I walk to Burger King, then I walk back home from Burger King

The text exchange with Valarr took approximately four minutes and was, you felt, one of your better performances.

going over to yours to drop something off for your dad

His response came fast.

oh I'm out with kiera actually, won't be back til late. can it wait?

You looked at the book on your kitchen table. A first edition — not ancient, not priceless, but specific. The kind of specific that required knowing what someone was looking for, and you had known what Baelor was looking for since the bookshop three weeks ago when he had mentioned it in passing, the particular rueful tone of someone who had been searching for something for a while and had mostly made peace with the search.

You had found it in a secondhand shop two streets from your flat on a Tuesday and had stood in the aisle for approximately thirty seconds before buying it.

that's even better 🥴

The three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

wait are you OH MY GOD please tell me you're not about to he's my DAD

You were already putting your coat on.

I don't know what you're talking about I'm just dropping off a book

YOU BOUGHT HIM A BOOK

it's just a book Valarr

people don't just buy specific books for people they're JUST dropping books off for

I genuinely have no idea what you mean

I am begging you

have a good one with Kiera

You sent your final text, and turned your phone face down in your bag and left before he could respond.

Your phone buzzed four times on the tube.

You did not look at it.

Baelor answered the door in reading glasses.

Just one pair, which was almost worse — there was something about one pair of glasses that was considerably more devastating than two, something about the specificity of it, the domesticity of a man who had been sitting reading in his own house on a weekday evening and had answered the door without thinking to take them off. He was also in a dark grey jumper that was doing things it had no business doing and had clearly not been expecting anyone because the composed public quality was not fully assembled — just him, in his jumper and his glasses, looking at you on his doorstep with an expression that moved from surprised to warm in about two seconds.

"I found something," you said, and held out the book.

He looked at it.

You watched the recognition arrive — the specific title, the edition, the fact of it existing in your hand on his doorstep — move through his expression in stages. He took it with the careful automatic reverence he gave books he considered important and turned it over and looked at the back and then looked at you.

"Where did you find this," he said.

"Shop near mine. Tuesday." You shrugged. "You mentioned it at the bookshop."

"I mentioned it once."

"You mentioned it specifically," you said. "The 1987 Ashgate edition. You said it was difficult to find secondhand."

He looked at the book. Looked at you. Opened his mouth and appeared to reconsider what he had been going to say and said instead: "Come in. I'll make tea."

His kitchen was warm and slightly cluttered in the specific way of a house that was lived in thoroughly rather than managed for appearance — papers on the table, a second book open and face-down on the counter which made you want to say something about spines but you restrained yourself, a mug that had clearly been there long enough to be architectural.

He filled the kettle with the focused attention he brought to small tasks and you sat at the kitchen table and watched him and thought about what you were going to do and felt, underneath the planning of it, the warm uncomplicated fact of how much you liked being in this kitchen.

"The 1987 edition has the corrected footnotes," he said, to the kettle. "The original 1983 printing had an error in the bibliography that propagated through most of the secondary literature for about a decade before anyone caught it."

"That's genuinely horrifying," you said.

"It is." He turned around and leaned against the counter while the kettle worked and looked at you with the glasses and the jumper and the warm composure of a man in his own kitchen on a weekday evening. "How did you know which edition to look for?"

"You were very specific about it," you said.

"I wasn't trying to —" He stopped. "I didn't expect you to actually look."

"I wasn't not looking," you said.

A brief pause in which he appeared to process the grammar of that and arrive at the implication and choose, carefully, not to follow it all the way to its conclusion.

The kettle boiled.

He made tea.

You were on your second cup when you said it.

"Can I say something without it being weird," you said.

He looked at you over his mug. "Probably depends on the thing."

"I find it really attractive," you said, "when someone is genuinely obsessed with something. Like intellectually obsessed. The way you talked about Byzantine iconoclasm in the café — I find that really attractive."

The mug lowered slightly.

"Right," he said, in the tone of a man who was not sure where to file this information.

"History nerds specifically," you continued. "There's something about someone who cares that much about something that's just—" you let the sentence do its work without finishing it.

Baelor looked at you with the expression of a man who had received information he was attempting to process through several different frameworks simultaneously and was finding the process slower than usual.

"That's—" he started.

"And the glasses," you said.

He stopped.

"Men in glasses," you said. "I have a thing. I'm aware it's not a particularly original thing but it's a consistent thing."

His hand moved very slightly toward the glasses and then stopped, which was the best thing you had ever seen another person do, the specific gesture of a man who had momentarily considered taking them off and had caught himself and now needed somewhere to look that was not your face.

He looked at his tea.

"You should probably—" he started.

"You're very attractive," you said. "I've thought so for a while. Since before the café, actually."

The kitchen was very quiet.

Baelor set his mug down with the careful precision of a man performing an action slowly enough to buy time for his thoughts to catch up with the situation. He looked at the table. Then at you. Then at the table again.

"You're Valarr's friend," he said.

"I know."

"You're—" He stopped. Started again. "This is complicated."

"I know," you said. "I've thought about the complicated."

"And?"

"And I'm still sitting in your kitchen on a Tuesday evening having told you I find you attractive." You looked at him steadily. "So."

He looked at you.

The composure was there but it was doing less than usual — the edges of it uneven in the specific way you had first noticed in the bookshop aisle. His jaw moved once. He opened his mouth to say something.

You leaned across the table and kissed him.

Not tentatively. You had been thinking about this for three weeks and tentative had not featured in any version of the thinking. You kissed him with the clear intention of someone who had made a decision and was implementing it, and felt in the first half second the specific quality of his absolute stillness — the shock of it, the composure going offline all at once — and then in the second half second the moment he stopped being still.

He made a sound against your mouth.

Low and involuntary and nothing like the curator or the composed man in the doorway with his book. Just a sound, pulled out of him by the simple fact of your lips against his, and then his hand came up and caught the back of your neck and he kissed you back and every careful principled argument that had been assembling itself somewhere in his head simply didn't.

He pulled back after a moment. Breathing slightly uneven. Looking at you from very close with the glasses slightly displaced and an expression that was trying to locate the counterargument and finding nothing available.

"I was going to say—" he started.

"Was it a good reason?" you said.

A pause.

"I can't currently remember what it was," he said.

"That's probably fine then," you said, and kissed him again.

This time he did not pull back.

This time his hand slid from the back of your neck into your hair and he kissed you like a man who had found the counterargument and assessed it and decided it was insufficient, thorough and unhurried in the way he did everything, and you made a sound against his mouth that he swallowed and responded to immediately.

At some point the table stopped being between you.

