welcome to the tornado zone🌪️

Divorce leaves you with an embarrassing amount of free time. Like many women on the other side of a relationship, you find yourself in desperate need of a hobby.

Call it perhaps naïve optimism, but decades of movie-induced psychosis had you somewhat convinced that after ending a marriage your life would fall into that frazzled chase towards the proverbial moving on. Your Bridget Jones-esque era, so to speak.

You're certain you've done all the steps. Bought a tape dispenser to pack your shared life into tidy cardboard boxes, called the notary, fixed the doorbell tag, endured the pity comments, drank the gifted celebration wine bottles (expensive), had the obligatory celebratory one-night stand (bad), and decided the backsplash had to go as it's only there because Simon liked it (he didn't. He positively did not care.)

You hate the backsplash tiles.

They'd been clearance stock from a hardware store, and when you'd seen the price, you had squealed so hard your husband had pretended to plug his good ear. His lips had thinned into that long-suffering line as your fingers curled around his elbow, tugging him towards the pallet. 'S ceramic crap, Simon had objected, tapping a nail against the PEI sticker. You'd rolled your eyes and had wanted to ask him exactly what he would know about tiling, but his hands had been already pulling the wallet out of his back pocket.

It took him two attempts and several YouTube tutorials he kept rewinding every ten seconds, but he got them up in the end. You sucked him off as repayment with your knees to the kitchen floor, tracing lazy circles across the white of his knuckles where they gripped the countertop.

They get stripped off in a manic yet satisfying fit of hysteria, and now instead of ignoring them, you ignore a sticky note over bare plaster reminding you to call the remodel company.

Hot pilates seems as good as any distraction, and your therapist's office sits between the studio and your house. It's convenient: you can waste an hour on some very pricey lies and then go shed the guilt along calories and sweat. You squirm on the love seat and nod along her words when it seems appropriate.

"I think it would help if it were a more... A cleaner cut," you stammer. Your tongue is dry but you've achieved what you think is the perfect interested-but-nonchalant posture and you don't want to risk it for the glass of water. "I still get all his stuff, you know. His medical records and his phone bills, it's... Confusing."

Your friends occupy every Thursday and Saturday night since last October. They sit criss-cross applesauce on the wood of your living room for movie night, swing by the day after potluck for their washed casserole bowl. You get passed from one hand to the other in the most absurd game of "who has it", a watchful eye forever on you and your spine of jello.

Around them, it's easy to forget you've lost the flock. You fall into step without thinking, borrowing their direction for a few hours. Let yourself be carried on the same current, trusting they know where they're going.

But when night comes, they rise up and rub their knees and the small of their backs and swipe open their phones. One texts her fiancé— leaving now, home in 15. The other traps the device between shoulder and cheek as she buttons her coat. Did you wash your teeth? Jaime, I'm going to check before your goodnight kiss.

Instagram fills your head with christenings and birthdays while you stack the dishes in the sink. The washer-dryer gets stuck on heavy duty. You take a shot in the dark.

[Mar 23, 11.06 P.M] [Attached image] ?

It makes you feel a little less pathetic that he answers immediately.

[Mar 23, 11.06 P.M] control lock on have to turn it off

[Mar 23, 11.15 P.M] nite pet

It should feel nice, that two can play the same game. You don't respond anyway.

The next morning, you check the mail before heading out for work. Wedged between letters and advertising flyers, you find another health record. This time there's a full STI panel in the summary.

[Mar 24, 7.03 AM] youre not funny

The call comes at 3 A.M.

Your car is on and out of the driveway before you've even fully realised what Price's voice is saying, streaming out of the speaker. They got the short end of the stick on the outskirts of northern Paris, and then had to get EVAC'd out of there because Simon almost bled out in a helo.

The team at Queen Elizabeth's Centre for Defence Medicine extracts two bullets from your ex-husband's side, nestled between his spleen and his pancreatic artery. A couple millimetres in a different direction, and you'd be getting a death notification instead of a call from the ICU.

You sit on the plastic benches just outside the OR block and stare at the linoleum until a woman timidly scooches over. She's waiting for her daughter, a ruptured appendix she tells you, and she cuts the biggest orange you've ever seen in slices to coax into your hands.

"Who are you waiting for?" She asks, and your eyes decide they no longer have the strength to contain the neurotic tears you've been holding in.

She pats your back awkwardly, a little maternal, and makes soft cooing sounds as you sob into your palms, pressing your nose and your mouth into your fingers.

You picture him lying there, on a steel anatomical table, the surgeon suctioning his blood into numbered plastic bags. You wonder if they've given him something for his head. His neck hurts, if he uses a pillow that's too thick. You hope they've found him a flat one.

For a moment, you imagine that he does die, and that you're relieved. You rub against the front of your throat when that makes your stomach turn until you feel sick.

The tears slip into your mouth, iodine and sweet juice.

"There, dear," the woman tuts, smoothing over your hair. "I'm sure everything will find its place."

You're not sure how to feel about it, that you couldn't answer her question.

The zipper of your bag leaves a red imprint like a scar across your cheek. You attempt to rub it away as the nurse leads you through the frigid corridor of the unit, shoes squeaking and cleaning agents stinging the lining of your nostrils. She makes you wear funny green covers for your shoes and hook a mask over your ears, showing you how to work the gel disinfectant into your hands.

Your bag slips off your shoulder as you peek through the gap, pushing the heavy door of the room open.

A wet laugh surges from you, completely involuntary, because Simon truly looks ridiculous. Sprawled out on a mattress somehow too small for him, cast leg propped on a metal sling, oxygen cannulas skewed over his top lip, away from where they're supposed to rest against his nose. They must've had trouble dressing him, because his gown is sagging down his arm, loosely tied behind his neck.

Half of it must be his own making given that he's leaning over the edge of the bed to smash his clunky fingers onto the screen of a beeping machine. He turns his head to look at you and you take a step back to rest against the doorpost. Your hands itch with the need to touch him, to check...

His chest heaves into a great sigh when he flops back against the pillows. "Sweetheart," he burrs, nodding his chin towards the equipment. "Giv'us a hand, yeah?"

You think about hitting him, but you're sure they'd throw you out.

He watches as you drag your feet towards the bed, letting your bag drop to the floor so you can inspect the monitor. His chin dips again with encouragement when your hand hovers on the side buttons, and the half-moons under his eyes have your heart give a pained squeeze.

"Simon," you start, hating how your voice turns wet. "Oh my God. Are you okay?"

Your ex-husband cocks his head to the side, like he's taking your measurements, and the line of his mouth softens. "None o'that," he tells you, patting the seat of the chair next to his head, "c'mon, you're breakin' my heart."

He lets you sniffle a little, stretching to the nightstand to offer you a tissue box as you start rubbing your eyes. You take one out of politeness, but there's really no need: they are so puffy and dry you'd be surprised if they'd manage to produce something. Still, you jam one end into your inner corner and hope at least to clear some crust from sleep.

"How long you been 'ere."

"Since four, maybe. What happened?"

Simon scans the room and you're sure he's fishing for a clock, but he winces when his eyelids flutter in the harsh lights and he covers one with a knuckle. "Ah, nothin'."

Some part of you must still have enough hope because you wait for him to offer up more. It never comes, predictably, and you wind your arms around yourself and drop your gaze as old resentment floods your mouth.

It makes him sigh again, a heavy noise that bleeds into a groan somewhere in the middle. "Not keepin' secrets, you wouldn't understand half o'it. Who called ya?"

"Price," you admit reluctantly, twisting the point of your shoe against the ground. You find the action immediately childish, so you stop by shifting in your chair and knocking your knees together. "I told you to take me off it."

The hand he had to his eye falls down over his barrel chest as it wavers up and down with his shallow breaths. There are scrapes there you didn't notice before, at the start of his wrists and up his forearms where the tactical jacket must've rolled up. He's more gauze than skin there, between the plasters and the IV dressings.

"Been busy."

"I've called the office. Says you didn't authorise it."

"S'important paperwork. Deserves proper attention."

"Right," you scoff, primming your lips. Perhaps you don't make the best decisions in a panic. His team would've taken care of him, so there's no need for you to be here. What a clean cut you'll get if your hands keep trembling around the handle.

Your bag is halfway from the floor when his hand dangles off the bed, right in front of your face. His index hooks into the strings of the mask, nail scraping lightly against your temple, and then he's pulling it down until it rests on your chin. Your eyebrows knit together as you look up at him and his thumb smoothes over one of them, hair catching on the callouses.

He's staring at you with that complete impassivity that can only mean he's thinking very hard.

"You look nice."

Sometimes, it's easy to forget that out of the two of you he's the better butcher.

Taking him home isn't a planned thing, nor a welcomed one. He spends eleven days in the hospital and you manage to limit yourself to one other visit only, just to really assure your brain that he's out of death's grip so you can leave this whole thing behind and go back to dismantle what's left of your marriage.

It's sprung up on you. You ask him what's the prognosis and he clucks his tongue and rubs his nape until he feels like he's made you work enough for it.

They won't let him go back to his flat. The stitches on his side are still precarious and his broken leg hobbles him even with crutches, so for once in his life, it seems Simon isn't trusted to take care of himself. The medical team is still too concerned about the risk of infection and hemorrhage to leave him be without observation.

"I thought you said your spleen was fine." Your eyes squint while you help him arrange his lunch tray precariously on his knees. The dedicated support attached to the bed doesn't fit over the width of his thighs.

He sucks his teeth before using them to tear open the oil packet. "It is. Just nicked it."

The rest of his unit has been sent on action already, gone a day or two after his injury. It's protocol, but you stare at the way he tightens when he shifts wrong and think that he looks a bit like a toy someone has gotten tired of playing with.

He eats around his words, hunched over the food like a big animal of prey. He's not one to complain, but you catch the way his crooked nose twists when he gives the spare bed in the room a sideways glance. He tells you that some kid blew his fingers off like it's to spite him personally.

"Thought I'd get some R&R, at least," he grumbles, licking meat glaze off the knife. "Have to share wit' a wanker who can't keep the spoon still."

You know you shouldn't say it, but it comes out anyway.

"Do you, uhm..." Your brain tells you to backtrack, twisting your voice until it's all strangled. "Do you want to come stay at the house? I work, so it's not like we'd see eachother much and I can... Yeah, I can help you out."

It wins you a taste of the laser focus he's capable of. "Oh, pet," he croons, making your toes curl inside your shoes. "S'not a good idea, innit?"

You shrug your shoulders, prickly with vulnerability you've grown unused to. It feels a bit like rejection, and can't figure out why it hurts. The plastic covers of the meal gather into your palms, and you cringe when condensation dampens your skin.

Simon reaches for you when you try to move to the bin. His thumb and forefinger close around your wrist, feeling for your heartbeat.

"Don't want to take advantage," he adds, and you know him too well to ignore what swims in his eyes. You pretend not to see it.

"You'd do it for me."

He licks his lips, and the hesitant press around your wrist turns full, hand circling it completely. "Yeah," he agrees, "of course I would."

The fact that the divorce was your idea goes without saying.

It's unclear exactly which cog had stopped turning, but one day you'd woken up to the uncanny feeling that no time had passed since the day before. Simon had been somewhere in the other hemisphere, and you'd stumbled through the twenty-four-hour cycle of your life with an inexplicable anxiety.

You'd felt like one of those birds that smash again and again on a window they can't see, desperate for something beyond the glass.

Then Simon had come home, and time had resumed moving. It had scared you terribly.

You try to keep it from heading there, now. In the morning you leave for work and attempt to think of anything else other than where Simon will be once you return. At times you find him wandering the back garden, checking the tree roots' stability with the end of one crutch. Others he's at the kitchen table, typing clumsily on a laptop with Tesco-bought plastic glasses precariously perched on the tip of his nose. Most of the time he doesn't even bother putting them on correctly, with one arm going over the ear and not behind.

Taking care of something gives a direction to your life that's been missing. You like that he has to listen to you, now.

He doesn't object when you nag him about taking his meds and makes such deep, growling noises of appreciation for your cooking they go right down to your stomach.

His thank-yous come in service, always, so he fixes the wardrobe door that's been giving you trouble and checks all the lightbulbs of the house. You're reminded of how many things he sees that you don't: your car oil too low, loose window latch in the bathroom. The fact that your neighbour's garage has been broken into twice since Christmas.

He spends a Saturday afternoon replacing locks and tinkering with the security system. You're only informed when a new set of keys is delivered into your hand.

"You can't change stuff in my house without telling me," you try to admonish him, pretending to not be distracted by the rolled-up sleeves of his sweated t-shirt. "You know normal people just call someone for this, yeah?"

"Aye," he says around the cigarette dangling from his lower lip, "get ya a three-weeks wait and a half-arsed job. You need this done now."

This is what you've been missing: to not have to explain yourself. The few (try two) dates that you've been on since you and Simon split have failed for the same reason. You can't expect someone to know you when there's no history, but it's a hard adjustment coming from a long-term relationship.

There's no need to faff around with Simon. You don't have to explain why it's a grand thing, when you're late at the end of the work day and enter the house and tell him that your sister is pregnant. Due in September, after a third cycle of IUI.

He turns the toy you've picked up from the store on the way home in his hands. "You think 'bout it?" He asks, waits for the moment it takes for it to click in your head.

"What, about kids?"

Sometimes, you want to say, but it seems unfair to say it to him. Parenthood was always off the table, to your agreement as well. How does one raise a child when their father is across the globe half a year. The idea was shelved and replaced with something else, and for a while it had worked.

"Don't know," you're hesitant to respond, torturing the inside of your cheek. "Depends on who comes along, I guess."

He hums, stare never leaving your face. "Sounds about right."

Simon knows just when he has to push with you, and where. You're aware he lets you ramble so you're distracted when he tugs your feet into his lap, press his thumb into your socked arches. Because he knows you, you let him.

Your former uni roommate glowers at you over clementine martinis when you go out drinking. Your ex-husband has been stashed in your house for two whole weeks and you've yet to tell a single soul. It would've gone on longer, but after you'd called a rain check on your Thursday-Saturday meetups twice in a row, your friends were nearly committed to an intervention. You managed to de-escalate it down to drinks, hoping the alcohol would help, but perhaps a tête-à-tête hadn't been your brightest idea.

"It's just until the end of the month," you reiterate, sounding too much like you're justifying yourself.

There's no particular amount of affection that your inner circle holds for Simon, and you're quite sure it has decreased significantly since your separation. No need to fake appearances once a friend's insufferable partner is out of their life.

"I don't know, babe," she grimaces, stirring her drink with a straw. "It's kind of fresh, you don't even have the papers signed. I don't think it's the healthiest thing."

"It's practical. And, c'mon, what was I supposed to do? Leave him there? It's temporary and it's... It's fine, it's nothing."

"All I'm saying is, you don't make the smartest decisions around him," she points out. Not like you can get mad at her if she's right.

You swirl the words on your tongue while you drive back.

The lights are all off and you wander into the kitchen, pulling open the medicine cabinet to rummage around for a paracetamol. The weather is not quite hot enough for summer yet, but you feel stifled under your dress, fanning your face with your free hand to dampen the alcohol-fed licks of heat travelling up your spine.

A shadow shifts in the corner of your sight and you scramble, whirling around and pressing against the counter so fast you almost land on top of it.

Simon turns his head away to curl his lips in that nasty manner that means he's amused, standing a few feet away as if not entirely sure you won't bolt. Your palm slides away from your heart, and you award him a blank look.

"Fuckhead," you chastise him, low because the anger has already bled out of you. Quiet is not something he decides on anymore.

He gives you a canine smile and saunters closer, holding his arm out for you to see. "Patch's comin' off," he explains, picking the corner of the dressing with his nails to show you how loose it is, nodding his head towards the cabinet.

The help isn't offered nor does it need to be, because he angles towards you and waits until you reach behind your back for the disinfectant and the box of plasters. You murmur that you're sorry when the glue pulls at the straw hairs on his forearm, and he hums softly like he's conversing with an animal he thinks a bit dumb.

"I like the dress," he tells you after a while, and when you look up briefly, he's sizing the length of your body approvingly. Your hips shift in response, correcting your slouch as you clean the skin around the wound. "When 'ave you worn this?"

"I haven't," you swallow, hissing when your fingers fumble opening up the new dressing. "Got it after you."

The massive curve of his shoulders hunch, closing in, and you don't think he liked that so much, that there's an after you. You stick the plaster in place and prepare to bite the bullet.

"You smell good," he interrupts eagerly, and it almost makes you give in.

"Simon, can you sign the papers?"

His eyes are so weird. They shift like earth, at times, one moment the light, rich brown of soil, warmed by the sunlight. Now they deepen, the ground opening in layers, pulling you further by a magnetic core, bubbling in their tar pits.

"What papers, love?" He asks it along a deep breath, lips pulling at one corner, like you're revising some old shared joke and he's helping you set up the punchline.

"The divorce papers. I have them in the office, we can..."

