fics i want to read later

Across the room, Smurf held a glass of bourbon that caught the dim lights every time she laughed. It was a prop, you knew so. It was the same as the huge gold chain she wore around her neck. It was a prop like the arm she drifted around whichever son drifted into range. You’d watched her do it to Craig twice tonight. You’d watched Andrew watch her do it, hands in his pockets with his spine so straight and rigid.

Deran had told you that, “You’ve been lookin’ so fuckin’ sad recently.”

He’d looked half-worried through his grin, and you had your answer ready. “Work’s just been a lot.”

He’d nodded and clinked his can against yours. You stood there an accumulation of your little lies, calendar lies, where-were-you-Saturday lies, each one costing a coin of something you couldn’t stop spending. You were getting better at that than you would’ve liked. Work had been a lot, and no you weren’t seeing anyone.

You’d said the latter to some girl making conversation by the pool. The “no” had come out before she’d even finished her question while thirty feet away stood the man whose bed you’d woken up in this morning. No. You weren’t seeing anyone.

You needed a minute. Craig was high off his shit – or, maybe, someone else’s – telling a story. Your mouth curved when his did. But the noise pressed in from all sides – the house made it possible to feel like you were within twenty walls instead of four – and you needed just about thirty seconds where you could stop pretending you weren’t in love with the eldest Cody in this house. How many seconds could you steal with him? Ninety, maybe. You’d take forty. 

Andrew’s door stood open, and it was a hand’s width of a gap. Through it, your eyes fell onto the gold lamplight laid down across the runner and that was the second you saw the shadows of movement play inside it. 

It’d irked you, the fact that the house he grew up in – the house where you’d flocked into with Deran and circled around Andrew for years before you knew you were circling – had never once held the two of you the way you were. You’d been safe in this house your entire life, in the shadows where Smurf registered you as a mindless stray. And then you’d gone and fallen in love with the eldest son, and converted yourself into the only contraband ever smuggled through this house without Smurf sniffing it out. 

You wanted – very badly – to hold Andrew. You wanted to get your hand around the back of his neck where he ran hot and press your thumb into that knot of muscle that never once in his life had come loose. You wanted to tell him that you loved him against his collar so his mouth would curve up just a degree like it always did. 

Your hand was on the door and then the gap was wider. It was when the gold of his lamp spilled fuller that you saw Andrew’s rigid posture at the edge of his bed, his back to the door. With a girl.

You could’ve sworn you’d seen her just earlier. She was someone from the party’s outer rings, someone Smurf had summoned out of the general dark. Andrew had told you she did that – “She brings girls around when she thinks I’m stressed.” 

You’d thought it was history when he told you, something she used to do. You supposed the past tense had been your invention – your brain cradling you unknowingly – and that he’d never conjugated it that way. 

Your breath came out heavy through your nostrils once, and you couldn’t be sure if you took a breath after that. 

She was talking to Andrew; you could see her mouth moving close to the side of his face. You could see the little nods she gave herself between words. Her hand was on his shoulder, and then it moved up the side of his neck to the place your own hand went.

You knew what that patch of skin felt like from the outside, warm as bread. You knew what your hand looked like there, you’d thrown your head back against the couch and watched as his shoulders lowered as your fingers worked into it. Hers looked the same. It made you sick, that it looked no different when she did it. 

Her fingers spread against his jaw and drew his face around toward her. It turned. A head is a heavy thing – Andrew’s had phantom in it besides, whole cemeteries of weight, Julia and everything this home had taken and done – and it came around under four of her fingers, easy as a door. All that weight, and she moved it with a wrist. 

You had to swallow down a lump so your voice wouldn’t yell out. Andrew’s secret, you had to tell yourself. You were Andrew’s secret, and if you did anything that showed you knew him better than the guy you sometimes talked to – if the space allowed it – then Andrew wouldn’t be happy.

His profile came into the lamplight and his hands closed on his lap, knuckles blanching, then opening again. He pressed them flat against his thighs. His shoulders were up around his ears. 

He shook his head once, the action so small you might have made it up. It was a fossil of a refusal.

She smiled – like he was growling at her from inside a kennel, fenced and adorable – at him. She kept her palm in your place and said something else, and his head stayed shaking its tiny trembling current of no, no, no. 

She shifted closer to the mattress. For some awful reason, you heard the bedsprings creak even though you could hear none of what she was saying.

His weight tipped just an inch – toward the pull of her hand – one of his hands came up off his thigh, crossed the small dark between their bodies, and found her waist and rested there. 

You found that nothing about his hand looked like the hand you knew, and that thought – the creepy, monstrous thought of something of Andrew’s that you’d thought was only ever yours to know being spent here, on another waist – had teeth. It bit you under your ribs, and there was a physical pinch that wrapped around your body.

Pope, you thought.

The name arrived from everywhere in this house, because the man on the bed wasn’t anyone you’d ever held. He’d never let you. Andrew was yours. Andrew had given you the chain that now felt like it was steaming up against your skin.

It was a little proof-of-ownership tag pressing its details into you at the precise moment his hand certified someone else’s waist. You’d worn it inside your clothes all night, hidden it like everything he gave you. It occurred to you that perhaps the girl’s hands on his neck was more public than anything the two of you had ever done. 

His hand had gone, had done this small obedient thing his mother intended it to do. Some part of you believed – stupidly, tenderly, for months – that you had gotten there. You’d had this dumb little faith that you reached whatever was underneath and embalmed it so thoroughly that Smurf could never truly put her fingers back on it. 

You hadn’t. You saw that now, that you hadn’t reached what lived under and made it yours in some way that predated his mother’s claim, that love didn’t go deeper than training. Andrew could love you when the air allowed it. The moment the air tangled with her breath, the love folded up and waited.

You were the newest thing in Andrew. You’d been pouring yourself into the top inch of a man and calling it the bottom.

You thought about it, nailed it into your stupid, stupid brain as your fingers closed on the steering wheel. You hadn’t even remembered getting into the car. 

If Smurf had him pliant the way you knew she could, Pope would be above the girl right now. 

You wondered if it was silly to carry that small little faith that Andrew wouldn’t fuck her. It felt childish in the face of the monstrosity. It was a girl’s faith. Silly girl, he’s not yours there.

You didn’t know. You’d left, coward you were. Now there was a room behind you that you couldn’t see into, and your brain – quick, disgusting – went right on ahead and finished it for you.

Even under it, you hoped that if it happened, it didn’t hurt Andrew. The enormous, completely ruined, loving part of you hoped that if he was in that room doing what she sent the girl for, then at least Andrew was spared.

You wanted the girl to be gentle with him, wanted her hands to be warm, wanted her to slow the way he needed. Because if his body had to be spent tonight on his mother’s errand, then let it at least be spent somewhere soft.

It had all the footage it needed; it remembered his hands in one fold, knew exactly what they’d do, and how that live wire running through your body would light up when they did. 

That wire was crossed now, the light going somewhere else, curling in on itself like a millipede when it dies. You’d learned that with Andrew on a documentary. You’d been half-asleep against him and he’d been all-awake, and the millipede had done its slow curl on the screen. He’d said, into your hair, “That’s how they go.” 

Now that was ruined, too, wasn’t it? Now that little curling death was with you, in your chest, in the car, everything he’d handed you turning in your grip and pointing back at itself. 

The weight of his mouth on yours. The weight of him going slack on you when he stopped holding himself up with his forearms. The sound, that little soft grunt. Your brain had all the memories, had held it close and swaddled it like something meant to be cherished forever. It was playing them on her, and you pressed the heel of your hand into your eye socket to make it go away. 

Coward. Coward, you could have stayed. You could have stood in the doorway of his childhood bedroom and let him see you. You could have been the thing that stopped his hands for him, and instead you’d taken your stupid soft feet and gone, and bought yourself this reel that you’d never get to see the end of. Your head would have to keep guessing the ending forever, generous with the details, cruel as Smurf herself.

You let out a full-fledged sob, dropping your head against the wheel as you pulled over on some side. You were crying about it and wishing Andrew well in it, hoping a stranger was being sweet to the man she was taking from you.

Your love – somewhere along the way – for Andrew had stopped including yourself. You’d have lain down under the wheels of it if it kept him warm. You think you would’ve given him away nicely, if it was what he had to do.

The waiting sat low and ugly in you and wouldn’t resolve. You were sure it wouldn’t resolve unless you popped something bad for you to go to sleep. You’d swallow just about anything just to feel different.

There was nothing in your apartment for you to swallow. The ceiling was the only thing that was moving – headlights, then gone, then another – and you could feel the sour taste the one drink had left in your mouth. You lay there and hated your own spit. You hated the chain warming against your sternum. You hated, distantly, the specific idiot you’d been for him tonight, brushing your teeth for him, choosing your earrings. 

He’d texted you an hour after you’d left, and then again. It was the grace of your routine. If you left without saying goodbye, it was normal. He’d show up whenever what needed to be done was done, and somewhere between then there’d be a text. Tonight, the first one had come in on schedule, lighting the ceiling blue for one second. 

Andrew: Home?

He’d sent another one forty minutes later. There usually was never a second text.

Andrew: Shouldn’t be long. You good?

Your thumb hovered, wanting to type out a ‘yes.’ Your hand wanted to answer him the same way his hand had wanted that waist, muscle memory greased and aimed. You watched your own body try to be obedient now, to the same thing that was killing you. So, you put the phone face-down on the mattress. 

You’d lay wondering if Andrew had done with the girl what his mother had sent her to him for. He could be inside her right now. Right now, while you lay here rationing your own breath. The thought went through you serrated, dragging its teeth. You let it, because some penitentiary part of you had decided that if you couldn’t know, you’d serve the worst sentence available.

You snorted softly to yourself through the tears. Wasn’t that the night’s filthiest joke? Smurf didn’t even have to know your relationship with Andrew to teach you how she could’ve hurt you. You were doing the work for her, free of charge, your brain cruel as the woman herself. 

He sent another one later.

Andrew: On my way

Andrew was looking at your silence and noticed, if you were lucky. Maybe he hadn’t.

You heard the graceless fumble as he used his spare keys hours later, the metal worrying the other metal. Andrew who’d cracked safes and still had a difficult time working his own girl’s front door quietly when he was spent. The bolt turned and you felt the air sing through the house, then heard the long nothing of him crossing it in the dark, no lights, because lights woke people. He’d learned that it was the polite thing to do – he never turned on lights, choosing whatever default setting a person had chosen – and the fact broke your heart on a normal night and tonight it just sat there like dead weight. 

You closed your eyes, never deciding to fake it but your body clearly wanted to. Coward, same as you. You arranged your face slack, and that was when you’d realized how every inch of your skin that could’ve scrunched up had been holding that position for the last three hours since you got home. 

The room took him in and the mattress went down under his weight. His boots came off one at a time, and then he was lowering himself into the bed with his arms taking the load so the springs wouldn’t talk. 

Somewhere along the way, Andrew’d stopped feeling the pressing need to shower before he got in bed with you. Eager, now. He used to scrub the day off before he’d let himself touch you, like he thought he’d track something in. It had taken you months to get him to stop.

Eager thing, you were, too. Dumb little wanting of wanting him now, now, now, after being starved of him for all the years he’d held himself back from you. The night he’d finally let himself climb into your bed smelling of work and himself, and let you have him unwashed, you’d understood it for the enormous surrender it was. Andrew laying down a guard he’d held since boyhood, trusting you now with the unrinsed version. 

You felt bile rise to your throat at the thought now. 

His knee found the back of yours, testing to see if you were awake. When he received no answer, his arm came over – the weight of it, God, the sheer heat and heft – and drew you back against the long line of him until there was nowhere left for the dark to get between you.

That rumbling inside you didn’t care what you’d seen; it only knew the heat of him against your back and wanted to turn to it. 

His face went to the back of your neck, and he breathed out. The breath went on and on and on, billowing raggedly against your skin at the end of it, everything in him coming down at once. You felt his body get heavier against you with the relief of having arrived. 

His hand found your fist under your chin and capped it, thumb going into the groove below your knuckles. His mouth moved on your nape, his lips resting there like they’d found home.

He breathed you in slowly, so rationing constantly. He never took anything at the rate he wanted. You could only feel the true rate underneath – in the pressure of his fingers when they curled and then remembered themselves and went flat, in the abortive flex of his arm that wanted to crush you to him and delivered, instead, a gentle cinching – held at the gate, metered out in doses he’d decided you could survive. 

You’d seen it as reverence for much too long. It had felt like being cradled by somebody who tried to remember you constantly.

Tonight, lying rigid inside his heat, you realized you’d only gotten halves of Andrew. The withheld remainder lived somewhere, didn’t it? Everything unspent had to go somewhere, and now you knew where. 

“Hate that house,” he murmured quietly. “Whole night. Wanted to get back here.” His thumb moved once in the groove of your knuckles. “To you.” 

His knee pressed into yours. “Shoulda left earlier,” he murmured, after a minute. “Looked for you after. Asked Deran – you were already gone.”

It’d taken so long to place Andrew into himself, for him to find the version of his body that could lie in a bed. Years he’d spent flinching. Years learning the flinch back down to nothing, learning the bed you were in was a place the past couldn’t reach through the floor and grab his ankle. His heart was going slow and unafraid against your spine. You’d built that heartbeat, he’d told you once. You’d built it with all of the halves Andrew brought you. 

You didn’t want it to go. You wanted to keep being the house he came into, the one where he was unclenched and humming with arrival, happy. You’d made a place out of yourself where he could fall into, and you were only now learning what it cost to be it.

You kept your breath long and level, which was the mistake. It was too level, too clean. Andrew’s thumb stopped for a second, and he blew out another soft breath against your skin. 

“Playin’ possum?” The corner of his mouth moved against your neck, and you could feel that little thing he’d started doing more, the closest to a grin he could get. “Nah. C’mon.” 

His arm cinched tighter to haul you back flush into him, and there was a low gruff of breath in your hair that was his laugh. His nose dragged up behind your ear and his hand slid off your fist to spread wide and warm over your stomach. 

“Waited up f’me?” he murmured, pleased, “and won’t even say hi. What sort of welcome’s that, huh?” He pressed a true kiss under your jaw, lingered there for a moment too long that you could feel his lips curve downwards against your skin, the frown arriving inside of the kiss. “Say hi.” 

His mouth dragged up from your jaw hesitantly, testing on your skin. His tongue touched down at the corner of your jaw – savoring the salt he thought was just your skin – and that was the exact second it went wrong on him. His lips flattened again, and you could feel his body go still as he held his breath against you. Andrew knew the taste of tears. 

He drew back an inch, enough to break the seal of his mouth from you, and the cool of the room rushed into the space where his warmth had been. 

His palm lifted from your stomach and came to your cheek and dragged a thumb – slowly, the pad of it rough – through the track running down toward the pillow, and stopped at the wet gathered at your lashes, and turned it. Against your back, his heart kicked once, then found a faster gear. A swallow went down his throat where it pressed to your shoulder, and his breath developed a small hitch at the top of each inhale. 

Andrew had never been one to keep his fear where you could reach it, but you could always feel it anyway. You felt it now, the tell of it thumping against your back.

He made a sound in his throat, like he was clearing it but instead only managed to lodge it more. 

“You’re crying,” he said, thumb at your lashes. “Why?”

His hand slid from your cheek to your jaw, cupped it, and pressed, suggesting a turn with a quarter-ounce of pressure. Then, he waited like he always did with you. He proposed, and you completed.

When you didn’t complete it, he applied the tiny pressure again, saying, “Please.”

You let him turn you, because you couldn’t not. That please had that boy in it, and because you were done being a coward in one direction only to be one in another.

You turned in his arms and saw his face for the first time, the memory of his hand around her waist surfacing behind your eyes even as you looked at him. For a second you saw both, his face here, creased and worried in the grey light, and his hand there, resting and obedient on skin that wasn’t yours.

He made a small, confusedly wounded sound in his throat as his eyes went back and forth along your face. His thumb wiped once at your cheek, catching what was leftover, and he didn’t even seem to know he was doing it. You leaned your cheek into his hold, and his palm came to your cheek immediately, brows furrowing. 

“What?” he murmured, and it came out in a breath like it’d been punched out of him.

You could feel his fingers curl to the shape of your face, cradling, the closest he could get to gripping without letting himself grip. Your jaw sat on the heel of his palm as his thumb brushed along your cheekbone while the pads of the others curled behind your hair. 

It was the sick tender wretchedness of it, letting the same hands that made you almost throw up bile only hours ago cup your face in the dark, leaning into it, because your body had never known what else to do with the enormous nearness of Andrew. You turned to him like a plant to the window even now, even knowing, and you hated that you couldn’t stop it. 

You heard his teeth clench together in your silence. His forehead came down, wanting to touch yours, and you let that, too. The weight of his head rested against your hairline and his breath billowed unevenly against your mouth. It was your first touch, you remembered with such tender cruelty. It was the only one he could do, his oldest word with you. 

“Somebody do something?” His thumb swept your cheekbone in haste, gathering another one you hadn’t even registered falling. 

