pure of heart, dumb of ass

“You little monkey!” The high pitched shout echoed through the halls to the solar in which Baelor worked diligently alongside his brother. 

Maekar and his brood had come to Kingslanding upon Baelor’s own behest. It was to be his wife’s nameday in a few day’s time, and though the occasion did not usually necessitate such a grand visit, Baelor knew how fond his wife was of her younger nieces and nephews, and he himself would take any excuse to see his brother again. 

Maekar looked up and met Baelor’s questioning eyes, his own eyebrow raising at the commotion. The sound of running feet echoed distantly, the slapping of boots and slippers on stone, and the loud mischievous laugh of Maekar’s youngest son followed by your own girlish giggle. 

“You can’t catch me!” Egg called, the shout closer than before, and Maekar sighed, dropping his head with a shake, pressing his hand to his face. But Baelor only smiled, feeling a deep satisfaction at having the Keep so full of joyful noise. 

Just as both men began to turn back to their work, the door burst open and a little bald head came rushing in. Egg skidded to a stop right in the centre of the solar, just shy of tripping over the edge of the rug, and stared wide eyed at both his father and uncle. Maekar was already scowling, one eyebrow rising dangerously, and though his uncle’s eyebrow mirrored it, he was far more amused than anything else. 

Before anyone could say anything, the sound of hurried footsteps along the corridor reached them, and Egg jumped into action once more, rushing towards Baelor and rounding his desk just as you came sprinting through the open door. 

You were a windswept vision. Your hair flew about and remained relatively contained only because of the intricate braids you kept. Your face was shiny, cheeks puffed from exertion, but your eyes were bright and alive, your face alight with the most beautiful smile. 

“There you are! You silly silly goose!” You exclaimed, walking into the solar with a loud laugh. 

“What the fuck is going on?” Maekar grumbled, glancing between his son (who was peeking out from behind Baelor’s chair with a bright smile and mischievous eyes) and his sister-in-law (who was pointing accusingly at his son). 

“The little rascal and I were playing a lovely game of cyvasse - which I was winning might I add - when he swept all the pieces up into his arms and ran off!” 

“You can’t win if there are no pieces!” Egg exclaimed, giggling brightly and hiding behind Baelor’s chair once more. He clutched the edge of his tunic up against his chest, creating a little pouch where many of the game pieces now resided (though many had also fallen along the way as he ran). 

Baelor leaned back in his seat, settling comfortably as he watched you with a loving smile. You offered him one in return, blowing him a kiss before refocusing on Egg. 

“That is called cheating!” You accused, pointing a finger at him as you moved forward to block his possible path around the other side of the desk. Egg only leaned around the side of Baelor’s chair and stuck his tongue out at you, giggling once more when you let out an exaggerated gasp and labelled him insolent. 

“She is right, Aegon,” Baelor finally said, “it is cheating to steal away the pieces.” But before Egg could respond, Baelor reached around his chair with both hands and grasped onto the little boy. He dug his fingers into his sides, and though the angle was awkward, tickled the boy mercilessly. 

“Uncle!” Egg yelled, squirming and squealing as he attempted to escape Baelor’s relentless grasp. You exclaimed triumphantly and quickly ran forward to join the onslaught, wrapping one arm around the boy and using the other hand to tickle at his stomach and ribs. All the pieces fell from his tunic and clattered on the floor, but the boy was too busy attempting to evade the hands grasping at him. 

Maekar watched silently from the other side of Baelor’s desk. Though he did not smile overtly, there was something soft in his face. He watched Baelor smile as he leant around the side of his chair to watch you with Egg, he watched how his brother beamed at you and the boy. He watched how you wrapped Egg up in a hug and how your laughter flowed freely, how your smile was as bright as his brother’s. And he saw Egg, sweet little Egg who remained an absolute nuisance to his father, but looked so full of joy now. He had not seen Egg so free, so relaxed and… happy. He had not seen his boy happy in so long. 

The scene reminded Maekar of his own youth, of all the moments spent playing with Baelor before they were both grown. He remembered such moments with Baelo when one chased the other through the halls of the Keep, or when Baelor was merciless with his ticklish onslaught, only yielding when Maekar had gone red in the face and could neither breathe nor speak. Those were some of the happiest memories Maekar possessed. 

“I yield! I yield!” Egg finally called, panting and breathless, curled in on himself to escape the onslaught. 

You and Baelor finally let go of the boy, the two of you falling into a heap beside Baelor’s chair, breathless and still laughing a little. You rubbed a hand over the top of Egg’s head and he shoved it away lightheartedly, slumping against the wall so he could catch his breath. 

Baelor reached down and gently pushed a sweaty strand of hair out of your face, caressing your cheek with his thumb for a moment. You turned your head and kissed the inside of his palm without thinking about it, leaning your head into his hold and fluttering your eyes shut for a second before returning to the world around you. 

“You’ve tired me out so early in the day,” you huffed, mock-glaring at Egg. He let out a breathless laugh, shrugging as if it could not be helped, and you reached out and lightly flicked him on the arm. “Oh!” You perked up with an idea then, offering Egg a conspiratorial and mischievous smile. “I’ve had rather a good idea, why don’t you and I go sneak some cake from the kitchens? I’m quite sure they’ve been practicing for my nameday feast, no doubt they will have scraps to offer us.” 

Egg nodded enthusiastically then jumped up, practically buzzing with excitement again. He offered you a hand up, and you smiled kindly in thanks, taking one of his and the one that Baelor too offered you. You were careful to not step on the inside of your dress, and you petted the top of Egg’s head in thanks. The boy quickly made his way to the door but you remained at Baelor’s side. 

“Would you like some secret cake?” You asked your husband cheekily, and he only huffed a chuckle in response. Baelor draped his arm around your waist and dragged you a little closer to the chair he was sitting in. He tilted his head back to look up at you and his eyes shined with love. 

“I shall wait to enjoy it legally,” he answered teasingly, and you scoffed, murmuring about how he was no fun at all, but your smile betrayed you. You leaned down and cupped Baelor’s cheek, rubbing a little at the scruff of his beard, then gently pressed your lips to his, kissing him once and then twice until both of you were smiling into it and you could hear a grumble from Maekar and a loud “ew!” from Egg. 

“Kissing my husband is not ‘ew’,” you responded petulantly, draping one arm over Baelor’s shoulders and turning to look at Egg who stood behind his father and scowled at you. 

“Yes it is, you’re kissing my uncle. It’s disgusting,” he answered firmly, sneering a little. 

“It is not ‘disgusting’!” You exclaimed even louder, then just to annoy him, you leant down again and pressed another kiss to Baelor’s lips (who could only chuckle and lightly shake his head at your antics). 

“Eugh, it is,” Egg repeated once more, shaking his head and looking at you with exaggerated disdain. 

“The boy is right, it’s fucking disgusting,” Maekar grumbled, shaking his head and looking back down at his papers, but you scoffed and let out a sound of indignation. But you could see right through the grump and knew that he was happy to see his family happy. 

“I care not for your weak little constitutions,” you dismissed then, waving your hand in the air. “I will kiss my husband freely!” Baelor chuckled and patted your side, but Egg only stuck his tongue out at you, reaching for the door knob. 

“Come along Auntie!” He finally called, tiring of your teasing and desperate to get back on the mission for cake. “Or I shall go have it all for myself and tell them to give you none!” Then he rushed through the door with a giggle. You scoffed and smiled in disbelief at Baelor, laughing loudly. 

“The little rascal! He forgets that I am married to the Crown Prince, and that it is my nameday that the cake is being made for!” You smiled cheekily, pressed another kiss to Baelor’s cheek, then ran out after the boy, yelling something along the lines of “wait for me you cheeky monkey! I want raspberry jam with mine!”

You’d laughed then, loud enough to gain the attention of the rest of the courtiers at the long table — because Ser Gwayne was not entirely wrong, to be sure, but he was far too generous for his own good; generous enough to believe that the effort of your marriage actually meant something in the grand scheme of things.

Gwayne Hightower was a sensible man. He was not outwardly affectionate, maybe, but he was no less kind. There was no great love in your union — not like all the songs and fairytales insist, at least — but there was safety. Security. Stability. His presence often found you like the thick walls of an ancient keep, steadfast against the howling winds of a summer storm. You would find no certainty of your future in war, but being Gwayne’s wife meant, at the very least, that you were still alive today.

That unsaid assurance is perhaps a greater gift than any truly loving marriage could’ve been for you. And, perhaps, it was with that unsaid assurance that you came to admire him, without ever realizing you were doing so — always searching for his face in crowds, waiting every night for the familiar sound of his footsteps to walk outside your chamber doors, constantly watching him from a distance (which has become a most embarrassing habit of yours).

You find him now on the western balcony overlooking Blackwater Bay, where the moon climbs high over shimmering midnight waters. The salty breeze mixes with the scent of damp stone and dying fires from the lantern light glittering in the city below. Gwayne stands alone with his forearms propped on the pale stone balustrade, having exchanged his armor for a forest-green doublet embroidered with winding gold vines. The fading torchlights gild his silken auburn hair, stirred loose by the sea breeze.

You linger just beneath the archway, hidden in the place where the torchlight turns to shadow, studying the slope of his strong shoulders and how they rise and fall with each breath. He looks lonely; lonely enough for your chest to tighten with the want to close the distance between you and slip in beside him. But your feet refuse to move. And whatever affection was warming in your chest before pierces through you like a sword.

“You’re staring.” The suddenness of his voice startles you.

“…You’re supposed to be watching the sea,” you respond, half-shy. He doesn’t look back at you when you emerge finally from the shadows; slippers scuffing the cobblestones, black skirts fluttering at your feet.

“I was,” Gwayne nods.

“Then how could you possibly notice I was standing there?”

He turns to face you then, as you settle on the balcony just beside him, keeping a few feet of careful distance between you like you always did — as if, in your union, an invisible line had been wedged between you and could not be crossed. 

The corner of his mouth lifts slowly into a crooked smile. “Because I notice everything about you,” he answers like it’s simple, like he hadn’t just stolen the breath from your lungs.

Heat crawls up the low neckline of your dress, speckling across your cheeks and the very tip of your ears. You turn away, face screwed in a feigned disgust, and busy your hands with an imaginary wrinkle on your sleeve. 

“That,” you murmur. “Is a terrifying thought.”

“Well, it ought to terrify you,” Gwayne quips knowingly, bending softly at the waist to fold his arms along the stone railing. “I’ve seen the way you steal the candied slices off of all your lemon cakes just to leave the sponge untouched, you know? Like an utter madwoman.” 

“Well…” you huff, face flaring hot at the acknowledgment of being so openly seen by another. “It seems I made the dreadful mistake of marrying the observant man in the Seven Kingdoms.”

“And here I thought that distinction belonged to my cousin,” Gwayne jokes lowly, brows raised to his hairline. “I shall write to Lord Ormund at once and relieve him of the title.”

You laugh quietly through your nose and turn away again. Silence settles comfortably over you once more, filled only by the distant clanging of metal as guards change their shift and the far-off crowing of a caged raven. The night feels impossibly dark, emptier than usual. It feels like an omen of sorts.

“It grows worse, does it not?” you wonder aloud through the breath that catches in your chest, as if you were half scared to even ask.

Gwayne’s thin smile slowly fades. His adam’s apple bobs in his throat. “Aye,” he nods. “I fear it does.”

“I keep… hoping that…” You swallow around the invisible hand tightening around your throat. “That they’ll remember I am your wife before they remember whose blood I carry. I feel it’s the only reason they’ve yet to take my head.”

“Of course, they remember,” he assures you.

“It feels less and less so these days.”

“They’re only frightened—”

“I’m frightened,” you remind him.

The admission lingers between you like the salt water scent hanging in the air. Gwayne studies you for a long moment — he sees the flicker of sincerity flashing across your face right before you turn away from him again, and the way your jaw clenches a second later in regret of saying the words aloud. 

He leans an elbow along the parapet to face you fully. And, as if to soothe you, he asks, “If there were no war… No thrones, no dragons—”

“No Hightowers?” you add.

“—If the Stranger himself appeared before you now and offered you another life,” the auburn-haired man continues with a hint of a smile gracing his lips. “What would you do?”

You ponder the question for a moment, eyes zeroed on the navy black horizon ahead as your fingers fidget on the stony barricade. “I should like a farm,” you answer, mouth twitching into an absentminded grin. “Somewhere far away from here. So I could raise chickens—”

“Chickens?” he scoffs a dry laugh, then softens a second later at the sincere look you give him. He swallows hard and nods supportively. “Most ladies would’ve said children, is all…”

“Well, I am not most ladies…” you tell him. “I would have a field of apple trees, and a hundred dogs to protect all my chickens and horses and fluffy cows— you know, the ones that live down in the Reach?”

“Well…” Gwayne croons. “You’ve certainly thought about this, haven’t you?”

“Every day,” you confess. The honesty in your answer strikes him down like a blade; the sorrowful look that heavies your face even more so. The reality of your situation returns to you then, settling over you like gravity’s inevitable weight. You swallow hard before you confess, “I fear they’ll kill me if matters grow worse at Dragonstone.”

“They won’t.”

“You cannot know that.”

“I do,” Gwayne assures you and takes a slow step closer, until the inherent warmth of his skin dulls the bite of the bitter sea wind. He ducks his chin to his chest to chase your gaze, peering down at you with glittering blue eyes. “I swore a vow before gods and men, did I not?”

“So do most men—”

“Well, I am not most men,” he lilts with an air of amusement hanging on the edge of his words. “I actually meant my vows.”

Your eyes soften as they search his face, looking for any hint of hesitation or doubt in his handsome features. You find no uncertainty there; just the maddening, immovable confidence that seems to be stitched into the very fiber of his making.

“If this castle should fall tomorrow…” you whisper to him, eyes narrowing in skepticism. “Or if your family decides that I have become too great a burden to keep here… What happens then?”

“Then I shall stand in the doorway,” he shrugs.

A shocked laugh sputters from your mouth at his boyish conviction. “And if they mean to come through it?”

“Then…” His lips jut softly. “They shall first have to make a corpse of me.”

“You are a valiant knight, Ser Gwayne, but you cannot fight an entire army.”

