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June 13, 2015
“Ask me again.”
He did. It didn't feel real. It felt like a dream, floaty and sweet and all-consuming, especially when there was suddenly a ring on her finger and her arms around his neck. Rhaena’s shocked voice was carrying across the lawn and Baela was giggling and he couldn't help but wonder if there was anything closer to heaven than this?
When he was lying next to her in bed a couple hours later, watching her smile as she looked at the glittering ring on her finger, he thought about how they’ve always been meant to be here. What a fool he was, thinking he could be anyone or anything but hers.
June 15, 2015
Harwin barely gave Baela’s car time to pull out of the driveway before his hand settled heavy on Jace’s shoulder and he said the words he’d been expecting the whole way here.
“Let’s take a walk.”
Luke gave him a worried look as they left, Alys ushering him and Joff inside with a smile, and Jace did his best to give him a reassuring thumbs up behind Harwin’s back. Joff wasn’t concerned at all, thankfully, more focused on the thrill of being at the Strong House once again. He’d been a baby when Harwin had moved away from Dragonstone, raised calling Daemon Dad, but Harwin had insisted on visits whether that meant he came to Dragonstone or all three boys made their way to DC, because he didn’t want Joff to grow up feeling like an outsider in the family that Luke and Jace had already had so much time with before he was born. Now that Joff was older, Harwin would come pick them up for his week in the summer, going out into the woods to camp and swim in the rivers and lakes. Some of Jace’s favorite memories with the older of his little brothers were moments from those trips.
Joff might not call Harwin his dad, but Jace knew that his little brother had no doubt that Harwin Strong loved them more than anything. All the Strongs did. Well, there was Larys who didn’t care much for kids being around, but it’s not like he hated them. He’d even helped Jace pick out the ring due to Harwin being out of town on a security job and him wanting a second opinion after Alys. His aunt was lovely, but eccentric.
Eccentric had never quite described the style of Baela’s jewelry in all the time he’d known her.
Ring shopping with Larys, while successful, had been concerning in a way that just added fuel to Jace’s belief that he did in fact work for the CIA and not just the NSA. He had found Baela’s old Pinterest account using her email and had double-checked Jace’s potential picks against various boards. Considering she’d said yes and had told him later on that she did love it, he’d fully admit that it was worth it to bring Larys on board. Bit surprising he’d kept the news of the imminent engagement from Harwin, though.
“Are you mad at me?” Jace couldn’t help but ask as they made their way halfway down the neighboring road in silence.
“No.” Harwin shook his head with a little laugh, “No, I had a feeling this would happen the second Alys told me you’d brought her back to the house. Then you left for High Tide to be there for her and I knew it for sure.”
Jace couldn’t stop the blush that ran up his neck. If there was anyone who knew how he felt about Baela, it was Harwin. He could keep it from his mother, from his friends, even from Luke if Rhaena hadn’t given it away, but he could never really keep it from his dad. Harwin had endured many a mortifying conversation with him over the last two years.
“I will say though,” there was a smile in Harwin’s voice, “When I told you that you needed to get your life together when it came to Baela, I didn’t mean this.”
Jace grinned, “Oh, I must have misheard you. I thought you said to get my wife together.”
Harwin swatted at the back of his head and Jace ducked away from him laughing.
“Targaryens.” Harwin rolled his eyes, “Such dramatics, it’s got to be genetic.”
Jace couldn’t help but agree. Not even his Strong blood had saved him from being his mother’s son, it seemed. Reckless marriage seemed to be a thing that they would have to share, now, even if the thought made him a bit uneasy. Reckless or not, he wasn’t going anywhere, not this time. He wasn’t like her.
“Luke said you fought with Mom.”
They rounded the corner onto the next residential street and Jace watched his father shrug.
“I had a conversation with her, I wouldn’t necessarily say we fought.”
“But you didn’t agree with her. With whatever she was saying.”
Harwin sighed.
“Your mom has good points, Jace. I’m always going to be on your side but I’m not going to open the floor to criticize your Mom with me. She’s scared for you, worried about you, and if I didn’t know all I do? I would be too.”
