•Hello•

#

80s/90s

A

Agents of Shield

American Horror Story

Animal Kingdom

Animated

B

Boy Meets World

C

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

Criminal Minds

D

DC

Divergent

F

Fear Street

G

Game of Thrones

Gotham

H

Hannibal 

Hemlock Grove

Harry Potter

Horror

I

It 2017/2019

M

Marvel

Movies/Shows

MTV Scream

O

Once Upon a Time

P

Peaky Blinders

Penny Dreadful

R

Riverdale

S

Shadowhunters

Shameless

Star Wars

Stranger Things

Supernatural

T

The Umbrella Academy

Teen Wolf

The Maze Runner

The Hunger Games

The 100

The Vampire Diaries/Originals

The Witcher

The Walking Dead

Twilight

V

Vikings

X

Benedict had always had a poet's soul, which coupled with that artist's mind of his, had plagued him in every moment of his life.

It was agony, he often told you. 

To be able to see all the beauty in the world, in the most vivid of colors and flashes of light, but to not be able to share that ability with every other person. Rather, it becomes the artist's task to become the lens through which to share that. 

It was maddening, and yet, he wouldn’t have traded it for anything because of that unbridled beauty and the freedom he felt in his spirit upon beholding it. 

He always wished he could share it with you, but it had never been that simple. For him, at least. 

It seemed that some others may have been able to capture it easily, but as far as Benedict was concerned, it seemed it wasn’t his destiny. He may have had the eye of a poet and an artist but his hands were hardly cooperating with that dream.

Every hope he had for each and every piece he created fell flat as they came out dull or all too plain. 

He hated himself for it. 

It was a waste of ability, due to a complete and total lack of inspiration, he had decided. 

What a pity. 

The cloud of gloom swirling above him dimmed only slightly at the sound of footsteps approaching, soft clicking on marble. Naturally, he assumed his mother had grown tired of his lateness.

Not that he wasn’t pleased to be wrong. 

“You look utterly morose” you sighed, entering the drawing room casually, taking in the sight of your oldest friend. You may have said you’d never seen Benedict so distraught, but it would have been a lie. 

In fact, dramatics like this were common for the second son, and it did not shock you to see him in such a state. 

All you didn’t understand at this moment was why he would be fussing over his sketchbook at this hour when dinner was going on down the hall. 

“Unfortunately, it would seem I was not cut out to be an artist” it was little more than a huff from him as he continued digging the charcoal into the page, forcing a laugh out of you from your place. 

Had you been in the company of another, you may have held it back for the sake of politeness, but at the moment, you didn’t bother. 

You imagined you had a few more moments before anyone came looking for you anyway, with the way the dinner party had been bustling when you left it. 

“I hardly believe that. Go on, let me see” you all but demanded, resting your hands on your chin as you waited, sure that he would turn his sketchbook around at the very suggestion. 

He did not.

He would not, because what he was looking at now was his greatest shame. 

What hope could he have had to make it as an artist if he couldn't even get a simple landscape down on paper? 

“It must be very good if you’re hiding it from me. Must you always keep your secrets?” you teased, attempting to snatch the bound paper from his grasp but failing in the process. 

Your gown was bound so tightly that you couldn’t imagine being able to do much of anything, no matter how important. 

Briefly, you considered just how far you could push the lacing across your back before it gave way, leading to a flashing image of a single deep breath doing the trick.

You laughed at yourself as you thought it over, providing a single sound aside from Benedict’s frustrated huffing, a sound that nearly shocked him out of his body. 

Did you always sound like that? Or was his frustration merely muddying his mind? 

“What’s so funny?” he wondered, glancing up at you for the first time since you entered, abandoning his work for a single second, finding himself immediately glad that he did. 

You were smiling, bright and beautiful even in the considerably dimly lit room. Somehow, you had chosen to sit across from him at his desk but you were bent in such a way that he was shocked you hadn’t fallen from the chair. 

One of your hands still remained perched at your cheek, holding up your face, your elbow bracing against the table’s edge. 

Your mother would have reprimanded you for it, for the casualness of it, but Benedict found it quite freeing. He liked the idea that you were comfortable enough with him to let loose of all pretense. 

You two had certainly known each other long enough for it to be appropriate. 

“Nothing, I swear. Just a thought” you shrugged, trying to convey just how little it had meant but in truth, Benedict didn’t really care. What had amused you so had little importance.

All he cared about now was that you were happy, and that you looked incredible in the process. 

What a happy coincidence for him. 

All day, he had been agonizing about how he was meant to capture the beauty of the sun shining upon the lake on something as flat as paper, but just now, he believed he’d found just the way. 

In you. 

In your joy, and in the glistening of your eyes as you beamed back at him, without a care in the world. That was the feeling he’d been searching for, and without even meaning to, you had given it to him. 

You beautiful creature, you. 

“Wait, Don’t Move!” 

You had begun to squirm under the burning gaze of the second born Bridgerton, finding his typically joking air gone in favor of a level of intensity you found yourself smothered beneath. 

It wasn’t right, and all at once, you found yourself seeking out an exit, but his words stilled you. 

How could they not? 

“What is it, Benedict? Is your drawing so terrible that I truly can’t see?” you wondered, considering that perhaps you’d offended him with your laughter. 

You weren’t teasing him about his art, of course, but in his stress, sometimes he could be a little more sensitive and you didn’t want to upset him. 

In truth, you couldn’t imagine a world where anything he created could be bad, but then again, you had yet to see any of the art he’d been promising all these weeks.

It was all just theoretical to you, so far. 

“No, no. Forget the drawing, you beautiful thing. Sit still” he all but ordered, moving quickly away from the compliment which stopped you in your tracks, in favor of beginning to sketch. 

The first page, a detailed but ever so slightly off, recreation of the view from his bedroom window down over the estate fell to the floor as if it meant nothing. Instead, he focused his gaze to a new page, sketching out rough shapes quickly. 

As if the image would fade away before him, as if you yourself may disappear from his eyes in a mere moment. 

You didn’t understand his haste, and you couldn’t have hoped to guess what he was drawing now, but you didn’t want to risk interrupting him in such an excited state so you didn’t budge. 

You remained there, folded strangely in your chair, a soft smile on your face as you considered the image of your oldest friend. 

He looked tired. 

Handsome, of course, but tired. You could only think it was as he’d told you. He was facing the burden of another season and the fact that he remained the second son in a prominent family, unmarried and without purpose.

It was terribly dramatic, you’d told him, but if that was how he felt, how were you to correct him? 

Benedict had always felt things wholly and with each ounce of his being, so it didn’t surprise you that shame and pressure were amongst those things. How glad for him that joy and love were also present. 

“Can we talk, or is this a solely silent venture?” you whispered, after a few moments of silence, his eyes flicking up to you every once and a while, his charcoal never stopping its movements. 

Whatever he was doing, he was certainly working fast. 

You sounded as if you thought a single word from you would send the whole room crumbling around you, and perhaps it would. This was unfounded territory for you and Benedict, after all. 

It wasn’t as if he’d ever done anything like this with you before. 

“You can talk if you’d like, so long as you keep on smiling at me” he shrugged, that smirk plastered on his face now as he saw what he’d been searching for materializing more and more on the page. 

He could never have thought this would be where he’d find what he needed. 

In you, of all people and places. 

“If you want me to smile, perhaps you should tell a joke?” you suggested, your voice remaining uncharacteristically small for you. 

Benedict wondered if you were afraid someone may think something uncouth was happening, seeing as you were both missing from the festivities, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. 

This was too important. 

“Or, maybe you could explain what exactly it is you’re doing over there? You look as well-pleased as the cat that got the canary” you continued prodding, another of Benedict’s favorite qualities of yours. 

Even in those rare moments where he found himself not in the mood for talking, you always had something to say. 

In your many years of friendship, he wondered if this was the quietest you’d managed to be, even though you were still softly chirping away.  

Perhaps if he was to be the cat, you had fashioned yourself the sort of canary between you. 

“I, my darling, have finally found some well needed inspiration,” he offered, wetting his bottom lip with his tongue, making that face he often made when trying to concentrate.

He must have really had something good over there, you just couldn’t imagine what it might have been after all this time. 

“I could leave you to it, if you needed some time” your words came gently, not wanting to interrupt when he was finally getting what he’d been so desperately searching for. 

The last thing you wanted to do was burden him, but the very mention further pushed Benedict nearer to you.

“No, you don’t understand,” he was trying to speak plainly but you had no clue what he was getting at, given the fact that he still hadn’t bothered including you in his creative process. 

All you knew thus far was that you were forbidden to move, which didn’t seem all together imperative. 

Benedict softly sighed, brushing the paper with his thumb before finally settling for a second, holding it out from his face a ways to confirm what he’d already realized.

It was perfect, or it would be, with a little more refining.  

“I have found my inspiration in you, you wonderful creature” he teased, taking his turn to smile back at you, now that he was sure it was the way he wanted it to be. 

He couldn’t believe it, and by this point, neither could you. 

You hadn’t done anything differently today than you normally did, but apparently, it had helped him in some way so you tried not to question it. Tried, and failed. 

“What ever could I have done?” 

You were glad he’d found what he needed, of course, but you had to admit you felt as though he’d left you in the dark somewhere along the way. He kept calling you those endearing names and looking at you as if you hung the moon in the sky, but had not yet explained why.

What could you have rightly done to deserve such praise? 

So, rather than explain it, he turned his sketchpad toward you in hopes that you would be just as amazed by what you saw as he was.

It was you.

In all that time, Benedict had been able to create a stunning likeness of you, beaming and joyous as you’d been when you arrived. It shocked you just as much as it brought you delight. 

All this time, you never would have imagined he’d been sketching you. 

“That’s what I’ve been missing,” his words were gentle and small, as if he were speaking directly to a frightened animal, likely to back away and never return if he made a wrong move. 

The two of you were in unfamiliar territory, after all. 

He didn’t want to risk years of friendship on a single beautiful moment. Did he? “I’ve been painting landscapes and sketching flowers and fruit, nothing of substance. Nothing of true beauty such as this” he further explained, falling into silence when you said nothing. 

Benedict considered it may have frightened you, or perhaps he had crossed one of those high society boundaries which often alluded him. 

It wasn’t until you stood, though, that he truly began to fear he’d overstepped. 

“Don’t be insulted, please? I meant no off-” he started, talking quickly only to immediately button up when you rounded the table in favor of marching out the door and back to the party. 

Of course you weren’t insulted. 

It was beautiful. 

“It’s perfect, Benedict. Absolutely perfect” you beamed, relief washing over him all at once. You were so in awe of him, so fully enveloped in his talent and the clear reverence he held for you.

It was dangerous territory for the two of you, something you were quickly reminded of at the sound of Anthony Bridgerton clearing his throat in the doorway, considering the touching moment before him.

“Yeah, we’re here. Just park wherever. I’ll buzz you in, it’s 312”

Matt’s voice mindlessly filled his apartment as he spoke into his phone, currently pressed between his shoulder and his ear.

He had been on the phone for about six minutes now, and right about the time it started to sound like plans were being made, that was when Foggy’s interest peaked.

After all, he lived in their shared place too and whatever was going on was bound to involve him in what seemed like a matter of minutes.

“Whose on the phone?” He whispered, getting quickly waved off as Matt focused on the task at hand. Whoever had called seemed to be still chatting away which only interested Foggy further.

So, out of options, he made his way over to the window, hoping that whoever was coming up was close enough to the building for him to scope something out.

…and he was in luck.

Right across the way, in the parking lot attached to the student center was a young woman talking excitedly into her phone, lugging bags of chinese takeout in her free hand.

In all honesty, he doubted that was who was coming to visit, as neither Foggy nor Matt had had a pretty girl visit them since moving in but the details didn’t matter.

Once he started looking at her, he felt like he couldn’t stop.

Everything about her was captivating to him from the bright smile on her face as she spoke to the way she cleverly dodged tripping on the curb after clipping her heel stepping onto the street.

