WispyCandle’s Art/Blog

Then the pain starts settling in.

At first it's distant, muted beneath the fading anesthesia. But slowly, steadily, it crawls up your thigh like fire spreading beneath your skin. Deep. Throbbing. Relentless. It coils around the muscle and bone until even breathing feels difficult. You suck in a sharp breath through clenched teeth, your fingers twitching weakly against the stiff hospital sheets.

“We managed to save your leg and restore blood flow to the severed artery. That tourniquet saved your life, Lieutenant.”

You can finally make out enough of the doctor's words to understand him, though opening your eyes feels like dragging sandpaper across your skull. When you manage it anyway, the harsh fluorescent lights overhead stab into your vision so violently you immediately regret it. White. Endless white. It burns behind your eyes.

“You’ll be off active duty for several months,” the doctor continues, voice calm and practiced. “You’ll need physiotherapy. We can discuss the details of your recovery before discharge.”

His voice sounds farther away now, as though he’s standing at the end of a tunnel instead of beside your bed.

“Okay,” you rasp out, "thank you."

Even speaking hurts.

You try shifting your weight, desperate to find a position that doesn’t feel like someone is driving nails through your leg, but the slightest movement sends a violent flare of pain through your thigh. Your entire body tenses instinctively. A strained groan escapes your throat before you can stop it.

The doctor offers you a sympathetic look, scribbles something onto the clipboard tucked beneath his arm, then finally leaves you alone.

Silence settles over the room or something close to silence. Machines continue humming softly around you. Somewhere outside, muffled voices drift down the hallway alongside the squeak of rubber soles against polished floors. The IV taped to your arm pulls unpleasantly every time you move your arm and your mouth tastes stale and metallic.

You should probably sleep, let the anesthetic finish wearing off, but even lifting a hand to rub at your burning eyes feels exhausting.

With a frustrated exhale, you give up trying to get comfortable. Nothing helps. The pain isn't worth the effort. Instead, you slowly roll your head from side to side against the pillow, trying to ease the stiffness lodged in your neck.

That’s when you notice the figure in the bed several meters away.

At first, your blurry vision struggles to make sense of him. Just a shape beneath dim hospital blankets. Broad shoulders. Dark clothes folded over the chair beside the bed. Then your focus sharpens enough to realize, the figure belongs to a man. Your brows knit together immediately—you could’ve sworn the men’s and women’s recovery rooms were separated.

As if sensing your stare, the man slowly turns his head toward you.

The movement is sluggish, clearly painful. His face comes into view little by little, littered with scars, rough around the edges and pale beneath the hospital lighting. There’s faint surprise in his eyes when he realizes you’re awake, quickly followed by visible confusion at the expression you’re giving him, like he's the reason you're stuck in that hospital bed.

Before he can tell you off for it, you speak first.

“Why are you here?”

Your voice comes out rough and hoarse, stripped of its usual sharp authority.

“Too many casualties,” he says after a moment, his tone low and gravelly. “Hospital’s full. Had to stick you in a spare room.”

You blink slowly, processing his words through the lingering fog in your head, followed by a soft nod.

“Okay.”

And just like that, silence returns.

─☆*:・

You can’t sleep, not even close.

The pain keeps gnawing at your leg, the mattress feels too stiff, the IV needle in your arm is irritating enough to make you want to rip it out entirely, the smell of disinfectant hangs thick in the air and the fluorescent lights buzz faintly overhead. Every distant sound from the hallway drills into your skull.

But worse than all of it is the realization sitting heavy in your chest: You can’t walk—not yet, at least.

A lieutenant reduced to lying helplessly in a hospital bed. Useless. The thought sours your mood almost instantly.

Eventually, the boredom outweighs your irritation.

You glance toward the man again. “What happened to you?”

He doesn’t look at you this time.

“Got shot,” his answer is short, straight forward and his tone awfully flat. “Upper abdomen,” he adds a second later, followed by a quiet groan as he carefully shifts against the bed.

“Oh, fuck,” you mutter weakly.

“Yeah,” despite his—still flat—tone, there’s dry humor buried underneath it. “Didn’t hit anything vital, though.”

“Lucky, I guess.”

“Still feels like shit.”

A breathy laugh escapes you before you can stop it, and to your surprise, the corner of his mouth twitches upward into something resembling half a smile. The room feels a slightly less unbearable after that.

“What’s your rank?” you ask once the silence stretches too long again.

“Lieutenant.”

That catches your attention immediately. You study him more carefully now, eyes tracing over the sharp lines of his profile. The broad frame, the military posture even while half-drugged and injured, the roughness in his voice.

“SAS?” you ask cautiously and he gives a small grunt of confirmation.

Weird. You know the faces of almost every lieutenant attached to the force. At the very least, you know their names, but his face doesn’t ring any bells at all.

It takes a few moments before the realization clicks into place, making your eyes narrow slightly.

“You’re Simon Riley?”

That finally gets a proper reaction out of him. His head turns toward you again, slower this time, and you catch the unmistakable flicker of surprise crossing his features. A tad of confusion and suspicion too.

How the hell did you figure that out?

“I’m pretty sure it’s you,” you continue, voice quieter now. “Only lieutenant whose face I’ve never seen.”

For a moment, he just stares at you. “Yes. It’s me.”

Your brows lift in amusement despite the pain pulsing through your leg.

Well.

That’s one hell of a roommate assignment.

─☆*:・

The Simon 'Ghost' Riley is lying three beds away from you in hospital issued clothes that looked one size too small.

The name alone carried enough reputation to make most recruits stand straighter. Half the stories about him sounded fabricated, stitched together from barracks gossip and post-mission exaggerations. Cold as winter steel. Mean enough to scare grown men into silence. Efficient enough to make enemies disappear before they realized they were being hunted.

“You’re staring,” he says flatly.

You blink, realizing you absolutely are. “Just making sure you’re real.”

His visible eye narrows slightly. “Disappointed?”

“A little,” you admit. “Thought you’d be uglier.” A rough chuckle leaves him, it's low and brief, like the sound surprised even him.

“You always this chatty?” he asks eventually.

His voice is rough with exhaustion, scraped raw around the edges like gravel dragged across concrete. The words come slower now, dulled by painkillers and fatigue, but there’s still something dryly amused underneath them.

You shift slightly against the stiff hospital pillow, immediately regretting it when your thigh throbs in protest beneath the layers of bandages. The pain has gone from sharp to heavy now, deep and pulsing, like someone lodged molten metal into the bone and left it there to cool.

“Just heavily medicated, don't get used to it,” you mumble and he just grunts in response.

