Void

King’s Landing smelled of salt, roses, and lies.

The salt came from Blackwater Bay, dragging itself through the streets with the morning mist. The roses came from your mother’s traveling chests, pressed between silks and sewn into hems so that every Tyrell daughter might arrive at court smelling as though Highgarden itself had been cut open for the realm’s delight.

The lies came from everywhere else.

They bloomed in courtyards and corridors, in painted smiles and soft hands, in the way lordlings bowed too low and ladies kissed your cheeks with their teeth clenched behind their lips. They sat at every feast and poured every cup. They glittered on crowns, curled beneath rings, warmed themselves beside hearths.

You had not been in King’s Landing half a day before you decided the city was a garden overwatered with poison.

“How charming,” your mother said when your wheelhouse passed beneath the Mud Gate and the stink of fish rose up strong enough to strangle a horse.

“Charming is one word for it,” you replied, lifting a perfumed handkerchief to your nose. “Though I believe the smallfolk use shorter ones.”

Your brother choked on a laugh.

Your father, Lord Tyrell, gave you the look he always gave when you had spoken too sharply before witnesses. Unfortunately for him, there were always witnesses. That was the curse of being born to a great house. That, and having to pretend fools were interesting because they owned enough land to make their stupidity hereditary.

“You will be gracious,” your father said.

“I am always gracious.”

Your brother snorted.

You turned your head slowly toward him. “Do you disagree?”

“I would never be so brave.”

“Good. Your survival instincts are improving.”

Your mother sighed, but her mouth twitched.

You had been summoned to King’s Landing for the celebration of Prince Baelor’s triumph in the Stepstones, though every courtier with half a wit knew a royal celebration was never merely a celebration. It was a market. Sons were displayed, daughters appraised, alliances sniffed and weighed and wrapped prettily in songs. Lords came with compliments in one hand and ledgers in the other.

And above them all sat House Targaryen.

Dragons without dragons, some whispered.

Dragons still, others answered.

You had never cared much for whispers. They were only useful when repeated loudly enough to wound.

The Red Keep rose above the city like old blood turned to stone. Its towers speared the sky. Its walls glowed red beneath the sun, a warning dressed as architecture. As your carriage climbed Aegon’s High Hill, you saw banners snapping from the battlements: the three-headed dragon of the royal house, black on red, wings spread as if the cloth itself wished to burn.

Your mother adjusted the fall of your sleeve. “You will meet the princes at court this evening.”

“I had assumed they would be there. It is difficult to host a royal feast without the royals. Though Prince Rhaegel, may attempt it, if only to prove he can.”

“Do not make jests about the prince.”

“I would never. Jests require fondness.”

Your father’s voice sharpened. “Daughter.”

You smiled sweetly. “Father.”

There was silence for three long heartbeats.

Then your brother muttered, “We have not even reached the gate.”

“And already the realm trembles,” you said.

That was what they called you in the Reach. Not to your face, at first. The Lady of Thorns, some said. The Rose with Daggers, said others. Your grandmother had laughed herself breathless the first time she heard it.

“Let them call you what they like,” she had told you while clipping deadheads from the rosebushes at Highgarden. “A woman who is loved by everyone has rarely said anything worth remembering.”

By your seventeenth nameday, the name had grown sharper.

Queen of Thorns.

You had never worn a crown. You had never needed one.

Court received your family in a storm of silk.

You were dressed in green so deep it seemed black where the candlelight failed to catch it. Gold vines wound along your bodice, climbing toward your throat. Your hair had been braided with tiny pearls and rosebuds the color of fresh blood. You looked, your mother had declared, like spring.

The throne room was packed from wall to wall with the finest peacocks of Westeros. Lords in velvet. Ladies in jewels. Knights polished until their armor blinded those poor enough to look too long. You moved through them with your family, accepting greetings with a smile that showed nothing but courtesy and promised nothing but danger.

The Iron Throne loomed at the far end of the hall, monstrous and ugly, all twisted blades and hungry points. No gardener would ever allow such a thing to grow.

King Daeron II sat upon it like a righteous king that he was known for.

Below him stood Prince Baelor.

There was a murmur when your father bowed, for Baelor Breakspear was beloved in a way few princes managed. Tall, dark-haired, steady-eyed, with the easy strength of a man who had nothing to prove and proved it anyway. He greeted your father with warmth and your mother with grace.

Then his gaze found you.

“Lady Tyrell,” he said. “King’s Landing is fortunate to have you.”

“Fortunate?” you said. “Then the city’s luck must have been poor indeed before my arrival.”

A ripple passed through those closest. Your father’s jaw tightened.

Baelor’s mouth moved, almost a smile. “I had heard you were quick.”

“Only when others are slow, Your Grace.”

This time, he did smile.

A smaller laugh sounded behind him.

You looked past Prince Baelor and saw his son.

Prince Valarr Targaryen stood near one of the red pillars, dressed in black with silver clasps shaped like dragon wings. He did not have the typical Targaryen coloring— dark hair that caught the torchlight. However, his face is fine enough to make weaker girls forget themselves. He was younger than his father, of course, but not rough and dark. There was something bright in him, something watchful beneath the princely polish.

He was smiling at you as though you had just handed him a secret.

You disliked him immediately.

Men who smiled too easily often expected women to do the same.

Baelor turned. “My son, Prince Valarr.”

Valarr stepped forward.

The court’s gaze shifted with him. You could feel the attention sharpening. He was heir to the heir, the realm’s bright promise, the darling of singers and ambitious mothers alike. You had heard too much about him already. Sweet Valarr, graceful Valarr, gallant Valarr. Half the ladies in the hall were standing straighter now, as if good posture alone could win a crown.

He bowed over your hand.

His fingers were warm.

“Lady Tyrell,” he said. His voice was smoother than you expected. “Welcome to King’s Landing.”

“I thank you, my prince. I shall try not to damage it.”

His smile deepened. “I am told the city has survived worse.”

“Then it has my admiration.”

His thumb brushed the edge of your knuckles before he released you. Too brief to be improper. Too deliberate to be accidental.

A little arrogant, then.

How unsurprising.

“You must find the court dull after Highgarden,” he said.

“I find most things dull after Highgarden.”

“Even princes?”

“Especially princes. They are polished from birth until nothing interesting remains beneath the shine.”

There was a little hush.

Your mother inhaled.

Valarr looked at you.

For one dangerous instant, you thought you had gone too far. His eyes did not harden, but they sharpened. Like a cat hearing movement in the dark.

Then he laughed.

Not loudly. Not for show. A surprised sound, warm and real.

“My lady,” he said, “I shall endeavor to rust.”

You blinked.

A better answer than expected.

How irritating.

“See that you do,” you said. “The realm has enough silverware.”

Baelor made a sound suspiciously close to a cough.

The king looked as if he had missed the entire exchange, which was probably how he survived most of his own court.

You moved on with your family, but you felt Prince Valarr’s gaze follow you across the hall.

You had been looked at before. Assessed. Desired. Measured like a vineyard, weighed like a dowry, admired like a jewel someone hoped to buy cheap and display proudly. Valarr’s gaze was different.

He looked at you as if he had been bored all his life and you had offended him awake.

That, you thought, was dangerous.

Not because he was a prince.

Because you had almost enjoyed it.

By the time the feast began, three ladies had already decided to hate you.

You knew because one smiled too widely, one complimented your gown with an expression suitable for mourning, and the third asked whether green was still worn so heavily in the Reach, as though fashion grew slower outside the capital.

You answered, “Only by those of us who can survive the color.”

The first lady went pink. The second became fascinated with her wine. The third did not speak to you again for the rest of the evening.

A small victory, but victories were like pearls. One ought to collect them.

You were seated with your family below the royal dais, close enough to be honored and far enough to remember your place. Musicians played from the gallery. Servants carried platters of swan, trout, capons glazed with honey, carrots stewed with butter and cloves, and enough lemon cakes to cause a minor war in Dorne.

Valarr sat above you beside his brother Matarys, who looked like a softer echo of him, all dark hair and cheerful eyes. Several times through the first course, you caught Matarys whispering something to Valarr and Valarr failing, badly, not to glance your way.

Your brother leaned toward you. “He is staring.”

“Many people stare. It is what eyes are for.”

“Princes usually blink.”

“Perhaps he was not taught.”

Your brother grinned. “Perhaps he likes you.”

“Then he has worse taste than I feared.”

“Your cheeks have gone pink.”

“They have not.”

“A very wrathful pink.”

You stabbed a carrot. “Speak another word and I shall tell Lady Sara you admire her singing.”

His grin vanished. “You wouldn’t.”

“I have done worse for less.”

He lowered his eyes to his plate. “Your cheeks are a normal color.”

“Wise boy.”

When the second course came, so did Prince Valarr.

Not to your table. That would have been too obvious. He descended from the dais with a cup in hand and drifted among the honored guests with all the effortless charm of a man trained since infancy to make attention look like generosity. He spoke to Lord Hightower, laughed with Lady Redwyne, accepted some jest from Ser Addam with a hand to his heart.

Then, inevitably, he reached you.

“Lord Tyrell,” he said. “My prince.” Your father rose slightly, bowing his head.

“My lady.” Valarr inclined his head to your mother.

“Your Grace,” she said with the pleasant brightness of a woman already imagining grandchildren with silver hair.

Traitor.

Valarr turned to your brother. “Ser Garlan.”

Your brother was not named Garlan, but Valarr knew that. He was testing.

Your brother smiled. “My prince, I would be honored to accept a better name, but my father has grown attached to the old one.”

Valarr laughed. “Forgive me. Ser Loras.”

Your brother said, “Still wrong.”

“Then I surrender.”

Your father looked faintly pained. You were delighted despite yourself.

Valarr’s eyes slid to you. “Lady Tyrell, will you rescue me?”

“From what? Your memory or my brother?”

“Both seem formidable.”

“My brother is harmless if fed. Your memory is beyond my skill.”

Valarr placed a hand over his heart. “You wound me.”

“You approached armed.”

“With a cup?”

“With confidence. Far more dangerous.”

His gaze warmed. “Then I am properly warned.”

“You are warned. Properly remains to be seen.”

Your mother made a soft strangled noise into her napkin.

Valarr looked at the empty place beside you. “May I?”

“No.”

He sat.

Your father stared.

You turned slowly toward the prince. “Was that word unfamiliar?”

“No,” he said. “Only discouraging.”

“I intended it to be final.”

“I am young enough to be hopeful.”

“And old enough to know better.”

He smiled. “One would think.”

There were whispers now. Of course there were. Whispers bred faster than rats in King’s Landing.

You lifted your cup and drank, refusing to give the court the satisfaction of seeing you flustered. Valarr watched you with open amusement. It was improper, but only by inches. Princes lived in inches. One step too far for another man was merely personality in a royal.

“Are you always so determined to be difficult?” he asked.

“Are you always so determined to sit where you are unwanted?”

“I am wanted in many places.”

“How exhausting for the places.”

He laughed again. You were beginning to resent the sound. It did not feel practiced. It made him seem almost human.

“I have heard of you,” he said.

“I offer condolences.”

“They call you the Queen of Thorns.”

“Yes. Men are always naming things they cannot manage.”

“And can you be managed?”

“Can dragons be housebroken?”

His eyes flashed. “Some have tried.”

“Some have burned.”

He leaned closer, just enough to lower his voice. “Would you like to see me burn, my lady?”

Your pulse betrayed you with one hard beat.

You smiled.

It was a cruel little smile, the kind that had made grown men reconsider proposals, wagers, and once, a duel.

“My prince,” you said softly, “I would not waste good firewood.”

For the first time, Valarr did not answer at once.

Good.

Then his smile changed.

It became quieter. Less charming. More intent.

“I think,” he said, “that you are far kinder than you pretend.”

“And I think you are far less clever than you hope.”

“Perhaps. But I am persistent.”

“So are weeds.”

“Roses, too.”

“Roses know when to bloom.”

“And thorns know when to draw blood.”

You held his gaze. Around you, conversation swelled and shifted, but the space between you seemed to narrow, as though the feast had folded itself away.

At last, you said, “Careful, my prince. If you spend too long admiring thorns, people will assume you have never seen a flower.”

His eyes dropped, briefly, to your mouth.

“I have seen many flowers,” he said. “I remember very few.”

It was too smooth.

It was also, annoyingly, well done.

You looked away first, though only because your mother kicked your ankle beneath the table.

Valarr rose after another moment, bowed to your family, and returned to the dais.

Your brother watched him go. “He is going to make a fool of himself over you.”

You cut into your trout. “Then I hope he does it gracefully. We are at a royal table.”

On the dais, Matarys leaned toward Valarr and whispered something.

Valarr’s eyes remained on you.

Prince Baelor noticed.

His face did not change, but you were watching closely enough to see his attention sharpen.

A father, you thought.

A prince.

A man already measuring the weight of trouble.

You raised your cup toward him.

Baelor’s brows lifted.

You smiled as sweetly as poison in honey.

Prince Baelor, to his credit, smiled back.

//

The first gift arrived the following morning.

It was a bouquet of roses.

Red, white, and pink, arranged in a vase of hammered silver and delivered by a royal servant who bowed so deeply his nose nearly met your carpet. A note came with it, sealed in black wax stamped with a dragon.

Your mother nearly snatched it from the tray.

Your father looked displeased, which meant he was thrilled and trying to conceal it.

Your brother leaned against the wall, grinning like an idiot.

You broke the seal.

For the Queen of Thorns,

Since I am told one must approach carefully.

Valarr.

You looked at the roses.

Their thorns had been clipped.

You stared.

Then you laughed.

Not because it was charming.

Because it was foolish in exactly the wrong way.

“Send them back,” you said.

Your mother blinked. “What?”

“Send them back.”

Your father frowned. “Daughter, a gift from the prince—”

“Was poorly considered.”

“They are roses,” your brother said.

“They are insults wearing petals.”

Your mother closed her eyes. “How can roses be insulting?”

You lifted one stem from the arrangement and held it up. Smooth. Harmless. Made safe for delicate hands.

“He sent me roses without thorns.”

Your brother’s grin widened. “May the gods protect him.”

You sat at the writing desk near the window and took up a quill.

Your reply was brief.

My prince,

How thoughtful of you to remove the only honest part.

Lady Tyrell.

You sent the flowers back with the note.

An hour later, the same servant returned, pale and terrified, carrying a second arrangement.

This one was a wild tangle of roses, bramble, and long wicked thorns. Not arranged so much as gathered in a riot. One thorn had already drawn blood from the servant’s wrist. There was no silver vase this time. Only an earthen pot, dark with soil.

The note read:

My lady,

Forgive me. I mistook courtesy for admiration.

It will not happen again.

Valarr.

You stared at it for a long while.

Then you set the pot by the window, where sunlight caught the thorns and made them gleam.

Your brother said, “Should I fetch the septon? You look moved.”

“I am considering murder.”

“You always look softer when considering murder.”

You picked up a cushion and threw it at his head.

//

By the third day, everyone knew.

Not knew in the manner of facts. Nothing had been announced, promised, offered, or agreed. But court did not require facts. Court thrived best on possibility. Prince Valarr had sent flowers to Lady Tyrell. Lady Tyrell had sent them back. Prince Valarr had sent more. Lady Tyrell had kept them.

By supper, you had become either a temptress, a fool, a genius, or a threat, depending on which woman was speaking and which man had been rejected by you previously.

Lady Floris Baratheon cornered you in the queen’s gallery with two companions and a smile sharp enough to peel fruit.

“Lady Tyrell,” she said. “How brave you are.”

You glanced behind you. “Are we under attack?”

Her smile tightened. “I mean, to encourage a prince so openly.”

“Do I?”

“Everyone is speaking of it.”

“Everyone speaks of rain when they lack imagination.”

One of her companions giggled and quickly pretended to cough.

Floris pressed on. “I only worry for you. Princes have many amusements at court. Some ladies mistake attention for intention.”

“How fortunate you warned me. I had thought him halfway to the sept already.”

Her eyes glittered. “You jest.”

“Constantly. It frightens weak men and confuses women who rely on them.”

The companion coughed again.

Floris stepped closer. She was pretty in the heavy Baratheon way, dark-haired, blue-eyed, with the sort of beauty that demanded loyalty before earning it.

“You think yourself very clever,” she said.

“No,” you said. “I think other people very committed to making me appear so.”

Her cheeks colored.

“You should be careful,” she said softly. “There are ladies at this court whose families are closer to the throne than yours.”

“Then they must be very pleased. Closeness to the throne seems to be all some families can boast.”

Her mouth parted.

You leaned closer, lowering your voice to something almost kind.

“Lady Floris, if you mean to threaten me, do it plainly. I dislike searching for daggers in flower baskets.”

“I do not threaten.”

“Then we are both disappointed.”

A voice behind you said, “Have I interrupted?”

Prince Valarr stood at the entrance to the gallery.

Floris transformed instantly. Her shoulders lowered. Her smile softened. Her eyes became pools.

“My prince,” she said. “Not at all.”

You nearly admired the speed of it.

Valarr looked from her to you.

You gave him nothing.

His gaze flicked once to Floris, then back. “Lady Tyrell, I came to ask whether you would walk with me.”

Floris stiffened.

You said, “How presumptuous.”

“Yes,” Valarr said.

“You admit it?”

“I try never to deny the obvious. It wastes time and insults witnesses.”

That was almost clever.

You hated him a little.

“Where?” you asked.

“The gardens.”

“I have seen gardens.”

“Not with me.”

“I fail to see the improvement.”

“I will bring conversation.”

“Yours?”

“If no better can be found.”

Floris’s eyes narrowed.

You smiled. “Very well, my prince. But if you bore me, I reserve the right to abandon you among the hedges.”

“I would expect nothing less.”

He offered his arm.

You looked at it as one might look at a suspicious mushroom.

Then you took it.

The court watched you leave.

Let them.

//

The Red Keep’s gardens were beautiful in the way captive things were beautiful. Everything pruned, trained, cut into obedience. The paths wound between pomegranate trees, fountains, beds of lavender, and rosebushes climbing white stone walls. Birds sang from gilded cages near the queen’s pavilion.

You paused before one.

“A poor advertisement for song,” you said.

Valarr followed your gaze. “The queen likes birds.”

“The queen likes possession.”

His mouth curved. “Do you always say exactly what you think?”

“No. Sometimes I improve it.”

“And sometimes?”

“Sometimes I make it survivable.”

That quieted him.

You continued walking. His arm was firm beneath your hand, the black silk of his sleeve warm from the sun. He did not lead too quickly, did not force your pace, did not parade you past every cluster of courtiers lingering nearby. That surprised you.

“I owe you an apology,” he said.

“For the thornless roses? Yes.”

“For that, and for sitting beside you when you told me not to.”

“You noticed.”

“I notice many things.”

“Yet you still did it.”

“Yes.”

You looked up at him. “An apology loses some weight when paired with pride.”

“It was not pride. It was impatience.”

“Another charming flaw.”

“I thought if I did not speak to you then, someone else would, and I would spend the evening listening to other men attempt wit near you.”

“And did that distress you?”

“Greatly.”

“How fragile.”

“How honest.”

You studied him.

He had removed his court smile. Without it, he looked younger and more dangerous. There was a restlessness beneath his elegance, a banked fire, something neither prince nor training had quite tamed.

“Honesty from a Targaryen,” you said. “How exotic.”

“Do Tyrells keep none?”

“We keep it in the cellars with the good wine. Brought out only when guests are worth impressing.”

“And am I?”

“No.”

He laughed softly. “You answer too quickly.”

“You ask too hopefully.”

The path turned toward a fountain where water spilled from the mouth of a stone dragon into a marble basin. Valarr stopped there, and because your hand was on his arm, you stopped too.

“Tell me what you think of me,” he said.

You arched a brow. “That is a dangerous request.”

“I know.”

“From a dangerous man?”

“From a curious one.”

“Curiosity kills cats.”

“Dragons eat cats.”

“And choke on the fur, I hope.”

He smiled, but his eyes remained fixed on yours.

So. He truly wanted it.

Very well.

You withdrew your hand from his arm.

“I think you are handsome enough to be forgiven before you apologize,” you said. “I think you have been praised so often that sincerity must sound like insult to you. I think you are clever when you are not trying to be charming, which is fortunate, because your charm is polished enough to blind and just as useful. I think half the ladies at court have decided they love you because singers told them to, and the other half because their fathers did. I think you are accustomed to being wanted and therefore take great interest in anyone rude enough to resist.”

His expression had changed while you spoke. The amusement faded. Not into anger. Into attention.

“And,” he said, “do you think I am shallow?”

“Yes.”

He inhaled.

Then you added, “But not empty.”

His gaze lifted sharply.

You shrugged. “There is a difference.”

For a long moment, only the fountain spoke.

Then Valarr said, very quietly, “You are far kinder than you pretend.”

You felt something shift beneath your ribs.

A small, treacherous thing.

“You keep saying that as if repetition will make it true.”

“No,” he said. “I say it because it unsettles you.”

Your eyes narrowed.

There he was.

Not merely pretty. Not merely princely.

Clever after all.

“Careful,” you said.

“I am trying to be.”

“You are failing.”

“I know.”

A laugh escaped before you could stop it.

His face brightened, not with triumph, but with pleasure so swift and unguarded that you nearly looked away.

Nearly.

“You should not look so pleased,” you said.

“I have won a laugh.”

“You have survived a laugh.”

“I will take it.”

“You may take very little from me.”

His eyes held yours. “Then I will earn the rest.”

The words landed softly.

That was the trouble with him, you began to understand. He knew when to sharpen and when to soften. Some men battered down doors. Valarr looked for the hinge.

You turned back toward the path. “You may start by walking. Standing still makes you appear thoughtful, and I dislike false advertising.”

He offered his arm again.

This time, you took it without hesitation.

From a balcony above, unseen by you both, Prince Baelor watched his son walk with the sharp-tongued girl from Highgarden.

Beside him, Matarys leaned over the stone rail.

“She’s eating him alive,” Matarys said cheerfully.

Baelor folded his hands behind his back. “He seems willing.”

“He seems delighted.”

“That concerns me more.”

Matarys grinned. “I like her.”

“You like anyone who frightens courtiers.”

“Yes. A rare and noble quality.”

Below, Valarr laughed at something you said, his head bending toward yours.

Baelor’s face softened, then grew thoughtful.

“He has never looked at anyone like that,” Matarys said.

“No,” Baelor murmured. “He has not.”

“Should we stop him?”

Baelor watched as you withdrew your hand from Valarr’s arm to scold him with one raised finger. His son listened as though receiving orders from a queen.

After a moment, Baelor said, “I suspect he would not thank us.”

Matarys snorted. “She might.”

Baelor almost smiled. “That is what worries me.”

//

Valarr’s courtship began with a war.

Not the bloody sort. Blood was simple. Men understood blood. They understood swords, banners, screams, the blunt arithmetic of bodies in mud. Courtship was far more intricate and, in your opinion, more vicious.

Valarr sent books after the roses.

Not poetry. That would have been expected. He sent histories of the Reach, botanical studies from the Citadel, a slim volume on the reign of Queen Alysanne, and a scandalous little collection of Essosi political essays banned twice in Oldtown and therefore worth reading.

You sent back the poetry he had not sent.

My prince,

You forgot these. I assume someone told you ladies enjoy being compared to moons, stars, swans, and other silent things.

Lady Tyrell.

He replied the next day with a single line.

My lady,

I would never compare you to something silent.

You kept that note.

For tactical reasons.

Obviously.

He appeared wherever you were, but never so often that you could accuse him of hounding. At court, he crossed the hall to ask your view on some petty dispute between lords and watched with pleasure as you sliced through both sides. In the library, he found you with a book on ancient Valyria and asked whether you wished to learn High Valyrian.

“No,” you said. “It seems unwise to learn a language that makes men sound even more self-important.”

“It also makes threats more beautiful.”

“Threats are already beautiful when phrased correctly.”

“Teach me.”

“You are a prince. Surely someone has threatened you before.”

“Not well.”

You had looked at him over the edge of the book. “Marry foolishly, and I shall send condolences to the girl.”

He smiled. “Better.”

At the training yard, he wore armor and broke three lances before noon. The ladies watched from shaded benches, sighing behind fans. When he removed his helm, hair damp against his brow, he looked up toward the gallery.

Not at them.

At you.

You raised a hand and yawned.

Matarys laughed so hard he nearly dropped his shield.

Valarr’s grin flashed bright as a blade.

Later, he found you near the kennels, feeding scraps to a three-legged hound the cooks had named King.

“You looked bored,” he said.

“I was.”

“I unhorsed Ser Damon.”

“I saw. The horse seemed relieved.”

“He is one of the finest knights in the realm.”

“The horse?”

He leaned beside you against the fence. “You are determined never to compliment me.”

“I complimented your boots yesterday.”

“You said they were too fine for my judgment.”

“And they were.”

The hound pressed its head beneath your hand. You scratched behind its torn ear.

Valarr watched.

You felt his gaze and refused to ask.

At last, he said, “You like broken things.”

“I like honest things.”

“Is broken honest?”

“Usually. It has stopped pretending to be whole.”

The air changed again. He had a talent for that. Or perhaps you did.

Valarr rested his hands on the fence. “And are you broken?”

You looked at him sharply.

He did not flinch, but his voice gentled. “Forgive me.”

“No,” you said. “Ask what you mean.”

He was silent.

So you answered the question he had not dared to shape.

“I am not broken. I am merely uninclined to sand myself smooth so men may handle me without bleeding.”

His eyes moved over your face.

“Good,” he said.

That was all.

Not how fierce. Not how amusing. Not you poor strange creature. Just good.

It stayed with you longer than you wished.

Naturally, you punished him for it.

At the queen’s masquerade, you wore a mask of gilded thorns and refused him three dances.

The first refusal made him smile.

The second made the court whisper.

The third made him bow and say, “I begin to suspect cruelty.”

“You are slow tonight.”

“Only tonight?”

“Do not fish for reassurance. It is unbecoming in a dragon.”

“Then dance with me.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because half the court is watching.”

“The other half will hear of it by morning.”

“Exactly.”

His gaze sharpened. “You fear gossip?”

“I respect weapons.”

“Gossip is a dull knife.”

“Only in dull hands.”

Around you, couples turned beneath chandeliers dripping with candlelight. Music filled the hall, bright and quick. Valarr stood too close and not close enough.

“Dance with me once,” he said. “Let them speak.”

“You are accustomed to letting others bleed for your impulses.”

His expression stilled.

It was the first time you had truly struck him.

Good, you thought.

Then why did you feel sorry?

Valarr bowed his head slightly. “You are right.”

You blinked.

How infuriating.

“You should argue,” you said.

“Would you prefer that?”

“I would prefer consistency. Men who accept fault gracefully are difficult to dislike.”

His mouth curved, but the smile was faint. “I do not wish you to bleed for me.”

“Pretty words.”

“I know.”

“Dangerous words.”

“I know that too.”

You looked at him. “Then what do you wish?”

He took a breath.

For the first time since you had met him, Prince Valarr Targaryen looked uncertain.

Not weak.

Never weak.

But stripped of performance. A prince standing amid music and masks with his heart closer to his face than was safe.

“I wish,” he said, “to stand beside you long enough that the court grows tired of making sport of it. I wish to hear what you say before you decide to make it cruel. I wish to earn one honest smile from you without having to be wounded first. I wish to know whether you laugh loudly when no one is listening. I wish to be the person you look for when something ridiculous happens. I wish—”

“Stop.”

He stopped.

Your throat felt tight.

Unacceptable.

“You say too much,” you said.

“I was told to ask what I mean.”

“That was before you became poetic. I dislike poetry in conversation. It makes people careless.”

“Then I will be plain.”

“Spare me.”

“I want you.”

The words were quiet.

They struck harder for it.

You stared at him, all music and candlelight blurring at the edges.

Then you said, because you were yourself and therefore doomed, “Many people want things they have no business touching.”

He stepped closer.

“Tell me not to,” he said.

You hated him then.

A little.

Because he meant it.

Because he would stop if you commanded it, and some reckless piece of you had wanted him to be worse. Worse would be easier to dismiss. Worse would let you keep your thorns sharp without questioning whether you had grown them for protection or habit.

You lifted your chin. “You may have one dance.”

His eyes flared.

“One,” you warned. “And if you look triumphant, I shall tread on your foot.”

He offered his hand. “I would deserve it.”

“Yes.”

You placed your hand in his.

The court saw.

The whispering began before you reached the floor.

Valarr’s hand settled at your waist, light and careful, as if you were something precious or armed. Perhaps both. His other hand enclosed yours. The music shifted into a slower measure. He guided you into the turn smoothly, not showing off, not crowding.

“How many girls have you danced with?” you asked.

“Before tonight?”

“How hopeful. Yes, before tonight.”

“Many.”

“And how many did you ask to bleed for you?”

His fingers tightened almost imperceptibly.

“None knowingly,” he said.

“That is not the defense you think it is.”

“No.” His gaze held yours. “It is the truth.”

You let him lead you through another turn.

“I am not gentle,” you said.

“I know.”

“I am not easily pleased.”

“I know.”

“I will not become some sweet court blossom because a prince smiles at me.”

His voice lowered. “I do not want a blossom.”

“Then what?”

His eyes moved to the gold thorns of your mask.

“A crown,” he said.

The answer stole a beat from you.

You recovered quickly, thank the gods.

“You have one already.”

“Not that kind.”

“Greedy.”

“With you? Yes.”

The music swelled. You turned beneath his hand, skirts whispering, jewels cold at your throat. When you came back into his hold, you were closer. Too close. The scent of him—smoke, clean linen, something sharp like cedar—wrapped around you.

“You should be careful with wanting,” you said. “It makes men stupid.”

“Then I am lost.”

“You admit stupidity very readily.”

“Only to you.”

“Flattery.”

“Confession.”

“You blur lines.”

“You draw them.”

You looked at him.

“What happens when I draw one you dislike?” you asked.

His answer came at once. “I stop.”

“And if you do not wish to?”

“I stop wishing before I stop respecting it.”

Your chest tightened again.

Damn him.

Damn him for being taught courtesy and still somehow meaning it.

The dance ended. Applause scattered lightly from the edges of the hall, though it was not truly applause for the musicians. Valarr did not release you immediately. Not enough to cause scandal. Enough for you to feel the question in it.

“One dance,” you said.

His thumb brushed the back of your hand.

“One,” he agreed.

Then he bowed and stepped away.

You returned to your mother with your face composed and your pulse ruined.

Your mother looked at you for a long moment.

“Well?” she asked.

You picked up a cup of wine. “He dances adequately.”

Your brother, who had appeared from nowhere, said, “Seven save us. She’s in love.”

You spilled wine on him.

By the end of the week, your father was summoned to speak privately with Prince Baelor.

Your mother pretended not to know. Your brother knew and told you immediately. Your father returned two hours later with the expression of a man who had swallowed both triumph and terror and found them equally difficult to digest.

At supper in your chambers, he announced, “Prince Valarr has requested permission to court you formally.”

Your mother clasped her hands.

Your brother looked at you as if waiting for fireworks.

You buttered your bread with great care. “How surprising.”

“Do not be coy,” your father said.

“I am never coy. Coyness requires patience and an interest in being misunderstood.”

“His interest is serious.”

“How fortunate for him.”

“And for you.”

You looked up.

Your father was not a cruel man. Ambitious, yes. Too careful with appearances. Too fond of hearing men call him wise when they meant useful. But not cruel.

Still, he was a lord. Lords saw daughters as both children and treaties. They kissed brows and calculated marriages. They wanted happiness for you, provided happiness did not interfere with advantage.

“For me?” you asked.

His mouth tightened. “He is a prince.”

“I had noticed.”

“Do you know what this could mean for our house?”

“Yes.”

“Then you understand.”

“I understand that a woman may be loved by her family and still priced like summer grain.”

Your mother went pale. “That is unfair.”

