Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

February 14, 2024

On Valentine's day, your blind date stood you up and the entire restaurant knew about it.

Couples on every table glanced at you in pity at least once. The elderly couple on the next table were definitely whispering about you. Their eyes kept shifting in your direction as they (and you) cut into the sixth course of the Valentine's special menu, wagyu beef ribeye.

You decided enough is enough. You picked up your glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and turned to them. Your eyes met the gentleman's deep blue ones, who flinched as if he'd been pinched. He ducked his head, his eyes intently on his steak. His wife hid her surprise better and returned your smile. Both had heads full of gray hair, his big head entirely white, while hers still had strands of pitch black.

“Happy Valentine's day,” you said genuinely.

The woman's shock melted into sweet kindness that came with age, unlike your hapless Mama who had it since birth and bestowed it often on the most undeserving person.

“Happy Valentine's day, my dear.” The lady hesitated. “Has your date…”

“Chickened out? Yeah.” You took a sip of the deliciously expensive wine. This was not your type of restaurant. Too expensive and luxurious. You didn't own clothes that fit the dress code this kind of place demanded. You did splurge almost a hundred pounds on a red velvet dress from a British website that you ordered two weeks ago. The dress got lost in the shipping due to an employee's carelessness and there was no refund. So, you ended up with a white silk maxi dress with a slit up your left thigh. Your best friend/roommate/ex-girlfriend, Etaf, lent it to you out of pity.

You were tired of pity.

So, you smiled brightly at the elderly lady on the next table and nodded. “His loss, my gain.”

She raised a brow.

“I'm the one enjoying such a decadent Valentine's dinner with such lovely company,” and here you tilted your wine glass at the couple, whose smiles deepened at your compliment, “while he's probably moping around in his apartment or got stuck in traffic.” You shrugged and picked up your cutlery.

“I like your attitude, my dear,” the gentleman said.

“And I love that gorgeous bracelet on your lovely wife's wrist.” You meant it. The deep purple amethyst-studded manacle must've cost at least the annual rent of your apartment, your roommates' shares included.

The lady fondly caressed her Algerian love knot silver bracelet. No trace of haughty pride in her gesture. “His first gift after he proposed to me in this very restaurant. In fact, we had our first ever date here.”

You tried to remember when this restaurant opened. Around 2005, as far as your memory served, reading from their website’s About section. The couple looked to be in their seventies. Maybe they married late?

“Oh no, we met in our late twenties and got married almost a decade later,” the lady said. Her eyes landed on her husband's, who puffed up his chest and told you how he starved himself during lunchtime with one meager sandwich to be able to save money for the bracelet meant for his sweetest ladylove.

Instantly, your view of the couple softened. They might be rich now but they weren't so when they were younger.“How many years, sir, ma'am?” you asked.

The man grinned. “Two more years until our golden jubilee.”

You congratulated them.

“Someday, I pray you too will be in my place with your significant other,” his wife said. She also complimented your dress. After you thanked her and didn't mention it was a borrow, she smiled at you like a proud mother. “White is your color.”

You made more small talk with the lovebirds over your steaks. Once the plates were cleared, you excused yourself for a trip to the washroom.

The bathroom was co-ed. You twisted the knob and entered. Your first impression was one word:

Dick.

A blond man stood by the sink, his pants and boxers bunched around his ankles, holding up a woman in a red dress on the counter. Her eyes met yours. She squealed and hid her face in the crook of the man's neck, who must've mistook it as a gesture of affection and kissed her tilted neck. His body continued its work on the woman, whose left ring finger sported two rings while the man's finger wore none.

You were speechless for one, two, three seconds and you counted on until you hit the fifteen-second mark and cleared your throat. But the man paid no mind to you.

“What the actual fucking hell?!” you said.

He lifted his head without stopping his movement. His blue eyes met yours in the mirror. He lifted his head without stopping his movement. His blue eyes met yours in the mirror.

He squinted and said, “Konīr iksā, ñuha jorrāelagon. Īlen jurnegēre mirre toliot syt ao.” (“There you are, my love. I was looking all over for you.”)

“Are you fucking serious? And in a co-ed bathroom?” You clenched your fists.

The woman finally lifted her head and apologized. The man shut her up by kissing her sloppily, all tongue and drool. You could tell he did it to piss you off.

You groaned and stalked off toward one of the three stalls. You slammed the door behind you and heard a snort and a giggle, the latter undoubtedly from the woman. Her giggle then turned into a sultry moan and you could hear the loud slap of flesh against naked flesh. You wished you'd brought your noise-canceling headphones tonight. You tried to drown out the gross sounds beyond your stall's door, which mercifully almost touched the floor, and did what you came here to do.

The man outside said something. You knew it was him considering how deep yet sweet his voice was. Had he not been such a fuckboy, you'd consider him handsome. But his fuckboy attitude pissed you off. You flushed the toilet and came out.

You stubbornly ignored the couple coupling by the sink, with a stack of napkins next to them on the floor, and chose the farthest tap to wash your hands. You felt an intense stare on your profile.

It was him, you could tell judging by the sharp intensity he gave off. “What?” you barked at him without lifting your head or looking at him.

“Ao jurnegon sīr olvie hae zirȳla,” he said. (“You look so much like her.”)

“What?” You couldn't help it this time. You looked up into his eyes and almost shivered from how intense both his eye color and the gaze were.

Slowly, the intensity in them melted away, like ink in a sea, and he smirked mischievously. “Gaomagon ao jaelagon naejot sagon hembar? Ao kostagon gūrogon zȳhon dīnagon. Kessa daor vēdros ziry.” (“Do you want to be next? You can take her place. She will not hate it.”)

He definitely wasn't an American, that was for sure. Probably Slavic or Scandinavian. You didn't care. You looked away, wiped your hands dry, and walked away.

“Skoros nykeā sȳz gundja!” he shouted after you, followed by a raucous laugh. (“What a fine ass!”)

You slammed the door behind you and returned to your table. Your stomping must've alerted the elderly lovebirds, as they ceased their talk and looked warily at you.

“Is everything all right, my dear?” the man asked.

You pressed your lips, clenched your fists, and squeezed your eyes shut. Here you were, stood-up on your blind date on Valentine's day. You weren't very heartbroken over that. In your ten years of dating, you'd gotten stood up nine times by now, some of them were even on third dates. It was fine. You had not only grown skin as thick as a rhinoceros, you had also armored yourself with a shell as solid as a Galapagos giant tortoise with quills as sharp as porcupines. You didn't let these failed efforts to gain love hurt you for too long. One of your exes had already built you up for that. No, what broke your composure tonight was how lascivious the fuckboy from the bathroom was to you. You didn't know what he said, but the tone was clear. Flirtatious, as flippantly flirtatious as men were to strippers. As the unwanted child of another fuckboy, this kind of behavior had the power to decimate your armor. Of all days to be on the receiving end of such behavior.

Finally, you opened your eyes, gulped down the screams crawling up your esophagus, and smiled at the couple. “Nothing, just witnessed something awful in the bathroom.”

“Oh my.”

“Oh, my dessert is here.” You focused on the pavlova. It was scrumptious, but you couldn't shake off the disgust that had latched onto you like jellyfish on unsuspecting legs. You quickly finished your dessert, paid your bill (almost $400 including the vat and gratuity, goodbye to a cab ride home), and asked your server for the manager. When the man came, you politely told him what you witnessed in the bathroom. At once, the man's face paled. The lovebirds next table ceased their fretting over their ice cream. The rest of the restaurant followed their suit.

“Are you sure, ma'am?” the manager asked.

You nodded determinedly. “The man also verbally harassed me. Please, do something exemplary so that this kind of uncivil incident doesn't repeat.” The “or else” part hung over you all like cumulonimbus clouds. The manager gave you his words. A few minutes after he left, you gathered your purse and coat, and left. You'd love to see the manager kicking that odious fuckboy out of the restaurant, but you didn't want to linger. Men can be vindictive and petty. Levy Everett was a glorious example, who stalked you after you got the abortion. No, you'd prioritize your safety over your desire. Once outside, you decided to take a lazy stroll to clear your head.

Your mind went to your girlfriends, Etaf and Mabel. They’d ask about your date. And you’d tell them the truth. You couldn’t hide from them. They knew all your dark secrets, even about your overly-kind mother, your dead father, and all the dating dramas. Etaf and Mabel were the sweetness to your fiery personality. It had been two and a half months since they officially became a couple, one of them your ex, the other your most recent crush. You planned to move out of your one-bedroom apartment but finding a good, affordable place to stay in New York was harder than finding a needle in a haystack. Still, you looked around, just to not sleep with your noise-canceling headphones on the nights your sweet, sweet girlfriends decided to take a tumble. Most of all, you wanted to not have to sleep on your one-seat sofa-bed from Ikea. You never had your own room, let alone your own apartment. The catering business you, Mabel, and Etaf ran, Mabel Taffy, alongside your assistant editorial position at a yellow-page-esque website weren’t anything that paid a lot. Sure, you worked from home and so, you didn’t have to commute every day for work. Nevertheless, it was tiresome to always worry about money. If only your father set you up with a trust fund like he did for your mama before he died. Your mother was the one he loved. You were just his posthumous baggage that your mother kept because her faith prohibited abortion. Didn’t her religion also tell her not to fornicate? And yet…

It was almost ten. Your phone rang. Thinking it must be one of your girlfriends, probably Mabel, you answered without checking the caller ID.

“Sooooo? How did it go?”

Fuck, it was your mama. She had conspired with your grandmother, your father's supercilious mother, to set you up on a blind date on Valentine's day of all days. You gnawed on your lip for a few seconds before you told her the truth.

“I got stood up.”

“Oh no!” As always, she pitied you. You rolled your eyes as you paused in front of The Halal Guys. Etaf always praised their baklava. You decided to get a slice for yourself. Even after your pavlova, you craved more sweetness.

“Mama, I gotta go. I'm heading to the subway station,” you said.

“Which one?”

“The one on the seventh avenue, where else?”

“Are you far?”

You frowned as you joined the small queue before one of the two The Halal Guys trucks. “Why do you ask?”

“Just worried, honey. It's so late and you're all alone…”

“I can take care of myself…”

“So, you're there now?”

“Not yet. Just getting some baklava.”

Your mama ended the call after some more small talk. You placed your order. It took about ten minutes to serve and ten more for you to demolish your slice. Then, off you went for the subway.

You were halfway down the stairs to the upper platform when you heard a muffled groan, followed by a loud thump. You slowed down but didn't stop. In an instant, you unzipped your purse and brought out two things made of metal. Armed and ready, you hurried down the stairs—well, as much as your heels allowed. You stopped two steps above the platform just as four pairs of eyes turned to you. One pair was swollen and black, most likely from punches. The other three, belonging to three beefy white men, scowled at you.

You brandished your weapons. “Take your pick, boys. Mace to your eyeballs or bullets to your dickballs.”

They dropped their victim, not on the platform but on the tracks. You screamed, “No!” But it was too late. They scampered off in the opposite direction. You ran down the stairs, put away your pepper spray but kept the gun in your hand. At the edge, you glanced down. Sure enough, the man lay crumpled on the tracks.

You looked around. The station was deserted. It was almost eleven. You brought out your phone and checked when the next train would arrive. Fifteen minutes. You got to work. Gun back to your purse, and the purse and your heels on a bench nearby, you climbed down the ladder to the tracks. You reached the unconscious man, who had landed on his stomach, and turned him on his back.

“Fucking hell! Of all people, it had to be you!” you muttered.

The fuckboy from the restaurant had one eye swollen shut. The other's lid almost touched his cheek. He grinned and hissed, his lips cut. “Hello to you too, gevie.” (“Beauty.”)

“What?” you barked, irritated beyond belief. What kind of shitty karma did you have to run into the same pathetic man not once but twice within an hour?

“Nyke jiōraton ao!” He clung to your arm but didn't get up. (“I got you!”)

“Seriously! Come on, get up! I've already seen your dick tonight. I don't wanna see anything more from inside you.” You tried to both get up yourself and pull him along. You almost dislocated his shoulder in the process. Yet, no progress. “What is the matter with you? Do you want to die?”

“Kessa!” He giggled. (“Yes!”)

“Speak English!”

“Daor!” (“No!”)

You peeked over the platform like a fucking meerkat over it's burrow. Nobody else was here. You checked your phone. Google map said twelve minutes until the next train.

You knelt by his head and went with a gentle approach. “Okay, clearly we got off on the wrong foot. What's your name?” You offered him yours. He blinked stupidly like an infant. “Why do you wanna die so badly?” You tried to yank him to his feet.

“Nyke jorrāelatan zirȳla,” he replied with a pout and tears down his cheeks. Crap, he must be suicidal. (“I loved her.”)

You lifted his head and placed it on your lap. “Look, you have issues. I understand. You want to die. So do I, sometimes. But don't die tonight, okay? Die... Tomorrow or some other day.”

“Skoro syt?” (“Why?”)

The questioning tone in his words made you assume he probably asked why. “I have had enough deaths in my life. I don't want to add you to that list.”

“How many?”

You barked out a laugh. “Hallelujah, you can speak English.”

“How many?” he repeated.

With a sigh, you held up four fingers. His one open eye widened as much as it could, then he nodded. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.” He tried to push himself up. Not much progress but better than nothing. You grabbed both his hands, his soft and definitely manicured hands, laced your fingers with his sticky ones (you didn't want to know why they were sticky), and pulled him to a sitting position. As soon as he stood on his feet, he wobbled. You rushed to his side and hugged him to yourself. He almost gave up his entire weight on you.

You shoved him to the ladder, and lifted and placed each of his hands and legs on the rungs. Your back protested. But you couldn't focus on that. You had five minutes until the train. If he didn't move his soft fuckboy ass, you'd be the one whose insides painted the tracks.

“Come on, man, hurry up or I'll die on Valentine's day.” You shoved at his ass. He had some nice ass and you were an ass girl. Too bad he was a drunk, stinky fuckboy.

He finally crumpled on the platform, right in front of the patch before the ladder. You didn't care. You could almost hear the train coming. You clambered up and stepped over him. You had never let your skin touch the dirty platform in your life, until tonight. With Etaf's pearly white dress, your night went extra crappy. Fuck this shit!

You grabbed the fuckboy's soft, sticky hands and dragged him like a sack of potatoes to the bench. You put away your purse, put on your heels, then shoved his upper torso to rest against the bench.

“I can't put you on it,” you said between gasping for breaths. He went to shrug and it made him slip down the bench. His head thudded on the platform but he was too busy laughing at you.

“Jurnegon rȳ nyke. Ānogar hen Valyria. Ānogar hen zaldrīzes.” He cackled as if he had cracked the funniest joke in the world. (“Look at me. Blood of Valyria. Blood of the dragon.”)

You rolled your eyes and pulled out your phone. “I'm calling 9-1-1. We gotta get you to the hospital.”

At once, all his pathetic jokes vanished. He hissed as he sat up and snatched your phone. When you protested, he grabbed your hand and, with surprising strength, pulled you closer. “No cops. No hospital. Take me home.”

“What?” You tried to get your phone back but he unzipped his pants and dangled it before his junk.

“You saw what I did in the bathroom. I'll fucking put your phone inside my boxers.”

“You fucking jerk!” You tried again to rescue your phone but in vain. All the strength you thought he lost from the beating came back as if in vengeance. He almost shoved you a foot away.

“I'm serious. I can't be seen by a cop or a doctor.”

“Why not? Are you Jeffrey Dahmer or something?”

“Close enough.”

That shut you up. “You're a serial killer?”

He snorted. “A wanted man. I can't be located by the authorities. Please.” His one open blue eye met yours in pleading. “You did so much for me already. Thank you for that. But please, don't notify the cops.”

“Give me one good reason,” you said stubbornly.

He sighed. “I ran away from home.”

“You're not a minor.”

“I know, Einstein. My family is very powerful. I don't wanna do what they want me to do. I gotta stay away from their radar.”

“What, are they the mafia or something?”

“You can say that.” He finally offered you your phone. “Please, dōnītsos. Don't call the cops.” (“sweetling”)

“Okay, I won't but I gotta take you to a hospital. You might have a concussion.”

“This is nothing,” he said with a self-deprecating chuckle. “My grandsire gave me much worse and I was fourteen back then.”

You flinched and he noticed it. He fell quiet. He took your hand and placed your phone on it. “I'll be fine.”

“You might go into a coma…”

“All the more reason I shouldn't see a doctor.”

You gulped down the lump slowly forming in your throat. Before this moment, you thought he was just a fuckboy. Now, he was a suicidal fuckboy, the sort who sought sex and alcohol to forget their pain, or the lack thereof. You took back your phone, ignoring the sticky film on its back, and asked if there was anybody you could call.

“I have nobody.” He didn't add, “I can trust” but you heard it anyway. When you asked for his emergency contact, he chuckled as if it were a joke.

“I have no person,” he told you soberly, even though you could smell the alcohol in his breath now that you sat closer.

“Where do you live? Anybody there I can call?”

“I live alone.”

You finally got his address from him. Gramercy park. He was a rich fuckboy, as you suspected. A rich, suicidal, lonely fuckboy. When the train came, you didn't board it. You gave him your purse to hold and helped him up the stairs. At the fifth avenue/53rd street station, two blocks away from the one where you found him, you boarded the E train to Gramercy park. Your soles throbbed in your heels. Your back and arms screamed from having to lug him back and forth. But the worst thing happened when you entered the train and the sad fuckboy groaned.

“What?” You feared he might've broken a rib or cracked his skull. Instead, he jolted forward and threw up. His contents landed right on top of an old man's wig. Just when the man took it off with trembling hands, the fuckboy landed another projectile on the man's bald head.

“Fuck me to hell and back,” you muttered.

The fuckboy under your arm giggled. “Why didn't you just ask me, dōnītsos?”

You shoved him to an empty bench and fetched from your purse a small pack of tissues for the old man, who screamed blood at you, even though he saw you weren't the culprit.

The fuckboy giggled on his bench, half his body on the verge of slipping from the bench. He was about to fall when you ran to his side and lifted his falling head onto your lap. The old man scoffed and busied himself with the tissues.

“Kirimvose, dōnītsos,” the fuckboy muttered and pressed his face into your crotch. “Kessa mazemā zirȳla dīnagon? Ao jurnegon sīr olvie hae zirȳla.” (“Thank you, sweetling.” “Will you take her place? You look so much like her.”)

The same jargon as before. You were certain now he was no American, nor was he British, Canadian, or Australian. Basically, not from any English-speaking countries. Since he was pale as fuck, with snow white hair and blue eyes, he was most likely European. Maybe Russian, Scandinavian, or Slavic?

You texted your girlfriends that you'd be home late tonight and not to wait up for you. At the Lexington avenue/51st street station, you woke him up, dragged him out of the train, up the stairs, down three blocks to the Brooklyn bridge city hall station. This time, the fuckboy didn't puke on anyone. But he pressed his face again to your crotch and wrapped his arms around your hips. “Jaelan ñuha muña,” he said. (“I want my mother.”)

This train ride was longer. So, you checked his pants pockets. His wallet was empty, as expected, no money or credit card. You only found his social security card.

“Gregory A. Teanan,” you finally learned his name.

“Egg…” he muttered to your crotch, sending a weird shock down your body. You squirmed and his hold around you tightened.

When you reached Gramercy park, lugging the fuckboy with you, you sat him on the sidewalk outside the private park, leaned him against the boundary wall, and gently slapped his cheeks. “Wake up! What's your address?”

He groaned and slowly opened his one functioning eye. “Muña?” (“Mommy?”)

“Huh?”

He coughed and dry heaved on the sidewalk. You patted his back, in case he puked again. He didn't, so that was a relief. This was one of the most posh areas in Manhattan. You didn't want to risk getting caught in such a humiliating scene.

“Who's there?” someone shouted from across the street.

You spoke too soon.

A beam of flashlight fell on your face. You shielded your eyes and the light shifted toward the fuckboy.

“Mr. Teanan!” Footsteps sounded as he hurried toward you from across the street. A man in a uniform. A doorman, most likely. He blinked at you, as if he couldn’t believe you were here.

“You know him?” you asked.

“He's one of the residents of this building,” He pointed at the one behind him.

You told him what happened, except for what he did in the restaurant, making it sound like you met him first at the subway. He helped you pull the fuckboy to his feet, which dragged behind him as you crossed the street to his residence. You almost slowed down to gawk at the opulent entrance. Inside the elevator, the doorman asked if you'd called 911. You told him the fuckboy didn't want you to. You didn't tell the doorman why. When you couldn't find the apartment keys inside the fuckboy's pockets, the doorman left you two slumped against the wall next to the front door to fetch the super. After you finally, fucking finally, got inside and laid the troublesome blondie on his California king-size bed, the super turned to you and thanked you. After a beat of silence, he said, “Do you know what Gramercy means?”

You shook your head, busy dialing Etaf's number. Your girlfriends must be worried sick.

“It's archaic English. Means many thanks.”

Before you could reply, Etaf answered your call. You told her you were fine and would be back soon. “I'll be home long before Eight o'clock with Eggs and Etaf starts. I've never missed your show now, have I?” Reassured, Etaf gave her phone to Mabel, who had been anxiously awaiting your return.

The fuckboy apparently had his personal doctor, his next-door neighbor, Dr. Samantha Tarly. The woman was gorgeous with her caramel brown hair and full lips. At the sight of the fuckboy's beaten face, her eyebrows (as trimmed as the fuckboy's own) knitted a frown.

“Cousin, what the hell happened?” She sat beside the bed. The building's super handed over her personal kit. Dr. Tarly immediately got to treating her cousin.

He muttered something in that jargon tongue. So, you told her what happened to him on the subway, to which Dr. Tarly frowned some more.

“He hates public transportation.” She shook her head and asked her cousin, “Headache?”

“A little,” he said in a raspy tone. You missed his soft, deep voice. You shook your head. No, no, you didn't.

“Sleepy?”

“Duh.”

“Nausea?”

His giggle confused his cousin. You told her what happened at the subway. Dr. Tarly's face showed nothing as she pulled open his eyelids (to which he hissed) to check his pupils, asked him how many fingers she was holding while holding none (he said eleven), and prescribed him some Tylenol for the headache. “In the morning, I'll take you for a scan. Someone needs to stay with him through the night to not let him sleep for long.” She glanced at you, the super, and the doorman.

“I gotta work super early tomorrow,” the super said.

“I gotta work right now!” the doorman cried.

Dr. Tarly turned to you and you could never say no to such a beautiful woman. “Please,” she requested. “I know you don't have any obligation to him, to us, but I have six kids to get ready for school tomorrow on top of my shifts. I can't stay with him. And you don't have to do too much, just wake him up once every hour and ask him trivial stuff, like about his hobby. Please?”

You could only mutter one thing to that.

“Fuck me to hell and back.”

“Aōha jaelagon iksis issa udrāzma, jorrāelagon,” replied the fuckboy before he finally passed out. (“Your wish is my command, love.”)

Chapter Text

Leap Day, 2024

Out of all your exes so far, you loved Etaf the most. Other than your mama, she was the only constant in your life. She'd been your next-door neighbor at Roosevelt Island, your lab partner in high school, your date to the prom, and now, your roommate at your Shore Boulevard apartment, and your colleague at Mabel Taffy.

You couldn't remember a time when you hadn't been in love with her. She was the ice to your fire, the levelheaded one in your trio who restrained you every time some pervert catcalled any of you three and your fingers wrapped around the Glock inside your purse. Her quiet voice that greeted the listeners of her show, “Eight o'clock with Eggs and Etaf”, every morning was the ultimate failsafe cure-all for your panic attacks. There was something serene about her voice that defused every single meltdown beeping inside your head and threatening to detonate. You could never start your morning without tuning in for her show. It'd become a habit since she finally got her own show five years after graduating from the Kingsborough Community College with you and Mabel and working at the station. You were partners back then, while Mabel was the third wheel, until you broke up, and two and a half years later, a day after last year's Thanksgiving, you came home to find Mabel, your crush at the time, and Etaf, your ex, doing stuff under the blanket you three used to share for cozy movie nights in.

That night, you cried yourself to sleep but gave them your blessing the next morning. You finally let Etaf go. You sold your single bed to move out of the one bedroom and bought an Ikea sofa bed with a portion of the money to move into the living room, to spare your heart from more pain and give the new lovebirds some space. You made peace with the truth: it'd never work out between you and Etaf again.

Too long, didn't read: you were still pining for Etaf and right now, you needed to hear her voice more than ever. Because...

Because you had almost shot your friend-with-benefit, Caleb Beasley, between his legs after you found your nudes in his phone, nudes you took but never sent to anyone. Not only that, he was offering to sell them to some incel on the internet. How did you know he planned to do it? He sent a picture of your face to the potential buyer first. The person on the other side was yet to make a decision. You had not only deleted all your photos, you chose the factory reset option, then boiled his phone for an hour for extra measure. When he caught you hammering down on the wet phone, he screamed blood and you brandished your Glock without Etaf there to hold you back.

At the moment, you waited at a crosswalk at Ocean Avenue, waiting for the green light to turn red. You had walked from Caleb's apartment in Flatbush on foot, your on-and-off arrangement with him over forever.

Etaf came on air, where she discussed what was so special about today (“Leap day, hurray!”), the weather forecast (“A tad cold and cloudy but nothing us New Yorkers can't weather with some delicious sunny-side-up!”), held brief interviews with her guest(s) (today, it was two pairs of twins, each with a leaper sibling born on Leap day but celebrated on the non-leaper twin's birthday, either the 28th of February or the first of March), and lastly, the listeners' participation.

After the interview, Etaf began to receive calls. The seventh caller was a man whose deep, soft voice clashed with the question he asked right off the bat.

“How the fuck do you cure a hangover? Seven hells, my head is splitting down in the middle like a tree struck down by lightning.”
Your best friend laughed. “Well, Nate from Manhattan, you're in luck because I know just what you need.”

“Oh yeah? What's that?”

“First, go and raid your fridge. What do you have?”

Silence from his side for some time, before he was back. “Some Bud Light, Corona, and Svedka. Obviously, no help. I can raid my cousin's fridge across the hall.”

Etaf told him to do so. A few minutes of silence from his side, then he was back.

“Jesus Christ, she's a health nut. She has some plant milks and frozen fruits. Some yogurt too.”

Etaf must be all smiles because you could hear it in her voice. She shared your hangover cure, your own recipe, on air. When she mentioned spinach right after listing raspberries, strawberries, bananas, and mangoes, Nate from Manhattan groaned.

“Ew, why? Fruits with vegetables are gross.”

The red light came on. You resumed your walk. Nine more blocks till your apartment at Shore Boulevard facing the Holocaust memorial park and the Sheepshead Bay. You stopped at a deli for breakfast: one scrambled eggs and cheese sandwich, two everything bagels with a lox and a schmear, and a cup of OJ to wash them down. You walked and ate. Your headphones carried the soft voice of Nate from Manhattan.

“Ugh, I don't wanna drink spinach. I hate green food,” he whined.

Etaf told him it was good for his hangover, like you would coax a four-year-old to eat his lima beans and brussel sprouts. But she was good at it, telling him he wouldn't even taste the greens in his mostly fruity smoothie. That if he finely chopped up the leaves and dunked them inside the blender, the fruits' sweetness would drown it and he wouldn't even notice any green in the reds and yellows of the fruits.
He finally relented.

“That's not the only hangover cure, y'know,” Etaf said. “You gotta eat some carbs too. Knowing my roommate who stayed out last night, she's probably out grabbing some scrambled eggs and cheese sandwich, and everything bagels with a lox and a schmear right now.”

You almost bit your tongue from how eerily specific Etaf was. You were halfway done with your sandwich. You stopped at another crosswalk and quickly sent her a picture of your bagels with the caption: “LegoLOX, what do your elf eyes see?”

Etaf didn't reply, so her phone was probably on airplane mode. You heard her telling Nate from Manhattan that today was Leap day and if he had any anecdote to add.

“Leap day, huh? Well…” Nate hummed in thought, the sound of a blender in the distance, “y'know the movie, Leap Year?”

You perked up and you knew so had Etaf. It was one of her favorite rom-coms, no matter how sloppy you found its plot. You heard her reply in the affirmative, not yet revealing her bias.

“The crappiest movie ever made. Even the lead actor felt the same way.”

Etaf laughed. “May I ask why?”

The blender in the background stopped. “It cost me my fiancée.”

You sensed a sad story behind Nate's bitter words. When Etaf asked him to kindly explain, the sounds of a sharp inhale and a loud exhale came from his side.

“I won't tell you any names. Nate is a fake name, by the way.”

Etaf assured him that it was fine, so he continued.

“We were together for four years. I didn't propose because my family didn't approve of our relationship and I'm a trust fund kid.” The sound of sniffles, then he cleared his throat. “Last leap year, before Valentine's day, I told her I had a surprise. She thought I was going to propose. She told her entire family and all her friends. In reality, my surprise was my decision to get emancipated from my family, something I wanted to do but she discouraged for a long time. Obviously, she was upset. She scolded me for wanting to cut myself from my family. I told her I wanted freedom. In her anger, she called me a coward for running away. I went to Italy after our fight for... something. She saw the stupid movie and flew there to drag me to Ireland for Bachelor's day, to propose to me herself since I didn't have the balls. She even bought me a ring.”

“What happened?” Etaf asked softly, when he didn't speak for a long time.

“Lombardy was one of the first places that COVID hit so deadly so early in the pandemic.”

You finally reached the front of your apartment building, constructed during the depression era. You stayed in the lobby, listening, imagining, mourning a love story that wasn't yours but you were invested in for the last ten minutes. You fetched some Kleenex from your satchel and dabbed at your tear-streaked cheeks.

Why did people fuck up? If only the bitterboy told his girlfriend what he planned to do beforehand. If only he had actually proposed like his girlfriend had hoped. If only the inevitable pandemic hit a little later so that those two lovebirds could safely live on and not become the broken half that made you sob on a Thursday morning.

Etaf, in her soft, somber voice, offered condolences. Bitterboy Nate brushed it off and asked not to be pitied on air. He didn't want pity.

“Then, what do you want?” Etaf asked.

You could picture the bitterboy shrugging. “My cousin said I should see a shrink. Then, I stumbled onto your show two mornings ago and thought, why not you, since I can't hire a therapist right now. Why not dump my shit on air for free? Free counseling for me, free entertainment for the rest of you sentimental fucks.” He snorted self-deprecatingly. “No, wait, I changed my mind. I wanna sing. I wanna sing live on the radio.”

You blinked. You hadn't expected this. Etaf mightn't have either. A beat of pause, then she offered to play a song for him. The bitterboy must've still been drunk, on alcohol or pain, you couldn't tell. He declined the offer and cleared his throat. You were ready for a sad, pathetic braying. Instead, he sounded great. Like he actually practiced how to sing. You leaned against the mailboxes, Kleenex back into the deep, dark depths of your satchel. You recognized the lyrics.

From Heavy in Your Arms by Florence Welch.

How cumbersome, the burden of mourning was. It not only weighed you down, it sometimes dragged the others, as it was the case with your mama and you.

Yet, the way he sang stole your breath. The original version was all epic chorus and Florence's raw voice. Bitterboy Nate crooned it instead, no chorus or instruments in the background. You wanted to record a few lines, his beautiful voice that you wanted to embrace until it stopped shaking and breaking the more words it spoke. You kicked the few brain cells straggling inside your skull to better not forget his voice, or else you'd make an appearance with your Glock in there.

You dialed the number to call on Etaf's show. You asked the operator to play a song for Bitterboy Nate still on air. When they asked for your name, you gave them your mother's first name and her grandmother's maiden name, and told them you were from Williamsburg. You didn't know why but you wanted to remain anonymous like he did.
Etaf told Bitterboy Nate to stay with them a little longer because someone had suggested a different song for him to remember his lover by.

My Love by Sia.

Your suggestion.

Before the song could end and Nate could react, Mabel called you.

“YOU SHOT CALEB?!?!”

You took off your headphones, resigned to the fate that you would miss Bitterboy Nate's reaction to your suggestion, and hurried inside the building. Upstairs, Mabel calmed down once you explained to her what happened. She at once hugged you tight and asked you how you'd been holding up.

“I know you liked him,” she said softly. Her one hand hugged you to her side while the other heaped on a plate a stack of golden yellow cookies. She pushed it to you and you wordlessly demolished your favorite comfort food: oatmeal raisin carrot cake cookies, dipped in oat milk. You watched your sweetest, kindest, most innocent friend finish with today's catering order for a funeral at Staten Island. The deceased person used to be your Italian-American neighbor, until her twin daughters turned five and the family moved to a house of their own.

“What do you think is worse? Having your birthday on leap day or your loved one's death anniversary?” you asked absentmindedly.

Mabel gave a wry smile. “She didn't die today.”

“It's one thing to not get the day of your birth for three years in a row. At least, you're alive and that proves your birthday happened. To not get the day you lost your loved one for three years in a row. You don't have them anymore, nor do you have the day they died.”

Mabel kissed your shoulder. You clung to her as she covered a serving dish full of minestrone soup with aluminum foil. The aroma made your mouth water. Mabel Taffy was Mabel's brainchild. As a graduate in associate of applied culinary arts from Kingsborough, she always wanted to be a part of the food industry. She cooked half the dishes in your business, the other half your contribution. Sometimes, Etaf would chip in with her knowledge of most of the Arab cuisines. You also applied your mother's Southern American and your father's Scandinavian influences whenever you could. But mostly, your most successful contribution to Mabel Taffy was your lemon squares, the bestselling dish almost everyone requested for their menus. While Mabel was an expert in your comfort food, you were the Gordon Ramsay of lemon squares. Nobody could ever beat you in this, not even Gordon Ramsay himself. You called them lemon brownies or lemonies.

By midmorning, the food was mostly done. Mabel had told Etaf what happened with Caleb, while you were working with your ten-year-old laptop in the living room. Etaf reassured you and Mabel that she'd find a way to transport the food safely. Caleb was the transportation. Without his van, you had nothing. Cabs were neither safe nor spacious. Subways were out of the question. None of you had cars because this was New York.

You were almost done with your lemonies in the oven when the doorbell rang. Mabel was in the bedroom getting changed. You opened the door and your jaw almost fell on the floor like the security skeleton's jaw in the movie, Coco.

Greg, fuckboy Greg who you were pretty sure to have erased from your memory, stood in the hallway. An abnormally huge grin decorated his abnormally, unfairly handsome face. He sported a purple-and-white hipster button-down with gray pants. His eyes and lips had recovered, while his hair was longer, much shaggier than two weeks ago when your worlds collided and he soared past you while you were still recovering. So, you didn't blame yourself when the first words out of your mouth were, “I'm calling the cops.”

Before you could get your phone out or he could open his mouth, Etaf appeared and squeezed past him and you. “Oh, you met Greg,” she said. Then, she leaned over and whispered, “He's Nate from this morning.”

At once, your notions of him crumbled like all the snowmen you built in childhood from just one kick. You would've apologized for your rude tone had he not smirked. You couldn't wrap your head around the fact that the shameless fuckboy from two weeks ago was the soft-spoken bitterboy from Etaf's show this morning.

Etaf tugged you inside to let him in. Mabel welcomed her girlfriend with a long kiss on the latter's lips. You rubbed your arms and stepped away. Your eyes met Greg's, who lifted his stupidly perfect brow. You gave him a scowl and he turned away. Mabel greeted him with her sunny smile and soft handshake. After Etaf had introduced everyone to everyone, Greg commented first.

“I didn't know I was going to work with the Powerpuff Girls tonight.”

You glanced at your girlfriends and it finally dawned on you. Etaf had permanently dyed her hair red a month ago. Mabel was born a golden blonde and you were a pitch black brunette. How had you never noticed it before? You crossed your arms. “That makes you Mojo Jojo, monkeyboy. Did you forget to pick up your stupid purple cape from the laundromat?”

“You must be Buttercup.” He winked, unfazed by your barb.

Etaf wrapped an arm around your shoulder and pulled you closer. “Dead fiancée,” she whispered to you.

Before you could speak, the oven dinged. You left your girlfriends with the fuckboy in the foyer and went to fetch your lemonies. You heard a loud sniffing from behind.

“Something smells good.” Though it came from him, you'd never reject praise.

“Her lemon squares, she calls them lemonies,” Mabel said proudly like your mama. “You'll love them. It's our bestseller.”

You overheard from the kitchen how Greg rescued you three. His cousin had a Chrysler Pacifica minivan that she let him borrow for tonight. You remembered Dr. Tarly. He must've raided her fridge this morning.

Someone entered the kitchen behind you. You could tell it was none of your girlfriends from how he walked. “The kitchen's off limits for outsiders.”

He ignored you and went for one of your lemonies just as you'd finished dusting them with powdered sugar. You slapped his hand off and he cradled it with a pout. “Ow! Meanie!” he said accusingly, rubbing the place where you hit him.

“If I blow over the top of your head, will your silky blond strands get carried away by the wind?”

“What?”

“And here I thought you're smart like Mojo Jojo. Guess you really are a dumb blond.”

“You really are Buttercup.”

“And you are a lousy fuckboy.”

“Kids, stop fighting,” Etaf said as she and Mabel walked in.

“She started it!” Greg said.

“You were the one who tried to put your greedy little pig fingers on my lemonies.”

“My fingers are not piggy and pigs don't have fingers.” He huffed and turned away. “They just reminded me of home.”

Etaf elbowed you with her eyes flashing. “Dead fiancée,” she mouthed.

Mabel gave Greg two lemon squares on a plate. He grinned like the sun and thanked her. “You are totally Bubbles.” He stuck a tongue in your direction and bit into your bright yellow lemonies. You wanted to look away but you didn't because you wanted to know if he liked it. Fuckboy or not, you craved praises and your lemonies were one of your biggest sources of pride and self-esteem.
His eyes closed and his cheeks hurriedly chewed and swallowed the first bite. “Jesus Christ, where have you been all my life?”

You turned away before he could catch you staring. You packed up the food with your girlfriends, while Greg took his time with the rest of his lemonies. Every now and then, he'd moan obscenely, excessively, dramatically. You'd pretend to ignore him but inside, you collected all his sounds and expressions like trophies you never won in life.

Once most of the food was packed, you quickly went to the bedroom and changed into a dark green, almost black cigarette pants and a black-and-gray striped blouse. When you returned, Greg had finished his lemonies and was about to probably compliment you when his eyes went to your pants. The playfulness from before vanished. He brushed past you, armed with two serving dishes covered with aluminum foil, and said to all three of you, “I'm gonna hold the lift.”

Mabel followed him with two smaller serving dishes. She shrugged one shoulder when you lifted a brow and telepathically asked her what happened when you were gone.

“Be nicer to him,” Etaf told you.

“I'm being as nice as I can be,” you muttered sullenly.

“He's fuckboy Greg from two weeks ago, isn't he?”

You nodded and lifted two containers of food.

“Be a little more forgiving, babe,” she told you as she followed you to the front door. “He's not that bad and you need to break whatever vow you took to take all your grudges to hell.” You pouted and she kissed your cheek. “He offered to help us out himself once my show ended and he called the station and asked for me. He said other than his cousin, he has nobody he knows here and his cousin has hospital shifts and six kids to keep her busy.”

You sighed. She was right. He was lonely. He was obnoxious but nothing he did so far crossed the line like Caleb did this morning. “How are you so forgiving?” you wondered.

She smiled sadly. “I'm a fourth-generation Palestinian-American. The Israelis stole my great-grandparents’ home in ‘48 and committed many more war crimes against us since then. We learned, since birth, to let go of the trivial grudges. Our lives haven't been normal for a long time now. If you want to survive, be forgiving to the insignificant things, babe. But don't forgive the big wrongs done to you, okay?”

You finally gave her your word that you'd try to be kinder to Greg.

Just as he killed the engine once you reached your destination, you grabbed ahold of his shirt collar and pulled him back from the backseat you were on. “Nuh-uh! You're staying here.”

He scoffed. “And do what?”

“Wait. It's not that hard.” You ignored Etaf's pointed glare and Mabel's pleading gaze. Your voice had steel in it that you didn't always incorporate even though, and you admitted this reluctantly, you really were the Buttercup in your group.

You and your girlfriends carried the food inside. Mr. Lombardi, the husband of the deceased, greeted you in the kitchen. His mother thanked you for your service and doddered back to her granddaughters, Odette and Tessa, who were nicknamed Odessa due to their first four years at Little Odessa (Brighton beach's nickname) and their frequent visit to the place. The girls, with strawberry blonde hair, stood with their arms crossed in a corner. You didn't like the way some of the older men purposefully brushed past them.

You and your girlfriends put on your black aprons. Once the buffet table was set, you manned it, Mabel carried a tray of finger foods to the guests, and Etaf remained in the kitchen, reheating anything that needed reheating.

You spotted snow white strands above the heads of dark hairs. Greg ambled around, wearing a black shirt with his gray pants, not talking to anyone. He stopped next to a wall of frames, his hands in his pockets. Mabel went up to him and offered him some crostini and panini. He shook his head. Someone near them called for Odette and Tessa's father.

“Mr. Lombardi!”

Greg flinched as if Mabel had pinched him. Had you not known your best friend for years and heard Greg's story from this morning, you would've thought so too. He distanced himself from Mr. Lombardi and headed in your direction.

He immediately went for the tray of lemonies. Again, you slapped his hand away. He looked genuinely hurt, a golden retriever puppy kicked to the curb. He gulped and walked away, not out of the room but away from you.

As soon as Mabel granted your request to take over manning-the-table duty from you, you almost dashed to the kitchen. You stacked a plate with squares and squares of your lemony goodness and covered them with a napkin. You hunched your shoulders and went back out. His silver strands stood out. He was back in his place before the picture frames, his sapphire blue eyes looking but not seeing.

You gently kicked his ankle. He was startled but didn't move away. You extended your peace offering and he took it. Fourteen pieces of lemonies.

“When did you change your shirt?” you asked.

He folded over his collar, the inside purple and white. A reversible shirt. “Smart. Hey, look over there.” You tilted your head to the buffet table. Mr. Lombardi was brushing his fingertips over the top of your bestseller. “He doesn't exactly wash his hands after he uses the bathroom,” you whispered conspiratorially.

Greg chuckled and popped a lemon square in his mouth. “Kirimvose, dōnītsos.” (“Thank you, sweetling.”)

“I still don't know what fucking language you speak to me sometimes. What is it? Polish? Russian? German?”

“High Valyrian,” he said absentmindedly, then blinked and stood straighter.

You snorted. “Lemme guess, you're not supposed to tell me.”

“Your lemon cakes are my kryptonite.”

“Lemon squares but thanks.”

“Kirimvose,” he said with his mouth full. “Means thanks or thank you in high Valyrian.” He handed you his almost empty plate. You fetched some more lemonies from the kitchen. You always baked seven times the number of lemon squares per person, so you always had some extra in the back. When you returned to his side, he grinned and two dimples appeared on his cheeks.

Fucking damn it! Dimples were your hamartia. Almost all your exes had them. You handed him the plate and was about to walk away when he nudged you with it. “I was actually offering you the last pieces but I don't mind being fed so many desserts.”

You picked up two squares. The time it took for you to finish yours, he was halfway done with his second pile. “Ah, I see. You're one of those stress eaters.”

His eating speed slowed down. You brushed your shoulder with his. “I'm not judging you. You eat when you're upset.”

“Thanks, Master Oogway.”

You plucked a piece from his plate. “You eat when you're upset. You drink when you're upset. You fuck when you're upset?” You peeked at him. He grimaced and said nothing. “Since you're at a wake, you can't drink or fuck, so eating it is.”

He smirked. “Is that a challenge?”

“Not really, Barnabus Stinson. But out of curiosity, you have a target in mind?”

He grinned. “You dirty little buttercup.” He turned around and scoped the room. “I can score any woman under this roof if I want.”

“Including the nonna in the armchair?”

He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

You too scanned the room. “Just the women?”

“The men here will mostly punch me in the face.” He nudged your shoulder with his. “Pick someone for me.”

“Pass.”

He was silent for a few minutes before he asked, “What made you think I was upset?”

“Lombardi,” you said quietly.

He rubbed a hand over his face. “You listened to this morning's show.”

“I never missed an episode.”

“Loyal.”

“My middle name. What does yours stand for? The A?”

“You went through my stuff at my apartment, didn't you?”

You shrugged, unrepentant. “No, just your pants pockets at the subway. Gregory A. Teanan. Trust funder. Runaway from home. Grieving boyfriend. Filthy fucking rich. Has a hot doctor for a cousin. Drinks, fucks, and binge eats whenever upset. Can't afford a shrink. Can't face the authorities or else…” You glanced at him. His fingers gripped the edge of the plate. You coaxed them open, his fingers supple and his nails trimmed, and took it from him. “This isn't the property of Mabel Taffy. Plus, deep cuts need serious stitches and you can't go to the hospital.”

He sighed. “I never actually thanked you for what you did that night. Dragging my sorry ass all over New York in the middle of the night in high heels.” He cocked his head. “Do you really carry a gun in your purse?”

“Stalker ex, nothing new.” You went back to the buffet table. The wake was almost over. People were crowding the coat closet by the front door. Mr. Lombardi stood and murmured his thanks. His daughters were nowhere to be seen.

Mr. Lombardi and his mother came to the kitchen with your check of the last 25% of your payment. Etaf and Mabel began to clean up. You excused yourself for a trip to the washroom. Outside the door, you instantly heard giggles and one of them, you detected, belonged to a man with snow white hair. A giddy sense of premonition coated you. You pounded on the door. “Greg? Gregory, is that you inside?”

You heard him mutter, “Seven hells!”. The door opened and his big head poked out.

“What's up, buttercup?”

“Are you fucking serious?”

He smirked. “You wanna join? I don't mind.”

“Four people won't fit in here,” a voice squeaked from inside that you recognized.

“Odette? Is that you?” you asked. “Is Tessa with you? Don't lie to me, girls, I know you two are joined at the hips.”

The door opened fully. The girls' bony hands grabbed both your arms and pulled you inside. Greg shut the door behind you. The girls flanked you while he leered at you. “Chin up, Buttercup. You're too grumpy. I can make you relax just with my hands.”

You slapped his wiggling fingers away. “What the fuck, Greg? I know you're a manwhore but I didn't peg you to be a pedo?!”

In an instant, his smirk died. “What?”

You shook off Tessa's fingers down your arm. “Cut it out, girls. You're minors.”

“What?!” Greg almost jumped away.

“They're sixteen. Can't you tell?” You distanced yourself from the twins and stood beside the shower curtain. Greg sat shakily on the toilet seat. Odette and Tessa rolled their eyes.

“Oh come on. Don't pretend that you don't like underage identical twins,” Tessa said.

“You were pretty excited when we told you we're virgins,” Odette said.

You clenched your fists and wished you could punch him. He looked at you helplessly like he wished you would punch him. The sad, pathetic look was back in his eyes.

Remembering his past, you decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. “Greg, what you were about to do was wrong. Statutory rape is serious business in New York. Even if the minors consented. Even if you didn't know about their age. Even if you were fucking married to a minor. Third degree rape, class E felony, and the punishment is four years in prison. Even for oral stuff.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “I didn't kiss them. They were doing it to each other and I was watching until you came.”

“Can't be proven in court, unless you have a video recording.”

Odette giggled and stood on her toes. From a shelf over the sink, she plucked out two phones from between two shampoo bottles, their cameras turned to the bathroom.

“Really, girls?” You tried to calm your heart and breaths. What kind of fucked up shit would've occurred here had your bladder not been demanding release? Greg would've committed statutory rape without knowing it, and either landed behind the bars or at the bottom of the Hudson river given the girls' father's associates' background. Shady at best and fatal at the worst.

You knocked on Greg's forehead, whose snow white strands had fallen on his face. His sapphire blue eyes stared, shell-shocked, at the white floor. You lightly slapped his cheek and he blinked out of it.

“Please, believe me. I'd never do something like this if I knew,” he said with a shaky voice.

You turned around, snatched both the girls' phones, activated factory reset for the second time in a day, then tossed them back at their owners. You kicked them out of their own bathroom and scolded them for their behavior during their own mother's wake, their mom whose body was buried only this morning. They sobered up and left. You locked the bathroom door and knelt before Greg.

“What's going on?” you asked.

“Please believe me…”

“It's okay…”

“I'd never do to them what was done to me once.”

You washed and wiped his wet face, made him drink a glass of water, called Mabel to come upstairs, then sent Greg with her back downstairs. “Give him all the leftover lemonies there are.”

You finished what you came to the bathroom for. By the time you returned, the serving dishes were washed and loaded. Greg wordlessly carried them to his cousin's minivan. You took the passenger seat and sent Etaf to Mabel in the back. As Greg drove back to Brighton beach, you texted your girlfriends in your group chat.

“Can Greg stay the night with us?”

Instantly, a barrage of replies came from them. Thankfully, your phone was perpetually kept silent. You told them what happened in the bathroom upstairs and they understood.

“Poor guy has nobody,” Mabel said with tons of crying emojis.

Etaf consented to letting him stay the night. So did Mabel. As the Chrysler Pacifica got on the Narrows, you glanced in the rearview mirror. Etaf and Mabel, curled up together in the backseat, gave you their thumbs up. You lightly kicked Greg's right foot.

“Stay the night.” Before he could reply, you added, “I'll make you a bed on our second couch.”

He stared at you for a moment before he nodded. “Kirimvose, dōnītsos.”

You smiled and leaned away. You turned on your internet and googled, “high Valyrian”. The Wiki entry at the top said it was one of the official languages of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, a southeast European country between Greece to the west and the north, the Island of Crete to the south, and the Aegean sea to the east. High Valyrian used to be the language of Valyria, a volcanic peninsula to the southeast, until hundreds of years ago, the fourteen volcanoes there erupted and destroyed much of it, like Mount Vesuvius did to Pompeii, shattering the peninsula from Westeros into the abandoned archipelago it currently was. The few families who lucked out and evacuated it beforehand later settled, then conquered and united the seven kingdoms one by one. The royal family was extremely private, to the point that the internet only had pictures of the king and the queen, that too were sourced from other European monarchs' coronation ceremonies, blurry and taken from a distance. Nothing else. Even the heir apparent was a secret to the rest of the world. The nobles were no different. The higher born the noble houses were, the more shrouded they were in privacy and secrecy. Like the Greeks had Mount Olympus, Westeros had the mythical Fourteen Flames of Valyria. While the Greeks had gods and goddesses fraternizing with mortals, the Valyrians were taming fire-breathing dragons. Though they claimed that at one point, the Valyrians had an empire vaster than the Roman one, the world historians found little proof to back this claim.

You were fascinated, but also tired from the day's events. You soon dozed off. You woke up from Etaf shaking you frantically.

You heard sirens. Loud, dizzying, ominous. You rubbed the sleep from your eyes and looked ahead.

Three red fire trucks blocked the entrance to your apartment building. You looked up at your floor and your heart sank as deeply as the Titanic.

Your apartment was on fire, as were the two above and one below your floor. Someone in the apartment next to yours had left the gas on. It exploded, some of the neighbors were saying.

In one night, you'd lost almost everything.

Chapter Text

St. Patrick's Day, 2024

It's not that you hate your mama. Far from it, she was the person you loved the most in your life. Not even Etaf could ever replace her. But truth be told, you didn't like your mama and it was because she cared too much. If Mabel was innocent, your mama was impressionable. If Mabel was kind, your mama was benevolent. And if Mabel was forgiving, your mama offered her left cheek to the person who slapped her right cheek.

She was too pure for this world, too good for the people in her life, including you, most definitely you. 

You were also tired of her pity and restless efforts to get your love life going ever since your break-up with Etaf. You knew your mother meant well. It was her joining hands with your grandmother, your father's mother, that pissed you off.

“Your grandmother called again,” your mama said during breakfast. It had been two weeks since you had moved into your childhood apartment on Roosevelt island. You had not stayed here more than a week since you left for college. Now, you mostly stayed cooped up inside the apartment. Ever since your laptop got destroyed in the fire, you had been laid off. Since then, you'd updated your resume and applied to almost hundreds of places. You got a callback once or twice but no more than that. You had been living off of your savings, which wasn't something that comforted you. Your mama, as expected, wanted to help you out financially. You'd rather chew your arms off than burden her some more. If she learned this was the reason you were rejecting her offers for help, she'd double down on you. So, you let her believe you tolerated her and would never touch her hard-earned money.

She patted your back and you almost shook her off. You focused on your cereal. You missed your sandwiches and bagels, but your mama only ate cereals and fruits for breakfast, so you made do.

“She just wants to see you, sweetie,” your mama said placatingly. “You remind her of her daughter so much…”

“She had almost thirty years to do so. She's only interested in me because I, her only son's bastard, don't have down syndrome like my half-sister.” You shoved a spoonful of chocolate raspberry cereals in your mouth, dripping with pinkish brown milk. “Wait till she finds out I have autism.”

Your mama peeled a clementine. “Honey, I know she wasn't the grandmother you deserve…”

“I'm not meeting her, that's final, Mama.” You put on your headphones and tuned in for Etaf's show. At least she had her job. She had moved in with her parents, who were beyond thrilled to welcome her back. The Palestinians were such family-oriented people. You wished your father's side was too.

Mabel moved there as well, given her history as an orphan and her adoptive parents were both dead. As soon as Etaf's family found out, through Mabel testing on 23andme, that she too was Palestinian like their daughter, only Christian, they started planning the two girls' wedding. Etaf had to hold them back from overwhelming Mabel, who began to panic as soon as the word marriage came up. She wasn't terrified of commitment, just that it was too soon and she hadn't been with Etaf for long.

Your heart twisted. You missed your girlfriends. As much as it stung being around them whenever they did PDA (which they did a lot), you missed them. Here in Roosevelt island, you had nobody and Etaf's family had moved to Queens long ago.

Your mama sighed and it twisted your heart some more. “I just... I want a part of your dad in your life after I'm gone, sweet pea.”

You pretended not to listen. But you considered unblocking your grandmother's number and let her call you. Okay, scratch that. Maybe text you. Ugh, this was stressful. You had, so far, only talked to her once and that was enough for a lifetime after she called you an illegitimate child. Back then, she still had her daughter, your Aunt Perry around. With both her and your father gone, your grandmother had turned into even more of a hag. At least back when she had Aunt Perry, she left you alone. Now that she had no children of her own left, she focused on her grandchildren, you and your half-sister, Lovisa. You adored your half-sister, even though you technically never met. You adored her simply because she had sued your grandmother for leaving her out of her will and not naming her, the sole legitimate heir, as her heir. You knew why your grandmother named you and not her.

She wanted you to usurp your sister's rights.
Pathetic.

Yeah, no, you changed your mind. You wouldn't unblock that ableist bitch. Let her get sued into oblivion by Lovisa. You'd dance naked on the grave of your grandmother's reputation happily.

After your mama left for her work (she was the principal of a kindergarten on the island), you pretty much had nothing to do. You cleaned, you cooked, you listened to your best friend expertly commandeer her show before the calls began to arrive.

“Hey, remember me?” a deep, soft voice said.

Instantly, you did and Etaf did too. “Nate from Manhattan! How are you, bro?”

The night you lost almost everything you had, Greg was supportive. He tucked you with a blanket after you'd cried yourself to sleep in his cousin's car. You thought it was Mabel or Etaf. They told you the truth a week later when you remembered the details and thanked them. He also drove you all to your respective family homes after waiting for hours while you three rummaged through your damaged apartment for anything salvageable. You liked to think after that night at the Lombardi residence, you two had a tentative friendship going on, if you could stretch it a little. You didn't have his number or else you'd thank him. So, you dialed the station's number, gave the same fake name as before, and suggested they play a song for him.

Light Up by Isak Danielson.

Eh, why not? He was Swedish like your father and you were nothing if not loyal to your people. This time, you didn't have any interruptions like before. This time, you heard him chuckle and thank Etaf for the song. She told him it was one of her listeners, in fact it was the person who suggested Sia's My Love to him the last time he called.

“In that case, my dear mysterious admirer,” and you rolled your eyes so hard at that, you almost put your red sweater with your white clothes in the washer, “I hope we get the chance to talk, if not meet, someday. I feel like we have much to share and enjoy about each other.”

He sounded so much more civil than he did face-to-face. You shook your head and finished putting your whites in the washer.
Someone called you, well, called the number for Mabel Taffy. Probably someone inquiring about the service. You went to your bed, your mama's bed, and slipped under the duvet.

You answered the call the usual way.

“Mabel Taffy Catering Service, how may I help you?”

“Can I only order your lemon cakes?” a familiar soft, deep voice said.

“Lemon squares,” you corrected absentmindedly, then sat up when it hit you. “Greg?”

“The one and only.” You detected mischief in his tone. “How are you, dōnītsos? Still on the island I left you?”

You tried not to sound ungrateful. Your mama was an angel, despite her nosiness and overly goodness. You had read plenty of reddit stories where the kids fell into harder times and the parents just turned them away. Your mama was a saint compared to those monsters. Still, it felt dishonest of you to lie.

“I have nowhere else to go.”

“No catering orders?”

You told him about the five you received since the fire, from well-meaning friends, colleagues, and neighbors. Two birthdays, one baby shower, one funeral, and one gender reveal. The baby shower came from a teacher from your mama's kindergarten. She introduced you to him, who in turn, introduced you to his wife. It was at this party that you realized a horrid truth.

You wanted to be a mama someday.

But you didn't tell Greg that. Just the five orders part. You told him you had one more this weekend. An important one. A Palestinian wedding. You'd never done weddings before. Etaf convinced you that it was high time you took on bigger events. The bride was Etaf's second cousin, so even if you fucked up, at least it was within the family. They needed this brief respite of joy desperately, what with their country of residence committing a genocide in their country of origin for six months now.

“Do you need my driving service?” Greg asked.

“Etaf found someone to regularly drive us around.”

“Damn, Mojo Jojo was hoping to reunite with the Powerpuff Girls.”

You went back to the washer and transferred the wet white clothes to the dryer, your phone on speaker. “Anyway, why did you call? Do you really wanna order some of my lemonies?”

“Kinda.” You detected hesitation in his tone. You pictured him scruffing the top of his shoes on the ground. “So, tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day.”

You checked the paper calendar your old-fashioned mama kept in the house, in case the zombie apocalypse occurred and you had no access to any digital calendar. Sure enough, it'd be March 17 tomorrow.

“Planning to party and drink?” you asked jokingly.

“Sort of. My brother is visiting soon.”

“That's your reason? Is he like Hitler or Putin?”

“Not a war criminal. Not yet, anyway. But I don't want him here and I can't stop him from visiting. So, I need all the liquid courage I can get beforehand.”

“I'd not call alcohol liquid courage. Trust me, I had an alcoholic for a boyfriend.”

“Was he abusive?”

“Only towards himself.” You remembered Darren. Etaf and Mabel pulled you through that break-up. He was such a rebound. A sore spot for you. “Anyway, what do you need me for?”

“I'd like you to be my escort for the night.”

“Excuse me?” you almost balked.

“Not in that way! Like a bodyguard or a child minder. Ugh, fuck, I'm bad at this.”

“At offending people? No, you're passing with flying colors.”

“Asking for help. I'm not good at it. I need someone to keep an eye on me tomorrow night and I can only trust you and your girlfriends in this city other than my cousin.”

“Go to a therapist, Greg.”

“I can't. I'm sorry but I can't. If I do, my cousin will find out and tell my family, who will drag me back to hell. Please, Buttercup.”

“No, sorry, Greg…”

“I'll pay you.”

That made you sit up. “How much?”

He laughed. “Money really can buy happiness.”

“Well?”

“As much as you want. I'm a rich fuckboy, remember?”

You bit your lips. Being his keeper for the night meant looking out for him. You had no idea how he held his drinks but should he be a lightweight, you had to find ways to keep him at least aware of his surroundings. You were no party girl but you knew stuff to prevent passing out after a few drinks. Being with Darren taught you stuff. “I'm gonna need at least four hundred bucks in advance.”

“Seven hells, you really are charging me for it.”

“Hey, you said it, you're a rich fuckboy. Don't hand over the reins if you can't afford the fees.”

He Venmo'ed you the advance. You decided to meet him outside his building, by the park where you once parked yourself after dragging him around. Your job tomorrow night was to take care of him and keep him in check once the pub crawling began. You told him the rest of the money would be calculated by the drinks he bought. Whatever money he spent on the drinks he'd have to pay you the same amount for your service.

Service. It sounded like you were babysitting him. Well, in a way, you were. He must really trust you to hand over so much control to you, someone he only met twice, excluding the radio talkshow thingy.

You shook your head and began your preparation. Greg had no allergies, just his inhibition toward visibly green food. Given how drunk he'd be tomorrow night, you could assume he'd be too inebriated to check out what you'd be feeding him. Or the green drinks the bars would definitely serve.

Once your grocery shopping was done, you began your meal planning. The rest of the day, you alternated between that and job hunting. Before you went to sleep, you soaked the oats you had bought.

The next morning, you woke up with both jitters and excitement. Your mama noticed it. “Is Etaf visiting today?”

“Can't I be excited otherwise?”

She kissed your hair. “It's been so long since I saw you waking up looking forward to the day,” she said fondly.

You patted her cheek like a mother does to her child. “Stop worrying about me so much. I'm gonna be fine. I'm here, aren't I? You can see I'm fine.”

“Etaf told me what Callum did.”

“Caleb. And I wish she hadn't.”

“You should've filed a charge, honey. It's a crime to steal other people's nudes, let alone sell them.”

“Who are you and what did you do to my pacifist mama?”

She laughed. “I'm serious, honey. He did an awful thing and I'd not let him get away so easily.”

“Well, I did almost blow off his balls.”

She giggled as if you two were best friends sharing secrets. Well, wasn't that your mama's lifelong dream? To be your best friend? You kissed her goodbye as she left for her job (since St. Patrick's Day was no official holiday for NYC). Once she was gone, you began to slowly cook the meal for tonight. You chose a long-sleeved black satin shirt with a pussycat bow (raided from your mama's closet), paired with high-waisted loose black trousers. Your hair up in a messy bun, a black trench coat, and a backpack for all the food and stuff, and you were ready.

You located the building Greg lived in. You neared the front entrance, flanked by two gray armors. Just as you began to climb the steps, the doorman from that night came out.

“Mr. Teanan is at the park, I'm afraid.”

“Where should I wait?”

“You can visit him if you want.” He led you across the street to the park’s gate. He unlocked it for you and a shiver went down your spine as you peeked inside. This was a private park. Other than the people living around it and paying an annual fee, nobody else could enter it. The only exception was one hour during Christmas Eve. You and your girlfriends attended the annual Christmas caroling last year. Etaf and Mabel had sneaked off to a corner to hang a mistletoe over themselves and kissed like horny teenagers. You had fled to Stuyvesant park, under the ancient elm and facing the back of a bench, to bawl your eyes out while hugging the thermos lunch box you’d bought for Etaf, full of food you’d cooked for Mabel. You left it behind at the park, letting your ex and your crush go.

You shook off the flashbacks and went inside. The doorman from Greg's apartment locked the gate behind you.

You found Greg by a smaller statue in a corner, hidden by trees and bushes. You recognized the place. This was the spot where Etaf and Mabel had kissed. It was dark back then, so you hadn’t gotten a proper look. Now, you drank it in. Smaller and inconspicuous. Made of granite, the statue depicted two people, one man and one woman. The woman had a long braid down her back, which was turned to you. The man held her right arm tightly, as if preventing her from slipping away, and kissed her arm with such devotion, evident even in the cold bodies of the stone statue. The woman had her face turned away, downcast, a hand placed on the wall beside her, depicted here by a thin strip of stone with an arch overhead. The man, with a beard and a sword tucked from his belt, stood on a step below her.

You stopped a few steps behind Greg. His back to you, his snow white hair open and touching his shoulder. His hands inside his beige coat pockets. At the sound of your footsteps, he ducked his head and turned away when you stopped beside him. His hands hastily wiped away something on his face and you decided not to stress him about it.

“How've you been?” you asked instead.

He cleared his throat. “Fine, fine.” He met your eyes and gave a wry smile. “Ready to drink myself to death.”

“Not on my watch.”

“That's the spirit,” and he seemed proud of that joke. “Let's get going.”

You pulled him back by the collar. “Not so fast, fuckboy. Since I'm in charge tonight, here are some rules first.”

He groaned and went to sit on a bench. You joined him and took off your backpack. He eyed it but said nothing, probably hoping it wouldn't dampen his night.

“First things first, you're gonna take breaks between drinks. No shots, no drinking game. You're gonna take it slow and sip each drink.”

He grimaced but said nothing.

“Say it back to me.”

“Breaks between drinks. No shots. No drinking games. Take it slow and sip each drink.”

You clapped him on the back. “I'm surprised you remember them word by word.”

He smirked. “I'm not just a beauty, y'know.”

“Moving on,” you unzipped your backpack and brought out a piece of cloth, “I made you food to eat between the drinks. No snacks, no fried food. If you can't eat them by yourself, I'll feed you.”

“If I puke on you, it's not on me.”

“That's for me to prevent and you to follow through.” You leaned over him.

He backed away. “What're you doing?”

“Blindfold. And no, not for any kinky stuff. The foods I made for you have greens in them.”

He groaned. “You and your girlfriends are out to get me.”

“Don't be such a baby.” You tied the blindfold around his eyes. “This is for your own good. The food will help you stay less drunk.”

“That's not the point of binge drinking.”

“I don't care. Anything that makes my job easier. You got twenty pounds on me. Do you expect me to carry you around bridal style?”

“I wouldn't mind that.”

“Not tonight.” You heard it then. “Are you sniffing me?”

“You smell like flowers.”

You decided to focus on the food. The first Tupperware contained poached eggs on toast with asparagus and hummus. “Open up.”

You fed him his first bite. “The last time someone fed me was my mother,” he said.

“So, twenty years ago?”

“Four years ago. I was out of quarantine. Nobody wanted to come near me even though I was tested negative. My mother dared it. She wore a protective suit.”

“What did she feed you?”

“Chicken noodle soup. Got anything like that?”

“Close. But not now. If I feed you all the food now, you won't be able to keep them down.”

He ate silently. Once you were done, he said quietly, softly, “Thanks for doing this.”

“Thanks for paying me to do this.”

He chuckled. You packed up the Tupperware and wiped his mouth. He pretended to bite you. You lightly slapped his cheek. When his dimples appeared with his smirk, you snatched your fingers away as if electrocuted. Luckily, he was still blindfolded, or else he'd not stop yapping about it. You took off his blindfold and you two headed for his first bar.
His first drink, approved by you, was Irish eyes.

“What was that statue about?” you asked.

“Hellelil and Hildebrand. You can Google more about them.”

And you did. Hellelil was a Danish princess who fell in love with her bodyguard, Hildebrand. As expected, their ending was tragic.

“Typical,” you commented as he sipped from his cocktail. You could tell he wasn't a cocktail type of person. “Medieval love stories tend to have sad endings.”

“Not just medieval.” He ignored your rule and downed the whole glass in one go. You decided to overlook it and let him order something stronger. A glass of green Drunk Leprechaun.

“Can you blindfold me again? I can't stand all this green shit but I want the alcohol.”

You did as he asked. The bartender and the few patrons nearby eyed you curiously but you ignored them. You tied the cloth over his eyes and again, he sniffed you. You handed him his drink and he sipped obediently. After he finished one more glass of Drunk Leprechaun, you decided it was time for a meal break. You tugged him out after he settled his tab. He didn't seem drunk enough but his steps were a little wobbly. You took him to a bus stand and sat him on the bench. You handed him a bottle of water. He drank from it gratefully.

“Kirimvose, dōnītsos,” he said as you wiped his mouth.

“You're welcome. Time for course two. You'll like it.”

He smiled. “The soup?”

You brought out the Tupperware full of chicken and sweet potato noodle soup. His eyes lit up at the bright yellow color. He asked if he could eat it himself. You handed him the box and the cutlery.

“You love yellow,” you commented.

“I had a golden retriever.”

“What happened?”

“He died. Got into a fight with two other dogs.”

“I'm so sorry.”

He pulled out his phone and showed you his picture. “Sunfyre. The culprits belonged to a cousin and an aunt.”

You looked at the golden retriever, laying on someone's lap, most likely Greg's, and looking at the camera, all bonny and bright. “I'm sorry for your loss.” You noticed a man in sunglasses in the distance, his sleek, long snow white hair in a half-ponytail. He was taller with an aquiline nose and a triangular face, nothing like Greg's straight nose and rectangular face. “Who's that?”

“My second brother.”

You took the empty Tupperware, and offered him a bottle of water and a napkin. “Tell me about him.”

“You won't like him.”

“Oh?”

“Exactly like you, only not as kind. I mean, he can be kind, I guess. But not to me, not to outsiders. Mostly to our mother, sister, and younger brother.”

“How many siblings do you have?”

“Three. Two brothers, one sister.”

“Is the brother visiting you the oldest?”

He snorted. “That'd be me.”

“You're the oldest?!”

“Hard to imagine, I know.”

“You have the youngest child vibe.”

“Glad to disappoint you.”

“Not disappointed. Just surprised.”

He muttered his thanks in high Valyrian and stood up. “Time for bar number two,” he said while rubbing his hands together.

And that was how it went. You'd visit three bars between the meals, he'd have at least two drinks, at most three. Then, you'd drag him outside, sit somewhere, blindfold him (since the next two courses had lots of greens), and feed him. He'd grumble out his complaints and reluctantly swallow his food after chewing on them for a long time. But nothing deterred you. You were here for a job and you intended to earn your bucks. You only drank once. A glass of mint julep. He also ordered a glass with you, finished it in one go, then called you a loser for lagging behind.

At one of the next bars, you left him in a booth with a Guinness float, and went to use the bathroom. As you were washing your hands, a gorgeous woman in burgundy sauntered out of one of the stalls, with glossy dark hair down her open back. She eyed you with a smirk for a second, before she joined you at the sink. “I saw you feeding him.”

You blinked. “Are you talking to me?”

She nodded. Her full lips were painted in a red so dark, you thought for a moment how it'd feel to bite them luscious looking cherries. You shook your head when you caught the big blue rock on her left ring finger.

She followed your gaze and smirked. “Don't let it stop you.”

You flushed. You felt hot. You turned away from her smoldering gaze and wiped your hands dry. “I'm sorry…”

“He can join us, if you want. Is he your boyfriend?”

“No, that's just Greg.” You waved dismissively, then felt guilty for leaving him alone for so long. You excused yourself and headed for the door.

“Alice,” the woman said.

You blinked stupidly.

“My name.”

You nodded, didn't offer your name, and fled. In your booth, Greg had two long straws in his mouth, each from a glass of yellowish-white cocktails. He simpered when he caught sight of you.

“What are you drinking?” you asked.

“Death in the Afternoon and The Sun Also Rises. Hemingway invented them. They're good together.” He offered you the straws.

You declined. When you slid beside him, he climbed onto your lap like Scooby did to Shaggy, looped his arms around you, and laid his head on top of yours. “Skoriot emagon ao issare?” (“Where have you been?”)

Fuck, he was at the high Valyrian jabbering level of drunkenness. He clung to you like a baby panda. Alice passed your booth and winked at you. You looked away, your cheeks aflame.

“Bisa vys buqsa nyke,” Greg muttered. “Pōnta mirre vēdros nyke. Ñuha muña. Ñuha hāedar. Ñuha lanta valonqroti. Ñuha kepāzma. Ñuha kepa, olvie hen mirre. Ziry gaomas daor jenigon zirȳla lo nyke glaesagon iā morghūljagon. Mērī zȳhon tala. Ziry zȳhon tala jorrāelza. Iksi daorun paktot zirȳla. Iksan daor Aemma's tresy. Konir sagon skoriot iksan pirta. Pirta muña, sīkudi nopāzmi! Pirta muña!” He sobbed and tucked his face into the crook of your neck. You adjusted his position and he slipped downward, landing his face half on your neck, half on top of your cleavage. Luckily, it was all covered with your shirt. (“This world hates me.”“They all hate me. My mother. My little sister. My two little brothers. My grandfather. My father, most of all. It does not bother him if I live or die. Only his daughter. He loves his daughter. We are nothing beside her. I am not Aemma's son. That is where I am wrong. Wrong mother, seven hells! Wrong mother!”)

You tucked his hair behind his ear and rubbed his soft lobe. He blinked innocently at you.

“Dōnītsos,” he whispered softly. “Skoros iā gevie ābra iksā. Olvie olvie hae zirȳla. Mērī se ōghar iksis daor keskydoso. Aōhon iksis zōbrie. Se ēdas kasta laesi. Ñuha jorrāelagon. Ñuha jorrāelagon, kostilus ȳdra daor henujagon nyke. Nyke daor glaesagon mijegon ao. Jurnegon rȳ nyke. Iksan daorun mijegon ao. Māzigon arlī naejot nyke. Kesan dīnagon ao. Emili riñar. Umbagon lēda nyke. Umbagon. Kostilus.” (“Sweetling, what a beautiful woman you are. Much, much like her. Only the hair is not the same. Yours is black. And she had blue eyes. My love. My love, please don't leave me. I cannot live without you.  Look at me. I am nothing without you.  Come back to me. I will marry you. We will have children. Stay with me. Stay. Please.”)

His face was wet now. Wet and flushed. You fetched some tissues from your backpack, wiped clean his face, and blew his nose. When he groaned, you had an inkling that he should be in the bathroom right now.

You put him back on the seat, slung your backpack over your shoulder, then shimmied out of the booth. You slipped your arms under his own and pulled him out. When he got to his feet, you slung his arm over your shoulder, then guided him to the bathroom. You thanked your half-an-hour-ago self for choosing the booth closest to the bathroom. You dragged him to the men's room, whose door was opening just as someone was exiting. When the man saw you coming, he held the door open. You thanked him and dragged Greg inside. You kicked open a stall door and helped Greg kneel next to a toilet bowl.

“Come on, you can do this,” you told him softly.

“Nyke daor gaomagon ziry.” (“I cannot do it.”)

“Come on, let it all out. Tears, vomit, pain, snot. It doesn't matter. Nothing is solved if you hold it in.”

“Gaomagon ao nūmāzma ziry?” he asked, his eyes hopeful. (“Do you mean it?”)

You didn't know what he asked. But you nodded nonetheless.

“I'm here for you, Greg. Money or not, I'm here. You can do it. I know you can. Come on.” You rubbed his back.

He shuddered and keeled over. You prevented him from dunking his face right into the bowl. One hand wrapped around his chest to keep him up, the other rubbed his back.

“Ñuha ōghar,” he mumbled but nothing came out of his mouth. (“My hair.”)

“What?”

He pointed to his hair, now dangerously close to touching the toilet bowl lip. You fished a scrunchie from your backpack, good thinking on your past self's part, and tied his hair into a ponytail. He giggled. “Ivestragon nyke iksan gevie.” (“Tell me I am beautiful.”)

“Sure, whatever. Come on now.” You rubbed his back. This time, he puked. He hurled out anything and everything he ate in the last two hours, including all your food. You held your breath and rubbed his back some more, until he could only throw up watery substances. You dragged him out and seated him on the counter beside the sink. Two men watched you curiously but said nothing. You wet some napkins and dabbed them all over Greg's face and neck. You made him rinse his mouth with water, then gargle with some Listerine. You sanitized his hands and fanned him a little. “How do you feel?”

“Jaelan naejot morghūljagon,” he muttered. (“I want to die.”)

“Please, speak English, I beg you.”

He lifted his hands and cupped your face. You feared he might kiss you. Instead, he simply gave you a nose kiss. His wet, cold nose made yours tingle. “Iksan aōhon. Iksā ñuhon. Daorys kostagon qūvy īlva qrīdrughagon.” (“I am yours. You are mine. No one can tear us away.”)

A lone tear rolled down his cheek. When you wiped it away, he grasped your fingers and kissed each tip and nail, tenderly, deeply, noisily, his eyes closed, his nose pressed as close to your palm as his lips. “Vējes maghatan īlva hēnkirī. Ao se nyke sytilībagon hēnkirī.” (“Fate brought us together. You and I belong together.”)

Then, he leaned over and kissed your forehead, his eyes closed, his lips cold, wet, and soft on your feverish, sweaty skin. You gasped and shivered. “Kesan va moriot jorrāelagon ao.” (“I will always love you.”)

Your fingers clasped his shirt and pushed him away. When your eyes met, you hiccupped.

He cupped and caressed your cheeks. “Ñuhon. Ñuha jorrāelagon.” (“Mine. My love.”)

You pulled him to a hug. You hid your face to his chest and embraced him so tightly, he croaked but said nothing. He smelled of tart sweat, medicinal Listerine, funky vomit, and his sharp cologne. His arms around you tightened. He stuffed his face in the crook of your neck. You were both covered in your own sweat and his tears and the smell of his vomit and the dirty, wet counter of the men's bathroom. Still, you clung to him because no matter what language he or you spoke, you were on the same wavelength. You saw and heard and felt all his pain, all the gibberish words he told you. They reached you and you gathered them to your heart as you would love and happiness and peace.

In the dirty bathroom of a New York bar, on Saint Patrick's Day, you clung to a drunk man you only met twice before and both times, you gravitated and strayed. No matter how many galaxies apart he lived, you decided you'd help him. He was not a fuckboy. At his core, he was a sadboy and you would help him find his way back to life, to light, to love.

You would help Gregory A. Teanan.

Later, much later, after you both had recovered and you'd cleaned him up, brought him out of the bar, sat him down on a bench outside, and fed him some green salad without a blindfold, you asked him about his aversion to green things.

He sniffed. “Ñuha muña jeldan…” (“My mother wanted…”)

“No,” and you placed your finger against his lips, “no more high Valyrian. Speak English. Talk to me. Tell me what hurts. Let me help you.”

He began to sob again. You wiped his face. He sniffled and ate the salad you fed him. “My mum wants me to become the heir to my family's business. She also wanted me to marry someone I don't want.”

“Then, what do you want?”

His eyes welled up. “Ziry eptan nyke keskydoso run.” (“She asked me the same thing.”)

“What did I just say, mister?”

He laughed, much more sobered up than before. “Iksan vaoreznuni, which means I'm sorry.” He cleared his throat. “I want to be a pianist.”

You raised a brow. “That explains the fingers.”

“The fingers?”

You took his hands and stroked them. “No bitten, dirty nails. Neat and trim. Soft hands, not calloused. No cuts or bruises.” You looked at him. “A pianist's hands are their biggest treasure.” You fed him more salad. “So, you want to become a musician, an artist, and your mum wants you to instead run the family business and marry the girl of her choice.”

He swallowed his food and nodded.

“Be honest. Are they the mafia?”

He laughed. “Close enough in power but no.”

“Dang it. And here I was hoping to finally have my Wattpad story.”

He grabbed your chin and raised a perfect brow. “You can still have it.”

You slapped his hand away. “Oh please, you're a pussycat”

“I'm actually Pepé Le Pew.”

“The skunk?” You ate a spoonful of salad. “Yeah, you are. Smelly, obnoxious, and delusionally perverted. Not French but you have a French pervert's soul.”

“Then, you're my Penelope.”

“Neither am I Penelope nor am I yours.”

His mirth dimmed a little. “How much more do I have to eat?”

“Depends. How much more do you want to drink?”

“I still haven't tried an Appletini.”

“Would you like to?”

You two went to a new bar. You cheered to your newfound friendship and took slow sips. The bartender allowed you to eat your dessert inside.

“Oats? Chia seed?” Greg deadpanned.

“Oats are rich in fiber and protein,” you parroted from a website where you found most of your information. “It eases the effects of alcohol.”

“You're just parroting from Google.”

You laughed. “True but I also know from firsthand experience. My last serious boyfriend.” You told him about Darren. Sweet, angelic Darren, who only took up alcohol after his twin brother committed suicide. They were very close. You remembered Derek, sweet sad Derek, as sweet as Mabel, as sad as Greg. Once his brother was gone, Darren fell into serious depression. You couldn't fix him. You tried but you couldn't. You could only hold an intervention with his family, coax him to admit himself to a rehab, and get clean. He sent you a letter a month ago as part of his recovery program. You told him how proud you were of him.

“You haven't yet reached his state of alcoholism but you're on your way, Greg.” You held his hand and he caressed the back of your palm with his thumb, a gesture so intimate yet lighthearted. “This is why I agreed to your offer. To keep an eye on you.”

“This is why you made all this food.”

“Yes. Darren didn't hurt me. But it hurt to see him suffer. I don't know you well.” You met his eyes. “But I'd like to help you. If you want. If you let me.”

Before he could reply, his phone buzzed. He declined the call. A text arrived. Something in English alphabets but the words seemed gibberish.

“Is that high Valyrian?” you asked.

“My brother. Such a nag.”

“What does he want so late?”

“Asking me where I am. To stop drinking and come home. Sam must've told him I'm out drinking.”

“Your cousin is very hot.”

“And she has a partner.”

“Darn it!”

“As if she'd ever notice you. She rebuffed my advances.”

“Ew, you hit on your cousin?”

“Not blood related. Her partner is my cousin from my mum's side. Besides, it doesn't matter in Westeros whether you're blood-related cousins or not.”

“Excuse me?” You almost choked on your drink.

He grinned mischievously. “Among the Valyrians, selective incest is allowed.”

You could say nothing as he went on, enjoying your shock and disgust. He told you how, among the Valyrian population of Westeros, marriages between uncles and nieces, aunts and nephews, and siblings were allowed. Among the rest of Westeros, marriages between cousins, including first cousins, were allowed.

“My older sister married our uncle. My ex-wife is my little sister.”

Your face must've turned green because Greg offered to take you to the restroom. You declined after a sip of your water. “Please, tell me you're joking.”

“I'm joking.”

“Please, be serious.”

“I am serious. Westeros is a fucked-up country and the Valyrians are the most fucked-up.”

“Fuck!” You downed your cocktail and immediately regretted it. Greg fed you some water and offered to head home.

“I have spare bedrooms. You can crash in one of them,” he suggested.

“I didn't bring any night clothes.”

“Sam will let you borrow something.” He stood on wobbly legs and surprisingly kept his balance. He gripped your coat sleeves as you both paid your tabs and hired a taxi.

You must've fallen asleep because a minute after you closed your eyes, you opened them when someone shook you. It was Greg.

“He shook me awake too…” He pointed to your taxi driver, who scowled at you through the rearview mirror. You rubbed the sleep from your eyes.

You two clambered out of the cab, then into his building, up the elevator, and to his apartment. He couldn't find his keys, so you slipped your hands inside his coat pockets and located them.

“Tell me something.” You tried the key. “Why do you hate the color green?”

“Didn't I tell you?”

“You said you want to be a pianist and your mum wants you to be the heir of the family business and enter an arranged marriage. Not the reason.”

“Her family's color is green. They always wear it.”

“Like all the time?"

He nodded.

“All the fucking time? Like both at parties and at home when she goes to sleep?”

He nodded again.

You snorted and opened the door. “That's so boring and stupid. Why the color green?”

“My mother's side is from a place called Oldtown. The rulers there used to light green fire whenever they called forth all their bannersmen to raise arms.”

“Sounds very Tolkien-ish.”

“The beacons of Minas Tirith!” Greg roared, like Viggo Mortensen.

“The beacons are lit!” you joined him.

“Gondor calls for aid!”

You two looked at each other and said together, “Then, Rohan will answer!”, and burst out giggling. He went ahead, saying he desperately needed a shower. You couldn't agree more.

You locked the door behind you and abandoned your backpack in the foyer. At the end of the hallway, you stumbled onto Greg. “What's wrong?” you asked. He stepped aside and you saw her.

Alice from the bar was draped across a chaise lounge by the decorative fireplace. At the far end of the living room, by the door stood a tall, blond man with a lean build. His snow white hair was straight and glossy, tied in a long half-ponytail down his back. When he turned around, the first thing you noticed was the piercing gaze of his purple right eye, while the other one was visibly fake and unmoving under a large scar that would’ve terrified you, had you been a five-year-old, but now it only made you sad now for some reasons. His gaze cut you like the swords from Tolkien’s lores. You turned to Greg, who stood rooted to the spot.

“Rytsas, lēkia,” the man said. (“Hello, big brother.”)

“Hello to you too, little brother,” Greg said tiredly, warily, quietly.

Chapter Text

April Fool's Day/World Autism Awareness Day, 2024

You never thought you'd be in this position but you had to admit the bitter truth as you sat outside the office of the founder and president of Maids in Manhattan Housekeeping Service for your interview. After a month of no replies from any of the twenty-nine applications you sent, you had sought help from your mother. Since nobody wanted you for your English lit degree, you went for your next skills.

Housekeeping.

You had only one experience, from Ezra Ebenezer, who used to be your boss and your dom. You had also looked after yourself since you were a child and your mother had to work late. You knew how to clean. You knew how to cook. You knew how to keep a house. It was time to start professionally.

You had brought a copious number of references from both Ezra (who, when you contacted him after years of radio silence, readily gave you his glowing reference) and all the places you had catered to, even one from your mama's colleague. Etaf's cousins sent a six-page long reference praising you to heaven, as did Mr. Lombardi (his was one-page long but beggars can't be choosers).

You once again opened your portfolio and checked that everything was arranged, first by how much you were praised, secondly by dates, lastly by alphabets. You wiped your sweaty hands before thumbing through them.

You had borrowed from your mother a white shirt, a beige coat, and the same high-waisted black trousers. Your hair was in a French braid. Your face was lightly made up, nothing flashy. No jewelries other than a pair of fake pearl studs on your lobes.

Someone took the seat right next to yours and it took everything in you to not snap when they occupied the shared armrest. You were about to get up to a seat away when your neighbor tugged you back down by your coat sleeve. You were about to bless them with a tongue lashing when you spotted the snow white hair.

“G-Greg?”

He greeted you with a boyishly impish grin. “Rytsas, dōnītsos.” (“Hello, sweetling.”)

You blinked and snapped, “What?”

“I just said hello.”

You leaned back and composed yourself, hugging your portfolio to your chest so tightly you almost crushed the folder. “What... What are you doing here?”

He smiled again, as bright and warm and cozy as the sunlight streaming through the window behind the receptionist's desk to your right. “I'm here for a job interview.”

Your brain must've short-circuited because you just blinked and said nothing. He was here for a job interview? Here, in a housekeeping service company? He, a cis man with a whole ass apartment in Gramercy, Manhattan? You blinked again as the suspicion slowly seeped in.

Did his family cut off his access to his accounts? Was that why his brother visited that night? You didn't know, because five minutes into the small talk between the two blond brothers, you had excused yourself and left the apartment. Greg ran after you without hesitation, begging you to stay the night. You sensed his reason. He didn't want to be alone with his brother and his partner. But you didn't bring your Glock that night, a seismic level mistake on your part, and you had no reason to stay and eavesdrop. Still, you let Greg take you back inside his apartment, his hand holding yours tightly like a kindergarten kid holding onto their parents' hands on their first day of school. You came back to the ostentatiously decorated living room and faced the stony brother and his seductive partner, who made you more nervous than her partner did. The brothers talked in high Valyrian. His partner must understand it a little because she chimed in every once in a while but kept her luscious chocolate brown eyes on you the whole time. She winked a few times, making you sweat and hate your disheveled appearance. You excused yourself to the kitchen. When Greg clung to your arm again, you told him you were just going to bake him some lemonies.

“I don't have the ingredients,” he told you sheepishly.

So, you went to Dr. Tarly's apartment next-door, Greg in tow, refusing to let you go out of his sight, and borrowed from her everything you needed. As you took the ingredients from her pantry, you asked Greg if he was okay. He shrugged and said nothing, much more sober and somber than he was an hour ago. When you both returned, your four arms ladened with ingredients for lemon squares, his brother let out a dissatisfied hum and you decided to despise him from then on.

You began to make your lemonies. Greg never left the kitchen. So, his brother and his partner moved there. The two brothers, separated by a marble island, spoke tersely in high Valyrian. Greg, staying stubbornly by your side, watched you measure the ingredients. His brother, whose name you never got to know that night, alternated his sharp gaze between you and his brother. Alice, for her part, roamed around. She asked for your name, which you gave to her this time in an embarrassingly squeaky voice.

Your reaction to his partner's mere question pleased Greg's brother, which made you despise him even more. When you glared at him, he narrowed his purple eye and glared back. Greg and Alice looked between you two and probably made bets on who would look away first. You won when Greg's brother's cell phone rang and he had to check the caller ID. When he looked back up at you, you offered him your smug smile and went back to baking your lemony goodness. Greg's brother mercifully left the room to answer someone who seemed to not know high Valyrian, for you caught snippets of his conversation from the other room.

“...not alone... out drinking... a girl... probably here for the money…” Then, you stopped listening because both Greg and your lemonies demanded your attention. You baked him two large trays of lemon squares, amounting to forty bars. You gave them all to him before you told him you had to go home or else your mama would worry. He begged you to stay, his blue eyes tearing up like a child. You put your number on the speed dial on his phone and told him you'd run back to him should his brother decide to murder him. You promised him should you be too late to save him, you'd avenge him no matter what. His brother scoffed behind you, but you ignored him and kissed Greg on his cheek. It was this gesture that shocked his brother, who cleared his throat when Greg clung to your arm.

“If you're done with your gold digger, can we talk?”

You wished so much at that moment to have your Glock in your hand. You decided to shake off the moniker, said your assurances and farewell to poor Greg, and headed for the door. On your way, you roughly shoved his brother's shoulder and passed him. To your pleasure, his brother grunted but said and did nothing. You slammed the door on your way out and called an Uber.

Now, at present, you settled down next to Greg, who looked debonair in his pressed brown suit. A little scruffy but he had cleaned up nice.

“I see Emilio Largo didn't throw you into his pool of sharks,” you said.

“Who?”

“Your one-eyed brother. I just compared him to a Bond villain who wears an eye patch.”

He snorted. “He did use to wear a patch when he was younger. Alys convinced him to try out a fake eye.”

“Improved his looks. I can't imagine he'd get a woman as hot as her with ugly ass eye patches but I've been told that love is blind.”

You caressed your portfolio. “You didn't tell me. What are you doing here?”

“A job interview, like I said.”

“Be serious.”

“What, you think men can't do housekeeping? How sexist of you, dōnītsos!”

The door to the president's office opened and a woman walked out. The receptionist called Greg's name and he stood up. No portfolio in his hands. He had turned up empty-handed. “Won't you wish me luck?

“Break a leg.”

“Ouch.”

And he left. You went to your group chat with your girlfriends and told them what happened. Etaf also assumed he must've been cut off from his trust fund to have to go on a job interview in a housekeeping service.

“What does he know about cleaning and cooking?” Mabel wondered.

“Nothing, lol,” you texted. “I'd love to see him clean his own vomit for once.”

The door to the office slammed open. Greg almost ran out, as if chased by angry bulls, and sure enough, the president of the company rushed out. “People like you belittle what we do here,” the redhead said to his back.

Greg, for his part, looked unfazed as he rushed to your side and grabbed your hand.

“Come on, babe, let's go home. These money-grubbing assholes don't deserve us,” he said to you, loud enough for the whole hallway to hear him, and tugged on your hands with the same strength he displayed at the subway station after he got mugged. You could do nothing but let him pull you to your feet and follow him. “What's going on?”

“Never come back here again!” the president said. “Entitled brats, both of you. Banned for life. Even if you come to us as clients.”

You shot a shocked glance over your shoulder at the redheaded woman, who glared at you. “But my interview?”

“Fired before hired. Out, out with you!” the woman said.

Greg pulled you faster now. The building's elevator was slower than molasses in January, so he cursed it out loud, blamed the president and her “money-grubbing asshole” employees, and took the stairs. You tried to twist your hand free but he didn't let you go. “Greg, let go! What the fuck is going on? What did you do inside? Why is she yelling at me? Greg!?”

He didn't reply, nor did he let you go until you both had come out of the building and he'd put you inside a cab. Once he shut the door, he told the driver his address.

“Greg, what the fuck?! You're kidnapping me!”

The driver frowned at you in the rearview mirror. Greg smiled at him and told him to keep driving. “No, she's my girlfriend, I'm not kidnapping her, sir.”

The man narrowed his eyes but continued driving.

“Greg?!” You tugged on his sleeve. “This isn't funny, okay, I'm unemployed and living with my mama for more than a month now. I'm running out of my savings. I can't burden her any more than I already have with my existence.”

Greg squeezed your hand. You snatched it back. “Dōnītsos,” he said so tenderly, the driver was finally convinced that Greg didn't have any ill intentions and turned back to the road, “I swear to God, what I did was for your own good.”

“This is a prank, isn't it?” You were almost teary now. “Fuck, Greg. We're friends but you can't just sabotage my interview like this. This is the only place I got a callback from. Everyone else either rejected me or ghosted me.”

“I'm not, I'm not. Please, trust me.” He cupped your face and wiped your tears and you let him because goddamn it, his fucking hands were so fucking soft, like your mama's eiderdown made from actual St. Cuthbert's duck feathers, a gift from your dad she only brought out for special occasions. You, against your better judgment, sank into Greg's touch. “I'm not pranking you. Okay, maybe I did. But this is not a good place for you.”

“What?” you asked, still savoring his touch.

“Mabel told me…”

You groaned but let him continue.

“She told me that weeks ago, you guys catered to a baby shower and you were sobbing at a baby-sized pillow.”

“I was on my period, okay. I get hormonal when there's a crime scene between my legs!”

He laughed. “That's fine, dōnītsos. Anyway, she told me how you told her you wanted to be a mum someday. All that was good until I learned from my cousin that most housekeeping services don't give their employees maternity leaves, let alone paid ones.”

“The hell?!” the driver muttered from his seat.

“Exactly!” Greg exclaimed. “Sam’s housekeeper was replaced when she requested to bring her baby to work and for breastfeeding breaks. Sam was ready to give them but her agency wasn’t. They sacked the woman when she tried to raise an online campaign for it. No references, even though she worked there for years. She was fired a day before Thanksgiving. It was awful.”

“Good lord,” your driver grumbled.

“I know, right?!” Greg's thumbs caressed your cheeks and you could almost fall asleep. “This is why I didn't want you to work at this kind of place.”

“What did you do inside the office to make the president so angry?”

“I told them you're my fiancée, pregnant with my child and…”

“What?!” You almost jumped away from him but his hands and the little space in the backseat prevented you. “You did what?”

He resumed stroking your cheeks and you couldn't stop him, you didn't want to, no matter how angry you felt toward him. “Yeah, well, that worked, didn't it?”

It took you a lot of willpower to distance yourself from Greg and shake off the allure of his soft hands. “Okay, I appreciate you looking out for me but this wasn't the way! You could've alerted me! You have my number. Why did you go behind my back and sabotage my chances? Pretty sure the president will call other companies and get me banned everywhere.” You ran a hand down your face and took a deep breath in, then out. You put your portfolio between you, a way to keep distance from his hands, your kryptonite. “Greg, we're friends but we only know each other for two months, not even that long. You trust me and I sort of trust you, no offense.”

He shrugged to say “none taken”.

“And I know you have my best interest in your mind but we're not the same, okay.”
The last part dimmed his brightness a little and it hurt you to do this but this was necessary.

“You're rich. You're a trust fund kid. Your family are a bunch of assholes but you're not like me, okay? My dad died before I was born and he left not a dime for me. For my mama, sure. But not me. He was a rich married fuckboy who had an affair with my mama. Ever since I was born, she struggled. Ever since I was born, I had to learn the hard way that money rules this world. And I need money right now. I've already burdened my mama enough and she's an angel for taking me in but I can't continue like this, okay? I need a job and this stupid fucking country offers you a degree in English literature but never a job for it unless you're rich like you are. And I'm not. I have no money, no prospect, and I'm a burden on my mama. I have to find a job to stop leeching off of her like I did for the first eighteen years of my life.” This was where you stopped because you were crying and hiccupping so badly, your words got tangled. Greg put aside your portfolio and hugged you and you let him because you craved his soft touch. He pressed your face to his chest and rubbed your back.

“I'm sorry,” he muttered.

“I'm poor, Greg.”

“I know and I'm stupid. I didn't think this through, especially how you'd react.”

“No, you didn't. And yes, you're an idiot.”

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”

You pushed him away and wiped your face. “Your apologies won't solve anything. The damage is done. Please, leave me alone.”

And he did. He told the driver to head for Roosevelt Island instead of Gramercy. He was with you the whole way. When you got out, he repeated his apologies but you had no energy left. Truth be told, you were embarrassed by your outburst. You hated being autistic sometimes, because these kinds of reactions were autistic meltdowns which you tried your utmost to not happen in public. But it happened and it happened in front of Greg who was your hot European friend with amazing hands and you didn't want to embarrass yourself in front of him any more than you already had. You didn't reply to his apologies and went inside your building. Once in your apartment, your movements were like a robot. You took off your clothes, put them in the washer, took a shower, ate some cereal straight from the box, then blocked Greg's number. He'd texted you three times since you left the cab. You turned on airplane mode and curled into sleep.

Why did he have to be like this? Childishly optimistic and angelically beautiful. He reminded you of the sun and a meadow full of sunflowers, golden retrievers and capybaras and meadow picnics. Though sometimes, he showed darkness too. But even in his dark depths, he was soft and sensitive. If only he didn't fuck up today. Why couldn't he just text you what happened to his cousin's housekeeper and warn you like a normal person? It wasn't like you were pregnant now and had to worry about maternity leaves, breastfeeding breaks, and daycare spaces. You weren't yet in your thirties, though you weren't very far from that threshold either. Unlike Etaf's mom, yours didn't nag you about your eggs dying. Then why?

Your anger turned briefly to Mabel before it evaporated. She didn't know Greg would pull such a stunt. She most likely had your well-being in mind. But when did they become such fast friends for her to share intimate details about you?

A headache was brewing inside your skull, probably a tension headache. You popped in two Tylenol and pulled your duvet over your head. You napped until your mama came home and woke you up.

“Mabel told me what happened,” she said quietly.

You blinked the sleep from your eyes. “Greg?”

“About him too.”

“I hate him,” you said sullenly.

“No, sweet pea, you don't.”

“I do!”

“No, you don't.” She laid your head on her lap and gently scratched your scalp. “Tell me about him.”

And you did. You left no details behind. Even how you met him at the restaurant on Valentine's day.

“He sounds a little…” Your mama struggled to find a proper adjective.

“Creepy?”

“Kooky.”

You scoffed and took her hands in yours. Why couldn't your mama have hands as soft as his? Even as you stewed in your hate (anger) at him, you still longed for the touch of his cotton-soft and silky-smooth hands. God, you never thought in a million years you'd be drooling over a man's hands. Jesus, what the fuck happened to you? People hit by a truck had better reactions than you did at that moment.

That night, your mama baked you a whole tray of oatmeal raisin carrot cake cookies (Mabel's recipe) to dip into oat milk. Purring like a cat in her embrace, you unblocked Greg's number. Instantly, a deluge of his texts drowned your notifications. You read them all, felt how anxious and upset he was from your silence, and texted him three words,
“Sweet dreams, Greg.”

He replied with a lot of words and emoji and gifs. You turned off your internet and went to sleep, cuddling with your mama after years of distance. You had a disturbing dream where you were nibbling on oatmeal raisin carrot cake cookies before they morphed into the shape of hands, white hands, hands as soft as cotton, smooth as silk, and sweet as cookies. Soon, you'd bitten off his entire hands before you began to eat his arms, then his shoulders, and he happily let you. You were crying by the time your canines reached his neck and he merrily leaned back to give you more access.

You woke up.

Your mama had set up an alarm by the bed. You shut it off and turned on your phone. Etaf, for the second time in your life, begged you in a text to listen to her morning show. You plugged in your headphones, tuned in, and went to brush your teeth. Etaf talked about today, the World Autism Awareness day. She talked about autistic meltdowns and shutdowns, and how to help an autistic person who is going through them. She credited you, anonymously, for everything she knew about autism. You sent her a quick thank you text. Her show continued as you made your bed and fixed yourself some cereal.

“Did you know that Etaf spelled backwards is Fate?” said a soft, deep voice you recognized. “Fate rhymes with my name, so I guess we were destined to meet.”

Etaf laughed. “Are you flirting with me, Nate from Manhattan? You should know I'm only into women.”

“Aw shucks. Maybe I can introduce you to my sister?”

“Sorry but I'm taken, bro, and very happy in my relationship.”

“If you ever need her number, let me know.” A pause. “I wanna thank you for doing the segment on autistic meltdowns. My sister used to have them sometimes and we never knew what caused her outbursts. She doesn't like being touched at all and is obsessed about bugs.”

You listened. He almost never talked about his sister. You only knew she was younger than him.

“Some autistic people don't like being touched, especially unprompted. And I think,” Etaf said, “your sister's hyperfixation is insects. I know someone whose hyperfixation is lemon squares.”

You rolled your eyes when your best friend and your tentative friend giggled conspiratorially on air. You made a group chat with your girlfriends and him, and named it, “The Powerpuff Girls (and Mojo Jojo)”. Your first text was telling them how you hate them, except for Mabel, who could do no wrong.

“Anyway, I wanna request you to play a song for someone special today,” Greg said. “It's a certain song we talked about before.”

They were talking about you, you were sure. You listened to what song he had in mind for you. Etaf granted the request.

“Why do you build me up (build me up)
Buttercup, baby
Just to let me down? (let me down)
And mess me around
And then, worst of all (worst of all)
You never call, baby
When you say you will (say you will)
But I love you still
I need you (I need you)
More than anyone, darling
You know that I have from the start
So build me up (build me up)
Buttercup, don't break my heart…”

After the song was over, you sent a middle finger emoji to the group chat. Etaf sent a peace emoji, Mabel left it at “seen”, and Greg sent a gif of a yellow buttercup with the caption, “Cheer up, buttercup”. You sent a gif of Buttercup, the green Powerpuff girl, where she yells, “I need to punch!”

Before you muted the chat, he sent a gif of a Mojo Jojo drawing with the caption, “sad monkey” and an arrow pointing at him.

The rest of the day, you received texts from Etaf and Mabel in turn, asking you to tune into various radio shows where Greg requested your favorite songs. During lunch, you got two songs back to back: Daughtry's Waiting for Superman (to which you replied with a gif of Edna saying, “No capes!”) and Coldplay's Yellow (to which you replied with a meme that said, “Look at the stars, look how they shine for you”, with a picture of a night sky full of stars that formed the words, “fuck you”).

“Ouch, dōnītsos,” he texted you only.

And he continued to send more song requests to other radio shows. The next two songs you never heard before but they became your new favorites, not that you'd tell him. When the English band, Lawson, said the lyrics:

“There's a place we know
What's cold enough won't grow
We have seen the dark
And the darkness took its toll
And the journey waits for no one
If no one breaks the mould
And our hearts are stronger than we know”

When the chorus began, you knew you were fucked. You felt goosebumps on your arms when the singer sang the part, your favorite part:

“That you and I could learn to love again
After all this time
Maybe that is how I knew you were the one
That you could still believe in me again
After all our trials
Maybe that is how I knew you were the one…”

You felt Greg chose this song especially for you two. Didn’t both of you go through trials, trials that could’ve shattered you but failed to do so? The thing with your dad, his family, your mama’s heartbreak and loneliness, what you went through when you had to let Etaf go and she never came back to you, when she and Mabel started dating, when Levy broke you and you kicked him out of your life, when you let Darren go reluctantly. For Greg, you only knew about the fiancée he lost because he was too chicken to propose, and Sunfyre, his golden retriever whom he lost to a fatal dog fight.

The next song, While Your Lips are Still Red, was from a Finnish band. The lyrics were like a lullaby. The music, especially the part at the end, sold you entirely. He didn't know you were part Scandinavian, did he? Etaf and Mabel would never tattle you out. They'd been sworn to secrecy and you knew they'd never sell you off on this secret about your dad, even to Greg.

By the time Robbie Williams' Angels was playing for you, your grudge iceberg had thawed into a puddle. Still, you were in a dilemma. What he did yesterday was a tasteless prank. You badly needed the job. Any job, to be frank. You were desperate, and unemployed people were seen almost as burdensome as the homeless, the old, and the disabled people. Especially in a capitalist society like in the States. Your bank account sighed in relief last month after your first quarterly blood donation event, perks of having Rh-null, one of the rarest blood in the world. But two thousand dollars would run out in a blink. No, you needed a steady source of income. Despite what he did, Greg obviously cared about you, enough to pretend to have an interview with the president and confront her about the lack of opportunities for pregnant people and those with newborns. He cared about your future. But the way he went at it was not to your liking. His approach almost cost you your reputation among the housekeeping services in the city. On top of that, your future as a mama was so far away, it didn't matter if your employer didn't give you any benefits right now. Not only that, his approach caught you so off guard, it caused you to have a meltdown in public, in front of him and a stranger. It embarrassed you, though the progressive part of your mind said it was nothing to be ashamed of. His sister was autistic too. He should know not to overwhelm an autistic person like that. Then again, he didn't know you were autistic.

By the time you were well and truly drowning in your dilemma, the sixth song had ended. The lyrics stuck with you like Greg's touches did to your skin.

“And through it all
She offers me protection
A lot of love and affection
Whether I'm right or wrong
And down the waterfall
Wherever it may take me
I know that life won't break me
When I come to call
She won't forsake me
I'm loving angels instead…”

Did he mean you? Were you the angel the song mentioned? You itched to ask but knew you'd embarrass yourself. You might be wrong about the angel assumption too. He was a rich, handsome European who was clearly a fuckboy too. Of course, he wouldn't feel anything mushy toward you. Obviously, he was lonely and you helped him out a lot of times and it made him feel like he could trust you. You were nobody important in his life. You were simply a friend he didn't want to lose in a foreign country while hiding from his influential family.

“Stop making a mountain out of a molehill,” you chided yourself.

You were getting ready for bed. Your mama had fallen asleep long ago, when a text came from him. He was asking you to tune into a midnight talk show, obviously for another song. You tuned in and...

He was singing! He was singing Chasing Cars.

You had heard it on Grey's Anatomy, season two finale for the first time and loved it ever since. Snow Patrol was such an underrated band. Etaf or Mabel must've told him how crazy you were about the song.

With no background music, Greg sang the song live. For his voice, it was perfect. You went to the living room portion of the one room the apartment had and sat on the windowsill. You opened the window. The night breeze greeted you, as did the sight of your doorman confronting someone in front of your building. Because your mama's apartment was one floor above the ground, you could call and be heard by the doorman easily.

“Mason, what's wrong?” you asked.

He turned and so did the man he was confronting. You knew only one man with such snow white hair. Well, two but there was no way the second one would turn up at your doorstep. So, Greg it was. He was singing, singing live the song you loved. Despite Mason, your beefy doorman confronting him, Greg never stopped nor did his voice falter.

You forgot to close the window. You forgot to put on anything decent over your ratty shirt with spaghetti straps and your loose pajamas that reached your knobby knees. You didn't even put on shoes. Barefoot, you rushed downstairs. Seeing you, Mason backed off. Greg grinned brightly at you while singing the lyrics, your favorite one:

“Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads
I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own”

Upon reaching him, you gently hugged him, not disrupting his flow. He sang even as he hugged you back and positioned his phone as close to his lips as possible. You had missed the softness of his slightly chubby body, the smell of his musky cologne, and the sound of his soft, deep voice that crooned like a professional. You squeezed him tight the whole time as he finished singing for you.

Just as he ended the call to the radio station, you did something impulsively.

You grabbed his face and kissed both his cheeks. “You stupid monkeyboy.”

“Anything for my Buttercup, ñuha dōnītsos.” He was panting a little, so you sat him down on the stairs to your building, Mason lurking somewhere behind the double glass doors. (“My sweetling.”)

“Why are you so mad? So weird? How did this happen to me, meeting someone like you?” you babbled on as you pulled him close and laced your fingers with his cute, delicate hands.

He laughed. “Runs in my family. Take my sister.”

“We're not weird,” you said with a frown.

“I know, but trust me, she has her own weirdness even other autistic people don't have. Sometimes, she says stuff that comes true later on.”

“So? She's perspective.”

“Maybe. If she was born during the Salem witch trials, she'd have been convicted, that's for sure.” He tightened his grip around your fingers. You sank your trimmed nails into his supple flesh. “And it's not just her. You said I'm weird. You met my brother and he's a whole other level of weirdness. Then, there's my older sister…”

“I thought you were the oldest,” you said. “And that you only had one sister.”

“Ray is my older half-sister. The one who's autistic, Hellie, we're from the same parents. Ray is from another mother, my father's first wife…” A pause, a gulp, and a sigh, “his one true love. My mother was his rebound.”

You nodded. You were familiar with rebounds. Your mama had plenty of them and she had been that to plenty of people. And if your mama strayed, you were not far behind. They made you feel used and useless, pumped you full of insecurity and vulnerability afterwards. “I'm sorry to hear that.”

“My father only loved his first wife's child. Never the four he birthed with his second wife. Probably because of the age gap. Probably because my mum used to be my older sister's childhood best friend.”