Your mouth opens, and you curl your lips to wet them, squeeze some moisture out of your dry mouth. Your hand lets go of his arm, but he moves his behind you to rest on the counter so he can bend you in a more comfortable position for himself, shifting you until you face him directly. You have to tuck your shoulders inwards or you brush against the cupboard.

"You know wha' I think," he mumbles, swiping his nose over the crown of your head. "I think tha' yer a little drunk, pet, and you're not talkin' straight."

In a broader sense, you already knew this was going to happen, so it's not exactly shock that twists in your gut when his fingers hike the skirt of your dress up your thighs. They pinch the softness there as they go, mean enough that you squeak, and he chuckles with his mouth fitted to your ear.

You fear for his stitches when he hoists you up on the countertop, trying to swat his hands away, but he's clever and he hooks the gusset of your underwear in the crease of your pelvis. You've been wet since you noticed he was in the kitchen, and the groan that rumbles up his throat when he discovers it punches you in the solar plexus.

"Fuckin' knew it, I knew she missed me."

It seems like memory doesn't fail him, because his thumb traces the folds at the top before he caresses the length of your labia, finding the pool of slick at your opening and smearing it back up.

You can't help but clutch at his shoulders, digging into the muscle. The heel on your left foot bangs against the wood behind it and threatens to slip away, but when you try to spread your toes to keep it on, Simon gives your clit a good jiggle that has you doing the opposite.

"Speakin' a load of nonsense with a cunt leakin' for me," he huffs annoyedly, muffled against the spot on your neck he's lavishing. He doesn't warn you, just presses hard against your clit and plunges two thick fingers into you, bullying the rim apart until it stretches over the thick of his knuckles.

"Simon-!"

The gasp is out of you before you can reel it back, and he uses the opportunity of your open lips and cram his tongue into your mouth, with such an insistence you'd think there isn't enough space. You try to duck your head away a little, keep this from turning tender, but he palpates the hinges of your jaw and strokes quick little jabs against your front wall that make your lips slack.

You cum dizzyingly fast, moaning when you suck instinctively on his tongue the way you know he wants you to.

Simon grins like the cat who got the cream when he decides to let you breathe again, rubbing your cheek in a rough back-and-forth with his thumb. No more sounds seem willing to leave your body, so you're silent as he tugs your panties back in place, smoothing the dress over your legs.

Unsure of what else to say, you palm his side with a delicate touch. "Are you hurt?"

"No, darlin'," he's quick to respond, lowering his head so he can plant an insistent kiss over your mouth. "Feel fuckin' fantastic."

The following week, you celebrate your birthday. It falls on a Saturday, so you'll go out to that nice rooftop bar you've been meaning to try with your friends and you'll pretend it's all a surprise. But on Friday, Simon orders your favourite Indian and almost gets offended when you try to pay him back. It makes you so awkward that you let him stamp a peck to the side of your head before settling on the couch to watch a film.

When 9 PM comes, he taps your biceps with his fingers. "Pill," he clicks his tongue, and you're somehow shocked that he remembered.

The truth gets wedged in your throat on its way out. Admitting to it seems like dangling intimacy in front of his eyes that you're not ready to depart from.

"Yeah, sure," you hum, feigning severe interest in the movie. "In a minute."

"No, not in a minute. Now."

You think about getting up and swallowing an ibuprofen, just to get him off your trail. But why should he have that control over you?

"I'm, uh, not on it anymore." Hand reaching for a curry chip, you sniff and stuff it between your lips, deciding to focus on the spice burning the roof of your mouth instead of the intense look he gives your cheekbone. "Didn't really seem useful. Thought I'd take a break."

The rest of the evening is spent convincing yourself that you don't care about his opinion rather than worrying whether he thinks it's a bad thing.

You make your wish over chicken korma and pray he hasn't yet figured out how to read your mind.

By the time the last week of the month rolls in, you've half-forgotten Simon is supposed to leave eventually. If it's slipping from your mind, then he's buried the thought so deep it may as well not exist. Every time he leaves for a health check-up, you wring your hands and wait for him to come back and tell you that the time is up, that he doesn't need you anymore. What is supposed to bring you solace now fills you with dread.

Spring is drawing to an end and you feel a part of your life goes with it.

Over dinner he tells you that his medical downgrade will be lifted when May comes, and you're grateful that he pretends to ignore your fork clattering against the plate. You twirl it around your fingers, tapping the tabletop with the flat end of it.

Steam curls from the pasta between you. Simon decided to cook for once, and you'd come home just in time to bear the results. "Clean across 1500 meters", you'd said, enjoying having to evade his grabby hands, "and defeated by a timer."

Now he eats like he's still in a mess hall, elbow planted wide across the table, barely looking at his plate. He's always had that about him. This is mine, his posture says sometimes, come and take it.

"That's good," is what comes when you manage to metabolize it as the prongs skewer a limp maccheroni, and he watches your mouth open for it.

You're not sure if it's irritation or embarrassment that twinges at your nape when he snorts, tilting his head away so you're only allowed one side of his face, watching the way the line of his mouth bleeds into the scarred divot on his cheek. It turns his whole face into one long, pitying grin.

You've seen the place he's supposed to return to. A stuffy cubicle crammed into the side of a duplex, so narrow you weren't sure it was fit for rent. He hadn't seemed interested in decorating, because it had been lacking any furniture aside from the basics, all dull popcorn ceilings and vinyl plank floors. You'd found a pack of condoms in the hardboard sidetable digging for the things he'd sent you to retrieve; shame somersaults in your guts at the memory of throwing them away.

Another noodle makes it into your mouth, and you swallow it along with the image of him noticing just as he's about to fuck another woman. "Will you go back?"

"Back where?" Simon says, stealing the last piece of bread for himself.

You go to answer honestly, but you lose your bravado. "Field. Your team left," you reply stupidly, as if he possibly couldn't know, "a few days after your surgery."

"Aye, probably. Kind o' need-to-know stuff."

The chair creaks under your shifting weight as you adjust, curling a foot towards your chest so it rests flat on the seat.

"Have you packed anything yet?"

"Plenty o'time."

He says it like time is something he can afford to waste, like leaving is an inconvenience to be dealt with only when necessary. He clears the plates without asking, carrying the stack to the sink while you rinse the cutlery. Silence grows thick, cut only by scraping metal and rushing water.

When you wander to check the back door, he looks up from where he's polishing a knife. "What're you doin'."

"Making sure it's shut," you reply with your hand still on the handle. The door gives a good rattle as you try the latch, putting some of your weight into it. The door gives a good rattle as you try the latch, putting some of your weight into it. The lock clicks, firm in its place even when tested under a second, harder shake. His mouth twitches and it earns him a mean glance in response.

"Checked it half an hour ago."

"So?"

"So you're starting to sound like me."

You laugh, but the sound catches somewhere in your chest when you try to make it real. He shifts away from the sink, setting the knife on the rack, sighing when you don't offer anything else.

"Someone had a go at Ms. Cooke's place. Police came sniffin' round."

"What?" You gape, abandoning the door to move back towards the kitchen island. Your stomach goes tight and unpleasantly hollow, and you can't stop your hand from pressing over it, as if that alone could help it settle. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Was tellin' ya now." His shoulder sways in disinterest, like he's swatting away a fly, watching you with that unnerving patience he gets when he's already decided on something. "S'fine. We've got the alarm."

When the tidying up is done, you go upstairs and stew in your anxiety. The night seems to have an in on your thoughts, because every little noise acquires intent. Your shoulders jump as you undress when the boiler settles with a knock in the walls, and later your eyes wander from your paperback towards the dark glass of the window, wind worrying at the fence panels.

A car door slamming is what sends you out of bed, resigned that you can't bear it anymore. You stick your fingers in your mouth, gnawing at the nails, and take laps around the first floor to inspect the dark corners of your home, the phone flashlight gripped in your palm as a weapon.

By the time you descend the stairs, you're embarrassed by yourself. You find Simon exactly where you've left him, sunk in the edge of the sofa with a Stella hanging lazily off his hand. Blue-white flashes from an old football match ripple across his face. He doesn't turn, but greets you before your feet have even landed from the flight.

"Oi."

There's no rush for an answer on his part, yet he still sighs heavily when it doesn't come. His eyes studies you, moving over your face with a quiet attentiveness you've never learnt to evade. "Still thinkin' bout Cooke?"

Your expression must answer for you, because he rubs a thumb over the condensation on the bottle before he's speaking again.

"If they're worth half o' their salt, they'll have scoped the place already." His chin dips towards the window without looking away from you. "Not stupid 'nuff to try while I'm in the house."

You know, of course you do. You've spent months alone in this very same building, and haven't spent a night turning in your bed about it. For some reason, it doesn't stop your stomach from churning tonight.

"Need me to come up?"

You're not strong enough to pretend that his weight on the mattress is not a relief. The sheets have been kicked to the end of the bed, room too stuffy for them to be useful, and you anchor a hand to the edge of the bed to keep yourself from rolling in his direction, gravity wanting to move you towards the alcove of his body.

Somehow, Simon feels bigger than you remembered. His breath rumbles when he stretches lavishly with one arm over his head, knee popping as he hangs his foot over the bed's end. The sound reverberates through the fabric, pulsing where your skin meets the topper. It turns physical when a hand touches between your scapulae.

Makes you jolt, eyes darting over your shoulder, finding the humped line of his nose bridge. His arm is still over his head, and he stares up at the ceiling while using the opposite to drag his knuckles up and down your spine. You don't have time to ask what he's doing before he answers.

"Stiff as a board," he chuffs. The fat joint of his middle finger digs into a sore spot dead centre on your back, and you tilt backwards in protest. " 'am makin' you nervous."

"Always," you reply, and he chuckles like he thinks it's a joke.

"And here I was hopin' it was the break-ins."

You give a sharp jiggle of your shoulders to knock his hand away, still too touched by the fact that he's sharing your bed to reassure you to bed truly mad. You keep tight to your pillow so there's no chance that he sees you smiling when he snorts, and fall asleep with his fingers tracing patterns over your back.

His tug wakes you. Your eyes flutter open mid-motion, rolling with the pull until your face plants against his chest. His breath wafts in your mouth before Simon tucks you under his chin, seemingly more content to take long huffs of your hair than facing you directly.

You're probably the only one conscious out of the two, which is why you don't move away. You take the precious opportunity, wallowing in the instinctive comfort it offers.

It's his smell you realise you've missed. Saliva drips liquid-hot on the back of your tongue as you press your nose to his throat. Dried sweat sticks to the crook of the arm beneath your head and in the hollow between his shoulder and neck, catching the back of your nostrils with acridness. It makes you press your thighs together, too embarrassed to consider rubbing them like you want to.

The pleasant floatiness of half-sleep is ripped away from you when his hand fists the fat of your calf to drag your leg over his hip.

"Wot 's it, baby," Simon slurs against the top of your head, and you gulp down your doe instinct with his voice under your ear.

You have to work the words through the tightness of your vocal cords and pull back a little from him so you can speak. "Sorry," you start, "just woke up. Think I rolled over."

The hand on your calf travels up, palming the length of your leg. When it reaches your ass, he sinks his fingers there like the pyjama trousers between you are a problem.

"Yeah." He ignores you when that makes you whimper, slapping his palm over your cheek a couple of times. It's not a smack, more of a pat, like he's testing the solidness of you. He grabs it again, this time a little bruising. "Need some touchin', do ya."

The familiarity of it confuses you. Your brain is not sure, as his palm moves to your front and up your shirt, if he should be allowed to do this. He's your husband and he's in your bed, but he's not. He's your ex and he's plucking your nipple between two fingers until he can catch your panting in his mouth, but you can't help it when it makes you rub your pussy on the muscle of his thigh.

"Please." You convince yourself you're begging him to stop, head spinning, but Simon must hear something else in your voice because the pad of his thumb flattens against the peak of your breast, and he flexes his leg to give you something harder to grind against.

"Bloody hell. Alrigh'," he groans, a punched moan, and the forearm behind your head curls so he can weave his fingers into your hair. Prickles bloom at your nape when he pulls, forcing your chin back so he can kiss you. His spit slips into your mouth, syrupy. Waxy sugar over candied apples, stuck behind your teeth out of your tongue's reach.

Whenever you get shy and try to inch backwards, he forces you again on his leg, pressing you so hard to himself that the rubbing verges between pleasure and burning. You know you're obscenely wet because he drags two fingers over the crotch of your pants repeatedly, trying to feel the moisture that seeps into the fabric.

"Goin' to be nice to me, uhm?" He croons, pressing his forehead to yours. He's gotten you desperate enough that your hips continue working even when his palm leaves them in favour of guiding you to the tent of his joggers. The hot, thick shape of his forces whines out of you, tip of your noses bumping. "So sweet for your old man, yeah."

The fabric moves and he's in your hand, weighty enough that it makes your cunt clench at the memory.

He has a cock that makes you want to touch it. He makes you want to touch him. You've known this since the first time you've slept together: there's a deliciousness in circling your fingers around the shaft, feeling the soft give of the veins gorging, swelling with his arousal. It has you hot in the stomach, eager when you find the tip angry and leaking already, slipping between your fingers until they're slick. You stroke him from the upside of his length, trapping yourself between him and his belly so you can feel the coarse hair on his pelvis tickle the back of your hand.

You imagine he made less noise when they shot him. He tries to muffle it by smashing your mouths together, cupping your cheeks to keep you still when you struggle to breathe.

"Fuck, tha's it," he hisses, bouncing his thigh when it makes you sigh pathetic little oh's. "Good girl, stroking my cock so good. Makes you wet as rain, uh? Ahhhh, fuck-"

Your head spins again, and this time it's because he's easing you on your back. It takes the pressure away from your achy pussy, and you claw at the dark where he's supposed to be only to come up empty-handed.

"Simon-" you call, until the bedside lamp switches on. He's already taking his shirt over his head. His back casts broad shadows across the wall, shifting with his wingspan, muscles flexing at the bottom of his sternum where they disappear into the soft fold of fat over his lower stomach. The ink on his bicep jumps when he fists his length, so tight you're sure it must hurt.

You realise the light is less for you when his free hand yanks your shirt until it rests at your collarbone, baring your breasts. He sucks on his teeth and settles on his hunches between your spread thighs.

"Lemme see," he beckons with a nod, barrel chest heaving. You feel pinned by his gaze, like there's no place else for you to be, and the head of his cock bobs up and down when he resumes stroking it. "Play with yer tits."

You oblige, strumming your nipples until they perk and rosy, coaxing gentle ripples of pleasure that move your hips in jerky circles. Every attempt to close your legs is stopped by his free hand.

"Baby," you sob when you're at your wit's end. You must hit whatever nail he was laying right on the head, because the stoic line of his brow softens and he shuffles forward towards you.

"You poor thing." Simon lets go of himself, tip slapping against his belly right under the surgery scar, in favour of pulling down your bottoms and panties all in one. His thumbs hook under your knees, and you gape up open-mouthed as he guides them towards your chest. "Been a'bad husband, haven't I?"

Your sight blurs, and he notices and cooes. Precum beads and drips to land on your inner thigh. His fingers seem a bit apologetic as they nudge you apart, pushing inside your cunt to make you sigh.

You want to cum, and you tell him with your walls spasming around his knuckles, shivering from the warmth of the tears leaking from your eyes and the warmth of the wetness leaking from your pussy. He wipes the former away and gives you a third finger to stretch on.

"Gonna be good to you from now on," he promises as he rolls you on your front, detangling the clothes from your feet. Your arms attempt to push you back around but a rough palm on your spine holds you down against the mattress.

"I'm-"

The head of his cock slips over your entrance, too slick to gain enough friction, your skin pulsing when he uses his fingers to wipe some of your wetness away. Looking back, you choke on your spit as you watch him lick them clean.

Simon cages you in, a fence of muscles over you, settling his elbows around your head when he punches his length into you. It's a bit stilted at first because he's not at the right angle, and it burns, paper-cut sharp. He soothes you with a kiss on your nape and gives you the rest of it.

You feel yourself open up for him, a caving space that wants for his shape. Your cunt gulps around his shaft, suctioning, pulling him further while you struggle to catch up, pressing your mouth to your forearm. "Ah, Simon, please-"

"S'okay," he says through gritted teeth, like he's telling you more than he's reassuring you. A hand fists your hair to have more of the back of your neck so he can bite you there when his hips start pumping. "I've got ya."

The train of your thoughts gets woozy after that, brain too winded in keeping conscious. The buzz at the base of your skull grows with each sound smack of his thighs against yours, skin prickling. You'll be red there tomorrow, and at the end of your spine where his abdomen chafes. His cock pistons deep behind your mons, sending direct waves to your redden clit as it rubs on the bed.

"My wife," Simon growls when his maw leaves your neck, pushing your head down when it tries to lift up. Your field of vision is entirely occupied by his bicep, jaw slack. He presses his nose into your cheek when you thump your forehead against his arm. "My fuckin' wife... Comin' on my fuckin' cock. Mine, my-"

"Fuck, please. Right there, ah, make me come," you keen, fucking yourself back, lifting your ass to meet his thrusts. You think you could cry when he balances on one arm to sneak the other under you, stroking his fingers on your clit. "Yes, Simon, yeah-!"

