The screaming is what stopped you.

Normally, Summerhall is a quiet place. The most sound comes from the wind whistling through the windows, and even then it's only a slight breeze. The air lingers with the scent of fresh spring grass most of the time, and the halls are usually empty save for the royals present, and the occasional servant. That is to say, Summerhall is generally peaceful.

So, of course when you heard screaming as you were making your final rounds for the night, you would have stopped and wondered what exactly, the fuck, it was about.

Your first glance around the hall you were in told you that you were the only servant in the vicinity, it being the hour of the eel— which was great for you, being a woman, and unarmed, but it was also generally par for the course. The second glance told you that the screaming was coming from Prince Daeron's chambers.

Prince Daeron. He has always been something of an enigma to you. Daeron the Drunken, they call him, and perhaps it's true. You see him drunk more often than not, but still there's something about him that strikes you as less… princely, than the others. A way of being that is more in tune with the common folk. He thanks the servants. He treats almost everyone with respect and frankness, when he's sober enough to do so. He carries himself like a man who was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and it sets him apart from the rest of his family.

But he's also absolute shit at fighting. You had the opportunity to see him compete in the lists at a tourney at one point, and he spent most of it face down in the mud, and the rest in the infirmary. So, if something was happening to make the Prince scream that badly…

And you were running. Down the hall, up the stairs to the Prince's chambers, without stopping to call for help or to think why, in the name of the suffering Seven, you were willing to jump directly into the fray for a Prince who probably didn't even know you existed.

Because you have a soft spot for him. That is the reason, the one you would never admit to anyone out loud. You like his laugh. You like his witty jokes during feasts where the only thing you usually have to occupy you is how bad your feet hurt. You like the way he grins when he notices that you've laughed at them, and the twinkle of his pale eyes when he does. And you like how, any time he has ever spoken to you, he didn't make you feel like you were beneath him.

That is the unspoken reason for why you threw yourself into his chambers without checking to see if there's an unknown attacker on the loose. Stupidity is what some might call that. Others, loyalty.

When you come into his chambers, it's mostly dark. You struggle to see from the light of the one or two candles left burning in their stands. But as you squint, you can make out the shapes of furniture, the far end of the room, the end of the bed, and eventually, him.

Prince Daeron Targaryen is alone in his bed. He's tangled in the sheets, and even in the low candle and moonlight you can still make out the sheen of sweat across his arms and shoulders, dampening his hair.

There is no intruder. He's having a nightmare.

You stand in the light cast by the open doorway, and you wring your hands as you consider what you should do. It's entirely unbecoming of a woman, servant or no, to be tending to the Prince alone— but then, Prince Daeron lets out an unholy shout in his sleep that could rattle the windows, and you instinctively jump to close the heavy wooden door behind you.

Great. If anyone were to come now, they'd think you're attacking him. The thought crosses your mind as you pad towards his bed, but you dismiss it as soon as it arrives. You can't just leave him like this, battling something unseen in his mind, bad enough to make him scream the way he's doing.

You mean to gently rouse him, of course. Or, as well as you can manage— but that idea is quickly squashed when, as soon as you're within reach of him, his arm shoots out and nearly comes down against your head.

You catch it reflexively. It wasn't a forceful throw, but it's enough to require your full strength as you catch his forearm in your two hands. He jerks his elbow, seeming to fight the hands he feels around his muscle.

"Prince Daeron," you hiss, grunting as he jerks in your grip. Your fingers dig in, halting his movements. "Daeron. Wake up."

A horrified gasp. Somewhere in the darkness is an intake of breath so sharp that it seems to tear directly through his lungs. Then, the struggle against you just… stops.

And suddenly, Prince Daeron is sitting up before you, his arm still in your hands, his eyes shining in the dim ambient light.

"Oh…" he breathes, once he comes back to himself. His awareness returns slowly; you imagine it may be due to whatever wine he drank, which clings to him and gives scent to the sweat on his brow.

Daeron's eyes eventually find yours, wide and fearful, and you can see the wheels turning in his head as he struggles to comprehend the situation. His gaze casts wildly from your face, to the sheets he's tangled in, his sweat-soaked shirt, and his arm as you grip it tightly, frozen in midair.

"Oh—" he says again, this time choked off on the end. "I'm sorry, I— did I…?"

"It's all right," you tell him immediately, without thinking. You don't seem to be doing much of it, tonight.

"I'm sorry," Daeron repeats, and his voice cracks. The sound hits painfully somewhere in your chest, somewhere tender and unsuitable for being touched by a prince. But he's still whispering it, over and over like a chant, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry," and he pries his arm out of your grip only to hastily gather you into his arms and pull you to him by the waist.

You freeze. Your arms suspended in midair, without a place to go or purchase to be made, hover just above his shoulders as he plants his head against your chest. He squeezes you the way a child might squeeze a stuffed toy, for comfort, for soothing, and you… you don't actually know what to do.

You have a prince hugging you. His ear to your pounding heart, his hand pressed to your spine to keep you there. What are you supposed to do, in this situation?

Deciding that there is no way, in any book written by Maester or common folk, that there are directions for a moment such as this. So, you don't spend the time pondering any. You lower your arms and cradle him around the shoulders, laying a palm flat against the back of Daeron's head as he clings to you.

Daeron takes a deep, stuttering breath that shakes in his shoulders, and you realize after a moment that he's crying. You hold him tighter for it. You bend your head down over his like you can shield him from the weight of his torment with your own body, somehow.

He's still muttering apologies, muffled by your bodice against his mouth. It ignites a part of you that is overly protective, monstrous in its capacity to defend that which it holds dear. It's all teeth and claws and snarling ferocity against any percieved threat.

Your hand smoothes his hair away from his temple, ignoring the stringiness of it as he presses his face to your breast, his hands clinging to your back like he can become a part of you if he just gets close enough. "Shh. You did nothing wrong."

"I almost hit you."

"But you didn't." He shakes in your arms. You pet his head. "You didn't."

Even so, he doesn't loosen his grip. He holds you to him like you're something precious that he doesn't want to lose, presses close to you at the edge of the bed with a desperation that you've never quite experienced before. You can't figure out what to do with it, so instead you do what you know to— soothe.

"It was only a nightmare," you tell him quietly, raking your fingers through his hair. Daeron's shallow breath whistles through his teeth as you do, and you let your nails scratch lightly over his scalp. He shudders. "You know what my mother used to tell me about nightmares? Once you're awake, they're gone. They can't bother you anymore."

"Not mine," he argues. Fingers dig into your back, holding you like an anchor. "Mine are real. Mine hurt. Blood, and— and ash. Rivers of fire. Monsters."

"There are no monsters here," you assure him quietly. "Just me."

Daeron makes a small noise, his hand moving to hold the curve of your hip. With one arm still around your waist, he lifts his head from your chest to look up at you. "I'm glad it's you."

Your hand still cradles his head as he peers at you through the darkness, the light of the moon reflected in his eyes. You brush his hair away from his face as you gaze down at him, tear streaked cheeks and trembling lips and all, and feel like you want to burst into flames from the look of sheer reverence on his face.

"Me?" Your brows tilt in confusion, while you still idly twist his hair around your fingers.

Daeron nods. You don't know if it's the drink still working on him, or just the emotion of the moment, but he quietly admits, "I like it, when you're near me."

You're at a loss for how to answer him. You hold your prince's face in your hands like a lover, and it scares you how much you want him to be. You're horrified by how badly you want to bend down and kiss him, to soothe away his pain with soft touches and slow hands. It worries you, almost moreso, that he would probably let you.

He makes no move to let you go, but you have to. Before you do something that you'll both regret.

You pull back slightly, and he slowly releases you, although you can feel the tension in his hands like he wants to pull you back in. You have to put distance between you, to ensure that he doesn't, and that you won't go like a moth to a flame. Instead, you step across to the small vanity by the wall and pour him a glass of water. You can feel his eyes on you through the dark, but you refuse to turn and meet them with your own.

He takes the glass readily enough, but pauses when he realizes that it isn't wine. He lets the cup hover below his lips with a rueful look on his face.

"Drink it," you dare to order him, momentarily feeling the rush of adrenaline that comes from ordering a man above your station.

Daeron shoots you a defiant look, but does what you tell him. He drains the cup, one eye on you all the while, and when he hands the empty cup back to you, it's with a low mutter of thanks.

"Good," you say quietly, taking the cup to return it to the vanity.

"Will you stay?" Daeron asks when you turn back towards him. He looks sheepish, fisting his hands in the tangled bedsheets. "Would you… stay with me tonight? I can't— I don't want to be alone."

You hesitate. Why do you hesitate? You're torn between a desire to say yes and curl yourself around him like smoke, and refusing him outright. It would be improper for you to stay with him in any capacity; it could mean your removal from Summerhall, and a world of trouble for you should you need to find a new employer.

Still, you clasp your hands and take a step towards his bed. "Is that wise, my lord?"

Daeron blinks. He breathes out a long, defeated sigh. "Probably not."

You nod, and examine him now that your eyes have truly adjusted. The dark rings under his eyes, the dappling of sweat on his shoulder where his shirt has shifted to the side and slipped off.

"I can't stay with you all night, my lord. It wouldn't be appropriate for either of us," you tell him honestly, and the words feel sour in your mouth. Daeron watches you with a mixture of apprehension and hope as you approach the bed and stop just when your skirts brush the mattress. "But… I could stay, at least until you fall back asleep. If you'd like."

"I can't see how I'll get any sleep, now," he croaks, fiddling with the sheets and disentangling his legs.

"The night is still young," you tell him softly. "Just try."

He glances at you as you straighten his pillow for him. "If I start to— if I have fits again…"

"I'll wake you."

"I was going to tell you to fetch a guard," he objects, his expression earnest. "You can't catch my arm every time. I'd hate to… I don't want to hurt you."

You smile, and even you can feel the warmth of it. "As you like it, my lord."

Daeron stares at you for a moment, looking as though he wants to say something else. Ultimately, he seems to think better of it, and he settles back against the pillow. He seems to stare unblinkingly up at the canopy over his bed for a moment before he blows out a puff of air and says, "I don't particularly want to go back to sleep, you know."

You grunt noncommittally, perching yourself on the edge of his mattress. "You look tired," you say, passing a gentle finger over one of the dark rings beneath his eye. The touch is unnecessary and indulgent— something you could easily lose a hand for, in the wrong company.

Daeron is not the wrong company. Daeron lifts his own hand and captures yours, then presses his lips to your knuckles in lieu of saying anything else. It conveys what he wants. His thanks. His trust. The emotional weight of the evening, at least somewhat eased by your presence.

"Sleep," you chance to order him again, and like before, he listens.

With his eyes closed, and half asleep already, he murmurs, "I hope I dream of you." It causes an ache in your chest that you can't, or won't, explain for.

You don't know if he does. Once his breathing slows, and he doesn't rouse when you drop his hand, you leave his chambers without looking back.

Prince Daeron is standing in the wine cellar.

You watch him for a long time. Mostly because it's the first time you've ever seen one of the royals in the servants' area of the castle, but also because he seems to not realize that you are standing there even with your shadow blocking the doorway, because as soon as you'd seen the mess of honey-gold hair on his head and made the purposeful decision to just… look.

Because you've never really allowed yourself to, before. You regard the nobles the way you are expected to, as a servant— deferrent, but only in cursory glances. You don't stare. You make eye contact when spoken directly to, and otherwise keep your eyes downcast, curtsy when necessary, jump to attention when directed to. You are not supposed to gaze openly, staring like you are now.

You tilt your head, eyes raking up and down his frame like you can consume the entirety of his appearance all at once and keep it forever if you try hard enough. His hair is clean, likely neatly combed earlier in the day but now falling around his face in unruly, thick waves. His doublet is red velvet, and the hint of white of his shirt presses out at the collar like a flash of light. He looks much better than he did the last time you saw him this close— less sickly, more composed. Maybe he's already had a drink or two, but it's hard to tell with him.

Since the other night, you haven't known what to think. You haven't necessarily avoided the prince, but neither have you sought him out. You figured he probably doesn't remember anything that transpired between you in the dark of his chambers. You didn't want to sift through the memory and try to figure out why, exactly, you kept coming back to the feeling of his arms around your waist, his head on your chest, his lips on your knuckles.

Daeron does not strike you as being a prince. He reminds you, oddly, of the few men you've been intimate with— pretty smiles and fumbling hands, tipsy in dimly lit taverns and inns. Once, regrettably, over a barrel in the back alley behind a pot shop. Watching Daeron swaying a little in the wine cellar of Summerhall, you feel your eyes shift to the wine cask beyond his shoulder.

That's dangerous, you tell yourself sharply before turning your attention back to the present, back to him. One of the noble lords of the house you serve, still unaware that you're leering at him like a pervert.

"Your grace?" you finally chance to say, softly.

"Mm?" Daeron is distracted. He doesn't turn around. You don't think he even realizes that you are a person standing in the room, and not just a voice inside his head.

"Prince Daeron." You say it a little louder this time, trying to rouse his attention.

Daeron starts, turning to look at you. His feet are still rooted in place, but he pivots at the waist to peer at you over his shoulder. He looks at you for a long— very long— moment. His eyes travel up and down your body a few times, before he finds his voice. He raises his eyebrows, shooting you a sardonic look. "…Ye-es?"

In response you offer him a small, polite smile. "Can I help you with anything, my lord?"

Daeron blinks, seeming to think over your words carefully. Then, he squints, his focus shifting as though he's only just remembered why he came down here. "I can't seem to find the Arbor Gold."

Your smile turns into something more fond. "The Arbors are kept at the far end."

"Right." He looks down that way, but doesn't move further into the cellar. After a pause, he confesses, "I haven't been down here, myself, in ages. I never had to. Always had someone else to do it for me."

You consider his words for a moment. "Was there no one to serve you tonight?"

"I didn't want to be a burden." He waves his hand as though it's nothing worth giving more thought, but it doesn't stop you from frowning. "Gods. It seemed so much bigger down here when I was a lad. Always does, though, doesn't it?"

When he smiles at you like you're sharing an inside joke, you find yourself smiling at him, too. After a moment, you offer, "Would you like me to bring some Arbor Gold to your chambers, my lord?"

Daeron opens and closes his mouth once, his eyes roving across the casks before he nods, chuckling. "Probably would be for the best."

You wipe your hands on the front of your kirtle and move to fetch a pitcher from the hooks on the wall, when you hear him cough.

"Would you…?"

You turn to gaze at him again, finding him apprehensive. It's an odd thing to have a Prince all but shrinking before you, as though he is afraid of overstepping, somehow. But the look leaves him almost as soon as it arrives, and he straightens his spine somewhat. He raises his chin a tick, clasps his hands behind his back in an almost funny impression of his father.

"Would you care to join me?"

"My lord?" You raise an eyebrow, half-sure you misheard him, and half-surprised that you didn't.

"For wine," he adds, as though that wasn't clear. He gestures vaguely at the casks. "As long as I'm pulling you away from your duties, and you're indulging me. Perhaps you could join me for a cup."

You blink. Look for some kind of jest or trick in his features, and find none. Daeron is an open book, his eyes wide and pale as a field of lavender in spring. His cheeks are flushed, and for the first time you wonder if it's entirely due to the drink.

After a long pause, you tilt your head. Kindly, you ask, "Is that wise, my lord?"

"Probably not."

You stare at each other— you, with your hand on the pitcher, half turned towards him. He, with his hands clasped behind his back, his weight shifting from foot to foot. And then, his eyes rake once over your body, a slow and deliberate up and down that sends a shiver through you. It is not a trick of the light. It is something very much like what you had been doing, secretly, to him.

Or, perhaps not so secretly. When his eyes find yours again Daeron's are open and inviting, sharing a look of knowing. He knows, somehow, the way you'd been staring at him— have been, for a while, when you thought he was entirely unaware. You're not in the exact frame of mind to question why or how that is. If the stories you've been told if the Targaryens are anything to go by, the prince might very well have eyes in the back of his head.

Of course, you've never been known for your grand ideas. You like his smile a bit too much when you say, "Give me ten minutes."

Fuck, he's pretty.

That's the first thing you think when you step into Prince Daeron's chambers with a light rap on the door, before foregoing propriety and just letting yourself in. You figure, if any of this were proper, he would have asked his own cupbearer, wherever the boy went, to bring him the wine. He would not have invited you to share it with him. And you would certainly not have accepted, and Daeron wouldn't have positively bounded out of the wine cellar like a knight before a joust, and you would not have secretly stolen to your own quarters for a quick once over at your mirror.

And, of course, he wouldn't be sitting there in his shirtsleeves, his doublet undone, his blouse open at the collar like something from a painting. He's so fucking pretty. Does he know? It's hard to tell, with him— Daeron's pattern of behavior makes him hard to pin down. It could be that he knows how handsome he is, but he carries himself through the shadows like he'd rather sink into them. You don't know him to be one of the princes who has ladies throwing themselves at him, so perhaps he assumes that means he isn't attractive, and that he must take his pleasure where he can get it.

If that's true, it's a shame. You were told once, by another maid who had been employed at Summerhall for longer than you've been alive, that Prince Daeron takes after his mother— that's why he doesn't have the same pale Targaryen coloring as his siblings. And you imagine that must be true, because although you never saw Lady Dyanna in life, it's obvious that he doesn't bear the same severity in his features as that of his father, Prince Maekar.

Daeron's features are softer, gentler. His honey-gold hair shines like sunlight by the fire, his lilac eyes catching the light and turning almost silver. Rosy lips and cheeks, a dimple in one of them when he smiles. His legs look strong and his arms muscular, as much as one might expect from a Prince, but less so than one who might spend all his time training. You remember, with a sharp surge of warmth at the base of your spine, the feeling of his arms as they squeezed you around the waist.

He is not a warrior. Something tells you he is not a poet, either— so that begs the question, what is he?

"Are you going to stare at me all night?"

Daeron turns his eyes to you, and there's a flash of that dimple in his cheek, his lips turned up at the corners humorously.

You avert your eyes almost instinctively, but cannot suppress your own small smile. "Apologies, your grace."

"Bah." He throws out an arm, making a grabbing gesture towards you as if to will the wine pitcher directly into his outstretched hand. As you approach and hand him a goblet, he mutters good-naturedly, "If I were really so concerned about it, I wouldn't have invited you into my chambers. Who knows what might happen?"

You bite back a smirk as you fill his cup. "Do you think I would take advantage of you?"

"Why, of course," he says with mock-surprise. "Me, a poor drunken Prince all alone, and you, a devastatingly handsome girl with a keen eye. My honor is likely forfeit."

A loud blast of laughter leaves you, such that it makes Daeron give you a startled look. Then delight sweeps across his features, and he laughs to himself as he takes the pitcher from you and fills your own cup.

"Do you mean to tell me that you're chaste, my lord?" You bite your lip slightly at the jab, lowering yourself into the chair across from him when he gestures to it. "Taken up the black, have you?"

"Me? Never." Daeron lifts his wine and takes a sip, though looks entirely bemused as he does so. "I'm not disciplined enough, and I fear Summerhall would miss the soul of my wit. Although, I imagine the thought has crossed my father's mind once or twice." His eyes flick over your form, focusing in on the cup that you grasp in your hands. "Drink, my lady. Before it goes warm."

The finery of the moment gives you pause— you don't believe you've ever sat in a chair this opulent, much less drank Arbor wine out of a silver goblet while making banter with a prince. It seems that the night is full of wonders.

"I'm not a lady, your grace," you remind him softly, lowering your eyes as you lift your cup.

Daeron in quiet for a moment, watching you thoughtfully. His lilac eyes linger on your lips as they touch the rim of your cup, and then he says, "All women are ladies. All men are knights."

"All men are fools," you add, feeling the sharpness of the wine at the back of your throat.

"True enough," Daeron agrees. "But it makes the other statements no less true."

"Well," you say, chewing on your lip as you look up at him through your lashes. He watches you with a calm, comfortable expression, as though you are just another person he might have met at an inn, or a tavern. Amicable. Gentle. "That's kind of you, my lord."

Daeron smirks into his cup. "That's a first."

"What is?"

"Kind is not something anyone would usually call me," Daeron remarks. "Certainly not to my face, at least."

"No one's ever… called you kind?" You tilt your head. "What of your friends?"

"Friends?" Daeron laughs. He throws his head back slightly, as though the mere notion is hilarious to him, but there's a sadness to it that grips at your heart and squeezes painfully. When he looks at you again, he shakes his head and gives you a rueful smile. "I don't have any friends."

You pause, wracking your brain. "But… You have five siblings."

"Siblings are not the same as friends." He tilts his head towards you, looking at you with a sort of deadpan humor that you're sure is intended to make you feel more at ease. "If they were, I imagine most families would be better off."

You consider the idea, and then make a face. "I suppose that's a fair assessment. You're quite right."

"Thank you. I've been saying so for the longest time, and no one ever believes me." He toasts you with a grin. It splits his face wide and makes him seem so boyish and sweet that you have to look quickly away.

"You know…" You hum, sipping at your wine demurely. You try to train your expression into something neutral— perfunctory, even— as you say, "I could be your friend, my lord."

Daeron is quiet for a moment too long, and you glance up to find him staring into the fire distantly. Then, he echoes, "Friend."

"Mhm." You take another sip of wine and wonder, absently, if perhaps there's something in it to make it double strength. There's no other reason you can think of for why you'd be so forward with a prince, but that you like him, and that he's been kind to you thus far.

Then, quite to your relief and also to your dismay, Prince Daeron shifts and takes a long breath through his nose. He says, so soft that it's almost as though you weren't meant to hear it, "It would be nice… to have a friend."

You hide your nervous smile with the rim of your cup.

Daeron clears his throat, and then looks up at you. He crosses one leg over the other, resting his ankle on his knee as though he's talking business late at night in front of a tavern fire. "And you would be my friend? Take up the mantle and… what, exactly?"

"It's not like being a sworn sword, your grace," you snort derisively. The wine has made you bold. Daeron seems to like it.

He gives you a lopsided grin. "No? What do friends do, then?" He rests his chin on his hand, his elbow on the arm of his chair as he slouches toward you like a sunflower turning towards the light. "Do tell me, since I have no earthly idea."

"Well," you begin, casting your gaze towards the fire. You feel suddenly shy with his eyes upon you, as though you can feel the intensity of his gaze directly through your bodice. Your heart leaps up into your throat. "Friends… they look out for each other."

"Mm?"

"Take care of each other, I mean."

"Mm." The tone changes to something suggestive. "Take care of each other how?"

Your face is burning— is it from the wine? The fire? You can't tell anymore. "Well, I— I suppose, with whatever the other needs. A helping hand. Companionship. Someone to talk to, or to be still with, or—"

"Or to hold?"

Oh, gods. That's your first thought when you look at him, and he's still staring at you, unwavering in his focus. Slowly blinking as though he's enraptured by you and has no intentention of looking away, even if he spends the rest of the night with his eyes still set upon you.

His arms around your waist. His ear pressed over your beating heart. His eyes peering up at you in the darkness, begging you to stay. His lips pressed to your knuckles. 'I hope I dream of you.' You let him, and you let him, and you let him.

"Yes, I suppose. In some cases." You nod, mostly to yourself, and then take a swig of the wine so large that you feel it stretch your esophagus on the way down.

Still watching you with a serene smile on his face, he says, "Then, I'd like to be your friend."

You swallow past the thickness in your throat, and return with a wobbly smile of your own. "Thank you, my lord."

He makes a short noise. "You should probably call me 'Daeron' when we're alone." Then amends with a wink, "Since we're friends."

"Right." Then, when he raises an eyebrow, you add, "…Daeron."

His responding smile is softer around the edges than the others, and holds something tenderly in it that, you think, he doesn't exactly want you to see. It's held to his chest like a secret.

Now is your turn to watch him the way he's been watching you— fully, unabashed, no attempt to hide the open hunger on your face. He's distracted by the fire, by his cups, and by the ring that he twists on his forefinger with his thumb. You watch the movement and feel, like a hot coal sinking down the line of your spine and between your legs, the arousal that you'd been trying so desperately to push away in the wine cellar.

"You know—" you say sharply, so suddenly that you see Daeron blink in suprise. He shoots you a curious look when you continue, hoarsely, "Friends do… other things, too."

"Is that so?" He gives you a once-over with an expression like he knows exactly what you mean, but feels like indulging you, anyway. "Like what?"

"Like…" You try to think of the best way to say what you're thinking.

Friends can fuck. Friends can do unspeakable things to each other an then carry on like nothing in the world ever happened.

Instead you say, "Favors."

"Favors?" Daeron parrots, refilling his goblet. "What kind of favors?"

You don't say anything. You don't have it in you to voice it— you've never seduced anyone before. You're not used to the talking, more the doing. You're very good at the doing, or so you've been told. But you don't have the words, and so you just… look.

The same way you've been doing all night, but this time without waiting for him to look away. His eyes are fixed on you as you take a long, lecherous, languid assessment of his body. Starting from his pale eyes, and traveling down to his lips, along the line of his throat to where his chest is laid bare from his open collar— the collar he loosened, on purpose, before you came in. Down further, to his hands holding the goblet aloft. Beautiful hands, hands that tremble a bit from the drink, but whose fingers are long and laced with veins that run down the back of his palm. Down, to the space between his legs where he's already made a tent in his breeches.

"Ah," he murmurs, more a breath than anything, but it's enough for you to snap your eyes back up towards his own. "Those kind of favors." He smirks, then quirks a brow and cocks his head. "Do you go to bed with all your friends?"

"Only the pretty ones."

That makes him laugh. Loudly, fully. It splits through the air like a bell, settling around your shoulders like hands squeezing you. Then, he sets his goblet down on the low table between you, and points at your cup. "Do you want more wine?"

You look down at your near empty goblet. "Sure. Why not."

Of course, you expect him to simply pick the pitcher up and refill your goblet, like a normal person. And you certainly imagine that you will both continue hedging about your desire to fuck each other, until one of you inevitably topples onto the bed in your wine-drunk stupor and the other follows with soft giggles and wandering hands. That's the basic script you've learned, by now, to follow when it comes to drunken dalliances. Except, Prince Daeron isn't a normal man, and your first mistake was expecting that he would act accordingly.

You don't expect him to crawl towards you on all fours. He lowers himself from his chair and approaches you like a dog looking for an affectionate hand, and you think your heart stops and starts nearly five times between his chair and yours. He gazes up at you with wide, almost innocent eyes— almost— and settles on his knees to take the goblet gently from your hand.

If you weren't frozen in shock, you might have realized that he would have liked it if, in that moment, you reached forward and stroked his head. But you would not be so presumptuous.

Daeron, for that matter, is. You hate him for it as much as you like him for it, or at least that's what you tell yourself. Daeron fills your goblet, but instead of simply handing it back to you, he holds it as he raises himself up on his knees until he's nearly towering over you. He's still so tall, even on his knees before you, and you have to suppress a sigh when one hand comes up and gently cups your chin, his fingers warm where they touch your skin. One thumb tracing the plush of your lower lip, but without deigning to press in.

"Open," Daeron says, his voice soft enough that you don't question it.

You part your lips and let him feel a flash of wetness on your inner lip with his thumb, the rough edge of your teeth. He waits there for a second, feeling. And then he raises your goblet to his own mouth and takes a small sip.

You gasp, more out of surprise than anything else, when he leans forward and his lips replace his thumb. Your chin tilted up, his face hovers just a fraction of an inch from yours before closing that gap, and he lets the wine flow from his mouth into yours. It spills sweet and warm from his tongue onto your own, and you find yourself instinctively grasping onto his arms for something stable to keep yourself upright.

You swallow. Daeron makes a pleased noise when he feels it, his thumb gliding along the curve of your chin.

"Gods," you mutter after a moment, your face still so close to his that you can see every detail in his lilac irises— where the blue turns into pale purple, where midnight blue flecks the inner ring.

Daeron cracks an almost victorious grin, but only for a second. Then, he squints. "Are we still friends?"

"Only if you intend to greet me that way every time you see me," you tell him. You thought yourself so stunned that you couldn't speak, but it seems the words come just as easily when you have no brain in your head to form them.

"Good," he answers brightly. Then, he gives you one of his looks of faux-severity, which never quite seems to land right on his features. "Then, perhaps we can be honest, and stop acting like we don't want to eat each other alive."

You snicker, turning your hands to fists against the sleeves of his shirt. "Your fault for half undressing yourself before I came here."

"You've been undressing me in your head the whole time, anyways," Daeron argues petulently, and when you open your mouth to object, he presses his finger to your lips. "Don't lie, your face betrays you every time."

You grumble a half-hearted assent, just before nipping lightly at his fingertip with your teeth. Daeron makes a little noise and jerks his hand away, just before echoing your giggle with one of his own and smoothing your hair away from your face.

"You're so lovely," Daeron admits to you after a moment. His hand still gently cradles your chin, but he looks down the slope of his nose at you with something wistful in his eyes. "I didn't thank you properly, the other night." He sits back heavily on his heels, hands folded against his thighs, eyes shining up at you. His neck— fuck, his neck— long and lean and exposed from where he tilts his chin up to look at you. "Let me atone for my transgressions."

"You don't have to— my prince," you gasp when his fingers wrap around your ankle and he draws your skirts upwards. The fabric whispers against your skin without much more urging.

"I'm not a prince," he says quietly, his eyes focused on your face. "Not with you."

You give him an incredulous look. His hand smoothes up your calf, and you practically swallow the squeal that threatens to break from your throat. "Because we're friends?"

"Yes." He's not teasing, or joking. His expression is as genuine and earnest as you've ever seen it, his hand tightening on your calf. "Will you let me thank you properly? Or am I to sit there simpering like a fucking imbecile all night?"

You bite back a snort, your hand momentarily flying to your lips before you give him a sidelong glance. He's still waiting for your approval, you realize.

"If I told you to go and sit there like an imbecile, you would?" you ask him, more out of curiosity than anything.

"Yes." It is, again, without question. He doesn't have it in him to be anything but forthcoming, apparently.

You believe him. You reach forward and stroke his head, once, just to remind yourself that he's real, and not a figment of your imagination. "It would be very indecent, you know."

"Yes, very." He blinks at you. He isn't deterred in the slightest. Amused, even, as his lips curl into a wan smile.

You can't help but mirror it. "Do as you like, my lord."

The grin he gives you is pure, selfish indulgence. He raises your calf and presses a kiss just below your knee— a chaste thing, nothing out of the ordinary, except that it's him and it's your knee. Your heart beats in your chest loud as thunder as he drags his lips upwards, over the curve of your knee, past the shelter of your skirts.

"Daeron," you hiss suddenly, gripping the arms of your chair for dear life as he pulls you forward in your seat.

"What?" The petulance in his voice is the only thing you have ever seen or heard from him to suggest his lineage. He sounds so much like his father when he says it, glancing up at you through long, fluttering lashes.

"Do you—" Your eyes bounce around the room, while you search for the proper words to voice your concern. "Are you sure you want to… do that?"

Daeron is frustratingly straight faced. He's so gravely serious about it that you almost want to laugh. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Because…" You bite your lip, suddenly bashful. "I've been working all day, and… and I haven't bathed."

Daeron gazes at you for a moment, his brows lifted incredulously before he laughs. His breath ghosts across your bare thigh, making you shift in his hold.

"You could have been riding bareback through the mud, and I would still want to taste you." His words send a horrid wave of heat rushing through your body. "Now let me."

You answer with a squeak, because he takes to the plush of your inner thigh with a nip of his teeth, the soft drag of his lips following. He is hard and soft— teeth and lips, wet tongue and rough beard stubble. Your mouth opens and closes, searching in vain for something to say or a sound to make, but nothing comes out.

Not until Daeron rucks your skirts up to your hips and yanks the laces of your smallclothes, his eyes suddenly sharper than they have been all night. The sight of your bared sex appears to have sobered him, somewhat. He leans forward, shouldering your thighs upwards while his hands spread you wide. Your slippers jump ship, falling to the carpet with dull thuds that act as punctuation. A small whimper leaves you, a mild sound of alarm at being so utterly exposed to him.

"You… gorgeous—" Daeron sighs, nuzzling his nose into the matted curls surrounding the cleft of your pussy, wet with your arousal. You gasp, your face burning as he takes a deep lungful of air, breathing in the scent of you.

He gives you a warm brush of his tongue, so soft that nought but a sigh escapes your lips. Daeron coaxes your thighs further apart, hoisting you towards his face with a strength you didn't know he had. Maybe he only uses it on occasions such as this, with his head between your legs and his mouth on your cunt.

"Gods," he mumbles against you, accented with a flattening of his tongue. "You're so sweet."

Your hands find his hair, and he groans. The sudden vibration makes you jolt, your hips bucking up into him, your back bent awkwardly towards the backrest of the chair while you struggle to find your stability. Daeron is unbothered. Daeron is tasting you with a voracity that, quite frankly, appalls you— his mouth makes a lewd slurp and his tongue worms its way into your entrance, a flexing of the muscle in an imprudently intimate place.

You never would have thought he'd be like this; certainly, most of the servants in the castle have suggested that he drinks too many to be of any use in the bedroom. But he still, somehow, managed to get his women— whores, usually, but you never heard any of them complaining. You thought it had something to do with the coin, but now… now, you aren't so sure.

"Daeron, I— I won't— fuck." The words tumble out, cut off on a little moan when he sucks, latching onto your clit and not letting go. He drags his tongue over it and you go boneless, your spine bowing into the hollow created between the seat and the backrest. Your chin hits your chest awkwardly and you find his eyes, staring up at you from between your legs, dark and vehement.

Daeron whines when you tug on his hair, a noise so gorgeous that it makes everything within you tighten up hard and sharp. Your hips buck against him, but Daeron's hands grasp you and hold you down against the edge of your seat, keeping you from moving an inch.

It's cruel, the wanting— how deeply it has you in its thrall; because you have him between your legs, and it's not enough. There's still that hollow in your chest that wants him inside it, but which is too small to house a dragon.

"Fuck, you're pretty," you gasp, hands on his head and in his hair, eyes on his. He makes a small noise, his eyes fluttering shut in earnest, but you continue, "So fucking pretty, Daeron, gods—"

His slick tongue, more dextrous than it has any right to be, strokes over your clit again, and again, and again, and you think you might choke. You aren't paying attention to how hard your fingers are gripping at him, scrabbling at his head until your nails find purchase and dig in, and Daeron moans unbelievably loud. The sound is filthy, depraved— he buckles, his hips lurching against nothing, his head both dipping low and pushing against the feeling like he wants more of it.

You hold him with both hands, your palms cradling his head to you like some precious thing. He follows your urging until there is nothing but the sounds of your moans mingling with his, and the rocking back and forth of his mouth and your hips.

You cum against his tongue, and it leaves you with a shattered cry and long, cloying spasms that seem to go on for ages, made stronger for the fact that he won't stop. He keeps sucking on your clit, ignoring your pleas for mercy, and his hand just strokes along your thigh as he feels it twitch against his ear.

When Daeron pulls off of your clit with a loud slurp and a ragged gasp, his cheeks are tinged red. His lips flushed and wet with you, his eyes shining in the firelight. "You— you have no idea," he stutters out, his words slightly thick and garbled in the back of his throat, "what you do to me."

Fuck, he looks absolutely wrecked. The strands of his golden waves that you'd captured in your fist hang in tangles around his face, and he pants heavily through parted lips.

"I could do more," you say, struggling to sit forward. "I could— I could fuck you so hard, Daeron, I—"

Daeron laughs breathlessly, dropping his forehead against your thigh in a way that seems bashful. "Ah... That may be difficult, at the moment."

"What…?" You peer at him in confusion as he leans back on his haunches, and then you see it. A blotch of wetness darkens the front of his breeches, which would explain for the roughness of his breath. "Oh."

"Terribly undignified, I know," he muses, grunting as he squeezes his eyes shut and shifts uncomfortably. "Not that I ever had any dignity."

You don't know whether to laugh, or cry, or fucking moan at the sight of him. You can't look away from the stain on his breeches. He came in his pants. You did that. Or, moreso, he did that with his face between your legs. Untouched.

With a wild hair that forces you to act before thinking— as you do more and more often, when it comes to him— you move your leg. Your foot, bare of your slipper, presses just against the crotch of his breeches, and a noisy groan tears from his lips.

He captures your ankle in his hand, his eyes suddenly dark. "That's… tender."

"I should hope so." A devilish smile curves at your lips, such that Daeron makes a pathetic noise at the sight of it. His thumb brushes back and forth against your ankle as you lift it, setting your toe against his chest. "We have plenty of time, my lord. I'm not done with you, yet."

You push, just barely, with your toe against his sternum, and he topples like a house of cards. He falls heavily back onto his hands, knees splayed wide to brace himself against the Myrish carpet, his chest leaping with the effort of his breath. Daeron tilts his head, looking almost like a confused puppy as you lower yourself from your chair, setting your hands on his knees and jerking them apart, much like he did yours.

"Take off your shirt," you order him.

Daeron opens his mouth to say something, seems to think it over, and then closes it. He begins with the open doublet, shrugging it away like so much fodder. His hands, shaking, find the front of his shirt and tug, loosening it from his breeches before throwing it over his head.

Your eyes and hands are greedy things. They want to take and absorb him until every edge and angle has been etched into your memory, to keep for yourself. You crowd yourself between his thighs and push him until he lays flat against the floor, the soft expanse of his stomach trembling beneath your touch.

He's more muscular than you thought he would be. Softer than a soldier, but beautifully toned. Your hands run over muscle padded by soft flesh, flushed red and dotted with freckles that you want to trace and lavish with your lips. Your palms cup and smooth over arms that are stronger than they have any right to be, fingers trace along veins that jump with the drumbeat of his pulse. Blood beating hot beneath his skin— blood of a dragon. Blood born of fire, even if the only fire he gives you is the kind he stokes between your legs.

Daeron whispers your name, and it nearly breaks in his throat where he seems to have lost his voice on his way down. The sound of it slams through your chest and worms its way down into your gut, kindling the fire already struck there by his mouth.

You take his hands. Big, warm things that stop shaking once yours are inside them, maybe only because you can hold them still. Your fingers lace with his, and his breath catches— you lift, bringing them over his head to rest against the carpet, his pectorals pulled taut, his ribs raised and the hollow of his stomach stretched to accomodate.

"Stay there," you tell him, and he does. It's a dangerous thing, to be able to order a prince around, and have him listen. To have him follow your instructions happily, blithely, like a dog responding to the snapping of your fingers. Good boy. Lay down. Roll over.

Your lips find his collarbone first. They linger there while you breathe him in, much like he did you— now that you've had some wine, yourself, you can't smell it much on him. Instead, you smell what lies under it; the spice of whatever Dornish perfume he wears against his throat, the musk of his sweat, the lingering sweetness of the lilac oil from his bath water. Your tongue flutters out to taste it, and Daeron gasps loudly, arching up into your touch with a desperation bordering on needy.

"This— this is what friends do?" Daeron asks quietly, his breath caught in his throat as your lips trace a path down his chest. Your tongue flicks out over one nipple, and he stiffens, his arms twitching like he wants to bring them down against you. He doesn't.

"They can," you say. "If you want."

"I want." A groan, airy and hoarse. "Oh f-fuck— I want."

"Good," you sigh. "Because I want it, too."

You bite at his ribs. He moans, and lets you. It stokes something terrible in you that wants to stake a claim, to be rough with him even while you continue being gentle. You want to sink your teeth in, so you give him the softness of your tongue instead. His responding sigh is worth it, and the slow widening of his thighs as you move downward.

"Did you dream of me, my lord?" you ask him as your hands find the laces of his breeches.

A hollow laugh rattles from his ribs and into your mouth. "More than you know."

That's not what you meant— and yet, it's exactly the answer that you wanted. Your lips part against his stomach, tongue laving before you suck, hard, hard enough to burst capillaries and leave a deep red bruise in your wake.

Daeron moans loud. Almost loud enough to echo around the bedchamber, his hips jolting upwards and finding no purchase. His arms finally come down, landing with dull thumps on either side of him. "Oh, fuck, what're you— what're you doing?"

"A favor," you say simply, and lick him from his navel to his hip.

"Here?" Even as he asks, your hands are pulling the ties of his breeches. "On the floor? There's a bed just over there."

"I would have fucked you on one of the wine casks," you grumble as you tug, the ties finally coming loose. You nuzzle in and lick over soft chestnut curls of hair, earning a shallow gasp in response.

Daeron laughs, a little too breathy. "Was that what you were thinking about? Figured I had something on my face."

When you meet resistence in the form of his hips, laying on the floor and keeping you from tugging his pants off, you pause. A prince's floor is better than a wine cask. Your eyes flick up to his, looking at you with mild amusement. "Do you mind?"

He lifts his hips. You pull. The fabric goes with a whisper, and you sit back to muscle them down the length of his legs. He's toned here, too. It's mildly unfair, considering his aptitude for athletic pursuits, and you have a mind to tell him— but he's hard again for you, already, and you don't want to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"There," you sigh, admiring him. He's pretty everywhere. Even his cock, rosy like the rest of him, wonderfully thick and smeared with cum left over from when he'd spent in his pants.

You lean down, and without pretense or lead in, take him into your mouth. Daeron shouts. It's different from the last time you heard it— not anguished, but instead carrying a note of delight in it. He's heavy on your tongue and tastes of salt, smells of musk like he had by his throat, but more. You taste him like you have all the time in the world, with a fervency to mirror his own.

Finally, you pull off of him, a string of spit connecting you. You say, almost conversationally, "I'm going to fuck you, now."

Daeron blinks, naked and spread-eagled beneath you. "Really? I had no idea. If this was your plan the whole time, you really must let a man know."

You snort, positioning yourself over him, your skirts rucked up around your thighs. "I'll give you fair warning next time, my lord."

"Next time," Daeron mutters, seemingly dazed, his hands finding your hips. "Yes."

You take him slowly, his cock stretching you so wide that your hips stall, your teeth grinding together as you brace yourself with a hand on his chest. "Fuck," you grit out, seating yourself fully, feeling him brush up against something wonderful and devastating there inside you. "Fuck, Daeron."

"Mhm." He's out of breath already. Panting, his lips parted and gazing up at you with the most pleading, desperate look you've ever seen. You move, and his mouth drops open with a ragged moan, his eyes falling shut as his head rocks back against the carpet.

Your hand finds the column of his throat. His pulse pounds beneath your fingers, his adam's apple bobbing against your palm. "Oh gods, you're so fucking good for me."

Daeron makes a strangled noise, his fingers digging into your hips. His hips lurch, trying to drive further into you— he fills you so completely, the relief of it is such that it draws a sigh from you.

You raise yourself up, sink back down. You begin a rhythm that has you keening, and has his breath stolen from his lungs.

Daeron reclines against the carpet, his hands beginning to guide your hips, his eyes starry and fixed on you in awe. His eyebrows pinch together, a smirk curving on his parted lips.

"What?" you ask him, breathless, a quiet moan leaving you as you grind your hips in slow circles. Your entire body feels like it's on fire. From the crown of your head to the tip of your toes, you feel as though the sparks dancing up your spine have ignited a blaze through you. When Daeron raises a hand and grabs at the front of your bodice, the laces loosening at his clumsy tugs, you fear that he may feel your blood boiling beneath your skin.

"Beautiful," Daeron whispers, his fingers parting the loosened front of your bodice to expose your breasts. "You're so beautiful."

"Daeron." Your cunt clamps hard around him, your breath catching in your throat as he drags his thumb over your hadened nipple, cupping the weight of your breast in his hand.

His mouth drops open in a moan, his eyes fluttering shut for just a moment. Then he lifts himself up on his elbow, pulling you towards him with one arm.

Daeron plants his face between your breasts clumsily, his mouth open and hot against your bare skin. "I'm not— ah, fuck— not worthy of this. You shouldn't— shouldn't give me—"

"I'll give you what I fucking want." Your fingers thread through his golden hair, softer now than you had been before, but no less insistent. "And right now, what I want is to make you cum."

Your words draw a strained sound from him that cracks in his throat, and he nips lightly at the curve of your breast with his teeth. The sharp edge of it sends a shockwave through you, pleasure mounting between your legs. Daeron audibly chokes, his eyes shut tight and mouth open over your breast as he feels you pulse around him.

Your head droops over his in an approximation of the way you held him before, days ago, while he came down from a nightmare. Your body jerks as his tongue laves against your nipple, his hand fumbling to yank your skirts up so that it can fit between your legs. A clumsy thumb finds your clit, unmeasured in his touch but focused in on just the right place to make you cry out, your face screwed tight at the onslaught of sensation.

"Oh fuck," you sob, feeling your orgasm wash over you with fury. Your body seizes, your muscles locking down tight around his cock, his thumb slipping through your wetness and nudging at your clit in small circles. It's too much, all at once, and you cum hard while he moans into your skin, his mouth still slotted over your breast.

Daeron makes a strangled, somewhat wet noise against you. You feel the sound vibrate against your skin like it was torn from some part of him that was still attached to it. His fingers tighten on your back, his hand pulling you flush to his chest while his hips grind up into yours, and you feel the rush of his release within you.

He cums pretty, too. You should have figured that he would.

"Beautiful," he's whispering again, soft against your body even as his thumb continues to work over your clit to the point of oversensitivity. "You're so beautiful— beautiful girl—"

"Hush." You lift his head, looking down at him as he takes shallow, shaking breaths. His eyes look heavy, drooping like they do halfway toward sleep. His face is still flushed, but his eyes are sparkling, pupils blown wide and dark. You tuck his hair back away from his face, and his eyes flutter shut, his head leaning into your hand like you may hold him up while he sleeps.

Instead, you lower him back down to the floor, and he goes, slowly, without complaint. You lay heavily on top of him while he's still inside you, growing soft, his cum beginning to leak from and making a sticky mess between your thighs.

You'll have to make moon tea in the morning. It doesn't matter, now.

"I did. Dream of you," Daeron murmurs, a weak noise breaking in his throat when he grinds his hips up into yours again for a brief second. "Of this."

Your heart practically slams up into your throat at his confession. You stare down at his gorgeous, placid face, and you're overcome with the urge to kiss him. You haven't kissed him yet, you realize— he spit wine into your mouth, but that was less a kiss and more a debased way to cut the fat from your mutual desire.

You almost drum up the courage to do it. Almost. But then, Daeron blinks his eyes open and finds you staring down at him, four inches from his face, and he grins lazily.

"Friends?" He asks, tracing a finger up your spine.

You clench your jaw and swallow the courage that you had been gathering. You nod at him, close enough that you can taste his breath. "Friends."

His cum continues to drip down your thighs.

Baelor has been standing at the foot of your bed for… much longer than he intended to. There's a tilt to his head, seventy-six degrees and counting, and a rise and fall to his chest that seems to be getting slightly faster with each passing exhale.

You do not see it. You are, as it is, asleep.

You're wearing his shirt. This is what has him still as stone, drawing his eyes over you in slow drags that he just can't seem to put an end to.

It's not an elaborate shirt. It's not even one of his best ones— the royal seamstresses have laden him with shirts of silk and fine woven cotton, embellished with hours of needlework or, in some horrifying cases, even beading. He has shirts of every color and shade, shirts of damask and velvet, shirts for summer and shirts for winter. Tunics from Dorne. Doublets from the Reach. Myrish robes. Qartheen samite vests.

You have chosen none of those. The one you have chosen is as simple a garment as he would choose on any given day, to wear against his skin beneath his doublet. White linen gauze, unembellished, unadorned. Its sleeves almost as billowing as its body, coming to plain rectangular cuffs. A simple collar, a sturdy yoke across the shoulders, double-stitched to keep it from unraveling. It is, in a word, efficient. Standard.

He knows, without having to ask you, that you chose to wear this shirt specifically because it is standard. Because it is one that he wears often. The cuffs have gone slightly soft with the wear, the neckline just a bit stretched along the bias. The felled seams are coming undone just a touch at the hem, a fact that he always sees but hasn't brought to the attention of his attendant, because it would mean a week of waiting to have it repaired. It is unfussy. But it is his.

And you are curled up in it like a kitten, asleep in his bed, your leg thrown over a pillow that you had moved toward his side of the bed in his absence. He has spent too long at his work, he knows. You spent too long waiting for him— long enough that you removed your nightgown and donned one of his shirts, and you fell asleep like that. Alone. In the bed you are meant to share with him.

Baelor feels a tightness in his chest that is ringed with fondness, an aching longing for you that hadn't stopped after your wedding, and doesn't seem like it will any time soon. He is too taken with you, too in love and consumed by it for that intrinsic sense of need for you to fade. It is a tender thing, tied around his heart in an intricate knot, with a tail that you hold the end of. You twirl it around your little finger and he buckles like a man who has never seen combat, who doesn't know what it is to stand his ground.

Baelor sighs as he undresses, but he keeps one eye on you all the while, as though you may disappear if he moves too far away. But you don't move. You don't even stir, when his belt hits the stone floor, or when his breeches follow. You are caught up in a world of dreams, unaware of what the sight of your sleeping form is doing to your husband, bringing him to the brink of something he has never quite been able to put a name to.

You do not stir when his hand presses into the mattress.

You do not stir when his weight dips the bedding and he moves slowly, purposefully, over you.

You do, however, stir just the smallest bit when his fingers dance over the curve of your hip through the fabric, feeling its drape over the soft plush of your skin. The meat of your ass, the swell of your thigh. Baelor feels, smoothing and caressing with a languid stroke that is not intended to rouse you, although he knows very well that it might and he does it anyway. Your fingers flex on the pillow that you clutch instead of him.

He finds himself, at that moment, inordinately envious of a pillow. A lump of fabric and feathers in your hands, between your thighs.

His hand grows bolder, a broad stroke over the small of your back, into the dip of your waist. You make a small noise in your throat, twitching the slightest bit as he passes over a particularly sensitive area.

"Shh, my sweet girl," Baelor whispers quietly, a lulling murmur in the darkness. Everything about you is soft— your skin, the fabric of his shirt as it lays over you, your hair, the expression on your face, the candle light on your sleeping body. It overwhelms him. It turns him into something that he's not normally, unless he is with you: a man. Not a Prince, and not the Hand of the King or heir to the throne. Not a warrior and not a subject of songs and poetry, myths and stories. With you, in this bed, he is simply a man in love with his wife, devoted beyond measure.

By the time his hand reaches your nape, your eyes are fluttering open the barest amount. Your face is still pressed slightly into the pillow, but you shift, a perking of your head as awareness returns to you. "Baelor?"

"It's me," he tells you, his voice low enough to not even constitute words.

"Mm. Waited for you," you mumble, confirming what he already knew.

His eyes crease at the corners, his smile overly tender. "I know. I'm here now."

Even as he says it, his hand is finding the hem of his shirt draped over your thigh, its frayed edge tickling against the smoothness of your skin. You hum quietly, dropping your eyelids against the feeling of his warm hand, burrowing between pillow and fabric and skin to find you, bare and wet and waiting for him.

"Oh," you sigh when his fingertip draws a slow circle around your clit.

"I know," he reassures you again, pressing a chaste, sweet kiss to the back of your neck. "I know, my love."

You turn your head further into the pillow beneath you, letting out a small whine at the feeling, your hips arching into his touch. He responds in kind, laying his weight flush to your back, his hand pinned between you and the pillow below.

"You're wearing my shirt," he remarks, his fingers finding your entrance and sliding in, stretching you open quick enough to make you keen softly. He gives you a few shallow strokes, feeling you grind back into the press of his cock against your tailbone. "My beautiful wife, wearing my clothes."

"W-Wanted to— to feel you— mm." Your voice is still slightly slurred with sleep, the heat of his body and the slowness of his movements doing nothing to rouse you more. You are still somewhere between awake and dreaming, pleasantly lulled, drowsy in your responses to him. Still, you moan at the curving of his fingers. "Wanted you… close to me…"

"Then let me be close," Baelor whispers, dragging the wilting fabric of his shirt up over your hips. He puffs a sigh through his nose, the ghost of it breezing against your neck. "What am I to do with you, hm?"

You make a pathetic noise when he moves your thighs apart to fit himself between them, his chest pressed to the curve of your spine, the thin fabric of his shirt separating you. He kisses you beneath the ear.

"You can sleep, darling," he tells you quietly, a whisper into your ear as his cock settles heavy between your thighs, the head sliding hotly against your cunt. Even though his voice is low, it booms through you like a thunderclap. "You need rest."

"I need you," you retort, but your own voice is far off, dipping towards the fogginess of sleep already.

Your eyes flutter shut, a gentle sigh of relief leaving you when he enters you slowly, stretching you open around him. Pressure on your back, pressure between your legs, pressure where his hand is pinned and lifting your hips from the front, angling them back towards him. Baelor's arm comes up to brace beside your head, and the scent of him surrounds you— the same scent that always drives you crazy, juniper and peppercorn, and something slightly like the salt of a raging sea.

You breathe in deep, exhale on a contented, fulfilled hum. Your entire world is Baelor, your mind and body consumed by him completely. His body spanning the length of you, bone to bone, naked skin to thin, ineffectual fabric.

You clench around him, and Baelor makes a noise as though you've punched him. So close to your ear, the headiness of it is echoed tenfold. Then he shifts his weight, dropping his hips ever-so-slightly, and then just grinds into you. His cock nestles into the deepest part of you and you groan, your mouth dropping open and face turning towards the breadth of his arm beside you.

"Baelor," you whimper, soft and broken, slurred from the recesses of sleep. Your hand finds his bicep, drawn taut from the muscle holding him up, keeping him from crushing you completely. Your fingers dig in, pull. A silent plea, a command that he follows like a dog on a leash.

Baelor fits his forearm under your head and lifts, letting you rest your chin there against the crook of his elbow, getting you into a loose headlock. Your hand wraps loosely around his upper arm, your body lax, letting him rut his hips shallowly into yours.

"My beautiful girl," he breathes into your ear, and you feel his teeth, bared with intent. His nose pressed to the shell, his beard scraping rough against your cheek. "My heart. My soul."

His arm tightens. Just a tad, but just enough. You mewl like a wounded animal, stretching your limbs so that he can move closer in, can fit his mouth to the curve of your throat, while he throbs somewhere deep in you that makes your head spin and your breath stick in your chest. His weight on you turns full, crushing, an all-over press that pins you flat to the bed, the pillow tucked beneath your stomach.

You are no longer asleep.

"Say it," he tells you, a primal rasp to his voice that wasn't there before. Low, smoky. A dragon. It's dragged from the pit of him, from some hell that lurks deep inside his body. His groan slinks down your spine and pools as raw energy right above where his cock hollows out and reaches the end of you. "Say that you're mine."

"M'yours," you murmur into his arm, breathing in the hot air that radiates from him. "Baelor. M-My heart. My soul—"

A guttural sound leaves you, your open mouth muffled by the bite you take of his bicep when he pulls his hips back and ruts into you hard, hard enough to shake the bed. Baelor's breath in your ear is shaky, stilted with the desperation of his movements, the purpose for which he collects himself.

"Gods above," he groans, his face turned into your neck just as yours is turned into his arm. With great effort, he loosens his hold on you. He presses an apologetic kiss to the curve of your shoulder. "I'm sorry. So sorry, my love."

You make a short noise, shake your head once. "Do it again."

Baelor does as you tell him. He pulls back slowly, letting his cock drag through your walls just before rushing back in with a jolt up the bed. Soft hair grinds against the plush of your ass, his mouth open and heaving with gasps against your shoulder, covered in the fabric of his shirt.

You can taste his need in the salt on his skin, beads of sweat forming in the crook of his elbow, fiery heat pressed flush to your back. "I need to— to wear your clothes more often."

"Yes." The word is hungry. It leaves no room for defiance. "You will."

The hand pinned between you and the pillow moves, snakes down to find your clit again. You are blinded with white light behind your eyelids, your breath gone still in your chest. Then, you pant like your air has no place to go, your hand tightening on his bicep, his arm tightening around your throat.

"Mm. There." The sound of his voice in your ear, while he fingers at your clit and his cock makes you so full that you can barely think, undoes you. Tremors take over your body, and you feel him smile as he continues to work at you. "That's what you get. I want you shaking."

"Baelor." You cum around him, with his full weight holding you down with nowhere to go. You are held hostage to it, to the slow, seductive movements of his hips, the lazy strokes of his finger against your clit.

"That's it. My good girl," Baelor purrs into your ear, and you sob as you clench around him. "My good, sweet, beautiful—"

He runs his tongue lightly across the nape of your neck and groans, ducking his head as he cums. His moans are muffled by his shirt on your back, his body curled over yours like fog. He presses his hips hard against yours, as though he can become a part of you if he gets close enough, deep enough.

"Oh, my love." His whisper falls upon your ears like a dream, like you may wake up and not remember it. But he's real, and he's there on top of you with his heart pounding against your back, and his fist in the fabric of his shirt, the one that started all of this.

He stays there for a breath, and then two. His hips are still flush to yours, but he's stopped moving, stopped the slow grind and the desperate, cloying attempt to get as far inside of you as he possibly could. He simply holds there, with his arm still around your throat, but not pressing in anymore. Just holding. Just cradling.

"I don't know if you noticed," Baelor says after a moment, his voice tremulous and padded by a wad of fabric between his teeth, at the nape of your neck. He releases it. "But I quite like it when you wear my clothes."

You huff a laugh, and press a kiss to the inside of his elbow. "If you do that every time, I may never get any sleep."

Baelor hums. "The chances are very slim, indeed."

Even so, you wear the same shirt the next night. And the one after that.

You don't get much sleep.

On the night before your wedding, you sit on the end of your bed and try not to tremble with nerves. You should go to sleep. You know you should go to bed, but you can't. If you go to bed now, it means that the next time you open your eyes will be your wedding day, and you can't fathom that right now.

It's not so much that you don't want to marry Valarr. You don't mind the prospect of being his wife— he is handsome, kind, chivalrous, everything that you could hope for in a husband. The problem is that you don't know him well enough to be able to hold a conversation with him beyond base pleasantries, and in roughly twenty-four hours you will be expected to lay naked beneath him and let him claim you as a man does his wife. You don't know what to expect from him, in that regard. Will he be gentle, as he is when you normally speak to him? Will he be forceful? Harsh? Angry?

You close your eyes. The very idea of it threatens to set your stomach churning. You have been sitting on the end of your bed with your head in your hands for roughly an hour now, but your anxiety is only seeming to mount tenfold each time you turn it over in your head. What you will do tomorrow with a man you barely know. You barely have it in you to move. You feel as though, if you do, the walls will come crumbling down around you.

Perhaps it's for the best that a knock at your chamber door rouses you from this stasis, finally permitting you to straighten and clear your throat. "Enter."

"M'lady." One of your chamber maids enters, looking a bit piqued, but keeping her voice hushed. "Lord Valarr has sent for you."

"Valarr?" You glance around the room wildly. Beyond the whorls in the window panes, black night falls over the Red Keep. You expected that the entire castle would be asleep at this hour, as you should be. What could Valarr want with you now?

What indeed. Your mind trips over itself, your anxiety spiking again. But you stand, your back straight as an arrow, and you follow her out the chamber door. It would not do to keep your future husband waiting.

Your chamber maid takes you as far as the stairway to the prince's apartments, where a serving boy you have never seen before meets you. The two eye each other meaningfully, and then your chamber maid abandons you quite unceremoniously, making your skin crawl beneath your dressing gown. You open your mouth to protest, but the serving boy looks at you apologetically and holds a single finger to his lips.

"All is well," he whispers, when you snap your mouth shut, looking mildly insulted. "Follow me, m'lady."

You follow the boy to the door of the prince's apartments, where he leaves you with a nod of his head. You do not dismiss him before he leaves— at this point, you surmise that he is following orders already given by someone whose authority outranks you. You steel yourself, fighting not to grind your teeth as you knock on the chamber door.

There is a quiet word from within bidding you entry, and you push open the door as quietly as possible. You are standing in what appears to be Valarr's study, surrounded by books of all size and description, stacked neatly in rows on floor to ceiling shelves. You cast your gaze around at the Myrish carpets, chaise longues and chairs, candles and other opulent comforts afforded a prince of House Targaryen, and you feel slightly out of your depth.

And then your eyes fall on him. The prince, in his shirtsleeves and breeches, sitting almost dejectedly on the couch by the fireplace. Either he or one of his servants had taken the liberty of building a small fire, enough to cast an amber glow throughout the room without overheating the chamber. The orange light catches on the strands of silver in Valarr's dark hair, making him appear as though fire dances along the edges of his being.

You stand with your back to the chamber door. You wait.

It takes your betrothed several moments to lift his eyes to you, and his face is drawn with a perplexing amount of stress. You wouldn't have imagined that he would have anything to worry about; as far as you know, he has not been opposed to your union in any way. But the longer he looks at you as though he carries all the weight of the heavens and the earth on his shoulders, doubts begin to creep in.

"I apologize for the secrecy, my lady," Valarr finally says quietly, his fingers twitching against the edge of the seat that he grips. "I hope I did not wake you."

"No, my lord." You are still standing, stalk-still in front of the chamber door, wondering what exactly this visit is about.

"I felt it necessary to be discreet," Valarr continues, as though he must explain himself to you. It's more than any other lord has ever done for you, when it comes to ordering you about, and it takes you slightly aback. "Talk runs rampant in the Keep. I wouldn't want there to be cause for gossip so near to our wedding day. You understand?"

"I— yes, I understand that. But, my lord," your eyes flit from him, to the fire, and back, "If you… wish to bed me, could it not wait until we are wed?"

That startles him. Valarr lifts his head, blinking up at you with a painfully concerned look on his face. "Oh— no, my lady, this is not…" He licks his lips, and looks to the fire again. "Ah. I fear there has been a misunderstanding. I did not call you here for that, on my honor. Forgive me."

"There is nothing to forgive." You tilt your head, watching as his pulse jumps against his throat. "I— please, do not think me insolent, but… why have you called me here tonight, if not for that?"

Valarr closes his eyes. You take a moment to admire his profile. The warm glow of the fire makes his skin look all the more ethereal, flushed and freckled as it is. Valarr is beautiful in a way that bards should write songs about— have written songs about, in ages past. It nearly pains you to see that beauty so laden with trouble.

"Would you like some wine?" He blurts the question like it supersedes something worse, something that he doesn't quite know how to approach yet. He seems to be weighing it in his mind as he stands and crosses to a table set with a decanter and two goblets, without waiting for an answer from you. You do not fail to notice that his hands are shaking.

"My lord."

You watch his back, tight with tension beneath the soft linen of his shirt, the sleeves rolled to the elbows in a rakish and informal way, as though he hadn't truly been meaning to have an audience tonight. He does not turn to look at you, just pours the wine like he hasn't heard you.

You take three steps toward him, and tentatively reach out to place a hand on his upper arm. "Valarr."

Valarr freezes. His head bowed, he holds the wine decanter aloft like it's a shield, a solid wall between him and whatever it is that's weighing so heavily on his mind. As though, if he draws out the night long enough, he may not have to put words to whatever it is that's bothering him.

But then the moment passes, and Valarr takes a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm sorry, my lady." His voice is so quiet, as to barely be heard over the crackling of the fire. The words practically break in his throat. "I'm so sorry."

"For what?" you ply gently, trying not to startle him. You feel as though you are approaching a cornered animal, with how tightly wound he is. Slowly, you stroke the flat of your hand down his bicep, trying to give him a reassuring touch without overstepping. You fear, perhaps, that you might be, but Valarr does not pull away.

Instead, he simply picks up a goblet of wine and offers it to you. You look at it for a moment dumbly— it is an ornate piece, carved with dragons and inlaid with red jewels that glitter in the firelight. For lack of an alternative, you take the wine from him without a word.