It was charming, as charming as a complete stranger could be and it actually made his chuckle.

“Nice save” he laughed under his breath, thinking about all the times he’d nearly wiped out in the same spot. “What is?” Matt wondered, suddenly appearing behind Foggy and nearly making the man jump out of his skin.

Apparently his phone call had ended, and he’d taken it upon himself to sneak up on his roommate, which always seemed surprisingly easy for him, given the whole being-blind-thing.

“This girl on the street, she almost ate it on the asphalt” he allowed, making room at the window for his roommate, not that he would be able to see her anyway.

Matt nodded, listening to your footsteps as you approached their building and made your way up to the call box. It was after official visiting hours in the building, but as long as he let you in, there wouldn’t be a problem.

Then, almost in sync with your movements, came the buzzing from downstairs. “That’s my sister, she wanted to see the place so I had her bring some food”

It was casual, all things considered, and still, the news hit Foggy like a ton of bricks.

Sister?

Since when did Matt have a sister?

“Hold on. You mean, you are related to her?” Foggy clarified, his jaw practically hanging down to the floor as he tried to process this new information.

Why was this the first he was hearing about it? And had you been this adorable the entire time?

Matt took a passive note of the way his roommate’s heart rate spiked briefly but thought nothing of it. Foggy was excitable and this wouldn’t be the first time he overreacted.

“Not really. We grew up together at the orphanage, became each other's family” he explained, hoping that was enough information without getting into your shared and very complicated history.

Really, there were enough stories between the two of you to fill hours and hours but there was no point dwelling on that now.

“That’s cool. I have a couple siblings too. I just didn’t expect to be meeting the family” Foggy tried, wondering casually if he needed to change into a cooler shirt before you made it up the three flights of stairs or if that would be too obvious.

After all, it was sort of against guy code to go after your buddies hot sister but it wasn’t like Matt wanted you anyway. It would be a waste if he didn’t at least make a good impression.

The knock on the door sent both men into motion, but for two very different reasons.

Matt made his way across the short expanse of the apartment to the front door while Foggy beelined for the bathroom, figuring he could fix his hair if nothing else.

“Hey Matty” you cooed, a wide grin on your face the moment Matt appeared in the doorway.

You two hadn’t seen each other since he moved in and, in your opinion, that had been far too long. After all, you had spent most of your lives a few doors down from one another.

You weren’t used to having to travel to see him.

“I heard you tripped in the parking lot on your way up” he joked, pulling you into a tight hug and closing the door.

You scoffed, at first because he would have the guts to make fun of you when you came all this way with the best chinese food in town and then because there was no normal way for him to know that.

“How?-” you started but he waved you off with a gentle nudge, “Nosy roommate”

Then, as if on cue, Foggy emerged, doing his best to look both as handsome and as normal as he ever had. His hair was still untamed, sitting just below his shoulders, but at least he’d brushed it.

That had to count for something.

“You must be the nosy roommate” You nodded, pointing him out as you put the pieces together, “It’s nice to meet you, I’m Y/N”

On instinct, you produced your hand for him to shake it but Foggy didn’t move. He wanted to, he really really did, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t do anything but stare.

Which was definitely very calm, and normal of him.

There was a beat of silence as you tried to figure out what to do, and Matt waited for Foggy to say something but it never came.

“That’s Foggy, and you can set the food in the kitchen”

You nodded, tapping his arm gingerly as you passed so he’d know you walked away before setting a new course toward where the little kitchenette across the apartment was.

Their place was no bigger than a dorm but considering two college boys lived in the space and one of them was completely blind, it was well kept and way nicer than you would have expected.

As soon as you were out of earshot, Foggy turned to his roommate with what could only be described as an incredulous glare dressing his face.

“Hey, so not to be weird but what the deal with your super hot sister?” Foggy hummed, hoping that his tone didn’t give away how aggressively he was ogling you to his best friend.

He could have used a heads up, at least.

He didn’t want to be inappropriate or make either of you uncomfortable of course but it wasn’t every day that such a beautiful woman invited herself into his living space and he was a little caught off guard.

He didn't want to miss an opportunity.

Not that you were an opportunity, of course.

He would never stoop so low as to think of you that way, he just wasn’t that kind of a guy.

Still, he was a guy and there was no getting around the fact that he was sure you were the most stunning person he’d ever laid eyes on, and he’d seen lots of people in his time.

“First of all, there’s no deal and second, she isn’t super hot” Matt answered, scrunching up his face as he considered that the reason behind Foggy’s increased heart rate was likely surrounding you.

Which was already far too much information as far as he was concerned.

“I can assure you, my friend, that she is uber hot, even if you can’t see it for yourself,” the blonde argued back, shamelessly letting himself watch as you searched the cabinets for actual plates.

You were sort of just hoping they would have some.

“Hold on, I’ll be right back” Foggy allowed, leaving Matt searching for which one of the movies in their extensive DVD collection they could watch while you were here.

You had gone through and made him braille labels for all the cases a while back, and now, all he had to do was decide which of the vast selection seemed right.

“The plates are up here” Foggy called, half jogging toward where you were still searching to reach up and grab the few dishes they had acquired together.

It didn’t even occur to him to wait for you to move before he did though, resulting in you basically being boxed in between his frame and the countertop.

There was a moment between the two of you as you met his eyes, a couple plastic plates held in his hands, the space between you essentially miniscule.

“Thanks, I was starting to think I’d never find them” you tried, doing your best to cover up how flustered the situation had made you, because you had just met him, after all.

There was no way you could have a crush on him already, right? Those things took time.

Though, how much time definitely seemed to vary because in the twenty minutes he’d known about your existence, Foggy would definitely say he had some kind of feelings for you.

He just wasn’t sure how to go about acting on them yet.

Foggy laughed, it still not occurring to him that he should back away from you, mostly because he didn’t really want to. “It’s no problem. We don’t really use them, not a lot of company”

That didn’t seem likely to you at first but between the two of them, you weren’t really sure who would have anyone to invite over more than the other.

“I’m sure you have girls over all the time” there was humor in your voice, but you were just as curious as teasing.

Surely you weren’t the first person to have noticed how darling he was. You thought the students at Columbia were supposed to be smart.

“Food’s getting cold!”

Matt interrupted your conversation before Foggy could assure you that, without a doubt, there were no other girls he’d rather have going through his dishware than you.

The reminder that you were not only not alone but also in the company of your brother made your skin hot but you did your best to cover it up with another light laugh. “

Foggy was having a tough time.

The news of what Matt had really been doing all those times he’d called and gotten sent to voicemail wasn’t exactly easy to swallow. It was crazy that he was some kind of masked vigilante, and you weren’t here to argue that.

You knew that it was insane.

Honestly, you knew that better than anyone by this point.

It wasn’t like you were thrilled when you learned about it in the first place yourself. You hated that Matt did all that to himself and that he took so many unnecessary risks, but that was a bridge to be crossed another day.

Right now, you just wanted to see your two best friends talking again. It was driving you crazy that they were fighting, and you wanted it to stop.

Whatever you had to do, you were desperate.

The three of you hadn’t gone this long without spending time together since the last year of college and you didn’t exactly want to break that streak after so many years. Especially not because of some mistake.

“Fogs, I know you’re home. Let me in” you called, knocking on his apartment door over and over again, in what you knew was a desperate and likely futile attempt at getting him to open up.

You had been standing here for fifteen minutes without a peep from him, and at this point, you were having your doubts that he would ever open the door. Which, just wasn’t like him.

Foggy had never been the silent type, and you weren’t sure that he’d ever gone this long without talking in his entire life. He was a passionate person, he felt things very deeply, and when he got upset, he talked.

It just was who he was.

On every day except for this one, apparently.

In all the time that you’d known Foggy, he had never been this way with you. He always put you first and never iced you out, even on the rare occasions when he and Matt got into spats.

He always made time for you.

Still, it was becoming more and more apparent that this thing with Matt was weighing on him more than he wanted to admit. You understood that, and you weren’t here to blame him or ask him to forget it.

That was the last thing you wanted.

He was worried about his best friend, worried about one of the only people in the world who had been by his side and it was really affecting him.

“Come on Foggy, I just want to explain” you sighed, practically begging. You had deflated now, your forearm propped up against his door, your forehead resting against it.

You felt like dirt.

The last thing you wanted to do was hurt him. Not that telling Foggy that was going to lessen the sting of betrayal at all. In some ways, this was just as much your lie as Matt’s and you knew that but you couldn’t just leave it at that.

It wasn’t like you had intentionally kept this from him.

You hadn’t even meant to find out.

It happened in a situation not dissimilar to when Foggy had, though under vastly different circumstances. It wasn’t a day unlike any other, and you had no reason to think anything was going on. You were just dropping off some takeout.

That was it.

You had gotten dinner for yourself and on the way home you passed Matts’ apartment and decided to leave him with the leftovers. Foggy had always been a little better about taking breaks, going out with Karen to Josies, or ordering in when working late.

Matt didn’t.

If left to his own devices, he would just keep working on whatever case they’d taken on and only feed himself after the nagging in his stomach became too much to ignore.

That was it.

It wasn’t your fault that by simply using the spare key Matt had given you, and letting yourself into his pitch black apartment, you had blown open his biggest secret. Though, in your defense, you weren’t exactly expecting to find him bleeding out on the couch.

It was quite literally the last thing you could have hoped to see, but that was what happened.

Would Foggy have made a different call if he’d been in your place? You didn’t think so. Not to mention the fact that if he’d been keeping this secret all along, you would have done whatever you had to in order to protect him too.

That was just what you did for each other, even though it had gotten out of hand this time.

It wasn’t like Matt was completely guilty in this either if you were being honest. He was arrogant and misguided, sure, but his heart was in the right place. He wasn’t trying to hurt Foggy either.

You just hoped you could try to make him understand.

That was why you’d come here, after all.

You hoped it would be a little easier to swallow coming from someone who wasn’t Matt. This had been hard for you too, from the moment you found out, the secret had just been eating you up.

Now that someone else knew, you wanted to explain.

You wanted to talk about it.

The whole thing was so important to Matt that you couldn’t be honest about how genuinely frustrating and taxing it was for you. How nerve-wracking it was to be caught between one best friend in constant danger and lying to the other.

It was awful, but this was the thing you dreaded the most. Every day, all you could think about was how much you wanted to tell Foggy and how much it was going to hurt him when he inevitably found it.

…but your hands were tied, weren’t they?

You just had to hope that he would understand if he ever gave you a chance to talk to him about it. Which, as the minutes continued to tick by with no word from him, you doubted would ever come.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought about it every day, but it wasn’t exactly my secret to tell” you huffed, giving up almost entirely, your voice nothing more than a faint expelling of air now.

It was no use.

Foggy was mad, he was hurt, and there was nothing you could do to change that. What had happened was really unfortunate, and it was far from how Matt would have wanted him to find out, but again, it was out of your hands.

There was very little you could do about any of it without somehow betraying one of them, and you made the best call you could knowing that.

On one hand, if you kept Matt’s secret, you were knowingly deceiving Foggy and the lies were bound to pile up. However, on the other hand, if you spilled Matt’s secret and the wrong people got ahold of it, there was no telling what could happen.

So, you made a call. Maybe it was the wrong one, but you couldn’t have known that before.

For better or worse, this was just what it was now.

“Okay well, you know where to find me if you want to talk” you finally decided, resigning yourself to accepting his silence. Clearly, if Foggy felt like talking about it, he would have done it by now.

You had nearly given up when you heard the soft sound of the latch on the other side of the door click out of its place.

It wasn’t much but it meant that at least Foggy had been listening to you. He’d heard what you said and that was more than you could have hoped for leading up to this moment.

It was probably more than you deserved.

He should have hated you for keeping something like this from him, for lying to him and potentially putting yourself in danger for Matt, but Foggy wasn’t irrational. He understood that you didn’t really have a choice.

