Arina

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He purses his mouth involuntarily when a girl sitting in front of him on the bus has her hair gathered in a ponytail that reveals the nape of her neck. She’s wearing a thin chain necklace that pulls on the tiny hairs. His hands itch to brush the skin and untangle the mess carefully, then place the whole breadth of his palm there, from tendon to tendon, to ease the sting. Before he gets to live his life’s most torrid affair, the girl yanks on the chain viciously, plucking out singular strands with a small hiss, and gets off the bus.

When he falls in love again, he is disastrously unready for the prospect of permanence. Handshakes and congratulations muttered over keys passed to the flat next door have far too much of long-term arrangement about them for his peace of mind. Duncan’s beloved of today is wearing paint-stained dungarees, the knees pushed out and sagging with age. Her hair is messy and her cheek smudged with dust. Her socks do not match either. She’s thanking the building manager with glassy eyes and a smile pulled so wide she looks about to cry.

The manager delivers one last pat to her back, then reveals Duncan’s presence by bidding him a quick, “Morning.” Duncan nods once, then keeps his head down as he passes by. Before descending the staircase, he allows himself one last glance: you sigh, pause, and step into your flat. Certainty floods him cold: he’s in love with his neighbour.

He spends the day at work trying to reason with himself. You are only one girl who happens to live on the other side of his bedroom wall. Duncan hardly ever sees the other neighbours as it is. For all he knows, you keep odd hours and spend weekends elsewhere and have a boyfriend already hanging pictures in that flat in his head. If luck is willing to show him some mercy, he will not be sentenced to pine after the girl next door. By lunch he has bargained himself into a kind of peace. By the end of the day, he almost believes it.

Then he comes home.

Your door is ajar. Passing by, Duncan catches through the crack the beginning of a new life. The hallway yawns open to the room beyond, where a mattress—not nearly wide enough for two—lies on the floor with its sheets crumpled up in a twist. There is a mug sitting on the windowsill with a teabag string dangling over the rim. A charger. A few cardboard boxes hunch by the wall, half-opened and all of it kills him a bit with tender, domestic ache. You’re really here, starting from scratch.

From deeper in the flat comes your voice, frayed by an argument with a consultant. It grows louder. Nearer. Duncan finds what is left of his wit and slips past as quietly as he can, key already in hand. He is through his own threshold and turning the lock on a held breath before you come into view. A second later, your door slams shut hard enough to carry through the wall. He hears you thank someone over the phone tightly and end the call. Then, he catches the cutest little growl of frustration he’s heard in his life. When he closes his eyes he can see you again in all your disarrayed glory and decides the girls from cafés and pubs and buses may as well pack it in, and Duncan is in trouble.

He wakes the next day hoping the universe will spare him permanence, only to get sucker-punched by the sight of you fighting your post box in the main hall. The same girlish growl he already knows leaves you when the box will not budge (despite you asking it very nicely by rattling the lock with the key stuck inside it). He tries to disguise his gasp and it comes out as a dumb, hiccuped chuckle, which, of course, gets your attention.

“Is something funny?” you ask, face dangerously frowned, yet still the prettiest thing Duncan’s ever seen.

“N-no. No,” he gulps, loudly. “You have to, uh… bully it a bit. Here—can I?”

His hands come out and you step away at once, making Duncan wonder whether it is because you believe his good intentions, or is it merely his intimidating size.

He leans in, presses on the little door and turns the key between his fingers until it clicks.

Your eyes are on him, bewildered. “That’s ‘bullying’ in your world?”

Duncan shrugs. “I mean…”

“Good to know.” Before he realises what is happening, your palm is out and disappearing in his, and he learns your name, and from this moment he will remember it forever. “Thirteen C,” you add, as if he has not noticed.

“Duncan,” he says. “Fifteen C.”

“Yeah, I know,” you say, smiling.

“So, err… how’s it going?”

“Alright. Just getting to…” Your eyes drag to the post box, then back to him. “—you know. Oh, um… it might get a bit”—your fingers pinch together to present what a bit means—“loud over the weekend. I’m having furniture delivered and I have to assemble it.”

That is it. Duncan’s heart behaves as if it has somehow acquired a brain of its own and is currently attempting an escape by slicing his chest open, lest he say something normal. Words pour out of his mouth and, to him, they sound like begging.

“D’you need a hand? I could—” As he speaks, you go still. Your eyes drop, and Duncan falters at once. “Unless you’ve that sorted already,” he says. “I only meant—I’m good with carrying, is all.”

After a beat, there’s a nod. “Yes,” you say, and Duncan realises you are nervous. “God, okay, yes. I’ve no one. I’m not even going to pretend I’m competent, or that it’s an easy job. My delivery company insists that we’ve agreed on a downstairs drop-off and it’s a ton of bookshelves. If you were just being nice, that’s absolutely fine though. God, sorry,” you mumble, holding your throat. “Moving is stressful.”

He has never seen awkwardness to match his own packed into someone so lovely. He feels an impossible urge to hug you, but knows that could make his affair fleeting, and suddenly finds himself wanting the opposite. “I wasn’t. I mean—I was. I’d gladly help. I’ve the weekend off.”

“Wicked,” you say, a shy curve on your mouth. “They come at eight on Saturday. That works?”

“It does. Yeah,” Duncan says, nodding once, then again, as if the second one might make him sound less like a man who has just been handed a winning lottery ticket in broad daylight. “That works. I’ll, uh… catch you later.”

He turns on his heel and starts back upstairs like a fool.

“Weren’t you heading out?” you ask.

He stops so abruptly he nearly misses the next step. “Right,” he says, and clears his throat. “I was actually—” Jerks a thumb towards the front door, then has to come back down past you with what dignity he can gather. “Going to work.”

Your smile does something unhelpful to his insides. “Thought so.”

“Yeah.” He gives a small nod. “So. Saturday.”

“Saturday,” you echo.

“Deadly.” The word slips out on its own. Duncan feels his ears burn. “I mean—good. Grand. I’ll see you then.”

He goes before his tongue can betray him any further, out through the front door and into the morning with his heart beating high in his throat, having managed to turn a straightforward goodbye into a full display of personal deficiency in under thirty seconds.

And deadly he is. You’re left smiling and so struck, it takes you another thirty seconds to clock that you are wearing an absurdly torn T-shirt, pyjama shorts and mountain climbing boots (classic just going to check mail assembly). Then another five to release a breath.

You were a bit too overwhelmed by the sight of your own four naked walls and a slice of floor to sleep on when you first saw him to assess him properly. Now, though—eyes, first and foremost. Huge, and blue and with lashes that belong on a doll rather than on a grown-up man. Proportional to the rest of him, which is also huge in a way that makes you feel safe and taken care of, not hunted.

Then his voice, which sits warm in your ear after he is gone, low and soft and careful with every word. His face: freckles over the bridge of his nose and across his cheeks, hair that cannot decide whether it is dark blond or ginger, and a blush that rises so easily it almost seems unfair on a man built like that. And his arms—Christ on a stick. They look as if they could hug any worry clean out of you. Crowning all of it is the most endearing smile, all crooked teeth, which he seems to reach for whenever the colour in his face becomes unbearable. Absolutely dear lad.

And he has agreed to spend the weekend with you, playing adult Lego with IKEA bookshelves. An offer you probably shouldn't have accepted, but he’s a sweetheart who, by all rights, ought to take up space more confidently than he does. Instead he ducks his head, fumbles his goodbye and flees, leaving you with your lip bitten raw.

You know damn well it is entirely unwise to develop a crush on your neighbour. Nevertheless, the tiny voice in the back of your head is already chanting, please don’t be a psycho, please don’t be a psycho.

The rest of the day you spend pointlessly cleaning the space that will get obliterated by dust and cardboard come weekend anyway, then listening to his footsteps through the wall in the evening. Saturday, you realise, while you have been busy making goo-goo eyes at him, you completely forgot to give him any actual logistics. Where are you meant to meet? Who carries what? How much time does he have?

You knock on his door at 7:45 a.m. and might as well just kiss the doorknob. Nothing. Try again, and still nothing. By the time the phone starts vibrating in your hand with an unknown number, your stomach has already dropped low enough to bruise. The delivery driver is downstairs. They are waiting for a signature. You swear, apologise, swear again and hang up feeling like an absolute clown for ever believing a kind stranger was something that just happened to you.

When you get down to the main hall, Duncan is already there. Waiting. In jeans and a white T-shirt with paint stains set so deep into it they look permanent. The sight of him hits you hard enough to wipe your mind for a second. Broad shoulders. Sleep still clinging somewhere about his face. Hair not fully decided yet. He turns at the sound of you coming and your heart gives one awful, hopeful kick.

“I thought you, uh—hi,” you say.

“Morning,” he says, straightening. There is a crease between his brows, like he has been wondering where you got to. “Sorry. I went down when I heard the van.” His eyes flick over your face quickly, then away. “You all right?”

That lands badly enough in your chest that you have to clear your throat before answering. “Yeah. Yes. I just thought you’d changed your mind.”

The blush comes up at once, easy as breath. “No,” he says. “No, I’m here.” His eyes flick to the heap of boxes crowding the entrance, then back to you. “And thank God, it seems. How many bookshelves d’you need, anyway?”

You shrug, already flustered. “I have a lot of books?”

Something in his face gives. Worse than a mockery—a smile. “Right.”

The delivery men are in no mood for inept romance. They want signatures, directions, confirmation that yes, all of this misery belongs to you. Duncan takes the handheld scanner from one of them before you can fumble it, passes it back, then bends to the first box with the ease of a man picking up a child’s toy. You stand there a second too long watching his forearms jump under the weight and have to jolt yourself back into usefulness.

So, it’s carry the lighter things. A flat-packed desk. Narrow boxes of shelves. Bags of fittings that clatter and bruise your shins. Duncan gets the proper monsters: the long boxes that seem designed to take out the ankles of whoever dares lift them, the thick ones packed with boards, the pieces that turn every staircase into an insult. By the second trip, his white T-shirt is sticking to the middle of his back. By the third, you have learned that the muscles there move under cotton in a way that ought to be regulated. He goes up the stairs with a box balanced on one shoulder and one hand free for the rail, and every time he turns sideways to clear the landing, you get some fresh reason to stop believing in a merciful god.

“Sorry,” you mutter for the fifth time, wrestling a carton through your front door.

“What for?”

“For owning things.”

He ducks under the doorframe with another box. “Bit late for that.”

You laugh despite yourself. He smiles without looking at you, sets the load down exactly where it needs to go and is gone again before you can decide whether to stare at his back or his hands.

Eventually, the entrance hall gets empty, so the one outside your flat can look as though a Scandinavian warehouse has exploded. Inside is worse. Cardboard everywhere. Thick white foam. Plastic corners. Long, baffling pieces of wood in shades with names no tree has ever deserved. You are sweaty and breathing through your mouth. Duncan wipes the back of his wrist across his forehead and leaves a pale streak through the dust there.

You lean against the wall and attempt a joke through your lungs. “If you’re fed up, I can probably handle the rest alone.”

His head comes up at once. “What, you’re kicking me out before the best part?”

“You think this is the best part?”

The blush arrives with such force it nearly does him an injury. “I meant—” He huffs a laugh at himself and looks down. “The building. The shelves.”

“Right,” you say. “The shelves.”

“Mm.”

You let him suffer for one beat longer than strictly kind, then rescue him. “Tea?”

He looks at you with real gratitude. “Go on, then.”

The kettle buys you both a little grace. For a while, it works. He tears through cardboard, stacks the big pieces, gets the general logic of things faster than seems fair. He is excellent at the parts requiring weight, reach or brute confidence. When you come back with two mugs though, Duncan is crouched in the middle of your floor among split boxes and hardware, reading the leaflets with an expression usually reserved for bad news from the doctor.