There was a period of rearrangement that involved chairs and the brief navigation of the table's corner and his hands at your waist — and then you were against the kitchen counter and he was in front of you with his hands braced on either side and was looking at you with the glasses still on and the jumper and the expression of a man whose counterargument had not returned and did not appear to be coming back.

"On the counter," you said.

His brow furrowed slightly. "What about—"

You put your hands on his shoulders and pushed yourself up onto it. Something happened in his expression.

"Oh," he said quietly.

"Yes," you smiled and bit your lip.

He kissed you again and this time it was different — the composure fully gone, replaced by something more direct and more urgent and considerably less managed, his hands sliding from the counter to your thighs with a purposefulness that made your breath catch. You pulled at the jumper and he shifted to help you get it off and you pushed it up over his head and threw it somewhere and then—

You stopped.

His ribs. The left side. Dark ink against warm skin, the letters precise and deliberate and clearly old enough to have settled into him like they had always been there.

Γνῶθι σεαυτόν.

You stared at it for a moment. Then you looked up at him.

Something in his expression had shifted — a different quality of vulnerability, not the composure being stripped away but something more specific, the particular exposure of something private being seen for the first time by someone he had not planned to show it to and found he did not mind showing it to.

"How long have you had that," you said.

"Twenty years," he said. "Approximately."

"Know thyself," you said softly.

Something moved in his face. "You read Greek?"

"My grandmother," you said. "She had opinions about a lot of things."

He looked at you for a moment with that expression — the unguarded one, the one that kept arriving and staying longer each time — and then you reached out and traced the letters with your fingertips, following the curve of them against his ribs, and felt him exhale sharply at the contact.

You then pressed your lips to it.

The sound that left him was low and immediate and completely unmanaged, his hand flying into your hair, and you felt him shudder under your mouth and filed the knowledge away with the specific satisfaction of someone who had found something important and intended to return to it.

"You are going to be the end of me," he said roughly. To the ceiling.

"Not yet," you said, and pulled him back.

This time when he kissed you it was with the full unmanaged weight of someone who had stopped looking for the counterargument and had no intention of finding it. His hands worked at your shirt with a focus that was no longer patient in the unhurried sense but patient in the specific sense of a man doing something he intended to do thoroughly, and your shirt ended up somewhere and his hands were on your skin and he exhaled against your mouth like the contact had knocked something out of him.

"God," he said quietly. Not to you. To the situation. To the fact of his hands on your waist and yours on his chest and the kitchen warm around you.

"Still thinking about that counterargument?" you said.

"There is no such thing in my brain anymore," he said, and kissed your jaw and then your throat and you tipped your head back and felt his mouth open against your neck — warm and deliberate — and then he did something and you gasped and felt his teeth and his mouth and then the specific bloom of pressure that meant—

He pulled back. Looked at your neck, then looked at your face.

"I'm—" he started, the composure making one last valiant attempt to reassemble itself. "I didn't mean to — I should—"

You grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him down and bit his throat.

Not hard. But deliberate. Specific. In the exact register of what he had just done to you, your mouth open against the warm skin of his neck, your teeth grazing the muscle there, and you felt the full body shudder that went through him and heard the sound — low and rough and dragged from somewhere he had not given it permission to come from — and when you pulled back his expression had nothing of the apology left in it.

Just — gone. All of it. The composure, the apology, the counterargument, the curator.

"Right," he said. His voice was wrecked. "Alright."

The bra went somewhere. His hands cupped your breasts with a directness that made you arch into him immediately and he made a sound at that — low and immediate and specifically responsive, like your body's reactions were doing something to him that he had no management available for.

"You're—" he started.

"Tell me," you said.

Something shifted in his expression. The specific thing he had with praise that you suspected was right there, sitting just under the surface, and you had put your finger directly on it and he knew it and was not even slightly trying to deflect anymore.

"Beautiful," he said, rough and specific, his hands moving. "I've — since the café. Since the bookshop. I kept thinking about—" his mouth dropped to your collarbone and the sentence dissolved into the warm press of his lips against your skin— "this. Exactly this. Whether you'd—" he kissed across your chest— "whether you'd make sounds. What sounds you'd make."

"And?" you managed.

"Better," he said against your skin. "So much better than whatever I—"

He kissed your breast and his tongue found your nipple and the sound you made was immediate and unguarded and he groaned against you — a genuine moan, low and resonant, vibrating through his chest into yours — in direct and unmistakable response to the sound you had made, like your pleasure had a direct line to something in him that bypassed every system he had.

"There," he breathed. "God — there—"

"Baelor—"

"I know," he said. "I know, I—" another moan, lower, as you shifted against him— "you have no idea what you sound like. What you feel like. I've been — Fuck, I've been trying not to think about this for weeks and it's—"

His hands found your jeans.

He dealt with your jeans and your underwear with hands that were steady and purposeful and not entirely in his control — the steadiness of focus rather than composure, the focus of a man doing something he had thought about and intended to do properly. His fingers found your clit and you grabbed his shoulder and made a sound that echoed off the kitchen tiles and he moaned in response — low and broken and entirely involuntary, his forehead dropping to your shoulder.

"You're so wet," he said, rough. Wondering. Like the fact of it was doing something specific to him. "God. Already — I've barely—"

"The hickey helped," you said.

A sound that was almost a laugh and almost not. His fingers moved and your hips rolled forward and the almost-laugh dissolved into something lower and more wrecked. "I'll keep that in mind," he said, against your throat, and did it again — the deliberate press of his mouth to the mark he had already left, tongue tracing it — and the sound you made was embarrassingly immediate.

"Baelor," you said.

"Mm," he said, not stopping.

"If you keep doing that I'm going to—"

"I know," he said. Warm. Certain. His fingers working with the focused attentiveness of a man who had decided this was worth studying thoroughly. "That's the idea."

He learned you quickly and used what he learned without mercy — the specific pressure that made your hips roll, the rhythm that made your breathing go ragged, the precise application of his thumb that made you clench around his fingers and made him moan against your throat like your body's responses were the best thing he had ever encountered and he intended to catalogue every one.

"You feel—" he started.

"Tell me," you said again, because you had found the thing and you were not letting go of it.

His breath caught. "Perfect," he said, low and rough and deliberate. "You feel perfect. Every time you clench like that — every time you make that sound — I can't—" a low moan as you did it again— "I've been thinking about having you like this since — fuck, since before I should have been and I can't—"

"Don't stop," you said.

"I'm not stopping," he said.

He didn't stop.