The fluorescent lights overhead buzz faintly above you, one of them flickering every few seconds in a way that’s starting to feel personal. The air conditioner hums somewhere near the ceiling, pushing cold recycled air through the room that smells faintly of antiseptic, old coffee, and hospital linens washed a thousand times too many.

You slowly turn your head toward him, narrowing your eyes. He looks terrible. Not in an insulting way—he got shot, and he looks like it, which is absolutely normal. His skin’s paler than before beneath the harsh lighting, shadows sitting dark beneath his eyes. The bandaging visible above the collar of his shirt disappears beneath the fabric wrapping around his torso. One arm rests across his abdomen instinctively in a protective manner.

Somehow he still manages to look intimidating lying half-dead in a hospital bed. Honestly impressive. You can't imagine how much more intimidating he gets when he's on duty. You have to admit: the mask really matches his demeanor.

"You're staring. Again."

"I've got the Ghost laying a few meters away, I'd say it's understandable"

"I'd say it's rude."

“You're the man people describe like some kind of cryptid in tactical gear talking to me. It is understandable.”

Simon’s brow furrows almost immediately.

“You're dramatic.”

"Oh bollocks," you momentarily let you head drop to the side, your entire face visible to him, “you've got quite the reputation.”

His lips crack into a faint smirk, "the mask helps."

"Definitely," you agree with him, “probably terrorize recruits with it.”

"Efficiently so," that earns him a low chuckle from you.

You sink lower into the pillow with a tired exhale, letting your head rest fully against the mattress for the first time since waking up. The pain killers are finally settling in properly now, smoothing the jagged corners off everything around you. The pain’s still there, buried beneath your skin and stitched into your leg, but it feels farther away. Manageable enough not to grit your teeth through every breath.

Your limbs feel strangely heavy, oddly warm, like gravity suddenly doubled. It's probably the medication making you groggy.

Ghost watches you from across the room for a moment before speaking again.

“You look less murderous now.”

You crack one eye open toward him. “Don’t worry,” you mumble sleepily. “Still judging your face.”

"Scars 're a turn off?" he raises his eyebrows.

"Quite the opposite" you respond, the words escaping your lips before your brain could process them.

"What if I told you my back's filled with 'em?"

"Don't tease me like that, lieutenant."

Then air leaves his nose sharply in something dangerously close to a laugh—not a full one, though. He probably hasn’t laughed properly since birth, but it’s there enough to count and you look absurdly pleased with yourself.

─☆*:・

Morning arrives without permission, not gently either.

Your eyes crack open reluctantly, every inch of your body still wrapped in that strange post-surgery heaviness where even existing feels physically expensive. Pale morning light bleeds weakly through the narrow hospital window, washing the room in cold blue-grey instead of the aggressive fluorescent white from yesterday, since the overhead lights are off.

The world feels quieter, softer around the edges. You're not used to this. Staying in bed after waking up, taking in the silence of the early morning. It feels odd. You try to enjoy the calmness of it all, until you do the mistake of moving your legs to get comfortable. Pain immediately shoots through your veins in your entire body, tensing up, a low groan escaping your lips, "fuck me."

"Mornin' to you too." the gruff voice of your roommate slices through the quiet morning.

His shirt hangs crooked across broad shoulders, his buzzcut already slightly overgrown from being stuck in bed for the last five days. The morning light catches against the rough edges of his scars, softening some and sharpening others. He looks less intimidating half-awake like this.

“Go back to sleep,” you groan, eyes shut tightly, waiting patiently for the pain to subside.

“Tempting,” he mumbles, "should I call a nurse?"

"No. I'm fine."

"Doesn't look like it."

"Shut up."

The agonizing pain finally dies down and you feel like you can breath again.

"I hate this."

"Everyone does."

The room falls into a quieter silence afterward—not awkward this time. Outside the window, rain taps softly against the glass in uneven rhythms. Somewhere farther down the hall, a nurse laughs at something muffled beyond your hearing.

“First time being benched?” he leans back carefully against the pillows, studying you for a moment with that same unreadable expression he seems to wear instead of normal human emotions. You don't glance toward him, it feels wrong—being this vulnerable, exposed. Instead you stare straight ahead at the ceiling tiling, "that obvious?”

“A bit.”

You exhale slowly through your nose. “I don’t know how to sit still,” the honesty comes easier than expected. Maybe because neither of you has enough energy left to pretend much right now. "Feels wrong," you admit quietly.

Simon gives a faint hum of understanding. It's not out of pity for you, he knows exactly what you're feeling.

“Yeah,” he says after a moment. “Gets ugly in your head when you stop moving.”

The words settle heavily between you.

You look at him more carefully, past all the scars, the sharp edges of his features. You stare at the exhaustion carved into his eyes, the stiffness in every movement he makes, the instinctive way his hand still guards his side even while resting, like his brain refuses to believe he's safe. Now, Ghost feels less like a myth and more like a man held together by scar tissue and stubbornness.

"Any advice?" you ask, returning to lazily staring at the ceiling.

"Try not to kill yourself."

"Oh, okay," you exhale deeply, "you've got more pessimistic shit to say?"

"It's true."

"Who on this bloody earth gives that as a piece of advice?"

"I'm no motivational speaker." he defends himself.

"Could've fooled me," that makes him huff out another breath through his nose.

Hours pass strangely after that. Slow and syrup-thick beneath pain medication and rainstorms and terrible television neither of you actually watches, but the noise is a good enough distraction from your thoughts. Nurses drift in and out checking vitals. Time moves a lot differently when you're stuck in a hospital bed.

—☆*:・

 By the third day, you learn two things about Simon Riley.

Firstly, he wakes up violently alert, not like a soldier ready to fight the enemy, but more like a man trying to fight his life's demons away.

One second asleep, the next fully conscious like somebody flipped a switch inside him. Eyes sharp, his breathing steady and his hand already halfway toward the knife that isn’t there before reality catches up.

The first time you witness it, a nurse accidentally drops a clipboard outside the door. The crack echoes down the hallway. It has Simon jolting upright instantly with a sharp inhale, every muscle in his body locking tight enough to snap steel cables, eyes darting wildly around the room for half a second before settling, before he realizes he's at the hospital and the tension drains in visible increments, even though his jaw remains tight.

You pretend not to notice. Mostly because the brief glimpse of genuine panic beneath all that control feels strangely private.

Secondly, he hates asking for help with almost pathological dedication.

You discover this around noon when he decides, for reasons known only to himself and whatever ancient curse fuels male stubbornness, that he can absolutely reach the cabinet across the room without assistance.

