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*****
“He’s got your nose, Nyra.”
“Don’t lie. We both know he’s going to be the spitting image of his father, just like his brothers.”
A pair of warm blue eyes squint with smile lines as Harwin Strong looks down upon the brow of his beloved wife, sweat dripping from just beneath her hair line, mascara running under her eyes. At 5’ 11”, he peaks just four inches above his bride, but his brawny stance and beefy features make him appear taller and more pronounced than most men. A grizzly in torn denim jeans and a blue gray shirt, face covered in dark brown fur and curls the same shade crowning the top of his wide forehead, Harwin looks the part of mountain man.
But just one look at his wife and the mountain can be brought to his knees.
“I’m sure eventually one will look like you, my love. I can’t help that my genes are stronger than yours,” he chuckles.
“Eventually? Harwin, we just had a baby.”
“I know,” he smiles sheepishly. “But you know how hard it is to keep my hands off of you.”
Rhaenyra Targaryen-Strong looked down at the slumbering babe in her arms, the scale of birth flaking subtly from the top of his scalp. Still, there is a touch of brown lingering in the downy strands that sprinkle atop his head, a far cry from the near platinum blonde of his mother.
“I know,” she smiles in reply, though it’s clear from her tone that she’s become lost in the gaze of her son.
Never in a million years would Rhaenyra have considered marrying the type of man like her husband. Certainly, three healthy young boys would not have been in her goal plan either. However, fate had other plans and Rhaenyra couldn’t even muster a whisper of regret.
Born first of her father and mother, Rhaenyra had always been an independent child, stubbornness flavoring nearly every action of her youth. A beauty at even the pre-teen stage, Viserys Targaryen thought he would have a heart attack before Rhaenyra graduated, watching as his daughter fielded date after date from several teenage boys who were less than impressionable. With stark white-blond tresses and eyes that glowed like amethysts, Rhaenyra turned heads the moment she walked into a room.
It certainly didn’t help that her confidence was far greater than it ought to have been for a girl in her teens. A set of hips that bloomed wider than most girls, a pair of breasts that appeared soft as milk yet firm with perkiness, she knew her visual worth. She was what the boys called “a stunner.” And a simple arrogant quirk of her lips could shock a man silent.
In short, she was every father’s pride and worst nightmare.
Rhaenyra always pictured herself falling for a man that was tall, lanky. A man who was cocky, whose lips were in a permanent smirk. Hair white as hers, unique and special and bold. A man not unlike her Uncle Daemon, though perhaps a match less improper with someone who shared far fewer chromosomes.
She imagined herself with a bad boy, someone she could taunt her loving father with just to prove despite her intelligence and upbringing that she could do whatever the Hell she wanted.
Harwin Strong had been nothing like that.
The biggest and oldest of Lyonel Strong’s boys, Harwin was tender and compassionate. He didn’t smoke cigarettes behind the school dumpsters. He didn’t cut class to drink a six pack of beer in the school parking lot. He didn’t hump every single member of the cheerleading squad, though he got through quite a few of them. His relationships lasted longer than a week and he didn’t act with dishonorable intentions.
He wasn’t a saint, by any means. He had found his way into the back of his pick-up truck many times with busty Celia Tully or shy, squeaky Marianne Vance, late nights spent parked by the shores of Red Fork River, tires squealing under the weight of the constant rocking. He found his pleasure like many teen boys do. But Harwin wasn’t one to string someone along. He was decent, honorable, and always made sure his intentions were clear with the young ladies of his dalliances.
Naturally, Rhaenyra all but ate him alive.
When they first met, gathered around the fire pit after the high school’s homecoming football game, it was strictly lust for her. Across the flames, she could pick out the damp curls that collected at the nape of his neck, still sweating from his time on the football field. She could make out the muscles hiding out beneath the buttery yellow sleeves of his letterman’s jacket. She could see the whiteness of his teeth as he smiled down at Celia Tully, his eyes trying but failing not to gaze down at the girl’s impressive rack.
He looked like the kind of man who could throw her around and show her a good time. A man who could erase the horrible first sexual experience she had had just a few weeks prior with football quarterback Criston Cole, whose concern was focused far more on making a quick touchdown in the sheets than working for that extra point with his mouth and fingers.
Rhaenyra had turned to her best friend at the time, Alicent Hightower, making up some lame excuse to refill the beer in her plastic cup in an effort to get closer to Harwin, who just happened to be standing with his hip cocked against the fender of his truck parked next to the keg.
