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messenger-of-babel · 8 months ago

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Picture Perfect

Summary: You and Bruce have the picture perfect relationship, but all it takes is a picture for it to be undone. (Bruce Wayne x fem!reader)

Word Count: 2.0K

Notes: So sorry for the late post! I know I'm posting at 1am but I had so much to do for work it's been a really rough week. I do often post late at night since that's when I get back, but I try to have then in before midnight at least. Not many warning for this one, only lightly edited due to busy at work. I'll work extra hard to make up for it~

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If there was one thing about Bruce Wayne that you'd like to pass to the tabloids, it would be that he knew how to fuck up a Saturday dinner.

You'd gone out on his arm as usual, dolled up to the nines. It was hard not to, when he all but insisted to line your pockets with cash and pay for any trouble of yours to disappear. When you refused that, he settled for wrapping strings of diamonds around your neck and wrists. He'd do it with soft touch, grin lopsided as his chest pressed along your back to fasten them. When he looked at you with that twinkle in his eye, you could only wonder how long it'd take for him to put a diamond on your finger and complete the set.

You had both been dating steadily for eleven months, casting ripples across the delicate pond that was the Gotham high life. You had sworn it was only going to be a one-night stand, to go home with the most eligible bachelor for one night just to try him out. Well, you could say that he had definitely lived up to the expectations, but neither of you had expected to catch feelings. By the third gala you had gone home together, the Gazette was already in a tizzy, headlines running about how the billionaire playboy had been seen with the same socialite on his arm for nights in a row. Well, they damn well ran out of ink when you and Bruce became official at that year’s Winter Gala.

Despite the rumours fluttering around Gotham, you and Bruce were quite happy. He worked late nights, something you had come to realise the further your relationship got. It didn't bother you too much, as you were often in your office anyways. Since your father had died you had become the head of the company, and a woman being the head of the company was enough to stir the sharks below you, fighting to wrestle it out of your hands. Sometimes when you were doing paperwork you imagined Bruce in Wayne Tower himself, pouring over his own work. The thought brought a smile to your face, and it always made the nights feel less lonely.

You were so sure in your relationship that when you walked through the door of the restaurant he had taken you to, you hadn't noticed anything different about the stares that followed you both into the private booth. You were unaware of the eyes that scanned the palm branding your back, oblivious to the way women turned to whisper to each other with pitying voices.

It had been the best night after a rough week, wanting nothing more to end the night with a glass of expensive wine and Bruce's bedsheets wrapped around your legs.

It was shaping up to be the perfect night, but like they say, ignorance is bliss.

As you had been walking to the car, Bruce opening the door for you, a reporter had come into your face, camera flashing before you had a chance to react. "Hey, personal space." Bruce had growled, putting a hand on the other man’s chest and pushing him away. The reporter acted like he wasn't even there, eyes trained on you. "How do you feel about the current news circling Bruce Wayne? Do you think you both will survive this?"

Your blood freezes as you look at the reporter, Bruce's warm hand on your shoulder snapping you out of it.

"No more questions, please." he says gruffly, helping you into the back seat and climbing in after you. With a hand signal, Alfred had pulled away, hurriedly taking you to Wayne Manor. You felt numb sitting next to him, eyes staring forward at the seat in front of you. You didn't know what he meant, but the anxious feeling in your throat told you that the eyes following your car were more than usual.

Like all good things, they all come to an end. Unfortunately, that also happened to include your relationship with Bruce. you're surprised that your breath is as even as it is right now. Tears burn forcefully at the back of your eyes, standing in the foyer of the manor.

"What is this?" you hiss out, holding up a paper by your face.