“Yes,” you said. “It is.”

Your father’s face hardened. “No promise has been made. Prince Baelor was clear. His son’s admiration will not be forced upon you.”

That surprised you.

Truly.

You hid it poorly enough that your brother noticed.

“Prince Baelor said that?” you asked.

“He did.”

“And Prince Valarr?”

“Prince Valarr said he would not have you cornered into accepting him.”

Silence settled.

Your mother reached across the table and touched your hand. “My darling, he seems to care for you.”

You looked down at her fingers. Soft, jeweled, warm. A mother’s hand. A lady’s hand. A hand that had survived court by learning when to fold and when to fist.

“I know,” you said.

It was the problem.

That night, you did not sleep.

You stood by the window and looked down over the dark city. Somewhere below, wine sinks roared, dogs fought, lovers lied, thieves prayed, septons slept, and the sea kept gnawing at the shore. The Red Keep behind you breathed like a beast with too many secrets.

A prince wanted to court you.

A Targaryen prince.

A kind one, perhaps.

A dangerous one, certainly.

And you—

No.

You would not name it yet.

Names gave things power. Everyone knew that.

//

A knock came at your door near midnight.

Your maid, half asleep in the corner, startled upright.

You turned. “Who is it?”

A pause.

Then, through the wood, Valarr’s voice said, “A weed.”

Your maid’s eyes widened so much you feared they might fall out.

You crossed the room and opened the door only a hand’s breadth.

Prince Valarr stood in the corridor wearing a dark cloak over loose evening clothes, his hair unbound around his shoulders. No crown. No guards in sight. Utterly improper.

You stared at him.

“Have you lost your mind?” you whispered.

“Temporarily.”

“Find it elsewhere.”

“I needed to speak with you.”

“At midnight?”

“I was impatient.”

“You must stop treating your flaws as openings.”

His mouth twitched. “May I come in?”

“No.”

“Good.”

You blinked. “Good?”

“If you had said yes, I would have worried you were ill.”

You began to close the door.

He put one hand against it.

Not forcefully. Just enough.

Your eyes dropped to his hand, then rose to his face.

He removed it at once.

“Forgive me.”

You opened the door slightly again. “You have one minute.”

“I spoke to my father.”

“I know.”

“Of course you do.”

“My brother is a sieve with hair.”

Valarr smiled faintly, but it faded quickly.

“I asked for permission to court you,” he said. “Not claim you. Not bargain for you. Court you.”

“Do you often trespass at midnight to define verbs?”

“When they matter.”

You leaned against the doorframe, arms folded. “And do I matter?”

The corridor seemed to still.

Valarr’s face changed.

There were no candles behind him, only torchlight from farther down the hall. It drew shadows beneath his cheekbones, made his eyes look darker than violet, almost black.

“Yes,” he said.

No ornament.

No wit.

Just the word.

You looked away first.

Damn him again.

“You barely know me.”

“I know enough to want more.”

“Want is not love.”

“No. But it is often where fools begin.”

“And are you a fool?”

“For you?” His smile was slight, almost sad. “Increasingly.”

You hated the softness in that. Hated it because it found some soft place in you and pressed.

“Valarr,” you said, and it was the first time you had used his name without title.

His breath caught.

Only a little.

Enough.

“You must understand something,” you said. “I will not be an ornament in your life. I will not sit prettily beside you while men speak over my head. I will not be grateful for gilded cages or call possession devotion. I will not become quiet because the crown prefers women who whisper.”

“I do not want you quiet.”

“Men say that until a woman’s voice displeases them.”

“Then displease me.”

You looked back at him.

He stepped closer, stopping before the threshold.

“Displease me,” he said again, softer. “Argue with me. Shame me when I deserve it. Tell me when I am arrogant. Laugh when I am ridiculous. Cut me down before the court if I grow too proud. Only—”

“Only?”

His throat moved.

“Only let me stand near enough to hear it.”

The ridiculous thing was that it should have sounded foolish.

It did not.

It sounded like the first honest proposal you had ever received.

You studied him for a long while.

Then you said, “You may court me.”

The stillness broke across his face like dawn.

“But,” you added.

His smile froze.

“There will be rules.”

“Of course.”

“You will not appear at my door after midnight again.”

“No.”

“You will not use your father, my father, the king, the court, or any other conveniently placed man to pressure me.”

“Never.”

“You will not mistake my agreement for surrender.”

His eyes warmed. “I would not dare.”

“You will not send singers.”

His brow furrowed. “That was not among my plans.”

“I am preventing future crimes.”

“Wise.”

“You will not send jewelry unless I request it.”

“Will you?”

“No.”

“Then I will not.”

“You may send books.”

“I know.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Do not look smug.”

“I am not.”

“You are.”

“I am happy.”

Ah.

That was worse.

You glanced toward your maid, who was pretending not to listen with the dedication of a woman who would tell every servant in the Keep by dawn.

“Go,” you said.

Valarr bowed, but before he turned, he looked at you with that unguarded warmth again.

“My lady.”

“My prince.”

He took three steps down the corridor.

“Valarr,” you said.

He stopped at once.

You should not have called him back. You knew that as soon as he turned.

But there was something you needed to say, and if you waited until morning you might become wise enough not to say it at all.

“If you hurt me,” you said softly, “I will not break prettily.”

His expression sobered.

“No,” he said. “I imagine you would take pieces of me with you.”

“I would.”

“Good.”

A foolish answer.

A perfect one.

You closed the door.

Behind you, your maid whispered, “My lady?”

You pressed your back to the wood and shut your eyes.

“Not a word.”

“No, my lady.”

“And stop smiling.”

“Yes, my lady.”

“You are still smiling.”

“Yes, my lady.”

You threw a slipper at her.

//

So when you left for Pittsburgh after graduating high school, with little more than a few possessions and each other, it felt less like stepping forward and more like falling through the world. Your family cut ties, while Dennis only stayed superficially in touch with his. Everything you had known dissolved behind you. Nothing was as you’d been taught it would be.

You learned quickly that love alone didn’t pay bills. Being each other’s rock made the hardship bearable, but student life was still ruthless. Dennis pushed himself through medical school with relentless determination, while you worked your way into a public school classroom, standing in front of children who had never had to choose between faith and ambition. Still, the debt piled up, and the money never quite stretched far enough.

That was how you ended up living in the abandoned wing of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. Quiet hallways, unused rooms, borrowed time. And that was how fate seemed to intervene once more, in the form of Trinity Santos, who found the two of you and, for reasons you’d never quite understand, chose kindness. She offered you a spare room in her apartment.

A moment that felt like another string of fate pulled tight. Another person that would become a home.

Six months later, life finally felt… steadier. You and Dennis were saving, planning, building something fragile but real. You were creating friendships, routines, a future that felt like it might actually hold.

You had no way of knowing just how completely that future was about to change.

The apartment is quiet, the type that settles deep into your bones. Only the steady sloshing of the washing machine and the low hum of the dishwasher fill the silence. You hum a song you used to sing in church back in Nebraska as you fold the warm, freshly dried laundry, muscle memory guiding your hands.

It's been an uneventful day so far. You'd come home from teaching at noon, and had started right away on household chores so everything would be tidy once Dennis and Trinity return from their shift at the ER.

But, then pain suddenly spears through you.

It comes sharp and sudden, like an arrow driven straight into your abdomen. Your knees buckle before you can even think, and you curl in on yourself, fingers scrabbling for the edge of the dryer to keep from collapsing.

“Oh—oh God.” you whisper, breathless.

You’ve never felt pain like this. It isn’t the dull ache you know from your period, isn’t something familiar and manageable. It’s cramping so intense it steals the air from your lungs, leaves you with nothing to do but fold inward and wait for it to pass.

Oh, it hurts.

With heavy, unsteady steps, you drag yourself down the short hallway to the bedroom you share with Dennis. You lower yourself into the chair by the desk, where a stack of tests still sits, untouched, waiting to be graded by tomorrow. Mocking. Patient. You swallow hard and blink rapidly, willing the sting behind your eyes to fade.

It’ll pass.

It has to.

It’s probably just your period, an especially bad cycle this month. It’s been irregular for a while now anyway. Spotting. Cramping. Little warning signs you’d brushed off as stress or hormones, things you never looked too closely at and never quite mentioned to Dennis. Old habits are hard to break. Being raised not to talk about periods at all, especially not with men, is one of them. And Dennis is busy. Exhausted. Too wrapped up in the hospital to notice subtle changes in your health, even if he wanted to.

You slump forward in the chair, bending over the desk, and reach for a red pen with trembling fingers. Maybe work will help. A distraction. Something orderly and familiar.

You start sorting the papers, telling yourself that if you can just focus, just for a few minutes, everything will settle back into place. Everything will be ok.

But the pain doesn’t fade the way you expect it to.

It loosens its grip just enough for you to breathe again, leaving behind a dull, aching pressure that settles low in your abdomen. You sag forward over the desk, forehead nearly touching the wood, counting slow breaths. One. Two. Three. Your hands are clammy, the red pen slipping in your fingers.

Maybe you were right. Maybe it is just a bad cycle.

Then it comes back.

Stronger this time. Deeper. A heavy cramp that coils tight inside you, squeezing until your vision blurs at the edges. You gasp, instinctively bracing your feet against the floor, shoulders tensing as if you could ride it out if you just stayed still long enough. The wave crests, holds, then finally ebbs, leaving you shaky and damp with sweat.

You glance at the clock without really knowing why. The seconds tick by, distorted, stretched thin.

When the next one hits, you barely manage not to cry out.

That’s when the unease settles in, quiet but insistent. This isn’t right. This isn’t something you can ignore and grade papers through. Your hands are trembling now as you fumble for your phone, thumb hovering over Dennis’s name for half a second before pressing call.

He answers on the second ring.

“Hey.” he says, voice warm, tired. “What’s up, baby?”

“I—” You break off as another cramp rolls through you, breath hitching. “I don’t feel good. My stomach really hurts.”

The shift in him is immediate. You can hear it even without seeing him.

“Okay.” he says, calm and steady. “Tell me more specifics. Where exactly does it hurt?”

“Low.” you manage, curling forward again. “Low in my abdomen. It—it comes and goes.”

“Alright. How strong would you say it is, on a scale of one to ten?”

You swallow, pressing a hand against your stomach as the pain tightens again, unforgiving. “Eight. Maybe nine when it’s bad.”

There’s a brief pause on the line, so short you might have imagined it.

“Do you have a fever? Nausea? Dizziness?”

“I feel kind of lightheaded.” you admit. “And sweaty.”

“Okay.” His voice stays even, reassuring. “I want you to come to the ER. It could be your appendix, and I don’t want you sitting at home with that. That'd be urgent.”

Relief flickers through you at the decisiveness. At him taking over. “Okay.”

“Can you get there safely?”

“Yes.” you say, even as another wave curls through you, forcing you to breathe shallowly until it passes.

“Good. I’m going to finish up here and meet you there, alright?”

“Alright.”

Only after he hangs up does the concern bleed through the edges of his calm, setting professionalism aside as he lets himself worry about you, before swallowing it all down with a deep, steadying breath and getting back to work.

As you brace yourself against the desk, waiting for the next cramp to hit, you realize with a quiet jolt that the pain seems to have a rhythm now. You try very hard not to think about that.

The bus ride blurs together in fragments, your fingers locked around the metal pole, the city swaying too much, each stop stretching endlessly as another cramp rolls through you. You breathe through them the only way you know how, shallow and controlled, forehead resting briefly against the cool glass of the window. Somehow, impossibly, you stay upright until the doors finally hiss open in front of the hospital.

Inside, everything moves quickly. You barely manage to say your name at reception before the pain spikes again, sharp enough to steal your breath and forces you to fold forward with a low, involuntary sound. That’s all it takes. A wheelchair is rolled out toward you. Hands steady your shoulders. Someone is already calling for triage as you’re wheeled out of the waiting room, its noise fading behind you.

The triage bay smells of antiseptic. It's too bright. Too white. You’re helped onto a bed, legs trembling as you curl slightly inward. A blood pressure cuff tightens around your arm.

“Deep breaths for me.” the nurse says gently. “I know it hurts. We’re going to take good care of you.”

Your vitals are taken one by one, heart rate fast, blood pressure elevated, temperature normal. Sweat beads along your hairline as another wave builds, forcing you to grip the edge of the mattress while you breathe through clenched teeth.

“It comes and goes?” the nurse asks.

“Yes." you manage. “In waves.”

“When was your last period?”

You hesitate. “I’m… not sure. It’s been irregular.”

She nods without judgment, scribbling something down. “Alright. We’re going to get a urine sample—standard procedure, okay?”

You nod, too tired to question it.

You're asked to change into a gown for further exam, then escorted to the bathroom to pee in a cup. It all feels so overwhelming, faintly humiliating.

When she leaves with the cup and returns a few minutes later, something about her expression has shifted. It’s careful now. Measured.

“Do you have someone we should notify?” she asks. “Family? A partner?”

“My husband.” you say quickly, another cramp curling tight inside you. “He works here. In the ER. Dennis Whitaker—he’s a resident.”

Relief flickers across her face. “Okay. We’ll let him know.”

The pain surges again before you can say anything else, stronger than before, ripping a cry from your throat despite your best efforts to stay quiet. The curtain is pulled back. The bed starts moving.

“Possible ectopic.” someone says nearby.

“Pain worsening.”

“Let’s get her to an ER bay.”

The word ectopic lands heavy and cold in your chest, fear blooming fast and unfamiliar. You don’t have time to ask what it means before the bed stops and hands are adjusting monitors, voices overlapping around you.

Then—

“I’m here.”

Dennis’s voice cuts through the noise like a lifeline. Your head turns sharply, tears blurring your vision as he steps into view. He looks pale beneath the harsh lights, concern etched deep into his face, but his eyes soften the moment they find yours.

“Hey.” he says quietly, moving to your side. “Hey, love.”

Relief crashes over you so hard it nearly hurts. Your fingers fumble for his, clutching onto his gloved hand like it’s the only solid thing left in the room.

“I’ve got you.” he murmurs, thumb brushing over your knuckles. Then, gently but firmly, he shifts into motion. “We’re going to take care of you.”

He glances up at one of the nurses. “Princess, can you hook her up to the monitor?”

She nods, already peeling back adhesive pads. Dennis turns back to you, voice low and steady.

“She’s just going to put some stickers on your chest so we can keep an eye on your heart, alright? You don’t have to do anything. Just breathe for me and try to stay calm.”

Cold fingers press briefly against your skin as the electrodes are placed. You flinch when another contraction hits, curling slightly inward.

“I know.” Dennis says softly, one hand warm and grounding at your shoulder. “I know it hurts. You’re doing really well.”

He reaches for your arm next, disinfecting it. “Okay—this is going to be a little pinch.”

You barely register the needle as it slides in, pain elsewhere demanding all your attention. Dennis tapes the IV down with careful, gentle movements, smoothing the edges as if he’s afraid even that might hurt you.

“There we go.” he says. “Now we can give you medication.”

His thumb lingers against your skin for a moment longer than necessary before he straightens, jaw tight. “They’re concerned it might be ectopic.” he explains quietly, meeting your eyes. “That’s when a pregnancy implants outside the uterus. We’re going to do an ultrasound to check, okay?”

The word pregnancy barely registers before the next wave hits, stronger, deeper, forcing a strangled sound from your throat. Dennis is instantly back at your side, grounding you through it, breathing slow and even so you can match him.

The ultrasound machine is rolled in. Gel spreads cold across your abdomen, making you gasp. The doctor presses the probe down, adjusting, frowning slightly.

Seconds pass.

Then—

“Wait.” Dennis says, voice barely above a whisper.

The image sharpens.

You don’t understand what you’re seeing at first. Shapes. Movement. Then a rhythm, fast, unmistakable.

“That’s… not ectopic.” the doctor says slowly.

Dennis’s breath leaves him in a shaky exhale. His grip tightens around your hand.

“Oh my God.” he murmurs.

“That’s a fetus.” the doctor continues. “And she’s contracting regularly.”

The room seems to tilt. You look at Dennis, searching his face, your voice barely more than air. “Dennis…?”

His eyes shine with shock, fear, and something overwhelming and unguarded as he leans closer, pressing his forehead briefly to yours.

“Love.” he whispers, voice breaking. “You’re... you're in labor.”

Another contraction crashes through you, undeniable now, and Dennis doesn’t let go, not for a second.

“I’m right here.” he says fiercely. “I’m not going anywhere.”

After that, everything blurs.

There are hands everywhere, voices layered over one another, the sharp sting of medication and then the way the pain shifts, still there, still immense, but dulled at the edges, like it’s happening to someone else. Time stops behaving normally. Minutes stretch. Then vanish.

Dennis stays with you through all of it.

You hear him more than you see him, his voice a steady thread you cling to as the world tilts and contracts around you. He tells you when to breathe, when to push, when to rest. He keeps one hand anchored in yours, the other warm and constant at your shoulder, as if he’s afraid you might drift away if he lets go.

You don’t remember when it ends.

Only that suddenly, impossibly, there is a sound.

Thin. Insistent. Alive.

“Oh.” Dennis breathes.

Your eyes flutter open properly then, the fog lifting just enough for you to see him as he turns back toward you, something small and pink cradled carefully in his arms. His hands are shaking.

“She’s… she’s small.” he says softly, wonder and disbelief threading through his voice.

He brings her closer, settling her against your chest with reverent care. Her skin is warm, impossibly real, her tiny fingers curling instinctively into the fabric of your gown. The weight of her knocks the breath from your lungs in an entirely different way.

There’s a baby on your chest.

Your baby.

You sob, the sound tearing out of you before you can stop it, forehead dropping forward as Dennis presses a kiss into your hair.

“It’s okay.” he murmurs, voice thick. “I’ve got you. You’re doing so good.”

He stays close, one hand resting over yours and hers together, the other smoothing slow, grounding strokes along your arm. When you finally find your voice, it breaks immediately.

“We don’t even have a bed for her.” you whisper, tears soaking into the thin hospital pillow. “Or a name.”

Dennis leans down until his face is level with yours, eyes soft and fierce all at once.

“That’s alright.” he says gently. “Don’t worry about that right now. We’ll figure it out. One step at a time.”

You sniff, nodding weakly, eyes never leaving the tiny rise and fall of her chest.

“She’s okay.” he continues quietly, slipping instinctively into explanation, into reassurance. “This happens sometimes... cryptic pregnancies. No symptoms, or symptoms that get mistaken for other things. Especially with stress, irregular cycles…” His thumb brushes over your knuckles. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

The door opens quietly.

“Well." Trinity says, voice pitched low but bright with awe. “I leave you two alone for one shift.”

You look up to find her hovering near the doorway, expression caught somewhere between shock, pride, and outright joy. She steps closer, peering down at the baby with something dangerously close to reverence.

“God.” she murmurs. “She’s perfect.”

Dennis lets out a shaky laugh. “Apparently you’re an aunt now.”

Trinity straightens immediately. “Excuse you.” she says. “I’m a godmother. I’ve decided.”

Despite everything, despite the fear, the exhaustion, the impossible reality settling into place, you laugh, soft and wet and disbelieving, as your daughter shifts against your chest.

After a flurry of checkups for both you and the baby, you’re finally brought upstairs to your own room. The noise fades, replaced by a hushed stillness that feels almost sacred. Dennis never leaves your side, his hand always wrapped around yours, grounding and warm.

The baby, your baby girl, you have to keep reminding yourself, has been dressed in a tiny onesie and a soft pink hat. She sleeps soundly now in the clear plastic crib beside your bed, chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm that feels impossible to look away from.

Dennis watches you watch her.

He wants to tell you how incredible you are. How impossibly proud he is. How overwhelming it feels to suddenly be a father, to have his entire world rearranged in the span of a few hours. But he knows those words would come too fast, too heavy.

So instead, he asks quietly, “How are you coping?”

Your gaze drifts from the crib back to him. He’s sitting in the chair on the other side of the bed, shoulders slumped with exhaustion, eyes soft and searching.

“Some pain.” you admit quietly. “But the medication’s helping. And I’m exhausted. And hungry.” You swallow. “And I can’t stop thinking about how… how I didn’t know. How I probably ate things I shouldn’t have and—”

Dennis is on his feet in an instant. He cups your cheeks in his calloused hands, thumbs brushing gently beneath your eyes.

“Shhh." he murmurs. “It’s okay.”

His forehead rests against yours as he speaks, voice low and steady. “My mind’s telling me the same things. That I should’ve known. That I would’ve, if I’d paid more attention. If I hadn’t been so buried in work.” He exhales softly. “But none of that changes what’s true right now.”

He pulls back just enough to look at you properly. “What I wanted to ask is… are you... okay with this? This isn’t what we planned. We wanted to wait. Until I’m finished with my studies... until... it's all stable.”

You nod slowly, eyes drifting back to the crib. She looks impossibly small. Peaceful. Real.

“Yeah." you say. “But… that’s just how it is now, isn’t it?” Your voice softens. “Maybe it’s fate.” You hesitate, then whisper, “Do you think we’ll be good parents?”

Dennis doesn’t hesitate.

“I know without a doubt that you’re already the best mom.” he says, pressing a kiss to your temple.

You talk like that for a while, voices hushed. About what you’ll need. What you’ll figure out as you go. How terrifying and strange and oddly right this all feels, even though it wasn’t part of the plan.

A soft knock breaks the quiet.

A moment later, Trinity slips into the room, already smiling.

“Hey, roomies.” she says. “Can I take a proper look at my new roommate?”

She’s already crossing the room, peering down into the crib with unmistakable awe.

“Sure." Dennis says. “You can hold her, if you want.”

She doesn’t need to be told twice.

Trinity scoops the baby up with practiced ease, one arm supporting her head, the other cradling her tiny body. She rocks her gently, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“Living with both of us was already more than we ever could’ve asked of you." you say quietly. “A debt we might never be able to repay. But a baby…”

“Oh, hush.” Trinity cuts in immediately. “I’m not making you move out.”

She glances over her shoulder at you. “I’ve gotten used to it. Besides, who’s going to cook dinner for me? Or meal prep? Or make that ridiculous sourdough that keeps me alive through twelve-hour shifts?”

“I could still make you bread.” you offer weakly. “Even if we didn’t live together.”

Trinity frowns. “You’re not leaving. End of discussion.” A beat. “I like having you two idiots around.” She looks back down at the baby, softening. “Three now, I guess.”

The baby squirms slightly in her arms, letting out a tiny sound, and the room feels warmer for it.

“The others asked when your baby shower will be." Trinity says after a long moment of silence, smiling at both of you while she still cradles your daughter.

“Baby shower?” you echo quietly.

You barely know what that is. Only fragments, really, over-the-top parties from social media, balloon arches and elaborate decorations, gender reveals that feel unnecessary now, almost funny. There’s no mystery left there. She’s here. She’s real.

“Yes.” Trinity says easily. “The whole staff downstairs wants to come. Gift you things. Honestly, we probably won’t even need to buy much ourselves.”

The word we hits you harder than anything else she’s said.

We.

She isn’t speaking as a bystander. She isn’t offering help from the outside. She’s placing herself firmly within the circle of this new, fragile little family. Your throat tightens.

“No...” you whisper, tears welling up. “That’s… that’s too much—”

“It’s exactly what all of us are willing to give.” Trinity cuts in gently, smiling. “And you don’t get to decide whether that’s too much.”

She adjusts the baby in her arms and continues, casual as if she’s listing groceries. “Anyway, Dana already called her husband, he’s bringing their old stroller that’s been sitting in their attic. I hope they clean it first. Can you imagine the spiders on that thing?” She wrinkles her nose. “And Princess raided the supply closet. Diapers. Onesies. A truly impressive haul.”

She keeps going, telling you how people you’ve grown quietly fond of over the past months, the nurses you brought home-cooked meals to, the residents you dropped off sandwiches and desserts for during long shifts, have come together without hesitation. How no one asked whether they should help. They just did.

You listen, stunned.

In this moment, it isn’t just one string of fate pulled taut. Not just your daughter bending reality into something new. It’s more than a dozen threads tightening all at once, each person stepping forward, ready to hold you up.

You’d always believed the community back in Nebraska was as close-knit as it could be, bonds forged beneath the roof of God, held together by tradition and obligation. But now, sitting in this quiet hospital room, surrounded by care freely given, you realize you were wrong.

This feels bigger.

People choosing you. Choosing to stay. Choosing to help, not because they have to, but because they want to.

And for the first time since everything changed, the future doesn’t feel so frightening after all.

A/N: This request was a very specific one, basically laid out from start to finish and I simply got to put it all into a proper story, and I quite enjoyed that progress.

“Your spacing’s off,” you say finally, voice calm but carrying easily over the noise. “You’re crowding the protein. Let it breathe. It’s the star of the show, the sauce is the supporting act.”

The woman startles, eyes snapping up to you, then immediately over your shoulder like she’s checking if she’s about to get in trouble.

“What,” he starts, turning sharply, already halfway into irritation, “did I just say about-”

His eyes land on you, a flicker of confusion on his face about the stranger who was relaxing against his station, as if she belonged there. 

“Who are you and why are you standing around like you own the place?” He asks gruffly, his hands leaning against the table now. His arm veins protruded as his body weight rested on the limbs. 

“The person who does own the place gave me a key,” You hold up the silver key between your fingers, “And I’m Y/n Y/l/n, the new sous-chef.” 

“The one from France?” he asks, stepping closer, wiping his hands on a towel but not breaking eye contact. 

You give a curt nod, a smirk still gracing your lips. It made it very hard for Jack not to stare at your pursed lips as he sized you up.

”Ah, yes,” Ellis chimes in, grinning as she leans against her station, clearly enjoying this far too much. It wasn’t often that many people gave Jack shit.  “The prodigal daughter back from studying abroad in France. Here to give this old guy a run for his money?”

”Old?” His voice echoed in the kitchen, making Ellis put her tattooed arms up. 

“Respectfully.” She whistled, holding her hand out for you to shake. 

Her grip was firm as she gave you her name, “Ellis Parker, Chef de Partie for the French girl.” 

You nearly flushed at her warm gaze, dropping her hand as she grabbed her plate, giving you and your new boss time to talk. 

“Alright,” he says. “Let’s see what Robby thought was worth importing.”

He holds his hand out in front of him, guiding you through the massive kitchen. 

“Careful,” you murmur. “You might like it.”

Something in his gaze darkens at that, interest threading through the challenge, but it’s gone just as fast as it appears. Your stuff is put up in a locker, while you throw an apron over your head. 

The tour is less formal than most restaurants you’ve worked in. That’s the first thing you’ve noticed, just how close-knit everyone seems to be. Which was a stark contrast to most other posh workplaces you’ve spent the last few years in. 

“Head of house, Frank Langdon with his assistant Mel King.” He points through the glass window into the dining room where the tall brunette was wildly explaining something to do with menus to the eager blonde. 

You’re on his heels as he walks, keeping up behind him like you were in a moving current. 

“Dana, house manager. She keeps this place running, don’t ever piss her off.” He grumbles, and you hear the blonde put the phone down to yell loudly at the man. 

“-I heard that!” 

“Anyways,” he continues, his shoulder pushing open another door for you two to glide through. “Santos and Garcia, our resident bartender and sommelier.” 

The younger girl is shoulder to shoulder with the older girl, polishing wine glasses with expert precision. You wave softly to them, trying your best to be polite while Jack is all but dragging you through the restaurant at lightning speed. 

You’re back in the kitchen, a guy is on his knees scrubbing at a spot on the floor while the other is rinsing the sink. 

“Whittaker, our busboy, and Ogilvie his assistant of sorts. I don’t really know what he does, he cleans.” Jack pauses watching the boy squint at him before you’re off in the kitchen again. 

The smell of sugar and vanilla hits your nose as you walk through the pastry kitchen. “Samira Mohan, our Pastry Chef. I don’t care what bullshit you saw in France, she’s better.” He boasts, and you barely catch a glance of the girl as she’s pulling another rack of pastries out of the oven. 

“There are some people I’m missing,” He huffs, “You met Ellis, then we have Shen and Crus our other chefs. We have our prep cooks Princess and Perlah, don’t tell them anything they gossip.” 

He lets out a short laugh as you’re suddenly right back where you started, “McKay and Javardi are our hosts, Joy and Emma are our veteran waitresses. We love them, Emma does our social media. So if she asks you to make a TikTok, you’ll do it because she’s too sweet to say no to.” 

“Understood,” You let out a breath, still trying your best to remember all of the names. 

”You met Robby and Heather, they’re hardly here since their daughter was born so that leaves me.” He smiles, rocking on his feet. “Jack Abbot.” 

“Nice to officially meet you,” You nearly laugh, sticking out your hand to shake his. You nearly shiver at the way his large warm hand encompasses yours. 

He switches in and out of Head Chef mode easily, immediately going into a deep explanation of how they work here. Their processes, what makes it work, and how under no circumstances are you to deviate from the plan. He was a stickler for order, that much was obvious, but you had to be in this line of work. 

“Did you memorize the menu?” 

“Of course.” You nod, thinking back to Robby shoving a binder in your hand upon hiring and telling you to study up. You didn’t think you’d actually be tested until Jack started throwing questions at you. 

“Miso cod,” he says. “What finishes it?”

“White miso glaze, reduced until it clings,” you answer without hesitation. “Caramelized under high heat, served over a bed of jasmine rice with a ginger-scallion emulsion and pickled shiitake for contrast.”

His eyes flick toward you briefly.

“Citrus?”

You don’t miss a beat. “Yuzu zest in the emulsion. Bright, but not overpowering.”

He hums, not quite approval, not quite dismissal.

“Filet.”

“Dry-aged,” you reply. “Pan-seared, basted in brown butter, garlic, and thyme. Rested properly. Served with pommes purée that’s more butter than potato and a red wine bordelaise reduced to almost syrup.”

“Temperature.”

“Mid-rare,” you scoff. “Obviously, anything higher is a crime.”

That earns the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth.

He stops suddenly at the pass, picking up a plate, holding it between you like a test you’re meant to fail. It’s still steaming, but there’s not much cooking happening besides prep. 

A smile quirks up at your lips, thinking of him preparing a dish just to quiz you on. You take the challenge. 

It’s a roasted chicken, split and pressed, the skin blistered and golden, glistening under a brush of jus. It sits over a bed of truffle-laced pommes anna, layered thin and crisp at the edges, soft and buttery at the center. There’s a swipe of charred leek purée, dark and smoky, and a scattering of pearl onions lacquered in something sweet and reduced.

He holds it out slightly toward you, pulling a fork out from his pocket.

“Roast chicken,” he says. “Walk me through it.”

You step in closer without hesitation, close enough that your shoulder nearly brushes his as you lean in.

“Air-dried for at least twenty-four hours,” you start, eyes scanning, picking it apart piece by piece. “High heat to render the skin, then finish slower so it stays juicy. Basted in butter, thyme, maybe a little garlic toward the end so it doesn’t burn.”

Your finger hovers just above the pommes anna, not touching, just tracing the shape with the fork. You bring it up to your lips, unaware of Jack’s sudden interest in the counter after your tongue swipes against it.

“Potatoes layered with clarified butter, pressed, cooked low and slow, then crisped. Truffle folded in at the end, not during, or it disappears.”

“Sauce,” he prompts.

“Chicken jus, mounted with butter,” you reply. “Reduced enough to coat the back of a spoon, not so much that it turns sticky.”

He nods once, then tilts the plate slightly.

“What doesn’t belong?”

You hum, twirling the fork around. 

You lean in just a little more, close enough now that if you shifted even an inch you’d touch him, your voice lowering without you meaning to. The fork stabs one of the pearl onions, you shove it into your mouth, and grimace a little. 

“They’re glazed in balsamic,” you say.

“And.”

“It’s too heavy,” you continue, straightening slightly, meeting his eyes again. “You’ve already got richness from the chicken, the butter, the potatoes. The balsamic makes it sweet and acidic in the wrong way. It pulls focus instead of balancing.”