You pass him a cup, and he mutters an absent, “Ah, thanks, luv,” making your stomach twist. Goes back to frowning. Squinting, while holding the paper a little further away. Then further still, arm almost fully extended. His eyes narrow into slits. He turns the page one way, then the other, like Satan himself may be written on the back in clearer print. Under his breath, he whispers, “Shite.”

You are beginning to enjoy yourself immensely. “Everything all right there?”

“Mm.”

That is plainly a lie. His jaw sets, and finally he reaches into the pocket of his jeans. Out comes a pair of glasses so practical and slightly old-fashioned they look as though they have been with him longer than some friendships. He puts them on with the air of a man making a grave concession to weakness.

You nearly go through the floor. The lenses give him the most ridiculous, endearing bug-eyes. Not distorted exactly, but gentled, opened up. Softer, somehow. Boyish in a way the rest of him does not allow. He glances up and catches you looking.

“What?” he says, already half-defensive.

“Nothing.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying.” You set your mug down very carefully. “You just look…”

He waits. There are a hundred things you could say and none of them are survivable. Dear. Ridiculous. So lovely it hurts. You land on, “Serious.”

Duncan snorts, unconvinced, and looks back at the paper. “This thing was written by the devil.”

You kneel beside him and lean in. The leaflet rustles between you. Up close, his shoulder is warm. So is the line of his thigh where it nearly touches yours through old denim. He smells of soap and sweat broken by honest work.

“I thought it was the best part,” you say, forcing your gaze onto the tiny drawings instead of his glasses.

Duncan glances up. “Best part’s the company,” he says, and with those huge eyes behind wire frames, your crush leaves the realm of manageable things entirely.

He doesn’t really know what he’s doing. This, leastways, feels natural: helping. And it gives him enough space to push through anxiety and have something like a conversation with you. Nothing that would make his ridiculous in-love feeling flee has happened yet, so Duncan allows it to persist. At least as long as he gets to spend time with you assembling bookshelves.

That goes as expected: he’s tormented by your hands brushing his whenever you pass him a screw. Then by his own indignity at being unable to work with the smaller bits, where you step in—much too close for safety—with your nice-smelling hair and cute jokes. “Whatever would you do without me, hm?” you say, turning the smallest Allen key Duncan’s ever seen.

He clears his throat. “Uh… let’s see. Watch telly? Go down the pub for a game? Go running?”

“How utterly boring,” you mutter, focused on the task.

Duncan nearly rests his chin in one hand. “I know. I consider myself saved.”

You smile. Huff at the key refusing to go any further and deem your job done. “Alright,” you say, then deliver one more nail to his coffin. Your hand comes up to lift the hair off the back of your neck and cool off. He immediately goes to judge the kissability of it. Duncan, who in his lifetime has inspected necks’ napes in abundance, considers himself an expert on the matter. The verdict: yours is everything-able. Grabbable. Lickable. Kissable, and when he focuses enough he can imagine it smells heavenly too. Before he can blink himself out of it, you turn and ask, “Hungry?”

“Always,” Duncan says, and curses internally at how breathy he sounds. “Where d’you want these?” he asks, pointing at the whopping four assembled bookshelves, which currently create a little maze in your living room/dining room/bedroom—a room serving as all three.

“Oh, wherever you think,” you say, already scrolling through the food ordering app. That one hits him square in the gut, being allowed to do something domestic in the home of a girl he’s known for not even a week and is still deeply, hopelessly fallen for.

When he’s put everything where it looks best, you reappear with two beers in hand. He’s managed to find himself a spot on the floor where he’s sitting cross-legged, fully engrossed in the manual of the furniture already assembled, and your mind briefly goes to what it would feel like to wedge yourself onto those thighs.

You pass him a bottle, plop down next to him, and say, “Got us pizza. Fastest.”

“Grand,” he says. Leans back, trying to find something to stare at that is not your feet. “So—” The bottles clink. “How’s it feeling?” he asks, then pauses to watch you down half of yours in approximately five greedy gulps and chuckles, all helpless.

“Jesus, sorry.” You stop when you catch him staring like you have grown horns. Wipe your mouth. “It’s, um… less echo-y. Weird. But good. Like I’m starring in a rom-com. Oh shi—”

One of the shelves tips and starts falling face-flat. Duncan is up before you can properly register him moving, catching it with one hand.

“Got it. Got it. Yeah, the floors.” He wedges a folded bit of cardboard underneath to keep it straight. “They’re round as the earth.”

You blink, then slam the bottle onto the floor so hard some beer erupts from the neck. “Fuck, so I was right all along? It does feel like I’m going downhill from that corner.”

“Seems you were,” Duncan says, sitting back down. “Got to screw those to the walls, or you might get flattened in the night.” He points out the trajectory of it. If it went, it would go straight for the mattress. “We can do it tomorrow?”

“Two days in a row? Guess I bought you dinner, so everything’s by the book,” you mutter, and Duncan chokes on his beer. “Sorry. God, sorry. It’s the beer, I promise I’m not an obnoxious neighbour.”

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “If that’s obnoxious, I’d say I’m managing.”

You blink at that, then smile fully, teeth and all, and Duncan counts them before licking the backs of his own in a poor imitation of what it might be like to kiss you.

You turn towards him and lower your voice. “So you’re saying I should keep plying you with pizza and lager?”

There is a crust of dust in the corner of your eye. A strand of hair curled at your temple. The hinge of your jaw, where he would gladly suck a pretty pale bruise, just so you’d remember him as a man who leaves souvenirs. The collar of your T-shirt is darkened with sweat, and he can smell it and wants to press his nose there. On the floor between you, your hands point towards each other, fingers a hair’s breadth apart. He has half a mind to lean in.

The buzzer goes off roaring so suddenly you jump.

“God, that’s… loud,” you say. “One minute.”

The pizza arrives in a flurry of apologies, change, the brief humiliation of you having to shoulder the sticking front door with your hip. By the time you come back, Duncan has schooled his face into something he hopes resembles a man here for neighbourly reasons and not because he is one missed interruption away from pressing you into a wall so you can learn another purpose for all this strength.

You sit on the floor to eat because there is nowhere else to do it. The box goes between you. Grease blooms through the paper. Your knee knocks his once and stays there just long enough to keep his heart misbehaving.

The conversation comes in starts. Where you moved from. Whether the building is always this loud. How many books is too many books. He tells you he works mornings more often than not; you tell him this move has already shortened your life by a year. He laughs when you do impressions of the delivery men. You laugh when he tells you the names of the shelves sound like obscure illnesses. It should feel awkward. It does, a little. It also feels good enough that Duncan keeps forgetting to be shy until his own voice brings him back to himself.

He does not want to go. He knows he should. So he puts on the fakest yawn of his life, stretches his arms over his head for effect and says, “Right. Better leave you to it.”

Your face falls so slightly he almost calls it back.

“What time d’you want me tomorrow?” he asks, before he can stop himself.

That brings you back at once. “Whenever works for you.”

Duncan nods like a man with options. “I could do ten?”

“Ten’s perfect.”

“Good.” He gets to his feet and brushes nonexistent dust from his jeans. “I’ll see you then.”

When he leaves, it is with pizza marrying lager in his stomach, your laugh in his ears, and the growing suspicion that the universe has no intention of sparing him permanence at all.

He lies awake in bed, acutely aware that you are just behind the wall, and snorts helplessly into his pillow when a loud Fuck! follows a loud bang—presumably a toe fallen victim to one of the corners in the dark.

There is something insanely erotic to Duncan about a girl who lets him in and allows him to see the raw bones. No objects yet to hide behind or define yourself with; all he gets is your personality, stripped right down, and the version of you made intimate by imperfection. The one whose socks are nearly brown on the soles from cardboard dust, whose fingernails are dark beneath the crescents from handling metal bits all day, who stops herself from downing a whole bottle of beer only because he, in his dumbness, looked at her sideways.

And it feels nothing like his other crushes, which lived in perfect sealed-off vignettes, girls caught on their way somewhere else. You are going nowhere. Better: you are trying to stay. And Duncan has the honour of watching and helping it happen.

On Sunday he is ready at ten sharp and knocking on your door. His hair is still wet, and he is standing there with two coffees because he has no idea whether you have managed to unpack the coffee pot yet. That is the only reason.

Your voice comes muffled from inside. “Coming! One sec—”

He hears fumbling. Water running. Something hits tile and you hiss, “Shit!”

When you open the door, you look like you have only just dragged your shirt down over your back. Your hair is lifted with static. Your feet are bare, and Duncan has to force his eyes up from them. There he finds the corner of your mouth whitened with a trace of toothpaste.

“Hi. Sorry, I overslept,” you say, flattening your hair down with both palms.

“D’you want me to come back later?”

“No! No,” you say. “I’m up, promise. Also, is that for me?” Your finger points at the cups.

“No, luv. Brought them so I could drink two coffees in front of you.”

He presses one into your hands. You snort, then step out of the way. The hallway is narrow enough that he has to turn sideways to get through, and your stomachs still brush faintly. Duncan stops dead, points at his own mouth. “You’ve got a little—”

Your hand flies up and scrubs at your mouth with alarming force. You huff, embarrassed. “Sorry. I don’t drool, it’s just toothpaste.”

“Thank God.” A smile, unguarded and crooked and just so dear you want to squish his cheeks. 

He steps in fully and is met by the sight of the place properly gutted this time. Boxes split open. Books in tottering stacks. Fragile things wrapped in newspaper. Clothes half-freed from bin bags. He crouches over one of the boxes nearest to him, whistles low, and lifts out a hardback thick enough to stun a horse.

“What have we here? Remember how we talked about how many books is too many books yesterday? This—”

Then he leans further into the box, and mind leaves your body.

His shirt rides up over his loins. The muscles there rise in two thick ridges either side of his spine. They deepen the groove between them, pull his waistband tight, make a gap between skin and denim that would fit a flat palm perfectly. Fucking biteable, is what they are. Unbearably hot. You could live there, happy and fed and entirely unbothered, your cheek resting in the well of his back. It doesn’t help at all that his butt is as round as your floors which are as round as the earth.

It takes him a second to turn. When he does, he looks almost pleased with himself. “This is too many books, lass,” he announces. The lass does not help either. His brow pulls in. “Hey. You good?”

“Hm?” you hum, and bury the lower half of your face in the coffee cup in a futile attempt to hide the heat of it. “Yeah. Hunky-dory. And there is no such thing as too many books, Duncan.”

“You can call me Dunk. Friends do.” He stands then, book still in hand, and your body takes that as fresh bad news. “Right,” he says. “You ready?”

“As ever. Are you? I see no glasses.”

Something bright flickers across his face. He sets the book down, reaches into his back pocket and produces the case with a little flourish. Flips the arms open with both thumbs and settles the glasses on his nose like a man about to perform surgery.

“There,” he says. “Happy now, lass?”

“Very.” You clear your throat. “Okay. What should I do?”

He looks round your flat, glasses low on his nose, taking stock. “Might be better to clear some of this first,” he says. “Leave the drilling till later. We’ve the desk still, don’t we?”

Yes, unfortunately. So you unpack the desk while Duncan deals with the cardboard. He breaks boxes down with an efficiency that ought to be illegal, folds them once, twice, then stamps them flat under one boot. It should not do what it does to you, that sound, that force, that careless certainty of a body built to make stubborn things give way, but it does. Repeatedly. By the time he hauls the broken-down mountain downstairs, you need a moment so badly it arrives without asking.

You end up spread flat on the floor, muttering, “Fuck, fucking fuck,” into the air, heels of your palms pressed into your eyesockets hard enough to make your vision exist only in shades of black.

The front door opens quietly. A few steps, and: “Tired already?” Duncan asks.

