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[kittycosmicc]

love language

[kittycosmicc]

I didn’t realize I missed this story so much❤️

After the kiss you can't forget about, your past and present with Eddie collide under the glow of the city lights and the glittering stars at the City Beats launch party.

Masterlist Listen to Clumsy Here

What to expect: Second Chance Romance set in 2012 Chicago.  Eddie and Steve are in their 30s. Fem!Reader is given a pet name from each of the guys. No other name mentioned. No use of Y/N. No physical description. Reader does have a bit of personality, as I find it nearly impossible to keep her blank for such a long fic. You may find yourself at times making choices that you wouldn't normally make, but I hope you can put that aside and enjoy the ride. Sensitive Content. 18+ Mentions of DV. Smut Guaranteed happy ending. This is my love letter to Eddie Munson.

WC: 11646 beta'd by @superblysubpar

“Stop being such a baby and just let me look.”

The light in Eddie’s bathroom buzzes with a slight flicker, casting a pallid tint over the worn linoleum and water-stained sink.

“I don’t recall anyone asking for your services here, Florence Nightingale,” Eddie grumbles, perched on the edge of the vanity with a blood-soaked washcloth pressed against his forehead. The knuckles on his right hand are swollen and split, and the scrape along his jaw is already turning colors. 

You pour a little iodine on a cotton ball you grabbed from the first-aid kit— the one your dad made you keep in your car for emergencies, though this probably isn’t what he had in mind. “Who else is going to patch you up?” you question, shifting until you’re standing in the space between his spread legs.

With a sigh, he lowers the washcloth and tosses it into the sink. Blood wells up in the gash above his brow, the skin around it swollen and purple. As gently as possible, you dab around the cut with cotton.

“Oww.” He winces and leans away. “That shit stings.”

"Sorry." You push up on your tippy toes, drawing closer, one hand resting on his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his breath. The scent of his apple shampoo tickles your nose as his hand moves to your hip, anchoring you. You purse your lips and blow gently over his wound to soothe the sting. His chest expands with a sharp intake of breath.

"Better?" you whisper, a flood of butterflies taking flight within you. His fingers press tighter into your skin, your shirt inching upward, eliminating the barrier between his touch and your warmth. 

"Yeah." His throat bobs, his gaze roaming your face.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” 

His grip on you loosens as his eyes fall away.

You pick up one of the butterfly strips, pulling back the adhesive tabs. “You said you weren’t going to do anything. I asked you not to.” 

The faucet drips into the cracked tub as you press the strip into place. “It was my choice to end things, Eddie. It didn’t feel…it wasn’t going to go anywhere.”

He grabs your fingers, holding them away. “Then maybe you shouldn’t have been running around with him in the first place.”

The anger in his tone has you stepping back until you can feel the towel bar pressing into your shoulders. He stands and faces away from you, shaking his head.

“So what? I’m a slut now?” Your voice is small in the cramped space, bouncing off half-filled bottles of shampoo and shaving cream. Maybe you shouldn’t have told him about losing your virginity to Parker Hayes in the backseat of his mom’s Chevy last weekend. But that’s something you tell your best friend, right? Eddie has certainly never shied away from sharing his sexual exploits with you. Maybe, deep down, you had been hoping for some kind of reaction, but not this. 

“No.” His shoulders slump as he turns to face you, the hardness in his stance softening. “I don't think that way,” he explains, his voice growing gentler, “and I'd never think that about you. I want you to date. I want you to have everything. I just want to…” The rest of the sentence dies in his throat as a familiar shadow falls over his eyes, dimming their warmth. “I guess this is what happens when you're friends with a chick,” he chuckles.

“Might have been easier if Gareth had moved down the street instead of me.” You switch gears to match his tone, a familiar move after all this time.

“Yeah, you’re a pain in the ass,” he says, attempting a smile that doesn’t quite make it to his eyes. “Speaking of Gareth, I got a thing.” His gaze drops to his wrist, but he’s never worn a watch. “Lock up when you leave, alright?” 

You're still standing in his bathroom when the front door clicks closed. 

Your hands smooth down the skirt of your long-sleeved mini-dress. Its modest front sits elegantly at your collarbone, but the back—you twist your head to check the mirror behind you—the back dramatically plunges to just above the curve of your ass.

“Wow.” Steve stands stopped in his tracks at the entrance of your walk-in closet, his eyes drinking you in. “You look like a sunset.” He moves behind you, pressing a kiss to the bare skin of your shoulder as his hand slides over the rose gold sequins covering your dress. 

“You’re not too shabby yourself, handsome.” You turn to get the full effect of his designer camel-striped suit with a bright mustard tie. “I always like you in yellow,” you tell him, running a finger down the cool silk. 

His smile widens as he grips your hips, spinning you back towards the mirror, wrapping his arms around your middle. “We should do this more often,” he says, holding your gaze in the reflection.

“What?” you ask, crossing your arms over his. “Launch streaming radio services?”

“No, smart ass.” His lips find your temple. “Get dressed up like this and go out. With everyone coming, do you know what it reminds me of?”

“Dare I ask?” You flutter your lashes. 

His grip on you tightens in a deliberate firmness that has you tensing. He steals another kiss, pausing for a moment before saying, “Prom.”

“Uck,” you moan, stepping out of his arms and moving to the island to pick up a pair of earrings. “Your parents went to prom? How sad.”

“Come on. Not them.” He shoves his hands in his pants pockets, his gaze tracking your movements. “Everyone else, though. Didn’t you have fun at prom?”

“I don’t remember,” you shrug, attaching the diamond to your lobe.

“Of course not. How stupid of me,” his tone drips sarcasm as he shakes his head, “How could I have forgotten about your Hawkins amnesia.”

The shrill melody of his ringtone sounds from the bedroom, pulling him away before words can escalate. Lately, high school memories seem to invade every conversation, leaving a residue of guilt that clings tighter with each mention. Alone, you face the mirror, taking a steadying breath. He’s under a lot of pressure. This is his night. You plaster a smile on your face, forcing a semblance of calm. You owe him.

With a final glance, you slip on a nude pair of heels and move to the bedroom to let him know you're ready. Steve’s phone is discarded on the bed beside him, where he sits with slumped shoulders and his hands raking through the hair he had just spent time styling. 

“Baby?” You keep your voice soft as you sit down next to him, your hand moving to rub circles on his back. “What’s going on?”

He glances up, only now becoming aware of your presence. "It's my parents," he murmurs, his lashes fluttering with rapid blinks as he pinches the bridge of his nose. "They've decided not to come."

“What? But they’re at the hotel.” Your mind races over the possibilities, “Are they okay? Did something happen?”

“Yeah, my dad ran into a client. That’s what happened.” Steve's voice hardens, taking on a bitter edge as he echoes his father's words, “Business is business, Steve. You understand, don’t you, son?” 

“I’m sorry, Steve,” you say in a near whisper, covering his hand with yours.

“It’s my fault. I didn’t really want them here, you know? But when I dropped by the hotel this afternoon with the tickets, my dad actually seemed proud of me for once. Fuck. I feel so dumb for getting excited.” He pulls his hand from yours to tug at the messy strands falling over his brow before his eyes find yours again.  “Did I ever tell you about my baseball coach in middle school?”

“No,” you shake your head, shifting on the bed to move even closer beside him, offering what comfort you can.

“Coach Patterson.” His eyes fall to his lap. “He tried talking to him once when he dropped me off for a game. He told him that it would mean a lot if he’d stayed and watched me play. But Dad…” Steve's voice falters, “He just looks at me and says, ‘I've got better things to do than watch you lose.’”

“Steve-”

His eyes bore into yours, filling your chest with an ache. “The thing is, we did win, but he still never stayed.  He didn’t believe in me. I guess he still doesn’t.”

His phone screen brightens with an incoming call, and he picks it up, silencing it with a push of a button. “I've poured everything I have into this, trying to be perfect, what they—what everyone—expects me to be.” The frustration builds in his voice,“But no matter how hard I try, it'll never be enough. Not for them. And maybe... not for you either.”

You cradle his larger hand between yours, wishing he could see himself through your eyes. “You’ve always been enough.”

“I want to give you everything–”

“Steve, stop. You can’t live for other people. Pursue this because it brings you fulfillment, not for anyone else. Think about everything your dad has given your mom. Do you think it’s made them happy?”

He pulls his hand from yours, a fleeting shadow crossing his features as his gaze drifts to some distant point in the room. “I’d never treat you the way he treats her.” 

“That’s right.” Gently, you cup his face, your thumbs brushing lightly against his jaw, coaxing his gaze back to you. “You’re better than him. And if he can’t see that or celebrate your wins, that’s his shortcoming. Tonight is going to go off without a hitch, and Richard is going to thank his lucky stars for having the good sense to have assigned you City Beats.”

Leaning in, you press a soft, deliberate kiss to his lips. “You deserve your success.” His hand rises to cover yours, and your face softens into a smile. “Now, can we go? I need you to dance with me during the slow songs. I’ll even let you pretend we’re at prom.” 

The corners of his mouth rise, his chuckle warming the space between you as he leans in, your foreheads touching gently. “What would I do without you, Ace?” The words are gentle as his lips seek out yours. A car horn blares from the street below, breaking the moment. “I think our driver is getting antsy.”

“Well then, handsome,” you say, a gentle determination in your voice as you smooth out an imaginary crease on his jacket. “Let’s go to a party.” 

Dozens of spotlights pierce the night, illuminating the iconic Adler Planetarium. Limos and sleek cars roll up, dropping off the who’s who of the city—celebrities, influential politicians, and tech moguls—onto the red carpet-lined stairs. Banners emblazoned with the City Beats logo wave from the art deco building's great dome, set against the dark waters of the lake and the distant city lights. 

“Wow,” you breathe as Steve takes your hand and helps you out of the car. The magnitude of the moment takes over. Now it’s your turn to be impressed. “Baby, you did all this!” 

Steve’s signature smirk takes over his face, his cheeks tinting with a flush from your compliment. A camera flash pops in your face as you step out onto the red carpet. With a deep breath, you tighten your hold on his hand. The PR team's efforts have paid off. Photogs from all over the city and national publications line the step and repeat. The air is a blend of lake chill and expensive perfumes as you await your turn to be photographed. Steve’s reassuring hand, firm along your ribs, holds you steady as the flashes blind you. His gaze drops to yours, brimming with unmistakable pride, lending you his confidence. A quick squeeze of his hand coaxes a genuine smile as you face the cameras together.

“Not used to being on this side,” you murmur, keeping your teeth on display under the relentless flashes.

He chuckles, drawing you forward. “You're a natural,” he whispers, guiding you to the entrance with a hand at your back.

As you step into the grand foyer, your name being called pierces the hum of conversations. Rihanna waves from across the room, her manicured hand catching the light. She mouths ‘Call me’ before being swept away by her very tall date.

"Was that–" Steve asks, eyes widening. 

"I interviewed her last year," you explain, returning her smile with your own as she navigates the crowd. 

"Must have made an impression. That was the new point guard for the Chicago Bulls." His eyebrows raise as he watches them disappear into the throng of guests. Leaning in, his breath tickles your ear, “I don’t think we’re in Hawkins anymore, Dorothy.”

Light laughter bubbles from your throat. “Thanks, Toto,” you quip, threading your arm into the crook of his elbow, letting him lead you along.

Abstract designs mimicking sound waves, musical notes set into star patterns, and cosmic shapes elegantly adorn the solarium. The floor-to-ceiling windows extend the celestial theme, allowing for sweeping views of the night sky. 

“From Skyline to Bassline: This is City Beats Streaming Radio.” 

The DJ's smooth voice transitions the songs playing through the speakers as they live-stream from a platform beside a wall of digital screens alive with a social media feed and a map showing millions of listeners around the world tuning in. 

Steve lets go of your hand as he’s swarmed with department heads buzzing with reports and updates. You stand alone, crossing one hand over another as muted conversation hums under the beat of the music. The waitstaff weaves through the crowd, offering trays of fluted glasses brimming with bubbling champagne, and you gratefully accept a glass. Guests interact with kiosks exploring the different channels offered by City Beats, including specific music genres, news, and talk shows, while others move onto the themed lounges or drift out to the terrace for the small bites and views of the city.

“Harrington.” Richard's booming voice sends Steve’s staff scattering into the crowd. “Everything is looking just splendid, son.” He greets Steve with a firm handshake before his voice drops,“Now, how are those numbers?”

You look away, rolling your eyes out of view as you drain the rest of your glass. He can’t give Steve five minutes of peace. 

“According to sales, we are easily beating the first round of projections and are slated to hit our monthly target in the next hour.” Steve’s voice is filled with cool confidence, but his palm is damp when his fingers slip between yours. 

“That’s good to hear,” Richard says, the tightness in his expression easing as the redness circling his face begins to fade. He leans closer to Steve, his tone firm, “I don't think I need to remind you that Second City has a lot riding on this, which means you've got a lot riding on this.”

Steve's lips press together in a firm line as he stands a little taller and smooths a hand over his tie. Your teeth clamp down on the inside of your lip, forcing your silence. 

A waiter glides to your side, stopping to collect your empty glass. You place your flute on his tray a touch too forcefully. The clink with the other glasses is louder than intended, breaking the moment. Richard straightens, his attention drawn to you for the first time. He steps back, the wheels turning behind his eyes as he tries to place you.

His manufactured grin returns as he claps Steve on the shoulder. “Keep up the excellent work, my boy. This is impressive.” He waves a hand, gesturing around the party, “I don’t know what any of it is, but it’s impressive,” he laughs, expecting you to join him. When you only muster a weak smile, his laughter fades, replaced by a brief, awkward silence.

“I’m glad you brought the little lady with you tonight, Steve. She just gets prettier and prettier,” Richard continues, not missing a beat. “My wife’s around here somewhere, probably telling someone how to do their job,” he chuckles, then signals a waitress for more drinks. “Make sure you say hello. She loves gossiping with the other wives.” Handing you both a fresh glass, he adds, “Now, see to it our boy here doesn't work too hard, okay?” With a final pat on Steve’s shoulder and a wag of his finger in your direction, Richard moves off into the crowd.

Steve exhales quietly, the tension leaving his shoulders, as he gently squeezes your hand.

“I don’t know how you stand him,” you fume, “How many years have I worked here, and the bastard doesn't even recognize me.”

“Trust me, you’re better off not being on his radar,” Steve replies, downing his champagne in one go before passing the empty glass off to a passing waiter. “I’m sure he’s going to be on my ass when I meet with the investors.”

“But it’s such a nice ass,” you grin over the rim of your glass, letting the bubbles tickle your lips.

His eyes gleam as he leans in a little closer, but his response dissolves before it's spoken. Warmth heats the bare skin of your back as someone steps close behind you. Your stomach plummets like a rollercoaster, and goosebumps dot your arms—there's no need to look.

“Eddie,” Steve welcomes him with a handshake that shifts to an embrace. “You made it.”

Since the kiss, Eddie has honored your request, maintaining the distance you needed— a display of restraint that the high school version of him might not have managed.  But after your talk with Hopper and the shadow of the looming deadline creeping closer, it was only a matter of time before you had to face him. And the clock has just run out. 

“How could I pass this up?” Eddie’s gaze darts around the solarium before landing on you. “Doll.” He leans in, placing a light kiss on your cheek before turning back to Steve. “This is some party. Congratulations, man.” 

"Thanks for passing the word down your contact list,” Steve says, his tone sincere. “My head of PR mentioned you've made her job a hell of a lot easier." 

“Happy to help,” he shrugs, adjusting the gold cufflinks at his wrists. He’s ignored the last few buttons of his pressed black shirt and worn it open-collar, allowing a glimpse of the fine black-inked lines that grace the skin of his chest. 

“Do you own a suit that isn’t black?” You ask, eyeing the slim-fit pinstripe, that's obviously been tailored to fit him like a glove. “Or is that a rental?”

“Ace,” Steve chides.

Eddie laughs, the sound rich and easy. “Gotta match with the sweet old tats, don’t I?” The edge that once sharpened your words now fails to cut. His smile blooms into dimples, and it’s contagious. Despite the crackling of nerves and self-made promises, he disarms you. A line creases Steve’s brow as the moment hangs, and your smirk echoes Eddie’s.

A peel of laughter rises above the blend of music and conversation as the party continues. A harried junior staffer pushes through the crowd, bumping shoulders and muttering apologies as she tries to keep a stray lock of hair from escaping her updo. “Steve, I’m so sorry to interrupt,” she keeps her voice low despite her breathlessness. “Ted's already on his fifth bourbon, and he's cornered Harris Blake from Bean City Brews. He's telling that joke about the nun and the circus tent, and I think we are about to lose half of our ad revenue for this quarter."

"Shit," Steve mutters, his fingers raking through his hair. "Okay, let's deal with this." Relief washes over the staffer's face as she quickly turns, leading the way.

Steve pauses, his eyes meeting yours, an apology written on his face. "I’m-”

"It's okay. Go," you reassure with a squeeze of his bicep. His lips lift at the corners before he turns away, disappearing into the crowd as your gaze lingers after him.

The weight of Eddie’s eyes settles on you before you’ve even turned to meet them. “So, is this the part where I chase you around all night until you finally agree to talk to me?” he asks, closing the distance with a step forward.

“Actually, I thought we’d skip that part.” Your eyes dip to your shoes, avoiding his stare. “I want to apologize for what happened. I let my emotions get the better of me. It was unprofessional.” 

“Unprofessional?” Surprise lifts brows before his lips press together in a hard line. “Come with me.” His hand closes over yours, pulling you through the solarium without looking back before you can object. 

“Eddie-” you start, but he’s already ushering you into the double doors of the sky theater.

He doesn’t stop as he leads you into the darkness, the room illuminated only by the soft rows of small floor lights as the soaring domed ceiling swirls with violet and periwinkle projections of the starry sky. Ignoring the few others milling around, he tugs you into the privacy of the shadows, finally releasing your hand. In the orchid-tinged light, his stare holds a depth that's hard to look away from. “This isn’t business, doll. You mean every–” he swallows, “you’re my closest friend.”

“You don’t even know me anymore, Eddie.” Your head shakes, silently begging him to understand.

His hands move to grip your shoulders. “There are some things that time can’t change.”

“It can’t happen again,” you state in a firm voice, taking a step back and widening the gap between you. 

He shoves his hands into his pockets, waiting as a couple meanders past, pointing out Cassiopeia. “Then what do you propose?”

“I’ll finish the articles.”

“And then?”

“And then everything goes back to the way it was. I'm sure we'll cross paths from time to time.” The words emerge on a strained breath, tightness seizing your lungs. “It’s for the best.” 

“That’s not good enough,” he counters, the shake of his head cutting through the dim light. “I want you in my life.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“You can.” He inches closer, blowing out a sigh. “Look, it was my fault. Be my friend. Draw that line, and we won’t cross it. I know you’re still pissed at me, but we can work through it.” His voice falters, the earlier resolve in his eyes melting into a plea. “Aren’t you tired of carrying all this around inside of you?”

His question softens the tension in your chest, suggesting a sliver of peace you hadn't known you were seeking. Maybe the scars etched on your heart for so long have also shielded it from joy. You swallow the lump in your throat, offering an almost imperceptible nod.

“Can you try for me?” he pleads. 

“I can’t make you any promises,” you nod again, more sure this time. “But I’ll try.” 

His thumb gently traces the side of your face before his arms circle you, pulling you close against him—the scent of vanilla and clove clings to his jacket. Under your cheek, the fabric is cool and smooth, tinged with a hint of tobacco, taking you someplace you thought was lost. 

“Don’t mark up my suit with that shit you wear all over your face,” he teases, his hold on you not lessening an inch. “It is a rental.”

There is a tentative hopefulness in your newly minted truce with Eddie. Almost as tangible as the pulse of the bass vibrating through the soles of your shoes. His smile, easy and unguarded, lights up his face as he guides you through the sea of finely dressed attendees with a hand resting on your lower back. Stopping to exchange hellos and handshakes with a group of industry professionals who are eager to discuss his Studio opening. He pushes the topic aside in favor of introducing you.  With an effortless charm, he leaves no room for doubt about your credentials as a journalist at Stax and suggests the value an interview with you would bring to their clients.

“What?” His eyebrows lift, amusement playing across his features as he catches the pleased look on your face as you tuck a handful of new business cards into your clutch.

“Are you auditioning to be my new publicist?” you tease, your brain already teeming with the new articles his introduction just made a possibility. 

The warmth of his laughter is becoming a welcome sound. “I’ll be anything you want, doll,” he offers, the words punctuated by a flirtatious flash of his dimples.

A snort accompanies the roll of your eyes, even as your stomach flutters. 

“I’m proud of you, you know? he adds, a soft earnestness in his tone. “I like showing you off.” The tenderness in his expression doesn't waver as he follows you through the solarium. You find your fiancée chatting with a familiar face. A welcome distraction from all things Eddie. 

“Dulcita,” Argyle wraps an arm around your shoulders. “Looking bitchin, as always. That dress is killer.”

Laughing, you nod toward his outfit, “Well, I’m just trying to keep up. You look amazing.” 

With an exaggerated flourish, he poses with his thumbs stretching the lapels of his periwinkle floral suit before turning to greet  Eddie with a handshake. 

Steve's hand finds its way to your hip, drawing you near. "I thought I’d lost you. Where'd you disappear to?"

“Just exploring a bit,” you offer, meeting his look with a smile, but his eyes shift past you toward Eddie.

A pretty blonde waitress weaves through the crowd, her tray of fresh drinks catching Eddie's attention. He flags her down with a tilt of his head and a confident wink. “Thanks, sweetheart,” he says, plucking a few glasses from her tray to pass around.

“This event is popping off,” Argyle chimes in, taking a glass and nodding toward Steve. “Congrats, dude. I couldn’t have planned this better myself.”

Eddie extends a glass in your direction. “Doll?” 

Steve’s shoulders tense as his stare fills the space between you and Eddie, the sides of his mouth dipping. “Have you eaten?” he asks, his hand tightening slightly on your waist.

For a heartbeat, you just look at him, letting the wave of irritation roll past. Your teeth sink into your lip as you decline Eddie’s offer with a shake of your head. 

Eddie's face tightens, a flash of restrained agitation crossing his features as he retracts the glass and dismisses the waitress with a polite nod. Argyle, shifts uncomfortably, his lips pursed into an O as his gaze skitters across the room. 

Turning fully towards Steve with a soft expression, you aim for lightness. “Argyle’s right, you know. It all looks perfect, Steve,” you say, channeling warmth into your words, “Everyone’s having a great time. All your hard work is really paying off.”

Half of his mouth lifts as his gaze wanders over the crowd. “Guess we’ll see on Monday when the final numbers come in. Richard is already pushing to take City Beats national.”

Your face falls, “But that’s...that’s a massive undertaking. You’d have to restructure everything, wouldn’t you?”

Steve nods, his expression turning heavy. “Yeah, it would mean a major overhaul, not just in marketing but across multiple departments. We'd likely need to set up satellite offices in other cities, which means a lot of travel for me. It’s ultimately up to the investors, though.”

“Not too shabby, Harrington,” Argyle says, clapping Steve on the shoulder. “You’re going to be running with the big dogs now.”

The conversation becomes muted as worry knots your stomach. Steve doesn’t seem to realize that his decisions impact more than just his own future. The coming months loom large with late nights and lost weekends. The toll won’t be just the dark circles under his hazel eyes but the shared moments slipping away like water through your fingers. His relentless drive for success and approval is edging him closer to repeating his father's mistakes—becoming distant, hollow, bitter. Pouring himself into work to the point of exhaustion, neglecting those he loves, just as he was once neglected. You can't just watch as he loses himself, not when you see the signs, feel the strain.

“Come on, Ace, smile for me. This is a good thing.” Steve says with a soft tone as his lips find your temple.

“I know that, and I’m so proud of you,” you manage, lifting your cheeks in the look of adorement he hopes to see. “You work so hard. I just worry.”

His hand shifts to cradle your jaw, tipping your chin to meet his gaze. “It will be fine, I promise. I’ll take some time before things really ramp up,” he reassures, the corners of his hopeful eyes crinkling. “Maybe for a honeymoon?”

“Sounds like someone is trying to think of excuses to get out of the actual work,” Nancy’s voice slices through the moment, her arrival almost as commanding as the deep plum of her silk dress that clings and flows in all the right places, complementing her sleek dark hair.

“A national campaign?” Jonathan steps beside Nancy, his narrow tie and vintage-cut suit making him look straight from the 1950s. “You might as well give back the ring now. Sounds like he’s already married to his work,” he leans toward you, cupping his mouth like a secret, earning him a chuckle from the rest of the group. 

Ignoring him, Steve directs his attention to Nancy with a self-assured smirk. “Thanks for showing up, Nance. Wouldn’t want you to miss the moment Second City leaves Spectrum behind for the history books."

Her eyes narrow as her arms cross over her slender body, “That’s adorable, Steve, really. But the idea that your little radio project outshines a whole TV network? Please..”

Steve lets out a snort as his hands move to his hips. “Last I checked, Spectrum's sprawling empire was one channel.” 

“We're thinking of expanding,” her voice is as smooth as silk as she examines her nails. 

“With the tech we’re developing for on-demand music, who’s going to need cable?”

“If you can manage–”

“If I may suggest putting away the rulers,” Argyle’s voice rises above their bickering, “It’s Steve’s party, and I think we’ve had enough dick measuring for the evening.”

“Fine,” Nancy agrees as she holds Steve's stare, matching his smug expression, “I’ll concede. Congratulations on your accomplishments, Steve.”

“Appreciated,” Steve says, with a tip of his chin. 

“But let's be clear,” Nancy adds, unable to help herself, “my dick is still bigger.”

Argyle groans as Jonathan's eyes roll skyward. Eddie takes a gulp of champagne, trying to stem his laughter.

“Where’s Robin?” you ask, cutting off whatever retort Steve was planning before it has a chance to leave his mouth, “Didn’t she ride with you guys?”

“She took off at the coat check with Jessie J—something about a twerking tutorial,” Jonathan explains, looking confused as he tucks his hands in his pockets. 

Nancy's laugh tinkles with mischief. “Trust me, it's a sight. Robin insists she's better.”

“Well, I’m not missing that,” Eddie says, polishing off his drink, “I’ll catch you all later.” He turns and leaves your group, placing his empty glass on a waiter's tray as he walks past. 

As he melts into the crowd, Nancy's gaze shifts to Richard making his way toward your circle. Her smile tightens ever so slightly, “Oh god. Is that Richard Kingsley?” she asks Steve. “I thought he’d have retired by now, off riding a golf cart in Florida.” 

“No such luck.” Steve mutters under his breath, “Play nice, please.”

“I’m always nice,” she whispers before she plasters on her grin, “Richard.”

Richard approaches with a practiced smile, extending his hand to Nancy. “Nancy Wheeler, Spectrum’s shining star in the digital domain, or so I’ve been told. They’ve certainly sent us their best tonight. How’s the world of content directing? ”

“Actually, Richard,”  Steve quickly corrects, his voice firm yet courteous as he positions himself alongside Nancy, “Vice President of Content Strategy. Nancy’s been leading the charge there for over a year now.” 

Richard's smile doesn't falter as he turns to Nancy. "My apologies, Nancy. I’m sure it's a well-deserved promotion.” She offers him a polite smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes as he continues, “Your insights at the conference in New York were…enlightening. It's always good to have industry leaders like yourself in attendance.”

As if on cue, a junior staff photographer weaves through the crowd. Richard snaps his finger at him, seizing the opportunity, "Let's capture this moment, shall we? A picture for the company archives.”

“Better him than me,” Jonathan mutters as the staffer directs the group a few feet away, ensuring the City Beats Logo will frame the background of the photo. Richard positions himself at the center, patting at the shine of his red face with a handkerchief before draping an arm over each of their shoulders.

“That’s depressing,” Jonathan snorts, watching the setup. “Well, I'm off to find a drink that matches my cynicism,” he adds, taking the opportunity to slip away, leaving you alone with Argyle.

“So,” The sweetness of pineapple and weed hit your nose as Argyle leans over your shoulder, his breath warm against your ear, “It looks like you and Eddie sorted out your shit, huh?”

“We’re tolerating each other,” you tell him without turning your head. 

“I don’t know, man,” he muses, his eyes narrowing, “Tolerance was not the look on your face when you walked in here with him.”

A huff escapes your throat as you whip around to face him. “I’m interviewing him, remember?” you ask, trying to keep defensiveness out of your voice. “I'm just trying to be…pleasant.” 

“You can tell yourself whatever you need to,” he adds, concern written across his face. “But from where I’m standing, you look like you’re in way over your head.”

The words die in your throat as Eddie reappears, weaving through the crowd with the grace of someone used to navigating this kind of affair. In one hand, he balances a plate arranged with an assortment of canapes and sushi, each piece a miniature work of art. His deep brown eyes keenly focused on you. “Eat something, doll,” he suggests, handing the plate over to you.

That feeling wells up in your stomach as you purse your lips, trying not to let your mouth stretch too big in front of Argyle, although he probably has picked up on the heat rising to your face. “Thanks,” you say shyly, accepting the plate. 