He watches you carefully.

“Sweetness is bad?”

“Not if it’s intentional,” you counter. “But this isn’t. It’s competing, not complementing.”

Then you tilt your head just slightly, a hint of something playful slipping in.

“You’d be better off with something brighter. Maybe a preserved lemon glaze, or even a light cider reduction. Something that cuts through instead of sitting on top.”

He makes a noise of satisfaction, “Most people would’ve said the truffle,” he admits.

“The truffle isn’t overdone, it’s a good addition. If it’s in the budget, I’d put it on the menu, minus the onions.” You smiled crookedly. 

He’s trying to hide how impressed he is, as he shuffles around. “Well, try not to slow us down tonight.” 

“Oh, I don’t like it slow.” You purse your lips, “Don’t worry about me.” 

He has an amused look on his face, “You are gonna give me a run for my money huh?” 

You shrug, “Guess you’ll just have to wait and see.” 

And you don’t make him wait long.

Service hits like a wave and you step into it without hesitation, sliding onto his line as if you’ve always belonged there, like the rhythm of this kitchen is something your body already understands. This is where you belong, even when the tickets start stacking. Jack glides through the kitchen like he could do it blindfolded.

You match him without thinking, your hands moving before the words even fully land, reaching for pans, adjusting heat, finishing sauces before he even has the chance to bark out orders. 

“Two scallops, one duck, one filet,” he calls.

“Scallops walking,” you answer just as quickly, already flipping them, butter foaming, the edges caramelizing into that perfect golden crust. You tilt the pan, baste once, twice, then pull them at exactly the right second, sliding them onto the plate like it’s elementary. 

Jack tries not to stare, tries to focus on his own job but he finds the way you move mesmerizing. Even when you reach for the wrong item, still gaining your footing here, you’re majestic. 

“Duck?” he presses.

You’re already slicing it, the blade gliding clean through, juices held exactly where they should be. “Rested,” you say, fanning it out, dragging the cherry reduction into a sharper line, tightening the plating just enough to elevate it without losing its soul.

“You’re moving fast,” he mutters, more to himself than you.

You don’t look up. “I told you, I don’t like it slow.”

There’s something in the way you say it that makes him pause for half a second too long before snapping back into motion.

The longer the service goes, the clearer it becomes. You’re not just keeping up with him, you’re anticipating him. Adjusting before he asks, finishing thoughts he hasn’t spoken yet, stepping into the exact spaces he leaves open without ever colliding. It isn’t chaotic, it isn’t competitive in a loud way. You’re not working against him, you’re not showing out. It’s a dance. 

At one point your hands brush when you both reach for the same pan, and neither of you pulls back immediately. He lingers, and you let your fingers dance over his before pulling the pan out from him. 

When service is over, the place takes a deep breath. Jack pretends he can’t smell the sweat clinging to your neck, and the soft scent of your shampoo when you pass him. 

“Is every night like that?” You ask, your skin still vibrating from the adrenaline rush. successful service. 

“If we’re so lucky,” Shen smiles, patting you on the back, “You were on fire back there.” 

“Thank you.” You smiled, listening to their compliments while your eyes were on Jack. He gave you a simple nod of encouragement, before he leaned back down to scrub at the oven. You took that to heart, ignoring the weird flutter in your chest at his approval. 

You roll your shoulders back, trying to shake the adrenaline loose, but it’s still there, buzzing under your ribs, settling somewhere deeper instead of fading.

“Careful,” Ellis calls from across the line, flicking water from a rag in your direction. “You keep that up, you’re gonna make the rest of us look bad.”

“You already do that on your own,” you shoot back, not missing a beat.

A few laughs ripple through the room.

”Yeah,” She whistles, tossing you a sponge, “You’re right where you belong.” 

You move through cleanup as you worked here for years, not a single night, falling into rhythm beside them, trading small comments, quiet jokes, letting yourself settle into something that feels dangerously close to belonging already. 

Princess is already whispering something to Perlah that makes them both glance at you and grin, Dana’s voice carries faintly from the front, still managing something even this late, and Shen is already halfway to the espresso machine without needing to ask. He brings you a coffee in a shot glass, a wide smile on his face. “To surviving your first shift at The Pitt.”

By the end of your first week, the kitchen stops watching you like you’re a baby deer on new legs, and starts moving with you as if you’ve always been there. By the end of your second, they start trusting you. And by the end of your first month, there isn’t a single person on the line who doesn’t adjust when you step in, who doesn’t listen when you speak, who doesn’t look for you the same way they look for him when something matters.

Service becomes something electric between you and Jack.

You learn his tells, the slight shift in his posture when something is about to go wrong, the way his voice drops when he’s focused, the exact second he expects a plate to land in the pass. And he learns yours too, whether he wants to admit it or not. The way you move faster when you’re challenged, the way you don’t wait to be told, the way you fix things before they ever reach him. 

“Too much salt,” he mutters one night, barely glancing at a pan.

You’re already beside him, tasting, adjusting, adding a splash of stock and a knob of butter, bringing it back into balance like it was never off.

“Better,” you say, sliding it back.

He watches you for a second longer than necessary, before you’re already back at your station.

“You don’t miss,” he says.

“Neither do you,” you reply, and he pretends it doesn’t make his knuckles shake. He’s too old for a crush, he tells himself. But it doesn’t stop the way he looks at you with stars in his eyes every night. 

There’s a push and pull to it, something unspoken but constant. You challenge him in small ways, tightening a plate here, swapping an element there, offering suggestions that are just bold enough to make him pause but never reckless enough to break the integrity of what he’s built.

“Lose the microgreens,” you murmur one night, adjusting a dish before it goes out. “They’re filler.”

“They add color.”

“They add nothing,” you counter, meeting his eyes. “If you need color, fix the dish, not the garnish. Microgreens are shipped in by the pound to every wanna be Michelin star restaurant in the US. We don’t need it.”

He wants to argue, you can see it on his face. Then his brows furrow, and he watches the plate so intensely you’d almost believe it was speaking to him.

Then he pulls them off himself.

“Send it,” he says.

You don’t smile, but you feel the way your cheeks burn. 

You find your place in the quieter moments too.

Samira’s kitchen is the first space that feels different. Warmer, softer, but no less precise. The scent of caramelizing sugar wraps around you the second you step inside, vanilla and citrus layered over butter and heat. She hands you a spoon without looking.

“Try that.” She orders. 

You do. A dark chocolate crémeux, smooth and rich, finished with a hint of sea salt that lingers at the back of your tongue.

”Respectfully,” You start, the spoon still in your mouth, “I think I’d do anything you asked me to do if you keep making things like that.” 

She laughs, a loud one that comes from her throat. “Jack was right, I like you.” 

You don’t press on what she means, because the idea of Jack boasting about you makes something coil in your stomach. 

It’s easy to fall into rhythm with the staff. You’d bum a cigarette off of Santos after long nights, the two of you chain-smoking with Dana in the freezing Pittsburgh weather. Samira would sneak you pastries in exchange for tips you had picked up in France. You brought her in some cookbooks from your time there, and she nearly cried. The next day there’s a container waiting for you in the breakroom fridge, your name written across the lid in careful script. Chai tiramisu, layered perfectly, the spice warm and unexpected against the bitterness of espresso. 

Frank and Mel were a joy to be around, you sat with them one day learning the inner workings of the magic they create out front. Your first outing with the crew was one weekend Javardi had convinced all the girls, barring Dana who was always busy, to go out and get drinks one night. Despite the girl's only memo, Shen showed up an hour in and got so drunk that Ellis had to carry him two blocks home. 

Somewhere in all of it, you find your place.

Not just in the kitchen, not just on the line, but here, in the middle of this strange, chaotic, loyal little family that somehow makes space for you without question. 

That’s why, you think, the first time it cracks makes it hurt a little more than if this were any other job posting. 

The kitchen is running hot, faster than usual, the kind of night where everything is just slightly off and everyone feels it. Tickets pile, timing tightens, and Jack is sharper than usual, voice cutting a little cleaner, a little colder.

A braised short rib, rich and heavy, sitting over a parsnip purée with a red wine reduction that leans deep, almost too deep, into itself. It’s Jack Abbot on a plate, almost. 

You taste it as it comes up, quick, instinctive, and your brow pulls just slightly. It’s good, actually, it’s fantastic, but it’s missing something vital to him. 

A splash of sherry vinegar, just enough to lift it. A touch of orange zest, subtle, brightening the edges without changing the core. You swirl, taste again, and it opens up immediately, the richness balanced, the flavor sharper, more alive.

You plate it and send it without thinking. 

Jack catches it at the pass, because of course he does. 

“What is this,” he asks, not loud, but dangerous in how controlled it is. Everyone seems to tense, knowing exactly what the inflection in his voice means. 

You don’t hesitate. “Short rib.”

His eyes flick to yours, then back to the plate. He then narrows his eyes at the sauce you have sitting on your station.

“You changed the sauce.” 

It’s not a question, but you answer anyway. “Yes.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” he says, voice tightening, the edge finally showing. “You don’t touch my dishes without clearing them first.”

”It needed it,” you reply, your voice steadier than you feel.

“That’s not your call,” he snaps, sharper now. “You think because you worked in France and have all these fancy restaurants under your belt that you get to walk in here and rewrite my menu? You’ve been here a little over a month, don’t think you’re more important than you are because Robby wanted a new shiny chef to look good in the media.”

There it is. 

The version of him everyone else warned you about. The version of him you have yet to see. The one no one had seen since you arrived. Because, Robby thought you’d mellow him out. Inspire him again, lighten the kitchen up. 

For a second, the kitchen holds its breath. Waiting to see if you crumble, or if you start yelling back. 

If anything, something in you sharpens right back, your eyes catching the light in amusement. 

The anger simmering in his chest only burns hotter when he sees your plush lips fighting off a stupid grin. 

“Taste it,” you say simply.

He scoffs. “That’s not the point.”

“Then make it the point,” you counter, stepping closer, lowering your voice just enough that it’s not for everyone else anymore. “Because if you’re going to be mad, you should at least be right.” 

His warm eyes are dark, with something you can’t quite place. 

“You come into my kitchen, and say my dish needs fixing?” He scoffs, both of your faces inching towards each other. The chaos of service still bustles around you, but both of you tune it out. Too fixated on each other 

“I mean no offense,” You start, “But that dish was supposed to be you on a plate right? It was wrong, it needed a boost, a light in it if you will.” 

“Don’t try to sound like my therapist,” His voice raises, “The sauce was fine-“ 

“I never said it wasn’t.” You stressed, “I just made it better. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, won’t happen again Chef.”

His jaw tightens at that, like the words themselves are a physical thing he has to chew through. For a second it looks like he’s going to refuse just to prove a point, to keep the argument alive on principle alone.

But he doesn’t, because he’s a chef first. And much to his chagrin and anger, he trusts you.

Jack snatches the spoon from the pot with more force than necessary, then drags it through the sauce you changed. The motion is sharp, almost aggressive, and when he brings it to his mouth, the entire kitchen somehow gets even quieter.

“It’s good,” he says finally, his voice not coming out as flat as he’d like. 

Your lips curve before you can stop them.

“Chef,” you correct softly, just to press him a little more.

His eyes snap to yours immediately, the irritation running back up his broad shoulders. “It’s good, Chef.” 

Jack leans in just slightly, not enough to touch, but enough that the space between you stops feeling safe. His hand grabs your upper arm, to pull you closer or just as an excuse to touch you. He isn’t sure which one it is. 

“You pull something like that again,” he says quietly, voice rougher now, “and it will be your last day in my kitchen.”

”Yes, Chef.” You whisper to him, a little too close to his ear. Your warm breath on his neck makes him shiver, his fingers dropping the grip he had on you. 

It occurs to you in that moment, that this is foreplay. For both of you. 

Both of your chests are panting, eyes dark with something neither of you dared to name. This is what every challenge in this kitchen has been. You push him, he pushes back, and you enjoy the rush. 

He steps back like your presence burns, turning his attention back to the tickets that were piling up. 

“Back on the line,” he calls, voice louder now, reestablishing control, forcing the kitchen back into motion.

As the rhythm picks back up, Crus passes behind you and bumps your shoulder lightly with his elbow, a grin tugging at his mouth.

“You poked the beast,” he murmurs, shaking his head like he can’t decide if he’s impressed or terrified for you.

You glance at him, calm as ever. “He survived.”

Crus snorts under his breath. “Barely.”

Across the line, Jack doesn’t look back at you again for the rest of the service, but you know he feels it. The coil wound tight between the two of you. What was once just longing stares and brushes of skin, was now a pressure cooker ready to explode all over the kitchen he spent the last few decades building from the ground up.

After that night, nothing really goes back to how it was before.

It doesn’t get worse, not exactly, but it changes shape. The kitchen doesn’t stop moving, doesn’t lose its rhythm, but there’s something threaded through it now that wasn’t there before. A pressure. A quiet awareness that sits under every callout, every pass, every brush of shoulders in tight spaces. People feel it even if they don’t say it out loud, even if they pretend they don’t see it. 

Princess and Perlah catch it immediately, and it spreads all the way to the front of the house.  Frank catches it in the way Jack’s eyes flick toward the kitchen door whenever you’re not on the line. Mel notices it in how quickly the tickets start moving when you’re working beside him, like the pace shifts just slightly to match the two of you instead of the system. Dana, of course, clocks it immediately and says nothing, which somehow makes it worse.

Santos says it out back one night, smoke curling between her fingers as she watches you lean against the brick wall after service.

”What’s going on between you and Jack?” She asks. 

“What’s going on with you and Garcia?” You pirate back, dangling the cigarette between your lips. 

She ignores your comment, continuing on. 

“You two are going to burn this place down with the passion between you two,” she says mildly, like she’s commenting on the weather.

You just take a drag of your cigarette and exhale slowly.

“We just both love food, passion makes us run hot, s’all,” you reply.

She hums like he doesn’t believe you.

Inside, Jack doesn’t say anything either, but he starts noticing everything. The way you stand a little closer than necessary when you’re correcting a dish. The way your hand lingers for half a second too long when you pass him a pan. The way you don’t look away first anymore.

Someone texted Robby about it, because of course they did. He gets a call one morning, asking if he’s running off the new chef or if he’s trying to commit an HR violation. Jack hangs up before he gets the chance to start making jokes anymore. 

It’s a random Thursday when you slip through the back door like normal, a little earlier, and a lot more dolled up. Your makeup is done, hair is down, and you have on a sweater as compared to your normal work attire. Samira whistles playfully as she walks into the breakroom, complimenting you as you begin to talk between yourselves. 

Jack hears you but doesn’t look up right away.

“You’re early,” he says, voice low, still facing the stove.

“Emma needs a headshot of me for the website,” you reply, shrugging off your coat and hanging it without slowing down. “She said she likes to take them in front of the sign. I’m also filming a few videos with her.”

He hums in acknowledgment, but his attention stays on the braise for the beef, on the way the liquid moves when he tilts the pot slightly, checking consistency, tasting with a spoon without thinking. He looks up at you, and that’s when everything goes wrong. 

You look beautiful. You’ve always been beautiful, even bare-faced with a dirty bandana tied around your head, but this? This was different, it was seeing you in another light. The Y/n you were outside of these walls, outside of being the best chef he’d ever met. 

Jack shifts slightly closer to the burner, adjusting the heat under the pot mindlessly, and that’s when it happens. He pulls back immediately, a sharp hiss escaping through his teeth before he even fully processes it. The side of his hand sizzles against the heat, and everyone’s heads turn. 

“You good, boss?” Crus asks, and you see Shen and Ellis falling into each other hiding their amusement. 

This is the first time in his career he had burned himself, and it suddenly feels like his world is falling apart in front of him. The clicking of your heels against the floor makes his brow furrow as he wraps his hand in a rag. 

“Jack,” you say, already moving.

He likes the way his name sounds coming from your lips. 

“I’m fine,” he answers automatically, but it’s too quick, too tight.

You don’t argue, just step in beside him, gently but firmly taking his wrist and turning it under the cooler sink before he can insist otherwise. The skin is already red, irritated, not serious but enough to sting, but enough to make him finally go quiet and let you work.

“I said I’m fine,” he mutters again, though softer now.

“And I didn’t ask,” you reply, adjusting the water slightly, your touch steady and unhurried as you check the burn properly.

You reach for ointment in the first aid kit without asking, careful as you apply it, your fingers light but precise as you wrap the gauze around his hand. He doesn’t pull away, doesn’t interrupt, just stands there letting you take control. Something he normally doesn't let happen. 

“You distracted me,” he says after a beat, quieter now, like he’s admitting something he doesn’t fully like saying out loud.

You glance up at him briefly while tying off the bandage. 

“I wasn’t even doing anything,” you laugh.

That earns a faint exhale from him that almost, almost sounds like a laugh he’s holding back. “Exactly,” he replies.

There’s a pause then, as your head tilts to the side watching him carefully. “Is it the heels? Because I know they’re not kitchen standard, but I have an outfit change before service.” 

“It’s not the heels,” He breathes out, but then his eyes do rake down your body for a fleeting moment before he meets your eyes again, “Maybe it’s the heels.” 

You chuckle again, patting his now bandaged hand softly. “You’re all set to go.” 

“You must have been a doctor in another life,” He smiles, “I feel better already.” 

“Healing hands.” You wiggle your fingers at him playfully, taking a short step back. You go to turn away, but you pause leaning back into his space. “Be careful, I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself again watching me walk away.” 

With those words you’re off, spinning on your heel and walking into the dining room with an unnecessary added sway in your steps. 

“Jesus,” He grumbles, feeling a flush run up the back of his neck as he indeed did watch you walk away. Ignoring all the alarm bells that were ringing in his head, as he tried his best not to get hard in the middle of prep. 

He’s not subtle at all with the way his eyes keep finding yours that night. At one point there was no shame as he stood in front of the pass window, watching Emma direct you and pose while Joy stood there following Emma’s every polite command. 

“You are not slick brother.” Robby’s voice bellows through the kitchen.

Jack barely reacts, just exhales through his nose like he’s been caught doing something mildly inconvenient rather than completely transparent. He turns his head slightly, watching Robby step into the kitchen like he still owns part of the air in it.

“You’re here,” Jack says flatly. “Almost forgot you worked here.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He takes the tease, hugging him gently. “I’m observant,” Robby adds, glancing past him straight to you, then back to Jack with a faint smirk. “And I’ve been hearing things.”

Jack’s jaw tightens just a fraction. “From who?”

“Little birdies,” Robby says casually, leaning against the edge of the pass like he’s got all the time in the world. “Mostly the kind that tells me my head chef’s been acting like he forgot how to breathe around his new sous chef.”

Jack scoffs, immediately turning back to the line like that’s the end of it. “People talk too much.”

“People always talk,” Robby replies, watching him carefully now. “What’s interesting is that I’ve been here two minutes and I already see it.”

Then, lighter, almost teasing, but not quite. “They’re saying she’s changed you.”

Jack doesn’t answer right away, just focuses a little too hard on the clock.

“She hasn’t changed anything,” he says finally.

Robby hums like he doesn’t believe him for a second. “Sure.”

Service pulls them both back in before anything else can be said, and the kitchen does what it always does, it swallows everything that isn’t immediately necessary. Orders fire, pans heat, voices cut across each other in practiced rhythm. You’re back on the line fully now, moving like you’ve always belonged there, correcting, plating, adjusting without hesitation, and Jack tries to stay locked in the way he always does.

But he keeps looking.

He catches himself doing it twice, maybe three times, eyes flicking up without permission, drawn to you like it’s reflex now. You’re leaning over a station explaining something to Ellis, hair slightly loosened from earlier, even as it’s pulled back, your expression focused and animated in a way that makes the whole room feel a fraction warmer. It annoys him more than it should that he notices how easily people orbit you now.

By the time service winds down, the kitchen is in that slow collapse, energy draining out of it in waves. The clatter softens, the urgency fades, and what’s left is exhaustion and the quiet satisfaction of getting through it.

Shen is already at the back counter when you finish cleaning your station, pulling shots of espresso with practiced ease, humming under his breath like he’s done this a thousand times and will do it a thousand more.

“You look like you need this,” he says, sliding a small glass toward you.

Ice cream first, espresso second, the classic affogato, simple and perfect in a way that feels like a reward for surviving the night.

You take it gratefully, leaning against the counter beside him.

“Saved my life,” you murmur after the first bite.

Shen shrugs like it’s nothing. “You say that every time.”

“Because it’s true every time.”

Across the room, Jack is wiping down his station, slower now, watching the kitchen settle back into itself. Or at least pretending to. His eyes flick toward you before he can stop them, landing on the two of you draped across the bar as you belong. The way your faded lipstick still clings to your lips that are wrapped around the spoon. 

Shen leaves before you do, bidding you a goodnight. No doubt stealing yet another glass bowl from the restaurant. You tell him not to eat and drive, and he flips you off as the door shuts behind him.

You finish your affogato and set the glass down, turning slightly like you feel Jack watching from behind you. 

“You two are close,” Jack says, voice level, neutral on the surface but just tight enough underneath to give it away.

It’s then you realise that you are the only two left. The lights are dim and the room smells of cleaning supplies and that slight metallic smell of polished stainless steel permeates through the air. 

“He’s a mess,” You comment, placing the bowl into the sink slowly. 

He makes a noise of agreement, tossing his rag around his neck. 

“Not as close as we are, chef,” you say lightly, almost teasing, but steady enough that it lands exactly where you intend it to. “Don’t worry, you’re still my favorite.” 

“Am I?” He asks, running his hand through his tousled salt and pepper curls. 

Your teeth bite down on your bottom lip, mischief in your eyes as the only thing that separated you two was the kitchen island. You lean your palms against the cold metal, leaning forward. 

“Of course you are.” 

He pretends he can’t see down your thin undershirt now, he finds his fingers itching to touch the exposed skin of your collarbones. 

“You’re my sous chef,” he says after a beat, like he needs to remind himself of something solid.

“Mm,” you murmur, stepping closer to the island, palms pressing lightly against the edge as you lean in more. “And?”

“And,” he repeats, but it comes out quieter than he intended, like the word itself has lost some of its authority.

You tilt your head, watching him carefully now, the teasing still there but softened by something more focused, more aware.

“White pinot goes best with cod,” you say casually, like you’re talking about nothing important at all.

His brow furrows slightly, thrown off for a second. “What?”

You shrug, eyes flicking briefly to his mouth before returning to his gaze like you didn’t just do that. “I thought we were just naming the obvious.”

His breath shifts slightly, like he’s trying to steady it without making it obvious, and he pushes off the counter, stepping closer without fully thinking about it until suddenly there isn’t really any space left between you and the island doesn’t feel like an obstacle anymore, just something your bodies are pressing against from opposite sides.

“That’s not,” he starts, then stops, jaw tightening as if he’s actively trying to regain control of the situation, of himself. “We can’t just-”

“Can’t just what,” you interrupt softly, not moving back, not giving him an inch. “Talk?”

His eyes drop for half a second, as they betray him before he can stop them, and when he realises just how close you both are. Even with the counter digging into both of your hips, it feels like there’s no space between you two at all. 

“You’re pushing it,” he says, but there’s no real force behind it anymore.

“I think you like it when I do,” you reply, and this time your voice drops with it, something slower threading through the words as you shift just slightly, your nose brushing against his. Your lips hovering over his warm skin, “Don’t you?”

He moves, nearly stumbling backwards as he does. Like your touch burned him just as bad as the burner did earlier. 

You follow him like it’s instinct, like the space he creates is just something you’re meant to fill. He doesn’t back up once, he just lets you step across from him 

“Listen, if I’m reading this wrong you can tell me.” You say softly, “I won’t be offended.”

His eyes flick to yours, sharp, guarded, but it’s slipping at the edges now.

“You’re not- fuck,” he replies, but it comes out lower than he intends, less certain than it should be. “That’s not it.”

You hum faintly, stepping just close enough that the air between you changes again, warmer, tighter, charged in a way that makes the quiet hum of the kitchen feel miles away. The towel around his neck catches your attention, and without asking, you reach for it.

He doesn’t stop you,if anything his body shivers anticipating your touch. 

Your fingers curl around the fabric, not pulling hard just enough to feel the tension in him as you draw him a fraction closer, enough that his breath shifts slightly when you do it. You pull his neck down to your height, meeting his eyes. 

“Then what is it?” You ask, that teasing jilt in your tone again. The same one you throw out during service that makes his cock twitch in his pants. 

His hand comes up, hesitates for half a second like he’s still trying to decide whether he should stop this or not, and then it settles at your waist, firm but controlled, pulling you just slightly closer until the space is gone between you two entirely. 

“You’re my sous chef,” He repeats, his mouth dry. “You work under me, it’s a- I don’t wanna- take advantage of you-“ 

“Jack,” You coo softly, “I’m a big girl, if anything I wish you’d take advantage of me-“ 

That’s all that it takes for that coil to snap. He leans forward, his hands pulling your hips flesh against his as your lips meet. 

It’s frantic, hot, and wet. Your lips are warm against his, teeth nearly gnashing together at the intensity of it. Before you know it, he’s pressing you against the edge of the counter, cornering you there. His hands on your hips grip tighter, before they lift you as if you weigh nothing. 

You plop down on the metal slab, your lips still chasing each other as his knee knocks your legs open wide for him. You oblige, pliant in his hands as yours are tugging against his curls. He pulls your shirt over your head as if it personally offended him, the fabric falling somewhere near the glasses. 

You nearly whine when his lips part from yours, but it’s soothed over with a moan when he kisses down your jawline to your neck.

”Tell me what you want.”

Your back arches, the ache between your legs growing stronger with each touch. 

“Just, f-fuck-“ You can barely get the words out when his canines bite down into your skin. 

“Do you like that?” He panted against your neck, his lips alternating between sucking and licking at the supple flesh. He moved down to your tits, kissing the exposed skin. 

“I want you to tell me how you want it,” He demanded, “Boss me around just like you do every fucking day in this kitchen. Tell me how to touch you, where you want my lips, how slow, how fast, how you like to be fucked..” 

Your eyes nearly roll into the back of your head at his words, your hands gripping his biceps like a lifeline. 

“Get these pants off,” You manage to bark out, lifting your hips to give him space to pull your pants to your ankles. The thin fabric separating you from him was damp, a dark patch that had been there since the start of your verbal foreplay earlier during service. 

“You are so fucking beautiful.” He whispers, his eyes never once leaving yours even as his lips trail down your body. “I’ve thought that from the moment you walked in here, correcting my chefs like you owned the place.” 

“Yeah?” You panted out, watching his fingers slide your underwear to the side. 

“And this….” He breathed out, staring at your wet heat. He used his fingers to spread you open wider for him, a guttural moan leaving his lips. “This is gonna be the best fucking meal I’ve ever had. Isn’t it?” 

You can’t speak, you’re breathing too hard, anticipation making your skin crawl. But you see the glint in his eyes, the smirk on his face. 

“You’re so mouthy during service, what’s wrong? Hmm?” 

“Fuck,” You nearly whine, feeling his fingers ghost around everywhere but where you need him the most. “It is gonna be the last meal if you don’t do something-oh.” 

Your head falls back against the wall as soon as his tongue makes contact with your clit. It’s an experimental swipe through your folds, enough to have your fingernails digging into his arms. 

“I was right,” He moans into you, "Delicious." 

Jack Abbot was not lying when he said this would be the best meal he’d ever had, because the way his mouth was moving against you you’d think the man had never eaten in his life. It’s messy, his tongue teasing in and out of your aching hole in between frantic sucks of your clit into his mouth. 

You were moaning his name like a prayer, jutting your hips up into his nose without even meaning to. 

“Fingers,” You gasped out in need. 

“Yeah?” he hummed, slipping an arm between your legs so he could slip a finger inside of your soaking entrance. “You’re so wet, baby. What got you like this?” 

His finger stretches you out with a delicious burn, you’re already aching for more by the time he curls the digit just right. It’s like he can read your mind, slipping another deep inside. They’re so thick it takes you a moment, before you’re clenching around him. 

“You, just you.” Your hands are now gripping the side of the counter, watching him through half-lidded eyes. “Been thinking of those fingers of yours, every time you’d- oh my god- stick your fucking finger into a sauce. Sucking on it like you knew I was watching.” 

“Same way you’d suck on those spoons while looking at me,” He whispered, bringing his mouth back down to your throbbing clit. 

The sound was just as disgusting as it was the hottest thing you’ve ever heard in the world. With each loud squelch of his fingers prying you apart, he was moaning desperately into you. His cock was hard and straining against his slacks. 

“S’good,” You praised, shifting your hips a little in his hold, “A little faster, wait- right there- yes, yes,” 

He listened intently, waiting to hear that sharp intake of breath and to feel your legs tremble around his head. He wouldn’t admit how many nights he went home, fisting his cock in the shower imagining just how you’d sound when you came. How you’d taste, how you’d feel wrapped around him. 

You could feel your orgasm approaching, and it almost pissed you off how fast you were coming apart around him. No other man had made you feel this way, but with his tongue lapping against you and his fingers curling deep inside right against your g-spot you were cumming with a loud moan. 

“There it is,” His voice was slurred and muffled against you.

Your shoulders dropped back, back arching and legs trembling as he didn’t change his rhythm once. Your head fell back, mouth parted as his fingers slid through your folds drawing out your orgasm until you couldn’t take it anymore. 

His head was pulled back up by your fingers in his curls, your release was dripping down his chin. His eyes were sparkling as he looked up at you. 

He brings his fingers up to his mouth and licks them clean like he made a mess eating the most expensive chocolate in the world. Not a drop is wasted, and you’re already clenching around nothing. 

“Remember,” You start, still trying to catch your breath, “How you wanted me to tell you how I wanted to be fucked?” 

He nods eagerly, slowly rising back up to your eye level. 

“I told you I don’t like it slow.” 

He smirks, the crinkles by his eyes deepening as you pull him closer towards you by his belt loops. 

“Get this off-“

”Eager?” He teases, his boxers falling to the floor. 

“Fuck.” You almost laugh, watching his heavy cock fall between his legs. He was veiny, and his tip was red and leaking. 

”I don’t have any condoms-“ 

You cut him off, eyes still locked on the massive cock that was twitching with neglect. “I’m clean, and I have an IUD.” 

He’s about to ask you another question before you bring your hand down, wrapping gently around his length. He hisses at the touch, warning you to go slow. 

“Sorry, this is just- god the biggest cock I’ve ever seen.” 

His chest puffs in pride, watching your thumb swipe a bead of his pre-cum around his sensitive tip. He can barely take it, he needs to be inside of you so bad his legs are practically shaking. 

“Think you can take it?” He asks, grabbing your thighs to push them up on the counter, as he settles between them. 

“Yes, chef.” You say jokingly, but you feel the way he tenses you see the way his eyes darken. You tilt your head at him, while he’s lining up at your entrance. 

“You like that don’t you?” 

He’s silent, but huffs as he rubs his tip against your soaked slit. 

“You gonna fuck me?” You ask, “Please Chef-“ 

You’re barely able to finish your teasing when he slips inside of you slowly, a gasp gets lodged in your throat. His palm is heavy on your stomach, thumb rubbing small circles into your clit as he inches in. 

“You’re okay,” He cooed, “Bigggg stretch, almost in baby. You’re doing so fucking good. F-fitting like a glove, so wet for me.” 

You feel so full, almost impossibly full. Each time you think he’s done, he keeps pushing more into your greedy velvety walls. With one final roll of his hips, he bottoms out. His hips meet yours. 

“Fuck.” He moans, leaning his forehead against yours to kiss you gently. “Need. This. Off.”

Your bra is unclasped with one of his hands, and pushed to the side. His head lowers to catch a nipple into his mouth, he swirls his tongue around the bud before pulling off with a pop. 

