Chapter Text
In retrospect, the only excuse Margaery can really make is that she'd spent a long time without sex.
That, and his hair was at that perfectly-fluffy stage of growing out from a truly horrendous buzzcut he'd had for one ill-advised year (further proof that you should never, ever place a bet with Theon, because he's a vicious bastard at the best of times), and his biceps were really starting to fill out his sleeves, and sharing a laundry machine meant that she was surrounded by the spicy-strong smell of his cologne every single day...
No, in retrospect, the only excuse she can make is that he's Robb, and she's been weak at the knees for him than longer than she herself even knows.
It's a chilly morning in November, the first day when the winter chill has really set in, and as such the first time she's slept in pajamas for the last six months. Being built on a bay as it is, high over the sea-smashed cliffs of the Narrow Sea, King's Landing is always a maelstrom of unpredictable weather - blazing hot in the summertime, with a brisk wind that whips up the dust from the streets and hurls it stinging into people's eyes, brisk and damp and rainy in spring and autumn, and with a harsh wet cold during the winter. After seven - going on eight - years living in this city, she's well-accustomed to its tempestuous moods and changeable winds, so different from the unending mellow sunshine and mild seas of her childhood home in Highgarden.
She still gets cold toes, though, which is why she's barely opened her eyes to shut off her alarm clock before groping for a pair of wooly socks on her bedside table and wriggling them on under the covers. Then she takes a deep breath, stretches, yawns, and flings back the quilts to meet the morning.
It barely counts as morning, mind you as she tugs her fluffy dressing-gown around her shoulders and yawns her way into the kitchen. It's only just past four, the sky still dark outside with no forgiving hints of pearl-grey on the horizon through the kitchen windows. The coffee machine is gurgling away, and she mentally thanks all the seven gods - again - for coffee machines with timers. She doesn't have the brain capacity for making it otherwise, not until she's woken up.
She gulps down the contents of her water bottle from the fridge, shivering at the chill, then refills it and helps herself to her first coffee of the morning; strong, rich, sweet with honey, warming down to her bones. Holding it to her chest to absorb its warmth, she makes her way to the small table tucked into the breakfast nook, where she left her books and laptop lying out last night, ready for her.
Here's the thing that nobody warns you about studying and working fulltime: it sucks. It massively, massively sucks, and there's no way around the sheer suckage. It's so hard to manage both, so difficult to motivate your brain to study after a long eight hours at the office. It doesn't seem like too much on paper, adding an extra three hours onto her weekdays to study, but the reality is that it means having to turn down dates and nights out and lazy Friday nights marathoning Netflix on the couch, and your weekends become jammed end-to-end with more reading and essays and problem sets, and you have to manage your time so carefully to actually also go to the gym and do the shopping and the laundry...
Being an adult and having to take care of yourself and hold yourself to certain professional standards like not showing up to the office in sweats is difficult enough; add in the extra studying and the discipline and motivation that requires, and it's harder. These days, about the only things she actually does, the only things occupying her calendar, is work, study, and burn off her stress on a treadmill. Gone are the days of working hard and partying harder; throughout university, and throughout law school, she was famous on campus for being able to maintain a rigorous - frankly terrifying - social life and still maintain her status in the top ten of the class, could pull sleepless nights both dancing on tables with her best friends and writing essays in the library. Now, the last time she did anything approaching social was to go out for drinks for her work friend's birthday - and even then, Margaery Tyrell, famous for her ability to hold her liquor and never suffer hangovers, had one drink and then took her fabulous self home to finish a reading about the ultra vires doctrine.
It's been all of five months since she graduated law school, only two since her summer internship turned into an actual job, a stressful, headache-inducing, time-consuming job, and it's another nine months until the Bar Exam. And already she's bloody exhausted.
She starts with Criminal Procedure, because somehow the rules of stop-and-search arrests and warrantability are soothing to a brain that's still halfway asleep. It's quiet in the kitchen for a full half-hour, only the soft rosy glow of the overhead lamp and her laptop keys clicking.
Then comes the sounds of the morning that she's intimately familiar with from behind the door of the second bedroom, which is closer to the kitchen than her own - cheerful chimes of a phone alarm, which is slapped off forcibly after about a minute, followed another minute later by a second alarm, likewise slapped off. The creak of a mattress and a thump as a limb - likely a foot - hits the wall as the bed's occupant flips over with force, as if to say bugger off to the entire concept of the mornings. She grins, a little self-satisfied curl of the lips, and keeps typing.
Five minutes later, the third alarm goes off, this one a loud, blaring, old-fashioned alarm clock with a noise akin to the sound of an aerial strike, a present from herself last Christmas when she got tired of trying to haul him out of bed in time for lectures, goes off, and is accompanied almost immediately by an almighty groan. The mattress creaks again, his feet hit the floor with a slap, and she hears him stumbling across the room - he knocks into his desk chair, as always, and lets out a muffled curse - to switch the damn thing off. She snickers, curling one foot underneath her for added comfort. Initially, he'd set the clock on his bedside table, which didn't have at all the desired effect. The only way to get Robb Stark out of bed in the morning is to make him move, a hypothesis proven when she'd woken him up by dumping ice-cold water over him, and then run for her life when he emerged from the sodden quilts with the wrath of Achilles and the bedhead of an electrocuted Medusa. A week after giving him the alarm clock, she'd taken the initiative to bolt it to the wall, and there've been no further ice-water-related incidents since...not counting, of course, the time last Christmas at Winterfell, when he'd bodily hoisted her out of bed on Christmas morning and dumped her into the outdoor pool as payback.