Your throat wouldn’t work. His fingers curled behind your ear, pads pressing lightly, counting something.

His breath stalled at the top of an inhale, holding it there, and then it came out slowly as he moved closer, nose grazing yours just barely. His tongue peeked out slightly between his lips, and you felt his breath quilt. His head made the smallest motion against yours, no.

His palm flattened some hair back from your face, and his lips pressed to the bridge of your nose and you felt them tremble there. He pressed harder to stop it. When he pulled away, his lips twisted slightly. 

“I do something?” he asked, voice cracking in the middle. 

You opened your mouth, and your voice came out broken out of disuse. “How was the party?” 

His hand tensed up against your face and he tugged his lower lip between his teeth, eyes pinching shut. You felt the second he took his hand off your face like it was burning you, felt the exact millisecond he realized the hand he was touching you with.

Andrew, who reached for you like people did railings on staircases, curled his hands into a fist against the sheet beside you. The whole hand you knew so well – and not at all – held away from you like he’d decided he’d forfeited his right to it. 

“Bad,” he murmured. “I didn’t like it.” 

You breathed in sharply through your nose at Andrew being the picture of himself, always meeting the worst things in life with the smallest words. You pushed your face further into the pillow, leaving his head hanging with the tiny gap between. Even with his eyes shut, his lips twisted into a small frown. And even as your own heart felt like it was burning up with something ugly and violent, you wanted to press your mouth at the edge of his self-flagellating scowl. 

He sucked in a sharp breath and from the corner of your eye, you could see his fists curl tighter on the sheet. You heard the cotton strain under them, threads ticking. One of his fists came up and pressed its knuckles hard against his mouth, like he was stopping words at the gate.

Tell me, you tried to telepathically communicate. Tell me so I don’t have to say it for you. 

“How was it – ” he tried, coming out past his knuckles. His lip curled off his teeth a flinch, and his head one hard motion like it was shaking off a fly, hating the question. He put his fist back down and picked a spot on the pillow an inch from your face and spoke to it. “How was it for you?” 

“Andrew – ” He tilted his head to the side, brows furrowing at your voice, the tremble in it. You continued, forcing yourself to ask the question. “Did anything – ”

“I’m sorry,” he said, overlapping your voice. His head went back, throat curving long and pale in the light. From here, you could see the curve of his throat bob as he swallowed. His eyes had come open and found the ceiling, shining wet along the bottom lids as he blinked hard, furious little shutters. 

“I’m so sorry.” He kept going, repeating it. “Sorry. M’so sorry. Sorry, sorry,” he said, each one softer and faster than the last.

His hand came up and dragged down his own face, knuckles scrubbing at his jaw.

Your body, quicker than your heart, turned to stone. Your head reared impossibly back. If it was possible, you would’ve gone into the pillow. Your nose started to burn and you felt a new pressure build up in your eyes all over again, jaw clenching.

He looked down again, trying to meet your eyes when he felt your body go stiff. His hand came up off the sheet to cradle your face again, but just as quickly as he reached, he put it away. 

“I shouldn’t be here. Put my hands on you. Didn’t even –” he rambled on, voice crumpling. “Came here ‘cause I missed you so much – sorry. I’m sorry.”

Your mouth opened as you let out a breath, sounding close to a defeated laugh. Your wires were crossed and you suddenly felt the stab of a thousand sharp knives as the images that had been playing on repeat came to your mind again. 

“What happened?” you asked, tearing out through the middle of his words in a voice you weren’t sure even belonged to you.

When he continued apologizing, the words tumbling over yours, you said, “Did you – did you fuck her?”

His head came up and he looked like he’d been struck, horrified and gutted all at once; the answer was in the line between his brows before his mouth caught up. But you needed the mouth, you needed to hear the word, so you held his eyes with your whole body gone rigid.

“No,” he said, voice trembling on the word. “What?” 

That made your nose burn even more, the complete brokenness in his voice at the insinuation, discovering you believed him capable of. You had to roll your eyes to the ceiling to get away from his face, and that let the pool gathering at your waterline spill slowly once again down your cheek. 

“Why would you think that?” he asked, pushing his face closer to get back into your eyeline, hunting it, needy to be seen completely for the first time maybe his entire life. “Why would I do that?”

You turned your neck so your cheek fell onto the pillow and away from him. He made a pained sound at you turning away from him, also maybe for the first time in your life. 

“I would never do that,” he said, firming his voice. “Don’t want anyone else. Don’t want anyone,” he said, rougher, correcting himself in the same breath down to the barest true thing. “S’only ever been – doesn’t work like that with me. You know that. Doesn’t work with anyone that’s not – that’s not you. You know that,”

The words all came out like he was drilling it back into you, like he thought that some base mechanism in you had been accidentally tossed over the hours you’d been away from him, and if he said the words with enough torque he could reseat it, will it back true. 

It hadn’t been. The mechanism was still wired and running charged, so completely charged. You knew Andrew down to the bone, loved him down to the phantoms in his brain and the loving hadn’t dimmed a watt for what you’d seen. If anything it’d gone sharper, meaner, more itself, the way a burn brightens a nerve. You lay there charged to the teeth with it and it did you no good at all, because being wired for Andrew didn’t mean the same as having him, and tonight the gap between those things was the whole width of the bed. 

Loving him hadn’t been enough to keep his hand off another waist when his mother willed it there. You could know him to the bone and love him to the phantoms – you knew you would, forever – and still lose him to a pull that predated you by a womb and answered to a name that wasn’t yours. 

“What’d you do with her?” you murmured, voice falling onto the pillow under you, because God it was easier to focus on the girl than the shark of a mother behind her.

“I paid her,” Andrew said quickly, the words tumbling out in his haste to explain, “to tell Smurf it was done and go.” His breath came quickly through his nose. “Didn’t do anythin’ with her, I swear. It stopped – I stopped it. Just gave her cash and got her out the door.” 

There was a horror in the competence in the transaction, how he’d had a procedure to it. Was this the rest of your life? To protect your relationship from Smurf’s claws, was this what it would take – forever? A lifetime of Andrew keeping a folded stack of bills ready like a fire extinguisher, of the two of you building your whole love in the negative space around a woman who’d never been told once it existed? You saw the stretch out ahead, year after year of him coming to your door, of you lying awake wondering if tonight had been just like this, and something in you buckled at the length of it. 

“How –” you said, voice going small, embarrassment clawing at your throat. “How many times has this happened?” 

“A few,” he mumbled. 

Your brows rose, and you felt fresh heat crawl behind your eyes again.

“Since we’ve been – ?” His eyes went somewhere else, out past your shoulder. You tried again at the silence, pulling your brows back down so as to not let any more tears fall. “Andrew?”

“Doesn’t matter.” He shook his head, and his eyes found yours again. His tongue pressed into his cheek, molding a small hill there, and left. “They come. I handle it, they go. That’s all,” he said, leaning down just slightly as if to press the words onto you. “It’s handled.” 

There was a quiet sort of bell that rang in your mind the same second he hesitantly let his forehead drop back to yours, reaching, reaching, reaching for the same old ease. You pushed your arms up from your sides, palms finding his chest, stopping. You were shaking your head, eyes fluttering as you tried to slide the picture of Andrew – your Andrew – back into your mind, to feel it whole like it always did. 

His eyes went down to your palms as if to make sure he wasn’t imagining the weight. “Stop,” he murmured. “Please.” 

Your eyes forced themselves shut. “And it’s gonna keep happening.”

“I don’t care about any of them – ”

“I care,” you said. “I care that your plan was always just – hope I don’t find out. Say the plan, Andrew. There’s no part where it stops.” 

“You weren’t,” he said, voice going rougher. “You weren’t supposed to find it. Got nothing to do with you.” 

You knew one day Smurf was going to die. One fateful fucking day, she would. Andrew may not believe so, but even Smurf would rot into the ground some day, same as anything that lived. She wasn’t god, however she’d built herself into one in the person of him. She was just a woman who one day would face the same fate anyone else does, and the string she kept through Andrew’s ribs would go slack for the first time in his whole life. 

Fuck, you felt selfish. Was it so wrong to hope for an Andrew that only existed on the far side of his mother’s grave? To lie in your own bed wondering – her age, her habits – while her son shook beside you? You were wishing a woman dead so you could love her son openly. 

You always came up empty. Smurf could die tonight, next year, or tomorrow, and it wouldn’t matter. She took from Andrew without lifting anything heavier than an intention. A dead woman kept that kind of reach. The string through his ribs didn’t need her hands on the other end of it anymore, for it’d learned to pull all by itself. 

Andrew watched your face as you watched the stretch of your life you’d have if it kept going on just like this. “This is why. Anything to do with her’s only gonna hurt you.” 

You reeled back at that, pulling your body to sit up so quickly Andrew flinched away, making space. 

“This is why?” The sheet fell off you and the cold hit your shoulders, the cotton of your tank top doing nothing to help. “Andrew, I don’t like this.” 

“Stop,” he murmured, reaching a palm across the distance as he sat up, even though his jaw was clenched. “I know. I know you don’t, just –” 

“There have been girls who’ve been with you, god knows how many,” your voice cracked, and you had to crane your neck to look at the ceiling at the thought. “Why haven’t you just told her to stop sending them?” 

His jaw shifted, a flinch. His lips pushed out slightly, shoulders coming up into a small shrug like you’d just asked him to walk through a wall. “It’s nothing. I don’t do anything with them. It’s – two minutes of my life, Smurf thinks she won. It costs nothing – ”

“It costs me,” you interrupted, the words coming out of you louder than anything you’d said all night. You both froze at the sound of your voice, and his head snapped back to your face. Your fingers went up to find the chain around your neck, clasping. “You might be fine with it, but I’m not – not when you’ve been hiding this from me the entire time. I can’t spend my entire life wondering if there’s another girl – another chance for you to –”

“It wouldn’t – ” he started, shaking his head. “I’d handle it.”

“I’m tired, Andrew,” you said, head dropping slightly. “I don’t know how to deal with this.”

His breathing had gone shallow. His eyes were on your fist, and his lips were pursed like he was fighting himself out of saying something – the softness trying to surface as the fear shoved it back down – and after a moment, he said, “You knew what you were getting into.” 

“I knew about the jobs,” you said quietly. You breathed in one small pull through your nose and your fingers came off the chain.

“I knew about the guns under your pillow and how you do things you can’t tell me at three in the morning. I knew that and I have never once – ” you had to click your tongue to process the sudden disbelief at yourself, “ – asked you anything you didn’t want to answer.” 

He opened his mouth, as if to argue. You raised your palm, and his teeth clicked together audibly, obedient to your hand in a manner that on any other night would’ve undone you. 

“I didn’t know about the girls. How many times you must’ve come here after – ” Your voice shook, and you had to push yourself off the bed, away. Suddenly, you felt too aware of the enormity of Andrew. You’d welcomed it, loved it, made a home out of the sheer size of him. Now the bed felt too close to standing next to a parked truck. “I don’t know what else I don’t know.” 

Your arms crossed over your chest, hands gripping your elbows. You looked at the window, the parking lot lights coming through the blinds in stripes, and started flipping backward through the years like a rolodex to see if there were any hints. 

“There’s nothing else,” he said, voice going quieter. He’d moved himself to the edge of the bed, feet on the floor, palms fisting the fabric of his pants as he watched you. “Nothing else. I’ll tell you if it happens again.” 

“If it happens again,” you said, the words coming out through a resigned chuckle. “It’s going to happen again.” 

“What do you want me to say?” Your heart kicked as he said the words, his eyes wide and wet and lost. “I can’t – I don’t know what you want me to do. I don’t know what I can do that isn’t already – ” His hand vaguely motioned between the two of you. “I’m already doing everything. This is everything.”

“I want you to tell me when this ends.” Your own voice cracked throughout the entire sentence, your shoulders coming up to your ears as you folded yourself further away from him, like your asking the question was enough to fill the space. “I’d wait, Andrew. I’d wait forever if I knew there was – I just, if I’m staying, I need to know it’s going somewhere.”

He craned his head up to look at you then, brows furrowed and lips parted, and you watched how his breathing kicked up.

“Don’t,” he murmured, the words coming out more to himself than you. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“That,” he murmured, pulling himself off the bed. His hands hesitantly reached up to your face, both palms cupping unsteadily, as he dropped his forehead to yours. “Don’t gotta put an ‘if’ in it. Don’t. Please.”

You pressed your lips together, eyes clenching shut as you tried to pull away from his hold. His grip tightened just slightly, pressing his forehead impossibly closer into yours.

“Please. Hey. Please.” He tapped your cheek once desperately, forcing you to open your eyes. “Why’re you thinkin’ of leaving? Stop that – nothing happened. Nothing’s gonna happen.”

You let out a pained sound at the words, feeling yourself weaken in his desperation. Nothing happened, nothing was going to happen. No, it was going to be exactly how it was. The good, and the hiding it came wrapped in.

“S’good here,” he murmured. “Don’t take the whole thing for one night.”

Was this enough?

The selfishness, the greed crawled through your body like the largest organ. Was this enough for a life, to have Andrew when you could, while he lived another?

You’d continue trusting that the women got paid at the door. You’d continue learning about them at doorways, by accident. You’d get older inside a few hours’ worth of a man. There were women who did it – you knew there were, whole quiet populations of them, mistresses to marriages, to churches, to armies – who took the visiting hours and meant it when it was love. Maybe they were happy. Maybe the trick was to stop measuring and stop waiting on something. 

“We’re good,” he said again, voice going softer as his chin dipped slightly, and you realized he was repeating it because you weren’t. 

He took in a sharp breath of air at your silence, fingers moving from your face down to your arms.

Your eyes focused on his collar instead, at the top button of his shirt. It never sat right. You thought you’d fixed it about a hundred times without thinking, your fingers at his throat while he stood statue-still and let you, letting you be the only person allowed to be the one to fuss over him. Your hands stayed at your side. 

“I hate this,” he said after a moment. His thumbs moved at your elbows in small circles. “Hate that I made you cry.”

His arms went up again, over your shoulders, up the sides of your neck, until he was tilting your face in both hands up to him, thumbs sweeping under your eyes to clear it. His fingers were moving in haste now, the desperation overriding the second-guessing.

“Will you look at me?” he murmured, and you did.

His mouth came down to your cheekbone, then higher to the corner of your eye, kissing along the damage slowly. His hand loosely slid back into your hair, tilting your head to the other side, doing it again. His breathing was ragged against your skin as his body crowded you, chest brushing yours with every breath.

“Will you let me?” His mouth moved to your temple and pressed there, voice breaking slightly. “Will you let me make you feel better?” His nose dragged along your hairline and his lips landed just under your ear. “Know how. Please let me.”

You knew he would, he always did with every good intention. He’d make you feel better tonight like he’d made you feel better a hundred nights, and tomorrow you’d remember how much Andrew you had, and how much he kept. The next party would still come, and there would always be another better to make you feel because that was one thing he could manufacture and changing anything was not. 

You cleared your throat, and hated how his entire body perked up at the small sound. 

“I’m gonna sleep,” you mumbled, slowly prying your body away from his hold. 

You moved your body on autopilot and got onto the bed again, facing the window. The mattress dipped, and he placed himself at your back. 

His mouth pressed against your shoulder, then an inch higher at the curve of your neck. His breath shuddered against you. “Been so good to me.”

You sucked in a shallow breath, turning your face slightly to meet his eyes, “Andrew – ” 

His hand slid along your jaw and his mouth came down onto yours, swallowing his own name from your lips. He kissed you so slowly, hope running the length of it, as his fingers stroked whatever inch of skin it could find in its haste. 

You matched it, trying to move when he did, body feeling completely weightless. Somewhere in it, as his fingers reached up to your hair, your breath broke, one small wet hitch against his mouth, and the tear went hot, down onto his palm. 

Andrew halted against your mouth, then pulled away to angle his head to rest on yours. He let out a short breath through his nostril, and pressed one last peck against your lips.

“Don’t cry while kissin’ me,” he said, voice so broken. “Please.”

His thumb moved through the dampness collected on your cheek again, then pressed slightly into the track. His eyes went down to your mouth, and his throat moved as he swallowed hard. 

“It feels bad now?” he murmured, eyes trained to your cheeks.

“No,” you said quickly, hands finding his wrist. “No, Andrew.”

His thumb stayed there, and his eyes stayed down. His lips moved slightly as you watched his brows furrow in understanding, watched him not believe you.

“M’sorry,” he said quietly, jaw clenching. “Been hurting you all night. You’ve been crying all night–”

“No.” Your hand came up to his face, palm to his cheek, and he flinched into it. “No. It’s not bad – never been bad. You could never feel bad to me.”

“Look at you,” he said, voice coming out in a whisper. “Why’re you letting me be – ”

“Because I love you,” you said, leaning up slightly to meet his eyes properly. “I love you, and that doesn’t change just because – ”

You felt like you were both understanding it at once. His tongue came out to press against his own lip. He scrunched up his whole face – eyes screwing shut – before silently turning his face down and away, into the pillow, hiding even now. 