"I—" he starts, then stops again, like he is still weighing the words in his head, trying to find the right ones to convey his particular issue.

The longer he takes to say what's on his mind, the more your own starts to come up with things to fill that void. He has a secret wife already. He is stricken with some disease he procured in a brothel. You are not what he wants. All of these thoughts and more flit through your head, and all seem to ring the very same at the end. He wants to call off the wedding.

But then he takes another deep breath, and he turns to you, though his eyes are still downcast. "Tomorrow. When we— The wedding. It's… there will be a ceremony."

You blink. "Yes, your grace. That happens at weddings. So I'm told."

"No." Valarr shuts his eyes, turns away like he's chastising himself. "After. The—" He pinches the bridge of his nose, the wine in his own goblet threatening to slosh over the rim. "When we are wed, and we… when I take you to our bed. There will be a ceremony. A bedding ceremony."

The words tumble from his mouth and land with a splat on the carpet like some viscous, globular thing. Bedding ceremony. It conjures an image in your head of leering heads watching you from behind sheer curtains, pompous men making comments, taking notes. Bedding ceremony. Humiliation, degradation. A crowd of spectators to observe you in your most intimate and private moments.

You say nothing. Like him, you struggle to find the words to say to describe what you feel at the prospect. But now that Valarr has gotten the point of contension out in the open, he seems to be unable to stop talking. You watch him pace around the floor of his study, like a man on the eve of battle.

"I only learned of it today. It's not customary. But because I am second in line for the throne, the small council wants proof of legitimacy, that the marriage will not be annulled. That you will bear me an heir. As though we are incapable of doing anything for ourselves." He shakes his head, scoffing with an incredulous, irritated smirk. "I begged them to tell you, my lady, I truly did, but they would not have it. They intended for you to simply walk into it, unaware. I believe they fear you will abscond in the night, or some such nonsense. My father was against it, as I knew he would be, but the rest of the council would not be swayed."

"Does your father… does he know that you've told me? About the ceremony?"

"He encouraged me to." Valarr's hand finds his hair and rucks it up into a mess, his cheeks pink in the firelight. "We were in agreement. If there's going to be an audience, you should be told. What you do in response is for you to decide."

You turn your eyes down to the wine quivering in your cup. The thought of an entire council of men conferring about what goes on in your marriage bed without your knowledge sends a finger of disgust clawing up your back.

"I called you here tonight because I wanted you to know. I wanted to tell you myself, without any eyes and ears on us. I do not wish to begin our marriage with any kind of deception."

He stops pacing, finally, and takes a step towards you. You lift your gaze to his— his mismatched eyes, one brown, one violet. The eyes of his father. You stare at them and find yourself wondering if your children would have them, as well. A mark of their father's beauty.

"I will always be true to you," Valarr says softly, though his face holds a certain amount of frantic desperation that makes you nervous for him. "I will always be honest, and frank with you when needs be. I never intend to be anything less. Do you understand? Let us be frank. Please."

"Frank. Yes," you echo, reaching out toward him. His eyes flutter when your hand finds his cheek, and you stroke your thumb against the point of his cheekbone. "Valarr. Please calm down. You have nothing to fear from me."

"I—" He swallows, his eyes flicking over your face like he's trying to map it out in his mind. "I know." He nods, seeming to let your words sink in slowly. "I know."

"Good. Drink your wine." You sound more sure of yourself than you feel.

Valarr follows your instructions in earnest, chugging the contents of his cup without a second thought. You do the same, although slower, the dry red wine hitting your soft palate with a sharp tang. You sink onto the couch and, without pretense, pull your knees up to your chest, your feet curled against the cushion beneath you. It's a protective posture, meant to calm you, but all it does is make you feel small in comparison to him when he sits heavily beside you, his elbows on his spread thighs.

"They only want proof of consummation," he adds after a moment of silence, still swallowing back the remnants of his wine as it brings a rush of saliva to his mouth. "If… when you bleed, if it stains the sheets, perhaps then I could convince them that it isn't necessary to sit in—"

"I won't bleed."

Valarr stops talking. When he turns his head to look at you, you hide your face in the folds of your robe against your knees, your eyes closed against the blackness. Your heart pounds in your chest for fear of what he might say.

But, true to character, Valarr is gentle in his response. "Forgive me, my lady. I thought that you were…"

"A virgin?" Your voice is muffled by your robe. "Yes, and you'd be correct. I've never lain with another person. But hands and fingers can do enough damage, my lord. And… various other implements."

"Oh. Oh, yes. I see." There is nothing for a few seconds but the crackle of the fire and its heat on your back. "Well, I… I suppose that it— it's a good thing. I do not wish to cause you any discomfort on our wedding night."

The sentiment brings tears to your eyes. They bubble up out of nowhere, and you feel them leak out without warning, dampening the fabric pressed to your eyelids. You let out a quiet little sob, without even meaning to. "Why are you so good to me?"

You feel him shift. His knee knocks against your ankle as he turns to look at you, and a warm hand settles on your arm. "Well, it's the only way you should be treated. Why wouldn't I be?"

"Because—" You're crying. It is not a soft, dignified weeping. It's ugly. It shakes your body and leaves you with wracking sobs that come from a place deep down inside you, where you had pushed all of your anxiety and reservations and fears, about your future husband and your wedding, and everything that's to come after. The tears come so suddenly and in such force that you can't rein it in, and you find yourself unable to say anything but, "Because."

"No," Valarr replies, and his hand slides around your back. "Not me. Never to you. Come— oh, come here, love."

He manages to get your limbs untangled and pulls you to him, your legs slung over his lap and your head hidden in his neck. You're thankful for it; you don't really want him to see what you look like, crying yourself snotty the day before your wedding. His hand pets idly against your thigh, and it occurs to you that this position is more intimate than you've ever been with anybody, including your husband-to-be. It's the first time he's held you. The first time anyone has, since you were a babe in your mother's arms. You sober quickly against his shoulder, clutching at him like a child clutches their favorite toy.

"I thought you wanted to call the wedding off," you admit to him. "When I came in and you— you wouldn't look at me. I thought you didn't want me."

Valarr tuts, holding you closer. "I'm sorry. I never intended to raise any doubt in your mind. You needn't ever worry if your husband wants you, darling. I do. Gods above, I do. You have me utterly beguiled." Then, he asks you tenderly, "Have I not told you that I am more than happy to marry you? I suppose I haven't had a chance, have I? Too many people around all the time."

And that thought brings you back to the issue at hand. "I can't— Valarr, I can't do it. Not with them watching. Listening." A shudder runs through you at the thought. And then, your temper flares. Who do these men think they are, to play you and your husband for fools this way? "I won't."

Valarr's hand goes still. "My dear—"

"When I fuck you, my pleasure will be for your eyes and your ears, alone." You lift your head, gripping the open collar of his shirt in a fist strong enough to tear the fabric, if you were to pull it. Your eyes are still vaguely watery, and you're sure that you don't look as fierce as you want to, but at the very least, you know you look adamant. "I will not have these old men partake in something I give only to you, just because they feel like it. I refuse to give them that satisfaction. It is not theirs. Do you understand?"

"Yes. I understand completely." Valarr gazes at you, an unreadable expression on his face as his hand coming up to stroke a lock of hair away from your brow. He fixates on your lips for a few seconds before saying, "When I fuck you, I will not have anyone else witness what I do to you. That is for only you and I to know. What you do to me, however… I suppose that could be up for negotiation. I'll never let it be said that I am not pleased by you."

He winks, and in spite of everything weighing on you, you giggle. Then he smiles, and it's the loveliest thing that you've seen all night.

You brush your nose against his. "We are alone, now."

"Yes, we are." His voice has dropped low, to reflect your proximity to his lips.

"I don't suppose there's a chance that we could just…" You drag one finger across his exposed skin, where the collar of his shirt hangs open. "Do it now?"

Valarr sucks in a rueful breath, tilting his head back and away from you. It exposes the length of his throat for your wandering eye, and you suddenly have a great urge to sink your teeth into something. "I'm afraid honor demands that I don't take advantage just yet."

"Honor," you grumble, resting your fingers just at the hollow of his throat. "Is it honorable, what they're doing to us?"

"No, it isn't." His head tilted back against the backrest of the couch, he peers down his nose at you. "Even so. I mustn't. Not until we're man and wife." He sighs. "Even though I really, really want to."

You make a short, perturbed sound. "You're so…"

"What?"

"Decent."

Valarr lets out a laugh, his hand coming up to smooth over the back of your head. "You say that as though it's a bad thing."

"In this instance, I rather think it is." You fall silent for a few seconds, tracing your finger through the smattering of hair exposed on his chest. "It doesn't matter," you say suddenly, "whether there's an audience. I doubt you'll be able to change their minds now, and they'll still want proof. There will be questions when there is no blood. Oh gods, Valarr—"

"Shh. There's plenty we can do. We'll think of something."

"Like what?"

Valarr is quiet, but his hand moves. He catches your wrist, stopping you where you draw idle patterns against his chest with your finger. Without a word, he lifts your hand so that it catches the light, his thumb brushing upwards to flex your fingers back as he examines them, scrutinizing the length of your fingers like they are the most interesting and complex things he's ever seen.

"I may have an idea," he says softly, and then presses a kiss to the center of your palm.

The wedding is a joyous affair, which is only to be expected from a royal celebration. The vows are in High Valyrian, which you don't understand but which you repeat to the best of your ability. As per the custom of House Targaryen, your lips are cut and your foreheads smudged with blood. Your hands, sliced and bound together to let your blood become one. The wine you sip and share with Valarr stings the cut on your lip, but the smile he gives you before he kisses you makes it worthwhile.

There is a feast of wild boar and venison, and various other intricate dishes which you're sure the cooks in the kitchens labored over for days, but which you barely even register. Your stomach is too busy turning at the prospect of what happens after the feast, and what you and Valarr had spoken of the night before.

Beneath the high table, Valarr's hand finds your knee. Through the fine silk of your gown, you feel the warmth and weight of his hand, and it's one of the only things that can ground you to reality, to the here and now. When you look up at him, your husband— not your betrothed, your husband, now— gives you a knowing look and a coy smile that makes your blood sing in your veins.

And then, all too soon, it's over. The music, the merriment, the laughter. You are herded away by your ladies' maids to the prince's apartments, and you're ushered through a door you have not passed through the night before.

The prince's bedchamber is just as opulent as his study, with heavy wooden furniture carved in ornate fashion, tapestries and heavy curtains around the bed. When your eyes fall on them, you tangibly relax. There are no sheer drapes, nothing to suggest that you will be seen in the bed with your husband.

As you are undressed and wrapped in linen and brocade, an embellished robe draped over your shoulders to protect your modesty. You have yet to be told by anyone— servants or otherwise— that there will be a bedding ceremony. The fact sends a rage boiling inside you; if your husband were not as honorable as he is, if he had not taken the chance to secrete you away in the middle of the night and speak to you as an equal, you would have absolutely no idea of what is to come. You have half a mind to reprimand all of your ladies' maids for being a part of it.

But then Valarr enters the room, and the mere sight of him, dressed down in his own shirt and robe, makes the swelling rage within you quiet. He reaches for you, takes the hand that is bandaged from your vows, and presses a kiss over the cloth, his breath fanning across your pulse.

It does enough to keep you from screaming when a majority of the small council files into the room. Prince Baelor is notably absent— but, then again, Valarr told you to expect as much. You don't imagine that Valarr's father would want to sit in on his son's bedding ceremony.

Then— and only then— is the truth of the matter explained to you. That the small council will remain in the room to ensure that, "things are well in hand." You have to stifle a snort at that, and Valarr's own hand tightens slightly where he holds yours. You keep your eyes on your husband, refusing to look at the councilmen who have so grievously tried to humiliate you.

You are fussed over, annointed with holy oils and prayed over, beseeching the gods to bless your union with many children. It's the use of the word many that makes Valarr's own resolve threaten to crack, a small smirk curving the edge of his lips.

In the blink of an eye, you are shut in with Valarr on the bed, the curtains drawn, and the light blocked out. You swallow hard, sitting still in the dark for only a second before you're moving, reaching across the sheets in search of your husband, in search of his warm touch and comforting presence. You find his knee, and follow it upwards, over the expanse of his thigh to his hip as you bring yourself towards him.

His arms come around you, and then you're being pulled, his chest flush to yours, his hand finding your ass and lifting you to seat you on his lap. You gasp, your hands blindly fumbling in the dark for something to hold onto, and you find his hair. Soft as silk and threading through your fingers, you tighten your hold on it hard enough that he lets out a soft groan in response.

"Relax," Valarr whispers, just loud enough for you to hear, and his lips find your jaw. As you settle onto his lap, his fingers draw your robe and the neckline of your chemise to the side, exposing your shoulder to the air. He presses another kiss there, soft against the newly bared skin, and he repeats, "Relax."

"Can't see shit," you mutter angrily, and he snorts. You feel his smile against your skin, his breath fluttering in soft bursts across your shoulder.

Valarr reaches back, feeling for something over his head in the dark. He finds it, and there is a whisper of something, a spark. A candle is lit in the darkness, suddenly illuminating the enclosed space with dim light, just enough for you to be able to see him and the expanse of the bed sheets, the dark wood of the headboard.

The candle flame creates a halo around his head, painting his hair slightly golden. Your hands find his face, trace along his jaw and thumbs finding the pulse point under his chin. "My beautiful Prince," you whisper to him, watching his pupils widen just slightly before you finally dip to kiss him.

His lips taste of blood and wine, the cut on his lower lip still raw from the wedding ceremony. Your teeth latch around his lower lip and give it a tug, and he gasps sharply, his arms tightening around you. You smile, remembering his words from the night before, as he told you his ingenius plan for how to trick your unwitting audience.

They will be listening for anything that suggests we're doing what we should. Gasps, moans, the creak of the bed. They can only draw their conclusions from that, and what we leave on the bed sheets.

Valarr reaches behind him again, this time down between the mattress and the headboard. He searches for something, his brow drawing and lips pursed in frustration for a moment, before he grips something and pulls it out from where the sheet tucks beneath the mattress.

A knife, small and discreet enough to be slipped into a pocket or a boot, but made of valyrian steel. The edge of it, so sharp that it practically whispers on the air, glints ominously in the candlelight.

You will already have a cut on your hand from the wedding ceremony. They won't be surprised to find it in the morning.

Valarr kisses your forehead, just above the smudge of blood he'd painted between your brows with his thumb during your vows. Then, he lifts your bandaged hand, and begins unwrapping it with the care of someone unpackaging the most delicate work of art they've ever held.

Your nose scrunches as the bandage is peeled away from the cut on your palm, stuck to it with clotted blood. The wound is not deep, but fresh— the gash wells with little beads of blood already, but not enough for what you intend to do.

Valarr lifts the knife with one hand, cradling your own hand with the other. He peers up at you from beneath his lashes, his eyes apprehensive as he waits for your permission.

You nod, and Valarr slices the cut open with one small flick of the blade. The sound you make is loud, and slightly obscene— a visceral reaction, one that you did not intend to make, but which sounds quite like something your audience would expect from your wedding bed.

Beyond the curtains, someone audibly clears their throat. You look at Valarr and roll your eyes, making him bite back a snicker.

The blood needs to be in a reasonable spot on the sheets for it to look believable. You must put it where your hips meet mine. If it gets on your clothes, even better.

While he cradles your bleeding hand, you ruck your nightgown and robe up your thighs. The cut is shallow enough that the blood is already beginning to slow, but there is enough for you to smear it against your cunt, and then wipe it directly onto the bed sheets below you. The result is a blotch of pinkish blood, mixed with your own arousal, on the white linen.

When you meet Valarr's gaze, he nods at you in approval. Then, he takes your hand, and lifts your bleeding palm to his lips.

This was not something you had spoken about. This, you imagine, is something that he does purely for himself. His tongue flicks out and drags the length of the cut on your hand, mopping up blood and arousal alike. His eyes on you the whole time, dark in the dimly lit canopy of his bed, he makes a noise in his throat like he's found relief after a long period of torment.

A deep burning want coils in your core, willing you to do something insane and unscrupulous. You have the urge to resent him for it, and for not letting you fuck him on the couch in his study last night, while he told you what to do. When it was just you, and him, and the crackle of the fire as your witness.

After that, we need only sound convincing. You may do anything you want to me, and I will try to make my performance believable. Whatever you do, I shall bear it happily.

You want to make him regret that. You want to make him regret looking at you as he licks your blood and your arousal from your hand, as he moans like a whore about it, as he bats his mismatched eyes and kisses the cut on your skin before rewrapping it like you are the greatest gift he has ever received. You want to crack him open and spill his contents all over the bed sheets for them to find in the morning, and know that you did.

There are noises beyond the shield of the opaque curtains that remind you of just who is on the other side, listening to everything that you do. It bothers you, enough that you feel the cold fingers of dread tightening around your throat. But you cannot allow it to stop you when you've come so far already.

So, you kiss Valarr deeply, capturing the taste of your blood on his tongue and swallowing his moan as it bubbles up out of his chest. He catches you with his hands on your hips as you lift yourself over him, planting your knees on the mattress. You reach down and unravel the tie of his robe, allowing it to fall open and off of his shoulders, leaving him in naught but his linen shirt.

You may do anything you want to me. He has no idea of the things you want to do to him. He cannot possibly fathom how vicious your desire for him is— it's an all-consuming thing, and the only way you'll be able to survive it is if you just give in to your urges.

As you slide his linen shirt up his torso, you slide your lips along his jaw, sucking once against the curve just below his ear. He gives a startled gasp and a small jerk of his hips, which you think was unplanned. You don't think he intended it, because he shudders just a bit when you smile and scrape your teeth along his throat.

You pull back to help him out of his shirt, letting it fall to the mattress beside you. He gazes up at you, wide-eyed in the candlelight, entirely naked beneath you. His cheeks flushed, the V drawn in blood between his brows looks darker than it should. You place your hands on either side of his head and bend down to lave your tongue across the mark, tasting his blood the way that he did, yours.

Valarr's mouth drops open on a silent moan. His fingers tighten against your hips, the flush from his cheeks reaching down across his freckled shoulders and chest. You drag your hands down his chest, lowering them down towards where his cock rests heavily against his navel, hard and leaking. His core muscles tighten beneath your touch, his breath falling from his parted lips in a stuttered rhythm.

And then, you stop. Just short of touching his cock, you pull your hands away and lift yourself from his lap. His hands tighten once— just once, just enough for you to know that he wants you to stay, to keep going. But you do not yield, and he doesn't argue. Just releases your hips with a soft sigh through his nose, mildly disappointed at the distance.

But your hands keep feeling him. That's the thing that seems to vex him the most. You start again at his shoulders, your palm running flat across his pectorals and over to the other shoulder as you shift, rocking onto your knees beside him. You can see the questions spinning around in his head, the look of what are you doing etched on his face like words on a page. He turns his head, following you with his eyes as you move, until you swing your leg around his body from behind and sit against the pillows behind him.

Valarr's breath audibly hitches, and his head snaps forward. Your legs bracket his hips, your pelvis nearly crushed up against his lower back. You rest against the headboard of the bed and smooth your hand over his shoulder, down between his shoulder blades, and begin to trace around the vertebrae of his spine with your thumbs.

"Oh." The word leaves him on an exhale, and he hangs his head. You trace your way down his spine, applying gentle pressure and watching goosebumps raise on his skin. When you reach the bottom of his ribs, you begin tracing your way back up and watch a full body shudder roll through him.

You reach his neck and wrap both hands over his shoulders, digging your thumbs into his trapezius muscles. As you drag downwards, Valarr lets out a moan that makes you both freeze at how loud it is.

You drag your knuckles lightly up and down his back, and lean forward to press a kiss just below his ear. "When was the last time anyone rubbed your back like this, husband?"

"Never." The word is slightly more than a breath in your direction as he turns his head, but you hear it. He looks practically sun burnt with how red his face is.

"Hmm. No more." You pepper him with kisses across his shoulders, massaging your way down his back again and pressing into knots as you go. You aren't surprised to find him so tense— he is a knight, a soldier by station and a Prince of the Realm. He has more than enough reasons to be wound tight, and so you spend a decent amount of time working it out of him, bit by bit, until he nearly sags back against you.

Once you're sure that you've disarmed him enough, you slide your hands slowly around his waist to hug him from behind, pulling him back against you. He goes willingly, but turns his head to look at you questioningly, as though he's still trying to figure out what your plan is. You merely smile at him, press a kiss to the corner of his mouth, and begin running your palms across his chest, down toward his stomach.

He grumbles a low sound, his jaw clenched tight and his brow drawn as he watches your hand sweep low, and lower still, until you're nearly an inch away from his cock. His legs twitch, and his hand moves as though he means to grab your wrist, to stop you or urge you on.

You lift one hand, moving your arm around his shoulder to cradle his jaw in your palm and turn his head towards you. Valarr's eyes find yours, and— he's desperate. You shake your head at him, your nose nearly bumping his as you move, telling him not to fight you. But his brow is drawn in consternation, his pulse jumping beneath your hand like pure adrenaline is pumping through his veins, just from the touch of your hand against his core.

"Let me," you whisper to him. You trace your finger back and forth, feeling his chest leap with his breath the longer you hover there. But you wait, until he gives you the smallest nod of assent, and then you're on him.

You wrap your hand around his cock, your thumb immediately brushing over the flushed tip. He jerks in your grip, a moan breaking in his throat at the contact. He's hot to the touch, hard and growing harder as you flex your fist and stroke him once.

Valarr makes a rough sound in his throat and takes your hand, momentarily stopping your movements. He lifts your hand in his, just to bring it to his mouth and drag the wet swath of his tongue over it. He gets you dripping with his spit, taking his time with it, until you find yourself grinding up against his back just from the feeling of his tongue on your hand and the wetness dripping between your fingers.

And then he moves your hand back down to his cock, and he wraps his hand around with yours, guiding you where he wants you. He uses a firm grasp, harder than you would have given to him on your own— but you like watching him squirm, and he seems more intent to do things quickly and efficiently.

Which, perhaps, is a good idea in this scenario. But you make a mental note to spend some time in another instance, another night, taking him to pieces, and taking your time doing it.

"Make it believable," you whisper against his skin, following the pace that he sets in earnest.

Valarr chuckles hoarsely, an airy thing that barely even meets your ears. "Anything for you," he breathes as he fucks his hips up into your joined fists with a quiet growl.

You press an open-mouthed kiss to the juncture of his neck and shoulder, as his tendons strain and his chest leaps with his breath. You let your tongue dance over his skin, salty with sweat and warm from the heat of the enclosed space and the exertion you're putting him through.

He moves your hand up and down in time with his, tightening your grip around him harshly each time you reach his leaking tip. The feeling of his cock sliding through your fist sets your body alight in a way that you can barely fathom. You turn your face into his neck, fitting your teeth around his skin to muffle the quiet moans that threaten to spill out of your mouth. You told him that they were for his ears only, and you meant it.

But one does escape. Quiet, and soft, and probably too low to make it past the curtains and to your audience. It vibrates against his skin, falls upon his ears like a sigh.

"Seven fuck—" Valarr's his snap violently up into your hand, making the bed shake, the wood creak with the strength of it. "Fuck. Fuck."

"Cum for me," you say quietly, directly into his ear. His breath hitches, a startled noise leaving him at the sound of your voice. "Valarr. Cum."

It takes him two more strokes. Warmth coats your joined hands, and he cums with a strangled moan that he half-swallows as he turns his face toward you, seeking out your lips. You cradle his face with your free hand, taking to him with an open mouth and a gracious tongue.

You've never felt so needy in your life. His hand still holding yours on his cock, his tongue in your mouth, you have to remind yourself why you aren't going to fuck him tonight. Why this is all that will happen on your wedding night— or, at least, until the audience leaves and your husband has a moment to collect himself.

You let Valarr lift your joined hands, covered in his spend, and you meet his eye as you both lick the evidence of what you've done from your hands. Between your fingers, your tongues meet in a depraved, possessive dance. Then, he lifts the bed sheet roughly and wipes his stomach with it, letting his cum stain the linen.

He collapses back against your chest, heaving a sigh that you feel resonate in your body. He closes his eyes briefly, and then opens them again, before he says aloud, "It is done. Begone."

You listen to the scraping of chairs, footsteps, low voices as the witnesses leave the room one by one. You think you hear a septon say a final prayer at the foot of the bed, which then makes you have to bite down on Valarr's shoulder to stop from laughing. Which then makes Valarr moan in the midst of the prayer, and you hear the prayer stop abruptly, and you have to struggle twice as hard to silence your laughter.

By the time the chamber door shuts with a resounding bang, Valarr is laughing, too.

After a moment, he squeezes your thigh and disentangles himself, crawling on all fours to the end of the bed. You watch from your seat, unabashedly, as he pokes his head out of the curtains to look around the room and confirm that no one remains. You admire his backside, his ass, the firmness of his thighs and the strong muscles of his back that you still intend to knead and push until you've heard every sound of relief that you can possibly steal from between his lips.

Valarr ducks his head back inside of the canopy. "The knife?"

You feel around awkwardly in the sheets until your fingers brush the hilt of the knife, and you hand it to him by the blade. He takes it gingerly, careful not to cut you, and leans out to tuck the knife under the cushion of a nearby chair.

"Servants are nosy, but they won't be looking there in the morning," he says with an easy smile as he straightens himself, and then turns to you. His face screws up as he looks at you, arranging the pillows and turning back the bed sheets. "What are you doing?"

"I'm… going to bed?"

"No." Valarr shakes his head, beginning to crawl up the mattress towards your seated form. "No no no. You will do no such thing, dear wife. Not after that."

"Wh— Valarr." You yelp when he grabs you by the ankle, yanking you down the bed towards him.

"We are quite alone, now. And you've tasted me," he murmurs as he guides your robe and your nightgown up your legs. He kisses the inside of your thigh and breathes a small sigh against your skin. "So now it's my turn."

The Targaryens believe that they have the fire of dragons coursing through their veins, but you aren't certain that it's true. If they did, you don't see how they could get anything done, at all. Because right now you do, and it's agony.

Everything hurts. From your head to your toes it feels like your body is filled with venom, burning beneath your skin, your muscles all convulsing in waves of destruction that leave you all but incapacitated. Milk of the poppy does not help, and nor does wine. If you were delirious it would probably be more bearable, but unfortunately your mind is devastatingly sharp. It feels like you have even more awareness of everything than you normally do— your skin is so hypersensitive that you can feel every fibre of your sweat-drenched chemise, and you can feel the temperature of every breath you take as it fills your lungs. The lights are too bright, sounds are louder, flavors more vibrant on your tongue. Every little thing that is happening around you gets filed into your mind so that you feel, in no uncertain terms, like you could fight an entire army yourself and survive. If you were able to move beyond the pain.

You've really done it this time. You didn't believe that the potion was anything dangerous; otherwise you wouldn't have put it in your wine. You were under the impression that it was just a little charm, something cooked up by a wise woman to make lovesick people sleep better at night. You expected it to put a gleam in your eye and a skip in your step, but not this.

"Put this in your wine and watch your love blossom like a rose in bloom," the old lady had told you as she pressed the vial into your outstretched hand. She had taken your coin readily enough and ignored the skeptical look that your lady's maid, Mircalla, had given her. "Drink deep. Enjoy the fortune of love."

Fortune of love, indeed. You're dying. You can tell just by the look on Maester Florin's face as he tests the remnants of the bottle in the corner with some convoluted apothecary setup he's constructed on your vanity table. You feel as though you have one eye on the bubbling beakers, and another eye on Mircalla as she sits by your bedside and dabs a damp cloth over your forehead.

"Is there anything I can get for you?" she asks quietly, and you know that she means well, but you have to physically stop yourself from smacking her hand away. The cloth is too rough on your forehead, scratching and squelching in your ears with the sound of the water, which smells of ale and sour fruit. Perhaps the bucket she used to bring the water in previously had been used to brew cider, but now it just makes the water stink.

"Nothing else, please," you croak at her with as much grace as you can muster. You lightly grab her wrist, squeeze it. "Thank you, Mircalla. Your services won't be needed anymore today, I think. I would not want you to see this any further."

"I am not certain that I should—"

"No. Go, please—" You just barely manage to turn your head away before a spasm of white-hot pain rips through your body, and you scream as you plant your face into your pillow. Both Mircalla and the maester jump at the shrillness of it.

"They're happening more frequently," you hear her mutter to him as she carries the bucket toward the door. "Shall I send for someone? A septon, perhaps?"

"Not yet, thank you. I must discuss the lady's affliction with her privately."

You close your eyes as if to block out the rush of sound that comes from the hall upon Mircalla opening your chamber door. You know that most— if not all— of your own family members, have retreated to other areas of the Red Keep. You assume that it's because you've been screaming loud enough to wake the dead, but perhaps there are other things happening in the castle that are more important than you managing to poison yourself.

"Maester," you grumble out dryly, your voice crackling in your throat. Now that the water is gone you aren't being assaulted by the smell of old cider, but the air still reeks of incense and acrid fumes from whatever his alchemy wrought. "I know I am dying. Just tell me why."

Maester Florin clears his throat and shifts on his feet, holding the little glass vial in his fingers. "My lady. You say that you bought this from a market stall?"

"Yes."

"And… did the seller tell you precisely what it was?"

"She said it was a potion," you tell him, tensing as a wave of pain swells up but then recedes before it can hit its peak, "to bring fortune in love. Nothing more."

There is a long silence, and you wonder if the maester has gone back to his work. You open your eyes a crack to look at him, but he is still standing in the same spot, seemingly deep in thought. Finally, he chances, "It is… not for me to ask what use you have of this potion…"

You groan, and it has nothing to do with the pain coursing through your body. You can't even gather the strength to cover your face in embarrassment, so you simply close your eyes.

It is common knowledge within the castle walls that Prince Daeron refused your hand in marriage after you were presented to him. He cited 'conflicting personalities' as the reason for his refusal— however, you had never had a complete conversation with Prince Daeron. There was no possible way that your personalities could be in conflict; you'd barely met him. Which meant that there was another reason for his refusal.

You knew that neither the King, nor the Crown Prince or his brother were pleased about it. It caused immense trouble for House Targaryen; your own family is one of the Targaryens' greatest allies, so it would only cause a rift between the two households if you were to be turned away with no good reason. House Targaryen could not afford to lose your family's alliance, and so you were asked to remain in King's Landing for another two weeks— or, to put it more plainly, until Prince Maekar or another of the Targaryens could convince Daeron to change his mind.

All of the muscles in your abdomen lock up, and what feels like a roaring hot fire rushes through your body all at once. You scream again, your back threatening to arch off the bed with your convulsing. It hurts so much. How could it possibly hurt so much? How could this little vial of fluid be enough to make you feel like you're burning alive from the inside out? You can hear your own scream ringing around the stone walls of the chamber, loud enough to startle a couple crows off of the eaves outside the open window.

While you're still curled into a ball on the bed, catching your breath, you hear a swift knock on the chamber door before it creaks open. There, you catch a whiff of spice and musk, rich and full. Your eyes fly open in horror as the source of the scent steps into the room with all the lordly grace of the seven kingdoms.

"Maester Florin," comes Prince Baelor Breakspear's voice, usually grounding and calming, but right now it hits you like a lightning bolt in the chest, knocking the very wind out of your lungs. "There seems to be much commotion. May I inquire as to how the lady is faring?"

Maester Florin bows. "Your Grace, I—"

"No."

The word tumbles out of your mouth before you can even stop it. Everything was manageable, more or less, until the Crown Prince entered the room, but now… now, his scent fills your lungs, his words are in your ears, you can practically taste him on the air, like peppercorn and sweet juniper. Your heart pounds in your ribcage like it's trying to escape, your blood singing with fire and your skin prickling with sweat.

You don't want to think about Prince Baelor right now. Each time he comes to mind, it's with an enormous wave of pain ripping through your entire body, as though the very thought of him causes the affliction to double its efforts to end you. Even so, in your mind you see the image of the Prince's concerned face when he stepped into your sick room one day ago, to make the same inquiry and send for a maester to attend you.

You have to get out. You have to leave before the next wave of pain kills you.

You're so tense that when you try to flop over on the bed, you look like a cockroach trying to right itself. "No. No no no no—" In spite of the pain in your muscles, you grab the corner of the goose down mattress and pull yourself toward the edge of the bed, until your upper body hangs off the side, limp as a wet rag.

"My lady, that is inadvisable—" Maester Florin rushes towards you as soon as your fingers meet the stone floor. "You will hurt yourself without assistance."

"Has she been like this the entire time?" Baelor's voice remains steady, but there is a newer, sharper quality to it: he's displeased. If you were to chance a look at him, you would see the carefully concealed worry beneath his practiced diplomacy, but you cannot bring yourself to look his way for fear that it might end you.

Instead, you continue trying to throw yourself from the bed, while Maester Florin actively tries to put you back in it. "No, Your Grace. Aside from the— the screaming—"

Florin's hand connects with your shoulder, and you just about punch him, the pain is so excruciating. Instead, you whack your hand against the front of his robes and bunch them in your fist to pull him close to your face.

"I asked you a question, Maester," you growl at him with a livid expression, watching his eyes widen at your sudden outburst. "Why is this happening?"

"You consumed a powerful aphrodisiac." He swallows, his eyes nervously flitting in Baelor's direction.

You make the grave mistake of following Florin's gaze, and you look at Baelor. The Hand of the King stands at the foot of your sickbed, his eyes focused on you, and only you. His face remains impassive, yet his fingers twitch as though he is contemplating what he can do to intervene.

You push Maester Florin away and begin frantically clawing your way back up the bed towards the headboard. You can feel it: the next wave of heat and pain, building in your toes and hands, inching down your limbs. "Nonono— Maid and Mother's fucking tits."

You manage to plant your face in the pillow before you let out another scream, but this time it seems worse, like you might actually split in half from the pain. You don't know how much more of it you can take. You've drenched your threadbare chemise in sweat, to the point that it doesn't really preserve your modesty anymore. All it does is stick to your damp, oversensitive skin, irritating you and making the sensory overload that much worse.

Once the pain subsides, you begin to rip at the offending garment in an attempt to draw it over your head. You're babbling nonsense, fragments of sentences and profanities that you don't even remember having in your repertoire, but you can still hear Maester Florin as he rattles off technical explanations to his Prince.

"—was purchased from a market stall— seems to be a tincture of moonbloom and gilliflower— another ingredient I have not yet identified—"

Before you can manage to muscle the useless chemise over your head, a hand settles on your back directly between your shoulder blades.

"Don't do that, my lady."

Baelor's voice is directly over your shoulder, gentle but stern. His hand presses solidly between your shoulders, holding the fabric of your chemise against your overheated flesh. You blink, seeing nothing but the headboard of the bed and cream colored linen, but feeling surrounded by him. His scent, his touch, his voice, so close and so strong, should hurt. It should hurt, because until now the barest touch has been agony, exacerbating the pain and torment.

But Baelor's touch does nothing. It's the oddest thing, enough to make you stop moving and tensing up for just a moment. You are still too hot, your skin is still too sensitive, but the only warmth and sensation that Baelor's hand brings is… comforting. Relief emanates from the single point of contact, bleeding through your body in tangible ripples that seem to stretch out down your spine and along your limbs.

That is, until the relief settles low. And then it becomes something else, something arguably worse than the pain. Your core muscles draw up tight and aching, and the heat and agony is replaced with devastating, almost crippling arousal.

You gasp, your back arching dramatically like that of a frightened cat, and you practically throw yourself away from Baelor with all the grace of a scared animal. Or, at least, you try to leap from the bed, but your body is sluggish, and Baelor Breakspear is nothing if not a quick combatant.

As soon as you try to take off, bouncing up like one of the crows into the air, Baelor's arm comes around your waist and drags you back down to the mattress. Try as you might to wriggle free and fling yourself to the floor, Baelor is strong, a force to be reckoned with.

"Stop this at once." Baelor's voice is still just as firm, but the gentility with which he orders you is… it's awful. He commands you with kindness and patience. "I will not abide you hurting yourself."

"Already hurts," you argue, although it's more of a lie the longer Baelor holds you.

It's as though he has the cure to your ailment within his very palms. But, while he holds you down, cradling you with your back to his chest, your arousal grows to a horrifying degree. You can feel your core muscles contract and release, the wetness between your legs smearing your thighs. There is a very likely chance that you may cum without any other form of stimulation, and you will not be able to survive that amount of humiliation. Perhaps he cannot abide you hurting yourself, but you cannot abide acting like a whore in the Prince of Dragonstone's arms.

You make a small, frantic noise in the back of your throat, and whimper, "I have to go. Let me go. Please. Please— Please. My lord, let me go. I have to go."

The small skirmish nears its end as you plant your hands on his forearm and try to push it away, but your hands are too weak and his arm is like a steel belt holding you down.

"Go where?" His voice is too close to your ear. You shiver in his arms, clamping your thighs together to stave off the new waves of heat coalescing between them. Goosebumps break out across your skin, and you feel your eyes widen. He sounds so fucking calm when he says, "There are several flights of stairs to descend before you reach the ground floor. Your only other option is the window, and you will break every bone in your body no matter which way you decide to go, unless you can walk. Can you walk?"

Only if you're touching me. You grit your teeth. "I have to try."

"No." It's Baelor who says it this time, and in spite of all your fighting, you can't seem to drum up any more of it.

You have to admit that it's a relief to not be in pain anymore, even if you have an entirely different set of problems to contend with, now. You slump forward in his arms, hanging your head as you dumbly squeeze at the fabric of his sleeve. "It is not proper for you to be holding me this way, Your Grace."

"I fear that it would be less proper of me to allow you to throw yourself from the window," Baelor explains rationally. Still, he releases his arm from around your waist, only bringing a hand up to move your hair away from your face. You have to physically fight not to press your overheated cheek into the cradle of his hand, like a cat seeking out affection. He pauses, and then says, "Maester, you said that you had not identified an ingredient of the tincture. Could it be dragon's breath?"

"No, Your Grace." Maester Florin speaks from across the room, where he retreated back to his apothecary setup. "With respect, I am familiar with dragon's breath. I would have been able to identify its presence with relative ease."

"She smells of it." Baelor does not say it unkindly.

"It is possible that while the tincture is in her system, the aphrodisiac effects may occur outwardly as well." Florin pauses, then clarifies, "That is, it will cause her to look, smell, or sound in ways that… some may consider… attractive, Your Grace."

Baelor remains silent. The implication hangs solidly in the air. You notice almost immediately that the maester did not include taste in that assessment, although it lingers in the subtext. The Prince is being effected by your presence, even if it is not to the same degree that you are being effected by his.

"You never answered my question, Maester," you finally interject. "Why is it killing me?"

You feel Baelor's fingers tense on your shoulder just slightly at the question, but he doesn't say anything. Instead, he waits while Florin seems to flounder for a moment, and then gently supplements, "Please answer the lady's question."

Florin looks deeply uncomfortable. "Your Grace, it's… of quite a delicate subject matter. I hesitate to cause yourself or the lady any offense—"

"Seven above, just spit it out, already!" You swipe your arm across your sweaty forehead, desperate to put an end to the hedging about. "I've been laying here dying for ages! What is it, what?"

"That's enough, now." Baelor holds a hand up to silence you, and you almost think you might bite it, except that he has such beautiful hands. You wouldn't want to mar them. You stare unabashedly at his silver ring and the lines on his palm, and you start… salivating.

Gods be good. You're going to eat him.

Florin hesitates only a second more. "This aphrodisiac… although the recipes differ across various regions, it is normally intended as a… a temporary cure for impotence and infertility. It is… I believe it is primarily used in brothels, to make— er… intercourse more— ehm. Pleasurable?"

You blink. "If it's meant to be pleasurable, then why does it hurt so much?" You still refuse to admit that you're already experiencing the so-called pleasurable function— that is, you're soaking the mattress with it the longer Baelor keeps his hand on your shoulder.

"Well, it is usually taken with the intention of… ehm. Using it for its innate purpose, you see. The aphrodisiac will remain in one's system until it has been expelled during copulation."

Baelor drops his hand from your shoulder and takes a step back. You feel the loss like a punch in the gut— quite literally, all of your muscles tighten at once, and you double over in pain.

Through clenched teeth, you say, "So, you mean I have to… to have sex?" The look on the maester's face says everything you need to know. "Or what? What if I don't? I'm— it hurts so much, I can't— I wouldn't be able to do anything… not on my own."

Your face burns at the admission. The humiliation— the irony of it all is unbelievable. The little lady took a love potion and now can't fuck herself properly enough to get it out of her system. The only hand she reacts to is the one she can't have, because it belongs to the Realm.

Florin chews on his lip while he thinks, and then explains, "This particular recipe seems more aggressive than most. That is likely due to the unidentifiable ingredient. The potion is, essentially, a slow acting poison. If it is not used for its intended purpose… I suppose, generally, there will be immense pain and fits for… three days after ingestion. Delirium sets in after about two days. And then—" His eyes flit from you, to Baelor, and back. "Then, my lady, I'm afraid you will die."

One Week Earlier

Admittedly, you knew it wouldn't work the minute you saw Daeron. He looked green about the face, his eyes so red and bleary that you thought he would keel over at any moment. If you hadn't heard him called 'Daeron the Drunken' behind closed doors, you would have tried to somehow politely ask if he was ill. Instead, you just assumed he'd had one too many before showing up to your presentation in court.

No, you aren't surprised that he turned down the offer of marriage. You were, however, surprised that he did not deliver the news himself. Instead, he sent a servant with a note while you were eating breakfast, and left you to bring it before the King. The entire meeting went over about the way you expected. Prince Maekar went to find Daeron, Prince Baelor apologized for his nephew's rudeness and the inconvenience, and the King assured you that all would be made well.

The truth of the matter is that you have no interest in Daeron, anyway. You do not want a husband who refuses to talk to you, even if his drunkenness was not an issue. Daeron has given you no reason to desire him— at this point, the prospect of the marriage would be a matter of your family's social and financial standing, and your own status as a Princess.

Now that the castle is sufficiently in an uproar about Daeron's refusal, you have made your gracious retreat to the gardens. You don't want to be in the castle any longer than you have to. Your family has already suggested leaving King's Landing in two days' time, and even so, it feels like too long to wait.

From the gardens, you look out over Blackwater Bay, watching ships disappear one by one over the horizon. You have no idea how long you sit there, but the sun slowly creeps lower and lower in the sky, until golden light filters through the leaves of the trees.

"My lady." For how large of a man Baelor is, he is light on his feet. You hadn't heard him approach, and so you jump when he addresses you, spinning around to find him standing a respectable distance away from your bench. When you stand to curtsy, he gives you an indulgent smile. "It appears that you've been out here for some time. I only wanted to ensure all was well."

You fight not to raise an eyebrow at the Prince. "You must have been watching me closely, then, Your Grace."

He squints, then pivots to peer up at the Tower of the Hand, looming over the Red Keep. "Not so close, I should think."

You snicker at that, casting your eyes away from him. Baelor is a handsome man, and kind. You find your awareness lingering on him above all others, and you're beginning to fear that your crush is becoming obvious. You feel nervous in his presence in only the best way, as though you may trip over your own tongue and say something entirely unbecoming just as soon as you open your mouth. That feeling is… refreshing, in the right company. But Baelor is heir apparent to the Iron Throne, Protector of the Realm, and you are simply a noble lady much younger than him, with the prospect of marrying his nephew. Any fantasies you indulge can only be that.

"May I join you a moment?" Baelor asks, and despite your internal angst, you cannot bring yourself to refuse him.

Perhaps it would be more proper to have your lady's maid here with you, but Mircalla has other things to be doing now, and so you sit a respectable distance away from Baelor on the bench while staring out to sea and wishing it was not respectable at all.

"In my week at court, I've discovered that I quite like this view," you say after a beat, to puncture the tight shroud of silence that settles between the two of you. "I enjoy watching the waves. I wonder what it's like to be one of them, sometimes. Rolling always towards the shore."

"Or dashing upon the rocks?"

You hum. "At least they know where they're going, rocks or no."

You retreat back into silence with him, and watch him out of the corner of your eye as he twirls his silver ring around his finger idly. He seems to be thinking hard about something, eyes fixed on the horizon with a purpose. It gives you just a moment to admire his profile— his strong, twice-broken nose, his furrowed brow, the touches of silvery gray in his close-cropped dark hair. The small freckle on his cheekbone. The stretch of his neck from beneath his collar, begging for a pair of lips or a tongue to lavish it.

"My lady, allow me to extend my apologies once more for my nephew's behavior," Baelor says finally, and you turn your eyes quickly back out to sea. "It is not the first time Daeron has been irresponsible with delicate matters. Although, it is also the fault of we who expect responsibility from him, that there must be an apology."

"I don't think it's unreasonable to expect responsibility from a prince," you answer without thinking, and then suddenly remember who you are speaking to. "…Your Grace."

"No. On that, we agree." There is a light chuckle in his voice, a slight humor that you imagine is meant to make you feel more at ease. "I do not imagine that Daeron will take long to rectify his behavior, however."

You feel a girlish temper flare within you at the idea that Daeron could rectify anything. You take a long, sobering breath, smelling sea salt and garden flowers on the air.

"You were married, Your Grace. You know quite well how to approach a—" Woman. You want to say it, but you feel it would be too forward. You reconsider, and continue instead with, "a betrothal. Do you believe that anything Daeron has done makes for a… a loving marriage?"

Baelor considers your question with the attention you would expect from the King's Hand. Then, he answers, "I would not hazard a guess as to the sincerity of Daeron's feelings toward you, my lady. Only he can truly know the answer to that. Though, it may bring you some comfort to know that…" He pauses thoughtfully. "My own marriage was not for love. It was arranged, as duty demanded. But, in time, I do believe Jena and I came to love one another, as well as a match made in service to the Crown would allow. Perhaps your marriage to Daeron would be the same."

You sit with his words. Enter into a loveless marriage, having already been besmirched by the man who you would bind yourself to, and hope that love will come in spite of it all. It sounds like a fool's errand.

"Be that as it may, I believe Daeron has already done some irreparable damage to my reputation." When you see Baelor turn his head just barely toward you, you supplement, "My lady's maid, Mircalla, shares with me the gossip I would otherwise be protected from. Sometimes, it can be… harsh. She is honest with me, which is a quality I admire most, you understand." You look down at your hands to find yourself tearing at your own cuticles in your nervousness. "She told me some hours ago that there are rumors floating about as to why— why Daeron would refuse me. Some speculated that we fought upon first meeting. Others suggest that I am pregnant with another man's bastard. Or— Or that we have already slept together, and that Daeron was not pleased with me. Can you imagine…?"

Your voice fades out on a horrified whisper. Although none of these rumors are true, each of them deal a blow to your reputation in turn. Your eyes sting with tears the longer you think of the different stories concocted about you.

"Although it may satisfy me to have Daeron grovel and beg forgiveness, it makes no difference. From now on I will be known as the whore that Daeron refused."

Out of the corner of your eye, you catch Baelor pressing his lips together tightly, raising his chin just a tick. The Prince is quiet for a moment, while you bite back your tears and turn your face away from him.

"You say that honesty is a trait that you value," Baelor remarks, and waits until you nod at him in response. "Then please trust me to be honest. I cannot imagine that anyone would truly believe that of you, my lady. You see, I have had the privilege of knowing you during your time at the Red Keep, and I find you to be exceptional in every way. I can't imagine it, because I cannot fathom anyone viewing you as anything else."

You finally turn to fix him with a watery stare, and find him looking back at you with such solitary focus that you practically wither beneath his gaze. For the first time, you notice that Baelor's eyes are two different colors. The castle is not brightly lit inside, and you have never been close enough to him to notice it, until now. One brown, one violet, they lend even more of a sense of mystery to his handsome features. You have a mind to mention it— you open your mouth to tell him that they're beautiful, but then you think better of it.

He's the Prince of Dragonstone. The Hand of the King. There is nothing that could bring you together.

Baelor holds a hand out to you, his palm facing upward. You peer down at it for a moment before placing your hand delicately in his. Baelor's thumb gently brushes your knuckles, his hand practically dwarfing your own. His palm is so warm, and when he places his other hand atop yours, your skin feels engulfed in flames.

"However," Baelor says, and locks you in his stare, "I can believe that rumors abound. It is an unfortunate effect of being highborn that many will speak on what they know nothing about. But rumors seldom bear any truth. They reflect nothing of your true nature. I assure you that House Targaryen, Daeron included, will understand that."

You blink down at your hand, enveloped in both of his. Daeron. Of course, all of this is to convince you not to lose hope, that Daeron will change his mind, that Daeron will decide to marry you.

"I… thank you for your kindness, Your Grace," you respond, for lack of anything else to say. You know that he's being as fair in his judgment as possible, but he has a duty to the King and to House Targaryen. Gently, you withdraw your hand from his as you add, "Unfortunately, I regret that my family are displeased with Daeron's refusal. I understand that they have designs on leaving King's Landing in two days' time. While I know that both you and Prince Maekar are quite persuasive, I doubt that it provides ample time for Daeron to change his mind. I imagine he wanted to refuse me the moment he saw me."

"Why do you imagine that?"

You look out across Blackwater Bay, thinking back to your first meeting with Daeron. When you curtsyed, the princeling looked as though he was going to either throw up or faint, or both. At the time, you blamed it on the drink. Now, you're not entirely sure.

"I believe he finds me ugly."

Baelor huffs a short laugh through his nose, so quiet and subtle that you would not have caught it if you weren't sitting so close to him. You turn to look at him, appalled, and find him with a soft, reserved smile on his face.

"Well, don't laugh."

"Apologies, my lady." Still, Baelor's mouth curves up at the edges as though he just can't help himself. You watch him tongue the inside of his cheek, half-amused. "I mean no jest. I just find it rather unlikely, to be frank."

"I can't think of another reason why," you explain, finally letting your true emotions ring through. You're hurt. You had given Daeron no reason to dislike you; you had been agreeable and good-natured whenever you spoke to him. "He sent his refusal via courier. He wanted not to speak to me, and he has been quite avoidant throughout my entire visit."

"It's true," Baelor replies smoothly. "Daeron has behaved abominably. But I do know him to be kind, and mannerly when given the opportunity."

You had given Daeron plenty of opportunities. You don't want to argue with Baelor, but you think that he is viewing your situation only from the position of a Prince of the Realm.

"How many hours in the day are there? How many days in a week? Daeron could have come to me during any of them, and I would have recieved him. Kind and mannerly though he may be, Your Grace," you say, looking over at Baelor Breakspear with a challenging fire in your eyes, "no one can force a man to want, any more than they can force a horse to drink."

Baelor's expression remains frustratingly unreadable. You gaze into his mismatched eyes as though they will tell you something, anything about what he's thinking, but there is nothing there to betray him.

"Daeron would be a fool not to want you," Baelor tells you, his voice low and edged with a finality that makes you want to take it for fact. "Whether he is or is not, I cannot say. Only time will tell."

"Do you say that as a man? Or as the Hand of the King?" you ask him more pointedly than you should.

"Both."

You gaze at each other for a long time, long enough that the breeze picks up and sweeps your hair up in its gust. You watch Baelor's jaw work— as small of a gesture though it is, it is the only thing about him that tells you he's contemplating something. He is no open book, your Prince, and it frustrates you as much as it seduces you. It sets you daydreaming, watching him openly in the cool evening air as his mouth curves vaguely toward a frown. Down by his knee, he worries the silver ring on his finger.

Then, Baelor lifts his hand, and with a touch so featherlight it's almost inconsequential, he brushes your hair away from your brow and tucks it behind your ear. His skin barely even meets yours— you can explain it away as him just being chivalrous, just keeping your hair from flying into your eyes. But it's enough to make your heart lurch up into your throat, nonetheless.

"It's late," you mutter, now that the sun has dipped below the horizon and the garden is bathed in shadow. You swallow the lump in your throat, trying to regain your composure as you drop your gaze.

"It is."

"It's getting dark."

"Yes," Baelor agrees, then finally looks away from you. He squints out across the bay, staring into the distance at the absence of sun. "The dragon's breath will be blooming, now."

"Dragon's breath?" You shake your head. "I'm sorry, Your Grace, I have not heard of it."

"I'm not surprised. It's a night-blooming flower, native to Dorne. There is a crop of them not far off, if I recall. Come, I can show it to you." Baelor stands and offers you his hand once again, and this time, you do not hesitate to take it.

He leads you, arm-in-arm, down the garden path toward the godswood. Just as the treeline begins to thicken in the gloaming, Baelor brings you to a stop.

"Just there," he murmurs, guiding you to investigate a shrub low to the ground, littered with trumpet-shaped red blooms. As he stoops to pluck one from the shrub, he says, "Dragon's breath. They are sweetly fragranced, but do not be mistaken. They can be quite deadly if eaten."

"I'll make sure not to put them in my tea, then," you tell him as you take the flower he extends to you. It smells slightly of jasmine and woodsmoke when you hold it beneath your nose, careful not to let it touch your lips. "It's lovely."

"Yes," Baelor says, watching you closely. His eyes linger on yours for an extended moment, a gentle smile curving his mouth. Then, a serene look crosses his face. "It is said that the First Men would ingest it to convene with the old gods. Whether or not this is true remains to be seen, but I would not advise it, at any rate."

"No, I'd imagine not." You spend a second twirling the little red blossom, the same shade as the red thread in his doublet, the colors of House Targaryen. Quite suddenly, you observe, "They're your favorite."

Baelor is quiet for a moment. "What makes you so certain?"

"You thought of them first. You could have shown me anything in the entire Keep, but you showed me these. Obviously, they're important to you." You peer up at him, and you can't bite back your smirk. "I'm right, aren't I?"

Baelor huffs a small laugh, the second one you've managed from him. The sound of it warms the pit of your stomach. "You're rather sure of yourself."

"That isn't a 'no.'"

"Mm. It's not a 'yes,' either."

You crack a grin. "Okay. Don't tell me, then. But I'm right."

This time, when Baelor tilts his head downward, you catch him smiling, a flash of teeth and a dimple indenting his bearded cheek. It is imperfect, crooked and so very human. He hides it well, but you're able to see it before he gentles his face into a careful mask once again.

He doesn't know that you see it. It will remain your secret, a fascination to look back on when you're in need of comfort. You made the Prince of Dragonstone smile. A real smile.

"Thank you, Your Grace," you tell him quietly, still pinching the blossom in your fingers. "For your company. And your hospitality."

"The pleasure is mine." Baelor looks as though he may leave the conversation there, but then he adds, "One more word before we part, my lady, if you please?"

"Certainly." You step a touch closer to him. A cricket sounds somewhere in the brush. The night is beginning to wake around you, the longer you linger with the Prince. You wonder if you could draw the moment out long enough to see the dawn.

Baelor does not seem overly concerned about it. "I should like to extend an invitation to your family, if you believe they would be willing. Perhaps, rather than departing King's Landing in two days' time, they would agree to remain another fortnight?"

You blink at him. Another two weeks? For what, exactly?

Baelor answers your unasked question, as though he can see directly into your mind. "So that we may have ample time for Daeron to correct his mistake. Of course."

"Of course," you echo. You feel clean out of air in your lungs, stunned for something to say. "Your Grace, I— I would say that my family would have to answer that invitation for themselves. I cannot speak for the lot."

He affords you the most patient of smiles. "I would like to hear your answer before all, if you don't mind."

"Oh."

Another two weeks at the Red Keep. Two weeks for the rumors to spread, to converge and morph into even worse ones. Two weeks for Daeron to insult you by ignoring you, tarnish your reputation by refusing you a second time. Conversely, two weeks for Daeron to decide that he may tolerate your company and accept you.

You look down at the flower in your fingers. Two weeks to search for the sight of Baelor in the halls and in the councils. Two weeks to speak to him again. Two weeks to indulge in that wickedest of fantasies: that you might fall in love with Baelor Breakspear.

"Yes," you tell Baelor, quiet enough that it threatens to be spirited away on the breeze. "Yes, if my family is willing. I would be glad to stay another fortnight, at Your Grace's pleasure."

Baelor nods at you graciously. "Then I will see to your family's response in the morning. Thank you for your acceptance, my lady."

"Thank you for your invitation." You tilt your face towards the sky. "It is quite dark. I fear that I will have trouble on my way back, should I remain any longer."

"Indeed. The fault is mine, entirely. Allow me to walk you to the holdfast."

You make the journey back to the holdfast in comfortable silence. You find that you do not feel even remotely unsafe as long as Baelor is near; otherwise, you would never chance to linger outside the holdfast, even within the castle walls, after dark. But Baelor's presence is a relief. You would trust him with your life. You would probably trust him with even more than that, given the chance.

"My Prince."

You pause in the golden torchlight, only bright enough to illuminate the bridge over the dry moat. Down in the pit there is nothing but blackness, and a sense that if you stepped too close it would suck you in. Turning to Baelor, you have the dragon's breath blossom still in your fingers, and lift it to your face to take in its scent again— sweet, smoky, like a garden aflame. You can understand why he is taken with this particular flower.

Baelor watches you expectantly, a respectable distance away again, as though every part of your conversation this evening had been a diplomatic mission. Cleaning up his nephew's mess. Doing what is right for the Realm.

The idea rattles you. It cuts you deep and hits something within that you thought you'd left in your girlhood— covetousness. The desire to be shown favoritism, attention. To be wanted, not simply tolerated. You are not a girl anymore, but the King's Hand seems to bring her out of you as though it were second nature. You feel the urge to try to bring the boy out of him, which may be an insurmountable task. He is a prince, a warrior and a lord of refined poise and sophistication. But you have never been one to shy away from a challenge.

You step closer to him. Baelor does not move away, but follows you with his eyes, a reserved expression on his face. Perhaps he is trying to anticipate what you may do, but he does not show any signs of backing down. You imagine that he wouldn't, even if you threw yourself at him unceremoniously. If you kissed him like you desperately want to, open-mouthed and wet.

But you are not improper, or desperate. You are a lady, and well-versed in flattery and elegant flirtation. You take the dragon's breath, and you tuck the green stem into the gap between the silk fabric of his doublet and the Hand of the King pin that adorns his chest. It flares up from the pin, as though the fingers of the hand were holding it tight to his heart.

"Keep this safe," you say, your smile hiding your desirous stare. Your fingers rest against his chest for just a second longer than is proper, but you pull them away quickly enough, you think. "I would hate for it to go to waste."

Baelor's eyes soften. "Certainly, my lady."

"You are quite a wonderful man, my Prince." Your innermost thoughts become physical things, they turn balmy on your tongue. "If you may pardon my saying so. I have wanted to for some time, but… the opportunity did not present itself."

Baelor's brows raise just the slightest, but he does not admonish you. "I thank you for the compliment, my lady. You are very kind, indeed." A pause, a breath on the wind. "Lovely."

You stay there, held captive in his gaze. One violet, one brown. Finally, in spite of your sense of self preservation, you tell him, "Your eyes… They really are very beautiful, you know."

You do not wait for his answer or reaction before you bid him goodnight, and all but flee into the holdfast. And so, you are not able to see the way he watches after you with a lingering smile, and a longing gaze in those very eyes.

Present

Baelor sends Maester Florin away with an order to return on the morrow, and to alert the servants that you should not be disturbed. It is not without your notice that after he ushers the maester out the chamber door, he bolts it with a final clang that reverberates in your oversensitive ears.

You lay on the mussed bedsheets, curled into a ball. You are sideways in the bed; there is no point in putting yourself to rights, because the moment the next wave of pain hits you will become a writhing animal once again, a slave to the torrents of agony. Through the stringy, damp strands of your loose hair, you watch Baelor's back.

He leans against the door with both hands pressed flat to the wood, head bowed in thought. Or, is it distress? Perhaps both. You don't quite know what to make of his reaction to your situation, at all.

What you do know is that you feel a wave of heat flash through your body so fast and so sharp that all of your muscles tense at once, and you yelp from the blast of pain. Your head pounds as though your heartbeat originates from it.

Baelor turns at the sound of your anguish, and his face pinches at the sight of you, a small, trembling heap on the bed. "I will fetch Daeron."

"No."

"My lady, please."

He approaches the end of the bed, but you can't do more than follow the sight of his face with your eyes, until it passes too far into your periphery, and you must drop them to his belt. The sight of Baelor's belt inches away from your face is not something that helps your situation at all, however, and so you shut your eyes before your body manages to torment you further.

"Daeron is… unreliable, yes. And irresponsible. I know that you harbor wounded feelings towards him at the moment, but…" Baelor hesitates. Clearly, he knows that he is not making the best case for his nephew. His eyes roam your disconsolate form, and then he finishes, "But he is your best chance at survival. I am certain that he will be agreeable, at least in this pursuit."

"Do you even know if his cock works?"

Baelor is eerily silent. You don't open your eyes to look at him until you feel the mattress shift, and you find that he's sat on the foot of the bed, his back to you once again. His hands loosely grip the edge of the mattress on either side of him, and his posture betrays no real emotion. It is only when you notice the redness of his ears that you realize your words must have unnerved him.

"I would not know, my lady," Baelor answers quietly, after a moment. "Daeron has sired no bastards, as far as I am aware. His drunkenness may prove an issue, but questionable odds are better than none."

"I don't want Daeron. He doesn't want me."

"He is to be your betrothed." Baelor's words are flat, even. Clinical. "I understand that if he had not refused you, then perhaps you would not have resorted to… other methods—"

"I didn't take the fucking thing for him," you finally snap, gritting your teeth against the pain throbbing in your head and in your abdomen.

Baelor's voice surrenders to something inquisitive. "Then, why did you take it?"

Another moment of silence. Baelor is too still, his hand pressed flat to the mattress in front of your face. You stare, unblinking, at the glint of the silver ring on his finger, bearing the insignia of House Targaryen.

"I thought… perhaps there was someone else for me." You take in a shallow breath. "Although, I think my rash decision making outweighs my judgment."

Baelor turns and gives you the most indulgent smile you think you've ever received, even though there is immense pain behind his eyes.

"If you will not have Daeron… perhaps I can call another for you. Ser Duncan may be willing," he suggests, his voice just above a whisper. "Ser Duncan is a good and honorable man. I trust him with my life, and I would trust him with yours."

You stare at him in shock for a moment. "Oh… Oh, yes, of course. Ser Duncan. Ser Duncan. Why didn't I think of that? Ser Duncan the Tall." Baelor remains stoic, nonplussed at your sarcasm. Your stomach cramps up as you blather, "Or, better yet, why not call Ser Donnel as well? The entire King's Guard, even? Drag me down to the Great Yard, maybe they can take turns, pass me off—"

"Enough," Baelor finally snaps, shooting you a stern look. "I will hear no more of that sort of talk from you."

"Or what? Your Grace," you return with a wicked glare. "I will not be foisted off to the first man you think of."

Lit up with the fury of a thousand suns now, and sweating enough to show it, you push yourself up on wobbly limbs and tumble off of the bed onto the bearskin rug on the floor. You land on your aching stomach with a loud, "OOMF," and all the air painfully leaves your lungs.

"Stop this, now." Baelor sounds weary, as though he's bored of a game you're playing.

"No. Leave me." You crawl clumsily across the rug towards the chamber window. "I'm not going to lay there, dying in agony and— and losing my mind. I'd rather throw myself out of the tower. Let me die with quiet dignity and grace."

"Quiet dignity and grace," he eventually repeats, incredulous. He hasn't even gotten up from the end of the bed, but just watches you, fascinated with your display. "You know, I fathered two boys. Theatrics don't impress me, especially when negotiating."