“You okay, honey?” He asks softly, doing his best to keep you relaxed as your body adjusts to him. 

You nod lazily, the dull ache turning into searing pleasure after a minute of his tongue expertly sucking at every sensitive spot he could reach. 

The first thrust has you nearly crying out in bliss, his tip is nudging so deep you swear you can feel him in your throat. He’s slow at first, steady enough to make sure he’s not hurting you and that your cunt is still dripping around him. 

As soon as he feels your hips rocking against his, he braces his hands on your hips. 

“M’member what you said, baby? How you don’t like it slow?” 

Your jaw goes slack, the moment he thrusts harder, pulling his cock all the way out before slamming back in with fever. 

Then, he’s everywhere. His lips mouthing at your neck, his cock rearranging your guts, his thumb flicking your clit. It’s overwhelming, in the best way possible. 

“I’ve been thinking about this ever since you walked in here in those fucking heels,” He admitted in a gasp, already lost in the warm wet of your cunt wrapped around him. “Hell, since the first day I met you.”

It was one thing to have a massive cock, it was a completely other thing to know exactly how to use it. And god, did he know how to use it. 

All control you held onto slipped through your hands, cockdrunk already on him. 

The lewd sounds of skin slapping against skin echoed through the quiet kitchen, alongside the pathetic moans you couldn’t stop from slipping through your lips. 

“S’ fucking big.” 

“You’re taking it so well,” He praises, “Feels s’good doesn't it baby?”

The moment your nails scratch down his shoulders so hard he winces, he knows he’s angled his hips just right. “There it is,” he says, under his breath. “That’s the spot isn’t it?”

When you don’t answer in coherent words he speaks up again, “Come on, talk to me. Tell me that’s the spot baby.” 

“That’s the spot,” You cry out, “That’s the fucking spot, don’t stop. Keep fucking me.” 

“Wouldn’t dream of stopping,” He huffs, pulling the hem of his white t-shirt up his torso. The hem finds itself slotted in between his teeth, keeping it out of the way as he jackhammers into you. 

The sight of his salt and pepper hair, and his abs glistening with sweat is all it takes for the familiar feeling to creep up your spine. And he knows it too. 

“You’re gonna cum for me, chef.” He orders, and you feel your cunt pulse around him. “Gonna cum all over my cock.”

”Y-yes, chef.” You’re gone, eyes closed and hips thrusting upwards as he pushes you down with his palm on your stomach to keep you still.

“That’s it,” He grunted, “Give it to me- fuck use this fucking cock.” 

You came so hard your ears rang, pleasuring licking up your spine even hotter than before. You can feel yourself creaming around him, each thrust only making your high ride out that much longer.

“Shit- you’re squeezing me so fucking tight- I’m barely gonna last.” He spoke through gritted teeth, his hand cupping the back of your neck harshly while the other ran up and down your side, squeezing the flesh harshly. 

“W-wanna feel you cum.” You babbled, head lolling to the side, only being held up by his hand. “Fuck me full of your cum.”

”Yeah?” His brows squinted in concentration, keeping your eyes on you. “Watch me while I cum.” 

Tears are filling your waterline as he fucks into you so hard you’re worried the shelving units are going to fall off the walls. 

Drool is sliding down your chin by the time his hand wraps around your throat, as he groans your name loudly into your neck. 

His hips stutter as he comes, and you can feel him twitch and release inside of you. The ropes of sticky cum are warm, filling up your cervix with each twitch until you’ve milked him dry. 

“Holy fuck,” He pants, pulling your head into his sweaty chest as the two of you come down. 

You were both sticky and out of breath, bodies aching from the intensity of it. But still, your brows were furrowed, lost in thought before you spoke up. 

“Wait,” You pant softly, “Have we ever thought about putting a new pasta dish on the menu?” 

His brows furrowed, sweat still clung to his top lip. “What?” 

“I just started thinking of an herb roasted chicken mafaldine pesto pasta, with like sundried tomatoes and shallots,” You rambled, as if his cock still wasn’t seated deep inside of your cunt. “We could top it with parmesan and some lemon, freshly cracked black pepper.”

”You realize,” He shifted, “I’m literally still inside of you.” 

You rolled your eyes, he wasn’t wrong. His release was still dripping out of you, coating the inside of your thighs. “Yes, you should be proud your dick inspired such a wonderful dish from my brain.” 

It was then he realised he was more far gone than he had ever been before. 

He thinks he’s in love with you. 

All he could do was shake his head. 

That’s how you ended up staying there late into the night, both of you working to make your impromptu post orgasm dish a reality. 

“Hm, I still think it’s missing something.” He mused, looking at the freshly made pasta dough and steaming chicken that was thrown together on the tasting plates, and you nodded letting him hand-feed you yet another bite. 

“I think,” You swallowed, “You should take me home, and we can shower and you can fuck the missing ingredient out of my head. How does that sound?” 

The fork was dropped within seconds, practically grabbing your hand and pulling you out of the door. “But, wait we need to clean up-“

“Fuck them, I’m the boss.” He shrugs, and you find yourself in an endless fit of giggles. 

It stops you in your tracks, your face reacting before your mind has a moment to catch up. The confusion and bewilderment is clear on your face. ‘Absolutely not’ you shoot back at him with your eyes. God damn, you guys had just started dating essentially. He was already thinking about kids?

You jerk your head towards the supply room, motion telling him to follow you, as you log out of the computer and make your way there. 

As soon as the door closes behind you, you turn to face him, finger pointed at him. “No! Get that look off your face, Mr. I-like-to-volunteer-with-the-SWAT-team-in-my-spare-time. We are not adopting a baby.”

His smirk is both infuriating and incredibly hot. “I didn't say—”

“You were thinking about it! You think I don't know you? I know you like—”

“What am I thinking right now?” He interrupts you. 

“What?” You ask, his question throwing you off your train of thought.

“Tell me. What am I thinking right now?” He crosses his arms, waiting for you to answer him. 

You rub your hand over your face, sputtering. “You are thinking that we could take care of a baby! Jack, we just started dating! We don't even live together!” 

“Is that such a bad thing? That I think we could handle it?”

You chew the inside of your cheek when someone comes into the supply room, cutting off your conversation. “Dr. Abbott, they need you in trauma one. Another firework wound. Fifteen year old male with open wounds on his face and neck.”

He leaves you in the supply room, your mind still on the abandoned baby and the state of your relationship. You were dating a psychopath. That was the only explanation. A crazy, hot, super smart, sarcastic psychopath.

He finds you later in the room with the baby, bouncing lightly on your feet with the infant in your arms. You didn't even hear him come in as you whisper to the child. “And he is crazy. Even if he is the best person I've ever dated. Batshit crazy.”

He smiles, leaning against the wall, taking in the sight in front of him, as it melts his heart. One day you were going to make a wonderful mother. Make him a father if he has anything to say in the matter. The baby babbles back like she understood every word. Pushing off the wall, he says softly, hands in his pockets. “I'm not sure you should be cussing in front of the baby. You are making me rethink if we could handle this.”

Your body jolts, your grip tightening in the infant. “Jack, you scared me. You need to start wearing a bell. And we were having girl talk. You wouldn't understand.”

He chuckles, pushing himself off the wall to stand behind you, looking over your shoulder, down at the baby. “Girl talk? You are telling her I am crazy.”

You incline your head to look at him. “Am I telling her lies?”

His hand finds your waist, squeezing gently. “She is supposed to figure it out on her own.”

You scoff, looking at the baby as she stares to drift off to sleep. She really is adorable. “Jack. This isn't like adopting a pet. This is a life changing decision.”

He nods in agreement. “Definitely.”

“We would be stuck together for eighteen years.”

“Good thing when I think about the future, you are all I see.”

You set the baby down in the warmer. There is no way you heard him right. “What did you just say?”

Jack pulls you in front of him. “When I think about tomorrow, you are there. When I think about next week, you are there. A year from now? Five years from now? Sweetheart, you are still the one I picture with me. Waking up next to me. Complaining about how much coffee I drink and that I left my socks on the floor.” 

He steps closer, fingers brushing away a strand of hair that had fallen in your face, fingers lingering on your cheek. “Ever since my wife died, I didn't want to think about my future for a long time. It felt like I was treading water just trying to get through each day. But now? You have given me a future I didn't think I would get to have again…and now I'm praying I'm not scaring you off by saying all that.”

Your hands reach for his face before you can think about how bad of an idea it is to be kissing him at your place of work, lips crashing together, both gentle and desperate. Your fingers tangle in his soft, short, gray locks as his arms wrap around you, bringing you closer, so there isn't an inch between the two of you. 

When you finally pull back, you smile at him. “I guess I didn't realize how serious you were about me.”

He smirks down at you. “Since when do you think I do things half way?”

You scoff and he kisses you again, slower this time. Like you both have all the time in the world. Like you aren't in the emergency department of PTMC on the evening of the fourth of July. Arguably one of the busiest nights in every hospital in the United States of America. 

“You are crazy.”

“Crazy for you.” He counters, and you roll your eyes in response.

“Are you really asking me to move in and foster a baby with you? After dating for three months?” You whisper, your hands having found their way to rest on his chest. 

He glances back at the baby, asleep behind the two of you. “When you say it like that it sounds crazy.”

“No shit.”

“I take it back. You keep cussing around the baby. Clearly, this isn't the environment I want her to be raised in.” He teases. 

You slap his chest playfully. “Says the man who curses more than me.”

“She would have no chance between the two of us, huh?” He whispers, his fingers slipping underneath the hem of your scrub top, rubbing against the skin of your waist. “Okay. Maybe we won't adopt the baby. But maybe you should try moving in?”

You bite your lip. “Can I think about it?”

“Of course. Take all the time you need.” He murmurs. “But you stay at my place at least three to four days a week, already…just saying. Practically halfway there.”

The sound of the door opening has the two of you jumping away from each other. Dana pokes her head in, eyes suspicious as she looks between you and Jack. “How is baby Jane Doe?”

“Asleep.” You squeak.

“Then get your asses back out here. There is plenty of work to do!” She chastises.

“Yes, ma'am.” You say, saluting her as you move past Jack out into the chaotic mess you call work, leaving Dana and Jack alone. 

“You gonna marry that girl?” Dana asks point blank, looking up at the older attending. 

Jack just watches you as you go into a patient room. “You have no idea.”

Thanks for reading! 😊🩷

Divider credit: @enchanthings

His voice sounded rough through the phone, sleep heavy, a little gravelled, and guilt immediately creeps up your spine.

Shit. You definitely woke him.

You hesitate, chewing lightly at the inside of your cheek as you glance around the mess again. This wasn’t even the first time. Ever since you’d moved into the house next to his, it had somehow… become a thing. If you had a loose cabinet door, flickering light, a lock that wouldn’t turn properly, you would call him. 

And every single time, he showed up.

“I’m really sorry,” you wince, pacing a small circle around the mess like that’s somehow going to fix it, “it’s just– I actually tried doing it myself this time, and it looked like it went well. Until it didn’t.”

You let out a small, embarrassed laugh, your hand coming up to scratch at your eyebrow, a nervous habit you’ve never managed to shake.

Another pause. Softer this time.

“Hey,” he says, a little clearer now, like he’s forcing himself properly awake, “it’s fine. Seriously.”

You’re not convinced.

If he was napping in the middle of the afternoon, then he was off shift, which meant this was probably one of the only quiet hours he got to himself all week. With the kind of hours he worked at the hospital, long shifts that seemed to blur into each other and never really end when they were supposed to, sleep wasn’t something he got nearly enough of.

The last thing you wanted was to be the reason he didn’t get it.

“I didn’t mean to wake you,” you mumble, quieter now, eyes flicking back to the mess like it might suddenly resolve itself out of pity. “I can– I can figure it out, if you want. You don’t have to come.”

There’s a brief pause. “Too late.”

You blink.

“What?”

“I’m already up,” he says, there's something dry in his voice, something faintly amused, like he’s already decided that he’s going to come over and fix it whether you like it or not. “And I’d rather fix it once than come over later when it’s somehow worse.”

“That’s very optimistic of you,” you mutter.

“Experience,” he shoots back easily.

Despite yourself, your lips twitch.

“Don’t worry about it,” he adds, softer now, and you can practically hear him dragging a hand down his face, grabbing for a shirt or whatever’s closest. “You’re not the first person to lose a fight to flat-pack furniture.”

“That makes me feel worse, actually.”

“It shouldn’t,” he says, a beat passing before his tone shifts, something lighter threading through it. “What can I say? I guess I’ve got a way with my hands.”

You go completely still.

There’s a brief, dangerous pause where your brain tries to decide whether that was a joke, a joke, or something you’re definitely overthinking.

Because there’s no way he just said that.

Right?

Your eyes flick to nothing in particular, grip tightening slightly around your phone as the words replay in your head, slower this time, like that’s somehow going to help.

I’ve got a way with my hands.

Heat creeps up the back of your neck, and you’re suddenly very aware of the fact that you’re standing alone in your living room reacting like this over a sentence that may or may not have been completely innocent.

He probably didn’t mean it like that.

He definitely didn’t mean it like that.

…He absolutely meant it like that.

You press your lips together, inhaling through your nose like that’s going to reset your brain. It doesn’t.

“Right…” You clear your throat, dragging your attention back to the mess in front of you like it might ground you. It doesn’t. 

“Yeah. We’ll– we’ll see about that, Abbot. Just ring the bell when you get here.”

“Mm. Try not to make it worse before I arrive.”

“Oh, shut up–”

You hang up before he can say anything else, your mouth still slightly parted. You stand there for a good five seconds, just blinking at nothing. Then you look back at the broken bookshelf.

God help you.

A good ten minutes go by, and you still don’t listen to him.

Because of course you don’t.

You’re crouched in front of the bookshelf again, one knee pressed into the floor, the screwdriver clutched a little too tight in your hand as you try, for the third time now, to get the top shelf to sit properly. Your head is half inside the frame, eyes narrowed as you angle the screw just right, tongue pressing lightly against your cheek in concentration.

“Okay just– stay,” you mutter under your breath, like the thing might actually cooperate if you asked nicely.

It doesn’t.

The doorbell rings.

And in the exact same second, the shelf gives way.

It comes straight down, catching the top of your head with a dull thud that makes your whole body jolt forward, the screwdriver slipping from your fingers as a sharp sting spreads instantly.

“Ow, shit,” you groan, squeezing your eyes shut as your hand flies up to your head, pressing against the spot like that’s somehow going to undo it.

For a second you just stay there, hunched over, breathing through it, before letting out a quiet, annoyed exhale. “Perfect,” you mumble to yourself, pushing yourself up slowly, still a little dazed. “That’s just perfect.”

The bell rings again, longer this time.

“Yeah, I’m coming,” you call out, your voice slightly strained as you make your way to the door, your hand still resting on top of your head, your face caught somewhere between a grimace and irritation.

You open it, and there he is.

You take him in for a second without meaning to. The faint grey stubble along his jaw, his hair still slightly out of place like he didn’t bother fixing it before leaving, the simple black shirt and pants thrown on in a rush. There’s a look on his face already, caught between amusement and expectation, like he knew exactly what he was walking into before you even opened the door.

His eyes move over you quickly, taking in the hand on your head, your hair out of place, the look on your face, and you can see the moment it clicks to him.

You drop your hand a little too late to make it subtle.

A small smile threatens at his lips as he adjusts the toolbox in his hand, stepping forward when you shift to the side to let him in. You hold your breath for half a second as he passes you, the space between you just close enough to make you aware of it, before you shut the door behind him.

“Do I need to guess what happened,” he says, glancing down at you as he steps further inside, his voice still a little rough but clearer now.

You scoff softly, already turning to follow him. “Don’t start. I was trying to take matters into my own hands again, and apparently this shelf is harder to build than it looks.”

He hums like he’s not convinced, already walking into your living room, and he’s done it enough times to know exactly where he’s going. His eyes land on the mess almost immediately, taking in the scattered pieces, the half-built frame, the screw you’d dropped on the floor.

“Right,” he says after a second, one brow lifting slightly. “You tried.”

“I did try,” you shoot back instantly, crossing your arms, even though there’s still a faint sting at the top of your head reminding you how that went.

His gaze flicks back to you, slower this time, settling on your face, then your hair, then the spot your hand had been covering.

“What did you do.”

“Nothing,” you answer quickly, a little too quickly.

“That didn’t sound like nothing.”

“It’s fine,” you insist, waving it off like it’s nothing even as you avoid looking at him properly. “It just hit my head a little, it’s not a big deal.”

He doesn’t say anything straight away, and that’s almost worse.

“Let me see.”

“It’s fine, Jack–”

“Let me see,” he repeats, already stepping closer, his tone not harsh but not really leaving you much room to argue either. It’s something about the way he says it, like he’s already decided and that’s that, and then there’s the way he’s looking at you — his eyes settling on your face, focused so intently that it makes your chest feel a little too warm all of a sudden, like you’re suddenly very aware of how close he is.

You hesitate for a second before letting your hand fall away, tilting your head slightly despite yourself. “It’s not even that bad,” you mumble, though it comes out weaker than you meant it to.

He doesn’t respond, just lifts his hand and brushes your hair aside, fingers careful as he checks the spot. There’s a brief pause while he looks at it properly, his expression shifting as the earlier amusement fades.

“Yeah,” he mutters, more to himself. “That’s gonna be a bump.”

You let out a small, unimpressed breath. “Great. Love that for me.”

His hand drops away, but instead of saying anything else, he turns and heads toward your kitchen. You watch him go for a second, still standing where he left you, a little thrown off by how quickly he just takes over your space (not that you're complaining about it).

You hear the fridge door open, the low hum getting louder for a second, then the scrape of the freezer compartment, things shifting around as he moves stuff aside.

“Of course you’ve got nothing useful in here,” he mutters.

“There should be peas or something.”

“There are,” he says after a second. “Miraculously.”

You roll your eyes, even though he can’t see you.

A moment later, he’s back, a bag of frozen peas in his hand as he stops in front of you. He doesn’t hand it to you.

Instead, he steps in closer, lifting it straight to your head before you can react.

You flinch slightly at the cold. “Oh–”

“Hold it,” he says, already reaching for your hand and bringing it up, pressing your fingers around the bag so you keep it in place. His touch lingers for half a second before he lets go.

“Okay.”

He doesn’t say anything else, just turns and walks back over to where he dropped his toolbox, crouching down and flipping it open like he’s done this a hundred times before (he has.)

You don’t move.

For a second, you just stand there, hand pressed to your head, watching him. Or more specifically — You’re watching the way his back shifts under the black shirt as he bends slightly over the frame, the fabric pulling just enough across his shoulders, his arms moving as he starts sorting through the pieces, he makes it look so easy.

You blink, forcing your eyes away for a second, adjusting the peas against your head like that’s what you were focused on the whole time.

It doesn’t really work because you look back.

He’s still crouched there, focused on the shelf, completely unaware, and you’re suddenly very aware of how long you’ve just been standing there doing absolutely nothing.

You clear your throat, shifting your weight as you take a small step forward, still holding the peas to your head as you glance between him and the mess. “Do you– need help, or something, or are you just gonna do the whole thing yourself?”

He doesn’t even look up, already moving pieces back into place like he knows exactly what he’s doing, fingers working easily as he adjusts the frame. “No, you’re alright,” he says, like it’s obvious, like you asking was almost unnecessary.

And then, after a second, like it’s nothing, “Just sit and look pretty.”

You just stand there, your brain going completely fuzzy for a second as it registers what he just said, your grip tightening slightly around the bag of peas while your mouth opens a little before you can stop it.

You’re suddenly very aware of the fact that he can’t see your face right now, because if he could, you’re pretty sure he’d notice it instantly.

So you don’t say anything.

You just stand there, holding the peas to your head, trying to act like that didn’t just completely throw you off, even though it absolutely did.

He keeps going like nothing happened, adjusting the frame, tightening something into place before leaning back slightly to look at it, checking his own work.

You shift slightly, lifting the peas just a little off your head, your fingers moving to press lightly against the spot instead, testing it to see if it still hurts. The second you do, his head turns slightly over his shoulder.

“Don’t touch it,” he adds after a second, almost as an afterthought, still focused on the shelf. “Just leave it for a minute.”

You freeze for half a second before putting the peas back where they were, pressing them properly against your head doing exactly as he said.

“Okay,” you say, softer this time, a lot more normal than whatever you would’ve said earlier.

He keeps going like nothing happened, adjusting the frame, tightening something into place before leaning back slightly to look at it, like he’s checking his own work.

You watch him for a second longer than you should, adjusting the peas again just so you have something to do.

“Thank you,” you add after a moment. He pauses briefly at that, just for a second, before continuing like it didn’t affect him at all.

“Yeah of course,” he says easily.

It was an awkward predicament you found yourself in, one that seemed to happen so quickly you couldn’t even properly process how you got there in the first place. One second you were standing on the sidewalk after getting out of the sports bar you had gone to with a few friends you hadn’t seen in a while, still half caught up in the lingering conversation, your eyes scanning the street for a taxi that could take you home.

And then the next second, without even looking properly, you didn’t realise a bike was coming straight toward you along the sidewalk.

There was barely any time to react before the impact happened, the force of it knocking straight into you and sending both you and the rider crashing down onto the concrete. Your body hit the ground hard, but it was your head that took most of it, smacking sharply against the pavement that made everything jolt at once.

A loud groan leaves you instantly, the pain spreading so suddenly and so intensely that you don’t even think before running your tongue over your teeth in your mouth, checking them one by one to make sure they were still intact, still where they were supposed to be. The sensation was so overwhelming, that it made it hard for you to focus on anything else. 

You don’t even register that people have started gathering around you, their voices overlapping, questions being thrown at you all at once as they hover nearby.

“Shit– I’m so, so sorry,” the man says quickly, the one who had collided with you.

You blink up at him through the blur, trying to focus your eyes enough to actually see him properly. He looks young, around your age, crouched close by, clearly shaken, his hands hovering like he doesn’t know whether to help you up or not. He looks completely fine in comparison, his helmet still strapped on, knee and elbow pads in place, protected in a way you clearly weren’t.

You try to sit yourself up from the ground, pushing against the concrete with your hands, but the second you do, a sharp sting spreads across your palms and arms. You hadn’t even noticed how badly you’d scraped yourself up until now. It barely registers though, not properly, not compared to the pounding in your head that only seems to get worse the more you try to move.

Your vision doesn’t clear either. It stays unfocused, everything still slightly out of place, and no matter how much you blink, it doesn’t quite fix itself.

You’d always been a little clumsy, always the type to trip over nothing or drop things at the worst possible time, but this was different. This wasn’t something you could laugh off later or brush away like it didn’t matter. It was worse.

“I’m okay, I think,” you mumble, the words coming out slower than you intended, your voice lacking any real certainty behind it.

The people around you don’t seem convinced.

There’s a shift in the air around you, a sudden stillness that you can’t fully understand, not when your head is still pounding and your vision refuses to cooperate.

“What?” you ask, more confused now, your brows pulling together as you try to make sense of their reactions.

You lift your hand to your head without thinking, fingers brushing against your temple as if to check it, and that’s when you feel it.

Something wet.

Sticky.

More than there should be.

Your hand comes back down into your line of sight, your eyes struggling to focus on it properly through the blur, and it takes longer than it should for your brain to catch up with what you’re seeing.

Blood.

A noticeable amount of it, smeared across your fingers and it doesn’t feel so minor anymore.

“Well, shit,” you mumble under your breath, the words barely leaving your mouth before everything around you starts to feel off again.

The noise of the crowd dulls, their voices becoming distant, like they’re being pulled further and further away from you. The ground beneath you feels unsteady, your vision darkening at the edges as the pounding in your head overtakes everything else.

Somewhere through the haze, you can hear the urgency in their voices shift. “Call an ambulance, quick—” But it all feels far away.

And then, just like that, everything goe s completely black as you fall back against the concrete.

Jack can’t quite take you off his mind.

Ever since you moved into the house next to his a couple months back, ever since that first day when you were tripping over the stairs trying to help the movers carry boxes into your place like you weren’t about to take yourself out before even settling in, he’d clocked you as someone he wouldn’t forget easily.

And it should’ve stopped there, it really should’ve, because it’s not like he doesn’t have other things to focus on, not like his job doesn’t take up most of his time anyway, but it didn’t, it just stuck. He never realised how often he was thinking about you until he caught himself doing it multiple times a day.

Robby would’ve absolutely lost it if he knew. Like actually laugh in his face, not even try to hide it.

Which is exactly why Jack never said anything.

Because it sounds ridiculous. It feels ridiculous.

At least it did, up until the moment he sees you being wheeled into the E.R.

And for a second it doesn’t even register properly, because it’s just another stretcher, another patient coming in too fast, paramedics talking over each other, the usual noise that never really stops around here, until his eyes land on you and everything’s stopped in Jack’s world.

Your head’s turned to the side, there’s blood at your temple, too much of it, dried and fresh mixed together, your hair stuck where it shouldn’t be, and you’re not moving, not even a little, and that’s what gets him the most because you’re never still.

Robby’s saying something, holding something out to him, but Jack doesn’t take it, doesn’t even look, because his focus is completely gone, locked on you in a way that makes everything else feel like background noise.

“You alright, brother?” Robby asks, and there’s something in his voice this time, not just casual, not just checking in, because he’s clocked it straight away, the way Jack’s just stopped responding, like he’s not even there for a second.

Jack doesn’t answer him.

He’s already moving before anything else can catch up, already at your side, falling into step with the stretcher as they push you through, his eyes running over you quickly, trying to take in as much as he can at once, trying to piece it together in real time without letting it slow him down, even with that tight feeling sitting heavy in his chest.

“What happened?” he asks, already reaching for gloves, his voice coming out like it normally would, like this is routine, like it’s just another patient even when it very clearly isn’t.

“Bike collision,” one of the paramedics says, not missing a step. “She hit her head pretty hard on the pavement, was talking when we got there but not making much sense, kept drifting in and out, then stopped responding on the way here.”

Jack nods once, already there as they move you across, his hand coming up without thinking, steadying your head like it’s instinct, like muscle memory has kicked in before anything else could.

Which it has. He’s done this a thousand times before. Just not with you.

“Alright, get her on the monitor, let’s check her properly, and I want a scan ready,” he says, more to the room now, more to himself, slipping into it because that’s what he does, that’s what he knows, even if everything in him feels slightly off.

Robby’s there beside him again, quick like always, but there’s a look he gives Jack, brief but there, like he’s noticed more than he’s saying.

Jack doesn’t acknowledge it. He doesn’t have the space for that right now.

Because his attention is already back on you, and this time it lingers a second longer than it should, taking you in properly, the way you look like this, the way you look too still for his liking.

He preferred you up and clumsy. Not like this.

As you’re laid down, somewhere between conscious and not, everything comes in pieces, sound first, then light, then shapes that don’t quite make sense straight away. You turn your head slightly, slower than you mean to, your mouth parting a little as your eyes try to focus, landing on him.

Jack.

He’s right there, by your side, talking to someone just out of your view, his voice low and quick, but you can’t really make out what he’s saying, it all kind of blends together in a way that makes your head feel heavier.

“Fancy seeing you here, doc,” you mumble, the words coming out a little off but still there, like you’re trying to make it sound normal even though nothing about this feels normal.

They move you properly onto the bed, and your brows pinch together almost immediately, a quiet wince slipping through as someone shines a light into your eye, then the other, the brightness too sharp for how your head already feels.

Jack’s attention shifts straight back to you the second you speak, his focus settling on your face properly now.

“Shouldn’t I be the one saying that, hm?” he replies, but it doesn’t sound like him, not really.

There’s no humour in it this time. And you notice that.

Despite everything, you still smile at him, all teeth, like none of this is as serious as it probably should be, even with people moving around you, checking things, definitely listening even if they’re pretending not to.

“You know,” you start, your words coming out a little uneven but still very much you, “I think because of whatever they’ve pumped into me… I should probably confess my undying crush on you, Mr Abbot.”

You let out a small laugh to yourself, like the thought genuinely amuses you, your head shifting slightly against the pillow before immediately regretting it.

“I feel like this is a very good time for that,” you add, softer now, like you’ve convinced yourself it makes perfect sense. “You know… just in case I die or something.”

Jack just looks at you for a second, properly this time, like he’s trying to decide whether to humour you or shut it down completely.

“…You’re not dying,” he says, and it comes out more firm than anything else, like he’s not even entertaining that part of what you said.

You squint at him slightly. “You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he answers straight away.

You hum softly, like you’re weighing that up, even though you’re not really.

“Okay… but if I did,” you continue, still looking at him, “that would’ve been a really good confession. Like you would’ve thought about it for the rest of your life.”

There’s the smallest shift in his expression at that, something that almost looks like he wants to smile but doesn’t quite let himself.

“Yeah,” he says after a second, quieter now, “I’ll make sure to keep that in mind.”

You nod slightly, like that’s settled.

“Good.”

He exhales through his nose, then glances over his shoulder toward one of the residents, his focus snapping back into place.

“Keep checking her pupils,” he says, his tone shifting without effort. “She’s been in and out, so keep talking to her, make sure she’s tracking, and get her ready for a CT. I don’t want to miss anything.”

There’s a quick nod, movement picking up again around you.

When you wake up, it takes you a second to properly come to, your head feeling heavy as confusion settles in before anything else does. You blink a few times, trying to clear the haze from your eyes as you stare up at the ceiling, not fully registering where you are at first.

The room is quiet.

Not completely silent, but quiet enough that it feels strange, especially compared to the E.R. you only faintly remember being brought through, the noise and movement and voices that never seemed to stop. It’s different here, and it throws you off more than it should, like you’re expecting something else to happen even though nothing would.

You know what led you here. You remember the bike, the impact, the way everything happened too quickly for you to even react properly before you both went down onto the concrete. But after that it’s blank. Completely fuzzy. Like your brain just cut everything off. You don’t remember getting here. You don’t remember being brought in, or what anyone said to you, or how long you’ve even been here. Just bits and pieces that don’t quite connect, like you were in and out of it the whole time and your mind never fully caught up, which was what exactly happened. 

The hospital bed beneath you feels stiff, uncomfortably so, and it only makes everything worse as you shift slightly, trying to sit up more properly. It’s not helping. If anything, it just makes you more aware of how off your body feels, like nothing is sitting right.

You move again, slower this time, trying to find some kind of position that doesn’t make you feel like you’re about to tip sideways or sink straight back into the mattress. The bed doesn’t cooperate, obviously.

“They really need to invest in better beds,” you mutter under your breath, more to yourself than anything, your voice still a little thick as it comes out. “People are gonna leave here with more problems than they came in with.”

You adjust again, one hand pressing lightly against the mattress to steady yourself as you sit up just a little more, even though it doesn’t actually make it any more comfortable. It just makes you more aware of everything — your head, your body, the fact that you’re here and not entirely sure how you got to this exact point.

And that part bothers you more than anything.

You don’t even realise when someone enters the room, only properly registering it when you hear the door shut. It makes you turn your head, slower than you mean to, and that’s when you see him.

Jack’s standing by the door, not fully inside yet, like he stopped himself halfway through walking in and couldn’t move himself further into the room. You don’t really understand why, but you don’t point it out.

What you do notice is the relief that crosses his face the second his eyes land on you. It’s quick, but it’s there, clear as anything, easing some of the tension that had been sitting in his expression. Like seeing you awake, sitting up, actually aware, settles something in him that had been building since you were brought in.

“Fancy seeing you here, doc,” you say repeating what you said hours ago (even though you didn’t remember saying it), a small smile pulling at your lips as you try to ease the tension that had filled the room the second you saw him.

He doesn’t answer straight away, and it gives you a second longer than you should have to actually look at him properly. His arms are crossed over his chest, his shirt pulling across his shoulders and biceps just enough that you have to stop yourself from staring any longer than you already are.