As Rhaenyra pumped amber liquid from the tap, she tried to overhear the conversation he was having with Celia, not noticing that most of her actions were causing beer foam to fill her cup like empty weight. Harwin, however, did not fail to notice. He shot her a simple smile, nudging towards the keg and her cup with a tilt of his head and a lift of his eyebrows. When Rhaenyra looked down, it took everything in her to hold her head up high and not to collapse in embarrassment.
He quickly righted the inside of her cup, stepping around Celia the five feet to reach the keg.
“Need a hand?”
She liked that he didn’t just take it away from her, didn’t say something smarmy like “looks like you might need a hand,” or some cheesy line like that. She appreciated that his was an offer, should she choose to take it. Not a command. Not a patronizing commentary on a woman pumping beer out of a keg spout.
They spent the rest of the evening conversing by his truck, Alicent watching their interactions from across the flames as she tried to ignore Harwin’s brother Larys, Celia no longer vying for Harwin’s attention and instead cozying up to high school manwhore Jason Lannister.
To say Harwin was intimidated by Rhaenyra’s confidence would be an understatement. He was downright petrified. But that fear was born out of respect, and that respect blossomed into intense attraction. Her independence was refreshing, and her lack of damsel demeanor was a nice change to some of the softer women he had been with. Rhaenyra was all flame, sharp movements despite her soft edges, fast pace despite her tiny stature.
She consumed him. Devoured him. Took his burly build and melted it down like candle wax at her feet. He was gone for her, lost in the gaze of her brilliant purple eyes as they captured the glow of the moonlight. He wanted to move slow, but she wasn’t having any of that and who was he to deny her when she made such an appealing argument?
Hands yanking at her jean jacket and soft cotton blouse, fingers running through his rich brown curls, she was a wildfire that couldn’t be put out. When she straddled him in the bed of his truck, parked two miles down the field from where the post-game bonfire still raged on, he had fallen under her spell. As his hands gripped her soft breasts, his lips puckered around a luscious pink nipple, he heard the song of her pleasure flooding his ears. When she placed a confident, yet somewhat shaky hand on his cock, Harwin thought he had died a blissful man’s death.
Ten years later, and three kids born from that very passion that began in the field near Tumblestone, Rhaenyra counted herself the lucky one.
She may not have bagged herself a bad boy, but she married a man who carried the same aesthetic appeal with the heart of a tender warrior. Motorcycle rider, drummer in a garage band, and a firefighter for the Kings Landing Fire Department, he became the man of her dreams – a mix between the desires of a young, excited teenage girl and the intense needs of a woman.
“Where are the boys?” she asked, her eyes still gazing down upon the face of her newborn son.
“Laenor is on his way. Apparently Jace has been asking about him non-stop, but Luke has been a bit harder to tame.”
Rhaenyra pulled her gaze from her babe, meeting the eyes of her husband with the look only an exasperated mother could give. “What did he do now?”
Harwin shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, his eyes now pulled to the bundle of pink flesh beginning to squirm in his swaddled gold blanket. “I guess he shoved Jace down while they were playing outside, then refused to take a bath when Laenor made him go in.”
Rhaenrya sighed, adjusting her tired body in the leather recliner of their birthing suite. She slipped a finger into the top edge of her black nursing bra, a swollen breast and leaking nipple popping out with vigor. Harwin didn’t even try to look away.
“Is it wrong for me to feel a little jealous right now?”
Rhaenyra rolled her eyes at him but couldn’t stop the smile from forming. “And deny your son the milk that will make him grow just as big as his two oldest brothers? Now I see where Luke gets it from. That certain insolence that runs in the family.”
Harwin chuckled, reaching down with two thick fingers to smoothly pass over the soft skin of his son’s cheek. Though hulking in size, his touch was gentle as a lamb. “I concede then. I’ll just have to wait my turn.”
His playful smirk still managed to pull a heavy blush from his wife’s face, but before she could respond, the opening riff of a heavy guitar started blasting from Harwin’s pocket. The baby squinted his eyes, wriggling around even more actively before Rhaenyra was able to maneuver her nipple into his puckered lips. As he sucked, Harwin reached for his cell phone and pulled it up to his ear.
“Where are you guys?”
From her seat next to where he stood, Rhaenyra could hear the distant voice of her cousin Laenor through the cell phone’s speakers. She watched as Harwin stepped away, anxious not to further wake the baby or disturb the little peace that had formed in the last twenty minutes since he had fallen asleep. Rhaenyra watched as a dribble of milk leaked from the corner of his plump pink lips, his suckling slowing down as he drifted back into restful, satiated slumber.