You jolted. “Excuse me?”

“Yeah, I told you my family is weird. Dramatic and violent and mercurial. My mum and my older sister are of the same age. Which is why my siblings and I are almost the same age as my nephews.”

“Wow,” was all you could say. “Wait, did you say nephews?”

“Five. Ray got married twice. All of them are boys. One of them even has the same first name as mine.”

“So many Gregorys.”

He fell quiet, as if embarrassed and upset.

“We don't have to talk about your family if you don't want to. I understand. My family is plenty weird. My mama never moved on from my dad. He was the Prince Charles who never married his Camilla. My grandmother is a total hag who doesn't want my half-sister to inherit because she has down syndrome.”

“That's a whole other level of fucked-upness.”

“Exactly! Our families are weird, complicated, embarrassing, and dramatic. No wonder you overacted and I overreacted in public.”

He laughed. “Am I forgiven?”

You squeezed his hand. “Sure. Why not? But promise me, no more pranks. No more doing anything that causes me public meltdowns.”

“Promise.”

“You're forgiven.”

He let out a long exhale. “I'm so relieved because I have an offer.”

You cocked your head.

“My brother and his partner sampled the lemon cakes you made that night…”

“Lemonies…”

“And then told our mum about what I've been up to, including you. In your defense, I told my mum about all the ways you helped me out. At the subway station. At the funeral you catered. On St. Patrick's Day. I'm pretty sure my brother and my grandfather are doing a background check on you by now…”

“Oh no!” You hid your face between your knees.

“And now, my mum wants me to hire you. Permanently. As my housekeeper.”

You sat up. “For real?”

“My brother wanted to hire a professional from a reputable company but I said, it's either you or nobody else.” He looked into your eyes. “Come take care of me, dōnītsos. Please.”

“Why me?”

“Because you're my first friend in this city. The first person who took care of me, expecting nothing in return. You saved me from those hooligans. You rescued me from being flattened on the subway tracks. You dragged me all over the city to get me home. You were there when I had a concussion and you woke me up every few hours, staying awake the whole night. Even though I was an ass to you hours ago. Then, you fed me lemon cakes…”

“Lemonies…”

“When I was upset at that Italian gangster's house. You saved my ass from committing a disgusting crime. You offered me a place to stay when I was upset. Then, you agreed to take care of me for a whole night. You cooked for me. You fed me. You cleaned my vomit. You listened to my venting. Need I go on?”

“That's pretty much all I did.”

“I know you'd do more should the opportunity present itself.”

“You give me too much credit.”

“Because you give yourself too little. Other than St. Patrick's Day, everything you did for me you did without anything in return. You're Buttercup with the heart of Bubbles.”

You grimaced. “You're too trusting. That tells me you've been sheltered all your life. For all you know, I could be a serial killer…”

“Why does everyone keep suggesting that?”

“...or a con woman or a sex trafficker or a cannibal.”

He smirked. “Dōnītsos, I'm too trusting because nothing you do to me can be any worse than what my family hasn't done to me already. You wanna eat my pancreas? Be my guest. I'd gladly lay down my life to fill your belly.”

“Fine, fine, I'll work for you. My hourly rate is thirty bucks. How many days a week? I'm not working on weekends.”

“How about live-in?”

“You want me to live with you?”

“I'm a menace that requires 24/7 observation. Constant concussion.”

You thought it over. You had been Ezra's live-in sub/housekeeper for some time. This was not foreign to you now as it was years ago. Plus, Greg asked you to perform household chores, not sexual activities. He was rich and generously paid you the last time he hired you, so why not? You could use the money. Save most of them and spend the rest. After all, beggars can't be choosers. “It's gonna cost you, fuckboy.”

“Nothing precious can be cheap.”

You blushed and looked away. “Shuddup.” You cleared your throat and stood up. “Let's discuss this tomorrow.”

“Sweet dreams, dōnītsos.”

You called an Uber for him, then went inside just as the car drove off. You went to sleep that night with a job offer and a new best friend on the horizon.

Chapter Text

May Day, 2024

The day you moved in was Tulip Day in NYC. You found out from Etaf's habit of keeping up with all the up-to-date events. So, you'd already purchased a ticket to pick a bouquet for your mama. She loved receiving flowers and had a picture of a tulip bouquet your father once gave her, his first ever gift to her that she cherished by safekeeping the petals inside her favorite books (she's such a bookworm, she got it from her mama, and you got it from your own). Anyway, you wanted to thank her for letting you stay and so, you made a rainbow colored bouquet of tulips for her, with a card that said, “Thank you for taking me in”. You planned to give it to her once you had settled in Greg's apartment and went to have one final dinner with your mama at her place before you'd spend your nights as a housekeeper.

When you entered the building, the daytime doorman, who you had never met before, greeted you with a “Oh, it's you! Mr. Teanan has been looking for you!”

Already? You only came to drop off your luggage and maybe make him lunch. You thought he'd still be sleeping in. He gave you a key for that purpose, so he didn't have to wake up and open the door. You smiled hesitantly at the doorman and dragged your small suitcase with you, your bouquet in one hand. As you expected, richboy Greg was fast asleep. You made him a light breakfast of Banana Bread French toasts from scratch, with some berry sun tea. You left the bouquet on the kitchen counter and went to the servant's quarter to keep your luggage. When you came out, Greg was in the kitchen, holding the bouquet and rubbing his cheeks on the petals as if it were his comfort plushie. His grin effectively blinded you. “Nobody ever gave me flowers. Thank you!”

You couldn't tell him it was for your mama. Oh well. You made a mental note to buy another bouquet on your way out. You quickly made him lunch of beef stew with garlic naan. He told you to move into one of the empty bedrooms he had.

“But I work for you,” you weakly protested.

“So? You're my friend first, everything else later.”

That was how it began.

A week later (after Greg's brother, Edmond, and his partner, Alice, left NYC for Vermont), you woke up to find a cream white Steinway O-180 in the living room, directly across the decorative fireplace.

“Surprise!” Greg popped up from behind the white elephant in the room. “Do you like it?”

You blinked. “I mean, I guess it suits the white aesthetic you got going on here.”

He rolled his eyes, came out from behind the piano to stand beside you, and slung an arm around your shoulder, his hand hanging down your arm. You clung to his fingers and enjoyed the view of the stunning piano.

“So, what brought on this expenditure?” you asked.

“A pianist friend of Samantha's suffers from carpal tunnel. So, she got me to fill in. Schumann's piano quartet in E-flat major, opus number 47. The violinist, cellist, and violist will arrive tomorrow for a trial. Just for tomorrow, we'll see if I can keep up with them.” You caught his other hand fisting up and unclenched it.

“What's the matter?”

“They're all professionals. The only time I performed in public was in my country, in front of people I know.”

You understood the tremor through his fingers. He had never done this before but he dreamed of becoming a professional pianist. “Show me how good you are.”

And he did. He played any tune you told him to play. If he never heard them before, you'd play the audio on YouTube and he'd repeat it on the piano.

“These are all songs and jingles,” he said with a sigh. “I'll be playing chamber music with people who have been doing it for money for years. I've never done this before in an unknown crowd with professional players before.”

You downloaded the PDF files of some well-known sheet music available online, including the one he'd be playing three weeks later. He complied, kept the digital sheet music open on his tablet, and played all day long. When internet notifications clogged up and interrupted his performance, you turned off the WiFi inside the apartment and turned on airplane mode for him. He asked you to stay and listen to him play. You dusted the living room as you did so.

“Tell me I suck,” he said.

“You were great.”

“Ugh, you're no help.”

“No, I'm not, because I know nothing about pianos and chamber music.” You sat next to him on the bench and massaged his hands.“They're stiff. Come, let me give you a manicure.”

“Not now…”

You didn't listen. You took him to his bathroom and dipped his hands inside soapy lukewarm water. He sighed as he kept them dipped. When you gave him the “see what I mean?” look, he slumped against the wall.

“What if my American debut sucks?”

“So what if it does? It won't be the end of the world. Samantha can get you another performance…”

“You don't get it!” he burst out, the volume of his voice silencing you. “My brother called me a loser when he was here. A fucking loser.” He ran his dripping wet hand down his face, his eyes squeezed shut. “And he's right, fucking damn it. He's right. He's accomplished, the founder of the largest automobile company in my country. My sisters are accomplished. Even little Ronnie is accomplished. I'm the only fuck-up among my siblings.” His voice shook. The deluge down his cheeks reddened his face. You pulled his fingers back under the warm water and kept yours there with his. You rubbed and massaged his fingers, the nails, the tips, the dips between each digit, the palms, the wrists with his pulse drumming underneath. He silently sobbed as you tried to relieve him of his tension.

“I need a drink.”

You fetched him a glass of Martell. He downed the drink in one go and asked for one more. You poured him two more glasses before you declined.

“I'm your boss,” he said shakily.

“I don't care. You're not doing this to yourself.”

“You're not my mum.”

“You're right, because I care.”

He scoffed. “You don't know her.”

“I know enough to know that if she cared, her oldest child wouldn't have such a battered self-worth. You're bleeding everywhere, Greg.”

He gulped and got up.

“Where are you going?” You went after him.

“Away from you, Mummy!”

“Don't call me that! I'm not an embalmed Egyptian corpse.”

“Mummy as in Mommy for you Americans!”
Before you could follow him, he left the apartment. You meant to follow him but at the elevator, he stopped you.

“Please, leave me alone.”

The pleading in his voice convinced you he needed some time away and alone. You handed him your mace and told him to call you if he needed you to pick him up. But he didn't call you. No, he called his brother, who flew in his private jet to fetch him and bring him home.

“Useless,” Edmond called you as he carried his brother in his arms with enviously effortless ease. You stripped off a passed-out Greg until he was in his boxers. You had never seen him without clothes before. His bareness revealed to you his almost hairless chest and left arm dusted with little hair but plenty of burn scars healed long ago.

“From fireworks,” Edmond said from his position before a wall full of frames. His hands locked behind his back, Edmond scrutinized the many posters Greg's flawless hands featured. This was something you learned on your first night here, on Valentine's day when you kept sentry by his bedside. He later told you about it, how, when he first arrived in the States and was bored out of his mind, he had his cousin find him work opportunities. An older patient of Dr. Tarly was a modeling scout who was looking for a hand model. Dr. Tarly had recommended her cousin, who had the first manicure in his life and never stopped doing it every two weeks from then on. His first photoshoot was a success, a men's watch company. He did some more before his interest in hand modeling waned and he quit. That was a week before he met you at that restaurant. Regardless of his departure, he was proud of it. His first job that paid. His first job where he wasn't a total loser. They helped every time he failed at something and his past haunted him.

Edmond closed in on one frame, where Greg's hand was lifted to flaunt a platinum knotted cufflink from Nördstrom. “Never realized this was my brother's hand.”

“Greg can surprise you.” You paused beside Edmond. “Thank you for bringing him home. I'm sorry I wasn't a better keeper.”

“Make sure it doesn't repeat.”

You nodded. “He's upset. Actually, he's nervous.”

“Samantha told me she got him a chance to perform.”

“He's never done it before. He thinks he's a fucked-up loser. His self-worth is bleeding, Edmond.”

“Mr. T.”

You rolled your eyes but didn't say anything. Edmond was presumptuous, you had learned when he ordered you to address him as Mr. T, not Edmond or Mr. Teanan. Just Mr. T. You obliged only when you were in the mood. After all, he wasn't your employer. Greg was.

“Can you do me a favor?” you asked after a long moment.

“Depends.”

“Can you please come to his performance? It will bolster his confidence. He doesn't have much, if any, if you can see it.”

“I do.”

“So, will you?”

He shrugged. “Depends.”

“Come on, Ed... Mr. T. Do it for him. Your opinion means a lot to him, actually.”

“Doubtful.”

“It does! He respects you a lot. He admires you and actually looks up to you. He says he's the only loser among your siblings, that even your half-sister and your youngest brother are better than him. Please, sir.” You added the last part out of desperation.

It worked because he turned to you with a raised brow. “Fine, since this obviously means a lot to you and my brother. I'll try to wrap up my business up north as soon as possible.”

“Thank you, sir,” you said with as much sincerity as possible with him.

He hummed and went back to observing the frames. You left him alone to check on Greg. He clung to your left arm as you wiped his face with wet wipes. By the time you were done, Edmond had departed, a lightly dark dust framing left on the wall. The poster of the Nördstrom ad was gone.

You smiled as you heard the front door slamming shut not long after. You locked it behind him and ran to the living room window. Sure enough, the intimidating blond carried a small rectangle in his arms as he lithely got into his car. You were fast enough to capture a quick shot of the scene, with the street lamp overhead providing some excellent lighting. You decided to show this to Greg once he woke up and panicked about the missing frame. And he did, as you predicted. He said nothing when you showed him your quick snapshot. You didn't know that after you went to make him breakfast, he texted his brother.

Aegon: You thief.

Aemond: Payback is a bitch ;)

Aegon: Grow up, grandpa.

Aemond: Eat dirt, grandma ;p

But you didn't know that. So, you spent days anxious about Greg probably being upset about the loss. You only hoped that Edmond showing up at his first public performance in the States might cheer Greg up. You clung to this hope until the night before his performance, when Edmond texted an hour before midnight, “I'm sorry.”

And you knew what he didn't mention. He wouldn't make it. You asked him why, he didn't reply. You called him, he didn't answer. You cursed him, he didn't know that you did.
Greg noticed your pacing around the kitchen after you had baked one large tray of lemonies and one of oatmeal raisin carrot cake cookies. The latter tasted nothing like the ones Mabel would bake for you. You missed her calm presence.

“What's the matter?” he asked.
You gave him the lemonies and sheepishly told him what happened.

“Oh,” was all he said.

You bit into a cookie, half dunk in oat milk. “Are you okay?”

“Not really. Tomorrow is D-Day. I could use a glass of Martell though.”

You gave into his wishes. You didn't want to upset him any more than he already probably was. He downed it after saying, “Fuck it, we ball!”

You poured him three more glasses before you put away the bottle. He didn't mind. He was tipsy enough. You went to lead him to his bedroom for an early night in. Instead, he took you to the living room, to his piano. A book of sheet music containing the notes for Schumann's piano quartet sat on the white behemoth.

The day after Edmond brought Greg home, the other members of the quartet visited the Gramercy apartment. Two women, one man. The violinist was a woman in her sixties. The violist was a gorgeous tall brunette. The cellist, the only other male in the group, was a bearded bear-sized man, his instrument appropriate for his size. You'd already set up chairs and stands for the three guests. After giving them the beverages they asked for, you went out of their way and settled by the decorative fireplace. They didn't mind your presence. In fact, the violist, Beatrice, was eager to have someone in their audience who had zero knowledge about chamber music. You listened to them play until the violinist, Juno, asked everyone to stop, turned to Greg, and told him he'd missed a few notes. Greg flushed and apologized.

“You don't need to memorize all the notes, you know,” said the cellist, Trevor.

“Yeah, you can have a page-turner, especially for such a lengthy, complex piece,” said Beatrice.

You could see both relief and hesitation in Greg's eyes. So, you asked on his behalf if having a page-turner was something only amateurs did.

“Of course not, darling,” Beatrice said to your relief. “Plenty of accomplished pianists use page-turners. You're a musician, not a bloody encyclopedia.”

“Why don't you fill up the position for now?” Trevor suggested to you.

“Me?”

“All you have to do is turn the page. Greg will give you a signal, like a foot tapping or a nod, and you'll get up and turn the page. Easy peesy.” Juno turned to Greg. “Go easy on yourself, dear.”

Greg visibly relaxed when you put your chair next to the piano, away from the keys but near enough to jump to his rescue whenever he needed you. The rest of the morning went smoothly. The quartet practiced six more times before they called it a day and decided to meet for rehearsal every weekday at Euphoria studios. You always accompanied Greg and watched him perform. Sometimes, when Boyd, his lazy page-turner, didn't turn up, you worked as a backup.

The day of his debut, Greg woke up at five and practiced one last time. His performance was scheduled at eleven. You baked him a tray of lemonies, which was the only thing he could stomach for breakfast. Dr. Tarly showed up for support, with her colorblock ruffle dress with a black bowtie over the white upper part (for you) and a mini white rose boutonniere (for Greg, a superstition he had for good luck ever since his fiancée bought him a boutonniere and his first performance in Westeros was a success). While you put on her dress, she clasped the flower to Greg's pressed black suit. He looked ready to cry, so moved he was by the gesture. That was when you got the idea.

“I'll be right back. Can you drive him to the venue, please, Dr. Tarly?”

“What? Why?” He clamped onto your wrists like vice. “You can't leave me right now. I need you, dōnītsos.”

You kissed his cheek. “I'll be back, I promise. I won't miss it for the world.”

Dr. Tarly herded him out. Once he was gone, it took you twenty minutes on the subway to reach the Flower District on Chelsea's 28th street. Between the 6th and the 7th avenues, you scoured almost all the shops open so early in the morning. Not one shop sold all the flowers you had in mind, specifically the flowers that you googled on your way, their meanings and how they look. Once you had all your flowers, one of the florists wrapped them with pretty pink paper and tied it with ribbons. They even let you write and tape a card on it, a card that you later tore off on your way to Alice Tully Hall. It was almost ten o'clock now. You took care not to let anyone or anything bruise or even brush one petal or leaves of your bouquet, as delicate as the heart of the one it was intended for. Once you reached the venue, you worried that you might not be allowed backstage. Luckily, you met Samantha in the lobby.

“He went in... Wow.” She marveled at the huge bouquet. “He'll love it. He was toying with my boutonniere the whole way.”

“Can I give it to him now?”

“Why don't you do it?” She led you to him backstage.

He was so wrapped up in the maelstrom inside his head, he didn't notice you until you stood right in front of him, your over-the-knee cream boots tapping within his vision cast on the floor.

He blinked when he looked up. A smile crept in. “You made it!” Then, he noticed the flowers. “For me?”

“From your brother,” you blurted out the lie as white as your bouquet that everyone backstage gawped at. He stood up and you handed it over. “All of them have these meanings that'll mean a lot to you. He…” You looked into his sapphire eyes. “He's really proud of you.”

Greg's astonished gaze roamed over the white alabaster rose, the lily and the cosmos, the rare white lavender, the carnation, hyacinth, camellia, and seven others. He pressed his lips and looked at you. “Thank you, thank you so much.” He set it next to him on the bench, then pulled you with him. His hands were sticky with sweat. You dried them with alcohol-based hand wipes.

“He didn't come,” he mumbled.

“But he sent flowers…”

“Not my brother. Boyd, my page-turner.”

Now, you panicked. “No! What can you do?”

He looked unusually calm. “Can you be my page-turner?”

You agreed without hesitation. Then, it hit you. You had never done this before. Like he never performed before the American public, you had never turned pages of a pianist during a live performance. You didn't even know how to read notes. Oh fuck. Oh crap. Oh damn.

“It's okay. I will nod. You'll turn the pages, one at a time.” Greg stroked your hands, stopping their shaking. You felt cold and empty inside. “Hey,” and he lifted your chin, “I'll be there with you.”

“I really am useless. Edmond was right,” you whispered.

“You're anything but.”

You focused on drying his hands. Gosh, how could hands be so fucking soft? You contemplated on how his flesh dipped under your prodding, how good you felt touching him. You felt no friction while running your tips down his smooth palm. A sudden desire to feel them against your face overwhelmed you, so you dropped them and took up his sheet music. You flipped through the pages. “How many times do I have to turn them?”

“Twenty, give or take a few more.”

“And how long…”

“Around twenty-eight minutes.”

“So,” you gave him back the sheets, “once every few minutes?”

His eyes offered you sympathy. “Hey, it's okay…”

“I'm a loser.”

“That's fine. We'll be losers together for our first time.”

You wanted to run away. You wanted to scream. You wanted to do something that would embarrass you and inconvenience him. As if he could sense the anxiety in you, he took you to the men's room. He kept the door wide open, soaped up both your hands, and massaged yours. He made sure every nook and cranny was cleaned. Slippery, his hands were softer and smoother than anything ever could be. You wanted to sink your teeth into them. He washed your hands. After he turned off the tap, you laced your fingers.

“Can we stay here like this?” you asked sullenly.

He laughed and wiped both your hands. Under the dryer, warm air took away all the sweat and stickiness. Both your hands were dry and clean now. A floral scent from the hand wash enveloped you. He brought you back to your bouquet, with his sheet music and your purse next to it. He sat down and pulled you to his lap, not giving a fuck about the people around you. You perched tentatively.

“You can do this,” he told you.

“I can do this.”

“We can do this.”

“Together.”

“Losers together.”

You focused on his hands holding you, on the supple white petals encased inside the pink wrapping papers, tied together by a silk ribbon. You kissed his forehead and the announcement came.

It was time.

He pulled you to the stage by hand. Beatrice smiled encouragingly. Juno patted your back.
“Don't worry,” Greg whispered as you entered the stage. “Page-turners sit to their pianists' left. I'll shield you.”

You stood back as the quartet bowed before the audience, then took their place. You sat on a black plastic chair a foot away to Greg's left. He hunched over the keys and glanced at you with a smile. You returned it. Then, the performance began.

Your turn to turn the page came a minute into the performance. You stood, not on shaky legs, and flipped the page a second after Greg nodded at you. Your hands weren't sweaty, so the pages didn't get wet or stick to your fingertips. Your legs didn't buckle or stumble over anything any time you walked up to him. You didn't turn multiple pages at once. You didn't block his view when you changed the pages. You didn't knock over the sheets with your hand.

You tried to listen to the music but your ears felt clogged. So, you focused on Greg as he hunched over the black-and-white keys and played his part. He didn't tie his hair, so the snow white strands curtained his face from you in half. You didn't mind. You took in his flawless profile and his long fingers pressing the keys. He never once glanced at the audience or his fellow musicians. He kept playing, lost in a trance he briefly came out of every once in a while to nod at you, your signal to turn the pages. You felt the warmth his fingers squeezed out of the keys with the music. He was glowing. He was vibrating. He was a solar deity who graced the mortals like you with his warm presence, a halo literally shining around his form before you. For a sun like him, you'd gladly melt the wax of your wings to your watery doom, perish naked on a rock from a nine-day hunger strike, and erect a 100-feet tall statue of him as your patron god.

You shook off the thoughts. What the fuck was the matter with you, drooling over him like some hapless helpless nymph? It was his good look, you reasoned. He had insane good looks that could momentarily turn off the logic switch in your brain. You were a mortal, it could happen. “Let's not think about that for now,” you thought. You focused on turning his pages only, though you briefly reverted to your swooning when your favorite part, the finale, began.

Overall, both of you did great in your debut, him as a pianist, you as his page-turner. You didn't feel any eyes on you. You were invisible despite being onstage and you loved it. You loved the performance.

So did the audience. Half an hour later, Greg and the others stood up to face them. You were about to melt into the background when his hand found yours. He tugged you forward, to the astonishment of Beatrice, Juno, Trevor, and apparently the audience. They watched as he bowed and so did you. All five of you soaked in the applause.

Once you returned backstage, everyone there congratulated the quartet. Though nobody said a word to you, Greg never let go of your hand. You didn't twist yourself free either. Why would you? You had a hand-shaped eiderdown holding you. You were happy here.
Once Beatrice, Juno, and Trevor united with their loved ones, Greg and you located your bouquet and purse on the same spot and left the venue. You only had your lemonies for a meager, hurried breakfast. Now, you visited a halal cart across the street and ordered two chicken and lamb platters. You demolished your meals on the street, standing under the glaring sun.

“How was it?” you asked between mouthfuls.

“Too quick for me,” he said. “I wish I could stretch the performance a little.”

“Too bad you can't shout “encore” in a chamber music concert.”

He shrugged. “Let's get drunk.”

You rolled your eyes. “That's the only way you know how to celebrate.”

“Yeah and why fix it when it's not broken? Come on, we never got drunk together.”

“It's barely midday.”

“It's five o'clock somewhere in the world.”

You obliged. Why not? He was right that you never got drunk together. Only he did and you took care of him.

“Who will take care of me when I'm drunk?” you asked.

“I will.”

“Who will take care of you when you're drunk?”

“You will. We were losers together. Now, let's be drunk together.”

Something in you agreed. You had never felt this carefree before. And being drunk during the daytime was pathetic but not as dangerous as it was after the sun went down.

“Okay,” you said.

“Okay?”

“Right after we drop off this bouquet.”

He grinned. “That's the spirit, dōnītsos.”

A quick cab ride to Gramercy, where you dropped off the bouquet to the doorman, who promised to deliver it safely upstairs. Then, Greg took you to Spring Lounge, a 24-hour bar that served alcohol even when it was sunny outside.

You started with Lawson's Sip of Sunshine, fruity and light, followed by Miller High Life and Half Acre Daisy Cutter.

“Oh look, they have free hotdogs cooked in beer every Wednesday!” You pointed to a chalkboard.

“Starting from five pm.”

“Boo!” You gave the bartender two thumbs down. He rolled his eyes.

“You just ate,” Greg said.

“So? Food is the best thing in life.”

“For me, it's sex.”

“Bleugh. It's good but it can never beat food for me.” You gave him a soft look. “Don't hide your love for food too.”

“My family thinks I'm fat, except for my little sister and littlest brother.”

“They're angels then.” You dusted some lint off his sleeve. “You shouldn't have pulled me to the front when it was time for you to bow.”

“Hmm?”

“At the stage. After the performance. Only the musicians face and bow before the audience. Not some page-turner.”

He didn't reply. His focus on his phone bugged you. Did he even listen to what you said? You twisted your body to peek into his screen. “What the hell are you looking at?”

“One of the flowers you gave me…”

“Edmond did…”

“Camellia. Google says in China, the petals are the women and the calyxes are the men.”

“What the fuck is a calyx?”

He typed something on his phone. “Sepal. These green small leaf thingy under the petals. See?” He showed you a diagram. You nodded when you got it. “So, in China, the petals are the women and the calyxes are the men. Normally, in other flowers, when the petals dry up and fall off, the calyxes stay intact. But in camellias, they are joined together, so if the petal drops off, the calyx does too.”

You cocked your head like a confused dog. “Huh?”

He gave you a nose kiss with his own and said, “Skoriot ao jikagon, nyke jikagon. Skoriot nyke jikagon, ao jikagon.” (“Where you go, I go. Where I go, you go.”)

You groaned. “Not high Valyrian again. Come on, monkeyboy, speak English. I don't understand a word you just said.”

“Pāsagon issa, dōnītsos. Emagon mirri vokēdre isse nyke. Kesan dōrī nāpāsagon ao. Nyke kivio.” (“Believe it, sweetling. Have some faith in me. I will never betray you. I promise.”)

You sighed and accepted your fate. He babbled some more in high Valyrian. You answered with whatever came to your mind. Some time later, when you went to pee, you left your purse behind. When you came back, he was brandishing the card you had taped to his bouquet before taking it off. You snatched it away. “You're not supposed to see this!”“

Pirtirys! Ao ivestretan nyke iā pirtir.” (“Liar! You lied to me.”)

“It's nothing! Stop screaming in bullshit!” You shoved the card inside your purse.

“Skorkydoso kostagon ao pirtir naejot nyke?” (“How can you lie to me?”)

“Calm down…”

“Skoro syt gōntan ao pirtir naejot nyke? Gaoman daor shifang.” (“Why did you lie to me? I do not understand.”)

“You're making a mountain out of a molehill…” You moved away from him. He wrapped his arms around you, his chin on your shoulder, his lips to your ear.

“Nyke jorrāelagon ziry. Kirimvose, dōnītsos. Īlis gevie. Emā iā gevie prūmia. Jaelan ziry. Tepagon nyke aōha prūmia, sīr bona kostan tepagon ao ñuhon.” (“I love it. Thank you, sweetling. They were beautiful. You have a beautiful heart. I want it. Give me your heart, so that I can give you mine.”)

You shook him off and stuck out your tongue at him. He pretended to bite it. You shrieked and ran away. He went after you. The bartender exasperatedly told you “no running,” inside the lounge. So, you came back to your seats and finished your drinks.

“I wanna be a pianist,” he began.

“Hallelujah, we're back to English.”

“What do you wanna be?”

You gulped your sip of beer. “Write cookbooks. I love food and I love books, so why not combine them?”

“You love books? Never saw you read any.”

“I read them on my phone before bedtime.”

“What's your absolute favorite?”

You answered without having to think about it. “The Hunger Games. I love, love, love Peeta.”

“Ugh not him.”

“Fuck you! He's the epitome of the best man your gender can ever produce.”

“No wonder he's not real.”

You elbowed him harshly. “Take that back!”

“No screaming, guys, come on,” the bartender begged.

You lifted your hands in surrender. Then, you turned to Greg. “You have to read the book. You have to, you have to, you have to.”

“I don't like reading. I already saw the movies.”

You scowled. “If you like me, you'll read them. Or you don't.”

He stuck his tongue at you. Some time later, per your request and despite Greg's protest, the bartender called you an Uber, whose driver judged you as you two ran into his car door and clambered inside like infants learning to climb the stairs. As the car drove you to Gramercy, a text came from Etaf. Somehow, she knew you didn't listen to her show today. You clicked a selfie with Greg and sent it to your group chat, with the caption:

“losers together 🤪”

“Are you drunk? At one in the afternoon?” Mabel texted.

“It's five o'clock somewhere in the world.”

“Like it's someone's birthday somewhere in the world,” Greg replied.

You two decided to bake a cake when you got home. You googled recipes. He chose a milk chocolate and raspberry pie. It was a Valentine's day special. Both of you had a shitty Valentine this year, so why not?

“Greg is my Valentine today,” you told your girlfriends.

“Iksan iā beri vala,” he wrote. (“I am a lucky man.”)

“Wtf does that mean?” Etaf asked, baffled and furious. “You're a bad influence on our friend, Greggy.”

“Kessa!” he said with a smirk emoji. (“Yes!”)

“That means yes, I think,” you wrote.

“Kessa!” he wrote.

“Get home, you two!” Etaf said.

“First, some cake!”

You made a pit stop at a supermarket where you bought everything the recipe listed. You were lucky to find things like unsweetened gelatin and a bottle of Chambord there. Once done, you ran into the closed car door, giggled like you had heard the world's funniest joke, and clambered inside with the bags. The recipe asked for two tablespoons of Chambord, so you two took sips of the raspberry liqueur until almost two spoonfuls were left at the bottom.

Back at the apartment, you dragged Greg to his bathroom.

“We have to puke first,” you told him seriously.

“Ew, why?”

“So that we don't puke on the delicious pie. Or puke it out of us. I want to keep it inside me.”

He reluctantly agreed. You showed him how you summoned your vomit. You stuck three of your middle fingers down your throat and kept poking until all that you ate and drank hurtled out of you like magma up a conduit. You puked first while Greg held back your hair and rubbed your back like you once did to him. When you were done, you helped him. He took a long time to induce his puking but he did it nonetheless.

You two brushed your teeth together, flossed, and rinsed your mouths with Listerine. Then, time to bake the pie.

It wasn't a difficult pie to make. So, you sent a reluctant Greg to the living room.

“Play me something, Orpheus,” you told him.

He didn't play anything for a while at first. You thought he must've passed out. Just as you were about to put the Oreo chocolate-y pie crust into the oven, you heard the tune. A familiar one. You had often heard Mabel's phone emitting it as she played some piano games. The name kept eluding you. No matter, you listened to Greg repeat the beautiful melody over and over again, as you finished making the chocolate ganache, then the raspberry filling. The recipe had asked for the pie to be set in the fridge for four hours. But you didn't have the time or the patience. You took the pie to Greg. He played the melody while you fed him forkfuls. He ate from your hands and you stood next to him, his head resting on your covered cleavage.

“Kirimvose, dōnītsos,” he told you, his mouth full of red raspberries and dark chocolate. (“Thank you, sweetling.”)

You kissed his snow white strands, slightly wet from sweat. “Kirimvose, fuckboy.”

He playfully nipped your neck. You yelped and pulled away.

“Don't do that,” you said in a shaky voice.

“Skoro syt daor?” (“Why not?”)

The question in his tone made you say what you would've never told him had either of you been sober.

“I'll fall for you. I always fall hard and nobody catches me.”

He smiled sweetly, kindly, and beautifully. “Ropagon syt nyke, dōnītsos. Nyke kivio kesan ūndegon ao.” (“Fall for me, sweetling. I promise I will catch you.”)

You shook your head, not knowing what he meant. For all your knew, he probably made fun of you. You fed him more slices. He ate them without touching you. When the pie was gone and the tune was over, he led you to his bedroom, where you both collapsed onto his plush, king-size bed, all your clothes on, sans the shoes. You pulled down your hair and took off your earrings. He untied his tie and unpinned the boutonniere. Not once did any of you take your eyes off each other. You both hit the pillows and slipped under the duvet.

“God natt, min vackra skatt,” you said the same way your mama used to say to you when you were a child, something she learned from your dad who used to say it to her before you. (“Goodnight, my beautiful treasure.”)

“Kesan ūndegon ao isse ñuhyz ēdruryssy,” Greg whispered to you hopefully, reverently, dreamily. (“I will see you in my dreams.”)

Under his pillow, you didn't know he had kept your card from today, pilfered when you were in the kitchen baking the pie, your words on his mind impressed for good:

“You don't have to be the sun
Let me be your moon
Let me mirror your soft light
While you get your rest.”

Chapter Text

National Chocolate Truffle Day/National Devil's Food Cake Day, 2024

The day after his debut, Greg declared he wanted to get a tattoo over his burn scars.

“Why?” was all you asked as you made his favorite breakfast, Brown Butter White Chocolate Blueberry Banana Bread French Toast Casserole. When you first made it and he fell in love with it, he asked if you made it in honor of his handsome looks (“All the colors mentioned in the name, I have them. White hair. Brown eyebrows. Blue eyes,” he had said, though the blueberries turned purple after coming out of the oven). To this, you rolled your eyes and sarcastically agreed with him. He never caught the sarcasm.

Greg took a healthy portion of seconds from the tray. “Back in 2020, after I lost her,” he looked at you pointedly and you realized who he meant, his dead fiancée, “I had an accident later that year.”

He told you how his older sister invited the whole family to her home to celebrate some big national holiday.

“Iron Throne day,” he muttered.

“What's that?”

He seemed surprised at this. “You don't know?”

“Go to Google, Greggy. You'll see how secretive your fucking country is. More than North Korea sometimes.”

He chuckled. “Okay, so the Valyrian king, Aegon Targaryen, conquered all the seven kingdoms of Westeros. He's like a King Arthur sort of figure to us. The founder of Westeros as a united country. He made this gigantic throne from one thousand swords of all the kings and lords he had defeated to unite the whole country. Here,” he showed you a picture of an ugly ass dark throne full of jagged, sharp bits of melted swords, “the Iron Throne.”

“Cactus chair,” you called it, which made him almost choke on his food.

“Anyway, the day the throne was made and Aegon became the king is a big day in Westeros. We have fireworks, parties, drinking, all the shit.”

“Must be your favorite day.”

He grimaced. “So, my older sister invited the whole family. My mum, ever the failed peacemaker, forced us to go. Now, Edmond, my dear brother, has a bit of bad blood with one of my nephews. After my parents forced all of us to mingle and light up fireworks together, my brother and two of my nephews got into a fight. The violence from their humans got our dogs excited and bloodthirsty too. Sunfyre got into a fight with my aunt and one of my cousin's two dogs. I was a bit drunk.”

You raised an eyebrow, so he groaned.

“Fine, I was drunk as a skunk. Happy?”

“Sure, go on, Pepé Le Pew,” you added dryly.

“I went to save Sunfyre who was bleeding so much. One of the nasty dogs, Meleys, bit me on my leg. I was trying to kick it off and I stumbled onto a just lit firecracker at the edge. My chest and left arm caught on fire and I fell from the second story rooftop.”
You gulped. 2020 seemed to have been the worst, most unlucky year he ever had.

“How injured were you?” you tentatively asked.

“Burnt my chest and left arm. Broke my ribs, hips, and both legs. Took me two years of therapy to be able to move around and do things by myself. Tons of skin grafting to heal my arm. I didn't do it on my chest since the burns weren't as bad. I was also tired of hospitals and doctors. And morphine. Almost got addicted to it.”

You couldn't find anything to say to that. You both quietly finished your casserole with oat milk. Just as you were done drying the dishes, he asked,

“You never asked what tattoo I wanna get.”
You shrugged. “Tell me then.”

“Your bouquet.”

You were thankful you had your back turned to him, or else the intense blush on your face would've turned you the butt of his every joke for the rest of your employment. “I see.”

“Come with me.”

“Okay.” You wanted to see the finished product.

Because the place he wanted his tattoo had burn scars, he had chosen an expert in this, someone who had done this before. The tattooist was full-on flirting with Greg, who returned it equally shamelessly. You rolled your eyes and shook your head at all the ways the two men drooled over each other. A minute into Greg going to the backroom to get his tattoo (you didn't want to accompany the two men because of the shameless flirting), he called you on your cell.

“Greg?” you asked.

He was panting. “Hey, so uh, change of plans. It'll take me longer to get the tattoo.”
You sat up and put away the magazine you were reading. “What's going on? Are you okay? Are you safe?”

“Oh, I'm very safe.” He moaned lowly and you blinked.

“Greg, are you... are you having sex?” you almost shrieked.

He giggled, then the sound of smacking lips. “I'm very happy right now.”

You put some distance between yourself and your phone. “Okay, I'm happy for you but do you want me to wait for you out here?”

“Nah…” He giggled again. “I'll be fine. You can go home. I'll see you there.”

You told him to be safe and use protection. Someone laughed in the background just before he ended the call. You glanced once at the door to the backroom and heard a woman moaning loudly. You shuddered in disgust and left at once.

You had nothing to do until Greg came home, so you paid a visit to Etaf and Mabel. Your apartment was restored and renovated back to how it was. Etaf and Mabel still considered you their roommate, though you had all your stuff either at Greg's or at your mama's. You decided to keep open their offer to move in anytime. In case Greg decided to go back home someday. When your girlfriends learned what you'd been up to with him, Etaf pulled your legs with bawdy jokes.

You scoffed. “You're delulu,” you said. “As we're speaking, Greg is out there having a spontaneous threesome with a tattooist and probably also his wife. I don't think he's interested at all. As for me, he's fuckboy Greg. Mojo Jojo. Buttercup here will never fall for someone like him.”

“Like what?” Mabel asked. You couldn't tell if she asked it teasingly or innocently.

“He's a loser, Maby.” You hugged her from behind as she folded her clothes and put them away in the closet. “A loserboy who can't even cook for himself.”

“If you say so,” Etaf said with a smirk.

“What does that mean?”

“You clearly love taking care of him. And he's such a loser babygirl, he likes being taken care of. Match made in heaven. He has such an omega energy. Any day now and he'll be calling you mommy and asking you to peg and spank him.”

You three moved on to your catering business. Being Greg's housekeeper didn't require much housework, so you were free to continue your contribution to the catering service. Etaf had kept your calendar busy, filling it up with events after events. Both you and Mabel knew why. Etaf lost six aunts and two cousins in March. Two whole families were gone. One day, they were surviving hunger and bombs. The next day, they were being wrapped into body bags and buried with thousands of other displaced people, victims of a genocide. Etaf didn't know until earlier this month. She didn't know those aunts well but she was very close to one of the cousins, Hala. You met her twice, whenever the younger girl came to New York for some time away from a life like hers: imprisoned and suffocating on the strip.
So, you let Etaf crowd your schedule with baby showers, birthdays, gender reveals, bar and bat mitzvahs, even funerals. Though the latter Mabel decided not to cater. Not now when Etaf's grief still throbbed.

You spent the rest of the morning helping your girlfriends prepare the food for this week's events: one birthday and one bridal shower. You made boxes and boxes of your famous lemonies. Two and a half hours later, Greg appeared at your Shore Boulevard apartment.

“I called him,” Mabel said as she heaped a plate of lemonies. Etaf opened the door and let him in.

“So? Show us the tat,” you said to him.
He grinned and unbuttoned his shirt. It was truly a pretty sight to find your bouquet blooming over his chest, just over his heart, covering his red burn scars with snow white ink. You had to admit this was such a cool way to cover your scars.

“Impressive,” you admitted, which earned you a wink from him.

“I got this for you, Buttercup.” He handed you a white box with the word, “Läderach” in gold lettering. You opened it to find chocolate truffles nestled inside. At your frown, he added, “Today is National Chocolate Truffle Day.”

Etaf lightly punched his arm. “You listened to my show.”

He grinned. “I never miss.”

“So doesn't she, how cute.”

“Come on, eat one!” His blue eyes glittered like the sea under the sun. You plucked a piece and examined it.

“Looks expensive. Which country is it from?” Mabel asked.

“Sweden,” he said.

Your face paled. You almost spat out your chocolate. You hurriedly chewed.

“Or Switzerland, I dunno. Which country is Swiss?”

“Switzerland,” Mabel said, worriedly eying you.

At once, relief flooded your veins parallel to blood. You popped two more truffles in your mouth.

“Buttercup is hungry,” he said.

You said nothing, only chewed the rich, decadent chocolate. You turned to Mabel and telepathically begged her to bring him his lemonies. She did what you asked at once.

“For me? You shouldn't have.” He sat beside you and offered you a piece. You shook your head and popped three more truffles into your mouth. Greg eyed you worriedly and told you to slow down, since some of the chocolates had alcohol. It didn't deter you.

When you two went back to his home, you got yourself busy with a shower and lunch. Greg couldn't bathe for the next 24 hours. He watched you make lunch (saffron fish stew with aioli), staring at you wordlessly.

“Something on my face?” you asked.

“What are you making?” he asked instead.

“Fiskgryta.” You paused deshelling the prawns. “Fuck,” you muttered under your breath. He heard it anyway.

“What's going on, dōnītsos?”

You sighed. “This is a Swedish fish stew my mama taught me.”

“And?”

“My dad was Swedish.”

“A spot more sore than my tattooed chest, huh?”

You resumed making the bright yellow stew.

“You need lots of fish and seafood to help heal your tattoo. Google said.”

“Thanks for all you do for me, dōnītsos.”

“Thanks for paying me for all I do for you, Mojo Jojo.”

“This reminds me, my brother might drop by again.”

“Ugh.”

“My birthday is on May 24.”

“Oh.”

“I'm not sure if he will come though. Just a guess.”

You stirred the soup. Almost done. You decided to make some garlic bread. “So, you're a Gemini?”

“Funny thing is, the twin gene runs in my family. My sister, the younger one, has a boy and girl twin.”

You looked up. “She's married?”

“She used to be my ex-wife. No, I wasn’t joking when I told you the first time. Incest between siblings of opposite gender is allowed among the Valyrians. But her kids are not mine. She had them through artificial insemination. She never dated, never hooked up, not even when we were together. Ours remained an unconsummated marriage, so the annulment was quick and easy.” He smiled fondly. “She loves being a mum so much, she's having another one.”

“And your parents don't mind?”

“My dad doesn't care. My mum was anxious about her only daughter having children out of wedlock, but she got around it once she took a look at her grandchildren.”

You turned off the stove and brought out a long baguette. You brushed it with a mix of olive oil, melted three-cheese blend, and chopped garlic. “Can I see them?”

“What?”

You put the bread in the oven. “If you have photos of them. In your phone or an album.”

“I have an album. Are you sure you wanna meet them?”

“I'd love to.”

After lunch, he pulled out a white album from far inside his dresser, as if he had been hiding it there. He probably was. You caught a glimpse of a diary and a white drawstring pouch stashed inside with the album. You sat on his bed and looked at the pictures. Greg sat a little away from you.

“Come and tell me who's who.”

He grimaced.

“What's wrong?”

He looked down at his lap. “I don't wanna look at them. It makes me feel weird.”

“It makes you homesick.”

He grimaced again.

You went over and sat next to him. He didn't move away. Whenever you pointed at someone, he'd tell you who they were. You spotted his brother but not his partner. Two more blonde people appeared. One girl, so pretty and so delicate about it. You could tell this was his younger sister/ex-wife. The other was a younger blond boy with a sweet smile at a redheaded woman.

“That's her,” Greg glumly said, his eyes on the redhead in the photo, the homesickness evident in his blue eyes. You took his hand and squeezed. He didn't squeeze back but didn't pull away.

“That's your mum?” you asked.

He nodded morosely. You pulled him closer.

“It's okay to look at her. It's okay to miss her, you know.”

He rolled his eyes but looked at the album open on your lap. “Still can't believe I stole it from her closet and brought it across the pond. What's wrong with me?”

“Love makes us do crazy things.” You turned back to the album. “I'm sorry but I cannot get over how absolutely gorgeous she is. And looks so young. Like she's 40 or something.”

“43,” he corrected you.

You blinked. “And how old are you exactly?”

He smirked. “28 and you know that.”

“I bet your dad is some hotshot guy too.” You flipped the page and landed on a photo of his mum with a dark-haired man. “Aha! Found him! Fuck, what a tasty looking man.”

Greg laughed. “I wish. Edmond wished so too. For Criston to be our dad and not him…” He jerked his chin toward the other picture, the one where an elderly man was being spoon-fed some pudding or custard by his mum.

“Wait, what?”

“That's my dad.” He pointed at the old man, bent in his chair like King Théoden in Lord of the Rings. “My father. That one is Criston Cole, Mum's bodyguard. Well, the head of our security.”

You fell quiet. Not a good kind of quiet. Greg craned his neck to get a better look at you.

“What's wrong?”

“You're 28 and your mum is 43. That means she had you when she was... 15?”

“Yes, Einstein. She was 15, and my dad was in his forties when he married her. What about it?”

Your fingertip skimmed over the photo of his parents. You pressed your lips and shut the album. “Doesn't that bother you?”

“The age gap? Well, what can you do about it? I didn't choose my parents. They didn't choose me either,” he said the last part quietly.

You cupped his cheek and lifted his face, so you could look him directly in the eye. “That's not what I mean. Your mum, I'm sorry to say, was a child bride.”

“Yes, and?”

“Doesn't that bother you?”

“In Westeros, the age of consent is 14.”

“Still! She was a child! And your dad was a fully grown adult.”

“Tell that to my grandfather. He seemed thrilled in the wedding photos.”

Your bottom lip wobbled. Greg sat up. Now, he was the one to cup your face. “What's wrong, dōnītsos?”

“Okay, I want you to know that I care about you and respect your family, even though I never met them…”

“Yet,” he said.

“But your dad groomed your mum. He's... He's a pedophile.”

He jerked back. “What the fuck are you on about?!”

You sighed and turned away. “I'm sorry. Forget I said anything.”

“How can you expect me to forget that you accused my father of being a fucking pedo?’

You stood up. The album book fell from your lap. You didn't care. You kicked it off as you walked away.

“Come on!” He threw his hands up in the air. “Running away when the going gets tough.”

You twisted the doorknob. “You're far from home, Gregory. Wonder why.” Then, you left.

He groaned into his hands before he too kicked the album book. It collided with a wall and its spine broke. Some of the photos fell from their transparent frames. In one of them, Criston had a six-year-old Daeron on his shoulder, a nine-year-old sullen Aemond with both eyes scowling at teen Aegon, who was busy chugging down some beer. Aegon remembered that day at the beach. He'd sneaked his brothers out of their hotel in Norway. Well, only Daeron. Aemond came after them to make sure they didn't get into trouble and if Aemond came, Criston wasn't far behind. He insisted they go back to the hotel. But one look at Daeron's tearful puppy eyes and Criston melted. He allowed them to play around but not draw any attention to themselves. Luckily, plenty of Norwegians had platinum blond hair, so the Targaryen boys didn't stand out. Daeron wanted to build a sandcastle but they didn't have any buckets or shovels. Criston bought them a whole set. Aegon started out helping Daeron with the sandcastle and before long, Aemond joined in, who used his geometry lessons to make a perfect sand replica of their home in King's Landing. He even dug a little hole beside the sandcastle where the water fell and created a miniature Blackwater bay. Daeron was so happy, Criston feared he'd be heartbroken when a big wave came and ruined their hard work. Instead, Daeron lifted his shovel and said, “Arlī! Arlī!” (“Again! Again!”)

Criston suggested they get ice cream instead. He was so busy wiping melted strawberry ice cream down Daeron's arms, he didn't notice Aegon bribing a bartender and sneaking in some cans of beer. At one point, Aemond said, wistfully, “I wish Helaena could come with us. She'd love the beach.”,

Daeron nodded sagely. “And Dad. Mum said he used to race his sailboat, Balerion, with Uncle Daemon's Caraxes all the time when they were kids.”

At the mention of their father, the boys fell quiet. Even Aegon felt pensive. He was certain his deadbeat father was back at the hotel with their mother and his personal doctor. He never played with his sons, only his grandsons. As if Daeron was any less innocent than Luke, or Aemond was any less book-smart than Jace. For Aegon, his father could excuse that he was too old at thirteen to play with. What excuse did he have for nine-year-old Aemond and six-year-old Daeron, who were almost the same age as Jace and Luke?

Criston, to cheer them up, suggested they buy some souvenirs for their family. Daeron chose some pretty shell necklaces for his sisters, Rhaenyra and Helaena, and their cousins, Baela and Rhaena, even for their great-aunt, Rhaenys and Auntie Laena. Aemond picked a photo album for Alicent. He'd bought a camera the moment they came to the beach and took tons of photos. He'd never be able to hide their little trip to the beach from Alicent, who'd be angry at all her boys, especially Aegon (who wouldn't care much) and Aemond (who'd be anxious to get back on her good grace). Criston bought souvenirs for the Targaryens boys: a windchime for Daeron who loved the twinkling sounds of the colorful glass beads; scented candles for Aemond who, Criston felt, needed something to help him relax more. For Aegon, Criston bought a simple mug that said, in cheerful sea blue letters, “Do what you LOVE!”

Aegon didn't care back then. Now, as he looked down at the mug Criston had bought him years ago which he still kept, Aegon couldn't help but let out the lonely tear down his cheek.

You were right, he realized. Criston was the father he never had but wanted. Not Viserys, his biological father. Not Otto, who tried to fill in the holes Viserys left. Not even Larys, the creepy personal manager of his mother.

Criston was Aegon's true father, as he was to Aemond and Daeron. Even to Helaena, who didn't mind him shadowing her as she visited the Montréal Insectarium, the largest in the world, many times on their first trip to Canada, and didn't want to leave until Viserys himself stepped in and made her leave. Helaena was so heartbroken that even Aemond, the sibling she was the closest to, left her alone. Nobody knew how to cheer her up, until Rhaenyra, the Rhaenyra Targaryen, flew her sweet sister to Montréal on her own jet and stayed there for more than two weeks. A gesture that made even Aemond concede that Rhaenyra could be a big sister to them when she felt like it.
Until her son took Aemond's eye and got away with it. Things only turned worse and worse after that.

Aegon pulled out his phone. He never thought he'd need to hear his voice this badly.

“This is Aemond Targaryen,” his little brother's cool voice said.

“Hey, Aemy,” Aegon said in a shaky voice.

“I told you not to call me that.”

Aegon smiled wryly. No questions about what was wrong or where he was. “Can we talk?”

“I have a meeting with Jason Lannister in fifteen minutes.”

“I really need someone right now.”

“Oh.” Aemond said nothing else, hinting that he was all ears.

Aegon made himself say it. “Did you know that Mum was groomed by Dad?”

“Of course. She was 14.”

Aegon finally lost his shit. They talked and talked, to the point Aemond postponed his meeting with Jason Lannister to listen to Aegon vent. The two brothers never talked as much as that moment. When Aegon mentioned you, Aemond scoffed but said that you were right.

“How can you be so calm about it?” Aegon asked.

“What do you expect me to do? Tell Mum to divorce him? You know Grandsire won't approve.”

Aegon fell quiet. Their mother, despite being the Queen of a fucking country, had no wealth of her own. Everything she owned she owed to either her father or her husband. Even the trust fund she had set up for her fugitive son came from the crown. Without this, both Aegon and Alicent had nothing of their own. Aemond had ventured beyond their own wealth thanks to his business administration degree and his family's influences. He now owned the number one automobile company in Westeros, which was branching out to other parts of Europe and across the pond too. Alys convinced him to do it, otherwise his little brother would remain under the crown's influence. She was good for him.

After the little heart-to-heart, Aegon sought you out. You weren't home. You'd taken your copy of the key to Gramercy park, where he spotted you standing before Edwin Booth's statue. He joined you there. You pretended not to notice his presence.

“You were right,” he said quietly.

“I know.”

“I just talked to my brother. He agrees with you.” A pause. “He hates me.”

“No, he doesn't.”

“Yes…”

“No, he does not.” You turned to him. “I know hatred. My grandmother hates me. She hates my mama, she hates my half-sister. Your brother? He doesn't hate you. He did at one point in life. But no longer.”

“I know which point you mean.”
He told you how it happened. He was eighteen, Edmond was fourteen. According to Westerosi law, Edmond had reached the age of consent. Greg, thinking he was doing him a favor by making him come out of his antisocial shell, took him to a strip club.

“You fucking ass,” you called him.

“Yes, yes, I was.” He told you how one of the dancers took Edmond to a private room for a lap dance. By the time Greg was done with the ones he went with, he was too drunk to remember his brother. By the time he did, it was too late. Edmond had gone home. Greg passed out after learning about his brother's departure. For two weeks, Edmond avoided his older brother, until the birthday dinner of their grandfather. Edmond was seething so much inside, he boiled over. He revealed to everyone present (their grandfather, their mum, their sister, their little brother) what Greg did and what happened once the curtains fell and Edmond was left alone with the stripper. By the end of it, his mum was bawling her eyes out. Their grandfather beat the shit out of Greg. Their sister was consoling Edmond, their sister who was touch-reluctant. Only their eleven-year-old brother understood nothing.

“You did a terrible, awful thing to your brother,” you told him.

“I know that now.” Greg hung his head. “I think I got my punishment. I lost my fiancée. I lost my dog. I was crippled for two years. I got burnt and broken. Maybe I deserve more. Until he forgives me.”

“Did you apologize?”

“He just left every time I did. No words. Nothing.”

“He hasn't forgiven you yet.” You ran a hand down your face. “I'm not gonna excuse what you did. You were eighteen, a fucking adult. You should've known better than bringing a fucking child to a strip club. Damn it, Greg, what were you fucking thinking? Or were you thinking at all?” When you got his loaded silence, you turned to him. “At what age was your first time in the strip club?”

“Fourteen.”

“Fucking hell!”

“I lost my virginity the year before.”

You groaned for a long time. “What the fuck what the fuck what the fucking fuck?!”

“Calm down!” He cupped your face and you went quiet. You had tear tracks down your face. He wiped them and you let more fall. “He didn't touch me,” you mumbled. “He just looked at me wrong. Especially at my chest. I still remember the revulsion that went through me. I still feel awful whenever a man looks at me wrong. I cannot fucking imagine what you and your brother went through. Fucking hell!” You closed your eyes.

He continued wiping your face, gently, gently. “Who was he?”

“My mama's boss. She was dating him until he got fired for hurting another child. My mama replaced him. She's been the principal ever since.”

“Wait, the kindergarten?”

You nodded, eyes still squeezed shut.

“Fucking hell. I'm so sorry, dōnītsos.”

“Every time he was at our home, Mama was nearby. So, all he could do was look. One time, I was wearing a bikini. One piece. He never stopped staring. My mama stopped inviting him to my birthday party. She also bought a can of pepper spray. Just in case. She was the vice principal. Lots of overtime.” You opened your eyes. “Greg, I want you to apologize to your brother.”

He promised you he would. You insisted he did so face-to-face. Whenever his brother was over the next time. No matter how short the visit would be.

When you two went back home, he showed you the rest of the album. You met his older sister, Ray and her two husbands, the gay ex, Leonor, and the current husband, her uncle Damon. The latter one gave you the creep vibes. You hoped to never meet him in your life. You felt the same way toward Greg's grandfather, Otto, a seriously somber man whose eyes reflected a never-ending well of hunger and ambition.

“No offense,” you said as you landed on the twentieth anniversary of Greg's parents, where his father resembled a rotting corpse, “but your dad is literally Gollum with hair. Even Théoden looked better while under Saruman's influence.”

Greg snickered. “You Lord of the Rings weirdo.”

“Are those your nephews?” You pointed to three curly dark-haired boys with Greg's older sister.

“Yep, Jace, Luke, and Geoffrey.”

“Who's that?” You pointed to a man in the distance with almost the same hair.

“Harry Strong. Ray's bodyguard slash the biological father of her boys.”

You covered your mouth and laughed. “Sister got busy. I get it though. Lavender marriages are never easy.”

He showed you more photos on his phone. Recent photos. His nephew and niece from his little sister. His little sister with a five-months pregnant belly. His mother with her evergreen outfits that matched with those of her own father's.

Thus, slowly, Greg opened his life to you. In the coming days, every time you took a break to help your girlfriends cater, he'd tag along. Etaf had borrowed an old van from one of her many distant uncles. In a lot of the events, Greg charmed some of the guests. But he never slept with them to avoid humiliating you in front of your clients. The most he got on was giving orals to two ladies at bridal showers and two men at their own engagement party.

A week before his birthday, you woke up one morning to hear Greg sobbing in his bathroom. He had texted you instead of calling your name across the apartment. As if he'd flushed his voice down the toilet.

“What's wrong?” you asked after a peek through the ajar door.

“Something is wrong with my penis, dōnītsos,” he said in a weak voice. His face was red and wet. “Well, my dick and asshole. It hurts when I pee. It hurts when I take a dump. It stings, dōnītsos, it fucking stings.”

Despite your reluctance, you agreed to take a look at his junk. His balls looked a little swollen. Some sort of transparent liquid coated his head. You helped him pull up his pants.

“Okay, here's what we're gonna do.” You sat on the tub's edge. You pulled out your phone and googled the nearest sex clinic. You found one at Chelsea that was free and didn't ask for health insurance. It was quite early, so you took him to the clinic. Two queues before the building. The left one was for standard testing. You stood with Greg, whose face had paled and was shaking and sweating.

You took his hands and wiped them dry. You told him to take deep breaths.

“Don't be scared. It's okay.” You pulled him into a hug. He rested his head over your heart and clung to you as if you were a raft he had found while drowning. “Relax. It'll be fine.”

“I'm gonna die,” he moaned.

“No, you won't. They have medicines for this.”

“I'm so fucking dumb.”

“No, you're not. It happens. It's not an indicator of your intellect.”

“I'm a slut.”

“It's not your fault, stop it. You're not a slut.”

“You said so.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Your eyes say it. I see how you judge me whenever I have a fling and come home.”

“That's just my face!” You pulled away and wiped his cheeks with the sleeves of your jacket. He sniffled. “Greg, look around. Plenty of people get STD. It's fine. It's nothing shameful. This isn't the fucking thirteenth century. Nothing to be ashamed or scared of. It's just like any other disease. You'll get treatment. You'll heal. You'll go back to having sex in no time.”

“Really?” His blue eyes, now bloodshot from all the crying, looked at you like you were his sun, here to chase away all his dark demons.

“Absolutely. They'll just give you a few antibiotics and pills and you'll be fine. I googled this shit.”

“Oh.” He glanced at the front of the queue, where a nurse was asking questions about the purpose of the person's visit, whether for a doctor's appointment or a standard testing.

You wiped his face again. “It'll be fine. I promise.”

The nurse came up to you. You stated your purpose. She gently herded Greg to the building. You went to follow them but she told you that you couldn't come inside.

“Only the patient, ma'am,” she said.

At once, Greg ran back to your side and hid behind you like a scared child behind their mama. His fingers gripped your jacket and his eyes welled up. “No, no, I'm not going anywhere or doing anything without her.”

The nurse tried to reason with him but he was as adamant as a terrified kindergartener. You slowly undid his grip on your jacket and cupped his face. “Hey, it's okay, I'll be right here.”

“But you won't be in there with me. What if I die? What if I die from syphilis? I know someone who had syphilis and…”

“You won't die.”

“But I might. My fiancée died. My dog died. Maybe now is my turn. I'm fine with dying, but not this way. Not by having my dick falling off.”

You bit your lip. He was so anxious. He dared not go without you. You brought out your phone and turned on your internet. You did the same to Greg's phone and handed it back to him. “FaceTime me.”

He did.

“Now, I'll be with you even inside. It'll be fine, Greg. Really. These are professionals. They know what they're doing. They won't hurt you.”

“For real?” His bottom lip thrust out. His puppy dog eyes were back, your second kryptonite.

You kissed his hands, hands that you made him wash thoroughly with sanitizer and then some more. “I promise I'll be with you every step of the way. You can do this. You're so brave. You're Aegon.”

He blinked. “What?”

“That king you mentioned? You're like him. Brave and strong and beautiful. You can do this.” You stood on your toes and kissed his forehead, then a light, brief peck on his lips, and lastly on his cheeks.

His shoulders sagged. He took a deep breath, then let it out. “Okay,” he said. The nurse gently herded him inside. You continued to FaceTime him as he went through the lobby, then the hallway, into a whitewashed room with medical instruments. Greg was told to take off his pants. The doctor examined him. One of the nurses gave him a cup to pee in. They even took swabs.

“Do you really think I can do this?” Greg asked inside the bathroom.

“Yes, you can. Okay, tell you what, Etaf just told me today is National Devil's Food Cake Day.”

“Oh?” He sat down on the toilet, his one hand held the phone, the other fumbled with his cup and his penis. You heard the sound of something liquid hitting something hard.

“Yeah!” you said. “So, after you're done here, we're gonna go to my mama's house and bake a devil's food cake.”

“I never had it.”

“All the more reason. Trust me, you'll love it. I'll even bake it for your birthday. That's next week, isn't it?”

He nodded. He stopped peeing and fumbled with his pants to pull them up. “Do you promise?”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.”

He submitted his sample. The nurse supplied him with words of encouragement. He relaxed a little when he realized the worst was over. The doctor explained to him how they'd treat the STD, if his tests came back positive in two days. The same nurse from before escorted him back to you. You put away your phone and took him back to the subway station. Inside, you found only one empty seat. You wanted to seat him but he pushed you to it, then climbed onto your lap. The people around you stared. You ignored them and hugged him, his head over your pillowy chest.

“How do you feel?” you asked.

“Defeated.”

You ran your hand up and down his back, then gently scratched his scalp and detangled his hair, his snow white strands greasy between your fingertips. “While the cake bakes, I'm gonna wash your hair."

“Why?”

“Because it's as greasy as an unwashed pan of bacon.”

He stuffed his face between your breasts, as if trying to drill into your ribcage with his nose to crawl into your chest cavity and nestle inside the beating organ there. “Distract me. What else are we going to do for my birthday?”

“What do you have in mind?”

“Can we go to Coney island?”

“Of course. We can visit the aquarium. We'll watch the seal show. The beautiful fish in the water.” You were massaging his scalp when you noticed a man in the distance laughing at you.

“What, fuckface?” you barked at him. “Never seen a real man show vulnerability in public? Nothing stupid slugs like you can ever do.”

“What a stupid crybaby!” he said.

“What'll be more stupid is you losing your balls to my bullets. Oh yeah, I got a gun in my purse. Want me to test it out on you? Check if you actually got balls inside there? Let's start right now, fuckface!” You almost pulled out your Glock. Greg held you back with his arms all around you.

The man still caught a glimpse of your gun's muzzle. He got up and went to another car.

“Yeah, that's right! Keep walking, you ball-less ghoul! Go fuck with someone else before you fuck with my man! What're you looking at? You want a piece of me too?” You barked at another jerkface who was watching you.

“Dōnītsos, calm down,” Greg whispered.“It's fine. I'm a loser.”

“You're my loser and only I have the right to laugh at you.”

He smiled. “Yeah? I'm your man?”

You stuck a tongue at him. He playfully nipped it. You almost dropped him from your hold. “Don't you fucking dare,” you mumbled.

Back at your place, your mama wasn't home. You tucked Greg in your bed with your mama's goose feather eiderdown. He fell asleep almost instantly. As he slept the stress away, with the sunlight falling on his snow white hair and pale face, you got on with the cake you promised him. By the time he woke up, you had it chilling in the fridge and were busy making lunch: rice with chicken and sausage gumbo. You had him rinse his mouth with Listerine, then you washed his hair and made him take a bath. After lunch, you cut him two slices of cake because you knew he'd love it.

And love it he did. He demolished the two slices, then five more afterwards. “This is so moist and chocolate-y. Gosh, I never had this kind of cake before. Well, once, after I left my country, in Las Vegas. But this is better.”
You packed up the rest and took it home. He had it for desserts after dinner.

“You should open a bakery or something,” he suggested as he licked the Tupperware you'd brought the cake in.

“I'm poor. That's why I'm working for you.”

He smirked. “Is that the only reason?”

You gave him a look. He laughed. “Can you make the cake again when my test results come back in two days?”

You gave him your words. Sure enough, you baked him another devil's food cake, this one covered with chocolate chips over the ganache and the chocolate buttercream frosting. You let him eat the whole thing as you learned from the clinic that he had contracted both chlamydia and gonorrhea. Before he could panic, you fed him your cake and he postponed his meltdown.

“Mum will be ashamed of me,” he said sadly.

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” you reminded him as you took him to the same clinic. This time, the guards put you in the queue to the right. “Just two diseases. They happened to be sex disease.”

“I'm a real whore.”

“You're not. This is gonna be something you'll be laughing about to your grandchildren some day. For that to happen, we need to get some antibiotics in you.”

This time, you FaceTimed him as the doctor injected him with antibiotics. He was given pills to take for a week. No sex for seven days either. They told him to come back for a retest three months later.

“You see? It's totally fine,” you said as you reunited outside the clinic.

To distract him, you took him to a piano quintet performance that evening. Dr. Tarly had given you the tickets. She had let you borrow one of her dresses again. She insisted that you would not ask for her permission every time, rather simply raid her closet and borrow whatever you needed. Her one condition was to not ruin the clothes, and if you did, to simply wash/mend it. This time, you took her cream white chiffon and lace dress, long sleeved and it reached your knees. To your dismay, by the time you were ready to go, Greg had downed five shots of Don Fulano Fuerte.

“Ao jurnegon gevie,” he said in a raspy, husky voice. (“You look beautiful.”)

You sighed. “I left you for ten minutes.”

He giggled. “Gaomagon ao daor jorrāelagon nyke, dōnītsos? Ivestragon nyke iksan gevie tolī.” (“Do you not love me, sweetling? Tell me I look beautiful too.”)

You rolled your eyes and dragged him out of the apartment, when the elevator at the end of the hallway dinged. You were about to tell them to hold the door when you stopped at the sight of the woman. Red hair, curly but sleek and up in an elegant chignon, covered with a green scarf similar to the one from Confession of a Shopaholic. Her green dress took your breath away, as stunning as the one Keira Knightley wore in Atonement. Well, a modest version of it, with no open back and spaghetti straps. Rather, the sleeves were long and the neck was high. Behind her, two more familiar faces appeared. Both sported snow white hair but no blue eyes like the man whose hands you tugged on. Both of them smiled at the sight of their dear older brother, who stopped on his tracks like you as soon as he made them out. Greg hiccupped and covered his mouth.

“Dōnītsos, gaomagon ao ūndegon skoros nyke ūndegon?” he asked. (“Sweetling, do you see what I see?”)

You said nothing. Half because the three newcomers were approaching you with bright smiles, half because you had no idea what the fuck Greg asked you.

The redheaded woman passed you and took Greg's face in her hands. “My son!” She hugged him and kissed his forehead.

Greg stared at her. “This is real!”

“Of course it is, lēkia,” the blond boy said. He offered you a smile and said, “Hello.”

You squeaked out a hello. The girl, Greg’s little sister/ex-wife, smiled shyly at you, her hands on her six-months-old pregnant belly. You turned back to Greg, who couldn't blink as he stared at his mother.

“Mum? Is that you?” he asked dumbly.

His mother scoffed. “You're drunk, aren't you? Honestly, Aegon, I cannot believe this…”

You frowned. Why did she call him by the name of that legendary king? Was it a term of endearment in Westeros? You were about to ask when his mother turned to you. “You must be Samantha. My niece. Hello, darling.” She enveloped you in a hug that smelled of a flower you had never smelled before. Sweet, a little mellow, and just to your liking. Her arms were as soft as Greg's and you just sank into it because she was a beautiful woman and you might have a bit of a crush on her. MILFs were your kryptonite, it seemed.

“Oh yes, our dear cousin,” the blond boy said and shook your hand as soon as his mother let you go. “A pleasure to meet you.”

The blonde girl murmured a shy hello to you. Before you could correct Greg's family, the man himself coiled a hand around your neck and pulled you closer. “Oh yes, isn't she lovely, Mother? Our cousin, Dr. Samantha Tarly.”

His mother eyed your proximity but said nothing, only smiled at you. “I see you are heading out for the night.”

You still wanted to correct her. Greg beat you to it and kept his family engaged. He told them you two were about to go out for a piano quintet. His mother's face brightened up. “Lyonel gave us tickets too. Ah, this is perfect. We should go now. Aemond is waiting for us downstairs.”

You wondered who that was. Probably their chauffeur. You went to speak up but Greg again beat you to it. “You three go on ahead. I need to get my socks. See?” He lifted his pants and of course, he wore no socks. He pulled you back inside and closed the door to his family's retreating backs.

“What the fuck, Greg?” you demanded as soon as you entered the foyer and he had locked the door.

“Oh come on, this is funny. You should know, she'll never go to a concert with the help.” He said the last part out of jest but it hit you.

He was right. She was right. You were the help. Just because you were easygoing with Greg didn't mean you didn't work for him. He paid for your food and gave you a roof over your head. You had a job because of him and his family's money. You would never belong to the same class as them. Greg might be a rich fuckboy but he was also your boss, as was his family. You were their employee, their... Their servant. The help.

“I'm going to tell her,” you said and opened the door. The elevator doors closed. Greg caught up to you as you waited for the lift to arrive.

“Come on, dōnītsos. It'll be so funny. Think of it as a harmless prank.”

“No! I could lose my job!”

“No, you won't. I'm your boss.”

“But your family ensures my paycheck.”

All the playfulness vanished from his face. “Buttercup, you may work for us but you're my best friend.”

You wanted to correct him but you didn't have the heart to. You didn't want to hurt him, sure. But mostly, you didn't want to hurt yourself by denying it. As if he knew what you were thinking, he took your hand and stroked the back of your palm with his thumb. “You are my best friend, right?” He even said your name, not his nicknames, your real name. He never called you by your real name.

You sighed. “What do you want me to do? Deceive your mum, my employer?”

“A harmless prank, nothing serious. Just for tonight. You know she'll find out who you are eventually. And I promise you, I'll take the blame. I'll take the fall. I'll be your cushion. Even if she fires you now, I'll rehire you when she leaves.”

A harmless prank. Nothing serious. He even promised to protect you. Besides, you had your mama's home and your catering job to go back to, should you get kicked out of this job.

“Okay,” you said.

He grinned and pulled you into the empty lift. Downstairs, you joined Edmond and Alice, who had no chauffeur for their car, a black Cadillac Escalade. Edmond got onto the driver's seat, his partner in the passenger side. Greg's mum, sister, and younger brother took the rear seat. You and Greg took the two middle ones. A block into the journey, Greg leaned over, found the button to open the sunroof, then stood on his seat and thrust his torso out of the car through the open roof. He threw his hands up in the air and whooped and hollered in high Valyrian.

“Get back down, you imbecile!” His mum was beyond embarrassed, glancing at you out of the corner of her eye as she tried to tug her unruly son back to his seat. You grabbed his arm and pulled him down. He flopped back and his brother immediately closed the roof.

“My car is not a fucking toy,” he said through gritted teeth. “Either you behave or I'll eject you out without stopping.”

Their mum sighed wearily. Alice and their sister paid no mind. Greg giggled while his mother and youngest brother were trying to not feel any more embarrassed than they already were. You pretended not to care and stared out the window. Greg clambered onto your lap, coiled his arms around you like tentacles, and laid his head over your breasts like he did in the train. The braid crown over your head got mussed up as he ran his fingers through your tresses. “Ao iēdrosa jorrāelagon nyke, gaomagon ao daor?” (“You still love me, do you not?”)

Edmond snorted. His youngest brother groaned behind you. Their sister stayed lost in another world from her window, her hands caressing her belly. Sandwiched between them, Greg's mum facepalmed. Alice shook her head in amusement in front of you.

“What did he say?” you asked. Edmond said nothing. So did his sister. Their youngest brother sheepishly told you that his older brother asked if you still loved him.

You patted his back and gently, gently, put him back in his seat. He pouted and tugged down your braid, completely undid it, and ran his fingers through your open hair. His mum slapped his hand. He rubbed the place and pouted the same sad way he had done back in Mr. Lombardi's house. You took his hand in yours and stroked the place he was slapped on. He grinned at you, stuck his tongue at his mother, and cradled your right hand the rest of the way. His mother apologized to you constantly and you wondered, if she were told who you were, would she treat you any differently?

Yes, yes, she would.

Despite Greg's concert seat being sandwiched between his sister and mother, you switched his seat with his sister and gave him your own at the end of the row. Just to isolate him from the rest of his family and keep him to yourself. Halfway through the recital, he fell asleep, drooling and snoring on your chest, his hair now silky, smooth, and smelled of eucalyptus and peppermint thanks to your washing earlier that day. You smiled remembering how he fell asleep in the tub and snored and finally calmed down from all the stress the last couple of days had caused him. He carried so much inside himself. You wanted to topple off most of those burdens. The ones you couldn't relieve him of, you wanted to help him carry. You didn't know where this altruism came from. You weren't your mama. You were rather like your dad, as your mama often told you and thus irritated you. That you had the looks and personality of the man you despised. Personality wise, prickly like a cactus outside and as vulnerable and fuzzy as a baby duck inside.

When the concert ended, you gently woke Greg up. His mother eyed you two warily. When he woke up and didn't cause any scenes, she invited you two for dinner at a Michelin star French restaurant in Manhattan. Edmond had booked a semi-private garden table. Greg ran into one of the olive trees, giggling, and said, “Excusez-moi, mademoiselle.” You took him to the table, pulled up a chair next to yours, and coaxed him to sit down. He did as you told and took the menu your server handed over. “Can you order for me? You know me the best,” he mock-whispered to you.

You did as requested. While the rest of your party mixed and matched between seafood and other dishes, you only ordered seafood for yourself and Greg.

“Ao jurnegon tolī nyke sīr sȳrī. Bisa iksis skoro syt Avy jorrāelan, dōnītsos,” he said as you fed him, because he kept dropping his cutlery and almost sliced his wrist while cutting into his fish (“You look after me so well. This is why I love you, sweetling.”). Every time you asked him to open his mouth, he did it cutely, like a child. His mother watched you two like a hawk, desperately and despairingly. She whispered to Edmond, who replied in the same volume. Because they sat across the table from you, you couldn't eavesdrop on them. At one point, Greg's sister/ex-wife touched your arm and smiled serenely.

“What the wind couldn't take off, the sun did. What the world couldn't break off, the hearts did.”

You frowned but said nothing, only smiled. She smiled back and went back to finishing her pasta with mushrooms. Her youngest brother smiled apologetically, as if he were ashamed of his sister's erratic behavior. You didn't smile back, instead you shook your head, meaning to convey to him that he had nothing to be ashamed of when it came to their sister. As much as you had learned about her, she was the purest of them all.
Greg's mum's phone rang. She excused herself and went to a corner to answer it. As she talked, her eyes widened and she whirled around, her eyes on you. You met her brown ones and gulped.

She knew.

You guessed it was the real Dr. Samantha Tarly on the phone. Your grip on Greg's fork tightened. He followed your gaze and met his mother's eyes, who continued to glare at you. You looked away and your eyes landed on Edmond, who smirked, his meal finished. He steepled his fingers and said, “This should be fun.”

Greg jumped to his feet and pulled you with him. His mother rushed back to your table. Before she could say anything, Greg wrapped his arms tightly around you and shoved you behind him. “Daor! Kesā daor ōdrikagon zirȳla.” (“No! You will not hurt her.”)

His mother frowned. “Darling, calm down.”

“Daor! Issa ñuhon. Ñuhon! Issa ñuha ābrar. Issa ñuha ōños. Issa ñuha jorrāelagon. Kesan morghūljagon mijegon zirȳla. Kesā daor gūrogon zirȳla hen nyke. Skoriot jān, is. Skoriot is, jān.” (“No! She is mine. Mine! She is my life. She is my light. She is my love. I will die without her. You cannot take her from me. Where I go, she goes. Where she goes, I go.”)

Edmond raised a brow, truly astonished. Alice leaned back with a smirk, not a malicious one, rather as if she had been rooting for something and it was going exactly as she wanted it.

“Son,” his mother lifted her hands in surrender, “I won't hurt you.”

“That's not what he means,” Edmond said.

“He's saying wherever she goes, he'll go too,” his sister said, her eyes on her pasta.

“And he's telling you not to hurt her. That she is his,” their youngest brother finished the translation.

Bewildered, you glanced up at Greg, your boss, your best friend, now your defender.

“No, no, I'll never hurt her. Trust me,” Greg's mother said, her hands still raised.

“Gaomagon eman aōha udir? Gaomagon ao kivio?” Greg said. (“Do I have your word? Do you promise?”)

“He's asking if he has your word. If you promise,” Edmond translated.

“Yes, yes, my boy. I won't hurt her. She's yours, as you said.”

Greg finally relaxed. So did you. At once, gratitude as deep as the grand canyon flowed into your heart. You clung to him as he clung to you. You took your seats and he opened his mouth for his next mouthful. You cut into his fish, speared it with a piece of trumpet mushroom, and ran it through the sauce. He smiled brightly at you and chewed his food. You sheepishly glanced at his mother, who stared at you baffled and angry. You gulped. You had to make this right. You had to fix this. You continued cutting Greg's food and feeding him, while you prepared the apology in your head.

“Mrs. Teanan?” you said.

She frowned. “Are you talking to me?”

You nodded. Who else, duh? Her second son leaned over and whispered something to her. She nodded and composed herself. “Go on,” she said to you.

“I'm really sorry for everything. It will never happen again, I promise.”

“Nooooo,” Greg whined. “Don't be sorry.”

You ignored him and went on. “It was irresponsible of me to pull such a childish prank on you. It won't happen again, you have my word.”

“Thank you for your apology. I accept it. Please, refrain from such behavior in future.”

You nodded. Greg scowled at his mother before you gently turned him back to you and fed him the last bits of his food. He had you order his dessert, a milk chocolate one, and smiled as serenely at you as his sister sometimes did to nobody. Throughout the meal, his mother and second brother kept their eyes on you.

Later, after you returned to Greg's apartment, you quietly moved your stuff from one of the three bedrooms to the servant's quarter. It was a little smaller but nothing horrible. Neither Greg nor his family had any idea. Only his sister caught you sneaking out but said nothing. You guided her to what used to be your bedroom, which she would share with her mother while her youngest brother would share the master bedroom with her older brother. The third one went to Edmond and Alice.
In your new room, you took off your dress, put on your usual clothes, and returned the dress to its owner. The last part, Greg's mother watched you do from the living room.

She hated you, you were convinced.

You knew she'd hate you even more if she learned that that night, Greg woke up in the middle of the night, stumbled towards what used to be your bedroom, got confused why you weren't there, searched for you all over the apartment, and found you in the servant's quarter. He had no idea it was a servant's quarter. He simply slipped under your duvet, wrapped his arms around your waist, and stuffed his face between your breasts. You smelled his eucalyptus and peppermint shampoo at the same moment he caught your lavender and citrus one and was lulled to sleep.

Chapter Text

Brother's Day, 2024

The next morning, you woke up early to do some damage control. You had fucked up last night. Now, you had to fix everything. Since it was food that brought Greg to your life, you turned to food to fix this shit. Your favorite breakfast was sandwiches and bagels. But it was too commonplace. You were pretty sure even a secretive country like Westeros probably had fifty thousand bagel places. No, you wanted to welcome Greg's family with actual American food. Southern American food, to be precise.

You woke up at five and left a drooling, snoring Greg in your bed. You dressed modestly, a pair of black cigarette pants and a white button-down. Your hair was in a braid, not one strand out. You brought out your notepad app, where you stored your mama's recipes. You got to work.

The first person from Greg's family to wake up was Mrs. Teanan. You already had the coffee up and running. You had even made a simple fruit platter for her to nibble on, while you cooked your grits with cheese, green onion, and bacon. You greeted her with a sweet smile and a cheerful “Good morning”. She only nodded, her hair combed and brushed but not yet covered with a scarf (she looked more breathtaking with her hair down, you realized where Greg and his siblings got their good looks from), and poured herself a cup of coffee.

“How did you sleep?” you asked.

“A little bit of jet lag but nothing I can't overcome.” She eyed you as you brought out the first batch of biscuits from the oven. “You're making scones?”

You almost grimaced. Typical European assumption. “Biscuits, southern American style. I hope you don't mind. I didn't discuss with you what you'd like for breakfast.”

She waved a hand. “It's fine. I'm blessed that none of my children have any food allergies.”

You smiled and answered her question as she asked about her oldest son. How he had been eating. If he had been drinking too much. If he had been sleeping around too much. You felt bad for hiding his recent STD incident from her, but you knew she'd judge both of you harshly and shame Greg for the rest of her stay.

Some time later, the rest of her family began to wake up and arrive for their morning coffee. Everyone, except for Helena, who asked for some pomegranate juice. You apologized for not having it at the moment. She blinked and hummed out an agreement. You made a mental note to buy boxes and boxes of pomegranate juice for the sweet girl. Ronald asked if you needed help cooking so much food. You politely declined. When Alice sauntered in, your brain almost had a short circuit. She was in a maroon silk negligée. Mrs. Teanan scowled but said nothing in front of her protective son. Alice poured herself a cup of coffee with oat milk. “Hello, loveliest. How are you this morning?”

You blinked. “Are you asking me?”

“Who else glows like you at seven in the morning frying bacon?” She booped your nose and you almost melted like the butter on your pan. Alice joined her partner in the living room, who nursed a cup of coffee as black and bitter as his soul. He rolled his eyes at your swooning.

The last person to wake up was Greg, who stumbled out of your room by the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. “Ugh, why is it so loud here, dōnītsos?”

His mother's eyes widened. “Son, why were you in the servant's quarter?” She looked positively scandalized, probably thinking her son was now sleeping with the help.

“So that's where you went last night.” His youngest brother was no help.

“What?” his mother asked.

“Lēkia woke up last night and went out. I thought he probably went to the bathroom. But the bathrooms here are attached. I waited a little but he never came back. Now, I know.” He smiled innocently at you and his brother. Greg stood behind you, confused.
You had to do something. You had to defuse the volcano inside Mrs. Teanan's head, which was obviously heading toward a violent eruption. “Oh, that's right. This morning, I found Mr. Teanan in the kitchen. He was here for a midnight snack. He does that sometimes. He fell asleep halfway through and I felt bad for his back. So, I took him to my room and tucked him to sleep. I'm sorry, but his bedroom is so far away from the kitchen and he was too sleepy to send him back by himself.”

His mother visibly relaxed. “Oh, thank the Seven. Greg, why would you fall asleep in the kitchen? Did you not eat enough last night?”
Greg shrunk into himself. You wanted to defend him but you were already on thin ice. You made him a glass of POMP juice (pineapple, orange, mango, passion fruit), which he took without looking at you. As if you had betrayed him. Betrayed him how? You didn't know. You felt a chasm occurring between you two, as if you were standing on both sides of the Grand Canyon.

You had to drive away such concerns, for your food demanded immediate attention. By nine, all the dishes were done. You told Mrs. Teanan, who sat next to her oldest on the piano bench and tried to persuade him to play for her. You led them to the dining table Greg almost never used. Mrs. Teanan sat at the head of the table, her two oldest sons to her left and right, followed by her only daughter and her youngest. Alice sat at the foot of the table, being the second oldest person there after Mrs. Teanan.

The matriarch joined hands to pray as soon as everyone was seated. You went to the kitchen to fetch the food. You wheeled them all in and her face lit up like her son's face did sometimes. You laid out the food, introduced the dishes to the foreign diners, and told them to call you if anyone needed anything. You were about to head back to the kitchen when Greg grabbed your hand.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“To the kitchen, sir.”

He scowled at your addressal. “Come and eat with us.”

Mrs. Teanan was about to speak when you beat her to it. It better came from you than from her, or else bad blood would occur between the mother and the son. “Mr. Teanan, I'm afraid that's not appropriate. I'm the help. You're my employer. My place is in the kitchen. But please, do call me if you need anything. Enjoy your breakfast.” You left without a glance at Greg's face, which had obviously fallen, and left before he could say anything. You heaped your plate with the leftovers and plugged one headphone to your ear, the other open in order to keep it trained on the Teanans out in the dining room. You tuned in to Etaf's show, which had started some time ago.

Footsteps sounded behind you. Before you could turn, Greg came within your field of vision, his plate in his hands. He slammed it on the marble island and opened the lids of the pots. He found the grits and ladled himself some more. Not once did he look at you. Then, he ladled some grillades on the creamy white grits. He was muttering something, not in English, but spoken too lowly for you to make out.

“Are you okay?” you asked.

“Never fucking better. Where's the gravy?”

You ladled some to his plate, while he fetched himself some biscuits. Once his plate was full, he took it, stomped towards your quarter, and slammed the door behind him. He even locked it from within. A minute later, his mother peeked into the kitchen.

“Where is he?” she asked.

You wordlessly pointed to your door.

Mrs. Teanan sighed, then smiled at you. “My son is emotionally mercurial. His father's side is like that. I merely suggested that he meets some girls…”

“Girls?” you involuntarily interrupted.

“Blind dates. He says he's not interested.” She massaged her forehead. “He's an almost thirty-year-old divorcee. He needs to settle down. He can't get hung up on... on her.” And you knew who she meant. His dead fiancée. She felt like Rebecca de Winter at this point, haunting everyone even though she was gone.

“I can help, if you'd like,” you offered before you could think of it.

“Don't you fucking dare, dōnītsos!” Greg shouted from inside. Apparently, he had been eavesdropping.

You moved away from the door and toward Mrs. Teanan, who led you out into the living room. She sat on the piano bench and you stood nearby. “What do you mean, dear?”

You tucked your hands into your pants pockets. “Well, he listens to me. I can persuade him.”

She frowned. She probably didn't like the idea of enlisting your help in personal matters. She said so anyway, but in polite terms. “Please, don't mind, dear.”

“No worries.” You went back to the dining room. The Teanans were done with their meal. You cleaned the dishes and washed them. The door to your quarter opened. Greg stepped out. You stretched your hand to him for his plate. He sullenly handed it over. “Iksā iā mittys,” he said. (“You are a fool.”)

“You're drunk?”

He scoffed. “I can speak my mother tongue whenever I please.” He watched you dump the leftovers into a trashcan. “That was delicious.”

“Thanks.”

“And greasy. Mum didn't like it. Though Helaena and my little brother did.”

“I'll make sure not to make them again without your mother's permission.”

“I don't like you like this.”

“Excuse me?”

“You're all subservient now. What happened to my fiery dōnītsos who cursed at me at every turn?”

You turned your back to him and put his plate inside the dishwasher. “You can't come to my room and sleep on my bed with me. You can't lock yourself in my room. Don't do that again, please.”

“Why not?”

“You're my boss.”

“When did you let that stop you? And what the fuck was that, calling me sir?”

You began to feel rage and irritation, but you pushed them aside. “I can't be how I was only with you in front of her. She doesn't like it.”

“Fuck what she likes.” His face turned soft.“Dōnītsos, I miss you. The you that you used to be when it was just the two of us.”

You bit your lip, then glanced at the door. When you saw the coast was clear, you went over and hugged him. “I'm sorry.”

Before he could return your hug, you pulled away because Helena entered. She asked for one last helping of ambrosia salad. You luckily had more leftovers of it than anything else. You served her a plate and she gave you the sweetest smile. You brought her a chair to sit on. Greg went over to her and asked about the baby. She fondly told him about the little boy inside her who would come out in less than four months and no, she hadn't named him yet. She told him about his nephew and niece, how the boy had taken after his uncle more than anybody else.

You began to prepare lunch. You didn't make the same mistake twice. You consulted Mrs. Teanan, who was pleased when you asked her what you should cook for lunch. Then, as you cooked Sister's Stew, a Westerosi dish made with seafood, cream, butter, and tons of vegetables, you heard Greg playing on his piano. The music sounded stilted and mechanical. His strict younger brother said so. You peeked and caught Greg's frown. His sister/ex-wife sat next to him and encouraged him, but he still looked so crestfallen. If you didn't have to cook five more dishes, you'd join him and coax him with words you knew would help. For now, you left him to the wolves and finished making lunch.

Again, you ate by yourself. This time, Greg didn't come to you. He scowled at his plate of food when you went to refill the bowl of stew. He asked for seconds of a dish of mutton and mushroom. Mrs. Teanan objected. “Too much fat for you, dear,” she said, to your disbelief. She told you to pour more creamy chestnut soup into his bowl instead. You did so reluctantly and Greg looked at you with so much hurt over your betrayal, you had to leave soon.

To your relief, Edmond invited his family to a charity gala he was invited at. Mrs. Teanan was thrilled. Helena opted to stay home. Mrs. Teanan had to drag her oldest and youngest to the party. Alice, before leaving, patted your back as if in consolation.

“Cheer up, Buttercup,” she said and it made you miss Greg even more.

You entertained Helena as she took up her knitting needles and began to weave the finishing touches to a wool glove with a golden retriever pattern on the back of the palm. She sat on a rocking chair, her feet on an ottoman, as you made her a simple salad of green beans, onions, and beets. For yourself, you made grilled cheese and tomato soup, with dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets. Helena expressed her interest in the nuggets coated with panko crumbs. So, you air-fried more for her, served with your copycat Chick-Fil-A sauce. She demolished almost one hundred nuggets. For dessert, some Westerosi buns stuffed with raisins, dried apples, and pine nuts. Your first batch didn't have enough raisins, Helena told you. Your next batch had more raisins but then the apples fell short. So, you dried more apple cubes and stuffed more in the third batch. By the time your fifth batch rolled out, you had stuffed yourself with more carbs than you had in recent times. You gave most of it to Helena, who giggled when you complained about your too full belly.

“Wait till you have a bun in your oven.” Her fingers lightly drummed over her bump. “I have stage IV endometriosis. It makes having sex painful for me, so my brother and I never consummated our marriage. Only my mother, siblings, and grandfather know about it. Having children artificially or through a surrogate would make them illegitimate in Westeros, even when the biological parents are legally married to each other.”

“That’s absurd!”

She shrugged. “This made it easier for my brother and I to annul our marriage. But I always wanted children of my own. So, I defied my family and the law, risked my life to undergo multiple surgeries, and conceived my twins through artificial insemination. The world can call them bastards all they want. To me, they’re my everything.”

You offered her a smile and asked permission to pat her hand. She blinked, unused to having people ask for consent to touch her, and nodded. “You’re a very brave woman, Helena. Always remember that. And fuck what everyone thinks. Children are a blessing, no matter if they’re legitimate or not.”
She smiled sweetly. “Thank you. My twins made me so sick, I couldn't stand being around honey and caramel. Sweet food made me sick.”

“Like my mama!” You finished your last bun. “Except, she couldn't keep down one ounce of spice when she was with me. She had to eat only sweet food and although they were a hustle to make, she learned to bake many desserts for this.” You felt bad for your mama, who was all alone when she was having you.

When Helena learned this, she cocked her head. “What about your dad?”

“I'm a child out of wedlock,” you confessed. “His side of the family either doesn't know about me or hates me.”

She nodded as if that made sense. “You worry about your cage but you forget to turn the page.”

“What?”

She blinked, as if coming out of a hypnosis. “Yes?”

“What did you say?”

“I said something?” She sighed. “I'm sorry. Sometimes, I say stuff I can't remember saying. My mother and siblings often judge me for it. Only my grandsire doesn't.” She rubbed her belly. “He loves being a great grandfather. He'll love him too.”

She told you more about herself. She had double doctorates in entomology and was on her way to a tenure. She said she sometimes did tarot card readings online. When she told you the amount of money she raked in during her last session, your eyes turned as huge as the buns you had just baked.

“Can you please become my sugar mommy?” you jokingly asked. “I'll love you forever.”

“You don't need a mommy. You already are one.” She smiled sweetly. “Ñuha lēkia iksis iā beri vala naejot emagon ao. Ēza va moriot issare hae bisa, merbugon syt jorrāelagon. Se ziry vestragon emā olvie jorrāelagon naejot tepagon zirȳla. Emā zȳhon prūmia. Iksā zȳhon prūmia. Lo aōha ābrar māzigon naejot iā mōris, sīr kessa se Aegon īlon gīmigon. Gaomagon zȳhon prūmia ȳgha. Gaomagon zirȳla ȳgha. Nyke kivio ao, kesā dōrī arlī rhaenagon vala hae gevie hae zirȳla.” (“My big brother is a lucky man to have you. He has always been like this, hungry for love. And it seems you have much love to give him. You have his heart. You are his heart. If your life comes to an end, so shall the Aegon we know. Keep his heart safe. Keep him safe. I promise you, you will never again meet a man as beautiful as him.”)

You didn't know what she said but you smiled sweetly nonetheless. Unlike Greg's drunken ramblings, hers felt like a sermon from a priest. You thanked her and got her ready for bed by ten, as Mrs. Teanan told you to. Helena asked you to stay in her room, until her mother came home.

“I don't like it,” she said.

“Being alone?”

“Being alone in the dark.”

You had an idea. You had bought it for Greg some time ago but he didn't like it. A capybara night lamp that lit up if you slightly squished its body. When it lit the room, Helena clapped her hands like a little girl who got a pony for birthday. “That's so pretty. Like Egg.”

“You mean Greg?”

She was so happy with the light, she didn't hear you. You tucked her in and put the lamp on her bedside table. She booped its nose and giggled. “Can I take it home?”

“Of course. Goodnight, miss.” You kept the door ajar, just in case. You went to your quarter and were about to take off your outfit when you saw him.

“Greg, what the fuck?!” You rebuttoned your shirt. But his eyes were far away as he sat on the floor and leaned against the side of your bed. “Greg?”

He finally glanced at you, his eyes teary and red. “Gaomā daor jorrāelagon nyke dombo.” (“You do not love me anymore.”)

You hung your head. You sat beside him and pulled him close. Fat tears fell from his eyes that somehow seemed more purple than blue in the dim light. You rested his head over your heart. He didn't touch you at all, his hands limp on his lap. “Greg, what's wrong?”

“Hae ñuha kepa, gaomā daor jorrāelagon nyke dombo. Ziry jorrāelatan nyke skori īlen āzma. Muña ivestretan nyke. Mazēdas nyke isse zȳhon nesh se vēttan nyke sōpagon. Arlī pār, ziry jorrāelatan nyke se olvie, daor Rhaenyra. Īlen se tresy ziry jeldan, se riña ziry jorrāelatan. Īlen mirros naejot zirȳla. Sir, iksan daorun naejot zirȳla. Daorys jorrāelza nyke dombo. Daor ondoso ñuha muña. Daor ondoso ñuha kepa. Daor ondoso ñuha valonqar. Daor ondoso ñuha kepāzma. Eman vēttan ñuha lyks lēda ziry. Yn daor ao. Nyke daor ojughagon ao. Nyke ojūdan zirȳla istin, kesan daor ojughagon ao tolī. Kostilus, dōnītsos. Kostilus ȳdra daor henujagon nyke hae zirȳla.” (“Like my father, you do not love me anymore. He loved me when I was born. Mother told me. He took me in his arms and made me laugh. Back then, he loved me the most, not Rhaenyra. I was the son he wanted, the child he loved. I was something before her. Now, I am nothing before her. No one loves me anymore. Not by my mother. Not by my father. Not by my little brother. Not by my grandfather. I have made my peace with it. But not you. I cannot lose you. I lost her once, I will not lose you again. Please, sweetling. Please, don't leave me like her.”)

He touched your face. Before you could realize what was happening, he pressed his lips to yours. Your brain stopped functioning. You couldn't understand what was happening. It was only when he pulled away, sighed, then passed out by keeling over your breasts did you come out of the shock.

He kissed you! What the fuck?!

You tried to get him off but he had his arms latched onto you like ivies. You somehow pulled out his phone, since yours was on your desk across the room. You dialed the person you could trust in his family with this situation. The blond appeared at your doorstep ten minutes later. Edmond extracted his brother from you and carried him back to his room. Before you could thank him, he had shut the door behind him. Not once did he exchange a word with you or meet your eyes. You kept Greg's phone, which his brother left behind, inside your bedside table's drawer.

Greg didn't sneak into your room that night. Or the next two nights. You found out why when you found the orange bottle of Sonata tucked far inside one of his drawers, next to the white drawstring pouch (which you suspected contained a ring) and a diary. You snooped around because you suspected he'd go for something like this. Your heart clenched and twisted at how desperate he must've been. You flushed the pills down the toilet and dumped the bottle in your own room's trash can. That night, you kept the door to your room unlocked. You woke up in the morning with a vice grip around your waist from behind. You faced him without breaking his hold, kissed him on his forehead, then his lips, and lastly on his cheeks, before you replaced yourself with your pillow. You tucked him in and went to work.

It was the morning of his birthday. You had promised him your devil's food cake. Greg's apartment pantry didn't have instant chocolate pudding mix, triple cocoa blend, and dark chocolate. You were about to head out when Mrs. Teanan found you.

“I see you're going out,” she said.

“Today's Mr. Teanan's birthday…”

She blinked, then slapped a hand over her forehead. “May 24, yes! Can't believe I forgot. Thank you for reminding me, dearest. Are you going shopping for his birthday?”

“Yes. He loves my devil's food cake.”

“I'm sorry, what?”

You explained it to her. She shook her head before you were finished. “No, no, my dear. He doesn't like chocolate. It's not good for his body. No, his favorite birthday cake that I always had our cooks bake for him is a really beautiful green cake. A lemon, cucumber, and melon cake, with a basil and mint glaze. He loves the glaze.”

You fumbled back in your memory of Greg ever liking any of those ingredients. Nope, never, 404 not found. To him, cucumber and melon's textures were “yucky” (his words, not yours), mint tasted “like toothpaste”, and basil was the bane of his existence. Only lemon was something he liked. “But ma'am…”

“I know my son better than you, dear,” she said this in a straight face but you could sense the seething inside. You bit your tongue and let her go on. “Trust me, he'll love it. Oh good, you're here.” Mrs. Teanan turned to her second son, who had just poured his morning coffee. “Listen, I'm going to get ready to go shopping with her,” she pointed at you, as if you didn't have a name, “for your brother's birthday. Why don't you tell her what kind of dishes he'd like to eat today?” She patted her son's shoulder and headed for her bedroom.

You turned to the tall blond, who gazed at you with a thoughtful expression. “Hmm.”

You whipped out your phone and the notepad app in it. “So?”

“Follow me.” He beckoned you to the living room, where he sipped on his coffee and supplied you with what to make for his brother's birthday. Risotto and semifreddo, the two dishes Greg seemed to have always eaten on his birthdays. Since he was getting his usual cake, why not the rest too? You listed the ingredients and instructions. Once Mrs. Teanan was ready, you left with her for the nearest Whole Foods Market. She decided what to buy. Rarely did she ask you for your input. Your job was to push the carts, two carts, yes, while she inspected the aisles and shelves. You carried the four bags of groceries behind her as you both returned. Greg was playing on his piano, his sister smiling like a sylph next to him. His youngest brother helped you unload the grocery. After Mrs. Teanan gave you the recipe for the cake, you got started.

The rest of the day, you slaved over the birthday feast, while the Teanans' job was to keep Greg from finding out about the surprise that awaited him. You made them lunch straight from Sicily, where Mrs. Teanan apparently honeymooned and conceived Greg. You had hidden your gag at the supermarket very well.

Greg expressed that gag as soon as you put the greenish yellow Maccu soup before him.

“What the fuck is this? Vomit?” he said.

Her mother scowled. “Fava beans. It's good for your health. You've been eating too much oily junk food here.”

Greg took a long time to finish his soup. His mood didn't improve, as you presented and he was forced to eat orange and fennel salad, stuffed eggplants, spaghetti with raw garlic, breadcrumbs, parsley, and olive oil, and for dessert, mint granita. You felt bad for him as he stomached each dish. You hoped the food you were making for dinner would cheer him up. Especially the cake.

Just as the sun set, the Teanans began to gather in the living room, Greg in the center. They revealed their gifts to him, which somewhat lifted his mood. From Helena, a knitted pair of gloves. She had apparently weaved Sunfyre on both gloves, a gift that summoned tears to Greg's eyes (and yours, but yours didn't catch anyone's attention as you lurked by the threshold). From Edmond and Alice, he received a car from Edmond's company. They handed him the keys, much to the shock of Greg.

“For real?” he asked.

“It's yours once you come back to Westeros,” Edmond said.

At once, Greg's mood plummeted. He tossed the keys back to his brother. “Keep it.” His mother chided him for refusing his brother's well thought-out gift. Greg didn't pay any mind to her, until she presented her gift.

“This is from both Criston and me,” she said.

Greg gasped when he opened the big box. A collection of mugs. White mugs with colorful writings and paintings on them. Thirteen mugs in total. Greg, like a child who got his wishes granted by Santa, touched and caressed each mug. He lined them up on the coffee table, then ran to his bedroom and returned with the mug he kept on his bedside table but never drank from. He put it with the rest of the mugs and giggled. “Now, I have the Fourteen Flames.”

Edmond rolled his eyes. Helena clapped and smiled at her older brother's joy. Lastly, Ronald gave him a picture of a puppy.

“A golden retriever?” Greg asked, dumbfounded.

“He was born in Westeros last month. I can have him shipped here if you want.” The sweet boy clasped his brother's shoulder. “He's one of Sunfyre's. I know because I tracked down the few female dogs he impregnated. He can be your Sunfyre again.”

Greg looked at the picture of the puppy and shook his head. “No, there can only be one Sunfyre.”

Ronald's face fell. “You don't want him?”

“I never said that. But I'd never replace my Sunfyre. I loved him and I never stopped. No, this little doggo, he won't have a leftover name. He will have a different name. What should we call him?”

“Hold on,” Alice took the picture and pointed out, “this is actually a girl. Look,” and she pointed between the hind legs.

“Oh!” everyone, except for Alice and you, collectively said.

“Can't believe we missed that,” Greg said.

“All the more reason we should name her something else. Hellie? Ronnie? You pick.”
Edmond hummed at not being asked to pick a name.

“Since her predecessor was called Sunfyre, let's call her something a little similar, since she's his daughter,” Ronald said.

“Dreamfyre,” Helena supplied.

You said, “Yes!” so loudly, they all turned to you. Greg smiled at you, as did Alice, Ronald, and Helena. Mrs. Teanan turned back to the photo, while Edmond frowned at you. You scurried back to the kitchen. You could still hear them speak. They decided on Dreamfyre for the new dog. As you put the finishing touches to the cake, Mrs. Teanan visited you.

“Almost done? Good.” She hesitated. “My son told me this is your first job as a housekeeper. Is that true?”

You never told Greg about Ezra, so of course, he'd think that. “Yes, ma'am,” you said, your eyes on the cake as you piped green mint and basil icing on top.

“I see. I won't blame you. You've never done this before, so this oversight came from a place of ignorance and inexperience. Though I cannot imagine why he would hire someone inexperienced,” she muttered the last part before she raised her voice. “Anyway, I'd really appreciate it, my dear, if you don't interrupt or participate in a private moment like just now.”

You stopped piping and looked up at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“It's all right. I forgive your blunder. Just remember, the private moments of your employers, unless shared with the help, are private for a reason. It's ours. It belongs to us. We do not welcome outside presence.”
You realized it then. She didn't like you witnessing the gift opening. A huge lump gathered in your throat. You gulped it down and nodded, not trusting your voice.

“You understand? Ah, that's good. I guess my son saw how mature and professional you can be. I'm so glad we have this out in the open. Please, notify me when you're done decorating the cake. It looks stunning.” She left and your knees buckled.

All your life, you had felt the exclusion. Every time your peers celebrated Father's day and you couldn't because yours not only never wanted you, he left you and your mama long before you were born. Now, his mother didn't want you out of love, purely out of an ableist motive. You were either a burden to them or a tool to use around. Nothing else. Nothing to love and cherish. A fucking nobody.

You understood where Mrs. Teanan came from. But damn, did it fucking sting. You were glad you didn't buy a birthday gift for Greg. Or else it'd be counted as another blunder feather to your hat. You splashed water on your face, in case your treacherous body decided to embarrass you further. You wiped your face dry, finished decorating the cake and lighting up the green candles, then put it gently on a cart and wheeled it toward the living room. You stopped just short of the threshold, peeked, and searched for Mrs. Teanan, who noticed your unwanted presence at once and came to the door. She cleared her throat and wished her son a happy birthday, then presented the cake that you wheeled in. Not once did your eyes seek or meet Greg's. You spotted his legs and kept your eyes on the floor. You stopped by the piano and then backtracked out of the room. You heard a barely audible, “Wait,” from him but didn't listen to him. You went back to the kitchen and began to cook the risotto. The semifreddo prep was the next item on the list. You put on your noise-canceling headphones, listened to the evening news reporter talking about a gun shop being robbed an hour ago, and worked until everything was done. You served the golden yellow rice onto the six plates and garnished them as Edmond told you to. Once you were done, you put away your headphones and notified Mrs. Teanan that dinner was ready to be served. She herded her children to the dining room, where you stood in a corner. Your eyes accidentally met Greg's, whose blue gaze reflected how betrayed and hurt he felt. He looked away and you felt as if someone had bit into your chest cavity and tore a chunk from inside. Metaphorically bleeding all over the golden carpet under the dining table, you served the Teanans their dinner. Five plates had the same dish: risotto with prawns flavored with lemon and capers, and creamed with burrata. For the birthday boy: Cacciucco risotto with shellfish, swordfish, calamari, prawns, and fresh tomato. It took you a lot of time to prepare the seafood. But you convinced yourself it'd be worth it if it meant Greg would be happy on his first birthday away from home. At least all his loved ones were here. You were about to leave the room to give the Teanans the privacy to eat, when Greg's hand shot out and grabbed yours. He'd never touched you like this. So tightly. There was no desperation behind it, only fury.

“Yes, sir?” you asked, your voice shaky.

“What the fuck is this?”

You explained to him what you made. Cacciucco was apparently an Italian seafood stew. You had incorporated it into a humble risotto.

“What's for dessert?” he asked like a robot.

“Semifreddo with nougat for everyone else. Amaretto semifreddo with vanilla cream for you.”

He let go of your hand so abruptly, you stumbled back. He stood up, his back to you and his eyes on his family, especially his mother and brooding brother, and said,“You're fired. And I'm done.” He threw away his plate of food and stomped out of the room. A few seconds later, the front door slammed shut.

Everyone was so shocked, it took them a while to catch up on what happened. A slow smirk spread across Edmond's lips as he leaned back. His partner frowned at the joy on his face. Helena and Ronald glanced at each other, wondering what was going on. Mrs. Teanan stood up and patted your shoulder.

“I'll talk to him…”

You shook your head and gently put her hand off of you. “I'll get out of your way before midnight. I'll clean everything up before I leave.” You found the cleaning supplies in a closet, cleaned up the broken plate and the tomatoey risotto, and then headed to your quarter.

You always knew you'd get fired. You just didn't expect Greg to be the one to do it. Greg, who serenaded outside your mama's apartment to convince you to work for him. What a huge fucking mistake. You wished to have never met him at the restaurant. If only you didn't have to go to the bathroom. If only they didn't have a co-ed bathroom. If only he wasn't fucking a woman on the counter. If only you had shrugged it off and not felt offended. If only you had kept your mouth shut and not tattled him to the manager. If only if only if only...

You didn't bring much to this apartment and thank fuck for that. You checked on Google maps to find out which train would take you to Roosevelt island. Or maybe you could crash on Etaf and Mabel's couch? You had been doing it for some time now.

And that was when you realized it.

You never had a place of your own. The Roosevelt island home belonged to your mama. The Shore Boulevard one you shared with Etaf and Mabel. Nowhere did you live that you owned yourself. Always had to share everything with others, including your father.
Someone knocked on your door. When you voiced your permission, Helena entered. She offered you the capybara night lamp. You shook your head.

“Take it, princess. It's yours.”

She blinked at you, then came over and hugged you. The force of the shock you were hit with left you speechless. She stuffed her face in the crook of your neck and whispered, “Īles paktot, ao yknagon hae iā rūklon.” (“He was right, you smell like a flower.”)

“What?” you asked.