Matt’s secret wasn’t one that you could have shared, because it wasn’t yours. If anything, he was just glad that the other man had someone who knew the truth, even though he didn’t.

“How long have you known?” he asked weakly, the door hardly even open before he started to speak. It wasn’t something you were prepared to answer right off the bat, but luckily, Foggy was in no mood to split hairs.

He didn’t seem to want exact details or long-winded, complicated answers. He just wanted to know the truth and he wanted you to be the one to tell him.

“I don’t know. A couple of months” you guessed, if you were being honest, it could have been years by now and it wouldn’t matter. It felt like time had been slipping through your fingers here lately.

Since you learned the truth about what happened in Hell’s Kitchen after dark.

Foggy considered that for a few moments, mulling over the implications of that. That you had been lying to him every day for months and never once felt the need to give him any clue as to what was going on.

That you had potentially been putting yourself in danger and he didn’t know. That Matt had been putting you in danger in the first place.

“I never wanted to hurt you”

There was an earnestness in your voice that made Foggy’s heart clench, but he couldn’t rightly let you know that. Not until he knew exactly how much had been going on without his knowing, and just how deep you and Matty were into this.

Foggy just looked at you for a second, taking in your disheveled appearance and clear distress before ultimately loosening up a little.

He was still pissed, of course, but it wasn’t right for him to make you pay the price for Matt’s stupid mistake.

“Come in” he prompted, swinging the door wide, only catching it just short of it slamming into the wall opposite.

There was a softness in the suggestion, an admission of sorts, that let you know that the two of you would be okay eventually. Right now, you weren’t sure what the future looked like, and for the first time in a long time, you weren’t sure if Matty would be a part of it.

…but if nothing else, you knew that you had Foggy.

“I’m so sorry Fogs” you hummed, your voice almost entirely muffled by the fabric of his hoodie as you hugged him.

He knew.

Of course he knew, but ultimately this was about so much more than a lie. This was about you, and him, and Matt. This was about what you had chosen to do, and what your friend had been doing all this time without considering how it would affect everyone else.

This was about how Foggy felt about the two of you, and how far he’d have been willing to go for either of you if it came to that.

How did Foggy feel about you? In this moment, holding you in his arms like his life depended on it, he felt like he knew but like everything else, that was too complicated.

It always had been.

“I’m sorry too, for getting upset with you” he muttered, finally cooling down enough to realize why blaming you had been such a bad idea in the first place.

None of this was your fault. You had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and if he’d been in your place or you’d had a secret you needed him to keep, he would have done it in a heartbeat.

You just nodded in reply, not pulling away from him, even though you were sure that this would be quite the sight for his neighbors if they happened to come home now.

You both stayed like that for a while, trying to figure out what more there was to say. It felt like there was so much more, and the issue was far from resolved, but every time you went to speak, you came up empty.

What words could say more than you already knew? What could ever even come close to smoothing something like this over?

You had no idea.

The King’s arrival in Winterfell wasn’t of much interest to you, if you were being honest.

Of course you understood that it was a great honor and that his Grace was very important to your father, but outside of that, you had no real reason to pay the caravan much mind as it moved through the streets of Winterfell.

Had it not been for the pretense of duty and honor, and more severely, the pressure of your mother’s wrath, you truly believed you would have skipped the entire affair.

You weren’t the object of their visit, after all.

As the eldest daughter of Lord Eddard Stark, you were much too old to be of much interest to the young Prince compared to your sisters, and the King only came to Winterfell with your Aunt Lyanna on the mind.

Really, you weren’t sure why you needed to attend.

Until, you found yourself staring down the traveling party of the King’s guard, and the striking presence of the man they called “the Hound”

You had heard stories of the man over the years, and you knew where the title had come from, but never could you have imagined the man before you now and that man were one in the same. He hardly struck you as some ravenous monster, even then.

…and as the days went by, you found your opinion unchanged.

You existed in Winterfell simply, a privilege afforded you by your father’s title and the love the families of the North had for the Starks.

For the most part, you did what you wanted and didn’t call too much attention to yourself, content to read on the sidelines and follow after your siblings as they grew into their own. That meant that you escaped a lot of the formalities of nobility, as no one really needed too much of your attention.

If they were looking for a Stark to talk to, you were always fairly low on the list and you liked it that way, especially given all the excitement in Winterfall over the past few days.

With Sansa entertaining the Prince, your father entertaining the King and Queen, and the charms of the North keeping the guard away, you finally had a moment to yourself which only meant one thing. You could finally finish your book.

It was all set, just as you wanted it.

The weather had yet to get so bitter cold that you couldn’t stand to be out, so you grabbed a blanket and set it in the clearing near the market, under a big tree. The septa’s rarely bothered you these days, so you should be able to get some peace and quiet.

Not that you got too far before something else caught your eye.

You had only been reading your book for a short time when you heard the familiar sing-songy tone of your sister’s voice, followed unsurprisingly by the nasally pitch of Prince Joffrey.

They were to be married following this trip, and you knew she was excited. You could tell by the way she skipped lightly as she walked, and how she hung on his every word.

You had never been in love yourself, but you had to imagine that was what it looked like. Perhaps that was why you found yourself watching them as they walked, or maybe it had more to do with the Hound, loyal as always, who was trailing behind them steadily.

He was an interesting man, you’d decided.

Even as he walked, he studied the world around him as if he wasn’t a part of it, rather that he was peering in at it from the outside. You felt that you could relate, in some way, as you had always been that way.

They’d chastised you for being a dreamer as a girl. The Septa would take your books and keep them from you, your mother would beg you to engage in your duties as a lady and even Robb and Theon teased you.

Your head was always far away and even now, you had managed to keep it that way. While other women your age married and had heirs for unimpressive Lords, you remained in your father’s homeland.

A place where you could keep your books and your dreams, without having to endure the ugliness.

Not that ugliness was really the problem in the first place.

You were certain that some found the Hound ugly in all his violence and impropriety, but you couldn’t dare count yourself among them. Even now, as you stared at him over your bound paper novel, you saw nothing short of a dream like all the others.

It wasn’t even something you could truly understand, if you had any desire to try. There was just a softness to him, a quiet contemplation that made you feel as if no harm would ever come to you.

That wasn’t a feeling you’d known before now, as that was one of the things the North had never really had. Your father and brothers would rather die than let something or someone hurt you, you knew that, but it wasn’t so simple.

The comfort his presence held went beyond any physical threat or danger, it was almost warm.

Not that you would have ever ventured to admit it.

After all, you had never even spoken to the man and if you tried to explain the way you were feeling to anyone, they would surely have you committed. The hound was a lot of things, but none would have called him warm.

None outside of you that was.

You continued your staring for quite some time, only occasionally looking away from the sight before you to mindlessly turn the page in your book. You imagined you may have sat there all evening if you remained uninterrupted.

However, when your attention returned to the imposing form of the King’s dog across the way to find him already looking at you, the illusion fell away entirely.

Surely he thought you were demented.

In the entire time he and the King’s guard had been in Winterfell, you had yet to speak a word to a one of them but that didn’t mean he was unfamiliar with you. Every time he turned around, he found you sitting somewhere over his shoulder, that same book perched in your lap.

Anyone else may have just brushed you off, assuming you were a bit out there as your family always had, but Sandor couldn’t quite do that.

After all, he had grown used to the weary glances and fearful whispers between people as he passed, but no one had ever paid him so much mind as you seemed to be.

Naturally he was curious.

No one had voluntarily spent that much time looking at him in all his life, and he needed to know what it was about you that was different.

You tensed the moment you noticed his attention, not daring to look away from the weathered pages beneath your fingers, not when you heard him nearing where you sat and certainly not when he stopped at your side.

Neither of you spoke, and you weren’t even sure if you drew a single breath, but he certainly did as he waited. Waited for what he wasn’t sure, but it just seemed to be the thing to do.

As if you would somehow explain yourself if he stood in your presence long enough.

Though, after a long moment passed between you without so much as a glance from you, he decided to just end the torment for you both.

There would be no sense in just standing here all evening.

“Why do you stare so much?” he wondered aloud, his voice just as gruff as it always was, though you caught something else hidden there too. Just beneath the surface, hiding beneath the walls he’d built hugh within himself.

It almost sounded like a sort of nervousness, though you would have imagined him incapable of something so common.

You didn’t answer at first.

Whether it was due to the humiliation of being caught that held your tongue or the nerves of facing down such an imposing man on your own, he wasn’t sure. All Sandor knew for sure was that this was one of the strangest interactions he’d ever had.

If only he knew.

The real reason for your silence wasn’t some twisted interest or shame but because there was no real answer at all. At least not one you’d confidently admit while those brown eyes had you locked in a stare.

You hadn’t meant it to be disrespectful, of course, because the nature of your admiration couldn’t be farther from distaste. However, to a man like Sandor, that was exactly what it looked like.

…What it felt like.

Naturally, after a life of rejection, Sandor assumed that your staring was like that of every else when they looked at him. He assumed you were disgusted by him, and his grotesque face, or perhaps that you were afraid.

He hoped you weren’t afraid.

In any case, he never could have imagined that you would answer him in the way you did, even if it took you a moment to summon the courage to string any words together at all.

“I suppose I’m interested in you” you decided finally, twisting your face up slightly at the way that must have sounded.

It wasn’t quite right, of course, though it wasn’t entirely wrong either.

You were interested in him, but that seemed too simply a phrasing, like all the gravity and sentiment was missing even still.

Sandor only grunted in reply after a brief pause, his gaze drifting across the market, watching as the surrounding northerners studied your interaction, only to drop their eyes when they met his.

They all feared him, and they were right too, because they understood what he was and what he was capable of. Though, maybe that was another thing that you had done since he arrived that was unique to you.

Never once had you looked away from him.

You had never shrunk away or grimaced as they did, even at a time like this when anyone else would have run for the hills. It was certainly new, even he couldn’t be so stubborn as to ignore that.

“What’s so interesting about me?” he wondered, not daring to move closer or join you as you sat, but not moving further away either. Even though it felt wrong to speak freely with an unmarried noble woman like you, it really wasn’t.

You certainly didn’t think so, and you believed that anyone else would agree.

If anything, you were simply making conversation while he did his duty, watching over the Prince and his future bride.

Now, it was your turn to pause, regarding the words on the page only a moment more before you closed it, and discarded it in the snowy grass.

“We don’t have men like you here,” you allowed, considering his imposing frame as he stood above you.

Though you had only seen him from afar until now, at his impressive height and with your current low position, Sandor seemed even larger than he had before. Still, you couldn’t find it in yourself to be frightened by him, which had to have been because he wasn’t frightening in the first place.

The rest of the realm may have treated him like a monster but you hardly believed that made him one.

You could tell in the way he glanced down at you, surprise painting his features, that he wanted to argue with you but he faltered, because he didn’t understand. He wanted to tell you that there were violent men everywhere, and that most were just better at hiding it, but somehow, he knew that wasn’t what you meant.

No matter how diluted that may have made you seem in the moment.

“Gentle,” you clarified, watching as his mind tried to pin down exactly what you were trying to say, because the most obvious answer just wasn’t possible. “Men here are all the same. They’re either ruthless fighters or cowards and fools. On rare occasions, they may be both but neither are gentle as you are”

That was it.

There were the words you had been trying to find before, but it still didn’t feel as if he understood, or perhaps he just didn’t feel as if you had any right to be the one saying them.

After all, you had only ever been in the North and you hardly knew anything about him, or many other men for that matter. What real ground did you have to stand on when it came to this?

“Trust me little girl, there’s nothing gentle about a man like me” he scoffed, washing away any tenderness you’d been feeling in a moment.

Perhaps he was right, but you didn’t think so.

While it was true that there were no other men like him in the North, you had seen your fair share of guarded men hiding from the truth about themselves. Normally they were trying to convince themself that they were braver than they were, or stronger, but it looked the same.

It made them look small.