“No, that’s the right entrance. We should be on the third floor, suite 117. But tell the boys to be quiet. He just went down for a nap.”
Rhaenyra watched as he hung up the phone, pocketing it into the back of his denims in a move formed by habit. “I’m glad he just fed. Did you bring the gifts?”
Harwin nodded, digging into the multiple bags they had brought with them to the hospital, searching for two individual presents covered in Spiderman wrapping paper. He held them up for Rhaenyra to inspect.
“Did I do an okay job with the wrapping?”
She grinned at his cheeky smile, folding her lips inward and moistening them with her tongue. “So good, I think you deserve a kiss for your hard work.”
Harwin wasted little time stepping back over to his wife, gifts in tow, held under his arm as he leaned down to capture her lips with his own. The kiss was soft and gentle, loving and sincere.
Their peace was immediately disturbed, however, when the hurried voices of her sons were heard just before they burst into the door of the birthing suite. Laenor followed them in a few seconds later, blowing out a heavy breath as he shot the parents an apologetic glance.
“Sorry about them. Once we got off the elevator, they took off running down the hall. I thought one of the nurses was going to clock them both.”
“Would’ve been well-deserved,” Harwin replied as he dropped the gifts onto the spare couch and exchanged them for the collars of both his sons’ shirts. “Slow down, you too. Your brother just went back to sleep. Voices on low,” he commanded, turning his thumb and forefinger like the twisting of a speaker knob.
The boys mimicked their father, as they so often did, but you could see the spring in the eldest boy’s steps, feel the vibration of his excitement. The other boy next to him looked far less thrilled, a sullen shade on his features as he stared down at the ground. It was almost as if he avoided looking at the baby, trying to find anything else in the room to cast his gaze upon.
“Jace, Luke,” Rhaenyra whispered, a motherly smile forming on her lips. “Come meet your new brother, Joffrey.”
“Joffrey?” Laenor questioned, his eyebrow quirking at the name.
“Yes, and no relation to your ex. I just happen to like the name,” Rhaenyra explained, her tone painted with a touch of attitude as she smirked at her cousin.
Jace, the eldest boy, quickly stepped up, trying his best to stand still and sturdy like his father. At 8 years old, he was the spitting image of Harwin. Soft brown curls, eyes the color of a robin’s egg, a smirk that could charm the fur off a kitten, the very essence of her loving husband. He peered down anxiously at the baby.
“He’s so small, mama.”
“He is,” Harwin replied, his gruff voice tender as he placed a firm yet gentle hand on his son’s shoulders.
“You were once this small, my love.”
Jace scrunched up his nose at Rhaenyra, giggling. “No way. I came out with muscles like dad.” To demonstrate, he held up one arm and attempted to flex his bicep. His parents chuckled softly.
“You’re almost there, bud.” Harwin ruffled his dark curls, pulling Jace in to his front where he could wrap an arm around his son and squeeze. “In fact, Joffrey got you a present to help you get big like daddy.”
Harwin reached behind him and grab a long cylindrical gift from the sofa. He held it out for Jace to take.
“You’re the next big man of the house, Jace. A gift like this is for big boys. Your mom and I are going to need your help around the house, taking care of your brothers. Joffrey wanted you to have this as a thank you for being such a good big brother.”
Jace took the gift like it was a prized jewel, his eyes growing wide. He looked up at his father and then back toward the baby and nodded. “I promise to be the best big brother, ever.”
He ripped off the gift wrap, holding a new youth-friendly baseball bat in its place.
“For real?” Jace asked excitedly, his wide eyes shooting up towards Harwin. His father nodded and smiled, again ruffling the feather light curls of his son’s hair.
“You bet, bud. That bat comes with big responsibility, Jace. Your mother and I think you’re ready.”
Jace smiled up at his daddy like he had stars in his eyes. “I won’t let you down, dad.”
He looked over towards Joffrey, his cheeks glowing and his smile big, lips stained just slightly with the remnants of an old Kool-Aid juice box. “Or you, baby Joffrey.”
Rhaenyra motioned for her son to give her a peck on the cheek, her arms still too full with the newborn to hold her eldest tightly. When Jace stepped back, his focus now solely on the new baseball bat he was daydreaming about playing with, Rhaenyra turned her attention to her other grown son.