She smiled. “Like the scent of magnolia. Like sweet bananas and grapes. A pitcher of cold sweet tea on a swing in a garden in the muggy heat. Floral like a bloomed rose. Citrus-y like a wedge of lemon. A little licorice like anise.” She cupped your face and looked into your eyes, hers as purple as aster. “He'll have to let you go. Then again, you're spring and summer.”

You blinked and pulled away. “Sorry, but I have to go before he comes back.”

“I'll miss you.” She hesitated before she said, “Risotto and semifreddo were the last things he ate with her.”

“What?”

“In Lombardy.”

That was when it hit you. His Valentine's dinner with his fiancée. His dead fiancée who thought he would propose but he didn't. His dead fiancée who wanted to ask him for his hand instead. His dead fiancée who died but he didn't.

You covered your mouth and almost dropped to your knees. You had essentially served him the last things he ever ate with the love of his life. Fuck, no wonder he reacted so strongly. So angry. At you, at his family, at his brother.

You clenched your fists. Edmond Teanan, the fucking culprit. You didn't know why he did it. He had to know. Why else was he so specific about the dishes? You searched among your possessions, found what you were looking for, the sight of which shocked Helena, and stomped out of your room. The evil mastermind was sitting with his partner and mother in the living room. You stomped up to him, slapped him as hard as you could and you slapped him on his scarred side, then, before he could react, you pointed your gun at his forehead. Alice's eyes widened. His mother jumped to her feet. Helena and Ronald came running. But you never budged.

“Why did you do it?” you asked calmly.
He glared but said nothing.

“Answer me, you slimy fucking bastard.”
He gritted his teeth. “He deserves it.”
“For taking you to the strip club? For getting you sexually assaulted?”

“For my eye.”

You faltered for a second but didn't let it get to you. “Explain.”

Mrs. Teanan came forward but didn't touch you. “Dear, what are you doing? Why do you have a gun?”

“I had a stalker who attempted my murder. Now,” you turned to her son, “explain.”

“I'll do it,” Alice piped in. “When they were kids, Greg was the ringleader to the boys who bullied Edmond.”

“My bastard nephews,” he spat out.

“Greg and his nephews bullied him. One day, he fought back. A fight broke out between him, his nephews, and his two female cousins. Greg wasn't there. At one point, one of the nephews slashed Edmond's face and gouged out the eyeball.”

Any other time, you'd sympathize with him. But not now. “So, he did you wrong greatly. What about me? What did I ever do to you?”
Edmond gulped and looked away. You caught the speck of guilt in his one eye.

“I'm not like you. I'm not rich like you all. I don't belong to your class. I work for you but that doesn't mean I'm dirt. I'm not a fucking piece of furniture, okay? I have feelings. And I hate it when people like you, rich and selfish and cruel, treat us like trash. Like tools to your agenda. You're like the government of my fucking country, using and abusing those who aren't influential like them for their selfish interest. I lost my job because of your petty fight. I lost... I lost a friend because of your grudge.”

Mrs. Teanan was about to say something but you shook your head. “No, ma'am. I won't deny nor hide it anymore. Greg is my friend. One of my best friends. He feels that way too. It's sad that you can't accept our friendship just because you're rich and I'm not.”

You turned back to Edmond. “Look at me.” When he did, you pressed the muzzle to his forehead, until it left a muzzle shaped dent on the flesh. “Apologize to me.”

He looked both impressed and incredulous at your audacity.

“I'm not fucking joking. Apologize for manipulating me. For costing me my job. For costing me my friendship. Apologize!”

“Do it, son,” Mrs. Teanan said in a resigned tone. “She's right.”

Edmond gulped, glaring at you, then nodded. “I'm sorry.”

“What are you sorry for?”

“For manipulating you. For taking advantage of your ignorance and abusing your trust. For using you like a tool in my scheme. For costing you your livelihood. For ruining yourf riendship.”

“Give me your word that you won't ever do those things to me again. Give it!”

He gave you his word.

“Thank you, sir.” You backed away. Mrs. Teanan sighed loudly. “No need for a severance check. I'll be out of your hair in ten minutes.” You were about to go back to your room and drag your luggage when your phone rang in your pocket. You pulled it out and saw Greg's name on it.

“Greg? Oh thank fuck, listen…” You were about to continue but his voice stopped you.

“You promised me,” his voice broke, “You promised me a devil's food cake. You promised me a trip to Coney island. You're a bad friend, dōnītsos.”

Tears rolled down your cheeks. “Yes, yes, I am. I'm so sorry…”

“Sorry won't cut it. Take responsibility. Keep your promises. Come to Coney island.”

“What?”

“I'm inside the aquarium building. I'll be waiting.” He ended the call.

“Was that my son?” Mrs. Teanan asked.

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

“Coney island. Don't worry. I'll go and get him.”

You kept your luggage in Samantha Tarly's apartment and headed for Coney island. You tried calling Greg again but he never picked up. He must still be upset with you. You could imagine. He didn't know you were being played. He probably thought you knew and did it anyway. Greg was one of the most forgiving people you knew. Like your mama and Mabel. If he didn't want to forgive you, it meant you'd fucked up gravely. You just hoped he'd forgive you after tonight. He didn't need to reinstate your job. Just not break off your friendship.

At Coney island, you walked from the station to the aquarium. You didn't spot anyone on your way. No guards at the gate either. You found one of the doors to the aquarium building ajar. You peeked. Nobody was in the foyer. You went in quietly, lest the security caught you trespassing and called the cops.

“Greg?” you called out.

“O-Over here, dōnītsos,” he said. His voice sounded unsteady. Something didn't feel right. You fumbled out your Glock from your purse and went further in. No lights were on. Only the blue lights from inside the aquarium. In the dim lighting, you spotted Greg being held by a gunman taller than six feet four. Greg's head barely reached his neck. The cord of muscles on the man's biceps and thighs and chest and everywhere else made you realize Greg was no match to this strongman. On top of that, he had a big ass shotgun aimed at Greg's head.

“Hey there, Buttercup,” Greg said weakly, his arms and ankles tied with ropes in a complicated knot.

“What have you gotten yourself into this time?” you asked exasperatedly.

“Not my fault. Your country's gun laws suck ass.”

“Quiet!” the man barked. Greg pressed his lips. “You!” he said to you. “Drop your gun and pass it to me. Or else I'll paint this pretty head of white with red and goo.”

“I have a brain,” Greg said offhandedly.

“Shut up!” both you and the gunman said simultaneously. The situation would be comical if not for the presence of firearms. You could run back to the door and flee for your life. But not without Greg. Never without Greg. So, you did as the gunman told you. You slid the Glock in his direction. He stepped forward, lugging Greg with him, and brought your gun closer with his foot. He trailed his shotgun's muzzle down to Greg's balls as he bent to pick up your gun. He stuffed it into his pants pocket and wrapped his muscled arm around Greg's neck. He tilted his head at you.

“Hands up. Come closer. Slowly, slowly.”
You did as he told you to. He almost threw Greg aside, not caring when Greg grunted out a “Oomph”, and tugged you closer to tie your hands and legs. He shoved both of you against the aquarium glass walls and sat across from you, his shotgun trained at you.

“What brings you here so late?” he asked.

“What brings you here?” you threw the question back at him.

“I'm the one holding the guns. You're the one tied up. Guess who can ask questions.”

You glared at him and didn't speak. Greg fidgeted. “I called her here, man. It's my fault she's here.”

“What did she do?” the gunman asked.

“Why the fuck would it be me at fault?” you asked.

“Parce que les femmes sont la principale cause de tous les problèmes des hommes,” he muttered. (“Because women are the main cause of all men's problems.”)

Your jaw dropped. “Espèce de connard sexiste!” (“You sexist fucking asshole!”)

He didn't speak for half a minute. “Vous pouvez parler français?” (“You can speak French?”)

“Oui, espèce d'idiot,” you said. “Pourquoi tu nous fais ça?” (“Yes, you fucking idiot. Why are you doing this to us?”)

“What's going on? Dōnītsos?” Greg asked, stupefied by your fluency in French. “You can speak whatever he's speaking?”

“One of Mabel's adopted parents was French before she immigrated to the States. Mabel taught us French and Italian.” You turned to the French gunman. “S'il vous plaît, partons.” (“Please, let us go.”)

“Non, j'ai bien peur de ne pas pouvoir le faire. Tu en as trop vu.” (“No, I'm afraid I cannot do that. You've seen too much.”)

“Dans ce cas, laissez-le au moins partir. C'est un étranger comme toi. Il a une famille qui l'attend à la maison. Sa mère. Ses frères. Sa sœur enceinte. Son neveu et sa nièce. Son grand-pere. C'est son anniversaire aujourd'hui.” (“In that case, at least let him go. He's a foreigner like you. He has a family waiting for him at home. His mother. His little brothers. His pregnant little sister. His nephew and niece. His grandfather. It's his birthday today.”)

“What are you guys talking about?” Greg fidgeted.

You ignored him. “Qu'attendez-vous de nous? Nous ne vous avons rien fait. Nous tuer ne vous aidera pas.” (“What do you want from us? We did nothing to you. Killing us won't help you.”)

“Je m'en fiche, salope. J'ai perdu l'amour de ma vie ce soir. Je me fiche de ce qui m'arrive,” he almost screamed. (“I don't care anymore, bitch. I lost the love of my life tonight. I don't care what happens to me.”)

You were taken aback. “Ce qui s'est passé?” (“What happened?”)

“Can someone please tell me what the fuck is going on? In case you didn't notice, dōnītsos, I was tied up and held at gunpoint long before you came along. I deserve to know what's going on.”

The gunman scowled at him. “Est-il toujours comme ça? Un enfant exigeant?” (“Is he always like this? A demanding brat?”)

You sighed. “Let's speak in English. You can tell us how you lost her.”

“Who?” Greg asked.

“He lost the love of his life tonight.”

Greg fidgeted again, this time not because the ropes were cutting into his soft flesh but because, you could tell, it was the topic cutting him too close to his heart.

You turned to the gunman. “What happened? How did she die?”

He blinked. “She didn't die. Though I wish she did. No, the slut cheated on me with my best friend and got knocked up.”

“Damn, bro, I'm so sorry,” you said genuinely.

He ran a hand down his face. “Colette was the best thing in my life. She even took my dog.”

“Okay, now that's unacceptable. He took both your best friends, human and canine.” Greg tutted and shook his head.

“What do you know?” the gunman said in disgust.

“He lost his fiancée to COVID, then his dog to other rabid dogs,” you said.

Greg gulped and looked away. The gunman nodded in understanding. “My condolences, brother.”

“Can you imbue those condolences into these? They hurt like fuck” Greg lifted his hands and legs.

The gunman scowled. “You Americans…”

“He's not American. He's from Westeros,” you supplied.

The gunman took Greg in a new light. “That backward country…”

“Hey, now!” Greg said.

“You guys refused to join the EU and NATO. Why would I respect you?”

Greg scoffed. “And you guys eat snails and frogs. You see me judging you?”

The gunman trained his gun back at Greg.

You shot him a glare. “Stop it, you two. And you,” you drew the gunman's attention, “your girlfriend is a fucking whore and so is your best friend. I'm sorry you went through such shit but that's life. You men think you're the only ones going through bad shit? You're not that special. I got used by men tons of times. One ex even stalked and assaulted me with a knife. Everyone is going through some shitstorm. That doesn't mean you can tie up and hold hostage whoever you fucking please. That's not how it goes. You men need to grow the fuck up.”

Now, the gunman trained his gun at you. Good, it was working.

“That's enough,” he warned you. “You don't get to talk to me like that.”

You arched an eyebrow. “I hit the bull's eyes, I see. Did Colette the coquette talk to you like that? You're the kind of man who falls for women who are mean to them? Hallelujah. Tu es une telle chatte. Une chatte! Espèce de chatte stupide!” (“You're a pussy. A pussy! You're a stupid pussy!”)

“Stop it! Stop it, you fucking bitch!” the gunman shouted before he stomped over to you and pointed his gun at you.

You glared back in defiance. Greg screamed in fear. “No, stop it! Stop it! Don't hurt her! Don't shoot!”

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up, you idiot!” And the gunman shifted his gun at Greg. No! This wasn't supposed to happen. You had to take back his attention.

“Yes, you moron. Shut the fuck up!” You glared at Greg, who looked at you with nothing but shock. “It's all your fucking fault. I'm in this situation because of you and your stupid brain. Oh wait, you don't have a fucking brain. It's all empty inside your thick skull. If you had one ounce of brain, you wouldn't land us in this situation. I wish I never met you. Ever since I met you, I've been landing in hot soup every time. But this time, you landed us right into the fucking fire. And for what? Because I served you the dishes you last ate with your dead fiancée? She's dead, she's fucking dead. Grow up and get over it!”

The gunman looked at you with wide eyes. “What?”

You remembered how deranged Jack Nicholson looked in The Shining. You tried to copy his unhinged expressions. “Oh yeah, today is his birthday and guess what I made for dinner. Risotto and semifreddo. What our little piggy Greggy last ate with the love of his life before COVID got her. He threw such a fucking tantrum. Get over it, you sensitive ass. The world doesn't revolve around you. You throw away food that reminds you of your dead fiancée? Food that people would kill to get their hands on. People who have to eat weeds and soil and animal feeds, and are dying from starvation. People who get shot and bombed for lining up for flour. You'll never know that pain because you're a fucking brat. You never worked a day in your life. You never earned a single dime. You live on a trust fund. Bong Joon-ho made a movie about your parasites. You’re a loser. Your brother was right to hate you. You cost him his eye. You gave him sexual trauma. You couldn't even save your fiancée. No, you always need saving, you fucking loser!"

“STOP IT!” Greg whimpered. “Stop it, please, dōnītsos.”

Your heart broke into a million shards, almost into glass sand. “Truth hurts, loser. Get over it.”

Then, the sound of a gun's safety being unlocked. You looked up to see the Frenchman determinedly pointing his gun at you. “You really are a cunt, aren't you?”

You glared back. It was working. “And you're a pathetic pussy. Your girlfriend saw right through you.”

Greg began to scream as the gunman's finger began to pull the trigger. He stopped at the last moment to scream back at Greg to shut the fuck up.

“He's a distraction. Why don't you throw him out?” you suggested.

And he did. He began to drag Greg toward the front entrance. Greg continued thrashing and screaming. Just before the turn, his blue, almost purple eyes met your tearful ones. He knew at once that you said everything on purpose, to save him. The devastation on his face broke your heart but this was necessary. You had to get him out. You had to save him.
You heard a gunshot then. You screamed and Greg screamed and the gunman screamed. The sound of a loud thump, that of a body being tossed aside. The door slammed shut. The gunman ran back to your side. He picked you up and held you before him like a shield. He backed up until he was cornered. His gun aimed at your head, he (and you) faced some heavily armored men with guns at the one holding you hostage. Your shocked brain somehow let you know that these men were on your side. They were the SWAT team. They were here to rescue you. Your vision blurred. Your ears and eyes refused to cooperate. You begged, begged, begged God, any deity listening out there, to supply you with Etaf's voice. The one cure to your nervous breakdown because your senses were shutting down. You felt breathless, even though your captor didn't put you on a chokehold. He didn't need to. Your legs were asleep. Your arms were tied. Your body was slowly shutting down to prepare for a fully blown nervous breakdown. You must have been whimpering because your captor barked at you to be quiet. You tried to listen to what was happening because your eyes kept shedding saltwater and not letting you see.
Then, you heard his voice. Like finding a music station after listening to radio static for an hour. His soft, deep voice reached you like a hand pulling you from sinking into a quicksand quagmire.

“Don't do this to me!” he yelled. You heard no footsteps. You blinked and blinked until your eyes cleared up. Through the blurry vision, you saw Greg, still tied up, crawling between the feet of the SWAT team. “I love her, man. I need her. Please, don't take away another brother's happiness. Don't be like your friend.”

Your captor was shaking. You felt water on your shoulder. “She left me!”

“You're angry. You're heartbroken. I know how you feel. I've been there. If you hurt my girlfriend, you'll only hurt me and her and yourself. Not your ex, not your friend. The only way you can punish them is by moving on, finding love elsewhere, and being happy. I did it. I'm happy now. Don't take away my second chance at life.”

Your captor sobbed. “I just love her so much!”

“You'll stop one day. Trust me, you will.”

“How?”

“You'll grit your teeth, cry until all the tears dry up, scream and punch stuff, not people though, and go get help. From people who know how to help. You'll get help and you'll get better. Then, ten years down the line, you'll meet your ex and you'll realize how utterly stupid you were by being hung up on someone like her. You'll be thankful to me for telling you this.”

Your captor barked a laugh. “Why, why are you defending her? This woman who was horrible to you?” And he shook you.

“Because I love her. And I know she loves me. You and I both know she was being mean to me in the face of your gun to rile you up. So that you spare me, someone who is hurt the same way you were hurt, a comrade in pain, and hurt her instead. So that she dies and I live on. She's a stupid buttercup but she's my stupid buttercup. Please, let her go, man.” Greg tried to get on his knees. “Do you need me to grovel some more?”

Suddenly, you were shoved forward. You landed on your elbows and knees. All the joints that hurt like a bitch if landed on hard ground. You screamed. Someone picked you up as booted feet passed you by. The sound of someone reciting the Miranda rights to your captor. Then, someone was calling your name.

“Dōnītsos? Dōnītsos? Please, don't die on me. Please!”

It was him, once again pulling you out of the quicksand of your senses shutting down. You lifted your face and met his gaze. He grinned stupidly and tried to crawl over to you. Two members of the SWAT team picked him up and untied him. You were untied as well. As soon as he was free, he crawled over to you. Despite the reddish dents on his arms and legs, he pulled you to his lap. You couldn't keep it down any longer. Your shaky hands wrapped tightly around him and you bawled. You had never done this for years now. The last time you had done this was when your stalker ex gave you a chase with a knife in hand and you broke a heel and you thought he'd caught up with you and you screamed to alert anyone around you. This time, you had someone to buoy you above all the chaos and pain. Greg sorted out the mess inside you and covered you with his sunny warmth until you could handle your emotions. When he started to mumble his apologies for once again dragging you to troublesome situations, you bawled louder. You almost didn't catch your captor shouting to Greg, “Hey, brat? Don't lose her! She's a keeper.”

Greg grinned. “She's my keeper.”

You screamed curses at the Frenchman in French, Italian, English, Swedish, and some Arabic Etaf had taught you. Greg laughed when you wished for your captor's death in the worst way possible. Greg hugged you tight and rocked you back and forth. Two paramedics came to check on you. They found bruises on your wrists, elbows, ankles, and knees from the ropes and the harsh landing, but nothing was broken.

Greg helped you stand. He wanted to carry you bridal style but you shot down the idea. One of the cops found you your Glock and you shakily tucked it into your purse that was located by another cop. A third cop asked if you wanted to press charges. You wanted to, but you were exhausted. You just wanted to crawl under your mama's eiderdown made from Cuthbert's duck feathers and eat a plate of Mabel's oatmeal raisin carrot cake cookies with oat milk. When you told this to Greg, he got into action. A cop dropped you off at your mama's place. Greg had called her already. She waited with Mason by the entrance. She hugged you and wept, and you wept with her and apologized for all the times you were a bitch to her. She forgave you and thanked God for returning the most precious thing in her life back in her arms. She brought out the eiderdown and went to bake your cookies. You laid down with Greg's hands around you. This was the first time your mama met Greg and what a way to meet. You shook in his warm, soft hands wrapped around your bare waist.

“I'm sorry for saying all that cruel stuff to you,” you said. “I didn't mean any of them. You're not a loser. You're not a parasite. Nothing that happened to her is your fault.”

His grip around you loosened, before it tightened. “Apology accepted. Just don't do it again, okay? Don't risk your life to save me.”

“I can't make that promise.”
He scowled. “Fine, then you're not forgiven.”

“Okay but can we be friends again? I... I missed you, fuckboy.”

He chuckled. “Sure, dōnītsos.”

Your mama brought you your comfort food. Greg didn't like carrots and raisins, but he ate a few cookies for you. Once you weren't as shaken up as before, you limped to the kitchen and brought out all the ingredients to make your devil's food cake, despite protests from your mama and Greg.

“I made a promise,” you said as you mixed all-purpose flour with the instant chocolate pudding mix and triple cocoa blend. Baking soda and baking powder went in and you sifted the whole thing. You sent your mama to bed after she yawned for the hundredth time. She had work tomorrow, which was Monday. Greg stayed behind, watching you slowly mix the wet ingredients with the dry ones. Once you had the cake tins in the oven, you made the glaze and the icing.

“I hated that green as fuck cake you made,” he said.

“I know.”

“Then, why did you make it?”

“She's my boss. No offense but my paychecks come from your mum, since your trust fund comes from her. I had to do as she said.”

“Well, don't do it anymore, okay? I don't want my buttercup to wither.”

You stuck your tongue at him. He stuck his back at you. Then, you both laughed. Once the cake was done, you cooled it down, then added the icing and the glaze on it. Before you could put any candles there, not that you had any birthday ones, Greg suggested going back to his apartment.

“Hellie and Ronnie deserve to have my birthday cake. Alys too.”

You packed up the cake in a box and left a note for your mama. Greg hired a cab and you headed back to Gramercy.

“Do you still have me fired?” you asked.

“Oh, right, that. No, I'm undoing it.”

“Your brother pulled a Mrs. Danvers on me.” You told him what the reference meant. That he told you to make those dishes, like Mrs. Danvers told the second Mrs. de Winter to wear Rebecca's last costume. “To sabotage our friendship.”

“That cunt.”

“He told me it was revenge for costing him his eye.” You narrated to him what happened after Greg stormed out. He laughed when you told him you had slapped his brother and pointed your gun at his head, in front of his entire family.

“You really are a badass, dōnītsos.” He gathered you, and the cake box, in his arms and shifted you both on his lap. You held onto the cake as he rocked you right to left.

At last, you reached his apartment building. True to your expectations, his whole family was awake, though it was long past midnight. Mrs. Teanan ran up to her son and hugged him, then smacked him lightly on his head.

“Where have you been? I've been calling you and you don't answer?”

Edmond watched you with a resting bitch face. “You have packages. They were accidentally delivered to our cousin across the hall.” He tilted his head towards several boxes on top of the console table. You recognized the golden crescent moon logo on top. You carefully placed your cake box next to them, opened a drawer to fetch the scissors, and unwrapped the six boxes. From them came out six objects for the six people facing you: a 3D white moon night light for Helena, a cat candle holder for Ronald (the doll resembled his cat, Tessarion), a miniature stainless steel goth sword ring with a scabbard for Edmond (you could not leave him out when you got gifts for his entire fucking family), a heart glow necklace for Alice, a volcano essential oil diffuser for Greg, and finally, a large Tree of Life tapestry for Mrs. Teanan. This was the most you had ever splurged for someone who wasn't a family or a friend. Even Edmond's eyebrow and the corner of his lips lifted when he put on his ring, a perfect fit. Mrs. Teanan profusely thanked you and only stopped when Greg told her he had unfired you. Edmond hummed. You rolled your eyes and passed his family in the foyer. You went to the kitchen and brought out the cake.

“That's so pretty,” Helena said from the door. She waddled up to you, carefully cradled your moon lamp in her arms, and watched as you stuck fourteen candles and lit them up. “He'll love it.”

Greg almost ran to your side, his mother and brother hot on his heels. “Dōnītsos, stop abandoning me to these wolves.” He hid behind you and rested his chin on your shoulder. “You forgot this one.” He gave you a small box you hadn't unwrapped.

“That's odd. I only placed six orders.”

“Bisa iksis syt ñuha jorrāeliarzus dōnītsos,” Greg said, his arms around your waist from behind, in front of his whole family. (“This is for my dearest sweetling.”)

You found a beautiful heart-shaped rose-gold necklace inside. You recognized it and gasped. “Is it for me?”

“Only for my dōnītsos. I saw you placing your orders on your phone and checked out the place. That's when I saw it.” He clasped the piece around your neck and showed to his family, especially his uncomfortably curious mother, the necklace’s specialty, when he projected his phone's flashlight on the tiny ball in the middle of the heart frame.

“What are those writings?” Ronald asked.

“I love you’s,” Edmond said dismissively.

“They’re how you say I Love You in a hundred languages.” Greg rubbed his cheek with yours, like a cat, his eyes closed. The delicious friction from his little stubble made you shiver. His arms tightened around you. “Avy jorrāelan, ñuha dōnītsos.” (“I love you, my sweetling.”)

Mrs. Teanan's face paled. She definitely knew this high Valyrian phrase.

“What does that mean?” you asked.

“I love you,” Helena said, her eyes on her moon lamp.

“Aww, thank you, baby. I love you too. You're one of my most favorite people in the world. Right there with my mama and my girlfriends.” When he pouted, you added, “But continue trying to dethrone them. You can achieve anything if you put your mind to it. I believe in you, my sun.” You kissed his cheek.

When Mrs. Teanan's face paled further, you spelled out S-U-N to reassure her that you didn't mean S-O-N. In response, Greg called you Muña, that made Edmond groan and Ronald chuckle. Greg nuzzled his nose to your chin and kept calling you Ñuha Muña (“My mommy”). You giggled, unaware of its meaning and uncaring toward what his family thought. You brought the cake to him. “Yes, fine, I'm your Muña. Happy birthday! Make a wish, my sun.”

His eyes lit up the room, your insides, and his sister's face. He blew out the candles. Ronald and Helena clapped. You asked if anyone else wanted a slice. Helena and Ronald put up their hands. Alice wasn't a fan of midnight snacks, so she asked you to save a piece and went to bed. Mrs. Teanan and her second son opted out. The former went to sleep. The latter stuck around. You were about to cut the cake into pieces, Greg hovering close by, when Edmond tutted in disapproval.

“You know Mum disapproves. Still, you do it.”

Greg frowned but shrank into himself.

“You're fat. Stop eating so much sugar and fat.”

“Shut up, dickhead,” you told him.

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Stop fat-shaming your brother. He may be fat but your big ego isn't enough to seat you even if you book an entire fucking stadium.”

Ronald chuckled. Greg laughed. Helena was confused.

“Don't interfere. You're the help.”

“Fuck you. I'm his best friend. You shame him for loving to eat, I'm gonna do to you what Philomela and Procne did to Tereus' son.” You relished his raised eyebrow.

“That's right, bitch, I majored in literature. Try me.”

He hummed and said nothing. You sliced three pieces of the cake, served two on plates and stored one in a Tupperware, then nudged the rest of the cake toward the birthday boy. Edmond narrowed his eyes on you. “Don't,” he warned his brother.

“Do it,” you told Greg, glare leveled at his brother.

“If you eat it, Grandsire will learn about it. The second trust fund in your name will go away.”

You gritted your teeth. “Greggy, if you finish the cake tonight, I'll kiss you.”

His face lit up, all dilemma gone. “For real?” When you nodded, he asked, “On the lips?”

“With tongue!” You smirked in victory when Greg dug into your cake.

“I really don't like your girlfriend,” Edmond said.

“I like my girlfriend,” Greg said.

“I'm not his girlfriend. You should be ashamed,” you told Edmond, who disapprovingly watched his brother demolish the chocolate debauchery. “Your brother loves one of the simplest pleasures in life and you shame him for it by being fatphobic.”

“It's for his own good.” Edmond turned to the door. “Daoruni gīmī.” (“You know nothing.”)

Helena asked if she could have another slice. Her brother cut her a big piece. Ronald said he had never eaten a more chocolate-y cake before.

“That's because my dōnītsos made it.” Greg offered you a spoonful.

You ate straight from the cutlery. “Now that you saw me make it, you can make it yourself.”

“I don't want to make them by myself. No, I want to make them with you. Only you. Anytime. Every time. All the time.”

You were glad Helena was busy with her cake and Ronald had gone back to his room. “You can't say that,” you said.

“Why not?”

“I won't always be around.”

“Why not?”

You shook your head. “Your brother hates me.”

“I know. He's probably plotting how to get away with your murder.”

“Tell you what, when the inevitable time comes for the proletariat to eat the rich, I'm gonna have so much vindication eating your brother.”

He pouted. “You don't wanna eat me?”

You winked. “Oh baby, I'm gonna save you for the last. There's always room for dessert.”

“You flatter me, dōnītsos.” His gaze softened. “You love me? For real?”

“You're my best friend.” You paused. “Would you like to sleep on my bed every night from now on?”

He grinned, a bright fucking midnight sun. “I thought you'd never ask.”

Chapter Text

National Love Conquers All Day, 2024

The next morning, you woke up with a mission to do some damage control. Your friendship with Greg took such a big hit. You must be careful with it. He was a sensitive soul with a bleeding heart. You gotta be strategic.

You woke up to his arms tight around you, his face stuffed between your breasts. His drool stained your sleep shirt. You untangled his hold gently, kissed his forehead, his lips, and his cheeks, then replaced yourself with your pillow. As you got ready for the day, you searched through the webs of the internet for an appropriate birthday gift for him. You were the only one in the apartment who didn't give him anything. The oil diffuser didn't count because that was for the chocolates he gave you. After you'd selected and confirmed everything, you went to make breakfast. A return of your mama's southern American breakfast. Fluffy buttermilk biscuits and creamy sausage gravy, grits with three different toppings (shrimps/grillades/grunts), ambrosia salad, sweet tea, and brown butter white chocolate blueberry banana bread French toast casserole. As the coffee brewed, Mrs. Teanan again made her entrance, the first in her family. She eyed you warily as you greeted her with three pans of freshly baked banana breads.

“Thank you for saving him last night,” she said quietly.

You arched an eyebrow. She told you she learned about it from this morning's news alerts on her phone. No pictures of the victims and the culprit, but the mention of your and Greg's names caught her attention.

“Aren't you injured?” she asked.

You shrugged. “I've fared worse.” From your abusive ex, yeah. But you wouldn't divulge that to her.

“You remind me of her.”

“Sorry?”

“I don't know if my son told you this but I used to be friends with my husband's eldest daughter before…”

“Before he married you at fourteen? Yes, I know.” You remembered the tall blonde woman in Greg's album. She was breathtakingly beautiful and if she wasn't already married, you'd probably bang her. Again, MILFs were one of your kryptonites.

Mrs. Teanan nodded as if she were expecting you to know about her family's history. She sat on one of the stools while you dipped slices of the banana bread into a mixture of eggs, milk, and vanilla and almond extracts. She watched you fry the slices, then place them on the casserole and pour the custard over it. “Is that the casserole?”

You smiled. “His favorite.”

“I'm sorry but I see dishes like this being his favorites and I can't stop worrying about the extra weight he'll gain.”

You couldn't help yourself. You had to let it all out, or else you'd explode. “You're supposed to be gentle with him.” Her eyes widened. You knew you should stop but you couldn't help it. “You're not supposed to hit him with sharp words. You're supposed to explain to him why junk foods are bad and then make him healthy, tasty alternatives. You're not supposed to punish him as if he had murdered someone and taken delight in it. You act as if loving to eat is a crime. It's not. Sure, gluttony is a sin but he's not binge eating out of greed, he's binge eating because he feels fucking empty inside. Because a void inside him sucks him dry every minute of every day and he needs to feed it so it doesn't feed on him. Can't you see? You're his mother. He's made from you. You literally carried him inside your body. You should know him better than the rest of us. You should love him more than the rest of us. You should protect him more than the rest of us.” You stopped to gulp and wet your dry throat, to catch your breath and not feel breathless. “He's not fat, ma'am. Even if he is, it's not the end of the world. He'll always be your son, your child. We shame people because of extra fat inside their bodies, and never when they take away someone's bodily autonomy and make them feel like a piece of object.”

Mrs. Teanan wiped the tears that your words had summoned. Her hands shook. “I lost my mother when I was a child. She had a heart attack but I didn't know. I thought she fainted from overexertion. I was alone with her.” She glanced at you. “Heart diseases run on my side of the family. I don't want to lose my baby boy the same way I lost my mother.”

You tried your best to not shed tears. “I'm sorry for yelling at you. But you gotta tell him. Tell him what happened to his grandmother and how it keeps you awake at night, or else he'll mistake your genuine concern as nothing but meanness.”

“What if he doesn't listen to me?”

“That's a concern for later. It hasn't happened yet. Trust me, I'm sure he will listen to you if you show him it comes from love.”

She reached over and squeezed your hand.“Thank you for taking care of my baby.”

“He's one of my best friends.”

She smiled, a genuine smile this time and goddamn it, she was so fucking beautiful, you would forgive her for her behavior the last few days if she asked for it. “A true friend. He's lucky to have you.”

“I know,” you said with mock-smugness that made her laugh.

“Can I ask you for your help in something?”

“Of course.” You put the casserole into the oven, then got the biscuits out.

“I might take you up on that offer.”

“Offer?” You peeked over the counter like a fucking meerkat from its burrow.

“You offered to convince him to go out on the blind dates I got for him?”

You remembered his reluctance, his rage.“May I ask why you feel this urgent need to get him to date?”

“I don't know if he told you yet but my eldest two used to be married to each other. But Helaena has endometriosis and...”

“I know all about it, ma’am. Your eldest children told me.”

“Did they also tell you how my son ran away from his own wedding last year? Left Helaena at the altar?”

Your eyes widened. Mrs. Teanan took that as a sign of your ignorance and continued.

“After his fiancée passed away, my father gave him time to recover. He somehow convinced my children to remarry. But an hour before the ceremony, Helaena went missing. We found her later on but by then, my son was also gone. We couldn't locate him until this year, when his brother did. Now, we’re feeling the pressure to either settle my son with someone of our standing…”

You fiddled with Greg's chain around your neck.

“...or remarry him to his sister. If not, he'll lose access to his current trust fund, mostly funded by my side of the family. So, you see my dilemma? I must do all I can to ensure my children are happy with their choices of life partners. Happier than I ever was.” The last part she said under her breath but you heard her anyway.

“If that's how dire the situation is, I'll help you. Tell me about her, so I can persuade him to meet her.”

She showed you a picture of the first candidate. Bethany Hightower, Lyonel Hightower's sister and Samantha Tarly's sister-in-law/ex daughter-in-law. Her skin and hair glowed in whatever lighting she was under when the photo was taken.

“She's gorgeous,” you said.

Mrs. Teanan smiled. “She's the sweetest soul. A little lazy and simple-minded. But she'll be good for my boy.”

She was right. A soft man like Greg needed someone like Bethany. Her Instagram feed told you she loved the sun like Greg did.

“If you can convince him, I can let Samantha know. She'll notify me with a date.”

Mrs. Teanan discussed some more about what sort of date would suit the potential couple. You suggested a date at home.

“It'll be intimate. Plus, Greg feels so much at home here. It'll be an extra hassle to arrange an outdoor date.” You stirred the roux for the sausage gravy.

“Do you think so?”

“As long as I've worked for him, he always stayed home. No more sniffing out parties, alcohol, and hot people to sleep around with. I can also make the dishes for the date. You don't have to go through the pains of choosing restaurants and searching for their menus online. No need to spend hundreds of bucks on pinches of food and hundreds more over the reservations. Plus,” you poured the hot gravy into a bowl, “Greg loves my cooking. It'll get him into a good mood. You know what they say, the way to a man's heart is through the stomach. When his tummy is sated, he'll be able to enjoy Bethany's company more.”

By the end of your impassioned speech, one of the organs inside your ribcage smarted. Mrs. Teanan's eyes sparkled like characters in Studio Ghibli movies. “You're a godsend, my dear.” She hesitated. “Are you sure about cooking for his date?”

“You know what, I'll be their server for the evening to check on the progress for you.” Something bloated slithered uncomfortably inside your chest, like a paper snake. “If Greg feels nervous, I can calm him down. If Bethany needs tips to know him better, I can supply those too.”

Mrs. Teanan rounded the counter and hugged you. This one was much different than the one you got when you first met her a week ago. “I misjudged you, my dear. My humblest apologies. No, you're not the help. You're his best friend. You're family to us now.”

You pressed your lips to suppress the itch behind your eyes. Gosh, why did such corny words summon the wretched saltwater? You excused yourself out of her hold to check on the casserole. She patted your back and greeted her second son, who had most definitely witnessed the exchange of words and hugs. He hummed and poured himself a tall mug of black coffee, no sugar, no milk. You bet if he could, he'd chug down the whole pot. To rile him up, you offered his partner (who sauntered in minutes later) her refrigerated slice of devil's food cake. Even Mrs. Teanan expressed interest in it. Alice was gracious enough to share her slice with her soon-to-be mother-in-law. You watched in content as the two beautiful women ooh'ed and aah'ed over your cake. You threw a smirk at Edmond, who walked out with his coffee. You'd count that as a victory.

Soon, one by one, Mrs. Teanan's other children arrived. The last one was Greg, rubbing his eyes and grumbling about the noise as he left your room. Mrs. Teanan looked troubled and glanced in your way. You shook your head and whispered, as Greg drank the POMP juice you made for him,

“We're platonic, ma'am. I feel nothing for him,” you whispered, emphasis on the n-word. Mrs. Teanan relaxed but said nothing.

When Greg learned all his favorite breakfast dishes were made, he hugged you from behind and kissed your neck, calling you Ñuha Muña. You almost recoiled, what with the audience of his entire fucking family. But he didn't give you any chance, resting his head on your shoulder. “Bisa iksis skoro syt avy jorrāelan sīr olvie, muña,” he said, eyes closed, lips stretched to a content smile. (“This is why I love you so much, mommy.”)

You gently got out of his hold. “So, what do you think of her?” You whipped out Bethany Hightower's Instagram feed.

He frowned, then focused on your phone screen. “Pretty. Smiles a little too much. So, do I get all three toppings on my grits or what?”

Mrs. Teanan eyed you suspiciously. It intensified when you served breakfast and instead of digging into his food immediately, Greg dragged a chair from his room, plopped it between his and his sister's seats, and put you on it.

“Oh no, I'm supposed to…” You were beginning to get up but he sat you down, his hands on your shoulders. “My plate is in the kitchen.”

“I'll get it.”

“This is a weird sitting arrangement.”

“Either this or you're sitting on my lap. Which is it?” He literally stood over you with his hands on his hips. You said nothing.

Victorious, he brought your plate, ladled you the same stuff you had put on his plate, then began to eat only when you started. Mrs. Teanan sighed and dug into her food.

That was how it went for days afterwards. You'd cook his favorite food at least once a day and he'd force you to dine with his family three times a day. He refused to go out unless you came with him, and accompanied you whenever you stepped out. You had never seen him act so assertive with his family before. Every time Mrs. Teanan secretly objected to his whims, you pacified her by saying that if you gave up to his every whims, he wouldn't have any reasons to object to his mother's choices for blind dates. As a Hunger Games fan, you compared it to the Capitol fattening up the tributes before slaughtering them in the arena. Cruel and sadistic, but much less severe in your case.

Every time he put his foot down and did as he wished, you'd insert more and more about Bethany Hightower to him, to the point he got suspicious one night and asked you outright what your deal with the girl was.

“You wanna fuck her or something?” he asked in Edmond's car during one outing.

“Aegon!” Mrs. Teanan shouted. You ignored her way of addressing her son. The Westerosi were really obsessed with this legendary king.

“It's okay, ma'am,” you told her. “So what if I am interested in her?”

Greg crossed his arms. “Why are you telling me?”

You grimaced. “Okay, so, she's one of your cousins.”

“Yeah, and?” The realization dawned on him and his facial expressions gave you a direct view of how it came inside his head.

“Wait a minute, are you guys trying to set me up with her?”

Instantly, his mother denied it. But you knew you couldn't skirt around it any longer. “Yes, we are.”

“I should've known.”

“Greg, you gotta get settled with Bethany or someone else. Or you'll have to remarry your sister.” Even as you said it, you felt like gagging.

“And if I do neither?”

“Father will cut off access to your trust fund,” Mrs. Teanan said.

“I don't care! I'll rather be penniless and homeless. Better than being saddled with someone I don't love.”

“Come on, Greg, your seeds are expiring,” you muttered.

“I'm a man. The oldest father in the world is 96. My own father sired me when he was in his forties.”

“Yeah well, guess what? The older you get, the more defects your kids get. See?” You showed him the top google result. “The offspring of older fathers show high prevalence of genetic abnormalities, childhood cancers, and several neuropsychiatric disorders. You don't want that, okay. My grandmother hates my half-sister because she has down syndrome.”

“Wait, you have a half-sister?” Mrs. Teanan asked, a hand on your arm.

You waved dismissively. “Halfway across the world, no biggie. My dead dad was a rich skank.” You turned to Greg. “You see what I mean?”

He tapped his chin dramatically. “So that explains why I'm a drunk loser, my sister babbles gibberish stuff, and my dear brother,” he clapped Edmond's arm, who frowned in the rearview mirror, “is dating a woman twice his age. No offense, Alys, you're great but let's face it, he's doing the opposite of what our father did, marrying a minor girl, the best friend and childhood companion of his only daughter after having his first wife vivisected.”

“Enough!” Mrs. Teanan shouted. “You're going on this date and that's final. I have had it with you. You've done things to your whims this past week. No more. I'll set up the date and you will attend it.”

Greg, sobered up, glanced at you. His blue eyes reflected his helplessness. “You're letting her do this to me?”

“Letting me?” His mother scoffed. “She has been helping me plan the date ever since your birthday. She suggested we hold your date at home…”

“What?” Greg asked so softly and quietly, everyone but you missed it.

“...while she will cook all the dishes and be your server for the evening. Isn't that lovely, children?”

Helena was watching something in the window behind you. “Rainbow will paint the tracks, seven will mend the cracks.”

Ronald and Edmond agreed with their mother. Alice, in the front, winked at you. You turned to Greg, who watched you. “Did you, really?”

You nodded, lips pressed. “She's very sweet. Give her a chance. I'll be there should you need someone to help you out.”

“How the fuck do you intend to help me out?” he barked. “You helped enough, dōnītsos. Go ahead, Mum, set up the fucking date.” He turned his back to you and, like his sister, kept his gaze out the window. His mother smiled at you. Your smile in turn was more of a grimace. You hoped you hadn't jeopardized your friendship in your attempt to prevent his grandfather from cutting off access to his trust fund.

The next couple of days passed agonizingly slowly. With Mrs. Teanan, you planned the menu for the date, as well as the layout of the table and what the date would entail. You suggested watching a movie after dinner. Bethany's favorite movies were What Happens in Vegas, She's Out of My League, and Made of Honor. Knowing how ghastly each of them were, you suggested something she hadn't seen before.

“Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?” Mrs. Teanan asked confusedly.

“It's much better the ones you mentioned. She'll love it. Trust me on this, please.”

She did. She watched the film herself and decided to let you take over the menu as well.

“My dear.” She found you the morning of the date in the kitchen, preparing breakfast. Her children were still asleep. Greg hadn't been to your room ever since he learned about your secret scheme. In fact, he acted as if you didn't exist, which stung, but you learned to live with it. “I've been stewing over this since my son's birthday.” She looked at you with limpid brown eyes. “Do you like him?” she blurted.

“I'm his best friend.”

“Please, answer the question.”

You pursed your lips and looked down at the tomatoes and red bell peppers you were sautéing. Ronald's favorite way of eating eggs was Shakshouka, a dish Etaf introduced to you and you, in turn, introduced to him. He specifically requested it for breakfast last night. “He may have a bit of a crush on me. I don't know, he's very physical but nothing in his touches indicates anything romantic or sexual.”

Mrs. Teanan bit her lip. “He sleeps on your bed almost every night.”

“He stopped ever since he learned about his date with Bethany. You can check if you want.”

“I believe you. It's just, he's very handsy with you and it worries me.”

“That's just Greg. In his childhood, as far as I know, he didn't get much physical affection. Not many hugs or kisses. No head or back pats.”

“I had the same childhood as him. My father was emotionally distant, busy with his job. My mother was devout and thought it would spoil us if she showed my brother and me too much physical affection. I'm afraid I've imposed upon my children the same starvation I suffered from.”

You beamed. She was slowly, slowly seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. You needed to nudge her a little more. “Perhaps that's why he's so handsy. My mother never hesitated hugging me, kissing me, cuddling me. She tells me every now and then how proud she is of me. Maybe, it's not your style but it doesn't hurt to try? You can compliment the outfit I've chosen for him for tonight's date before you leave for the opera? Tell him how handsome he looks, how proud you are that he's giving your choices a chance. That it won't disappoint you if the date doesn't work out, etcetera, etcetera.”

Mrs. Teanan squeezed your hand, her way of telling you how much she appreciated your help. You focused on Ronald's Shakshouka with shaky hands and thus, your conversation ended.

The rest of the day went by idly. When you returned with some last-minute shopping, you found Greg sulking in the living room with his mother. He glared at you, while Mrs. Teanan smiled through her gaze. You went to work immediately.

Seven and fourteen were Greg's lucky numbers. So tonight, you prepared a romantic seven-course dinner for him and Bethany, hoping it would help them bond.

You were done with the surf and turf, the soup, the vegetables, and the sauces. All you had to do was cook the scallops and the red mullet, sauté the spaghetti, and make the panna cotta and the chocolate molten cake. Just as you had filled up two ramekins with the chocolate cake batter and two chunks of bars in the middle, the doorbell rang. Mrs. Teanan and her other children had left the apartment half an hour ago, and Greg was nowhere to be found.

You opened the door. A gorgeous girl, much younger and much prettier than you, stood in a golden glittery cocktail dress that would surely please her date tonight. She smiled sweetly at you and if she wasn't his date, you'd let yourself daydream about her luscious red lips and stunning legs. You welcomed her in and took her coat. She took a deep breath and smiled. “Something smells delicious.”

You ushered her in, mentally scolding Greg for not being the one to open the door and welcome the poor girl. You found him in the living room, sitting morosely by his piano. You alerted him of Bethany's arrival and introduced the two. He gently shook her hand and that was your cue to leave.

You checked on the steak. You oiled a pan on the stove and put butter, garlic, and scallops on. Just as the first course was done, you plated up the food and announced to the lovebirds that dinner had been served.

Bethany thanked you profusely as you pulled out her chair, after Greg rudely plopped down on his own. Bethany complimented the silver buttons on your vest and you thanked her, earning an eye roll from your friend. You served the first course.

“Ooh, scallops. I heard they can be aphrodisiac,” Bethany said with a giggle.

“Wrong mollusks. That'd be oysters,” Greg said.

“Actually, Ms. Hightower is right. Scallops are aphrodisiac. That's why I've chosen this particular dish for your first course. Enjoy.” You pretended not to notice Greg's glare and left the room. The sound of cutlery reached you into the kitchen.

The next five dishes went by in a blur. Bethany pretended to be dismayed by so much food, especially when you put her plate of surf and turf before her. Once you left the room, you overheard her praising your cooking to the skies. Greg replied nonverbally.

You were plating up the panna cotta as the first dessert course, when he came to the kitchen. “Is something wrong?” you asked.

“Ms. Bethany wants to watch the movie you got for her now.”

“There are still two desserts left.”

“She suggested you put both on the same plate.”

You sighed but told him it would be done. As you gently nudged the panna cotta from the center to the left, you felt his eyes on you.

“I've seen the movie already,” he said when you looked up at him.

“I can pick something else for you.”

His eyes were glued to your hands that carefully put dainty drops of the strawberry sauce in a comet tail pattern on the plate. “Have you watched it?”

You smiled fondly. “It's one of my favorites. For Jim Carey, a comedian, this is his first somber role. Somehow, his chemistry with Kate Winslet works.”

He returned your smile. “What do you like about the movie?”

You smiled shyly now, wiping any fingerprints off the plate with a napkin. “How Joel and Clementine, and Mary and Howard, find their ways back to each other, despite how doomed the second couple are. Like they're joined with a rubber band. Stretch too far apart and they'll be yanked back together.”

“Would you like that? To be tied to someone with an elastic band?”

“Fuck no!” You barked out a laugh. “I don't want some invisible rubber band to force someone to come back to me. No, I want them to stay with me of their own free will. Better if they do it over their “destined soulmates”. I want them to choose me...” You met his eyes. “Someone on Google said the deeper meaning behind the story is that love is worth it, even if it hurts you a lot. That we should cherish our memories, not erase them.”

“Would you erase your memories? If they hurt you?”

“I'm selfish and fickle, like Clementine. If anything or anyone hurts me, I remove them from my life. I don't have any wish to be a seraphic martyr.”

He smiled sadly. “Ñuha gevie, dōna pirtirys. Skorkydoso bōsa kessa ao pryjagon aōha prūmia syt nyke? Skorkydoso olvie hen aōha biarves kessa ao lioragon syt nyke?” (“My beautiful, sweet liar. How long will you break your heart for me? How much of your happiness will you sell for me?”)

You tilted your head. “What?”

“Would you erase me?”

You wet your lips. His eyes traced the trajectory of your tongue tip. “Only if you hurt me. Sorry, but I love me more. What about you? Would you erase me?”

“Seraphic martyrdom sounds good.” He gulped. “Why are you doing this? Supporting my mum in setting me up on a blind date. I don't want this.”

“She's worried about you. Your grandfather will cut you off and you haven't seriously dated since... you know.”

He looked away.

“She wouldn't want you to be alone.”

“I'm not alone. I have you.”

“What about after I'm gone?”

“Why will you be gone?”

“You expect me to work for you for the rest of my life?”

“I want you in my life for the rest of my life, but not as my housekeeper.”

Your expression softened. “I'll always be your friend, Greggy. But I gotta find some other places for employment too. Maybe I'll open up a bakery like you suggested.”

“Does that entail not being in my life anymore?”

You put away the kitchen towel hanging from your shoulder. “What does any of this have to do with me? What does your fear of commitment have anything to do with me?”

He scoffed. “You think I'm afraid of commitment?”

“Why else would you be not interested in settling down?”

He said through gritted teeth, “I do want to settle down. It's you who wants to fly away.”

“What?”

“Forget it!” He stormed out.

Per her request, you served the rum-flavored panna cotta with strawberry syrup, along with the spiced chocolate molten cake. Greg had his arm on the back of the couch, an inch behind Bethany's bare nape. He caressed it like strumming a guitar's strings. He suggested she cut the cake first, let the chocolate ooze out, spoon a piece of the panna cotta, then run it through the chocolate. You admitted out loud that rum and strawberry flavored panna cotta did go well with spiced melted chocolate. When Bethany moaned out her pleasure, Greg dipped his face and kissed her. The shock from the gesture made her gasp, which he took advantage of by slipping his tongue inside and dipping the tip into his suggested concoction. When he lifted his face, his gaze was on you as he licked the drip on his bottom lip.

You fled the scene. The first thing you did back in the kitchen, you plugged in your noise-canceling headphones and put on one of the recordings of Etaf's voices. This one was your absolute favorite, saved and savored for the worst moments you could face. It was four years ago, when you were together. You had called her show for the first time and asked what kind of romantic dishes you should prepare for the love of your life that night? Etaf listed out all the recipes that she loved, dishes you had made tonight. Her soothing voice with a little bit of teasing in it calmed you down. As you listened, you washed the dishes and pans, dumped or stored the leftovers, then cleaned the counter. By the time you were done, you only had two plates left to wash. Headphones on, you tiptoed to the living room, where Bethany sat on the piano bench, her legs spread and her dress bunched up around her waist, her red lacy panties still on but the crotch tugged to a side, Greg's blond strands between her thighs. She moaned and tipped her head back, her elbows hitting two keys on the piano. You tried your best to not make a sound as you collected the plates behind him. But he heard you anyway. He turned around. The one-second long gaze seared your insides into soot. He was furious. You had never seen him so furious before, except for the night of his birthday when you served him risotto and semifreddo. You ducked your head, apologized for the interruption, and scampered out. You dared not go anywhere near that room.

You changed your clothes into a yellow oversized shirt and matching loose boxers. You made your dinner: chicken salad sandwich and chicken noodle soup. You were making the salad when Greg came in.

“Where's the pomegranate juice?” he asked after you took off your headphones.

You wordlessly brought out the box and handed it to him, taking care not to touch him.

“Strawberries? I need five, at least.”

You opened the fridge and knelt to count one, two, three, seven strawberries. You plucked the leaves from their top and plated them up.

“For luck,” you said softly.

“I don't need luck,” he snapped. “I'm hitting it big tonight. Turn that volume mighty high.” He left with the food.

You listened to Etaf's voice again. When it didn't work as it had done before, you called her, to hear her voice. She didn't answer. Mabel did, who innocently told you Etaf was taking a shower. You ended the call and went to dial your mama's number, before you realized it was the beginning of summer vacation and she was having a girls' night out.

You packed up your food, put on warmer clothes, grabbed your key, and headed out. You took a pillow and a blanket with you, just in case. Once in the lobby, you bid goodnight to the doorman, who eyed you worriedly, and left for the park. You laid the blanket and the pillow on a bench opposite the Hellelil and Hildebrand statue, and ate your dinner while listening to all your recordings of Etaf's voice.

When that was over, you went on Facebook and stalked your half-sister. Lovisa Gyldenløve, only two years older than you. One of her recent posts was a memory from six years ago, where she sat on a deck chair on the beach, her perfectly sculpted body in a red bikini. Beside her sat a gorgeous blonde with sky-blue eyes and a smile that blinded you. You checked the profile. Your grandmother. Both your grandmother. Lovisa had tagged your aunt, Pernilla Tove “Perry” Gyldenløve, whose flawless body sunned behind Lovisa and your grandmother, her golden bikini as sexy as the mystery of her face that she shielded with a white wide-brimmed hat from the sun. From the taglist, you visited her profile but her display picture was that of a golden retriever on a beach. Her account was locked, or else you'd be scrolling through her profile and comparing yourself to a dead woman. She was everything you weren't. The founder of Sixten Strategies Inc., a successful PR agency named after her brother's middle name. She was talented enough to have royalties as her clients, smart enough to extend it across Europe, and so funny, everyone left ha-ha reactions to her comments on Lovisa's posts from back when she was alive. She loved your sister a lot. You wondered if your aunt knew about your existence and whether it disgusted her or made her curious about you. You wondered, if you were in Lovisa's place, would Aunty Perry love you even though you were nothing like your sister? Unlike the beautiful, charming Lovisa Gyldenløve, you were mediocre at your best and fugly at your worst.

You decided to find a place of your own after your current employment ended. You were getting a hefty chunk of money here. In your two months of working, you'd received close to $80k. Five more months and you'd have at least $200k in total, enough to float by while you do some soul-searching, or fund your passion. Maybe cookbooks? Open a bakery with your girlfriends? Make Mabel Taffy something not based in your Shore Boulevard apartment but someplace else?

You didn't know when you fell asleep. The bench was spacious and you had a history of sleeping on narrow spaces like your sofa-bed. It was the hard concrete that made you wake up at seven with a zigzag of pain down your spine. With a groan, you sat up and rubbed your eyes.

The first thing your gaze landed on was the damned statue. Half as tall as you, it depicted an ill-fated love story between a princess and her bodyguard, her defender, her servant. Tragic love stories didn't just happen in medieval times, you begrudgingly admitted. Your parents were one real-life example. Your dad left his wife and daughter, tried to fly across the Atlantic during a fucking storm, and crashed somewhere near the Bermuda triangle. Could he be any more melodramatic? Fucking skank. If you had watched him drown, you'd gladly shove his head under the water and chant spells to ensure his death took.

You dragged yourself across the street. The night doorman was handing over his duties to his daytime counterpart. Both men eyed you as you headed for the lift.

“Noisy sex, gentlemen. You understand, right?” You fiddled with the buttons.

They gave you a sympathetic look so similar to each other's, it was like watching a pair of identical twins. They still looked at you as if you were the butt of a nasty insider joke, especially whenever you were around Greg. You muttered a hallelujah when the doors closed.

Back inside the apartment, you headed straight for your room in the servant's quarter. In the dim morning light, you almost didn't catch the small figure behind the open fridge door.

“Oh, it's you!” Bethany grinned, a cup of blueberry yogurt in her hand. “I was hungry. You can guess why. Oh, you were out the whole night?” She smiled apologetically. “I'm so sorry. He told me you had noise-canceling headphones, so I could be as loud as I wanted. Your back must hurt a lot. Here.” She left her yogurt and ran to your side. She bent you over the counter, then began to massage your back. All of this happened so fast, you had no time to react before her soft, smooth hands were releasing the tension knots and pain nests from your back, like releasing pigeons from a cage. You moaned out loud and caught her giggle as she leaned over you and massaged you some more.

“Can I fuck you now?” you asked, your eyes closed and your moans getting louder.

“Sorry, I'm not into girls.”

“Oh, I can change your mind, baby. Ah, yes, right there.”
She ran her magical hands all over your spine. “You sound a lot like him.”

“Hmm?”

“He flirts like you. With no regrets.”

“Life is short, baby.”

“That's what he said!”

You couldn't reply anymore. Your mind was so lost in a fog of bliss, you almost came. “Fuck, I was about to cum.”

Bethany giggled and helped you to a stool. You wanted to lay down and die at her feet. All the bad, bitter feelings from last night had taken their leaves under Bethany's magical fingers. You thanked her and decided to reward her by making her breakfast. Halfway through baking the banana bread, the doorbell chimed. You opened the door, almost nine in the morning, and found a delivery guy with twelve boxes of all shapes and sizes. You smiled, the first good thing after Bethany's magical massage. You paid, signed the papers, took your boxes, and closed the door after a quick thanks. Bethany helped you carry them to the kitchen. When you brought out the contents one by one, she gasped out loud.

“So pretty!” She touched the green letter-shaped glass and read what was written on it.

“Help me hang them up.”

And she did, the good girl that she was. She helped you bring chairs to windows and doors and any other places you pointed at. You hung the pieces and she marveled at how they lit up in the sun. The last place was Greg's bedroom. He slept peacefully on his bed, the covers mussed up. You didn't miss some of the dark stains on the sheet and groaned internally at having to wash them. You didn't voice your frustrations. Instead, you hung your pieces over his headboard, from the window behind it.

“Fourteen pieces,” Bethany said once you returned to the kitchen. You went back to your banana bread that was done baking in the oven. You prepared the custard to pour over it.

“All for him.” You narrated to her how you fucked up his birthday, skipping over some parts like how you yelled at him to rile up the gunman so that he spared Greg. Bethany, at the end of it, came over to your side and hugged you.

“You're such a good person. Greg told me so much about you, once we were, y'know…”

You slipped out of her hug and smiled. You cracked seven eggs and beat them with milk, sugar, and vanilla and almond extracts.

“He knows you so well, inside and out,” she continued. “I bet it's mutual. Can you tell me more about him?”

You sliced the banana bread and dipped them into the egg mixture one by one. “After that magical massage, how can I not? Let's see.”
You went back to the day you first met him. Valentine's day.

You listed out things about him off the top of your head, as you fried up the French toasts. Bethany recorded your speech after you gave her your permission. Once you were done, you put the casserole into the oven and told her to take it out once it dinged. You also had a timer set, just in case.

“You're leaving?” Bethany asked glumly.

You pressed your lips as you put on your shoes with your back to her. “I'm going to stay with my girlfriends for a few days. Boy, do I need a vacation. Best of luck with him, Ms. Hightower. Please, take good care of him.”

She kissed your cheeks. You left the building and headed for the nearest subway station.

On your way, Mabel called you.

“Hey, Maby, what's up?” you said in a deadpan sort of voice, something you almost never used on her.

“Babe, is everything okay?” Etaf asked.

Crap, you were on the speaker. “Yeah, I'm just tired. Man, cooking and cleaning up after six people is tiresome. My only incentive is money.”

“Five more months and you're outta there, babe.”

You asked why they called, as you grabbed some breakfast bagels from a deli. They reminded you of an upcoming birthday party you'd be catering to. The parents asked for rainbow-colored cupcakes, because their trans child would be turning seven soon, and what screamed seven and queer than seven colored rainbows? Etaf and Mabel had run out of food colorings and needed you to please buy them an Ann Clark Gel Food coloring set, yes, the 12-color set because no place sold them individually under $25, for fuck's sake. You relented and went to a nearby store. As you waited for the checkout, you didn't notice a man with snow white hair running around in ratty pajamas and a checkered robe outside, looking for you. No, you were too focused on listening to Etaf's voice in one of your recordings, too busy in your drowning to notice that Aegon was looking for you. In fact, you didn't even know you knew someone named Aegon Targaryen.

Aegon, for his part, had been miserable for the last week, as he watched you confirm you were indeed working with his mother to set him up on a blind date, to his cousin, Bethany Hightower. He didn't remember her much. Only that she was too pretty and too stupid about it. Perfect for a one night's fuck but that was it. You often joked it was nothing but air inside his thick skull. Wait till you meet Bethany.

He seethed, as he watched you and his mother plan the menu for his blind date at home. At his fucking home, while you cooked the food and served them as well. Why the fuck did it not bother you the way it bugged the shit out of him? Was he wrong in his assumption that his feelings were returned? Or were you the martyr type like your mama?
All too soon, Sunday evening arrived and with it, Bethany Hightower in a golden glittery cocktail dress. He stubbornly didn't get the door like his mum told him to. You glared at him as you ushered Bethany in. He spotted admiration in your eyes. A metaphorical punch knocked him out, as he began to weigh the possibility that his feelings might not be requited. He felt angry about it. How could you love him but not be in love with him? What did the last two months mean to you then? Just friendship? Did friends hug and snuggle as intimately in bed as you two did almost every night since his birthday? He didn't know, because rarely did he have friends like you.

You served them the first course. When you corrected him correcting Bethany, his mood plummeted. He sullenly ate all that you cooked tonight, all of them delicious. If it wasn't Bethany sitting opposite him, rather you, instead of serving him food for his date tonight, he'd enjoy his meal much better. But reality sucked ass.

His rage reached its eruption point when you served steak and lobster for the main course. He remembered one night after his big debut. It was a month ago when you cooked him steak and lobster to celebrate his “big break”, as you had called it. You two had dined in the kitchen. No soft candlelight in a dimly lit room. No red and white tablecloths. No gentle music playing in the background. Just the bare marble island, sturdy wooden stools, two plates of food, and you two laughing and talking about anything and everything.

He missed that.

He missed you.

One of the things he hated the most about you was how you could make him feel like being thousands of miles away when you were, in fact, right in the next room, preparing the desserts. Desserts that you and him should be eating together, not him and his cousin.

In the kitchen, he watched you deftly unmold the panna cotta onto two plates. When your fingers expertly drew a comet tail with strawberry sauce on the plate. When your tongue wet your lips, he couldn't tear his eyes away from how your lips and tongue glistened deliciously in the light. Most of all, he basked in the ardor behind your discussion about the movie you picked, and the topic of soulmates and memories. You lied about becoming a martyr when you already showcased all its prerequisites. He couldn't find any fucking viable reason you could be doing this for him, other than that you felt nothing romantic toward him. The possibility was rising higher and higher the longer this farce of a forced date went on. Nobody these days possesses a heart so big. So, it must be because you felt nothing toward him. He wanted to shake you and ask you why you did it. Why did you charge into his life like a mad bull, impale his heart with barbeque skewers, and then leave him in the dust once you had consumed his bleeding, broken heart, like Snow White's evil stepmom? Why were you such a stupid beautiful witch? He hated you for making him so miserable and in love and so miserable in love. He wanted to hate you. So, he stormed into the room, shocking you into snapping out of your plating. When he lied about what Bethany wanted, you graciously made the change. He wanted to inconvenience you and even at that, he sucked. But he didn't give up.
In the living room, he gave you a show of what you were missing out on by dipping his tongue down his cousin's throat and giving you the front row view of him licking melted chocolate and strawberry syrup from his lips. You looked positively revolted and almost fled the room. Part of the reason he hated this was you showed no pain or regret. Just revulsion.
Was that it? Were you so disgusted that you couldn't fall in love with him? He did show you his dick coming in and out of another woman's pussy on your first meeting in that bathroom. He did show you his infected, diseased penis again as he suffered from not one but two STDs. He vomited in front of you multiple times. He climbed onto your lap and clung to you like Scooby clung to Shaggy. He could imagine the disgust on your face if he ever let you know he liked to be tied up in bed and pegged. Other than his fiancée, he never told anyone about his kink, out of fear of being laughed at. Prince William was the butt of merciless online jokes for it. Aegon would definitely be torn apart and eaten and then spat out.

He returned to you in the kitchen, where you had put on yellow oversized clothes, his favorite color cloaking his favorite person. He wondered, if he could get his hands on your shirt, would it smell and feel like a hug from you, warm and lemony and sweet and soft. You had your noise-canceling headphones on, while you made your humble chicken dinner, a meal he'd love to have with you every night for the rest of his life. No seven-course aphrodisiac dinner would ever hold a candle to a simple soup-and-sandwich supper with you.

His daydreams cracked like mirrors when you took off your headphones. The volume must've been the highest, because he could hear Etaf's voice. A recording of her radio show, her voice jubilant and her words spunky. You once told him her voice had a soothing effect on you. Was that the reason, then? Were you still in love with her? You rarely showed anything to indicate that, until now.

He lingered as you rummaged through the fridge looking for strawberries. When you put the seven strawberries on a plate, seven, his lucky number, he lost all his cool. He took them and left the kitchen, determined to fuck his cousin tonight if it meant it would temporarily balm his bruised, battered heart. He'd make Bethany cum so many times and so loudly, your headphones wouldn't be able to keep out the screams.

He kept his promise. Bethany came so many times and so hard, she passed out at one point. While he was taking a break, two neighbors stopped by to complain about the noise. You didn't answer the door, so he had to do it. That was when he discovered you were gone.

Where did you go? Nobody knew. Not your best friends, who were having a date night of their own. Mabel did say you had called but then ended the call before Etaf could talk to you. Your mama, on a girls' night out, whose number you had given to him for emergencies, said she was out with her friends and no, you hadn't called or visited her apartment. She knew because every time you came, she'd be notified of your arrival by her doorman, Mason, the big beefy guy Aegon met a few times.

Aegon called your cell at last. It went straight to voicemail. He began to record voice messages, then erased them before hanging up. He wondered if he judged your reactions too quickly. You had once told him you had alex-something, something that a lot of autistic people had. It meant you couldn't detect what you were feeling the moment you were feeling it, and you could only detect it once months had passed, weeks at the least, and you had some emotional distance. What if you did love him back and tonight's actions hurt you? What if you really were a martyr like you often accused your mama of being?

He waited for you. You still had your stuff in the servant's quarter. You'd come back, right? He could wait. He could be patient. They did say if you love someone, set them free and that if they come back, they're yours, that sort of bullshit. He clung to that hope as he sat on a stool and nibbled on the leftovers you had packed up in the fridge.

But you never came back and he fell asleep. He woke up briefly when Bethany found him in the kitchen, massaged his sore back, and sent him to bed. He fell asleep with the hope that he would find you in his dreams.

He woke up after ten. His back wasn't hurting anymore. No matter her intelligence or the lack of it, Bethany had a promising future as a masseuse. Aegon yawned and cracked his neck. That was when he smelled it. He always knew what the smell was coming from.

Hopeful, he went to the kitchen. Bethany was taking out a casserole dish. Hearing his footsteps, she grinned. “Look what I got for you!” She showed him the casserole. He caught the bluish purple of the blueberries, the melted white of the chocolate chips, and the brown of the butter. Yep, there was no way you didn't bake it for him. It took you almost three hours to make the banana bread from scratch, then fry their slices to make French toasts, then bake them into a casserole dish with custard that you also made from scratch. Tons of prep work, but you never hesitated to make it for him at least three times a week, if not more.

You had such a big heart, he could write a ballad about it.

“Where is she?” He searched inside the servant's quarter. Nope, you weren't inside. Not even in the bathroom.

Bethany followed him in. “Your housekeeper, you meant her, right? Well, she left.”

His eyes scanned every inch of the tiny bathroom as if you were a mouse who could hide in the holes in the wall.

“She came by this morning,” Bethany continued. “The poor thing looked so exhausted. I gave her a massage and almost made her cum, hehe.”

Aegon whirled around. “What?”

Bethany blinked, taken aback by the harsh tone. “I just gave her a massage! Don't be so angry about it. She needed it. So many tension knots. Jesus, I wonder how her spine hasn't folded yet. Anyway, she said she was going to her girlfriends' for a few days. And you know what, she hung up all these beautiful suncatchers for you all over the house. They're so pretty. I'm gonna ask her to give me links to the places she ordered from…”

“What?” Aegon asked.

“Suncatchers.” She pointed at two glass pieces that hung and rotated from the curtain pole in your room. Two suncatchers of pressed flowers, one of them being yellow buttercups. Aegon caressed them. He loved suncatchers but never bought them because, according to Aemond, they were hippie, girly decorations, totally useless to splurge money on. He had no taste for aesthetics.

Bethany went on, oblivious to what he was feeling. “These aren't the only ones. She hung up two per room, so…” She counted on her fingers, “... fourteen in total. Her birthday gift to you.”

Aegon turned around. Fourteen, his second lucky number. He went to each room in the apartment and found, true to Bethany's account, two suncatchers per room.

In the kitchen, one of them was an oval stained glass piece with a seven-colored rainbow that reflected their colors on the wall opposite the window. The other was a peach-shaped and -colored glass piece that reflected a beautiful glowing shadow on the cabinets, like a shallow water surface glittering in the sun.

In Helaena and Alicent's room, you had hung up an Empire moth suncatcher for his sister and an elaborately painted suncatcher depicting a blue sky with clouds, stars, the sun and the moon on it, definitely to Alicent's taste.

In Aemond and Alys' room, the first suncatcher depicted a small, golden tarot card, the Lovers. The second one was two black-and-white cats curled around each other, like yin and yang.

In the living room, there was a spider's web shaped suncatcher and a 3D pyramid suncatcher.

In the dining room, a rose suncatcher and a sun-and-moon suncatcher.

Lastly, in his own room, he found an evil eye suncatcher to protect him from everything bad, and a green envelope suncatcher that said, to the left, “on this strange small planet at least there's you,” while the right side said, “my dearest pen pal”.

You were his pal. You were his bestest pal, the only one he ever had and ever needed. In a daze, he returned to the kitchen. Bethany had cut him a huge portion of the casserole while she demolished the rest. He didn't care. He wasn't hungry. “When did she do it?” he asked.

“While you were sleeping. I helped her. She was so nice about everything. She even told me stuff about you.”

“She did what?”

Bethany played a video on her phone. In it, you were making the casserole and telling Bethany about him.

“First thing's first,” you said, gathering the dry ingredients for the banana bread dough, “Greg loves food, but he's hesitant to show it, especially in front of his mother, second brother, and grandfather, who are incredibly fatphobic. His mother you can convince to not judge him for his food intakes and probably bond with her. His brother you gotta ignore. As for his grandfather, well, I’ve never met him face-to-face, so I don't know yet how to tackle his fatphobia.”

You measured out the dry ingredients. “Second, Greg loves to cuddle. At one point when he is drunk, he'll climb onto your lap like Scooby does to Shaggy and cling to you like vines and tentacles. Get used to it. Love it if you can.”

You mixed all the dry ingredients. “Third, food is one of the three things that can relieve Greg of stress. The other two are alcohol and sex. Those are bad in excess, so make him plenty of healthy but tasty food and he'll be happy.”

You brought out the wet ingredients, the eggs and butter. “Fourth, Greg's favorite breakfast dish is this one that I'm making. Brown Butter White Chocolate Blueberry Banana Bread French Toast Casserole. Yes, it's long. Ten words, he counted when he first heard it. But he loves it because the name has three colors that his body also has; brown eyebrows, white hair, and blue eyes, though the blue turns purple once you get the casserole out of the oven. Fifth, hmmm…”

You beat eggs with an electrical whisker. “Greg's favorite color is white and only because it doesn't have any traces of green in it, a color he hates so much, he refuses to eat anything green unless you can coax him somehow. It's because of his mother's side of the family, well, your side, the Hightowers, love green to the extreme. This is the reason he chose this building and this apartment. Everything is white, you see? Even his piano.”

You put a pan on the lit stove and began to brown the butter, your eyes never leaving the pan. “Sixth, Greg loves collecting mugs. His mum's bodyguard, Criston Cole, once gave him a white mug with blue letters that told him to do what he loves and, although he'd rather die than drink from it, he still keeps it on his bedside table. On his birthday, his mum and Criston gave him thirteen mugs similar to that first one and he says they're his fourteen flames. Like a kid with toys that asks you to collect them all.”

You slowly mixed the wet ingredients with the dry one. “Anyway, the seventh thing about Greg, the day before his performance at any chamber music concert, he gets nervous and tries to get drunk. Don't give in. Or else he'll have you become his page-turner for his performance. That reminds me, eighth point…”

You slowly folded the two mixtures gently, patiently. “Greg gets manicure for his hands, which are so fucking soft, like pillows or goose feather eiderdown. Don't mock him about it. He's sensitive about this. If you can, get a manicure with him. It'll make him feel not alone. I did it once. It'll help you bond too.”

You poured the unkneaded dough onto the rolling board and applied flour to your hands. “Ninth, speaking of his hands, Greg worked as a hand model after he immigrated to the States. He's damn proud of it because this was his first paid job that he didn't fuck up. Those hands and posters framed on his bedroom wall? That's him. His favorite gig was this Nördstrom cufflink ad whose poster his second brother stole one night because he's also damn proud of his big brother but he won't say it to him like their other siblings do. And if Greg wakes up in the morning to find it missing, he'll panic but calm him down with a video of his brother caught on camera fleeing with the framed poster.”

You slowly kneaded the dough, a fond smile on your face, until the dough was pliable under your fingers. “Tenth, another way you can calm down his panic is by feeding him lemon squares. I call them lemonies, like brownies and blondies. He loves them to death and can survive on a desert island if he gets a truckload of lemonies to last his stay. I can give you my recipe if you wanna make it for him. He loves them to death.”

You mixed white chocolate chips to the dough and kneaded again. “Eleventh, Greg has a great singing voice but he'll only sing on live radio, unless he needs to employ you as his housekeeper, then he'll serenade outside your house after midnight until you give in.”

You mixed the blueberries next, though you kneaded this time more gently. “Twelve, Greg loves receiving flowers. On his first performance, his ex fiancée gave him a white rose boutonniere, so he has this superstition that receiving flowers on the day of his performance grants him good luck. But he won't tell you that, so you must get him outrageously priced bouquets. Best if you get mostly white flowers and get them from the Flower District in Chelsea's 28th street, between the 6th and the 7th avenues. Go there before ten in the morning or else they’ll sell out.”

You slowly put the dough in a greased pan. “Thirteenth, Greg loves cuddling. He'll climb into your bed in the middle of the night out of nowhere and hold you in his arms like he's trying to give you the Heimlich maneuver. Get used to it. The tighter he holds you, the more he loves you. If you ban him from your room, he'll start taking sleeping pills.”

You finally put the bread in the oven and put on a timer. “Now, lucky number fourteen, at one point when he's drunk, Greg will start babbling in High Valyrian. If you don't know it, either ignore him or agree with him. Best case scenario, he'll be affronted or love you for supporting him. And that's it! Fourteen things to know about Gregory A. Teanan. Any questions?”

Bethany ended the video and glanced at him hopefully. He didn't know he was crying until she caught a drop on her fingertip. “Look at that, it's raining.”

Aegon ran for the door at once. Screw his clothes. He had to see you now. He put on his shoes, grabbed the dressing gown Bethany handed him, then ran down the stairs, not waiting for the damn elevator. He was breathless by the time he made it to the front doors. The doorman asked worriedly if he'd like to get a cab, but Aegon didn't care. He ran down the streets, similar to Daniel Radcliffe in his slippers and robes, hair disheveled and his face splotchy and flushed. He rushed to the nearest subway station. He knew the way because you took him there many times. He ran down the escalator, shoving anyone who got in his way. He had to get to you, fast. You were probably taking the N train to reach Brighton Beach.
He searched everywhere, the two island platforms, the Canarsie Line station underneath it, even the two abandoned side platforms. You weren't here. Desperate, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted,

“Dōnītsos! Dōnītsos!”

Nobody came forward.

“Buttercup? Buttercup!”

Still, nothing.

He at last called your real name. The full name. Leaving out not even the middle name. The people around him looked at him funny. He was, after all, dressed weirdly casually and calling odd names. His throat began to hurt from screaming. But he couldn't give up. He glanced up and saw the cameras, which gave him the idea.

Meanwhile, you were done with your purchase. With the dye tubes inside a brown bag, you munched on some bagels and walked to 14 St and union square station. Your backache was creeping up, so you let your ass meet the escalator steps, your head against the moving railing as you finished your bagels. You didn't notice Greg running frantically up the escalator just to your left, nor did he notice the hunched figure to his right, eating bagels and hating herself.

Your mama called you as you landed. She told you Greg had called last night. “He said you weren't home, so he was worried about you.”

“Yeah, right. He probably ran out of condoms, so he needed me to pick some up.”

“What?”

“He had a blind hot date at home last night and the sex got so loud,” you added the lie expertly, “I had to get out of there. I went to the park…”

“Central Park?” your mama squeaked hysterically.

You rolled your eyes, not noticing that you were mere centimeters away from the edge of the platform. “No, Mama, Gramercy park. It's safe and locked up all the time and I have a key.”

She calmed down. You asked about her girls' night out and she told you all about Vegan Regan, her colleague who was vegan when sober and a diehard meat lover when drunk. Your mama told you how, when drunk, Regan chomped on meat like a hungry grizzly. You were laughing with her when someone passed you by with a hard shove. You dropped your food color tubes on the tracks.

“Watch where you going, you fucking dick!” you yelled over your shoulder.

“Watch where you're standing, you suicidal bitch!” snarled the man. You didn't hear him because you had your headphones on and you were climbing down the ladder to the tracks. You still had ten minutes until the next train. Plenty of time to rescue your precious purchase.

You were so wrapped up in your work, you didn't hear the subway security yelling at you through the microphone to get off the track. You didn't catch Aegon calling you by both your nicknames and your real name. He felt as if someone, probably his grandfather, had ripped open his chest and hammered down his ribcage to tear out his heart and squeeze it until it melted into nothingness. He watched helplessly as the minutes ticked down to single digit. The subway security staff before him yelled at you to get off the tracks. But you couldn't hear him because you had your fucking headphones on. You continued kneeling on the tracks and fumbling around, looking for your stupid food coloring tubes with your phone's flashlight.

Aegon couldn't wait. He had to go.

He stormed out of the office, down the escalator to your platform, and rushed to the tracks. He called your name, but you had your back turned to him as you wedged your fingers under the tracks to fetch seven of the twelve tubes. It was just your fucking luck that all the essential colors to make a rainbow had rolled down under the tracks, as if they were the Roadrunner playing hide and seek with your Wile E. Coyote.

You felt a sharp tug on your hoodie. Before you could turn around, someone pulled you to your feet. Snow white hair, blue eyes, and brown eyebrows. Greg dragged you to the ladder. “Get on!”

You took off your headphones. “No! My tubes!”

You both tried to gain the upper hand but he was stronger than he let on, using on you the strength he rarely, if ever, used on you. At the end of his tether, Greg threw you over his shoulder and climbed the ladder. You hit him on his chest and back, but he never let you go. Only when you both were back up on the platform did he put you down. He restrained you when you tried to get back down. “No, fuck no, you're not going back there!”

“My tubes! I gotta get them back!”

“I don't care! The train is coming!”

You were almost at the ladder when he dragged you away. That was when you heard it. The train was coming.

You cast one last helpless glance at the butt of a tube peeking out from under the tracks. Then, the train came to a standstill before you. You noticed two things: one, rainbow squiggles now painted the tracks under the train, and two, you were inside the yellow line. The grip on your arms slackened. You twisted free and turned around. “Look at what you did!”

“I don't care!”

“That's fifty dollars I won't get back!”

“I'll buy it for you…”

“I don't want your stupid money…”

“Shut up!”

“You can shove it up your ass…”

“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”

And shut up you did. His face was in a whole other shade of red than the one you rarely saw whenever he got mad. All you could do was glare back and cross your arms as he took deep breaths.

“Shut up and listen to me.” His voice almost cracked. “You listen to me, dōnītsos. You shut up and listen.”

You huffed but stayed put, your arms still crossed. He ran a hand down his face. “You have a potty mouth that no soaps or detergents in this world can wash clean.”

You frowned. “What?”

“You love bagels and breakfast sandwiches for your first meal of the day. You had an alcoholic ex named Darren who became addicted after he lost his twin brother to suicide, and you joined his family in an intervention to coax him to a rehab. You had an abusive ex, Levy, who stalked you until he chased you down a street with a knife, and your heel broke, and you fell and screamed, and when some cops came along, you showed them a video recording that Etaf made when you opened an Instagram DM video of Levy threatening your life, and that's how you got a permanent restraining order against him and a license for a Glock, which you almost always keep in your person. You have this alex-something disorder that's common among the autistic population, which means you cannot detect what you're feeling when you're feeling it, until much time has passed and you got some emotional distance. You're half Swedish but you don't like to talk about your dad or anything related to him because it pains you. You can speak both French and Italian, because of your friend, Mabel, whose adoptive parents were French and Italian immigrants. You have been in love with your best friend, Etaf, since elementary school and you broke up after she stopped loving you romantically and she got together with Mabel. Your comfort food is oatmeal raisin carrot cake cookies, especially the versions your mama and Mabel bake. Your favorite book series ever is The Hunger Games and you swoon over Peeta Mellark because he's a soft blondie. You're autistic, so you don't let societal norms rule you, which is why you don't hesitate buying flowers for me or cradling me, a fully grown man, in your lap in public. You hate having public meltdowns because it embarrasses you to show the soft, mushy side inside you. You hate your grandmother because she's ableist toward your half-sister, even though you never met your sister. You love me, yes, you love me because you buy thoughtful gifts for me, take care of me whenever I'm vulnerable, physically and/or emotionally, defend me against anything and everything to the point you'll either end other people's life or risk your own, and you repress your feelings for me if it means I can have money and be happy with anyone else, but you forget I want you back as well and I can never be happy without you.”

You gulped and blinked. Your mind was a clean slate. Nothing came up. Absolutely fucking nothing. “What?” was the only thing you could croak.

He groaned. “Really? Fuck, okay then. I'm gonna say it to your face right now, so you can have no more excuses. I'm in love with you, dōnītsos. I want you, romantically, sexually, exclusively. Okay? I. Want. You.”

You blinked and said nothing. Only stared back at him. So, he did what he thought would help. He cupped your face and kissed you. He slid his hands, his fucking soft hands around your face, tilted your head, and just fucking kissed you, because you still didn't get it. Maybe your brain broke or something, he didn't know. He just wanted to kiss you to feel you, alive and soft and warm under his lips, not kissing him back at all. Undeterred, he prodded your lips with his tongue and you opened up to him. He wanted to scream hallelujah, but he wanted to kiss you more, so he did the latter and kissed you with tongue, because on the night of his birthday, you promised him you'd let him kiss you on the lips with tongue, but it never happened afterwards. He kissed you and after a long, agonizingly long moment, your brain returned from war and gave you back your control over your body, so you could kiss back this wonderful, amazing man who chased you down to the train tracks and scolded you for risking your life. You kissed him back and the world melted away like old paint peeling off a dilapidated building, like ice cream melting down a cone, like water down Greg's slightly chubby chest that was cute because of the chubbiness, and you wanted to touch him every time he came out of the shower without toweling his body properly and you had to do it but carefully, lest you unknowingly felt him up. If this were any other time, you'd shake your head to shake off the thoughts, but you were kissing Greg now, so who the fuck cared what kind of dirty thoughts ran through your head about him?! He loved you back. He was in love with you, as your subconscious was too terrified to hope for, because you had been burnt and broken and bruised and battered way too many times by love, love that should've been as soft as Greg's lips on yours right now.

When he let you go, you wanted to pull him back but you needed air too, so you took the break. Take a breath. Take a gulp because your throat was parched. Greg was still cupping your face, stroking gently as if he held a chick newly hatched out of an egg. He touched his forehead with yours and smiled so brightly, it was like staring at the sun. He was your Sun and you, heliotropic you, could never turn away from his rays of warmth and promises of life.

“Are you sure?” you asked.

“With all the cells and fibers in my body.”
You felt like crying but you were so full of delightful joy, there was no place left for tears. You didn't care about the tubes behind you. You didn't care about the birthday catering tomorrow. You let Greg take you back to his nest, your nest, which Bethany had mercifully vacated by the time of your return. She even left a thank you note to both of you for giving her such a lovely time last night and this morning. You crumpled up the note and kissed him again.

“For real?” you asked to check again, in case this was a stupid fucking dream and not reality, because reality was gray and dull, not bright and beautiful like Gregory A. Teanan.

“Want me to show you?” He tugged you closer and tugged open his robe. You ran your hands shamelessly up and down his chest, over the burnt and scarred skin, over his beating heart and your white bouquet blooming over it. Your fingertips toyed with his nipples, making him shudder and gasp. His arms tightened around you like vines and tentacles. Body to body, skin to skin, flesh to flesh, warmth to warmth. He kissed you like a meteor had hit the earth and you were being swallowed by the fiery depths of hell. No food could ever taste as good as his lips on yours, soft and warm and safe. No sex could ever fulfill him as deeply as your tongue tangled with his, wet and sticky and hot. You didn't worry about anyone. He didn't care about anything. Your love was mutual and that was all that mattered.

So into the kiss you were, you didn't hear the front door opening, the five pairs of footsteps entering and walking down the hallway, then stopping by the kitchen door. One pair of delicate hands clapped. One male voice hummed. One female voice gasped. The fourth one chuckled and the fifth voiced nothing.

But you and Greg were lost in your delightful, delirious, delicious daydream. A cocoon bathed with lights caught by the suncatchers.

Chapter Text

National Best Friends Day/National Soul Food Month, 2024

In a day, Greg changed entirely.

Gone was the man who cried whenever he was drunk and sullenly obeyed his mum. He was now openly rebelling against her. He'd invade the kitchen any hour of the day and shove his tongue down your throat. You would be washing a stubborn burn stain on a pan, elbow deep in suds, your brows in a frown and your teeth gritted, internally cursing the entire family of the burn stain, when out of nowhere, Greg would pop up behind you, slip his arms around you, his chin on your shoulder, and kiss you from your neck to your lobes. He didn't care who was present. Often, it'd be Helena, who loved hanging out with you, or Mrs. Teanan, who had awkwardly come to tell you about meal plans or something else housekeeping related. One time, as Mrs. Teanan was telling you about one particular Westerosi recipe and Helena was knitting another pair of gloves for her pianist brother's delicate hands, the said brother stormed into the kitchen from your bedroom and grabbed you to dip you, yes, dip you, and kissed you like the sailor kissing the nurse from the famous photograph, V-J Day in Times Square, to the point your foot embarrassingly popped up. Something about this gave you the feeling of déjâ vu, as if this had happened to you before, but your memory couldn’t help you out.

At her brother’s antics, Helena giggled, her eyes still on her needles, while Mrs. Teanan's mouth fell open. She cleared her throat, called both of your names, saw that your eyes opened and your gaze moved to her, but you were helpless in her son's tight hold. He kissed you with his morning breath and eye dust, his lips wet with a drool he hadn't yet wiped off, pillow lines still zigzagging on his cheeks. The act both disgusted and delighted you. That kissing you was the first thing he wanted to do upon waking up. You forgave him for the stenchy breath and the wet lips. By the time he would let you go, your bacon was burnt to crispy soot and Mrs. Teanan had left the building.

Thankfully, he kept it at kisses and groping only. He only groped your breasts and ass, sometimes your thighs. He knew you weren't ready for more than that and respected your wishes. If you told him to stop kissing you, he'd do that too. But you loved kissing him, dragon breath or not. That didn't mean he didn't get horny. Several times, you'd come across his cum on your bed sheets or clothes. He'd dry-hump you in his sleep, resulting in you waking up to a poking from behind almost every morning.

At last, he asked you out on a date.

“Lunch date?” you had offered. You didn't want to go anywhere expensive. He'd pay for everything but all you wanted was to sun in a park with him in your brand new tortilla blanket after a good, hearty lunch. When you told him what you had in mind, his answering grin rivaled the sun the catchers in the kitchen reflected across the cabinets. When you told his mum where you two would be in a few days, Greg called it, “Soul food with my soulmate,” and you turned redder than tomatoes and had to leave the kitchen.

Samantha was beyond ecstatic, the opposite of her aunt-in-law. She went online-shopping with you and found you a yellow floral wrap dress with a bare midriff that you had to tie up to cover your breasts. You matched it with a pair of floral white shoes from her and your favorite hat, your only hat, black with white flowers painted on the brim.

The night before the date, your special delivery arrived in a nondescript box without announcing who it was from or what it contained. You took it to your room and tried it on. The purple gems were not the ones you had in mind, rather peacock blue, but you had to make do. You hid it deep inside your dresser drawer, out of his reach.

On the day of the date, you woke up extra early and cooked lunch right after breakfast. You told Mrs. Teanan where you kept what and how to heat them up. Her lips were pursed as she listened and said nothing. You knew she didn't approve. But you didn't care anymore. Her son loved you and you loved him. The rest of them could get fucked for all you cared, except for Helena, but you knew she was your biggest shipper, right there with Etaf, Mabel, and Alice.

Your mama was thrilled that you were finally going out on a date again. She was the one who recommended the two soul food restaurants in Harlem that she frequented with her colleagues. You chose the first one since it was close to the subway station. Greg didn't mind where he got to eat or what, as long as you were there as his romantic date, as his girlfriend (fuck, why did that sound so good?! Ugh!!!), he'd eat actual mud pies with live worms in them. He said so himself, making his younger brother gag in disgust.
You dressed up in Samantha's apartment, as if you were the bride who couldn't get seen by the groom before the vows. Samantha dolled you up. When you showed her your special delivery from yesterday, she laughed.

“He might fuck you right then and there if you show it to him.” She winked. “Unless that's your intention. But don't wear it for too long.”
You nodded. You had done this before with Ezra. No worries there. “Thank you for everything, Samantha. You've been helping us out, helping him out so much.”

“He did a lot for me too. He won't brag about it but he saved my marriage last year.” She told you how she and Lyonel had drifted apart last year, and Lyonel was staying in New Jersey during Thanksgiving, working, since his law farm was based there. Samantha had a shift at the hospital before dinner. Her pregnant housekeeper was fired days ago and the agency didn't send any replacement. Samantha's six kids were upset by the turn of the event. They sought help from Greg, who hunted down thanksgiving dinner ingredients to make the meal, a surprise gesture, for their estranged parents. A gesture that reconciled Samantha and Lyonel later on.

You smiled. This was the Greg you loved. Selfless, soft, sweet. You couldn't wait to be his.

With your hat on your head and your tote on your arm, you put on your shoes and came out.

Greg came out at the same time. He wore a black tee with yellow sea animals printed on it. Gray trousers, white sneakers, and a rainbow kufiya around his neck completed his outfit, the last one a friendship gift from Etaf after you and your boyfriend joined your girlfriends for a protest for the student intifada last week. He was closing the door when you came out. The moment he saw you, he almost jumped.

“Fuck the seven, you look like my favorite food.” He wrapped his arms around you, his soft hands caressing your half-bare waist at the front. “Can I eat you?”
“Maybe for dessert.” You kissed his nose tip and tugged him to the elevator.
Inside the restaurant, you took the last available table. Excited, you brought out your phone and recorded him, grinning like a damn sunflower toward the sun. You pinched his cheek and he bit your wrist.

“Say it to the camera. Where are we?” you asked him, the camera at his face.

“On our first date to this soul food restaurant. Soul food with my soulmate.” He winked.
Your insides melted like ice cream beside a wood fire oven.

“It's the ninth of June, quarter past one,” he continued, and you captured the time on the wall clock near your table, “and I'm here with my gorgeous girlfriend who looks as tasty as a mountain of her lemonies. Come on, dōnītsos, show the camera what you're wearing. Here,” and he took your phone from you, aiming its camera at you. “My pretty little buttercup.”

After the short recording, you ordered your food. Once your server left, you decided to put on what your bag concealed. You excused yourself to the restroom and told him to man the fort (your table), after seeing how antsy some people were getting while waiting for a table.

In the restroom, you took out the special necklace. You sat inside a stall, took off your dress, and put the necklace on. Greg's one that reflected I Love You's in a hundred languages nestled between the purple gemstones of your other naughtier jewelry. You put the dress back on, and came out to a scene and a crowd outside. Greg stood beside your table, now occupied by a family of five, the parents and three kids.

“What the fuck is going on?” you asked when you reached your boyfriend.

“Language!” the mother said, a white Karen with racism hiding between her beady eyes.

“They fucking stole our table!” Greg's blue eyes blazed. “I dropped a bunch of quarters from my pocket when I went to pull out my wallet and I was picking them up from the floor when they stole our table!”

You turned to the parents who acted as if they didn't care that they just set a horrible example in front of their kids. “You fucking Israel'd us!”

“Language, young lady!” the father said.

“Shut the fuck up, Zionist. This is our table and you fucking stole it.” You saw your server coming out of the kitchen. You flagged him down. He came over and you told them what happened. The couple vehemently denied it.

“We're good Christians. We have children. Why would we do something like this to these two... these heathens?” the mother said.

You turned to the server. “You took our order. You saw us sitting here.”

The server apologized, not to you but to the couple. When you burst out with a sea of profanities, he shot you a glare. “Ma'am, this is a family friendly place. Please, don't cause a ruckus. If you'd like, you can wait until this lovely couple,” and he pointed to a Black couple almost done with their dessert, “are done. You don't need a five-person table. Let us all be kind to each other.”

You clenched your fists. “But we came first! We were here first. What the fuck happened to your first come, first served policy? What is this, fucking musical chair? Steal someone's seats right under their noses?”

The father turned to Greg and told him to “control his woman”.

“Nah, I'm gonna let her handle this. Go on, buttercup. Show them how fiery you can be.” He wrapped an arm around your waist, not to hold you back, but to act as your shield should you need one. Emboldened by his support, you asked to see the manager. But the server didn't bring them.

“Fine! Fucking fine!” You pulled out your phone and played the video you recorded minutes ago. You turned up the volume and showed it to every single patron inside.

“Right now it's half past one, right?” you asked one elderly Black lady, who nodded in support. “We were here around a quarter past one. We ordered our food and I went to use the bathroom, while my boyfriend accidentally dropped his coins. When he went to pick them up from the floor beside the table, this heinous family,” you pointed at the couple, who scowled at you, “stole our table. Even if they needed a bigger table than us, they could've asked us. We would've vacated it for them or found some other arrangements. But nope. They had to steal. Fucking thieves!”

Most of the diners agreed with you and told the server to fix this mess. With the proof out, he had to ask the family to give back your table. By then, the Black couple from before had vacated their two-person table. The parents tried to bribe the server into letting them stay. That was when Greg had enough.

“Come on, dōnītsos, let's go. We can go to the other restaurant your mama mentioned.” He pulled you to the door.

The server tried to stop you now that your orders were ready. But you gave him, and the family of thieves, two middle fingers and told the parents to “Go fuck yourself with a fucking cactus up your hairy, unwashed ass!”

Greg kissed your temple and neck, trying to calm you. “I'm sorry I couldn't man the fort.”

“It wasn't your fault. You were alone. I shouldn't have left you.” You hugged him and he returned it. The next restaurant your mama recommended was ten blocks away. The day was hot and you both sweated, but you could handle it. You sensed that Greg's mood had gone down a little.

As you were passing through the metro station, you glanced to your left and spotted a Just Salad store. “Let's eat there,” you joked.

When he saw what you were pointing at, he almost yanked you out of there, as if chased by angry bulls. “Nope! Nope! I was promised a soul food date with my soulmate. I am not chewing on grass. Also, who the fuck goes to eat salad on their first date?”

“The worst first date ever.”

“Now you get me, dōnītsos.” He kissed your nape. “Thanks again for sticking to my side.”

“The moon can never betray the sun, baby boy.” You rubbed your face on his arm. He wrapped it around your shoulder and pulled you closer. When your noosed nipples brushed against him, you had to use all your resolve to tamp down the moan trying to flee your mouth. You peeked. He didn't notice anything. Good.

At the next restaurant, you decided to order some takeout.

“I don't feel like eating here anymore,” you said. “Let's have a picnic in a park.”
Greg supported your decision.

Bags in hand, you checked out two parks in the vicinity, Marcus Garvey park and St. Nicholas park. But none of them impressed him. He got you out after taking one look at them.

“Why go to a public park,” he said as he brought out his key and opened the gate to Gramercy park, “when you have a private park in your backyard.”

Once you laid your tortilla blanket under a tree opposite the Hellelil and Hildebrand statue and then finished your soul food lunch of fourteen dishes (three desserts), Greg laid his head on your lap. “I'm sleepy,” he said.

You played with his hair and he stuffed his face in your crotch. “I don't like your necklace. It's too long.”
If only he knew.

“Vāedagon syt nyke, Muña,” he said.

“What?”

“Sing for me.”

You laughed. “My name is not Gregory A. Teanan.” When he insisted, you cleared your throat and crooned the only lullaby you knew, something you learned from your mama, who, in turn, learned it from the love of her life.

“Sov min lille, sov
Vak opp i kungens hov

Stjärnorna på himlen blå
äro silverlammen små
Månen de till herde fått
Nu ska barnet sova gott

Sov, min lille, sov
Vakna opp i kungens hov

Kråka satt i lunden
med gullblad i munnen
Vart skall du flyga?
Till Gullåsen
Där väx löken,
där gal göken
Där sjunga svalorna sju
Gott år i år
Myttje bätter åt åren.”

Greg hummed contently and asked about it.

“It's a lullaby from Ångermanland, the province my dad's family is from. Something he taught my mama, that she sang to me and the twins after me.”

“Twins?”

“Like yours, her side of the family has the twin gene. I was seven. Mama had a one night stand and got preggo. Twins, Mina and Maya. Both were stillborn. Siamese, thoracopagus. Shared every vital organ in their conjoined torso.” You didn't know you had tears until Greg's fingers reached out and touched them gently, gently, tiny diamonds on his fingertips. You blinked and a few more landed on his face. He didn't wipe them. You did. “My baby sisters. Mama lost a lot of blood. I thought I'd lose her. My sisters left the day Mama came back to me.”

Greg kissed your midriff, up and up the chain studded with purple gemstones, until his lips met yours, stained with saltwater. He licked them and tried to take away two of the four deaths that still haunted you.

“Thank you.” You gently laid him back on your lap. He stuffed his face to your bare waist and midriff. You held off the sensation that his weight on the clip between your legs sent up your spine. You enjoyed his lips upon your exposed skin, between the chains, before you felt his wet tongue under your tits.

“Did you just lick my underboobs?” you asked amusedly.

He sheepishly peered up at you with wet eyes, then stuffed his face in your crotch, sending another shockwave up your spine.

You held off the shudder and lifted his face by his chin. “Does my Sun want to suck on my tits?”

His bottom lip wobbled. “Can I, Muña?”

You knew what he meant by that addressal. You kissed his forehead, then his lips, lastly his cheeks, before you untied your wrap dress with one hand. The other slipped under his head to thrust his mouth toward your noosed nipples exposed to the air, to him. As soon as his eyes fell on almost the entirety of the jewelry, he gasped and sat up. “You're wearing clamps?”

You nodded, two spots of red on your face. “I got them for you.”

His grin spread from ear to ear. He lowered his face to your breast level and gently poked your noosed nipples with his tongue. You hissed and thrust out your chest to his mouth. “Careful, I've been wearing them for too long now.”

“Does my Muña need some relief?” he asked in a soft voice, as if he were a little boy, shy and eager to help. When you nodded, your eyes hooded and your body lax, his teeth tenderly unhooked a noose from one nipple, then the other. Your areolas had turned slightly pale from the lack of blood circulation. You shook and cried out as soon as your buds were free. His eyes traced the third chain between your legs. He gently slipped his fingers down there to softly unhook the clip from your clit. You cried out as he massaged your button with his soft, smooth fingertips.

“Fuck, dōnītsos, it's swollen,” he whispered huskily.

“I'm sorry…” you whined.

“No, no, no, don't be sorry. I'm sorry for not noticing it before. I'm a bad boyfriend. Let me take care of my delicate little buttercup. Would you like that?”

You nodded, drunk and pliant. He fetched the thermos lunch box you had filled with ice cubes for relief from his apartment before coming to this park (you were astonished to find your red thermos at his apartment, what were the odds he found it out of all the visitors of Stuyvesant park!). He didn't know what it contained until now. He popped one cube in his mouth, then his tongue pushed it out until his lips caught it between them. He leaned over and slowly, softly, rubbed the cube all over your left nipple, then the right one. You threw your head back and would've jumped away from the sting, had his hands not wrapped around your waist and kept you in place. Your moans got louder. He did nothing to silence them. Instead, he pressed the melting cubes to your nipples, as erect as clothespins. Your fingers fisted his hair and shirt. Your nails dug into his scalp and flesh. He groaned and popped one more ice cube in his mouth. He kept cooling down your nipples until you could take it no longer and screamed his name. One of his hands around you slipped down your open dress with an ice cube. He rubbed it the same way over your swollen bud. Your hips almost hit him in the face.

This felt like déjâ vu again. As if you two had played with ice on each other’s bodies before. But when? Where?

The ice in his mouth now melted, his lips latched onto your cold nipple. His tongue massaged them. You grabbed the back of his head and pulled him closer, almost smashing your tits to his face, suffocating him. He rubbed your clit extra hard, until he slipped the almost melted cube inside your wet entrance and kept his middle finger inside you. By then, you had gotten so wet, your panties were dripping. He slipped his finger in and out, in and out, his thumb circling over your clit, until you cried out his name again and came all over his fingers, his tongue and teeth worshiping your breasts.

“Fuck, Mommy, what spell did you cast on me?” His hips humped against the blanket.

You laughed and tilted your forehead against his own, your eyes closed, still shaky and breathless. “Speak for yourself.”

His fingers were still inside you. They never stopped moving as he added two more fingers, one by one. You had been drooling over his hands for so long, you decided this had to be a dream. A beautiful pipe dream. You feared it would end soon. Dreams are meant to end.

To distract yourself from the uninvited sad thought, your fingers fumbled with his trousers' drawstrings. You tugged it open, then leaned over to slip your hand inside. He cursed out as loudly and lewdly as a sailor. His hips eagerly humped into your fingers as you wrapped them around his cock. The head was slightly wet. Your thumb caressed the slit. You scraped your trimmed nail, gently pinching it. He moaned with a tit in his mouth, your tit that he tried and failed to put entirely in his mouth. “Bisa jūlor jorrāelagon,” he said. (“This needs milk.”)

“Huh?”

“Aōhor jūlor mōzugon,” he mumbled, before he went to take up your other tit in his mouth. “Timpa āeksion.” (“I want to drink your milk. White gold.”)

You sighed. You couldn't tell if it was from exasperation at failing to understand what he was saying, or because he was making you feel so damn good, all you could let out was sighs.

He suddenly let go of your tit with a pop and focused on his fingers inside you. “Dōnītsos, iksā vok. Iksā vok syt nyke. Iksā vēttan syt nyke. Nyke jaelagon naejot mōzugon hen ao.” (“Sweetling, you are perfect. You are perfect for me. You are made for me. I wish to drink from you.”)

You groaned and tried to claw out of the delicious daze he was lulling you into. “Greggy, you have got to remember, I don't speak High Valyrian.”

“I wish you did.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

“No, you can never disappoint me, my love.” He kissed you tenderly.

“Tell me.”

“What?”

“Tell me what you just meant.”

His fingers stopped inside you. He brought them out. Before you could protest, he put them in your mouth. You licked and sucked his fingers, making him groan. “Dōnītsos, this is embarrassing.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I…” He cleared his throat, eyes on yours as you cleaned his fingers and nibbled on the supple flesh. “I want to drink your milk.”

You popped out his fingers. “Sorry, I don't have any.”

He laughed. “You don't feel grossed out?”

“No, why?”

“Some of the women I have been with felt disgusted.”

“Did she?”

He tilted his head. “I'm not sure. I never asked because Nelly felt nothing whenever I sucked her tits. She was more into my ass.”
So, her name was Nelly. “My kinda woman. Tell me more about her.”

“She was so good to me, dōnītsos. She gave me another chance after I got drunk and slept with someone else on my birthday eight years ago. During our first year. I was so fucking stupid.”

You raised a brow. “Infidelity? Really?”

He hung his head in shame. “My grandfather found me passed out and naked in bed with another woman. He called Nelly, obviously hoping this will finally get her to dump me. She did dump me for a while. I did my best to win her back. And win her back I did. What bugs me even now is that I only had two drinks that night and I'm not a lightweight. That wasn't my first rodeo.”

“Okay, first, you better not cheat on me. I'm not Nelly. I'll castrate you with my Glock.”

He laughed. “You can't castrate someone with a gun.”

“Wanna find out, slut?”

He held his hands up in surrender.

“Second, maybe the drinks you had were stronger than your usual and you drank more after your memory started to get hazy? I dunno, I've seen Darren do shit he'd never do when sober.”

“Such as?”

“Peeing in his fishbowl. He loved his pets and it killed him when his goldfish died from his golden shower. Or getting his dick pierced.”

Greg sat up, excited to know more about the dick piercing. You shoved him away and continued. “Anyway, alcohol can make you go miles away from your true personality. This is why Etaf never drinks.”

“Never?”

“Teetotaler, like my mama's parents.” A lull fell in the park, as you stroked his cheek. “So, you're into lactation, huh?”

“My mother never breastfed me or my siblings. It always made me wonder. For me and Helaena, it was because she had postnatal depression. By the time my two brothers came along, she had two older children and a sickly husband to take care of, not to mention managing both his and my father's family businesses as the matriarch. We were fed formulas by our nannies.”

You lightly scratched his scalp. He closed his eyes, licked, and sucked your pinky twisted around his own. “I'm sorry to hear that.” A pause. You thought about it. “Would you like to drink your wife's milk?”

He raised a brow. “I'm not getting you pregnant yet.”

“I'm not talking about myself…”

He flicked your forehead, then kissed and licked the place. “Well, I'm talking about you. Get it in your head. Whenever I'm talking about my future from now on, you'll be in it.”

You rubbed your forehead, both to soothe the sting and to wipe his saliva. “Anyway, you can induce lactation without getting pregnant. You just need to trick my body into thinking I need to breastfeed.” You told him about breast pumping machines, galactagogues such as lactation tea and cookies, hormones such as domperidone, as well as lactation consultants. The internet had tons of resources. “Would you like to try this out?”

He kissed you and put his fingers back inside you. “Only if you're comfortable.”

“I'll have to use a pump on my tits a lot. To trick my body…”

“Why a pump when you got me?” He began to suckle you again. Eagerly, loudly, with teeth and tongue and fingers and lips. You couldn't take it anymore. You laid on your back. He climbed over you and groped your other breast. Your hand he wrapped around himself and made you rub him up and down. Once you got the speed he wanted, his fingers found their way back to where they belonged, inside your tight, hot, sticky cunt. You freely moaned out your pleasure, even after you both heard footsteps not far away. You two pleased each other openly, unashamedly, tirelessly. You glanced to your left to find a man with silver strands in his brown hair, standing not far away, his hand over his crotch, his eyes on you both. You nudged Greg to look up. He saw the man, who stopped his movements when Greg's blue eyes met his gray ones. Greg winked and said, “Enjoy! Don't forget to rate us five stars,” before he went back to devouring your tits. He aggressively suckled them, twisting your nipples with his teeth or fingers. Your one hand pleased him. With the other, you beckoned the voyeur with a come hither gesture. He shyly knelt beside you. When Greg felt his presence, he kissed your neck. “Go ahead, dōnītsos. Suck him off.”

And you did. You took the voyeur in your mouth till the leaking head reached your throat (he was quite big) and hollowed out your cheeks. The man dropped to his knees, his head thrown back. His fingers fisted your hair and he fucked your mouth. Just as Greg's fingers made you cum, the man slipped out and came all over your face and tits. Greg gently licked you clean and kissed you, letting you taste another man's cum. By the time he crawled over your lips and slipped his own hard shaft inside your mouth, the voyeur had thanked you and left.

Greg was gentle with you. His one hand cupped the back of your head to lift it a little, to make it easier for you to suck him without a pillow. His other hand massaged your throat, to help you relax, as his girth was much wider than the voyeur from minutes ago. You slipped your tongue under his foreskin. He hissed and threw his head back, his eyes closed and his teeth sinking into his lip. Your tongue dragged up and down his vein, before you gently sucked on his balls; heavy, fat, and bursting. When you nibbled him, he growled and told you to get him back inside your throat. The moment you did, he came with your name on his lips. You swallowed all he released down your throat to the best of your abilities. Some of his cum dribbled down your chin, which you licked once you had swallowed all you could.

“How do I taste?” he asked.

You let him know with a kiss, sloppy and slobbery. His cum and both your saliva dribbled down your chins. He licked you as you licked him, like cats smearing tongues all over their mates. Both your faces wet and sticky, his tiny stubbles gave you delicious burns on your cheeks. You started to laugh when, behind your closed lids, you pictured yourself tangled in his arms, how the squelches of your coupling would sound to an outsider, either appealing or appalling. Once you started laughing, he wasn't far behind.

