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[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Napoleonville [Chapter 10: The House Of Saint Honoratus of Amiens] [Series Finale]

Series Summary: The year is 1988. The town is Napoleonville, Louisiana. You are a small business owner in need of some stress relief. Aemond is a stranger with a taste for domination. But as his secrets are revealed, this casual arrangement becomes something more volatile than either of you could have ever imagined.

Chapter Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), dom/sub dynamics, smoking, drinking, drugs, weddings, Willis Warning, infidelity, kids, parenthood, Rice-A-Roni.

Word Count: 6k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @marvelescvpe @toodlesxcuddles @era127 @at-a-rax-ia @0eessirk8 @arcielee @dd122004dd @humanpurposes @taredhunter @tinykryptonitewerewolf @partnerincrime0 @dr-aegon @persephonerinyes @namelesslosers @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @daenysx @gemini-mama @chattylurker @moonlightfoxx @huramuna @britt-mf @myspotofcraziness @padfooteyes @targaryenbarbie @trifoliumviridi @joliettes @darkenchantress @florent1s @babyblue711 @minttea07 @bungalowbear @bluerskiees @herfantasyworldd @elizarbell @urmomsgirlfriend1 @fudge13 @strangersunghoon @wickedfrsgrl

Thank you so much for loving this strange, sexy, sweet story. I hope you enjoy the finale. 🥰🧁

Your bare feet in warm grass, your hands around the ropes of the tree swing, no sounds except the ancient psalms of the earth: cicadas, mourning doves, goldfinches, bumble bees, bullfrogs, wind in the leaves of the dogwoods and southern live oaks. The adolescent alligator is at one end of the front yard, sunbathing up by the mouth of the gravel driveway; in the opposite corner are several nutria nibbling on cattails. The sky is a calm, cloudless blue. It’s hot, mid-80s, even when 5:00 p.m. comes and goes; but the breeze is cool as it evaporates the sweat from your temples, your palms, the nape of your neck. It’s as close as Louisiana ever gets to Heaven. It’s a good day for a wedding.

You remember thinking that it was the end of the world when you found out you were pregnant almost exactly eleven years ago, and then again when you realized you would have to divorce Willis, and so you have lived through enough moments like this—these quiet, infinitesimal apocalypses—to know that there will be a future beyond Aemond marrying Christabel. The sun will rise tomorrow, and then it will set, the lightning bugs will appear and the stars will tell myths in the night sky, and the phone will ring as orders come in for the bakery, and Cadi will be back in her bedroom playing her Nintendo, and life will roll on like currents through the bayou: slow, opaque, inevitable. The world isn’t ending, you know that. It’s just full of beautiful things that aren’t for you.

Out on Route 401, a Plymouth Gran Fury zooms by the house, squeals to a halt, and then reverses until Willis can take another look, squinting through his tinted windows. He turns down the driveway and steps out into golden July daylight. He doesn’t pay any attention to the gator as he strides past her. He belongs here, in a place that is old and strange and savage and full of beasts. You have carved out a home for yourself in the swamplands; Willis was born with veins like the roots of a mangrove tree and ancient silt instead of marrow in his bones.

“Hey, sugar,” he says, pushing his sunglasses up into his hair. The wind ruffles the dark curls of his mullet, the bumble bees flee as he tramples clovers. “Ain’t ya supposed to be at the weddin’?”

“I’m sick.” A lie. “But Cadi’s fine, she’s with Amir. She was so excited she actually wore one of the sundresses my mom bought her and had Amir braid a dogwood flower into her hair to match his. You should have seen it. You would’ve been so proud.”

“I’m always proud of her,” Willis says, smiling. And then: “Ya don’t look sick.”

“I am.”

“Ya got one of your headaches?”

You pause. You don’t, but this is a convenient excuse. “Yeah.”

Willis stalls, his hands on his belt. His pistol is there; you remember how he used it in the bayou, how he helped save your life. But he wasn’t the one who jumped into the water. Aemond was willing to risk his body for me, but not his soul. What kind of sense does that make? “Ya had me scared for a minute there,” Willis says.

“What? When?”

“When I thought ya were goin’ to end up with that Rockefeller boy.”

“Aemond?” you say, like it’s so shocking. “No. Absolutely not. It’s impossible.”

“And why’s that?”

You stare into the trees so Willis can’t see the tears welling up in your eyes, the tension in your throat as embers kindle there, pulsing with heat that could char flesh to the bone. “He can’t marry someone like me.”

“I could,” Willis replies, grinning. You glare at him until he recants. “Alright, alright, oublie ça. Pardonne-moi.”

“Why would you be afraid of me and Aemond being together?”

“An oil tycoon? A millionaire? He would never stay here for long. In a town like Napoleonville? Soon as he was done getting’ those rigs up and runnin’, he’d go jettin’ off to some other corner of the world, and he’d take you with him. And Cadi too. I wouldn’t be able to fight that. What’s a parish sheriff to a Targaryen? Who would listen to me? Cadi would be gone and I’d never get her back. It would kill me. It would rip the heart right outta my chest.”

You look up at Willis from where you sit on the tree swing, the soles of your feet colored with soil and grass. “I wouldn’t do that.”

“No?” he asks, perhaps suspicious, perhaps hopeful.

“No,” you promise. “Cadi loves you. Cadi needs you to be in her life. I would never try to take her away from you, Willis.”

He nods; he seems to believe you. And something relaxes in him, like there’s been a tension in the lines of his spine and shoulders that you didn’t notice for years. “I’m sorry about your petit ami.”

“Yeah. Me too.” It comes out like a whisper, brittle and frail. “I’m sorry about Lake Verret.”

“They might be able to fix it. Talk around town is they got some kind of desalination”—he says this with each syllable enunciated distinctly, like he’s put great effort into memorizing it—“process that can take the salt back outta the water. And if that don’t work…” He shrugs with a sly smile. “I’ll survive somehow. The world’s a big place. There’s always another lake.”

You consider him, and you remember—like a dream from the night before that just returned to you—how Willis can be unexpectedly deep, randomly tender. “They should put that on bumper stickers.”

He chuckles and waves as he heads back to his car. “I’ll pick Cadi up on Tuesday. Back to the usual schedule.”

“Sure.” Back to real life. Back to before I met Aemond. And you find yourself wishing that you could forget what it had felt like to be with him; the absence he left feels so much heavier than the nonspecific longing that existed before. Willis’ Plymouth Gran Fury rolls out of the driveway, and you stay precisely where you are on the tree swing, absentmindedly pushing yourself back and forth with your tiptoes and trying to believe that tomorrow this will feel easier, and then even easier the day after that, and eventually it will cease to be anything but a vague recollection, a relic in a rarely-opened drawer, a whisper, an echo. One day, you will stop missing Aemond. One day, you will stop wondering whether a sliver of his life would have been better than none at all.

Inside what Cadi calls the Fall-Down House, the phone rings. You ignore it; if it’s an order for the bakery, they can leave a message. But then it rings again, and again, and you have to answer it. What if your mother had a heart attack? What if Cadi and Amir were in a car accident? You hurry to the kitchen and grab the phone, pink to match the little Panasonic boombox that is presently silent.

“Hello?”

“Hiiiiiii,” Amir says, slow and something else too. Disoriented? Evasive?

Your forehead wrinkles with confusion. “Where are you calling from?” There are definitely no phonelines running to the Chapel of Saint Honoratus of Amiens, a tiny brick-and-stucco edifice built in the 1830s.

“I’m at a McDonald’s up the road. I’ve paid them $5 to let me use the phone.” And then, because he knows it’s the first place your mind will go: “Cadi’s fine. She’s eating Chicken McNuggets. Everyone’s fine.”

“Okay…?”

“I think you should come over here.”

“What, to the chapel?!”

“Yeah.” He’s talking to someone; you can hear an indistinct tangle of voices through the hand he undoubtedly has clasped over the transmitter.

I can’t see Aemond. I can’t see Christabel. There is a lurching in your guts; you are a fish that swallowed a hook. “I thought we agreed that I wasn’t going to go to the wedding.” I can’t handle it. It might kill me.

“Yes, we did, but now…um…I think you will want to make an appearance.”

“Amir, what happened?”

There is more muffled conversation on the other end of the line. “Look,” he tells you. “Things, uh…things are…occurring. And I think it would be better to explain in person.”

“Did you drop the cake?”

“No,” he says, defensive. “The cake is perfect, thank you for your concern. Not a single frosting wildflower was mutilated in the delivery.”

“Then why—?”

“Do you trust me?” Amir asks.

The answer is obvious. Of course. More than anyone. “You know I do.”

“Then go get in your car.”

You glance at the clock on the wall. “Okay, but you know it’s going to take me like 40 minutes to drive to Belle River.”

“That’s fine.” He confers with someone else. “Yeah, that’s good actually, that will work.”

“Great,” you say uncertainly.

“See you soon!” Then Amir hangs up, leaving you alone in the creaks and groans of your ailing house.

You take Route 70 around Lake Verret, gliding past fields of soybeans and sugarcane, paddocks of cattle and horses, marshes of cordgrass occupied by blue herons and white egrets and prowling alligators, stirring awake as the sun begins its descent into the west. More than once, you notice that your Chevy Celebrity’s odometer reports you are travelling well below the speed limit. You aren’t in any hurry to reach the chapel; you don’t want to carry the weight of what you will see there, Christabel in her wedding dress, Aemond in his suit, Alicent anxiously fidgeting and gnawing at her fingernails, Viserys parading around triumphantly. You can’t imagine that there is anything less than torturous for you there. You don’t remember what you’re wearing until you reach Belle River, a small, old town full of double-wide trailers and jetties that run far out into the lake: a simple cotton sundress you threw on this morning without much thought, modest but white and therefore forbidden for a wedding guest. The sky is turning from a sun-drenched cerulean blue to something more soft, more muted, as dusk lurks just a few hours away. The radio is playing Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car.

The Chapel of Saint Honoratus of Amiens was built by a man in extremis. An acclaimed mason by trade, he had been born in France and settled in the New World in Louisiana when it was still in the possession of Napoleon. The mason had a wife and children—some people say 5, others say 8 or 10, though details always seem to grow more elaborate in the retelling, don’t they?—and he loved them dearly. But tragedy struck when every single member of the family, except for the mason himself, fell ill with tuberculosis. When healers of the earth failed to offer sufficient remedies, the mason appealed to a higher power. He built the chapel to implore Honoratus of Amiens, his wife’s favorite saint—she was a baker and a florist, both professions that Honoratus presides over—to intercede with the Almighty on their behalf. This effort proved futile, and as each member of the family died, the mason interred them in a brick vault beneath the altar where they would spend eternity together. Perhaps this makes for a peculiar wedding venue, yet for over a century couples rich and poor, religious and secular have traveled to the chapel to exchange their vows. Perhaps there are few things more romantic than loving someone in the face of total futility: illness, distance, unrequitedness, prohibitions, death.

The chapel sits in a clearing surrounded by live oak trees, massive, hundreds of years old, hanging with Spanish moss, blotting out the sunlight as aisles cascade through gaps in the leaves. As you park in the grass—joining an army of Lexuses, Audis, limousines, Porsches, Ferraris, Cadillacs, Aston Martins, Alfa Romeos, and Amir’s blue Ford Escort—you observe that there are perhaps fifty guests in formal attire milling aimlessly around the building. You peer down at your white sundress, frowning. Well, I can’t go naked. The faux pas will have to be forgiven. You step out of your Chevy Celebrity and make your way across the clearing towards the chapel.

There is a long table set up in the shade with a tower of champagne glasses, an ice sculpture of a dragon, and the banana bread cake you and Amir baked for the wedding. Grim-faced servants in black suits are cutting slices and handing them out to guests on green china plates. You recognize Aegon’s wife Stephanie chatting with a flock of young women in extravagant gowns, golds and emeralds and sapphires. Helaena is among them, wearing a shimmering blue-green color like the scales of her chameleon Dreamfyre. Evidently, the Targaryens’ exotic pets have been left at the mansion for this excursion.

“Well,” the princess of Monaco says sardonically as she takes a bite, the white cream cheese frosting covered with a kaleidoscope of wildflowers. “At least the cake is good. What is this, banana? Whoever heard of a banana wedding cake? I mean, it’s delicious, but still. I knew that Christabel girl was daft. Did you see her positively absurd dress? It looks like children doodled all over it…”

Is it over? you think as you weave through the crowd, largely unnoticed. Is the ceremony done already? Why would Aemond want to see me? To try to convince me to be his mistress one last time? To show me what I’m missing by severing ties with him?

But no: something else has happened. Viserys and Christabel’s father the marquess are embroiled in a heated argument; a nun and two priests are trying to haul them apart.

“You’re dead to me, Viserys!” the marquess roars. “And you’ll be dead to everyone back home once I tell them what you’ve done!”

“I did my part! This has nothing to do with me! Wait…wait…we can figure something else out! Wait! Wait! You can have Daeron!”

Wedding guests are gawking and snapping photos with their polaroid cameras. Upon hearing his name, Daeron glances over towards his father wearily. Alicent’s youngest son is kneeling beside where she has collapsed to the grass, patting her encouragingly on the shoulder as she sobs into a green cloth handkerchief. Criston is there too, trying to soothe her with sympathetic murmurs and a flute of pink champagne glittering with bubbles of carbonation.

“How did this happen?” she wails, peering up at Criston with her vast, dark, glassy eyes. The gold rings on her fingers clang and glint; they match the single hoop earring that Criston wears. Alicent’s gown is purple like royalty, but Criston is dressed in a suit of pale pink; it’s the exact same one Daeron has on. Groomsmen? you wonder. “He knows better than this! We raised him better than this!”

You think, stunned and petrified: Aemond, what the hell did you do?

As you approach the chapel, you note that it appears empty inside; you don’t spot anyone in the pews. Somewhere, a boombox is thundering Higher Love. At the entrance of the building, Christabel is sitting on the brick walkway in her wedding dress. It’s the one you told her to choose: elegant and timeless, long train and short flowing sleeves, silk wildflowers sewn into the white lace. Her bouquet is lying forgotten on the ground beside her. Her lips are a deep, lovely pink; her eyeshadow is gold. She’s smoking, something you’ve never seen her do before. There is a half-crumpled pack of Marlboro Reds and a lighter in her left hand, a single lit cigarette in her right.