"Yes, remind me again of how you're so amazing at everything, like— fathering sons, and— negotiating," you growl, huffing with the exertion of your endeavor. "Because you're— you're so fucking perfect and chivalrous. The Hammer. With your— fucking— giant, veiny— host of Dornish spearmen."

"My, you're verbose."

It's only when you threaten to tip the table by the window, as you attempt to haul yourself up to your feet, that Baelor rises. He reaches you in three quick strides, snatches you about the waist and throws you over his shoulder, just to carry you back to the bed. Your small amount of spite-fueled energy spent, you merely hang on him like a sack of straw.

Baelor lays you down so that your head hits the pillow, your hands thrown above your head. "Are you quite finished?" he asks sharply, looming over you, his eyes boring into yours. His jaw set, he states, "I am trying to save your life."

"And I am no one's whore." You stare defiantly up into the eyes of Baelor Targaryen, willing him to yield.

And, to your surprise, he does. His eyes soften, his jaw untensing as he lets out a slow, defeated sigh. "No, you are not."

He sits back, his hands still pressed into the mattress on either side of you. You miss his proximity like a lost limb.

"Forgive me. I have been presumptuous in my suggestions. I would never force you into any situation against your will or desires." A pause. "But I cannot sit idle and let you die. I beg you, my lady. Name someone, anyone, who you would trust in this matter. Someone who you would accept. I will bring them to you without question."

You gaze up at him tearfully, and feel another wave of heat blooming in your hands and feet. You press your tongue to the back of your teeth and take in the sight of him, so poised and regal, even when faced with an unmanageable task.

"Baelor."

Your hand— small, clammy with sweat and shaky from the fatigue in your limbs— reaches out and finds his— large, warm, grounding. You pull at his hand, and he lets you. His head turns just slightly, watching you as you cradle his large palm in your two hands and press it firmly against your chest, just below your collarbone.

Whatever this magic is, be it gods sent or gods cursed, it reacts the second his skin touches yours. Your entire body sparks alive with sensation— but rather than the unrelenting heat and pain of the poison coursing through your veins, it's solace. You let out a soft moan at the feeling, like gentle sunlight flooding through your body the moment that his fingers lace with yours.

"My Prince," you whisper shakily, and feel his fingers flex just slightly against your chest. Your heart pounds against your ribcage so hard that you know he feels it. He can probably feel the unbelievable heat radiating off of you. "It's— I feel so much pain. I hear the voices of the guards on the ramparts and I taste— I taste the salt from the sweat on your brow. I feel as though I will rip in two when the waves come, and nothing has made it better except— except you. When you touch me. Your hands on me… it's you."

Baelor is quiet, listening to your rambling speech. Tears stream from your eyes. It is both a relief and a terror to confess what you feel to him.

Then, Baelor removes his hand from your chest and brings it to cup the side of your face. The tenderness of his touch strips you to the bone. You feel like you're breathing only for him, like he commands the very air that gives your body function. His thumb brushes your damp hair away from your face, wiping away your tears with it, and he gazes down at you with such care, such affection.

He says your name softly, but there's a touch of sadness in it. He closes his eyes, breathes in long and slow through his nose. "I cannot do what you ask. You must name another."

"Please." You make a frail noise in the back of your throat, feeling as though you may begin sobbing in a moment. You shake your head, lifting one hand to clutch at Baelor's wrist.

"I cannot," he insists, although he doesn't pull his hand away from you. You don't know if he is bearing in mind what you told him— that his touch is the only thing that keeps the pain from tormenting you. There is palpable tension in his expression, his brow furrowed and his mouth set in a firm line. "I am the King's Hand and heir to the throne. If you were to be gotten with my child, it would cause a scandal."

"I am already rumored to be pregnant, remember? House Targaryen has weathered far worse than a bastard child," you remark weakly.

"But you have not. I would not dishonor you in such a way." When you pout and look as though you may argue, he continues, "Whatever rumors circulate about you, we need not give them merit."

"So you would have me carry another man's bastard, instead?"

Baelor snaps his mouth shut, his expression turning suddenly guarded. He makes as though he may pull his hand back as he turns away from you, and your stomach drops.

"Baelor, no."

You clap your own hand over his, turning to nuzzle into the warmth of his palm. On instinct, you plant your lips against his skin, and it's as though something savage bursts alive within you. Some greedy, desperate thing takes hold as your eyes drift shut, with each breath tasting the warmth and spice of his skin as though your tongue were flush to it.

"Don't let go," you whisper into the cradle of his hand. "If you let go of me the pain will return, and I can't— I can't bear it anymore, Baelor, I can't—"

"I know. I won't let you go, darling." He sounds strained even as he reassures you, but he doesn't remove his hand.

There is a long silence, while you practically lose yourself in the feeling of just… giving in. You relax into the glowing feeling, hot pleasure sweeping through your body, up your limbs and into your core, replacing any pain that had been there before. It's glorious. It distracts you, pulls your mind away from the reality of the situation— that you cannot simply have him hold your face and hope that the poison works its way out of your system on its own.

Without meaning to, you drag your parted lips along his fingers, as though exploring them just with your mouth. His fingers are so long. Slender and dextrous, calloused from hours of sword training. You feel each bump and ridge against your mouth and you're trying so hard not to sink your teeth in. Your lower lip catches on the band of his silver ring and draws back, letting the smallest flash of your teeth graze his skin.

You hear his breath catch, and your eyes fly open, suddenly aware of what you're doing. Baelor watches you from the corner of his eye as you press your face into his touch, his jaw locked up tight, his free hand a fist where it rests on his knee.

You feel as though you should apologize, but you can't bring yourself to. Apologize for what? For desiring him? Wanting him? He's so handsome. His differently colored eyes study you, a painful reminder of it. You stare back at him, imagining what it would be like to trace his face with your lips, as well.

"You told me once that Daeron would be a fool not to want me," you say, and you take a purposefully slow breath, because if you don't you may start heaving for air. "Are you a fool, my Prince?"

Baelor lets out a soft sigh, and looks quickly away from you. His fingers twitch slightly against your cheek. He's silent for a long time, long enough that you begin to fear you've misread him, confused his kindness for something deeper.

But then he tilts his head down, and without looking at you, he says quietly, "I am not, my lady. Though, whether my desire in itself is foolish, I have no idea. I may be doomed for it."

"Then… perhaps we are both doomed," you admit, your eyes practically dancing over his features. "I can't think around my desire for you. All I know is that you— you are all that I want in the world. Scandals and suspicious potions be damned."

"Gods above." You watch Baelor roll his eyes toward the ceiling. When he returns his eyes to you, it's with a look of solemn admiration. He strokes his knuckles along the curve of your jaw. "I'm beginning to believe you exist simply to torment me."

You allow yourself to fashion a wobbly smile. "Me? Torment the Breakspear? Never."

Baelor huffs a quiet laugh, looking away from you in a manner that is almost… shy. You can see his jaw flex beneath his short beard and a rosy flush come over his face, and—

You just made Baelor blush.

You lay with that, watching him in the silence. His hand drifts from grazing your jaw to resting flat against your collarbone again, and you lift your own to trace your fingers languidly along the back of his palm. You can hear his breath come out shaky at the light contact, and it's just enough to give you the clarity to really, truly think about this.

His hands on you could be enough, you realize. You practically came the moment that he touched you, and if this magic can just be expelled from your system by an orgasm, it might be that he doesn't need to do anything more than just… put his hands on you. It feels good enough as it is— the heat of him, the smell and the feeling of him, are all adding to the pleasurable fire burning in your core. But, if you felt his hands go… down…

"Baelor."

His name comes out of your mouth faster than it should, and he snaps his eyes to you with a look of sudden concern, as though he expects to find something wrong. But nothing really is wrong— at least nothing that hasn't been wrong to begin with.

"What if—" You bite your lip, trying hard not to move your hips in any way that could startle him off. Your cunt throbs just at the thought of feeling his hands on your body with no barrier. "What if you just… touched me?"

Baelor seems to think your question over, searching your face for any kind of deception. But you simply stare at him openly, your eyes pleading, heart pounding as you feel his thumb stroke once over the hollow of your throat.

And then, his eyes drift down. They linger on the swell of your breast, heaving under the thin, practically sheer linen of your chemise. Everything is too intimate, too bright in the mid-afternoon sun slanting through the open window, illuminating you. Gods, it feels like you're already naked before him with the way he just stares, undressing you in his mind. It hits you directly between the legs, and you clench your thighs together to stave off the rush of arousal.

Your breath hitches, and Baelor snaps his eyes back up to your face, as though he's just remembered himself. "I am touching you."

"Y-You—" Your breath hiccups in your chest with how hard you're trying not to gasp for air. "You don't know how cl-close I am to— to—"

You clap your hands over your face, feeling a flush of heat throughout your body that has nothing to do with his hand on you. It's hard enough to be begging him for some kind of stimulation, but to tell him how close you are to an orgasm just from his touch is mortifying.

Not for the first time, Baelor seems to be able to see inside your mind without you voicing your thoughts. "Tell me," he plies gently, his thumb sweeping across your damp skin. He remains so composed, even when you feel like dissolving into thin air. "What is it that you feel… when I touch you?"

He's still hesitant, but his voice holds a curiosity that he hadn't made manifest before now. Everything in you winds up tight at the sound. He's not just indulging you, he wants to know. You know that he's trying to be proper— Baelor is a man of restraint, of infinite patience and regard for honor and decency. You know that he's clinging to his morals even while trying to rationalize the problem set before him.

But he bolted the chamber door, you remember. Behind your closed eyelids, beyond the sound of your heavy breathing and his, more measured, you can hear the clang of the bolt reverberate in your ears all over again. His hands pressed to the solid oak, his head bowed in thought. Why would he have locked you in together? Unless…

"It feels like sunrise after a frost." Your voice is muffled behind your hands, because you refuse to look at him while you say such things. You don't think you could bear to see his face, as you confess, "It is as though all of this poison in me changes, and it becomes heavenly. I feel… when you touch me… as though my body is not my own, but yours to— to do with as you please. To mold to your whim. And I would let you, my lord, I— I would have you do anything that you desired to me, and I would ask you only to do it again. I could glut myself on your touch and it would not be enough, it undoes me in ways I cannot explain, I… You set your hand upon my back and I thought… I thought I was going to c-cum—"

You choke off on a quiet, humiliated sob. So there it is, out in the open now, with no way to take it back. Baelor is still frustratingly silent, but you refuse to pull your hands away from your face to look at him, because you can't find it within yourself to be clever or brave anymore.

"You wouldn't even need to— to deflower me," you continue, blathering now, unleashing any thought that comes to mind as a way to fill the silence. "It would hardly even be anything that would be significant to anyone, just— just lay your hand upon me, and I might— I could—"

"Where?"

All things stop at once. Your thoughts, your breath, your heartbeat. You freeze up like he has just found a way to completely obliterate you with one word. You take a sharp inhale to kickstart your lungs again, and hesitantly curl your fingers away from your eyes to look at him.

Baelor's eyes are transfixed on your face, unwavering, his expression open and earnest. He waits for you to answer him, but when it becomes apparent that you can't, he supplements, "Show me where you would have me touch you."

You consider him for just a second, just long enough for the gravity of his words to register. He wants you to show him. It occurs to you to tell him that he could touch you anywhere beneath your chemise— your stomach, your hip, your knee— and it may yield the same results. But you don't.

You take Baelor's hand, the one resting on your chest so steadily, and you move it. He allows you to, watching you all the time, the pupils of his mismatched eyes blown wide. With one hand you pull at the fabric of your chemise, tugging it up your legs, while you guide his own beneath it. As soon as his hand touches the plush skin of your thigh, you both gasp in tandem— but for different reasons.

For you, it's the burst of sensation, the sharp arcing pleasure that shoots up your spine and grips at something tight and cruel in your core, making you stifle a moan. You were right. The proximity of his touch to where you want it most makes all the difference— you fist at the gathered fabric in your hand and try not to rock your hips toward his touch, but your pussy throbs threateningly at the heat of him so close to it.

Baelor is simply startled. His brow shoots up, his jaw slack as he breathlessly murmurs, "Oh, my sweet girl."

You're drenched down your thighs, a fact that you had failed to mention to him. His fingers slip through the wetness there, feeling it against your skin, and his breath leaves him in shock.

"I— I wasn't like this, before." You take a shaky inhale, and tremors travel through your entire body. "Before you."

It's as though something within him cracks, and all of his inner turmoil is laid bare before you, etched across his features like a carving on stone. The fear, the worry, the frustration, all manifest in his pinched brow and the dip of his mouth, the tremble of his breath. But there is something else there, too— raw desire, sharp as a knife's edge. It's in his eyes, in the way that his shoulders draw tight, in the set of his jaw. It's in his hands, the way that his fingers shift and press into the pillowy flesh of your thigh.

Baelor's thumb sweeps along the curve of your inner thigh, the same affectionate, instinctive gesture that it had been as he laid his hand on your chest. But on this part of your body it is more suggestive, and perhaps ill-advised. His thumb glides too close to the core of you and, quite by accident, he discovers that you are bare of any smallclothes.

Your gasp is sudden and loud. The brush of his finger against your bare sex is enough to make you jump, your hand clamping down on his wrist desperately as pleasure dances like pure dragonflame over your nerves. Your cunt pulses, and a feeble moan breaks from you. "Baelor, please."

He halts, and something changes in his expression. Call it the end of resolve, or a breaking point. There is no hiding anything from him now, you know. He has seen everything, knows what you are laying with.

"No more begging," Baelor finally says, and it's a gentle order. This man who has led armies, who has killed and fought to defend his realm, speaks to you with infinite tenderness. "I have you now, darling. I am for you. You need not beg anymore."

I am for you. He is your knight, upholding his vows, taking up his sword to defend you.

You shiver to feel his grip on your thigh tighten just a bit, a final test of his resolve before he moves it. There is a shift beneath the white linen of your chemise, and then Baelor's knuckle drags slowly through your soaked folds.

Your breath stalls in your chest as your mouth drops open. His touch turns you golden. Your body seems to light up from the inside, fresh heat blooming low in your stomach. Heart pounding in your chest, you stutter, "Oh, fuck— fuck, Baelor, this— this is too much, you don't have to—"

He shushes you, and the look in his eyes threatens to undo you more than his finger tracing a line through your cunt. There is a fire in his eyes that was not there before. The fire of a dragon, of a Targaryen. His gaze feels almost like a physical caress as he says, "Hush, now. I do this willingly."

Fuck. His voice is deep, rich and soft as velvet as he stares at you with that unwavering intensity, touching you between your legs. Your Prince. Touching you between your legs. It completely arrests your ability to think. He is slow, methodical in his movements as he is with everything; he glides the length of his finger through your pussy without rush, letting you feel each bump and ridge as they pass over your clit.

With your heightened senses, you can hear how wet you are, and the salacious sound of his fingers gliding through the mess you've made is enough to drive you up the wall. He begins drawing circles around your clit with the tip of his finger, and you melt into the mattress. You feel as though your pleasure and your need have turned you inside out, bitten chunks from your sensibilities.

He's too beautiful. The thought plagues you more and more. Baelor is too handsome, too competent with his strong hands and too gentle with his lust-roughened words. Gods above, you feel like you could cum— you should have cum by now, with how badly your cunt spasms under his attention, how hypersensitive your clit is as he continues tracing languid circles around it.

Then Baelor dips down and sinks a single finger into you, where you leak and ache desperately for him. Your thighs widen to give him more room, and he takes it, pushes in to the knuckle and gives you a practiced crook of his finger.

A sound rips from you— something animalistic and completely unfamiliar, a moan from the very depths of your fevered being. You tighten a fist in the tangled bedsheets and turn your face to the side, trying to hide from him while he makes you unravel at the seams.

"Look at me, darling." At the hushed rasp of his voice, your cunt clamps down hard on his finger. He pauses, halting all movement until you turn your head to open your eyes to him.

What you find in his face is enough to move the endless soul in you. You have spent two weeks etching Baelor's face into your memory— his careful, poised demeanor, the way he steadies his expression to keep it neutral, tactful. You know his cautious smiles, and you know his deeper one, the one that you hold tight to your chest like a secret. You know his kindness, and you know his disappointment.

But you've never seen this. This unbridled lust, his every feature touched by the amount of desire he has for you. He gazes at you like he feels everything you do, and more. Baelor inclines his head, and he appears so composed, as he always does, but his chest is heaving— you can see it and you can hear it, in the rattle of his inhale, in the obvious rise and fall of his shoulders.

"I will have you look at me when I do this," Baelor tells you, his eyes so dark and hungry that the very glint in them is wicked. It unnerves you, runs quick and hot through your veins. "I will have you see all that I give, and know it is yours to keep. Only yours. Do you understand?"

You swallow hard. "Yes, my lord."

"Baelor." His voice is quiet when he corrects you.

"Baelor."

He flexes his finger within you and your face crumples, your thighs shaking where they lay spread on the mattress. His free hand comes to rest on your thigh and makes to pull your legs further apart, prevents you from moving it back to center. It is not a rough or demanding move, but it conveys his message. Stay. Don't move away.

Baelor whispers something in a language you don't understand— High Valyrian, most like, but it makes no difference that you cannot speak it. It sounds warm, seductive in his throat, and a tremble rolls through your body at the sound of it.

Soft moans fall from your lips as he adds a second finger beside the first, and your hips nearly leave the bed. You take him in so easily, a quiet breath of disbelief leaves him, and he shifts, giving you strokes that have you fighting to keep your eyes open and fixed on him. A gentle back and forth, a hot press against the wall of you. Your body doesn't know how to react— hot then cold, trembling and then still, rocking against him and then backing away as though it's too much and not enough all at once.

His silver signet ring grazes you, hard to offset his softness. You're so close, you can taste your release on the back of your tongue like the entire ocean is rising within you. You grab at the pillow beside your head, ripping at it between fingers that don't know what to do with themselves. Your eyes clench shut at the sudden onslaught, your head tilted back on the pillow.

"Look at me," Baelor reminds you, his voice gently commanding.

Quick as he says it, you snap your eyes open again and find his fixed on you, dark and fathomless. There is a sudden surge, a quickening in your breath. "Oh, gods, Baelor—"

It looms like some wretched, evil thing come to destroy you. You snatch at his forearm frantically, trying to warn him, but unable to form words.

"I know. I feel it," he soothes, a palm moving sweetly against your thigh. He squeezes you there, a reassuring touch even while his other hand takes you apart. "You don't have to hold on anymore. I've got you. I've got you."

Your hips lurch towards him, your vision whiting out. His fingers hit a spot both perfect and devastating inside of you, and your mind's focus is whittled down to a fine point, aimed at him.

"Cum for me, lovely girl," Baelor orders. So you do.

He remains constant. Even when the wave rises and breaks within you, even when you writhe and let out a ragged cry, the sound torn from a hidden, previously unknown part of you. Through the seemingly unending torrents, Baelor remains your anchor. He does not change. He does not move. He does not let you go.

You turn pliant in the aftershocks. He gentles his movements— he does not stop them altogether, but turns them lighter, slower. His thumb brushes over your clit, and you jolt hard enough to convince him to finally withdraw his hand.

Baelor watches you closely, his darkened eyes focused on yours, but that familiar tenderness is returning, creeping across his features. The span of his fingers curves around the meat of your thigh, measured breaths leaving parted lips. His other hand is drenched with your fluids, still held cautiously between your legs as though hesitant to pull back entirely.

"How do you feel?" He asks then, softly.

You blink at him, and then up at the canopy over the bed. You're still shaking, your brain fizzling and humming from the orgasm he'd given you. "I don't… I don't know, I— that's the first time anyone has ever— done that…"

Baelor stays quiet for a beat, a small, affectionate smile curling the corners of his mouth. Then, he clarifies, "Do you think that it worked?"

"Oh." Yes, that. You had somehow forgotten that there is an ulterior motive to all of this, that it is not just sex for the sake of sex. "We… We could check?"

The words leave your mouth meekly. You don't want him to let you go. You don't want him to go away. Yes, you want the poison to be gone from your system, but you are greedy. You want him to stay with you and take you until morning. You want him to keep looking at you like that, like he'd swallow you whole, bones and all.

Unfortunately, Baelor listens. He slowly lifts his hands away from you, leaving you entirely. For a few calm seconds, nothing happens. Your body is still awash with the remnants of your orgasm, your skin still tingling with the memory of his touch. You lay there for a moment, thinking, was that it?

But then you look at Baelor again. He stares down at his hand— the one drenched in your arousal. It shines in the mid-afternoon light, strings of it threading between the parting of his fingers as he… feels it. Rubs his fingers against each other to test the silkiness, pulls them apart just to watch it web across the gap in thin strands.

You watch, wide-eyed, as he returns his gaze to your face. And he lifts his fingers to his mouth to suck your wetness from them. His eyes, amber and violet, trained on your expression until they flutter shut, and he groans.

"Oh— gods on fire."

Your whole body tenses up with the fury of it. The pain. It assaults you worse than before, with a ferocity that scares you. There's so much of it that it is not enough to scream— you can't even breathe for it. You curl into yourself and roll, the muscles of your stomach and core pulling taut.

"No. No no no— Baelor." You whimper, blindly throwing your hand back to grab at him. You find a wrist— left or right, you don't know— and pull so that his hand smacks down onto your flank with a lewd sounding slap. "Didn't work. It didn't— fuck."

"All right. All right, my love. Come here." Baelor's hand slides around your waist to gather you into his lap. You slide across the bedsheets with your spine bent into a crescent, knees pulled to your chest. "I've got you. I'm right here, just relax." You jerk involuntarily in his hold, an elbow catching him in the ribs. He grunts, adjusting his arm around you, curling himself over you like a shield. "Relax. Relax."

You will the tension in your muscles to release one by one. You imagine yourself absorbing into him, your head resting on his strong thigh as you allow your body to feel him. The rise and fall of his chest as he breathes, the distracting warmth radiating from the space between his legs. The smell of him there, strong and sweetly arousing. The taste of something on the back of your tongue— sweat and something muskier, something more masculine.

Him. The taste of him, through silk, through smallclothes. Your head spins, and you fight not to turn your head further into his lap, not to nuzzle into the crotch of his breeches and just breathe him into your lungs.

"Stupid fucking sex potion," you mumble angrily once the pain recedes. "Secret ingredient. Bullshit."

"All right," Baelor says again to quiet you, laying his hand on the crown of your head soothingly. You imagine that he understands what you're feeling, though, because he doesn't argue.

"What do we do?" Your voice is thin, a barely-there thing in the quiet.

"We continue."

You turn your head. Baelor is gazing down at you, eyes glittering with affection. He exudes a calmness that you cannot feel, even though your overwrought body relaxes into him. "You want to… continue?"

"We need not stop at one." Baelor pets your head, shrugs a shoulder. "I wouldn't, even under normal conditions."

You stare at him, aghast. "Your Grace."

He gives you a wry smile. "We don't know what this 'secret ingredient' is. Perhaps it needs… more. We can continue until it takes." Another pause. "You'll have to forgive me for my choice of words. It's my first time experiencing the… joys of a sex potion, as well."

You snort incredulously, trailing your fingers along his clothed forearm. "And what if it… takes?"

You don't need to elaborate. What if you become pregnant with his child, like he suggested you might? What happens if you bear the heir apparent a bastard, and still end up married to his nephew? What if you cause a scandal?

"Then… we continue," he repeats. "Come what may." Baelor takes your hand in his, presses a kiss to the back of your palm. You are filled with so much adoration for him that it almost wounds you. It sets up a home in your body, right below your heart. "Whatever happens, it makes no difference. You may have anything that you want from me."

"Even your hand?"

"Especially that."

"In marriage?" Your chest tightens up in anticipation. You gaze up at him, willing him to accept you, clutching his hand like he might pull it away, recoil in disgust. If he were to turn you down now, you think that it might just kill you before the poison does.

Perhaps he feels how hard you tense up in your nervousness. He pulls back just the slightest bit and peers at you, taking in your expression, before his own turns into something open, genuine. His eyes crease at the corners as he traces a single finger down the part in your hair, and he replies, "Yes. I will marry you, darling girl. I should have, the moment I was able to. I should have begged you on my knees."

You smile at the mental image that provides. The Hand and Heir on his knees for you. "I would have liked that."

He gives you the fondest look. "I have no doubt."

You fiddle with his hand. His skin is soft, prominent veins running up the back and to the knuckles. You fit your hand to his like a question, examining the difference in size and shape. The ring on his middle finger, still damp from where it's been. In you. In his mouth.

"Why did you do that?" You don't mean to ask the question aloud, but it comes out anyway.

"Do what?"

You glance at Baelor and determine that he's only asking because he wants to hear you say it, and not because he's really confused as to what you mean. He looks coy, which is not something you've ever seen on him before— but you think that it suits him.

"Taste it." The words feel sharp in your mouth. "You didn't have to. I wouldn't have expected you to."

He breathes in deeply, and exhales on a long, low hum. Then, his eyes find yours again. "There are few pleasures in this world that compare to the taste of a woman. I wanted to."

Your heartbeat thrums in your ears. "And?"

"And you taste divine." A deft finger twists in the hair just at the very top of your head, twirling it around and around in hypnotic circles. "I would taste you again, if you would allow me."

It's your turn to hum. You hold his one hand in both of yours, tracing the details of them with your fingertips. Your thumbs map out the dip of his palm, the raised, sword-strengthened calluses beneath his fingers. The meat of his hand, where it connects to his wrist.

Without pausing to feel embarrassment or shame, you bring his hand to your mouth. You brush your lips over his fingers just barely, before you take them in and suck on them. You hear a shudder in Baelor's breath, but you don't stop. It is an intimate thing, to have his fingers stroke your tongue, to taste yourself on him, to know that his own tongue had been in the exact same place moments ago. You whimper and draw them in deep, your lips fitting around the silver ring against his knuckle, your eyes falling shut. He watches you, allowing you to take his swordsman's hand and fit his fingers between your teeth, trusting you not to bite down.

You sigh as you release them, dragging your tongue along the ridges and dips of his fingers on their way out. "I wanted to do that," you admit to him quietly. "For a while."

"You like my hands, it seems," he muses, a note of approval in his voice.

"Very much." You blink at him, suddenly feeling shy under the intensity of his gaze. "I'll let you have me however you want, my Prince. I only ask that first… you kiss me."

"Is that so? Only a kiss?" You nod, and Baelor smirks. He drags the tip of his pinkie finger gently down the slope of your nose. "You drive a hard bargain. If I kiss you now, I fear I may never stop."

"Don't stop."

Baelor lets out a short breath, and then scoops you up into a sitting position. You grunt in surprise, grabbing for his shoulders at the sudden movement, but you settle with his arm tight around your waist. Your heart skips a beat when he cradles your head in his palm, his fingers tangled in your hair.

"I don't think you understand just how wonderful you are," Baelor whispers, his mouth so close to your that the warmth of his lips practically touches yours. He hovers there, a breath away, and it's torturous to hold back. "You'll be the death of me."

With a shaking hand, you rest your palm against his cheek. You feel the scruff of his beard, the way that his jaw tenses the tiniest bit. "And if I don't kiss you, I'll die."

That seems to finally crack his composure. Baelor brushes your hair away from your face, strokes his thumb over your cheekbone, and closes the gap.

His kiss sends shocks of warmth through you, and you melt into him with a quiet sob of relief. Relief from the tension and swells of pain and fear. Relief at finally being able to hold him, to kiss him, open mouth to open mouth. You clutch at his shoulder, his neck, and swing your thigh over his to sit halfway on his lap.

He moves with you, his strong arms keeping you steady as you sink against him, groaning into you. Each point of contact feels bright, like if you opened your eyes to look you would find yourself glowing where he touches you. But his mouth moves against yours like silk, his tongue against yours, and he tastes like peace. It feels like the end of the storm, the answer to all your problems— even if it is only just the beginning.

Baelor's hand slides down to your lower back, holding you fast, splayed wide across your spine. His fingertips press into the flesh there, pulling you closer, until you're flush against him.

Your cunt grinds down onto the meat of his thigh, and you moan brokenly into his mouth. The sound of his name again, sweet on your tongue. He captures your lips with his, his other hand coming down to grip your hip. He rocks you against his thigh purposefully, swallowing the desperate sound that leaves you when your clit presses into the heat of him, through frustrating barriers of fabric.

You make a small, disgruntled noise, and your hand falls to the belt around his doublet. Nails scratching at the leather, you fumble with the buckle until it comes free. You feel beneath the cover of his doublet to find his soft linen shirt, warm from the heat of his body. Strong muscles tense beneath the lightness of your touch.

You huff a perturbed sigh against his mouth. "You are too clothed."

"You are too impatient," Baelor returns, but there is a huskiness to his voice that makes his words seem inconsequential. He shrugs out of his doublet to let your hands wander over his shoulders, down to squeeze the width of his arms. His beard tickles along your jaw as he presses kisses to your skin, trailing up to your ear. "Lie back, darling."

You recline on a pile of tangled sheets, chemise rucked up around your hips. Heat kisses your cheeks and pulses low in your core, your thighs instinctively wanting to close in on themselves, but they are stopped in their endeavor by Baelor's hips.

The mattress dips beside your shoulder where he leans his weight, hovering over you, a veil of security against the rest of the world. He drags his open mouth across your skin like this is not only for your benefit, but for his. You feel the flash of wet and warmth from his tongue, and your back arches up against him. He moves so slowly, savoring, his breath tumbling across your heated flesh like clouds of smoke.

It feels good. It feels so heavenly that you don't quite know how to accept it— you feel almost as though you should move away, but you would only be condemning yourself to more torment. You are bound to the bed by curiosity, an insatiable need to see what he does next. To feel his mouth touch more of you, places that you never thought to feel a pair of lips, teeth, or a tongue.

Baelor skims lightly over your breasts through the fabric of your chemise, while his hands find the curve of your waist. As he lowers, he ever-so-slowly tugs the fabric up, up, up, until you are bare from the waist-down and left open for his wandering mouth.

Your hands cling to him, one clawing against his back, the other gliding over the back of his head, cradling him to you. You gasp to feel the heat of his tongue on the skin just beneath your ribs. "Baelor…"

He hums in acknowledgement of his name, dragging his lips down over the curve of your stomach and lingering there. Baelor is thorough in a way that shouldn't shock you as much as it does— he lavishes you with his tongue and his lips, the quickest grazes of his teeth making you lurch against him with small sighs and moans. You are entirely alive with feeling, winding you up, until your whole body tenses and releases with it.

Then, he's moving. He passes over your pelvis and your aching, swollen cunt, and goes lower, settling between your knees. You make a little sound, a whimper of protest when you can't hold his head in your hands anymore.

He shushes you with his mouth against the inside of your knee, and then the wet swath of his tongue licks upwards in a way that takes you entirely by surprise. Bold, quick, his face so close and coming towards the most intimate part of you that you startle. "Gods—"

"Let me." It's a quiet plea, hushed against the skin of your inner thigh, one big hand cradling it to his cheek. There's the prickle of his beard, then the soft soothing of his tongue after. "My sweet girl. Let me taste you here."

"Yes," you sigh, even as he's already licking over the trail that your arousal has left, smeared across your overheated flesh.

The aphrodisiac effects may occur outwardly. The maester had said as much, and it becomes more and more apparent that, as Baelor lingers there, breathing in your scent and tasting you on his tongue, he is becoming intoxicated by the poison leeching from you. It's in the way his breath falls unevenly from his mouth, the way his gaze has gone a bit glassy with want, his pupils so wide that his beautiful, incongruous eyes are nearly black.

Baelor takes to you with a wide, flat stroke of his tongue that practically burns you alive. Your back leaves the mattress, your hands snatching at his head. Your cry breaks in your throat with its intensity and pitch, already taken to pieces by the single touch of his mouth to your cunt.

He groans into you— fully moans, as though this is entirely for his benefit and it is not something that he's doing in service to you. It is not a sound that you would have ever expected to hear from him, half-animalistic and far from the restrained, princely figure you've come to know him as. Large hands grasp at your hips and bring you further into his mouth, firm and consuming.

His name leaves you on a squeal. You're being too loud and you know it— through the open window, you can hear birds soar past, voices down in the courtyards. Any and everyone will hear you, and what the Prince of Dragonstone is doing to you, if you can't help it. You barely have the mental fortitude to let one shaking hand leave his head and clap over your mouth to stifle your cries.

He pulls back, releasing your clit from between his lips with a wet sound that makes your face burn. His eyes find yours, and you feel pinned beneath the weight of his gaze. "Do not silence yourself. Let me hear you."

You hesitate for only a second, but he doesn't move. Baelor's eyes remain fixed on your face as you reach forward, then stroke a hand over the crown of his head, a tentative and seeking touch. Then he returns to suck at your clit again, and you have to bite your tongue on a whimper.

He remains there for a long time. Long enough that you begin to think you may go delirious from the pleasure, and not from the poison throbbing and coursing through your veins, effecting him as he tastes you. He drags you to the precipice, to a place where reason and restraint don't exist anymore. There, you threaten to burn alive.

You cum into his mouth with a hoarse cry, your head tipped back on the pillows. It splinters through you like it may both destroy you and rebuild you anew at the same time— there's a rush, a flood between your legs that you don't expect, any more than you expect Baelor to stay there and take it, in all its viciousness.

You can't quite think. You feel him lingering there, his lips and tongue still on you, but it's as though you've been entirely unmade. He doesn't move, just remains solid and capable with his attention on your spent cunt, his tongue still lapping at the wetness that drips from you until you're certain— almost entirely certain— that this is not for the sake of the poison. This is not the potion at work. This is sex for the sake of sex.

"Baelor," you murmur, your voice a bit too high and airy in your throat. Your fingers dig at his scalp for something to make sense of. "D'you think— think it worked—?"

"Mm. You need another." Baelor answers you before you finish asking the question, his eyes narrowed as he rears back. His face is painted in your wetness, glistening around his mouth as he breathes heavily. "Let's not take any chances, shall we?"

"No, I wouldn't want to— to take chances— oh."

Baelor is climbing the line of your body, traversing over you like a panther on the hunt. His parted lips trail a wet line over your stomach, and he nudges your bunched up chemise back, further up your ribs. With trembling hands, you grab the useless fabric and pull it, tugging it frustratedly over your head so that you can throw it across the room.

"My beautiful girl," Baelor whispers into your skin, almost as though talking to himself more than you. His palm smoothes over the curve of your ribs and comes up to cup your breast, a reverent and tender touch, as though simply feeling the weight of it in his hand. "So stunning. Oh, I dreamt of this."

"You dreamt…?" You stutter out a gasp when his mouth closes hotly over your nipple, and your hands fly up to grasp the back of his head.

"I dreamt," Baelor repeats, moving his attention to your other breast with the same amount of care. "I wanted. I wished."

You pull him by the nape of his neck and he moves with your urging, lifting himself over you so that you can kiss him. The dampness of your arousal, still lingering in his facial hair, smears against your cheek as you lick into his mouth and taste yourself, oddly sweet on his tongue.

"Take your clothes off," you grumble against his lips, the slightest note of impatience lacing your tone as your fingers dig against his shoulders.

His linen shirt meets your chemise somewhere on the floor. Your hands find his chest, sliding down over hard muscle padded with soft flesh. He has a body befitting a man of his station— a soldier, hard and lean, bearing the scars of battle but unashamed of them. You trace a scar stretching across his ribs, trailing down towards his navel. Unhurried fingers dance over the trail of hair stretching downwards, guiding you towards the waist of his breeches.

"You're beautiful." It comes out more forceful than you mean for it to— but gods, do you mean it. You want to map out his body with your hands and your lips and your teeth, you want to learn every inch of him by rote, and still never stop once you know all. You try to convey it to him with your eyes, because you can't find any other words to express it. "You're so beautiful, Baelor, you must know."

He smiles, and it's that smile. The one that has haunted you since you saw it last, the one that you want to see over and over again. It causes a swelling feeling in your chest that… probably isn't healthy, but none of this is. It would be death to deny it now.

"You flatter me," Baelor says, his thumb stroking idly against your thigh, where his hand rests. His eyes are soft, flicking over you with so much adoration you struggle not to squirm beneath it.

"I tell the truth," you murmur, slipping two fingers just beneath the waist of his breeches to trace just below the fabric. His breath hitches, and you smirk. "I could always lie, but I imagine you'd see right through it, now."

"It would be very unladylike of you," he remarks, his smile turning sardonic.

"Hm. Can't have that." Even as you say it, your hands are untying his breeches, your fingers tugging until you're able to slip them down his hips. "We both know just how ladylike I am."

One boot comes off, then two, and his breeches shed to leave him in his smallclothes. There is no finesse to his movements— the seduction is over, leaving only sharp intent and the promise of what's to come. Desire wound tight like a spring, loaded to snap at a single touch.

That touch comes when you slip your fingers along the band of his smallclothes, a single, featherlight graze against the laces. Baelor's entire body goes rigid over you, as if you've held a blade to his throat. You guide them over his hips and down his thighs, until he snaps to and shirks them the rest of the way. He whispers your name, something between awe and guttural need forming the word in his throat.

"Baelor," you hum in response when your fingers find him and wrap around his cock. You freeze for just a moment— he's larger than you expected, and the prospect sends a little shiver through you. The Hammer, you think to yourself. Of course. He's hot to the touch, burning and throbbing against your palm, so hard it seems like it should be unbearable for him. But he bears it, for you. "Do you know how many women in the realm dream of this?"

He makes a small noise of warning, twitching in your grip.

Your grin turns wolfish as you pass your thumb over the head, flushed and leaking. "Do you know how many would kill for this? Would die to lie beneath you like this?"

"Heavens above." He shudders out a sigh as you stroke him, his forehead falling to rest against yours. "Don't— you mustn't say such things to me, my love, I— I have to be so careful with you. You have no idea."

So this is what it is, to have him lose his composure. No longer the Prince of Dragonstone, Hand to the King, heir to the Iron Throne— in your hands, he is simply a man. A man who wants, whose breath spills warm across your lips. Whose hips search for yours when you wrap your legs around his waist.

"Would you let me have you, my Prince?" you ask him, and your voice is light, inquisitive. It can't be anything else, because you are just as desperate as he is. You don't have it in you to be teasing, you are simply open with your need for him, allowing your innermost thoughts to surge to the forefront. Your forehead pressed to his, you look up through your lashes to find his eyes closed, squeezed shut in some vain attempt to hold on. "My love?"

His eyes snap open to meet yours, pressed so close that your noses touch. Baelor groans quietly when you guide him between your legs without waiting for an answer— it was a rhetorical question, after all.

But all the same, he replies, "Anything you desire."

Baelor drops his hips, enough to follow the guidance of your hand. He fills you in one fluid stoke, and together you take a long, deep breath.

"You are…"

"Perfect." He finishes your sentence for you, hushed and airy though it is. It feels as though you could be interrupted at any moment with the way he holds you, like a secret, like something that should never been spoken or heard about. Like you are only for him to know this way.

He presses his hips flush to yours, making you keen from the fullness, the exquisite stretch. The potion, for what it's worth, does make everything slicker, easier— you are so swollen and relaxed from his mouth, your body so attuned to his that there is no pain. Only the pleasure of his touch remains.

He moves, and it lights you up from within like wildfire. Your back arches towards him, your chest pressing up against his, and a sound unlike anything you've ever made tears from your throat. Arms blindly snatching for him, you wrap yourself around him as though he may try to move away.

He nuzzles his nose against yours, almost too tender of a gesture for the position you find yourself in. "That's it, darling. Take all of me."

Your mind clouds with pleasure as he rocks his hips into yours. You feel like you're drowning in the skin on skin, stripped to the skin and pressed flush to him. Your hand smoothes down his back, feeling rigid muscle and raised scars there, too.

He withdraws and presses forward, setting a slow, deliberate pace that drives you practically mad. He's so gentle and tender even when everything about him, about this situation, tells you that he wants to let go of his restraint. Widening your thighs on instinct, your hand cradles the back of his head, bringing his lips closer to yours.

"Don't hold back," you tell him, and you feel his breath pause where it fans against your cheek. Even though to try to be commanding, your voice cracks. "Baelor— stop holding back—"

Baelor presses a single, chaste kiss to your lips, and you are too caught up in the moment to realize that it's a warning, a subtle apology before he's shifting. He lifts your hips, planting his knees on the mattress before he pulls you into his lap, your back bent over the expanse of his strong thighs.

You slide down the mattress with an undignified squeak, hands scratching along the sheets for stability where there is none. And then you settle into your new position, gazing up at him with a stunned expression.

He's unbelievably gorgeous. His chest leaps with his breath, tanned and freckled skin glistening with a thin layer of sweat. He pants through parted lips, his eyes sharp and focused as they always are, cheeks flushed. He's a vision, and he's all yours.

Baelor splays his hand flat against your chest, running his palm over the skin where, beneath, your heart pounds a drumbeat loud as thunder in your ears. Then he drags his touch down, between your breasts, over the curve of your stomach. His hand settles warm and solid over your navel, thumb stroking you tenderly enough to make you let out a soft sigh.

But then he's sliding his cock into you again, a wicked thrust that punches all the air from your lungs, and his hand presses down. Your brows draw together, your mouth falling open on a silent moan as he hits something so devastating inside of you that it makes your eyes involuntarily roll back in your head.

"Feel that?" Baelor murmurs, his voice roughened with desperation as he does it again, and again. Pull back, push forward, press down. "Feel how deep I am inside you?"

It comes out so… possessive. Spurred on by the fact that he's the only one to do this to you, the only person to see you like this. Like he's staking a claim to you with each roll of his hips. His fingers rub back and forth over the soft flesh of your stomach, and you do feel it— the tip of his cock as he drives it into you, reaching so deep within you that it makes a faint bulge in your lower stomach.

You sob out an incoherent response, lights dancing behind your eyelids. Your hands, searching for something to hold onto as his thrusts gain momentum, find the pillow above your head. You squeeze it, pull blindly as though it will bring you some respite, and the downy soft padding of it covers your face, smothering the obscene moans that spill from your mouth.

Baelor's hand all but slams down on top of the pillow with a dull thump. You feel the impact through the feather stuffing, a slight bump against the tip of your nose before he's snatching it away from you and flinging the accursed thing across the room. It hits one of the open window shutters and falls to the floor.

"Do not. Hide." It's a snarl released from his throat, his hand coming to cup your chin and pull you to center. "Show me your eyes."

You blink your eyes open at him and bite your lip, trying to keep your whimpering at bay. You watch his core muscles flex with the movement of his hips, his chest dappled with golden sunlight, his jaw tightening with the effort to remain consistent, even when you told him to let go.

"There she is," Baelor whispers, a flicker of awe crossing his features. "My beautiful girl."

His thumb strokes across your lower lip, and without even thinking, you close your lips around it. The pad of his thumb, tasting of salt and the sweet musk of your own cunt, strokes against your tongue. A quiet groan breaks from him, his thrusts turning erratic and unmeasured when you suck hard.

Baelor drops his chin toward his chest, his face drawn in silent agony. "Fuck."

Your cunt clamps down hard around him at the sound of the swear falling from his lips. You don't know why the single word is enough to drive you crazy— probably because you've never heard Baelor curse before, and it's such a juxtaposition to the rest of him. The unshakeable prince brought to shambles by your lips around his thumb, your legs around his core.

Your orgasm mounts suddenly, and your teeth bear down hard on his thumb. It's enough to throw him off-kilter. He hisses through his teeth and pulls you with his free hand, seating himself deep inside you, his hips pressed flush to yours. He slides his hand from your waist downward, through the soft curls of hair on your mound. He finds your clit, brushing a circle around it with the tip of one, impossibly gentle fingertip.

You cum so quickly that the force of it turns blinding and sharp. Your cunt pulses on his cock with an urgency that wracks your entire body. But it is not enough for him that you lay there milking him— no, he has to escalate it.

Just as soon as it hits, Baelor's hand is gripping your thigh, pushing your leg up until your knee hooks over his shoulder, and he bends you. Your thigh presses tight to your chest as he moves over you, his cock hitting immeasurably deeper now. You claw desperately at his back, fingernails scratching, raking hard lines that will be too easy for his servants to notice, come morning.

He doesn't let up, even for a second. Still driving his hips, fucking you through the pulsing of your cunt, his body holding you down against the bed. His thumb slides from your mouth with a wet pop, spit smearing across your cheek as he cradles your face. Baelor replaces his thumb with his tongue, kissing you deeply, reverently, like he can feed all his devotion into you with it.

"Good girl," he whispers into your mouth, dragging his hips back slowly and then filling you back up even slower. You squirm, drowning between your legs from the oversensitivity and the entirely new angle he hits at. The sound that he makes is unbelievably erotic, something between a sigh and a rasping moan that cracks in his throat. "So good for me, my darling."

You cry his name, latching onto him with a trembling hand. "Fuck— Baelor. You need to cum. You should—"

"Don't." He shakes his head, fixing you with a heated look. He swallows, exhaling a stuttering breath. "Not— not yet, I don't—"

But you're nodding against him in retaliation, tightening your core muscles around his cock, squeezing him so hard that he makes a noise like you've punched him.

"Fuck," Baelor grits, hanging his head. "Oh, fucking Seven, you just— just can't stand to lose— can you—?"

Perspiration beads on his brow, and you have the sudden urge to lick it. So, you do. You pull him down by the neck, and he goes, following the urging of your hand like it's a command he's beholden to. You run your tongue across his temple, up and over his drawn brow, and he shudders.

In spite of everything— the overstimulation, the frightening possibility that you might cum again— you manage to break a small, breathless smile. Your mouth finds the shell of his ear, and your voice drops unexpectedly low. "Yield."

He plants his hips against yours, pressing your thigh so far against your chest that your knee almost touches your ear. He cums with an exquisite moan against your cheek, your tongue still pressed to his face to taste more of him, as though you can consume the very beauty from his skin.

You take his hand— the one against your thigh, holding it up around his waist— and guide it down between your flush bodies. Even while you feel him pulse inside you, he follows your guidance without question. He rubs a light caress against your clit, just enough to send sparks shooting up your spine.

You cum again for him, and it's gentler this time— like sunlight breaking through a storm. You give him a soft, relieved moan, while you pulse on his cock and your tense muscles release beneath him.

You both lay there in the feeling, letting the pulsations die down as you settle. And then, he stirs just a bit.

"Better?" Baelor murmurs, nudging his nose against yours.

"Much."

You feel him smile as he kisses you, his hand coming up to cup your cheek. You let him linger there, smiling into your mouth, for a few more seconds— and then you kick your heel against his shoulder, where your leg is still slung up and pinned against you.

He laughs at the disgruntled noise you make, lowering your leg and smoothing his palm up the length of it as he pulls it to rest against his hip. "My strong girl. You're quite the force when you want something, hm?"

"Don't you forget it," you grumble, but there's no real heat to it.

"I'm not likely to anytime soon."

You sigh when he withdraws from you, but only so that he can roll you both, gathering you into his arms. You lay with your head on his sweat-slick chest, his arm encircling your shoulders to hold you close. Relaxing into him, your body spent, you place a hand over his chest to feel his heart thundering beneath your palm.

Both naked, tangled up in each other, you remain like that for a while. Your fingers drawing idle shapes against his chest, gliding through the hair there as it rises and falls with his breaths as they even out.

He's yours. The thought flits through your mind, light as a feather. He's going to marry you. You'll be his wife. Many things about it make your chest tighten. That you'll be the Crown Princess in the process. That eventually, you will be expected to be Queen.

As quickly as your fears bubble up, one thing quells the flood. He's Baelor. He'll take care of you. He always seems to. You trust him to. You… you love him for it.

"You're staring."

You blink, and tilt your head to look up at him. You had been staring, directly at the mess you made between his legs, while your mind whirled in a dozen different directions. You should probably feel embarrassed at being caught, but there's mirth in Baelor's eyes. His hand pets affectionately against the back of your head.

"We're betrothed," you say, in lieu of an explanation.

"So we are."

"The King should probably know."

Baelor makes a short noise. It rumbles in his chest, against your cheek. "The King can wait until the 'morrow. I'm not terribly enticed by the idea of leaving you tonight." He turns his head slightly towards the open window. "After all, I'd imagine most of the Keep knows about it, by now."

You giggle, turning your face towards his chest. You nuzzle into the hair over his heart and breathe in, smelling the comforting scent of his skin. Remarkably, it is less strong than it has been all evening, no longer heightened to the point of overwhelm. You can't hear every damned thing in the Keep anymore— nor can you taste the saltwater on the air from the bay.

"Baelor."

"Mm?"

"I think it worked." You press a kiss to his sternum. "We did it."

"Good." A pause. Baelor heaves a deep sigh. "Do not. Ever. Drink another fucking sex potion. For the love of the suffering Seven."

You tut, a teasing smile quirking at your lips. "So I shouldn't use the second one I have in my drawers, then?"

Baelor's head snaps towards you. When you see the look of terror on his face, you dissolve into a fit of laughter, pulling yourself closer against his side.

He huffs a quiet chuckle, but you can't mistake the sound of relief underlying it. He lays a warm palm against your bare shoulder. "Troublemaker."

"Yes, I am." You bite your lip, trailing your hand down his stomach, your fingers grazing lightly enough that you watch his abdominal muscles tense beneath the touch. "But I want you like this all the time."

"Naked?"

"Unmoored."

You turn your head to find him regarding you with the same calmness you've come to expect from him, but with a fire burning within his gaze. He smirks slightly. "That shouldn't be too difficult for you to accomplish, I fear."

With a hum, you slip your leg over his hips and lift yourself to straddle him. His hands find your waist, steadying you. You raise yourself up, one hand braced on his chest, the other falling to one of his hands. Beneath you, you feel his cock begin to harden again as you place his hand on your breast.

"Then let me begin, my Prince."

The wedding is scheduled for three weeks later, at Baelor's behest. Long enough for the lords of the seven houses to arrive in due course, but not long enough for there to be question if you indeed are with his child.

You spoke about it at length, actually. He was very insistent, seeing as how he was trying to actively put one in you at the time.

On the day of your wedding, you sit in your vanity chair and fiddle with the cuffs of your dress. It is white and gold, of a fabric quality you've never been able to luxuriate in before. It feels stifling. You fear walking in it, breathing in it, doing anything that may damage it at all. You sit with your spine stiff and straight, allowing Mircalla to fix pins into your hair. Several other serving girls flit about the room, attending to various other chores.

When you feel you've just about had enough of the prodding of pins, a knock sounds at the chamber door. Your heart thuds in your chest, and you shift in your seat, hoping that it may be your husband-to-be, come to steal you away for a moment before the ceremony. It would not be unlike him— Baelor is a busy man, but attentive as often when he can be. Even if it is a mere kiss in an alcove, or a five minute interlude in the courtyard, there is always a time and a place that he can find to be with you, to show you his affections.

But the chamber door opens, and your guard steps a foot into the room. "Prince Daeron to see you, my lady."

Daeron? Your brow draws in confusion, but you rise from your chair all the same. "Enter."

Daeron stumbles into the room with all the grace of a newborn deer. The maids all pause in tandem, and a hush falls over the room as he blinks up at each of them awkwardly, his blue eyes a bit less bleary than normal, his honey-gold hair tied back with a black ribbon for the festivities. "Apologies for my… intrusion?"

"No harm done, my lord." You clasp your hands anxiously behind your back, all the same. "What may I do for you?"

"I had wanted a word with you, my lady. Alone. For only a moment, if you wouldn't mind?"

You think that you would mind, very much. But the longer you regard Daeron, trying to cling to your vitriol, the less you can find any. You are about to be married to the Crown Prince, a gorgeous and honorable man who you are falling desperately in love with, to no one's surprise.

You cannot bring yourself to refuse Daeron— and so, you dismiss your ladies with a courteous nod.

As soon as the door shuts, Daeron is crossing the room and slumping into an armchair by the window. You do not move, but follow him with his eyes as he slouches, heaving an enormous sigh.

"Are you drunk?" you ask him pointedly.

"Always." He flashes you a sardonic smile. You give him an incredulous look. "Necessity compels. But I am here, and not at a tavern, at least."

"Better wine, I'd imagine."

"Mm, yes. Arbor red. An excellent choice, indeed." He pauses, his eyes flicking over you apprehensively. "I came to… apologize, my lady. I fear I have behaved rather badly towards you, and I felt I owed you an explanation."

You only blink at him. "Yes, you do."

"Right." He licks his lips, seeming to collect his thoughts. "Before you came to King's Landing… I dreamed of you."

"How romantic."

"No, not— not so much." Daeron takes a breath and pinches the bridge of his nose. "You see, my dreams… they have a tendency to come true. It isn't always a good thing." He pauses for a long moment, his eyes focused on the middle-distance, appearing to see something that you can't. "When I dreamt of you, it was… I saw you dying, my lady. I saw you on your death bed. And you cursed me for it."

You say nothing, but watch him as his shaking hands smooth against his pants.

"I didn't know what it meant. But I figured, when I saw you, that if I was going to be the reason for your death— in screaming agony— then it would needs be best for both of us if I held no relation to you. If I could refuse you and not speak a word, it would be… you wouldn't have died. And I wouldn't have been the cause."

"But, I have not died, my lord."

"No." Daeron lets out a short laugh, void of humor. "But, you had an affliction some weeks back, did you not? I heard it was rather a close call." He fixes his eyes on you, and he looks so deeply apologetic. Like a kicked dog, he peers up at you through his lashes. "If I was in any way responsible for— for any pain caused, I am truly sorry, my lady. My intentions were noble, I assure you. My execution, however…"

"Leaves something to be desired, yes." You close your eyes, breathe in slowly. Daeron reeks of alcohol, but you don't allow it to deter you from stepping closer to his chair. "In your dream, what was it that I said? How did I curse you?"

Daeron swallows, his eyes flicking around the room briefly. "You said… 'I don't want Daeron. He doesn't want me. I didn't take the fucking thing for him.'" Your face must betray your thoughts, because Daeron regards you closely before nodding solemnly, folding his hands in his lap. "Right. So, it was that."

Your heart pounds so hard that you swear it's trying to leap up into your throat. "Daeron. Whatever you think you saw—"

"It's not for me to pry." His eyes continuously move from your face to various areas of the room, like he doesn't want to look at you head-on. "What I know is that you are well now, and marrying my uncle. And I am happy for you, my lady. I truly am. It has been many years since I saw him smile the way he does, when you aren't looking." Daeron finally chances to look you directly in the eye, and he looks gravely serious. "Do not take this the wrong way, but I think that we would have been terrible for each other. Wouldn't you agree?"

For the first time since Daeron stepped into your chambers, a smile crosses your face. "You know, I think you're absolutely right. We would have killed each other."

Daeron lets out a sad chuckle. "Quite so."

He looks around, at a loss for a few seconds, before he heaves himself up and stands over you. He's quite a bit taller than you first thought— maybe it's because he isn't slouching as much, now.

"Forgive me, my lady. I've taken enough of your time. I wish you a long and happy marriage." He winks. "Only, one not to me."

That finally earns him a giggle from you, and Daeron smiles, before lifting your hand and pressing a chaste kiss to your knuckles. You watch him cross the room, narrowly avoiding bumping into your vanity chair as he moves.

At the door, Daeron pauses and turns back to you with a reserved smirk. "Just so you know. My cock does work. If the need should ever arise again."

He ducks out of the room before the pillow you throw can hit him.

"Apologies, m'lady. I did not know you were here."

You pause, your hand wrapped around the ends of your hair as you gaze at the strange man who just interrupted you. You had heard him tromping through the brush. He stomps like an ox— you're sure that half of the nine kingdoms could have heard him coming, but the most you could do to hide yourself was dip your chest beneath the surface of the water. Even then, the water is so clear that you don't think it would have hidden much. You figured that one person finding you bathing would make no difference in the grand scheme of things.

"That's all right," you say after a moment, and continue wringing out your wet hair. Water trails over your skin, dripping in long rivulets that the man is clearly trying very hard not to focus on. The man gazes down at the grass and turns his head away, as though he can somehow unsee you in your nakedness. In fact, he looks anywhere but at you; the tree line, the water, the rocks on the far side of the creek. You tilt your head, examining his demeanor, the way he holds himself stiff and straight, as awkward as can be at the sight of you. "What is your name?"

"Dunk— Ser Duncan the Tall. My lady." He shifts on his feet, and then makes an attempt to bow, a little too late. He still doesn't chance a look at you. "I am… a hedge knight, you see, and I have been sleeping under the tree over there—" he points at the elm tree in the glade, under which a palate has been laid, far enough away that you actually hadn't noticed it, "—for several days, now."

"Yes, I do see."

You snicker under your breath and look at him again, raking your eyes up and down his frame. He's huge, a giant of a man with strawberry blond hair that shifts in the breeze. Even from the side, his profile is handsome, his brow drawn with nervous tension. You figure you would have to look up at him if you were face to face with him, and yet he stoops bashfully as though he expects you to tear him apart just for looking at you. Biting your lip, you can't help the flirtatious smile that stretches across your face.

"Ser Duncan," you say, wading through the waist-deep water towards him. You watch his adam's apple bob as he swallows, moving as though he means to turn away from you. You introduce yourself to him, running your fingers over the surface of the water. "I apologize for my intrusion. I didn't know that this glade was in use. The error is entirely mine."

"No. No, with respect," he looks at you, and then his eyes widen as he remembers himself and averts his gaze again, "I have no claim here. I— I would leave you to your washing, but you are… terribly exposed here, I'm afraid."

"Yes, that usually happens when one bathes, Ser."

"No, I—" He puffs out his cheeks and blows out an exasperated breath. He thinks for a moment. "Begging your pardon, m'lady. What I mean to say, is that there are many people afoot who are not… not honorable."

"Honorable," you repeat, with an air of amusement.

"That would place you in jeopardy, I mean."

"And you would not?" You can tell just by looking at him that he wouldn't do anything to harm you; he looks like he's mortified just at seeing you naked.

"You have nothing to fear from me," he confirms, nodding his head, almost to himself more than to you.

You're almost immediately smitten with him. It takes you a second to come up with a response that won't come off as overbearing; but you can't resist teasing him, at least a little. A small smile stretches across your face as you muse, "Because you don't wish to see me naked, Ser?"

"What? No, I— I mean, I don't— I… I wouldn't—"

"You find me ugly, then?"

"No, ma'am, I—"

"Mhm. Horrid. Repulsive."

"No! No, by the gods, you're beautiful. I just mean—" He breaks off with a deep sigh, clapping his hands over his face. He shakes his head, as though chastising himself. "I am sorry, my lady. I've never been good with words. I would not presume to look upon you in any way that could be un— untoward—"

"Because you are honorable." You giggle at his distress over something so trivial, as you walk out of the water and face him. With a warm smile, you tell him, "I understand you quite well, Ser Duncan. Forgive me for teasing. I meant nothing by it."

He sets his lips in a firm line, shooting you a glance out of the corner of his eye. "Thank you."

You nod at him encouragingly. "I will take my leave, as soon as I am dressed. If you don't mind?"

"No, please. Do as you like, I'll stand watch." And then he turns his back to you, his hand placed on the hilt of his sword with purpose.

You let out a soft laugh. "Quite right." There is a moment where you stand, watching his back, waiting for him to turn around again; he doesn't. You are not shocked, but you still smile to yourself as you turn to retrieve your clothes from where you left them, on the old stone wall.

What does shock you is that your clothes are not there. You had left them within plain sight, and they are nowhere to be seen— not on the ground, or behind the wall at all. They couldn't have been blown away in the wind.

"Ser Duncan," you say, and clear your throat as you turn towards him. "Where are my clothes?"

"Where—?" He glances over his shoulder, and then whirls away again. "How— how should I know?"

"Well, they didn't walk off by themselves." The night air is cool on your damp skin as you place your hands on your hips. "Clearly, someone took them."

All is quiet for a few seconds, and then: "You think I did?" He sounds utterly appalled.

You had, for only a moment— but now, you aren't so sure. You approach him slowly from behind, folding your hands and watching him curiously. He's so wound up tight that he holds his shoulders near his ears, his chest seemingly heaving. He won't even look at you. You have given him every opportunity to, and he won't. Why steal your clothes, and then refuse to reap the rewards?

"Ser Duncan, you may look at me. I don't mind."

You hear him take a shaky breath, and then he turns and looks down at you. His eyes are bright azure, positively glowing in the low evening light and so striking that you nearly recoil from the sight of them; but even so, they drop to the ground almost instantly.

The wind picks up just a bit, rustling his hair. You shiver in the breeze, squeezing your arms against the sudden cold. He immediately snaps to, untying his cloak before handing it out to you. "Here, m'lady."

You feel your heart swell at his gallantry, as he drapes the fabric over your shoulders. The linen is worn and soft on your skin, and warm in the shoulders from his own body heat. Unsurprisingly, it's so long that it pools around your feet, whereas it floats around his knees when he wears it. You're momentarily distracted by the sight of his large hands so close to your face, tying the cloak beneath your chin so that it remains secure.

Once you're covered, he doesn't seem quite so hesitant to look at you. He meets your eye with a gravely serious look. "I do apologize. I did not take your clothes, I assure you."

"No, I'm sure you didn't. Since you seem more concerned about it than I am." Concern is the kindest word you can come up with— really, he looked about to vomit at the prospect of your suspicion. You draw his cloak tight around you, the smell of loam and woodsmoke permeating the fabric. "At any rate, this does put me in a bit of trouble. I am a long way from my tent."

"Would you like me to accompany you back to camp?"

You let out a quiet chuckle, probably giving him a more affectionate look than you mean to. In a voice sweet as honey, you say, "I'm flattered, Ser, but I don't believe that walking through camp on the arm of a knight, dressed in nothing but his cloak, would reflect well on my reputation. I'm afraid I'm stuck here, unless I find some way to steal another change of clothes from someone else."

His head tilted down, he appears lost in thought. You stare boldly up into his face while he isn't paying attention, just simply… admiring him. How have you never seen him before? He looms over you, seemingly cut from marble and brought alive by sunlight. It's humbling, how lovely he is, even without all his chivalry.

Then, he snaps his gaze up to your face. "You could stay here, just for tonight. I'll keep you safe 'til morning, and then I can send my squire to fetch you some clothes from camp. No one need see you, my lady."

"Other than yourself, of course."

He closes his mouth swiftly, flushing red and looking away. You smile to yourself, having to hold yourself back from reaching out towards him.

"I only jest, Ser," you whisper conspiratorially. "I already told you, I don't mind if you see me."

"Right." He laughs weakly, still flustered. "I… I'll alert my squire, then?"

"Yes, I would be glad of it." You step back, trying not to trip on the frayed ends of his cloak. "I thank you for your kindness, Ser Duncan. You're a good man."

"Aye, well… thank you. My lady." He stares at you for a long time, and then seems to remember himself. "Ah… stay— stay here, and, ehm. I'll be back." He turns to leave, and then thinks better of it and turns the other way, before tromping back through the grass the way he originally came.

"Ser Duncan?" You call, just before he disappears from sight. When he turns, looking at you expectantly, you give him a sweet smile. "You're beautiful, too. By the gods."

You feel inordinately proud of yourself when he goes red up to his ears.

Dunk is fucked.

He spends a long time beating his head against a tree trunk. You know, for posterity.