In the sudden silence once the alarm has been silenced, his morning grumbles take over - he's not even verbal yet, just grumbling in half-mumbles, half a growl inside his chest as he stumps about his room for a minute, the sound reverberating through the walls, and then his door is yanked open and he comes grumbling out and into the kitchen.
His hair is a disaster, auburn curls sticking out in every conceivable direction, and his jawline is heavy with scruff that he scrubs a hand over, yawning hugely and with no small resemblance to a lion yawning. He's in boxer shorts, one leg hitched higher than the other, and his old KL rugby sweatshirt, the deep red one that brings out all his blushes and still smells of the cigarettes he used to sneak at the time. He stumps across the kitchen, making a beeline for the coffeepot, and the moment he takes his first sip - black and bitter, the savage - his grumbles turn into something like a deep, satisfied purr in his chest.
Leaning against the counter, he blinks his blue eyes open more than a slit, and they focus on her, bundled up in her robe with her hair piled on top of her head, smirking at him over her laptop screen. He tips his mug her direction in a sort of salute, and when she tips hers in response, he pushes off the counter, coffeepot in hand, and brings it over to refill her mug. She's trained him well at this point.
He's quiet while he finishes his first cup of coffee, staring out the windows over the city roofs sloping away below them, and she's likewise silent, refocusing on her problem questions and revision flashcards while still peripherally aware of him. After the last sip, he puts his mug down across from her, stretches his arms over his head with a groan, and vanishes back into his room, only to reappear with his own laptop and stack of flashcards.
They settle in for another two hours, alternatively refilling their coffee cups and shifting in their seats, but working in perfect quiet. She curls her legs under her, switches to crossing them yoga-style on the bench, pulls them up to rest her chin on her knees while she works, back to the window and the pale pink streaks of sunlight slowly appearing behind her. He leans back in his chair, a line between his brows as he stares at his screen, a pen shoved behind one ear and occasionally flipping through his notes with one hand. At one point he stretches his legs up and onto the bench beside her, and she flicks his big toe with her fingernail - a little hello, a little don't even think about it, because he can and will make a nuisance of himself if he's in the mood to do so.
At half-seven, his watch beeps and he shuts his laptop, yawning and rumpling up his curls. She shuts her own and rubs her eyes, stretching her arms over her head and arching her cramped back as much as possible.
"You look like a goblin, all bundled up like that," he says, morning-gruff and with a voice like gravel. He's grinning, taking her in from socked feet to cotton pajamas and the sleeves of her dressing-gown pulled down over her fingers. "How are you cold already?"
"Since winter has arrived, you cretin." she says, rolling her eyes in response. "We can't all be walking furnaces."
"This isn't winter," he scoffs, Northern burr heavy on his tongue as he pushes his chair back and starts scooping up their laptops, notebooks, pens and pencils. "This is mild, you know that."
"Not to me, as you know very well."
"Slack Southern softie."
"Stubborn Northern bastard." she retorts, wriggling out from behind the table. He hums, flicking the end of her nose with his finger, grinning teeth white against the darker shades of his beard.
"D'you want fried or scrambled eggs this morning?"
"Scrambled, and with bacon."
He scoffs. "Obviously with bacon, woman, who do you think I am?" He deposits their study materials in her arms and turns to open the cupboards and pull out the frying pan. "Go on, shoo, go make yourself presentable."
"I'm always presentable," she says loftily, and with a pinch to his hip before darting out of arms reach in case of retribution and padding off. She stops in his room to leave his things on his desk, where the air smells of his cologne and the smell of man and the wintergreen air freshener he uses, his navy sheets rumpled, and duvet kicked almost onto the floor. In her own room, she dumps her things on her desk - which is frankly more of a vanity table, she's always preferred to study at the kitchen table.
She takes a hot shower in their shared bathroom, hair clipped atop her head and cursing when she whacks her elbow off the wall, then climbs back into her dressing-gown and flops down at her desk-vanity to do her makeup and brush her hair. All the while, the smells of fresh coffee and frying bacon come wafting through her half-open door, making her stomach growl pleasantly in anticipation, and she can hear him singing along, gruff and off-key, to his dreadful Tom Jones playlist. What's new, pussycat, a-whoa, whoa, whoa...
"Hurry up, princess, it's hot!" he shouts as she's putting in her earrings.
"I have told you how unbelievably unoriginal that nickname is, haven't I?" she asks, heels clicking on the hardwood kitchen floor.
"Numerous times," he confirms, putting two plates of delicious-smelling food on the table. He glances up and his eyebrows do a little bounce up and down at the sight of her. "He-llo, look at you."
She grins, doing a little twirl to show off her neat pencil skirt and sea-green jumper. "Do I meet your approval?"