You came with his fingers inside you and his mouth on the hickey he had left on your neck and his voice in your ear saying your name and then saying perfect, exactly that, god, you're— in a low broken stream that your brain was going to be replaying for a very long time, and he held you through every shudder of it with his free hand spanning your lower back, steady and certain, and the sounds he made while you came apart around his fingers suggested that your orgasm was doing as much to him as it was to you.

He was hard against your thigh and had been for a while and the specific evidence of it when you reached for him made him say your name in a way that had clearly been waiting to sound like that.

You got his boxers out of the way.

He made a sound that came from somewhere deep and his hips pressed forward into your hand involuntarily and he made another sound at that, lower, his forehead dropping to your shoulder while you wrapped your hand around his cock and felt him twitch and felt him breathe and felt the specific shudder that went through him when you moved your hand.

"Christ," he said.

"Good?" you teased.

"Don't be smug," he answered, voice completely destroyed.

"I'm not being smug," you said. "I'm asking."

"Yes," he said. "Obviously yes. You feel — your hand feels—" he made a sound that interrupted whatever he had been going to say and you filed the sound somewhere permanent. "I need to—" He stopped. Gathered himself with visible effort. "If you keep doing that this is going to be embarrassingly short and I have — I have specific intentions."

"Specific intentions," you repeated.

"I'm a thorough person," he said roughly.

You released him. He exhaled shakily.

Then he was between your thighs and positioned and looking at you with the glasses still on — crooked, both lenses catching the kitchen light — and the hickey you had left on his throat and the tattoo on his ribs and the completely dismantled expression of a man who had retired the counterargument and every system downstream of it.

He pushed inside.

The sound he made was—

Long. Low. Broken entirely open, dragged from somewhere below every layer of management he had ever built, arriving with the helpless totality of something that had been contained for too long and had finally, completely, stopped being contained. His head dropped forward to your chest. His jaw was working and his eyes were closed and he stayed there for a moment just — breathing, or attempting to, his chest rising and falling unevenly.

"Baelor," you said softly.

"Give me a moment," he said. His voice was unrecognisable as the café voice or the bookshop voice or any voice you had previously catalogued. "You feel — Christ, you feel — I need a moment or I'm going to—"

"Take your time," you said.

"I intend to," he said, and then he moved and you both made sounds simultaneously and the intentions became very clear.

He fucked you slowly at first, with the specific deliberateness of a man who had said he was thorough and intended to prove it, and made sounds that you were going to think about for the rest of your life — low and continuous and arriving one after another with complete disregard for composure or management or anything else he had previously used to keep himself contained. Every movement produced something from him. Every time you clenched around his cock he moaned — properly, openly, the sound resonating through his chest into yours.

"You feel—" he said, against your throat. A low moan interrupted him. "God. Every time you — when you do that — I can't — you're so—"

"Tell me," you said.

His breath caught.

"Perfect," rough and specific and chosen with the care of a man who selected words deliberately. "You feel perfect. Your pussy feels — god — every time you clench I can feel exactly—" another moan, longer this time, as you did it intentionally— "there. Exactly there. You have no idea — I've been trying not to think about this and it's so much — you're so much better than—"

"Than what," you managed.

"Anything I—" he started, and his hips found a rhythm that interrupted the sentence and made you grab his shoulder and hold on.

He fucked you on his kitchen counter with his hands on your hips and his glasses crooked and the Greek tattoo on his ribs catching the light and made sounds that belonged to nobody you had met before this evening — unguarded and unrestrained and arriving in response to everything, your sounds, your movements, your hands in his hair, every time you said his name which you did frequently and with purpose because of what it did to him.

"Say my name, please," he said at one point, breathlessly, against your jaw.

"Baelor," you said, deliberate.

The moan that left him at that was long and low and you felt it everywhere.

"God," he said. "Again."

You obliged.

"Fuck," he said, and his rhythm deepened and you stopped being able to say anything coherent for a while.

You came a second time somewhere in the middle of it, which you had not planned for but which arrived with the inevitability of something that had been building since the kitchen wall and the edging and the hickey and the tattoo and all of it, clenching around him with his name on your lips and your nails in his shoulder, and the sound he made at the feel of it—

Was the most undone thing you had ever heard from another person.

A long low broken moan that he pressed into your throat and that shook through his entire chest and that had absolutely nothing of the museum curator or the composed man on the doorstep in it — just Baelor, stripped entirely down, making sounds he had never made in front of another person because nobody had ever gotten past the composure far enough to find them.

"You feel so good," he said, rough and wrecked and honest. "When you come around my cock — fuck — I can feel everything — you feel so—"

"Baelor," you said, and pulled him closer.

He came shortly after with your name and then perfect and then something that was not quite a word pressed into your throat, shuddering through him completely, his hands holding you like you were the thing he was anchored to and he intended to stay anchored.

The kitchen was quiet after.

Both of you breathing.

His forehead against yours.

The glasses — still on, still crooked — catching the kitchen light in a way that made you feel something specific in your chest that you were choosing not to examine until you were in a better position to handle it.

You reached up and straightened them.

He looked at you.

The expression on his face was entirely, completely undone and entirely, completely unbothered about being undone, which was new from a man who had been managing his expression for as long as you had known him.

He reached up and touched the hickey on your neck. Lightly. Just his fingertips.

"I should probably—" he started.

"Don't apologise," you said.

He looked at you. You tilted your head and traced the one you had left on his throat. Something in his expression did something entirely unmanageable.

"Fair point," he laughed.

Your phone was in your bag. Valarr had sent approximately seventeen messages. You did not check your phone.

You traced the tattoo on his ribs instead and felt him exhale slowly against your hair.

Know thyself.

You thought, with the warm certainty of someone who had just watched a man find out something true about himself on his own kitchen counter, that he was getting there.

(i'm truly sorry i did not find a gif that vibed with the vibes)

Daeron was, by any reasonable metric, completely gone.

You had established this approximately forty five minutes ago when he had attempted to explain to you why the Fibonacci sequence was secretly a conspiracy and had made, briefly and alarmingly, a compelling case. Since then he had progressed through several distinct phases — philosophical, then mournful, then inexplicably delighted by a lamppost — and had arrived at the current phase which was primarily characterised by his inability to walk in a straight line and his arm around your shoulders being the only thing keeping him approximately vertical.

"You are," you told him, dragging him up the front path, "an absolute disaster."

"I am having," he said, with great dignity, "a very good evening."

"You can barely walk."

"I'm walking fine."

"Daeron. I am carrying you."

"That's very kind of you," he said, and attempted to pat your head and got your ear instead.

You rang the doorbell with your elbow.

The door opened after about thirty seconds and Maekar stood there in a dark t-shirt and jeans with the expression of a man who had been doing something else and had come to the door expecting approximately anything other than this specific situation.