“How did I do for our first time?” he asked.

“A++. Your tongue and fingers can do magic. You almost made me forget the best sex I ever had. A one night stand in Vegas.”

He pulled away and laughed. “What?”

You told him how, earlier this year, before you met him, your mama won the first prize of a raffles at a staff potluck party in her kindergarten. A 3-day-3-night trip to Vegas for two. You gave one of the two plane tickets to one of your favorite clients of your catering business, but he died before he could use the ticket. You couldn’t get it back, because his obnoxious neighbor stole it. So, you used the spare one to go to Vegas by yourself. You were in your slut mode, after sending Darren to rehab, and having to watch your ex and your crush hang onto each other's words and arms. You were lonely, so lonely, that you decided to have a drunken one night stand on the last night of the trip. You smoked weeds, drank a lot of cocktails, and fucked someone there.

“I don't remember his face or name. Just his hair. Blond. That's it.”

“How can someone you don’t know the name of, or remember how he looks, be the best sex of your life? I don’t buy it.” He crossed his arms petulantly.

You shrugged. “I wish I could’ve stayed. I’d love to have a round two.”

He scowled at the ground. “I don’t like not being the best fuck of your life.”

You kissed him, until he smiled and his dimples appeared. You licked the dents on his chubby cheeks. “Is my sun jealous?” You rubbed your nose over his stubble. “You're so cute when you're green, I love it. Baby boy, I was drunk and in my post-breakup whore mode. If I'm denied sex, I imbibe. It happens. Don't worry about it.” You explained to him how, after a bad break-up, you tended to either enter a rebound (Ezra, Darren) or meaningless flings (too many to count). If neither, you ate or drank too much. Which was why you tended to enter serious relationships after much consideration.

“I can't be alone when I'm emotionally vulnerable. I need something or someone to lean on, to glue my broken pieces together, temporarily, but glue me back together no matter what.”

He tilted his forehead against yours. His eyes gazed at you with such adoration, you felt like a holy figure despite your confession about your whore modes. “I too had a slut era after Nelly. A whore era, a glutton era, a drunk era. I guess, birds of a feather flock together.”

You smiled softly. “Like calls to like.”

“Like answers to like.”

When you returned home half an hour later, you were in for a surprise. The voyeur from the park sat in the living room, across from Mrs. Teanan and Edmond. As soon as Mrs. Teanan's eyes fell on you and your clothes, the mirth on her face dimmed a little. The park's voyeur had his mouth fall open for a second. Mrs. Teanan didn't notice. Edmond did. He hummed and narrowed his eye. Mrs. Teanan made the introduction.

“This is Bryndon, Ormund's cousin.”

Greg lifted an eyebrow, still confused.

His mum sighed. “He's a distant uncle of yours from my side.”

A mischievous smile crept onto his lips. You went to put away your tote and change into proper clothes, while your boyfriend hung around.

“You really didn't know who he was?” you asked with a giggle.

He laughed. “As Mum said, he's a distant uncle. Third or fourth cousin of hers, I don't know.” He wrapped his arms around you.

“It's not incest since I didn't touch him.”

“You did eat some of his bodily fluids…”

You both giggled. “If Mum learned what happened, she'd be scandalous.”

“Do you think he knew who you were?”

“Doubt it. Her side of the family can be a bit uptight. Samantha was the first promiscuous one.” He told you how Samantha was first married to Ormund Hightower, Lyonel Hightower's father and Mrs. Teanan's cousin. Then, Ormund died from a heart attack (this part worried you) and Lyonel, two years younger than Samantha with a massive crush on her, pursued her. She only agreed to date him after he promised not to join the Kingsguard.

“What's that?” You put on your apron and Greg followed you out into the kitchen.

“A special group of bodyguards for our king or queen. They're not allowed to own properties, get married, or have kids.”

“Warrior nuns, more like.”

You sent him to his room to get changed, while you prepared refreshments for the guest. You could hear them talk. Apparently, Otto Hightower, Mrs. Teanan's father and Greg's grandfather, wished to visit his grandchildren soon. You remembered the severe look on the old man's face from the few photos Greg had of him. If his daughter showed such open disapproval toward your relationship with Greg, you could imagine a viper poised to strike when you pictured Otto Hightower. You only hoped that by then, your relationship with Greg would be more developed than it was now, as strong as a stag with large antlers than a newborn fawn learning to walk.

After you prepared some peach and raspberry sun tea, with summer berry pudding and ambrosia salad (Helena's favorite that you made almost everyday), you made your way to the living room. You paused in the hallway when you heard Bryndon asking Mrs. Teanan about the statue in the park across the street.

“This couple from a medieval painting or something,” Bryndon finished his question.

“My oldest had commissioned it,” his cousin said.

This was news to you. Greg had that statue made? Why did he never mention this to you before?

Mrs. Teanan continued. “It's in memory of Nelly. Hellelil and Hildebrand, from the painting, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs. She was a Danish princess and he was her sworn guard. My son thinks it embodies the essence of his and Nelly's love story.”

“His fiancée?” Bryndon asked. “The same one who died in Italy from COVID? The one he sang those songs for at the radio stations?”

This felt like an assault on your autistic senses. So much information. Greg made that statue for his fiancée? He sang for her on radio stations? Was it in Westeros?

“I still remember that,” Bryndon continued, laughing. “Never thought my philandering nephew would fall for someone, let alone a woman neither from the nobility nor from Westeros. After his stunt, the whole country knew about his feelings for her. For someone like his stature to do something like this, a grand gesture of love? He inspired a generation of lovesick Romeos. I remember two songs by Westlife, My Love and If I Let You Go.”

Edmond hummed. “He did all that to win her back after he cheated on her. He was desperate.”

“But she was perfect for him,” Mrs. Teanan insisted. “They were a match made in heaven. Even though she was no Westerosi or noblewoman. Her family background was stellar. Her looks and successful career made her all the more eligible. She straightened him up in a flash. In her, my son found his match.”

“Indeed, indeed,” Bryndon said. “It's a great gesture to commemorate the love of your life. Sad that their story ended in such a tragedy.”

“And now he's dating a floozy,” Edmond said flippantly.

You narrowed your eyes. Your grip on the tray tightened.

Mrs. Teanan chided her second son. “We do not use such language to describe any woman, son. Remember, every woman is an image of the Mother... to be spoken of with reverence.”

The who? You didn't know. Mrs. Teanan continued. “As I was saying, Nelly was perfect for him. He mourned her deeply. He still does.”

“His current girlfriend…” Bryndon began.

“A rebound, nothing else,” Edmond quipped. “Don't take her seriously.”

Something pinched your insides. Of course, Nelly was perfect for Greg, not you, never you. You'd never hold a candle to her. Nelly was to Greg what Meghan was to Harry.

You composed yourself, stuffing down your feelings as deeply inside you as the Mariana trench. The moment you entered the room, Bryndon jumped to his feet, then plopped back down, his face red as beetroot juice.

Chapter Text

Summer Solstice/National Kouign-amann Day, 2024

Since Bryndon was on a Mediterranean diet due to the heart problems in his family, you made dishes you learned from growing up next to Etaf's family. While the rest of Greg's family ate falafel over harissa couscous, tabbouleh and fattoush salads, and pita slices dipped in baba ganoush and hummus, you and Greg (and Helena) ate in the kitchen, away from the rest of the family. Mrs. Teanan vastly disapproved, probably blaming you for the breaking of her family. You didn't care. For the three of you, you made musakhan (baked spiced chicken served over taboon flatbread) and awameh (deep-fried donut holes). After the dining table emptied out, you went to collect the plates. When you came back to the kitchen, you found Greg and his uncle whispering to each other. They stopped once they spotted you. His uncle averted your gaze and left. When you asked your boyfriend what he was up to, he smirked.

“Uncle Bryn will sleep in my room. I'll stay with you tonight.”

“Don't you always.”

He pulled you closer and nibbled on your earlobe. “He asked me if he could visit us after midnight.”

You smirked. “Can he?”

“Ball's in your court.”

“Oh, I'll have balls in my court tonight, all right.”

Greg went to brush his teeth and put on his night clothes in his room. You had just settled under your duvet when the door opened, and in stepped the silverfox uncle.

You laughed. “Punctual you Hightower lots are.” You made no move to welcome him, so he sat at the foot of the bed. “Make yourself comfortable. Your nephew will be here soon.”

“You'll wait for him?”

“I don't do anything sexual without him. Whatever I do, he joins in. Whatever he finds, I climb in. That's our deal.”

He asked more about you. Where you were born. If you'd ever been to Westeros. How long you had been working for Greg and his family. How old you were and how much you studied.

Greg came ten minutes of small talks later. His face lit up as soon as he saw his uncle and girlfriend in bed. You folded over the duvet and patted the spot next to you. Your boyfriend climbed in and snuggled up to you. His sneaky soft fingers tugged down your loose shorts.

His uncle cocked his head. “Where…”

You tilted your head to your right, your front facing the wall next to the bathroom door. Bryndon knelt on the bed before you and pulled down his boxers. Greg's fingers took off your shorts. He groped your ass with one hand and your tits with the other. Bryndon's fingers hesitantly pulled out his shaft.

You took initiative and caressed his thighs. “It's okay. We're all consenting adults here.”

Greg laughed. His uncle lifted a brow. “You have a snarky little mouth, don't you?”

Greg toyed with your left nipple. “The pottiest mouth I've ever found in a girl.”

“In that case, let me clean you up.” Bryndon cupped your chin and lifted your face to his leaky head. You gave it kitten licks, your eyes on him. Greg's fingers slipped between your legs and he began to rub your nub. You still had a bit of leftover sensitivity from wearing the clit clip for so long. You shuddered when Greg's fingers pinched your bud.

“Relax, dōnītsos. We got you. I got you,” he whispered.

His uncle's fingers grabbed a fistful of your hair and tugged you forward, to put all of him in your mouth. You took him in until your nose pressed against the soft, trimmed dark hair. You breathed through your nose and relaxed your throat. It had taken you tons of practice to perfect your gag reflex, mostly thanks to your Dom, Ezra, who patiently taught you all you knew. Your hand cupped Bryndon's heavy balls and gently squeezed. He cursed.
Greg, on his part, had gotten you wet with his touch. His fingers easily slipped in and out of your sticky wet cunt. He gathered all your juice and spread them to your puckered hole. You inhaled sharply. You had only let people touch you there a handful of times. Nobody had ever put their cocks or tongues in there, only fingers and toys. It was a privilege only Etaf and Ezra had. Not even Levy, who you dated for twenty-one months, got anywhere near it. Greg was moving fast and it made you panic.

Bryndon stroked your cheeks and throat. You continued sucking him off but you tensed up when Greg kept fingering your back hole.

You popped Bryndon off your mouth and stopped your boyfriend. “Not tonight, please?”

His eyes widened. When he apologized, you assured him that you weren't offended and gave him kisses on his forehead, then his lips, lastly on both cheeks. You went back to your previous task. Greg asked if he could touch your pussy. You nodded, your mouth full of Bryndon's cock. The older man threw his head back and sighed. You began to go faster, as did Greg's fingers inside your cunt and on your bud. His other hand toyed with your hardened nipples. You freed one hand and fumbled for Greg's dick. As if he could sense what you were looking for, he shoved down his boxers and guided your hand to him. Once you began pleasing him, he swung one leg over your hip and humped into your fingers, cupped like a ring. The sounds inside the room were lewd: Greg's moans getting louder and louder, Bryndon's moans muffled as he bit his lip, and the slick squelch of wet flesh against wet flesh, of licking and sucking and spreading wetness and rubbing up and down and pumping in and out. Pretty soon, Greg was chanting your name and Bryndon was biting his hand to not be vocal. He pulled out of your mouth, as did Greg's fingers from inside you. They surrounded your head and came all over your face. Over your eyelids. Over your nose and lips and cheeks and forehead. Some drops landed on your neck and ears. You laughed without care, your face heated up under the thick, hot cum. Bryndon took your hand that you used on him and kissed it deeply. He was about to swipe a finger over your facial, when Greg stopped him.

“My girl, mine to clean up.”

Bryndon laughed and told his nephew to hold on to you. “Such a lovely girl.” He cleaned himself up in your bathroom and sneaked out.

Once the door closed, Greg crouched between your legs. He ate you so well, the slop-slop-slop of his wet tongue lapping up your soaked slit. His soft fingers slipped in and out of you. His tongue licked bottom to top, strip after strip from your cunt to your clit. His tongue tip poked at your bud. His lips clamped on it and pulled it with his teeth. At last, he slipped his tongue in your pussy, moving it around until he found your sensitive spot. Just then, his top row of teeth and lip came down hard and abruptly on your swollen pearl. With a scream of his name, you flooded his face with a torrent of your juice. You threw your head back, your thighs crushing his head, your nails digging into your pillows, as you came for the second time that night. He kept his assaults on your clit and sensitive spot, merciless and determined to prolong your release.

Once you came down from the heavens, Greg crawled up your body and licked all the sticky cum over your face. He kissed you, his tongue offering you all it had collected, his tithe to you, his Queen: the cum of two men and one woman in the throes of pleasure and passion. You gladly tasted and swallowed all he gave you and more. You played tonsil tennis until you needed air more than each other's fleshy mouth and saliva.

“Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou…” you mumbled incoherently. Your hands cupped his face. You sloppily kissed him again and again.

He brushed his cheeks with yours. “Anything for my dōnītsos. My sweetest, tastiest buttercup.”

You opened your eyes and met his blue gaze. “Do you mean that?”

He nodded.

You took off both your shirts. When he saw you trying to take off his boxers, he realized where this was going.

“Not tonight, please.”

You stopped at once. “Why?”

He flopped beside you and held you close. “I don't want to infect you.”

“Greggy…”

“No, listen. It hasn't even been a month since I got the STD. I'm not taking any chances.”

“You had sex with Bethany.”

“With condoms. With you... I don't want any barriers between us…”

“You fucked my mouth.”

He looked away.

You lightly spanked his ass. To your delight, they jiggled. The action shocked him so much, he was speechless for a few minutes.

“Do you like it, my Sun?” you asked.

“I do, I do, Mommy,” he whined.

“Tell me how much you want it.”

“I want it, Mommy, I want it so much. Please, please, please give it to me, Mommy.”

You stroked his lips, the bottom one sticking out, his eyes teary. You knelt on the bed. He did the same when you ordered him to mimic you. Once both of you were naked and facing each other, you spanked his ass. He inhaled sharply and gasped when you kept spanking him. His arms coiled around your torso. He took one of your tits in his mouth and suckled you, while you spanked him. Every time you slapped his soft ass a little too hard, his teeth sank into your flesh. After fourteen spanks, you stopped. He whimpered when you touched his inflamed cheeks. You untangled yourself and fetched the aloe gel you always kept nearby for this kind of foreplay. You spread a generous amount on his ass. He hissed, eyes squeezed shut, and sighed. He suckled your other tit in his mouth, his arms around you.

“Do it to me now.”

His eyes widened. “Mommy?”

“Spank me, baby boy.”

He hesitated. “Are you sure? I don't wanna hurt my Mommy.”

“You won't, you won't. Mommy wants this, my Sun. Mommy needs you. Needs your soft hands spanking the hell out of her ass. Come on, baby, give it to me. Don't you want your Mommy to be happy?”

He bit his lips.

“Baby boy, Mommy is so horny. You'll make her cum this way. You'll do anything to make Mommy happy, won't you?”

“Anything for you, Mommy, anything.”

You hugged him tightly as he spanked you. You told him to do it harder and louder. He obeyed you, obeyed his dear Mommy, like a good little boy. As you told him this over and over, his spanks got louder and harder and faster. You stuffed your face in the crook of his neck and counted aloud. After the fourteenth spank, you slumped against his hold. His tender touches on your inflamed skin made you nibble on his neck. “Such a good boy. Mommy is happy. Mommy is proud of you. You're such a good boy.”
You asked him to drag his nails down your sensitive ass, pinch you hard, and keep his nails sunk into your flesh for a long time. The moment he spread the soothing gel on your ass, you came for the third time tonight. He spat in your gaping mouth like you told him to, then hugged you tightly. Your soul momentarily left your shell and watched you two cling to each other, like wisterias around a tree, choking the life out of them with their strangleholds. Your head was thrown back, your face contorted from so much pleasure, it seemed as if you were in pain, your misty eyes up on the ceiling, your toes curling and curling until it hurt. Greg hugged you until not one inch of your bodies weren't touching and humping. He held you close as if the world had tilted off kilter and you'd slip through his grasp if he didn't hold on to you. When you returned to your body and swallowed his spit, he licked your tears, sweat, snot, and drool down your face. Your voice hoarse, you had only ever cried like this from your first orgasm with Etaf. Your throat was so sore and dry, neither your nor Greg's spit could satisfy. Your hands grabbed his face and kissed him, still sobbing from the intensity of the orgasm.

“Did I make Mommy happy?” he asked nervously. “Or did I hurt Mommy?”

You shook your head and hugged him tighter. He kissed from your collarbones down to your tits, suckling each of them.“Why are you so scared to fuck me, baby boy?”

He sniffled. “It hurt a lot when it happened to me. I don't want my Mommy to go through it.”

“What about Bethany?”

“I told you. I don't care about her. I want you. Only you.”

You pulled away to look at him. “Really, only me?”

He nodded, his eyes on your tits, two soft pink spots on his pale face. “Only you. Say it back, Mommy.”

“I want you too, baby boy.”

“Again, Mommy.”

And you did. You repeated it until it became a tongue twister and he finally let you put his cock between your legs.

“Just rub yourself against me,” you said. “You won't hurt me. I trust you.”

He trembled and moaned when his cock, hard and leaking again, slipped under your wet cunt. You sighed in relief. You stayed still for some time, before he asked, “Can I move a little, Mommy?”

“Of course you can, baby boy.”

Excited, he moved in and out of your wet, sticky thighs. No matter how much he pulled out, his mushroom head stayed between them. You lightly scratched his back and arms. At one point, his head got stuck between your folds, his head kissing your clit. Helpless, he glanced at you. You gently guided him inside you. His eyes were wide and panicky. He whined, “Mommy!”

You cupped his face and kissed his forehead, then his lips, lastly his cheeks. You lapped up all his tears, drools, snots, and whimpers, as he kept himself inside you but dared not move.

“Mommy, I can't…” His bottom lip wobbled.

You tucked his hair behind his ears, and stroked your nose and lips all over his face. “It's okay, baby boy. Mommy understands. You can stay still. Let Mommy warm your cock and stuff her cunt full.”

You laid down on your sides, face-to-face, as he kept himself inside you.

“I feel so happy right now, dōnītsos, so happy. I remember this quote I read once.” He looked into your eyes. “Can I recite it to you like a poem, Mommy?”

You stroked his cheek. “Who is it by?”

“David Wojnarowicz. This American artist who died from AIDS in the 80s. Will you listen, Mommy? Everything he said is how I feel about you. And I gotta tell you this now that we finally had sex.” He inhaled. “The first time I read the quote, I thought about you and fucked myself with my hands.” He blushed. “I may have come on your clothes.”

You laughed. “That's so sweet, my boy. Mommy loves that. When did it happen?”

He rubbed his face to your palm, like a puppy sniffing and licking their master. “After our first kiss at the metro station. Can I tell you?”

“Yes, baby.” You stroked his cheek with your thumb, while the rest of your fingers cupped him under his jaw. He closed his eyes and began.

“When I put my hands
On your body
On your flesh
I feel the history of that body.
Not just the beginning
Of its forming in that distant lake
But all the way beyond its ending.
I feel the warmth and texture and
Simultaneously I see the flesh unwrap
From the layers of fat and disappear.
I see the fat disappear from the muscle.
I see the muscle disappearing
From around the organs and
Detaching itself from the bones.
I see the organs gradually fade
Into transparency leaving
A gleaming skeleton
Gleaming like ivory
That slowly resolves
Until it becomes dust.
I am consumed
In the sense of your weight,
The way your flesh occupies momentary space
The fullness of it beneath my palms.
I am amazed
At how perfectly your body fits
To the curves of my hands.
If I could attach our blood vessels
So we could become each other
I would.
If I could attach our blood vessels
In order to anchor you to the earth
To this present time
I would.
If I could open up your body
And slip inside your skin
And look out your eyes
And forever have my lips fused with yours
I would.
It makes me weep
To feel the history of your flesh
Beneath my hands in a time of so much loss.
It makes me weep
To feel the movement of your flesh
Beneath my palms as you twist
And turn over to one side to create
A series of gestures
To reach up around my neck
To draw me nearer.
All these memories will be lost
In time like tears in the rain.”

When he opened his eyes, he found freshly freed tear tracks down your face. Your breath shaky, you leaned over and kissed him, so that he could taste the saltwater of your body and learn what birthed them: his beautiful words, his beautiful voice, his beautiful self.

“You're so good to me, baby boy. What did I do to deserve you?” you said in a broken voice, broken from the pain of a love that only appeared now but not before, a love you greedily wanted since birth but fate only thought you deserved to have it at this moment.

“You tell me! I've been asking myself the same question ever since I met you.” He nuzzled his nose to yours. “Can I confess something?”

You let him wipe your tears. “Sure.”

“After you brought me here on Valentine's day, in the morning, I bribed this building's security to check out the CCTV footage. To make out your features clearly.”

“So, this is why the daytime doorman acted like he knew me when I first came to work for you.”

He smiled sheepishly. “I was drunk that night, so I thought I dreamed you up.”

“Not creepy at all!”

“I didn't look you up, only Etaf's show. The super overheard you talking to her on the phone. I bribed everyone who met you that night to tell me if they remember anything significant about you. Any clue to find you.”

“See?! Not creepy at all. You just stalked me, no biggie. You're lucky I'm in love with you, or else I'll be leaving your creepy chubby ass.” You slotted your body with his, his cock moving a little inside you. He moaned and held you still. “You're a poet, my love,” you whispered.

“It was David Wojnarowicz.”

“The way you recited it…” You sniffled.

“I'm gonna put your name down for a poetry slam contest.”

“What's that?”

You explained to him the rules of a poetry slam. The three-minute time limit, the ten seconds of grace period, the random selection of judges from the live audience, the sacrificial poet, and the master of ceremony.

“Etaf is going to be the emcee of a bad poetry slam contest in August, hosted by her radio station. On national bad poetry day. She asked me to be the sacrificial poet.”

“What’s that?”

“I'm gonna recite something and the random judges will score me between 1 to 10. Whatever mark I get will set the benchmark. Anything under my score will get you out of running for the prize.”

“So, a bad poem means…”

“You can fuck up as much as you want. The judging will be based on how much fuckery you did and whether your poems still made sense. Bonus points if your fuckery is the reason your poems made sense. So, you can commit plagiarism.” You brushed your smooth cheeks against his stubbles. The delicious friction sent a shudder down your spine.

“What's your fuckery?”

“I'm gonna recite my poem drunk as a skunk.”

“My Pepé Le Pew.”

“I'm your Penelope.”

“Can we dress up as Pepé Le Pew and Penelope Pussycat this Halloween? Our first together?”

You laughed. “Sure, why not. But maybe something else. I dressed up as Penelope last year while catering to this birthday party.” You told him about the party, where everyone loved your cake. It was a themed party and a last-minute addition was to dress up in costumes. So, you showed up one of the few leftovers you found in a shop, Penelope Pussycat.

“The Pepé Le Pew was sold out or I'd have given it to Darren. Anyway, in the middle of the party, a kid came up to me and told me my boyfriend was in pain. I thought Darren might've dropped. Turns out, a guest was dressed as Pepé Le Pew and…”

“He was jerking himself off in the bathroom?” He ducked his head.

You blinked. “That was you?!”

He pressed his lips and told you how he witnessed you defending the birthday girl's mom (Samantha’s daughter's classmate's mother) from the abusive dad. Then he ate your delicious lemony cake and it all made him hard for you. He had to relieve himself, or else the tights he was wearing would make his horniness obvious to the kids.

“We met even though we never met,” you wondered aloud. “You're such a whore. Jerking off at a kid's birthday party.”

He grinned. “I'm Pepé Le Pew, aren't I? So, what do you wanna dress...”

You pulled out a little, then pushed back in. His words died in his brain when his cockhead rested against your sensitive spot. “Cat got your tongue, fuckboy?” you asked.

He panted and pulled you closer. “Baby boy, call me your baby boy, Mommy.”

“That you are.”

You warmed his cock for half an hour before you slid out to pee. He followed you to the door and clung to your pinky, like a child to his mommy's apron strings. You kept the door ajar and held his hand, as you finished your job and washed yourself up. You wet a towel with warm water and brought him inside. You cleaned him up. He thanked you with the gentlest of kisses and the softest of words. You washed his face and hands, then led him back to bed. You slipped back under the duvet and let him hug you close.

The next morning, Mrs. Teanan accused you of cheating on her son.

Greg wasn't awake yet. You were making breakfast for your employers and their one guest. Helena was up early, sipping on pomegranate juice and FaceTiming her seven-year-old twins, who waved at you, the boy enthusiastically and the girl shyly, a lot like their mother and oldest uncle. You were almost done with the Shakshouka for Ronald and his uncle Bryndon, when Mrs. Teanan entered the kitchen, her glare on you palpable even to Helena, who often couldn't read the room. She ended the call and sipped on her juice, as her mother told you how she saw her distant cousin entering your room, naked above the chest and below the knees, while her son was in his own bathroom brushing his teeth. She didn't outright accuse you, simply questioned what on earth her cousin could want from you after midnight while her son, your boyfriend, was elsewhere.

You said nothing, simply served the Shakshouka and left the apartment. You made sure to slam the door behind you. You called Mabel. She immediately picked up on your mood and offered you refuge from your employers. You took the subway to Shore Boulevard, where your Bubbles welcomed you with her hug and a plate of your comfort cookies. You both listened to your Blossom's radio show. You laid your head on Mabel's lap and she brushed your uncombed hair into submission. When your phone buzzed, it was Mrs. Teanan. You texted, “Leave me the fuck alone!”, then switched on airplane mode.

“I'm so sorry, sweetie.” Mabel slipped behind you and hugged you close. Your tears soaked her pillow and she gently wiped them off. You soon fell asleep in her arms and woke up, an hour later, to a different set of arms around you. A man's arms, soft and warm and tight. You tried to twist yourself free but he wouldn't let go.

“I yelled at her for the first time in my life,” he said, his lips stuffed in the nape of your neck.

You sniffled. “She basically called me a whore.”

“I'm so sorry, dōnītsos.”

“Like I'm something horrible. Disgusting. Something beneath her.”

He hugged you tighter.

“They called my mama a whore like this. All the kids' moms behind our backs. All the people from the Alabaman town she came from. Her parents disowned her after she got pregnant.” Greg softly kissed your nape. You let him and continued. “A woman even said to my mama that my twin sisters' death was karma for being a homewrecker. The truth is,” and you twisted in his arms to face him, “my dad's widow is asexual and aromantic.”

“Like my sister.”

“Her parents tried to enforce correctional rape on her.” You rubbed your eyes with the heels of your palms. “My dad was her best friend. My grandmother helped that poor woman by getting her married to her own son. They agreed it would be a lavender marriage...”

“Like my older sister's...”

“Yeah. My father's wife knew all about us. She even met my mama the one time she came to the States. She gave them her blessing. The only reason she was reluctant to divorce my dad was because her family had disowned her when she married him against their will. Those bitches knew she did it to escape their clutches. Without my dad as her husband, as her protector, she feared it would expose her and her daughter to harassment from her family.” You looked at Greg. “My stepmom, if I can call her that, conceived my sister artificially to give my dad an heir. You can ask my mama and my sister about this. Though I've never met or spoken to my sister in my life.”

Greg kissed your forehead, then your lips, lastly your cheeks. “I promise you, buttercup, I'll never let anyone get away with slutshaming you again. I promise.”

“Thank you. I should confess. I was the other woman once. With Levy. I didn't know he was married. He was ten years older. My first rebound after Etaf. Not a day goes by when I don't regret it. I was desperate to have someone love me the way she did once. He was one of our first clients. An office party we catered to was where I met him. He wasn't wearing any rings, so I let him fuck me. A year and a half later, I learned he's married with three kids.” You gulped and looked away, the next part you were ashamed of. “I was two months pregnant. I aborted it. That drove him mad. His wife had left him and taken the kids. He stalked both of us. His wife was successful in getting a restraining order. I was the mistress, so I didn't get one at first.”
He rubbed his hand up and down your back, a silent signal for you to continue. If he was judging you, he didn't let it on.

“Levy got aggressive. He couldn't stalk his wife, so I was the replacement. He sent me rape threats. Death threats. He killed Etaf's cat...”

Greg inhaled sharply.

“Tawny. This beautiful Maine Coone who used to rub herself on my legs whenever I cooked fish.” You bawled now. You remembered Tawny. The kitty cat Etaf rescued from a shelter. You didn't particularly like cats since your mama had allergies, but you learned to bond with the cutie patootie. Then, one morning, you woke up to find her cleaved paws and tail inside a trash bag in your mailbox. You never recovered her body.

Greg hugged you tight. Your sobs shook the sofa-bed and echoed down the hall. He held you as long as you needed him. He let you unleash the grief. “She was the last loved one I lost after my dad and my sisters.”

He nodded. The four people you once told him that you had lost. Your father, Sture Sixten Gyldenløve. Your twin little sisters, Mina and Maya. Your best friend's beloved pet, Tawny, who you treated like your own child. You could only bury the paws that used to knead on your thighs every time you laid down for a nap after work. The paws that used to play with balls of yarn and onions. The paws that scratched and made you bleed the first time you tried to give her a bath. The tail that wrapped around you whenever you served her anchovies.

“I wrecked a home and she got punished. I wish it was done to me and not that poor little babygirl.”

Greg rocked you back and forth. Once you ran out of tears and hiccupped instead, he kissed all of you he could touch. You clung to him as he often clung to you whenever he was upset. You basked in this moment's warmth despite the pain throbbing inside you.

You returned that night but didn't give Mrs. Teanan any chance to apologize. You went to your room and Greg followed you. But not before he revealed to his family what happened last night, all the traumas his mother's words invited, and how disappointed and angry he felt toward her. He locked your door behind him and cuddled you to sleep.

A week later, Bryndon Hightower left for his country and Mrs. Teanan finally found the chance to apologize to you.

“I've been nothing but absolutely ghoulish to you. Horrible, awful, cruel.” She nursed her cup of coffee, her hair up in a bun, her eyes on you even though, you could tell, she wanted to avert your steely gaze. “I've been an absolute piece of shit, as my son called me that night. I'm very sorry for the pain I caused you.”

You sighed. “Forgive, not forget. That's one of the things my mama taught me. Thank you for the honest apology.”

She tried to reach for your hand but you pulled away before she could touch you. Her hand hovered in the air for a moment before she withdrew. “I'm sorry.”

“I just don't get it,” you said exasperatedly. “Why do you hate me? Is it because I'm a bastard? Is it because I'm from the working class and not rich like you? Is it because you still see me as the help? Because it all seems hypocritical if you take into account your feelings for your bodyguard.”

She tensed up. “What?”

“I've seen the way you looked at him in the photo album Greg stole from you, and the way he looks at you.”

She denied it with stuttering replies. You rolled your eyes and put two slices of bread in the toaster. “Denial is a river in Egypt, ma'am. Even your sons view him as the father they never got.”

She sat down and drank her coffee.

“Honestly, ma'am. Class division is so middle ages. You can love anyone you want. Even Edmond adores him. It's okay to have feelings for someone who isn't your groomer husband.”

Mrs. Teanan left the room. A sick sense of satisfaction unfurled inside you from rattling her up. Well, she did it to you first. Revenge was a dish you served with breakfast that day.

Mrs. Teanan avoided you for days until it was summer solstice and time for your quarterly blood donation.

“Blood donation?” Edmond asked, his brow raised.

You sat between his older siblings. Helena's belly had grown significantly this month, all thanks to your cooking that she absolutely adored.

“They pay me handsomely,” you said, “and I have plenty of that red liquid inside my body, so why not.”

“And you thought it was charity,” Edmond said to his mother, who blinked and looked at her food.

“I'd still like to come with you,” she mumbled.

“Suit yourself.”

Greg was coming with you obviously. Helena, though she couldn't donate due to her pregnancy, didn't want to stay home alone, since her mother, brothers, and sister-in-law were going. After breakfast, you selected what Greg would wear today, something you had been doing for months now. He preferred it if you chose his outfits for him.

Once everyone was ready, you all piled into Edmond's Cadillac Escalade. Because Helena's belly didn't allow her to squish herself to the rear seat, you switched with hers, earning a sad pout from your boyfriend, who switched seats with his littlest brother and sandwiched you with his mother to your right. Greg clung to your arm and laid his head on your chest. You softly chided him for not putting on his seatbelt, then put it on for him.

“How does he look at me?” Mrs. Teanan whispered to you.

“Who?” you asked, your fingers sunk inside Greg's hair, now growing past his shoulders.

“My... My bodyguard,” she hesitantly whispered.

“Like Hildebrand at Hellelil,” Greg said loudly.

“Like Tristan at Isolde,” Ronald said.

“Like Lancelot at Guinevere,” Helena said absentmindedly.

“Like Dante at Beatrice,” Alice said.

“Like Durran Godsgrief at Elenei,” Edmond said quietly.

“Like Sultan Suleiman at Hürrem,” you added at last.

“Who?”

“Seriously? Isn't Turkey your eastern neighbor? Y'all should know more about the most famous Ottoman empress than an average American like me. She was his slave before he freed her, let go of all the other girls in his harem, became monogamous, married her, and they had six kids.”

“Well, I can't have children anymore. Menopause.” At the silence and glances her way, she rectified, “Not that I want to have children with him.”

“Of course not, Mum,” Greg said amusedly.
Mrs. Teanan turned to her window to not face her children, her face as red as the Shakshouka her youngest loved. You and Greg high-fived.

“Stones will shatter, truths won't matter, what twelve has messed, by fourteen will be blessed,” Helena murmured, her gaze out the window, hands on her belly.

Edmond parked his car outside the donation center. You led the Teanans inside. As soon as you entered the lobby, a chorus of voices greeted you. You chortled and soaked in the warm welcome. The Teanans behind you stood dumbfounded. Even Edmond frowned in surprise.

One of the nurses ushered you in. “Our golden unicorn!” She was about to lead you to your chair when you paused and introduced the Teanans to the staff. “They're also here to donate.”

They received almost the same VIP treatment as you. After the questionnaire (Greg was AB+, Helena O+, Edmond B+, and Ronald A+), they were prepared for the blood transfusion. Only Helena sat by and watched it happen.

“Why were they calling you a golden unicorn?” Greg sat the closest to you. Mrs. Teanan held her youngest's hand, who shut his eyes when the needle pierced his skin. Helena blinked owlishly at Alice, who chatted about blood groups and vice versa.

“Oh, my blood group is Rh-null,” you said.

“What's that?”

“Well, remember the positives and negatives attached to your A, B, AB, and O groups? They're from another type of vital blood group called the Rhesus group. If you're positive, you have a certain type of protein attached to your blood. If negative, you don't have it. Before you do blood transfusion, you're supposed to know if you're positive or negative, to avoid some medical complications. Mine is null because mine is neither of those.”

“Only forty-four people in this world have it, including your girlfriend,” your nurse said.

“What does that mean?” Greg asked.

“It means we're the rarest blood group in the world,” you said.

“Only nine other donors are active around the world. Three Americans, including your girlfriend.” The nurse winked. “Which is why you get the VIP treatment!”

“Don't forget the free lunch at the diner across the street and $2000 to her account four times a year,” said another nurse who took Edmond's blood.

Greg blinked. “How many times do you donate?”

“Quarterly. Only on the solstices and equinoxes.”

“Why on those dates?”

“So that I can remember.”

Greg laced his fingers with yours and squeezed. “Muña, I don't like this.”

“My sun, what's wrong?” you asked softly.

“Only ten donors around the world?”

“Yeah?”

“Only forty-five people have this blood?”

“You just scored 100% on your math and memory test, genius,” Edmond quipped. You sent him a glare, as did their mother.

“Baby boy, what's wrong?” you whispered to your boyfriend.

His eyes became watery. His bottom lip pushed out and wobbled. “If you get hurt, you won't have blood to give you immediately.”

“Oh.” So that was what it was about.“Well, yes.”

He climbed onto your lap and wrapped his arms around you, tight as ivy on walls.

“Please, don't ever get hurt. Please, Muña.”

You patted his arm. Your lips searched for his, until you found them and tenderly kissed them. Your fingers gently scratched his scalp and untangled his hair. He needed a wash. “Baby boy, nothing will happen to Muña, I promise.”

“Really?”

You held up your pinky. He coiled his own around you. You sealed the promise with a kiss. “As long as I have you, I won't get hurt.”

“Then, I'll never let you go.”

You ruffled his hair and he rested his head over your breasts. You could feel his mother and brothers feeling embarrassed. You didn't care. Greg was anxious about your well-being. You felt touched. He remained on your lap until your blood had been drawn and taken away. You rubbed his back while his mother and brothers headed out. Alice was speaking to another nurse. Helena came up to you and patted her brother's head. He leaned into her touch.

“How far along are you, ma'am, if you don't mind my question?” your nurse asked.

Helena smiled serenely. “Seven. My brother's lucky number.”

“I'm about to have another nephew,” Greg said, his arms around you.

“You're so young,” your nurse said. “My apologies. I'm already a granny and have two granddaughters your age. They're just getting started with their lives. To see a youngster like you embracing motherhood so early on in life... I dunno, it does something to me. Makes me protective.”

Greg rolled his eyes. “This isn't her first rodeo. I already have a nephew and a niece. Seven-year-old twins. She had them when she was twenty.”

Your nurse's eyes widened. “No kidding! Your husband is a lucky man!”

Helena cleared her throat. “No husband.”

“Ah, I'm sorry. Your wife.”

“Not that either.”

“Artificial insemination,” you supplied.
Your nurse nodded in understanding. “If my mama learned about things like that, she'd faint. To take up another man's seeds inside your womb. A man not your own and you'll never meet.”

“I met mine. He's nice. He has the same blood group as me. O positive.” Helena beamed beatifically.

“Ah, yes. He gave his sperm for this one as well, didn't he? Nice chap.” Greg finally got off your lap. “Too bad your babies didn't get the blood group you thought they would.”

“What do you mean?” you asked.

“My nephew is A+, my niece B+.”

You sent Greg and Helena back to their mother. You asked your trusty nurse if something was as amiss as you felt. She gave you a chart of what blood groups children inherited from their parents. You thanked her and went to Alice, who was grabbing bottles of cranberry juice for her partner’s family. You told her what you learned so far.

“Are you sure, lovely?” she asked, not skeptically.

“My nurse gave me this chart.” You showed it to her. “If both parents have O positive, the kids would get the same blood group. But Helena's twins have A and B positives. Something is wrong here and you can feel it too, right?”

Alice handed you the bottles and fetched some chips and Oreos. “I know some people. I'll see what I can find out.”

You thanked her and joined her family out in the lobby. You fed Greg Oreos and he fed you lots of juice, even gave up half his bottle to you. Once you had finished your food and drinks, and rested long enough, you took them to the diner across the street for lunch. Your payment for this session was already sent to your bank account.

“You do this four times a year?” Edmond asked.

“Why not? I got this rare blood inside me and I thought, lemme cash on it while I still can.”

“Commendable.” He helped his pregnant sister to the only chair facing one of the colorful booths. You and Greg sat opposite her, while her mother and Alice sat to her right and left. The other two Teanan brothers flanked you and your boyfriend, Edmond to Greg's right and Ronald to your left. Once your server came, you asked for the Land and Sea Paella to be packed for takeout. “For my girlfriends,” you explained. For yourself, the usual dish: Heart Attack Sandwich. Mrs. Teanan asked your server about its contents.

“Three eggs,” the woman pointed out to Mrs. Teanan on the menu.

“Three eggs, ham, bacon, sausage, sliced cheese, with cheese fries…” The judgmental look in her eyes irritated Greg.

He groaned. “Mum, enough! Let us eat what we want. I don't want to eat any more grass like a sheep.”

“I just think the name tells you what it can give you.”

Your server was about to say something when you requested her to come back a little later.

After she left, you turned to Mrs. Teanan.
“Ma'am, I've been donating blood since I turned eighteen and my mama couldn't stop me. She has hemophobia, fear of blood. Anyway, I've donated to pretty much all the centers in this city. The one across the street is the best place I've been to so far and I have been coming to this diner since I turned twenty-five. This has always been the place where I eat my lunch. Because after you donate blood, you need food rich in iron. There are two types of iron, heme and non-heme. You find heme iron in proteins and non-heme in plants. Your body doesn't absorb all the iron the foods have though. You take in 30% of the heme and 10% of the non-heme iron from the food you eat. This is why I choose this sandwich almost every time I visit. Trust me, I know what I'm doing.”

Greg nuzzled your neck. “You're such a nerd, I love you for this, Muña.”

Mrs. Teanan met your eyes. “Remember what we talked about, my dear? About my mother?”

At the vulnerability in her eyes, you relented. Since her son earlier insisted you order for him the same things you order for yourself, you decided to change your order. For him and you, you got sofrito chicken with rice and pinto beans, and seafood omelets.

Greg pouted. “Dōnītsos, you promised we'll get the sandwich you always order!”

“Tell him, ma'am,” you told his mother.

“Tell me what?”

Mrs. Teanan rubbed her forehead before she narrated how, one Sunday when she was a little girl, she went with her mother, Lady Hightower, to pray at the private chapel on their property grounds. Nobody else was around, since the whole place was secure and within the perimeter. Even the priest was away to give them some privacy. Lady Hightower was lighting up some candles when she dropped them. A second later, her body crumpled next to the broken white sticks. Mrs. Teanan, a little girl back then, was rooted to the spot, baffled by the turn of the events. By the time she recovered, Lady Hightower was gone. She had to leave her mother behind to find the priest and everyone else, to alert them.

Her eyes welled up as she dabbed a napkin at them and narrated the sorrowful tale. Her big brown doe eyes, red and watery now, met her oldest son's blue ones, who gulped and looked down at his lap.

“I'm always worried, children. Heart disease runs on my side of the family. I just don't want anything to happen to any of you.”

Helena patted her mother's hand.

“We understand, Mother,” Edmond said.

Alice rubbed her partner's arm and he gently kissed her forehead in return. You pulled Greg closer and hugged him. He rested his head on your shoulder, his eyes on his mother.

“I'm sorry, Mum,” he mumbled.

Before she could say anything, the food arrived. Mrs. Teanan refrained from criticizing her daughter's pile of chocolate chip pancakes, French toast, and Belgian waffles with dream omelet and chicken tenders.

“She's expecting,” Mrs. Teanan mumbled. “She needs to eat.”

You were about to cut into your chicken half when Greg took away your cutlery. He cut your meat instead, to your exasperation.

“Baby boy, I won't get hurt.”

“I don't care. I'm not taking any chances with my Muña.” He speared a piece of chicken and held it to you.

You sighed. “This is why I never told my mama about my Rh-null blood group.”
Edmond raised a brow.

“Don't you dare!” You raised a finger in his direction.

He smirked and turned to his Reuben sandwich.

You bit into your forkful of chicken. Greg waited until you had finished your meal, before he let you use only a spoon and fork to feed him. Whenever you needed to use the knife, he'd pick it up and cut his own meat.

The menu had seven dessert items. You all picked one for each of you. Greg called dibs on the chocolate cake, while you called dibs on the red velvet.

After lunch, Edmond dropped you (and Greg, who refused to leave your side) off at Shore Boulevard. Etaf and Mabel welcomed you in. You handed over the paella, while Mabel brought in a tray of Kouign-amann (pronounced koon-yah-mahn), a Breton dessert, with a crispy exterior and soft interior.

“The most buttery pastry in the world.” Mabel served two slices of the golden-brown butter cakes that would put even croissants to shame. She began her lecture for newcomers. “Back in the 1860s, a town in Brittany had less flour than butter, so they made this. I followed the original recipe. 400 grams of butter, 300 grams of flour, and 300 grams of sugar.”

Greg's brows rose. “Dōnītsos, there's a heart attack sandwich and now, here's the heart attack cake.” He opted out of eating the dessert. Mabel didn't mind when she learned that heart attacks ran on his mother's side of the family. You kissed his head and thanked him for taking his mother's concerns seriously for once. In return, he shamelessly groped your tits. You didn't stop him. Your girlfriends didn't mind. They knew about his lactation kink and your participation in it. In fact, they left you with kouign-amann and some galactagogues, once Greg announced that it was time for his tiddy feeding and started to unbutton your shirt. The second Mabel closed the bedroom door behind her, Greg almost tore off the buttons. Since your bra was cupless (something he bought for you in dozens, to make it easy for his feeding), he immediately latched onto your right tit. You hissed and chided him.

“You said it yourself,” he said petulantly. “That I needed to suckle you eight times a day to make sure…”

He sucked your tits for half an hour before Etaf knocked on the door, saying both your phones had been buzzing non-stop for ten minutes now. Greg reluctantly let you go. You promised him more tiddy feeding once you got home and finished all your chores.

That never got to happen.

Once you crossed the threshold into his Gramercy apartment, you met a crowd of silver blonde heads, purple eyes, and strikingly handsome features. You recognized Greg's father, grandfather, his older sister and her uncle-husband, even his grandfather. An interracial elderly couple you didn't recognize sat by the window. They sported the same silver blonde hair and purple eyes, although the dark-skinned man's hair was up in locs, similar to a Black blond girl next to him. They all either sat on the couches or stood around. Their heads turned in your direction as soon as you and Greg entered, ushered in by Ronald.

“Greg, what's going on?” you asked.

His uncle/brother-in-law, who stood by the decorative fireplace, lifted an invisible eyebrow, the action so similar to Edmond's, you wondered if they could've been twins had there not been at least twenty years between them. They were definitely uncle and nephew.

“Who the fuck is Greg, little girl?” He stalked towards you. Greg tried to shove you behind him, as if his uncle were holding a sword in his hands to cut you down. You stood firm in your place. Instead, you halfway shielded your boyfriend, which earned a head-cocking from his uncle. “Don't you know who you're working for, who you're fucking, rinītsos?” He stood before you, toe to toe. You steeled your resolve to not flinch at his cruel gaze. “His name is Aegon Targaryen.”

“Prince Aegon Targaryen,” Otto Hightower corrected the blond man. He came to stand beside him and faced you. You had a feeling they both hated you. Nevertheless, you stood firm in the face of their hostile condescension and shielded your boyfriend as much as you could.

Then it hit you. Prince? Did he say Prince? You ignored the arrows of glares pointed at you and turned to your boyfriend. “Prince?”

Your boyfriend backed away. You pulled him closer. “What did he mean by Prince? Why are they calling you by that legendary King's name?”

He sighed. “That's my real name. Gregory A. Teanan is an anagram my brother made up for me.”

You blinked. “Aegon Targaryen, Gregory A. Teanan?” It all made sense, why his mother called him Aegon sometimes. “So, you're royalty?”

“Not just any royalty, girl,” his grandfather barked behind you. “He's the King's eldest son.” When you turned to him, he gestured to the elderly man sitting on the chaise lounge. His one functional eye was trained on his daughter, who sat beside him, her purple gaze on you.

“So, you lied about your identity?” you asked your boyfriend, a prince, apparently.

“I'm so sorry, dōnītsos. You know that we're very secretive about our monarchs. This is why I used an alias.” He took your hands. “Please, don't be mad at me. Are you mad at me?”

You bit your lip. This wasn't too bad, was it? So, he was a prince. Big deal! All it changed was his name and his whole fucking background. It made sense that he was royalty, since the Valyrians were either that or nobility. You used to think he must've been connected to the nobility. You didn't guess he was a whole fucking prince. That made his mother the Queen. Oh fuck, you used the f-word in front of a queen. You held a gun against another prince. You fucking slapped a prince! What was more important was that you fucked a prince. You had a prince's cock in your cunt, in your mouth, in your hand, especially when he was suffering from two STDs. You were undergoing induced lactation for a fucking prince!

No, you shook yourself inwardly. Greg, no, Aegon, he was still your boyfriend. The Mojo Jojo. The fuckboy. Your boyfriend. Your baby boy. The love of your life. If he lied, he had good reasons to hide his royal identity, not to catfish you. Why would a prince catfish you, a nobody? He had nothing to gain from it. Nah, anything he did was to continue a stupid tradition his ancestors had been upholding. He didn't lie to you out of malice. If the American press got a hold of this news, that the prince of a European country shrouded in secrecy was dating an Alabaman nobody, your normal life would be over. Oh God, your normal life. No, he did the right thing by hiding himself. You could forgive him for it. Unless he was like Prince Charles. Then, you had a problem.

“Dōnītsos? You're mad at me, aren't you?” His voice cracked at the end.

“It depends.”

“On?”

You inhaled, then exhaled. “Be honest, are you the crown prince or something like that? Like, do you want the cactus chair or not?”

He shook his head vehemently. “Absolutely not! Nuh-uh. I'm not the heir. My sister is. There she is! Rhaenyra Targaryen. The Princess of Dragonstone, like the Prince of Wales sort of thing.” He pointed at the stunning woman beside their father.

Every eye in the room watched you laugh and splay your fingers over your heart. “Oh thank fuck!”

Both Otto Hightower and your boyfriend's uncle blinked. You saw the one-eyed prince cock his head, standing to your left.

“What?” their uncle demanded.

You turned to him. “My man, I've seen Spencer. I've seen The Crown. I do not wanna be Princess fucking Diana 2.0, the ugly American version.” You pecked Greg, no, Aegon on the lips, who blinked as if he had just met a deity or something.

“You're not mad?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“Nah! So long as you don't stake a claim to that health hazard cactus chair, I'm all cool with your secret identity. In fact, you could be Princess Mia Thermopolis and I, Michael Moscovitz.” Both of you giggled.

Behind you, the two factions, the Greens and the Blacks, came to the same realization.

You were a key player to the dance of dragons now. You had Aegon all wrapped around your little pinky. You could essentially make him the King if you wanted, or pave the way to the throne easier to tread for his sister.

You were a central cog to the machine and you didn't know it. Not yet. Not yet.

Chapter Text

National Kissing Day, 2024

And just like that, as abruptly as the Alabaman twisters that often hit your mama's parents' farm, your boyfriend's whole family up and left in one night. Not the building, unfortunately. They simply moved out of his apartment and settled inside the six others they had apparently rented in the same building. No matter, beggars couldn't be choosers. As soon as his mother and siblings rolled out the last of their luggage through the front door, you said your goodbyes (temporarily) and shut the door behind them. And as suddenly as the twisters attacked the Alabamans, you jumped on Greg, no, Aegon.

“You lied to me.” You pinned him to the wall of the foyer, his back to your chest. He cried out, followed by the sluttiest of moans, as you humped up and down his body. “You said your name is Greg, princeling. You lied to your Mommy. You lied!”

He whimpered. “Technically, you read my alias from my social security card, Mommy.”

You spanked his ass so hard, despite being clothed, he felt the shape of your fingers settling in. “Talking back, are we? That earns you punishment. Count till fourteen, baby boy.” You spanked him and he counted to fourteen on each ass. “Naughty little boy.” You grabbed ahold of his hair and pulled his head back, his neck bending backward. “Nothing inside that big ass head.” You kissed his temple, then down his profile. Deep kisses that left trails of your spit on his skin. He trembled, putty in your hands. “Compared to most men in your family, you're so short. Petite. Tiniest whore I've ever fucked.” You took his lobe between your teeth. His breathing picked up, literally panting with the tip of his tongue poked out of his mouth. “I should fuck the lies out of you. Would you like that, you nasty little slut?”

“Yes, Mommy, please, fuck me!” His nails dug into the wallpaper and left crescent dents on it.

You trailed your lips down and licked the junction of his shoulder and neck. You sucked on it, until a beautiful love bite bloomed on his pale, soft skin. Your hands, rubbing his ass so far, unzipped his pants. He held his breath as you pulled out his cock, now hard and leaking. You pinched the soft head and he almost jumped away. You lightly scraped your nails up and down his vein that throbbed under the thin foreskin. You slipped your thumb inside. He almost choked out his excitement. You dipped and dragged your thumb by the nail. His pants dropped and gathered around his ankles. Your one hand wrapped around his cock, you rid him of all his clothes. You lightly slapped his already inflamed ass. He bit his lip as you caressed the heated skin. “Tiny little baby boy. Lying to his Mommy about who he is, huh? Mommy knows who he is. He's the dirtiest little whore in the world. Aren't you, boy?” You held his excited cock in one hand and gently slapped it with the other. He moaned and jumped a little. Your right hand played with his shaft, while your left cupped his heavy, fat balls. You pinched and pulled at the skin between them.

He mewled out, “Mommy,” pathetically. His tip leaked more precum and stained your fingers.

You lifted your glistening digits. He sucked and licked them as if they were creamsicles. You thrust your fingers in and out, while your other hand, shaped like an O, stroked his cock up and down. The mirroring gestures made him tremble deliciously in your hold. He thrust his hips in and out of your fingers, and hollowed his mouth to suck your other digits. You added fuel to the fire by humping him from behind. His inflamed ass cheeks you grinded with your rough jeans and cold belt buckles. He hissed and thrust them out. “More, Mommy, please! Harder!”

You kissed his shoulder and he threw his head back. Your wet fingers you wrapped around his neck and squeezed. “Cum for me, baby boy. Cum for Mommy.”

He obeyed with a scream of your name. He had never said your real name during sex. You were so surprised, you almost pulled away. His hands shot out and wrapped them around you. His splayed fingers clung to your body as he rode out his euphoric release.

Once he calmed down, he turned and kissed you deeply. The sudden action stunned you for a minute, before you kissed back. His hands cupped the back of his head to deepen the kiss. He tenderly kissed your forehead, a peck on your lips, then two sloppy kisses on your cheeks. “You're the bestest, dōnītsos.”

You rubbed your cheeks with his own. “Strip me, my love.” When he did, you knelt before him and took him in your mouth.

He trembled inside your plush, wet, hot mouth. “Mommy…”

You gave kitten licks to the remaining drops of cum on his head. He ended the little gap and pushed himself in your mouth. Your tongue licked him up and down. Equal attention you gave to both his head and his base, where little silver hair curled up. You kissed him there devotedly, the short strands soft, as if the fuzzy head of a newborn.

His fingers fisted your hair. He pulled down your ponytail and lightly scratched your scalp. His hips thrust into your mouth, whose slick, warm walls sucked him in. You gagged a bit and pulled out. A trail of his precum and your saliva connected you two. Your eyes never once strayed from his purple ones. Purple, not blue, a color he got from frequently wearing contacts around you, a knowledge that both bugged you (how could he wear them all day long, didn't they irritate his eyes?) and endeared him to you (poor sweet baby boy).

Now, as you looked into them and he looked back, his gaze glazed over as if he were sleepwalking or daydreaming. You brought down your teeth infinitesimally to scrape up and down his bulging, throbbing veins. He sank both hands into your hair and pushed himself in, till he touched your throat. You grabbed a handful of his inflamed ass and squeezed. Your toes curled and gripped the fluffy carpet. Tears inched out of your eyes. Still, you kept your gaze on him. When he saw the tears, he tried to pull out. You hugged his hips and kept him in, in, in for a whole minute before you let go. He would've knelt to check on you, had you not taken his balls in your mouth, one after the other. You sucked and nibbled on them. Your hand cupped and squeezed the other one as if honking it. He leaned on the wall behind you, caging you in, and breathlessly let out a stream of curses as strong and sudden as the one his cock almost shot out. You quickly took him back in. His thick white cum filled your mouth, an almost endless stream. You sucked him and swallowed his seeds. The glug-glug-glug of your sucking his cock and gulping down his cum echoed down the hall. Even after the last drop, you sucked him until he was semi-hard again.

“Mommy,” he mewled.

“Just one more, baby, please.” You stood on shaky legs. “One more,” and you hugged him, your lips down his ear, “inside my ass.”

He moaned out your name, your real name again. “For real?”

“Only two people have been in so far. I only let people I really like fuck my ass.” You kissed his cheek when his face broke into a sunny grin.

“Okay, Mommy.” He led you to his room. “On my bed, please. I missed having you there. Let's christen it, hmm?”

You sent him in and went to fetch two bottles of lubes and one of aloe gel from your dresser. In his room, he waited like an eager puppy. You chided him for sitting on his spanked ass before you could soothe them with your gel. You laid him on his stomach across your lap and massaged his soft, round, red cheeks with the gel. He ran his hands up and down your bare legs. Once you were done, you both knelt on the bed, face-to-face. You handed him the heated lube and uncapped the regular one. 

“Mommy, you sure?” he asked.

You kissed him. “I trust you, baby boy.”

You turned around and stuck your ass out to him. His soft fingers massaged you just above your cheeks. With his other hands, he squeezed the heated lube generously into your puckered hole.

“Talk to me, dōnītsos.” He leaned over you. His lubed middle finger circled your asshole. “Tell me what you want.”

The anticipation, similar to standing at the edge of a cliff, sent tickles to your soles. Your toes curled up. “Put it inside me.”

His finger slowly pushed in, inch by inch by inch. When he comfortably nestled inside, you let out a sigh. “Twirl it, twirl your finger, baby boy.”

He slowly moved it like a twister. His other hand squeezed more lube in you. He twirled until his finger loosened you up and got you used to its presence.

“Your middle finger next,” you told him in a husky voice.

He repeated the same process with a second, then a third finger up your ass. The whole time, he kissed up your back and neck, and fondled your tits. Your fingers clenched and fisted up the sheet, eyes closed, your forehead touching the bed. At last, when his three fingers formed a funnel, and lubed and loosened you up liberally, you lifted yourself and faced him.

“Mommy, don't get up. I can fuck you in that position.”

You shook your head, blissfully breathless. Both of you squeezed one last ample amount of lube and applied it on each other, him up your hole, you all over his shaft.

“Mommy wants to watch you fuck her ass, baby boy. I want you to see how much you please your Mommy.” You kissed his nose. “Would you like that?”

He eagerly nodded. “Anything Mommy wants, Mommy will get.” He lined himself up with your hole. “Ready?”

You wrapped your arms around his neck. He slowly pushed in.

“Tell me if it hurts.”

You looked into his purple eyes, like a circular garden of bloomed lavender, like an amethyst ring. How unique the color was. You had never met anyone with such regal eyes before. You had read on the internet that the Valyrians were rumored to be the only race in the world to possess the most purple-eyed people. But you had chalked it up as a rumor, since the country was so damn secretive. You cupped his cheek. Your thumb caressed his chiseled cheekbones and jawline, the tiniest blond stubble, his chubby cheeks, until your thumb tip stroked just under his left eye.

“Mommy?!” His worried tone burst your bubble. “Are you in pain?! You're crying!” He panicked and almost pulled out of you.

You cupped his face. “No, no, no, baby boy. Don't pull out. I'm not in pain. I'm just…” Eyes closed, you tilted your forehead against his. “I'm in awe of how breathtaking you are.”

Now, it was his turn to be teary eyed. “Really?”

“Look at you. So pretty. So cute. I love you so much. If you didn't love me back, I'd be embarrassed about how much I love you.”

He giggled through his tears. “You think I'm beautiful?”

“Sometimes I wanna turn into Hannibal Lecter and eat you right up. God, you're so fucking hot, it's insufferable. Like, I'm fucking a Greek god. You've got to be Apollo.”

His face flushed, you couldn't tell if it was because of your praise or because his cock was halfway inside you. “Mommy!”

“Fuck me, baby boy. Fuck me so good, I'll never forget this. Imprint your fucking cock in me like a key slotted in its lock.” You giggled giddily.

“Mommy, I love you! I love you! Please, never leave me.” He hiccupped and hugged you abruptly. The action pushed the rest of his cock inside you, faster than the pace he had set up. You almost croaked. When he realized what he had done, he stuttered out apologies, begged you not to leave him, and panicked over what he should do.

You pulled him closer, until your tits were squished with his own. “Hug me, baby boy. Hug me tight and stay still.”

He obeyed you at once. His arms were as tight around you as if giving you the Heimlich maneuver. You rested your chin on his shoulder and sucked on his earlobe. His cock inside you twitched.

“Tell me,” you whispered.

“Yes?”

“Why did you hide? Why did you lie?”

He sniffed you, his nose up and down your clammy neck. He licked up all your sweat. “A lot of customs in my country are outdated or weird or outright disgusting, like the incest among the Valyrians. We feared it would isolate us, get us ridiculed and ostracized. So, we keep to ourselves. Since the Valyrians are exclusively royalty and nobility, we have to hide more.”

“Your people can just, you know, abolish incest.”

He shook his head. “That would mean our unique features would get lost. Our silver hair. Our purple eyes. The blood of the dragon in our veins. All of it.”

“So, just to keep the genes intact, you're so secretive?”

“Crazy, I know. It's a common practice among the Westerosi nobles, especially the Valyrians, to have aliases to use outside Westeros. My name is Aegon Targaryen. I like it, because my namesake was this handsome conqueror. So, I asked Daeron, that's Ronald for you, to fashion me a name out of the letters of my true name. An anagram.”

“Gregory A. Teanan. What was the A for?”

“Aegon. Try as I might, I couldn't take it off. I love it.”

You licked behind his ear. He gasped and shuddered. That was a tickle point. You stored the information for later. “I love your name too. Both of them. My Greg. My Aegon. My baby boy.” A pause. “You're mine, right?”

He pulled away to look into your non-purple eyes. “Always.”

You allowed him to move a little. He fucked your asshole slowly, very slowly. He asked if he could finger your wet pussy. You let him. He asked if he could suckle on your hard nippled tits. You let him. If he asked to reach into your chest and chomp on your heart, you'd let him too. You were so drunkenly in love with him, you'd let him do anything to your body and you'd not mind.

Fuck, this was bad for you, you realized with his thumb on your swollen clit, his four fingers inside your sopping, hot cunt, his lips around your left tit, and his cock pumping in and out of your asshole. You cried out his real name, his full regal name, until your voice was hoarse and he was filling you up with his thick, sticky seeds.

“Mommy?” He clung to you. “Mommy, I'm scared.”

“Why?” You tried to catch your breath and wet your throat. He'd wrung you dry from just one fuck session.

“I'm scared, Mommy. Please, believe me. I love you so much, I'm scared this world will get jealous and take you away from me. They'll steal you from me.” He was panicking, while you were still reeling from your mind-blowing climax. “Mommy, promise me. Please, please, please don't ever leave me. Please, don't give them any chance to tear us apart. Please, Mommy, please. I need you so much.” His face flushed. Teardrops after teardrops rolled down his plump cheeks. His nose leaked too. “I can't live without you. I'll do anything you want me to. I'll do anything to make you stay.” His whole body was shaking, even as he was still inside you. His cum seeped out through the littlest cracks around your rim. He bit his lip and tried to stop his hiccups and stutters. “Pl-please, hold m-me, Mommy!” he choked out.

You carefully pulled him out of you and offered him one of your tits. He took it in his mouth and sucked as desperately as underwater divers and astronauts do for oxygen. He suckled you and suckled you, until the sudden spasms began to subside. You rocked him back and forth. You stroked up and down his body. He curled up on your lap, like a fetus inside a womb. You kissed his head and licked his face clean. You held him close, until his shivers and whimpers went away. He let go of your one tit for the other, to let blood circulate to the first one. You slowly coaxed him to lie down with you. With his permission, you put his flaccid cock inside your slippery cunt. After almost an hour of him suckling your breasts, and you holding him safe in your arms, his cock hardened inside you and he recovered his sanity.

“How do you feel, my love?” you asked softly, a kiss on his ear.

He looked up at you with a sad expression. “I'm pathetic, dōnītsos.”

“No. Never! You're amazing. I mean it.”

“I wish I wasn't selfish. I'd let you be with a real man, like my brother or uncle.”

“Well, one of them is a groomer and the other is Edward Cullen without fangs. Nah, I don't want them. I want you. Like it or not, you're stuck with me, princeling.”

He stuffed his face in your pillow, as you went to the bathroom to pee and wash yourself clean. You came back with a warm, wet towel and cleaned him too. You made him pee and wash his hands. Then, you both laid down.

“Tell me everything. A crash course, bullet points, anything. I need to be ready for whatever bullshit your family throws my way.”

He narrated to you what happened before he fled Westeros. After Nelly died, for a year his grandfather left him alone. Aegon was recovering from not only a broken heart, also from a body almost broken beyond repair. The nagging started once he recovered enough to move around in a wheelchair or with crutches. Otto Hightower brought up the succession issue during his own birthday dinner two years ago.

“Except, there was no issue technically. My older sister is the heir and that's it. But my mum fears for our lives ever since Rhaenyra's son gouged out Aemond's eyeball. Besides, my grandfather had always coveted the throne,” Aegon said.

Otto suggested the remarriage of his two oldest grandchildren.

You shook your head in disgust and disbelief. “Isn't Otto non-Valyrian? How can he advocate for incest?”

Aegon tucked you both with his duvet. “My grandfather would resort to cannibalism and genocide if it means he gets to either sit on the Iron Throne...”

“Cactus chair,” you said.

He laughed. “...or someone from his bloodline will sit on it, preferably one of his grandchildren. Since I'm the oldest...”

“He wants you to usurp your sister and become the King. God, our grandparents would be best friends.”

He took up your tit in his mouth. After suckling for a few minutes, he was ready to continue.

The nagging intensified last year, when Helaena decided to conceive another child. Already, to the people of Westeros, Jaehaerys and Jaehaera Targaryen were bastards, since they were born from artificial insemination, and their biological parents were neither married to each other nor did they conceive them via sexual intercourse. Rhaenyra’s faction, who, for years, battled Alicent’s faction fanning the rumor that Rhaenyra’s three eldest sons were bastards, found their counterattack when Helaena conceived her twins. Another similar pregnancy would intensify it. Nobody knew why she annulled her marriage with Aegon and conceived artificially, using sperm from a donor who wasn’t her brother. To gain an upper hand over Rhaenyra’s faction, Otto suggested remarrying Helaena and Aegon, so that they could pretend at least her third child was her brother-husband’s. When Otto suggested it, Helaena immediately rejected it. She’d not remarry her brother, let alone have sex with him, sex which was painful for her. Otto persuaded her by reminding her what Rhaenyra might do to Helaena’s children once the former took the Iron Throne, and if Rhaenyra wouldn’t do anything, it’d be Daemon, due to his passionate contempt of the TargTower siblings and their spawns. If Helaena married Aegon and he became the King, he could protect his sister’s children from anything. For her children’s safety, Helaena reluctantly agreed. But she had cold feet at the last moment and fled to Alys’ vacation home in Turkey.

“Rhaenyra is your father's first wife's only child, right?” you asked to make sure you were following.

“Yes, Aemma Arryn. She was half-Valyrian, died during a difficult childbirth where my dad forced cesarean on her.”

“That's so fucked up. Fucking hell, what was he, a fucking butcher? Ugly twat.” You punched your pillow a few times imagining the woman's belly being forcefully cut open to bring out her baby, a woman whose husband, the supposed love of her life, chose her unborn child over her. Then, you remembered he was Aegon's father. “Offense intended.”

He laughed. “Offense encouraged. I hate him too. I used to vie for his affection and praise the same way my grandfather vie for the Iron Throne...”

“Cactus chair.”

“Nelly weaned me out of it. This is why she means so much to me, dōnītsos. I'm sorry to praise my ex in front of you...”

You pressed a finger to his lips. “Praise away. That woman saved me a shit ton of time and energy I'd have to otherwise spend on you to fix you up. I'm rather using that to fuck your brains out.” You tucked his wayward strands behind his ear. “Don't feel bad. I don't mind if you still love her. Just don't still be in love with her, okay?” You sighed. “I don't ever wanna be anyone's rebound. It's a shitty place to be in, such an awful thing to do to someone. To be someone's rebound is like being the poor substitute. A consolation prize. You can't have them, so you're making do with me. I don't ever want to be used again, my love.” You met his glistening eyes. The confusion in them made you confess. “I was used as a rebound in high school. Twice. Once I started dating Etaf, my self-esteem healed a little. This is why I'm still friends with her. She brought me back to life. I'm grateful to her. So should you toward Nelly.”

He caressed your face gently, so gently, as if you were sugar spun sculpture. “What happened in high school?”

“Two boys used me to get their girlfriends jealous. One of them told me, after I got upset, that girls like me are only good for rebounds. Girls like me, bisexual, autistic, with daddy issues and abandonment issues, girls desperate for male validation. Man, was I like Cassie Howard and Jules Vaughn back then.” You told him how, after your disastrous first meeting with your Alabaman grandparents at thirteen, you began to dress in skimpy, short clothes. At fourteen, you sold your nudes to adults online. At fifteen, you hooked up with Xavier, a high school salutatorian who needed a date to his graduation party. He paid you handsomely for what happened later on. He was your first. After that, you worked as an escort for a year, out of rebellion toward your mama for bringing you to this world, for not aborting you as your grandma insinuated, even though abortions are a sin in her faith. The money you earned was good, meaning you didn't have to rely on your mama for things like lunch money, cab fees to discreet meeting locations, or slutty clothes and lingerie. You would've continued, had your mama not found your secret stash of money a day before your seventeenth birthday. That was the day you first bonded with her and the grand canyon between you lessened by half. It closed up some more after you got used as rebounds and dumped by two seniors in your junior year. Your mama bought you your first noise-canceling headphones and your life changed from then on.

“Then Etaf came,” Aegon said.

“She was always there. As a neighbor. As a lab partner. She became my best friend in senior year, my girlfriend during the summer before college. We both got accepted at Kingsborough and rented an apartment with Mabel. We dated until three years ago, when she said she was no longer in love with me and didn't want to lead me on. I let her go and never got her back.”

You met Levy Everett a week later and dated him for twenty-one months, until you found out about his wife and kids, and he found out you got an abortion. He stalked you, kidnapped and murdered Etaf's cat, and assaulted you. You got your restraining order and he got some time away in the orange jumpsuit.

“Then, I met Darren last year. I was never in love with him but I loved him.” He was gentle and sweet. When he became an alcoholic, you had to let him go. “Then, Etaf and Mabel got together. Now, here I am. That's all, folks.” You bit your lip. “No, wait. There's more.” This was something you never thought you'd tell another soul. Not even Etaf or your mama knew and they'd been in your life all your life, much longer than Aegon. But something about him made you wanna trust him and confess.

“Right after college, Etaf and I broke up for six months. I was emotionally and financially vulnerable. So, I became a live-in sub to a rich guy.”

Aegon sat up. “So, that's how you know so much about sex and housekeeping.”

You laughed. “Is that the reaction you got?”

“He's no longer in the picture, right?”

You nodded.

“Then, I don't care. What happened?”

You told him how, at twenty-one, jobless, penniless, and loveless, you worked at an exclusive BDSM club. A few weeks later, you met Ezra. Ezra Ebenezer, 45, your Dom for a hundred days. He paid you twenty-five thousand bucks per month. You easily paid off your student loan and saved several thousands for the future.

“So, lemme get this right.” Aegon began to count with his fingers. “You met your mama's parents when you were...”

“Thirteen.”

“They broke your heart by being nasty ass motherfuckers.”

You laughed.

“You sold your first nudes to adults online at fourteen. At fifteen, you got paid for being some loser's date to the prom and lost your virginity to him.”

“Xavier was nice. He asked me what I liked and actually made me cum.”

Aegon grimaced. “Moving on, at fifteen, you secretly worked as an escort for a year, until your mama caught you the day before you turned seventeen, thank the seven for that. Then, two of your bitch classmates used you to make their girlfriends jealous and one of them broke your heart by being a fucking cunt. You finally became best friends with Etaf in senior year and she became your girlfriend the summer before college. You dated through college but broke up for six months after graduation. You met Ezra and he was your Dom for four months. From him, you learned about sex and housekeeping.”

“Some added perks.”

“With what he gave you, you paid off your student loan. You and Etaf got back together, until three years ago. You dated Levy, your first rebound, a married man with kids. You dated for twenty-one months until you learned about his marriage and he learned about your abortion. He stalked and harassed you, killed Etaf's Maine Coone, and assaulted you. You finally got your restraining order. Then, you dated Darren last year and sent him to rehab when his alcoholism got worse. Etaf and Mabel got together. And now, here you are with me.”

You kissed his nose. “Aemond was right. Your memory is getting better.”

He pouted, then continued on with how he couldn't take his grandfather's pressure anymore and decided to run away.

“Aemond gave me a chase, of course. Mum told him to find me after I went missing from my wedding. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you, there was a wedding.”

“Don't worry. Your mum told me some time ago. Helaena left you first at the altar, right?”

“Yep. She took her kids and flew to Turkey with help from Alys. The moment they located her, I knew I had to run.”

Aemond and Criston found him in line to board a plane to Spain. Aemond wanted to drag him back home. Criston restrained the second prince to give Aegon time to board the plane to Spain, where he stayed with Criston's extended family. Soon, Aegon got in touch with Samantha, immigrated to the US, and bought his Gramercy apartment.

You remembered Ser Criston Cole, the dark-haired man with olive skin, Queen Alicent's personal bodyguard. He didn't come with his queen to the States before, because she left him to guard her twin grandchildren, who had now come to New York. “Criston really is your father. He let you escape.”

“I wish he was. He loves Mum and would make her happy. I don't care if we got him as a stepdad. Better than the one we're saddled with.”

When you wanted to know about the history of his family's current feud, he started from the beginning. Aemma Arryn was the Queen consort of King Viserys Targaryen. Their only child was Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen. Given how sexist the Westerosi society still was, Queen Aemma had to suffer multiple miscarriages and stillbirths until her death. The King made his only child, his daughter, the heir apparent.

“To prevent Uncle Daemon from taking the throne,” Aegon said.

“Good decision on his part.”

But the King wasn't as decrepit as he was now. So, he began to look for a new bride. His Prime Minister's teenage daughter would do. Alicent Hightower, fourteen-year-old lady-in-waiting of Rhaenyra, was married off to Viserys, almost triple her age.

“Grandsire sent her secretly to the King's room in her mother's clothes.”

You cringed. “Basically pimping off a child, his child. Bloody pig.”

Alicent and Rhaenyra's friendship, which bordered on a romance, soured more after Aegon was born a year later.

“Rhaenyra became openly hostile to us. According to the norms of Westeros, I was her rival. I remember on my second nameday...”

You raised an eyebrow.

“On my second birthday, my dad arranged a hunting party. Rhaenyra said she didn't like squealing pigs, that they sounded like children bawling, and looked right at me. Not long after, she came back covered in the blood of a boar she hunted.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!” You almost sat up. “That's fucking fucked-up. What the actual fuck! You were a fucking baby!” When he looked away, you gently untangled his hair. “How did you know she did that?”

“A video. My other uncle, Gwayne Hightower, filmed it. But everything irreparably fell apart after Rhaenyra went to a red light district with Daemon and began to sleep around with Criston.”

“Daddy Cole.”

“Mum questioned him about Rhaenyra's promiscuity. He used to be her personal bodyguard back then. He confessed that he slept with her.” But Alicent never told her dad. When Otto pressed about this topic, Rhaenyra requested the King to sack him. That was when Alicent began to see her old best friend as her new enemy, now that her three sons threatened her claim. Soon, Rhaenyra was married off to Laenor Velaryon. But she had three kids with Harwin Strong, the Lord Commander of King’s Landing, the capital of Westeros.

“Everyone could see they weren't Laenor's. No dark skin like him, no silver hair or purple eyes like us. Mum had a field day, adding fuel to the fiery rumor. Everyone saw the truth, but couldn't speak about it unless you wanted to die.”

“What a medieval load of crap.”

“If it's upsetting you...”

You shook your head. “I'm fine with your history. It's your backward country that's still stuck in the days of the Julian calendar.”

He looked away sheepishly.

“You guys still use the Julian calendar? Jesus Christ, you guys are from the middle ages.”

He continued with his messy family history. How Aegon and Aemond were forced by their parents to learn fencing and other stuff with Rhaenyra's sons. How Aegon and the two Velaryon boys bullied Aemond, who had intense equinophobia. Fear of horses.

“So what?” you asked.

“Being able to break a wild horse is one of the key requirements for the VHAGAR prize.”

“The what now?”

“Valyrian Heritance for Authentic Genealogical Affirmation Requirements, VHAGAR in short. Established by Queen Visenya Targaryen, sister-wife of Aegon Targaryen, our founder, our King Arthur.”

Aegon explained how, like bar and bat mitzvah, the Valyrian children had to undergo an initiation. Fulfill some skill requirements to be considered an eligible candidate for the VHAGAR prize. Having all of them checked off before your fourteenth birthday (when you become an adult in Westeros) proved that you were a true Valyrian. The first to check off all the requirements won the prize: access to the coveted one million golden dragons, the highest valued currency in Westeros. The prize lasted for ten years, which meant...

“Ten million gold coins? Are you fucking kidding me?”

Aegon booped your nose. “Focus, buttercup.”

Before he turned ten, Aemond, ever the overachiever, had fulfilled thirteen other requirements needed to win the VHAGAR prize. Except for the horse taming and riding skill. And not just any horses. You must be able to break a horse from the exclusive Ānogar Perzys breed.

“I read about them. Mercurial temperament. Will bite you and kick you if you approach them without caution.” You thought back to what you read about them in the one-paragraph Wikipedia article. “They're only bred and sold within the borders of Westeros, right?”

“Yep! Extremely loyal to their riders. Monogamous, you can say. They won't let anyone else care for them, ride them, hell, they won't even let anyone but their riders near them, or else you'll have your guts spilling out of you. Queen Visenya dubbed them Ānogar Perzys, meaning Blood Fire in High Valyrian, because our ancestors claimed the horses were dragons in disguise and we're the house of the dragon.”

“Pretentious.”

“Anyway, Aemond had his sights set on this particular horse that our late Aunt Laena tamed. A majestic mare. So had one of her daughters, Rhaena. Like Aemond, she was one requirement away from winning the VHAGAR prize. The previous victor was Aunt Laena, so Rhaena wanted to win the prize with her mother's mare, to honor her memories after she died from childbirth.”
Aemond was desperate. Hours after Laena Velaryon's funeral rites, Aemond sneaked into the stable and tamed the mare. Baela and Rhaena saw him from their cottage, and told Jace and Luke. They confronted Aemond, who bragged about it, especially to Rhaena, who recently lost her mother.

“What a little shit,” you said.

“Agreed. He was already mad at our nephews for bullying him. With him emerging as the victor, his pride swelled. He got arrogant. He called them bastards. The heated words led to fistfights. Four against one. Aemond gained the upper hand and was about to smash Jace's head with a rock, when Luke slashed his face and gouged out his eyeball with a pocket knife he got from Harwin. Aemond lost his eye. Mum went feral. What hurt the most was when our dad did nothing about it.”

“What do you mean?”

“He didn't punish Luke, or chided Rhaenyra, who asked for Aemond to be sharply questioned, euphemism for torture, mind you, because Aemond called her sons bastards.”

“Jesus! What a barbaric thing to ask for.”

“Things only went downhill. Mum took a knife herself and wanted to do to Luke what he did to her son.”

“Fucking hell, like that would solve anything!”

“Mum was emotional and humiliated, okay? Nobody was standing up for Aemond other than her, not even my grandsire. Not even our dad. Luke mutilated Aemond for life and got a slap on the wrist.”

“Hurting a little boy the same way won't solve anything. The real one to blame is your dad. He should've punished your nephew in a less severe way. Teach him that even accidents have consequences, for the sake of accountability.”

Aegon exhaled. “He could've taken away Luke's eligibility for the VHAGAR prize. Exile him for some time. Strip him of his title and inheritance, until he earns them back. Anything but taking away Luke's eye. But nope, he did nothing.”

“Not doing something is doing something, as my mama would say.”

Aegon stroked your face. You leaned further into his soft touch. He told you how his mum, in her attempt to gouge out Luke's eye for her son's, slashed Rhaenyra's arm. In the end, Aemond pacified his mum, telling her, “I may have lost an eye but I came out on top.”

That was how he won the VHAGAR prize. The money went to his bank account for ten years. Like the prudent child he was, he spent not one coin on anything, not even on a prosthetic eye. Instead, he strove to be the best at everything, be it history and philosophy, or fencing and horse riding. It was after he met Alys (yes, Alys, not Alice like you thought) when he first used his money. He got himself a prosthetic eye. He obtained an MBA degree. He founded the Vhagar Automobile, named after the prize that gave him independence and self-reliance, as well as the mare he tamed and named Vhagar that night. VHAGAR the prize and Vhagar the mare changed his life. Then, Alys helped him with her many connections across the country and the continent.

“Alys was her Nelly,” you said.

Aegon shook his head. “Floris Baratheon, his first love, would be his Nelly. She helped him process his trauma, and sent him to many shrinks. They broke up when they were no longer compatible. It happens. Now, I love my Nelly. She fixed my life, after all. But I love you just as much. Buttercup, you brought me back to life. Nelly was the rope I held on to but you were the one who pulled me through. You're my person, dōnītsos.”

He told you what happened after Aemond's injury. His mum got more paranoid and determined to get Aegon on the throne. They forced him to wed Helaena, who annulled the marriage, unconsummated, after two months when her endometriosis diagnosis came out and the impossibility for her to have painless sex became unavoidable. She couldn’t have children via sexual intercourse, and children born from artificial insemination or surrogacy were legally viewed as illegitimate in Westeros. So, as a fuck you to the sexist system, she conceived via artificial insemination as a single woman. By then, Aegon had met Nelly, his PR manager, and fell in love.

“Hellie knew we'd never be compatible. I mean, I love her like a big brother should love his little sister, and that's it. I never wanted to be her husband. That's gross and not my cup of tea.”

You squeezed his nose. “Good, because you're mine, baby boy. You were made for your Mommy. And who is your Mommy?”

“You are.” He took up one of your tits and gave a deep suck. You sighed and stroked his belly, his little paunch noticeable. Credits went to your cooking. The thought made you giddy with joy, that he wasn't the only one who affected your body (your tits), that you did it to him too. “And then you lost her.”

He nodded. “I lost Nelly. She was so patient with me. Like you. She fixed my fear of commitment. I actually wanted to be with her. Maybe not married instantly. But I wanted to be with her, however we can be together.”

“Why didn't you propose sooner?”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “I was stupid, dōnītsos. I thought I had all the time in the world. I was living my “happily ever after” with her. I took her for granted.”

You slowly put his mouth back on your tit. “I listened to Etaf's show.” He met your eyes expectantly. “I may have cried a little at the end of your story.” He laughed, his mouth still suckling. “I really rooted for you two.”

He let go and kissed you. “Thank you for telling me all about your past. You have such a colorful history. My grandfather will have a field day with it.”

You booped his nose. “Good thing it's out in the open now.”

He snuggled with you. “Can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“Can you do some of the BDSM stuff on me?”

You lifted his face by his chin. “Does my baby boy want his mommy to tie him up and spank him?”

His bottom lip pushed out. “Can you, Mommy? Please?”

You kissed his cheek. “We can visit a sex shop tomorrow if you want.”

“Um, can we get a dildo for me?”

“Sure. What size can you take through your backdoor?” you asked, absentmindedly stroking his paunch.

He blinked. “For real?”

“I don't think that's a size...”

“No, I...” He took a deep breath, then let it out. “You sure you wanna do it?”

“Why not? If it's something my partner would like to do, I can get behind it.” A mischievous smirk came on your lips. “Or get behind you, if you want.”

He laughed. “I can't believe you're real.”

“I can pinch you really hard to see if I am.” When you did pinch his ass and he yowled like a cat whose tail got caught in the door, you laughed. “Oh, look at that, I didn't vanish back into a magic lamp. Now, do you believe I'm real?”

He nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes, I'm so fucking glad you're real and you're mine.”
He went back to suckling your tit. You fell asleep soon.

The next morning, even though his family didn't reside in the same apartment, you had to prepare for a lot of stuff. Like facing the royalty who absolutely hated your gut (or tolerated you at their best). You ordered takeout from the same Harlem restaurant, the second one. While it took its time to arrive, you sent Aegon to shower. From online recipes, you made hush puppies and fried green tomatoes. As you both ate your lunch, you discussed the proposal his family presented last night.

“This is the first time they ever vacationed anywhere together,” he told you. Rhaenyra's family vacationed only with the Velaryons and the Celtigars, while Alicent's side vacationed with the Hightowers and, sometimes the Tarlys and the Tyrells. Viserys mostly went with her older daughter.

“What do you think they're here for?”

He inhaled sharply. “Me. Both factions. Rhaenyra's side wants to make sure I stay far away from the Iron Throne...”

“Cactus chair.”

“...while my grandsire wants to take me back.”

“How long will they stay?”

“Summer vacation, at least. Rhaenyra and Daemon's kids are still in school. I think Jace, Baela, and Rhaena graduated last year. I'm not sure about Luke. Helaena will give birth in August or September.”

“You can hold on until then, can't you?”

He wrapped one leg around the legs of your stool and pulled you closer. “As long as I have my mommy, I can face anything.”

“I'm here for you, baby boy.”

The next morning, Alicent Hightower and her husband summoned you to their apartment. Two floors under their son's home, they rented a three bedroom apartment, where they lived with Helaena and her twins, Daeron and his cat, and Criston Cole. Rhaenyra and her husband, and Aemond and Alys, were present in the living room, as were the King's cousin and in-laws, Corlys Velaryon and Rhaenys Targaryen. Ser Criston stood sentry in one corner, behind Alicent, who smiled warmly at you.

Something didn't feel right. You ignored the amused leer from Daemon and focused on the Queen.

“I wish my son was here,” the Queen muttered.

“Probably sleeping off a hangover, surrounded by empty bottles,” Daemon suggested.

“The only empty thing around him would be his balls, credits to yours truly.” You winked at Alys, who smirked back.

Alicent called your name. “Dearest, my son told me you run a catering business with a few friends.” When you affirmed it, she smiled. “My family plans to spend the summer in the States. I can attest to the quality of your cooking, as can my children. Does the rest of your staff carry the same qualities as you do?”

You blinked. “My girlfriends, Etaf Hegazy and Mabilia Auffret-Donati, are the co-owners. We run it together. Whatever profits we earn, we share it equally.”

“You're self-made, then?” Rhaenyra asked.

“Yes. We require 50-75% in advance and the rest, you pay us after our service ends.”

“What sort of cuisines do you cater to?” Rhaenys asked, one arm thrown behind her husband on the back of the couch.

“Any well-known cuisines. Ms. Hegazy is Palestinian Muslim. Ms. Auffret-Donati was born Palestinian Christian, but raised by French and Italian parents. We're experts in the Arab, Mediterranean, and almost all European cuisines, but we can make others too. I'm mostly in charge of the baked goods and desserts.”

“What about Westerosi cuisine?” the King spoke at last.

“Given how secretive the country is, your grace, not much is known about your food. But I'm confident we can make anything you have in mind, if you can supply us with the recipes and special ingredients that cannot be procured elsewhere.”

“You sound too formal for a catering service owner,” Daemon commented.

“Probably because I have a degree in English literature.” You held his gaze. “As for my comrades, Ms. Hegazy has a degree in fashion designing and Ms. Auffret-Donati has one in applied culinary arts.”

Corlys leaned forward. “A girl with a fashion designing degree doing catering service?”

You smiled thinly. “You're rich. Privileged. Nobles. Born with a silver spoon. I mean no disrespect, but the only people in this room who are self-made would be me, Alys Rivers, and Sir Daddy Cole over in the corner.” Criston glanced at you, taken aback when you pointed out to him with your thumb. “The rest of you come from privileged backgrounds. None of you, and that includes you, Prince Aemond, despite your VHAGAR prize background, yes, I know all about it, despite that background, none of you ever had to struggle in a foreign country either as a refugee or as an immigrant. Therefore, before you judge our background compared to our present circumstances, I suggest you apply a healthy dose of empathy to yourself and take off the blinkers your wealth put upon your eyes. How about that, sir?”

Daemon laughed. Corlys scowled and leaned back. The Queen pursed her lips and the Crown Princess raised a brow. Rhaenys sighed and rubbed her forehead.

“Anyway, as I was saying, given how much I trust your cooking skill, I was hoping you can cater to my family during our stay,” Alicent asked.

“May I seek more information? What kind of service do you require from us?”

The Queen explained to you how the Targaryens and the Velaryons rented the entirety of the Montauk Manor until September. They didn't fly out their personal chefs and staff, to avoid any leaks to the Westerosi or the American press.

“And you want Mabel Taffy Catering Service to cook for your family for the rest of the summer?” you hazarded a guess.

“Bull's eye, loveliest,” Alys finally spoke.

“Please, clarify more. Do you seek only our food related services, such as cooking meals for your family and security staff, and do nothing else?”

“Yes,” the Queen said. “Our trip here is a secret only our personal staff and the staff at White House are aware of. With the press of both countries unaware of our visit, we'd like to keep it that way.”

“Do you need us to sign any NDA?”

Rhaenys nodded in approval. “Clever girl.”

You addressed the Queen. “I shall neither accept nor reject your proposal immediately, your grace. However,” you pulled out your phone, “I'd like to include my comrades into this conversation, since we're equals in this business. I'll need their suggestions, opinions, and permissions. I may cast the assumption that the following conversation does not need participation from all of you now, does it?”

They took the hint. Other than the Princess and the Queen, the rest left the room. Ser Criston stayed behind. You seated yourself across the two women and called your girlfriends on Zoom. You turned on the recording option with everyone's permission. For an hour, you discussed the terms of your upcoming employment and anything related to it, including your final payments, your residence during your employment, should you be allowed to take up any other offers from anyone besides them, as well as the dishes that were encouraged and forbidden. Alicent summoned Larys Strong, her personal assistant. The man drafted a contract for you and your girlfriends to sign. Rhaenyra invited Etaf and Mabel to Gramercy, to meet them and discuss her children's dietary demands. That was when she revealed her sixth pregnancy. Alicent and Ser Criston were rendered speechless. Larys was the first to congratulate, you the quick second.

“We're hoping for a girl this time,” Rhaenyra said, her hand on her tiny bump that she had hidden with her baggy black blouse.

Alicent's smile didn't reach her eyes. Ser Criston's lips pressed thin.

Later, when you returned to Aegon's apartment, he was awake. He wore only a towel around his hips, his blond strands wet. He ate the breakfast you had left for him. Smulpaj, a Swedish crumble you baked with rhubarb, mixed berries, and orange. He morosely shoveled spoonfuls of it in his mouth and scrolled through his phone. When you hugged him from behind, he leaned back into you and pouted. “I didn't get my dragon breath kiss this morning. You didn't even lay out my clothes, Mommy.”

You knelt, took off the towel, and put his flaccid cock in your mouth. You licked the soft foreskin and his head. He didn't take long to welcome your tongue with beads of precum. Your warm, wet walls sucked him in and out, in and out. Your tongue grazed his veins and under his foreskin. He smelled like your vanilla and lavender body wash. He probably used it on himself, missing you terribly under the showerhead. You lightly scraped your rows of teeth up and down his shaft. He shoved away his breakfast and threw his head back. His eyes shut, his mouth open and drooling, his fingers fisted your hair. He lifted his hips from the stool an inch and thrust his hard cock, fucking your mouth. The sound of his moans got louder and louder. Soon, it drowned the slick squelch of his cock down your throat and your gagging around him. Saliva dripped down your chin and soaked your t-shirt. You sucked his balls, licked his base, and nibbled on his cockhead. All too soon, Aegon came in your mouth. You messily gulped down all he gave you.

You stood up on shaky legs, like Bambi learning how to walk. When he recovered, he unzipped your pants and slipped his fingers inside your cunt. You pulled off your shirt and he suckled on your tits. Breathlessly, stuttering, you told him about his mother's proposition.

“All the more reasons you should've woken me up, dōnītsos. To face all the dragons...” He kitten-licked your nipples.

You cut into a spoonful of pie, as he fingered you. “Dragons never existed, baby boy. Those are a bunch of curmudgeons trying to scare a working class PowerPuff Girl. Rest assured. I'm fine. Your family will pay us thousands of dollars. Etaf will finally be able to pay off her student loan and help the rest of her family stuck on the strip to evacuate to safety.”

“Let's hope for that,” he said and made you cum.

Chapter Text

Fourth of July, 2024

In a week, Etaf, Mabel, and you confirmed all the official stuff with Aegon's family. You three signed an NDA to not say a peep about your employment and whatever you witness on the ground about the family. The contracts were watertight. Still, you three read everything and consulted a lawyer cousin of Etaf as part of extra safety measures against the rich royals. Finally, you and your girlfriends went to serve the Westerosi royal family for two months at the Montauk Manor. Etaf and Mabel got their own room on the first floor, not far from where the security personnel would stay. You were supposed to get your own room, but Aegon had already booked a one-bedroom duplex suite with a fireplace and a loft, as did Aemond and Alys. Rhaenyra and Daemon, Rhaenys and Corlys, and Alicent and Viserys booked their own three-bedroom suites for themselves, their children, and grandchildren. Lastly, Otto booked a one-bedroom simplex suite for himself, as did Criston, whose room was next-door to Alicent's suite. From her parents' suite, Helaena took up a bedroom for herself and her twins: seven-year-old Jaehaerys and Jaehaera Targaryen. Two au pairs came with Rhaenyra and Daemon, to look after Aegon (not your one) and Viserys (not the King). Nettles Dragonseed, nicknamed Netty, a seventeen-year-old Black girl with wild curls and a confident smile, was in charge of nine-year-old Aegon. Larra Rogare, a blonde sixteen-year-old with silver hair and purple eyes, was looking after seven-year-old Viserys.

Helaena's twins were excited for all the fireworks about to be lit on the Fourth of July. Even little Viserys. The only exception was little Aegon. On the anticipated day, you woke up to hear a great hullabaloo.

Prince Aegon, Rhaenyra's son, had gone missing. You remembered the puny child. A mop of silver hair on his head, extremely fond of his mother, much more than his brothers. A mama's boy, through and through. Unlike his older brothers, he was shy and sensitive, easily upset from all the teasing his older brothers unleashed upon him. Nothing that could be chalked up to outright bullying though.

You and your girlfriends looked everywhere near the kitchen and dining area of the downstairs restaurant (closed for the summer under the pretense of a renovation, to cover up the European royalty's presence). You were running late making lunch for a family of almost thirty people, excluding their security staff. Etaf and Mabel had already got the baked goods in the oven. You sent them upstairs to help the family look for the boy. You stayed back to keep an eye on the timer. You washed an apple to eat, but it slipped from your hand and rolled under one of the huge kitchen tables by the window. You crawled under them, covered entirely with wide tablecloths. Before you could come out, you heard voices who shouldn't be alone together.

Daemon and Netty.

You recognized her voice as she whispered with urgency.

“We'll get caught!” she said, while Daemon closed the doors behind him.

“Those Arab girls are gone. It's just you and me here, riñītsos,” he purred.

You stayed where you were, apple in your hand. You silently brought out your phone, turned on the airplane mode, silenced everything, then started to record from under the table.

“Gods, I've missed you,” he said. “You're a sneaky little thing.” He kissed her loudly, sloppily, lustfully. She kissed back. His one hand tugged down the straps of her sundress and groped her tits. Netty moaned into his mouth, almost like a surprised keen. She let him slip his tongue in her mouth, her fingers clenched behind her back, as if trying not to stop him. You zoomed in on them, hoping to capture their expressions.

“Want Daddy to take care of you, little girl?” Daemon asked. “I've been neglecting my riñītsos for too long, haven't I?”

Netty threw her head back, her eyes shut, her mouth open. Daemon pulled her dress up and slipped her panties aside to touch her slit. “Leaking, are we? Want me to eat you up?”

Netty mewled but said nothing. You felt ice down your spine, as Daemon didn't wait to hear her consent and got down on his knees.

He slapped her ass. “Do you want it, riñītsos?”

She nodded, her grip on the counter tight enough to turn her knuckles white.

“Use your words, brat!”

“Yes, please, Daddy!”

He licked her in one long strip, then delved his tongue in her slit. Netty leaned back on the counter, on the cabinet behind her. She gulped down her moans. Daemon didn't like it. He spanked her until the girl was moaning out loud. He continued to eat her up until she let go of the counter and moaned into her hand over her mouth. Just then, the ovens dinged and the timer went off.

The teenager collected her breath as Daemon shut down the timer. He glanced at the ovens. The buns and cakes he carefully brought out and put them on one of the tables near you. You crawled back further in to avoid getting caught. When he went back to Netty, she was pulling up her panties but he stopped her.

“I'm not done with you yet,” he said.

“But Aegon…”

“He's fine. Probably hiding in a closet or something.” He caged her against the cabinet and tugged down her panties, then pulled down his pants. They pooled around his ankles as he slipped inside her. The girl moaned and threw her arms around him for support. He wrapped her legs around his hips and went deeper. The sounds they emitted began to make you uncomfortable. Luckily, you had your headphones with you. You put them on and kept your phone camera on them. The sneaky couple continued their coupling, as you looked away and focused on what you just witnessed and were still witnessing.

You always felt off about this pedo. Now, he was fucking another minor while his own child was missing and his wife, his pregnant wife, was frantically looking for the little boy. How could he be so nasty? Well, it was no surprise. Anyone who lusted after his minor niece would be a nasty piece of shit. Aegon, your Aegon, once told you how his uncle had been a prime suspect for the fatal freak accident of his first wife, Rhea Royce. How the man drained the accounts of his second wife, Laena Velaryon, with his debts and hedonistic lifestyle, while exiled from Westeros. Laena had to use her VHAGAR prize money to pay off her husband's loans and afford their lifestyle abroad. You heard the pregnant woman died giving birth to her third child, stillborn, while the man was busy fucking Rhaenyra during her ex husband's funeral. Laena and Laenor's parents only came to the States to strengthen their grandsons' claim to the cactus chair, which meant they had to deter Aegon's return to Westerosi succession drama.

At last, Daemon and Netty's sexcapade ended. They put their clothes back on and went out. You could finally, finally come out. Your knees screamed from having to kneel in such a cramped space. You saved the recording in your phone and cooled down the baked goods. You laid them out on several platters and tiered trays, then transferred them on two wheeled carts. Soon, Mabel returned.

“Any news?” you asked.

She shook her head. “His brothers are saying he probably hid somewhere to not see and hear the fireworks. For some reason, he's scared of them.” She went to make eggs and bacon for the family. Etaf soon joined her. You decided to search for little Aegon on your own.

In your room, you found your boyfriend coming out of the shower. “Dōnītsos!” he whined. “Stop jilting me every morning. I told you to wake me up when you wake up from now on. You're my girl, not my housekeeper.” His pout vanished when you laid out his clothes for the day.

“Bad news,” you told him as he put on his pants. “Little Aegon is missing.”

He glanced down at his crotch. “Nope, he's still tucked in there, napping. I can wake him up if you want.” He winked.

You playfully smacked his thigh. “Be serious. He's your nephew. Don't you care?”

“He has the rest of his family looking for him. I'm sure he's hiding in a closet or something.”

“We should look for him.”

“Pass.”

“If you look for him with me, I'll tie you up and spank your ass.”

He sat up. “With the straps we bought the other day?”

You had made a little trip to a sex shop before coming to Montauk. He paid for all the toys. “I'll lick all the places I spank. What do you say, baby boy?”

And off you went. You two split up to cover more ground. You headed for the hamlet, where you asked people about a little boy with silver blond hair and purple eyes. After some time, a lovely couple told you about such a boy they had passed by on their way from Montauk Point State Park, where they visited the lighthouse. You called Aegon, who had gone in that direction, and told him about the little boy probably heading that way. He said he'd look around.

It took you fifteen minutes to reach the spot. The lovely couple from before had given you a lift, or else it'd have taken a couple of hours at least to reach the park. You called Aegon, who turned on his phone location for you to track. By the time you reached them, both Aegons were sitting on the uneven, pebbly ground. Older Aegon had a lighter in his hand that he waved before little Aegon, who shook and sobbed at the sight of the tiny flame. You sneaked up behind your boyfriend and smacked him on his head. He dropped the lighter. The flame almost grazed the little boy, who screamed and jumped away, ready to bolt. You rushed to his side and blocked his path. “Hey, baby boy, it's okay,” you told him softly. “Nothing to worry about. You're okay.”

He bawled. “No, there's gonna be so much fire! Loud fire! I hate it! I hate it!”

You showed him your hands, palms up. “Yes, I know they're loud and bright, but they won't hurt you or come near you. I promise.”

He limped a little. You glanced at his feet. Sure enough, his knees were scraped and skinned.

“Hey, Aegon?”

Both your boyfriend and his nephew looked up.

You pointed at the little boy. “Can I touch you? Just to check your knees.”

The boy nodded. You cleaned your hands with a sanitizer, and brought out your water bottle and the first aid kit that Criston wisely handed over to everyone who had gone out in search of the little prince. You gently washed and cleaned his knees with wet wipes. Once the balm was applied and the cuts were sealed off with band-aids, he quietly thanked you.

“Your grace.” You lowered your head to meet his violet eyes. “What's going on? Was your mean uncle scaring you?”

Your boyfriend pouted. “I wasn't scaring him.”

“Waving a lit lighter before a pyrophobic child is not scaring him? Then what is, you…” You glanced at little Aegon and told him to cover his ears, which he did, “you fucking bully.”

Your Aegon pouted. “I thought I'll make him face his fear and drive it away.”

“Oh, that's nice,” you said sarcastically. “I'm terrified of grizzlies. Let's throw me in front of a hungry grizzly who just came out of hibernation. That'll teach me.” You took little Aegon's hands covering his ears and nudged them off. “You're safe, princeling. Fireworks won't hurt you. If it's too much on your nerves, you can always close your eyes.”

“But the sounds...”

“I have a pair of noise-canceling headphones. I can lend them to you until the fireworks end.”

Older Aegon's eyes widened. “Dōnītsos, you never share them with anyone.”

“Obviously, this child needs it more than I do. I'm an adult. He's a baby.”

“I'm no baby,” little Aegon said with a pout eerily similar to his uncle's. “I'm going to be ten in three months.”

“That's great, but I'm old and, to old people like me, you're a baby. And that's okay. Be a baby. It's cute and beautiful.”

“You think so?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yes, it is. Be a child as long as you can, dearest.”

His face crumpled as he remembered something and tried not to cry. You asked for his permission to touch his face. He allowed you. You cupped his delicate cheeks and looked him in the eye. “If you want to cry, cry away, baby boy. I promise you, nothing is wrong with tears.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Why else would our eyes have tear ducts? You can cry anytime, for anything, in anyplace, around anyone, as long, loudly, and messily as you want. If people give you a hard time about it, no matter who it is, you let me know, okay? I'll deal with them bullies.”

“Even Mummy and Daddy?”

“Especially them. But something tells me your mummy doesn't mind, does she?”

“No. Only Daddy. He says boys don't cry.”

“He's wrong. Boys do cry. Boys should absolutely cry. You know why?” When he shook his head, you continued. “When something upsets us, ice begins to form inside us. Ice, solid and sharp. The more ice you grow inside you, the more it'll hurt you. What do you do? You thaw them. How do you thaw them? With your tears. You melt them and they come out of you like river water. You let them out, okay? Never, ever hide your tears. Own them. Real men cry and aren't ashamed about it. You're a real man, aren't you?”

He nodded.

“Go ahead, then. Cry. And while we're at it,” you bent your knees to scoop him up in your arms, “we should go. Your mummy is worried.”

He wrapped his legs around your waist and his arms around your neck, his head on your shoulder. You held him tight and stood straight. Aegon, your boyfriend that was, lingered a good distance away, hands in his pockets, a pout on his lips and a frown on his brows. He kicked aimlessly on the uneven ground. You went to his side and held your free hand out to him. His wide eyes met yours.

“Leave no Aegon behind, princeling.” You laced your fingers with his and pulled him with you. You fell into steps, as little Aegon stuffed his face in the crook of your neck and cried silently. Your boyfriend hesitantly patted his nephew's head, who stuffed his face more in your neck. You nuzzled your nose to his temple.

“I'm disappointed in you, y'know. You're his uncle,” you told your boyfriend. “You're supposed to protect him, care for him, love him. Not scare him. Now, I kinda see the bully Aegon your brother mentioned.”

“I was just trying to help!”

“Waving fire in front of a pyrophobic child is not helping him. What part of it do you not get, love?”

He sighed. “I'm not like you, dōnītsos. Parenthood comes easy to you. Not me.”

“It's not like you have to do this 24/7. He's only gonna be here for two months. Heck, he's only gonna witness fireworks for one night. You can be kind to him for one night, can you not?”

He nodded. You held up your pinky and he coiled his own around it.

“I don't get it though,” your boyfriend muttered. “Why is he so scared of fire and fireworks? You were there when I got burnt, lighting up the crackers with your brothers.”

Little Aegon whimpered and pressed himself more to you. You caressed his back with your thumb. “Baby boy, what's the matter?”

He whispered to you what caused his pyrophobia. It began the moment his uncle got burnt from fireworks. Little Aegon, five or six back then, was the first to rush to his uncle's aid and witnessed the gruesome burns on older Aegon's bare body. The sight of the raw flesh and charred skin made him so sick and scared, he couldn't forget it.

“He's terrified because he doesn't want what happened to his uncle to happen to him. He heard your painful screams when you were being rescued,” you told your boyfriend what his nephew whispered in your ear.

Your Aegon fell quiet. His fingers still laced with you, he lifted his other hand and gently patted his nephew's head. Little Aegon sniffled but didn't pull away.

“You were in a lot of pain, kepās,” he mumbled.

“I know. I'm sorry I scared you. It won't happen again, I promise.”

You squeezed your boyfriend's hand, while his nephew whispered his thanks to you. Aegon called Criston and let him know where you were.

“My little niece is coming too,” Aegon said with a laugh.

Little Aegon groaned. “Not her, please, not her.”

“Why not?” you asked.

The boy nuzzled his face in the crook of your neck, so you couldn't see his expression. But your boyfriend did. The corners of his lips lifted. “Somebody's got a cruuuuuush!”

You lightly smacked his cheek with the back of your hand, your fingers still entwined. “Stop it! So what if he has a crush on his cousin? Big deal!”

Little Aegon lifted his face. “It's not a big deal?”

“Oh no, it is a big deal for you. Did you tell her? Or do you plan to?”

You felt him shake his head. “Mummy doesn't like them.”

“So what? You're gonna be the star-crossed lovers of Westeros.”

You scowled at your boyfriend for his flippant comment. “Or, this is the twenty-first century and you're literal babies, so let's never squash their tender feelings, shall we? Baby Aegon, why don't you tell her how you feel? She's coming all the way over here to see if you're okay. That means she likes you back.”

“For real?” Such fragile hope bloomed in his words, your heart melted.

“Of course, baby boy. She must like you back. You don't have to tell her anything. Just hang out with her and get to know her. How much do you know about her?”

“I dunno. I only met her a few times.”

“Tonight, if you feel bold enough, you can sit next to her at the bonfire and eat s'mores with her.”

“No, not the bonfire.”

“Okay, you can stay inside. How about I toast the s'mores and bring them to you?”

“Okay... But her brother is always with her,” he said with a pout.

“Leave that to me,” your boyfriend said. “I won't let my nephew cockblock his own sister.”

You elbowed him. “Language!”

Ten minutes later, Aemond's Cadillac Escalade arrived. From the backseat, Rhaenyra ran out and snatched her son from your back. Little Aegon sobbed in his mother's gentle embrace. The princess thanked you profusely and her brother hesitantly. Your Aegon nodded and scooted closer to you. From the backseat, Jaehaera and her brother came out. The little girl smiled sweetly at Aegon, who hid his face in his mother's embrace.

“He's hopeless,” your boyfriend said.

“He's nine. He'll be fine.”

Daemon and Netty came out as well. Criston was in the driving seat. Seeing Daemon, your phone in your pocket felt heavier. While going back to the Manor, you sat in the back and uploaded the video to several online storage spaces you had.

That night, you helped little Aegon sit next to his crush inside, wearing your headphones and eating the s'mores that you toasted for them. They didn't speak but helped each other assemble their chocolate and marshmallow sandwiches.

Out at the bonfire, your Aegon crooned the song, the Poet and the Muse, at your encouragement. His sister and mother beamed at him once he finished. Rhaena quietly praised his singing. Alicent boasted about how her son played professionally in the States two months ago, something even Otto didn't expect. What was more surprising was the King wishing to hear his son play.

Aegon's bottom lip wobbled. You took his shaky hands in yours and steadily held his s'mores stick over the fire. “See,” you whispered, “he'll be so proud of you. Just you wait.”

He nodded but said nothing. Helaena talked about how much she loved hearing her brother croon and wanted him to sing lullabies to her twins. But he was always self-conscious about it.

“Which is surprising considering how he sang for Nelly in front of the whole country,” Daeron teased him.