He doesn't know what he's doing. Oh gods, he has no fucking idea. All he knows is that it's a terrible trick to play on a lady, to steal her clothes while she's vulnerable and leave her stranded. He doesn't even know if you're a lady of noble birth— you could be a bar maid, or from one of the brothels, for all he knows. It doesn't matter to him. Dunk would never say no to anyone in trouble, let alone anyone as beautiful as you. And you are. What was he supposed to do? You came out of the water like a vision, as splendid as a water nymph or a goddess. You took his breath away without even trying.

So. Dunk doesn't know how he's going to survive this. He probably won't.

"Egg?" Dunk rears back from the tree, wiping his nose on the back of his sleeve and shaking his head. He might throw up from his nerves, but it wouldn't be the first time.

"Ser!" He hears the boy's tiny feet pattering along dirt path as he answers Dunk's call. Egg rounds the tree Dunk leans against, staring unseeing into the creek as the sun sets over the horizon. Egg pauses, standing with something clutched in his hands as he looks up at Dunk. "Are you well, Ser?"

"Ehm. Not sure, really." Dunk glances at the boy. "What… do you have, there?"

Egg holds it up— it's a bird. The little thing squirms in Egg's grip, and then blinks up at Dunk placidly. "Pigeon. Fell out of a tree, I think. I didn't want to leave it."

"Right." Dunk blinks, sucking on his teeth as he tries to think of a way to explain the situation. "Look, lad. I, eh, have matters to attend tonight. In a wee bit of a bind."

"Do you need help, Ser?"

"Well." Dunk tilts his head back and forth. "I— It's not me, really." Dunk sighs and flexes his shoulders, straightening his spine. "There's a lady will be sleeping with me under the elm, for tonight."

"Oh… oh." Egg hums, wiggling his blond eyebrows mockingly at Dunk.

"D'you want a clout in the ear?" Egg doesn't even flinch at the faux severity in Dunk's voice; he simply cradles the baby pigeon close to his chest and pets its head. Dunk sighs, trying not to show how hard he's blushing. "She's… the lady, she was bathing in the creek, and now… she doesn't have any clothes, see."

"She doesn't have clothes?" Egg echoes, screwing up his face.

"Aye, someone took them, it seems." A look of realization crosses Egg's face, but Dunk doesn't give him a second to respond. "And she can't be expected to walk into camp with no clothes on her back, because plenty of men would take advantage, and— and her reputation would be ruined, o' course."

"Of course." Egg frowns. "Ser, I wanted to tell you, I found some clothes—"

"So." Dunk swallows, nodding to himself resolutely and shooting Egg a silencing look. "So, what you'll do is take Thunder and Chestnut— and your bird— and you'll go sleep across the meadow. And you'll go to camp and fetch the lady some clothes on the morn. Is that clear?"

"But Ser—"

"No buts." He points one large, stern finger at the boy. "I'll hear none of that from you. There's a lady needs help, and you best not argue about it. We're meant to protect people in need, not turn them away."

Egg blinks his big violet eyes at Dunk, his mouth on sideways. "Is she pretty, Ser?"

"What?" Dunk does a double-take. He blusters like mad. "What matter is that of yours?"

"Well, it would just make sense, is all." Egg rocks on his feet. "Pretty girl in need of clothes, and a knight willing to defend her. Like they wrote about in the stories. Is she?"

Dunk sighs, knocking his head back against the tree in defeat. "Aye. She's a true beauty, so she is. But I'll hear nothing of it, now. Begone with you. And take the horses."

Egg looks as though he has more arguments to make, but saves them. His mouth ticks upwards, and then he turns, cooing down at the baby bird in his hands as he wanders off down the path. "Have a good night, Ser."

"Shut it."

Dunk bends down and braces his hands on his knees, trying to even out his breath. He takes a long, deep inhale, leaning into the breeze as if it can cleanse him. He's terrified. He's never been good with women, and you've already unraveled him, taken him completely by surprise.

He can't get the image of you, naked as the day you were born, water dripping over the curve of your breast and down across your belly from his mind. That very water drying on the linen of his cloak, wrapped around your body as you wait for him somewhere down the meadow path.

"Fuuuuck me." He drags his hands down his face. There's a place in the seven hells for him somewhere, he's sure.

He's going to die.

"Ser Duncan." He finds you in the glade, still wrapped in his cloak. You've started a small fire in the rudimentary pit near the elm tree. You smile up at him, glowing in the light of the flames, and Dunk temporarily forgets where he is. "I almost began to think that you'd left me."

"Never, my lady." He rests his sword against the trunk of the tree. "And… it's Dunk."

"… Sorry?"

"My— er, my name." He swallows, looking sort of like he wants to crawl into a hole and die. "Most people call me Dunk."

"Okay. Dunk." You smirk, endlessly charmed by him. Your hand drifts over the thin linen of his cloak on your shoulder, fretting about a threadbare spot. "I could mend this for you, if you'd like?"

"Thank you, but, ehm… that isn't necessary." He blinks, the corner of his mouth turning upward. "I do most of my own mending."

"You did these?" You fiddle with a few mended patches on the edges, where he has darned them with green thread. It's been done with very immense care; the weave is tight and strong. "This is lovely work. Where did you learn to do it?"

"Aye, well… I had a lot of time for practice, squiring for Ser Arlan of Pennytree."

"You have a delicate hand," you remark, and look up at him just in time to see him blush a pretty shade of pink. "Still, I think it's the least I could do, for you being so kind to me."

"M'lady, that's… you don't have to do anything." He tilts his head toward you. "I'm just glad of your company."

That makes your heart stutter in your chest. You blink down at the fire, not really seeing it at all. You search for something to say in reply, but you can't think of anything; you look back up at him with what you're sure is an adoring smile. "Will you please sit with me? Or am I to enjoy the fire alone?"

Dunk gives you a wobbly smile and sits beside the fire. He can't move on from the sight of you in his cloak— you've pulled it around you like a blanket, tucking it under your chin while you hug your knees to your chest. You're spellbinding, so small and swathed in orange fire and silvery moonlight, and Dunk can't help imagining you in ways that he ought not to. He imagines you sharing a bed with him in an inn, or tending a flock of sheep on a farm, with his babe in your arms.

Dunk clears his throat. "You look—" He stops as soon as you gaze up at him, an expectant gleam in your eyes. He was going to say 'good,' which is probably not the most proper thing to say to a lady, wearing naught but his cloak. So he swallows and says, "comfortable."

"Considering the circumstances, I suppose." You laugh. It twinkles like stars in the night. "Pleasurable company, good ale and warm tents… I guess I can see why you knights love these tourneys so much."

"Aye, it's not so bad. Though, I'm only a hedge knight. There's food and drink, a chance for a prize, but… we don't do much with tents. Can't afford one, really."

"I can't see how that would be much of a problem. I mean, maybe you get cold or wet sometimes, but… I think you're the fortunate one." You peer up at the stars, tilting your nose toward the sky. "A view of the infinite. It's good for you. Reminds you to stay grounded." You give him a look over the campfire; his blue eyes catch the flames and dance with them. "Have you jousted, yet?"

"Not yet, my lady. I hope to on the 'morrow." He shrugs. "At his lordship's pleasure, of course."

"Of course." You wink at him. "The lord does love to watch men knocking poles about, I hear."

"I guess," Dunk replies quietly, a blush upon his cheeks. He squirms under your scrutiny, and then to fill the silence, he says, "I… told my squire to fetch you some clothes, come morning. Let him know not to come 'round."

"I hope he wasn't too put out," you hum, picking up a stick to nudge the embers. "I'd hate to know I ruined his night."

Dunk shakes his head. "Nah, he's a good boy. He can take care of himself. Doesn't fuss about much."

"Mm, so you do all the fussing, instead."

"Me?" His eyes go round as saucers. "No— no, I don't— I don't fuss… not really…"

You peer up at him through your lashes, a devilish smirk plucking at the corners of your lips. Dunk's heart starts to beat faster— he knows that look. You're going to do something to completely unmoor him, and he'll eat his words as quickly as he says them.

True to form, you shrug his cloak aside and expose your chest. Dunk stares for a moment at your breasts, feels his face warm just at the sight of them— their soft curves, the peaks of your nipples in the cool night air. He takes a staggering breath and turns his eyes away when he feels his cock stir, his trousers tightening uncomfortably.

You huff a little laugh that makes him flush even redder. "See? Fussy."

"Must you be so… so wicked?" He mutters, casting you a despairing look.

"Wicked? No, darling, this isn't me being wicked." You tilt your head at him coyly. "This is me trying to fuck you. There's a difference."

"What?" That seems to rattle him even more. He stares at you, utterly bewildered. "Wh— you want to— why?"

"Why?"

You give him eyes like you want to ravish him where he sits, and by the gods, Dunk thinks he might let you. He shifts in his seat, believing that he might let you do anything that you want to him, if you just keep looking at him like that. But then you lower your knees and rock forward, crawling around the fire like an animal stalking its prey, and Dunk is so painfully hard it doesn't even occur to him to move away. He doesn't want to.

"Because you're beautiful," you tell him slowly, easing toward him on all fours. You watch him trailing you with his eyes, his jaw clenching and unclenching as you inch closer to him. "Because you are… so exceedingly wonderful, Ser Duncan. A good man is hard to find, these days."

"'S D—Dunk," he stutters, nearly jumping out of his skin when you crawl into his lap. His hands fly up of their own accord and snatch onto your hips, and his heart lurches at the feel of you, soft and hot beneath his fingertips.

"Ser Dunk. My apologies."

You smile at him, straddling him while untying his cloak from around your neck and letting it fall by the wayside. For all your bravado, you nearly tremble at just how imposingly big he is; your hand looks comedically small against his chest, your thighs parted unbelievably far to accomodate the width of his own. Still, you drag your hand down, down, down, until you palm him through his trousers— and then bite your lip as he hisses, jerking against you.

"Well," you gasp, trying not to gape at the size you feel beneath your hand. "A hard man is good to find, though. Isn't that right?"

"M—My lady, please—" He gazes at you wide-eyed, his lips parted. He digs his fingers into your hips so hard that you swear he might rip you in two.

"Please, what?" You lift your hand away and trail your fingers back up his stomach to his chest. "Want me to stop?"

"No. Please, don't—" He sighs, almost defeatedly, and closes his eyes. "Don't stop."

Still, you pause. You lift your hands and cradle his face, waiting for him to blink his eyes open and look at you. You stroke a lock of hair away from his forehead, and his brow knits in confusion.

"You must be the loveliest thing in all the nine kingdoms, Ser Dunk," you whisper to him, not even bothering to conceal the awe in your voice. "The gods must have made you, because I think you're too… bloody perfect."

"Me?" He takes a small, astounded breath, and then cracks a slightly humorous smile in spite of his nerves. He quirks a brow. "Shall I send for a looking-glass for you, as well?"

"Charmer." You trace your thumb across his lower lip and watch his eyelashes flutter. "You don't get many women throwing themselves at you, do you?"

"Not— Not really. No."

"Gods know why. You're really something to behold." You drag your knuckles down his cheek, bending forward to crush your chest up against his. You didn't expect him to be lecherous, but he's so tentative, you guess that he must be grievously inexperienced— possibly even a virgin. You can desire him, hunt him like some deranged beast, but you don't want to frighten him. "Mind if I throw myself at you?"

Dunk shakes his head, but leans forward and kisses you before he can say anything else. His arms come around you, wrapping you in an embrace that all but engulfs you. You are surrounded by warmth, and his lips taste like sweet spiced mead.

He breaks away from the kiss with a sharp gasp and stares down into your face with a mildly terrified expression. "'Pologies. Needed to do that 'fore I— I said something stupid."

You grin, leaning close to nuzzle your nose against his. "Never apologize for a kiss, Ser Dunk. You can have as many as you want, from me."

There's a bright pink blush beneath the freckles on his cheeks and his dimples when he cracks a smile. Dunk clears his throat, feigning composure. "Do you want to, uh… y'know…?"

"Fuck?"

"Yes, that." He laughs nervously. "What— what would you like me to do—?"

You hum in a low voice, reaching down to take one of his hands in yours. His palm dwarfs your own; the comparison of the two is enough to make you ache with want. He watches you closely as you lift his hand towards you, looking somewhat confused. That is, until you run your tongue along the length of his two fingers and take them into your mouth, and his confusion is rewritten into complete shock.

"My lady." Dunk blinks rapidly, speaking with a slightly chastising tone. That was the last thing he expected you to do, and it somehow feels more debased than having you sit on his lap entirely naked. His fingers come out of your mouth covered with your saliva, glistening in the light of the fire.

"No need to fret, Ser. I can guide you." You already sound a little breathy, the look in your eyes much darker than before. You drag his hand down between your breasts, his two fingers trailing wet along your skin. You lead him downwards until his fingers brush through your soft curls, while the breadth of his warm palm flattens over your lower stomach.

Dunk's breath hitches and his mouth drops open the moment his fingers dip into the soaking heat of your pussy, and a shudder flows through your body. A wrecked moan leaves you, your thighs trembling on either side of his hips from the single touch.

"Feel what you do to me?" You ask him, snatching onto his shoulder to prevent yourself from simply jamming yourself down onto his hand with your full weight. It's overwhelming— the warmth of his touch and the pressure of his naked skin on you, even if it's just a hand, a finger.

"Y—You feel—" Dunk sucks in air through his teeth, his eyes flicking frantically from your face to where his hand dips further between your legs, his fingers gliding through your wetness. The touch is intimate, exploratory. "Seven hells, you feel unreal."

"Oh, I'm very real." You cover his hand with your own— or, you try. You have to spread your fingers wide to even approximate the width and placement of his own. "Want me to show you how?"

He gives you the briefest little nod, like if he moves too far in any way you might disappear. You wrap your thumb and pinkie around the edges of his hand, lining up your two fingers with his own.

"It's not unlike shining a blade," you tell him softly, beginning to move his fingers with yours, rocking your hips as you do. "You keep— keep this amount of pressure. And you just move back… and forth… just like that."

Dunk's eyes widen at the sound of your moan, his entire body feeling as though it's filled with fire. The Targaryens might believe themselves to be dragons, but Dunk is sure that in this moment, he must be turning into one. Everything feels too hot beneath his collar, as though his skin might melt away and flay him bare. "How— How does it feel?"

You shiver, a smile curling at your lips. He's still so eager to please, even now. "Feels good. But it can feel better."

"Show me."

You swallow past the thickness in your throat, lifting his hand just the tiniest bit. "There's a spot on every woman— it's a… a sweet spot. You focus on it, and she'll sing to the heavens."

"Will you sing, my lady?" Dunk's deep voice is so much lower than you've heard it yet. He watches everything you do so closely, his free hand pressing into your lower spine to keep you steady, holding you fast against the hand that you guide between your legs.

"I will if you make me. If you focus… here." And you guide the calloused pads of his fingers over your clit.

Hot pleasure sweeps through you at the touch, making you gasp aloud. He keeps up the pressure and the movement that you've shown him, feels the swollen hardness of your clit and stays there. His pupils are so wide they nearly cover the beautiful azure of his irises, becoming two black mirrors to reflect the fire.

"Is that it?" Dunk's eyes are locked on yours, and you whine, hips twitching toward his touch. Something passes over his face— be it possession or resolution, you can't be sure. But his jaw sets and he adjusts the pressure of his fingers as he dips his fingers down to collect some of your wetness, and brings it back up to your clit. When you keen loudly, he hums, "Mm. There."

You nod, your hand slipping against his. It seems like you don't need to guide him anymore, but you keep it there anyway, just to feel the way that his knuckles tense and release, to feel the warmth against your own palm.

"Gods above, Dunk," you gasp, nearly launching forward into his chest when he traces a circle around your clit. You close your eyes, swallowing a sob. "You don't— don't need my help."

"I want it," he urges, his mouth watering at the sounds of the breathy moans that fall from your lips. His fingers never stop moving, even when he adds, "Want to hear you sing for me, m'lady."

You whimper and push on his hand, moving him downwards. Dunk follows your directions, letting you guide him, until his fingertips catch on your entrance. Without any further instruction, Dunk prods inside. The stretch to accommodate him is immense, even just with his two fingers.

Dunk is in agony. His cock is straining in his trousers, throbbing unbelievably hard at the smell of you, the feel of you, every gasp and moan that falls from your lips. Still, he grits his teeth, and he ignores it. His voice a quiet rasp held tight in his throat, he asks, "And now?"

You blink your eyes open, feeling yourself beginning to unravel at the seams. "Dunk…" You take a deep, sobering inhale, while he gazes at you like you hung the stars in the sky. "Shine your blade."

Dunk's lashes flutter, his breath still coming out in little pants between his lips, but he does as you tell him. He crooks his fingers just the way you showed him how, and the entire fucking world shatters.

With a cry of his name, you fling your arms around his neck. It's so abrupt— enough to make him falter and hug you to him with one arm, his big hand cradling the nape of your neck. The other has gone still, while he listens to you gasp and lets you press your forehead against his cheek.

"Have I—" Dunk turns his head a bit, wanting to look at you, but unable to. He murmurs your name, and you shiver in his arms. "Did I hurt yo—?"

"No." You're shaking your head before he can even finish the question, gripping at the ends of his shaggy hair. "No, Dunk, it's so— you— you're just so good."

He huffs a little sigh of relief, and feel him smile as his hold on your shoulder loosens just slightly. "You make it easy."

You shift your hips, and Dunk feels your lips drag against his cheek. He's almost scared to let you go, now, and strokes his thumb over the back of your neck just to soothe you. But then you whisper, "Don't stop," and he doesn't want to deny you.

His fingers slide into your hair, feeling it slip soft through his fingers as he holds you to him. Testing, he moves his fingers again, flexing them within you just to hear you gasp and feel you squirm against him. That same fire blooms in him, creeping up the back of his neck and deep into his chest— the fire that makes him dare to feel like the dragonborn— and he thinks that he may hold you for as long as you like. For as long as he can.

Moaning his name against his skin, you seek out his lips, turning your head just to capture him in an open-mouthed, desperate kiss. Dunk makes a noise of surprise, but keeps up his movements, plunging his fingers in and out and stroking you from the inside, feeling each pulse and flutter of your core like a punch to his gut.

He curves his fingers a particular way that sends a wave of euphoria shooting up your spine, and you moan pathetically loud into his open mouth. Dunk seems shocked by it, pausing for half a second, before doing it again, just to hear you keen.

"You do sing very pretty for me," Dunk murmurs against your lips.

The sound of his voice in that low register— like soft rolling thunder— does things to you that you never even thought possible. It bores a hole through you, melts everything within you. Then he grinds the meat of his palm up against your clit, and all your muscles seize up.

"Seven fuck— Dunk." You feel around for something else to grab onto, but only get his shoulder, his hair, his bicep. Your breath hitches, and then you cum with his name falling from your tongue, your hips bucking into his hand. Dunk marvels at the feeling of you spasming around his fingers, the flood of wetness that drips from you and coats his skin.

You hear him breathe your name. It sounds so sweet coming from him, a reverent prayer spoken in the night. Still trembling, you open your eyes to find that you've shifted— you've somehow lifted yourself with your hands on his shoulders, and his spine has bowed into an arc beneath your hold. You look down at him. Dunk looks up at you, like he's glimpsing the divine in your very face.

"Did you come off just then, my lady?" It's a quiet, almost too innocent question for the way that he's looking at you— like he could throw you to the ground and completely decimate you, if he was a little less controlled, a little less staunch in his respect for you.

"You know very well that I did, Ser." Your chest still heaves with the effort of your breathing.

His eyes flick down to your lips, then back up. "D'you think I could make you do that if I put my mouth on you, too?"

Your mind reels around that. Dunk gazes at you with open hunger, flushed and almost as out of breath as you. The sight makes you dizzy.

"I'm sure that you could," you tell him. You hold the sides of his throat, tracing the line of his jaw with your thumbs. "But I want you too much right now. Must I beg you to take that beast out of your pants? Or will you leave me wanting?"

The thought of leaving you wanting for anything is enough to make Dunk balk. He withdraws his hand from you, and with it comes a dreadful absence, an ache where pressure should be. Instinctively, you want him back, carressing you and filling you as he had been, but he moves to untie his trousers.

"If I were a more noble man, I would lay you down in furs, as you deserve," Dunk confides in you, a touch of insecurity lacing his tone. "But I am only a hedge knight— all I can offer you is the tall grass."

"Then I'll be glad to have you in the tall grass," you say, feeling his pulse jump beneath your fingertips. "I don't want furs, I want you."

Impatient now, you reach down to untie his trousers yourself, and—

Well.

"Seven fucking hells, Dunk."

Gods above, he's going to die. He's going to die, you're going to kill him and it won't even be in combat. "What?"

You stare down at his cock, and feel the barest inklings of fear creeping in. You'd known just from the size of him and the barest touch through his clothes that he'd be big, but this… It's glorious. Thick and long, with a flushed red tip dripping with precum. He looks painfully hard, and the weight of it nearly drags it downwards.

"Nothing in the entire world needs to be this big."

The tips of his ears redden. "Well, I—I'm quite large—"

"Yes, I know that. I know that very well, indeed. You're magnificent." You chew on your lip, feasting your eyes upon it for a moment. With the lightest touch, you trace one finger up the vein that runs along the underside of his shaft. Dunk gasps and twitches against you. "Mm. I can take it."

There is a concerning amount of resolution in your tone, as you shift your hips and hover over him. He snatches at your waist, practically holding you aloft without even trying. His eyes wide, he blurts, "M'lady, don't hurt yourself—"

"Shh. I do what I want. Right now, that's you." You lift your hips, lining him up where you want him. "Don't fuss."

"M'not fu—UCK!" Dunk growls the curse with his eyes closed tight. The head of his cock is engulfed in the sweet, excruciating heat of your pussy. He bares his teeth as he grits out, "Oh, fuuuck me."

"Mhm." You gasp, pausing and trying to acclimate to the stretch. Fuck, he's enormous. You rock your hips and try to shift your weight, adjusting to take more of him, despite the pain of the stretch.

Dunk squeezes at your waist, fingers digging into the curve of your back. You lift up and sink down again, slipping down further, and he's sure he's done for. He's sure that you could cut out his heart with a dinner knife, and he might thank you for it. He hangs his head, resting his forehead against yours. "You feel like heaven. I kn— I knew you would."

He groans softly as you seat yourself finally with one achingly slow push of your hips. It nearly knocks the breath out of your lungs, feeling him hit the end of you. He grinds up into you, not wanting to be rough, but gods. Each move, each small breath that falls from your lips against his feels like a dream.

"Told you I could take it," you whisper brokenly. You sound just about wrecked, your fingers tangling in his hair as you rock against him. It burns in the best way, stretching you so wonderfully, filling you to the brim. A pleasant tingling slinks up your spine. "You fit me perfectly, my knight."

The fire crackles. Somewhere across the creek, crickets sing in the brush. Perhaps back in the camp, lovers roll as one in the solitude and warmth of tents, but here in the glade you seat yourself upon the hedge knight, guiding him with one hand to squeeze at your breast, and you would not trade the night air for any tent or pillowed furs in the world. Be it rough, be it dirty and perhaps a bit animalistic, it is only as you want it to be.

Dunk's nostrils flare as he uses one arm to haul you up, lifting you like it's nothing, and he lays you down in the grass. Your head hits the wide palm of his hand, protecting you from knocking your head against the ground. And he slides back into you with one fluid motion, filling you again and making your toes curl. He groans obscenely loud, his eyes fluttering shut as he braces one enormous forearm against the ground beside your head.

You arch against him, his name caught in your throat as you clutch at his shoulders and neck. He looms over you, hulking and godly, and desire bubbles up like a torrent in your throat. Your eyebrows tilt upwards in earnest.

He makes you feel so small. Cages you in the shelter of his arms, keeps his weight from crushing you— but presses his warm chest to yours, so that your sensitive nipples scrape against the rough linen of his tunic. Your hands cup his shoulders, nails scratching at the fabric keeping you from feeling his skin.

"Dunk, please—" you hiccup, squeezing at the muscles beneath his shirt.

"What is it, sweet girl?" There is an edge to his voice hinting at desperation. Dunk thinks that he would give you anything you want. Money, fame, a life of beauty and devotion. There's no coming back. He would do anything that you ask, if only to stay in this feeling forever. Breathing in your air, feeling you quiver and tremble as you grind your hips against his.

You tighten your fists in the fabric of his shirt, bunching it up to tug at it. "Off."

Dunk plants his hips flush against yours, so deep that you can feel him in your throat. He dips his head and lets you pull at the fabric of his shirt, until it slips down his arms and his overheated skin meets the cool night air. Your hands glide along his strong biceps, smooth over the curves of his shoulders and down his chest.

"Kiss me," you breathe. "Dunk, kiss me—"

You gasp when he snatches you by the waist and lifts you, rocking back on his knees to seat you in his lap. Crushed up against his broad chest, you fling your arms around his neck and push yourself down onto his cock, as far as he can go, moaning as he hits heaven up inside you. The coarse hair at the base of his cock grinds sharply against your clit, sending sparks of hot pleasure coursing through your veins.

Mouth open, he breathes in small, quick pants as he smoothes your hair away from your face, his large hand cradling your cheek. It's a tender touch, even while you feel like he could tear you to shreds from the inside out. You push your face into his palm, turning to pepper the breadth of his hand with kisses.

"Kiss me, please," you beg him again, and Dunk pulls you towards him, meeting you with a hot, open mouthed kiss. It sears you, makes you whimper onto his tongue.

"My lady," Dunk groans, tilting his head just slightly where it rests against yours. "I will not last."

"Then don't," you tell him. "And I'll love you a dozen more times before the night is out."

And then, so fast it's as though he's following your orders to the letter, he cums. Moaning as he jerks his hips up into yours, he shoves himself deep and cums so long and hard that he swears he sees stars behind his darkened eyelids. A ragged gasp tears from his throat while his hips twich and buck up into yours, muscles flexing and nearly throwing him off-balance.

Dunk blinks open his eyes, gazing at you with his brow furrowed in consternation. "But you— you didn't—"

You shush him, taking his hand to guide it between your legs. "Remember what I told you?"

Dunk hums, flicking his gaze downwards. His throat jumps when his fingers brush through your wet curls. "Yes, m'lady."

His breath hitches when he touches your clit, and he feels you clench down on him. Oversensitive as he is, he doesn't think to pull out or refuse you— he stays there, deep in the heat of you, while he strokes you the way you showed him before.

With a feeble noise, you cant your hips further toward his hand. A pleased hum tears from your lips. "You learn fast, my knight."

Dunk blushes. It's the first time anyone has told him that. "I want to please you."

"You do," you whisper, holding his face in the cradle of your small hands. "You please me so well, Dunk."

The evidence of your words burns in your core, wound up more and more by the movement of his fingers over your clit. You rock against him and hear his slight hiss of breath, and you know that it won't be long. Your thighs twitch and your fingers dance through his hair while your breath mingles with his, washing over your skin.

Then your muscles clamp down tight as your orgasm washes over you, and Dunk nearly chokes at the feeling. "Oh, fuck," he grits out, feeling you pulse on his cock, clenching around him so hard that his eyes nearly roll back in his head. "Ah, gods above—"

It burns through you like fire, enveloping you in its grasp. You collapse against Dunk's warm chest, resting your head on his shoulder. As you tremble through the aftershocks, you giggle weakly, biting your lip when the feeling has him moaning again. You hum, sighing as you come down. "Beautiful thing, is it not?"

"Yes, you are," he chuckles, breathless. He meets your eye with a pleading, starry look. He traces his fingers down your spine, reveling in the warmth and softness of your body. "I would— I think I would like to, again…"

"Let me give you some respite, first." You lift off of him, hissing as he leaves you achingly empty. He squeezes at your hips, his fingers pressing into your lower back as he keeps you steady. You press a kiss to his lips, tasting the salt of his sweat on his skin. "Have some ale, my love. We'll go again when you're ready."

Dunk clears his throat, nodding. "Yes, my lady."

"And Dunk… take off your pants, this time?"

"…Yes, my lady."

In the morning, you rouse from beneath the shelter of Dunk's cloak, and find a pile of clothes set out on the wall that separates the glade from the meadow. You stare at it for a moment, recognizing the jewel toned embroidery on the dress, the tanned leather of the shoes. Beside you, Dunk shifts, pulling you closer by the hip. He'd put his clothes back on in the night, right before he swaddled you again in his cloak, preferring not to insense his squire whenever the boy came round.

"Dunk," you murmur, nudging him in the shoulder.

"Mmph."

"I thought you said you didn't know what happened to my clothes."

"I know not, m'lady," he slurs tiredly.

"Right." You click your tongue. "But it appears that your squire did."

Dunk's eyes fly open, giving you a wide, bright blue stare. You tilt your head at him, a smirk stretching across your face as you nod towards your missing clothes, perched on the wall. He looks at the pile of clothes for a moment, blinking sleep out of his eyes. And then, he screws up his face as something Egg said comes back to him.

"Seven fucks." Dunk scrambles up, remembering Egg's insistent and earnest face when he'd been silenced.

Ser, I wanted to tell you, I found some clothes—

Shit. He needs to listen to the boy more often.

You're going to kill him. You know this for a fact.

It came to you as an epiphany. The only way you get out of this is if one or the other of you is destroyed, and it's not going to be you. It's just that he hasn't tried to kill you yet, and you don't really have a plan figured out— he has guards and cameras everywhere, he makes sure you don't get your hands on anything that could be used as a weapon against him. It's irritating, but you're patient. You can play along with his game. So you have, from the moment you realized that he wasn't going to let you off the island.

"If you desire anything," Safin told you early on, "feel free to ask."

"Let me go."

He only smiled at you wryly. "You know I can't do that."

'Can't' and 'won't' seem to mean the same thing, in his vocabulary.

Time moves differently on the island. You can separate morning from night, but the days, weeks, months pass by in a haze. The tide rises and falls. You carved out a routine around his, so that you could avoid the man as much as possible. You go to the rocks and watch the waves beating the shore. You stroll around the World War II era promenades and try not to think about what's happening below. You don't say much, and you sleep in your colorless room that's only slightly better than a prison cell, because at least the bed is king sized.

Or, you did. Until recent developments.

At first, you wrote it off as an anomaly. You haven't masturbated in months, haven't had sex for far longer. You weren't surprised when you had a wet dream, you were just shocked when the subject of it took the shape of your captor.

Safin's glittering eyes and scarred face looming over you, laying you down, beckoning you to follow him into oblivion. You woke up mostly annoyed with how pleasant the dream was, all things considered. You avoided his eye over breakfast that morning, but by the afternoon you'd mostly forgotten about it. The waves continued to rush in upon the land. The world continued to spin on, and you— speck of dust— were simply a blip on its surface. Nothing was of that much importance.

Until it happened again.

Safin's lithe body pressed against your back, bending you over the dining table, his hand wrapped around your throat as he whispered filth into your ear—

You woke up with a headache, for which the offending asshole gave you a special herbal tea, which pissed you off. Because fuck him for making you dream of him twice, and then offering you tea about it.

Safin taking you in his beloved poison garden, with your head using a belladonna plant as a pillow. That one completely threw you. You stared at the very bush in the morning with such vitriol that even Safin seemed to notice it.

"Find something intoxicating?" His accented voice seemed to slither its way down your very spine. You could feel your hackles raise at the sound.

You shot him an ornery look. You stood mere feet away from him, wound up tight as a cornered animal. "Oh, you'd love that, wouldn't you?"

He hummed, his shrewd eyes seeming to dance over your body. "It would certainly intrigue me."

After that, the dreams came in quick succession. Safin pressing you up against a wall. Safin getting you completely naked on the beach. Safin fucking you eight ways to Sunday in the middle of a crowded street. The mere fact of the dreams' existence in your mind was enough to vex you, yes, but you weren't actually concerned about it. You and he had been tiptoeing around each other for months, circling each other, trying to find a way to devour one another like some two-headed ourobouros.

It was possible that you were having an ill-conceived Freudian dreamscape to compensate for the unspoken war between the two of you. Didn't Freud believe that you are everyone in your dreams? It had nothing to do with Safin; it was all you, and the trouble in your head. At least, that was what you told yourself.

And then the horror struck.

It was a particularly vivid dream, one where you could almost feel the touch of his hands on your thighs, hear his voice in your head. The ghost of his breath lingered on the back of your neck, the soft drag of his tongue against your spine. You woke up with your breath coming out in short pants, your pulse pounding in your ears, and much lower.

You curled into a fetal ball and pulled the covers over your head. You couldn't deal with this, not with everything else going on. You wanted him dead. You had already made your decision. You were supposed to kill the guy, not fuck him.

Unfortunately, your body kept the score. One after the other, wet dreams lead to rude awakenings, leaving you desperate. Aching. Each morning afterwards, you were stuck facing him over breakfast and pretending like you hadn't dreamt about him having you bent over this very table, with his hand around your throat.

Eventually, you got tired of being left hanging, and you tried fixing things yourself.

You didn't think Safin had cameras in your room. The four walls remain drab, grey concrete, the white sheets of your bed not much of a contrast. Not only had you checked the place (what little there was to check), you'd grown accustomed to him well enough to know that he would consider it rude. So, at the very least, you knew you wouldn't be spied on with your hand between your legs.

But when you tried, when you parted the lips of your pussy to dip your finger in and circle around your clit, you found that you simply… couldn't. You were frigid, without feeling or response, utterly lacking any sense of respite. You tried again later, before you went to sleep, and it was the same. You tried in the morning after another, tamer dream about him. Still nothing. No fantasies could warm you up, no memories of old lovers could shake you.

It was just Safin, Safin, Safin, on a loop in your head, without an end, and seemingly without a true beginning. And even the thoughts of him were not enough to help you coax yourself to a climax.

You had been backed into a corner. You were trodding through a desert without water or nourishment anywhere in sight. You had been bested even in your own mind.

"I hate you," you spat at him, one of your first days on the island. He hardly even blinked at the venom in your voice.

Safin's fingertip had grazed just along the edge of your jaw, the barest feather of a touch. It was the only time he ever touched you, and the last time you were touched by anyone at all. His eyes were a deep blue, as fathomless and stormy as a raging sea. You had never noticed them before.

"You are so beautiful, sometimes it troubles me," he said, his voice stretched thin with want.

You had almost laughed in his face. Safin surrounds himself with things that he finds beautiful, and you are no exception. He seems to think he owns you, just because he didn't let you die one time. You are the spoils of his war against the world. You are his Helen of Troy; the difference is that no one is launching a thousand ships to save you. However much of a fight you put up, he finds it cute, like a mouse struggling in the claws of a tiger.

But, you hadn't known that in only a few months' time you would be echoing the same sentiment.

You want to carve out your own eyeballs with a spoon. You want to throw yourself off of a cliff and into the island's tiny harbor. You're going to have a fucking fit and it's going to be his fault.

You have gotten no sleep. Zero. Not even a wink, all because you can't stop thinking about Lyutsifer fucking Safin, lord of the poison garden, your very own captor. Your own body won't stop thinking about him, too, it seems. You spent all night tossing and turning, eyes shut to no end, while you physically shook from the merest thought of him.

Truthfully, you almost didn't come to breakfast. You considered just laying in bed all day until somehow, some way, managing to fall asleep. Even if you had another one of those fucking dreams, at least you would get some rest.

But the one time you had tried to skip out on breakfast before, Safin had no compunctions about sending the goon squad to break down your bedroom door just to tell you that your tea was getting cold. So, you pulled yourself together, at least somewhat.

Breakfast seems to be a thing with him. You can do whatever you want for the rest of the day, within reason. If you wander too far towards the beach, a guard will follow, presumably to make sure you don't try your best Ophelia impression. Otherwise, Safin doesn't vie for your attention any more than you do his. But he always wants you there at the breakfast table, for some inordinate reason, like it's not the start of the day without you.

You'd think it was sweet, if you weren't certain it was a display of his power over you.

You show up to breakfast, but you don't make any attempts to be civil, or look like you want to be there. Still in your silk dressing robe, your elbow on the table top, you rest your head in your hand while you stab at your omelette with your fork and wish it was some one of Safin's extremities.

Safin isn't oblivious, but nor is he impatient. He watches you for a while, and notes the heaviness of your limbs, the way you blink so slowly that you appear to be fighting to stay awake. Finally, he asks, "Did you sleep well?"

"No."

You stab your fork a bit harder, so that it shrieks against the plate. That fucking morning rasp. You want to launch across the table and throttle him. Or maybe throw him across the table and ride him until the damn thing breaks, but the goon squad would probably shoot you before you even fully got up from your chair.

Safin has the decency to look displeased by this. He sits back in his chair, his hands folded in his lap. "If there's something that you need—"

"There's nothing you can do to help." Your voice comes out so sharp, so emphatic, that it cuts through the air like a knife. You don't look up from your plate, but you know that he's staring at you— you can feel the weight of his gaze like a hand on the back of your neck.

"Leave."

Like a king commanding his army, the guards around the room turn heel and disperse. It takes half a second for you to be left alone in the room with Safin, the only sound remaining being the distant roar of ocean surf over the balcony ledge. You straighten up in your chair and tilt your head back, praying that whichever god is listening smites you where you sit.

It makes you angrier that you can't even deny your attraction to him. You would be lying. Even beneath all your simmering hatred, you find him captivating. Like the call of the void at the edge of a thousand foot drop. He is beautiful, and wicked, and you have always been attracted to power. It's your Achilles heel, your fatal flaw.

You sit in a drawn out, heavy silence. You keep your head tilted back, counting the cracks in the ceiling, because if you look at him you're very sure you're going to say something so stupid there will be epic poetry written about it.

"You know that I could have anything, or anyone, disposed of. If it pleases you." Safin breaks the silence, tilting his head in a pantomime of thought. "Considering how you've been so agreeable."

"How kind of you." You have not been agreeable, that much you both know. You have no idea why he hasn't tried to kill you with that nanobyte cocktail, yet. Something tells you there's a weakness hidden in there, somewhere, which you can exploit if you just find the right angle.

"If you wish to tell me what troubles you, speak freely," Safin says, like you couldn't have thought of that yourself.

"I don't wish to tell you anything."

"Then indulge me," he counters. You reserve the urge to roll your eyes. "If there is a problem, I would like to nip it in the bud."

You finally look at him, giving him a deadpan stare, conveniently over the bud vase on the table with a foxglove clipping in it. "Was that a joke?"

Safin affects a shrug with a wave of his hand. The sight of him irks you, just as you thought it might. He's the kind of beautiful that makes you want to lash out, bare your teeth. It's cruel how he effects you so deeply, when your bones tell you to loathe him.

"Sure, I'll indulge you with my problems," you bite, not withholding the hostility in your tone. Safin simply stares at you mildly, like nothing you can say or do will shock him. "Aside from the obvious," you begin, leaning forward to point between you and him, "You have contractors crawling all over this place constantly, designing and arranging things just right, but I'm still stuck in a concrete sensory deprivation tank. I mean, god, I know this place was a missile siloh or something, but I can't fucking sleep because I can hear myself breathing, it's so echoey in there. What does it take to, I don't know, get a rug? A lamp? Where the hell is your interior designer?"

Safin leans his chin against his hand, his face carefully devoid of emotion. "This is what bothers you so?"

"I— yes." Now is the time for you to shut up, and not incriminate yourself any further. "Yes. The interior decorating of your guest room is found wanting, Monsieur Safin. If you don't mind my humble critique."

You think this is the most that you have ever spoken to him in one sitting. Most of the time you keep your mouth shut, preferring to listen rather than fill the empty air. Up until this point, you really have had nothing to say to him— so, why now? Probably sleep deprivation. Probably the thousand different ways you've had him in your dreams, clouding your judgement.

Safin bending you over the table, his hand fisting in your hair to hold you down while the other lifts your skirt, a lecherous touch dragging up the back of your thigh. The memory of the dream flashes through your head for just a second, and you knock back the rest of your tea like it might make you forget.

It doesn't.

Safin looks down at the table, seeming to process this information, but his lips quirk up at the edges like he finds your outrage funny. "Very well. I will… see to decorating your room."

There's a beat of silence, and you think that it's over, you can go back to suffering in silence. But then, he looks up at you, his wide eyes sparkling in the light.

"There is more, though. Isn't there?"

"Jesus Christ." He's infuriating. Your chair scrapes across the floor with a loud noise as you stand, turning your back fully to him. Your entire body feels so hot, like a live wire ready to spark. You rake your fingers over your face, your tired eyes straining for rest. "Of course there's more, Safin, don't be so obtuse."

Your jab doesn't phase him. He clicks his tongue. "Tell me."

"Can't you see it?" You're so strung out you could scream. You turn toward the balcony, toward the view of the ocean. The endless blue stretches far away, its song like a harmony to the storm in your head. "I'm so alone here. For you, this is your home. You have your purpose and your plans. Everything here is yours. I'm just another piece in your collection, and that's my purpose. I belong nowhere, I have nothing. All I had was my hatred and my pride, and now I don't. Even those belong to you, like everything else. I mean, I can't even have a fucking orgasm without—"

Without you.

It was on the tip of your tongue. You try to swallow it down, stop before you blurt it out as a last confession. But it's the truth, and it's so obvious that it's humiliating. The back of your throat burns, still holding that last unspoken word like a stone.

You open your mouth to say something else, or possibly to shove your foot back in it, but you look over at Safin and you know that it's no use.

You hate the way that he bats his eyelashes; it's altogether too innocent of a gesture for a man like him. He's looking at you in a way that tells you he knows exactly what you were going to say. Maybe he isn't gloating, per se, but he absolutely looks pleased at the knowledge that you desire him, at least in some way.

"Then you're right," he tells you after a moment, and your breath halts in your lungs. "I can't help you."

Right. You shouldn't have expected anything different. You showed your cards and lost the game. You flounder a bit, turn away and wish that you were back in bed, never having mentioned anything or gone on your little tirade.

"Not unless you want me to."

You freeze. All your muscles lock up at once, but you don't look at him again. It feels safer, like if you can't see him, then he can't see the way you're beginning to tremble.

"Do you want me to?"

Safin's voice has gone so quiet, so soft. You wring your hands in front of you, staring back out to sea. Your mind spins, your body feels like it's on fire, and you almost think that you misheard him until he repeats the question.

"My darling," Safin says slowly, and it's the first time he's ever called you by anything other than your given name. "Do you want me to help you?"

You can't say it. To say it is to admit defeat, to admit to weeks of torturous dreams and desires that completely betrayed everything you thought you knew about yourself. Instead, you nod your head enough that your answer can't be mistaken.

He holds his hand out towards you. "Come."

"I can't, that's the whole fucking point."

You don't see Safin's eye roll, but you can hear it in his long intake of breath, ending with a perturbed sigh. "Come here."

With one final breath, you turn your back to the sea and face him. Safin's hand is still outstretched, his palm up in an invitation that you have yet to accept, but he doesn't move to pull away. When you approach him, you set your hand into his, and it feels like the final nail being hammered into your proverbial coffin. This must have been how Eve felt in the garden, staring into the eyes of the serpent.

You can still kill him. That's not out of the question. But you can also fuck him; never were the two ever mutually exclusive.

Safin smirks coyly up at you. "There, now. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

"If you think I'm going to straddle you, you can forget it," you retort. That, at the very least, makes his brow quirk up a smidge.

Safin raises his chin to give you a serene, if condescending, look. His hand meets your waist, and he guides you to turn, slowly, until you begin to think that he's about to bend you over the table. You're sure that you're about to live out your dream right here, right now, and without even telling him about it. But instead, Safin pulls you down into his lap so that your back meets his chest.

"Is this more to your taste?" Safin asks, his chin brushing against your shoulder as he wraps his arm around your waist. His body is so warm. He curls around you like he might completely consume you, if he tries hard enough.

You don't know where to look; you never expected to sit on Safin's lap. Your heart pounds within your ribcage. Can he hear it? Feel it? "My taste changes with the tide."

"Then I shall endeavor to be so changeable." His accented voice slithers along your skin like a caress, while his fingers find the edge of your silk robe. "I can be anything you desire, if it pleases you."

You scoff as he hitches your thigh over his own. The very idea is absurd. "I'll kill you."

Safin stops, his breath just barely registering in your ear. "And I, you."

His hand leaves your thigh, and for the slightest moment, you think that he's going for your throat. You prepare to flinch away, to bolt, but he merely captures your chin between his thumb and forefinger, and guides you to look at him. This close, you can almost feel the heat of the fire burning in his eyes.

"We are the same, you and I. Both of us driven by passion and marked by death." His dulcet voice dips low, as though he could mesmerise you with his words alone. "When I saved your life, it tied you to me. Your life belongs to me, now, as does mine to you. It is as inescapable as fate itself."

The ache in your core only grows the longer he drags this out, and your hand grips the arm of the chair so hard that you fear you might snap it off. Rage, desire— they're both fueled by passion, and he would know that better than anyone. Safin dips his head the slightest bit, until his nose nearly nudges against your own, like he means to kiss you.

"You think I won't strangle you with our red string of fate?" you snarl furiously at him, shifting in his hold. "I'll make you regret ever laying eyes on me."

"You say that with such conviction. I'd like to see you try," he muses. "What poisons me, poisons you. Remember that."

There are a million things you could say as a rebuttal; how mistaken he is in his comparison, how you are nothing alike, and nothing ties you to him except his own need for control. But, you think he can anticipate every one of those statements. It exasperates you how predictable you've become, and how he can read your mind like a book. You're starting to believe that he knew all along about your dreams, and your growing desire for him, even before you said anything.

You can't help yourself. Your gaze flicks down to his lips for just a moment, so close to your own.

"Ah. We understand each other." Just to twist the knife, he draws his thumb over the curve of your lower lip. He smiles, more to himself than at you. "Now, do you want my help, or not?"

You won't get away with avoiding him this time. He holds you captive in his stare and his embrace, as much as he does the rest of you. Safin tilts his head, searching your eyes as though the answer might be hidden behind them, but says nothing else, awaiting your reply.

"Yes." You speak against the pad of his thumb, and consider biting down on it, just to let him know that you aren't all bark. You almost begin to wonder what he would taste like.

"Then be a good girl," he tells you, his tone so commanding even while his voice is as quiet as a drop of water. "Behave yourself."

Blood rushes hot beneath your skin, but you do not look away from him. Not until his hand finds your thigh again, his thumb pressing against the soft skin beneath the edge of your robe. His hands are so big— why did you never notice before? His palm flat against your thigh, his fingers wrap around the soft flesh like they're meant to be there, and you… you aren't even sure you want to argue with that.

And then you tense as something occurs to you.

You turn your head, your eyes flicking around the room. "Cameras."

"There are no cameras here," Safin reassures you. While you sweep your eyes around the room looking for evidence to the contrary, the hand on your thigh doesn't move. His other hand, however, raises to press against your chest, to guide you back against him— and there, you guess that he feels how fast your heart pounds against your ribcage. "Relax."

"I can't. I—"

"You can." The palm of his hand is so warm as it settles against your inner thigh. "You will."

It takes you a moment, and he waits— ever patient, taking note of your every move— while you gaze wildly around the room, until you're satisfied that he isn't lying to you. Maybe he does feel you relax into his hold, or your heartbeat slow just a touch beneath the still of his hand. Whatever it is, you know that you feel him smile, with his lips so close that they nearly brush against your cheek.

Safin gathers the silk of your robe in his hand, drawing it upward. It falls aside as though you are being unveiled, exposing the rest of your thigh and your hip bone to his wandering eye. You close your eyes, suddenly bashful— you're nervous, which is not something that you normally are when it comes to sex. But this is Terra Incognita; you have no idea what to expect from him.

You certainly don't expect him to be gentle, but he is. Safin finally touches you, and you audibly gasp, choking on your own need. You cover your face with your hands, shaking in his arms. You're wet. You've soaked through the thin fabric of your panties, sitting here in his arms while he toyed with you, threatened you.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

You all but try to slam your legs shut at the touch of his hand, but his own knee blocks your effort. He keeps your legs open, his fingers moving slowly over the wet fabric.

"Don't hide," Safin croons, his voice hushed. "Not from me."

He traces the seam of your cunt with his middle finger, gliding up until he presses down hard on the bead of your clit through the thin barrier. You practically yelp at the electric shock it sends through your body, your hand clapping down over his, where it still rests on your chest.

Safin hums low, turns his head to nuzzle at the crook of your neck. "How long has it been? Too long, I take it." He tsks, and you feel him shake his head. He pets you with his hand like he has all the time in the world to take you to pieces. "Such a shame, to be found wanting."

Ohhh, he's such an asshole. You're speechless; his breath fans over your skin, and you aren't exactly thinking straight as it is. You're so overwhelmed, you don't even have time to come up with a witty response before he's sliding his hand into your underwear.

A high whimper leaves you as his finger slips through your cunt. The touch unleashes a wave of warmth through you, melting up your spine and down your limbs. You arch into his hand, searching desperately for friction, anything that will stave off the need rising like a tempest inside you.

Safin breaks his hand free of your grip and drags you back down against him, planting your hips flush with his.

You can feel how much it effects him— his hard cock presses against your spine. Because, of course, Safin is a man. Of course, he is not as unshakeable as he would have you believe. You know he must like this, must like having the power to command your pleasure as he commands everything else. You know he must love how he got you to beg him for it, even though you were so mortified about it; that must be what this is.

Whatever it is, you don't really have it in you to fight it right now. You've gone a little bit mindless, and the pace he's set feels so good, so right, that you can't think of anything but chasing it to its end.

The tip of his finger rubs tight circles around your clit, making your toes curl, your spine threatening to arch against his hold again. He tucks his face against your neck and he breathes deeply, like he truly needs something from this.

Safin plunges his free hand into the fold of your robe and squeezes your breast, and you moan, rocking against him. At a loss for something to hold, your hands blindly decide for themselves— one hand slams down on the arm of the chair, and the other shoots over your shoulder, burying itself in the soft waves of his hair.

"Safin," you sob his name, your head finally falling back onto his shoulder.

He dips his hand lower, easing two fingers into you. Your own hand flexes, tightening on his hair between your fingers like a lifeline. You feel his mouth open against your shoulder, panting hot against the silk of your robe.

"Beautiful thing," Safin murmurs, just slightly too breathy. "You do not have nothing. You have this." He curls his fingers, his steady pace winding you up far more than you ever could have expected. "You have me."

If he wanted to fuck you now, you think you'd let him. However he wanted to— here, on the chair, or over the table, or on the floor. It doesn't matter. If all he wanted was to degrade you, to render you one of his conquests, he's done it. Why not go all the way? Why not seal the deal?

You make a small, feeble noise in the back of your throat, your hips meeting his hands in earnest. "Do you want to— to…?"

Maybe it's just the way your voice sounds, so far gone in your lust, that he knows what you mean without having to articulate it. "No."

You suck in a stuttering breath that doesn't quite want to seat itself in your lungs. What?

"This is yours. Take what you want," Safin whispers, and as he does, withdraws his fingers to slide back up over your sensitive pussy, to circle around your clit again.

You shudder against him, letting your eyes flutter shut. He remains steady, even as you begin to whimper. He dips his fingers into your cunt and then draws them back out to stroke your clit, never faltering in his pace. And when you give him a tight gasp of warning and dig your nails into his scalp, he simply hums.

"Don't fight it," Safin tells you softly, pumping his fingers into you and curling them perfectly. "Let it happen."

It comes over you like a tidal wave, crashing into you with immeasurable fury. It's been so long, and you're so unprepared that it seizes you entirely. Your cunt pulses on his fingers, and you hear his breath catch before you're spasming against him, your hands smacking down on both arms of the chair, your hips hitching and bucking against his hold.

Christ, it's been ages since you had an orgasm, and you don't recall it ever feeling anything remotely like this. Have you ever cum this hard before? Did it have to be for him? He keeps moving his fingers over your clit until you flinch against him and clamp your hand down over his wrist— and even then, he just rests it there, like he doesn't want to let you go.

You lean against him, letting him hold you up. This is nice, you think in your deepest, most disoriented state. He flexes his fingers— his hand is still inside of your robe, still cupping your breast, but he doesn't move. All you can hear is your shared breath, heavy in the charged air between you as he hugs you against him. You've turned your forehead to rest against his. Your faces in tandem, your lips are so close to his that you can taste his breath.

Then, in the comedown, you realize what you just did.

You just came.

You just came… for Lyutsifer Safin.

You pick your head up, jolting back to reality like from one of your dreams. But this is not a dream. Safin's hand is in your robe, in your underwear. Your hand is still clamped on his wrist, to keep him from moving any which way.

This is what you wanted, what you asked him for. He helped you, gave you an orgasm without asking for anything in return. All that desire for him, all those nights tossing and turning and losing sleep to the thought of him, has come to this. To you, twitching from sensitivity while his hand lingers against your cunt. And you liked it.

You liked it.

In a panicked haze, you wrench yourself free of his grip and jump up. You don't speak a word to him— if you do, you might say something you regret, make promises that you can't keep. You can't trust yourself; you can barely think, no thanks to him. Safin doesn't try to hold you any longer than you let him.

Your legs practically threaten to buckle under you, but you still make a break for the door like it's your only salvation. Maybe, at this point, it is.

So. There's a priceless work of art in your room.

And by priceless, that is to say, a museum piece is taking up almost the entirety of the wall across from your bed. You've been sitting on the edge of it, staring at the painting in shock for roughly fifteen minutes.

Claude Monet's Water Lilies spans from floor to ceiling, so tall and wide that a frame wouldn't even be able to fit in the room. How anyone got it through the door, you have no idea. You don't exactly know what to do about it, since it wasn't there before.

You woke up this morning in the same drab, plain room as always, your breathing echoing in your ears. For the first time in… well, for the first time ever, you didn't go to breakfast. You refused to get out of bed, still reeling from the shock that happened at the last one. Just the thought of looking Safin in the eye after that debacle had you so nervous, your stomach clenched up so hard you figured you wouldn't be able to eat anything at all. So, you rolled over, and you went back to sleep.

And, for the first time, the goon squad didn't come to bust down your door. Which meant that Safin didn't want to see you, either.

Fine. That was perfectly fine with you. The last thing you needed was Safin thinking he was somehow endeared to you, just because you let him shove his hand down your pants. It meant nothing, it was just an itch that needed to be scratched. It didn't change anything between you, and it certainly didn't mean that it was ever going to happen again.

…Do you want it to happen again?

You mulled that one over for a while. You'd finally slept, without having a wet dream about him, which was fortunate. But it meant that the cure for the wet dreams was to recreate them in real life, which was less so. And it had been… good. Annoyingly good. So good, you were actually surprised that you didn't dream about him— but now you were plagued by thoughts of his hands on you while you were awake, so you guess you traded one problem for another.

You resolved to find a way around it. Somehow. There's more than one way to skin a cat, so they say.

When you finally did pull yourself out of bed, you opened the door to find a guard standing outside. You didn't know how long he'd been there. Usually there aren't guards posted outside your door at all hours, but if one sees you wandering around you'll notice them start to shadow you.

You blinked at the man disinterestedly, waiting for him to explain himself. This was your normal tactic, dealing with anyone on the island: stare at them long enough, and they'll start talking just to fill the void. It worked often enough that it became a habit.

The guard pulled something from his vest and handed it to you. It was a small rectangular tin box, colorless and plain save for the monogram etched on the bottom left corner. L.S.

The fucker had his own line of personalized housewares.

"Boss said to give this to you when you woke up," the guard stated as you opened the tin. It was a bento box full of grazing foods— cheeses, sliced fruits, crackers, cured meats. "He also said if you wanted tea, I'm supposed to tell the kitchen."

You glanced up at the guard. "How about a coffee?"

The guard nodded and turned away, muttering, "Right. Guess I'm a fucking housemaid."

You spent an hour sitting on the floor of your room, your back to the foot of your bed, picking from the bento box and sipping a coffee that was burnt to shit, but it was coffee. You'd begun to suspect that Safin didn't even have any on the island, the way he guzzled tea like it somehow sustained him. You savored the coffee the way that you savored sunshine after a long period of rain. You stared at the concrete wall across from your bed, noting its cracks, its pock marks, the subtle changes in shades of grey where the sunlight from the far window hit it.

You inevitably fell into analyzing every detail of what had happened between you and Safin. You turned it over and over in your head, like you could pick up the very moment in time and examine it, puzzle it out like a Rubik's cube. Every little interaction, every touch, every word whispered. There was a meaning behind it, beyond its outward appearance— just because you saw it as a means to an end, a way to stave off the vexatious desire that was plaguing you, did not mean it was the same for him.

Once you finally made the sojourn out of your room, it was already noon. The sun beat down over the island, glittering on the water as you made your usual trek out to the rocks. Like clockwork, one of the guards had wandered along to watch you, but hung back like you wouldn't notice anything. You didn't know if it was meant to make you feel like you had more freedom, or if they really thought you were that dimwitted.

You hated to admit it, but the island was rather beautiful, if you could get past the brutalist megastructures and old wartime factories that dotted the coastline. The island itself juts up out of the water, the peak of its mountain casting a shadow over everything below it. Lush greenery grows wherever it gets the opportunity. You've seen dolphins swimming so close to shore that sometimes, if you listened hard enough, you could hear their friendly trilling. Life goes on around you; the world is indifferent to your troubles.

Your life belongs to me, now, as does mine to you. It is as inescapable as fate itself. Safin's lilting voice beat at the inside of your skull like it was trying to get out. Kneeling by the water, you jammed the balls of your hands into your eye sockets— he couldn't effect you like this. What was it about him that called you to disarm yourself entirely?

You guess that it was for the feeling of freedom it brought that you stripped off your dress. You didn't bother listening to the guard shouting at you, from where he lingered back away from the rocks, as you threw yourself into the water. It wasn't like you could swim toward the small island just barely visible on the horizon. If the sharks didn't kill you on the way, the hypothermia would.

Opting to float on your back, you stared up at the sky as the sound of the water dulled out the rest of the world. Overhead, the sky was a clear blue, as untouched by fog or cloud as it could ever be. You floated there for a while, letting the saltwater lap at your body, and letting the water wash away your concerns.

It was while you bobbed in the water that you saw the plane soar overhead, like a bird swooping down to perch on a tree branch. You hadn't really paid it any mind at the time. Safin gets any and all sorts of imports, it wasn't anything that would have interested you.

But now, staring at the work of art on your wall, maybe you should have. You don't know what you could have done to change anything. Maybe get out of the water, come to see what it was? But how were you to know that it was transporting a bunch of precious cargo?

By the time you'd gotten back to your room, everything was entirely different. You don't know how Safin managed it. He must have had an entire team come in to rearrange things as fast as possible, bring in new furniture, new decorations. There's a red Persian rug where there was once cold concrete floor. There's a bookshelf practically overflowing with reading material, two nightstands, desk lamps. There's a wardrobe, a chaise longue. Curtains— fucking curtains.

The bed hasn't changed; it's still the same basic white, but someone has made it for you. You sit perched on the end of it, staring at the wall opposite. Staring at Water Lilies, and trying to make sense of it.

My beloved is mine and I am his; he feedeth among the lilies.

Maybe you're in shock. You've been in the room for about thirty minutes, and you haven't been able to do anything. It took you a while to even sit on the bed, because it meant you had to walk on the rug. Whenever you managed to wander over and sit down, you lifted your eyes toward the painting and just… stayed there.

You aren't even sure if it's real. Is it? It could be a reproduction, but somehow you doubt that Safin would opt for anything ingenuine. You can see the paint strokes. With its deep blues and bright pink lily flowers, it evokes the twilight hour, where nothing has shadows and everything is in-between.

Admittedly, it takes you some time to finally pick yourself up and leave the room, but you're so scared to touch anything. What else could be some priceless artifact?

Unsurprisingly, you find him in the poison garden. The late afternoon sun illuminates him, makes the silver in his hair sparkle. The scars from his boyhood seem to fade away, leaving behind only the angles of his face. He seems lost in thought, his hands folded behind his back and his head inclined as he meanders through the garden maze. It's only when he stops to admire the oleander plant that you decide to make your presence known.

"Safin." His gaze whirls towards you like you've startled him. He never struck you as a man who could be taken off-guard. "Is it real?"

"Is what real?" He recovers quickly, with his eyes flicking over your frame. As you descend the steps into the garden, something like apprehension crosses his face at the last second.

"The Monet, obviously. Is it genuine?" You come to a stop several feet from him. Not close enough to appear threatening— you don't need the goon squad closing in— but not far enough away that you need to shout to be heard.

"Mmm. Yes, that. It is genuine." Safin hums, turning back towards the oleander. Its pink blossoms jostle in the breeze. "Do you like it? I find it rather meditative."

You open and close your mouth, searching for a reply to that. Do you like it? If you're honest with yourself, you don't dislike it. It's obviously gorgeous, and you're actually rather impressed by his audacity, but you'd never admit it. "That's not my point."

"Then what is your point?" Safin asks, shooting you a sidelong glance. "Do be kind and share it, I'm not fond of guessing."

"Did you buy it?" You ask bluntly.

"Does it really matter?"

You rear back, turning to face the garden hedge. "You put stolen art in my room?"

"You wanted decoration," he retorts, meeting your petulance in stride. "Monet painted two hundred and fifty of them in his lifetime, I doubt that the purchase of one will stop the world in its tracks."

You suck on your teeth. So he did buy it. You don't even want to think about how much he paid for it. Everything is a piece of the same puzzle, no matter its size or shape. The breakfasts, the gifts, the sex. The way that he hasn't killed you yet, despite his threats. You keep giving him reasons to, and he just keeps acting like you're so amusing for it. It means something. What the fuck does it mean?

"What are you playing at?"

"I don't play at anything," Safin tells you, his tone clipped. "Games are for children."

"So you just dropped hundreds of millions of dollars on a work of art for a prison cell, just because it's… meditative?" You squint at him. "You expect me to believe that?"

Safin closes his eyes. It's the only way you know that you're getting to him— he stands perfectly straight, so eerily still that you wouldn't be able to tell anything was amiss. "I expect you will believe what you want, regardless of what I do."

"Then why— why would you do that?"

"Because you asked." Safin finally turns his entire body in your direction, his hands carefully concealed behind his back. He gives you a stern look, his eyes flashing. "Do you not understand? You ask, I deliver. You want, I provide. You beg for help, I give it to you. That is my reason."

His words make you recoil, turning away to hide the utter embarrassment that you're certain is written on your face. "It's that simple, huh?"

"Yes," Safin hisses, testier than normal. "It is that simple."

You nod to yourself, but you're more confused than ever. Confused by his seemingly generous acts of devotion. Confused by his defensiveness when questioned about it. Nothing about him makes sense— it's almost as if he wants you to believe that he actually cares for you. Which is… well. It's completely ridiculous, and entirely out of the question. Safin doesn't care about anything but his own power.

…Does he?

You stare, unblinking, at the plant in front of you. Its clusters of bright blue, trumpet shaped flowers sway gently in the breeze, while you develop a theory so absurd that it would have to negate everything you thought you knew, if true. The hum of the nearby beehive fills the silence, droning in a quiet monotone as you, brat of the century, drum up the dumbest of all dumb plans to test your theory. It's so insanely stupid that it might even work.

Tilting your head, you eye the little blue flowers with keen interest. "That's wolfsbane, isn't it?"

Safin hesitates. Maybe he's suspicious, or maybe he's too irritated with you to actually want to answer. But, eventually, he says, "Yes. That is aconite."

You hum, mirroring his posture as you step towards it, hands behind your back, spine straight. Out of the corner of your eye, you see him shift. It's so subtle, you would easily have missed it if you weren't paying attention. "It's pretty."

"Deadly things usually are."

His words make you bristle, but you have to swallow your reason. If this is going to work, you have to trust that your theory is correct. So, rather than wither away, you reach forward and pluck one of the flowers from its stem.

