Masterlist of fics I like, and recommend you enjoy as well:
Like a rotten dog by punk-in-docs — Sandor Clegane x handmaiden!reader; this fic has quickly made me fall in lust with The Hound despite knowing of him for years…
I’ll Help You by captainfern — SEX POLLEN DUNK X YOU FIC! Smut! Yes!
Be Good and Share by captainfern — dunk x travel companion! reader x daeron; very good 👍
modern!duncan as your bf by dustofstarss - cute blurb…
modern!ser duncan as your bf by breakspearz - so sweet!!! More of a comfort fic
Dad bod!Dunk blurb & Chubby!Dad!Dunk blurb & ser duncan the tall masterlist & Yummy bush fic… by louloucake - unfortunately this gets me feral every time. I think this is my type, gang… big strong sweet men…
Accelerate by yenayaps (gojo satoru x milf!reader)
Intriguing plot, mild angst, has smut; A well-rounded, well-executed fic.
Folded by tonycries (toji fushiguro x reader)
If you love a munch, this fic is for you.
Shot in the dark by bibelotcat (weapons tech! reader x leon kennedy)
If you love the “reader has same/similar career or skill level as the character” trope, this is for you
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your thoughts on ls tracing AKOTSK men's features while they're asleep....? 🙏
*explodes*
oh, these made me YEARN like a mf.
BAELOR.
Baelor sleeps wrapped around you. One arm under your neck, the other banded around your waist, his chest a broad steady heat along your spine. This man doesn’t just sleep next to you. He gathers you, hoards you, his forearm snug across your middle as if he’s shielding something from sight. Some part of him still doesn’t quite trust the world not to steal you while he dreams. So to trace his features you would have to disentangle yourself, slowly, without waking him, which is its own minor heist in truth. And when you finally got your hand free, what you would find, in sleep, is a face that has finally let go of duty.
His brow unknits. That crease between his brows (the one that lives permanently in the daytime, the crease that comes from carrying a kingdom on his shoulders) is gone. You would touch it lightly with your thumb because the absence of it is so striking. And you would trace the line of his nose, the slight bump where it was broken once in a tourney mishap he refuses to discuss. You would map the shape of his mouth, which in sleep falls slightly open, vulnerable in a way it never is when he speaks. You would touch the silver at his temples that the southern light at the Red Keep kisses, as if the gods simply meant to mark him there. And you would feel, with a sharp and unbearable tenderness, the thinness of the skin beneath his eyes. The bruised hollows of a man who’s not slept properly in years until he started sleeping with you. The wonder of it would land on you like cold water: I am the reason this man rests.
He would catch you at it. Baelor sleeps the lightest of any of them despite being the most exhausted, because part of him is always listening for the realm. His hand would close gently around your wrist mid-trace and his eyes would crack open. That strange mismatched gaze, dark and pale, dazed with sleep, and he would smile, slow, delighted. What are you doing, wife? And you would, mortified, try to retract your hand, and he would not let you. No. Carry on. I should like to see what conclusions you reach.
MAEKAR.
Sleeps like a soldier. On his back, one hand resting on his stomach, the other near where his sword would be. Even now, even in your bed, even years into a marriage he’s come to want with all the fierce surprise of a man who didn’t expect to want anything again, he still sleeps in formation. Braced. His body has not unlearned the war. And to trace his face in sleep is to trace a map of every fight he’s been in, because Maekar’s face is evidence of them. The faint pox scars across his cheeks. The new split scar along the ridge of his knuckle from a sword hilt that bit him years ago. The cut along his cheek that has faded but not gone from Redgrass Field.
His hands are the part that would steal your breath, though. Rough, scarred and callused from years with a sword in his hand, from battles he’s had to fight. You would lift his hand from where it rests on the coverlet and you would turn it over in yours and you would map the calluses with your fingertip. The place where the pommel sits, where the reins lie, where the bowstring pulls. And somewhere in this, he would wake. Maekar wakes fast. Soldier-fast. He would wake with his other hand moving toward where the sword should be, and then he would register it was you, and the readiness would drain out of him in a single long exhale, and he would look at you with that gruff bewildered tenderness he can never quite hide and he would grunt, voice rough with sleep: what. Not a question, exactly. More a statement of presence. And you would say, softly: go back to sleep, husband. And he would, but only after pulling you closer, his big hand settling at the small of your back, his face turning into your throat where he can smell you.
AERION.
Catastrophic. And not in the way you’d expect, because Aerion doesn’t sleep braced or guarded the way a man with his obsession ought to. Aerion sleeps curled toward you, every line of him already oriented your way, like a flower that grew toward the sun in the dark and has not bothered to dissemble about it. One hand fisted in the fabric of your shift. One leg hooked over yours. His face turned into the pillow you share, lashes pale against fever-warm skin, breath stirring the loose hair at your temple. And the moment your fingertips graze his cheek (the moment you have the audacity to touch him while he sleeps)he doesn’t startle, doesn’t flinch. He leans into it.
Greedy is the only word for him. Aerion in sleep is greedy for you, in a way his waking self has spent years trying to disguise. Awake, his obsession comes barbed, sneering, costumed in cruelty so he doesn’t have to admit how badly he wants. Asleep, none of that machinery is running. So when your thumb traces the line of his jaw, he turns his face into your hand. Open-mouthed. Half-conscious. Like a dragonling rooting toward heat. His lashes flutter. He makes a small, rumbling sound in his throat. And he moves. That lean dangerous body shifting closer, closer. Until you understand he’s not simply asleep beside you but winding himself around you, leisurely and deliberate. His face is inches from yours and his forehead nearly brushes yours and you’re nose-to-nose in the dim, his breath on your mouth.
Presenting himself. Offering himself. Look at me, the whole shape of him says, even in sleep. Map me. Mark me. It has always been yours.
And so you do. You trace the cropped softness of his hair at the nape, where it grows in stubble-pale from the time he cut it for you. You touch the scar on his jaw. Smooth your thumb along the high arrogant ridge of his cheekbone, the place that goes flushed when he’s feverish or furious or wanting. You touch the corner of his full mouth, and his lips part for you, automatically, the same way they parted for the cup of water you held to them when he was sick. And his eyes are open by then, of course they are (Aerion sleeps shallow, the dark thing in him will not let him sleep deeper than that) and they’re pale and blown wide, fever-bright in the dark, watching you map him with the desperate attentiveness of a man who’s been waiting for this his entire life and would die before he admitted it.
He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t break the spell. He simply lies there, curled around you, face inches from yours, and lets you have him. Lets you claim him. The whole tableau of it. The hot dragonish body coiled into yours, the parted mouth, the eyes that have not blinked in what feels like minutes. He’s a man being handed over to you in the only language he’s ever been able to speak: the language of stillness while you do what you like. He’ll be vicious about it tomorrow, say something cutting about your sentiment. Your softness, your northern habits. He will perform the disdain so you can’t take from him what he was unable to refuse you tonight. It won’t work. And the next night he’ll be curled into you again, fiercer, before the candle is even out.
VALARR.
Sleeps boyish. There’s no other word for it. For a man so polished in waking (the careful cultivation of charm, the lingering look he gives you across rooms, the deliberate way he holds himself even at rest) Valarr in sleep is softened to the point of foolishness. His mouth is slightly parted, dark hair mussed. The white streak at his temple is a pale slash through the tousle. The polish that defines him by day has completely deserted him, and what’s left is a man in his twenties with a small crease between his brows and an unguarded face that you can’t stop looking at.
So you touch him. Just your thumb at first, smoothing the crease between his brows the way you’ve wanted to all day. And Valarr (who’s the most attuned to you of any of them) doesn’t so much wake as soften further under your hand. He makes a small sound, sleep-thick and pleased. Turns his face into your palm, slow, instinctive. His lashes don’t lift. His eyes don’t open. He’s still mostly asleep. But his mouth finds the pad of your thumb, and his lips trace it, unhurried, half-conscious, learning the shape of you with the same devotion he gives every other inch of you when he’s awake.
Then he nuzzles deeper. His cheek against your palm. His nose at the heel of your hand. A man who is, you realise with a quiet jolt, presenting himself for petting. Presenting himself to be claimed. I’m yours, take stock, do as you like. Said with no words, only the small shameless tilt of his head into your hand, the tiny kiss he plants in the centre of your palm when his lips happen to find it. And when his eyes finally do crack open, mismatched and unfocused, they find your face and his whole expression breaks open into that helpless unguarded delight you only ever see from Valarr in sleep. The man under the prince.
He wants to be kept. That’s the secret of Valarr in sleep. The performance is intricate, the polish is real, the immortalising gaze is genuine. But underneath all of it is a man who wants to be a thing you keep on the bed and stroke when he’s good. And tracing his features while he sleeps gives him exactly that, and he goes utterly liquid under your hand. He’ll let you do it as long as you want, and he’ll purr small wordless sounds into your palm, and somewhere in this hour you’ll understand that you have ruined him for any other woman who’s ever lived, because no one else has ever touched him like this. Without performance, without ceremony, without payment due, and no one else ever will again.
DAERON.
Oh, oh, oh. Daeron sleeps with his hand curled near his face, knuckles white, holding something back. And his face in sleep is the only place you ever see him young. Waking, Daeron is older than his years. Wine-aged, dream-gnawed, carrying the weight of visions that crawl out of him in his sleep and walk into the world. He has a face that’s going to be ruined by drink before he’s forty if no one stops him. But in sleep, before the drink hits, before the dreams come, before the hand pours the next cup… Daeron looks young, handsome. He looks like the boy he was before the gift cracked him open.
So to trace his features in sleep is to map the wound the dreams have been chewing on. You would touch the dark crescents under his eyes. Deep, blue-black, constant now. You would touch the soft hair at his temple, damp at the roots. You would touch the corner of his mouth, which in sleep does this terrible thing. It twitches, downward, as if the dreams are already starting, as if even unconscious he’s bracing. And you would know, with a sinking that is its own kind of love, that you can’t save him from what is in his head. You can only sit with him afterwards. You can only hold him while he sweats it out.
He will wake mid-trace. He’ll wake with his eyes already wet, dream-disturbed, half a word in his mouth that he swallows when he sees you. And he will look at you for a long moment and then his face will crumple (just briefly, just for a heartbeat) and then he’ll laugh, that bitter wine-aged laugh, and say darling, you should not look at me like that, you’ll spoil me for the rest. And you will say, levelly, Daeron, and he’ll stop laughing, his hand coming up to cover yours where it rests against his cheek. He’ll hold it there for one long silence, and that will be the closest thing to I love you he’s capable of giving you.
LYONEL.
The opposite of all of these men. Lyonel sprawls. He sleeps the way he laughs: loud, generous, taking up the entire bed and apologising for none of it. One arm flung above his head, the other across your waist with a possessiveness so unselfconscious it reads as thoughtless, his frame radiating heat like a hearth. He’s the man who falls asleep faster than anyone you know, because Lyonel doesn’t lie awake worrying. Lyonel has never lain awake worrying. That’s one of the great gifts of being Lyonel Baratheon.
So to trace his features is a different kind of project entirely. It’s not heartbreak. It’s wonder. He’s almost obscenely beautiful in sleep. The stag’s pride of him, the strong jaw gone slack, the dark lashes fanned against tanned skin, the mouth that’s always grinning in waking finally at rest. You would map his face slowly. The small white scar through his eyebrow from a tourney. The flattened bridge of a nose broken twice. The soft place at his temple where his pulse beats steady and unhurried. And Lyonel, who sleeps deeply and long, would not wake. You could trace him for an hour and the man would simply continue to breathe, mouth open, lashes still.
He would wake eventually (late, slow, irritated by sunlight) and he would catch your hand without opening his eyes and bring it to his lips and kiss the palm and rumble what’re you about, she-wolf, and when you told him, I was looking at you, he would crack one eye open, grin like sin, and say aye? And what’s the verdict? And you would have to lie to him, because Lyonel doesn’t need to be told he’s beautiful, Lyonel already knows, Lyonel will dine out on it for a week. So you’d say the verdict is you snore, and he’d roar with laughter, and pull you on top of him, and that would be the end of any further tracing.
DUNK.
Dunk is the only one on this list who sleeps completely undefended. Dunk, all seven feet of him, all knotted muscle and scarred knuckles and broken-nosed sweet-eyed enormity. He sleeps like a child. On his side, one big hand tucked under his cheek, his face slack and peaceful in a way that takes your breath. The largest man you have ever seen, and in sleep he’s the softest, and the dissonance of it is so profound that the first time you saw it your eyes burned.
So you trace his features slowly. Oh so, very slowly. Because Dunk is a man who’s been touched without tenderness his entire life. Bruised, broken, struck by others, and to be touched gently while he sleeps is something he’s never received, ever, not in all the years of life. You would trace the cauliflowered curl of his ear, scarred from training. The ridge of his nose, broken so many times it has settled into its asymmetry. The pale lines of old scars across his cheek, his jaw, his brow. And you would touch his mouth last, most gently, because Dunk has the softest mouth of any man you know, and in sleep it lies parted and trusting like a boy’s.
And Dunk would wake. Slowly. Blinking up at you in the dim light, confused at first, his big body stirring carefully because even half-asleep Ser Duncan the Tall is afraid of breaking small things. And when he registers what you’ve been doing (when he understands you’ve been touching his face) he would go still, the way he goes still when something gentle happens to him that he doesn’t know how to receive. And his eyes, which are honest blue and absolutely without guile, would fill. Genuinely fill. And he would say, in that quiet rumble of a voice, m’lady. You don’t… you don’t have to do that. And you would say, I know. And he wouldn’t be able to speak after that for a long time.
And he would, carefully, very tentatively, lift one of his enormous hands and lay the back of it against your cheek. A fraction of the gentleness you just gave him, a fraction of the same gift returned in his clumsy, sincere way, and he would not say anything, but you would understand that he’s just made you a private vow no septa would recognise but every god in the seven heavens would.
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Part I - Part II - Part III - Part IV - Part V - Part VI - Part VII - Part VIII - Part IX - Part X - Part XI
Summary; You spend your evening serving wine to lords and ladies at a feast - The Hound cant keep his eyes - or hands - off you. With delicious results... TW; SMUT!
Do we have any guesses as to why he split his knuckles? Come chat to my inbox darlings. Reqs welcome
You served on the fringes of the room. Slipping in and out of slices of shadows cast by glowing tiered stands of candles. In-between the fine line of light and dark, there treads your silent, obedient steps.
Filling cups over elbows and weaving around people. Switching out for ale or honey wine, Arbour gold or Dornish red. The silent maiden hand. Sewing harmony with the rich folk; keeping them plunged deep into their cups. Keeping rapacious bellies full.
For the dinner service, you’d been told to dress in your finery. Which consisted of a second hand rich red gown that you’d had to stitch and hem, and mend yourself. Bought for pennies from a back alley merchant. It had probably clothed a fine Lannister’s favourite whore at some point.
It was the colour of cut open pomegranates. Or spilled Lannisport wine. Gold stitching. Worn with your gold belt cinched around your waist. Showing your station of course. You don’t dare forget it. It’s gauzy and the back of the halter trails behind you when you move. Leaving jasmine settling in its wake.
You’ve put your silver pendant on again. The one bearing the stranger. You will endure many things from this keep, but brandishing yourself in gold seems a step too far. You’ll keep your silver and wear it gladly. An ode for your cold, beloved north.
You walk along the tables and pour when a cup is raised in your direction. A very polite summons compared to the shout of ‘maid’ or the snapping of fingers.
The worst was when noblemen’s eyes roamed up and down your figure as you poured. When they grinned like jackals at the pinch of your waist, the fat of your plump ass, the roundness of your cleavage.
They commented on the fierceness of your hair. Molten copper. The lewdness of the river of red that ran down your back. Kissed by fire. And nothing drew men in faster than the offered warmth of a flame.
Some dared curl their arm around you as you stood and poured. Patted your thigh. Reduced you to a working whore with a pat of a hand.
Tried to grope you as they chewed, open mouthed, on their food and drank their fill. You’d seen better manners in a hog pen.
You won’t be coerced into a lap with an easy curl of an arm. Won’t be petted politely on a man’s knee, and let yourself be told to behave like a pretty little slip of a girl.
You weren’t the target. Not like other ladies. No. You were the piercing arrow.
Luckily, no such attentions come sleazing your way tonight. Though you do glare sharply at a man who open handed slaps the ass of your fellow handmaiden, Raela, across from you.
She flinched away. Scurried off. Eyes down. Embarrassed as they roared laughter. The man’s wife shot him enough daggers to trust him not to do it again.
You didn’t trust him not to repeat the offence.
Sandor watched your sharp eyes flay the man - even from across the room.
You won’t forget that indignity.
The north remembers.
He can’t take you off his eyes. Couldn’t be done.
He can’t look past the way your face stiffens. Cold northern rock. The twin discs of them sparkle in the dim. Like swords and silk. Brimmed with a hardness that he recognised was unique to you.
When that same scum commands you for more wine, with a snap of portly fingers, you cross to him, silky as a flower swaying on the wind.
You smile. Pour dutifully. You flirt for fucks sake. That blinding, blooming flash of your smile. Fucker falls for it.
Gods help him.
You do make sure to spill a little on his lap. Just to watch his displeasure. It’s not much, it’s not a dagger rammed in his neck for touching what isn’t his. But it soothes you.
He boots from his seat and shakes off wine drips. Curses you. “Can’t you pour. You silly, bitch.”
“Beg pardon my lord.” You soothe sweetly to his ragged treatment. Staining his golden tunic. Shaking wine off his arm. Red spots falling to the tiles. Not the kind of red you’d like to see fall, sadly.
His silent and bored wife rolls her eyes. She looks like she’d given up talking long ago.
He sits back down with a boar-like grunt.
Moments like that, make your fingers itch, impatient for the familiar hilt of your dagger. As if reaching for an old friend.
It appears you weren’t the only one;
When you glanced back up the head table, you couldn’t help your eyes wandering straight to Sandor;
Who now had his hand curled around his sword hilt. Eyes goring into the head of the man who’d just insulted you. He’d stepped forwards by an inch too. Protective.
You catch his eye. When you’re in the shadows again. Too far away to make out his expression. But the gleam in them. You know that.
Maybe that’s because it’s private. Maybe that gleam is only for you.
It definitely is.
That gleam spoke loudly of your shared secret.
You smile at him. He scowls back. But his eyes softened. Not by much. Enough for you to recognise.
You were stood, in waiting to be beckoned again as a cup bearer, when you weren’t fetching new dishes. You were free to let your eyes roam the hall. To turn your face to where the high table soaked up light like the sun.
Naturally, your eyes do roam to where the King and Queen dine. Cersei eats with a pursed unpleasant mouth as her King slouched. Belches, gulps, shouts with raining spittle for more wine, and as much fatty roast as they can pile on his plate. Rips the meat off the bone with jagged teeth like you’ve seen wildlings do.
Myrcella and Tommen eat like little sparrows. Children both. Demure. Milk cheeked. Baby teeth. Too innocent for this filthy court.
Joffrey stabs at his bloody meat like an executioner. Scowling around the place as usual. Liking the blood that’s seeping down all over his plate from cold meat. His usual state of poison, piss, and vinegar.
Your eyes go beyond that prick Prince. To him again.
Where you stand to the side, it gives you a grand vantage. No one else would call your position that. But you would. You’re lucky. It affords you license to run your eyes across the stoic and massive beast of a figure.
He combs the crowds ahead of him. Hunting for any danger that might still arise. Those whiskey dark, sad eyes hunt shadow and light both, on duty for any glimmer of unrest.
He must’ve relaxed. You know how he slings his hand over the hilt of his sword if he’s expecting trouble. A test to those with the balls who would dare try and take on the hound. The bunching of those huge stacked shoulders before unrest brews. It’s like he’s sniffed the air and found it wanting. Can taste danger. Found it ready to simmer with danger.
One gauntlet hand rests on his belt. The other loosely back by his side.
Every time you come back up from the kitchens with a plate in your hand, his eyes met you at the doorway like he’d missed you. It’s thrilling.
You want to get him alone again. Get your hands all over him. Strip down those pieces of armour and feel the chest you know is built like a barrel. Frankly, his armour was offensive in that it didn’t add much to his bulk. It rudely hid it.
You’re dying, mouth dry with it, to feel the musculature of his bare chest under your palms. Matted with that thick dark hair you spied the first time you saw him. It damn near crawled up his neck to meet his beard. His gorget hid it from your sight.
He’s built like a brute beast and you can’t deny the appeal of it any longer. They poke and prod and call him ugly. You know how mistaken they all are.
You’d seen the way he sits and looks when he’s alone. When he thinks no one can see. Sadness tinged him. He hid it well with wine and silence. He snarks, snarls, pushes people away. Acts as if it’s to protect them, when maybe, it’s the other way round.
Men like him, you’ve found, have bigger softer hearts in their chests than they let on.
When there’s no anger to him. No battle to fight. No throat to cut or skulls to crush. The brute hate empties out of him. The fractured pieces of a strong warrior stood in post too long, is all that’s left behind.
You’d been captured by Sandor Clegane. Possibly from the instance of your first sight of him. Try and deny it as you might. To push it down or away for both your safety. To tuck your affection away so it can’t be found out, used against you.
It was becoming evident your eyes could take to no other. Wanted no other. It’s been so long since you wanted anyone.
And he wanted you right back. Fuck. Safety be damned to hell. It was maddening.
More calls for wine take you off with your flagon. Snap your attention from your thoughts. When your jug runs dry you edge along the shadows of the hall. Walking along to the kitchen stair.
At the shadow bathed mouth of the doorway, a guard with a lecherous shining smile awaits you.