“It’s in your eyes. You think I can’t see it because you don’t, but it’s there. It’s the same reason you’re still having this conversation with me, even though the Prince snuck off with Sansa” you countered, gesturing to the missing space they’d previously occupied through the pass.

If he’d truly been keeping an eye on them, and nothing more, he wouldn’t have let them out of his sight.

“Maybe I just want to know what’s wrong with you? After all, I thought the future Lady of Winterfell would be a bit more sociable” he argued, almost poking fun at you in a way you hadn’t seen coming.

Which was a welcome break in that untouchable armor of his.

“I am hardly the future Lady of Winterfell. That title will belong to the wife of my brother Robb,” you informed, gathering your skirts to rise to your feet, only to find his hand outstretched to you, a further invitation behind the curtain.

You took it as gracefully as you could and rose to your full height, though you remained entirely dwarfed by the large man at your side.

“And I have never really taken to being sociable, that’s true. It’s my mother’s greatest upset” you teased, straightening out your gown and taking in the full sight of the Hound in all his glory.

He looked small, if that was even physically possible, as you admired him with those eyes of yours. If you thought his gaze was pointed, you had no idea how he felt beneath the heavy weight of your own.

“You’re a strange little thing, aren’t you?” he grumbled, his question hanging in the air untouched for a moment as you studied him, no longer caring how strange it may have looked to anyone else.

You had been right.

He was anything but ugly up close, and it was a tragedy that so few got to gaze upon him in this manner.

“I suppose. Perhaps that’s why I remain unmarried” you suggested, subconsciously hinting at what you knew to be your own greatest flaw, at least in the eyes of your people and your house.

At the very least, the Hound had been able to make something of himself outside of being a husband or son. He could be a warrior, and he was, one of the most fearsome warriors you’d ever seen.

As a woman, you had never been afforded that kind of privilege and you never would. As far as your mother was concerned, you would live and die a spinster, and there was little you could do to change that.

“Perhaps. Or maybe this place really is full of cowards and fools, as you said” he muttered, sparing you one more heady glance before turning his back to you, his attention fully on the clearing ahead.

That was it.

In all the days you’d been admiring him and making a desperate attempt to understand exactly what lay beneath that shell of his, that was all he had for you.

You had always loved a night in.

Whether it was a cozy night spent snuggled up with a blanket and a good book, or a new release of a gory slasher you’d been anxiously waiting to get your hands on, it felt like there was nothing better in the world than being home. 

…but you had to admit that there was one thing that topped even your favorite at-home activity. 

Cinema Club. 

Which, while admittedly only being adjacent to what you’d be doing anyway, did offer the occasional change of scenery that you grew to greatly appreciate. ‘

The Woodsboro High School Cinema Club was the one place in the world where the film geeks and creatives at your school could come together to co-exist, which had been more than enough to draw you in. 

You had always loved movies as a means of expression and any opportunity to talk about them with people who enjoyed them just as much was too good to pass up. 

That wasn’t what really sealed the deal for you though. 

What kept you coming back to that mismatched group of nerds was the underbelly of Cinema Club, comprised of all the horror fanatics and true crime junkies of Woodsboro, who came to get together and discuss some of their favorite aspects of the genre. 

In a town so famous for its own serial killer, there was little open discussion about any aspect, which had never sat right with you.

After all, everyone on planet Earth had seen at least one of the “Stab” films, and still, most of Woodsboro’s residents actively chose to live in a delusion. 

That was what made Cinema Club so compelling, and its president along with it. 

Charlie Walker, or the King of the Freaks as you’d taken to calling him in the comfort of your own mind, was a huge film buff and one of the only people whose love of horror seemed to rival your own. 

He was clever and had a lot of interesting theories about a lot of different things, the Stab franchise and the events that inspired it chief among them. In fact, in the years you’d been attending his club, you’d 

spent several evenings heatedly debating over which slasher was the best or which classic horror trope you’d choose given the option. 

In a lot of ways, he was one of the only people you felt seen by in that way, and eventually, you formed quite an attachment to the man, even if you’d never acted on it. 

Maybe that was why you’d called him. 

It had really come out of left field, and you had never reached out to him before in your life outside of occasionally asking him about a point of contention within the horror community or to get his opinion on something.

You couldn’t even say that you were friends, but that didn’t change the fact that when you got the news that someone wearing a Ghostface mask was running around cutting people up, your first thought had been of Charlie.

It was only natural. 

You were going to be home all night long by yourself, and while that was normally your idea of a fantastic night, it seemed foolish to be alone like a sitting duck all night, hoping you wouldn’t run into a killer. 

After all, Ghostface was a legend around this town and you weren’t about to underestimate what someone could be capable of once they put on that mask.

It seemed right to be afraid, at first. 

Though, now that you were sitting in the dark waiting for Charlie to show up, you were starting to doubt yourself. Would he think you were a huge loser for bothering him over something so arbitrary? Was he doing something when you called? 

If he were, you figured he would have turned you down instead of telling you he’d be at your house in fifteen, but that didn’t mean he didn’t think you were lame. 

God, you were lame, weren’t you? 

You started to sigh, debating whether or not you should just call Charlie and tell him not to bother, but you didn’t get the chance before a loud banging on your front door nearly sent you flying out of your seat. 

Your first instinct was to grab a kitchen knife and take it with you, sort of like how Casey’s character had in the opening scene of the first stab, but you quickly abandoned that idea. 

It hadn’t helped her, and you were sure it wouldn’t prove any more useful for you now. 

“Charlie? Is that you?” you called out, letting your careful footsteps carry you toward the door, without bothering to turn on a light. If it wasn’t him, you didn’t need whoever was out there knowing exactly where you were. 

Briefly, you felt a flash of heat wash over you at how embarrassing this would be if it was Charlie at the door, only to once again have that ice prick at your spine at the even worse possibility that he hadn’t left his house yet. 

What would you do if this was the killer at your door? If you opened it and found that haunting face staring back at you in the pitch dark?

You weren’t sure. 

“You alive in there, sweetheart? I brought popcorn”

All at once, relief flooded you as you took in the voice through the door. It was muffled, sure, but even if you weren’t entirely sure it was Charlie waiting for you, you were confident Ghostface didn’t use pet names like that on his victims. 

“Yeah, I’m good” you assured, pulling open the door to find none other than Charlie Walker standing there, that brown mop of hair falling in his face as he turned to meet your face. 

You weren’t entirely sure what he’d been watching out by the street, but in all honesty, you didn’t even question it. You were so glad to not be alone, especially after that scare, you weren’t even sure you’d processed it, even if he told you.

Proven further when he grinned at you like you’d missed something important. 

“I said, can I come in? I don’t think it’s safe to spend all night in the open doorway” Charlie hummed, making it clear that he was teasing you, which you nearly bristled at. Perhaps, if he’d been anyone else, you would have. 

That was the thing about Charlie though, even when he was poking fun at you, it never felt mean-spirited or cruel, and you appreciated that. 

You had always been a little hard to get to know, and even harder to get along with, but he didn’t even bat an eye at your slightly more reserved nature or casual obsession with grisly crimes and imagery. 

He never made you feel bad, or less than you were. 

“Sure. Come on in,” you suggested finally, taking a brief beat to collect yourself from the very hectic last 2 minutes. 

“Sorry, I feel like this is super weird. I just didn’t want to be alone tonight” you tried, hoping that sounded less pathetic out loud than it did when it reached your ears. 

It would be a lie to say that you’d never thought about having Charlie over, but never had it been under these circumstances, and never had it been this awkward. 

He must have thought you were a freak. 

“No worries. I was just going to spend it with Robbie and trust me, you’re much better company” he assured, watching casually as you closed and latched your front door and turned back to him, visibly relieved. 

He was telling you the truth. 

Given the choice, he would most certainly like to spend time with a pretty girl over the same guy he’d been attached to since grade school. After all, you’d made it clear when you called that you didn’t want to be alone. 

,,,and that you needed someone to look after you. 

Charlie was more than happy to be that someone, and he could protect you if he had to, especially from Ghostface.

“I don’t know about that. Robbie seems like a pretty good time” you countered, trying to joke back with him without it being weird, though he didn’t bother to respond to that. Instead, he followed you into your living room and helped himself to your couch. 

When you’d invited him over, you hadn’t really considered what you’d do to pass the time, but given the pretense for how you knew one another, and the Jiffy pop Charlie had brought, it didn’t seem too far off to put in a movie. 

“I was thinking about watching Stab 2 before I called you,” you prompted, assuming that Charlie would either agree or disagree rather quickly after the suggestion. 

You knew the President of Cinema Club to be a lot of things, but soft-spoken had never been one of them. 

“Sounds good to me”  

This room was one you’d set foot in at least once every day for most of your life, but it wasn’t the warm, inviting space it normally was, at least not with Charlie present. Under his watchful eye, you almost felt as if the air itself was popping with energy.

However, when you once again peeked at him and took in his composure, you realized that nervous energy was actually just buzzing under your skin. 

“The kill in the opening scene of this one is one of my favorite of the franchise. I think the practical effects are so well done,” you hummed, relaxing only slightly as the welcoming score to Stab 2 filled your ears.

The title screen flashed in black and green, a few choppy chase scenes from the middle of the movie playing on repeat while the music blared, and you ate it up just like you did every time. 

It was probably one of your favorite movies of all time, and without even thinking, you sat down next to Charlie, though you kept distance both between your bodies and between you and the back of the couch. 

“The gore in the first movie was more experimental, but I think by this one, they were more confident and knew just how far they could take all the body horror” 

Charlie hummed again, listening to you as you talked with more enthusiasm than he’d ever seen from you during club meetings. 

You participated in discussions, of course, but it was always  more muted and careful. Like, you were constantly worried someone would think you took it too far or crossed some line you weren’t sure existed. 

It was nice to watch you drop all the pretence for once and just enjoy something that clearly meant a lot to the both of you. 

“But, did you know that guy actually burst an eardrum getting stabbed like that, even with a prop knife?” he spoke up, pointing out one of his own fun facts. 

You didn’t, but you could believe it. 

The force that had to go behind something like that, even when it wasn’t real, had to be super intense and you couldn’t imagine being on the receiving end of it, something you apparently said out loud, given Charlie’s face. 

“I don’t know. It might not be that bad, it would take forever though” he allowed, further shocking you as you processed both what he’d said and the fact that you’d accidentally just been way weirder than you’d meant to. 

You stopped, abandoning the movie fully now and turning to face where he’d been sitting, watching your reactions more than the movie itself. 

“What would take forever? Getting stabbed?” you questioned, only partially aware of what you may have asked him in your adrenaline-fueled haze. You couldn’t imagine it took too long from start to finish if you were being honest. 

Charlie scoffed, though it was more of a laugh than anything concrete or mocking, “No, bleeding out from a wound like that. It would take way longer than you’d think” he explained, with a casual shrug. 

You believed him. 

This wouldn’t be the first time he’d shared a strange or unexpected fact with you about something like that, and you certainly didn’t want to question him. Though, you did find yourself glancing toward the door and windows absently. 

When you two had discussed this before, it was always in a well-lit room full of people, but this was much more intimate…and ominous. 

After all, someone had just been stabbed to death yesterday in their home, and you didn’t like the idea of just how long it had taken them to bleed out. 

“Sorry. That’s in bad taste, huh?” Charlie tried, finding the joy he’d gotten from watching you excited coldly replaced with your discomfort, or fear, more likely. “Don’t worry, I got you” he assured, his gaze shifting from the side of your face to your hand.

You were holding the couch cushion lightly in your fist, almost as if it would keep you safe, and that just wouldn’t do. 

Not while he was right here, waiting to comfort you. 

“Nobody’s gonna get you” His words were soft, near a whisper as he focused on gathering his courage and finally made his move, reaching out to take your hand in his own. 

The action made you shift, and rather than falling off the edge of the couch onto the floor, you leaned back, closer to where Charlie was already situated. 