Off with your head, then. When you look up, he is standing over you with the ceiling nearly on his shoulders. Not really. It only feels that way. A sigh. “Just… regrouping,” you say.

His mouth twitches. He puts a hand out. “C’mere, wee thing. It’s nearly done.”

It stirs your lower belly hot. So does the sight of his hand waiting for yours, broad and open and patient. You give him your arm because the other option is to reject it and scramble yourself up in an entirely undignified way. His palm closes round your elbow. Instead of yanking, he lifts steadily, calmly, as if you simply have no weight. The pressure of him stays even once you are upright. He is still holding you when you straighten fully, and for one daft second you let him.

“Right,” you say, smoothing your hands down your jeans. “I just need some water. Do you want some?”

He nods and follows you into the kitchen.

You reach up for the glasses from the top cupboard. There are only two unpacked. Duncan notices that at once. Notices, too, the way your shirt rides with the stretch and catches there above your hip, folded back on itself, leaving a strip of stomach bare. He feels it clean in the chest. Affection and neighbourly feelings that somehow have managed to fester into want, plain and greedy. He wants a lot, he realises. And he’s certain he’s obvious as daylight in it, and so engrossed in his own inadequacy things elude him.

What he misses is that you are no less obvious, only quieter. The way you hand him the glass so your fingers drag against his and stay a fraction too long. The way you drink from yours fast, quenching thirst that water has nothing to do with. The way your eyes travel down the line of his jaw to his throat as he swallows, unabashed for a second before you blink and pull them back.

Thank god he cannot read minds. Yours is all clatter. He looks right in here. In your kitchen, such as it is. A bit sweaty. A bit messy. Big enough to crowd the room without trying. The flat already warmer and more lived in for having him inside it. And you want him to stay so badly it makes your palms damp round the glass. Spoken aloud, it would sound ridiculous. Inside your head, it has already settled into fact.

You clear your throat and look anywhere but at his mouth. “Right,” you say. “If we stand here much longer, that desk will build itself out of spite.”

That gets a smile out of him. Small. Crooked. Ruinous. “Can’t have that.”

So, the desk gets built. The shelves end up arranged into a final, satisfying shape which, if everything goes to plan, will make a small home library. Duncan measures them up, shifts them by inches, squints, steps back, shifts them again, makes them line as evenly as the old building allows and does the bulk of the work with the drill. You end up his nurse, passing him sleeves and screws when he asks, holding things steady where he tells you, fetching the bits that roll away.

At one point he grunts and squints at the wall with such offence in his face that you ask, “Did BILLY say something rude?”

He snorts. “No. But I might need your hawk eyes here, luv.”

“I see,” you tease. “I’ll tell you a secret. Can’t see shit from afar. I suppose that makes us one properly sighted person between us.”

The prospect of making something whole with you is so enticing Duncan nearly misses the fact that you have slipped under his arm and then between his biceps. From there he gets your neck again. The shape of the space behind your ear. The little hollow where he decides his fingers would sit perfectly, cradling your head while he kissed you stupid. He puts all his strength into pressing the shelf to the wall while you screw the tiny bits in, holds his breath and prays for his body to behave. The space between his stomach and your back is so narrow he could close it in one step. Then he could bury his nose in your nape. Then—

He blinks against the thought so hard something scratches his eyeball. “Bloody fu—” he mutters, trying to wipe his face against his shoulder.

You feel the shift and turn your head a little. “You all right?”

“Yeah, just… something in my eye. Dust, I—”

You crane your neck first, then turn in the cage of his body. Set the screwdriver down. Dust your hands off on your jeans. “Hold it,” you say. “Come here.”

Dear Lord above.

Your hands reach for him. One finds the bridge of his glasses and pushes them up till they catch in his hair. The other comes to his cheek. Then both of them are there, cool skin, cradling his face as you pull him down to your height and look straight into the ruined eye. Duncan goes still from boots to teeth.

“D’you see it?” he chokes out.

“Yeah. Just an eyelash. Long one,” you mutter.

Your knuckle comes to his lid and draws it down gently. The eyelash—a brown curved thing, outrageous in its prettiness, like he has put a bloody curler to it—works itself loose, catches him once more for spite, then blinks far enough free for you to pinch it between thumb and forefinger. You hold it up in front of him, forgetting he likely cannot make out a thing without his glasses.

“There,” you say. “Better?”

“Can’t see it, but I believe you,” Duncan breathes.

He stays bent over you, close enough that the freckles show one by one. You could count them if given the time. You want the time. All day, if possible. Or a year. All year to count them and then find out whether they continue elsewhere. He licks his lips once and then keeps very still, save for the faint trembling in the arms.

You pull him a fraction lower. Then another.

Duncan looks like he wants to say something and rejects each option in real time. His mouth opens. Shuts. When he thinks you are about to kiss him, you slide his glasses back down onto the bridge of his nose and he makes the smallest wounded sound in his throat, near enough a whine to count. But you keep coming. Closer. Closer. He can feel your breath wash warm over the tip of his nose, over his upper lip. Then your mouths are there, set together already, the contact made and held. Soft and dry with the day. Neither of you moving. Both of you letting the other back out if they want it badly enough. There are no takers. 

Duncan closes his eyes. His voice comes out low and strained. “C’mon, girl. Give me something.”

“This?” you say, and then move. And god, what a movement that is. He feels it everywhere. In his toes, where you step on them to lengthen your reach, and he welcomes that weight. On his scalp, where your fingernails scratch him so deliciously a shiver skitters down his spine, making his hips move forth. On his upper lip that gets framed by both of yours and then his mouth opens and his tongue slips out and Duncan is so trustful of his own work his palms finally leave the shelf. They come to gather what there is of you. He wraps you all tight and around in his arms, sets his hands on your waist and hip and with it you lift a little, and in that lift Duncan’s kissing his neighbour.

His glasses get skewed. He steps away from the bookcase and to the nearest wall, where he presses you in. One tug, and your legs know exactly what to do—they cinch him, ankles crossed in the small of his back, and you’re airborne, clutching his neck, thighs supported in his grip. He keeps kissing, because this is simply impossible and if there is news about to be broken to him that permanence is not an option he’d rather receive it later than sooner.

“Wait,” you mutter. “God, I’ve been trying not to do that.”

“Y-you?” he stammers. “Why?”

“Because you’re my neighbour,” you say, swiping hair off his forehead. For once, your faces are level. He’s so damn gorgeous it’s nearly absurd for him to be unaware of it. Angular where it matters, soft where it’s unexpected. You can think of another arrangement where height will not exactly come into play, but first—

You’re overcome with need to glue yourself to him, so you hug him into a full-body shackle: tighten your arms and legs where they keep you up, and bury your face into his neck to mumble a wishful, “You’re not a player, are you? You don’t go around calling women lass like you know what it’s doing, right?”

His palms twitch on your thighs. Face moves towards you, then stops, held there by caution so naked it shreds. He lets out a breath that is a quizzical chuckle. “Jesus, no,” he says. “I can barely talk to you.”

A laugh breaks out of you, and then out of him too. He tips his forehead to yours for a second, still holding you up like it costs him nothing.

“Are you?” he asks, quieter. “A maneater?”

The thing is, you were struck with him from the start. There was lust in it, greedy enough to startle you with your own nerve. But the rest has come on slower and worse. Out of use. Out of kindness. Out of watching him take the weight of things without making a show of it. Out of seeing him go soft-faced with concentration, seeing how badly he wants and how carefully he handles the wanting, as if it is something that could do damage if let loose carelessly. You have known him three days and already the flat feels rearranged around his presence. Maybe this is what blessing looks like in real time. Proximity. Repetition. Two people getting an unfairly clear look at each other too quickly.

You lean back enough to see him. “Do I look like one?”

His eyes go over your face as though the answer might be written there if he studies hard enough. “No,” he says, with such immediate certainty it almost hurts. Then, because apparently that is not enough for him: “You look pretty. And kind.”

A smile tries to happen. Your throat goes tight around it. “That so?”

He nods once. “Yeah.”

You smooth your thumb over the heat in his cheek, the rasp of ginger stubble there. His glasses are still crooked. His mouth is still open the slightest bit from the last kiss. Entirely too dear. Entirely too much.

Oh, and does he. The second time it comes with all his better judgement buried alive beneath it. He gets his mouth on yours like he has finally understood the point of having one. Bolder now. Hungrier. Your lower lip catches between his teeth and there is nothing neat about the way he bites it, only care and the lack of enough care, both at once. Crooked teeth bite just fine, you learn. Better than fine. He mouths you until your breath goes thin, then drops to your neck and inhales so deeply it feels dragged out of the soles of his feet. Nibs, and whatever was warming in you goes past that. Burning now. Clean through.

“Bed,” you mutter, fingers twisted up in his shirt.

Duncan had no idea that was even possible, that one word from you could turn his whole body into a set of orders barked and obeyed in the same second. He does what he is told. Walks with you held high on him, your weight gathered tight and easy, and when he reaches the mattress on the floor he goes down with care, one knee first, then the other, until your back is sinking into bed that is still only a mattress and a fitted sheet half-pulled loose at one corner. He stays over you, breathing hard enough to show it, one hand planted by your head, the other still hooked under your thigh.

“You sure?” he asks.

You nod too fast, then colour. “Yeah. Sorry. I’m just…” Your face does something shy and pained. “Sweaty.”

Duncan looks at you. Thoughtfully. Like this is a thing worth considering from all angles. Weren’t he the biggest sweetheart god ever let loose on the public, that look might be labelled as menacing, too.

“I know,” he says. Then, lowers his face to your belly.

Words leave your body. That is all. They just go. He presses his mouth to you through the shirt first, then rides it up with both hands, bunching cotton inch by inch until your arms have to lift. The chance is taken: his hand slides to your wrists and sets them above your head. Your breath catches so sharply it nearly cuts. Duncan’s nose goes to your skin and he smells you like he means to learn something useful. Belly first. Then higher. He drags slow through the middle, mouth open now and then, breathing in. Your chest. The damp little hollows under your arms, where the tickle of his breath makes you squirm and laugh helplessly. Higher still, until he reaches your throat. He sweeps your hair aside with his cheek to get a clean stripe of skin and settles there, breathing you in as if he has come home to it.

“I like the way you smell,” he says against your neck. His voice roughens on the last word. “Bloody maddening, if you ask me.”

It does something murderous to your insides. You twist under him, wrists flexing in his hold, just to get closer. His grip tightens by a hair from pure absorption. Nose traces the line under your jaw. Another small bite. Your heel drags against the sheet.

“Duncan,” you say, and it comes out wrecked enough to make him lift his head.

Hair is falling into his eyes. Glasses sit crooked on his nose. His mouth is wet and pink from kissing you, cheeks spill red all over his skin and you wonder if that blush exists below the T-shirt too. Sensitive. There is a look on his face like he is trying very hard to keep being good while every part of him is begging for permission to stop.

“Yeah?” he says.

You swallow. Feel his thumb resting on the inside of your wrists. The whole blunt weight of him held off you by restraint alone.

“More,” you tell him.

Lances him clean through, that one. Duncan’s eyes drop to your mouth, then lower, as if he means to be sensible about it and catalogue the options. “Where?” he asks, voice thick. “Tell me where, lass.”

You could laugh at how decent he is, kneeling over you in a state that ought to excuse much worse, still asking like the answer matters more than his own pain. Instead you lift your wrists a little in his hand and he understands. Lets them go. Your palms land on his shoulders and stay a second. On the impressive spread of him and the hard work of holding himself up. “Everywhere,” you say, then, because he looks like he may pass out from being too good, “Start with here.”