“I’ll snag one,” Argyle reaches toward your plate with two fingers.

 Eddie brows lower. “You can get your own, they’re not charging.”

“Sheesh, I know, dude. They're from my restaurant,” Argyle informs him.

“Then you know exactly where to get more,” Eddie counters.

“Did you find Robin?” you ask, changing the subject. “Was she twerking?”

“Yeah, I caught the tail end of it. And I’ll never unsee it,” his genuine laughter fills the space. “I think it’s burned into my retinas.”

“Mrs. Harrington," comes the voice of a junior staffer materializing beside you with such abruptness that the plate nearly slips from your grasp. "They want you in the photo now.”

“Umm, sure,” you say, glancing to where Steve is standing with Nancy, laughing at something she said. Eddie takes the plate from you, his easy smile from earlier erased by the downturn of his lips. 

Smoothing down your skirt, you follow the photographer, consciously relaxing the clench of your jaw over how you were addressed. Steve’s eyes sparkle with warmth as he makes space for you between himself and Nancy, Richard positioned at the end. The clear happiness on his face eases your irritation. His hand finds a place on your ribs, pulling you into his side before the photographer directs you where to look. 

“Very nice,” Richard comments with a nod after the flash goes off. 

“One for your company Christmas card,” Nancy quips, throwing a look in Steve's direction.

Richard, not missing a beat, turns to you both. “Yes, well, it’s always a pleasure, Ms. Wheeler. I hope you enjoy the party,” he says before shifting to Steve. “Ready to give the investors a tour, my boy? They’ve had their share of drinks. Should be just about softened up for you now.”

“I’ll be right with you, Richard.” Steve waves him off, his eyes softening as he looks down at you, “You going to be okay on your own for a while, Ace?”

“Absolutely,” you tell him, rising to your toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. “You’re going to kill it, handsome.” 

The side of his mouth tips up as you use your thumb to wipe away the gloss you left behind. “How did I get so lucky?” he wonders aloud, his gaze locked on yours. Leaning in, he captures your lips with his in a kiss that lingers a beat too long for a public place. 

“I'll find you later.” Regret clouds his eyes as he pulls back, slipping on the professional mask he wears far too often. He walks away with Richard in tow.

“I better go find Jonathan,” Nancy tells Argyle and Eddie as you rejoin your friends, “or he’ll end up in a corner talking politics all night, and I made him promise me that he’d dance with me for at least one song.” 

“You can sign me up for one too, Wheeler,” Eddie says, popping a piece of sushi in his mouth. “No arm twisting required.”

“I’m going to hold you to that, Munson,” she promises, pointing a playful finger at him before turning to leave, her dress swirling behind her.

“You, Eddie Muson, volunteering to dance,” you tease, your expression mockingly shocked. “Now I’ve seen everything.”

“Play your cards right, doll, and I’ll show you up close and personal,” Eddie says, his eyebrows dancing as he offers you a canapé.

“That’s alright, Eddie. I’ve got my regular dance partner right here, right Argyle?” you say, looping your arm through his.

“Yeah... yup,” Argyle murmurs, his attention momentarily snagged by a tall brunette striding past. She sweeps a waterfall of silky hair over her shoulder, pretending not to notice him, but the extra sway added to her hips says otherwise. 

“Solo dame una noche con ese culo y te haré mami, querida,” Argyle calls after her, untangling himself from your arm.  

“Traitor,” you accuse, watching him go with a shake of your head as he follows after her without a backward glance.

“Ve por ella, amigo,” Eddie encourages with a booming laugh.

Turning back to you, he rocks on his heels, a smirk playing on his lips. “Looks like it’s just you and me, doll.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t have to look so happy about it,” you chide when his dimples make an appearance, sending the rusted chains around your heart rattling when it jumps under your ribs. Maybe Argyle wasn’t too far off the mark.

A brisk wind cuts across the dark surface of Lake Michigan. The City Beats logo burns bright in yellow neon, its light spilling over the outdoor stage and dancing across the water’s surface in a rotation of colors. Despite the press of bodies, warmth is scarce, with the night air nipping at any exposed skin. Before you can even think of shivering, Eddie drapes his suit jacket over your shoulders, the fabric holding the residual warmth of his body. He stands close beside you, seemingly unfazed by the cool temperature, as Maroon 5 concludes their set.

The crowd sways as one, heads bobbing in sync with the rhythm pulsing into the chilly evening. The spice of Eddie's cologne is a veil around you, drawing you closer into his orbit. Glancing his way, you expect his attention to be on the show, eyes tracking each note and chord. Instead, you find the intensity of his gaze fixed on you.

As the song ends with the band offering their thanks, the MC dashes on stage to announce the next performer. With a tip of his chin, Eddie motions for you to follow him. Together, you squeeze through the crowd, walking along the path at the lake's edge until the sea of people begins to thin, their noise fading into a distant murmur until it's just the two of you left, accompanied by the quiet hush of waves lapping against the bank. 

He stops, gazing out over the water, city lights dancing in his eyes. “I almost forgot how your face changes when you listen to music. It’s like the lyrics break right through, lighting you up from the inside.”

“My one true love,” you respond with a wistful sigh, giving him a shrug. 

“Oh yeah?” He turns toward you, inching a bit closer to reach into the breast pocket of the suit jacket enveloping your shoulders. He pulls out a tightly rolled joint, eyeing you with a raised brow. “What’s with all the ‘Mrs. Harrington’ business?” he asks, placing the joint between his lips and fishing a brass Zippo from his pants pocket. “Did you get married and forget to invite me?”

Your eyes flash skyward as he lights it with a practiced flick and takes a deep drag. “I don’t know...Steve encourages it. I think it’s his way of reminding me he’s waiting for me to set a date.”

He passes you the joint and blows out a lung full of white smoke that swirls into the night air.  “You have left the poor sap waiting for a while.”

“I don’t want to talk about my relationship with you, Eddie,” you say, flicking the ash off the burning paper's end before pressing it to your lips and inhaling. 

“Why not?” His gaze probes, seeking an opening, a slip, anything. “Friends talk about their relationships, don’t they?”

You can’t help but cough, the potency of the smoke catching you off guard. “You know exactly why not,” you retort, passing the joint back to him. A soft fog settles over your thoughts, smoothing out the evening’s sharpness. “And you? Volunteering to help with the guest list...” You eye him skeptically, “Trying to ease your conscience?”

He chuckles, shaking his head as he takes another hit, “It was only a couple of texts, doll,” he says, passing the joint back to you, his fingers brushing yours. “Trust me, I sleep just fine at night. What’s between you and me started long before Steve entered the picture.”

 "Well, he’s here now," you assert with defiance, your gaze locked with Eddie's as the joint burns down in your fingers. 

His fingers wrap around your wrist, guiding your left hand into the streetlamp's glow until the diamond on your finger flashes. "I guess he is. But doll," he steps closer, his eyes holding yours, "so am I."

“Yeah? Let’s wait and see if you stick around this time.” Your skepticism is clear as you bring the joint back to your lips, watching his face fall with your pointed words.

“So this is where the cool kids hang out,” Hopper’s gruff voice cuts into the night, anchoring you back to reality. Eddie takes a step away from you, his hands tugging on the ends of his curls. Hopper’s eyes narrow on the joint between your fingers. “Really think it’s wise to smoke grass at a work function?” 

“I promise not to operate any heavy machinery,” you respond in a dry tone, blowing out a cloud of smoke.

The older man’s eyes shoot skyward before he holds out an expectant hand, “Give it here.”  

You hand it over, and the burning paper crackles as he takes a practiced drag, “Are you going to introduce me?”

“Sorry. Yeah,” you rub your forehead, “James Hopper, this is my…um, friend, Eddie Munson.” Eddie leans forward, reaching out to shake hands as you quickly explain, “Hopper’s my editor.” The steadiness in your voice doesn’t quite bridge the awkward moment. 

Eddie’s brows raise as Hopper’s hand closes over his in a crushing grip. “Hell of a grip,” Eddie comments with a question written across his face. 

“A handshake is a good measure of man,” Hopper offers him no other explanation, handing him back the smoking joint before turning to you. “I expect a write-up of the launch on my desk by 10:30 tomorrow for the digital edition. And don’t skimp on the details about the radio service. Downtown is keen on pushing this, so I hope you paid attention.”

“No problem, Hop. I’m on it,” you assure him.

“Now, I’m going home to Joyce. If she gets a whiff of this on me, I’m sending her your way.”

“You’ll be in the clear,” you promise with a soft grin. 

Hopper's stern demeanor gives way to something gentler. “Alright,” he says with a nod, “Enjoy your evening, kid.” His eyes dart to Eddie. “But not too much.”

“Jesus, that’s your editor?” Eddie asks once Hopper is out of sight. “The guy missed his calling, he would’ve made a great cop.”

Your laughter accompanies the dismissive shake of your head. “We better go back inside.”

The walk back is steeped in quiet, the night’s emotions a heavy weight that weaves threads of weariness and a dull ache through your limbs. Eddie appears less burdened, wearing an expression of contentment, his hand slipping beneath the fabric of his jacket still resting over your shoulders. The warmth of his palm seeps into the bare skin of your back while his thumb traces soothing circles along your spine. Carried in on a breeze, the earthy spice of late-blooming asters mingle with the vibrant colors of marigolds softened under the glowing canopy of string lights.

As you near the terrace, the murmur of voices grows, and the sparse groups of people along the pathway thicken to a full gathering. The shift from the lake’s tranquility to the party's bright lights and crescendo of conversations is jarring.  The solarium overflows with party-goers, their inhibitions loosened by drinks as they flood the dance floor, the music swelling louder and more insistent than before.  Despite the sea of people, it takes only moments for Steve’s gaze to lock onto yours across the room as you reenter with Eddie by your side. 

Without hesitation, he leaves the conversation he'd been having and moves toward you. The corners of your mouth lift in a greeting that isn’t returned. His forehead creases with a question. The air seems thicker as you slide the jacket off, returning it to Eddie, the tightness in your chest reappearing. Steve's jaw clenches as he reaches you, his arm circling your waist. “I’ll take my fiance back now, Munson.”

Eddie’s smirk sharpens as he hooks his jacket over one shoulder, “Just keeping an eye on her for you, buddy. Couldn’t leave the lady alone with all these musicians wandering around.” He leans closer, his free hand circling his mouth, “They tend to  get a little handsy.”

"Thanks, pal," Steve replies, the last word stretched tight as he stands taller. “I’ll take it from here.”

Eddie’s gaze drops to his feet momentarily before his head lifts. Amusement widens his grin, reflecting a confidence that borders on smug. His feet shuffle as he adjusts his posture to match Steve’s. A twist of nerves tightens your stomach as a spark that you know all too well brightens Eddie’s eyes like an echo of the cocky teenager he once was. 

“How about that dance you promised me, handsome?” you blurt, cutting Eddie off just as his mouth opens to respond. Stepping between them, you intertwine your fingers with Steve's and tug him toward the dance floor. As if on cue, the music mellows to a slower tempo. 

Steve’s stare remains on Eddie as his arms circle your waist. “You know, it’s funny, I never realized what a dick Eddie is.” 

Your head turns to see Eddie watching you with hands shoved in his pocket. “You barely spoke to him all night. What led you to that conclusion?”

Robin bops over to meet him, her blue eyes gleaming as she tugs at his arm, trying to coax him into a dance despite his shaking head. 

“I don’t know. The guy is just rubbing me the wrong way,” Steve doesn’t hide the irritation in his voice as he turns you so you’re facing away from them. 

A burst of protectiveness that has been dormant since high school wells up like a hot spring. The words escape before your better judgment can catch them. “Really. Are you sure it’s not because he’s my friend?” 

The mossy green rings of his eyes burn into yours for only a moment before he blows out a soft breath. “Let’s not fight.” His big hand slides down to rest low on your back as he pulls you closer. “I’ve been waiting to get you alone all night,” he says into your ear before his mouth covers yours hotly, leaving you whirling with his quick change. “Where have you been all night, Ace?”

One side of his mouth lifts in a half-smile, but his confident mask slips. Behind his eyes, he’s lost—the familiarity tugs at you. Rising on your toes, you press your lips to his. “I’m right here.” 

His expression softens, radiating a comforting warmth as his lips brush your temple. The rhythm of the song wraps around you both like a truce. Burying your cheek into Steve’s shoulder, your gaze follows Eddie as he turns his back and heads for the door. 

Steve leans closer to the bathroom mirror, his fingertips shiny with the pomade he's using to piece out the strands of his chestnut hair. 

“Don’t forget your glasses,” you remind him, turning away from the open doorway and entering your bedroom.  

“Or the tickets,” you toss out, noticing the white envelope on his night table.

“What would I do without you, Ace?” His voice floats from the bathroom, light and teasing.

Settling at the end of your bed, you pick up the novel you started recently, the book's weight familiar in your lap. Seeing Steve so relaxed and happy broadens your smile. He deserves this night out to blow off a little steam. City Beats' launch exceeded every expectation. A success that's finally turned the heads of the old guard at Second City toward the efforts of their youngest executive. Of course, memories are short, and victories are fleeting.

Steve's workload hasn't lessened, and the prospect of taking the platform national is still on the horizon, but you've set aside any misgivings, at least for now. It’s been a week since you surprised him with the Bulls tickets during his birthday dinner at Maple and Ash, Steve’s favorite, surrounded by your closest friends–with one empty chair at the table when Eddie hadn’t shown. 

“Sure you don’t want to come? I still have an extra ticket,” He asks, emerging through the pocket doors separating your bedroom from the closet. Securing his Jaeger-Lecoultre watch to his wrist, the scent of Dior Homme follows him.

You glance down at your cozy leggings and cream wrap sweater. “I’ve got big plans tonight, handsome.” You hold up the book against your chest. “Didn’t anyone from your pick-up game want the ticket? Or those guys you play racquetball with?”

“I didn't get a chance to ask until the last minute,” he explains. “Robin called my office about fifty times to harass me about inviting Eddie to the game. It took me all week to get the guy on the phone, and  then he turned me down flat.” He shakes his head, walking over to his nightstand to retrieve the tickets. 

“I don't think Eddie is much of a sports guy,” you muse, glancing down at your fingers, folding and unfolding a dog-eared page. “He used to say he didn't have time for throwing balls into laundry baskets. He’d go on and on about the unfairness of high school politics.” A quiet laugh escapes your mouth along with the memory. “He could be so dramatic back then.”

When you lift your eyes, Steve's standing frozen in place, the deep line between his brows wiping away his easy demeanor. He's looking at you like he's just found an uninvited stranger in his bed. It’s just a flash before he recovers, his features returning to the affectionate expression he usually carries for you, but it was enough. The parts of yourself you keep hidden loom like an iceberg–he’s just spotted the tip. You draw your knees to your chest, wrapping your arms around yourself.

“Yeah?” He pauses, the air between you thickening as a hint of challenge colors his voice. “That’s a little weird considering he got us seats at a Lakers game last time I was in LA.”

The silence stretches just a moment longer. “Guess he’s not the same guy you knew back in Hawkins. But then again, none of us are, right?” He lets the question hover, knowing an answer isn’t coming.  “People change,” he shrugs, his gaze intense and probing. “Or maybe we just never really knew them at all.”

He steps closer and leans in, his lips brushing the corner of your mouth in a kiss that punctuates the conversation. His tone, sharp and heavy like a dull knife, cuts deep as he turns to leave. “Enjoy your book.” 

“Wait.” You slip off the bed, bridging the gap between you. Your fingers tangle in the material of his shirt, drawing him closer until your lips meet his, adding pressure until his arms circle your waist and he kisses you back. His embrace grows warmer as your tongue slides into his mouth, grazing his before pulling back, making him chase you, and he does. You break away but keep him close, his forehead pressed against yours, his breath a warm whisper as his nose runs along your cheek. “Have fun, okay?” you murmur against his lips as his hands slide up and down your back. “Knock back a few. Yell at the Ref. Get Jonathan drunk enough to annoy Nancy.” 

He chuckles, a smile lifting his cheeks. “You got it, Ace.” His eyes close as his lips find yours again. “I love you.” 

"I love you too, Steve," you whisper, your fingers uncurling from his shirt as you let him go. He takes your hand as you follow him downstairs. He opens the front door to a car waiting at the curb, the driver hoping out to open the backdoor. 

“I’ll see you in a few hours.” He smiles, picking up his keys from the small table.

The cold air rushes in from outside, and you pull your sweater tighter around your neck. Watching him step through the door, you call out, “Happy Birthday, handsome.”

As you close the door, Steve pauses on the landing with a thoughtful look crossing his face. “You know, now that I think about it, Eddie didn’t stop yapping that entire game. Maybe you’re right after all. The guy just doesn’t like sports.”

You give a noncommittal shrug, your fingers tightening around the edge of the door. "What did you talk about?"

“Can’t remember,” he shakes his head, resuming his descent down the steps. You watch for a moment longer before closing the door and latching the deadbolt.

With a sigh, you turn back to the now quiet house. The soft pad of your fluffy socks muffles your footsteps as you drift through the rooms, dimming the overhead lights to let the warmer glow of lamps bathe the space in a comforting light. You head to the kitchen, grabbing the remote from the counter. At the press of a button, the scratch of a guitar and a gravelly voice fill the silence, as comforting as an old friend.

You mouth the lyrics as you reach for a wine glass from the cupboard. With a practiced motion, you uncork a bottle of red, filling your glass halfway, only to keep going until it's right to the brim. The song shifts as you leave the kitchen, glass in hand, taking a sip, the rich flavors of dark fruit and spice mingling perfectly, soothingly. Sinking into the couch, you tip your head back against the cushion, letting the music and the stillness envelop you. Your eyes close, the lyrics weaving a soothing spell, chasing dark thoughts away. 

The peace is predictably short-lived. A buzz jolts you. The phone tucked into your leggings vibrates with an incoming call. You try to ignore it, letting it ring to voicemail, but it buzzes again—this time a text. With a resigned huff, you pull it out and unlock the screen with a click.

Missed Call – Eddie

Eddie: Your neighbors don’t complain when you play music that loud?

You blink down at the screen and then lift your gaze to the room's dark corners.

Eddie: Don’t get freaked out. Just come to the door. 

Pushing off the couch, you pad through the house to the front door and open it to the chilly November night. A brisk gust of wind blows down your street, swirling dried red and orange leaves around Eddie's black leather boots, where he stands at the base of your steps, bathed in the soft glow of the sconces flanking your door.

His hands are shoved into the pockets of dark-fitted jeans, a cozy half-zip sweater in deep charcoal hugging his broad chest. He looks up at you from under his long lashes, head slightly cocked to the side. “I tried the bell.” His head turns to the street as a passing car splashes water up from the wet pavement. “What kind of sound system is that? I thought Chris was in there with you for a second.”

Wrapping your arms around your chest, your fingers gently rub the fabric of your sweater as you ignore the surrealness of Eddie casually referring to Chris Cornell by his first name. “What are you doing here? Steve's not home.”

“I know. I thought the guy would never leave. How long does it take him to do his hair, anyway?”

“It’s not funny, Eddie. You can’t come in.” You glance down the street to see your neighbor, leash in hand, appear in the circle of light cast by the streetlamp.

“I don’t want to come in, doll. We’re going out. And we're late, so if you could light a fire under it.” Eddie’s lips press into a hard line as your neighbor passes him on the sidewalk, giving him the once-over, the poodle pausing to sniff his legs.

“Evening, Mr. Davis," you acknowledge with a wave as the man continues down the street, shaking his head. You turn back to Eddie, frustration evident in your tone. "I can't go anywhere. I'm not even dressed.”

Eddie raises an eyebrow, assessing your attire. “Those look like clothes to me.” 

Your head tilts to the side, your expression unwavering. 

He glances at the sky and lets out a frustrated sigh before his gaze returns to you. “You look beautiful, doll. Now, please. Just grab your coat,” he implores, his hands pressing together in front of him. “ I promise to have you back before you turn into a pumpkin.” 

Your eyes lower to where your toes are wiggling in your socks, “Eddie, I–”

“Well, I could always just hang out here,” he muses, scratching at the scruff on his chin. “Might get awkward when the game lets out.”

“You're not serious,” you challenge, skepticism evident in your tone.

“Oh, aren't I?” he asks, cocking a brow as he crosses his arms over his chest. “Friends hang out together, don’t they?”

“Fine,” you fume. “But I better be back in plenty of time.” You catch the way his smile broadens as you turn back into the house to slip on a pair of boots and grab an old woolen peacoat off the hook by the door. Stepping out onto the stone landing of your brownstone, you hesitate, shooting him another look of apprehension before turning to lock the door.

“Christ, woman, was that so difficult?” He throws his hands in the air as he crosses the street to a shiny black Audi Q7 parked at the curb. With a wave of his hand, he opens the passenger door, beckoning you to climb inside. 

The bare branches of the trees sway with the wind, casting moving shadows against the shining asphalt painted with the last of the fallen leaves. You walk across the road to where he’s waiting and step into the SUV. You sink into the plush seat, the smell of leather, smoke, and his cologne assaulting your senses. It's the same scent that seemed to linger for days after your last visit to CursedSound, the one your guilt tried to erase.

Your hands worry themselves in your lap, twisting the diamond on your fourth finger while you wait for him to round the vehicle. The agreement about keeping the lines drawn is fresh in your mind as he climbs into the driver's seat. 

Without warning, he leans over you, the warmth of his body invading your space, the pout of his full bottom lip hovering inches from yours. The sharp intake of your breath echoes loudly in the vehicle's quiet confines.

“Seatbelt,” he reminds you, his big brown eyes dancing with amusement as he drags the strap across your shoulder and clicks it into position at your hip. 

Heat rises up your neck, burning your cheeks as he settles himself in his seat, strapping in before pressing the button that starts the ignition. 

“Shit.” His face falls as he glares at the glowing numbers on his dash.  He turns the wheel, lurching the Audi onto the roadway. Your neighborhood disappears in a blur as he turns and heads north. “And I thought LA traffic was bad,” he mutters, weaving in and out of stagnant lanes. 

The congestion loosens as he turns onto Lakeshore Drive, heading uptown. The moon hangs low, presiding over the rippling waters of Lake Michigan that stretch out into the night. A vast, dark canvas that reflects the tapestry of light from the towering buildings across the roadway rises to pierce the skyline. 

Music from Eddie’s phone plays at a low volume through the stereo. It serves to fill the quiet between you, but there’s something in the clash of the electric guitar and smooth bass that's an itch in your brain. Familiar like a half-remembered dream, but somehow still new. 

Your eyes steal glances to your left. His profile fades in and out of shadow with the passing headlights. The sharp line of his jaw tightens with a clench when he’s forced to slow his speed. The baby softness he used to carry in high school has given way to solid angles and the perpetual growth of stubble. There’s no denying it– he’s only gotten more attractive.

His head turns suddenly, catching your stare. Your throat clears as you reach for the knob, turning up the volume and letting the song replace anything about to be said. His hand moves from the gear shift to his thigh, his elegant fingers flexing against his jeans. Your eyes stay fixed on the taillights ahead as the song moves into its final refrain.

"Wait." You reach out to punch the back button,  restarting the song. "This is you."

His eyebrows lift in surprise, his mouth parting slightly. "How did you—"

"I’m right, aren’t I?" you interject, pointing at the dash, focusing on the distinct chord progression and the sound of fingers sliding over frets.

"Yeah, it's something I’ve been working on for a while,” he admits, looking at you with soft eyes. “Still trying to figure out a part that's missing." 

"I didn’t realize you still played," you comment, adjusting the volume again.

“I don’t know why you're surprised,” he says, reaching back to place his hand on your headrest as he smoothly backs the SUV into a space, turning the wheel to align with the curb. “I don't give up on the things I care about.” He shifts into park and turns off the ignition. “Come on.” His hand lands on your knee in a gentle squeeze. “We’re here.” 

Exiting the car, you step onto the empty side street. Ambient light filters down from the high windows of the brick buildings lining both sides of the street. A nondescript bus with blackened windows and a few other cars sit parked at the curb. This is exactly the kind of place you'd normally avoid after dark. Sighing, you round the car to where Eddie is waiting. His hand finds its way to the small of your back, guiding you across the street to a lone, unmarked steel door. With a closed fist, he raps out five quick knocks followed by two slower and turns to you with a grin. 

“What are we doing here?” you ask, shoving your hands into your coat pockets and looking up and down the street.

“I’m apologizing.” His words are cut off by the scraping sound of locks, followed by the door swinging open. Bright light spills out, casting a silhouette of a very large, bald man holding a clipboard, nearly obscuring the doorway.

“Can I help you?” booms the man’s voice, reverberating off the surrounding brick.

“I’m on the list,” Eddie says, undeterred.

“Name?” the doorman asks, retrieving a pen from behind his ear.

“Munson,” Eddie responds, glancing at the clipboard. “Edward and guest.”

The man sizes up Eddie with a thorough once-over, his gaze flickers towards you briefly before allowing you both to enter. 

Following Eddie, you step inside, the brightness of the overhead fluorescents bouncing off the cinder block walls, causing you to squint after the dimly lit street outside. Flight cases and amp stacks clutter the small vestibule of the venue's loading area. The muffled thrum of a bass line vibrates through the walls and high ceilings. 

“You’re cutting it close,” the man grunts, his staff shirt stamped with the Riviera Theater’s logo pulling tight across his chest as he hands Eddie two lanyards with plastic tags. 

The sweet sound of a cascade of delicate strings drifts through the air from down the hall opposite you, drawing your attention like a moth to a porch light. 

“Is that violins?” Turning toward the sound, tiny sparks ignite in your chest as Eddie slips the lanyard over your head.

“You know the way?” The doorman snaps his clipboard, ignoring your question.

“We’ll find it,” Eddie assures him, his fingers closing around your elbow as he tugs you toward the hallway.

The smile stretching your lips is automatic. Tingles of energy zip through your veins as anticipation builds, like being a kid at Christmas. As the stark fluorescents give way to dimmer bulbs, a murkier haze settles around you, mirroring the anticipation building in your chest. Their soft glow catches the shine of the dark curls resting on Eddie's collar as you trail after him down the maze of narrowing corridors.

Passing by closed doors and bulletin boards tacked with production notes and schedules, you step lightly to avoid the cords snaking across your path. The worn wooden floorboards creak with each step like they are responding to the growing clarity of the strings that now reach your ears, no longer muffled but rich and full.

The baseline of Dreams smooths into its final notes, and applause thunders from the audience. Eddie pauses, his hand resting lightly on your back, guiding you to a halt. You step between him and the canopy of curtains gathered at the stage’s edge, the sounds of the crowd's approval dissipating into the cavernous space. The polished instruments rest in the orchestra’s hands, poised for their next cue. Your hand flies to your mouth as the sight of The Cranberries at center stage fully registers. Dolores O’Riordan’s head turns, catching Eddie’s gaze. With an exasperated look, she taps the watch strapped to her wrist. He mouths a “Sorry,” his head tilting slightly towards you. At that moment, her brown eyes connect with yours. A hint of a smile graces her face before she turns back to the audience, her voice resonating in the stillness, "I was saving this one."

The first sigh of the violin expands with your breath, an arrow soaring through the air, piercing the center of your chest. A thrum of a calloused thumb brushing over the strings of an acoustic guitar accompanies the “Ahhs” of her lilting voice. The harmony is echoed by a cello, then a viola, and another violin, each repetition weaving into the next like a ripple of raindrops on calm water until it all fades into a hush, leaving your stomach swooping in its wake.

The silence shatters with the bold strum of the guitar. The air leaves your lungs in unison with the crashing bassline, the full swell of the strings washing over you like an ocean wave.

If you, if you could return

Don't let it burn

Don't let it fade

In the auditorium's darkness, the audience vanishes until only you and he exist. Eddie stands close, his warmth seeping into you as he presses into you with his shoulder. Clove and tobacco mix with the tang of iron and polished wood. The back of his hand grazes the soft skin of your own, but it’s the stage that holds your attention, pulling you in deeper. 

Is that the way we stand?

Were you lying all the time?

Was it just a game to you?

The accompanying musicians close their eyes, becoming extensions of their instruments. Dolores tilts her head, her voice clear and strong, pouring from her slight frame. The music rises through the aged floorboards, tremors of notes climbing your legs and bursting within your chest. Stirring emotions so immense it threatens to spill over as tears sting behind your eyes. 

Oh, I thought the world of you

I thought nothing could go wrong

Your head turns and you find Eddie has been watching you the entire time. His throat bobs as he swallows, the bright lights reflecting the shine in his eyes, and now it's you who can't look away. The soft expression he wears is tender and novel. The black lines that have always connected you pull taut, tugging at your heart. Lines that you thought were severed by anger and loneliness. 

But I was wrong, I was wrong

But somehow, they’ve remained. Tattered and a little frayed but enduring all the same. At his core, he is who he’s always been, and so are you.

Things wouldn't be so confused

And I wouldn't feel so used

But you always really knew

I just want to be with you

Two souls found each other in the darkness, singing the same song. He brought you here for a reason—he's telling you he's sorry without words, reaching for you through the melody in a way you can't ignore—in a way that matters.