"Always," he says, as he always does. She's no stranger to compliments from pretty boys and handsome men alike, never has been, but he's complimented everything she's ever worn since just about the day he met her. And she's human enough to get that little warm glow at being complimented by him - by Robb, with his high standards and unerring ability to read people, in her work clothes instead of in the tight bandage dresses and miniskirts she wears on nights out.
They slide into their chairs and dig into breakfast; Robb has a Northerner's belief that a hearty breakfast is the only way to start the day. She grew up in the Reach eating only fresh fruit for breakfast, which horrified him a few years ago, and by now he's converted her, spoilt her entirely into eating huge breakfasts. They do, in fact, start her day off right and give her plenty of energy throughout the day, but she absolutely will not give him the satisfaction of saying so.
She doesn't have to. He knows.
Ever his mother's son, he's already cleaned up after himself, so there's nothing to do after breakfast but put the plates in the tiny dishwasher and fill her thermos with more coffee.
"I can stop by the store on my way home, are we out of anything?" she asks, zipping up her work bag and grabbing her keys.
"Q-tips." He holds her coat for her, waits patiently while she slips her arms into the sleeves, and then carefully pulls her hair free from under the collar while she does up the buttons. His fingers, calloused pleasantly, brush her neck, and he gathers up the full weight of her long hair in his hands, sending a shiver through her body. She bites the inside of her lip and stubbornly waits for the shivers to pass.
"Q-tips, alright." She glances over her shoulder at him for the moment before he steps away, handing her her thermos and bag. "Nothing else?"
He quirks an eyebrow. "Chocolate?"
"Didn't I buy you chocolate only two days ago?"
"...maybe."
"And you ate all of it already?"
"...maybe."
She snorts. "You and your damned sweet-tooth, it's a miracle you don't have cavities."
"Hey, I floss." He flashes his - frankly excellent - teeth at her, and really how sad is it to be admiring someone's teeth?
She needs to get laid, she thinks, not for the first time in recent weeks.
"Congrats to your dentist, then." She slings the strap of her bag over her shoulder. "See you tonight."
"Have a good day, kick some ass." He's walking backwards, hands shoved into the front pocket of his hoodie, meandering towards his own shower.
"Don't I always?" She says with an arched brow and catches his laugh before the door shuts behind her.
This is the irony of the situation: Margaery has never felt the desire for domesticity. Two years ago, the idea of sharing a flat and a washing-machine with someone, of having their routines polished down to a science, worn smooth and soft with long use, of having habits and favourite mugs and shared television shows, would have chafed her. Two years ago, she was sharing this very same flat with Sansa Stark, her best friend in the entire world, her sister in all-but-name, her long-legged red-headed sweet-smiling compatriot in arms, and it was a very different place. They were still in college then, Margaery in law school and Sansa finishing her Master's, still having wild nights out on the town and sleeping until noon, and for both of them growing up surrounded by brothers - Arya definitely almost counted as a brother -there was a sudden fierce joy in having a girls' apartment, a place to be as overly feminine and girly and free as they damn well pleased.
The flat smelled permanently of perfume and air freshener and the really good pizza down the road that was the only acceptable food after six shots of tequila. Every surface was smudged with edible body glitter, because one of them got the bright idea to bring it into the house and then it never left again. Every flat surface was strewn not only with notebooks and laptops and pens, but with mirrors and tubes of mascara, lipsticks and nail polishes and discarded clothes. Half of their clean laundry lived on the couch, where outfits were laid out for approval and promptly discarded or thrown on. There were piles of shoes in every corner, and they rarely had a fully-stocked fridge because they were whirlwind creatures of the moment, never had a routine, never knew where a night would take them and whether they'd even be home in the morning. Laundry was done when there was absolutely nothing left to wear, the groceries bought alongside bottles of vodka and rum and pints of ice cream. They painted their nails lying on the living-room floor, laughing until they screeched at romantic comedies and overly-dramatic soap operas, fell in and out of the front door with pretty boys, left their hair straighteners on the kitchen counters, and always had dance music blasting. It was their safe, cozy, wild, happy, glittering, sparkling bachelorette pad.
Now? Now Sansa's up North again, and Margaery has a nine-to-five in the city and hasn't brought a boy home in far too long. Now Robb sleeps in the room that Sansa once filled with lemon plants and posters of popstars, and they've half-fallen half-deliberately-climbed into a steady routine. He makes breakfast, she cooks dinner. Mornings are for studying, evenings are for their competitive streaks to come out over flashcards, or Mario Kart, or games of Scrabble that get far too intense. He takes out the rubbish, she folds the laundry, they do their grocery shopping together every Friday night, and she looks forward to it. He buys her favourite ice-cream flavours and she remembers which brand of toothpaste he likes. They have a designated day set aside at the end of the month to pay their bills and balance their household budget. It's safe and soothing and calm and orderly, and what her twenty-three-year-old self would never have believed is, she loves it just as much as she loved those wild hedonistic bacchanal days with Sansa.
Her twenty-three-year-old self would also never have imagined herself living with a boy she wasn't screwing, because her younger self slotted boys firmly into categories - she still does, in fact, but her categories have expanded since she was sixteen.