It's a full body spasm, a rolling tide, growing and growing until your throat is tightening around your pants and you're near silent, mouth open in teary sobs. The ring of your pussy draws so strict that he inhales like it stings before he's rocking hard against you, making your teeth clack together.

Once you're sated, his pace changes from rolling plunges to short stabs that makes you search for his fisted hand, so hard they make it for your lungs to expand. It loosens just a second, only to snake around yours, constricting like a noose.

You feel his cock throb, pulse against your rim, and you swipe your thumb over his knuckles. "Pull out," you try, voice smothered by his weight, "pull out. Baby-"

The sound is harsh when he shushes you, lips pressed right over your temple. His arms lock like a manacle, elbows digging in the mattress, mouth parted over your ear when he huffs like a bull.

"Givin' it to you," he warns, and something scampers in your guts. Your shoulders try to shift, but you're rendered near immobile under him. "Ya need it, yeah? Somethin' to fuss over. Yours and mine, pet. Uhm?"

Objecting is a useless attempt, because the only things that come out when you open your mouth are feeble moans and wheezing breaths. He must take your silence as a yes, and his cock pulls back all the way, right down to the head, before it's slamming inside in a few desperate thrusts.

They're a repetitive drumming, laden, heavy shoves that have the entire power of the muscles of his back and thighs. Your second orgasm comes like a tumble, catching you underfoot as he spills against your cervix, making you shiver with the viscous warmth of it.

He stays there for a while, nudging the back of your head with his nose while you both catch your breath. You pant against the mattress and wince when your pussy doesn't want to let him go, seizing up when his spent sloshes out of you as he slips out.

Simon gathers you up in his arms, pulling you astride his hips, letting you rest your cheek against his tacky pectoral. He tilts your chin up with two knuckles and kisses you until you gasp for air, just to make himself laugh.

"I love you, sweetheart," he smiles when you frown at him, sealing the words with another press of his lips.

You feel like the price is already paid. Whether by you or him, it seems unimportant.

Pregnancy doesn't agree with you, but you're so content you can hardly pay it any mind.

The feeling is self-inflicted, though, because people smile at you in the grocery store, eyeing the gentle curve of your belly, and your friends twist their fingers in your hair every night out, checking the quality of the locks. God, so the pregnancy glow is real! Why didn't I look like this? You know Simon agrees because he seems physically incapable of sharing your twenty inches radius without cupping some part of your body.

The first two months you could barely roll out of bed, and when you would, you'd have to sway towards the bathroom before nausea had you bent in half. Now on the cusp of your second trimester, the stubborn thing growing under your ribs seems happier to grant you the occasional uninterrupted walk.

You take your breakfast by skirting the trowels, tile cutters and floats strewn across your kitchen floor, pinching your nose when the sharp smell of grout catches in the back of your throat.

"Out," your husband commands, swatting your ass with a loud smack. You'd think that having done this once already would be helping him somehow, but he seems to be struggling more than the first time. There's no rush: you know he'll get it how he wants it in the end. "Shouldn't be breathin' this in. Go somewhere else."

You retreat with your tea and the morning post, humming along to the weather forecast intro while you sort through envelopes. Bills. A wedding invitation. A card from your godparents congratulating you on the pregnancy. Can the baby hear you yet? Does it recognise the sound of your voice and Simon's?

When you're in bed at night, it seems that it can— it lands such kicks when its father presses his mouth to your abdomen to make silly noises for the pleasure of making you laugh.

A yolk-yellow paper clip slips from the stack and lands on the table. It takes a second to recognise it: the medical records from the night Simon was shot.

You push it aside to continue parsing through the remaining letters, but curiosity has you going back. The excerpt from the surgical record is nothing new. Two entry wounds to the abdomen (LUQ), no major arterial damage, minor damage to the splenic capsule. Patient underwent emergency exploratory laparotomy. Then there are the files from his hospital stay, the billing from the RXs and the reports of his blood work. The last page is his discharge notes.

Discharge destination: patient's residential address. Advice and caretaking: no heavy lifting 3mos, no contact exercise 3mos, see therapy section for pharmacy. No home care required.

The date stares back at you until Simon curses from the kitchen. You smooth the corner flat and slide it back beneath the paper clip.

"Simon?"

You laughed low in your throat, leaning closer, pressing your forehead to his. “No? You speak as though my brother were some common foe, and not the blood that made me.”

“Your blood is wolf,” he said, cruel as ever, “and wolves snarl at lions until their throats are torn. Do you think Stark invites us north for feasting and song? He despises me. He despises the gold that binds you here.”

“And still,” you murmured, lips grazing his ear, “I wish you to come. I wish him to look upon us — upon me, upon our son — and see I am not cowed. I am wife to the greatest lord in Westeros.”

Tywin’s eyes narrowed, but there was no true fire behind them, only thought, calculation. His voice lacked the conviction it once carried. “The North is barren stone and bitter snow. I have no need of it.”

“Yet I have need of you,” you said, with the stubbornness only a Stark could wield. “If I go alone, he will see me as stolen. If I go with you, he will see me as chosen. Let him learn that I have not been broken, nor kept in some gilded cage.”

Tywin tilted his head, studying you as though weighing a battle yet unfought. His hand slid up your spine, fingers threading into your wild hair. “You would drag me into that frozen waste to play at happy kinship with a man who would put a sword through my heart, given half a chance.”

“You will not die by Ned’s sword,” you replied fiercely. “He would sooner cut his own hand. He loves me too well.”

Silence stretched, long and taut. At last he exhaled, a sound almost like a growl, his mouth brushing the corner of yours.

“You play a dangerous game, wife,” Tywin said. “But perhaps it is time the wolves remembered that lions do not yield.”

The chamber soon smelled of fire and sea-salt, the great waves crashing below the Rock as if to remind you of the world beyond those golden walls. The hearth burned low, gilding his bare skin in red light. You sat astride him still, hair wild as a storm-tossed wolf’s mane, your lips close enough to taste the sharpness of his breath. His hand clamped to your waist, bruising, unrelenting; his eyes, pale and green, never wavered from you.

The conversation had dissolved, “Husband,” you whispered.

“Wife?” His voice was low, heavy, as though he already dreaded what you would say.

“Say you love me,” you breathed, tilting your head, wild smile tugging your mouth. “I would like to hear it once, before I die a tragic death.”

A muscle worked in his jaw. “You will not die.”

“I might,” you teased, with the drama only a Stark could muster in the face of lions. “The gods are cruel, war is crueler. One day I may find myself speared, or cast from a tower, or slain in my bed. Say it once, husband. Let me die knowing you loved me.”

His eyes narrowed, fierce and wounded all at once. “Do not mock me with your foolish tongue. You know what I feel.”

“I know what you command,” you answered, pressing closer, your hand cupping his neck. “I know what you hold. But what you feel? That you never say.”

His hand shifted, sliding up your spine, fingers curling into your wild hair. He dragged your head back just enough to force your gaze into his.

“Words are wind,” he said, voice low and sharp. “Love is not a vow murmured into the night. It is a hand that holds fast, a will that does not falter. It is this.” His grip tightened, keeping you there, bound to him. “I would sooner let the Rock crumble into the sea than let you go.”

Your lips curved into a defiant grin. “You say everything but the words, husband.”

“Then be content with that,” Tywin growled, though the sound was almost a plea. His mouth brushed the line of your throat, rare softness breaking through the steel. “You are mine, wife. That is love enough.”

You laughed softly, leaning down until your lips brushed his ear. “One day, when I am old and grey, I shall haunt you as a wolf-spirit for never saying it plain.”

Tywin’s hand slid to the small of your back, drawing you against him with bruising need. “One day,” he muttered against your skin, “you may force the word from me. But not tonight.”

The fire burned low in the hearth, throwing your tangled hair into a crown of wild shadow. You sat astride him, your hands cupped at his neck, his pale eyes drinking you in as though he might never look away. The gold lions carved into the chamber walls seemed to leer down in judgment, but here, in this chair, he was not the great Lord of Casterly Rock. He was only your husband, undone beneath your touch.

“Fine,” you sighed, dramatic as only a wolf-maid could be, and loosened your grip on him. “I shall leave, then. Find love elsewhere, if my lion cannot speak the word.”

You made to rise from his lap, but his hand clamped down on your waist with a bruising force. His voice came rough, low, edged with something perilously close to panic.

“You will not leave.”

Your lips curved, sly, testing. “You said you would not follow. Perhaps another man would, with softer words—”

That was as far as you got before he hauled you down against him, teeth bared in something not quite a snarl, not quite a kiss. His mouth claimed yours with the desperation of a man who could not abide losing. His hands—always so steady, so sure—shook faintly as they gripped your hips, dragging you down until you felt all of him, hard and unyielding.

“You will not speak of other men,” Tywin hissed against your lips. “Not in this chamber. Not ever. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, husband,” you whispered, voice taunting, your hair spilling into his face.

“Say it again.”

“Yes, husband.”

He groaned low in his throat, lifting you and driving you back down upon him with a force that made your breath break. The rhythm began rough, punishing, his jealousy spilling into every thrust, as though he meant to brand you from the inside out. Yet beneath the fury was something deeper, something wordless, a truth he would never name.

Your fingers tangled in his hair, wild and untamed as your own. “Is this how you cage a wolf?” you gasped.

“This is how I keep what is mine,” he rasped, dragging your mouth down to his again. “You are mine, wife. There is no elsewhere for you. No other hands, no other bed. Only this.”

The words poured from him in place of the one you craved: not love, never love, but possession, devotion carved in iron. His lips found your throat, your breast, your shoulder, each kiss fierce as a claim. The chair groaned beneath the violence of his need, yet he never loosened his grip on your waist, as though the very thought of you rising away would unman him.

Your pace met his, stubborn and wild, turning the rhythm from conquest into battle. He tried to command, to hold, but you met him stroke for stroke, defiance in every gasp, every shudder. He cursed you, low and hoarse, his forehead pressed to yours, sweat dampening his unkempt hair.

“Gods damn you,” Tywin groaned, his voice breaking in a way the court would never know. “You’ll be the ruin of me. Do you know that?”

You were astride him still, your hair wild and unpinned, your hand curled about his neck, his pale eyes fixed unblinking on yours. The lions carved into the chair pressed cold against your skin, but Tywin was hot beneath you, taut with a fury he could not name.

“Say you love me,” you whispered against his mouth.

His answer was a growl, a sharp snap of his hips that made you gasp. “Do not ask me again.”

“Say it,” you demanded, defiant even as your body arched to his. “Say it once, husband. Is it so difficult?”

Another thrust, harder, deeper, until your breath shattered. His grip bruised your waist as he dragged you down. “What I feel does not need a name. You will know it here.” His hands tightened, his voice low, cutting through your moans. “Every time I take you. Every time I hold you fast. This is love enough.”

You laughed breathlessly, though it broke into a whimper as he drove into you again. “You think thrusts are words?”

“They are stronger than words,” Tywin bit back, sweat dampening the strands of his usually ordered hair. “Words are wind. This is truth.” He snapped his hips again, each movement deliberate, punishing. “Mine. Mine. Say it.”

“Yours,” you gasped, clawing at his shoulders. “But husband—”

“No.” He cut you off with another deep, brutal rhythm, his hand threading into your hair, pulling your head back so he could see your face, hear every broken sound you made. “No more foolish questions, no more childish pleas. I will not prattle like a bard.” His lips brushed your throat, your jaw, your ear. “I give you myself in deed. That is more than any vow.”

Your nails dug into him, half in defiance, half in surrender. “You are cruel,” you whispered, your voice trembling. “Too proud to give me the word.”

His jaw clenched, his breath hot against your cheek. “Cruel?” His pace slowed suddenly, each thrust long, deliberate, dragging fire through your body. “Cruel is letting you think there is any man alive who would dare take you from me. Cruel is what I would do to him, if he tried.” His hand cupped the back of your neck, forcing you to meet his eyes. “You are bound, wife. In blood, in bed, in every breath you take. Do not speak of leaving me again.”

The rhythm built again, faster now, his jealousy bleeding through every movement, his body claiming you with more eloquence than any sonnet could.

“Say you love me,” you whispered one last time, your voice breaking under the force of him.

His answer came in a ragged groan, his forehead pressed to yours, his thrusts near desperate now. “I will say it in the only way I can.” His mouth captured yours, brutal and bruising, his hand clutching your waist like iron. “I will say it until you can no longer speak at all.”

Your body moved with his, the rhythm sharp and relentless, yet you found your tongue even as your breath caught. “I only want you to say it once, husband,” you gasped, your lips brushing his ear. “Is it so much to ask?”

He gave you nothing but another punishing thrust, his jaw hard, his eyes burning.

You smiled, wicked as any wolf. “Perhaps your son, Tyrion would say it. I see it, the way he looks at me—”

His grip turned brutal, your gasp breaking as his pace snapped faster, fiercer. “Do not speak of him. Not here.”

“Or Robert,” you taunted, though your voice shook with the force of him. “He would drunkenly say it until his ears fell off—”

Tywin’s mouth crushed yours, silencing you with a kiss more savage than tender, his teeth grazing your lower lip. When he pulled back his breath came ragged. “If Robert Baratheon so much as breathed the word in your direction, I would spill his entrails on the floor of his hall.”

You laughed breathlessly, even as you clung to his shoulders, you moaned loudly, as drove deeper into you. “And the Dornish prince…he was—”

The growl that broke from him shook through you. His hands seized your hips, slamming you down upon him with such force that the chair itself groaned. “Enough. No Dornishman, no king, no son, no man alive will claim you. Only me. Do you hear?”

“Then say it,” you whispered, your voice breaking into a whimper. “Say the word I beg for.”

His thrusts slowed suddenly, deep and measured, drawing pleasure out until your cry caught in your throat. His forehead pressed to yours, his voice low, almost tender. “I will not cheapen it with sound. I will show you. I will carve it into your bones with every breath I take inside you.”

You trembled, half in defiance, half undone by the way he said it — not love, never love, but everything else.

“Say it,” you pleaded again, your wild hair tangling with his.

His lips brushed your jaw, then your throat, his words hot against your skin. “No one else. No one. You are mine, wife. That is the only truth that matters.”

The rhythm built again, furious then soft, possession tempered with a tenderness he would deny come morning. He talked you through every movement, each thrust a vow unspoken: mine, mine, mine.

And though he never gave you the word, you felt it burn hotter than any flame, in the way he held you, in the way he broke against you, in the way he would not let you go.

Your laugh was breathless, your hair wild as the waves crashing against the cliffs beneath the Rock. You arched against him, your lips brushing his ear as your smirk curled sharp as a dagger.

“I will never say it to you again,” you moaned softly, the words rolling off your tongue like a taunt.

He stilled. Not entirely — his body still moved within you, but the rhythm faltered, slowed, softened, betraying him. His pale eyes fixed on you, hard as glass, yet flickering with something else, something dangerous.

“Do not,” Tywin said, his voice ragged, “do not mock me so.”

Your smile only deepened, though your moans caught as he rocked into you slow and deep, dragging fire through every nerve. “Am I mocking you? Or am I only speaking truth? If you will not say it, then why should I?”

His grip on your waist trembled, not from weakness but from restraint. You felt it — the crack in his armor, the word trembling on the edge of his tongue, held back by sheer force of will.

“Say it,” you whispered, cupping his jaw, forcing him to meet your gaze. “Once, husband. Give me what I beg of you.”

His thrusts grew languid, torturous, each one slow enough to make your body writhe. His lips hovered at your throat, his breath hot, uneven. “You…you know already. Gods damn you, you know.”

“But I want to hear it,” you sighed, your smirk faltering into something softer, needier. “You have given me gold, a son, your name, but never the word. Am I so unworthy?”

His forehead pressed to yours, his hair damp, his eyes burning with war between pride and surrender. His mouth opened, the shape of it forming against your lips, almost —

Almost.

Then his jaw clenched, his teeth gritted, and instead of the word he groaned into your mouth, breaking against you in silence. His body gave you everything, every thrust, every tremor, every shred of himself, but the word died on his tongue.

When it was done, when the fire of it left your body trembling, he gathered you against him, still inside you, his hand in your hair.

His voice was hoarse when he finally spoke: “Do not ever say such things again. You will not speak of leaving. You will not speak of other men. You are mine. That is the only vow you will ever need.”

You smirked faintly, though your voice was little more than a breath. “One day, husband. One day you will say it.”

His eyes flickered, soft for the span of a heartbeat, before hardening once more. “Pray that day never comes. For if it does, it will be the end of us both.”

━━━━━━━━━━ ☼ ━━━━━━━━━━

Dawn broke over Casterly Rock, pale light seeping through the high windows, gilding the chamber in muted gold. The cries of gulls carried in from the sea below, harsh and distant.

You stirred beneath furs, hair still tangled, and turned to the sight that stole the breath from your chest. Tywin Lannister stood tall at the hearth, bare save for the crimson cloak thrown hastily about his shoulders. In his arms, he held your son.