And I'm in so deep

You know I'm such a fool for you

Everything falls away, but the music and your shared heartbeats. Memories flicker, like pages of a faded scrapbook caught in the wind—sunlit and shadowed. The heavy musk of aged velvet curtains shifts into the fresh scent of cut grass and summer nights, the cool touch of lakewater, and the honeyed warmth of sunshine lingering on his skin. Hummed lyrics, shared laughter, the comfort of being by his side. You liked the version of yourself reflected in his eyes.

Recollections you locked away come back in a deluge. Past moments, both sweet and sharp, weave together, softening the edges of old wounds. Each verse, each look from him, peels back layers of hurt you’d clung to. The bitter shell around your heart begins to crack, dislodging the shards within. Lighter now, your wounds can start to mend. The remaining scars are reminders, but a warmth begins to unfurl in their place, reluctant and bewildering. It’s not forgiveness yet, but the possibility is closer for him and for yourself.

You got me wrapped around your finger

Notes spiral upwards, threading through the shadow-laden lattice of ropes and rigging until they dissipate into the darkness above. Under the glare of the stage lights, the harmonies that once defined you rekindle, sparking to life. Your fingers find his with intention, intertwining with deliberate grace, palm to palm, sliding, locked together. Warmth spreads through the both of you. It's unexpected the way lyrics unravel you, making room for something new. Your gaze leaves his, returning to the performance, but you lean into Eddie, your head tipping to rest on his shoulder. The breath releases from his chest in a shuddering sigh.  And he feels an awful lot like home. 

Do you have to let it linger?

Do you have to, do you have to, do you have to let it linger?

Listen to the acoustic version of Linger here Rest in peace, Delores. Ni bheidh a leitheid ann aris.

Big, huge, giant, hugs and sloppy wet kisses for sticking with me. I know the wait was long. Your encouragement got me through it. Especially Leighanne and Taylor who had to put up with me whining.

All your song suggestions have made this fic so fun to write. Please keep 'em coming.

We are about halfway through, kittens. It's about to get bumpy.

For updates follow @tornupdates

[kittycosmicc]

Heart of the Great Wolf

45 - Dark Blood of Blinding Light

Pairing: Jon Snow x F!Baratheon!Reader, Robb Stark x F!Baratheon!Reader (Past)

Length: 21.4k

Warnings: angst/hurt comfort, past character deaths, mild disturbing imagery, references to past rape, insecurity, possessive behavior and language, breeding kink, smut, oral (f receiving), p in v

Notes: I know, I know, okay? I know about the length already, I was the moron who wrote it. Previous Chapter Here, Series Masterlist Here

You were too much alike, both of you were being pragmatic and yet it around in circles you both continued to do. He had a point but so did you, and thus as you both stood there the debate once more spin around and around coming to the same conclusions once, twice, too many times. It was almost far too much how it used to be, instead this time you both were walking the cold grounds within the Nightfort instead of along the sunny and warm docks at the edge of Kings Landing. And this time it wasn't numbers which were the discussion of debate, it was what such numbers meant in actuality.

Gold and trade the usual debates between you two back when the highest place you had any influence on was the small council. A Kingdom rapidly finding itself in dire straights as the treasury was empty and the Lannisters were as well. The only gold remaining to them was for their own spends and livelihoods but no longer could they pay for anything of other uses. The Iron Bank was new in dealings with Robert's reign and it meant that you were too aware that payments were going to be needed far more prompt then before. Your allocated budget grew smaller every quarter year and thus you and Stannis spent many days debating on what trade deals to prioritize.

Those however, were low stakes in comparison to now. You understood his position, truly you did. He was the one true King and no one had ever respected him for it. By every law in Westeros, the Iron Throne was his. You had almost died beside Eddard Stark to defend that stance, but once more like the days on the docks, those were more simple times. More simple stakes. These were not, and it would be all too easy to be blinded by presuming those stakes were just as important. But they weren't.

Jon had only been able to send a raven to Aegon, because it was now known that he had taken Storm's End, and the battle to claim the rest of the Stormlands had begun. But it also meant, asking your father to give up the castle where he grew up, and the lands of his family to the one House which meant the most insulting to claim what was yours.

The urge to keep what men he had here, stay in his place and leave to his vastly more superior numbers, and chase the Dragon from the Stag's home was too tempting, and you knew it.

“It's asking me to hand over the lands this House has ruled for centuries, to give up the home I grew up in, the home my father grew up in and his father before him.” Once more you knew that argument was fair, and in many other occasions you'd have agreed.

On the other hand, your eyes narrowed ever the slightest not from the sting of the cold winds. “You are aware father, that you cannot appeal to emotions in me which don't exist.” You both knew what that was referring to, but the man as stubborn as the daughter he passed such a trait down to, waited for you to elaborate. “Asking me to care about the things my grandfather did is a far stretch of what I am willing to do. Which for him, is none.”

Collected as ever it did not yet show in your father's face that your point had effected him as such in a harmful manner. Neither his tone was well. “Some days it's difficult to tell if your insolence would only make him like you more.” If any could see you trying to not roll your eyes, it was Stannis. Who even from just a side view, saw the slight twitch in your face trying to hold it back. “You are not alone in that manner, my father tried very hard to have me see the world his way. Moreso then he ever did with Robert or Renly. The last I ever heard from him was a raven telling me they didn't find what they were looking for in their journey but they found something hopefully which would teach me how to laugh.”

Your eyebrow raised only for your entire expression to grimace, a tilt to the side asking, “Please do not tell me it was-” Glancing to him, your father only gave you a single knowing look that had you shake your head in further exasperation. “Are you certain your father didn't hate you, because that fool never made a single soul laugh in the twenty two years I knew him.”

“Save for Shireen.”

Quick in amusement as you were dismissal, “Shireen was a child, she didn't know what was funny.” In a moment passing others by, you had waited until it was once more only the two of you in any earshot. “I'm not sure you've ever told me what they were doing. My grandfather and grandmother, you told me they had sailed to Essos but never why.”

Blunt as he was honest, your father was. “You already had a strong contempt for the Targaryeans at a young age, I did not think it productive to give you more reasons to hate them as strongly as Robert did.” Playing the same game, you turned to him in a questioning gaze but asked none. Tone quiet, there was a shred of sympathy towards you as he spoke. “They were travelling to Volantis under the order of King Aerys to find a suitable Valyrian bride for Prince Rhaegar.”

He was right, telling you that would've made you lean much more towards Roberts side, even now, it still did. More then ever it did. Nothing was spoken as you both looked at one anther, waiting for the building flooding of anger to simmer back down before getting out of hand. A long exhale left your lips before your arms crossed over your front, turning to the grounds below where you had been walking.

It was far away on you as it was spoken, but not with anger or vitriol, just an honesty. “The last thing I've wanted to do was to downplay what happened that day, they were your parents and I heard enough from Robert to know it must have been horrifying to watch. But maybe that was the price he paid.”

Stannis matched your stance, neither of you giving away in posture or even faces as you spoke in low tones. You both appeared as neutral as the other, when in truth the weight here was growing to be insurmountable. “Robert and I discussed it. Not often, but we discussed what we would have done differently had our father been alive once war was declared. We both knew our father would have remained loyal to the Targaryeans, and we both agreed that we still wouldn't have done anything different. He made his choice long ago, we only wished that he had not taken our mother's life with him when he passed.”

For everything said about Steffon Baratheon, there was not even a match of tone towards the grandmother you never knew. Cassana Estermont. Even when the remainder of her House had done nothing but insult your father. Declared for Renly, then went running to Stannis when he had passed, then to Joffery at the defeat at Blackwater Bay, and now have come crawling back to Stannis once more as the Lannisters lost nearly all true hold on the realm. Yet through all of it, your grandmother was never spoken in any ill.

Glancing to him you asked with something genuine. “Those lands have been ours for centuries, and perhaps once long ago they would be worth dying to defend, but it won't matter. None of it matters, and we're running out of time too quickly to keep pretending as if it does. Everything you have seen here, do you truly think you're needed more there then you are here?”

Looking up to your father, something heavy flowed in the air. Something unspoken that was not tense, nor agitated. Something rather, which pleaded what little vulnerability you two ever shared. He was not judging either in his response after a good while of thought. “Robert held the peace for nearly twenty four years, not because he was a good ruler, but because he relied on better men to do the ruling for him behind the curtain. Everytime he ignored his council, we had to clean up the mess it left behind before it got out of hand. He never listened, not when it mattered. Not to Jon Arryn, not to me, not even to Ned Stark. And after he died his Kingdom has done nothing but bleed for it.”

There was a point somewhere in there, but you were quiet to let it breathe before crowding it with any clarifying questions.

“But now by every law there is, now it is my Kingdom. And I will not forget how much these people have made my Kingdom bleed, and I will not forgive it either. If I pull every of my men out of the Stormlands and bring them North, my enemies will think I am weak.”

It weighed heavy in your heart, you two did not often speak in any praise, not to each other about each other. But it came out as honest as any could be, “If you were weak, father, I wouldn't stand here asking you to not leave. Westeros will survive without you fighting in it, but it will not survive if we do not fight for it. Jon cannot do this alone. The North doesn't have the numbers, and even if we did it would take months, years to train everyone to even resemble an army large enough. If you were weak, then we wouldn't need you. But we do.”

Finding his gaze, neither of you said anything. Much in your eyes held back as did his, not to let it creep too close to the surface. When he did, you admittedly could have let out a chuckle were your heart not still fast and too heavy. “You're starting to sound like Jon.”

Biting your tongue, you turned back to the cold sight of the forts activities bustling about. Arms moving to rest along the wooden railing, Stannis too matched you. Only he had the retort on his tongue, knowing that furrow in your brows far too well. “It wasn't an insult.”

Eyes trained forward, it came off as dry as your stare was tense. “I'd hope so. He's your son in law now, I can't imagine insulting him is a good starting off point.” Curious it was, that your father had asked the very question you asked her what felt like a fortnight passed, asking how your mother was fairing with such a detail. You resisted the urge to shrug. “They're..” Pausing to find the more diplomatic of approaches, “Taking it at their own pace shall we say.”

It surprised you, but your father almost chuckled. Almost. “Selyse was never fond of the boy even before we had arrived at Castle Black.” Your brows narrowed turning to look at him, before the realization formed lightly on your face as it did his. A fondness amplified by the feeling of her necklace under everything. “Used to say you were too distracted, and shouldn't spend that much time around boys when you weren't even a woman yet.”

“It wasn't like that.”

Quick as you were, so was Stannis. “I know. Despite everything I raised you better then that.” The sights of the Nightfort passed by still, neither party noticing that should any glance up, an amusingly identical image was sat between the two of you as you both stood there, leaned against the railing. “If Aegon cooperates, I'll order my troops to sail on Eastwatch by the Sea as soon as possible. Organize with Jon and this Lord Commander-”

“Edd.”

You could see your father turn slightly to give you a glance, but continued without noting your interruption. “Edd. Decide what forts need to be prioritized and how many. I'll remain in the long term for now. I presume you will return to Winterfell shortly, I will keep my command here. The North needs an army to man the wall, so we'll man it.”

Nodding, you said nothing for a moment. This was neither the time nor place, but you still struggled to even find the words for what could be said. You discussed strategy, plans, and numbers with your father, no details of your life. He never knew your last until it was too late, but telling him of this one felt foreign and strange. Of course he would care, but part of you was still a girl with a father you didn't like to step out of line towards.

You weren't quite yet ready to have that conversation. And yet, what came out of your mouth was not at all the same as the thoughts at the front of your mind. Instead without permission, your mouth reached deep within and pulled up something you hadn't even considered saying previously. “I didn't go to Robb to spite you. At the beginning of the war, I didn't side against you with ill intent.”

Stannis barley turned to look at you. Something distant in his tone with a question long forgotten until now. “I never asked how it was you came to leave. You were said to have been in King's Landing at the same time Ned Stark was arrested, how did you leave before they could get to you?”

“I was there that day too. In the throne room, Lord Stark and I both went to confront Cersei, we had Roberts will, we thought we had the gold cloaks. But we didn't. They arrested us both that day. Separated us and tossed us both into the black cells.” Shaking your head, gloved hands wrung slightly together as your face twisted in long passed conflict. “I didn't go into this war wanting to stand on the opposite side as you. But I had a choice, and I made it, and I will never apologize for choosing Robb over you. But it was never meant to betray you.”

“Who aided in your escape?”

Right to the point, you considered not wanting to know if he had even considered your words thus far beyond that. Honesty however, was all he wanted on some. “Ser Barristan Selmy. We went though the tunnels under the city and I got on a small fishing ship headed to White Harbour.”

Neither of you spoke for the moment, until once more he shifted the tone. “The man did always have a soft spot for you.” Only a nod, something in your head tried to ask a question but there was too much fog from the days since. Too much had occurred in such a short period of time to allow such a wondering thought to bloom.

For once however, the quiet between father and daughter which followed, wasn't awkward nor tense as the day continued to pass by around you.

“So what are we looking for exactly?”

Somehow it seemed there were still rooms which had not yet been explored nor even walked in. Only now had you found what appeared to look much like what the Lord Commanders quarters in Castle Black looked like. Dust sat around and it felt as barren as any, like it had been gutted long ago. Eyes squinting as you looked up to the shelves near the ceiling you muttered, “Anything that appears to have writing on it, especially anything not written in Common.”

Theon and Olly both looked at one another, the question once more coming from the younger ones mouth. “Has she always been vague about things?”

You answered at the exact same time as Theon in a dry word. “Yes.”

Fifteen years knowing one another, Theon knew your most annoying of quirks likely better then anyone else. Some still needed time to get used to it, but if the two of them were going to be in your proximity in the first place, then you were going to make them useful to your purpose in here.

It felt a shame this fort had been abandoned so long. It was large and vast and too much to upkeep for the dwindling numbers of the Nights Watch, but it was well constructed and rather impressive. You could almost stand in the training yard and imagine the vast amount of black furs and leathers all bustling within these walls. You meant no offence to Castle Black but it was minuscule in comparison to the luxuries which could be afforded here.

Now it was no longer as such, a dreary place which needed as much work as it likely ever had since it's first build. No fancy noble woman would come here and find it suitable to live in or even be in. The first they ever build though, you wondered how long the men had attempted to hold onto this place before finally being ordered to leave.

Jon had said the other abandoned forts tunnels had been flooded, but the did not this one, and you wondered just how many men understood the strangeness below. The gate, the face, the symbols all there but did they know somewhere in there was a mystery tied to bodies and symbols of blood in the snow? Did they have any idea when they left this place what was to come in hundreds of years?

The Wall was said to be built to protect the realm, but why now did all of those secrets lay in the dark little hope to ever find answers to their depths?

Books scattered about, looking in one and nothing but numbers and inventory. Another schedules and routines, discipline and what not. All standard and left behind with no care anymore for what would not remain. But still, no hint of other forts containing answers to a thing seemed likely when the black gate below was something not like any other.

Something, someone, somewhere and sometime in this very place there had to be something written in one form or another as to what was going on. What happened here and why was the remainder of the Nights Watch left in such disarray and unprepared?

Near a desk, you could see the remains of a large book, more of a tomb then anything. As you picked it up however, it became very obvious that it would likely not be hiding any secret, a book this absurdly heavy. A wince on your face, you walked it to the nearest surface and let it drop with a thud. Only as it did, more then just the wood of the natural desk shifted.

Brows narrowing, you looked to see nothing. So you repeated the process, and something surely seemed to be moving separate of the rest of the wood. Theon and Olly both glanced over, the former with a question in the air. “What is it?”

Frowning, you knelt down to look more at the wood, but saw nothing. “I thought I saw something, must be imagining things.”

Walking to your side as Olly stood on the opposite of the desk, Theon looked at the book. Opening it, there was more of nothing useful, and yet you bit your tongue trying to look at what didn't move. But startling you back, Theon with far more strength did the same and that time, you were at the right angle to see just the slightest of jolts underneath. Right where the legs of a man would sit.

Mouth parting slightly, Theon explained. “Some wood can get stuck against any metal keeping it together in the cold. Just needs a good shift to do so.”

Both coming to your side, Olly pulled the chair from the way and all knelt on each side of you, looking to where your gloved hand traced along what might be an opening. Only for a second did you reach for a blade, only to find your hand empty and turning with a frown to see nothing. Right.

A certain someone didn't seem to want you casually carrying weapons so frivolously anymore.

Almost rolling your eyes with a sigh, Theon caught enough of the context with a smirk. “Allow me.” Pulling a dagger out of his own, you and Olly both leaned back to let him pry at it. A wince on his own face until a thud of his arm slamming against the side of the desk and did a piece of wood fall.

Wood, and what appeared to be scraps of paper all wrapped together with a string to keep them from separating. Slowly picking up up, you turned some of it in place but wrapped up as such not a lot could be determined. “If you were to abandon this castle for good, why go to such lengths to hide papers instead of taking it with you?”

Theon presented one answer, “Maybe to hide it and come back to it when no one was around.”

But it was Olly with the one you suspected might ring more true. “Or they didn't know this was there in the first place. Hide it where no one would ever find it.”

Until now you thought. Standing up, you carefully undid the strings and let them fall in place. One by one you gently looked through the ink, and found something far more interesting then inventory and routines. You found something written in a language long not used, something which looked much like carvings on a rune stone.

The Nightfort was the oldest along the Wall, and such papers truly reminded you as such. That it was not just ancestors and Northerners manning this place. Once thousands of years ago, the First Men occupied this place all on their own.

By the time the afternoon fell over the sky, you were still there. Only enough light filtering in from the windows alone, but sat at the desk still flipping through it all. A small journal of your own to the side where your left hand was preoccupied writing, and your right sifting through each page.

Not anywhere near what you likely could know if the vast extend of work Sam had conducted, but you felt strange looking at these. Something hidden away for so long not even the hundreds of Lord Commanders after these were made, had found them. They would be at least four thousand years old, as the traditional phonetics of written word as it was used now, was only brought over by the Andals.

It likely, sat somewhere closer to six thousand, the fade some of the ink had become and the darkening on the paper naturally from accumulated age. What you could recognize seemed strange this far, speakings of curtains of light, heart and winter, and something you could only translate as a woman of white. Over and over such symbols came back and back and back again but never more did you grasp the meanings of it all.

Whatever this man had seen, something unusual had happened to him, he had seen something almost as if it drove him mad. The writings not even neat, uniform or clear. It was as if they were scrambled down in a haste, manic ramblings which were all they had time for or the sanity to put forth. Every symbol was cracked and faded and had you running your gloved hand over again and again as if to scrub away the grime from years.

But it wasn't that itself which caught your attention, it wasn't strange writings alone which had you sitting here on your own. It was the final page. Nothing as if a name, nothing which spoke of a person, but a symbol which was one not out of the ordinary to your knowledge. At the bottom, sat the symbol you knew all too well now. Faded and nearly wiped gone, but it was there. No name of who left such a story, but that of a direwolf. A sigil no mistakening from that of House Stark.

Old Nan had told many stories of the Nights Watch, the Wall and the Nightfort but none ever contained mystique of such far north whispers. Monsters and strange creatures and corpses and death, but nothing close to matching what this spoke of. Whatever this was, it was old. So old it seemed not have to been passed down.

You needed more information somewhere else.

Why he kept glancing at you in a knowing manner you weren't sure, but you at that point in your life had found expert talent in pretending as if you did not notice a bit of it. Focusing instead on the words in front of you and not either the eyes or the weight of papers you had not brought out from where you hid it on your person. As if a bird pecking at the inside of your mind, something had told you to keep it to yourself. To not throw it down to others so quickly, and it just might have been that Stark sigil doing so. But you spoke none of it, only walking into the room and stating you wanted to simply look over things yourself, to make yourself useful.

Sam had accepted that explanation, but you felt that rising paranoia that it was what you had hidden from his knowledge he was looking at you for. Regardless, you ignored it and spoke as collected as you could. “And this is every record available?”

Almost as if shaking his head out of it's thoughts, Sam jolted to look over at you with more calm. “Names, dates, greatest accomplishments, everything they recorded as they went. Though, not so much where you're still at.” A narrowing of eyes as you asked the question in quiet. “Well, once the Andals came in, they had to transcribe the records all before them into our writing and so the further back the records go, the less information they have.”

The book was one Sam said should exist somewhere in every fort along the Wall. The Maesters records of every Lord Commander of the Nights Watch, from the start until the last day of each forts use. This one sat still in the somewhat empty library of the Nightfort and thus had no information passed a few short centuries ago. But you didn't look to there, not yet.

Right now, you had begun from the start. Each entry as Sam said was barren at first. But there were names and dates of voting in until their death. You could look one to the next and the math added up entirely correct. Only, no, you couldn't. From the first through to the twelfth Lord Commander it was Stark after Stark recorded. It made sense in your mind, one Stark ruled the North as King, the other commanded the Wall following the end of the Long Night.

But there was no entry for the thirteenth, and after as such it was never a Stark so consistently until it devolved into rarity and then it ended far before your lifetime. The thirteenth, you thought. Brows narrowed as your nails tapped along the edge of the page. Something was in your mind, but you weren't anywhere near a Northerner to have it so readily in your memory.

No, your lifetime was filled with tedious knowledge of every dragon named Targaryean there ever had been in their dynasty. You only knew the North in stories, you had not the lifetime of learning in such an age. But Sam was not a Northerner either, and you were far too aware, that was only an excuse as to why you did not ask.

There was only one other entry which intrigued your mind, but it was not here. They were voted in far later then the last of the Nightfort's days. Two Lord Commanders of the Nights Watch, and something once more like a bird pecked at your mind with increasing frustration. You were too tired, you had been awake too long and far too much of the last night when sleep should have been had, was spent on something else entirely.

Maybe you didn't have the capacity to understand any of this right now. And the longer the day went on the less you found yourself wanting any to intrude on it with a single word. You required a very specific air of quiet and it would not be found as the day was busy. And if by the weary expression on Jons face, he felt all too the same.

Walking in with a frown and unfocused eyes, you could sense the irritation all the same as it sat in your blood, but judging by the unphased reaction of Sam, you'd suspect he was used to it as you were. A lightness in his tone as he jested with ease, “You know sometimes I forget I should be referring you to by your title, but then you walk in like that and you make it difficult to remember there's a King under that look.”

Jon's eyes narrowed in a half baked glare towards Sam, which was taken as good as Jon sending him but a smirk. Passing him by to circle more around to where you were, he mumbled under his breath enough for him to still hear. “You're the last person I'd ask to call me that, Sam.”

To your surprise, as your eyes had been casted downward, you hadn't noticed until warmth enveloped your side. Jon resting a hand gentle along the back of your head as the other braced against the desk, leaning down he spared no hesitation pressing a tender kiss to the hair at the top of your head. Out of everything, it was such a simple act in front of another that had you feel a flush building in your chest, not daring to look at Sam, no doubt having seen the display of affection.

Murmuring a he pulled a seat close to where you were at the edge of one side of the desk, Jon sat at the other. Eyes narrowing at the book in front of you, “What is that?”

“Oh, that's called a book, your grace.”

Jon's face fell flat instantly, peeling his eyes up to glare at Sam who was no doubt rather amused with how much a grouchy Jon would let him get away with saying. Knowing the man was too tired to say a word back with the same quickness. You were also rather certain he knew you were smothering your own smirk, but passing by it as you cleared the strain in your throat. “It's every Lord Commander since the Wall was constructed. I had wondered if any name ends up standing out, or something they've done could match anything Sam's already uncovered.”

Nodding, Jon's eyes had not seen as you did, and none would yet. “Have you found anything?”

Yes. “No.”

The hand at the back of your head had slid to the top edge of your chair, not noticeable enough for you, but on every non consistent occasion, Jon would reach what of his fingers he could to toy with the loose strands of hair free down your back. Eyes hardly leaving you to the page then back. Whatever he normally held back in respect in front of others, Sam was not one Jon felt the need to hide in front of.

The papers hiding under your clothes weighed a crushing amount.

Voices moved between the two men, the rasp from one side so gentle in your ear you for once had not felt the burn in your scar. But something only a little girl would describe as a fluttering in your stomach in it's place. For so long you couldn't ever think of it in terms of something which couldn't haunt, but it wasn't life alone now. It was life gifted by Jon himself.

You came here to focus and search for answers, but your heart skipped light in your heart being so close to him. All the talk of children, and it was only real now. It was only real not even in the past twenty four hours. And instead of having time to consider it together, you both were once more jumping within the depths of duty.

A sigh holding back inside you, you were a mess. Tugged in many directions in the storms of winter coming but the one which came back again and again you could feel Jon's eyes flickering down to your stomach. You were avoiding the grey and he knew it, as if begging you to ignore your focus and look back up at him.

Did he want to make you feel out of your mind? You thought to yourself, Jon was just sadistic enough enjoy dangling your silence in front of those closest to him. “Either we used symbols of their language in our writing afterwards, or they are using ours thinking we could read it.”

You could hear Sam somewhat near you still, the sounds of the endless amount of paper trailing along his workspace as he spoke. “What if it's both?” Jon's brows narrowed in question just as you much firmer felt his hands trail along strands of your hair along your back, Sam continuing. “I tried to combine the symbols you both had seen, and found it seemed to form a new phrase entirely. Something along the lines of winters heart.”

Head turned just to the slightest, your tone breathless as you tried to make it nonchalant. “What does that mean?”

Sam earnest as he responded without hesitating. “I don't know. Nothing I've seen even in the old manuscripts mention anything like that.” Jaw clenching, you turned back to re reading the same words over and over. The papers would crush you had you hid them against your lungs. Begging to be looked at but you weren't sure why you continued to withhold it.

It was a bizarre sensation, something you cannot control telling you against the logic in your mind and you knew too well it wasn't something you have never felt before. But never with something so close to the storms of the North coming. It was never so close to something you understood as such.

Per chance you spared a glance to Jon, already leaned down somewhat to catch your eyes in tandem as you sought his out. A brightness of asking in them, but you bit your tongue. Doubt only you could look to him back with, and the smallest of single head shakes you were graced to know he understood as later. If it was his family on these papers, he should know about them first.

Looking away, the thought sat deep on his face trying to put more together. Low and strained as Jon spoke through the clues already in front of him. “They know our vows, they think we can understand their symbols..” Trailing off the right question was left to him. “I only see two options. Either they're trying to communicate with us, or it's meant to be a threat.” Sam asking a threat to what, and it seemed Jon had thought that through as well. “That they know us more then we know them.”

Such a fact was true, but it did not sit comfortably anywhere between the three of you.

“Edd said his rangers report it would take months to reach where the green in the sky is. As far as the Frost Fangs.” Jon stood abruptly, his hand pressing more firm along your back and down to your hip as if when moving by towards Sam, he was beckoning you to follow. For now it seemed, you had seen enough from the book in front of you. There was little else a missing entry could say without anything further to go of off.

Smoothing the skirt of your dress down as you stood, Jon and Sam had begun looking over a map of sorts. Coming closer to Jons side, one arm without looking away, spared no expense in wrapping around your waist to pull you into your side. Sliding the same hand to press along the small of your back. Eyes of yours trained downward in a fluster to smother the urge see the continuous gaze of Sam watching Jons physical ease with you.

Hand trailing along a path from Castle Black out to lands you knew none of. North of the Wall was large and vast, and no doubt however you thought the North you live in now was, likely was minuscule in comparison to the cold endless snowy lands the further you went. Up past the eeiry named Haunted Forest, Jon landed on what looked like a set of mountains before a very empty space along the rest of the map above it.

Rasping deep as Jon looked over it to give him the answers here and now. “If the light's we saw aren't passing by the Frost Fangs, we shouldn't be able to see them at all.” You asking why, Jons face twisted once more in thought. “It would take months to reach there. It's the furthest North the Nights Watch has ever made it, but that's too far to see anything in the horizon from there.”

“Unless they want us to see it.” Both your and Jons head rose to find the more hopeful knowing in Sam. “Think about it, they leave things for us to read, they want us to see these green waves in the sky, but not bring it any closer.”

Your eyes found the map once more, looking to where Jons hand sat at the Frost Fangs you leaned down closer to the table. “What's beyond it?” Both men turned to look at you in question. “The Frost Fangs, it's the furthest the Nights Watch has ever made it, but what's beyond that?”

It was small print in the middle of a space of nothing at the top of the map. Stretching to sights unseen as if unable to confirm it. The location nothing which spoke of actual civilization, unlike the rest of the northern map which detailed where many people had once lived all over. Sam filled you in on such details, all three of you now looking to the same place. “The Maesters at the citadel have about as much knowledge as we do, but according to them, it's where giants and the children of the forest lived during the dawn age. A land frozen forever, inhospitable to man.”

Jon turning to meet your gaze with a more gentle of tones, “Some of the brothers used to say it's where the Others came from thousands of years ago.”

Shaking your head a tad, your eyes trailed off to nothing in particular. “We already know they're coming, why tell us now? Why warn us they're coming now when they've spent years hunting us all down?”