In the first category, always, there were her brothers - steady, calming Willas, wild and reckless Garlan, impetuous and selfish Loras. Family. Safety. Home - and left behind when she departed for King's Landing, all of eighteen and already with a chip on her shoulder and her nose in the air. All other males fit into the category of other.
Of those others, there were the boys for fun - these, she had already discovered, spent many golden heady hours of teenagehood expending some energy on them. Boys for dancing, for flirting, for a few hedonistic nights on the nearest horizontal surface. Boys that gave you funny stories to tell and enabled you to get very drunk at games of Never-Have-I-Ever. Expendable boys.
There were the sensible boys; familiar again from her teenagehood. Boys of the right name, the right family, the right connections; boys who made suitable escorts to society events, who knew how to shake hands and say all the right things. Boys whose families had wealth, power, connections, whose interest was not only in her curving hips and wicked smirk, but in her last name, in the Tyrell fortune, in the gold of the Reach. Useful boys, who could get you into places and into the right rooms and the right conversations; always with an edge of danger to them, all of them with that streak of narcissism, of self-interest, of thinking that the world - and women - owed them something. Boys who struggled with taking no for an answer. She sharpened her wits on such boys, cut her teeth on them, honed all the tricks to keep them pliant and useful, and to dance featherlight away from dangerous waters of tempers and grabbing hands. Grandmother taught her how to manage such boys. Useful boys.
There are still boys, but there are also men - those who are fun for a night, those who come with the same power and connections, men to keep sweet and supple to her charms, those who have neither charm nor connection nor appeal, but still think they're worth something to her. Men of thinly-veiled innuendo and wandering hands - men best kept at bay with sharp heels and a stiletto smile. And then there is Robb.
Robb Stark, eldest of Sansa's brothers. Meeting Sansa, both of them eighteen and fresh-faced and ready for adventure, becoming her best friend, forming those bonds between women that are deeper than friendship and older than loyalty, meant meeting her brothers: the wild scamp Rickon, always ready to run off for an adventure; solemn deep-eyed Bran with the endless questions of why and how. Jon, a cousin but a brother in proximity, in growing up alongside them, and Theon, who the Starks adopted when his own parents died. Arya, a younger sister with wildness in her soul and a tomboyishness that Sansa never understood. And Robb.
Robb was equal sides playful and serious when she met him; he was nineteen, helping Sansa lift boxes into their shared dorm room, all lanky muscle and floppy curls. Her first thought, flush with teenage hormones, was yum. Her second, noticing the deep blue eyes and straight nose he shared with his sister, was off-limits. She doesn't fuck the brothers of girls she knows; it never ends well.
He has the steadiness and the watchfulness that Willas has; older brothers, eyes always watching out for their younger siblings, tender with their younger sisters. His eyes narrowed at her the more he heard Sansa's stories of nights in bars and dancing on tables, of going to boys' apartments and walking home at dawn carrying their shoes. He has Garlan's reckless impetuosity on the rugby pitch; Sansa dragged her to every single game, and she watched how he directed his teammates, born leader down to his bones, and didn't hesitate to throw himself into the thick of the fray and come out with a broken nose, bloody teeth, smashed fingers. He had Loras' playfulness, tousling Sansa's hair and teasing her about boyfriends, rough-housing with Jon and Theon, teaching Arya how to throw punches and giving Bran piggy-back rides, throwing Rickon squealing over one shoulder. He had the connections and the wealth of the Stark family, could socialise and network with the best of them; he was a boy with eyes that wandered, taking in her legs in cut-off shorts and her stomach in a crop top and her breasts in a low-cut dress before snapping firmly back to her face. Red-blooded boy, grown up into a broad-shouldered man with a voice she can feel in her bones and a penchant for pranks and a serious, difficult job that he works in suits that make her brain slide a little out of focus.
Off-limits. That's how he's always been, because you don't fuck your best friend's siblings - she keeps away from that line, just as Jon and Theon keep away from it, though she's seen both their eyes following Sansa's legs and long red hair for years now. Off-limits.
But at some point, she stopped trying to categorise him. At some point, he crossed all the lines drawn between the different sets of boys and men; the stern, watchful older brother, the prankster, the rugby god whose name was chanted with a ferocity approaching bloodthirstiness on the pitches, the charming socialite, the hot-eyed boy, they all bled together into one until she couldn't see any more where the one ended and the other began. Other boys, other men, were for categorising. Robb defies categorisation. He's just Robb, part of her life, woven into her bones, as intrinsic as her heartbeat and as reliable as the breath in her lungs. Her friend, her rock, her stability - her roommate.
That was Sansa's bright idea. They'd been out at brunch, all of them - Margaery, Sansa, Theon, Jon, Robb, all nursing hangovers and sharing a pitcher of mimosas to mourn the end of an era, soon to be scattered like winds to the four corners of the map - Sansa northwest to a job in the Eyrie in her aunt's fashion house. Theon to medical school, west to the Iron Islands where he could reconnect with his roots; a surprising sentiment from a man to whom "sensitivity" was a word solely for the Scrabble board. Jon north to the Castle Black Policy Academy; all he'd wanted for as long as Margaery had known him, though watching him watching Sansa under his eyelashes, she would place money on it being a self-imposed isolation as well.