Five moons old, dark hair like a raven’s wing already curling at his temples, grey eyes sharp as any Stark’s before him. No lion’s golden mane, no Lannister green gaze. He was Winterfell’s child, Winterfell’s son — despite the blood that carried him south.

Tywin’s hand, so often wielding quill or sword with unshaking precision, curved now around the babe’s small body. He held the boy firm, steady, as though daring the world itself to challenge his claim.

“Steady your head,” he murmured under his breath, adjusting the infant with surprising gentleness. “A lord does not bow, even in his mother’s arms.”

Your smile came unbidden. Always commanding, even now. Even to the smallest life he had made with you.

Servants bustled about the chamber. At his orders, food was set, horses readied, gold counted, guards doubled. The Lion of the Rock never faltered; his voice cut clear, his commands brooked no question. Yet you watched him closely, saw what no bannerman ever would — the way his arm never shifted far from your son, the way his eyes flicked back to the boy as though to anchor himself.

You knew then, as you had known in the firelit night, that he would go North. That your words had lodged deep, thorn-sharp, in the pride of him. He was jealous — of Robert’s drunken longing, of Tyrion’s wandering eyes, of every man who had dared to glance your way. He would not admit it, but it burned in him all the same.

Always jealous. Always yours.

And so you smiled to yourself, drawing the furs close, watching the most powerful man in Westeros cradle a Stark son as if the boy were the heart of the realm.

━━━━━━━━━━ ☼ ━━━━━━━━━━

The solar smelled of ink, wax, and parchment. Sunlight cut in narrow beams through the high windows, glinting off the golden lions worked into every surface. At the far end, your son slept in a cradle newly built at Tywin’s command — oak inlaid with gold, the lion of Lannister snarling across its sides. Lion pride, you thought with a smile, and for all its grandeur there was sweetness in it too: the most calculating man in Westeros had wanted his child close, even in the seat of his power.

Tywin sat at his desk, quill scratching, pale eyes sweeping line after line with the hunger of a man who had never known leisure. His hair, washed and combed back to its proper order, gleamed like pale fire in the morning light.

“Tell me, wife,” he said, his voice low, controlled, never lifting his gaze from the parchment.

You leaned against the carved pillar, your smile sly, your hair still unpinned. “Tell you what, my sweet lion?” you whispered, drawing out the words.

The quill stilled a moment, just the faintest pause, but he did not look up. “You know well enough.”

You drifted toward him, hips swaying beneath your gown, soft steps meant to tease. “Do I?” you asked, voice mocking in its sweetness. “Am I to guess at the secret cravings of the Lord of Casterly Rock?”

His jaw shifted, clenched. His eyes did not rise. “Do not toy with me.”

You came to stand at his side, hand resting upon his shoulder, fingers slipping into the folds of his crimson cloak. “Toy with you?” You bent, lips brushing the line of his jaw, the scent of parchment and ink mingling with his skin. “No, husband. I only wish to please you.”

“Then say it,” he muttered, the mask of command fraying for but a heartbeat. His hand tightened on the quill until the feather bent. “Say it, and be done with your games.”

You smiled against his skin, pressing a kiss to the hollow beneath his ear. “You want it too much,” you whispered. “You crave it more than you admit. That is why I will not give it yet.”

At that his quill snapped, ink spilling across the parchment. His head turned sharply, pale eyes finally catching yours. The fire in them was near desperation, though his mouth twisted into disdain.

“You are a cruel woman,” Tywin said.

“Cruel?” you echoed, brushing your nose against his, your lips hovering a breath away. “No, husband. Only a wolf. And wolves do not yield so easily to lions, no matter how they roar.”

From the cradle, your son stirred faintly, and for a moment the room held nothing but the sound of his small breath. Tywin’s eyes flicked to the boy, then back to you. His hand rose, cupping the side of your face with a roughness that bordered on tenderness.

“You will say it,” he vowed, voice rough, low, as though the words cost him dearly. “One day, wife. You will break, and you will say it.”

You kissed him then, slow and taunting, tasting the edge of his pride. “Perhaps, my lion. But not today.”

The quill snapped between his fingers, black ink bleeding across his parchment like a wound. He did not move to clean it, only stared at you with that pale, unblinking fury that was not truly fury at all.

You gave him a wolf’s smile, daring, and began to drift back toward the cradle, toward the door beyond. Your skirts whispered across the stone as though you had dismissed him from his own solar. But before you could pass the threshold, his voice cut low and sharp.

“Where are you going?”

You turned, slow and languid, tilting your head. “Away. If you will not say it, then what is left for me here?”

His hand slammed flat upon the desk, the crack echoing off golden walls. Your son stirred faintly in the cradle, but did not wake. Tywin’s gaze followed you, taut as a bowstring.

“Come back,” he ordered.

You laughed softly, wild and sweet. “Commanding, always commanding.” You stepped closer again, eyes glinting as you leaned against the pillar. “I want to hear it first, husband. Say it, and I will give you what you want.”

His breath came heavier, though he masked it with stillness. “You dare barter with me?”

“I dare,” you whispered, the word a challenge. “You would have me speak, but you never do. I am not some bannerman to obey your wordless will. Give me truth, or I will withhold mine.”

His chair scraped back as he rose, taller than the pillar, every inch the lion. In two strides he had you caged between stone and his body, his hand at your chin, forcing your eyes to his.

“You think I cannot break you,” Tywin said, voice low, dangerous, his body pressing you into the cold pillar. “You think I need words to hold you. But you are wrong, wife. You are mine without them.”

You smiled against his grip, lips curling sly. “And yet, I still ask. Still taunt. Perhaps you are not so certain as you pretend.”

His eyes darkened, narrowing. “I will not speak it.”

“Then I will not either,” you breathed, your lips brushing his knuckles where they held your chin. “And we shall see who breaks first.”

His mouth came down on yours then, hard, furious, yet shaking with the need he denied. His other hand gripped your waist, pulling you against him, already betraying that he would give in to you before he ever gave you the word.

The cradle creaked softly as your son stirred again, the carved lions glinting in the sunlight. Tywin broke the kiss only long enough to mutter, rough and ragged:

“You will say it, wife. One day, you will beg to say it.”

And you laughed softly against his mouth, defiant as any Stark. “Not before you do, my sweet lion.”

━━━━━━━━━━ ☼ ━━━━━━━━━━

The road unwound like a serpent, one moon’s march of dust and stone. Each day Tywin rode at the head of his men, crimson cloak a flare against the gray skies. You watched him from the carriage, your son stirring beside you in his gilded cradle. At night, the inns were cleared at his command, chambers emptied, tables laden, fires stoked. Always, the lion took what he required.

He watched you, making a mental note that your bleed should be soon. He packed that dried meat just for you, some fruits that you craved and the sweets he demanded his men to procure for you but in the nights, when the babe lay quiet in his traveling cradle, it was you he sought most.

You felt it in the way his hand lingered at your back when he drew you against him beneath heavy furs, in the restless turns of his body, in the silence that pressed too long between you. He was a man who conquered kings, who bent lords to his will, yet you had left him with a hunger he could not master.

It came one night as the hearth burned low, shadows crawling long across the walls. He pulled you into his lap, his arms wound tight around you, his mouth hot at your temple.

“Say it,” Tywin muttered, low and hoarse, voice stripped of its iron. “Say it now.”

You smiled into his shoulder, your fingers toying with the gold chain at his throat. “I told you, husband. Not until you give me the same.”

His grip tightened, his body tense. “Do you delight in tormenting me?”

“Yes,” you whispered, pressing your lips to his jaw. “I delight in seeing the lion beg.”

The words struck him like a blade. He turned your face up to his, eyes pale and fierce, yet unsteady in a way you had never seen. His breath shuddered against your cheek.

“You think me unbending stone,” he said, voice near breaking. “But you—you are the one thing I cannot master.” His mouth brushed yours, desperate though his tone remained sharp. “I need it from you. Do you hear me? I need it. I have built kingdoms on obedience, on fear, on loyalty bought with blood. Yet I cannot still my own thoughts until you say it. Gods damn you, wife—say it.”

You cupped his face, your smile soft now, though your eyes still glinted with wolf’s fire. “There it is. My proud lion admits need.”

He groaned low, pressing his forehead to yours, his hands running through your hair as though he meant to hold you together by sheer force. “You will ruin me.”

“Then let me,” you whispered, kissing the corner of his mouth. “But first—you must earn it.”

The words made him shudder, his restraint crumbling, his body betraying what his pride would not allow. He kissed you then, hard and desperate, each breath thick with the word he would not say.

And though the night stretched long with his hands, his mouth, his desperate rhythm within you, he never gave the word. But in the breaking cadence of his body, in the rare admission he could not take back, you knew it all the same.

━━━━━━━━━━ ☼ ━━━━━━━━━━

 The fire in the Great Hall roared, shadows leaping across stone and timber, the banners of direwolf and stag stirring in the draught. The king sat slouched upon the high seat, goblet in hand, his voice thick with wine and frustration.

“She was meant to be mine,” Robert said, low but heated, his eyes fixed on the dark red in his chalice as though it held her reflection. He drank deep, then slammed the cup down with a rattle. “Wild, beautiful — gods, she kissed me before I went to war. Told me to gut that Targaryen cunt, and I swore I would.”

Ned’s lips twitched into the ghost of a smirk. He remembered — remembered you at his side in those bitter days, begging him to march with Robert. You had seen your father burn, your brother strangle, and still you had fire in you. The Mad King had a softness for you, though, and Ned had barred you from the field. Stay, he had said. Stay, for your safety. You obeyed, though it near broke you. You were the first to hold Jon when he came squalling into the world, and for a time the boy had called you mama. You had known the truth, but sworn silence at Ned’s bidding.

“She is happy,” Ned said now, firm though quiet.

“Happy?” Robert barked, half rising from his chair. “She is caged, Ned. A wolf upon the Rock, surrounded by gold and lions! You call that joy? She was meant to run free, to roam — not to rot in a gilded cage. And now…” His voice lowered, bitter. “Now she bears that Lannister cunt’s son.”

The word snapped in the air like a whip.

Cersei’s eyes rolled, her smile tight. She sipped her wine, saying nothing, though she had more claim to your heart than any of them knew. She had never despised you, not wholly, though she had little fondness either. Yet in girlhood, you had never judged her — never called her cruel, nor whispered poison about her name. When you caught her once with Jaime, tangled in shadows, you had not threatened or condemned. Instead, you had smirked.

“He’s handsome, Kingslayer,” you had teased her, lips curved with mischief. “I would too. Gods, Ned’s far too ugly — I’d sooner cut my own cunt out.”

Despite herself, she had laughed.

And one night, with the candles guttering low, you had told her another secret, voice soft with wine: “I once bedded a girl. She was blonde — not as golden as you, but close. She kissed me softly.”

Cersei had arched a brow, lips curved. “You’re telling me this?”

“Because I will not judge you,” you had said, smiling that wolf’s smile. “You know mine, I know yours. We could both be burned, both be shamed. But we will not.”

And you had left her with that, the bond unspoken, the secret shared.

Now her green eyes snapped back to the hall, to the men still debating your name as though you were not flesh and blood but prize and possession.

“She will be fine,” Catelyn said with a soft smile, ever the gentle lady. “She writes and writes. Her letters speak of her son — ‘handsome,’ she calls him.”

Robert slammed his goblet again, wine spilling down his beard. “Complacent. Caged and complacent! That is what she is. The lion has snuffed the fire from her.” Ned’s jaw clenched. He said nothing, but gods help him — he feared the king was right.

The children waited in the Great Hall, restless beneath the high stone arches. On rare occasion Jon was allowed to linger with them, and tonight was such a night — for you had made it clear you would brook no slight against the boy. If Jon was kept from greeting you, the castle would know your fury. Even Catelyn, though she held her tongue, had come to respect you for it. She loved you as though you were her own sister, though the words would never pass her lips.

“She named the boy Arys,” Catelyn said softly, a smile curving her lips as she bent to kiss little Arya on her dark head. “A winter’s name, for a Lannister child.”

Before Ned could answer, the hall doors slammed wide, and your voice rang bright across the cold stone.

“Eddard!”

It was wild and warm, carried on the wind of travel, full of laughter and life. You came striding through the doors as if the Rock itself had never tried to cage you. Your hair was loose, untamed, spilling down your shoulders like the northern wind. Your cheeks were flushed from the cold, your smile broad enough to banish the shadows in the hall.

Ned stood at once, the children with him, his breath caught in his throat. Gods, you looked unchanged — wild as ever, untamed by lion’s chains. His eyes fell to the babe in your arms: hair dark as a raven’s wing, grey eyes bright. A Winter’s son. He breathed a sigh he had not known he was holding. No lion there. No gold.

Behind you, Tywin Lannister entered, red cloak sweeping, his guard flanking him like twin shadows. His hand went to your back, firm, possessive, tugging you close as though to remind the North of what was his. His voice was low at your ear, sharp as steel.

“Behave, my wild wolf. Remember, you belong to me. All of you.”

You smirked, flashing him a look over your shoulder, half-taunt, half-promise, before turning your face back to your kin.

You moved to Ned with the grace of a wolf, your arm sweeping around him even as you cradled the babe close. He caught you up in his own embrace, his eyes soft, his jaw tight.

“Arys,” you said warmly, glancing down at your son as though the whole world lay there in your arms.

Ned gave a low laugh, rough with relief. “Sounds like Arya.”

“Well, yes!” you said with a grin, voice full of mischief. “It’s all I could get away with. No Rickon, no Rickard. He wanted to name him Lyon!” You threw your head back dramatically, laughter ringing across the hall. “Can you believe it? A Stark babe, named Lyon!”

“He’s a Lannister,” Tywin’s voice cut in, cold as a blade. His eyes swept the hall, daring anyone to dispute him.

You turned, fire in your smile, voice bright and defiant. “He belongs to Winter. My winter’s child, born when the moon was brightest and fullest.” You looked down at the babe, your hand stroking his soft hair. “He is ours. A Stark son, whatever his lion-father may say.”

Jon lingered on the edge, as though afraid to step forward, though his eyes never left the babe. At last he cleared his throat, awkward as a boy grown too fast for his years.

“I will always be your first son…right?” he asked, voice low, a shy laugh softening the words.

You turned at once, bright as sunlight in Winterfell’s stone hall, and cupped his face between your hands. “Of course!” you said, joy bubbling in your voice. “My first son, my first everything. You taught me all I know, Jon. You were so fussy, always pulling at teats. You wouldn’t go to the nursemaids, wouldn’t go to Ned. You were worse than Robb!”

Jon flushed crimson, ducking his head, but his smile showed.

“That he was,” Catelyn agreed, her voice gentled, a rare softness in her eyes as she remembered.

You laughed, pressing a kiss to Jon’s dark curls. “You were mine, no matter what anyone says. You will always be mine.”

Jon took Arys then, careful as if cradling glass. The babe blinked, little fists waving, and Jon’s smile broke wide as the boy gurgled against his chest. Your heart clenched at the sight, wolf sons together.

Catelyn moved close, her hand brushing Arys’s hair with surprising tenderness. “He looks like Arya when she was born,” she murmured, a smile softening her stern face.

A low snort cut through the moment. “He is no Arya. He is a Lannister. My son.” Tywin’s voice rang cold, every word a steel edge.

You only smiled, your warmth refusing to bend to his chill. “He is both,” you said softly, still watching Jon rock the babe. “A lion by blood, a wolf by soul. Winter claimed him first — and I will not see it denied.”

Tywin’s eyes narrowed, his jaw tightening, but he said no more. The hall had gone quiet, all ears turned toward your words, and you stood as you ever had — wild, untamed, and unafraid, even with a lion’s hand pressed to the small of your back.

━━━━━━━━━━ ☼ ━━━━━━━━━━

The hall roared with firelight and voices, meat sizzling on spits, cups brimming with wine. Yet for all the din, you felt the weight of eyes upon you. Wolves and lions and stags alike watched as you sat near the king, your son cradled in your arms, your smile bright as ever.

Robert leaned forward, his cheeks flushed with drink, his eyes lingering too long on your face. “Gods,” he muttered, loud enough for those closest to hear, “you were meant to be mine. I should’ve taken you when I had the chance. You kissed me before the war, do you remember? You told me to gut that silver-haired bastard.” His laugh was booming, but there was bitterness in it still. “I’d have given you freedom, not a cage of gold.”

The hall quieted, ears pricking at the king’s confession.

You smiled softly, though your hand tightened protectively on Arys. “You gave me much, Robert. A brother’s protection when I needed it, and laughter when the world was grim. That is no cage.”

Across the table, Cersei’s lips curved into a knowing smirk. She caught your glance, and for an instant the hall faded — only you and she, two women bound by shared secrets. She sipped her wine with queenly grace, her eyes glinting, as if to say: you are clever, as I am clever; we will not be judged by men who would own us.

Ned’s chair scraped back as he leaned closer, his voice firm, protective. “Enough, Robert. She is wed, and happily so. Leave the past where it lies.”

Your brother’s hand brushed your arm, his eyes dark with warning, his mouth drawn tight. He had seen too much — father’s bones, brother’s strangled cries — to bear the thought of losing you to another man’s folly.