You slow your steps and brace back when you see who’s just come on shift. Standing guard to the doors to the lower bowels of the kitchens. Landar.
Who smirks when he slots himself right in your way. Bedecked in red and gold like the Lannister cunt lion he believes himself to be.
Acting like he was birthed in this castle, to Tywin Lannister himself. Brought squealing into the world between a Queen’s thighs. Promised a princes life. When in reality he came from nothing. One squalling child among several, clinging to his mother’s teat, sprung from in a piss and dung soaked cobbled street, in a decrepit slum in the Hook.
Ale sits stout and foul on his breath. He hooks an arm to yours. Reels you tight in. You keep your spine steel rigid.
“There she is. You look awfully fetching tonight. Red bitch in red.” He drawled lowly. Blue eyes trailing up and down you.
Your eyes narrow to ice. Packed tight with it. Hating that the nickname Joffrey stained you with, was sticking around. Like a flea stuck in ink.
“Haven’t you got a five penny whore to go disappoint.” You snap. Jerking your arm back.
His grip tightens. So deep you already know it will come to nightshade bruises.
He grits his jaw. Smells the perfume you put on earlier. Mingling with the clean scent of sweat as to your labours. Pretty kissable flesh. Salt and jasmine. He likes that you’re a punchy bitch. Someone to cut his teeth on. Difficult and stubborn as a storm.
He acts as if you haven’t spoken. Like he’s taken your tongue with hot pincers.
“So pretty. I don’t half wonder if you’ve put this dress on for some big oaf to tear off you and fuck you in….” He wonders. Eyes tracing over your pendant. And as he was such a rat of a man, they traced your tits after too.
“You wouldn’t be lucky enough to know.” You snapped. You twist and take your arm back off him.
“I like your fire well enough. No point in a girl who lays there and takes it easy.” He smiles. It’s every kind of slimy and insulting.
“I’ll take your tongue out if you dare touch me again.” You crowd him close to the wall. Square your proud shoulders. Level the jut of your chin.
You watch him. You watch every tick and twitch of his face and body.
Your silence should unnerve him. But he’s too stupid and arrogant for that.
He snatches your flagon off you whilst you’re stood seething for a defence. Tipped the dregs in it to his lips. Some red trickled over his gold beard. Down his chin. He wets his lips with it. The sight makes you feel ill.
“Ladies everywhere would curse you to all the gods for taking my tongue from their cunts.” He explains. Flickering his wine stained tongue at you with filthy intent. Chucking your flagon to clatter to the floor.
You’ve had enough.
You catch your ankle behind his. Jerk your leg back and unbalance him on the step. Shove forwards with your elbow braced over his chest plate. Shoving him to the wall. Uncaring if you cracked his head on the uneven stones.
You snatch his own dirk out his belt. Hold it dangerously close to his crotch. Let the knifes tip kiss his laces.
His eyes widen with the way you caught his drunken stupid self, off guard. It wasn’t hard. You knew your way around the gaps in armour. Neck. Knees. Under arms. Soft spots which give when pushed or stabbed. Even when the rest of the body is covered in steel plating.
“Come near me, or any Handmaiden again. I’ll turn you into a fucking eunuch and feed your pathetic cock and balls to the Kings hunting hounds. Understood?” You seethe.
He snarls at you. Trying to think of something clever to say.
You weren’t some meek southern woman. Your hands had known fighting. You’d taken blows. Delivered some. If they try to crush you down, they will be disappointed that you won’t just curl up and give in.
“Icy north bitch.” He snarls.
You smile.
“Don’t forget it. I’ve killed men twice your size with no more than a blunt dinner knife. Now fuck off.” You bite.
You push him away. Let him stumble down the stairs until he finds his balance. His knife you crudely chuck back to him. Clatters against his chest. He cups it to his front, and glares. Disappears off down the stairs in a clank of armour. You hope he stays away for good.
You tread the halls until some of the guests begin to drift away. Cersei takes the young royals to their bed. The king stays to drink and slur, and stuff his face, alongside his favourite trusted courtiers.
Joffrey grows bored. Not enough things to maim. He shrills at his guard dog as he descends, stalks away with the Hounds shadow covering his back.
His eyes scan for you just once more. Flickering across to meet yours. One last look. Before he must bay to heel. A leashed hound forced to obey.
You watch him file out. Cloak swinging off his shoulders with the sway of his steps. Huge longsword gleaming candlelight at his back. The creak of the doors as they opened, and shudder closed.
Your heart sinks a little. Nothing worth looking at now.
You soldier on in your duties as guests stay to dance and dine. Drunken revelry behind to seep across the crowds - following the kings example no doubt. The bards play. Dancing starts.
You head down the stairs once more.
More ale. More wine.
More of the plum pies and be quick about it, girl.
More lamb, wench.
The smell of roasted meats, duck fat scalded potatoes and stewing spices cloaked heavy the air when you walked back into the kitchens, it practically sung your name. It smelled so divine. A rich and insulting pull on your currently empty belly.
Hunger curdled deep at your stomach with the sharp charm of a knife. Appetite long denied in favour as usual of a night on your already aching feet.
But you knew the punishment if you dared pick off royal plates. Darria would thrash you til she broke the skin.
Your lunch had been hours previous. A dry heel of brown bread and a small bowl of thin stew with scrappy game meat, and some brown onions. You’d eaten it in seconds, in a hurry between scampering around the castle running errands. Emptying chamber pots. Fetching food. Pouring wine.
You came down for more lamb. As requested. Watching the kitchen maid afore you, begin to layer it on the huge gold platter.
You watched cook slap the back of a reaching kitchen urchins hand with a wooden spoon. Going for the lemon cakes. A rap to the knuckles to leave a reminder. Not a mark. She wasn’t that cruel.
“You.” Darria barked. Your name fell like an artless command from her cross lips. “Put that platter down. And wash your hands.”
You twisted round and looked back at her. Hands on the table bench where the maid filled your platter, heaped and piled once again with thick cut, roasted lamb chops. Juices and blood seeping into the base of the dish.
“Why?” You asked. If you were being swept away from service upstairs, that either meant something good or something awful- your money was on the latter for this place.
“Quit your fussing. You’ve been asked for...” she snaps. Intemperate. As she quickly arranged slices of fruit over a plate of jointed chicken thighs and breasts.
She turned to the side and then came back with a tray heaped with roast chicken, steaming warm bread, some cheeses, butter and sliced cold ham. A flagon of dark wine. You meet her eyes. Nearly crumpling under the weight of the heavy tray of food. This must have been two jointed chickens in all.
“This can’t be for one person?” You check. This was three days’ worth of food to you.
“Didn’t realise you gave orders now… Highness.” Cook snarked at you.
“Lots of roast chicken and wine. On his orders. And send that northern redhead up with it.”
“The Hound?” You crooked a brow.
She sighed like she wanted to slap you silly.
“Best go feed the damn old dog. Don’t stand around here. I don’t need you cluttering up the place.” She smarted at you. Wiping her hands on a cloth. Shooing you away. Wiping the sweat off her head with the back of her hand.
Alssa was stood behind you in the doorway. Clutching a platter piled high with partridges. Her mouth gaped wide open.
She began to smile. A huge grin. “Told you so. I knew it.”
“Shut it.” You warned. Lethal. Eyes turned steel.
You didn’t want her exultation spewed around this kitchen like fresh gossip for the little birds to pluck at like crumbs, come the morrow.
“Out. Before I thrash both your bony arses for wasting my time” Darria sneers at you. Punching the life out of some dough on her scarred table.
“Get a move on. Girl. Lest he beat you bloody for being slow.” She snaps.
The look in her eyes is like she hopes he will - if only to teach you a lesson.
“Unlikely.” Alssa chimes in. Her tone sultry.
You give her a glare that could wither a dead man. “Begone.”
Alssa practically skips back up the stairs. Mouthing a soft ‘Milady’ and a curtsey at you as she went. Platter in her hands wobbling dangerously.
You followed. Opening the doors with your back. Heaving open the heavy wood. By the time you’d climbed the stairs and weaved through the endless maze of fucking dim lit halls.
Your elbows were weary with the amount of boned meat and wine you carried. Iron goblet and carafe didn’t make it any the lighter.
By the time you came to his door, your shoulder joints nearly shook with the strained effort.
You scuffle a knock on the door with your foot. A soft kick.
A bark comes at once. “Come.”
You push open with your back, twisting into the room. The heavy door whines like an old maester on its hinges. Your throat goes dry, stomach a flurry of excitement as you cross the threshold. Coming into his rooms.
The yellow walls, bare of any decoration, shimmer with the waving candles that shake with the disturbance of your opening the door. It’s cool and calm up here compared to the packed, busy, strangling heat of the kitchens you came from. You can feel the sweat cooling now on your brow.
He has the window shutters pulled open. Scant moonlight floods in. Casting the white bed in a shaft of watery silver.
You see he had a huge metal tub stood a ways from the hearth. Naturally his disinclination of fire has his furniture clustered to the other side of the room.
Water within the tub still barely swirling steam. Telling you he’d bathed after he finished his post. The scent of that bland soap you know well lingers in the warm air. Aswell as rosemary oil. Green and verdant.
You walk across to the table. Knowing the route by now.
He treats you like a human being and not an object for service. The cooks and maids downstairs don’t know why you linger. They think you’re at the mercy of his temper; his wrath.
How wrong they all are-
You finally see the huge shape of him. Where he’d usually be. Sat at table. A single thick candle flickers on its brass stand. Throwing jagged shapes of shadow across the grain of the wood.
Usually polishing a dagger or some piece of armour. He was used to maintaining his armour alone. Cleaning alone. In everything he does, he’s used to being a solitary animal. Kept at the edge of all things. The lone hound.
Your eyes do linger on him.
He’d bathed of course. And redressed in a simple pair of brown breeches and a cotton tunic. Combating the stifling heat of the keep. Your eyes snatch to the gap in his shirt that exposed his chest. Right down to his sternum.
He lays aside the dagger he was cleaning. Bunching the cloth and setting it on the table out of the way.
“Red.” He greeted. His usual gruff baritone. A flicker of warmth dashed to it.
“Hound.” You smiled back.
You redirect your gaze as you place the heavy dinner tray before him. Savoury smell of chicken roasted with lemon making your stomach clench.
It’s then you see the twist and turn of his hands catch the candle light, you see his knuckles are raw. Burst, bruised, weeping open like split red grapes.
You think nothing of reaching over and gently clasping his hand. Others would sooner die than reach for this man. You did it without a shred of consequence.
You reached out for him and you didn’t give two damns about it.
Your face falls as you raise it his hand up nearer the light. You’re amazed he lets you. Fingers swallowed under his huge ones.
“What poor creature did that boy have you maim this time?” You seek. Your thumb gently swipes over his second index knuckle as you look down at the mangled damage.
As ever, he grunts, reaches for his wine. Crossing over with his other hand.
“Don’t fret your pretty head about it maid. I’m fine.”
“And the person whose face you no doubt caved in?” You sought. Where you stood close, a section of your hair fell forwards over your shoulder. His eyes followed its path for a second.
He flicks you up a dark look. All sarcasm and drowning brown eyes.
“They’re a bit less than fine.”
He adjusted himself back in the chair that creaked like old bones. Settling back with his legs spread out in front of him.
“Is there anyone left in this keep he won’t mutilate…” You snap lowly.
Angry at the way things were.
That little golden cunt played with people like they were his little wooden dolls. Lop off a leg here. Cut out a tongue. Put out their eyes as if it were some macabre game to delight his sick childish senses. He was malice made skin, that boy.
Maybe your angrier still that Sandor gets used as his instrument. His tool of torture. If there’s blood to be spilled, the hound will step up and obey.
You wonder what kind of toll that takes on a man. To keep his own opinions and autonomy tamed back behind his teeth. To always have to grit said teeth and do as he’s bid. To stand in silence whilst his Prince rips his way through flesh of his subjects for fun.
One day, you’re sure, there’s an order that will come that he will refuse. And then what’s to become of him…
“I can tend those cuts for you.” You state. Stepping closer. Skirts brushing to his knees now.
“At this rate they’d better give me a nurses pay for all the mopping up of you I do.”
“Hounds nurse doesn’t sound half as frightening as the red bitch.” He leers. Teeth flashing a grin.
“Don’t you start with that shite.” You rib him.
He smiles wider at that. Leering like a skulls bare sneer. He likes a lady that can bite back.
“Where’s the soap so I can patch you up again.” you go to move for his jug and basin. He catches your arm gently.
He deflects attention as he dives for his food. Now he had a good half cup of wine in his belly, he felt the sting of his hand, lessen.
“Stop grousing about me. Red. Sit.” He commands. Pushing you round the other side of the table.
The tone he used was to command his Kingsmen and give orders. His foot reaches out and kicks the chair opposite to make his point. Clattering of wood scraping the floor.
You turn and look at the chair.
Your body weeps at the thought of sitting down and resting your sore feet. You cast an eye longingly at his mountain of dinner. His split hands. His relaxed demeanour. The wine. The soft candlelight blazing over his face and chest. So many things compelling you to fucking stay.
“I can hear your stomach growling from over here. For fucks sake, sit. Eat.”
You hesitate. Whom was nursing whom, here?
“Cook will crucify me alive if I don’t get back to the kitchens.”
He gives you a look.
“Yeah? She a stout woman that cook? Cause she’d have to have balls of steel to come all the way up here, and go through me first.”
He grunts, chewing around a bite of chicken. Tearing off bread to mop up the juices with. “Sit.”
You do so with a smile.
The dinner tray is shoved between you. You eat gingerly. Picking your way through the bread, the chicken.
He pours you some of the wine into a wooden cup. Nudges it at you.
You eat in partial silence to the tune of the fire snapping and cracking away.
He eyes you curiously as you both dine. Like he wants to say something. But the words keep dissolving on the tip of his tongue. He sees how you chew quickly. Wet your mouth with wine. Take big bites. Like you’re afraid it’ll be snatched off you.
“What do they even feed your lot. Below stairs…” He asks. He dreads to know.
“Scraps your lot don’t want.” You tell. Ripping a bit of soft bread off the damn half loaf he’d been given.
You swallow more wine. “Little more than bones and offal some nights. They water down our wine too.”
“Cunts.” He scoffed.
What a crime. To water down wine so it doesn’t linger nicely on the tongues of servants. Those who deserved less. He made sure to pour even more in your glass. Liking how it made you smile. Giving you the good stuff.
“And not forgetting the bowls of brown.” You answer, grimly.
He turned his nose up. Wrinkled his face all distasteful. “No better than fucking dog food.”
“I’m sure the hounds eat better than we do. Mouldy bread. Brown stew. Old fruit. I’m told the kennel master feeds legs of rare Riverrun venison to the kings dogs.”
His smile curls at one side again. You were whip smart. Perceptive. Certainly fucking beautiful. So beautiful he could hardly stand it.
You could read. Write. You carried yourself like your whole life had been one long fight. You kept yourself armed. You were punchy and certainly not stupid. You could be some handsome merchants wife in Braavos. Marry some second son Lord and have a far better life than this bowing, scraping and filling cups.
“What are you doing…Serving prick lords and ladies in this fucking rotten place.” He asks.
It’s more of a musing than a statement. He barked it at you all the same.
You tilt your head. Your smile turns secretive. Eyes glow with candles dancing in them.
“Lady has to make a living somehow.” You told him. Clutching your cards close to your chest.
“Could ask the same thing of you.” You nodded back at him. Slowly chewing your bread. Another morsel held in your hand.
He’d tease the real answer out of you one of these days. He’s sure of it.
When you put the bread in your mouth. You playfully toyed your fingertip around the rim of your wine cup. He had to stop his cheeks heating from watching the delicate sway of your hands.
You reflect on his position here.
“You’re a second son of a knighted house. Clegane. How come you’re not married to some lovely lady. In some comfortable castle tower somewhere, with a fleet of servants. Wearing fine threads. Going on hunts, spend your days drinking wine to your hearts content…” You seek.
“They tried to wed me off when I was younger. No one could bear to be bound in holy matrimony to this fucking face.” He grunts.
Though the soft edge to his voice told you that the thought still carried deep stinging wounds. That insult had not been forgotten. He’d kept hold of it.
“More fool them.” You say proudly.
He grunted like he didn’t believe you.
So you drink your wine. And then you prove it.
You stand slowly, so slow it makes his heart race. You come to stand between his knees where he sits. He leans back until the chair hits his spine.
Looking up at you like he was nervous or guilty of something. His eyes watch you with a hint of panic. Like you still might flee if he growls too much. Or snaps his teeth in a bite when tested.
“I think you’re handsome. And I hate the fact that all these southern stuck up cunts can’t see that.” You say.
Your hands come up and frame his neck. Pressing to the rough woven linen of his shirt. Fingertips kiss to his chest. Feeling the black dusting of hair that absolutely covers him. His skin is like warm firm sand stone to the touch. You move some locks of dark wavy hair off his face.
Meet his gaze and let him see there was one person in Westeros that didn’t flinch from him.
He was breathing hard. Like he can’t believe a maid was touching him. You wonder who the last lady to touch him was.
“You are soft in the fucking head. Red.” He growls. Admonishing.
“For you. Aye.” You delight in telling him. A smile climbing across your lips.
You take his whiskered rough chin back in your hand. Hold it as you lean in and place a gentle kiss on his mouth. Taste on your tongue was velvet red wine and wheaten bread.
He sits there still as a statue. Letting the kiss grow more intense. You’ll have to coax him gently.
He lets you tower over him and deepen the kiss. It’s a full minute before he hesitantly raises his arms up to encircle you.
You bite his lip. Pleased. When you feel those huge hot hands smooth over your back. Up your shoulders. Feeling the bumps and ridges of your own scar. Like you were two skewed broken shards of the same mirror.
“You look… fucking nice. Tonight. Your dress.” He settles on. “Suits you…” He pants choppy, trying to catch his breath. Skimming his hand up your back again.
Your smile is so genuine is steals a little of his breath away.
“Thank you. They like us looking presentable. I’m glad it pleases, my lord.” Voice breathy. Lips red bruised, kiss stung. You lean in and seal your mouth over his again.
So lovely. His northern beauty.
You break away. He addresses your impertinence.
“Not a lord you cheeky fuck.” He snarls. His voice is much affected too. Same as yours. Husky and wanting more.
You cup his hand behind your back, and smirk as you encourage it higher. Letting his big fingers settle on the fastenings of your dress. You coax his fingertips to the halter braids. Let him unravel them.
His eyes nearly blow wide as brown dinner saucers when you let his hand pull down, taking your dress with it. Folding it over your chest.
Followed in quick succession by your golden belt. Clanking to the floor. Leaving you standing in your shift and your fucking sandals. Those also get shoved down your hips. You kick out your shoes. Get yourself bare for him. Stark naked.
He’d been flicking glances at you all night. Now. You let him feast his eyes.
He didn’t know where to rest his eyes. The fullness of your tits. Neck. Hips. The soft round of your thighs. So soft. All of you is. And his ruined eyes get to see something this delicate and lovely.
One part of your body meets with his dissatisfaction;
The black-blue spread of a nasty bruise to the right side of your ribs. It’s about the span of a fist. His brow crashes down in a frown.
He reaches over and covers it. His callused rough palm hotter than a stovetop. Covered half your belly with its span. He knows that wasn’t a natural injury.
“Who?” He barked out. Teeth set on their killer edge. Eyes slice to yours.
You place your two fingers over his moody lips to stop him talking. He glares. Eyes glitter black like beetles wings.
“Doesn’t matter.” You urge softly. Shake your head. Your hair falls so nicely over your shoulders. Almost clasping the tops of your tits.
You wanted his anger to melt away. You didn’t want it here. Not now. Not now you had him all to yourself. Hopefully you could coax him to shed his clothes too.
You slip your hand under his tunic. Feel the musculature of him. Crush yourself tighter to his chest.
“When I’m done with you. I want that name.” He seethes.
You smile. Pressing a kiss gladly to his moody lips. Never forget he’s a dog with a bone to pick. That’s his job.
But for now-
He stands up so fast it makes your head spin. His hands are around you. Your weight and height is of no consequence to him. He plucks you off the ground like you’re a feather pillow.
You nearly yelp. He growls. Slings your arms around his neck. Cups your plump arse in his hands. Lifts you across to the bed. Caged to his body. Hefts you onto the feather mattress like you were a sack of flour.
He had no qualms about taking off his shirt. If you hadn’t run from his ugly face. He doubted you’d run from the bare thickness of his brute body. That wasn’t the scary part of him after all.
You look hungry when he shifts his tunic off his shoulders. Sit up and run your hands down his chest. Huge spreads of muscles layered in a healthy amount of weight. He’s so big everywhere it made you ache. You hoped you felt his presence on you, or in you, for days to come.
“Can I touch you proper?” He asks. Settling you in the middle of sheets that smell like soap, sweat and the oil he must use on his hair. Notes of rosemary, salt, soap.
“You need to ask?” You clarify with a smile. You were naked and draped in the middle of his bed.
“I’m no raper. Red. I ask a woman before I take her.” He sighs. Caressing your soft breast under his hand. Feeling the nipple pucker to his hand.
You guide his hand to your flesh. Let him cup your tits. Cup between your legs. Let him do whatever the hell he wants-
“This woman came willingly, happily, to your bed.” You tease.
Hair fanned out behind you like some red sultry goddess.
Touch me, Hound.
That’s just the thing. I’ll never want to stop touching you, Red.
“Aye.” He grunted. Smiling again.
“I think she’s a mad rare bitch this one. Think I’m getting myself in trouble here.” He jokes.
“Careful. My father was a wildling, you know.” You tell him. Grin growing.
“Fucking knew it.” He huffed out laughter.