"Don't." His warning cuts through the air, making you pause even without meaning to. When you look at him, he's watching you so closely that you might shrink away, if you weren't deliberately trying to provoke him. Safin turns his head just the tiniest bit, eyes falling to the blossom in your fingers. "I wouldn't do that, if I were you."

"But you aren't, are you?" You twirl the flower in between your thumb and forefinger, squeezing just the tiniest bit so that moisture releases from its stem. The longer you do, the more you begin to feel a curious numbing sensation grow on your fingertips, like you've touched a bit of novocaine. "And anyways, if you really are so set on giving me what I want— or, you know, killing me otherwise— I don't really see how it should be a problem."

And you, in all of your glorious wisdom, pop the poisonous flower into your mouth.

"Stop."

You've never really seen Safin lose his composure. He kills people without remorse, threatens without batting an eye. He's always so poised that you thought him absolutely unshakeable. You practically thought him incapable of any emotion, at all. And yet, he snaps in an instant, rushing at you faster than you ever imagined him doing.

Safin snatches you by the jaw with one hand. He doesn't exactly look frantic, but his eyes are wider than they ought to be, his jaw locked with tension. He presses his lips together, and you hear him take a slightly shaky breath. You notice the guards around the garden and in the foyer standing at attention, watching and listening for any orders, but they're never given any.

Safin only speaks loud enough for you to hear him, his voice dangerously void of inflection. "Spit it out."

You refuse to fold. You hold the flower in your mouth and taste its poison on your tongue, sharp and acrid, and you stare into his eyes defiantly.

"If you do not listen to me, within twelve hours your lungs will atrophy and you will suffocate, trapped inside your own body." His fingers squeeze your cheeks in a punishing grip, puckering your lips unnaturally. "Spit. It. Out."

You're sure that the entire situation looks ludicrous, but he squeezes your cheeks until you have no choice but to spit the disgusting little flower into his outstretched hand.

Safin whips it aside in an instant, tossing it into the water of the meditation pond. You, on the other hand, are not particularly keen on actually dying— you bend over and spit out as much as you can onto the ground, trying hard not to worry over the fact that your tongue has gone numb.

He captures you with both hands, examining your face as though you might drop dead in front of him any second. He breathes heavily, a lock of his hair hanging over his brow, having fallen askew in his haste. "Are you trying to kill yourself, you ridiculous girl?" Safin asks, both his frustration and fear evident in his voice.

You're laughing in his face, giggling like a lunatic, because you were right. He won't let you die, and he won't kill you. All his threats have been hollow. This is the reason, the weakness in his impenetrable armor that you've been searching for.

You. You are his weakness.

"I thought you said you'd kill me, Safin," you say, trying to ignore the weight of your tongue and the coolness of your face against his palms. "Seems to me like you need to make up your mind. Either you care, or you don't."

For the first time in all the months that you've known him, Safin looks shocked. He gazes at you in horror like you've just stabbed him in the chest with your words, alone.

In the sunlight, the wolfsbane flower spins around idly in the ripples on the pond. Aimless, going nowhere and serving nobody.

You smile ruefully up at Safin, pressing your face into his hands. "Poisons me, poisons you, right?"

You've done stupider things in your life. It isn't even the first time you've managed to poison yourself, it's just the first time you did it to prove a point.

Nothing much happens for the first little while after the incident in the garden. Safin drags you into the foyer and plants his hands on your shoulders so that you can't move from the sofa while you wait for one of his goons to fetch something. You're not sure what it is, because Safin barks his orders in a language you don't know, but he sounds pretty serious about it.

You're trying not to gloat too hard.

When the guard comes back, he hands Safin a small bottle. You can't make out the label, but Safin tips two pills into his hand and holds them out to you.

You refuse to take them. Out of spite.

Safin sighs, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. Of course, there was never a chance you were going to make this easy for him— you're amusing yourself with his reaction, watching what he'll do with the curiosity of a scientist surveying a specimen.

He claps his hand with the pills over your mouth. You give him a muffled grunt, trying to push his hand away and shake him off, but he barely moves. Safin is a lot stronger than he looks, a fact that is thoroughly annoying to you because he just won't budge. Finally, with his free hand, he pinches your nose and waits.

After about thirty seconds you gasp for air, and Safin shoves the pills into your mouth.

"Swallow." He's seething, and he wraps his hand around your throat to ensure that you follow his instructions. You would be outraged, if you hadn't dreamt about him doing exactly that. Several times.

"What the fuck was that?" you rasp when he finally lets you speak, feeling the pills slide down your throat like two hot coals.

"That was me saving your life. Again." He turns your face to look you in the eye, his hold hard on your chin. "You're welcome."

It takes very little else to get you to storm off in anger. And then it takes roughly forty-five minutes for the poison to take effect.

You don't honestly know what all the effects of wolfsbane are. You figured that since you hadn't swallowed it you were safe, but you start to change your mind when your legs give out from under you while walking down a corridor. You feel yourself inverting, like someone has taken hold of your spine and flipped your entire body inside out. You can't help but collapse onto all fours, searching for a stability that isn't coming.

It's unclear how long you stay there, pressing your forehead to the cool concrete— a pair of arms wrap around your middle to hoist you up, and in your delirium you manage to slur, "I'm gonna throw up."

"Your body is rejecting the poison. Do what it tells you." Safin's voice in your ear is soft as velvet, his palm coming to rest over your damp forehead.

After that, you begin to lose your grip on what happens around you. Safin either carries you or drags you like a rag doll to your room— you aren't entirely sure. Somehow, some way, you know that you end up in a bathroom, on your knees, vomiting up everything but your childhood memories.

Somewhere in your periphery, you know that he's there, too. You know that he's holding you up as the world spins around you and threatens to split in half. You know that when you collapse backwards, your body limp and shaking, that he's there to catch you and cradle you in the shelter of his arms, so that you don't lay on the concrete floor.

"Am I gonna die?" you ask at some point, hiccuping and coughing past the accumulation of bile and tears that flows from you.

"I will not let that happen," comes Safin's reply, authoritative enough that it calms you, as though he's capable of stopping death in its tracks. "Why do you cut off your nose to spite your face?"

"I had to— to see if you c—cared." You hug something to your chest. With your eyes closed, you can't tell what it is, but when you squeeze your hand around it you think that it must be his bicep, and the softness the sweater that he wears. You pull his arm closer, and a hand strokes over your head soothingly while tears stream down your cheeks. "Lyutsifer. Why do you care for me?"

He says nothing for a while, just shushes you while you jolt from your body's dry-heaving. "Why does the sea love the shore?"

"I never took you for a poet," you grumble. You open your eyes briefly, just to make sure that everything is still spinning. Unfortunately, it is.

"I never took you for a masochist," Safin counters, while you lurch forward to be sick again. "And yet, here we are."

You spend ages recovering.

Realistically, you think it's a grand total of three days or so before you can get out of bed, but then again, time escapes you.

You never would have done it if you'd known it would be like this. Sometime during your first day of convalescence, while your body is so drained and lethargic that you can hardly lift your head from the pillow to drink water, you begin to wonder if you should have prayed more. But to whom? Your world has turned upside down and you don't really know if any god is listening to you right now.

On the second day, Safin comes to sit in the chair he had placed in your room. He doesn't say anything, just hovers like a watchful spirit at the end of your bed.

You don't know how he did it, when he was a child. You imagine his scars are worse than just the ones on his face, but you've never seen them. How could he have survived, just a boy, when his family all died around him? With no one to care for him, the way that he's cared for you?

"Why do you have that plant in your garden, anyways?" you ask him, not even rolling over to look him in the eye. You know he's there, because the air shifts like he's released an electric current into the room.

"Usually, to kill people. But there is a first time for everything." His sense of humor is dry as a bone, you find.

That's the last time he visits your bedside. That you're aware of, anyway.

Still, after you recover enough to leave your bed, and you can stomach food without a problem, you take a couple days just to make sure it isn't a fluke. You flip through the books that had been placed in your room, ignoring the one or two botanical manuals tucked on the shelves.

Eventually, you begin to miss the sun.

Regrettably, you begin to miss him.

You wanted to kill him. Somewhere low down inside you, you still think you should— just out of sheer self respect, of course. Since you now know that he doesn't want to kill you. He didn't let you die. He doesn't even want to hurt you, from what you can gather. He just wants you.

At some point, while you lay there in the shadow of Water Lilies, you start wishing that Safin was there to hold you like he did before. To stroke your head while you sleep, and tell you that he would reorder time if only to give you more of it. It almost appalls you, how much you want him. How you begin to ache for him, like all the time you spent dreaming about him and lusting over him was a mere trifle in comparison. It fills you from your head to your toes, like his touch opened up a chasm within you, where there is no bottom to your need.

Why does the sea love the shore? That's a good fucking question. You'll have to ask him, sometime.

Your best guess as to why he stays away is that he's busy and expects you to do as you please until you've recovered. Your worst guess is that he's scared. You figured that fear was a foreign concept to him, the same as love and shame. But now, you're not so sure. Not by the way he'd held you like you were something precious to him, turned desperate at the prospect of losing you. You've proven that he feels at least one of those things— or, you think you did, based on the horror he'd shown at your power play.

Some power play. It had put you out of commission for the better part of a week. He most definitely saved your life. If he hadn't intervened, you would be dead as a doornail. When you step out of your room on the third day, you feel as feeble as a baby bird. The sun practically scorches your eyes, the breeze is far too cold on your skin.

Maybe later, you think as you retreat back into your room, back under the covers. You'll thank him for it later.

When you finally do venture out, you find him in a board room, deliberating over something with a group of his scientists. You rarely see them in the main house; they normally keep to the underground rooms and the factories. But, you guess that there's been some kind of development, since you hear the words test, success rate, and duplicate thrown around.

You're not really paying attention to any of that, though. You're watching him. Every move he makes, the way he shifts, the way he turns his head, the way his lashes flutter while he contemplates one of the papers set in front of him.

You've always found him attractive, and it's hard to deny it now. You could hate him all you want, but you could never refute his beauty, even when you detested the very ground he walked on; it would have been like standing in front of The David and calling it 'primitive.' Safin is beautiful in the way that a landslide is, or a tsunami rushing towards land— overwhelming and marvellous, and capable of destroying you if you let it. It's a bit of a miracle how you held out this long.

You blame your pride. You guess you don't have much of it left.

"Lyutsifer."

Maybe it's the imploring way that you say his name that makes everything come to a screeching halt. Every eye in the room turns toward you, including his. In fact, his head snaps in your direction so fast you think he might bolt up from his chair.

"Sorry. Is this a bad time?" You know it is. You've interrupted him during a business meeting, there's no way that you aren't being a pest. But, as with everything else, you want to see what he'll do.

Safin dismisses the group of scientists with a wave of his hand. It's startling, the way everyone launches up and out of the room without a word, like they all have somewhere else they desperately need to be and they only just remembered it. You shouldn't be so surprised, though, since it's almost the same thing he did the last time you had breakfast with him, what feels like a lifetime ago.

Whatever is between you now feels so much more… delicate, now, as opposed to the blustering anger and hatred you had towards him before, and his impenetrable coldness. Something has shifted. Your roaring fire has turned down to a low smoulder the longer it's gone on. His ice has melted, at least a bit.

He takes in the sight of you, reading you like he can find the answers to your being etched into your skin. After a moment's silence, he says, "You seem to have recovered well."

You physically have to stop yourself from snorting at him. "Yeah, I can tell you're really choked up about it."

"You find it funny." He tilts his head, fixing you with a hard, devouring stare. His features appear sharper now, more severe than they normally are— his scars deeper, his eyes lit with fire from within. He seems so displeased with you that you wonder if you finally did manage to piss him off. "I know you love to try my patience, but I should think you would limit the damage you cause yourself, in that pursuit."

"Please. It's not like the world would have ended if I died."

"That is where you're wrong," Safin says, his finger tapping lightly against the table top. "I would have torn the world apart, if you had been taken from me. There would be no place on this earth safe from my wrath. You must know that, by now."

There is a touch of vulnerability in his tone that makes you pause. He's so poised, so gentlemanly, but something dark lingers in the margins of it. You know that he's not exaggerating— he has more ability to destroy the world than any man you've ever known. That he would do it for your sake, though…

"Well. That's incredibly romantic, isn't it?" Dragging your fingers along the tops of the chairs, you round the table toward him. You probably look like you want to swallow him whole, and you're not even trying to hide it.

Safin lifts his chin at your approach, but his eyes fall to the mahogany table top. A perverse part of you likes watching him squirm, even if his version of squirming is decidedly more subtle than your own. Something about a powerful man refusing to meet your eye is enough to give you an ego.

"Did you interrupt my meeting for any particular reason? Or, was that simply to test my will, too?" He draws out the words slowly, like he's unbothered, but you see the way his jaw flexes when you perch yourself against the edge of the table, facing him.

"On the contrary, I came to thank you."

"Mm. For what, exactly?"

"For saving my life." At that, Safin blinks and looks up at you, his lashes casting long shadows across his cheeks. You have to stop yourself from reaching forward to trace them with your fingertip. "I think you're right. I think we are alike. At least, now we both know what it's like to be poisoned."

His hand twitches on the table, like he wants to reach over and grab you somewhere— place his hand on your thigh or wrap his fingers around your waist. You take note of the movement, and of the way his eyes linger on you, on the space where your nightgown splits at mid-thigh and exposes your skin nearly up to the juncture of your hip. You balance on the edge of that idea for a moment before you make an executive decision, because you don't think you can bear the tension anymore.

Slowly, you lift your knee and swing your leg across his lap. You don't mean to startle him, but his hand leaves the table so suddenly and captures your ankle midair, you think you must have. Safin holds you there, your foot hovering above his lap, his hand wrapped tight around your ankle, and he looks at you like he's prepared for you to attack him, somehow.

"Lyutsifer." His brow tilts at the sound of his name coming from your lips, but he doesn't let you go. He doesn't do much of anything at all until you move, bending your leg at the knee so that you can place it on the chair beside his hip.

"What is this?" Safin asks, his voice just above a whisper as you settle over his lap. He sounds so mystified. His hands almost immediately fly to your hips, fingers pressed into your lower back like he can leave an imprint of them there to mark you.

"This is me thanking you." If you were thinking any clearer, you might recall that you told him you wouldn't straddle him, the last time something like this happened between you. But you're not thinking clearly. Your mind is clouded with nothing beyond him, and how good it feels to have him between your legs.

His eyes crease at the corners, a calculating look crossing his face. You should be scared by that look. Instead, your heart races in a different way, and the feeling settles lower in your body.

"You're trying to seduce me." It's a statement, rumbling in his chest with a pleased hum.

You pause. Heat surges through your body like a solar flare. "Is it working?"

He laughs— actually laughs, shaking his head a bit in disbelief. You don't think you've ever heard Safin laugh. He's only ever given little sighs, puffs of air that convey either irritation or amusement, depending on the look on his face. But laughter, coming from him, doesn't sound like what you thought it would. It sounds… light. Boyish. He tilts his head back with it like there's nowhere for it to go but up.

You feel just a touch embarrassed, like a teenager who's been laughed at for trying to flirt. Heat rises in your cheeks, your mouth wanting to set in a frown. You can't exactly tell what he's thinking; he's such a closed book that it frustrates you. If he was like any normal man, you think he'd take a little more kindly to having you practically throw yourself at him.

But then he looks at you, his eyes shining, his mouth still curved up at the corner. "What in the world makes you think that you have to try?"

That destabilizes you a bit. At least, you weren't expecting such a shameless and bold-faced confession from him. You glance aside as you consider it. Did you really think it would take all that much? Did he not tell you from the beginning how beautiful he finds you? Did he not give you an orgasm without a moment's hesitation? Demonstrate his desire for you by any means necessary?

"Indulge me." You echo his words from all those days ago back to him. You know that it comes out more pleading than demanding, but it elicits the reaction from him that you wanted, all the same.

Safin closes his eyes and smiles fondly. "Don't I just."

Stillness stretches between you both. You hadn't anticipated getting this far with him— but now that you're here, you can't turn back. You don't think you want to.

You drop your hips, and you nearly hiss at the contact of his rough wool trousers against your bare cunt. Because you'd foregone underwear when you'd set out to look for him. Maybe you'd been planning this all along, and you just hadn't been honest with yourself about it. Maybe you aren't as impulsive as you think you are.

Your name leaves his mouth in a rush of breath, and you know it must be hot, and achingly sweet for him. You'd gotten so wet just from riling yourself up, just from staring at him, like a dog salivating over a bone. You know that he must feel it, pressed against him through his clothes. His mouth opens, a quiet breath rattling from his throat as he gapes at you.

God, he's hard. You can't imagine how he isn't absolutely losing his mind. Or, maybe he is? If you know anything about Safin, you know his restraint is second to none. It's like he prides himself on his ability to downplay everything, like nothing in the world effects him. You want him to lose that composure, like you've never wanted anything else.

You capture his face in your hands, your breath mingling with his in the space between you. "I never told you how gorgeous you are, did I?"

"Don't lie to me—"

"I'm not. You know I'm not. Can't you feel it?" He tenses beneath you, his thighs straining and his hips threatening to buck up into yours as you grind yourself against him. The friction is slow and slick, getting wetter as you work yourself over him, the sharp rasp of fabric on your clit like electricity on starved nerves. "You haunt me."

"I haunt you?" Safin parrots your words in a voice so low and bassy that you practically feel it vibrate in your bones. He gives you a look that tells you the feeling is mutual.

You hum, nodding slow, letting your nose nuzzle against his. "You know, I dreamt of you— I still do. I've had you every possible way, in my head. On your back. On mine. In every place, every position, and it's not enough. It's never enough."

You dip your head to drag your tongue over his parted lips, not really kissing him but more just tasting him. Letting your tongue catch just on the edge of his teeth and skip over the curve of his lip.

You don't know how he does it, how he sits there while you rub yourself on him, swollen and dripping, and just holds you. His fingers pressed into your back so tight, you can feel the blunt edges of his nails digging in for purchase. But then you hear it. Safin makes the slightest noise— a barely there thing, just this side of a gasp, but cut from something deeper, more guttural. It's a sound of thinly veiled desperation.

You grin, a giggle slipping from you that's more coquettish than you mean for it to be, but god. His body is so warm and solid between your legs, his breath so sweet in your mouth, sharing air like he can breathe life into you. You hear it catch in his throat when you brush your lips softly against his. "Am I testing you?"

Safin's hooded eyes focus on yours, the picture of lust and livid desire, like he's a step away from destroying you. You just barely fight the urge to bite his lip, feeling the way that his jaw flexes against the palm of your hand.

"C'mon, Lyutsifer," you goad him, grinning a cheshire cat smile against his lips. "Don't fight it. Let it happen."

Then, two things happen at once. You roll your hips down devillishly hard against him, moaning into his mouth at the feeling of his hard cock pressed perfectly against your core. And he shudders out a growl, and he yanks you down to crash his lips against yours.

Safin kisses you like he can consume you entirely with it, if given the chance. His hand finds the back of your head and plants itself there, while he snatches you around the back of the thighs and lifts you bodily, only to effectively throw you across the table.

Your back hits the hard, cold table top, your legs thrown around his waist while he looms over you, his breathing ragged. "Enough with your tests."

He kisses you again, and you could burn alive from the heat of it. To think that you could have been doing this instead of hating him, fighting him every step of the way. Why were you fighting him, again? It would be so much easier to do this, to have him between your legs and behind your teeth when you want him. You're a house of cards, toppling at the force of his storm.

Safin's hand cradles the back of your head, keeping you from knocking it against the table as his tongue dips into your mouth. But the other drags down the line of your body, trailing over the curve of your breast and down your stomach to dip between your legs.

You whine into his mouth, your hands clutching helplessly at him while he takes to you with two fingers. Your legs splayed wide by his hips, you have nowhere to go and nothing to do but take it as he curls his two fingers and sends sharp pleasure rocketing up your spine.

Safin catches your bottom lip with his teeth and you moan, arching against him, trying to chase his touch. You want to feel him everywhere, not just on your lips and between your legs, but pressed against you, pinning you down, holding you captive in his embrace.

"Lyutsifer," you gasp against his lips, trying to pull him down against you in vain. "Please—"

"I love the way you say my name," he whispers back, not even letting you finish your plea, whatever it would have been. "You make it sound so beautiful." His accent comes out thicker, harsher, clipped at the edges like you've made him lose his bearings entirely. And then his tongue is back in your mouth, tasting you, and his warm palm presses hard against your clit, so smooth and soft after the harshness of his trousers, and you—

You're going to cum.

It simmers up inside you, the familiar mounting pleasure riding on the crest of a wave. When the hell did that happen? When you were trying to get him to lose control? Grinding on him like a bitch in heat? He's not fucking you. He's touching you, yes, giving you his fingers the way that he did before, but he's not fucking you the way that you wanted him to. And still, you're going to cum. You have to bite back a whimper, a simpering little noise in the back of your throat at the sheer defeat of it all.

"Stop whining," Lyutsifer chides, but his tone has no real heat to it. His lips drag softly over yours as he hums. "This was your idea."

You do the exact opposite of what he says. "B—But I want you to—"

"Yes," he interjects again, and you feel his lips quirk up against yours, a smile crossing his face. "You want me."

You open your mouth to argue that that was not what you were going to say, that you want his cock, that you want him to fuck you into the table, like you've been wanting him to do forever. But his tongue is back in your mouth and he drives his fingers so deep that you can't think, can't really do anything but claw at his back and his hair. You feel yourself hurtling toward the edge of reason, while he brings you closer, closer—

There's a commotion above you, and Lyutsifer rips his hand away from you to all but slam it down on the table beside your head. You jump at the sound, tightening your legs around his waist like you can pull him down to you like a shield.

"Sir—"

"Get. Out." Lyutsifer lifts his head to growl at the guard who has just burst in on you.

Whoever it is must be getting a great show. You know that there's no mistaking the position you two are in— your skirt is pushed up around your hips, your breasts practically spilling out of the neckline of your nightgown. Lyutsifer is more disheveled than you've ever seen him, his chest heaving, a dark curl hanging low over his brow, dappled with perspiration.

"Sir…" the guard says again, decidedly more hesitant this time, "there's been a security breach. In the factory."

Oh. Lyutsifer's going to kill this guy. You can see it as you stare up at him, the way that he glares murderously over your head as though he could eviscerate the guard with just a look. A vein jumps in his neck, and he grits his teeth like he's lingering on the very thought.

You fight off the embarrassment of being caught with your pants down, and decide to take the proverbial bull by the horns. Sliding your hands from Lyutsifer's neck to capture his face, you tilt his head back down to look at you. His eyes are stormy, rife with frustration, his pupils nearly overtaking his irises.

"It's okay." You watch the anger practically drain from his face the second your finger smoothes his hair back into place. You try to give him your most encouraging, winsome smile, but it feels weak. "Go on. It's all right."

He spends a moment there, hovering over you with his lips pursed, like he'd still rather kill the guy and finish what you started. But then he dips his head and lets out another perturbed sigh, like you've come to associate with him.

Lyutsifer uses the flat of his palm to drag your skirt back down over your hips— as though your decency is something that can be preserved, now. You throb with want, your core begging for something to relieve the tension he's wrought in you, but there's nothing for it.

When he stands, you have to fight not to reach for him again. Mostly because of the dark spot on the front of his trousers, which is entirely of your own creation.

He captures your hand before he leaves, to press a quick kiss to your knuckles. There's something gallant in it, like he's making a promise to you with his lips. You watch him breeze past the guard on his way out of the room, as calm and composed as you've ever seen him, and you think you've done a noble thing, a good thing.

What you don't see is Lyutsifer turning on the guard in the stairway, jamming the tip of a fountain pen into the man's jugular. As the guard burbles and splutters on his own blood, Lyutsifer sucks in a deep breath that doesn't do much to clear the thought of you from his mind.

"Interruptions," he hisses while wiping the guard's blood off of his hands.

Admittedly, it was way too easy to get into his room. Deceptively easy. Stupidly easy. The kind of easy that makes you think that it may be a trap. Except, what else is there to trap you with? This whole island is a trap, the whole thing is meant to keep you here and keep you his.

You didn't know what you expected to find. Perhaps a dank dungeon full of corpses, to make you believe that he's nothing more than Bluebeard, come to life. But, it appears that Lyutsifer must keep his skeletons elsewhere; his room is just as orderly, just as unassuming as he likes to appear, himself.

The room is bigger than yours. The walls and floors are still concrete, but there's something airy about it. Maybe the ceiling is higher? He has a chandelier that doubles as an abstract art piece, hanging over a king sized bed with midnight blue sheets. The wardrobe has two doors of obsidian glass, to match the obsidian coffee table in a sitting area closer to the balcony doors. When you open the wardrobe, you find nothing but a neatly organized closet. There's not even a lockbox hidden in the back, nothing of curiosity or note.

It's a strange thing, to have a glimpse into the inner world of someone who remains such an enigma to you. Everything is so stark, so… tidy. Nothing really appears lived-in or used. The spines of the books on the shelves are all intact, and you wonder if they've ever been opened. Upon close inspection, you find that Lyutsifer is fond of the Romantics— Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, Blake— but notably, Byron has been omitted from the catalogue. You have to stifle a laugh. Night is dark, water is wet. Lyutsifer Safin dislikes Byron.

But even the letter opener on the desk, a silver thing with an ornate handle, appears to have never been used. Perhaps it's more decorative than useful. The blade is not edged, but it comes to a point that glints in the light. You hold it in your hands, feeling the weight of it, the coolness of the metal in your palm.

You could kill him. The voice in your head is quieter this time than all the other times you've heard it, over the months you've spent on the island. Drive it into his heart. Escape before anyone notices.

…And never see him again. That's a new voice. You don't know what to make of it. That voice confuses you, makes you hesitate when you should be acting, instead. That voice makes you crave him more than you crave your freedom, and it's getting louder than the rest all the time. Never kiss him again. Never hold him again. Never look into his eyes and feel…

What? What is it that you feel for him?

"Planning something?"

You jump, your heart rate spiking. You didn't hear him come in— he just appears out of the shadows like a vision. Lyutsifer takes in the sight of you holding the letter opener with a curious expression on his face. He doesn't look surprised to find you in his room, or even bothered by it at all. He seems just as resigned to it as though he always expected you to be here, waiting for him once he'd gotten done with… whatever it was that was wrong in the factory. A security breach, whatever that could mean.

"Oh, I was just thinking about killing you." You say it so flippantly, returning your attention back to the blade in your hand, but you turn it just slightly so that you capture his image in the polished surface. You watch his eyes rake over you, lingering for a moment on the short, insignificant nothing of a skirt on your nightgown. The one he'd had his hand under just a mere hour ago.

"How would you do it, I wonder?" There's a reserved sort of mirth in his voice, like the prospect of you taking a knife to him turns him on. You wouldn't be surprised if it did.

"In your sleep," you tell him, pressing your finger to the tip of the blade and twirling it. It's not sharp enough to do anything but dent your skin, but given the right amount of pressure, it could certainly pierce into someone's chest. If you were resolved enough. If you had the right amount of desperation. "Would you be dreaming of me, do you think?"

"Of course I would be. And I would die in bliss." The earnestness of his words makes you shiver as he steps towards you, draws one gentle finger up the curve of your spine. He pauses at the nape of your neck, resting his hand there possessively. Then, he remarks, "You won't kill me."

"No?" You shoot him a look over your shoulder. Lyutsifer hovers so close, carving out a place for himself in your space like it's his own. "What makes you so sure?"

He reaches forward and takes your hand in his, squeezing your fist before guiding you to turn toward him.

The point of the blade presses into his sternum, and he keeps you there, never flinching. Lyutsifer's fingers flex against the back of your hand, narrowing the distance between you until the hilt practically touches your own chest. In this way he holds your gaze, his mouth curling up in the slightest smirk while you tremble.

You stare at the blade pressed into his chest, drawing the fabric of his blouse taut against his skin. Chewing on your lip, your brow pinches as you consider the possibility. It would take nothing. A sharp thrust, a shifting of your weight, and his skin would give beneath your force. And then, what? You return to your old life, as though nothing happened? An army doesn't come after you?

Poisons me, poisons you.

He doesn't have to say it for you to know that he means it, in his eyes and in his hands. He strokes his thumb over the back of your neck, as though he has already forgiven you for it. Before you've even made up your mind that it's what you want to do.

You blink up at him. He fixates on your lips for a moment before meeting your eye again. His gaze is so adoring in a way you cannot fathom— as though you could do anything to him and you would still have him wrapped around your finger. That look… it goes straight to your core. Heat blooms from every point of contact you have with him, your heart pounding in your chest as though you've been poisoned again. He is the poison. It's him.

"You precious thing," Lyutsifer croons, his hand wrapping around the back of your neck, fingers pressing into the sides of your throat. You know he can feel the way your pulse jumps against his touch. "How lovely it would be, for you to cut out my heart. It belongs to you, after all."

The blade clatters to the floor, skittering to a stop near the bed. You take a deep, shuddering breath, since air suddenly can't get into your lungs and stay there. His scent surrounds you, fiery and sweet like cypress and incense. It disrupts your train of thought, entirely.

"This… This is insanity." You feel yourself nodding, even though the words sound half-baked as they fall from your mouth. "I'm losing my mind."

"You say that as though love has ever been sane." His eyes are darker than they ought to be, even in the low light of the room. "Why deny yourself any longer?"

You breathe tightly, and as arousal beats a steady rhythm in your core, you find yourself fisting his shirt in your hands. You tug him to you and kiss him, like his lips are the only thing that make sense to you right now. His touch, his taste. The feeling of him pressed against you, and the warmth of his skin on yours.

Lyutsifer holds your face in his hands, tilting your jaw and licking into your mouth. However much you want him, he kisses you like his desire for you is tenfold. His fingers circle your throat, holding you steady as he deepens the kiss as though staking a claim to you. You rake your nails through his hair and moan at the feeling, at the sweetness of him, and the relief that it brings.

"Lyutsifer," you speak into his mouth and hear his breath hitch. "Take me to bed."

And he does.

Your silk nightgown flutters to the floor like so much smoke. His hands and mouth are on you, teeth grazing your shoulder as he backs you towards the bed. He lays you down like you are something to be cherished, to be revered. He traces your skin with his lips like you are the most delicate thing in the world, to him.

Kneeling at the end of the bed, he kisses the inside of your thigh. He moves so slow, to savour you in all your nakedness, your legs spread before him on his own bed, stripped down to the bone. Lyutsifer's breath sweeps across your skin, and without even meaning to, you shiver in his hold.

"Do not be afraid, my love." His voice is a delicate purr in his throat. If his objective was to keep you from trembling, that was the worst thing he could have done.

"I'm not afraid." You despise how your words waver, while everything within you draws up tight and aching. "I'm— my god, I just want you so bad, I can't stand it."

"Patience is a virtue," Lyutsifer hums low, using the most patronizing tone imaginable, and you fucking hate him for it right now.

"Don't talk to me about patience when you're between my le—" You cut yourself off on a gasp, because he turns his head and sinks his teeth into the inside of your thigh hard enough that you're sure it's going to leave a mark.

"Quiet." He soothes the bite with the swath of his tongue, lingering on the flavor of your skin for a moment. You lift your head to find him watching you with piercing intensity. "I have been patient enough, waiting for a taste of you. You can certainly learn some of it."

Lyutsifer's hand smoothes down the curve of your thigh before he hooks his hand behind your knee, pulling you towards the edge of the bed, towards him. He dips his head to breathe you in, his nose pressed against your pelvis and gasping like it's all the air he needs. He clutches you in his hands, spreads you open so wide that there can be no more hiding from him, no more shying away.

Goosebumps prickle along your skin when he presses his tongue against your cunt. It's been so long since someone went down on you, and even then it was only as a begrudging favor— but you can tell that Lyutsifer enjoys it, derives pleasure from it, just by the way he takes to you and lets out a content, resonating moan.

Your nails scratch at his scalp, your hips bucking towards him. Warmth spreads through your limbs and twists through your core, as he licks upwards and closes his mouth over your clit. Lyutsifer's hand leaves your thigh so that he can prod his fingers inside. You bend towards him with the surge of heat, a pleading whine issuing from your throat.

"That's it, darling," he whispers as he works his fingers into you. His tongue, dripping wet and hot as sin, strokes long and hard over your clit, his fingers curling up against a spot that makes you cry out.

Like with everything else, he is precise, calculating— he takes note of each hitch of your breath, each time your knees quiver against his shoulders, each soft moan that falls from your mouth. He takes his time, slowly bringing you close to the edge of oblivion, without faltering.

"Lyutsifer—" You gasp his name, your hand tightening in his hair as you feel yourself hurtling toward an orgasm. All your floor muscles clamp down at once, and your eyes roll back. "Oh my god."

Lyutsifer curls his fingers within you, feeling the way your muscles contract and release, the way your hips seek him out desperately. "Go on, sweet girl," he tells you, and his voice is a low rumble in the darkness, far headier than you've ever heard it.

It rises up in you just at the sound of his voice, at his gentle permission to let go. You make an obscene sound, loud and impossibly wrecked as you cum in his mouth. His tongue swirls gentle circles around your clit and every nerve in your body sings. Your hands grip at his head as though he might leave, but he doesn't.

He stays there for a long time. Even after you've come down, after you've stopped twitching against him. Your hips still follow his movements, like he puppeteers every bit of your pleasure, and your body is only a vessel for him to control. But he lingers, until he builds you up again, back towards that same peak.

And then he breaks away. It's maddening. You're there, teetering on the edge again, waiting for the drop that doesn't come. For a second time today, he rips his hand away from you too soon, and you have to bite back a sob. You have the mind to kick him, except your limbs are as strong as gelatin, now.

You make a pitiful sound, your lungs deflating as you grip the sheets, and then cover your face. Laying there shaking, you're sure that you look completely helpless. You open your mouth to snap something impossibly bitchy at him, but then you see a flash of something from between your fingers, and you feel the mattress dip on either side of you. Something warm and wet melts along the skin of your stomach, and it takes you a moment to realize that it's his tongue, dragging up the line of your ribs and between your breasts, as he stalks above you on the bed.

"Look at me."

You pull your hands away from your eyes to meet his. Lyutsifer hovers over you, bracing himself with his arms, caging you in. Thoughts spiral around your head, calling visions of the hundreds of ways you've had him in your dreams, all the times you thought of having him in this exact position.

You drag your gaze down his neck, to his chest, to where his naked hips press against yours, skin on hot skin, your thighs parted for him. His scars are more extensive than you once thought— they stretch down his chest, over his arms and along his ribs like lightning splitting the sky. It occurs to you that this is probably the reason why he has never done more than use his hands on you, up until now.

He's beautiful.

Still trying to wrap your mind around it, around him, you reach forward and rest your hand against his warm chest. His heart pounds beneath your touch. You adore his body, and every inch of it that you haven't seen before enraptures you. Your hands itch to hold him, your teeth ache to sink into him. You want every part of him against every part of you, if you can get it.

"You have never feared me," Lyutsifer says after a moment. And then, his brow draws in the slightest bit of confusion. "Why?"

You search for the answer to that question, endless possibilities spinning through your mind. Of all the emotions he has ever wrought in you, fear has never been one of them. It does strike you as odd, but not unbelievable. You have hated him, desired him, felt… affection for him, if that's what it could be called. But not fear. For all the reasons that he's given you to fear him, none of them have ever hit the mark. Why?

Finally, you settle on the most reasonable conclusion. "Because I know you," you say, and touch his face, sweeping your thumb over his cheekbone. You focus on his eyes, the way his pupils have almost entirely eclipsed his irises. "I know you like I know myself. Because you're mine."

It comes out more possessively than you intend for it to. Lyutsifer searches your face for some kind of deception, but there isn't any. You mean it.

"You're mine," you repeat, and as you do, you drag your thigh against his hip, hooking your leg around his waist. "Aren't you?"

Lyutsifer takes a deep breath in, and lets it out with a long, rumbling hum that makes you lose your grasp on reality. You feel lightheaded, entirely intoxicated by him as he grinds his hips so slowly up against yours, and tips his head to to drag his lips along your jaw, up to your ear. "I've told you before, darling. Take my life. It belongs to you."

Your teeth dig into your bottom lip as he enters you in one slow, fluid stroke. It arrests everything within you. You spread your legs further and arch your back like you can urge him deeper, the thickness of him making your toes curl.

It's been too long. It's been way, way too long since you've been properly fucked— it's made you so sensitive, your cunt tightening around him to the point that it almost hurts. You sink into the mattress beneath his weight, your nails raking up his back. "Fuck—"

Lyutsifer groans into your ear, and shifts against you. He pulls your leg up, angling his hips to hit something absolutely devastating inside you. You cry out, flinging your arms around him as he starts up a steady pace. Of course, he is nothing if not patient, measured as he always is.

There is no rush, only slow pleasure bleeding into everything, and the taste of a thousand sweet deaths rising in the back of your throat, like licking honey from thorns. Your clit is pounding, your head humming with a song that you can't quite figure out the cadence to. Lyutsifer turns his head and captures your mouth in a kiss, moaning as his tongue delves in to taste you. His hand, still holding your thigh, squeezes as he pushes in, feeling flesh give under his touch as his hips meet yours.

"So this is what it takes," he whispers, touched with a note of awe, "for you to stop fighting me, hm?"

You open your mouth to speak, but you're at a loss for any words that could possibly form there. He's so deep, surrounding you entirely. You can't think. It's as though he has crawled under your skin, into the cradle of your ribcage, and made a home within your body that will only ever belong to him.

"I'm t—tired of trying," you stutter out, hissing through your teeth as you bite back a whimper. You seek him out, dragging your tongue along the slope of his neck as though you can map him out with your sense of taste, and let your breath ghost over the trail your saliva makes. "Just let me— I want—"

You hook your ankles behind his back, locking him against you. You sink your teeth into the juncture of his shoulder and he moans aloud, snapping his hips forward and jolting you against the mattress. Something about him has turned you bloodthirsty. Your cunt throbs in warning, hot pleasure erupting through your core at the feeling. Lyutsifer groans, pausing as he closes his eyes, and you know just from the way he shakes that he must be close, as well.

"You can have anything you want," he coos, much gentler than you want him to be. Your eyelashes flutter when he traces the shell of your ear with his teeth. "I'll take care of you. Just tell me."

You know that he means it. You know that he would give you anything that you want. Anything, except for your freedom. For the first time, you're not sure if that's what you desire. "Lyutsifer, please…"

"Tell me." Lyutsifer raises his head to look at you, and a moan chokes off in your throat as though it's been broken in half. Gazing at you like you are the single most perfect thing in the world to him, his eyes are like two glittering sapphires. "What is it, darling?"

You don't really know what you're asking for. He's just so gorgeous— you're entranced by him, completely consumed by your lust for him and your desire to have him in any way that you can. "I just… I just lo—"

You cut yourself off on a gasp, tightening your grip on your senses. No. You can't say that. You don't know where that thought came from, but you need it to go away right now. Biting your tongue, you whimper instead of finishing your sentence.

I just love you. It must have boiled up from the basest part of you, from somewhere deep enough that you never saw it coming.

Oh, god.

You've fallen for him.

It's impossible. Entirely implausible. There's no way that you could have fallen for fucking Lyutsifer Safin. Apathy is easy, hatred is comfortable— love is something else entirely. But there it is, like a bomb that has not yet detonated, or a bullet without its casing. It takes nothing to debase yourself; it takes even less for you to dig your own grave. What a punch line at the end of a very funny joke.

You love him. Fucking great.

"Want you to cum," you pant, as a replacement for what you refuse to say, and clamp your hand around the back of his neck like you can force him to do what you say if you squeeze hard enough.

A small scoff of a laugh falls from his lips, disbelieving. "That's what you want?" You're nodding before he even finishes his question, pulling him into you with your legs and your arms, trying to cling to him and get him closer, although you aren't entirely sure if that's possible.

"I want it," you insist in a wobbly voice, still nodding. You're frantic, scrambling for something to override the irrational conclusion you've just been faced with. "I want you to cum, Lyutsifer. Give it— give it to me."

He rests his forehead against yours, his hips never faltering. He's too pretty. You hate him.

"You first." His gravelly voice is like a bolt of lightning between your legs— but then he reaches between you, brushes his thumb over your clit, and you're done for. Pleasure arcs through you and breaks. You shatter with a loud cry, digging your fingers into his hair, while your hips chase his frantically and you jerk in his hold.

Lyutsifer curses, a broken noise coming from him as he loses himself. He plants his hips against yours, shivering at the feeling of you throbbing and clenching around him, and he cums with your name on his lips. You drag your hand up his spine, feeling the tremors in his body, his shoulders flexing and chest heaving as he lays his whole weight on top of you.

You both lay for a while, sweat damp skin on skin, breathing in each others' air. What hovers between you feels like a blank slate; nothing is the same, but whatever lays ahead is entirely unwritten. He can't know what you were going to say— you think you saved yourself a second before disaster, before you could say something that you could never take back.

But the more you think about it, tracing your fingers up and down his spine, the more you think it wouldn't really make a difference. Would it? If you really belong to each other?

You take a sobering breath, and lift your hand to stroke your thumb over the apple of his cheek. "Lyutsifer?"

He blinks at you slowly. "Mm?"

"Why does the sea love the shore?"

Lyutsifer wets his lip with his tongue, his brow still pressed to yours. He considers the question for a moment, before he answers, "Because nature deems it so. There cannot be one without the other. They are… bound, by their very existence. Made for each other."

"That sounds about right." Sounds about like what you figured he would say, anyway. He rolls off of you with one last brush of his lips to your temple. Without his warmth, the cold air kisses your skin and makes you shiver.

Staring up at the ceiling, your mind inevitably drifts to the letter opener, where it lays on the floor at the end of the bed. You can still kill him, says that ever-quieter voice in your head. Wait until he falls asleep. Stab him in the heart. It's yours, isn't it?

Lighter than a feather, Lyutsifer's hand drifts over the plane of your stomach, and his arm wraps around your waist. He pulls you closer and presses the smallest kiss to your shoulder. The motion is… tender. Sweet. Hinting at a desire for closeness that you had not expected from him.

"Lyutsifer…"

You pause. You open and close your mouth, searching for something to say to fill the silence, to avoid the words that still so desperately want to jump out of your mouth, even as you beat them back. I love you. I love you. I love you. You swallow it down. You simply refuse to say it.

Instead, you finally resort to, "Why do you hate Byron?"

He's quiet for longer than before. Then, he murmurs, "Because he was a simpering little pissant who fucked his sister."

A loud blast of laughter erupts from you, causing him to snicker against your skin.

Maybe later. You have to agree with the second voice. You'll kill him later.

Matt has done some far more idiotic things in his life. For one, there was the time he almost fell off the Brooklyn Bridge because he thought it would be a good idea to practice his balance on a windy night. There was the time he shadowed Foggy on a date and had to pretend like he wasn’t there when Foggy threw up in the pub bathroom from his nerves (college was rough on the poor guy). There was the time he almost died because he was stabbed in the side and failed to mention it to anyone. 

That actually happens really often, but he digresses. 

None of these absolutely hair-brained stunts has ever had him feeling like this, though. His hands shaking as they fist at his mask, wringing it out like a dishrag, water splattering at his feet from where it had saturated the fabric. His heart hammering so hard in his chest that it very nearly drowns out the sound of everything else for a moment. Just long enough for him to accept that he’s fucking scared.

Scared of what exactly, he’s not sure yet. Maybe that he got the wrong address? (Of course he didn’t, he could find his way back to your house from any point in the city; there’s that familiar smell of peony laundry detergent and chamomile-laced perfume oil that follows you around wherever you go, seeping from the cracks around the door. You’ve been drinking- what is it, two glasses of wine? He tastes it in the air.) 

Maybe that he hasn’t spoken to you in months and you might have found someone else? (Also not true, he’s been keeping tabs on you. Not in a creepy way- well it might be considered creepy from an outsider’s perspective- he just worries about you, and so much shit has been going on recently that he sleeps better at night if he knows you’re okay. He also finds it interesting that you went on a date with another guy named Matt a couple weeks ago, but that’s really none of his business.)

Maybe the truth is that he’s terrified you’ll turn him away, because he left. Because you have every business doing so, and it’s his fault. He can’t deny that. 

He still hesitates when he raises his fist to knock his bleeding knuckles against your door. A last chance to back out with grace. Not that he has any. 

He hears your heart rate lurch at the knock. You never were one for unsolicited visitors, but at least he’s not here to preach the word of God. He always could, if it really came down to it, but he knows you’d sooner punch him in the jaw than listen. 

When the door opens, it’s with a flood of warmth from inside to soothe his chilled and aching skin. He hears you fighting to remain calm, hears your heart pounding in your chest until he wonders if you’re going to have a heart attack. That smell of yours, of all the florals mixed with a bit of your natural scent and the wine on your breath, is enough to launch him back to six months ago in his mind. 

“Are you insane?” are the first words out of your mouth, because Matt looks like a fucking mess. His hair plastered against his skull, dressed like some version of Brandon Lee from The Crow, with a rain-soaked black long sleeve top and form fitting pants. Well, the tattered remains of what used to be pants. He grips a wad of fabric in his hands that you hope was meant to clean him up, but with one look at him you don’t think he’s been using it. His face is lacerated and bruised, and a thin trail of blood drips from the corner of his lip, rips in the fabric of his top revealing cuts too deep to have just been from falling or crashing into something.

He’s still beautiful. Not that you’d tell him.

“I- uh, yeah. Most likely.” he winces as a twinge of pain stabs at him just below the ribs. “I know it looks bad…”

“Bad?” You raise your hands forward to tentatively touch him, seemingly to reaffirm that he is truly here and not merely an apparition. When you draw your hand back, you inspect it to find your palm wet and sticky with his blood and rain water. “You- my god, Matt, this is so much blood- you look like you died.”

He presses his lips together, deciding now is probably not the best time to laugh in your face. “It’s just been that kind of a year.”

You stare at him, trying to determine if he’s joking or if he was just hit on the head really, really hard. That kind of a year- he means the kind without you, right? After he told you it wouldn’t work out and, with no explanation, left you high and dry at the beginning of it. And now, after spending months wondering what you did wrong and pulling yourself together, he stands on your doorstep bleeding all over everything and shaking like a ticking bomb, and you’re supposed to hear him out?

“What the hell happened to you?” You still sound livid, even if your touch barely ghosts over his skin. “And don’t say you just had a clumsy blind moment, we both know that’s not true.”

“I was attacked by the toaster.” 

“You know, you can always leave if you’re gonna be a dick about it.”

He exhales a bit too quickly and winces again. “Look, my life has been… really complicated since I left. And I, um. I don’t want to make yours complicated either, but… I haven’t stopped thinking about you. I can’t. And I know I can’t come in and pretend like I didn’t leave without saying goodbye, or run away because I was afraid, because I did, and I was. I was afraid that if I told you what I was planning to do, you would hate me for it. But I think I’m more afraid of losing you- really losing you- than anything else.”

There’s a long pause, wherein you chew on your bottom lip because he’s so cute, even when he’s scaring you half to death and you could absolutely rip into him for saying this now, and not six months ago. But, you’re feeling generous, and he’s still shaking. 

He opens his mouth to say something else, but thinks better of it when your hand gently settles against his cheek, as though you’re frightened to cause him more pain.

“That didn’t answer my question, but I’m gonna give you a pass because that speech was kind of sweet and you’re getting blood all over my porch,” you mutter, pulling away from him. “I need to get you cleaned up. Jesus, did you have to come to me all beat to shit when I've been drinking?”

He’s sure the smile that slips across his lips is all but patronizing. “I might be able to plan the next time accordingly.” With an exhausted exhale, he leans against the door frame as a wave of vertigo spins through his skull.

You hum lowly in the back of your throat, fingers dragging lightly up the front of his chest until they dig into his shoulder with such a vice-like grip that it surprises even him. “Upstairs.”

Matt imagines it must be the way that you hold him once again, broken and covered in blood but so alive, that makes him lean into your embrace like it’s his lifeline to reality. His hands on your waist may be cold, but the heat in his chest attests to that. 

The idea would have been an impossibility to him even a week ago. But now he holds you, he lets you carry him up the stairs to your bathroom, and it’s like the weight of the world has been lifted from his shoulders, for a time.

Matt doesn’t remember passing out, but when he wakes up with a mattress beneath him, he temporarily forgets where exactly he is. He startles, flinching before he recognizes your weight against him for what it is, and the scent of you all over and around him.

“Relax. You’re safe, you’re in my bed, idiot,” you mumble against his chest, the movement of your lips dragging against his skin and setting him quite suddenly aflame. ‘Safe’ and ‘In his ex’s bed’ are typically quite the oxymoron, but he’s not going to argue when your thumb traces a little circle over his heart. 

“Is this… Microfiber?” he fiddles with the stretchy, filmy fabric on the mattress, trying his hardest not to move too much. It seems like his hands are about the only thing that aren’t hurting, and even then, his knuckles are still cracked and scabbed over, smarting when he moves his fingers too much. 

“After the silk sheets I could never go back to cotton. It’s too rough.”

Matt exhales slowly, his hand finding your leg where it’s wrapped across his midsection. “What happened to my clothes?”

“They were soaked, had to take ‘em off.”

“And what happened to your clothes?”

“Had to get you warm somehow.”

He grunts like it’s no big deal, but he can hear and feel your heart pounding in your chest where it’s pressed against his side, and his own mimics it. His body is immeasurably sore and he feels the numerous bandages you’ve pasted to his skin in his sleep, but for some reason it’s your presence, and the warm press of your skin against his, that has him scarcely able to breathe.

“So. You wanna tell me how you’re the vigilante from the news?” His mouth opens and closes like he’s floundering for some excuse, and you lift your head. “Don’t try it. I saw the mask, and I patched up all the battle scars. You can’t lie your way out of this one, Matt.”

“Ouch.”

You pull your hand away from his chest. “Shit, did I hurt you?”

“Only my pride.” He grabs your hand and pulls it back to his chest, to rest over his heart. “Guess I had it coming, though.”

You mumble a couple swears and drop your head back onto his shoulder. “Spill the beans or I’m leaving you to warm yourself.”

He clears his throat. Where should he begin? With the fact that he left you because he didn’t want to drag you into it, or the fact that he just did anyways and made the six months he’s spent without you, and all the agony he put you through, entirely pointless?

And, in that way you’ve always had of being able to read him like a book, you murmur, “Start at the beginning,” your voice as soft as it can be without being a whisper. He’s noticed that you do that for him and no one else; like you’re aware that he can hear too much all of the time, and you’re just trying to keep it down for him.

So, he talks for what feels like ages, your hand so still on his chest that he might think you were asleep if it wasn’t for your erratic breathing, far from the slow and steady pace of one who’s dreaming. He tells you about crime rings and their illicit activities, about corrupt cops, about the law firm and how close he’s been to being killed at night before waking up and pretending to be a normal lawyer each day. He explains how he fights, how he uses every sense he has to paint a picture of his surroundings. 

“I didn’t want you to know,” he finishes brokenly, after who knows how many minutes of his rambling speech. It all seems so monotonous to him, like he’s a broken record spinning on a player, repeating the same phrases over and over. I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want you to see me differently. Leaving you is easier than giving us a slow death.

“I... understand.” Your heart skips a beat. 

“Liar.”

You shift, and the curve of your breast crushes up against his side as your breath draws soft and hot across his neck. Matt drums his fingers against your spine, not sure why the simple reminder that he has your naked body pressed up against him is enough to have him burning beneath his skin. 

“How are you so sure?” you ask him, that little bit of bite back in your voice. He smirks, and a rush of heat beneath your skin warms your cheeks. He always did have such a pretty smile.

“Your heartbeat.” His hand lifts and presses into the valley of your breasts, his fingers so long and wide that they splay across your chest and nearly graze one of your nipples. Your breath catches in your throat. “I can hear it, you know.”

“That’s- um. Well.” He tries not to smile too unabashedly as he feels your heart pound against his hand, as though he couldn’t already hear it kicking into gear. “That’s not the strangest thing you’ve said tonight. You can hear everyone’s heartbeats?”

“I can hear more than heartbeats.” He wonders how much he can safely tell you, without you getting too overwhelmed. He turns his head to the left, in the direction of the far wall. “Your neighbor, June, is going on a date with… a girl named April? That’s poetic.”

“Oh my god.” You snort and hide your face in his neck, but he can feel you smile against his skin. “She was telling me about that. Does it sound like it’s going to be good?”

A beat of silence. “She’s lamenting about what dress to wear. It’s between a red one or a black one.”

“Fuck.” You shift across him, your arm extending as he grunts and grips you around the waist, while you smack at something on the bedside table. “The black one, it has to be the black one.”

“Oh, and what will you tell her about your perfect timing?” He asks you condescendingly as you lean back to open your texts. “Your ex that can hear through walls told you that she’s having trouble?”

“She leaves her blinds open all the time, I can just say I saw her looking at the options. It is imperative that she picks the black one.”

“Sounds like.” He waits until he hears your phone thunk down on the bedside table again to lay his other hand on your back, his fingers lightly tracing down your spine. You pause, your breath hitting his lips from how close you are to him, and he can still taste wine on it; but, he imagines, the taste of your breath in his mouth alone is intoxicating enough. “I know you don’t understand, not entirely,” he tells you softly as you hover over his face. “But I hope you know that there is nothing I wouldn’t do to keep you safe. No part of me that I wouldn’t give.”

“Matt,” you tut, and although your heart lurches in your chest, you shift your thigh and the soft cotton of your panties shifts against his bare hip. “Still torching for me after all this time?”

“I thought that was obvious by the way I groveled at the door.”

“I wouldn’t call it groveling, exactly. You didn’t beg for me to take you back.” You peer down your nose at Matt’s unfocused eyes, how his lashes flutter as he takes an unsteady breath. “But even if you do- beg, that is- and even if I did take you back, you wouldn’t stop, would you? I’d always be second to the rest of Hell’s Kitchen.”

He’s quiet, probably for a bit too long. “You shouldn’t… shouldn’t be second to anyone. You don’t deserve that.”

“But I would be, with you.”

His lashes kiss his cheeks. He doesn’t want to make promises that he can’t keep.

“It’s all right, Matt. You can be the hero everyone needs. I don’t think I could love you as much as I do if you were any less.” A pause. “But I’m not going to be able to stand it, worrying every night about whether or not you’re out there getting yourself killed. Wondering if every kiss is the last one I get with you.”

Matt swallows thickly, his eyes brimming with tears. “You love me?”

Your heavy sigh hits his jaw and lips. “For a guy with supposed super-hearing, your attention to detail is pretty damn selective.”

His hand comes up to follow the curve of your jaw before settling against your throat to pull you to him, closing the gap between your mouths. You give a little squeak that makes his heart lurch as he does his level best to trace every corner of your mouth with his tongue. 

He’ll never get tired of kissing you. He doesn’t know why he ever thought it would be a good idea to let you go; he must have lost his mind somewhere along the way.

“That wasn’t the last one,” Matt says hoarsely once he lets you go. Your foreheads pressed together, your lips still brushing over his with every panting breath you make, you give a minute shake of your head. 

“Better not be.”

Your body shifts until you’re straddling his waist, hovering just over his bare body and slowly sinking your weight onto his groin, staying clear of each of his injuries and letting him take his time processing what you’re doing.

His breath hitches and he groans as you grind the front of your panties onto his cock. “I- sweetheart, I don’t know if I can do this right now. Like this.”

“Who said you have to do anything, Matty?” You slowly and gently roll your hips against his, remembering just how much he loves subtle touches and movements. “Tell me to stop, and I’ll stop.”

“N-... No, don’t stop, don’t- fuck.” He cants his hips up into yours, a weak groan breaking in his throat from the strain of trying to move against you, his head rolling back against your pillow. 

“You’re so pretty like this, honey,” you hum before you press a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth, finding his hands to place them gently on your hips. “But I’m gonna need you to stop moving, before you hurt yourself even more.”

“You want me to just lay here?” He hears the impatience and need in his own voice, and he would be embarrassed if you weren’t distracting him with the slow back and forth brush of your groin against him.

“I expect you to hold still and take what I give to you, for once. I know it’s a very difficult task for you.”

The growl he makes could be construed as dangerous, if you didn’t already know him like the back of your hand. His fingers dig into the flesh of your ass, tugging at the elastic of your panties like he might try to tear them in half in a minute; which you may not actually dislike, but you know he’s not in any shape to be exerting himself right now. His arms and chest are covered in angry red scrapes and cuts, still tender and inflamed around the edges. You wouldn’t want him to break one of them open. 

It takes everything in him to try to keep still, with you rubbing yourself on his cock until he can feel the dampness of the one little scrap of fabric keeping him from feeling you, with how he can taste your wetness in the air, hanging over him like a thick haze. And when you finally do slip your hand down between your bodies to pull the fabric to the side, the heat of your cunt nearly burns him.

“Oh,” he gasps, with a burst of air from his lungs like he momentarily forgot to breathe. 

“Fuck, Matt.” It’s not like you forgot how big he is- who the hell could? He’s goddamn glorious- but six months without it does damage to one’s readiness. It takes you a long moment to take him in entirely, and even then, the stretch your body makes to accommodate him has your toes curling. 

It’s no wonder you had a hard time finding someone who could compare.

You don’t move. You sink onto his cock, squeezing him like a vice, and he swears he could come just from the feeling of being inside you again. Just from having your heat and your wetness around him, melting him from the inside out. “Baby, please-”

“So, now you’re gonna beg?”

Matt groans. Not just because you’re right (you’re so right), but because you flex your muscles once around his cock, and he squirms just enough that you plant your hands on his hips to keep him still.

“Stay down, Matty.” 

Stay down. His heart jumps so hard he can feel it in his fingertips, where they press into your hips and likely leave marks behind. You nuzzle at his jaw before you gently bite it, your cunt pulsing around him like you don’t plan to fuck him, you just plan on milking him dry and then leaving him to lick his wounds. He wouldn’t be surprised if you did.

And then you move, slowly picking your hips up just to bring them back down to meet his again. Matt makes the softest little noise, carried by some form of submission he hasn’t been able to reach for ages, as he gives under your touch. It’s been so long since he’s been able to let go, to give up control. Of course it would only be you that he gives it to.

His split lip still tastes like blood when you bite down on it, the slow and steady rocking of your hips making him start panting, broken gasps of air whispering over your mouth and cheek. His hands tighten on your hips, trying to urge you in your movements, guide you to pick up the pace, but you shake your head as you hum into his ear.

“It’s been too damn long, don’t you want to take your time?”

“You know I never like to take my time.”

“Took your time coming back to me,” you mumble petulantly, snapping your hips down against his and making him grunt out a surprised groan, his hands landing on the small of your back. “But I think I can find it in me to forgive you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Your hands grapple for the headboard, leveraging your arms to help you sit up just a bit. “That’s how this works. You let me fuck you nice and slow, and I’ll consider forgiving you.”

His hands glide up your sides and sweep across your breasts, grounding you to the moment even when you threaten to lose your head in the bliss of having him inside you. His voice comes out a bit weak when he says, “Doesn’t seem like a fair exchange.”

“Never said it was supposed to be fair.” You grab one of his hands and lift it to your mouth, kissing his fingertips before taking them between your lips. Your tongue dances over and around the digits, soft and hot and dividing his attention. With one swirling, heavenly motion, you slip his two fingers out of your mouth and drag them, wet with your saliva, down between your breasts. “But I’m sure you’ll come up with some debonair quid-pro-quo, eventually.”

“Now you’re starting to talk like a lawyer,” he says with a smirk and, following the previous direction of your hand, lets his slick fingers glide down your stomach and past the bunched up edge of your panties to find your clit. “I like it.”

A high pitched moan echoes from your throat, your head tilting back and tossing the sound up toward the ceiling as his fingers stroke smooth circles against your clit. As if you could fold in on yourself from the feeling, your hand tightens on the headboard so hard the wood creaks in your grip, your hips lock up against his and hold, every nerve in your body trained on that one point of sharp pleasure.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Matt murmurs, trying to keep his voice steady but it comes out a bit too close to a groan as he feels you pulse around him, your heart pounding in your chest and your thighs locking up on either side of his hips. He continues the steady circles he makes with his fingers, his free hand sweeping up your thigh to feel the muscle twitch beneath his touch. Your hand squeezes desperately at the wood above his head, squeaking and slipping with accumulated sweat. He grits his teeth as he presses down just a bit harder, and feels your muscles all contract at once. 

Your eyes are screwed shut, and you search for something to spit out at him but nothing comes, save for the mind-numbing feeling of him spinning you toward orgasm. Weren’t you just saying, something-something take your time? 

“It’s okay. You can let go,” Matt breathes from beneath you, sounding something close to death. “I’ll catch you.”

“Shut up.” You smack your hand down against his mouth, catching his nose with your fingertips and making him give you a muffled snort of laughter. Which he then chokes on, because you give a jerky move of your hips and his cock twitches inside you just as he involuntarily bucks up against you.

His fingers turn clumsy against your clit as you resume your slow, lazy pace, your bottom lip so firmly pressed between your teeth you fear you might draw some blood and mimic his own lips. It’s torturous, how soft and measured you can be, when he knows you’d love nothing more than to fuck him so hard and loud that the neighbors complain. He should learn not to underestimate your resolve, but he never does. 

Matt kisses your fingertips, dragging his nails dully down your thigh as he feels the muscle flex with every up-and-down, up-and-down, so patient and strong. Each moan that passes from your lips is sweet like honey, such that he can practically taste it in the back of his throat, along with the rest of you, of your sex and perfume and the tang of the blood you’ve just drawn from your lip.

God, he could drown in you for days.

“W-what do you want?” He graduates from begging to bargaining, as everything focuses down to the pinpoint of a needle, his breath coming out in a staggering wheeze. “I’ll give it to you, tell m-”

“I want you to shut up, you fucking- sexy- goddamn-” You pound your hand down against the headboard as heat licks sweetly at the base of your spine, spurred on by his fingers stroking you. You manage to blink down at him, your hand still lightly resting on top of his smiling lips, and in a daze of tenderness, you stroke your knuckles down the side of his face. “You’re so beautiful, Matty.”

And there it is. You watch Matt’s orgasm shatter across his face, his brows screwing together and the tendons in his neck leaping out at you, as he strains to keep quiet. You aren’t sure if he does that because he doesn’t want to be loud, or if it’s because you told him to shut up, but it doesn’t really matter. There’s no getting around his desperate gasps for breath, like he can’t figure out which way is out and which way is in, his eyes squeezed so tight that the tears he’d conjured up earlier manage to slip out over his reddened cheekbones. 

It’s the heat of his release, the warmth and rush of him filling you that finally sends you over the edge after him, slumping forward until you have to reach up with both hands to grab onto the headboard. Every muscle tense and locked tight around him, your cunt throbbing as your moans echo against the wood above his head and reverberate in his ears. Matt’s fingertips softly glide up and down your spine like he can somehow coax you back to earth that way, holding you up by the waist before you collapse on top of him. 

There’s a few long moments of silence where your breath mingles in the air together between your sweat damp faces, your fingers still clutching the headboard so tightly they’re turning stiff. Then, Matt wets his lips and says, “You still with me, sweetheart?”

“Mhm.” It’s too soft and high in your throat to sound convincing. You suck a long breath in through your nose and try, “‘M with you,” but that also comes out slurred and like you’re suddenly drunk.