He took in Daeron.

Daeron, to his credit, attempted to stand up straight. He managed about forty percent of upright before gravity reasserted itself and he leaned back onto your shoulder.

"Hi dad," he said.

The silence that followed had considerable weight.

"For the love of—" Maekar started, and then said several other things in rapid succession that were not appropriate for general audiences and that you were filing away for later because the specific combination and delivery was genuinely impressive.

"He's fine," you said. "Just drunk."

"He's absolutely hammered," Maekar said flatly.

"Okay he's absolutely hammered," you conceded. "But fine. He didn't do anything stupid, he just had about four drinks too many and started explaining mathematics to strangers."

Something moved through Maekar's expression that was exasperation and reluctant parental resignation in equal measure. He held the door open. "Get him in."

Getting Daeron up the stairs was a collaborative project.

You had his left side and Maekar had his right and Daeron contributed by providing commentary on the staircase, which he found architecturally interesting, and by stopping twice to make points about things that had not been raised.

"Dad," he said, at the second landing, with the abrupt subject change of the extremely drunk.

"What," said Maekar, in the tone of a man concentrating on a task.

"She thinks you're really sexy," Daeron said, conversationally, then turning his face to you. "That's the thing you said, right?"

You stopped walking.

"Keep moving," Maekar said, apparently to both of you.

"Like, really sexy," Daeron continued to you, with the relentless honesty of someone for whom the filter between brain and mouth had completely dissolved. "You told me. After the pipe thing. You were like Daeron— wait no that's me. You were like your dad is—"

"Daeron," you said, through your teeth.

"What? It's a compliment. I'm sure dad will take the compliment."

"I'm going to fucking kill you," you told him pleasantly.

"You're literally carrying me, you're not going to—"

"I will drop you on this landing."

"But you said—" Daeron started.

"He's fine," you said loudly, to Maekar, who was — you checked — focused entirely on navigating Daeron through the bedroom door with the focused efficiency of a man who was too irritated at his son to be processing anything else. His jaw was set in the specific way of someone managing several feelings at once and prioritising the most immediate one, which appeared to be get this man horizontal before he falls over.

Good.

Fine.

He had not heard. Or had heard and dismissed it because Daeron was drunk and Daeron said things and the more pressing concern was the logistics.

You were going with that.

You got Daeron onto his bed with the cooperative efficiency of two people who had identified a shared goal and were pursuing it without further conversation. He landed with the boneless satisfaction of someone whose relationship with gravity had become philosophical rather than practical, made a sound of profound contentment, and was asleep within approximately ninety seconds.

You both stood at the foot of his bed looking at him.

"He'll be fine," you said. "Water and paracetamol in the morning."

"I know," Maekar said, in the flat tone of a man who had done this before with various combinations of his six children. He reached down to pull the duvet up and his t-shirt rode up at the back—

You saw it.

Just the bottom edge of it — the tail, curling at the base of his spine, scales rendered in deep red and black with the fine detail of something that had taken serious time and serious money and serious commitment. The colour was extraordinary even in the low light of Daeron's bedroom, vivid and deliberate, and it disappeared back under the t-shirt when he straightened but it was too late.

You had seen it.

You were thinking about what was above it.

"Right," Maekar said, turning around and finding you with an expression that was still mostly parental irritation and some baseline tiredness and not whatever your face was currently doing. "Tea? Or I've got whisky if you need it after that."

"Whisky," you said immediately.

His kitchen was warm and quiet and he poured two glasses with the economical ease of someone who knew his own kitchen and did not need to perform anything in it, and you sat at the table and took the glass he set in front of you and felt the whisky do its immediate work and thought about the tail of a dragon at the base of his spine.

"He's an idiot," Maekar said, sitting across from you.

"He's your idiot," you said.

Something that was almost the almost-smile. "Unfortunately."

You drank your whisky. He drank his.

The kitchen was quiet in the specific way of two people who had just performed a task together and had not yet decided what happened next.

You were happy tipsy — the warm uncomplicated kind, the kind that made you feel slightly more yourself than usual rather than less — and the whisky was good and Maekar was sitting across from you in his t-shirt with the dragon underneath it and you had been thinking about this for weeks and Daeron had, drunk and disastrously, already said half of it anyway.

"He wasn't wrong, by the way," you said.

Maekar looked at you over his glass. "About what."

"What he said on the stairs."

A pause. The quality of Maekar's stillness shifted slightly — not the irritated-at-Daeron stillness, something more attentive than that.

"He said a lot of things on the stairs," Maekar said. "He said the banister was load-bearing in an interesting way."

"The other thing," you said. "I think you heard."

He looked at you, eyes doing that funny thing they do when they grow darker. You looked back.

"You're Daeron's age," he said.

You rolled your eyes. "You're not that old."

"I have six children."

"I know. I've met them. They're fine." You swirled the whisky. "That's not actually a reason not to."

"It's a context."

"Still not a reason, is it?."

His jaw tightened slightly. He set his glass down. "You should probably—"

"Probably what?" you said, and tilted your head, and watched him clock the tone and reassess.

There was a beat.

"Don't," he said. Flatly. The specific flat of a man who has identified a dynamic and is issuing an early warning.

"Don't what?" you said, with the complete innocence of someone who knew exactly what.

His eyes narrowed fractionally.

"You're being a brat," he said.

"I'm asking a question."

"You're being a brat," he said again, and this time it was not a warning exactly, it was something else — something that had arrived from a different place, lower and more specific — "and you know it."

You smiled at him over your glass.

Something shifted in Maekar's expression with the finality of a decision being made.

He stood up.

He crossed to your side of the table with the direct purposeful movement that characterised everything he did physically and you stood because sitting while he was standing felt suddenly like a tactical disadvantage and then you were both standing in his kitchen at a distance that was not a distance anymore and he was looking at you with those violet eyes that had stopped being the grumpy-at-everything eyes and had become something considerably more focused.

"Last chance," he said. Not a threat. Just — information, delivered with the flat certainty of a man who meant what he said.

"I don't buy it" you said staring directly at him.

He kissed you.

Not the way you had imagined it — you had imagined it various ways over various weeks — but harder than any of the imaginings, more immediate, with the specific quality of a man who had been holding something at arm's length for too long and had decided, definitively, to stop. His hand came up and caught your jaw and he kissed you like punctuation, like a full stop at the end of something, and you kissed him back with equal fervour and felt his other hand find your waist and pull you in and the size of him was—

There. Immediate. Real. His hands spanning you, his chest against yours, the specific overwhelming quality of being pulled against someone that much larger and feeling it in every nerve.