“Perhaps not,” he replies with a sad sort of smile. “But armies are made of men. And every man who wishes to reach you will first have to face me... As I said… I meant my vows.”

Something in his words strikes a deep sadness within you. No one had ever spoken of your being like it possessed any value worth defending, and now the words come from the very family you were meant to despise.

But even still, for the first time since the ravens brought the tidings of war and the dragons took wing against dragon, you believed him. You believed that, should the whole realm come crashing down around you, Ser Gwayne would likely be the only one left standing at your side when the last stone fell.

And, gods, how stupid you were to do so.

ii. OATHS & ASHES

The news of your husband’s leaving came not from your husband himself. 

It came, rather, in whispers at court, slithering through the Red Keep like snakes beneath rushes — passing from Gold Cloak to stable boy to serving girl to scullion. “They say Ser Criston and his knights are marching for Harrenhal on the morrow,” says a thick-accented handmaiden. “Lord Hand means to smoke Daemon from the castle. It’ll be Prince Aemond’s before the next moon, no doubt.”

Your stomach dropped so harshly at the whispers that you nearly retched upon the marble. It was not Gwayne’s leaving that frightened you so, but rather what his absence would represent — he might as well throw you to the hounds himself before he goes, because you were as good as dead with him gone.

Your slippers strike the ancient stone in a frantic rhythm as you turn on your heel to storm back the way you came. The harsh echo of the soles catches the attention of surrounding servants, who flatten themselves against the walls as you hurry suddenly past. Your heartbeat pounds like thunder in your ears, far louder than the bells of the Great Sept that toll the evening hour — the combination of both feels like an ominous funeral knell.

You rush up the winding stone staircase with your crimson skirts gathering in your fists. Gwayne’s chambers sit directly opposite yours, and you find the heavy wooden door is cracked ajar. The hinges screechbeneath your palm when you shove it the rest of the way open without warning. The sight you find on the other side hollows you from the inside out — a travel satchel, laid open along the emerald sheets. Inside, a whetstone, riding gloves, a leather-bound prayer book, a sword belt, a flask. 

The careful order of it all feels almost cruel. Chaos, at the very least, would suggest some air of hesitation from the man; a faint pause at leaving you behind. This, however, feels far too final.

Gwayne stands at the head of the bed with his back facing you. His pale hands work with a quiet precision to roll a Hightower-green cloak into his bag. He did not need to turn at the sudden intrusion. He learned the sound of your footsteps long ago.

“I wondered how long it might take,” the man croons distantly. The calmness of his voice, the indifference, sets you entirely aflame.

“Why would you not tell me?” you bite in response.

Gwayne glances over his shoulder at you then. The flickering candlelight turns his hair a more golden shade of Hightower-red, and carves the soft edges of his face out in shadow. He was still every inch the striking knight that the whispers purported him to be — broad as an oak tree, handsome as a saint carved into an altar — but there’s a foreign weariness etched into his features now. It darkens the skin beneath his eyes, turns his gaze a duller shade of icy blue.

“Well, I was going to, of course.”

“When?” The sharpness in your voice could draw blood. 

“…Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Your laugh splinters the otherwise silent room, sharper than broken glass. You shut the door behind you with an aggressive hand and close the distance between you, dress skirts billowing wildly at your ankles. “When you ride at dawn? And you meant to tell me when your horses were already saddled?”

“Yes,” Gwayne sighs, lowering the folded doublet into its place. “I thought I might spare you one night’s grief—”

“You’re abandoning me,” you tell him then, as if to translate the man’s words back to himself. You linger at his side, eyes darting wildly over his profile when he fails to meet your gaze. “Just like all the rest of them. You do realize that, right?”

“The king has given orders—”

“Well, it wasn’t the king who stood beside me at Blackwater Bay not even a week ago, was it?” Your voice lowers into a faux-masculine tone, trying and failing to mock him. “If anyone comes for you, I shall stand in the doorway—”

Gwayne scoffs. “Surely, I do not sound like that.”

“—They shall first have to make a corpse of me.”

“Yes… I remember,” he answers through a slow huff of annoyance, stepping back from his travel bag to drag a pair of weary hands down his face. “I was— well into my cups by then, as you well know—”

“Oh, do not cheapen those words now,” you spit, shoving hard at his shoulder. Gwayne’s features twist in offense as his wide eyes glance down at the hand you’d pushed him with, though he doesn’t move an inch. “Don’t dishonor yourself with a coward’s excuse just to make up for the fact that you lied.”

Gwayne’s composure fractures at that. He had spent too much of his life trying to be a good knight, a good man — one that maybe his callous father could be proud of — so he refuses to stomach accusations of otherwise from you. 

His icy blue eyes harden into a glacial sort of look, more hurt than truly angry. He lays his cloak into place to face you fully.

“Do you not see that I am leaving to keep the fight from coming here?”

“Do not you see that by leaving me here that I’m as good as dead?” you retort through a jaw clenched tight. “If you do not take me with you, then—”

“Of course I’m not taking you with me!” he scoffs with a crooked smile, like it’s funny to him. “You’d be dead before we made it to the God’s Eye—”

“And I will be dead before this war is won if you leave!” you shout, voice wet and fragile with the unshed tears burning the backs of your eyes. “The fight is already here! The people who wish me dead are in these walls! They pour my wine, they wash my hair, they cook my food, they bow when I walk by and whisper when my back is turned! And if you aren’t here, then…” 

You trail off with a ragged breath. Your corset feels suddenly tight against your ribs. You choke back the sob that strangles your throat and blink rapidly to clear the haze of tears blurring at your waterline. You peer up at the man with the sternest gaze you can muster.

“I am… frightened,” you tell him, though your voice cracks into a fragile whisper halfway through.

The anger disappears from Gwayne’s face as quickly as it arrived. His shoulders deflate with a slow huff through his nose as he takes a slow step towards you. His hands release their clenched fists to reach hesitantly for your face. His palms are warm and softly calloused when they cup your cheeks, caressing you with a tenderness he hasn’t shown since your bedding ceremony six or more moons ago.

The quiet half-smile he gives you, then, is weighed down by a palpable sadness.

“To tell you the truth… I have never been more afraid than I am right now,” he confesses in a low murmur, swiping his thumb over the warm apple of your cheek. The softness in his voice threatens to undo you entirely. 

“So then don’t go,” you plead in a small voice, grasping at the front of his emerald doublet until the golden vines wrinkle under your grip. “Please.”

“If Harrenhal remains in Rhaenyra’s hold, and if Daemon rallies the Riverland armies, then the war will come here,” Gwayne continues in a painfully steady voice. “I fear I don’t have a choice in the matter.”

“Everyone has a choice,” you tell him, filled with a girlish sort of rage once more. “But, I suppose you’ve already made yours.”

The man meets your scowl with a tired, slightly heartbroken smile. “Please do not make me spend my last night with my wife quarreling with her,” Gwayne jokes quietly, swiping an eyelash from your cheek with the pad of his thumb. “At least leave me with something to hold onto until my return.”

Your tight chest deflates with a slow sigh from your nose. The rage ebbs evenly into grief. “And what shall I have, hm? Considering tonight is very likely my last one alive and all…”

Gwayne laughs. “You are being… catastrophically dramatic.”

Your chest burns with a mixture of rage and desire. He could never possibly understand you, but somehow, he is the only one with the walls of the Keep who ever has. The contrast is dizzying.

“I hate you,” you hear yourself say.

“Perhaps...” Gwayne hums, warm breath fanning across your cheek. “But not nearly as much as you love me.”

Your first instinct is to strike him for the sarcasm in his words; your second is to weep at the truth of them. He kisses you before you can do either.

He ducks down to press his lips to yours in a tender kiss, a mere brushing of your lips. The last time he had done so was beneath the glowing candles of the Sept, following the declaration of your wedding vows. But that was an obligation, a political victory of sorts.

This kiss is far sweeter in comparison. You feel the man heavying against you as he falls deeper into your touch. He opens your mouth with his and flicks the pad of his tongue against yours, like velvet brushing velvet. Your hands tremble as they leave the chest of his doublet to rake through his auburn locks, like silk between your fingers. You sigh against his open mouth at the taste of him — like wine and mint and oranges — sweet enough to get drunk on.

It takes you a long moment to realize his hands have snaked around your waist accordingly. You don’t realize his deft fingers are loosening the tie in your corset until the discomfort in your ribs disappears entirely. Your body acts before your mind, and your arms slither from their sleeves to curl once more around Gwayne’s broad shoulders.

The man folds the top of your dress down until your bare chest is revealed to him. A grumbled moan sounds in the back of his throat as he pulls you back into him with two wide palms along your bare back, pressing your breasts flush against his chest. He thinks, if he concentrated hard enough, he could feel the steady thundering of your heart like this.

“Gwayne—” you whisper against his mouth when you feel something hardening against your hip. Your hands drop from his hair to slide between your bodies, headed for the tie in his trousers to release the stiffness growing there. 

He twists you round in the meanwhile, shoes scuffing the cobbles, until the bend of your knees meets the edge of the mattress behind you. He lays you down without once taking his mouth off of yours, with one wide palm splayed along your ribcage and his other cradling the back of your neck.

He pulls off of you with a quiet smack to catch his breath. A small whimper sounds in the back of your throat when his warm body leaves yours, rising to reach down for your skirts. Your bare chest heaves as you sit up on your elbows to watch him fumble with your dress. “Gods above, how many skirts are you wearing?” you hear him complain under his breath. “I’ve faced hedge knights with fewer defenses than this.”

You giggle when he finally pushes the layers of your dress up to your hips. Your thighs spread on instinct, exposing yourself to him. Gwayne’s mouth waters at the sight of your silken folds, already glittering in anticipation. Your chest tightens when he falls to his knees before you. 

“What are you doing?” you ask on bated breath.

Gwayne flashes you a love-drunk grin and a pair of glassy blue eyes. His warm palms smooth along the velvety skin of your inner thighs to spread them further. “Call it a knight’s act of service, shall we?” he quips.

His auburn head disappears beneath your bunched-up skirts a second later. Your face twists momentarily in confusion before you feel his tongue slotting in the silk folds of your cunt. He licks a fat stripe up the length of it, until his tongue finds something that makes your hips twitch despite yourself. His mouth closes around the sensitive button, suckling at it with a grumbled moan in the back of his throat.

Your head tips back at the feeling. Your lips part as if to moan, but the electric shock in the pit of your stomach knocks all the available air from your lungs. You feel him laughing against you when your thighs clench suddenly around his head, tighter than you realize.

Gwayne pulls off of you with a quick smacking sound. He wears your slick down to his chin as he flashes you a teasing, glassy-eyed look. “I’d quite like to keep my head, dear wife—”

You say nothing in response to his quip. You just dart a head to the crown of his skull and shove his face back between your thighs.

 Gwayne complies without complaint, lapping at the honey you leak for him, until the wet sounds of his mouth fill the quiet chambers. You rock your hips against his face, bracing yourself with the auburn locks you clench in your fist.

His nose nudges the swollen bud that makes you keen, right before he takes it in his mouth again. Your skin buzzes at the foreign feeling.

“Gwayne—” you gasp. A tight feeling settles deep in your stomach, like a fraying knot about to snap. Your back arches off the mattress. Your hand tightens in his hair. Your features screw in a pain look, half-scared at the pleasure welling within you. “I can’t—”

“Mm…” he just keeps moaning against you, letting the vibrations deepen your pleasure. His wide hands smooth up and down your outer thighs when they tremble on either side of his head, clenching around him as your orgasm hits you with a pleasured whine. He laps up every ounce of honey you leak for him, and sighs hard through his nose at the salty-sweet taste of you.

Only when your legs grow finally lax around his jaw does he pull back from your thighs. A smile curls lazily at his rosier, more swollen mouth. The bottom half of his face glitters in the candlelight with a mixture of saliva and cum — you lift your head in time to watch him wipe his mouth with the back of his hand.

“If this truly is my final night alive…” you say through panted breaths, eyes still wide from the shock of your simmering pleasure. “I feel I could finally die a happy woman.”

“I’m glad I could be of service, princess…” Gwayne smiles lazily, grimacing slightly at the ache in his knees as he rises from the unforgiving cobbles. He leans down to lay his warmth back over you. You stop him with a firm hand on his chest.

“I want to be on top this time,” you confess in a breathless whisper, eyes darting back and forth between his.

Gwayne’s brows raise slowly in shock at your sudden display of dominance. The corner of his lip twitches into a smile the same way his cock twitches in his boxers. He nods until the words catch up to him. “As you wish…”

iii. CROWNS & CAGES

You did not weep when they came for you, scarcely a fortnight after your lord husband’s leaving.

Gwayne was gone by first light, perhaps already a league or more away before you stirred awake that morning to the chill of an empty bed. He parted with nothing but a folded scrap of parchment resting where his head had been the night before. In his scrawled handwriting, half-smudged from where his wrist had dragged the ink in haste, he wrote: “Write to me. Don’t die. I’ll build the form for you myself.”

You keep the note tucked safely inside the chest of your corset now, folded so many times that the edges have already begun to soften. You keep it close to your heart like a holy relic, or perhaps, a threat to whatever unlucky son of a bitch kills you first — something to discover on your corpse after they slit your throat, so they’ll know who to answer to upon your husband’s return.

Eventually, the servants ceased asking whether you needed anything, and all your meals came cold. Conversations ceased the moment you entered a room, and doors slammed shut before you could reach them. And then, when word spread that a wild dragon had taken wing not far from here, all eyes of suspicion turned to you — to whom a dragon had never belonged, though the blood in your veins wearied the courtiers all the same. Rhaenyra had already added three new riders to her fleet; she certainly did not need another.

You were no longer a bride, but a prisoner in pretty gowns — it was the Queen Dowager, and your sister by law, who confirmed as much to you.

“I had hoped…” Alicent started slowly, bathed half in sunshine and half in shadow from where she stood before the window in your quarters, watching the distant storm clouds blow in over Blackwater. “That I might never have to ask this of you.”

Her auburn curls swept over her pale shoulder when she turned to face you. Something heavy sat in her round green eyes, as if she wanted you to finish the rest of it for her. But you remained as stoic and silent as ever from where you sat at the small dining table just across from her. Your hands wrung into knots over your skirts, hidden beneath the surface, as you waited for the words of your fate to fall from her lips.