'WAYNE SEEN WITH SELENA KYLE STARLET, GOTHAM PLAYBOY RETURNS', reads the headline, with a picture of the pair kissing on a staircase. Your heart feels as crumpled as the newspaper in your fist, lips trembling. "You feel like explaining?" you force out, hating the way the break in your voice echoes in the empty foyer. He looks down, guilty. "It wasn't anything, I swear-" he tries to defend, arms coming out to try and reach for you. You scoff, turning on your heel, lips wobbling as you hold back your sobs. "Don't give me that bullshit," you scoff, tears finally slipping loose. "You don't get to say anything, you don't deserve to."

you cover your face with your hands, fingers coming away with smeared make up. Alfred had quietly slipped away, expression solemn. "God, I really thought that we had something, Bruce." you cry softly. "Why?"

He looks at you softly, hands trembling. "I can explain, please, let me explain." His hands come up to make a soothing motion, gently approaching you like you're a wild animal. "It isn't what it looks like. We aren't together. I love you; you know that. She came onto me, I swear."

You roll your eyes, although they're blurry from tears. "That's what all the rich billionaires say." you say deprecatingly.

"Not me." he says firmly, eyes wavering with a tinge of fear, fingers itching for something to hold. For you. "We can work past this. We can work it out, I assure you. This tabloid isn’t true. It isn't as bad as it seems."

That snaps something in you, almost doubling over from the angst welling up in your chest. "Not a problem? Not as bad as it seems?" you whirl on him, letting him see the destruction written across your face. "You humiliated me!" you scream, hand clutching your chest, other waving the paper. "Our relationship? Did it mean anything? Even if you're telling the truth, the problem is that half of Gotham pities me now. Did you not even have the decency to tell me before we went out? Just paraded me around while everyone else knew about our relationship trouble but me? How is that fair, Bruce?" you cry, feet feeling weak in your heels. "You know, I really thought I came to see a new side of you. I thought I knew all of you. My friends told me that I should be careful, that you were a skirt chaser. But no. I trusted you, Bruce." you say, voice rising. "I trusted you!"

His face shatters, grimacing at your cries.

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart." he says, voice thick. "I'm so, so sorry."

"Sorry doesn't fix this!" you cry, relieving the paper from your grip and it flutters to the ground. "It doesn’t fix us." you say weakly. "Did I…did I even mean anything? Or was I just another girl to string along?"

"No." he says firmly, taking a step towards you. "You weren't just another girl. you were my everything, you are my everything. I never meant to hurt you."

you shrug, tears falling down your face. "I'm a laughingstock." you cry softly, defeated. your fingers itch for your phone, to check the news, but you knew nothing good would come from scrolling the gossip columns. "I've got half of my father's board at my feet trying to get control through shareholder stocks. The other half were the elites mad I had taken you off the market," you jab a finger at him. "And now I'm nothing more than a floozy in the eyes of the public. I’m going to lose the respect I fought so hard for."

you run your fingers through your hair, stressed. Tears continue to stream down your face, heart rabbiting in stress. "I've never been this humiliated in my life." you weakly choke out.

He closes the distance, palms coming to cradle your face with thumbs stroking your cheeks. "I can fix this." he says desperately. you just shake your head, resigned and overwhelmed. You had always thought how special Bruce was, down to his calloused palms that were so different from every other highbrow man you had dated. "You still cheated." you grit out, eyes coming to meet his blue ones. Even though you wanted to relax so badly into his hold, to pretend like it had all been a dream and let him whisk you away into the bedroom, you pulled away.

you could see the flicker of pain that rippled across his body at your rejection, and the sight made your heart twist. "I need space." you say shakily, adrenaline making your world spin and chest tight. "Tell Alfred I'm going home."

The words feel heavy in your throat and even heavier when you see the panic in his eyes.

"Love, please don't-"

You hold a hand up to stop him.

"No. you, ‘please don't’." you say softly, head tilting down to the floor. "Just…don't. I need to find Alfred." you say as you follow the direction the elderly butler left in. Bruce can't do anything, rooted to the spot as he watches you hurry away. His body feels cold, and if he didn't know better, he'd say that this is what dying must feel like.