He broke the kiss and looked at you.

"Still being a brat?" he said, low.

"Oh, abso-fucking-lutely," you laughed.

His jaw moved. "Right."

His hands moved to your hips and walked you backward with a calm deliberateness that left you no input into the direction of travel, and your back met the kitchen wall with a solidity that was not rough but was very definite, and Maekar braced one hand beside your head and looked at you with the expression of a man who had made several decisions and was implementing them in order.

"Maekar—"

"You wanted to be a brat," he said. "Fine."

His other hand slid down your stomach and your breath caught.

"You can be a brat," he said, his mouth dropping to your throat, "and I'll teach you what happens."

His fingers found the waistband of your jeans and dealt with the button with one hand and the efficiency of someone who was not performing patience because he had the real thing, and then his hand was inside your underwear and finding your clit with a directness that made you grab his shoulder and make a sound that was embarrassingly immediate.

"There," he said, against your throat. Not pleased exactly — satisfied, in the specific way of someone whose assessment has been confirmed. "That's it."

His fingers moved and you stopped being able to think about much else.

He was — thorough. That was the word. In the way the garden spreadsheet had been thorough, in the way the pipeline had been thorough — focused and attentive and completely committed to the task with a patience that was somehow more intense than urgency would have been. He learned what made you gasp and returned to it. He learned what made your hips roll forward and used it deliberately. He paid attention with the same quality of attention he had given the raised bed and the isolation valve except directed entirely at your clit and it was — a lot. It was a frankly unreasonable amount.

"You're close," he said, low. Not a question.

"Yes," you managed. "Yes, keep—"

He stopped.

You made a sound.

"What—" you whined.

"Told you," he said, against your jaw. Calm. Completely, infuriatingly calm. "Brats don't get to come that easily."

"Maekar—"

"Mm."

"That's not—"

"Not what?" he said, and his fingers moved again, barely, just enough, and you grabbed his shirt with both hands.

"Not fair," you said.

"No," he agreed, and did it again — built you up with that focused relentless patience, got you to the edge with the specific efficiency of someone who knew exactly where the edge was and had decided to park you there indefinitely, and then stopped again.

The sound you made was not dignified.

He made a low noise against your throat that was the closest thing to satisfied you had heard from him and you were furious about how much you liked it.

"Maekar," you said, with feeling.

"When you're ready to stop being difficult," he said pleasantly.

"I am not being—"

"You walked into my kitchen at midnight and told me you knew exactly what you were doing," he said, pulling back enough to look at your face. His eyes were dark and completely focused and there was nothing grumpy-at-inanimate-objects about his expression now, just — direct, and certain, and very specifically aimed at you. "You were being difficult on purpose."

"Maybe," you managed.

"So." He tilted his head. The movement was so deliberate it made something in your stomach clench. "Consequences."

He edged you a third time against the kitchen wall.

By the end of it you were gripping his shirt with both fists and making sounds that had nothing to do with dignity and he was pressing his mouth to your temple and saying there, that's it, stay there in a low voice that was simultaneously the hottest thing you had ever heard and the most aggravating and when he stopped for the third time you actually whined.

"Please," you said when he removed his hand from your jeans entirely.

"Please what?" he said.

"Please, you absolute—"

He picked you up.

Not with ceremony, not with warning — simply put his hands under your thighs and lifted you off the floor with the casual ease of someone for whom this was not a significant physical undertaking and carried you out of the kitchen while you were still processing the fact that you were no longer on the ground.

"I hate you," you informed him.

"No you don't," he scoffed, and sat down on the sofa with you in his lap.

The living room was dark except for the light coming through from the hall and Maekar was solid and warm underneath you and you were straddling him and looking at each other and the aggravation had transmuted into something else entirely in the twenty seconds it had taken to get from the kitchen wall to here.

He kissed you again.

Slower this time. His hands on your hips, thumbs tracing small movements against the fabric, and you kissed him back and felt the kiss change as it went — finding its own depth, its own pace — and then you were pulling at his t-shirt and he lifted his arms and you got it over his head and threw it somewhere in the dark and—

You stopped.

The dragon covered his entire back. You could only see the front of him from where you sat but the tail curled around his ribs on the left side and there were scales at his collarbone and it was — in the living room dark with the hall light catching the colour — extraordinary. Deep red and black and the fine detail of something built over years, the kind of tattoo that had been added to incrementally, that had grown with him.

"How," you said.

"How what," he said.

"This." You traced the scales at his ribs. Felt him breathe in. "How does nobody know about this."

"People know," he said. "They just don't see it unless I—" he stopped, because you had leaned forward and pressed your mouth to the scales at his collarbone and his sentence dissolved.

"Unless you what?" you said against his skin.

"You're still being a brat," he said, low.

"Yes," you smiled, and kissed across his collarbone to the scales on his ribs and felt him exhale sharply, his hands tightening on your hips, and heard the low sound he made that was different from the gruff default and considerably better.

You pulled back and looked at him.

"Your turn," he said.

He dealt with your shirt with the same one-handed efficiency as before and unclipped your bra and looked at you with the direct thoroughness he brought to things he was assessing seriously, which should not have been as effective as it was.

You laughed at the way he was staring at you. "That look is getting dangerously close to a compliment."

"And you're getting dangerously close to being pleased about it," he said back, this time the smile almost coming fully to his face.

"Says the man who hasn't looked away from my tits."

"If I had looked away, we both know you'd be disappointed," he said, which was so flat and so Maekar that you laughed, and he watched you laugh with that fractional almost-smile and then pulled you in and kissed you and his hands were everywhere and you stopped laughing about anything.

Clothes ended up in various parts of the living room over the next several minutes — yours, his, everything — with the mutual efficiency of two people who had both been thinking about this and were done with the intermediary steps. His jeans went somewhere near the coffee table. Your underwear ended up on the arm of the sofa.

You were straddling him again, properly now, and he was looking up at you with those dark focused eyes and his hands were on your hips and the size of him was — there. Present. Impossible to be casual about.

"Well?" he said.

"Well what?" you mimicked.

"You wanted to be a brat," he said, low. The almost-smile at the corner of his mouth, barely there, completely deliberate. "Show me."

You held his gaze.

"You're a brat too, you know," you smirked.

"I know," he answered. "So show me."

You sank down onto him slowly and the sound he made was — long and low and entirely without the management of any of his usual composure, his head going back briefly, his jaw clenching, his hands gripping your hips with a pressure that was going to leave something and that you were entirely fine with.

"Fuck," he said. Rough. Genuine.

"That good?" you breathed, because turnabout was fair play and because you wanted to hear what he did with it.