“The council believes that— Should the opportunity present itself, you would attempt to reach the wild beast. The Cannibal, I believe it’s called,” Alicent said. “And through him, Rhaenyra.”

“So…” You sighed, making no attempt to argue the subject. It did not matter whether or not it was true; the possibility was enough to make you a criminal. “The Black Cells, then?”

“No,” Alicent shook her head, half-offended by the suggestion. “Of course not. My cousin, Lord Ormund, he commands the Hightower host. He has agreed to keep you under his… protection for the time being.”

“Protection?” you echoed through a scoff. The word tasted foreign and bitter in your mouth. “What a pleasant name for captivity.”

Alicent’s face flickered with a mother’s sort of sympathy. Her hands wrang together beneath the draping sleeves of her emerald dress.“You will be treated with every courtesy your station deserves, I assure you.”

“If your council means to bargain with me, Your Grace…” you started with a sad smile. “They mistake me for something worth bartering for. Rhaenyra already abandoned e— keeping me hostage will not make her respond to your offered terms.”

“Even still… You would be far safer there than you would be here, whether or not you believe that’s true,” Alicent said. “I know what my brother would wish of me. And Gwayne would never forgive me if I didn’t do everything I could to keep you safe.”

The long journey south smells of wet earth and horse dung. By the time you reach the Hightower encampment — which sprawls across the rolling fields like a second city — your fine silk gown has long surrendered to the dust of the road, and your hands now bear the tenderness of a week spent in the saddle. 

Your broad-shouldered escort guides you through the avenue of canvas tents billowing wildly beneath snapping green banners. The air smells of woodsmoke, cooked venison, and salty sweat — the soft breeze carries with it the sound of laughter, barking hounds, clanking chainmail, and shouted commands.

A pair of guards draw back the heavy canvas of the biggest pavilion in the camp. “My lord,” one says to announce your arrival inside, right before the entrance flap closes heavily behind you.

Inside, candles burn despite the lingering daylight, filling the enclosed tent with the smell of beeswax and parchment from the large map covering the long oak table. Pieces carved from ivory and oak mark castles and armies across the whole of Westeros, waiting to be won or maybe burned. 

A strange man stands over them with his broad hands planted along the edge, visibly built beneath his ornately decorated armor, and standing several inches taller than the rest of the knights in the room.

Lord Ormund was not pretty like Gwayne, but he was his own kind of handsome, made of sharp edges and strong features. His Hightower-auburn curls are less vivid in color and sheared short. He has his family’s pair of striking blue eyes, too, which feel a little like they’re piercing you when he glances up from his map. 

“Leave us,” he commands his guards in a low, melodic voice, keeping his eyes on you as his knights filter out of the tent. Their armor clatters faintly as they go. The man doesn’t say another word until they’re gone. 

“So…” he hums, one corner of his mouth lifting upwards. “The infamous dragon bride.”

Your brows bounce at the title. It feels like another chain around your neck. “I suppose I’ve been called worse…” you sigh, studying him with the same curiosity. “You must be Lord Ormund.”

“I must,” the man nods as he rounds the war table at an unhurried pace. 

His boots sink into the woven rungs laid across the hard earth with each step. He towers several inches over your head when he plants himself in front of you. He smells of steel and sweat and strongly of incense.

“I expected someone… older.”

His brows raise in amusement. “And here I expected someone taller.”

“Well,” you deadpan, eyes narrowing up at him as your hands clasp behind your back. “I’m sorry for disappointing you, Ser.”

“Oh, I’ve endured far worse disappointments, my lady, I assure you.” A ghost of a smile graces his pink lips as his eyes soften slightly around the edges. “I give you my word. While you remain beneath my banners, no harm will come to you.”

You sigh hard through your nose. “Yes… People keep promising me that.”

“I’m sure they have… But I intend to honor it.” The certainty of the man’s words unsettles you. It’s strange, you find, to be looked at like you were something worth protecting. “And if you require anything— anything at all. You need only ask.”

You nod slowly with a deep exhale, considering the offer. “A quill,” you conclude firmly.

Ormund blinks. “A… A quill?”

“Yes,” you say. “And parchment.”

“For… What purpose?” he laughs.

You glance over your shoulder towards the tent’s fluttering entrance, where the last light of the early evening burns gold against a sea of green banners. You wonder, briefly, how many soldiers outside this pavilion would celebrate if they found you dead on the morrow — how many would mourn, how many would care enough to do anything at all. 

You think, perhaps, that in the whole of the Seven Kingdoms, there is only one person who would weep for you. And he was a hundred leagues away.

“So that I may write to my lord husband,” you answer finally. “And tell him that I was right… And that he still owes me a farm.”

Lord Ormund allows you to write to Gwayne that night, and every seventh day after. It was the only thing you could look forward to, since there was little else to do at camp. He had been gracious enough to give you your own pavilion at the edge of the command encampment, close enough for the sentries to watch but far enough away to force you into solitude. 

It was clean and moderately comfortable — with a narrow cot draped in a single wool blanket, a traveling chest for the few dresses you were allowed to bring, a wash basin, and a small writing table tucked beneath the only slit in the canvas that permitted daylight. Inside smelled of candle wax, pressed linen, and lavender soap.

Outside smelled of war — of pressed metal from the blacksmiths, of men cursing over burnt porridge, of stableboys tending to horses who fouled the earth faster than they could shovel it. It was cruel, how the world went on while you could go scarcely a step without an escort. Eventually, you became accustomed to feeling a hundred eyes upon your back — most curious, others suspicious, some outright hateful.

The letters you wrote to Gwayne, at least, gave you the illusion of escape. You tended to each with careful precision — melting the wax, stamping it shut, then tying it off with a ribbon — and watched from afar as one of Ormund’s knights carried them toward the rookery. It was not until the twentieth day at camp, when you wandered further than you were typically allowed, that you noticed that none of your messages had been sent. You watched the knight toss the letter into the fire, flinching slightly when the flames sparked beneath the fresh kindling.

It had been four days since then. 

And you haven’t eaten once in protest.

It took roughly half that time for Lord Ormund’s patience to run thin. He’s suffered the endless whispers of your attempts to starve to death with an increasing displeasure. He commands thousands of knights beneath his banners, serves as the leader of his house with grace, and yet — he still cannot seem to manage to command one lady to supper. It was absurd. Humiliating. And worse, it invited doubt. What army will follow a man whom they believe incapable of governing his own household?

On the fifth evening, after your breakfast tray went untouched that morning, Ormund opts to bring you your supper himself. He marches through the crowded camp with his jaw clenched tight like a soldier headed into battle. His chainmail clanks with every step. Avoiding the stares he gets from surrounding knights feels borderline impossible.

He throws open the entrance of your tent without ceremony. The canvas snaps sharply beneath his aggressive hand as he ducks suddenly underneath it.  The light of the golden evening pours suddenly inside around his towering silhouette before the flap falls shut behind him once more, trapping the two of you inside.

There, he finds you lying on your cot, staring upward at the slit in the pavilion where one lonely shaft of sunlight spills through. Your fingers drift lazily through the rays, as if you were trying to catch it somehow. 

Your head snaps suddenly to the side at the sudden intrusion — your hair is loose and unkempt, because no one ever taught you how to do it yourself, and all of your dresses are now wrinkled and stained with dirt. The thin white nightgown you wear makes you look more sunken, more lifeless. 

Ormund grasps your tray with one hand and reaches for your small writing desk with the other. He lectures you through the distant pang of sympathy in his chest.

“I have commanded men twice your size—” His boots are heavy on the thin rug as he carries the desk over to you. “I have started sieges, I have broken sieges. And yet—” He slams the table in front of you with a dull thump. You try not to cower under the icy blue glare he gives you. “I cannot seem to persuade one prisoner— a lady, no less— to eat her supper. And I confess, it does very little for confidence in my command. So eat.”

Ormund slams the tray onto the desk. The broth steaming in a small wooden bowl sloshes over. Next to it, strips of leftover venison and a broken loaf of stale bread. Your empty stomach twists painfully with a mixture of nausea and hunger.

“So…” you start lowly, clearing your throat when your voice comes gravelly. You rise from your supine position on weak limbs. The fabric of your nightgown rides up your thighs as you turn to place your bare feet on the ground — eyes dull when you peer up at the man from beneath your lashes. “You admit it, then? That I am your prisoner here?”

His jaw clenches tight. His nostrils flare through a sharp breath. He no longer finds amusement in your banter. “Your status here depends entirely on your pliancy,” he spits, ripping off a piece of the stale loaf. “Now eat.”

You flinch when his fist rears suddenly towards your face, holding the broken bread just in front of your mouth. You blink wildly up at him, features screwed in offense. “…Excuse me?”

“Eat.”

You swat his hand away; it moves scarcely an inch. “I’m not a child—”

“Well, at present, you are behaving remarkably like one,” Ormund argues through a tight jaw. “Now open your mouth.”

You respond with only a glare.

Fury rages through the man’s chest. He wishes wordlessly for the strength of the Mother and the Warrior engraved upon his armor as he offers bitterly, “Or shall I make you?”

You spend a long moment staring up at him with eyes cold enough to freeze wine. You hold his gaze as your mouth parts slowly to accept the chunk of bread he pinches between his thumb and forefinger. He places it upon your tongue with a surprising gentleness, considering the wrath he’d had moments ago.

“Chew,” he commands, glaring down the bridge of his nose at you. Your jaw moves slowly. Ormund nods in approval. “Swallow.” 

Your heart lurches into your throat at his order. But you do as you’re told, throat bobbing as the piece of bread goes down. Another piece follows soon after; this time, your lips part before he asks you to do so. Relief crosses over his strong features as he places the food onto your tongue. His shoulders sag with the exhaled breath that it feels like he’s been holding for days.

He looks almost worried for you; relieved, almost, to have fed you. A warm, foreign feeling settles in your chest accordingly.

“I am trying… Very hard to be kind to you,” Ormund confesses, scarred hands twitching at his sides.  “So I cannot, for the life of me, understand why you insist on making this so difficult.”

“My letters,” you tell him. “Why aren’t they being sent?”

“The rookery master feared they could be intercepted,” he answers plainly. “I could not risk one falling into enemy hands. I… meant to tell you.”

“When?” you spit.

“When I found a safer way to deliver them.”

A bitter laugh sputters from your mouth. “What curious men you Hightowers are,” you quip with narrowed eyes. “So fond of deciding what sorrows I ought to be spared.”

His brows lower in confusion. “Is that not a kindness?” 

His answer lingers between you for several long moments. There was no cleverness in his words, only an honesty that strikes you like a fist to the stomach.

“Aye. I suppose it is,” you answer, clearing your throat when your voice catches. 

A strange emotion strangles you, and burns at the back of your eyes as you look down at your dress. Your dull nails pick at a smudge of mud on the fabric that will likely never come off. An embarrassed sort of laugh tumbles from your mouth. 

“Perhaps I… I spent so long waiting for someone to hurt me that I no longer remember what kindness is supposed to feel like.”

Ormund nods through a slow exhale from his nose. He glances to the side and walks the short distance to the stool that the table had knocked over in his rage. Your wet eyes follow his form as he walks away and then back to you, setting the chair on the other side of the table. You can feel the warmth radiating from his body, even in the scarce distance between you.

“I’ll admit— A man spends enough time at war, they start to forget that mornings are not meant to begin with fear,” he says, reaching again for the loaf of bread, but this time breaking it in half. “I forget myself, at times, but… if you’ll allow me… I’d very much like to prove to you that I can be kind.”

Your weary features soften around the edges. “Well, I don’t have much of a choice in the matter, do I?” you tell him, with a more sincere smile hinting at the corners of your lips. “I am your prisoner, after all.”

“So you keep insisting,” Ormund quips with his own quiet grin. “But I should rather you thought of yourself as my… responsibility.”

Your heart stumbles a beat. Responsibility felt much safer than hostage, or bargaining piece, or burden. It felt, you’ll admit, like a kindness.

iv. SILK & SWORDS

You fall into a steady routine at the Hightower encampment by the fifth moon of your captivity.

Each morning arrives with the same mournful groan of a warhorn that rolls across the grass green hills before the sun has even broken the horizon. You wake to the distant ringing of hammers against anvils, hounds barking for gristles off the cookfires, and knights shouting for their squires. The first hours were reserved for armorers; the afternoons for drilling knights whose swords cracked together until you could feel them ringing in your skull; and the evenings for songs, laughter, and ale.

Your days, however, remained painfully empty.

Lord Ormund had been kind enough to provide you with greater comforts as the weeks went by — cushioned pillows and heavier woolen blankets for when the nights got colder; sprigs of lavender for your bedside to keep out the stench of man; more parchment and colored ink to busy your hands when the days were especially long. And all of them were especially long. He’d given you his leather-bound prayer book, too, and even though you were not an entirely pious woman, you’d read through it enough times to recite each passage from memory.

The camp has since grown accustomed to your being there, ever since Ormund slackened his metaphorical leash on you — “You’ve had more than ample opportunity to run,” he’d said beneath the scratching of his quill. “Besides, where exactly would you go? No one else would take you.” No one bats an eye when you leave your tent, after three days of relentless rain had finally broken, to pick fresh berries from the brushes along the treeline.

Your crimson silk dress scrubs the dewy evening grass as you collect wild raspberries into a small wooden bowl. The juices stain your fingertips the color of red wine. The sweet scent mixes with the smell of wet earth and mint leaves crushed beneath your slippers. You bend at the waist to parse through tangled brambles, searching for the ripest berries. For the first time in months — years, maybe — you feel almost peaceful.

“Is that a love letter—?”

The voice cuts through the quiet like a blade. Your heart lurches into your throat as you jerk to full height again. The small bowl of berries slips from your grasp and rolls through the wet clover like so many drops of scattered blood. Behind you, you find a vaguely familiar hedgeknight, scarcely ten paces away — made of broad shoulders, broken teeth, and greasy hair that falls to his shoulders.

It takes you an embarrassingly long moment to catch your breath.

“I’m sorry,” you say through a tightening chest. “You… You startled me.”

“Did I?” he hums gruffly, in a voice that borders on amusement.