You guide him back to your neck. The instruction is taken with shameful gratitude—he might go down as a man who leaves souvenirs after all. Mouth finds the place he’s already put some mind into, perfecting the bruise with focused lips, then the edge of his teeth, then the flat of his tongue to soothe what he has done. Then, he shifts—nose wedging the collar of your shirt aside, finding skin hidden all day under cotton and sweat. Every new inch offends him with how little of it he had before.

Sounds get born in his throat and die into a hiccup every time your body speaks up. There are fingers in his hair. Little gasps. Movement under his groin is particularly unbearable when your leg brushes him. No matter how old and stretched, jeans were simply not made to contain a boner, and Duncan learns it the literal hard way.

“You’re doing me in,” he says into your throat.

It bounces off your pulse. “You seem alive enough.”

He laughs, a breathy little snort. Lifts his head just far enough to look at you. His face is flushed down to the neck. He reaches between your bodies with obvious reluctance and catches the hem of your shirt in both hands. Stops there. “Can I?”

You nod. It still does not satisfy him.

“Mm. And now can you tell me that I can?” he says.

“Yes, you can,” you tell him. “Take it off.”

He strips you with the care of a man undoing bandages. Your shirt goes up in stages, dragged over your ribs, your bra, your face, until it is gone. He stares long enough to make your stomach jump. It’s slower than everything—than a quick skim of current wants or broad hungry looking. Almost dazed. Like each small part of you has to travel the whole way through him before he can move to the next one. His thumb runs along the underside of your breast through the bra, testing nothing more scandalous than weight, and his eyes close briefly at the feel of it.

“Jesus,” he says under his breath.

“What?”

He opens his eyes. “You’re…” Then stops, mouth twisting, unhappy with every word available. “A lot.”

You grin before you can help it. “Good a lot?”

His answer is to lower himself and press his face between your breasts, right into the warm cleft through the bra, as if language is a thing failed beyond repair. The sound you make at that goes straight to his hips. Duncan exhales hard, rubs his cheek on the lace, then wedges his fingers between your back and the mattress, to the clasp at your back with more hope than skill. The first try gets him nowhere. The second worse. He pulls away far enough to glare at your tits like they have personally insulted his family.

“Need help?” you ask.

He looks embarrassed for exactly one second. “Need a miracle.”

You laugh. Arch and bend and press your belly out and your arms briefly make it look like you’ve grown small wings. That is worse for him somehow, watching you undo your own bra for his benefit. When it loosens he sighs like he is the one being let out of it. He peels it away, lets it fall wherever, then just looks again. His hands come up and hover, huge and uncertain, before settling on your ribs. Warm. Shaking faintly.

“Still alright?” he asks.

“Yes.”

You find him. Guide him higher. The effect is immediate. Duncan’s breath leaves him in one stunned pull. Then, it’s roughness on skin. Palms large enough to divide equally, a tit per one. He holds you and smiles like an absolute goof.

“There,” you murmur. “That’s better.”

His mouth opens. Nothing useful comes of it. Which, really, fair.

You slide one hand down from his neck to the hem of his T-shirt, bunch it in your fist and tug. It lifts enough to show a strip of stomach, warm and furred and indecent in its ordinariness. A man’s body right there in your hands. “Can I take your shirt off, Dunk?”

That sobers him by half a shade. Makes his eyes search yours. “Yeah,” he says. Then, because permissions have to be balanced: “You can.”

You peel it up and over him. Duncan helps in the last second, ducking his head, pulling one arm free and then the other. The shirt lands somewhere by the mattress and suddenly there is too much of him at once. Chest broad enough to lay a proper grievance on. Shoulders built for carrying things that have no business being carried by one person. A scatter of pale freckles over the tops of them, which feels like information the public should not have access to. Hair dusting through the middle and down his stomach, where it disappears under the waistband of his jeans and leaves your mind to finish the route unsupervised.

“Oh, Jesus,” you say before deciding whether you mean to.

The colour in his face deepens. As you suspected, it bleeds down: stains that bloom like bruises sketch his neck and lower. “What?”

“Nothing,” you lie. Your hand goes out, palm to his chest, just to see. Warm. Slightly damp. Hard and alive under skin. His heart is going like a thing trapped. “You’re very…”

He watches you try to land it. Offers, “Big?” and somehow even that comes out apologetic.

“Hot,” you say, and the laugh that breaks out of him is so helpless it nearly kills you.

You kiss him to put him out of his misery. Or yourself. Or deepen it. Hard to say. His hands wake up after that. One stays on your breast, thumb dragging over the nipple until your back leaves the mattress. The other travels down your ribs, your waist, the notch of your hip, then lower still until he reaches the button of your jeans and stops there like someone brought up against a locked gate.

His forehead drops to yours. “Can I?”

“Yes.”

The button goes. The zip next. Duncan’s fingers slip below and the sound you make at the first pass of his knuckles is enough to make him shut his eyes. There’s no rush in it, just checking. He decides one yes about bottoms is probably enough, so instead of cramming a palm into denim, he hooks both hands over the waistband and slides your jeans down to your knees. You kick the rest off.

A quick examination of conscience later, Duncan realises he is the victim of the mysterious ways the universe works. One day he sees a girl in a corridor and thinks all the unhelpful thoughts about her. The next, he offers to help because he’s built like that. Now the same girl lies below him, naked as day, clearly wanting him back if he’s learnt anything at all about why girls get wet between the legs. This is the part he wasn’t prepared for. Pining over a face with no name to it is one kind of torture. Being desired is another, because desire asks something back.

He runs a hand the whole length of you, ankle to knee to thigh, until it lands there. The skin is damp, curls glossy, and when he squints hard enough through those goddamn stupid glasses he can see your muscles clenching, impatient. Impatient for him. Your hands get impatient too: they come for his buttons, shake there a little. He lets you fumble a bit, even allows one clumsy tug, until, inevitably, his trousers stay locked round his thighs.

“We in a hurry?” he asks.

“N-no, I just—” Your brows furrow; throat bobs. You inhale, then sigh out, “want you.”

His mouth pulls crooked with it, because the sweetness of being wanted hurts him a little. He comes down next to you, onto his side, one arm sliding under your neck so your head has somewhere proper to go. He kisses your temple once, warm and brief, then the corner of your eye.

“Soon, lass,” he says.

You only huff at that, offended on principle. The offence does not survive long. His hand drops between your legs and one finger presses inside with all the patience he has got, and your whole body gives a startled little jump.

“Oh—”

“Good oh?”

“Best fucking oh,” you say, and a cute smile blooms on him.

He works it slow, watching your face with such naked concentration it ought to count as indecent. The glasses are slipping again. He nudges them up with his shoulder, fails, gives up, so you help by plucking them off. His thumb finds the place above and your breath leaves you in strips. He swallows, looks faintly green around the gills with the effort of saying the next thing, then says it anyway.

“You got a condom?”

“N-no, but—” A sharper thrust of his thumb splits the thought clean in two. “Fuck—I’m on the pill.”

Something truly frightful must cross his face, because you rush to fix it.

“Nothing whorish, I promise. Just health reasons. I’m all alone like a country dunny otherwise.”

Duncan shuts his eyes for half a second and bows his head, not out of judgement but because the opposite has arrived too hard and fast. A blessing to him, that. A crime, otherwise. He gets half a mind to entertain the daftest thought alive—that maybe it was always meant to go this way. You, alone like a country dunny. Him, not much better.

Second finger joins the first. You make a sound into his throat and the silly thought dies happy.

He works you open by degrees so thoroughly you start wondering if there’s going to be a follow up to that condom question. Not that his fingers don’t feel good—the fucking do, almost too much. But from where you’re cradled you can see exactly the way his cock is jerking in his underwear, still framed by the fly of his jeans. Simultaneously you know he’s the kind of guy who’d close your trembling legs after you come, then cuddle into your neck until he softens, because this is not about him. So you try again.

“Duncan,” you breathe. “Enough, I—”

“You’ll need more than that for me,” he says. Abashed. I’m sorry that my cock’s too big to fuck you right away and there will be no quickies in our life kind of embarrassment. It’s unbearably sweet. Insanely hot. Blood pumps your cheeks plump and warm already, and then Duncan nearly ends you by saying, “Need to sort you out first.”

And it’s the first time in your life a man has told you his size might be a problem while making it sound like care came first and ego didn’t show up at all. He’s everything but swagger. Your heart does something daft and soft around the edges while the rest of you clenches hot around his fingers.

“Okay,” you say, cupping his face. “Okay, one more. Just—” A swallow. “Fair warning, I might come.”

It startles a grin out of him. Mean by his standards. Lovely by any other. “How’s that a bad thing?” he asks. Kisses you once, hard enough to shut you up for a second, then gives you that remedy for a cock-too-big problem of his and your vision bleaches.

God, you’re full. If girth blesses every part of him evenly, you may indeed be doomed. You would be already if he wasn’t this thoughtfully slow. You can feel in real time how your muscles adjust round him, then take a second to unclench when he withdraws to the first knuckle.

“You alright?” he asks, and his own voice tells on him. Tight. Thinned out with strain. You look so pretty it’s becoming unendurable. Hair dragged wrong, mouth open, eyes gone bright and glassy in a way that makes him so hard it’s difficult to think with any dignity.

Your nails dig into his nape. “I’m so good I’m gonna lose my mind in a second,” you breathe. A swallow. “Can you please take your pants off?”

He nods, nose brushing yours. “Alright,” he says. “If anything hurts, you tell me, yeah?”

Then he has to do the humiliating bit. First, he drags the shoes off his feet by pressing a sole to each heel. Then, shimmies out of the jeans, dragging the underwear down with them. Kicks that off too, and one leg catches, stubborn, round his ankle. By the time he joins you in nudity, he is red right up to the ears and flat on his back, camped next to you in all his difficult truth, cock heavy on his stomach.

Your eyes drop and your breath does an audible hiccup. You can feel his stare burning a hole through your forehead. He lies there tense, arms pinned to his sides like they are itching to cover himself up. God, what a waste that would be. It hits you then that he is boyish in random places so he can be an exaggeration of a man in others, and somehow all of that adds up to just a lad.

And since the opportunity has presented itself, you take it.

He is large enough that the head reaches near his navel, and yes, the girth is something to reckon with—but haven’t you just been worked open for this exact occasion? There is something insanely lovely about a man who would have half a locker room struck dumb standing for verdict, only to lie there with tension standing out in his forearms like he expects to be judged instead of wanted. He is not carved out of marble either, thank god. There is softness to him. Hair lies over his chest in an even, soft spread and trails down his stomach, which has the smallest give to it, a swell around the navel that looks made for a cheek to rest there. A vein runs the whole length of his cock, and with the pulse inside it he twitches, lifts off his stomach and falls back again. Heavy thing. Solid. Human. Entirely too much and, for that very reason, exactly right.

You put a palm on his arm. Murmur, “Come here,” and squeeze till he gets the message.

Duncan rolls back onto his side to face you, still halfway looking like he might apologise for the state of himself. You hook a thigh over his hip and pull him in until your groins meet. The contact draws a raw little grunt out of him. Good. Let him suffer a bit too. You kiss him—once, slow enough to make it stick, then again with your mouth smiling into his.

“I like you,” you whisper. His face does a helpless thing around the eyes. “Come on,” you say, nudging his nose with yours. “I’ll take it easy on you.”

“Will you?” he asks, while suffering internally. Both a promise of bliss and a difficult animal before him, he fists himself at the base and lines up. Your lips kiss the crown. Arms yoke his neck until noses flatten against each other. He can feel where your thigh, the meat of it, spills over his hip bone, quivers and settles heavier than he’d suspect it can. First inch, and he’s breathing hard. A bit more, and you join him.

“Shit,” you mutter. “Keep… keep going.”