“I just can’t imagine what that’s like” you allowed, steeling your own nerves and meeting his eyes, which subsequently sent a kaleidoscope of butterflies into your gut. 

The topic was grim, and you both knew that, but for such a nasty conversation, you were feeling anything but disturbed. It would have been hard to be, with him looking at you like that, his thumb stroking your wrist gently. 

“You are never going to find out. I can promise you that” Charlie spoke again, more earnest now than you ever could have predicted.

It wasn’t something he could promise, you knew that, but that didn’t make it any less reassuring. 

“Charlie?” 

He hummed, never breaking eye contact with you, not even shifting even as you blinked away, your gaze flicking momentarily to the third death scene playing out on screen.

“This seems like a pretty good time to mention that I have a little bit of a crush on you” you mentally cursed yourself for how small you sounded, but not for long before you had to confront the feeling of Charlie’s mouth against your own in a bruising kiss. 

He had been waiting with bated breath to see which one of you would get the chance to confess first, and while he didn’t think it would be you, he couldn’t be happier regardless. 

The kiss lasted for quite some time, with Charlie only pulling away just long enough to fully close the gap you’d been keeping between your bodies this entire time.

“I’m so glad you called me” he whispered, one of his hands coming to rest on your jaw to keep you close while the other played gently at your fingers. 

You heard yourself let out a dreamy sort of sigh in reply, but you were far too caught up in what you were feeling to really process it. So, rather than dwell on it, you just nodded softly, “I’m so glad you came” 

“I’ll always be here when you need me, sweetheart. Don’t worry about a thing” he cooed, saying each word with the depth and sincerity as a vow, and the intensity that only Charlie Walker could pooling in those blue eyes. 

..and the thing was, you believed every word.

Even on this couch, in the dead of night, in the heart of Woodsboro, you felt completely at ease because who could really get to you when someone looked at you like that? 

You had always cared for Aegon.

He could be challenging sometimes, you knew that better than anyone, but that didn’t change the fact that he was important to you. As children, he would share his toys with you and tell you stories of worlds far beyond this one.

Things changed as you got older, of course, but he was still Aegon. It didn’t matter how crass, cruel, or drunk he got.

He was your truest friend, and that meant that you were willing to put up with certain things for his sake.

At this moment, for example, you were listening to him drunkenly ramble about battle strategy and knights he figured he could best in combat over dinner. Did you particularly care about either of those things? Of course not.

…but Aegon did, so you listened all the same.

Just as the rest of his family did, because like it or not, he was the firstborn son and this kingdom was his to inherit.

One member of his family, in particular, was less than thrilled with this arrangement. At the other end of the table sat Aemond, the second son of King Viserys Targaryen, drinking from his own goblet to keep the bile from rising in his throat.

You had to be kidding.

Did you truly find his brother that interesting? It wasn’t possible that you actually believed him capable of besting Sir Harwin Strong in hand-to-hand combat. Aegon could hardly stand on his own most of the time.

He would die in a fight like that, and Aemond knew you were clever enough to know that. Still, you said nothing as he continued his rant.

You just kept listening, with a soft smile playing at your lips, as if his idiot brother wasn’t an embarrassment to his bloodline.

“I know for certain that I could have been a knight, the best knight there ever was” Aegon spouted, slurring his words lightly toward their end and earning a soft giggle from you as you imagined what that would look like.

It was a lie.

Aegon didn’t have what it took to be a knight by any stretch of the imagination but your laughter wasn’t so much about what he said. More than anything, it was about Aegon. He was drunk, as he so often was, but in moments like these, it didn’t matter.

This was how he’d been as a boy too, and that was the part that amused you. The slight glimpses of the dreamer he’d been before the world had robbed him of his right to dream.

Before he’d turned into nothing more than a man, seeking out his own pleasures, even at the expense of every other.

“I think I would quite like to see that” you mused, sipping from your own cup, though you weren’t anywhere near as under the influence as he was. You had been nursing the same goblet all night, one cup for Aegon’s seven.

It wasn’t really a challenge, but like he so often did, Aegon took it as one anyway.

“I would venture I could even beat Aemond, if he’d be brave enough to face me,” he added, shooting his brother a look that did sort of alarm you. It was beyond harmless musings about the knights of the realm and famed warriors.

This was a bit more personal, and you didn’t like where it was heading. “I could even cover an eye, make it fair for him”

Naturally, in his drunken state, Aegon’s movements were clumsy and rash but the implications when his left hand came up to cover his eye were just as impactful as they would have been if they’d been delivered sober.

You were silent for a moment, your gaze shifting between the future King’s lopsided grin and the sharp glare of his younger brother.

He knew that he’d been insulted, and you didn’t expect him to forgive it, but shot him a look anyway. It was small, but the message was clear.

You were asking him to ignore his brother’s ill conceived attempt at humor.

“Alright, perhaps you should slow down, Aegon” you suggested finally, resting your hand gingerly on his wrist, all but forcing the cup in his hand back to the table’s surface the moment he once again attempted to lift it to his mouth.

He had already been drinking most of the day and as the sun slowly retreated from the sky, it was certainly time to stop. Your fear for what he’d do if he didn’t was only furthering your insistence.

Not that you could make that clear outright.

“Y/N’s right, it’s about time for everyone to turn in” Alicent agreed, shooting you a thankful glance as she stood from the table, glad that she didn’t have to step in. The King had already gone back to his chambers, and with her leaving, everyone else was sure to follow suit.

Alicent had always been glad for the bond you shared with Aegon, though she didn’t understand it, especially in moments like this.

You were probably the only person who could have ever gotten him to do as you asked without the tantrum that normally followed. “Goodnight, your Grace” you called, watching as she and Helena retreated from the room, leaving you, Aegon and his brother alone in the room.

In the back of your mind, you were aware that Aemond was still watching you, his blue eye unwavering as he studied you, but you didn’t have time to figure out why.

Not before his brother once again pulled your attention to him instead.

“I’m not finished” Aegon tried, bringing the chalice back to his lips only for Aemond to scoff over your shoulder.

He would truly never understand how his brother had managed to survive this long, much less maintain his place in line for the throne. He had no real business being there, and he wouldn’t, if it hadn’t been for his birthright.

Though that would just be among the list of things Aemond didn’t understand, like why you were so determined to take such good care of his pathetic brother, when you got nothing back in return.

Aegon would never show you the same courtesy, not in the way he would, had he been in his place.

“Yes you are, it’s time for bed” you spoke softly to your oldest friend, but your eyes had found their way across the table to Aemond and his now sour attitude.

It was no secret that he and his brother didn’t exactly get along, but you didn’t understand what had happened tonight that was any more irksome to him than any other night. It certainly wasn’t the first time he’d insulted him, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Every night with Aegon was essentially the same, and no one was more used to that than Aemond was. Not even you.

“Will you take me?” the firstborn asked, that twisted smirk finding its way onto his face once more as he grinned, never ceasing his drinking even as he spoke about being done drinking.

Normally, one of the servant girls would be tasked with trying to get the future King to his chambers, but between his cheery mood this evening and the silent appreciation you’d gotten from the Queen, you figured you were up to the task tonight.

“If you promise to behave, I will take you” you agreed, finally reaching over to snag his cup from him completely, the stem held delicately between your fingers.

Again, Aemond found himself swallowing back more than just wine as he watched the scene in front of him unfold.

Did the two of you really have to do this every night? Aegon was married after all, and if his mother had anything to say about it, you would be too, soon enough.

It was so far beneath you.

In Aemond’s opinion, his ridiculous brother could live a thousand lifetimes and never deserve a moment of your time, but clearly, his believing that wasn’t enough to convince you. At this point, he feared nothing would.

“Are you serious?” he finally called out, not even bothering to hide the ugly tone in his voice. It was practically dripping with emotions, but whether that was jealousy or disgust, he wasn’t sure.

Perhaps it was some mix of both.

“About what?” you hummed, your focus not leaving his brother even as you spoke to Aemond, ignoring the clear upset in his voice in favor of getting the future King to his feet.

Because even when he was speaking directly to you, Aegon was all you could ever give your attention to.

Aegon was basically dead weight when he drank like this, and it was going to be quite the task for you to get him into bed without accident. Not that the servant girls complained, each and every night when they took the job.

They simply did what needed to be done, and you weren’t about to be any different. Those girls deserved a break from his drunken antics for once.

“I could get someone to do that for you. It isn’t your job to make sure he gets to bed” This time, Aemond was sure to monitor the venom in his voice, fully aware that it wasn’t getting him anywhere anyway.

If Aegon had spoken to you like that, you would have stopped everything to assess its origin, but from Aemond, it was almost as if he hadn’t opened his mouth at all.

Why he even bothered at all at this point, he wasn’t sure.

“It’s okay, I don’t mind,” you assured, draping the blonde’s arm over your shoulders and heading toward the door without a second look at his brother. The second son, the man who dreamed of taking care of you instead of forcing you to care for his every need.

The man who had been hopelessly pining over you for all the years you’d known him, but who you’d never once actually seen.

Left all alone at the table.

~

You were able to move quietly through the halls, finding Aegon much less drunk than you’d originally assumed once he got to his feet. His steps were clunky, and he’d been whisper-yelling in Valyrian at you the entire time, but he wasn’t totally helpless.

He’d had enough to fully give up on the pretense of his birthright, but not enough to be slobbering on your shoulder, which you had enough cause to be thankful for. In the past, he’d not been so gracious.

“Alright, go to sleep now Aegon,” you cooed, pulling the covers up over him and pressing a gentle kiss to the top of his head. “In the morning, we can take a walk around the garden”

The only answer to your suggestion came in the form of gentle snoring, which made you smile in spite of yourself as you left the room.

It seemed to you that the only time the prince got any peace was when he slept. He hadn’t always been that way, but as the days passed, you found it harder and harder to ignore the way the world was changing him.

You weren’t blind to the truth.

It was just as obvious to you that Aegon was a disaster as it was to everyone else. You knew that he was a coward and a fool and that the care you had for him was the only thing keeping you from sharing the ire for him that so many others felt.

You knew that, but the truth remained that he was your oldest friend and you loved him for that, despite his many flaws.

You were many things, and loyal seemed to be chief among them, even if sometimes you wondered if your faith in him was misplaced. Would Aegon be a good King? You weren’t sure, but you knew that you would be by his side until the day he proved undeserving.

The Lord’s chamber door closed softly behind you and gave way to a long dark hallway, which you maneuvered expertly. You had taken the walk between your chambers and Aegon’s a thousand times and you knew it like the back of your hand.

Still, you couldn’t account for everything.

For example, you never could have expected to be grabbed from your path until it happened, and you found yourself standing in an adjacent room instead of the long expanse of the hallway. You couldn’t see it that well, with only the moonlight streaming in through the window available to help orient yourself.

It wasn’t an altogether distinctive space at first glance, but it didn’t take you long to place it anyway.

The grasp your kidnapper had on your arms remained, even as the moments ticked by, and while it wasn’t tight or uncomfortable, it gave away the perpetrator in an instant.

Aemond.

No one else was capable of so much selfish aggression while also maintaining such a tight composure. No one else would have cause to take you from the hall, and certainly no one else would have the gull to do so.

Still, for whatever reason, apparently the blonde had decided to snatch you from your normal path and was now just holding you here, a foul look on his usually handsome face.

“Care to explain yourself, my Lord?” you scoffed, removing your arms from his grip as gently as you could, and trying to figure out what could have possibly gotten into him.

It didn’t make any sense.

Never had he attempted something like this before, and you couldn’t work out what was going on, no matter how hard you tried.

“My problem? My problem is that you couldn’t possibly be more of a fool” he started, essentially ignoring your justified response in favor of his own feelings.

He couldn’t watch it anymore.

It was bad enough that his brother was a bumbling idiot without any care for history or culture, or any actual skill. He couldn’t have the throne, the realm, and the affections of you.

That would simply be too much.

Especially when he deserved it so much more. .