“Now, who needs rest?” His voice is much too cocky for his actual state, because he gives a pained grunt as he raises his hands to lift yours from the headboard above his face.

“Still you,” you retort, and follow it with a delicate whimper as you raise your hips and let him slide free of you. As soon as he releases your arms, you slump forward into your position on the bed beside him again, your leg draped across his waist and your head on his shoulder. 

Right back where you started. 

Matt turns his head and presses his lips to your forehead. Your skin is burning hot and damp, smells of salt and pheromones, but he wouldn’t have it any other way. “...I,” he starts, not entirely sure of what he was planning to say, but just that he feels the need to say something as your heart rate gradually slows against his side. Finally, he settles on something. “I love you, too.”

“You broke my heart.”

The words reverberate across his skin and send a shiver up his spine. He swallows, but lets his fingertips trail along your forearm. “I know.”

“Don’t do it again.”

Matt doesn’t want to make promises that he can’t keep. But, like a fool, he does anyway.

You clocked the man at the bar nearly as soon as you walked in; you wanted to eat him for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You liked a man with strong, beautiful hands, and his were perfect. He wore a black leather jacket, and his palm dwarfed the Old Fashioned he drank— or was it a Manhattan? Whichever it was that came with a maraschino.

His forefinger tapped absent-mindedly on the rim of the glass. He leaned back in his chair, then leaned forward. He bounced his leg, then cracked his knuckles, then lifted his drink to his lips. It was like he was doing a some kind of nervous choreography that you just couldn't land on a reason for.

You singled him out. Maybe he could tell that you did.

Now, when you sit one seat down from him and order a Nikolashka, you see him glance over at you and smirk in the mirrored backsplash.

"Classy." His voice is boyish and light. You press your lips together and turn to find him peering at you over the rim of his glass, and god help you. His eyes are like two smoldering embers.

"I'm sorry?"

"A Nikolashka. It's very… elegant. Refined." He waves his hand. You track the movement with your eyes hungrily, and you definitely catch the twitch at the corner of his mouth.

"And which are you?" you ask him mildly, "Elegant or refined?"

He gives you a slight grimace as he hisses through his teeth. "Neither." His dimples are something otherworldly, and you find yourself wanting to bite the cheek that made them.

"So, what are you, then?"

"Depends," he hums. He looks thoughtful for a moment, and then squints at you. "How do you feel about card tricks?"

Dark eyes, good hands, dimples, and card tricks. He's going to kill you. "Intrigued."

He chuckles, and sets down his glass with a quiet tap onto the mahogany bartop. Somehow, you've whittled down a spot in the middle of the busy bar where the music is dimmed, the energy is more of a steady thrum than the overall chaos around you. As you slide your drink over one space and sit beside him, you enter a bubble that encircles the two of you, alone.

This close, you see the veins on his hands, each freckle on his cheek. He is objectively beautiful, too pretty for you to look at for too long without blushing. He fishes a deck of cards out of the inside of his leather jacket, and glances at you from beneath unfairly long lashes. "You'll have to forgive me if this sucks. I'm nervous."

"Oh, don't tell me that," you mutter, then take a little sip of your drink. The alcohol wips all the moisture from your mouth. "I expect you to wow me."

"All right. No pressure there." With a little smile, he fans the cards out at you. "Pick a card, any card. Don't let me see. Here—" He claps his free hand over his eyes, then peeks between his fingers at you. "I'm not looking, I promise."

You choose from the center and tilt it towards you, careful not to catch it in the mirror behind the bar. Eight of Hearts.

"Okay, now shove it back in there."

You finally let a little giggle slip. It's absurd, like something a boy would do to impress you in high school, but it's… charming. He's charming you. Which is unexpected, at least, but never unwelcome.

He does a little flourish with the cards, impressively shuffling them in an arc, and flips over the top card of the deck before pronouncing confidently, "Is this your card?"

It is, in fact, the King of Spades. "Not a chance."

"Really? Shit." Looking confused, he pats at his breast pockets, his back pockets. "This usually works. Y'know what, check— check your back pocket?"

You nearly roll your eyes. You've been watching his hands since you sat down, and he knows it. He saw how fixated you are on them, so there's no real way he could have put anything in your pocket—

Except, there is. You pull a playing card from your left pocket, completely shocked. "How…?" It's the Eight of Hearts, but this time, there's something written on it. A phone number.

"Is that your card?"

You've actually been stunned into silence. You look at it for a long time, then at his hands, then at his pretty face, smirking coyly at you.

"Well, I guess it must be," you say, looking at him coquettishly over the top of your glass. "And what name do I write under this number?"

"Jack," he says with a grin. "Jack Wilder."

You know his name, but you can't quite put your finger on where you've heard it, yet. It's like a foggy memory, buried deep down beneath years upon years of media consumption and names of people met in passing.

"Well, Jack Wilder," you repeat, putting extra emphasis on his name. You tuck the card into your back pocket slowly, keeping your eyes trained on him. "I'll forgive you for obviously touching my ass during that trick, as long as you let me buy you another drink."

He blinks at you. "Is that meant to be some kind of punishment?"

"It depends on what you ask for."

At that, he finally laughs. He throws his head back in a sweet way, like he can't laugh without putting his whole body into it. It almost makes you feel smug as you take another sip of your drink.

After signaling for another drink, Jack turns to you. "So, what about you? Do you know any magic?" He draws out the word 'magic' like it's a joke.

You think for a moment. "The only thing I can really do is read tarot. Poorly."

"What? That's actually crazy."

"I know, it's weird, isn't it?"

"No, I mean it's crazy because I have a tarot deck. Right now." Jack reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out another card deck, slightly bigger, and sets it on the bar in front of you. The High Priestess stares up at you from the top of the deck.

"How many card decks do you happen to have in there?" You ask with mild amusement.

"About three at any given time." He shrugs when you shoot him an incredulous look. "It's good to be prepared."

You narrow your eyes at him. "You're not some kind of card sharp, are you?"

Jack cracks a wide grin. "Why, would you hate me if I was?"

"No, I'd just be working that much harder to figure you out."

Jack presses his lips together like he's secretly pleased that you're so fascinated with him, and taps the card deck on the counter. "You could always predict my future, right?"

You snort. "Right." In spite of yourself, you pick up the deck and shuffle it with a lot less flourish than he did. "You know how to read these, I take it?"

"Not really, I just like the artwork. The deck gives me something to do with my hands." There it is, the small clue-in to his demeanor. He has to be moving, stillness doesn't suit him. When he sits still, there's a slight tremor that remains in his hands or in his leg, like he's constantly on high alert. You make a note of it as you shuffle the cards, and then set the deck on the counter, face-down.

"Knock on it three times." You watch as Jack does as he's told, his fist tapping lightly on the cards and looking almost comical in their gentility. You flip over the first card. Death, on his pale horse, stands over a battlefield. You blow out a puff of air. "Well, shit. You're dead."

Jack laughs again. "An excellent observation. You're good."

"Thank you, thank you." With a smirk, you turn over the next card. The Eight of Swords reversed. "Aha. You were holding yourself back, but you finally found your freedom from something, and now you're heading down a new path. Does that sound right?"

He rests his chin in his palm, looking vaguely impressed. "You can do magic."

You try hard not to preen in front of him. "Yeah? That's good to hear."

"So, pray-tell, where is this new path taking me?" He continues looking at you, chin in his hand, like he can see into your mind. You feel like every thought you have is laid out in front of him. You wonder if he can read your entire soul on your face.

You flip over the third card and set it down in front of him. The Lovers.

"I don't suppose you need me to interpret that for you," you say, meeting his eye again, your insinuation hanging in the air between you.

His gaze travels down to your lips just once, and lingers there for a long moment. You don't know it yet— and how could you? It's supposed to be a secret, he is supposed to be a secret— but you terrify him. You noticed him when he had just been trying to get away from reality for a little while, trying to forget that he's on the run, that he has to pretend to be someone he's not. He isn't supposed to be telling people his real name. He isn't supposed to be picking people up in bars and doing stupid card tricks to impress them.

You baffle him. You don't even know how right you are about him, so right that you could probably guess who he is without him telling you, given time. And, unfortunately, Jack has always been drawn to things that could easily destroy him.

Held aloft on that suspension, you don't object when he asks to close the tab.

"Bullshit."

"I swear to god! You can even google it, I won't be mad."

Your combined laughter bounces down the hallway past hotel rooms, televisions echoing beyond closed doors. Your arm slung around Jack's shoulders, he bears your weight with one arm while he carries your discarded heels with the other. When you complained about your feet hurting, he had offered to carry you from the taxi up to your room, but you declined. Even so, you appreciate the gallantry.

"That Jack Wilder— The Four Horsemen Jack Wilder— he died. I remember hearing about it." And you remember now, that's where you'd heard the name. It had been all over the news. Even if you weren't keeping up with Las Vegas magic acts, everyone has at least heard about the magicians-turned-thieves. You couldn't get away from hearing about them if you tried.

"You really don't know how easy it is to fake your own death. Here," Jack chuckles, using his free hand to dig out his wallet. "There, under the top one. My I.D."

You snatch it from him, walking blindly as he advances with you down the hall. You find several I.D.'s, each with a different name, each older than the last— but the oldest, with an address in Brooklyn, bears the name Jack Wilder.

"Cute picture." You grunt and hand the wallet back to him. Not to be duped so easily, you pull out your phone to do a quick Google search on the Horsemen. An image search or two confirms that Jack, your Jack (or so you desperately want him to be), is the Jack Wilder. The same stupidly pretty smile. The same mischeivous eyes. The same arch to his brow.

You spin around, squinting at him, flashing your phone in his face. He looks somewhat bemused, like he was fully expecting it. "Okay. So, you're back from the dead. Any explanations, or will I stay in the dark?"

"Ah… I stole a cadaver and made it have a car accident. It's not that interesting." Jack waves it off, as if it's the most normal thing in the world. "Now I'm just staying under the radar, I suppose. Only thing you can do. 'Lotta people want me, few can have me. You know how it is."

"Merritt McKinney, J. Daniel Atlas…" you read as you meander through the Wikipedia article on the Four Horsemen. "Hey, what does the J. stand for, anyways?"

"Jerk-off." He says it way too quickly for it to not be personal.

You cackle, probably a lot louder than you intended to. You lean back against the wall beside your hotel room door. "So you're telling me that you're this… this ex-David Copperfield fugitive from justice?"

"Hey, I'm not entirely out of commission yet," he insists, holding up his hands, your sparkling heels dangling from the fingers of one. "But yeah, I've been ordering pizza under the name 'Kevin' for about a year now."

"And why didn't you tell me your name is 'Kevin'?" You quirk an eyebrow at him. "Seems like if you're in hiding, it would be safer to keep up the charade."

"Maybe," Jack hums, sounding like he doesn't quite agree. "But, I'm not in the business of lying to girls I want to take home, so."

You let out a little puff of air, unsure of whether to laugh or melt before him. You aren't used to men being so candid with you. "And what if I slammed the door in your face?"

"Well, that would be pretty hard," he tells you, looking upwards like he's really mulling it over. "Considering I have your room key."

"What— hey." You feel at the inside pocket of your jacket, finding no room key-card anywhere. When you look back up at him, he has it extended between his two fingers, and swipes it through the card reader on the door. The lock beeps, and the door swings open to reveal the dimly lit room within. "Unbelievable. When did you do that?"

"In the cab."

In the cab. In the cab, when you were so busy trying not to attack his face or otherwise mount him that you were completely distracted. It must have happened sometime when you crawled into the backseat, and his hands guided you in like the gentleman he'd been, up until this point. The ghost of his touch remained on your waist, but you hadn't felt him stealing anything from your pockets.

You realize then, with only a base amount of embarrassment, that you're biting your lip just thinking about his hands on you. It takes all your strength not to pull him in and kiss him immediately, although you doubt he would object if you did.

"So," you say, leaning against the open door frame, your breathing strained from trying not to let it get too erratic. God, he's gorgeous. And it pisses you off that it effects you so deeply, but you can't help how badly you want him. You've been aching for him all evening, fantasizing about him, trying not to squirm too much at the bar or in the taxi. It's getting to be too much for you, the heat between your legs a constant, demanding presence. "You got any other tricks up your sleeve?"

"One or two."

"Will you show me?"

His grin could light up a stadium. "Sure, I can."

Down the hall somewhere, a door opens. Jack turns his head to look in the direction of the sound, and in that moment you snatch him by the collar of his grey t-shirt and yank him full-force into your hotel room. He bashes into you, tripping over the door jamb, and you kick the door shut before you both slam up against the wall.

"Whoa— easy," he chuckles, his nose bumped against yours. "I promise I'll come willingly."

"I'm counting on it."

With that you finally kiss him, tugging his lower lip between your teeth, and you hear the dull thunk of your shoes being dropped on the carpet. Everything about him surrounds you; the spice of his cologne, the warmth of his body, the taste of the alcohol he drank. His hands slide around your waist to pull you close, and this time you feel it when he slips your room key into your back pocket, tucked right against the card with his number on it— although you figure you only felt it because he let you. His hands on either side of your face, fingers in your hair, he backs you into the corner like it's the only thing he's been wanting to do since he saw you.

"You're so fucking hot," Jack breathes into your mouth, his thumb tracing along your jawline. His fingers could burn a line along your skin, like you might just wake up in the morning to find scorch marks where he touched you.

His kiss is frenzied, almost rushed and desperate— when you break away, gasping for air, a string of saliva connects you by the lower lip. His face is covered in your lipstick, your dark red painting a chelsea smile around his mouth.

"You have something…" You swipe your finger along the trail of lipstick, but he just grins and backs away. You don't know how you look, but you swipe your hand across your mouth for good measure.

"Is it my color?" He doesn't look too worried about the state of his appearance. He frames his face with his hands, posing at you with a sardonic smile. "Does it go with my outfit?"

"Yeah, you look real sexy," you snicker, pulling him back towards you by his jacket lapel. You watch his pupils dilate, his smile faltering for just a moment while you bring your thumbs up and wipe the makeup from his face. "You're lucky I didn't just fuck you in that disgusting bar bathroom."

"Thank god for that." His voice has gone a little bit rough, his easy-going veneer slipping as you trace your fingernail along his cheekbone. "Now I can take my time."

"Touch me," you order, leaving no room for argument.

You expect him to go directly for your waist or your chest, to weasel his hands under your shirt, to remove your bra with some kind of abracadabra, or whatever the hell he does. But, he hadn't been joking about taking his time, and you take a trembling breath when he cradles your jaw in his hand, turning your head like you're something precious, and kisses the spot just below your ear. Your eyes fall shut, and you swear that you really are melting, like he is somehow able to dismantle you with a single brush of his lips.

And then you realize that your earring is missing.

"Jack." You don't even turn your head to look at him. You would be annoyed if it wasn't a little bit hilarious.

"Sorry. Bad habit." His words come out muffled as he pulls your earring from between his lips and drops it into your outstretched palm, looking like he's been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. It glints in the light for a moment before you chuck it aside, hearing it plink somewhere on the dresser.

The placing of your hand on his belt grabs his attention. You tug him close, his hips nearly pressed up to yours, your back against the wall. In the stilted air between your faces, you hiss, "Behave."

Jack's eyelids flutter, his gaze raking over your face once, twice. "I'll try my best."

But he won't. You know that he won't, and you hate that you want him even more for it.

Jack drags his hand down, down, down, running along the curve of your breast, the dip of your waist. He traces the seam of your jeans, startling you with his boldness. You give him a tight gasp and arch against his touch, almost embarrassed with how readily you react to him. His two fingers press against your cunt through the fabric, and you moan as you part your legs for him.

"There we go," Jack whispers to you, his voice light as a feather. When you blink your eyes open, you find him searching your face, his eyebrows slanting upward. "Is this where you want me?"

His fingers split into a V, tracing slowly around the seam, bracketing the outline of your cunt. He drags upwards, avoiding all the places you want him most, and then slides down again, pressing harder. Your mouth hangs open, and you stop breathing, stop thinking, stop doing anything of substance.

"Answer me, sweetheart." His whispered inquiry passes through your foggy mind, but it's the pause of his touch that finally snaps you into a response.

"Yes— Jack, please." You're torn between wanting the upper hand and wanting to give it over to him, but from the way he has you mindless with one touch, you're not sure you ever had the upper hand to begin with.

He pops the button on your jeans without further comment, and there's a touch of his lips against your jaw, a hint of a breath on your neck, and then he dips his hand beneath your waistband. You're throbbing, aching for him and frozen under the weight of his gaze. Then the rough, calloused pads of his fingers dip into your wetness, and you both gasp at the same time.

"You can't have gotten this turned on by my dorky card tricks," Jack murmurs, his fingers tracing a delicate path through the soaking heat of your pussy. Without him even urging you, you widen your legs and push your hips against his touch.

"It's just— I— I like— fuck." You can't think straight, not when he's touching you like that. His fingers swirl around your clit with a precision that's completely debilitating, and he watches you with his eyes just inches from your face.

"'You like' what?"

Your cunt throbs at the rasp of his voice, the slow strokes of his fingers, but you can't look away from him. Not even for a second. "Your hands. I like— like your ha—"

His two fingers drive into you to the knuckle, and you cut yourself off on a whine. Jack flexes his hand, nearly pulling you away from the wall with the force of it, and your nails rake down the back of his leather jacket with a noisy ripping sound.

It's good. It's really, really good, and the sounds coming from you are obscene, the air around you already thick with tension and sweat. His eyes are focused in on you, but they're so blown out that they've gone nearly black. You bite back a moan and lurch against him, trying to meet the slow thrusts of his fingers with your hips and only meeting resistance.

"My hands," he repeats, and his voice is disarming, almost lulling. Jack tilts his head and hums low in his throat, moving so that you keep your eyes on his. You practically wither under his stare. "That's it. My hands on you, inside you. Do you think I could go deeper? Would you like that, too? Feel me, deeper."

You hear a snap somewhere in your periphery, a soft ticking in the background of your thoughts. Like the ticking of a clock, this gentle snap—snap—snap— and you realize that he's whispering to you, but it's so soft you're barely catching the words. He does drive his fingers deeper, curling them in a way that has you keening, held captive in his stare. You still hear that snapping, echoing through your head like a gentle refrain.

"What— What are you doing to me?" Beneath the tremble in your voice is a note of suspicion. You feel like you're falling into him, the space between you is electric, everything else is intangible.

"Do you know what the fun thing about hypnotism is?" Jack asks, his voice quiet, just above a whisper, now. Everything within you draws up tight at the sound of it, coiling up like a cobra ready to strike. His fingers move at a steady pace, keeping you rocking against him. The pleasure ebbs and flows like the swing of a pendulum. "I can make you cum with the snap of my fingers."

It's entirely unpredictable. He has you frozen in place, unable to really move or think, except to dig your nails into his leather jacket and accept that Jack is not like any other guy you'd ever picked up at a bar. Your voice comes out strained when you say, "That's not behaving."

"No," he agrees. "But you don't really want me to behave, do you? You want me to show you my tricks. This is number one." Jack crowds close and spread your legs wider to accomodate, until the only thing holding you up is his body. You have no choice but to let go, and trust that he won't let you fall.

"Shit— Jack." You wilt against him. Hands scrambling for something to hold onto, you find nothing but his hair, his shoulder, the wall behind you. You moan pathetically loud— so loud you're sure it can be heard on the other side of the door, but you don't really care. You don't have it in you to care about anything anymore.

You cant your hips toward him, your toes just barely skimming the carpet, but he keeps the pace slow, deliberate. He swirls his fingers around your clit, sending warmth dancing in spirals along your nerves. Your breath comes out in uneven pants, and your fingers tug on his hair just enough to make him purr, the sound absolutely lighting you up from the inside.

"Ready?" Jack whispers, and you nod without even really thinking about it. Ready for what, you're not sure, but you know you're ready for whatever he wants to give you.

He raises his hand in the air, just beside your head, and he snaps his fingers.

And you shatter.

Your cunt clenches down around the stretch of his fingers, and you yank on his collar, trying so hard and still failing to stay quiet. It pulses through you in quick succession, the tension that's been buidling in you all night finally let loose with his one command.

You've never fucking cum on command before.

Jack's hand slows to a stop, and then he withdraws while keeping himself between you and gravity. His hand lingers just at your waistband while you catch your breath, panting up at the ceiling.

"What the fuck," you wheeze in the comedown, your body still twitching against him. "You— did you really just— just hypnotize me?"

"I did." He sounds just as shocked as you are. His voice is still soft, but that cadence of wanting to lull you is gone. "Although, you're pretty agreeable when I have my hand down your pants."

Covered in sweat from head to toe, you have to shed your jacket just to take back a bit of normalcy. You huff a laugh, then level your gaze at him again. "I guess most people are?"

"I, uh— I wouldn't know. That's a relatively new trick for me." Jack gives a small exhale of disbelief, still completely taken aback. He's flushed up to his ears, his chest heaving almost as much as yours. "Was it… was that too much?"

You shake your head. It was, in fact, so unbelievably hot that you're having trouble even forming the words to express it. You grab his hand, still lingering down by your waist, and bring it to your lips. Jack follows your movements with his eyes, those eyes, his fingertips flexing slightly in your hold. You can't help yourself. You part your lips and take his fingers into your mouth, swirling your tongue around the two that had just been deep in your pussy.

"Jesus." He has the decency to look surprised— he wasn't expecting you to do that. It's almost endearing after all this; after you eyeing them all night in the bar, after him making you cum on them, making you admit your fixation. Maybe he thought you were exaggerating when you told him that you like his hands, but you were serious. You're so serious that you could spend hours just tracing his fingers with your tongue. Doesn't matter if you can taste yourself on them or not.

"Do you think you could do that to me in public?" You ask once you pull his fingers, glistening with your spit, from your mouth. You bat your lashes at him, but you feel like your blood is boiling beneath your skin. "Could you snap your fingers and make me cum in a room full of people without them even knowing?"

Jack's eyebrows shoot up. "Would you want me to?"

"Mmm." You're nodding, moving your hands up his chest and beneath his leather jacket. You meet tension when you cup his shoulders beneath the leather, and he finally shrugs the jacket off so that it lands with your discarded one on the ground. "I'd let you do anything you want to me, Jack."

His eyes dart sideways toward the bed a second before he snatches you around the waist. Jack guides you like he's dancing, his feet staggered with yours. Your shirt is forfeit— it lands somewhere across the room, and later you'll find it hanging off of the floor lamp in the corner. Rough hands meet your bare skin, flesh on flesh, nearly burning in the relief it brings you.

He kisses you and it's all teeth, visceral need punching a hole through the thin veil of restraint he'd been operating behind. The easy pace that he'd set, the quip about taking his time, has gone out the window. It's replaced with desperation and blind desire, the limits of what his patience can handle exceeded. He undoes your bra clasp with a single pinch, yanks at your jeans with a demanding huff. Your knees hit the edge of the bed and you plop down, landing on your elbows.

"God— control yourself." Your teasing falls on deaf ears; Jack is much too preoccupied with getting you out of your jeans, and your heart nearly stalls at the sight of him before you, his hands so sure as they tug your jeans down your legs, a low hum issuing from his throat as he presses a kiss to the curve of your stomach.

"Nope. Not happening, not right now." His palm smooths up your bare calf as though he's trying to map out every part of you he can get his hands on and dedicate it to memory. Jack turns his head and presses one kiss there at the plushest part of your thigh, his dark eyes watching you for your reaction. When you don't pull away or object, he parts his lips and nips at the same place he just kissed.

You sigh and run your fingers through his hair just before you snag the collar of his shirt and pull. Thankfully, he finally gets the memo and pulls it off, tossing it the way of your own shirt. His wavy hair sticks up at odd angles now, his cheeks rosy, eyes wide. He looks so sweet like this, biting his bottom lip, his gaze flicking almost nervously over your face.

But then he raises his hand and snaps his fingers.

"Fuck—ing—?!" No, not sweet. Evil. He's evil. And you're cumming again, completely untouched. All your floor muscles clamp down at the sound of his fingers snapping, and you're thrown into an orgasm. Losing your balance, falling back against the mattress while your cunt spasms, legs spread for his view. You try to close them, but he plants his hands firmly on your thighs, shoving them apart before you can manage.

"You're so gorgeous when you cum for me."

He sounds so cheeky, and you have a mind to smack him. You cover your face, shaking and groaning as the aftershocks continue to pulse through you. How the fuck did he manage it? It's not like before when he had his fingers in your pussy, you were perfectly still, just waiting for him to do something—

"Yeah, I could definitely do that to you in public," he concludes, and you hear his belt clink as he undoes it.

"You little fucker," you gasp, pulling your hands away from your face. There's no real malice in it, you're still breathless while he sheds the rest of his clothes. "You think you can— you can just wave a magic wand and make me cum like that?"

Jack snickers at you. "I thought you said I could do whatever I wanted…?"

His hips are between your legs, and for a split second, you consider letting him continue. You wouldn't mind being fucked into the mattress. But something about his voice, how cute he is even when he's being a snarky little shit, fills you with fire.

You throw your legs around his waist and tip him sideways. Jack makes a startled noise that bubbles up from the pit of his stomach, and he bounces onto the mattress beside you. It's a clumsy mess of tangled arms and legs for a moment before you throw yourself over his hips and sit on his lap, hovering above him on the bed.

"I take it back. You're getting too big for your britches."

Jack doesn't say anything, just blinks up at you and suppresses a smirk while he sucks on his teeth. You can feel his cock beneath you, resting heavy against his stomach. It's big, and so impressively hard that you're amazed he's held off as long as he has. Now, the urgency to take your clothes off makes sense.

"Don't look at me like that."

"What? I'm just looking at you—" Jack shakes his head just a little bit, but he cracks a smile that turns into a laugh. He can't help it.

"Shut—" you slap your hand over his pretty mouth, making him snort, "—up." You drop your hips, and he gasps against your fingers when you grind your cunt against his cock. "It's my turn now, and I'm oh-for-two. I don't like that score."

Jack sucks in a breath through his teeth, his hips jumping at your slow glide against him. It's so wet, made worse from all his teasing, and probably so hot that it burns. He groans, grabbing at your hips with a white-knuckled grip. "Not fair. It's easier for you—"

"Right. Because forced orgasms are sooo fair." You hum low, almost allowing yourself to get lost in the feeling of your clit dragging over the ridges of his cock. You bite your lip, dipping low to press a kiss to his temple and whisper in his ear, "No more shortcuts. We're gonna do this the hard way now."

"You think hypnotism isn't hard?" His voice is so strained. Jack lifts his hand, his chest heaving while he tangles his fingers just in the ends of your hair, twisting it around them in small curls. He rocks his hips against you. "Took me a fffffucking— a year to learn that—"

"Only a year?" Your teeth graze the shell of his ear and he shudders, making a sound that should be absolutely criminal with how sexy it is. "Now you can make me cum whenever you feel like it, but I have to work for it. So fucking. Take. What I give you."

You sit up, raking your fingernails down his chest as you go. Your eyes flick down to watch red trails bloom where they'd been, goosebumps raising on his tan skin. Jack has such a nice body, covered in a thin sheen of sweat, his muscles hard and strong. You tremble on top of him, starry-eyed and nearly taken apart by the little bit of friction between you. You're soaking him, slipping along his length and so close to cumming just from rubbing yourself on his cock.

"Fuck—" Jack takes you by the hips as you lift yourself and ease him inside of you. Then, it's all you can do not to cry out towards the ceiling.

And he's up, holding you in a full-bodied embrace, his arms wrapped fully around you, his hands in your hair and on your waist. He's so deep, and his shifting around keeps sending him deeper, like he's trying to carve out a place for himself inside of you. He hisses in your ear and then… presses a kiss to your shoulder. Gentle.

You gasp once, arching into him when he rocks you a bit in his arms, sending shockwaves shooting up your spine. "You're such a goddamn gentleman."

Jack chuckles, and turns his head so that he can speak directly into your ear. "Well, do you want me to behave or not?"

The tone of his voice practically tears you in half. He's being so fucking condescending. It shouldn't turn you on the way it does, but your pussy clamps down around him and your body tenses in his arms, your eyes glued to the ceiling, your breath catching in your throat.

"Not. Got it." And then he sinks his teeth into your shoulder, where he just kissed you.

It takes you by surprise and you cry out, rolling your hips into his in earnest. There will be an imprint of his teeth on your shoulder— something to remind you for days about this, and about him. The thought consumes you, makes you needy, desperate to leave a mark on him that can compare.

Your nails claw down his back— his beautiful, gorgeous back that you can feel flex beneath your touch, now covered in the same welts you'd raised on his chest. But deeper. Harder. Something that he'll be feeling for days, whenever he takes off his shirt, whenever he lifts his arm.

Jack groans like you've punched him, holding you tight to him as though he's afraid you'll disappear. "You have no idea what you're doing to me," he mumbles, just loud enough for the words to rumble across your skin and make you shiver.

Your muscles draw up tight, your thighs locking up with the strength of it. You jolt against him. "Oh my god, Jack—"

"Are you gonna cum again?" He sounds so fucking pleased with himself. "Already?"

"No… no."

"Isn't that oh-for-three?"

"Jack, shut—" A loud moan breaks from your throat, and you snatch at his hair. You're going to cum. Shit, you didn't want to, not before he does, but it seems you can't stop the effect that he has on you.

"Noisy," Jack murmurs, and ruts his hips up into yours just to hear you do it again. "Gonna let all the neighbors know you're cumming for me?"

"They already do," you grit out. You squeeze your eyes shut while your cunt tightens down, and Jack moans into your ear. "They can fucking hear. I don't care."

"You just really—" Jack chokes on a laugh, breathless as you ride him harder, "—really want people to know I'm fucking you, huh? I can make it quicker—"

He raises his hand from your waist, but you catch it before he can snap his fingers in your ear again. You rear back and smack his hand down onto your collarbone, his thumb pressed into the dip just beside where he'd sunk his teeth in.

Oh. He looks completelyfucked out. Glassy-eyed, mouth slightly open with each breath he takes. Your eyebrows tilt up slightly just at the sight, and that was the worst thing you could have done if you didn't want to cum too quickly.

Your intake of breath sounds like a sob. "You're so p-pretty—"

He gasps your name, and it's so quiet that you could have missed it if you weren't watching him, staring at his lips with every intent on kissing him. You yank him toward you with both hands, cradling him like he's the most perfect thing in the world, and you plant one on him. His hand tightens just slightly, where it rests against your throat, and you can't fucking believe it.

You cum. Just like that, with his hand on your neck, holding you in place. You moan into his lips, arch against him, and grind down like you can somehow get him deeper while your cunt spasms around his cock.

It's not fair. He can't just— he can't just make you do that by simply existing, by just looking and talking the way he does, it's not fucking fair—

"Oh, fuck." Jack tenses and rocks his hips up into you, his brows pinched together and his eyes tightly shut. He moans so beautifully, his breath sweet in your mouth, and he cums, rutting up into you as hard as he can. Your limbs feel fluid, completely spent, but he holds you to him like he can't get enough.

He doesn't let go, at first. He stays with his hand on your throat and his arm tight around your waist, crushing you against his chest while he gasps for air. His nose pressed into the crook of your neck, just where his bite mark is starting to smart. Your legs feel like jelly, but you can at least lift your hand, dig your fingers into his hair.

Peaceful. It's peaceful, is what it is. It's soft. You wouldn't have expected Jack to be the perfect balance of hard and soft, to change whichever way he fits. He's a surprise from all angles.

Finally, you collapse with him onto the bed, a jumble of boneless limbs pulled down into a sleepy stillness. Except he's not still, not entirely. In the periphery of your awareness, you feel him tracing his fingertips along your spine. He outlines little shapes across your feverish skin, listening to your breathing slow.

"You're not—" Jack begins after a moment, then pauses, and starts again. "You won't be here tomorrow."

He sounds vaguely sad about it, like he'd been hoping you'd stick around for a little while.

"No. Headed to Los Angeles tomorrow afternoon. This was just a stop-over." You sigh and curl into him, a little too exhausted by everything to even consider how you hadn't mentioned anything about it to him. You figure he just put two and two together, considering you're in a hotel room and not an apartment.

"Hm. Better get some sleep, then."

You're all too willing to take his suggestion. Just before you drift off, you feel his fingers tangle in your hair, just at the nape of your neck, twisting around and around in tight circles. Never still. Always moving.

You aren't surprised to wake up without Jack in your bed. You're only minorly disappointed, since you stupidly wished that he'd be there to say goodbye with another couple rounds. But it makes sense that he would be the type to leave without saying goodbye.

Figures. You always fall for the emotionally unavailable ones.

You are surprised, however, to be turned away by airport security while trying to get into the gate at JFK. When the TSA agent asks to see your I.D., you grab for your wallet. You don't find it in your jacket pocket, where you were sure you left it last night.

But you do find, in its place, a single playing card with a phone number on it.

"Mother fucker." In spite of your rage, while you pull out your phone to dial the number so you can get your fucking wallet back— because you fucking know he did this just to keep you in New York, just to see you again, the little shit— you can't help but smile at the words scrawled beneath it.

Jack Wilder. Here's trick number two.

You cannot outrun a man on horseback. Common sense, if it really were common, would have told you this. But common sense cannot explain for ghosts.

As you tear through the foliage, you consider this. You consider your death as it looms behind you, so close that you can nearly feel his steed's foul breath billowing across the back of your neck, its flaming eyes scorching you.

You've grown up with the stories. The Hessian soldier, cut down in battle, mercilessly beheaded for his ruthlessness. Like a shadowy avenger, he rises from the grave to find a replacement. He'll cut your head off without a second thought. He'll take it back to his grave until he finds one that fits.

But these were just ghost stories, and you didn't place your faith in them. Perhaps you should have. Perhaps it would have kept you from straying into the forest after dark. But you did, and you have no one to blame but yourself.

You still didn't believe it when you heard the crickets and frogs grow quiet. You still didn't quite believe it when you felt your own hackles raise, your intuition alerting you to some danger you could not yet see. Maybe you just began to believe it when you heard the galloping of hooves in the dark.

When you saw him, you didn't know what to think. At first, you thought, a rider so late at night ought to slow down, or he may collide with something. Then you made out his hulking frame in the dark, poised atop his steed, and you thought it odd that he seemed dressed for battle.

Then you saw his raised sword. Then you saw his horse's red eyes. Then you saw that the man atop the steed had no head.

And you ran. Like an imbecile.

Now you're caught in the trees, branches pulling at your skirts and snagging your skin. An ungodly fog is rolling in, making it all the more difficult to see in the dense woods, with only the moon to light your path. You had just been walking home from the Baron Van Tassel's All Hallow's Eve dinner party, and expected to be sat in front of the fire by now, resting your aching feet, preparing for bed. Instead, you're tangled in the brush.

You hear the snapping of branches as the Headless Horseman crashes through them, unconcerned, bearing down on you. A broken twig scratches your arm, tearing your sleeve. Your foot snags on a tree root and you scream before you tumble sideways down an embankment.

You roll to a stop, knocking your head against the earth harder than you'd like. The demonic horse whinnies, and you hear a frightening pause as it leaps over you in the dark, before the crash of galloping hooves surrounds you all at once. The Headless Horseman pivots, turning his horse in a full circle to face where you lay supine, trying to collect yourself after your fall. The embankment is too steep to climb back up at a reasonable pace. The Horseman has you cornered.

You push yourself up, autumn leaves clinging to your hair and shoulders. As you watch, the Hessian jumps down from his horse, his boots thudding ominously against the damp earth. The Horseman— violent, enormous, indomitable— approaches with his sword drawn, and you… you have nowhere to go.

Nowhere but forward, that is.

You expect to pass directly through him; a ghost is a ghost no matter how you slice it, right? He should be intangible, almost gaseous, or merely a figment of your imagination. But when you throw yourself forward, levelling your torso parallel with the ground, your shoulder hits him solidly in the middle with a THUMP against his chest, and you screech as you and the Headless Horseman tumble unceremoniously to the forest floor.

You sputter, gritting your teeth. His chest is more solid than you expected it to be, and your shoulder is decidedly not, if you can believe it. You groan, rolling over onto your back while your hand instinctively lifts to touch the aching joint.

And then a sword connects with the ground beside your head, throwing debris across your face.

You yelp, catching his arm before he can strike again. Something about the struggle is clumsy. While the Hessian may have been a graceful soldier in life, his blows calculated and artful, you are the exact antithesis. What you lack in combat training is made up for with animal instinct and idiocy, which altogether can be a lethal combination if you're unhinged enough.

You swing your thigh across his waist and sit directly onto the Headless Horseman's lap. Your skirts billow around you, your chest heaving in your bodice while you snatch at his wrists and try to wrench his sword loose. You duck a swing once, twice— and then you capture the handle and fling it aside. You hear it land somewhere in the bushes. The only weapon the Horseman has now is his hands. Theoretically.

The two of you sit, or lay, still for a moment. He doesn't have a head. This is inconvenient for multiple reasons. One, it's grotesque. Terribly disconcerting, if you're honest— you're trying not to stare at the jagged wound above his collar. And two, you can't tell what he's thinking, if he can think at all. You wonder if maybe the magic that directs him is attached to his sword, and perhaps now that you've disarmed him he's no longer functional. Maybe you could just walk away? Maybe he'd fade into oblivion if you stood up.

"You don't want to kill me," you say, slightly breathless, somewhat pleading. Trying to reason with him, you add, "I haven't done anything to you."

And then the Horseman's hands tighten on your hips and he throws you to the side. You scream as your back hits the ground, dirt in your hair, dirt in your dress. It seems that speaking to him just reminded him of his base instinct to end you, and that's even more inconvenient. You can't reason with a headless man, as the stories go.

Your legs are flung up around his waist now, and his gloved hands close around your throat. You're going to die, you're sure of it. You flail your legs, your hands coming up to smack at his forearms in vain while he tightens his grip around your windpipe. Your knee jabs him in the side. He throws his weight forward, and for an extended moment you slide three feet across dead leaves, kicking up dust all the way.

You close your hands around his arms, your thighs around his waist, and again roll yourself sideways, knocking the Hessian off balance. He lands with a heavy thud on the ground. You're left gasping for air, the skin of your throat throbbing in objection to being so abused. Then you throw your leg over his waist again and sit down on his middle with your full weight and a frustrated grunt.

"That was rude." You pound your fist against his chest, doing more harm to your hand than to him, you're sure. The Headless Horseman lays still beneath you, his arms splayed out like he's confounded. This is probably an off day for him, too. You wonder if you're the first victim to give him this much trouble.

"Listen," you hiss, and you feel somewhat stupid for saying that to a man with no ears. You point a finger at where his head should be, if he had one. "I can forgive a little head lopping, but being inconsiderate is another matter altogether. I know you were taught manners."

The Horseman shifts, like he really is listening to you. He raises his hands in response, a gesture of 'What do you expect?'

"Don't give me that." He flops his hands to the ground. It's an expressive movement, one of exasperation. You fight the urge to snort. You sit back, your full weight against his hips, and cross your arms. "So are we just going to be locked into this battle until one of us gives?"

The Horseman doesn't move. You sigh, your head falling back on your shoulders, nose pointed towards the sky. It's useless. You can't talk to this creature, can't make sense to it. Treating him like he has the capacity for logical thought is probably an exercise in futility.

You're trying to come up with a plan when his hands lift. It's subtle, and slow, like he's… hesitant. You don't know what to do. You're frozen in place. The Horseman's gloved hands land on your thighs on either side of his waist, and you think, you imagine, that he's testing you. He's trying to see what you'll do. If you'll run away, like you did before.

You think the time for running has flown. You have the Horseman between your legs now, and if you do run, you likely won't make it out alive. You're working with borrowed time and your instinct knows as much. You stay still while his gloved hands drag up your thighs to where your stockings end and your skin begins.

You clench your jaw. This must be a terrible dream, or a horrible trick. Perhaps Brom Bones is hidden under the armor somewhere, giggling in his lunacy. A spirit could not be this solid. A ghost could not be so tangible.

But you can hear his infernal horse clomping through the trees somewhere, and you can feel his fingertips pressing into the flesh of your hips, and none of the stories tell you what to do when you have the Horseman on his back between your legs. You don't think you can treat him like a normal man— nothing about this is normal— but you're not sure that you could assume that he isn't one, either. He was a normal man, once. He was man of flesh and blood and fever, just like every other man in creation.

His thumb sweeps low between your thighs, too close to the most intimate part of your body for you to ignore it. You aren't able to stop the hitch in your breath, nor the way that your core begins to ache with arousal, any more than you could stop yourself from running when you first saw the murderous spectre.

This is unprecedented, really. A dead man shouldn't be capable of desire. Then again, a dead man shouldn't be able to ride a horse and chop heads. You seem to be toeing the line of familiar territory tonight.

You're frozen, trying to determine what to do when his leatherclad thumb sweeps close enough to the apex of your thighs to graze your cunt, and all reason escapes you. A shaky, startled breath just barely covers the noise that threatens to erupt from your throat.

It's too generous to call it a plan. It's more like a bad, hedonistic excuse to do what you want. In that moment, you make the executive decision to use a different set of wiles against the Headless Horseman. It won't be difficult. He seems to be halfway there, already.

You begin by dragging the flat of your hands from his broad shoulders down the expanse of his chest. He's cold, probably like a dead man should be, but his chest rises and falls beneath your touch. He's… breathing.

If it walks like a man and breathes like a man…

Your nail skips over the raised embroidery on his vest, making a soft tick, tick, tick in the night air that raises goosebumps on your skin. When you feel his grip tighten on your thigh, a shiver runs up your spine.

"All right," you mutter. You don't want him to wrestle you into the dirt again, because you're not sure how many times you can remaneuver him into this position. You really want to be dignified about it, but there's no dignity in letting a monster have its way with you. There's even less dignity in liking it. And in your case, both are true.

The Hessian sweeps his gloved finger deliberately through your folds, and this time you can't bite back the moan that spills out of you. Your thighs twitch on either side of his hips, a knee-jerk reaction to not knowing whether to pull away from his touch or rock forward into it. The slickness is unbelievable— the way the soft leather of his glove glides along your sensitive flesh diabolical in how good it feels.

That's the problem. It feels too good. It shouldn't feel this good. You shouldn't want him to keep touching you. According to everything you know, he shouldn't want to touch you, unless it's in violence.

You try not to overthink it. You try not to decipher anything besides fear and lust when you move back in his lap far enough to work at the buttons on his trousers. You try not to parse out the why or how, as you discover that he not only breathes, but he has body heat, blood flow, entirely normal and human.

You may go to Hell for this. But, at least there will be a spirit you know intimately on the other side when you do.

You sink down onto him in one swift movement, and gasp. He fills you completely, buried to the hilt, beyond anything or anyone you've had before. You close your eyes, tilt your head back with a soft moan. With every roll of your hips, and the feeling of his hands tightening around your waist, you almost forget who, or what, you have beneath you. It could be anyone.

He has no head. He's a ghost. You're fucking a ghost. It's not really enough to deter you, now. A small giggle, a laugh of incredulity, threatens to break forth— but before you can, the Horseman snatches you around the waist.

You're tumbling again, leaves flying in all directions. Your back against dirt, your skirts thrown up around your waist. Cool air hits your bare ass, your legs wrapped around the specter that has haunted the villages nightmares for months.

The Horseman sinks into you, punching the air from your lungs and the thought from your head. You may not lose your head or your life, but you have a feeling you'll be mindless in spite of it all. If the insanity of the moment is anything to go by, you're already well on your way.

You wriggle your hips against the building tension, mouth agape. Your hands grasp at his broad shoulders, looking for even a hint of stability, but the Horseman isn't done fighting you. Perhaps it's a primal need to be in control or to conquer, but the Horseman yanks your hands free and pins them to the ground beside your head. It's as if he wants you helpless, wants you defenseless to his actions no matter what they are.

A sob of protest, a sound disappearing into the unforgiving dark. There is nothing save the push of his hips and the scratch of dead leaves, the taste of blood and earth on your tongue. You wonder if the Horseman was ever a very giving lover in life, or if this is always how it was for him. The animal need to possess, to take pleasure and bleed it dry.

A wave of heat breaks from your head to your toes, drawing sweat from your skin where it touches the autumn night air. You open your eyes only to see the trees overhead, the sharp silhouette of his shoulders in the dark. There is nowhere that you cannot feel him, the torn fabric of his trousers against your bare legs, the weight of him on your chest, the strokes deep into your cunt. You struggle only a little, just barely pushing against his fists, but not really meaning it. You couldn't get away if you tried, and you find that you don't really want to.

You keen and wriggle against him, feeling the darkness press in, feeling ecstasy mount in your stomach and your throat. You're going to cum. It's inevitable, it's evil, it's wholly implausible—

And it breaks within you.

The Horseman stiffens, his hulking frame trembling for just a moment as you pulse around him, tightening down like you mean to keep him there inside of you. It's the only thing that tells you what he feels, and you shake your head in disbelief.

"You need to cum," you say through gritted teeth, each word punched out from deep in your gut. Your legs around his waist tighten, puling him in close as your eyes search him in vain for a face that isn't there. "Do it."

It's perhaps the only order you give him that he follows in stride. He chases his own release, using your body as a tool for his pleasure. It threatens to end you. You think the wildness of it, the ruthless ferocity, might be the only thing that you desire from this moment on. You fear yourself going mad, wandering the forest from here to eternity to find the same rush, the same desperate, hedonistic fire you have here.

The Horseman cums, his hips pressed to yours, his hands squeezing your wrists until you're certain that there will be bruses there in the shape of his fingers. There is a pause, drawn out in the silence of the forest, where you feel his chest heave against yours, and you wonder why he doesn't have a head. Why, then, does the magic that forms him not include his head, if the rest of his body is present, if he breathes, if he feels?

You loosen your legs around his waist in the comedown. You don't know what to say. You don't think anything you could say would make a difference to him at all, if you're honest.

And then, inexplicably, the Horseman lets you go. Just like that, no struggle, no more attempting to end you and take your head. He pulls back, leaves you empty. He rips himself away from you like the idea of your touch offends him. He jumps up, rights his clothing, and stalks off to find his horse.

You lay on the ground, dumbstruck. It's not like this wasn't the plan all along. You effectively offered your cunt in place of your life, it's not like you had any expectations that he was a gentleman. But still, the abruptness leaves you stunned. You hear him somewhere in the trees, sheathing his sword into his scabbard. You hear him mount his horse.

With a sigh, you heave yourself up into a sitting position, throwing your skirt back down like your decency makes a difference to the night. You watch, over your shoulder, as the Horseman tears off through the trees, the sound of hooves on the earth quickly fading. You still feel his cum leaking from between your legs.

What a typical man.

"Don't… move…"

Hard knuckles rock over your clit— one, two, three— making your hips twitch despite his warning. A startled breath rattles in your lungs. His hand pauses, one knuckle pressed unflinchingly hard against the swollen flesh like a reprimand.

You could hear a pin drop. The room is still, cast with shadows, although there's a glow emanating from around the boards nailed to the window's edge. Everything is blanketed by warm lamplight and a thin layer of dust on everything but the bed (of course not the bed, never the bed). Your hands sink deep into the mattress beneath you. Your bare legs are parted by his, jean-clad, unyielding. The tension curls between you two like a fog.

Remmick's eyes are blue, but they still manage to scorch you where you lay, untethered to reality. He has to hold you there beneath it, because he can't trust you not to squirm away from him. He can't trust himself not to annihilate you at the first drop of your blood. And what he's about to do to you— what you asked him to do to you, mind you— might not end without a bit of it.

He drags the length of one long, impossibly long, clawed finger through your folds with a wet schlick that cuts through the silence and raises the hair on your neck. Your face burns like it's been held to a fire. Your hips fight to buck against his hand.

"D'ya like that, darlin'?" His voice is sinful, smooth and sweet as honey. Remmick's face holds a self-aggrandizing smirk, like it usually does, but behind it is a bit of awe. He's not used to being desired so entirely.

Your mouth, flooded with saliva, refuses to open for your reply. The evidence is right there on his fingers; it was a rhetorical question. Laid out before him, you tremble like some harmless prey animal that can sense its demise and only run away.

Remmick breathes in through his nose, takes a long, indulgent lungful of the scent wafting up at him from between your legs. He groans obscenely, letting his head roll back on his shoulders like it's enough to make him cum.

You finally break. You turn your face away from the sight of him, a lump in your throat, a fever beneath your skin. He loves to tease you, loves to make you squirm— he loves to toy with you and see how long it takes you to lose your composure.

"No-no-no, don't you hide from me," Remmick tsks, spreading his thighs further to splay your legs wide. You feel ever more exposed by the drag of his dirty denim jeans against your bare skin. Above his white undershirt, a trickle of perspiration trails through his chest hair. The gold chain around his neck hangs tantalizingly over you, suspended in the air.

His hand captures your chin and yanks your head back to center. "No gettin' all shy now. You're gonna stay right there and watch while I do this to you."

You don't have it in you to move away again, but you do whimper as you fix him with a glassy stare. "Baby—"

"Shh." His eyes are so deep you could drown in them.

Remmick rears back and spits onto your pussy. You gasp, feeling the hot drip of it, from your clit down to your entrance. He shushes you again, his eyes fixed there between your legs, watching it glisten against your cunt.

"Look a' that," he whispers, to himself more than you. He runs his knuckles through your folds again, kicking up a lewd noise in the silence, getting his hand drenched with it. When you squirm against him, he cracks one palm against your clit, making you yelp.

"Remmick!"

"Told ya not to move," he grits out, and you notice a warning flash of his teeth. It's this that finally gets you to will yourself to stay still— humiliated, but still. He waits a beat, watching to ensure that you don't move again.

So slowly that you barely even feel it at the start, one long clawed finger dips into your pussy. You moan, wanting so badly to rock against the intrusion but unable to. The stretch is unbelievable, his claws thicker than they seem upon first glance. Your walls squeeze around his single digit, greedy and insatiable.

"Fuckin' filthy," Remmick breathes, watching as the long talon disappears inside you, feeling the warmth of your flesh quivering around him. He doesn't dare curl it, but just sinks it further until he feels the end of you pressed against the tip of his nail. He hisses, halting all movement, gauging your reaction.

Your breathing is short, almost frantic, and you scratch at the sheets for an outlet to unload your frustration onto. It's so deep inside you, so sharp, it strikes an electric jolt of fear through you. It's pleasure balanced on the tip of a knife. It only stokes your desire even more.

"Please," you whimper, not above begging and already near blubbering. "Please move."

Remmick quirks a brow. He doesn't understand it, not entirely, but he can smell your fear and your arousal— it's pouring off of you in waves, making the animal part of him hunger for your blood.

He hollows out to the first knuckle, devastatingly slow, twisting as he goes so that you feel the curve of his claw scraping at your walls. You nearly shout, the muscles in your neck tightening with how you grip the sheets.

Remmick plants a hand on your stomach, holding your hips down. His fingers, long enough to reach up to your sternum and prick the skin, press against the curve of your breast. His voice is way too sugary for his words. "Stop fuckin' squirming, honey. Ya wanted it, you're gonna take it like I give it."

He's straining against his jeans; you can see the tent in them when he crowds forward, pressing your hips farther upwards onto his lap. He licks his lips, sighs quietly in concentration.

He adds a second digit beside the first.

You keen loudly. "Oh, fuck—" It's so much, almost too much. They're so long and thick, hard against your softness even when he's careful (and you know that he's trying to be, you know it).

He stills, lets you get used to the intrusion, the stretch. His forearm flexes with his restraint, veins bulging. Remmick is a patient man, in spite of his recklessness. He'll wait you out, sit still until you do what he says, but he'll always give you what you ask for.

You moan. Arch your back just the tiniest bit, the littlest circle of your hips. His hand twitches on your stomach, a quiet grunt leaving his lips. He doesn't have to say it again— you force yourself to lie still. It's harder than it should be. It's unfair, really, that you can't grind yourself on them the way that you want.

But you're so fucking wet. Your eyes shine, watching as he moves his fingers, so slow, so gentle. He feels no resistence except the pulse of your walls around him, hears nothing in the room but the soft hitch of your breath and the slick sounds of his fingers inside you.

Remmick gives you a huff of a laugh that sounds almost disbelieving.

"You're like some horny little leveret," he murmurs, his lips barely moving with how focused he is. "So desperate for it you'll lay down and take these fuckin' things? Not givin' you enough, am I?"

Your face screws up when he pushes in again, until you feel full to the brim, until you can feel the press of his claws up against your cervix. "N— no, you do, I just— I…"

You trail off. He's dragging back out again, until he leaves you empty entirely. The length of his claws glisten with your arousal, and there, at the very tips of them, they're tinged pink with just a bit of your blood.

Remmick smells it. Takes a big whiff like it's some kind of perfume sample, leaving you feeling debased and inexplicably turned on at the same time. Your mouth hangs agape. He wants to spit into it.

"'You just' what, darlin'?" He asks you, and his eyes are red. He traces the length of his claw with his tongue, watching you as he does, and closes his eyes in bliss when he comes to taste your blood. A relieved moan leaves him, like he'd been hankering for it. "Go on. Tell me."

"I just like them," you whisper, finally voicing the truth of the matter. Why you'd asked him to fuck you with his claws. Why you didn't care when he said it would hurt. Why that's part of the appeal. "'Cos they're yours."

He blinks. You've surprised him.

"Bad luck to hurt a hare, y'know," he remarks after a moment, tilting his head matter-of-factly. Like he isn't still licking his hands clean of you, the motion akin to an animal grooming itself. "The aos sí might have a thing or two to say."

You squirm against the unrelenting force of his thighs. He shifts, hooking his ankles around yours to pin your legs apart. You gasp. "Rem—"

"Not like I'm known for good decisions. I'll apologize later."

This time, he doesn't stop until you cum around them.

THEN

It began with the stranger showing up at your door. Bruised and bloodied, covered in a number of fluids that you couldn’t identify and didn’t want to think about, it looked like someone had bent him backwards over a fire pit and beaten him to a pulp. His dark hair was matted over his forehead, drenched in sweat. And when you opened the door after he’d pounded on it, he’d begged you on his knees. 

“Please,” the stranger had cried, whimpering like a kicked dog. “Please, let me in. You dunno how long I’ve been runnin’– they been chasin’ me–”

“Who’s been chasing you?” was your honest reply. You clutched your robe tighter around your body, peering out into the darkness beyond your porch. Mosquitos and mayflies buzzed in the yellow light over your door, and the trees swayed in the summer breeze. You heard nothing but the sound of the leaves rustling, and the soft noises of the stranger bent solemnly at your feet, like a pilgrim to a shrine.

“Please,” the man croaked again, instead of answering you. Tears ran down his cheeks, trailing dirt and blood like rivers over his reddened skin. His lip trembled, and in spite of everything that told you a stranger asking to be let in was a recipe for disaster, your heart ached in sympathy for him. 

“I can’t let you in,” you’d told him then, and he seemed to sag like a balloon with a leak. His hands– long, spindly fingers that looked almost claw-like in the low light– plunked onto your porch beside his knees, palms up like an outcast sinner. He breathed through his mouth in sharp, gasping inhales and shaky exhales, his broad chest heaving with the effort. You looked him over, and then hesitantly amended, “Wait there.”

Truth was, you really couldn’t let him in, and you knew it. You had company– your best friend had gone through a terrible fight with her partner, and she was currently curled up in a fetal ball on your couch under a hoard of blankets. Letting a bloodied stranger in was not a welcome idea, and gun to your head, you’d never put her in a position where she’d be uncomfortable. 

That didn’t mean you couldn’t help in some way, though. Warm washcloth and glass of water in hand, you went to open the door again. 

“Where’re you going?” your friend called, muffled from within her cocoon. 

“Fella on the porch needs some help,” you told her as you opened the door to find him where you left him, looking haggard, but sat with his head in his hands now rather than kneeling. “Don’t worry about it, stay there.” 

You met her eye and gave her a lingering look. Stay there and call for help if need be. She nodded at you once, like she got the message loud and clear. 

You left the door open when you stepped onto the porch, the screen snapping shut behind you. You set the glass of water down beside his hip, and clutched your robe to your chest like you could use it as a shield. 

The stranger looked up at you then with gleaming eyes, and a look crossed his face that made you pause. You couldn’t see what he saw in that moment, as you held a dripping rag in one hand, and your head was framed with the halo of light from over the door, the chiffon sleeves of your robe over your negligée like the gossamer wings of a faerie queen.

Vain and ancient creature that he is, he’s known kindness enough to know when to weaponize it. He knows beauty like a commodity to be molded, used and destroyed. But he’s only ever truly come across the sublime once or twice in his neverending existence, and it’s always something that makes him understand that so-called ‘fear of God’ that the people who tore his home apart talked about. It’s something that makes him feel small, if that’s ever a thing that he could be called. It’s something awe-inspiring. Terrifying.

It’s something that he felt as you loomed over him, and you touched your fingertip gently under his chin to tilt his head up, up, up, and pressed the warm, damp washcloth to his clammy forehead. It was earth-shattering in its softness. It was horrifying in the way your touch felt like the warmth of the fires of his home, seventeen-hundred years ago and counting, singing songs to the Tuatha Dé Danann and wishing for fresh rain come spring. 

And you didn’t even know it. You didn’t know the scope of his hunger, his lust, or the age of his aching heart. Your hand so close to his mouth was steady, like you’d put your hand in the mouth of a lion, trusting that it wouldn’t bite. So he didn’t. Not yet.

“Well, you’re pretty as a cool wind in the month o’ August,” he croaked softly at you, and his voice cracked with the effort to keep it low.

The stranger’s accent was odd, clunky– ambiguously southern, but didn’t flow quite right. It was as if certain syllables were from another language, another dialect. You didn’t know enough to question it at the time, though.

You tried not to wither away from his gaze, piercing as it was. His eyes glinted in the low light, almost like a cat’s shining through the darkness. You felt as though he could see the breadth of your soul with them and brand their gaze onto it, burning hot and searing. 

“Would you like me to call someone?” you asked. “A doctor? Cops?” 

“No,” he insisted, urgently. “No doctors. No cops, please.” You didn’t blame him.

“I’m sorry I can’t help you more,” you admitted with a soft exhale as you cleaned the dirt from his face. Something had hit him over the head and left a nasty cut, which seeped blood even as you wiped it from his skin. He didn’t even flinch as the rag passed over the open wound, like he couldn’t feel it. He was too busy looking at you.

“Can’t come in if you don’t let me,” he muttered. “S’not proper, like.”

“I guess your mother raised you right, then.” 

The man’s nostrils flared. You thought, perhaps, that you’d actually hurt him, what with the blood weeping from the gash in his head and the bruising on his temple and his cheek. But the truth was that he was smelling you, with your wrist so close to his teeth, and his hunger so long without satiating that it took everything in him not to turn his head and catch your hand in his maw, like the animal he is. Your scent, like roses and pinewood, wrapped around him like a gift, enveloped him like the embrace of an old friend. 

“My mama didn’t teach me nothin’ proper. Learned most of that on my own,” he admitted to you then, and it was more about himself than he’d told anyone in an age– maybe two, three centuries. Most people didn’t stay long enough to learn or listen. He didn’t have the patience for it, usually. Once he sired them and they saw into his mind, he didn’t have to reveal anything about himself.

But with you… with you, something held him back from biting. Maybe it was a morbid curiosity. Maybe it was a longing for genuine sympathy from a warm, living creature that he didn’t have control over. Or maybe it was just his greed, as it usually was, wanting to keep you alive long enough to ruin you, as he ruined most pretty things.

That must have been it, he supposed. No other reason. He wasn’t human enough for that anymore.

“What’s your name, stranger?” you asked. It was a miracle that you didn’t flinch away from him when he closed his eyes at the sound of your voice, and when he opened them again they burned red with want. He could feel his composure slipping like water over riverstones, and he searched in the dark for something to hold himself back.

His hands, his claws, folded in on themselves like paper cranes. “Remmick.” 

“Remmick?” You saw the red in his eyes. You ignored it, imagining it was a trick of the light. Maybe you shouldn’t have.

“Aye, Remmick.” You wiped away the tear streaks through the dirt on his cheeks, and he scrunched his nose in a way that made your heart hammer in your chest. He really was very handsome, this stranger, and the way he kept looking at you like you were a holy spirit was starting to make you a bit weak. “It’s Irish.”

A smile fluttered over your features, and Remmick decided that it was a bigger mistake to have looked at him like that than if you’d let him into your home. 

“Well, Remmick,” you said, and his name sounded so sweet in your mouth that he felt the ache of his sharp teeth wanting to spring forth. Saliva pooled in his mouth, threatening to spill out. He swallowed fast. “This is a really deep cut on your head. I don’t know what did this to you, but I’m not really in a position to help you.” 

“I gathered.” The thing that got to him the most was that you dropped your hand from his chin, and he wanted to surge forward and cling to your hips like a child clamoring for the comfort of a grown-up. He hadn’t felt like such a boy in a millennia.

“I’m a bit tied up tonight,” you explained to him, reaching down and pushing the glass of water into his hand. “But if you go down the street to the Joneses, Mrs. Jones is a nurse. She should be able to help you more than me.” You indicated to him the house that you meant, and he followed the line of your arm with hungry eyes, not bothering to look beyond it. 

“Right– right. I– I’m sure I can, yeah–” 

He stared down into the glass of water like it had slapped him. He held that posture for a long moment, hanging his head with his elbows on his knees, the moon reflected in the water in his cup. You were almost afraid that he’d start crying again, and you’d have to go inside and call someone for help, because his blood was dripping down his forehead again and onto his brow. 

Then he sniffed, and jerked his head away like he was trying to contain himself. He tapped his finger on the rim of the glass once, and looked up at you. He smiled at you, a grin that showcased his sharp canines. 

“Well, I best not keep you,” Remmick said lowly, and set the still full glass of water on the porch step beside him as he stood. When he reached the bottom of the step, he turned back toward you, his eyes flickering in the moonlight. “Thanks so much for your help, Miss…?” 

You told him your name, and he inhaled deeply, like he hadn’t had fresh air in years. Then he repeated your name back to you, like he was tasting each letter on his tongue. 

You should never tell a stranger your name, is what his mother taught him. Because strangers, especially ones that show up bleeding at your door, often turn out to be fae.

He was not the same as he had been when you first opened your door– desperate, whimpering, crying and near crawling on all fours, claiming someone was after him. He stood straight, his hand in the pocket of his tattered trousers, his undershirt soaked through with blood and sweat. His own blood dripped down the side of his face, eerily off-setting his smile.

You had half a mind to invite him inside after all, if only to get him a change of clothes and a bandage for his head. 

“‘Nother time, maybe,” he mused, and then began walking away in the direction of the Joneses.

And when you went back inside, you couldn’t get the flash of his red eyes out of your mind for anything, like they’d burned their mark into your soul after all.

That night, you had a nightmare. 

Or… was it a nightmare, really? You weren’t sure. It wasn’t like any nightmare you’d ever had before, but it also wasn’t like any pleasant dream, either. 

It was all dark. It was the kind of darkness that sinks into your bones and invites terror, an uncertainty of what lurks around you. There may have been stars; you may have been floating somewhere in the cosmos, for all you knew. But what you did know was that you were not alone. 

The presence made itself known in whispers, first. And then, the touch of a single, steady finger gliding gently, almost tantalizingly soft, up your spine. Your skin prickled. Your heart pulsed. 

You felt your fear physically in your body, like fingers reaching deep into your gut and mixing your organs around like sludge. What made it worse was that you couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. You could think all you wanted, you could imagine the worst things possible happening to you, but it didn’t change the way your heart stuttered in your chest when a single hand gripped the back of your neck, and you felt sharp nails digging into your soft, sensitive flesh.