His jaw tightened. His eyes, which had closed briefly, opened and found yours. "Don't push it."

"I'm just asking," you chirped sweetly, and moved, and the sound that left him then was—

Not managed at all.

You rode him with his hands on your hips and his eyes on your face and the low continuous sounds he was making against every instinct to contain them, and it was — the power of it, the specific pleasure of being the one setting the pace while he sat there and took it and made those sounds — was something you had not anticipated and intended to revisit extensively.

"You feel—" he started, low.

"Tell me," you said.

His jaw worked. His fingers dug into your hips. "You feel—" the words seemed to cost him, dragged out by the combination of the movement and something else, something more fundamental— "good. Christ, you feel—" he stopped. Made a sound. Started again. "Perfect. Exactly—" his hips rose to meet yours and you both made sounds simultaneously— "exactly what I—"

"What you what?" you said.

"Thought about," he managed roughly. "For weeks. Christ."

That was the most words you had ever heard Maekar say in a single emotional direction and you filed it somewhere permanent and moved again and felt his entire body respond.

One of his hands left your hip and found your clit.

"Oh—" you started.

"You're going to come," he stated, low and flat and completely certain. "And then you're going to come again. And we're going to see—" his thumb moved and you grabbed his shoulder— "how difficult you feel like being after that."

"Maekar—"

"Yeah," he said. The almost-smile. Devastating. "Yeah."

His thumb worked your clit with the same focused patience he had employed against the kitchen wall except now there was no stopping, no edging, just — direct and relentless and entirely committed, and you rode him and felt everything build simultaneously and heard his sounds and felt his hands and looked at the dragon scales on his ribs and came with his name in your mouth and your nails in his shoulder and everything clenching around him and the sound he made when you did—

Was the best thing you had ever heard from another person.

Low and rough and entirely wrecked, his head dropping back, his hands gripping you like you were the only fixed point available.

"Again," he said roughly. "You can—"

"I literally just—"

"Again," he insisted, and his thumb was still moving and you found out he was right.

You came a second time somewhere shortly after with less warning and more intensity and said something that you would have been embarrassed about if you had had any available capacity for embarrassment, which you did not, and Maekar said your name and then said there, exactly— and followed you over the edge with a roughness and a totality that shook through him completely and left you both in the specific stillness of people who have just dismantled something and are taking stock of the wreckage.

The living room was quiet. Your forehead was against his. His hands had moved from your hips to your back, large and warm and spanning you completely, holding rather than gripping.

"Still being a brat?" he teased.

His voice was completely wrecked.

"Ask me in a minute and we'll see," you said.

The almost-smile. Full this time. Real. Directed entirely at you in the dark living room with the dragon on his ribs and his hands on your back and the evidence of your underwear on the arm of the sofa somewhere to your left.

"Tea," he asked eventually.

"Yeah," you said.

"Then you're staying." Not a question. The flat certainty of a man making a reasonable determination.

"Feel like you'll need me again that much?" you teased.

He looked at you.

"Brat," he scoffed.

"You love it," you said.

He said nothing, but the almost-smile stayed.

The text came at half eleven the following morning.

You were in Maekar's kitchen drinking coffee while he read the paper with the focused attention of someone who had entirely recovered their composure and was pretending the living room situation had not occurred, which was belied only by the coffee he had made you without being asked and the way his hand had rested briefly on the small of your back when he passed.

Your phone lit up.

so daeron targaryen here your best friend??? who you dragged home last night??? and who apparently passed out in his room while something was happening on his sofa???? i have no memory of the stairs but apparently i said some things anyway i need you to know that i heard you last night specifically i heard you say [and then a direct quote of the thing you had said while riding his father that you were not going to repeat even internally] i just want you to know that i will never recover ever are you okay? are you alive? do you need extraction?

You looked at the message for a moment.

You looked at Maekar, who was reading his paper with his coffee and his recovered composure and that fucking hot dragon underneath his t-shirt.

You typed back.

get used to it i'll pay for your therapist x

And then you added an emoji that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.

Daeron's response was a string of increasingly unhinged capitalisation followed by what appeared to be genuine laughter rendered in text.

i literally cannot believe you okay fair enough is he making you coffee tho

You looked at the coffee.

yes why

He waited a few seconds to reply.

good he only makes coffee for people he likes. he made mum coffee every morning for fifteen years

daeron

I'm just saying

daeron

okay okay I'm going back to sleep my head is KILLING me

drink your water

Three dots. None. Three dots again.

yes mum also oh my god I cannot believe you rode my

You turned your phone face down on the table. Maekar looked up from his paper.

"Daeron?"

"Daeron," you confirmed.

He looked at you for a moment with those violet eyes and the recovered composure and the almost-smile sitting at the very corner of his mouth.

"How bad?" he asked.

"He'll be fine," you said. "Mostly horrified."

"Good," Maekar said, and returned to his paper. "He should have kept his mouth shut on the stairs."

You laughed and picked up your coffee.

Outside the morning continued with its business entirely indifferent to the fact that you were sitting in Maekar Targaryen's kitchen the morning after, drinking coffee he had made without being asked, while he read his paper and pretended to be completely normal about it.

You were both completely normal about it.

You were both, underneath the completely normal, not even slightly normal about it.

A.N.: listen i had a very productive day and couldn't stop writing. also, there's a little ✨extra✨ coming tomorrow (if i can proofread it). how do y'all feel about sexting Baelor and Maekar???

Taglist: @qardasngan @nerdyinfluencertastemaker @princessphilly @shyravenns @loveslide @dulcebloodhnd @caitlynluna @mongrelcryptid @sacha1slytherin @faithfullyvigilantsliver @alternarabuda @jjubilee-fluff @hrh007

The raven arrived on a Tuesday, and Valarr's world collapsed. Not really. It was just two days. Forty eight hours. Less time than he had spent apart from you a hundred times before. But somehow, with Aelias now three years old and capable of expressing his feelings with words instead of just screams, the parting felt infinitely worse.

Your brother's wife had given birth again. Another girl. Healthy, screaming, perfect. And your brother, the fool, had written to say that he needed you there because his wife was "unwell" and he was "overwhelmed" and you were "the only person who could help."

You had read the letter aloud to Valarr at breakfast. Aelias had been sitting between you, smearing porridge across his face and the table and his father's sleeve.

"I have to go," you had said.

Valarr had opened his mouth to argue. Aelias had beaten him to it.

"No." It was a clear, firm, three year old no. The kind of no that came with crossed arms and a jutted chin and eyes that looked exactly like Valarr's own.

"Mama has to go help Uncle," you had said, wiping porridge off Aelias's nose. "Auntie is sick. The new baby needs her."