Robert grunted, waving Ned off with a heavy hand, but his eyes still lingered on you. “A lion’s wife,” he said with disdain, “but still a wolf at heart. Don’t forget that, Ned.”

You lifted your goblet, smiling as though the words had not cut deep. “A wolf I was born, a wolf I remain. Even in Casterly Rock, Winter runs through my veins.”

“Do I cage you, wife?” Tywin asked at last, his voice carrying over the feast, pale eyes fixed only on you.

You laughed gently, your cheeks flushed from wine and warmth. “Gods, yes!” you cried, throwing yourself against his shoulder with mock despair, hand pressed to your brow in dramatic fashion. “A golden cage, with a lion’s head on the lock. I can scarce breathe, husband — I cannot escape!” Your giggle rang bright as the hall chuckled.

His hand, ever instinctive, found your waist, fingers curling with quiet possession. “Good,” he said, his tone cruel as iron, though there was the faintest glint in his eye. “May you never roam free again.”

You leaned close, your voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper meant only for his ear. “Even a caged wolf bites, husband. One day I might gnaw the bars and slip away.”

His mouth curved the barest fraction, though it was no smile. “If you do, I will follow. To the ends of the world, I will drag you back.”

“Drag me?” you teased, eyes gleaming as you tipped your cup to your lips. “Perhaps I should make it a game then — run far, run fast, and see how long it takes the lion to catch the wolf.”

His grip tightened, a warning, his voice low enough that only you heard. “Do not tempt me, wife. I would catch you too quickly. You would not enjoy the punishment.”

“Oh, but perhaps I would,” you whispered back, laughter soft as snow.

Robert’s booming laugh broke through the moment. “Seven hells, Stark, she’s still wild! I told you she was not meant for chains!”

Ned bristled at the king’s words, his hand clenching the cup before him, but you only leaned closer into your husband’s side, your smile as bright as the firelight.

“And yet,” you said sweetly, your voice carrying across the table, “I am here. By choice or cage, who can say? But I am here, and I will not be moved.”

Tywin’s hand pressed firmer at your waist, his silence saying more than words ever could.

━━━━━━━━━━ ☼ ━━━━━━━━━━

Later that night, Winterfell lay quiet, its halls hushed but for the crack of distant torches in the wind. Catelyn came to you with gentle words, hands clasped before her. “Let me put him to bed,” she pleaded, her eyes soft on the babe. “It has been so long since I held one so small in these halls. Please, sister.”

You glanced to Tywin, his pale eyes already narrowing.

“He is mine,” your husband said flatly, voice brooking no question.

But you only laughed, your smile bright. “He’s all yours tonight, Catelyn,” you said warmly, brushing the dark hair from Arys’s brow before passing him into her arms. “Keep him near the fire. He’ll sleep better for it.”

Tywin’s jaw tightened, his silence sharper than steel. He turned without a word, his crimson cloak sweeping behind him as he stalked down the hall.

When at last you entered the guest chamber, he was already there. The chamber was cold stone softened by Stark furs, yet Tywin looked every inch the lion — cloak unbuckled with sharp motions, golden clasp clattering against the table. His hands worked with fury at the belts and fastenings of his doublet, every movement precise, violent in its restraint

“Robert Baratheon,” he spat, his voice low, cold enough to crack stone. “Drunk, loud, boasting before an entire hall that you were meant for him. As if you were some bauble lost in a wager. As if our son were his to jest about.”

You leaned against the bedpost, your smile faint, sly. “He has always been Robert. Loud, foolish, too fond of wine. You should not waste your temper on him, husband.”

Tywin’s head snapped up, pale eyes narrowing. “Do you think me blind? He covets you still. He dares speak of your kiss, of what he believes should have been his.”

“Covet, perhaps,” you said with a little shrug, “but coveting and having are different things.”

His jaw flexed. “It should not have been spoken at all.” He stepped toward you, hands curling at his sides. “No man should speak of you in my presence and live unscathed.”

You laughed gently, shaking your head. “Always commanding. Always furious. Tell me, do I live in your protection, or in your cage?”

Tywin stopped, eyes flashing. “You mock me.”

“I soothe you,” you corrected softly, crossing the chamber to lay your hand against his chest. “If I were caged, do you think I would laugh so? Do you think I would taunt a lion, if my chains were real?”

He caught your wrist, holding you still, voice rough. “You think this is a game, wife? Robert, Ned, your northern lords — all of them watch, all of them whisper. They see a wolf they think has been tamed. They cannot know what you are to me.”

You tilted your head, eyes gleaming. “Then tell me. What am I to you?”

His breath caught. He turned sharply away, bracing his hands on the table, shoulders rigid. “You are mine. That should be answer enough.”

“It never is.” You came behind him, sliding your hands up his back, your lips brushing his ear. “Mine, you say. But what else? Speak plainly for once, Tywin. No command, no title. Speak as a man.”

He spun then, sudden, seizing your face between his hands. His mouth was inches from yours, his voice low, ragged, stripped bare.

“You are the woman that I love.”

The words rang louder than any shout. His eyes burned with fury at himself, but his grip did not falter. For once, the lion could not take them back.

Your lips parted in shock, then curved into a wolf’s grin. “Gods, husband,” you whispered, pressing your forehead to his, “you nearly sound human.”

He growled low in his throat, kissing you hard, as if to smother the words he had loosed. But the fire had already burned them into the air — and into you.

You had teased him before, begged him, laughed at his silence, but never had he said it. And now, fury had ripped it free from his tongue.

He kissed you hard, crushing, his hands seizing your face as though he feared you might vanish. You gasped against him, half-wild with the suddenness, your fingers clawing at his doublet. He tore it open himself, cloth and clasps scattering across the floor.

“Damn you,” he rasped, his mouth against your jaw, your throat, his hands gripping your waist hard enough to bruise. “Damn you for making me say it. You should never have heard those words.”

“And yet I did,” you whispered breathlessly, your laugh catching in your throat as he lifted you, carrying you to the bed like a man in battle-madness. “Say it again, husband. Once more.”

He laid you down with more force than care, climbing after you, his cloak pooling red across the furs before he snatched it off. “No,” he growled, tearing at your gown until your skin gleamed in the firelight. “Not again. Never again. Once was too many.”

You arched beneath him, your hands tangling in his hair, drawing him down. “Then prove it,” you gasped, teeth grazing his ear. “Prove your love if you will not name it.”

His control shattered. He thrust into you with a fury that was half-jealousy, half-desperation, his rhythm rough at first, as though to punish you for the word wrung from him. But his voice betrayed him, ragged and unguarded.

“You are mine,” he panted, his forehead pressed to yours, his eyes closing as though the sight of you undid him. “Mine in the sight of gods and men. Not Robert’s, not your brother’s, not the North’s. Mine.”

Your nails dug into his back, pulling him closer still. “Then love me, husband. As a man, not as a lion.”

He groaned low, his pace faltering, slowing — not to ease but to draw it out, to make you feel every inch of his need. His lips brushed your cheek, your temple, your mouth, softer now, trembling in a way you had never known from him.

“I do,” he whispered against your skin, the words torn from him in spite of himself. “Gods curse me, but I do. I love you.”

The admission broke him. His thrusts turned desperate, uneven, each one driven more by need than control. He clutched you as though the world itself might steal you away, his breath ragged in your ear.

You held him, kissed him, laughed softly through your gasps. “Say it again.”

He shook his head, jaw clenched, but his body betrayed him. “No more words,” he growled, but when release came, it was with your name torn from his lips and the word buried in it, unspoken yet unmistakable.

His body moved over yours, every thrust a clash of fury and need, his jaw clenched tight against words he would not loose.

“Say it,” you gasped, your arms winding around his neck, your lips grazing his temple. “Say it again.”

“No.” His voice was a growl, sharp as steel. His hips drove harder, rougher, as though each stroke could silence you. “You will not take that from me. Once was too many.”

You laughed softly through your moans, your hand cupping his cheek, forcing his pale eyes to yours. “I take nothing, husband. I only want what is already in you.”

He shook his head, teeth bared, sweat shining at his brow. “No,” he rasped, thrusting deeper, slower, punishing, “you will not make me—”

You kissed him then, slow and tender, your mouth brushing his in a way that robbed him of fury. When you pulled back, your voice came sweet as snowfall.

“Say it for me, Tywin.”

His body faltered, the rhythm breaking. His breath caught in his throat, his eyes squeezed shut as though he could force the word back.

“Say it, husband,” you whispered, soft as prayer, your thumb stroking his jaw. “Please.”

Something cracked. His thrusts grew desperate, uneven, as though the strength of him was pouring into each stroke faster than he could bear. His mouth trembled against yours, and at last, ragged, broken, the word tore free.

“I love you.”

It came low, hoarse, ripped raw from him. He buried his face against your neck, repeating it once more, as though he hated himself for yielding, yet could not stop.

The chamber was stifling with heat, the fire snapping in the hearth, the furs twisted and damp with sweat. His body moved above yours in a rhythm that had lost all command — no longer the measured precision of a lion in control, but the desperate, faltering pace of a man undone. His pale eyes burned into yours, his jaw clenched as though he could grind the words back into silence.

“Say it again,” you gasped, your nails raking across his back, your lips brushing the shell of his ear. “Say you love me.”

He groaned, low and ragged, thrusting harder, as though he could drive your plea from existence. “No,” he hissed, his forehead pressing to yours, sweat dripping between you. “Do not ask me. Not again.”

You laughed softly through your moans, wild as a wolf in the snow. “Husband,” you whispered sweetly, tilting your head so your lips ghosted his. “Please.”

His control cracked. His thrusts slowed, deepened, every stroke shaking through his body. His mouth trembled over yours, and then the words broke free, hoarse and raw.

“I love you.”

Once, with his lips on yours.

Again, against your cheek, almost a prayer.

And again, muffled in your throat, as though he hated himself for yielding but could not hold it back.

Your body arched to him, clutching him closer, your wild smile breaking through your gasps. “Then give me another,” you pleaded, your voice fierce with longing. “Another heir, Tywin. Another Winter’s child.”

He froze mid-thrust, his breath catching, eyes locking on yours. The world stilled in that heartbeat — lion and wolf, fire and frost.

“Another…” he rasped, his voice breaking.

“Yes,” you whispered, cupping his face with both hands, your hair spilling wild across the furs. “Give me another child. Fill me with Winter again. Let the Rock hear the cry of wolves.”

His mouth fell open, and for once no command, no cruelty, only need spilled from him. He thrust again, deep and shuddering, his words torn free with every movement.

“I would give you anything.” His lips crushed yours, broken between gasps. “Anything you asked. Gods curse me, wife, I would give you everything. Another child. Ten. The whole world, if you wanted it.”

You cried out, his name spilling from your lips as his rhythm faltered into abandon, desperate and uneven. He clutched you as though he would never let go, his mouth on yours, your cheek, your throat, whispering the word he had sworn never to give.

“I love you. I love you. I love you.”

Each one sharper, rougher, until he broke with a groan, his body trembling, his seed spilling deep inside you. He collapsed against you, still moving in languid aftershocks, his weight heavy but his arms holding you as if you were too precious to be lost.

At last he lifted his head, his face pale and damp, his eyes stripped of all their armor. He smoothed your wild hair back from your brow, his fingers trembling faintly.

“Do not ask me again,” he whispered hoarsely, though his lips brushed your temple with rare tenderness. “For each time you do, I will yield. And I cannot bear to yield to anyone but you.”

You smiled, pressing your lips to his cheek, then his nose, then finally his mouth. “Then I will ask, husband,” you murmured, soft but certain. “Until the end of days.”

He closed his eyes, forehead to yours, the lion undone by the wolf.

And though pride would make him silent come the morning, you had torn the words from him, and the fire knew them, and so did you.

━━━━━━━━━━ ☼ ━━━━━━━━━━

The bow was light in your hands, familiar. The string snapped as you loosed, and the arrow sank deep into the painted circle. Bullseye. Arya shrieked in delight, Bran clapped, even Jon grinned as if it were his own victory.

Tywin’s pale eyes narrowed, his voice cool. “This is unbecoming of a lady.”

“I am no lady, Tywin,” you retorted, tossing your wild hair back as you reached for another arrow.

“You were once,” he said, folding his hands behind his back. “I recall you blushing like a maiden, dressed in silk, laughing too eagerly at my jests.”

“That was strategy,” you said loftily, drawing the bowstring back. “I wanted you, so I planned and I got you.” The arrow flew, striking near the first.

The Stark children laughed, Arya bouncing on her toes.

Tywin’s mouth curved, though faint. “Not how I recall. You came to Casterly Rock wild-haired, your tongue sharp, mocking me in my own court. And after one supper, you declared I was courting you.”

You turned to him, mock-offended. “Declared? I assumed! You asked me to stay five days. Five. You said I was to oversee the process and keep you company. What else was I to think but that the lion was courting the wolf?”

The children erupted in laughter. Ned, standing nearby with Catelyn, hid his smile poorly in his beard.

Arya darted forward. “She’s right! That is courting. Why else keep her there?”

Jon crossed his arms, smirking. “If my lady-aunt says it was strategy, then it was. She won. Look at you now.”

Tywin’s gaze cut sharp to the boy, but Robb stepped in with a grin. “No, Uncle Tywin has it right. He didn’t waste five days on anything he didn’t intend to keep. That sounds more like him.”

Sansa nodded primly, her hands folded. “Lord Tywin would never let someone else decide what he wanted. If he asked her to stay, it was because he had already chosen her.”

Arya stuck out her tongue. “Or because she tricked him! Wolves are cleverer than lions.”

“Not cleverer. Quicker,” Jon added, smirking at you. “She cornered him before he knew it.”

Robb laughed. “He’s not cornered now, is he? Look who has the Rock, the guards, the gold.”

Catelyn raised her brows, amused despite herself. “It seems we have sides forming in the yard.”

“Aye,” Ned said, folding his arms as he watched his children bicker, his eyes soft on you. “But whichever way the tale is told, the ending is the same. The wolf sits beside the lion still.”

Tywin’s hand slid absently to your waist, his eyes gleaming faintly. “And the lion,” he said quietly, “does not let go what he claims.”

You leaned your head against his shoulder, grinning at the children. “Or what the wolf steals,” you teased.

The yard rang with laughter, split down the middle — wolves against lions, each convinced their version the true one.

━━━━━━━━━━ ☼ ━━━━━━━━━━

The guest chamber was hushed but for the fire and your mingled breaths. The weeks in Winterfell had worn on, one moon on the road, near another beneath Stark stone. And yet no blood had come. He had checked the sheets himself each morning, when you stirred late and he rose early. No stain of red, no sharp scent of iron.

He knew your ways — how you demanded meat, salted heavy, during your bleed. How you drank near like a sailor to dull the ache, how you lay beneath him after, letting the weight of him ground you. But there had been no requests, no salt, no wine-drowned nights.

So he watched you. Always watching.

Tonight, he touched you softer than he had in many moons. His lips brushed your temple, your jaw, the hollow of your throat as he moved above you. His hand skimmed down, possessive and reverent both, lingering over the faint swell of your stomach. Not yet visible, not yet certain — but his pale eyes burned on it as though the proof were plain.

You laughed softly beneath him, brushing back the gold-streaked hair that had fallen loose from his temples. “Why so tender, husband? Have you grown weary of your cruelty?”

His mouth brushed your ear, his breath warm. “I have no cruelty for you, wife.” His thrusts were slow, deep, each one drawn out as though he meant to carve them into your very bones. “Not tonight.”

You arched, your nails dragging along his back, your voice breaking into a moan. “Then what is it? Speak to me.”

He cupped your face with one hand, forcing your eyes to his. “Because you may carry another heir of mine.” His voice was low, nearly a growl, yet soft in its own way. “Because I will not let the Rock, or the North, or Robert Baratheon himself, take from me what I built in you.”

Your breath caught, your lips parting, but his mouth claimed yours before you could answer. He kissed you fiercely, then pulled back only to whisper, words uncharacteristic of him, words he could not stop.

“You are mine. My wild wolf. My lioness. My love.”

Each thrust followed the words, his rhythm steady but tender, as if he worshiped what he feared to name. His gaze kept straying down to your stomach, his hand pressing there, thumb circling gently as though to coax life into being.

You smiled through your gasps, tears bright at your eyes. “Then speak it again, husband. Tell me.”

And though he had sworn before that he would never say it twice, he did — breaking against you, his forehead pressed to yours, his voice hoarse with surrender.

“I love you. And if the gods are kind, you will give me another child. Another Winter’s child, born of you.”

When you cried out beneath him, he kissed you as though he could drink the sound into his very soul, his body trembling with release, his hand never straying from the place where he already claimed his legacy.

The fire hissed low in the Winterfell chamber, the wind battering the shutters, the howl of wolves carrying over stone. You lay half-asleep against him, but Tywin Lannister did not sleep. His arm anchored you close, yet his eyes were fixed on the hearth as his thoughts marched on like soldiers.