You cower into the hedgerow behind you as he approaches you, reaching you quickly on much longer limbs. He looms close enough for you to smell the sweat and ale and horse piss on his chainmail, close enough for you to lift your chin to meet his gaze.

His eyes never quite reach yours. They linger, instead, on your chest. “Letter from your lord husband, is it?” he asks, motioning with his head.

Your chin ducks to follow his eyes, where the rough edges of parchment nestled against your chest peek out from your corset. Your hands lift to cover it instinctively. “Yes. It’s a… a letter. From home.”

“Mind if I take a look at it?” he asks, taking another daring step closer. You wince at the sour smell of him. “What does Ser Gwayne write his pretty wife, hm?”

“Please, don’t—”

His hand shoots out. Thick, filthy fingers hook beneath the neckline of your gown, hard enough to stretch the fine silk with an audible crack. You react on pure instinct accordingly, lifting your own hand to strike him before your mind could forbid it.

The sound of your palm colliding with his bearded jaw cracks through the hedgerow like a whip.

His head turns slightly under the blow.

Your breath catches in surprise at yourself.

The back of his hand catches you across the cheek before you can blink. A red-hot pain explodes from your ear to your jaw as your world lurches suddenly sideways. You hit the unforgiving earth below with a huff when the air rushes from your lungs. Coppery blood pools thick on your tongue from where your teeth had cut the inside of your cheek.

“You little cunt—” you hear the man say, right before he catches a fistful of your skirts to pull you back towards him. The fabric screams beneath his hand. The cool evening air strikes your legs all at once when the silk rips up to your thighs.

You kick wildly at the man. Your slipper strikes uselessly against his shoulder. Your fingernails claw muddy furrows through the soaked earth.

“I am— Gwayne Hightower’s wife—” You tell him through panted, fearful breaths. He flips you onto your back by your ankle. Your foot burns beneath his grip. Your head strikes the soaked earth. Through the lack of air in your lungs, you heave, “He will have your head for this—”

“Oh, will he?” the hedge knight laughs with a brown-tooth grin. “‘Cause he ain’t here—”

The hand not holding your squirming ankle reaches for the tie in his trousers.

Then, in a blink, steel sings with a clean rasping sound. Warm blood splashes from your right jaw up to your left temple. For a flicker of a moment, you can’t quite comprehend why — not until the hedge knight kneels suddenly before you, with open eyes that have gone strangely distant. He topples suddenly sideways with his neck bent at an awkward angle, head half cut off and spouting bright red blood.

You blink wildly through the haze of death until you find Ormund standing just behind the corpse, chest rising and falling beneath his heavy armor. His longsword drips crimson onto the grass where your raspberries lie.

Sweat from the long day clings to his dark curls, wetting them against his temples and forehead. Flecks of blood dot his jaw like crimson stars. His blue eyes burn with something fierce, but his voice remains remarkably soft.

“My lady…”

You open your mouth to answer him, but nothing comes out.

Only then do you notice how violently your body is shaking, buzzing with a white-hot fear, as you scan the scene surrounding you — your torn skirts, the blood staining your chest, the dead body at your feet. You stare at the hedge knight’s gushing throat without fully understanding the sight of it.

Ormund reaches you in three long strides. He sheaths his sword without a word before dropping carefully to one knee. He slides one arm under your leg and his other behind your back, hoisting you upward with a pair of strong arms. The scent of blood and earth gives way to the smell of leather, incense, and bathing oils as he cradles you to the broad wall of his chest.

Your trembling hands clench a fistful of the green velvet cape draped along his shoulder.

“You’re safe, my lady,” Ormund murmurs as he carries you back to camp. “You’re safe.”

Your face finds the hollow space between his jaw and collarbone. You’re not entirely sure if you believe the words he speaks, but you know now that you do believe in the man who speaks them.

v. SANCTUARY & SIN

The weeks that followed could be divided into two — the days before the attack and all the days after.

For a time, you startled far too easily. A dropped shield sent you into a panic. A knight laughing too loudly made your pulse skyrocket. And if a pair of bootsteps walked too closely behind you, you lost all your breath before your mind had time to remind your body that no one meant you any harm. 

Nights proved harder still. You dreamt of nothing but rough hands and torn silk and crushed berries that smelled so sweet the thought alone made you sick. One moment you were suffocating beneath the sweaty body of a hedge knight, and the next, your canvas door was thrown open while you were choking on a scream.

Ormund stood silhouetted before you, barefoot, with a sword in his naked hand. He’d reached you with haste, after having your pavilion packed up and pitched again not quite twenty paces from his following the attack — “It’ll be easier that way,” he assured you. “If another fool decides to trouble you, I’d rather not have to cross half of Westeros to remove his head.” 

His curls were flattened from slumber, his linen shirt unlaced to reveal his broad chest heaving with panic. His sleep-swollen eyes swept every corner of the empty pavilion before they settled finally on you. His steel lowered as he crossed the tent to settle beside you, smoothing a hand up and down your back despite the way your nightgown clung uncomfortably to your sweaty skin.

“We’ll move your bed into my tent,” he’d said. “You’ll sleep there for the time being.” 

It was concern disguised as a command. One you could not refuse if you wanted to.

Ormund’s tent was large enough to pass for a modest hall — maps and banners occupied one half, while the other had become something half-resembling living quarters. Your smaller cot was placed opposite his beneath the same sloping canvas roof, separated by little more than a table crowded with candles and books. You would wake occasionally to find Ormund already seated beside the brazier in nothing but a linen shirt, reading dispatches by firelight while occasionally glancing over to see whether you were sleeping soundly.

You pretended that you were, if only to keep on watching him.

But then the late summer storms arrived; and the unforgiving deluge washed over the camp with enough violence to shake the pavilion you slept beneath. Thunder cracked like an explosion closely overhead, and you woke with another frightened gasp before remembering where you were.

Ormund was already awake, as if stirred in knowing that you were scared.

“If you’re frightened…” he murmured from across the darkness. A flash of lightning revealed his blanketed body, and his face half-smushed into his pillow. “I imagine my bed could accommodate two people without either touching the other."

You crossed the space between your cots and climbed beneath his blankets without another word.  

You haven’t left his bed since.

The days soon settle into something almost resembling normalcy. Ormund, you find, possesses an absurd fondness for taking care of you — always making sure that you’ve eaten breakfast before he’s started his mornings; delivering his wool blankets to you before you can complain that you’re cold, warming your hands between his calloused palms when he does so; and escorting you through camp with a protective hand splayed along the small of your back.

No one ever cared for you with such deliberate attention before — even Gwayne, as gentle as he was, could only love you from a respectful distance before the war had sent him off. Your husband washed away into memory, into the note left abandoned somewhere on the forest floor. 

You did not know whether he still rode beneath banners or if his corpse had been picked clean by crows. You did know, at the very least, that Ormund was here — he was there in the mornings when you woke and each night when old fears crept back into your skin. It was a dangerous thing, you soon realized, to mistake safety for love. Or more dangerous still, to suspect that the two were any different at all.

You watch from Ormund’s bed — freshly bathed beneath your thin ivory slip, with your legs kicking lazily from where you lie on your stomach — as his squire removes pieces of his armor. A sketchbook lies open before you, alongside a collection of colored inks.

“This is what you get for tightening the straps so much,” Ormund hums as Daeron struggles with the final buckle across the man’s broad shoulders. 

“Well, you’d like them to remain attached, wouldn’t you?” the boy quips back.

The man smiles despite himself. “You complain more than any squire I've ever met, do you know that?”

“I learned everything from you, did I not?”

When the final piece of armor comes finally free, Ormund dismisses the boy back to his tent. The entrance cover opens and shuts behind the boy, letting in a rush of cool evening air before it closes again. Silence returns to the expansive pavilion, filled only by the crackling of burning candles.

Ormund, left only in his loose dark breeches and a linen undertunic, walks to the round table to pour himself a goblet of wine. “What is occupying you so completely over there?”

“I’m hard at work,” you answer vaguely.

“So I see.” He eyes you carefully over the glugging of the flagon. A faint, unreadable flicker crosses his face. “Writing to Gwayne, are you?”

“No,” you sigh. “I’m drawing you.”

You set the quill into the inkpot and lift the sketchbook to face the man with a girlish grin, which seems to be becoming more and more frequent as the days go by. Ormund’s light eyes squint to study the page. It was unmistakably him drawn in the ink, though perhaps only if one was exceedingly charitable. The proportions are all wrong: his nose is too large, his mouth is too small, one eye sits higher than the other, and he’s missing his left brow.

His eyes flick to meet yours again. “…Is that intended to be me?” he asks, motioning with the goblet in his fist.

“Of course,” you shrug like it’s obvious.

“Well,” he sighs, raising the cup to his mouth. “I had no idea that I resembled that of a rotting turnip.”

You gasp in faux-offense that’s soon overcome by a fit of laughter. “It is not that bad!”

“My lady…” Ormund huffs sympathetically, abandoning his ale to saunter slowly towards the bed. “This could be considered treason— I should confiscate this immediately."

“You shall do no such thing,” you tease.

“Oh really?” he croons, brows raised in amusement.

He lunges for you in an instant. You jerk back onto your haunches with a squeal, cradling the sketchbook to your chest. You dodge each of his attempts to take it with a girlish gracelessness, laughing harder with each of his failed attempts. Ormund smiles at the sound without realizing it, dropping the table of ink to the rug below before clambering onto the bed to follow you. 

One final tug sends the book flying across the bed, and the two of you go to reach for it at the same time. The momentum carries you forward until you land clumsily against his chest, knocking the breath out of him as his back hits the mattress, with you squarely on top of him.

It takes you a long moment to realize your precarious position — your chest brushing his beneath your thin slip, noses nearly touching, breaths nearly entwining. Your laughter fades first, but you still do not move. Ormund’s smile flickers, but his hands lift to rest lightly along the arms you use to prop up your weight on top of him.

You can feel each of his warm breaths fan against your chin. You could get drunk on the ale stained on his mouth from the proximity between you alone. Closer by an inch or two and you would taste it on his lips.

“We ought not,” Ormund murmurs lowly, as if he can read your mind.

“Ought what?”

“This,” he answers. His blue eyes flick briefly in the space separating your mouths. “You are another man’s wife. My cousin’s wife.”

You swallow hard at the mention of Gwayne. It had been far easier to forget him, in truth. “I have not seen my husband in nearly a year,” you reply in a small voice. “I do not even know whether he yet lives…”

Pain etches in Ormund's strong features before disappearing behind his usual practiced restraint. His hands tremble with the urge to smooth away the frown between your brows, but he does not allow himself the satisfaction. 

“I swore on oath to protect you,” he says. “To serve you in my cousin’s absence.”

You, without possessing a similar self-control, lift a hand to brush a wild curl from his temple. “And do you intend to keep that promise, Lord Ormund?”

He nods against the mattress. “Of course I do.”

“Okay then…” you hum as a smile tugs slowly at one corner of your mouth. “Then serve me.”

You duck down to close the distance between you without a second thought. The tip of your nose grazes the strong bridge of his as you press your lips to his chapped ones, nothing more than an experimental brushing of your mouths. You go to pull away just as quickly as you came, and whatever restraint Ormund had had before vanishes in an instant.

He lifts his head from the tousled blankets to chase your mouth, cradling your neck with a wide hide to draw you back into him again. The second kiss lands with none of the careful uncertainty of the first. This one is slower, deeper, and far more languid. His tongue licks into your mouth, tasting of wine and the mint leaves he always chews after supper. You sigh through your nose to savor it, melting further into his chest.

Your mouths move together with an awkward sort of tenderness, learning one another by the second. Ormund kisses you far rougher than Gwayne ever did — it’s all tongue and teeth and spit, as if he were committing the taste of you to memory: the meat from your supper, the berry from your tea; the guilt from your broken vows, the relief of being found after believing yourself long abandoned.

Your breath catches in your throat when Ormund suddenly takes charge, urging you onto your back with his mouth still on yours. He pulls off you with a quiet smack, wearing your spit on his rosy mouth like gloss. 

“Do you want me to stop?” he asks with heavy eyes that dart back and forth between your glassy ones.

You shake your head against the cushions beneath you, features twisting with a pained look at the thought of stopping now.

“Do you understand what will follow? What… vows both of us will be breaking?”

Your eyes glisten as they dance between his blue ones. “The war broke those vows,” you tell him, half-breathless. “Not us.”

Ormund nods wordlessly for a moment, pleased with your answer. “Then open,” he says.

Your mouth parts for him on instinct. He lifts his middle and pointer finger to your lips, wetting them on your tongue, before sliding them in between your bodies. His hand disappears beneath the skirt of your slip. Your head tips back when you feel his fingertips sliding between your velvety folds, brushing your clit before sinking into your waiting cunt.

Your sigh fills the quiet tent, accompanied by the low groan in the back of Ormund’s throat.

“You’re softer than I imagined…” he confesses, almost to himself.

“Imagining me a lot, are you?” you tease on bated breath.

“Yes,” he answers without missing a beat. “I dreamt of how your cunt would wrap around me… of how you’d soak the sheets… of what noise you’d make when I moved my fingers like this—”

A whine catches in your throat when he crooks his fingers just so, nestling the fatty part of his palm flat against your clit. Your hips buck into his hand despite yourself. Your exhaled whine is half-drowned beneath his breathy chuckle.

“There it is…” he praises.

“Fuck me,” you plead, face crumpling under the weight of your need. One hand twists in his hair, while your other fists in his thin white tunic to keep him close. You only vaguely realize how little you sound like yourself as you plead: “I need it so bad, Ormund, please, fuck me—”

The man goes dizzy at the sound of your begging, as if he brought you into his camp, his tent, his bed, to do anything other than serve you. 

His fingers glitter with your slick when he drags them out of your cunt. He brings them to his nose, nostrils flaring slightly as he inhales the scent of your musk upon them. You whine at the sight of it — half-disgusted, half-intrigued. You watch with heavy eyes when he brings the same hand into his trousers to fist his half-hard cock fully stiff for you.

It’s a mess of tangled limbs for a moment, as you drag his shirt gracefully from his torso while he attempts to free himself from his breeches. He’s made of tanned skin, toned muscles, and a dusting of auburn hair from his sternum to his stomach. It grows more dense at the root of his cock — which is not quite as long as Gwayne’s, but thicker still and adorned with more prominent veins. 