Despite being four days post-op with a bullet wound on his chest and the shit ton of painkillers.

You wake up from a light nap to find him standing. Debatable if that's even considered standing.

One hand grips the IV pole while the other braces hard against the wall, his shoulders tense. His face has gone concerningly pale with effort.

You stare at him for a long moment.

“Riley.”

“I got it.”

You shift slightly, as much as your wound will allow you, "Simon."

"Said I got it."

“You look like one inconvenience away from meeting God.”

“'M fine.”

“I'll smash the IV poll on your head. Go sit down.”

His visible eye narrows immediately.

“Thought ya leg didn’t work.”

“Temporarily,” you shoot back. “Unlike your brain apparently.”

A dangerous silence follows.

Then, somehow, he takes another step.

Pain flashes across his face so quickly most people probably wouldn’t catch it, but you do. His breathing shallows almost immediately afterward.

You sigh heavily.

“Congratulations,” you mutter sarcastically, "you're a fuckin' idiot."

“I was getting water.”

“There is literally a button beside your bed to ask for help.”

“I can do it on my own.”

You blink at him.

"No, you can't. You got shot, for fuck's sake.” you say flatly. “You’re allowed to ask for help, just—go sit down.”

His mouth twitches faintly at that. You’re strangely caring with him. Part of him likes it more than he wants to admit. Likes that his name, and whatever ugly reputation dragged itself all the way to your team, didn’t make you flinch. Likes, embarrassingly enough, the way you called him a fucking idiot like it was the easiest thing in the world.

But there’s another part of him that hates this. Hates that the first time he meets someone as pretty as you, he’s a complete bloody wreck who can barely stand on his own two feet. You got shot and still somehow look gorgeous. He got shot and looks half-dead.

Doesn’t feel fair.

─☆*:・

The next morning is quiet, wrapped in rain and pale grey light.

The hospital room looks softer this early, less clinical—sort off. The harsh fluorescent lights overhead remain switched off, leaving only the dim glow of dawn filtering through the wide window across the room. Rainwater slides slowly down the glass in uneven trails, blurring the city skyline into streaks of silver and charcoal. Somewhere far below, traffic hums faintly through wet streets. Tires hiss against pavement. A siren wails in the distance before fading back into the rain.

You wake slowly at first, trapped somewhere between sleep and consciousness while pain medication drags heavily through your veins. Everything feels warm and sluggish beneath the blankets. Your thoughts drift lazily in disconnected fragments. The scent of antiseptic lingers thick in the air, tangled with stale coffee from the nurses’ station and the faint metallic smell of rain pressing against the cracked window seal.

Then the pain hits—one brutal pulse tears through your thigh hard enough to wrench a broken sound from your throat before your eyes are even fully open.

Breath vanishes from your lungs instantly.

Your body locks around the agony, muscles seizing beneath the blankets while another pulse crashes through your leg like a live wire buried beneath skin and bone. Heat spreads viciously through the injury, deep and swollen and unbearable, pressure building inside the muscle until it feels like the stitches themselves might split apart.

Your eyes snap open.

The ceiling above you blurs immediately.

“Oh, fuck—”

The words barely make it out.

Your fingers twist violently into the sheets as instinct takes over, your body curling inward around the pain despite knowing movement only makes it worse. The bandages around your thigh suddenly feel too tight. Too hot. Every heartbeat sends another sickening throb through the damaged muscle, radiating upward into your hip and lower spine until even breathing becomes difficult.

Cold sweat prickles along the back of your neck.

Your stomach twists sharply.

Another pulse hits.

White flashes behind your eyes.

For one terrifying second you genuinely think you might pass out.

Across the room, you hear movement, it's fast, sharp.

Simon wakes instantly. The mattress creaks beneath sudden weight, sheets rustle violently. There’s the sound of bare feet against polished floor before his voice cuts through the haze surrounding your thoughts.

“What happened?” still rough with sleep, lower than usual, but alert immediately after.

You try answering him—you really do, but the pain swells again before words can form properly and all that leaves you instead is a strained gasp that sounds humiliatingly fragile in the quiet room.

You hate this—how helpless it feels. You hate how one moment later your breathing is ragged and labored.

You’ve spent years training your body into something dependable, useful, strong enough to survive things other people wouldn’t. And now you can barely breathe through pain without feeling like you’re falling apart at the seams.

The realization sits ugly and heavy in your chest.

Simon reaches your bedside, his hand clutching his abdomen—he had his stitches removed yesterday so it doesn't hurt the same when he's walking anymore, makes it easier to get to you.

Tears are already burning unexpectedly behind your eyes, you turn your face sharply toward the wall before he can see them, but it's too late.

The mattress dips slightly beneath his weight as he braces one hand carefully against the bed rail. You can feel his presence before you properly look at him. Warmth cutting through the cold recycled hospital air. The faint scent of soap and antiseptic clinging to his skin. The uneven rhythm of his breathing, slightly tighter now from moving too quickly.

“Hey,” he says quietly, the word lands softer than expected.

You squeeze your eyes shut harder. Another wave of pain tears through your thigh and suddenly your breathing stutters apart completely. A broken noise slips from your throat before you can swallow it down, your entire body tightening instinctively around the pain.

Then his hand settles against your shoulder, instinctively you grab it and squeeze—hard, maybe too hard.

The contact startles him, you feel it immediately in the way he stills afterward, like reaching for you happened before he consciously decided to do it, but the pain is too much to care right now.

His palm feels warm, solid, steady. The weight of it anchors you enough that your breathing slows by the smallest fraction.

Still, embarrassment crashes over you almost immediately after.

“Don’t,” you mutter weakly, voice rough around the edges.

Simon’s brows knit slightly.

“Whot?”

“Don't look at me like this,” the words come quieter than intended, raw enough that you instantly regret saying them out loud.

For a moment the room falls silent except for rain tapping softly against the window and the low mechanical hum of hospital equipment surrounding you both. Simon doesn’t answer immediately. His hand remains where it is, holding yours tightly, grounding you.

“How’m I looking at you?”

You don’t answer, mostly because you don’t know how to explain it. He is looking at you like you’re something fragile and your pain matters, like seeing you hurt bothers him more than he expected it to.

Another pulse of pain rolls through your leg and your composure cracks completely this time. Your breathing shudders sharply. Tears blur your vision despite every effort to stop them.

Humiliation burns hot beneath your skin.

You lift a trembling hand to cover your face instinctively.

The movement is weak.

Exhausted.