He does, but so slowly it nearly stops counting as movement. Your body loses the line between pain and pleasure. There is excruciating sweetness in his hand. He manages to hold man’s favourite handle (your ass) while rubbing his thumb in compassionate strokes. Mouth hums and lashes tickle your cheek, eyes search for signs of sore that’s unwanted. The stretch he delivers burns, the opening is downright rude in its bluntness, but Duncan remains gentle, and that’s what turns this whole thing so total.

Underneath the turmoil, deeper, stranger, comes fullness that puts your musings about fingers to shame. There’s weight to it, length to it and, fundamentally, intent that makes your body waver between flinching from it or gathering it closer, so it tries both.

Duncan sees the whole war pass through your face and stops dead. “Too much?”

“N-no,” You breathe through it. Feel the wait in the whole of his frame. “Stay a minute. Just let me—”

He goes still at once. By force of patience, and by that old art he has been made to practise all his life and still has not mastered. A man built like Duncan does not get much leave to move through the world carelessly. People take one look at the size of him and hand him a part before he has opened his mouth: lift this, carry that, mind yourself, do not crowd, do not startle, be gentle. So he learns slowness. Learns to take the edge off himself before it reaches anyone else.

Now all of that gets spent on holding still while your cunt drags on the little of him already inside, hot and slick and so tight round the crown and upper body of his cock it feels like a clean seizure. He had let himself think of this in useless scraps. The sight of it. The permission of it. The prospect of being taken in where he has wanted to be since that first day. The actual feel is another beast entirely. The yielding comes by increments. The muscles take him, think better of it, grip again. Heat packs close enough to border on pain. If this much is enough to strip every spare thought out of his head, Duncan has no idea what shape he will be in when you let him deeper.

When your hips start making little lawless attempts at settling further onto him, he asks, “What’re you doing, hm?”

You huff at him. “Bouncing on it crazy-style, what does it look like?”

Insane, is what you are. He lets out a full snort, then another, and it all breaks into a boyish giggle. “Have I got a mad girl, then?”

“Yeah, I’m fully bonkers,” you grin. Sweat breaks on your forehead and it looks pretty. “Probably should’ve told you before—” The angle shifts, minutely. You sink deeper. Moan tears your mouth open and Duncan’s cock jerks inside you. “Oh fuck, it’s getting good. Oh, there—”

“There?”

“Yeah, right there,” you say, hugging him tighter and speaking into his mouth. “Oh God, you’re precious. You were right.” A swallow. “With that sorting-out thing.”

He kisses the corner of your mouth. “You tell me,” he says. “Tell me if I’m being a bastard.”

“Impossible,” you whisper. “No chance. Fuck, Duncan—”

One of your hands comes loose from his neck and slips between your bodies. You press it low on your belly first, just above where the softness gives way to strain, and when you sink carefully again you can feel it there if you mean to. A hard shape. Buried enough that the knowledge of it makes your face go hot all over.

“Christ,” you breathe.

Duncan’s brow pulls in. “What?”

You catch his wrist and drag his hand from your hip to your stomach. Flatten it there. Make him feel it. Then, because the thing asks to be proved twice, you rock down on him again and pin his palm in place.

“Look,” you say. “Look what you’re doing to me.”

There he is, a proof of blood under flesh—filling you so completely it overspills. His fingers flare over your stomach, press, and Duncan can touch his own cock through the membrane of skin. His mouth falls open. Red surges up his throat so fast you nearly laugh.

“Jesus,” he says, stunned. “Lass.”

You do it once more, slower, both of you feeling for it. “That’s me,” he says, dazed.

You nod against his cheek. “That’s you.”

His eyes shut. One beat. Two. Then he makes a sound into your mouth that is pure loss of it. His forehead presses to yours. “Girl,” he says, thumb twitching over your belly, “you keep doing that and I’ll be no use to either of us.”

“It’s your turn,” you say, wrapping your arm back where it belongs. Wrapping him all over with your limbs until he’s shackled and happy about it. “Fuck me. Please.”

“Okay,” Duncan says. Swallows. “Okay, just—can you tell me again? Please,” he says, hoping you’ll catch the meaning. That’s it’s not about smugness, but for a big bastard like him, needing to hear it twice before he believes someone truly wants him this bad.

“Come on, Dunk. Fuck me.” There’s a kiss on his forehead. “Nice and slow until you come, yeah?”

Before he knows it, he’s nodding like a daft thing, and his hips start moving. Gentle thrusts, deep, fat rolls of pelvis until a smile pulls your lips. “Just like that,” you tell him. “You’re doing so good. God, you feel good, fuck—”

“Take it easy on me, lass,” he breathes. “You promised.”

He holds you, or himself onto, the dip of your hip. Kisses you through it, badly at first because neither of you can keep the rhythm of your mouths and bodies straight, then better, then worse again when the feeling climbs. The heel of his palm presses on your stomach where he bulges you out and the fingers he keeps pointed down so they can brush you whenever you decide a twitch from your side is due. Crude little arrangement, but effective.

“Shit,” you grunt. “How you doing, hm?”

"Barely," he says. "You?"

The truth of it is written all over him. The tremor in his thigh and the way his breath snags. The slow loss of that thoughtful caution he has worn like a second skin all day. He is trying, still, to be good. It only makes the strain of it show more plainly.

"Close," you tell him, feeling your own spine prickling with it. "Fuck, so close. Will you come inside me?" 

His whole face changes around it. “Jesus, luv,” he says, nearly bitten off. Wedges his nose into your neck. Then, lower: “Yeah. God, yes.”

You can tell exactly how sore you are going to be tomorrow and expect your insides to have a different shape starting now. But your body has already made up its mind about him. It is learning him in real time and keeping the record. From the look of him, he would let himself be kept if asked, so you have a growing feeling that this must be the place. And then another thought comes, equal parts romantic and foul: that if he finished there, if he gave you all of it, the ache might turn kinder.

And Duncan, god—he's truly barely holding. He tries to think of neutral things but whenever his lids part your mouth is there, blurred and lovely, and you smell so good skin is about to melt off his cheeks. His balls ride up a notch, tense, and go hard with the strain in the sack, and the whole of his length burns so bright he feels it in his temples. It’s hard to keep his thigh from quivering and his hand from misbehaving. Fingers dig where he holds you and there’s a growing worry he’ll leave you with a palm-shaped bruise on your ass. He hopes you’ll forgive him.

“F-fuck,” you grit. “Duncan—”

You tighten like you mean to choke the soul out of him. Everything—arms, legs, cunt—seizes around him. The skin goes taut under his touch and you stare him dead in the eye from under eyelids so fuck-drunk he’s never been granted a sight like this in his life.

In this entanglement of trembling thighs and shoulders working so hard they seem knocked senseless, he feels it pulled out of him by force. Comes, and keeps coming, with his face pressed into yours, panting, and muttering yes, girl, yes, until his toes go cold and Duncan realises he’s way too long for your mattress and his feet kept touching the floor the whole time he’s been making love to you. 

He blinks and feels the resistance of skin against his eyelashes. Learns that he’s crushed you in a bear hug so tight your breath has gone shallow. His arms loosen. Face comes up to scan for damage and instead of asking if you’re alright, Duncan hears himself saying, “I’ve been half gone on you since the hallway.”

Your eyes are glassy. Your mouth does that helpless pull that’s a smile around something overwhelming. One that happens when people burst out laughing instead of crying.

“I hope I lived up to expectations,” you say. “Because I’ve been half gone on you since the post boxes and now I’m fully.”

“My girl,” Duncan says, swiping hair off your forehead and disbelieving his own boldness. “Are you my girl?”

You nod and hold your arms out for him. It does something quiet and final to his face. Duncan folds himself back down into you, gathers you up proper, then draws back just enough to look. His hand runs the line of your side, careful and searching.

“I didn’t hurt you?”

You shake your head. “No.” A laugh, weak and warm. “I’ve learnt a thing or two, though.”

That gets one out of him too. He ducks his head, grinning into your cheek, then lifts it again with some practical thought arriving behind the eyes. “Hold on a sec.”

You blink at him. “Why?”

He glances down at the mattress, the sheet, the general state of things. “Because that bed’s poor enough without me making a full show of it,” he says. “I don’t see another in here, so I’m trying to save you the mess.”

You do hold on. Arms and legs go round him at once, locking him in place so completely it startles a pleased little huff out of him. Duncan plants a palm behind him and gets to his feet with you wrapped round him. The lift goes through his whole body. A hard breath. A tightening in the jaw. One small adjustment of grip when your weight shifts. Then he is up, broad and warm and breathing a touch harder than before, and you are still exactly where you want to be.

Still, you ask, “I’m sorry, and what exactly are you going to do? Pull out over a bin?”

Duncan looks mildly offended. “You strike me as a lady,” he says. “I had the shower in mind. If you’ve one of those.”

You smile into his mouth. “I’m tempted to say no only to make you march us like this to your flat.”

He fixes his grip by hitching you once higher on him. There’s a small girlish yelp. His nose rubs along yours, playful and mean and soft and—

“Will you take it easy on me, lass?”

You nod with your face still tucked close to his. “Will you?”

He will, or lightning may as well strike him where he stands. Because Duncan is in love with his neighbour, and this one is not going anywhere.

Golden afternoon sunshine glitters across the river’s surface, mottled between the gently swaying leaves of the willow above. The branches skim the water, a brush against canvas, as you lather honey wax soap between two wet hands. You hum quietly as you place the soap bar amongst the shingles before running your fingers over Dunk’s hair, threading bubbles through the lightly knotted strands.

The knight’s eyes are closed as he sits in the river’s shallows, water lapping around his bare hips. You kneel on the bank, his thick woolen cloak softening the press of stones beneath your legs as you extend your arms and scrub your fingers against his scalp.

“Hair like a horse’s,” you remark, taking a good fistful of his tawny brown hair and pulling it out, admiring the length of the soapy strands. “S’gotten long, hasn’t it?”

Dunk leans back into your touch, your other hand working at the nape of his neck. He keeps his eyes closed as he speaks. “You can cut it if you want.”

You laugh softly, twirling the thick lock around your finger. You give it a little tug, a small grunt leaving the back of his throat.

“No, I like it,” you mutter, before wiping the remaining suds across his freckled shoulders. You pat him firmly on the back, the slap of wet skin loud through the woodland around you. “Rinse, boy.”

Dunk does what he’s told and bends his large body forward. He dunks his head beneath the water, hands finding his hair to wash the soap away. Your eyes trace the curve of his spine, the muscles across his back and shoulders, but you make good work of ignoring the dip in his lower back and the curve of his arse. Instead, you watch a misty cloud of white float away downstream, before Dunk is pulling himself out of the water.

And you realise you didn’t get out of the way.

“Shit!” You exclaim, attempting to fall to the side, but to no avail. Dunk whips his head back, cold river water dashing across your face and chest as he shakes his head like a dog. You groan, slapping his shoulder as you get to your feet, other hand wiping down your face. “Every fucking time, Dunk.”

“Then you should expect it by now,” Dunk says, smiling up at you as you wring excess water from your sleeves. You shoot him a pointed look and he laughs. He wades out further into the river, turning and floating, watching you carefully. “Are you bathing too?”

You nod, already untying your dress. You shed your layers until you’re bare atop his cloak, bending to fold your clothes neatly atop the spun wool. It’s a juxtaposition to his own belongings, which are strewn haphazardly across the bank. Carefully, you toe the water and despite the pleasant spring air glowing warm around you, the water bites cold.

“It’s not bad,” Dunk tells you. He’s looking in your direction, but those sky-blue eyes of his are squarely on your face. Countless times you’ve been bare before him in manners like this, and countless times his eyes have never strayed from the lines of your face. He brings a hand out of the water, cupping some in his palm. “See?”