Ormund works himself hard with his fist; the reddened head of his cock leaks pearly drops every time his hand moves upwards. Your mouth waters for a taste. You let him smear it along the folds of your cunt instead.

You curl your arms under his broad arms to splay your hands along his shoulder blades. They flex slightly under your touch as he leans down over you. You tense on instinct when he pierces you with the tip of his cock. “Shh, shh, shh,” he soothes lowly, fighting back his own grunt as you spread so perfectly around him.

He sinks slowly into you, slow enough for you to feel every vein and ridge of his cock as he mounts you until his hips are flush with yours. Your mouth parts. He ducks down to kiss you before a moan tumbles out, swallowing the pretty sound with his mouth. 

He stays still against you for several long, agonizing moments. Your hips buck against his in anticipation. “Please move,” you whine, digging crescent shapes into his shoulders with your nails. “I need you so much, please—”

Ormund’s jaw clenches tight. “Do you have any idea how long it’s been since I’ve been inside another woman?”

Your face screws. “I’d rather not hear about your previous exploits at the moment—”

“Don’t,” Ormund spits, shuddering on top of you when you roll your hips into his once more. He grasps your thigh hard enough to dig bruises into the plush skin with the hand not holding himself up beside your head. His light eyes turn glacial in an instant, darting wildly between both of yours. “I won’t… I won’t last…” he confesses.

Your eyes soften around the edges with a faux innocence. “This isn’t going to be the last time you fuck me, is it?”

The crude word falls so effortlessly from your pristine mouth that it makes his cock jerk within your drooling confines. “I don’t want it to be. No,” he answers, half-shy.

“Then I don’t care how long you last,” you assure him with a lazy grin. “You have kept me hostage for nearly a year— Surely, I’m entitled to make some use of my captor while the realm delays the war, am I not?”

Ormund’s resolve crumbles under your permission. He rolls his hips forward and back again, never quite pulling all the way out of you. He groans quietly when you clench around the sensitive head of his cock; and you swallow down a whimper when the coarse hair below his stomach rubs mercilessly along your sensitive clit. 

Your head tips back. He falls to the hollow space between your neck and shoulder.

Ormund’s open-mouthed breaths fan warm along your burning skin as he stumbles into a graceless rhythm, thrusting hard enough to make the wooden frame of his bed squeak quietly beneath you. 

The pressure on your clit is relentless. You squirm underneath his sweat-slick body, chasing and running from the pleasure all at once. “I know. I know. It’s okay,” you hear him slur against your skin. “Just take it. Just fuckin’ take it— Fuck—” His voice breaks like splintered glass. 

He tenses suddenly above you, taut muscles trembling. You hear his breath catch for a moment, right before a foreign warmth pools in the very pit of your stomach. He groans in time with his release, heavying his weight further against you. 

You aren’t far behind.

He grinds his hips lazily to ride out his high, smothering your sensitive clit as the warm, wet, sticky feeling continues to bloom inside of you. “Ormund—” you gasp, tensing beneath him.

“There it is…”the man praises as you tremble underneath him, smearing his lips against your jaw until they reach your parted mouth. “There it is— Fuck, that’s it,look at me.”

Your eyes snap open at his command, bleary and heavy-lidded. You ride out the rest of your orgasm with your gaze locked with his glassy one. 

The honeyed moment doesn’t last nearly as long as either of you would’ve liked.

“My lord?”

The two of you sober in a flash as the spell between you shatters. Ormund stills suddenly above you, as if pierced by steel. The warmth flees from his features at once, replaced by the hard composure of the commander of House Hightower. You, too, freeze where you lay beneath him — pulse thrumming hard in your throat as the muffled voice drifts once more through the pavilion.

“My lord—”

“Yes, Daeron,” Ormund spits through gritted teeth, nostrils flaring as he breathes through the rage searing in his chest. “What is it?”

The squire hesitates at his uncle’s harsh tone. “Forgive me for the intrusion, my lord…” the boy says carefully, hidden behind the covered entrance. “But a messenger arrived from the river road. He bears urgent word from Ser Criston’s camp.”

You feel your stomach sink — or, perhaps, it’s only the mixture of cum seeping out of your still fluttering confines, soaking the sheets beneath you. You feel unspeakably dirty now, and the lack of regret only deepens the feeling.

Ormund remains motionless above you for a moment before sitting back on his haunches. You shiver at the absence of his warmth, and wince slightly when his softening cock slips out of you. “A letter?” he calls to the entrance, brows lowered. “What news?”

“It is sealed, my lord,” Daeron says. “The messenger said it was to be opened by our hand alone.”

Ormund’s confusion deepens. “And who sends it?”

After another brief hesitation, the voice answers solemnly: “Ser Gwayne, my lord.”

You meet his soft, brown-blue gaze with a pair of squinted eyes. “I’m perfectly temperate, I’ll have you know,” you argue, smiling despite yourself as you rise to the toe of your boots. The tip of your nose drags over the bridge of his as you murmur, “So forgive me, my love, for missing you…”

Your words trail off as you lean forward to press a sweet kiss to his lips, slow and languid — savoring the mint leaf taste in his mouth and the coarse scruff of his beard against your skin. You’d melt into him entirely if the gods allowed it. But Baelor possesses far more self-restraint than you do in the matter, and pulls away with a quiet click before you can deepen the kiss.

“Have you spoken to the maester yet, like I asked?” he wonders gently.

A flicker of confusion passes across your face. “For what?”

“Your dizzy spell this morning, for one. And your sudden food aversions, for another,” the older man lists, lips quirking into a gentle smile. (He’d make mention of your mood swings, too, if he had a death wish.) “As well as your… newfound appetite.”

You shove him by the shoulder, only partially playful. “Having an adoring wife is hardly enough to warrant a visit to the maester, Your Grace.”

“That was not my point,” Baelor laughs under his breath, turning on his heel and walking the short distance to his chair at the makeshift council table. He fans out the tail of his black coat before dropping into the creaking wooden seat. The melting candles on the table cast a flickering orange glow across his face as he tilts his chin to smile up at you. “I only want to make sure you’re okay, my love.”

“And I will be…” you hum in a mischievous lilt, towering over the man with the skirt of your dress balled into fists. You swing your leg over his spread thighs and brace your hands on his broad shoulders as you descend over his lap. “…When you give me what I want.”

“Spoiled thing,” Baelor scolds despite his own sly grin, gripping your hips in a pair of wide hands. “The rest of the council will arrive at any second, and you wish to hump my thigh like a bitch in heat.”

“I’ve pleasured you in less time,” you tease.

“You minx—” he chuckles and swats softly at your thigh.

Your entwined laughter fills the quiet, candlelit study and trails off in tandem as you close the distance between you. Baelor lifts his chin to meet you halfway when you duck down to press another kiss to his mouth. Your plush lips just barely brush his chapped ones before a set of footsteps echoes down the long hall.

“Seven fucking hells…” Maekar huffs, deep voice bouncing off the cobbled walls. “Haven’t I suffered enough for one day?”

“Oh, don’t stop on my account,” Aerion grins from behind his father when you slide off of Baelor’s thighs. “You wouldn’t have room for one more over there, would you—?”

He’s cut off by a dull smack of his father’s sudden backhand colliding with his jaw — not nearly enough to hurt, but enough to take the young boy by surprise. He cradles his cheek and gapes while Maekar continues on towards the long table.

“What in the seven hells was that for?” Aerion shouts boyishly.

“For bothering me…” Maekar mumbles vaguely, beneath the scraping of his chair as he takes his seat beside his brother.

Aerion shrinks inside himself as he follows behind his father like a hurt puppy. He scowls when he catches you snickering from Baelor’s other side, helping yourself to the small bowl of grapes that the help had set out for you — the only thing you can eat without the sheer thought of it making you utterly nauseous.

“Why is she not leaving?” Aerion argues like a child.

“Why did The Hedge Knight not kill you when he had the chance?” you retort in a gritty monotone, with a purple grape wadded in your cheek. “See? I can ask questions, too…”

Baelor and Maekar turn in tandem to gawk at your sudden ire. You and Aerion had a way of bickering like stubborn children, but you weren’t always quite this brash.

“I should have your tongue for that,” the silver-haired boy scolds, dragging the bowl of nuts away from his father and closer to him.

“On what grounds?” Maekar grumbles, lip twitching in disgust beneath his silver mustache as Aerion cracks one under the hilt of his dagger. “If you lack the fortitude to withstand harmless bickering, I’ll send you to the fucking septas instead of the battlefield…”

“You won’t defend your own son?” Aerion squints.

“Stop whinging,” you and Maekar answer simultaneously.

“Enough,” Baelor spits. “All of you.”

You flash your husband a wordless look of offense as another set of heavy footsteps enters the room — a pair of knights escorting Ser Duncan inside the expansive study. Your eyes grow wet, glittering with unshed tears beneath the flickering candlelight, because you’re not used to the older man’s scolding.

Baelor softens with a sigh, momentarily forgetting how sensitive you’ve grown in the past weeks (in more ways than one). He reaches for your hand beneath the table and wraps his larger fingers around your colder ones, giving you a reassuring squeeze there. Maekar grumbles a sound of disgust in his throat.

“T-Trial by combat,” Ser Duncan stutters, like he’d been preparing the words for some time and overthought exactly how to say them. He shifts before the prying eyes at the council table, like a prey animal trapped inside a seven-foot-tall man. “That— That is my right, is it not?”

Aerion answers the knight’s question with another hearty slam of his dagger against the table. “I refuse,” the boy shrugs before popping a walnut into his mouth.

Maekar grits his teeth at the boy’s audible chewing. “You cannot… refuse—”

“A trial of seven,” he declares instead, smirking through the crumbs in his mouth. “That is my right. I do believe.”

Duncan looks to Baelor, who looks to Aerion, who looks to Maekar, who looks to you.

“What the fuck is a trial of seven?” the father wonders aloud, pointing his question to the only person in the room who’s memorized nearly every book in the Red Keep.

“It came across the Narrow Sea with the Andals and their seven gods,” you explain. “They believed that if seven champions fought, the gods would be more likely to intervene, and see the guilty party appropriately punished. It hasn’t been invoked in nearly two centuries. Not since Damon the Devout—”

“Show off…” Aerion mumbles against the slam of his dagger.

“It’s more likely to be used by pious knights,” you continue with a pointed glare thrown the silver-haired boy’s way. “It’s not typically reserved for cowards who’d sooner risk the lives of his men rather than fight with honor—”

“Make no mistake, Daeron has been wronged in this as well,” Aerion explains with his mouthful, mostly towards his father. “Ser Duncan must pay for his crimes against each of us. Or shall we leave the Targaryen honor in doubt?”

“Do not speak to me of honor, boy,” Maekar spits. “This is fucking nonsense—”

“Aerion is within his rights,” Baelor says, much softer than the tension filling the candlelight study. He leans forward in his seat and flashes the Hedge Knight a look that borders on sympathetic. “We have no choice. You must find six other knights to fight beside you before dawn—”

“But I have no one else!” Duncan thunders as his pleading eyes dart to you. “Surely your gods must have something to say about that.”

“The Andals believed that, if the cause is just, men will rally behind it,” you explain softly, cowering in your seat. “And if they do not, then it’s because you are guilty— or because you’re facing a prince who fears his own chances of winning…”

Your head swivels slowly to look at the boy across the long table. The emotion in your chest snuffs out in an instant, replaced with a more fiery anger that prickles at your skin. Most of your feelings felt like that most days — misplaced and a little too big for your own body.

“What can I say?” Aerion grins. “I am nothing if not a pious knight—”

He’s cut off by Maekar’s chair scraping harshly at the cobble as he rises from his seat, yanking Aerion from his chair by the lapel of his coat. The boy stumbles over his feet as he scrambles to keep up with the man’s longer strides.

“Idiot,” the father spits, pushing his son off down the hall.

Lightning flashes purple in the sky, casting a daunting hue through the stained-glass windows, moments before thunder rolls overhead. Something about it feels like a bad omen.

“Find your champions, Ser Duncan,” Baelor tells the younger man. “You are dismissed.”

The guards reanimate from their posts by the doorway and take the dumbfounded Hedge Knight with kind eyes by the shoulders, urging him back the way he came. When they are finally gone, you and Baelor are left alone again, like you’d longed for all day, though something about this silence feels distinctly different than the one before.

Your eyes dart over the edges of the older man’s profile as he focuses on the darkened hall, down where his brother and Ser Duncan had disappeared. There’s something distant in his gaze, as though he were a thousand miles away in thought.

“My love?” you call gently to him, lifting a hand to cradle his bearded jaw. “What are you thinking about now?”

Your thumb swipes over his pale cheek. He melts instinctively into your touch, settling further into your delicate hand as his blue-brown eyes dart to yours. He blinks the pondering haze from his gaze and says, “About your going to see the maester—”

“Baelor…” you sigh dismissively.

“Please, my love,” he begs, always soft with you, but a little extra now — weighed down by his own stress and all the love he has for you. “I already have enough to worry about. Ease my mind on this, at least.”

The storm finally breaks on your way out of the infirmary, and now you know for certain it is a bad omen.

You return from the maester’s quarters with your cloak drenched in rain and a whole lot more than you bargained for — a babe, namely, which had taken seed in your womb two or three moons ago, who was most assuredly the culprit for your fainting spells, nausea, and your… suddenly carnal urges.

You spent about five minutes after the fact puking in the nearby garden, because a child was not something you had talked about with your husband — who had already done his duties as a father — let alone something you thought you wanted for yourself. You spend another five minutes trekking through the dimly lit castle to tell your husband the news.

The heavy wood creaks when the posted knight opens it for you. You murmur a quiet thanks and pass through the threshold into your candlelight bedroom, slipping your wet cloak from your head. The door thuds shut behind you a second later, in time with your heart falling to your stomach, when you catch Baelor looming before the wooden stand at the corner of the room — where Valarr’s black armor has been prepped to wear.

Your shoes scuff the cobbles as you freeze suddenly in place. The sound catches the attention of the man across the room, whose head snaps in your direction. He softens at the sight of you, rain-drenched and wet-eyed.