Only Margaery and Robb were staying in King's Landing - Margaery was bemoaning the loss of her pretty pretty flat as well as that of her best friend, whereas Robb was handing the boys' three-bedroom flat over to an aspiring rock band.
"I can't believe I have to go back to student housing," Margaery said with a grimace, already picturing the dorms they'd escaped after only a year. "Gods."
"Join the club," Robb said darkly, pouring himself another drink. "Here's to living with stupid eighteen-year-olds who wear too much cologne and never clean up after themselves."
"That's rich coming from you, mate," Jon said drily, even as Sansa smacked herself abruptly on the forehead.
"We're all idiots," she declared.
"Speak for yourself, I'm mature now." Theon said loftily, around a mouthful of French toast. Sansa flicked him on the forehead without even looking in his direction.
"Don't give up our place," she said to Margaery. "Keep it and give my room to Robb."
Margaery paused, glass at her lips. She quirked an eyebrow at Sansa and looked across the table to Robb, who was already looking back at her. He pulled a face. She pulled one right back.
But for all their hesitation - over living with a boy, over living with a girl, over her being a morning person and him decidedly not, over her being a girly little princess (said with a grin) and him being a thickheaded muscle-bound rugby-playing Neanderthal (said venomously; "You noticed?" Theon asked, and Robb thumped him) - they had enough brains to admit it made sense. They were on the same path, after all; both had another two years at the Baelor Law School, then planned to start working in law offices in King's Landing while qualifying. They had the same workloads, the same hectic schedules, the same utterly insane disregard for things like sleep and sensibility while slamming through Torts lectures and vodka shots. They knew each other very well, had shared living spaces at Winterfell over Christmas and on a half-baked weekend in Dorne the previous summer when all five of them got severe food poisoning and Jon was attacked by a vengeful jellyfish, could safely call each other "friend" after enough karaoke nights and Sunday brunches. Both agreed that the arrangement made perfect sense.
They blended perfectly as roommates throughout their final two years of law school; he could bar-hop as well as Sansa, and unlike Sansa could match Margaery shot for shot. They got used to walking home at three in the morning, her demanding piggyback rides and him bitching the whole way home about her thoroughly impractical choices of footwear. They mocked each other's unfortunate relationships, provided ice cream in the breakups, edited each other's essays, bickered all through classes, and got into shouting matches at midnight over the responsibilities of the Supreme Court. Since their booze-soaked graduations, they transitioned seamlessly into functioning adults, working and studying and sharing a laundry rotation in perfect harmony. And it's getting harder and harder to ignore that not only does domesticity please her, but it looks overwhelmingly attractive on him.
Sitting on the metro heading for her office, Margaery uncrosses and recrosses her legs just thinking about his fingers brushing her neck this morning, the smell of his sleepy skin and coffee-scented breath, the strip of skin revealed at his hips when he stretches and his sweatshirt rides up a bit. Gods. She knows perfectly well that's he's her type, almost exactly her type; with him safely under the heading of off-limits, she can freely look and admit to herself that yes, he ticks every box for her, including a few she didn't even know he had. He's a few inches taller than her, can rest his chin securely on the top of her head during a hug, but he's also broad in the shoulders and strong in the arms, can toss her around without breaking a sweat - and frequently does, when wrestling for the remote or for the snacks she refuses to share. His hair has grown out to fall over his forehead and brush his ears, long enough to pull, long enough that she could wind those curls around her fingers and yank. He's really mastered the art of facial hair too, just scruffy enough to look masculine and mature and adult, and she knows it's alternatively soft and scratchy from the times she's playfully tapped her fingers on his cheek, the times he's held her down and scrubbed his face against her skin to make her shriek with laughter (and shiver, and arch, and bit down on a moan). And he's got that voice, and that accent, and oh God she knows he's good in bed, because after two years and three relationships of his, after she's met his girlfriends in the kitchen wobbly-kneed and glassy-eyed and very obviously fucked-out, she knows that he knows what he's doing, knows that he likes it, loves it even, knows that he craves it with the same high sex drive that's always exhausted her own partners.
Margaery squeezes her thighs together, then pointedly uncrosses her legs and puts both feet flat on the floor.
He's a man. So very clearly a man. And it's been so goddamned long since she brought one of those home, has had absolutely no time whatsoever for the past few months, and it's getting harder and harder to pull her eyes away from the curve of his mouth and the flex of his fingers - long, broad, strong, firm - and the stretch of his jeans over his thighs and the way he dwarfs her with the sheer breadth of his shoulders...
Right. She stands abruptly and reaches for one of the overhead handles to keep her balance. The faint vibrations of the seat are becoming a little too much when combined with a four-month dry spell and thinking about Robb Stark's body behind hers this morning.
She's a grown woman. She's an adult. She habitually and frequently brings both men and boys to their knees before her. She is powerful and clever and drop-dead sexy.
She's not going to fantasize about licking whipped cream off her roommate. She's not.
(Not again, at least).