But Jon had a possible answer to that, one that he came to conclusion of at Hardhome as he and one of them found the others eyes across the waters. Meeting one another before letting the free folk all rise dead and blue eyed beside for the remaining living to see. It wasn't a threat to warn, it was a message to scare. “First kill our people, and only then make sure we know they're coming.” Face twisting in thought, you could see the strain as always existed in him now as he looked with sudden sharp eyes to Sam. “You've killed one of them, and now they know I have too. They might be trying to scare us into thinking we can't fight back the way they can. They want people like Sam and me to believe we aren't enough. We know they're still out there and now we have to watch it every night until they decide to come for us.”

The room was warm as it could be with the fires around, and yet a chill shivered between all three of you. It was too dangerous, this path finding itself uncovering. If they wanted you all to believe you were without hope, then the lack of it couldn't leave this room. The Long Night ended once, it would end again but perhaps preventing it in the first place was the losing battle. Perhaps it was finding the answer of how to end it before a generation was born and died all in that darkness.

An order coming firmly from Jon in the creeping silence that shocked both Sam and yourself back into your heads without crushing dread taking over again. “Every translation you have, I need a copy of it. If the only way we can understand them is in a dead language,”

Only you would dare with such a finish for his words, the only one in the room who understood. “No one better to learn how to understand it then a dead King.” Greys met Green, and you knew too well that it was not one dead man who should understand it. But three.

It seemed fitting, the first of you to die and return now one of the first to learn a language of symbols and people long dead. Jon when conveying his plans before coming here had been firm. If Thoros and Beric wished to fight this fight, they wouldn't do so anywhere near Jons true home. Trusting them to commit to such a battle, but not enough to let them have eyes on you more then they already were.

Telling the group of you who had all accompanied Jon here, that should Stannis agree, the two outlaws would remain at the Nightfort under his watch and command. “The Night's Watch is beyond reach of the law. Edd knows what we're up against as well as I do, and he and I are working together, but sending men there can't be a punishment anymore.”

You could recall standing beside him, the flare of pride in you watching Jon speak with such conviction and confidence without a shred of ego to back his voice up. Smalljon Umber had spoken up in a respectful manner, “I'm not sure I follow, your grace.”

Jon, as he was better at then he'd give credit for, was convincing to the point you'd almost mistaken it for another act of strange magic natural in his blood. “I had brothers in the Nights Watch sent there instead of being physically punished for their crimes. But the Wall needs more then men forced to find purpose there because that's the only life they have left. Thoros and Lord Beric will serve at the Nightfort, no chains, no sentencing. We have to fight this fight beacuse we want to. Not because we have no other choice. I'm bringing them with us when we leave, and hate them or not, they won't be my prisoners anymore. I'm trusting them with the same chances I trusted my brothers with at Castle Black. You are free to voice your complains my lords, but I can't have us arguing about it. Now now. We have to all trust each other regardless of what we may have once done.”

The thought that he once thought he wasn't worth anything and yet in that moment all you could do, was hope Robb and Ned could hear you. Hear you tell them that they should be proud of who they helped Jon become.

Robb would always be Jons brother, the closest companion he had from before he could even form memories, Robb was there right beside him. Nothing could take that away from then, nothing and no one could remove that Jon and Robb both were brothers who missed each other in those wars with everything they had. Robb tried not to talk about Jon in front of you as much as you did him, his presence a missing void especially once Theon had turned traitor.

Once it was only Robb and yourself left, Jon was such a missing space in your hearts beyond even the love you felt for him. He was in different ways, best friends to both of you. All Robb wanted to do once the war was over, was take you home and find a way to bring his brother home where he belonged.

You both knew something was coming one day, the moment the raven arrived in Riverrun with news of Sansa being wed to Tyrion Lannister, you both could sense Lord Tywin was plotting something to replace you both with. Not the idea of how inhumane it would be or how sudden, but you both had the growing sense that there was a chance you both wouldn't make it.

Robb had said it himself. “Tywin finally knows your pregnant.”

You had no doubt that even had Robb known the truth of Jons birth, that would not have changed his mind in naming Jon as his true heir. Unspoken, but so enraged by his mothers insulation that Jon would have any intentions of harming what remained of Robbs family, it had Grey Wind step forward and growl deeply at her. It gave away how far she overstepped, and Robb did not hide that he had let his direwolf express such rage for him.

Everyday you always wished Robb could see his trust in Jon was right. That he could rest with his family in the crypts beneath Winterfell and watch over his brother not rule like him, but be a great leader all of his own.

You knew too well, Ned Stark was proud of Jon. Never more had you been confident he'd be proud of him. He knew the truth Jons entire life, and never raised him as anything but his own true son he loved with all his heart. Father by blood or not, there was no influence on the man Jon stood as now which was greater then Neds.

Without failure, every time the night settled into drawing you into sleep did you feel the nerves inside you flare up. Everytime you wondered not what you might see, but if he would be there. What he would say, what he would do. He wanted you to fall for his tricks, but did not hide his willingness to act as the attacker if you wouldn't give in.

The scariest thought of it all however, was that this was someone in the world you lived in. Somewhere out there, this stranger was real, and he knew far more about you then you knew about him.

If there was only one factor to redeem it thus far, is that for reasons you still did not know, both dreams he has come to you, was where you were protected by that of a great wolf. A white direwolf larger on four legs then he'd ever been seen, and feirce as any could possibly dream of when in need of aid. But, there was a difference between that one, and the very large ball of white fur laying about by the fire in the room and the one only now just taking a seat at the edge of the bed with a rough, low groan and a wince in his face.

The image of Ghost was what stood with you in those dreams, but it was the white wolf currently rubbing harshly at the back of his neck to no avail of easing his tension. You already perched on the bed, knees somewhat bent as they lay outward, you had been to write something. Paper flat out on the cover of a book, it was taking you far longer then what you suspect Jon would think.

That was always a complaint directed towards your father and yourself. Your ravens were always very deliberately worded, but it meant it took longer to write out then what many scribbled out in haste. A pause between half sentences trying to consider the wording once more. Had you been the one writing to Aegon, Jon had jested you'd needed to have started two hours before he did just to get it done at the same time.

You hadn't looked up from your writing to that, but likely he had caught the smirk trying to smother itself forming on your lips. Now though, he sat down as it stretched far too late into the night and not much sleep had been found for a while.

The night before you and he had stayed up on the Wall with one another until the watch duty moved onto the morning switch. Little was said, little needed to be then. You had to accept it, Jon had to actually deal with the ramifications of what was once his biggest fear being with you. Neither of you rushed each other. It was different this time.

You had not the burden of failure weighing you down, and Robb had spent his entire life knowing one day he would so easily start a family. Once it was out there, it was only joy. Even out at war, even when everyone was finding ways to stab him in the back, when you both were losing everything, the happiness of sharing that news was the easiest part.

But you no longer were that person, and Jon spent most of his life as far from Robb's dream of a family as what he thought possible. It wasn't upsetting, it wasn't angering, but it wasn't easy. You finally knew though only time could ease that for you both. Though, one thing was the same it seemed, no matter how much more frustrating it felt this time.

As if knowing, begun a path in your mind that could be set off at any moment. It had been this way once Robb and you knew, but now with Jon that might be a bit more dangerous. Jon would never admit it, but in a shocking turn of events, somehow he was the brother with the insatiable appetite. You feeling needy for Robb was easy, you both knew when was not the right time for it. Jon though, would push anything aside should the need become too much.

You were daring not think about what he might say, should he realize the more this carried on, the more of such a need you were going to feel swirling on the inside.

Very carefully as to not quite let him know, you gently moved the paper and ink off to the side completely before slowly making your way down the rest of the beds length. Moving up onto your knees, you let your front drape lightly against Jons back as your hands took place of his. Digging down more into the base of his neck and spine and putting just the right pressure into the muscles you felt him tense before relaxing. Moving along further down until you reached the far worse strain he carried in his shoulders.

Something akin to a grunt left Jon as his head dropped, hands braced against the sheets below him only to relax moreso as you pressed a kiss to just below his ear. Murmuring lowly, “You should've asked me to do this far sooner. It's not good for you, walking around this tense.”

You think maybe Jon nodded, and you could only smile at how easily he crumbled under such a touch in all the same ways you knew finding the right place for your nails to scratch at Ghost would make the direwolf as weak. Truly one in the same your two wolves were. His words slurred out a bit more as he leaned a bit back int your touch, clearly lost in the feeling as he sounded as if his accent had thickened in no time. “I didn't ask you the first time.”

A chuckle left lightly in his ear from you, yourself missing the smile it drew from Jon at the sound so close to him. “No, but I like making you feel good.” Were Jon not still hidden somewhat by you having only a view of his back, you would've noticed his jaw clenching. Too often you would phrase things that pricked at a wild part of his mind, and he would sit there telling himself not to ruin the peace of the moment by turning around and forcing your back against the bed laying under him. You were just being sweet and Jon wanted to ravage you for it.

Now more then ever he wanted to ravage you for it.

By the time your hands eased up, you let them dance slightly back to his neck and up before working on what as to be Jons next weakness. Letting loose his curls, you begun running your fingers through them and scratching against his scalp to have it sit comfortably and neatly. “You need to stop doing that.”

A light questioning on your lips asking, “Doing what?” Whatever mumble Jon gave you was not an answer you could decipher. Leaning more over his shoulder, you tried to seek his face out more, “Jon? Stop doing what?”

Inhaling, he sat up, grabbing a hand of your which had slid down to his shoulder, forcing it in front of his chest to leave a kiss against the back. Holding it in place it forced you to lean more against his back as he turned to somewhat find your gaze back. “Doing things for me like this, trying to take care of me.” Not changing your expression you only looked at him curiously asking why. Letting the hand go, you didn't take it back, but kept it draped over to press somewhat against his chest as he used his now free hand to run along what of your jaw he could reach. “I'm supposed to take care of you.”

A lightness sat in your eyes, but yet even as the tone matched it's softness, your words knew better then to challenge him as such. “If you need proof you take care of me perfectly fine, it's currently growing between us.” Truly, you meant it innocently, and you really should have known far better then that.

His eyes narrowed for a moment before Jons far superior strength managed to turn on you. Before the understanding of the moment hit, in an instance your back was flat against the bed as Jon how hovered over you. Both of his hands pressed somewhere on the sheets beside your frame. A laugh left you with ease, “Jon-”

Smiling brightly in return he said your name in the same mocking tone. But as soon as the laugh on you faded into a quiet, tender smile, it quickly thus melted along with your heart as you felt that growing in your heart of adoration. Jon made it too easy, and part of you in the back of your head despised that he once thought he would never have or deserve anything close to this.

Running a hand over the facial hair on his jaw, you let your thumb trace against the scratching feeling as your other sat just above where your scar was, even covered up. Hardly but a whisper on you, as if now the room became only what was here and now on the bed. “I hate to be the bearer of difficult news, my King. But if only a mention of it garners such a reaction, I'm not sure how I'm going to ever get anything accomplished once it starts showing.”

The tease was on the tip of his tongue you could tell, but he held it back. Swallowing the jest right back down as he inhaled deeply. Bright eyes shining down at you even despite the darkness falling upon the room in the night. Low and still thick as if such rawness in him brought out the most Northern of an accent deep in his capability. “When do you?” Your head tilting best it could against the sheets in question, he repeated himself just a softly. “When do you start showing?”

He had been there to see Lady Catelyn go through four pregnancies but it wasn't quite as if she was eager to have her husbands bastard around her in her more sensitive states. Jon usually avoided her in the early months to not accidentally instigate things. Almost eleven years after her last one, it wasn't as if Jon was spending hoards of time around pregnant women at the Wall. Part of him almost felt disappointed in himself for how much he realized he didn't yet know about this process.

Yet not for a moment did it even occur in your mind the same thought. Your eyes distant in trying to search back to a life long passed. “Two moons passed when I started to notice, but it wasn't until around three when I couldn't hide it anymore.”

Grey eyes trailing downward, Jon pulled back, now more kneeling between your legs upright, a hand running down your waist and hip until his thumb could reach where he knew your scar was. Perhaps it was the familiarity that calmed you, and yet Jon felt a skip in his heart. Something rough caught in his throat that refused to come out, were he with anyone else he'd worry they'd mistaken the frowning in his expression as a negative. But you knew him.

Wanting to sit up to go to him, you knew though it would take away what he needed right now. And even in the quiet of the room, you could hear Jons head spinning. Robb had it easy, he had always wanted it, and knew one day it was coming his way. Jon didn't. He had thought of it, obsessed over it, rambled about it when deep inside of you but it wasn't until he could sit there and know the life in your womb was his did it feel real.

His eyes flickering up to meet yours, slowly when he didn't break gaze you sat up. A breathless chuckle almost leaving you, it had started already. Jon moving in an instant to gently help you sit up, moving so you both sat more side by side on the bed facing the other. Your hand finding his cheek once more, Jons both at your waist. Dragging back from your stomach up to you again.

Shaking his head you knew he was struggling to even comprehend whatever words were forming in his mind. Instead, you leaned forward. A light capture of his lips to yours, Jon moved to cup both of your cheeks in return. Deepening it in a manner of seconds, your hands drifted to rest along the back of his neck and shoulders. His kiss wasn't greedy or demanding, but there was a pouring of nerves he was trying to get rid of in your lips. Refusing to let you go until the anxieties filtered out, but it wasn't that easy you knew.

Still, you let Jon guide your kiss, soft lips begging yours not to leave his for too long or he'd pull you right back before you could catch one proper inhale of air. Moving to wrap an arm around your waist, Jon suddenly shifted both of you. Pulling just barley from your lips, his eyes heavy as they looked dark at you and back down to your lips as he pulled you up. His legs swinging over the edge of the bed before he hauled you to perch straddling his lap. Your hands clutched at his shoulders and both of his tight at your hip.

Jon kept you a decent amount from his chest though, despite the begging in his lips to kiss yours again he trailed his eyes down your neck, to your chest and resting finally at your stomach. Rasping out, he almost seemed like he could not choose between the dark need brewing in him, and something far more wide eyed and boyish in honesty. “The first day you arrived in Winterfell,” A huff of a laugh left him as his voice dreamed of past. “I thought you were the prettiest thing I'd ever seen. Standing all alone in the training yard, but the moment Robb and I went up to you, the last thing I wanted to do was talk to you.”

Hands running up and down your hips, material bunching and smoothing out with each instance. Your hands wrapped gently around the back of his neck to toy with the curls loose around his head.

Barley finding your eyes he just looked to where you suspected he wished he could see without the dress in his way. “I knew I'd have to tell you I was a Snow, and I knew after that you wouldn't want to talk to me.” Your brows narrowed, something jolting at your heart as you looked at him in a despair but he continued onward. “Girls never wanted to talk to me after they learned my name. And I knew the pretty daughter of the Kings brother wouldn't ever want to talk to a bastard. But then I told you, and you didn't do anything. You asked if I was Ned Starks other son, and you never said anything about it after.”

You both knew you wouldn't remember that, you recalled very little about the day you arrived given how fever ridden you were pretending not to feel. But you did remember meeting him properly the second time, but you didn't care then either. Fingers running through his hair, stopping at the pause of any tangle and gently running through them carefully to not disturb it. Your voice soft and as quiet as his. “Being a bastard didn't mean much to me, even then. I grew up around different members of House Seaworth, and they all came from Gin Alley. If I wasn't supposed to judge them, I didn't think I should judge you.”

Jon had only ever known Ser Davos as he was now, but he knew Karl Tanner, another from just there. A man as dangerous as he was morally reprehensible and he boasted all he could about how he was the top paid cutthroat in Flea Bottom, and if he could judge by shaking and disturbed look in the girls bruised eye in Crasters Keep, he died as sickening as he lived.

And yet on the other side was Ser Davos, a man that many, including Jon had come to greatly respect and value the opinion of. Or Sam, a highborn disowned by an abusive father because he didn't fit the rigid standards of what he saw as manhood. Grenn and Pyp, just two lowborns not given a chance in the world to succeed. Tormund, a large, outspoken wild man from beyond the wall who in another life would have every reason to consider Jon an enemy.

Outside of his family, almost everyone it felt like he was close to was something of an outcast. The ones who didn't have a place like the rest of the highborns they were surrounded by and found people in one another. Carving a place for themselves when most of them should've been cast out and forgotten.

Except you. You never made sense when Jon considered his life. A beautiful highborn Baratheon girl, the Kings niece with a fancy education and lived in the Red Keep, sitting on the small council. You had no place in Jons life, he thought. Most girls with less prestige then you looked down on Jon as it was, but you were as highborn as a girl could get without being a princess and you found yourself a life where nothing but a Northern Bastard was such a big part of it.

Even now, learning the truth of his mother didn't make Jon any less a bastard. It didn't change that he spent his entire life being raised as one. Jon used to know he was lucky to even live in Winterfell. Most highborn bastards of the North didn't get to live with whoever fathered them. But he lived with his father and grew up with five siblings alongside him as if be belonged but you shouldn't have cared about that.

No one in the Kings company gave him a second glance until Tyrion Lannister came creeping around the corner with advice Jon was then too angry to listen too. It was only you.

Sitting there, his grey eyes trained so heavily on your stomach, he knew there was nothing to see but a scar, but it still felt so odd to know it was real. Him being a father? And not just that, but a father to a legitimate child? Snow or Stark in name his child still wouldn't be a bastard and Jon struggled with it. He didn't want to get you pregnant knowing putting a child in you, a bastard child, would be ruining that child's life before they even had a chance.

The only children he dreamed of were yours, but he wasn't stupid. He knew it was a dream. It was part of why he knew he was taking the black. What was left? He couldn't have a life with you so why stay and mourn what was still right in front of him? But yet? Now?

Jon wasn't sure how quiet he had been for how long. He had told you he wanted to keep this to yourselves for right now, until he could get you safe and sound back in Winterfell and that was true, but there was one more thing Jon wanted to do before his people knew.

If this was real, if this was happening, Jon wanted to go see her. To tell her that Jon would do everything to make sure what happened to her, wouldn't happen to you. Jon wanted to get you home, so before he could even see the burial place of the only father he cared about to tell, he first wanted to visit the resting place of Lyanna Stark.

Jon wanted to promise his mother he'd protect you the way someone should've protected her.

Only a rasping whisper came out, hands still running up and down your sides. “Let me see.” A hum of question came from you, but Jon ignored it. Suddenly moving you around himself to undress you, tossing each offending article in his way mindlessly to the ground.

“Jon, there's nothing to see yet.”

But he didn't listen, not until there was only one thing left on you, but otherwise bare in the cold air of the room, yet warm in Jons touch. He skipped past everything else to seek out the scar. Nothing else mattered, but he stared intently at it until the greys turned black in colour in his eyes. You prompted his name once more, a hand running along the hair at the side of his head when Jon more hissed out with his jaw clenching.

“It started with you, didn't it?” When his eyes soared up to meet yours, there was anger in them. Which grew in the second of silence as you contemplated his question. “The night you died, it started with you. With this.” Keeping one hand at the small of your back to support you, his other moved to trace more purposely over the scar. All you could do was nod, you weren't sure you knew what to say if anything at all. “He killed your son before he even killed you. How far along were you?”

A skip in your heart felt heavy and dizzying, you weren't sure why his demeanour changed so suddenly, but you stammered trying to seek the right answer. “Around five months.”

Something in Jon was blazing with rage, you couldn't identify where it came from but you knew this wasn't going to be the last this was brought up. A distinct feeling in your veins that the longer you were with child this time, the longer you survived the worse this feeling in him would continue to grow. Almost growling, “Five months. You wouldn't have been able to hide it.”

You didn't want to think of it, the disgust in words as you had to stand there in the Twins and let Walder Frey leer over your pregnant form with an utter perversion for doing so in front of Robb. Knowing Robb needed his support more then he wanted to put a stop to his comments, knowing that in hours time, he'd have his men close the doors and end it all.

Shaking your head, you weren't angry as him, but not quite as present as you hoped. “No. Lord Tywin had learned I was pregnant by then. That's why it all happened so fast. Word had reached him and I couldn't hide it anymore, so he moved quickly. Organized everything the moment we left Roose Bolton at Harrenhal.” A rough rasp in his voice almost to himself that he wouldn't let it happen again. Your attempt to lighten his mood didn't work. “Tywin Lannister and Roose Bolton are both dead, it would be far harder for it to happen again now.”

Finding yours, Jons hands on you were fighting not to hold you tight enough to bruise but you knew he wanted to do more. Something inside him had switched, and something far closer to an animal was raging inside of him now. “This isn't a joke.” Your gaze softened at his, trying to implore him to ease up but at the same time, you suspected he was too worked up.

The tighter his hands on you were, the more Jon seemed to without notice, drag your covered hips down onto his. Even under all his own clothes, you could feel his cock twitching with how hard something protective was working up inside of him. “You understand why I need you to listen to me from now on?” You nodded almost a bit shyly, unsure how to approach his agitation yet. Inhaling deep enough his chest rose and fell quite visibly, Jon leaned in. The hand on your scar moving to your hip as the one around your back rose to pull your forehead to press against his. Breath hot as it trailed along your skin. “I have to protect you, both of you from now on. So please, darling. I need you to trust me when I want you to listen to what I say. I couldn't protect you then, so let me do it now.”

Part of you wished you had an argument against it, you really did. Your hands braced against his shoulders, you nodded. Jon encouraging you with the hand keeping your head to his, ran down the length of your hair. Prompting you to vocalize it to him. “I promise, Jon.”

Sighing deeply, he pulled back to look at you, only to let his eyes that time trail downward in a much greedier manner. Hard underneath you, he knew you could feel it and both his hands this time ran up from your hips to your sides so close to your breasts but just an inch or two away from touching them.

Only as his eyes found themselves trapped once they trailed back up and reached your breasts did a bit of a light in your heart force a far too adoring smirk out for how little you had on. For everything this conversation had been, and everything which led up to how worked up Jon got himself both in something protectively angry and in a raw lust, still deep down, all men had something that turned them back into teenage boys. Now his dark eyes were more of the man who already knows what he has, but there was still almost a bit of wonder like a boy seeing them for the first time. A tease leaving your lips far before you could think better of it, “Is this your first time seeing a girls chest, your grace?”

Peeling his eyes up, a shimmer of playfulness sparked in his eyes but he was not quite that teenage boy anymore. A sturdy confidence in how he hadn't blinked the same time he reached up, both hands grabbing your breasts with a greedy hold. Thumbs both moving to run across the small buds already quick to react under his touch and the cold air around you. Raising an eyebrow, Jon spoke calm and collected despite the twitch of his cock you could feel under you once more. “You remember which one of us was the nervous one that day?”

You knew the answer and just as the wrong one was to intentionally come out of your mouth, his fingers twisted both. A gasp leaving you as your head dropped, fingertips digging harsher into his shoulders. He could play them as a minstrel plays their instrument, Jon had long since fine tuned your sound and mastered his craft.

Breathless a bit, you didn't quite raise your head back up as the sparking of something twisting and beautiful was found right in his touch. Fogging your mind and point until you had nothing left but the meek truth to spit out. “Me it- it was always..” Eyes slipping shut you tried not to gasp the more roughly he twisted, begging to yank them but not quite committing. “Gods, you always made me nervous..”

The husk in his voice gave away that he wasn't as unaffected as he wanted to pretend. “Do I still?” But when you nodded, Jon breathed out such a lovely laugh that his hands switched back to almost a caressing sort of grope, but it didn't really bring you back down any. “Everything you are, and I make you nervous. Why?”

He was being cruel, you thought. Jon was asking for a true answer while refusing to let his hands sit innocently on you instead of this. But you kept that feeling growing in your core, radiating down between your legs and begging something terribly and needy in you that wanted Jons clothes off compared to almost all of yours already gone.

“Darling?” Your face almost winced trying to push passed the building inside you, telling yourself not to move against his cock as if you were too impatient to wait. He asked you a question, and your breathing was heavy as you calmed down your heart long enough to form an answer. Forcing your head up, meeting his eyes once more, they were soft and yet so sadistically knowing.

Swallowing, ironically, in a nervous fashion you tried to ignore the greed of his rough hands large against your breasts. “You're overwhelming, being with you is a lot.” Asking why, one hand found the small bud on your chest to twist and the other continued far gentler. “You're intimidating..the way you can stand over me, knowing exactly what you want, it- gods, it makes me want to do anything you ask..anything you want..”

A shiver ran through you, and just as your head dropped again, one left your chest to tilt your chin back to meet his eye. “Anything?” Nodding eagerly, Jon exhaled as shakily as the shiver had moved down your own spine. Eyes a bit more soft as he eased up on their intensity. “There is one thing I want.”

There was the intimidation, no matter how much time had passed you were never the one holding the cards with a man. You were weak in his touch, and you nodded once more, far too eager then Jon was expecting. “I'll do it, I promise.”

His eyes closed for a moment, a small whisper for you to stop almost too quiet to be heard. “It'll be easier to show you then explain. But first, take these off for me, alright?” Nodding down to his clothes you felt so relieved. Feeling his bare skin against yours wasn't even sensual, it was an intimacy that you craved in every needy to innocent form.

Jon moved you back, getting you to brace on his shoulders to stand you up on two feet, he paused any further movement. Both hands dragging down the edges of the last material hiding you from him, at an eye level sight Jon shut his eyes as he groaned deep in his chest. Head resting on your lower stomach by your scar, he pushed himself up and standing before you as well.

Nothing on you and almost everything still adorning his person, you felt small against him, and you felt that need begging once more between your legs, but you had a task to do. A hand of his trailing along your hip, but Jon otherwise stayed silent as you worked. The cold of the room around you had your fingers working slower, but you had a growing sense Jon wanted it that way. Grey eyes watching you intently the entire time, and you knew Jon hadn't the clue this was exactly what you were talking about.

He said not a word, but stood there with a silent, stoic confidence as his eyes took in your bare form over and over as you dutifully took the layers off of him. There was an authority to the way Jon could stand there in silence, one he must think you were exaggerating but it only caused you to work to keep your breathing even in front of him.

Maybe it was what you had learned keeping your mind tethered to both men, but the comparison was striking in your mind as let the last layer covering his torso sit neatly to the side before kneeling in front of him to continue.

Robb would talk, he always did. It never bothered him that you didn't say a lot sometimes, he was happy to fill the air for you and he would do so in a manner he knew would work you up. He'd stand there as you knelt in front of him and say all the right things to make you want him to fill your mouth the second you got everything off of him.

Jon though? He was silent, stoic, and didn't say things to work you up. He said them in a husking voice because he was rambling them out as he was the one already worked up. But he would stand there as you undressed him, knowing you would do the work and he didn't have to say a word. It wasn't as teasing and seducing as Robb, but it was far more intimidating.

You'd take everything off of Jon, and stay knelt there waiting for him to decide what to do next and sometimes he'd stare at you with his dark, greedy eyes for a while before directing you to what he wanted. You always knew what Robb wanted, but you never knew what Jon wanted.

And as you were undoing the laces to take his boots off, you started to suspect he liked it that way. That Jon liked keeping you on edge, relying on him for direction, for what to do next, to be guided by him into the next thing. Something inside him didn't want you to just rely on him for support, he wanted you to rely on him completely.

He knew you were capable all on your own, but something inside him almost didn't want you to be. As if he had spent his whole life at the bottom being pushed around, and now as a man he wanted to take advantage that he was at the top, and keep you right under him safe and protected the way he and many others weren't. Jon relied on himself for most of his life, and now that he didn't have to, instead wished for you to let him prove you could rely on him for all the same.

But in truth, you had relied on yourself much of your life in separate ways. It was why you were the way you were, but Jon had known that for twenty years, hadn't he? He knew you always wanted to prove yourself, do everything yourself without help. You were silent and careful as you undressed him, but in your mind just perhaps it had started to click. That maybe, he was happier taking care of you, then you were trying to still take care of yourself.

He always had. It was the first thing he ever did for you, three days you were sick and unconscious and it was Jon who spent three days taking care of you. He had just never quite let go of that, and never had an opportunity to show you he could do more then just that until now.

Finally, getting Jon as bare as you were. You looked up to him, something shining bright in your eyes that spoke far more then you had said out loud. Almost biting your lip trying to keep it and your heart steady as you waited for him to do or say something first.

Jon wanted you to behave for him.

Helping you stand, Jon grabbed your hips to pull you a bit closer before letting one tilt your gaze up to his by your chin. “You can say no, but I want you to trust me. Because you're going to say no right away to this, but I promise if you trust me, you're going to like it.” The nerves hit you again, and your lack of creativity left you in the dark.

You truly knew so little what a man and woman could do with one another, and both Starks who had your heart got to have their turns guiding you into how depraved it could truly be.

“I trust you.” The manner in which Jon could ignore how achingly hard he was seemed to be a skill few men had you suspected. Guiding you to the bed, at first, you thought you understood what he thought you would be apprehensive about.

Jon laid out on the bed, gently guiding to straddle him. It made sense, you didn't feel confident in this position. You already didn't look flattering but this did not help, and you knew it showed off how utterly untalented you were in pleasing a man. It was embarrassing, you should have full control this way but all it did was expose how unappealing of a bed warmer you were.