“What are you talking about? How much did you have to drink tonight?” you wondered. You were used to Aemond being moody, and he could be unpredictable sometimes but never had he put his hands on you like this. Never had he spoken to you in such a way.

It didn’t make sense, and if you were being honest, you didn’t like it. This was something you wouldn’t have given a second thought coming from Aegon, but here, with Aemond in front of you, it confused you.

Aemond scoffed, clearly not finding your care for his well-being as endearing now that it was aimed at him. Even an hour earlier, he would have been thrilled to have even an ounce of your affection, but not now.

Now, it was almost an insult.

He was so tired of being the second son, and the second in line for everything. Just once, he wanted someone to pick him over his idiot brother.

“Not nearly enough. Perhaps if I drank more, you’d actually look me in the eye”

That got your attention.

You were silent for a moment as you considered his words, and what they could possibly mean in regards to this conversation.

It was an obvious jab at his brother, but it still didn’t help you understand what all this was about and you were torn. You didn’t know how long you were supposed to let this go on or how you were supposed to react.

On one hand, you never would have wanted Aemond to be upset but on the other, you couldn’t exactly explain being alone together in the dark, in the middle of the night.

It wasn’t technically allowed considering that you were both unmarried, and while the Queen was fond of you, you were certain she wouldn’t like this.

You sighed, taking in the distance, or lack therefore, of space between the two of you before you finally broke your silence. “Aemond, enough of this, what has you so upset?”

Your voice was soft as you spoke, hoping to get him to calm down enough to actually speak to you. He had always been the more rational of the brothers and he was certainly better at communicating.

It was one of your favorite things about him, but right now, he sounded like Aegon and you didn’t like that one bit either.

You put up with Aegon out of care for him and hope for the kind young boy you had once known him to be, but Aemond was better than that. You enjoyed his company, and the time you spent together was time you treasured.

You didn’t understand why he was so angry with you tonight.

“I don’t understand why you love him when he treats you so poorly. What has he ever done to deserve your affections?” he wondered, his tone matching yours almost instantly.

It hadn’t been his intention to yell at you, and it certainly wasn’t something he wanted to do, but one man could only take so much. At some point, he had to make it so that you saw who he was, and what he had to offer you.

Of course, Aemond would have preferred a heartfelt declaration of his feelings, in a room where he could actually see the sparkling of your eyes instead of this, but it was no matter.

Even if it had to be like this, little more than a hushed whisper under the cover of darkness, all that mattered was that you heard him.

…and what choice did you have after something like that? What had Aegon done to deserve your affections? You weren’t sure.

Granted, if you’d had time to think about it, you may have had a reason. You may have been able to explain the many reasons you’d chosen him as your closest friend but right now, you couldn’t think of a single thing.

All you could focus on was the way Aemond was peering down at you with so much intensity and the way his right hand had slowly snuck back up to your wrist at your side, fiddling with the fabric trim of your sleeve.

All you could see, and feel, was him in a way you’d never experienced before.

“I don’t know,'' you muttered finally, feeling a bit pathetic as you willed your brain to work properly. You had never once been stunned into silence by the presence of another person before, and it didn’t make any sense.

What had changed? You didn’t know. Apparently, in this moment, you didn’t know much of anything but instead of mocking you as Aegon would have, Aemond simply nodded.

That was what he thought.

You were so used to being devoted to his brother, and had been for so many years, that you didn’t even know why that was. You were so busy constantly doting on him, and dealing with his every thought and feeling that you didn’t realize it was meaningless.

“I could be so much more for you, if you’d only let me” Aemond’s words surrounded you the moment he spoke them, and like the crashing of waves, you realized what this was.

He wasn’t angry at all.

Aemond was hurt.

All this time, he was under the impression that the reason you remained by Aegon’s side was because of a longing, forever to be unfulfilled, but that couldn’t be more wrong.

You did not love Aegon, and it was not Aegon who made you feel as if you could breathe for the first time in all your life.

That title belonged to another, though he had clearly been just as blind to the truth as you had before now.

“I do care much for Aegon. He’s one of my oldest friends, but I have no desire to be with him,” you clarified, feeling the need to get that out in the open first and foremost. Getting a bit braver, you took his wandering hand in your own, giving it a testing squeeze.

It was so strange, knowing someone so well and not at all, all in the same moment.

Aemond tensed slightly at the touch, almost as if you’d struck him, largely because this wasn’t what he’d expected at all. In truth, he hadn’t had much time to consider anything at all regarding this conversation, but he never would have predicted this, not with all the time in the world.

“What do you desire?” he asked, his tone barely audible and inconceivably small as he tried to wrap his mind around how he’d gotten to this point.

You, the one he’d always dreamed of, were so close and yet still so far away. He felt as if he were to breathe, he may ruin it all, and that just wasn’t worth the risk.

Gingerly, you collected your thoughts, for once deciding to let your own desires out way those of everyone else.

Aegon didn’t matter, the opinions of the nobility didn’t matter, and really, Aemond didn’t either. In this moment, all that mattered was you and what you truly desired, stripped bare of all other things.

“I quite think I’d like to be cared for, for a while” you hummed, your voice equal parts certain and wavering as you tried to take a role you’d never known a day in your life.

If Aemond meant as he said, he would take care of you and that was something you desperately wanted. You just weren’t used to asking for the things you wanted, or even, needed. It wasn’t something someone of your standing had ever known.

You hadn’t meant to snoop.

Jake had asked you to find Troy, said he had to talk to him but didn’t have the time to track him down. He was a busy man, after all, and if Jeremiah needed help, he couldn’t exactly make him wait.

So, you agreed.

You took off toward Troy’s room, assuming that given the time of day and schedule for rounds, that was where he would be.

He wasn’t.

His bedroom was unoccupied by the time you reached it, but not empty.

On the floor, out of place in the immaculate space, was that leather-bound notebook he carried with him all the time. It was one of his most prized possessions and you knew he would be missing it, if he didn’t realize it was gone.

That was it.

By all accounts, you were trying to do something nice. You figured it had fallen out of his back pocket when he was getting dressed or rushing out the door to get to his post.

You had to find him anyway, so when you did, you could take it to him.

It was innocent, at least, at first.

You had only good intentions and you weren’t even going to open it, but almost on instinct, as soon as you touched the leather, you flipped open the front cover. Whether out of curiosity or habit, you weren’t sure but it didn’t matter.

All that mattered as soon as it was open was the ink, dried to the page and committing his every thought, as if recording for posterity.

On the first page, he’d written his name, followed by a date. If you had to guess, you’d say that was the day he obtained it.

It was interesting.

Troy’s handwriting was delicate and even, and you could tell that he put time into every single letter and number. Like he knew they would be there forever and couldn’t handle a mistake.

You smiled, letting yourself sit at the foot of his bed, your fingers tracing each letter as you read them.

For the most part, his notebook was filled with what you would have expected. Factual scribblings and miscellaneous numbers that held no meaning to anyone other than Troy.

In all honesty, you barely understood what you were looking at.

…but it didn’t matter.

Troy had been carrying this time with him everywhere he went since you’d met him, and never once had you held it like this. Never had you looked upon the pages, or even asked what he was always writing.

You just let him keep his secrets, because everyone had something that was just for them, but now that you were seeing it, you didn’t regret picking it up.

No matter how wrong it was.

You felt like, for what was probably the first time, you were seeing Troy for who he was and he wasn’t even in the room with you.

The next few pages were less interesting, though just as telling, with every inch of the paper covered with dates and times.

The watch schedule.

After that, you found what seemed to be a detailed list of miscellanious items, and quantities that had to be supply logs from his runs. You could tell because of the delicate little checks beside each thing, telling you he'd cataloged them.

That was who Troy was.

Organized and meticulous, even when he was within his own private thoughts.

It continued on like that for a while. Page after page full of numbers, little symbols and time stamps, but you didn’t skip over a single one. You took your time considering each little marking, far more than you’d ever studied anything in your life.

It was almost as if you were reading a roadmap and you couldn't forget a single detail, which in a way, you were.

This notebook was a reflection of Troy, and not just who he presented to people on the outside, but the real Troy.

This was the closest thing he’d ever keep to a personal journal, and while it didn’t contain any written feeling or sentiment, you could feel it.

With each word you read, and each number you attempted to quantify, you got it. You understood who he was, more and more.

In a way that he could never have expressed to your face.

You were remarkably relaxed as you read, considering you were actively betraying the personal privacy of one of your closest friends, but that all came to a screeching halt as you neared the center of the book.

There, above everything else you’d seen so far, you found something that surprised you. Something within the collection of thoughts that actually confused you more than anything else had.

It was you.

There, on those worn pages, was you. Or, at the very least, some sort of tribute to you. The resemblance was stark, and you couldn’t have explained it away if you tried.

Which obviously wasn’t what you expected.

Still, you didn’t move to make anything of it at first. You knew Troy well enough to know that there could very well be drawings of every single person he’d ever seen hidden within the covers.

Maybe he just didn’t want to forget the people he knew. Maybe he didn’t want to forget their faces.

That would have been a perfectly reasonable thing to do considering the world you lived in, and how frequently people left your lives.

The second drawing was harder to explain away, and by the time you reached a seventh page, you couldn’t deny it anymore.

They were all of you.

Each one was different, and just as great a resemblance, but they were all of you.

You could feel your face scrunch up slightly as you considered what you were looking at, before eventually turning back to the first drawing of many and just looking at it for a while.

It was good.

A simple pencil sketch, with harsher lines and shading in some areas, where Troy had deemed necessary and softer, lighter emphaisis on others. Complete, of course, with the date in the corner.

It looked a lot like you.

The first one, the one that had caught your attention in the first place, was of your face. There was a soft, almost serene smile on your face and you looked happy.

You looked pretty, if you could look pretty in a pencil drawing.

The second was farther away, and featured you in the middle of cleaning your hand gun on the picnic table. The third was of you reading, your back against the shed and a sharp look of concentration on your face.

Did you really twist your face up like that when you read? You must have.

There were a few others, all capturing you as you existed, in the exact way you must have looked and you couldn’t help but feel like you were watching yourself through Troy’s eyes.

It was strange.

Still, you didn’t stop your quest and continued looking from page to page, until you came to the most recent drawing.

The last drawing in the set.

This one featured you, sitting in front of a roaring fire with the full expanse of the desert at your back. By all means, it was no different than the others, but for some reason, it felt different as you studied it.

You looked peaceful, almost comfortable, with a wide smile on your face and it would be a lie to say that you didn’t find it beautiful.

It was.

That was when it dawned on you.

You remembered this, remembered sitting in the dirt like you were on the page, telling the militia jokes and listening to their stories about what life was like for them before the fall.

Troy had been so quiet that night. This notebook of his had his full attention the entire night, and at the time, you thought he was taking notes, strategizing and planning out your next moves.

…but he wasn’t.

If the date in the corner of the page was correct, that meant he was doing this that whole time.

His mind wasn’t wondering to far away possibilities, or bloody disasters that no one could prevent except for him. His was watching you, studying the lines of your body and the contours of your face.

Listening to your voice and doing his best to capture the emotion on your face to the page, so that it didn’t have to live in his memories alone.

Wow.

You were quiet for a moment as you thought over the implications of this, or if they were any implications at all, only stopping when you heard the sound of Troy’s truck coming up the road.

It had to be him.

It was always him.

At the sudden distraction, you released a breath you didn’t realize you were holding after a moment, and forced yourself to close the notebook, but you didn’t put it down.

You couldn’t.

For some reason, you felt like if you allowed the leather to separate from your fingers, it would go away somehow. Like, if you set it down, what you now knew would be lost to you forever.

So, rather than be caught in his room without explanation, you tucked the book into your back pocket, where Troy often kept it on his own body, and left.

In a lot of ways, it was the perfect crime.

There was no way that Troy could actually prove that you had been in his room, and considering the fact that you were sure he didn’t realize his journal was missing, he wouldn’t know you’d seen it.