It’d been the only secret Harwin had ever agreed to keep and he’d done it. He was a known pushover when it came to Jace’s mom but when she called and asked if he knew anything? He denied it to the very end. It was something Jace didn’t think he’d ever forget about his dad, that at the end of the day he kept his word to his kids. There’d been a lot of late nights sat up doing homework and talking in Harwin’s office or in the sunroom after Alys had gone to bed, eventually caving to his own need to be understood and telling Harwin things he hadn’t even told Luke.
Like how he loved Baela. Like how he resented his mom. Like how he worried that Luke resented him for running away to DC, leaving him behind in that hell pit that was Dragonstone, Ohio.
“Did she ask you to talk me out of it?”
Harwin gave him one of those looks, the one that said Harwin knew his game. That knew he was just picking at a wound just to have something to pick at because it was easier than explaining what was going on in his head.
“I told her that she’d had her chance to make decisions that affected others for good or bad and no one had stopped her. Now it's your turn, as terrifying as it feels to let it be your turn. You and Baela are adults, if you want to get married after such a short time, that’s your right. You don’t need us telling you how we feel because I know that you’re well aware of what we’re all thinking. Now, my turn.”
Jace realized he was wringing his hands and pulled them apart, shoving them roughly into his pockets and avoiding Harwin’s eyes.
“No one gets married this quick to be exempt from living in the dorms.” Harwin cleared his throat loudly, uncomfortably, “Jacaerys, is she pregnant?”
“No!”
Jace must have not seemed convincing enough because he got a look back that said he was full of it.
“She’s not pregnant.” Another look, “She’s not. I’m not my mother.”
“I never said you were.”
“Yeah you did. Reckless, dramatic, Targaryen Jacaerys, screwing it all up. Getting expelled from school, breaking up with his girlfriend who didn’t do anything wrong, bet it doesn’t take much to think he’d knock up his stepsister too, doesn’t it?”
Harwin huffed a little laugh, which only made him angrier, but further words were stopped in their tracks by Harwin suddenly standing in front of him, a pair of heavy hands on his shoulders.
“Jace, who was expelled defending his Momma’s good name. Jace, who broke up with Grace because it would have been unkind to keep leading her on. Jace, who is the honorable kind of young man that would, despite all his feelings about his reputation, ask his stepsister to marry him if the test read positive.”
Harwin squeezed his shoulders, “Bud, I didn’t think you had, but I had to ask or your Momma would and I felt like that would go much, much worse than me asking. Yeah?”
Jace’s eyes burned hot with angry tears and he ducked his head, “Yeah.”
“Now,” Harwin’s arm looped around and dragged him into a headlock, pulling him around the corner as Jace tried to squirm out of his hold, “Let’s find those brothers of yours. There’s apartments to tour and suits to try on and we’re burning daylight.”
. . .
“Did Baela text you suit colors?”
Harwin asked him over lunch, Joff sitting next to him and working on a burger that was practically the size of his head. The kid was a bottomless pit lately.
Jace nodded, “Rhaenys did.”
“Ask Baela for them,” Harwin said and Jace looked at him questioningly, “She’s going to be your wife, make sure that it's what she wants, not what Rhaenys wants. That’s your job now, you understand? It’s your duty to make sure she’s heard, especially by you.”
Luke glanced up from his phone in the next chair over. Jace nodded again, pulling out his phone, and did as Harwin said.
“I’m just surprised she’s letting you pick the apartment.”
Jace shrugged, “Rhaenys has things on a tight schedule and she didn’t want to risk missing out on a good place.
I trust your judgement, she’d said, and he’d felt on top of the world holding her in the driveway of the Strong’s house.
. . .
June 16, 2015
The creaking of his bedroom door woke him, the nightstand clock blinking a red 3:52.
At first he thought it was Joff, unable to sleep since he wasn’t at home and too proud to go to Harwin for comfort, but then the bed shifted next to him and the scent of her conditioner washed over him and it took his half-awake brain a second to process that she was there.