Simon goes very still beside you, before you feel his hand slide slowly from your palm until his fingers close carefully around your other wrist instead. Not restraining, just holding on.

Your pulse jumps strangely beneath his fingertips.

“You need a nurse,” he says quietly.

“No.”

The refusal comes too fast, you hear it yourself immediately, it's not stubborn this time, but something else, something weaker, more fragile.

Outside the window, rainwater races down the glass in silver streams while distant thunder rolls softly somewhere across the city. The room feels dim and close around both of you now, wrapped in early morning shadows and the quiet rhythm of your uneven breathing.

Simon studies your face for a long moment. There’s exhaustion carved into every line of your expression this morning. Shadows are darker beneath your eyes. Healing bruises fading yellow along the edge of your jaw. Your shirt sticks to your sweaty skin, the shorts you're wearing visible since your thrashing pulled the thin blanket to the very end of your feet. Your bandages around the gunshot are clean, that's good, you didn't bust a stitch and you're not bleeding out. But that doesn't mean you're not tired, you look exhausted. Despite all the sharp edges he usually keeps wrapped tightly around himself, there’s something openly unsettled in his eyes right now that wasn’t there before. Because of you, of your exhaustion, your pain.

Another wave of pain rolls through your leg, though weaker now, dulled slightly by whatever medication still lingers in your bloodstream. You suck in a shaky breath through your teeth.

Simon’s grip tightens instinctively around your wrist. Not enough to hurt. Just enough to steady, to let you know he is here.

Your eyes lift toward his without meaning to, your free hand searching for something to hold onto. He immediately notices and your fingers interlock with your grip so tight you obscure normal blood flow to his fingers. His attention moves over you carefully, tracking every flicker of pain that crosses your expression like he’s trying to memorize how to soften it. It unravels something within you more than the pain does.

Nobody’s ever looked at you that way before. It has your chest tightening strangely.

His jaw shifts slightly, gaze flicking away toward the rain-streaked window, but his hand never leaves yours.

The silence stretches. It's not awkward or comfortable either, just full—heavy with things neither of you knows how to say.

Eventually, when your breathing returns to a steady rhythm, he exhales quietly through his nose, the sound roughened by exhaustion.

“Scared me for a moment,” the confession comes so softly you almost think you imagined it it has your breath catching unexpectedly.

He doesn’t look at you after saying it. His eyes stay fixed somewhere toward the floor instead, expression unreadable again except for the faint tension pulling at the corners of his mouth. Like he regrets letting the words slip out at all, but they settle warm and aching beneath your ribs anyway.

You stare at him, "me too." Without thinking, your fingers shift slightly against his hand, squeezing it, not like before, it's soft now and he goes completely still beneath the slight movement of your fingers.

Most people wouldn’t even notice it, but you do. You feel it in the way the muscles in his hand tighten faintly before relaxing again, careful and controlled like every instinct inside him is suddenly being held back by force. His thumb shifts once against your skin, absentminded almost, brushing lightly over your the back of your hand.

The contact sends something warm and disorienting through you.

Outside, rain continues slipping down the windows in silver trails, turning the early morning skyline into a blur of pale concrete and distant lights. Thunder rolls low across the city again, softer now, like the storm is beginning to drift farther away. The room smells faintly of rainwater sneaking through old window seals, tangled with antiseptic and the bitter scent of stale coffee lingering from somewhere down the hall.

The silence settles around you slowly, thick without becoming uncomfortable. It feels oddly fragile now, as though one wrong word might crack whatever this strange new thing between you has quietly become overnight.

Your breathing finally begins to steady beneath the pain.

Your leg still throbs viciously beneath the bandages, deep enough to make your stomach twist every few seconds, but the sharpest edge of it has dulled into something survivable again. The agony no longer owns your entire body, exhaustion starts creeping in behind it instead, heavy and slow and impossible to fight.

That doesn't go unnoticed by Simon.

His gaze flicks briefly toward your face again, studying you with that same quiet intensity that’s become strangely familiar over the last few days. You’re beginning to realize Simon Riley pays attention to everything when he cares enough to—tiny shifts in expression, changes in breathing, the way your fingers tense before pain hits harder.

It should feel invasive.

Instead it makes something low in your chest ache softly.

“You should sleep,” he says eventually, voice roughened by exhaustion and something gentler buried beneath it.

The words settle into the dim room quietly.

You glance toward him properly for the first time since he crossed the room.

Up close like this, he looks exhausted in ways that go deeper than lack of sleep. The pale morning light softens the harsher angles of his face, catches silver against old scars and tired shadows beneath his eyes. His overgrown hair sits messily flattened from sleep, the collar of his shirt hangs unevenly near one shoulder, exposing the edge of white bandaging wrapped around his torso beneath.

He looks worn down. Human in a way Ghost never sounds in stories.

And suddenly you become sharply aware of the fact he’s still standing despite the pain he must be in himself. Your gaze drops instinctively toward the hand pressed unconsciously against his abdomen.

"You just got your stitches off. Go sit down," your tone is less demanding and more caring, it has Simon’s eyes flicking back toward you, one corner of his mouth twitching faintly upward. There it is, that tone he has grown quite fond of.

“'M fine.”

“Go lay down,” your tone is strict, matching at the slightest the one you use to bark orders.

"Said I’m fine," he repeats dryly, before walking towards the room's far corner where a chair is discarded for visitors.

The scraping of the chair's legs against the floor stops you from asking what he's planning on doing. A moment later he is finally lowering himself carefully into the chair he dragged beside your bed instead of returning across the room. The movement is slow and controlled, tension tightening visibly across his shoulders as he settles back with obvious effort, a quiet breath slips through his nose afterward.

"Go lay down," you repeat, voice softer than before, the adrenaline from earlier completely wearing off by now.

"Negative."

"You're insufferable."

“Hm.”

“You’re injured.” you debate a second later.

“So’re you.”

“Yes, but I’m clearly the more emotionally compelling patient.”

That finally earns you the smallest exhale of laughter. You hadn’t realized how tense the air felt until that sound loosened it.

The rain outside begins falling harder again, tapping steadily against the windows now in soft rhythmic waves. Somewhere farther down the hallway, a nurse laughs quietly at something muffled beyond the walls before the sound disappears again beneath the hum of hospital machinery.

Your eyelids begin growing heavier.

Pain medication and exhaustion drag at you relentlessly now that the worst of the agony has passed. Still, you fight sleep instinctively. Partly because you’re afraid the pain will spike again the second you let your guard down. Mostly because Simon is still sitting beside you, and some selfish, odd part of you doesn’t want him to leave yet.