"I need you," Aelias had said, which was a devastating argument that Valarr wished he had thought of first.

"I will be back in two days."

"Two days is forever."

"It is two sleeps. You can count them. One sleep, then another sleep, then Mama is home."

Aelias had considered this. His little face had scrunched up in concentration. Then he had looked at Valarr, looked back at you, and sighed the sigh of a child who knew he was beaten.

"Fine," he had said. "But Papa has to do the voices for the dragon story."

"The dragon story is a Mama story," Valarr had said.

"Then you have to learn it." And that had been that. You had left that afternoon, and Valarr had spent the evening trying to memorize a story about a dragon and a knight and a princess who rescued herself, because Aelias had made it very clear that he would accept no substitutes.

Now it was the next morning. You had been gone for eighteen hours. Aelias had woken up three times during the night asking for you. Valarr had not slept at all. He had lain in your empty side of the bed, holding your pillow, staring at the ceiling, and missing you with a physical ache that made him feel like he was drowning.

The small council meeting started at nine. Valarr arrived on time, which was unusual. He arrived holding a locket, which was not unusual when his wife was missing. He sat down in his usual seat, opened the locket, and stared at your painted face with the expression of a man who had just received terrible news about his favorite horse.

Baelor watched him for a full minute before speaking. "Valarr."

"Yes, Father?"

"The locket."

"What about it?"

"You are looking at it."

"I am looking at my wife. There is a difference."

"You have been looking at it for the entire meeting. We have not started yet, but you have been looking at it for the entire time we have been sitting here."

Valarr tore his gaze away from your painted smile. He looked at his father. He looked at the Master of Coin, who was pretending to read a report. He looked at the Lord Commander, who was not pretending to be amused.

"My wife is gone," Valarr said. "She has been gone for eighteen hours. That is eighteen hours without her smile, without her voice, without the way she hums when she brushes her hair. I am allowed to miss her."

"No one said you are not allowed to miss her. But you are sighing."

"I am not sighing."

"You sighed three times since I started speaking. You sighed when I mentioned the grain shipments. You sighed when the Master of Laws asked about the roads. You sighed when the Lord Commander cleared his throat."

Valarr had not realized he was sighing. He tried to stop. He lasted approximately thirty seconds before his chest heaved and another sigh escaped him.

"There," Baelor said. "That is the fourth one."

"I cannot help it. My wife is gone."

"Your wife has been gone for less than a day. She has visited her family before. You have survived. You will survive again."

"This is different."

"How is this different?"

Valarr looked down at the locket. Your eyes looked back at him. Your soft smile. He wanted to kiss you. He wanted to hold you. He wanted to bury his face in your neck and breathe in your scent and feel your arms wrap around him.

"Aelias is three now," he said quietly. "He understands that she is gone. He keeps asking for her. He cried three times last night. He cried when I tucked him in. He cried when I gave him water. He cried when I tried to do the dragon story voices because I am not as good at them as she is."

Baelor's expression softened. Just a little. Just enough. "That is hard," he said. "But you are his father. You can comfort him."

"I do not know how to comfort him when I cannot comfort myself."

There was a pause. The Master of Coin shifted in his seat. The Lord Commander looked at the ceiling. Baelor rubbed the bridge of his nose and sighed in a way that had nothing to do with missing his wife.

"Let us begin," Baelor said. "We have matters to discuss. Grain shipments. Roads. The situation in the Riverlands. Valarr, if you can manage to contribute without sighing, I would appreciate it."

Valarr nodded. He closed the locket. He set it on the table in front of him. He took a breath.

The door burst open. A small maid, no older than four and ten, stood in the doorway with her cheeks flushed and her hands twisted in her apron. "Your Grace," she said to Baelor, then turned to Valarr. "My prince. The little prince is asking for his mother."

Valarr was on his feet before she finished speaking. "Is he alright? Is he crying? Did he eat breakfast?"

"He ate his porridge. But he keeps asking. Every few minutes. He wants to know if she is back yet."

"Tell him two days. Tell him she will be back after two sleeps."

"I told him. He said two days is forever and he wants his mama."

Valarr looked at his father. Baelor looked back. The Master of Coin cleared his throat.

"Go," Baelor said. "Take him. Bring him here if you have to. We will manage."

Valarr did not need to be told twice. He found Aelias in the nursery, sitting on the floor with his dragon toy in his lap and his lower lip pushed out in a pout so dramatic that Valarr almost laughed. Valarr saw you. He saw you in the way Aelias wrinkled his nose when he was thinking. He saw you in the way he tilted his head when he was listening. He saw you in the shape of his hands and the sound of his laugh and the fierce protective love that burned in his chest whenever he looked at his mother.

"My baby," Valarr said, crossing the room and scooping Aelias into his arms. "My sweet boy. My little prince."

"I want Mama."

"I know. I know. I want her too."

"When is she coming back?"

"After two sleeps. You remember. We talked about this."

Aelias buried his face in Valarr's neck. His small body was warm and solid, his arms wrapping around Valarr's shoulders with a grip that would have been impressive in a child twice his age.

"I miss her," Aelias said, his voice muffled.

"I miss her too."

"I miss her more."

Valarr smiled against his son's hair. "You definitely miss her more. No one has ever missed anyone as much as you miss Mama."

"Not even you?"

"Not even me. You win. You are the champion of missing." Aelias pulled back to look at him. His eyes were red rimmed, his cheeks wet, but he was not crying anymore. He was studying Valarr's face with that serious expression that always made Valarr feel like he was being evaluated.

"You look sad too," Aelias said.

"I am sad. I miss her."

"Are you crying?"

"No."

"You look like you want to cry."

"I am being brave. For you."

Aelias considered this. Then he patted Valarr's cheek with his small hand, the way you did when you were comforting him, and said, "You do not have to be brave. You can cry. I will not tell anyone."

Valarr's throat tightened. He pulled his son close again and held him there, breathing in the smell of him, porridge and soap and something that was just Aelias.

"I love you," Valarr said. "You know that, right? I love you more than all the dragons in all the stories."

"I know. I love you too. But I love Mama more."

"That is fair. I love Mama more too. We have that in common."

Aelias nodded against his shoulder. "Can we go find her now?"

"She is far away. We cannot find her. But we can wait for her together. Would you like to come to the council meeting with me?"

"The boring meeting?"

"The very boring meeting. But you can sit on my lap and I will let you hold the locket."

Aelias perked up. "The locket with Mama's face?"

"The same one."

"Okay. But only if I can open it myself."

"You can open it yourself."

"And close it."

"You can close it too."

"Okay. Let us go."