“Baelor?” you call to him, voice still weak from the previous wave of nausea.

“What did the maester say, my love?” he asks, wiping his oiled palms on a white cloth, from where the armor had been waxed to prevent rust.

You answer him with a question of your own, voice taut as your eyes dart between him and the lavish metal on the stand across the room. “What is this?”

“Armor,” he answers vaguely.

“Okay,” you nod. “But why is it in here?”

“Because I plan to use it,” the man confesses, unable to lie, least of all to you. “When I fight for Ser Duncan on the morrow.”

You flinch like he’s just backhanded you. You think it would hurt less if he had.

“Why in the seven hells would you do that?” you spit like fire.

Baelor meets your anger with a softness that never seems to leave him.

“You said it yourself, my love. If a cause is just, then just men will fight for it,” he answers with a sad smile, dropping the cloth to the table and walking slowly over to you. “Ser Duncan will be lucky to find six knights by sunrise, anyway. At least, I know I’ll have some air of immunity in the matter— The oath of the Kingsguard prevents them from harming a prince of the blood.”

“Why are you saying this like you’ve already thought about it?” you ask him in a fragile whisper, tilting your chin to keep his gaze when he towers over you. “Like you’ve already decided?”

“Because I have,” Baelor tells you. “Because it is the right thing to do—”

“The right thing to do,” you argue through gritted teeth, blinking back the burning tears that sting the backs of your eyes. “Is not risk your life when you know you have a son and a pregnant wife counting on you. When you have an entire kingdom relying on you—”

“Pregnant?” the man echoes with his greying brows lowered in confusion. It takes him a long moment thereafter to catch his breath. “You… You mean to say that… You’re with child?”

You swallow hard, nodding wordlessly for a moment, because this was not exactly how you planned on telling him that your lives were about to change forever.

“Yes,” you answer weakly, with your eyes turned to your hands wringing into knots before you. “The maester seems to think so, anyway. He assumes it might be a boy from the way I’m carrying thus far, but… It’s still too early to tell, he says…”

It takes you several moments to get the courage to meet his eyes again. You peer up at the man from beneath your lashes, clumped together with the tears you’d shed on the way over. You find his brown-blue irises glittering in the flickering candlelight, growing glassy at the revelation. The look of shock, adoration, and distant horror softening his weathered features makes your throat tighten with emotion all over again.

“That is why you cannot go, Baelor,” you whimper. “I forbade it. I’ll slaughter Aerion myself if I must, but I will not let you go.”

Baelor exhales hard through his nose, a faint laugh that doesn’t quite match the wet look in his gaze. He sighs and engulfs your wringing hands with his larger, gently calloused ones. “My love—”

You reject his softness, jerking your fingers from his grasp and reaching instead for the lapel of his black coat. You pull him closer and force him to meet your stern, teary-eyed gaze.

“You have to stay. You have to live,” you tell him firmly. “For me. For Maekar. For Valarr— For your unborn son.”

“A daughter,” Baelor corrects, half-strangled, and musters a wavering smile at the look you give him. “I hope it’s a girl. My sons have caused me enough stress for a lifetime, I think…”

You exhale through your nose in place of a laugh, softening under his touch when his wide palms smooth over your waist. You loosen your grip on his coat and trail your hands down his forearms until they settle much more gently over his wrists.

“Well, then, I hope she has your eyes,” you smile.

“And your everything else, Gods be good.” Baelor quips with a wider grin.

“So you’ll stay?” you whisper on bated breath, distantly fearful of his response.

“Aye,” Baelor nods once. “I’ll stay.”

You spend the long night discussing arrangements, baby names and birth plans and the like. Prince Aerion yields to his injuries by daybreak, the word of the Hedge Knight’s innocence spreads by nightfall, and the Targaryen camp returns to the Red Keep the following morning.

A baby girl is born to you some seven months later — named Casella, after Baelor’s Dornish grandmother — and she has his eyes.

Synopsis: After reading Peter’s letter and rejecting him, you invite him inside your apartment to talk

“Sorry about him. He’s just excited that you’re here.” You said once Ned left the apartment to get the food he’d ordered. You and Peter were alone once again, with you on the couch and him sitting on the floor. He was preoccupied by a Lego set Ned had put out, but you were still thinking out the letter you’d found. The letter that informed you that you and Peter were once together, but you had his existence entirely wiped from your memory.

“It’s all good. This is honestly the most fun I’ve had in years.” Peter told you as he fitted another two blocks together.

“Really? You don’t do Lego nights with your new friends?”

“No, no. I didn’t really make any. Not the kinds that like to build Lego’s, anyways. I’m pretty busy with Spiderman stuff.” He answered you. There was no self pity in his voice, but that only made you feel all the more guilty. The more you thought about what his last four years must’ve been like compared to yours, you wanted to break down into tears and hold him tight. You had to look away from him when your eyes began to water.

“That makes me sad.” You admitted as you discreetly dabbed at your eyes.

“What does?” He wondered.

“Thinking of you going through all of this alone. I mean, Ned and I had each other, but we didn’t even know that we had lost something. You really didn’t have anyone?”

“No, but it’s okay.” He assured you. “Don’t feel sad. I made the decision to have the spell cast. I knew what it would do.”

“I don’t know if I could have done something that selfless.” You shook your head and continued to dodge his gaze. Peter watched you and could tell you were emotional and trying to hide it from him, but he knew you too well. The last thing he wanted was for you to feel any kind of remorse for a decision he made.

“Yeah, well, I guess I’m just a better person than you.” He shrugged and watched your reaction carefully. Despite forgetting him, his sense of humor still worked on you. You cracked a smile and looked at him.

“You’re funny.” You told him. “That’s something I’ve learned about you so far. Selfless and funny.”

“And humble.” He added, making you smile again.

“Right, and humble.” You nodded. You watched him build the Lego set some more as the two of you sat in comfortable silence. Peter had a million things he wanted to say to you, but didn’t want to overwhelm you, so he kept quiet.

“Gentle, too.” You said after a beat of silence.

“Gentle?” He tilted his head.

“The way you held me when you swung me home.” You explained. “You kept me secure, but it still felt respectful of my space. And you swung us back so slowly and carefully. Even… even after what I had just said to you.”

Since he still had his mask on, you watched his body language carefully to see how he reacted to being reminded of you telling him you didn’t love him. You wanted to see if it was crushing him as much as it was crushing you, or if he was more understanding. But he was too hard to read.

“You know, you never really liked swinging with me.” Peter laughed softly. “It used to scare you, understandably so. That’s why I went so slow. I didn’t want to freak you out anymore than you probably already are. I know reading that letter must’ve been a lot.”

“I’m right, then.” You smiled coyly. “You are gentle. And considerate. That’s another thing I know about you now.”

“Collecting data on me, are you?” Peter asked, grateful that his mask was concealed the delighted smile he was wearing. After the heavy conversation you’d had after you discovered the letter, he was appreciating each shred of tenderness between the two of you.

“Wouldn’t you? If someone showed up at your door and said “hey, by the way, we were together, but I was wiped from your memory”, wouldn’t you want to learn everything about them to see why you once loved them?”

“Honestly, I don’t even know if I’d believe them.” Peter admitted. “I’m actually kinda surprised that you did. You’re usually pretty skeptical and like to see things for yourself. For all you know, I could be making this all up as a really elaborate way to ask you out.”

“I didn’t even think of that.” You realized. “I just automatically believed you when I read the letter.”

“Why do you think that was?” Peter wondered as he looked over at you.

“I don’t really know. I think it just made sense to me. All throughout college, I felt like there was something missing in my life. Nothing ever satisfied me - no job, no guy, no achievement, because I always felt like I was waiting for something more. So when I read your letter, it all made sense. I knew what I’d be waiting for was actually a who. And that’s you.”

Peter could do little to suppress the onset of hope growing within him that maybe you whole heartedly believing him meant a part of you remembered him. He was quiet for a minute and felt himself getting emotional once more. He couldn’t wipe his eyes since he still had his mask on, so he nodded his head and looked down.

Peter could feel your gaze all over him, but his voice was too shaky to speak. After being told by both you and Jean that you had no thoughts of him, it meant everything to him that some part of you had felt his absence.

“Well I very grateful that you believed me.” He said once he finally trusted his voice not to crack. You smiled sadly and then looked down at your lap. Peter watched you, feeling like there was something at the tip of your tongue that you’d been holding back for the entirety of the conversation.

“Hey, Peter?” You asked in a timid voice.

“Yeah?”

“I feel really bad about what I said to you before. About not loving you, I mean.” You admitted, still keeping your eyes down. Peter swallowed and looked away as well as he mentally prepared himself to have this conversation again.

“Oh, that’s…that’s okay.” He said kindly. “I don’t want you to worry about that, okay? Don’t feel bad. It’s….everything is okay.”

“None of this is okay.” You said tearfully. “That must’ve been really awful to hear after you waited so long to talk to me. I can’t stop thinking about your face when I said it. I keep replaying it in my mind.”

Peter didn’t say anything for a long time. Finally, he stood up from his spot on the floor and sat beside you on your couch. You watched him through tear stained eyelashes and moved over a little to be closer to him. Silently, Peter took a box of tissues off the end table and handed them to you.

“I really don’t want this to weigh on you.” He said finally. “What you said, it’s really okay. How could you love me? You don’t know me.”

“I think I just felt really angry in that moment. I remember you coming into the donut shop before I started school. I remember you holding that letter in your hand. You looked like you had something to tell me.” You recalled as you dried your eyes with your tissue.

“I wish I had just told you then.” Peter sighed. “I really do. I’m sorry I took that choice from you.”

You stared at him for a moment and wished you could pull his mask off and look into his eyes. You settled for the glimpse of them that you could get through the white of his mask, and found unexpected comfort in them.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner, Peter?” You whispered. “We could have been rebuilding this whole time. I could’ve been getting to know you this whole time. But now, I feel like you’ve been taken from me twice.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” Was all he could say. You could tell he was crying too. You wiped your eyes again and then started to rip up the tissue to give your hands something to do.

“It’s strange. I don’t remember you, but I can still feel what a loss that is.” You said as if you were thinking out loud. As you looked into Peter’s eyes, he had never seen you look so lost. He decided you’d both gone long enough without connection and pulled off his mask.

“What are you doing? Put it back on. Ned could come back any minute.” You warned him as your head whipped to the door to see if Ned had returned.

“I don’t care.” Peter shook his head. “I have to tell you this.”

“Tell me what?” You asked as your eyes desperately searched his face to try and jog your memory.

“I am truly sorry that I didn’t tell you sooner. But you have to understand that it only came from a place of wanting to protect you.”

He paused as though he was carefully considering his next words. His knee was bouncing up and down, seemingly unbeknownst to him, so you put your hand on top of it. It stopped bouncing almost immediately and he instinctively put his hand on top of yours. He rubbed his thumb over your knuckles for just a second before remembering that you didn’t have that kind of relationship anymore. He quickly withdrew his hand and wiped his eyes.

“When I first went to give you the letter all those years ago, I had just come back from my aunts grave. I was carrying the weight of my lifestyle being the cause of her death. Seeing your face that day was the only thing that eased the pain. But then I saw that you still had a bandage on your face from helping me when I was fighting some people. You probably don’t remember that either.”

You reached up and touched the scar above your right eyebrow when you heard this. Something you’d always chalked up to being a birthmark or leftover scrape from childhood had been a connection to Peter this whole time.

“When I looked at you and heard how excited you were to go off to school, you seemed so peaceful.” Peter continued. “I couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I couldn’t complicate your life all over again and risk you getting killed for me.”

You chewed your bottom lip for a moment as you processed what he was saying. You could understand his reasoning to a point, but you still wished he had let you make the decision for yourself.

“Did I know you were Spiderman when we were together?” You asked him.

“Yeah. You figured it out.” He said with a soft laugh when he remembered the night you told him you knew his secret. You didn’t seemed pleased by that answer and frowned at him.

“But doesn’t that mean I already knew the risk? And was with you regardless?”

“You were.” He had to agree. “I guess it didn’t feel like a risk anymore after my aunt passed. It felt inevitable.”

You sighed and put your hand back on Peter’s knee. He looked into your eyes expecting residual anger, but they were only soft now.

“I understand why you did what you did. But I don’t want you to make decisions like that for me ever again, okay?” You said firmly but kindly.

“I won’t.” He nodded. “Never again. I promise.”

“Good. Because if I’m back in your life now, I need to be able to trust you.”

“You can. I’ll make it up to you.” He assured you. The faintest hint of a smile crept onto his face, so he looked down in attempt to hide it.

“What?” You wondered.

“I didn’t realize this meant you were officially back in my life.” He said in a quiet voice. You could hear a difference in his voice as he spoke, sounding much lighter than he had since he first reentered your life.

“Ned and I are, yeah.” You said simply, not understanding how desperately he needed to hear that.

“That’s, uh, that’s really great to hear.” He nodded and kept his head low so you wouldn’t see his misty eyes. He didn’t want you to see that he was all choked up over the mere fact you were someone he could talk to again.

“You could’ve heard it four years ago.” You said out the corner of his mouth. Peter let out a soft chuckle at that, making you smile as well. The atmosphere in the room finally felt a little less intense and you were able to smile at each other.

“Are you gonna remind me of that for the rest of our lives?” Peter asked you, secretly thrilled to have the beginning of some kind of inside joke with you. Inside jokes existed between people who meant something to each other, giving him hope that this would be the first of many between you.

“Almost definitely.” You assured him.

“I deserve that.” He shrugged. To his surprise, your smile fell and a very serious look crossed your face.

“You don’t deserve any of this.” You stated as you stared into his eyes. Peter blinked at the sudden candor from you and nodded his head to show you he heard you.

“I appreciate you saying that.” He said, voice quiet once again.

“I mean it, Peter.” You insisted. “No one should have ever had to go through what you’ve gone through. But you don’t have to go through it alone anymore. I’m here for you now. As long as you’re honest with me.”

“Since I’m being honest, there’s actually something else I have to tell you.”

“Oh God.” You sighed. “There’s more? What else could you possibly have to tell me?”