“The North is peril,” he said suddenly, his voice low but firm, as if speaking to a council of one. “It clings to old gods, old ways, savage and stiff-necked. Even here, in your brother’s hall, I feel the weight of suspicion. They will always whisper that our son is wolf, never lion. That his blood is theirs to claim. They are wrong.” His hand brushed your belly, lingering. “He is mine.”

You shifted faintly, your lips brushing his throat, but he pressed on, relentless.

“Our legacy cannot be left in Winter’s hands. Too cold, too soft, too stubborn. They dream of honor while the Rock builds kingdoms. I will not see my line diluted by northern filth — not Robert’s drunken claims, not Stark mutterings, not even these children who look at you as though you are theirs.” His jaw clenched, his eyes narrowing. “You are mine. The babe is mine. And the next will be mine.”

He exhaled sharply, his voice steady but edged. “It will be a daughter this time. I have decided it. You will give me a daughter.” His thumb traced a circle over your stomach, almost possessive. “And you will name her something northern, I have no doubt. Some stone name, some Stark relic. But I will not have her diminished. No long-winded grave-name dragged from crypts. Something simple. Strong. A name that can be spoken in the Rock’s halls without shame.”

You stirred at that, murmuring, but he kept on, the commander unspooling his plan.

“She will not be a plaything of this place. She will not run wild with wolf pups, nor be buried in furs and forgotten. She will be raised to rule. She will stand where lions stand, but she will have the wolf’s steel as well. And they will bow to her — here, in the North, and in the South. A daughter of mine will command, not beg.”

His hand slid to your hair, smoothing it back, his voice quieter now, but no less firm. “And you will guard her as you guard that boy. Fiercely. Wildly. Even if it kills you.”

At last he stilled, his chest heaving faintly, his eyes hard in the glow of the dying fire. He had spoken as though to himself, but his hand had never left you — your hair, your waist, your belly.

You smiled against his chest, eyes closing once more. “Then we will give her both, husband. Wolf fire and lion pride. A true daughter of ours.”

He said nothing, but his grip tightened, the commander already planning her place in a world that did not yet know her name.

The fire was nearly spent, the chamber washed in shadow. You lay curled against him, your cheek on his chest, his hand never leaving the gentle swell of your belly. His voice broke the quiet suddenly, cold and clipped, though you could feel the faint tremor beneath it.

“It will be a girl,” he muttered. “And you’ll name her something northern. I can see it already. Gods forbid it be Lyanna.” His jaw tightened. “Every bard in the realm would croon songs, and Robert Baratheon would never shut his drunken mouth.”

You smiled faintly against his chest, offering no reply, only a soft kiss to his skin.

“Alys, then? Too simple. Too common. A daughter of mine is not some hedge knight’s wife.” His tone sharpened as though the name itself had offended him. “Wynafryd? Ridiculous. She would sound like a serving maid before she could walk.”

You stifled a laugh in his chest, kissing him again. He did not falter.

“Barbrey?” He scoffed, the sound harsh. “A bitter woman’s name, fit for a widow clinging to past grudges. No.” His hand pressed firmer to your stomach, as though the child might hear him already. “Not Rowena, not Wylla, not some wildling-sounding nonsense you dig from a snowbank.”

You hummed softly, lips brushing the base of his throat, and he sighed as if your silence only urged him on.

“Lyarra,” he continued, voice dripping disdain. “Another relic buried in Winterfell’s crypts. You would choose it to spite me, I know. Gods, I can hear the whispers now: the lion’s daughter, named for Stark bones.”

You kissed the line of his jaw, and his pale eyes narrowed, though his mouth curved faintly at one corner.

He exhaled sharply. “I will not have it. Not a name that stinks of stone and ice. I will not have my daughter called Marna or Sera or whatever dull scraps the North remembers.”

Your hand smoothed over his chest, but still you gave him no answer.

He shifted, settling you closer against him, though his eyes never left the fire. “Rowena. Old, brittle, all bone and no bite. My daughter will not be some relic, walking history to be pitied. She will have a name that cuts. Cerelle. Lanna. Names with teeth.”

Your lips curved against his chest, though you never spoke, only kissed him gently as he went on.

“Walda,” he muttered suddenly. “Fat, foolish Walda. The North is riddled with them. Would you make me suffer that shame? No. A lioness is lean. Sharp. She bears names that command. Not Walda. Not Goodwife-this or Widow-that.”

“Something simple,” he muttered, half to himself now, his voice like a general reviewing a battle plan. “Strong. Short. A name with bite. Not every half-forgotten lady who ever bred wolves in this cursed land.” His eyes flicked down at last, meeting yours. “And do not think your silence tricks me, wife. I know your game. I will know the name, sooner or later.”

You only smiled, kissed his cheek, and closed your eyes again. His mutterings continued long into the night, names sharp as arrows, dismissed one by one. And you, his wild wolf, listened and kissed him gently, the lion pacing circles even in his own bed.

The fire cracked low, shadows heavy on the walls. You pressed a kiss to his jaw, your voice soft but clear.

“Elira. I like Elira husband.”

Tywin stilled. His hand tightened on your waist, his pale eyes narrowing as though he weighed the sound on his tongue. Slowly, he spoke it back to you.

“Elira.”

Once, clipped. Again, longer, savoring the syllables. “E-li-ra.” He sat straighter against the headboard, his jaw working. “It is Stark enough to please your brother, but lion enough to echo in Rock’s halls. It bends, but it does not break.”

You smiled faintly, lips brushing his throat, but he kept going, as though in council.

“It is not a whimper. Not a relic. Not a milkmaid’s call. Elira… no, that is a name a hall will rise to. A name men will bow before. Not Wynafryd, not Lyanna, not some crypt-ghost. Elira.”

He said it again, firmer, like a general presenting his line. “Lady Elira of Casterly Rock. Our daughter.” His hand drifted down to your stomach, thumb pressing there as though to seal the name into the flesh. “Not theirs. Not Ned’s. Not the North’s. Mine.”

You kissed his temple, murmuring, “Ours, husband.”

His mouth twitched — not a smile, never that, but something softer in the firelight. His voice dropped, quieter, almost reverent. “Elira Lannister. My daughter.”

The laughter doubles and strangles Gwayne accordingly, who is completely and utterly out of his element now. He swallows hard through a tightening throat and draws a slow breath through his nose, trying once again to steady himself — because it was not for himself that he was out here in the first place. It was for Daeron, and for the dozen other boys just like him that Ormund had lined along the front ranks to take the war’s first bite. 

So Gwayne presses on, forcing an evenness into his voice that he doesn’t exactly feel beneath the death glares all around him. “My cousin, Ormund, has taken leave of his senses. As I’m sure you’re aware. He’d rather die than admit defeat—”

“And you?” Daemon lilts lazily, resting his arms along the hilt of his sword.

Gwayne’s eyes cut across the men arrayed before him, still only a fraction of the true Black host. “Well, I’m not blind… I know we will not survive the day if you attack. So… As a token of good faith… I return your Hand.” 

He drops Corlys’s shackles with a heavy clinking sound, but does not take the blade from his side. The silence that follows seems to last for an eternity, until your pretty voice breaks it at last.

“Can he be a Hard with only four fingers?” you joke, tilting your head towards the old lord’s bandaged fist.

The laughter returns again. Gwayne’s icy blue eyes flits once more to you in a quick, assessing pass; he does not mean for his gaze to linger upon you, but he can’t quite manage to look away. Your armor catches in what little light breaks through the clouds overhead, carved with the intricate detailing of your house. And beneath all that heavy steel is your much softer face — beautiful and unbothered by the promise of war simmering in the heavy summer air.

There is something very wrong about you, Gwayne knows; something he can’t quite decide to be afraid of or intrigued by. A bit of both, perhaps.

“I’ve come to sue for peace,” Gwayne announces, louder now, forcing the words out over the laughter. ‘To plead with you at the behest of Daeron Targaryen.”

The amusement in Daemon’s pale eyes flickers at once, a distant warmth running cold as his thin mouth curls into a sharp grin. “The war will end when all the traitors’ heads are mounted on spikes about the King’s Gate,” the older man answers. “And not before.”

“Listen to Daeron’s entreaty,” Gwayne pleads, eyes growing wide behind the silken auburn tendrils swaying over his brows. “Divide the realm. Let the Queen rule over the Crownlands, the North, the Vale, all the lands watered by the Trident… And let Daeron rule from Oldtown—"

“Oh, gods…” Roderick groans in disgust from his left.

“He’s boring me, Daemon,” you tell the silver-haired man standing on foot before you, voice flat with a theatrical ennui that borders on girlish. “Just kill him already.” 

“Do you hear that?” Daemon laughs as he turns back to Gwayne. “You’re boring her… And trust me, Ser, you do not want to see how she gets when she’s bored—”

“You jest?” Gwayne spits as his composure splinters all at once. The words seem to spill from his mouth before he can stop them, as he approaches the older man on instinct alone. “You would rather callously cast aside the lives of thousands—”

He does not get another word out before Daemon’s hand closes suddenly around his throat.  The world tilts sideways as the man drags him downward in his fist. His metal glove digs hard into Gwayne’s milky white neck, cutting off just enough of his air supply to keep him conscious, though Daemon does not so much as blink at the show of strength.

“No one will rule but Rhaenyra,” Daemon tells him in a casual voice, even as Gwayne’s hands scrabble uselessly for purchase at his wrist. “The ordained Queen of the Andals, of the First Men, of beggars and thieves and cowards, like you. A new Valyria will rise from the ashes of her usurper half-brothers. And of the Hightowers of Oldtown.” 

Gwayne can hardly hear him over the thunder of his pulse in his skull as black spots begin to speckle in his vision, like so many drops of ink spreading through water.

“But…” Daemon trails off. His grip on Gwayne’s neck does not loosen, but something in his eyes does. The cold burn of rage melts away into a distant look of calculation. “Since you came under the banner of peace… Perhaps I’ll give you a choice…” 

Daemon turns slowly to you, peering up at you from behind the wisps of white hair blowing across his face. Gwayne’s watery, unfocused eyes follow in turn and find you watching the whole ordeal with your head tilted gently to one side. There is no horror in your face, nor an ounce of pity either. 

“You said you wanted to live in a pretty castle, didn’t you?” Daemon calls to you, with a sort of fondness creeping into his voice while Gwayne turns purple under his fist. “To twirl around in pretty silk dresses, with a pretty silk husband?”

You had said it half in jest a few months past, in a hall far too to the north for anyone to remember its existence, except for when they needed its sword. You were the last living heir to a name older than most in the realm, ruling alone with more soldiers under your command than servants, when Daemon had come with his dragon asking for whatever men you could spare.

You’d given him what he asked, and when he’d wondered in turn what you wanted for it, you answered him evenly. “A castle… And a few dresses… And perhaps a husband to warm my bed— all the pretty, useless shit people like you worry about.”

You hadn’t expected to be repaid so soon, and certainly not on the battlefield on the very eve of war, with a dead man crumpling to his feet before you.

“What of it?” you say with an arched brow.

“Here’s your pretty husband,” Daemon nods his silver head down toward the man gasping in his grip. “Right here… If you want him, of course.”

Gwayne’s bleary eyes flit back to you. Through the black in his vision, he finds you studying the whole of him as if he were livestock to be appraised at market. He comes to the rather humiliating realization that he wants very badly for you to say yes — both with a primal despair of wanting to live and with the distant desperation of wanting your approval.

You scrunch the bridge of his nose. “He’s a bit puny, isn’t he?”

“A bit?” Ser Rodrick scoffs.

“Well, what he lacks in height and muscle, he makes up for twice over in wealth,” Daemon tells you. “Far wealthier than you’re like to find anywhere else, to be sure… What do you say?”

You consider for a long moment, then, despite watching Gwayne slowly slip from consciousness. He can no longer tell if it takes you one minute or one hour to decide, which you finally do with one lazy bounce of your shoulder. 

“Alright.” 

Daemon’s fingers loosen at once. Warm, summer air rushes back into Gwayne’s body as he crumples to his knees onto the dried grass below. The oxygen burns in his throat, his shoulders heaving as he retches. It takes a long moment for the world to come back into focus. And when it finally does, Daemon’s voice finds him again as he looms a long shadow over the kneeling man.

“Do you hear that? I will spare your life — and that of your precious nephew’s, should he bend the knee to the rightful Queen — and you will live out the rest of your days as lord husband to the new Lady of Oldtown… How does that sound?”

It sounds nothing like what Gwyane had walked out here to discuss, to be sure. He’d only meant to save Daeron’s life, and somehow bartered his own for a marriage to a woman he had known for the length of one terribly humiliating conversation. But he is still breathing, at least, and his nephew is too. And for now, that’s enough.

He nods wordlessly in response, and feels an aching in his throat when he does so.

“Thank her,” Daemon scolds like a parent would their child. When Gwayne’s bowed hands snap in his direction to make sure he’d heard him right, he feels the man take a sudden fistful of his auburn hair, wrenching him towards you again. “That was not rhetorical, Ser Gwayne— Thank your new lady wife for saving you. It’s only fair.”

Gwayne swallows hard through a raw throat and peers up at you with bleary eyes from where he kneels on the ground before you. “Thank...” he attempts to speak, but the word comes out strangled. “Thank you...”

“My lady,” Daemon reminds him.

Gwayne coughs. “M-My lady…”

You look down at him from where you idle on horseback. A small smile hints at the corner of your mouth as you hum in satisfaction. “Mm… You’re welcome, lord husband.”

You turn on your horse without so much as a backward glance, gathering the reins in your fist and looking instead toward the gates of Tumbleton — where Ormund’s men prepare their archers for the first wave of battle. “Now…” you say, grinning over your shoulder at your house’s men gathered just behind you. Your voice carries across the length of the plain. “Let’s go win this fucking war!”

The ranks roar a wordless answer in response — a ragged, joyous, bloodthirsty sound as swords beat against their shields. Gwayne hears the battlecry swell all around him, and wonders if his death would’ve been a kinder fate than what is sure to await him when the fight is done.

The wedding was done by evenfall, while smoke rose from the ashes of Tumbleton; the air still thick with the scent of blood and rot. 

You exchanged vows while your armor was still splattered with the blood of the Green Army and your hair was still matted with sweat. There had been no sept, no godswood, no seven blessings, no ribbon tied around clasped hands. There was only a shaded tent, a Tumbleton septon kept alive for the very purpose of ceremony, and a scrap of parchment to sign your names — though Gwayne’s hand was still a little sore from the heavy chains wrapped around them.

No feast follows. No song, no celebration, no bedding. Because too many people had died on both sides — Ormund among them, burnt and buried in ash. And though Daeron breathes still, safe and unbloodied by sword, Gwayne wears the cost of that safety in the shackles around his wrist and waist. He was lord now, and a husband, and he did not ask to be. 

He only wanted his nephew to live to see sixteen.

“So… That’s it then,” Gwayne said on an exhaled breath while a worse-for-wear Daemon shoved the old septon out by his neck. His pretty face was softened by the candlelight of the war tent, even despite the soot streaked across his face and the flaming tendrils clinging to his forehead with sweat. “Husband and wife, are we?”

“Seems that way,” you said beneath the quiet glugging of the ale you poured. The watered wine spilled slightly over the maps scattered there when you turned briefly to flash him a smile over your shoulder. “Congratulations, my lord.” 

Gwayne felt a tired smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, right before a sharp breath escaped him in a sad sort of laugh. “Aren’t you concerned?” he said, pale eyes fixed on your armored form. “I’m not sure how a marriage such as this can be held up by law…” 

“Oh, I’m not worried,” you assured him with a shake of your head.

“No?” 

“No…” you insisted and turned back around to face him, sporting an old goblet in your bloodied fist. “Because I know you have no interest in being killed— or your nephew, besides… It’s righteous of you, really, so… You’re not going anywhere, Ser Gwayne.”

Your lips curled into a slow, sharp grin as you brought the cup to your mouth, chugging the whole of it until the soft purple wine started to drip down to your chin.

Gwayne still could not yet decide what you had planned for him — if you meant to love him truly or kill him the second you arrived at Oldtown. And a distant, disgusting part of him could not wait to find out.

Oldtown, as you’ve come to find it, smells nothing like the wet cobbles, and horse dung, and rotted wood of the half-forgotten manse you grew up in. Here, everything smells of salt and lemon trees and sun-warmed stone. It is everything you’d asked Daemon for — a large castle, enough silk to drown in, hands that tended to your every want, and a husband to warm your bed. Though you still spend most of your days in the fighting yard, tearing and sweating through whatever fine silk you’d dressed in that day.

Gwayne is still getting used to the presence of you and your men in his ancestral home, and his newfound position within it. Daeron, too, spends many weeks wary of the very sight of you — the reason for the death of his uncle, and simultaneously, the reason for his freedom. You do not ask for his forgiveness; you just put a sparring sword in his hand and ask him to give you all the brunt of the anger you know he keeps hidden. 

You and your men put the sweet boy on his back more often than not, but he keeps coming back for more anyway.  And somewhere in that routine, gratitude creeps in where the resentment used to live, and Daeron comes slowly around.