Daemon snorted. “Petroleum Nelly.”

You frowned and turned to Aegon. “Her full name is Petronella Y. Vendeline,” he explained.

“Odd, considering she wasn't Dutch,” Daemon continued.

“What was her nationality?” you asked your boyfriend and ignored his obnoxious uncle.

“Scandinavian,” Daemon said, regardless of your ignoring him. “Her real name I intend to find out.”

“Give it a rest, Daemon,” Rhaenyra snapped, surprising everyone else. “She rejected you long ago. Don't bring her up again.”

Daemon scowled at his wife and focused on his s'mores with Baela. You turned to Aegon, who whispered that before Nelly worked for him, she worked for Daemon. His status as the Rogue Prince vastly lowered his eligibility for the cactus chair. So, Laena Velaryon, his second wife, hired Nelly to improve his image. Daemon tried to seduce Nelly but she rebuffed him every time. It stung him when she fell in love with someone like Aegon and not him. Till date, his bruised male ego never recovered.

“Anyway,” Daeron tried to steer the conversation back to the topic he started. “Lēkia's tactic to win back Nelly backfired. She left Westeros and moved to Spain.”

“How did they reconcile?” you asked.

“He crashed her job interview with a Spanish noblewoman.”

Little crumpled paper balls filled your throat. Why did that sound so familiar? Oh right, he did that with you. You tried to swallow the paper balls or spit them out. But they stubbornly stayed lodged in your throat.

Daeron, oblivious, continued. “The lady had sued her uncle for expelling her and her cousin from some of the properties her great grandmother left in her will for her children and their descendants. The case is still ongoing. No, wait, the appeal is. A great gossip among the European nobility. I'm surprised you don't know about it.”

You rolled your eyes. “Forgive me, your grace, but you're speaking to a peasant, an American peasant at that. We had zero monarchs of our own.”

Daemon interrupted. “You were under the British monarchy...”

“Colonizers, man, keep up. I said, our own.” You turned to Daeron. “Continue, my prince.”

Daeron also avoided his uncle's searing gaze. “Well, um, that noblewoman was going through intense scrutiny from both the nobilities and the press. She wanted to hire Nelly to handle everything. In the middle of their lunch meeting, guess who gatecrashed?”

You turned to your boyfriend, who scowled at his untoasted s'mores. “Fuck off, dairy,” he muttered.

“Don't call me that!” Daeron snapped. He took a deep breath, then let it out. “Anyway, Nelly and that potential client were having lunch, when Lēkia interrupted their meal. Drunk, slobbery, and sweaty, he begged Nelly for one more chance. He even lied to the lady that Nelly was pregnant with his child and he wanted to be there for them.”

Nelly, embarrassed, felt such anger at him and his lies. But the noblewoman, her potential client, was watching. So, Nelly calmly refuted his claims, though Aegon insisted, and tried to send him away. He stayed at the restaurant's bar and kept drinking. At one point, he fell from his stool, hit his head, and passed out.

“Jesus Christ!” you said.

Your boyfriend bit into his toasted marshmallow and melted chocolate bars, sandwiched by graham crackers. He acted as if he weren't listening to the gossip about one of the worst days of his life, when he almost lost his life from alcohol poisoning.

Daeron offered him a smile of support. “Nelly rushed him to the hospital. He was lucky, he only needed fluid and oxygen to recover. No gastric lavage or hemodialysis. Mum was furious.”

“I tried to send him to rehab...” Alicent shook her head in disappointment.

“Only Nelly was able to convince him,” Alys finished.

“But...” Aemond gazed at his older brother with a deadpan look, “our dear Lēkia had a condition. Nelly had to give him a chance. He won't try to get better without the promise that she'll give him a chance.”

You frowned. “You blackmailed your girlfriend into taking you back? That's not the way you win someone back after you cheat on them.”

Aegon sighed. “I couldn't let her go.”

All the eyes on you felt oppressive, as if you'd been spread open on the operating table, being autopsied while everyone watched your guts spill out. “Can we talk?” you whispered, then left the bonfire. He followed you like a lost puppy being led home by the lure of food. From the kitchen, you fetched two Tupperwares, one full of lemonies for him, the other with lactation cookies for yourself. In your room, on the bed, you took off your blouse and bra, and let him suckle your tits. You nibbled on the lactation cookies and he listened.

“You cannot do to me what you did to Nelly, baby boy.”

He nodded, his purple eyes on yours, his lips tight around your nipple. “Have you ever been cheated on?”

He shook his head.

“Then, you have no idea how much it fucking hurts. It's bad, baby boy. It's bad! Nelly had every right to be mad at you. She saw you in bed, naked, with another naked woman. Even if she didn't want to picture it, she did imagine you putting your dick inside another woman's pussy. How would you feel if some other guy fucked Nelly? Or even me? Won't you feel betrayed? That I let someone else fuck me while I'm with you? That's a serious breach of trust.”

He pulled his mouth from your tit. “I did consider it. I just...” He picked up a lemonie. “It made me feel like shit. When I realized I broke Nelly's heart, her trust. If she dated someone else, like my brothers, they'd treat her better. Even Daemon.”

“No. You're a cheater but not to his level. Didn't he cheat on Rhea Royce with Laena Velaryon, and then on Laena with your sister?”

“Not Laena. She'd never date a married man. By the time she was with Daemon, Rhea was long dead. He cheated on Rhea with Mysaria, a woman who runs a high-end escort service.” He grimaced. “One of her girls was my first.”

You patted his back and returned to your chiding. “Anyway, even as a drunk, you gotta have enough resolve to rebuff other people's advances. On top of that, you took advantage of Nelly's feelings for you. You knew she cared for you a lot. That she'd take you back if it means you got the help your drunk ass needed. I'm sorry to say this but she was too good for you.”

He gulped. Droplets of tears wobbled fragilely on his long lashes. He kept on suckling your tit but you could tell his heart was not into it. You took him off you and fed him lemonies after lemonies. “I'm sorry that my words hurt you, baby boy. I was a bit harsh. You're not like Daemon. He's a serial cheater with no remorse. He cheated on all three of his wives...”

Aegon sat up. “What?”

You sheepishly showed him the video you caught. You didn't play it all the way, but enough for Aegon to grin from ear to ear. “Grandsire will kill to get his hands on stuff like this. Anything to have the King annul his daughter's marriage to his brother. Especially if he's been unfaithful to her.”

You gnawed on your lip, while Aegon ate lemonies from your hand, like a puppy eating treats from his human. “I don't know, baby boy. I feel torn. On one hand, it'll wreck her home and so far, she's only been civil to me...”

“You're new. Wait until you fuck up. She'll tear you apart like a zaldrītsos.”

“A what?”

“High Valyrian for little dragon.”

“She hasn't done that to me yet, so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.”

“You're too good for your own good, dōnītsos.”

You shrugged. “Mama's goodness must've rubbed off on me. I give people a chance, one chance, to fuck it up. Until they do that, I give them the benefit of the doubt. But like Mr. Darcy, my good opinion once lost is lost forever. Be sure to remember that. I'm not Nelly. I'll never be like Nelly.”

“And I'm in love with that. You're so unforgiving. It's hot.” He slowly licked your tit, his eyes on you.

You lightly poked his face away. “Anyway, I'm worried about going against your uncle. He terrifies me a little. Not enough to make me cower. Enough to make me watch my back. If I get caught, I'll be ruined. I mean, his own brother never wanted to make him his heir.”

“Send it anonymously then,” Aegon suggested. He set up a new Gmail account for you to send the video to Rhaenyra's personal email that he supplied you with. You used a strong VPN.

“There,” he said as you put away your phone. “That should do it.”

“Back to the original topic. You didn't treat Nelly right. Do not repeat those with me. I'd rather let you drown in your piss than take you back until you have rightfully earned your forgiveness and your place in my life.”
He pecked your collarbones. “I promise, Mommy. I won't repeat my mistakes.”

Together, you watched the Netflix series, One Day. Aegon thought Emma and Dexter were like you and him. An unlikely pair who ended up being the one most in love. You squeezed his nose and fed him lemonies after lemonies. Two episodes left, you finally went to sleep.

A whole day passed before Rhaenyra's reply came. Two words:

“Thank you.”

Nothing else. This worried you. Did she know who sent this? Or did she not believe you? Or did she not care? Was hers an open marriage?

The next morning, Rhaenyra came to the kitchen and greeted you with a good morning, no hints that she ever watched your video. You greeted her back. She sat down and asked for some croissants.

“I'm craving buttery pastry. Your friends have run out of croissants and told me to wait. I thought, why not wait in the kitchen where I can see the goodies being baked.” She rubbed her belly with a fond smile. “This girl is making me crave fat.”

“I have something better.” You presented the kouign-amann, cooling on the rack. You cut the cake and regaled her with the history of the pastry, as well as how much butter went into it. Rhaenyra gave you a dimpled smile and you internally cursed the Targaryen genes for producing such hot fuckers. Even though Rhaenyra and Aegon weren't close, they looked like two siblings would.

You went to separate egg yolks from the egg whites for Otto's special egg white omelet, when a pair of soft, cold arms surprised you. They slipped under your shirt and coiled around your midsection. You shuddered and tried to face him. Aegon's grips tightened. He stuffed his face in your hair. Your arm fumbled behind you, until your fingers reached his wet hair, then down his face. He was topless. In fact, he was totally naked, just a towel around his hips. You put away Otto's egg whites and coaxed Aegon to let you turn around. He whimpered, protesting your movements, but loosened his hold. His purple eyes were tearful and downcast. His bottom lip pushed out and shaky.

“Baby boy, what's wrong? Why are your hands so cold?” You cupped them to your face and pressed them to your skin, to feed off your warmth. They smelled of your body wash, vanilla and lavender.

He sobbed. “I couldn't move. I couldn't turn off the cold shower.”

“What? Why?”

“Emma’s dead!”

“Who's Emma?” Rhaenyra asked, her mouth full of the Breton butter cake.

“Emma Morley. A character from a Netflix series.” You wondered why it upset him so much, before you remembered.

Nelly.

He tried to say more, but his trembling lips let out words that collided into one another, like cars in a pile-up. His knees buckled. You led him to the nearest chair. You sat down and he curled up on your lap, like a fetus in a womb. With some Kleenex, you blew his nose and wiped his face. With a brand new kitchen towel, you dried his hair. You untangled the wet strands, carefully, carefully, since his hair was thin and tended to get tangled up easily. Your nails gently scraped up and down his scalp. “I wish you hadn't finished without me.”

“I'm sorry, Mommy.” He evaded your gaze when you tried to meet his eyes, as if ashamed and fearful.

“It's okay. Nothing to apologize for. Tell me, baby boy, did it remind you of...”

He sniveled. You quickly hugged him and ran your hand up and down his spine.

“It's not fair! They finally got together! They were apart for so long!” He hiccupped. A fresh stream of tears tumbled down his cheeks. You stuffed his wet face in the crook of your neck. His sobs got louder, so you rocked him back and forth. Rhaenyra ate and watched, amused but not jeeringly.

Aegon continued. “I'll die if something happens to you, dōnītsos. I'll kill myself if I get to live on but you don't.”

You lifted his head and wiped his face. “No, no, you'll be like Dexter...”

“The fuck I will!” he snapped. “I lost Nelly! I won't lose you too. You're my soulmate, Mommy.”

Your thumb stroked his face. You leaned over and kissed his forehead, then his lips, lastly his cheeks. “In that case, I hope you'll go first...”

He shook his head and pressed your palm to his face. “Then, I'll be lonely in the afterlife. No, we're dying together. Like Noah and Allie.”

“Who?”

“From The Notebook. Nelly's favorite.”

You sighed. He was emotionally too strung up. You agreed to what he wanted. He leaned his forehead against yours and kissed you. Your fingers latched around him. Your tongue stroked his own. You lapped up all his drool. The click of the sloppy kiss joined the other sounds in the room, that of Rhaenyra chewing her cake and watching your dramatic romance unfold. Aegon didn't care about his audience, nor did he notice. He kissed you all over your face, with drool and tongue and teeth, one word per kiss. “You. Are. The. Best. Thing. In. My. Life. Dōnītsos. The very fucking best.”

You tied up his towel more securely around his hips. “Next time, don't watch anything without me, okay?”

He made you a pinky promise and nibbled on your nose tip. You recommended Normal People for your next viewing together. “The lead couple doesn't die there,” you said.

“Do you want some lemonies, baby boy?”

“Did you make them?”

“I haven't yet, but I can tell you how to make them.”

“No, I only want lemonies that you make. Only you. Not me. Not Mabel. The ones she made last night weren't that good. No offense but she's not you. Nobody can be you.”

“I know, I'm one in a million.”

“No, you're the only one in eight billion. My only one.”

You tucked his hair behind his ears and lovingly yanked one of his ears. “Speaking of lemonies, you don't have to make them on your own. I can show you. I'll give you my secret ingredient that even Mabel and Etaf don't know. Not even my mama.”

His face brightened like the sun outside. “You'll trust me with this?”

“I trust you with my life.” You took him to the counter and made him stand before you, his back to your front, not an inch spared. You aligned his hands with yours, until both your wrists, elbows, and palms all matched in position. “I'm your puppeteer. From now on, you'll do as I say. Got it?”

Aegon trembled from your authoritarian tone. “Yes, Mommy.”

You kissed his head. “Preheat the oven first. 325°.” You bent together, his ass to your crotch, and with fingers aligned, set the oven to 325°.

“What's next, Mommy?” he asked.

“Get all the ingredients.”

One by one, you assembled everything you'd need to make the crust, the curd, and the candied lemon slices, one of your secret ingredients, to be slipped between the crust and the curd. The second secret ingredient was halal lemon extract (so that Etaf could eat or cook with it). Your bodies stayed together, your front to his back. Under your guidance, Aegon blitzed up and sieved the lemon oatmeal cookies, then mixed the crumbs with Parmigiano-Reggiano, lemon zest, sugar, melted butter, and vanilla extract. Once you'd pressed the sticky crust into an already lined pan, both your hands holding a fork, you poked shallow holes on it. “Not too deep, baby boy.” Into the oven it went. Next up, the curd and the candied lemon.

“How do you feel?” you asked him softly just as you both placed the thinly sliced lemon slivers into the sugar syrup on a pan. “Do you think you can bake your own lemonies from now on?”

He shook his head adamantly. “Nope, I'll need you till my last breath and beyond.”

“You're too dependent on me.”

“Good, I intend to.”

Just as the final product was ready to come out, you sent him to get dressed. Rhaenyra was done with her cake too. She gave you a gentle smile. “Thank you for the cake.” She took a plate of the last two slices. “I just wanna say...” She looked into your eyes and was about to say more when the doors opened. Alys entered, some papers in her hands. Rhaenyra departed. Your insides congealed like aspic. Did she know it was you? Did she want to talk about that video? You'd have felt anger at Alys, had she not handed you her findings about Helaena's children's paternal identity.

“As you suspected.” She settled down on one of the chairs. “The twins aren't from the man Helaena chose. His DNA doesn't match with the twins.”

You brought out the trays of lemonies and cooled them on the rack. “Since she's O+ and the twins are A+ and B+, the father is someone with the AB blood group.”

Alys crossed her legs and popped a hot lemonie in her mouth, no sign of her tongue being burnt. “I'll have my connection search for all the sperm donors in Westeros with AB blood. We test their DNA and find out who the father is. I just don't get it.”

“What?”

“Why would a sperm bank make such a grave mistake? To a princess? This is enough to shut them down. They'd never do such things.”

“Either they got really careless staff...”

“Or someone powerful is conspiring against our sweet little dreamer.”

“If this gets out, that they fucked up with a princess' case, it'll be not only end of their business, they might face jail. For deceiving a royalty.”

Alys stood up. “I'll see what I can find out.”

Just then, Otto Hightower arrived. He demanded what was taking you so long with his order of an egg white avocado omelet, not a regular omelet, over his special 15-grain bread and grass-fed butter, not margarine. You apologized like a professional and made him what he wanted, while he stood behind you and watched until you plated his food.

“Make sure it doesn't repeat,” he grumbled. He passed by his oldest grandson, who was on his way back to you, as peppy as the sun outside. Otto scowled but said nothing, taking his breakfast with him. Aegon came in and immediately kissed you, his arms tight around you. “He didn't bug you, did he?”

“No, I was late with his order.”

“Let's eat.”

You were about to plate up both your food when he stopped you. Apparently, Alicent invited her son and his girlfriend for breakfast with his family. Ever since you came to Montauk to serve your boyfriend's royal family, Aegon had been having all his meals with you and your girlfriends in the kitchen. He defied orders from both his mother, the Queen, and his grandfather, the Prime Minister, to dine with them. His father didn't give a shit if his oldest son lived, died, or ate with the servants. It seemed Alicent had finally ceded to her son's obstinacy and invited you to the royal table.

Aegon took you to the dining hall, where his family was either sitting at the table or milling around the buffet, manned by Etaf, while Mabel handled the omelet station. Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at you.

“What?” Aegon barked and pulled you toward the buffet. Etaf chuckled, while Mabel's wide eyes took in what was happening. Everyone watched him pile his plate high with lemonies. He grimaced at the berry soufflé omelets, chicken lettuce shawarma, and chocolate vegetable muffins on your plate, knowing you'd feed them to him. At the table, he pulled you a chair.

“What do you think you're doing?” his grandfather barked.

“Having breakfast.” Aegon plopped down next to you once you'd taken your seat. His mother pursed her lips, not at you, rather at her father.

“She's a servant,” Otto said.

“She's my girlfriend.”

“Her kind cannot sit with us.”

Aegon slammed his glass of POMP juice on the table. It miraculously didn't spill. “She's my fucking girlfriend. She goes where I go, I go where she goes.” He offered you his plate of lemonies. You took a few pieces and gave him an omelet.

“She's a nobody!”

Aegon clenched his hold on his cutlery and ignored his grandfather. You regretted not bringing your headphones with you. Little Aegon still had them from last night.

“Aegon, did you hear me? She's a commoner. A nobody. You cannot date someone like her.”

“Someone like what? Huh?” Aegon challenged.

“A whore.”

Your boyfriend gritted his teeth and clenched his fists. You gently undid the latter and rubbed his chin. He exhaled and smiled at you.

“Father, please,” Alicent begged, to your astonishment.

“No, you let this atrocity continue for too long. I won't allow it.”

“Please,” Aegon mockingly said, “tell us what about us or my girlfriend is atrocious to you, Grandsire.”

Otto glowered at you. You looked back with equal vitriol. “She’s a bastard.”

“So is Alys. No offense, sweet sister.”

Aemond glared at his older brother, but Alys smiled. “None taken.”

“She's a whore,” Otto continues. “She sold nude pictures of herself for money when she was fourteen.”

“She has a killer body. She needed money. She utilized her assets.” Saying this, Aegon quickly pecked your cheek. You fed him some berry omelet.

“She worked as an escort.”

“I'm so proud of her for being independent so early on in her life. Did you know you can charge $200 per hour? Man, that's some rate.”

“She's a fucking whore!”

“She's my fucking girlfriend!”

“Your girlfriend participated in abominable games that pertain to being tied up and whipped.”

Aegon shrugged. “Guess what, Grandpapi, so do I. I also like being spanked, pegged, and tied up in bed. Sue me!” He threw a wink at Daemon, who was smirking.

“She had an affair with a married man.”

“The said married man who hid his wife and kids from her? The same married man who stalked her and murdered her friend's cat by cutting off the poor animal's paws and tail?”

Rhaena gasped, pale and petrified.

Aegon continued. “The same fucking married man who chased her with a knife one night? Yes, I know all about him. I also know about the abortion you're about to bring up.”

Both Rhaenyra and Alicent's eyes widened. The latter covered her mouth as if trying to prevent her nausea. “You had an abortion?”

You shrugged. “Dreadful stuff but nothing else I could do about it. I didn't want a kid back then, so I got rid of the fetus.”

“Now you see, daughter?!” Otto turned to Alicent, who still had a pasty complexion.

“Nothing wrong with it,” Aegon said. “Her body, her choice. I thought you didn't like bastards existing, Grandsire.”

Otto stomped his foot. “This cannot go on! You're an heir to the throne...”

“No!” Aegon stood up. “I am not. I do not want that cactus chair...”

Jace and Luke snorted. Daemon raised a brow. His wife blinked in disbelief.

“Son, sit down,” Alicent said exasperatedly.

To her surprise, he did. You squeezed his hands and fed him more omelets.

“Look at her, your grace!” Otto now pleaded to the King, who, surprisingly, was quietly eating his semolina pudding. You guessed he was probably hard of hearing.

King Viserys glanced up at Otto, then to Aegon, then went back to his pudding.
Otto's face paled. Aegon and Daemon mirrored each other as they leaned back in their chairs and crossed their arms. You offered your boyfriend some lemonies, which he gratefully ate from your hand.

“She is a whore!” Otto kept thundering. “She's a fucking whore who sold her body and murdered her unborn baby.”

“That is it!” Aegon jumped to his feet and pulled out of his pants pocket something you thought you'd left behind at home.

Your Glock.

Otto's eyes went wide, as did his daughter's and the rest of the royal family. Basically, everyone at the table was astonished, even you. Only Etaf sighed behind you and Mabel squeaked.

“What the... Is that a gun, Aegon?” Otto backed away.

“My gun, actually. I can't believe you brought it.”

Aegon winked. “I finally enrolled myself in the Daemon and Aemond Targaryen School of Protecting Your Ladylove's Honor. They have their swords and knives, I have your gun, dōnītsos.”

You beamed at him, proud. Baela whispered to Luke, “This reminds me of a Filipino telenovela I watched the other day, Wildflower. All we need is the rest of us to produce a gun of our own and it'll be a standoff.”

Alicent stood up. “Son, put that away.”

“Not until Lord Hightower apologizes to my girlfriend.”

You patted his arm. “It's okay, baby boy. I don't need it. I know his type.” You met Otto's glare. “If you force an apology out of him, not only will it be half-assed, it'll also make him more spiteful toward me. I don't care about apologies. Sit down and let's have breakfast right in front of him, on the same table.”

Aegon returned your Glock, which you tucked in your pants. Alicent sighed in relief and tended to her husband's meal, who somehow remained the most unaffected person on that table. Otto resumed his meal, his glare constantly on you. You decided to keep an eye on him from then on. After all, he had painted a target on your back and intended to hit the bull's eye.

After lunch, lethargy came over the Valyrians and the Andals. They each went to their suites for some time away. You sent Aegon to your room and went to fetch your headphones from little Aegon. The boy was in Helaena's room, his head on her belly with her twins doing the same. Little Aegon was reluctant to leave Jaehaera's company, so you asked him where he kept your headphones to get it yourself. He told you it was in Viserys' nursery.

Just as you were about to enter that room, you heard the little boy's whimper. Someone shushed him.

“You don't want Meraxes to burn, do you?” said a female voice. Larra Rogare, Viserys' nanny. You peeked. The teenager held a red dragon doll over the fireplace. The flame almost grazed the toy's tail. Her eyes were on the little boy, whose bottom lip was pushed out. Tears streamed down his chubby cheeks. He looked so much like your Aegon, whenever he was hurt. You entered. Larra immediately yanked her hand from over the flame. She smiled. “Hi, there. I was just drying Viserys' doll. He dropped it in his bathtub.”

You had to commend her ability to pretend you didn't smell gasoline in the room, most likely coming out of the wet doll she held close. “I was wondering who on earth would start a fire inside a house in the middle of summer.”

Larra grinned. The sharpness of how fake it was hurt your heart. You glanced at little Viserys, whose eyes were downcast, tears still trailing down his face. You knelt and asked for his permission to touch him. When he looked into your eyes, the purple in his eyes seemed so vulnerable, you requested to touch him. When he nodded, you hugged him. After a while, he returned the gesture and sobbed silently. Your heart broke for the baby. It took everything in you to not slap the shit out of his nanny. What an absolute monster!

“Let's go to your brother,” you said.

“What? But it's his nap time.” Larra protested.

You gave her your most venomous glare. “Viserys is clearly upset and needs his big brother. Let's not hurt the child any more than he already is.” You didn't wait for the girl's reply. You snatched your headphones from the desk where little Aegon said he had last kept it, and carried little Viserys to Helaena's room.

Viserys' tears stopped at the sight of his big brother's joy. Alicent was coaxing Helaena to drink some juice. The children played in a corner. Little Aegon especially seemed fond of Jaehaera, while her twin petulantly tried to insert himself between the two kids.

“Their birthdays are coming up,” Alicent said.

Helaena smiled, her hand on her belly.

“Once Maelor arrives, it'll be their first birthday with their little brother.”

“When is it?” you asked.

“Not one birthday. Jaehaerys came on the last night of the year. Jaehaera arrived once the sun came up. So, we hold the party around midnight.” Alicent offered them some of the pomegranate juice their mother was sipping on. Jaehaerys made a face and refused. Jaehaera shyly smiled at you, very much like her mother.

“They were early,” Helaena said. “Seven months completed. Aegon and Nelly had just got back together and celebrated New Year's Eve with us.”

Alicent took over. “My first grandchildren. Born premature. I was so worried. My baby girl was so young. Only twenty years old. Nelly was a big help. She had her own niece. She guided my son through his first time being an uncle. He panicked, as if he didn't have any nephews already.”

Something didn't feel right. You calculated the timeline. Aegon and Nelly started dating in October of 2015, as Aegon told you. He cheated on her on his birthday in 2016. They got back together the same year. If Helaena was seven months pregnant at the end of the year, she must've conceived at the start of summer, sometime after her brother's disastrous birthday.

“May I ask a personal question, Princess?” you asked.

Helaena glanced at you, as did Alicent. “The answer is the weekend after his birthday. I took a test. It was positive after a year of trying.”

Alicent frowned, not being included into the conversation. Just as you thanked Helaena, the door slammed open. Rhaenyra entered, her face flushed. Behind her, Larra and Netty peeked. Rhaenyra's sons immediately ceased playing with their cousins. The twins also peered up at their aunt.

“Who brought my sons here without my permission?” she asked.

You raised your hand. “I only brought Viserys. Aegon came on his own.”

When his mother looked at him, Aegon nodded. “I-I wanted to play with Jaehaera, Mummy.”

Rhaenyra knelt and kissed his forehead. “You never go anywhere without telling me, do you hear me?”

He nodded, like the good boy he was.

Rhaenyra turned to you, her son's hand in her own. “You do not get to move my son from his quarters without my permission. You're not one of us.”

Alicent chimed in. “That's where you're mistaken, Princess. She's with my son, therefore, as much a part of this family as you. So, I suggest you correct your tone. We're in front of children. Set a good example. Besides, we're in the same building. What do you think will happen to your sons in your pregnant little sister's quarters?”

Rhaenyra clenched the fist of her unoccupied hand and tilted her head at Viserys, her eyes on Larra. The girl picked up the little boy, whose face paled at the contact. Rhaenyra handed Aegon over to Netty. The two au pairs left with the princes.

Rhaenyra stood before you and the Queen.
“You're only dating Aegon for a few months. I know because I keep an eye on people who do not view my and my sons' claims to the throne favorably.” At the last part, she glanced at Alicent, who tensed up but said nothing. Rhaenyra continued. “I understand you're fond of her, your grace,” she said this to Alicent, “but I suggest you maintain some distance. No matter how much you dress a crow with colorful feathers, it won't ever become a peacock. Sooner or later, the crow will get exposed.”

You laughed dryly. “My feathers got exposed this morning when Lord Hightower poked and prodded at my colorful history. I have nothing to hide, Princess.” You glanced at the twins, now glum because their playmates were gone. “You might want to poke and prod at your au pairs though.” You met her mauve eyes, her brow raised. “They're not who you think they are.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I think you know what I'm talking about.”

Rhaenyra, a little unnerved than when she first arrived, left the room. Alicent apologized and gathered her grandchildren.

“The crow dressed in borrowed feathers, fasted to a peacock with red tethers,” Helaena mumbled and weaved a loose thread in a circle around her forefinger.

You thanked Alicent for her support.

“I've been absolutely ghoulish to you so far. It's time I do the right thing and support my son's choices.” She patted your arm and sent you back to your room.

Instead, you went looking for Alys. But she wasn't in her room, neither was her fiancée. You texted her but she didn't reply. You checked on your boyfriend, who napped in your room, clutching to his chest your pillow that likely smelled of you. You kissed his forehead, then his lips, lastly his cheeks. You plucked the few silver strands stuck to his brush, put them inside a plastic pouch, and pocketed it. You headed for the kitchen. You still felt shaken from Rhaenyra's unkind words. You knew what would help. Stressed spelled backwards became desserts.

In the kitchen, you came upon Aemond, his hips against the counter. In his hands was the platter of leftover kouign-amann Mabel made later this morning. He straightened up at once and put down the almost empty platter, the half-eaten butter cake back to where it came from.

You smirked and opened the fridge. From inside, you brought out one of the Tupperware, opened it, and sent it across the kitchen table. Brown Tyroshi honeyfingers laid neatly inside. Aemond raised a brow, then grabbed a few.

You plucked a finger and bit into it. The taste of honey caramel filled your mouth. “Never pegged you to have a sweet tooth. Your mum would have a heart attack watching you eat the fattiest dessert in the world.”

He hummed but said nothing. You stared at him. He ignored you. “I need a favor.”

He raised a brow but promised nothing. You brought out the pouch. He frowned. “Is that one of ours?”

“Give this to Alys. Tell her to run this one under the test.”

“The test?”

“She'll explain everything. She's the boron rod to your nutty neutrons.” You winked, proud to have used a reference to the Chernobyl series, a recent watch with Aegon, and left the pouch in Aemond's care. You knew he'd deliver, because you'd ask Alys about it later on and he'd do everything except for upsetting the love of his life. You left him with the stacks of honeyfingers to join Aegon in bed. He clung to you, your tit in his mouth as you told him what happened to little Viserys in his nursery, then what Rhaenyra said to you in Helaena's room.

“I'm sorry but I gotta say I told you so.”
You grimaced. “Never again am I embracing my mama's ideals.”

“About the nanny, Daemon is in cahoots with the Rogare family. He stayed with them during his exiles.” He told you how the Rogue Prince often got exiled by his big brother due to his wild youth. “He used to deflower virgins when he was my age. The red light districts in King's Landing had all types of unsavory stories about him. He's a sadist, apparently.”

You thought back to Rhaenyra. She didn't have one submissive bone in her, like you. What could Daemon want with a woman like her? Netty, now Netty was submissive. She wasn't a pushover, no, that wasn't what being a sub was about. But you detected submissive nature in her. No wonder Daemon was sleeping with her. She probably couldn't tell him no. He was her employer, after all. It seemed Bill Clinton existed in every nation.

Chapter Text

National Penuche Fudge Day/National Crème Brûlée Day, 2024

You spent the next two weeks sticking either with your boyfriend, his mother, and full siblings, or with your girlfriends, who had no kind words to spare about the Valyrians and the Andals.

“That Otto Hightower is pissing me off,” Etaf grumbled, as you prepared lunch one morning. “He has so many dietary demands. On top of that, he made Mabel cry this morning just for burning his toast.”

“What?” you almost screamed. You turned back to the saucepan of penuche fudge you were making for your crème brûlée pies.

Etaf told you what happened. Otto Hightower, ever since he got eviscerated by his oldest grandson, a grandson he was used to beating around physically and verbally, was pissed after he got a taste of his own medicine. He vented his frustration on “the help”, Etaf and Mabel, since he couldn't say shit to you without repercussions. To Otto, not only were you a fallen woman (how Victorian of him!), you also obstructed his scheme to persuade Aegon back to Westeros. As long as you supported his unwillingness to usurp his sister, Aegon would “continue shirking from his duties”, as Otto so aptly put it. On the other hand, the black faction no longer treated you unkindly. Rhaenyra stayed away and Daemon openly gleaned amusement from the little bit of rebellion Aegon showed toward his grandfather. Wait till he learned how you recorded his infidelity and sent it to his wife. Until then, the blacks needed you to remain in Aegon's life to keep him from the cactus chair. You didn't give a fuck about how they wanted to exploit you. You'd stay with Aegon as long as you loved each other and were faithful to each other. That was all you wanted.

You thought back to the baby showers last week. Because both the Targaryen princesses were pregnant at the same time, the older sister with a girl and the younger one with a boy, the bridal shower turned into a covert negotiation table. On one side of the dining hall, you brought out the three cakes meant for Rhaenyra, Helaena, and Helaena's “guest”. Days ago, when you asked the two princesses what sort of cakes they wanted for their shower, the dreamy-eyed younger princess immediately demanded you to make three cakes, not two. Even after Rhaenyra said that it was just the two of them whose baby shower this was.

Helaena adamantly shook her head. “Three cakes for three. Red, white, and pink. Charlotte, cheesecake, chocolate. Cassandra, Cressida, Clytemnestra.”

Rhaenyra, confused, backed off. You, on the other hand, gently asked the young princess if she had any recipes in mind. She showed you three decadent cakes, gorgeous, delicious, and complicated to make. One of them took six hours to bake, the least amount of time one of the cakes needed was three hours. But Helaena almost begged you to make them, as if the lives of the babies depended upon it.

So, you accepted. Your girlfriends cleared up the schedule for you to focus on the cakes and took up some of your responsibilities. The nine-hour long labor was a success, for Helaena squealed and hugged you on her own. “Maelor, Visenya, Aemon. White, red, pink. Charlotte, chocolate, cheesecake. Cassandra, Clytemnestra, Cressida.”

You only recognized the Trojan ladies, the colors, the cakes you made, and the names of the babies the two princesses were carrying. You knew no Aemon, only Aemond. You wondered if Helaena was like Cassandra, a prophetess whose words sounded like the gibberish of a madwoman until they came true.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the room, the congregation of the Velaryon elderly couple, the King and the Queen, and Otto Hightower was in full swing. The five of them discussed whether an engagement between Maelor and Visenya could be arranged. Rhaenys suggested bringing in the unborn girl's parents for consultation. Instantly, Daemon was staunchly against it. Rhaenyra was relieved to have her husband support her reluctance.

“You didn't allow the betrothal between your daughter and Rhaenyra's son,” Daemon said to Alicent. You once overheard him call her Alicunt, which didn't surprise you considering how misogynistic he was, but it did disgust you and hate him more. The vitriol behind his words stunned you though. Such intensity. “And now you propose a betrothal between my daughter and your bastard grandson?”
Alicent pressed her lips thinly. Otto came to rescue his daughter. He revealed to everyone how it was the King's suggestion, not his own or his daughter's. In response to this, Daemon scoffed and refused point blank to never allow his daughter to marry a Hightower, let alone a Hightower bastard.

From the other side of the room, you (and Rhaena) observed this intense war of marriage pacts and court intrigue. You thanked your stars for not being romantically linked with an heir apparent. Until Etaf pointed out that your children with Aegon might have to be sold off as cattle to marriages of convenience in future. The possibility made your joy curdle. Rhaena was kind enough to not initiate a conversation and simply let you be. She did look worried though.

To distract yourself, you presented the baby shower gifts to the two princesses. For Helaena, a set of ten astrosphere lamps. To demonstrate how stellar they were, you turned off the lights and put down the curtains. The lamps glowed in the dark. Helaena giggled and thanked you profusely.

For Rhaenyra, you had bought a necklace with two heart pendants chained to each other, the names of her and her unborn daughter engraved on each heart. The box it came with had a red rose eternally preserved in it; if you rotate this top with a side handle, it unveiled the necklace.

“Anne Boleyn was my inspiration,” you said to Rhaenyra, the woman who had insulted you a week ago. You just wanted to make peace. With her mauve gaze on you, you explained how Queen Elizabeth the First always wore a mother-of-pearl ring, called the Chequers' ring, which contained two miniature portraits. One was undoubtedly that of Elizabeth, the other was most probably of Anne Boleyn's. This little tidbit inspired you to buy this necklace for little Visenya to wear in future, to remember her mother by, like Elizabeth and Anne.

“I can't afford jewelry with miniature portraits. Besides, Visenya isn't here yet. So, I bought this with you two in mind. I apologize for not buying a gift for the mother, rather for the baby.”

Rhaenyra asked her husband to put it around her slim neck. “Until my girl arrives, I shall cherish it.” As Daemon did so, she looked at you. “For a gift so thoughtful and precious, you have my gratitude...” The next part was less loud. “...and my apology.”

You understood at once what she referred to. “Water under the bridge, Princess.” Though you wished she had apologized properly to Alicent and Aemond, for what her son did to his uncle.

You'd also bought gifts for the twins, and Rhaenyra's little boys, because once Jaehaerys saw his mummy getting a gift, he wanted one for him and his sister. You had anticipated this. For Jaehaera, a kitty-shaped cup with a fish-shaped infuser inside, for her tea parties.

“The kitty has a fish inside her belly!” Jaehaera stated the obvious.

For Jaehaerys, a strawberry plush bunny whose floppy ears functioned as a bag around its body. The little boy grumbled but accepted it nonetheless. Days later, his sister tattled about how her brother slept with the bunny under his favorite blankie.

For little Aegon, a night light where a flying dragon spewed fire and the flame glowed in the dark.

Lastly, for little Viserys, a six-feet-three goose plushie. Rhaenyra's concern over such a gigantic doll vanished once little Viserys squeezed the neck of the goose and hugged it. “For the days when your queenly duties won't let you hug your kids,” you told her. “My mama bought me a gigantic teddy for the nights when she had to work overtime and couldn't tuck me to bed.”

Alicent squeezed your hand. Aegon pulled you closer and kissed your temple. “See?! Isn't my buttercup wonderful?”

With things more stable now than before, no matter what ammunition Otto tried to trigger by egging you and your girlfriends, you didn't want to give him an inch. He'd definitely take a mile.

Now, a week after the shower, in the kitchen, you awaited both the penuche fudge to thicken and Alys to return from Westeros, where she went two days ago without her husband. He stayed back to support his mum and siblings against the blacks.

As if she'd been summoned, Alys entered the kitchen. Etaf and Mabel carried away the breakfast dishes for the buffet table. You were putting away the crème brûlée custard in the fridge. You'd make the pie later on, the dessert for today's lunch. You greeted Alys with a cheerful, “Welcome back!”

Alys didn't return your smile like she usually did. “I've got bad news, lovely. Double bad news.”

You knew what the paternity test result would tell you even before you opened the envelope and read the contents. Alys played the two recordings, the second one churning your stomach. You could picture how Helaena and Aegon would react. But the truth must come out. You steeled your resolve and told Alys to make copies of the report. While she did that, you asked Mabel to cover for you, as you went to mentally prepare the love of your life.
Yes, he was, wasn't he? Aegon meant so much to you. He had beat himself around for so long thinking he cheated on the love of his life. And what about Helaena? That poor girl deserved none of this.

Aegon was taking a shower. You had done it already. Still, you stripped yourself and joined him. He laughed in surprise and mirth, before he wrapped his arms around you.

“How is it that we never showered together, dōnītsos?” He playfully nipped the delicate flesh of your earlobe. You threw your head back, colliding with his collarbone, his arms tight around you as water cascaded down your entwined bodies. He sucked on your earlobe. A growl vibrated through him. His hardness poked your thighs. Your hand found him and slowly stroked him with gentle but hurried movements. He rubbed his nose up and down your nape. His teeth scraped your wet skin. His soft body against yours, you clung to him with your arm thrown behind you and around him. He grinded himself through your fingers around his cock. “Fuck me, dōnītsos. Fuck me so good, I melt in your warmth.”

“He was still a married man,” your mind supplied. “You’re having an affair with a married man with kids once again, like your mama did before you.”

You couldn't take it anymore. You burst into tears. Loud, ugly sobs wracked your body. At once, Aegon stilled. He turned off the water and turned you around. He wiped your face. Your hot tears mixing with the cold shower water let him know you were sobbing, if your contorted face hadn't done so already. He asked what was wrong. You fetched the towel and dried him up, sobbing all the time. He tried to stop you and check if you were okay. At last, he put his foot down, and carried you out of the shower and back to your room.

“Buttercup, you're scaring me. What's going on? Was my sister mean to you again? Or is it my Grandsire?”

At the mention of Otto, you bawled again. Aegon was alert at once. “What did he do this time? What the fuck did he do?”

You cupped his face and tried to stop your weeping fits. “I wish he did something to me, baby boy.”

He grabbed your hands on his face and kissed your nose. “What did he do, Mommy?”

You put on your clothes. You made him wear what you'd picked out for him, sweatpants and a sweatshirt, his comfy clothes. Once you were both dressed, you sat down and told him the horrible things his grandfather did to him and his sister.

“He persuaded the High Septon and the Council of Faith to not annul your marriage. Instead, he had them present falsified papers to you and Helaena, to keep your marriage intact all these years without your knowledge or consent.” You took a deep breath, then let it out. “You’re still Helaena’s husband.” You felt a bloated porcupine inside you, poking you and perforating you. You couldn’t imagine what your boyfriend was going through, or what he’d go through once he learned the second part of your revelation, much more devastating than the one you just unveiled. But you had to tell him. So, you did.

Aegon didn't speak for a whole minute. His eyes slowly welled up. His jaw clenched, he stared at a spot in the distance. Only when you touched his cheeks and turned his gaze on you did he snap out of it. Tears ran down his pale cheeks. He sniffled, gulped, and got to his feet. He pulled you with him and stomped downstairs, to the dining hall which was already up in chaos. Alys had played the phone recordings between Otto, the High Septon, and the Council of Faith; and Otto and the head of the sperm bank, and distributed copies of the paternity test reports. Your boyfriend ignored everyone else, who looked up at his charging form. Aegon stormed up to his grandfather, who was arguing with his daughter. He gently pushed his mum aside and punched Otto’s nose. The sound of a crack lulled the room into a pin-drop silence. Aegon grunted and shook. You immediately fetched a napkin and filled it with ice from a bucket on the buffet table. You placed the cold compressor against his fist. He yelled and stomped his feet. You kept up with his movements, gently pressing the cold napkin against his knuckle.

Otto, on his part, had crumpled to the floor against the wall. He cupped his nose, from which streams of red gushed down. One of the family bodyguards had fetched a first-aid kit for the prime minister and the prince. You coaxed Aegon to sit on a chair. He was crying now. Whimpering from the pain in his knuckle and his heart.

“You fucking motherfucker!” he yelled. “You fucked-up sack of flesh and bones! I'll fucking burn you alive!”

You poured him a glass of POMP juice that Etaf made. Aegon greedily gulped down the whole thing. Your eyes landed on Helaena, who sat like a statue, surrounded by her twins, who were baffled by the chaos of the adults. Your eyes found Netty, not Larra, and you begged her to take the children out of the room. The shocked girl sprang to her feet and herded the twins out, with little Aegon and Viserys in tow. You didn't spot Larra anywhere.

“You imbecile!” Otto yelled despite his broken, bloody nose.

“Go fuck yourself with a cactus up your hairy, unwashed ass!” Aegon roared. “You did this to me! You did this to my sister! My sister! You said you loved her!”

“I did this because of my love for her!” Otto barked back. “Have none of you witnessed the ill treatment Helaena received, even from her own blood,” at this, he pointedly glared at Helaena’s older sister and uncle, “for conceiving children artificially and allegedly out of wedlock? I safeguarded your marriage and made you the father of her children so that you can protect them, Aegon. I did this because of the love I hold for her, for you, both of you!”

“No!” This came from Alicent. “You have no fucking right to claim that you hold genuine love for my children!”

Otto, and everyone else, stared in shock at the Queen, the devout Queen who never cursed in her life, let alone raised her voice against her father. Her face red with rage and pain, her meticulously braided and pinned auburn crown now disheveled under her scarf, she resembled a dragon even though her ancestors never claimed to have dragon ancestry. Otto actually cowered in front of his daughter.

Alicent towered over her father. “They're my children. Mine! I have carried them in my womb for forty months! I am their mother, not you. You have no right to do to them what you did to me! If you suppose I shall allow you to treat my babies as a plaything to further your ambition, you're fucking delusional, Otto Hightower.”

Otto let out a shaky breath. “That American whore has brainwashed you as well, huh?”

Alicent laughed mirthlessly. “It seems you need a mirror to view who is the brainwashed one here.” She pressed her lips. “How could you betray and violate your own grandchildren? To Helaena, of all my children. My sweet girl. She has never hurt even an insect.” She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. “Ser Criston, please remove Lord Hightower from the premises at once.”

Before Criston could move, Otto scrambled to his feet. “You do not comprehend, daughter,” he rasped. “Your son is wasting his time here. He is Helaena’s lord husband and the father of her children. He should be in Westeros, rallying our allies to our side.”

“Enough!” Alicent blocked Otto's trek to his grandchildren. “You will not repeat what you did to me. I shall no longer be a piece that you move around your board as you desire. I shall not and neither shall my children. As long as I live, I shall protect all seven of my children and grandchildren.”

In that moment, your admiration for Mama Alicent dwarfed any and all attraction or detestation you ever harbored toward her. You felt in awe of the woman who had been groomed her entire life by either her ambitious father or her lustful husband. You wanted to hug her and comfort her, tell the fourteen-year-old little girl writhing inside her that it was okay, it was okay to cry and rage and show violence to a world that had used and abused her so much. You felt a deep kinship with the Queen of Westeros that you had never felt with anyone. Not even your mama. You saw in Alicent what you could've been at the hands of your grandmother, had you accepted her offer to usurp your older sister. Alicent was your cautionary tale, and God should smite you should you ever let anyone turn you into Alicent 2.0.

You turned to Aegon and replenished the ice around his knuckle and the juice in his glass. You asked Mabel if she could hold the ice-pack around his hand for a little while. You moved to Alicent's side and rubbed her back. She almost sagged against your touch. “Ser Criston, please remove Lord Hightower...”

“No, I shall not go anywhere,” Otto said. “I'm the Prime Minister of Westeros, the right hand of the King.”

“Do you wish for me to strip you of your position, then? Is that what you desire?”

Otto smirked despite the blood gushing down his twisted nose. “Only the King has that authority, your grace. Without his permission, not even his consort can do such a thing.”

Before anybody could react to that, a chair loudly scraped across the floor. Everyone turned to Helaena, who waddled down to the head of the table, where her useless father slumped against the cushions. Her hands over her belly, she glanced only on the ground.

“Your grace, I do not have the late Queen Aemma's blood in my veins. Nor was I born with the anatomy of a man. I've accepted my fate.” She looked up, her eyes teary, yet clearer than ever. “I still bear your blood, your DNA in me. I've never asked for anything. This is the only thing I'll ever ask from you.”

Viserys looked into the violet eyes of the daughter he never cared for. His left eye, like Aemond's, was now out of function and covered with a golden half-mask.

Helaena exhaled. “Defend me, Father. Defend the daughter you never wanted, never cared for. Defend me. Defend my honor.” Her voice broke at the end.

Everyone else in the room waited with bated breath, including you. What would Viserys do?
He simply picked up his spoon and went back to his breakfast. Before Helaena could wither in disappointment, Alicent almost lunged at the hand-shaped badge on her father's breast pocket and tore it off his coat. “His grace, King Viserys Targaryen, the first of his name, has no objections. Therefore, I, Queen Alicent Hightower, relieve you, Lord Otto Hightower, of your duties and position as the Prime Minister of Westeros. You may leave.” She turned to Criston Cole. “Kindly, Ser, remove him from the premises at once.”

Otto glared at Alys, who had revealed to the Valyrians his schemes. He took one step in her direction and met Aemond's one-eyed glare instead.

“Do not dare touch my pregnant wife!” he said in an ominously calm voice.

Everyone was in for another surprise, including you. You glanced at the same sapphire ring on her left hand, then her hand discreetly over her belly. Alys' eyes met yours and she smiled wryly. “When we flew to Vermont. Aemond brought a septon with us. He fashioned my ring from the very gemstone he kept inside his empty eye socket.”

You didn't know Aemond used to be such a weird little goth. You congratulated her. So, Helaena was right. A guest was coming.

“So, you married a bastard whore and will sire a bastard of your own. Did you forget who took your eye?” Otto muttered.

“Careful, now. My brother simply twisted your nose, Lord Hightower,” Aemond said. “My fists have more accurate aims that even Lēkia's 20-20 vision won't allow him. Would you like to find out? I can promise you, no plastic surgeon in this world would be able to fix you when I'm done with you, should you harm even a hair on my wife's body.”

Otto, now thoroughly isolated, glared venomously at you. “Happy now, aren't we? You have finally accomplished what you plotted to do with that whore.”

You glared back at him. The reassuring presence of your Glock in your back pocket gave you courage. “I didn't dig your grave, sir. I simply gave you a nudge.”

“Such confidence. I admire it. I'll admire it even more when it'll crumble to dust.”

“Nothing you say can hurt me.”

His smile resembled a sneer. “You're not ashamed of your past. Nor are you guilty about your nature. Yet, I've always sensed a chink in your armor. A chink a bastard whore like you hide so well with your promiscuity.”

You frowned. You didn't like where this was going. He leaned over and whispered to you three words that made you nauseous.

“He's using you.”

Before you could react, Queen Alicent Hightower repeated her order to Ser Criston Cole. As the Dornish man escorted the recently sacked Prime Minister out of the manor, you went back to Aegon. You checked his hand. He was in pain, you could tell. You took him to Southampton Hospital's emergency room. Aemond drove you there and waited outside, while the doctor checked Aegon's hand. After a physical exam and an x-ray, the good doctor declared that it was just a boxer's fracture, that Aegon was lucky it was a closed, non-displaced fracture and should heal in three to six weeks. Aegon whined, having ruined his pianist's hands and essentially, his only chance to impress his parents with his musical skills. You calmed him down with the Tupperware of lemonies that Mabel had packed up. He ate, while the doctor wrapped up Aegon's right hand with an ulnar gutter splint.

“Come back after six weeks for another x-ray, to check if you've healed properly,” the doctor said.

The rest of the day went by solemnly. Even Daemon toned down his celebration for Otto's departure. Helaena stayed in her room with her children and her mother. After you returned, Aegon napped for a few hours. After lunch, you coaxed him to visit his sister-wife and, this part ached you but you had to suppress it, his children. Jaehaerys and Jaehaera Targaryen, children of Aegon Targaryen, the love of your life. His grandfather's hired hooker had drugged his drink eight years ago on his birthday, and assaulted him after he passed out, to collect his semen to be used as the secret replacement for Helaena's chosen donor.

As you closed the door to Helaena's room behind Aegon, you received a text from an unknown number.

“He told Boyd not to turn up at the recital.”

Attached to it was a phone conversation between your boyfriend and the page-turner who allegedly didn't turn up at his American debut.

Followed by the recording came another text:

“He's using you.”

Chapter Text

National Peanut Butter and Chocolate Day/National Vanilla Ice Cream Day, 2024

You were watching videos of innovative kitchen inventions, when Aegon returned from Helaena's room. He slipped in behind you and under the duvet, his left arm tight around your belly, his right arm spread over your head on the pillow. You waited for him to speak up, but he stayed quiet and watched the reels over your shoulder. It was when you were watching a video of five corner drawers fit into one space that you broke the silence.

“Can you make me this kind of drawer in the kitchen?” you asked.

“You'll have to rush me to the emergency room every week. My fingers will get caught somewhere.”

You laughed, as did he. He rubbed his face in the crook of your neck and groaned.

“How did it go?”

“Horrible. They stacked Legos, and Hellie and I said nothing and did nothing. Just a bunch of useless statues.”

You kissed his left hand and placed it on one of your cheeks. “If you wanna get back together with her...”

He gagged, literally gagged. “I told you. I see her as my weird little sister. Nothing else. It's disgusting, yuck.”

You put away your phone and turned to him. He pressed his face to your chest. “If only you were in her place... If I'm gonna do incest, I'd rather it be with you.”

This time, you gagged. “Pass. If you were my brother, we'd be Thor and Loki.”

“As much as I hate green, the color does suit me.”

“I'm Loki. You're Thor. Ray of sunshine with sun-kissed hair.” You kissed his head.

“Dōnītsos, I can't do it. I'm not ready to be a dad.”

“Then, don't. Be their uncle.”

“I can't, okay, I can't. If I wasn't born Valyrian, if my ancestors didn't forcefully normalize incest between siblings, I'd love to be in my position as their uncle and Helaena's big brother. But I’m still married to her, and my country normalizes siblings having sex and kids. They'll force me to be their dad. They'll force me to stay with Helaena. Ugh!”

“You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. It's what Criston's mug said. Do what you love. If you hate being their dad, be their uncle. Just don't fuck it up like Otto and your father.”

He sighed. “I meant what I said, you know.” He met your eyes. His purple ones glistened from unshed tears. “I'll gladly raise kids with you. If Jaehaerys and Jaehaera were your babies, not mine, I'd love to parent them with you.”

You lightly scratched his scalp. “If we survive this, we will.”

“Not if. When. When we'll survive this. We will survive everything.” He cupped your face. “I need your warmth, buttercup. You call me the sun, but it's me who needs your warmth more than anything.”

“It's summer right now.”

“I don't care. You're the warmth in my heart, the hearth for my storms, the home of my soul, no matter what season it is.”

“You're so gonna recite a poem for me next month.”

“I'll become Homer for you.”

“Don't be Homer. Be my Hozier.” You caressed his right hand, encased in a splint.

“You must be in pain.”

He grimaced. “Not much. Mum will be furious once she remembers I fractured my hand and I'm supposed to regale my father with my Orphean skills.”

“Does that make me Eurydice?”

“Don't you die on me.”

You kissed his splint. “Why did you have to punch that motherfucker in the first place?”

“Because he violated my and Helaena's bodies? Because he lied to us and made us think we’re not married anymore for almost a decade?”

You sighed. “How is she?”

“Traumatized. Broken. I doubt she'll ever recover fully from this. She already hated being touched without consent. He literally invaded her uterus. She'll never get over this.”

Poor girl. She never deserved any of the stuff karma awarded her. “Do you plan on telling the twins about this?”

“That I'm still married to their mother and their biological dad? I'm not sure. I'll have to talk to my mum and sister about this.”

You lifted his face and kissed his forehead, then his lips, lastly his cheeks. “Do you know what this means? You never cheated on Nelly on the night of your birthday. You were sexually assaulted.”

The unshed tears finally made their exit. You didn't wipe them. You let them fall, be free, and thus unburden the love of your life. So what if Nelly would always be his one true love? Aegon still loved you. Nelly was no longer in the picture. She was Gwen Stacy and you were Mary Jane Watson. Nelly was gone forever. You were here now with your Peter Parker, alive and happy. You wouldn't let any of your past, shared or separated, come between you.

Yet, you couldn't delete the text that said you were being used. Neither could you stop listening to the recording, to Aegon's soft, deep voice calmly telling Boyd not to make an appearance. Nor could you block the unknown number.

In the evening, after dinner, Alicent took Aegon to Helaena's room to say goodnight to the twins. You were about to head in the opposite direction when she called your name.

“Where do you think you're going, young lady?” she asked briskly.

You paused. “To bed?”

She tugged you by your hand. “Not until you say goodnight to the twins as well. You're going to be their stepmother. They'll need to get used to seeing you around.”

“Wait, what?”

She stopped. Aegon halted a few steps ahead, as shocked as you and also a little amused.

“Do you not intend to marry my son?”

You blinked a few times. “Uh, of course.”

“Then, it's settled. You'll be a part of my grandchildren's lives. They'll call you by your name, if you like. They can call you something else if you have anything else in mind. Come, come. Jaehaerys gets antsy if he doesn't get tucked in bed by ten.”

That was how you found yourself kneeling by the twins' bunk beds. Jaehaerys kissed his mother goodnight from the top bed. Jaehaera shyly let you croon the Swedish lullaby you learned from your mama. Their dad stared lovingly at you, finally at peace after the horrible day he had.

Out in the hallway, Alicent squeezed your hands. Her big brown eyes were wet. “Alys told me how you got the itch first. That you got the idea at the blood donation center and approached her with your suspicion. That you gave her Aegon's hair...”

Aegon turned to you. “You did?”

“I'm sorry for not telling you,” you said, worried that it might upset him. “I didn't know for sure if what I suspected was true. I'm sorry, baby boy.”
He gripped your hands tightly. “From now

on, you tell me what's going on in your head, okay?”

You nodded but made no promises. As Alicent gushed her gratitude to you, your head replayed the text and the phone conversation over and over again.

“He's using you.”

“You don't need to come today. I found someone else.”

The next day was Daeron's birthday. He was turning twenty-three this year. When you asked what sort of cake he wanted, he gave you free rein. Etaf suggested a peanut butter and chocolate cake, with vanilla ice cream.

“July 23 is National Peanut Butter Chocolate Day, also National Vanilla Ice Cream Day. So, why not incorporate them all?”

You could kiss Etaf. Aegon pouted when he heard you proclaim that.

“No, you only kiss me, dōnītsos. I'm your boyfriend!”

You grabbed his chin and kissed him. When you told him he was the best kiss in your life so far, he grinned. “Your last first kiss.”

You rolled your eyes. Etaf laughed that she had been finally, officially dethroned. “That is some feat, man. Nobody has ever done it before.” She spooned some brown butter scrambled eggs onto your plate. Aegon's plate, as usual, was heaped with piles of your lemonies. Before you could coax him to have some Quiche Lorraine, the rest of the dining hall fell silent. A sick sense of dread assaulted your back. You turned around and froze.
Otto Hightower was back. When he felt your stare, he turned in your direction and smirked.

“Great grandsire!” Jaehaerys ran to him.

The old man bent and scooped up the little prince.

The reunion took away all your appetite. From Alicent, you learned that Jaehaerys had secretly called his great grandfather last night in bed. He told only Jaehaera about it, who in turn told her mother and grandmother at the breakfast table, so Alicent had no way of knowing this would happen beforehand. Nor could she warn her children or prevent his return.

Otto took a seat near his great grandson. Helaena wasn't far. You solidified your resolve and sent Aegon with his mother. You went to Helaena's side, bypassing her grandfather and son, to coax her from her seat. Jaehaera followed you. And if Jaehaera came, little Aegon wasn't far behind. Soon, little Viserys followed. Thus, Rhaenyra came along as well. Alicent, who sat to the King's right, blinked, taken aback by your entourage. King Viserys smiled at the sight of his favorite child and her sons. You left them to him and ushered Helaena to Alicent's right side. Jaehaera went with her mum.

“Thank you,” Alicent mouthed to you.

Aegon, your Aegon, slumped in his chair. You fed him lemonies after lemonies. Occasionally, you fed him your scrambled eggs and fruit porridge. He ate robotically. You had sat to his left, to shield him from the stare of his grandfather. At one point, when a little milk dribbled down the corner of his lips, you unmistakably heard Otto snicker. You gently wiped it off Aegon's face. He stood up and fled the room. You followed.

“I can't do this, dōnītsos. I can't... I can't... I can't! He had me raped! He got me drugged and raped!” He paced around in your room. You hugged him. He crumpled in your arms, sobbing and hiccupping. “He's back. He's back to hurt me, hurt Helaena, hurt her kids...”

“Yours too.”

He stuffed his wet face in the crook of your neck and sobbed loudly, messily, with hiccups and snot. You took him to bed and tucked him in. He pulled you with him. “Don't leave me, dōnītsos. You're keeping me sane. If you leave me, I'll go mad.”

You tangled your legs with his and unbuttoned your blouse to expose your tits to him. He latched onto them. He hollowed out his cheeks and suckled. It ached a little.

“That means it's working. My labor is paying off,” he said, after you told him to slow down because it hurt.

You had to leave soon. You had to bake the cake and help your girlfriends with lunch and dinner services. Aegon followed you into the kitchen. He mostly watched you three cook. When Mabel asked if he'd ever learn to cook for himself, you leaped into the conversation.

“That's what I'm here for.”

“What about when you can't cook?”

“The only time my buttercup won't be able to cook is when she's tired, sick, or pregnant.” Aegon twisted your apron string around his finger. “We can order takeout then.”

“For nine months?” Etaf asked. “All the more reasons you gotta learn how to cook, man. At least learn southern American or Swedish dishes, from your better half's background.”

After you presented Daeron's birthday cake in the dining hall that evening, you were greeted with a familiar face you hadn't seen for some time. Alicent had invited Lyonel Hightower and Samantha Tarly for her son's birthday party. The couple drove with their six kids. They too stayed away from Otto. You wondered if Alicent told them what happened, before you learned the truth.

“He views our kids as bastards,” Samantha told you. “Lyonel and I weren't married when our youngest was born. Even though we're married now. He still views them as bastards.”

Alicent and Aegon joined you, the Queen with no plate in her hand, while her son ate five cake slices from his plate. You were astonished that she let him do this. Then, you saw Otto alone in a corner, eating cake. You offered to feed Aegon, so that he could open the mail that Samantha brought from his box.

“One of them is a reminder from that sex clinic in Chelsea,” she said.

Alicent tensed up. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, nothing to get anxious about, your grace. Just a three-monthly check-in to see if the chlamydia or gonorrhea came back.” Obviously, Samantha didn't get the memo.

At once, Alicent's face paled. She turned to her son. “You got an STD again?!”

Aegon took his plate back from you and shoveled more cake in his mouth. You frowned when what Alicent said set in.

“Again?”

She rubbed her forehead. “He got syphilis years ago. Nelly got him treated. Took him to the doctor and got him cured. I'm forever indebted to her for burying the rumors.”

Samantha chuckled. “This time, he had you to thank,” she said to you. “How did he get the STDs again?”

You swallowed the succulent growing in your throat. “From a tattooist. Or his wife. I'm not sure. He wanted to get a tattoo.”

Alicent panicked again. She demanded to see the tattoo. Aegon refused to show her. He ran away when his mother tried to unbutton his shirt. She followed him.

“A tattooist, huh?” Samantha said, as if she suspected something.

“Yeah, why?”

“It's just that, one of my dermatologist friends visited me in March. She told me she had a patient who ran away from her, literally ran away, when my friend tried to inject the antibiotics in her. The woman stated in her form that she ran a tattoo shop in Manhattan with her husband. I wonder if it's the same woman.”

You asked if Aegon knew about the lady.

“He was present at the time. Even asked which tattoo place it was,” she said.

The succulent grew in size, thick, fleshy, and engorged, until you couldn't speak without croaking. You excused yourself and went to your room.

It was too eerie to be a mere coincidence. He had syphilis years ago, back when Nelly was alive to take care of him. Now, he had chlamydia and gonorrhea from a lady that he knew had them. Did he do it willingly? Why would he undergo STD to relive a similar moment with his dead fiancée? Ridiculous. You were ridiculous to think such a bizarre and farfetched connection.

The next morning, the unknown number had texted you again, this time with two files. The first was a screenshot of a Facebook post from Samantha's dermatologist friend's account. A photo of her with one arm thrown over the shoulder of a woman, both in deep purple gowns with green hoods, back when they graduated from NYU Grossman. The second was the PDF file of a patient's information to make an appointment at Mount Sinai. The address and zip code matched that of the tattoo place Aegon took you to. You Googled the shop. When the co-owner's name matched with the patient whose records you received, the succulent in your throat pierced your flesh. Two realizations dawned on you.

Otto Hightower was behind the unknown number.

Aegon Targaryen might've willingly contracted his STDs.

The first one you were 100% certain. The second, you needed to dig deeper.

You remembered your interview with the housekeeping agency. How he sabotaged it by lying about you being pregnant, the same thing he tried to do to Nelly. He sent song requests to radio stations, before he sang one on air himself. He hired you as his housekeeper shortly afterwards, the same way he reconciled with Nelly later on. The thing he did to Nelly to placate her was the same thing he did to you. Were you his rebound? Was that it? It had been four years, but Nelly was his one true love. The love of his life. Of course, he'd not be able to move on. But was he using you to cope? 

Otto Hightower had kept his word. He'd found your chink. He wedged his knife into the hole. Now, he was expanding it. And you couldn't stop him.

You turned to your boyfriend, still asleep, his arms tightly around you. You took his one hand and placed it over your throat. “Peux-tu le sentir, mon amour? Tu me fais du mal. J'ai peur. J'espère vraiment que ce n'est pas ce que je pense. J'espère vraiment que tu ne m'utilises pas. S'il te plaît, ne me brise pas le cœur comme ça. S'il te plait mon amour.” (“Can you feel it, my love? You're hurting me. I'm scared. I really hope it's not what I think. I really hope you're not using me. Please, don't break my heart like that. Please, my love.”). You tilted your forehead against his, tears down your face.

Aegon mumbled your name. “Dōnītsos?” He opened his purple eyes. Pretty, so pretty, it summoned a fresh deluge down your cheeks. He was awake at once. “Mommy, what's wrong?” He leaned on his elbow to wipe your tears.

“Nightmare, it's nothing. Go back to sleep.” You untangled his arms around you and fled to the bathroom. When he tried to follow you, you locked the door. He called your name, your real name. You bit into your forearm to muffle your sobs.

This was nothing. It proved nothing, your logical mind told you. This was Otto Hightower, the master manipulator. You wouldn't let him come between you and your one true love. You shouldn't. You remembered how panicked and sorrowful Aegon was when he came that night inside your ass and made you promise not to leave him. That he feared the world was out to steal you from him. What if you handed over ammunition to the world? You were doing it now. Letting Otto distend the gash on your chest, over your heart, inside your soul. You had to stop him before your pain infected Aegon. He already had his heart ripped off when Nelly was taken from him. You wouldn't do that to him, would you? No, you would not.

The first thing you did when you came out was to block the vulture's number from your phone. You leaned over and kissed your sleeping boyfriend, who clutched your pillow to his chest as if it were you. He mumbled your name when you pecked on his cheeks. You laid out his clothes for today and went to make breakfast.

You shared your worries with your girlfriends. They checked out the stuff Otto sent you. The call recording. The PDF file. The screenshot. They learned from you about the interview sabotage and the radio serenade.

“The phone conversation proves nothing,” Mabel said. “So, he told his page-turner not to turn up. He probably wanted you by his side, instead of a stranger. I think it's romantic.”

Etaf couldn't agree. “But the PDF, the screenshot, the interview sabotage, and the radio serenade are a little too coincidental though. Three red flags. I don't know.” She kissed your cheek. “But good call on blocking that old fucker. I can't believe he's back after all the fucked-up shit he did to his own grandkids.”

Alicent had tried to get rid of him, but Jaehaerys got upset when Otto was leaving last night. So, she reluctantly let him stay. She did her best to keep her daughter and grandkids as much away from him as possible. But she had a sick husband to care for as well.

You asked Ser Criston if he could take Otto's breakfast to his room. When he hesitated, Alicent told him to do it. He was up for it at once. You and your girlfriends had a good laugh once the Westerosi Queen left with her Lancelot.

“He's more whipped than your whipped cream, Maby baby,” Etaf said.

Aegon stumbled into the kitchen, wearing the clothes you'd laid out for him. He looked panicked. “Baby boy, what's wrong?”

“Mum brought my Steinway all the way from Manhattan.” He lifted his hand encased in the splint. Immediately, your girlfriends sensed the dilemma.

“Can't you play with one hand? Like Nicholas McCarthy does?” Mabel asked.

“Is it possible to play with one hand?” you asked.

Aegon hesitated. “I'm not sure, I've never played one-handedly before.”

Mabel told him how one of her adoptive parents' sister was a pianist, who once played one-handedly in a recital. She got him a list of tunes to play with his left hand. Aegon downloaded all the sheet music and pored over them.

“They're having it installed in the lobby, replacing the player piano,” he told you glumly.

“Go ahead and perform with it. Let us hear you and pick a tune for you.”

He sat you next to him on the bench and began with Czerny. Ten minutes later, Alicent came downstairs. Seeing her son play on the piano with his left hand, she smiled. “Now, that's dedication, son.” She kissed his head. You cradled his right hand on your lap. He sighed once his mum left.

“I'm useless, Mommy.”

“No, you're not, baby boy. Come. Let's revisit Scriabin.”

In the end, he narrowed it down to three tunes. Prelude and Nocturne by Scriabin, Five Little Pieces by Nepomuceno, and Six Études by Zichy.

“Géza Zichy, I'm going for him,” Aegon decided. “He was one-handed. He knew what he was doing.”

Aegon's performance was five days away, on the twenty-ninth of July. He continued to practice diligently, sixteen hours a day, the first thing after breakfast and the last thing before bedtime. Even the blacks admitted in whispers that he was showing admirable determination, something he almost never displayed before. Alicent credited you for the positive influence. Daemon called you Petroleum Nelly 2.0 after he told you how much you physically resembled her.

“Is it true?” you asked Aegon after lunch, when he was taking a break from his practice.

His mouth was full of lemonies. He shrugged and swallowed his mouthful. “A bit, I guess.”

“Do you have any pictures of her?”

“My new phone, when I came to this country, has nothing of hers. A clean slate, as Criston called it.”

Aegon wasn't on social media, so you couldn't visit his profile to find out more about his fiancée. You searched online for Petronella Y. Vendeline, before you closed the tab.

What were you doing? What the fuck were you doing? Here you were, snooping behind your boyfriend about his dead fiancée. She was gone. She would never come back. Why couldn't you let it go? So, you resembled his ex. He had contracted STD like he did back when she was alive. He sabotaged your job interview like he once did to her. He sang songs for you on the radio, like he did to Nelly. He told his page-turner to not come, then lied to you about it, like he lied about his royal identity for months. But those were white lies that had nothing to do with Nelly. Did he betray you? Nope. You were letting his scheming grandfather get inside your head and toy with your wires.

“I'm not a rebound,” you whispered to yourself. “I'm not a rebound. I'm not a fucking rebound. I'm not. I'm not. I am not!”

You needed to get out of here. You'd been cooped up inside this manor for way too long.

You grabbed your satchel and headed for the beach. It was an hour after lunch. Aegon was hammering away on his piano. You sneaked out the backdoor, in case he noticed how agitated you looked and came after you. You visited a restaurant near Fort Pond first, bought all four pizzas on the menu, and fled to Big Reed Pond. You didn't have lunch, so this would do. On the desolate boardwalk, you sat cross-legged, stacked four slices from each pizza on top of each other, and took a big bite. The sausage and bacon, mixed with gorgonzola and mozzarella, with crunch from broccoli and artichoke filled your mouth and fed the black hole that throbbed within you. You ate until you could no longer hold the dam over your emotions. You bit and chewed and swallowed, while two rivers rushed down your cheeks. You accidentally bit on your gummy walls. The inside of your cheek swelled and bled.

Why did stuff like this happen only to you? Getting stood up on dates. Getting your nudes stolen and sold off. Being attracted to married people, cheaters, alcoholics, and abusers, all of them toxic, unattainable people. What caused this? It couldn't just be your grandparents treating you like shit. It couldn't be losing your sisters, your comrades who would’ve shared your pains of being the bastard children of an unmarried woman, disowned by her family. It couldn't be your father, who was caught up in a storm and drowned.

You remembered your sisters. Their sonogram picture your mama still kept framed on her bedside table, right next to your most recent photos. Her treasure triad, she called you. You, Maya, and Mina. You vowed to become a mother someday. You hoped you'd have twins. Girls, preferably. You'd name them after your sisters, no matter if your partner was Palestinian or Valyrian or Swedish or something else.

You missed your mama. You called her. She picked up on the second ring.

“Mama?” your voice cracked and she picked up on it.

“Sweet pea, what's wrong?” Worry was evident in her voice. If there was one person in this stupid fucking world you could always return to was your mama, the only one who was just yours. Etaf could stop being in love with you. Aegon could be using you as a rebound. But your mama? Your mama was yours, truly, wholly, eternally. Nobody could snip your bond. She'd always be the woman who braved this world alone and never let you go. Never left you. Never used you. Never replaced you. She tried her best and her best, you admitted to her, was enough, more than enough for you. Why did we always recognize someone's worth when it was either too late, or you'd been burnt and broken? You cried and laid bare to her, through hiccups and stutters and tears, all your deep, dark fears.

“Mama, please help me. I think I'm drowning like Dad. Please, don't let me sink too. I don't wanna die, Mama. I don't wanna leave you like Dad did.”

She cried with you. You wished you had the internet here to make a video call. You yearned to see her. You wished you could tell her about Aegon, his true identity. “Mama, I think, I'm a rebound to Ae... Greg. I don't understand. Why is it always happening to me? What did I do wrong when I was born? I didn't ask for this. Yet, it keeps happening with me. Am I just a toy? Am I that bad?”
She tried her best to calm you down. You told her all that happened without giving away identifying details. “Mama, I'm scared.”

“Don't let the suspicions break you, my darling. I think you should talk to him about this.”

You dismissed that thought, but didn't voice it. Your mama would only insist on it. You got her stubbornness, after all, intensified by your father's temper and impulsiveness. After your call with your mama and the four pizzas didn't help, you decided it was time to return. Aegon would be worried. Your girlfriends needed you to shoulder the dinner duties. Everyone needed you. Who did you need? Who would be there when you needed them?

A new unknown number sent you a text. A picture. A rare photo of Petronella Y. Vendeline, with Prince Aegon Targaryen. A photo taken from at least five yards away. Aegon had his arms draped around the golden blonde, whose physical features eerily resembled yours. All you had to do was dye your hair golden blonde, wear blue contact lenses, and dress as elegantly as she did, in a golden sequin scalloped dress. Though flappers didn't sport long hair, Nelly did in what was obviously a Gatsby costume party. Aegon was in a black pinstripe suit, his hair much shorter than now, sleek and brushed back. He looked so much cleaner than he did now. Healthier. Happier. You envied them. A golden couple, arm in arm, bright and bonny. Anyone would be jealous of them, feel like an outsider, an intruder, a homewrecker.

You blocked the number but saved the photo. You did a Google reverse image search for the dress. The price tag was in five digits. Of course, it was. A handsome prince deserved a rich, classy woman, not a broke whore like you. A whore and a servant.

You visited a salon on Euclid avenue. You showed the hairdresser the picture of Nelly with her sleek, flapper style long blonde hair. “I want to look like this.”

The woman frowned. “Honey, that's you.”

The words watered the succulent in your throat. The prickly spines burrowed into your flesh. “No, that's my boyfriend's ex fiancée.”

“That's your boyfriend?” she asked.

You nodded, unable to speak. The woman gave you a look of pity. You couldn't stomach it. You took the photo and fled.

This had to stop. It had to. Only days ago, you were fine. You were fine! And now you were miserable. How did this happen? How could Otto Hightower be so good at manipulation? How could you, stupid moronic you, let him cut you so deeply?

You unblocked the number and sent a text.

“Leave me alone!”

The reply was instantaneous.

“Only if you leave him.”

Chapter Text

National Aunt and Uncle Day, 2024

The next morning, you woke up to utter chaos and panic. It came from the black faction. Out on the patio, they and their King were arguing furiously. You spotted Otto in the distance, alone and delighted. Did he do something?

Alicent told you what happened. Apparently, the King received video proof of Daemon's infidelity this morning, as did the press of Westeros, who released it into the wild instantly. Alicent viewed the first five minutes before she had to bow out.

“Now, they have nobody to look after the children. How will the pregnant princess take care of her young sons, what with the wave of chaos this will surely unleash upon us? Despicable behavior from him. Now, the entire country is conscious of the skeletons the Prince and the Princess bury in their closet.”

Inside, you were panicking. You didn't do this, then who did? Sure, you sent it to Rhaenyra, but she would never release it to the press. What if someone hacked your phone, your online storage? Otto? Aegon did say he'd kill for proofs like your video. You glanced in his direction, but he never once looked at you. You went to your group chat with your boyfriend and girlfriends, and shared what bugged you.

“If you didn't send it to the King and the press, then who did?” Mabel asked.

“Either someone hacked your stuff, or Rhaenyra's. Maybe Nettles?”

You disagreed. “Look at her! Look how terrified she is!” You four glanced at the girl in the corner, far from the royal couple and the King. She wrung her hands, her eyes downcast, alone and friendless. You itched to go to her side, but this would draw more ire upon you.

“Everyone will blame her, call her a homewrecker. I don't think she did it,” you wrote.

“What about Corlys? Or Rhaenys? She's always been a bitter harpy about Rhaenyra and Daemon ever since the two of them eloped right after her kids died one by one,” your boyfriend supplied. He described to you the Valyrian marriage rituals. You had to make cuts on both your palms and lips, then join them in a kiss and a hand clasping. The last bit would squeeze blood from your palms, to be caught in a goblet full of wine that you and your partner had to drink, to consume the blood of your spouse, to become one in blood.

Mabel gagged. As did you. Etaf sent a green nauseated emoji. “Your people are like Satan worshippers,” you texted.

“What about that other nanny?” Etaf suggested. “I'm just casting stones in the dark here...”

“You might be onto something,” Aegon wrote. “The Rogare family is influential. They sent their daughter to Westeros, to Daemon, to curry favors and rise in power. Probably to seduce one of Rhaenyra's remaining sons or someone else. This could be her revenge for getting sacked.”

“Should we voice our suspicion to the King?” Mabel asked.

“Let's not butt our nose here. We're the outsiders,” Etaf wrote. “Besides, we have no proof that it was her. Snooping around might reveal to them that you were the one who took that video. Let's lay low.”

The rest of you agreed with her.

You four watched with the Queen, as Daemon argued with his wife/niece and brother/father-in-law. Rhaenyra defended his actions by claiming theirs was an open marriage. But the King would have none of it. He called it an abomination, nothing that the future first Queen of Westeros should ever even think of indulging in.

“It goes against the Faith of the Seven,” the King said in his raspy, sickness-laden voice.

Daemon scoffed. “We're the blood of the dragon, the last of Valyria. What care do we put upon these lowly Andals and their idiotic faith?”

Alicent stood up straighter. “The Faith and the Crown are one body, one mind, one soul, Prince Daemon. Let me refresh your memory, lest you have forgotten that King Aegon the First, the Conqueror, converted to the Faith of the Seven. One of King Jaehaerys’ longest serving hand was Septon Barth. Queen Alysanne sent Princess Maegelle to become a septa and Prince Vaegon to become an archmaester, and Princess Daella, your grandmother-in-law, refused to marry Lord Royce Blackwood because he worshiped the old gods. The Faith and the Crown are as married to each other as you are to your lady wife. Show some respect.”

Daemon rolled his eyes. “This does not concern you, your grace. Do keep out of it.”

But the King would hear no defense from his brother or his daughter. “Now that the video has found its way to the nobles and the smallfolks, they might lose their faith in us, in the sanctity of marriage, if they haven't done so already. The High Septon has been trying to reach me ever since the press released the video online. Chaos will be unleashed upon us. Nobody will take you seriously, daughter,” he turned to Rhaenyra, “if you do not place the utmost importance in restoring the sanctity of your marriage. This might jeopardize your claim, your position as my heir.”

At this, Otto stood up straighter, a tiger ready to pounce. Aegon clung to your hand, nervous that they might drag him into this. None of you were ready for this.

“We can make it go away,” Rhaenyra pleaded. “Claim that it isn't Daemon, rather a lookalike, or a deepfake video. Claim that it is AI.”

“They'll know,” Otto finally spoke. “There are technologies available to detect what is real and what is deepfake. As for a doppelganger, they'll assess the Prince's voice with the male one in the video. Modern technology doesn't leave much scope for deception. Lying will not assist your case, Princess.”

The King feebly nodded. “Whoever captured it is among us. Whoever sent it to you and me could be present at this very moment. They have already released this boar into the public. To prevent a bloodbath from following it, a bloodbath of our blood, you must do as I command you.”

The Princess pressed her lips. “What do you wish for me to do, Father?”

The King turned to his brother, his hands clasped by his daughter's. “Cast aside the girl. Send her far away. Blame her, that she seduced you. She's baseborn. Nobody will believe her over you, a trueborn Targaryen, a Valyrian princess, the heir to the throne.”

Netty looked up. The pain and shock in her eyes broke your heart. Cast her aside? As if she weren't a human being, rather a piece of furniture? She was like you, like Monica Lewinsky. Used for sex, then thrown aside as if she meant nothing. As if she were nothing. How could a minor, a teenager, seduce a grown man like Daemon, who was a prince and her boss? Did people even watch the video? There should be Reddit analysis supporting Nettles over a known predator. There should be leaks and rumors resurfacing of him deflowering young virgins. But this was the real world and in the real world, Bill Clintons go scot free, while Monica Lewinskys were hunted down like women accused of witchcraft from the middle ages. When abusers like Bill Clinton, OJ Simpson, Donald Trump, and Johnny Depp enjoy freedom and love despite their heinous actions in a country like the US, what sort of fuckery did the Monica Lewinskys of Westeros go through? You didn't want to know. But you couldn't help yourself. You left your boyfriend and girlfriends, and went to her side. She either didn't see you or care you were there. Her eyes sought Daemon's only. The man, on his part, instantly protested against his brother's command.

“I will not,” he snarled.

“You want the girl?” The King was astonished. “You dare choose a baseborn servant over my daughter?”
Rhaenyra looked shell-shocked. Her lips parted, her hands gripped her belly.

“Daemon?” was all she could manage to utter.

“I'll not send Netty away. She's mine,” Daemon said, loud and clear.

Netty slumped against you. That was when she took notice of you. She whimpered when you took her hands in yours and squeezed. “I'm so sorry,” you whispered. “None of this is your fault. I believe you.” She sobbed in your arms.

“You shall either cast that girl aside or I shall cast aside your marriage with my daughter,” the King said. “I'll not let you ruin her life and her claim by your waywardness. I accepted your marriage that you conducted without my permission. I've accepted your position in her life, in her future. But hear you me, Daemon, I shall do whatever it takes me, until my last breath, to prevent you from destroying my only child's life.”

You blinked. His only child? Did you hear this right? You glanced at your boyfriend across the patio. His eyes on the ground, he stood with his mother, who pressed her lips thinly and looked away. So, this was how the King viewed his second wife and his children with her. In his eyes, he was forever married to Aemma, even after her death by his order, even after he'd married his daughter's childhood friend, even after she'd given him four more children. To him, Alicent was a glorified mistress, a sorry substitute for Aemma. You felt more kinship with the Queen than before. She was the rebound for Aemma in her husband's eyes.

“Will this be me?” your treacherous mind wondered. “Will I be Alicent if Aegon and I married, I gave him four kids, and in his senile, sickness-laden mind, he'd call for Nelly and not me?” Alicent was already a cautionary tale for you, for letting the parental figures of your life dictate it without your permission. Was she another cautionary tale for if you allow Aegon to use you as a rebound?

You couldn't think for too long, as someone tugged Netty's hands from yours. “Let's go,” Daemon ordered the girl.

Netty blinked. “What?”

“We're leaving. We've overstayed our welcome.” He turned to his brother and wife one last time. “This isn't over. My retaliation will occur soon. You'll realize how dire the consequences of depriving a dragon of its hoard can be.” He pulled Netty to her feet and dragged her to the manor. The King called his name. As did Rhaenyra. The former roared his brother's name. The latter begged for her husband to return, to not leave her and their children, both alive and unborn. She almost fell to her knees. Alicent, to everyone's shock, rushed to her side, as did you and Mabel. You three held her up on her feet. The Queen took over from you and Mabel, and led the Princess to her quarter. Etaf ran inside to notify Rhaenys and Rhaenyra's children. She needed them all by her side.

You went to your boyfriend and took him to his piano. He needed to practice. He played for a long time, with you in the kitchen making breakfast with your girlfriends. Most of the royal family was with either Rhaenyra or Helaena. In the ensuing silence, Aegon practiced and improved his performance for hours. You fed him lemonies and other breakfast dishes. He ate from your one hand, while your other one turned his pages.

Alicent came downstairs. She looked defeated. You offered her your seat on the bench. She gave you a tired smile and sat beside her son. You were about to leave when Aegon grabbed your hand.

“Don't leave,” he said.

Alicent excused herself and went to her daughter's room. You took your seat back. He held both your hands and faced you.

“Dōnītsos, what's going on?”

You smiled wryly. “Nothing, just tired.”

He stared at you as you fed him breakfast. “Something's wrong. What is it?” When you said nothing and went to feed him a spoonful of strawberry spinach salad, he stopped you. “I'm serious. Tell me what's going on in there.” He lightly tapped your temple.

You ate a lemonie and chewed on it, taking your time. “Can you promise to be honest?”

“I promise.”

His sincerity melted the dam inside you. “Am I your Alicent?”

“What?”

You took a deep breath, then let it go. “Am I just a rebound?”

His eyes widened, his mouth fell open. When he closed it, he gulped and looked away. “N-no. Of course not.” He cleared his throat. “No, you're not.”

“Be honest.”

“I am...”

You lifted his face by his chin. “All my life, I've been used and abused, then tossed aside. By my grandparents on both sides. By my classmates. By adults who bought my nudes when I was a minor. By married men and alcoholic men and men twice my age.” You met his eyes, yours blurry with tears teetering over the lines of your eyes. “Please, don't be like them. Please, be the exception. Please, love me forever for who I am, not for what use I can be to you. I don't ask for much. Just for your love.”

Tears streamed down both your faces now. “I'm sorry...”

“You contracted STD willingly, didn't you?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

He let out a shaky exhale. “I don't know. Believe me, I really don't know. I overheard Sam and her friend talking about it, and my brain went on autopilot. It led me to the tattoo parlor.”

“So, you used my bouquet as an excuse to visit the place.” You didn't know why it hurt so much. It was just a stupid fucking bouquet. A stupid fucking tattoo. It was nothing permanent. He could have it erased anytime he wanted. Everything was temporary, including your own life and his life and your life together. Then, why did it fucking feel like a car was running over your heart again and again, while tethered to your senses? Why did it feel like someone dropped your brain from the top of a building, your body following it down, down, down? Why did it feel like someone shoved their fist down your throat and up your ass and just tore you asunder from the inside out?

“Mommy?” Aegon asked in a fearful voice.
You stood on shaky legs. “I don't think I can stay in the same room with you right now.”

“No...”

“Please, leave me alone.” You went to his room. His, not yours. It was all paid by his money, his family's money. Nothing was just yours. Everything you had, everything you were, belonged to other people. Your body, your heart, your time and energy, your useless fucking life. You had to get away from him.

Etaf and Mabel readily shared their room with you. You slept on the floor, not listening to their protests. You'd trespassed in their bedroom, but you wouldn't extend your intrusion to their bed. You stayed away from Aegon, unsure about your relationship status. When he tried to engage in conversation with you, you told him quietly to give you some time and space to process how you felt. His face crumpled, as if you'd robbed him blind and kicked him to the gutters. But he gave you what you wanted. He devoted this time away from you by practicing on his piano. He hammered away on the instrument day and night, so much that even his mum was anxious. She sought you out in the kitchen as you made breakfast on the third last day of the month.

“He's drinking,” Alicent said to you.

Your girlfriends pretended to focus on their work but you knew they were listening. You were peeling and slicing boiled chicken and cucumbers for Jaehaera's tea party's sandwiches. “I beg your pardon?”

Alicent took you aside and sat you on the same table under which you'd hidden and recorded Daemon's infidelity. Alicent knew none of it. She took your hands and looked you in the eyes. “Be honest. Is something the matter?”

Your toes curled inside your shoes. “I'm not sure I'm following.”

“Aegon was playing just now, two empty bottles of Martell behind the piano. I discovered them when I went to assist him with turning the sheets. Is something wrong between you and him? I barely see you two together these days.”

You didn't know how to reply.

She continued. “The last time he drank in the daytime was a happy memory for him. His recital with Nelly was a success.”

“Nelly?”

Alicent told you how, before Nelly came along, Aegon would drink and get wasted day and night. He'd often imbibe during daytime, at important public events and fundraisers. After Nelly came and straightened him up, he only drank once during the daytime. It was in 2015, on her birthday in December when he made his Westerosi debut, his actual debut unlike the one you attended. His first recital. But his accompanist bailed at the last moment when they broke their feet from a car accident. Nelly filled in, Nelly who was already an accomplished violinist with a real Stradivarius in her possession. Together, they played the tune, Pachelbel's Canon D. The name rang a bell. At the confusion on your face, Alicent brought out her phone and showed you the video, taken from backstage.

There was your sun, sitting before a piano, in a pressed suit with the white rose boutonniere Nelly had obviously pinned on him. Only two feet away from him stood a tall, blonde woman. Her back to you, she played on her instrument. Steinway and Stradivarius, a match made in heaven. Here, she was the sun and he was her moon. Her cozy warmth, her endless light cocooned him. Unlike his “debut” in the States, here he turned to the audience, no, to Nelly every once in a while. He needed no page-turner. He didn't need you. He had Nelly. She was all he needed, all he wanted, all he loved. Once the performance was over, Aegon, the soloist, was supposed to bow first and then acknowledge his accompanist. Instead, he took Nelly's hand. They shared a loving glance, before they bowed together, hand-in-hand.

The hit came once they stood upright again. You remembered why the tune sounded familiar. This was the same music Aegon played the day of his American debut, when you two got drunk in the daylight and you were busy baking that pie.

“Afterwards, to celebrate, they went drinking. The only time he ever drank with her in daylight. Three months before his debut in December, he vowed to stop for good. He went pub crawling with Nelly one night, his last big hurrah. She was his keeper, to remain sober and take care of him. She fed him food, kept his drinks at a minimum, made sure he didn't ruin his clothes or get mugged. I think that was when my son began to fall for her.”

The video had mercifully ended. She put away her phone. “This was the happiest I've ever seen my son in his life...”

You tuned her out. You felt trapped, as if inside an aquarium, a lobster awaiting the moment the chefs would pluck you and release you into the boiling hot water. You'd welcome it, welcome the burn to scorch you until you were nothing but cooked flesh and hard shell. Throw away the shell and chomp on the plump pink meat. That was all you were good for.

So immersed were you in your misery, you didn't catch what Alicent said next. You didn't, but your girlfriends did.

“...until I found him here with you. He was radiant when he was with Nelly. As bright and elusive as a comet. With you, he's softer. He's no longer a star forever passing by milky ways. He's a star who has found their solar system to settle into. Nelly gave him an adventure. You made him an abode, a home to live in.”

But you didn't hear any of it. No, you were drowning in your quagmire of misery. The succulent in your throat had metamorphosed into a sentient porcupine. It moved around, seeking the softest flesh to spear its quills on.

You smiled wryly. “He's stressed. But everything's fine. I'm trying not to distract him.”

“You're not a distraction. You're his motivation. You're his water and sun. Without you, he withers.”

You almost snatched away your hands and jumped to your feet. It took all your resolve to not do that to your boss, the Queen of a fucking country. “I apologize, your grace. It's just... I'm not in a proper mental headspace right now. Um, my grandmother has been pestering me a lot...” You lied. Your bitch of a grandma hadn't called your mama since you rejected her on a three-way phone conversation months ago. You called her a bitch hag and she ended the call at once.

Alicent frowned. “I see. Is there any way I can alleviate your worries...”

“It's personal, your grace. It's nothing. Everything's fine!”

Just then, Etaf dropped the lid of a saucepan. That was your excuse to leave. You helped her out and stayed by her side, even though Alicent patiently waited for your return. When it was evident she wouldn't leave until you came back, you reluctantly went to the table.

“Anything else, your grace?” you forced yourself to ask.

She made you sit down, much closer now than before. “I know my son can be high maintenance. He's always been a needy child. Emotionally, physically. I've tried my best to quench his thirst for affection, but it is a never-ending well.”

You wanted to correct her, tell her that wasn't true. Aegon didn't demand an endless supply of love, just physical touches and verbal support. He didn't ask you to buy him luxurious cars or bequeath him vast expanses of wealth. No, he wanted cuddles and hugs and kisses and rocking him on your lap and putting out his clothes first thing in the morning and making sure he took his meals and cooking him healthy, tasty dishes. He just wanted to be taken care of, like a beloved pet or a sensitive houseplant. Sure, he could be needy if you didn't have enough barrels of affections to bestow. He wasn't everyone's cup of tea. But that didn't mean he was greedy and needy.

Your protest died down when the man himself stumbled into the kitchen. His eyes bloodshot, he reeked of alcohol. “I think I puked on the keys a little.”

Alicent sighed. “I'll ask the hotel management to clean it up.”

You noticed it then. White dribbles down his white shirt. He'd puked on himself as well.

The instincts were as instantaneous in their arrival, as self-defense did. You moved towards him. His eyes widened when you took his hand and pulled him to his room. Once inside, you stripped him bare and gave him a warm bath. As he soaked himself in the bubbles, you massaged his hands in lukewarm, soapy water.

“You're not...” He hiccupped. You held out a trash can for him. He shook his head and let out a big burp instead. You poured him a glass of water. He downed it in one gulp. “You're not a rebound. Please, buttercup, believe me, you're not a rebound. You're my return to life.” Fat tears ran down his wet cheeks. You wiped them with a towel. You shampooed his hair, then turned on the handheld showerhead. You washed him clean. When was the last time he properly bathed? Certainly not since you both took a break. Or you took one and enforced it on him. You wiped him dry. You clothed him in clean sweatpants and a t-shirt. When you moved to launder his dirty clothes downstairs, he shadowed you like an orphaned puppy. Once you were done with the load, you folded them and put them away.

“Dōnītsos, please,” his voice broke, yet he stayed away, not forcing his presence on you, “don't shut me out.”

You combed his hair gently. All this time, he sought your eyes and you hid your pain from him. He sensed it. He tried to claw off your defenses, but your fortress was made of rocks as huge as what the Egyptian pyramids were made of. When his purple eyes shed floods down his chubby cheeks, your resolve cracked a little.

“I'm your Alicent.”

“No.”

“I'm the Alicent to your Viserys, still hung up on his Aemma. Your Nelly.”

“Listen to me, love. Just listen, okay?! You're not like my mum.”

“No. I'll be like my mama.” You inhaled. “Did I ever tell you that my stepmom was my dad's first love? His first everything. He loved her since they were in diapers. But she couldn't love him the same way. My mama was his rebound for years. He led her on and she let him. I can't be like her!”

“You won't be like her. You're not her and I'm not him. Please, believe me, my love. I love you, I love you so much.”

This was the first time he said those three words. But the circumstances had staled them. Now, they gave more power to the porcupine inside your throat. “Don't say that.”

“What?”

“That you love me. You don't love a rebound. They're just a temporary band-aid over the cracks in your heart. Sooner or later, the adhesive will come apart and I'll fall off.”

“Then, I'll catch you. I'm not strong like my brother but I'll catch you and hold onto you. And if I ever let you fall, I'll jump behind you. I told you, I go where you go.”

You glanced at your lap. The tears clawed at your resolve to be free. But you held on. “She was there.”

“What?”

“An accompanist is more equal than a mere page-turner.” You looked at him, into his purple eyes. “Fingers that play on a Steinway deserve fingers that play on a Stradivarius, not with fingers that merely turn pages.”

He exhaled. “You saw Mum's video.”

“You told Boyd not to come. You lied, Aegon.”

“How...”

You played the recording. His voice and Boyd's floated out. “Your grandfather sent it from an anonymous number. Probably a burner phone. He also sent me that tattooist's hospital form, and a screenshot of Samantha and her dermatologist friend's graduation photo.” You clenched your fists. He tried to open them but you adamantly kept them fisted. “I did something stupid.”

“What?”

“I went to a hairdresser on Euclid avenue and,” you showed him the photo of him and Nelly in their costumes, “asked her to give me this hairstyle. She mistook Nelly for me.”

“Dōnītsos...”

“Please, don't call me that. If you have any respect for me, not love, just respect, then you won't string me around like a goddamn puppy you can train to do your bidding.” Your resolve broke. The dam shattered. The damned saltwater messily dripped down your cheeks and chin. “People have used me all the time. But you take the crown. You take this crown if not your father's.”

He almost lunged for your hands. He held them to his chest, over his tattoo, the excuse for a reliving. “My love, please forgive me. I'm sorry. I'm so fucking sorry. Nothing I did has ever made me so ashamed of myself. I'm not worthy of you. I'm not.”

“You're a Valyrian prince. A fucking prince who has legitimate claims to the Iron Throne.”

“Cactus chair...”

“Who knows, with all this chaos, you might become the next King? Your grandfather will be happy.”

He shook his head, his fingers almost bruising yours. “I don't want it. I don't want anything. Not my father's approval. Not my mother's love. Not my siblings' success. I want you, okay, only you.”

You finally tore your hands from his grip. You cupped his face and wiped his tears. He tried to do the same to you, but you pulled away. “You don't want me. You want the one who I remind you of. I'm just a poor substitute, your grace. Nothing I do will ever hold a candle to her. You're wasting your time and mine.”

“No! No, no, no. You're my dōnītsos. My buttercup. My Muña. I'm your baby boy, your Greg. Your fuckboy. Your Mojo Jojo. You're the Eurydice to my Orpheus. The Emma Morley to my Dexter Mayhew. Please, we can't be apart.” He cupped your face and this time, this time you let him because you were such a weakling. “I love you. I do. Please, believe me.”

“How?!” Your voice broke. You fucking hated your tear ducts. “You make memories with me to recreate the ones you made with Nelly. You can't do that. I told you how much it kills me to know I'm just something to use. You know that. I told you that. Still, you did it.”

He shook his head. “No, you see. We have our own memories. Our first? You saw me fucking another woman. My first meeting with Nelly was nothing like that. Mum just introduced her to me one morning during breakfast. Then, you rescued me with your Glock. Nelly never knew how to use a gun, let alone own one. You dragged me across the city. You saved my life. Nelly and I never had that. You made me lemonies. Nelly sucked at cooking. She hated it. But you feed me so much goodness. Lemony goodness. Your goodness.” His face flushed and wet, he recounted more memories between you, unique ones that he never shared with Nelly. When he drove you to and from the funeral of Little Odessa's mom. When you bought him a bouquet of tulips on Tulip Day in April. When you took that video of Aemond running away with the poster of Nördstrom. When you gave him flower bouquets on three occasions. Nelly only pinned a boutonniere on his suit the day of his debut because Alicent asked her to. When you both fell asleep on his bed, drunk, after his debut. “I lied that day not because I was trying to recreate my memory with Nelly. It can't be recreated. You don't know how to play any instruments...”

You remembered the pairing of Steinway and Stradivarius, a match made in heaven.

“But I told Boyd not to show up, because you calmed me down. Like Alys calms down Aemond's volcanic eruptions, you scatter away the twisters of my anxieties and panics. You're the boron rods to my nutty neutrons, like you told him once.”

You wrapped your arms around him, as tightly as ivy on walls, as tightly as giving someone the Heimlich maneuver. You stuffed your face in the crook of his neck and bawled loudly, messily, pathetically. He gently took hold of your limbs and folded them onto his lap, where you curled up like a fetus in a womb. His arms tight around you, he rocked you back and forth, and crooned your Swedish lullaby. He butchered the words and simply hummed when he couldn't remember the rest of the lyrics after the first three stanzas.

“He found my chink,” you said.

“Of course he did, that's his specialty.”

“He stabbed me where it hurts the most.”

“I know, I'm so sorry.”

“He's wedging it wider. It fucking bleeds. He aimed, not at my veins, but at my arteries.”

Aegon kissed you wherever his lips could reach without breaking your position. You stayed like this, until parts of your body began to fall asleep, or had pins and needles. He laid you down and tucked you in his bed. You pulled him with you.

“At the risk of sounding like a desperate pick-me and firing the feminism from my body, I just want to say...” You took a deep breath, then let it out. “Pick me. Choose me. Love me.”

“I promise, my beloved. I'll always pick you. I'll always choose you. I'll always love you.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Am I really not your rebound? Is that really not why you pursued me?”

He sighed, then shook his head. “No.”

An hour of nap and cuddles later, you sent him to his Steinway. He played a different tune from memory, one that you fancied more than Pachelbel's Canon D. He watched you move back into his bedroom, your bedroom, on the second floor. After you had put your stuff back to where they belonged, you sent a prayer to whatever deity or demon was listening.

“I hope I made the right decision.”

That night, two more tsunamis ambushed the Targaryen family, Rhaenyra specifically. Overnight, her second husband revealed to the press of Westeros and the rest of the world, with proofs from more than a hundred labs across the world, that Jacaerys Velaryon, Lucerys Velaryon, and Joffrey Velaryon were sired by Harwin Strong, not Laenor Velaryon, as claimed by Rhaenyra. An hour later, a video proof of Laenor Velaryon, alive and vacationing in Casablanca valley, at a wine tasting event, reached the press of Westeros.

In one night, all six children of Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen were outed to be bastards.

Chapter Text

International Day of Friendship/National Day of Friendship, 2024

The 30th of July was supposed to be Aegon's day, but Rhaenyra took his spotlight, not that she had any hand in it. Her world had come crashing down. In a day, two men, Daemon Targaryen and Otto Hightower, had destroyed her life and endangered those of her six children, both alive and unborn.

The entire Montauk Manor had fallen into a desolate silence. Rhaenyra's faction stayed inside her suite with her father. Alicent stayed with her children in her own suite. Criston was mostly stationed there. Only the rest of the security staff, Larys, and you and your girlfriends came out. Etaf and Mabel went from room to room to deliver the meals. You stayed in the kitchen to make the dishes and serve them. On the first day, you were busy making Eggs Benedict when Aegon hugged you from behind. “Mommy, I don't feel so good.”

His hands were hot and clammy. You checked his temperature. Yep, he had a fever. “A headache too,” he said, his eyes droopy.

You returned him to his room and took off the clothes you'd laid out for him this morning. As you unbuttoned his shirt, you noticed the red spots on his pale skin.

“Baby boy, I think you've got chicken pox.”

He sighed tiredly. “All my siblings had it but me. Finally, I'm included.”

You tucked him in bed and kept the windows open. Upon your return to the kitchen, you checked the pantry and found the ingredients needed for the soup you had in mind. You made the chicken stock from scratch. When Mabel saw you with the saucepan, you told her what happened.

“Tell the rest of the family about this. Tell them not to come anywhere near his room, unless you had it before.”

You ladled a big batch of the Emerald and White Jade soup (spinach tofu soup) and took a loaf of sourdough with you. Aegon had no appetite, but he ate everything you fed him with whines and whimpers. You applied calamine lotion on his hot body. He shivered when you touched his sensitive parts.

“Mommy, I'm scarred.”

“You'll be beautiful again.”

“You won't love me anymore.”

You shushed him by offering one of your tits. His feeble mouth suckled weakly. Still, your breasts responded with stings.

“Any day now,” he said hopefully.

The rest of the day was exhausting, juggling between making meals and taking care of the sick prince. You did all you could to reduce his fever. His temper went up at two in the afternoon. When he began to sweat profusely, you wiped his body with damp clothes. By three, the fever reached its peak. You coaxed him to his feet and bathed him in the tepid water with baking soda. He relaxed once the water coated his warm body. By evening, his fever had departed, but left him with itchy spots, spread all over his body. Now that he wasn't bedridden, he began to scratch the infected skins.

“No, no, no!” You tried to stop him but his strength left you helpless. Together with Etaf, you trimmed his nails and taped mittens on his hands. When that didn't deter him (he used his teeth to pull off the tapes and mittens), you brought out Mabel's silk scarves to tie his hands and legs to the bed.

“Mommy, please!” His purple eyes welled up. He thrashed his limbs and bucked his hips. “I can't take it anymore! It itches! It fucking itches! Argh!”

You kissed him between the spots, the blisters. He cried more when Mabel came in with some popsicles and kept her eyes on the ceiling, while you covered him up with a sheet. She put the tray on the bedside table and left. You fed him one popsicle after another. All his favorite flavors: raspberry lemonade, blueberry banana, pineapple orange mango passion fruit, and cherry strawberry. You laughed when he started to suck on the popsicles like sucking a cock.

“You nasty little boy,” you said. He sighed and stuck out his bottom lip. You locked the door, took the sheet off him, and let him suckle your tits.

“Any day now.” You gasped when he sunk his teeth gently into your sensitive flesh.

That night, before bed, you gave him an oatmeal bath, then rubbed him all over with more calamine. You left him asleep but untied, and went to the empty kitchen.

You brought out the ingredients one by one. For the bread. For the kimchi. For the cheese. You were stirring a pot of milk when Aegon stumbled into the kitchen, only in his boxer briefs, clutching his duvet around him.

“Mommy, I'm so lonely. How could you leave me?” He took in the cheese-making equipment you'd set up on one of the tables. “What's going on?”

You told him to sit down but far enough away to not cough anywhere into your food. “I'm making brie from scratch. My mama's parents have a dairy farm.” You stirred the pot of milk slowly, as you explained to him the brie-making process. “I made my first wheel of brie, a disaster, at their farm.” Your face fell, remembering your grandfather's taunts when you flipped the molds on the draining mats and the cheese collapsed, despite being your first time. Your grandmother snarkily remarked that bastards ruined everything, including cheese. Your curd had set, but God didn't want your creations to pollute this world, so He had failed you at the most crucial juncture of brie-making. Your mama consoled you for days.

“I have practiced since then. My first successful wheel, at age twenty, I mailed to them. I lied that Mama made it. They praised it to heaven. Then, I told them the truth. They sent me a picture of my half-eaten brie wheel in a trashcan, raccoons and squirrels feasting on it.”

“Our grandparents are such big assholes.”

“I'm sorry yours violated your body. At least, mine didn't dare to touch me, lest my unclean existence tainted them.”

After you added the rennet, you let your milk sit to coagulate. In the meantime, you made the bread starter and moved onto dicing the napa cabbages.

“What's that?” He pointed at the off-white gloopy bread starter.

“That's for my Amish friendship bread. Today's the International day of friendship.”

He smiled. “Happy day.”

You told him how the starter had an indefinite lifespan if you treated it properly. That you could share it with your friends for them to make their own bread. “That's why, the name.” When you told him the starter would need ten days to be ready, starting the moment you made it, he groaned.

“Don't worry, baby boy. I'll make you the bread. Hopefully, one day, we'll have kimchi brie toast on sourdough, everything made from scratch.”

“Why kimchi?” he asked, as you soaked the sliced cabbage in brine.

“Did I never tell you that Darren is Korean? Darren Choi. His family was so kind to me. One of his grandmothers taught me how to make kimchi from scratch.” You glanced contentedly around the kitchen. At the bread starter. At the cabbages soaking in brine. At the milk curdling in the pot. “Everything I'm making tonight comes from fermentation. If you treat the products carefully, they can leave legacies to others of their kind. My starter can make more bread. My kimchi juice can be used to make the fermentation process faster for new kimchi. The white mold around my brie wheel can be used as a starter to make more brie.” You inhaled, then exhaled, a beatific smile on your face. “It's like love. You care for it properly and it'll give birth to new love, more love, even after the original love is gone.” Your eyes itched. All this time, Aegon watched you silently, either to let you express yourself, or he was just tired. “I like to believe Nelly and your love gave birth to ours. She led you to me. She played her hands at destiny, because she can't let you be alone. She led us to each other.” Your voice broke. You tried, tried so hard to hold onto this belief, that she wouldn't, from the afterlife, come between you two, rather drive you two together. You liked to believe she was beautiful like that. The love story between her and Aegon was gone. But it gave birth to yours with its juice, its starter, its mold, its essence in every form and texture. Because the alternative was to have her eternal love living on and throttling yours from growing. You held onto this hope like a raft.

“I'm sure she is. She was like you. Kind, sweet, soft. She didn't have to hide her mushy parts. She was privileged like that. You hide yours but it lives on, hidden but alive.”

Your face felt hot. You avoided his gaze and went to flip the molds. “This is the part I'm the most nervous about.” Because the board and the draining mats weren't as large as the ones in your grandparents' farm, your hands had a relatively easier time gripping the edges and flipping them by yourself. “This is my sixty-first attempt at flipping.”

The rest of the night, you alternated between flipping the cheese mold and making the kimchi, and watching Normal People with Aegon. He hated the ending, when Marianne and Connell decided to let their relationship run its course and see where it would lead.

“I think they'll eventually find their way back to each other,” Aegon declared, “like they did throughout the show.”

You smiled wryly. “You know what I love about them? That they let each other go. Sometimes, you have to do that to the ones you love. Ivies and other vines, singers have romanticized them for their intense attachment but...” You sighed. “Some attachments steal your nourishments. Until you turn into dry, dead husks.”

He gulped. “Would you let me go?”

You knew the answer without thinking about it. “I would.” Your tearful eyes met his. “If it's best for you.”

“And if it's not best for you?”

You shrugged. “I'll become Princess Diana 2.0, the ugly American version.”

“Naejot nyke daor. Naejot nyke, iksā gevie. Emā va moriot issare gevie.” (“Not to me. To me, you are beautiful. You have always been beautiful.”)

You booped his nose. “I wish you wouldn't speak High Valyrian in front of a bumpkin like me.”

“Stop that!” His outburst stunned you. “Stop putting yourself down, okay? You're amazing. You're so good to me, so good for me. You have to stop not being good to yourself.”

You led him back to his room. After you tucked him in, you received a text from a third unknown number. A video. You decided not to watch it. Not now. Your guts told you this video would be your annihilation. It'd be the end of what you and Aegon had nurtured between you. So, you prolonged the doom, a doom you were certain would rival that of the Valyrian peninsula.