You drag your eyes back up, a little too late, and the second you meet his gaze again you can feel the heat surge through your body, because he’s already looking at you, not even pretending he wasn’t. His expression is still controlled, still holding onto composure, but there’s concern sitting there underneath it, clear in the way his hazel eyes stay on you.

“Shouldn’t I be the one saying that,” he says finally, his voice even, but not as light as it usually is with you, “I work here. You’re the one turning up as a patient.”

You don’t really know how to take that, and that’s what throws you off more than anything, because normally with him it’s easy, you know where you stand in the conversation, you know when he’s joking and when he’s not, but right now you can’t tell which one this is supposed to be.

You shift slightly against the bed, like you’re about to say something back, something quick or sarcastic just to ease it, but nothing actually comes out, and instead you just end up looking at him, the silence stretching a little longer than it should between you.

“You gave me quite the scare,” he adds after a second, and there’s no humour in it now, none of that usual back-and-forth you’re used to, just something honest that makes your expression shift without you meaning it to.

“I didn’t know you cared.” You say vulnerably.

“Of course I care,” he says, and now there’s something more familiar in his tone, something that actually sounds like him again, even if the concern hasn’t fully left his face. “Who else is going to call me every time something in your house decides to fall apart, hm.”

Your lips twitch at that despite yourself, a small breath leaving you as some of that tension in your chest eases, even if it doesn’t fully go away. “So that’s the only reason you care?” you ask, tilting your head slightly, your voice lighter than it probably should be for what you’re actually asking.

Even as the words leave your mouth, there’s a part of you that pauses, because you don’t really know where that came from. A week ago you could barely hold a normal conversation with him without overthinking every little thing he said, without second guessing the way you stood or where you looked whenever he was over fixing something in your house, and now you’re sitting here in a hospital bed questioning him like this without even hesitating.

It throws you off more than anything.

Maybe it’s the medication they’d given you earlier, still sitting somewhere in your system, loosening whatever filter you usually had, making it easier to say things you’d normally keep to yourself. That’s the only explanation you can come up with, because there’s no way you’d be this forward otherwise, especially not with him.

He watches you for a second after that, like he’s caught onto the shift just as much as you have, his gaze settling on you in a way that makes your chest feel warmer than it should.

“That’s not what I said,” he replies, his tone quieter now, but there’s something in it that makes it clear he’s not brushing you off, not really.

You watch as he finally moves fully into the room, like he’s done holding himself back, his hand reaching down to pull a chair from the wall beside the door before dragging it over and sitting right next to your bed. It’s close, closer than he needs to be, but neither of you say anything about it.

And now he’s right here, close enough that you don’t really have anywhere else to look.

His attention doesn’t leave you once.

It makes you want to look away, break it somehow, but you can’t bring yourself to. You just lay there, holding his gaze, even as it makes something in your chest tighten in a way you don’t want to think about too much.

“Do you remember anything?” he asks.

You let out a small breath, glancing down for a second like that might help you find something you missed. “I can remember the crash,” you say slowly, trying to piece it together as you speak, “like I remember the bike and hitting the ground and everything, but after that it just cuts off.”

You shift slightly against the bed, your brows pulling together. “Which I’m actually kind of thankful for, because if my head still feels like this now, I don’t even want to know how bad it was when I got brought in.”

He watches you the whole time, his gaze fixed on your face like he’s taking in every little detail, every shift in your expression, and it does something to him he doesn’t really want to sit with.

Because he remembers it.

He remembers it clearly, not in bits the way you do. He remembers the way you looked, the way you kept drifting in and out, the way you said it like it didn’t even cost you anything to say.

And he remembers exactly what you said.

“You don’t remember anything after that?” he asks again, and this time it’s not just a question, there’s something behind it, like he’s checking before he says anything else.

You shake your head, a little more sure this time even though it’s frustrating, like you should be able to remember and you just can’t. “No. Nothing. It’s just blank.”

You look at him properly then, and it’s the way he reacts that makes you pause. Not what he says, but what he doesn’t. He just nods once, like he expected that, but there’s a look on his face that says otherwise, one that you couldn’t name properly.

It doesn’t sit right with you.

“Why,” you ask, narrowing your eyes at him slightly, “did I do something?”

He huffs out a breath through his nose, like he almost laughs but doesn’t fully commit to it. “You always do something.”

“That’s not helpful,” you mutter, shifting a little on the bed as you look at him again, more serious now. “What did I say?”

He doesn’t answer straight away, which makes your stomach drop. Because if it was simply nothing, he would’ve said something, but it was as if he was holding himself back from doing so. It surely couldn’t be that bad, whatever you may have said.

“Jack,” you pressed, panic in your voice, “what did I say.”

He looks at you then.

“You told me you’re in love with me,” he says, like it’s a normal thing to say, like it didn’t just completely shift everything between you in the span of a second, “in front of half the room.”

For a second, you just look at him.

Properly look at him, like maybe if you stare long enough the words will rearrange themselves into something else, something less insane, something that actually makes sense coming out of your own mouth. Your brain lags behind, struggling to catch up, like it’s still stuck somewhere before the crash while everything else has moved forward without it.

“I what?”

“You heard me.”

Your lips part slightly, but nothing comes out straight away, because it’s hitting you in pieces now, slow and heavy, each part worse than the last as it actually starts to settle.

“Oh my God,” you say, sounding utterly horrified.

“Oh my God,” you say again, louder now, your hand lifting instinctively before dropping again when your head protests the movement, the dull ache making everything feel that much more real. “No, I didn’t– I wouldn’t–”

You stop yourself.

Because you would.

“I am so sorry,” you rush out, the words picking up pace before you can even think about slowing them down, like if you don’t get them out now he’s going to look at you differently. “I didn’t mean to say it like that, or out loud, or in front of people– especially not your coworkers, like that is actually the worst possible place that could’ve happened, I literally could not have picked a worse moment for that if I tried–”

You drag a hand down your face, pressing your palm against your cheek for a second, your thoughts already running ahead of you before you can even catch them.

“I don’t even remember saying it, which somehow makes it worse, because now I’m hearing it from you and I don’t even get to know how it came out or what I said before it or after it, and that just makes me look even more insane–”

You glance at him quickly before looking away again, your voice getting faster the longer you keep going. “Did I say anything else? Actually don’t tell me, I don’t think I can deal with that right now, like genuinely I think I’d rather not know if it gets worse than that–”

A breath leaves you, somewhere between a laugh and something closer to a groan, your head tipping back slightly against the bed.

“This is so bad,” you continue, the words tumbling over each other now, your brain refusing to slow down. “Like I’ve completely ruined it, haven’t I? I’ve made it weird now, and you’re not even gonna come over anymore, and every time something breaks in my house I’m just gonna have to deal with it myself because I decided to confess my feelings in front of an entire hospital like that’s a normal thing to do–”

You barely paused to breathe, your thoughts running ahead of you faster than you can catch them, too caught up in defending yourself, in trying to explain it away, to even realise what you’ve just done again.

Because you’ve said it again.

Just as easily.

Right in front of him.

And you don’t even notice it but Jack does.

He doesn’t interrupt you though, doesn’t point it out, doesn’t say anything at all. He just sits there, watching you, one brow lifting slightly, amusement settling into his expression the longer you keep going, like he can’t quite believe you’re doing this without even realising it.

“And now you’re just sitting there,” you add, your voice still rushing out, “like I haven’t just made everything ten times worse, and I don’t even blame you if you don’t want to come near me after this because I wouldn’t either, I’d actually avoid me at all costs–”

You stop just enough to breathe, your chest rising a little quicker, your eyes finally landing back on him properly. There’s a small shift in his expression, the corner of his mouth pulling slightly, his brows lifting just a bit like he’s watching something you haven’t caught onto yet.

It doesn’t make sense to you, the way he’s acting like this, like you didn’t just make everything awkward between you, like you didn’t just ruin whatever this was supposed to be.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” you ask, your voice softer now, more confused than anything.

What you didn’t expect was for him to suddenly lean forward, closing the short distance between you, and before you can even fully process what he’s doing, his hand comes up to your face, fingers settling along your jaw as he kisses you.

It shuts you up instantly.

Completely.

One second you were still mid-rant, the next you’re just there, kissing him, your brain trying and failing to catch up with what’s happening. Your breath catches slightly against him, your eyes fluttering shut as you lean into it without even thinking, your hand coming up to grip lightly at the fabric of his shirt like you need something to ground you.

His hand stays where it is, steady against your face, his thumb brushing just slightly against your skin as he deepens it, slow enough to make you feel it properly, like he’s been waiting to do this and finally decided to stop holding back.

And you respond just as easily to the kiss, like all that overthinking you usually do just isn’t there right now.

He tastes like coffee and mint, the faint scent of antiseptic still clinging to him from the hospital mixed with his cologne, and it settles into you in a way that makes your chest tighten, your fingers curling a little tighter into his shirt as you lean into him just a bit more.

You don’t even realise how long it lasts.

It’s only when he finally pulls back, slow and unhurried, that your head starts catching up, your breath still uneven as your eyes open and find his straight away.

You can feel it then, the heat you feel, the way everything feels just slightly off in the best way, and you’re pretty sure it shows, because there’s no way you look normal right now. A small smile pulls at your lips before you can stop it, and you try to turn your head, instinct kicking in like you suddenly remember how to be self-conscious again.

He doesn’t let you.

His hand stays where it is, steady against your face, and he dips his head just enough to keep your attention on him, his expression shifting into something that looks a little too pleased with himself, like he got exactly the reaction he wanted.

There's space though, at least. Regarding the mattress in question, the two twin beds—Foggy's and Matt's—have been shoved together since April, a dubious project held in place by the wall on one side and dogged hope on the other. Even the sheets don't match—one's navy and one's a truly tragic shade of beige.

Right now, you're sprawled out and sweating across the seam where they meet, wearing nothing but a pair of cotton shorts and an oversized t-shirt of Foggy's.

"Aw," Matt remarks from his desk. He's got his earbuds around his neck, one of them plugged in, listening to what you're pretty sure is a contracts textbook. In this heat. For fun. The angle with which he's leaning back in his chair makes you nervous. "Maybe the RA'll put a little memorial up. 'Here she melted. She was okay.'"

"Okay?!"

"Ah, I didn't wanna oversell it."

Oh, Matt.

Even after months of dating Foggy, you can't seem to parse Matt completely. Your boyfriend's best friend has never been fully hostile to you, and you know these little jokes are supposed to be just him teasing, but in actuality—you can never tell with Matt. One moment he's okay, one moment he's provoking you again: joking that you're stealing Foggy from him, teasing you, ignoring you. Bumping into you and crowding you. You're not even sure what you've done to him.

It's not like you can bring it up to Foggy, though. Just thinking of all the little things that've made you come to this conclusion is enough to know that you're going to sound crazy and delusional if you do.

Right now though: if you tease Matt back hard enough, you can ignore the fact that his shirt is off. Not that you're trying hard to not notice too much about his unclothed body. It's just— his skin's faintly sheened in the syrupy light coming through the window.

You'd grumbled about it: how guys always seemed to lose that battle so easily just because they had the option.

But it's okay—you can be normal, right? It's just bodies. It's just bodies.

"Hey," Foggy grunts from beside you. He's shirtless, too, clad only in basketball shorts. "She's more than okay, thank you very much. She's the love of my life and she'll be remembered as such."

You bat your eyes at him exaggeratedly. "Aw, Fog."

"'Here she melted. She was pretty hot.'" He turns his head back to grin at you, eyes crinkling. "Matt's just dramatic."

"You're both dramatic," Matt says.

"Says the man who pointed the single fan at himself," you shoot back.

The oscillating fan has indeed been hogged, rotating by the corner of Matt's desk in agreement. It ruffles the dark hair at his forehead before swiveling away again.

"I'm studying," he says mildly. As if that has anything to do with anything.

"You're hogging the breeze is what you are, Murdock."

Under the thick, stifling comforter of heat, though, it only just then occurs to you that Foggy's hand has been on your thigh, rubbing along the inside of it.

"Hey," he says to you, rolling onto his side to face you. His eyes are half-lidded.

You know this look. You know exactly what it means. It's the one that usually precedes him kissing your neck hotly and talking you out of whatever you were doing.

And the thing is, there's actually nothing you'd want more than to pull Foggy's shorts down now and ride him, but fuck. Matt's right there.

"Foggy. No."

"I didn't say anything."

"Your hand's saying plenty." You grab his wrist and lift it off your leg, depositing it back on his own chest. "It's a thousand degrees," you say, and then lower your voice in warning, "Matt's right there."

Foggy makes a sound like a deflating balloon. "Matt doesn't care. He's basically furniture right now. He's a lamp." And louder, he calls, "No offense, buddy."

"None taken." And then lighter, "I've endured worse from him."

"See?" Foggy's hand migrates back, and this time it lands on your hip, squeezing through the fabric of your shorts. "Lamp says it's fine."

"Yeah. You deal with the wandering hands for a few hours. I've had years of this."

Ignoring Matt, you swat at Foggy again, harder, trying for propriety, and he retreats with a dramatic wince.

"You are so— it's too hot, Fog. I'll literally melt. Do you wanna lose your girlfriend to, um— entropy?"

"Thermodynamics," Matt contributes from the distance, needling.

"Thank you, Lamp."

He shrugs. Foggy flops onto his back with a theatrical groan, arms thrown wide.

For a while, there's nothing but the faint whirring off the fan, and the muffled sounds of the dormitory drifting through the open window. Someone's playing Ke$ha downstairs.

You close your eyes. It's so, so hot. Your thoughts go slow and syrupy, circling into the ever-perilous drain of sleep.

"...anyway," Foggy's saying. And you realize that you missed the start of some conversation he and Matt have drifted into. "I'm just saying, you can't cite that for that proposition."

"But you're thinking of the Seventh Circuit dissent, not the—"

"Oh, the dissent, he says—"

"It's a famous one, Foggy."

"Famous doesn't mean right."

"Neither does loud."

You crack one eye open and find that they're grinning at each other. Jesus. It's your favorite thing about them, at least: the way they bicker like an old married couple that secretly enjoy it. Foggy catches you looking and winks.

"Back me up here, babe."

You shudder at the name. "I have no idea what you're talking about." Planting a kiss on his cheek, you say, "And I refuse to learn."

Matt barks a laugh at that. "Good, you know Foggy's a worse influence than he lets on."

"Oh, I'm the bad influence? That's rich coming from—" Foggy cuts himself off, waving a hand. "You know what, no. I'm not taking that bait."

"What bait?" you ask.

"Matt-bait. He does this thing where, you know, he says something provocative then he sits back and lets you—"

"Oh, come on, man. I don't do 'a thing.'"

"—crash and burn and flail. You know what this reminds me of?" Foggy rolls his head toward you, conspiratorial. "There was a time sophomore year— wait, was it sophomore year? Matt, was it sophomore year when the power went out in Carman the whole heatwave?"

"Yeah, uh," Matt taps his fingers on the table, licking his lips, "freshman year, I think?"

"Right, right. And we had to sleep with the door open and there was this guy from down the hall who kept walking by in his boxers—"

"I don't think he was even wearing boxers."

"Wow, I blocked that part out, thanks for that." Foggy waves a hand. "Anyway, we drank endless shots because Matt kept saying, you know, I don't even think you can handle it, over and over, so I kept doing it and he kept doing it, over and over, and then we ended up—" Foggy stops. "Uh. Anyway, it was a weird night."

Matt's fingers have stopped drumming on the desk.

"Ended up what?" you ask lazily, only half-listening.

"Nothing. Just— just talking. We stayed up talking."

You look between them, and find Matt grinning, like the cat who ate the canary.

"What?" you say, and now you're propping up on your elbow, curious. "What happened?"

"Nothing! Matt's just being— Man, you're being weird."

"I'm not being anything!" Matt leans back in his chair and tips it back onto two legs. His mouth's curled at the corners. "I'm just saying. It was a good night."

"It was a normal night—"

Matt scoffs.

"—that we don't need to—"

"Wait," you say. Something's assembling itself in your head, puzzle pieces slowly clicking into place. Foggy's blush. Matt's smirk. Even the conspicuous way Foggy derailed his own anecdote. Ended up—? "Wait. Hold on. Matt. What happened freshman year?"

Matt turns to face you. Without his glasses, those unfocused eyes are warm and brown, with flecks of pretty amber.

"We kissed," he says simply.

The fan clicks. Clicks. Clicks.

"You—" You sit up fully. "What?"

"MATT." Foggy jackknifes upright on the bed beside you, so fast the whole mattress-island wobbles, as if he's only just woken up from some dreamlike trance. "We had a pact!"

"That was two years ago!"

"What— When was—" You can't even gather your thoughts up quick enough to substantiate anything you're saying. Matt's kissed Foggy? Foggy's kissed Matt? "Sorry, what happened exactly?"

"It was— It was before you," Matt says, all quickly, like he's had that at the ready. "Obviously."

"Obviously," you echo, looking at Foggy. He's rubbing the back of his neck, not meeting your eyes. The flush is spreading from his cheeks down to his freckled chest.

"We were drunk," Foggy says. He drags both hands down his face. "It was one time— It was stupid, it didn't mean— I mean, it meant something, but not like— not like you mean something—"

"It was more than one time," Matt says pleasantly.

Foggy falters, losing his words. Meanwhile, something's happening in your chest. It's a mix of intrigue and jealousy, though decidedly not betrayal, not any of the things you should probably be feeling upon learning your boyfriend's kissed his best friend. What it is is more like a door opening, a window thrown wide in a room already hot, flushed with heat. Electric.

"More than once," you say.

Your boyfriend's blue eyes are so, so wide and worried, brow crumpled, looking so guilty. You can practically see the gears grinding behind his eyes.

"Was it good?"

Matt's eyebrows lift and Foggy's mouth opens, closes, and opens again.

"I—" He blinks. "What?"

"Was it good?" You cross your legs on the bed, your shorts riding up. "The kiss. Was it good?"

There's only silence.

And then Matt says, "It wasn't bad."

Foggy makes an indignant noise. "Wasn't bad? I'll have you know—" He sighs, giving up, and turns back to you. "Why aren't you mad?"

You consider this honestly. "I don't know. I don't know," you say. Your voice sounds different. "I think it's... It's actually kind of hot?"

Matt's chair comes down on all four legs with a soft thud.

Foggy's staring at you. "You— I, uh, what?"

"I get it. Matt's not hard on the eyes," you say. You drag your thumb along the ridge of his knuckles, feeling each soft dip and indentation. "So how many times? Three? Four?"

Foggy glances at Matt, then back at you. "I— Yeah? Why are you asking me this...?"

"Because I want you to do again."

Matt hasn't moved, but you can see the shift in his posture.

"Do it again," Foggy repeats.

"Yeah. Kiss him again. If you want."

"In front of—"

"Yeah."

He rubs his face again with both hands. "This is— Okay, this is insane. Matt?"

"I mean," Matt's tongue darts across his lower lip, quick and unconscious, "I'm not opposed."

"Oh, you're not opposed? Come on, back me up here—"

"Come on, Fog." Matt stands from the desk. He pads across the tiny room barefoot, and the orange-white sun from the window catches the planes of his stomach, the dark trail of hair below his navel. He stops at the edge of the pushed-together beds, standing over both of you. "She did ask nicely."

For a second, there's a beat where Foggy just looks up at him. You see something pass between them, some well-worn frequency that predates you. A contemplative look of shared history. Then Foggy exhales, long and slow, and tilts his chin up.

"If this is weird after," he warns, pointing a finger at Matt, "that's on you."

"Everything's on me," Matt says, and he leans down and kisses him.

It's careful at first. Almost... Chaste? Respectful. Matt's hand finds the curve of Foggy's jaw, and they press their mouths together so softly, so easily that it makes you stomach flip. Very clearly having done this before.

Then Matt makes a sound—quiet, like a suppressed groan—and kisses deeper, and Foggy's lips part, and suddenly it isn't chaste at all.

Your breath catches. Watching them from inches away, it's all close enough to see the way Matt's hand comes down to caress Foggy's neck. Foggy, in seeming retaliation, reaches up to grip the back of Matt's neck, pulling him closer.

Matt's on one knee on the mattress now, half-bracing himself over Foggy. The way their mouths are moving together makes you feel like you can't breathe. Foggy kisses the way you know, the way he does everything. Warm and generous, open-mouthed and giving. Matt's rougher, though. Like he's taking.

You press your thighs together. It's as if the heat in the room has narrowed to a single, pulsing point low in your belly.

Matt pulls back just enough to breathe, and his lower lip drags against Foggy's. And then he's kissing him again, much deeper this time. His tongue slides into Foggy's mouth. Your boyfriend makes a muffled sound, and from Matt's neck, his hand slides up into his hair, gripping. Matt shivers, and you watch the muscles in his shoulders flex.

"Don't stop," you breathe.

Matt smiles smugly against Foggy's mouth, and you suddenly know it for what it is: he's performing at least a little, and you don't mind at all. His hand plants itself on Foggy's bare chest, fingers spread wide over his pecs. Then it slides lower, palm dragging through the sheen of sweat, the downy blond hair of Foggy's soft stomach—

"Okay," Foggy breathes. He breaks the kiss and turns his head, eyes finding yours. They're dark. Heavy-lidded. Unmistakably turned on. "You— Come here."

You're lost in the daze, though, and Foggy knows you enough to not wait for you to obey. As Matt makes room for you, Foggy reaches out to hook the back of your neck and pull you in, and then his mouth's on yours. Hot and slick and tastes faintly of lemonade, of salty spit. Matt's spit, you think hazily. His tongue pushes past your lips and you make a sound into his mouth, only for him to deepen it. Kissing you like he's claiming you back. Like he needs to know the difference.

You slide your own hands up your boyfriend's chest, over his nipples and his stomach. His skin's so sticky under your palms and you love it, how alive he feels between the two of you.

But even as Foggy's tongue slides against yours, you feel Matt. His hands are on your hips from behind, chest pressing against your back, palms skimming up your sides beneath the oversized t-shirt. His fingers are long, longer than Foggy's, and they leave trails of heat across your ribs. He's so warm. Skin-on-skin where your top's ridden up, and you can feel his cock pressing against your ass through the thin layers between you.

"Easy, easy," Foggy mumbles into your mouth, directed past you. But Matt doesn't listen: his hands coast up higher, thumbs grazing the undersides of your breasts, and you jolt, gasping against Foggy's mouth.

"Not fair," Matt mutters behind you. His mouth finds the curve of your neck, open and hot, teeth dragging, and you shudder between them. "Share."

You break from Foggy—who chases your mouth with a lazy, half-lidded look to him—and turn your head. Matt must sense the movement, because he stops his groping and fondling, and tilts his head toward you.

"Hi," Matt says hoarsely, close enough that you feel the word on your mouth.

"Hi."

"You wanna?"

You do. Fuck, you do.

You tip your head and kiss Matt Murdock for the first time. It's absolutely nothing like kissing your boyfriend. Matt is teeth and tongue immediately, sharp and searching. Hot. Hypnotizing. A little mean about it, too. He bites your bottom lip and you make a startled sound, and feel Foggy laugh weakly between you.

"Yeah," Foggy says. "Yeah, he's like that."

"Mm-hmm," you mumble, having lost all language, and then Matt's back to kissing you.

When you break apart, you're panting. Foggy's turned his face to you and you kiss him again. It's easier. Home. He sighs into your mouth the way he does when you're alone. But even as he kisses you his hips are rocking forward into Matt's hand, which has snaked around from behind you.

Matt's other hand slides up your stomach again, and between the two of them your shirt gets tugged up over your head. And like that, you're bare from the waist up, sweaty and breathless. The feeling of being freed from your clothes is almost as good as the feeling of Foggy's eyes on you.

"Jesus Christ," Foggy breathes, so clearly ogling your tits.

Matt's hands drag across your nipples, pinching firmly just to see what noise you make. From the front, Foggy's mouth drops to your chest, tongue darting out to lick at one peaked bud. You cry out, hand fisting in his long hair.

Everything's slippery. Matt's chest against your bare back. Foggy's mouth on your skin. Hands, everywhere—you lose track of whose is whose.

You slide one hand down the front of Foggy's body—down, past the trail of hair at his navel—until your fingers bump the back of Matt's wrist where it's still under the waistband of Foggy's shorts. Matt stills. You can feel Foggy's thick cock under his hand, hot and heavy and straining, and the angle's awkward but you slip your fingers under alongside Matt's and feel your boyfriend twitch hard against both of you at once.

"Oh God," Foggy says hoarsely.

Matt pulls his hand out first, fingers bumping yours as he goes. You get off Foggy, and then Matt's hooking both thumbs into the waistband of Foggy's shorts and tugging.

"Up," he says. "C'mon. C'mon."

"Fuck, I can't believe this is happening," Foggy mutters, but he plants his hands on the mattress and lifts his hips anyway. Matt drags the shorts down his thighs in one pull, and Foggy's cock springs up against his stomach. Leaking already at the tip.

Matt's hand goes right back to where it was, working Foggy's cock so loosely, slick with precome and sweat, pulling pained groans from your boyfriend's pretty, pretty mouth. He turns his face toward yours and grins.

"You want a turn?" he asks you sweetly. Insufferably smug.

"Don't be rude," you spit at him, even as you're reaching.

Your hand closes over Matt's, closes over Foggy, who's making these tiny helpless hitches of breath, eyes squeezed shut. And when you grip him a little harder, he whimpers.

"See," Matt says to you, "he likes this sound."

"I know, Matt."

"Yeah? Do you know how to get five of 'em in a row?"

"Matt, stop— Stop being mean," Foggy says through gritted teeth. You laugh, and you can't help the little squirm you do. You're so turned on you're lightheaded. You want out of your shorts, out of your panties, now.

You wriggle out of them in an undignified sort of shimmy, and your bare thighs stick instantly to the beige sheet. God, it's so hot in here you're going to combust. Seeing you're naked, Foggy reaches back and shoves Matt aside, grabbing your thigh and hauling it over his hip. Hooking you around him, and making you fit yourself against his hardness. You grind down once and cry out.

"Matt," you rasp. "Come back."

He crawls back in, a long lean creature stalking up the seam of the sheets, and when he gets close enough, you grab the waistband of his shorts yourself and tug. Like a cat being lifted out of a lap, he lifts up obligingly and you drag down his hips and he kicks out of them and then he's bare too, all three of you bare. The head of Matt's cock is flushed an angry pink. He's leaking onto himself.

"What a mess," you say teasingly. "All for us, huh?"

But your teasing's barely potent: Matt's smirking, and you kind of want to slap him and also kind of want to climb him.

"Here," Foggy says, pushing you off again to gentle you down against the mattress. "I'm gonna move you, okay?"

You go where he puts you—with him behind you, cradling your body. Another round of kisses with your face turned to him: deep and slow, the way he kisses you when he's about to fuck you.

You expect Matt to crawl up in front of you, ostensibly to fuck you, or kiss you too. Instead, he's between your thighs and nudges your legs open with his shoulders. You suck in a breath so hard you make yourself dizzy.

"Wait, wait, wait..."

"Mm?" Matt tips his head up, all puppy-like. "I can stop."

You look down your body and there he is. His cheek almost on your thigh, and he's waiting. For you; your permission.

"Don't stop," you say. Twice now you've said that—you're starting to think it might be your permanent answer from here on out.

Matt smiles and drops his face to you.

You don't get much more than one swipe of his tongue, though, before Foggy's mouth is back on yours, catching all your noise. Your hand flies out to grab Matt's hair and hold him there.

"Mm, oh my God," you gasp. "Foggy, he's—"

"I know, I know. He's showing off, huh?"

"A little, a little..." Matt keeps at it, and he's good at it. The worst part, you think, is that he knows he's good at it. You can feel him smiling smugly against your cunt every time your thighs twitch around his ears. Foggy's got his hand in your hair, petting you, stroking you, whispering sweet, dumb things in your face—that's it, no, I know, he's being such a show-off, isn't he? you're doing so, so good, sweetheart—and you don't even feel real anymore. Swimming in heat.

Matt pulls off, and you make a noise in protest.

"Don't be selfish," he says. Mouth slick and eyes glassy. "Save some for Foggy."

"Matt, don't be an asshole."

"I'm not."

"Yes, you are. Come here."

Matt obeys. He crawls up your body, heavy over you, and Foggy drags him into a kiss so filthy right from the jump. You lie there with your chest heaving and watch two men who have known each other longer than they've known you eat each other's mouths above your face. Matt's tongue flicks out and there's a smear of you on his chin. Foggy licks it off him.

"Jesus," you breathe.

They break apart and Matt sinks back on his heels. Foggy leans down and gives you a peck, almost apologetically, and then he's sliding back. Adjusting you until you're on all fours on wrinkled sheets. And just like that, he's lining himself up with you and you're so wet it's embarrassing. He slides against you twice just to coat himself, and you whimper.

"Please, Foggy..."

"I got you, baby." He pushes himself in, one slow slide and you push yourself back onto him, feeling him stretch you out. "Jesus fuck," he curses loudly, as he starts to move. "You're so wet, babe."

"S'Matt..." you mumble. "S'all Matt..."

Kneeling by your hip, Matt's still there, stroking himself slowly to the sound of Foggy fucking you. Little wet catches of sound, your panting, Foggy's groaning. The bed squeaks under you, creaking every time Foggy thrusts into you, and you don't even care if the whole thing collapses, as long as Foggy's using you to feel good.

"Matt," Foggy pants, not looking away from you. "Get up there."

"Hmm?"

"Her— Her mouth." He palms your ass, gripping it as he fucks you. "Okay, right, baby? You want—?"

You nod so fast, and drop your head against the pillow. "Yes, yes please—!"

"Mm, I don't know," Matt says, tugging at your hair to lift your head back up. He's fucking smiling. "Should I? Do you want it?"

"Uhuh, uhuh, please..."

"Say it, then. 'Matt, I want you to fuck my mouth.'"

Behind you, Foggy groans, his rhythm faltering for half a second before recovering. You swallow, peering up at Matt with big, wet eyes. "I— I want you t— Please..." Matt laughs as you falter and stutter, smiling at you so coyly. "I want you to fuck my mouth—!" you finally yelp, as Foggy drives into you especially deep.

Matt doesn't say anything more, though. He kneels in front of you, cock bobbing above your mouth. You open for him immediately. Tongue out, hungry—and you must look wild. Must look half-gone already. Matt breathes out hard above you, and slaps his cock on your lips once, twice, before feeding himself into your mouth.

"Open up," he grunts. "Suck. Yeah, just like that—"

Your eyes sting at the stretch of him. He's big, but not as thick as Foggy. Still, he's long, and doesn't give you a lot of warning before he's nudging the back of your throat. You breathe through your nose and fist the sheets, letting him set the pace, and his hand comes down to cup your cheek.

"Taking me so well, Jesus," Matt hisses. "So good at this, huh?"

Foggy's fucking you harder now, like Matt's praise has him wound up. The angle changes and he hits that place inside you that makes your throat close up, and you try to moan around Matt's cock and end up just making a gurgled sound that's got Matt swearing above you.

"Do it again," he pants.

"Working on it."

Foggy does it again. And again. And Matt rocks down to meet your mouth and the three of you find a rhythm for about thirty seconds before it devolves into something messier. More animal and desperate. With Foggy's hips slapping against your thighs, and Matt's balls brushing your chin, your hands grope blindly for any purchase you can find: Matt's hip, the bunched-up sheet beneath you.

And Matt— Matt who's been holding himself in careful check, at least, loses it. His hand tightens in your hair and his thrusts go shorter, sharper. He stops pulling back far enough for you to catch your breath.

"Matt," Foggy warns. "Hey. Easy."

"I'm being easy," he lies, voice ragged, and rocks forward again so deep your eyes water. Your fingers scratch at his thighs and you gag, and instead of pulling back he shudders and pushes deeper.

Your eyes sting and you're making sounds you can't control—high, broken things—and you feel yourself starting to slip, the world going hazy at the edges, too much heat and too much Matt and—

Foggy snaps at him. "Matt. Hey. Off."