“Says the walking furnace himself,” you mumble as you take a deep breath, realising slowly wading in wasn’t going to do you any favours. So, you take a few large steps until you’re knee deep in the river, before diving straight in. Cold water rushes around you, and when you break the surface a few feet from Dunk, you gasp. “Ah! Dunk, you prick, it’s freezing!”

You splash him then, and he takes it with a wide grin split across his face. You splash him again, and he chuckles, reaching one strong arm out and taking hold of your wrist. Your other hand splashes too, water flying around you, and he grabs that wrist with his other hand. He holds you firmly, and before you know it, he’s dunking you under the water.

You’re under for barely a second, and he hoists you out, laughter echoing loudly through the clearing, glancing off the river’s surface like a skipping stone.

“I hate you,” you spit, but you don’t mean it. 

You regain control of your arms—he lets you go, not that you have to fight him—and you grab the nape of his neck. He laughs while you shove him beneath the water, holding him there like you mean to drown him. The knight lets you, of course, considering he gives you a victorious four seconds before he easily rights himself and comes up for air. You let out a playful yelp, swimming away as he takes a swipe at you. You kick yourself off the stony bottom, paddling away, but he gets a hand on your ankle and yanks you back so firmly that a wake pushes out around you, sending the water lapping higher up the shingled bank.

“Dunk!” You shout as you thrash about the water. You look around the forest, dappled sunlight passing across your eyes in short, golden bursts. You smile as you shout, “My closest friend is drowning me! A knight is drowning me! Help!”

Dunk smiles, rolling his eyes. “Oh, hush. You deserve it.”

That night, beneath the ever-reaching cloak of darkness, you huddle by the fire, gnawing on a slightly stale roll of beef-stuffed bread. You had been reading your book—the only book you had, and which you had read eight times over yet—which now sits at your feet. There’s a slight chill in the air that licks at the flames in such a way they look to be dancing atop the gathered branches. Dunk approaches from tending to the horses, pulling his thick cloak from his shoulders. You look up, mouth full and cheeks protruding, as Dunk bends and wraps his cloak around your body.

“Y’do’ h’v t’do dat,” you say around your dinner, and he looks at you strangely as you chew.

“D’you just cast a spell on me?” He asks, shaking his head as he settles down beside you.

You slap his thigh, chewing and finally swallowing. You shrug your shoulders, gesturing to the heavy cloak now shrouding you. “You don’t have to do that,” you repeat, clearer now.

“Right, then I’ll take it back.” Dunk reaches a hand out, but you lean away.

“No, no, whatever, thank you,” you say quickly, enjoying the added layer and the heat as the nightly chill rustles the dead leaves on the ground around you. Dunk just huffs, amused, reclining back against the trunk of the willow. You look down at your half-eaten roll then, sighing through your nose before offering it to him. “You can have the rest.”

He shakes his head firmly. “No, you need to eat.”

“This is my second roll.”

“Exactly,” Dunk says, eyes flitting down your covered frame for just a second, flames reflecting in his eyes. He looks back at you. “You need to eat. I’d make you a third if we had any rolls left.”

You shake the bread roll in front of his face, a strip of salt beef hanging out the bitten end. “I’ve eaten. Have the rest.”

“No, you need to eat.”

“Dunk, I’ve eaten. I’m full.”

“No, you’re not.”

You roll your eyes. “Take the fucking bread.”

Dunk eyes the food sceptically for a moment, then looks back to you. “Are you sure?”

“Take the bread or I’ll throw it at your big head.”

Dunk takes it without another word, his sword-calloused fingers brushing yours. He takes a large bite, chewing contently as you lean back against the tree as well. Your shoulders knock together, and you feel the heat radiating off of him despite his thin tunic and fraying summer cloak he insists he mends himself—despite your sewing skills being considerably better than his (which, in itself, is not difficult considering his are… poor).

You take the corner of the cloak, your thumb immediately poking through a hole there. He watches you, eyes wide and glistening. There are crumbs around his lips.

“You need to let me mend this,” you tell him, wiggling your thumb for emphasis.

“I can do it.”

“I’ve mended every cloak you’ve had since we were children,” you say pointedly, tugging on the hole. It rips a little bigger, and he makes a face. You hide your smile. “My needlework is much better than yours.”

He huffs. “I mended my trousers just this morning.”

In the semi-darkness, your eyes find a patch of poorly stitched fabric beneath his right knee.

You laugh. “Yeah, I can tell.”

Dunk takes a rough bite of the bread roll, shaking his head as he chews. “Some friend you are.”

—✿—

Four days later, you and Dunk ride your horses along a well-trodden path. It rings around a dense thicket of woodland, and you listen to the way in which the trees jostle their leaves and branches together as the breeze blows through them. Birdsong filters out between the canopy too. You close your eyes, seated comfortably in your saddle as you ride Chestnut.

Ahead of you however, several hooded figures jump out onto the dirt road, brandishing jagged daggers. Dunk reacts before you, one strong arm shooting out to seize hold of Chestnut’s reins and pull you to an abrupt stop. Chestnut huffs in protest as Dunk manoeuvres himself and Thunder in front of you, the sturdy warhorse barely blinking as the three men advance.

“Pretty horse y’ve got,” one of the men says, gesturing to Thunder with the point of his dagger. The man’s eyes lift over to you a moment later, and he smiles a mouth full of silver as he gestures at you next. “Pretty wee lady y’ve got, too.”

Dunk’s face is set in stone, a steely flash in his eyes as he dismounts. All three men snap their eyes away from you to peer up at the hulking mass of a man standing before them. Dunk stands taller than Thunder’s withers, and he isn’t a small horse by any means.

One of the men falters on his sentence, concern flashing across his face, but the man who had first spoken takes a brave—or, you think, rather foolish—step forward, dagger outstretched. Dunk’s hand is balled tight on the pommel of his sword, which rests faithfully at his hip.

“Coin,” the man instructs simply. His eyes shoot up to you again, and you feel a worried chill creep up your spine. A sickly sort of nausea spindles through your diaphragm too. The man looks back at Dunk, dagger brandishing. “Or we can take the lady—”

Dunk rips his sword from its rope sheath and points it at the man. The other two take a few large steps back. Dunk grips the sword, the blade unwavering as he angles it directly at the man’s face.

“Speak one more word and you lose a hand,” Dunk grits out, the muscles in his jaw working. You watch, slightly helpless, from your saddle. Dunk nods towards the other two men, who still clutch their daggers in dirt-stained fingers. “Well? Anything to say?”

The first man scowls. “You—”

Dunk spins his wrist and shifts forward, blade of his sword coming down hard on the man’s hand. Blood splatters outwards in stripes of red silk, painting the earth like a bug squashed beneath a thumb. The man lets out a harrowing scream, his dagger hitting the reddened earth with a dull thud as he backs away, cradling his hand now. A large, deep gash splits across the side of his hand, cutting beneath the thumb knuckle in a bloody display of muscle and bone.

“Fucking hell!” One of the other men shouts, before proceeding to sprint back into the shadows of the forest alongside his friend, scarpering like a pair of rats. The injured man stumbles back, sending Dunk a look of pure fright, before vanishing into the woods, leaving a dotted trail of blood in his wake.

Dunk kicks the dagger away, watching it skitter off into the woodlands underbrush, before turning to you. He approaches slowly, placing a gentle hand on your calf.

“Are you alright?” He asks, wiping the tip of his sword through the dirt.

“Fine,” you tell him. Your eyes find his, which are brimming with worry, before you allow yours to rise to the forest line. You sigh. “You should’ve cut his hand off.”

Dunk sheaths his sword, frowning. “I was… I was trying to be intimidating. I didn’t—I mean, if he tried to get to you, I would’ve… I would’ve maybe, you know—”

You reach down and pet your friend gently on the top of his head. “Too noble for your own good, aren’t you?”

He shrugs, and he’s still holding your calf. “Thieves like that are mostly harmless. I didn’t…” He looks up at you then. “Should I have…?”

You shake your head. “You did great, Dunk. Very brave, and very strong.”

Dunk bows his head, bashful. He gives your calf one last firm pat before pulling himself up and into his own saddle. He offers you one last glance over his shoulder.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

You nod, smiling softly. “I’m fine, Dunk.”

He nods too, turning. You sink your teeth into your bottom lip, still smiling as your eyes find his shoulders and back. You see the mass of muscle beneath the material that covers him, and you can’t help the weight of your smile and the warmth in your chest that quickly replaces your feeling of nausea.

—✿—

Two days after that, the springtime sun shines warmly against your back as you and Dunk traipse the sun-soaked cobbled streets of Oldtown. The towering knight loiters close behind you as you browse the market stalls, air swimming with flowery incense and freshly baked breads. Dunk lugs a few linen sacks of supplies in his arms, carrying them easily, as you give him yet another parchment-wrapped parcel of who knows what.

He lets you slip it into one of the sacks. “What is that?”

“Cake,” you say simply.

The frown that graces his face is light as he fights a smile. “You can’t keep buying cake. Our coin is scarce, and should be spent on things we need.”

You shoot him a pointed look over your shoulder, replying light-heartedly, “Well, it’s my coin and I need cake. Shut up.”

Dunk doesn’t argue, and instead follows you through the crowd. You linger ahead though as Dunk lags behind, hyper-aware of his large size taking up a considerable amount of the thoroughfare. He apologises under his breath as he accidentally bumps someone, and he tries to keep his arms tucked in as he holds onto all the produce you had insisted on purchasing.

When he finally catches up to you, after being cursed at by an elderly woman, you’re standing before a market stall with a wide grin split across your pretty face. Dunk watches you laugh softly at something the vendor says—the vendor, who happens to be a very attractive man around your age—before offering a response. And whatever you say makes the vendor smile even wider, a mouth full of flashing ivory.

Something solid churns deep in Dunk’s chest. It settles deep in the chambers of his heart.

He sidles up to you as casually as possible, body casting a long shadow across the stall. The vendor looks up, and Dunk almost feels guilty in the delight that greets him when the vendor’s smile vanishes.

You lift your head, smiling at your companion. “Dunk, what do you think?”

His eyes pull away from the vendor to where you’re showing him… another cake.

He huffs. “M’lady.”

It’s small, probably an easy fit in the palm of your hand, decorated with segments of blackberries and dusted with glittering sugar. His eyes flit from the little cake to your face, where you look at him with glossy eyes he swears he can see his reflection in—all pleading and begging and looking just the way you did when he met you all those years ago. Except now, you’re no longer surrounded by the grime of Flea Bottom. You’re here, together, in a tightly-packed market in Oldtown, clean and well-fed and smelling of honey and horse.

“One more,” you whisper. “This one looks good.”

“I’m certain you said that earlier,” Dunk mutters, but doesn’t argue. 

He nods at the vendor, who hurries to offer you a square of parchment to wrap the little cake in. You beam, and Dunk feels something glowing from his chest, warm against the bone of his sternum. He hands the vendor the right coin before the two of you move off, heading back through the market, footsteps audible against the cobbled ground.

“Thank you,” you say suddenly, shifting to the side to lean your cheek against his arm. The muscle of his bicep is pillowy and warm against your face, and you peer up at him as you take a gentle hold of his wrist as he hefts the loot of the trip. “Thank you, Dunk.”

He smiles down at you, a few strands of hair framing his face. “Y’welcome.”

—✿—

Evening falls in a curtain of pale oranges and yellows as you lounge across the mattress. The inn room around you is lit up in those colours, sunlight streaming in through the small window that overlooks one of Oldtown’s many winding alleys. You lie comfortably in your chemise, candles burning near the iron-framed bed, deflated pillows piled behind you. Paper rustling is all that fills the room as you read, the book resting in your lap.

The room’s door opens and Dunk ducks in. You greet him.

He stands over the bed and holds something out to you. “Here.”