Robert Baratheon is one of Father's oldest friends, has known him since they were boys themselves. He's also known Robb for all of his life, was the half-strange half-familiar boisterous uncle with the booming laugh who came around for Christmas, running away from his own family to seek refuge with the Starks. He's hoisted Robb onto his shoulders, taught him practical jokes, showed him how to ride a motorcycle, given him (very bad) tips for picking up girls. He's Robb's namesake, his godfather, his uncle in everything but blood.
He's also a goddamned pain in the ass.
"Seven hells!" He booms, thundering into the Flea Bottom office with a footfall like a hoard of angry elephants and his beard bristling out in every conceivable direction from sheer righteous indignation. "Did I not tell you to charm the judge, boy? Did that not get into that thick-headed skull of yours? Did you mishear me somehow when I told you to be charming, for the love of the Seven, and make everyone's lives a little bit easier?"
"I tried." Robb says, not looking up from his screen. His fingers are flying over the keyboard, drafting yet another motion for judgement in default of defense - the third he's filed in the last two months on this thrice-bedamned case.
"I don't want to hear that you tried, gods damn you, Robb! This isn't gym class, you don't get credit for trying!"
"We get paid for trying," Robb says drily, and almost laughs at the growl working its way out of Robert's throat.
"Not nearly enough," he snarls. "Which I know you know very well, so wipe that smirk off your face and kindly explain to me how you misunderstood my directions - "
"I didn't misunderstand." Robb says firmly, with every intent of heading off what's shaping up to be a tantrum in true Baratheon style before it can get off the ground.
"Then you deliberately disobeyed me!"
Robert also has a habit of speaking to his employees as if they're all going into battle together - though with the way work has been going for the past few months, that's almost understandable. Heaving a sigh, Rob spins his chair around to look up into Robert's red and furious face.
"No, I did not." he says firmly. "The strategy of charm and poise and a bit of flattery might have worked with the original judge, but the judges were switched at the last minute thanks to the staffing shortages."
"So try it on the new judge!"
"The new judge was Lysine Lannister."
Robert deflates like a hot air balloon with a puncture. "Oh." He went quiet for a moment, tapping his thick fingers on the desk. "So no joy, then?"
"None." Rob nods to his screen. "We'll have to push for it again, I'll file this first thing in the morning and see if we can't get lucky with a new judge in a week or so."
"Bloody Lannisters," Robert grumbles. "Bloody snake-pit, the lot of them...well, let me know how you get on."
Robb hums, already back to typing as his uncle stumps out of the room. Barely a minute later, his voice booms up the narrow stairwell. "ROS! What's all this I hear about the prison visit list being revised?!"
Robb stifles a snort. Too many years in corporate law, too many deals struck over a game of golf or an afternoon in the pub, too many winking nudges to judges and glad-handing at office Christmas parties, and Robert still thinks everything can be fixed by who you know and how you know them.
Thirty years ago, as all of society and the greater half of the country knows, Robert Baratheon married Cersei Lannister, then the most eligible girl in Westeros, daughter to Tywin Lannister, then the richest man in Westeros with a finger in politics, the courts, the banks, and the biggest commercial law firms. In the deal - for it was a deal, a transaction of the old style, no love on either side - Robert got not only a rich and beautiful wife, but a place as managing partner and a stake in most of the commercial law firms, setting himself up nicely for a long and successful legal career in corporate law.
Then, only five years ago, in a scandal that rocked the country to its core, Father revealed to Robert what he'd learned, that all three of Cersei's golden-headed children were not only not Robert's, but were in fact the children of her own twin brother, the perpetually-smirking Jaime Lannister. Robert could have forgiven the infidelity - he himself had illegitimate children in just about every city in the South, including Arya's best friend Gendry - but the incest was too much. The divorce was very public and very ugly; the Lannisters sided, naturally, with their own, and the tabloids spilled the dirty details of the Lannister twins' tryst for months on end. When the divorce was finalised, Robert, on Father's advice, decided to be the better man he'd always pictured himself as, and threw his substantial share of the Baratheon fortune into funding the non-corporate and pro bono law firms throughout King's Landing. Under Tywin's patronage and guidance, there was a Lannister in every big law firm, every bank, in every court; and Robert, red-faced and furious all these years later, backed the underdogs against them, funding the law firms that represented the destitute, the criminals, the underdogs, those repeatedly trodden underfoot by the corporate swells. There was no small shred of malice in every interaction between Robert's party and the Lannisters; not only had the divorce been public and thereby humiliating to the Lannisters (particularly to Tywin, who'd worn a constipated face for months on end), but in the wake of it, Jaime Lannister had vanished from King's Landing, leaving his children and sister behind, and Cersei seethed at his abandonment, and was all too happy to take out her frustrations on the man she held responsible.
Ironically enough, that man wasn't Robert. For all his bawling and shouting and cursing and threats of violence, Robert was the voice of the operation; the brains of the pair of them, as always, was Ned Stark, Father. The Lannisters hated Father for interfering; it was in his role as Chief Superintendent of the Westerosi Police Taskforce that he'd uncovered cold hard evidence of the affair - he was responsible for the tabloid footage of Cersei and Jaime intertwined, for the photos of them in every position known to mankind, for the court-ordered paternity tests, for humiliating the Lannisters by exposing their seedy underbelly. Additionally, the scandal breaking coincided with the nasty business between Sansa and Cersei's eldest, Joffrey - the outcome of which had been ugly for Sansa, half-deadly for Joffrey, and infuriating for Cersei, who would not tolerate her precious boy being taught not to touch what wasn't his. So when Robb, on the brink of entering law school and wanting to follow in his father's footsteps of delivering justice for those who needed it most, started hunting for jobs, there was really only one choice.