"I'm fine, she's fine—"

"Off. Now." It's the voice Foggy uses when he means it. Not Foggy being silly or Foggy being sweet, but the one who'll go to the mat for you without thinking twice. Matt goes still above you, breath heaving, and then reluctantly pulls out of your mouth.

You gasp, spluttering. Coughing. Your jaw aches and there's spit all down your chin. Matt sits back on his heels, his cock bobbing wet against his stomach, and he looks—chastened. Pouting, like a kid who's had his favorite toy taken away.

"She was fine," he mutters.

"She was crying."

"She liked it." You did.

"Not for you to decide, buddy." Foggy's slowed inside you but he hasn't pulled out, and his hand comes to your back, stroking affectionately. So gentle that it's at odds with the filthy state of you. "Hey. You okay, baby?"

You nod, still catching your breath. "M'okay. M'good. Really good."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, Fog, I promise."

Foggy looks down at you so tenderly, and he pulls out and the sudden emptiness makes you whine.

"C'mere," he says, shifting onto his back. "Come up here, baby. You ride me."

Yes. God, yes.

You crawl over him on shaky limbs—your knees are shot, thighs trembling—and Foggy's hands find your hips and guide you down. You sink down onto him and oh, oh— you always forget how thick he is until you're taking him from this angle, feeling yourself stretch and spread around the fat head of him.

"There you go," Foggy murmurs, stroking your sides lovingly. "You set the pace, okay? There you go, that's it. Take your time."

You don't though. With an impulsiveness you realize is more aligned with Matt, actually— you bottom out in one slow slide and Foggy groans beneath you, hands clamping down. You plant your palms on his chest and start to move.

The pace you set is filthy, almost punishing. You roll your hips and lift up until he almost slips out, before slamming back down. The two beds are definitely drifting apart beneath you, the gap at the seam widening with every bounce, and Foggy's hands are everywhere. Waist, your tits, your thighs.

"Fuck!" he says. "Fuck, baby, you feel so—"

Foggy's eyes are so dark they're almost black, and his hips start to rock up into you, hard.

You glance over your shoulder and find Matt where you left him—and he's got one hand wrapped around himself, working himself fast and rough. His lips are parted, brows drawn up, and he's making these soft little whimpers, as if he can't stand being excluded.

"Fog," he says, and his voice cracks.

So that's what Matt sounds like when he's desperate.

"Matt," Foggy says, not unkindly. Watching him.

Matt's hand drops from himself, shifting forward on his knees until he's pressing up against Foggy's leg, straddling it. Cock dragging against the sweaty muscle of Foggy's calf, and he starts to rut. Grinding himself into Foggy's leg like a dog, whining so reedily. You clench so hard around Foggy that he chokes.

"Jesus," Foggy breathes, watching Matt rub himself off on his leg. "Matt. Matt, hey, come here—"

"Wanna—" Matt's voice is barely there. He's flushed from his ears down to his strong stomach, and there's precome smeared all along Foggy's leg. "Foggy, I wanna—"

"I know you do, puppy. C'mere. Come up here."

Matt crawls up behind you again, and you feel his chest against your back. Bare and scorching skin. His cock presses into the curve of your ass, and he's so hard it must hurt. His mouth finds the crook of your neck and he whimpers against your pulse point.

And then he shifts, adjusting his angle. His cock slides down and nudges against where Foggy's already inside you.

You freeze.

"—Oh," you whimper.

"Mm," Matt mumbles against your throat, rubbing his cock along your entrance, right alongside Foggy's shaft.

"Matt, mm!"

"Please." It doesn't even sound like Matt anymore. "Please, I need—"

Foggy's looking up at you, and then past you, at Matt's face over your shoulder.

"Baby," he groans, "You could— You could let him in too."

Your heart's pounding in your chest. You can barely even think. "Both of— both of you?"

"Mm-hmm. Both of us."

"At the same... time...?"

"We'll—" Foggy's chest heaves. "We'll go slow. I promise. We'll go so slow, baby. What do you think?" He glances at Matt again. "I think you can take it. Can you take it for me, baby?"

You should say no. You're already stretched around Foggy and he's thick, and Matt isn't small—

"Yes," you say.

"Yeah?" His voice drops, so sweetly. "Okay?"

"Mm-hmm. Okay."

"Good girl." Foggy licks at his lips, and turns to Matt. "Okay, Matt. Slow, okay? You hear me? Slow and easy."

"I know, I know."

"She tells you to stop, stop."

"I'll stop. I'll stop." Matt's forehead drops to the back of your neck. You feel his breath shuddering out. "I promise, Foggy. I promise."

"Good boy."

Feeling him twitch hard against you, the blunt head of his cock nudges insistently at where you're already full. You breathe out. Trying to relax, to let yourself go soft— but it's hard. Every instinct's telling you there isn't room, there can't possibly.

Matt pushes in anyway.

Just the head, just the very tip of him. Pressing in alongside Foggy.

"Oh God—" Your nails dig into Foggy's shoulders. "Oh my God, oh fuck!"

"Breathe, baby. Breathe for me. It's a lot, huh?"

"Mmm..."

"Mmm. I know. I know it is, you're doing so good, huh? So brave."

Matt's hips push forward another inch and you cry out. Almost pained.

"Sorry, sorry—" Matt grits out, trembling against your back. You can feel the effort it takes him to not rut the way he was rutting before. "Sorry. I'll wait. I'm waiting."

You breathe. In, out, in, out. Foggy's still whispering to you, so good, Jesus, I'm so proud of you, baby—and you feel yourself softening. The stretch going from painfully full to something warm. You press your forehead against Foggy's collarbone and nod.

"Okay," you whisper. "Okay, I can take more."

Slowly, Matt slides all the way in, and all three of you stop breathing.

Full. You're so full it's like you can feel them everywhere. Foggy's cock and Matt's cock and the way they're pressed together inside you. Separated by nothing. Skin on skin through the slick squeezing of your body, feeling them against each other. They're so close together inside you that every movement's shared.

"Fog," Matt breathes into your shoulder. "Can feel you."

"I know, man. Can feel you too."

Matt presses a kiss into your cheek, more into your hair, really. "Can I move?"

You nod.

They don't coordinate, and they can't, you think—it feels too new and strange and overwhelmingly good. So what happens instead is a kind of stuttered rhythm. Matt pulls back and Foggy pushes up; Foggy drops, Matt thrusts forward—so that you're never empty. Never not full. One of them's always bottomed out inside you while the other slides against him.

The friction of them moving against each other in your cunt is—

You can't think anymore.

You're dripping. Around them, between them, all over Foggy's thighs. Every thrust pushes more out of you, slick and warm and running down your skin. They're both losing it. Foggy's hands bruise at your hips, pulling you down onto them both, and Matt's arms are locked around your waist from behind, his face buried in your hair.

"You're so good," Foggy pants up at you. This awful sticking melting heat's turned you fully stupid, and sweat is dripping from your chin onto Foggy's chest and he doesn't care. "You're so good, baby, you're taking both of us, you're perfect, you're—"

"Harder," you cry.

Matt answers; it seems he always answers when you tell him to be worse. His hips snap forward and Foggy's eyes fly wide because he can feel it—Matt's cock shoving alongside his own, the friction and the pressure doubling—and both of them groan in unison.

They find it, then. The rhythm. Not staggered anymore but together, both of them thrusting up into you at the same time, splitting you open on every upstroke, and you're not bouncing anymore, you're being fucked, held in place between their bodies and fucked open by two cocks that slide and press and rub against each other inside you with every stroke.

"I'm—" Matt's voice is wrecked, bitten-off. "Foggy, I'm close, I'm gonna—"

"Me too, buddy. Hold on. Baby—" Foggy grabs your chin and makes you look at him and his eyes are blown wide and desperate. "You close? Can you come for us?"

"Yeah—yes—please, Fog, please—"

"Come on, then. Let go for me. Let go."

So you do.

Like a wave. A wall. Like the floor dropping out from under you. It's these you feel, clenching so hard around both of them that Matt groans and Foggy's hips bow off the mattress as your cunt spasms around them, milking them, squeezing them together inside you.

"Fuck—fuck, baby, I'm—"

You can't tell anymore who comes first. At once, they're both pulsing inside you at almost the same time, filling you up from both sides. There's so much of it, and you sob against Foggy's chest and feel them throb as they empty into you.

And then it's very quiet after.

Quiet except for breathing.

Matt pulls out first, and you feel a rush of warmth follow him out. It drips down over Foggy where he's still inside you. Matt collapses beside you both like a marionette with its strings cut, spent arms splayed out, chest heaving.

"Holy shit," he pants to the ceiling.

Foggy lifts you gently, so gently and slips out of you himself, and another gush of warmth follows. It's running out of you in thick, lazy rivulets of white, pooling on the sheets and on Foggy's thighs.

"Oh my God," you mumble into the pillow. You genuinely can't move. Ruined and leaking cum onto the tragic beige sheet; you're never getting up again.

Maybe you were right; this is where they'll find your body after all.

Foggy tucks you against his side, his hand strokes up and down your arm. Your eyelids are already dragging shut.

"Hey, Matt?" Foggy says, after a minute. Matt lifts his head. "Wanna clean her up?"

There's a pause. A long one. Matt blinks, and wordlessly—he shifts down the bed.

You feel his hands on your thighs, parting them carefully. You shiver; you're so oversensitive you think a strong breeze could finish you off. He settles between your legs and you feel his hot breath ghost over you and you twitch.

"It's okay," Foggy murmurs into your hair. "Just let him. He's gonna take care of you."

Matt's mouth starts on you and you whimper. He's gentle this time, at least. There's none of the earlier show-off bravado, only slow, careful licks, cleaning you up, lapping at the mess of cum leaking out of your swollen, fucked-open cunt. His tongue dips inside you and you jerk, and Foggy's arm tightens around your shoulders. Holding you still.

"Good boy," Foggy says quietly, and it's directed at Matt.

You lie there and shake. Matt eats you out until there's nothing left to clean, and then he keeps going, just enough that a second orgasm catches you by surprise. It's just a soft, warming thing that barely makes you gasp, a slow tightening and release. Foggy presses a kiss to your forehead as you come down from it.

Matt crawls back up the mattress and collapses on Foggy's other side. He throws an arm across Foggy's chest and his fingertips brush your shoulder. The three of you lie there in the terrible heat, sweating and sticky and wrecked, breathing together.

"I can't believe," Foggy says slowly, staring at the ceiling, "that we just did that."

Matt grins, loose and lazy and entirely too pleased with himself, and you watch his hand find Foggy's on the mattress. Their fingers lace together. You drape your arm over Foggy's stomach and let your hand rest on top of theirs and nobody says anything about it.

"Hey, Matt," you say, drowsy.

"Hm."

"You're more than okay, you know."

A pause. Matt's fingers twitch against yours. He barks a laugh and says, "Yeah, you too."

a/n: average college dorm activities be like...

When the raven came from the south, the snow had begun to fall in earnest.

It came black-winged and wet with frost, beating against the gray morning like some dark thought that would not leave. Winterfell was quieter in snow. Even the yard below the window seemed hushed under it, the clang of practice swords made smaller, the barking of hounds muffled. Smoke rose from the towers in pale ribbons. The godswood stood white and still beyond the curtain wall, the heart tree half-veiled in a drift of falling flakes, its red leaves bright as fresh blood against the cold.

You were in the godswood when your brother found you.

He did not call out at once. Starks learned early that there were places where voices should lower themselves without being asked, and the godswood was one of them. You heard him before you saw him; boots sinking into the snow, the faint whisper of wool, a pause by the pool where black water held the weirwood’s reflection like a secret.

“My lady sister,” he said at last.

You looked back over your shoulder. He had the raven’s parchment in one gloved hand. Frost jeweled the fur at his collar. There was something too careful in his face.

That was when you knew it was not ordinary business.

The weirwood watched in its old, patient way. Red eyes. Red mouth. Red leaves that never fell, even with winter closing its fist around the world.

You rose from where you had been kneeling in the snow.

“Is someone dead?” you asked.

“No.”

“Then why do you look as if so, dear brother?”

His mouth twitched, but it was not a smile. He came to stand beside you beneath the pale branches. He looked up at the carved face in the trunk as if hoping the old gods might choose to answer in his stead.

“The king has written,” he said. “And the prince.”

Your fingers tightened around the wool of your cloak.

There were many princes in the south, but not so many whose letters came folded beneath royal seal and wolf-headed dread. You knew the name before he spoke it. You had known it since last winter when whispers started drifting north with merchants and black brothers and lordlings riding for home; the crown prince’s son, the dragon prince with the grave face, the one the singers called bright and the courtiers called promising and the smallfolk called beloved because it cost nothing to love a prince who had not yet sat on the iron throne.

“Prince Valarr,” you said.

Your brother gave a short nod.

The name seemed to darken the air.

You had seen him only once, years ago, when you were younger and a royal progress had stopped at Winterfell on its way farther north. He had been all sharp bones and solemn eyes then, more boy than man, dark short hair with a silver steak to his temple, his black and red doublet too fine for your northern eye. He had stood in your father’s hall with the look some southrons wore in the cold; proud, stiff, enduring. Yet later you had seen him in the godswood, standing beneath the weirwood while snow gathered in his hair, looking up at the carved red face with an expression you had not understood.

He had not looked like a boy then.

He had looked haunted.

You had hidden behind an elm and watched him until he turned, sudden as if he had felt your gaze. You remembered the colors of his mismatched eyes even now; not quite purple in the dimness, but dark enough to swallow whatever softness was in them.

He had bowed to you.

You had fled.

That memory had followed you longer than you liked.

“What does he want?” you asked, though you knew.

Your brother unfolded the letter. “A royal marriage.”

There it was. Plain as ice.

You did not speak.

He went on with the kind of careful bluntness men used when they feared gentleness would do worse. “The king seeks closer ties with the North. There has been unrest among lesser lords, talk of old rights and older grievances. The Wall is uneasy. The seas are uneasy. So are the Dornish, if rumor speaks true. A Stark bride in the royal house settles many things at once.”

“And what does it settle for me?”

His eyes moved from you to the weirwood and back. “That depends on whether you mean to be only a daughter of Winterfell, or something more.”

Something more.

As if girls were forever being asked to go south and make peace with their bodies.

You looked again to the heart tree, to the red sap dried in the grooves of its old carved mouth, to the face that had watched Starks kneel for thousands of years.

“Does father agree?”

“Our father is dead.”

The answer was gentle. It still cut.

“Do you?”

He exhaled slowly through his nose. “I think the south is a poor place for you. I think the Red Keep is a nest of snakes. I think no marriage made for peace has ever cared much for the woman in the middle of it.” His mouth hardened. “I also think the realm is built by such marriages, whether we despise the truth of it or not.”

You might have laughed if your chest had not gone so tight.

The snow kept falling. It gathered on your lashes. Melted there.

“And if I refuse?”

“You may,” he said at once. “You are a Stark. And you are my sister. No one will drag you south in chains.”

But kings had long hands, and winter was hard, and the North had fewer friends than pride liked to pretend.

You looked at the weirwood’s face until it blurred.

“Has he the courtesy to write himself?”

Your brother held out the second letter.

This one bore no royal seal. Only dark wax stamped with the three-headed dragon.

You broke it with cold-numb fingers.

The hand was precise, elegant, unblotted.

Lady of Winterfell,

I do not insult you by saying I think this proposal was born of romance. It was not. Yet I would not have it said that you were offered to a stranger who did not understand the weight of what was asked of you.

I remember Winterfell. I remember your godswood. I remember the snow on the face of your heart tree.

If this marriage is made, I will not dishonor you by treating you carelessly. You will have all respect worthy of your name and station. If there are customs of the North you wish observed in my household, they shall be observed. If there are comforts of home you require, name them and they will be provided where they may.

I do not ask your affection. I ask only for your consent.

Prince Valarr Targaryen.

That was all.

No softening. No flattery. No false sweetness about songs or summer skies or southern devotion. Only respect laid out like offering.

You read it twice.

It should have comforted you, perhaps. It should have angered you less than a more honeyed letter would. Instead, it left you with a strange ache beneath your ribs. There was something in its restraint that felt more intimate than easy charm.

He remembered the godswood.

He remembered the snow on the face of your heart tree.

Your brother watched you fold the letter back along its crease.

“Well, dear sister?” he asked.

You should have said no.

You should have said you would not trade the honest cruelty of winter for the perfumed lies of the south. You should have said you belonged where the old gods could see you and where the air did not smell of roses trying to hide rot. You should have said you were not made to be taken apart by court.

Instead, you heard yourself say, “If I go, I will not kneel in a sept.”

He blinked. “What?”

“If I go south, I will not speak vows before seven gilded faces I do not worship. I will not be made to pray where my gods cannot hear me.”

His expression eased, just a little. “I thought the same. I have already written as much. The king will consent to a northern ceremony before witnesses, and whatever southern show they need after can be for them, not you.”

The breath left you in a white cloud.

The weirwood looked on.

You put your palm against its pale bark, cold as old bone.

“I will go,” you said to the tree before you said it to him.

And because no one ever asked the heart tree whether it approved, it did not answer.

//

The south began by taking the cold from you.

By the time you reached King’s Landing, your skin felt wrong. The air lay too soft upon it. The winds smelled of salt and fish and the press of too many bodies. The sky seemed lower somehow, hazed by smoke and heat even in winter’s edge, and the city itself sprawled red and dun beneath the hill like a thing too large to be healthy.

The Red Keep rose over the city with its red stone and proud towers and black iron teeth, and the walls within were full of movement; pages darting, ladies gliding, guards at every turn, servants who lowered their eyes and missed nothing. Everywhere color. Everywhere silk. Everywhere people speaking as though every word were weighed before being given breath.

You felt enormous in your northern wool, crude as a battle-axe in a room full of jeweled daggers.

The first time you saw Prince Valarr as a man, he came to greet you in the outer yard beneath a pale winter sun.

You knew him at once.

He was taller than memory had made him, broad through the shoulders now, dressed not in cloth of gold like the peacocks at court but in black velvet with a dark red half-cloak clasped at one shoulder. His hair was dark as night sky on new snow, falling past his collar where it escaped its binding. He had his father’s beauty, perhaps, if the songs were true, but not the easy brightness of it. There was something held too tightly in him. Something banked. It showed in the stillness of his face, in the hard line of his mouth, in the way his hands stayed calm at his sides while everything in him seemed to watch.

Not one of the ladies peering from the gallery missed him.

Neither did you.

He crossed the yard before the herald had finished his flourishing. He bowed exactly as his station required. No more. No less.

“My lady Stark,” he said.

His voice was lower than you remembered. Smooth. Careful.

You dipped in answer. “My prince.”

He offered his hand to help you down from the litter. His glove was black kid leather. Warm from the sun, perhaps, or from his skin. When your fingers touched his, the contact was brief enough to be proper and long enough to be felt for the rest of the day.

“Your journey was difficult?” he asked.

“It was long.”

A flicker passed over his expression, there and gone too quickly to name. “Your chambers have been prepared. I hope they will suit you.”

Hope.

But his face gave nothing.

You had told yourself not to expect warmth. You had told yourself that princes did not come thundering out to seize hands and grin like boys in songs. You had told yourself you wanted dignity more than charm.

Even so, some softer part of you had imagined… something. A look held a little too long. A note of welcome. A sign that you were not merely a piece set upon a board he had already studied.

Instead, there was only perfect courtesy.

If he felt disappointment at your plain northern braid or your solemn face or your silence, he hid it well.

He walked you into the keep without once brushing your sleeve.

That first week taught you the shape and shadow of him.

He was everywhere and nowhere. At council in the morning, at arms in the yard by noon, at table in the evening, in the queen’s apartments, in the king’s solar, in the halls with petitioners, with maesters, with lords come from the Reach, with envoys from the Stormlands. He moved through court like a sword through water: smooth, bright, parting everything around him without seeming to try.

And always, when he came to you, he was polite.

Never unkind.

Never familiar.

“Has the seamstress troubled you?”

“Did the northern spices arrive?”

“Would you prefer a larger hearth in your solar?”

“Are the kitchens preparing your meals to your liking?”

Each question attended to before you could ask it. Each need known too quickly. Your chambers had been hung with thicker draperies than the south usually used. A stone basin in your bath was filled not with scented oils but with pine needles steeped in hot water. Furs waited folded at the foot of your bed, not lion or leopard skins from warmer lands, but wolf and fox. A serving girl whispered that the prince himself had instructed the kitchens to send smoked trout, oat bread, turnips mashed with butter, even mulled ale in the northern manner, as though he had memorized Winterfell pantry by pantry.

He saw everything.

He said almost nothing.

By the third day, the ladies at court began to smile at you as if you were a child too young to know she was being pitied.

By the fifth, you hated him for his kindness.

It was the strangest hatred you had ever felt. It grew from no insult. It sprang from the opposite; the unbearable precision of his care, offered without warmth enough to ease it.

If he had been vicious, you could have met him blade for blade.

If he had been charming, you could have distrusted him like any sensible woman.

Instead he sent a brazier to your rooms because he had noticed you rub your hands together once at supper, and then sat three seats away at the feast as if the touch of your sleeve might burn him.

He arranged for a singer from White Harbor to perform in the hall after hearing you mention northern songs, yet when the song ended and your eyes found him across the candles, he only inclined his head as if to say yes, that has been done.

He remembered that you disliked sweet wines.

He remembered that you favored the west-facing window in the queen’s garden because from there you could smell the sea.

He remembered, somehow, that on the second day of every moon you rose before dawn to pray.

There was no godswood in King’s Landing. Not a true one. Only a little garden with fruit trees and fountains, and a small sept nestled by its wall where ladies went to murmur prettily at the Seven. The first morning you went seeking open sky before sunrise, you found the garden gate already unbarred and a guard posted at a discreet distance, as if someone had anticipated your need for solitude before the castle woke.

You knew who.

You stood there in the dark among orange trees and stone paths, staring at the fountain as if the prince might rise from it.

He did not.

When you thanked him for the guard later, he said only, “You should be able to walk safely before dawn.”

As if it meant nothing.

As if your strange northern silences mattered no more to him than the weather.

So you began to think what perhaps you ought to have thought at first; that the prince was dutiful, and very little else.

It was easier when you believed that.

It made the ache smaller.

It made you less of a fool.

//

The wedding was done in the old way first, because the king had agreed and because the North had given too much to the realm to be denied a tree and words spoken before it.

There was no heart tree in the Red Keep, and none in the city. So, a branch of weirwood had been sent from Winterfell, wrapped in linen and snow-packed moss, set upright in a carved stand of black oak in a private garden under gray sky. It was not the same. It was not living root and ancient face and red eyes in white bark. But it was wood from holy wood, and that would have to be enough.

You stood cloaked in white and gray. He stood opposite you in black and crimson.

The southern witnesses shifted in the cold, uncertain of what to do with a ceremony that asked them to be quiet longer than comfort liked. Your brother spoke the old words. The prince answered his parts with no stumble, his voice level as stone. When your cloak was removed and his was draped around your shoulders, it smelled faintly of cedar and smoke.

When it was your turn to speak, you looked not at him but at the weirwood branch and said the vows to the old gods of your father and his fathers.

Yet when you came to the last words and lifted your eyes, he was already looking at you.

Not as a prince looks at a bride before lords.

Not even as a man looks at a woman he means to bed.

As though he was watching something that mattered too much.

The look vanished the instant the southern witnesses began to murmur, but it was there. You had not imagined it.

Later, in the sept, a second ceremony was held for the court because kings liked their symbols doubled. Candles burned. Seven crystal faces stared down. You knelt when you must, rose when you must, and felt nothing except the weight of the Targaryen cloak still around your shoulders beneath all the silk.

The feast after was lavish enough to shame harvest gods. Boar glazed in honey, lampreys in crust, swans roasted whole, lemon cakes, eels, pomegranates burst open like jewels, wine enough to drown a holdfast. Singers sang. Fools tumbled. Lords toasted peace between wolf and dragon as though it were a cup that could simply be lifted and emptied.

Your husband sat beside you on the high dais like a carved thing newly given breath.

He drank little. Smiled rarely. Watched much.

When some Reach lord grew too merry and made a jest about northerners worshipping trees because they had too little sun for prettier gods, Valarr’s hand set his cup down with such quiet deliberation that the sound was somehow louder than a slam.

“The North has gods old enough not to need ornaments,” he said.

The hall went still.

The Reach lord flushed and bent his head in apology.

Prince Valarr did not look at him again.

He looked at you once. Only once. But there was heat in it.

And you, fool that you were, cherished that scrap of heat through half the night.

It did not help.

Because when the feast ended and you were brought to the bedchamber amid lewd songs and wine-thick laughter, and the women stripped off your outer gown and left you in linen and blushes, and the last door closed—your husband did not come near you.

Not at once.

He stood by the hearth with one hand braced on the mantel and the other at his side, staring into the flames as if they spoke a language he did not much care for. He had removed his outer coat. The shirt beneath was black. At his throat the ties were loosened just enough to reveal the hollow there.

The room smelled of cedar and myrrh and banked fire.

Your heart beat so hard it made you angry.

At last he turned.

“You are tired,” he said.

It was a strange thing to say to a bride on her wedding night.

“I have been married twice today,” you said. “I imagine I am.”

His mouth shifted, almost a smile, almost pain. “Yes.”

Silence opened between you.

You were not innocent enough to believe men did not bed women they did not love. Northern girls learned early what marriage was, what duty asked of flesh. You had come south prepared to endure that part of it if you must. Better a clean wound than the trembling of waiting.

But he only looked at you, and there was that same terrible restraint in him, that same sense of a door barred from within.

“If you fear I would force a claim tonight because the hall expects it,” he said quietly, “you need not fear.”

“I did not say I feared you.”

“No.” His eyes held yours. “You would say so if you did.”

Something hot and embarrassed and furious went through you.

“What do you fear, then?” you asked. “That I will find my duty unbearable? That a northern girl will take fright if a man touches her?”

“That is not what I said.”

“It is what you mean.”

He took one step toward you.

You hated yourself for noticing how beautiful he was. Hated the breadth of him, the seriousness, the way candlelight made a faint violet burn in his eyes.

“What I mean,” he said, very evenly, “is that you have left everything you have ever known. You are in a strange place among strange gods, wedded to a man you barely remember. I will not make that worse by taking what should not be taken under dread.”

Your throat tightened.

Because it was kind. Because it was sensible. Because some bruised girlish part of you wanted him to want you badly enough to forget kindness.

“And if I do not dread it?”

His gaze flickered—down, then up, so quick you might have imagined it.

The silence after seemed to change shape.

When he answered, his voice had gone lower. “Then I dread it enough for us both.”

You went still.

He looked away first.

That hurt more than anything.

He crossed to the table, poured wine into two cups, and handed one to you. His fingers did not brush yours this time. “Drink,” he said. “Then sleep. Tomorrow we sail for Dragonstone.”

“Dragonstone.”

“Yes.”

You stared at him. “So soon?”

“The court will be glad of its pageant. I will be glad to leave it.”

And because you were hurt, because you were bewildered, because you had offered one trembling inch of yourself and he had retreated as if from a precipice, you said the crueler thing.

“Is that why you married me, then? For peace in the realm and quiet in your own halls?”

His face changed so little most would not have seen it. But you did. Something shuttered harder.

“I married you,” he said, “because it was agreed that I should.”

It was not a lie.

That made it worse.

He bowed his head, as if to a queen, and slept the night on a couch by the fire. There might as well be a dagger beneath his hand.

You lay awake until dawn despising him for honor and yourself for weeping over it in silence.

//

Dragonstone was not like King’s Landing.

It was harsher. Older. Stranger.

It rose black from the sea as if dragons had indeed once clawed it from the deep. Towers shaped like coiled beasts and open jaws loomed over the cliffs. The wind there had bite, though not the right kind of bite. It smelled of salt and sulfur and rain. The sea crashed white against stone far below. Everything seemed built from some dream of conquest held too long in one family’s blood.

Yet it was quieter.

For that alone, you might have loved it.

There was less silk, less laughter that hid venom, fewer eyes always turning toward you. The servants bowed and went about their work. The master-at-arms grunted. The castellan respected silence. The sea did not care whether you prayed to seven gods or none.

If only there had been a tree.

There was a garden on the eastern side of the castle, if such a name could be given to that patch of hard-won green in black volcanic soil. Wind-twisted shrubs. Tough flowers with thick leaves. Herbs that clung low. A few stunted pines brought by some Targaryen queen who had missed the smell of inland woods. Beautiful in their own fierce way.

But no godswood.

No pool.

No red leaves stirring over old prayers.

For the first month you did not know where to put your grief for that.

You walked the sea walls at dawn and listened to gulls shrieking over the waves. You knelt in your chamber with a bowl of dark water before you, trying to pretend reflection might suffice where a heart tree’s face could not. Sometimes you whispered your prayers into the wind and told yourself the old gods were older than roots, older than bark, older than any castle men built to forget they would die.

Some days you believed it.

Some days you did not.

Valarr—your husband, though the word still felt borrowed—saw more than you wished him to see.

On the fourth morning at Dragonstone, you came back from the battlements with your cheeks salted by wind and found a square box of pale wood upon the table in your solar. Inside were little carved faces of weirwood, white as bone, each no larger than your palm, their eyes and mouths painted in red lacquer.

You picked one up and stared at it.

A servant curtsied. “The prince ordered them made, my lady. By a carver from White Harbor, so he said the look would be right.”

You could not decide whether to laugh or cry.

That evening, at supper in the smaller hall, you said, “Thank you for the carvings.”

He looked up from his plate. “They are poor substitutes.”

“Yes,” you said, perhaps too sharply. “They are.”

The servants went still.

You saw the apology form at once in the tightening of his mouth, and perversely that made you crueler, not kinder.

“I did not mean—” he began.

“No,” you said. “You rarely do.”

You rose before he could answer and left him in the hall with the candles burning low and half the fish untouched on his plate.

For three days after, he did not come to your chamber or seek you in the garden.

He sent your meals. He sent a new fur-lined mantle because rain had soaked the hem of yours. He sent a book of northern songs copied by a careful hand. He sent, absurdly, a stone basin carved with leaves upon the rim because he had seen you pray over water.

He did not send himself.

By then you were angry enough to miss him.

Which was perhaps the most humiliating thing of all.

You began to learn his absences by sound. The hour his boots crossed the gallery before dawn. The ring of his practice sword in the yard below. The nights he did not come to supper because ravens had flown or ships had been sighted. The hours he vanished into some part of the island you did not know, taking only a handful of men and returning with black earth on his boots or grit on his sleeves.

He was hiding something.

At first you thought it must be political business. Then, because your hurt was eager for uglier answers, you thought perhaps there was a woman on the island, or in some fisherman’s daughter’s cottage below the cliffs, or a widow in the village who smiled when the prince came riding past. Why should there not be? Men did not go cold to brides they desired and disappear into rain for innocent reasons.

The thought made you sick.

It also made you reckless.

One wet afternoon when the wind lashed at the casement and the sea was iron-gray below, you went to the old sept near the kitchens—not to pray, but because old stones gathered gossip like moss. There you found Lady Ysabel, widow to some lord of the Crownlands, a woman who had attached herself to your service on the voyage south and now spent her days plucking at embroidery and other people’s secrets.

She looked up from her hoop when you entered.

“My lady,” she said, eyes bright as pins. “The weather is foul enough to make saints curse.”

“I have found no saints here yet,” you answered.

“Then you have not looked at the prince when he thinks no one sees him.”

You stilled.

She smiled. “Forgive me. Age makes me ungovernable.”

“What do you mean?”

Lady Ysabel set aside her embroidery. “Only that men can be strange animals when they are unhappy.”

“I would not know whether my husband is unhappy,” you said. “He keeps his face for feast days and funerals.”