“Um, hi, Christabel,” you say. And then, something equally brainless: “Is everything okay?”

“I should have known.” She’s staring out at the crowd, not at you. Her large blue eyes are dull, vacant.

“You should have known what?” Your heart is in your throat; blood pounds in your ears like the hooves of a racehorse.

“That he didn’t care,” she says listlessly. “I could tell that he didn’t. I could feel it. But I didn’t want it to be true, so I told myself it wasn’t. Isn’t that interesting? How we can lie to ourselves? Not that it was entirely my error. Other people meddled plenty. ‘Oh no, Christabel.’ ‘He’s just emotionally stunted, Christabel.’ ‘He’s busy with work, Christabel.’ What man is too busy with work to handle a five-minute phone call? It’s not like he was on the moon. He could have made time if he wanted to. I bet he made lots of time for you.”

“Uh.” You try to decide what to say. “I broke up with him, if that’s what you’re asking. I didn’t want to be his mistress. I didn’t think that was fair to you.” Or me, obviously, but right now doesn’t seem to be the opportune time to voice my own grievances.

“Next time, I’m going to choose who I marry,” Christabel insists, puffing on her cigarette. “He has to talk to me. He has to like me.”

Aemond called it off? What did he say? What is he going to do now? “Christabel…do you know where Aemond is? Or Amir and Cadi?”

“Alicent is so upset,” she says instead. “Poor woman. She’s sweet, in her own way. But I don’t want to end up like her.” Christabel holds up the pack of Marlboros and the lighter. “She feels guilty, I think. She gave me these. She had them in her purse, she has so many neurotic little habits, doesn’t she? It’s not very ladylike to smoke, but it’s not ladylike to get left at the altar either, so fuck it.”

You ask, afraid to know the answer: “Do you hate me? I didn’t know Aemond was engaged when I met him. And then…” Why lie now? What’s the point? “Then I was in love with him and it was kind of…too late to try not to be. But I’m sorry.”

“I don’t hate you,” Christabel replies immediately. “I know he would never be allowed to marry…someone like you. Your options were limited.”

You don’t know if this is meant to be an insult or not. “Thanks.”

“I don’t think I ever loved him either,” Christabel realizes, exhaling smoke. “I think I idolized him. I think I loved my fantasy of what our marriage would be like. But I didn’t love Aemond. I didn’t even know Aemond. You did, I suspect. Good luck with him. He’s a bit…complex.”

“I’m sorry,” you say again, rather compulsively. You aren’t sure what she expects from you. Abruptly, from wherever it’s coming from, Higher Love is cut off. “So, is Aemond, like…around, or…?”

“I don’t regret the sex part.”

“Okay.” You examine the crowd in the clearing again. You still don’t see Aemond.

“That went well,” Christabel muses. “I’m glad my first time is over and done with. I was terrified it would hurt like hell. And so few people know, so it’s almost like it never happened, right?”

“Right,” you say obediently.

“I think I’ll have a new rule. I won’t marry anyone unless he likes me and we sleep together first. Life is too long to spend it with the wrong person, don’t you agree?”

“I totally do.”

“He’s waiting for you inside,” Christabel says, flicking ashes towards the gaping doorway of the chapel.

“Really?” you peer into the shadows; there is indeed a solitary figure standing at the altar. “So…what exactly is happening…?”

“Go,” Christabel urges, and takes a drag on her cigarette. You leave her and cross through the doorway into the chapel.

The light is dim and gentle; fading sunbeams slant in through the glass of the cathedral-style windows. The mason’s inspiration was Gothic architecture, imposing, cavernous. Two candlelit iron chandeliers hang from the high ceiling; the floor is made of tiles of black and white marble. Small stone sculptures of angels watch over their realm like benevolent gargoyles. There is a single stained glass window above the altar: circular like a ring, red and gold like the sun.

He’s waiting for you in a pale pink suit, long disheveled hair, thin mustache with flecks of white powder in it, mischievous smirk. “Hey cake lady,” Aegon says.

“Um. I’m not marrying you.”

“No, you’re definitely not.” Aegon offers you his hand and you take it with some hesitation. “I’m here to be your guide. Just like on the Oregon Trail.”

“What…?”

“Let’s go.” He pulls you out of the chapel, past where Christabel is still sitting at the entranceway, and across the clearing towards the trees. When you look to the crowd, Otto is elbowing his way through disgruntled guests towards a limousine, already idling.

Viserys bellows at him: “Where the hell are you going?!”

“Back to Kiribati!” Otto shouts back, not breaking his stride. He vanishes into the limo.

“Hurry,” Aegon says. He leads you into the forest, a thick canopy of verdant leaves and Spanish moss and the narrow rays of sunshine that tumble down through the gaps.

“Aegon, I don’t think we should be in the woods, it could be dangerous—”

“No, this part is fine. We already checked.”

“Who’s ‘we’?!” You’re wearing flip flops that catch on gnarled roots; the shrieking of cicadas grows loud. One of them buzzes towards Aegon and he screams as he backhands it away.

“You good?” Amir’s voice calls from farther within the trees.

“Yeah. I’m fine. We made it.”

You turn to Aegon. “What’s going on—?”

Suddenly, there is booming music that startles you: “Ooh, baby, do you know what that’s worth? Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth! They say in Heaven, love comes first, we’ll make Heaven a place on Earth! Ooh, Heaven is a place on Earth!”

“Aegon, what is that?”

“Uh, I think it’s Heaven Is A Place On Earth.”

“Yes, okay, but why?”

“Ask that guy.” You round a thicket and there under a colossal southern live oak tree, surrounded by hundred-year-old branches that twist down to the earth, is Aemond; but he’s not looking at you. He and Cadi are lighting the last of the candles. She picks them up, he ignites the wick with the same lighter he uses to smoke his Marlboros, and then Cadi places them back on the ground or on top of a branch. Amir is standing by the large black boombox, the same one Aegon always listens to by the Targaryens’ pool. Amir grins craftily, pushing his tortoiseshell glasses up the bridge of his nose. His suit is orange, the single dogwood flower in his hair white.

“Did we get them all?” Aemond asks Cadi.

“Yeah, I think so. Wait, no, there’s one over there!” Cadi darts to it and Aemond lights the candle, then spins around and sees you. He smiles. “Hi, Cupcake.”

“Hi,” you say, so shellshocked you can’t form any of your very vital questions.

“Okay, so we have the candles,” Aemond informs you as Cadi and Aegon go to join Amir. “White with wildflower patterns.” And you recall how Alicent mentioned needing to pick out candles with Christabel, and how you didn’t see any scattered around the chapel. They brought them here. They did it for me. “And we have some actual wildflowers.” He takes the boutonniere off the lapel of his white suit and tucks it into your hair behind your left ear. “And we have Heaven Is A Place On Earth.” He gestures to the boombox. “And I think those were the three things you said you wanted if you were ever going to get married again.”

I did say that. Just once, months ago, the first time he ever came over, the first time he ever touched me. “You remembered.”

“Of course I remembered.” He takes both of your hands in his own. Amir lets out a little squeal and covers his mouth as his eyes begin to glisten. Aemond takes a deep breath. “So, I don’t have a speech, because this is very last-minute. I mean extremely last-minute. But you were right about everything. And I realized I couldn’t live that way. It wouldn’t be fair to you or to me, but it wouldn’t be fair to Christabel either. So I broke it off.”

“Literally at the altar,” Aegon says. “In front of everybody. It was so fucking awkward.”

“Those are not necessary details!” Aemond snaps, then looks back to you and is smiling again. “I know what I want. I’ve known it for as long as I’ve known you. But I wasn’t a strong enough person to make it happen. I’m so sorry. I should have done things differently. I can’t change the past. But everything is going to be different now.”

You gaze up at him as Belinda Carlisle sings, thinking: This can’t be real. I’m going to wake up now.

“On the night we met, you told me you’d never felt chosen,” Aemond says. “I’m choosing you. And, you know.” He nods to her. “Cadi too. And Amir. And the bakery. And dealing with Willis too, I guess. All of it. I’m choosing you and your whole life and that’s exactly where I want to be.”

You can feel the warmth in your face, beaming and hopeful and full of possibilities. Under the shade of the southern live oak, the first lightning bugs are blooming in the air like stars. “What about your family?”

“I’ll figure it out. I don’t think my father can entirely disown me…turns out I’m the only one who understands how the stock market works. But no matter what, you and Cadi are the priority. And my father will have to learn to live with that.”

“Or he can drop dead,” Aegon says. “Whichever.”

It’s possible? We can be together? Not just for a night, an afternoon, a stolen moment, but forever?

“I said I don’t have a speech.” Aemond tells you. His right eye is bright, elated, gleaming like a mirror. “I don’t have a ring either. But I’m going to get you one, if you’ll let me. So I’m asking you, Cupcake: Will you marry me?”

“Say yes, Mom!” Cadi yells, and Amir bursts out laughing.

“Say yes, cake lady!” Aegon adds. “Unlimited Cap’n Crunch Treats!”

When am I going to wake up? When is this going to end?