You took in a shaky breath, and your hand came up to land at the back of his head, palm curving to his skull. He rolled into you, knee knocking into yours. His arm hauled you in too hard and then flinched, correcting himself. His face pressed into your chest, into the cotton over your sternum, over the small shape of the chain, and the entire weight of his skull rested against your heart. You felt the warmth soaking to your skin as he let out a sob, pooling around the metal. His fists gripped your shirt at the ribs, both sides, holding on, and his shoulders moved in that arrhythmic way. 

“Please don’t leave,” he said, muffled against you. 

Your throat closed as you let out a close-mouthed sob, hands moving in his hair. “Stay tonight.”

Ser Gwayne was patient, just as he had promised, as he had vowed to be long before your wedding, ever since you first met him, many years ago.

And irritatingly determined and persistent. He was a full-fledged knight, quite possibly the most graceful and refined knight you had ever met in your entire life, and simultaneously, was the most frustrating and exhaustingly annoying man you'd have ever found.

The realization that Gwayne was different—good different—did not sit well with you at first, at all. You had spent years preparing for the worst, ever since you were a little girl, hardening your heart to face a kind of evil beyond comprehension, a wicked, darkness-filled, and power-hungry man as your husband, only to be met with one who treated your boundaries like sacred ground.

His outrageously determined crusade to win your trust only intensified with the passing moons after the festivities of your wedding ceremony had ended. It was a campaign fought not with swords, but with quiet, incredibly detailed gestures of devotion and above all, respect.

It all appeared to be an endeavour aimed at courtship, if not outright friendly intentions.

For every morning, you would wake to find a small silver tray on your vanity. On it lay a single, freshly plucked clover from the gardens—still damp with dew—and a small cup of hot, spiced tea brewed exactly how you liked it, with a dash of dried orange peel and heavy honey. He never stayed to hand it to you, knowing you valued your morning solitude. He simply left it as a silent promise, a gesture of kindness and thoughtfulness, one that he made in the knowledge that he was not truly expecting anything in return from you.

Breakfast with the royal family was, much like every gathering within the Red Keep, a careful performance.

Queen Rhaenyra sat at the head of the table, her silver hair braided with pearls, speaking quietly with Lord Corlys over matters of the Narrow Sea. Prince Daemon lounged in his chair to her right, lazily carving an apple with his dagger instead of using the silver knife laid before him. Baela and Rhaena exchanged amused whispers further down the table, while Jacaerys attempted—unsuccessfully—to keep Joffrey from feeding scraps of bread to Tyraxes' hatchling beneath the table.

Conversation slowed the moment the heavy doors opened.

Ser Gwayne Hightower entered alone.

Dressed in dark red and black rather than the bright Hightower colors of Oldtown—a concession made after the wedding—he crossed the hall with measured steps and every eye followed him.

He bowed first before the Queen. “Your Grace.”

Then to Prince Daemon. “My King.”

Daemon merely grunted, truly unconcerned by his presence.

Only then did Gwayne turn toward you, and the indigo blue of his eyes shimmered as bright as the heavens above the moment they found you, and your beautiful face, which seemed unbelievably more radiant that particular morning—like he always thought every morning.

You sat halfway down the table amongst your family, absently stirring honey into your spiced tea.

There was an empty chair beside yours and absolutely no one there would have questioned him for taking it, he was your husband, after all.

But, still, he stopped beside it, folding his hands neatly behind his back as he gazed down at you with soft eyes.

“My Princess,” Gwayne's voice was quiet enough that only the table could hear, “...may I sit beside you?”

Baela's brows lifted, Rhaena blinked, Jacaerys looked from Gwayne to you, visibly confused, as Luke was covering his mouth to avoid bursting into laughter. Even Queen Rhaenyra paused mid-sentence.

You slowly looked up from your teacup, your silvery brow wrinkling on your forehead. “Y–you are asking me?”

“I am.” He nodded once, giving you a quick, dimpled smile, his lips trembling slightly out of sheer nervousness.

The sight of your magnificent lavender eyes narrowing at him brought a sudden sweat to Gwayne’s palms and a thrilling shiver down his spine.

“You do realize you are my husband, Gwayne.” You tilted your head, visually disturbed by the entirety of the situation.

“I do.”

“And husbands generally do not request permission to sit beside their wives.”

“I know,” another faint, nervous smile touched his finely shaped lips. “I simply thought...” he continued, “...that perhaps you might prefer to enjoy breakfast with your family alone.”

Daemon let out a low snort at his words and so did Luke.

The Rogue Prince leaned back in his chair, watching the exchange with open amusement before taking a leisurely bite of his apple.

“I have seen beaten hounds with more confidence,” the prince drawled.

But Gwayne didn't even bother listening to him, since he was too absorbed in looking at you, taking in the beauty of your gorgeous face, and delighting in the pleasure of having your beautiful eyes lock onto his for such a long moment.

“If you would rather I sit elsewhere,” Gwayne continued softly, “I shall.”

Daemon barked out a laugh this time, “there it is.”

Rhaenyra shot her husband a warning glance, silencing him instantly.

The corner of your mouth threatened to twitch and you concealed it behind a gentle sigh.

“You may sit, Ser Gwayne.”

The relief that softened his features was almost imperceptible, but you, obviously, were able to catch a sight of it. “Thank you, my darling.”

Only then did he pull out the chair and he waited until you had resumed your breakfast before seating himself, careful not to invade your space.

The faint flush already lingering upon his rosy, cute cheeks deepened into a intense red the moment you gifted him a gentle, intimate smile, reserved only for him to experience.

And he understood that, perhaps, you were starting to like him.

One warm afternoon, you find him in the library.

He is sitting at the massive oak table, surrounded by piles of heavy, leather-bound books. His forehead is furrowed in deep concentration, and he is clumsily trying to translate a passage of High Valyrian, his pronunciation so atrocious that even from the doorway, you could hear him butchering the ancient vowels.

“It is ñuha, Gwayne, not nu-ha,” you correct him, leaning against the doorframe. “You sound like a dying frog, Ser.”

Gwayne is startled, cousing him to drop his quill, which lefts a tiny blot of ink on his nose. He looks up, a sheepish but entirely delighted grin breaking across his handsome face. 

Your husband is breathtakingly beautiful, not only that day, but every bloody day; his flaming red hair seems to burn under the afterglow of the dying sun, and his face, oh his face, flushed with embarrassment and shy delight, beams under your heavy gaze.

You can easily see how truly happy he is to have earned a glimpse of your notice, one that isn’t merely a display of good manners or basic politeness, but real attention and genuine interest in him.

“I must apologize, my princess,” still, your husband hurries to excuse himself, flashing you a sheepish smile. “I have been endeavoring to master a few words of the tongue of your ancestors... Though it was never my intent that you should overhear my clumsy attempts, darling.”

You lean your head back against the heavy wooden frame of the door, crossing your arms over your chest as you look over at him. You squint your eyes, granting yourself a quick moment to meticulously examine his features.

The ink smudge on his nose does absolutely nothing to diminish how strikingly handsome he is. If anything, it softens his countenance, rendering him younger—a dream made flesh—as he looks up at you as though you alone have hung the stars in the celestial vault.

“Clearly,” you mock, a thread of gentle amusement and teasing irony weaving into your voice as you finally detach yourself from the timber frame.

With measured, quiet steps, you cross the quiet chamber floor and come to a standstill beside his high-backed chair, looking down upon the erratic, ink-stained scratching that mars his parchment and all over his face.

Gwayne is utterly perplexed, rendered near speechless, unable to bring himself to move at all, unwilling to risk upsetting you too much and having you step away, for your closeness and warmth and the way you are looking down at him have him holding his breath and entirely spellbound.

“...Princess?”

Before your lips can shape a reply, your hand moves toward him. Your fingers advance with a sudden, delicate hesitation. You gently press the pad of your thumb against his nose, wiping away the dark stain of ink he has left behind.

At your touch, Gwayne freezes instantly. Not only that, the breath abandons his lungs entirely; his azure eyes widen as the soft skin of your fingers makes contact with his warming cheek.

He does not draw back, nor does he make any motion to stay your hand. He simply sits there, utterly captive to your gentle touch, his visage flushing a deeper, more magnificent shade of pink beneath the warmth of your thumb.

“You have ruined your cute little nose, husband,” you note softly, your voice scarce above a whisper, striving—and failing—to maintain a veneer of cold indifference.

“A worthy sacrifice,” Gwayne breathes, his gaze dropping to your lips for a fleeting, breathless second before rising once more to meet your eyes, alight with a quiet, shimmering hope.

Slowly, you pull your hand back, though you don't step away. You point to a specific line on his parchment, where he has scribbled a phrase over and over again until the ink is nearly illegible.

“You wrote this wrong,” you say, your tone softening further as you lean over the table, your shoulder brushing lightly against his doublet. “Here. ‘Kirimvose, ñuha dōra.’  You translated it as ‘Thank you, my peace.’ But dōra is a very clunky word for it. If you want to say it correctly...”

You take up his discarded quill, dip the nib into the dark inkwell, and trace a clean, elegant script of High Valyrian beneath his unpracticed scrawls.

“...you must say, ‘Kirimvose, ñuha mēre.’ Thank you, my only.”

Gwayne stares at the graceful calligraphy, then lifts his eyes to yours, his green gaze shimmering in the dying, amber light of the afternoon.

He repeats the foreign words on his tongue, his pronunciation still marred by a slight Andal accent, yet spoken with such profound, deliberate weight that the phrase hangs in the air like a solemn vow.

“Kirimvose, ñuha mēre,” he echoes after you, striving with earnest devotion to no longer appear a shameful sight in your estimation.

“Mhm...” you hum in quiet approval, nodding faintly as your eyes trail from the manuscript back to his face. “You are a fast learner, Gwayne.”

For a long, suspended moment, neither of you breaks the silence. There is only the scent of aged parchment, the fading golden glory of the sunset, and the steady, quiet rhythm of Gwayne’s breathing beside you.

Slowly, you slide your hand across the polished oak table, until your fingers brush against his own.

Gwayne’s breath catches in his throat. He does not immediately clasp your hand; instead, he waits, granting you ample grace to pull away should you so choose. But when you remain right there beside him, his fingers slowly, reverently fold over yours. His palm is warm and somewhat calloused, yet his grip is incredibly tender, as though he were cradling something infinitely precious and fragile.

He is always like that. Gentle, patient. Always patient.

It is utterly infuriating.

You find the very existence of Gwayne Hightower entirely vexing, for you have grown accustomed to the tales of husbands who behave like conquerors, thieves and exploiters who claim everything and yield nothing in return, destroying the sacred meaning of marriage and devotion and love. Men who demand blind obedience, heirs, and subservience.

Instead, yours asked for permission before sitting beside you at the morning meal.

Gwayne is different. Good different. And that realization unsettles your soul more than any open threat ever could.

The shift between you is subtle, yet undeniable, a quiet, hairline fracture in the ice. Over the passing days, you find yourself less inclined to retreat into the guarded shadows of your mind during the evening feast.

No longer do you reach for the comfort of your own mind the very instant he crosses the threshold, nor flee far from his company, flying away on your dragon. Instead, you watch, you see him. You see the way he carries himself amongst the household guards, the way he never forces his presence upon your solitude, and how he genuinely, stubbornly persists in his quiet courtship.

You find yourself struggling to ignore the waves of warmth spreading through your chest every time you're with him, increasing your heartbeat, accompanied by that giddy feeling in the pit of your belly.

And as the days rolled by, you gradually got comfortable with Gwayne's persistent hovering around you.

One particularly cloudy morning, he made you giggle.

By the time Viridrax touches down upon the stone platform, kicking up a storm of dust and ash, your heart is still drumming against your ribs as you dismount gracefully.

You stroke the warm, rough hide of Viridrax's snout, breathing in the familiar scent of ozone and brimstone of her.

“Rikās, Viridrax,” you whisper softly in High Valyrian, resting your forehead against her snout. Stay. “Rest, my girl.”

The green dragon let out a long puff of hot smoke that singed the hem of your riding leathers, nuzzling your shoulder before settling down with a heavy, earth-shaking thud.

You unbuckle your flying gloves, your silver hair wild and wind-tangled, your cheeks flushed from the biting chill of the upper sky.

Turning to head toward the cavernous exit of the Dragonpit, you expect to see only the stoic, iron-clad Dragonkeepers—only to freeze in your tracks.

Standing right at the edge of the landing platform... is Gwayne.

He is wrapped in a heavy, dark red cloak lined with fur, standing entirely alone in the shadow of the colossal stone arches.

He looks painfully out of place amidst the ancient, dark stone of the dragonpit, yet he stands unnaturally still, his jaw set in a rigid line.

You see the exact moment he fights himself. He takes a heavy, deliberate breath, forcing his boots to stay firmly planted on the cold stone. He squares his shoulders, swallows hard against the knot of fear in his throat, and wills his trembling hands to relax at his sides.

He refuses to run. He refuses to look weak or faint-hearted in your eyes, forcing a composure he clearly does not feel as he faces down a nightmare made of scales and fire simply to be near you.

When his gaze finally locks onto yours, the terror in his eyes softens, replaced by that quiet, stubborn devotion that had been relentlessly chipping away at your own walls for moons.

“You are a fool, Gwayne,” you call out to him, your voice cutting through the heavy, tense silence of the vault as you slap your gloves against your leather-clad thigh. “Viridrax does not share my patience, and she certainly does not share my tolerance for Hightowers.”

A soft, breathless laugh escapes Gwayne's rosy lips, though it sounded more like a relieved gasp as he managed to hold his ground before you. “Then it is fortunate... that I came to see you, my Princess, and not your... magnificent companion.”

Very sowly and cautiously, as if navigating a minefield, he takes two measured steps forward, coming to a stop just a few paces away. He is still within strike of Viridrax’s tail, yet he focus every ounce of his attention entirely on you, forcing the looming threat of the beast right behind your back into the background of his mind.

“You've been standing in this damp pit,” you note, narrowing your eyes as you studied the pale flush on his handsome face and the faint tremor in his hands. “How long?”

“Long enough to watch you descend from the heavens,” Gwayne replies softly, a faint, sheepish smile finally managing to break through his nervous tension. “It was... a terrifyingly beautiful sight. Though I must admit, standing down here requires s–significantly more courage than I—I anticipated.”

Right as the last stuttered word leaves his lips, Viridrax shifts her immense weight behind you.

The massive emerald dragon stretches her neck, opening her cavernous jaws to release a sudden, bone-rattling growl—a deep, reverberating snarl that vibrates through the flagstones and shakes the very dust from the vaulted ceiling. A cloud of scalding, sulfurous steam vents straight from her nostrils, whipping the hem of Gwayne’s dark red cloak around his boots.

Gwayne’s forced composure shatters in an instant.

His indigo eyes widen to the size of silver stags. He squeaks—a high, pathetically un-knightly sound—and jumps a good foot into the air, instinctively throwing his arms up to shield his face. His boots scramble backward on the slick stone as if he were trying to outrun a falling star, his grand cloak wrapping clumsily around his legs until he nearly trips over his own spurs.

A sudden, helpless snort escapes you. You clap a gloved hand over your mouth, but it is useless. A burst of giggles bubble up from deep within your chest, echoing wildly off the high stone walls of the Dragonpit.

Gwayne blinks, his wide, terrified gaze slowly darting from the dragon over to you. Seeing you helpless with laughter, his pale cheeks instantly flood with a dark, burning crimson that spreads all the way to the tips of his ears.

You gently reach out and clasp his hand, your fingers curling firmly around his trembling, warm palm.

“I have seen seasoned knights faint in her presence,” you tease him. “But I do believe that high-pitched squeak was a first.”

Gwayne lets out a long, heavy sigh, his fingers instantly clasp yours, firm and desperate. “I believe she enjoys seeing me humiliate myself in front of you. Like everyone else in this place.”

“Oh, she doesn't care enough about you to want to humiliate you, my lord,” you say, your thumb lightly rubbing the back of his knuckles to soothe the lingering panic in his pulse. “But Viridrax would never harm you. Not while you belong to me.”

He is rendered speechless and with his jaw hanging open in utter amazement, he happily lets you pull him along by his hand.

You like Gwayne Hightower.

And the catalyst of it all arrives upon a sweltering evening, during a feast thrown to celebrate your mother, the Queen's name day. The Great Hall is suffocating, thick with the heavy stench of roasted meats, the clinking of silver chalices, and the low, rumbling laughter of lords who wear their loyalties like hidden daggers beneath their velvet doublets.

Gwayne remains by your side for the better part of the night, watching over your form with that quiet, devoted vigilance to which you have slowly grown accustomed.

He is, as ever, the very mirror of a chivalrous knight, attentive, pouring your sweet Arbor wine before his own cup is even touched. Yet, the fragile illusion of peace shatters the moment the musicians strike up a slower, more solemn air.

“My princess,” a drawling, dangerously familiar voice interrupts your thoughts.

Turning, your gaze falls upon Ser Lucon. He wears a smug, mocking smirk and offers a grand, sweeping bow that does nothing to conceal the bold, unseemly lust lingering within his dark eyes.