The old man is kind when you find him, and you can't help but cry on his shoulder when you break in front of him. He takes you out the kitchen door to the side, leading you to the car and opening the door silently. "I'm assuming you'd like some space for now, ma'am?" he says gently, not commenting on the tears and smeared makeup across your skin. you nod, and he closes the door after squeezing your shoulder comfortingly.

The ride back to your place is cold, hardly ever riding in the Wayne car without the warm presence of Bruce beside you. Your forehead presses against the window, staring out of it blankly. Staring out at the city that gossiped all about you now for sure, who'd eat you up in the coming months if you faltered. That was just the kind of place that Gotham is, especially in the elite circles.

When you click your phone back on, you make a conscious effort to resist the urge to respond to Bruce's string of frantic messages. Instead, your fingers trail over to the news tab, even though you know you shouldn't. Your face and Bruce's fill the pages, stages of your relationship depicted, all the way up to the photo the reporter snapped tonight. Your eyes are wide, lips parted in surprise. scrolling further down you encounter the fateful kiss and your heart clenches, mouth going dry. It was hard to believe that it was the same Bruce who kissed you so sweetly at night when he dropped you home or sent flowers to your office when work got hard.

It got so hard in fact, that all you could do was shut off the phone screen before any more tears could distort the colours on the screen. It flashes once with an incoming message from Bruce.

"Please let me fix this."

You shake your head to yourself, heart bleeding. Gotham was going to eat you alive. Despite your control your fingers typing out a message before backspacing.

"You shouldn't have broken us in the first place." remained unsent, as Alfred drove you to back to Old Gotham. Tears still dripped down the bridge of your nose, and you wished, desperately hoped, that the shame wouldn't follow you under the covers of your bed tonight.

The sheets that despite it all, you would still imagine to be Bruce's.

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crossingthedreams · 8 months ago

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humiliation — aemond targaryen x niece!reader

a/n: bro, for real, i can’t believe i’m posting day 10 - humiliation (@angstober) on the right day. seriously. i’m so fucking proud of myself! anyway, this can be read as a stand alone or a prequel to growing pains (aka day 08). and let me know what you think!

masterlist

summary: we don’t choose our family, but we choose how we do politics.

word count: 2k

warnings: angst. slight sexual harassment. arranged marriage. implied targaryen incest (uncle/niece). aegon is an asshole.

It didn’t matter you were as much of a royal as they, as much of a Targaryen as they were. It didn’t matter if you rode a dragon and had silver hair. You were still the half-sister of Jacaerys, Lucerys and Joffrey, and that was enough for the Greens to treat you like a jester in court.

Queen Alicent was not blatantly hostile towards you, but she was not friendly either. You saw the way she side-eyed you, that her father looked you up and down. Whilst her quarrel was with your mother, the Hand’s mind was much more cunning. He saw you as a piece not yet allocated in his board. Fortunately for him, you were sent as a bona fide present to court after your mother relocated to Dragonstone.

Your grandsire, the King, barely looked at you. Of course, he was terribly ill. Still, you were certain he just didn’t like the reminder his daughter was wed to, and clearing bedding his brother.

As a young woman of a certain age, you knew whenever someone did the math, it was clear your parents conceived you before they were properly wed. The timeline was confusing, and you were undoubtedly the child of Princess Rhaenyra and Prince Daemon, but were they or were they not wed at the time of your birth? Were you a bastard in technical terms?

To you, it didn’t matter at all. For some, well, that was a point of conversation constantly brought up.

“Uncles and their nieces seem not to be bound by rules of wedlock, isn’t that right, Princess?”, a drunken Aegon moved his hand towards your leg at the dinner table. You slapped it away instantly, frowning towards him.

His mother sighed, and his wife wasn’t paying attention.

“Prince Aegon, you ought to respect the Princess”, Otto Hightower said. You read between the lines. Her father will assassinate you. Your own father will disown you.