Valarr carried him through the corridors of the Red Keep. Aelias was getting heavy, too heavy to carry for long, but Valarr did not put him down. He held his son against his chest and walked past the guards and the servants and the painted tapestries, and he thought about you, about the way you looked when you held Aelias, about the way your whole body softened around him like he was the most precious thing in the world.

He walked into the council chamber with his son in his arms. Everyone looked up. The Master of Coin stopped mid sentence. The Lord Commander raised an eyebrow. Baelor looked at Valarr, looked at Aelias, and sighed.

"Valarr," Baelor said.

"Father."

"You brought your son."

"I brought my son. He is missing his mother. I am missing his mother. We are going to sit here together and miss her while you discuss grain shipments. Is that a problem?"

Baelor looked at the ceiling. He looked at the other men around the table. He looked back at Valarr and Aelias, who was now staring at his grandfather with the same stubborn expression that Valarr had worn at every council meeting since he was old enough to attend.

"No," Baelor said. "No problem. Sit down. Try not to sigh."

Valarr sat down. He settled Aelias on his lap and pulled out the locket. He opened it. Your face looked back at him, painted and golden and perfect.

"That is Mama," Aelias said, touching the portrait with his finger.

"That is Mama."

"She is so pretty."

"She is the prettiest. The prettiest in all the Seven Kingdoms."

"Prettier than the queen?"

"Much prettier. Do not tell the queen I said that."

Aelias nodded seriously. He took the locket from Valarr's hands and held it himself, studying your face with the same intensity that Valarr had seen in his own reflection a hundred times.

"Mama," he said softly. "Come home soon."

Valarr's chest ached. He wrapped his arms around his son and rested his chin on top of Aelias's head and stared at the locket over his shoulder.

The Master of Coin began speaking about grain shipments. Valarr did not hear a word. He was too busy watching his son trace the outline of your painted smile with his tiny finger, too busy feeling the weight of Aelias against his chest, too busy missing you with every breath he took.

Ten minutes passed.

Aelias looked up at Valarr. "Is Mama back yet?"

"No, sweet boy. Not yet."

"Oh."

He went back to studying the locket. The Master of Coin droned on. The Lord Commander asked a question about roads. Baelor answered. Valarr sighed.

"There," Baelor said. "That is the fifth one."

"I cannot help it."

"You are not even trying."

Valarr sighed again. Aelias looked up at him with concern.

"Papa is sad," Aelias announced to the council.

"We know," the Master of Coin muttered.

"His wife is gone," Aelias continued. "He misses her. I miss her too. We are both sad. That is why he is sighing."

"Thank you for the explanation," Baelor said.

"You are welcome, Grandfather."

Aelias turned back to the locket. He held it up to the light, watching the gold catch the sun, watching your painted face glow. He kissed it, right on your painted lips, and Valarr felt something crack open in his chest.

"I love you, Mama," Aelias whispered. "I will see you after two sleeps."

The meeting continued. The Master of Coin finished his report. The Master of Laws started talking about the roads. The Lord Commander added his thoughts about the Riverlands. Valarr sat in his chair with his son in his arms and his locket in his son's hands and his heart somewhere far away, wherever you were.

Fifteen more minutes passed.

Aelias tugged on Valarr's sleeve. "Papa."

"Yes?"

"Is Mama back yet?"

"No. Still two sleeps."

"I do not like two sleeps. I want zero sleeps."

"I know. I want zero sleeps too."

"Can we make her come back faster?"

"No. But we can wait together. That makes the waiting easier."

Aelias considered this. Then he nodded, leaned back against Valarr's chest, and resumed his study of the locket.

He asked again after twenty minutes. And again after thirty. And again when the Master of Laws started talking about the roads for the second time, which Valarr suspected was because he was bored rather than because he had forgotten.

Each time, Valarr answered the same way. Not yet. Two sleeps. She will be home soon.

Each time, Aelias nodded and went back to the locket.

And each time, Valarr held him a little tighter, kissed the top of his head a little softer, and sighed a little deeper.

By the end of the meeting, Baelor looked like he had aged ten years.

"Valarr," he said, as the other council members filed out.

"Yes, Father?"

"Take your son. Go do something. Play with him. Read to him. Anything. Just stop coming to council meetings with that locket and those sighs. I cannot take another day of it."

"Tomorrow is another day. She will still be gone tomorrow."

Baelor closed his eyes. "I know. That is what I am afraid of."

Valarr stood up. Aelias was asleep in his arms, finally worn out by the morning of missing, his cheek pressed against Valarr's chest, the locket still clutched in his small hand.

"Look at him," Valarr said softly, looking down at his son. "He looks so much like her."

Baelor opened his eyes. He looked at Aelias. The dark hair. The silver gold streak. The eyes, closed now in sleep. The narrow face and the long limbs and the stubborn jaw.

"He looks exactly like you," Baelor said.

"He does not. He has her nose."

"He has your nose. He has your whole face. He is a copy of you. Everyone says so. Your mother would have wept to see it."

Valarr shook his head. "You are wrong. He has her spirit. Her kindness. Her stubbornness."

"His stubbornness comes from you. You are the most stubborn person I have ever met."

"I am not stubborn. I am determined."

"Valarr."

"Fine. I am stubborn. But so is she. So is he. We are a family of stubborn people."

Baelor stood up and crossed the room. He looked down at his grandson, at the sleeping child in his son's arms, and his weathered face softened into something almost tender.

"He is a good boy," Baelor said. "You are doing well. Both of you. She will be proud when she comes home."

Valarr's throat tightened. "Thank you, Father."

"Now go. Take him to the gardens or something. Let him run around. Stop sighing in my council chambers."

Valarr carried Aelias out of the room. The baby woke up as they walked through the corridor, blinking and confused, still clutching the locket.

"Papa?"

"Yes?"

"Is Mama back yet?"

"Not yet. But soon. Come. Let us go to the gardens. We can look for flowers to show her when she comes home."

Aelias perked up. "Pink ones?"

"All the pink ones we can find."

"And yellow ones?"

"And yellow ones too."

Aelias wrapped his arms around Valarr's neck and held on. Valarr held him back. They walked through the Red Keep together, father and son, missing the same woman, waiting for the same homecoming.

And somewhere on the road between your brother's keep and King's Landing, you were already on your way back. You did not know that your husband was sighing in council meetings. You did not know that your son was asking every ten minutes if you were home yet.

But you would. Soon and when you walked through the door, Aelias would run to you with pink and yellow flowers clutched in his small hands. Valarr would stand behind him, watching, smiling, crying a little. And you would hold them both, and the waiting would be over.

Two sleeps. That was all.