“Well… You’ve made a fine swordsman out of him,” Gwayne sighs without turning from the window overlooking the courtyard, where his nephew continues to spar with the northern knights. He hears you waltz by somewhere behind him, your pretty silk gown rustling at your ankles and clinging at the sweaty small of your back. “Ormund would never let the boy train this hard…” 

“Daeron has good enough instincts, it seems,” you answer, tugging lazily at the lace in your bodice. “Which I find rather surprising, considering the company he grew up with…” 

Gwayne finds himself smiling at the jab, far wider than he realizes. You’ve never run short of witty, merciless quips, he’s found throughout his time with you; and he finds himself taking a strange liking to the way you so effortlessly cut him down. 

“And what is that supposed to mean exactly?” he says as he turns away from the window. 

Whatever quip had been sitting on his tongue then, turns to ash in his throat at the sight of you — with your gown abandoned in a pile on the cobbles, and you slouched at your vanity stool in nothing but the thin slip beneath it. The fabric rises from your knee, revealing the soft canvas of your thighs. You’ve slid one arm free from the thin sleeves to bare a shoulder painted a darker shade from the fresh bruises blooming there.

Your skin is littered with scars from battles past, and he struggles to look away from any of it. His chest stings with the thought of you ever being hurt, then warms twice over at the sight of your breast threatening to spill over from where the slip had gone askew.

“You needn’t look so scandalized, husband,” you laugh as you reach for the clay pot of healing ointment, which never strays too far from your side. “Surely, you’ve seen worse than a woman’s shift… Handsome as you are.”

Gwayne’s face flushes at the compliment, and he hates how boyish he feels.

He clears his throat and averts his gaze, folding his clammy palms behind his back. “I only find myself surprised, I guess, at how… little you seem to mind it, is all.”

“Mind what? The bruises?” you scoff, dabbing the ointment along your shoulder and hissing at how tender the skin has gone. “I’ve had far worse from far better fights, I assure you. Maybe one day I’ll show you the scar on my—”

“Modesty,” Gwayne blurts before you can finish. “I meant modesty…” 

“Oh…” you hum, face screwing faintly as you work the earthy salve in slow circles. “I never had much use for modesty, I suppose… A keep with more soldiers than servants doesn’t have much of it, in truth…”

You reach back then, trying hopelessly to work the balm into the worst of the bruise along your shoulder blade, but the angle is not so forgiving. You huff and twist and achieve nothing but a fresher ache for the trouble. 

Gwayne exhales a sympathetic sigh from across the room. “Here…” he huffs as he crosses the distance between you, reaching out an expectant hand when he looms just behind your chair.

You consider arguing for a moment, if only out of habit, but place the clay pot into his pale palm regardless. “Try not to enjoy it too much,” you joke with a small grin tugging at your mouth.

“I make no promises, my lady,” he quips in a low deadpan. 

But even his sarcasm cannot mask the tenderness he holds in his hands when they find your shoulder, working the ointment in with a care you didn’t know he was capable of — a care you didn’t know you were deserving of. The pad of his thumb smooths slowly over the worst of the bruise, and you feel something soften in your chest.

“You’re better at this than I would’ve guessed,” you tell him, if only to fill the suffocating silence pressing hard on either side of you.

“I’ve had ample practice with bruises of my own,” Gwayne confesses, lifting his eyes to peer at you through the smudged looking glass. “I didn’t come into this marriage entirely unmarked, if you recall…”

“Mm… I do recall,” you croon lowly, as though amused by the memory. Your head tips back to grin up at him with a fond reminiscence. “You were very purple. And very sore… For weeks… It was delicious…” 

Gwayne shakes his head. “Well, you’ll forgive me if I don’t find the memory as amusing as you do…” 

“I find everything amusing,” you scoff.

“I know you do,” he huffs a not-quite laugh. “Honestly, it’s among the things I’ve come to… appreciate about you, I suppose.” 

Your eyes narrow in suspicion of his compliment. “Careful, Ser Gwayne… A lady could get ideas, hearing you talk like that…”

“Really?” the man hums, still working gently at your bruised skin. “And what ideas are those, I wonder?”

You do not answer him with words. Instead, you rise slowly from the creaking vanity stool until you’re stood just before him. Then you reach for the remaining sleeve of your slip and trail it down your arm until you’re free of it; until the thin fabric falls to your feet in a forgotten piece of cotton; until you’re stood utterly bare before him — made of warm skin, soft curves, and faded scars. There’s one at your sternum, a longer one at your hip, and a darker one along your ribcage.

Gwayne’s breath catches audibly in his throat. The composure he’s spent weeks holding onto — full of dry wit and careful distance and a week’s worth of telling himself this was a political arrangement and nothing more — seems to abandon him all at once. His glassy eyes drift over your naked form, and he feels some warm, boyish feelings sparkling somewhere deep in his chest. 

It takes everything in you not to cower — not because you are ashamed at his staring, you’ve never been ashamed of anything, but because you have never once been looked at with so much reverence.

“Do you get the hint now, Ser Gwayne?” you quip drily as you close the scant distance between you. Your palms splay over the chest of his emerald coat and drift slowly upward until they settle cold along his warm neck, dragging him down with a little more force than necessary. 

You kiss him then like you’ve kissed him a thousand times over, like you’ve kissed a thousand men a thousand times over. There is little reservation in the way you slot your lips against his, or in the way you lick into his mouth and sigh hard through your nose at the taste of him — like mint and wine and whatever fruit he’d been snaking on before you found him here. 

His mouth is far softer than your own, you realize, a far gentler touch than you think you’ve ever felt before. He spreads one wide hand along your back, pressing your bare chest flush against his clothed one, while his other trails down down down the ladder of your spine. 

Your breath nearly catches when his calloused palm settles warm along the plush of your ass; you lose it completely when he grabs a fistful of the skin to pull you closer. 

You rise onto the tip of your toes, curling your arms around his neck while your noses knock under the weight of your searing kiss — which breaks only when Gwayne’s knee slots between your thighs, and when the rough fabric of his trousers brushes the most sensitive part of you.

His rosy mouth curls into a slow grin at the pretty sound you make for him then.

“Yes. To answer your question…” the man quips through panted breaths, with the tip of his nose brushing the bridge of yours. “I believe I am starting to get the hint, my lady.”

He’d noticed it gradually.

Morning erections disappearing first, though he couldn’t have said precisely when- not when his mornings were spent around other people and never actually got the time to wank one out before morning drills or in between dodging gunfire.

Then on the rare occasion he did actually feel enough inclination to do something about himself, it became an exercise in diminishing returns: attraction still existed somewhere in his head, sensation technically existed below the waist, but whatever bridge had once connected the two appeared to have been bombed out.

Simon discovered it through the deeply scientific process of occasionally attempting to masturbate and getting absolutely fuck all for his trouble

He could touch himself and get nowhere. Could want, abstractly, and have his body answer with complete indifference. The first few times Simon tested it, he approached the problem the way he approached most of his failures: with detached irritation, as though persistence alone might force the damaged thing back into service.

Eventually he’d stared down at himself, accepted that nothing was happening, pulled his trousers back up and thought, Right. That’s that, then.

He never mentioned it to anyone, not to a doctor and certainly not to Price, because- contrary to popular belief- there were limits to what Simon Riley was willing to survive and the idea of being waterboarded ranked higher on the list of things he’d want to go through again before having John Price know whether his lieutenant’s cock remained operational or not.

He didn’t make an appointment specifically for it either. Doctors had poked, prodded, scanned, stitched and reconstructed enough of him already, and there was something uniquely intolerable about volunteering this particular failure for examination when he had no real intention of actually doing anything with the equipment even if they did manage to fix it.

Casual sex had never really held enough appeal to justify navigating the humiliation of his body refusing to cooperate halfway through. A relationship sounded worse. Relationships required trust, trust required vulnerability, and Simon had never understood the fascination people had with handing another human being that kind of weakness so openly.

So celibacy became another practical adjustment. Fine. Good, even. One less thing to worry about, one less chemical urge trying to convince him another person was necessary.

Simon’s body already demanded sleep, food, medication, physical therapy and the occasional begrudging acknowledgment that he was not, despite considerable evidence to the contrary, composed entirely of out of spite.

He didn’t particularly mind losing one more demand and eventually he stopped checking whether anything had changed. He stopped noticing attractive strangers beyond the detached recognition that, yes, objectively, they were attractive. He stopped wondering whether there might be some circumstance under which his body would respond differently.

It had been years and whatever part of him had once wanted sex had either been damaged beyond use or buried beneath too much other shit to reach daylight, and Simon had made his peace with that.

Then you arrived and immediately became the most irritating person he had met in recent memory.

Not because you were cruel. Simon could deal with cruel; cruelty was straightforward. You simply possessed a spectacular disregard for the strange force field that usually formed around Ghost.

New recruits tended to give him space. Experienced operators might not fear him, but they understood him well enough not to poke unnecessarily at whatever lived behind the skull mask.

Even Soap, who had elevated testing Simon’s patience into a recreational activity, possessed enough survival instinct to recognize certain lines.

You, however, seemed unaware there were lines at all.

The first time Simon deliberately crowded your space during a disagreement, expecting the usual subtle retreat people made when six-foot-something of masked lieutenant invaded their breathing room, you merely tipped your head back farther and continued arguing. When he leaned down, you leaned forward. When he blocked the doorway afterward because you’d been getting on his nerves for the better part of twenty minutes, you stared at him and asked, “Are you finished?”

“Finished what?” he’d replied, because sometimes Simon could be every bit as juvenile as Soap accused him of being, even if he’s deny it until the day he died.

“This.” You waved vaguely at all of him. “Whatever weird intimidation ritual you’ve got going on. Move.”

He hadn’t and you responded with putting both hands against the center of his chest and shoving him instead. He barely shifted if course, which only seemed to annoy you further.

Your mouth tightened, your boots planted and you shoved again with genuine intent this time while Simon stared down at you in profound disbelief.

Somewhere behind him Soap made the distinctive strangled sound of a man swallowing laughter, and when Simon turned his head just enough all he saw was the sergeant suddenly studying a patch of wall with extraordinary concentration because he valued his continued existence.

By the time Simon looked back, you were already shouldering past the narrow gap you’d created, muttering something about oversized fucking roadblocks.

Deeply irritating. That was Simon’s assessment, and it remained his assessment over the following weeks while you developed an increasingly casual habit of putting your hands on him whenever he was being difficult.

Not affectionately. Never anything he could easily categorize as flirtation.

Rather, you slapped his hand away when he reached for things you were using, nudged his boots aside when he stretched his legs into your path, drove your shoulder into his arm rather than walk around him when he occupied too much corridor.

One afternoon he reached over your head for the exact mug you’d been reaching toward despite three identical ones sitting beside it, and you promptly elbowed him in the ribs.

“Use another one.”

“Wanted this one.”

“You’re a prick.”

“Been told.”

You turned with your mug held against your chest and gave him a look of profound disgust. “Do you wake up every morning and consciously decide to be unbearable, or does it come naturally?”

“Natural talent.”

Something low in his stomach tightened when your eyes narrowed. Simon noticed it only enough to dismiss it. His body produced strange aches, sparks and misfires constantly; one more meant nothing.

The real problem emerged three weeks later over a mission report, largely because Simon had made the decision to edit your wording after you’d already submitted it.

You found him sitting at his desk with the amended copy beside him and launched immediately into an accusation of bureaucratic sabotage.

Simon informed you that he’d corrected inaccuracies. You informed him there had been no inaccuracies. He reminded you that on line of your official report had read, Lieutenant Riley ignored the proposed entry point because apparently God himself whispered a better idea directly into his ear.

“That is an accurate account of events,” you argued.

“Not putting that in an official report.”

“You’re only mad because it makes you sound like an asshole.”

“I am an asshole.”

“Then why are we editing for accuracy?”

You were already moving around the desk while you said it, coming toward him with the particular determined stride Simon had learned meant you were about to invade his personal space as punishment for some perceived crime.

He remained seated though, mostly because standing would have made the whole thing absurd; he was already large enough without looming over you while you complained about paperwork.

You stopped directly between his knees instead, close enough that the fabric over one of your thighs brushed the outside of his. Simon registered it without meaning to and dismissed it.

Then your finger came up and pressed hard into the center of his chest.

“You listen to me, Riley. If you touch my report again without asking, you can take that red pen and shove it so far up your- “

Simon stopped listening.

His body had gone abruptly, impossibly still around one singular point of awareness. There was pressure beneath his pants. Heat. A heavy rush of blood into an organ Simon had, for all practical purposes, considered medically retired.

For several bewildered seconds his brain refused to identify the sensation because it had been absent too long to belong naturally among the catalog of things Simon expected his body to do.

Then his cock gave a distinct pulse against the front of his trousers and every word leaving your mouth vanished beneath one stunned thought.

He was hard.

Not sort of hard, not an ambiguous twitch he could blame on sitting wrong or fabric pressure or some random neurological event.

Simon Riley, who had gone years without getting an erection under considerably more deliberate circumstances, was sitting in his office with a fully functioning cock because you were jabbing him in the chest and telling him to go fuck himself.

You were still speaking, though Simon had no idea what you were saying anymore- although judging by your expression it remained insulting.

He stared at you with such unusual stillness that eventually you stopped on your own, finger still planted against his sternum. “What?”

Simon said nothing.

“What?” you repeated. “Have you gone deaf?”

His gaze dropped to your hand as though it might explain what had just happened. You mistook the look for irritation and removed your finger and Simon waited for the erection to disappear with it. It didn’t.

If anything, the lingering anger in your expression produced another deeply inconvenient pulse.

“No,” he finally said.

“Then say something.”

There were probably several sensible options but Simon chose, “Finished?”

Your whole expression sharpened. “Oh, fuck you.”

You snatched the report from beside him and stormed away, leaving Simon alone in his office with the door swinging behind you and his body apparently celebrating a resurrection.

He sat there for another several seconds before slowly looking down at himself.

The erection remained as undeniable as it was inexplicable. After years of absolutely nothing, his nervous system had apparently located a bypass around the damage because you had yelled at him over paperwork.

Simon stared until disbelief curdled into suspicion, then muttered, “Tha’s fucki’ inconvenient.”

By the following morning, he had explained it away. Bodies were strange. Blood pressure changed. Anger raised adrenaline. Perhaps poking his chest had compressed something in precisely the right way. Perhaps a damaged nerve had fired randomly for the first time in years.

After much deliberation, Simon decided one isolated event proved nothing, and there was absolutely no reason to investigate further.

So it was a completely coincidence, of course, that Simon happened to be standing directly in front of the cutlery drawer the next day, when you needed it.

You’d made tea, reached for the drawer and found approximately two hundred and forty pounds of lieutenant in the way. “Move.”

“Comfy.”

Your hand paused on the mug. “You’re blocking the spoons.”

“Plenty elsewhere.”

“No, there aren’t. They’re in the drawer behind your ass.”

“Sounds inconvenient.”

You stared at him. Simon leaned against the counter with studied indifference, though somewhere beneath that indifference his attention had become embarrassingly focused.

Nothing happened. No stirring. No heat. Simon experienced an emotion dangerously close to disappointment and immediately resented himself for it.

Then you stepped forward, caught a fistful of his shirt at the chest and yanked. “For fuck’s sake, Riley, move.”

His cock went hard so quickly Simon nearly inhaled his own tongue.

There was no ambiguity this time. Your knuckles dragged against his sternum through the fabric, your body crowded directly into his as you tried to haul a man significantly larger than yourself out of the way, and apparently this combination constituted the precise password required to unlock Simon Riley’s long dormant reproductive system.

You succeeded in shifting him half a step, reached around him for the drawer and retrieved your spoon without noticing that Simon had gone rigid for an entirely different reason.

“What’s wrong with you?” you asked when you turned back.

“Nothin’.”

“You look weird.”

“Always look like this.”

“No, you’re acting weird.”

Simon left without making the tea he’d ostensibly entered the kitchen to prepare.

Still, twice could still be coincidence. Simon clung to that argument for roughly forty eight hours before curiosity overwhelmed dignity and the entire situation deteriorated into an experiment he refused to acknowledge he was conducting.

He began noticing variables with the clinical attention he would normally reserve for surveillance. Ordinary proximity produced nothing reliable. Sitting beside you during briefings didn’t do it. Your shoulder bumping his in a crowded transport didn’t do it. You once passed him a weapon and your fingers brushed his glove, and his nervous system remained entirely uninterested.

There was something reassuring about that at first. Perhaps the episodes really were random.

Then he ignored you while you were trying to ask him a question.

“Riley.”

Simon continued inspecting the rifle in his hands.

“Riley.”

Nothing.

“Simon.”

There it was: that warning woven through his name, irritation sharpening the edges. Simon looked up and caught the full force of your glare just as warmth tightened low behind his belt.

“Wot?” he asked.

“I’ve been talking to you.”

“Have you?”

Your eyes narrowed further. His cock stirred harder.

Simon turned back toward the weapons bench before you could notice the slight adjustment in his stance.