But it’s not a dream. It’s real. And Aemond reads the answer on your face before you can say it, and so it’s only a murmur as he kisses you, a whisper, a prayer: “Yes.”

~~~~~~~~~~

The three of you drive from the new house all the way to San Francisco; you still call it the new house, even though you’ve owned it for a full year. The journey takes seven days, with overnight stops in Dallas, Wonderland Amusement Park in Amarillo, Albuquerque, Flagstaff, Las Vegas, and Bakersfield. Aemond sold his Audi Quattro and replaced it with a Dodge Caravan. It’s July 1989, and Tom Petty’s brand new single Runnin’ Down A Dream is strumming from the radio. It’s always temperate in San Fran, in the 60s even at the height of summer. The sky is overcast and grey. When Cadi complains that she’s cold despite the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles hoodie you packed for her, Aemond gives her his Marlboro jacket.

Amir, his boyfriend, and two other roommates share a sunshine yellow Italianate townhouse in the Castro District. Aemond parks his wood-paneled Caravan on the steep, inclined street—he narrowly misses colliding with a whooshing cable car, which he blames on poor depth perception—and then helps you carry the luggage inside. There are no alligators on the front porch, but there are neighborhood cats that Amir puts out Friskies for; there are no screaming cicadas, but there are swooping seagulls and the melodies of sidewalk musicians. When Amir opens the door, he nearly tackles you with enthusiasm. He still wears his loud colors and short shorts, but he’s traded in the dogwood flowers he once wove into his hair for dahlias.

Amir’s boyfriend is named Don, but everyone calls him Donald Schwarzenegger because he looks so much like the Austrian bodybuilder turned actor. When Amir first arrived in the city, he got a job as a cake decorator for a very popular bakery, and quickly segued into handling much of their marketing as well. He’s thinking of getting a degree in advertising and trying his luck in corporate America. You very much enjoy teasing him for being a sellout; what would socialist Bayard Rustin say?

“Call your Daddy and let him know we made it safely to the West Coast,” you tell Cadi once her things are unpacked in the guest room she’ll get all to herself; you and Aemond are consigned to the living room futon. Cadi chats with Willis for a while, then says he wants to talk to you. You take the phone, slightly concerned; you hope nothing is amiss with the house. “Hello?”

“What the hell is wrong with this horse?” he demands. “That ain’t no pet. That’s a demon. It’s a goddamn Rougarou.”

“I told you not to try to touch him,” you say, amused.

“I feed him and water him, don’t I? Ain’t that the least he can do? Lettin’ me scratch his big ol’ idiot head?”

“Patches is not very well-behaved. But Cadi loves him.”

“And don’t even get me started on the dog. Ugliest fuckin’ dog I ever saw. Growls every time I show up. Shows its teeth and everythin’. I’d take twenty gators over that son of a bitch any day.”

“Vhagar is a girl,” you say. “Thanks for watching them while we’re out of town.”

“Sure thing, sugar. Although I still don’t understand why the bon a rien can’t do it.”

“Aegon isn’t always…reliable.” But he does seem to be improving. He’s cut back to mostly just booze and marijuana, because otherwise he and Sunfyre aren't allowed to stay at the new house for sleepovers. There’s a guest bedroom, but Aegon prefers the sunken conversation pit in the mauve pink living room. He likes to be where anyone can stumble across him if they wake up in the middle of the night for pancakes or ice cream. He likes to be where people are; he likes to be included. “Anyway, I gotta go. Cadi will call again tomorrow. Enjoy your fishing.”

“Will do. Maybe I’ll toss your accursed animals in as bait.” Lake Verret is still a bit too brackish for a proper freshwater lake, but that’s changing gradually with Daeron’s desalination efforts and a subaquatic plug affixed to the opening of the breached salt dome. He views it as a pioneering experiment in reversing such drilling accidents, potentially for application globally. Now there are more bass and lampreys and catfish, and less breams and gars, but life goes on in Napoleonville’s 14,000-acre lake. Daeron has replaced Aemond as Viserys’ heir apparent, and he is thriving in the role. He is bookish yet empathetic, focused but never ruthless. Furthermore, he happens to be genuinely in love with his aristocratic fiancée: Princess Alexandra of Denmark.

Aemond was right; Viserys didn’t disown him, but he did fire him, ban him from the mansion, and reduce his available funds to a modest living stipend. Fortunately, Viserys has a very limited comprehension of how money works for normal people, and he considers $200,000 per year to be “modest.” With that plus your bakery earnings and a paid-off house, you, Cadi, and Aemond will be living comfortably for the remainder of your lives. Also fortunately, no one else will enforce the no-Aemond rule at The Last Desire, so anytime Viserys is out of town—which is far more often than not—you get to visit the Targaryens at the mansion as much as you please. Cadi loves the water slide and the koi pond. She’s named the fish after Greek deities, her latest obsession: Zeus, Narcissus, Athena, Dionysus, Artemis, Apollo, Echo. Viserys will not acknowledge you, but the rest of the family is polite enough now that the drama of the broken engagement has blown over. When you finish the cookbook of Southern baked goods that you’ve been working on, Alicent had pledged to mail copies to all her friends and relatives back in the U.K. Otto has offered to take a box of them with him next time he jets off for Kiribati; the wealthy housewives marooned in paradise are always on the hunt for new reading material.

On your first night in San Francisco, Amir serves a dinner of cioppino, sourdough bread, and (not homemade) Rice-A-Roni. You provide dessert, a recipe you’re still perfecting: Saint Honoratus cake, a pastry that dates back to Paris in the 1800s. You want to be able to include it in your cookbook, along with photographs from your wedding in the chapel this past May, almost exactly a year from when you and Aemond first met. Your engagement ring has a gold band and pink diamonds arranged to resemble a rockrose, a dauntless little wildflower native to Aemond’s ancestral homeland of Greece. For over a decade you have loved that wildflowers are grown and not bought, small but tenacious, humble yet untamed. They do not wait for other hands to tell them where and how to grow. They are the architects of their own fortune.

When everyone is finished with dessert and gathers around the tv to watch The Golden Girls, Aemond says he’s going outside for a smoke break; but you know he’s trying to quit. You follow him into the small backyard and as soon as your bare feet touch the grass, he’s pushed you against the wall of the house, forced your thighs apart, slipped his hand down the front of your shorts as he watches the amazed, electrified desire rise in your face like heat from a stove. “It’s been a week, and I need you,” Aemond murmurs, his lips ghosting across your throat, his hips braced insistently against yours, and then he kisses you to stifle your moans as you bury your fingers in his hair, to swallow down the vicarious ecstasy of every wondrous thing he’s ever done to you and ever will. “I don’t even need you to get me off. I just need to see you like this.”

Trusting him, wanting him, letting him make me come.

Aemond has been accepted into UC Berkeley’s History PhD program and will start there at the end of August. He wants to write books about underrecognized heroes, extraordinary and yet unassuming people like Bayard Rustin and Bobbi Campbell and Phillis Wheatley. You’ll miss him of course, but there will be breaks for holidays and summers when he can return to Napoleonville, and you can fly out to visit him too, and there are phone calls, and postcards, and one day you’ll be able to go anywhere together—

You gasp, a shaky, starving breath, your lips grinning into Aemond’s. You’re close, you’re so close.

There is a shrill whistle from the back porch of a townhouse from the row behind Amir’s. “Get it, honey!” a man in a leopard-print robe cheers, waving the newspaper he’d been reading. You and Aemond unravel from each other, laughing hysterically.

“Okay,” you tell him, still panting. “Bad plan. We are clearly not accustomed to city life.”

“Tonight,” Aemond says, low and commanding. He returns to you, kissing the side of your face: temple, cheekbone, the curve of your jaw. His voice is dark, jagged glass; his lips are soft like kind dreams. “On the futon, on the floor, anywhere.”

You want it too, but you know the game. “No.”

He pins you to the wall again, powerful, irresistible, his hardness grinding against you through his jeans, everything about him—voice, flesh, rhythm, soul—promising you the peace only he has ever given you, proving that being at the right person’s mercy can make you free. “I’m in charge now. Let me take care of you.” And for a split second you almost beg: Just do it, Aemond, right now, please touch me again, I don’t care if a stranger sees. I want you now, I want you forever.

Instead you smile up at him, the whirls of your fingerprints skating harmlessly over his scarred left cheek as you answer: “Yes sir.”

[dailyreverie]

Sugar rush

A/N: Requested by @apollo-enthusiast/@myfandomlikesandstories 🧁 here's a cupcake for you because this was really so fun to write and I loved how it turned out, a bit silly and a bit spicy but it's just Jake being a total sweetheart. I hope you like it!

@flufftober - Day 11 Sweet tooth

Pairing: Jake Lockley x reader (mentions of the System)

Word count: 663

CW: Implicit sexy times

Flufftober masterlist

When you leave the comfort of the bed and follow the hall of bookshelves that leads to the kitchen, a smile begins to creep up your lips at the sigh of him. Jake is silent, in his movements and presence, and that’s how you know he’s the one who’s with you now. He’s leaning over the kitchen counter, the paper extended over the table, probably an old one he found lying somewhere around the place, but he’s immersed in the reading anyway.

“Morning,” You walk past him to pour some coffee into your mug, feeling his eyes following your walk. A small jar of cinnamon, the one he adores with his coffee, still stands beside the machine, and you add some to your coffee too, as the taste has begun to become of your liking too. 

When you turn around he has done so too, using the edge of the counter as a seat. There’s always a glint of mischief behind Jake’s, from where he looks at you, you see that sparkle that has you giggling into your coffee. “Morning," he responds, his voice still husky, welcoming the new day as warmly as he welcomes you into his embrace. You hold onto his tie as his lips meet yours in a tender morning kiss. His hand slips around your back, pulling you close, taking the chance to give your butt a squeeze that makes you laugh against his lips. He’s the cheekiest of them all, always keeping you on your toes.

In his kiss, though, you taste something else, something sweet that’s not coming from the cinnamon in his coffee. “Wait a second…” You push back, trying to move him to the side so you can peek behind him to confirm your suspicions.

“Wait, no, mi amor!” He grunts, holding your waist tightly to prevent you from seeing, but he’s caught red-handed anyway when you find one of the cupcakes you baked the night before, a bite on it and the whipped cream long gone.

“What happened here?” With the victim in your hands, you show him the cupcake and wait for an answer, the smell of the freshly baked pumpkin spice bread reaching your nose. Your cocked eyebrow shows seriousness, but your grin says otherwise. “I thought you didn’t like sweet stuff?” You ask, referring to the whole system that lives within him.

“Speak for them.” He’s already guilty, he might as well confess his secret.

You gasp with mocking shock, your eyes opening at his reveal. “Jake Lockley, you like sweets?”

“Ah, mierda.” He already knows he’s never going to hear the end of it. “They are comforting, ‘kay?”

“So the brownies?”

Jake points at himself. “Yup.”

“And last week’s cookies?”

Jake nods this time. “They serve for great snacks when I have a drive.”

“Oh my god,” Your heart swelled with this sweet side you hadn’t seen of him. “I always thought it was Steven.”

“Are you mad?” There’s a hint of real concern on his face as he tilts his head to the side to meet your eyes.

“Mad? Jake…” Your hand cups his cheek. “This is, literally, the sweetest thing I’ve heard in my life.” 

He sighs relieved. “Good, because I was not going to stop eating those wonderful cookies of yours.”

With a playful twinkle in your eyes and a laugh, you decide to let him off the hook, knowing that his secret sweet tooth is a charming addition to the many layers of the man you love. "Well, in that case," you say, leaning in to steal a sweet kiss from him, ever so slowly licking his lower lip just to draw him into you. "I hope you don’t have anywhere to go soon, ‘cause you're in for a real treat today."

"Good," he replies, his fingers gently squeezing your sides and pulling you even closer, chest to chest. He licks his lips, savoring the taste of you, and whispers, "Those are my favorite kind of treats."

🌙🍂🌙🍂🌙🍂🌙🍂🌙🍂🌙🍂🌙🍂🌙🍂

Thanks for reading! Please reblog and comment if you enjoyed it!

[makeyoumine69]

Be My Daddy🧁

◥ PAIRING: Sugar Daddy!Patrick Bateman x Fem!Reader

◥ SUMMARY: Patrick's going to take you from behind for the first time but before that, he compelled you to watch his favorite porn.

◥ WARNINGS: NSFW │oral sex (Patrick eats his Cupcake), mutual masturbation, body worship, manhandling, nipple play, rough vaginal sex, creampie, spanking, overstimulation, heavy daddy kink, degradation kink, praise kink, corruption kink, dumbification & dacryphilia (kinda), a lot of dirty talk, pet names.

● Wordcount: 2.8k

◥ SONG REC: Lana Del Rey - Be My Daddy💦

◥ A/N: Okay, this is pure filth, you've been warned😁, I recommend you listen to the song I used for inspiration, cos it left me no choice but to write this. I hope you like it!

◥ LINKS: [Sweet like a Cupcake Masterlist] [MASTERLIST] [EDIT🥵]

Loud naughty female moans echoed across Patrick’s fashionable living room; the images on the TV were as nasty as the sounds–these things were pretty typical for any pornographic film.

Frustrated, you were sitting on his perfect white couch, fidgeting from time to time as the senses you watched in front of your eyes made you feel so uncomfortable–you literally wanted to sink into the ground, right here right now.

“Cupcake, you’re not watching,” Bateman’s irritated voice resounded from behind your back. “This,” he pointed at the TV’s screen. “...is one of the best hardcore porns I’ve ever seen. So, I highly recommend you to be attentive.”

“I j-just…” you stammered when a naked woman cried out noisily from the screen. “Why is it necessary to scream so loud? I just don’t get it…”

Smirking, Patrick came closer to the couch and leaned on its back, just right where you were sitting. “When we get to my bedroom–I will show you why.”

His tempting intonation induced your heart to skip a beat, and your blood rushed through your veins with the speed of light, you could almost feel the heat burning under your skin, and that was just words–Bateman didn’t even touch you and you were already set on fire. Embarrassed, you were trying to soothe yourself, but as much as you wanted to close your eyes, you had to be obedient and watch this awful movie, if you could have named this “a movie”. 

“Mm, look at that!” Patrick blurted out, pointing at the TV before he took the place next to you. "He fucks her really good!”

Timidly, you focused your gaze on the screen to see a wailing woman roughly railed from behind by a man, two times bigger than her; all the sounds she was making gave you the impression that she was in pain. 

Meanwhile, Bateman placed his palm on your hip, touching it barely sensible but even this was enough for you to gasp from the all consuming attraction to him, which you couldn’t deny or fight.

“What do you think about it?’ He suddenly asked, not taking his eyes off of the screen.

“I… I don’t know,” breathing heavily, you tensed from his hand gliding against your soft skin, especially when he reached the inner side of your thigh, revealing your black stockings. “Really, this is so frustrating…”

“Oh, yeah?” smirking, Patrick got closer, embracing your shoulders with one arm and forcing you to look at him with another as he took you possessively by the chin. “Does it turn you on, Cupcake?”

With a brief catch of breath, you attempted to break away from his intense gaze, but Bateman didn’t let you, wrapping his hand around your neck, and squeezing your jaw with his long fingers. 

Although he didn’t intend to hurt you, his not-too-gentle touches made you whimper: “I don’t think so…”

“Then, why are you trembling?” He glimpsed at your inviting lips before looking into your slightly foggy eyes. “I can feel your crazy heartbeat, little one,” he crooned, sliding a finger along your cheekbone and turning your head towards the TV’s screen. “See? This—is exactly what I want to do with you.”

His raspy masculine voice was melting your brain like hot honey which was mercilessly poured into an ice cream—that mind-blowing feeling made you realize how helpless you were against this man and all his features, every little one.

“Patrick… I’m not sure about this,” you mumbled, assuring yourself that even if right now there was a longing desire, burning you from the inside, he shouldn't have known about that, not even a hint. “To be fair, I don’t think I was made for such things…”

With a soft chuckle, Bateman let go of your face and acknowledged: “Oh, Cupcake… You can’t even imagine how badly you’re mistaken. But don’t worry, you will get into all ‘these things’, cause I'm gonna lead you through this path,” he planted a small peck on your lower lip, sucking it passionately after and inducing you to limp in his arms. “In the end, you’ll finally discover yourself and your genuine desires...”

Meantime, pornographic moans became louder in the background, and you couldn't help but give into the intoxicating temptation, allowing him to press you harder against his heated body and grope your boobs through your silk blouse, along with leaving a trail of wet kisses on the delicate skin of your neck.

“Mmm, P-Patrick,” you mewled into his ear, leaning on his broad shoulders as he snuggled into you with palpable pressure. “W-wait, please...”

“C’mon, Cupcake… Touch me,” he urged against your lips before licking your cheek, his hands were busy unbuckling his leather belt as his self-control eventually collapsed. “Don’t be shy, Daddy likes it when you act like a brave girl…” 

A bit harshly, Patrick grabbed your shaking palm, forcing you to encircle it around his painfully erected shaft. As soon as you touched his hot flesh a loud groan erupted from his greedy mouth–his inner nature was craving you desperately.

“D-Daddy, you’re so hard,” you stuttered, holding your breath from how demandingly Bateman opened your knees, painting invisible lines across your wet panties, whereas his skilful fingers were playing with your peaks, which now were so tight–he could easily rub them through the thin fabric of your blouse as you had nothing beneath it, and that fact was throwing gasoline on fire, turning him on insanely fast. “Please, give me a sec…”

Your voice waved as you flinched when Patrick suddenly cupped your dripping pussy, squeezing your swollen folds together and pressing his thumb against your sensitive little nub. Huffing languidly, you were looking at each other, sensing the enveloping heat your bodies were radiating from the ravenous hunger which was devouring you both from the inside. 

After some time, your heavy breaths drowned out all TV’s sounds as you were losing the sense of reality, not even understanding whose hand was giving such pleasure–all current sensations mixed up in one blissful impulse which was snowballing so quickly, it was gonna wash over you like a fucking avalanche. Excited, Bateman was vividly toying your clit, sending millions of tingles all around your body and inducing you to clutch his bicep with your free hand as you were stroking his thick cock rhythmically.

“Mm-my perfect girl,” Patrick cooed with you, massaging a sweet spot on the nape of your neck to relax you a bit as he felt your body tensing with each sensual rub he made. “Dripping so badly...Are you gonna flood my couch with your juices if I don’t stop.”

Smirking, he brought you closer, ringing his arm around your shoulders and turning his head, so that you could say your answer right into his ear: “Let’s just finish what we’ve s-started…”

“Really?” he blurted out in disbelief, prodding his digits against your little hole just to check on your reaction, and when you didn’t protest, he sneered lustfully: “(Y/N), I must say, you impressed me...”

Saying nothing more, Patrick picked you up with ease and headed to his bedroom, not missing a chance to grope your buttocks as he pulled up the hem of your skirt. 

All the time before you got laid on his large bed, you were tracing your hands along his broad back, gently hugging his loin with your legs which were seductively covered in black tight stockings. 

Gasping, you heard his raspy snarl once you began to unbutton your blouse: “No, no, no, Cupcake,” Bateman took your hands away as he set himself between your hips, forcing you to sprawl on his soft sheets. “Leave it to me…”

Briefly licking his lips, he drew near to your cleavage, scorching your skin with his hot breathing, as his sneaky fingers worked on undoing your clothes.

First, Patrick put off your blouse and he felt an unendurable longing to devour your nipples on the spot.  But he stopped himself from doing that even though they looked so mouth-watering; a muffled groan broke out from his wide chest, his eyes were constantly tracing up and down your face, watching your lips curled into a muted moan.

Then, he proceeded to go down to your belly, his heated tongue playing with your soft skin here and there, leaving you completely breathless, especially when he got to your mound as he left a sloppy kiss just right there.

“Ahh, P-Patrick,” you pressed a hand against your forehead from a staggering sensation in your lower abdomen. “W-why are you doing this to me!?”