Your gaze met Otto’s, and you nodded once, recognizing his attempts at decency.

“Please, grandfather”, Aegon’s hand moved towards your face, and you deflected. He still managed to toy with a single lock of your hair. “She likes it”.

Once more, you removed his hand. Right now, silence was your finest ally. Enticing Aegon would only make him grow angry towards you or worse, take it out on sweet Helaena. How could Aegon be such an arse? His siblings sure weren’t as terrible.

Helaena was a good friend, and ever since giving birth she had grown even kinder, albeit a little weird. You and Daeron were closer in age, and he was ever courteous.

And then there was Aemond. You had never seen a man so torn between the darkness and the light within themselves, except only, perhaps, for your own father. And when it came to your father, you only ever saw the good in him, and these horrible things he supposedly did were only stories. That wasn’t the case with Aemond.

You had seen him come and go from brothels, harm servants unnecessarily and even have you at the end of his insults. He could be a monster, prone to humiliating your brothers or even you yourself when he was threatened, and he seemed glad in causing chaos.

But he was also loving. He would defend you from Aegon and others sometimes, even. He was the first to take you dancing, and he would be on the floor with you even past his feet hurt. He had taken it upon himself to make sure you became fluent in High Valyrian, a task your mother herself had given up on. After you first claimed a dragon, he flew many times with you, and all of the smallfolk made sure to watch when you took the skies together, as it was quite the sight.

You were expecting him to defend you from Aegon right now, instead, he just quietly moved his food around his plate with his fork.

“I often wish we could go back to Sunspear, Helaena”, you changed the subject. Your aunt, who seemed to be in a totally different world, looked at you alarmed. “Do you remember?”, you continued, stretching to see over Aegon and look directly into your aunt’s eyes. “The weather agreed with me much more than the rain”.

“Maybe we could see Daeron, too”, Helaena seemed excited for once. You didn’t have it in you to tell her Sunspear and Old Town were a far ride from each other.

“We should take the Cannibal and Dreamfyre and go”, you said, already smiling at the prospect. The smiles died when you mentioned your dragon, who seemed to be aggressive to all but you and, eventually, Vhagar.

“Oh, dear, I don’t think either of you should leave now”, Queen Alicent stated, voice sweet.

“And why’s that, mother?”, it was Aemond’s turn to speak, for the first time during the whole supper. His head turned to look at his mother, who was in her usual seat besides the King’s seat, which lay empty. Viserys was much too ill and in too much pain. “Associating your daughter with the scandalous child of a scandalous mother is crossing a line?”.

The silence was deadly.

You knew Aemond well enough to know the problem wasn’t with Helaena and you dreaming of Dorne.

Your eyes darted from Aemond to Alicent, and then to Otto. They all knew something they didn’t let out yet.

And every bone in your body told you — whatever it was they weren’t letting out, well, it was about you.

Aemond stood up like a bolt and excused himself, marching angrily away.

You had to find out what was going on, but leaving now would only bring more attention to both you and the matter, and it also meant dealing with an aggravated Aemond. Bad idea.

After dinner, waiting until the dead of night and sneaking into your Uncle’s room to get the truth out of him? Sounds perfectly reasonable.

Aemond was sitting, looking unbothered. You walked in from the secret passageway that connected most of the Red Keep, and he didn’t seem surprised at all. He looked like a true Targaryen Prince.

“Took you long enough”, he was examining his nails, and then his one lilac eye turned towards you.

“I wasn’t aware we had an arrangement”.

“Yet here you are”.

You smiled softly, not showing any teeth. A conversation like this with Aemond could go in any direction, and, with your experience, you knew it was best to appear submissive.

“You have been informed your name is a constant in the Small Council, haven’t you, niece?”.

You raised your eyebrows, entering his chambers nonchalantly. With the King’s health deteriorating and talks of succession rising once more, you, the daughter of the heir apparent, were as valuable as gold. Of course you knew you were talked about often, and Aemond knew this as well. Therefore, you didn’t reply. He wanted to make a point, so he was going to make it.