“Ah.” She leaned back. “Then I will tell you what old women are for. To notice what pretty young people are too miserable to notice themselves.”

You should have left. Instead you stayed.

“He has had half the southern coast searched for white-barked saplings,” she said.

Your breath caught. “What?”

“I know not what name to give them. Some say they are ghosts of trees from older ages. He has sent ships and riders and coin besides. He has bullied maesters and gardeners and even one poor drunken hedge knight who claimed to have seen such a tree on his grandsire’s land before the crows pecked the lie from him.” Her brows lifted. “Whatever else your husband is, my lady, I do not think he keeps a mistress in the rain.”

The room went warm and cold together.

“Why would he—”

“To please you,” she said with the blunt mercy of age. “Men have done stupider things for less cause.”

You stared at the cracked floor between you.

“But he scarcely speaks to me.”

“And yet he notices when you sleep poorly. And when you are cold. And when you look west too long.” She threaded her needle anew. “If I were you, I should decide whether I prefer a husband who speaks sweetly and means nothing, or one who means too much and is frightened of the sound it makes.”

You left before she could see what her words had done to your face.

That evening Prince Valarr came late to supper, rain still silvering his shoulders. He looked tired. More than tired. Drawn.

His gaze found you at once.

You had meant to say something cutting, or clever, or at least guarded. Instead you said, “Where have you been?”

He paused before removing his gloves. “About the island.”

“In the rain.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

He set the gloves down with maddening care. “Dragonstone has weathered worse than rain.”

“That is not an answer.”

His eyes sharpened. “Must I account for every hour to you?”

You flinched as if struck, though the words were not crueler than many husbands spoke before breakfast.

He saw it and shut his eyes a brief moment.

“No,” you said, sitting straighter. “Of course not. Forgive me. I mistook curiosity for rights I do not possess.”

Something flashed in him then. Not anger. Something worse.

“You are my wife,” he said.

The hall seemed to narrow around the words.

“Yes,” you said. “I have noticed.”

You did not know why every exchange between you became a cut dressed in silk. Perhaps because both of you were forever bleeding where the other could not quite see.

He drew a slow breath.

“Eat,” he said, as if to himself as much as to you. “The fish will cool.”

So that was your supper; silver bowls, rain at the shutters, a husband who had searched the world for your faith and would not tell you, and a wife who had learned enough to hope and not enough to stop hurting.

That night you dreamed of the Winterfell godswood. The weirwood’s carved eyes were black holes in the snow, and when you knelt beneath it, the roots under the ice were warm.

//

The first time he touched you as a husband, it was because you slipped on wet stone.

It was little enough. A foolish thing. The sort of stumble any girl might laugh off among sisters.

You had gone down to the lower yard to watch the men returning from the shore, their boots muddy, their cloaks full of damp wind. Prince Valarr was among them, speaking to the master of horse. His hair loose against the sea breeze. Rain had darkened his black doublet almost to the color of the stone.

You were watching too closely. That was why your foot found slick moss on the step.

The world tilted.

Before fear could even rise, he was there.

One hand caught your elbow, the other your waist. The force of it swung you back against him, not hard enough to bruise, merely certain enough to make it clear you were not falling unless he allowed it.

For a heartbeat neither of you moved.

His hand at your waist was broad and hot even through layers of wool. Your shoulder blades rested against his chest. You could feel the wet coolness of rain on his sleeve and the heat beneath. His breath touched the side of your face.

“My lady,” he said, but it came out almost rough.

You put your hand over his wrist, meaning only to steady yourself.

His fingers tightened.

When you turned your head, his face was closer than it had ever been. Water clung to his lashes. There was nothing cold in him now. Nothing distant. The look in his eyes was not princely. It was too intense for that. Too bare. Too hungry in some way that had nothing to do with flesh and everything to do with restraint stretched until it sang.

You forgot how to breathe.

Then someone called his name from across the yard.

He stepped back at once.

The loss of him was so immediate it felt indecent.

“Take care,” he said.

And there was your husband again; composed, grave, gloved in courtesy.

He walked away without looking back.

You stood on the step with your pulse in your throat and hated him more tenderly than before.

//

It was not all pain.

There were evenings when the storm winds kept everyone indoors and Dragonstone seemed less a castle than a ship at sea, its stones groaning softly, fires turned bright against the dark. On such nights you and Prince Valarr sometimes ended in the same library by accident or design, and there the distance between you altered.

He read history. Campaigns, treaties, old Valyrian accounts written in curling script, ledgers of ports and grain and ships. You read songs, and old northern tales where wolves spoke in dreams and dead kings walked under hills. Once, finding you frown over a page in High Valyrian, he crossed the room and translated a line without being asked.

His voice in that language was beautiful.

You lifted your head. “You know northern songs,” you said.

“I know one or two.”

“How?”

“I remember what I hear.”

“Everything?”

His mouth moved. “More than is useful.”

You almost smiled. “That sounds a burden.”

“It is.”

There was no bitterness in it. Only truth.

Another time you found him standing before the window, watching the storm-churned sea. He had removed his sword belt and set it aside. The looseness of him in private relaxed you more than ceremony ever could.

“Do dragons miss the sky when they are caged in stone?” you asked.

He did not turn. “I have never been a dragon.”

“No?”

“No.” At last he glanced back. “Only a man born under banners painted with them.”

And because the room was dim and the storm loud and neither of you had the strength for pretense that night, you said, “Men can be caged more thoroughly.”

His gaze lingered on you too long.

“Yes,” he said.

Then the moment shuttered, as they always did.

Yet such moments grew, stubborn and sparse as flowers in the island garden. A hand under your elbow when stairs were treacherous. His voice at your shoulder warning of a gust along the sea wall before it hit. His cloak placed around you when you had forgotten yours. The way he stood between you and anyone who displeased him without making a show of it. The way he listened when you spoke of the North, not as southerners did with indulgent smiles, but as if each detail were a map to something precious.

And in turn, because love or its cruel half-brother had already begun its work whether you welcomed it or not, you noticed him.

You noticed the fine white scar under his chin, likely from boyhood training. The way his hands looked made for a sword and yet turned pages gently. The exhaustion he hid after council ravens came. The habit he had of touching the signet at his finger when thinking hard. The headaches that took him in rain-heavy weather, betrayed only by the pinch between his brows. The way he relaxed, just a little, when you entered a room, as though some watchfulness in him eased without leave.

Once you found him asleep in a chair by the library hearth, a book fallen face-down on his chest. The fire had burned low. His head rested back against the leather. Without the alertness that usually armored him, he looked younger. More vulnerable than you had thought a prince could look and remain alive.

You might have left him there.

Instead you fetched a blanket and laid it over him.

His hand caught your wrist before the wool settled.

His eyes were open now, dark and unfocused with sleep.

For a heartbeat neither of you moved.

Then recognition came into his gaze. So did something softer.

“You should sleep,” you whispered, because you did not know what else to do with the hand around your wrist.

He released you at once, but slowly. “As should you.”

You walked out with your pulse shivering, and behind you the pages of his fallen book stirred in the draft like wings.

//

Spring did not come sweetly to Dragonstone.

It came with storms.

The sea turned savage. Winds tore at banners. Rain came slanting and relentless, and the island seemed to crouch under it. The eastern garden suffered worst. Twice the gardeners had to lash the young pines to stakes to keep them from snapping. Once the sea spray came so high it burned the leaves.

It was during those storms that you learned what he had been doing.

Not from him.

Never from him.

One morning the rain lessened to a hard gray drizzle, and you took the covered walk along the eastern wall because your chamber felt close as a tomb. At the end of the path, where the wall curved inward toward a part of the garden long closed for repairs, the gate stood ajar.

Beyond it, the ground had been turned.

Deep black earth—richer than the island’s mean soil—had been carted in and laid in a square sheltered by stone on three sides. The walls had been whitewashed to throw back light. Drainage channels had been cut with obsessive care. Small channels of fresh water ran from a cistern. Windbreak screens stood half-raised. Gardeners moved in silence, patting, tying, measuring. A maester argued in low tones with a gray-bearded man whose hands were stained with earth to the wrist.

And in the center of it all, bareheaded in the drizzle, cloak cast aside, boots sunk in mud—Valarr.

He had a spade in his hands.

You had never seen him thus.

Not as prince. Not as husband. Not as the still, polished thing court made of him.

His sleeves were rolled. His black shirt clung damp to his arms. Mud streaked one cheek where he must have wiped rain away with a dirty hand. He was kneeling before a small tree cradled in burlap and moss and packed roots—a pale thing with white bark and blood-red leaves trembling in the wet.

Your heart stopped.

A weirwood.

Young. Fragile. No face carved in it. No ancient roots sunk through centuries of prayer. But a weirwood nonetheless. Living. Impossible.

The gray-bearded gardener muttered, “If the soil salts again, it will die.”

“Then we will change the soil again,” Prince Valarr said.

“It is not made for sea air.”

“Then wall it deeper.”

“It wants cold.”

“Then shade it through summer.”

“It may still fail.”

Prince Valarr set the spade down and looked at the little tree with such ferocity you felt almost ashamed to witness it.

“Then I will fail having tried.”

No one noticed you.

You stood in the gate and put your fingers to your mouth.

All the vanished hours. The rain. The mud on his boots. The maesters bullied and saplings hunted and ships sent. He had built a godswood out of stubbornness and longing and whatever devotion he could not bring himself to name aloud.

For you.

The young tree shook under the rain like a living wound.

You should have gone to him then.

You should have spoken his name.

Instead something broke open too fast inside you. You turned and fled before he could look up and see you.

Because it was too much.

Because if you had stayed one moment longer, you might have run to him in the mud and put your hands on his face and kissed him like a woman who had been starving.

And what if he had gone still beneath your mouth? What if his beautiful, careful kindness had once again mistaken itself for restraint? What if even now this labor was only duty carried to a heroic, impossible edge?

You could not bear the answer.

So you did what wounded pride always does when offered healing too late; you hid.

For the next two days you remained in your chambers under pretense of a chill. Prince Valarr came once with Maester Hollis to inquire after your health. You lay in bed and spoke through the curtains of the tester, hating yourself for cowardice and unable to stop.

“I am well enough,” you said.

The maester fussed. “Your maid says you have not eaten.”

“I am not hungry.”

Then his voice came from beyond the drapes. Low. Tauter than usual.

“Is there anything you require?”

Yes, you thought wildly. You. Truth. The end of this misery.

Instead you said, “No, my prince.”

A pause.

Then, very formal, “As you wish, my lady.”

When the door closed you buried your face in the pillow and wanted to die of your own foolishness.

By the third day shame drove you out.

The storm had passed. The sky was pale and hard. Sea light lay silver over the walls. You wrapped yourself in gray wool and made your way to the eastern garden, half convinced the little tree would be gone, half praying it would not.

It was there.

So was he.

The square of earth had been smoothed. The windbreaks raised. The young weirwood stood in the center, pale as moonlit bone, red leaves trembling in the clean cold air. Around it were stones taken, you guessed, from the North—some lichen-marked, some dark with river wear. A rough bench had been placed beneath the wall. Water ran nearby in a narrow rill so the roots would hear it.

And Valarr stood with one hand against the white bark, eyes closed, as though he had reached the end of something and did not yet know what waited there.

He opened his eyes when your steps sounded on the stone.

For one rare moment, he looked almost afraid.

“My lady,” he said.

You could not stop staring at the tree.

“It lives,” you whispered.

“For now.”

You went nearer. The bark was smooth beneath your fingertips. Cold. Real. Not Winterfell’s old giant with its carved face and centuries in its roots, no. But alive. A miracle grown from stubbornness.

“When?” you asked.

“The ship arrived three weeks ago. We waited to see if it would survive the passage.”

Three weeks. Three weeks he had said nothing.

You turned to him. “Why?”

The question seemed to strike him dumb for a moment.

“Why what?”

“Why do all this and say nothing?”

Something shuttered across his face. “Because it was not done yet.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the only one I have.”

Anger rose, hot and strange, born of gratitude too large for silence. “Do you think me so cold a creature that I should not have wanted to know?”

“No.” His voice sharpened suddenly. “I thought you did not want me.”

The garden fell still.

Even the sea seemed to withdraw.

You stared at him. He stood rigid, as if the words had escaped by accident and he hated them for it. His hand dropped from the trunk. Mud still marked one cuff where no servant had managed to scrub it fully away.

“What?”

He let out a laugh with no joy in it. “There. Now it is said badly.”

“I do not understand.”

“No,” he said. “I know.”

You took one step toward him. “Then make me understand.”

He looked at you then—not as a prince, not as a husband bound by courtesy, but as the man who had stood in rain and black soil and bent half a kingdom to bring a northern god south.

“You came here unwilling,” he said. “I saw that much from the first. You were brave enough to consent, but not eager. Why should you have been? You left your home, your gods, your own sky, for a bargain struck between men. I thought the least cruelty I could offer was restraint.”

The words went through you like a blade.

“Cruelty?”

“Yes.” At last heat entered his voice, long banked and dangerous now that it was loosed. “Because I wanted you before I had any right to want you.”

Your breath caught.

He did not stop.

“I remembered you from Winterfell,” he said. “Not as a child remembers a face in passing. I remembered you too well. I remembered you in the godswood, with snow in your hair and your hand on the heart tree, and I thought—” He broke off, jaw tight. “It does not matter what I thought. Years passed. I saw a hundred court beauties. I heard a hundred women praised. None of them stood before me the way you did in memory. Then when the match was proposed, I knew what sort of gift it would look like from the outside; a prince honoring a northern house. I also knew what it would be to me. And that frightened me more than I care to confess.”

Your fingers curled in your sleeves.

He took a step closer. Not enough to touch. Enough that the air changed.

“I did not mean to be cold,” he said. “I meant to be careful. I thought if I gave you ease, if I asked nothing, if I kept my wants well-hidden, then perhaps you would come to find this place tolerable. Perhaps you would not feel trapped by a husband whose desire had helped build the trap.”

The truth of it hit so cleanly you almost laughed. Or sobbed.

“You fool,” you whispered.

Something painful moved through his face. “Yes.”

“No.” Your voice shook. “You great, impossible fool.”

He stared at you as if uncertain whether you were about to strike him or weep.

“I thought,” you said, and had to stop to swallow around the thickness in your throat. “I thought you found me unlovely. Or too northern. Or only convenient. You would not touch me. You would not look at me except in those moments when you forgot yourself. You did everything for me except the one thing that would have told me it was for me and not for duty.”

His head bowed once, as though at a blow honestly earned.

“I know.”

“You told me on our wedding night you married me because it was agreed you should.”

His eyes closed briefly. “Had I answered truthfully, I might have kissed you before you were ready, and then I would have deserved your hatred.”

“And did it never occur to you,” you said, tears burning now despite your pride, “that I might have preferred honesty to all your noble silences?”

At that, something in him snapped.

It was not rage. It was worse because it was truer.

“It occurred to me every hour,” he said.

The wind stirred the little red leaves above you.

You looked at him and saw it all at once—the restraint, the watchfulness, the impossible care offered with clenched hands because he feared the strength of his own wanting. His obsession had not made him grasping. It had made him reverent to the point of cruelty. And yours, quieter but no less fierce, had made every kindness a wound because you thought it was all you would ever be allowed.

“You planted me a heart tree,” you said softly.

“I brought you a sapling,” he corrected, almost harshly, as if refusing too much credit. “A true heart tree must earn its face.”

You laughed then through tears. He stared as if he had never heard the sound before and did not know whether it was mercy.

“It may take a hundred years,” you said.

“Then let it.”

You wiped at your cheek with the back of your hand. “And if it dies?”

“I will plant another.”

The answer was instant.

The air between you trembled.

You looked at the young tree, its white bark glowing in the thin light, its red leaves shifting like small hearts. Then back at him.

“There is one thing you have still not said.”

His voice dropped. “Name it.”

“Do not name me duty again.”

He went very still.

When he spoke, it seemed torn from somewhere far deeper than courtesy had ever reached.

“I love you.”

The words were not polished. They did not sound practiced. They sounded like surrender.

“I have loved you in every foolish way a man can love a woman he scarcely knows and then in every worse way a husband can love the wife he is afraid to frighten. I have watched you pray to absent gods and envied them because you give them your face so openly. I have counted the things that make you smile and the things that make you cold and the mornings you wake before dawn and the songs that quiet you. I know the sound of your steps in the corridor. I know when you are trying not to cry. I know how often you look north even when there is only sea. And if this is obsession, then I have been lost in it for years.”

Your whole body went weak with the hearing of it.

He kept going, because perhaps once such men began telling truth they feared stopping more than they feared death.

“I did not touch you because I wanted to too much. I did not speak because I might have said all of it. I built this for you because every prayer you whispered into empty air felt like an accusation against me, and I would have torn Dragonstone stone from stone if it meant your gods could find you here.”

The tears came properly then.

You hated crying in front of men. Hated the softness of it. Hated yielding where strength should stand.

He looked stricken at once.

“Do not weep,” he said, stepping forward. “Please. If I have mistaken this—”

“You have mistaken everything,” you said, laughing wetly through it.

His hands hovered at his sides as if he dared not lift them without leave.

So you gave it.

You reached for him first.

The sound he made was very small, very rough.

Then his hands were on you—not seizing, never that, but gathering you with such aching care it undid you more than any hunger could have. One came to your cheek, thumb brushing away tears. The other found your waist as if it had known the road there in dreams. You rose to him, and he bent his head, and when he kissed you at last it was with the restraint of a man who had built walls around himself for years and now felt every stone begin to fall.

The first kiss was almost chaste.

The second was not.

It deepened by degrees, as though neither of you trusted the earth to hold beneath you. His mouth was warm. Reverent, yes, but not only reverent. There was hunger in him after all, old and banked and immense. It came through in the way his breath hitched when your fingers slid into his hair, in the way his hand at your waist tightened as though some part of him still feared you might vanish. You tasted rain and wine and something that was simply him.

When at last he broke away, your forehead rested against his.

“I have wanted that since Winterfell,” he said into the space between you.

You let out a shaky breath. “You should have started with that instead of carved little trees.”

His shoulders moved with a laugh, astonished and low. “I thought the trees were safer.”

“For whom?”

His eyes lifted to yours. Dark, bright, helpless now that truth had breached him. “Not for me.”

You kissed him again because there was no answer better than that.

The little weirwood shivered above you. Somewhere beyond the walls, the sea struck stone with its endless fury. But within the sheltered square of fresh earth and white bark, all the world seemed narrowed to breath and heart and the terrible sweetness of finally being known.

When you drew back, he touched his brow to yours once more.

“There is something else,” he said.

You smiled faintly. “If you tell me there are seven more weirwoods hidden under the castle, I may forgive you for every silence.”

He actually smiled then. It transformed him. Not because it made him prettier—he was already too beautiful for safety—but because it made him look suddenly young, and tired, and real.

“No seven,” he said. “Only this one.”

“That will do.”

His thumb stroked the line of your jaw. “I will have a face carved only when the tree is old enough to bear it.”

“Not yet,” you said. “Let it grow wild a while. Let it learn this place.”

His gaze flicked to the weirwood. “As you have?”

You might once have flinched from the question.

Now, with his arms around you and the northern tree standing impossible and alive on Targaryen stone, the answer was easier.

“I am trying,” you said.

He nodded, as if that mattered more than declarations. Perhaps to him it did.

You stood together in silence then, and it was not an empty one. It was the silence of snowfields, of prayer, of roots beneath earth finding water.

After a while he said, “Will you pray?”

You looked up. “Now?”

“If you wish.”

At Winterfell, prayer had never felt strange. Here, with the sea close and southern sky overhead and your husband waiting beside a sapling brought across half a kingdom for your sake, it felt almost too intimate.

Yet you turned to the young tree and knelt.

For an instant uncertainty brushed you. There was no carved face to meet your eyes, no ancient witness. Only white bark and red leaves and the hush of a place made holy by love before age had time to sanctify it.

Then Valarr knelt beside you.

Not because he believed as you did. Not because anyone watched. Simply because you knelt.

The sight of him there in black wool and mud-marked boots, silver-gold head bowed beside yours before the little tree, nearly broke you anew.

You folded your hands.

The words came slowly at first, then easier.

You prayed for your house in the North, for your brother under the same hard sky, for the Wall and the men upon it, for the dead whose names the gods remembered better than men. You prayed for the tree itself, that it might take root in foreign stone and not judge too harshly the strange island asked to hold it. At the last you prayed—not aloud, but with a fervor that lit your whole blood—that if the old gods had indeed followed you south, they might bear witness to the man beside you and know him by the labor of his hands.

When you rose, Prince Valarr rose too.

“Well?” he asked quietly.

“Well what?”

“Did they hear?”

You looked at the weirwood. At the red leaves moving in the sea wind. At the white bark bright against black stone. At him.

“Yes,” you said. “I think they did.”

Something in him eased at last.

Not all. Men like him did not loosen entirely; perhaps if they ever did, kingdoms would burn. But enough that you saw the relief.

He drew your hand to his mouth and kissed the inside of your wrist. The touch was so unexpectedly tender it sent a tremor through you.

“I would build you Winterfell itself if I could,” he murmured against your skin.

“You would hate the cold.”

“I hate it already,” he said. “It took you from me for too many years.”

There it was again, that trace of obsession worn not like threat but like wound. You could not pretend it did not thrill some dangerous part of you. He loved too deeply. You had known that even before he named it. Perhaps you did too. Perhaps that was why all your pain had felt sharpened against him alone.

So you answered in kind.

“I thought Dragonstone a prison when I came,” you said. “Now I think if you sent me back north tomorrow, I would spend half my days looking at the sea and hating the trees for not being planted by your hands.”

His eyes darkened.

“That is an unwise thing to tell your husband.”

“Why?”

“Because I have very little wisdom where you are concerned.”

“Nor I, it seems.”

He smiled in that astonished way again, as if joy still sat strangely on him.

“Come,” he said after a moment. “The wind is turning colder.”

“I am from the North.”

“Yes,” he said, drawing your cloak closer around your shoulders himself. “And you are my wife. Both reasons enough for me to mind the wind.”

You let him fuss with the fastening though you could have done it yourself. Let him smooth the fur along your throat. Let him keep his hand at the small of your back as you walked from the sheltered garden square toward the keep.

At the doorway you stopped and looked back once more.

The little tree stood alone in its fresh black earth, red leaves sharp against the pale wall. Small. Fragile. Stubborn. Impossible.

Like many holy things.

//

After that, Dragonstone changed.

Or perhaps only you did.

The castle was still black stone and dragon jaws and sea thunder. The wind still worried the walls. The island still smelled of salt and sulfur after rain. But what had once seemed grim began to show its other face. There was beauty there, if a harsher sort than northern woods. Light shattered on the sea like armor. The cliffs blazed gold in sunset. Storms made music through the arrow slits at night. The pines in the eastern garden, bent and stubborn, smelled almost like home when the air cooled.

And within the keep, you no longer moved like a hostage among rich rooms.

Valarr’s restraint did not vanish all at once. Neither did yours. Habits of caution, once grown deep, did not die from one confession. But the silence between you had altered its nature. What was hidden now was less dangerous. More human.

He came to your chambers in the evening without needing excuses of tapestries or weather or whether the kitchens had prepared your meal properly. Sometimes you read aloud while he listened with his head against the carved back of your chair. Sometimes he spoke of council matters only as much as he could bear, and you answered with northern bluntness that made him laugh under his breath. Sometimes no words were needed at all.

When he touched you, he did so as though even now asking.

A hand at your neck in passing. Fingers brushing your knuckles at table beneath the cloth. A kiss pressed to your temple before dawn when he rose for duty. Once, finding you half-asleep by the hearth with your embroidery slipped from numb fingers, he carried you to bed. You woke enough to feel the care of it, the pause when he laid you down, the long stillness afterward when he stood looking at you in the dark as though sleep itself were something he envied.

You reached for him then.

He came to you with a sound like defeat and prayer made the same.

Afterward, wrapped in linen and shadows and the salt-washed night, he kissed your shoulder and said in the dark, “You do not know what mercy you are.”

You turned in his arms and laid your palm over the beat of his heart.

“No,” you said softly. “But perhaps you do not know what comfort you are.”

He made a disbelieving sound.

You smiled against his chest. “Even in your silences.”

“Especially in my silences, I suspect.”

“Those nearly ruined us.”

“Yes.” His arm tightened around you. “I have hated myself for that.”

You tipped your head back to look at him in the faint firelight. “Do not. Or if you must, hate me a little as well. I was too proud to ask what mattered.”

He looked at you for a long moment.

Then, with that grave sincerity that made even tenderness feel like a vow, he said, “I do not know how to hate you. I have tried safer things.”

You kissed him to stop whatever perilous truth he meant to say next.

//

Letters went north with warmer tidings.

You wrote to your brother of the sea first, because men understood weather better than hearts. Then of Dragonstone’s strange beauty. Then, after a pause long enough to make the ink dry while you chose your courage, of the young weirwood in the eastern garden.

His reply came two weeks later and was very short.

If the prince has bent the stone of Dragonstone to make room for our gods, then perhaps he is either mad or worthy of you. Guard the tree from southern fools. And guard your own heart only if it is still possible.

You laughed aloud when you read it.

Prince Valarr, across the table, looked up from his papers. “Good news?”

“My brother thinks you may be mad.”

He considered. “He is not the first.”

“No,” you said, smiling. “But he also thinks you may be worthy.”

For once the prince looked almost abashed. “That is better than I deserve.”

“Perhaps.” You folded the letter. “But I find myself not inclined to justice where you are concerned.”

His gaze lingered on your mouth with warmth enough to make the room feel smaller.

“That,” he said, “is a dangerous kindness.”

You had learned by then that danger and kindness often shared a border in him.

You had crossed it willingly.

//

Summer’s first true warmth came late and sudden.

The weirwood held.

Against salt, against southern sun, against maesters who muttered that old northern trees belonged in old northern ground, it held. New leaves unfurled at the tips of its branches. The white bark brightened. Tiny roots, the gardener told you with reverence fit for relics, had taken deeply enough that the tree no longer trembled at every change in weather.

One evening, near sunset, you and Valarr stood together before it while the sea burned copper beyond the walls.

He had been away three days settling some quarrel among ships’ captains, and the moment he returned he came first not to the hall, not to the solar, but to the eastern garden. To you. You found him there with salt dried on his cloak and fatigue in the set of his shoulders.

“You are late,” you told him.

“I came as quickly as the tide allowed.”

“You might have sent word.”

“I did.” He touched the signet ring at his hand. “Three ravens.”

“I received two.”

His mouth twitched. “Then the third loved me best and kept its secrets.”

You moved closer. “Did it?”

“No.” His gaze softened. “It only said I missed you.”

Your breath caught, though such words no longer startled as once they had.

“And do you?” you asked.

He looked at you with the full force of that strange fierce tenderness which, once named, had grown easier for him to show.

“With poor dignity,” he said.

You laughed and put your hands to his chest, smoothing a wrinkle in his cloak that did not need smoothing. “A prince should have better training.”

“I fear I neglected that lesson.”

“Good.”

His hand came up to cradle the back of your neck. “Good?”

“Yes.” You looked up at him. “I should not much like a husband who missed me with grace.”

His eyes darkened with laughter and something warmer. “No?”

“No.”

He bent and kissed you once, slowly, with the sunset on one side of you and the white weirwood on the other.

When he drew back, he glanced at the tree.

“It wants a face,” he said.

You followed his gaze. The trunk was thicker now, strong enough perhaps to bear the beginning of carving.

“Soon,” you said. “Not yet.”

“Still learning this place?”

“Yes.” You slid your fingers through his. “As I am.”

He was quiet a moment. Then, very softly, “Do you regret coming?”

The question held no accusation. That made it dearer. Harder too.

You looked at Dragonstone around you—the black stone towers, the sea walls, the hard-won green, the impossible tree. At the man beside you, grave and watchful and too careful still in some things, but no longer hidden. At the life you had not chosen and had nevertheless grown into by force of pain and patience and love that had refused to remain unnamed.

“I regret the cost,” you said honestly. “I regret leaving home. I regret what marriage asks of women in this world. I regret every night I thought myself alone beside you.”

He bowed his head once, accepting each wound as if it were his to carry too.

“But do I regret you?” You turned fully to him. “No, my prince. Not even when you are unbearable.”

A smile touched his mouth. “Only then, perhaps.”

“Especially then.”

He lifted your joined hands and pressed them to his lips. “There are moments,” he said, “when I think the gods—yours or mine or all of them together—must be mocking me.”

“Why?”

“Because they have given me exactly what I wanted and then made me afraid to reach for it.”

You stepped into him, laid your head beneath his chin, and felt his arms come around you with all the certainty he used to deny himself.

“Then they are cruel gods,” you said.

“Yes.”

“But they were kind once.”

His cheek rested against your hair. “When?”

You smiled against his chest and looked at the young weirwood glowing pale in the dusk.

“When they let a wolf pray beneath a dragon’s tree,” you said, “and a dragon learn to kneel beside her.”

He held you tighter.

The wind moved through the leaves with a whisper like old voices speaking from very far away.

Perhaps it was only wind.

Perhaps not.

In the years to come, the little tree would grow taller. Its roots would split the black earth deeper and deeper. One day a face would be carved into the pale trunk, solemn and red-eyed as all heart trees were, and northern men visiting Dragonstone would fall silent when they saw it. Children yet unborn would play beneath its branches and hear the tale of how a prince once dragged half the world to one stubborn island because his wife had nowhere to pray.

They would tell it as romance, perhaps.

Or as madness.

Most love, when looked at from a safe distance, resembled one or the other.

Only those who had stood inside it knew the truth; that love was not made gentler by misunderstanding, only hungrier. That obsession could bruise like a hand closing too tight, or guard like a wall built against winter winds. That care, when frightened of its own depth, sometimes disguised itself as coldness so severe it nearly became a cruelty. And that when truth at last was spoken, it did not make the old hurt vanish. It merely gave the hurt a home where it could stop wandering.

You learned that on Dragonstone.

Under a white tree in black soil.

In the arms of a man who had loved you badly before he learned to love you well, and whom you had mistaken nearly long enough to lose.

The sea kept beating at the cliffs below, as it always had and always would. The castle kept its watch over the narrow water. Ravens flew. Kings plotted. Winters came and went. The world remained what it was: hard, hungry, full of bargains.

But in the eastern garden of Dragonstone, where no godswood had ever stood before, a weirwood lifted red leaves to the southern sky.

The morning had ripened fair and bright over Summerhall, all pale gold sun and long clean banners stirring lazily from tower and parapet. The keep seemed gentler in such hours, before the day’s petitions gathered, before men began bringing their grievances and ambitions into its halls. Servants moved through the corridors with baskets of linen and polished flagons, maids with ribbons at their belts and boys carrying logs for hearths not yet in need of them. Through the open windows the scent of rosemary and warm stone drifted in from the gardens below, mingled with the faint sweetness of crushed grass and the distant, dusty smell of the yard where squires had already begun their morning’s bruising labor.

It ought to have been a peaceful hour.

It might even have remained one, had Prince Baelor not come striding into the family solar with the bright, dangerous confidence of a grandsire who loved his descendants dearly and therefore believed himself equal to every task involving them.

Your elder son had gone to him gladly enough, for he adored his grandsire with that easy, unquestioning devotion children gave to men who laughed readily and made the world feel broad and exciting. He had been perched already upon the carved window seat, half listening while Ser Duncan told him some account of horses from years past, when Baelor entered and opened his arms.

“There is my young prince,” Baelor had said, and the boy was across the room at once.

The younger one had been in your lap, drowsy with milk and recent sleep, all soft cheeks and milk-white hair and stubborn little fists. He was heavy even at rest. Not merely well-grown, but substantial. He had the serene, treacherous weight of a babe who appeared all softness until one attempted to lift him and discovered, too late, that he had been made out of lead and cream.