You place your book aside, taking in his slightly flushed appearance. “What…?”

The knight holds a book out towards you, leather-bound and clean of wear and tear. Your mouth parts into a small gasp as you gently take the book, admiring it and hefting its weight in your hands.

“Dunk,” you mutter, looking up at him. “Where did you get this?”

“Don’t worry about that,” he says quietly. He sits on the edge of the bed, mattress dipping beneath his weight. “You’ve read your book a hundred times over by now, so I thought a new one’d suit you well.”

You brush your fingers down the neatly bound spine. “Dunk…”

Tossing it aside, you all but throw yourself at him, wrapping your arms around his neck and squeezing him to you. He laughs at your enthusiasm, arms wrapping around your middle, cheeks heating as you murmur thanks into his shoulder. You pull back after a moment, but his hands rest on your hips and your fingers remain interlinked behind the column of his neck.

“You’re too good to me, y’know that?” You mutter, cocking your head and appraising the pink tint across his lightly freckled cheeks.

It flushes to his ears. “You deserve it. That and more, t’be fair.”

You chuckle at that, your fingers finding the hair at the nape of his neck. You thread them slowly, scratching against his scalp, and the sound that leaves his throat is nothing less than a purr as his eyes close and he leans his head back into the contact. The grip he has on your hips tightens. You’re so close you can feel the heat radiating from him.

“Like what?” You query, your other hand resting high on his shoulder, toying with the seam of his tunic.

Dunk opens his eyes. “Huh?”

“You said I deserve that and more,” you tell him. “Like what? What else do I deserve?”

He groans quietly, warring with himself as his eyes, lids half-lowered and sluggish in their movements, trace the features of your face.

“So much more,” he whispers. The hold on your hips draws firmer and you feel a giddy sort of heat take over you, settling in your stomach and between your thighs. Dunk continues, corner of his mouth curling up into a shadow of a grimace. “More than I can give you.”

You pout at his words, fingers in his hair taking the strands firmly between knuckles and tugging. He sucks in a breath, and you hold him as you speak.

“Don’t act the fool,” you say. “You give me everything I want, Dunk.”

He frowns.

“You do,” you challenge, hand not in his hair coming to cup his cheek now. His skin is warm and slightly dewy to the touch, testament of a man having spent the last hour searching the warm, narrow streets of Oldtown for a book. A book for you. You swipe your thumb along his cheekbone. “Now tell me: what else do I deserve?”

Dunk opens his mouth, then closes it. His eyes sweep down your face again, lingering on the shape of your lips, then the lines of your nose. They reach your eyes and he releases a pained sound—a sound punched from his gut, dragged across a whimper so intimate that it settles your heartbeat between your thighs.

“You deserve everything,” he whispers finally, tongue finding the corner of his mouth. Touching, a nervous movement, before his lips close and he’s trapping a grunt between his teeth as you scratch at the back of his neck. He closes his eyes, speaking like your touch might put him to sleep. “Everything I can give you.”

The hand you have on his face shifts to his jaw and you work the muscle and bone beneath the pads of your fingers. “And what can you give me?”

Dunk groans, head lolling to the side, resting against your forearm while you continue to rub at the nape of his neck, hair between your fingers. You let go of his jaw and swipe your hand across his forehead, pushing loose strands away so you can get a good look at his face. He’s redder now, his blush coloured darker in the shadows of the room. His freckles blur together beneath the flickering candlelight too, and you allow yourself to feather the tips of your fingers across the ones high on his cheekbones. You map them like the stars as he rubs his head against your forearm like a cat.

“Anything you want,” Dunk whispers finally, and it’s broken around a whine. Heat prickles at the back of your neck, blood pumping hot in your core as your body reacts to his audible need. Beneath the thin material of your chemise, you’re on fire. Dunk finally opens his eyes, observing you when the silence stretches for just a moment too long. He says your name, soft, tender, before he speaks. “Please.”

You smile, tucking a few thin locks of his hair behind his ear. You lean in, lips ghosting across the warm skin of his cheek. “I want you.”

A rumbling groan is ripped from his throat as he shifts his head to the side, chasing your words before they can disappear into the candlelit air. His mouth slots to yours so easily as you turn your head too, and another deep sound leaves his mouth as your lips work together. You grip his hair tightly, angling his head back so you can draw him in even closer.

Your name falls from his mouth, followed by a whisper of “my sweet girl,” before your tongues draw together. One of his hands finds the back of your neck, clutching firmly, fingers flexing as if you would draw away from him. You whimper in response, tugging at his hair.

“C’mon,” he mutters against your mouth as his hands find your hips again. He shifts you backwards, hefting you like a sack of grain until your head hits the stack of pillows. You smile into the kiss, pulling his hair into a closed fist at the back of his head. He groans, teeth catching on your bottom lip as he pulls away. “Tell me what you want. I’ll give it to you.”

You sit up slightly, forcing him to back up. Tugging your chemise off, the amber-lit warmth of the room greets your bare tits, and you toss the garment aside as Dunk gapes at you, eyes firmly on your chest.

“Dunk,” you chuckle, taking in his shocked—pleased—expression. “You’ve seen me bare before.”

“Not like this,” he utters, voice dark. He leans in then, and you suck in a gasp as he presses his face between the valley of your breasts. His hands find the small of your back, hugging you to him, and the skin of his face is burning red-hot against your chest. His mouth opens and he groans loudly, holding you tightly. “Oh gods.”

You seize his head and pull him back to you. You kiss him hard this time—it’s not gentle, and it’s not tender. It’s teeth and tongue and spit and fuelled by everything pent up inside you. A glass bottle uncorked, liquid need overflowing as you lick the salt from his tongue. His clothing comes next: blindly, you work his tunic over his arms and shoulders, pulling away from him so he could throw it across the room. He’s on you like a leaping hound, pinning you back against the pillows while your hands find the ties of his trousers.

There’s a molasses-thick desire seeping into your belly as you untie his trousers. It consumes you, hot and sticky, and you can’t help but moan into his mouth as your fingers brush across the tent in the material of his trousers. He groans in return, the sound breathless and almost embarrassed, as you shuck his trousers down and start tugging at his breeches.

He pulls back. “Sweet girl, hold on—”

You pause, panting, fingers on the knot at the band of his breeches. “Are you okay?”

“M’so good,” Dunk whispers, kissing you one last time on the lips. It’s chaste, almost polite, something akin to an apology before he leans back. A pout is halfway formed across your lips, nipples hardening at the loss of warmth against your front, before you feel his hands run down your back to the bunched fabric of your smallclothes. His eyes find yours as he slowly, slowly begins guiding them down. “Is this okay?”

You nod, admiring the shadowed lines of his face in the candlelight. A small dip in his brow draws his face into a mask of disbelief as he gently draws your smallclothes down your hips, over the curve of your arse, and then down your thighs. You lift yourself to aid him, eyes on the way his tongue finds the corner of his mouth again, his pupils blown wide. Soon, your thin linen undergarments are discarded and you lie completely bare before him.

“Here she is…” Dunk whispers, and it’s so quiet you’re certain it wasn’t meant for you.

His large hands find the plush of your thighs, kneading the flesh there as he parts them. His movements are unhurried as he brings them wider, and wider still, until the slick heat of your core glistens wet in the flickering candlelight. The sound that leaves him is pained, stretched thin across a moan as his fingers ghost down the sensitive skin of your inner thighs. He traces circles as he looks.

Your heart clatters against your ribcage like a marble in a jar and you swear you’re losing your breath. A hand you barely register as yours reaches out, feeling along the line of hair above his breeches. The muscle is cloaked in a layer of fat that you dig your fingers into, and you taste that molasses-thick desire between your teeth as his name rolls over your tongue.

“Put your mouth on me,” you say when you draw his attention away from your core. Your fingers dip, tracing the line of hair, brushing over the tent in his breeches. There’s a jerk of mass beneath the fabric. It sends your heartbeat straight between your legs.

The small dent in his brow deepens as he shudders out a breath, eyes on yours. “I’ve never…”

“S’alright,” you tell him, other hand finding his face. You pat his cheek tenderly. “We’ll learn—we’ll learn together, okay?”

His lips part, but he nods. A few strands of hair fall across his eyes as he settles further onto the bed, mattress and bedframe groaning. You can feel the callouses on the top of his palms against you, and his hands twist from your inner thighs to the backs of them. You yelp when he suddenly pushes your thighs up, thumb and fingers on either side of your knee’s undersides. He bends them up until they rest against the softness of your belly. 

The angle is exposing, and there is a fleeting moment of fear that passes through your mind. It is squashed immediately when a boarish grunt leaves Dunk’s throat as he bends forward, squeezing your legs to anchor himself, before his breath is ghosting across you.

You writhe, gasping out, “Dunk, Dunk, please—”

His eyes appear black in the dim light as he peers up at you, hair damp on his forehead already. He watches you carefully as he blows out a breath—the sensation against your slick folds slicing your sentence mid-air. You moan softly and Dunk repeats the action, tepid air a finger-like stroke against the blazing warmth of your cunt. You manage to wriggle an arm between the fold of your legs, your fingers threading through his hair again.

He takes the encouragement: still looking up at you, Dunk gently presses his mouth to your core. It’s a kiss, a press of lips against velvet warmth, before they part. His tongue follows, a tentative split between your folds as his head shifts. His nose bumps your clit, and when a short “ha-ah” slips over the point of your tongue, he chases—tongue finding, searching, until you call a stretched-out whine of his name when he finally gets it.

“Dunk, yes, fuck,” you ramble, fisting his hair when he flattens his tongue. Something electric fizzles down your spine, shoulders to hips, as he works with a pressure just slightly too little, but somehow it works. It works because it’s him, and it works because you cant your hips and gently urge his head forward. And because he’s a good knight, your good knight, he listens, his lips drawing around your clit in a wet suction that punches a moan from you. “Du–uh–nk, oh gods.”

A thick grumble vibrates against you, his eyelids fluttering. His mouth shifts, tongue splitting back down your folds as you pant. He continues to watch you, eyes glassy. You nod, imploring, when the point of his tongue finds your hole, and you tighten your grip on his hair when he presses in. Like everything else about him, his tongue is thick—a thick press inside you that pulls you apart. It draws a pressure into the base of your belly as he licks into you, the line of his nose pressing deep against your puffy clit.

You wriggle beneath him, trapped under the fold of your own thighs as he pins you to the mattress and takes what he wants—gives you what you need. And he gives it to you, ever the quick-learner, with his tongue pulling and pushing in broad strokes. In, out, curling inwards as his head shifts. He chases the gasps that fall from your mouth, the little whimpers you try and quell as his tongue flicks in. He hums, pleased at the way your body heats up beneath him, and he feels his cock jerk in his breeches when the vibrations of his hum travel straight through you. You keen, holding his head tighter against your core. He breathes deeply, smelling and tasting you, face slick and flushed.

Is this good? he wants to ask. Am I making you feel good? teeters painfully on his tongue, but he keeps them locked in. He doesn’t want to interrupt this. Not now, not ever. The sounds you make spur him on, ignite a spark deep in his chest. His closest friend. His. His sweet girl writhing and moaning for him.

Sickly sweet now, the molasses-thick need crystalises in your womb, and you feel something tugging. A deep-seated pressure that rocks your heartbeat through your core, blood pumping hot in your veins. There’s a tension in your thighs too, and they tremble in his hold as his tongue splits you apart. The sounds are wet, and Dunk is grunting, and you’re trying not to fall too deeply into it—but you can’t help it. All you can think of, all you can hear, all you can taste is Dunk, Dunk, Dunk, and that pressure inside you builds to its breaking point. Your fingers grip his hair tightly as you attempt to grind yourself against his face.