“I know what you want–want–want–” said the voice, which would come to haunt you both sleeping and waking for days to come. It echoed into the void around you like you lingered in an endless cavern, and each word spoken would stretch on and on into eternity. “Lovely girl–girl–girl, you need only ask–ask–ask–”

The voice sounded old, older than your bones and older than anything you’d ever known before. It had an accent that wasn’t familiar to you, something ancient and untethered to your time. Whatever this was, spirit or demon or other, you had no idea how to approach it.

The thing in the dark, seemingly sensing your uncertainty, laid another hand on your waist. The touch was almost… delicate. It wrapped around the curve of your body, long fingers spreading slowly across your exposed skin. It felt you, like it was searching, exploring with languorous curiosity. Over the soft plane of your stomach, between your breasts, over the curve of one– but only a ghost of a touch, never deigning to press in and truly grope or grab. Almost as if to show you what you could have, if only you let it.

Your nerves on high, piqued by the faintest passing of a rough palm over your nipple, your breath hitched. The fear was seeping into something worse, something primal and older than fear itself, lingering deep in your anatomy, quivering beneath the fascia. You could feel your body warm with a fever where the thing dragged its touch.

“Tell me–me–me–” the thing insisted, its voice like that of a snake slithering over cool stone, echoing into the fathomless dark. “What needs do you bury–bury–bury, what desires do you let fester within you–you–you–”

One sharp nail, or perhaps it could be more accurately described as a talon or a claw, scraped ever-so-gently down from between your breasts, over the slope of your stomach, pausing just above your pelvis. The skin there was sensitive enough that you jerked in the thing’s grip, and the hand that had held the back of your neck slipped forward to wrap around your throat. 

There was a body against your back. Should there have been? For some reason, it made sense to you– the hands must have been attached to something, the voice coming from the mouth of a creature. But it was more than that. The thing was solid but also intangible, like a presence pressing in on you from all sides. Surrounding you. Engulfing you. Devouring you.

You hated that you liked it. You were confused by your desire to let the hands roam where they wanted, do with you as they pleased. It made no sense that you wanted to press your body back against the invisible force holding you, but you did.

Its clawed finger brushed lower than before, gliding through the hair at the apex of your thighs. When you squirmed again, and you widened your shaking legs to welcome the dip of its hand, the thing laughed in your ear. 

Suddenly, you found you could speak, like its grip on the back of your neck was the only thing that had been holding you back. Not your fear or your uncertainty, no. Just its touch, like you were its puppet.

“What are you?” you asked, and your own voice sounded too loud and clear in comparison to the thing’s unearthly whisper. 

“I am your release,” it said into your ear, its tone airy enough that the darkness didn’t capture and mirror it. “I am your opus to mold to your whim, if you let. Me. In.”

“Are you the Devil?” you asked, though you don’t know why you did. You didn’t even know if you believed in the Devil. But it seemed the right question to ask, the obvious question. What else could create lust in you like this?

The creature, or thing, or man– whatever it may be– chuckled then. “Only if you want me to be.” 

“I don’t know what I want.”

“You do.” 

There was a purring. It rumbled in your chest and up your throat, reverberating in your soft palate. It came from the thing in the dark, as it pressed up against you, along the length of your spine. Its hand dipped lower, a teasing caress just along the edges of your aching cunt.

“Let me in, love,” the voice whispered its plea into your ear, and there, right there, its mask slipped. That primordial voice, the accent that you could not place– it turned human. Just human enough for you to make out the urgency, the desire, the need. 

The crack in its facade was Irish. Its bones were brittle with longing.

You felt what could have been a nose skirt the shell of your ear, and a breath on your neck. You turned your head, your eyes searching in the dark for something, anything that you could see to identify what it was. If it was man or beast, solid or spirit, you couldn’t see a thing. Except for two red embers, almost scorching in their brightness against the endless abyss. It’s breath, if that’s what it was, fell hot across your open mouth when you gasped.

“Sink your teeth in me,” you told it, your eyes focused on those two red coals within the darkness. And like a servant obeying its master, the thing did as it was ordered. You felt cool lips upon your skin before the pain of fangs in your throat, as its finger stroked once, and agonizingly slow, over your clit.

And you woke up gasping for air, drenched in sweat, in the throes of an orgasm. For a moment you couldn’t move, and it frightened you that you were paralyzed and held captive to your body’s pleasure.

You’d never experienced anything quite like it– neither the dream, nor the experience of a release with no room to move away from it. You lay there while your orgasm rushed over you in waves, and your mind raced with phrases that faded from your memory faster than you could capture them.

Are you the Devil?

Let me in.

Sink your teeth in me.

Once your orgasm ran its course, you spent a few seconds willing your fingers to twitch so that you could rouse your paralyzed body. Just before you did, your wandering eyes landed on your bedroom window, and the inky night beyond.

That was where you swore you could see two red eyes staring back at you.

Remmick watched you for days. 

He’s never been one to back down when he wants something– one of his many vices, he knows, but at this point he’s more vice than virtue. If he ever had any virtues, they died a long time ago. 

The first night after he entered your dream, he captured the smell of you on the breeze, and he thought he was going to be sick. You smell so sweet, your blood rich, your body’s natural odor like an aphrodisiac, and he was so overcome with want he nearly tore his own face off trying to keep himself sane about it. His throat stung, his eyes spilled tears that burned like acid. He was absorbed in the memory of his finger stroking through your cunt, even if it was only in your unconscious mind– it was real to him. Your orgasm was very real to you, he was certain of that.

It took an hour and his claws in the earth and a lot of dry heaving, but he managed. Don’t worry about him, he’s fine.

The night after that, you left your window open well into the evening, while you chatted with that friend of yours over wine. He watched you, holding her hand over the top of the dining table, while she sobbed into the glass. 

“I hate my life,” your friend was crying, her tears smudging her mascara. She looked like a tragic heroine from an Italian opera. 

“You don’t hate your life,” you returned calmly, to offset her outburst. “You just aren’t enjoying it right now.” 

“You say that,” she argued, yanking a napkin up to blot her face, “but just wait until you have someone throw you aside like trash right before your birthday. I’m going to be single on my birthday.” 

“And somehow, I imagine you might just survive.” You hummed and stretched, standing up to gather your two empty wine glasses, accustomed to these sort of dramatics. You’d tuck her into her cocoon on the couch and she’d be asleep in no time. She just needed to wallow before she could return to the land of the living, so to speak. 

Remmick watched as you stooped and kissed your friend on the top of her head before retreating into the kitchen. And then to quell his rabid jealousy, he snatched a squirrel out of the tree beside him and bit its head off.

He wanted to really know you, you see. He wanted to know everything about you. It’s easier for him when he can go through the world without a care other than his survival, and anyone or anything he becomes attached to is a byproduct. But you… you surprised him. You’d ambushed him with your gentility, made a fool of him with your beauty. You ripped his heart out by simply resting your fingertip on his chin. 

Remmick doesn’t deal with admiration well.

The third day, your friend left your home after dark, and it was then that his rash decision making came out in full force. 

Her hands shook when she fished her keys out of her pocket. She was walking alone, at night, through the dark woods, and… well, almost every folk tale on earth will tell you not to do that, but maybe she wasn’t familiar. It didn’t really matter when Remmick dropped down beside her from above, and clamped a clawed hand around the back of her neck.

She was too stunned to scream. She whirled around, eyes wide as saucers, and saw in his face the demon that he was.

“You got somethin’ I want,” he said, as a way of explaining himself. His voice was too friendly, though, and normally that tends to signal death. 

Then, he opened his mouth wide and tore out her throat before she had a chance to reply. And it was a good thing, too, because he hadn’t eaten in days and quite frankly, he was starving.

It’s always a little bit disorienting when he sires people, and their memories flood into his mind like a wave crashing on the cliffs of Inis Meáin. He has to sort through them like files in an archive, while he sucks the blood from his fingers and ignores the brackish tumult of the change happening in whatever-their-name’s system. 

“You’re a wee feckin’ mess, ain’tcha?” Remmick swore under his breath as he tilted his head. Your friend’s memories seemed to spin one hyperdramatic crisis into the next. She’d gone through partners like changes of clothes, and each time seemed to think her life was forfeit before a new one emerged. She was neurotic and needy, and the one constant in her life was… you.

You, who never judged her for being high maintenance. You, who always opened your door to her when she had a problem. You, who showed her love and support when she felt like the world had turned against her. She loved you like a sister.

Remmick focused on her memories of you, like flipping through his own personal encyclopedia of your quirks. You could be outspoken and loud when in the company of close friends. You talked about masturbation techniques with your friend like it was the weather. You hadn’t had a real partner in years. If your track record was anything to go by, you probably hadn’t been properly fucked in a long time, and your friend was preoccupied with changing that for you. You and she drank Kentucky bourbon until it flowed through you like warm amber, and you danced in the rain.

You reminded him of things that he loved long ago, parts of life that he couldn’t enjoy in death. The smell of morning dew. The taste of fresh honey. The touch of sunlight on his skin after a long period of rain. It hurts to miss these things, but it’s agonizing to find it in something that’s just out of reach.

“Agh, my head.” Your friend had woken up. And as Remmick sorted through your likes and dislikes, your behavioral patterns and your habits in her memory, one thing became abundantly clear to him. 

You seemed to be the kind of person who gave themselves freely to others, but got little in return for your sacrifice. He’s known too many like you. He knows that it’s a lonely life to lead. He knows that deep down inside you there must be a hunger, a longing for something more. Something to fill the hole where your bleeding heart is.

With his glowing eyes focused on the moon overhead, Remmick laughed to himself. He knew how to fill that hole.

“No, you can’t.” 

Remmick turned his bloody face and locked eyes with your friend, who had pushed up onto her elbows on the ground. She blinked at him through the dark, watching as the night bent around him like he could command it. Her new fangs flashed bright from beneath her upper lip. She curled her face into a grimace, an agonized frown. 

“You can’t touch her.” 

Remmick’s eyes glowed red, the red of blood, the red of a predator finding its prey. Your friend’s eyes remained their base white– just a fledgeling. She’d seen into his mind. She knew how old he was, how many eons he had lived and how many stretched before him like an endless road he was destined to trod. She hadn’t even tasted blood, she was nothing compared to him. And yet, she planned to keep you from him. 

“Dunna recall askin’, love. Not really up to ya now, is it?” There was a finality in his tone that, if she understood it, she ignored.

She struck out at him, a broken piece of wood from the forest floor in her hand. It was a valiant effort, he gave her that, but he could see it coming. He’s been around a long time.

Remmick’s hand, elongated with razor sharp talons that could cut like a knife, plunged into the cavern of her chest as if her ribcage was no more than a paper film. He felt her pain in his own chest– the setback of a hivemind– but it was nothing that he hadn’t felt before, one thousand times over. Remmick gritted his teeth and welcomed the agony like an old friend. 

Her heart came free in his grip, still ripe with blood. It tasted of regret. He ate it with a smile on his face.

The rain came in as a welcome reprieve in the summer heat. When you stepped off your porch at dusk, it was with a soft whisper of your skirt in the breeze, your screen door snapping shut behind you. 

In the summertime, the crickets sang so loud that the night felt alive around you, like the darkness had its own soul and consciousness. You’d be lying if you said you didn’t love it, that walking into it didn’t feel like walking into the arms of a lover. 

The pond in the woods was a well-known secret to those who lived around the woods, but you never saw anyone around there when you went, so you could always bet that you’d be alone when you wanted to sit by the water. This time of year the frogs would be croaking, and you knew that the moon would reflect on the water nicely, and the water in the soil would float up to you with the heat and wrap around you like a blanket. 

You said that you liked to be alone, especially when you went to the pond, but did you really like it when it was the only choice you had? Can you truly like something out of necessity? You didn’t know. You spent a majority of your time alone, when you weren’t tending to your best friend’s newest crisis– and she’d gone home, citing a desperate need to “work things out” with her partner. You loved her, don’t mistake that, but there was also a deep loneliness within you that you couldn’t explain.

It was a stone in the pit of your stomach that never really left, even if your hunger was sated every so often. It was always there, it was just a matter of time before it made itself known again. It was a deep longing for something more, something that you couldn’t quite name but knew was missing from your soul. 

When you sat on a rock by the water’s edge, you searched for the answer in it like the surface would give up the secret to you, place it in the palm of your hand. But you saw and heard nothing, save for the rustle of the leaves in the wind. 

That is, until the rustling of the leaves gave way to a whispering, if you could call it that. It was a breath of air falling from parted lips, a sharp exhale on the nape of your neck.

Let me in. You swore you could hear the words, you could almost feel them dancing down your exposed arms. The whispers seemed to surround you on all sides, coming from the trees, the sky, the water. Tell me–Lovely girl–What needs–you bury–

You startled at a twig snapping in the trees behind you. Heart pounding, you looked over your shoulder with a gasp.

“Whup!” It was the man from your porch some nights ago who held his palms up in the darkness. He gave you a lopsided grin that seemed too sharp to be disarming. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare ya.”

You stared at him, not really knowing what to say. He looked better than he had when he nearly collapsed on your doorstep like a martyr. His shirt and face were no longer bloody. He wore a blouse, sleeves rolled to the elbows. His face showed no sign of ever having been lacerated at all. His hands were spotless. He wore his pants a bit loose, belted at the waist like it could erase the fact they were too big for him. 

“You’re not–” you began, then stopped, searching for the right words. “No one comes out here at night.”

“You did.”

“Old habits.” You blinked, then looked away, back to the water. He was too handsome. You were too weak. “Do you just… like to wander around here, then? I thought someone was chasing you.”

“Oh, they ran off. People come and go. It’s like that, ain’t it?” There was a mirth in his voice that confused you, like it was all just a joke to him. 

“Well, I guess that’s a good thing, then. Your name’s Remmick, right?”

He sounded pleased. “You remembered!” 

“You’re hard to forget,” you admitted. “You were pretty beat. You had me worried, there.”

“Kind o’ ya.” You didn’t hear his approach, but he was suddenly closer to you. “Nah, I can handle m’self pretty well, I like to think. But there are better things to talk about.”

“Oh, yeah?” you said, matching his smirk. “Like what?”

“Like what you’re doing out here in the middle o’ the night with no shoes on,” Remmick pointed out, gesturing to your bare feet on the rock. 

You looked down. You’d been excited about the rain letting up and you had run outside without your shoes, in your nightgown. You hadn’t actually expected anyone to see you like this. “I like to listen to the frogs.”

Remmick raised an eyebrow at you. “...Frogs?”

“Yes, frogs.” You nodded at him slowly. “Y’know. In the pond. They like to sound off at night.” 

He paused for a second. “I don’t hear anything.”

“That’s because you’re scaring them.”

Remmick snorted then, turning half-away from you. He spluttered a bit. “You– you’re somethin’ else, I’ll give ya that–”

“What do you have against frogs?”

“I’ll have you know, I like frogs just fine.” He sounded a little bit too indignant about it.

“Well, they’re not gonna make any noise while you’re standing around jabbering like that,” you scoffed at him. “They have stage fright.”

“Right, right. A thousand apologies, ma’am.” He kicked his heel against the ground. “Would they be offended if I joined you for the show?”

“Sit down and see.” 

Remmick grumbled something under his breath that you couldn’t make out, but he perched on the boulder beside you, anyways. His heels dug into the damp earth while he waited beside you, and the space around him seemed to buzz with electricity, nearly singeing your skin with its closeness. He smelled metallic, like copper pounded into a flat disc, and the salt of his sweat lingered in the humid air like it wanted you to taste it. Your mouth watered. 

After a few moments, he leaned a bit toward you, opened his mouth with an inhale to speak. You shushed him before he could, and he stared at you for a second with his mouth agape and a bewildered look on his face. Then he pressed his lips together and straightened up, following your lead without any more fuss. 

You spent a number of minutes sitting in silence together, watching the fireflies blink through the trees and over the water. It was peaceful, and laced with a kind of contentment you hadn’t had before, sitting there. It was as if his mere presence, unfamiliar though it was, drew you in and warmed you like a moth to a flame. 

Then, one frog croaked in the bushes. Then two joined in, and soon an entire chorus was chittering, filling the night air with sound. You grinned, and nudged Remmick’s arm with your elbow, as if to say, told you. He turned his head and nodded his assent. You were right.

After listening for a while, you said to him softly, “You know, I’ve never been out here with anyone before.”

“The frogs’d be too afraid, I reckon.” 

You giggled at him, and Remmick shot you a winsome smile. The singing of the little animals died out slowly as you spoke, but you found you couldn’t help yourself with him. “No, I just… I hadn’t thought anyone would want to.”

“What, you never even showed your friend?” You shot him a look out of the corner of your eye, and he faltered. “The… the one that was on your couch the other night.”

You hesitated for a moment, and then grunted. “She’s not really the type to sit and listen to the ‘music of the night,’ so to speak.” 

“I’d think that anybody who cares for you would want to share in the things you enjoy,” Remmick said. He crossed his arms, seemingly deep in thought. “Tell me somethin’. When was the last time… someone did for you, and expected nothin’ in return?” 

“I don’t know,” you murmured. “That’s not really how the world works.”

“It can be,” Remmick replied, and looked you over as though he could glean all of your earthly secrets just with a glance. “Only if you want it to be.”

You gazed into his eyes, and something about his words sparked a familiarity in you that you couldn’t explain. You felt as if you’d been here with him before, on this rock, having this exact conversation. Or that maybe, you met him once in a dream.

Are you the Devil?

Only if you want me to be.

You frowned. His accent still didn’t sit right with you. It didn’t even sit right in his mouth. It wasn’t supposed to be there. “You’re not really from the south, are you?”

Remmick tilted his head at you like an animal trying to figure out a foreign object. His hands had wandered into his pockets, his posture feigning comfort, but his back was too straight for it to seem real. Something in his face made you feel like he commanded the wind in the trees. “Not originally.”

“Your name is Irish, you said. Is that where you’re from?”

His glittering eyes trailed over you again as he hesitated. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, while he seemed to make up his mind about something. “That’s right.”

You crossed your legs, sitting your full weight onto the boulder you used as a perch. “Tell me about it.”

“About Ireland?” He was surprised. Surprised enough that the southern mask slipped, and was replaced by what you guessed was his real accent.

You nodded at him. Remmick finally tore his eyes away from you, almost bashful. He looked everywhere but at you– the trees, the sky, the pond, his shoes. He sucked on his teeth for a moment, before he shifted a bit towards you again. 

“‘Twas a little village, on the east o’ the island,” he began, and the lilt of his accent slipped through like he’d lost the resolve to cover it. “The land there… It was so green. Like nothin’ ye’d ever known. The conifers could grow so tall ya thought they’d reach the sky.” He gestured with his hand, holding it up over his head. “And the bogs, they’d swallow ya if ya weren’t careful. Like there was somethin’ livin’ there that didn’a wanna be bothered.”

“It sounds beautiful,” you told him in barely a whisper.

“Aye, it was,” Remmick murmured back. “There were groves where you could go, bring the sheep and let 'em graze. You could lay there in the grass for hours and never worry ‘bout anyone disturbin’ ya. And when the clouds broke, and the sun hit ya, it was like Brigid was singin’ a song right to ya.”

“Brigid?”

“Goddess o’ fire,” Remmick explained with an indulgent smile. He peered at you from beneath his lashes, looking a bit misty in the eyes. “And in the evenings, there’d be music, ‘cause truth was, ain’t nothin’ better in the world than music that moved the very soul in ya. Me grandda could beat a drum louder than thunder. You’d feel it in here,” he touched his fingers to your chest, drawing an X right over your thudding heart. “Like it was tryin’ to break ya clean in half. But that was before–” 

Remmick stopped short, like something had wrapped around his throat and forced his words to die there. He stared blankly at his fingers on your chest, seemingly at something there that distracted him. His lashes fluttered, casting long, spiney shadows over his cheeks.

“Before what?” you prompted gently after a moment. 

He blinked once, twice. Then he glanced up at your face, and smiled ruefully. “Bah. Listen to me chatterin’ on. The world seemed so much bigger when I was a lad. Always does, dunnit?”

You opened your mouth to agree, but found that you couldn’t make a sound. You were struck dumb. His eyes. They were glowing red, and you couldn’t ignore it this time, the way you had before. 

As if in a trance, you reached forward and touched your fingers to his cheek. You could feel his hand pressing against your chest, to feel your heartbeat as it pounded against your ribcage. His skin was cool to the touch, unlike the air that hung around him, swimming with the heat of summer.

You don’t know why you did it– you weren’t thinking, that could be the only explanation. Or maybe you were overwhelmed by the fact that whatever you held in your hands was not a man, even though he talked and breathed like one. He’d even groveled at your feet like one. But, when he parted his lips and you saw the flash of sharp fangs in his mouth, you reached to drag the pad of your fingertip across its razorlike edge.

Sink your teeth in me.

“I dreamt of these,” you whispered, while the ridges of your fingertip skipped over the point of his elongated canine. He held still as you felt them, nearly trembling and staring at you wide-eyed, and you imagined yourself sticking your hand into the mouth of a wolf as it bared its teeth. You remembered the feeling of them in your neck, so real in your mind, before you’d woken up in ecstasy. “I came.”

“You did.” 

“You knew that already,” you said, and it wasn’t exactly a question. 

“I did,” he answered, anyway. Remmick’s voice was broken and rough in his throat, almost the same as it had been in your dream. 

He was drooling. A thick stream of it dripped from the corner of his mouth, down his chin. You traced it with your fingertip, gathered it up before licking it off. Its taste was saccharine, like flowers rotting in the heat. Remmick’s hand fisted in the front of your nightgown.

You were on fire. Your heart felt as though it may jump up your throat from beneath his touch. Your skin prickled with goosebumps even in the hot summer night air. You wanted to lean forward and kiss him. You wanted to know what it might feel like if you came on his cock, instead. You wanted to take him right there on the dirt floor of the woods. 

You didn’t. You brushed your thumb over his cheekbone, and you didn’t miss the way he shivered when you did. 

“It’s getting late,” you told him finally, trying to keep your voice steady and even. Maybe you failed; he didn’t show any reaction either way. He stared at you like he hung on every word you said. “Walk me home.”

Without question, he did what you told him to. He shadowed you three feet behind, like a domesticated pet. But his eyes glowing at you in the dark like two red spotlights, an indication that he was not domesticated, nor a pet. Whatever Remmick was, he belonged to something more ancient and unknowable than the night itself. 

When you came to your porch, Remmick stopped short. Like a gentleman, he stood there in the dark as you mounted the porch steps, and you got the feeling that he was waiting for your next instruction, whatever it may be.

You paused with your back to him, feeling his piercing stare following your every move. Your tongue dragged over your dry lips, parched with thirst and unable to quench it. Not without him.

Then, you turned. You found him gazing up at you, and the red in his eyes seemed less sinister, and more reverent. When he looked at you like that, you felt like you were something otherworldly to him. 

“Would you like to come in for a drink?” The words left your mouth before you could overthink them. 

Remmick raised an eyebrow at you, like he thought he’d misheard you. “If you want.”

You almost laughed. Your hands shook in want of him. His mouth curled into a smile that was too innocent and reassuring for what you wanted from him. 

“Come in, Remmick,” you said. 

So he did.

NOW

Remmick stands in your house, and honestly, he doesn’t know what to do with himself now that he’s here. A lot of the time he expects not to be let in, because more and more people are smart enough to tell he’s not an honest person.

You are smart and you are aware that he’s not an honest person, if he’s a person at all, so he really wonders how in the world he’s standing here. He stares around at your bookshelves and your couch and your tables and chairs and rugs, and he feels like he shouldn’t be here, when he can’t be more than a dog without a bone where you’re concerned. 

The place smells like you. It positively reeks of your scent, and he breathes until his lungs are full of you. He figured he’d have to be patient, have to wait for you to warm up to him. He thought for sure that you’d run away screaming when you caught him with his fangs out– most people do. But you touched them, you stuck your fingers in his mouth and you licked his drool from them, and he hadn’t bitten down. 

Maybe you’re domesticating him after all, because he’s never known himself to not bite when he gets the chance.

You watch him with a curiosity that you think must mirror his own. Remmick froze in the middle of the room and he hasn’t moved in a minute, so you’re leaning against the kitchen counter, just… observing. 

It’s an odd thing, having something inhuman looking around at your domicile, which you can only assume he had to be invited into explicitly. His eyes are still glowing, but they wander around the room like he can somehow burn every bit of it into his memory if he looks at it all quick enough.

“Remmick?”

He looks at you. He can’t decide whether you’re prettier in the light of your own home, or with the moonlight spilling over you like a veil. 

“What are you, really?” A pout touches your lip, like it’s confounding you that you just can’t figure him out.

He grins. His teeth are long, sharp, and too plentiful. You get the sense that there are more where they come from, like he’s all teeth and he’s only letting you see some of them now. “We’ve already been over this, haven’t we?” 

You don’t move as he approaches you slowly, but you feel your senses circling the drain the closer he comes. “You spoke to me in riddles.”

Remmick shakes his head. “I told you the truth. At least, a little bit of it.” He leans in close, until you feel his breath on you and smell that metallic, warm scent that lingers around him. “Have you figured out what you want, love?”

Your lashes flutter. “You,” you whisper so sweetly, almost shyly, that he fights not to lose his composure. 

It’s frightening how still he goes. He won’t tell you what he is, but it seems that the appearance of life is a facade he can adopt or dispose of when he wants to. And yet, when he leans in and closes that small gap between you, your heart pounds and your hands reach up to rest against him, your fingers grazing the gold chain around his neck. 

Remmick kisses you, chastely, right at the corner of your mouth. His nose pressed against your cheek, he lingers there, and the light brush of his mouth next to yours is torturous. 

He waits. 

The stillness drags on for a beat, maybe two. And then you break, because you aren’t as studied in patience as a never-aging being who has all the time in the world.

When you turn your head and search for the touch of his lips, he makes a sound like a purr. His gratification is apparent in the curve of his mouth, and in the way his arm circles your waist to scoop you against him, like you weigh nothing. Like you are immaterial, a drop of water to his flood. 

Remmick’s palm touches your cheek, calloused and rough. His fingers, longer than they should realistically be and curved at the ends like jagged talons, stretch up your temples and to the side of your head. His thumb traces your jaw slowly, one millimeter at a time, as though to savor the stretch of skin he feels, to take it all in. 

His tongue drags along the curve of your lip and skips over your cupid’s bow, and you could burn up. You could melt in his arms. You moan into him, a broken sound in the back of your throat, and there is no bottom to his hunger. 

Time is an endless well for him, yes. But he wants you now.

Your feet barely touch the floor when Remmick moves you, and you cling to him. You can’t let go of him for anything, and his tongue invades you just as much as his touch does. The couch creaks under you when your back connects with it, and you find yourself splayed open for him.

Clawed hands hold you by your knees. Remmick hears your heart, the way that it thuds a cacophony in your chest. He smirks at you from below, eyes blazing.

“Are you nervous?” The words fall too softly from his mouth. Sharp nails prick into your skin and threaten to draw blood, and your nightgown is bunched around your hips. 

You don’t have the mind to lie to him– the idea of it seems futile, now. “Yes.”

“You should be.” 

Remmick’s lips press cool to your ankle, and are too soft as they drag over the curve of your calf, and he kneels before you. He touches you reverently, with desire burning in his gaze that could level cities. 

“First time I saw you, I thought y’were a goddess,” he tells you, almost under his breath. “Far as I know, you might still be.”

His spit smears along your inner thigh, the corner of his mouth too wet with it. He flicks his tongue out to lave over the skin there, and his senses are accosted by you– the heat of your body, the smell of the deepest part of you, the salt on your skin. 

“Let me taste you,” Remmick begs, his voice cracking with his need. It feels tight in his throat while he tries not to take what he wants. A base part of him needs you to say it, to give him the permission to devour you. With his eyes closed, he breathes in and whispers a, “please,” that you wouldn’t have caught, if not for his lips against your thigh. 

Your hand finds his head, and his hair– no, it shouldn’t feel the way that it does, light and whispy as smoke between your fingers. It should be sharp, coarse, like everything else about him seems to be. Instead it invites you to lace your fingers through it, to tug just to hear the small noise he makes in his throat as he stares up at you. 

“I want you to taste me.” The words are feeble in your mouth. You’d been so sure of yourself, so brave, but now he pushes your skirt up over your hips, and your cunt hits the cool air, and you feel more exposed than you know what to do with.

Remmick stares between your legs like what he sees there could save him, but from what you don’t know. Himself? His existence? He’s a mystery to you, beyond your comprehension. 

Your thighs threaten to close in around his shoulders. He holds you by your hips, yanks you toward him down the seat of the couch, and you latch onto the backrest for dear life. 

Niceties are a child’s game, but Remmick is a greedy, self indulgent creature. So he takes his time. 

He guides your thigh over his shoulder, and his sharp claws scrape down your sensitive skin. You jerk in his hold. Before you realize what’s happening, the claws digging into the juncture of your thigh slice sideways, leaving a gash that drips blood across your skin, and you cry out more in surprise than in pain. 

Remmick can’t drink from you properly, not unless he wants you to become like him, and see into his mind and know what he did to your friend, and then you’ll absolutely hate him. You’d despise him if you knew what he was in his entirety. 

So, it’s for self preservation– and no other reason, mind you– that he avoids letting his poison into your bloodstream. He licks your blood from you and feels warmth rush through him, feels it stir his cock and stoke his desire all at once. 

His cheeks flush, his eyes heavy lidded, he looks like the Devil between your legs.

“You taste divine,” Remmick says, the words delicate against your skin, and you forgive him. You’d forgive him for anything, you think, when he speaks to you like that. 

Then his mouth closes over your cunt. You cry out, your breath stalling in your lungs like he stole it. 

He takes note of every soft moan and sigh that falls from your lips, every twitch of your hips. He spends a long time there, tasting you, feeling you, on his tongue and his lips and his teeth. 

Remmick tightens his grip on your hip, his other hand reaching up to press flat against your stomach and pin you down. Your cunt throbs, your pleasure mounting and your thighs flexing and tensing when his fingers stroke over the fabric, his claws scraping and tearing at the threads. 

You always were fond of delicate lingerie; that’s your achilles heel now, because his nails cut through it like butter. 

His tongue prods into you, and you gasp so loudly it startles you both. He blinks, and then does it again, slower, watching your face as it pinches in pleasure. 

You’re so warm, warmer than anything Remmick has known in a long time. Sunlight couldn’t compare, fire is a weak substitute to your heat and your presence against him. So, when your hand in his hair tightens and you rock your hips against his mouth, Remmick lets you. He lets you, because he doesn’t remember the last time he enjoyed someone using him. 

You sing like a siren when you come, chasing your release on his tongue. It’s pleasure with an edge of pain. His teeth grazing your clit and his tongue soothing it makes you spasm against him.

Remmick doesn’t mean to, nor wants to let you go, but you squirm so much you break his hold. He gasps for air as if he actually needs it (he doesn’t), painfully stiff in his pants and ignoring it. He could spend eternity between your legs if you let him. 

Then you rip your nightgown the rest of the way over your head, and Remmick is faced with your naked beauty. Open-mouthed, he gulps air like an animal. You’re a vision to him, and he didn’t expect it to make him falter, but he does. Where his mind is normally rife with turmoil, suddenly he comes up with nothing. 

He’s still long enough for you to push him back. He makes a noise in his throat– he might have been trying to object or tell you to stay there, don’t move, but it was barely even a word, and it doesn’t register on his lips. Because, you slide off the couch and into his lap, and your lips crash into his mouth before he can.

And, well. Remmick never looks a gift horse in the mouth. 

Your hands tear at his clothes. The offending things are still on his body and you’re irritated by it, you want them off. Your skin is humming and you want to feel him against you like you’ve never wanted anything in your life. 

His shirt comes undone, finally, with buttons flying through the air and ripping seams. Remmick’s responding chuckle hits you between the legs. “Eager, are we?” 

“Please,” you whisper against his jaw. “I want to eat you alive.”

“The feeling’s mutual, love.” It’s a growl under his breath, but it sings to you in a way you don’t think he could fathom. That you’d let him is a fact you don’t want to face right now. 

Your mouth latches onto his neck and he whimpers. It’s a noise that makes you think maybe he doesn’t care if you see him exposed– that maybe you could sink your teeth into him as well, and he’d be just as happy with it. 

The thought makes something inside you stir. A sleeping beast; a dormant, needy thing, with teeth and claws to match his own. You test him, draw back your lips and let them indent his flesh as far as you dare. 

Remmick, the bastard, laughs. He laughs, but it ends on a moan when you run your tongue over the impression of your teeth, like a salve on a bruise. 

He draws a hand up your back. “Y’can do better than that, sweet pea. Go on. Draw blood.”

You latch your teeth around his shoulder and bite down hard, harder, until you feel his skin give. Remmick’s hips jerk up into you while his hand clamps down harder on your neck. His blood floods your mouth in a rush of salty brine, like the sea rushes in to meet the shore.

Remmick’s cry is sinful, a delight in the way that it crackles in his throat and rumbles against your lips. His gasps are almost like moans, each loud in its obscenity. 

The pain is exquisite. Unrestrained love is something Remmick needs like a sword in the back– it would only destroy him in the long run. But pain keeps the balance. Pain reminds him of what he is.

Your lips break away from his skin with a sticky, wet noise, and remain connected to it by a string of bloody saliva. His blood oozes from the wound in the shape of your teeth, marring his shoulder. 

You can’t help yourself. You drag your tongue over it, lapping up the blood just to feel him shudder beneath you. It’s a full-body tremor that makes you wonder if you’ve really frightened him. Hurt is a different story altogether. 

But then you look at his face. 

“You can’t have enjoyed that,” you murmur in disbelief, your eyes searching him, close enough to feel his breath on your cheek. Remmick looks dazed, half drunk with how his eyelids droop. He pants like he ran ten miles through the desert. 

“Oh, I did,” he replies, his voice dark, his eyes shining. “I did immensely, believe you, me.”

“I did, too,” you admit. You debate whether you should feel embarrassed about that– in his lap, it feels like a moot point. 

The mark of your teeth in his shoulder oozes with blood, and it spills down his chest in smooth trails. You drag your hand from his unmarred shoulder, down the slope of his pectoral to the dip between his ribs, and you feel no heartbeat, nor the warmth of a living body. But he is alive, and he looks at you like you’ve hung the moon. 

He smiles as he drags his thumb across your bottom lip, bringing with it your spit and his blood. “You’ve got a hunger in there you just can’t satisfy, don’tcha? Something bloodthirsty about you,” he remarks, bringing his thumb to his mouth and sucking on it. “We’re gonna have so much fun together.”

He doesn’t kiss you so much as he licks the blood from your face, but you don’t mind it. You find that you like having Remmick’s tongue on you, as much as you like having his blood in your mouth. You must make a charming pair, really. 

Your hands tear at his pants, trying desperately to finish what you started in your haste. Remmick doesn’t stop you, but he also doesn’t try to help you. He’s more content to let you struggle, because he knows you’ll be more satisfied in the end. Never let it be said that Remmick leaves his lovers unsatisfied. 

He hovers there, a hair’s breadth away from your lips, watching you as you lift him from his trousers. Torturing you with his closeness, amused while you try to hide the surprise that washes over your face. 

“Don’t worry,” he says simply, and his chagrin is evident in his voice. “We can go slow if you need to.”

You nearly growl in your indignation. You know that he’s just trying to provoke you, just to see what you’ll do. You can’t help it, though. Lust is boiling in the pit of your stomach, crawling along your skin and coursing through your veins. 

You do not go slow. You do not go gentle, or soft, and you hadn’t ever been tempted to. You sink down on his cock with a fire in your eyes that could level his, just to spite him. He cries out like you’ve torn him in half– like your teeth digging into his flesh had been a kitten lick in comparison. 

Oh, it burns. It burns in the most wonderfully intimate way, and you’re a bit too mindless to stop. You set a pace as ruthless and brutal as his claws in your back. 

Your head bent back on your shoulders, you feel his nose skimming up the line of your throat. The flash of his fangs graze your jugular, but he doesn’t bite. You don’t know why he won’t. 

“Fuck, you’re massive,” you gasp, and it’s the truth. Remmick is so deep in you that he hits some indelible end that makes you feel as though you’re splitting open. You’re caving in, sucked into a void with no light and no meaning other than him.

Remmick pulls you to him, hard. You’re smashed against his bloody chest, encased in his arms while you rock down onto him. You want him as far as he’ll go. You want him the way a starving man wants salvation.

You’re so sensitive from when he brought you to orgasm with his tongue, and your body takes him so willingly, inviting him in as though he’s meant to be there. When you move your hips, it feels like the breath has been stolen from your lungs. It feels like you could latch onto him and never let him go. 

Remmick’s lips part with his hiss of breath, his eyes glassy as he turns his face into the crook of your neck. He’s been deprived of pleasure for too long, and for a creature that survives on hedonism, deprivation is a fate worse than death. He drowns in the flood of it, squeezing his eyes shut when his hunger burns red hot in the back of his throat. 

A tear spills out, dripping down his cheek as he shudders against you. It’s undignified, pathetic of him to need you so badly, but his jaw aches with the desire to bite down on something, and your scent is so strong there at the dip of your neck. 

He snaps his hips up sharply, and your cunt pulses around him. The rise and fall of your body is hasty, instinctual, like if you chase your release fast enough it may bring you to a conclusion more meaningful and everlasting than what waits for you: the comedown, the inevitable dissolution of what you have here.

It doesn’t have to end, Remmick thinks, and he curses in his original tongue, a language so ancient that you can’t even recognize it for what it is. 

“I can’t– I can’t–” he mutters into your skin, and you don’t know that he’s talking to himself more than you, hanging on to his composure by a thread while it’s splitting at the seams. “You are so beautiful,” he whispers, like it’s a secret. “No, I can’t.” 

He mouths at the juncture of your shoulder and neck, as if he isn’t thinking about ripping it apart with his teeth. As if you aren’t a prey animal in the maw of its very demise.

Your fingers weave through the hair at the back of his skull, and a wave of heat bursts up his spine, from his hips to the nape of his neck. He shudders and groans against you, his eyes going wide as you lift his head so you can gaze down at him. 

He’s always going to feel so small when you look down on him like that. 

“You can have anything you want,” you tell him, but then you moan into his face because he jolts his hips up into you, and he hits a part of you that’s desperate for attention. It takes everything in you to keep your eyes open. “You need only ask.”

They’re his own words, echoed back to him. He shakes his head a bit in your hands. You have no idea what he wants– you can’t possibly. In direct opposition to you, Remmick closes his burning eyes. 

“I want you– with me– always,” he tells you from behind gritted teeth, his aching jaw clenched shut. His frustration is evident in his voice, his claws digging into your lower back until blood wells on the skin.

“Then make me yours.” 

He cants his hips up into yours, a groan breaking in his throat. He can hear and feel your heart beating in your chest, pressed up against his own. If he does what you tell him to, he’ll never hear it again. He’ll taste you like this, once more, and then never again, another drop in the sea of things he’s lost to time.

“Make me yours, Remmick,” you repeat, your breath ghosting over his mouth, your tongue silver as moonlight to his senses. Your cunt squeezes him so tight, he swears he could come just from this; the heat of your breath in his mouth, the scent of you surrounding him, pulsating on him. 

You still taste like his blood when you bite down on his lip. His ensuing growl is the very sound of danger– an animal threatened in its home, a primal warning. Remmick’s hands on your hips urge you on, guide you to move faster against him. You snap your hips down sharply against his, meeting him with a slow grind that has you seeing stars. 

One hand, elongated with claws that could span the curve of your skull and reach your brow, curls possessively around the back of your neck. Remmick’s glowing eyes lock on yours, fresh with a hunger as old as humanity itself. 

It’s the essence of being– to want and be wanted.

“Come for me,” Remmick says, his voice low and rough, almost like a groan in the way it rattles in his chest. 

Pleasure licks you sweetly between the legs. Remmick watches as it washes over your face and then breaks, shattering you when your orgasm hits. You cry out, letting his hand hold your head up for you, letting him fill you when he comes. You’re wet where you connect to him, stuck to him with blood and cum, smeared with his spit and sweat. 

It’s the best you’ve ever felt.

Remmick’s moans sing to you like an admission of defeat. His sweat damp face, turned against your throat, feels like the kiss of death. His fangs in your skin are exactly that.

You slump forward, pushing your throat into his mouth while a high pitched, needy moan falls from your lips. It reverberates in his ears, urging him to give over further to the animal impulse, to rip at your flesh and drink what he can before you’re gone. 

Your blood, like golden ichor, fills him with longing. You taste of nectar, and the temporary, fleeting spell of life. He drinks until he feels sick. He drinks until he’s full of you, and even then it’ll never be enough. Never enough for the hunger that lives in him.

Remmick holds you to him until he doesn’t feel your heartbeat anymore. Until he starts to see your memories, he starts to feel his sire connection to you take hold, he keeps his fangs in you. Maybe you will hate him for what he’s done. Maybe you will curse him for eternity. 

Regardless, you will live in each other, a part of each other, until the sun dies out, and the earth stands still. You’ll spend the rest of time intertwined.

Such is the nature of a vampire.

Sweat drips down his heaving chest, collects on his brow and dampens his dark curls. Eyes shut, his breath stutters through parted lips, rosy with a little bit of blood that he’s drawn from them. His head is hung back on his shoulders, baring his neck and the crisp protrusion of his adam’s apple to your wandering eye.

God, he has such a neck. You want to sink your teeth into it.

“You know, you can always ask for a break if you need one,” you tell him with a base amount of gentility. “I can be generous.”

He laughs up toward the ceiling; a weak, haggard sound that rattles in the back of his throat and turns vaguely toward a cough near the end. He takes a few short breaths afterwards, arms flexing against their restraints, wrists tied to the back legs of the metal chair he sits in.

“Give me your best shot, pal.”

You take an even breath to contrast his shuddering one. Then, you lean forward and bring the wand in your hand between his legs again.

The crackling of electricity fills the air, a vaguely blue glow shining from the conductive metal in the dark. His naked legs tense and flail, his hips arching off of the metal surface beneath him. And oh, how he howls up toward the ceiling, the sound echoing off the barren, dirty warehouse walls and meeting your ears ten times over. It raises the hairs on your neck, rolls something deep in your gut that you’re almost afraid to admit is there. Almost.

Three seconds later you sit back, and the shimmering Adonis before you sinks down into his seat again with a fresh layer of sweat gleaming on his skin.

You’ve been at this for a while now; you periodically electrocuting him between the legs, him proverbially spitting in your face every chance he gets. A vicious cycle of you torturing him, him goading you on, and so on into the night, all because he refuses to give you one piece of information.

“What’s your name?”

“Rumplestiltskin.”

You quirk an eyebrow. “Water?”

“Please.”

You reach down to the floor beside your ankle and raise a white plastic water bottle. It’s the kind football players use, large and capable of holding a full quart at once.

You point it towards him and spray him in the face like a dog.

He splutters. You’re sure that with your aim he managed to inhale some of it. He tilts his soaked face towards you finally, a thin rivulet of blood running from his lip down his chin along with the droplets of fresh water. His eyes flash at you in tired annoyance. “The fuck was that for?”

“You didn’t specify how you wanted it.”

The insinuation hangs solidly in the air. You cross your legs, the leather of your pants creaking as it moves. His bright green eyes trail that movement, his lips parted still as he tries to catch his breath, and you catch a glimpse of another emotion underlying all that pain and exhaustion. A dark swell crawls along your skin at the thought.

Pretty boy.

“I don’t think you got enough of it up my nose that time,” he says blandly after a moment. “I haven’t done my weekly neti pot, do you think you could-”

Your hand tightens on the bottle, and a projectile stream of water hits him squarely between the eyes. His head flies back, water dripping down the sides of his face.

“Thanks.”

You bark a laugh. “Such a polite little brat. A cute juxtaposition, if ever there was one.”

He gives you a quiet hmph, his head slumped forward just enough that you can’t see his eyes past the matted curtain of curls over his forehead. His body has finally relaxed after its last jolt to the point that his thighs part just enough, giving you a prime view of what he has to work with.

Very pretty boy.

“I didn’t know you’d be such a glutton for pain, Vigilante.” The words roll off your tongue easily, but something about that nickname is clunky. It arrests the flow of the sentence, throwing a wrench in the works and making it come out almost wrong. Perhaps that was the desired effect, or perhaps he just isn’t very skillful at coming up with code names.

Vigilante looks up at you from beneath his lashes, heavy lidded eyes scowling at you through the dark. “Think I’d do any of this shit if I didn’t like it?”

A wolfish smile spreads across your face. “You should really run away when you can.”

“Y’know, Mozart wrote a song called ‘Lick My Ass.’ You should listen to it sometime.”

You slam the metal rod in your hands between his legs again, ensuring that it smacks hard against his balls before you turn it on, and the sharp sound of electricity crackles over the din of his shouting.

“HOOOOOOHHHH FUCK!”

This time you pull away after five seconds, just to salt the wound. Even after the current is lifted from him, he writhes, head tossed back, hips pushed out so far toward you that you can’t help but admire his cock. Flushed, swollen, and impressively hard. He doesn’t seem to be shy about it, but you guess he has bigger things to worry about at the moment.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” he hisses, his face contorted in pain as he slowly lowers back into a semi-comfortable position. A vein jumps out of his neck, his teeth bared as he gurgles something in the back of his throat that sounds like another snarky insult towards you.

“You’re very resilient. I’m impressed.” You tap the dormant wand against your boot, leaning back in your chair again. You watch him, riveted as though you’re watching a movie. Small whimpers come out of his mouth with each quiet breath, his tongue darting out to stave off the blood seeping from his cracked lip. A deep bruise colors a spot just beneath his sharp jaw, purple fading to yellow already. With a hint of amusement, you observe, “That’s a pretty mark. Got someone waiting for you at home?”

He makes a short noise of protest. “Fuck off.”

“Ah. So, Vigilante’s got a partner. That’s sweet. Surprising, but sweet.” You tilt your head at him. “Do they know how much you like getting your balls fried?”

He pants, lifting his head a bit to fix his dilated eyes on your face. “Theoretically… if I had someone… and they knew that… I bet they could still do it better than this.”

You grin. “What’s your name, Vigilante?”

“Bruce fucking Wayne.”

This time, he almost starts yelling before the wand touches him. Unwilling to start letting him anticipate the pain, you pull away so quickly you barely give him more than a little zap.

He rocks forward in his seat as far as he can, whimpering and hissing miserably through his teeth.

“You must want some sort of relief by now,” you muse, tapping your finger on your knee. “Unfortunately for you, I’m a very patient person.”

He chuckles, a dimple popping up on his cheek when he grins at you. “What kind of relief are we talking?”

You hum, your eyes searching his face for some kind of trick. “Nothing for nothing, sweetheart. You tell me what your name is, and I’ll help you take care of that raging hard on.”

“You’re gonna help me?”

“Or I’ll just untie you so that you can take care of it yourself.”

He smirks, gazing at you tiredly with half-lidded eyes. “You untie me and that’ll be the last thing you ever fucking do. Ohhhh, I want to tear you to pieces.”

Amazing how menacing he can look even with those sweet curls and eyes half shut, the dimples on his cheeks seeming deeper in the shadows. Something about the tilt of his head, the tint of blood on his teeth as he smiles at you, makes you think that he’s far from joking. Still, you refuse to balk any more than he is.

“I’m so threatened.” You flick the button on the wand again, letting the electricity crackle in the silence for a second. “Okay. So I don’t untie you. There are other ways to get you off. I’m sure you’ll come if I just breathe lightly on that thing. I don’t even have to touch you.”

Vigilante whines, hanging his head back with his nose scrunched in indignation. “Fuck you for being so hot. Fuck this. ‘S not fair. God, I’d love to have you between my legs-”

“Then tell me,” you press, uncrossing your legs to lean forward. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“M-my name?” He heaves a shaky breath, his adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows drily. “My name… my name is…”

You blink. He couldn’t possibly be about to break.

“Deez nuts.”

Your hand swings forward, thumb clamping down on the button, amping the power up to ten. Vigilante shrieks up toward the ceiling, a broken sound dying in his throat and fading into a racking sob that shakes his entire body. His hips fully leave the seat, his writhing threatening to topple the chair he’s tied to.

When you pull back, you turn the wand off and toss it to the floor beside the water bottle with a clatter.

You watch him for a long moment. He twitches, his face still clenched tight, muscles still tense as he takes deep, labored breaths. His pale skin is flushed, rosy patches coloring his neck and shoulders. Slowly, so slowly, he sinks back into the seat until his legs release that built up tension, and his breaths turn natural, a rasping groan punctuating each one.

A sharp blast of laughter lurches from your throat, startling him and making him jump to look at you.

“‘Deez nuts?’ Really?”

A tired smile worms its way across his face, and he echoes your laugh softly. “Couldn’t help it. I’ve always wanted to say that.”

You each dissolve into your respective fits of laughter, yours much more energetic and loud compared to his at this point. You rub your eyes, check the time. You’ve been going for hours.

“How are you doing?”

He finally drops his shoulders, fully slumping back into the seat with his head tilted back on his shoulders. He’s obviously exhausted, but a soft smile graces his face as he cracks his eyes open at you.

“‘M good. How’re you?”

“Just fine, baby,” you coo at him. “Can I kiss you?”

He nods. He lifts his head as you stand, shuffling forward to carefully slide your hand up his thigh, clammy with sweat and cold from the chill in the empty warehouse.

You bend down and kiss your boyfriend tenderly on the lips, your thumbs stroking over his damp cheeks. His lips taste of salt and blood, bitten raw and rough. He groans softly, stretching up to try to deepen the kiss, his tongue darting into your mouth as quickly as he can manage it.

“Was I good?” Adrian says in a rushed exhale when you pull back. His green eyes are wide and stare up at you hopefully.

“Fucking amazing, baby. I don’t think anything can break you.” You stroke your knuckles down the side of his cheek, your heart swelling when he leans into that touch. “You were so good for me. God, I love you.”

“Mm… love you.”

For someone so easy to read, he’s almost anomalous in the way he behaves. Dating him, you’d been so accustomed to his usual state of bubbliness that when you finally saw him fight for the first time, you’d been utterly astounded. It was almost as if you couldn’t quite comprehend the fact that Adrian could be Vigilante, and vice versa.

You’ve gotten to a point where it isn’t so jarring. But that doesn’t mean he won’t throw a curveball at you every now and then.

“Okay so one time Peacemaker and I got captured by aliens and they tied me to a chair and electrocuted my balls and I was really mad at Peacemaker because he didn’t give up any information to stop them even though he totally could have but what I didn’t tell anyone was that I actually kind of liked it and anyways I was thinking can you maybe tie me down and torture me for information in a sexy way and then kiss me after?”

The request had taken you fully by surprise, but once you sat with it for a second, it wasn’t the strangest thing Adrian had ever said to you. And, you realized, there was something appealing about the idea to you, too.

“Yeah, I can do that. But we’re going to have a safe word and action, and if I feel like you’re in over your head then I’m going to stop everything. Okay?”

“Okay. Can our safe word be ‘Tinky-Winky?’”

“...That can be the safe word, yes.”

“Sweet. There’s nothing less sexy than a Teletubby.”

It had taken a week of thorough planning to work out everything, and to ensure that Adrian was keeping it all in mind. He put a lot of emphasis on the information-giving aspect of it, to the point where you were certain this was a test of his will. You’d checked in with him again as you pulled the Sebring up outside the abandoned warehouse on the edge of town, bracketed by woods on either side.

“You know that you have nothing to prove to me, right, baby?”

“I know. This is gonna be fun.”

He was practically vibrating with excitement. You smiled as you pulled rope out of the trunk. “I’m going to ask you for your name. Don’t tell me it, okay?”

“But you already know my name.”

“No, I know that. But when we go in there, you’re Vigilante. And I’m the enemy. Got it?”

“Okay.”

“What’s your safe word?”

“Tinky-Winky. Oh! And if I can’t talk I slap my hand on the leg of the chair three times.”

“Good boy.” You reached up and slipped his glasses from his face. He blinked at you slowly as you slid them into your pocket. “I’ll ask you ‘How are you doing?’ That means everything is over, we’re done. Got it?”

“Got it. I love you.”

“I love you too, sweetheart. Now take off your clothes.”

Now, you pull his glasses out of your pocket and put them back on him. He looks up at you again, not having to stare quite so hard to see you clearly. “You’re the sexiest person on earth. Like seriously, how did I get so lucky with you, huh?”

“Because you’re the only guy I know who’ll get his ass beat and then bring me home a plushie from the claw machine at work the same night.” You smile, your fingers drifting through his damp hair. “I’m gonna untie you now, okay?”

“NO- I mean… no. Please.” Adrian inhales sharply as you search his face for an explanation. “I-I’m really fucking hard right now and I don’t… I’m not sure if I- I mean-”

“You want me to help you with it?”

He nods rapidly, his face screwed up in earnest. “But if you untie me I might be really rough with you and I don’t want to do that on accident-”

“It’s okay, Adrian,” you shush him, slowly dropping to your knees in front of his spread legs. “I won’t untie you, but you still tell me if you want me to stop.”

“Okay. F-fuck, okay. Do I still have to say the safe word?”

“You can, if you want. I’ll stop either way.” You reach forward, ghosting one feather-light fingertip up the length of his cock. He hisses through his teeth, hips jolting even at that bare amount of contact. “Are you sure you want this now, baby? I know it hurts, I wasn’t easy on you.”

“No, I’m… I mean, it does. But I… I like it.” You know that Adrian is sometimes a little shy when it comes to asking for what he wants. It’s the only time you ever see him truly nervous to talk to you, but this is more sheepish than you’ve ever seen him, as you gaze up at him from between his legs. His voice is barely above a whisper when he repeats, “I like it.”

“Okay. Sweet boy, I’m going to take care of you. Just relax.”

Overly cautious, you lean forward to let the warmth of your lips brush along the side of his cock. It isn’t so much that you’re set on teasing him anymore, it’s that you refuse to cause him any more pain than he likely already has. Going at him hard and fast immediately would only irritate him further, and you want him to enjoy this.

The wet swath of your tongue soothes over his sensitive skin, and he strains against the ties that bind him to the chair, a groan bubbling up out of his chest.

“Haaah shit, holy shit.”

“Relax.” You kiss his tip, tongue darting out to flick gently at his slit.

“Ah, fuck- I’m trying.” Contrary to his words, he squirms, hips bucking toward your face, making you pull back with the movement. “Shit, you’re so good- so good for me. God, I fucking love you so much.”

You hum a quiet, soothing response as you let your lips glide smoothly along his curved underside, the very tip of your tongue tracing the long vein there and swirling carefully around his swollen head. His open mouthed gasps and groans fill your ears, sounding even more sinful than his howls of pain had been. Your blood boiling, you elect to make each touch of your lips and tongue to his skin an attempt to kiss that pain away.

He moans obscenely loud when your lips finally wrap around him, giving him the lightest little suck while petting the length of him with your fingers. He’s sweating again, nearly pouring buckets, but you imagine that this time it isn’t necessarily from a point of pain.

You remain there, sucking rhythmically and letting your fingers do the rest of the work, easing your saliva along his shaft until he’s quivering, strong legs twitching on either side of your head and breath coming out in short bursts. Then you slide your mouth down, matching the moan that he makes above you, and this time you don’t pull back when his hips buck forward just slightly.

“God, I’m gonna come. You’re gonna- fuck- don’t stop, please-”

You hum, letting your hands caress his thighs and thumbs graze along his hips, stroking softly before your hands tighten and hold him down against the chair. Not that you think you could overpower him if he really wanted to struggle out of your grasp- but, you know, he has a habit of jerking around when he orgasms.

You ease up as you continue the steady working of your mouth and tongue on him, giving it to him softly, each draw back accompanied by a lewd slick noise to combat his harsh groaning. All at once he jolts, head flinging back with an alarmingly high pitched noise in his throat and limbs straining as he comes, a rush of warmth and salt on your tongue. Hard pulses absolutely ravage his body until he can do nothing but slump back in his seat and take his air in weak, wheezing breaths.

You pull back with one last kitten lick to his tip, making his hips jump from oversensitivity. “Better?”

“Huuuuuuhh… uh huh.”

You smirk to yourself as you pull a knife out of your pocket and start cutting the restraints on his ankles. “You have such a way with words. You write poetry?”

His words are thick in his throat. “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day-”

“Save your breath, Shakespeare.”

Adrian swallows, goes to say something and ends up coughing instead. You cut his wrists free, and reach for the bottle of water behind you, straightening up on your knees to push it into his hands. “Drink. I’ve got you now, you’re safe.”

“I know I’m safe.” His hands shake as he lifts the bottle to his lips, and he spends a long moment just chugging it until he manages to clear the dryness from his throat. He keeps his eyes trained on the floor beside you as he adds quietly, “You make me feel safe.”

“I always want you to feel safe with me.” You shift forward, settling between his knees as your arms wrap around his middle. He tucks his head against your shoulder, slumping forward to hold you, his breathing slowly returning to normal the longer you keep him there against you. Drenched in sweat and cold to the touch, but speaking of peace and comfort with his attempts to pull you ever closer to him.

“You’re really cold, sweetheart,” you tell him after his body completely relaxes into yours. “You want me to help you put some clothes on?”

“If I put pants on it’ll hurt.”

“Okay. There’s a blanket in the back of the Sebring, you can just wrap up until we get back home.”

He nods, letting you support his weight as he stands. Wrapping an arm around his waist to keep him steady, you hold the water and electric wand in your other hand as you slowly make your way back toward the entrance of the warehouse. He hisses as he walks, sort of bending forward and hobbling like an old man.

“Dammit- Peacemaker’s gonna know something’s off. He always knows about shit like this. You think he can read minds?”

“I think he can read your mind,” you say with a smirk. “Pretty much everyone can, babe.”

“That’s bullshit. How can everyone read my mind? I don’t have a radio brain.” He pauses. “Do I have a radio brain?”

“No, you don’t. You’re just really easy to read, there’s no shame in that.” After a short moment of contemplation on your end, you finally add, “There is something, though. You said you wanted to tear me apart. I couldn’t figure out if you were serious or not.”

“I uh… hm.” He blushes, looking down at his feet.

“Because, if that’s an offer for you to return the favor… I’d love for you to make good on that threat sometime.”

Adrian turns his head back towards you with a lopsided grin. “Really? You… yeah? Okay. What’s your safe word?”

“Tinky-Winky, of course.”

Adrian’s laughter echoes throughout the empty warehouse, bouncing off the walls and surging up on your heels.

A warm breeze sighs through the trees as you stare up at Peacemaker’s, uh, house? It’s a mobile home, at least, but it’s painted in such a gaudy stars and stripes way that it makes your toes curl just looking at it. Stepping up to the place, you have to weave around multiple little garden ornaments that are weather-beaten and moss covered to various degrees.

You couldn’t get ahold of Peacemaker, but you still have to retrieve the dossier on Senator Goff from him before he can get into any more trouble with it. Knowing him, the guy probably smoked a joint and is laying passed out on his bed right now. You don’t really care, as long as you can get back to Project Butterfly HQ without a fuss.

You rap on the door twice, turning to look over your shoulder at the kids across the cul-de-sac riding their bikes. You don’t hear anything behind the door, and it occurs to you that maybe he isn’t home, and you briefly chide yourself for not checking the tracking in his head to find out where he actually is. But then, a second later, you hear a shuffling and then the bright red door pops open to reveal… not Peacemaker.

“Vigilante?” 

You squint up at the red visor on the masked man in front of you, just barely able to pick out two eyes staring back at you. Admittedly, you only know Vigilante superficially at best; you couldn’t tell anyone his name, and even less what he looks like under the mask (just that he has a nice ass). You’ve barely even had a full conversation with him thus far, even though you’ve often caught yourself checking him out from across the room. He strikes you as a little too unhinged to be approachable, and he tends to linger around Peacemaker more than anyone else. 

“Yeah, that’s my name. Don’t wear it out.” His voice is way too bubbly and chipper for that sarcastic of a statement, but you don’t think he really absorbs how snotty the line is supposed to be. His head dips as he pointedly looks you up and down, and then his head snaps up in the direction of the kids across the way. “Oh, fuck- come in, quick.”

“I take it you’re not really supposed to be here. Where’s Chris?” you grumble as you step into the messy house. It’s apparent that someone has been trying to clean it, but whoever it is hasn’t gotten very far. 

Almost as if he reads your mind, Vigilante picks up a trash bag and sweeps his arm along a line of empty potato chip bags and water bottles on the kitchen counter, knocking them all into the bag. “Well, uh. ‘Supposed to’ is kind of a choice of words. Peacemaker had to go do some shit at his dad’s house, but didn't say when he’d be back. It seemed like a while, though, he told me to stick around and watch Eagly and Goff.” 

You stop dead, staring at his broad-shouldered form over the kitchen counter. “Goff?”

“Fuck,” he mutters to himself, and then sort of turns on his heels to shoot a look over his shoulder at you. “Uh… Goff? What Goff? I don’t know a Goff-” You fix him with a dead eyed stare that makes him falter, his hands fisting in the plastic bag in his hands. You could swear he looks almost meek when he blurts, “We sort of kept Goff sorry.”

“Motherfucker, I will bury you- what do you mean, ‘you guys kept Goff?’” 

“W-well,” he tilts his head back toward the ceiling, his posture so rail-straight that you know he’s completely tense. “I didn’t, it was Peacemaker. I just kinda helped him wrestle it into the jar-”

“Jar? What the fuck is going on, man?” 

You can see him blink at you in stunned silence from under the visor. Then he sighs and, tossing the trash bag onto the floor, reaches under the kitchen counter and pulls out a pickle jar with a perforated lid.

“Holy shit,” you breathe, inching closer to squint at the thing in the jar. It looks like a cross between a moth and a mosquito, overly large for a normal insect and bright turquoise. It blinks at you with glassy black eyes. “That’s Goff?”

“Well, it’s… it’s the thing that came out of the dude’s head when Peacemaker blew his brains out.” Vigilante shrugs, tilting his head as he stares down at the jar. “I dunno, I think it’s kinda cute in a weird praying mantis type of way. Y’know, I used to keep mantises as a kid, whenever I found them. I thought they were cool as hell. Did you know they’ll eat anything smaller than them? And the females sometimes eat the males after sex. I mean, talk about a way to go, right?”

You glance up at him during his impromptu National Geographic lecture. “Aren’t praying mantises protected? I don’t think you’re supposed to keep them.”

“Hey, Peacemaker has a bald eagle. I don’t see you raising an issue about that.”

You shrug as you draw back from the jar. “I dunno, I feel like you’ve killed people for less.”

“I have, but Eagly loves Peacemaker. Who am I to fuck with the natural order of things? The little guy would be heartbroken.”

“No, I meant- ah, forget it.” You blow a harsh breath out as you straighten your spine. “Have you seen the file Chris has on Goff? I’m only here for that.”

“Bedroom, maybe.” As you trod past him toward the back of the house, he goes back to clearing piles of trash off the counters. A small smile quirks your lips; Vigilante is playing housekeeper while watching Peacemaker’s menagerie. The concept is… well, not really surprising, but just odd. You wouldn’t have imagined it happening, except that now that you see it taking place it makes sense.

“Where’s Eagly?” you call as you walk the length of the hallway and still don’t find the bird anywhere in sight.