Lucon is a handsome, swaggering lordling from the Crownlands, possessing dark curls and an arrogance that has long since outstayed its welcome. He was numbered among the many suitors who actively courted your favor before your political match to Gwayne Hightower was sealed by the High Septon.

“It would be an absolute tragedy for the fairest maid in the keep to sit out such a song,” he says, extending a gloved hand toward you. “Grant me this dance, Your Grace. For the sake of old days.”

With an imperceptible sigh, you place your hand in Lucon’s grip.

“A single dance, Ser,” you consent, your voice flat and strictly formal.

Before stepping onto the rushes of the floor, you catch Gwayne’s eye. His jaw is clenched so tightly it resembles carved stone, his fingers brush restlessly against the pommel of his sword.

Lucon leads you into the center of the hall. As the measure begins, he presses closer than etiquette or decency should ever permit, his hand gripping your waist with an unnecessary, firm pressure that draws you flush against his massive frame.

“The livery of the greens suits you, my princess,” Lucon whispers near your ear, his warm breath thoroughly vexing your senses. “Though every soul in the Red Keep knows that squire of a husband possesses not the slightest inkling of what to do with a dragon’s fire.”

“Watch your tongue, Ser Lucon,” you hiss, keeping your visage a mask of polite indifference as the steps force you both to spin. “Gwayne is my lord husband, and I assure you he is twice the knight you could ever hope to be.”

Lucon lets out a soft, derisive laugh that makes your blood boil in your veins.

“Is he? For from where I stand, I can feel how cold your skin remains. Were you mine...”

Before the lordling can finish his blasphemy, a heavy, iron-firm hand clad in boiled leather grips his shoulder, bringing your turn to an abrupt and dead halt.

Gwayne has stepped directly onto the dance floor. His blue eyes, usually so soft and pleading when they seek yours, are now dark as a stormy night, fixed upon Lucon with a promise of absolute violence.

“Your dance is finished, ser,” Gwayne says. His voice is a low, raspy whisper, yet it carries a lethal edge that causes the nearby lords and ladies to step back hastily, sensing the sudden peril.

Lucon, striving to maintain his arrogant facade, does not relinquish his grip upon your waist right away.

“Ser Gwayne, let us not ruin protocol. The Princess and I were—”

“I said, unhand my wife,” Gwayne interrupts, stepping forward so sharply that Lucon is forced backward by sheer physical instinct. Gwayne’s hand slides down from the knight's shoulder, clamping around Lucon's wrist with a crushing, bone-grating grip to force his release. “Now. Before I forget where we stand and decide to teach you proper court manners in the middle of this hall.”

The tension within the Great Hall becomes suffocating. The hands of your guards drift toward their swords, and your kin move a step closer. The air is thick, ready to spark into a bloodbath over a sudden flash of jealousy.

Knowing that a single wrong move could incite slaughter this night, you step in, subtly placing your body between both men. You press a firm hand against Gwayne’s chest and beneath the fine fabric of his doublet, you can feel his heart hammering wildly, violently, like a trapped beast.

“That is enough,” you announce, your voice ringing with an authority that commands the quieted room. You fix Lucon with a look of pure disdain. “If you dare to ever raise a hand to me or my husband again, that will be the last time you'll have hands. Leave us now.”

Lucon swallows hard, looking from Gwayne’s iron grip upon his wrist to the fierce fire in your eyes. Offering a stiff, forced bow, he retreats into the crowd, quickly losing himself in the shadows of the pillars.

Gwayne does not break his stare from the corridor where Lucon vanished, his chest heaving with heavy, erratic breaths. He is trembling slightly—not from any tremor of fear, but from the massive, physical restraint it takes not to draw his steel and kill the lord.

You take his hand, sliding your fingers into his and the touch seems to pull him back from the brink of madness; his sky blue eyes find yours, wide and filled with a raw, vulnerable mix of wrath and desperation.

“Are you well, my love?” still, he needs to ensure your well-being, his other hand rising close to your face, grazing your cheekbone just a tickle. "Forgive me. I... I lost my composure. If I have embarrassed you—"

“I am well,” you assure him. “Let us return to our chambers, p–please, Gwayne.”

Your wish is his command.

The heavy oak doors of your chambers have scarce clicked shut behind you before the silence within the room becomes unbearable.

Gwayne immediately begins unbuckling his ceremonial clothing and trappings, his movements uncharacteristically rough, frantic, and impatient. He hurls his heavy leather gauntlets onto the table with a resounding thud.

“You were jealous,” you accuse, cutting through the quiet, tense silence.

Gwayne freezes. He keeps his back turned to you for a long, agonizing moment, his shoulders rigid beneath his fine linen shirt.

When he slowly turns around, you can see how weak and vulnerable his composure truly is. His auburn hair is slightly disheveled, and his eyes lock onto yours with a desperate, burning intensity.

“I am a man, darling, not a statue of the Seven,” he says, his voice raw with emotion and despair. “I have spent months keeping my distance, respecting your sanctuaries, sleeping on the very edge of our bed because I wanted—I needed—you to feel safe in my presence. I have choked down my own desires every single day.”

You look up at him, your own breath catching in your throat. The dangerous, thrilling tension in the chamber is so thick it makes you hold your breath.

“Desires?” Your absurd remark is swallowed up by his deep voice, and with every step he takes closer to you, it feels as if your chest is collapsing.

“—watching him look upon you in that manner? Watching his hands defile your waist, whispering filth into your ear, smell your scent?” Gwayne’s breath catches, his jaw tight as iron. “Yes. I was jealous. I desired nothing more than to tear him apart on the rushes.”

“And what of now, Gwayne?” you challenge softly, stepping even closer, until your chest almost brushes his. “Are you still angry?”

“Not angry,” Gwayne denies, his gaze dropping instantly to your lips, his hands trembling slightly at his sides as he fights the desperate urge to seize you, to touch you, to hold you close to him and never let you go. “Tormented. Because you stand so close, and I am still striving to be the gentleman you deserve. B–but I... I was a fool. I allowed my temper to master me and—and I embarrassed you before the court and before your mother and your family—”

“You truly are a fool, Hightower.”

His face falls. For one terrible heartbeat, he believes you have confirmed his deepest terror—that he has frightened you, that every careful step forward over the past moons has just crumbled beneath his own beastly nature, his most profound instinct, his own feelings.

“I am terribly sorry, please forg—”

“You stopped.”

The words are quiet, but they silence him instantly.

You look upon him for a long moment before continuing, trying to properly piece together the thoughts you're trying to express, making sense out of the overwhelming turmoil of emotions that's raging in your chest.

“You could have struck him down. You could have just―thrown your gauntlet. Seven hells, most husbands in this wretched court would have drawn steel before the man even finished insulting their honor. Because that's all that matters to them―their own honor, their own property, their own m–masculine pride.” Your eyes search the depths of his. “Instead... you stopped.”

Gwayne swallows, his throat dry. “B–barely.”

“But you did. I expected to spend my days bound to a stranger who would demand everything from me, to whom I would be nothing more than a prize with the right family name, something of his own property, another boost to his own pride.”

Your fingers hesitate before lightly smoothing a wrinkle in the front of his linen shirt, your fingers trembling with emotion against his body, overwhelmed by that flood of mixed feelings rushing through your heart and body.

You can feel his heart pounding up against the palm of your hand, so powerful and fast that it makes your flesh crawl. “I never...I never imagined I would wed a man who offers apologies for being jealous when another touches his lady wife.”

His cheeks flush. “I fear I was not particularly knightly, then.”

“No,” a faint smile tugges at your lips, and at that, his tense shoulders slump slightly. “You were terribly possessive.”

“Yes.”

“And rather intimidating,” you add.

“...Unfortunately. I didn't mean to scare you.”

“And,” you continue, unable to suppress the amusement warming your voice, “I believe Ser Lucon may never dare speak to me or even look at me again.”

“Well,” Gwayne says softly, a faint, lopsided smirk finally tugging at the corner of his finely shaped lips as his earlier shame gives way to quiet amusement, “in my defense, darling... you did threaten to cut his hands off.”

You blink, a sudden, breathy laugh bubbling up from your chest before you can stop it. “I was protecting my husband and myself.”

“And you did so with terrifying grace,” he murmurs, stepping the final fraction of an inch closer.

When you remain right where you are, leaning into his touch, his breath hitches in his throat. His thumb gently brushes against the fabric at your hip, his beautiful eyes sparkling with deep devotion.

But to your astonishment, Gwayne looks utterly horrified now.

“Oh.”

You blink. “...Oh?”

“I may have squeezed his wrist with too much force.”

Despite yourself, a laugh escapes you. A genuine one, bright and warm, echoing softly through the high timber rafters of the chamber, a sudden, sweet sound that cuts through the lingering tension of the evening like a blade through silk.

And for a heartbeat, Gwayne simply forgets how to draw breath.

He stands utterly still, his chest freezing mid-rise as though a spell has been cast over his very bones. His gentle eyes, wide, fix upon your lips and the soft crinkling at the corners of your eyes, committing the sight to memory.

“Gods,” he whispers, the word slipping past his lips on a breathless prayer.

You look up at him, the residual warmth of the smile still lingering upon your face, softening the pretty lines of your features. “What?”

“I have been trying for months,” he confesses softly.

“Trying what, Ser?”

“To make you laugh,” Gwayne responds. The solemnity of his voice breaks as a sheepish, self-deprecating smile tugs at his lips. “Though I fear my efforts have been entirely lacking. I have only managed to embarrass myself at every turn.”

You pull a little mocking grimace, a playful tilt of your chin that you haven't granted to another soul in the world. “You do possess a remarkable talent for that.”

“I know,” he murmurs, his laugh a low, rich vibration.

Without announcing your intent, you close the final span of floor between you and reach for his hands.

Gwayne’s eyes snap back to yours, a sudden, sharp hitch in his breathing betraying his astonishment and his smile fades. Yet, he does not hesitate. He closes his hands around your own with that same impossible, agonizing gentleness he always reserves for you, a man accustomed to the weight of a broadsword holding your fingers as though you are fashioned from the most fragile, priceless Valyrian glass.

You look down at your joined hands, his sun-kissed, calloused skin grazing against yours.

“Your palms are cold,” he notices, his thumbs immediately beginning a slow, sweeping motion across the backs of your hands, seeking to share the immense heat of his own body.

“They usually are,” you reply, a slight shrug shifting the fine fabric of your gown.

A crease appears between his brows, a look of genuine, heavy concern clouding his handsome face as he looks up. “You never spoke of this, my love.”

You shrug again, though a sudden, treacherous blush warms your cheeks beneath the intensity of his gaze and the way he pronounce the term of endearment. “I did not think it mattered.”

“It matters to me,” Gwayne counters instantly, his voice leaving no room for argument, heavy with a quiet, fierce conviction. “Every minor discomfort you bear matters to me, princess.”

He does not force the movement; his grip remains loose enough that you could pull away with the slightest tug. His beautiful eyes lock onto yours, silently, reverently begging for your permission.

You look into that azure gaze, finding no malice at all, but love and a patience that has finally broken through your defenses.

Finally, you give the smallest, faintest nod of your head.

Only then does he turn your hands over within his palms. Gwayne lowers his head, his auburn hair catching the gold of the firelight of your shared chambers, and presses the softest, most breathless kisses imaginable against your knuckles.

His lips are warm and parted slightly, the touch lasting barely a second—so brief, so achingly tender it could have been a passing whim of the autumn wind. Yet, the heat of it ripples up your arms and straight into your heart.

When Gwayne lowers your hands close against his heart, he looks almost startled by his own boldness, a deep blush creeping along his high cheekbones and down the column of his neck.

“I hope...” he says quietly, his voice catching in his throat as he searches your face for any sign of regret, “...that was not unwelcome.”

You look at him for what feels like an eternity and then, lifting one of your hands, you slowly reach up towards his face. Your fingertips hesitate for a fraction of a second before you gently brush a stray lock of fiery red hair away from his freckled forehead.

“No, my sweet husband,” you promise him, your hand lingering there, the palm of your hand cupping the warm, sharp line of his jaw as you look into the eyes of the man who has won your heart. “It was not. Nothing from you shall be unwelcome.”

you're not entirely sure why he never takes it farther than giving you your first orgasm. he'll use his fingers or his tongue or both, and then roll you over to go to sleep once you've come down from the high of pleasure he wrings out from you. and it's not like he's not turned on, you know that for a fact because he's always rock hard by the time he tells you to get some sleep. sadly enough, he's only let you use your mouth on him twice :(

unfortunately, you're always just a bit too floaty from your release to ever really fight him on it, but tonight you are determined to get to round two.

" 'm so close andy- please d-don't stop-!" is what you're whining against pope's lips as he lays next to you in bed. him only in his boxers and you only in your panties that are pulled to the side, as two of his thick fingers rub deep inside you while his thumb firmly circles your clit. your grip on his curls is probably painful, but he hasn't complained, he even groans a little when you yank them as you hike your leg higher up his waist to spread yourself even further for him.

the shlick shlick sounds of pope's fingers pumping into you paired with his warm, muscular frame that holds you close, has your body lock up tight in anticipation. one more swipe of his tongue against yours and the feeling explodes into white hot tremors that shake through you, from your spinning head to your flexing toes. "andrew andrew andrew", is all that sounds from you as you fall apart for him.

when you settle back into your body, pope gently removes his fingers that sparkle with your release then places a soft kiss to your nose. "so pretty. night sweetheart." his murmured words almost have you complying before you remember the task at hand. you follow when he rolls to lay on his back, crawling on him until you're straddling his tree trunk waist.

you rest your hands on his bare chest and whimper when you feel his hard on beneath you. " 'm not tired andy... lets keep going." pope blinks up at you for a second before his rugged face furrows in what looks like confusion. "but if we kept going… you'd have to— i don't want you to fake it for me."

um- what? your face mirrors his in perplexity now. "why- why would i have to fake it?" rolling your hips against the bulge in his boxers confirms that you definitely wouldn't have to fake any praise regarding how big he is.

pope stares at you as if this is some kind of test you're giving him, his large hands slide up and down your waist as his tone goes slightly cautious. "because you just finished and you need time before… you know. you can do it again." knowing your boyfriend and his inability to take anything lightly, you bite back your giggle at his words. "andy…" you explain slowly, carefully, "that's only true for men, not women."

he looks almost astonished, "what? r-really?" you nod in a gentle confirmation, no point in making him feel bad for not knowing something he clearly was never taught. you lean down to place tender kisses to his face. "you can make me feel good over and over again and i'll be able to finish. as many times as you want." pope's cheeks blush beneath your lips, grinding his hips up into yours enough to have both of you inhale sharply. "so… so i could use my mouth on you now?"

you hum in response, and even though the thought has your thighs squeeze at his waist, you're interested in something else. you both watch as you trace one of your fingers down his panting chest, then across each ridge of abs until you reach his waist band. "or…" you slowly slide your finger back an forth just beneath the fabric as you kiss his neck, "we could have sex."

his breath catches, swallowing once before saying, "you want to?" you're squirming on top of him in anticipation, words coming out all whiney but you don't even care. "so badly andy. need you inside me." instantly, pope is flipping you over until he's pressed on top of you, his lips moving against yours and his hand pulling off your panties is confirmation enough.

after he slides off his boxers, mutters one more, "you sure?", the two of you are moaning in between kisses as he pushes inside you, only starts to slide in and out of you after a minute of letting you adjust to his size.

already sensitive and vulnerable from your first orgasm, it's almost embarrassing how quickly you feel another one start to build when you feel pope's thick cock threaten to split you in half. it's a mess of tangled sweaty limbs, slow sensual strokes, and hushed "you f-feel s'good"'s, "you were made for me"'s that have you hiccuping and clawing at pope's muscular back.

he's intently watching your face as he makes love to you, tracking what angle makes you moan, what speed makes you twitch and what location of his kisses has you clench around him.

with his bottom lip tucked over his teeth in concentration, he hitches your leg higher up your waist to get even deeper inside you, causing his coarse hair at the base of his length to rut against your sensitive clit, and the body tingling pleasure rises uncontrollably.

your hands tighten at the nape of pope's neck and your legs shake around his waist as you whimper "gonna-gonna come andy! feels so- gonna- oh andy-!" he kisses you as you tighten and cry out his name, not changing his pace or the way he holds you at all in order to intensify your release. only when you regain some brain power do you realize he's still moving inside you.

his freckled face is squeezed impossibly tight, abs contracting with restraint, clearly trying not to come yet. "andy..?" you rub your thumb on his cheekbone and his eyes flutter open, hips faltering as he looks down at you. you peck at his lips. "you can come inside me. i wanna feel you."

pope quickly shakes his head as you both groan at a particularly deep thrust. "not yet. want-want you to gimme another one." your eyes widen at his raspy words when you realize what he means.

there's no time to argue as pope abruptly pulls out and flips you over, your yelp at the upwards yank of your hips quickly morphs into a moan as he easily thrusts back into your sopping cunt. "ffuuuucckk" is all he groans before starting to pound into you. a silent scream graces your lips as his cock stretches your soft walls relentlessly, keeping you lightheaded and tingly all over as you're filled by him completely.

his tight grip on your shoulder keeps you compliant for each powerful thrust, and you can barely hear your shaky moans over the slapping of his hips against your ass. pope's huffing and puffing behind you, desperately trying to fend off his own orgasm.