Your fingers remain loosely tangled with his, but neither of you mentions it.

“You don’t have to stay over here,” you murmur eventually, voice quieter now from exhaustion.

Simon glances toward you.

“I know,” the answer comes immediately, but he chooses to stay, he wants to stay.

You stare at the rain for a long moment, watching droplets race one another down the glass while silence settles softly around the room again.

Your thoughts feel slow, heavy, dangerously honest around the edges. "I fucking hate this," you say quietly.

"You'll get used to it"

"That's what I'm afraid of," the confession hangs in the air.

"Everything about the job is scary."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?"

"You took a bullet. You're still here tryin' to recover to get back out there. That's something to be fucking proud of."

"I can't even walk."

"You got shot on the damn leg, give yourself some time."

"Still sucks."

After a long moment, his voice breaks the quiet.

“I know.”

Just two words, but they land heavily.

Because suddenly you realize he truly does, not in a hypothetical or sympathetic way. He knows exactly what it feels like to wake up for the first time changed by pain and wonder if the person left afterward still fits inside their own skin.

Your eyes drift toward him again without meaning to. He’s already looking at you, his gaze quietly present in the dim morning light while rain shadows move softly across the room around him.

And for one suspended moment the hospital, the pain, the machines humming softly around you both—all of it disappears beneath the simple realization that neither of you feels quite as alone as you did a week ago.

Simon’s gaze drops briefly toward your joined hands then returns to your face.

Something unreadable flickers across his expression. It vanishes almost immediately beneath the familiar rough edges he wears like armor, but not before you catch it. That brief glimpse affects you far more than it should.

Simon shifts slightly in the chair beside you, exhaustion finally beginning to weigh visibly against him. His head tips back briefly against the wall behind him, eyes closing for just a second too long before reopening again.

You study him quietly.

The tension still lingering around his mouth. The faint lines exhaustion carved beneath his eyes. The stubborn effort it clearly takes for him to stay awake despite his own injuries.

A strange tenderness catches you off guard.

“Go sleep,” you murmur softly.

One corner of his mouth twitches faintly again.

“Bossy.”

“You like it.”

─☆*:・

 Night settles slowly around the hospital room, quiet and blue at the edges.

The overhead lights are turned off, leaving only the soft amber glow from the hallway slipping through the cracked door and the far away muted city lights beyond the rain-streaked windows. Somewhere outside, water still drips steadily from rooftops and fire escapes after the storm, the sound faint beneath the distant hum of traffic moving through wet streets.

Everything feels softer after dark. The hospital itself seems to exhale. Voices lower into murmurs beyond the walls. Footsteps grow less frequent. Machines continue their endless quiet beeping around you both, but even that begins blending into the atmosphere after a while, becoming less noise and more heartbeat.

At some point after the nurses finish their evening rounds and repeatedly tell him to return to his bed—advice that he doesn't follow, he shifts his chair closer to your bed, close enough that he can rest his arm on the mattress, you let him. You like it.

Instead he sits beside you now, fingers occasionally brushing lightly against your forearm whenever either of you moves.

Tiny accidents that neither of you acknowledge.

Your leg still aches relentlessly beneath the bandages, but the pain medication has dulled it into something distant enough to tolerate. Warm heaviness settles through your body instead, leaving your thoughts slow and dangerously unguarded around the edges.

Simon sits close enough now that you can feel the warmth radiating from him, that you notice details you probably shouldn’t: The rough scar disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt, the faint shadow of stubble darkening his jaw by the end of the day, the way his hands flex unconsciously whenever pain pulls through his healing abdomen—fingers curling slightly against his knee before relaxing again.

The strong hands, scarred knuckles, they're careful too, he is a sniper after all.

“You’re staring again,” he murmurs quietly beside you, voice roughened by exhaustion.

You glance toward his face and immediately regret it because he’s already watching you, head tipped slightly back against the wall. The dim lighting softens the harsher planes of his face, shadows settling deep beneath tired eyes. He looks unfairly good like this, worn down enough to seem real. Dangerous enough to still make your pulse trip every time he looks directly at you.

“You make it difficult not to,” you answer before thinking better of it.

The words settle into the quiet room between you.

His gaze lingers on your face a moment too long before shifting downward briefly. Your mouth. Your throat. Then back up again.

A subtle movement.

Still enough to make warmth spread slowly through your chest.

“Should I be concerned ya flirt with the entire force like tha'?” he asks eventually.

There’s dry amusement in the question.

You study him for a second before answering.

“No,” the honesty slips out easier than expected.

Simon’s expression changes almost imperceptibly afterward.

Not surprise exactly.

Just awareness.

The room feels smaller suddenly, neither of you looks away.

Your pulse feels loud in your own ears. You both let the silence settle, it doesn't feel awkward, or comfortable. Just something you've grown used to.

Several minutes pass before Simon glances toward you again, his gaze dropping briefly toward your leg before returning to your face.

“How bad is it?”

“Better now.” You answer without looking at him.

Something flickers behind his eye at that—relief. It's real enough to affect you immediately.

No one should look that relieved over your comfort. No one should stay awake watching your breathing like it matters. But he does.

You look down briefly at your own hands twisted loosely in the blankets.

“You stayed all day," the observation comes quieter than intended.

Simon leans his head back slightly against the wall again, “Didn’t have anywhere else to be.”

He could have asked to have you transferred once a bed cleared. He could've left this room whenever he wanted. He could have disappeared back behind all those carefully built walls and sharp edges and distance, hide his face like he does with everyone. But he wanted you to see him like this, to stay next to you.

“You know,” you murmur softly, “you’re not nearly as cold as everyone says.”

Simon’s eyes drift toward you slowly, one corner of his mouth lifts faintly "Meds are doing their job."

"Oh?" you raise your brows, acting offended, "and here I thought I was special."

He rolls his eyes in response, still smirking faintly.

You let the silence linger again, it's somewhat comforting at this point. Charged with things you don't think you'll ever share with each other.

His eye drifts shut briefly before reopening again a second later, like he caught himself slipping. “You should sleep,” you whisper.

Simon turns his head just enough to look at you properly. “Eventually.”

You roll your eyes softly. “You’re impossible.”

“I’ve been told.”

There’s a quiet ease to it now, the kind that sneaks up on you without permission. Minutes pass by and you allow the quiet of the room to swallow you whole. Your gazes are fixed on anything but each other. Your eyes dart around the room, searching for something more interesting than the hospital ceiling, you’ve been staring at for the past three days while Simon’s stare blankly on the floor, lips slightly pursed into a thin line, deep in thought.