He didn’t have to know.

…but part of you didn’t want that.

Part of you didn’t want to get away with what you’d done, to get away with reading his notebook and learning what you had without something changing.

Everything had changed.

This proved it, whether Troy meant for it to or not.

~

You decided not to say anything at first.

Not because you didn’t want to, but because you didn’t know how. It wasn’t as if you could just go up to him and ask why he’d been sketching scarily accurate portraits of you in his spare time.

So, until you could make up your mind about what you wanted to do, you decided to do nothing.

Instead, you focused your energy forward toward where Troy was, unloading his pack and guns from the back of the truck with Cooper and Blake.

They weren’t scheduled for a run this morning, at least, not to your knowledge but you didn’t have time to care about that. The important thing was that they just got back and they were too preoccupied to notice you.

…but you weren’t preoccupied.

Not anymore.

In fact, as you looked upon Troy at this moment, you felt like you were seeing him for the first time. Like, you finally had a point of reference for how he thought and what happened inside his head when he got all quiet.

Like you were looking at a brand-new person.

You tried to think back to the way he looked at you, looking over that notebook of his, that soft concentration consuming everything else around him. Maybe if you saw the world like that, it would be better.

If you saw him the way he saw you.

In your head, Troy had always been this untouchable force. He was stoic and solid, barking orders and burying everything he felt no matter how unpleasant it may have been, but that wasn’t all there was to him.

There couldn’t be.

As you watched him and took note of the way his face faltered as he scanned the crowd, you saw it. A glimmer of something that wasn’t quite as untouchable as you would have thought.

He was unsure, and given the way, he winced slightly after slugging on his pack, tired too but that wasn’t all. There was a silent joy in the way he wiped the blood from his hands and a whisper of adrenaline clear from the pep in his step.

How was it possible?

Had he always been this complex and you’d just managed to miss it? Or was it simpler than that? Maybe you didn’t want to notice because you couldn’t handle the gamble.

You couldn’t handle being let down, not by Troy. He was too important to you, and if you were to fall too hard, you knew you’d never be able to claw your way back up.

Not that you had much of a choice now.

You had picked up that notebook, and there was no taking that back. The most you could do now was keep going, and deal with what followed with as much grace as you could muster.

“Hey, there you are”

It was the sound of Troy’s voice that brought you out of your head, but not in time to actually prepare yourself for having to face him.

The best you could do was smile, desperately hoping that your face didn’t look as guilty and conflicted as you felt.

“Yeah, here I am,” you tried, willing yourself to focus on the conversation at hand and not on the way the midday sun made his eyes sparkle. Was he watching you like you were watching him?

Stop it.

“I was supposed to tell you to find Jake. He was looking for you” you forced, giving the blonde a soft smile before continuing on your way, brushing past him only slightly in your hurry.

You couldn’t do this.

How were you supposed to just go about your life like you didn’t know he was silently studying every little thing about you?

How did you do that?

“Y/N, wait up. What’s going on?” Troy called out, shocked by your uncharacteristic briefness and evidently choosing this very moment to start caring about other people’s feelings.

Perfect.

You stopped, considering your options for a second as you waited for him to meet your side, his boots keeping time with his usual stride.

On one hand, you could just abandon your original plan and tell him about the notebook, confess that you’d read it and that you had seen the drawings. On the other hand, you could keep it hidden and say nothing, but that was a bandage at best.

Eventually, you would have to give it back.

So, you took a deep breath and made up your mind. Today was going to be the day that you faced Troy Otto and the feelings you had for him that you’d been steadily burying since you’d met.

You didn’t have any other choice.

It was unceremonious, all things considered, the way you just pulled the small book from your pocket but you didn’t really care. Of all the things currently fighting for the top spot in your mind, finesse didn’t even crack the top ten.

There was no getting away from this and the longer you tried to play it off, the worse it was going to be for both of you.

There was probably a perfectly casual explanation that you just had yet to consider. All you could know for sure right now was that you were never going to know if you didn’t give Troy a chance to explain himself.

“You found it” he allowed, gingerly taking the book from your hands and inspecting it lightly before returning it back to where it belonged.

Safely away in the back pocket of his jeans, away from prying eyes like yours.

“Yeah, I found it.” you could practically feel your blood dropping in temperature as you forced yourself to take the leap. “And I read it too”

Troy’s blood ran cold as soon as you spoke.

You read it? What did that mean? Most of what he’d cataloged in that book wasn’t something you would have been able to understand, even with as clever as you happened to be.

It was an extension of what happened inside his head, and if he was being honest, Troy was lucky he could understand what he’d written most of the time.

It wasn’t possible that you’d read it.

It just wasn’t possible.

“What do you mean?” his words were much more pensive this time, as he waited for you to explain yourself.

Troy was smart, and he knew better than to incriminate himself, even if technically he hadn’t done anything wrong. The drawings were creepy, sure, but not necessarily disallowed.

“It’s a good likeness. It could have been a lot worse. I mean, I didn’t even know you could draw” you shrugged, telling him everything he needed to know without having to actually admit to what you both knew out loud.

It was the most painless option, but knowing that didn’t stop Troy from panicking as he considered what this might mean for the two of you in the future. Of course, he wouldn’t blame you for whatever choice you made.

He’d crossed a line, again.

“You weren’t supposed to see those” he tried, ultimately preparing himself for the yelling or screaming that would follow your discovery.

It was strange.

Troy knew that when he started the sketches, but for the life of him, he couldn’t stop once he’d started. There was just something about you, and the way you looked when you were completely in your element.

It was like the rest of the world fell away, and even if for a moment, he wanted to capture it.

…but there was no way for him to explain that to you without making the whole thing a lot worse than it already was.

After all, the only thing more inappropriate than drawing you without your permission or awareness would be justifying it with unreciprocated feelings of admiration.

Feelings he could hardly rectify within his own head, let alone out loud to you.

“Why do you draw them?” you wondered, heading back down the hill toward your own cabin, Troy following you gingerly.

You had no idea what you were doing here, or what difference this whole thing would make but you knew that you had to talk about it. You had to figure out where to go from here, and you’d rather do it without an audience.

This definitely wasn’t the business of anyone else at the ranch.

He sighed, watching you out of the corner of his eye as you moved, making no motion to say anything else until he spoke. “Got bored” he tried, his voice wavering in a way you’d never heard before.

“Don’t lie. It’s okay, I just want to know why” you shrugged, practically pleading with him to tell you the truth.

You didn’t blame him for assuming the worst. That was just who Troy was, and who he would always be, but you weren’t angry with him for this.

You were just surprised.

Most of the drawings, kept between important data he’d collected, were of you out in the world, going about your day and unaware that you were being watched.

Which, to some, may have been unsettling but you didn’t think so. You knew Troy and you knew that in order for him to put the time and effort into these, they were important to him.

Because you were important to him.

All you wanted was to hear him say it.

“Truth?” he hummed, more for himself than you as he bought just a little more time before you finally stopped, just far enough away from the center of the ranch to have some privacy.

You nodded, trying to ignore the way his gaze shifted around your face before finally dropping to the dirt.

“You’re real. Real and beautiful” Troy shrugged, in what had to be the most pitiful attempt at minimizing himself that you’d ever seen.

This wasn’t who he was.

Troy was strong and self-assured. You had never seen him doubt a decision or second guess a choice once in all the time you’d known him unless that was just another one of his illusions you’d never looked twice at.

Sensing you weren’t content with just that, he continued, laying his soul bare in a way you’d never expected.

Not from him.

“You know that feeling when you’re staring them down out there, and you know that if you make one wrong move or miss anything, that will be it?” he questioned, clearly referencing the dead and the thrill he got from the sick little game of chicken you’d had to put a stop to quite a few times before.

“Yeah, but what does that have to do with me?” you started, only to stop again when Troy continued, “The feeling after, when they’re all dead and everything is okay again…that’s how I feel when I’m around you”

Troy paused, his eyes meetings yours for a moment as he breathed, clearly trying to gauge your reaction to his confession so far.

He found nothing.

You knew the feeling he was talking about. The relief that flooded your body when the adrenaline peaked after the danger had already faded away and you could revel in what you’d accomplished.

…but the drawings.

You didn’t understand how they were related.

So, clearly following your train of thought, Troy fished the book out of his pocket and opened it, pausing only briefly before showing you the page he’d ended on.

It was further along in the journal than you’d gotten in your initial search this morning but it would seem that there was a reason for that.

It was another drawing of you.

This time, you were curled up in your sleeping bag, fast asleep. It wasn’t entirely different from any of the others, but considering that it was the one he’d chosen, you knew it was special.

It was his favorite.

This was the first one he’d drawn. The one that had started the habit that he’d yet to break, even now.

You had been out with the rest of the militia. Under his direction, you’d wandered too far away from the ranch and bunked down for the night in a cave, but for the life of him, Troy couldn’t sleep.

He couldn’t quiet his mind and he certainly couldn’t have hoped to get any sleep, so he picked up his notebook. At first, he was just going to read over his notes from the outpost, but then he glanced over at you.

You were too peaceful and too beautiful. It made him feel something he’d never felt and some part of him felt like if he didn’t commemorate it somewhere, that feeling would just slip away and he didn’t want to let it go.

He couldn't let it go.

“I won’t say I love you, because I don’t think I’d know even if I did, but I draw these because they remind me of what I do it for,” Troy muttered, admiring the graphite as if he’d done it a hundred times before, and maybe he had.

The adjustment to the Ranch was proving to be far harder for you than you would have expected.

It was a perfectly nice place and there was no reason that it shouldn’t have been the greatest thing that had happened to you since the fall of the world.

Other than the fact that everything about it just seemed off.

You had been looking over your shoulder for so long, constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, that being in a house again just made you feel like a caged animal.

It was strange how things like that could change in an instant. How something you had once done every day without thought, that made you feel so comfortable, now was nearly enough to make you crawl out of your skin.

It felt wrong.

No matter what you did, you just couldn’t seem to come to terms with the way it felt. You were uncomfortable, finding yourself more and more uneasy as the days went by, instead of settling in like the others.

This was just the way the world was now and you had to get used to that. The trouble was that you just couldn’t be sure if this was the new normal or not.

You couldn’t trust that this was what it was and that it wasn’t going to change at a moment's notice.

After all, this used to be the norm and just as quickly as it had gone away, it was back. It was only natural that you struggled a bit in the interim.

For example, you had just finished your first real shower in years, during which you had scrubbed what felt like a lifetime of dirt and grime from your flesh. It felt raw once you’d finished, but that wasn’t the strangest part.

The strangest part by far was the coconut shampoo you found already waiting for you in the cabin you’d been given, fully stocked with anything you or the Clarks could have ever needed.

It was insane to smell like a tropical oasis after so much time.

It was wrong.

To even think about it was too much for you to comprehend and in some ways, it may have even scared you. It was too normal and too mundane for you to be able to relax, even though every fiber of your being was begging you to.

After all, you were physically and mentally exhausted. It was just that the idea of getting too comfortable here constantly plagued your mind, and that paranoia of no longer being prepared for the outside world was daunting.

Paralyzing.

Still, you did your very best to avoid letting anyone in your group know just how much you were struggling with this.

There was nothing they could do to help, and even if they could, it wasn’t as if you were alone in your distrust. Everyone here was feeling the familiar strangling sensation of normalcy, threatening to choke the life out of you all if you let it.

So, you kept up a brave face and didn’t say anything.

For the most part, it worked well. You did everything you could to keep your mind off of the strange nature of it all, cleaning and recleaning your handgun and keeping a constant eye out for any signs of compromise in the fence.

Anything to keep your wits about you.

Though, no matter what you did, everything seemed to change when the sun went down.

All of that paranoia and fear got worse when you couldn’t rely on the daylight to keep your composure. Even something as simple as a stray beam of light across the wall made you panic, with everything registering as a threat.

It was as if you couldn’t turn those reflexes off, regardless of how hard you tried.