The way you held a blade wasn’t southern. He was damn sure it wasn’t entirely northern either. Now he knew the truth. You were cut from the cloth of free folk. Fucking beyond the wall savages.
“No cunt out there could be madder than a fucking wildling.”
You pinch his thick side for his cheek. Barely made a dent. All muscle and brawn. “Careful. Dog.”
He liked when you called him your dog. Everyone else could rot in hell for it. For you? He’d come to heel gladly.
You pull him close by the back of the neck. Fingers tangled in his hair. Settle your mouth over his again. Share a wet kiss that rapidly evolved into tongues and teeth. Your leg wraps for his side. His hand plunges down your thigh. Squeezes the flesh of your hip where it’s curled.
Your fingers claw into his meaty back. Feeling he was just as carpeted with hair at his back, much like his chest - a truly dark delicious beast all over.
When his thick hand delves between your thighs, you moan boldly into his mouth. His big fingers caught your clit just right. Swirled and pressed with the right amount of friction.
You hadn’t been touched in months. Not since well before you’d left Braavos. And even that had been a more rough tumble than anything comparable to this.
“Like that? Did you, Red?” He asks. Peering down at you. Smug.
Watched your face like a clever hawk as he did it again.
Braced up over you. Watched your mouth gape and your hand dive to cover the large back of his. Slipping against your wet pussy. Feeling you twitch and writhe to his hand.
He shuffled down below you in the sheets. Came away from your side. Hefted your left leg onto his back. Hungrily eyed the thatch of curls covering your cunt.
Before you could even gasp his mouth was upon you. “Sandor…” you whined.
Captured and searched the taut berry of your clit in his lips. The texture of his shorn beard tickled and scratched. He curled his fingers deep in you still. Two this time. He went deep. He wasn’t exactly good at being gentle.
The sweet unexpected combination made you cry out. You can’t recall the last time a man had knelt for you- gone down on you with the sole purpose of your pleasure. And you’d had plenty of lovers in your time.
Your back arches as he digs deeper. Fingers thick, filling you so well. Stretching for that spot inside to crook against. The one that when he dragged a touch against it, made you curl up.
Thighs clamping around his neck. The onslaught of his wet beard tickling your thighs as he worked you over. Licking and lapping your cunt like he was a man born to do it.
Your eyes flicked back in your head as his rhythm grew in intensity. The flick of his tongue on your clit. The wedge of his fingers pushing your pussy wide. Scraping against places that made you shake.
“Sandor- fuck“ You choke on moans. Head back. Your small hands rooted in his hair so hard it was a nice edge of pain.
He liked that. Liked hearing his given name.
He grunts. Pleased to hear his given name cross your lips in ecstasy. The room is lost to the sounds of your gasps, his wet grunts, the smack of his slick wet mouth feasting happily, messily on your cunt.
He tore away. Breath ragged. Mouth drooling with you. Dragged a breath in.
“You taste fucking sweet.” He supplied. Better than fine wine. You met his eyes. He still looked half starved. Eyes like dark whiskey pits that swallowed you up.
Taking a moment to feel the drag of his lips against you. To hear and feel the squelch of your wetness that came oozing out from round his fingers. You shuddered. Called out for god, or maybe several.
“None of your gods to be found here, Red.”
You’re clutching wildly at the sheets now. Bunching them in his hands. He liked that he’ll sleep in them tonight, slaked in the scent of jasmine and your sweat and slick.
“Gonna make me cum.” You sigh. Voice dragged through a warning. He smiles. That was very obviously the point of his hauling you to his bed.
He captured your eyes in his. “Do it. Cum for me.” He ordered. Succinct. To the point. He didn’t mince his words and he didn’t show mercy.
He ate you like a dying man allowed one last drink. And he chose to take it between your thighs. Your spine was burning. Simmering pleasure building low in your belly, told you how close you were getting. Rushing towards a finish.
You whine when he doubles down hard. Increasing his efforts. Flicks his eyes up your writhing body. Reaches up to cup one breast in his hand as he made you cum gasping around his fingers. Cunt twitching and pulsing like mad. Tongue working your clit relentless.
He drags you bodily though every second of the throbbing aftershocks of it. Doesn’t ease til your thighs practically snap off his neck.
Your breathy whines like music and golden wine to his ears. Hearing them reverberate around his bedchamber like sweet sweet birdsong. He almost hoped some fucking guards on duty walking past, heard your cries.
Let them hear good the hound can bed a woman.
Not that anyone here would believe it. They all think he couldn’t get a wench to save his life - even with coin.
You sit up and grasp onto his back. Trying to pull him up. “Fucking come here.” You gasp.
Dragging his still moist beard and mouth to meet yours. You delve your tongue into his mouth. His big hand cups the back of your neck. Able to grasp the whole nape of it in one hand. It makes you dizzy to feel it. How big he is compared to you-
You know now that applies to other places-
You slip your hand to the laces of his breeches. By the time you’d ripped them open, he was halfway hard.
You smile against his lips. Wrapping your hand around him. Curling and cupping around him. His hips jerk when you stroke him. Wetting your hand with the amount of precum leaking from him.
You urge him to lay down. Your hand holding onto his cock. Pulling him down over you. He presses you to his cushions. Hair swirled around you. He hopes his pillows smell like jasmine later.
He ruts his hips to you. Aching for the magic of your kind hands. Panting into your neck with the way you stroke him. Hand barely able to fit around the girth. Liking the way he melted into you.
It was his turn to grip the sheets in a fist. Sighing your name. Not calling you Red or Maid. Not here. This was sacred.
You roll your hips to him as he moves against you. Grunting. Squeezing his eyes closed. Burying his face in your neck. Biting. Kissing. Moaning loud when you squeezed your hand tighter around him. Your other clutched his back. Digging your nails in as you made him come undone.
It had been so long since someone touched him. He had to try hard not to finish early in your hand like some wet behind the ears whelp.
“Fucking good…. With your hands. Bloody hell.” He groaned. Breath coming shorter and shorter the closer he got.
He pulled back. Hips flinching as he came in a heavy huffing grunt. Unable to help it. Spilling at your thigh in thick ropes onto the sheets. Breath muggy at your ear. How he didn’t spill when he first set his tongue to your cunt he didn’t know.
“Seven hells.” He snarled. But all fight in his voice had been leeched away. No wonder. You’d taken his damn brains out.
You lay together. Clasped in a heap. Touching. Littering kisses on skin. Admiring the bare flesh you’d exposed to each other.
“Where did you learn how to pleasure a woman like that?” You ask when you caught your breath. High of your orgasm still rolling through you like passing thunder.
You thought all southern men just mounted their women and fucked fierce til they blew their load. No romantic notions. No taking the time to learn a woman’s pleasure. You were glad for once to have been proven wrong.
He rolled to thump himself down onto his back. Head shuffled on the pillow next to yours. Big body Crashing out. Making the bed sag so much, you rolled to his side as a consequence.
“Paid good coin to the one whore who didn’t run from me when I was a lad. She was, more mature, very instructive. Taught me how to please my lovers, proper. Showed me how good it is to get a woman properly wet before you fuck her.” He explained.
You twist to look at him. Breasts sticking together with sweat. You pet the shaggy hair away from his eyes. Sticking to his sweat wicked skin. Cup his face in your hands.
“What’s her name. I’ll send her all the coin I have in thanks.” You remark. Chest heaving. Sweat glimmering on your tits.
He smiled. A rare smile. Leaned in and damn near crushed you into the bed to kiss you again. To devastate you with a mouth that still tasted like you.
You hate when you have to leave the bed.
Leave his touches. Kisses. When all you wanted to do, was have the liberty to stay in this bed, drink wine, and fuck him blind all night long.
You gather your shoes. He helps you pick up your discarded shift. Leans in and kisses your shoulder, scooped your sex mussed hair aside, as his big clumsy fingers helped re-tie your dress. You cinch your belt around your waist again. Looking with sadness at the door you’d have to walk through.
He stands behind you. Hands sunk low to grip your hips.
“You’ll come back, again?” He asks. Says it all hopeful. Voice severe. Like you’ll dare refuse.
You smile. Cross his hands with yours. “Try and stop me. Hound.”
He grunts. Drops a kiss your shoulder again. But those big paws of his, slip around. He squeezes your ass for the audacity.
“You don’t come back to me tomorrow night. Red. I’ll have to come down to those kitchens and get you, myself.”
You smile. He drags you back into the bracket of his body. Presses a kiss to the copper crown of your head.
And then you have to leave. Dragging your hands from him like you had to rip away your own skin.
Even though every bone in you aches to stay. You go.
tagging some hound peeps - i'm new to this guy - be gentle with me! I've tagged based on all the wonderful hound fics i've read off you guys -- @konigslittleliebling @first-edition @catsteeth @castieltrash1 @terry2227 @justagirlwholikesadam @auxmodi @proseandpretrichor @novaursa @jxckerbxtch @mydearviserra @slut4thehound @yeyinde @jaimesrighthand @daydream818 @poisonousrain222 @slowlikehoney-stronglikemusic @itisjustwhatitis
part I - part II - part III - part IV - part V - part VI - part VII - part VIII - part IX - part X - part XI
summary: I wrote this whole piece around a Burton painting called meeting on the turret stairs and honestly? it shows. Also, Cersei is a right cunt. TW; more violence and sexism towards women here, flashback to DV; be warned.
“If you courted him, would you be a lady?” Alssa asked curiously. As she shook out the sun dried linen high in her hands. Letting it mushroom on the air, before floating gracefully to the bed.
“He’s a second son of his house. Alssa. Not a shagging Prince.” You uttered. Balling the filthy bed linens in your hands. Discarding them to the basket.
“The Lady Hound.” She trills at you. “Oh. Lady Clegane. Now that sounds so romantic.”
You huff. Dumping dirty blankets on the basket to be taken away and laundered. Give her a chilly side eye.
“If he courted me I’d still be as I am now. You daft twit.” You huffed. Stripping a plump pillow of its casings. “…A fucking handmaiden.”
“If.” She scoffs. Unbelieving.
“Aye. If.” You retort.
“There’s no reason to believe he wants to court me.” You speak miserably. Folding old linens into neat piles. Speaking as you worked. It made just a small warm simmering spark of hope in your stomach, die a cold death. It was for the better.
You liked the Hound. Made no secret of it. Your gratitude and warmth to him was obvious.
But you couldn’t dare indulge in more.
Just because you were the first Handmaid he didn’t send fleeing from his chambers in tears at his nasty bark, doesn’t mean you should hope to find anything in that.
You’d hoped before. You couldn’t take yourself through that again. The pain of it was worse than a knife to the heart. You can’t do that to yourself. Not again.
“We’re small folk, in case you’ve forgotten. Alssa. Not lords or ladies. We don’t get the luxury of being courted.” You tell as you crossed to open the patterned shutters. Letting some light in to this rotten golden place.
“We do our jobs. We work hard and keep our eyes down. Try not to get molested. Try not to lose our heads.” You gave her your succinct rules for working in service.
One that’s kept you alive and with your hands and dignity intact, to work for some of the grandest houses across the seven kingdoms. Royalty. Merchants. Minor houses. You’d worked in them all.
“I saw you both that night of the Tourney. At the back of that turnip cart. You all bloodied and tumbled. He looked ready to spit fire he was so livid. Like wanted to scoop you up into his arms and cradle you safe to his chest, forevermore.” She chirps away.
You lob a pillow at her head with a growl. She laughed, bright with joy, and stumbled back, caught it before it met the floor.
“Put your gossip away and help.” You demand. Crossing to tidy some platters on the far side off the room. Large platters littered with crusts of stale bread, the rinds of hard cheeses. Plucked grape vines and empty stained red goblets.
These were Lord Tyrion’s rooms you’d been tasked to clean. You were mildly lucky there were no plump lounging whores, dozing in the bed when you called to enter. Alssa wouldn’t know where to look with her innocent eyes.
You found the rooms - thankfully - empty save for last nights dinner plates on the side. Used wine cups. And mussed sheets. Nothing too scandalous.
You actually did like Lord Tyrion. He was a cunning man. Not to be taken for an empty headed noble. He was always kind to the maidens who tended his rooms. He liked prettiness, certainly. But not vanity or empty beauty.
But he also admired the certain glimmers of a stubborn personality. Sharp eyes. Smart tongues. He took a liking to you instantly. Adored the girls with looks about them that spoke of cynicism or wit.
More than once when serving you’d had to hide your smile when the Lord Imp made a clever comment that sliced right through the morons he had to deal with. A stout head on him.
Could be worse. You could end up serving Ser Meryn. A nastier cunt never drew breath.
Speaking of;
He’d knocked the breath clean out of you last week for being five minutes late with his supper tray. The cook was ready to send up a small waif of a serving girl - no more than ten.
You called her back. Gave her your job of sweeping the floors. Gladly took her place. Took the punch to the gut that made you gasp. Pain shot through your ribs as you sunk to the floor. Looked up and found him sneering at you.
You didn’t care. The blue black ribs you had as a result was worth it. You couldn’t bare to see another poor child beaten like that.
You wince as you re-stuff the pillows with fresh linens. Moving was tricky at the moment but you tried not to show your pain.
You also had the audacity to think that Alssa has finished dissecting your burgeoning situation with the princes sworn shield.
“I’ve seen the way he looks at you when you’re not watching, you know.” She preened. Voice all high and girly. Singing the words at you like a little bird.
Perisistant. Annoying. Pecking away at you all day about this.
You turn away from her and close your eyes. Just for a second. You’d seen it too. Felt his gaze upon your skin like warm metal. You banish those thoughts with a sigh.
“Last night at dinner when we served, his eyes followed you around the room. All night. He couldn’t take his eyes off you if forced. I think you’ve captured him.”
Paranoia flashed through you in a dizzying wave.
“Hush your damn mouth.” You chided. A fiery frown shot her way.
You twisted to look where the door was ajar. You could almost fear her whispers would slither out, slide along the stones like woodsmoke. You walked to it and pressed it closed. You didn’t want every gutter snipe from here to the sept to know your business.
They’d find unfriendly ears to latch too. Her whispers. Sliding to the notice of a waiting corrupt guard. One of Varys’ little birds. One of the Lannister’s. Or worse. One of little fingers whores. You don’t know which is worse.
“There’s no one listening.” She assured you. Far too candidly.
“Everywhere has eyes and ears in this palace.” You reprimand her darkly. “You need to learn that now. Watch yourself. And don’t trust anyone.” You warn.
“What do you think will happen? Whose going to overhear us?”
You give her a dark look. “This isn’t the fucking place to parade out things you care about. Or to form attachments.” You tell her dryly, wisely so.
“Listen to me. Alssa. If the Hound was to court anyone, he wouldn’t look to a low born handmaiden with no family name, and no money. He would be matched to a great lady, from a fine house, of the Lannisters choosing. It would be a match to sew harmony. For an alliance. That’s never going to be the likes of me.” You tell her seriously.
Perhaps you tell yourself too.
“Whatever looks he gives me, please believe me, they are far fetched. I realise that now.” You inform her. “Mere- mild interest cause I once stitched a wound, and showed him kindness. Nothing more.”
She has the gall to look slightly cowed by the news. She nods. Folds some cloth in her hands.
When she speaks again, it’s so gentle, you cannot help but listen. She opens her mouth, flounders, but manages to find her words.
“Maybe if it’s his own choice?”
You laugh. It sounds like a resigned sigh. She really is a doe eyed optimist.
“Aye. Maybe so. But I’m not holding my breath. Alright? Can we lay the matter to bed?”
She nods in response. Blonde hair waving around her long neck.
“Now. Stop calling me Lady Hound. And help me with this cursed sheet. O’ Queen of wagging tongues.” You ordered with a smile. Kneeling on the feather mattress to stuff it into the corners.
If she was supposed to be scared of your grousing and commands, she bloody well didn’t show it.
She grinned. Leaning in to assist you. You would lose hope. That doesn’t mean she would.
You hit her with a pillow again. She blows a loose feather to stick in your hair. You laugh as you pluck it out.
You both had the bed remade and dressed prettily with satin covers and cushions. All nice and neat. You gather the linens.
She takes the empty goblets and plates back down to the kitchens. You’d see to it that the wine flagons would be refilled. Dornish and Arbor gold. Tyrion was also fond of his sweet treats. You’d bring back some plum cakes, candied almonds, honey fingers and dried dates. Left on the side to be devoured at his leisure.
You were back out into the darkened hallways of the keep. Walking among the slanted shade, where patches of bright sun chased it into the corners. Patterns fell in golden stars across the tiles from the shaped shutters. Bounced around the stone arches. Another warm day blessing over the capital. Sun drenched and airless.
You’re descending the stairs to the kitchens when there comes a shout for your attention. “Girl.”
You’ll never say how much you despise that nickname. You and Alssa both turn around and you plaster on a less than enthused smile.
You, peering over the basket of linens. And her, struggling to stop the platters from sliding about everywhere. A guard appears before you.
“The Queen has asked for wine. In her chambers. Quick about it.” Spits his sour command.
“Yes. Ser. I’ll come directly.” You beam. You glare daggers into his back as he’s marching away.
Alssa’s tongue shrivels in her mouth. She fidgets. Uneasy. “She won’t like that we kept her waiting this long.” She worried.
“Then she needs more servant girls to dance on her demanding whims.” You groan. Shoving the door to the stairs open. You nod her along first.
“Come along. Quick about it. I’ll bring the wine back up. You start on the laundry….and then tend to Tyrion’s sweets.” You offer.
Knowing full well Alssa never fairs well in front of the Queen. Her acidic whims make your friends tongue curl stupidly into her head.
You dump your things. Grab the wine and make haste back up the stairs with a tray full. Padding in the shade and thankful for the way it cools the sweat running down your brow.
Trying to stop the glasses from wobbling into each other. You put your hair up with a pretty ribbon earlier. But now you fear you look frazzled and run ragged. Atleast the revealing nature of your dress allowed the cool air to kiss your skin along these halls.
The thin peach fabrics that you hated the colour of, flowed around your legs. Belt cinching your waist in bright gold. The back of it billowed out from your shoulders as you walked. Footsteps slapping fast across the tiles to come to the Queens room.
Your heart falls when you see the pair of guards on shift outside her rooms.
Tullen and Landar.
Tullen was harmless. All brawn and no brains. Barely knew how to hold a sword. Probably didn’t know how to strap his armour on without aid.
But Landar beside him was a sneering pig of a man. Chauvinistic and thinking himself as golden handsome as the Lannisters he serves. Wheaten hair. Green eyes that you saw nothing but poison ivy in.
He’d gotten several a handmaid pregnant, so you’d heard. Abandoned them when he grew bored. Onto the next set of legs he could pry open with flirts and charm. The head maid, Kalla, had to ply the poor dears with moon tea. One was so far gone, now she worked in a third rate five penny brothel on the poor end of silk street, with her wailing babe in tow.
He leered when he saw you coming. Face split into a huge slimy grin.
The day you started he’d made himself known. Slyly dipping in front of you as you climbed the stairs to serve dinner. Arm blocking your path on the stair.
Asked if the hair on your head was as fierce red as the curls on your cunt. Asked you to let him see. You smiled and leaned in like butter wouldn’t melt.
You swiftly gave him a black eye for his troubles.
It was only just healing to yellow now. He had cursed you every name under the sun. You walked away grinning. He told everyone it happened during training.
“There she is. The red Keeps own red goddess.” He smarms. Tullen sniggers laughter. It wasn’t even funny.
You roll your eyes. Tiredly bite words at him. “Just open the fucking door before I kick you in the balls. Landar.” You stand and hold your tray. Not having the energy for this.
“You should take a look at my balls darling. You might be impressed.” He sneered. Sauntering close to you. Having the audacity to wink.
“I’d rather piss broken glass. Open the door before I have to explain to the Queen her wine is late because her prick guard got a half inch hard on.”
He opens the door with a chuckle. Remarkably doing as you bid.
“You just can’t face the fact I get you wet. That it?” He teases all husky. Tullen snorts laughter like an old boar.
“Believe me, any maiden hearing you speak, goes dry as sand.” You flirt nastily. Voice traced in venom.
Shoulder your way in past him. Biting back your ire as he leans across and pinches your ass as you cross the threshold. Made your teeth grit.
With your arms full, you can’t whirl around and slap him. Mores the pity. He closes the door with a chuckle.
You cross the rooms and make yourself invisible as you spot the queen sat at the table. You cross to her and lay the tray down.
“Took your time, girl.” She speaks. Voice low and disappointed.
Hair a golden curtain down her back. Famous Lannister gold. Her dress was the colour of a smoke tree you’d once seen in the wood. Dark vicious purple. As dark red as the wine she loves so much. A huge collar of gold jewels around her neck. You’d been warned of Cersei. How she would toy and torment. Prickly with most if she desired to be. She played games. The way predator plays with the mangled bodies of their prey. For sheer fun.
“Beg pardon. Your grace. I came as quick as I could.” You offer. Wondering if she’ll lash you to bits with her tongue for your insolence.
She waved you off. Your voice an irritation. Looked entirely bored of you already.
Holding out her hand expectedly. You placed the full glass in. She sips it quick. Eyes you up and down like a new challenge as she holds it out to be refilled.
“I don’t recall your face. You must be new.”
You nod as you pour slowly. Careful not to drip any. “I am. Your grace. I joined only a few weeks ago. When you and the king were up in the north.”
“Tell me your name.” She asked. And you gave it. You didn’t miss the slight twitch at the side of her pursed mouth.
“A northern name.” She commented dryly. As if it left a bad taste in her mouth that wine couldn’t mask.