Ned Stark's son, he wouldn't have been hired in any law firm with a Lannister on the board, even if he'd wanted to pursue corporate law or had the stomach to work for a family that was coldheartedly evil at worst, spineless and enthralled to Tywin at best. He threw his lot firmly in with working pro bono, taking a job as an executive at the Stag's Head law offices in the criminal underbelly that was Flea Bottom. It was a near-thankless job to represent the defendants of criminal cases, which including everything from genuine monsters to those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, the victims of circumstances like poverty and crippling drug addictions. It meant long hours at the office, and it meant fighting Lannisters and an uncaring public at every turn, it meant them being lambasted in the press for representing rapists and murderers, it meant heartache when consoling the families of the incarcerated, or struggling to find a middle-ground with victims. It was thankless and horrible, and he definitely wasn't being paid enough.
It was worth it. Every bloody, shit-stained, frustrating, heartbreaking second of it was worth it for the chance to help one person, make one life better, get one year knocked off an unjust sentence. It was worth it to feel that he was, however slowly and painfully, making a difference - a small one, and one obtained by swimming doggedly against the current that threatened to overwhelm him, but a difference to even one person.
That, he muses, not for the first time, is where he and Margaery differ: they both want to change the world, make it better, but he wants to do it piece by piece, for one person at a time. She prefers to dismantle the system for within with a mix of charm and cunning and, when her conniving doesn't work, with sheer fucking stubbornness. If she could get away with it, she'd break out the matches and blow the entire establishment sky-high, build her own society in the ruins and rubble. She's always been an iron fist in a silk glove, always been able to slide with charm and a smile into the most difficult rooms in the world, always been able to work both sides and never play her hand until it's too late to stop her.
All her networking throughout college and law school, all her pretty smiles and clever words and sheer bloody charm, all her family's wealth and long and storied name, both of which surpassed even Tywin-fucking-Lannister, got her into rooms full of the members of the oldest families, got her into local politics, got her into job interviews. Everyone wants her, and she knows how to flatter all parties and take no sides while hurting feelings. She took a job in one of the most prestigious, Lannister-infested firms in the city, has been working her ass off there to climb the ladder for months now; half her colleagues still see her as the pretty little executive, but she's going to wind up running that place one day. She can converse with Lannisters and hold her own, even after what she did to Joffrey - something for which Cersei would skin her alive, but Tywin overruled her for the sake of keeping the possibility of adding the Tyrells to his cohorts through Margaery one day.
Robb warned her once, after yet another ball at which he'd narrowly avoided having a drink thrown in his face, that Tywin would marry her off to Joffrey or his other grandson Tommen in a minute, use her family's endless savings accounts for his own means. She'd laughed so hard she'd snorted, pressed a champagne-and-lipstick kiss to his cheek, brown eyes dancing merrily.
"Idiot boy," she said, smiling. "Don't you think I know that?"
He's never worried about her again - not in politics, that is. She handles herself better than he does. He worries about her every time he sees the old society leeches watching her in her skintight dresses and short skirts, would like to remove their eyeballs with an ice-cream scooper for drooling over her, but never in local politics or in a boardroom, when she can talk herself both into and out of every situation possible. He most decidedly cannot; oh he's good at socialising, knows how to work a room, can charm society matrons with the best of them, but she's had to bail him out of jail for throwing a punch at one of the Freys, and he's never, ever going to live that one down.
"What did I say?" she asked from the other side of the bars of the holding cell, one hand propped on her hip in a gauzy, silky, shimmery slip of a dress, curls tumbling just so about her face, eyes amused and lips curled at the sight of them. "I said don't punch anyone, how on earth could you have misunderstood me?"
Robb was holding an icepack to his cheek, where one of the taller Freys got in a lucky shot. "Don't patronise me," he snapped.
"Pay your own bail and bloody well walk home, then." She retorted, face calm as if she was offering him tea.
"Shut up, Robb," Theon groaned from where he was lying curled up protectively around his bruised ribs, before Robb could answer as scathingly as he felt the need to in that moment. Propped against the wall and cradling his sore hand to his chest, Jon let out a grunt of agreement.
Margaery heaved a sigh, looking heavenward as if for divine intervention. "You know boys, you don't have to follow him into every little scrape he gets himself into."
"He's their Papa Duck." Sansa quipped, coming into view and shaking her hair out of her face. "A half-cocked one, but Papa Duck all the same."
Robb contemplated telling her to do something highly unnatural to herself, bonds of siblinghood be damned, but Margaery's silver-bell laugh interrupted.
"Quack, quack," she said, grinning merrily at him, and his lip split open all over again when he grinned back, completely unable to help himself.
Bloody woman. She's always been able to twist him into knots around her little fingers, even when he was a hardheaded nineteen-year-old convinced that she was a terrible influence on his baby sister, what with her flirting and her endless innuendos and that sly quirk of her lips. To be fair, the shape of her legs in a pair of cut-offs definitely didn't hurt, at that age.