"c'mon. jus want one more sweetheart. p-please. give it ta'me." he grits out above your whines.

pope uses one strong hand at the base of your neck to press you into the mattress, and brings the other to roll your clit in between two chubby fingers. the angle has his his fat mushroomy tip rubbing against the softest part of you over and over and— "oh my fucking god andy im gonna-!"

your eyes roll back and you sob beneath him, not being able comprehend anything in your empty brain past the heat overtaking you and the stars twinkling behind your teary eyes. you're only vaguely aware and half conscious as the warmth of his come fills your fluttering pussy.

pope collapsing on top of you sobers you slightly, but not enough to do anything other than nod with a lopsided smile when he rolls you back over and asks "you okay?" as he gently licks up your tears.

your glazed over eyes flutter shut as he kisses you softly. your lips, then cheek… neck… breasts… stomach then— "think you can gimme another?" he rasps by the time he reaches your spread thighs and settles in between them with a hungry look on his flushed face.

maybe you shouldn't have told pope about the different refractory periods between men and women.

"he mows my yard, what happened to your face?" you asked, moving to reach a hand up to gently touch the bruise, pope yanking his head away at your touch. you furrowed your eyebrows, watching as he approached jared. "your lawn services are no longer needed. thanks man," he mumbled, moving past jared to make his way into the house with your daughter. you mumbled a quick thank you and apology to jared, slipping him the $10 bill you had stuffed in your pocket before rushing to follow him inside. "andrew what happened?" you asked again as you shut the door behind you, watching as he sat sunny down on the floor to play before turning to you. "i'm going to get some of my stuff out of the car. don't know why you wouldn't have me mow your yard," he spoke again, watching as your eyes immediately went to the mark on his face every time you looked at him. he hated that you noticed. he didn't want you to worry about him.

he was quiet as he moved things from his car and into your house, just a few duffle bags of things before finally bringing his surfboard in. "put it on the back porch, i don't want it falling and breaking something in here," you spoke softly as he looked at you as if to question a place for it. he just nodded, moving out back before he made his way back in. "i'm going to make lunch. come talk to me when you are ready," you spoke quietly to him, giving him a small smile as you watched him sit down with sunny on the ground. you knew she probably hit him. you doubted it was one of his brothers that did it. it broke your heart to see him with any sort of marks on him, a sight you saw all too often when you were together. you hadn't even heard him come in the kitchen as you continued to think, putting a small lunch together for the three of you.

"she hit me. that's all. it's no big deal," he finally spoke, his low voice causing you to jump a little bit. it was hard to find words to put together to say to him, your heart aching at the quiet tone of his voice. you stayed silent as you plated the lunches, setting them on the table. "we will talk about this after lunch okay?" you spoke out, voice cracking as you smiled up at him. all he did was nod, sitting down at the table as you went to grab your daughter. your lunch together was quiet, besides sunny's constant babbling and pope talking quietly back to her. you would catch yourself staring at him every so often, pope just staring back causing you to look away every time he caught you. "i'll lay her down for a nap then we will talk," you finally said, moving to clean sunny a little before carrying her up to your bedroom. the sound of him cleaning up downstairs was all you could hear as you sang softly to your daughter, rubbing her back as she finally fell asleep.

"she's asleep. are you ready to talk about this?" you asked finally as you made your way down the steps to where he was now sat in the living room, laying on his back and staring at the ceiling. he just sighed, moving his legs a little so you could sit at the end of the couch. he noticed your hesitation, raising an eyebrow before throwing his legs across your lap once you got comfortable. "why did she hit you?" you spoke, breaking the silence because you knew he wouldn't be the first to talk. he usually was never the first to talk about how he was feeling. "because i told her i wasn't coming back," he shrugged, finally looking over at you. you frowned a little, your hand instinctively moving to rub his leg. "i know you, andrew. what did you say to make her do that?" you pushed more, pushed like you always did.

he closed his eyes for a moment, his hands moving to rub across his face before looking back at you. "will you play with my hair?" he asked, almost like he was scared. he never was one to be anxious around you. whether it was flirting, touching you, begging to get your pregnant again. but now it was different. he was scared to ask you to touch him. you chewed on your bottom lip as you looked at him, thinking if you were going to give in. and you did. you did a slow nod, pope moving quick to flip around so his head was now in your lap. you could see the tension melt from his shoulders as he buried himself in your lap, your fingers immediately moving to run through his hair. "she was talking bad about you. doesn't matter what she said. no one talks bad about you," he said quietly, the corner of your lip twitching to an almost smile.

it stayed like that for a minute, pope laying in your lap as you ran your hands through his curls. your head moved to lay on the back of the couch, eyes closing. you were so... calm. you always felt so safe around him when things went to shit. "i don't want her hitting you anymore. you run into her and she talks about me, walk away," you spoke softly, eyes still closed. he let a soft chuckle out, shaking his head. "not happening. told you no one talks bad about you," he mumbled, your eyes immediately opening to look down at him. you removed your hands from his hair quickly, reaching to squeeze his jaw and force him to look at you. "i mean it, andy. don't want our daughter seeing you with a fucked up face," you spat, him only staring straight into your eyes. "you're really sexy when you're all stern with me," he mumbled, a stupid cheesy smile spreading across his face.

you couldn't help but laugh, letting go of his face before nudging his head to get off of you with your thighs. "not even going to give me one little kiss? c'mon im hurt," he spoke, showing those puppy dog eyes at you. you laughed again as he moved to sit up, his face right in front of yours. "you haven't earned that yet. you take me out on a proper date again then maybe ill think about it," you mumbled, moving his face to the side so you could press a small kiss to the bruise on his cheek. the smile that spread across his face was the biggest one you had seen on him in so long.

“once sunny is up from her nap i’m going to take her to my sister’s. i have to work,” you spoke, finally pulling away to stop yourself from falling into him even more. you could see the slight annoyed look that appeared on his face, his eyebrows furrowing. “you don’t need to work. i have money. and i can watch my daughter,” he spoke immediately, watching as you got up and began to pick her toys up that were scattered around the living room. “i like work,”you lied straight through your teeth, “and i don’t need your money. it’s smurf money,” you mumbled as you shook your head, his hand grabbing your wrist to force you to turn around.

“do you not trust me to watch my daughter?” he asked, his tone shifting into a more irritated one. you sighed, pulling your arm from him. “you have never stayed alone with her for that long, andrew. i trust you, just get worried is all,” you spoke softly, arms crossing over your chest. his annoyed expression turned into an almost pleading one. all you could do was close your eyes tightly before dropping your head. it’s just one night, what could go wrong?

── ✦ pope who was sometimes very strange and didn’t know he was. he’d bring you rocks because you once said – while walking past an enormous house in oceanside – that the quartz gravel in somebody’s driveway was pretty. so naturally he picked up a random little rock from the gutter two streets over, wiped it on his shirt, and gave it to you.

he did it again and again and again because you found that you were more endeared than anything and had started keeping these rocks first in your pocket, then in a shoebox, and finally on your windowsill. you could’ve told anyone which came from where. so even if you didn’t particularly have a fondness for random rocks when you noticed the quartz gravel, you definitely grew one!

(pope who also later replaced said rocks with the real thing when he came into money he had no idea what to use for, only ever remembering how your older tastes had sometimes made you look through the window at the jewelers and your eyes had lingered too long on a little diamond necklace. he never saw the necklace, really, only noticed you wanting it. he knew how to take care of that)

pope who wasn’t really sure how a simple hangout worked, so when you’d asked him to come over later on saturday without specifying when, he sat on your porch step for two and a half hours. when your mother asked him if he wanted to come inside and eat something, he’d say no, because he was supposed to be hanging out with you, not your mother.

when you finally came, you just sat next to him on the step and stayed there, finding it all so natural.

── ✦ and when he’d begrudgingly agree to hang out with your other friends, it’d accidentally lead into him drawing them away from the both of you. he hadn’t even meant to do that (not at first, at least).

he’d watched your friend hand you some shitty snack and said something like “don’t give her those,” without any explanation, smacking the snack away from your hand gently (though the explanation was that you’d ate one of those and promptly threw up on the ferris wheel, and it’d put you off of them for life).

if someone asked if you wanted beer, he’d say “she’s driving.” you were?

if someone asked you if you were cold, he was already handing you his jacket, mentally beating himself up for not having noticed sooner.

he’d move his chair to face the door wherever he was sitting, because ever since he’d watched people break into their little trailer as a kid – smurf, always tangled up in some shit – he’d learned to stay alert. so people always thought he was rude when he randomly turned his chair away from the group while someone was speaking and they were forced to stare at his back.

── ✦ pope who during your surprise birthday party (that he was only invited to because everyone knew how mad you’d be if they didn’t invite your best friend since you were a kid) would just stand in the corner and watch everyone with a frown, and when it got too late he’d tell everyone that the party was meant to end at ten even though that was never decided. and everyone would leave because you’d just stand there beside pope being like “yup!”

and then you and pope would spend the next three hours bagging cans, wiping down corners, finding a nickel or two between the couch cushions because of how thorough the two of you were. that was the good part. he’d wait for that.

after, he’d say, “that was fun.” and you’d think he was talking about the party.

── ✦ pope who kept saying “i can take care of it,” whenever one of your friends mentioned someone bothering them. at first, they thought it was a turn of phrase – ugh, i’ll beat him up for you, but in pope’s language – until pope started asking where he worked, where he lived, and what his car looked like.

pope who had punched a guy for you, a boyfriend-of-a-friend, when he’d said something about you while you were in the bathroom. he’d asked the guy to go outside to smoke a cigarette, decked him, and come back with his hands in his pockets.

you were a little confused when your friends told you pope had gone out for a smoke, because pope doesn’t smoke, and because the six of them had squeaked it out at once.

he knew your friends knew, so when he came back, he’d just looked at all of them as he stood behind your chair as you and your friends sat in silence, tilting his head to the side to confirm whatever social contract he’d expected from them. then he’d simply shrugged and said, “he had to go home.”

── ✦ and when pope started noticing that you were being invited to hang out less with your other friends, consequently meaning he was being invited by you less with your other friends, he’d ask, “is it ‘cause of me?”

you’d immediately say “no!”

because even you hardly believed that it was because of him; pope was so good. he read the manuals for everything you got, peeled oranges for you – handed over in an unbroken coil, because a torn piece would've bothered him – fixed your bike chain, and made you the perfect sandwiches.

sure, he had a tendency to sometimes growl when a stranger got too close to you or a little puppy barked at you. sureee, he always had bruises on his knuckles without ever having a story for them (or rather, without giving one). and he sometimes glared when your girlfriends asked you to go on a double date. or appointed himself as the designated driver when they specifically asked you to have girls night.

on the occasion you actually did go, he’d sit outside in the car watching you through the window of some restaurant or bar.

he’d come in just once – after he saw a guy linger at your table for nineteen minutes and thought it was fucking girls night, waiting until the guy went to the bathroom – and when you gave him a questioning look he just pointed toward the bathroom, forcing an embarrassed shrug like he just wanted to take a leak.

maybe it was just a coincidence that you nor your friends saw the guy come out of the bathroom! pope stopped at your table on the way back, hands in his pockets, knuckles freshly pink, and said, “want anything?” and when you said no, he went back to his car.

“isn’t he so sweet?” you’d say to your friends, misty-eyed and dreamily, watching him sit in the parked car like he was a pretty sunset.

“the sweetest,” they’d say, three of them in unison like they’d been trained. you were completely unaware that they were in the midst of realizing you were a lost cause.

so obviously you could not, for the life of you, imagine that people wanted to not hang out with you because of pope. it was their loss, anyway, you thought.

pope was so relieved once he realized he wouldn’t have to spend time with other people, just so he could hang out with you.

── ✦ pope who took over their vacancy so quickly that you didn’t even consider it as a loss even for a day.

if you wanted to get drunk at a bar, he’d go with you and get a beer while you slammed three cocktails within an hour. he’d try to gossip with you when you asked him to “tell me something fun.”

“craig and renn had a fight.”

you’d light up because that was interesting. “good. he’s bad for her anyway.”

“yes,” he’d simply say.

and when you’d press for the details (what did they fight about? who started it? did anyone cry? on a scale of one-to-ten, how bad?), and he’d have none, he’d noticed how you’d slumped slightly, ever the nosy little thing he’d been hauling around for years, he’d frown. he genuinely had no more details to give you because he hadn’t cared enough to listen to craig’s tangent. but clearly you cared, so he’d say, “i’ll ask him.”

after he managed to get the hang of it – and found he liked it, talking shit, the whole nine yards of "but you didn't hear it from me – you’d both end up laughing.

and when you’d ask him for another story (because he had so many; the cody house was so weird), he’d say, “smurf woke up so late this morning,” thinking it held the same value as baz breaking up with his girlfriend at the time.

when you opened your mouth without saying a single word, stumped, he'd double down, "like ten," like you just didn't get it yet.

pope who somehow started filling every single shoe of the people in your life. pope, your girl best friend. pope, your mother (“did you eat?” “yes.”). pope, your dad, apparently, at some point (making it his mission to check your car).

pope, your dog (waits by the door and knows the sound of your car pulling in). pope, your bodyguard (constantly scaring away everyone, threat or not). pope, your financial advisor (“you don’t need to spend that kinda money on that.”) pope, your sugar daddy, immediately after (“fine. give it to me.” “what?” “i’m getting it.”)

pope, when you’d run him through the list, just looked at you confused and said, “someone’s gotta.”

once again, he was right. you’d gotten so lucky with pope, what were the odds of that? astronomical, you’d think, cheerfully. and then you’d wonder if he’d like one more shoe to fill.

Your lips quipped up and you nodded. You didn't know how you started talking about this- you'd only asked what she was doing and how she fell. Date with an older guy, she said, was walking back from his when I fell. It must have been more of a tumble, roll and fall from the state of her leg that had got her through the waiting room and triage.

The next thing you knew she was highlighting how good sex was with an older man.

“It's like they have the experience and the confidence and they care more about getting you off than they do themselves,” she said.

“How many dates have you been on with the guy?” you asked, only trying to keep conversation while you plucked out the gravel. Trying to distract yourself from thinking about sex and older.

“Oh, this was the first one,” said Lu, laid back on the bed with a dreamy look in her eyes. “We've been talking for a few months on this app for older guys to meet women who are younger and interested. We met tonight and I had the best sex ever.”

The pling of gravel on the metal tray echoed out.

“You got a boyfriend?” she asked you.

You were silent, acting as if you were focused on the gravel. “I don't.”

Lu smirked at your silence. “But you got somebody?”

To that you had nothing to say. Maybe you did have somebody- or at least someone came to mind. Grey hair, stubbled chin and dark eyes in the shape of a doctor.

“Oh you got somebody,” said Lu.

You managed two more pieces of gravel and glass before she opened her mouth to speak again, to probably ask you another question but at the same time the door opened, bringing with it a small snap of the bustling sounds of the Pitt at night and the faint air of woodland and grease.

“How we doing in here?”

Jack walked in like he was un-aware to how you'd thought about him and then he came like you'd conjured him up. His grey hair, short stubble at the chin that he quickly rubbed at and dark eyes evaluating.

You betrayed yourself in looking to Lu.

“Is this him?” she asked, eyes lighting up.

Jack looked between the two of you. “Talking about me again, doc?” Jack asked.

You were focused on the task at hand but you didn't need to look to find him at your side, diligently watching you work.

“All good things,” said Lu.

He huffed out a little smile, hands held behind his back. His eyes bore into your head. “I'm Doctor Jack Abbott, I see you're in good hands here. How're her bloods?”

“Bloods are all clear though blood pressure is a bit high, we wanna keep an eye on that,” you said.

Jack nodded. “Well I'm sorry you're night took an unfortunate turn, Miss Marigold.”

She shrugged, rumpling her black dress. It was sleek and fit her in ways you could never imagine the dress fitting you. “Meh, it was pretty much done anyway.”

You were too caught up in the gossip she had been giving you that you didn't think about Jack not being informed. “He kicked you out?”

“No,” she said. “I left. Didn't want that awkward after sex small talk.”

“That's called aftercare.”

It was such a thrown away comment in Jack's words. He said it like he was prescribing her morphine. But the words rushed to your body, jolted you awake and alert to his presence.

Aftercare to some may have been normal, you didn't know other peoples sexual habits- you only knew yours and aftercare wasn't part of it. Your... sexual partners were few and far between and also loved to use your bathroom and sleep it off. Besides that was months ago before you started night shifts. Now your sex life was nothing but dry dry dry with the only occasional fantasy of your attending keeping you going.

“How old are you, Doctor Abbott?” asked your patient.

You caught Jack's smirk.

“Don't you know you should never ask a gentleman his age?” he said.