“How is it you came to Kings Landing…”
“I’ve worked all over the seven. Your grace. I worked for the Starks when I was but a child. Then I was sent to Dorne to work for the Martells. I left there to work for some houses in Volantis. In Pentos for the Brenyls. And then for the Rogares in Braavos. And now, here.”
“Quite the traveller.” She said. You weren’t sure if it was a compliment or not.
“Well. You are certainly a damn sight prettier than any of the plump and dour faced northern maids I’ve had the misfortune to see these past few weeks. Even with that ungainly scar on your lip. How came you by such a thing?”
You wet your lips. Your tongue feeling over the thin white line that started at the middle of your cheek and ended at your top lip. A barely visible line now. It’s crinkled into your smile. Worked its way into your skin.
“A…disagreement. Your grace. With one of the free folk from beyond the wall. A clansman’s daughter took exception to something I had said. And she came for me with a bone handled dagger.”
Cersei looked positively hungry. Mouth curled to a smile. Now you have her intrigued. All it took was bloodlust.
“You’ve been beyond the wall….” She stated. Acting like you’d cut her throat any moment. “You’re not a filthy fucking wildling, are you?”
“No. Your grace.” You lied a little.
“Your accent isn’t northern either. Did you grow bored of its dull tones? Quite right it is a hideous dialect. So harsh on the ears” She seeks.
You smile. Shouldering every expression far far back. You’d reveal nothing to this viper save what she asked. Let her poison drain away elsewhere.
“What happened?” She asked. Holding her glass up yet again to be filled. “To the girl you had a disagreement with?”
“It was eventually settled by the Chieftan. Your grace. She nearly took my eyes. Not before I took her hand clean off.”
Her smile grew very wide. Obscenely so. She looked delighted.
“You don’t sound very regretful to have maimed a girl.” She said with a gaze locked to yours that unnerved you.
You smile back. Polite. Cold.
“I’d do it again if occasion called for it. Your grace.”
She hummed.
“Maybe you are a savage.” She decided. Looking you up and down.
“That’s the best thing a woman in your low position can be, I suppose. Here you’ll get lots of… unwanted attention from the guards and knights and the like.” She warned with glee.
“Though I imagine if you’ve been around savages such as wildlings and north men. I trust you can keep yourself out of trouble and being raped well enough.”
You swallow.
“I can. Your grace. I’ve survived many less civilised households.”
“I wouldn’t call this place civilised.” She says before a gulp of wine.
She takes a moment to consider you. Tasting the grapes in her mouth. Tilting her head at your attire.
You had a pleasing figure, strong. Built of hard work and an even harder life. Hair as red as cinnamon or spice.
You were brutally pretty. In the way something precious hewn from rough northern rock is pretty. Tough stock she imagines. Your father must have been a big brute. And your mother must have been slight and pretty. To give you a good mixture of the two. She imagined that’s where your flaming locks came from.
“You may survive this place yet. So long as no one tries to hold your lovely red hair in one hand and slit your pretty throat with the other.” She beams.
You don’t say anything. At first, you cling to silence.
You can’t tell if she’s treading the line of idolising you, patronising you, or scaring you. Possibly all three at once. As was her way.
“I believe it a woman’s duty. To be able to defend herself at all times. Your grace.” You tell her slowly.
“A noble thought. My dear. Let’s hope you keep your head long enough to treasure it.” She clucks.
Her smile seems sour. She sips her wine before she speaks again. In no rush. A queen cannot be rushed.
“Do you know. I heard the most hilarious story from Lord Baelish…. At the Kings Tourney. Apparantly there was an, unfortunate, incident at the feast. Three of our guards were found among the tents dead. One had a snapped neck. One a dagger sized hole in his throat. And the other had his gut torn open. Isn’t that just so incredibly funny...”
You meet her eyes. They look almost black in the light as she savours the flip of fear in your own.
“Lord Baelish also informed told me they tried to harm that plain little blonde thing that you’re close too. And that someone noble must have kindly intervened… to save the girl from being fucked bloody into the dirt by all three of them.” She prattled on. “Poor thing.”
Each word struck more horror into you. She knows.
She was testing you.
“My sons sworn shield, the Hound, assures me that the issue was purely harmless. Some brawl over a roast chicken… or some wine…. Stupid men being stupid cunts. Very interesting.” She rapped her fingers on the table.
You stay frozen in place. Holding the wine flagon.
“Are you a maiden, sweetness?” She asks out of nowhere.
You’re too stunned to answer. Your mouth flounders on an answer. She talks over you.
“You want my advice… choose a man. A big brute of one. Seduce him. Make him want no other. Make him beg on his hands and knees for you. So cuntstruck he can barely speak. Part your pretty thighs and let him take you rough. Break you in hard. It’s far better than having it taken from you by a man you don’t want. You can avoid disappointment that way.” She tells.
You don’t want to divulge but it seems you have no choice. She’s staring at you so intensely. Picking the secrets out of you like birds take snails from their safe shells. Like the way her son sits around all day, doing naught but torturing poor animals and picking the wings off flies.
“I was broken in…. rough, a long time ago. Your grace.”
You fight a shudder that rolls up from your belly. Threatens acid bile at the back of your throat. You can hear the creak of the wooden canopy bed as it shifted. The gale howling with lashing snow at the window. Your tears falling molten hot on linen bedding. The blood between your thighs and the burning pain-
She seemed pleased with your answer.
“Pretty face like that. I’m not suprised. Though that is good. That will save you further pain when it doubtless happens again.” She accepted. Sipping more red.
“Nothing men like more than taking a rare beauty and making her succumb. Making her theirs. That’s the thing about beauty, they want to keep it for themselves. A big strapping northerner was it? Lucky he didn’t split you in half. Precious.” She condescends.
You nod. Try and keep your composure. You don’t know how you do.
He had taken you. But it was everything he’d done to have you, to get you. That was where the pain truly lay.
“Yes. Your grace.”
“Oh listen to me. Now, I have gone on. Haven’t I.. refill my wine. And stay awhile won’t you….I may need more when my odious brother arrives.”
You nod. Do as instructed. You pour her wine and then wait to the side of the room as ordered.
The doors shift and whine open not long after, as Lord Tyrion arrived. Accompanied by as usual by the ever lyrical and flighty Bronn. He greeted the Queen sunnily. If only to see how it made her lips tighten again.
“I see you have wine and… oh, incredibly pretty company.” Tyrion turned his eyes to you as he strolled past. Shooting you his clever charming wink.
Bronn nodded in weathered recognition at you too. Keeping his thumbs slung on his belt. He was a decent enough solider. Loyal to the bone. So long as the coin followed in the right direction.
He helps himself to a seat at the table. You move to pour wine for him and his sister. Bronn stays on the far side of the room. Arms across his front. Assessing silently. The drapes fluttering in the wind crashed into his leather boots.
“I see you’ve met our new handmaiden.” Tyrion remarks to his sister, as you pour her cup and then turn to fill his.
She sneers. “I have. Pretty is she not? You must warn your guards and men to keep their hands to themselves. Seems she has quite the reputation for cutting them off.”
She eyes you. You see joy in her expression. She liked toying with the little things below her station. Pick pick picking at things like the red keep starlings.
You flush. Embarrassment staining you. You retreat to stand at the side of the room when the wine is done being poured. You bite back your expressions as much as possible.
Tyrion lets out an impressed laugh. Bronn smiles at you. “I know she comes from a cold northern climate. This is no news to my ears.”
If Cersei saw the scars to your back when she turned, it was just another thing she chose to ignore about you. Clearly she was moving on to skewering her next victim.
“Can we get on with the business at hand rather than prattle on about a low-born maiden.” She requests.
You fade into the wall as they talk. Only coming forward when wine drained to empty in their cups. The door whines again and your heart leaps into high alert at the sight of Joffrey striding his way into the room-
That meant-
Your eyes cast across to the door as the frame was amply filled by a very familiar wide figure. He had to stoop to avoid catching his head on the doorcase.
You kept your head high. Even though the mere nearness of him made you want to catch his eye.
It was like trying to ignore the ocean, even as it fills your lungs and drags you under.
He followed his prince into this room. Staying stood at the far side like you. Like a marble column. Or some stout furniture. That’s what you small folk were reduced to when the nobles and royalty needed to talk. You were resigned to the fringes of the room.
He daren’t glance your way. You don’t look his. The connection between you burned and throbbed. A crumbling bridge you can’t step foot on.
If you look it will be obvious. They have sharp eyes here too. They will know.
Yet. You can’t help but conceal a small smile at the memory of your lips on his.
He was a clunky and awkward kisser. That made you endeared to him all the more. Kissed like he never had before. A bump of lips. The hit of his teeth before he relaxed to it.
Like he was a cursed saint, touching his mouth to something holy for the first time in his life. The shocking divine revelation that, bleed like a lightning bolt through him, that for once, his ugly bark and his even uglier fucking face, hadn’t scared someone in getting close.
Who are you trying to fool, ugly old dog.
She’s too pretty for the likes of you-
Cersei called your name again. “Wine.” She barked. Held out her cup. You moved obediently to fill it.
This gave the Hound all the permission he needed to run his unworthy eyes all over you as you moved forwards. The cut of your back beyond that coral dress. Flare of your hips. The arch of your arms.
The long coppery sway of your hair. You’d wrestled it up today. Unruly, same as you. You’d swept into a ribbon that barely contained it. Some stuck with sweat to the back of your neck. Making the waves dark.
He lets his eyes roam your silky skinned shoulders. The juxtaposition of deformed skin, knotted with tugging scars and then theres the graceful fluid arch of your spine.
He wonders how his hand would fit the span of your waist.
He nestles his eyes in slope of your neck. The side of your jaw. That made a man yearn to link his arms around that waist of yours. Rest his scruffy chin down on the curve. Follow the slope of your neck with his lips alone. Map out what made you sigh. Keen. Arch. If he playfully bit the corner of your jawbone and left a love-bite, how you’d chide him and praise him in equal measure.
Hear the beautiful sultry whisper of your mouth making the shape of his name. The first thing that’s ever made his name seem holy. Sandor.
Not Hound. Not Dog.
Not something collared. A snapped command to call a canine to heel. To bite. Maim. To kill.
For some reason that sight of your back again, made his whole mid-section heat to see it. The way your neck glistened with sweat. Inching its way down your back. He tore his eyes away before he did anymore damage.
Before any more damage was done to him, more like.
He never knew something so pretty could be so devastating.
Sword. Steel. Armour. Those were things he knew could devastate. Could cleave limbs. Could hack a man to bits.
He was beginning to understand how a woman could be doubly as devastating.
You came back to your post. Stood off to the side. He looked down. If he concentrated hard enough, yellow jasmine ebbed along on the shift of air after you. It was like torture. To be so close and so far.
You listened to Joffrey squeal when he didn’t get his way. His mothers attempts at soothing and placating his wishes. Tyrion’s sly underhanded comments. All in all it made for a lively gathering. Watching the sun slant across the room as it crawled across the sky into late afternoon.
“I say. Dog.” Comes Joffrey’s shrill exclaim.
He stands to attention a little straighter. Scowl comes through a tad heavier.
“They’ve hired a new maid. I see. A new toy. A bone for you to play with.”
You looked across to The Prince. The jug slipped a little. Your palms were sweaty. You keep your tongue tamed. It would give him so much delight to see it cut out for a cross word against him. He’d slain men for less.
Sandor treads softly. Cause this is a trap. He’s sure of it. He shifts a little in his place. Says nothing.
You despise how they rib him. Make him the brunt of their ugly jokes. No wonder he snaps and snarls. He’d have to grow skin an inch thick for all the slurry and nastiness they hurl his way. It wasn’t a wonder his temper flared so.
“You must watch her, Hound. I fear the girl has survived something even worse than you. And lived to tell the tale. It’s a most sordid story.” Tyrion remarks.
You mood deflates. He’d gotten the story out of you the other night. After he was in his cups.
“Oh?” Cersei asks as she holds her wine glass aloft. You move across and fill it. You’d be needing another flagon soon. Most of one she’d drunk herself.
“Our lady here has quite the run in with a beast. Judging by the state of her back. Quite a shocking sight. Marring something so beautiful.” Tyrion explained.
“How came you by the scars again? Lady? Do delight us. I do tire of small council natterings.”
You wet your lips. Try and keep your face neutral.
“I grew up near Winterfell. Your grace. My- my father had left us when I was very small. With my mother expecting, and two brothers. We survived on very little. And with winter on the way, I…”
“Go on.” Joffrey screeched. Impatient.
“I ended up poaching a deer from the Wolfswood. The local lord caught me and uh… had me set upon by his hunting hounds.”
Joffrey laughed. It was the bitterest sound you’d ever heard.
“They tore open my back. I was brought before the steward of the north to face charges. But he took mercy on me instead. Gave me and my mother employment in the castle kitchens. He considered it better to put us to work than to have me hanged and see a family starved.”
“What a weak man. I’d have had your pretty red bitch head mounted on my wall for such a crime.” Joffrey leered.
Sanders jaw grit. Tight. He’s surprised he didn’t snap something. His hand shifted on his pommel. The noise of his gauntlets made a crunch.
“Indeed your grace. It was very wrong of me to do so. Though I paid for my crime. But to my defense, it was either that, or watch my mother, heavy with child, and my two younger siblings, starve to death.” You told him.
“Noble.” Cersei spoke the word slowly at you. Heady with meaning.
When you went to the side to fetch more wine. Joffrey commanded you to stop. And turn so he could see this scar.
When you didn’t move fast enough, he pulled your dress. Shoved it to one side at the back so he could see. Yanked you towards him with the strength of it.
“Careful darling.” Cersei frowned. “We must be gentle with our pretty things.”
You steeled yourself. Feeling this rabid Prince gawk at the ruined skin of your back. The rough red troughs and dips that made the ugly constellation of tooth and claw that had torn at you. You could still see the indented bite marks. You’d had it sealed with flame to stop infection. Damn nearly killed you it hurt so much. You’d passed out from the pain.
Now you were fucking entertainment. You did as he bid. Eyes kept low as you turned. Showed him the worst scars of you; the mottled uneven skin of your back.
“Very distressing. How ugly.” Joffrey spat in glee. The words studded you like arrowheads. You felt shame sweep over you. Hot and searing from the inside out.
You dared look up. Because the way your throat got thick with emotion was too much to bear. You set your eyes on the far wall.
Where the Hound stood.
His gaze caught yours. Something in his eyes read as pity. Anger too. Hard as axe blades. Twice as sharp. Swirling and sudden on your behalf.
Of these fucking rabid royals making you as much a joke as him. Parading you around like some dinner party piece they could bring out for show.
He saw steely determination in your eyes. You would not flinch. You would not shed one tear.
There’s a good little maid. Don’t give in to them.
You’re not ugly. The ugliness lies with those golden cunts. Not you.
He sent you a nod. A jerk of his chin that bolstered more than you could say. You lowered your eyes.
“If you please, your grace. The flagons are near empty.” You stated.
“Go…” Cersei dismissed. You nodded. They were done with prodding at you.
“Red bitch.” Joffrey called after you.
Head down. You passed by the hound. Flickered his eyes to you briefly. Watching you cross to leave. Sweet heady Jasmine filled his nose as passed by. He savoured the sweetness. Each little round yellow petal of it.
His eyes roamed to the doors when he heard that blonde cunt guard outside speak to you. How he’d leered and turned your way. That made him grimace a frown.
“I didn’t mean you to make an exhibition of the girl.” Tyrion chided his nephew.
Joffrey looked irritated by that. “Why should I care about a wenches feelings?”
Tyrion turned his eyes to Cersei. Who seemed mildly content with it all.
“A good handmaiden doesn’t deserve being dragged through mud, for your amusement. She is your subject.”
The Queens eyes narrowed. “Sore spot? Fucked her, have you brother?” She asks.
Tyrions jaw grit.
Sandor squeezed his sword hilt so tight. His fingers shook. He knew the Imp liked girls such as you. Dear god it better not be true. Please no. He couldn’t take it.
“I have not.”
His chest released under his armour. A full deep breath. A relief.
“I know you like fat assed redheads. Fiery nature. Nice tits too.” She dug.
He eyes her for a moment. “And we all know your type. Dear sister.” He tilted his head at her.
She went silent at that. Looked as if he’d struck her. Sandor tried not to crook a smile. Her face was ten kinds of acidic.
“Are we done here?” She asks.
“Try not to make fools of your staff. Lord knows the crown has enough enemies. You could use a friendly girl or two about the place. Or was it her youth and beauty that set your teeth on edge….” He asked as he slid from his seat, cockily, to leave the room.
Cersei just glared.
Tyrion took his leave with a sunny goodbye. Bronn followed. Always eyeing Sandor like he couldn’t quite believe anyone could be that tall. They left.
The Hound found himself rather fond of the Imp. For once.
~
It was late into a hot summer night and you were exhausted. After your interrogation with the Queen, and Joffrey, you’d gone to hide in the kitchens awhile. Sent another girl back up with the wine. You felt like you had to go put sharp wolf teeth in, to face down the Queen once again.
Many duties fell to you of an evening. You were sent to serve wine and plates spilling over with fresh fruits or platters of stuffed wild goose at dinner. Pouring ale or wine and working your way along the feast tables.
Elbow deep in suds, scrubbing plates when you were sent back below stairs. Taking up sweet cakes and treats for the next course. You also had to run trays to rooms for those who couldn’t make it downstairs to the hall. Lucky fucks.
You must’ve run miles around that castle serving food. You’d be fortunate if you got a spare crumb or a cup of weak ale at the end of this long night.
Just your luck you got stuck delivering food to Maester Pycelle - who was a doddery pain in the ass when it came to how he liked his chicken cooked.
First it was too dry. Then too salty. And now he picked at the tray in front of you asking you ten questions about how the potatoes were cooked. Cream or butter. Onions or shallots. Were the turnips mashed or sliced.
You just about kept your tongue tamed to answer him sweetly. You’d fetched wine and the syrup-soaked plum pudding he liked. At fucking last, he seemed pleased. But still instructed you to change his sheets as he dined.
You despised the feeling of his eyes weighing on you as you bent over to untuck the sheets. Took out the pillows. Fluffed the sagging feather mattress as you were taught. Dripping sweat with an armful of laundry, you took your leave. He was curled in like a dried winter leaf, over his food. Chewing loudly and slurping wine as you left.
You stood outside his door a moment. Catching your breath. The dirty sheets you heaped in an empty basket on the landing and began to lug it down the turret stairs. Your sandals slapping with each step. The dark way barely lit by the bronze sconces high on the walls. Bleeding yellow wax down the stone.
The stone wall is clammy cold when you put your hand to it. Helping you balance as you rounded the spiral, coming to the landing where the night wind poured through the window arches, tumbling leaves into the hall.
You look up and nearly jump out clean your skin to see the archway beyond is filled by a wide male body.
You reel back, clutching the sheets to your chest. Back against the spiral wall.
When you see it’s the Hound, you instantly relax.
“Seven fucking hells.” You curse. Putting one hand across your heaving chest. Sweat kissing your hand.
He winced like he was sorry.
Flicked his eyes down for a second, sheepish, bad dog, before looking back up at you. Hair obscuring the ruined twisted side of his face.
“Didn’t mean to scare you.” He uttered lowly. The shivering candlelight from around you danced across the hard planes of his face. Made his eyes glitter gold. Stroked across his strong dark beard.
It’s stuns you. In that moment. How handsome he looked.
“For a big man, you don’t half move quiet.” You tell him with a grin. Trying to catch your breath. Aching raw hands and tired arms holding the basket.
He considered you for a long second before he spoke. Chewing over the words. “I didn’t see you at dinner.”
You parse that into context.
He was concerned about you. How you’d been a gap in his day where usually you filled routine.
“Someone had to run dinner trays to half the lazy bastards in this castle.” You told him, a flick of mirth on your mouth.
He stepped closer. A shift of his armour. Metal scraping metal as he came nearer. He still smelt like plain white soap and armour polish.
“You were brave today. Letting them corner you like that.” He told.
You knew him well enough to know he rarely barked words he didn’t mean. No lie crosses his tongue. You want honesty? He’ll give it straight as an arrow.
“I’ve been cornered before. by worse. Their empty threats don’t scare me.” You tell him with a shake of your head.
“Not much scares you. Does it?” He asks with something that’s nearly a grin on his lips.
He steps in so close, he rests his hand on the stone wall beside you.
His gauntlets are off. You come to comprehend just how huge his hands are. Even without them. Spread out on the wall next to you. Tanned skin. Knotted with scars on his knuckles. Dusted with hair that’s as dark as his head.
His other hand takes the basket of dirty laundry and casts it to the side. Dropped at your feet.
You swallow. Peering back up at him.
“Not very good at being scared. Far better at being armed. And angry. Like you.” You explain calmly. He’d expect no less from a northern lass.
He lets out a slow breath. You can smell red wine on him. Red wine and salt from roasted meat.
“You kissed me.” He remarked softly.
So softly you could barely hear him over the whistling breeze that flowed in the halls around you. Could only just make out his deep voice for the snap and burn of the candles.
He could barely wrap his mind around it. Even now, seeing you again like this, he still couldn’t fathom it.
“Aye. I did.” You answer back. No shame. Forthright. Eyes blazing at him in the half light.
No retracting the fact. You owned to it.
“What’s a nice girl like you doing, kissing an ugly old dog like me?” He seeks.
Your heart falls gently in your chest. Sinks down like stone in the ocean. Delves somewhere deep and turgid and cold.
He thinks you’ve been sent to seduce or beguile him by some unseen hand.
He thinks you kissing him was a plot.
You try something. Hold to that bravery he spoke of.
You reach up and gently use your thumb to brush away the hair that he let cover one side of his cheekbone. You unveil his ruined scars.