“There’s been talks about your future”, Aemond continued, leaning forward as you sat across from him in the room. “Matrimonial matters have been raised”.

You gasped. You tried not to, but you did. Your mother swore you would have a say in who your husband was. Surely she hadn’t delegated this matter to the Queen. Which meant you would be given as a shine prize to a nobleman, and he would consummate the marriage before your mother was even made aware of it.

You felt sick.

“Don’t worry. Aegon is not taking a second wife”, the smile could be heard in Aemond’s voice. You scoffed and turned to him.

“Is that all?”

“My grandfather wished to have you wed Daeron”. Your eyes widened. Certainly not a good match. Daeron was kind and sweet, but he lived distantly. You would not be sent to Old Town, there’d be no convincing you of that. “My mother opposed, of course”.

“How could the always just Queen Alicent have her child married to the child of the ‘scandalous’ princess Rhaenyra, right?”, you mocked and copied his words from dinner earlier. Aemond constantly looked angry, but now he looked just annoyed.

“There’s that, yes. Also, it’s not politically wise”, he continued. “Cregan Stark would be a better match, perhaps even a dornish man, since you seem so fond of those wildlings”.

“Make your point, Uncle. Who am I to marry?”

“It hasn’t been decided”, he turned to you. “There’s a problem with your family, you see”.

“Our family”, you corrected. Whether he willed it or no, Aemond Targaryen was the younger brother of your mother, and he would have to live as such.

Your uncle’s eye narrowed, then went back to normal. Sitting across from each other, you seemed almost the same height. His gaze went from your eyes to your neck, then chest, then covered legs, darting upwards to the ceiling quickly as he let his body fall even more on the sofa. He breathed deeply. “Yes, dear niece. Our family”.

“You should take me”, you said, without thinking. You thought too much, and a marriage between the Greens and the Blacks would be interesting for both, assuring both sides of the family were united. Wasn’t that the way your family did business? Marrying off their daughters?

Out of this entire planet, Aemond was the only man you’d met that you’d be willing to marry. The rest were brutes, disgustingly aggressive or simply dumb.

From the look in his eyes, you knew Aemond was thinking about it. Your breath got caught in your throat. He surely had thought about it before, right? You were a beautiful girl, you knew this, and Aemond had a thing for women with silver hair. All men in King’s Landing wished they could have you, why would Aemond be any different?

You kept forgetting that Aemond was, in fact, different.

“I couldn’t wed you, niece”, he said, mouth a thin line. Your heart was racing in your chest. “What would we have? Not the throne, not even Dragonstone”.

“Each other”, you replied harshly, fighting the tears in your eyes. “We’d have each other”.

“That’s not enough”.

The sheer humiliation that you felt was enough to make you stand up and motion towards the door. But you couldn’t leave through the front door, could you? Your reputation would be ruined forever.

So, with your heart simultaneously beating fast and not beating at all, you just stood there in the middle of Aemond’s chambers. You didn’t want to look back at him, but you had to turn to make your way out where you came.

You hadn’t heard Aemond, who quietly made his way to you, and was now towering above you. Your eyes locked, breaths mixing. If you were to stand on your tiptoes, your lips would almost reach his. Almost.

The problem with Aemond was this constant streak of ‘almosts’. You were sure his reasons for not marrying you were political more than anything else, and it pained you to know that the legitimacy of your brothers was a matter even now, when yours wasn’t. Your mother and her decisions… It had humiliated you once more.

Your heart was beating so loudly you feared he could hear it from this distance. Still close enough so you could feel his breath, Aemond muttered in Valyrian, even though you were alone “Ao issi naejot jikagon sir (You should go now)”.

Quietly, with feelings of humiliation and something else you couldn’t quite name, you stepped away as you did as your uncle commanded, and left.

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