“Forties? Fifties?”

“Well I'm glad you ruled out thirties.”

You laughed.

“Are you single?”

“You asking?”

“And what do you think about younger women?” Lu asked with seemingly no shame. You carried it all in the blaze of heat in your cheeks.

“I don't know if this is an appropriate conversation to be having,” you said, trying to deflect. Looking between them, you found Lu waiting with curious eyes, not at all uncomfortable and Jack... surprisingly much of the same.

“You mean how do I feel about dating younger women?” asked Jack, standing at the other side of her bed.

In your eyeline.

“There's this app, called 'Always go older' it's catered for men over forty meeting younger women with similar interests. Go on dates, have long term relationships, or just sex.”

You couldn't believe the conversation you had been having with her before Jack came in, making the small space of the exam room even smaller. Having it with him in the room was your idea of a nightmare.

Jack nodded slowly, considering. “An app for... sugar daddies?”

You looked up at him. “You know what sugar daddies are?”

He pursed his lips at you in disappointment. “I'm old, I'm not clueless.”

“If you're interested I can get you a great discount,” said Lu like this was a business meeting. “Both of you.”

Jack looked at you but you missed whatever his eyes were trying to convey when you realised this app cost.

“You have to pay?”

“To be a member yeah, there can be a lot of creeps out there and they do real good work to make sure they're not in the club. You interested?”

“Not if I have to pay,” you said, thinking first of your bank account and nothing else. You only realised once you'd said it what it sounded like.

That you were interested. That older men and dating for you were hand in hand.

You looked up hoping at least Jack wouldn't have noticed. His eyes were on you, an amused tilt to his lips. “Okay!” you stood up, pulling off your gloves. “All the gravel and glass is out but I'm gonna get another blood test in to check your alcohol levels. I'll call a nurse to dress you up and we'll keep you for observation on that blood pressure.”

She nodded. “Do you think I could do a pregnancy test too? Just, while I'm here.”

Jack approached your side, watching you again. His head was tilted up but his eyes were down on you. He was attending but as always he waited on your say. He never overstepped, never made assumptions, always let you lead with your gut.

You wondered if that was what younger women were looking for...

“Sure, I'll get you a pot for a urine sample and we can get those tests.”

“Were you practising safe sex?” asked Jack.

Lu stretched out on the bed, pulling at the seams of her dress at her cleavage. “It feels better without.”

Jack seemed un-bothered, if anything understanding as his head slowly bobbed in a nod.

You'd never had sex without a condom before. Never wanted to risk it.

Jack held the door open for you, letting you lead the way out.

It was noisier and busier yet it was easier to breath. At least for a second before Jack's body brushed yours as he walked next to you.

“Is she a cop? Feel like we were being interrogated in there.”

“That or she gets paid to promote the app.”

You slid into a chair desperately trying not to look at the clock. You had a bad habit of doing so and the night would drag on. You pulled up her chart and distracted yourself with repeating what you'd already said to avoid the inevitable conversation you were gonna be having with Jack.

His mouth opened and you beat him to it.

“I swear we just started talking about that, I was just asking her how she fell and she told me about the guy and started talking about sex and the date and the app, I... I did not invite that conversation.”

He nodded. “It's okay if you did.”

“I didn't.”

“Okay.”

There was silence between you. Your finger moves quickly over the keyboard and Abbott stayed stood there, watching.

“If you're interested-”

“- I'm not,” you said, quickly, without really knowing what he was asking for.

Jack held his hands up in surrender. “Older men aren't too bad.”

“Oh no, I'm-I'm sure they're great, I have nothing against age, you know, old's great! Like.... like wine! Or-or cheese! I just, I mean, my love life- sex life is kinda, urm-” you stumbled over your words. It was annoying how Jack just stood there, letting you, without stopping or helping. “I just don't really have the time for dating.”

You worked nights and in the day you were catching up on sleeping and eating. The furthest your date life got was phone calls with Jack when he was grocery shopping and wanted your opinion, or sometimes in the morning when you got breakfast together before heading back.

He always walked you home, even if it meant an extra half hour before he got home. He was a gentleman like that.

He was still calm as he held his hands behind his back and watched you. “Are you looking to date?”

You chuckled. “Ha, you know a guy who works as crazy shifts as me?”

Jack's eyes lowered to yours. “Maybe. Might be a bit older though.”

You realised what he meant just as an ETA was called in.

The ETA had turned into five and for the rest of the night you and Abbott were too busy with the rest of the team to brush by each other. Every move was a hard move of shoulders to not bump or ripping of the gowns off and the harsh change of gloves. There was no time to talk about anything through the night, let alone whatever the hell had happened at the start of shift.

Your small reprise came when a man dressed in the makings of a rushed man walked in as the clock was striking past five in the morning.

“Excuse me, I'm looking for Lu Mari-gold?”

His hair was silver and growing at the back of his neck. It was brushed back handsomely and though he clearly must have been in his fifties (at least) he had a head full of hair and stubble growing on his chin.

He was handsome and even more so when you saw the bouquet of flowers he held in hand.

“Are you- are you family?”

“No I'm uh- I'm her partner.”

So you escorted him to her room, letting him in and giving him a small update on her care. He set the flowers next to her and you lingered, diligently checking her chart.

“Why'd you leave, honey?” he asked, sitting on the edge of her bed and petting back her hair.

“Oh you know,” she said, casually. “Didn't want to do the whole awkward morning after thing.”

“There'd be nothing awkward about it. I was gonna make you breakfast, had plans to make love two you in the morning.”

Your cheeks flamed up as he said it so casually, like he was laying out a list for morning plans which.... he well was.

You decided to give them some privacy and save yourself form listening. You gently closed the door over and watched them through. He kissed her gently on the forehead, cradling her and Lu soaked it all in in adoring eyes and gentle touches.

It was a sort of tender touch you weren't used to even seeing, let alone feeling.

“Hey,” there was a ghost of a touch on the small of your back and Jack came to stand next to you. “That her boyfriend?”

“Yeah, though I don't know if they're their yet,” you admitted. “They only met tonight- well, last night. But she ran out.”

“And he came to her,” observed Jack. “They'll be just fine.”

“How'd you know?”

“The way he looks at her.”

When you looked at Jack he was already looking at you.

The thousand moments between the two of you played out. The gentle ghosts of a hand, the watchful moments but Jack was like that with a lot of people, attentive.

Your eyes fluttered as you looked away from him to the scene playing out again. “Are you some sort of relationship whisperer?”

He huffed a small amused laugh and followed your eyes to look ahead. “I just know things.”

It wasn't long before Lu and her partner were walking out, the flowers in hand as his arm was around her waist, supporting her.

They stopped off by the nurses counter where both you and Jack lingered working on separate cases.

“We just wanted to say thank you,” said Lu. “And here. There's a ninety percent success rate.”

She handed you a business card with the app name and promo code applied.

“Oh, er, thank you,” you said, un-sure on what to say other than a thanks.

Lu smiled kindly, leaning in to you as subtle as possible. Her eyes lingered somewhere over your shoulder. “Though I don't think you'll need it.”

You turned, catching sight of what she was watching.

Jack stood with Crus who was thrusting a tablet to him but he was looking at you.

“I'll- er- put it to good use. I'll see you in a couple days to check out those stitches.”

Slowly they left and you were stood frozen, staring down at the card. Ten dollars a month wasn't so bad if you didn't count the subscriptions you already had at the student loan and bills and such. You got three months half price, maybe three months to meet the love of your life or at least get some-

The card was plucked from you fingers.

Jack twirled it around. “You thinking about it?” he said, an edge to his voice.

“What? No- I don't know, she just- it was a parting gift?”

He nodded, reading the card. “Always go older,” he read.

“It's the app, younger women with, um, older men.”

“Interested?”

The way he looked at you felt more like an invitation than a general question. His eyes were hooded as he looked at you. It was the way he always looked at you but it felt weighted.

“It's just an app,” you excused.

Jack held the card out between the two of you, letting you chose.

It should've been your choice but it felt like there was a right and wrong answer.

Slowly, you plucked it from his fingers.

Two days later you found Jack Abbott on the app.

You were scrolling in the bathroom on your three minute pee break. You'd got the app that morning, caving in after spending a night tossing and turning and dreaming. You could say the dream was any old man, a faceless sort but even if that were true you felt the hard press of the chest, the tickle of the stubble. You imagined the freckles along the arms and the low rumble of his voice in your ear.

“That's it... that's it... take me in... all the way... god you feel beautiful,”

You woke wet between your legs and hot all over with little to no time to do anything about it.

You were desperate, you told yourself as you hastily built up a profile, picking what small pictures you had of yourself not in scrubs.

You hadn't had time to check it until the bathroom break and you don't make it three profiles before you were faced with Abbott.

The pictures of him were pictures you'd seen before, a selfie with his stupid smirk, the peek of army uniform there. There was another of him that seemed to a couple years ago and the third and final was a picture of him in scrubs.

It was a picture of the night shift but you could tell there were several cropped out, but you who stood next to him were still there.

You stared down at the picture of you two, his arm was thrown over your shoulders casually. He was grinning at the camera and you had a small smile to, your body leant into him. You hadn't even realised you did that.

Didn't Abbott know it wasn't a good sign to have a picture of another woman on the dating app? Unless it was your mother and you were a mamas boy.

There was knocking on the bathroom stool doors.

“Have you coded in there?” Crus called out.

You huffed and got off the toilet, pulling up your pants and pocketing your phone.

“If only.”

The night continued as usual, abdominal pains, charting, lacerations, charting, traumas and charting.

You'd hardly got a look at Jack when it was turning to six in the morning and day shifters started piling in.

You were passing the break room when the door swung open.

Jack popped out, catching you, his arms braced at the door. “Get in here, now.”

You were worried, reading through every patient you'd seen that day. You were sure you dealt with them all attentively, you'd never misdiagnosed someone before and today couldn't have been the day.

Jack closed the door behind him, checking nobody was on their way to find you before speaking. He was calm as he walked over to you, leaning his hand on the table and crowding you. “Why do you think I need to talk to you?”

You tried to think of something you'd done wrong. Anything. “Trauma came in, I er, didn't intubate quick enough?”

He shook his head and you tried to think again.

Before you could hazard a guess, he spoke. “I thought if you were interested, you'd have said something.”

There was a beat of silence.

“Interested?”

Jack's chest rose and fell in a deep breath. “In going older.”

“In going-” your mind short-circuited to his profile. If you'd seen him just a few hours ago, he could have seen you before then.

“I thought I had made my invitation clear,” he uttered.

“Invitation?” you repeated, feeling like a stuck record player.

“To go older,” Jack stepped closer and you could feel the warmth of his breath. “I was inviting you to try it.”

His breath somehow still smelt of mint freshness whereas you were sure yours was coffee stained from the three cups you'd already drunk.

“And not through the app,” he added.

You gulped. “You saw me on the app?”

“I saw you on the app.”

“But you're on the app,” you pointed out, eyes flickering up to his.

“I got it two days ago to make sure you didn't get it,” he said. His eyes weren't focused on yours. They were flickering between your eyes and your lips.

You wondered if you were still dreaming. If you were still in your bed, still dampening your panties and sheets with this crazy dream of him. You pinched yourself slowly but you felt the pain and didn't wake.

You squeezed your eyes shut and opened them and he was still there. Still calm. “You want to have sex with me?”

Jack's jaw clenched. “Honey, I want so much more than that.”

His finger was light as it brushed the back of your hand that rested on the table there.

“I want what you want, and maybe even more,” said Jack, his hand cradled your face. thumb dragging over your cheekbone. “You just got to tell me what you want and I'll make it happen.”

You'd thought that being with an older man meant being told what to do, that you wouldn't get a word in edge ways and yes, it was hot to think about.

You imagined Jack would be that, gently guiding you through your pleasure like he understood it better than you did. “You, I want you.”

Jack's lips were soft on yours, his head tilted at the perfect angle that meant he reached every edge of your lips at once. He didn't push against you, annoyingly so, he just let you feel the press of his lips like a fresh summers breeze.

It was your hands that fell on his chest, it was you that tilted your head back so he could reach deeper. It was your tongue tracing the bottom of his lips to get in deeper.

The door clattered and you jumped from Jack like he'd scorched you.

Jack only opened his eyes slowly, turning.

Robby leant on the door frame, arms crossed over his chest and a smirk on his lips as he sipped from his coffee cup. “Good morning, brother.”

Jack took you home to his and carefully man handled you through the door. Once it was closed his lips sort yours in a hunger even a twelve hour shift couldn't kill.

He breathed against you hard as he kissed you, stirring you through his house with his hands migrating from your cheeks, to your neck, to your waist, to your hips, to anyplace he could get a hold of you.

Your hands made his neatly combed hair a mess as you leant against him, letting yourself be moved around like a rag doll.

“Is this your house?” you asked against his lips. You couldn't look around to study his space, he was hardly letting you go to catch your breath let alone turn your head.

He nodded, kissing you. His tongue entered the warmth of your mouth and he moaned into you. “We didn't break and enter, baby.”

“But you-” you gasped as his hands travelled under your shirt, sending a chill. “You don't rent.”

This wasn't your best dirty talk.

Jack smiled against your lips. “No, I have a mortage.”

You kissed him again, holding him close as your hand slithered to the back of his neck.

He was still navigating you through his house till you felt your back hit a wall. “Does that turn you on?”

Slowly he pulled at the ties of your scrub pants and he slid his hand in enough to get a feel of the warmth of your cunt through your panties. You were wet, impossibly so just by kissing him.

“Yeah,” he said, breathless. “It turns you on.”

Jack's teeth scraped down your neck, his tongue soothing where he nipped.

You tilted your head back, a silent invite for more.

A thigh of his slotted between your legs and you fell onto it.

“You wanna- wanna tell me about tax returns next?” you teased.

“Maybe,” he said, lifting his head back to yours. “I kinda wanna taste you first.”

With strong hands on your hips he turned you and pushed you through the open door into a master of a bedroom. The bed was in the middle, a four postered type thing with clean and made sheets. There was nothing messy about it, nothing to signify the exhaustion of a night shift.

Jack held your body into his, hips rutting against yours.

You acknowledged somewhere in the back of your head that he'd told you years ago he moved into a bungalow. No stairs- easier on his leg.

“Do you know how many times I've touched myself thinking about you, on that bed?” he whispered into your skin, kissing the words there.

“You-You have?”

You felt his hair tickle you as he nodded. “Do you like knowing that?”

“Yes.” You reached over, cupping the back of his head till your tongues were meeting in a sloppy kiss.

Jack's hands slipped down your waist, down your underwear and spread at your cunt till he could easily slip in a finger.

You gasped against him, body curling in pleasure you'd never felt.

He moved with you as if he was chasing you, sucking on your bottom lip.

“You like that?” he uttered, dragging out your bottom lip.

You nodded as he slowly withdrew his finger to slip another in.

“Need to hear you like it, baby.”

“I like it, Jack, like your fingers inside of me.”

The fingers on his free hand moved to wrap around your neck, tilting your head back till it rested on his shoulder. With this advantage he could like on the skin, feel the heat of you and the jump of your pulse as he slowly worked his fingers in and out, curling at the spots that got you shaking.

Your held onto his arm, fingers digging into the skin.

“You're gonna like it,” he whispered. “You're gonna like it so much you'll never go back, never want anyone else.”

His fingers worked quicker as you felt him leave marks at your neck, in places you knew people would be able to see. “Still like my fingers inside of you?”

“Yes, god, yes!”

“How'd they make you feel, baby?”

“Good, so good.”

Jack withdrew his hands and turned you, guiding you up on the bed. He leant back on his knees, slowly undoing the ties of his scrub bants.

You'd never been happier that they were black, showing the outline of his cock, hard and begging for attention.

“Take your top off.” He gestured.

You did and his eyes grew darker though didn't know how that was possible. Your hands trembled with eager excitement to get your hands on him or for him to get his hands on you. You moved to un-clasp your bra but Jack shook his head.

“Keep it on. Take my shirt off.”

His chest was broad and slightly defined. Freckles dotted around and one or two scares you'd never seen before were littered there too.

It was instinct to move in to his neck to kiss him but his hand wrapped around your neck and pushed you down till you bounced off the mattress.

“Eyes on me, keep your eyes on me.”

You followed his order as he slowly dragged down your scrub pants and panties, getting a glimpse of how wet they were before they were chucked aside.

Hopefully that was the time Jack let you see all of him. No.

Like a prized possession Jack laid you out and spread your legs.

It was suddenly all too real. The haste of the drive over, his hand on your thigh, everything he said about being with an older guy and how Lu had told you how experienced they were. Would he expect something you couldn't deliver? Did you expect something?

“Jack,” you said only his name but you didn't know what else you were trying to lead on anyhow.

His eyes were earnest though clouded by desire as he pushed your legs up till you were sprawled out for him. “I'll stop any time you want.”

You watched him get closer to your heat. Felt yourself cry out for his attention.

“You're gonna like it, gonna love it,” he promised, eyes focused on you as he slid his middle finger inside of you. “Relax... relax.”