“You know how I came into your room the other day and told you someone bad was after you? And then we found out later that it was Jean?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“After I got you out of your apartment, we landed on a rooftop. I thought I had gotten us far enough away from Jean where she couldn’t get us, but I didn’t. She took you over at some point without me realizing. And she, uh, she kissed me.” Peter admitted. He’d been carrying the shame from the moment he’d realized it was Jean, and not you, who kissed him. In the spirit of rebuilding your relationship, he knew he had to be honest with you.

“Oh. I didn’t know that happened. Everything just sort of switched off after we left my apartment.” You frowned and tried to recall the moments between Peter rushing into your open window and you waking up in his arms on the sidewalk after Jean threw you off the rooftop.

“I assumed you didn’t know. But I wanted you to know that I kissed you back. Or, her back, I guess. But only because I thought it was you. I really thought we were safe from her up there. If I had known it wasn’t really you, I never would’ve kissed her back. Or, you back. I don’t know exactly. I just want you to know that I’m really sorry.”

“I appreciate you telling me that.” You smiled sadly at him. “And your apology. I’m pretty disgusted that she used my body like that, but I don’t blame you for it. I know you wouldn’t have kissed me if you knew the truth.”

“I wouldn’t. Ever. But I’m still sorry.”

“I forgive you, since you didn’t know. Plus, I’m sure we’ve kissed before, right?”

“Yeah.” Peter blushed. “We have.”

“I figured. That explains why I don’t remember my first kiss.” You said with a sad laugh. Peter could tell that bothered you but stayed silent to let you process it.

“Or my first time.” You realized. “Was that you, too?”

“Yeah, yeah that was me.” Peter said weakly. He was bright red now, but luckily, you weren’t looking at him.

“Damn. And here I thought I was a virgin.”

“Definitely not.” Peter mumbled.

“Definitely not?” You repeated through a laugh. “Damn, Spiderman. What were we getting up to?”

Before he could answer, he watched your face slowly drop into a frown. You slumped back on the couch and stared off into the distance but not at anything in particular.

“That’s actually hitting me pretty hard.” You confessed. “Those were two pivotal moments in my life and I have no memory of them. Or of being in love. Or, I’m sorry. Were we in love? How serious was our relationship? Your letter just said we were together.”

“Very serious and very much in love. We were that annoying couple that sat on the same side of the booth at restaurants.” He informed you. You smiled a little at that, but he could tell you were still grieving the loss of memories for those foundational moments in your life.

“Oh God. Really?” You asked in total disbelief, feeling unable to imagine yourself as one half of a couple that did that.

“Oh yes. And always holding hands. Even under the desk in class. People would make fun of us sometimes. But even when they did, you never let go of my hand.”

“I mean, that’s pretty sweet.” You admitted. “As long as we weren’t the kind of high school couple that would like bark at each other or make out to say goodbye if we had different classes.”

“No, no barking.” He chuckled. “Just holding hands. And you’d wear my debate club hoodie. You always said it was because it smelled like me, but I really think you just didn’t want to buy your own.”

“That sounds like me. I actually still have that. I thought it was mine.”

“It’s mine. My initials are on the tag.”

“Really?” Your eyes widened. “How did I not notice that? I did notice it smelled like cologne, though. But I thought that was because Ned had borrowed it or something.”

“Nope. All me.” Peter said proudly.

“What else?” You asked as you leaned your chin on your hands to look at him. You resembled a kid eagerly waiting to hear the next part of a storybook, and that made Peter eager to tell you.

“You’d come over every Friday and my aunt would make us some bizarre recipe she saw online. It was never good, and rarely edible, but you’d always pretend to like it. And then we’d sneak out and get McDonald’s.”

“May.” You recalled. “I could never remember how I knew her. Or why I spent so much time at a 50 year old woman’s home in my teens.”

“Yeah, May.” He smiled sadly. “We’d watch movies in your room a lot. You let me show you all my favorites. If you complimented something random about the movie after we watched it, I knew that meant you didn’t like it. Like, “the score was really powerful” or “the costumes were so detailed”. That’s when I’d think yep, she hated it.”

“Is that why I’ve seen all the Star Wars movies? That’s your doing?”

“Oh, yes.” He nodded. “That’s all me.”

“Keep going.” You said, thought it sounded more like a plead.

“You always had my back. Always. You don’t remember this, but before the spell, my identity got revealed to the world. You went down swinging for me anytime someone said something to me. Even though it was making things harder for you.”

“Harder how?”

“You got fired from your job. So did Ned. And neither of you got into MIT because you were linked to the “controversy” about me.” He explained.

“I can’t believe that happened. I don’t remember any of that.”

“It did. That’s part of the reason I didn’t tell you sooner.”

“Which you’re sorry about.” You reminded him.

“Right, which I’m sorry about.” He nodded in agreement and cracked a smile at you keeping him in line. You frowned again and touched a gentle hand to Peter’s cheek, to which he instantly melted into.

“You gave up so much for Ned and I to have normal lives. And we had no idea for all this time.” You said in a voice barely above a whisper.

“Of course. I would do anything to protect you guys. Anything.”

“I can’t tell you how much I wish I had our memories.” You stayed in a hushed tone as you stroked his freckles with your thumb.

“I really wish you did too.” He said, voice beginning to waver as well. You gave him a teary smile and then wiped your eyes with the back of your hand.

“Listen, um, I know that I said before that I’m grateful for what you sacrificed for me, but that I don’t know you.”

“I remember.” Peter said quietly.

“But I’d like to.” You continued. Peter stared into your eyes for what felt like a really long time, unwilling to blindly trust that this was really you talking and not another trick.

“If that’s okay?” You added when he didn’t respond.

“Can I have four years to think about it?” He said finally, making you laugh through your tears and pull him into a hug. He hugged you back as tightly as he could and let himself trust that this was real. He buried your face in his shoulder, letting himself grow familiar with the new perfume you wore. You held him just as tightly, feeling your muscle memory kick it as you gripped the curls on the top of his head.

“No, you may not.” You said into his shoulder. “I think we’ve lost enough time.”

Tag List 🏷️

@thebookwormlife @imanativeofswlondondahling

@whatareyouhidingpeter @takenbyheartstrings

@imyourliquor-youremypoison

@peterparkoure

@justcallmehitgirl @jackiehollanderr

@emmamarshmellow @unbelievableholland

@sovereignparker @every-marveler-ever @undiadeestos @eridanuswave​ ​

@solarxmoonchild

@quaksonhehe @lovelessdagger

@thesuitelifeofafangirl @marshxx @nooneinvitedfascistbarbie

@maybemona

@alexxcorona113 @lethal-wisdom

@pandaxnienke

 @itsemohours

@leysol

@olixerwxxd @leilanixx

@whereismytelephone @so-very-asleep

@spideyspeaches @hihiweezing

@mathletemadison  

@dhtomholland @insomniac-nerd-posts-things @prancerrparkerr

@hallecarey1 @adayasgeorgia @blackwidowisthebest @imawhoreforu

@ciarahollands

@nellabellaa @pinklxmonade @boogywoogywoogy @wordsarelife @caramelfondu

He flounders for a second, turning his head sharply on the pillow to look at you. You're in no better state, perhaps worse. Your hair is a mess; his fingers had been all over you—and if he squints, there may just be a bit of web fluid in there. He won't mention that until you have to wash it out. You're glistening too, not just with sweat but his own spit, Jesus Christ.

"W-What?" His voice is a little wrecked, a side effect of grunting like a caveman, apparently. He tries to clear it.

"Yeah. When male spiders moult, they reach maturity and have to find a mate. Sometimes they survive after, but the female always tries to eat them. For dominance or protection, maybe."

Peter grimaces at the memory of his own moult. You're not even looking at him as you ramble off about male spiders, how their pedipalps look like big boxing gloves to help subdue the female into mating. He doesn't miss how your hands flick down to his own large hands.

"So you're going to eat me?"

The silence that follows shouldn't be as long as it is. It shouldn't make him squirm when you glance at him, the flat expression to your face—are you joking around? Are you serious? Are you about to knock him out, wrap him up in some foil and shove him in the oven? He can win that fight, right? He can fight back against a woman trying to eat him-

Your laugh is like light at the end of the tunnel. His shoulders immediately unbunch, and his eyebrows relax. You're grinning, laughing in a way that makes his heart flutter in his sweat-ridden chest.

"'Course I'm not going to eat you." You roll onto your side to face him, he matches you. "My oven's not big enough anyway."

His face falls, and it's nearly impossible to not crack into a wider grin at the expression on his face.

"Not funny, by the way."

"It's a little funny."

He lunges, not in the way Spider-Man might with a villain, but the way a boyfriend would when he's wrapped in a small warm bubble with his girlfriend. His arms are around you before you can squirm away, muffling your indignant squeak into the plushness of his pectorals. He's holding back despite having an ironclad grasp on you; you know that too, apparently, when you suddenly go lax in his arms.

Peter nuzzles his nose into your hair, taking in a deep breath in and letting his body relax now that he's got you all wrapped up in his arms. Nice and quiet. As it should be after he just essentially fucked you through the bed, he's not even sure where you got the energy after all that.

"Is this the part where you try and mate after subduing me?"

Peter groans, long and loud to the point where you're giggling in his arms at the vibrations. "Stop using the word mate."

Wrong thing to say, seemingly, as you're pulling your head out from under his chin so fast that it actually causes his teeth to clack. His eyes blink at the sharp pain in his mouth before readjusting onto you... aaaand you're pissed.

"You don't see me as a mate?" You're pouting now, and Peter hates that because it works on him every time. He's already melting, using those big hands to smooth down your hair and pull you in closer. You try to resist, but you somehow end up nose-to-nose with him.

"I mean, in the sense of relationships and my own biology, yeah I guess you're my mate. But when you say it like that, it sounds so barbaric and primal and a little silly, if I'm honest. What ever happened to boyfriend and girlfriend?"

He doesn't notice at first, with how close you are, how your smile grows the more he rambles nonsense about his spider hormones, how he's not entirely an arachnid. It's a kiss on the lips that has him falling silent, chasing after your lips when you break away.

"I'm just messing with you, Peter."

"I know." His voice softens when you smile at him again, naturally falling into you to lay another delicate kiss on your lips. He loves you, perhaps more than anything he's ever loved before. You get him in a way that no one else does; you question things he's not thought of yet and support his nighttime activities.

His tongue is still gentle when it invades your mouth, a large hand angling your head just-so, giving him the room he needs to work. You're pliant under his hands, soft in a way that maybe Spider-Man doesn't deserve but soft for him regardless. Your quiet moans are enough to stir that feeling back up in his stomach, to have him rolling over until he's between your legs and his body caging you in once again.

You both break for air, just enough space between you that Peter can see every speck of colour in your eyes.

"You can't cum out of your hands, right?"

If he was a stronger man, he might've rolled off of you and went to sulk in his corner with all his computers—but he's not. He's weak, especially for you, because he drops his head down into your neck with an amused groan.

"Shut up." There's no bite to it, not when your laugh fills his stomach with the butterflies he always gets when he's around you.

When you broke for lunch that day, Beau invited you and your friend/upcoming roommate, Maya, to sit with him and his friend, Dean. You agreed, and you met Dean. He immediately tried to charm you, but you just laughed him off. Which he liked, so he decided he liked you. Then he tried to do the same to Maya, who did the same as you. He then decided that he would like to keep both of you. Unfortunately, he did word it that way. 

“I don’t think that’s the way you should word it.” Maya teased and the blonde rolled his eyes. 

“Oh, please.” Dean starts. “For me to be saying that to the two of you, is an honor.” You looked to Beau for confirmation, who just shook his head no and you snickered quietly behind your water bottle. 

After that day, you didn’t expect to see Beau and Dean at all. You figured that freshman year would start, they wouldn’t remember you, or you wouldn’t see them, and all would be alright. Everybody makes friends with people at freshman orientation and never talks to them again. Beau and Dean were that to you and Maya. wrong.

Two weeks into the school year, you and Maya were invited to an after party of one of the football games. Neither of you thought anything of it, and decided to attend. Ten minutes in, while you were talking to a girl who lived on your hall, you had the feeling of eyes being on you. When you turned your head, you noticed that the curly haired brunette standing in the corner with a drink in his hand was Beau. As soon as you turn, his face lights up and he puts a pause on the conversation he’s in. You match his smile, waving at him. 

Beau makes it to you in quick fashion, wrapping you up in a hug. “Dude! I was wondering if I would run into you!!” He says as you hug and when you separate you can’t help but giggle up at him. 

“I didn’t think we would.” You admitted, shrugging your shoulders. 

“Well I’m glad we did! How are you?” The two of you catch up, he pointed out Dean across the room, making out with a girl with bright blue hair and piercings galore. “He told me he hopes there’s some secret piercings.” Beau wiggled his eyebrows in a suggestive manner and you laughed loudly, hitting his shoulder. 

“That’s disgusting!” Beau chuckled, taking a sip of his drink. One of the players from the football team came up, patting Beau on the back. You recognized him from one of the Instagram posts, and assumed that he’s older. 

“Maxwell! I see you’ve already got yourself a lady friend.” The player, who introduced himself as Kipner, teased the both of you. 

“Oh no, she’s just a friend.” You nodded your head, a small smile on your face. Just friends. You liked it that way.

2. Late night diner

Over the course of freshman and the first semester of sophomore year, you and Beau got extremely close. You considered him one of your best friends. Beau considered you his best friend right next to Dean, who was already salty that you were almost as close to Beau as he was. 

One night during your second semester of sophomore year, you were studying at the library. It was late, your eyes were starting to mix the words of your textbook together, and the ache forming in your head was something that you were pretty sure even ibuprofen couldn’t fix. Right as you were going to lay your head down and ‘rest’ your eyes, someone's hands landed on the table in front of you. You jumped, ready to tell the person off until you noticed that it was Beau. “Oh, it’s you.” Said man looked down at all of your textbooks and notebooks, worry laced on his face.

“How long have you been here?” 

“Long enough that I’m pretty sure I’m seeing two of you right now.” Beau shook his head, starting to tidy all of your things together. “Hey, hey, what are you doing?” 

“I’m packing your things. We’re going somewhere.” 

“Oh yeah, that doesn’t sound threatening at all.” Beau rolled his eyes, with no ill intent behind it before handing you your bookbag. 