Hands gently resting on his chest, you inhale a bit with a nervous look in your eye. “Jon,”

But his hands at your hips prompted you to move away from his cock, and your brows furrowed in an instant. Voice turning a bit stern, Jon beckoned you. “Come here.” You did not get what he was doing, or how this could possibly end up being a position he could make love to you in. Gentle promptings he moved you higher against his torso, “There we go. Come on, darling.”

But only the last minute did you realize, and you tried moving away from him in an instant. He called your name, but you moved away enough he could sit up better as you shook your head. Curling a bit in on yourself, now you felt such an immense embarrassment it grew up your chest and into your cheeks. “No, Jon- why would you-”

He thought of simply moving you back, but knew using his strength against you and forcing your hips up was a bad idea. Instead, his voice was a bit rough as if a lecture. “Because this will feel good for you, and me.”

Shaking your head, you frowned a bit. “Jon, no, that will not be good for you. That's horrible.”

But he only smiled, that bright charming smile that could melt you in an instant. “And who told you that? Your Septa?” Your eyes rolled to the side, grumbling at him to not make fun of you, but he let his back flop back onto the sheets. His hands still on your hips but now running up and down them in a bit more of a soothing manner. “I promise you, it'll be more then good for me.”

Turning away from his gaze, you felt utterly humiliated.

Jons tone was comforting, not with judgment. “What is it you think you won't like about it?”

The silence was deafening, he wouldn't budge or say another word until you answered this one you knew. Your finger tips twitching against his chest, but Jon lay back comfortably looking up at you with ease. The discomfort sat heavy in your stomach. “I already don't understand what you like about..”

Rambling off, Jon filled in the blanks for you without hesitating. “What I like about tasting you?” Still not looking at him you gave a small nod, and thus you missed the smile. “That's easy, I love doing it because I love the way you taste.” Oh the wide eyed fluster you had before going back to not at all looking near his way. Hands smoothing up and down your hips, he was patient. “So, you can take away worrying I don't enjoy your taste, what else is there? Is it the way you think you look on top of me?”

If you could get even more flustered you would pass out. “If I looked-”

Cutting you off, Jon was far too nonchalant in such a raw honesty. “You look beautiful, especially like this. What else?” Once more you said nothing, this time the insecurity sunk a lot deeper. It sunk right down to an innocent day in his chambers in Winterfell as you told him you were worried he might not enjoy being with you because you didn't know what to do. “Oh darling,”

You'd pull away if you wouldn't instantly miss the comforting feeling of his bare skin against yours. He reached up, leaning on one elbow to allow his hand to tilt your gaze back to him by your cheek. A small shrug on your shoulders, trying to play yourself off as uncaring and failing. “It's fine, I'm upset over nothing. Let's just do it, I can get over it-”

“I'm not doing this unless you tell me you want to.” Looking back at him, you hesitated to say it now that you felt the fluster drain a little. His calmness easing your heart down, and now you felt foolish to say it as if he had ever expressed dissatisfaction before.

Saying it felt childish, but you said it. “I don't know what to do.”

The charming smile on Jons face and the way he let his thumb trail over your cheek and bottom lip, he was as blunt as you had spoken it. “Good thing about this, all you need to do is enjoy yourself. But it's up to you, we won't do this if you really don't like the idea.”

Watching him in quiet for a moment before a much more genuine ask, “It won't be uncomfortable for you?” Telling you not at all, you sighed. Palms flat against his chest before inhaling. Nodding, you found the bravery passed the hesitation in your heart. “If It does-”

“If it becomes uncomfortable for either of us, we'll stop. And I'll lay you down and taste you the way I always do. Alright?” Nodding again, you sighed out a deep breathe.

Not confident enough to watch, your eyes slipped closed, as you let him guide your hips up. Both knees moving to beside his head, hands firm on your hips as he leaned up. Your hands initially tense and useless by your sides, a spark hit you, causing one to reach up to steady your almost jump, gripping the headboard.

The quick feeling of Jon nudging at your clit with his nose took you off guard until he then pressed a lingering kiss to the small bundle of nerves. A gasp high pitched leaving you, as his hands tightened to prevent you from moving away. Small, gentle brushes of his tongue stole your breath and had you seizing up from the desire it so easily drew out.

Licks one after another just to work you up and your chest tightened at how easy it was for you to want to cry out already, but Jon was only beginning. In his mind, you had offered yourself up as a feast and he now could keep you glued to his mouth as long as he wanted. You were so much easier to hold down against his mouth from this position.

He was desperately hoping you would like this, because Jon was fairly certain outside of gently hovering over you with your back against the sheets as Jon would slip inside of you, this was by far, the best way he's ever had anything of you and it wasn't even close.

Soaking your core, Jons tongue ran more flat against your clit, kiss turning almost into gently sucking at the sparking nerves and he only increased the intensity the more you writhed in his hold. You wanted to say something, anything, but there was something so unsure and unknown in you about how he went about this that kept you on an edge. How casual he was able to coax you into it and how tightly he was holding your hips. Bruises shaped just like his hands would no doubt be contrasting notably in colour against your skin tomorrow.

In another life you were the experienced one, but despite all what could have been seen as proof, it was in the contrast between you both which made you feel so new at this everytime. You and Robb both knew he was the experienced one, and neither of you shied away from that fact, he would use his greater experience to guide you with confidence. Now it was so much more complicated, for you and Jon both and yet he took the reigns as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It was as if no time had passed between that day he tried to guide you in his chambers. You still the unsure girl with far too many preconceived notions about sex.

But what was once guidance from older women who implored you to view such enjoyment as the sort of behaviour men only find in a brothel, it was the creeping words of a man many months dead still spitting vitriol in your ear about how little choice you had and how the only reason you should enjoy it, was that maybe it would be less painful.

Jon though, he almost got angry when you would try and deny yourself the enjoyment. He hated when you tried to make it all about him, even though in your mess of a mind it would be so much easier to please him and move on. But instead, Jon's hands kept tight on you, but as if you were not engaging in your own pleasure enough, he seemed to get impatient.

Leaning up as much as he could from where he lay, you could feel his facial hair, thick and coarse as it was rubbing up against the sensitive, raw skin between your thighs. His mouth was warm and only adding to the growing wetness between your legs, but the dry and rough scratching of his facial hair made such a contrast that you swallowed heavily. Attempting to contain what felt like a growing whimper.

Not letting up, Jon licked more small, tight patterns against your clit. Keeping on one as it burned through you, and only when the coil begun to tighten some what inside, did he ease up and find a new manner to run his tongue over. Not even letting you go close to the edge before he drew you away from it, your hand trying to hold the wooden railing of the headboard tightening meekly, your other gripping the sheet beside his head unsure what to do.

Teeth giving the slightest of grazes along your clit, a cry jumped from your mouth just as your hips tried to jump from the sudden sharpness. Jon though, ran his tongue almost gently along you, soaking the offence with a soft brushing lick before going back to the more rough treatment. Back and forth his mouth dragged you from a soaking caress to a bladed edge and your tingling clit the wet stone keeping his sword sharp. Just like one too, Jon controlled exactly how he ran it along, and how sharp he wanted to keep.

Your insides were twisting like the moulting of lava, burning as hot and yet it stuttered your breathe to something high pitched, hand in the sheets beside him twisting to where the strain in your knuckles could be seen. Small begs of his name were all you afforded yet, only adding to the noise of ravenous desire in Jon knowing he could do more. He knew he could drag much more sounds from you, but he was playing a game of patience.

Pressing a kiss to the bundle of nerves, you closed your eyes with a shaking inhale. Trying and failing to move from his touch, the pit in your core growing and growing and your eyes slipped closed again as the desire twisted through your blood stream. Trying to infect your nerves and flowing all over like an illness, only the cause and concern was the same, how close you were. Muscles tensing and straining in his touch, your thighs shook trying to keep mostly upright as off of him as possible.

Smaller presses of his lips were given with a soothing softness, but it had you cry out unable to choose between leaning away or giving in. Teetering on an edge that had you mutter softly without giving thought to the soft nothings you were saying so gently. Muttering pleases and his name so gently that Jon couldn't tell if it was making him want to show you mercy, or drag you down further into the depraved depths which his darker mind fantasized about.

You could be so innocent the closer you were to an orgasm, relying on him to either let you or obeying without a fight if he took it away. And some days he couldn't tell what he liked more. Giving you too much and exhausting your senses from pleasure, or taking everything from you at the last minute and making you that much more needy for him but trusting to only let him give it to you when he thought you deserved it.

The things Jons already convinced you to do? Deplorable, your better more restrained instincts looked at you in dismay over what you'd wind up begging for Jon to do. You knew there was so much you didn't know about, but the more his warm tongue dragged up and down your clit with a needing hunger, the more you knew the list of what you wouldn't let him do to you, was provocatively short.

Pulling you closer and closer to that orgasm, your head dropped as you felt that strain burning between your legs from its origins in your core. “Please, Jon. Please, gods, I'll do anything. Anything you want, I'll do it please don't..”

Humming against you, Jon once more moved his mouth to you more, and once more teetered you at that precipice of pain only he could make you beg for. Teeth against your clit before sucking at it as he would the sensitive buds of your breasts. Gasping with no air, you seized a bit in his touch, but just as you felt that twisting coil begging to snap, did Jon change up again.

Though, this time, whatever desire of a meal you thought he was giving such warm soaking attention to your clit of, was nothing. In a grunt, Jon removed his mouth and turned to the side. Just somewhat, sinking his teeth into your upper thigh, but instead of the jolt of fear in memory, only a buzzing in your head making your muscles weak.

Moving his teeth upward along your thighs, Jon pulled away just enough you felt his breath exhaling against your soaked core, and yet, just as you felt your muscles loosen from how stinging being taken from your finish felt, did Jon once more find new paths.

Jon while running his tongue flat along your clit, grabbed both hips tighter and in one go? Jon humiliated you, dragging your core down to fuse his mouth. Forcing you to practically find seat on his mouth and tongue, one hand only leaving you long enough to take the hand beside him, and drag it into the loose curls around him.

Grasping your hip again, he wrapped the other around your back and perked your back up running his hand up and down your spine. Begging his name, you knew you were soaking his mouth but Jons tongue, hot and flat ran thick along your folds. Clit down to your cunt and a growl left his chest at the slightest hint of a taste.

So much of you was already coating his tongue the moment he dragged you down onto it with no room to hover away from it. Your hand in his hair trying to hold without keeping too tight, but Jons growling need himself vibrated against what already was a dizzying pleasure inside you. Head dropping down, but only lasting but a single peek.

Barley anything of his enjoyment was visible from such an angle, but it was too much. It was far too intimate having to look down and see his black curls between your legs knowing he was giving you no room to let him breathe. Running his tongue flat from your clit and back along your folds, Jon finally had enough.

He wanted to be selfish.

The hand on your spine slunk down, grasping one cheek of your ass tightly as you gasped. The other holding your hip down against his mouth, Jon sunk his tongue deep inside your cunt and once more the rawness against your thighs, how hot his mouth was and how much you soaked him still. Dragging what he could of his tongue along a wall to make you beg his name with a shaking cry.

“Please- oh fuck,” Your head all but falling back with begs high into the cold night sky, your voice was breathless as your muscles all tensed around a burning feeling hot like a white star twisting to oblivion inside of you. “Your so good, feels so good, Jon please.” Jons hands tightened as he kept you now much more by force against his mouth with a growl if you even tried to move away from his mouth desperately drinking from you. “Please let me cum, just once, please, I'll be good..I'll be so good for you, Jon...please- I'll never ask you again, I promise.”

Even through the raging noise in Jons head at how on a bordering feeling of feral he felt, he knew you likely weren't really even aware how much you began to ramble. But you did, you rambled and begged and promised in such a breathless high pitched whine, that Jon was going to hold you to it.

You promised to be good, and he was going to expect it, but his greed was as strong as your needy cries.

Vibrating deep in your core did something inaudible growl from Jons mouth, but his tongue gathered every soaking taste of what your cunt gave to him that you couldn't stop to think of anything you were saying. His name only what you recognized, but you could've asked him or promised anything and as long as he didn't take this one away from you, you'd do whatever you promised him.

Burning bright, your thighs strained in a shake, Jons fingertips digging roughly into your ass that had you almost weak enough to ask for one thing. But you didn't, and his hot mouth dragged you right up to that edge and kept you forced against his mouth to drink as soon as that coil snapped.

A loud beg of his name cried into the air like a melody, your vision dark and head falling back so lightheaded that you couldn't even stop begging of such pleasure to realize Jons own growling and grunts had turned to greedy moans as he drank every bit of what your wetness gave to him.

His other hand at your waist slid back. Jon sitting up only enough so that as both hands grasped your ass, he brought you further into his mouth as groans escaped shamelessly at your taste. Just as you felt nothing but his soaked, fat tongue lick along your cunt and inside you to taste every chance you gifted him, just as you did begs of his name so sweetly.

Were Jon a tad more cruel, he may have kept you there for so much longer but there was something he was struggling to ignore. Behind you, Jons cock was leaking seed of his own as it turned red with need and twitched and throbbed free in the air. The cold not enough to be able to grant you mercy of his size but noticeable enough for Jon that he had only one place to fix such a feeling. Dragging your orgasm with his tongue ensuring none of you went anywhere but his taste, Jon did not stop until your muscles around him relaxed as did the begging of his name.

Your breathing was so heavy, and your cunt was such a mess of your own wetness and Jons saliva drinking with a purposeful sloppiness. He pulled away only enough he could raise you off him to inhale any for air. Once more holding you in place over him as you seemed to let out a surprised noise as if he wanted you to move, but Jon shook his head.

His hot breath dancing along the soaked wetness you both let him drink of from such a feast.

Murmuring against you, the sensation making you writhe as the aftershocks glistened against you, head so heavy you almost couldn't hear Jon. But the gentle tone did not match the depravity of what he had just done. “Switch places with me. Lay down, alright?”

Grey eyes watching with a flicker up to you, you nodded with a bite to your lip but followed his lead to guide you. Your legs shaking as he ran a hand up and down your thigh, “Easy now, slowly,”

Spreading your legs almost indecently wide the moment Jon had you on your back, he followed the action you gave him by moving in between them. Hands now shoving your legs a little more apart against the bed as he hovered over you. Lips shining with what you embarrassingly knew was you, but Jon took a moment to gently watch you still shake in the aftershocks. “Thank you..”

His eyes fluttered closed, brow furrowing under it as he exhaled shakily. His hands pressed beside your head on either side, tight as he fisted the sheets under you, muttering your name in a dark warning you did not quite fully grasp the need of. Grasping your jaw, Jon leaned down to capture your lips without any further thought.

Angling you to lean up to his mercy, your hands ran along his chest reaching his shoulders and back of his neck, fingers tangling in his curls as you felt him deepen the kiss with more of an urgent greed. Only for a moment did he barley pull back, saliva trailing between your lips as the grey was barley visible in his eyes as he looked down what he could of you pressed to close. Rasping low, words almost slurred together in a heavy need. “Don't ever be nervous about letting me taste you, you're perfect.”

Before you could protest, Jon clearly read your mind, pushing you back into the bed with another kiss, rough and biting down to your bottom lip. Bare hips rutting into yours, his cock was so hard against you, begging to be paid attention to. One leg moved to rise up his hip, Jon shifting with you to wrap an arm around your thigh and hitched it up more.

Your other loose but lost, slunk a bit up to somewhat try and wrap your ankle around what you could reach of his calf as if to steady your overwhelmed mind. Letting your lips part, Jon slipped his tongue into your mouth, brushing along your tongue just as eager. The hand on your jaw sliding to cup the back of your head, keeping your mouths together without parting.

Jon forced your taste heavy on his tongue, to make you capture a bit of it. Your hands in his hair tightened as did a needy sound leave deep in your chest. Heart racing each time you felt Jons cock brush against your core but never caring enough to commit. He yanked your thigh up higher, almost trying to move it with him. Pulling back from your lips suddenly, a dark glaze over his eyes at the swiftness you tried chasing his kiss to no avail. His arm moving to all but shove the leg in his hold as much against your chest as he could, letting the other stay wide in contrast around his calf.

Looking down between your bodies with a rough sigh, Jon trailed them to your scar, up to your breasts and hardly managed to get to your lips before something inside him snapped. The hand behind your head flying down, you barley had a moment to register as he stared down at you with dark eyes. The feeling of Jon moving so the leaking tip of his cock just barley prodded your entrance. Looking down to what your bodies were too close to see, he flew back up to watch you with dark eyes, and a complete silence.

Jon tilted his head with the slightest of frowns and only in the last second did a command register in your mind. Not daring to disobey, you kept your eyes on his, hands in his hair falling to hold more firmly at his shoulders, his eyes barley narrowed and darkened as he pushed inside you.

A single, beautifully smooth thrust, he was as deep as you could take him and pushed inside as slow as it could torment you. Eyes dark and his face almost unchanged the whole time, staring you down as your own tried to keep calm but eyes fluttered in a gasp at the stretch. Cock so thick that taking all of it burned in a way that had your back arching up into him.

Jon only managed to slide out perhaps half way, before he slammed back inside you. The jostle having your head fly back to cry out, only for him to mutter angrily under his breath. Head dropping to your chest, that time Jon didn't look back. Cock so smooth and soaked, sliding back out of you before sliding back in. Shoulders and arms almost shaking as was the breathing coming from him heavy.

Slowly his cock slid in and out of you so perfectly, you felt all air leave your lungs, but it seemed to take much effort for him to go so slow. No other thrusts as rough as his first, but he dragged his cock along your walls as your nails dug into his shoulder and upper back. Trying to wrap them around, your eyes were closed with whispers of his name in nothing but desire.

Jon didn't look that way. Every slide of his cock inside of you, his muscles tensed, his eyes closed as his head was dropped. Curls dancing along your breasts, nothing guided Jon but the harmony you moved together with as he was inside of you. As if he was trying to hold back with more intensity then it was taking to make love to you.

Burning inside you, it flooded your veins and swam along every inch of your body, you tried coaxing him back to you. “Jon, please, come here,” You were fighting the pain he gave you just being inside of you, but you soaked him every single time he cock slid deep inside. Something in your heart fought against the racing desire making your mind a fogging mess wanting him to come back to you but he wouldn't.

In and out, you tried gently moving with him hoping to lull him into the same floating feeling twisting inside of you, but he instead shoved your leg as far up as he could stretch it. Sitting up better, Jon now more kneeling between your legs but having refused to leave your warmth for a single second. His other hand grabbed your free leg. Yanking it away from him and where it fell, both hands shoved you as wide as he could. Staring down at you with something angry brewing behind each thrust. Accent so thick, words so unintelligible, you knew he had hardly registered he said anything as his eyes closes shut after. Thrusts pulling such an obscene wet sound each time it was followed by a rough pound of his hips against yours. “I should've fucked you until it took that first night. I hate that I didn't.”

No words came as your heart jumped along with the screaming if pleasure begging with the pain and sting to stop, knowing stopping was the last thing you actually wanted. Your hands barley able to even touch him, he was so pulled away from you, and each pound grew rougher and rougher. His eyes slinking down to watch himself sink in and out of your cunt, Jon looked almost angry.

Before you could say a word in your hazy mind, Jon kept rambling, kept sounding like he spoke without registering he had said anything substantial. “I wanted it to take so badly, fuck- more badly then I wanted to be alive, I wanted to put a child in you that night. I wanted to force you to let me.”

Raising his eyes up, he found yours wide and innocent. Shaking his head, Jon's teeth grit as he thrusted harder, not giving you more chances to speak, he kept letting his deep husk fight over top of the slapping of his skin against yours. Fighting to not look down and watch with a dark, obsessive feeling as your cunt took his cock so perfectly. Still his voice didn't stop. “This is all I've ever wanted, wanted you to be the mother of my children, make you my wife..” A growl mixing with a groan left as his body shivered through the need. “I can't do this without you, I won't..” Another shuddering groan left him, his head dropping as he fucked into you harder. “Promise me you'll stay, promise me I won't lose you again.”

Crying his name, he barley looked up at you from his eyes trained on where his cock was pounding in and out of you. Eyes barley keeping open, your heart full and senses all overloaded you hardly could recall anything around you but him. “I'll stay, I promise, Jon. I'll stay, I'm yours. For good.”

Something in him swallowed heavily. An emotion so close to the surface on him, Jon shook his head before grabbing your hands. Pushing them back against the bed, Jons hips still pounding so roughly into yours. Fingers interlocking tightly, he held you as tight as his cock was rough inside of you, eyes wide as he looked down at you, something so strangely innocent contrasted to how he fucked you. “None of this belonged to her, it never should've been hers, I'd have rather died without having this then letting her ever have a piece of it.”

Voice stammering, your hearty was heavy as it was racing with each pound of his cock. Shaking your head but he barley met your eyes. “You have me now, as I have you, that's all that matters.” Dropping down, Jon pressed his lips to yours, hands still intertwined with his, hips still fucking into you smooth as he was roughly but he kissed you like a man still about to fall apart.

But he was, wasn't he? Hardly able to think over the twisting inside you as it was painful, but enough sense came to you as every desperation poured into you from his kiss. He was falling apart.

He was a bastard, nothing was his, no future was ever supposed to be this. He walked away from the only life he's ever known to one where the first time any told him any of this could be his, was a pretty hair of red forcing it all on a man against his will. Only to come back and find out everything he never had, all died without him anyways.

Being here, a King with a home and a kingdom and a wife and a family, and now growing between you two was life of his very own making. None of it was supposed to be his, and Jon spent his whole life knowing it was out of any reach. But it was real, it was between you both and only months would prove him it continues to be real.

Yet, as he kissed you, as his hips rutted rough and desperate into yours with a pounding slap, it was as if the moment this was over he'd go back to none of it being real. Kissing him back with as much gentle love as you could against his roughness, you moved against him. Together, locked in embrace you gave Jon the loving gentle he was struggling to see as allowed.

Pulling from your lips, Jon tried to go slow enough to press his forehead against yours, but your scratching voice beat his to the chase. “You deserve this Jon, all of this.” He tried shaking his head, but you tried to lean up as much as you could, judging his nose with yours lovingly. “You do, I promise. You've always deserved this, and now we can have it, together.”

Hands tightening holding yours, his jaw clenched as he tried to slow his cocks thrusts down to something suddenly incredible in it's slow speed. Pulling back to look at you, but instead of the angry desperation, was just Jon. The Jon you've always loved as bright and genuine as he always had been, and nudged your nose with his back. “And I promise, we'll be here to love our son. We'll both be here. I'll protect you, him, all three of us.”

Barley managing out against the floating in your chest of rough to gentle and slow, “Son?”

Were any to see, none would have guessed such a bright smile came from a man with his cock deep inside of a woman. “It's a boy, I know it is.” Shaking your head best you could, you wanted to hold back the sting but right away it boiled over and tears fell down with your own shaking head smiling.

Pressing a kiss to his lips, you pressed another, then one more trying to seek out his cheek finally for a fourth. “Been thinking about this a lot?”

“My whole life.”

Jon didn't give you any more thought, just leaned down, no longer angry and pounding as he fucked you. But slow and gentle, making sure you felt every inch of him and he felt every tight soak around his cock without missing a thing. Kissing you once more, only a gentle loving one shared as if innocent lovers but yet you were soaking his cock as he was burning your walls on the inside.

The second he felt you clench, you whined something meek into his lips, but he didn't pick up, or even let go of your hands or kiss. Just a gentle thrust as deep as he could before almost pulling out entirely as you finally seized up. A flood of water bursting through and splashing across your body with a fire that screamed only of Jons existence and nothing more. Begging his name in meaningless cries, Jon barley thrusted into you so slowly and gently twice more before he shook above you.

Sinking his cock deep, Jon felt you clench tightly around him so warm and soaking around him and he groaned your name into your kiss the moment he felt it become too much. His seed spilling deep inside of you, thrusting slowly as if he could still find a way to give you a daughter too.

Yet nothing perverse or debauched sat between you both as his seed, close to hot, spilled so thick as deep as he could inside of you. Jons lips didn't leave yours and didn't push you any further. Your hips moving together as long as he filled and filled you.

Maybe it took a lot longer for your peaks to settle, maybe your orgasms only lasted seconds and something within you wrapped that time to feel like hours. But that time, Jon didn't pull out of you, but before anything else was said, or before you could think he'd leave you, Jon turned both of you onto your side. Pulling you thigh up and open more to fit his hips, and his hand then wrapping around your front to cover your stomach and scar best he could.

Jon knew the scar would never go away, but he'd watch it move along with your growing stomach, and such an image was one he knew now, would kill more then ever, to ensure he could see and protect.

Neither of you really even came down from your ends by the time Jon gently laid you on your side, but you both fell asleep at the same time for once. Connected in body, connected in the minds of bringing him back, and in the son Jon knew was growing inside of you.

He knew, now begun the true test. More then ever, he needed to keep you safe. As terrified of anything happening to you he was, Jon knew the closer you would draw to five months with child, Jon knew he was going to have to be the strong one. You brought him down to earth tonight, but it wouldn't be many moons from now, that Jon would know, you'd feel the terror unlike any understood.

But Jon was yours as you were his, he was going to have to understand. This was not the ease of your love and life with Robb. This time, you were carrying Jons child, and more fear of losing that child then any mother could possibly comprehend.

Falling asleep along with you, Jon's heart begun to settle for the first time in weeks.

Creeping down the corridor, once more the illuminated light at the end of the tunnel was not one spoken of from death but rather a strangeness calling to the human eyes behind the wolves. The power had called to many, its source ran roots deep within the world and no one spot was its origin. It tied together in unison but was never stronger then in the snow and ice.

It had not been cut down, but fashioned into something else which did not operate as the rest of the castles holding similar fortresses. This held a face, and writing. Something which had no answer of why, just as some asked whether or not the Children of the Forest had carved faces into the great Weirwoods, or if they had always had faces, so they would always have eyes.

It was when a young boy, hair growing long and shaggy, was brought towards a tree just like it, when it started truly this time. Crippled and crawling towards it as he was gently placed down into the snow. As soon as his bare hand reached out and touched the bark, did his eyes go white and connect with a power calling to him. Few had such a reach, not the children, not man, only a select few were so intertwined with such paths of eyes that they could connect to another so directly.

Most were gifted it by those three eyes. Eyes which all could connect, seek each other out if need be, and yet it was still not known by the boy when he was called, what he was going to find when he got to where he was destined to go.

None ever knew, but all who had been shown something with such power had always come. To the crow with three eyes watching over all with the sight tied through the world, but also to the powers which came before it. Afterall, the world existed long before an old man with red eyes and a mark along his face in the shape of a raven.

For thousands of years did they sleep. Until it grew and grew, and suddenly that power drew forth such strength from the frozen lands that it rattled powers opposite of it across the world. Eternally at war, the darkness could exist without the light, but light could not exist without first coming from the darkness. The dark was where it came from, and yet the dark had fought the light all the same.

The world had changed as they slept beneath the ice. The light grew brighter and hotter until it threatened to overtake every inch of the lands with fire and blood. But a war was not battles and swords alone, war here was not the way in which man considered it. Warnings were given, and those who chose the unnatural path the light promised, paid the price of not heading that warning.

Yet it was not enough. The darkness had shown man what would happen should they force the balance into fire and blood, and now they begged more. So they watched. Their eyes were tied into the Weirwoods, and they could see without asking. The crow with three eyes did not take sides but this creature and his kind, did.

As the human eyes behind a direwolf walked one path, it had been a very long time since another path was taken by the creature. Its own destination not dissimilar.

It stood tall and old but strong and bright against the darkness and shimmering green illuminating behind it. But they had seen enough of the light refusing to give up its stronghold within the world. They had known what would happen as war once more would ravage the realms of men. The price to pay for what they did. The rest saw no other path, they saw what they needed to do for the darkness, but they were not with eyes tied to the world, as the one walking towards the sacred sight had. This one had knowledge they did not, could not.

The old man, the young crippled boy, the crow with three eyes would not be enough anymore. The dark and light would tear the world apart before the crow became ready. But, the darkness within the blood of the boy, was the same in this man that the creature was watching all on their own.

They had come and they had fought and taken. There was no match for such a brutal fight. But it was necessary. Man had many warnings before, and this would be their final one before they begun their true work. The place men had called Hardhome was where this creature met him for the first time. And from the instance they saw him, they knew this one was different.

He took the battle as a threat, and he should have. It was a display that one of him was no match against them. The sword in his hand during the midst of fighting, collided with one in the hands of the creatures own kind. Which should not have been possible. The weapons of men were nothing to then, but this man had swung and his sword did not break or shatter. Before the creature had a chance to comprehend what was about to happen, the man had knocked the blade away and cut through their body, shattering them to the wind.

But there was no glory nor triumph in his aftermath, falling to his knees in the same spot he stood realizing the weight of what he had done.

The light in the man’s blood was dim, hardly overtaking the darkness, but the creature had descended from the cliffs above and walked onto the docks which the man and all the rest had sailed away from. But the creature? The darkness was their existence, and it connected them, binded them. As if using their own person as a conduit for all their power, all had drawn the darkness out and up beside the creature rose the thousands of dead only they just cut down.