In your room, you cuddled and watched Madonna's directorial debut, W.E. When the scene of the Nazi British King's declaration of his abdication came up, Aegon sighed.

“I planned to do something like this for Nelly. Announce my emancipation on air. She didn't want that.”

“I agree with her.”

His purple eyes met yours, full of questions. So, you elaborated.

“Not all members of your family are rotten eggs. Helaena is so pure. So is Daeron. Can you honestly live with yourself if you cut them all off, your little sister and brothers, your mum, your surrogate dad?” When he raised a brow at this, you added, “Criston, I mean. Your unborn nephew or niece. And now, you have two beautiful kids and one more on the way. You can't bail on them. Promise me, baby boy. That you'll never abandon them like my dad did with his death and yours did with negligence and favoritism. Promise me.”

He gulped. “I promise. I'll never cut off my family, especially my mum, my surrogate dad, my siblings, my nephew or niece, and...” He pressed his lips. “My children.”

You kissed his forehead. “I'm so proud of you.”

Five days later, Aegon recovered. So did the atmosphere inside the manor. Rhaenyra finally came out of her suite, as did the rest of her faction and Alicent's as well. At the breakfast table, the King announced his next move to protect his daughter's life and claim, as well as that of her children's. He revealed that the High Septon and the Council of Faith would grant the annulment of Rhaenyra's marriage with Laenor, on the basis that it was never consummated, which legitimized little Aegon, Viserys, and unborn Visenya's existence. In exchange, the King would establish and codify the law that would legitimize children born from artificial insemination or surrogacy, like the twins and Maelor, if their biological parents were married to each other only at the time of both their conception and birth.

However, the legitimacy of Jacaerys, Lucerys, and Joffrey's identity was a huge problem. The paternity and the DNA tests had thrown everything into utter chaos. The King couldn't legitimize his grandsons without endangering his own daughter, since trying to pass off bastard children as trueborn, something that Rhaenyra openly committed before, was high treason. Hence, all three of her sons renounced their claims to the throne, accepted their status as the baseborn sons of the future first Queen of Westeros, and made way for their younger brother, little Prince Aegon, to become their mother's heir. The High Septon, at first, vehemently refused to accept a Queen whose “character and morality were ignoble”. Everyone was aware of the High Septon being in cahoots with the Hightower family. To buy their support, the King declared betrothal between little Prince Aegon with Princess Jaehaera, and little Prince Jaehaerys with unborn Princess Visenya. He also secured an alliance with House Velaryon (codeword for appeasing Corlys now that none of his grandchildren, biological or adopted, were ascending the throne) by engaging little Prince Viserys with little Lady Daenaera Velaryon. Thus, six children, one of them unborn, were sold off to marriage, just like that, to rectify the mistakes of their adults. Not one of them was consulted or asked for their consent, although most of them weren't old enough to form a sensible opinion.

You thumbed your necklace from Aegon, as you shuffled him to his piano. To celebrate the triple betrothal, the King announced the official date of Aegon's recital to be held on August 4.

“National friendship day,” you said as Aegon sat you next to him and played on his Steinway. “Would you like another bouquet? You don't have to tattoo it on your body this time.”

He gulped. “Up to you, buttercup.”

You meticulously learned how to do the Elderedge knot on his cornflower blue tie and how to do the Birds of Paradise fold as a replacement for the boutonniere. Your girlfriends let you practice on them. Etaf helped you find a beautiful gauze dress, floral and off shoulder, with puff sleeves. Mabel's cousin sold you one of her floral clay necklaces. Samantha promised to bring you her white floral shoes, with the bouquet you had ordered for your boyfriend.

The night before his recital, you both cuddled in bed and watched Casino Royale. You wanted to dress as Vesper Lynd for Halloween this year, while Aegon could be Daniel Craig's James Bond.

“She dies at the end.” Aegon pouted.

“So? Everyone dies. Big deal. Besides, I wanna wear her backless dress and Algerian love knot necklace.”

“You really like movies and shows where the girl dies first.”

“Not true. Two of my favorite Bollywood movies have either the guy die, or both of them die at the end.”

He wanted to watch them. So, you did. When the male lead of Devdas died and the flame in his name blew off, you sighed sadly. “She kept him alive all this time. The one time she didn't pay attention to his flame, it blew off.”

“Don't worry, dōnītsos. I'll always keep your lamp lit.” He rested his head on your shoulder. “Can we watch something wholesome? Even a romcom? I'm tired of sad or bittersweet endings. I want a happy ending, goddamn it.”

You promised him that, after his performance tomorrow, you'd watch Dash & Lily, a Netflix Christmas romcom series that Etaf and Mabel heartily recommended and promised that it had a happy ending.

“Not tonight though. You gotta sleep.” You tucked him in.

“I can't wait to spend your birthday and the holidays with you. Last year was so lonely.”
You remembered your brief visit to Gramercy park last Christmas Eve. How lost and lonely you were. Now, here you were with Aegon, the love of your life.

But for how long?

You woke up at the crack of dawn. Your body both anticipated and dreaded the day. Your guts told you something monumental would happen today. As large and deep as the Grand Canyon.

Corlys was in a mood. Laenor had flown to NYC last night, now that the truth had come out and everything had been sorted out. Jace, Luke, and Joffrey were excited to see their dad again, as was Rhaenys. Since Aegon's recital was after lunch, Laenor had plenty of time to reach by brunch.

You spent the morning toiling away in the kitchen with your girlfriends. With the whole family in a festive mood after a long time, their hunger had doubled. Alicent accepted your request and commanded some of the security staff, including Larys, to help you and your girlfriends in the kitchen. Aegon pouted when she shooed him away.

“You're still recuperating. You need to reserve your energy for the recital.”

By midday, the brunch was served. In the middle of the meal, Laenor arrived with two men, the sight of which shocked the entire family into silence.

“Harwin?” Rhaenyra asked.

The giant man with curly black hair smiled sadly at the Princess. So, this was her lover. Her boyfriend before Daemon. The reunion remained incomplete, because she was still married to Daemon, despite his desertion.

The second man, with auburn hair like Alicent, resembled her and Otto. You learned the reason why, when Otto stood up, his eyes on the man. “Gwayne?”

The redhead, either in his late thirties or early forties, smiled weakly. “Hello, Father.” He gulped when Otto's glare intensified. Just as Alicent stood up to greet her brother, Laenor took his hand and squeezed. You, and undoubtedly the rest of the family, caught the diamond rings on both men's fingers.

“What is the meaning of this?” Otto barked.
Alicent reached her brother's side.

“Gwayne?”

“Laenor?” Rhaenys asked, also on her way to greet her only son.

“We're getting married,” the two men said, hands clasped.

Helaena was the first to clap. Baela, Rhaena, Jace, Luke, Joffrey, and Alys joined her. You and your girlfriends added to the sound. Soon, the TargTower brothers joined their sister. The children were the last to clap. Only the elders remained still. Disappointingly, that included Alicent, Rhaenyra, and Criston.

“But how?!” Corlys demanded.
Gwayne and Laenor fondly recounted how Laenor was hiding in Chile when he ran into Gwayne, who was there to attend the wedding of an old college friend. Laenor told him the truth and they began to see each other. One summer together turned into two, then four, and before they knew it, both men separately but simultaneously proposed to each other on one dinner date.

“He slipped his ring for me in my champagne glass,” Laenor said shyly.

“He put his ring for me in my tiramisu bowl,” Gwayne added.

After years of bitter rivalry, Otto Hightower and Corlys Velaryon finally united over one cause: homophobia against their gay sons.

You didn't have time to indulge in more Westerosi dramas, because Samantha called you. You had asked for a favor, to collect your rainbow bouquet for Aegon from Lexington avenue. She had done so, but when she came home, one of her kids had a wireless earbud stuck up his nose, with blood dripping. She had to rush him to the ER, so she couldn't do the two-and-a-half hour car journey to Montauk.

After you inquired about her son's well-being, you asked, “Can't you send someone to deliver it?” This was a tradition, your tradition, to bolster Aegon's confidence before the recital, not after.

“I wish I could send Lyonel, but he's back in New Jersey for a case. I'm so sorry.”

You decided to go by yourself. You put on your dress and necklace, in case you didn't have time to change when you returned. The back and forth journey by subway would take more than seven hours. So, you had to ask someone to drive you.

Your first choice was Alys. She was coming back to her room with Aemond, when she ran into you. She would drive you herself, but the Prince volunteered.

“She needs to rest,” he quipped. Jeez, he reminded you of all the toxic alpha werewolves from the paranormal fantasy novels your grandmother loved to read but hid behind her bookshelf (you revealed this to her husband during your last meal in their house). Aemond began to walk, not waiting for you. Alys patted your cheek and sent you with her surly husband.

The entire ride was quiet in the most awkward way possible. To thaw the ice, you asked him when his birthday was.

“November 5,” he muttered.

“A Scorpio, like me.”

“Hmm.”

“Alys is a Pisces, I heard.”

He said nothing.

“You make a good match.”

“And you don't.” At the surprise on your face, he smirked. “My wife is interested in horoscopes. Gemini and Scorpio don't match. Never do. The relationship is deciduous, like oaks and elms.”

Your purse felt heavy from the weight of the unseen video. What did it contain? Another comparison? Another glaring similarity? “Oaks and elms are hardy trees that live long. The leaves fall off but they do grow back come spring.”

He smirked. “The question is, are you the leaf or the tree?”

You put on your headphones. Because his car was built in European style, the driver's seat was on the right side. So, he didn't notice your headphones. He continued his lecture. “Of course, my brother is clingy like a hamadryad. If you're axed off, he'd probably perish too.” When he heard no response, he turned and saw your eyes closed, head tilted back, and headphones on.

The journey back was equally, if not more, oppressive. He awkwardly complimented the rainbow bouquet of seven flowers: red pansies, pink lilies, white chrysanthemums,  orange alstroemeria, purple lisianthus, blue forget-me-nots, and yellow freesias.

“They all mean farewells,” he commented.

“And unrequited love.”

He hummed but said nothing. You checked the time. The lunch hour was definitely over, now that it was three in the afternoon. The Westerosis were on the patio, you could imagine, either listening to Aegon play from memory, or waiting for him to show up.

It was neither. Aemond slipped to his seat in the second row, by Alys' side. You clutched your bouquet. The last time was a private moment. This time, everything was out in the open. You stood at the end of the aisle between two rows of chairs set out on the patio. The piano sat with its bench at the front, in the middle. Aegon slumped in his seat. His hands on his lap. He was refusing to play. He waited, for what?

You stepped up. One foot forward, then another. You walked on, until the heels of Samantha's shoes broke the silence and demanded everyone's attention, including the sun who was your destination. He looked up and saw you. His eyes, tearful and beautiful like a flower, lit up. Your heart clenched painfully. This was it. This was the pinnacle of your relationship. From now on, everything would go downhill and nothing would ever be the same. You walked up to him and presented your bouquet, your farewell. He stood up and accepted it. You saw his collar undone, no ties, no handkerchief in his front pocket. They lay on top of the Steinway. You placed your flowers next to them and picked them up. You knotted his tie. You folded his handkerchiefs and tucked them into his front pocket. He pulled you to sit on his left. You adamantly sat to his right, to shield him from the scrutiny of his family, no matter they came from a place of empathy, sympathy, or antipathy. You'd take all the assaults and keep him safe and sound.

He played.

You turned his pages and cradled his hand in the splint.

That was how it went, the Love Song no. 3 by Franz Liszt, arranged by Géza Zichy. For the next five minutes, you held off the tears, the swooning, and the pain, and focused on your task. Turning his pages. You stood up and turned his sheets whenever he needed you to. At the end of the five minutes, silence fell on the patio. King Viserys clapped once, followed by applause from Alicent, Helaena, Daeron, Alys, Criston, even Aemond. Even some members of the black faction, including Rhaenyra, her sons, Rhaenys, and Harwin.

You turned to check if Otto was clapping for his grandson. That was when you noticed his absence. You were certain he was sitting next to his second grandson. Where did he go?

As if summoned by your thoughts, he appeared. In his hands, he held an open laptop. He stood before Aegon, who frowned but accepted his grandfather's congratulations silently.

“You've displayed your latent talent before your family, as your girlfriend has claimed you possessed time and again. She has always seen through you. But has she seen this?”

He placed the laptop next to your bouquet. It played the video you were certain you received days ago. It was a small room, dimly lit. Several TV screens showed the footage of the CCTV cameras installed in the lobby of Aegon's building, as well as the hallways and elevators. You easily detected Aegon, thanks to his snow white hair and big, round head. The date at the bottom of the video said it was a day after you rescued him and brought him to his apartment, February 15, 2024. He met the two doormen in the room, around the time of their shift change. He asked to see the footage of the lobby and the hallway outside his apartment from the previous night.

“She looks a lot like that woman you used to bring here before the pandemic. Your girlfriend,” the daytime doorman said.

“My fiancée. She died from COVID.” Aegon bent over to watch the footage of you and a drunk him slumped outside the walls of his apartment, while the nighttime doorman had left to fetch the building's super.

“That's something you don't see everyday. To come across someone's doppelganger.”

“You got that right,” the nighttime doorman said. The two exchanged a look when they saw Aegon scrutinize you dragging him across the lobby. He asked the two men to zoom onto your face. When they did, Aegon sighed morosely and said, “Nelly.”

Your stomach felt as if it'd been released into space without a spacesuit, shrinking into itself for an implosion.

“She really does look a lot like Miss Nelly, sir,” the daytime doorman said.

“Except for the hair color,” the nighttime doorman said. “Hers was golden like the sun. This lady's hair is black like tar.”

“Miss Nelly was also a very happy person. Sweet, kind, charming. This one is sort of grumpy and irritated all the time.”

“Do you guys have any clue that can identify her?” Aegon asked.

The two doormen snickered. “She mentioned some kind of a radio show that her friend hosts. The super would know the details, he heard her speak on the phone. Why, sir? Do you wanna find her?” one of them asked.

“Maybe.”

“What will you do if you find her?”

Aegon shrugged. “A quickie, most likely. Girls like her are only good for rebounds and flings.”

“Girls like her?” The nighttime doorman raised a brow and leaned back on his chair.

“You're both gay, right?”

The two men nodded.

“It's like what Mr. Darcy said, she's tolerable, I suppose, but not handsome enough to tempt me. So, yeah, mediocre, ordinary, nothing special.”

“Mr. Darcy then fell hopelessly in love with Lizzie. Besides, God had to put her on your path for some reason,” the daytime doorman said.

Aegon chuckled humorlessly, his eyes still on your face on the screen. “I only fall for the exquisite, bona fide ladies, not their cheap, hand-me-down copycats.”

The video ended here. You felt the arrows of stares on your back, on your face, on your relationship. Was this even a relationship? Weren't you some floozy that men would use to kill their time? Aegon certainly did.

“Dōnītsos...”

You exhaled. “Is it true?”

He gulped but you didn't see it.

“Am I a rebound? Am I a rebound?” You lifted your gaze. “Am I a fucking rebound?!”

His eyes teared up but he nodded. “Yes. Buttercup, I...”

Your hand found its way to his chubby cheek, not to cup it but to slap it. “You disgust me.”

His family expressed their shock either with gasps or silence. Only Otto smirked in victory. He had won, hadn't he? He'd found your chink, made it bleed, and now infected it with disease and pain.

You let out a shaky exhale. Someone wrapped their arms around you. Before you could shake them off, Etaf's face came into your line of sight. She was here. She was comforting you. As did Mabel, who stood on your other side. Your defenders, your supporters, your lifelines. Your best friends. You drank in calmness and strength from them, to compose yourself. You turned to the Queen, whose big brown eyes glistened from unshed tears. Why was she so upset? Hadn't she wanted you gone? Maybe not now but initially? You steeled your nerves and spoke in a calm, collected tone. “I'd like to verbally submit my formal resignation. Please, your grace, accept it instantly, so I don't have to remain here to be further humiliated.”

Aegon stepped up and you turned your glare on him. He shrunk into himself.

“Y-yes, I accept...” The Queen's voice shook.

“Thank you, your grace. No need for a severance pay. I'll only take last month's payment.” You turned to your girlfriends. “My business partners can stay...”

Mabel shook her head. “No, honey. We go where you go.”

Aegon whimpered at the last part. This was his promise. Now, he'd never be allowed to keep it. “Dōnītsos, please... I'm sorry...”

You pretended that he didn't exist. “If you'd be so kind, your grace,” you turned to the Queen, “please accept the resignations of Etaf Hegazy and Mabel Auffret-Donati...”

The Queen nodded. “All three of you will get payments for both July and August, as well as severance pay and my reference letters. It is the least I can do...”

You thanked her. With heavy hearts and heavier steps, you three headed for the manor. It was time to pack it up.

“No, no, no, dōnītsos, please...” Aegon blocked your path. He went to grab your hand, but Mabel blocked him.

“Haven't you done enough?!” You'd never heard her raise her voice like this. “You used her! You humiliated her! What more does your kind want from her?!”

His gaze stayed on you. But you didn't acknowledge him.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. But I don't think like that anymore, okay. I was hungover and pissed off at that time. I didn't mean any of it...”

You lifted your face. “You hired me as your keeper on St. Patrick's day, for your night of pub crawling. You sabotaged my job interview with the same lie. You sent song requests to radio stations to pacify me, before you sang one outside my house. You told your page-turner not to show up, so you can relive your debut with Nelly by having me by your side onstage. You got a tattoo of my bouquet as an excuse to get STD, so that I would take care of you the same way she did. I even look like her! Her ugly brunette version. Face it, I am a rebound. A fucking rebound. Nothing special, as you pointed out. A cheap, hand-me-down copycat. Now, let me go.”

He didn't listen. He stayed where he was. “You're not, okay? You're nothing that I said. You're original. You're beautiful. You're unique. One-of-a-kind. Please, my love. I love you. I love you so much. Please, don't go.”

You shoved him away. “I'm not going to be your Alicent!”

Someone gasped. You ignored it.

“I'll not be the Alicent to your Viserys, still hung up on your Aemma. I'm not going to become Princess fucking Diana. I won't be the second choice, the backup, the rebound.”

Etaf and Mabel bypassed him to take you to your room. You packed up all you had in ten minutes. You changed out of your gauzy dress and put on your usual clothes. Scruffy T-shirt, sweatshirt, and a pair of green yoga pants. Just as you zipped up your small suitcase, Aegon appeared at the doorway. He whimpered when he saw your luggage.
“Your grace, please move.”

He shook his head. “You can't go. Please, I need you.”

“Your mother and Princess Diana were trapped by marriage. I won't stay any longer for you to trap me.”

“I won't trap you. I'll never trap you. I love you!” His face flushed, tears and snot ran down his cheeks.

“You love me because you need me.”

“No, I need you because I love you.”

Etaf and Mabel needed to pack their own bags. You assured them that you'd be fine and sent them downstairs. You slumped on a chair with your suitcase between your legs. Aegon sat on the bed, not far from you.

“I told you to be honest with me,” you said quietly. “You weren't.”

He sniffled. “I was. I was. I meant all I said just now. You're not a rebound.”

“No matter how much you claim otherwise, the definition won't change. What you and I have is a rebound relationship. Flimsy, hollow, deciduous. It was fated to fall off.”

“If it was just a rebound, then why is my heart breaking like this? Why do I feel like I can't breathe?”

You gave a sad smile. “I'm the best substitute for Nelly and she's your one true love, the love of your life.” You met his eyes. “She might be gone from this planet but she's still inside your heart. You'll always be in love with her. I can't be with someone who isn't in love with only me. So, this has to end.”

His face contorted. “This can't be the end. This can't be our end. Please, my love, I beg you.” He got down on his knees, hands clasped, tears streaming down his face.

The door opened. You stood up but it wasn't your girlfriends.

“Oh, you're still here.” Otto Hightower turned to his grandson, who still knelt before you, hands clasped in supplication. “What are you doing? Get up.”

“Get out!” Aegon stood up.

“Lower your voice, your grace. It isn't my fault that your little relationship didn't work out. Had you been less selfish and had she been more pragmatic...” He shook his head. “People have feelings, grandson. And you.” He addressed you. “You didn't think you became the love of a prince's life for real, did you?”

You looked at your feet, ashamed and defenseless.

“Oh, you did? That's so sweet. But unfortunately, this is real life. And in real life, princes either marry princesses, like my granddaughter, or noble ladies, like Bethany Hightower. Do be wise to remember this from now on.”

Aegon lunged and literally shoved his grandfather out of the room. The old man was so shocked by this, he didn't have time to recover, let alone retaliate, before he was out in the hallway and Aegon had locked the door on his face. He rushed to your side and, before you could stop him, hugged you tightly. “Please, please don't go. Don't do this. Don't leave me. Everyone leaves me. Nobody stays. Nobody loves me. But you do and you're leaving me. Please, please don't break my heart.” He looked into your eyes. “I'll be alone. I'll be so alone. Nobody will be there, to love me, to be my mommy. You're my mommy, my buttercup, my dōnītsos. I need you, please. I love you. Please, please, believe me. I do. I do. I do.”

“Your brother was right. Scorpio and Gemini don't match.” You wiped his face, despite your brain telling you not to. “I don't think we should see each other anymore, your grace.” You untangled his arms and, defeated, he let you. You took your suitcase and headed for the door. “Goodbye, Prince Aegon.”

You shut the door. Otto was gone. In his place, your girlfriends waited with their luggage. So did two people you didn't think would visit you.

Queen Alicent Hightower and Ser Criston Cole.

“Her grace would like a word,” the stoic bodyguard said.

“I have to go,” you said.

“My son will drive you home, if you'd like. Please, my dear. Hear me out.” Alicent almost took your hands, before she thought better of it and backed away.

“Whatever you want to say, do it here.” You looked resolutely into her big brown eyes. “I don't care how sensitive or private it is. Tell me now or forever hold your peace, how about that?”

Etaf and Mabel flanked you, your lifelines. They each took one of your hands, fearful that the Queen might say something along the line, “good riddance”.

Instead, she looked at her feet and twirled the tasseled end of  her headscarf. “I know how you feel.” She inhaled and exhaled. “I'm the only daughter of a second son of an ancient, noble family. In Westeros, second sons have to make their own way. The firstborn men inherit the family business. The others have to fend for themselves. Either they work under their older brothers or venture into new avenues, like my Aemond did.”

You nodded. She took it as a sign to carry on.

“This is why my father sent me to the King's room every day after the late Queen Aemma passed away, may she rest in peace.” She looked into your eyes. “He'd make me wear my mother's sheer, tight, open dresses, and without my headscarves. Every time I visited, I felt bare. He thought King Viserys would provide a good match. He never physically hurt his wife. Always loved and cherished her. In him, my father thought, lay a great match for me. I'd be the Queen. The second most powerful person in the country. He wouldn't have to worry about my safety as the wife of some lesser lords. I'd rule over the realm. My children would be princes and princesses. He thought he had the best interest in his heart. But it wasn't in my best interest. To the King, I was a replacement for Aemma.” She sobbed now, freely and unabashedly. Criston wrapped his arms around her shoulders, tentatively, hesitantly, since they had an audience.

The Queen composed herself. “I received the late Queen's chamber. I slept on the same bed where she was cut open, where she breathed her last. Some nights I'd have nightmares, where I was in her place, my belly slashed open like a sack of potatoes, all my intestines and flesh exposed to the world to feast upon.” She covered her face with her scarf and wept. When she finally ran out of tears, she cleared her throat. “As the second wife and the only daughter of a second son, I had to give the King more heirs. Specifically, male heirs. To secure my position. My lord husband never visited me, no. He summoned me to his own chamber. Yes, we slept separately. It's the tradition.” Her eyes met yours. “He summoned me in the nightgowns of his late wife only. His one condition that arrived with his nocturnal invitations. The nights I'd anticipate his summons, I'd comfort myself with several glasses of wine. The slight intoxication made everything easier to endure, including the moments he'd call me by her name while still inside me. He never found me desirable until and unless I morphed myself into my predecessor, to bear his heirs and secure my position. He'd cry and beg for her to stay. Some nights he'd smell of wine. Some nights, of his medicines. He never let me sleep on his bed. No, he felt claustrophobic, he said. So, I had to walk back to my own chambers, no robes, no scarf to protect my face. I had to pass by his guards stationed outside, and all the servants I'd unfortunately run into. They'd watch me, watch my gauzy night clothes, as if I were a common whore from the Flea Bottom, covertly summoned to please the King. I'm his legally married wife! Yet, I'm treated like a concubine. His substitute wife.” She gulped, while Criston's arms around her tightened. “I stay, because he needs me. My children need me. Most of all, I need him. Without him, I'm nothing. Without him, my children will be nothing. So, I stay.” Before you could debate her point, she shook her head. “No, my dear. I'm not asking you to stay. I'm asking you to fly away. My son, I love him, but he's turned out to be his father's son. You have the freedom to do what I can't do. Utilize it. All my life, I've endeavored to serve my duties to my children, my family, my country, but never to myself. You shall not repeat my mishaps. Sacrifice your heart's silly desires to fulfill your duty to yourself. One day, you'll thank your past self for this decision.”

“Like I did,” Criston finally spoke up. “Rhaenyra... Princess Rhaenyra I used to serve as her personal bodyguard. She'd share with me all her ailments. All that troubled her. The pressure to marry a lord. The pressure to succeed her father as the first ever Queen Regent of Westeros. The pressure to conceive a male heir to further her line. She was a motherless princess, still in mourning, her best friend married to her father only months after her mother died horrifically. She was lonely, miserable, and I was there. She shared with me the deepest recesses of her heart's desire. I mistook it as love. I broke my vow as the Kingsguard, my vow of chastity. Afterwards, the guilt tore me apart. The only way I could release myself from my guilt and the Princess from her cumbersome duties, I offered it to her. To elope with me.”

Mabel gasped. This time, the Queen reached out to hold her most trusted guard's hands. They glanced at their entwined fingers. Criston continued. “I was a fool to assume she'd ever accept my proposal. I was her servant. Her bodyguard. A lowly Dornish man whose father was a mere retainer. I wasn't Andal, nor was I Valyrian. Then, she broke my heart, my trust in her, when she offered me to continue on as if nothing had changed. To become her paramour. I refused. My honor couldn't endure it. I confessed my sins to her grace,” he looked into the Queen's eyes, “and like the merciful Mother, she forgave me. She saved my life when I attempted to end it. She gifted me a new one, a rebirth, and since then, I've been in her debt.”

The Queen shook her head. “Nothing I did deserves such devotion, Ser.”

“You saved my life. You saved me, Alicent.”

Mabel sniffled. Even Etaf got emotional.

“He's your Hildebrand,” you said. The Queen and her knight turned to you. “She gave you a new life. A second chance. Give her the same when her time comes.”

Alicent's eyes widened. Criston looked away.

“I'm serious!” You inhaled sharply. “My mama still mourns my father. They'll never have a second chance. But you will. Fulfill your duty to yourself, your grace,” you said to Alicent, “and you repay her kindness like she did to you once,” the last part you said to Criston.

He nodded in promise. Alicent squeezed her eyes shut and nodded reluctantly.

“Go out front. I'll ensure my father maintains his distance. My son will drive you home.”

That was how you and your girlfriends found yourself in the rear seat of Aemond's Cadillac Escalade. Criston sat in the passenger seat, while Aemond drove. No sooner had the car left the manor behind when you heard him.
Aegon. He called your name, your real name, as he ran to catch up to you. Aemond's violet eye met yours. Criston twisted in his seat to glance in your direction.

“Step on it,” you said, your voice broken but determined. Etaf squeezed your hand while Mabel hugged you from sideways. Aemond sped up the car. Soon, way too soon, you left Aegon behind. Just as you left Montauk and were on the Sunrise highway, over the Shinnecock canal, the dam inside you burst open.

“Hey, Maby?” your voice cracked. When she turned to you, you gathered all your courage to ask this. “Can I have your permission to kiss your girlfriend?”

The ensuing silence was oppressive. So, you had to beg.

“Please? I'll never ask for anything like this from you. Just this once, please!”

She pressed her lips and nodded. “Okay,” she said in a small voice.

You turned to Etaf. “Please, Taffy?”

Etaf gulped and nodded. You turned your body, your back to Mabel, whose hands had retracted. You cupped Etaf's face with shaky, sweaty hands and kissed her. She didn't kiss back at first, but when your desperation showed, she relented, for the sake of your friendship. You kissed for one minute, two, before you pulled away.

“I can't, I can't, I can't...” You pressed the heels of your hands over your eyes. “You were the best in my life, Taffy, until... Now, I can't forget him. I can't replace him. He's the best in my life. He'll always be the best in my life. This can't be happening to me. No, no, no, no, no! Argh!” You tried your best to replace him, dethrone him, but you failed. You failed miserably, pathetically, like the big, fat, ugly loser that you were. You had to kick him out. Eject him from your system. Get him out while you still could. But Etaf didn't work out. And if Etaf, who had been the love of your life for so long, failed like this, fat chance did the rest of them have to erase him.

“GET HIM OUT!” you screamed. “ERASE HIM FROM MY HEAD! REPLACE HIM! MAKE ME FORGET! I DON'T WANT ANY OF HIS MEMORIES ANYMORE! MABY! TAFFY!”

You screamed until your voice was hoarse and you were depleted. You stuffed your face in one of your friend's lap and hugged her tight. Multiple hands held you and tried to pull you out of the black hole of your misery. But the thing about black holes was that, once something went in, nothing ever came out.

That was the rule of the universe.

Chapter Text

National Couples Day/National Bad Poetry Day/Serendipity Day/Never Give Up Day, 2024

Aegon Targaryen had skinned his knees and he knew that had you been here, you'd be all over it, like you were all over his broken knuckle when he punched his grandsire in the nose.

He wanted to punch that old hag again. But his right hand hadn't healed yet and his left one was the only functional one. Without you and his two hands, he'd be as useless as his father without his mother. He had no desire to become like his father. He'd already overheard his mother comparing him to the King, that he was the man's son after all. It broke his heart to hear that two of the four women he ever loved saw him this way. Like his father. Like the despicable man who groomed his mother, and neglected him and his siblings.

Aegon laid very still, so as not to feel anything. He wanted to feel nothing, to stop this madness his life had turned into. Even an hour ago, everything was fine. You were sitting by his side, turning his pages, filling him with happiness he rarely felt before, happiness he thought he'd never feel again.

What a fool he was. Happiness in his life always came with her best friend, Sadness. The two couldn't stay apart.

Like you and him.

He never wanted to forget you. He wanted to open a museum in your name, that contained your memories. He wanted to live in that museum and enter every memory, like putting on the clothes you'd select for him first thing in the morning. He wanted to consume the memories, all the angles and senses, like the lemonies you baked for him almost every day. He would live in that museum forever, until the world died like his heart did today.

He whimpered when he tried to move. He lay crumpled on the ground, his vision blurry. A ringing sound in his ears. His head throbbed. He probably looked like a carcass that had been run over by cars for so long, nobody could recognize it. All his body parts, the bones, the marrow, the flesh, and the muscles, all splattered red on the asphalt road.

A scream sprouted in his throat. A seed, a seedling, a plant, until it engorged into a tree and burst out of him. He cried out, letting the tree go, spreading the pollen born from his agony, watered by his misery, flourishing from his broken heart. He could picture the roots spreading all over his sooty, empty heart, like chains coiled around the front door handles of an ancient, abandoned manor.

He called your name. He had called your name many times as he chased after his brother's car. But you left him. You left him in the dust of your departure. Now, he was nothing but sand and pebbles.

“Come back, please,” he begged. Nobody was there to listen.

Hours passed like this. He fell asleep. He woke up. He passed out. Until two pairs of hands pulled him to his feet, soft hands, feminine hands, hands that smelled of flowers and fruits. They pulled him to his feet and dragged him to the light.

His sisters. His big sister and little sister. The two women, pregnant, had thrown each of his arms over their shoulders and dragged him with them. As soon as he heard Criston's voice, he wondered if you'd be with them as well.

What if you weren't? What would he do then? Could his reach into your heart be deep enough to summon you back to him? Could his connection to your soul be strong enough to alert you that he needed you? Where were you? Please, come back.

He opened his eyes and sighed. There you were, hidden among his family members. You smiled and waited for Criston and his brothers to carry him inside the manor. You followed them but you stayed away. Always at the back, until everyone's cacophony ceased and your voice emerged.

“Oh my poor baby boy, look at you.” You tsked.

“I know, I'm pathetic.”

At once, his family went silent. They glanced in the direction his eyes stared at and frowned. Could they not see you? Ha-ha, all the better. He had you all to himself.

“Is he drunk?” Rhaenyra asked.

His mum rubbed her forehead. “I don't think so. You said you and Helaena found him by the side of the road?”

“No, we found him exactly in the middle of the road. He's lucky to not have been run over by now.”

You shook your head exasperatedly and chided him for being so careless about his life.

“Ñuha ābrar iksis mērī aōhon,” he said to you. “Ñuha prūmia iksis aōhon. Mirre yno iksis aōhon. Gaomagon ao pāsagon nyke sir? Eman va moriot jorrāelatan ao, lēda mirre ñuha prūmia. Kostilus, jorrāelagon nyke arlī, jorrāelagon nyke arlī, jorrāelagon nyke va moriot.”(“My life is only yours.” “My heart is yours. All of me is yours. Do you believe me now? I have always loved you, with all my heart. Please, love me back, love me again, love me always.”)

His mum and Criston were the only ones in the room who didn't understand him. Rhaenyra's eyes widened. Helaena stayed composed. His brothers sighed.

“What is he saying? Who is he talking to?” his mum asked.

Aemond rolled his eyes. Daeron answered, “I think Lēkia is speaking to her ghost.”

“Whose ghost?”

“The girl he lost tonight,” Rhaenyra said.

They fussed over him, well, his mum, brothers, and Criston. His sisters stayed away but they stayed back. “When he speaks to a woman phantom, know that within him lies a deep chasm,” Helaena murmured.

Rhaenyra frowned. “Chasm?”

Helaena blinked, unused to having people pay attention to her words. “A chasm with no bottom, that holds his sanity ransom.”

Alicent sent her pregnant daughter back to her room with her youngest son. Rhaenyra went back to her own. Criston, Aemond, and Alicent watched the second claimant to the Iron Throne speak in High Valyrian and giggle with the ghost of you. They discussed what to do about this. Was he going mad? It was a well-known fact that madness ran in the Targaryen blood. Volatile as a dragon, hot as their fire. What if this was the event that'd tip Aegon off to the side of insanity?

They finally decided to let him sleep it off. He was obviously in shock, since he wasn't drunk. When they turned to him, they found his bed empty, the door open. They heard the music then, a tune they'd heard sometimes played between the tune he performed earlier this afternoon.

Spring Waltz (Mariage d'Amor) by Paul de Senneville.

They followed the sound and found him sitting alone before his white piano. He played with both hands, his right hand covered with a splint. He sat to the far left of his bench, as if he'd made room for another person to sit by his side. He calmly, quietly played his tune, until it ended and he turned to his right. “Well? What do you think?”

Alicent mistook it as a question sent their way. She was about to answer when Aegon laughed.

“You flatter me, dōnītsos. I'm glad you like it. Hmm? My hand is fine. Just a little pain. Nothing I can't endure for you. You wanna hear it again? Encore, huh? If you insist.”

He played the tune again and again. Aemond stepped up after the fourth performance. He tugged his older brother to his feet, his fingers tightly clasping his brother's chubby arm.

Aegon blinked, as if he'd been sleepwalking all this time. He looked over his shoulder at the bench. “Where... Where is she?”

“She's gone,” Aemond said in a cool tone. “I dropped her off at your place.”

“My place?”

“To pack up the rest of her stuff.” He scoffed. “What? Do you really think she'd stay with you after how you treated her? Learn how to use the white goo inside your thick skull, or else it'll grow mold.”

Alicent scolded her second son for being so straightforward and insensitive. But Aegon wasn't listening to them. All he could latch onto was the word “mold”.

“It's almost midnight?” he whispered.

“Of course it is almost midnight. We ordered takeout because our cooks are gone. Just when Criston went to give you your portions, he noticed you never returned. So, off we went. Our sisters found you in the middle of the road, like a deer carcass.”

But Aegon wasn't listening. He was trying to remember the exact time and date when you made your cheese, your kimchi, your starter. By the end of his calculation, he'd made up his mind. With surprising strength, he shoved his brother's arm off him and ran for the kitchen. His brother ran after him, like he did when Aegon was running away from his wedding with their sister. Criston and Alicent followed their oldest son to the empty kitchen. They watched him open the fridge, fumble around until he found a wheel of cheese inside, cut a slice, and tasted it. His face crumpled when he had to spit it out. He tasted slice after slice, but spat them out tearfully.

“They're gone! They've all gone bad!” He shoved the cheese wheel into the dumpster. He moved onto a plastic tub of kimchi. He tasted the shredded, fermented cabbages, their red juice, before he dumped it in the trash as well, tearfully and angrily. “I've ruined it. I've killed all her legacies.” His eyes fell on the last item on the same shelf inside the fridge. A glass jar that contained some off-white substance. He checked it. “Bubbly surface, tart smell, gloopy consistency...” His face crumpled again, this time he laughed and cried. “It's alive. It's still alive. Don't worry, baby, I got you.” From the jar's body, he read out the instructions in your messy handwriting and black sharpie. “Day six is for feeding. Day ten is when I can bake it.” He brought out a glass mixing bowl, a wooden spoon, and a measuring cup from a cabinet, flour and sugar from the pantry, and milk from the fridge. He measured one cup of each ingredient and mixed them into the gloopy substance in the bowl.

“What is he doing?” Criston asked.

Aegon intently fed the starter, the one cup you had made and stored in the jar. Once that was done, he carefully poured the mix back into the glass jar and sealed it off into the fridge.

“What was that?” Aemond demanded.

Aegon met his brother's eye. “I'm keeping her legacy alive, so when she comes back, she can bake me the bread she said she would.”

Alicent's heart broke from his innocent belief. Innocent and delusional, according to Aemond.

“She's not coming back,” he insisted.

“She will, okay, she will. Nelly brought her to me. She won't steal my buttercup.”

Aemond gave up and left. Alicent hugged her son, who, for the first time, didn't return it. He stayed frozen, like Helaena did whenever Alicent hugged without permission.

“You should leave him,” Aegon muttered.

“Who?”

“Dad groomed you. He's a pedo.”

Before she could reply or react, he left the kitchen. He went back to his piano on the patio. He noticed your bouquet still on top of the white Steinway. He stroked the petals, the pink wrappers and the white ribbon. No cards, like before. He had no way of knowing if you ever taped a card onto this one. He took the bouquet and went to his room. He slept in his suit, his tie still in the Elderedge knot, with the Birds of Paradise folded handkerchiefs peeking from his front pocket. He took off his shoes and socks, then slipped under the duvet, your bouquet in his arms. When he hugged your pillow and bouquet, the petals crushed from his embrace.

“I miss you,” he mumbled, his face wet with tears. He stuffed his face in the bouquet. The petals stroked him like your hands would. He'd suck on your fingers, as he sucked the petals now. His teeth bit into them and tore them off. He chewed the petals, one by one. Red pansies, pink lilies, white chrysanthemums, orange alstroemeria, purple lisianthus, blue forget-me-nots, and yellow freesias. He didn't care how they tasted. He tore them off the stems, chewed, and swallowed. Only the green stems, leaves, and calyxes remained. He had no intention to eat the male. Only the female, only you, the petals to his calyxes.

An hour later, he was violently ill, nauseated with diarrhea. He didn't call for help. He slept on the bathroom floor in his clothes until the next morning, when Alicent found him. Criston gave him proper medication. Helaena brought their kids to him, hopeful that their presence might keep him sane.

That night, sometimes before midnight, Alicent found him back in the kitchen, stirring the off-white gloopy substance in the glass jar.

“I have to keep it alive, Mum,” he confessed tearfully. “I don't wanna disappoint her when she comes back.”

The next morning, she took him, her daughter, and their children to the beach. Helaena lured a southern pine beetle in her hands, like a Disney princess luring in deer, rabbits, and birds. The twins tried to make a sandcastle. When that failed, they half-buried each other with sand. Jaehaera lifted her feet and wiggled her toes. Her brother followed suit.

“What are you doing?” Alicent asked incredulously.

“It's National Wiggle Your Toes Day!” Jaehaera giggled.

Alicent was confused. Helaena smiled. “How do you know?”

“Miss Etaf told us,” Jaehaerys said. “She took us to a website that tells you what day today is. Here.” He showed his grandmother the website.

The mention of Etaf's name and the days she talked about on her radio show injected something in Aegon's veins. He walked back to the Montauk Manor. He called the radio station. They told him her show would return the next morning.

Aegon diligently called. He stood at the top of the Montauk Point Lighthouse, because it was National Lighthouse Day, and told her so. Etaf, on air, couldn't reject his call or his song request. She relayed his message to you, that he was keeping your starter alive and he would until the day you would come back to his life.

“Like the lamp in Devdas,” he said before he ended the call. He listened to the song he had requested for you. He couldn't text you to listen to it, since you had blocked him. He just knew you were listening. You were loyal like that.

“There goes my heart beating
'Cause you are the reason
I'm losing my sleep
Please come back now…”

He was coming down the stairs when the song ended and Etaf announced the next song on the queue, requested by... Aegon almost missed a step when he heard your name. He quickly stepped aside to let the other tourists pass him. He almost forgot to breathe as he listened to the song you had requested, seemingly your answer to his own.

“Who do you think you are?
Runnin' 'round leaving scars
Collecting your jar of hearts
Tearing love apart
You're gonna catch a cold
From the ice inside your soul
So don't come back for me
Who do you think you are?”

He fought back the tears. He deserved your vitriol. He'd used you and lied about it. His feelings for you were true, but it didn't negate his original intention for pursuing you. So, he listened to the song, then went on YouTube and listened to it again and again, the raw pain in Christina Perri's voice, scolding him for breaking your heart.

“I wish I had missed the first time that we kissed
'Cause you broke all your promises…”

He did, didn't he? You asked for one thing. To love you truly. But did what he felt matter if the original intention was to use you?

“And now you're back
You don't get to get me back…”

He was adamant. He'd do anything, any fucking thing, to get you back. So, the next morning, he sent another request to Etaf's show, this time from a new number. He feared she might alert her station to not pick up any call from his own cell. So, he used burner phones to call her show. As he ate frozen custard for breakfast (on National Frozen Custard Day), he sent his new song request.

“I'm not a perfect person
There's many things I wish I didn't do
But I continue learning
I never meant to do those things to you…”

Aegon hoped that you'd realize that he didn't mean any of those mean things he said about you. He had only met you once and in his hungover, he said whatever ugly, cruel stuff that came into his head. He was pissed at you for existing, for looking like Nelly, for saving his life when he really did want to paint himself red on the train tracks the night before. He was angry at you for saving his life... and utterly, eternally grateful that you existed, that you looked like Nelly, that you saved his life by risking yours. He wanted to insert himself into your life. He wanted to get to know you, see if you were like Nelly in any way other than your facial features, or if you were her opposite.

Just as he had finished his second cup of custard, your reply came in the form of Olivia Rodrigo's Driver's License. What hit him the most, and the probable reason you chose this song, came in the following lyrics:

“And you're probably with that blonde girl
Who always made me doubt
She's so much older than me
She's everything I'm insecure about
Yeah, today I drove through the suburbs
'Cause how could I ever love someone else?”

Blonde girl, so much older, who always made you doubt, and who was everything you were insecure about. Nelly. You were still comparing yourself to her, weren't you? He wished, as he sobbed into his empty frozen custard cup, that he could invade your mind and rip off all the weeds, the thoughts that made you feel insecure. He wanted to plant, in their stead, all the things that made you perfect in his eyes, that made him fall for you.

The next four days went like this. In the mornings, he would call Etaf's show through different numbers and under different aliases. He'd request a song for you. As replies, you'd request songs too. When he told you, through Dido's Here With Me, that he hadn't cleaned his room for days now because he feared cleaning it, or even removing one stuff from how you left it, would shift and thus irreparably ruin your memories in his head. He wished he could tell you how desperately his mum and Criston tried to clean his room, but he locked himself inside.

Your reply came in the form of Lord Huron's song, through which you called him an emerald star and accused him of never loving you, and despite the seemingly unrequited love from his side (it wasn't, for fuck's sake, it never was!), you sincerely wished his light would never die.

On August 9, three days after you left, he learned how to make POMP juice that you would make for him every morning. You'd told him the ratio, 1:1:1:1 of the four fruit juices. Everyone else, including you, didn't fancy the brew but he did, so you made it every morning and tasted one sip just to make sure it tasted as “meh” (in your words) as he liked it. Etaf reluctantly let him drone on air, before he requested his song for you. A sweet song. A classic. One of his mum's favorites.

“Come let me love you
Let me give my life to you
Let me drown in your laughter
Let me die in your arms
Let me lay down beside you
Let me always be with you
Come let me love you
Come love me again…”

Was it tacky? Yeah, but he was desperate. He was dying to reach you, but he knew if he showed up at either the Shore Boulevard or the Roosevelt Island apartments, you'd file a restraining order against him.

Your response came at the end of the show. A depressing, sad song.

“How do I love, how do I love again?
How do I trust, how do I trust again?”

He'd fucked up worse than before. Worse than he ever had. He'd broken both your heart and trust. He remembered your exes, how they hurt you in their own way; either used you as rebounds (the two classmates), stopped being in love with you (Etaf), broke your trust (Levy, Caleb), never loved you (Ezra), or hurt you by hurting themselves (Darren). What category did he belong to? The first one, for sure. Also, the one with Levy and Caleb. You did say he was the top contender.

The next three days, this song and dance went on. He sent song requests to proclaim his love for you. You sent songs of heartbreak. He cried buckets when he listened to the song, The One That Got Away, not the upbeat Katy Perry version, rather the slo-mo, heartbroken one by Brielle von Hugel.

“In another life
I would be your girl
We'd keep all our promises
Be us against the world
In another life
I would make you stay
So I don't have to say
You were the one that got away
The one that got away…”

He cried every time he listened to this version. He was masochistic like that. Helaena found him like this, while stacking Legos with his kids, who either felt awkward (Jaehaera) or annoyed (Jaehaerys). She took him aside and assured the twins that Uncle Aegon was just having a bad day. Jaehaera genuinely wished he'd feel better soon. Jaehaerys offered his pink bunny, the one you gifted his kids. Aegon pathetically accepted the plushie for a while. As his thumbs traced doodles on the soft, floppy bunny ears, Helaena listened to the song with him.

“Prove her wrong,” she said.

“She won't talk to me.”

“Find a way.” She glanced at her belly. “Before Grandsire forces us to reconcile. I can't do that. Not with you, not with anyone, never again.”

He nodded. Though Otto stayed away from his grandchildren, kudos to Alicent and Criston, he still tried to vex them, particularly the eldest one.

Two days later, Etaf personally called Aegon after your request for Sam Smith's For The Lover That I Lost. She told him not to call the station again.

“You're doing the same thing you did to woo her before, the same fucking way you wooed your fiancée. Stop recycling the same old shit. Let her grieve. You broke her much worse than the ones before you.”

“I didn't mean to! I swear, I do love her.”

“You don't love a rebound.”

“She's not a rebound. Not anymore.”

Etaf sighed. “It's not that she doesn't know this, okay! It's the thought that you approached her with this intention. You didn't come to her life because you liked her. You came to use her. That's what hurt her. All her life, people tried to use her. She thought you'd be an exception.”

He wiped his face, to better view his room, the same as it was the day you left. “I gotta apologize to her. I gotta do something. Anything but let her go.”

“She's not in the right headspace now. She moved out of our apartment permanently. Fuck, she's even seeing Caleb now.”

A heavy stone perched in his throat. “What?”

Etaf told him how, two days after your break-up, sometime after he sent the first song request, you contacted Caleb. “For meaningless sex, she said. She doesn't answer our calls or texts much. She left our group. She's drunk all the time, according to her mama. She's not coping well.”

Aegon's heart latched onto the second last sentence. “She's drinking?”

Etaf laughed dryly. “You infected her with your alcoholism apparently. Most nights, she's out drinking and partying with Caleb. They spend the nights too. Whenever we need her for Mabel Taffy, she just drops by the food, does her part, then leaves. She never stays back. She's quiet when she's sober. She's gone whenever she wants to be drunk. You're depriving us of our best friend too.”

Aegon gulped. He didn't think it'd be this bad. How come you turned into him? How come you became so self-destructive?

The realization left him cold and broken. Even though he knew you, he didn't know you that well. He'd met you, what, six months ago? He only dated you for two months. That wasn't enough time to know someone inside out, no matter how much you loved them or spent time with them. And god dammit, he wanted to know you more, better, for the rest of your life if he was allowed.

After the call, he decided to pay your mama's apartment a visit. He picked the song he'd sing, like the night he hired you as his housekeeper. How long ago was it? Four months? It felt like four decades ago.

After he'd mashed your starter for Day Thirteen (he didn't make the bread with it, since he didn't have your recipe, so he just doubled the size of the jar), he called an Uber and made the two and a half hour journey to Roosevelt Island. Outside your mama's building, his nerves made his soles tingle. What if you told your security to remove him? Worse, what if you called the cops? What if you threatened to use your Glock on him?
No, he couldn't back off. This worked before. If it didn't, he could improvise. He hoped you weren't already asleep, or wearing your headphones.

The beefy guard watched him behind the glass double doors.

Aegon cleared his throat and began to sing. You had always admired his voice, like you admired his hands. You once told him about a cannibalistic dream you had about his hands. His voice, his hands, and his eye color. You told him they were your favorite features of him. For him, your hair was his most favorite feature. Darker than a starless night sky, like your mama's. He loved your scent, both the artificial one from your soap and shampoo, and the natural one that came out whenever you sweated. He once licked a streak from your neck, while he was cock deep inside your ass.

His voice shook when he sang one particular line. When he said, I do, I do, I do. He felt as if he were saying his vows to you. Fuck, he wanted to marry you someday, didn't he? This was too soon, probably not now. But he was sure as hell that he wanted to marry you someday. You'd look great in white, much more than the night you met. When, not if, because he wanted to believe in such a future with you, if you wouldn't believe in it, he'd believe in it for you. When he'd marry you, you would be the one to hold a bouquet. Given your knowledge of the language of flowers (something you learned from Ezra, who liked having fresh flowers delivered to his home every morning), you'd pick something with lots of meaning. Like the two bouquets you gave him and the third one you presented to say your goodbye. Aemond told him what the seven flowers meant, while Aegon recovered in his bed, tired from the gastric sickness he got from ingesting the flowers. Did you suspect something? Did you know what that video contained already? No, it couldn't be. You didn't know anything. Or else you'd not but him flowers, or turn his pages, or shield him from his family's censure.
He didn't know when he'd stopped singing, running out of lyrics to croon. He didn't notice when he'd started sobbing. With tears down his face, he began anew. He'd sing until you came out. He could do that. It didn't matter that his voice sounded hoarse or that it felt dry or that the residents of the building probably complained. He sang again and again and again and again...

Until a silhouette appeared beside the beefy security guy. By then, two hours had passed. He made do with his saliva to wet his throat. He had sat cross-legged on the hard sidewalk. He'd endured the embarrassment he probably earned from the security guy and whosoever was witnessing his serenade. They all paid off when he saw a woman with dark hair climb down the stairs. He clambered to his feet, hopeful and happy, until the face came under the streetlights.

Your mama walked in his direction. She offered him a soft smile but it didn't reach her eyes. She knew how he had hurt you. She was definitely disappointed. She stopped a foot away and wrapped her arms around herself.

“She's not here,” she said.

“Is she with Caleb?” he asked.

“I don't know. She doesn't live here anymore.”

She sat with him and told him what happened. How, after his brother dropped you off here, you collapsed in her arms. Tearfully, you told her that your worst fear had come true.

“You broke her,” your mama told him.

Aegon said nothing.

“She trusted you and you broke her. So much that she wished to never have been born. She wished to give her years to her father.”

“What?”

Your mama smiled sadly. “She thinks that unlike her, Stu was wanted. Because I still wait for him, she wished her father was alive, instead of her.”

“What did you tell her?”

“The truth. I never told her out of fear that she might blame herself or me for his death.” She told Aegon that Stu, the love of her life and your father, wanted to have a baby with her. She wept. “My babygirl always thought she was an accident. A burden on me. How can something I've always wanted, something I and my beloved always craved for and tried to procreate...”

Aegon understood at once. You were never an accident. Your parents had planned to bring you to their life. This planet. This world. Even though they weren't married yet. The night your father drowned in the Atlantic, your mama took a test and found out she was pregnant.

“With her. My little girl. In my excitement, I called Stu and told him. He got so excited, my impulsive love, he hopped on his plane and tried to cross the ocean for me. To come to me and our little girl. He was impulsive like her. Short-tempered, impulsive...” She sighed. “And autistic.”

Aegon gasped. Your mama gave him a sad smile. “I told her time and again. She's like her father both inside and out. If he was alive, they'd both get along and fight the most. She's so much like him, sometimes I wish he was here instead of me. He'd know what to do, seeing her so broken now. He'd not drive her away like I did.”

Aegon remembered that you didn't live here anymore. “Where is she?”

Your mama shrugged. “She doesn't tell me. She just moved out. We had a fight...” She thought about it. “Five days ago? Over her dating Caleb again. Two nights ago, I came home to find all her stuff gone. I called Etaf. She told me my stubborn little girl wasn't with her. I panicked, obviously.”

Aegon hummed. He would too. He was like your mama. Maybe not as altruistic as her, but she was the sunshine to your dad's grumpiness, like Aegon was to you.

Your mama continued. “I called her. She told me she found a studio apartment in the Bronx. She won't give her address. She said if I tracked her down, she'd move across the country. So, I relented. I made her promise to give me two calls every day, first thing in the morning and every night before bed.”

Aegon wanted to listen to your calls that your mama secretly recorded, in case something in the background gave her a clue. A little noisy. Lots of Spanish speakers. Nothing else.

“Go home, son,” your mama said. “I believe you. You do love my daughter. But give her some time to grieve.”

“How can I? She's in a self-destructive mode.”

“I'll find her. But tonight, there's nothing we can do. One thing I'm sure about is that my girl won't do anything fatal. She doesn't wanna follow her father's example. She won't leave me alone in this world. Other than her, I have nobody else.” Her voice broke a little in the end. How optimistic she was.

Aegon decided to invest in it. How fatal a mistake it was, he realized days later.

His mother and brother were taking him to Carnegie Hall for some concert, followed by a dinner reservation at the iconic Russian Tea Room. He'd been sulking in his room for too long, according to Alicent.

“You've started talking to yourself,” she chided him.

Aegon glanced out the window. His mum was right, but he wasn't talking to himself. He was picturing you with him, commenting on the stuff around him, and tons of stuff had happened since you left.

Harwin had been installed as the head of Rhaenyra's security personnel. With Jace and Luke being ineligible for the throne and established as bastards now, Rhaenys wanted to nullify their betrothals to her granddaughters. Baela and Rhaena consented, only to introduce their new boyfriends to their grandparents. Baela was dating Allyn Hull, her uncle's so-called bastard, while Rhaena was seeing Garmund Hightower, Ormund's son, aka Alicent's nephew, and Lyonel and Samantha's cousin. Meanwhile, Jace was secretly dating Cregan Stark, the Warden of the North. Corlys vehemently refused to accept them. Otto was smug about their choices, until Daeron introduced Addam Hull, Allyn's little brother, as his boyfriend. All four young couples met in the University of Oldtown. Once again, homophobia brought bitter enemies like Otto and Corlys together.

Aegon imagined what you'd say.

“Really, man? Homophobia in the 21st century?” You'd give them a crooked smile. “So, the boys like sticks and stones more than holes and pillows. Although, guys have it all: sticks, stones, holes, and pillows if you go to the gym too much. That's not the end of the world. If you ask me, sticks and stones are just as amazing as holes and pillows.” You'd wink at them. “In fact, all three of you,” you'd point to Viserys, Otto, and Corlys, “and Daemon should bang each other, best if you do it in one room, better than the best if y'all do it on the same bed and to one another. Get it out of your system. Your cookers are accumulating too much pressure. If y'all keep this up, your camel backs will break. Or, in your case, your dicks will break.”

As soon as Aegon felt the slap, you vanished from his side. He blinked. His grandfather towered over him, his face red from rage.

“That American whore has polluted your mind. So much that you'd sprout revolting nonsense even to your father, the King.”

His father, on his part, was dozing off in his chair. Rhaenyra and Harwin shared a laugh, while Alicent rubbed her forehead. The corner of Aemond's mouth had turned up. Alys shook her head, a smile on her face.

Aegon still felt the sting of the slap. Had you been by his side, you'd have applied some ice. You'd offer him your tits to suckle onto. He wondered, shamefully and shamelessly, if your tits were leaking now. A hollowness spread in his chest. He missed you. He missed you so fucking much, to reach you, he'd gladly run through the heavy traffic his brother's car was stuck in, while they waited for the umpteenth red light to turn green.

“Any day now,” Otto said, “Maelor would be born and you'll become a father again. Perhaps now...”

“Shut the fuck up!” Aegon snarled, his eyes still on the scenario outside, his back to his grandsire, who sat on what used to be your seat. His mum, Daeron, and Criston were in the rear seat. Aemond and his wife were at the front.

“I beg your pardon?” When Aegon didn't pay the man any attention, Otto gripped his arm to forcefully turn him around. Aegon resisted but couldn't stop his grandsire, who was physically stronger than him. He faced the old man. “How dare you talk to me like that?”

Aegon scoffed. “I'm the Prince of Westeros. And you? Nothing but the second son of House Hightower. Your older brother has heirs, who have heirs themselves. You're nothing. Not even the Hand of the King any longer.”

Otto itched to slap him, Aegon knew. But now that he had used the Prince card, he was superior to Otto when it came to their social standing. “Daughter,” he said to Alicent instead, “discipline your son when he speaks to his elders.”

“Mum, teach your father how not to touch the Prince of his country.” Aegon shoved his grandsire's grip on his arm. He knew it might be bruised. But he didn't care.

“Honestly, can you not fight for one night?” Alicent groaned in an unladylike manner. Her fingers coiled the tasseled end of her scarf.

“My only crime was to express how your son, a Prince of Westeros, should shoulder his duties as a father, a husband, and a Valyrian Prince. His sister is his wife and the mother of his three children.”

“Remind me again, Mr. Hightower,” Aegon purposefully left out his lord status, “who betrayed the trust of his grandchildren? Who violated the bodies of the Prince and the Princess of his country? You've committed a sexual violence. A crime. I could have you arrested and prosecuted. Fuck, I can execute you for this. Wouldn't you defend and avenge Princess Helaena's honor, Ser Criston?” Aegon turned to the knight sitting to Alicent's right. He blinked and cleared his throat. Before he could say anything, Daeron spoke up.

“Oh the seven save us!”

“What is it?” Alicent asked distractedly.

“Nelly's ghost!”

Aegon followed Daeron's line of vision. True to his words, across the street, inside a Just Salad store sat a woman with golden blonde hair, in an emerald green cocktail dress with sequins, beads, and fringes. Her hair, sleek and curly, was swept to a side in an elegantly messy way. A white flapper headpiece over her forehead, with a fake pearl necklace around her neck, three long strands. She stood out from the rest of the customers, who wore everyday clothes. Two plates of food on her table and a glass of purple smoothie. With gloved hands, she was eating alone, a half-eaten wrap in her hand. She took a big, messy bite. With the back of her hand, she wiped something from her blood red lips, before she took a long sip of her smoothie.

Aegon instantly forgot what his brother said. Only one word came out of his mouth and it wasn't Nelly's name.

“Dōnītsos?!”

He watched how lonely you looked, how small and broken, hunched and defeated. Your movements were slow and clumsy, as if you were a snail stuck inside amber. You almost toppled your glass and spilled your smoothie. You took your time to chew. Swallowing a mouthful seemed like a chore to you. His heart broke even more when he realized how closely you resembled the woman who struck insecurities in you.

At once, his body took over. He tried to open his door. When it didn't, he lunged for the button that opened the sunroof. He tried to clamber out, but his grandsire's reflexes were praiseworthy. He immediately pulled him back down and simultaneously closed the sunroof.

“Let me go! Let me go!” Aegon screamed like bloody murder. He struggled against his grandsire's stranglehold, who refused to free him.

“You. Are. Not. Going. To. That. Whore!” Otto's arms pinioned around Aegon's own.

Aegon, for his part, sank his teeth into his grandsire's arm. The old man screamed but refused to let go. “I won't let my labor go to waste! You shall fulfill your duties to your wife and forget that whore! You shall do as I say!”

In response, Aegon bit him harder. Otto's arm began to bleed. Still, the man refused to release his grandson.

“Ser Criston, stop him!”

Like a bucket of icy water doused over them, the grandfather-grandson dueling duo paused their fight. They turned to their Queen, the mother of one of them and the daughter of the other. Yet, their gazes differed. Otto's eyes reflected relief and joy in surmising his daughter's support in his endeavor, while Aegon's eyes emanated shock and sadness at his mother's betrayal. “Mum?” His voice broke.

Alicent held his gaze. “Stop Lord Hightower at once.”

All the fight left Aegon's body when the knight, whom you once called his surrogate father, pressed his gun to Otto's neck. The nobleman, on his part, exhaled a sigh of shock. “Alicent?”

“Let him go. This is the command of your Queen.” When Otto didn't do as she ordered, she repeated, “Let Prince Aegon go! Now!”

Otto gulped and did as she told him. Aegon lunged for the car door, which Aemond had unlocked. He stopped at the last moment and turned to his mother. “Thank you.”

She smiled warmly. “Go get her.”

“All the best, Lēkia!” Daeron gave a thumbs up.

“Good luck,” Alys said.

Aemond only hummed, but the corner of his lips turned up. Aegon wasted not a second. Just as he shut the door behind him, the light turned green. Cars honked and screeched to a halt, as he threw himself across the street. People cursed after him. He didn't care. He stopped for one second once he reached the sidewalk, to take a breath. Then, he ran for the Just Salad door. He didn't head for the counter. Instead, he rushed to one of the few occupied tables by the glass walls. He almost ran into the table and held onto the back of an empty chair.

The single occupant, you, looked up, slowly, too sluggishly to be considered normal. Your eyes raked over his body, finally to his face, stayed there for a heartbeat, before you slowly turned back to your food. Your eyes were glazed over, their lids droopy.

Aegon finally understood why. You were drunk. His heart broke more and more, as he realized you were dressed like Nelly from the photo Otto sent you. Your hair was dyed golden blonde. A cheap imitation of Nelly's designer dress, sleeveless and skimpy. You were drunk and having dinner alone in a Just Salad store, the same place you two joked about only two months ago. Was it just two months ago when you were happy and out on your first date?

His vision blurred. His cheeks wet, he pressed his lips to not cry. He did this to you. He fucking broke you! The form before his eyes was just a husk, from which oozed out blood, cleaved in half, which exposed your vulnerable parts, offering all the carnivores to peck at you and devour you, all the while you were alive and still tethered to your senses.

“My love?” he whispered.

You sluggishly glanced up. Your gaze cleared, only for your brows to furrow. “Can I help you?”

Aegon took the seat closest to you. “Buttercup, I'm here.”

You cocked your head, the centerpiece of your headband falling over your eyes, which he now noticed weren't brown, rather blue, not a color that suited you, the same way golden blonde wasn't your color. You were Buttercup, with night black hair and earth brown eyes. The gradual realization made his tears come down.

You were trying to become Nelly. His suspicion solidified when the lady behind the counter called out Nelly, not your name. You stood up on wobbly legs and went to fetch your second glass of beverage. You flopped back on your seat and took a big sip, not once glancing his way. The moment you put your glass back down, he took your hand. You looked at his hand holding yours, as if he were a dung beetle. You glanced back at his face. “Who are you?”

His eyes widened. “What?”

“Do we know each other, sir?”

The addressal brought back the bitter memories, when you called him sir because you were trying to make it up to his class-conscious mother. He swallowed the thorny lump in his throat. “My love?”

“I think you mistook me for someone else.” You giggled. “I'm Nelly, by the way.”

“You're not Nelly.”

You laughed. “I think I know my name better than you, Mister...”

He cupped your face. You tried to distance yourself, but he held onto you. “It's me, my love, my buttercup, my dōnītsos.” He gulped. “Mommy?”

You giggled. “Mommy? Little boy, are you lost?” You cupped his cheek with one hand and rubbed his stubble. He closed his eyes and sank into your touch. He almost fell from his seat when you leaned over and kissed his forehead. “Sorry, but I'm not your mommy.” Fresh tears down his face made you cup both his cheeks. “Oh, my little boy. Don't cry. You'll find your mommy.”

“I have found her. I'm with her right now.”

“Well, where is she? I gotta safely hand you over to her.”

“I don't want anybody else. I want you. Only you.”

You gave him a beatific smile. “Is that so? Won't your mommy mind?”

“No, I only have one mommy. You. You're my mommy. My one and only.”

Your smile widened. “I see. Come then, my sun. Come to Mommy.” You patted your lap. He sat on your thighs. You tucked his hair behind his ears and wiped his face with a napkin. “Are you hungry? Mommy got lots of food.”

He placed your left hand over his heart, over the bouquet tattoo. “Feed me, Mommy.”
You picked up your fork and fed him several mouthfuls of Autumn Caesar salad, until he noticed the food was mostly gone but you ate nothing. He picked up your wrap and offered you a bite. You did and smiled, chewing on a big mouthful.

Just as your meal together was over, your purse buzzed. He didn't let your left hand go, so you one-handedly pulled out your phone. You answered the video call.

“Babe, where are you? How was your date? Wait...” Etaf noticed Aegon on your lap. “What is he doing with you?”

You giggled. “Oh, him? He's my new Sun. S-U-N. He was lost and I found him. Well, he found me. I'm keeping him. Isn't he pretty and bright? Say hello to Auntie Etaf, baby boy!”

Aegon could only stare at your best friend, who glared disapprovingly. “Sweetie, it's almost time for your recitation.”

Your eyes widened. “Oh right, right! The pottery slam!”

“Poetry slam,” she corrected you.

“That too. I'm coming.” You turned to him.

“Baby boy, wanna watch Mommy recite poems? I promise, they're not nursery rhymes.”

Aegon wept. At once, you were fussing over him. He'd missed this. He'd missed you. So fucking much, it actually hurt under his ribs. He threw his arms around you and stuffed his face in the crook of your neck. You smelled so good, so familiar. Vanilla and lavender, with some sweat mixed into it. He wanted to slip inside your body, curl up in your heart, swim through all your brain cells, and see and hear and feel the world through all your senses, become one with you, so much that when people bury you both, years later they'd find one skeleton.

You rocked him back and forth, and let him chase out all his tears, all his fears. Your hands ran up and down his back. Why were you consoling him? He broke you first. Yet, here you were, ever maternal, ever gentle, ever merciful. Comforting him when you were the lonely, broken one.

“Mommy, I'm sorry.” He cupped your face. “I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you.”

Your hands rested over his. “I love you too, baby boy.”

He tilted his forehead with yours. This was the first time you ever said those three words. You were drunk, you couldn't recognize him, or remember what he did.

“Come, we're getting late.” You slowly put him on his feet and got to yours. He wrapped his arms around your waist and kept you close. Out in the fresh air, you shivered. “I forgot my coat.”

Aegon went back in. At your table, there was no coat. He asked around. The employees behind the counter said they didn't see you bring in any coat, but they could be wrong. He came out and saw you had waddled almost half a block ahead. He ran to your side.

“There was no coat.”

You shrugged. “Oh well. Look what I got for you, baby boy.” You produced an orange and a lemon from your purse. “My neighbor is this lovely Cuban Abuela. She thinks I don't eat enough fruit. She gives me two pieces of fruit every day. Tonight, she gave me an orange and a lemon, and told me to give it to Mi Media Naranja and Mi Medio Limón. I dunno who those people are. I intend to find out. She was really serious about it.”

Aegon took them. “Can I have them?”

“Sure.” From your purse, you produced a pocket knife. “She taught me this trick. Watch.” You cut the top and bottom of the lemon, then gently made room between the skin and the pith. Once there was a flap to wiggle your nail in, you peeled the skin until, like an orange, the lemon's yellow globe came out. While Aegon separated the orange segments with his hands, you used your knife to divide the lemon's segments. You stared at his fingers. You took his left hand and placed it on your face. You rubbed his hand up and down your cheeks, over your painted lips, your drawn eyebrows, your nose, your dolled-up cheeks. You licked his fingers one by one. He could no longer keep his tears at bay, as he watched you suck on his fingers one by one. He remembered your dream. Did you remember it? Not in your intoxicated state. You were a girl, alone out here, in your state of clothing and inebriation. Did you even bring your mace and Glock? Just a pocket knife and two citrus fruits. Etaf mentioned a date. What happened? Did they bail on you?

Just as you let his hand go, he slipped it into your hair and pulled you closer. He leaned in and pressed his lips over yours. He felt as content as if he'd come home after a long journey, as if he'd soaked his hands into a tub of lukewarm water after playing all day, as if he'd laid down on a soft bed after hours of hunching over a piano.

He was home and his home was you.

When you two parted, he offered you a piece of orange. You offered him a piece of lemon. You bit your orange in half and fed him the other. He did the same with your lemon slice. Together, your teeth snapped the citrus pieces inside your mouth. Tart lemon mixed with sweet orange, their marriage harmonious. The larger, mellowed sweetness balanced out the smaller, sharp tartness. You two fed each other and giggled as if sharing scandalous gossip. Once you ran out of fruits, you pouted. Aegon promised to buy you fruits later on. He helped you stand up and flagged down a cab. Before you could climb in, you bent over and puked into a gutter. Aegon held back your hair and rubbed your back. The cab left, but he gave no fuck. Once you straightened up, he wiped your face and, from a Mexican restaurant nearby, bought bottled water.

“My baby boy is so good to me,” you said endearingly, after rinsing your mouth and taking two long gulps. 

“I'm not a good boy, Mommy.”

“Nonsense. You're a very good boy. Mommy loves you. Always be my baby boy, okay?”

He hailed another cab. You told him the address to the bar in Brooklyn. As your cab drove over the East River, you passed out, your skin cold and clammy. Aegon rubbed your arms, until you woke up not long after, just as you entered Lorimer street.

You blinked owlishly at him, before you shoved him away. You sat up. “Aegon?”

“Hi, dōnītsos.” His voice was shaky. 

You were still drunk but more conscious than before. The vomiting probably cleared your head. You sat as far from him as the backseat allowed. “Where am I? How the fuck am I with you? Fuck, did you kidnap me again?” You fumbled for your purse. You'd forgotten your Glock, goddamn it!

“Relax, Buttercup. I didn't do anything. You were drunk. I was passing by and saw you inside a Just Salad store.”

You refused to believe him. The only reason you hadn't maced him was because you were inside a running cab and it was slowing down before stopping altogether in front of the bar.
You ran out, well, as much as your drunken state and your heels let you. Aegon paid the fare and ran after you. Inside the bar, you were already seated and chugging down a can of Midnight Painkiller. He went to your side. You moved away and finished your can.

“I need something stronger, please!”

The bartender got you a can of White Claw Black Cherry. You took a healthy gulp before your face contorted and you put down the half-empty can.

“Dōnītsos, slow down.”

“Don't fucking call me that!” You collected one more can of White Claw and stomped away, most likely looking for Etaf. This early on in the night, the backroom, which resembled a train compartment, wasn't very crowded. You went over to the stage, where Etaf and two men argued over something.

“There you are!” Etaf said, before her smile of relief left at the sight of Aegon. “What is he doing here?”

“Beats me.” You crumpled the empty can of vodka and opened the second one. “How long do I have to wait?”

“Not long, babe. Go sit over there. I'll get things started ASAP.”

You found an empty table. He sat across from you. He was about to speak up when you lifted a finger. “Get me more drinks. I'm not talking to you without anything to drink.”

“You're drunk already, love.”

“I don't care. You called alcohol liquid courage. Get me more liquid courage.” You put on your headphones and tapped your fingers on the tabletop, your gaze hard and waiting.

He held up the menu. You pointed at White Claw and lifted one finger, UFO White and one finger, and five for Tecate and Tequila shots. He gulped. This was a lot. Were you used to so much alcohol? But you refused to listen without drinks. To appease you, he got the drinks. He set them down in front of you and immediately, you downed one shot.

“You have until I finish all these. Go.” You downed another shot. Three more shots, and two cans of vodka and beer.

“I'm sorry, dōnītsos.” His tone was so sincere, you paused opening the White Claw.

You cocked your head. “Go on. Clock's ticking.”

“You're not a rebound.” He sniffled. “You're my page-turner.”

You scoffed and took a large gulp.

He went on. “If you don't turn my pages, I'll be stuck. I won't be able to turn my pages. I won't be able to play anything new. I'll be forever stuck in one chapter of my life. You're my page-turner. You turned my pages and here I am, just a pianist, sitting before you, my page-turner, my equal, my Muña, my soulmate...”

“There's no such thing as soulmates!” you hissed, teeth bared. “Even if there was, you wouldn't be mine!” A pause. A sigh. A lonely teardrop down your dolled-up face. “Nobody would. I'd be the anomaly. Who would want to be the soulmate of a cum dumpster, a cocksleeve, a set of holes for men to cum in. Nobody wants a whore.”

“You're not...”

“That's all anyone ever saw in me. Ezra. Levy. Darren. Caleb. Lastly, you, Prince Aegon Targaryen. Most importantly, you. Your mother and grandfather are right. We can never exist on the same plane. I was never your equal. I'm your servant, your punching bag, your footrest. You paid to use me, I should've remembered. So many people used me, including your brother. At least they pretend to love me, unlike you. So, yeah, the worst is you. It'll always be you.” You went back to chugging down your vodka.

“Stop calling yourself all those horrible things. You're none of those. Not to me, never to me. You're my page-turner, my dōnītsos, my buttercup, my Muña, the love of my life.”

You downed your third shot. You gagged at the speed the alcohol was entering your system. You shook your head and opened the beer can. “I was on a date tonight.”

He gulped but said nothing.

“A blind date Mama got for me. I insisted. This was supposed to be our third date. He bailed on me. Russian Vodka Room. I was alone. I was nervous. I got a little drunk. I met a Belarusian guy at the bar. He sent me a few cocktails. We got into talking. He told me to meet him at the men's room. We fucked. He was sloppy. Not the worst I had. He put me up on the counter. The whole time he fucked me,” you looked into Aegon's eyes, purple even in this hazy light, “I stared at the door, hoping you'd arrive, like I did at that restaurant.” Your lips wobbled, your eyes teared up. “The whole time, you disappointed me.”

“I'm sorry...”

“When I began to cry, the guy freaked out and left. He left me, half naked and full of his cum, inside a men's room. I went to the women's bathroom next door. In one of the stalls, I sat down but didn't clean myself up. That's right. I still have his jizz inside me. That's how dirty I am,” your face contorted as the tears made a comeback, “that's how much of a whore I am. Do you still want me? Still want a slut with another man's cum inside her cunt?”

His face was also wet with fresh tears. “Yes. Yes, I still want you.”

You shook your head, not because you didn't believe him, rather because he really meant it and you hated that he still wanted you after hurting you like he hurt you. “You're lying,” you lied.

“I'm not.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I'm not and you know it. My love, you're in denial.”

“I was in denial last month, before I got that video. I was angry after your recital. Now, I'm bargaining with Nelly. If she lends me a little bit of her essence from the afterlife, so that I can be more like her than my fugly face, I might appeal to you.”

He took your hands and you let him. Fuck, why were you so cold? Were the drinks so cold? He warmed your hands with his own, before he placed them on his necks, around it. “Kill me then.” He squeezed your fingers around his windpipe. “Throttle me. Avenge your pain.”

You slipped your fingers up until they cupped his jaw. “I'd rather kill myself,” you whispered, before you freed your hands and, in lightning fast succession, downed your remaining shots and chugged down your beer. Just as they were all empty, Etaf called your name.

You hiccupped. “That's moi!” You stumbled to your feet, blinked rapidly to shake off the blurriness in your vision, and staggered to the stage. You gripped the mic stand so tightly, even in the dim light, Aegon noticed how white your knuckles were. You were leaning on it, using it as your crutch. You greeted the crowd and the spontaneous judges panel.

You introduced yourself, the sacrificial poet.
“The poem I'll recite tonight is called My Nuclear Radiation, My Cannibal Lover. I dedicate it to the worst love of my life. He's here in this room. Let's hear it for him!”
Rounds of applause, followed by you shushing everyone and clearing your throat.

Your time began.

“I love you, you love her
She can't be yours, you can't be mine
You know what, that's fine
I don't really mind
I should've known better
My father was a fuckboy like you
A notorious one at that
I thought I'd not repeat my mother's mistake
This is why I have a potty mouth
A Glock in my purse ready 24/7
Walls wrapped around my heart
To protect me from all storms
But you see, you were not a nor'wester
You were the fucking sun
And like Aesop did in his fable
You made me shed off my walls
While others tried to demolish them
You made me, stupid me, tear them down myself
You gave me so much warmth
I forgot the danger of loving someone
Who resembled my father
But girls be like that
We will always be attracted to men
Who resemble our fuckboy daddies.
I forgot that cautionary tale.
I forgot myself.
Now, I want to forget you.
Because you hurt me.
Everything about you hurts me.
Even the letters of your name.
No lover of mine ever hurt me like you did.
Not even Levy.
He scared me but
He never made me wish I was never born.
He made me want to live, to survive.
But you make me want to die.
Because it hurts so fucking much...
Not here, no, you hurt me
Up here, inside my skull
Because I stored all our memories there.
Our memories are evil thieves
They have invaded my mind
Now, they oppress me brutally
They won't leave me alone.
They sink their fangs into my flesh like bayonets.
Because you're not like anyone else.
Even Etaf, I loved her for almost two decades.
But our love faded and fell like autumn leaves
And it didn't hurt much.
But you, you autopsy me
While I'm still breathing 
While my heart beats and pumps blood
While I'm wide awake on a dirty floor
When you finish feasting on my organs
My organs being what you came to me for
You leave me bleeding everywhere
Exposed to the air
To all the viruses, bacteria, and other invaders
To attack, infect, and give me
A slow, merciless death
My body decomposes
While I'm still alive
Like the victims of a direct radiation
Radiation which is a bullet
Invisible, unstoppable
Like you were
Perforating all my defenses
Until you hit your marks all over me
You're my nuclear radiation
You melt my body like a corpse
While I'm still alive
No painkillers can relieve me
Because my veins and arteries have melted
You have thoroughly decimated me
And I hope you're happy
My cannibalistic lover
Sate your appetite from my misery
My flesh and blood and bones and tears
And my love for you.”

The timer had dinged long ago. The ten-second grace period was over too. But this was the Bad Poetry Slam contest. So, breaking rules applied. A halfhearted round of applause, before you stumbled back to your seat across from him. Mabel fetched you two cans of White Claw and UFO White. Aegon couldn't stop you, because when he did, you moved away and sat someplace else.

Etaf called his name. He remembered that you'd put his name on the list last month. You had wanted him to recite a poem in your name. Well, he'd keep this promise. He stood onstage, behind the mic, and kept his gaze only on you, as you downed two more shots of Tecate and Tequila.

“I love you so much
I can't bear a minute without seeing you
If I can't see you
I fear you'll cease to exist 
That you'll become my fantasy
Something I made up
Something beautifully unreal
Someone that God custom-made for me.
I wish I were born as your shadow
To follow you wherever you go
To leave you in the sunny embrace of light
To shield you from the evils lurking in the night
To be shaped like you because
You are me
I am you
Whatever your soul is made of
Whatever your cells are made of
Yours and mine are the same
As inseparable
As the petals and calyxes of camellias
As a body from its shadow
As sleeps from dreams within
As black and white piano keys
Wherever you go, I shall follow
I am yours as you are mine…”

He didn't finish, because you stood up and fled the backroom. He left his audience hanging from a cliff and followed you out. You stumbled back to the bar and ordered a bottle of Narragansett lager.

“Dōnītsos, that's enough,” he begged.

You snatched your arm from him. “You don't get to dictate what I can do. You're not my dad. You're not my boyfriend. You're nothing! You mean nothing to me!” You took a deep chug. “You actually disgust me.” You stumbled outside, your arms and neck wet with sweat, and cold as fuck. Why were you so cold?

You finished your drink and put the glass bottle next to the exit. Outside, you stood under a street lamp. You raised your face to the sky, your lips parted, and took a big gulp of breath. Your hands shook, as your fingers gripped your sequined skirt. Tears streamed down your face. But your smudge-proof, waterproof make-up didn't get ruined.

“You broke me first, Aegon Targaryen. I should get to smash you to pieces. To dust. To nothing.”

“Go ahead,” he said. “Do your worst. Your worst will never be enough.”

“Damn right!” You laughed, then looked down at the ground. “Do you know why yours hurt the most?” You sniffled. “You're not like the other guys. Ezra and Levy were too masculine, like your uncle and brother. Darren was too sad, no light in him. Etaf, see, now Etaf can be like you, only she isn't as sad as you. You're the perfect ratio of sadness and brightness for me. My sad sun. My bright rain. A sunshower. A little crybaby, who made me smile. A little sun, who made me weep. Every time you were in pain, I wanted to execute your sorrow. Every time you were happy, I wanted to archive your joy. You were perfect for me. You are perfect for me. But I'm not. I'm just a sorry sack of shit.”

“No!” He grabbed your hand, your bare, cold, sweaty hand, and hugged it to his chest. He placed kisses after kisses on it, from your fingertips all the way to your shoulder blade. He held your arm tightly, as if you were teetering on the edge of this earth, ready to float into space and get lost. He had to hold you tight, because gravity conspired against you. He had to melt himself into your skin, weld his flesh to yours, sew his veins and arteries with yours, yoke his bones to yours, and make a potent cocktail of your blood with his, until he finally reached the deepest treasure you hid from him, your soul. He'd amalgamate, consolidate, and agglutinate his soul to yours. He'd become a thrall to your wills, until he had no brain cells left, only yours thinking for him, deciding for him, and feeling for him.

“Let me in!” he begged you. “Open your gates, my love. Let me in. Let me love you. Let me show you. I'll hand you all the drills. You can peek inside my skull. I'll give you all the ice picks to rearrange my brain. I'll find you a pacemaker to control my heart, even stop its beats. Just don't shut me out. Please!”

You laid your head back on his shoulder, your eyes shut, your face to the sky, as if an invisible tether from the heavens were pulling you toward it. But Aegon wouldn't let you go. He wrapped his arms around you and slowly, gently, coaxed you to turn to him. You placed your entire weight on him and he took everything you gave him. His lips fumbled all over your body, your skin, marking you, coating you with himself, shielding you from the heaven's all-seeing eyes so that whosoever reigned there would never find you and steal you from him. He'd swim to the deepest parts of hell to hide you from answering to the loftiest summons. You leaned toward his body, bone weary and broken.

“It hurts,” you whimpered.

“I know, love, I'm so sorry. I'll take away all your pain. I'll swallow them. I'll spread them all over my heart. I'll send them to the farthest corners of the galaxy. Give them all to me.”

“I can't breathe!” you wailed.

“I'll become your lungs. I'll breathe for you. Take all my oxygen. Take them.”

“I can't breathe...”

He finally slotted your body neatly with his own. Your face to his neck, his lips to your forehead, his arms around you, your fingers fisting his shirt, the Birds of Paradise fold of his handkerchiefs, the Elderedge knot of his tie, signs that he was learning all you left to him, to keep you alive in his life, in his memory, the deepest core of what made Aegon Targaryen Aegon Targaryen. So lost he was basking in your presence, he didn't notice until you almost slipped from his grasp to your knees. He held you up and noticed...

You weren't breathing anymore.

Chapter Text

World Letter Writing Day/National Piano Month/Classic Music Month/Sourdough Month/National Teddy Bear Day, 2024

7 × 7 + love = 
An amount 
Infinitely above: 
7 × 7 – love.

(Addition (1) by Langston Hughes)

Aegon Targaryen had experienced hell on earth three times so far.

The first time was in Lombardy, Italy, in February, 2020, when he and Nelly were rushed to the hospital. He was quarantined, while Nelly died alone in the ICU. In a week, his mother and grandsire located him and took him home, secretly, under a lot of regulation and protection. The month after Nelly died, he couldn't feel anything but a blank, unmoving numbness inside him.

The second time he faced hell was seven months later, when he fell from the second storied rooftop of Rhaenyra's vacation home, his chest and arms on fire, a pain so immense, all his thoughts were erased. Before he passed out, he felt even more pain. The two pains, different in textures but the same flavor, devoured him until he struggled in their conjoined belly and fought his way out.

The third time he faced hell, he was standing under a lamppost in Williamsburg, clutching your almost lifeless body in his arms, and dialing 9-1-1 with his broken right hand. Half an hour later, he was inside the ambulance where he watched the paramedics provide you with an oral airway because you couldn't breathe, like you said. This wasn't a déjà vu moment, no, this was much worse, made worse by the fact that he'd lost one love before you, thanks to his recklessness and taking Nelly for granted. He did it again with you, fucked up his beautiful relationship by his original intention behind pursuing you. He kept fucking up and his girlfriends had to pay for it, fatally.

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; 
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink 
And rise and sink and rise and sink again; 
Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, 
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; 
Yet many a man is making friends with death 
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone. 
It well may be that in a difficult hour, 
Pinned down by pain and moaning for release, 
Or nagged by want past resolution's power, 
I might be driven to sell your love for peace, 
Or trade the memory of this night for food. 
It well may be. I do not think I would.

(Love Is Not All by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

Aegon sat alone inside the beautiful chapel of Bellevue hospital. A quarter past midnight. In the first two hours, he'd paced outside the ER, or begged the doctors to get you back to him, back to him because he couldn't live with himself, live without you. He called his mother and begged her to come. He needed her, her sharp words but soft touches. The moment she came, he crumpled in her arms.

“Mum, she's gonna die!”

No matter how much his mother assured him that you were a fighter, that you'd survive this, he'd bawled and bawled, until all his energy left him and he passed out.

He woke up in a hospital bed. A bone-deep exhaustion settled all over him, much more effective than sedatives. His mum sat in an uncomfortable chair, asleep, her scarf askew on her head. He called her name but she didn't wake up. Setting her scarf right and leaving her to rest, he went out. A nurse told him where he'd find the chapel. He was never a religious person. He never believed in any gods. He never felt any need for it. He still didn't. He simply sought the serenity that being alone provided. Especially in a place that was said to be the home of the so-called divine being.

He laid down on one of the pews and counted to one thousand in his head. He remembered what happened immediately after you were brought in.

The doctors rushed you to one of the ER, while a nurse escorted him to the waiting room. He demanded to know if you'd be okay. All he heard was that your serum ethanol level was “more than five hundred and fifty milligrams per deciliter”. You were unconscious “with a Glasgow coma scale of three”, didn't respond to voices, and had some sort of tubes in your mouth to breathe. When a blood test told them your oxygen level had gone down some more, they intubated you and rushed you to the ICU. That was when his panic crushed him under its titanic weight and led him to his breakdown.

He heard footsteps he recognized. His brother was here. Were they already looking for him?

“Everyone's wishing it was me inside the ICU, not her,” Aegon said.

“Feeling pathetic won't help her.”

“Do you want me to pray?”

“You're physically incapable of that.”

“Can't hurt to try.”

Aemond sat across from him. “This should be interesting.”

“Fuck you.” A pause. “I'm cursed.”

“Yes. You're the most selfish, pathetic, disgusting person I've ever met in my life. I can't believe you're my blood, my full brother.”

“Sorry.”

“I'm sorry for what happened.”

“Thank you.”

“Her ethanol level isn't going down at the pace it should. It's been more than five hours. They've taken her off sedation, and put in more intravenous fluids and thiamine. She just had a bradycardia episode...”

“What's that?”

“Heartbeat slower than normal. ECG showed it. They gave her atropine and epinephrine. Her lab results showed significant hypocalcemia, less calcium in her blood than normal, so they gave her some calcium gluconate.”

Tears slipped down Aegon's temples. He sniffled. “I got better just with IV fluids. Why isn't she?”

“They're considering hemodialysis, if her ethanol level doesn't go down in the next eight hours.”

Aegon slowly sat up and turned to the stained glass piece at the front. He had zero clue what they painted in such vivid colors. “Tell me how it's done.”

Aemond did. By the end of it, Aegon was horrified and terrified.

“They'll draw blood out of her into a machine, filter it, and put it back inside her, all at the same time?”

“That's what hemodialysis is, genius.”

He looked at his hands that gripped the wooden seat. You were being subjected to unimaginable pain and suffering, all because he used you and broke your heart. He wished someone would hemodialyze the toxicity out of him, the toxicity of being so incredibly self-centered and ruthless. It mattered no more whether he truly loved you or not. He'd done this to you. Made you go through such excruciating pain because he couldn't grow a fucking spine and mourn like a sane, mature person. “I wish I could do something about it,” he said helplessly.

“You can do something about it. You're a fucking Targaryen Prince, for fuck's sake. Learn to grow fucking balls and act like it.” Aemond exhaled. “Act like how you did when you pointed a gun at our grandsire. Or when you punched him. Or when you fought with him inside my fucking car. Do something, so that none of your future girlfriends die just because you're a spineless cowardly loser like our progenitor.”

Aegon swallowed all the bitter, thorny words. They were great motivators and he was grateful. He told Aemond so.

“Good, because Mother and I are tired of always having to guide you. Learn to solve and decide by yourself.”

“Thanks, twat.”

“Welcome, cunt.”

Aegon finally faced his brother, who surprisingly sported some stubble. It seemed he was worried about you as well. “I wanna do what I wanted to do before Nelly died.”

“Emancipate yourself? I can't say I'm not surprised. Do remember that once you do it, you'll be left penniless and homeless here, not to mention you could never come back home.”

Aegon remembered the promise he made you. To never cut ties with his family. He ran a hand down his face. “Then, what should I do?”

“Again, solve it yourself.” Aemond crossed his legs and sat back.

“I'm sorry...” Aegon let out a shaky exhale.
Aemond didn't turn around.

“I'm sorry for being such a useless brother. No, not just useless. I'm bad. I'm toxic. I'm Medusa, I'm Midas. Everything I turn to dies. I killed your innocence. I killed Nelly. Now, I'm killing her.” He sought Aemond's eye, but his little brother had shut his eye.

“I thought I was doing the right thing. Helping you learn how to have sex, how to seduce. Helping you lose your virginity. I thought, as your big brother, I should guide you. Only now I realize how stupid and irresponsible I was.” His face contorted and he sobbed loudly. “I got you raped.”

“I could've been. Mercifully, I wasn't.”

“Nobody was merciful to you, brother. You saved yourself by running away. I wasn't far from you and I never once tried to help you. No, I had rather pushed you into it. You came to me, hopeful to get to know me, to get closer to me. I couldn't understand your dedication and dutiful mindset. I still can't. After what those twats did to you, I thought, I gotta guide my little brother. He used to be lost, now he'll be even more lost without an eye. I gotta step up and protect you. Instead, I ruined your life.”

Aemond gulped, Aegon didn't notice. “I used to wet my bed for a month afterwards.”

“I'm so sorry.”

“Only Mother was aware.” He paused.

“Helaena used to suck her thumb in her sleep. Alys told me children who never got breastfed do that.”

“We've always been destined to get the pointy end of the stick, haven't we? Our father never stood up for us. Our mother did, but nobody helped her. What are we gonna do?!”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Okay. I wanna apologize for everything.”

“Everything?”

“For bullying you with that pig and all the other instances. For taking you to that strip club. For every way I made you feel like shit and caused you harm. I'm sorry. Don't ever forgive me.”

“I won't. You can always repent by not fucking up your relationships and ruining the lives of beautiful women.”

“You think she's beautiful?”

“She's Nelly's doppelganger.”

“I'd love her even if she wasn't. Can I go see her?”

“You're not her immediate family. Her mother is with her.” He cleared his throat. “I appreciate how you shouldered the expenses. The US insurance companies are fucking cunts.”

Aegon remembered. Some insurance companies in the state of New York could refuse to cover someone's medical expenses if their injuries were alcohol related. Like yours. Your mother's insurance rejected you. Aegon couldn't bear it. But he also couldn't accept his brother's praise. It felt wrong. “I wanna see her one last time before I do something.”

“What do you plan on doing?”

Aegon told him. Aemond immediately protested. “Doing this idiotic thing is worse than emancipation.”

“I want to do it, brother. You know me. To put it in your language, I have no taste for duty, no desire to rule. I have fled from Westeros and never once contacted you or our family. I literally ran away from you. If only it weren't for Criston restraining you...”

Aemond finally opened his eye. “Is it really that bad to be our sister's husband?”

“You marry her then.”

“I have a wife I love.”

“So? If you wanna encourage incest between siblings, you can uphold our ancestors' grand ancient tradition of polygamy, how about that?”

Aemond gritted his teeth. “Are we really going to talk about stupid stuff like this while your girlfriend battles with death?”

Aegon clenched his fists. “Yes, because you have never understood my point of view. I'll never love our sister that way. She's my fucking sister, for fuck's sake! I've never, nor will I ever, viewed her romantically and sexually.”

“What about your duty to her?”

Aegon laughed humorlessly. “Haven't you listened to a word I said? I have no taste for duties. No matter what duty I have toward her, I won't be able to fulfill them. Besides, what about her wishes? You care so much about duties but never any of her desires. She doesn't want me, brother. She wants nobody that way.”

“She's always been different, hasn't she?”

“My dōnītsos would say she's perfectly normal as a human being.” Aegon gulped. “I miss her. So much. I feel like Barbie dolls, plastic and hollow.” Aegon scooted closer to the one-eyed prince. “Help me, brother.” He dropped to his knees and hugged Aemond's legs, his forehead on his little brother's kneecaps. “I'll do anything to repent for what I did to you, how I damaged you. You can cut off my tongue. My hands. My entire fucking body without anesthesia. Name it and it shall be done. In exchange,” Aegon met his brother's eye, “please help me with two things.”

Aemond lifted a brow.

“I need your army of lawyers' legal expertise, and to borrow your jet. And I gotta see her one last time...”

Aemond hummed, a smirk on his lips. “I shall hold you to your words. Come, you have lots to accomplish.”

How can I keep my soul in me, so that
it doesn't touch your soul? How can I raise
it high enough, past you, to other things?
I would like to shelter it, among remote
lost objects, in some dark and silent place
that doesn't resonate when your depths resound.
Yet everything that touches us, me and you,
takes us together like a violin's bow,
which draws one voice out of two separate strings.
Upon what instrument are we two spanned?
And what musician holds us in his hand?
Oh sweetest song.

(Love Song by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell)

Inside the ICU, you slept restless and immobile. All the tubes in you, around you, like vines and vipers. You slept amidst this plastic jungle like the Sleeping Beauty. He was the dark fairy who lured you to the spinning wheel. He didn't want to be Maleficent. He'd rather be your knight in shining armor, the Criston Cole to your Alicent Hightower. Or your Prince Charming. He was already a prince. All he had to do was rescue you from further harassment and abuse from his people, particularly his grandsire. And his grandsire pursued him, like Aegon once pursued you, out of selfish goals. Once Aegon bombed off that bridge, Otto Hightower would never be able to hurt you or steal you from him.

Aegon tentatively sat down on the chair that your mama vacated moments ago. He took in your hands. Your magical hands, no longer baby soft because you had always been feeding people, be it for money or out of love. You had always been fond of his hands that could do nothing but play the piano, fuck people, and occasionally punch his grandfather. But yours? Yours had made countless delicious meals. They had pleased him and comforted him. Your hands had nourished and cherished him, and now they might soon perish with the rest of you, second-to-none you, because he led you to self-destruction.

“I'm sorry.” He wept. “I did this to you. Everything I do to you I've done to Nelly. It's disgusting. I should kill myself.” He wiped his face, since you couldn't do it anymore. He missed your hands chasing away his liquid sorrows. “I'll fix everything, I promise. If I can't...” He wished he could look into your eyes. “I'll let you go, if you want. Who am I to come between you and your happiness? You deserve each other. I won't stand in your way. This will be my last battle. Either I'll return victorious, or I'll set you free.”

His thumb gently caressed the back of your palm. He dared not lift your whole hand, lest he ruined something. He found a way to kiss the little patch of your bare skin. “Please don't leave me. Without you, my life will be bland and numb and dark and silent and...lifeless. Like the Moon without the Sun. You always called me the Sun but the truth is, you're the Sun. You're my Sun. I'm the Moon who was busy orbiting around the Earth, even though my light came from you. I steal your light and peddle it as my own. Without you, I'm nothing but a giant rock hung up in the sky. I might revolve around the Earth but my life comes from your light. If your light dies, so will my life. Please, don't be Emma to my Dexter. I'll be so much worse. I'll follow you into the tunnel, across the river, into the fields of rush. Yes, I'm blackmailing you. You better follow through.” He tentatively touched your dyed hair. “You have to come back to be yourself again. This isn't you, my love. You can't die as anyone but you.”

You heard none of it. He brought out the glass jar that Aemond, fucking Aemond of all people, brought for his crazy older brother from the kitchen of Montauk Manor, without Aegon having to tell him. He proudly showed you the bread starter he still kept alive. At the chapel, he'd (secretly) stirred the starter with a wooden spoon that Aemond also brought, to keep it alive for one more day.

“It's like I'm taking care of a baby or something.” He smiled sadly. “Our baby. Our starter baby.” He leaned back in his chair, his eyes on the ceiling. “Y'know, it's still National Bad Poetry Day in Howland and Baker islands, parts of your country. I can't find my way back to my original poem, which lost in the competition, by the way. Yours won, the gold standard. I'll get you the prize, free baker's dozen bagels from this shop not far from your mama's home. Anyway, I'm gonna plagiarize and recite seven poems to you now. Seven, my lucky number. The first one had seven four times in it. Addition by Langston Hughes.”

He recited all the poems from Google, only the first one from memory. All were love poems. Never in his life did he think he'd recite love poems to someone.

He stayed with you the rest of the night, until your mama visited after her well-deserved rest. She sent him to fetch breakfast for himself. When he refused to leave, she told him that the cafe inside the hospital premises had bagels on the menu.

“You know my little girl is crazy about them.” She gently patted his cheek. The touch felt so similar to the rare moments when his own mother showed him affection.
At the cafe, he bought six different bagels and four different spreads. When he came back, your mama was with a doctor. It was eight in the morning, thirteen hours after your admission.

“Four hundred and twenty-eight milligrams per deciliter. Not good, ma'am,” the doctor said. “We need to do hemodialysis.”

When your mama turned to Aegon for support and opinion, he squeezed her hands. Both him and your mother gleaned comfort from physical touches. “You should know, her blood group is Rh-null,” he said.

The doctor blinked. “There won't be any need to alert any blood banks though. Hemodialysis doesn't make you bleed much.”

“What about VND?”

The doctor promised him they would triple check the graft being securely taped to your vein. But Aegon couldn't trust him. Yours was the rarest blood in the world. So, he contacted the blood bank where you quarterly donated, just in case.

They wheeled you inside an OR. He couldn't watch your dialysis from outside. So, Aemond used bribery and his intimidating influence to sneak himself and his brother in the gallery, thankfully empty.

Aegon stared at the giant white machine that would filter your blood. One of the doctors injected anesthesia and made a small incision on your forearm. To Aegon's horror and disgust, they slowly spread open your skin and flesh, pink and red, to gently bring out your vein, then your artery, to connect the two.

“That's the arteriovenous graft,” Aemond nodded at the soft plastic tube, “to connect her artery to her vein.”

Once the doctors taped one end of the graft securely to your vein and the other to your artery, the dialysis began. A nurse put two needles into the AV graft. One of the tubes began to turn red.

“Rh-null,” Aegon mumbled. The rarest blood group in the world, the golden blood, the blood that earned you thousands of dollars four times a year. “No VND, please, no VND.”

“You know about venous needle dislodgement?”

“I googled it last night. I watched YouTube videos of everything related to hemodialysis.” His hands shook when the second tube began to turn red, but from the other direction.

Aemond patted his shoulder. “That's her clean blood going back in. She'll get through this.”

Aegon let out a shaky breath. He had to have faith in you. He had to have faith in modern medical science and the doctors' competence. What would have happened if you (and he) weren't born into the 21st century, rather in the medieval or the ancient times? You'd die, for sure.

He whimpered. Aemond clamped his arms around his brother's shoulders. “We need to leave.”

“What?”

“My jet awaits. We need to make a deal and finalize everything. My attorneys have drafted a contract for Rhaenyra and her side. Grandsire somehow found out...”

“Of course he did,” Aegon muttered, his eyes intently on you one final time. He urged to speak into your mind, now lost in the world of unconsciousness, to make you promise him that you wouldn't leave him while he was gone.

“Alys is here. She'll update us.”

True to his words, the older woman sauntered in. She gave Aegon a reassuring smile.

“She'll make it. I know it.”

Aegon followed his brother to the Teterboro Airport. An hour into flying back to Westeros, Alys sent an update. Aemond came to notify his brother in his cabin. His eye fell on Aegon's fingers, which held the ancient heirloom of House Hightower, a seven-pointed star emerald ring. “You're not serious, are you?”

Aegon blinked as if coming out of hypnosis. “What?”

“Do you plan on proposing?”

Aegon's eyes went wide. “No! I-I mean, not now. Someday, definitely, when she wakes up and if she gives me a chance.”

“Did Alys give you the ring?”

“Yep. She tracked me down in February. I was at the Natural History Museum...”

“You go to museums?”

He shrugged. “I was bored. Anyway, we had lunch and she gave it to me, on her own.”

“I don't believe you.”

“You can ask her yourself.”

“I will. She just came home one day without her ring and I'm supposed to believe she gave it to you out of nowhere. Did she tell you why?”

Aegon put the ring inside a white drawstring pouch, then pocketed it. “She said she had an itch. That we shouldn't incur the wrath of our ancestors.”

“So you know.”

Aegon smiled sadly. “I don't really care that you cheated, brother. I lost Nelly by then. I didn't know I'd fall in love again.”

Aemond sat beside him on the small bed. “What if your Buttercup's finger doesn't fit like Alys?”

“I'll get her a new one and give this to Daeron. Addam would like it, I bet.”

“And Grandsire would have a heart attack.”

“Two birds with one stone.” He looked at his brother. “Your phone's out. Did Alys say anything?”

“She's awake.”

Aegon covered his face and sobbed.

I've been told
That people in the army
Do more by 7:00 am
Than I do
In an entire day

But if I wake
At 6:59 am
To trace the outline of your lips
With mine
I will have done enough
And killed no one
In the process.

(6:59 AM by Shane Koyczan)

You weren't in the ICU anymore. So, Aegon asked the reception desk to inquire after you. He had zero knowledge of the language of flowers. Instead, he used the gift certificate you won at the poetry slam contest and bought the baker's dozen bagels. Before he entered, he peeked through the ajar door. You were turned to the window, your eyes closed, basking in the sun even though it was almost eighty degrees outside. When he entered, you opened, not your eyes, but your mouth.

“I just want some alone time, Maby...”

“It's me, love,” he said quietly.

You took your time to open your eyes and turn to him. You said nothing as he lifted the bag of bagels, his peace offering. Your eyes betrayed nothing. He let out a shaky exhale and sat on the chair next to your bed. “Hi.”

You stared intently. “WWW: Wallis, Whore of Westeros.”

“What?”

“They're calling me Wallis Simpson of Westeros. In Mêlée, the secret social media of your country.”

Aegon gulped. “I'm sorry...”

You continued as if he had never spoken. “Some racists called me Meghan Markle 2.0, because we're both biracial.”

“I'm biracial too. Half Andal, half Valyrian.”

“You're still white. Here.” You sat up and bent down, to bring out from under your bed a gift basket of tea tins. “Get-well-soon presents from your family. These are from your siblings...” You pulled out three tins. “Wedding tea, royal wedding tea, and mother's day tea. From Aemond, Alys, and Helaena. I'm not even married, let alone a mother.” You met his eyes, truly irritated. “Is this some kind of a joke? For Prince Aegon's drunk whore?”

He put away the bagels. When he went to hold your hands or touch you in any way, you pulled away.

“Obviously, this is a mocking gift. I drank alcohol too much, and this is your family telling me I should stick to caffeine instead. Hahaha, what a fucking joke I am.” You shoved the basket off your bed. The tins clattered to the floor loudly, so loudly that a nurse peeked and asked if everything was okay. Aegon reassured her that you accidentally dropped the basket from your bed. You didn't refute him. You laid down and turned your back to him.

“Get out of my life. I left yours, why won't you leave mine?”

He picked up the tins one by one. “My sister would never buy you a gift out of malice and snark. She loves you and you love her too.”

You stuffed your face in your pillow. “Maybe she didn't pick the gifts. Maybe it was your Mum or Aemond. He has no love for me.”

“He brought this for me.” He lifted the glass jar from your bedside table. “Your friendship bread starter. Look, I've kept it alive.”

You shoved it from his hands. It crashed on the floor, glass and starter everywhere. 

“What the fuck are you doing?!” He dropped to his hands and knees. Despite the glass shards, he tried to salvage the starter.

“Get out of my fucking life!”

“No, I won't give up like you. I'll fight for our love.”

“I don't love you!”

He whimpered. A shard had sliced his soft hand, his right hand half in a splint. The nurse from before came in. She took in what happened and ushered Aegon out.

“You can be a real bitch sometimes, dōnītsos,” he said.

“Yeah, well, that's how I protect myself from rich fuckboys like you.”

He needed no stitches, thankfully. The nurse bandaged his cut and scheduled him for an appointment with an orthopedic resident, who told him his broken knuckle was healing well.

Aegon hesitated outside your room, before he heard your muffled sobs. Through the ajar door, he peeked.

You had brought out bagels from the bag. Fourteen, not thirteen, the specialty of your prize. So, he picked seven fish and seven egg sandwiches. You ate and wiped your face with the back of your hand. You only ate half of a bagel, before you rewrapped it and moved on to another one. You were rewrapping a sable sandwich when he entered. Your eyes met his and held his gaze.

You offered him the half-eaten bagel, hands shaky, still sobbing, and quietly said, “I'm sorry, baby boy.”

He rushed to your side and took a big bite out of his portion.

You checked his right hand. “Are you in pain?”

He shook his head. “I'm healing well. How's your hand?” He nodded at the bandages around your forearm, where the incision was made and the graft was inserted.

“I've had worse.”

“Worse?”

“Levy once smashed my hand through a glass table. Broke my bones. Broke my heart. But it resolved my survivor's will.”

Aegon's bottom lip shook. He couldn't help but picture it. A cunt called Levy physically assaulted you. His grip on your fingers tightened. “I'm sorry he hurt you so much. And I'm sorry about all the ways I hurt you.”

“Thanks.”

You fed him your half-eaten bagels. He shared with you the uneaten ones. You told him what you saw in Mêlée. All the ugly names. Though no pictures of you circulated, Otto released via his sources that you physically resembled Petronella Y. Vendeline a lot.

“They're saying the quiet part out loud,” you said, once the bagels were gone.

“They're wrong.”

“They're also right. I am your rebound.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Otto texted that if I keep contact with you, he'll dox me and my mama. I can handle my own doxing. But Mama's sensitive. And not just to Mêlée. To the rest of the world. Like Daemon did to Rhaenyra.”

“I won't let him do it. I promise.”

“Why did you go and renounce your claim to the throne? Why declare it on live radio, like that Nazi?”

“I thought I'd burn the bridge that allows my grandsire into my life. I forgot he had aerial bombs in his arsenal, no need for a bridge.” He put away the empty wrappers. “Besides, Aemond made sure he'll become the Hand of the Queen, the Prime Minister, Daeron will be the Master of Coins, and Alys will be the Mistress of Whisper. Rhaenyra agreed, on the condition that her first two sons will become the Masters of Ship and Law, and little Aegon will have the freedom to choose his small council when his time comes. Harwin will be the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and we already have the Grand Maester on our side. A good balance. Alys called it the Strong council, since four out of its seven members come from that family. If Rhaenyra backs off on our deal, I'll retract my renouncement and our side will withdraw our support. Without Daemon, she can't afford to lose us.”

“A great deal.”

“He has good lawyers.”

You pulled out your phone and selected one of your comfort movies on Netflix.

“Can I join you?” he asked.

You scooted to the edge to make room for him. He laid on his side and watched Julie Powell decide to cook more than five hundred recipes in three hundred and sixty-five days.

“That's madness,” he said.

“That's dedication. That's a great way to express your admiration to someone.”

“Someone?”

“Fine, a cookbook author. I won't be like Julia though. I'd reach out to anyone who performs a feat like this and thank them.”