Let your eyes run all over his face. You feel him tense when you lay your soft palm to his cheek and jaw. The skin was smooth, yet ridged and bumped. Not unpleasant to the touch. And you look at that side of him without fear. Without judgement.
He tensed. Jaw tight. Like he expects you to shrink away. Retract your hand. To run away screaming.
That’s what every other fucker does. Why not you?
“You’re not ugly to me.” You explain. “And I kissed you cause I fucking wanted too.”
He sneers. “That’s not what proper ladies are supposed to want. Not from this.” He gestured to his ruined burned face with one thick finger. “Not from the likes of me.” He growls.
“I look like a proper lady to you?” You raise one red brow.
He took a deep breath. His eyes turned to hungry pits. He’s not shy about dragging his eyes to your chest, your lips. Meets your eyes again.
You see pure want in the turn of his smile. The naked nature in his eyes turned black. Lust.
“Aye. Red. You sure as hell do look like a damn lady to me. Got half those idiot guards downstairs gagging and drooling to stick their cocks in you.”
“I don’t want them.” You state clearly.
You want him?
“You’re a fucking mad bitch. You know that.”
His breath comes heavier now.
He steps in so you’re nearly chest to chest. Thankfully the high step you were on, brings you nearly level to his height.
“Sandor?” You ask. Placing your hand on the front of his gorget.
He grunts in recognition. Eyes stuck on your lips. His thumb comes up and brushed the pad of your chin. Hard rough calluses against such silk. It shouldn’t be so.
“I want to kiss you again.” You breathe.
His response is his huge paw of a hand, capturing the side of your hip. He nearly yanks you off that stair, bringing you into him. Your flesh moulding soft and tender under his brute hands.
He didn’t let you have the choice this time. He pushed his mouth to yours, and kisses you so hard, the wall and his hand was the only thing keeping you upright.
Your hand slips up over his shoulder. Folding over the back of his neck as you deepen the kiss. Chase the fiery hunger in his lips. He was impatient. Kissed like he fought, towered over all and took what he wanted.
When you feel the pull of his teeth on your bottom lip, that heady velvet taste of tannic red wine in your mouth, you smile into this kiss, which makes him break it.
You don’t take your arm off him. He doesn’t take his off you. You try to catch your breath. His forehead nearly pressed to yours. His thumb sliding under your chin. Rough fingertips finding your jawbone. Your neck.
He steps back and wets his lips. Trying to act like you hadn’t just reached in and plucked his damn soul out through that kiss.
He drew you in again. Your back arched hands slipping up to tangle in his hair. Stupidly soft black mane through your fingers.
“The fuck you doing to me… hmm?” He grunts. His fingers finally delve into a section of your hair down by your neck. Running red and sleek through his fingers. Thick with jasmine flowers. The scent that haunts him.
Your pulse leaps when he touched you. You feel drunk. Dazed.
“Trying to focus on protecting that boy Prince and all I can think of is you. Your damn red hair. That yellow Jasmine soap. The way you fucking smile back at me. Follows me round like my own damn shadow.” He curses. Like he wants to tear your gizzards out for making him so unfocused.
“Like a song I can’t get out my head. Rain tapping on the roof. Driving me half fucking mad. You are dangerous. Woman.”
Your grin blinds him. “My sincere apologies.”
You stretch on your tiptoes to kiss him again. Maybe to soothe the ache. He growls into it. Like the ornery old dog he is.
You sigh happily when you feel him kiss you back again. You sweep your tongue to his lower lip. He all but crushed you into the wall to squeeze you close for more. Hand on your hip seizing onto more of you.
Squeezing the side of where your hip meets your ass. Made you gasp, arching your body to his plate armour. It was a crying shame he couldn’t feel your tits through this soft dress. His hand slides from your ass, up your back. Greedy fingertips had to find that scar of yours. Graze over your soft skin like he’d die without it. You want him to wrap his hands around all of you. Always.
Footsteps on the far end of the hall make you break away.
He watches your eyes flush wide in panic. He steps back from you and spins to see who it is. Dark cloak sweeping to the back of his legs. Crashing into his armour.
You bend for your basket. Heave it back into your arms. Pray your lips weren’t too kiss-bruised. They feel it. Bright red.
“Dog.” You bobbed a nod at him. Corners of your smile stuck in his eyes. He couldn’t tear his eyes away if his life depends on it.
He leered at you. Darkly. He knew your game.
Don’t give them an inch.
“Maid.” He greeted. Gruff. Short. Cutting to unfriendly ears.
You go your separate ways.
You off with the soiled washing. He down the halls. You smile mildly at the fellow handmaiden you pass along the way. Her arms laden with a tray. Taliya. You think her name is. Raven haired. Always friendly and quiet as a mouse.
She bids you good evening. Soft like the coo of a dove. You smile back. Friendly. Nothing more.
When she turns past you and down another hall, you dare turn over your shoulder.
Still he stands, that giant figure hulking in the shadows. Safe, far away from any flame. As he likes it.
Eyes glazed with honey gold candle light as he watched you walk away. A small smile decorating the corner of his mouth at the sway of your hips and ass, in that damned flowy dress. Before he ducked out of sight and down the spiral stairs.
Off to go splash cold, very cold, water in his face. Try and calm himself. A long walk around the keep should do. Though he well knows there’ll be no getting rid of your influence. Not for all the tits on silk street. You were danger and liability all wrapped in guise, and he wanted you.
Gods be damned it didn’t make sense.
You smiled all the way back down to the kitchens. Dirty laundry and duties be damned.
tagging some hound peeps - i'm new to this guy - be gentle with me! I've tagged based on all the wonderful hound fics i've read off you guys -- @konigslittleliebling @first-edition @catsteeth @castieltrash1 @terry2227 @justagirlwholikesadam @auxmodi @proseandpretrichor @novaursa @jxckerbxtch @mydearviserra @slut4thehound @yeyinde @jaimesrighthand @daydream818 @poisonousrain222 @slowlikehoney-stronglikemusic @itisjustwhatitis
Summary: How would you meet the men of akotsk in modern times?
AN: First off, thank you to the person who asked for this!! Sorry I accidentally deleted the ask 🫥 This was so so fun; when I started reading fanfic this was the kind of stuff that was really popular, so it was cute to remember all the stuff I was into lol. I’ve been gone but I promise I’m back and I’m getting to all of yalls wonderful requests!!<3
You meet Daeron through a friend of a friend and, at first, he seems like a laid back, stoner type who never takes anything too seriously. He's laughing, drink in hand, telling some story about a party that makes little sense on account of the alcohol. Always ordering another round for the group, always putting down his father’s credit card to pay the tab. You don’t remember exactly what tips you off about it, but something tells you most of his “friends” are only around for the free fun. At first, he’s a little unsettled with how perceptive you seem to be; staring too long when you notice the dark circles that permanently ring his lavender eyes, gently pulling a glass out of his hand when he knows he’s one sip away from a meltdown, asking him if he’s alright. No one asks him if he’s alright, they just assume from his easy smile and blasé attitude that nothing's wrong.
Daeron begins to sort of cling to the normalcy you bring, the control, the ability to have fun without taking it over the edge. He’s still guarded when you’re alone, reluctant to bring up anything that might frighten you away, but you coax him into activities that involve daylight and sobriety, and he finds himself actually enjoying them. Laying out in the grass in a park, walking around the aquarium, chatting over breakfast. His hand always seems to find yours, firm grip betraying the lax look on his face. It hurts you, deep down, to see that he is clearly suffering, but refuses to share it with you, refuses to acknowledge the obvious thing happening between the two of you. He can see what he’s doing, see the crestfallen look in your eye when he casually brushes you off, but he can’t seem to stop himself. How could he bring you, so kind and gentle and lovely, into the mess of his mind? What would you even think? He’s certain you wouldn’t want to involve yourself with him, so he resigns to keeping you at arms length, whatever keeps you in his life.
It all comes to a head one night, a thunderstorm rattling outside your apartment. You almost miss it, the rapping on your door, but you get up out of bed to find a shivering, exhausted Daeron, rain-soaked clothes clinging to his frame.
“Please, please sweet girl, I had nowhere else to go.”
You grab his arm, tugging him inside, and he all but collapses against you. Slowly, you tug at his wet clothes, neither of you speaking as you help him towel off. He’s not drunk yet, there’s a crazed look in his eye you only seldom see, when he hasn’t numbed his brain enough. You find your way into your bed, his head tucked against your chest and his arms an iron band around your waist, as if you might leave if he lets go. You run your fingers through his damp, blond hair, nose nuzzled against the crown of his head. You’ve almost drifted off when he starts mumbling, incoherent at first, but eventually you pick up what he’s saying. Dreams he cannot escape, fire, blood, ashes. He fears what you’ll think of him, but he wants, more than anything, for you to know the truth about him. When all you do is hold him tighter, fat tears develop at the corners of his eyes. He doesn’t sleep much that night, but you’re warm and soft and there, and he knows things don’t have to be so bad.
Maekar:
You and Maekar have the slow burn of the century. You meet at work, him the gruff, rude younger brother of the head of the company. He’s the one they send to do the dirty work, clever and calculating, he’s strong enough to do the jobs no one else has the heart to do. You’re hardworking, lively, friendly to everyone, and have an edge that makes your work stand out. He notices right away, because Maekar notices everything, but you hardly hear him speak unless to give demands- at first. You don’t seem intimidated by him, though he is intimidating, and you begin to recognize a small, reluctant respect from him. This is where the disconnect happens. To you, he’s your stoic superior, not cruel, but not kind either. To him however, his acceptance of your work, the constructive criticism, his quiet agreement with you in meetings, is a declaration of friendship. It’s not until the two of you happen to stand next to each other (happen meaning he deliberately placed himself at your elbow) during a boring discussion over trade deals, that you realize he may not dislike you as much as you thought. A man from the marketing department is loudly giving his opinion on something when you mumble:
“This could have been an email.”
The snort Maekar lets out at your words has your head whipping around in disbelief. Actually, most of the people around you have similar, shocked faces. Maekar’s face is hard again in moments, back to glowering, but you catch his eyes on you as the meeting continues. It’s not really romantic at first: you invite him to eat lunch with you, and he sits quietly and listens to you talk; he stops men with a glare when they’ve interrupted you; you find the two of you work well together, clever, efficient, your smiles mellowing out his jagged approach. The attraction is certainly there, but he’s older, jaded, and you’re bright and pretty and he doesn’t know how to approach you in a way that doesn’t come off as lecherous.
Maekar overhears a coworker, coincidentally the same guy from the marketing meeting, asking you to go out for drinks after work. He watches, nose flared and eyes cold, from across the office, as the man leans against your desk. He shouldn’t care. You can go out with anyone. You don’t belong to him.
But that’s his spot at your desk, where he leans in to correct your work.
Maekar has to turn away when you smile up at the man, he has no right to feel the way he does. You don’t hear from him for days after; he’s busy in meetings, you’re scheduled for travel, and you find yourself missing his company. The mood of the office is grim, no one is safe from his wrath and more than one person leaves in tears. You finally get the courage to knock on the door to his office, demanding to know why he’s ignoring you. He’s defensive, arms crossed over his broad chest and brows furrowed as you pointedly ask him why he’s so pissy.
He mentions the guy from marketing and you realize what’s happened.
“Maekar, you can’t honestly think I said yes to that guy.”
He lets out a huff, but the tips of his ears have gone red. You smile softly as you walk to him, gently taking his face in your hands to pull his mouth down to yours.
The mood of the office is much calmer after that.
Aerion:
Your relationship with modern Aerion develops through a fierce academic rivalry. This may be an unpopular opinion, but he seems like he really is very smart; or at least, he is willing to work very hard to be the best at something. Anything to give him bragging rights, he’s studious in a way that’s dangerous. When you meet him, it’s in a challenging university course; maybe you’re getting the same degree, maybe you both signed up for a difficult class to look good on a transcript. Immediately, he notices how well you’re doing. Perfect grades, correct answers when called on, working well with other groups of classmates. It infuriates him, because as hard as he works, he’s always one step behind you. He gets a 98 on an exam, you get a 99, you get the picture. It doesn’t help that you’re pretty smug about it. The handsome psycho who sits a row behind you and stares daggers at your back; it’s easy to rile him up.
Aerion even attempts to sabotage your work; accusing you of cheating, loudly arguing against your answers, giving you incorrect notes in an attempt to lead you astray. Obviously, none of this works. He doesn’t have the same charisma you do in class, the ease in which you speak to professors and classmates alike.
He’s pretty cute though, and instead of reporting him to the dean, you offer to help him study. He takes this as a giant offense, but by this point you’re basically all he thinks about anyway, so he reluctantly accepts. Late night study sessions, arguing over notes, gloating over grades, slowly turn into hanging out without talking about class. He asks you to study at a coffee shop and “forgets” his notebook, now he has to lean close, arm slung around the back of your chair, to see your papers. You find yourself inviting him to get drinks with your friends, only it ends up being just the two of you, pressed close together to hear each other speak over the buzz of the bar. It’s not smooth; you argue over who has better penmanship, you race to raise your hands in class first, but eventually, a better grade than him earns you an eye roll and a kiss on the brow.
“You’ve got me this time, baby, but I swear I’ll beat you on the next one.”
It doesn’t sound as intimidating when he says it with his arms around your waist and his mouth on your neck.
Dunk:
Dunk is perfect for a gym meet cute. You’ve just joined a new gym, looking for a comfortable environment to work out in free of creeps. Dunk’s there at odd hours; he works a lot and shows up to the gym in his downtime.You just happen to be there at the same time when he first spots you, later in the night when there’s less people around, and he swears his heart stops momentarily. You’re in a cute set, hair back, still a little shy in a new place but confidently walking to your machine. He can’t help but stare, until he realizes that he’s big and menacing and you’re alone and oh my god what if he scares you?
So he turns back to the weight bench, pushing himself harder than strictly necessary, hoping to impress you without coming off as a douchebag. Of course, the man is hard to miss, and you immediately see his strapping figure from across the room. It almost makes you trip on the stair machine, but you regain your balance quickly and hope he didn’t see you stare.
That’s your dance for a while, not really speaking but watching one another. It’s hard not to eye him while he’s lifting, muscles in his arms and back bulging, once you’re close enough to hear him grunt at the weight, and you have to squeeze your legs together at the sound. He’s constantly got an eye on you, though he tries in vain not to. He knows what he looks like, big man following you, and would never dream of making you uncomfortable. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t pop a boner every time you bend over. He’s so embarrassed too, face scarlet as he tries to subtly adjust himself. But he also knows he can use his size to his advantage. He’s staring daggers at any man who gives you a hard time, blue eyes going dark. Your eyes meet his every time, as the men in question leave you alone, and you can watch Dunk’s face relax.
You’d have to be the one to speak first; Dunk would never think to interrupt your workout, or startle you, or god forbid, frighten you. His self-esteem isn’t what it should be, and he fumbles with his words when he thinks about you, how could he manage actually introducing himself? You shyly idle up to him one evening, finally introducing yourself and asking if he’d help spot you.
“I’ve seen you around here- not that I’m watching you or anything, you just seem so strong.”
He’s blushing and nodding, shaking your hand as he stutters his name out and follows you to the weights. Unbeknownst to him, you’ve spent just as much time planning what to say to him as he’s spent daydreaming about you. You’d worn something you thought suited you, pretending in the mirror before leaving for the gym. Somewhere, deep down, he gets the courage to ask for your number so you can work out together again.
Baelor:
Dad’s best friend.
Wait, who said that?
Baelor is an older man you’ve known a while, not as old as your father but old enough to turn heads when you’re out together. It starts clean, but you both feel the unignorable tension between you. He takes you out to dinner, just to catch up. He pays the bill, because it’s the nice thing to do. He drives you home, because what kind of man would he be if he let you walk home alone late? You know he’s lonely, finding comfort in your conversation, and a relationship begins to form around the margins. Your friends joke that you’re his sugar baby, hanging on his arm and letting him spend his money on a whim. They beg to hear about the sex (who wouldn’t), and don’t quite believe when you say there isn’t any. He’s kind, respectful, gentlemanly in a way you’ve never known. It’s so unlike men your age that for a while you believe he really does only see you as a friend.
The inner turmoil is killing him because on one hand, Baelor knows he’s too old for you; you could find a smart, handsome man your own age, and you’d be far happier. On the other hand, he can barely contain his burning need for you, even just being in your presence scratches an itch he didn’t think he still had.
And what if you did find another man, one more appropriate for you? How would Baelor know he was good to you, took care of you, pleased you the way you deserved? The thought actually makes him a little sick, but he cannot get it out of his head. It gets to the point where Maekar even points out the furrow of his brow that has no place there. The older brother gives a half-assed excuse about work, but he’s well aware Maekar doesn’t believe him for a second. For some reason, he doesn’t want his brother to know, not yet anyway, about your strange relationship. You’re his, and the idea of anyone, even a most beloved brother, talking about you fills him with a hot jealousy.
Instead, he goes out of his way to be there for you; listening to your complaints about work over a very expensive dinner, whisking you away on a weekend to a place you mentioned wanting to see, taking you on what literally anyone else would consider a date, but the two of you insist is just two likeminded people spending time together. He loves how thoughtful you are, how you always have something interesting to say, and finds himself happy to spend hours listening to you, chin in hand, a fond look on his face.
Eventually, it gets too much for you. No knowing how he feels, if you really are just a younger woman he keeps around to chat with. You ask him one night why keeps insisting on spending time with you, and it ends with you on the brink of tears, confessing your own love and feelings of doubt. It takes a moment for him to respond- he’s so shocked you actually feel the same way he’s at a bit of a loss for words. Gently, he takes your face in his hands, softly thumbing away the tears and kissing over the planes of your face. He whispers out his own affections, how he thought you’d want someone your own age, not someone like him, and how he was willing to take whatever he could get if it meant he could be around you.
Needless to say, your friends get a lot more information about Baelor the next time you see them.
Lyonel:
Lyonel gives playboy who never catches feelings until the right person comes along, and then he falls hard. Of course, his salacious reputation has not set him up for success in finding a real relationship. You do NOT vibe with his bullshit at first. He kind of fumbles your first introductions. He’s the type to be traipsing around with models and getting himself into trouble, so when he falls to his knees and dramatically asks to take you out, all he gets is an eye roll and a firm no. Why would you want to make a fool out of yourself by getting wrapped up with a man who changes interests in a moment?
You’ve met at a party, he’s drunk and loud and dancing in a way that would be embarrassing for anyone else, but is mesmerizing when he does it. He doesn’t take your response as a hard stop, more as a challenge. He starts showing up places he knows you’ll be, casually siding up to you to chat. He writes you love letters, disgustingly sappy but sweet nonetheless. It’s not pushy, because the thing is, he really is being sincere. This is just the only way he knows how to show affection. He’s loud and overbearing, dramatic and wild, and can totally read when you’re pretending not to care.
Eventually, you grow close enough that he outright asks you why you’re so against him. You confess that you don’t like the idea of falling for him, only to have your heart broken when he suddenly changes his mind and finds something else to take up his time. You’re well aware he’s never had a long relationship before, why would he want to start now? To Lyonel, this is only another challenge to conquer. He makes it his mission to prove to you that he’s lovestruck.
The gestures are far more personal than before, and more romantic. He brings flowers every time he sees you, expensive ones, and insists on cutting and fixing them in water himself. You mention a new art installation in passing, and the next thing you know he’s rented out the exhibit so that you see it just the two of you. He’s always there when you need him, even if he has no idea how to help. You call him in tears one night because a pipe burst under the sink in your apartment, and he’s there within minutes. He insists on taking a look at it himself, easy smile:
“I’ve got this honey, don’t you worry.”
Lyonel gets down on his hands and knees, sticking his head under the sink, only to get his hair and shirt soaking wet. It’s enough to make you giggle, seeing a man who clearly has no idea how to fix your problem dive headfirst into it anyway. The sound brings a grin to his face, and he rises up to wrap you in his arms. The soaked clothes don’t matter much longer after that.
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contents (nsfw): Dunk x fem!Reader, Modern AU friends to lovers rom-com with pregnancy. Fluff, humour, smidge of angst, banter, domesticity, caretaking, pregnant sex with some dirty talk, riding, mild choking, marking, aftercare. They cry at the end.
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MASTERLIST
next chapter -> (03/07)
synopsis: In which Reader meets Egg. (Pregnancy status: 21-24 weeks, II trimester).
word count: 13,3K
a/n: Banner by me, dividers by @strangergraphics, proofread by @hextoken!
Dunk is watching Finn from 2B take a terrible kick at the ball and thinking about how children’s bodies consist of elbows and zest. He walks around the pitch, corrects someone’s stance and does his best to avoid getting knocked on the head. His summer class is not as orderly as the school-year one, but the chaos of it is joyous. It’s less of a class and more of an afternoon thing. A place where kids can busy themselves while the weather is formidable and they are stuck in a boring town with their options narrowed to riding bikes, throwing stones into ponds and playing video games.
He makes them play Gaelic football because it holds fifteen per team and whoever plays it does so purely for fun. Egg enjoys it tremendously. He’s small enough to sneak past larger kids, so the ball gets hard-passed to him often.
It has unfolded itself so that when someone scores, their teammates gather them by the legs and arms and carry them above their heads like an offering to some hedge god. Egg has just scored and is currently being presented to the sky, and Duncan stands there, watching the anarchy, and laughing.
He is in a dangerous state of happiness. It has begun to make claims on him. He is no longer just Dunk, he is now a dad-to-be, a father to his future son, a useful lad and a man stuck, and happy to be stuck, in an arrangement that pains him little but confuses him greatly.