What you didn’t realize was that you weren’t alone in your anxiety and there was another in your group, staring out into the darkness, unable to even consider sleep.

Across the room, right now, Nick was staring up at the same shadows dancing along the ceiling as you were, considering each one carefully.

As if there was some secret held within them that he couldn’t quite make out.

This went on for a while longer before eventually, Nick decided that he’d had enough of trying to sleep in the bunk he’d been given and made his way, as quietly as he could, outside.

Anything would have been better than trying to sleep, knowing he couldn’t have been farther from getting any rest.

At least outside, he could see any threats coming, instead of just waiting for them to catch him when he turned his back.

Nick was quiet.

All things considered, you were sure that no one else knew that he was even awake, but between the creaking of the door on its hinges and the fact he walked heavily on his feet, you couldn’t have hoped to miss it.

Not when you’d been awake for hours.

So, you did the only thing you could think to do. You got up as quietly as you could, your bare feet padding on the wood floors in a cadence all their own.

Past where Madison and Alicia were fast asleep in their own beds until finally, you found yourself on the front porch.

In the short time, it had taken you to catch up to him, Nick was already standing on the porch, a lit cigarette held between his lips as he stared out into the desert beyond the walls.

Obviously, you two were having the same problem.

“Can’t sleep?” you called, only briefly contemplating going back inside to suffer alone before deciding against that. For all you knew, Nick was coming out here to have some alone time and you were just going to be a bother.

…but, considering the very thought of going back in there now filled that pit in your stomach with dread, so you continued on your way, only stopping when you reached the banister.

You figured being with him would be better than being alone, even in the unlikely event he didn’t feel like talking.

“Nope. What about you? You doing okay?” Nick hummed, casually looking over your face, lit up only by the light of the moon, searching for any signs of distress or upset.

It seemed obvious to him that you wouldn't have come out here if you didn’t need or want something, but it also wasn’t like you to just show up out of the blue either, not without a reason.

Not in the middle of the night.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m just not sure about this yet” you shrugged, doing your very best to keep calm. It freaked you out, and you couldn’t help but be upset. Though, you knew you didn’t need to try too hard to put it into words.

You never did with Nick.

No matter what you were feeling, he always understood where you were coming from.

There was silence for a few more moments, as you sat down on the porch steps. The wood was a bit cool when compared to the warmth of your blankets, but it didn’t bother you. Even after the scorching sun had faded away, some of its warmth remained.

“Yeah, I know the feeling” the male agreed, sitting down beside you with a small huff, exhaling the breath of his cigarette into the air around you.

On anyone else, it may have been unwelcome but after all this time, it was a scent you had grown to associate with Nick.

At times like this, you weren’t above admitting that it made you feel a bit safer than you would have without it, like a security blanket.

“What about you? What’s on your mind? You wouldn’t be up if something wasn’t bothering you” you asked, speaking softly to keep from waking anyone else up.

You recognized that look on his face.

It was the look that you’d all worn at one point or another during all of this and even in the dim moonlight, it was clear as day. You couldn’t have missed it even if you tried, because that was what this living nightmare did to people.

It was unavoidable, even for someone like Nick.

“Just like you said, couldn’t sleep, plus I needed a smoke” he shrugged again, not really ready to get into the whole existential crisis thing with you in the middle of the night.

Not that you were ready to just blindly accept that either.

The truth was, it was clear that Nick wasn’t telling you everything, which was odd for him.

The two of you had never really had trouble communicating with one another. If anything, you had a sort of silent understanding that you were on the same page, and you had never needed anything more than that.

…but tonight, you needed more.

Tonight, you needed to know he was here, and that he wasn’t going anywhere. Really, all you wanted to hear was his voice, and it wouldn’t matter what he said.

As long as he was talking.

“Tell me” you prompted, hoping that by some miracle, Nick could somehow drown out the noise in your head, even if for just a moment. “Talk to me”

That was all it took.

For Nick, permission to take up space was all he needed, and as soon as he had it, you found just a bit of the solace you’d been searching for.

“It’s the dark, right? It makes it all worse, feels like the ground could fall out from under you at any second,” he decided, more smoke billowing from between his lips and dissipating somewhere above you both.

You could only nod in reply, not even attempting to come up with some kind of response. That was it.

You already felt out of place here, like a fish out of water, but in the dark, you felt powerless.

“Like you’re all alone in the world, and everything is out to get you the moment you close your eyes” you allowed, recalling the way it made you feel, each and every night the sun fell from the sky.

For people like you and Nick, it had always been there, but now the rest of the world was feeling it too.

It really was over, and it was hard not to feel hopeless about it.

Normally, Nick didn’t know how to put the feelings into words, and he certainly didn’t want you to think he was too weak to handle what his mother seemed to consider a blessing. It was bad enough that she thought he was a burden, he couldn’t take it from you too.

…but, you got it. You had always seen him, for who he was, even when he didn’t know who that was.

This was a good thing.

This place, it was good for you to be here.

Realistically, he knew that, just as you did. Coming to terms with the benefit of living here wasn’t the hard part, it was actually doing it every day.

It was being able to do it without going out of your head.

“So, what are we supposed to do about it?” His words came all at once, a bit rough and just as pointed as always, though they died off softer than they normally would have on his lips.

There had to be something you could do, something that you both could do to make this whole thing a little easier.

Right?

Eventually, you were bound to get used to this and you were sure you would, but in the meantime, you still needed to sleep.

Navigating this world, dead on your feet, would only make everything worse.

“I don’t know. I guess we live…as hard as it is” you decided, taking the cigarette as he offered it now, letting the smoke warm you from the inside out.

It was weak, a bandage at best, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter if it was a lie or was far-fetched; it was the best you could do and it would have to do.

For now.

“It’s okay. It doesn’t have to be alright overnight”

There was a finality in Nick’s voice then, something that told you everything you needed to know. Even though he hadn’t actually vocalized every bit of what he was thinking, you didn’t need him to.

You were going to be okay because he thought you would.

“Whatever happens, we’ll deal with it” you agreed, after just a moment to think about what you wanted to say. If nothing else, at least you could believe in that.

Whatever this world threw at you, you knew Nick would be there through it all.

Nick sighed, a small “yeah” leaving his lips as he took another long drag of the cigarette, too lost in thought to give you much more than that. You didn’t mind, letting your head rest on his shoulder, his rhythmic breaths calming you.

In and out, over and over again…never stopping.

Neither of you moved from that place for a while, only shifting when the temperature started dropping below the point of comfort. Both of you were dressed for sleep, not for the early morning chill.

“We should probably head back in” he whispered, bumping you with that same shoulder you’d been resting against, jostling you slightly. “Tomorrow’s another day”

You nodded but didn’t move even then, choosing to instead watch as Nick took what was left of the cig from his lips and dropped it, before standing up and heading toward the door.

It stayed where it landed, the embers burning away for a moment before fading out completely against the dirt.

“You coming?” You didn’t even realize you’d been staring at it until Nick’s voice shook you from the trance, back from where he was standing, waiting for you.

There was another beat between you, but this time, the silence wasn’t born of anything tense or unsure. Now, Nick was just waiting, watching you like the two of you had all the time in the world.

Which, at this moment, you did.

Life was already fragile, to begin with, but now, death was as common as breathing. So, there was no reason to waste a second.

No reason not to admire one another from time to time, and certainly no reason to chase sleep alone, in the dead of night.

“Will you stay with me?”

Your voice was quiet as you spoke, still cautious of the late hour and surrounding families, but it wasn’t timid by any means.

Nick knew you, and you knew him.

You weren’t a couple of school kids with a crush, not Romeo and Juliet on opposite sides of a war.  You were just two people who enjoyed one another’s company, and with the world, as it was, you didn’t see the point in pretending otherwise.

Thankfully, neither did Nick.

He had never been one to ignore his base impulses, and the moment you extended the invitation, he agreed with a nod.

So, as quietly as you could, both you and Nick stepped back into the cabin. Your bunks were all relatively close together, which was nice, but they weren’t exactly made for more than one person.

Not that that was going to stop you. If anything, it meant you had to get a little creative, which was almost second nature by this point.

You grinned to yourself as you figured out the solution to your little problem and yanked the blankets from your bunk onto the floor, following them up with Nick’s own bedding.

It was a little silly, but you didn’t mind and the muffled chuckle from the man at your back told you that he didn’t either.

It was kind of perfect if you were being honest.

Nick snuggled in first, opening his arm to create a space for you at his side, which you took as carefully as you could. This would all be pretty difficult to explain if you woke up Madison right now.

“Comfy?” Nick cooed, his warm breath fanning your face due to the sheer proximity of your two bodies after you’d had a second to get settled.

“Actually, I think am” you decided, once again nuzzling into his side, the pattern of his breath lulling you into peace.

In and out, over and over again.

~Bruce is an easy person to be with romantically

~So long as you’re a fan of awkward glances and late nights

~Bruce Wayne is a night owl and doesn’t actually make it to bed a lot of the time, so get used to cold sheets and early breakfasts

~A ton of really uncomfortable eye contact, because expressing his feelings is hard for Bruce and sometimes he just can’t express what he’s going through to you. It’s easier to just hope you get him well enough to work it out for yourself.

~Staunchly protective. Bruce has seen the underbelly of his fair city and as much as he adores it, he wouldn’t trust it with his most prized possession.

~Lots of little touches

~Bruce always has some kind of contact with you, whether it’s a hand on your lower back while you’re walking through a crowd or reassuring squeezes to your hands or shoulders as he passes.

~That being said, he isn’t “touchy” in any way. He doesn’t touch you just for the sake of it, every touch is deliberate and intentional.

~Bruce also isn’t particularly vocal if he can help it.

~After a while of being together, you just get to know all his little tells and actions that give away far more about how he’s feeling than he’d ever actually tell you.

~He’s careful, and guarded to a fault so don’t expect getting him to open up to you to be easy.

~Constantly getting dragged to galas and events, partially because it’s good for the heir to the Wayne empire to be seen out and about with you on his arm and partially because he simply can’t survive them on his own

~Bruce’s love language is absolutely gift giving, not because of the sheer amounts of money he has but because it was his fathers love language.

~He grew up watching Thomas shower Martha in just about everything she could have ever wanted, and that’s how he sees love. More than anything, he wants you to know that he loves you the same way his father loved his mother.

~Little black smudges all over your pillows and towels from all the eye makeup

~He’s a little (a lot) moody

~Bruce gets grumpy a lot and would probably get snippy sometimes if he’s too tired or hasn’t eaten in a while but eventually, you get good at not paying that too much mind.

~He’s covered in bruises, cuts and scars. Most of them you don’t take care of for him, but one occasion, he’s let you check them out just to make yourself feel better

~Having dinner together, at his favorite place, on the same night every single week…as long as he isn’t busy wearing his mask and saving the soul of Gotham city

~Constant check ins from Alfred, who grows just as protective over you as Bruce is.

~It’s important to remember that Bruce grew up richy rich and high society so sometimes he gets a little snobby. He likes expensive wine and the kind of classical music that blends into the background of a room.

~If you didn’t grow up like he did, he’s going to be a little out of touch.

~”You can’t just drop that much money out of nowhere”  

~”I don’t know. Not everybody was a boy billionaire”

~Dating Bruce Wayne and dating Batman are two different things but somehow, you manage to juggle the two without issue.

~Absolutely loves to rest his head against your middle, especially if he’s getting overwhelmed. He loves to just pull you into him wherever he’s sitting and hide away in you for a while.

~Small surprises all the time. You haven’t actually woken up without a pastry from that little french bakery you love or a cup of hot coffee since you moved into Wayne Manor.

~Forehead kisses

~Bruce is sensitive to bright light, which you adjust too quickly, which means a lot of candle lit dinners and nights spend in front of the roaring fireplace in your pajamas

~This man is a fantastic boyfriend. He’s absolutely on top of everything. Sometimes, he forgets his own appointments and things like that but never yours.