Baelor, seeing one grandson already in his arms and the other blinking up from your lap, had smiled with fatal confidence.

“Well,” he said, “I cannot walk the keep with only half my pride in hand.”

You had laughed then, because the day was bright, because Baelor looked so pleased with himself, and because it had not yet occurred to you that the gods were about to be amused.

Valarr, who had been standing near the hearth fastening one dark leather glove about his wrist, glanced over at once. “Father,” he said, and there was the faintest note in his voice, no more than the first warning tremor before a bridge gives way, “perhaps take them one at a time.”

Baelor waved him off.

“Nonsense. Have I gone soft, that I cannot manage my grandsons?”

Prince Maekar, seated not far off with a cup of watered wine in hand, watched over the rim with the sort of expression he reserved for tourneys, council sessions, and Aerion. It was not disapproval exactly, but a grave expectation that foolishness was imminent and that he would somehow be made to suffer it merely by witnessing it.

Aerion, lounging by the open archway with his shoulder against the stone and his arms folded, said nothing. Yet a certain stillness came into him, a particular brightness about the eyes that suggested he, too, sensed some coming entertainment and meant to enjoy it as long as none of the consequences touched him.

Baelor bent and gathered the babe from your lap with every appearance of ease.

For a single, glorious heartbeat, all was well.

Then the baby settled fully into his arms.

Baelor’s brows rose.

It was a very small movement, but those who knew him saw it at once. The slight hitch in breath. The abrupt tightening through the shoulders. The near-imperceptible shift of stance as he adjusted his footing like a man who had expected a cushion and instead found himself handed a sack of wet grain in embroidered swaddling.

Your elder son, already balanced happily upon Baelor’s other arm, turned his head and looked at his baby brother with keen interest, then back to his grandsire.

“He is heavy,” he observed.

Baelor, who had far too much pride to retreat while observed by half his family, let out a short laugh. “Only because he is thriving.”

“Thriving,” Aerion murmured under his breath, not quite softly enough, “like a castle-fed piglet.”

Maekar’s head turned.

Not sharply. That would have wasted energy. He merely looked at Aerion.

It was enough.

Aerion lifted one shoulder, as if to say he had spoken no falsehood and saw little reason to repent of accuracy merely because it had offended decorum.

Valarr, who knew his cousin too well, shut his eyes for one brief moment and then opened them again.

Baelor, determined now, resettled the child higher against his chest. The babe, delighted by motion and utterly trusting, gave a pleased little hum and seized a fold of Baelor’s sleeve in one plump fist. His white head gleamed in the sunlight. One blue eye and one brown fixed solemnly upon the room as if he were already judging it.

“There,” Baelor said, more to reassure his audience than himself. “You see? Perfectly manageable.”

“No one said otherwise,” Valarr answered, which was princely speech for put him down before you embarrass yourself.

But Baelor had already committed. That was always the danger of him. Once some bright notion seized his heart, he carried it forward with all the vigor of a man half his age and twice the confidence.

“I shall show them the eastern gallery,” he declared. “And the painted shields. And the old dragon carvings on the stair. A prince ought to know his home.”

“Both of them?” you asked, smiling despite yourself.

Baelor looked almost offended. “What, would you have me deprive one grandson for the comfort of my own arms?”

That was noble enough in sentiment, if not in wisdom.

So off he went, one boy riding easily upon his left arm, the younger clutched upon the right, and a small procession trailing after in varying states of fondness, alarm, and morbid curiosity. You rose and followed. Valarr came too, though with the resigned pace of a man already anticipating disaster. Duncan, drawn perhaps by the same instinct that led large dogs toward kitchen mishaps, came behind him. Egg slipped after them with bright eyes. Maekar set down his cup with the dignity of a man accepting punishment from the gods and followed as well. Aerion lingered last, because he would rather die than appear eager, though he came all the same.

The first part went well enough.

Baelor carried the boys through the sunlit passage above the inner court, speaking to them as though both were already of an age to understand. He pointed out old tapestries browned at the edges with time, told your elder son which king had built which tower, and informed the babe, with complete seriousness, that one day he must learn the difference between a dragon worked in red thread and one done in black. The elder listened earnestly. The younger gnawed upon his own fist and drooled onto Baelor’s collar.

Servants smiled as they passed. Guards bowed their heads. One old woman in the laundry gallery made the sign for luck when she saw the little princes borne along so proudly, as if Summerhall itself had decided to soften and grow domestic for an hour.

Then they came to the turning stair.

It was broad enough and shallow enough, with carved stone dragons crouched along the banister, their wings curled and their teeth worn smooth by generations of childish hands. Baelor paused there, perhaps intending some grand gesture, perhaps merely shifting the baby’s weight before continuing.

That was the moment the child chose to lean.

He did it with all the cheerful conviction of infancy, sudden and absolute, one plump leg kicking, one arm flinging outward toward the carved dragon on the post as if he had decided, in that instant, that he must possess it.

Baelor, taken unawares, adjusted too late.

The babe slipped.

Not far.

But enough.

Enough that Baelor’s grip lurched. Enough that the child’s weight tipped heavily downward. Enough that every soul upon that stair felt the bottom drop out of the morning.

“Oh—whoa, whoa—”

The words came from half a dozen mouths at once.

You made a sound that did not belong in princely corridors at all.

Valarr moved so fast the leather of his boots bit the stone. One hand shot out beneath the baby before he had dropped more than an inch, the other bracing Baelor’s arm. Duncan lunged forward behind him on pure instinct. Egg nearly collided with Duncan’s back in his own haste to see. Your elder son clutched at Baelor’s shoulder, eyes wide. Even the nearest guard stepped forward before remembering that to lay hands upon princes unbidden was its own kind of madness.

Prince Maekar, standing two steps below, flinched visibly.

It was not dramatic. He did not cry out. Yet the wince crossed his face plain as daylight, brief and sharp and unhidden, the expression of a man who had seen tourney lances splinter and sons thrown from horseback and who had no wish to add dropped royal infants to the tally of things he must endure before death.

By the time the moment had finished unfolding, the baby was safe.

Very safe.

Safe in that absurd way children sometimes were, where seven adults had nearly died of fright and he himself only blinked, offended by the interruption of his adventure.

Valarr had him now, one strong hand under his son’s bottom, the other firm across his back. The child stared up at him for a moment, surprised, then gave a happy little noise as if this had all been an elaborate game staged for his amusement.

Silence fell.

Baelor stood empty-armed on one side and your elder son still upon his other arm, blinking with all the sober concern of a boy not yet old enough to hide his feelings.

Valarr looked at his father.

He said nothing for one beat too long.

Then, very mildly, very clearly, he said, “Father. Please. If my wife had seen that cleanly, she would have had both our heads.”

For a moment there was nothing.

Then you heard Egg choke.

Duncan coughed into his fist.

Baelor, to his credit, had the grace to look ashamed for perhaps the length of half a heartbeat. After that, his pride reassembled itself quickly enough.

“Well,” he said, drawing himself up while your elder son still clung to him, “I am sorry. I did not think he would be this big.”

The words hung in the stairwell.

Valarr shut his eyes for the briefest moment. One could almost see the thought pass across his face: Father, why would you say that aloud?

Your own eyes widened at once, sharp with offended astonishment, as though for a heartbeat you could scarcely believe what you had just heard.

And from behind them all, low under his breath but not low enough, came Aerion’s voice:

“Because he is a chonky thing.”

Every head turned.

It happened as one motion. Duncan. Egg. You. Valarr. Even Baelor. Maekar last of all, but his was the look that mattered.

Aerion, caught squarely in the full regard of his kin, did not retreat. He merely lifted his chin the smallest fraction, as if prepared to defend himself in single combat over the right to describe the obvious.

Maekar stared at him with the cold weariness of a father whom the gods had cursed with a son both handsome and determined to be himself at every opportunity.

“Do not,” Maekar said, each word clipped clean as a blade, “call your kinsman a chonky thing.”

The word sounded profoundly unnatural in Maekar’s mouth. Even the guards had to lower their eyes and bite at the insides of their cheeks, for the whole of it had become too strange and too ridiculous to bear with proper dignity.

Aerion’s mouth twitched. That was the worst part. He was trying not to smile.

“I was speaking quietly.”

“Yes,” Egg said weakly, already beginning to fold in on himself, “that was the problem. We all heard it.”

That finished it.

You laughed first, because the fright had to go somewhere and laughter was kinder than tears. It came out breathless and bright, half relief, half scolding, half the sheer ridiculousness of seeing princes and heirs and great lords brought low by one very plump infant.

Baelor laughed next, loud and easy, because shame never held him long and the child was safe and the world had not ended. Your elder son, seeing that all was well, began to giggle too, burying his face against Baelor’s shoulder. Duncan let out one helpless bark of laughter before attempting to strangle it into something respectable and failing utterly. Egg leaned against the stair rail, one hand over his eyes, shoulders shaking.

Even Valarr gave in at last, enough that the stern line of his mouth softened and the light returned to his eyes as he looked down at the baby in his arms.

The baby, as if sensing triumph, patted his father’s jaw and crowed.

Baelor peered at him, then at Valarr, then at the babe again. “I swear he weighs more than your elder son did at twice that age.”

“You forget,” Maekar said dryly, “that your other grandson did not spend his infancy being admired into fatness.”

“He is not fat,” you said at once.

“He is well beloved,” Duncan offered, with the solemn diplomacy of a man trying to save everyone.

“Which is another way,” Aerion muttered, “of saying chon—”

“Aerion,” said Maekar.

Aerion looked almost wounded by the interruption. “I was going to say comfortable.”

“You were not,” said Egg.

“I might have.”

“You absolutely were not,” your elder son informed him, still laughing. “You said chonky.”

Traitorous child.

Aerion stared at him as if personally betrayed by blood.

Valarr shifted the baby higher and pressed a kiss against the fine white hair atop his son’s head. “You hear what they call you,” he murmured, low enough only those nearest could catch it. “And after your mother works so hard to keep you splendid.”

The baby blinked up at him, one fist still wrapped in dark cloth, with all the grave serenity of a prince secure in his own importance.

Baelor reached over then, more cautiously this time, and smoothed one broad hand over the child’s back. There was laughter still in him, but also something softer, something older. Love sat very plainly upon his face in that moment.

“He is a fine boy,” he said.

Valarr’s expression eased fully then. “He is.”

“And a heavier one than he looks,” Baelor added, which sent Egg into another fit and Duncan into a fresh cough and you into helpless laughter all over again.

Maekar closed his eyes once, very briefly, like a man beseeching the Seven for patience. When he opened them, though, even he was less severe than before. Not smiling, precisely. That would have been too much to ask of him before noon. But gentled.

“Next time,” he said to Baelor, “take one grandson and leave the other to his parents.”

Baelor sighed as though this were tyranny of the blackest sort. “You would strip an old man of joy.”

“I would spare the rest of us heart failure.”

“That too,” said Aerion.

Maekar gave him a look.

Aerion, who had apparently decided one reprimand per hour was his limit, raised both hands in surrender and leaned back against the carved dragon post.

Your elder son twisted round in Baelor’s arm to look at his baby brother, then asked very seriously, “May I still show him the painted shields later? When he is bigger?”

Valarr smiled at that. “You may show him everything.”

The boy nodded, satisfied.

And so the little procession re-formed, though with rather more care than before. Baelor kept only the elder this time and bore the change with noble resignation. Valarr carried the younger against his chest, where the child seemed entirely pleased to remain, warm and sturdy and adored. You walked beside them with your hand resting once upon the babe’s back just because you could. Duncan and Egg followed, still exchanging looks of disbelief whenever someone said the word heavy. Aerion came after with the lazy air of a man who wished it known he had not enjoyed himself, though the mutinous curve at one corner of his mouth betrayed him. Maekar brought up the rear like a stern shadow over all of it.

And Summerhall, bright under the morning sun, seemed to gather the sound of their laughter into its old stones and keep it there.

For all its towers, its blood, its pride, its dragons carved and living, it was in such moments that the place felt richest.

Not in ceremony.

Not in power.

But in the absurd, whole-hearted tenderness of one family nearly undone by the weight of a very beloved baby.

⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ ☽ ⋆ ☾ ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆ ☽ ⋆ ☾ ⋆｡ﾟ☁︎｡⋆｡ ﾟ☾

That night Summerhall had at last gone quiet.

The torches in the outer passages had burned low, their light gone soft and golden against the stone, and the great keep seemed to breathe more slowly once the household had retired behind carved doors and heavy curtains. Somewhere far below, in the dark belly of the castle, a servant shut a distant door with careful hands. The sound traveled faintly upward and was gone. Outside, the wind moved warm through the gardens and set the cypresses whispering. From the stables there came now and then the muted shift of horses in straw.

Valarr found his father in the long gallery outside the family apartments, standing beside one of the arched windows with a cup in hand and the moonlight silvering one side of his face. Baelor had shed the greater weight of the day from his shoulders. Without court around him, without petitioners and retainers and watchful eyes, he looked only what he had always been beneath the dignity of his rank: a man of easy warmth, broad feeling, and occasional ruinous confidence.

He glanced over at the sound of footsteps and smiled at once.

“There you are. I thought you’d gone to bed.”

“I had meant to.”

Baelor’s smile widened. “Ah.”

Valarr came to stand beside him, one hand resting briefly on the stone sill. Beyond the window, the courtyard lay washed in pale light, banners stirring faintly above the roofs and towers. He was quiet for a moment, as if considering how best to begin.

Baelor, being Baelor, ruined that silence almost at once.

“If you have come to scold me again,” he said, “I remind you that the child did not fall.”

Valarr let out a slow breath through his nose.

“No,” he said. “He did not. By the mercy of the gods and the speed of my reflexes.”

Baelor gave a low laugh into his cup. “You are beginning to sound like your grandsire.”

“I should hope not.”

“You do when you are vexed.”

Valarr turned his head and looked at him then, pale-eyed and patient in the way that meant he was not patient at all.

“Father.”

Baelor’s laughter softened, though the amusement still lingered in his face. “Very well. I admit it. I misjudged him.”

“That is a graceful way of saying you nearly dropped my son on a stair.”

“I nearly did no such thing.”

Valarr’s brow lifted.

Baelor paused, reconsidered, then amended with dignity, “I came nearer to mishap than I had intended.”

“That,” said Valarr, “is not as reassuring as you seem to think.”

For a moment Baelor looked as though he might laugh again, but something in his son’s face held him back. He lowered the cup a little.

“You are truly angry with me, then.”

Valarr was silent.

Not angry, exactly. Not in the hot and fleeting way of boys and cousins and foolish court frictions. What sat in him now was older than that, heavier, shaped by marriage and fatherhood and the strange terror of loving something so small that one could imagine losing it in a single breath.

“At the stair,” he said at last, “I thought only that if he slipped—” He stopped there, jaw tightening a little. “And after, I thought of my wife.”

Baelor’s expression changed.

The jesting ease in him gentled, then receded.

Valarr looked back out across the moonlit court rather than at his father. “She was frightened enough already. You saw her.”

“I did.”

“And then everyone laughed.”

Baelor made a faint sound. “He was safe.”

“He was,” Valarr agreed. “That is why they laughed.” His mouth quirked once, without much humor. “And I laughed too, in the end. I know how it looked. I know no cruelty was meant. But she has been strange of late where the babe is concerned.”

Baelor listened without interruption now.

Valarr continued more quietly, “She thinks he is too large.”

Baelor blinked once. “Too large?”

“Yes.”

“He is a babe.”

“I am aware of that.”

Baelor’s mouth twitched.

Valarr gave him a warning look.

“I am trying,” Baelor said, with some effort, “not to say anything unhelpful.”

“That would be a first.”

Baelor huffed a laugh despite himself, then grew sober again. “Go on.”

Valarr folded his arms. “She frets over everything. Whether he feeds too much. Whether he is too heavy when she carries him. Whether the nurses notice. Whether the maids talk. Whether everyone thinks she has indulged him too much, held him too much, loved him too much.” He glanced aside then, and there was something weary and tender in him both at once. “As though a child may be ruined by being cherished.”

Baelor’s face softened fully then.

“Ah,” he said, and this time there was no laughter in it at all.

For a while neither spoke.

The wind moved lightly through the open arch and stirred the edge of Valarr’s sleeve.

At last Baelor said, “And I made it worse.”

Valarr looked at him. “Not gravely. Not beyond mending. But yes.”

His father exhaled.

“I only meant that he is a healthy little thing.”

“I know.”

“And he is somewhat…” Baelor paused, searching perhaps for a word less dangerous than the ones used earlier that day.

Valarr looked at him steadily.

Baelor tried again. “Round.”

Against his will, some fragment of amusement returned to Valarr’s face. “Father.”

“Well, he is.”

“I know he is.”

Baelor spread one hand helplessly. “Then what would you have me do? Pretend I have not got eyes?”

“No. Only do not say it before my wife.”

Baelor stared at him for a moment, then barked a laugh before he could stop himself.

Valarr closed his eyes.

“Come now,” Baelor said, still half laughing. “He is chubby.”

“I know.”

“And very much so.”

“I know.”

“And built like a—”

“Do not finish that sentence.”

Baelor had the grace to look somewhat ashamed, though not ashamed enough to cease being amused. “You cannot blame me overmuch. The boy is magnificent.”

“He is,” Valarr said at once, and with enough feeling that Baelor’s mirth quieted again.

The words had come too quickly to be anything but true.

Valarr’s gaze had gone distant now, as if seeing not the gallery but the bedchamber beyond, where the fire had burned low and the curtains breathed softly with the night air. His wife would be there, perhaps asleep at last, perhaps not. Perhaps lying wakeful as she often did now, one hand against the cradle and some needless worry turning over in her mind.

“I would not change a thing about him,” Valarr said. “Not his cheeks. Not his hands. Not the weight of him. Not the way he goes heavy and warm when he sleeps against her shoulder. He is exactly as he ought to be.”

Baelor said nothing.

Valarr’s mouth softened then, and despite the late hour and the quiet there came into him that unmistakable look of a man in love beyond all dignity or cure.

“And if she is troubled,” he added, “then I must spend half my time persuading her he is perfect, and the other half persuading her she is.”

Baelor watched him, something warm and knowing passing over his face.

“That,” he said, “sounds like marriage.”

Valarr let out a faint breath that might have been a laugh.

“It is exhausting.”

“It seems to suit you.”

“It does,” Valarr said.

Then, after the briefest pause, he added with perfect seriousness, “Which is why I would prefer not to spend my evenings repairing damage done by my father when I might instead be back in bed with my wife.”

Baelor stared at him.

Then he threw back his head and laughed outright, warm and booming in the moonlit hush of the gallery, so that Valarr had to glance once down the corridor in case some poor soul had been woken by it.

“Oh, that is the truth of it, is it?” Baelor said.

“Yes.”

“You did not come here only out of concern for the child.”

“I came here out of concern for my peace.”

Baelor laughed harder. “Gods preserve me.”

Valarr endured it with long-suffering dignity.

“At least you are honest.”

“I am married. Honesty is cheaper than failure.”

That seemed only to amuse Baelor the more. He wiped once at the corner of his eye and shook his head.

“You are very far gone.”

“I have children. That is usually a sign.”

“No,” Baelor said, still smiling. “I mean with her.”

And there it was, said plainly, without mockery.

Valarr did not answer at once. He looked again into the courtyard, where the moonlight lay white across the stone and the shadows of the towers stretched long and black.

“Yes,” he said at last. “I am.”

Baelor’s smile gentled into something deeper then, something touched perhaps by memory. “Good.”

The word sat softly between them.

After a moment Baelor lifted his cup, then thought better of it and set it aside upon the sill instead.

“I will be more careful,” he said. “With the babe. And with my tongue.”

Valarr glanced at him. “Truly?”

“I said I would.”

“You also said this morning that you could carry both boys without issue.”

Baelor drew himself up. “And for most of the morning, I did.”

Valarr looked at him for one long beat, then laughed despite himself.

It was quiet laughter, worn down by the hour and the day and all that fatherhood had made of him, but real. Baelor smiled to hear it.

“I shall apologize to her properly tomorrow,” Baelor said. “Not in a way that makes matters worse.”

“That last condition matters most.”

“I know how to speak to women, boy.”

“Do you?”

Baelor gave him an affronted look. “I managed your mother.”

Valarr’s mouth curved. “That is not the same as success.”

Baelor made a noise of theatrical offense.

Then, because tenderness always sat very near the surface in him, he reached out and clasped Valarr once at the shoulder.

“He is a fine child,” he said. “And she is a good mother. Better than she knows.”

Valarr’s expression eased.

“I know,” he said quietly. “I only need her to know it too.”

For a little while longer they stood there, father and son, with the hush of Summerhall all around them and the moon keeping silver watch over stone and garden and sleeping towers. Then Baelor gave his shoulder a final squeeze and stepped back.

“Go on, then.”

Valarr glanced at him.

“To bed,” Baelor said, with a wicked glint returning at last to his eyes. “Before your wife decides your absence is my fault too.”

Valarr shook his head once, though there was laughter in him now.

“It usually is.”

“Ungrateful boy.”

“Good night, Father.”

“Good night, son.”

Valarr turned then and went back down the quiet corridor toward his chambers, where warmth waited, and the cradle, and the soft-breathed stillness of the woman he loved. And Baelor, left alone in the moonlit gallery, smiled to himself and murmured into the dark:

“Chubby little prince.”

You had always been kind, had always been taught to find kindness in everything. To see the good in everyone. You were a sweet flower, as your mother would say, with none of the cunning of a fox, despite your house sigil. You were the perfect lady, kind, caring, beautiful and always doing what was expected of you. Even when it meant marrying the king's youngest son, becoming his second wife and mother to a large brood of children, the oldest of which was closer in age to you than your future husband. 

You had looked on the brightside, as you always did, you thought of a man who might grow to love you, a man who perhaps would be like the fairy tales you read as a child, a man willing to go to war for you. You thought of his younger children; perhaps they would grow to love you as a motherly figure, not as a mother. You knew you could never replace her, but you hoped perhaps there would be great happiness in your life. Even if you were to be the notoriously hard and tough man they call “the anvil”. 

You grew hopefully as you journeyed to the crownlands, thinking of the life you would live as a princess. 

You had never met the man that would be your husband, nor any royal to be exact, you would meet him for the first time on your wedding day. But your parents hadn't met till their wedding, and now they were the picture of adoration. You were the youngest child of five, though the only girl, and you had spent your whole life watching your brothers fall in love, allowed to marry ladies of their choosing. 

And yes, you were idealistic, but why wouldn’t you be? You have never had to worry about anything, never had to know a single second of sadness. 

You were filled with a sense of nervous joy as you journeyed to the sept, dressed in a pure white gown, with pink accents throughout your gown, small pink flowers laced throughout your dress, and your veil a soft blush. On your shoulders sat your maiden cloak, the blue a tricking contrast against your dress, the fox of your house sat proud on your back as your father escorted you into the sept. 

Prince Maekar stood tall as you walked through the sept, his gaze unmoving as you stood in the door, waiting for the orchestra to start the procession. 

He was far more handsome than you had expected. Though his face was stern, his cheeks were marred with scars, but they did not take away from his looks. He was thickly built, his silver hair was cut shorter than you had expected, but his eyes were what drew you in. As you walked closer, your father's grip on your arm grew tighter. The closer he got to having to let you go, you noticed the lightness of his eyes, you couldn’t tell if they were blue or purple. Your gaze locked with his as you finally approached the altar, your father hesitantly letting go of your arm, placing a soft kiss on your brow. 

Maekar's jaw ticked as you stood before him, his gaze assessing you as you greeted him with a soft smile. Your hands were joined with his as the septon began the ceremony, the roughness of his hands against the softness of your own. 

The septon droned on as you memorised every inch of your new husband, taking in the sternness of his face, how he seemed permanently annoyed by everything around him, how his hands were holding on to yours but seemed to play with your fingers as the septon spoke, he was doing it mindlessly it seemed as he stopped the second you drew attention to it. 

He spoke the vows quickly, his voice sharp and eager to get it over with. Your smile faltered. 

He kissed you quickly, barely touching your lips before moving back, and the smile faded from your face. 

The carriage ride to the red keep was silent, with him letting go of your arm as soon as you stepped inside. He sat opposite you, his eyes not once looking at you. You had tried to talk to him, but every response was a simple grunt. Your smile didn’t return to your face. You, a woman who had never stopped smiling her whole life, who had knights and lords falling at your feet to speak to you, and now your own lord husband didn’t even dare to look in your direction. 

The rest of the night was much of the same, your husband didn’t once ask you to dance, didn’t utter a single word, at least to you. He spoke with his brother Baelor and his children. But not with you.

You loved to dance, never had you had a feast, let alone a wedding, where you didn’t dance the whole night.  Instead, you sat and watched, drinking your wine glass until it was emptied and refilled over and over again. The only people you spoke to the whole night were Maekar's sons, Daeron and Aerion. Daeron, who seemed to delight in your drinking, had made you laugh a few times but had easily moved on to some of his drunkard friends. And Aerion, who leered at you and spoke something about being pumped full of dragons in no time, as he stared at the neckline of your dress.  Your brothers and sister in laws circled the room and spoke kindly to you, but stayed no longer than a few minutes, as was appropriate, it seems. 

The hours droned on slowly, and before you knew it, the bedding ceremony was called. 

Maekar had merely grunted and stood up, his hand flexing slightly before he offered it to you, leading you out to the floor before the rabble of lords who had been eyeing you all night could get their hands on you. 

You had participated in your fair share of bedding ceremonies, you knew what to expect, and yet as they pulled your clothes off you, leaving you entirely bare as you pushed your way into your marital chambers. Maekar sat on the bed waiting for you, wearing far more clothes than you. 

You blushed, reaching to cover yourself as you felt Maeker’s gaze on you. He cleared his throat, standing from the bed, and pulling at the laces of the breeches he still wore. 

“Husband,” you greeted, your smile returning, though feeling far more awkward than ever before. 

“Wife,” he nodded, the first words he had said to you outside of your vows.

“What do we, um, what do we do now?” you asked, awkwardly, your hands covering you up. 

“We consummate,” he grunted, pulling back the covers of the bed and getting in. He stared at you, waiting for you to move. You didn’t. “You do know what is to happen?” he asked, his voice a little awkward but not lacking any of its coldness. 

“Of course I do, I just…” You trailed off, slowly moving towards the bed.

“What?” he asked harshly. You flinched back, halting your steps slightly. 

“Nothing,” you mumbled as you finally approached the bed, settling in under the covers, grateful for the sheet to hide your body. You played with the covers, following the pattern with your fingers, waiting for Maekar to move. 

He sighed as he looked at you, his hand reaching out to stop your movements. “Stop that,” he ordered. You nodded, stopping instantly. You felt the weight of reality settle into your shoulders, realising for the first time in your life that optimism didn't always lead to happiness. 

Makear sighed before he crawled over to your side of the bed. 

He didn’t kiss you, didn't hold you to him, nor did he whisper sweet nothings in your ears. The consummation was over before you knew it, and Maekar, as quickly as he arrived, left. 

He didn’t look at you when he left, said no words, bid no farewells. He just left. Leaving you alone in a room that wasn’t your own, in a keep that wasn't your own. And a marital bed that you felt would never live up to the dreams you held in your heart. 

You cried yourself to sleep that night. 

It was such an oddity for you to cry or feel sadness. The last time you felt sad was when your cat died when you were ten. Never once had you felt sadness this great. Never once did you cry yourself to sleep, praying no one could hear your cries echoing across the hall. 

You knew love and warmth grew with him, but you hadn’t expected there to be such coldness. You hadn’t expected there to be a wall of ice between you, a wall so thick it rivalled the wall in the north. 

You began to question everything your parents had told you. Everything they had told you about your marriage night was a lie. What else would be? 

You got little sleep that night before the maids came in at dawn and awoke you softly. Though strangers, they treated you softly, bathing you in a lavender-scented bath. They wash away the small trickles of blood between your thighs. Wash the tear stain marks off your face. And spoke in hushed tones as they prepared you for breakfast. 

You were the first to arrive, settling at the end of the table, your gaze flickering across the room, noting all the tapestries and art that adorned the walls. The table was filled with fruits and berries, and pastries of all sorts filled the table. 

You contemplated filling your plate before everyone else joined, you were hungry, having eaten little at the wedding feast. 

But before you could reach for even a single grape, the door opened and in walked your husband. His step faltered when he saw you. His gaze took note of your pink gown and the soft smile that graced your features as he appeared. 

Prepah's last night was a blip, maybe he was drunk or nervous. You may as well start today anew. Perhaps your sadness from last night was a one-time occurrence and would quickly be forgotten. “Husband,” you greeted, standing up as he walked towards you, taking a seat at the head of the table. 

“Wife,” he greeted in turn. Grunting as he sat down, reaching to fill his plate. 

“How did you sleep?” you asked, following his lead and filling your own. 

“Fine,” he grunted, not looking at you. The door opened as you went to speak, his younger children running in with their Septa. They called for their father as they ran in, stopping short as they saw you. Aegon bowed, and Daella and Rhae both curtseyed. “My lady,” they greeted, before rushing to fit for a seat next to Maekar. Daella won, sitting closest to him and Rhae next to her. Aegon moved to sit next to you, sighing in defeat. And Aemon, who wandered in with a book in hand, moved to sit beside Aegon. 

The children rambled on over breakfast, asking you all sorts of questions and answering each one you had for them. You smiled softly at their rambles, though your gaze turned to Maekar, hoping to see some softness, hoping to see that he wished to talk to you as much as his children did. Instead, he scowled the second your gaze met his. 

He left the second he was done, not waiting for his elder children to walk in. He ruffled his daughter's hair as he walked by, bidding each of his children farewell. Only side-eyeing you as he left. 

Perhaps last night wasn’t a blip after all. 

He was fucked, totally and completely fucked. He was the second, he saw you walk into the sept in your pretty white gown covered in pink. The second he saw your smile, the second he touched you.

He didn't need another wife, he had six children, had loved before and had absolutely no need for a wife. And yet you appeared. His parents had wed him off and introduced you, a perfect flower from the reach. Eager to be plucked. So perfect and so entirely unlike him. 

He didn’t want a wife and had hoped you would be easy to ignore. And yet as you spoke your pretty words to him, he realised you wouldn't be, he realised that you were as sweet and kind as his father had said. And yet you were stuck with him. He was cold, colder since Dyanna had died. You couldnt possible be happy with the arrangement. Happy with him as your husband. Perhaps you would be happy if you were a wife in name only. Then you would be happy, and not chained to him for the rest of his life, and miserable for it. 

And yet you, with your smiles that could outshine the sun, seemed to make him melt. 

You were too soft, too sweet, too happy. He had noticed it easily, you would hate him, resent him, and he wouldn’t blame you. Not when he never wanted to marry. 

He would do his duty and nothing more, and yet last night, when he had done that, guilt ate at him. It was clear you wanted a sweet, loving husband, but he couldn't be that, wouldn't be that.  And yet when you greeted him this morning, with gentle eyes and a nervous smile, he almost took back his desire to be a husband in name only. When he noticed his younger children adoring you, how easily you spoke with them, eager to know them. To know him. 

Gods, it would have been easier had you been cold, had you been mean or ugly. But you were anything but. Beautiful, as happy as the sun, kind and caring, and always dressed in pink. And he hated all of it. Or atleast thats what he told himself. 

He tried to be as distant and cold as he could be, and yet time and time again, he was drawn back to you. As time went by and you had all travelled to Summerhall, he had made sure you had your own chambers. Not once did he visit you. Not once did he seek you out. 

And yet you were always there. In his library, his dining hall, and even with his children. You often found yourself in the garden at the same time as him, or standing there at the exact moment he decided to look out of it. Always there, always kind and soft. And he hated it. Hated how you drew him in, no matter what you did. Hated how he fucked his fist to you every night, your name and face on his lips.