The sound of the rain from outside and of your breathing fills the lack of words.

“We should go out once we’re discharged.”

His words are so casual it takes your brain a full second to process them. “Are you asking me out?”

One corner of his mouth lifts slightly. “Thought I was being obvious.”

A soft laugh escapes you before you can stop it, warm and sleepy and a little disbelieving.

“You know you'll have to put up with my limp, right?” you question a second later, looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

Matching your expression he also raises a brow at you, entirely unimpressed, “not a problem.”

You smirk satisfied with his response, tilting you head softly at him, “Date sounds fun."

The long tables below are a chaos of colour and motion. Platters of boar glisten with fat; geese lie breast-up and shining beneath sprigs of rosemary. Someone has overturned a dish of oysters near the lower tables, and the smell of salt and brine threads through roast meat and hot tallow, fighting with the sour-sweet tang of spilt wine. Fresh rushes, strewn thick earlier, are already bruised underfoot, releasing the crushed green smell of herbs trampled into damp straw.

Music leans over it all: a harp’s bright pluck, a fiddle’s keening line, a pipe’s reedy counterpoint. The tune threads through the noise, sometimes almost lost under the human sound, sometimes rising clear as a whistle over a gale.

Lyonel Baratheon’s laugh sits on top of everything.

He has always been appropriately named. Even when he is not drunk, he sounds it. Voice booming, rich, rolling through a room like thunder finding the weak stones. Tonight, he is less sodden than his reputation promises, but no less a tempest. His laughter breaks, then reshapes the noise, and people tilt toward it, toward him, the way trees lean in a prevailing wind.

Baelor feels him before he sees him on the floor. It’s in the way conversations shift, some voices brightening, others sharpening with wariness. In the way eyes turn. The air itself seems to cant a degree in the Baratheon’s direction.

And then he sees why.

The stag has set his sights on his wolf.

You are in grey again, of course—Stark will out, even in southern tailoring. The gown is cut for this heat: fabric finer than you’d tolerate at home, sleeves a touch shorter, the lines simpler than the southern ladies’ flounces but adapted enough not to cause comment. The colour, though, is the North all over: soft wolf-grey, drinking the candlelight instead of reflecting it, broken only by the fine silver thread that edges your collar and cuffs like frost traced along stone.

Your hair is pulled back in a practical knot that looks designed to survive both a blizzard and a brawl, pinned close and sure at the back of your head. The heat of the hall has still managed to coax a few strands loose at your temples; they curl stubbornly against your skin, catching the glow from the nearest candelabra. A faint sheen of sweat glosses the hollow at the base of your throat, just visible above the modest line of your gown.

You stand at the edge of the dance space, just beyond the sweep of the couples, one hand clasped around your own forearm. Your weight is balanced, ready to move, but your face has gone into that particular calm Baelor has learned to recognise. The court is watching you too openly, and you hate it, so you go still. You let their stares hit the winter-plain set of your features and slide off.

A wolf in snowlight, pretending to be a statue.

The music swells; a set ends. Couples peel apart with a rustle of silk and brocade, skirts flaring and settling, boots scuffing rushes. A lady in Reach green trips on a hem and stumbles into her partner, laughing too loudly, perfume sharp and floral even from a distance. Two half-drunk Riverland knights argue under their breath about whether the last step was meant to turn or cross, gesturing with their cups and sloshing wine onto the floor.

The space in the centre opens. Lyonel strides into it as if the floor were made for him.

He wears stormland colours—black and gold and the dark, damp green of woods beaten by rain. His doublet is well-cut but not fussy, the fabric pulling cleanly over a lean, hard frame built for sudden movement rather than sheer bulk. He is not huge like some tales make him; he is something worse for a man who might be your enemy one day—lithe, quick, all coiled energy and too sharp eyes.

His antlered sigil brooch, wrought in bright metal and dark enamel, catches firelight every time he moves, antlers flashing like a warning.

His cloak flares behind him like a living banner as he cuts through dancers and servants alike. He is not rude; he does not shove or bark. He simply walks as if everyone else will get out of his way, and the thing is, they do. It’s entitlement, yes, but it’s also the sure knowledge of someone who can charm or break you and hasn’t yet decided which he prefers tonight. Up close, Baelor knows, Lyonel is handsome in a way that makes parents wary and lovers stupid. Rugged rather than polished—his jaw shadowed by a dark stubble that’s edging into a beard, his straight nose bearing the faint crook of an old break, his mouth big and expressive. His eyes are where the danger lives: dark, churning, with something a little wild at the edges, like a cliff path that has no railing but dares you to run it anyway.

Baelor’s fingers still on the stem of his cup.

He watches Lyonel approach you with that deceptively lazy stride, the one that always reads as a man loping his way through the evening until, abruptly, it doesn’t and someone is bleeding on the floor. The Baratheon offers you a bow, surprisingly precise for a man whose laughter can crack a bench, one hand pressed to his own chest.

“Lady Stark,” he calls out cheerfully.

Even over the harp and fiddle and hum of talk, Baelor hears him. Of course he does. Lyonel knows how to lay a voice over chaos, the same way a drummer knows how to find the beat under noise.

“Would you do the storm the honour of letting it chase a wolf for a song or two?”

You answer. Baelor can’t make out the words over the music, but he sees the shape of your mouth, the brief lift at one corner that means you’ve said something drier than is strictly polite. He sees your eyes flick, quick as a dart, to the high table—to the king, to your father, to him.

Barthogan Stark, two seats down from Baelor, doesn’t shift much. The man is a mountain in wolf-grey, broad shoulders swallowing the chair’s carved back. One big hand rests around his cup; the other lies flat on the table, fingers thick and scarred. To most eyes, he has not moved at all.

Baelor, who has been learning to read lords like maps since before his voice broke, sees the tiny nod. The fractional drop of heavy lids. The almost-sigh of a man who knows he must let the young test their own footing on the ice. Daeron’s eyes cut sideways once, quick as a sword-feint. Baelor feels, more than sees, his father take it all in: Storm’s End. Winterfell. The dragon throne above them both. Alliances like stitches in a wound that has only just stopped seeping Blackfyre poison.

Baelor’s grip tightens on his cup until the fine metal bites into his palm.

You place your hand in Lyonel’s.

The dance begins.

You move well. Baelor knows that like he knows the weight of his own sword. He has felt the balance of you, the measured give when his hand settled at your waist, the way you read space and step with a fighter’s instinct for distance.

But there is something different in the way you move with the storm lord.