“What exactly?” Bateman muttered, looking at you from between your legs, petting them with both arms.

“All of these… things,” gulping, you let him pull down your soaked underwear and open you up, so he could easily latch his plump lips around your sensitive tip. “Aww…Ahh-Daddy, you’re making me feel so h-heady...”

“I feel it too, baby,” Patrick crooned before he slowly licked your pussy and then again, and again. “Your taste is so addictive...” 

Mewling, you clung to the pillows above as he was eating your pussy like a starved man, playing with your tender flesh and sucking on it with a slurping sound, which was both embarrassing and extremely sexy.

“Mm-hmm…” His sudden moan reverberated against your throbbing clit, causing your thighs to quiver, so he had to fixate you in one place, not letting you close your legs. 

“I… I can’t take it, a-anymore… Please!”

“Little Cupcake likes how Daddy treats her delicious pussy?”

“Y-yes, I do… Mm-mm, Daddy, it’s too much, ahh,” you threw your head back as he bent your knees, pushing on your hips to shove his tongue deep inside your inner channel, coaxing you to twitch like a snake. “Tooooo much, oh-please…”

When you were about to combust, Patrick stopped unwillingly, peppering the area around your core with small pecks, before saying: “All right, my cinnamon girl,” he licked your slickness off from his lips and grabbed you by your ankles to roll you on your belly. “Get on all fours… That’s it.”

Satisfied, Bateman petted your ass, pulling up your skirt almost till your waist. With a deep breath, you leaned on your elbows, feeling nervous just from hearing him undoing his pants and it seemed like he noticed it somehow, as he planted a libidinous kiss on your back, pulling you closer to the edge of the bed. 

“Cupcake,” he drew near to your neck, his whisper sounded like a sweet mantra. “I need you to relax, you hear me?”

Trembling, you swallowed hard from how his wet tip was brushing against your tight hole, when you suddenly whimpered: “Can I take a pillow?”

“Sure, if you think it will help,” admiring the picture of your moist cunt while stroking himself, Patrick waited for you to set yourself comfortably on the pillow as you hugged it like it was your lifeline. “Mmm, sweetheart… You have no idea how full I’m gonna make you feel…” 

With that said, Bateman placed his one leg on the bed, grabbing your hips and rubbing his cock along your soaked folds. Damn, he was so huge—only one thought of it induced your inner walls to spasm painfully around nothing and he didn’t even start to thrust; the tormenting anticipation was shredding your dizzy mind into pieces. 

“Such a messy slutty girl,” cursing, he poked at your entrance. “Did you ever imagine this? Being on your knees, with your ass up in air and waiting for Daddy to fuck you until your legs will shake so fucking badly?” Patrick groaned and slapped your butt, biting his lower lip and pushing his hips against yours.

“Aaaa-ahhh!” you cried out, squashing the pillow beneath, feeling his beefy dick stretching you from the inside. “Mmm, s-slow down…Aaa-awww, mmmy-Goshh…”

Paralyzed, you seemed to black out for a moment as your inner muscles were trying to take his thickness, clenching around it, which only spurred him to ram into you more intensely.

“Fuck, you’re so tight… Mmm, feels so amazing,” Bateman closed his eyes in delight as he thrusted into you with his full length. “Cupcake, are you still with me?”

Sobbing against the sheets, you couldn’t even think about what to reply, not to mention your ability to pronounce it. Though he didn’t insist for you to answer, Patrick was eager for any of your reactions, whether it would be your miserable moans or crying or your trembling little form—these all felt better than drugs, it felt better than anything, having you so vulnerable beneath him, so conquered and submissive.

This bastard was right about the sensations he was gonna give you, never in your life had you felt yourself fuller than this—his fat girth was brushing against the walls of your womb so vigorously, hitting the hidden spots you didn’t know you had.

“D-Daddy!” You almost yelled, when he gripped your hands and restricted them behind your back, literally fucking you into his bed with bloodlust frenzy. 

“My sweet Cupcake… Mmm, I’ve been waiting for this for so fucking long!” His low voice turned into a feral snarl, as he spanked your ass and then pulled on your hair, keeping your arms securely like handcuffs. “No one will ever… Fuck you better than me… Argh-hh, dont’cha dare to doubt it!”

“I… I’m all yours…Dad-ddddy…”

Shameless slapping sounds filled up the room, mixing with your pathetic whimpers and his husky growling into a nasty cacophony of pure lust. Soon, the white veil would cover your vision and you didn’t even notice yourself drooling, along with your salty tears, making everything beneath you damp as hell. Setting the pace to its maximum, Patrick forced you to spread your legs even wider, his heavy balls hitting your cunt so delightfully–that was the best stimulation for you at that moment, as you froze in a silent cry from how your insides spasmed around his throbbing dick.

“Good girl!” he purred in a sweet voice, patting your head, watching your hips trembling from indescribable pleasure and then, he released your hands and knelt beside your shivering form. “Ahh, I knew your little hole would enjoy this ride…”

Panting, he induced you to lay almost flat on your belly, wrapping his powerful arms around your hips and lifting them up, as he was slamming into you so roughly, leaving you completely breathless and dumb, with your eyes rolled to the back of your head. 

“Pat-Patrick… Mmmh,” as soon as he covered your tiny frame with his solid one, placing his hands from both sides of your head, you clawed at them, turning to face him and begging: “I’m so… Worked up, p-please…”

“Oh, yeah?” He taunted you; his thrusts became ragged and erratic. “Feeling yourself so overstimulated? So used, huh? Remember this sensation, Cupcake… Ah-hhh, remember it!”

Clinging you, Bateman buried himself as deep as he could, hitting your bruised cervix as he unloaded his warm seed into your pulsating womb, plugging it up with his huge cock; the way he kept you in one place made you think he was gonna break your bones. Breathing heavily, Patrick rocked in your limp body a few times more before he laid on top of you, not giving you a chance to move at all.  

“Jeez, you’re still shivering,” he commented in a moment, sliding his palm against your spine. “Now you understand, why was that girl screaming so loud?”

You said nothing, sensing yourself so fucking exhausted–you didn’t even have any power to open your eyes, and he wanted you to talk… Goddamn egoistic jerk–echoed in your head, when you felt him flipping on his back, so you could finally breathe deeply.

“You know what,” Patrick laid next to you, with his hand resting possessively on your ass. “Your moans sound even hotter than those in that porn, more to my taste. So natural, so sparking… And considering they are coming out from such an innocent mouth, which someday was saying things like: ‘Oh, Mr. Bateman, please, stop… We shouldn’t do this!’ Damn, this is naughty…” He laughed, gesturing all the time while imitating your speech. 

“Very funny…” You mumbled into the pillow, nearly notable.

“It’s not funny, Cupcake!” He corrected, smacking your butt almost with his all might. 

“Augh-hhh,” you hissed, rolling on your side to dodge him. “I... I didn’t mean it’s goofy…”

Patrick hummed something to himself, before putting his crossed hands under his head and assuring in a confident tone: “Next time I’ll film us, for sure.”

“You what?”

“I'll videotape us having sex,” Bateman smiled as if he already did it, looking at the ceiling above. “You should see yourself from the side, cause it’s really priceless… The way you close your eyes when I’m railing you too hard, the way you frown and your lips twitch as you cry out like a dirty whore…”

No way he was saying it seriously. No fucking way…

[hpsugarfest]

Welcome to Sugarfest: A Sugar Daddy Harry Fest!

This is an art and writing fest to celebrate one of the most underrated sugar daddies in fandom: Harry James Potter.

Fiercely loyal and protective towards those he cares about, Harry would make for a dream sugar daddy. He's absolutely loaded, and as we've seen, he's willing to drop 1000 galleons at the drop of a hat.

Coupled with his natural charm and good looks, it's not hard to imagine Harry Potter as the ideal sugar daddy, one with both the influence and the financial means to take care of his loved ones.

Heard enough? Sign-Up Here!

Want more information? Read on!

🧁 Fest Information:

This is a self-posting fest for written works and fanart.

Only those over the age of 18 are permitted to participate.

What counts as Sugar Daddy Harry Potter for the purposes of this fest?

All works must feature a main pairing with Harry in a sugar dating relationship with someone that's his age or younger. Sugar dating is when a wealthy older partner provides a financial resource for their sugar baby.

As this is a sugar dating-themed fest, all works must contain on-screen dating content between the main pairing (T-rated or higher).

Any named characters within the Harry Potter universe are okay to feature within the main pairing. AUs are allowed (in other words, characters do not have to be their canon-accurate age.)

There is a minimum word count of 500 words. Multi-chaptered works are okay. Works should be unique to this fest.

Written works must have undergone a SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) check.

Prompts can be submitted via the AO3 collection. Please sign-up as a creator prior to prompting. Self-prompting is allowed.

Creators do not need to claim a prompt to participate in the fest.

Check out our AO3 Collection for full details.

🧁 Fest Schedule:

Times and dates in Pacific Time.

Sign-Ups Open: Now!

Prompt Submission Open: Saturday, 1 July 2023, 8pm PT

Prompt Submission Close: Tuesday, 1 August 2023, 8pm PT

Prompt Claim Open: Tuesday, 15 August 2023, 8pm PT

Submission Open: Wednesday, 1 November 2023, 8pm PT

Submission Close: Sunday, 31 December 2023, 8pm PT

🧁 Links Out:

🍧 Sign-Up Here! 🍧

🍧 Sugarfest AO3 Collection! 🍧

🍧 Our Discord Server! 🍧

🍧 Twitter! 🍧

[cutecinnamon]

Cafe Menu: ໒꒰ྀིっ˕ -｡꒱ྀི১♡

: Cinna's Masterlist ⊹₊

Hi everyone, you can easily locate my works using this, ♡໒꒰ྀིᵔ ᵕ ᵔ ꒱ྀི১ ⊹₊

:dividers by @cafekitsune

• About Me •

Hi you can call me Cinna or Kie, I'm currently 19 and I'm in college. I find writing as a comfort and way of loving my free time, I do hope you enjoy reading my works, ♡ ⊹₊

:gif from pinterest

• Works •

Levi x Reader ⊹₊

Oneshots: ☕️₊˚⊹

"A Broken Teacup" ( Angst and Eventual Comfort 3.1k word count ♡ Postwar Levi, Reader carrying his child, while taking care of him, while Levi was still moving on from losing Hange )

"Smiles & Frosting" ( Fluff 2k word count ♡ First Birthday of Levi and Reader's little daughter Luna, with the squad )

Levi x Reader ⊹₊

Series: 🧁⊹₊

Concurrence ( • MDNI • y/n is a declared traitor, she was a marleyan who was tasked to infiltrate the survey corps, she was then punished to carry Captain Levi's child. )

Concurrence I { A Declared Traitor } • 2.3k word count •

Concurrence II { "The Captain's Incubator" } • 2.1k word count •

Concurrence III { "A Date" } • 3.1k word count •

Concurrence IV { Lost } • 2.8 word count •

Levi x Reader ⊹₊

Drabbles: 🍮 ₊˚⊹

"Wearing Levi's Uniform" ( Fluff, reader being shorter and wearing Levi's uniform, and Levi teasing her. )

Levi x Reader ⊹₊

Snippets: 🍰₊˚⊹

Concurrence (Synopsis + Snippet Idea MDNI )

Concurrence (Smut Snippet MDNI )

Concurrence II ( MDNI Snippet )

Concurrence IV ( Snippet, one of my favs. )

•Still Brewing "Concurrence" ( Ongoing ) •

Will be updating for more... :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

Last Update: April 19, 2024 ⊹₊

( Reminder: Always add a cup of sugar to your day, ♡ ໒꒰ྀིᵔ ᵕ ᵔ ꒱ྀི১ ) ⊹₊

[thefairylights]

suckerpunch chapter 11/11 (Loustat all human coffee shop au)

It has taken me over three months, but the end is here. I have finally finished my modern, all human coffee shop au. This has turned into something I didn't plan. This was meant to be a one shot and then took on a life of it's own. I grew attached to this universe and the connections I created in it. The original characters and my human takes on other more familiar characters. I learned to make so many different coffee concoctions, many which I did not share because they were disastrous. I think I have given my coffee boys a deserving and earned happy ending after all the drama and the trauma and the anxiety and the tears. Thank you for your comments, messages, kudos, and support. I never expected anyone to like this story of mine. It was mainly self indulgent but I love it so much now and it is difficult for me to say goodbye, but it is time, and I am going to move onto my next writing projects. Here is my final latte recipe: Hazelnut amaretto biscotti latte: 1 tablespoon of Hazelnut syrup 1/2 tablespoon of Amaretto syrup Coffee of your choice. I chose a donut shop k-cup this morning Milk of your choice. I chose oat milk. Sugar of your choice if needed. I used a tsp of monkfruit sweetner. Crumbled up biscotti flavor of your choice to top the latte Brew your coffee. While it brews, mix your syrups together with the milk. I then placed them into my frother and added milk, so I could combine them. Once it was ready, I added it to my hot coffee and then sprinkled my crumbled biscotti on top of it. I hope you like it. And I hope you enjoy the finale of Suckerpunch. <3

Loustat go on an epic Italian vacation and have lots of coffee and lots of sex and other things. 12285 words of things. ☕️🇮🇹🍝📚💌🥂🌊🧁❤️

[somany-fandoms-solittle-time]

Listen....

As someone who used to play piano, sing in choirs, and did Community Theatre I'd 100% serenade my fave (or any) Twst boys. Hell, I'd do it for the bit or as some type of prank! I might find any and all opportunities to sing/play songs from a range of decades to my boys.....

Imagine teasing Trey by singing Build Me Up Buttercup by the Foundations while he's baking for you ❤️ and seeing him shaking his head with an amused smile. As long as you help around the kitchen, and don't mind a playful chase or two with the ingredients, 🧁 he might be willing to join in with I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) by Four Tops as you clean up the mess the two of you made.

Jokingly singing Hard Days Night by the Beatles with/at Ruggie after another long day of school, work, errands and babysitting.... 🌼 When finally you've got some time to just be in each other's presence. But even if the two of you can only get these small moments now, deep down Ruggie knows how lucky he is to love you. 🌠 Introducing Knock On Wood by Eddie Floyd would perfectly put words to just how lucky he is to have you.

Late at night, when Jamil finally has some time to rest, and finally being able to Serenade him in the moonlight 🌙 with Moonlight Serenade by Ella Fitzgerald. Sure, it's a little on the nose but he's still flattered. Save The Last Dance For Me by The Drifters would be another testament of how well you understood him; 🪭Jamil's first priority might be Kalim's by blood, but his biggest priority is YOU (and that's by choice).

Rook would be fascinated to know French songs on Earth like La Vie En Rose by Louise Armstrong! Even if you fumble through the words a little, as long as you show him the lyrics perhaps the two of you could work through it together.🌹He'd equally love hearing old Crooner songs like The Way You Look Tonight by Frank Sinatra.... And the way he looks at you while performing just about sets your heart on fire 🔥💕.

Old Man Lilia would appreciate just about any rendition of Dream A Little Dream Of Me considering his affiliation with 💭Diasomnia. But considering his love of music in general, along with the seemingly endless life he's already had up until he finally got to meet and fall for you 💘, At Last by Etta James would be almost too perfect.

(This wasn't perfectly done, but I LITERALLY couldn't sleep until I typed it all out. As you can tell my taste can lean kinda old school (because I was raised by a Baby Boomer) but I've also been listening to a lot of Jazz, Soul and classic musical numbers lately. These songs hold a lot of memories and nostalgia and I guess I just needed a space to project them on lol! And if you couldn't tell.... I fucking ADORE the Vice Wardens in Twisted Wonderland 💖😩🥰 These characters and so many others hold SUUUUUUCH a close place in my heart I literally can't.💜❤️ Lowkey, lemme know if anyone's interested in more songs that I associate (and dissociate singing to them lol) with these or any other characters!! It'd also be fun to try writing a drabble, ONE-SHOT, or full fic again 🥴😋)

- Aim's Ongoing Delusions 📜

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

Napoleonville [Chapter 9: Clarence House]

Series Summary: The year is 1988. The town is Napoleonville, Louisiana. You are a small business owner in need of some stress relief. Aemond is a stranger with a taste for domination. But as his secrets are revealed, this casual arrangement becomes something more volatile than either of you could have ever imagined.

Chapter Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+ readers only), dom/sub dynamics, smoking, drinking, drugs, Adventures with Aegon (ft. Sunfyre the Ferret), Willis Warning, infidelity, kids, parenthood, and no more hints for you, start reading!!!

Word Count: 8.9k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @marvelescvpe @toodlesxcuddles @era127 @at-a-rax-ia @0eessirk8 @arcielee @dd122004dd @humanpurposes @taredhunter @tinykryptonitewerewolf @partnerincrime0 @dr-aegon @persephonerinyes @namelesslosers @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @daenysx @gemini-mama @chattylurker @moonlightfoxx @huramuna @britt-mf @myspotofcraziness @padfooteyes @targaryenbarbie @trifoliumviridi @joliettes @darkenchantress @florent1s @babyblue711 @minttea07 @libroparaiso @bluerskiees @herfantasyworldd @elizarbell @urmomsgirlfriend1 @fudge13 @strangersunghoon @wickedfrsgrl

Only 1 chapter left!!! 🥰🧁

He returns in an afternoon of inescapable golden sunlight, hot and muggy, bumble bees and ladybugs wheeling lazily above tall grass, cumulus clouds like tufts of cotton in a sky the color of Aemond’s eye. You hear him talking to Cadi—she’s out in the front yard making mud pies, earth for sugar and sprinkles of stray pelican feathers—and then the weight of his footsteps on the sinking, sloping porch. He opens the door, never locked, and walks through the living room into the kitchen. From behind, his arms circle around your waist; and you’ve missed him so much—dreaming of waves and storms, chains and blood—that you have nothing for him but softness, gentle smiles and a voice hushed with relief.

“How was Norway?” you ask as you roll out dough on the counter. You’re making a buttermilk pie.

“Fine,” Aemond says, resting his chin on your shoulder. But he sounds tired, low.

You turn around to look at him, raising your fingertips to his unscarred right cheek; he won’t tolerate you touching the left. You leave a dusting of flour across his skin like snow, which you have never seen in person and likely never will. The air conditioner is humming. The little pink Panasonic boombox is playing Africa by Toto. “Did something happen?”

“I just missed you.” Then he brightens. “But I was greeted by some very welcome news when I got back to the house this morning.” He’s wearing his neon teal duffle bag. He drops it to the floor and unzips it; inside you glimpse several Nintendo game cartridges, presumably for Cadi. And you think: I’m always here making things, he’s always bringing them from far away. Aemond takes two small dark blue booklets out of a pocket in the inner lining of the duffle bag and gives them to you. On the front of each is embossed in gold lettering, along with an emblem of a bald eagle: Passport, United States of America.

“…Aemond?!”

“There’s one for you and one for Cadi. I submitted the forms a month ago, but even with expedited processing it took this long. Ridiculous. What does the government do all day besides hunt down social programs to defund?”

“But…but…” You open one of the booklets. A photograph of your own face gazes back at you, serious and serene, taken against the white wall of your bedroom before you knew about Aemond being a Targaryen, or Christabel, or Amir’s exodus to San Franscisco, or the profound futility of everything, it seems. “How…?”

“I took the pictures, obviously. The rest was easy enough to find. You store birth certificates and social security cards the same place where you keep the business records that Amir showed me. Typically people have to go to a passport agency in person, but Criston and I have ways around that. Your signature might have been forged on the applications…but I suspect you won’t be filing any police reports.” Aemond grins, pleased with himself. “I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“It’s definitely surprising.” You stare down at the passports, amazed. “Aemond…this is a lot. But you already know that.”

“The whole time I was gone, I was wishing you could be there too. And now I can take you anywhere.”

Your heart is pounding, helpless childlike exhilaration. “Where are we going?”

“Clarence House in London.”

London: it’s another world, a distant planet, a constellation whose name you don’t know, the lost city of Atlantis.“Clarence House? Is that a hotel?”

“It’s a royal residence,” Aemond says, amused. “It’s officially the home of the Queen Mother, but the whole family goes to Balmoral in Scotland every summer, and while they’re gone they often rent out one wing to guests, not just anyone, trusted people like distant cousins or longtime, aristocratic friends. And the Targaryens…”

“You’re marrying Christabel, and she’s nobility. So you’re basically nobility now too.”

“Yes,” Aemond admits, a little guiltily, perhaps. “But you’re the person I’m inviting.”

“And Cadi.”

Now he’s genuinely puzzled. “Of course. We couldn’t leave her behind.”

Maybe I can handle this. Maybe I can make this work.

And you climb onto your tiptoes to circle your arms around the back of his neck, embracing him, thanking him, thinking: Christabel will have his ring, his last name, his family’s mansion, his acquiescent kiss at the altar of the Chapel of Saint Honoratus of Amiens…but I have what he’s made of, dreams, soul, bones in the abyss of an ocean of blood. Maybe that’s enough.

Maybe.