“Baela?” He murmured, still out of it, pushing up on his elbows to see her, and there she was, plugging her phone in on his nightstand, the pale yellow light from her lockscreen shining up at her.
“Hey, you.”
Baela’s voice was soft as she leaned over, her lips landing on his cheek as he shifted further upwards, blinking to try and clear his vision. She was, against all reasonable explanation, there, her curls wrapped up in silk and one of her giant t-shirts barely reaching her thighs as she knelt on the bed, shifting pillows and blankets around so she could get in.
All his half awake brain could say was that she wasn’t really there. Because she shouldn’t have been. She wasn’t due back till the next night. He must be dreaming. But then she was nudging him back down to his pillow so she could lie down with her head on his chest and surely the warmth of her had to be real?
She took in a shaky breath and that was all it took to drag him from half-awake to full awareness.
“Missed you.” He kissed the top of her head, “You okay?”
She wasn’t, he knew that. She wouldn’t have driven four hours in the middle of the night if she was.
“Just couldn’t sleep.”
Her t-shirt was soft under his hand, smoothing up and down her back, back and forth and back again. His own shirt was damp under her head.
“Any luck with the dresses? Find something pretty?”
She nodded against his chest, “Grandmama found a beautiful one, I think you’ll like it.”
“But do you like it?”
“Of course I do. I liked it most out of all the ones we saw.”
“I just,” He hesitated, “All I want is for you to be happy and get what you want. I don’t care what Rhaenys and them think as long as you have everything you want.”
She sniffled and he pulled her even closer. Her right hand moved on his chest and something glittered there, reflecting the light of the TV, still on but quiet in the corner. Jace caught her hand up in his free one, gently touching the ring there. It was familiar, he’d seen it that morning hanging from her rearview window, its matching band on Rhaena’s right ring finger.
Laena Targaryen was the one thing that she could want that he couldn’t get her for their wedding.
“I talked to her the whole way here. Didn’t even have the radio on. Just couldn’t stop talking.”
“Did it help?”
She took in a deep breath, snuggling down further into his chest.
“I’m not quite sure yet.”
. . .
June 16, 2015
Waking up to her would never get old, he was sure of it.
Baela was beautiful in every light, but there was something ethereal about her in the morning sun. Glowing and soft and sweet. Half-asleep and blinking, t-shirt rucked up above her belly from moving in her sleep or slipping off a shoulder to reveal her pretty collarbones when she propped herself up on her elbows.
“I swear, I left a note,” she said blearily, wincing at the phone as another text from Rhaenys came in, “Texted them both and left a message on the company landline in case they somehow both missed it and yet…”
She sighed, typing something out before she tossed her phone and silk scarf from her hair down into her bag on her side of the bed and rolled back over to him. He couldn’t help but grin, pulling her close to kiss her as one of his hands dropped to her bare waist.
“Luke’s in the next room,” Baela said, pulling away slightly to give him an amused look.
“We can be quiet?”
His mouth dropped to her neck as she lifted an eyebrow, lip twitching with suppressed laughter, “Do you really believe that? Not to mention Joff is in the room right past his.”
Jace paused, his face still tucked into her neck for a moment before he also pulled away, “What time is it?”
“A little after eight so,” She hummed under her breath, “He’ll be up at literally any moment. If you can be quiet and quick…”
He surged up to meet her mouth, but the kiss had barely even begun when they heard the telltale squeak of door hinges in the hallway and the sudden, incessant knocking on the bedroom door began.
“Jace?” Joff kept knocking even as he spoke, “Jace are you awake yet?”
“I’m going to kill him.”
Baela giggled at his expression and rolled away from him, rising from the bed and giving him a glance of her toned thighs just past the hem of her shirt as she bent over to pull clothing from her bag.
“Jace?”
“I’ll be down in just a minute, Joff!” Jace called, voice trailing off at the end as Baela winked at him.
She raised her arms to tie back her hair with a scrunchie, the hem of her shirt rising, and he decided breakfast would just have to wait. There was a top priority task to achieve first.
He had to commit this moment to memory and he had no plans to rush it.