You tried to but as another one of his fingers slid into you, creating a slow thrusting pattern and his other hand kept playing with your cunt to get your lips spread you could do anything but relax.

Your breathing kicked up, your pulse was high.

As Jack leant down to slowly flick his tongue against your clit you threw your head back and moaned.

“Oh shit, Jack- Jack!”

His gaze flickered up to you, daring you to try to speak.

When you did it came out as another moan, his tongue flattening against your bud of nerves.

He played with you like that, moulding your legs around to where he wanted them. Flat on the bed, over his shoulders, up in the air. Anything to get him deeper inside of you.

All the while you alternated between watching him and falling back on the bed in aches of pleasure.

Jack watched where his fingers disappeared inside of you. “Swallowing me up, can't wait to get my cock inside of you.”

“Want it.... want it....” you mumbled, head back on the softness of his quilt.

“Yeah?” he whimpered.

Your hand fisted the quilt that smelt like him and you smothered your face in it as his fingers curled.

“Oh my god, honey... yeah....” Jack moaned before you felt the wet of his tongue on the heat of you.

You couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Whether it was his spit on your cunt or your want that was pooling into wetness on his sheets.

There was no warning, only your moans, as you came around his fingers and tongue. You had no idea you could come so quick, had no idea it could be pulled from your head to your toes.

Jack let your orgasm play out, pulling back to watch it leak. “Oh yeah... yeah...” his fingers swept up the mess lightly. “You're so sweet, oh yeah... moan like that...”

His tongue went in, licking up all the mess around you.

“Jack please, I can't- I can't!”

Your body was trembling beyond your control and he was still playing around with you and your sensitive bud. Your arms wrapped around yourself as if you could hold yourself together from breaking out in cries.

You hadn't noticed your eyes were screwed shut until you felt him move and heard the demand in his voice.

“Look at me.”

When you did you found Jack standing at the foot of his bed, scrub pants deserted and hand wrapped around his own cock.

You looked at him and then some.

“Touch me, touch me,” he said gently, prying your hands away from your chest with care.

With guidance he helped you sit up and helped you feel his cock.

You'd done this before but your mouth had never watered by the idea, your body never wept with the need to suck another guy off. Nothing about him disgusted you. Not the scars around his knee where he lost his leg, not the hair that dusted the base of his cock in tamed grey.

It moved you on.

You only jerked him off slow, only a little at first but his breath became laboured.

Jack's eyes closed as he grabbed a hold of your legs like they were his anchor.

You wanted to speed up.

“Go easy on me,” he said with a drunk grin. “It's been a while.”

You moaned and inched your body closer to the edge of the bed, your heat wanting to swallow him up.

Jack's eyes watched as you withered. He held onto your wrist that stayed wrapped around the base of his cock. “No, no, no, don't put it in yet.” Slowly he came to lean over you. “I want you to suck on it. You want it? Want to suck this old mans cock?”

In answer, the two of you moved quickly till he was lying flat on the bed and you were over him, slowly taking the tip in your mouth.

“Oh my god... oh yeah...” he moaned. Jack petted back your hair. “Take the tip.... take the tip... swirl your tongue...”

You took in his tip and swirled the tongue just as he said, watching him as you took him deeper with his careful help.

A string of 'oh yeah, don't stop' fell from him like a mantra as you took him deeper and faster, the need growing in you again.

“It's not- it's not too much?” he checked in, his head falling back.

You only took yourself off him to shake your head before sucking him into your mouth again, holding the base of him and working what you couldn't manage.

Jack groaned, hands flying to his head as his fists clenched. “You're so good... oh you're so good, baby.”

You took him deep and hollowed your cheeks.

Jack lurched. “Fuck! Fuck- shit, don't do that,” he moaned, guiding you off with pink cheeks. He chuckled, guiding you up to him. “I'll finish if you do that.”

He kissed you, never minding the both of your arousal on each other's lips. “They're are so many ways I want to be inside of you.”

You moaned against his lips. “I want you inside me, Jack.”

“I know, I know.” His brows pulled together as he seemed to have a battle in his own mind about just how to have you.

You didn't make it easier. In temptation you lied back on his bed and spread yourself out. All the while he was still caught up in thinking.

You almost started playing with yourself to relieve the build up when Jack grabbed your wrist and guided your fingers into his mouth.

He gently kissed the pads of your finger tips. “Turn around.”

Jack lied next to you, your back flush with his chest. He lined his cock up with your cunt, slowly sliding the length of it between your folds.

“Con-condom?” you mumbled, dreading the feel of anything that wasn't completely him.

Jake kissed your shoulder. “It feels better without. I'm clean.”

You nodded, breathless at the promise of feeling him. All of him. “I'm clean and I have a, an IUD.”

He kissed you again as he nudged the head of his cock into you.

Your moans echoed around the room as he held onto you, inching himself in further and further.

Only once you'd just got the feel of all of him he was slowly retreating to push back in again. For a moment it was only the sound of the both of you breathless and the gentle sounds of skin on skin as he moved at a steady pace, growing needier, getting deeper by every thrust.

“Oh my god... oh my god...” you moaned.

Jack's hands grabbed your hips, helping you meet his thrusts in urgency. The sun was just peeking through the blinds and a thin layer of sweat glowed off both your bodies.

You tried to grind your backside into him, desperate to feel relief as his pace remained steady.

Jack gripped your hip, leaning into your ear. “Don't rush it, don't rush it,” he nipped at your ear. “Don't be greedy, we'll go slow.”

You didn't want slow. You wanted fast. You wanted hard.

The slow drag of his cock through your walls drove you mad. He reached around, fingers circling your clit as his other hand finally un-hooked your bra.

It wasn't long before Jack was slamming into you, harder, your body rocking with his movements and the head of his bed hitting the wall.

“God, it's been so long.... you feel amazing...” said Jack as his fingers circled your clit hard.

“Jack I'm gonna-”

At the warning he stilled himself inside of you.

“Not yet, honey, not yet.”

You whined, hand moving round to grab at his ass and hold him in.

Jack groaned and bit into your neck. “I know, I know. Just gimme a minute.”

You had no choice as he slid out of you and moved you around so you were flat on the bed. You felt his fingers thrust inside of you again harder than before.

His breath was hard, chest rising and falling quickly. “I wanna make you come in so many ways I can't chose how.”

He was a man starved, ravenous as he dedicated time to licking you up again, if only for a minute. But he moaned around you, sucked in your nerves and released it to the mercy of his fingers.

“Jack!” you yelled, screw the neighbours.

There was a growl somewhere in the back of his throat as he loomed over you.

“You wanna fuck me?”

“Yes, Jack, bad so bad!”

“Okay, okay honey, fuck me then, come one baby.... I know you can.”

Jack pushed into you as the both of your eyes clashed watching the pleasure in each others eyes. He set a brutal pace, holding a leg up as he peppered kisses along your chest.

“J-Jack-”

“Tell me how good I feel.”

“So good.”

“So good, yeah baby, so good,” he gasped. “Oh fuck, god baby!” He reached over and gripped the headboard, body tight in pleasure.

You arched off the bed.

“I need you to come,” he announced, eyes screwed up in pleasure as he thrusted into you hard, the slap of his balls on you.

You watched where he met you as your legs shook.

“I need you to come so I can come.... one more time, baby.... one more time, please....” he begged.

The sight of him sweating, his body rigid, eyes shut in pleasure and mouth hanging open only to voice obscene moans was enough to have you coming over the edge.

Your walls tightened.

Jack must have felt it as he steadied himself over you, fingers falling between your bodies to work you through it. “That's it.... that's it.... that's it...” He kissed along your collarbone.

You released over him, gasping, body melting into him as Jack rode out your orgasm.

“Arg... oh god... you feel so good, I-urg-”

Dirty words spilled from your mouth as Jack latched onto your mouth and let go inside of you.

The both of you were a panting, sweating mess as he calmed down, slowly slipping out of you but kissing away every whine and protest.

Your breathes slowed and slowly Jack slipped out of you, watching his release leave you.

His eyes flickered back up to you, brushing away hair that had stuck. “I've never come like that in my life.”

You were still catching your breath, still waiting for the race of your heart to dull. “Your welcome?”

Jack chuckled, falling beside you and throwing an arm over you. “I think you can delete that app now.”

You groaned with a wave of embarrassment, covering your face. Gently, Jack pried away your hands and kissed the palms of them. You turned on your side. “Are you going to delete it too?”

“Honey I only got it cause I couldn't stand the thought of you getting it, and some other gut thinking he can treat you better.”

“I always hoped it would be you.”

The oldest Cody brother, the most ominous if one trusted the whispers on the beach, had caught your eye early on. Despite what everyone said about him he had been nothing but gentle with you. He wasn't that monster people described him as, he was just a man who looked more lost than anything. Sure, he wasn't Prince Charming, but who wanted that anyway? Andrew, or Pope as they called him, was far more intelligent than Smurf gave him credit for. He noticed everything that happened around him and was most often the first to intervene. Maybe that’s what had gotten him behind bars in the first place, his brothers never really told you what happened, but a very high Craig had once let it slip that he went for Baz, which once again proved who he was as a person. Things between you two had been relatively fresh when he’d gotten arrested. Your things slowly started to stay in his house and your presence as his girlfriend had become accepted by his family, or so you thought. Loving Andrew wasn’t always easy, not because he wasn’t a loveable human being, no. But all the trauma Smurf had put him through had left deep scars behind, which you had tried to learn and care for. The fact that his mother had outcast his own twin sister was a wound that never closed. Andrew constantly thought about seeking her out, getting her clean and even taking her and the boy in for a while. Though he knew that this would be a crime hardly forgiven by Smurf. She kept him busy with jobs. Busy enough that he hardly had time for your relationship and especially that he couldn’t afford to take a child and his addicted mother in. In hindsight should that had been the first red flag, the indicator that once you were out, you were out. But when Smurf had called you after Pope’s conviction it still had come as a surprise. “You see sweetie, it wasn’t that serious for him. And now that he’s got real problems to deal with, he decided to end things. I told him it was nonsense and that you’re a lovely girl, but you know Pope. He’s not stable. So maybe it would be best if you don’t come to visit him for a while.” Smurf’s words still echoed in your head. He hadn’t even had the balls to call you himself or write you. No. Once the bars were between you the mask dropped and suddenly, he was the man everyone had always warned you about. Cold, unreliable, psychopathic. You didn’t want to believe it, but once you tried to visit him, they told you he didn’t want to see you. So, you send letters, weekly at first, then only monthly, but none got answered. At first you didn’t understand why he would throw away that beautiful thing you two had built together, but eventually you had to move on with your life. At had been easiest to leave it all behind and avoid the Cody’s all together. But Smurf still had her claws in you and with the sweet talk of ‘I never wanted that he abandoned you’ the snake coiled itself tighter and tighter around you.

Seagulls filled the early morning air and the golden streaks of sunlight crawled through the streets of Oceanside. Kids passed you on their skateboards and the first surfer arrived on the beach as you left the small store and made your way back to the Cody house. Even three years later you still were Smurf’s little helper, at least she paid you well. Despite hollow ache inside of you, you were glad that she hadn’t made you to an outsider of Oceanside. This was your home and you wouldn’t wanna live anywhere else. Walking in felt different than usual. Not only was the house unusually quiet, but there was some kind of new vibe going on. Maybe it was just Jay, Julia’s son, who now lived here. Whatever it was it was, you had not the energy to care about it. Passing by the pool you put the things you’d bought for Smurf down on a table. Someone was busy in the back of the garden, but enough years around Deran and Craig had told you not to get nosy if you preferred your visual innocence. Just as you turned to go, you spotted the man who was busy destroying the old oven. Every muscle in your body froze and you could do nothing but stare. There he was, like a dream from an old live. Andrew. He looked different than you remembered him. His hair was in some short buzz cut and he looked incredibly tense. In a way that wasn’t the man you once knew, and yet you could see ‘your’ Andrew within his shell. His big puppy dog eyes had already found you and he too was just staring at you. Three years had passed since you last saw him. Three years of silence of questions and trying to forget him. You never thought about the moment you’d see him again. No one had told you he’d be released anytime soon. Either because his family didn’t know as well or because no one had deemed it your business any longer after he so gracefully excluded you from his life. Maybe he’d done so before with others and you were just too blind to see it. Maybe that was exactly who he was. Using people for his own needs, saying empty words like a script he knew would work on someone so naively like yourself and then, once the situation had changed or the person lost their value to him, he’d drop them. Even if you didn’t want to believe that this was who Andrew was, over the last three years you had to learn to live with that truth. So, it came as a surprise when you registered the shocked look on his face as well. He didn’t look like someone who saw an ex he’d rather avoided. Andrew looked at you as if he saw a ghost. He looked like a little lost boy within the ruins of the oven. Like someone who could not understand what he saw was true. What had he been told? Sure, properly not that you were Smurf’s little helper, used like her personal assistant, but he had to know that you still lived in the same area. So why did he look at you like you had just crawled from a grave or something.

Andrew felt a lot of emotions rise within him at the same time and his hand tightened around the hammer he was still holding. Surprise at your appearance in his backyard, but immediately after, anger. Anger at you for being there as if nothing had happened between you. As if you hadn’t been too cowardly to send Smurf to bring your message instead of calling him yourself. For six months you had let him believe that he was actually lovably, worth any honest affection. He had opened up to you, had trusted you. He had been so naively to think that you were different, you would stay. But no. A week after his conviction he had gotten a phone call from his mother. She had sounded actually surprised, or at least he thought so. He had always struggled to read people’s emotions and over the phone anyone was hard to read, but Smurf was always number one. She had told him in short sentences that you apparently had cleaned out your stuff out of his house and told everybody that you did not want to be associated with someone like him, someone in prison. He wasn’t worth the wait. Those words had echoed through his head for three years, every night. His anger shifted towards himself the longer he looked at you. It was his own fault for getting hurt. How could he ever be so stupid and believe that someone as pure and innocent as you would seriously stay with him, especially when confronted with the consequences of the Cody lifestyle. He should have listened to Smurf and Baz. No one but his family would ever love him. No one. Finally he freed himself out of his shock and stepped closer to you. You still hovered beneath the table by the pool and the closer he came, the more you moved as well. You retreated and your eyes darted to the hammer he was still holding. As if you were scared. As if he was the monster they all said he was. As if he would ever hurt you. As if you saw Pope and not Andrew. Your Andrew. Your sweet boy you would allow to lay his head in your let and play with his curls. Curls he buzzed off because he didn’t want to be reminded of your soft touch. It hurt him more than any injury he had suffered in the past three years. “You’re afraid of me now?” He snapped like the hurt animal he was. “What? Can’t even face me after everything you’ve done?” Hurt flashed over your face, but the awaited satisfaction on his side didn’t set in. Then confusion hit you, which made him stop. He didn’t like to toy with you. He got no pleasure from fear or pain in your eyes. It didn’t make him feel any better. “What do you mean, after what I did?” At first, he wanted to scoff at your words, but then he saw it.

You couldn’t hold the anger that rose within you back any longer. How dare he?! How dare he accuse you of doing something wrong after he personally ripped your heart out of you. “I’m only here to bring by a few things. I didn’t even know you were out again.” You try to keep your voice steady, but your hands are already trembling. He looks so much like the man you remember, the man you lost and yet he looks so different. Harder. Like he hid himself away and built a wall. Probably what prison does to someone like Andrew. You’re about to finally leave the grounds, when he steps around and before you. Andrew isn’t the tallest Cody brother, but his broad shoulders and muscular body always made him look intimidating in a way. Even if you have never been scared of him, your body knows when to be careful around someone much stronger. He was also still holding a hammer. “Don’t,” he says in a way that makes it sound both like a command and plea. Your only raise a brow. “Don’t go. Don’t just leave me again.” “Leave you?” “Yes. You left.” Accusation. “What are you talking about? I didn’t leave you. You left me?” “I went to prison. It was a mistake. But I-“ “Stop,” you snap. Out of frustration and confusion. Something isn’t right here. You take a step back, he follows. Always a little too close. If it weren’t for the situation, you’d smile at that small quirk of his. “You aren’t making sense, Andrew.” Your eyes lift to his again and the familiarity of those warm brown orbs almost makes you cry. While Andrew had trouble understanding human emotions, he had never just lied to you. “After you went to prison, you told Smurf to tell me that we were done. To get my shit out of your house and not call.”

Bam! The words echo through his head like a gunshot and all he can do is stare at you. “But I wrote to you anyway and you ignored every letter. And when I tried to visit you wouldn’t see me.” With every word his eyes widen, and he feels that same dread wash over him he felt as kid when he got accused of something he didn’t do. He felt the words to defend himself arise, but they weren’t making it past his lips. They piled up in his throat and build a knot so big he felt like he was choking inside. He wanted to do something, say something, anything, but his body wasn’t listening. In his mind he was back inside with Smurf lecturing him or laughing at him. His lungs felt too small and too big all at once and the familiar burning in his eyes told him that he hadn’t blinked once in the past two minutes. Andrew shut his eyes and looked down, then quickly back up as if to check that you were still there. You looked so hurt and all he wanted to do was take all of your pain and make it go away. But he seemed to be the cause of the pain so maybe he shut just take himself out of your life and end this misery. But then your words really set in, and he realised what kind of big lie had shaped both of your lives in the past three years. She had done this. It hurt him that the information didn’t hurt. Being stabbed in the back by his mother had become like a mosquito bite because it happened so frequently and at the same time it caused him a pain only she could. As if she had a direct link to the deepest part of his brain and could inject him with pain directly at his core.