~~~~~~~~~~

First class, cheerful stewardesses, an array of magazines purchased from a gift shop in New Orleans International Airport: the National Enquirer and Food & Wine for you, The Face and Smithsonian for Aemond, and National Geographic Kids and Zoobooks for Cadi. The Zoobooks animal this month is the eagle, how quintessentially American. You are served antipasto Italiano, shrimp cocktail, Perrier, and champagne (Cadi gets a Shirley Temple) over the Atlantic Ocean. Aemond shows you and Cadi how to chew gum to pop your ears as the pressure builds to pain. When there is turbulence and he leans in close to tell you everything is fine, Aemond smells like Wrigley’s Doublemint, cologne, Marlboro cigarettes like the logo on his red and white jacket. You press your palm to the cool window, and clouds float by through the gaps between your fingers. The world is older than anything you could fathom; the world is brand new.

There is a black limousine waiting outside Terminal 3 of Heathrow Airport. The driver gets out to load the sparse luggage: Aemond’s teal duffle bag, a frayed and battered rolling suitcase that you borrowed from your mother, a Super Mario Bros. backpack that you found for Cadi at Kmart. Aemond doesn’t have much time to spare, only 4 days, practically a long weekend; but it feels like an eternity stretches out in front of you as the limousine zooms through the narrow, winding streets of downtown London, Starship’s We Built This City piping from the radio. You have never had more than a few uninterrupted hours with Aemond before. Now you will have a hundred.

The London air is cool, grey, misty; fresh rainwater bleeds into puddles, dark pools of mirrorlike reflections. With the windows rolled down and clean slate-colored air unfurling in your lungs, Aemond points to the landmarks you pass: Gunnersbury Park, Chiswick House and its gardens, cathedrals, museums, shopping districts, centuries-old cemeteries, stations of the London Underground, the River Thames, Hyde Park, the Ritz Hotel, Buckingham Palace, Saint James’ Palace, and at last Clarence House. It is a boxy white four-story townhouse with columns at the entranceway that remind you of the Targaryens’ estate on the shore of Lake Verret, the beautiful yet temporary home they call The Last Desire.

Aemond says that the entire first floor will be yours for the duration of your stay. There is the Lancaster Room, red and gold, and the Morning Room of creams and weak watery blue. There is the Library, the Dining Room, and the vibrantly pink Horse Corridor named for its ample equine paintings and sculptures; Cadi immediately proclaims this to be the best part of the house. She lingers in the hallway examining the art pieces as you and Aemond proceed to the Garden Room, which looks out upon a sea of lavender and shrubs meticulously shaped into a maze no higher than your waist. It has a golden harp and a grand piano, and a vast bed large enough for at least five people, in your estimation. I wonder if Aemond has ever tried that, you think distractedly. I wonder if there are temptations I can’t satisfy for him.

“You and Cadi can have this room,” Aemond says. He keeps wincing and bringing his hand up to the left side of his face; you doubt he’s even aware of it. “I’ll sleep on one of the couches.” Of course he will; Cadi thinks you’re just friends, and she’s aware he’s getting married to someone else. He knew exactly what it would mean when he bought a passport for her. “Queen Elizabeth and her husband Philip lived here before she ascended to the throne. They loved it so much that at first they refused to move to Buckingham Palace, which is the traditional residence of the reigning monarch. But their insolence was worn down. No one gets to break the rules.”

I shouldn’t be in this place, you keep thinking as you gaze around at the portraits on the wall, the stiff unnatural photographs of royals, the vases, the chandeliers, the fireplaces, the plush intricate rugs, the garden on the other side of the windows. People like me don’t belong here. “Aemond, are you alright?”

“It’s my eye,” he confesses with an uneasy, apologetic smirk. “Sometimes flights…the altitude changes…it aggravates the nerve damage. It’s like needles in my skull. But I’ll be okay.”

“You fly a lot for work, don’t you?” You hurt yourself for Viserys, in body and soul.

“I do,” he agrees. He unzips his duffle bag and produces a bottle of Percocet. “Why do you think I carry these around?”

“Take one,” you say. “Lie down, rest. Cadi and I can entertain ourselves for a few hours.”

He’s relieved, he’s grateful. “Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. You can even borrow the bed.”

“Back between your sheets, huh?” Aemond says, in pain but smiling through it. He draws a semicircle from the part in your hair down to your chin, a weightless sweep of his fingertips like a kind breeze. “You are incurable. You can’t resist me.”

“I have my own scheme in mind.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.” You grab the front of his Marlboro jacket, appropriate for the overcast London weather. He belongs here, this house, this city, this way of life. He wasn’t made for the primordial heat of the swamplands. You fold into him, close enough to tease, to quicken his heartbeat and momentarily clear the wounded furrows from his brow. “I want my pillows to smell like you. I want to breathe you in all night. It’s how I sleep best.”

“I’ll try not to disappoint,” Aemond says, a little stunned; but he’s elated too. For a moment, you’ve distracted him from his suffering entirely. “I’ll roll around all over them. I will mar the bedding irrevocably, the Queen Mother will never invite me back.” And he watches as you leave, his gaze transfixed and meditative and—more than anything else—hopeful.

“Hey, honey,” you say when you find Cadi in the Horse Corridor, poking a 100-year-old oil painting that she is definitely not supposed to be touching. “Let’s go explore and grab some dinner. Aemond isn’t feeling great, but we’ll hang out with him later.”

“Is it his face?”

You are startled. She knows so much. “Yeah, actually, it is.”

“He showed me,” Cadi says casually, still peering up at the horse; and you remember the day when he took her out to the front yard after she said she wished you were more like her friends’ mothers. “He even let me touch it. Radical, right? It’s so gross, but super cool too.”

Aemond couldn’t stand for me to see how he was maimed, but he forced himself to endure it for Cadi. “What did he tell you?”

“That I should appreciate having a good mom, because not all parents treat their kids right. He said his dad let his eye get crushed. And he told me he’d bet $1 million that you’d snap someone’s neck if they hurt me like that.”

You reach out to skim your fingers through her dark disheveled hair, smiling faintly, fondly. Cadi doesn’t seem to mind. “He wasn’t wrong.”

“Can we get fish and chips?”

“Totally. I have 50 British pounds in my wallet, I assume that’s enough for dinner.”

“Wow! How much is 50 pounds in dollars?”