“Luke?” she inquired, her tone soft as she tried to get him to look her way. “Do you want to see what baby Joffrey got you too?”
Luke turned the toe of one sneakered foot inward, looking down at the ground with a frown. “No.”
Harwin’s smile turned downward as he tilted his head towards his middle son. “Why not, Luka bear?”
Luke failed to warm at the mention of his nickname, turning his chin deeper in towards his neck, trying even harder to avoid their stares.
“I don’t want to have a baby brother.”
Rhaenyra and Harwin looked at each other, both with the same knowing expression on their faces – Luke didn’t want to share. For many years, he had been the baby of the family, siphoning attention away from Jace and growing more spoiled for it. When Rhaenyra found out she was pregnant for a third time, her first concern wasn’t finances, wasn’t Harwin’s reaction. She was worried how her youngest son would take it.
To say the news was welcome would be a grave fallacy.
Luke had thrown a fit, stomping around his bedroom and smashing his Lego castle set into hundreds of pieces. He had earned the ire of his parents that day, Harwin growing increasingly frustrated with the brattish attitude of his son. He remembered what it was like when Larys was born and he couldn’t understand why Luke was having such a hard time with it. He had been tickled knowing he was going to have a baby brother to play with. Even when his two sisters were born, Harwin never felt the frustration of being left out or of receiving less attention from his parents.
“But think of all the fun adventures you two can share.” Harwin had tried to reason with Luke, only to fail miserably when Luke shoved his body and face down into the twin mattress on his bunk bed, his arms crossed and his face sour. Improvement had been very scarce since then in trying to get Luke to warm to the idea of having a new sibling.
Inside the cradle of his mother’s arms, Joffrey made a small squealing noise and Luke’s head turned upward for the first time since he arrived. His eyes were narrowed as he stared at the babe, his lips puckering to the side as if he were in serious thought.
“What’s wrong with him?”
Harwin frowned, but Rhaenyra shot him a pitying look, telling him ‘I’ve got this one’ through their eye contact.
“Joffrey was really excited to meet you but you don’t seem very happy to see him.”
“How do you know?” Luke asked, taking a tentative step towards his mother and baby brother. “Babies can’t talk.”
“No, they can’t, but do you remember when I let you feel my belly when he was still inside? He was moving all around when he heard your voice, dancing almost like he was excited. That’s how I know he was really looking forward to meeting you.”
Luke seemed skeptical at first, but his mother’s persuasive tale and Luke’s keen sense of interest turned him over to their cause, and he took another couple steps forward until he was standing by the arm of Rhaenyra’s recliner.
She tucked Joffrey closer to her breast as she released one of her arms, reaching out towards Harwin for Luke’s present. She then offered it to her son.
“Why don’t you open it and see what baby Joffrey got you?”
Luke stared down at the gift hesitantly and he clutched the gift easily in his hands, as if he would be able to give it back if he changed his mind. After a few silent seconds of contemplation, Luke began to peel away at the wrapping paper gingerly.
It was a decent size for a 6 year old, round and smooth at its edges, raised slightly in the middle in some sort of design. As Luke tore off a section of the paper, it gave way to a brilliant silver star.
Luke’s eyes widened, and for the first time since meeting Joffrey he smiled. “No way…” he whispered softly.
In his hand he held the familiar shield of his favorite superhero, Captain America, its red and silver rings framing a bold blue middle. The star in the center glistened.
Luke looked up at his father.
“Is this really for me?”
Harwin nodded, finally smiling at the positive turn in his son’s reaction. “You bet. You’re the closest in age to Joffrey, which means you’ll be the one he looks up to. Your mother and I know you’ll take care of him, show him how to play. Take him under your wing.”
“Can he play with Arrax?” Luke questioned with hopeful eyes, thinking of his pet turtle at home lounging in its heated tank.
Rhaenyra grinned tiredly. “He’s a little too young for Arrax right now, but maybe you can hold it up and show it to him when we get home.”
Luke accepted his mother’s response and turned his attention back down toward his baby brother. He looked to the shield in his hand and looked back at Joffrey. With a subtle nod and a small grin, Luke accepted his role.
“He looks a little like Arrax,” he giggled, staring at the wrinkle lines forming on Joffrey’s forehead.
Rhaenyra grinned, reaching for her son’s hand and bringing it to the baby’s. In an instant, Joffrey gripped Luke’s finger.
“Just wait. I bet he’ll look just like you.”
Fanart created by the incredibly talented Maluceh