“She lied,” his voice sounded hollow. But he continued before you had a chance to push him away again. “She lied. She lied to you. She lied to me. She always fucking lies!” He threw the hammer across the yard at the last bit. It hit a planter and clattered into the pool. This time you didn’t flinch, you froze. Not because of his violent outburst, but because of the new information. “What… what do you mean?” “She told me the same,” something in him seemed to break and as he took another step towards you, you let him. He dug his head a little to find your gaze again with his stupid puppy eyes. “She told me, after I went in, that you didn’t wanna wait for me. That you were done. That you… that I wasn’t worth the wait.” Your heart broke as he said those words and suddenly the last three years hurt for a whole other reason. “Smurf said that?” The look on his face was answer enough. Andrew looked like a kicked puppy. Like someone who had trusted and had once again been mislead by the one person who should protect him. “Andrew,” speaking his name made him get even closer. His hands hovered around your waist for a moment before he dropped them again. “Andrew I never wanted to leave you. I thought you were done with me and that… that you’ve changed your mind.” “Never.” He placed his hands on your waist and looked at you with an intensity that stole your breath for a moment.

For a moment neither of you said a word. You were both simply realising that the other had never turned away and that these first six months together had been real after all. Slowly, giving you time to stop him, Andrew leaned his forehead against yours. He wasn’t good with touch, and he also wasn’t good with words, but he needed you to understand what he felt. That he was yours. Despite all the pain and doubt that part of him, deep inside, that had been yours from the start had never stopped aching and yearning. He wasn’t sure if you still felt the same, he could understand if not, if you had moved on after all these years. But he hoped. Maybe he was foolish for doing so, yet he couldn’t help himself but hope that whatever part of you once wanted him still did. Because he was still into you.

The tourney had grown boring, unbearable, and hot. It was a tourney for pleasantries and other obnoxious reasons for more chatter. 

Knights were swooning over you which in turn had caught the malicious attention of the other noblewomen who were in the bylines. You could not help but roll your eyes at the next Lord that would introduce themselves to you, but prim and poise was your vice, you were high on it, surely you must be. Gwayne is far more better than you in exchanging civilities, it is his strong suit and you? You were the complete opposite, which had confused the others of your marriage. The most righteous man in all of Westeros chose the egoistic sensualist of a wife he could ever find—it stunned you as well at the match, but it worked in your favour.

However, you had places to be, if not with your husband, then on your husband. 

You made your way in the sea of people who had been going through similar struggles as you in this heat. Thankfully, the wine makes everything somewhat bearable in the scorching heat, your silks clung onto your skin as you aggressively fanned yourself to cool down, it was hot and you were tired. 

Your servants did their best to alleviate the effects of the warm weather and the stuffy environment as you made your way through the many nobles that looked at you like you were a fresh piece of meat for the taking, for gossip, position, and whatever else they can gain from you. 

Finally, a cool breeze had brushed over your skin, soothing your strenuous toil but that was only for a short while. Your gaze landed on the ladies that were unashamedly doting on your husband, Gwayne. A blonde noblewoman had been faking her laughter to get his attention, only for her to finally gain it when she forcibly interlocks her arms with him. You took immediate notice of the recoil in his reaction, he knew better, good. Disgust was an understatement that painted his features.

The lesser blonde goads and toys with him as other ladies made this their chance to vie for his attention. It was an uncommon occurrence for some to slip past you but it is uncommon for a reason. Even so, it did not do any wonders to your ego, the skin you that you wore had shed and the dragon beneath it had finally revealed itself. 

“Ser Gwayne? Your thoughts on the lovely knights today?” 

“Have you tried the wine? Absolutely delicious!”

“You’ve great hair, is that lavender I smell?”

Their shrill voices rang in your ears as you made your way to them. Prim and poise. Which still rang true … but that was for occasions that it is appropriate, this was not.

“Princess! I did not realise you were here, you were gone for some period of time, but do not worry, your husband had better company to attend to,” the Lady exclaimed in such a fake manner that it heated your face to a flush of pink as the words landed like a strong blow. It only worsened the feeling as you see her holding Gwayne like she owned him, like he was her property. To your advantage, you knew how these played out, you were not idle and stuck with cross-stitching and other thugs, you were either on dragonback or training with your sword, an unbecoming image for a princess but you were no ordinary princess—you have the blood of old Valyria running through your veins and you have dragons.

You retaliate.

“You speak as though my presence requires your acknowledgment, rest assured, it does not.”

It deepened the disdain that took root in your bones, as it did not easily sway the Lady beside your poor husband who is caught in the crossfire. The look on your face was not quite subtle anymore, the disrespect you had experienced fueled the scorn on your face. 

You carefully designed the woman that stood right in front of her, through years and years of defiance and spite, you’ve learned to mask the arrogance with humility and the animosity with kindness. However, your arrogance took matters into her own hands, Gwayne knew upon entering your marriage that there would always be a third, your ego.

You ignored his innocent stare, reminding yourself to take care of him … later.

Much to your annoyance, another lady from yet another house spoke, “dragons tend to blend into the scenery until they choose to open their jaws.”

You gave her a small, pitying sigh, “how quaint. You speak of dragons as if they are beasts to be feared, rather than kin to be commanded. Do not mistake my silence for blending in, for I am merely deciding if you are worth the breath.”

The opponent had weakened, only then, you had struck the final blow. 

It was simple. Unnerving. Scorching. 

You held your gaze to their embarrassed ones, a sickly sweet smile you mimicked the first lady from earlier, your quaint fingers toying with the fabric of her dress, “although …you must pray I keep mine closed. Your silks are far too pretty to be reduced to ash.”

With a gentle grip, you pulled Gwayne’s arm from her grasp, walking away from the group of vipers and snakes. 

You could care less of the broken proper princess act in front of the noble men and women who were practically slithering from the sides just to take a piece of their gossip. The air as you walked right passed them grew cold and icy. They hold no worth to you, regardless of their miniscule jabs at you and your house.

The proud dragon princess. The defiant heir. The evil Hightower wife. The tyrant Targaryen.

At least they knew what the Gods have granted you before you even drew your first breath: the divine, unyielding right to rule, which left the rest of Westeros to pray the coin lands on the side that spares them from your fire. You hailed from the royal house that many feared … but most of all, you were in love. 

Gwayne had softened the rougher edges you wore when you met him, which had stunned you, you never bowed to anyone, no, not until he arrived into your life. He has earned the softness of your heart and you promised yourself that he will have it for the rest of your days together.

You endured to heat as you scurried towards your guest chambers, your husband following suit. He knew better than to defy you and your authority. 

“You are angry,” he pointed out, a pout could be seen from his lips. Gods, he was handsome.

“I am fine, I do not partake in such folly,” you said wryly.

“Are you mad at me?”

That question stopped you in your place, you turned back to him as if he went mad. 

“Absurd.”

He sighs, “you are tense.”

“They treat you as if you are a toy to play with, I simply reminded them of who warms your bed.”

That reply made Gwayne blush. The sight made your heart soften.

You circled him like a dragon ready to devour its prey, guiding him towards your bed unknowingly, again, he knew better than to defy you of all people. 

He sits at the edge of your bed, you rightfully took your place between his legs, your hand gentle as you grasped his chin to look up at you. Your eyes never left his, you were furious of course, no one deserved to touch him like you did, to love him like you did, to pleasure him like you did.

“You are pliant, husband.”

“Of course I am. Only to you,” his statement encouraged the uproar in your thinly veiled arrogance, the mix of pride and ego had egged on your arousal. It claws on your stomach as he submitted, caved into your touch alone, reminding you once more that he belonged to you. 

His hands slithered up to your waist, undoing your laces as he maintained eye contact with you, serving you. His grip possessive and needy, the heat you had complained about was erased from your memory as a fresh wave of fire began in your body. Your dress pools down to your feet as he strips the rest away, pulling you in, making you straddle his lap.

He kisses you earnestly and eagerly, his hands cupping your breasts as you press yourself closer to him, the erotic sensation of your nakedness that is opposite to his clothed body is vibrating between your bodies. 

He hums into the kiss as he deepened it, taking claim of you, his tongue sliding against yours in an indulgent dance that rendered him weak. There was no urgency in the act, it was just two people who willingly adored each other in secrecy and in public. You attempted, hard, to keep up your strong appearance, to stay mad but you were oh so soft for your husband. The feigned hatred in your face began to dissipate as he pathetically moaned into your lips, owning him, needing him. You submit. 

On the other hand, Gwayne felt almost unworthy of having you all to himself, the unashamed greed made him run hot to the touch. He holds your body against his, his kisses more insistent and that was all you needed to undo you. Gwayne feels the love that is radiating from you and he plans on using that to his advantage, to win you over, carefully, lovingly, intimately.

He pulls away to look at you and then to your pouted lips, a string of saliva connecting you both. He notices that you look … softer in the ambient light of the chambers, although he loves you just the same even when the fire in you sparks aflame. Your hair is a mess but it sat pretty on you, you have this effortless beauty and sensuality that you exuded and he envied almost anyone who will ever come across you—but he would never tell you that, it must be a safely kept secret but it would not matter if he considers you a god. The Seven truly took their time with you and he was grateful that you chose him, he could not bear spending a life without you by his side. 

Gwayne never indulges himself, he rarely does, not until he met you. His earnest gaze appreciated your features, he notices the smallest of things, the faint scar on your neck from your cousin’s dagger, that crooked smile you have whenever you are content, the pattern of your breathing is different when you turn supple and needy—these are some of the things he notices about you, because he listens and he knows. 

Your clingy sounds had urged Gwayne’s light kisses on both of your tits, which soon evolved into sloppier ones that made you sigh in relief as he grips the back of your thighs, pulling you closer to him, your puffy cunt brushing up against his clothed cock, a needy moan slips past between his lips. 

To him this was vulnerability but to you this was opportunity. 

You ground your hips against him, feeling your slick arousal spreading on the fabric of his breeches, the action sending waves of pleasure to your body. You pushed his body against the bed, your hands placed on his chest as you continued the rolling motion of your hips as you made him watch you take your pleasure from him.

“You only look at me,” you moaned, your gaze fixed on his face as you rode him, your movements provocative and needy, only for him. Only for Gwayne. 

If it was humanly possible, Gwayne could have peaked at the sight before him, his cock twitched needily under your wet cunt. His hands were snug at your waist, your movements were encouraged by him, his groans were like hymns of worship to you and you lived for it. The heat from earlier took a toll on your stamina but you were bound to endure it, lest your claim be proven hollow—you were stubborn.

Gwayne touched you everywhere as you rolled your hips against him, you threw your head back as you felt yourself closer to the edge, the friction between your sexes is delicious. It relaxed your complaining body and pleasured it further. Another wet spot had appeared on his breeches from his precum and tantalizingly mixed with your wetness. Your moans had increased and your nails scratched at his chest as you quickened your movements.

There was a fire that had awoken in your belly, it was only spurred when Gwayne moved against your hips, intensifying your pleasure, the action provoking your climax. Your hips stuttered as you came, your pants and mewls were of his name and that made Gwayne groan deeply.

It tamed you. Your body took comfort on top of his, Gwayne pulled you closer, his movements subtle yet noticeable, he partially slid his breeches off, his hard cock instantly meeting your sensitive sex.

He whispered praise to his sweet wife and that alone had lulled the fire in you, only a little bit before it gave out on you and gave more way to him. You were still sensitive from your high but the want is still etched into your body, Gwayne caressed your buzzing body, his fingers feeling every crevice you have. 

“My sweet dragon … I need to feel you around me, come home.”

That usual sweet tone of his stirred you out of your bliss, your consciousness coming back to you fully as he tapped the enraged  head of his cock to your hardened pearl, you reacted to the sensation as he collected more of your previous honeyed arousal to lubricate himself with.

He fixes your position, raising your hips a little for him to move properly beneath you, his cock nudging into your hole, the squeeze of it made Gwayne twitch beneath you.

His free hand guided your hips down his length, practically splitting you in half at the sheer size of him when he enters, it overwhelmed the both of you at this point. Your wetness emitted a sound so scandalous that Gwayne was livid for it, he tested his rhythm as he bounced you on his cock, the air left his lungs as he moved you up and down.

Your body was still pressed against his body, your hips met his, Gwayne controlled your movements, using your sensitive cunt for his pleasure. He made sure to revel in moments like these, taking charge of your shared pleasure when you were typically the one in control.

His hold on you was intimate, it weakened your defences and had your walls fluttering around him which earned a soft whine from your husband, he accentuated his movements, his tip nudging against the spot that made you spasm and shake, exactly where he belonged.

“Gods,” you mewled, the walls around you collapsed, there was no reason to shield yourself with your ego, you were snug in his arms and you were being ravaged in full force, what more could you ever need in this moment? 

You cried out as your cunt clamped down his twitching length, his orgasm following suit as you felt him coat your walls with his cum. He needed to stuff you full to the brim and to hope to the Gods that it takes root in your womb. He felt himself softening as you both came down from your highs, he could feel himself leaking out from your pretty hole, your essence running down from your thighs to his. 

Gwayne then kisses you silly, as egoistical as you are, you were ticklish and he used it to his advantage, you giggled softly and before you knew it, you were laying down on your bed. His unabashed gaze took you apart, like always, with care. 

You were not going to finish this day without a fight.

You slightly opened your legs, your cunt oozed what was left of your mixed arousals and that had fogged the goodness in your husband’s eyes, almost completely. Gwayne went weak when he saw you leaking more of him, puffy and pretty. 

His mouth was on you, his hands on both your thighs as he opened you up to him. To some, this endeavour was mechanical, to Gwayne, it was pure love, for you.

His tongue dipped right between your folds, lapping up the leaked evidence, the sweetness and the saltiness was almost like a drug to him. You moaned wantonly and called out to him in your pleasure, your hands on his hair and on your tits. Gwayne’s strong hands fought with your thighs that had threatened to close in on him, but he wanted to worship you first before indulging himself. The obscene wet noises fell from his lips, guttural grunts and groans as he tasted you both on you.

“Yes, Gwayne, yes!”

The words that came out of you was a plea instead of a command, your fingers tugging tightly at his hair. Gwayne sucked the last of his cum from your cunt and resurfaced with a pussy-drunk smile on his face. 

By the time you pull him on top of you, closer to you as your lips meet for another kiss, his length has hardened once more. Gwayne’s words of love and praise fell muffled to your lips, his cock heavy on his hand as he supported himself with the other. 

He pushed himself inside you once more, purely for the reason of belonging there, of completing you—making you full. His free hand plays with the pearl of your cunt, earning him scratches on his arms as you hold onto him.

“My sweet wife, you are perfect … you are all mine,” he grunts into your ear.

His demeanour softens at your blissful face, the cacophony of sounds emitting from the both of you across chamber walls which turned into intimate hymnals that billowed around your connected bodies and fine silks you lay on top of.

Gwayne was determined to push for another peak for you, to make sure that his sweet wife was satiated, to forget her woes, to remember that he belongs to her—Gwayne needed it like the air he breathed, like the uttered prayers under the Seven’s eyes, like his sustenance to live for you. Gwayne wanted it now more than ever, his thrusts became rough, your sounds more high-pitched, melodic even. You could feel his slicked up balls slap your ass, making a plapplapplap sound as he quickens his pace.

He could feel you swarm around him, like flames and he was unaffected by it, your cunt does the fluttering around his hammering length once more and it sends him to the Seven Heavens and Seven Hells and back. 

His movements erratic, panting as he holds your body closer to him as he finishes inside you once more, coating your tightening walls, your orgasm making his length even more slick.

Gwayne pulls out momentarily, patiently watching both your essences ooze out you again before collecting it with the tip of his cock and fucking it into you, you moaned lazily as he thrusts deeper, slower. He emphasises his movements, the belonging and need, his message was not lost on you. You were beyond saving from the very moment you submitted to him, from the moment you met him, leaving your ego no choice but to watch your carnal affair instead.

“That is it, my sweet dragon, you did good, so good.”

His voice a soft whisper to your ears as he peppered your face with kisses, his hips halting their movements, staying right there and inside you. 

Gwayne is not a man of pride but this time … he indulges for his egoistical wife, smugly.

“Are you still mad at me, wife?”

“Oh, shut it.”

© 2026 𝙂𝙒𝘼𝙔𝙉𝙀𝙎-𝙎𝙒𝙀𝙀𝙏𝙇𝙄𝙉𝙂! i condemn plagiarism of any kind and feeding my work to ai, NO AI here! my writing may be shit but it is my shit.