“I have no idea,” you say. “Let’s go spend them.”

~~~~~~~~~~

In the evenings, you, Cadi, and Aemond gather around the television in the Lancaster Room and help yourself to the extensive VHS collection stocked for guests. You let Cadi pick: Raiders Of The Lost Ark, The Terminator, Firestarter, the Karate Kid, Aliens. You make popcorn in the extravagant kitchen in the basement of Clarence House and the three of you devour bowlfuls of it as you giggle on the couch, engulfed with throw pillows and playfully kicking at each other beneath the blankets. One night at Cadi’s request you bake Betty Crocker’s Party Rainbow Chip cupcakes with mix purchased at a Tesco down the street; on another you make hot chocolate to sip from antique tea cups. Each day, Aemond has new destinations picked out to tour. You ride the Underground like true Londoners to the Hampton Court Palace, the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, the Natural History Museum, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Tower Bridge, the National Gallery, the Kew Gardens, Imperial College where Aemond received the petroleum engineering degree he never wanted.

As he shows you the classrooms where he attended lectures and seminars—you aren’t sure what the difference is, though you can sense that there is one—Aemond doesn’t talk about math or oil drilling. Instead, he tells you and Cadi about the people he learned about in the history classes he managed to slip into his exacting schedule like splinters into flesh: Sir Harold Gillies who pioneered plastic surgery in his treatment of World War I veterans, Phillis Wheatley who was enslaved as a child and became a renowned poet and abolitionist, Boudicca who led a rebellion against the Roman invaders and upon her defeat succumbed to some tragic, enigmatic doom. Aemond loves stories like this, you can see the light that sparks into the crystalline blue of his right eye. There is nothing he deems more heroic than people who took circumstances beyond their control and made something worthwhile out of them.

The night before the flight back to New Orleans, you’re staring at the crown molding of the Garden Room as Cadi snores softly from the other end of the massive bed and silvery moonlight covers the world. You can’t stop your thoughts from roiling like the North Sea; you can’t stop thinking about desks and chairs and books and clever blue-blooded girls jotting down in their notebooks not cake orders but mathematical equations or dates of conquest. When you breathe in the smoke and cologne Aemond left on your pillows, it tastes dark and forbidden. You climb out of the bed, roomy Bob Dylan t-shirt, pink cotton shorts, hair loose and wild, bare feet.

He is outside pacing around the sundial in the center of the garden, puffing on a Marlboro cigarette and pondering the full moon. “Can’t sleep?” Aemond asks, exhaling smoke as he glances over at you.

“You must think I’m stupid.”

“What?” He stops pacing. “Why?”

“Imperial College,” you say. “And the sorts of people who go to places like that. You must have known a lot of women who could recite Shakespear and name all the kings of England, all of Jupiter’s moons. Things I never learned. Things that I have no use for. I don’t write books or design machines or study the secrets of the universe. I bake cupcakes.”

“And they’re brilliant,” Aemond says, smiling. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”

“No?”

“No,” Aemond insists. “I think that if you’d been born where I was, you would have done far more with it.”

“Aemond…” You walk across the wet cobblestones to meet him by the sundial. It’s been raining again. The night air is chilly, foggy, painting you with goosebumps. “You still have time to become who you want to be.”

“No. I don’t.”

It’s coming from somewhere, distant but still audible, a parked car or a nearby building: Kyrie by Mr. Mister. Aemond chuckles, flicks the end of his cigarette into the lavender bushes—surely against the rules—and takes your hands in his.

“I remember this,” he says as he dances with you slowly, clumsily; you don’t know the steps. Still, you don’t want him to stop. “In your kitchen.”

He remembers everything. “Right before we went to Olive Garden for the first time.”

He sighs, pretending to be exasperated. “Of course that’s the part you committed to memory.”

“I’ve held onto a few other details too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like how small the back seat of your Audi Quattro is.”

“A limousine would be far more comfortable. I should invest in one.”

You laugh as he twirls you and you trip over your own feet; he pulls you upright before you can fall to the slick cobblestones. And you think: This is real. No matter what happens between him and anyone else, what we have is safe and extraordinary and real.

“I’m glad you’re here, Cupcake,” Aemond murmurs through your hair, holding you without seeking more. “You and Cadi.”

You want him again, or you’re so close to wanting him that the line is less of a boundary than a quagmire, indistinct edges and quicksand that can drag you down to drown in it. “I never knew that this was possible. Thank you, Aemond.”

“It can be like this all the time.”

Not all the time, you think, knowing that there will always be Jade Dragon, the Targaryens, the stock market, the world, the past and the future, Christabel. But some of it.

Is that enough?

~~~~~~~~~~

Willis agreed to you and Aemond taking Cadi out of the country on one condition: that you return her to him the second you arrive back in Napoleonville. It’s late Tuesday afternoon when the plane’s wheels hit the runway and squeal to a halt. Aemond has left his red Audi in the Park-and-Ride lot. You collect the car and soar west on Route 10 into the red-gold horizon, chasing the setting sun.

“Daddy!” Cadi bellows when she throws open the front door of the Assumption Parish Sheriff’s Office, waving his gift bag excitedly. Inside is a refrigerator magnet, several packages of McVitie’s Digestives in different flavors, and a miniature red-coated Queen’s Guard to keep on his desk, perpetually covered with disorganized papers and crumbs from innumerable desserts. From her poster on the wall, Heather Locklear simpers at you. At the center of the dartboard, poor Tommy Lee is impaled in four different places.

“Comment ca va, cherie?!” Willis opens his arms to hug Cadi when she barrels into him. He guffaws, his eyes are shiny; he has missed her. “Ya had a real good time, I reckon?”

“It was totally tubular. But I’m glad I’m home now. Can I get a horse? His name is Patches and I love him.”

“Huh? What the hell ya need a horse for?” He peeks around Cadi to look at you, a curious blue gaze beneath the thick dark bangs of his mullet. “What’s she talkin’ ‘bout, sugar?”

Beside you, Aemond groans irritably. Then you hear a voice from one of the holding cells, almost always empty: “Hey, cake lady.”

“Aegon?!” you and Aemond say at once, and sure enough, when you check the last holding cell there he is: unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, blue shorts, rainbow flip flops, hair like he’s been in a hurricane, a new eyebrow piercing.

Aemond asks Willis: “What did he do?”

Willis picks up a clipboard from his cluttered desk and begins reading. “Possession with intent to distribute cocaine—”

“I told you, I wasn’t distributing anything! It was for me!”

“Aegon, shut up,” Aemond pleads.

“Possession with intent to distribute marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of methamphetamine less than 28 grams, operatin’ a vehicle while intoxicated, possession of MDMA, possession of alcoholic beverages in a motor vehicle, operatin’ a vehicle with a suspended license, resistin’ an officer…” Willis flips the page. “Speedin’, reckless drivin’, disturbin’ the peace while in an intoxicated condition, possession with intent to distribute Xanax, theft—”

“What the hell did you steal?!” Aemond demands.

“Burritos. I forgot my wallet at home.” Now Aegon is indignant. “But I saidI’d get them back! They didn’t need to call anybody about it!”

“Aegon, Taco Bell does not offer payment plans!”

“I can release him to ya, I guess,” Willis tells Aemond in a slow drawl.

“I really appreciate that. I’m so sorry about him, I’m absolutely mortified, I’ll pay whatever fines you want—”

“Wait, no,” Aegon says, panicked. His hands are gripped around the iron bars. “I don’t want to leave.”

Aemond stares at him. “You’re asking to stay in jail…?”

“I can’t go home. Stephanie’s there.”

“Of course she’s there. You knew she was flying in for the wedding.”

“Please let me stay here until she goes back to Monaco.”

“Definitely not. How’s everything else?”

“There’s something wrong with one of the Lake Verret rigs. Viserys mentioned a…a…I don’t remember, a dirt dump or something.”

“A mud pump?!”

“Yeah! That’s it. That’s what he said. It exploded.”

“Fuck,” Aemond hisses, then remembers that Cadi’s still there. She gives him a sly grin. You messed up, she means. Aemond looks to you, apologetic, disappointed. “I’m going to have to drop you off and then head straight home. There are messes to be mopped up.”

“No,” Aegon moans as Willis unlocks the holding cell and then wrestles him out of it when Aegon resists. “No, I’m a felon! I’m a danger to the public!”

“Don’t,” Aemond snaps, and this time his brother listens.

You say goodbye to Cadi—she barely notices—but as you go to follow Aemond and Aegon out of the Sheriff’s Office, she has a question. “Aemond?”

He stops. “Yeah, Cadi?”

“Can I go to the wedding?”

“Weddin’?!” Willis exclaims. “Already?!”

“Not mine,” you say.

“You really want to go?” Aemond asks Cadi with some reticence. But he seems to be considering it.

“Well, yeah. Mom said she and Amir are going. You’ll be there. Lots of cake will be there. And I’ve never been to a wedding before. I want to see what it’s like.”

Aemond turns to you, then to Willis, searching for permission. “It’s alright with me,” Willis says. “As long as someone there is keepin’ an eye on her.”

“It’s your choice,” you tell Cadi. “If you’re interested, I have no objections. But you have to be nice to Christabel.”

“Christabel?!” Willis says.

“That’s Aemond’s fiancée.” And there is a collective uncomfortable silence: Willis nodding slowly as he squints at you, Cadi chewing on her thumbnail, Aemond looking down at his Adidas sneakers, Aegon staring vacuously at the Heather Locklear poster on the wall.

With Aegon squeezed into the back seat, Aemond drops you off at the home Cadi calls the Fall-Down House. The new house hasn’t closed yet, but probably will in the next week. The adolescent gator is sunbathing in the last of the daylight in one corner of the yard; you can hear the pink Panasonic boombox inside playing Another One Bites The Dust.

“Ho, you’re back!” Amir cries, jubilant. He hugs you energetically, staining you with the flour on his hands; he’s been watching the bakery while you’ve been gone and keeping every cent of the profits in recognition of his labor, as agreed upon. “How was London?”

You give him his souvenir: a purple t-shirt with Princess Diana’s face on it. “Rainy. Wonderful.”

“Did you have any kinky sex in the royal grandma’s bed?”

“No,” you say, laughing. “But it was…I don’t know how to describe it. Calm. Normal. Easy. Like we could live that way forever.”

“So you’ve decided to be his Camilla.”

“Some moments I have. Other times I haven’t. But more and more, I just…” You try to decide what you mean. “The thought of giving him up feels impossible. And Christabel…they’re so distant with each other, so disconnected, so platonic. Their relationship doesn’t feel real. Maybe I can ignore it. Maybe this is the best I can hope for.”

Amir pushes his tortoiseshell glasses up the bridge of his nose and raises an eyebrow. “It might feel more real in three days.”