You are… lighter. Less guarded at the edges. There is a thread of wildness in your step, tonight, as if for the span of this tune you’ve decided to treat the dance less like a duty and more like a dare. Your skirts flare a little higher, your turns hitch closer to the line between correct and reckless.

Lyonel answers that without missing a beat, his teeth flashing in delight.

He leads you down the line with surprising gentleness for a man whose nickname was half-won in taverns. His hand is warm and steady at your back, fingers spread but not clutching, palm following the curve of your spine like he’s mapping it. For all his roaring reputation, his footwork is clean and sharp as any court knight’s. He doesn’t tug or shove. He invites, and you, damn you, accept.

Baelor feels that acceptance twist in his gut.

“Careful,” Maekar grouses again, voice low at his shoulder. “You’ll turn that wine to rubies at this rate.”

Baelor blinks down. The stem creaks faintly under his grip once more. He unclenches his hand with deliberate care and sets the goblet down. The wine inside rocks, then steadies. His fingers hum with the urge to close around something else. A wrist. A collar. The hilt of a sword.

“I was unaware I’d become so transparent,” he says.

Maekar tears off a hunk of bread, drags it through a smear of gravy, and pops it into his mouth with the leisurely air of a man enjoying excellent theatre.

“You’re not,” he replies after chewing. “To anyone else, you look like Baelor the Unshakeable, contemplating some grave and noble matter. Grain levies, perhaps. Fleet repairs. The nature of justice.” He lifts a pale brow. “To me, you look like a man trying to decide whether he wants to break Baratheon’s face or his fingers first.”

On the floor, Lyonel says something that makes you tilt your head up, eyes bright. Whatever it is, it’s audacious; Baelor can see the flash of it in the way Lyonel’s mouth twists, half-dare, half-invitation. You answer without flinching. Your mouth moves quick and sure, shaping words Baelor cannot hear but can almost feel—the clean, cutting weight of your northern humour. Lyonel almost recoils, then laughs loudly, a shorter, sharper sound, hand thumping his own chest as if to say, Well struck, wolf.

Baelor’s blood runs hotter.

Dragon blood, they all call it, like it’s a sort of blessing. Like it’s only about banners and skulls and the right to sit on a throne carved for a conqueror. They never talk about how it burns. He feels it now: wildfire threaded through his veins, pooling in his chest, heat licking along the bone. It coils under his sternum, wanting out. It wants him to stand up in front of half of Westeros, walk the length of the hall, and take you back—not gently, not with the careful courtesies he has shown you, but with his hand around your wrist and his other at your waist, claiming, fitting you back against him and letting the court choke on it.

Baelor keeps his hands exactly where they are.

“You’re steaming,” Maekar notes, lazy as a cat in a sunbeam, eyes sharp as a drawn blade. 

Baelor exhales slowly through his nose. The air tastes of hot fat and wine and the faint tang of iron from the sword-belts lining the walls.

“It’s a hot hall,” he answers stiffly.

“The hall was hot before you started glaring holes in it,” Maekar retorts with a snort. “You’re in a mood, brother. It’s very unlike you. I think you’ve frightened three pages and a Lannister already.”

“Only three?” Baelor mutters.

The music lifts, the pattern of the dance tightening into one of those showier figures the court favours. Couples draw closer, steps quickening. Layers of silk and wool swirl, colours blurring into brief storms of green and blue and red. Lyonel’s hand settles more securely at the small of your back as he guides you through the turn. It is an entirely appropriate touch—any dancing master would approve—but his thumb lies a fraction lower than it strictly needs to.

Baelor’s chest constricts.

He knows the arguments. Gods, he has made them in council himself.

Storm’s End held firm for the rightful king when Daemon Blackfyre unfurled his treason. Lyonel’s banners were among the first on the field at Redgrass Ford, his men breaking more than one Blackfyre flank. Baratheon ships guarded the Narrow Sea while the realm bled. A storm-and-snow match would bind two notoriously stubborn regions tighter to the crown. If Daeron asked him for a list of prudent alliances, he would put you and Lyonel in the first third without hesitation.

And yet he watches Lyonel’s fingers flex against the back of your gown as he spins you out, arm lengthening, then draws you in again, and all that careful thought goes to ash.

“You could ask her for the next dance,” Maekar suggests idly around a mouthful of bread. “You did it once, the realm didn’t fall into the sea.”

“No law says I can’t,” Baelor agrees. “There is also no law against stepping into the dragonpit and seeing how many skulls one can balance on one’s head. Wisdom is another matter.”

Maekar scoffs. “Since when have you cared so much for whispers? They’re already calling you half a dozen names because of her.”

Baelor has heard them. Baelor the Wolf-tamer. Baelor Winter’s Hand. The crown prince, who leads the Northern heir out of the crush and dances with her under dragon banners instead of focusing on more politically convenient ladies. Some say it admiringly, some with a curl of the lip, some with the wary tone of men watching the weather turn.

Daeron has not discouraged it. Let them talk, his father had said, eyes on a map littered with carved pieces. Let them think the North favours you. It is useful for them to imagine you have teeth at your back.

Father had not warned him that usefulness and desire could be such close kin under the skin.

On the floor, Lyonel leans in as he guides you through a cross-step. He bends his head close, bringing his mouth to your ear, saying something Baelor cannot hear but feels in his own spine all the same. Baelor’s body reacts before his mind catches up—his jaw tightening, shoulders coiling, the old training that measures distance and threat spinning itself up for a fight that will not, cannot, be allowed.

You blink, then your mouth breaks into something that is not your polite court smile. You laugh. Not the brittle, careful little cracks of sound you use to deflect stupidity. Not the weary huff you give when you’re mocking the south under your breath. A real laugh. Your head tips back for a heartbeat, eyes closing, throat bared in the candlelight. The sound doesn’t reach the high table over the music and the roar of the hall.

Baelor hears it anyway, inside his own skull.

He has made you laugh like that once. Perhaps twice. Both times alone, in smaller spaces, where he could afford to let his own composure loosen without the weight of a hundred eyes. Jealousy slides into him then, cold at the edges, molten at the middle. It is not the quick sting he remembers from boyhood, when Aerys out-argued him in history, or Rhaegel presented some verse the maester praised. This is deeper. It sits under his ribs like a coal that has been there a very long time, flaring now that someone has blown on it.

He takes a breath. And another. And another.

He is not a stripling to sulk because another man has taken one turn on the floor with the woman he—

No.

He does not let the thought finish.

Maekar watches him chew the inside of his cheek and sighs contentedly, like a man settling in to the second act of a very good play.

“You look,” his brother says, “like you swallowed wildfire and it hasn’t decided which way to go yet.”