He did nothing and said nothing. He watched, and the creature knew then, they would continue to watch him in return. But the realms of men were chaos, and they watched death befall him.

Yet? A woman whose blood radiating so brightly it blinded them, she brought him back. The light in her, reignited the dim light within his blood and yet the darkness in his blood dimmed down her blinding brightness. As if fire encased their persons, and the ice thus covered over it. Protecting them both, his power now shared with her.

But, the crow with three eyes was not yet finished his own work. The crippled boy granting her power just as the old man had others before. But her and the mans powers were already connected through the blood needed to bring him back. And so the power granted in her, too strengthened his. The world was putting those into place whom would be needed most in the war to come.

But the creature was not one without any reason. They knew that the darkness and the light both needed those to serve them, and those who served, could not be ignorant any longer.

So they walked and finally did the sacred sight come into view. The Weirwood was strong and tall, and as blueish skin of milk white touched the bark, so did their eyes turn white just like it.

But it was when not a hand, but the gentle scrape of a wolfs paw against the tall gate with its carved face met the surface so did the minds attached.

Visions shown which both could see. The blood of war, the mans own death through his now beating heart, a dense land of men and castles as a large shadow flew over top of it, an iron seat drenched in white as the snows around them covered every surface in the great sized room.

Bloods, birds, crypts, her, and yet finally came the ice. The snow and the darkness which they were born from. Nothing spoken, only a destination shown. It was a calling further then any had asked of men before.

They needed to know if the light shared between he and his mate had overtook the natural darkness in his blood. In this vision between the two, did the Great Wolf stand before them. Kneeling down their crystal blue eyes met ones of red, and it was sealed.

They would come, they knew it.

As Ghosts paw fell back again to the ground, did the direwolf return to his own mind alone and, run from the carved face of the gate under the Nightfort into the room Jon was in.

Now gasping for air as silently as he could without startling you awake, he and Ghosts eyes met. Jons breathing evened out, beckoning the direwolf silently to more by his side. There was no use Jon trying to dissuade him from climbing up onto the bed, regardless how much space he took up.

Turning more to his side, Jon let a hand tenderly come down to run along your arm and down your side as the grey in his eyes were wide and bright with something he had no words for to explain. What they promised waiting for him at the end, Jon did not know, but something heavy ate away at his heart as he watched you sleep in peace.

Tormund was right. The answers lay out there, but one more person beyond Jon and Ghost alone, were being told to go out there and find them.

And it was that realization that had Jon lay awake, consumed by it for days.

[kittycosmicc]

What You Deserve Part 7.1: Not Okay

Masterlist: Here

CW: Drunk ex, mentions of violent behavior, language and don’t read if you’re not comfortable with the brief mentions of past abusive type of situations

Tag List: @littlered0000 @saramelaniemoon @ali-r3n @sapphire4082 @sweetmoonlove0214 @eddies-girl-22 @darknesseddiem @peaches-roses-sins @blckburd @comeonatmebruh @daisy-munson @cultish-corner @mrsjellymunson @aol19 @micheledawn1975 @2000babies @marshmallowgem @ang3lc @angelina16torres-blog @transparentenemypenguin @alilstressyandlotdepressy

A/N: This part and the next one are on the more difficult side, I wrote them from my own experience. I think it’s important to know what exactly you’ve been/are going through with your ex, it’s short but I hope yall still enjoy it✨

[kittycosmicc]

Hi Sarah! I’m just looking for anything fluffy if can be about anyone I’m just desperate 🥹🥹

Hiii babes!! So I don’t know why this is the first thing that popped into my mind and it is fluffy and it involves both Eddie and Steve so enjoy😂💖

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Secret Rendezvous Part 12: Convenient

Masterlist: Here

CW: language

Tag List: @emma-munson @aol19 @tlclick73 @prestinalove @kailey-firefly @fromasgardandback @therealgothamguardianfr @peaches-roses-sins @hiscrimsonangel @furiousladyking @angelina16torres-blog @sofaritsalrightt @josephquinnsfreckles @starrywhitenight @mrsjellymunson @witchwolflea @jasminelafleur @ohmeg @comeonatmebruh @missmarch-99 @arthurcerverogf

A/N: This is a shorter one but it packs a friggin punch…yeah that’s all you get and just a reminder we still have like 8 updates left so…just keep that in mind✨

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They deserved a happy ending

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I’m the founder of the “I suck at keeping the conversation going, but I really like talking to you” club

[kittycosmicc]

"Let me help you out."

Bon appétit, hungry beasts.

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He bite

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[kittycosmicc]

Heart of the Great Wolf

42 - The Thing in the Night

Pairing: Jon Snow x F!Baratheon!Reader, Robb Stark x F!Baratheon!Reader (Past)

Length: 19.8k

Warnings: angst/hurt comfort, references to past rape, discussions of miscarriage and fertility, disturbing imagery, blood and violence, unintentional self harm, smut, voyeurism, guided masterbation, oral (f receiving), p in v, breeding kink, possessive sexual language

Notes: Who guessed it? Come forward, how long ago did some of you figure it out? Previous Chapter Here, Series Masterlist Here

Jon knew to some degree, he was making it obvious by asking. Or at the least, he was not subtle about his intentions. At the time he had respected your decision not to tell him, it was a sensitive subject for you and in some weeks time by then you were all sailing to a battle. You didn't want it plaguing his mind as he didn't want it plaguing yours. So you went to see Maester Wolkan about whether or not you any longer had the ability to bear a child, and didn't tell Jon the answer until the first night on Dragonstone.

Before this new life, the last time Jon ever saw you he was still firmly in the position of getting you pregnant as his biggest fear. Even if you were ready for him that day, Jon still wouldn't have been able to go through with it, how much he begun to panic over the idea of accidentally giving you a child. A girl in the royal family, having a bastard child with a bastard for a father. He also couldn't possibly find a way to get his hands on moontea or even any tansy. Luwin would have figured it out in seconds and it would all be over.

Going to Maester Pylos however, Jon hadn't quite yet shaken off that insecurity. He of course, didn't actually seem to give it much thought. He was a Maester not a Septon he had said, it wasn't his position to judge what a man does in his spare time. Asking if he'd prefer it made for his ease, Jon truthfully wanted to end it and leave. No Pylos didn't judge the conversation, but there was no doubt what it was going to be used for and he wanted to escape the awkwardness within him already. Telling him he'd take the ingredients needed and would brew it himself should it be of use.

It was a slightly more uncomfortable conversation for Jon, when he had to go to Pylos a second time for more.

But still, he knew it was important. He couldn't be reckless because of the noise in his head. No matter what it seemed like something inside him tried to claim, Jon was still a man. Not a wolf. He couldn't just take you as much as he wanted, couldn't carelessly spill inside of you with no plan because a darker instinct inside his chest growled at him to do it enough until it took. Jon knew it was a stroke of luck that he hadn't put a child in you that night in Castle Black. Twice he spilled inside of you and twice more the next morning.

Though, a large part of Jons mind was taken up by the wonder of what if it did take. By the time on Dragonstone when you and Jon finally made love again, his wondering fantasy knew that enough time had passed that you'd have started showing. By now, you'd have needed people to do even the simplest tasks for you, if you hadn't already given birth.

Jon felt like a mad man. Obsessing over the idea of you mothering his children. It wasn't something Jon ever thought was what he would be like by now. Once he decided he was taking the black, he thought he had all but killed any thoughts of a child of his own.

His Uncle Benjen had tried to tell him, warn him about what he would be giving up. Never marrying, never fathering any children. But, shut out that night in the cold, inside the royal company here to split his family in half across the country and knowing it would end in losing you to his brother? Jon saw not a single shred of future for him here anymore.

His father, sisters, and Bran would go to Kings Landing, leaving Lady Catelyn with Rickon, and Robb remaining as he would take on more and more responsibility as heir to Winterfell. Knowing that the only one which was guaranteed to come back in due time, was you, returning to your now permanent home to what would become your husband in Robb. Jon would be left with watching his brother do the duty of two things Jon could never have, and the remaining eyes of Lady Catelyn to hate him all the while. The two younger siblings he adored the most as well in Arya and Bran, unlikely to return as long as father stayed in Kings Landing.

There was no future for Jon left in Winterfell. So he told his uncle he didn't care about any of it. Didn't care about marrying or having children and he meant it. Only for the strange softness in his uncle's eyes that Jon couldn't quite read at the time.

“You might. If you knew what it meant.”

Jon didn't understand it then, but he was beginning to think he did now. Standing in Wolkan's study, Jon was finding anything meaningless for his attention and focus to fidget with. Pretending as if he didn't want to just find you and drag you in here to deal with this here and now. Trying to find the right way to ask how it was he was sure he determined you weren't without the ability to bare children without making it obvious.

“Ramsay had raped her for months, and that whole time there was never a hint she was ever..” The sentence felt atrocious on his tongue, but there was no reason to mince words here. Wolkan knew what had happened to you, he was there for all of it.

A morose look fell over the man's face, and Jon felt a familiar swirling in his gut. A feeling that you, Wolkan, and Theon were all keeping some of the worst from him. That no one had actually told him the extent of what was done to you. But an even tone fought through Wolkan's grim expression. “No, I can assure you of that. Roose Bolton was a cruel man, but he was also a smart one. Had there been a hint of her being with child, he'd have his men drag her out to the godswood to marry Ramsay then and there. He needed their child to be legitimate. But that doesn't mean he was not aware of what was happening.”

Pacing somewhat near the window, Jon slightly turned his head. Brow furrowed with a rougher tone then before. “He wanted his grandchild to be a trueborn son, but he still let Ramsay rape her knowing it could've happened at anytime.” Crossing his arms over his chest, Jons jaw clenched. “Doesn't sound smart if you ask me.”

Wolkan however, had an answer without hesitation. “No it would not be a wise choice. Which is why he had me brew just enough of the makings of moontea, that it's taste could be hidden in a drink with a strong flavour.” Jon turned to him fully, his eyes widened in something disbelieving but found no such lie in the genuity of Wolkan's face. “Wine was suitable for them to both ease her nerves her enough to attempt to dissuade any out bursting behaviour, and it quite successfully overpowers any taste when just the right amount is added to a mixture of mint, wormwood, and tansy.”

Jons arms fell to his sides as did a heavy weight in his chest. Stepping forward enough he braced his palms on the top of the chair across from the man at his desk. Exhale wavering, it was striking to him the extent to which he was relieved. The utter devastation he knew you'd have felt should the first child you become pregnant with after losing Robbs, being with Ramsay. Your heart was far more gentle then it used to be, such a thing might have ended every resolve you had let to keep yourself alive. But now here he stood, realizing it didn't happen because through no fault of your own body.

His voice hardly a strained whisper, “She doesn't know this, does she?”

Wolkan shook his head. “I am afraid not. Roose Bolton was the only one other then myself who knew about it, and by the time she had returned to Winterfell after escaping, you had in only a matter of days, taken Ramsay's head. After that, I didn't see it appropriate to bring up her time with him more then necessary.”

Sighing deeply, Jon wasn't quite sure how to approach it. Any of it. He was sure of the facts themselves, but his methods weren't quite what any would call traditional. He had always thought of it in a back and forth manner all his life and yet now that it was right in front of him begging to be dealt with, none of what he ever considered was the right answer.

In a fantasy, it was easy. You'd find out as normal, tell him, and nothing else could make either of you happier. But Jon couldn't live in a fantasy, and the truth in the real world he lived in was marred in far more blood and pain then what made it easier for you the first time he suspected. Fair was fair however. You withheld the information from Robb, and this time, Jon was withholding the information from you. Telling you gently that it was alright to find love in your life after Robb was one thing.

It was another to tell you that new life was growing inside you, underneath the scar that took Robb's son from you far too early.

But Jon was sure, because Ghost was sure. Ghost sensed it almost right away. Not even days after the first time the blue eyed stranger marked a place in your dreams did Ghost start acting different around you. It took over a week after that when Jon was inside his mind to figure out what his direwolf already knew. But now a fortnight passed, and he was no closer to an answer then he was when he found out, about how to tell you.

Wolkan's tone drew him from his mind, eyes wide and a genuity in how brightly innocent they were, it was more clear to the Maester that Jon had been asking questions not to speculate on trying, but to perhaps talk his way around figuring out how to handle what already happened. “When she came to see about her fertility, it struck me how dispondant she was about it all. Too calm, too even toned, as if any answer wouldn't phase her whatsoever. Presumed every worst case possibility and walked in ready to confirm what she already felt was the answer.”

Nodding, Jons face tried to tighten itself. Working to keep calm and steady, but any close eyes could see the workings and twitches begging to carry far more emotion then he wanted to show about it. His voice, a scratching rasp as if forced out. “She didn't just lose her son that night, she lost everything. Only to come back to something even worse, and all she has left of my brother is that scar on her stomach.”

If Jon couldn't bring Robb back, he wished there had been a way to protect Robb's from being taken from you too. Jon wouldn't have let that change anything. He'd still love you exactly as he does, and he'd love Robbs son like his own. Make sure he felt loved and cared for, wait until he was old enough and Jon could be able to properly tell him about his birth father, the charming trouble maker Robb was. That night in the cave Jon had seen a black haired baby in your arms, but Jon never wanted to trade Robb's son for his.

It was never supposed to be one against the other. He and Robb were each others closest companions their entire lives. Jon's jealousy was never about being better, taking from his brother. Just sharing equally what they both could be. Or have.

Jon could share your love with his brother even now, but Jon couldn't stop the fact that it would be his son you were having, not his brothers. He couldn't change that, and now, he was too selfish to not have that. From the study the two stood in, Jon could easily hear the muffled voices and yells from the training yard where he knew for a fact was where you were. He should tell you, he thought to himself. Before you all left, he should tell you. But once more, Jon wasn't sure how.

“How long until I'll be able to fight with two daggers in each hand the way you can?”

Dropping the blunt practice sword, you looked flatly at Arya. Your voice as monotone as it was with a sarcastic hint of dryness. “When you've been doing it for over a decade then maybe you will be as good at it.” Swinging the sword in your hand almost in a childish wave, you beckoned her to find her form once more.

She had been vague about what kind of people she was with in Bravvos, but it seemed they focused her more on being sneaky and clever instead of physical training. Meaning you had plenty to pick her back up on in the training yards these past days. Finding both of you paired well together. Both smaller and quicker then normal soldiers, both fighting with an emphasis on your left hand alone, and knowing not to try and overpower an opponent, but rather work around them to find a weak spot.

Better then her last days in Kings Landing, but your father had taught you that if you get too comfortable with your skill, then it eventually will worsen compared to those around who aren't as confident. Arya, seemed to feel an impatience at the idea. “I'm already fighting with a sword, how different can two knifes be?”

Dodging your quick moves with ease, you did however feel the breaking need to smother a smile at how proud Ned would have been to see where she is today. Your eyes shifting away from her own form, “Very different. If you think we're fighting quickly now, you need to be able to move much faster with a knife. Most of the time your opponent will be far better armed then you in such cases.”

Many men could fight with a sword in hand, not many could yield two knifes in a respective hand each and keep up against a sharp, long blade. You had against Aegon, but even then you took a good amount of a very painful beating to gain that upper hand. And more then a few words and very close calls you'd rather not think of which were traded as well. But neither you nor Aegon had spoken on that one after the fact.

“When do you think I'll be ready then?” Your eyes dropped in a lack of amusement and for a moment Arya dropped the advantage her pose previous held to whine at you with far more of the tinge of a jesting sister. “Come on, I'm not ready for that but I can't know when you think I will be?”

Your eyes only narrowed, and your words would not speak as well as your answer could be. Only a few quick paces forward, and her distracted form was thrown off balance enough to send her own practice sword to the ground. Her eyes narrowed at you as you finally let a smirk out, gesturing with your own blade to where hers lay limp. “Learn how to not let your guard down so easily first.”

The moment she crouched to grab it, you stepped forward and kicked it a few feet behind her. Her brows annoyed as was the scrunch in her face, moreso at the mischievous brightness in your own smirk. “If I turn around to go get it, are you going to stab me in the back?” Your head only tilted to the side slightly as if to challenge her to find out.

Your smirk forming more to a grin at how instead, Arya kept eye contact and walked backwards rather then turning. Her voice once more piping back up as she returned to a proper position. “Kicking a weapon away from someone doesn't sound very hounrable.”

“In that case, you'll be the most honourable dead girl a swordsman has ever beaten.” She came at you far harder for that one. Sparring with Arya certainly was a little more fun then it was her older brothers, at least there wasn't two of her to gang up on you and spend an hour toying with you until they knocked you into the mud.

It wasn't until you both were a bit more on the side of out of breath when she brought it back up. Her arm reaching across the weapons hold to hand you hers with an ask hoping to sound causal. “If I'm expected to use the dragonglass to defend myself, shouldn't I know how to use it properly?” Her eyes rose in a brightness hoping to look innocent but alas, she was more transparent then she assumed.

Head dropping a bit with a narrowing of your eyes before you turned back to putting things back with a huff. “It's there to protect you. You're not using it to fight them, Arya. It's there to keep you alive, that's all. You don't need to know more then just how to shove a blade into something.”

Something distant sat on her tone, which you couldn't quite pin. “So, stick 'em with the pointy end?”

You nodded your head slightly to the side, more a mumble on your lips then a real response. “That's the essence of it.” Not looking, you missed the easy smile forming along Arya's face before she covered it up soon as you looked back up to her gaze.

Your eyes a bit as distant as hers had just been, only without hiding whatsoever. Hands braced against the wood as you leaned against it somewhat. “It really was the Hound you were with?” Nodding, your jaw clenched as you turned slightly away, voice dropping more to a mutter. “Difficult to imagine he was fit to care for anything more then running down boys.”

It had been a long time since any had brought him up to her. You could still recall that night, walking the path from the Inn with Lord Stark. The Hound walking his horse in the opposite manner, the poor boy hanging across it. Beaten, bloody, and limp. Not an easy task it was imagining that sort of man would ever turn out to be different for the good.

Arya's voice was quiet, and you knew it still sat heavy in her heart as much as it did when she found out the next day. “No one even remembered his name-”

“Mycah.” Her head shot up with wider eyes, your tone softer as you leaned your forearms across to look at her more on her eyeline. “The butchers son. His name was Mycah.”

Neither of you said a word for a moment. Struggling in her throat to find the right emotion to let out, and you with the patience to watch her get there on her own. She didn't see it happen or his body, but it was still the first real violence she was exposed to. If you were to judge now, you'd say it led her down the path to where she stands now. Walking not a few feet behind her, Arya found a small platform to sit down against.

Or, more like collapse down onto. With a deep exhale, all her weight was tossed in one go as she landed heavy like the far away look in her gaze. Slowly, you worked your way around until you sat next to her, giving a fair amount of space for her mind as she finally spoke. “I wanted to kill him. The Hound. We travelled for almost a year and the entire time I wanted him dead. But then..then he really was dying and there was nothing either of us could do. I could have done it then, he told me to do it. Told me all about the day he killed Mycah to convince me..but..he didn't mean it.”

Your eyes narrowed, but only silence followed.

Arya wasn't unlike Jon in that way. Sometimes you needed to let her get it out before saying anything otherwise she might talk herself out of being open or vulnerable. “It wasn't about revenge. Not really. But people kept doing horrible things to innocent people and never were punished for it. The Hound killed my friend and he got to walk free and no one but me remembered his name. I wanted to kill him because otherwise Mycah would never get any justice. But that day, he was dying and I realized killing him then would only be for revenge. Because killing him didn't feel like justice. Not by then.”

She had been somewhat vague about that day. You didn't want to pry, but it led to her getting on a ship to Bravvos. It felt important to know regardless of not liking the idea of invading her privacy. “You don't have to tell me, but what happened? You said there was a fight with someone, but I knew the Hound a long time. Winning against him in a fight isn't exactly simple.”

It was a name you hadn't thought of in years. You only properly met the woman for a short time an only spoke directly once, and it was not quite an interaction you'd throw yourself at to relive. Out of everyone to run into Arya Stark and Sandor Clegane, it was Brienne of Tarth. Carrying shiny new armour and a sword with hilt made from Lannister gold, given to her by none other then Jaime Lannister himself.

Even if you didn't know the information that you did, you still wouldn't have gone with her either. But you did know her. And now you knew that as strange of a guardian as the Hound would be, Arya wasn't alone when she was with him. Wasn't in such constant danger, wasn't across the bloody Narrow Sea because she thought there was nothing left for her. One fight with Brienne of Tarth however, and it took years for Arya to return to Westeros to her family.

You didn't care where she was now, but you had a rising stack of reasons to wish to never see her face.

Inhaling deeply, you knew better then to let your own bias interfere with Aryas own story, and kept everything of your grievances with her from the statement of facts. “She was the one who helped the Kingslayer escape.” Her head whipped over to you, but all you could see was how infuriated it had made you and Robb. “Your mother was manipulated into thinking you and Sansa both were in Kings Landing. That returning Jaime Lannister would mean you both would be returned to her, so she had Brienne of Tarth help him escape against Robb's own orders.”

Surprisingly, it was anger which followed from Arya. “She tried having the person she was with chase me, but I hid from him. Both of them until they left. Wasn't long after that I got on a ship to Bravvos. The only person I knew I had left was Jon, but I was in the Vale and Jon was all the way at Castle Black. I knew I wouldn't be able to get there on my own. Not alive.”

If she had expected the gesture, she leaned into your hand running gently along the back of her head in an instant. Merely a mutter coming from you, “You're here now, Arya. You're back with him, that's what matters. If all we do is think of what differently we would do in the past, you're not going to get over what actually happened.”

Arya nodded, something held back in her chest from how much she put in to appearing not upset, but you both sat there until she came back on her own to the present. Her voice rough, but forcing itself out regardless. “You're sure I can't come?”

Eyes wide and hopeful, but yours not rejecting or harsh. “There must always be a Stark in Winterfell. Until Jon returns, that will be you.” Her brows narrowed as her head looked to the ground but didn't argue. Your hand slipped across her shoulders comfortingly. “You know this place, and these people. Jon needs someone he can trust beyond doubt to take care of things while he's gone. And he'll never trust his men more then he trusts you.”

Inhaling shakily, her voice actually spoke out as if now nothing had been weighing on her. “Would have been nice to meet your father, though.” Your sudden laugh surprised most nearby.

“That may be the first and only time someone has ever said meeting Stannis Baratheon would be nice.”

You had all in previous days debated what exactly to do, how to go about solving one of the largest problems that had plagued the Nights Watch for centuries. Suggestions came from every corner of the room but the simple fact was that the North alone did not have enough to man the Wall. Not the way you were all beginning to realize was going to be incredibly vital to whatever was coming. Each time a new idea came about, you and Jon would look at the other and still once more find reasons to disagree with it's sustainability.

At one point, it hadn't gone anywhere long enough that Tormund had stood with his own suggestion. “We're used to dealing with the Crows, you want us to man the castles?” But Jon disagreed.

He quickly shut it down in truth. “Even if I get every single free folk, that still isn't enough to guard and restore sixteen forts. I opened the gates for your people to find land and lives, not to make you guard the Wall for us. You're people need time to prepare for winter as much as we are.”

Debates of numbers and manpower had come about for a bit. It was never an easy subject, even in peace times. The Wall hadn't been properly manned in centuries, to find a way to do so now with such limited people and resources felt near impossible. A losing battle more then it already was. The weight wasn't easy on Jon when he was Lord Commander and it continued to be a difficult problem as King in the North.

“We would need at least double what we can spare, most castles need significant restoring, most tunnels before being abandoned were plugged with rocks and ice. Flooded to freeze over before it was left to ensure nothing could get through.” Leaning somewhat with his palms braced against the wooden table before him, you could see Jon trying not to tense up the muscles there more then they already had been.

Voices piped up from more spots around the hall. “We'd need more men then we can spare to handle that, most of us are busy ensuring our own homes and lands are prepared for winter alone.” From your seated position, you could see the workings inside Jons head spinning. Something was forming in his head, but he would keep it until the answer was a clear to present as possible.

Your own voice agreeing with the majority. “If you're right, and each castle would need hundreds of men to properly restore and man, we would still have to sit here and debate which ones are the most important, and which we keep abandoned. And having five or six instead of three is hardly giving the Wall proper defences.”

Jon's head tilted slightly, eyes narrowing somewhat as he glanced to you. “Between us and the free folk we still don't have anywhere near the numbers for nineteen castles. It's more men then we have in our entire army.” Only, his eyes drifted the moment such words left his mouth.

Lips parted somewhat as he refocused them to you, then the lords attending as soon as your own eyes brightened just a bit. He was right, what the North needed was an army to man the Wall. Not anywhere needed once but desperate now that the storms drew closer. There wasn't an army that size willing to spare it's fighting to help the North. Except one that already had.

Your voice barley a mutter, almost a grin asking to breath itself out with it and you looked up to where he stood. “He likes you better, might actually say yes if you propose it to him.” Jon only turned once more to look down at you, close to a twist in his face as if to tease you for it in his expression alone. Though, it was one which you both knew wasn't a bad idea regardless.

Jon couldn't stand and wait for an answer though, even if such help would not come, there was still one place that begged to be looked at. One which had an answer which potentially, three separate people had parts of a puzzle to. Plans had to be made regardless. Even if only one place needed to be looked after, Jon would find a way to make it work. Sam had continued to underestimate his use for this cause, and every time he was the one stumbling upon answers.

He had seen the army of the dead. He had been the one to prove his father wrong, and show a bravery few men could ever have and shoved a dagger of dragonglass into the back of the creature coming for Gillys son and watched it shatter it to pieces. He discovered the old manuscripts and runes in the citadel, and he had been the one to leave with them stolen away on his person knowing the answers in there were more important then not stealing them.

Though, when returning to Winterfell, Jon had asked him where he had gotten a Valyrian steel sword, and that confession had made Jon laugh quite a lot. The first thing Jon truly learned about Sam, was that his father had forced him to take the black or otherwise threatened to take his life for not growing up to his standards. From what he could gather from you, you knew Lord Randyll Tarly by reputation as a commander not a father, but you had it on good authority that the toughest commanders were too the toughest fathers. So it seemed fitting that the last thing Sam did before leaving his family home a second time, was take the families sword Heartsbane with him.

This time, it wasn't a direct new answer Sam had provided Jon with, but a place. Something which by his description, held more of a key then anyone alive currently knew a thing about previously.

Organizing a small group to head out first, look the place over before anything else was done about it in particular, but one thing seemed to come to Jon. An idea as uncomfortable was it was logical, after all, he still wasn't quite convinced Lord Beric had been wrong. The only other two people who knew what both returning from death and bringing the dead back to life felt like, were also the ones who saw fit to travel North for their own cause of what was to come. Even if they disagreed on all else, perhaps the four of you were not in the same place as only a coincidence.

“Isn't it your job to talk him out of stupid fucking ideas like this?” At least you thought to yourself, Tormund was still willing to speak the truth. You didn't quite feel exactly as they were, it certainly came across as risky, and uncomfortable even if you followed Jons logic.

Walking to his side further down into the undergrounds of Winterfell you tilted your head briefly to the side in almost dismissal. “If you've got a better one.”

Mumbling a bit almost in amusement, knowing full well Jon could hear you both. “Three dead people, two dead raisers and me. Starting to think I'm missing out on something.” Eyes almost glaring to the side without any meaning that Tormund would take offence.

Jon held the most calm in his own words, turning somewhat to wait for you both to catch up. “They know things most people don't. Been through things only we,” Jon gesturing to yourself, “have been through. I don't care if I like or even trust them. They're apart of this, somehow.”

Looking up to him, you added in a plain simpleness. “Thoros knows how to fight, Beric knows how to fight. If they're going to be in the North regardless, may as well put them to use instead of keeping them in our home.” Tormund looking doubtful asking in what seemed like a bit of a condescending jest that they were the ones who kidnapped you in Barrowton. Your eyes found Jons, tense and on edge as you settled the same feeling growing in your veins. “In a manner of speaking.”

Nodded for the two to keep going, you could hear as you passed the not so subtle whispering towards Jon of, “You two are made for each other. Both morons.”

You had never seen Thoros this sober before. He looked as miserable as your worst days felt anymore and just as it always did now, such a shared attribute shivered unsettlingly in your blood. You would rather not know how he felt. Beric held himself together a bit more, not unlike the manner in which Jon could be unreadable some days.

First it was only you, then Jon, now four stood in the same place and you couldn't comprehend what the point of any of it led towards. It seemed more on the side of sober however, Thoros did not come to a dissimilar conclusion. “I'd say I haven't been feeling like myself, but quite the opposite it really is. If you wanted to torture him,” gesturing to Beric who watched just as carefully to you both as Jon did him. “You did a wonderful job. Quite tedious my company becomes in sobriety. Tell me my Queen, you don't strike me as a drinker like King Robert. How do you handle it, I've always wondered.”

Thoros's eyes on you was unsettling still further, but in a worse way, you understood it. You saw the lure to drinking with this sort of weight. One no one else understood but the ragged priest with far too flowery language for your liking. Jon however, answered for you with not a shred of patience for the direction of the conversation.