The rehearsal dinner is on Friday; the wedding is only 24 hours later.

~~~~~~~~~~

“You really should consider writing a cookbook, dear,” Alicent says from where she sits across from you. The dining room table is covered with flickering pink candles, bouquets of wildflowers, drinks garnished with cotton candy and Pop Rocks. Balloons bump against the ceilings, their long ribbons streaming down like the tentacles of a jellyfish. The stereo is thumping out Caught Up In You by 38 Special. Everything is pink and red: the colors of love. Yet just like at the engagement party, no one is talking about the couple getting married tomorrow. You could almost forget that there’s going to be a wedding. That makes it easier; and if denial is the terrain you live on now, so be it. That is far less agonizing than the alternative.

“Oh, no,” you demur, taking a sip of a cotton candy cocktail. You exchange a glance with Aemond, sitting several seats down from his mother. He is in a suit—black and white, fitted, faultless—and smiling, proud of you. “A book?! I couldn’t. Not in a million years.” I never even finished high school English.

“But all of my friends from home are captivated by your recipes, darling, and it would be so much easier if I could simply send them a copy of a cookbook rather than trying to describe every dish to them! Please consider it. Do you promise?”

“That I’ll think about it? Not too taxing a commitment. I suppose so.”

“Good,” Alicent chirps, then turns to whisper something to Criston, who drapes an arm briefly across her shoulders and gives her a reassuring little embrace. Amir is chatting with Aemond about San Franscisco. Christabel is talking to Helaena, who has been forced into a voluminous, magenta taffeta dress that she clearly despises; her chameleon Dreamfyre lurches around the table, occasionally stealing tastes of people’s food. Daeron, with Tessarion perched on the back of his chair, is trying to discuss something called seismic testing results with Viserys but getting ignored. Viserys is deep in conversation with Christabel’s father, the marquess, a large loud man whose booming voice drowns out everyone else. The two of them seem delighted, celebratory, very much in their own world. Their schemes have come at last to fruition. Christabel has several younger sisters in attendance—her bridesmaids—but no mother. You gather from pieces of dialogue you’ve overheard that her mother died when she was a child, a terrible and irreparable loss. Otto is so bored he’s flipping through a picture book about Kiribati. Aegon’s wife, Princess Stephanie of Monaco, is a headstrong, charismatic, and rather critical woman with short dark hair. She notifies Aegon each and every time he fails her, which happens frequently: You’re using the wrong fork. You missed a button on your shirt. You haven’t fucked me properly in over two years. You didn’t send flowers to my grandma’s funeral. This is evidently Aegon’s worst nightmare; he has disappeared upstairs in an effort to escape her.

Dinner is finished, and dessert has been brought by the servants. It turned out more like a crepe cake than a Napoleon cake—the layers of puff pastry didn’t want to fluff up as much as they should have—but no one seems to notice. This time, you and Amir knew the dress code expectations. You are both wearing black to fade into the backdrop like shadows, like distant memories. You are invited guests, but you are also locals, inferiors, recipients of charity.

“Where’s Aegon?” Helaena says. “He has to try this cake, it’s delicious! The cherry jam cuts the heaviness of the cream and pastry dough and makes it a perfect dessert for summer! And the color is delightful! It looks just like blood!”

“Where the hell is he?” Viserys demands, looking around, twisting in his chair. “It’s his brother’s rehearsal dinner, for Christ’s sake. One night of this importance and he can’t handle it? I swear to God, if he’s snorting or smoking anything up there I’ll have him committed to an institution—”

“I’ll find him,” you offer as you stand from the table. You have to visit the bathroom anyway, too many glitzy pink cocktails; two birds, one stone. You depart from the table and Aemond’s gaze follows you, a low heat that is building towards incineration, a baiting promise of dark euphoria that you can no longer pretend you don’t want desperately, defenselessly. Christabel gives you a sweet little wave. She is dripping in gold—dress, heels, jewelry—and seems happier tonight, more self-assured. Perhaps with the wedding so close, her trepidation concerning Aemond’s commitment has evaporated. Surely it is too late to call off the ceremony now. Tonight they feast, tomorrow they recite their vows, and then…

But no, you don’t think about the honeymoon. You will not allow yourself to. It can’t exist to you, and that is how you’ll survive this. Christabel will be in one universe, you in another, two timelines that never cross like something out of Star Trek. And the way she and Aemond interact is so impersonal, so untactile, that it is not so difficult to treat anything beyond chaste pecks on cheeks as an impossibility.

At the top of the staircase, Vhagar is lurking. She wags her long twiglike tail when she sees you and licks the knuckles of your left hand. You give her a pat on the head—and then several more when she whines as you try to leave—then at last she lopes off down the hallway.

Aegon is exactly where you’d assumed he’d be. He’s in his bedroom hunched over his computer and hammering furiously at the keyboard. There’s white powder on his fingers and in his thin mustache. On the screen, bizarrely, is what appears to be neon green grass and an ox-drawn wagon like the ones from the pioneer days. Sunfyre the ferret is stretched out across the bed napping, his angular face resting on his paws.

Aegon whirls around to face you. He is wearing a lime green satin suit but has forgotten to put on a shirt under it. “What? What? What do you want? I’m playing Oregon Trail. I have dysentery.”

“You have what…? Never mind, it’s not important. You need to come downstairs and eat some dessert. People are wondering where you are.”

“I’m busy.”

“If you don’t make an appearance on your own, Viserys will come looking for you. Also there are some Cap’n Crunch treats I left on the kitchen counter that you might be interested in.”

“Consider me tempted. I’ll be down momentarily.”

“You better be,” you tell Aegon, then retrace your steps back to the kitchen. Amir and Christabel are both there getting cans of Pepsi from the fridge and making very cumbersome small talk…or perhaps only Amir thinks it is that much of a burden. Christabel is chattering blithely away about different types of wildflowers. He gives you a look like Oh thank God, an excuse to escape and wastes no time heading back to the dining room.

“Did you notice what’s playing now?” he asks you just before he vanishes, then points towards the stereo in the grand foyer. You listen; it’s Money For Nothing by Dire Straits. “You think they know this song is about class warfare?”

“You should tell them,” you joke.

“Yeah, if I want to end up on Unsolved Mysteries.” Then Amir is gone.

“How are you doing?” you ask Christabel to be polite. You open the refrigerator and start hunting for your own can of Pepsi. “Excited? Nervous? You seem a little more relaxed than the last time I saw you. Are the wedding jitters finally dissipating?”

“They are,” she says, and when you glance back at her she is wearing a bashful sort of smile. It’s not an expression you can read. You resume digging through the refrigerator for a can of Pepsi; Amir and Christabel might have taken the last ones.

“That’s good,” you say noncommittally, hoping she’ll leave. But Christabel doesn’t leave. She seems to have something she needs to say. Just as you spy a lone can of Pepsi at the very back of the refrigerator and lean in to grab it, she proceeds to unburden herself.

“Well, you know, I was so concerned about me and Aemond before. I had no conviction that he especially liked me, and we never had anything to talk about, and he was so dreadfully undemonstrative…I was just beside myself, truly. I didn’t know what to do. But I feel much better about everything now. Norway was so good for us.”

Norway?

You close the refrigerator, your ice-cold Pepsi can clutched in your hand. You’re going cold all over. Slowly, you turn towards Christabel, glittering in her gold dress.

Norway???

“He took you on the North Sea trip.” You hear the words, but it doesn’t feel like you’ve said them. They sound flat and dazed.

“It’s a bit of a secret,” Christabel says; and again, her smile has no cruelty or sharp awareness in it, but her cheeks are pink. She’s blushing. What does she have to be embarrassed about? “My father doesn’t know. He wouldn’t approve. But I just felt…I felt ready, you know? I’m sure you understand what I mean. You aren’t so clinical and aloof about everything. I had to know if Aemond and I really had something between us before we got married.”

“You felt…ready?” Ready for what? Ready for WHAT, Christabel?

“I asked Aemond to take me with him. I begged, actually.” She giggles. “I won’t try to be proud about it! And finally he said yes. We stayed at a lovely hotel in Bergen, and during the day he would have to fly by helicopter out to the rigs, but at night…”

You’re staring blankly at her. You can’t believe what you think she’s going to say. Surely it must be something else, anything else—

“It wasn’t my plan to ever be intimate with a man before marriage, but sometimes…things change. Minds change, circumstances change. And I knew I wanted it. And it went so well! Now what do I have to be nervous about? All the uncertainties are resolved. Now we just sign the paperwork and start our lives together.”

He took her to Norway.

He slept with her in Norway.

“I hope it was just as good for him,” Christabel muses, a compulsive sort of oversharing. But she has had a few cocktails and she thinks you’re nonjudgemental and there’s probably not a single other soul she feels she can be truthful with…so why not the girl who got knocked up at prom and had a baby at seventeen? Surely she’s in no position to judge. “It’ll be even better once we can…you know. When we’re officially trying for a baby and there’s no need to worry about any precautions. I want Aemond to enjoy himself as much as possible. I want to be a good wife to him.”

You feel dizzy; you feel violently ill. And now you see everything: Aemond kissing her with his mouth open and ravenous, his hands between her legs, his hips pressed to hers, peeling off her clothes and learning how to make her moan, make her wet, make her come, and you think of how careful he must have been with her, a girl with no past, no ex-husband, no childbirth that nearly killed her, no stretchmarks and no baggage, just a smooth pristine rivulet of flesh that was so pure and uncontaminated it was weightless, and you can hear—though you don’t want to, though it feels like it will kill you—how tender he was, how encouraging, not a dominant who drinks down fantasies like a vampire sustained by blood but just a man, and a man who has at last found a woman he doesn’t need to grab, bite, bruise, handcuff to a bedpost to feel satisfied with.

He took her to Norway and he never told me.

You are saying something, and Christabel is nodding appreciatively, accepting the sage wisdom of a tarnished life. Your words don’t matter. They are folktales and charms, the croaks of bullfrogs, the whispers of the wind through Spanish moss, the Morse code of ripples in the water of the bayou. You are a novelty and your counsel is a souvenir; one day when she is living in California or Argentina or Australia or Alaska or her ancestral castle back in the U.K., Christabel will tell Aemond’s children: Once I met a nice single mom from Napoleonville Louisiana, and she told me to follow my heart and not let anyone shame me for wanting to be close with my soon-to-be husband.

Vhagar trots into the kitchen and begins nudging her massive head against Christabel’s bare knees. “Hi, big girl!” Christabel coos as she pets the blue merle Great Dane, clearly accustomed to this. “Who’s a giant gorgeous girl? You are!”

What did I expect? I knew they were getting married. I knew they were going to sleep together.

Yes, you knew it, but you hadn’t felt it, and now you have.

I can’t do this, you realize. I thought I could but I can’t.

“Christabel?” Alicent is calling like a windchime. “Darling, there are just a few more things we have to discuss before tomorrow, will you come back to the table please?”

“On my way!” Christabel replies obediently, and she gives you a quick, impulsive hug before vanishing.

I’m going to be sick. I’m going to have a heart attack. I’m going to drop dead right in the middle of this fucking kitchen.

Leaving your can of Pepsi forgotten on the countertop, you escape to the living room and then out the French doors into the garden. You run past the pool all the way to the pond full of multicolored fish you once hadn’t known were koi. You drop to your knees, then lie down on the cold cobblestones, and when it hits you again—Aemond touching her, Aemond loving her—you rupture into sobs that are breathless and shuddering. You try to stifle the noise with your palms; you clasp them over your mouth and smother your wails. It feels like you’re being ripped apart; it feels like you’re in labor, but there is no end, no consolation of a new life, no point at which your body chooses whether you live or die. It is only a razored wheel that turns in you again and again and again, shredding muscle and splitting bones.

There is a hand on your shoulder; someone is patting it awkwardly. You look up to see Aegon standing there. “Sorry,” he says. “You look…not good.”

“I’m really not good. I’m fucking terrible.” Your face is soaked and stinging with tears, your voice is strangled.

“Do you want some coke?”

“No, Aegon.”

“Do you want a ride home?”

“From you? Yeah, for sure, getting impaled by a stop sign would be a great next move for me.”

“I’m totally fine to drive.”

“Can you just pull Amir aside without anyone else noticing and tell him to say his goodbyes and then meet me in the driveway, please? He drove me here. I need him to take me home.”

“Okay,” Aegon says, and then: “Thanks for the Cap’n Crunch Treats. Thanks for remembering something I like and caring enough to bring more. No one really does that around here.” And he’s gone before you can think of a reply.

To get to the driveway without going though the house, you climb over a 5-foot wrought iron fence swarmed with rosebushes and ivy, no easy feat in a black Kmart dress and matching ballet flats. You acquire a dozen shallow gashes on your hands and forearms, but make it to the Ford Escort just in time for Amir to meet you under the full, cloudless moon, tossing his car keys from one hand to the other.

“What did—?” Then he sees your face. He gasps, knowing how bad it is. He’s never seen you like this. He didn’t know it was possible for you to look like this. He unlocks the Ford Escort and joins you inside, turning the key in the ignition. “What the fuck did Aemond do to you?!”

“I have to go home. It’s over, it’s over, I can’t do this.”

Amir is spinning out of the driveway. “Did he hurt you, did he—?!”

“He fucked Christabel in Norway,” you say, sobbing uncontrollably. “And I know I have no right to be jealous, I know we don’t have a conventional relationship, I thought I could handle this but I can’t. I can’t stop picturing him with her, and hearing it, and I…I…I don’t understand why this hurts so goddamn bad.”

“Babe,” Amir says gently, a palm on your trembling thigh. “You’re in love with him. That’s why.”

“This is killing me,” you whisper. You’re shaking all over. You feel like you’re battling for every breath.

Your best friend—your only friend—is quiet for a long time. “Don’t go tomorrow,” Amir finally says. “You don’t need to see the wedding. You shouldn’t put yourself through that. I’ll go, I can handle the cake alone, especially if Cadi’s with me to help with carrying plates and stuff.”

You don’t say anything. You stare out the nightscape window and mop tears from your face with McDonald’s napkins you find in Amir’s glovebox.

“Did you hear me? I don’t think you should go to the wedding tomorrow.”

“I won’t,” you agree hoarsely. “I can’t watch them have my wedding.”

“Willis is dropping Cadi off in the morning, right? I’ll pick her and the cake up from your house and bring her back when it’s over. You can tell her whatever you want…you have another cake order to work on, you’re sick, you’re injured, your mom needs a ride to the doctor, whatever.”

“Okay,” you whimper.

“Hey, look at me.”

You do, sniffling, shivering, in agony.

“You don’t deserve this. You deserve better than this.”

I don’t think I do. I think if I did, it would have happened by now. But you know Amir will not accept this answer. “Okay,” you say again, trying to make yourself believe it.

In the gravel driveway of your sinking house, Amir asks if you want him to say. You tell him no, you want to be alone, you have to think, you have to plan. Really, you just don’t want anyone to see you this shattered. It’s humiliating, it’s like you’re an animal, like something less than human needing to licks its wounds in a dark place. You walk into the Fall-Down House and flip on the kitchen light, artificial yellow luminance. You don’t start the air conditioner. You don’t touch the Panasonic boombox. You stand there mindlessly in the sounds of the bayou: cicada screams, owl hoots, the far-away hissing of gators. The wedding cake is in the refrigerator, banana bread, cream cheese frosting, a kaleidoscope of wildflowers painted by Amir’s expert hand. He’s leaving. Aemond’s leaving. Everyone is leaving.

There are tires crunching on gravel in the driveway, there are footsteps on the sloping porch. He is able to yank the door open because you never lock it. He blows in like a storm that kills.

“What the hell happened?!” Aemond shouts. “Why did you leave?! You didn’t even have the decency to say goodbye to me—”

“You took her to Norway.”

Aemond’s face goes from furious to lost. “Why would she tell you that?”

Not That’s not true, not Let me explain, not It didn’t mean anything. Your stomach sinks, a basket full of stones. “Because she thinks I’m her friend.”

“It wasn’t…” Aemond sighs. “It was a last-minute thing, and it was her idea. She really, really wanted to go to Norway, and I figured…you know…what’s the difference between the wedding night and a few weeks before it? So yeah, it happened—”

“Oh God,” you whisper, starting to sob again.

“And then I came home to your house, to your doorstep, because I missed you the entire time. The entire time, every hour, every minute, and there are no exceptions, okay, are you listening to me? I took her to Norway because I had to. I took you and Cadi to Clarence House because I wanted to. What I do with her is a reflex, an obligation, I’m on autopilot, I’m thinking of you to get myself hard, I don’t know how else to express to you how completely different these situation are in every single goddamn way.”

“She said it was good,” you say huskily, tears snaking down your cheeks that are raw from trying to dab them dry.