The agreed label is a friend and co-parent who happens to be sleeping with you. There is some shape of a family within it and it is a better one than Dunk’s ever had, and to Dunk, who converts crumbs into meals because he learned early to be grateful for crumbs, this is a banquet with no obvious bill yet. Sometimes this breeds uneasiness.
Good mood clings to him for so long he mistrusts it. Things keep going well. You text him when you wake or simply talk to him, because oftentimes the waking is done next to each other. Most of what he wants he gets: feeding you, driving you, putting furniture together, hearing you complain and getting scolded and looked at by you. Even if he doesn’t acquire the full catalogue of his dream things, it is already good. Becoming chosen can only happen without forcing your hand, otherwise he does not want it.
His confusion is about permission, and fairness, and consequence. Not the feeling. The feeling itself is clear and Duncan sometimes worries he is achingly plain with it. He’s babbled I want this, I want you, and mine too many times to remain inconspicuous. Thanks to your kindness, your remarkable ability to explain everything with a shrug and by telling him that things are like this sometimes, that people are strange like this sometimes, they say stuff and do stuff when their brains shut off, Duncan’s intentions are currently an elephant in the middle of the room, considerately covered with a white sheet.
This is, generally, how he survives the sex, though it feels less like sex and more like being read aloud from. Besides you being gorgeous and dear to him even without his boy in your belly, you’ve managed to rewire him into a caveman creature who thinks good every time your tit spills out of the bra. Then yes, this, when you’re muttering put a baby in me into his ear despite having one ripening in you already. And well, he likes that it is like that. He likes being allowed near the consequence of his own coveting, even if how deep that goes embarrasses him terribly.
He has a key to your place and intends to give you one to his place today, for today is another mundane day in the lives of the happily unmarried. He’s setting up a baby space in his flat and you’ve offered to help, and there are a great many worries in Duncan concerning it. His apartment being a testimony to his bachelor status is one of them. Despite him calling the whole date a 'preparation', to him it is nearer to consecration. Then, you coming and picking him up is another story entirely, because there is a shade of a chance for you to meet Egg and that makes Dunk giddy for reasons he doesn’t understand.
“Oi!” he yells at a boy tackling a smaller boy to the ground. “Quit actin’ like a maggot, will ye?”
The children laugh collectively and start chanting maggot-maggot like an extremely potent little cult. Egg comes over to Dunk with mud smeared on his ears. He squints, shields his eyes with one hand, and points towards the outskirts of the pitch with the other. “Who’s that?”
Duncan turns. Then, for two seconds, he becomes useless.
You are standing there in a blue sundress with your belly hugged by it prettily, and waving at him. He waves back. To his utter terror, he giggles too.
“Oh, boy,” Egg murmurs. “It’s real bad, innit?”
“Wha—?” Duncan mumbles. When there’s no reply he looks at Egg and Egg is wearing a shite-eating grin, so Dunk decides to overcompensate by yelling at children some more. “Oh, quit it, you,” he says. “Get back in there, we ain’t done yet.”
“Aye, sir,” Egg says and starts towards the middle of the field. He arranges himself into a position that suggests he’s about to sprint off, but before that happens he cranes his bald head to Duncan and quips, “She’s much prettier than Miss Darry.” And he’s off. And Duncan’s cheeks fill with a snort.
He gets back into the mosh-pit after Egg and the closer he is to finishing the session, the more his mind ventures into wistful areas. He’ll be able to do that with his own boy, and soon. He wonders what kind of player his boy will be, then tells himself the boy can hate sport if he wants, that would be fine, probably, though Dunk would need a private minute. After that private minute, the boy can do whatever he pleases. Duncan’s own boyhood was lonely and patched together by whoever took him in for a while, so the most important thing is for his boy to not have that sort of life. Those kinds of musings are easier, because he can say my son without lying, and where it might be heard. The rest of what he’d like to call his still feels stolen: girl, wife, family, home, and those are said only where no one can hear.
“Is that Mrs Pennytree?” asks Finn from 2B.
“Yes!” Egg bellows, as much as a person his size can bellow. Duncan glares at him, and gets another grin in response.
“Eyes on the ball, please,” Duncan says in a flat tone, trying to ignore the matter, and failing.
Another squeaky voice comes from the middle of the field: “Is she having your baby?”
That one nearly kills him. “Aye,” he says, tormented. “And if any of ye kick that ball near her, you’ll be doing laps till September.”
It all just turns into havoc. The children stop playing and openly giggle, and whisper and stare at you and ask their child-sized questions and state their child-sized statements, which, in this case, are all enormous. When did you marry? What’s her name? She’s so pretty! Will the baby go to our school? Having a teacher-parent’s a bummer.
At some point, Egg asks, “Is it a boy or a girl?”
“Boy,” Duncan tells him, all fond despite himself.
“Cool,” Egg says with God-honest joy, and Duncan starts laughing, because he’s never heard Egg say cool before.
He turns to the maddening crowd. “Right, all of you,” he booms. “If one pregnant lady distracts you, I’ve no good news ’bout your futures. But it’s a wrap here for today!”
The kids disperse in various directions. Some go for the showers, some go straight home, and some make sure to come right by you and shout, “Goodbye, Mrs Pennytree!” with enough shrill sincerity to make Duncan redder than he has any right to be despite standing half a day in the sun.
He picks up the ball, though only the physical one, and trots towards you with Egg beside him. He wants to say hi, sweetheart. Egg is there, so what comes out is, “Oi.”
You smile. “Oi yourself.”
He smiles too, with one hand on the back of his neck and with the ball tucked under his other arm. “You good?”
“Yeah,” you say. “Warm, but alive. You?”
“Aye.” Duncan nods. “Grand.” Then nothing. For no proper reason, because you are standing on a school pitch and he has said hello to you before and Egg is only a child, except Egg is also looking between the pair of you with the attentive cruelty of a pensioner at a wake.
You cock your head to the side. “Are you the boy I keep hearing about?”
“Most likely,” Egg says. “I’m the favourite.” He squints up at you. “Are you the girl I keep hearing about?”
Duncan scowls.
“Oh?” you laugh. Then you turn to Dunk. “Uh, I hope so? Am I?”
Duncan has reached the sort of red that exists in nature only as a warning sign. He turns to the boy. “Egg, for Christ’s sake. Spare me, alright?” Then he turns to you and his voice softens at once. “Can ye wait another ten? I’m smellin’ all foul—”
You are grinning, clearly amused. “Yeah, no worries. I’ll wait.”
“Grand,” Duncan says. He turns to Egg once more. “Egg—” A finger gets pointed at the bald head. “No funny business, you hear me?”
“Aye, sir,” Egg says, and Duncan does not believe him for a moment.
He walks towards the building and you stare at his back a second too long.
You think, fervently, that you might just as well have been shot. The sight of Duncan with children is lethal. Patient, mock-stern, somehow gentle even when he is yelling across the pitch like he's calling cattle home. He corrects where correction is needed, encourages where encouragement has a place to land, and goes soft around the smaller ones without doing anything as obvious as softening. If you did not know him, you would think he was showing off.
Then again, who in their right mind would see this and not want it?
For one strange minute you feel a deep, wounded kinship with the maths teacher, whoever she is. Of course some woman who sees him every day in shorts and glasses and patience would lose her shite over it. It is a sensible injury.
You already know he is good with children. You have seen him with the bump, which is worse because the bump has no limbs and no eyes and no ability to thank him, and still he lowers his voice to it like it might be shy. You know he will be a good father. You know this with a grim force. But knowing a thing in your flat is different from seeing it here, in daylight, from the outside.
Here it gets embodied. It runs around in grass stains and shouts over him. Clings to his arm, ignores his authority, takes comfort from his largeness and abuses his kindness for sport. And naturally, because you are pregnant and therefore built from appetite and disaster, it all confuses you more.
Egg’s eyes on your face become heavier until they weigh a ton, so you break out from whatever stupor has taken you.
“And you?” you ask. “Not showering?”
“No,” Egg says. He looks you over with deep, thorough scrutiny, as if he has built a version of you from whatever Duncan has let slip, and is now comparing the product to reality. “I don’t get to be dirty as often, so I savour it,” he says, clearly thinking something else.
“That’s…” You press your lips together. “Very boy of you.”
He accepts the compliment with a small nod. Then keeps looking, which is both endearing and unnerving.
“So,” he says, in the tone of someone who has completed the formalities and is now ready to discuss dirt. “Why don’t you want to marry Mr Pennytree?”
The breath leaves you in one fast blow. “Oh Lord,” you say. “I see what Duncan means. You’re a real menace, aren’t you?” You shift the bag on your shoulder and try for stern. It comes out somewhat damaged by amusement. “I don’t think that’s any of your business, hm?”
“That’s exactly what he says,” Egg murmurs under his breath.
You glance at the sun reflected in his baldness. He looks down first, then up again, testing the fence.
“Did he propose badly?”
“Egg.”
“What?”
You mean to scold him. You do. It simply comes out far too fond, which is worrying for everybody involved.
“Fine, fine,” he relents. He digs his foot into grass. A beat passes. “All I mean is that he’s real good and he likes you a lot.” He says it off-hand, almost bored, which somehow makes it huge. “He only stares at this app of his and avoids Miss Darry like wildfire.”
“Miss Darry?”
“The maths teacher.”
The kinship with Miss Darry lives out its natural lifespan, which in this case amounts to roughly two minutes.
“I see,” you say, diplomatic in the way of someone who would love to hear more and knows perfectly well they should not invite a seven-year-old into gossip. Especially gossip about a woman who may well be guilty of nothing except having eyes and a workplace. “Well.”
“She wears red lipstick,” Egg says.
“Does she.”
“And laughs at everything.”
“I see,” you say again, less diplomatically.
Egg stares at you. His face has softened a little, impudence thinning into something more careful.
“You care about him, aye?” you ask.
Egg shrugs. “He’s alright.”
You smile. “I think the feeling’s mutual.”
He considers this, then smiles too. Small, quick, there and gone. His eyes drop to your stomach. “Can I touch your belly?”
The question catches you more gently than the others. “Yeah,” you say. “Of course.”
Egg steps closer. For all his nerve, his hand comes up with caution. It lands on the curve, light and flat, fingers splayed in a way that makes him look younger than he sounded a second ago. Both of you go quiet.
His hand is small. Warm from running. There is dirt crescented under one nail and a faint green smear at the heel of it. Your own boy will have hands like that one day. Small hands, damp from effort. Unreasonable with wanting things. Maybe grass-stained, maybe ink-stained, maybe sticky with jam or paint or God knows what. The thought warms you some and melts the borders of its surrounding countries through gentle invasion.
Egg’s brow pinches. “Can he hear me?”
“Maybe a little,” you say. “I’m not sure. I think mostly he hears my insides being rude.”
Egg nods as if this is useful scientific material. “Hello,” he says to your stomach.
You bite the inside of your cheek.
“He’s quiet,” Egg observes.
“He takes after his father in exactly one area, then.”
That makes Egg grin again. “What’s his name?”
“Oh.” You blink. “We actually haven’t decided yet.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Dunk has an app.”
“He does,” you say, trying not to squeal at being trusted enough that Egg now calls him Dunk instead of Mr Pennytree around you.
“With lists.”
“He does love a list.”
Egg hums to that, disappointed by adult incompetence but willing to continue living in the world despite it. His hand remains on your belly another moment, then drops.
Behind him, the building door opens hard enough to startle you both.
Duncan comes out with his hair still wet, cheeks and forehead a little sunburnt, shirt clinging damply at the collar. He has changed, but only just; there is still a streak of grass on his shorts and a look on his face that says he has spent the whole shower worrying what a small bald child might do with ten unsupervised minutes.
“Is he pesterin’ you?” he asks.
Egg straightens. “No.”
“He’s fine,” you say.
“She allowed me,” Egg adds, with great legal force.
Duncan looks between you. “Allowed you what?”
“To touch the baby.”
Duncan’s face does a thing dangerously soft before he throttles it and stuffs it behind suspicion. “Right.” He turns to Egg. “Have you been tellin’ her nonsense?”
“Some,” Egg says.
You laugh.
Duncan looks at you, panicked. “What sort of some?”
You lift one shoulder. “A lady never tells.”
“Ah, Jesus.” He looks to the sky, then back at Egg. “I knew it’d be trouble leavin’ ye two alone.”
Egg’s grin comes back in full. “You did say no funny business.”
“Aye, and?”
“I didn’t do funny business.”
Duncan folds his arms.
Egg thinks. “I did serious business.”
You laugh again, harder this time, and Duncan loses the fight with his own mouth. It twitches, then gives up. A limo pulls up to the parking lot.
“Into the car with ye,” he says, pointing towards the gate. “Before you start a union.”
Egg goes, but slowly, with one last assessing glance at you and then at Duncan, as if pleased with whatever private conclusion he has reached. You go too, because you're not sure if into the car with ye was intended for Egg, or you, or simply everyone who Dunk has marked as misbehaving.
Goodbyes are bid, and then into the respective cars, and then Duncan is driving you to his place and eyeing your knees every now and then, trying to come up with some last-minute reasons for carrying you through the threshold and setting you on the bed so your feet don’t touch the floor and you only conduct him while he does everything himself and then makes sweet love to you.
None of it happens, and the minute you set one slipper in his hallway, something in Dunk sinks with urgent vehemence, like he has been hoping for you to float three inches above the floor.
You look at him when the sigh leaves him. “Nervous?”
“A little,” Duncan says, because it is a white lie and the truth is insane.
He clears his throat and leads you to the kitchen. There are cups in the sink. Two, maybe three, and one spoon with tea dried round the bowl of it. The fridge door has ketchup smeared near the handle in a short red streak that immediately becomes the loudest colour in the room. Duncan sees you seeing the kitchen, then sees you being kind enough to not see the fridge, and feels a violent affection that makes him stupider than he already is.
“I’ll make tea,” he says.
“Oh, can I have coffee?”
Duncan turns to you.
“One,” you add quickly. “One coffee. The doctor said one is fine. The app said one is fine too.”
“Is it your first today?”
“Yes.”
“Proper first?”
“Yes, Dunk.”
“You sure?”
You look at him as if considering whether to bite. Then you put your hand on his bicep and say, “Please.”
It is the prettiest please he has heard in a week. He relents so thoroughly it is almost shameful. “Aye, alright. One.”
“Thank you.”
“One small one.”
“You’re a tyrant.”
“I’m responsible,” he says, reaching for the jar, and hears how pleased he sounds with himself. “There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
He points the spoon at you. “Sit down.”
You do, smiling. It makes him feel warm in places he'd rather not think of now.
The baby things are mostly in his bedroom, he tells you while the kettle starts its work. Some are in the hall cupboard. Some are in the living room too because the box said changing table on it and Duncan did not want to risk carrying it somewhere wrong without your supervision, which is how he says he panicked briefly and abandoned it near the telly.
You accept the coffee as if it has been handed down by a benevolent saint. Duncan carries his tea and points you towards the bedroom.
He has got rid of the desk. It sits in the corner of the living room now, looking wrong and sulky under a stack of old training cones and a folded hoodie. In its place, by his side of the bed, there is a gap he has cleared and swept and stood staring at for an embarrassing amount of time. A baby corner. That is what he has called it. A corner makes it sound small and sensible and temporary, like a lamp or a chair. What it feels like is a claim being made in wood and cotton.
You both agreed on a bedside sleeper instead of a cot because there is not enough space. Duncan agreed too, with his mouth, and in all practical senses he knows it is the right choice. Still, a cot would have pleased him. Two cots, really. One at yours, one at his. Two solid, lovely places for the boy to sleep in and make up for the shitty one Duncan remembers only as a smell of disinfectant and old milk and other children’s noise through thin walls. He does not say this.
There is also the matter of Duncan’s sleeping. He has never trusted himself in full unconsciousness. He gets too hot, kicks the covers off, twists himself into them, wakes sideways, wakes sweating, wakes with one arm dead under him. The thought of a newborn within reach of all that makes his stomach knot. A cot has borders. It's a little country of its own. A bedside sleeper, to Dunk, looks like a compromise between closeness and disaster, with one side too open and the boy too near the weather of his body.
Though, of course, the boy will mostly be with you. Dunk knows that. Everyone knows that. For the first months especially, the baby will need his mother more than he needs a large man with hands too big for the buttons on newborn clothes. This whole mission might be some jury-rigged thing, a small structure built so Duncan can feel included in the early days. Your way of saying he can have his space too.
Why he would need space, he has no idea. He would be happy to stay over at yours as much as needed, which he hopes, privately and with no dignity, is every day.
“You know,” you start, while he is setting up the changing table and you are doing your terrible job of folding onesies. “Egg asked me about a name.”
“Has he?” Duncan asks. “And what did you tell him?”
“That we haven’t picked yet. But he said that you’ve got…” You glance at him. “A list?”
Duncan blushes furiously. “Little—” He looks at you and your face manages to marry mockery with fondness the only way yours can. “It ain’t a list. It’s just a few names written down, is all.”
“Well,” you say, folding one sleeve into a shape no sleeve has ever asked for. “Do you have any ideas?”
“I dunno,” Dunk says. “Do you?”
“I thought, uh—” You stop. Your fingers worry the little cotton foot. “Maybe you have someone in your family you’d like to name him after? I don’t—” Your face shifts, cautious around him. “I don’t really have anyone like that, but I thought—”
“I don’t really know,” Duncan blurts.
And he really does not know.
Duncan has never quite been his name. He was given away nameless, as far as he knows, and named by Uncle Arlan afterwards. It was plainly Dunk first, despite everyone later deciding that Duncan must be the proper thing and Dunk the nickname. Someone stopped it before Dunk could be put into documents and said that was no name for a child, so Duncan went down instead. But he stayed Dunk whenever Uncle Arlan would speak to him, angry or fond or needing something fetched. Duncan was reserved for serious talks.
One of those talks was when Arlan smiled at him, which was menacing enough by itself.
There was a family considering Dunk as their child. They would visit and try to get to know him better, even though, by Dunk’s reckoning, he has always been knowable at first glance and there is not much excitement underneath to dig to. He liked sports. He liked animals. That was about it on him. The woman was kind-eyed and slender and taller than her husband, who was some sort of an office job-haver and always came with a leather suitcase and a shirt and tie on him. She wanted Dunk very much. The husband was apprehensive first, then mild.
In the end, Arlan called him Duncan and told him the family had decided it was not a good idea after all to adopt a boy, and Duncan would be staying in the home a little while longer, which lasted until he was eighteen and left.
Another time was when Rafe died.
Dunk felt it in his gut that something bad had happened, even though Rafe only had an infection and it seemed unfeasible that she would fail to shrug it off because she was the strongest girl Duncan knew. When Arlan sat him on the couch in the playroom late in the afternoon and said, “Duncan. Duncan, boy, there’s something I gotta tell you,” Dunk already had this acrimonious feeling growing in his chest because surely some injustice had just happened.
The injustice was that Rafe, a girl who had made it to the orphanage in a state of severe malnourishment, had never really shrugged off her immune system being wonky. What was a hidden infection, and then bronchitis, and then pneumonia, had managed to build its own resistance to all antibiotics, and well, Rafe suffocated despite all the work the good doctors and good nurses at the hospital were doing.
Dunk took the news as Duncan, the version of himself made for the bad things, and that was the first time Uncle Arlan poured him a drink and said nothing when Dunk cried. And he cried a lot.
It became a whole thing, being called Duncan when something bad had happened. Caretaker Maeve called him that when she delivered the news of Arlan’s death too, so it took Dunk some time to not flinch every time someone called him Duncan.
He only has a few names in his inventory, and none of them are fit for his boy.
He does not want to call him Arlan, because Arlan was an old drunk, kind sometimes, cruel sometimes, taught Dunk a lot, and Dunk does not really want to think about him every time he looks at his son. He had thought of mentioning Rafe to you, but it is a haggard name, and it suited Rafe and only her, and therefore should remain hers.
He thinks people should be given their own names with no roots and no past, so that they can step into their lives fresh and with no burdens and shape their futures as they please.
So he has a list of names he has looked up and researched, and he likes some of them a lot, but none of them mean anything personal. They are just nice names his son could have for himself.
“Dunk?”
He turns and finds you looking at him over a defeated little pile of cotton. Your face has gone gentle in a way that makes him grateful, down to the bone, for being called Dunk in that moment.
“You okay, sweetie?”
“Aye, I’m grand,” he says. “Sorry, I jus’—I think I got a bit sunburnt, is all.”
You look at his face, then the abandoned onesie in your hands. “Do you want to do it some other day?”
“No, no.” He glances at the changing table as if it might defend him. “We’re nearly done. It’s one screw away from bein’ a thing.”
You smile faintly. “No. I mean the names.”
“Aye.” Duncan’s mouth goes dry. “That. Yeah, maybe?” He clears his throat, then pretends the screw packet needs his full attention. “Would ye mind?”
Your face changes by no great measure. Only the softness shifts a little deeper, and compassion sits somewhere in it. Duncan does not like that. Does not like the feeling of something compassionable having been found in him.
“Sure,” you say. “Of course. If you want to talk, though—about something else—I could—”
“No, no. There’s naught to talk about.” He gives you a smile that feels too large on his face. “I’m only tired.”
He says it while rising, which is where the trouble begins. His hand leaves the half-built changing table, and the half-built changing table, having no loyalty in it, folds slightly in on itself. The coffee cup you put there tips, rolls, and drops straight into your lap, spilling a brown stain all over the blue dress before tumbling down onto the carpet.
He reaches you in one ugly stride and crouches down, hands hovering first, then landing because panic makes decisions for him. He pulls the wet material away from your belly on instinct, heart thudding. “Was it hot? Did it burn ye?”