“Spoiler!” When you squeaked out an apology, he tentatively laid his head on your shoulder. You didn't pull away or push him off. “You've decided then? You wanna be a cookbook writer.”

“I got enough money in my account, thanks to my last job.”

“You're not coming back.”

You sighed. “I always wanted us to be Mondler, Monica Geller and Chandler Bing. Steady, strong, and healthy. But we turned out to be Ross and Rachel, doomed, destined lovers too intensely passionate for their own good. We're not even destined, just doomed and toxic. For once in my life, I want something healthy for my soul. And you aren't that. Neither am I to you. I'm the saturated fat for your cardiac-arrest-gene-carrier heart, and you're sharp blades to the Rh-null blood in my carotid arteries.”

A lonely tear slipped down his cheek. Your thumb gently traced down the track. “I always feared you'd leave me like Nelly. I thought, now that you're safe and I've officially renounced my claim, you'll be back. I keep burning bridges with my family but they always find a way to get me.” He kissed your palm. “Please don't do this. This can't be goodbye. I'll do anything. I'll do anything.”

“Like what?” Your dark eyes met his exotic ones.

“I'll give you my body.”

“What?”

“If you die and leave yours, I'll share my body. If you don't wanna share, I can leave. I'll give you my body so that you can stay alive, even if I don't. Stay alive in what used to be me. Remember all our memories tattooed over my skin, pumped into my heart, and imprinted on all my fucking brain cells.”

You cupped his face and kissed his forehead, then a peck on his lips, lastly on his cheeks. “Baby boy, that'll be you keeping me alive, not keeping me in your life.”

“Is there a difference?”

“I thought you'll be alone in the afterlife if you die first.”

“Better me alone in the afterlife than here on earth.”

“And what makes you think I'll be happy if you're dead?”

“You don't want me dead?”

“Never. You're my emerald star.”

“Stars are lonely. Let me be the Moon. The Moon of the Sun, your Sun.”

You smiled sadly. “I think we've established...”

“No, you're the Sun. My Sun. I'm your Moon. Only you give my existence relevance.”

You sobered up. “We can't go back to the way we were.”

“Then, we start over. This time, you're my one true love. This time, nobody is rebounding.” He clasped your hands. “Please, Mommy, please, give me another chance.”

You turned off your phone and looked away. “I need to think.”

“I can work with that.”

“You have to stay away. Your presence will influence my decision.”

“No...”

“For our sake. Please.”

So, he did. He stayed away. He kept himself busy by watching DIY videos on YouTube on how to make audio greeting cards. He crooned the song he wished to record for you. He bought supplies after supplies and ruined most of them. He called your mama every day, three times a day, for updates. She sent videos and photos of you being discharged from Bellevue and making a short detour to your Bronx apartment, where you washed off your hair dye with a clarifying shampoo, and snapped a quick selfie with the Citrus Abuela, before you returned to your mama's Roosevelt Island apartment. In the meantime, Alicent had submitted his name to a small-time piano competition with six other Westerosi-American pianists, for one week during September, which was both National Piano Month and Classical Music Month. The participants had to perform for seven days in a row before they would be judged unbiasedly by non-Westerosi American judges. The venue was at Bargemusic concert hall, literally inside a barge floating on the East River, with the skylines of Manhattan and Brooklyn, and the Brooklyn bridge in the backdrop. He couldn't practice much, what with having no page-turner and one hand in a splint. His mother selected seven classical études for him to play. But they were too complicated to memorize. Helaena offered to be his page-turner, but he turned her down. Nobody could replace you. Besides, his sister would be too pregnant to constantly get up and turn his pages. Daeron offered, but Aegon turned him down.

“You're waiting for her,” Criston told him one morning at his Gramercy apartment. Most of the Targaryens and all the Velaryons and Hightowers were gone, even the two Strong brothers. Only Alicent, her children and grandchildren, Alys, and Criston remained. Little Aegon was reluctant to leave Jaehaera, but the little girl promised to follow him on Mêlée.

Aegon ate the French toast the Dornish knight had made for him and his family. “I don't know what you're talking about.”

“The Queen, your mother, has found a beautiful opportunity for you to demonstrate and develop your skills more, your grace, but your inertia indicates you're waiting for someone.” He put two more toasts on Aegon's plate, before he put some maple syrup and whipped cream on top. “Why don't you share the news with her? It can be your excuse to contact her.”

Aegon did. Exactly five days since he last spoke to you. He sent you the invitation to perform at the competition. In response, you invited him to your Bronx apartment, from which you were moving out. He helped your mama with the boxes, which weren't much, so she simply sat inside her car, and Aegon and you did most of the work.

“Criston is worried that I'm not practicing much. He thinks I'm still waiting for you.”

“Are you?”

He looked at his feet. You tucked his hair behind his ears. “There's a sunburst through the foliage over you. A spotlight. A sign.” He glanced up and sure enough, the London Plane, with almost translucent leaves, had created a little spotlight for him. “Stop being so pretty, it hurts my corneas. Like looking directly at the Sun.”

He pulled you into his tiny spotlight. “You're the golden Sun. I'm just the gray Moon.”

“Silver.” You refused to look into his eyes.

“Fine, I'll do it,” you said, eyes downcast.

“What?”

“I'll be your page-turner. I'll bring you bouquets before your performance and bake a dessert afterwards. I'll knot your ties in the Elderedge style and fold your handkerchiefs in the Birds of Paradise style. We can go on a tea drinking spree afterwards.”

“No alcohol?”

“I'm the only family my mama has.” You looked over at her. She was laughing and watching a Welsh married couple playing an innovative rock paper scissors game, where they shoved the loser's face into a pillow smeared with flour, ketchup, salad cream, eggs, and lastly, coffee. “I want that kind of playful relationship, where, when we get older, we get more casual and playful. I fear we might become Meredith and Derek. Or Izzie and Alex, no, Jo and Alex. You might leave me at the altar to pursue your Nelly.”

The emerald ring in his pocket heated up a hundred degrees and weighed a ton. “Let me prove you wrong. Let me prove my love to you. It's not fake or hollow. It's not a rebound. It's real.”

You threw your head back, which made him wanna kiss your neck. You groaned at the sky. “Why did I fall in love with you?! I'm so stupid to think we had something. You never cared about me.”

“I do, okay. I do. I do care. I care so much, I was almost admitted at the psych ward.”

“Mad Targaryens.”

You hadn't noticed it yet, but he had slowly begun to rotate you, your hands in his. One of your neighbors was listening to a Spanish song, a bolero called Contigo en la Distancia. 

You hugged him all of a sudden and stuffed your face in the crook of his neck. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I'll give you one last chance.”

I am offering this poem to you,
since I have nothing else to give.
Keep it like a warm coat
when winter comes to cover you,
or like a pair of thick socks
the cold cannot bite through,

                         I love you,

I have nothing else to give you,
so it is a pot full of yellow corn
to warm your belly in winter,
it is a scarf for your head, to wear
over your hair, to tie up around your face,

                         I love you,

Keep it, treasure this as you would
if you were lost, needing direction,
in the wilderness life becomes when mature;
and in the corner of your drawer,
tucked away like a cabin or hogan
in dense trees, come knocking,
and I will answer, give you directions,
and let you warm yourself by this fire,
rest by this fire, and make you feel safe

                         I love you,

It's all I have to give,
and all anyone needs to live,
and to go on living inside,
when the world outside
no longer cares if you live or die;
remember,

                         I love you.

(I Am Offering This Poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca)

You resumed your role as Aegon's housekeeper, but you didn't take any money. Aegon learned this a week into your return to his home.

Now that Criston, and Jaehaera and Jaehaerys were living here, there had to be some arrangements. Alicent, Helaena, and the twins moved into Aegon's old bedroom, since it was the largest and had a California king-size bed, plenty of space for the mother and daughter to sleep with the children. Helaena had already ordered a bunk bed and a bassinet for her three children.

Aemond and Alys stayed in the room where they previously slept. Daeron and Aegon slept in what used to be Alicent and Helaena's room. Since you had moved out long ago, Criston had moved in what used to be your room.

“I can move out,” he offered. But you had already installed your Ikea sofa-bed in the living room, next to Aegon's piano. You didn't bring much clothes, which made Aegon suspicious. He found out when your newly made passport was delivered to you while you were out grocery shopping. Aegon decided to tuck it away under your sofa mattress, where he came across the big manila envelope. Inside, a contract of employment. He put it back where it was and confronted his mother, who confessed that you only came back after she pleaded to you.

“You need her, son,” she said. “Like food, like oxygen and sleep and clothes and a roof over your head.” She hugged him and he stuffed his face in her lap. “I didn't want to do it, son. But you've been languishing after her. Wasting away your life, your time and energy, your potential. You're a child who has been weaned too early.”

“You want me to get over her slowly, is that why you rehired her?”

“She also wants to pay off her medical expenses.”

He couldn't help the tears. He quietly cried, while Alicent gently untangled his hair. “If you want...”

“No, she stays. If she wants to stay, no matter the reason, I'll let her.”

After dinner, he told you what happened. With a sigh, you showed him the contract paper, the second page, where the signatories names had blank lines underneath. Alicent had signed her name but you hadn't.

“Mum said it's because you wanna pay me back.”

You nodded. “I'm leaving this country.”

A pit began to chip away inside him. “When?”

“This month. After your competition. My sister has invited me to Stockholm. She wants to get to know me. And I need a change of scenario. This city holds too many memories for me.”

“Good or bad?”

“Both. They both hurt me.” Your eyes were glistening with unshed tears. “I need a fresh start, baby boy. My life has been messy so far. Before I hit thirty, I wanna detox all the bad stuff. Exorcize them out of me so that I don't die hating the life I led.”

His tears came before yours. You gently wiped them and pulled him to your lap. He curled up like a fetus inside a womb. You rocked him back and forth. The gesture should feel like reliving a nostalgic memory. Yet, it felt as final as a farewell, as if this would be the last time he'd ever experience something like this.

“It's all my fault,” he said between his weeping hiccups.

“Mine too.” You rested your chin on top of his head. “I base my self-worth on the success of my relationships. I lack it because people have always demolished whatever self-worth I muster. You, on the other hand, you have relationships to bolster your self-worth. You feel guilty about fumbling the one with Nelly, about your hand in her death. So, you sought a relationship with someone who looked like her, as your second chance. I can't be your do-over. I'm a human being.”

“When did you psychoanalyze us?”

You smiled sadly. “Besides drinking all the time, I also visited a shrink. I told her about us. She made me see the truth. Right now, there are lots of hostility aimed at me, from your grandsire, from your people, from Nelly's fans. It's best if we don't see each other. At least not now. They need to get used to seeing you no longer stake a claim to the Iron Throne. But I can't wait that long. So, I'm letting you go. You need to let me go too. Maybe, if we're meant for each other, we'll find each other again.”

He sobbed and hiccupped. You let him deplete his immediate pain, the big ones. Once he ran out of tears, you gently took him to the kitchen. From the pantry, you brought out whole wheat flour and, from the tap, some water. “Starting today, we'll have a sourdough starter. Our firstborn died, thanks to my anger. We'll make a new one.” You added, to half a cup of flour, one quarter cup of water. Into the jar you mixed them. “Tomorrow, around the same time, we'll check if there's bubbles. If there is, our fetus is born. We'll leave him be. On the day after tomorrow, we'll throw away half the starter and feed the rest half a cup of all purpose flour and a quarter cup of water. That's how it'll go, until Day Seven when our baby will be born.”

“Can we name him?” he asked.

“What do you wanna call him?”

“Sunfyre.” His eyes were full of innocent hope.

“Sunfyre II Targaryen.”

The next morning, he woke you with his music. It wasn't Bach as he said his first performance would be. You folded up the bed into the sofa. He scooted to his right and you sat next to him. The title page of the sheets said, “The Seven, by Septon Mortin, Part I: The Father”.

“This isn't Bach,” you said.

“I've changed my mind. I'm going down the rogue route.” He stopped and turned to you. “Turn pages for me?”

You did. When the entire étude was over, you asked if his mum would mind (“Of course, she would!”). When you asked why, he gave you a history lesson.

“Septon Mortin left his service in pursuit of music.”

“Scandalous! Tell me more.”

He told you how the man was born as a bastard in a noble house, how his noblewoman mother secretly gave birth to him and gave him to the faith. He was literally left outside the door of a sept. A furious storm that night didn't kill him. The septas raised him and he became a septon. “But it wasn't enough. He enjoyed music of all kinds, no matter if they were hymns or jingles. One day, he began to create his own music. For seven years, he toiled on it, until he published it secretly. The seven gods and goddesses of the faith paired with the seven heavenly virtues and vices of Christianity. Mind you, the faith of the seven has a beef with Christianity. Christians call us pagans while we call them heathens. Anyway, seeing how hostile the reaction was to his tunes, he packed up his stuff and disappeared one week after the publication. He left a written confession where he said he could no longer deny his true calling, his music, and serve the seven with a false depth of devotion. Ever since then, which is like fifty years ago, the seven études are banned in Westeros.”

“How come you have this?” You knocked on the sheets.

“Someone smuggled the music to Greece and beyond. When I went after Nelly, I came across the sheets in a music shop. It cost a lot but it was worth it. The music is good. Too bad most Westerosi never got to experience it.”

He showed you the other six sheets. The Mother. The Warrior. The Maiden. The Smith. The Crone. And the Stranger. Your favorite was the last one. Haunting, like faraway strains of music late at night, when all is silent and still, like a cold breeze on a summer night out of nowhere, even though it didn't rain, like the scent of a perfume with no origin.

Alicent was angry, obviously. But her son displayed more stubbornness than her objections.

On the first day of his performance, you baked him lemonies and brewed him a cup of chamomile, lavender, and cornflower tisane. You fetched your bouquet of sunflowers and yellow roses. You knotted his golden tie and folded his brown and yellow handkerchiefs in the Bird of Paradise style.

His performance was the fourth one and it went splendidly. He was the only pianist to have a page-turner. It made him nervous. But you gently placed your bouquet on top of the piano and sat to his left. His mother and siblings, and Alys and Criston sat in the second row, since the front row was only for the judges. Despite her objection, Alicent sent him an encouraging smile.

After his performance, you all went to a nearby lobster restaurant for lobster rolls, clam chowder, and bisque, followed by rocky road and dusty road ice creams for dessert.

At home, you celebrated with bright yellow Limoncello Tiramisu. You had baked it last night after everyone went to sleep.

“Everything is made from scratch,” you told him, and everyone else in his family who sat around the kitchen island. They were all full, but they ate one slice out of courtesy, except for Aegon, who ate the leftovers.

“The ladyfingers?” Daeron asked.

“Yes.”

“The Limoncello?” Alys asked.

“That too.”

“What about the lemon curd?” Criston asked.

“Made it last night, with everything else.”
Aegon wore a content smile on his face. He finished the leftovers by himself, despite his mum worrying he'd make himself sick. He thanked you for everything you did.

“Ñuha vēzos,” he said. “Se vēzos hen ñuha hūra.” (“My sun.” “The sun of my moon.”)

In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly one hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.

(The Quiet World by Jeffrey McDaniel)

That was how it went for the rest of the week. You gave him bouquets and bouquets of flowers, so much that Alicent bought two more vases to keep the flowers. You baked him desserts after desserts, including innovative desserts, such as a zebra cake of dark chocolate and purple ube that represented both your eye colors, and a checkerboard cake out of charcoal and white chocolate that reflected your hair colors. Every time Aegon finished all your desserts, he sent you smiles of gratitude and heartbreak.

The night before his last performance and the verdict, he slipped behind you just as you were falling asleep. You stiffened when he wrapped his arms around you.

“I can leave,” he said glumly.

In response, you held his hands.

“Dōnītsos, it's the day after tomorrow, isn't it?”

You said nothing.

“Can we have a date night tomorrow? After my performance?”

You agreed. “Sunfyre will be ready by then. We can make sourdough focaccia.”

He let you have free reign. His last performance was your favorite, the Stranger. His hands were shaky and sweaty just as the first two performances ended. You took him aside and dried his hands with wet wipes. As you massaged his fingers and joints, he leaned over and kissed you.

“I had a nightmare while you were unconscious. I fell asleep in your room. It was after I googled about hemodialysis. In my dream, I was in the OR. You were being operated on. Your vein and artery were being connected. The graft tape came loose. You were bleeding. You were leaving me.” His voice shook. “Later, I made my way to you. To my mommy. The doctors could never agree on the truth. Broken hearts are lethal.”

You kissed his forehead, then his lips, lastly his cheeks. “I'm not that fragile, baby boy. It'll take me more than just some alcohol to kill me.”

“Can we have our date at the restaurant where we first met?”

You grimaced. Your heart still throbbed from having been stood up. The memory still smarted. “Maybe when we're both whole and healed. We can visit on Valentine's Day and have their special meal. For now, let's have a dinner date at home after the movie, just the two of us. Your family still got the dinner reservations at that Michelin star restaurant, don't they?”

“Scandinavian restaurant. You should go.”

“And leave you home alone? No.” You traced his lips, just as the third performance was over. “About broken heart syndrome...”

“Yeah?”

“I know what Meredith Grey would say.” You led him to the piano as his name was announced. “When your heart stops, because someone else's did.”

After the performance, the verdict was announced, a tie. The winners were jointly Alysanne Blackwood and Sabitha Frey. The two ladies shared a smile that told you they shared more than just a trophy.

To his mother's disappointment, Aegon placed last. He didn't mind. He rather flashed a bright, grateful smile at the judges and the audience, as well as his fellow participants, who didn't return his smile. Some of their glares told you why.

“Nepotism,” Sabitha mouthed at Alysanne and rolled her eyes, clapping unenthusiastically for Aegon as his name was announced.

Alicent's downturned lips told you she was disappointed. You clapped harder and louder than everyone else to make up for everyone else's lack of it. Aegon's eyes glittered when he saw you. Just as the participants dispersed, you rushed to his side and loudly said, for the joint winners to hear you proclaim how proud you were of him, that he was just starting out, miles and years behind the rest, and still managed to give his best.

“Mommy's proud of you, baby boy,” you whispered to him. You held his hands as Alicent patted his cheek, but the affection behind the gesture didn't reach her big eyes. Daeron and Helaena congratulated, as did Alys. Aemond hummed, the corners of his lips slightly upturned.

“Are you certain you cannot join us for dinner?” Alicent asked.

“It's our date tonight, Mum,” Aegon finally revealed.

Helaena smiled sweetly at you. “Sunchoke, egg yolk, and a little bit of smoke. Don't worry, you shall never choke.”

“Thank you.” You felt a little spooked. You planned on using sunchoke and egg yolk for your dinner date menu. You didn't share with anyone. How did she know?

“Cassandra,” your mind supplied.

Before you could ponder over it, Aegon pulled you toward the exit, with the rest of his family. Aemond dropped you and Aegon off at Regal Union Square for the Ghibli fest. For the next two hours, you and Aegon enjoyed the romantic fantastical brainchild of Diana Wynne Jones and Hayao Miyazaki. When Howl, in his dark hair and true looks, bemoaned that he saw “no point in living” if he couldn't be beautiful, you nudged Aegon. “That's you when you had chicken pox.”

He stuck a tongue at you. You gently nibbled on it. “Don't poke the sleeping dragon, love. You'll get burnt.”

You frowned instead. Why did that feel so familiar? As if you had heard it before. He asked if you were okay and if he was crossing a boundary. You shook your head. “This popcorn was a waste of money. Somehow it's both salty and bland.”

He kissed your forehead. “There's a cannabis store across the square. Wanna head there?”

“You wanna get high?”

“Why not? It'll give us some munchies. Great way to end our last night together.” Then, he grew quiet.

You kissed his forehead. “It's a date.”

An hour later, with the movie being over, you two headed for the cannabis shop as planned. Inside, you told him how you only ever smoked cannabis once in your life before.

“When I was in Las Vegas. Before I slept with that guy.”

He grimaced. “Can't believe I still haven't dethroned him. Pathetic.”

“Maybe you can do that if we're both high tonight.”

He gulped. “You sure about that, dōnītsos? Spending our last night like that?”

You tucked his unruly hair behind his ears. They had suddenly stopped growing, as if stunted. “Only if you're up for it.”

After carefully checking out the display, you decided on four products: one to enjoy with music, one to give you munchies, one to take away your fatigue and depression (which were slowly creeping into your bones), and one to put you to sleep.

A pair of soft, familiar hands wrapped around your waist from behind. You winced, not because of its suddenness, rather because how, like the moment in the theater, you felt a sense of déjà vu.

Aegon didn't sense your thoughts. He rested his chin on your shoulder and handed you his sole choice, a lemon berry candy flavored cannabis. “Mommy, don't go.” He stuffed his face in the crook of your neck. He sniffed you. “Who will make me lemonies every day? Who will give me food and love?”
You squeezed his arms around you. “I have to go.”

“Why?”

You untangled his arms and pulled him to the cashier. Once your purchase was done, you two walked back to Gramercy, not far from the store. As you neared the gate, he stopped you.

“Can we have our date there? A nightly picnic one last time?”

You nodded with a smile.

Sunfyre, Sunny as you nicknamed him, was ready. You made the sourdough and gently placed it all over the baking sheet.

“Focaccia?” he asked when you told him what you intended to make.

You began to place all the art pieces. You created the north wind with a round slice of black perigord winter truffle, the windflow with ground pepper and smears of black garlic aioli. Below, the form of a hunched and huddled figure came in the form of a smashed sunchoke covered with a kale leaf, both individually brushed with olive oil. A few tiny ricotta pieces you spread around the aioli smears.

Across the dough, you made the sun with an egg yolk, its rays with small sunflower petals brushed lightly with honey. Another smashed sunchoke brushed with olive oil this time pressed under the sun, with a few more kale leaves overhead as the foliage of a tree and some chives as the body.

Once the bread came out, Aegon gasped, his mouth literally open. With your phone, you snapped a photo. Souvenir, you called it. You explained the artwork.

“Aesop has a fable. The north wind and the sun. They were fighting over who was the mightiest. A passerby solved the problem. Whosoever can take off his cloak will win. The north wind blew storms after storms to take it off. But the passerby clutched the cloak tighter around their body. When it was time for the sun, he simply warmed up and the passerby took off the cloak.” You stroked his soft cheeks. “Everyone else was the north wind. You're my Sun, no matter what you say. You took off all my barriers.”

His tears made a comeback. “I want to be an obsessive, possessive, yandere sort of man, so that I can force you to stay. Tie you up and lock you in my basement or something. Gaslight you, break your mind, and drug you with Stockholm syndrome so that you’ll never leave me. Something my uncle would do. I'm not him. I'm destined to have a broken heart that stabs me and makes me bleed all over. Forever fated to lose you. If that's why we met, whatever God bound us together will face serious revenge. What kind of sadist does that?!”

You stood on tiptoes and kissed his nose. “Please, don't be like King Edward. Wallis felt trapped by their marriage. Don't suffocate me like he did her. Don't be an ivy. If we're meant to be, we'll find our way back to each other, like Connell and Marianne.”

He nodded. While you made the cream cheese and chicken soup, he rolled up the first two joints, one for the music and one for the munchies. Once the food was done, you packed up everything with your giant tortilla blanket. With the food basket and the folded blanket, you came downstairs. Aegon had left already, to see the super for something. You waited in the lobby, avoiding the nighttime doorman who tried his best to catch your eyes.

Aegon emerged with a shovel and the red thermos you once bought for Etaf, the same one that carried ice for your first date with Aegon to the park.

“Planning to bury a Lilliput?” you joked.

“Nope. Just my letter.”

“You write?”

He kissed your nose, took the basket, and led you out. Out in the park, under the moon in her last quarter, the night was awake and cool. You spread the blanket and set out the food, which was forbidden in the park but nobody else would know about it. A little farther away, at the foot of the Hellelil and Hildebrand statue, Aegon dug a small, deep hole. He half dunked the shovel inside and came to you.

“What is this letter you plan to bury?” You cut the focaccia, poured the soup into cups, and topped it off with fried halloumi croutons.

“The first day of this month was world letter writing day. Etaf's show told me. I planned to write you a letter ever since you told me you wanted to leave. I finished it last night.”

A lump in your throat concentrated like rain clouds. “Can I read it?” Your voice was surprisingly steady.

“No, it's for when we meet again.”

“I see.”

“It's my bait. You're curious. So, this knowledge will pull you back to me as fast as possible.” He opened the thermos and showed you the folded letter inside, then sealed it away. “Come, let's get high.” He put on some music and you smoked your second cannabis in life. Coffee, spicy, and woodsy. Instantly, you felt relaxed and uplifted. A tingle in your palms and soles, in your finger and toe tips. You felt as if you could levitate. You and Aegon shared the joint. He gave you the munchies one, a bit floral and tasted like soap.

You both ate the bread and soup. Aegon joked that you were eating flesh of your firstborn. It reminded you of a painting you once saw online. Saturn Devouring His Son. When Aegon saw the photo, he gagged.

“That reminds me of my father so much.”

“Mine too.”

The next two joints tasted fruity. Lemon berry candy and strawberry lemonade. The first one spread happiness inside you, like powdered sugar over your lemonies. The second one erased your backaches and achy joints, like Bethany Hightower's magical massage. You laid on your blanket and Aegon followed. He unbuttoned your shirt and you didn't stop him. He took down your bra and suckled your tits.

“It's been a while,” you whispered. They stung when he hollowed out his cheeks, his teeth gently sinking into your soft flesh. Your fingers ran through his snow white hair. You remembered the exact moment you saw them first.

“Across a bar...” a voice inside you supplied.

You shook your head. No, not a bar. Inside a gender neutral bathroom. On Valentine's Day. His big head and his snow white hair. His cute ass and his chubby little thighs. His soft, deep voice and his leery blue eyes. Purple, no longer blue. You missed the days of his blue eyes. When he was Gregory A. Teanan, a fuckboy, your fuckboy, not the prince of a fucking country. Just a rich spoiled brat who drank and whored his ways out of heartbreak and loneliness. You missed that version of him. Somewhere in your seven months and fourteen days with him, you had lost the initial version of him you fell in love with. Your Mojo Jojo whose hand you slapped at, to prevent him from eating lemonies that Mr. Lombardy touched with unwashed hands. Your Greg who you dragged across the city on St. Patrick's day...

Your heart felt as if enmeshed with barb wires. You whimpered and trembled. Tears rolled down your cheeks, your eyes on the night sky. The moon was out but the sun was long gone, as was the sun you glimpsed. The sun that basked you with his warmth, and the sun that burnt you with his heat weren't the same. You mourned their loss, because both would be gone soon, too soon for your liking. Tomorrow, at seven o'clock, your flight for Stockholm would mark your departure from his life, and his exit from yours.

“Dōnītsos?” he asked, teary eyed. “You're crying too?”

“I'm sorry, baby boy. I don't wanna leave.”

He stroked your cheeks, chasing away your liquid sorrows. “Then don't.”

“I have to go.”

“Why?”

“I gave you my heart and you destroyed it. I made memories with you and you tore them to pieces.”

“No, no, no. I kept them all. I'm fucking Mary Shelley preserving the calcified heart of my most beloved. I'm a fucking cabinet of curiosities where I stored every single piece of our time together. All your touches, all your assaults, all your kisses, all your barbed words, I stored them here,” he put your hands on his temples, “all intact. Even if an asteroid hits it and causes a continental drift, it'll stay bolted to the walls, the glass doors and wood walls as thick as fucking bank vaults. I kept them all safe and secure inside me, my love. Don't you dare accuse me of otherwise.”

You let out a shaky exhale. “When did you become so poetic?”

“A broken heart can do wonders.”

“See, this is why I gotta leave.” You sat up. He kept his hold on you. “We're both broken. I never had a lasting healthy relationship. They either scarred me or left me. I'm the common denominator. I gotta heal myself first. No sex, no alcohol, no rebounds, nothing of those sorts. I need to heal myself and process my relationship with myself. I can't love another person before I learn to love myself. And I don't, okay, I don't love myself. Neither do you love yourself. That's why it's so easy for us to commit self-destruction.” He wept and you gently held his face in your palm, as delicate as sugar spun candy. “I love you, Aegon Targaryen. I've always loved you and, even if I stop being in love with you, I'll forever love you, in one way or another.”

“You don't have to leave, Mommy.” He tilted his forehead to yours, eyes closed. “We can heal together. We can fix ourselves together. You hand me one shard of my broken self and I do the same to you. If I cut myself, you can treat me. If you cut yourself, I can treat you. If we stay apart, who will take care of us if not ourselves?”

You untangled his arms around you. “No, baby boy. We're born alone and we leave alone. I gotta make this trek by myself.”

“Why?”

You couldn't give him a proper reply. He wrapped his arms around you and you let him. “Will you leave me your sister's contact?”

You shook your head. “You disrupted my time away from you twice now. My decisions became biased. I can't risk it again.”

“So, no way to contact each other? How will I ever find you?”

“Let's leave that to destiny, okay?”

“That's bullshit!” He shoved you away from him. “Leave things to destiny, don't fuck with me, please!”

“You forcefully entered my life, Aegon. You pursued me out of greedy motives. Our first time was forced. Let's allow the second chance happen organically.”

“I can't! What if I never get to see you again? What if I never get over you? I won't get over you, you know that!”

“You don't know that. You thought you'd never fall in love again after Nelly.”

“So you believe me then. That I do love you. That I am in love with you.”

You grasped his hands and pulled him back to you. “I do. I do, baby boy, I really do. It's just, you're still in love with Nelly. Don't deny it. I can tell. You still love her because you haven't finished mourning for her, processing your pain. The leftovers of your love still lingers. As long as the leftovers are here, you can't settle for something new. That's not fair to me.”

He closed his eyes. “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I wish I met you after I healed.”

“Classic case of right person, wrong time.”

“So you agree then? You're made for me?” he asked hopefully.

“Let's let destiny decide for us.”

“I still can't leave all to fate. What about free will?”

You sighed. “How about this? Until we find our way back to each other, once we heal, we come to this park, one day every year.” You thought a bit more. “On Valentine's day? The day we met? You can add my name to the apartment lease, so that I receive a key to this park every year.”

“What if you heal before me and you come here, but I haven’t healed, so I don’t come here? What then?”

“We wait and visit the next year.”

“Until...”

“Until both of us give up.”

His lips wobbled. “You've turned into sand, into water, into air. I can't hold you anymore. The more time passes, the more of you I lose.”

You hugged him. “I'm still sand now. Hold me close until I run out.”

And he did. Legs tangled, arms around each other, his face in the crook of your neck, you laid down. “Write me a letter too.” From his jacket, he brought out a pen and two sheets of paper. “So that my curiosity threads me back to our inevitable reunion.”

You rolled out the last joint. You smoked the puffs by turn. He was the first to fall asleep. While he slept, you wrote your letter, taking care to bleed the words onto the page, your love over his heart, a tattoo to safeguard his soul until your return.

You woke up before him. You tucked him with the rest of the blanket and drew kisses after kisses all over him. “Find me in the future,” you whispered into his ear, just as he mumbled your name in his sleep. You put your letter inside the thermos, sealed it with his own, and buried it. You cast one last glance at your Sleeping Beauty, before you left him behind.

Hours later, as the plane you were on was flying over Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Aegon woke up alone inside Gramercy park. The sun was overhead. You were gone. So was the thermos. The hole by the foot of the Hellelil and Hildebrand statue was gone, as well as the shovel and the picnic basket. Only the blanket tucked him in.

The world inside his head was beginning to chip away, like earthquake chipped away soil slowly, slowly, then lightning fast. Before the cataclysm inside his brain could gain speed, he rushed out of the park and inside his building. He, with both the daytime and the nighttime doormen, checked the CCTV footage. You entered the building with the shovel and the basket. The time stamp said four in the morning. At six thirty in the morning, you left with the bags you brought when you moved back in.

Aegon held back the cataclysm inside his skull. He rushed back upstairs. Nobody was inside. His family was gone. A sticky note with Alicent's handwriting to the fridge told him why.

“Helaena's in labor. We're in Bellevue.”

A package lay on the foyer sideboard. He’d ordered it a week before you came to work for him, as a humorous present to celebrate your first day. But it got lost in shipping from the UK. He stroked the wooden sign, real black mulberry, weatherproofed with a clear matt varnish. With a string, he hung it from his front door.

“A lovely lady and a grumpy old git live here.”

He opened the fridge. It was well stocked inside. Three devil's food cake covered with steel cloches. Seven brown butter white chocolate blueberry banana bread French toast casseroles, and fourteen Tupperwares of your lemony goodness.

The cataclysm inside him erupted and overtook him. He trudged back to the living room, where your neatly made sofa-bed was the only remnant that you were real and not a fantasy his Targaryen-madness-infected mind conjured up. He pulled out the bed and curled up in it, the grass and earth stained tortilla blanket over him.

He screamed, for a long time, at the top of his lungs, even after his voice was hoarse and he couldn't scream in one smooth strain. He coughed and groaned and almost puked. He brayed your name so many times, the empty rooms echoed his calls but they never reached you. A human voice could only travel so far. When he was tired and could call you no longer, he crooned with his broken voice. All the songs he ever sent your way, all the songs you ever sent his way, and the ones that graced you in between.

It was many and many a year ago,   
   In a kingdom by the sea,   
That a maiden there lived whom you may know    
   By the name of Annabel Lee;   
And this maiden she lived with no other thought   
   Than to love and be loved by me.   

I was a child and she was a child,   
   In this kingdom by the sea,   
But we loved with a love that was more than love—   
   I and my Annabel Lee—   
With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven   
   Coveted her and me.   

And this was the reason that, long ago,   
   In this kingdom by the sea,   
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling   
   My beautiful Annabel Lee;   
So that her highborn kinsmen came   
   And bore her away from me,   
To shut her up in a sepulchre   
   In this kingdom by the sea.   

The angels, not half so happy in Heaven,   
   Went envying her and me—   
Yes!—that was the reason (as all men know,   
   In this kingdom by the sea)   
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,   
   Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.   

But our love it was stronger by far than the love   
   Of those who were older than we—   
   Of many far wiser than we—   
And neither the angels in Heaven above   
   Nor the demons down under the sea   
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul   
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;   

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams    
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;   
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes   
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;   
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side   
   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,   
   In her sepulchre there by the sea—   
   In her tomb by the sounding sea.

(Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe)

Later, hours later, someone's soft, feminine hands stroked his hair.

“Muña?” he mumbled.

“Mandia,” said the most unexpected voice.

He opened his eyes to stare confusedly at his older sister, his rival in every way. “Rhaenyra?”

She smiled gently but hesitantly. “Hello, valonqar.” She sat on the piano bench she had obviously dragged to the sofa-bed.

“How...” He tried to sit up.

She gently pushed him back. “Alicent was worried about you. You never once responded to her calls, or those from your brothers. Not even when your doormen knocked and rang the doorbell. She wanted to come, but our sweet sister needed her.”

“Mum told you to come?”

Rhaenyra shook her head, her hand on her belly. “Alys contacted Harwin. Yes, they're speaking now, it seems. She's his kin. Anyway, we were already on our way here. To add some more clauses in our contract, and make some changes. Joffrey will replace Luke. He wants to pursue filmmaking with Baela. Anyway, Harwin and I volunteered to come here because, well, I felt a little awkward in there.”

Aegon smiled, despite his body being in pain all over. “Thank you.”

“Don't worry about it.” She glanced at the door. “Harwin is in the kitchen. I hope you don't mind us invading your space.” She lightly patted her belly. “Little Visenya is a bit fond of your girlfriend's food. Her chocolate cake is to die for.”

The mention of you made his heart throb. His face contorted, the aftershock of earthquakes inside his head. He felt embarrassed but couldn't help himself, as he flung his arms around Rhaenyra. “She's gone, sister, she's left me.”

Rhaenyra was still first. After a minute of no reaction from her, she slowly hugged him back. “Tell me everything.”

And he did. From the beginning when you first met, to last night when you left him.

“Do what she says, then.”

“What?” He blinked up at her.

“Take it from me, never fall in love with a broken heart. It never ends well.” She glanced at something above his head, at the door. “My first love was cruelly ripped from me. For years, I was miserable. I used sex and anger to relieve myself, to forget the gap inside me. I used Criston as a rebound. Even after he left, I never regretted hurting him. It was Harwin's departure, then his return, that made me realize the error of my ways.” She let go and lifted Aegon's face. “Don't be like me. Heal yourself. Trust me, you will heal. No matter how great a pain, if you try, you can heal. Maybe not wholly. Maybe not back to how you were. But you can heal. Just try. Don't waste time and love. I'm lucky to have my one true love back in my life. You might not be so lucky. You might. Let's not gamble.”

“What should I do, sister?” he asked helplessly.

Rhaenyra stared at him for a long time. “I'm sorry.”

“What?”

“I'm sorry for all I did to you. For beefing with a toddler. I was never a good older sister to you, to our younger siblings. Neither were you to them. We both fucked up in our roles, didn't we?”

Aegon sniffled. “I never competed with you when it comes to the cactus chair...”

She snickered.

“Only for Father's affection and attention. Even there, you always won, by a mile if not more. He literally calls you his only child. It's not fair. You stole all our love.”

“It's not like I did it on purpose!”

“No, but you did like rubbing it on our faces. I remember the stupid smug smile you sent our way when Father sided with you for the inheritance of Driftmark.”

“Sorry about that. It's just... I still feel threatened by you. That one day, Father might wake up and see Baelon in you, like he did when you were a toddler, and replace me. Nobody likes being replaced. Nobody likes being the poor replacement.”

“I'll never be Baelon. That ship has sailed. I never had the right mother.”

“And I never had the right gender.” Rhaenyra sighed. “I'm sorry for all I did.”

“I'm sorry for all I did too.” A pause. “Thank you for being here.”

“What are you gonna do now?”

He leaned back in the sofa-bed. A lump from underneath the mattress/cushion poked his ass. He tried to shove it down, but it never budged much. He pulled off the whole thing and saw it.

A red teddy bear, whose skin resembled the circles and curls of a red rose. It held a golden heart in its arms, from which wafted out scent of rose. What made his eyes go wide was the red satin robe with black linings. His suspicion, that this was the teddy he lost earlier this year, was confirmed when he found the little tear on one of its ass.

“Rosy!” he called.

“Who?” Rhaenyra asked.

But he didn't reply. His mind went months back, to early February, on Teddy Day, when he bought a teddy at a Build-A-Bear workshop, then lost the bear in the Museum of Natural History. He'd safekept the bear in the lap of a dozing elderly lady, before he went to use the washroom. When he came back, instead of his red rose teddy bear in the customized satin robe, he found a teddy bear of the same build and design, only it wore a fuzzy red robe. Rosy was already taken, so he'd called the next teddy Rosa. Rosa had no tears in her ass, like Rosy did.

You said you and he weren't destined lovers. You were wrong. He realized the truth as he sat his Rosy and your Rosa side-by-side in your sofa-bed. He went to his room and began to work earnestly on the half-made audio card. Once it was finished, he joined his older sister and her lover for lunch. When their little sister and the rest of his family began to make their return, he told them what he intended to do.

“I'm going to heal.”

Chapter Text

Halloween, 2023

The creaks of bedsprings, and moans from both male and female voices made you cringe. Your face in the mirror across the hallway reflected your disgust.

The man of the house was gone. You knew, because an hour ago, on your way from the costume shop in Manhattan to your client's house in Brooklyn, you were almost run over by a sky-blue Vauxhall Astra. Before you could flip at the driver, the window rolled down, and the familiar long face and red hair of Mr. Volpone peeked out. He told you that you were early, that his wife and sister-in-law would be at home, and that he was just taking his daughter, nine-year-old Molly, an evergreen sourpuss, to some last-minute candy shopping. He reminded you about the theme of the party, characters from Cartoon Network shows, even though you and your girlfriends were just the caterers. You showed them your Penelope Pussycat costume.

“Someone bought only her icky boyfriend's costume. Guess they're single.”

The redhead girl stared daggers at you, before her father drove away. You lugged the birthday cake ingredients and your costume toward their house.

An hour later, the lemon curd was done. The chiffon bundt cake was ready for the oven. The honeyed lemon and the lemon syrup were done too. All you needed was for the cake to bake and cool down, before you could assemble and decorate it. Just as you popped the tins into the oven, you felt moisture between your legs. You cursed the timing.

Your period was early. Less than thirty days since your last rodeo. You didn't bring any pads and you didn't use tampons, because they felt so invasive inside you. Like having a small, detached dick in your vagina 24/7. This was why you failed every time Ezra tested your patience and endurance with bullet vibrators. Your autistic ass noped out.

You waddled up the stairs and located the master bedroom. Etaf had told you that Mrs. Volpone liked to nap in the afternoon, so that you could pop in before her nap time and not bug her when she was asleep. But this was an emergency. Besides, if she wasn't around, you hoped at least her twin sister would be awake.

Now, you understood why you felt you heard the doorbell ring when you were whipping the lemon curd. Someone did visit. A man, from the voice you heard in the distance. The kitchen was far in the back, so you couldn't check without revealing you were eavesdropping. Besides, what would it matter if a man visited Mrs. Volpone or not? It could be that the guest was here for her sister.

Now, you unmistakably recognized Mrs. Volpone's voice keening out of pleasure. She was being unfaithful and you hated being part of moments like this. It reminded you of Levy, and what you did to his wife and kids. You would leave the fuck outta here, but the moisture between your legs would paint your borrowed costume badly.

You knocked. The moans quieted down but not the bed springs.

The door opened. This wasn't Mrs. Volpone, instead it was her twin sister, sporting magenta lipstick. You timidly told her about your emergency. “I'm sorry to have sprung this up on you...”

Someone snorted from inside. Mrs. Volpone's sister laughed. “Nice pun. So, you heard us inside?”

You pressed your lips. “I'm only here for a pad. Please.”

“Sure you don't wanna stay? The more, the merrier. I'm sure Tony...”

“My cake is in the oven!” you almost screeched. “I just need to take care of my blood, I mean, my emergency, and get back to work.”

“Okay, okay. Wait here.” She went to raid the attached bathroom. The door was ajar. You dared not peek, but you heard the moans restart. Mrs. Volpone reached her orgasm. You wished you hadn't left your headphones downstairs. You began to count the seconds before you heard a soft, deep voice speak, definitely masculine, that sent a shiver up your spine.

“Is it the cake maker?” he asked.

“Yep.” Mrs. Volpone. “My neighbor's husband recommended them. They catered to a birthday party at his office.”

“Something smelled good. Sure you can't convince her to join us? I'd love to reward her for her hardwork.”

The two women laughed. Your face grew hot. You felt embarrassed and awkward, what with a river of blood between your legs. Mercifully, Mrs. Volpone's sister returned with a pad. You thanked her.

“Tony wants to see you.” She winked.

“I have a boyfriend...”

“Oh, come on,” she clamped her hands on yours, “I bet I'd enjoy watching him please you with his tongue. I'm sure he won't mind a little blood.”

You shuddered in disgust. “NOPE! Nope, nope, nope, nope.” And off you flew down the stairs.

The door creaked behind you. The guy named Tony laughed at your retreating back.

At the guest bathroom downstairs, you put on the pad. By then, the cake was done. You left it to cool down and decided to go out to get some Advils. You could borrow from Mrs. Volpone, but you dared not go upstairs until you had at least one girlfriend in the house with you.

You didn't know a pair of blue eyes watched you cross the street.

Hours later, Aegon was still upstairs. The birthday party downstairs was in full swing. But this was a child's birthday party. No funny stuff. Still, Mrs. Celia Volpone and her sister, Cecelia Miller, were fun to hang out with. He had always wanted to fuck twins. While the sisters didn't let him fuck them at the same time, rather watched their sister get fucked from a distance, he enjoyed his hours with them, yes, hours, because the two women were insatiable and he had to participate in every act, because they weren't into incest. They'd not fuck on the same bed at the same time.

He heard the guests singing happy birthday to the birthday girl. He had no desire to join them. But he did want a slice of the cake he smelled earlier. He deserved a slice or two. He put up the effort. He drove Sam's kid to the party. He put on a costume, no matter how ridiculous he looked as the horny French skunk. He was lucky to get any costume on Halloween, let alone so close to his home in Manhattan. Sure, it was part of a couple's costume, but he had nobody to dress up as Penelope Pussycat. So, he paid extra to buy only the Pepé Le Pew costume, which consisted of a long sleeved tee, a pair of tight leggings, and skunk tail and ears. He put the last two back on and was about to join the party goers downstairs when he heard a scream.

The scream of a man.

Aegon rushed down the stairs. Celia Volpone huddled in a corner, her face wet, red, and swollen, obviously from an assault or an accident. Her sister pressed an icepack to her cheek, a scowl on her pretty face. Mr. Volpone writhed on the floor of the living room, his hands between his legs. A woman in a sexy black cat costume stood over him, her back to the stairs. Aegon couldn't see her face but he appreciated her ass, to which a furry tail was attached. He recognized her voice. The cake maker.

He remembered when he first saw her. In the kitchen, her back to him as she folded something yellow in a mixing bowl. The color was so radiant, it popped out and ambushed his eyes like Sunfyre did every time he came home. He wished to eat whatever it was. Before he could go in and ask for a taste, Celia and Cecelia took him upstairs.

Now, here she stood, her left knee raised slightly in case she needed to repeat herself again, a tray of amous bouche candies in her hands.

“I simply kneed your wee-wee and stepped on your foot, Mr. Foxy. Imagine me stepping on your neck. Or better yet, you itty bitty balls. I can puncture them until they're nothing but saggy little hairy balloons. The next time you assault your wife, the mother of your child, remember my pencil heels on your balls. Heels on your balls. Rree-memm-berr!” You purred like a cat.

Some of the parents complained about your deployment of violence on the host, as well as your use of curse words. You shut them down easily.

“When the host used violence on the hostess right in front of your eyes, where were your objections? When he used the C-word and the F-word and the S-word to humiliate her in front of her child and her friends, where were your fucking objections?”

Those moms tried to put you down again, when the flat screen in the living room began to play a video. Mr. and Mrs. Volpone in the same living room. They were arguing before he slapped her so hard, she almost flew across the room, collided with a china cabinet, and crumpled to the floor. She held the back of her head and sobbed, her face hidden by the curtain of her hair. The video changed to another one, where Mr. Volpone was once again shouting at the top of his lungs, before his fingers wrapped around his wife's hair and he threw her to the floor. He knelt on her back and called her a slut, a whore, a faggot for preferring women more than men, like her sister did.

Molly, the birthday girl, stood in front of the paused screen, dressed like Tweety, the yellow canary. She held up her mom's cellphone and dialed 9-1-1, staring at her dad dead in the eye. Fifteen minutes later, the cops showed up. Molly handed over the seventy-three videos she captured through the nanny cam her mom installed in one of her teddy bears.

An hour later, most of the guests were gone. Aegon stayed upstairs, since Sam's kid was still with Molly, her new best friend. Cecelia came to check on Aegon sometimes. She brought him a slice of birthday cake, an upside down lemon chiffon bundt layer cake.

“That's a long name,” he wanted to comment, before he tasted a spoonful and forgot what he wanted to say. The moment his tongue bit into the soft chiffon cake, touched the creamy curd in between, and tasted the sweet bitterness of the honeyed lemon, he forgot everything else. His mind only supplied one thing.

Lemon cake.

The taste took him decades back, when he was a child, in his teen mother's arms, being fed lemon cakes. He was being fussy, so she stuffed his mouth with the tiny round goodness, topped with sliced lemons. A tingle spread all over him. His heart softened like the curd and lightened up like the chiffon cake. He must've moaned, because Cecelia teasingly asked if he came in his pants. He begged Cecelia to please bring him more cakes, because he was hungry all of a sudden. She was thankful for all the orgasms he gave her earlier, so she brought him a whole Tupperware full of leftovers.

“I smuggled it out of the kitchen. The cake girl is grumpy.”

“Feisty,” Aegon corrected her. “She saved your sister.”

Cecelia's face softened. “I know. Cee is grateful. So am I.”

“And I for these.” He stuffed an entire slice inside his mouth.

“You love lemon, don't you?”

“The best fruit out there.”

She patted his head like a child and left him with his cakes.

Meanwhile, downstairs, you were busy looking everywhere for one of the three Tupperwares you kept the leftovers in. Mabel wanted to try out the cake and you kept it specifically for your girlfriends and yourself. When you couldn't find it, you sneaked out two slices from one of the other Tupperwares and arranged them on a plate. You were about to take it to them, when a little Black boy dressed like Roadrunner came to you.

“Miss, Miss, your boyfriend is in pain!”

You blinked. Darren was here? How? Why? You never told him where you were working tonight. He was supposed to take his cousin's kids to trick or treating. And he was in pain? Did he drink too much? Fuck!

“Where is he?” You knelt before the boy.

The little angel, Gabriel, took you upstairs and inside the master bedroom. You were so confused, until you heard the male voice from earlier tonight.

Tony, Mrs. Volpone's man candy.

He moaned inside the bathroom. You were the adult, so you knew it wasn't a moan of pain, rather pleasure. You quickly covered the boy's ears and steered him out. You thanked him for his help, which made him smile brightly, and told him to go back downstairs.

Once Gabriel was gone, you turned back to the bathroom. Was anyone else inside? You only heard the man. You tiptoed to the door, an illogical move because why the fuck were you interested, and placed your ear against the door.

“I love your lemon cakes, Mommy. Yes, I love them, I love them as much as I love you. Please, Mommy, make me more lemon cakes. I'll fuck you so good.”

You shot to your feet and accidentally knocked down what was surely a costly bottle of eau de vie prisonnière Poire Williams. The brandy soaked the carpet, the glass shards embedded on the warp and weft, while the pear rolled down under the bed.

“Shit, shit, shit!” You ran out of the room, as the moaning inside stopped. Just as you touched the bottommost step, the door creaked open. You fled to the kitchen. Mabel and Etaf were almost done cleaning up.

“I'm taking a raincheck.”

“Is everything okay? Other than what you did back there?” Mabel asked.

“Uh, well, a pervert guest upstairs is jerking off to my cake.”

“What?!” Etaf said. “Okay, do you want us to take care of him?” She picked up your rolling pin.

“What?” You laughed. “No, um, I think he caught me eavesdropping.”

Etaf smirked and crossed her arms. “Oh, really? Why, pray tell, were you listening to him jerk himself to your cake?”

“Nothing, okay? I'm leaving. Bye, bitches.”

You grabbed your coat and fled through the backdoor. Had you taken the front door, you'd have run into a blond man also fleeing the scene, leaving behind a little girl in a Bug's Bunny costume, for which he'd receive hell from his cousin later on, but he didn't care about it right now. Like you, he only thought of self-preservation, embarrassed about his actions. Being caught red-handed for it, he fled the fuck outta there.

The only witness to both your escapades was a blonde guest alone in the hallway, a slice of your cake in her hand.

Thanksgiving, 2023

The downside to crying while wearing a mask was that the tears pooled inside the mask, making you inhale through the saltwater.

You had a cold. A really bad cold. But you were starving and lonely and craving for some lasagna. Last night, you sent your mama to Alabama. A week ago, her parents invited her for Thanksgiving. The only condition was to not bring her bastard with her. They were hosting dinner for their friends, some of the most esteemed figures in their community. They didn't want your presence to taint their meal. Your mama would've refused, had you not persuaded her to go.

“You're accomplished now, Mama,” you told her as you both awaited her Greyhound bus to arrive. “You're the principal of one of the city's best kindergartens. You've held this position for almost two decades now. You have a stable income. A good roof over your head. There is nothing they can shame you for.”

“Except for my spinsterhood.”

“Well, it's your own damn fault, young lady.” You stuck out your tongue. “I've been harping about you going back into the dating pool. Get fucked, live a little.”

Your mama laughed. This was music to your ears. This was why you did it. A little sacrifice. Nothing you couldn't handle. Sure, this would mark your first Thanksgiving alone, but you had to get used to it. Ever since you, along with his family, held an intervention and sent Darren to a rehab, you had been down in the dumps. The dreary, dreadful future that awaited you terrified you, also motivated you to prepare for it. This was the first stepping stone. You knew you'd be doomed to the lonely kind of spinsterhood in future, because you were desperate for a partner and some kids, and spinsters who dreamt so desperately for such things but never attained them were doomed to be unhappy. You'd be Monica Geller who never found his Chandler Muriel Bing.

So, you helped your mama pack her stuff and go to spend the Thanksgiving weekend with her parents. Meanwhile, your girlfriends invited you to Etaf's parents' Queens home for Thanksgiving. You declined, to Mabel's hidden relief. She still felt awkward around you, ever since you confessed your crush on her and asked her out, and she rejected you. The salt over your wounds was Mabel's confession that she actually liked Etaf and asked for your permission to ask her out, sister code and all that. You loved Mabel and Etaf so much, you gave her your permission and wished her luck. Mabel had already accepted Etaf's invitation. You didn't want to be there to witness your crush making heart eyes to your ex. So, you didn't tell them about your mama's southern sojourn and lied that you'd be spending the weekend with her.

And now you were alone in a Walmart supercenter in New Jersey, pushing a cart down an aisle, jotting down the ingredients for your famous lasagna, so famous, even you mama's colleagues asked for it every time there was a potluck party among the staff. Caleb's parents were gone for the weekend, so he had his parents' Weehawken home all to himself. He invited you, after you confided in him the truth about your situation. The thing about being alone and having secrets was that more than the loneliness, the secrets swelled inside you, itched you to tell someone, anyone, even strangers. So, you did. Caleb took pity on you and invited you. He too was alone for Thanksgiving. So, you accepted it. He was cleaning up his parents' house, bringing out some china his mom had in the attic. Off you went to buy some last-minute groceries.

You stopped by the box of mini pies, except there was only one mini pie, a lemon pie. You put it in your cart with a box of eggs and your Walmart meal kit when you heard him.

A man was pleading to an employee in the next aisle.

“C'mon, man, I know you got one more box in the back. Everyone knows you keep some spares.”

The employee replied coolly but impatiently. “For the hundredth time, sir, we do not have any spares left. Today's literally Thanksgiving. You cannot expect there to be more boxes of the $30 meal kit. I gave you the last one we had.”

“Please, you see, my nephews and nieces, they need this really badly. Their parents have recently separated. Their dad is here in New Jersey for his law practice. Their mom, my cousin, is working a shift at a hospital in NYC. Their housekeeper got fired recently. They have nobody to cook for them. Now, I'd make something for them, but I don't know how to cook. And these kids, six kids, did I tell you that, so these kids, they wanna whip up a meal for their parents as a surprise. They wanna get their parents back together so badly. Please, I just need one more kit. We're more than six people.”

Their footsteps indicated they'd moved away. You rounded the corner and saw the man's cart alone in the aisle. A lonesome box of the Walmart Thanksgiving $30 meal kit sat in his cart. Nothing else.

You glanced at your own box. It was just you and Caleb tonight. Two adults who didn't need a large Thanksgiving meal. Besides, didn't you plan to make lasagna? You didn't need this box any more than those kids, who had to reunite their parents. They needed this to work out. If only their uncle knew how to cook, something you knew how to do. You blamed the next thing you did on the freshly released altruistic hormones in your body, triggered by Darren's intervention. You lifted your box and was about to put it on top of the other box, when someone yelled.

“STOP! THIEF!”

You dropped the kit into the other cart. Your eyes, covered with sunglasses because of how bloodshot and swollen they looked, didn't glance up. You just fled the fuck outta there. You pushed your almost empty cart down the aisle. You heard the running footsteps behind you. More yells from the man. You turned down the corner and ran into another cart. The woman behind it didn't move an inch, but your almost empty cart flew and landed with a crash a couple of feet away. The yelling continued, calling you a fucking thief. You hightailed outta there. Your outfit did not make you any less suspicious. Sunglasses, a mask, your hood on. You ran the other way, toward the exit. The cashier was so shocked, she didn't stop you. The doors automatically opened and you ran and ran, until your lungs protested and you had left the Walmart long behind.

Back inside the supercenter, Aegon reached his cart too late and realized his mistake much later. He noticed the extra weight that slowed him down only when the so-called thief had rounded the corner. His eyes fell on the second box on top. Two boxes? Two meal kits? That couldn't be. He stopped for a second. He lifted the top box and yep, his suspicion was right.

The person he accused of being a thief was actually a good Samaritan, his good Samaritan.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

“Wait!” he called after you. He tried to run faster but his heavy cart slowed him down. He couldn't leave it behind because, what if someone actually stole it? He used all his strength, from the reservoir he rarely tapped into, to catch you before you fled. He almost crashed into your overturned cart. He learned it was yours, because a woman whined about how someone in a hoodie and sunglasses ran into her cart, and thus almost ruined her shopping. He skirted past them to catch you. He caught a glimpse of your back, running out of the supercenter. He went to follow you, but he hadn't yet checked out anything from his cart. So, he stopped by the doors and helplessly watched you melt into the darkness. He called after you, but you never stopped.

He felt such deep remorse, he wanted to punch something, punch himself. He glanced at the two meal kits inside his cart. The top one was yours. Yet, you gave it to him, despite finding another box in his cart. Why? Did you overhear him pleading to the Walmart employee? That must've been the case. He went back to your overturned cart, which an employee was putting back up. He offered to pay for your stuff. The employee passed the cart. Aegon checked what you had. Just a box of lemon pie, a carton of eggs, now broken, and a handwritten, unfinished list of ingredients for... Lasagna. He asked the employee if there was anything else.

“No, just the pie, the eggs, and that piece of paper.”

He borrowed your cart and began the second part of his shopping tonight. He found every item your list had, a miracle since Walmart was usually empty on Thanksgiving. All the cans of crushed tomatoes, both the regular and the Italian style (he had no idea how the fuck they were different, so he guessed you were probably the cooking type), tomato paste and puree. The lasagna noodles. The two types of Italian sausages, hot and sweet, and the ground beef. Even the mushrooms and the spinach. He didn't check which herbs and spices you had listed, only that you had an empty section for herbs and spices, and one for the cheese. Aegon knew ricotta was the cheese for lasagna and that was all the knowledge he had. So, he improvised. He bought all seven types of cheese, including ricotta, and all the seven herbs and spices they had. As an Aegon style finishing touch, he left a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Once he was done, he asked the cashier to pack them up in separate bags.

“The person who ran out of here sometime ago?”

The cashier smirked. “This is for her? Okay, then. Happy Thanksgiving. Come again.”

Aegon left in a peppy mood. One of his nephews texted him to ask where he was. He told the kid he was on his way. He got into Samantha's Chrysler Pacifica minivan and headed for the Ho-Ho-Kus address where Lyonel stayed whenever he had to work overtime. The kids were all there, with their father shut inside his office. Together with his nephews and nieces, Aegon made his first ever Thanksgiving dinner: turkey, stuffing, gravy, green bean casseroles, mashed potatoes, and sweet corn, with cranberry sauce and dinner rolls. One of his nieces, the one he left behind at the Volpones' during Halloween, who later blackmailed him to rope him into their scheme, called Samantha and told her their youngest had gone out to be with their dad. Samantha rushed to New Jersey to bring the said child back. Once Lyonel let his wife in and the two bickered over what brought her here, Aegon calmly greeted them and told them to come to the dining table. Samantha and Lyonel followed him. The surprise shrieks from their kids, and the initial shock, followed by fury originating from affection and care, they all made Aegon feel moved. He felt lonely all of a sudden. Like he shouldn't be here. But he couldn't leave. One of his nephews took his hands and pulled him to the dining table, where the large spread of simple, readymade meals awaited him. They weren't phenomenal. But mediocre food shared with your loved ones after being apart for a long time tasted extra special. He overlooked the lack of seasonings, the slightly undercooked turkey, the too watery gravy, and the too hard dinner rolls. They seemed trivial in front of the joy that bathed the Hightower family sitting with him. Once it was time to say grace, Aegon silently prayed to whoever brought him the miracle tonight, in the form of you, he prayed to that deity that may your Thanksgiving go as joyous as the six kids of Samantha Tarly and Lyonel Hightower. Without your generosity, the meal would've fallen short. He and the kids watched bemusedly, as the contentious couple finally buried the hatchet and isolated themselves inside Lyonel's office after dinner. Half an hour later, they came out, not holding hands, but much more amicable to one another.

Aegon, that night, sent his first text to his mother and sister, who hadn't heard from him since the year before. With a burner phone, he sent a selfie with a fake background and told them not to worry, that he was okay, safe and content.

While Aegon thanked you for your goodwill in Ho-Ho-Kus, hours ago, you returned to the Walmart supercenter with trepidation. You had taken off your sunglasses, no matter how bloodshot and tearful your eyes seemed. You had taken off your mask too. Your hoodie tied around your waist, you took off your ponytail and mussed up your hair. You tried to act casual as you stepped inside. You glanced around, nervous that the man who called you thief might be here, even though you tried to help him. Did he take your meal kit? Surely, he did. What about your pie? Your eggs? Your list? You decided to ditch your plan to make lasagna and stick to frozen meals. You went to the aisle stocked with those and picked the two boxes left: a meatloaf and a fettuccine Alfredo. Caleb would like the pasta, so the meatloaf was for you. You were on your way to the self-checkout when someone tapped your shoulder.

A Walmart employee, whose smile blinded you like the sun. You blinked and stepped back to view her better. A blonde woman with a French braid.

“Here, this is for you.” She lifted three bags of purchase. You checked the topmost ingredients; packets of herbs and spices, and cheese. Lots of cheese. Not shredded or grated. Whole blocks of parmesan, fontina, asiago, and cheddar, balls of ricotta and mascarpone, and slices of provolone. A carton full of unbroken eggs. And many other things. So absorbed you were by the ingredients, you didn't notice the paper stapled to one of the bags.

Your unfinished list of ingredients for your lasagna.

Instinct told you to turn the page and you did. An unknown handwriting.

“Dear Great Samaritan,
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Grateful and Remorseful.”

You smiled when you realized he had paid for all of these. The man was aware and grateful. You noticed a bottle of wine peeking. The Walmart employee lastly handed out your box of lemon pie. She helped you call an Uber, yes, Uber, since you had cash to spare, and handed you the groceries. Too much groceries. You could make casseroles of lasagna that would last the weekend. Inside the car, you ate your pie, since Caleb liked to take lion's share from your desserts. Once you reached his parents' house, you somehow carried the bags to his apartment upstairs, without breaking the eggs or the wine bottle.

Caleb helped you unload. You didn't tell him what took you so long. You lied that you visited two supercenters, both the Secaucus and the Fairview ones, to find all the ingredients. When he went to uncork the wine bottle, you snatched it from him, to save it for dinner tonight and for the weekend. Since he thought you'd spent good money on all the groceries, he let you boss him around.

Later that night, after you and Caleb exhausted each other in bed, you sneaked a glass of wine and locked yourself inside his parents' bedroom. You put on the curtains and stripped in front of the life-size mirror. Thanks to a bit of a weight gain in the last couple of months, due to watching your girlfriends become each other's girlfriends, your thighs had some stretch marks. You took some nudes and zoomed in on your body. Your face, whose forehead had tiny, ugly bumps called milia (yes, your googled it). Your arms had white sunspots, something you must get treatment for, because once summer returned, you wouldn't be able to wear long sleeves like you did now. You also must get rid of the slight love handles and muffin tops your weight gain caused you. You groaned. You were all about body positivity, until it was you. Only about your body could you never be positive. Etaf frequently praised you every time you had some sexy times in bed. So did Ezra and Darren. Caleb didn't mind how you looked, so long as you were willing to fuck and could fuck him good. As for Levy, you hadn't gained weight back then, like you did now. You wondered if he'd call you ugly and other fatphobic stuff. You'd never know and you intended not to find out, least of all from him.

You put on your panties and tee, but you stayed in Caleb's parents' bedroom. You laid down on their bed and zoomed in on your body, trying to find other imperfections. Like how flabby your arms and legs were. How you imagined your tits would look when you'd grow old, saggy and unappealing. Crow's feet and probably liver spots all over your face. Bald spots on your head. Throw in some warts and you were Snow White's evil stepmom dressed as an ugly hag.

You didn't know when you fell asleep, nor would you know that sometime after you fell asleep, Caleb entered his parents' bedroom using a key and found you on the bed, your phone open, your nude photo zoomed on the screen. You didn't catch him stealing your photo, nor would you know his intention behind this theft, until three months later.

Christmas Eve, 2023

The bench was cold, wet, and hard beneath you. You hugged the red thermos lunch box extra tight. You wanted to slip into the liquid warmth inside, or the lukewarm sourdough focaccia you had baked earlier tonight. People passed by behind you. Some even sat a foot or two away. Most of them probably thought you were some homeless person and so, they left you alone. Your body lightly shook as the tears made their descent.

You thought you were over this. Turned out, you were a thousand miles away from getting over this. Not only were you rejected, now you had to watch your ex and your crush dating. You were the one who gave Mabel your permission to date Etaf. Why were you so butthurt? Oh right, you thought Etaf wouldn't reciprocate. Well, Thanksgiving proved otherwise. They spent their first holiday together with Etaf's family. Mabel had already met them, this time as her girlfriend. They all approved. In fact, they encouraged Mabel to find out her ancestry from 23andme. Three and a half weeks later, Mabel learned she had Palestinian lineage. In fact, her ancestors were from Gaza, which delighted Etaf's parents, aunts, and uncles so much, they immediately discussed the two girls' wedding. Mabel freaked out a little, so they backed off. You listened to all this, even witnessed some of it, with a forced smile on your face. You were happy for your girlfriends. Everything was turning out great for them. Yet, you couldn't deny the ugly feelings inside you.

The ugliest you'd ever felt toward your girlfriends occurred tonight, just an hour ago. You three had made plans to meet at Gramercy park. You had never been inside before. So, this was a first. You arrived ten minutes after your girlfriends did. You were running late because you were cooking, excited for your Christmas gifts for your best friends, especially the one for Mabel. Everyone gave her something amazing to celebrate the new revelation. You were good at cooking. So, you researched for the last two days, until a recipe formed inside your head. A celebration and amalgamation of Mabel's journey so far. You bought everything, even dived into the sea to fetch a stone and secretly borrowed the Zibdiyet pot from Etaf's mom, to make the surprise gift for your dear friend. You also bought a red thermos lunch box for Etaf, whose box recently got stolen during a subway ride home.

You were all set.

Everything crumbled like a house of cards the moment you saw them kissing, while Etaf held a mistletoe above their heads. You had been looking for them everywhere inside the park. With the Christmas caroling in the background, you found your girlfriends under three elm trees that flanked a mini statue you couldn't make out in the dark.

Your main focus was the smooching couple in front of it. One of them was your ex-girlfriend, who fell out of love with you, your neighbor since childhood, your best friend from high school, the girl you thought you'd marry and grow old with. The other was your current crush, your best friend from college, your sweetest, kindest, dearest roommate, who was there in the hospital after Levy broke your arm.

You could picture it. Etaf and Mabel in beautiful trousseaux. Their happy families would surround them. You would be both their maid of honor. You'd probably officiate their wedding. You'd definitely bake the wedding cake, not a fake styrofoam one, but a real three tiered cake. You'd be their kids' auntie, maybe their godmother too, if Mabel wanted to baptize her kids. They'd grow old together, sit under a porch on deck chairs, wrapped with shawls, hold hands, sip tea, and gossip. You'd not be anywhere in that picture. You'd be alone, hopefully six feet under. The miserably lonely auntie.

Your hands itched to hurl the lunchbox full of hot stew and warm bread at them, to break them apart, to hurt them, to make them bleed the same way you were bleeding, hurting, breaking apart. Your fingers clutched the handle. You left at once.

You were now at Stuyvesant park. You couldn't cover much distance before you needed to sit down, lie down, find support because your feet couldn't carry you anymore. You couldn't breathe. You wanted to run far away, to the edge of this planet, to launch a grappling hook toward the sky, to make God accept your gatecrashing without your having to resort to slitting your throat or hanging yourself. You wanted an out but there was no out, so you made do. You found yourself under the ancient elm tree and made your way to the circular bench. You laid down, your back to the world and your face to the bench's back. You hugged the thermos, because as much as you envied your girlfriends, you loved them even more. You didn't want them to know why you were like this. It'd break their hearts and fill them with guilt. They were already suffering, having to witness their people's genocide and not being able to stop it. No, they deserved this happiness and you, the thorn in their path, would remove yourself.

Your phone buzzed, like it had been doing for the last ten minutes. You knew if you didn't answer soon, they'd track you down, like Dan Levy did to Kristen Stewart in Happiest Season.

It was the happiest season now, wasn't it? You were the unhappy anomaly.

Your phone went quiet, only to buzz again. This had to be Etaf. She was much more persistent than Mabel. You decided to tell them. Better to be honest than fill their lives with lies they did not deserve.

“Babe, where are you?” Etaf squinted and tried to make out your dark surroundings. There was a streetlight not far from you, but your back blocked it.

“Stuyvesant park.”

“Oh, thank God. Why the fuck weren't your answering your phone, bitch?”

“Sorry. I, um, I'm not okay.” Your voice broke.

At once, the irritation from her face vanished. “Babe, are you safe? Are you hiding from some creep? Fuck, Maby?!”

“No, no, I'm safe... but not okay. I...” You took a deep breath. “I saw you and Maby kiss at Gramercy park.”

“Huh?”

“I'm not okay, Taffy.”

Her face crumpled. The guilt resurfaced. The guilt and awkwardness. “I'm sorry...”

“No, don't be sorry. It's just... I thought...” You sniffled. “I thought I'd be okay. I mean, I told Maby...” She appeared on the screen. “I told you I'll be okay, didn't I? Turns out, I'm not. I'm not and I'm sorry.” You began to sob. Ugly, loud, embarrassing sounds erupted out of you. You hoped people wouldn't think you were in pain or something.

Little did you know, someone did.

Aegon stood behind the elm tree, as he overheard you tell your girlfriends, through hiccups, that you weren't okay, that you didn't blame them, rather yourself for being so weak and stupid. What a sad girl you were, what a sad, broken girl.

“We're coming to get you,” your girlfriend said, to his relief.

“No, no, don't do that. I...” You hiccupped, to his worry. “I just wanna be alone tonight.”

“Oh no, we're not falling for that again.” Your friends argued with you. But you, the sadgirl, were adamant.

“Damn it, I can't be around you two anymore, okay?! Things have changed.”

“You're still our best friend, babe.”

“That's why I gotta stay away.”

“You don't make us uncomfortable.”

You sniffled. “But you do.”

“What?”

“You make me uncomfortable. You... Seeing you happy together hurts me. How pathetic am I?!”

“Oh no...”

“Yep, that's right. I'm still in love with you. Why wouldn't I be?” A long pause. “You're my first love, goddamn it. My one true love, the One for me. For a decade I thought you were my soulmate. I weaved a future for us, growing old together with our kids and grandkids. But that’ll never happen now. You're not in love with me anymore and I still am. On top of that, I have this huge crush on your girlfriend, my best friend. Seeing my ex with my crush, giving her the love I want, the love I still feel like I deserve and not her, it makes me feel uglier than I already am. A sick sense of hope overwhelms me whenever you two fight. For my own happiness, I'm rooting for you to break up. My two best friends who I love the most in the world after my mama. I want them to lose this beautiful love they have just so I can be happy. It's not healthy. I'm casting evil eyes on you and you know what Mama Ghada says about those. I don't wanna take a chance.”

“Mom is just superstitious,” your friend suggested.

You, the sadgirl, laughed. “As a big fan of Sex and the City, she told me, after we broke up, that I shouldn't lose heart. She believes in what Charlotte York once said, that we get two great loves in life. My first one is you. Now, I gotta find the second one, my Harry Goldenblatt, my bald, fat, hairy divorce lawyer who will be the best sex of my life. I gotta find them, or else I'm gonna be miserable and bitter, and cast more evil eyes on you two. Please, let me do that. Set me free.”

Your other best friend cried. “I can't lose you. I lost too much already. I can't lose you too, sweetie.”

“You're not, okay, I'm not leaving permanently. I just... I need some distance. Not forever or a world apart. Just until New Year's. I'll come back. I promise. I've already deployed Mama on Mission: Find My Harry Goldenblatt. She got me a blind date. He hasn't responded yet. She's confident he will. If he turns out to be my Harry, all the better. Until then, I need some distance, please.”

Your friends reluctantly agreed. “I hope you'll find a much more passionate love. Someone who will never fall out of love with you, no matter how much time they spend without you, away from you. I pray that you find your second great love.”

You laughed unhappily. “Ever since we broke up, I've been begging God for someone to dethrone you. I doubt I'll find them soon, if ever. The women in my family only fall in love once. My grandmother was lucky. My mama and I, not so much. She has me, at least. I got nobody. Before you deny that, once you guys have babies, you'll forget about me. Trust me, that's life.”

Your one true love vehemently denied and vowed to prove you wrong. You made a bet.

“If you find and marry your Harry Goldenblatt in a decade, you'll forgive your dad,” she challenged you.

You scoffed, confident about the power of your rotten luck. “And when I win, when and not if, you'll build me a nest over your garage, like Chandler and Monica did for Joey. I can't live alone in an old home. Lemme live vicariously through your marital bliss and parental blizzards.”

“We were going to build that for you anyway,” your crush said.

You wished them happy holidays before you ended the call. You pulled off your gloves and stuffed them in your mouth. Your hands were freezing but your insides, your heart was on fire. Magma filled it, lava cocooned it, while it burned bright and blistering. You let yourself be self-immolated. You hoped from these ashes, you'd be reborn, ready to fall in love again. With your mouth stuffed, you screamed your voice hoarse and bawled your eyes out, under the dark sky, with snow falling like confetti.

To you, God was your only witness, unaware about the presence behind you, behind the elm tree, who wept silently at the pain in your voice, your words, your vulnerable hope, a tiny sprout budding in a wasteland. Why did people fall out of love? How could your soulmates one day become strangers? From mutually in love to mutually blocked. How the fuck did that happen?

Aegon peeked from behind the tree. You were getting up. He hid again, embracing the ancient elm like a damn tree hugger. He waited for you to leave. For a long time, you didn't. You hunched over a writing pad on the bench, a pen in your hand. Your hood and dark open hair covered your face from the pedestrians, as did your sunglasses and mask.

Aegon slid down, to huddle in the shadow and wait. He’d come here for a walk after his stupid cranky old neighbor complained about his one night stand two nights ago. Sure, the sex was loud, but nobody else complained. Only he did. Aegon, to escape the unfriendly atmosphere, came out for a walk in the park near his building. Samantha had been bugging him to move into one of the apartments in her building. He had no need to move out.

Once he heard the crunch of your heels on the gravel, walking away, he sighed in relief. His feet were in pins and needles. He waited until your footsteps faded away. Then, he came out.

Your lunch box sat on the bench. Fuck! He fetched it at once. Still warm and a little heavy, probably had food inside. He ran with your thermos. Unlike his brother, he wasn't physically fit. No wonder he needed assistance from Criston to outrun Aemond at the airport. Still, Aegon ran toward the park exit. He couldn't spot you as far as his eyes could see. Beyond the gate, the sidewalk was full of pedestrians who weren't you.

You were gone.

He trudged back to the bench. He needed to sit down and catch his breath. Just as he did so, he found the folded piece of paper. A letter covered with snowflakes. Did you leave it?

“Dear Finder,
Thank you for taking my thermos lunch box. I don't know if, by the time you find it, it's still warm or not. If not, oh well. But if it's still hot, please open it...”

Aegon did. A three level lunch box. The topmost pot had a small plastic ketchup bottle.

“The first layer contains rouille, French mayonnaise that you spread on bread to eat with soup...”

The second layer had neat little slices of focaccia, sourdough focaccia, according to you. The last layer, the largest one, greeted him with a warm vapor and a scent that made his mouth water and stomach cry out. The reddish stew was piping hot.

“My Frankenstein invention, inspired by seven different seafood stews (zibdiyet gambari, brodetto alla Vastese, cacciucco, bouillabaisse, zarzuela, halászlé, and cioppino) from the cultural backgrounds of my best friend. She's such a sweet lady...”

You painstakingly described your best friend's multicultural background, from her biological origin in Gaza, Palestine, to her upbringing by her European parents, one of them French (Breton and Provençal), the other Italian (Tuscan and Abruzesse), and lastly to their immigration to the States, particularly to San Francisco. You narrated how you drew inspiration after inspiration from these backgrounds, the seafood stews those cultures had and how you cherry picked aspects from them to create your own recipe.

“You must be bored by now. I apologize. I'm a culinary nut. I should write a blog or something. Anyway, if you can, please enjoy my Frankenstein stew. I made it for my best friend as a Christmas gift, only now I cannot give it to her without hurting both of us. I don't want my labor of love to go to waste. I literally dove into the sea to fetch a stone, and cut myself while dealing with the sea urchin. Literal blood, sweat, and tears. I know I'm a stranger, but please grant me this kindness if you can. Help me let them go.

Merry Christmas.
A Charlotte York looking for her Harry Goldenblatt.”

By the time Aegon finished the letter, he'd finished half your stew. The flavors were familiar, as if he'd known the cook personally. Where? How?

He rummaged through his mind, his memories. The warm soup glided down his throat, its warmth invaded his bones and gave them a hug. Although much spicier and tastier, your creation reminded him of Sister's stew, the slapdash versions he drank at the many taverns and pubs of King's Landing, whenever he fled there to escape the drudgery of his royal life. He'd don plain, dirty clothes pilfered from the servant's quarters, and slip out through the many hidden passageways King Maegor built. Nobody would recognize him as long as his hair stayed hidden under his hood and his eyes downcast. He'd temporarily shed off his royal identity to become one with the rest of the world. A comfort in being invisible and ordinary. To be treated like everyone else. To not have to act a certain way, and anticipate slaps from his mother and grandsire for doing the opposite. To drink as much as he could and fuck as many as he could, and no brown eyes would glare at him and no silver tongue would admonish him. That was what he wanted, didn't he? To be free and ordinary. No extraordinary burden, no cage to imprison him.

Once the stew, the bread, and the mayo were gone, so was his temporary moment of freedom and normalcy. As he finished the last slice of bread, slathered with the last dollop of mayo, to wipe off the last drop of stew, he remembered where he heard your voice before, why this dish made him feel like déjâ vu.

You were the cake girl from Samantha's kid's friend's birthday party on Halloween. The feisty cat who kneed a wife beater's dick and threatened to puncture his balls with your pencil heels. The embarrassed caterer who fled the minute he offered period cunnilingus. The brilliant cook whose one slice of cake transported him back to his homeland, his happy past, his comfort spot. Your actions and creations were unforgettable. Your emotions gave him a glimpse into your soul, which he found beautiful, even though he'd never seen your face, only your back and hair and such lovely, lovely ass. He witnessed you bare your broken heart, ate your food twice, read and touched your handwriting, and shared space under the same roof and over the same bench. You were so close, yet so far away. He wasn't sated with these fleeting moments. He wanted to see your face, your eyes, what color they were, what shade, if they contained the depths your food, words, and emotions held. You'd been an elusive scent and he wanted to capture you in a bottle, a photograph in a negative film he wanted to develop and bound in a frame, a human being who felt more fantastical than real. He wanted to touch you and see if he hadn't made you up.

He took the thermos home and washed it clean. He safe-kept your letter inside an unused diary.

He knew you'd return. He was sure of it.

Old Calendar Christmas, 2024

Aegon had never felt such shame in his life before. Well, not since Aemond lost his eye and their mother slapped Aegon in front of everyone. He felt not only ashamed of himself at that moment, for failing to protect his little brother, he also felt responsible for what happened to him. He was the ringleader. He schemed with the little shits to bully his brother. Those Strong boys got so arrogant around Aemond, they maimed him for life and got away with it.

Now, Aegon felt miserable, as he pressed his ear to his front door and eavesdropped on the cakegirl.

You were here, and he knew it was you. The cakegirl who baked Samantha's daughter's friend's birthday cake, a luscious lemony goodness. The pussycat who defended a victim of domestic abuse simply with her knees and pencil heels. The sadgirl who bared her broken heart and left behind her thermos full of food, as a gesture of letting her ex and her crush go.

He finally heard you speak.

“How did he die?” you asked quietly.

The building's super stood beside you, as you knelt before Aegon's neighbor's door and placed a beautiful bouquet in front of it. He could tell it was handpicked. You were the kind of person who would put an effort for people you cared about. He could make out a card from the petals. But your handwriting was too tiny to make out from his perch behind his door, his eyes on the peephole, his ear pressed to the wood.

Your hoodie was up, as usual. Your back to him, once again. He whispered for you to turn around, show him your face, just one glimpse, please! But you kept kneeling by the flowers and asked the super about Tanel, Aegon's neighbor from across the hallway.

He remembered the grumpy old git. Tiny but full of energy and spunk. A potty mouth that cursed Aegon every time he dusted mud on top of the rug in front of the old man's door. Served him right, Aegon thought. The old man complained about his late night returns from bars or, on rare occasion, Samantha's home. Tanel whined about the loud sex and Aegon's louder companions. Until a week ago, Aegon pegged the old man as a homophobe, until they discovered him asleep for good, on his bed, under his duvet, clutching a frame to his chest. A sepia photograph of a man, not Tanel from the way he stood majestically. A gigantic man with a big moustache on a square face.
Aegon knew, at once, from the way the photo frame had left a neat little patch on the bedside table with dust everywhere else. This was Tanel's one true love. Where was he? Either far away or six feet under. No papers in that apartment told him anything about the man, not even the back of the frame. He asked the mortician if the photo frame could be buried with Tanel. They agreed when Aegon explained to them how important it was to the deceased.

Now, almost a week later, the cakegirl was here. It was after Tanel died when Aegon learned that your catering service used to deliver food to the old man. Your boxes were unmarked, no logo, so he had no way of knowing it was your service, until he stole and ate the food a week ago.

So, how did he know they were your creations? His tongue told him. His taste buds automatically detected it was your food as soon as he ate the blueberry dumplings. Not the quark stuffed pancakes. Not the delicious baked milk. It was the purplish blue dumplings and the thick, creamy sauce you delivered to Tanel for breakfast. It took Aegon two hours to finish everything. He savored each bite and, apparently Tanel had quite the appetite. By the time Aegon had finished the heavy, hearty breakfast, he was so full, he couldn't move. He sat where he was, on his couch, and took a nap. He woke up two hours later when someone knocked on Tanel's door. By then, Aegon's stomach had digested all the breakfast. He was hungry again. He peeked through the peephole. A man stood with his back to Aegon, three boxes in his hands. One of them was undoubtedly a cake box, judging by its height. Aegon's mouth watered. Your food, your food, his mind chanted, as he waited for the delivery guy to place the boxes outside and leave. Once the elevator doors closed with a ding, Aegon sprang into action. Before Tanel could come out, Aegon leaped out of his door, scooped up the boxes, and ran back inside. Just as he turned to close the door, he spotted a little girl with a green balloon, her mouth stuffed with a lollipop. Aegon timidly waved, which she didn't return, and closed the door.

He demolished half the food in thirty minutes. Again, it was a lot of food, but he was hungry for more of your creations. The soup, the mini pies, and the salad, you didn't make them, his taste buds told him. They were tasty enough. He only ate half of the savory dishes to save some spots for the dessert, which was a beautiful tall cake with the most gorgeous decorations. Bees and sugar-dusted cranberries, assembled to look like bees perching on red flowers to collect nectar. One side of the cake had golden-orange corals and golden-yellow chunks of honeycombs. A few bees perched on the combs too. He didn't bother with plates, just the plastic knife you supplied. He ate the sweet decorations, even the cranberries, by hand. Then, he cut a slice. A layered cake, nine in total. Just as he pulled out a slice for himself, he noticed the folded papers taped inside the box. A letter and a plane ticket.

“Here ya go, you grumpy old git. The honey cake you ask for every year. Just to reassure you, yes, I used orange blossom raw honey specifically ordered from the Californian orange orchard you recommended. Just so you know, it's gonna cost you extra. I even burnt some of it to make the burnt honey. For the filling, I used condensed milk instead of sugar, like you asked. This will be my first time making and using smetana for this cake. You've blown off my ears complaining about using only crème fraîche, so here you go, ya miserable old trout. Your dinner menu will be entirely Estonian. Five courses. Warning in advance, I'll finally make the sweet bread soup, Leivasupp, that you keep harping about, after weeks of searching online, no thanks to you. You could've spared me the trouble and given me the recipe yourself, ya curmudgeon Russkiy. How's this for my grand gesture of love to ya, huh? Imma charge you extra for the research labor. You better give us five stars on the Google map.

Merry Christmas.
Stay safe.
Don't give a fuck about your nasty nymphomaniac neighbor.

With love,
Your grumpy lil baker.

P.S.
Mama won a raffle at her workplace and got a Las Vegas holiday package, two return tickets, 3 day 3 night, city view premium room at Conrad hotel. I'm sending you one of the tickets. If you're up for it and plan to bring someone else, let me know, I'll send you the second one.”

Aegon gobbled up his slice. Mostly sweet like honey, a little bitter from the burnt honey, and a little citrusy from the orange blossom. The sponge was somewhat crunchy, like cookies dipped in milk. The cream was so rich and filling, he could eat only three slices and store the rest.

He ate two more slices in the evening, just as Samantha's dinner invitation came. He got ready. He peeked into the hallway. Tanel's door was closed, as always. Odd that he didn't investigate his missing deliveries. Did he go out? Aegon didn't see him leave. Then again, he was drunk as fuck last night, so he probably didn't notice.

That night, Aegon came home around two in the morning. He was so wasted, the doorman had to help him to the elevator. He declined the man's offer to get him to his apartment. He'd gone through worse. He stumbled down the hallway, empty and silent. He didn't notice the three boxes outside Tanel's door. He simply unlocked his own and went inside, not sparing a glance.

The next morning, he was the first person to spot them. The box at the top had a chit with your handwriting.

“Merry Christmas, TIM. Hope you like the dessert.

If not, shove it up your ass, or up your nymphomaniac neighbor's. I bet he'll like it.

Goodnight.

P.S. I still see no five stars from your account yet. What's taking ya so long?!”

Aegon checked the food. Most of it had gone stale. Did Tanel not come home? He called the doorman and asked if Tanel went somewhere. The doorman told him the old man was home all day, since neither him nor the nighttime doorman saw him leave. Worried, Aegon asked the guy to call the super. Once the man came, Aegon told him about the rotten food deliveries at Tanel's doorstep.

“That is odd,” the super said. “Mr. Mägi is always excited about the special holiday deliveries. He's been ordering from the same service for the last six years.” He knocked on the door and called the old man's name. No response. The super used his master key, while loudly declaring to Tanel inside what he was doing.

They found him in his bedroom, alone, peacefully gone. The super wondered aloud what happened to the breakfast and lunch deliveries. Aegon stayed silent, lest the super realize the truth. It was all in vain. Hours later, when a mortician came to take Tanel away, the little girl from the previous day told her mother what Aegon did, and the news spread like wildfire. Aegon hid inside his apartment all day, and only came out to attend Tanel's funeral at a Russian orthodox cathedral fourteen blocks away. All the neighbors attended. Most openly glared at him. Everyone knew what he did. He sat alone in the back and waited until everyone had left, before he paid his respect. It was a closed casket, something Tanel mentioned in a piece of paper on his writing desk. Aegon apologized for all the ways he annoyed the old man. When he returned home, one of his neighbors in the lift glared at him. “You're a godless little man,” she spat, before her floor came up and she left.

Now, he stood still and silent behind his front door, days after Tanel's burial.

You, the cakegirl, stood up. “He died in the morning?”

“Cardiac arrest. The coroner said he most likely died more than twenty-four hours before we found him.” He hesitated. “Did he owe you payment?”

You tentatively nodded. “It's okay. This is irrelevant.”

“He'd want you to be paid. How much did he owe you?”

You told him the amount, including the dinner dishes.

“Our delivery guy told us there was no food in front of his door,” you said. “If he died before we made our breakfast delivery, how come there were no boxes in front of his door?”

The super crossed his arms and glared at Aegon's door. He immediately ducked. He heard the man tell you how Tanel's neighbor across the hallway stole all his food, except for the dinner, which was why nobody suspected anything.

“The nymphomaniac?” you asked. “How horrid. Tanel was right about him.”

Aegon pressed his lips. All the bad stuff said about him floated to the surface.

Irresponsible. Impulsive. Drunk. Skirt chaser. Dumb. Stupid. Pathetic. Crybaby. Needy. Greedy. Fat. Gluttonous. He bit his lip to not whimper, for all those words came into his head whispered in his mother and siblings' phantom voices.

He must make amends.

He pulled out his phone and typed furiously. He sent a text to the super, an offer to pay you himself. He listened to the super pass the message to you. You reluctantly agreed and asked for cash. Aegon texted the man that he'd send the money immediately. He slid the bills one by one under his door. The super handed them to you. Not once did you turn around, your eyes on Tanel's door, as if willing him to appear magically, hale and hearty, and grumble about his insatiable neighbor who stole his food and had obnoxiously loud sex. Aegon understood, because he had wished for the same thing when he returned from the funeral.

For a week, his neighbors shunned him and shamed him. He couldn't take it anymore. He asked Samantha if she could connect him with the landlord of her building. She happily compiled.

By the third week of January, Aegon was packed and ready to move out. Though all his stuff the movers carried themselves, Aegon took a box of valuables, including pages of your handwriting and the sole plane ticket. One of the pages was the farewell letter you had penned for Tanel. Aegon took it hours after you left. He only pilfered the letter and nothing else. He let your lovely bouquet wither without water. He couldn't take them without his nosy neighbors thinking the worst about him.

“Dear Mr. Tanel Indrek Mägi,

I'm sorry for everything.

I pray for your passage to be filled with love, ease, and fulfilment. May you reunite with Juri soon. You've lived without your sunshine for too long.

Yours,
Grumpy lil baker.”

Ginuary/National Chocolate Cake Day, 2024

A pair of soft hands wrapped themselves around your waist, followed by the scent of eucalyptus and spearmint invaded your nose. The most handsome man in your life rested his chin on your shoulder, as you inspected a packet of coverture chocolate.

“Mommy, I'm hungry,” he whined.

You twisted your hand to pat his cheek. “Patience, my love. I need to be thorough with the cakes. After all,” now you turned around and pulled him closer by your arms around his waist, his chubby slutty waist, “my baby boy craves chocolate.” You kissed his forehead and he melted like dark coverture chocolate with extra cocoa butter. He rubbed his face up and down your neck, which made you giggle from the tickle. You pulled and squeezed his chubby cheeks. His silver hair was the first thing you noticed when you met him at the bar. He was so adorably beautiful, it hurt your eyes. As if Apollo had descended on earth. Thank goodness it was winter in Las Vegas.

You were inside the Walmart supercenter on Charleston Boulevard. Tonight was the last day of your short trip to the sin city. There was no way to get back the ticket you stupidly mailed to Tanel, so your mama gave you the second one and you had to take it, now that she knew you lied to her on Thanksgiving and suffered alone, in silence. Your first two days were spent with Yvonne Olsen, your mama's youngest colleague, who won the second prize, a two-day trip to Vegas. She flew back home last night, leaving you behind. You had a zoom call with your mama and girlfriends. You promised them you wouldn't stay cooped up inside your hotel room.

“You better wear that dress your girlfriends splurged on for you,” your mama said.

A perk of having girlfriends who felt guilty of your misery was getting your first LBD, with sequined suns across the black fabric. The off-shoulder neckline, the long sleeves, and the thigh-high hem had faux fur trimming. From your mama came the knee-high black stiletto boots with buckles and red bottoms. You kept your neck bare and your hair open, your lips blood red, and your eyeshadows golden and silver. You felt beautiful in a way you'd rarely felt before. Still, to strike luck on the bull's eye tonight, you finished the refrigerated pie Yvonne left for you. She'd baked it on her first night, said a gentleman let her borrow his suite's kitchen.

“The same one with whom you joined the mile high club?” you had asked teasingly.

She blushed. While you napped in the plane, she had fun in the lavatory at the back, two rows away from you. But you had your headphones and complimentary eye mask on, and the weighted blanket Yvonne had lent you (she was also autistic) hid you from the rest of the world. Once the plane was preparing to land, she woke you up. You instantly caught the after-sex glow on her.

“He's so good with his fingers,” she said, swooning. “So soft and warm.”

You were glad she had fun. She was anxious to meet you, an admirer of your lemonies and lasagna. After she learned you were also autistic, she became a fan. On your first night, she presented her freshly baked Key Lime Lemon Meringue Pie, her inspirations being your two pies that you catered to their potluck party last year. Halfway through, she revealed the secret ingredient 

“Super lemon haze!”

You almost choked on your mouthful. “This is a weed pie?”

She nodded enthusiastically. Her ponytail resembled a black Arabian's tail.

“I'm allergic to marijuana!”

“What?!” She jumped to her feet.

You laughed. “Just kidding! But you should've told me before. Some people don't wanna eat weed.”

She apologized. You forgave her and took her on a girl's night out. Once drunk, you two fucked, but you declined her offer to go any further once you were back in NYC. She understood and went out to fuck the guy from the plane, who was apparently staying at the Concord. Before she left, she bequeathed him her leftover weed and you, the leftover pie.

“He loves lemon,” she said.

Before you went out, you ate the rest of her pie. The almost instantaneous euphoria gave you much confidence. Your destination was the hidden speakeasy bar downstairs. That was where you met the most beautiful man you’d ever seen.

“Charlotte York,” you said.

“Nice to meet you, Charlotte. I'm...”

“Can I call you Harry?”

His smirk was so radiant, the entire hazy bar lit up. His silver hair almost touched his shoulders, with purple eyes you lost yourself into. His soft, deep voice sold you over. “I'll be who you want me to be, cakegirl.”
He bought you a Negroni, since it was Ginuary, something you told him. The drink was so bad, he offered to make better cocktails for free. In exchange, you offered to make him chocolate cakes.

“Cakes? As in plural?” he asked.

“Anything for my baby boy.”

“Can I call you Mommy?”

You nuzzled his nose in response. He leaned over and kissed you. Your first kiss. His lips were as soft and warm as his hands. Fuck, they gave you more high than the lemon haze, were more addictive than chocolate, and the kiss more potent than the strongest of vodkas.

Your first destination was the Walmart supercenter on Charleston Boulevard. Inside the taxi, you snuggled with him. He burrowed his nose in your hair. “Mmm, vanilla and lavender.”

You stroked your nose in his neck. “I feel full, like the east coast of South America...”

“Hmm?”

“...finally united to the west coast of Africa.”

You showed him an animated video on the Britannica website about continental drift. When he realized what you meant, he climbed onto your lap and placed his head on your bare shoulder. “My pretty, pretty sweetgirl.”

“Sweet girl?”

“As sweet as a honey cake.”

You stroked his hair and kissed his temple. “Honey cake?”

“And lemon cakes. I love lemon cakes.”

You decided to bake seven cakes, that was how energetic you felt and how strong your munchies were. When he learned your decision, he declared to make you fourteen cocktails. “They're my lucky numbers.”

“One more sign we're two pieces of a great continent, drafted apart by a cataclysm of epic proportions.”

“How prophetic.” He dipped you in front of the checkout, as the cashier put your stuff in three bags, with nine other people behind you as your witnesses. He literally dipped you, as if you were dancing a tango, the ends of your hair caressing the floor, while he kissed you deeply. The cashier's deadpan expression mirrored the shoppers' behind you. One of them even rolled their eyes and muttered, “Stupid drunk tourists,” under their breath.

Because Harry had tons of cocktails in mind, from a luggage store, he bought a big pink suitcase. Once his liquor shopping was done, he put all twenty-one bottles inside the suitcase, nestled between bubble wraps and foam peanuts. It was big enough to fit your groceries too.

His suite had a coatroom and a powder room. The kitchen was an impressive thing. You borrowed a writing pad and a pen to jot down your recipes, in case the weed in your system blurred your memory of them. You taped them on the double doors of his fridge. He got to work as well. He put the bottles on the dining table and began to make the cocktails. His first poison was Bee's Knees.

“Something lighter to start with. So it won't hit you hard.”

Just as you slid all seven cake tins into the oven, he made you a glass of gimlet. You let him lick the cake spatula. He smacked his lips and gave you a chocolatey kiss. “We should open a shop or something. I'll make the cocktails. You bake the cakes.”

“What will we call it? Cakes and Cocktails?”

“Tall Cakes and Cocktails.”

You pecked his soft lips, so soft you'd bite it off him and consume it without chewing.

“You can do anything to me, run your car over my body,” he sniffed you, his nose up and down your neck, “douse me with gasoline and set my body on fire, tie me up and cut my limbs piece by piece and even eat them. I'll let you do anything to me... Anything! My cakegirl, my sweetest girl, my sweetling.”

You nipped at his bottom lip. “Don't poke the sleeping lion, love. You'll get mauled. Now, would you let Mommy peg you?”

His breathing picked up. His gaze turned soft and pleading. “Would you, Mommy?”

“Baby boy, I thought you'd never ask.”

You went to your room, alone, to bring your strap-on dildo, aloe gel, and two bottles of lubes, one of them heated lube. You put them in the master bedroom and took out the cakes. He made you more cocktails, your favorites being Fallen Angel, French 75, and Aviation. In two hours, all seven cakes and fourteen cocktails were done and gone. You were beyond tipsy. You sated your munchies with the cakes, half you demolished and the rest he did. Only a few pieces remained. You two lazed around on his king-size bed.

“We should get up,” he said.

“Agreed.”

None of you did.

“We're here to fuck. We should move.”

“Yep.”

None of you did. The most you could do was kneel on the bed. He could only sit up.

“Cakegirl, I gotta fuck you.”

“Why do you call me that? You did it even before I suggested making the cakes.”

He sighed. “I'm the skunk from the birthday party.”

“Be more specific. I catered to tons of birthday parties.”

“The one where you defended a woman from her abusive husband.”

You giggled. “That skunk, huh? Naughty, naughty boy. You deserve punishment.”

His bottom lip pushed out, his eyes teary. “Please, Mommy...”

You stripped him. He moved not a muscle, unless you told him to, his eyes on you. As a reward, you kissed his forehead. He sighed in content. “Avy jorrāelan, Muña.” (“I love you, Mommy.”)

“Hmm, what?” You removed his boxers at last. He held his breath as you beheld him. Not yet hard.

“I'm sorry, Mommy.”

You knelt behind him and, with his tie, bound his hands. He took a deep breath. “Don't be sorry. Have you done this before, baby?”

“A few times with my fiancée.”

“You're engaged?”

“Ex fiancée. She's dead.”

You kissed his head. “I'm sorry. Do you wanna talk about it?”

“Mommy, I wanna get fucked...”

“You'll get that, baby, but you gotta release all your tensions first. Here.” Your nails gently scraped his scalp in circles, from back to front, left to right, gently, gently, covering every inch, until you reached his forehead.

“What's her name?”

“Perry,” he said breathlessly.

“Pretty name.” You slowly moved your thumb to his third eye between his brows and gently pressed. “Is it short for Perdita?” You didn't say that Perdita meant lost. 

“Pernilla, the Swedish version of Petronella. She often used Petronella as her professional name, to keep separate her personal life.”

“What does her name mean?”

“Rock. She was my rock.”

“How did you meet?”

“My mother introduced us. I was naked and hungover. I woke up alone in bed. I couldn't remember who I slept with the night before. I didn't know my mum hired Perry. She was disposing of the bottles scattered on the floor. I thought she was my one night stand. I hugged her from behind, naked...”

“Did she knee you like I did to that bastard?”

“Yep,” he said with a smile. “Mum heard my scream and ran downstairs. I was writhing on the floor, my hands between my legs...”

“That's how you met Perry.”

“That's why what you did reminded me of her.” With some aloe gel, you lightly rubbed his ears. He shivered. “Mommy...”

You blew on them, making him whimper. “If you stay quiet, Mommy won't punish you. Will you be a good boy for Mommy?”

“I-I'll try.”

You sucked on his earlobe and slid your hands to his shoulder wells. You pressed the muscles between the base of his neck and his shoulder ends. He was breathless by the time you moved onto his shoulder blades.

“Mommy...” He cried out when your elbows pressed.

“Baby boy...” You kissed between his angel wings. “You are...” Another kiss. “...such a masochist...”

He had given up on being quiet. He slumped in his seat, his hands between his legs. You let him touch himself. He was already in trouble for being vocal, not that you didn't enjoy it. Your fingers trailed down to his elbows, your destination the soft meat inside. His eyes shut, his lips parted, no frown over his third eye. You lowered your lips to his right hand, over the soft joint between his arm and forearm. He inhaled sharply when you licked and nipped at his skin, supple and sensitive. He mewled. His hands sped up, his flaccid cock slowly awakening. Your fingers pressed on the inside of his elbow, coated with your spit, a bit red from your ministrations. You moved behind him onto his other elbow and gently pulled at the skin. His cock was now fully erect. With bound hands, he pleased himself, lost in the sensation between his legs and anywhere you paid attention. While you nibbled on his elbow's inside, your hands lightly skimmed over his back, curved from his slouching. Your right finger pads pressed down his spine, while your left ones lightly scraped your nails down his back, until they reached his sacrum, one of the most underrated erogenous zones, especially if you'd already turned on your partner. With both hands on the bony plate above his ass, you licked a strip down his spine. His moans got louder the more you licked and nibbled on his spine. Your fingers massaged his sacrum. Just as your hands kneaded a handful of his hip meat, he came with a yelp. One peek at his lap told you how messy he was. You latched your mouth onto his sacrum. As his cock began to wake up, he chanted your name like a mantra.

“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy...”

His defense down, he resembled a soft, pliable mound of clay, ready to be shaped and molded. He let you manhandle him and put him on his stomach, his bound hands over his head, his face squished into a pillow. He cried out when you applied some aloe on his ass and slapped them. He almost sprang up from the bed. He sniffled, the pillowcase slightly wet. 

“Now, let's have some safe words, shall we?” You stroked his cheeks. “What would you like to say when you want me to stop altogether?”

“Daor. It means no, in my tongue.”

“Da-or.” You tasted the word on your tongue. “Daor it is. And if you want me to keep going?”

“Tolī. It means more.”

“And if you like something I'm doing and want it as it is, no more, no less?”

“Kessa. It means yes.”

“Good boy. How do I say good boy in your language?”

“Sȳz valītsos.”

You repeated the words a few times. With the boundary established, you slapped the mounds of his ass. He laid his head on the pillow, his hooded eyes on you. You slid down, until your lips reached behind his left knee. You met his eyes. His long lashes had beads of tears. “Poor little lamb.” You tsked, before you bit the place, soft and sensitive. He almost kicked you off. You straddled his feet and rubbed your wet, bare cunt on them. Your slick coated his calves. More gel on the patches behind his knees, you massaged them, one after the other. In a circular motion, you slipped down to his calves, where you gently picked at his leg hairs, soaked by your wetness. His toes curled when your fingers kneaded the muscles, down, down, until they reached the back of his heels. Your thumbs and forefingers clamped on his Achilles tendon, as if the pincers of a crab holding delicate flesh of their helpless prey. You dipped your fingertips as deep as they could go, then moved them and his flesh in a circle, again and again. His eyes closed and he began to hump the bed. You cupped the balls of his feet, as if they were as fragile as deshelled poached eggs. Without any gel or pressure, you ghosted over them, coaxing his feet to stretch and his toes to curl. You scratched up and down his soles, which made his humping speed up. With your knuckles, you swiveled his big toes, cracking them. You did it for a minute or two, then moved onto the rest of his toes. You repeated your movements, with your fingers instead of knuckles, until all the toes were shaky, tingly, and aching to land on solid ground.

“How do you feel, baby boy?” You snaked up his body. He was still humping the bed. Once you settled on his thighs, he found his voice.

“Mommy, I wanna cum.”

You decided to edge him a little. You left him, the bed, the room, to his whines. When he wiggled to an upright position, you stopped at the threshold. “Stay still. If you do, I'll let you fuck me.”

Eyes wide, he resumed his position. You gave him a flying kiss. From the kitchen, you fetched a tray of ice. In the bedroom, you turned up the radiator a little. Once the cubes began to melt, you carefully placed one on the back of his thigh. You moved it, from his knee to his ass. He shivered. You asked if it was too cold for him. He shook his head.

“Fee-Feels good, Mommy. More, please.”

You cooed at him and placed two more ice cubes on his other thigh. You rubbed them up and down, until they melted into puddles and streaks. You licked them all clean. “Time to get on your back, baby boy.” 

He obeyed you. You popped a cube in his belly button. His back arched.

“Daor?” You placed a hand on his chest.

He shook his head but his teeth chattered. You tossed the cube from his navel, wiped him dry, and turned up the heat. You cleaned his sweaty, splotchy face. He pouted when you put away the ice. “Mommy, I can handle it.”

“No.” The finality in your tone shut down all his protests. You cupped his face and he leaned into your touch, your hands still cold. “A good Mommy doesn't hurt her little boy. The same way a good boy always obeys his Mommy. Okay?”

He nodded, eager to please you. You kissed his navel and poked at it with your tongue tip. He shook when you left sloppy, sucking kisses on every few inches of his beltline. His hips bucked and he muttered, “Tolī, tolī, Muña! Tolī jaelan! Nyke tolī jorrāelagon!” (“More, more, Mommy! I want more! I need more!”)

You only recognized Tolī, so you kept going. You licked and nibbled and scratched and sucked up and down his belly, then to his chest. You gently tugged on his chest hair, a mix between his dark eyebrows and fair hair, lightly dusted over his heart. You stopped at the scars on his left side, over his heart. You somehow hadn't noticed it before. “Baby boy, who hurt you?!”

He opened his eyes lazily. When he saw you gazing at his scars, he instantly turned to lay on his stomach.

“Burn scars?” you asked softly.

“I'm sorry, Mommy. I'm ugly.”

“Never! Don't you ever call yourself ugly. You're beautiful, like the sun.” You stroked his arms. “My sweet baby. My little boy.” You kissed his nape and laid down over him. He carried your body as if you weighed nothing. You coaxed your fingers until he let you turn him on his side, your breasts pressed against his back. Your fingers inched their way to his heart. You met his eyes and asked, “Kessa?”

“Kessa, Muña.”

You smiled sweetly. Your eyes on his, you rubbed his scarred skin, over his heart. As if you were doodling a meadow of rainbow colored wildflowers, you stroked over his heart, until the organ beneath relaxed. Slowly, timidly, he laid on his back. You leaned on your right elbow and caressed his scars, his heart, his most vulnerable core. He lifted his face and captured your lips, so suddenly, you gasped at the intrusion. In the next second, you greeted the invasion with equal passion. Your hand on whose elbow you leaned on, you used it to cup his head and lifted his face, to deepen your kiss. Your left hand soothed his long healed, yet still throbbing scars. You were ice cubes to his burns, its aloe gel, all that cured and nourished him. Your lips trailed down his chin and neck, his flesh as supple and malleable as the ones inside his elbows and behind his knees. Your lips, teeth, and tongue left love bites blooming everywhere. He ghosted his lips up and down your chin to your temple. You leaned into his touch and traced your fingers to the dimple between his breasts, called the sea of tranquility in acupuncture. You settled the heel of your palm there and kneaded the place. With your heel on the dimple, your thumb and forefinger reached over to the groove just under his collar bones. A little bit of pressure, with your heel dipping and stroking him, and he was once again putty in your hands. He forgot to kiss your profile and focused on not jumping away from you because it was too much, too much for his touch-starved body. He'd rarely been worshipped with such attention and affection. He felt as if someone had skinned him alive and exposed his red, raw flesh. He couldn't think straight. In fact, he couldn't think at all. For the first time in years, his head felt blissfully empty and silent. An oddly comfortable feeling, as if you had cast nets in his mind and captured all his thoughts, only to fling them out of his system.

“Mommy?”

“Yes, my love?” Your fingers left his chest, only to pummel his lips with your wickedly light strokes. As if you were drawing over them, painting them, kneading and molding them to any shape and form you desired.

“Hurt me, Mommy.”

“Huh?”

“You're being too soft.” He hiccupped. “Other than Perry, nobody was soft to me. If they were, they'd hurt me the next second. I...” He was full-on sobbing. You pulled him to your chest, between your breasts, and let him ride out the outburst in his own volition. He stuffed his face in your cleavage and shook in your embrace. You sat up and gathered him in your arms.

“I'm pathetic!” he wailed.

“No, you're not.”

“Please, hurt me!”

“Never!”

“Please!” He looked up. “If you don't, I'll be left dry and hanging, anxiously waiting for your punishment.”

“Oh, you poor baby.” You rocked him back and forth. He sobbed and hiccupped. When the latter got too intense, you untied his hands and offered him one of your tits. He obeyed you. Like an agitated child finding comfort in a chew toy, he sucked your tit as if his life depended on it. You hissed when his teeth sank into your flesh. But you didn't mind. He needed an outlet for relief. He needed to process the sudden change in treatment. You pulled him closer, until he tangled his arms and legs around you, and clung to you like an ivy around a wall. His ass on your thighs, his cock slowly grew erect, nestled between his belly and your own. With one hand, you rubbed his back. The other you wrapped around his cock. He whimpered, your nipple teased by his tongue. You felt wetness between your legs. You traced your fingers to the base of his cock. The little bush there was soft. In a twisting motion, your fingers cupped one of his balls.