“You said you came North to fight what was coming. That you wanted to be part of this.”

Beric Dondarrian however, remained as even toned as he ever was and it grated on you. “We don't want to fight this fight, your grace. We have to. Same as you. War is coming and our Lord needs us here more then in the South fighting against Kings.”

Shifting between them you found barley a breath to spare, hissing out to them. “The last thing your Lord told you to do, you sold Gendry to the red woman, who was taking him to slaughter like a lamb. What should we care what your Lord tells you?”

It wasn't the reason Jon was here, but in an instant he found a stronger argument brewing between you and Beric. Who was steadfast yet defensive as he stood. “We do what our Lord bids, no more, no less. It isn't up to us to question what he wants. If the boy was meant to die, he wouldn't be alive now. But he is.”

Both of you a step closer to the iron bars, your tone seething as did the sharpness in your eyes. “He's alive beacuse only one person stood up to do the right thing. You promised he could stay with you, and then you sold him for gold, because all your talk and still you're nothing but an outlaw.” You think perhaps Jon warned you in your name, but you heard it little in your actual mind.

And Beric found no reason to hold back as such. “Outlaws banding together to protect the innocent-”

Another step and more anger flooded in you almost unusually strong. “You killed those innocents just to draw me out-”

Cutting through both of you, Jon came close to a yell. “Enough.” Your eyes watched Berics sharply and he you, but still felt the slight pull at your back to draw you away from him and closer to Jon behind you. “We're not down here for this.” Tearing your gaze from Beric to Jon, did the guilt follow with it.

The sharpness in your eyes softened almost as soon as you found his grey ones, and with but a nod you felt you shrink a bit in on yourself. You didn't like nor trust these two, but you didn't come down here with any intention on such an outburst. Nor did you know really where it came from.

“We're all here for the same reason. It won't matter who did what when the army of the dead come, what happened in the past stays in the past from now on.” You knew he was right, this was what he was always trying to do. Throw away the fighting and direct everyone on the only path that would matter.

Jon and Beric both watched each other carefully as you looked at none. You should be calmer then this, what was wrong with you?

Speaking low behind the bars, Beric sounded in agreement. “There's a greater purpose at work, and we serve it together. Whether we know it or not. I can't change the past, but we came here to ensure there can even be a future. We may take the steps, but the Lord of Light-”

Tormund however, had no qualms of being exhausted with this rhetoric. “You southerners never know when to shut up, do you? He's giving you a chance to make up for being piece of shit, either take it or stop talking about your damn god. It's only us men down here.”

In the quiet only the crackling of torch fire was heard until it blended in harmony with Jons low rasp. “You tell me you're on our side, you need to prove it.” Thoros asking from previous he only watched it play out, how they were do to that. Jon with keys in his hand, found the unlocks of the cell door. “You come with us, fight for the living where it matters.”

Still on a side akin to somewhat pathetic, Thoros's expression twisted to a morose jest. “As long as it's more interesting then sitting in a freezing cell all day.”

Yet as you watched Jon and Tormund both unshackle them, you couldn't stop the wonder. Coming down here, you knew why and agreed why. Anger in outbursts weren't like you anymore, it came out of nowhere when you had faced far worse opponents without the blockade of iron bars with more of a firm hand. Though, a brief glance shared between you and Thoros, it seemed he did not question it the way you were.

Bringing one back changes something inside you he said. The months passed was beginning to make it feel like that cost was your sanity. Your sense of stability in a well mannered, stoic demeanour when it mattered. But that wasn't the only hold on your mind either. Bringing dead to life in one direction, and visions and green dreams in the other.

How much longer could you even hold yourself together?

A few stories always stuck out in your mind, or at least, it was the ones not as intriguing as the others. But the ones which instilled a chilling in your lungs when you first heard them. The thing that came in the night. That was the the first you remembered hearing.

Your first visit in Winterfell, told to you by Old Nan, who even then seemed to be as old twenty years ago as had been the last you saw of her. She held all of those stories, and it was the scary ones which you found yourself always drawn to. The first was that story which stuck out in your mind.

Many years ago it was said, four apprentice boys went to their Lord Commander spinning terrified stories that something came for them in the night. Each boy however, gave different accounts of what had happened, and each described its appearance vastly different then the other. As a result, the Lord Commander found no reason to take their ramblings seriously. Within a year it was said, three of the boys had died and the fourth had gone mad. A century later it was said to have returned, but few lived to speak of what it had done once more.

Robb had snuck up on you when you heard that story, and you could still recall the laughter from he and Jon when you nearly jumped out of your skin with a shriek.

Another you never forgot was that of the seventy nine. It was said that seventy nine men had deserted their posts from the Nights Watch, running South. One of the men, the youngest son of the Lord of House Ryswell had taken them there hoping to seek shelter. Instead, Lord Ryswell had called upon the Nights Watch to his home and the outlaws all captured. Including his son. Dragged back, holes just big enough for a man were carved into the Wall and each and every deserter was forced inside. Spiked in with spears and horns before sealing them all back up with ice. That they had left their posts in life, and so their punishment was that their watch never ended even in death.

So many passed through the years, the Rat Cook serving a King his son in a prince and bacon pie. The ghost of Danny Flint, brave and young and how the songs sung about her were sad and pretty but what ended her life was not. The blind knight of Symeon Star Eyes, sapphires in place of where his eyes were both lost and somehow still saw the figures of hellhounds fighting before him. The Mad Axe who walked the halls and butchered his brothers in the dark. Many stories all surrounded this one place, and yet as you rode upon the destination it looked nothing of the sorts.

The Nightfort was indeed the largest of the castles manning the Wall. It was the oldest as well, first ever built by Brandon the Builder himself, and where everything of the Nights Watch truly begun. Built on slanted land of rolling hills, surrounded by snow and ice it looked unassuming in every way. It was only a series of large buildings, made of stone and metal but nothing which told you it matched such stories you listened in great fear as a child.

The main building itself was large. Broken towers and paths and tunnels leading around to the many smaller sections sealed from the cold outside. Some places had only one wall standing, while others remained as if never touched. An octagon of stone, walls carved like steps sat much like that, mostly put together with nothing out of the ordinary, it's dome room as strong as ever.

It's outside however, was unique. Time had turned it into that of a small forest. Lush with fauna and flora surrounding thick trees that hid the castle well from prying eyes. The twisting branches of white poked through buildings and around others down to the ground again as if time had bound building and bark together.

All sat on your horses looking to it in the distance, Jon next to you with piercing eyes scouring every corner he could see from here as if searching for danger even this far away. The only other one as close to you both was Sam, his voice breaking the only noise of blowing wind around you. “Doesn't look quite as intimidating from out here, I admit.”

Jon's tone breath filled but still heard as he looked with wide eyes, as bright as the snow around him. “This was where you met him, Bran?” Sam confirming it only to watch as Jon let that breath out in a noticeable exhale. The cold around you all visible on the way out. Spoken to himself, knowing both by his either side would hear. “What were they doing, two teenagers bringing a crippled boy beyond the Wall?”

He heard it all before, but still it didn't sit well with him you knew. Sam couldn't get from the two Reed children nor Bran what they were doing here or why they needed to go North, but claimed they had to do it all the same. Sam had given them some of the cache of dragonglass he had found as his only way of protecting them best he could, but he could not convince them to come back to Castle Black if they truly didn't want to.

But you looked upon the vastness of the Wall and wondered, what was it Jojen Reed had seen? What did Lord Bloodraven show him that needed Brandon Stark so desperately for? Why any of it? Why you now?

You could hear Sam to your right, “They said they were needed. That they could only try and stop the Others by heading far North.”

Jon made the very point which came to your mind. “No one's ever survived as far north as they say these things live. No normal person at least.” Finally did his gaze catch yours from the very corner of your gaze to the side.

Not anything normal, but walking in the minds of a dream? You both had done that now.

The main gate was already prepared to be opened, likely from the first time Bran had arrived with the two Reed's getting here. The main yard was as overrun as it looked from the outside, but a chilling wind blew through the winding branches of white bark sticking up and around from the earth. Eyes all finding one way or another to something as eeiry as the next. Out of the entire group which came, Jon insisted a short few ensure its safety first.

Climbing off your horse, once more only Jon spoke and with a command as quiet as it was without room for question. “We'll split into groups, make sure it's empty. But be careful.” It was a large place, and even as you found your eyes on Ghost, the direwolf looked as not comfortable as Jon did. Both glanced to you, but for once did not make a fuss about you walking out of his sight. Not in front of the group of nine within the yards now. “Tormund, Theon, go with her. You two, with me.”

Thoros and Beric looked as many did coming to the Wall for the first time. A strange awe. The greatest structure ever built, and the unusual feeling which came with being near it. Ser Davos in another direction with Maege Mormont. Olly beside you, sharing a not so insignificant glance at being back in such a place.

Not holding the same conflicting memories which had that of Castle Black, but the Nights Watch a reminder all the same.

Every room which was held within four walls looked identical. Dark without fire light, only the outside peering in to give any hint of what was there. Empty, more empty, and a space that told it was far larger then the last fort you had been in. Was easy to understand to you, how this was the first built. It was grand, but too grand to maintain with dwindling men and resources.

You supposed the creation of a united Seven Kingdoms did not help such a matter. Considering this very place was abandoned after one visit from Queen Alysanne Targaryean. It was said she found it dour and depressing, and used her precious jems to build a newer, smaller castle. Another which later was abandoned too.

The four of you walked with little words shared. Something about this place felt off. As if it made the hair on the back of your neck stand on end with no explanation as to why. Wherever Ghost went, you weren't sure, he seemed to not like this place as much either. Sensing what you all could or more but you ventured further into the creeping dark.

Out of the three men walking together on the other side of the castle, two voices were quiet, but the same pair which tended to always speak with such a cadence regardless. “If the dead were here, there is no use in biding their time hiding in shadows.”

Jon's eyes peeled from every corner to give somewhat of a glare to Beric. The entire journey here he had tried to enlist Jon in this cause for a god he didn't believe in. Wars had been fought over single individuals before and always ended in one side with far too much blood spilt. This wasn't about one god or another, it was about survival.

Many times including now, he let him speak and said nothing in return. Jon had found great skill in the ability to let others talk endlessly at him without uttering a sentence. On the opposite end, he sensed that normally it was Thoros who was the talker and yet he had been quiet. Quiet with attention trained much on you, whether you noticed or not.

Not attraction or malice but something Jon sensed he could not understand. Thoros was to Beric was what you were to Jon. The one his new life was in debt to. The one who brought him back. However desperate Jon could feel looking at you, it was not the same he knew, to the trepidation you had spent months looking at him like.

Jon would feel lost without you, but he also had wondered if you truly would be lost without him.

He couldn't even understand death in the same manner. His mind attached itself to Ghost. The second the cold begun to seep deeply into the wound in his heart, Jon's gaze was in the stables. Lower to the ground then normal and sharper to the point it wasn't quite as pitch black. At the time, he almost wondered if it had been a dream. Only to finally realize where his mind was. When Jon made his way outside, he found the blood. His blood.

Drenched in the snow and his senses picked up it's path instantly. By the time Jon was looking down at his own dead body, he was fairly sure he lost part of his mind. You though, it was nothing of the sort for you. You had seen the world fade, and as soon as it was gone you opened them up once more.

You compared it to waking up from a dreamless sleep. Groggy and heavy, no actual recollection of the seconds before you fell asleep and if you dreamt anything you had already forgotten. Only that feeling was even worse in death. Jon didn't know what that felt like. His mind was awake from every second he was dead to the moment he returned in his own body.

Only Beric would understand exactly how you felt in one way, and only Thoros would understand in another. But not both. Your returned from the dead, already something Jon knows drastically changes part of a person. Then your new life brought Jon back from the dead. Another thing Jon now knew drastically changed a person.

You were the link between all four of them. Five if he was including what used to be Catelyn Stark.

An amalgamation of them all in a mind too traumatized to handle it. Jon once thought you were the only two who understood each other, but not even that was true. In a painful honesty, he thought to himself, there isn't a soul on earth who understands what is in your mind. No one could. Death haunted you in every facet of your existence, how deep did it run? How often were you trained on the thoughts of death the way Jons was tethered to his obsession with you?

Their voices around him spoke as they traversed the empty, grim halls. Thoros the one speaking when Jon found it in him to pay attention to their conversation, and wishing in an instant they'd stop. “Anything still hiding around here, it'd be old but if there is one which doesn't care about it's age, it's rum.”

Beric to the side of Jon responding in jest, “Would make you more bearable, my friend. I do admit.”

The whispering hiss from Jon was far more fed up with both of them then any previous words had given off. “Or you could stay sober and handle your problems the way the rest of us have to.” He elected to ignore the glance both men gave one another. They were right, Jon did not think you were all in the same place for no reason, but good company remained rare in Southerners clearly.

Raising an eyebrow, Thoros gave a look assuming Jon could read the jest in him. “Do me a favour, your grace and ask your lady if she thinks handling our burden is more bearable sober, or good and drunk and uncaring?”

His jaw clenched. If that wasn't a good option for you before, Jon would forbid it now of all times. That time, he openly glared. Anything which might have come impulsively from his mouth by then, was stopped by a faint sound somewhere in the outside.

Ghost had begun to bark and growl in great volume.

“Old Nan used to tell stories about this place.” Glancing over to Theon, he looked a bit less on edge then you felt walking through these halls. Turning away your eyes looked to the dark unlit by fire and felt nothing but the same bitter cold floating around you. Olly turning to look at him asking what kind of stories.

You could hear the smirk on Theons face. “The scary kind. The kind that would scare the hair on your head right out.”

Tormund rumbled with his own amusement. “Somewhere on the North side of the Wall here there's an old tunnel one of my own tried carving to get through to the other side. The Crows caught him and buried him back into the wall. Some say you can hear the sounds of a pick through ice if you're quiet enough.”

Olly glared at both of them. “Those aren't scary, they're just stories.”

You admired it a little, you knew he was tense but refusing to let the men in his company make him appear just the boy his age was. Mumbling mostly to yourself, “Leave him be.” They caught it, but your eyes followed a white branch poking through the floor, stretching and twisting around a pole and reaching up to the sky.

It was everywhere, these branches. From the earth and white like a heart tree but without one standing tall where it would seem to make the most sense.

Still they bickered behind you like boys. “You're scarier then any bed side story.”

Tormund's voice almost amused as his attention was now directed at Olly. “Aye, boy. I probably am. Carved up more Crows then your Axe Man ever did I bet.” You'd roll your eyes if you didn't still feel that strange creeping just under your skin.

A gloved hand reached out and carefully pushed a creaking wooden door open, one strong looking companion sat on the other side of the room you stepped into, looking almost as if it had been barred off before being left. Glancing somewhat behind you, the sight of the much smaller Olly continued to bicker with the very large Tormund. Catching Theons gaze, his narrowed at likely what was your tense frame. Unsure as to what was on your mind, but alas you were not sure either these days.

Some you felt fine, others you felt as if you flared a great temper from nothing, others your emotions ran you a true mess from teary eyed to the chilling paranoia sat with you now. It was erratic how wildly you were beginning to swing in how you felt these days. But explaining that now was of no use, and you both walked into the room all the same.

The cold in here was striking, as if whatever wind flowed in, was captured and stayed due to it's layout with not a single window to the outside world. Only the light pouring in from under both doors the rest of the room remained hidden.

Nothing seemed to stand out to you, and as you pressed against the barred up door you tried instead to give it a shove to no avail. If it led somewhere else, it would have to be seen to be accessed on the other side. Coming to your side, Theon looked it over with the same thought. “Whatever's on the other side is empty most likely, been abandoned for hundreds of years anything that might be in there's long dead.”

Sharpness sat on the edge of your tongue, “Easy to say that when you've never been the dead thing.”

His eyes rolled as yours shined with almost a bratiness as you paced further into the cold, darkness of the room. Catching your eye only slightly, you looked to what almost might be that of a bedroll. Splayed out in the darkness by the end of the room. Kneeling down by it, you looked with wide eyes and your lips parted in a slight confusion. Scattered things laid about as if someone had been here not so long ago. Standing up, you turned to Theon.

Nodding behind you to the same sight, his voice with the same curiosity. “What is it?”

You didn't answer, because as soon as he was finished, something seemed as if it crept from the dark behind him. The door slammed shut, and this time the hand which did it was cold and grey and almost blue.

But not as blue as it's eyes.

A figure with ragged hair and a snarling mouth stomped it's way right to Theon in the same instance those very sounds emerged from the darkness you stood within as well. A hand fighting against Theons defences, the thing finally slammed him into the wall in the same instance two pairs of hands grabbed you.

One almost jumping from behind as another snatched at your legs and dragged you down with your head slamming hard into the floor. Both figures captured your sight instantly, one knee bending upwards as if to push back the one most over top of you, while your hands were fighting to grab at the other wrapping his own cold ones around your throat.

Yelling behind the door was barley heard over the inhuman growling of the blue eyes around both of you. You think Theon might have yelled your name but you couldn't even sense anything the closer the one by your head leaned in, almost drooling on you from it's snarling.

Your other leg pinned down by the larger figures weight you could only push against with your knee enough that you could barley try and slip your other leg free with each jostle. Yet every movement your lungs burned inside your chest as the tighter the cold hands around your neck got.

One, two, almost five rough kicks and finally you managed to shove it off of you enough you could reach what was hidden under your cloak from your grasp. The cold was like glass in your touch and it was enough. Barley managing to reach up to shove the dagger into the eye of the one above it let out almost a gurgling with wide eyes, before the sight of black drenched your vision, stinging your own eyes.

Knowing the other was coming right back you flung yourself to the side in just the right time the blue eyed figure crowded you. Back against the wall in a somewhat sitting position, but you shoved one forearm against his neck to keep you from him as his own hands grabbed at your other to fight against the hold of weapon.

There was nothing in it's eyes but blue and nothing from it's sounds but such snarling. A sound of sinking flesh filled the air beside you and then you heard Theon call to you much more clearly. As if it could focus on two, it's other strong hand came out and grabbed at the wrist holding the dagger in Theons own, keeping both ends at bay.

Just as Theons other hand came around to roughly grasp at the thing, you thrusted your head forward against its in a painful slam. Theon then pulling it almost behind him using the force pushed back. Hauling yourself up, you and Theon looked to the other for only a second before more of snarling came out from it, and both of your daggers sunk into different parts of him. Theon's in the forehead and yours deep in it's neck, a vicious black smothering both of you in splashes.

Collapsing to the ground, Theon grabbed your arm with concern on him before more blue found your eyes. A fourth opening just as it screeched to fling itself right at you both and it seemed far smarter then either of the others. Leaping through the air as if a performance and flung Theon to the side with no thought.

Raising your dagger up it grabbed your arm and shoved you back against the wall as felt it tighten so much the dagger twisted in your very grip as your hand twitched.

The force sinking it deeper into your skin until it sliced through and blood pooled against your gloved palm and soaking the dagger. Only in the same instance, did the blood against your palm grow hot, so hot it felt extreme and it only got worse each passing moment. Not even a single second went by before it was so hot you cried out at the burn until it inflamed whatever it soaked.

Following the path to the dagger and the sensation seemed to shock the blue eyed creature for enough moment you shoved the rest of the blade into his own hand. Stumbling to the ground flames swam from you and now flooded the creature until he was engulfed in inhuman screeches on the ground. Writhing as Theon ran to your side and hauled you to the now empty side of the room.

Stopping with a grasp on the other, eyes wide as the creature finally stopped. The fire burning through what moulting skin it had touched before sizzling out on it's very own. Both you and Theon stood there as the silence finally came about the room.

The sounds outside the door no more as if you were left together alone in the cold, but perhaps it was truly just the ringing in your ears of blood muffling anything to your shocked senses looking to the four corpses now dead without question.

It was only as Theon tried calling your name did you begin to fade back into the world, looking over at him. Both of you covered in..something. It covered both you it felt thick like molasses and a murky black colour unlike the blood on your glove. Theon had grabbed your wrist, yanking it up for both of you to see.

Nothing was burned, nothing was burning. The leather sliced through and torn from the force, showing the skin underneath and the cut deep within your palm. Blood soaked the area. Perhaps against the black covering you both, made your blood appear as if it stained itself such a striking red it almost glowed the way those creatures glowed blue in their eyes.

Panting in the feeling rushing through you both, and yet your eyes slid from the blood on you to one another and what was there to say? You couldn't think of words, you weren't sure any existed.

Only did the world return to you did your heart feel as if it was leaving your chest. Almost leaning against his side, Theon did the same as you both collapsed against the wall. You sinking in a shock to the ground. If it didn't feel real before, it did now.

His grip never left the wrist attached to your bleeding palm so red the colour was terrible. But your eyes all looked to the creatures before you. Only somewhat in the distance, did you register the sound of barking. But against the numbed shock, you and Theon only sat there, you with a vague awareness that anything outside this room had ever existed before.

Whatever short time passed you did not know, only that sometime later did the door once too sealed closed to open, burst. Thrown against the wall, it swung on it's hinges with aggression. Ghost barred in first, his own barking and growling matched by the hostility he stood with looking at the bodies now on the ground.

Everyone else followed, but you hadn't noticed until two hands grabbed you and the world came back once more as it was the urgent rasping of Jons voice and the desperation in his panicked grey eyes that pulled you out of such a state. His hands on your upper arms as if he had been shaking you to snap out of it, until your eyes found his and he moved to grasp your cheeks. “Are you hurt?”

He didn't actually let you answer, pulling back to find out for himself but you didn't even know what was there. You felt the sting of cold air against the slice in your palm and the pain along your neck that had Jons eyes darken and his face twist in an anger. Only, there was no one left alive to take the feeling out on.

Moving to force the black moulted substance off from where it splattered against your face, his thumb ran over your cheek before swallowing harshly. Pulling you up to your feet without needing a single bit of effort from you, but not actually letting you stand any further away from him then right against his front.

Turning you both to the rest of the room, one arm on your waist tightly, the other running smoothly up and down your bicep as if trying to soothe himself rather then your still quiet, shocked self. Theon sat against a crate, hands braced against his knees watching the bodies in a silent uncertainty as Olly sat close to his side checking on him.

Somewhere in the back of the ringing in your head, did you hear the faint sounds of talking. Hardly finding it easy to attribute one voice to another unless it came from the rasp directly behind you into your ear. A shortness on Jons voice every time he spoke, but another one now rumbled as if shaking the earth.

“Probably shacked up here after coming through the Wall. Some of my people are shit at trying to work together. Thought this place was big enough no one would find them.”

Your eyes trained on the burned corpse, your hand clenching as it continued to sting. Slowly you could feel Jon reaching to grab it, unfurling the fist you had made only to keep your palm free. No doubt his eyes now trained on the gash in your palm, the red slightly more normal then it had been in the moment Theon did the same.

Jaw clenching looking from it to the corpse, you felt a pounding in your heart trying to recount how it happened. It was sudden, quick, and you barley could register anything until it was already off you and on fire. Somewhere in the distance you could hear Maege asking, “How'd that one end up like this?”

You and Theon glanced to each other, an unknowing in his eyes but yours slid from him to the entryway where Beric and Thoros stood. They on the other hand, only looked right at you as if telling you something you should already have known.

Jon behind you roughly finding his voice, “We'll bring them out into the courtyard. Let the others in, and burn the rest. It'll be dark soon.” With a mumble of your name, you didn't notice Jons touch trying to pull you with him. Eyes trained unblinking on the dead, on the burned body. And it was not just one body charred in black from fire you couldn't stop looking at.

First the wildfire, now this. You were no better then her. Good people shouldn't be capable of creating things like this. Letting Jon pull you out of the room to wherever it was he intended to bring you, part of you wondered if she felt as sick as you did looking at the things she's burned away.

Only, you had no reasonable way to know, that she didn't.

You knew you were a little more dispondant then normal when you explained what happened, but for once Jon understood entirely. He had you perched on the edge of some crate, Olly having run down to the horses to get him something to at least wrap your hand up in for now. Jons voice was quiet, only loud enough for you to hear him inside what otherwise would be the echo of the corridor. “Couldn't use my hand for days. The whole palm was burned.”

Eyebrows almost raising as if an attempt to be amusing passed you by, your voice a little strained from the nerves inside you settling. “You grabbed a lantern with your bare hand, that's a little different.”

Having cleaned most of the strange black blood from your face, and then cleaned your hand as must as he could of your own, Jon started to gently cover the cut with the cloth slowly. Not quite looking up to your eyes as he focused. “And you set him on fire with your bare hands.” You tried to protest that you didn't do anything but Jon shut it down with your name as if in lecture. Looking up at you, blending an upset with frustration in his twisting expression. “It attacked you, cut you. You said it felt like it was burning and then it catches fire?”

Your voice was short as it was a mutter. Brows narrowing looking away from him. “My apologies if I'm not jumping at the opportunity to boast I can set men on fire at will.” Jon argued that isn't what he was saying but you only shrugged a shoulder halfheartedly.

Sighing out, silence sat between you as he finished caring for your hand. Letting it move down to rest on your lap, Jon didn't yet move away or help you down. Instead he stood there, a hand trailing on your upper arm and the other on your thigh next to where your wrapped hand lay. Not forcing you to look at him either, Jon only spoke in a somehow, even softer quiet then before. “We'll discuss it later.”

Moving more to try and catch your eye, he repeated your name. That time getting you to nod, flickering a glance to his. Bright and grey and shining wide at you with none of that frustration from moments before. You weren't quite sure it was an appropriate time, but you did it anyways.

The uninjured hand reaching up, tracing your fingertips along his jaw before letting it slide tenderly to the back of his neck. His hair up giving you the opportunity to better prompt him to meet you half way, as your eyes slid closed. Lips meeting each others, Jons hand on your arm moving to cup your cheek, keeping you there against a soft kiss until he heard you sigh lightly into it.

Before you could pull away, he pressed two more chaste ones to your lips. Moving to press a final one to your forehead before he wrapped an arm around your back, pulling you up onto your feet. “You don't have to be brave when we're alone. It's alright if what happened back there scared you.”

Almost a soft smile formed, your hands perched still on his waist as you steadied yourself getting onto the ground. His eyes painted over with something almost adoring as you spared no care this time to spin a falsehood. “Good. Because it did.”

His face tied between soft and serious, Jon sighed out with a heavy weight behind him. “It should scare you. It scared me.”

Raising an eyebrow slightly, you found yourself returning a bit to something more normal on the inside at least. “Stupid and scared. We are made for each other.” That had Jon trying to pull back a mighty smirk right away, causing you to smother the same in yourself.

Guiding you away from the halls you were in, Jon muttered lowly as he pulled the hand on your lower back away. “Wouldn't want anything else.”

If you were feeling well enough to laugh, you might have. But not quite yet. Ice and fire still haunted both sides of you and each one radiated the looming threat of death. A threat which had followed your entire life, a shadow. You only hoped it all happening around you so rapidly now was always meant to happen this way, and not the things you brought to them.

The fire burned high and bright, eyes all watching intently as whatever conversations happened in the now larger group, you barley could hear a word. Watching the already dead burn once more, you couldn't stop the wonder all the same. Things the red woman did, things the Targaryean was whispered to be doing. What was the line between them and you?

Why when you used fire does it make you a good person and them not? Is it guilt? Is it the pit inside your gut of what a horrific manner to die that separated you? Even already dead, your eyes were dark and expression cold but disturbed as you watched. When did it stop being about survival and start becoming the actions of a monster?

A voice trickling in beside you, and it was likely the only one who had anything to say that was an answer for something of the many questions passing through you. “Through one manner or another, the Lord raised us both. And it's his power which runs through us, through our blood. I have discovered the same, blood which set something around you alight.”

Your arms crossed over you, not bothering to dress any warmer in the dark night sky overhead. Still your clothes were covered in the same black substance. Your eyes on the flames before tearing away to Beric beside you. “I've bled since coming back. Why now, why this time?”

He thought for a moment as the pair of you remained ignorant to the ones watching and listening to your conversation. “That I don't know, but both instances of the Lords power showing in you happened here, somewhere along the Wall. Perhaps it is a way of telling you, your fate lies here, more then anywhere else.”

Little patience in your words but tone was kept even. “Your god didn't need to force me into lighting a man on fire to know that, my lord. I've known that far longer then today, that my place is in the North.”

A chuckle on his breath didn't sound anything comforting, but little did to you anymore. “I didn't say it was the North your fate lies with, your grace.” Finding his gaze, you followed with an unblinking path to that of the dark grey ones not so far off with Ghost on one side and Sam on the other.

It wasn't unlike many years ago. Just on the outside of the gates at Castle Black did Jon stand by Sam as the corpses of wights burned before them. Only that time, there were far less dead in his memory and far more the fear of the unknown sat between the group that day. “I translated what I could about them, and it sounded as if the dead didn't rise back up like that until the the Others came through. Their presence was enough to bring them back as wights.”