“It’s alright,” you say quickly. “It’s alright, Dunk. It wasn’t hot.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I’m good. Just…” You look down at yourself. The stain has spread rudely over the front of you. “Wet.”
He stares at the dress as though it has died under his roof. “I’ll give ye something. Wait.”
He turns to his wardrobe, opens it, and immediately cringes at the small pile on the lower shelf. Clothes in that middle state between clean and dirty, rejected by both categories and left to govern themselves. He shuts that shelf in his head and looks at the hanging shirts instead.
For a second he only stands there. It becomes, terribly, a matter of choosing what he would like to see you in. The soft grey T-shirt. The old green one from a tournament years ago. The thick navy jumper that would hang off one shoulder if fortune chose to be kind. Then he remembers the business at hand and feels heat crawl up the back of his neck.
“Ye want a T-shirt or a button-up?” he asks, voice roughened.
You come closer and peek under his arm into the wardrobe, and it is so endearing that Dunk nearly makes a sound fit for a kitten. “Button-up,” you say. Then your hand appears, finger pointing. “Can I have this one?”
The blue one. His favourite.
The one he was going to give you anyway, if he had managed to do it without looking like a man handing over a ring in cotton form. So, in a way, things work themselves out.
“Anything ye want, m’lady,” he says.
He takes it from the hanger and shakes it once, then holds it up against you, pressing it flat to your chest as if checking if it suits you. The fabric covers the stain and half your thighs and sits blue against your skin in a way that makes his whole body go stupidly pleased. It does suit you.
"Thank you, good sir," you say, hugging the keepsake to yourself. "I'll be right back."
He points you in the right direction and you go, very calmly, into his bathroom with your dress sticking coldly to your thighs.
The bathroom is small and clean, though not in a way that suggests habit. More like he remembered you were coming and panicked. You peel the dress off and drop it into the basin so it can soak. Your bra follows, because it has also taken coffee in the war and is now damp across one cup in a way that feels terribly gross.
Then you put Duncan’s shirt on. The mirror only shows you down to the torso. You stand there in the blue of him, belly pushing the fabric forward, buttons sitting close over you, collar loose around your throat. The sleeves hang off your hands. You roll them up once, then twice, then a few more times, until your fingers come free.
You're ready to come out and somehow entirely unready. Maybe because Duncan has been cryptic today in a way that makes him feel locked from the inside, and maybe that is why you stay. Maybe you would have snooped anyway. You are wearing his shirt in his bathroom. There is only so much restraint a person can be expected to show.
His shower gel smells plainly of clean person in male edition. There is a toothbrush in the cup with its bristles near flattened from how furiously he must brush his teeth. The sight of it moves something in you. An affection with a small ache in it.
You start smelling more of his things. He has two colognes, both of them similar. One sharper, one warmer, both close enough to the same idea that you can imagine him standing in a shop, overwhelmed by choice, deciding to buy the thing nearest to what he already knows. There is also the deodorant he smells of often. The everyday one you know from his sweatshirts and from the place under his arm where your face sometimes ends up when he holds you after.
You open the cabinet. There is not much. Basic painkillers. A nail clipper. Spare razors. Something for indigestion. Plasters. No sunscreen, which is typical enough to make you shut your eyes for a second. But there is panthenol, sitting there ready to be useful, and it is adorable in some odd way. He's excellent at consequences, useless at prevention. You take the panthenol out and turn it in your hand.
His reaction to the names sits with you in the little tiled room. The way his face went strange and far away, and he reached for tired as an explanation, as though a question about family could be escaped by blaming anything but the family itself.
His must be real bad, you think, if this is how he reacts to the mildest door opening onto it. It would be good if you talked about it. Both of you. It might be a bonding ground, or at least some patch of shared earth neither of you could pretend away after. You are not fond of talking about your mother. You are not fond of even thinking of talking about your mother. There are things in you that still go rigid and childish around that subject, and it irritates you to know this about yourself. But maybe it would clear some things up. Maybe it would make him understand why you keep thinking love and suspecting a trap under the floorboards.
The only thing you cannot work out is how Duncan has turned out to be such a good man. You do not believe yourself to be simply good. You only try very hard. Sometimes you manage. Sometimes you fail and then try to make the failure less palpable. Most people, you think, are built out of that: effort, want, fear, apology, repeat.
Duncan seems to have come from somewhere with very little good in it and still made himself into this. You wonder if he is an exception, or if he simply tries infinitely better than you.
You come out, finally, having found not much, but enough to know what to do next. When you enter the bedroom he's sat on the bed and testing the sleeper, whether it folds and unfolds well, and once you appear in the doorway he freezes and gives in to staring.
The shoulders hang off your shoulders in a way that makes the stitching sit somewhere at your mid-arms, and the sleeves themselves end where Duncan cannot see, because you've got your hands hidden behind your back. Then there is a matter of your bra being lost and your tits filling the cotton in a way his chest could never dream of filling it. The whole thing reaches your mid-thighs, much like the sundress did, but is somehow more exciting to him because it is private. He's the only one who gets to see you like this, therefore he gets to be a little smug about it.
"What've ye got there, lass?" he asks, letting the sleeper fold and getting his hands free.
You show him the bottle with a shy smile. "For your face," you explain. Duncan hears face and tries, very hard, to keep his eyes there, though they seem to want to drop to where your belly is bulging the cotton out, and to spot whether you've been impish enough to lose your knickers too. Then, he scolds himself for this sort of thinking.
He huffs a laugh to shield himself, shakes his head and pulls out a ceiling-facing palm, to which you protest. You sit in front of him on your heels, and say, "Let me."
Your hand lifts to his glasses first, and Duncan goes still.
“They’ll be right next to you,” you tell him.
It hits him in the gut, fondly and with ridiculous force, this small reassurance. As if his own bedside table has become unknown country and you are kindly guiding him through it. He dips his chin a little and lets you take them off.
The room softens immediately. Edges go. Your face becomes a warm shape close to him. He hears the quiet click of plastic frames being set down within reach. Then you move somewhere in the blur, and from the amorphous shapes he can tell you are pressing foam into your palm and lathering it. Your hands come towards him, less and less visible the closer they get, and then he stops bothering to see.
You set both to his face. Duncan sighs very deeply. His eyes close. The panthenol is cool first, then quickly warms. You press it into his cheeks in soft little pats, careful around the red places where the sun has caught him worst. His skin drinks it greedily. For a moment the white sits in the fine creases beside his eyes, filling the little lines there and making them stand out. Then it disappears.
His lashes flutter. They tickle your fingers every now and then in quick dark brushes when your thumb passes under his eye.
“You really did burn,” you murmur.
“Aye,” he says, breathy.
You work more foam into the broad of his forehead, then across his nose, which has taken the sun hardest and feels rougher, almost crusted. He lets you move him. Sits there, large and quiet, and lets you turn his face by the jaw. You do his chin. The corner of his mouth. Then, because you are capable of great foolishness today, you pass your thumb lightly over his bottom lip.
His mouth parts. Only a little. Softly. Obedient to no audible order.
For a second you forget the sunburn altogether and it becomes foreplay. That mouth is far too delicate for a man built like this. Wide and bitten red, yes, but soft at rest. Kissable. So, so kissable.
You have to put more foam on your fingers to justify still being this close. His ears are blazing too, so you move there, and Duncan’s breathing changes.
It is small enough that you could pretend to miss it, which is probably kinder, but you feel it. Something catches in him when you slide up the side of his face and cup the ear away from his head. His skin is hot there, the outer rim is flushed red. You spread the panthenol over it with two fingers, careful, rubbing it along the curve, then behind where sweat and sun have made him frail.
He makes a sound low in his throat. You pause. “Alright?”
“Aye,” he says quickly, so you carry on.
Duncan keeps his eyes shut because opening them would make him answer for something, and they are useless anyway. He has been touched like this in pieces. Hands on him with want in them, with need in them, with your laughter, your hunger, your pain, your relief. But this is slower and worse. Care with no hurry to it. You are putting medicine on him. That is all. A decent person would know how to receive that without his cock making itself known in his shorts.
The trouble is that his body has never been decent about your hands. It takes everything as news. It takes everything as chance.
Your thumb rubs a small circle behind his ear, and his shoulders drop, which, begrudgingly, is noticed. You do the other ear with even more concern, and Duncan sits through it with his fists loose on his thighs. His face has gone slack. He looks younger without his glasses. Blind and sunburnt and, once again, trying very hard to be normal about being handled.
When you finish, you sit back a little and look him over. “Anywhere else?”
He blinks his eyes open, unfocused, then looks down at himself as if he has temporarily forgotten the shape of his own body. His arms move in answer, awkwardly offered, red along the forearms and up towards the bend of the elbow.
You take one wrist. Too big for this sort of nursing, which makes you want to nurse it more. His skin is warm and dry, the hair there bleached fair by the sun in a way it is nowhere else on him. It gathers the white of the panthenol when you spread it down from the elbow, stands up under your strokes, then lies back damply.
Then, rest. Bicep first, because the sleeve line has left him pink there and because his arm is in your hands and you are only human. The muscle shifts under your palm. He has the gall to look away, as though this is all very practical and nothing else, while the tendons in his forearm rise when you press your thumb down near the wrist.
“You’re very quiet,” you say.
“I’m being seen to,” he answers.
“Mm, and that's such a serious business, aye?”
His mouth tugs, but he stays quiet.
The other arm. Same path. Shoulder to bicep, bicep to forearm, forearm to wrist. He has little marks there you have seen before and some you have not. Old scratches, and a pale scar near the thumb. Red knuckles. His body keeps a record badly organised and in several languages. You take each hand in both of yours because you have to. There is no other way to hold the size of him and do the job properly.
His palms are darker than the rest of him, broad and lined and slightly rough at the base of the fingers. The spaces between are almost untouched by the sun. You rub the foam over the backs first, then the knuckles, then turn his hands over and press your thumbs into the meat below his because the bottle is in your lap now and the work has clearly travelled beyond medical need.
Duncan grunts. Your eyes flick up. “That sore?”
“No.”
You press again, firmer.
His fingers curl and then open again around nothing. “Christ.”
“Good Christ or bad Christ?”
He swallows. “The other one.”
You smile down at your knees and smooth through his palm again. His whole body seems to listen.
By the time you release him, Duncan looks both better and worse. Less dried out, somehow more endangered. He rubs one treated thumb against the side of his finger and then, with a sudden little pull of nerve, catches the neckline of his T-shirt and tugs it open.
“Here,” he says. “A little.”
The skin below his throat is pink where the collar has missed its duty. There is a sharp line where the burn stops and the usual pale of him begins. You look at it. Then at him. “Hm,” you say. “I think we should take this off, then.”
His brows lift. “Do ye? You’re the expert here, it would seem.”
You hum. “Take it off.”
Duncan obeys quickly enough to embarrass both of you. The shirt goes up and over his head, mussing his hair into rough copper tufts. He sits there bare from the waist up, blinking at you through the blur, big hands holding the discarded T-shirt as if he has been caught stealing it from himself.
You reach over and give him his glasses back. He puts them on. His face returns to itself piece by piece. Eyes first, then the crease between his brows, then the attention with which he looks at you and tries to read whether he has done something wrong.
You feel yourself go a little bashful under it. Ridiculous, given the circumstances. Still, the words come out shy. “I like you in those.”
Duncan blushes. A stupid thing to happen, because his face has already switched the palette, but his body finds a way. Redder over red. He glances down, then back up, and something very pleased and very helpless moves behind his eyes.
“They help me see,” he says.
“I gathered.”
“Aye, well.” His mouth twitches. “Important work.”
You put more foam on your hand and touch his neck, so he stops joking.
There is tender at the base of his throat where the T-shirt has gaped with movement. You work there first because that is what you have been given permission for. Your fingers slide over the heat, along the tendons, down to the hollow. His pulse jumps under your thumb. The panthenol makes a pale gloss of him before it sinks in.
He watches you now. The glasses make that worse. You can see him seeing you. His gaze catches on your mouth, then corrects. Drops to the place where his shirt hangs open a little over your belly, then corrects again. He is trying to behave.
You do his shoulders, though they need no doing. Then lower, though it needs no doing either, for he's pale where cloth kept him. The border gets crossed anyway. Your hands move from treated skin to untouched one, down over the top of his chest where the hair begins. Your fingers scratch lightly through it, gathering some of the foam, dragging it in thin streaks over him.
He could ask what you are doing. He should, maybe. He has used questions before as fences. Are you sure? Is this alright? Do ye want me to stop? Good questions, all of them. Useful ones. They keep the world decent.
But you gave him a token. You put it in his hand without knowing what he would spend it on. People want things, you told him. People are strange. People say stuff and do stuff when their brains shut off. You said he could want things too, or near enough that he has been living off it since, so he sits there and lets himself want this.
What he wants is to disenchant that superstition of his about you walking round his floor and therefore never wanting to touch him again. And here you are, touching him. And lovely, too. And your eyes look hazy, your breath sounds different and your hands are gentle. They move down on him to more dangerous country. Over his ribs where he's making an obvious case of himself, then toward the belly where it creases with some boy-fat he still carries. He sucks in a breath, ignores the pull at his groin, and asks, "Do ye have to be somewhere today?"
“No, silly,” you tell him. “I’m pregnant. I’ve nothing to do besides growing a baby.”
He nods to that thoughtfully. “Would ye stay then? Sleep here?”
Your eyes go all muggy and he knows it is a yes already. “Sleep?” you ask. “So soon? It’s not even eight yet.”
His legs knock a little wider apart. He does not bother hiding it. His hands settle on your thighs, heavy and warm. “I ain’t saying we should sleep right now.”
“What should we do then, hm?”
“Lassie, yer makin’ such a fool of me, ye know that?” Duncan says, leaning in and brushing your nose with his. His hands inch higher until they reach the hem of his shirt on you. “Have ye got your knickers on?”
“Dunk,” you squeal, but let him. “Course I do. Who do you think I am?”
“A minx, sometimes,” he hums. “Only sometimes.”
He kisses you with the laugh still caught in his mouth. It makes the first second silly; then your hand slides over his bare chest and whatever wisecracking held him together comes apart without a dramatic sound. His fingers first stay under the blue hem, then drift higher and find elastic.
A little tug takes the liberty of asking the question.
You understand so quickly it feels awkward. Rise on your knees and let him have the answer. The shirt drops loose around you. His knuckles graze your skin while he eases the underwear down your thighs. He has to work harder to wedge it from under your knees because his attention keeps lifting to the open slope of your belly. “Hold on,” he mutters, deeply engaged with the task.
“I am holding on.”
“Aye, smartarse.”
It comes free, eventually. He drops it without looking where it lands. Then his palm settles between your legs.
Flat and warm. Broad enough that your body has to make a place for him there. You open wider, and the small adjustment does dreadful business on his face. Duncan looks down with his mouth parted while the heel of his hand presses soft to your pussy and his fingers lie heavy over the hair. He finds you slick. Finds you ready. The finding climbs him visibly.
“Ye tell me if anythin’s wrong, aye?”
You smile at him from above. “Nothing will be wrong,” you say. “But alright.”
His thumb shifts, barely anything, though enough to make your knees take more of the mattress and your hand go to his shoulder for balance. The other reaches the buttons, and they give one by one. Tiny pops. A domestic striptease in reverse order of shame. The shirt opens down the middle and lets him see you in portions: belly, then skin above it, then the undercurve of your breasts held by gravity, affectionately. Duncan’s hand stays where it is, but his mind clearly leaves the room for a second and comes back carrying firewood.
You reach the last button. Then you're about to slide the shirt off your shoulders, when his hand catches your wrist. “Could ye keep this one on?” he asks.
You look down at him. His ears are redder than his sunburn now. Lovely thing, really, to watch a man built for hurling furniture blush over cloth. “You like it?”
“Aye.” He releases your wrist and puts both hands under the fabric, up your sides, then over your breasts with a slow pressure that makes your breathing misbehave. “I do.”
His thumbs stroke where you have gone fuller, heavier, and his eyes follow the movement with focus that has lost all right to call itself innocent.
“Sure,” you say, and hook a finger under the waistband of his shorts. Snap it against his stomach. “But you have to take those off.”
That gets him moving with a speed best described as unsafe. Shorts shoved down. Underwear with them. One ankle caught, a hissed fuck’s sake, then freedom, and him bare on the edge of the bed with his cock lifting hard against him. Wet at the head and a smear already printed where it has touched skin.
For once, chagrin arrives late and finds the room occupied. He sees you looking. He lets you look. Then reaches for you.
The gathering, regardless of what he's agreed on with himself, is still abashed. He draws you onto his lap by the hips and makes room for the belly between you without turning the matter solemn. Your knees sink on either side of him. The shirt hangs open and around you both. His cock gets caught hot between your thighs and his, and twitches when your leg brushes it, and Duncan kisses the corner of your mouth first, misses, corrects, then kisses you properly with a sound that comes from somewhere low and grateful.
You settle yourself against him. His hands stay on you, ready for work, ready for orders. “How do you want me, hm?” you ask.
His fingers tighten. Any way, says the whole of him. Any way you’ll give me. In the bed. On the floor. Cross with me. Laughing at me. Wearing my shirt until it smells wrong forever. Any way that keeps you here long enough for the flat to learn you.
“On top,” he says. “Wanna see ya.”
You take his chin in your hand. Your thumb crosses his lower lip again, and his mouth softens under it, opening by the smallest amount. “You sure you’re alright?”
There must be something plain in him tonight. Some bolt left visible. Names, children, coffee, all of it has knocked something loose and left him sitting there with the telling in his lap. He looks at your mouth. “Aye,” he says. “Aye, I’m sure. I just—” His breath catches, stupid honest thing. “Been thinkin’ ’bout you, is all.”
You nod. Accept it. Do not tease him for once. “I’ve been thinking about you too,” you say, and press yourself to his cock.
By now, Dunk should’ve learnt your weight and stopped being surprised by it. He is, however, a man of weak memory, or simply someone who stores recollections as a version that is endurable. You settle over him and he goes aghast all over again because your wet mouth frames his length until his spine forgets what it was made for. It is a snug fit, near throttling, and the memory of what it is like to get his cock throttled by your womb covers him until he's awash in it. More and more, he remembers, while you kiss him sweetly through it, and thinks, in some naive, unfledged way, that he would let you do worse than throttle him. Strangle him, more like. Anything, probably, so long as it involved your hands on him and your breath somewhere close to his neck. He wakes to the damp, exultant pressure of you working him in and starts throbbing with the same blood that has gone loud in his temples.
"Jus' like that," he tells you, hoping it will be good enough for you to stay a while. Come here and stay with me, Dunk wants to say. Screw me, wrap your legs around me. Warm me. I am hurt to be alone, because every time he goes away he does so with pieces of you sticking to him, and they are enough for him to survive, but not enough to live.
He knows naught of how a good day that's turned into a hard day has managed to turn itself over again. It would seem that upon inspection of his private life you've not recoiled. That, more than anything, abolishes his unfounded belief. It has never been about walking on his floor, not really. More about seeing his boy-mess and dust around the spaces in his flat he never touches, and deciding he is not good enough. You have not decided so. Nor are you disgusted. You are currently sinking down his cock with your hands in his hair. It knocks another wall inside him down.
"Dunk," you whisper. "Look at me, baby."
So he looks.
Split groins and burning loins are one thing, and the rest is an entirely different thing. He feels like he's scarcely looked so far and now he's looking. He's looking as if it is the first-ever glance, for your body changes every time he makes love to it. It grows and swells and plumps somewhere in secret, and Duncan is begrudged by the impossible ordeal of it and by not being allowed to sit somewhere under your clothes and observe the expansion he's the sole reason for and unforeseen architect of. Instead, he lives in perpetual expectancy of change and it hits him every time how much rounder your tits have become, how many millimetres they have dropped, how your thighs look fuller and your belly more ready for his hands.
"Ye should keep it," he says, meaning the shirt and himself. "It looks better on you than on me."
You smile at him, and then your mouth rounds on a small oh. You've taken him whole again, and his brain no longer holds space for feeble kinship of pasts getting their scabs scratched off them. You both dodge the verbal intimacy and choose an embodied one that is worse for its plausible deniability. It is worse, but it is easier, still. Because Duncan doesn't want to be pitied. He wants romancing, slow dancing, hand holding and balancing this fear of nearness, of stillness, of remaining unseen in his palpability until you truly want to look. Until you are ready to say stay. Stay for yourself, not because of something. Stay for me, because I want you to, because I want you.
There's an answer to that, and it arrives from your hips. At first slow enough to seem kind. Duncan receives it badly. That is, he receives it with the best behaviour available to him, which is a poor one wearing a clean shirt. His hands sit on your thighs but feel more like they have been set there by somebody else. They flex, go still, and flex again, fingers working in little disgraced increments as if every grasp has to pass through a committee of shame, manners and terrible starvation.
Receiving gives him too much time with himself. When he is working, there is work. When he is under you, all that remains is being taken into account. He can feel the waiting in his own body, want hurrying ahead of what's allowed, the terror of greed making a person ugly. So he tries to stay useful. Stays steady. Lets you set the pace with your hands in his hair and cock near giddy at being swallowed so cordially. The effort shows in his jaw.
You kiss it. The hard place near the hinge. Then his mouth.
He follows you up into it, and for a few strokes the kiss manages to cover everything. The shirt slips open wider. His breath hits your cheek. His fingers slide a little higher on your legs and stop there, arrested by some private law.
“Dunk,” you say into his mouth.
“Aye.”
He sounds cracked open already. It should satisfy you. It does, partly. Another part of you wants the rest of him to come out from under all that caution and put its hands on you. He hears that thought in passing, maybe, and takes your wrists.