“Went for a fly, I dunno. The skylight’s open, so he’ll be back. Hopefully.”

The bedroom isn’t much better than the kitchen, with piles of clothes and empty bottles of every description covering the floor. Thankfully, and as the rest of the team had feared, Peacemaker isn’t very concerned with hiding sensitive documents. The classified file on Senator Goff has been tossed freely onto the bedside table, some of the contents poking out of the corner of it. You sigh and scoop it up, leafing through it briefly to ensure that everything is there before making your way back to the kitchen.

As soon as he hears you coming, Vigilante is right back to talking. “Hey, have you ever seen anything like this? It’s fucking… what’s the word… effervescent?”

You turn your head to find Vigilante dipping two gloved fingers into a mason jar filled with the amber goo that had been found at the Goff residence. The food that the butterflies presumably live off of glistens on his fingertips, vaguely sparkling in the light. You freeze in place as he curiously rubs his fingers together, pulling them apart to have the viscous liquid cling together and create a web across them. In the silence, it makes a soft, wet sound against the textured pads of his gloves. 

“Iridescent,” you correct, watching. There’s absolutely no reason why that should look as suggestive as it does, but you find yourself swallowing past an inexplicable dryness in your throat all the same. “Why are you playing with it?”

“I’m not… I mean, I’m just curious.” He shakes his hand roughly, but the goo remains stuck to it. “Y’know, there’s a fine line between scientific research and just dicking around, and the line is writing shit down. Go grab a pen.”

“You are not a scientist,” you object, but you hand him a pen from the cabinet behind you, anyways. 

“Don’t be presumptuous, you don’t know shit about me. I could be a biochemist for all you know…” Instead of writing anything down with the pen, he dips the end of it into the jar and swirls it around before pulling it out, covered with the amber fluid and pulling a long string of it out of the jar. “I gotta be honest, it looks like honey. I want to eat it.”

“That is so inadvisable, I don’t even know where to begin.” You shake your head. “If you were a biochemist I promise you would not be talking about eating the suspicious alien substance you stole after killing said aliens.”

“But you gotta admit, it looks fucking delicious,” he continues, gathering all the goo from the pen onto his fingers again. You tear your eyes away just before he starts playing with it again, and stare down at your shoes as he says, “We should totally try it together.”

“We should not.”

“Hey, what’s the worst that could happen?”

“UM, let me think. Hives. Anaphylaxis. Sepsis. Organ failure. Probable death.”

“Damn, you really know how to turn a guy on, huh?” Vigilante gives a crazed little giggle that makes your heart do a flip in your chest. “Anyways, I know you’re probably thinking about it, too.”

“Why’s that?” you ask challengingly. 

“Because you haven’t left yet.” He shrugs, and even though you can’t see behind his mask, you can almost guarantee he’s smiling at you. “Unless you’re staying for me, in which case I’d be like, sweet! We should totally go out for drinks. But like, I can’t take off the mask, so… that might not work out so well-”

“Maybe I’m sticking around because you’re talking about eating that, and I won’t be held accountable if I knowingly leave you and you die. If I have to rush you to the hospital, I will.” 

“Aw, that’s so nice. I think there’s a romcom that starts that way. Or maybe it was a horror movie? I don’t remember.” He pauses for a moment like he’s thinking. “Oh, hey! I know! We can ask Goff if it’s safe.”

“Goff can’t speak.”

“You have like zero imagination, you know that? Watch this.” Vigilante leans down to look directly into the jar. “Hey, Goff. One tap is yes, two is no. If we eat the honey stuff you eat, will it kill us?”

“This is so stupi-”

Tap tap.

Your face falls, and you blink down at the alien in the jar. “Did it just…?”

“Hey Goff, if we eat it will it make us sick?”

Tap tap.

“Works for me,” Vigilante says in that same chipper manner, and moves to scoop a glob of the stuff into his fingers.

“Hey, wait,” you snap, reaching forward to catch his wrist. “How do you know that thing is even trustworthy?”

“I dunno. He has honest eyes.”

“What, the creepily sentient insectoid ones? Yeah. Super trustworthy.” You roll your eyes. “Plus, didn’t it try to kill you before?”

Vigilante stares at you- or, you think he does. With the mask blocking out all his facial features, talking to him is kind of like trying to uphold a conversation with a mannequin at the GAP. 

“You’re sounding kinda prejudiced towards aliens right now.”

“Dude!”

“What? He can’t help it if his eyes are insectoid. He’s a butterfly.” He shrugs again, and this time he tilts his head to the side, reminiscent of a confused puppy. “Besides, what would be the advantage of killing us? He’s literally trapped in a jar and we’re the only ones who can get him out. Also, I’ve never been able to stay away from sparkly gold things. Like, I remember I had this one shiny gold book about Egypt as a kid-”

“The Egyptology book?”

“Yeah, that one! You had it?”

“Yeah, I had it. It was fucking awesome.” You stare down at his hand, his two fingers extended toward you, covered in sticky gold syrup. “Fucking… fine. I don’t like it, but I won’t stop you if you insist on shoving random things in your mouth.”

“It’s not a random thing, Goff said it’s fine.” He says it with such conviction, but he still hesitates when you let go of his wrist. There’s a pause, and then, “You sure you don’t want to lick it off my fingers?”

Your face heats up, and you clench your jaw as you look away. Is it bad that you’re almost tempted to? “Nice try. You’re on your own, buddy.” 

Vigilante sighs and leans back, looking down at his fingers. “So… how am I gonna…? Can you, like, turn around or something?”

“Why do I need to turn around?”

“This mask doesn’t have a mouth hole, dude.”

“It’s elastic, right? Just pull it up a little bit, don’t be shy. It’s like a strip tease.”

He’s quiet for a long moment. “That’s… the weirdest way you could have put that. Are you trying to Spider-Man kiss me right now?”

You squint at him. “Am I what?”

“You know. In the Spider-Man movie with Tobey Mc-whatshisface and Kirsten Dunst, when she pulls down his mask so she can kiss him upside down?”

“I’m not trying to Spider-Man kiss you, man. Now just do it if you’re gonna do it so I can figure out whether or not I need to call an EMT.”

“Okay! Geez!” He hooks his thumb under the bottom edge of his mask, yanking it sharply outwards to tent the fabric around his jaw. You only catch a glimpse of his throat before he shoves his fingers under the fabric and, presumably, into his mouth. 

He makes a startled noise in the back of his throat, and it sends you into immediate panic mode. 

“Oh, fuck, is it okay?” He mutely shakes his head. “Is it bad? Gasoline? Motor oil? Sewage? Can you fucking breathe? Dude, talk to me!”

He pulls his fingers slowly out from under the mask, and they still glisten with a certain amount of the syrup on them. “No, it’s… it’s way better than okay, it’s like… like milk and honey? With apricots? It’s like the best thing I’ve ever tasted in my life-”

You snatch his hand and lift it to your mouth so that you can wrap your lips around his fingers. He stills, his mask snapping back into place over his jaw as he lowers his hand to brace himself on the counter. You can feel his eyes trained on you, but you’re not really paying attention to him anymore. 

You’re focusing on the absolute burst of flavor on your tongue. You know what he means by never having tasted anything like it. It’s composed of the most incongruent, fantastic flavors melded together, but somehow they work; chocolate and orange, kiwi, strawberry. You do taste the creamy bit of milk and honey on the back of your tongue, but it’s like each flavor changes from taste bud to taste bud. Like, somehow, your brain doesn’t know exactly how to process what it’s tasting.

You succeed in cleaning off his gloves, until the Willy Wonka bullshit dissolves into the flavor of leather and gunmetal. And Vigilante lets you- granted, he’s standing rigid and staring at you, probably like you’re just as insane as he is, but he doesn’t try to pull his hand away from you. You might imagine it, but you think his forefinger twitches against your tongue like he means to shove them further into your mouth, but he doesn’t. 

He lets you pull his fingers from your mouth, and his grip on your hand lingers for half a second. Quietly, he begins, “Do you want to…?” 

“Get a spoon?”

“Yeah, that’s… that’s what I was gonna say.”

“What’s your biggest fear?”

Vigilante passes you the jar as he snaps the edge of his mask back against his neck. “This is the strangest conversation I’ve ever had on a first date.”

You feel like your blood is boiling beneath your skin, but you’re trying your best not to show it. Your eyes track every little glimpse of his skin you can get like you’re ravenous for it- every time he pulls the mask away from his jaw to stick the spoon under it, your eyes are on his throat. You swear you caught sight of his jaw at one point, and you nearly fell out of your seat over it.

You run a shaking hand over the back of your neck, finding it a little bit damp with perspiration. You’re not hot, you’re just way too worked up. It doesn’t help that you’ve always had a thing for guys in gloves and masks. God, you sound like you’re begging to be mugged.

If you were being mugged, Vigilante could save you. And then fuck you up against the wa-

“This is not a date, man, I’m just trying to talk about something other than Meet the Robinsons with you.” 

“It’s a cinematic masterpiece!”

“So you keep saying.” You sink back against the arm of the couch, propping your feet into Vigilante’s lap as he turns to face you. “How many dates have you been on if this is the weirdest it’s gotten?”

“I’ve been on, like, two actual legitimate dates,” he sighs with his face pointed towards the ceiling. “And they didn’t really end well. One girl didn’t have any idea where she wanted to go so I took her to an ice cream shop, and she failed to mention she was lactose intolerant so she puked on my shoes. And then the other person I was really into, but they took me to a rave and then disappeared in the crowd and ghosted me. So that’s why I don’t date.” 

“Cool. So, what’s your biggest fear?”

“Man, you’re really not gonna let this go, are you? I was just being honest with my feelings, a little sympathy would be super nice.”

“Sorry. Poor baby, I would never eat ice cream and then puke on your shoes. I’m built different.” You give him a noncommittal hum as you pop a spoonful of the alien honey into your mouth. You stifle an obnoxious moan that threatens to bubble up out of your throat, despite the fact that you’ve been passing the jar back and forth with him for nearly thirty minutes now. Every time it hits your tongue it’s entirely different, gliding sweet and almost hot down your throat like whisky. “Now tell me your fear and I’ll tell you mine.”

He bends his knee, sort of spreading his legs to accommodate yours as he leans back against the armrest across from you. You notice that he tends to lounge like a king from a medieval painting, and it’s absurd how everything between your legs draws up tight and aching at the sight of it. “Uhhhhh… radiation poisoning.”

“Are you fucking serious? That’s it?”

“What? Do you know how many times I’ve had literal nightmares about all that shit that happened in Central City with S.T.A.R. Labs? It’s scary.” He shifts, and his leg bounces up against yours, knocking your legs apart in the process. It takes everything in you not to snap your legs shut as he continues, “Anyways, I can’t imagine a big fucking explosion rocking the city and then suddenly waking up with, like, X-Ray vision. Having to see everyone’s boners and skeletons and shit? No way… well, actually, I don’t think I’d mind the boners as much. But I don’t like skeletons. And then if it doesn’t give you mad superpowers, it just melts your skin off. Sounds bonkers.”

A smile curls your lips. “What if the radiation gave you super sex magnet powers? Would you still be scared of it then?”

He shakes his head. “Why… why would it make give me super sex magnet powers? What basis does that have? You think I fuck like a maniac or something?” A pause. “I mean… not. Not saying that I don’t fuck like a maniac, I mean, I get tons of, uhhh. Pussy. And dick. But like, would that even affect my superpower? Theoretically?”

Your face grows hot at his rambling, and you bluster for a moment looking for a reply. “I don’t know, maybe? Why would it give you X-Ray vision?”

“Because I have… because the visor…” he gives you a perturbed sigh. “Doesn’t matter. You promised you’d tell me your fear.”

“Mm. Rejection.” The metal spoon clinks against the glass rim of the jar as you hand it back to him.

“Who the fuck would reject you?” He even has the decency to sound genuinely confused, bless him. 

You scoff. “Plenty of people, believe it or not. Turns out that if it happens enough, you can develop a fear of it.” 

“That makes no sense,” he begins, and you open your mouth to start waxing on about the psychology of traumatic reactions, but he cuts you off before you can get a word in. “You’re gorgeous, like I swear I can’t stop staring at you no matter what I do. And you’re smart, and funny, and you stopped what you were doing to make sure I wasn’t going to die if I ate this stuff, even though you don’t even really know me, which is probably more than even Peacemaker would do and he’s my best friend.” His voice drops in volume as he concludes, “You’re just… good. You’re so good. And I like that about you.”

“You’re good too, you know.” Your eyelashes flutter as you take him in, staring down at the jar as he swirls the spoon around, seemingly lost in thought. “And I can’t stop staring at you, either.”

The leg that he has braced with his foot flat on the floor bounces twice, and then stops when he realizes he’s bouncing your leg as well. Then it bounces again, and then stops. Christ, is he having a panic attack?

Are you, would be the better question. Your heart might just jump out of your chest and into his lap for how hard it’s beating against your ribcage. Your hands are starting to shake, and you clamp a hand against the back of the couch to try to steady it. It also acts as leverage for you to press yourself back into your seat, because the need stirring around in your core like a cement mixer has you wanting to crawl forward and grind on his lap. 

Which, you know, might be a bad idea, considering. 

You need to calm down. Think of something other than him, and how good it would feel to have him bouncing his leg between your thighs. 

No, fuck. Concentrate. Cool off.

A wave of heat rushes down your arms and up the back of your neck, and you jump to start unzipping your jacket. 

“Huuhhh oh my god? Wh- what are you…?” Vigilante rears back against the armrest like he’s rankled just by the sight of your arms. 

“It’s just fucking blazing in here. Aren’t you hot?” You say to save face as you tug your jacket out from behind you and toss it to the ground. 

“Oh… oh, yeah.” He thrusts the jar at you without having really touched it, and moves to shirk off the straps of his machete holster, and then the chest plate of his armor. It’s nearly half-performance, half-genuine struggle as he removes an obscene amount of weapons from compartments you hadn’t even noticed before, one shoulder pad and then two, and then, finally, he unlatches the thing across his chest.

You realize then how fucking easy he has it, keeping his face hidden from view. You’re staring, and it’s so painfully obvious that you are when your mouth drops open just a bit as his black undershirt is revealed, skin-tight and nearly pasted to his body with sweat. 

You actually draw your legs back, knees toward your chest as he tosses the chest plate down on top of your jacket, and then starts undoing his arm plates. He fumbles with buckles and hooks, looking quite consumed by the act in itself.

“You need help?” You ask, your voice coming out smaller than you’d like it to. 

“Nah, I got it. I do this all the time.” One plate hits the floor, and then two. And then the motherfucker rolls his sleeves up, and you can feel your cunt pulse between your thighs as your eyes trace up the line of his forearms. 

Holy fuck.

You sit completely still across from each other, surrounded by a tension so palpable that you could cut a knife with it. You shift your hips once on accident, and then a second time on purpose, grinding hard down into the couch cushion and trying to stave off the aching need boiling in your gut and running hot through your veins at the sight of him.

Then, Vigilante reaches behind him and pulls a purple velvet pillow out of the corner by his hip, and places it directly over his crotch in the most non-subtle way he possibly can. You don’t think he’s looking at you, his head is tilted a little too far down, but he kind of clutches the pillow like a teddy bear against his navel as he resumes bouncing his leg.

“Dude, are you okay?”

“Huh?” He snaps his head up towards you, and then sucks in a sharp hiss through his teeth like it’s causing him physical pain to look at you. “Yeah… no, yeah I’m totally. Totally fine. One hundred percent. Nothing going on, nope.”

Tap tap. 

“Goff! Shut the fuck up!”

A short little chuckle falls from your lips as you turn to look at the jar on the kitchen counter. The butterfly wiggles back on its haunches, watching the two of you like it’s getting ready for a show about to commence.

You blink twice, and then slowly turn your head to Vigilante, who is somehow clutching the pillow tighter against him with his gloved hands, and feel a twinge of white hot need surge up your spine and along the curve of your shoulders. And you look down at the jar of amber goo, glistening so tantalizingly against the glass and on the spoon as you raise it. And you look back at the creepy little alien that’s watching it all happen. 

The smile disintegrates from your face as quickly as it formed. “Goff… you said this stuff wouldn’t make us sick. Does it still have side effects?”

Tap.

“Goff, you son of a bitch.” So, that’s what this is. It’s not just your inexplicable desire for him. It’s the raw amber fluid that’s making your mouth flood with saliva each time you glimpse his bare skin. God, you’re so fucking turned on by him already that it’s not even funny, and seeing his arms flex as he shifts his hips and tries to hide the fact that he’s being affected the same way isn’t helping you to calm down. 

“I think-” he pants behind his mask, audibly out of breath as he sinks further back against the arm rest, “I think Goff is a f-fucking… pervert. Shouldn’t have trusted him. You were right.”

His head tilts back against the armrest, chest heaving as he softly whimpers up toward the ceiling. A thin strip of his throat is revealed in this position, drawing your eye as his hips threaten to lurch forward, and he shoves the pillow even harder against his crotch. He’s nearly fucking up into it at this point, and a jittery sound just this side of a laugh comes barreling out of your throat before you can stop it.

“Hey, no, it’s… you’re fine,” you breathe, spellbound as you watch him struggle to keep still. Maybe you could use a pillow of your own to grind on. It would probably help to keep the fucking heartbeat that’s kicked up between your legs at bay. You swallow back the rush of saliva in your mouth and continue, “It’s fine, I’m… I’m in the same boat as you. We’ll get through it together.”

“Together?” Vigilante’s voice cracks, and his head lifts just enough that you know he’s looking at you. God, what you wouldn’t give to be able to see his face right now, and read all the need in his voice written on his expression. The mask just barely moves with the flexing of his jaw, and his hands shake as they dig a death grip into the pillow between his legs.

“Yeah, I’m- I mean- fuck!” The glass slips in your sweaty palms. As you struggle to keep a grip on the jar in your hands, the spoon catches on the front of your tank top and slips out of the glass, smacking fully against the fabric over your cleavage and leaving a glob of fluid to slide gooey and thick in a line down your front. It drips, seeping into the fabric and leaving a wet trail against your skin.

You jump into immediate action, throwing your legs over the edge of the couch and placing the jar on the coffee table. Vigilante tosses his pillow aside just as you stand, straightening your top so that you don’t smear the mess any more than necessary across your front. 

It was a good time for an intermission, anyways. Maybe if you get enough air being across the room from him, you can calm yourself down enough to not throw yourself at him the first chance you get. Maybe he can stretch out and get a little bit of rest, instead of nearly back-bending over the arm of the couch like he wants to get away from you. 

You mutter a string of curses incoherently under your breath, and then, “God, fucking… of course. Do you want some water, while I’m up?” 

Vigilante doesn’t answer. For how chatty he is, he’s particularly good at surprise attacks, like he’s secretly a goddamn ambush predator. He doesn’t even make a noise when he moves, silent as a fucking spider, so you almost yelp when you feel his hands on your hips. His fingertips dig into your skin for half a second, and then he pulls, bringing you down between his spread legs. 

You stare directly forward at the window on the wall across from you, swallowing thickly. Here, with your back against his chest and his head so close to yours that they nearly touch, you can hear his labored breathing and how it nearly rattles in his lungs with his effort to keep it steady. You can feel the hard length of his cock against your tailbone when his arm snakes around your waist to press you harder against him, like he’s just replaced his beloved pillow with you. And when he holds you just a bit tighter, his small whimper resounds in your ear and makes your skin prickle.

You aren’t prepared for how shaky and thin his voice is in your ear when he says, “All I want is you, now.”

Your teeth catch on your lower lip, biting down harder than necessary. It takes everything in you not to squirm back against the press of his erection, to hear him whimper in your ear again. Your hand wraps around his forearm across your waist like a vise, everything below it wound up unbearably tight and aching, begging to be satiated. His skin is hot against your hand, nearly burning to the touch, and you can’t imagine how stifling it must feel to be under that mask now. 

Your face contorts in desperation, fingers crooking forward and nails digging into his skin enough that he draws a sharp breath in. “I’m- I w-w-ant…”

Your breath catches loudly in your throat, your words hiccupping when his other hand comes up to your chest and, using one gloved finger, he collects the sticky trail of golden syrup, pausing just at the hem of your tank top to wipe it all off of the fabric. And then he lifts his hand, and brings his finger to your mouth.

“We don’t want to waste it,” he says quietly.

You suck on your teeth for half a second. It’s obnoxious how wet you are, how you can feel your arousal saturating your underwear and probably beginning to leak through the thin barrier of your leggings. You’re already fit to burst, sitting between his legs and pretending it’s not exactly where you want to be, alien-induced lust or no. But then you make the executive decision to open your mouth and wrap your lips around his finger, and he fully fucking moans in your ear. 

Holy shit. You jam your hips back against his crotch without even trying to hold back. So much for the art of seduction.

A sharp breath hisses through his teeth behind the mask. His hand tightens down on your waist, his forearm squeezing you harder against his chest as he rocks his hips forward so slowly . You know that you’re not doing yourself any favors, but you can’t help it. This time he does press his finger further into your mouth, curling down and physically stroking your tongue as you suck the criminal aphrodisiac off of it. 

“You want to… want to handle it together? Yeah?” He whispers, slowly dragging his finger out of your mouth and leaving you panting. “Want me to- to help? God, I won’t do it if you don’t ask-”

You don’t know exactly what he means by ‘help.’ It could be that he’s saying he’ll push you face-first into the couch and fuck you senseless, right here. You’ve seen how unforgiving he can be to people, and he could probably wring you out and leave you wallowing afterwards. To be honest, you don’t really mind if that’s what he has planned. Your judgment is just clouded enough that you’d let him do anything he wanted with your body, as long as he screws this overwhelming need out of your system.

“Yeah, I’m- please.” You hear his breathing stop, and you reach back to place a hand on the side of his head, feeling the contour of his cheek through the slippery fabric of his mask. “Please, I… I want you to.” 

“Yeah?” His voice is soft. Vulnerable. He clears his throat, and then his gloved hand is dragging down your chest, fingers fumbling along the band of your leggings and wedging under them. “Yeah, okay. Fuck, okay.” 

Once you realize what he’s doing, you know that it’s going to turn you on to no end that the leather of his gloves is so cold and impersonal, making his fingers bulkier and unyielding. To add to that, little ridges are moulded into the pads of them, you presume, to help with grip. What they’re really helping with right now is making you lose all sense of focus, when his finger dips through your slick cunt and drags long and so painfully slow over your swollen clit.

The moan you make is obscene in its volume and has nearly the same intonation as humming a high pitched and long mhmm. Your nails dig in and scratch up his forearm hard enough to leave four long claw marks, raising welts on his pale skin, to which he groans into your ear and presses his finger down just a bit harder for you. 

“Fuck. Shit’s got you so wet. Feels good, doesn’t it?” He breathes. You swear you can nearly feel the heat of his breath on your neck as it punches through the fabric of his mask. “Yeah, I bet it does. I bet it tastes even better.”

“You can… you can taste-” you cut yourself off with a whine when drags the length of his gloved finger over your clit again, and your back nearly arches away from his chest. His arm crushes you back against him, keeping you from moving away even an inch.

You feel him shake his head. “Not yet, I wanna help you first. Let me?”

You give him a wordless whine in response, but you think he gets the message. His finger dips down and curves along the slope of your pussy to find your entrance, the leather of his glove slick enough with your wetness to provide only the kind of resistance that makes you crave more. Your head drops back onto his shoulder when he slides in and curls upwards, finding the pad of muscle that lights up with nerves when he presses it. 

“Oh, fuck fuck fuck,” you groan when he starts moving in a slow, smooth back-and-forth that makes your legs jerk and spasm alongside his. Your hips rock onto his hand to mirror that motion, but all you succeed in doing is grinding back against his erection even more, and his free hand presses down against your stomach to get you to stop. 

“Please, I- I know you want more but if you keep doing that I’m gonna come so soon and I don’t want to do that before I’m inside you and I don’t want to be inside you until I kiss you,” he blathers, keeping up the repetitive movement of his finger into your cunt that has your body writhing against him. His mask presses hot and damp along your shoulder, and you realize that it’s his lips you feel tracing your skin through the fabric. You feel them move as he mutters, “I want to kiss you so bad.”

“Then kiss me.” You gasp, your cunt tightening down around his finger. God, it’s so thick with the leather, and you feel like grinding down on it despite his warning. “Kiss me, you fuuuu-cking idiot, don’t wait. I want to kiss you, too. Why are you waiting?”

“The mask, I can’t.” 

You impatiently scratch your fingers along his neckline, searching for that bottom edge that he’s been fucking around with for the last hour. Your hips involuntarily rock down against his hand again, and he jams his palm up against your clit to give you a bit more of the friction that you seek. 

He gives you a weak sound in the back of his throat when you hook your finger under the edge of his mask and pull, yanking it up to just past the edge of his nose. You hear it when he gasps, uninhibited by fabric, and it’s so fresh and clear, arguably hotter. 

He curls his finger sharply, making you jolt against his hand and grab onto his neck for stability, his face bared for your hand. His skin is smooth, his jaw sharp and defined against your palm. “Shit, you’re so- so hot. So fucking-”

“J-just…” A gasp. “Shut up. I’m trying to Spider-Man kiss you.” 

You pull at his cheek, turning your head to awkwardly kiss him over your shoulder. His nose bumps yours, his breath hitting your mouth in a heavy, nervous rush. Then he tilts his head just slightly and he’s on you, lips parted and tongue brushing yours. 

Oh god, the heat of it could burn you alive if you let it. 

He pulls his finger slowly out of you, and you whine into his open mouth with the loss of contact. He shushes you, quick to smother your mouth once again, and his fingertip turns to rubbing gentle circles around your clit. 

You make a series of desperate noises, pawing at his face and trying to draw him further into your mouth. Your body shudders against him, hips pushing downward onto his finger like that will make him touch you more. 

He pulls back just enough that his nose brushes yours, and you crane your neck to try to find his lips again. His breath hits your mouth, and it tastes nearly as sweet and seductive as the alien syrup was. 

“Shit, I-I didn’t think this was how it would happen,” he sighs, his lips just brushing yours as your hips seek friction in his hand. 

A long, wordless whine leaves your mouth, and then you wheeze, “You thought about it?”

“All the time. When I see you. When I try to go to sleep. When I jerk off.” His hips grind against the curve of your ass, his soft grunt meeting yours in the air. “I wanted… wanted to- wanted you to see my- ah, fuck it.”

His free hand comes up, and you just barely see him rear back and slip his hand under the edge of the mask, giving it a swift yank. It makes a quiet thunk on the ground with the rest of his discarded armor, but you’re too strung out to pay much attention. 

Your hand plunges back into a mess of curly brown hair as he stretches forward to kiss you again. Your eyes meet a flash of green, and your cunt throbs forebodingly against his fingers.

“You h-have-” you suck in a shaky breath, nearly struggling to take in air properly. Exhale… exhale inhale? Inhale?? Ex...exhale… “Green eyes. I love- love-”

You come with a strangled noise, painfully clenching down on nothing as he kisses you, continuing to stroke your clit even though your legs jolt and your heels push and kick against the couch cushion like you’re trying to get away. His free hand presses against your chest, keeping you flush against him- you catch him squeezing at your breast through your thin tank top, but you can’t fault him for it. He’s been so patient, so attentive. More than you’ve been. 

“That’s good,” he whispers against your mouth. “Pretty. You’re so pretty.”

You’re out of breath, panting heavily towards his face. “You… you.” You’re not able to form a more coherent sentence just yet, so you sort of pat the side of his head and hope he understands. 

He slows his fingers gradually to a full stop, letting it rest dormant against your throbbing clit. His forehead pressed to yours, he lets you take a few cleansing breaths before he says, “Can we…?”

He leaves that open-ended, but you guess that you’re both just taking your cues from the context at this point. You smack your hand down over his and pull it away from your chest so that you can move forward. He whines. 

“I’m just trying to take off my clothes,” you tell him plainly, lifting your tank top up over your head. “You could do the same, y’know.”

“You could help.” His hand touches the middle of your back- his bare hand, now.

You freeze, tank top hitting the floor. He took off the gloves. His skin is on yours. Your brain short circuits, a small shiver running up your spine. 

You take your sweet time turning around, your hips twisting with the movement. You sling a leg over his, your toe just barely brushing the carpet as you try to maneuver the odd position you’re in. You almost feel like you’re trying not to look directly at his face, like it’s improper to get anything other than an indirect glimpse of brown hair, green eyes, sharp jaw, pale skin. 

Your eyes land on his thigh first, tactical pants stretched taut across hard muscle. Then they shift to his bulge- which honestly looks like something painful, at this point, straining ungodly hard against the front of his trousers. You trail your eyes up his torso, over the black shirt that made you nearly lose your mental faculties. You hesitate when you reach the neckline of it, but finally, your curiosity wins over.

You find his face, and you don’t know why you hesitated. You want to stare at his face for the rest of time. 

He watches you with a shy, almost nervous expression. His lips are pressed tight into a thin line, his jaw twitching as he clenches and unclenches his jaw. His hair is flattened over his head in matted curls, a bit damp with sweat and hanging across his brow. He blinks, and long eyelashes catch the light.

You take a few swift breaths, steeling yourself to look directly into those round, green eyes. “You know, it’s really fucking criminal that you hide your face, Vigilante.”

“Adrian.”

“What?”

“My name is Adrian,” he admits softly. His eyes fall to where your legs are thrown over his thigh. “Also I wear glasses and you’re kind of sitting on them right now.”

“Oh.” 

You awkwardly shuffle back, bracing yourself on your knees between his legs as he reaches down to open a pocket on his thigh and pulls out a pair of aviator glasses. He puts them on, pushing them up to the bridge of his nose before he looks back at you. Or, he makes direct eye contact with your tits.

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” You roll your eyes, sitting back on your feet.

“What? You have a really nice rack. I mean, I’ve been able to look at your face this whole time and you’re gorgeous.” He reaches out like he means to grope your chest, but pulls back at the last second. “Like, all of you. Perfect.”

You hum, leaning forward to straddle his legs and push your chest into his outstretched hands. His breath hiccups in his throat, his eyes finding your face when you cradle his cheeks in your hands and tilt his head up toward yours. “I’m gonna get you naked now, Adrian.”

He nods eagerly, his hands squeezing your breasts almost instinctively. “Okay. Okay, yeah, good idea.”

You kiss him once, and then your hands yank his shirt up over his head without any flourishing. He scrambles to catch his glasses before they fall, fumbling to get them back on his face. You reach down to undo his belt, but then you stop, and cast a glance back at his somewhat complicated-looking boots and padding.

“Dude, could your armor be any harder to get off?” you grumble as you scooch back to lift his boot into your lap.

“That’s kind of the fucking point,” he says as he pulls his other leg up to start undoing the other. “I mean, can you imagine if I was fighting someone and my boot just fell off? That’s a safety hazard. Also, this is a nice bonding experience for us.”

“Oh, is it?” You yank the boot after loosening the laces, and it’s still not coming off.

“Yeah, I mean, you’re getting to see how my armor works. I’m getting to have you undress me. Careful, there’s a-”

“OW!”

“-knife in there, sorry.”

You huff a sigh as you pull a long dagger out of the ankle of his boot and toss it down onto the coffee table, then lifting your hand and sucking at the cut on your thumb. “This is like trying to get you out of deep sea diving gear. Look, I just want you to fuck my brains out before I do it myself.” You lose your patience and drop your hands from his boot. “Or I could just sit on your face. You want me to sit on your face?”

He groans as he roughly tugs his boot off, then starts working on the one in your lap. “Christ- You want me to cream my pants? I will, I’m so fucking hard right now. I already almost did when I had my finger in your pussy. Don’t talk to me about it- don’t.”  

He throws his second boot so hard that it plops down on the other side of the coffee table. You swallow hard, your pulse pounding in your ears. You scoot back further on the couch, crushing your back up against the arm again to muscle your way out of your leggings. Your legs bump his as he lifts his hips to slide out of his own, and with a graceless snap of elastic, you fling your leggings back against the window behind you. Your bare legs plop down over his, leaving you naked and spread-eagled across from him. 

He gets his pants down- fucking finally- kicking them off roughly and discarding them with the rest. You glance at his cock; hard, impressively long, swollen and looking like it desperately needs attention. He surges forward, clambering over you and pushing you back to lay against the couch cushions.

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,” he babbles as he strokes a shaky hand up your thigh, “You’re so hot and I’ve wanted to do this for so long but you’re so soft and I don’t know if I can be gentle right now-”

“So don’t.” You’re just as breathless as he is as his hand finds your face and his thumb traces your bottom lip with a touch of innocence. You part your lips and suck on the end of it, finding his eyes wide and dilated as you pull back. “You think you’re the only one who’s been wanting this? Don’t be nice. If you’re nice, then I won’t be.”

He gulps. “But I don’t want to actually hurt you.”

“Adrian, just wreck my shit. Do it.”

He slips into you in one fluid motion, the stretch your body makes to fit him nearly overwhelming despite how wet you are from your first orgasm. He groans fantastically loud into your shoulder, and just stops. Stops moving, stops breathing, maybe even stops thinking as you shudder and wrap your legs around his hips. 

“Adrian-”

“Don’t.”

Your hands find his hair, soft and pliable between your fingers. “Are you going to come already, baby?” 

“Don’t- don’t call me that- I don’t want to-” He gasps, his muscles tensing up as he struggles to hold still. He breathes out with a sharp blast of air against your skin. “You’re so perfect you feel so good oh my god oh my god-”

Your face burns. You draw a hand up his spine, fingers dancing along his smooth skin. You didn’t imagine he would be the one unable to hold on. “If you need to, you can. It doesn’t matter, I’m not finished with you yet.”

“I’m not- not usually like this,” he admits in a high, weak voice. His hips instinctively grind into yours, and he reaches the end of you and presses up against something absolutely devastating that has you moaning up toward the ceiling. “It’s the fucking- ah- iridescent… butterfly shit. Fuck butterflies.”

“It’s fucking fffffff-” your eyes nearly roll back in your skull when he fully pulls out and slams back in, jolting you up toward the headrest. The couch creaks, a warm breeze sweeps in through the open skylight, somewhere across the room the voyeuristic alien titters in the confines of its jar, but you don’t care. You feel stifled, like you’re drowning. It’s even harder to breathe when he’s giving something between a sob and a whimper into your shoulder, the rim of his glasses digging into your skin. “It’s fi- huuh. Fine. Oh god.”

You told him not to be nice, so, he’s not. You don’t think he’s being particularly mean, but he’s jackhammering into you so hard that you’re seeing stars at the end of every hard thrust. Your nails scratch down his back, likely leaving more welts like they did to his arm. All at once, your muscles clamp down around him, and he shouts into your shoulder. His hips snap into yours one final time, and his entire body shakes against you. He pauses for a drawn out moment, hovering over you, and then you feel him squeeze your thigh twice.

You take a steadying breath, hardly able to think past the ache in your core, halfway to orgasm and just sitting idle on that plateau. “Did you just…?”

“Yeah.”

“Was it enough?”

“Absolutely fucking not.” He pulls back to look at you, and confusion is written all over his expression, along with something that looks close to concern. “I’m still… still…?”

He’s still hard. You can feel it, pulsing within you, hard and thick like you’re still just getting started.

“What the fuck is in that stuff?” He casts his eyes gravely toward the jar on the table, like he has a bone to pick with it.

“I’m gonna take a guess and say something not from Earth.” You reach up to tilt his face back toward you. His eyelashes flutter, and he sucks in a ragged breath when you whisper, “Keep going, baby.”

He draws out slowly this time, and eases carefully back in like he wants to treat you gently now. His eyes stay fixed to yours, his nose nearly brushing against your own as he rocks his hips, moving in small circles that make your toes curl and your hips buck up toward his impatiently.

“Don’t go slow,” you whine, arching your back when he moves smoothly into you, all the way to the end and back, “Why are you… don’t be gentle, I-” 

“No, I read somewhere that most of sex is mental, like it’s the teasing that turns you on the most,” he says clinically, continuing to move within you. A short puff of air meets your lips, and then he adds, “Plus, if you asked me not to be nice wouldn’t it make sense that I do the opposite of that? It’s like a double negative.”

“Adrian, shut up. Please, shut up.” You thump your hand down on his shoulder blade, trying to buck your hips up into his again and ultimately failing.

“No, because it’s hot when you lose your patience with me like that.” Your eyes flutter shut, mouth falling open, and his face is close enough to yours that the lenses of his glasses fog up. He reaches up a shaking hand to tug them off, and they clatter to the floor with the rest of his clothes. “It’s also cute when you try to hurt me. I get stabbed regularly. Turns me on when you do it, though. You should try to stab me sometime, it would be fun.”

He speeds up for just a second, just enough that you moan and grab onto him, but ultimately slows back down to that languid pace that keeps pleasure winding up tight in your core. 

“I h-hate you,” you stutter out, weaving your fingers through his hair just to yank on it. He hisses through his teeth, and after another sharp tug you feel his hand grab yours and pin it against the armrest above your head. “I hate you.”

“Really? But you’re so wet for me right now,” he mutters with that chipper, happy note to his voice that’s just shy of infuriating. “Mm, and tight. God, I love your pussy.”

Your free hand grips his shoulder so hard that you know you leave crescent moon shaped dents in his skin. He lets out a groan, a soft sound vibrating from the back of his throat, and you just barely process it before he kisses you, giving you one hard thrust to make you squeak against his lips. 

He bites down on your lip as he pulls back. You feel his hand skimming your hip, your stomach, reaching down between your bodies. “You think if I rub your clit again I’ll make you come quicker? I think you’ll last ten seconds.”

You snap your eyes open and hiss a warning, “Adrian…”

“Hm. I’ll take that as a yes.”

“Adri-”

His thumb touches your clit, and a loud moan punches out of your lungs, your head rolling back and legs spasming on either side of his hips. It feels so fucking good, too good, and you can barely comprehend him releasing your arm above your head and bringing it down to hook around the back of his neck. 

You come with another loud cry of his name. It pours over you in waves, burning brighter than the sun and making your body jolt up against his. Your hands scramble for a hold on him anywhere they can get, one finding the curve of his lower back and giving it a weak push, urging him deeper into your spasming cunt.

He fucks into you harder, making you sob into the open air as the pleasure turns raw and sharp, a cutting edge on a cathartic kind of pain. And then he heaves a heavy breath, and his teeth sink into your shoulder as he groans and stills his hips, a flood of warmth leaving you full and wetness leaking from you onto the cushion below. 

His teeth leave your shoulder once he stops moaning, a warm cloud of breath making the sore skin there tingle. He kisses the marks he left, and then he fully slumps down on top of you, his sweaty skin sticking to yours.

You lay still, your hand still pressed into the dip of his lower back. You take a sharp breath through your nose. He smells so… distinct. Like fennel and pinewood and maybe a little bit of sea salt. Vigilante. 

You just fucked Vigilante. 

You blink up toward the ceiling. You just fucked Vigilante… on Peacemaker’s couch. 

Again, he seems to read your mind. His voice cracks in your ear when he whimpers, “Peacemaker’s gonna fucking kill me.”

“Us. He’ll have to go through me first.” You playfully squeeze his ass, and he shivers as he pulls back to look at you with an obvious fucked-out haze in his eyes. It makes you smile, and you twist one of his tousled curls around your fingertip. You give him a taste of one of his own crazed giggles. “No super sex magnet powers, huh?”

He blushes. After all that, you still manage to make him blush, as he gingerly pulls out of you and braces himself on his elbows in order to kiss you on the nose. There’s something so cute about it that you grin, another giggle threatening to spill out as he rests his chin on your chest, staring up at your face through his lashes. 

“Can I take you on a date?” He blurts out, his words still a little shaky. “Like, a real date. Without Goff’s weird food fucking us up. You like pizza? I know this really neat pizza place that has a bunch of old arcade games, we could go… I’ll give you all my quarters.”

“Yeah.” You sigh, pulling him up by the neck to give him a swift kiss. “I won’t even puke on your shoes.”

“Working hours” with this black ops group are loosely defined at best, and entirely nonexistent at worst. And don’t even get started on pay, because you think at this point that you’re only getting comped whatever the pay is for your cost of living, and that’s only really when you’re on the clock. They’ll pay for the hotel room and sometimes the food, but besides that, you’re on your own.

But, back to those working hours. You don’t know when they stopped, but maybe it was around the time your roomie decided to crack open a bottle of whisky and pour out half of it for you into one of the plastic solo cups they provide with the coffee pot. God knows you’re not working anymore, you’re just sort of sitting idle while he rambles about the room, gesticulating with the bottle. Like he does.

(Plus, you don’t think he’s even being paid for this? Adrian is just here for the fun and because he’s available, and the rest of the team just let him tag along because he’s useful. The thought makes you smirk a little bit.)

You admire his profile as he talks, one finger pressed to your smiling lips as your eyes trail him back and forth, thinking he might eventually hypnotize you. He’s so… expressive. And he has dimples and curly hair, which you’ve always been a sucker for. He hasn’t even taken off his suit; blue on silver on black, with a red visor on the mask discarded on the table. You had watched him remove it, and carefully tried to hide the fact that you were staring as he pulled his wire-rimmed glasses out of a hidden pocket.

You’re very pointedly staring now, sizing him up like your next fucking meal (alcohol does that to you), and Adrian keeps on blathering in one long spiel, pacing in circles like hasn’t even noticed your hungry gaze (alcohol does that to him).

“Is that prescription?” you ask, cutting him off in the middle of his sentence, which you’d barely been paying attention to. Something something Twilight, something something cultural reset.

Adrian stops pacing, looking at you with a deer-in-headlights expression. “Huh?”

You nod at the mask laying on the table by the door. “The visor. Is it prescription?” 

He swivels to look at the mask, and then back to you with an almost bashful laugh. “Uh… yeah?”

“That’s sick.” 

“Really?” Dimples. You take another sip of your whisky to calm yourself, and it burns at the back of your throat. Objectively, you should not be feeling this way about your pseudo-coworker, who also happens to be somewhat of a lunatic. But, y’know, he’s… sweet. To you. Which is the odd thing, but you’ve gone beyond worrying about the details at this point. You’re hunting alien butterfly creatures that live in people’s brains, you can get past a couple character flaws.

“I mean, yeah.” You lick your lips, which have taken on the flavor of the peach liqueur in the whisky. “I wear prescription lenses, too, but they’re a bitch to keep clean on the job. If I could afford prescription hardware, I would. Good on you.”

“Yeah, I mean… yeah, it is fucking cool, thank you!” He grins, his eyes crinkling at the corners and making you clench your jaw with how badly you want to reach out and kiss him long and hard at that exact moment. “I was starting to think no one else would notice how genius it is. Y’know, I don’t even think Peacemaker’s noticed, which is totally not very best friend-like of him, but it’s fine, I’m sure he’ll come around eventually, the guy constantly has a lot of shit on his plate. Like I remember one time, me and him got stuck in a Winnebago that was rolling downhill toward a cliff like something out of Looney Tunes because some idiot crack dealer locked us in there with his load, and-”

He’s pacing again, and the amber colored liquid in the square bottle he grips by the neck sloshes against the glass as he continues waving it around emphatically. And you’ve zoned out again, because now you’re thinking about his hands, and how nice they’d feel on your body. You’ve seen him beat the shit out of people, you know he’s packing some major force in those fists, but you haven’t felt them on your own skin, or had the experience of having them wrapped around your throat for yourself. 

“-then, y’know, Eagly’s a fucking badass, I don’t know if you’ve seen him in action, but the little dude can take a guy out in like one peck. Like do not get caught on the wrong end of those talons is all I’m saying. Anyways, he swooped in and yanked the fucking wheel, so the Winnebago flipped. I mean, can you imagine! A bald eagle rolling a camper. That shit’s gotta be, like, legendary-”

And his quads as he walks, Jesus Christ. You’ve never been super partial to burly, buff guys (sorry Chris), but there’s something to be said for muscle in the right places. Adrian’s legs are nice, you can tell just by the way the fabric of his pants stretches around them when he turns, and fuck his ass is so tight. You nearly salivate just staring at it, thinking about how much you’d love to dig your heels into it, or squeeze it to urge him on as he fucks you. 

Your eyes snap down to your solo cup of whisky, and you frown. When did you drink half of it?

“-but like I’m sure you know Eagly pretty well because he loves you, I can tell. He kind of scooches closer every time you sit near him, it’s really cute actually, I mean, I would scooch closer whenever you sat near me too except I feel like you’d punch me in the dick, good thing my suit’s got a reinforced crotch-”

“Wait, what?” You blink up at him, your brain sort of fizzling out and then rebooting as you stare at him. What did he say? 

Adrian doesn’t miss a beat. “Yeah, the guy who made it was like, ‘That makes no sense, you’re gonna have the worst time trying to take a piss in this,’ and I said, ‘No, dude, have you ever been karate kicked in the nuts before? Shit hurts.’ I still had to pay extra-”

“No, no, what was that shit about scooching closer? To me?” You squint at him. “Babe, are you trying to tell me something?”

He blushes. You know he’s joked about not feeling emotions like other people do, but you wonder how true that really is, because he goes beet fucking red like he’s having trouble breathing as he stares down at his shoes. “I, uh- well, I mean, yeah, I’d scooch closer to you. Theoretically. If- if you wanted me to. And if you weren’t going to punch me in the dick.”

“Why would I punch you in the dick?”

“I don’t know, it’s like… it’s an understandable reaction to someone getting in someone else’s personal space!”

“No, it really isn’t…”

“Well, how was I supposed to know you wouldn’t punch me in the dick?”

You throw up your hand in an exasperated gesture. “When have you ever seen me punch someone in the dick?”

He screws up his face. “UM, I don’t know, you punched Peacemaker in the dick!”

“What? When?”

“When he tried lifting you onto the truck that one time!” 

“That was a misunderstanding, I kneed him because he didn’t give me a heads up!”

“But you did it!”

“Well, the last thing I would want to do to your dick is punch it, all right?”

You both stop and stare at each other for a long moment. You think you might have stopped breathing, too. Yeah, you are definitely tipsy at this point, but you raise a slightly shaking hand to take a casual sip of your drink, as if you aren’t staring at him with bulging eyes like you’re possessed.

He opens his mouth and closes it a few times before he comes out with a response. “Okay.”

You blink. “Okay?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, okay. I mean, what other stuff would you do to my dick?”

“Uh… stuff.” You jerkily stand, nearly sloshing your drink as you try to get your bearings. You set the cup down on the bedside table and turn to look at him with the most awkward, pin-straight posture you could possibly muster, like a high schooler trying to pretend they aren’t drunk in front of their parents. “I’m going to take a shower now. Yeah. I am. I’m going to do that.”

“Oh. Okay.” Adrian looks down at the bottle in his hand, and then shuffles a bit to the side so that you can pass him.

“I mean, unless you wanted to shower first?” You pause at the end of your respective bed, and turn to see him turning down the covers on his own by the window. “What are you doing?”

“I’m getting in bed,” he says flatly, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He reaches up and undoes a latch on his armor that frees the chestplate, and lifts it over his head in one swift move, leaving him in his tight fitting black undershirt.

You stare at him, scatterbrained until you manage to scowl at him, and the two knives he wears crossed against his lower back. “You’re going to sleep with all your weapons?”

“Yeah.”

“With all the dirt and sweat and fucking blood from fighting?”

“Yeah.” 

“You can’t just… you can’t just get in bed with your outside clothes on, dude!” you splutter, leaning your thigh against the end of the mattress before you, and slow your speech carefully as you declare, “It’s… unsanitary.”

“Oh, and who are you, the sleep police?” Adrian turns to sneer at you. “I thought you were going to take a shower.”

“Well I was, but that was before I knew you weren’t planning on it!” You throw your hand out at him. “Why?”

“Because! If I go to sleep with wet hair it dries all weird, okay? Get off my dick!”

“I’m sure you’ll look just as pretty regardless, Adrian,” you tut condescendingly at him, rolling your eyes as you turn on your heels toward the bathroom. “Do what you want, or fucking join me if you change your mind, I don’t care.”

You don’t register the full weight of your words until you turn on the tap. But, by that time, you also don’t get to see the way Adrian stares at the door to the bathroom like you’ve just presented him with the key to the city.

You very rarely opt for lukewarm showers, but you certainly do now. With the way your blood is humming through your veins like electricity, and you feel hot just from the sight of Adrian’s muscles in that tight fucking shirt, you feel a cold shower is in order. Well, colder, anyways. 

The water pressure is complete bullshit, of course. It pathetically trickles out, and it takes longer than usual for your body to get completely soaked. In that time, you lean against the tile and hold your head in your hands as the water drips down your face. How the fuck are you supposed to sleep in the same room as this guy? Between the way you’re just aching to jump his bones, and his inability to stop talking, you don’t think it’s a possibility tonight.

You wonder what he would sound like when you ride him. You wonder if he would finally shut up, or if he would switch to talking to you like a lover instead of a drinking buddy. You wonder if he would beg, or if he’s more dominant than that. 

You’re imagining his head between your thighs. You’re imagining what he’d look like with your hands tangled in his hair. You’re imagining the feeling of his mouth on your skin, the calloused planes of his palms on your breasts and beneath your thighs. You’re… you’re shaking.

The white shower curtain rips open, and Adrian steps in beside you, naked as the day he was born. “Hey, can you pass the soap?”

“What the fuck?” You turn your head to look at him with a bewildered expression, simply refusing to tear your eyes away from his face because you do not want to cross that line and have the image of his dick imprinted in your brain while you try to get to sleep tonight. “Adrian, what are you doing?”

“Well, you said to join you if I changed my mind.” He shrugs, his smile the absolute picture of innocence, but his eyes still rake slowly down your body before finding your face again. 

You blink, searching for a proper response to that. His eyes are green. Jesus Christ, that’s three for three: dimples, curly hair, and green eyes. He’s trying to kill you. 

“I was being sar-” you cut yourself off with a sigh, “yeah, you know what, I did say that. Shit. Fucking… okay. Whatever. Here.” You fumble with the tiny complimentary body wash tube and thrust it toward him. “Go apeshit.”

“You have a really great ass by the way.”

“Adrian.”  

“What? You do. I’m just being honest. I’m not even saying that because this is the first time I’ve seen you naked, I always thought your ass was nice, there just wasn’t a good time to say it.”

Your face is burning. You turn your back on him and try your hardest not to clap your hands over your eyes or do something equally embarrassing. You don’t think Adrian is even fazed by any of this; he wasn’t wearing his glasses, either, and you don’t know how strong his prescription is. You imagine pretty strong, if he needs it in his visor. Maybe there’s a good chance he can’t see the exact details of your tits. Maybe-

He touches your shoulder, and you feel lather running down your back as he starts massaging circles into your skin.

“Are you washing me?” you wheeze, your voice coming out an octave higher, and you really do cover your face again this time. Your heartbeat pounds in your ears, and you can’t focus on anything other than the touch of his hand on your shoulder blade.

“Uh, yeah? I wash your back, you wash mine, right?” He sounds cheery and completely content with everything that’s happening and, despite the sheer oddness of all of it, you don’t really want him to stop. You guess that’s why you haven’t told him to get the hell out, yet.

Maybe you’re just as much of a lunatic as him. “‘Scratch,’ Adrian. It’s fucking ‘scratch.’” 

He pauses. “What?”

“It’s ‘I scratch your back, you scratch mine.’”

“That makes no fucking sense.” He shakes his head in your periphery, his hand resuming its circular motion against your back, moving across to your other shoulder. You feel the soft, wet glide like a molten lava trail.

“Of course it makes sense! Why would it be ‘wash?’”

“Why wouldn’t it be ‘wash?’”

“Because it’s about doing your friends favors,” you argue in a wobbly, strained voice as you shiver while his fingers slide down your spine. It raises goosebumps on your skin, despite the heat in your veins and the cool of the water. “Friends don’t wash each other’s backs, genius.”

“So, we’re not friends?”

His hand pauses again just at the curve of your lower back, where it extends down into your tailbone. You bite your lip, and you can feel his eyes on you, the touch of his gaze almost as real as his hand is. Your thighs clench together involuntarily. You simpering little… weak, desperate thing, you are not going to beg for him to touch you. That’s not it. That’s not how this should go.

But, you could turn around and touch him, too. You could probably kiss him, if you were feeling really adventurous. He just basically implied that he wouldn’t be opposed to fucking you, right? That was where the conversation had been going earlier, if you hadn’t been such a pussy. Neither of you is nearly as subtle as you think you are.

You manage to chew your lip enough to tear a gash in it, and salty, coppery blood hits your tongue. You’re losing it, standing on the precipice of something way bigger than the two of you. You’re just an inch away from becoming more than just friends with Adrian, if you don’t reel it in quickly. Your hand comes up to slam against the wall when his fingers, which seem to be discontented to remain idle, start tracing little shapes on your lower back. A star. A diamond. A heart.

“N… No, I- I mean, we are. But I don’t think we’re going to be, if you keep it up.”

He grunts carelessly. “I’m having a hard time not keeping it up, really.”

“What do you mean?” You turn around, and his hand glides across your lower back and to your hip, because he refuses to stop touching you now (not that you want him to stop, either, if you’re being honest with yourself). Your eyes flick down, and you know exactly what he means, because he’s hard as a rock. 

And also thick, and long, and veiny, but hey. What did you expect?

Your eyes linger on his erection for a long time, and drag your gaze slowly from the burst of dark hair at the base of his cock, up the line of his torso and to his chest. His pale skin is riddled with little scars here and there, from small injuries that weren’t serious enough to slow him down. He has a faint spray of freckles on his shoulders, suggesting that he spends at least some time in the sun. It makes you inordinately flustered to think of him doing some sort of outdoor activities to get that toned body of his. 

You clear your throat as you find his gaze again. “Next dumb question,” you say, and he gives you a wide-eyed, vaguely awestruck look that makes you way more confident than it ought to. “Are you gonna fuck me, Adrian?”

His eyelashes flutter. His cheeks are painted with that sweet pink blush again, like he’s been entirely oblivious to the fact that he’s had you melting for him since he cracked open the bottle of Jim Beam. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“I think it’s a fucking fantastic idea, do you?”  

“Yeah, I do.” And he grabs you by the face to kiss you, and crowds you back against the wall. You give a surprised yelp into his open mouth, your arms coming up to wrap around his neck as your back hits the cold tile. He grunts and brushes his soap covered fingers across your cheeks. “Did you bite your lip?”

“Yeah.”

“...Was that because of me?”

You whimper weakly as he slowly, and very purposefully, traces the length of your bottom lip with his tongue like he’s savoring the taste of your blood. “Yeah.”

“That’s so fucking hot.”

He yanks you up off of your feet, making you squeak and hold in a nervous laugh. Your leg bumps the faucet handle, and the water turns ice cold just as Adrian scrambles to hook your legs around his waist. 

“Shit.” Adrian hisses and smacks the wall beside your hip once or twice before he finds the faucet, because he doesn’t stop kissing you. He’s sloppy and rushed and overexcited, but at least he gets the water running warm against as he presses you up against the wall. “I’ve never done this here, have you?”

“Shower sex? No.” You bite his lip as he hitches you up by the back of your thighs, and he groans as his hips jerk up toward yours. “But I think you’re doing a good job.”

“Wait, fuck. Do we need, like, a condom…?” He blinks at you with a glassy look in his eyes. 

“IUD. I have- it’s all good, you’re fine.” You knock your head back against the wall with a whimper high in your throat as he brushes his cock against your entrance. You can feel the world spinning as you tangle your fingers in his wet hair, giving it a small but sharp tug. “Now, if you don’t fuck me I’m gonna-”

You choke when he drives the full length of his cock into you, pushing your hips back against the wall. Your nails scratch down his neck and across his shoulder blades as he splits you open, your legs tightening around his waist while simultaneously trying to spread wider to accommodate him. Adrian spits a curse into your neck, his teeth grazing a vein there as he ruts up into you, filling you so completely that a cry dies in your throat. 

“God, fuck, Adrian,” you sob toward the ceiling, only too aware of him moaning loudly against your skin. He feels better than you had imagined, stretching you out so perfectly that your toes curl as you try your hardest to draw him forward with your legs alone.

“I knew you’d be perfect,” you catch him whispering into the crook of your neck, just barely audible over the trickle of water over your head.

He doesn’t even give you time to adjust before he starts pistoning his hips into yours, jolting you up the wall. Your skin squeaks against the wet tile, and his grunts echo in the curve of your neck. Tears might actually be streaming down your face, but you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart from the warm water coming from the showerhead.

Adrian’s hand comes up to brace against the wall beside your head, and he surprises you. “You really think I’m pretty?” He asks with such a genuine note of hope in his voice that you think he must be serious. 

“I think you’re fucking gorgeous,” you breathe, whining when he nips at your jaw with his teeth. You interrupt your train of thought with a series of hoarse cries, because Adrian picks up the pace with less precision, and more just forceful thrusts that drive all the way to the end of you and make you see stars, regardless.

“You’re the most perfect person in the world and I wish I could paint because the only thing I’d be painting is just you over and over and over-” 

He’s blathering into your shoulder, his mouth brushing your skin as it moves and his hips slamming yours back against the wall hard enough that you’re definitely going to be feeling it in the morning. Every bit of desire you have for him surges up inside you like an inferno catching on, like every stroke he makes is stoking that fire within you.

“-so pretty everyone wants you I can’t believe you would let me touch you or even kiss you but you’re letting me do this to you and it’s all I’ve wanted to do since I first saw you-”

It occurs to you to tell him that you’d let him do anything he wants to you at this point, as long as he just doesn’t stop fucking you- but that’s yet another line you refuse to cross for the sake of self preservation. You’re already drunk, and confessing the true scope of your feelings to him in this state would just be a recipe for disaster. 

Oh god, but he’s like a reckoning. You shake your head to compose yourself and scratch your nails along his neck before you take his face in your hands and draw him up to you. His pupils were already blown out, but you think they nearly eclipse his irises when his hips falter and he sucks in a sharp breath. His dark hair is thoroughly drenched, and water drips down his face in little rivulets that you trace with your fingers just before you draw him to your lips.

You feel his small moan vibrate on your lips, and that’s enough. Your legs spasm, and your orgasm suddenly snaps within you like a rubber band, every muscle in your core tightening down on his cock as you see a burst of white behind your closed eyelids. It snuck up on you just as much as it did him.

“Holy fuck-” Adrian loudly gasps against your lips with a startled jolt of his hips, his full weight crushing you up against the wall. His nose nuzzles yours, so intimate in a way that you hadn’t expected from him, and with a few shuddering huffs of breath you feel him come with a rush of warmth deep inside you.

You’re floating somewhere above awareness when he slouches forward, his forehead resting against yours and his eyes closed as he takes deep, steadying breaths. It takes you a moment to realize that he’s just holding you, with his fingers digging into your thighs like he’s just trying to ground himself in your body.

You raise a shaking hand to smooth his wet hair back from his face. “Earth to Adrian. You still with me, babe?”

He grumbles something entirely non-coherent directly in front of your face, and blinks his eyes groggily open at you. 

“The alcohol’s catching up with you, huh?”

He nods.

“Guess I’m washing your back, anyways. C’mon.” You wiggle out of his grip, and you’re only too thankful that you’re smushed up against the shower wall, or else you may have easily slipped and ate shit on the tile. The alcohol is fucking with your head quite a bit now, too, and your movements are a little jerky and uncoordinated as you try to help him get cleaned up.

He’s uncharacteristically quiet. The rest of the shower takes place in complete silence, actually, with the exception of the little grunt he makes when you urge him to bend down so you can get his hair for him. You catch him looking a little dazed as you turn off the water, and he gives you an unfocused stare when you toss a towel at him. You wonder if you actually succeeded in frying the guy’s brains just by fucking him.

But then, back in the room as you clumsily dig through your bag to pull out a night shirt and a pair of underwear, Adrian shuffles directly to his bed and tosses his towel aside before clambouring into it, bare ass to the wind. He flops down face first, and shoves his feet under the turned down comforter.

“Adrian… what are you doing?” You say for what feels like the millionth time this evening. 

“‘M going to bed,” he drawls into the pillow. His entire body shakes as he hiccups, and then turns his head to the side to look up at you with his big green doe-eyes that make your heart do a somersault in your ribcage. “You should tooootally join me. There’s-” hiccup- “lotsa room. We could go again.”

You blink at him as you semi-stagger, semi-walk toward the bed, stooping to pick up pieces of his uniform strewn across the floor as he had, presumably, just ripped everything off as he made his way to the bathroom. “Mm, no, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Uh, you said it was a great idea,” he argues as you toss his clothes into a pile at the end of the bed.

“That was before the whisky kicked in and we were both staggering… fuckin… drunk-” you accidentally whack your foot against the corner of the bed and bite your lip as you fight not to crumble to the floor. “One of us has to be responsible.”

“I’m-” hiccup- “responstable.”

“Uh-huh.” You stop as your eyes land on the mostly empty Jim Beam bottle on the bedside table. You’re almost positive it had been at least quarter full when you left him to go take a shower. “Adrian, did you drink all that?”

He blinks his eyes open and follows your pointing finger to the bottle. “Oh, yeah. Hhhuuuhh… had to… I lost the cap so we can’t keep it.” When you march forward to snatch it off the table, he grunts dismissively. “Gotta… get rid of it.”

“Guess that’s why you’re worse off than me.” You shake your head and drop the entire bottle into the trash bin. “Aren’t you gonna put something on to sleep in?”

“I don’t have anything.”

You snap your head towards his sprawling, naked form. Your eyes linger on his ass for way too long. “You didn’t bring a single thing to wear?”

“Why… why would I bring a change of clothes to kill bad guys?” 

“I don’t fuckin’ know! Anonymity!” 

He grumbles into the pillow, “I have a mask.”

“Fuck the mask. You can’t sleep in the mask.”

“Sure I can. I fuck in the mask, I can sleep in it. S’a free country.”

You blink, your eyes flicking between Adrian and the mask on the table. “Dude, you fuck in that thing?”

“Hell yeah I do. I could fuck you in the mask. Could do it right now. Go get the mask.” Despite the conviction of his words, he’s slurring them, and his face is still pressed into his pillow as he lies motionless on the bed. 

“I… don’t think that’s gonna happen tonight.” You sigh as you toe forward and grab the end of his comforter, drawing it up over his body. “We’re both way too drunk. We probably… probably shouldn’t have…”

Adrian flops over to look up at you as you, essentially, tuck him in. There’s a note of hurt in his voice when he mumbles, “You regret it?”

You pause, staring down at his expression of confusion and betrayal. Do you regret it? You can’t deny that you hadn’t been hesitant to have sex with him for a litany of reasons- one being that you work with him, and another being that he’s a loose cannon on the best of days. Not exactly relationship material, you think. 

Or, you thought, but now he’s gazing up at you with these wide, dumbfounded eyes, and you’re tucking the comforter up beneath his chin, and he turns his face down and kisses your knuckle even though he looks mildly hurt. And yes, you liked the sex very much. You liked it so much that you can’t trust yourself not to do it again if you don’t shuffle off to your own bed immediately.

“No,” you tell him firmly, combing your fingers through his wet hair as you draw back. “I don’t regret it, but I think we both need to sleep this off.”

“Okay,” Adrian says quietly, his expression relaxing, but his arms come out from under the comforter and he reaches for you with grabby-hands. “Sleep with me?”

You catch one of his hands and give it a gentle squeeze. “G’night, Adrian.”

You hear him sigh in disappointment when you shut off the bedside lamp. His hands audibly plop down onto the mattress as he rasps, “Night.”