Lost in a thought for a moment, Jon considered the idea. “If they were this close we'd have known by now. And they weren't anywhere near Castle Black when Othor came back.” Both men stood there looking at the bodies, both with more understanding of what was coming them any of the rest did in a way, but still there was something missing. Something that they weren't privy to it's information.

Sam glanced passed Jon, his own eyes finding the narrowed, troubled ones you sported across an expression just as disturbed as the rest of you looked. “She's a lot more like you then I thought.”

Jon's face turning to a confused one before he realized what was being referred too. Inhaling deeply, he shook his head slightly in a mutter. “Not if you say that to her.” From the side of his vision he could tell Sam was looking at him. “She'd tell you it's insulting to me, putting me at where she thinks is down at her level.”

Sam only huffed a laugh out. “Oh now I know she's really like you.” Jon's glare not angry but more of a jesting irritation as he said Sams name in warning. “If I told you that you're just like her, you'd get angry at me for that all the same.”

Jon knew he had a point. “Well I don't want her to be like me. I only want to keep her safe.”

He knew it came out of his mouth without much thought to it, but it truly stuck out the moments the words left Sams mouth. “Nothings killed her yet.” Both slowly turned to look at each other, Jons face almost twitching to laugh at how quickly Sams widened ready to dive into an apology. “Really though, Jon. You're doing fine. All things considered, everything bad that's happened to her isn't your fault. We can't protect the women we love from everything, no matter how much we want too.”

It was the wrong time to feel it, but something possessive in Jon begun to growl at that idea. The wolf in him did not accept that, would not accept that.

You were fairly certain it would've been easier to have tossed the material right into the fire then getting out what was left on it. Washing what was left on your face, hands, and arms you had turned your attention to trying to scrub out whatever bled on your clothes. To no avail it seemed, whatever it really was it was coated thick on there like dried paint by now.

All but tossing it against the floor, you stood with a huff trying to will away the dizziness from the fast movement off the ground. Hand pressed to your forehead, you knew it wasn't really the clothes bothering you. It didn't matter, that was trivial. It was everything else. The way they attacked you and Theon but it was as if you were the one they wanted to get to.

Armed with the same things, but it wasn't Theon that three out of four had focused on ending. A glance of the wrapping on your hand, and you dropped it down to your side. Mystery upon mystery, they added up with such speed it seemed.

“Do you wear this little because you're stubborn, or because you like making me go mad?”

Jon's voice easily accompanied the sound of the door opening, and only then did it occur to you that once you had stripped down the offending articles of clothing, you left the shift on without anything else to accommodate. Looking down then back up to him, who admittedly looked very warm, you found a bit of a bashful fluster travelling up your chest.

You tried to cover it up with something clever, but you knew Jon saw right through it. “That's assuming I could wear too much that would stop you from having that same reaction.” The charming smile you adored slid onto his face with ease, but the second he made any move to dress down he almost switched right into lecture tone to stop you.

Only, your hands reached up to his front, slowly taking things off for him with a gentle care you paid no attention to the look on his face he always had when you'd do so. Doing the bare minimum to pull off his own gloves, Jon let his hands now rest on your waist, watching you in quiet attending to him as if it was so natural for you.

Even though it was, you sometimes could forget that this was not something Jon was used too. It came easily to Robb. A highborn, trueborn son, heir to Winterfell, he was used to people wanting to do things for him, but Jon still struggled even all these months later together.

Too much of his life you knew he wanted to rely on himself, his own skills, survive all on his own if need be. Jon was still a bastard and thus maids and servants never quite clambered to attend to him quite the same way. Not that Jon would want them too. But you knew he let you now, due in part as an excuse for his large, warm hands to trail along the thin material covering what little it did of you.

Muttering lowly as you worked away, “Sometimes I can't tell if you're looking at me like that beacuse you want to take the rest of it off or not.” Jon only replied, voice deep and rasping that he always wants to do that. Warmth bubbled up in your chest and Jon caught it in your eyes, his own smile far easier coming. “Had I known when I met you that you would be this insatiable I might not have been so polite.”

Your hands stopped the moment he said it. “You don't remember the first time we met.” Eyes slinking up his chest to his face, the more yours dropped the more his eyes blazed with a mischief. “The first time I met you was in the training yard the morning you arrived.” You had little memory at all of that first day, but you weren't sure if he was just trying to tease you.

Tearing your eyes back down you begun to move more around him, taking the heaviest layers off to the cold of the room. Your voice low as you worked. “My point was, you did a good job at hiding what an animal you are.”

To you, nothing was thought of it. Simply, kneeling down in front of him to once more undress his heavier outer layers. But, not quite the other way around. Jon wasn't a man normally tempted like this, were it to come down to a choice he'd much rather dine between your legs then ever choose you pleasuring him instead. And yet, he knew his voice husked out a lot rougher then he was mere seconds ago teasing you.

Eyes almost hooded a it looking down at you, flexing his hands to stay respectful off of you. “You didn't make it easy.” Your gaze tilted up at him, and it really did not help. Only an innocent curiosity on your face, but for whatever reasons Jon felt his blood rush hotter. “Probably was a good thing we weren't supposed to be together. Have the freedom to know I could've done what I really wanted and not been so afraid.”

The skip in your heart shouldn't have added so such a fluster, but it did. Your attention directing back down you swallowed heavily before responding. “And what is it you really wanted to do?”

He was silent for a little bit, the nerves inside you forcing the tips of your fingers to steady without sign of shaking. Only as you moved to his boots did you notice his own hands finally moved. The top of your vision catching how swiftly he pulled the last layer against his torso off as if the cold meant nothing to his bare torso.

Still, Jon said not a word. Waiting for you to finish putting them aside before reaching down. Gently a few fingers under your chin to tilt you to look up at him, Jon not sparing to let out a deep exhale as he looked down dark and bright and all seeing. His accent thick as it was rough, “Every night for years I spent wondering what it'd feel like to be inside you. But there's something I want to know. When did you want me?” Your brows narrowing in confusion, his hand sliding to toy with the strands of hair loose at the side of your head. “When did you first think about letting me take you to bed?”

The stammer in you without saying a word was almost embarrassing, the fluster flushed in your face so obviously but Jon didn't even give you the relief of a smirk. Just watched with dark eyes and a low hissing tone. “Be honest, if I asked you how many times in your entire life you've even touched yourself, could you count it on two hands?”

Your head turned away, the embarrassment mounting in drastic fashion all of the sudden. Mumbling, “Jon..” Without any words to explain what you meant.

He continued though. “Three hands? Four?” You knew right away by the falling drop of your face, how you almost shrunk away from him even kneeling like this that he knew. The embarrassment flowing down the river and finding itself replaced with a wide eyed humiliation. “It's not less then five times.” But you didn't say anything, and almost looked away from him more. Hardly able to ascertain his tone over the feeling in your chest of almost shame. “How many?”

You managed to get it out, but it was a mumble only Jon could've picked up on. “Twice.” He was silent and you felt that shame flare higher and higher wanting to explain yourself. “I didn't..I didn't know for a long time that was something I could even do..have..feel like that..”

Truly you were ruining him, he knew. This wasn't fair, he wasn't trying to dangle how innocent you were as a something to mock but Jon knew he was so unbelievably hard. Cock strained against the only thing left covering his body and once more that perverse feeling returned. Even all these years later you were too innocent for your own good, and that was a dangerous mix.

Jon stood there, knowing you shouldn't be kneeling so beautiful and telling him just how truly innocent you've been your whole life, when he knew far too intimately how it felt to spill so deeply down your throat. That it let tears fall from your eyes at how overwhelming he could hold you there. He knew he shouldn't want that, he didn't want it because he didn't want to risk being too rough or unsafe with you.

But still he thought, never once did you ever do anything but swallow every drop of his seed as if you needed it.

He was tied between two things, but he knew he couldn't act like that with you. He had to be gentle, show you love instead of making it all about him. Mumbling your name, Jon held a hand out, prompting you to stand up properly, before he could pull his cock out to slide deep in your mouth.

One hand at your hip and the other tilting your jaw to look up at him, your lips parted, lungs almost burning in anticipation for what he wanted. Days when something risked your life, Jon was wild and unpredictable those subsequent nights. He lacked any other way to cope with almost losing you, but to be the one rough with you himself when alone. Brushing his lips against yours, your hands at his waist tightening but he only muttered with hot breath dancing across your skin. “Lay on the bed for me.”

Bracing yourself with your palms back against the sheets, one knee somewhat bent keeping you propped up, unsure of how to even attempt to give him something to look at. But as Jon turned to face you, attention was grabbed from where you were looking with ease. Rough hands undoing the laces at the top of his breeches before uncaringly shoving the rest of it off.

Already his cock stood hard as could be, begging to take what he wanted from you. One knee he climbed up onto the bed and the next, all but crawling over top of you like he had his prey exactly where he wanted. Only his hands grabbed something along the way.

Pulling your shift up and off you, Jon tossed it without a single care. His eyes black as the night outside but he only watched you, chest breathing heavily as he looked you over. Top to bottom trailing down as if he had every inch of you already memorized.

The air was heavy, tense as you both were perched on the bed until Jon once more stole your breath with ease. Grasping at your legs, Jon pushed them wide, yanking you down the bed before slinking down so that his broad shoulders kept you from being able to close them. Hovering just where he would torment you for hours, only the hot breathe you felt tracing along your skin spoke what you didn't expect.

“Why didn't you ever try it more? Touching yourself?” Your head fell against the sheets, turning into the pillow somewhat with that same embarrassment. Your name coming from him with another prompt, hands resting along your outer thighs soothingly. “It's alright, I'm not trying to embarrass you. But I need to know.” All you did was barley breath out an ask of why when he smiled too gently for the way he was between your legs. “Because I spent a lot of nights spilling into my own hand pretending it was you. Did you not know you were allowed to think of me?”

You wanted to be anywhere but here, you didn't understand why this mattered. Not a shred of confidence was found in your mutterings. “I tried but then I'd remember when my Septa used to tell me girls shouldn't do things like that. Then both times I tried it never..it didn't really work so I stopped. It felt good when you were doing it, I thought that meant that only you were supposed do that.” Were you not bare, you would have made your way to the top of the Wall by now and flung yourself from the edge.

Jon only soothed his touch against your thighs. Breath warm as his voice was soothing, no judgment not even desire, just comforting. “Try for me.”

“Here?”

A grin cracked at how your voice snapped against the words. “Right here. Show me what you think it is you weren't supposed to be doing.” The Queen of one word answers you were and asked why, and once more Jon was there not to pressure, but to alleviate the suffocating fluster in your lungs. “You're in the North, you married a Northman. You belong to the North now, not the new gods always trying to convince you wanting to feel good is something to be ashamed of.”

It was cruel how well he knew you. How he could rip down your walls in seconds and expose the shivering insecurities underneath. “Are you going to laugh at me if I say I don't know what to do?”

Instantly. Jon laughed instantly.

Trying to pull away from him, you didn't want to do this. You didn't want everything today to end with Jon making fun of you for something you spent years thinking you were sinful for trying. It was easy for him, he was a man, he followed the Old Gods. No one cared what Jon did or wanted like that, but you were taught your entire life. Marry, breed and repeat. Pleasure wasn't part of such lessons.

“Woah, woah-” Jon reached up, grasping at your waist quickly and pushed you back down into the sheets, hoisting himself up to see your eyes a little better. Now mostly hovering over your stomach. “Darling, I wasn't laughing at you. Not like that. You..” His eyes were admittedly wide, and earnest. The grey far less black and more light once more. “You're just..cute.”

Mumbling as you wanted to squirm away, the tickling his breath on your stomach causing. “Isn't that a seductive way to be seen by your husband.”

In response, Jon let that same smile sit on his lips before pressing it down to your stomach, almost kissing a non existent path to something before pulling a thigh up, and somewhat over his shoulder, pressing a kiss to your inner thigh there as well. “I want you to understand it's okay to feel good, it's okay to do things just for yourself. But you're not good at doing nice things for yourself, so we're going to stay right here until I've taught you that properly.”

The strength to say anything still was a little too on the embarrassed side, but when Jon wanted to make a point about something sensitive, you had long learned to trust the way he delicately chose to do so with you. Nodding, you still didn't really look anywhere but the stone wall to the side of the room whispering, “I don't know how to start.”

In another world that may have come off as petulant, but you didn't want to be in charge of this sort of thing for yourself. Being so open, so raw, and so vulgar in front of Jon felt like he'd judge you for it but he encouraged it with the most gentle eyes he always held towards you. “Give me your hand.” Smartly choosing your luckily uninjured left, he opened the fingers right in your palm before sitting it flat against your stomach. “I'll lead, you just follow along for now.”

Barley nodding, you felt him trail your hand down your stomach, tracing just barley over your mound without the courage to even slightly look at him. Fingertips of his over top yours on the opposite sides, Jon gently dragged your hand down slightly until just barley did you feel that slight jolt of pleasure fluttering across your clit.

Biting roughly into your lip, you felt rather stupid as if you had no idea what any of this entailed. You had been touched this way before, but here on your own in front of Jon? You felt as nervous and lost as you did that day in Winterfell on his bed, bare for the first time in front of him. Trying to apply a little bit of pressure, Jon's voice was soft. “Come on, darling. Find out what feels good.”

You were trying, really you were. But everything felt wrong, you felt stupid and not looking his way at all did not help the worry Jon might think you were incompetent. Jon always took the lead, Robb always took the lead. You didn't want to be in charge, you didn't want to do all of this yourself for yourself, you'd much rather Jon have let you stay on your knees earlier instead.

Small touches he would try and guide you to something a little better, but no doubt he could see how tense and unrelaxed you were. “If I take my hand away, would it help you to explore more on your own?”

Your response however, was as mumbled and embarrassed as before. Any movement stopping, the moment Jon wasn't actively leading. “Couldn't we do things the way we always do..”

Quiet for a moment, you feared the sigh Jon let out was either disappointment or defeat. Not helped by the sudden feeling of him gently laying your legs out more comfortably and rising up. Only to have him climb back over you, hands pressed on either side of your head as he nudged you gently to look up at him. You were sure the embarrassment was striking on your face.

Before any words were spoken, the moment you looked to him, Jon captured your lips. Nothing feirce or deep or urgent, just a gentle kiss until you settled to something more calm. Enough so that you naturally raised your hands to run along his shoulder and upper back. Pulling away more then once, Jon would reclaim your lips until he found the strength to pull back enough to speak properly.

Nudging your nose gently with his, “Whenever we were separated, I'd always wonder late at night if you were touching yourself the same time I was. I wanted you to be.” Resting his forehead against yours, the gesture rather sweet for the spoke words rasping from his mouth. “I'd pull one of your letters out, reading it trying to hear your voice, try to imagine what it'd feel like to finally slip inside of you. Hoping you were on the other side of the country wondering what it'd feel like to be filled that way.”

Ever so slowly, Jon while keeping your eyes on his the entire time, removed a hand from around his shoulder. Dragging it right back down. Instead of prompting you himself, he only held your hand in the position, knowing the command was already understood. Do it yourself right now.

The jolt of pleasure almost made you jump, the moment Jon knew you obeyed him, let that hand press back into the sheets as he stayed over you. Eyes forcing you to look up at him as he kept going. “Then you were standing right in front of me, after a year of thinking you were gone. I know I was too rough with you, I should've been gentle, should've taken my time, ease you into it.”

Ever so slightly you felt more of a pattern grow easier and easier to follow. Breath increasing as it would then hitch trying to keep steady underneath him, but your bloodstream flowed warmer and tighter as that feeling grew in your core. Trying to recall what Jon would do at this point but he kept talking, kept distracting your too focused mind.

“I was afraid after, if you didn't want it. Beacuse it was all I kept thinking about. Every moment I was looking at you, all I could think about was how you felt around me. How beautiful you looked under me just like this.” A whimper in your throat swallowed itself back down, but that warmth from Jon above was starting to compare to it deep in your core. Fingertips a little firmer, finding a pattern almost to match the cadence of Jons voice.

Nudging your nose with his again, barley brushing his lips against yours to speak. “Even when I woke up, you bare against me like that..” A rough exhale blew across your skin. “I had yanked you down onto my cock before I even knew what I was doing, I was obsessed. I'm still obsessed, I'm addicted to being inside you. You have no idea the things I want to do to you, things you'd never imagine two people could do with each other..”

Your eyes almost fluttered shut as a weak gasp left you, fingertips slightly down just slightly only to let out the tiniest of cries at just how wet you felt yourself getting. Tracing just some of that back to your clit, you nodded. Wanting to find a voice, but Jon was here to do all the talking for you, hovering over you as you breathing grew erratic, as your muscles begun to shake.

“I can't do half the things I want to do to you, I'd get sent to every hell there is for how much I want to keep you locked away, tied to my bed, making you beg for me every second I'm not inside you.”

Oh that faint whine did Jon in. His cock already throbbed terribly, but now it was enough to make his heart race, his hands tighten into fists against the sheets. Your eyes almost struggling to stay open like a true beauty in his eyes, losing yourself to a pleasure he was desperate for you to find. More and more the embarrassment left you, remaining only a burning white hot desire.

A gentle kiss to your cheek, once more the contrast captured your lungs. “The worst part is? You'd let me wouldn't you? You'd let me do anything to you, because you trust me to take care of you.” Nodding you tried to meet his dark eyes, but wave after wave of something tingling passed through you as you kept on your clit just as he wanted. Groaning over top of you, Jon hid his face in your neck, keeping enough of his body off of you to give you the space still. “...fuck, I'm nowhere near an honourable man for what I want to do to you, not even a good one..”

Shaking your head, you tried turning slightly into his close proximity, breathless and weak, “You are, I promise you are, Jon. Always have been.” His own breathing growing harsh against your neck, he was trying to keep from indulging himself in touching you but the edge of that cliff of self restraint was drawing near mighty fast.

Creeping right up on you, your free hand reached up, grasping at Jons shoulder as stuttering breaths found you as you almost arched up into him. Something like sparks of a flame smouldering through you with a swiftness finally had him pull back to look at you. Barley managing to meet his eyes as yours kept fluttering shut, any tension within you left.

That fire burst into a proper flame and spread across your core and through your every nerve, arching up to him even more as Jon forced himself to stay propped up to watch. Your head thrown back with a desperate gasp of his name. It wasn't nearly as powerful as any another had given you, but feeling Jon so close against you had only helped keep it properly strong. Riding out that wave, something needy forced itself into your mind.

Forcing your self upward your hand left without thought as you met his lips. Jon sensing what you wanted right away, shifting his position to grasp at your waist and keep you firmly under him as he bit at your bottom lip. The very start of what might have been a gasp and Jon impatient as anything used such an opportunity to glide his tongue into your mouth, brushing against your own as he leaned over you more.

A far more dominant position then he held previously, one hand as Jon tasted you as such with a greed, did he shift onto his knees more. Suddenly pulling away, the saliva between you snapping as he looked down with something almost authoritative. Yanking your leg up into his hold, grasping by your thigh you were jostled further down the bed as he all but hooked your leg up over his shoulder. Far more on display then he'd ever previously positioned you.

Dark, heavy eyes raking down your bare form until he reached your soaking core. As if he worked himself up, Jons breathing was heavy as he clenched his jaw trying to keep composure and utterly failing. The aggressive look almost could be mistaken for anger as he sent his other hand down between you.

Much more knowing, rubbing tightly at your clit until you cried out, not even noticing the volume of your voice, not that he cared by now. Sinking down he shoved two fingers deep inside you, soaking to the point even just such one small action you could hear how wet you were. A cry biting against your tongue at the differences.

You with that sense of shame, Jons chest heaving all the more as he slid his fingers in and out of you deeply until he pulled from you, impatient. The press of the leaking tip of his cock teased against you, but Jon let that hand drift up. Running between your breasts, grasping not even in greed, almost tenderly to get your attention before running it what he could reach through your hair. You knew you looked a mess already, but Jon truthfully looked no more put together then you felt.

Rasping far more tenderly then such a lewd position had any right being spoken in tandem with, Jon looked with something overwhelmingly adoring. Letting his hand trace down to the bruises forming where the wight grabbed at your neck he swallowed with something far too close of watering to the surface. “I'm so sorry, darling, that never should have happened.”

Shaking your head you felt confused by the juxtaposition. His cock teasingly prodding at slipping right inside of you, and the desperate look as he looked down at you. “Jon, it's not your fault,”

Cutting you off, you stuttered a breath as just barley an inch more slid inside of you, but Jons eyes and voice no less heavy. “It doesn't matter. I need to protect you, both of you. Especially here.”

Jon wouldn't realize until far later into the night then he should've been awake, exactly what he had said. You didn't notice, your mind far too high in the clouds as you tried to find anything of him to grasp at in need. Barley a voice, more of just a weak high pitched breath as your core burned for him. “We protect each other, no matter what.”

Dropping his head, Jon without prompt sunk deep inside of you. The gasp pouring out of your mouth with a needy cry of his name, Jon for once couldn't convince himself to smother it with a kiss. He could barley look at you as you no longer could keep your eyes open.

Instead, his eyes dragged themselves down to watch his cock sink slowly inside of you, every slow pull almost leaving you showing off how soaking you were around him, made worse each slide back as deep as you could take him. Running against something sensitive that had your nails dig into where of his waist you could reach. Still, he only watched.

Again and again Jons cock slowly disappeared into you, made just for him. Your cunt made to fit his cock like a fate, and you were as tight as you somehow also gave him no resistance. You had worked yourself up perfect for him. “Oh fuck, darling..” A rougher thrust and one hand of yours reached mindlessly to the sheets below to grasp at.

More of a slap of his hips pounded into you, pace picking up rougher and rougher until the obscene yet telltale slap of skin against one another gave away what truly taking place in the hour of the wolf. The stretch of his cock never got any better, you always lay there feeling such a stinging burn that you might have cried without. Fucking deep into you rough, and thick and so much of you was only filled with him and you couldn't live without him.

The floating in your heart travelled down your chest between your legs and bloomed within your core as your cries found themselves shameless into the air, yet was nothing against the smack of Jons hips pounding into yours. Back arching as he dragged along your walls as if to torture you with how every sense was overtaken with his touch, his deep growl, his cock too thick to handle and yet he sunk as deep as you could take every time without the agony such a girth should give.

He couldn't take his eyes off watching your cunt take his cock like you were born to do only this. Your eyes shed tears at how little breath you had left each time he pounded harder. His head somewhat leaning against your leg up on his shoulder, other hand grasping tightly at your hips to bruise the skin with just more imprints of him. Forcing you steady as with a grunting growl in his chest did he fuck into rougher.

Pound after pound hardly a word was spoken not prayers for the others ears only, begging for mercy and none yet for how much he filled you over and over and how much your insides twisted like a tight coil edging itself to snap with a violence. You wanted Jon close but he couldn't tear his eyes away, and every few thrusts he watched did Jon pound rougher.

Teeth gritting Jon rambled swears under his breath watching you take him, watching how soaked his cock was every single time he managed to pull himself out of you even a little bit, and how little Jon ever wanted to be anywhere but so deep inside you every drop of seed he'd fill you with could never leak out. Leaning as much as he could over you, the leverage tore the growling from Jons chest out of his mouth as his harsh slam of hips pained you.

He was too rough with you, but you wanted more and more. Wanted Jon to treat you however he wished but you also wanted him close to feel and kiss. Begging his name, only it came out as tiny pleas of need in the slapping skin around you. “Jon, gods, Jon you're perfect..please, you're so good..”

Eyes rolling into the back of his head Jon shoved the leg of yours off his shoulder and forced them both wide to make room. Both hands pressed beside your body again, the slapping of skin fucking rough inside your soaking walls would've sounded too rough had it not been the only music you desired to hear the rest of your life.

Grasping his waist, your chest lurched and your core burned once more and yet the feeling inside twisted and fogged your head to the point not even the bed below you existed. Only the touch Jon gifted you. His forehead falling against yours, accent thick as anything as he slurringly rambled with the pace leaving a cruel pound, switching to an overwhelming slap as he thrusted into you faster and faster.

“Cum for me, darling. Please, I-” A groan leaving his mouth had you lurch up to kiss him. Deep and messy and he bit at your lips as he did so before he yanked back from that to ramble more. “Cum around me, I need to feel you, please..cum for me and I'll fill you just the way you like I promise.”

Nodding you met his lips in a kiss just as rough, Jons cock just as fast and unrelenting as he carved a place for his cock deep in your cunt made for him alone. The air between you both left how cold it was, the sweat covering both of you, a fire would have nothing on the heat now.

Gasping into his kiss, Jon slipped his tongue inside you once more just as you clenched around him. Muscles screaming as they seized, the coil inside snapping with such a roughness the tears once more fell from your eyes, but Jons kiss and tongue refused your begs and pleads for mercy. Jon had none anyways. Not the speed in which he kept pounding into you with no reprieve.

Your mind high in the clouds, just as Jon almost snarled into your kiss, spilling deep inside of you, making it feel like his seed was thick but burning hot as he pumped it all deep. Hips not relenting a bit, Jon shook in keeping himself propped up but more and more his seed filled you.

Almost falling, Jons forehead met yours again, one hand reaching up to grasp at the headboard above and pounding into you still. His own breaths as unsteady and stuttering as your own, but his hips never gave up the slapping into you he created. Your hands wrapped around his shoulders and back of his neck. Letting him hide more in your own neck as your nails dug into the free skin not yet covered by whatever strands fell from their pull up.

Jons other hand holding at your hip still rutting into you despite the overstimulated cries singing into his ears, he needed more. Jon craved more just as he needed to spill inside of you again, and again and as many times as he could give no matter what.

He knew now too, that if you passed out, if Jon wasn't done, you wanted him to fuck you anyways.

No rhythm or pattern followed this time, just the desperate fucking of a great wolf who needed to fill his mate at any and all cost. Nothing existed but Jons touch, his voice, all of it. Only him as for Jon it was only you. Only you two. That's all there was for him nothing outside mattered as long as he had you two in here and with a cruelty forcing a groan to pour from his mouth of your name, the thought had Jon spill inside you again. The thickness of his seed made fucking you over and over afterwards obscene, the sounds humiliating for you but Jon would willingly loose his sanity if it was this which would take it from him.

It hurt, how much cumming around him hurt, the burn he stretched you with but Jon would pull back and kiss you and you'd let him hurt you just like this for the rest of your days. Only with him did you feel as if you craved anything he could give you.

Looking up to his eyes, grey and bright and the only thing that mattered to you, barley a whisper you managed to breath out, “I love you.”

Jon couldn't say it back beacuse he lost the words for anything. Nodding, Jon rutted into you harder and kissed you deeper with such a greed the new gods would've been ashamed should he have cared. Spilling inside you once more, you weren't sure if he stopped. For the second time in over three weeks, your mind slipped into sleep at the pounding of his cock soaked inside you.

Once your eyes had slipped closed, the hand at your hip slid up to your stomach. Pressing down to feel nothing, not yet. But Jon knew the second that changed, he was going to feel no better about how desperate he was to fuck you. If he could give you a daughter right now too, he would stay inside you until he did just that.

You were long asleep, and shamefully filled with his seed by the time Jon slid out of you. Even in your sleep you whined. A tender kiss to your lips, and another when Jon pulled back to merely look at you first. He turned you in his arms, holding you close into his chest and one hand pressed at the back of your head to keep you tucked into him.

Jon almost failed you today, he arrived too late, they were all dead but it was still his fault he wasn't with you in the first place. You could take care of yourself, but Jon wanted you to let him do it for you, he'd do anything for you.

But something he knew, wanted him and you deeply involved in the winter storms of the far North. What that role was just yet he didn't know, but he would stake a high bet on it that the true answers to that lay here. In the North, the cold and the Old Gods. It all connected somehow, and for whatever reason, it seemed like the gods were saying that Jon and you together belonged right in this mystery alongside the Others.

High up on the Wall, the reports had been growing more and more every night but he had to be sure before he said anything.

He was given this responsibility and what led to this being his position meant he wasn't messing around. He wasn't taking it for granted with a snarky comment or dismissal anymore, beacuse they all knew better now.

Black fur barley doing anything in the high night wind but he walked up to the ledge the others stood at regardless. They called him up here for a reason, and as he stood by the ledge he saw just what the men had been whispering about for days. Only now it was close enough he could see with his own damn eyes.

Jon would be at the Nightfort by now he estimated. It wasn't far, it was close enough, and he wasn't willing to wait for an army he wasn't sure would come to their aid a second time to pick up the slack, and he didn't trust sending a raven to get across the seriousness of what this meant.

It would be unlikely he didn't know, but they all had to be on the same page now more then ever. The Nights Watch was no longer an exile stuck at the end of the world. They more then ever had to be the shield that guards the realms of men. The North together. All of them, just like Jon had told them.

Turning to the others, he said without room for question. “Ready my horse. If I leave tonight I can get there before the new moon. If they're this close already, Jon needs to know now.”

Edd stood high up on the Wall at Castle Black, and in the distant night sky of the North did the stars and black night start to shimmer. Closer and closer it was drawing and now he could see it.

The dark was coming, and a strange glow of shimmering green light within the sky waved like water along with it.

[kittycosmicc]

oh god

[kittycosmicc]

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