“Of course it was good for her!” Aemond flings back. “I’ve had a lot of casual sex, I know how to make women come, it’s a math equation, it doesn’t mean we’re soulmates!”

“I know I have no claim to you, but I…” You gaze out the kitchen window, dark and still, nothing to see but stars and lighting bugs. “I can’t do this.”

Aemond asks, kindly now: “What do you want?”

I want to not have to beg you to choose me. “I want this to be over.”

“No,” he says, panicking. “No you don’t.”

“I do.”

“You’re going to give this up as soon as it gets painful? I’m not worth fighting for, what I can do for you and Cadi isn’t worth a little pain? Because I’m no stranger to it either. You think I’m not hurting, you think nothing ever keeps me awake at night?”

“You could leave your prison any time you want to. But instead you built a brand new one around me.”

“You don’t understand what the kind of responsibility I’m beholden to feels like.”

“Yeah, a town named after Napoleon is the right place for you,” you seethe, enraged. “You’ve felt so fucking small your whole life that now you’re starving for what it tastes like to be in control. But I can’t let you destroy me. I can’t let my daughter grow up watching me settle for less than I need from a man. She’ll learn to live the same way.”

“I can’t believe you’re doing this.”

“Aemond,” you say, and you wait until he looks at you. “Do you really want children?”

When he answers, his voice frayed and his right eye misty. “I love Cadi.”

“That’s not what I asked. Do you want children of your own with Christabel?”

“I have to,” he says, miserable.

“No,” you plead. “You cannot have a baby with that girl. You can’t, Aemond. You are going to ruin so many lives, not just your own.”

“I have to,” he says again.

“Then get out. Viserys owns you, and Viserys wouldn’t want you here. He would want you back at the mansion impregnating your child bride.”

“She’s a legal adult, she’s 19, and she wants me, she begs for me, I’m not twisting her arm—”

“Then go!” you roar, striking him hard, both palms to his chest. Aemond doesn’t budge. “Get out, go home, go have kids you won’t give a fuck about just like Viserys never cared about you. Go repeat the cycle all over again. I’m done. I can’t be a part of it.”

“I won’t be like him,” Aemond swears.

“You will be. You already are.” You shove him again, but still, Aemond doesn’t move. You know what he’s waiting for, you know the right word to say. But you can’t get it to launch from your lips; it catches in your throat like a blade through the windpipe. “Get out!”

Your fingers hook into the lapels of his black suit jacket and stay there; you can’t let go. You’re both breathing heavily; you can hear it, you can feel the heat in the air. You keep his jacket gripped in your hands, he can move no closer, no farther away. When he leans into you, you breathe in his smoke and cologne; when his hands cradle your face, you feel the benevolent power that once gave you peace.

I want him. I need him. Not forever, no, I understand that’s not possible. But just for right now.

You look up at him and Aemond kisses you, his lips and tongue claiming you like untouched land; he puts down roots, he slits the jugulars of trespassers.

Here. Now.

You drag him down with you. When you drop to the floor, you strike the back of your skull against the scuffed, sloping wood and bite back a yelp.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Aemond says, though it isn’t his fault; he reaches for your head and cushions it with his right hand. “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.” You’re tearing open his white shirt; tiny translucent buttons go flying in every direction. Your palms glide over his chest, up to his throat, to his jaw, to knot in his hair. He reaches beneath your dress to slide off your panties, then buries his fingers between your legs. You moan helplessly, needfully, spreading your thighs wider for him. No man has ever been able to do this to you before: to make you forget everything, to make you feel—if only for a moment—beloved, worthy, chosen. He’s kissing you like he knows this is the last time. You’re touching the left side of his face and he doesn’t even notice, he won’t realize until later that there was a time when he was cured.

Aemond pulls his wallet out of the pocket of his suit pants, flips it open, and roots through it until he finds a condom. He starts to rip it open, moving with desperate speed, dire impatience.

“No, don’t,” you say. “Please don’t. I want all of you.” And I won’t get another chance.

He exhales in deep, ecstatic relief; he wants it too. You’re soaked, you’re ready, you’re aching for him like mending bones. He eases himself into you, gasping, and you are stunned by how good it feels already, how close you are, every rope of nerves and muscle glimmering with an opening heat that builds higher and higher, the reverse of a tornado finally touching down on earth. His hands are linked with yours and pinned to the floor above your head; he’s kissing you, he’s moaning into you, he thrusts deeper and harder when you beg him to do it.

Aemond untangles one hand from yours and reaches low to stroke you. Your fingers find his again and catch him, capture him, bring his hand back to the floor where it can be entwined with yours and his weight can hold it to the scraped wood. “I don’t need it, I’m close. Stay here. Stay with me.”

“I’m here,” he whispers, panting; and the friction of his body against yours overtakes you, and when you come it is blinding, bone-breaking, a whirlpool that traps you for what feels like over a minute, soaring highs punctuated by the illusion of fading over and over again until you think you can’t stand it, and only then does it end, Aemond collapsing on the floor beside you covered in your sweat and your wetness, you feeling the remnants of him bleeding down your bare thighs.

You drag yourself upright—muscles sore in your belly and back and thighs—and roll onto your knees so you can stagger to your feet. You tug on your panties so he doesn’t drip out of you onto the floor. Then you straighten the skirt of your black dress, turn on the little pink Panasonic boombox—it’s a U2 song, Where The Streets Have No Name—and begin washing a muffin tin that was left in the sink.

Aemond stands up and runs a hand through his hair, getting his bearings. He looks down at his pants and fixes his zipper and belt. He tries to close his shirt and then remembers you tore off the buttons. They lie scattered across the floor, useless.

As you scrub the muffin tin, you hear Aemond’s footsteps behind you. His palms begin at the small of your back and then skate around your waist to encircle you.

“Stop,” you tell him; and immediately his hands fall away. Aemond waits for you to say more, but you don’t. You don’t even look at him.

He walks to where the kitchen becomes the living room—you can tell by the creaks in the floor—and again, he waits. After a while he says: “I’ll call you when the new house is ready.”

“No. Have Criston handle it. I don’t ever want to talk to you again.”

“You get that I’m in love with you, right?” Aemond forces out, and when at last you turn to him there is the metallic glistening of tears on his right cheek. “I never feel this way about anyone. I don’t know how to handle it, I didn’t even know it was possible. But it’s true.”

“It’s not enough,” you say simply, and resume scrubbing the muffin tin.

He waits in silence, thirty seconds, a minute, two minutes. Then the door opens and shuts—like the jaws of a beast—and he’s gone.

[littleracha]

Hello! I was wondering if you could write about baking with Felix! A full day of baking brownies, cookies, cupcakes, and any other sweet treats! 🍪🧁🍩🍰 After everything is done baking, all the boys get together to watch cartoons and enjoy the sweet treats <3

You don't have to do it, of course, but I would love it if you did! :)

I love this idea, little duckie! Felix is one of my favorite CGs and baking is also my favorite thing to do!

Felix was nervous, to say the least. He told the other boys about your regression a while back and while they all were very supportive and understanding, none of them have met little you. The closest they ever came was Chan calling Felix while you were playing with your blocks next to him. Chan chuckled and cooed at you through the phone after hearing a tiny 'Uh Oh' when your tower fell over. Besides that, however, they only knew big you. It wasn't that Felix was embarrassed, far from that actually. He was just very protective of you.

"Mama" a tiny voice knocked him back to reality. There you stood in your Bbokkari footie pajamas holding your quokka plushie. He smiled down at you.

"Hello little cupcake, sleep well?" he swooped you up into his arms and you giggled wildly. He loved that sound.

"Mommy! I hav idea!" you exclamied.

"And what is my precious little cookie's idea hmm?" Felix nuzzled into your hair and breathed in your scented shampoo. You always could calm his nerves, even without trying to.

"Brownies! for tonite! Have brownies wif uncles!" he loved the way you called the other members your uncles. You were so comfortable around them already and they aren't even there yet.

"I think that is a wonderful idea sweetie pie, let's get ready!" With that, you two were dressed in matching aprons. Felix did most of the actual baking, like cutting the chocolate bars and using heavy equipment. You however got to be his little assistant. When he needed sugar. You got it! If he needed someone to watch the batter? Your eyes were glued to the bowl. Need someone to taste test the batter? Who is better than the little sous chef?

He also got multiple photos now stored on his phone with you covered in sugar, flour, and chocolate batter.

Once the brownies were in the oven Felix let you set the timer. He used it as a moment to teach you. Lifting you up to reach the timer on the stovetop, Felix explained to you how numbers and time worked. You smiled and nodded even though you really didn't understand, you just liked pressing the buttons.

While the brownies were baking Felix whisked you off for a bath and to get ready for the boys. He dressed you in a slightly oversized sweater and some cute pants to match. He made sure to do your hair just the way you like it and even let you put on some lipgloss!

The boys arrived one by one and Felix was very impressed with how brave you were being. You greeted each one of them with a big hug and an adorable variation of their names. However, once Channie, Minnie, Binnie, Jinnie, Sungie, Minmin, and Innie were all together you began to feel nervous. Slowly you sneaked behind your mama and held onto him, hoping he would take the lead. Felix chuckled a bit and lead you to the couch, right in between Chan and Han.

"Hello little bunny," Han said in a gentle voice, honestly everyone was surprised by how quiet he could be.

"Hi Sungie" You answered back softly, bringing a smile to everyones face.

"I think I smell some brownies. Do you guys smell those?" Han asked the group, prompting a group reaction.

"They smell delicious, did you make them little one?" Asked Jeongin who was now sitting on the floor in front of you.

"Mhm! Mama and I made them! They are for the movie!" everyone died at how adorable you were.

"Well if watching a movie means brownies, then let's get this movie started!" Changbin boomed.

Felix turned on Ponyo while Seungmin and Hyunjin helped pass out brownies to everyone. You smiled and giggled as everyone went on about how amazing they were. Minho even said they were better than Felix's!

Once the excitement of sweets died down and the movie played Felix felt you snuggle up deeper into his chest. He leaned down and kissed your head.

"I love you, my little sweetie"

[oceanlue]

If you are okay with if of course but coul you write abt the listener being obsessed with the yv boys ass? Like all the time they have thier hand on thier butt or thay give it a good smack at times (there is obvs consent)

⚠️ this contains hot man's @$$

DAT @$$ 🍑😏💗

💗Alphonse🧁🍭

Now this man has a fine @$$

Whenever you're close to one another you and him never have your hands off each other's rear end

YouTube really like each other's ass that you can't keep your eyes it

Anytime when you're laying down on the bed and he's lying down on top of you you just slide your hand down his back and to grab a piece of that cake

"Boo I know that my ass is fine and that nothing can compare to it but I think that's enough for you to hold maybe if you're good tonight, my little boo can hold more than what you're holding right now"

But on occasionally when you're in a hurry or something you leave a light smack while giving him a kiss on the cheek

Him be blushy

🧡Seth🏕🍂

I mean who wouldn't want to smack that cake

He may look all delicious in the front but in the back he's holding dessert that you want to gouge on

I swear to God not one moment is where your hands are on his cake that even he notices and teases you about it that you like his cake too much

And you have no shame in it

"Now sugar, I know that you can't keep your eyes nor your hands off my cake but if you keep on doing that. I'm going to have to insert some manners into you and maybe give you a little smack or two just to make sure you behave"

...........

You still smack his cake once in awhile because you love to see it jiggle like jello

💚Finn🪴🌻

He's got a soft cake in the behind

Every time when you hug him from the front you give him a little squeeze from the back even the little noises he makes is adorable

You don't really smack his cake but you give it a light little tap whenever you pass them in the kitchen

No matter how many times you do it it's freaking enjoyable to watch him blush and get all shy about it hehehehhehe

"Ah~ o-orchid I...I know that my behind is....soft in your o-opinion...but please refrain from doing that while I'm in the kitchen and even when I'm near the stove >///////<"

He's a cutie pie and we all love him even his soft cake that he hides in the back

❤Auron☕⌚

With things like work to hold you back from touching that sweet sweet cake that he has you are limited to when you can and can't do it and you don't want to get him embarrassed

He knows that you stare at him when he walks away

And he knows you want to hold his cake

So he teases you a little bit

Sometimes gives it a little wiggle even if he embarrassed himself maybe bends down to pick something up well you just have to watch like that rule you can look but not touch

"Now rookie, looking at your boss's behind there's a little interesting don't you think I know you've been watching me a little too much in your case I just hope my behind doesn't distract you from your work my little pet maybe one day you can try to touch it but until that be a good little pet finish your work for me will you"

But you did get a good light tap at his ass one time

Most likely when he was just making a sandwich for himself at lunch time at home in his condo

You woke up from a nap gave him a light tap on the ass and made yourself some cereal even he was stunned of what you just did but you were too tired to care

When he walked away from you after he gave you a report to do you just stared at him well you just stared at his cake

" I hate seeing you leave but I love watching you go"

He heard it and blush then quickly went back to his office to scream at his hands because he was embarrassed but you won't know that no one will ever know

----------

Hope you like this

Peace out

💙💙💙

[angelicflirt]

pretty pink princess morning pampering routine

good morning lovelies! taking good care of your mind + body after getting your beauty sleep is such an important part to having the perfect day ʚ₍ᐢ. .ᐢ₎ɞ this is my recipe for a flawless, energized, angelic morning- feel free to take inspiration from whatever you like and leave what you don’t!

first thing after waking up, i love to open up the curtains to let the morning sunlight into my room 💭 bonus points if you wake up early enough to see the sunrise!

after sitting in the sunlight for a little bit, it’s time to use the bathroom + brush my teeth- i use a pink quip brand toothbrush and it’s honestly the best i’ve ever used ^_^ i like to use a bubblegum mouthwash as well! 💅🏻

to awaken + energize my body, i try to take time to do yoga and a bit of exercise every morning. [pro-tip: keep your yoga mat rolled out so you’re motivated and ready to hop right on in the morning 🎀]

a nice, warm shower feels soooo good after a workout <3 i wash my hair w the sweetest strawberry shampoo, deep condition, + use a frosted cupcake body wash bc i luv to smell like a bakery 🧁 i like to shave as well but that’s totally optional! i follow up w vanilla cashmere lotion + pink sugar body spray to keep me smelling like an angel princess 👛🕯

while i wait for my hair to dry to do makeup + get dressed, i take a minute to write down a few things i’m grateful for and a list of goals for the day to keep me happy and on track 🖇🗒

next up is my face! if you haven’t tried gua sha, i would absolutely recommend it- the results come so quickly + it’s such a relaxing process 💗 i use a rose quartz stone + rose/hyalauronic oil from pacifica :) i also do my skincare at this time, which includes a micellar water rinse, oil cleanse, astringent application, and moisturizer.

for makeup, my go-to is glittery pink eyeshadow, eyeliner, big fluttery kiss lashes, lip gloss, contour, + highlight. all the pretty girl essentials!

i hope this helps, angels! have a lovely day!

[alohastyles-x]

Happy Birthday to me! 🫶🏼

What’s my age again? nobody likes you when you’re 23!

It’s my birthday weekend, and I wanted to celebrate with all of you!!🫶🏼☺️ join me in my birthday celebration by choosing one of the following and sending it into my asks!

The celebration will be running all weekend (09/23-09/25), so you can send in as many asks as you want!💗

🧁 Cake Batter

Get to know me and/or my blog! | ask me any questions you want, and if you need inspo, here is a good list of things to ask!

💗 Pink Sugar

Cast Your Mutuals As … | choose what you want me to cast my moots as! 🫶🏼

☕️ Pumpkin Spice

Ship me! | send in a brief description of you (unless you’re a moot), and a character from either (or both) universes from below to be shipped with! | OR you can ship me with someone if you want / feel inspired to!

Universes: MCU (cinematic) | Stranger Things

🌿 Mint Chocolate

Meet Cute AU | send in a character and an AU concept, and I’ll write you a short meet cute! You can add in a trope as well if you want.* | OR you can write me a meet cute if you’re a moot or just feeling generous 🫶🏼🥺

* this will be a super short fic, nothing long!

🍋 Raspberry Lemon

Self Promote / Fic Recs | you can either send in a fic you write that you think I would like | OR you can ask for a fic rec- just send in a character and trope/AU and I’ll let you know if I have something!

🥕 Carrot Cake

Praise Kink | *moots only* lemme give you some praise, you deserve it! | OR if you’re feeling generous you can also feed my praise kink🥰

Posting today (09/22) but will be answering asks beginning tomorrow (09/23)- my actual birthday!