For a second you think he means to move you away from his face, but he brings your hands to his throat and leaves them there.
"Touch me," he says. Looks almost cross with himself for saying it.
You set your fingers there, light. His pulse is ferocious. It knocks against your thumbs with all the subtlety that's absent tonight, and Duncan shuts his eyes as soon as your palms close with any pressure at all. He gives out a small sound, wrecked and worked up from the chest. His cock jumps inside you, and the pleasure of that little convulsion gets through you like a warm knife.
"Like this?" you ask, brushing your thumbs on his Adam's apple. It's a delicious-looking cartilage. Large enough on him to require your mouth opening wide if you were ever to bite him.
"Aye," he says, eyelids flickering. "Like that. Please."
The please is dangerous. It opens something in your belly that has little to do with the child and much to do with the man. It has none of the kidding courtesy of earlier in it. It is bare and wanting and somehow younger than him, and it makes you bend down and kiss him harder than you meant to. Your belly presses between you. His throat moves pliably. He opens for the kiss and lets you have his mouth, and you feel the shudder in him when your hips roll again and take him deeper.
You could stay there. Keep him like that, held and entered into, his touch restless on you while he tries to behave under the flood. There would be a sweetness in it, and a cruelty. He would let you. That is becoming clear. Duncan would let you do a great deal if it meant your hands remained on him.
So you take his wrists, and his eyes open. You slide his palms to your hips and fit them there where his grip can do some good. "You too," you tell him. "Touch me. And fuck me."
Something in him receives it as instruction and amnesty both. His fingers bite into muscle, surprised first, then purposeful, and he gives you a thrust in exchange for permission. Hard. Stops immediately, alarmed by his own force.
"Alright?" he asks.
You nod, then take his lower lip between your teeth since speech feels wasteful. Underneath it he melts a little and forgets what he's here for, so you tell him, "Again."
“Lassie—”
“Again, Dunk.”
So he does, shorter this time, testing the shapes, and when your hips come down to meet him the room loses its mildness.
There is a place sex knows how to go when words become too exacting. You find it together with freakish ease. All the unsaid matter stands aside and lets the body through: hands converse with skin where they rest and squeeze, cock's in cunt, intending to make nothing but respite, and his face, oh, his face. It keeps watching you. Even in greed he watches. Tenderness has rooted itself too deep in him to be pulled out for the sake of the rhythm, though the rhythm gets fierce enough to make the shirt slip off one shoulder and hang from your elbow.
He catches and fixes it back, letting you slip for a moment so you take a heavy sit on him and feel him brushing the spot that needs him most ardently. "Keep it on," he says, breathless.
You look down at him.
“The shirt.” His ears are red again. “Please. Keep it on.”
"Okay," you say, rolling your shoulders. "Okay."
He stares at it as if the sight is all that matters. His bed has you in it. His shirt has you in it. His hands have you under them. Later, if you go, the room will still know you have been here, and the thought makes him thrust up hard enough that your next sound breaks against his cheek.
“Ah, there,” he says. “There, yeah?”
“Yes, there—” you wheeze. "Oh, Dunk—"
He follows the barometer of your thumbs. When they dig deeper it means your body is giving him a place. His hips learn it fast. Stomach flexes with every punch up, making him feel like he owns his body in separate drawers. He's caught between wanting to deserve you and wanting to fuck you through the mattress, and you feel that disagreement holding him by the spine. He groans some and stammers some and breathes through lips he's trying to stick together so you don't hear his dog-like panting, and does not at all realise you want it. The loss of manners, his mouth turning to greedy angles, a decline of goodness, mild at least. Make him a little worse, so he's easier to keep. So you feel less guilty for craving it.
"Don't go sweet on me now," you rasp.
His laugh breaks into a gasp. “I’m tryin’.”
“Try less.”
It means give me more, and Duncan understands. He wraps his arms around you, claiming the favourite things. He's inside you and around you, and that is how matters should be. He pulls you down on him and fucks up with enough force for your tits to get knocked into his face. His mouth takes advantage, catches one and has to bite down to keep it. Your body conducts some gut-wrenching business in response, clenching on him wildly and throwing your head back so your neck becomes long and all wired with hard tendons. One of your hands digs its thumb under his jaw, the other closes around the roots on his nape. He's almost defeated. It feels incredible.
“There,” he grunts. “Stay there. Just—fuck, stay.”
“I’m here,” you say, closing in on him.
Then, your hand moves from his hair, circles his head and keeps him there with his mouth open to your throat. It changes the work of him. The force comes from below now, from his thighs and arse. You hold him and yourself onto him and Duncan's body believes you scathingly well, for you are truly there and staying.
“Tell me you like it,” you say. He moves against your neck uselessly. Gets a little of your skin between his teeth and loses it again. You ride the next thrust down and make him feel the whole of you taking it. “Tell me you like fucking me hard. I know you’re all sweet and tender, but tell me you like this too. Tell me—”
“Aye,” he mumbles. Then, trying for stronger, though still muffled: “Aye, I like it.”
You breathe out through your nose, pleased and shaken.
“I like it,” he says again, and his hands go meaner with their gripping. “God, I like it. Like ye takin’ me. Like ye lettin’ me—fuck, lassie—like ye lettin’ me have ye hard.”
“Yes,” you whisper. “Yes, Dunk.”
“Mad with it,” he says. “With you. Lettin' me have ye like this.”
And he's doing it so. Just having you, while you're rigid and motionless and simply trying to survive his cock without telling too much on yourself. He's large enough to not have to pull out for you to feel him spreading you. He's brilliant, really. Willing and reliable. Hot and delicate where it matters. The work turns blunt and filthy and knowing that he can be this, this regular man who likes to fuck his girl hard once in a while when she asks nicely makes you lose it a little.
"Yes—" you whine. "Fuck, yes. Fuck me, like that. Right there. Fuck, Dunk, yes—"
He drives up and holds, then grinds, then gives you another hard stroke that catches so exactly your mouth opens and nothing comes out. It's pleasure only now. White and bodily, making you come with your face turned against his hair and air puffing fast through your nose and your hand pulsing at his throat.
Your cunt seizes round him, wild and vicious, and Duncan chokes on all of it. His cock manages to break into somewhere deeper than he's been all evening and finds that perfect place for post-bursting burial. This, and three arrows to the chest, Duncan's mind produces. He spills thickly, mumbling sweetheart, lassie, oh fuck's sake, Christ and all the other names that he's given you, and your own too, and then says only, "Fuck, yer so good. So good, my sweet girl—"
Blessed, he thinks, gone stupid with it. Blessed, blessed. Allowed to fill you with his cock and then with his cum. More so, allowed to sit here shaking afterwards, knowing it will leak from you when he pulls out. He will get to see it staining your thighs and will get to clean it off you, and he will try to keep his hands from showing how much he likes that too.
"Shite," you breathe. "Mm, Dunk? You alright?"
He's gone slack against you. You turn his face up by the cheeks and look him over. His eyes are beyond fucked-out, and when his head tips a little back you spot the red imprint of your fingers on his throat.
"Oh God, I've hurt you. Oh, Duncan, I'm so sorry—"
"Hush now," he tells you. "Hush, girl, let me catch a breath." Which would probably be funny if you weren't looking so frightened with yourself. He sees that on you and adds, "I'm grand, sweetheart. Promise. You?"
"I'm sorry—"
"None of that," he stops you. "I asked, aye?" He rests his forehead to yours, and tells you, secretively, "Besides. I liked it."
"You did?"
"Mm. Fiercely."
You go a touch abashed at that. Bite your lip and let your shoulders sink forward, folding around the pleased little damage of it. Duncan watches the shift of your breasts when you do. There is a souvenir from him too, just above the fuller curve of one: a small indent of his teeth, with skin risen at the edges.
He brushes it with his thumb. “I’ve hurt you some too.”
“I liked it,” you say. “Fiercely.”
He hums a laugh at that and hugs you closer. “You alright?”
“Yes.”
His eyes search your face. “Properly?”
“Yes, Dunk.”
“Hm. Your pussy alright too?”
You giggle. Sweet and girlish, and it does something awful to him after all that filth. “Yes. That’s alright too.”
“Good.” His hand moves, broad and warm, to your belly. “And here?”
You cover it with yours. “Everything alright.”
“All’s well then,” Duncan states, as if it has been entered into the record. “Let me sort ye out, hm?”
You murmur a small okay and rise off him.
He wanted to see it and the wanting still shames him some, though less than it used to. His come slips down your inner thigh in a pearly track and leaves his cock shining with you both. There is something strange in him after seeing it. A small confidence. He's less marooned, maybe. More at home in his own bed, in his own body, and in the flat too.
“I’ll get a towel,” he says.
He goes to the bathroom still naked and finds your dress filling the basin. The sight pleases him so much he has to stand there for a second and be an idiot about it. Then he lifts it out, squeezes the coffee water from it as best he can and carries it to the washing machine. He adds some of his own clothes because it seems wasteful to run it near empty, then sets the whole thing on a delicate cycle with immense joy at the knowledge of your things washing together.
The bra he handles separately. Very gently. He squeezes it out over the sink, careful with the cups and the little straps, because he remembers Rowan once complaining about Raymun ruining her lace by tumbling it together with his sweatpants. This bra is very pretty and Dunk would hate to ruin it for you. It is green too, or so he thinks. Darker now, wet and heavy in his hands.
He sets it over the radiator, then catches himself in the mirror.
There are five red stamps on his throat. He stops to stare some more.
Lovely, is the first thought. To be marked in a place he can see. To have your hand on him after your hand has gone. He has no idea what he is going to tell the kids if any of them notice, and briefly ponders a turtleneck in July, purely for the sake of keeping this private. Selfishness, that. Wanting the mark and wanting the concealment of it too.
He brushes his fingers over where yours have been. The skin is pink and calorous from the tissue torn small by squeeze and pressure. It makes hubris rise in him, a warm little thing with wings.
When he steps back into the bedroom again, you have made tea. You are still in his shirt, bare-legged at the edge of the bed, two mugs on the bedside table as if this is a life and not an incident. His seed has slipped down near your knee from walking, so he kneels in front of you with the wet cloth and puts one hand on your ankle to keep you still.
His cock stirs a little when he touches you, because he is naked and weak and recently benedicted. He ignores it with great professionalism. “Sorry,” he murmurs, and wipes the inside of your thigh.
You look down at him. “For what?”
“For bein’ pleased.”
You smile. “You’re very strange.”
“Am I?” He folds the cloth to a clean corner. “I think it takes one to know one, aye?”
To that, you simply huff and it's beyond cute.
He works gently. His hand rests on your belly while he does it. On his belly, he thinks for one cracked second, and then corrects nothing.
“Ye can use the bathroom,” he says after. “If ye want. I’ve put a fresh towel out for you.”
You nod and leave him for a moment. During that time he changes the sheets, tidies what he can without making a large performance of it, then puts on shorts because he is still a little shy about nudity once the emergency of sex has passed. And then, because he's still a coward, slips a spare key into your purse and decides to text you about it later. By the time you come back, the room has become ordinary in a painstaking way.
You order pizza. While waiting, the telly goes on with some old black-and-white film neither of you watches properly. Outside, the sky starts building itself into a storm, so Duncan opens the window wide. The curtain billows into the room and carries in the damp, charged smell of weather turning. You cuddle closer to him on the bed, tucked under his arm, fingers tangled into his hair.
He is happy like this. He knows there are talks to be had and confessions to be spilled. Names, families, homes, all the buried things with their hands under the floorboards, but for now he's happy like this.
After food, his lids grow heavy. He falls asleep on his back, with you nuzzled under his wing.
It is odd to sleep at Duncan's, but not wrong. You, too, fall asleep almost instantly after eating, and wake only to a terrible pressure in your bladder. Then, there is a matter of freeing yourself from underneath his gigantic arm. Thankfully Dunk sleeps like a bear in winter, and snores a little too, so even forceful shoving doesn't stir him.
In one of the rooms you pass there is a rack with washing hung out, which he must’ve done sometime during your nap. You do your business sleepily, come back, and find his windowsill bathed in rain. So you close the window and pull the curtains closed.
And then you feel it. A knock from inside. Small, firm, unmistakably separate from you. You stop with your hand still on the curtain, breath held in dark. It comes again, lower this time, a blunt little push against the wall of your stomach. There is intelligence in it, or your body invents intelligence for it so quickly that the difference does not matter.
You look down. For one second you do nothing, afraid that movement might scare it off. Then you unbutton Duncan’s shirt with clumsy fingers and pull it open over your belly. The skin there has gone taut and silvered in the rainy light. You stare until your eyes hurt.
Another push. Barely anything. A small bulge under the skin, there and gone. But visible. Visible.
You start crying before any other part of you offers itself. “Sweetheart,” you say, putting your hand over the place that moved. “There you are. Oh, there you are, my lovely. Hi.”
The baby answers with something softer. A brush, maybe. Or another kick made shy by your hand. You laugh and the laugh comes out wet and thin, almost frightened by its own happiness.
You take a few unsure steps towards the bed. Your knees have become of poor use. Duncan is still on his back, one arm thrown out where you escaped him, mouth slightly open, gone into sleep with the trust of a person who has never seen himself sleeping.
You sit beside him and shake him by the shoulder. “Hey, Dunk,” you whisper. “Dunk, sweetie, wake up. Wake up, please.”
He sucks in a breath as if hauled up from underwater. His eyes open, bleary and full of slumber. One hand pats blindly at the bedside table. “G-glasses,” he mumbles.
You find them before he does and pass them over, then set both hands on his cheeks before he can get spooked by the wet on your face. “He’s kicking,” you tell him. “He’s kicking, look—”
His whole face changes before he understands. Fear first, because you are crying. Then your words catch up with him. You take his hand and guide it under the fabric, press his palm to the place where the movement happened.
For a moment, nothing. Duncan lies there breathing through his mouth, eyes huge. He does not blink. His palm is so warm that the skin under it seems to wake in answer.
Then, the baby kicks. He sits up so suddenly the mattress jumps beneath you. “Jesus—”
“Did you feel that?”
“I felt him.” His other hand joins the first, too fast, then slows when it reaches you, spreading careful over the bump. “I felt him.”
The baby kicks again, right under the heel of the palm.
Duncan makes a sound that is almost a laugh until it breaks. He looks at your stomach. Rain bounces against the window behind him. His thumbs shift, following, trying to understand where his son has gone.
“Ah, lad,” he whispers. “There ye are.” His mouth trembles around the smile. “There ye are, ye little terror.”
You cry harder. Duncan looks up at you, already crying too, and laughs wetly at the state of you both. “He’s kickin’,” he says, uselessly, as if you might have missed the central fact. “He’s really kickin’.”
“I know.”
“He’s strong.”
“He is.”
“Course he is,” Duncan says, and one tear runs straight down into the sunburn high on his cheek. “Course ye are. Givin’ us a fright in the middle of the night. That’s grand, that is. Very polite of ye.”
His voice has gone soft and shredded. The next movement quiets him completely. He bends closer and his shoulders start to shake. “Hi, boy,” he says, barely above breath. “Hi. I’m here. Your mam’s here too. We’ve got ye.”
The baby shifts. Duncan swears under his breath. “Fuck’s sake,” he whispers. “Fuck’s sake, he’s real.”
It pulverizes him impossibly. There are words, obvious words, trying to get out with such violence it feels near like his throat is being sliced open from the inside. On the outside, the same throat is garroted into silence. It is all as if Duncan is holding a lung-burning breath, one that's hauled after exertion in the middle of freezing winter or one that begs out right before drowning. Christ, how badly he wants to exhale. How vehemently he wants to get rid of that breath and get a fresh one.
He leans to the belly and sets his mouth on it. "I love ye," Dunk says, and exhales, and then inhales again.
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My favorite crackship I have that's in the same vein as Alicent Hightower x Maekar is Arya x Daeron simply because I find it funny! It's girl-boss x boy-failure at it's core. The most competent person you'll ever meet and their wet cat of a partner.
An arranged marriage scenario between the two is just hilarious, especially if both their families are around. By some miracle and political shenanigans Catelyn had managed to marry her daughter off to a prince in hopes that it's help her daughter be more of a lady only to find that the Prince is an absolute wet doormat for her daughter and even gifts her swords. Apparently despite looking very Targaryen, Daeron still had the Dornish beliefs of "Yeah, women can fight!" instilled in him by his mother and grandmother and honestly prefers Arya being the one to hold the sword, at least she is good at it.
It is a Knight x Princess relationship, except Arya is the knight. Daeron is fine being the pretty princess.
I love how we're all going through akotsk withdrawals like, they're so missed 😩😩😩😩
How about Dunk being extremely touch starved and reader easing him into caresses and skin-to-skin contact that isn't violence? 👉👈👉👈🥺🥺
Thinking about loving and showing affection to touch!starved Dunk..
a/n: this is just fluffiness, i’m glad i’m not alone, i’ve especially missed our knight!!
Most people looking at him, would think he’s anything but. He’s a large, built, great giant of a man, and all people that pass him seem to stare. What would he need of love? Of someone’s touch?
But that was until you.
Unlike most. Because they wouldn’t stop for him, they wouldn’t talk or even care to give him a moment. Not like you have. He’s a hedge knight, dumber than a castle wall. That’s all he’d been told.
But not to you.
You seem to notice it all. All of the little things he barely picks up on himself. Like the way his hand flinches when someone draws near, or the way his shoulders sag in company, only to be corrected around that of royals or nobles. That every touch — a practical, brotherly clap on the shoulder, Egg tugging at his sleeve, or townsfolk shoving by.
It’s far from gentle.
Because it’s something he’s never known. Something he couldn’t even begin to wrap his head around.
So you ease him into it, with the small things, things less likely to frighten him off.
The first is when you began reaching for him more in crowds. Your shoulders brushing, arms touching, even holding on loosely to the corner of his cloak just to keep up with his long strides. He blushes at first, the tips of his ears turning pink at the sudden movement, but it was useful, nothing more, something to protect you.
And that he held onto.. that he reassured himself it’s all it was.
The time it happens again, is softer, quieter with you both lazing on the bank of the river. The night had been drawing in for some time, dusk crowding the countryside and a chill settling your bones. You had moved up to him a mere inch before he flinched away, nothing dramatic, but enough and by the slightest you had felt it. Dunk had thought had had taken up too much room, shifting sideways to give you more of it. But you stopped him.
“Stay put.” You wriggle backwards, easing into the side of his shoulder, and this time he doesn’t move a muscle, “It is far too cold.”
That he couldn’t argue with, and so he didn’t. Again he’s simply looking after you, providing, trying his best to ignore the ticking in his chest, the longing.
Then comes the hand holding, more intricate and more testing but you do it anyway. The market stalls are bustling, apple carts pulled by horses and sellers airing out their wears, he had slowed as much as he could so that you had kept up, but it was too much. Your hand reached as far as it could go in front of you until your fingers slipped through his. They stayed loose at first, large, calloused hands stuttering around ones smaller than his own.
A joke it must have looked like.
His hand stays there, closing around yours slowly, hesitantly just as you catch up, but neither of you pull away. Instead you take in the sights around you, striding beside him without a care in the world, like it’s normal, like it’s so simple. Like he isn’t darting his eyes back and forth every second to where you’re both connected.
And when you finally let go, his hand remains open, flexing his fingers around nothing, the foreign feeling of holding something so warm and soft.
And he’s already missing it.
Somewhat of a confession finally comes with a night under the stars. Spring had came and gone leaving summer in its way, the heat of it too and for once it wasn’t cold, the cloaks and ragged blankets were shrugged from you, and yet you found yourself cuddled up to Dunk, further by the hour.
The fire had burned low, the moon twinkling shadows from the branches overhead. A tiredness overwhelmes you, sleep clinging to your eyes as you lean back without another thought. A huff escapes his throat, chest jolting up behind you as you collide with it.
“Are you comfortable?” You call out through the dying light, hand splaying out onto his chest.
“Yes.” Dunk grits out carefully, so sharp you can feel the way he stares out into the treeline. You raise your head slightly to see him, blinking up at him as he looks wearily down at you.
“You look terrified..”
“I ain’t terrified, I just..” He pauses, stuttering before he can stop himself, and you urge him on, nodding your head carefully. “Nobody’s done this before.”
The words come out quietly, his body stiffening under you like the wound him even to say. Like it’s some shameful secret. And your chest tightens, heart breaking a little, because of course they haven’t. No one has given him this, even the time to, let alone to hold him, comfort him the way you have.
A hedge knight doesn’t get softness, he doesn’t get love. He gets a space on the ground surrounded by mud and stone, tourneys to compete in and duties to take care of. That’s it.
And so you made that difference. You made it your task to start teaching him. That it was alright, that he was deserving.. and most of all that you wanted to do it. But it wasn’t lessons or reprimanding that did it, it was patience.
Your hand brushing the hair from the sweat beading at his brow from practicing in the meadow. Or chopping wood on the bench.
A hand on his arm when he grows tense, stroking your fingers up and down the broad muscle, and feeling him ease in real time.
Your head resting against his shoulder as you both curl up on the far too small bed of an inn you had found from long days on the road. And he finally stops jolting, arms moving awkwardly to search for you, curling around you with a deliberate care. He starts reflecting you, searching for you as soon as you leave his side, hand pressing at the dip of your back as you stand in the tents.
And from then on, Dunk seeks it out. Some sort of seal is being broken and you realise further just how starved he’s been, because he wants that too. He wants to be relied on, to be touched by you, to be held and to hold you.
And he proves it, because he can no longer go without walking too far without you on his arm, or your hand placed in his larger one. Dunk finds himself shadowing you more than ever, because he may have been a hedge knight first, but he is your protector, and your warmth is something that he can’t go without.