Baelor lets out a sound that is half laugh, half growl. “I’m fine.”

“You,” Maekar continues like he hasn’t heard him, “are many things. Fine is not one of them. At present you are… let me see.” He tilts his head, pretending to consider. “Smouldering. Still. Badly.”

Baelor reaches for bread and tears it in half without meaning to. The crust cracks; crumbs scatter across his plate like snow over dark earth.

“Perhaps you’d prefer I tore my hair and raved,” he suggests dryly. “Would that make you more comfortable?”

“It would be refreshing,” Maekar tells him blandly. “You never do anything properly scandalous. I’m beginning to worry you’re not really our father’s son. Where is the dragon fire, brother?”

Baelor’s mouth tightens. “Lyonel Baratheon is a good man,” he says quietly. “He’s loyal. Brave despite his brass. Not as drunk as he wants the world to think. He fought where he should have fought. He laughed on the right side.”

“And yet,” Maekar prompts, eyes glinting.

“And yet,” Baelor says, very softly, “his hands are on what is not his.”

Maekar’s brows climb. “Ah,” he says, satisfaction like a knife. “There it is.”

Baelor shuts his eyes for a heartbeat. When he opens them, the hall is the same and not. Torchlight throws wilder shadows; the music feels just a fraction off, too fast, then too slow. The dragon in his blood hisses along his veins, wanting heat, wanting action. He strangles it with the discipline of a lifetime.

On the floor, Lyonel catches your hand and spins you under his arm. Your skirts flare, a wolf-grey storm around your boots. For an instant, the movement bares the strong line of your calves where the fabric parts. More than one man on the edges of the floor looks. Lyonel does too. His gaze flicks down, quick as any man’s, then snaps back to your face, attention anchored there. Some small, unwilling part of Baelor respects him for that.

He still wants to put his fist through the Baratheon’s roguish grin.

The song crests, then slows into its last figure. The fiddles draw out the notes; the pipes soften. Couples draw in for the final turn, bodies aligning closer. Lyonel’s hand slides a little higher on your back as he turns you, bringing you in along the length of his frame for three measured steps.

You step into it, trusting the pattern, the courtesy, the public eyes.

The dragon in Baelor—whatever that really is, old blood, old madness, old pride—thrashes once, hard enough that he has to set both hands flat on the table to steady himself. His fingertips press into the grain of the wood; the ring on his forefinger clicks faintly.

“What do you intend to do?” Maekar asks, unhurried, as if they’re discussing hunting plans. “Anything foolish?”

“No,” Baelor replies promptly.

“Do you wish to?”

“Yes,” Baelor says, before his instincts can bite down on the word.

Maekar bares his teeth in a grin. “Good. It’s when you stop wishing for that I’ll start worrying.”

The song ends. The last chord hangs, shivers, and breaks like a wave on rock. Lyonel bows over your hand, but he does not kiss it. He’s not quite that drunk, not in front of the king, not with Barthogan Stark’s gaze on the back of his neck, old wolf’s jaws ready to close around his throat should he overstep.

But his thumb lingers, for one extra heartbeat, stroking once along your knuckles before he lets go.

Baelor counts that heartbeat.

You step back, skirts whispering over the stone and rushes, and speak the expected courtesies. Lyonel answers with another easy grin and a shallow bow, then spins away, cloak flaring, already letting his eyes skim the hall for the next thing to amuse him.

You turn off the floor. You shift instead toward your father, toward the shadowed edge of the hall, toward the high table.

Your eyes find Baelor’s.

It is nothing. It is everything. Half a heartbeat, no more; if you held longer, it would become a scene.

He doesn’t know what you see.

He hopes you see the prince the realm needs: composed, steady, the man who sits at his father’s right hand and weighs war and peace with the same careful scales. The Hand of the King. Aegon’s blood. The dutiful son who will carry Daeron’s hard-won peace forward.

He fears you see the other thing.

The man with dragon blood snapping at his bones. The man who nearly rose from his seat to reclaim you from a stag’s arms in front of half of Westeros. The man who is remembering, with humiliating clarity, the exact weight of your waist beneath his hand, the warmth of your body when he guided you through a crush, and who would very much like to remind the hall whose palm rested there first.

Your mouth moves, the tiniest shift. Neither a full smile nor displeasure. A small, wry acknowledgement, something like: I see you.

Then you incline your head, just enough to be courteous to the high table as a whole, and the moment snaps. Another lord has already bowed before you, hand outstretched for his own turn in the pattern.

Baelor realises his cup is in his hand again. He has no memory of picking it up.

“Terrible,” Maekar notes conversationally.

Baelor takes a swallow. The wine is rich and thick, and it scorches his throat on the way down as if it were something much rougher.

“My wine?” he asks.

“Your mood,” Maekar says. “It’s dreadful. I’d say it doesn’t suit you, but it’s almost charming. Like watching Father misplace a document.”

Baelor exhales, a sound like flint scraping stone. “I will apologise to the pages and the minstrel tomorrow,” he says.

“You’ll have to,” Maekar agrees. “In the meantime…” He leans back a little, eyeing the hall with a soldier’s detached interest. “Remember, brother—stags gore from the front. Wolves from all angles. Stand too close when either of them lowers their head, and you don’t get to complain when you’re the one carried off on the antlers.”

Baelor follows his gaze.

Lyonel has claimed another partner—the Westerling girl this time, all dimples and pale silk, looking up at him like he’s some dangerous joke she’s not sure she should laugh at. His grin is bright, a shade more feral now that the wine has sunk deeper.

You have retreated to the edge beside your father, profile turned towards the high table. Barthogan says something low; you answer without turning your head, shoulders making that minute, familiar shift Baelor recognises as stubbornness pressing against duty. He wonders if you enjoyed the dance. Truly enjoyed it, the way your laugh suggested, or if you simply endured it with more grace than usual because you know you must.

He wonders if Lyonel noticed the small things Baelor does: the way your fingers tighten briefly before you step into a crowded space, the little notch that appears between your brows when you’re weighing risk, the fraction of a second before you decide to trust anyone’s hand on your back.

He wonders what you would do if he rose now. If he set his cup down, walked down the steps, through the heat and noise and gossip, and held out his hand for the next song. The dragon under his skin surges at the thought. Heat licks at his ribs, wanting out, wanting to brand something invisible and undeniable across the space between you: mine, it wants to say, for as far as the gods allow it.

Baelor sets the cup down.

He smiles, and it feels like a wound.

Duty first. Always duty first.

His heart, damn it, has not yet learned the order.