“Let’s go.” You looked up at your best friend, who is in a sweatshirt and sweatpants, not gaining much attention from anyone on campus. He must’ve looked at your location. “Come on, I don’t have all night.” It was your turn to roll your eyes as you got up from the table, following Beau as he slung the bookbag over his shoulder. “Wow, it’s like getting a dog to obey.” He knew the shove was coming before it did, and he laughed so hard he almost fell over. 

“I swear, Maxwell, I will ruin that precious arm. It will be depleted by the time I’m done with it. And so will your career.” 

“Is that a threat or a promise?” 

“Both.” Beau laughs again, and you can’t help the smile on your face. The two of you have learned how to take each other's jokes. You’ve always been someone who can poke fun at others and then take it when they poke fun back. So when you met Beau, you were glad to have someone to do that back and forth with. 

He leads you to his car, the blue shining underneath the street light. Like a gentleman, he opens the passenger door for you and you shake your head as you get in. He walked around the front, getting in the driver’s seat and taking off, towards wherever he wanted to take you. “Is this the part where you tell me that you’ve been articulating this since we met and you’re gonna dump me on the side of the road?” You ask halfway through, and his nose scrunches in amusement. 

“Something like that.” The rest of the ride is filled with comfortable silence, nothing but the breathing patterns of the two of you, and the faint lyrics of a song being played from the radio. Before you knew it, Beau was pulling into a grand old 50s inspired diner, and you shook your head. 

“Beau, I do not have any money on me.” You admit as you open his door. Beau smirks, coming around to you and wrapping his arm around your shoulders. 

“Good thing I’m paying then, huh?” You shook your head, letting him walk you into the diner. The two of you took up a booth in the back corner, and an older lady with the diner’s themed costume came up to the table. You notice that her nametag reads Ethel. 

“Good evening, youngins. What can I get for the two of you?” You glance over the menu, but you already decided what you wanted the second you walked in. 

“Could I please get a chocolate milkshake? And do you guys have malt?” 

“We sure do, sweetheart.” 

“Awesome! Could I add that to it?”

“Of course you can, and for the gentleman?” 

“I’ll have the same thing.” You narrow your eyes at him and he does the same to you before turning back to Ethel. “Oh, and can we get a basket of fries as well?” Ethel nods her head before taking the menus and whisking herself away to behind the counter. You lean over the table, keeping your eyes on Beau. 

“What’s your move, Maxwell?” 

“No move, that sounded good.” He leans in as well, staring into your eyes. It takes a few moments before you lean back into the booth. Conversation starts to flow easily, just like it always does when it’s just the two of you. Beau tells you all about his practice today, and how his coach told him he’s in the running for starting quarterback next season. 

“Beau! That’s amazing!!” The exclamation causes you to put your hands out. Beau sheepishly shakes it off. 

“Yeah, it’s cool or whatever.” 

“Beau, do not do that right now. Stop downplaying it. That’s amazing, I’m so proud of you.” Your words are followed with a bout of silence. Beau doesn’t really know what to say. The two of you have expressed emotions such as that before, but never really out loud. Beau opens his mouth to say something, but it’s interrupted by Ethel putting your milkshakes and the basket of fries on the table. 

“Here you go, sweethearts.” There’s a huge smile on her face. “I’m sorry if I’m overstepping, but you two remind me of my husband and myself when we were your age. Such a beautiful young couple.” 

“Oh- we’re not-” 

“He’s not-” Ethel just gives the two of you a knowing look, letting out a hum and not letting either of you finish your sentences and walking away. You and Beau both share a look with each other before both of you start laughing, shaking your heads. 

3. Hockey House Hangout

The third time it happened, it was the beginning of Junior year. Beau was invited to the hockey house for a hangout, and you were having a movie night with friends in your dorm. Technically, the two of you weren’t together at all that night. But it doesn’t mean that the two of you weren’t together through your phones. 

Beau sat on the couch of the hockey house, absentmindedly looking down at his phone every ten seconds to see if you replied to his text. NHL was playing through the screen, Logan and Tucker currently facing off at each other in a seemingly really important game. Well, important in that Beau was pretty sure there was some money on the line. While he’s listening to Dean talk his most recent hook up, Beau feels his phone buzz against his thigh. Immediately, he picks it up to see your message. 

you: i’m pretty sure that was the worst class i have ever sat in. 

Beau lets out a snicker. You were talking about a lecture that the two of you shared earlier in the day. It’s your weekly Friday lecture, and it’s around an hour and a half, but today, the professor only talked about his wife leaving him the whole time. He picked on students and asked them why they thought she left him. You got picked on. You didn’t know what to say so you said, ‘maybe she’s just not in love anymore’. Fortunately, the person before you suggested that your professor cheated, so he didn’t really care about what you said and moved on to the next person.

As Beau is thinking about it, his phone buzzes again from another message. 

you: how in the world am i supposed to know why his wife left him, beau?!?! 

you: i mean, if my husband interrogated me like how he did our whole class today i would probably leave him too.

Beau’s laugh is louder now, and it causes Dean to look over from his previous focused attention on the tv screen. “What are you laughing at?” 

“Nothing.” Beau answers, shaking his head and replying to your text. 

Beau: i thought you were gonna pass out. 

Beau: you should’ve seen your face, it was hilarious.

“You’re texting her aren’t you?” Beau looks up at that, confused by what Dean is saying. 

“Texting who?” 

“You know who.” Dean says accusingly. “y/n. It’s all you do all day. You text her, hang out with her, or talk about her. You’re obsessed with her, dude.” 

“That’s not even remotely true, Dean. We’re just friends.” 

“‘Just friends’ my asshole, Maxwell. Just wait, man. You’ll see what I’m talking about.” 

Meanwhile, on campus in your dorm, you’re currently watching Clueless with some of your friends when you read Beau’s texts. You roll your eyes with a smile on your face as you heart one of the messages and text him back. 

you: i really wish he would’ve called on you. i can only imagine what you would’ve said. 

beau: i would’ve told him that his voice probably put her to sleep during their intimate time. 

Unfortunately, you let out a loud laugh at the text, apologizing when your friends look at you. 

you: that’s such a horrible way to put that, maxwell. Please don’t ever say that again. 

Before you can see how he responds, Maya snatches your phone from you. “Hey!” You reach out towards your phone before Maya sneaks it behind her back. “Give it back!” 

“No! It’s girl’s night and you’re texting your boyfriend!” The scoff that leaves your lips is out of your control. 

“He’s not my boyfriend and you know that, Maya. We’re-” 

“Just friends, yeah, yeah, I know. When are the two of you gonna quit the charades and get together already? It’s really annoying watching the two of you pine after each other.” A chorus of agreements are heard throughout your room and you let another scoff leave your lips. 

“You guys don’t know what you’re talking about.” You cross your arms, focus going back onto the movie. 

4. Hurricanes Fundraiser

By the first semester of senior year, the two of you could barely leave without being accused as a couple. At first, you guys thought it was hilarious. But after the first couple of times, it got annoying. It unfortunately forces you to think about a life where Beau is your boyfriend, where you kiss and he holds you close, and shows you off around campus, and all of the things boyfriends and girlfriends are supposed to do together. 

You couldn’t get the thought out of your head. 

Beau was the same. He sits in the booth at Malone’s watching as you dance around with Maya near where the band is playing. The two of you arrived together, but you immediately left him to scout out Maya and your friends, all of whom you are surrounded by on the dance floor, hands in the air, hips bumping with others, and your hair all over the place. Beau can’t help it, he admires you from afar. Another person asked if you two were dating the other day, and both of you hesitated. Eventually, Beau was the one to correct them, but he could see the longing look in your eye. Except, he didn’t know how to say anything. Your friendship with Beau has been an anchor in his life since you guys first met, and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if you don’t feel the same and the friendship is ruined. 

A familiar tune plays throughout the diner, and Beau watches as your face lights up, searching around the room. Before he knows it, you’re running towards him with a huge smile on your face. “Beau! It’s our song!!” You exclaim, reaching for his hands. Beau lets you take him to the dance floor, the lyrics of Let’s Hear it For the Boy by Deniece Williams. 

“Jealousy, turning saints into the sea, swimming through sick lullabies, choking on your alibis, but it’s just the price I pay, destiny is calling me, open up my eager eyesssssss, ‘cause I’m Mr. Brightside.” You and Beau sing along, jumping around and dancing together. He spins you around, and you place your hands around his neck, swinging back and forth. Beau follows your lead, swaying the both of you around the dance floor. 

“I didn’t know this would turn into my senior prom.” You laugh, throwing your head back. 

“Please, this is much better.” You assure him, still dancing along to the song. For the rest of the song, and the one afterwards, Beau stays and dances with you. Twirling you around, letting you put your arms around his neck, setting your hands on his shoulders, his hands on your hips, moving up to the middle of your back to balance you every once in a while. He could get lost in this feeling. 

“I think I’m gonna go get a drink, do you want anything?” you ask over the music. Beau shakes his head, letting you leave to go to the bar while he finds his way back to the booth. 

One of the freshmen on the football team come up to him, also looking in your direction. “Are you dating her?” the kid, Mark, asks. Beau shakes his head. 

“No. We’re just friends.” 

“Nice, I might go make a move then.” The words don’t even process in Beau’s head before Mark is making his way over the bar where you’re standing. You notice he’s there after a few seconds, and Beau watches as the two of you make conversation. Mark says something that makes you laugh and shake your head, but your eyes glance over to Beau, who quickly turns his head away from you, hoping that he didn’t get caught. 

It doesn’t take long for you to appear at the booth, squeezing in next to beau. “Did you tell that kid I was single?” 

“He asked if we were dating.” Beau answers, truthfully. 

“Oh my gosh, that was so embarrassing. He totally thought I was someone else. Started asking me about our class we had together, and I had to tell him I had no clue who he was.” You answer, putting your head in your hands. “I feel so bad.” Beau chuckles, wrapping his arm around your shoulders. 

“It’s okay, he needs the ego check. He’s been pretty cocky at practice lately.” You smile, taking a sip of your drink, not noticing the breath of relief Beau had just let out. 

+0 the confession

It was late at night. You were in your dorm watching a movie by yourself. Maya had decided to visit home for the weekend, and most of your friends wanted to go out and do things while you wanted to stay home and do nothing. 

You weren’t expecting anyone to come around, let alone, knock on your door. Everyone you know who would show up around this time would just waltz themselves in. You silently hope that it’s not an intruder wanting to kidnap you or something like that. Slowly, you make your way to the door, looking through the peephole to see a nervous Beau Maxwell, in a Briar Football t-shirt and grey sweatpants. You look down at yourself, your flowy nightgown a contrast to his everyday clothes. Opening the door a crack, you poke only your head out. “Hey, what are you doing here?” Beau looks up at your voice, a small smile on his face. 

“Hey, can we- uh, I need to talk to you.” It looks serious, so you open the door fully and let him in, shutting the door behind you as he starts to pace in your sitting room area. 

“Beau-” 

“I need to talk, and this is nothing against you, but I can’t be interrupted or I’ll forget everything and I’m already nervous as it is.” You furrow your brows, but nod, encouraging him to go on. “I’ve been in love with you for the past year, y/n. And not like, ‘oh, she’s kinda cute’ type of way but in ‘oh my gosh I’m desperately in love with her and everything she does’ type of way.” The words shock you, your face now softening. “And I needed to tell you because lately it’s been getting too much and I couldn’t go one more second without telling you. I was laying in my bed and before I knew it, I was driving here to tell you and I was at your door, and I just wanted to be truthful with you because I’m sick of telling people that we’re just friends when that’s not what I want.” You let out a small gasp at his words. “I want to be more than that. I want to be your boyfriend.” A bashful smile makes its way to your face. “If you want that, of course.” Walking up to Beau, you wrap your arms around his neck. 

“I want that.” Beau smiles before leaning down and capturing your lips in his, savoring this moment that he’s been thinking about for over a year. His hands make their way to your waist, pulling you closer to him and your hands thread into his curls, absentmindedly twirling the curls in between your fingers. He held you close, you held him close and you couldn’t help but think that this is all you want. 

When you separate, the two of you are both out of breath, and you place your forehead against his. “For the record,” You start, causing his eyes to flit up to yours. “I’m in love with you too.” The smile on his face could light up a whole room, and he leans back down to capture your lips into another kiss. 

This time when you break apart, it’s his turn to talk. “I like this nightgown.” You hit his shoulder, causing him to laugh. 

+ 1 

It was a party, or rather, a simple hangout. The hockey house was known for their parties, but it was also known for its inner circle hangouts, only girlfriends and close friends invited. Beau was invited by Dean, and you were invited by Beau, so you rightfully earned your spot on the corner of the couch next to Hannah as she shares about her Christmas break. You’re half listening to what she’s saying and half watching Beau from across the room. He’s currently in the kitchen with some of the guys, all of them drinking beers. 

Right as you’re about to look away, Beau looks towards you and you make eye contact. Both of you smile, and he waves at you. You wave back, before going back to your conversation with Hannah. She didn’t notice that you weren’t actually paying attention. You were thinking about Beau, and how the two of you were dating. And how you were treated so well. And how you were probably in love with him. But he didn’t need to know that yet.

It’s a few minutes of Hannah talking with barely an audience before she notices that you are in fact not paying attention. And are in fact stealing glances and longing looks towards Beau in the kitchen. A smirk plays on his face. “Just friends my ass.” She teases and you roll your eyes, but don’t defend yourself. Usually, you would jump to assure Hannah that you two were in fact just friends and she was jumping to conclusions. Her gasp is heard all throughout the room and your eyes widen in panic. “You’re not defending yourself!” Her finger points accusingly towards you, before then pointing to Beau. “You!” His hands shoot up in an innocent look. “You two are dating!!” You and Beau look at each other with small smiles on your faces. 

Beau is the first to break the silence. “Yeah, I’m her boyfriend.” Your smile widens. 

“I’m his girlfriend.” You shrug, playing it cool, but all of your friends are anything but cool, hooping and hollering at the idea of the two of you dating each other. Dean is hyping Beau up while Hannah is shaking your shoulders. Meanwhile, you and Beau keep your eyes on each other.