Three times constituted a pattern.

After that, his behavior became indefensible.

He discovered that if he deliberately moved one of your things, you would hunt him down to complain. If he blocked your route, you would put your hands on him rather than politely ask twice. If he took the pen nearest your fingers instead of any of the other four available, you would slap the back of his hand. If he walked away while you were talking, you would occasionally grab the back of his vest and yank him to a halt, which produced such an immediate response the first time that Simon had needed to invent an urgent reason to leave the room before you noticed.

He tested other possibilities privately because, despite what his increasingly deranged behavior suggested, Simon was still attempting to establish whether you were actually the variable.

A woman flirted openly with him during leave; nothing. He watched pornography one evening and experienced such profound indifference that halfway through he became distracted wondering whether he’d cleaned the knife he’d used on a security guard earlier. He tried touching himself without any outside stimulus and got little more than the same sluggish response he’d become accustomed to years before.

The following afternoon you stormed into the common room because he’d eaten something with your name written very clearly across the container and jabbed him in the chest, snarling. “I swear to God, Riley, I’m going to kill you.”

His body responded like somebody had thrown a switch, cock harder than diamonds.

Simon stared at you as heat settled heavily between his legs. You stared back, waiting for remorse that was not forthcoming.

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah.”

“And?”

A profoundly defective impulse surfaced. Simon leaned slightly closer. “Gonna have to try harder than that.”

Your mouth fell open before outrage filled the space. “You absolute fucking bastard.”

You attempted to leap at him, spitting profanities and attempting- Simon assumed- to claw his eyes out but Gaz intercepted and kept you off of him. Still, you managed to shove his shoulder and his cock throbbed in response.

Simon stepped back immediately, which only made you look suspicious. “Stay away from my food,” you snapped, throwing Gaz’s hands off of you, before walking out.

Gaz lowered his hands and looked toward Simon.

Simon turned his head very slowly.

Gaz’s eyebrows rose.

“Wot?”

“Didn’t say anything.”

“Your face did.”

Gaz gave him a deeply searching look- perceptive bastard- before finally settling on. “Not a conversation I’m looking to have, mate.”

Simon went upstairs, shut his bedroom door and sat on the edge of his mattress with both hands dragged over his mask.

It should have been good news. That was the part he could not reconcile. For years he’d assumed the damage was permanent, another small theft committed by men and circumstances that had already taken enough from him.

He had accepted it because Simon understood loss better than he understood recovery; there was peace in declaring something gone and never hoping for it again after all.

Now, against every expectation, his body was proving that some pathway still existed. Something beneath the scar tissue and damaged nerves still knew what to do. Under any reasonable circumstance, that should have felt like getting a piece of himself back.

Instead, Simon was being forced to confront the humiliating possibility that his cock was not broken so much as catastrophically selective.

Apparently lingerie did nothing for it. Flirting did nothing. Attractive strangers did nothing. Pornography had nearly put him to sleep.

But you glaring at him like you were three seconds away from committing an indictable offense? Excellent. You hauling him around by his clothes? Evidently irresistible. You shoving him because he was deliberately standing somewhere inconvenient? His nervous system seemed to consider it practically erotic.

It got worse because Simon genuinely enjoyed irritating you even without the increasingly inconvenient physical reward attached to it. There was something satisfying about the immediacy of your reactions.

Most people behaved differently around Ghost. They measured their words. Watched his hands. Gave the mask more space than it physically occupied. Even people who knew him eventually retained some instinctive awareness that he could become frightening very quickly if circumstances demanded it.

But you treated him like an enormous nuisance.

Simon could stand silently behind hardened soldiers and watch their shoulders stiffen; but all you would do is look over, discover him hovering there, and tell him his breathing was annoying you. People feared monsters but you only responded with irritation at the one who stole your mug.

Simon did not examine why that distinction mattered to him. Instead, he moved your mug again.

The situation finally collapsed when he blocked you in a corridor for no reason beyond the fact that he knew exactly what would happen.

You stopped in front of him with immediate suspicion. “Move.”

Simon remained where he was, arms folded.

“Riley.”

“Hm?”

“You’re doing it again.”

“Doing what?”

“This.” You gestured at the width of him occupying nearly the entire passage. “Standing exactly where I need to go.”

“Small corridor.”

“Exactly and you’re somehow taking up all of it.”

“Skill.”

You stepped left. Simon stepped left. You stopped and stared at him. He could see realization beginning, he dawning certainty that his obstruction was deliberate. You moved right. Simon mirrored you again.

“Are you twelve?”

“Could ask you the same.”

“Oh, my God.” You tried left one more time. He blocked you, and now your patience broke visibly. Your shoulders squared, your jaw tightened and when you spoke again your voice dropped into that particular warning register his body had inexplicably decided it adored. “Move, Riley.”

Heat tightened beneath his belt.

Jesus fucking Christ.

He should have stepped aside then. He had his answer. He had, in fact, accumulated an absurd quantity of answers over the previous week and required absolutely no further data.

Instead, despite being a grown ass adult, Simon leaned one shoulder against the wall and heard himself say, “Make me.”

You went very still.

There was a small part of Simon’s brain, the portion apparently not currently occupied by destroying his own dignity, that recognized he had pushed this into ridiculous territory.

Then you planted both hands against his chest and shoved hard enough to drive his shoulder into the wall.

The response was immediate and vicious. His cock surged against the front of his pants, balls tightening instinctively, breath catching just enough that you noticed. Your hands remained spread over his chest while your expression changed from irritation to confusion.

Simon looked down at them.

You followed his gaze, but this time your attention continued lower.

Silence settled between you.

Simon felt the exact moment you understood.

Your eyes lifted slowly back to his.

“No.”

He said nothing.

Your mouth began to twitch. “No fucking way. Is that why you’ve been fucking with me?”

“No.”

The denial came far too quickly.

Your expression transformed. “Oh my God.”

Simon pushed away from the wall. “Don’t.”

“You have been deliberately pissing me off.”

“Have not.”

“You moved my boots yesterday.”

“Safety hazard.”

“They were under my bed.”

“Could’ve tripped.”

“In my sleep?”

“Dangerous business.”

You stared at him for a long second before laughter broke through. Not polite laughter either. You actually bent slightly with it, one hand still braced against his vest while Simon considered every decision he had made since entering military service and wondered which one had placed him on the path toward this precise humiliation and whether he could go find his enemies and beg for the west release of death.

“You ate my food,” you accused between breaths.

“Was hungry.”

“You stole my pen out of my hand when there were three sitting next to it.”

“Liked yours.”

“You stood in front of the spoon drawer for five fucking minutes.”

Simon’s silence convicted him more effectively than anything he might have said.

“You’ve been fucking with me because it gets you off.”

“Wouldn’t call it that.”

“What would you call it?”

He had nothing.

Your laughter returned, softer now but infinitely more dangerous because amusement was giving way to curiosity. Simon recognized the shift immediately. You looked down again, not long enough to be crude, merely long enough to confirm the evidence remained present, then back up at him. Something in your expression sharpened with wicked understanding.

“You’re a fucking freak, Riley.”

“Watch your mouth.”

“That do it too?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

Simon caught your wrists when you pressed both hands to his chest again, intending only to remove them. The movement changed your expression instantly. Amusement flashed into irritation at being restrained, your weight shifting toward him instead of away.

“Let go.”

His erection throbbed so hard Simon nearly swore.

Your eyes narrowed.

Simon shut his own for half a second because apparently there were indignities even he required time to process. When he opened them, you were staring at him with a new kind of fascination.

“Oh,” you said quietly.

Simon released your wrists.

You didn’t move back.

Neither did he.

The corridor had somehow become smaller around you both, the joking edge thinning into awareness. You watched him for a second, then reached forward with deliberate slowness and hooked one finger beneath the edge of his pants. Simon knew exactly what you were doing now. More importantly, so did you.

“Don’t,” he warned.

“Don’t what?”

“You know what.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“Bullshit.”

You tugged him half an inch closer.

His jaw tightened as his cock reacted instantly.

That awful, delighted grin spread across your face before cupping your palm around the hard, obvious shape of his cock through the fabric and closing your fingers.

Simon’s entire body betrayed him at once.

His head tipped back against the wall with a dull, undignified thunk. His eyes rolled upward so hard he briefly saw the inside of his own skull. A sound escaped him that could generously be described as a groan and less generously as a whine.

He stayed like that for a second- head thrown back, eyes somewhere in the rafters, cock throbbing shamelessly in the warm curve of your hand- while his brain attempted to process the sheer fucking audacity of the situation.

You gave a small, experimental squeeze.

Simon’s hips jerked forward of their own accord- traitors- and he locked every muscle he still had control over, forcing himself still, which only made the next pulse against your palm more obvious.

“Christ,” he muttered at the ceiling, voice strangled.

You didn’t let go. If anything, you adjusted your grip with the calm curiosity of someone who had just discovered a particularly interesting malfunction and intended to poke it until it made more interesting noises. Your thumb stroked once along the ridge of him, and Simon’s breath left him in a short, punched out sound that was deeply unhelpful to whatever remaining dignity he was trying to cling to.

You tilted your head, still cupping him, and watched the way his throat worked under the mask.

“So,” you said, far too conversationally for someone currently holding a lieutenant’s previously non-functional cock in her hand, “this is the bit where you explain yourself, or…?”

Simon dragged his eyes back down to you with visible effort. The mask hid most of his expression, but the set of his shoulders suggested a man who had just realised he had spent the better part of two weeks engineering his own public humiliation and was now living with the consequences.

“Not explainin’ a fuckin’ thing,” he managed, voice rough. “While you’re still holdin’ my cock in your hand. You’re becoming a problem.”

“I’m becoming a problem? You’ve spent the last week acting like a primary school boy pulling someone’s hair because apparently your dick needs interpersonal conflict to function.”

“Tha’s not what’s happening.”

“You got hard because I shoved you into a wall.”

“Coincidence.”

“I can test that.”

“You fuckin’ will not.”

Your grin widened and your palm pressed down and Ghost nearly saw God long enough to ask why after nearly thirty years of suffering, this was apparently the punchline.

Before he could ask, God apparently decided to throw the poor suffering bastard a bone because Soap’s voice sounded from around the corner. “Ghost, ye seen- “

Simon stepped away from you with enough speed that you nearly stumbled forward.

Soap rounded the corner, stopped and took in the scene. You were suspiciously amused. Simon was standing at an equally suspicious angle with his hands planted on his hips and approximately three feet more distance between you than two people naturally needed. Johnny’s gaze moved from you to Ghost, back to you and then very deliberately refused to travel any lower.

“Aye,” Soap said slowly.

Nobody answered.

He nodded to himself. “Actually, never mind.”

Soap turned around.

“MacTavish.”

His pace increased.

“Johnny.”

“Didnae see anything, LT.”

“You didn’t.”

“Exactly.”

He disappeared around the corner before Simon could decide whether murder was worth the paperwork.

You made it perhaps two seconds before laughter burst out of you again, and Simon dragged one hand down the front of his mask while your amusement echoed through the corridor.

This, apparently, was his life now. He had survived torture, burial, gunfire, explosions and enough bodily damage to permanently alter the way his nervous system functioned, only to discover that whatever remained of his sexual response had crawled out of its grave specifically for the most confrontational person he knew.

The pattern had become painfully specific: you close enough to crowd him, your voice edged with irritation, your hands on his chest because Simon had deliberately made himself impossible to tolerate.

His body had surveyed years of opportunity with complete indifference, ignored every conventional invitation offered to it, then watched you square up against a man nearly twice your mass and apparently made an executive decision.

That one. You need to fuck that one.

The thought arrived so clearly Simon actually glanced upward again as though God might be willizng to throw him another bone.

Apparently he’d used up all this good will because the Almighty wasn’t.

There was only you, still laughing as you pushed past him and deliberately knocked your shoulder into his chest on the way.

“Move, Riley.”

His cock twitched again.

Simon closed his eyes and stood perfectly still in the corridor while the universe continued to punish him for crimes he could not presently recall committing and groaned out. “Fuck’s sake.”

Bare concrete walls, chains hanging from hooks, one exposed bulb casting ominous shadows. There is even what appears to be a table containing several neatly arranged implements of torture, although Price suspects at least two of them are novelty kitchen utensils.

Simon sits in the middle of it all wearing his skull mask, trousers, and an expression that cannot be seen but can nevertheless be felt radiating through the photograph.

Price studies the ropes binding his lieutenant’s wrists.

He blinks.

He studies them again.

The rope is looped around Simon’s arms perhaps twice, secured with what looks suspiciously like a shoelace knot, and hanging loose enough that a moderately determined toddler could escape it.

“Are we certain this is current?” Price asks.

The intelligence officer standing opposite his desk shifts his weight. “Timestamp puts it at fourteen hundred yesterday, sir.”

“And we’re certain it’s Riley?”

“Yes, sir.”

Price looks back at the photograph.

Simon’s boots are planted comfortably apart. His shoulders are relaxed. There are no visible injuries. Someone has placed a folded blanket beneath him so the metal chair won’t be uncomfortable.

There is also, Price notices with mounting despair, a bottle of water positioned beside his right foot with the water level already half gone.

“Right,” Price says.

The investigation continues and it should be difficult to determine how one of the world’s most highly trained special operations soldiers was abducted from his own home. Simon Riley is six foot something of professionally cultivated paranoia. He checks exits without thinking, sleeps lightly, and once identified a surveillance team because the same pigeon appeared outside three different cafes.

You, by comparison, possess all the operational subtlety of a marching band falling down a staircase.

Price discovers you have been following Simon for six weeks.

Not discreetly, no. You’ve followed him to the store, the gym, the shooting range, and several coffee shops. You’ve taken photographs from behind newspapers held upside down, worn a black trench coat during a heatwave, an once crouched behind a decorative hedge that did not make you as invisible as you probably led yourself to believe you were.

Security footage shows Simon looking directly into the camera on several occasions while you scurry behind him between hiding places.

Price sees all of this and lowers his face into his hands.

The next report arrives shortly before lunch.

“A syringe was recovered from Lieutenant Riley’s residence,” an officer tells him.

Price straightens slightly. Finally. Something resembling an actual crime.

“Forensics?”

“Lorazepam, sir.”

“What dosage?”

The officer consults the report. “Zero point five milligrams.”

Price stares at him.

The officer clears his throat. “Ativan.”

“I know what lorazepam is.”

“Yes, sir.”

Price looks at the report again, perhaps hoping an additional zero will materialize through force of will.

It doesn’t.

“Zero point five.”

“Yes, sir.”

“That dose wouldn’t knock out a pensioner after Sunday lunch.”

“No, sir.”

“Riley weighs nearly two forty.”

“Yes, sir.”

They stand in silence and Price’s eye begins to twitch.

The final piece of evidence is recovered from a traffic camera positioned across from Simon’s flat where Pricd can see you dragging Simon beneath the arms towards the back door.

Dragging is perhaps generous. You are straining, red faced and panting, moving him approximately three inches at a time while Simon allows his boots to scrape uselessly across the floor. His head lolls against his shoulder with theatrical unconsciousness.

In the process, his boot catches the base of a standing lamp, which begins to fall.

Simon, still allegedly unconscious, reaches out one hand, catches it, carefully rights it, and places it back beside the doorway.

“Unbelievable,” Price mutters.

You turn around at the sound and he drops his arm and resumes being unconscious before you see him.

You stare suspiciously and Simon remains perfectly still.

After several seconds, you shrug and return to your kidnapping.

Price pauses the footage, sits back, and runs both hands slowly down his face, dragging his palms over his beard until he resembles a man trying to physically remove himself from existence.

Behind him, one of the task force operators shifts impatiently. “Captain?”

Price says nothing.

“Do you want us to assemble a team?”

“No.”

There is a pause.

“No, sir?”

“No.”

“But Lieutenant Riley has been taken hostage.”

“Has he?”

The operator looks at the frozen image on the screen. Simon’s enormous, supposedly unconscious body is halfway inside a compact hatchback while you attempt to fold one of his legs through the door.

“He’s tied to a chair, sir.”

“He could break those ropes by sneezing.” He says while he picks up Simon’s personnel file.

He opens it, turns to the appropriate page, and begins filling out a leave request.

The operator watches him. “Sir?”

Price writes Simon Riley beneath the section marked PERSONNEL NAME.

“Captain, what are you doing?”

“Administrative work.”

“Shouldn’t we at least contact him?”

Price checks the box beside personal leave.

“He’s been missing for two days.”

Price writes seven beneath REQUESTED NUMBER OF DAYS, considers it, crosses it out, and replaces it with fourteen.

“Sir.”

Price signs the bottom of the form with a flourish made violent by fatigue.

The operator makes a questioning noise in the back of his throat.

Price places the completed document neatly on top of the photograph showing his lieutenant sitting comfortably in a dungeon with a blanket beneath his ass, a half finished bottle of water by his foot, and enough slack in his restraints to knit a second rope.

“No deployment,” Price says. “No rescue attempt. No one contacts him unless there’s an actual emergency.”

“But- ”