“Dunk,” you whine, calling for him as your body shakes. “Dunk, s’good—m’gonna—”

You burst apart when his tongue dips deep inside you and he groans into your heat. The pressure inside you fissures and your cunt clenches tightly around him, heartbeat spiking as you call for him over and over, strung across breathy whimpers that seem to rise into the ceiling. He licks you through it, face unyielding as you tremble under the weight of his palms.

After a long moment, pleasure spiking sharp in the pit of your stomach, you pull him away from you by his hair. The knight groans, eyes finally closing, his face slick with you, lips kiss-bruised and wet as he whispers your name. He squeezes your thighs too, before gently placing your legs back against the sheets.

“Did I… was that okay?” Dunk can finally ask, eyes roaming down your naked form. They fall from your face, to your chest and stomach, to where you drool out between your thighs. The sight makes him moan, one hand resting over his lap.

“So good,” you assure him, picking yourself off the pillows now. Dunk swallows, watching you as you close the gap and kiss him. He’s shocked, frozen for a split-second as you lick yourself from his lips. The loud moan you offer him quickly pulls him back to solid earth, and he opens his mouth to kiss you back. You mutter against his lips, “You did so well, Dunk.”

He preens beneath the praise, ears burning hot as your tongues meet. He huffs into the kiss, his own pleasure thick in his trousers, the taste and smell and heat of you swimming in his head. But you seem to know exactly how he’s feeling, and your hand finds the ties of his breeches once more. You pull them loose as your mouths move together.

You dip a hand in and wrap your fingers around his cock. Dunk breaks the kiss with a low groan, forehead resting against yours as you pull him from the linen of his breeches. He’s warm and solid in your hand, velvet skin across steel as he pumps hot in your hand. Both of you look down.

“Gods…” You whisper, giving him a little stroke. It’s not like you’ve never seen it before. But here, in the privacy of this little inn room, bathed in ichored candlelight, it’s so much different. Your fingers work lightly, feeling the subtle give of skin. There are soft, shallow ridges and a vein you can feel working up the back of his shaft, and he’s so warm and so real against you. You whisper again, “So pretty, Dunk.”

He offers you a whiny breath as your fingers press beneath the dip of his cockhead. It’s blushing a deep pink and pearling wet at the slit and he looks embarrassed. His cheeks are pink and he’s frowning like he can’t quite believe what’s happening. Your hand is so much smaller than his—the sight of it wrapped around his cock making it jerk.

“So big…” You think aloud as your fingers move gently.

Dunk breathes deeply, chest heaving. His hands are on your hips, gripping you firmly, smoothing stuttering circles with his thumbs.

You pull away from him. He looks at you, eyes nearly black.

“Want you,” you tell him simply, fingers wrapping around the base of him now. You give him a tight squeeze. “Need you.”

“Gods above,” Dunk gasps out, but he’s already nodding. A thick, viscous heat clings to his ribs, pulls at the strings of his heart as he lets you work your fingers around the thick of his cock. He dips and kisses your forehead—he can’t help it. “Okay, sweet girl, I’ll give it to you.”

You smile then, retracting your hand. He hisses at the lack of contact, watching you shuffle back until you’re lying amongst your throne of pillows. The prettiest thing he’s ever seen. His sweet girl, spreading her legs with a smile on her pretty face. All for him.

The thoughts make him dizzy as he quickly shucks his clothing down his legs, kicking it away. He kneels on the bed, bedframe creaking beneath the weight of his body, but he ignores it. He draws in close to you, large hands finding the backs of your thighs and folding you again. The sound it pushes from your chest—“ha–uh–fu–uck, Dunk,”—is breathy and sweet in the amber-lit air between you. It has his cock jerking where it sits heavy and leaking against the mass of his thigh as he settles before you.

It’s easy to fold you like this. He leans over you, abdomen contracting as he holds himself up enough not to crush you. Up enough, too, to take one hand and clutch the base of his cock, guiding it to your cunt. You whimper his name and the sound goes directly to his brain, fills his lungs like a puff of smoke. It’s heady and dizzying and he can’t help but moan as he drags the head of his cock up and down your slit.

“Dunk,” you whine, the pressure between your folds sparking something in your lower belly again. Your cunt flutters around nothing when he taps the head against your swollen clit, then slowly drags it back down to notch at your hole. You suck in a breath. “Please.”

He doesn’t say anything. But he’s listening. He clutches himself in a lightly trembling hand and carefully, almost too slowly, pushes in. Your pussy opens up for him, slick and warm, sucking in the head with a wet clutch that has him losing his breath. It’s tight and unlike nothing he’s ever experienced before.

You whimper, hands gripping the sheets beside you. “Dunk, please, keep going.”

He hadn’t realised he’d stopped.

“M’sorry,” he whispers, then shifts his hips. Such a good listener. 

He leans in, cock splitting you apart. He’s thick and heavy, dragging against your walls in one solid movement. It’s intoxicating, and you whine, the sound rattling your teeth as it’s wrenched from the back of your throat. You’re so full, and he’s still moving.

Dunk mutters your name like a prayer as he feeds his cock into you, marvelling at the way you open for him. Deeper and deeper. He holds you firm, folding you into the mattress, pinned beneath his strong chest. The heat that envelops him, he’s certain, burns hotter than any flame in Westeros.

He stills after a moment. The head of his cock is wedged right up beneath the plug of your cervix, and there’s a slowly soothing ache somewhere in your pelvis. You can feel it, feel it festering like a bruise. Dunk’s cock gives a feeble jerk inside you, and you wince just slightly, so full, reaching so deep.

His face drops. Worried. “Are you—?”

“M’okay,” you whisper. The pain is slowly dissipating as your cunt flutters around him. You see him bite back a groan, pleasure fighting against concern. You smile at him softly. “So good, Dunk. You feel so good inside me.”

Dunk’s still frowning, but you can tell your words have hit him square across the face. He releases a shuddering breath, and his cock twitches inside you again.

“Please move,” you tell him, purposefully tightening the muscles of your core, sucking him in even tighter. His eyes flutter, and you finally get to hear that groan he had been wrangling with. It’s hoarse, flung through gravel. You huff loudly. “Please, Dunk.”

“Okay, okay,” Dunk utters, soothing.

Holding your thighs, he pulls out until just the head rests inside. He takes a deep breath, then pushes back in, and his composure shatters completely when you attempt to arch, moaning. He’s making you feel like this. He is. He hounds after that feeling, pulling his cock out again and repeating the movement until he settles into a pace he didn’t know he could keep.

“That’s it, just like that,” you ramble, tits bouncing against your chest as Dunk’s thrusts lean heavy. Your knees near your head, the pressure on your belly making him feel even deeper. The ache inside you has completely vanished, replaced now by that viscous heat you’ve come to love. “Dunk, fuck, so—so good.”

The bed creaks in protest as he drives you deeper and deeper into the mattress, his strokes becoming more confident. He’s a quick learner, you already know, and you can feel the pride leeching from him as he breaks you apart from the inside out. He’s basking in the little sounds that fall from you as the head of his cock nudges deep. Thick, stretching, rolling.

You’re so tight around him. Warm and slick and everything he’d dared to imagine late at night, bent against a tree with his cock in hand. And you take him so well, sucking him in as his hips roll, skin-slapping-skin. The iron headboard knocks against the wooden wall, but he pays it no mind, thoughts only of you, you, you. His girl. His perfect girl.

“Harder,” you moan, fisting the sheets.

Dunk listens.

He wrestles your legs onto his shoulders, angling himself even deeper now and thrusting deep. You yelp, then moan, at the angle and the fact he nails that perfect spot inside you on the third thrust. He hears it, hears the shift in your moans, feels the clench of your pussy, all hot and vice-like around him. And he follows it, tracing it like a line to treasure. Rolling hips, creaking bed, bear-like grunts.

“Like that?” He utters, but he knows. He’s folding you in half and he knows.

You can barely answer, pressure tight in your womb. His cock drags you closer to another release, bubbling hot as he pins you beneath the thick, muscled mass of his body. He’s a walking furnace, and you feel it closer now. Fire seeps from his skin. Sweat traps along your front, along your back, building beneath the joints of your knees as he fucks you.

“Y–yeah,” you manage to reply, but that’s all you have energy for. Your pleasure is stacking deep inside you and you’re losing your ability to form proper words.

Dunk grunts in response.

Hair hangs over his forehead, some tacked to his skin with sweat. The muscles in his arms work as he holds himself over you. He’s so thick, so strong. You manage to lift an arm to squeeze at his bicep, fingers indenting flesh. You want to bite it, but he has you trapped so firmly against the mattress that you’re sure you couldn’t move an inch if you tried.

Your pussy squeezes around him again as pressure builds. It’s familiar now, and you know where it comes from, and where it’s going to lead you, as it crawls down your spine and spans out across your womb.

You clutch Dunk’s arm with one hand, the other useless at your side, limbless and pleasure-lax. “Dunk.”

“Yeah?” He looks down at you, a light furrow in his brow. “You’ve got something for me?”

You nod. “M’so close.”

Dunk huffs, pace remaining. Firm and even, cock slamming into that perfect spot inside you. His hips roll, the mattress shifts, the bedframe groans and knocks heavy against the wall. Candles flicker around you, white wax dripping, rolling in pearls. His eyes are on you, blue smothered beneath black. He looks at you like you’re the only thing that matters.

That makes you moan. A feather-soft “Dunk,” followed by a louder, more desperate, “Oh, gods, Dunk—!” You shatter for a second time then, body giving in. Your cunt clutches tight around his cock, slick gushing as he fucks you through it, dribbling out and down the curve of your arse as he rocks in, in, in. His movements falter, just slightly, as you cry out for him, release pressing heavy on your belly as he folds you.

“M’here, m’here,” Dunk coos, bending to kiss you. Your legs press even deeper, and you whine into the kiss. Trembling, legs shaking, heart seeping deep into the marrow of your bones. Dunk pulls back, thrusts slowing by a fraction as his cock jerks. He moans like a wounded man, “Oh, sweet girl, I’m—I’m—”

It’s a sudden, solid heat in his pelvis. His cock jumps where it’s seated against the base of your cervix, and his balls draw tight where they rest against the curve of your arse. His hips stutter, thighs tensing, then he’s spilling. Inside you.

It feels thicker, hotter. It knocks through his diaphragm and he groans through it, jaw working as he shoves himself to the hilt inside you. He feels the way your pussy wraps to take him, sucks him in even deeper as he empties himself in white-hot stripes. The force in which it leaves him is dizzying, and his eyes drop closed, mouth parting.

And he can’t help himself.

“I love you,” he breathes out as he comes, spilling hot. It leaves him in shudders as he holds himself over you, trapping you, keeping you. He huffs, fending off a groan as he rolls his hips to a stop. “Gods above.”

Neither of you speak for a long moment after that. The mattress settles as you still. You pant, and so does Dunk, as pleasure fizzles like the bubbles of ale.

Dunk flushes even deeper when he shakes himself from his haze. He opens his eyes properly, peering down at you as if he’d caused you injury.

“M’sorry,” he says quickly, scanning your face. “My sweet girl, I’m—”

You shake your head, heartbeat calming. “S’okay—oh, Dunk, it’s okay.”

You lift a hand to cup his cheek. He leans into it, eyes closing.

“I love you,” you tell him through a whisper. There’s a quiet in the room that feels warm against your skin. You can hear music somewhere below you: the muffled plucking of strings, the clamour of singing voices. You stroke his cheekbone with your thumb. “More than anything.”

His reply is to bend and kiss you again. It’s soft and tender, but there’s a strength behind it that tastes of the knight you know.

“You’re too good to me,” Dunk mumbles against your lips, echoing your words from earlier. “My sweet girl. Too good for me.”

You smile and kiss him harder.

———

big man fold me please i’m begging

tags 🌿