“Tell me, baby boy...”

He hummed.

“How did she treat you?”

He let go of your tit and placed his head on your shoulder. “Gentle.”

“How did that make you feel?”

“Weird.”

“Weird how?”

“It surprised me. I waited and waited for her to hurt me. Punish me. Slap me and shove me. She never did.”

“How did you react?”

He sniffled. “I tried to cut her off. She wasn't like the others. So, I got suspicious.”

“And?”

“I lashed out.”

“How did she react?”

“She lashed back. Until one night.”

You lightly squeezed his balls. They were too heavy and fat for your one hand to hold them. Still, you tried. Your fingers faced his ass. With your left digits, you stroked the tiny patch between his balls and asshole. “What happened that night?”

He rubbed his lips and nose on the column of your neck. He licked a strip to taste your sweat. “She worked for me.”

“Like a secretary?”

“Like a handler. She kept me out of trouble and, if trouble has already found me, she kept the damages minimum.”

“Like a PR?”

“Yeah. My older sister's sons...”

“Your nephews?”

“The night they got engaged with their cousins, my grandfather, my mother's father, panicked. He got anxious about the shift of power within our family, our business, and wanted me to remarry my ex-wife.”

“How did you take it?”

“I got wasted. I made a fool of myself at their engagement party. My grandfather taught me a lesson.”

“What kind of lesson?”

“See this light bump on my bottom lip.” He pointed to the right corner. You traced the small, almost invisible bump. “Busted lip. He gave it to me. Perry took care of it.”

“And?”

“The whole time she gazed at me softly. Pity gazes. She pitied me. And it came from a place of understanding. As if she too had gone through something similar. I got angry. I told her to get out whatever ugly stuff that crowded inside her head. About me. About what I did. All the ways I'm the family disappointment. She simply crooned a lullaby in her language. I pushed her away and locked myself in my room.”

“She had a key?”

“She had a key. Just as I fell asleep, she tucked me in. She kissed my head. She told me goodnight in my tongue. I didn't know she was learning.”

You smiled. “She was already into you.”

“She never voiced it. She cleaned up after every hook-up, one night stands, and flings. She never once showed envy or disgust. She did her job with a straight face, until my grandfather tried to get me reengaged to my ex-wife.”

“How did Perry react?”

“She didn't! I did. I was furious that he arranged everything without my or my ex-wife's consent. He put Perry in charge of the party decorations. She took on the responsibility without complaint. As if this was just another day. So, I did what I could do.”

“Which is?”

“I swallowed both engagement rings.” He told you how they gave him tons of laxatives to make him shit out the rings. By then, his ex-wife had backed off. His grandfather was furious, but could do nothing as his grandson humiliated him in front of important guests, including the opposing faction of his stepsister.

“How did Perry take it?”

He smiled fondly, his eyes closed, as if the reels of his memories were projected on the screen of his inner eyelids. “She was confused. She thought I still loved my ex-wife. We grew up together. But I never saw her that way. I hinted at Perry that I wanted her, but she never got it. Ironic, considering she used to mock me for my thick, hollow skull. Her words, not mine.”

“Maybe she didn't realize she also loved you back.”

“What do you mean?”

You told him about your alexithymia, about your autism. How alexithymia could affect non-autistic people too. “It means we can't detect what we're feeling when we're feeling it. We just feel the effects of those emotions. For example, Perry might've been restless inside but she didn't know how to channel it properly, so she busied herself with her work. As a distraction.”

He hummed. “Come to think of it, she was skittish that week. A bit clumsy with the decorations, so she stood aside and dictated everyone else's work.”

You slowly massaged his balls. He moaned and took up your other tit in his mouth. His hot, wet, sticky tongue licked your nipple and his warm mouth sucked you deeply. You gulped down a moan and focused on his balls. With your palm, you gently squeezed the delicate scrotum that held his balls. You tugged and tickled them. His teeth clamped down on your flesh and you couldn't keep it down anymore. You softly cried out. He met your eyes.

“Gently, my love.”

“Sorry, Mommy.”

You kissed his forehead and trailed your lips down to his nose, to his lips. He kissed you back, with equal vigor and tenderness. You let each other's tongue visit the other's mouth by turn, no hurry, no urgency, as if this night would never end. You kissed his left cheek sloppily, deeply, then repeated it on his right cheek, not before you pecked his lips once again.

“Mommy, I don't deserve this.”

“No, baby boy, you deserve everything. You deserve me, as I deserve you. My west coast of Africa, the missing half of my continent, you're mine.”

“I'm yours.”

“And I'm yours.”

“And you're mine.”

You took his chin, slightly clefted, in your mouth to suck on. He tossed his head back, his mouth parted in a silent scream of pleasure. His eyes wide open, his body squirmed in your hold. Your mouth latched onto his chin, you took him in your hand. He was so hard, hard and wet from his precum. The more you ran your fingers up and down his cock, the more he thrust his hips to your touch. Before he could cum, he grabbed a handful of your hair and tugged harshly. You groaned but kept going, pleasing him and pleasing him, until he erupted in your hand, in your delicate, stubborn hold. He screamed, literally screamed your fake name. His chest rose up and down, coated with sweat, while your hand was covered with his sticky, hot, thick cum.

“You're wicked, Mommy,” he burrowed his head in the crook of your neck, “I wanted to come inside you. I wanna please you. You've only worshipped me. Let me love you.” He sobbed. “I have so much inside me. Carve it out. Take all of them, so it doesn't hurt.”

You realized why he seemed to be aching so much. He had a mountain of love inside him and nobody to give it to, so they had hardened and pained him, like an iceberg with a poky tip. He needed to thaw them, leak them out of him so that he didn't hurt anymore. Love, when not shared, congealed into the worst kind of pain, so excruciating, so persistent, you become desperate to give it to someone. That was what made lonely people so desperate. All the love in their hearts and nobody to give it to.

You gently placed him on the bed. You laid down beside him, facing him, and tangled your legs with his own. Your wet cunt dangerously close to his cock, you laid still and let him do whatever ways he chose to melt and bathe you with his love. The moment he slid inside you, you choked and hid your face in his chest, pressed tightly against his soft flesh, as he stayed still inside you.

“You're too hot,” you mumbled, “spewing fire inside me.”

“Like a dragon?”

“Totally.”

He dragged his tongue down your nape, collected all your sweat, and sucked on your flesh. Your fingers clamped on his arms that enfolded you. You shook helplessly when he began to move. To not babble stupidly, you sucked on his nipple. His hips stuttered against yours.

“Am I making you happy, Mommy?!”

You could do nothing but moan and nod. Your lips and tongue nibbled on his pebbly nipple. He gasped and picked up his pace, as if he hoped to outmaneuver you. But you weren't competing with him, oh no. You simply wanted to not babble out stupid, impulsive, illogical declarations of love to him, a literal stranger you just met. One night stands aren't supposed to make you feel so whole, so healed, so beautiful and full of warm, soft, delicious feelings. As if, through your bodily connection, he were pumping all his melted love into yours, telling you to feel them, taste them, touch them, store them, and remember them. Remember them because there'd never be another love like this, a love like his. Remember me, remember me, remember me, was all he told you and you gave him your words. No, you'd remember him. Even if God had struck another curse of Babel on the human race, you would forget your name and your tongue, but you wouldn't forget him, the boy with silver hair and a golden soul, with fire in his blood and icebergs in his heart, an iceberg of love he couldn't melt and share, until he met you and you forged a canal from his soul to yours. When he came inside you, inside you so that you could make this tunnel permanent between your soul and his, he hugged you tight, as if you weren't real, as if you would vanish into thin air the first chance you got.

“I want to stay awake,” he whined. “If I fall asleep, tonight will turn into a dream. I don't want it to end. I want you to last forever. Endlessly, the same thing over and over again. I promise, I'll never get bored of you. You're the most unique part of my life. Not a footnote, not a chapter. You're what my whole damn book is about.”

You cupped his face and kissed him gently, so gently, as if you were kissing a sugar spun statue. “Let's do something that'll keep you awake for longer.” You turned on the stereo system in the bedroom. A familiar, joyful tune wafted out, as if you were on a merry-go-round ride. You fetched your lube and coated your hands generously with them. You put on your strap-on, and positioned him on his hands and knees. Inside his puckered hole, with one hand, you poured lots of lube. With your other hand, you took his cock, and rubbed it up and down. The more you made him relax, the more his hole opened up to your fingers. One digit inside him to its hilt, you slowly twirled it to loosen him up. His breathing hitched when you, with his permission, put your middle finger inside, then your ring finger. You shaped them like a funnel and slowly opened him up more and more, until he could take in your fingers going in and out. Just as you put all five fingers inside him, your other hand released his cock to glide a little up, to find where his bladder was. Your Dom had drilled into your head the human male genital anatomy so deeply, you easily located your baby boy’s prostate. You gently added pressure on it, not too much, enough for him to croak out your name.

He was ready.

You pushed your dildo in much more slowly than you did your fingers. Your left hand you placed on his chest, over his scars and his heart. With your right hand, you took his cock and steadily, tenderly, gave him a handjob. He couldn't stay still anymore. He lifted himself until he knelt on the bed, his torso as erect as yours. The mirror above the headboard reflected your coupling. His eyes shut, his lips chanting your name. You leaned forward without pushing the dildo in, and licked a strip behind his ear. He shuddered. “Mommy!”

“My beautiful boy. Open your eyes. See how pretty you are. Come on, baby, open up.”

He obeyed you. His eyes met yours in the mirror. He cried out, tears down his cheeks, his head thrown back on your shoulder. You left his cock and cupped his chin, to turn his face. Your tongue licked from his chin to his eyes, wiped clean all his tears, all the love he was melting for you to take. You were his goddess and this was his offering. You gladly took all he gave you, and in return, showered him with happiness so unique, as if it were a divine blessing.

“Enter me wholly, please,” he told you between hiccups.

“Are you sure, my love?”

More tears streamed down his cheeks. “Yes, Mommy!” His arm snaked around behind him to hold your head, to pull you closer, to end whatever gap between you to weld your bodies into one, because separate, you two made no sense, only together, merged and submerged in each other, until you could emerge as something new, as grotesquely beautiful as the mythological Androgynies, joined at the navel, and only made sense to each other.

Later, much later, after a hot shower and another round of him inside you, you fell onto the king-size bed in a heap, no sense of where you ended and he began. That was how you fell asleep, smiling like two silly goofballs, limbs tangled, hearts sated, souls bound, and memories seared into your brains.

Until you woke up first. The windows let in the lukewarm sun. You were naked and covered with a duvet. On the other side of the bed slept a man, obvious from his back, his head stuffed under two pillows. He too was naked, with his tasty ass sticking out. You stumbled out of bed and into the shower. After a quick tour inside the lavish bathroom, cleaned and brushed and ready to bail, you went to the kitchen. On the double door fridge, seven pages were stuck with magnets. Your handwritings, your cake recipes, with someone else's penmanship on the backs. Probably the guy you fucked last night. His writing was as messy as yours. He had jotted down recipes of one, two, three, fourteen cocktails! You glanced at the half empty bottles on the dining table. Inside the fridge were three slices of leftover cakes. You ate them all, not caring that your one night stand wouldn't have anything to eat. Eh, he was rich enough to book this suite, he was rich enough to order room service. You washed the cake platters and tore down your recipes. You crumpled them into balls and disposed them in one of the hallway trash cans on your way out. You left no notes, no trace of yourself, since you had no memory of last night after your zoom call with your mama and girlfriends.

Two hours later, you boarded the plane back to New York. Aegon Targaryen, your one night stand whose name you never learned, missed his flight. He woke up an hour after you left, just as you were checking out. He woke up alone. He couldn't tell if he fucked someone last night or had a one-man orgy with bottles of liquor. His hangover was so nasty, he hid inside the bathroom and stayed there until he fell asleep in the bathtub and woke up much later. The hotel people had let themselves in after his checkout time had passed and he didn't answer their calls. They were obviously irritated, but he didn't care. He told them he'd like to stay there one more night. He spent the day moping around, upset that his trip to Vegas ended the same way it started, no idea about his cakegirl. He thought he'd found her when he met a dark haired girl on his flight to Vegas. She told him she loved to bake, and he assumed it'd be you, his sweet, badass cakegirl. He fucked her, then she told him she was actually a kindergarten teacher and no, she never ran a catering service, she just liked to bake. He fucked her again when they both checked into their hotel, the same one, and she baked him a delicious pie. Sure, it wasn't as delicious as yours, in his mind, nobody could top you. He spent his three-day trip inside the hotel, either loitering in the lobby or sulking in the bars or restaurants. He never once went out, impatiently waiting to meet you. He was confident that if the universe kept throwing you into his path in New York, the largest city in the world, then being inside the same hotel, much smaller than NYC would yield in many more run-ins.

Oh, how wrong he was.

He finally decided to give up on you. Although he couldn't remember his second last night in Vegas, thanks to all the booze, he knew he hadn't met you. If he did, his brain, no matter how weak it was, would remember you.

He didn't realize how fickle memories were, susceptible to chemicals, traumas, and diseases.

Teddy Day, 2024

Aegon couldn't believe this was happening. Here he was, in some American restaurant with Italian ambience, having lunch with Alys Rivers of all people. Even two hours ago, he didn't think he'd run into his brother's partner in the American Museum of Natural History of all places. Now, he sat opposite Alys, more like squirmed in his seat, as their server placed two plates of raw fish appetizers on their table. Alys flashed a charming smile at the server, and thanked him. The swooning man left and Alys' brown eyes turned on Aegon.

“So...” She picked up her cutlery and began to cut her ceviche. “How are you, your grace?”

He scowled at his plate of food. He had no appetite. Sure, yeah, he was hungry. But he had no appetite for raw fish or lunch with Alys. Why was she here? Was Aemond here too? In this city? Were they looking for him?

As if she could read his mind, which, knowing her she probably did, she smiled reassuringly. “Relax, my prince. Aemond isn't here.”

“Where is he?” he asked, just to be sure.

“Westeros. Storm's End, to be precise. Striking a deal with Lady Cassandra Baratheon. She wants to invest in Vhagar, and he wants her brother and father to invest as well.”

“What about...”

“The rest of your family aren't here either, as far as I know. Relax, Aegon. Your food is getting cold.”

“It's cold, raw fish.” He picked up his fork and knife nonetheless.

“You didn't answer me. How. Are. You?” She emphasized each word, as if he were a child, or a person hard of hearing.

“Okay, until you came along.”

“That wounds my poor little heart. So, how okay?”

“I'm a hand model, if you wanna know.”

“How lovely. And I do want to know. That's why I asked, silly boy.”

“From your grace to silly boy, oh how the mighty have fallen.” Aegon ate, purposefully much louder and faster than Alys, as if his seat were on fire.

“You're my brother-in-law.”

“Soon-to-be, not yet.”

She smiled serenely. “Aemond is desperate. I, not so much.”

“How come?”

“I sense the timing isn't right at this moment. Also, because of this.” She set down her cutlery, lifted her finger, pulled out the seven-pointed star emerald ring off her left ring finger, and slid it to him. He didn't pick it up. But the server came to pick up their plates and asked if they'd like the main course now. Alys said yes. Aegon didn't move or speak until the man left. He didn't pick up the ring either. “What are you playing at?”

She tapped her fingers on the table. “I have a hunch.”

Aegon played with his teddy bear, Rosa. He bought a teddy like her from the Build-A-Bear workshop in Rockefeller Plaza this morning. The dark red teddy had her skin patterned like roses. She came with a rose scent installed inside, and a small golden heart in her arms. Aegon spent extra to buy Rosy, his teddy bear a red satin robe, since her back had a tiny tear. He remembered how much Nelly loved teddy bears. Aegon used to buy her one every Teddy Day before Valentine's. He wanted the fuzzy red robe for Rosy, but before he could ask for one, the staff behind the counter took the last one to hand it over to another employee, who left the counter to give the robe to someone else. So, he settled for the satin robe.

“Do you still miss Nelly?” Alys asked softly.

He nodded but said nothing. Their main courses arrived. Duck breast and ricotta gnocchi for him, moussaka and branzino for her. Their server asked if they'd like to order the dessert now. Alys handed the reins to Aegon, who perused the menu and distractedly asked for the panna cotta and the chocolate lava cake.

“Aegon?”

He hummed but didn't look up. His eyes were on his gnocchi, spearing two at a time.

“Silly boy, how long will you run from what scares you?”

He chewed, his eyes moving onto his duck breast. “I dunno whatcha talking about.”

Alys didn't press him. She made small talks but didn't insist on dragging any topic. While they waited for their dessert, Aegon finally took the ring.

“Why are you giving me this? I have no use for it.”

“It doesn't fit me.”

“Sorry, what?”

She told him how Aemond, in order to win against his big brother, seized the opportunity by applying prosthetics around Alys' finger to make the ring fit. “Because Otto won't let us have it unless my finger miraculously fits the ring. What a superstition your house has.”

Aegon chuckled. “Unluckily for me, the ring fit Helaena, which gave him more ammunition against our annulment.”

“Did it fit...” Alys paused until Aegon looked up. “...Nelly?”

“I never tried it on her.” He toyed with the teddy in his lap. He missed Nelly, so fucking much, especially now that he lost his cakegirl and had no clue leading to you. He couldn’t remember how your food tasted, only that it was delicious. On top of that, Nelly's mother reached out to him several times the last few months, for a blind date she had in mind for him.

“I'm sorry,” Alys said.

They fell quiet. Aegon sniffed the teddy. Scent of red rose. Nelly could never smell the rose fragrance. She found them scentless. He wondered if she'd have liked his original red rose teddy, Rosy, with a satin robe, or Rosa, the one he held now, with a fuzzy trim robe. He thanked the person who took Rosy. He didn't like satin robes, since Nelly wore them often at home.

“What were you doing at the museum?” Alys asked.

“Samantha took her kids. I came to help her juggle them.”

“Samantha Tarly, huh?” She smirked.

“Don't tell Mum about what she did for me.”

“My lips are sealed.” She pretended to zip her lips.

“Promise me.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die.” She leaned over and took his hand in both of hers. She squeezed it a little. Even this little skin-to-skin touch made him shiver. “So, what did you do at the museum?”

He told her about the exhibitions, particularly the Garden of Green one. “Emerald jewelry everywhere. Grandsire would love it.”

“I bet he would. Can I see your teddy? What's her name?”

“Rosa.” He handed her over. Alys caressed the red rose petal skin, her golden heart wristie, her satin robe. “She isn't yours, is she?”

His eyes went wide. “How did you know?”

“A hunch.” She handed Rosa back.

Aegon told her how he went to a family bathroom near the Grand Gallery, gender neutral. He couldn't get his precious teddy, Rosy, wet. So, he placed her on a sleeping elderly woman's lap outside the bathroom, where another teddy bear already sat, similar to his, albeit it had the red fuzzy trim robe wanted. By the time he came back to the sleeping lady outside, she had only one teddy on her lap, and it wasn't his Rosy. He still picked the teddy up, named her Rosa, and stroked the fuzzy trim of her robe. He didn't mind that someone else took Rosy. Maybe they wanted the satin robe more. Who knew? He certainly didn't know, until he was climbing down the front steps of the museum and felt eyes on him. He craned his neck and saw a middle-aged woman with dark hair. She stood with his Rosy, satin robe and all, while a young man with his hoodie up knelt before her, tying her shoelaces. Aegon lifted Rosa and waved at the woman, who confusedly smiled and waved back. Aegon now regretted pausing on the step, because it gave Alys time to block his path, her car parked in front of the museum. When she blackmailed vaguely to reveal his location to his brother, Aegon had to accept her lunch invitation.

Unbeknownst to him, you, his cakegirl, his sweetgirl, was the hoodie clad young man he mistook. You were under the same roof as him.

It all started two nights ago, when Valentine's week started and your mama began to pester you about your dress for the blind date. You had ordered a beautiful red velvet dress from a UK online shop. It was still in shipping. The date your mama and grandmother had found for you was supposed to reply any day now. Since he hadn't yet, you reconsidered not letting your mother and grandmother send your photo to him. Maybe he freaked out when you refused to send a photo of yourself and refused to see a photo of him. You wanted to do this the old-fashioned way, see if the first impression truly did wonders.
To not dwell on it further, you decided to spend your Saturday with your mama. She had been asking you to accompany her to the emerald jewelry exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History, ever since it started last year. You could no longer postpone it. You owed her this. She was terribly upset when she learned from your girlfriends that you had lied to her on Thanksgiving. You explained your reason again and again, even apologized. She agreed to forgive you under one condition.

“Spend a whole weekend with your mama.”

You agreed. You missed her too. Now that you had moved back in your apartment with your girlfriends, you agreed to meet with her outside the museum. You agreed to buy her breakfast, and she'd buy your tickets. The first place you went to had something called an Israeli bowl on its menu, so you went to another place not far away. Two breakfast wraps and two blueberry muffins. Your mama waited on the wide steps to the museum, where Hollywood said the exhibits temporarily come to life at night. You ate as you climbed the stairs together. She asked about the teddy peeking out of your hoodie's pocket.

“She's my gift to my own damn self,” you grumbled. You didn't tell her how you witnessed your girlfriends exchanging teddies this morning, teddies they had secretly and individually made at the Build-A-Bear workshop in Rockefeller Plaza. Surprise gifts to each other, on their first Valentine's week together. You remembered the last Valentine's you spent with Etaf as a couple. She gave you a huge bouquet of red roses, their petals you still had preserved inside pages of your favorite books. That was years ago. Now, you two were strictly, platonically friends, and she was dating Mabel.

So, you went to the same place they got their teddies from and bought, not made, your first teddy. From their website, you had preferred the satin robe, but the employee behind you told you they only had the fuzzy trim robe. So, you took it and joined your mama to view the exhibition.

The green jewelry sat like kings and queens inside their display cases. Your mama fancied the Cydonia necklace. You loved the Pongal ring and the platinum bracelet with three embedded emeralds. Once you viewed the exhibition thrice, your mama went to see the other exhibitions and you went to find the nearest bathroom. On your way, you kicked something. The clinking sound of metal on tiles echoed down the empty corridor. You squinted in the dim lights and saw it glint.

A silver ring. Upon closer inspection, it was a silver ring with a seven-pointed star emerald on it. The gem was so dark yet vivid, you could only stare as you held it in your palm. You tried to gauge its value. Probably a hundred or five hundred thousand bucks, if not more. What if this was one of the exhibition pieces? What were the chances that the museum held a green gem jewelry exhibition and an emerald ring lay alone in one of the corridors on the same floor? How did it get here? Probably someone tried to steal it (very unlikely, this wasn't Ocean 8) or it fell while moving the pieces in and out of the boxes. However it fell, you should return it. Not just because the CCTV cameras would capture you finding it, also emerald wasn't your choice of gem. As a Scorpio, opal was your birthstone.

Still, your fingers itched. It was a crime to steal the ring, but was it a crime to wear the ring for two seconds, five max? You glanced up and down the corridor, then once at the CCTV camera, before you discreetly put on the ring. It didn't fit your forefinger. A little loose. A bit tight for your middle finger. Perfect for your ring finger. You put it on and, with a smile, watched how the gem winked at you in the light, as if a grandmother sharing secrets with you, secrets others would know later on but only you were privy to it now. You gladly accepted the abstract, unknown secret. You took out your phone and snapped a selfie, a souvenir. You only had a minute before you had to return it to Lost and Found.

But first, you should show this to your mama.
You found her not far from the Garden of Green exhibition. You took her aside, showed her the ring, and told her how you found it.

“Lucky that you found it and not anyone else.” She inspected it with her glasses on. “This reminds me how much Stu wanted to propose to me with a turquoise ring. Yes, he told me beforehand how he will propose the minute his divorce was final.” She stroked the emerald. “You should take it off, sweet pea. It's an exhibition piece.”

You reluctantly said your goodbye to the ring. “If my partner doesn't give me something as pretty as this, the whole thing is off.”
Your mama giggled as you two headed for the Lost and Found office. Just outside the door, you told her you didn't go to the bathroom and your bladder was bursting, so why didn't she go ahead and submit the ring, while you went and finished your job? You two parted ways. You went to the gender neutral bathroom near the Grand Gallery. You forgot to hand your teddy to your mama. It was too late, your bladder couldn’t hold on for too long, but you also didn't want to get your new teddy dirty inside the bathroom. But keeping it anywhere unattended might get it stolen.

That was when you spotted the woman. Sitting alone on a bench, with a purse strapped over her shoulder and resting on her lap. You put your teddy gently on her lap and whispered to her (which didn't awaken her) to look after your teddy. Afterwards, when you returned to the elderly teddy guard, to your surprise, your doll had multiplied. She had a girlfriend in a satin robe, almost identical to yours, on the elderly lady's lap. You picked them up and smushed their faces to make them kiss. The bathroom door was opening behind you, so you quickly put back one of the teddies and walked away.

While you were busy with the teddy bears, your mama had submitted the ring to the Lost and Found staff. They checked their record of all the Garden of Green pieces, even other gemstone exhibitions from the past. Nothing matched the description of the ring.

At one point, one of the staff wondered aloud if this was the ring that one of their patrons lost about a week ago. They found her picture from a month prior, with the emerald ring you found snug on the long, manicured fingers of a lady called Alys Rivers. The staff (and your mama) sighed in relief. They told your mama to please wait, so that they could hand over the ring to the owner and give your mama her reward. Despite your mama's refusal to accept the reward for doing such a small thing, they didn't let her leave.

Fifteen minutes later, Alys Rivers sauntered in. Your mama's mouth fell open at how elegantly dressed she was for a museum visit to pick up her lost ring. Alys hugged and thanked your mama. She offered the reward, a thousand bucks, but your mama refused again.

“Besides, it was my daughter who found it, not me.” Outside the office, your mama told Alys how you, on your way to the bathroom, came across the ring in one of the corridors. When Alys asked about your whereabouts, your mama told her you were probably around here somewhere. Alys asked if she could meet you. Your mama hesitated.

“You see, ma'am,” she cleared her throat, “my daughter did something embarrassing.” She hesitantly told Alys how you put on the ring and it fit you perfectly.

Instead of irritation or amusement, Alys displayed curiosity. “Which finger? Which hand?”

“Her left ring finger. I'm so sorry, my daughter can be silly sometimes...”

Alys squeezed your mama's hands. “It's okay. I was just curious. I lost the ring because it didn't fit me. See.” She demonstrated what she said.

“You can always alter it.”

“No, it's an heirloom from my partner's family. They're a superstitious bunch. They'll never allow it.” She told your mama how House Hightower, a noble European family, passed down this ancient heirloom generation after generation, from son to son. Whoever married first and their betrothed’s fingers fit the ring would win it, thus encouraging the scions of the family to marry as early as possible. And if the ring fit your betrothed’s finger, you got to keep it in your bloodline, blessing the marriages of your descendants. Alys’ grandfather in-law won it fair and square, despite being the second son, so he had the last word on whom to pass it to, either his sons or grandsons. His sons were either still unmarried or the ring didn’t fit their wives’ fingers, so he gave it to Alys’ fiancé, the second son of his only daughter. If deceit was used to fit the ring, the marriage would be cursed. If the ring fit on the first try without subterfuge, the union was fated and blessed, like Alys’ grandfather in-law’s marriage, no matter how short-lived it was.

“I intend to the right thing,” Alys said, “so thank you for finding it for me.”

After Alys left, your mama found you on the wide staircase at the front entrance. You met her halfway and knelt before her. “Your shoelaces are open! How did you not notice?! You could've tripped and fallen!” You handed her your teddy and began to tie the laces.

You didn't notice Aegon passing you by, nor did you catch the exchange between him and your mama. Once you tied up her laces, you two linked arms and headed for the Italian restaurant your mama had booked a table for lunch. You passed by Alys blocking Aegon's path, but you didn't notice. Alys, on the other hand, saw you. She was good at remembering faces. She was confident she'd recognize you when you'd return to her good brother's life, as her gut instincts said you would.

You didn't know this. You strolled with your mama to the restaurant. On the way, she told you the ring wasn't an exhibition piece, rather it belonged to a patron.

“Oh, how nice,” you dryly replied, jealous that the ring would grace someone's hand. Better, in your mind, that they stayed locked and lonely inside a glass case and an iron vault, than on some dazzling woman's perfect fingers.

As if she could sense the drop in your mood, your mama ordered for you. You stabbed your Sicilian meatballs and ate sullenly.

“Cheer up, sweet pea.” She patted your hand.

“I'm sorry. It's just...” You toyed with your teddy. “They've moved on.”

Your mama glanced at the teddy and understood. Etaf and Mabel, you were still heartbroken over them. “Of course they will, darling. You can't blame them for it.”

“I'm not! I'm mad at myself. I can't move on. My stubborn ass refuses. It's pathetic.” You put away the cutlery and covered your eyes.

Your mama decided to change the topic. “Did you receive your dress yet?”

You laughed wryly. “Whatever for? The guy my father's mother has in mind for me hasn't replied yet. When will he? The date is on Valentine's day, February 14. Today is February 10. Either he's the biggest procrastinator in the world or he's not interested. Can't you find someone else for me?”

Your mama tried to cheer you up with food. But you were so damn tired. “I'm pathetic. I'm so desperate for romantic love, I'm being an ass to you. I'm sorry.”

Your mama kissed your hand. ”Don't worry, darling. Stu was just like you. I'm used to grumpiness.”

With a grimace, you picked up your fork and knife to dig into your chicken marsala and creamy polenta. Just as you were about to ask for the dessert, your mama's phone chimed. The name on the screen said Mrs. Gyldenløve. Your mama looked at you as if for permission. You rolled your eyes and told her to answer it. She went to a corner to speak. Five minutes later, she returned, smiling brightly.

“He's ready,” she told you.

You rolled your eyes. “What brought on the sudden change of heart?”

Your mama shrugged. Your grandmother hadn't told her, since the man himself didn't tell her. You chalked him off as the world's biggest procrastinator.

Little did you know, about a block away, Aegon was having desserts with his soon-to-be good sister, who encouraged him to take the ring.

“Helaena would never marry again. Daeron bowed out long ago, with no desire to return. Besides, you're the eldest. You should have it.” Alys pushed the ring back to him.

Aegon didn't pick it up. Their server returned with their panna cotta and chocolate lava cake. Before he could dig in, Alys taught him a trick. “Cut the cake. Let the chocolate ooze out. Mix with the panna cotta and the passion fruit juice.”

He did as she said. The tart juice cut through the rich chocolate. “Thanks for the tip.”

“You're welcome. Now, are you going to take it?”

“Why are you so insistent about this? What are you planning?”

Alys gave him a cryptic smile. “The Hightower family believes that if the ring is not worn for one generation, its magic wanes, magic to bestow its wearer with marital bliss.”

Aegon scoffed. “Old wives tales.”

“Maybe. But the ring is an heirloom. Don't disrespect it.”

“Like how you and my brother did?”

“Exactly. You must appease it. Find the finger for it.”

Aegon stared at the dark green gem. It winked at him in the light, telling him to join it on a mischievous journey. What fun it'd be! Against his better judgement, he picked it up. “On one condition.”

“Name it.”

“Your visit will remain a secret. That you found me here, that we had lunch and talked, anything and everything related to my stay in this city, you'll keep them as secret, even from Aemy.”

“He doesn't like being called that.”

“Promise me, Alys!”

She smiled, unruffled. “I promise, your grace.” Aegon's phone screen lit up. An unknown number from out of the country. “Shouldn't you pick it up?”

He took a deep breath, pocketed the ring, and got up with his phone. By the end of the call, he had something to look forward to.

A blind date on Valentine's day.

Chapter Text

Valentine's Day, 2025

Darren's phone camera had the flash on. He didn't know. So, when you blinked, your eyes appeared to be closed, as you held up the t-shirt, your prize for successfully completing the Big Fat Bastard challenge, to eat a large meal of fish and chips in fifteen minutes all by yourself. As the whole celebration charade came to an end, you went back to your corner table and put on the t-shirt. Thankfully, you were still in your wheelchair, your knees wrapped with bandages and braces.

“If you don't mind my asking,” a British blonde leaned over her table, “what happened to you?”

You smiled wryly. “I didn't check both sides before I began to cross the street.”

The woman's face softened. “I'm so sorry.”

“Grade three anterior cruciate ligament tear, with meniscus tear on the sides.” You lightly patted your banged up knees. “I had surgery. Regional anesthesia. I was awake the whole time, and felt nothing from the waist down.” Which was a lie. You felt everything, just not the physical stuff. The knee arthroscopy had lasted only an hour. The surgeons mended the tears in a blink. The whole time, you stared holes into the ceiling. You wished to have Cyclops' optic blasts, to burn down this whole fucking world. Or whoever was up there, penning your stupid fucking fate. The whole time, your mama was pacing outside, exhausted from having a daughter who kept risking her life. She was disappointed when you told her you were simply careless while crossing the street. The truth would imprison her inside her paranoia. You couldn't have that. It had only been a month since you and your mama returned from Sweden. She immensely enjoyed herself. You couldn't take it away.

The blonde woman patted your hand. You itched to claw her painted fingers off your own. Thankfully, Darren returned just then, with two takeout boxes.

“They gave us the last of their kedgeree, and steak and ale pies.” He knelt before you. “Are your knees hurting?”

You shook your head.

“Ready to go home?”

You nodded.

He put the takeout boxes on your lap and wheeled you from behind the table. You'd never used wheelchairs before. There was a first time for everything, like realizing how fucking bumpy even the smoothest sidewalks were to a wheelchair user. Or how fucking inaccessible most buildings were.

“Oh, is that your boyfriend?” the blonde asked.

“Yes,” you replied before Darren could.

“You make a lovely couple,” she said like your mother would.

You thanked her and left the restaurant. Darren pushed you to an intersection and waited for the red light.

“I don't believe you,” he said.

“What?”

“You weren't being careless. You're the most responsible girlfriend I ever had. My mom and both grandmothers wanted us to work out.”

You smiled. “That's good to know.”

“So, what is it? How did this happen?”

You ran your nails gently down the boxes of food. You had no appetite left. “I'll tell you if you do something for me.”

“What?”

“Take me to Gramercy park.”

Outside the walls, you cursed your luck. You hadn't brought your key. You wondered if you could ask the nighttime doorman of the building across the street to help you out. But that might alert him, if he was still in the States. And you weren't ready. Not yet, not yet.

“Will you tell me now?” Darren parked you two outside the boundary wall. You stared into the dark of the park. Trying to locate the statue, the damn fucking statue that Aegon commissioned for the love of his life, which would never be you.

“Today's the day I met him.”

“Gregory?”

You nodded. “I got stood up at my blind date. I dined alone. I went to the bathroom, gender neutral, where I found him fucking a married woman.” Your lips wobbled. You put on your hoodie, to hide your face from Darren. “His recital was today.”

“Huh?”

“He's a musician. A pianist. I was his page-turner. We had rituals. I'd buy him bouquets of flowers, tie his tie in the Elderedge knot, and fold his handkerchiefs in the Birds of Paradise fold. I'd turn the pages of his sheets. He'd bow before the audience with me, as if I were his equal. Then, we'd eat the cakes I'd bake for him and take a nap together. We did none of those this year.”

Darren cupped one of your cheeks with his hand. His thumb stroked your face. “What happened?”

You leaned into his touch. “He didn't hire any page-turner, nor did he memorize his notes. He used an iPad. The thing malfunctioned in the middle of his performance. He stormed out. His sister sent me the video, her first contact with me in months.”

“I see.”

“His recital was a disaster and it's all my fault.” You glanced at your knees. “I was in a dilemma all night last night. Only at seven in the morning did I make a decision. I wanted to go to the Union Square Market. I spent the whole night awake, so I fell asleep in the subway. I got off at the 34 St. Herald Square. I decided to walk to the market. I saw and heard the taxi. Something inside me shut down. I decided to not move and they didn't pull the brake in time. The next thing I knew, I was in a lot of pain, laying on the road, people screaming, running, lifting me. Sirens, or just one ambulance's siren. They checked me. Did the physical exam, and a CT scan. My meniscus and ACL were torn, the second one completely, grade three. They had to do a surgery. Hours later, you were passing by my room. I called your name. Now, here we are.” You met his eyes, as dark as yours. “I'm pathetic, aren't I?”

“Yes. I'm sorry for what happened.”

You handed him the takeout boxes. “Can you do something for me?”

“Depends.”

“You've always been great at rock climbing.” You glanced at the boundary walls.

He snorted. “You want me to dump these inside?”

“There's a tiny statue under some elm trees. A statue of a couple. Not the large one of Edwin Booth. Place these boxes by the couple's statue.”

He left you and swiftly, nimbly climbed the boundary walls. You kept watch, until he returned not long after.

“Where to next?” he asked cheerfully.

“Take me home.”

He hired a cab and helped you in. You laid your head on his chest. “You never told me.”

“What?”

“Why were you in the hospital?”

He inhaled, then exhaled. “I have testicular cancer. My docs suggested orchiectomy.”

“Huh?”

“Cutting off my balls.”

You held him tight and he held you back. The top of your head felt wet. You rubbed your hands up and down his arms.

“You should store them.”

“Hmm?”

You lifted your head. “Freeze your swimmers. If you wanna become a father some day, you'll have an option.”

“Okay.”

Back in Gramercy, Aegon Targaryen was wide awake, scrolling through Google to find a dessert dish to make from sourdough discard. Sunfyre had accumulated too much and Aegon couldn't throw all away. So, he distracted himself with Google search results. Before this, alone in his apartment, he had watched the video of his disastrous recital on repeat. He blamed you for it. For not being here. He hugged Rosy and Rosa, and glanced at Sunfyre. “Your mother is an awful woman. I hate her.”

Sunfyre said nothing. Helaena had offered him Dreamfyre, but she bonded with the puppy much more than Aegon ever could, and his sister-wife needed Dreamfyre more, now that Maelor was born and they had no reason to stay married. Helaena had filed for divorce a week ago. Despite the opposition, overtly from Otto and covertly from the High Septon and the Council of Faith, the King, the Queen, and the Princess of Dragonstone had supported him and Helaena. Now that Maelor was born, Helaena and Aegon also told the twins the truth of their parentage. Jaehaera hugged him tightly, happy that her favorite uncle was actually her father. Jaehaerys raged on for days. Helaena and Alicent gave him time and space to process this. Aegon stayed away.

He fed Sunfyre before he put the jar inside his fridge. Your cakes, lemonies, and casseroles were long gone. The fridge was mostly empty, like before your arrival. He took out a bottle of Martell and was about to drink from the bottle, when he saw two shadows by the park's boundary walls. One of them was in a wheelchair, the other knelt before them. At one point, the abled man, with two boxes in his hands, began to scale the walls. Aegon felt like he should alert the security. But he stayed rooted to his spot. The only things he could do were watch the whole thing unfold and sip from his Martell. Not long after, the trespasser returned. He hired a cab and wheeled his disabled friend inside. The car drove away.

As if he'd been released from a spell, Aegon could move again. He went downstairs, then to the park. What if they were terrorists? What if the boxes had bombs? Or something illegal like drugs or body parts? His imagination ran wild, as he ran inside the park and searched everywhere. He found them in front of his statue of Hellelil and Hildebrand. With a flashlight, he one-handedly opened the boxes.

Food. They were food. Two hand pies, and some sort of rice and fish dish. The boxes came with plastic cutlery and napkins. What if they were poisoned? Why were they here?
Aegon spread out the complimentary napkins. Inside, he found his name in someone's handwriting. Not yours, definitely.

“For Gregory A. Teanan.
She's sorry.”

Aegon sighed, both in relief and disappointment. These were from you. You had watched his performance. Were you in the audience? Or did you see it online? No matter, this was embarrassing. For you to see him crash and burn without you.

Aegon Targaryen sat down in front of his statue of star-crossed lovers, and ate the food his own had left for him, your apology.
The next morning, he called Alicent and asked if he could come back home. The Queen was beyond ecstatic.

Valentine's Day, 2026

Most people didn't know this, but you and YouTube had a decade long enmity, ever since they suspended your account after you (justifiably) dropped F bombs in a comments war with a bunch of TERFs. Since then, you vowed to never open another account. You kept that vow even now, as Ruth Choi, your soon-to-be mother-in-law, showed you the channel that was basically Julie Powell-ing all the recipes from your blog, The Dessert Island. Ruth had left half an hour ago to feed her own mother, Darren's oehalmeoni, who often held cook-offs with you of non-Korean dishes (because let's face it, nobody could beat Grace Kwon in her own cuisine). It was also her who taught you how to make kimchi.

The day was almost over. Aegon didn't show up at Gramercy park, where you had waited for hours, alone, watching couples stroll by, inside and outside the park. The statue of Hellelil and Hildebrand remained the same. Your fingers itched to dig out the thermos you had buried near it. But it wouldn't be right. Not yet. Tempting fate the last time almost crippled you. So, you trudged back home to Darren, who knew you still loved Aegon and didn't demand you to love him. You two got together only because he was sick and nobody would marry him, his last wish, now that he had no balls and was dying. He was one of your best friends, asleep next to you at the moment, while you relaxed in his recliner.

You watched a pair of white hands carefully (and a bit slowly for your liking) mix the ingredients for your version of Kladdkaka, Swedish chocolate cake, one of the first recipes you mastered during your months of rest and relaxation in your father's homeland. You had spent almost the entirety of 2025 posting dessert recipes from all your heritage, currently stopping at 364 recipes. At the moment, your blog had more than a thousand subscribers and someone was Julie Powell-ing your recipes. Life was good, even though Darren was sick and nobody knew who you really were. Whenever you'd make guest posts for some big-time food bloggers, you'd never reveal your real name, always writing under a pseudonym. Penelope Paige Turner, or P.P. Turner. Never a photo of yourself was attached with the About the Author section. Sure, Darren's family knew who P.P. Turner was, but they were great at keeping secrets, proven many times over the years. Even to their friends and neighbors, Grace and Ruth introduced the author as someone they just came across, not as their only grandson/son's fiancée.

You watched your Julie Powell make a smooth batter for Kladdkaka. Your version had cherry, chilli, and licorice in it, a homage to your favorite Swedish candy, Röd Chili. This video was the fourth from their channel, AntsInMyPants. Weird name for a channel that was all about Julie Powell-ing someone's food blog. But you didn't care much. You had a Julie Powell among your fans and that was what you wanted. It was your blog that helped you pitch your debut cookbook to your publishers, despite having no agents in your corner. Initially ashamed, you let your older sister introduce you to a publisher she knew in the States, so you had a book deal before an agent, which came faster and easier than it normally would, because of your book deal. Nepotism had its perks, as Sylvie Choi, Darren's chinhalmeoni, his other grandma, liked to remind you. She didn't approve of the upcoming deathbed marriage of her only grandchild and wanted you to do more, like carry on Darren's legacy by getting pregnant with his frozen sperm (he had his orchiectomy last August). Nobody else in his family pressured you like Chinhalmeoni did.

With the Kladdkaka cake baked and decorated (just the frosting), the YouTube video came to an end. Never once did your Julie Powell reveal their face or voice. You only saw their hands. The camera was positioned above the person's hands. No voices to narrate, no comment about the process, only reaction captions on the screen, alongside the ingredients and the instructions. Classical music played in the background, inside a kitchen with a wallpaper so generic, they gave you no clue about your Julie Powell.

Oh well, you didn't mind that much. You watched all 364 videos they had uploaded, one for every day until today. The latest one was your Citronmåne cake, Danish lemon moon cake, another recipe you collected during your grand tour of Scandinavia. Your Julie Powell admitted in the description box how much they loved lemon and the moon, so this cake was now one of their favorites and they had you to thank for. You couldn't help it. You had to leave a comment.

“Hello, this is PP Turner (not my account, it belongs to a friend 🙂). I just wanna thank you for all you've done with my recipes. I feel like Julia Child.”

An hour later, Ruth told you that AntsInMyPants had replied to your, well, her comment on their latest video.

“AntsInMyPants: Oh wow ms. turner i never thought this day would come, thank you for watching my videos, i feel honored <3 can't wait to cook more from your recipes, you introduced me to so many dishes i never knew existed”

You left a like. You wished you could tell them about your yet-to-announce two book deal, the first one for Westerosi cuisine in general, the second book highlighting Westerosi regional specialties. There weren't any cookbooks on the Westerosi cuisine by any outsiders. You were hesitant at first, but Helaena and Daeron gave you permission to introduce their cuisine to the rest of the world, since their own citizens couldn't risk it without being shunned by the royals and the nobles. You were an outsider with intimate knowledge of the country, with no strings attached. Nothing could their royals and nobles do to you. The siblings were also teaching you how to speak in High Valyrian, something that helped appeal your book to the executive board of your publisher, since knowing High Valyrian proved that you were no ordinary cookbook writer. The two siblings helped you with the recipes too, collecting them from their own cooks and chefs, including anecdotes about the dish's history and their current status in the country. Aemond even gave you, through Helaena, his permission to reveal to the world his favorite dessert: Tyroshi honeyfingers. He was in the most jubilant mood at that time. Alys had survived the difficult, lengthy childbirth and gave him a son, Aemon Targaryen. She wanted more, but Aemond had to put his foot down to not risk her life again. She still considered using surrogacy while she still hadn't hit menopause.

That night, as the clock struck midnight, meaning another year had passed without reunion between you and Aegon, you sat down to post your blueberry boy bait recipe. You decided to give AntsInMyPants a surprise and posted a bonus recipe, Orange Delight cake, otherwise known as Pig Licking Cake. Two days later, Ruth would show you the two videos that AntsInMyPants had posted, of your boy bait and your pig licking cakes. That same night, you approached Darren after dinner. “I'm ready,” you told him.

His eyes filled with tears, he hugged you. “Chinhalmeoni would finally get off your back.”

“Part of the appeal,” you joked.

True to your words, Chinhalmeoni finally gave you her blessings. “I'll teach you how to make sujebi noodles,” she only said, with a little lift off the corner of her lips. Ruth, across the room, winked at you.

You had done it. You had won over matriarchs of both the Kwon and the Choi families.

Later on, you emailed your editor that you wanted to dedicate your cookbook to your Julie Powell. She accepted it.

Two weeks later, halfway across the world, in King's Landing, Prince Aegon Targaryen sneaked into the royal kitchen a crate of marionberry shipment straight from Oregon. A week ago, his favorite dessert blogger, P.P. Turner had posted a marionberry pie recipe. But he had no marionberry to cook with. So, he postponed that recipe and moved onto the subsequent ones. Now, looking at the purplish black berries in a crate, he smiled. He first came across The Dessert Island when he was desperately looking for a sweet sourdough discard recipe last year. Sunfyre was the only remnant of you in his life, the only living remnant, your firstborn together. As he was looking around, he stumbled across a blogger who made sourdough discard blueberry clafoutis. Aegon had previously eaten cherry clafoutis, not the blueberry one, let alone made from sourdough discard. He couldn't enter the royal kitchen in daytime, so he made use of the nightly desolation. He used background music to mask any and all sounds that could incriminate him. With help from Luke and Baela, the resident budding filmmakers, he set up a camera above the kitchen counter and stove, which remained hidden during the daytime shifts by a fake cabinet panel. So far, nobody else had found out about his secret, not even his siblings, who would feel offended that he sought help from his nephew and cousin, not them, especially Aemond. But Aegon knew Helaena and Daeron kept in touch with you regularly. He didn't want you to know that he was learning to cook for you, so that when you came back, he could take care of you too. He didn't want to remain a burden on you. He wanted to impress you with his skills. He envisioned the shock on your face, shock and a bit of awe, as he would whip up delicious desserts after desserts. Luke promised to snap a photo of you, or a video, to keep the moment alive forever.

Two weeks ago, on Valentine's day, his second one without you, he wanted to fly back to Gramercy and reunite with you in the park, right in front of the statue of Hellelil and Hildebrand. But he couldn't do it, for twofold reasons: firstly, Viserys was gravely ill. His doctors said he might not make it this time. Rhaenyra had left Dragonstone and permanently settled back in King's Landing, which put both factions in the same place at the same time. Though the succession crisis had somewhat abated, thanks to his renunciation and declaration of (retractable and conditional) support to Rhaenyra, as well as the deals between the two factions, tensions still remained, especially between Otto and Corlys, and Aemond and Luke. With the King probably in his deathbed any moment now, the Princess and the Queen took turns to care for the dying King, and things had been civil between the two women. Rhaenyra, without Daemon's dark shadow, was much more gracious to her siblings and stepmother. Alicent, with the greatest threat to her children's life gone forever, similarly was much more receptive of the peaceful resolution than she wouldn’t have, had Daemon been here. So, everyone collectively agreed. Daemon was the venom that needed to be sucked out of their lives. With Otto and Corlys defanged as well, things were relatively peaceful.

But the biggest reason Aegon didn't go was because he wasn't ready. Going back to you unhealed would be unfair to you. No, he wanted to reunite with you as the kind of man you deserved, not a crybaby, cowardly absentee father, like his own. So, he endured the day by restlessly rewatching all his YouTube videos, and only felt the tension leave him when his favorite food blogger, through one of her friends' accounts, commented on his video of Kladdkaka. He never expected this in his wildest dreams. He was grateful. If his idol herself gave him her stamp of approval, how could you not? He itched to send you, through either of his siblings, the revelation that he had a whole YouTube channel of a thousand subscribers who watched him Julie Powell a dessert blogger's recipes for a whole year, just to know if it'd make you proud. He held back, after Aemond gave him his ears to vent to.

Aemond was working in his office, his kid strapped to his chest, Alys asleep in the room next-door, while Aegon paced around and told his brother his dilemma. He didn't reveal the details, only that he did something that would make you proud, but he was wondering if he should reveal it to you now, or wait until he would become the man you deserved.

“Do as you please.” Aemond had bags under his bloodshot eye, even though Aemon was the most well-behaved kid in the world.

Aegon took pity on his brother and took his nephew from his papa to give the one-eyed prince some nap time with his wife. Aegon took Aemon to his aunts and cousins. Jaehaerys and little Viserys ignored the baby. Jaehaera and little Aegon cooed over their newest cousin. But Aemon preferred Maelor and Visenya the most, which was mutual. The three cousins stacked Legos. Helaena embroidered pillowcases for all seven children. Aegon practiced on his piano across the hallway. So absorbed everyone else was in their tasks, they didn't hear Helaena croon.

“Maya and Mina, please don't cry,
Tears are water, they shall dry.
Maya and Mina, when you arrive
Your mother will know how to survive
So, Maya and Mina, love is magick
What builds our life brick by brick.”

Valentine's Day, 2027

Aegon poured the tea into two long glasses. He didn't have anything in his fridge or pantry, only Sunfyre in his jar, or else he'd offer some to his guest. He could hear, from his kitchen, the piano technician rooting around in his toolkit, humming to himself. The unruly ginger bush on his face and head didn't exactly scream piano technician, let alone a Registered Piano Technician, aka someone who went through rigorous exams such as a written exam, a tuning exam, and a technical exam, meaning he was a member of the Piano Technicians' Guild, something Aegon didn't know existed until two days ago, when he booked an appointment with the man. Jeremy Ford, he said his name was, with a smile that blinded Aegon instantly, before the man took Aegon's hand in his own and shook it. His big, meaty fingers with calloused skin told Aegon the man spent an awful lot of time woodworking too. He admitted to it, after Aegon couldn't keep a lid on his pot of simmering curiosity.

But Jeremy Ford didn't mind. He enjoyed the questions. He seemed to enjoy his line of profession too, something he had been doing for thirty-four years now, which was how old Aegon would be next year.

“Here you go, sir.” Aegon handed over the glass of berry sun tea, a recipe from long ago.

Jeremy Ford stood up from his kneeling position by the Steinway. He smiled blindingly and accepted the tea. “Blistering hot today, ain't it, Mr. Teanan? And it's only February. Lord knows where our mother earth is heading.” He finished the tea in one gulp, while Aegon stared and took slow sips from his own. “My word, this is some excellent sun tea.”

“You can tell it's sun tea?”

Jeremy Ford nodded. “My soon-to-be missus makes us sun tea every chance she gets. Yours tastes a lot like hers. Thank you.” He kept the glass on a coaster on the coffee table, away from the Steinway he'd labored over. “Now, I've installed the Dampp Chaser under the piano. The dehumidifier will keep your baby nice and dry. Do remember to tune it once a year.”

Aegon nodded. It had been two years since he lived in NYC. The last two years he spent either in Westeros or around the world, touring, playing, establishing himself in the global classical music community, gaining fame. He was nowhere near as his contemporaries and had no desire to aggressively compete with them. He had only won one small-time competition out of the eleven he participated in, and that took away two months of his life. His disastrous American recital still left a bitter taste in his mouth. So, he kept himself busy. Gaining experiences, forming connections, making his mum proud, building bridges with all of his siblings, including Rhaenyra, raising three kids with Helaena, finally divorced from him, and staying away from his grandsire's schemes to get his oldest two grandchildren remarried. Life had been busy, not enough to forget NYC but enough to avoid it. And avoid it he did, most of the time, until he had to return for one performance recently. An invitation he couldn't refuse. The recital took place last night. An intimate venue with only twenty people in attendance. No recording, except for in personal cellphones. That too allowed only after the performance. Aegon would've bolted right after the recital, but his Steinway, neglected and abandoned in his Gramercy apartment, demanded attention via swollen keys, swollen from moisture. According to the first guy he brought, a piano tuner, this was the job of a piano technician. He introduced Aegon to Jeremy Ford, one of the most experienced Registered Piano Technicians in NYC. Jeremy couldn't make time until today, since his wedding was less than a week away. Aegon didn't mind. He could stay one more day. He did stay, cooped up inside his apartment. Once Jeremy Ford's work was done, Aegon would leave via his brother's private jet, back to Westeros.

“Are you, by any chance, Gregory A. Teanan?” Jeremy Ford asked.

Aegon smiled wryly. He should be used to the little fame he achieved. But he could never get used to it, despite being born as a prince. “That's me,” he said as politely as he could.

The man grinned. “Oh, my fiancée is a huge fan, sir. She attends every single concert of yours, solo and group, whenever it is in this city. She's never missed one.”

Aegon's heart softened. A dedicated fan. He should treat them right. “Thank you for your kindness.”

The man waved a hand in the air. “Kindness, please?! You're magnificent! I'm not a fan of classical music, despite my choice of profession, but I did enjoy your sole original creation. Something melancholic and incomplete about it. I know the critics were brutal about the last part but that's the feeling you intended. You want your listeners to feel incomplete to actually enjoy melancholia.”

“Very philosophic of your wife.”

“It was actually my step-daughter who said that. Would you mind if I take a photo with you? They'd love it...”

Aegon immediately shook his head. He didn't do fan photos, out of fear that someone would find out that he, a prince of Westeros, moonlighted as the pianist called Gregory A. Teanan, and expose his real identity to the rest of the world. Sure, his rejections pissed off some people, but it showed him time and again who his true fans were. “Sorry, I don't take photos.”

Jeremy Ford lifted his hands in surrender. “My apologies. I made you uncomfortable.”

“It's okay, don't worry.” He still felt bad for turning down such a dedicated fan. “I can give you an autograph, if you want. But you can never tell anyone else that I did it. An exception for your wife's dedication and your labor here.”

Jeremy Ford smiled at once, lighting up the gloomy room. He produced a small notebook and a pen from his kit, and handed them over.

“What's her name?”

“Nadia.”

Aegon signed while Jeremy continued to talk.

“She's the best, I tell you. I'm so lucky to have her. So late into life I waited for the right person. Everyone around me was like, oh Jeremy, give up this pipe dream, be a man, just marry a hot girl. But my mama raised me well and I ain't gonna marry a woman I'll never love. I followed her words to a tee and met Nadia at a speed dating event. I never looked back. Now, here I am, about to be married in five days.”

“Congratulations, sir,” Aegon said absentmindedly while trying to conjure sweet words for Nadia, his big fan.

Jeremy hesitated for a second but Aegon didn't notice. “Y'know, her daughter is an absolute angel like her mama. Such a sweet girl. She's the reason my Nadia attended that speed dating event. I'm so grateful to her. She's such a lovely lady but fate has dealt with her harshly. She lost her husband not long ago and is pregnant with his twins. Say, would you, um, I dunno, would you be interested in having her number...”

Aegon snapped the notebook shut and handed it over with the pen. He avoided the man's eyes, so as not to seem unkind to a pregnant widow. “I'm sorry but I'm, uh, I'm not dating anyone anymore. A hiatus of sorts, after my last relationship ended tragically.” His voice shook. He could never speak about you without his tear ducts bursting. “She left me to fix herself and I'm still waiting for her.”

At once, Jeremy's face displayed pity. It soon morphed into something else. Awe. Understanding. “Then, you hold onto her, young man. Patience is bitter but its fruits are sweet. I'll pray at my next Sunday mass that God reunites you and your beloved soon.”

Aegon smiled gratefully at his genuine well-wisher. “Thank you, sir. You're too kind. I'll need all the luck and prayers I can get.”

Jeremy packed up and confirmed he received the payment that Aegon Venmo'd. He wished Aegon luck once again before he left in his Mini Paceman Cooper D. Aegon came back to his piano. Alone, he began to play Se Jaedos Vēzendio (The Summer Sunset), his sole creation for you.

Meanwhile, Jeremy Ford, in his car, called his wife, Nadia. But in her stead, you, her pregnant widowed daughter, answered.

“Hi, Jere. Sorry, Mama is out. I have this crazy craving for mango lemon pudding,” you said breathlessly as if you were doing push-ups. But Jeremy knew it was just you doing the dishes or folding the laundry, because that was all your mama, his fiancée, ever let you do these days. Carrying twins in your tummy was no piece of cake, no sirree!
Jeremy laughed. “Nothing you crave is ever crazy, young lady. You're at home, right?”

“Uh-huh, but I will have to leave soon.”

“Oh yes, the mystery shrine you visit every Valentine's day.” He realized the error in his joke when you decided to change the subject.

“Are you driving? You know how I feel when you drive and call or text Mama.”

“Okay, okay, I'm hanging up. Tell her I have gotten the best wedding present she could ask for. Let her imagination run wild.”

You laughed. “I doubt you can outshine Mama. I know what her present is and I bet she'll win over yours.”

“Oh, a bet, huh? You won't side your Dad then? Mama's girl, huh?”

“Mother before Father, sir. Always have been.”

“Pity, you'd have earned a hundred bucks.”

“A hundred? Pussy. I'd bet five hundred.”

“Hey, now, missy, what did I tell ya about cussing while pregnant?”

“The babies' first words will be the curse words,” you deadpanned. “Anyway, you're on and I'm hanging up. Drive safe and don't you dare use your cellphone, Mister Dad.”

“Aye, aye, Captain of HMS Nadia.”

Jeremy drove with absolute determination in his heart. He was certain, bless his naïve heart, that his present would please his soon-to-be wife and his stepdaughter.

A week later, your mama loved the gift but she had to hide it from you, heavily pregnant and recently widowed you, to not upset you. Jeremy told your mama how Gregory A. Teanan, who he just learned had dated you last, refused to date anyone else and was waiting for you. Your mama revealed that, even if Gregory was ready to have you back in his life, you weren't ready to go back.

The next Sunday, the one immediately after his wedding, Jeremy prayed to God that may He bestow Gregory with more patience and you with quicker healing, so that you two could reunite soon, if ever.

V alentine's Day, 2028

The restaurant would close in an hour. If you didn't hurry, your mama and Jeremy would starve, as would Ruth, Grace, and James and Charles Choi, Darren's father and grandfather. You had promised them Ethiopian food. You couldn't disappoint them. Not for him. Not for anything.

You were at Gramercy park. It was almost nine in the evening. You'd been here since this morning. Your mama and Jeremy knew where you went every year on Valentine's Day. Only your in-laws didn't and you'd like to keep it that way. Under the pretext of meeting with your girlfriends, you left this morning. Ruth and Grace promised to take the twins off your hands for the day, with your mama and Jeremy helping them whenever their assistance was needed. The twins would turn one this year. They were already crawling. Any day now, they'd take their first steps. You wouldn't miss it for the world. You asked your mama and Jeremy, before you left home this morning, to film anything, any progress the girls make in your absence. You reminded them throughout the day and your mama, like the angel she was, refrained from asking about progress on your side.

You arrived at the park sometime after eight in the morning. A lot of people were jogging and walking their dogs outside the park. You were one of the first to go inside. You still had a copy of the key. Your name was still on the lease, though you paid nothing. Aegon had promised to keep your name there until the day of your reunion. Now, it was four years later, another leap year. Another Valentine's Day without him. You had healed now. You no longer had meaningless flings and one night stands. You had a full-time day job as one of the bakers of Grace's sister's bakery, not to mention the book advances and the royalty of the first book slowly, slowly trickling in. Your mama and Jeremy didn't spend much, despite their well paying jobs. Even the Chois and the Kwons would help you out if you needed anything.

Life was good.

Except for your love life. Your mama worried that you barely dated anymore. You told them until Maya and Mina turned three at the least, you'd stay away from dating. Your top priority was your babies now. You'd not become your father, or their own. They both couldn't be there for their daughters. But you would be, like your mother was for you. Until the girls were old enough to know what having a father meant, you'd be their father and mother. You'd be their everything, so when good times and bad times hit them in adulthood, the first safe place they think of would be you. Or second, if their partners/best friends were really good to them.

You secretly ordered takeout from a Somali restaurant, the only one in the city. Hilib ari (spicy braised goat) with bariis (basmati rice) and basbaas sauce (green chilli sauce). Eating inside the park was still forbidden. You hid under the elm trees, behind the Hellelil and Hildebrand statue, and finished your lustrous lunch lacklusterly alone. You disposed of the boxes and napkins, and sat on the grass, the spot where you and he had your first date, first picnic. How long ago was it? The last leap year. You were back now, wearing a long yellow maxi dress, and a nursing bra. Both times, you were leaking. This time, you were a mother. You wondered how his kids were. If he had more kids with Helaena or someone else. You didn't keep in touch with his siblings anymore. You didn't hold a grudge against them. They had more duties to fulfill. They were royalty who operated on a different plane, unlike a nobody like you.

The sky began to turn dark, until it was dark everywhere. The scattered lights inside the park shaded you from view. Your lunch had long been digested. You were wise to keep aside the appetizers, the crunchy, stuffed triangular sambusas. You gnawed on them and waited, and waited, and waited.

You, masochistic you, to kill time, decided to visit the Facebook page dedicated to him. Yes, throughout the years, he had gained a steady following of admirers and even fans. Sure, he wasn't yet big enough to get multiple fan accounts. But he had one. He sure did keep his face hidden from the most normie audience. No fan photos. Nothing. Most of his concerts were private and/or forbade phones to capture videos.

The latest Facebook post was from hours ago. Apparently, he was in the city for a private concert. No cameras, as usual. But someone had secretly recorded him playing. You turned up your volume and listened.
A pensive tune. You recognized it. Se Jaedos Vēzendio, or the Summer Sunset, if your translation to English from High Valyrian was correct. You practiced whenever you could. But life got in the way sometimes.
You listened to the tune again. It made you feel as disappointed and empty as investing in a Netflix show, only to learn it had been cancelled after one season. Hanging from a cliffhanger, no going down or being pulled up. Just stuck. Just hanging. You replayed the tune again and again. Every time, you felt worse than before. Incomplete. Unfinished. The critical reception was universally negative. Almost nobody liked it.

You finished your sambusa and paced around. You'd deleted his creation from your phone and blocked the fan page from your Facebook account. To calm yourself, you went on your gallery and viewed some of the YouTube videos you had downloaded from AntsInMyPants, your dedicated fan even after all this time. They regularly posted videos of your blog recipes. Their special features for Westerosi cuisine warmed your heart. They respected your secrecy as much as you did theirs. That was how it went these days.

Your phone chirped. Grace sent a video on Messenger. You opened it and time stopped.

Maya was walking. Sure, she crawled the first thirty seconds, but then she grabbed the edge of a low coffee table and began to stand up. She remained standing for a long time, with your mama and Jeremy coaxing her in the background. At last, after two minutes of watching her crawl and stand only, she finally took her first step. One step. Two step. Then, she collapsed on the carpet in a heap and giggled.

Your hands shook. Droplets landed on your phone screen. Your baby was walking. Your little girl. Your firstborn, Maya! You glanced at Mina, but she was asleep, sucking on her pacifier. She'd missed out on her sister's first steps.

As did you.

You rewatched the exact moment again and again, until you couldn't take it anymore. Here you were, waiting for your past to return, while your present, your future were leaving you behind. Your daughter had taken her first step and you missed out on it for a man who most definitely didn't love you like you loved him. What the fuck was the matter with you? This was ridiculous. You were a mother now, a mother of two beautiful girls. You couldn't do this anymore, waiting in a park for a European prince who had most certainly forgotten about you. The audio of him playing just broke your heart. He had moved on, obviously, most likely, apparently, hopefully. Then, why couldn't you? Why shouldn't you? You had to do this for the sake of Maya and Mina. They needed their mother, now that their father and two grandparents were gone (RIP, Sylvie Choi and Ethan Kwon). 

You made up your mind.

You'd never again come to this park. This must stop.

Inside, you knew, even if you stopped coming here, you'd never stop loving him. You were Penelope, forever waiting for your Odysseus. You might no longer come to Gramercy park. You might return your park key to the authorities. You might remove your name from the lease. You knew, deep inside, when you'd grow old and frail on your deathbed, it'd be Aegon who would crowd your mind, along with your other loved ones, maybe as a phantom thread of a fleeting memory. But he'd be there, your one great love. The one that got away.

But now, for the sake of your present, your children who needed their mother's undivided affection and attention, you had to let him go. You submitted your key to the park committee's head. You removed your name from Aegon's apartment lease. You never once looked back as you hired a cab and headed for the Ethiopian restaurant, then back to your Queen's apartment with your mama and Jeremy, with the Chois and the Kwons right across the hallway.

Had you delayed an hour, you would run into a European man with silver hair and purple eyes. He wasn't the one you were waiting for, but he would, in his own way, which was the way of violence, pull back together the stretched, tangled tethers that connected you and his oldest nephew.

Valentine's Day, 2029

An old man stood in front of his statue, his hands in the pockets of his long trench coat, his snow white hair in a messy ponytail, even his eyebrows were as gray as his hair. He had put on sunglasses, so his eyes weren't visible to Aegon, as he neared the old man. He kept his distance and watched the man watch the statue.

Something was off about this scene, Aegon just couldn't put his fingers on it.

The man turned around at last. From the way the creases on his face folded, he was probably in his late seventies or early eighties. He felt the man's eyes on him, which made him stand up straighter.

“Hello there, young man,” the old man said, his voice soft and deep despite the years piled on it.

Aegon offered a timid smile. “Hi.”

“May I sit here?”

Aegon blinked. He barked out a laugh. “Of course. Can I join you?”

The man's answering laughter echoed off of Aegon's own. He waved a hand toward the only bench in front of the statue. The two blond men sat down, their eyes on the park unfurling before them, their backs to the statue.

“I never saw you around here before,” the old man said.

“Likewise.”

The old man grinned. “I don't live around here. I came on special invitation.”

“Invitation?”

The old man nodded. “Why, I'm the sculptor of the statue behind us.”

Aegon's eyes widened. He'd never met the sculptor of his statue. Aemond gave him contact information. He only met the sculptor's assistant once, handed over the requirements for the statue and his payment half in advance. That was it. Even if Aegon had met the man, he'd not remember him. It had been almost a decade since he had commissioned it. But now, to meet the genius who built the statue. At once, his body felt airy and light. Spring was in the air, after all. The two men shook hands. Aegon introduced himself.

The old man shook his head. “No, sir. That's not your name. It's Aegon, no, Prince Aegon Targaryen, isn't it?”

Aegon blinked, unable to come up with something to dismiss it.

“Now, don't lie to me, young man. I know because she told me.”

“She?”

He smiled and pulled out a folded page. A letter in your handwriting. Aegon would recognize it anytime, anywhere, no matter how much time had passed and how many changes your penmanship had undergone. He'd recognize you, as he'd sense your soul's presence anywhere. He took the letter. He hesitated.

“Go on, now. This is for you. She wrote it to me, but I believe you need to read it.”
And he did.

“Dear Mr. Aaron Tyge Regan,” you began the letter. You introduced yourself in the next line.

“You don't know me. I didn't know about you until recently. I've seen your name engraved in the corner of a favorite statue of mine, one that you sculpted for someone very special to me. You probably don't remember it, a statue of a pair of star-crossed lovers called Princess Hellelil and her sworn guard, Hildebrand. The person you made it for is the love of my life, though the woman he made it for isn't me. She is the love of his life. Yes, I'm afraid mine is a story of unrequited love. He had made it for his one true love, long before we ever met. He lost her in the most tragic way. He lost her today in 2020, a leap day. It is different to be born on a leap day. You get to celebrate your birthday every four year, on your real birthday, not a day before or after. But to have your loved one's death day on a leap day. Now, that's a whole other level of tragedy. They're no longer in your life. The only solace, the only reassurance that you hadn't dreamt them up is the day you lost them. And when that day bails on you, what to do? My love is a very tragic figure. He was born under the unluckiest stars. He's the oldest child and yet, he isn't. His father wanted him to be born, but then realized, no, not really. His mother, now he took after his mother. He reminds her of the girlhood she never got to have. He reminds her of the innocence and naïvety she had and then lost. He reminds her of the lack her gender has but his doesn't, so he must not repeat the mistakes she did, and he must take advantage of his own gender to ensure he never suffers from the same plights and pressures she once went through; the paranoia of a parent. You're a parent, aren't you? Your assistant told me you married twice in life. Your first marriage gave you three children, your second one two. Your wife married twice too. In her case, two before you, two with you. You should understand the paranoia of a parent. I do too. The constant fear that something, someone might come and hurt your baby, who are an extension of you. No matter how much you don't wanna burden them with your unfulfilled desires and dreams, you drop them on them. You wanna protect them like your instincts wanna protect you. It comes naturally. When you're the only one who wants the best for your children, while the rest of the world sharpens their blades, wanting to hurt your babies, what do you do? You jump in front of the dragon, you stare Death in the eye, your arms thrown over your baby, ready to die with them, because they've never known a world where you hadn't been in it. That's what his mother feels, and that's what he feels to everyone he loves. Like a mother. He'd die for them, kill for them, spare lives for them, and give birth to new lives for them. Anything and everything means anything and everything to my beloved. That's why I love him like he loves everyone. Somebody gotta do it. Might as well be me. So, for the sake of my beloved, I'm requesting you, please, come out of your retirement one last time. For this Hildebrand. So that her prince can be happy again. Help me make him happy again. The statue is all he has left of his one great love, his beautiful soulmate who left him way too soon, unfairly, untimely. Please, sir. You name any amount and it'll be yours. I'm ending this letter with a hope as frail as the pulp of a peeled orange. Please, accept my offer.”

The ink was smudged now and it wasn't your fault. With shaky hands, Aegon handed the letter to Mr. Regan. He folded it and put it back inside his coat pocket.

“February 14 of 2028. A man, identified as Daemon Targaryen, a rogue prince of the royal family of Westeros, was seen trespassing. The next morning, some of the inhabitants found debris of my statue, your statue.”

Aegon glanced over his shoulder.

“I charged her a hundred thousand. She's dragging me out of a very comfy place. I must be compensated thoroughly.” He stood up.

“They say she never came to view my sculpture. I'm disappointed.”

“She didn't?” Aegon picked at his nails.

“She gave up her key before my statue was vandalized. She removed her name from the lease around that time. She never came back. My assistant sent her a photo.”

Aegon's bottom lip wobbled. He sniffled, his eyes desperate to keep at bay the itch behind his lids. The sound of footsteps left him, until Aegon heard him no more. Only then did he cover his face and let the deluge come out.
You'd given up on him. He was too fucking late, once again. And now, he had lost you. Before coming here, he tried to find Etaf and Mabel. Mabel Taffy Catering Service shut down long ago. After searching for many days, he found them. They lived in New Jersey now, married for three years and mothers of a boy and a girl. They ran a Palestinian restaurant, named after the cousin Etaf lost in Gaza back in 2024. He met them in the restaurant. He had to order a lot of food to persuade the two owners to talk to him. Etaf refused to say anything. Mabel gave monosyllabic answers, until Aegon begged for ways to contact you. Etaf stormed out of the backroom. Mabel told him they had promised you they'd never divulge any contact info to him, knowingly or unknowingly.

“She's given up. Let her go,” Mabel said. When he refused, she told him the last thing you said about him, before he became the taboo topic.

“We've been apart longer than we'd ever been together. If that isn't a sign...”

Aegon circled the new statue. It so eerily resembled the last one that his uncle had smashed to pieces. Aegon caressed the engraved name.

“The Princess and Her Sworn Protector.”

He stopped on the spot where he'd buried the thermos. Your thermos. The red lunch box. Was it still here? He regretted not asking Mr. Regan.

He went out of the park, crossed the street, and borrowed a shovel from his building's super. After ten minutes of digging, the shovel hit something hard. Something metallic. His prayers to the seven Andal and the fourteen Valyrian gods came to fruition.

The thermos was dirty now. It felt much heavier. Did you put anything inside? He didn't know. He cleaned it up as much as he could, and opened it.

Inside, the layers were gone. Only one layer, and way too much stuff. He brought them out one by one.

An incomplete list of ingredients for lasagna in your messy handwriting, with his own in the back that thanked the Great Samaritan of Thanksgiving 2023, meaning the Great Samaritan was you.

Your letter about Mabel's stew and Etaf's thermos box.

Your letter about honey cake, as well as your farewell letter to Tanel.

Seven pages of chocolate cake recipes in your messy handwriting, with his own in the back depicting fourteen cocktail recipes. The stationary marks in the margin told him they were from the Concord hotel in Las Vegas.

Two bouquet cards, one that you intended to buy for your mama but Aegon mistook it for himself, the second one for him before his American debut.

The dedication page of The World of Westerosi Cuisine by P.P. Turner, dedicated to AntsInMyPants YouTube channel, your very own Julie Powell.

Aegon's page of autograph to Nadia, fiancée of Jeremy Ford.

Your handwritten letter to Mr. Aaron Tyge Regan, which was odd, since it had Aegon's tear stains smudging the ink, and he could swear Mr. Regan took it with him.

The seven-pointed star emerald ring, ancient heirloom of House Hightower.

Aegon's notebook where he scrawled the notes for Se Jaedos Vēzendio, his sole creation so far, that he wrote for you.

Aegon's handmade audio greeting card that he gave to Etaf to post to you, that got lost in shipping to Sweden the fall of 2024.

Lastly, yours and his farewell letters to each other, except yours was a poem to him.

“I want your eyes to become my grave
A field of lavender, fragrant and eye-soothing
Such a beautiful, peaceful color
Such depth, such serenity
Death wouldn't feel so bad in them.

I want to drink your voice and taste it
Soft, honeyed, beautiful, and warm
Like lukewarm lemonade on snowy nights
Or cold chocolate milk on sunny days.

I want to smell your thoughts, your pain, your laughter
So that the second I smell pain
I can fan them away from you
So that the second I smell joy
I fan them all toward you
So that when I smell your laughter
I inhale them all until I'm laughing with you.

I want to bake your futures
Take ingredients from the pantry of your past
Measure them on the scales of your present
How much of your past your present needs
To brew your future in my heart's cauldron
Until I concoct you the perfect potion
To make you the future you deserve.

I want to love you
Like liberation loves blood
Like blood loves pain
Like pain loves attention
Like attention loves obsession
Like obsession loves captivity
Like captivity loves cruelty 
Like cruelty loves liberation.

Instead,
I love you like the desert
I love you like the ocean
I love you like the horizon
I love you like the sky
I love you like the black hole
I love you like the number π
I love you like the afterlife.

The moon of my sun
The sun of my moon.”

Aegon took the thermos to bed and fell asleep with it.

Miles away, hours later, you were busy cleaning the closets of your apartment. Your mama and Jeremy had taken the girls to Coney Island. The remaining Chois had gone to South Korea to attend the wedding of a distant cousin. Grace was the only Kwon left, who napped in her own apartment.

With your mask and gloves on, your hair up in a bun, you sorted through the messy closets. Ever since the girls began to outgrow everything, things piled up. So, you picked today for spring cleaning, a day you'd like to forget.

Just as you ventured into the deepest part of your girls' closet cave, your hands came across something metallic and smooth. Your fumbling found a handle. You pulled it out.

A red thermos box. It looked familiar. You turned on the lights of the living room. Yep, you knew this one. How did it get here? You dusted off the brown crumbs and gray strands on it. You took it to the coffee table and, after some elbow grease, opened the lid.

No layers inside, as far as you could remember otherwise. Instead, the thermos was jam-packed with pages and other stuff. One by one, you unloaded them.

An incomplete list of ingredients for lasagna in your messy handwriting, with a penmanship that you recognized as Aegon's in the back. He thanked you, his Great Samaritan of Thanksgiving 2023. You thought you had lost this paper in the fire of your Shore Boulevard apartment. Now, you knew Aegon was the one you helped that night.

Your letter about Mabel's stew and Etaf's thermos box, that Aegon found out of all the park-goers of Stuyvesant.

Your letter about Medovik cake and other lunch dishes to Tanel, along with your farewell letter to him, attached to your bouquet, that Aegon could only find if he was one of Tanel’s neighbors. What if he was the nymphomaniac?

Seven pages of chocolate cake recipes in your messy handwriting, that you didn't remember ever writing, with Aegon's own in the back, describing fourteen cocktail recipes. The stationary marks on the margins told you they were from the Concord hotel in Las Vegas. He was your Harry Goldenblatt that night.

A seven-pointed star emerald ring, that failed to unlock some forgotten memories.

Two cards, one that you got with your mama's bouquet but Aegon mistook it for himself, the second one for him before his American debut.

A handmade audio greeting card that he seemed to have made for you, from the week after your journey to Sweden began, Aegon’s recorded voice crooning the song, Grow As We Go by Ben Platt.

The dedication page of your debut cookbook, The World of Westerosi Cuisine, dedicated to AntsInMyPants.

A notebook where Aegon scrawled the notes for Se Jaedos Vēzendio, his sole creation so far, that he apparently wrote for you.

Aegon's autograph to your mama, Nadia, something you didn't remember he ever wrote.

Your handwritten letter to Mr. Aaron Tyge Regan, with tear stains smudging the ink.

Lastly, your poem and his letter.

His one read:

“I couldn't save our seat at that Harlem restaurant. But I'll always save your seat in my life. Feel free to stop by.”

Valentine's Day, 2030

If someone had told Aegon Targaryen six years ago that he'd ever find comfort in sweaty crowds of lovebirds inside a cramped train car, he'd laugh in your face.

Now, he'd just shrug.

That was life. It changed you so much, sometimes you wonder how your past self would react to your present self. Would they be horrified? Or in awe of your future self? Aegon supposed his drunk as a skunk self from the past would be a little bit in awe of him.

He was clean for four years now. He touched not a drop of alcohol when he woke up one morning last year in his bed, alone, no red thermos in his arms. Did he dream up the whole thing? He didn't know. The super did admit that Aegon had borrowed a shovel from him. But there was no hole at the foot of the Hellelil and Hildebrand statue. In fact, when he dug around the pedestal again, he found nothing.

The thermos was gone.

As were all his memories and connections to you. Alone and depressed, he spent the whole night baking desserts, your desserts. Two days and mountains of food later, he was somewhat sane. He decided to go back home. This trip was nuts.

A month later, he returned to Gramercy to sell the place. Samantha and her family had long since moved into Lyonel's house in New Jersey. Aegon had no use keeping the apartment. He sold it back to the landlord and rented a studio apartment not far away. He gave back his key to the park. His heart ached, to say a permanent farewell to Hellelil and Hildebrand. But he had to do this. He had to let go of the past.

What he could never let go of was you.

He still kept Rosy and Rosa, your suncatchers, your volcano oil diffuser, and many more stuff from you, for you. Sunfyre was still alive. Every week, he made either bread or something else from the discard. Sometimes, he made blueberry clafoutis. By now, he'd learned how to make your lemonies, your casseroles, your devil's food cake, and your one comfort food, oatmeal raisin carrot cake cookies.

He had tried to reach out to you via your agent. But the woman refused to give him any information. So, he relied on fate. Whatever web had pulled you into his orbit, he placed his faith on their ability to bring you back to him.

This morning, it did. Briefly, it did.

He was sitting on a bench on the platform, reading an autobiography that Daeron had recommended. The pink book cover had a blonde holding a pink urn. She used to be a child actor and this was supposed to be her tell-all about all the abuse she endured at the hands of her own mother and every other adult on set. Just as he was about to check the time, he heard a voice above the din.

Your voice.

“Excuuuuse meeeee! Coming through! A hundred black velvet cupcakes coming through!”

He only caught a glimpse of you. Clad in black, except for your new headphones which were red and pink, you flew past the crowd of people to enter a train car.

For a few seconds, he sat frozen in his spot, the book open on his lap. His eyes glued to the train car you had disappeared into. Just as the doors began to close, he could move again.

“Dōnītsos! Dōnītsos!” He ran for the train car. But the doors slammed shut in front of his eyes. For ten seconds after the doors closed and the train hadn't started moving, Aegon banged on the door. Most of the passengers inside stared, as if he had antlers growing from his back. His eyes found your figure, sitting across the car, your back to him as you clutched your boxes of cupcakes for dear life, your headphones on, your eyes closed, catching your breath. You leaned your head on the wall behind you. The train began to move.

So did Aegon. He ran alongside the car as long as he could, yelling your name. You were sand, now water, and lastly air as you slipped from his hold once again.

You were gone.

He was alone.

Later, much later, at his session with his therapist, he vented his frustration to the woman, who was much older than his mum. The blonde listened patiently, no comments, only jotting down something in his case files.

“If we're not meant to be, then why did she come to my life?” he said. “No, don't give me that experience in life bullshit. She was never an experience. She's my endgame.” He rubbed his face several times before his therapist offered him a box of tissues. He declined. “Don't worry about me. I'm a royalty. A Targaryen prince. I'll make destiny bring her back to me, no matter what I have to go through.”

Chapter Text

Valentine's Day, 2024

As far as he could remember, Aegon Targaryen had never felt nervous like this, not when he was about to meet a woman. But this woman was his blind date and he hadn't seriously dated for years now, not since he met Nelly.

Oh Nelly, lend me some strength now, wouldn't you?

Aegon rubbed his hands and approached the doors to the clearly expensive restaurant in Manhattan. Once inside, the maître d' led him to the table by the window.

“Just like Nelly's mum said,” he thought as he handed over his coat to the maître d', to be hung inside the coatroom. His server for tonight, a gangly man with a tiny ponytail in the back, pulled out a chair for him. Aegon thanked the server, who left after he told him he was going to wait for the rest of his party to arrive.

Once the server left, Aegon glanced around the room. Couples, yep, all the tables were full of couples. Most of them seemed deeply engaged in conversations, which meant they were already in established relationships. None were on a blind date tonight. It should be obvious. Valentine's days were for already established couples, not for blind dates. But he had no choice. He'd agreed to this date at the last minute. He should've postponed it. Blind dates on Valentine's day were extra pressure. On top of that, he never saw his date. The girl refused to see him beforehand, so it was only fair he extended the same courtesy to her. Now, he was second guessing himself. What if she had already been here? No, Nelly's mum said the rendezvous time was eight in the evening. It was half past seven now. Plenty of time. Besides, the table was booked, the one closest to the exit.

Fuck, he needed a drink. No, he didn't. He couldn't get drunk before his date. It'd ruin everything. To distract himself, he turned to the rest of the restaurant.

An elderly couple arrived to take the table next to his. The man had only gray hair. The woman had salt-and-pepper hair. She had it pinned and braided elegantly. A red velvet dress on, she waited as her husband pulled out a chair for her. The sweet smile she gave him was somehow the motivation Aegon needed. This was what he was here for. To find someone to spend the rest of his life with.

This was the ultimate goal.

“Happy Valentine's day, my dear,” the woman said.

Aegon blinked. Did she mean him? He offered a weak smile. The woman said nothing. Aegon was pretty sure she hid a smirk behind her fingers as she briefly covered her mouth. She turned to her man, who openly chuckled.
Great, now they were mocking him. He couldn't take it anymore. He needed a drink. Just one. One drink couldn't hurt. He was no lightweight.

Fifteen minutes later, at the bar across the room, Aegon slumped in his seat. Ten more minutes until his date would arrive...

Unless she bailed on him too.

Aegon felt the bile crawling up his esophagus. He pressed his lips and almost ran for the washroom. It was a gender neutral washroom. Two women were chatting inside, washing their hands. Seeing him stumble inside, they held back their reactions as he found an empty stall and kicked the door shut behind him. He knelt by the toilet bowl and tried to hurl out all he had just drunk. True to his rotten luck, nothing came out. His head was spinning. The mob inside his stomach had a riot.

He gave up. This date was going to be a disaster and he had accepted it. He emptied his bladder, then stumbled out.

A white woman stood by the counter. Her dress oozed elegance and sexiness equally. She glanced at him as he washed his hands. He blinked to stave off the blurriness in his eyes, before the dam burst behind his eyelids.

He sobbed.

The woman asked if he was all right. He wiped dry his face with a napkin, but dropped the rest of the pile on the floor. The woman neared him now. She asked if he was okay.

He finally took in the color of her outfit. Red. Blood red. Red velvet.

“I'm pathetic,” he muttered.

She smiled. “Yes, I know. Come here.” She pulled him closer to the tap and washed his face. She patted his cheeks dry with some napkins.

“You're beautiful,” he whispered.

“I should hope so. And so are you.”

He smiled serenely. She must be it, then. His blind date.

“Uh oh.”

“What?” he asked, clinging to her now.
Her hand snaked between his legs. He liked it, liked women who took the initiative. He let her cup him and stand on her toes to whisper into his ears.

“Looks like meat is back on the menu, my boy.”

He grinned back. His hands cupped her ass, before he lifted her and sat her down on the counter. Her fingers made quick work with his belt and boxers. His pants dropped around his ankles. He asked if she had a condom. She rolled her eyes and, from her purse, pulled out a string of packets.

Tonight was going to be a long night.

Valentine's Day, 2031

Mina was getting in your nerves and it was all your fault.

“Mina, my love, calm down. I'm sure it's somewhere in your room,” you said inside the bathroom. A man came out of his stall and watched you try your umpteenth time to pacify your youngest daughter. But Mina, well, bless her heart, Mina was a darling whenever she wasn't stressed. But when she was, like tonight, she could take her sweet time to calm down, something you'd been working on with her. Your baby girl was trying too. But it wasn't easy for a little girl to have both autism and ADHD and being the only one in her friend circle to not get invited to her friend's birthday party.

“Honey, look at me. No, not into my eyes. Just as the screen. You can look at my hair.” You held your phone closer.

She reluctantly glanced at your hair. “You look great, Mommy.”

Your hands itched to reach into the screen and pull your girl into a hug. When would technology achieve this feat? For now, you made do with soothing words.

“What did she tell you, exactly?” you asked softly. You caught a glimpse of your mama's hair in the background.

Mina's lips wobbled. “I'm too weird.”

“Did she say those exact words?”

Mina shook her head. “But she said it with her eyes.”

You tried not to laugh. “Okay, how did she look at you then?”

She shrugged. “Like a meanie.”

“Did she ever look at you like this before?”

Mina nodded.

“Sweet pea, I told you before. If someone gives you bad vibes, you're supposed to tell me. Why didn't you?”

She gulped, her eyes on her lap. “I didn't wanna bug you, Mommy.”

“Baby girl, the only reason I'm not jumping into a cab right now is because I promised your Auntie Love I'm going to meet her tonight.”

Her face brightened up. “She's here?”

“Not yet. I'm in the restroom.” You heard more footsteps coming toward the bathroom, so you ducked inside a stall and closed the door behind you. You sat on the toilet lid, carefully, to not get your dress ruined. It'd been a miracle to have this dress. The red velvet dress you had ordered seven years ago, only to land on your doorstep two days ago. The dress you had purchased to meet your blind date that later bailed on you. That was the night you met Aegon.

This was the restaurant, the washroom where you met him.

You focused on Mina and tried your best to assure her once again that no, you were her mother and so, she could never bug you, unless you explicitly told her not to come to her for some reason. You asked if you ever gave her any reason to hesitate coming to you. Mina shook her head. You asked her if she and her sister ate the big Chinese spread you had cooked for them before coming here. When Mina shook her head, you told her to take herself and her sister to eat. It was almost eight in the evening. Their bedtime was fast approaching. Mina asked what you made for her. Her recent food obsession was Chinese cuisine. So, you spent the entire day making dishes after dishes for your girls. Moo Goo Gai Pan, sweet and sour fish, red braised lamb, He Teng Xiao Chao, and Shanghai scallion oil noodles. For dessert, Chinese sugar buns and banana fritters. Grace and Jeremy thought it was too much to indulge in all your girls' desires and demands. But you'd rather spoil them than starve them.
Soon, your mama herded the girls over to Grace, who was serving the food. You told your mama not to wait for you, and please tuck the girls to bed for tonight. Jeremy called dibs on it, making Grace groan and mutter.

You laughed and stood up.
“Mama, I gotta go. Love might be here any minute.”

“Okay, honey, stay safe. I love you.”

You opened the door, all smiles, and saw him. Your lips was on autopilot, saying, “I love you too,” to your mama, but your eyes on him.

Silver hair. Purple eyes. Stubbles over his lips and on his cheeks and chin. He was dressed to the nines, and he was here. In the same restaurant where you first met him. In the same washroom. On the same fucking day.

Prince Aegon Targaryen met your eyes and offered a hesitant smile. Not out of awkwardness or embarrassment. Rather, he didn't know if his smile would be welcome.

“Hello,” he said in the same soft, deep voice, if not a bit richer and more mature. Age had suited him well, like sugar dusted on top of your lemonies.

“Hi.” You came out and a woman ran in. She passed you and locked the door of your recently vacated stall behind you. You winced at the abruptness of it. Aegon probably noticed it, because he stepped aside so that you could wash your hands.

He'd heard you speak on the phone. Muffled but he could tell you were talking to a child. Your child? Did you get married? Did you have kids? His eyes surreptitiously went to your left ring finger and yep, a ring, a simple gold band, sat around your finger.

He gulped and looked away. So, you were married now. Great. He wanted to congratulate you but didn't know how to do it since he'd never mean it. That was unfair to you.

“How are you?” he asked instead.

“I'm great. Thanks. You?” You put your phone on the counter and washed your hands, even though you didn't use the bathroom.

He slipped his hands in his pants pockets. “I'm okay. So, uh, Happy Valentine's day.”

You glanced down at the water rushing to slip through the drain. That was when you noticed it. “This was where I found you,” you blurted out.

He frowned, then glanced at the counter. He barked out a laugh. “Yeah, you did.”

“Your butts were the first things I saw of you.”

He looked away, embarrassed but not ashamed. “Yeah, let's not bring up my ass while people are within hearing range.”

“Ivestragī's ȳdragon isse Valyrio Eglie pār,” you said. (“Let's speak in High Valyrian then.”)

He looked up, eyes wide, mouth open. “You can speak...”

You smiled. “Rȳ ēlī, nyke gūrēntan hen Duolingo. Helaena se Daeron dohaertan nyke lēda tolī. Iksan daor olvie sȳz rȳ ziry.” (“At first, I learned from Duolingo. Helaena and Daeron helped me. I'm not very good at it.”)

“Ao sagon vok,” he said dazedly, breathlessly. (“You're perfect.”)

You smiled shyly. “Kirimvose, ñuha dārilaros.” (“Thank you, my prince.”)

“Kostilus ȳdra daor yne brōzā bona. Ao hen daor.” (“Please don't call me that. Not from you.”)

“Iksan vaoreznuni.” (“I'm sorry.”) You shifted your legs to lean your hips on the counter. Your knees had to act out then. You hissed a little when they stung.

“Are you okay?” he asked, eyes full of concern.

You waved a hand, dismissing his concern. “I had an accident years ago. A car hit me. I was careless.”

“What happened?”

You grimaced. “Torn ligaments, nothing serious. I was in a wheelchair for a while.”

The image flashed in his head. A person in a wheelchair, by the boundary of Gramercy park, while a man scaled the walls. An hour later, Aegon found the boxes of pies and kedgeree. It was you in the wheelchair. So close to him, yet so far away. He cleared his throat. “Are you okay now?”

You nodded extra enthusiastically. “Maya worries unnecessarily sometimes...”

“Maya?”

You brought out the photos. Your daughters. The most important people in your life. The most loved and cherished. “Maya and Mina Choi.”

“Choi...”

“I married Darren.” A sudden sadness draped your heart. Your fingers found the gold band. He never got to give you a ring. He died before that could happen. But he did marry you and left you with the girls. For that, you honored his memories by wearing a gold band on your left ring finger.

“Congratulations,” Aegon croaked out.

You smiled. “Thank you.”

“Can I meet him? Is he here tonight?”

You slowly shook your head. “I'm a widow now.” You told him about Darren's testicular cancer. How it took him away within a few hours of your court marriage. You didn't even get to wear a pretty trousseau. No wedding cakes or anything. Just visiting the New York City Hall and signing a paper with your names on it. No vows or anything. No kisses either. A deathbed marriage, all in all.

Aegon reached out, unknowingly, and squeezed your hand. You stared at it, frozen. You met his eyes and smiled sadly. “My condolences,” he said.

You thanked him. “Mama and Jeremy think it's time for me to go back out there. Well, they thought that long ago, but I held back because of my girls.”

“Jeremy? Oh right, your mama got married.”

You showed him the picture of their wedding. Your mama radiant in a gown, Jeremy winking at you as you took the shot. “He's a piano technician...”

“I know.” Aegon scratched the back of his head. “Jeremy Ford, right? I met him once. My Steinway's keys got swollen. He told me your mother is a big fan of mine.”

You laughed. “You can say that. She never was a classical music fan, until you.”

“He tried to set me up with you.”

“What?” You were confused.

“Your stepfather, he probably didn't know about our history, so he tried to set us up. I think it was a week before his wedding?”

You laughed. “Classic Jeremy. He's a lot like you.”

“You think so?” he asked bashfully. The look in his eyes, the intensity took your breath away. You had to remember to breathe and look away.

“So, um, how's everyone else? Your siblings, your mum... Your grandfather?”

He told you everything; firstly, about Aemond, Alys, and their son, Aemon. Aemond was the Hand of Queen Rhaenyra now, the first Queen Regina of Westeros. She married Harwin not long after her divorce from Daemon, who went missing with Nettles not long after. Thanks to Rhaenyra’s codification, children born from artificial insemination and/or surrogacy, whose biological parents were legally married to each other, would no longer be considered illegitimate. So, Alys and Aemond were trying once again. The next step would be Rhaenyra allowing non-married couples, regardless of their gender, to have legitimate children through artificial insemination and surrogacy, hopeful that this would lead the path to the decriminalization of being openly queer and the eventual legitimation of gay marriage and adoption/conception. As for his mother, Alicent was finally, fucking finally, married to Criston. The couple got together three years after Viserys died in his sleep, only after all her children persuaded, some even emotionally blackmailed her to do it. Otto didn’t attend his daughter’s second wedding, so Gwayne gave her away.

“How’s Helaena?” you asked.

He grimaced. “She and I got divorced. Fucking finally. She’s the same otherwise, only she’s a tenured professor now and our kids have grown up. The twins are teenagers now.” He laughed. “I'm not yet forty and I'm the father of two teenagers.” He showed you pictures of Jaehaerys and Jaehaera, with little Maelor, whom you didn't see before. A family photo of Aegon and Helaena with their three kids.

“Picture perfect family.”

“Daor, Helaena iksis ñuha hāedar. Bisa iksis daor iā lentor, daor se ñuhoso vestrā issa.” (“No, Helaena is my little sister. This is not a family, not the way you say it is.”)

The tone of his voice shut down any and all nagging inside your head. Aegon was as you had left him, disgusted by incest, even though incest between siblings was allowed in his family. You took his hand and squeezed.

“I'm sorry.”

He laced his fingers with yours.

“Still as soft as I remember,” you whispered.

He smirked. “A pianist's hands are their greatest treasure.” He cleared his throat. “I model sometimes. Decent gig. You?”

“I'm a cookbook writer now. I wrote two books on Westerosi cuisine.”

“Penelope Paige Turner?” he asked, hopeful.

You met his eyes. “AntsInMyPants?”

He smiled sadly. “I can cook now.”

“So I see.”

“You've been doing great.”

“So have you.”

“I'm so proud of you.”

“As I'm proud of you.”

He leaned over, as did you. Your lips met his and pressed a little. He pressed back. The softest kiss you ever had with anyone. His fingers cupped your cheeks, to pull you closer, to make sure you were here, that you were real, that no Targaryen madness conjured you up. Just when your tongue tip touched his lips, you pulled away.

“I'm sorry, I...” You shook your head and cleared your throat. “Sorry, that wasn't appropriate.”

He nodded disappointingly. “Yeah, okay...”

“Thank you,” you sniffled and pulled away reluctantly, “for being my Julie Powell.”

He smiled tenderly. “Thank you for restoring my Hellelil and Hildebrand statue.”

You blinked. “How did you...”

“I met Aaron Tyge Regan.”

“He's great, isn't he?”

Aegon nodded. “He was moved by your letter.”

“Oh.”

“How did you pay him? It can't be from your book earnings, is it?”

You shook your head. “My sister paid. Well, she gave me five million dollars, something our father set aside for me. My reward for not usurping her like our grandmother wanted me to.”

“Can I have her as my older sister? Rhaenyra gave me nothing.”

You both laughed. Aegon opened up more about how his family had been doing. He showed you pictures of Aemon, his youngest nephew so far. Jaehaera and her Aegon were openly dating, as did Viserys and Daenaera. Jaehaerys couldn’t, since Visenya was still so young. Daeron was engaged with Addam. Baela and Rhaena got married to their college sweethearts. Even Laenor and Gwayne, and Jace and Cregan were married, the former couple for five years now, the latter for one, though both couples had to visit Greece in order to legally marry their partner. But all on all, everyone was romantically paired with someone.

“Everyone but you,” you wanted to say.

“Are you okay?” he asked, putting away his phone.

You nodded. “How are you, Aegon?”

Something in your tone told him you asked seriously. “I'm okay. Doing okay.” He leaned his hips against the counter, like you.

“I saw your Carnegie hall recital.”

He ran a hand down his face. “I wish you hadn't.”

“You should've hired a page-turner.”

He shook his head. “I don't know if you ever read my letter in the thermos but...”

“You don't have to save me a seat anymore.”

“I intend to.”

“For how long?”

He met your gaze determinedly. “As long as it takes.”

“Then why?”

“Why what?”

“Why didn't you come to the park? I waited for you for years. You never came.”

“I did.”

“You were too late.”

“I'm sorry...”

You sniffled and fetched a napkin. Though all your makeup was waterproof and smudgeproof, you still didn't want the tears on your face. 

“I saw you last year.”

“When?”

“At a subway station. You were carrying boxes of cupcakes. Black velvet, I think. I called your name. But the doors closed and you had your headphones on.”

“Oh.”

He turned to you and took your hands in his own. “Please, please forgive me, my love.”

You met his gaze, frustrated and angry at yourself. It had been almost seven years. You should be over him. Goddamn it, you had to be over him. You had to. “I can't...”

“Please, don't give up on us,” he begged.

“I'm tired, Aegon. I've fought all my life for people. And they've always disappointed me... Including you. I don't have the energy to fight anymore.”

“Then, let me fight for you, on your behalf, for both of us.” He was panting. “Let me be your knight. Let me be your champion in our trial by combat. I'll protect you, I'll fight for you. Please, just let me fight.”

You didn't stop him when his arms wrapped around you. You leaned in when his lips were almost touching yours. You moaned out loud when his fingers, his damn soft fingers, sneaked down, down your velvet dress, until they slipped under and up your thighs. You shook in his arms, your head laid on his shoulder, as he kissed your forehead and his fingers reached their destination, the junction of your legs. He easily picked you up in his arms and carried you to one of the empty stalls. With one leg, he shut the door behind him. With one hand, he locked the door. He gently placed you on the closed lid of the toilet bowl. You leaned back when he knelt before you and hiked your dress up, until it bunched around your waist. He made quick work of your panties. His purple eyes met yours, before he brought his mouth to your most sensitive place. Your helpless gaze begged him to be gentle, you'd rarely been held so intimately for a long time. The vulnerable reassurance in his eyes matched yours, as he gave you his words that he'd cherish you with the gentlest of love. With your gazes locked, his tongue slipped into your hot, sticky, wet cunt. You bit into your lips, trying your best not to look away from his gaze or close your eyes, to not make any sound that could incriminate you or him. You held your breath as his tongue, teeth, lips, and fingers slowly opened you up, chased away all your fears and loneliness and pains and emptiness. You were left so blissfully numb and silent inside your head, you didn't realize you had closed your eyes and leaned back on the water tank behind you. Your legs shook. When did he throw them over his shoulders? You couldn't remember. Through the blurry vision, you saw him rise. The tent in his pants made you giggle. He laughed silently and kissed you. You kissed back. He picked you up, wrapped your legs around his waist, and sat down, with you straddling him.

“Izula ampā perzyssy, nyke iēdrosa ao jorrāelagon,” he said breathlessly. (“Fourteen flames, I still love you.”)

You blinked. “Skoros gōntan vestrā?” (“What did you say?”)

The mirth in his eyes crumbled. “Nyke iēdrosa ao jorrāelagon, dōnītsos. Nyke iēdrosa ao jaelagon. Kostilus ȳdra daor pryjagon ñuha prūmia.” (“I still love you, sweetling. I still want you. Please don't break my heart.”)

You stroked his cheeks. The stubbles, the sharp cheekbones now covered with more chubby apples, the bags under his eyes. Despite this, he was so beautiful. Godly beauty the Targaryens had. You couldn't take your gaze from them, no matter how much you wanted to. Staring into his eyes would doom you. But you'd gladly crash-land your ship into the field of lavender in his eyes, and die a thousand deaths in there, than deny yourself the divine beauty of this man made of flesh and blood and fire. You leaned over and kissed him. It was a soft kiss, but laced within it was your farewell.

“I'm so sorry, my love.” Your voice broke. “It's too late.”

“No...” His hold around you tightened.

You gulped down the cracks in your voice.

“My sister has found someone for me. I promised her I'd give them a chance.” Your thumb traced his lips. He slipped it in his mouth and sucked. You shook in his arms. “Please, I have to...”

“Ao sagon gevie isse mele. Tolī quba ao issi daor ñuhon. Skoro syt kostagon ao daor sagon ñuhon? Nyke vēdros ziry!” (“You are so beautiful in red. Too bad you're not mine. Why can you not be mine? I hate it!”) 

You caressed his hair, his head, his forehead, all of him. “Glaeson iksos daor litse, ñuha byka rene.” (“Life is not fair, my little slut.”)

He smirked sadly. “Iksis bona skorkydoso kesā yne brōzā? Aōha byka rene.” (“Is that how you will call me? Your little slut?”)

“Kessa.” (“Yes.”) You sobered up. It was time to end this. “Iksā daor ñuhon, iksan daor aōhon.” (“Aegon, you are not mine, I am not yours.”)

His face crumpled. You could tell he was holding back the tears. “Kostan dōrī jorrāelagon arlī hae avy jorrāelan. Emā pryjata nyke syt tolie.” (“I can never love again as I love you. You have ruined me for others.”)

“Sīr emagon ao.” (“So have you.”)

He stuffed his face in the crook of your neck. “Kostilus māzigon arlī naejot nyke. Ivestragī nyke jorrāelagon ao, Dāria hen ñuha prūmia, ñuha ābrar, ñuha giez issare. Sagon ñuha ābrazȳrys. Ivestragī nyke sagon aōha valzȳrys. Avy jorrāelan. Avy jorrāelan sīr olvie, kesā dōrī gīmigon. Ȳdra daor henujagon nyke arlī.  Kesan daor giēñagon bisa jēda.” (“Please come back to me. Let me love you, queen of my heart, my life, my entire being. Be my wife. Let me be your husband. I love you. I love you so much, you will never know. Don't leave me again. I will not heal this time.”)

You tilted your forehead against his. Your eyes closed, as were his. Your hands cupped his face, while his tightly held onto your arms. “Kostilus shijetra nyke. Ivestragī nyke jikagon.” (“Please forgive me. Let me go.”)

He slumped in your hold. His bottom lip wobbled. “Lo konir sagon skoros jaelā, jorrāelagon. Dōrī nārhēdegon, kesan va moriot jorrāelagon ao. Kesan umbagon syt ao. Ēva morghon mazēza nyke” (“If that is what you want, love. Don't forget, I will always love you. I will wait for you. Until death takes me.”)

“Geros ilas, ñuha dārilaros.” (“Farewell, my prince.”)

You stood up and he let you go. You opened the door and stumbled out. You didn't care if anyone else was outside. You fetched a napkin and dabbed your face dry. You washed your hands and checked yourself in the mirror one last time.

Aegon never once came out. Only after you were gone did he leave the stall. He splashed water on his face and vigorously rubbed his eyes. With some napkins, he patted his face dry and finally, glanced at his reflection in the mirror.

You were here. You were out there. Sitting on a table, meeting your sister, who was probably introducing you to your blind date. He knew you'd never move on from him, because he’d never move on from you. Then, why? Why was he letting you go? No, he couldn't. If he were Aemond, he'd not let you go. He'd persistently try to win you over. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that nobody in the world could love you more than he did, the same way nobody could love him more than you did.

No, he wouldn't let you go. Not without a fight.

Starting now.

He checked himself in the mirror one last time. Then, he marched toward the dining hall.

Back in the dining room, you located your sister. Lovisa Gyldenløve. Every time she was in NYC, which was 9-10 times a year, she'd visit you. Your daughters were fond of their aunt, as was she fond of your girls and your mama. Your mama and her mother were regularly in contact. Your mama had a picture of her, you, Lovisa, and her mother as her cover photo in Facebook. You chatted with Lovisa at least once a week. She had been desperate to get you into a romantic relationship, ever since she met her partner, Clas, a year ago. Now, they lived together, to the disappointment of your grandmother, who famously lost Lovisa's case against her unfair will. Ever since then, the grandmother and granddaughter had a frosty relationship, which you took advantage of by befriending Lovisa, though she was the one who hosted your months-long stay in Sweden.

Now, here she sat opposite you, on the table closest to the exit. She took your hands in her own once you sat down and she took in your face. “Have you been crying, little sister?”

You blinked and looked away. “No, just tired.”

“Don't lie to me. Your eyes have bags under them whenever you cry. What is it? Are my nieces okay?”

You took a sip of your wine. Cabernet Sauvignon. “They’re okay. Don't worry about it. So, where is my date?”

Lovisa didn't fall for it. “I'm your older sister. Tell me please.”

You sighed. “Maybe later tonight? After my date? I don’t have any energy to talk about it.”

She finally accepted defeat. She told you about her mother and Clas. “It was him who found this date for you.”

“A friend of his?”

“No, uh, I hope you won't mind. He used to date our aunt.”

You blinked. “Aunt Perry?” You laughed. “Is he a silver fox then? I don't mind the age gap.”

Lovisa rolled her eyes. “He's not that old. He's around your age. Clas saw a performance of his and recognized him from a photo I have of Aunt Perry.”

“Performance?”

“Oh, he's a classical pianist.” Her gaze shifted behind you. Her face brightened up. “There he is!”

That was when you heard his voice. Calling your name. Your real name. You froze. Not now, please, not now.

Footsteps neared you, until they stopped beside you. You refused to turn around. But your sister stood up and... She left her seat to greet him, a bright smile on her face.

“At long last, Mr. Targaryen.”

You finally looked up. At him. Your sun. Your moon. He stubbornly stood by your side, until you met his gaze.

“Hello,” he said in his soft, deep voice, honeyed by age. “I believe we have met before, haven't we?”

You finally allowed yourself to smile with hope. “I believe we have.”

Lovisa glanced between you two. “Do you two know each other?”

Neither you nor Aegon shifted your gaze from each other, not even when he took the empty seat next to you. “Tell me, are you a woman of your words?”

“I believe I am.”

His hand found yours under the table. “Was it you who said you wished to move on with whomever your sister chooses for you tonight?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Will you keep your words? Will you give him a chance then?”

“Yes, I will.”

He finally called you what he had been dying to call you all evening.

“Ñuha vēzos, ñuha hūra.” (“My sun, my moon.”)

“Ñuha hūra, ñuha vēzos.” (“My moon, my sun.”)