He's grown up and matured since. These days, it's her quick wit and her unflinching loyalty and the ferocious way she protects his sister.
And her legs in a miniskirt. That definitely doesn't hurt.
As if somehow able to divine that he's thinking of her, his phone chimes, with the ringtone he picked out precisely for her, and which never fails these days to get his pulse elevated.
She's sent him a photo of her shopping basket: Q-tips, white wine, that body lotion she likes so much, two pints of ice cream (cookie dough for her, rocky road for him), six-pack of Coke, and his preferred bottle of rum. She's captioned it "just q-tips!!!"
He grins, lips curling without his knowledge or say-so. A minute later his phone pings again. Boozy dinner tonight? Need it after today.
He frowns, typing back quickly.
ROBB: what happened? U ok?
MARGAERY: Learn to use punctuation, you animal.
MARGAERY: Long day. Trystane tried to pour his water over my top. This sweater was not a great idea.
His scowl deepens.
ROBB: the sweater was a great idea. u working for perverts was not.
MARGAERY: Try finding me one non-pervert in this city to work for.
ROBB: Robert would take you.
MARGAERY: Against the nearest wall, yes he would.
He snorts through his nose. She's most definitely not wrong; Robert had made it his life's mission to hate all Lannisters and anyone who works with them, then met Margaery at last year's Christmas party and within five minutes was utterly charmed and ready to fall at her feet. He made several toast to "pretty cinnamon-scented armfuls" throughout the course of the evening. That Robb didn't skewer him with a poker is something approaching a miracle.
ROBB: u can't blame him for having basic instincts, we're all animals when ur involved.
MARGAERY: Maybe I *should* switch sides, it's been so long since anyone threw me up against a wall.
Oh sweet bloody Jesus. He can't even help the mental images that flash straight into his brain, of hoisting her up against the wall himself, of fastening his mouth on her neck until he learns exactly where she sprays that cinnamon-orange perfume of hers, until he knows the kind of noises she makes when he finds the right combination of lips-teeth-tongue to use on her, until he makes her squirm against him and sigh his name and wrap those damned legs around his hips -
Ahem. He shifts in his seat and bites down hard on his tongue, until the taste of iron fills his mouth and chases out the sugar-sweetness he imagines Margaery's skin tastes like.
ROBB: don't give me that, u could quirk ur finger and have any man fall at ur feet.
MARGAERY: My feet is not where I want him.
Tell me exactly where you want me, and preferably in extremely filthy detail, Robb thinks furiously, as if he can will it into solid reality, as if this is a new idea for him, as if the concept of Margaery Tyrell telling him in her musical, lilting, Southern accent precisely how to get her off doesn't occupy an enormous part of his brain at any given time of day.
ROBB: typing
MARGAERY: Anyway, I'm going home to take a bubble bath, and I'm making us both drinks. Try to get home at a halfway decent hour, won't you?
ROBB: i'm chained to my desk
MARGAERY: Kinky.
She's trying to kill him. That's the only feasible explanation.
ROBB: i wish
ROBB: yeah no i'll be home soon. enjoy ur bath!
"Enjoy your bath," he mutters in self-censorious tones, tossing his phone onto the desk and resuming typing with an almost vicious stab at each key. "And I'll be here trying not to think about you in the bath."
He's going to think about her in the bath. He already knows he will. He can't not, for God's sake, he's an extremely visual thinker and he shares a living space with the same gorgeous woman who's been occupying a permanent space in his dreams for about five years straight now.
Contrary to his siblings' belief, Robb is not an idiot. He's an intelligent and highly-organised, functioning member of adult society. He has a job, thank you very much, a highly demanding one that never causes him to lose his cool or his confidence. He was top of his class in law school, he was a member of the Law Review, he chaired no less than three societies, and he frequently keeps his younger siblings from killing each other. He's self-aware, clever, downright witty, women like him.
And Margaery Tyrell frequently sends him into a tailspin. Unfortunately for his continuing capacity to function like a rational being, he's also a red-blooded hot-headed male, and just about everything about Margaery sends every single one of his most basic instincts singing like a choir. Just being in the same room as her has his caveman instincts dancing the can-can, unable to deny that she is very much woman, all over, and he is man, and isn't there something far more interesting they could be getting up to?
Initially, he tried to ignore it, tried to pretend there was no way he could be attracted to his little sister's best friend. There were a lot of nights when he committed unbelievable acts of self-abuse just thinking about her, and couldn't face his own reflection in the morning. Eventually he gave up, because everyone is attracted to Margaery, with the solid exception of those who haven't met her yet. Even those who don't think they are can be persuaded under the sheer blast of her charms, he's seen it happen. She's won innumerable bets throughout college getting the most phone numbers in under twenty minutes. If he didn't know better, he'd swear she was some kind of succubus, it's the only explanation for how bloody distracting she is, just with a smile and a flash of those brown eyes and a particular way of swaying her hips when she walks that makes it physically impossible not to stare after her.
So, whatever. He wants her. Desperately. Would do unspeakably filthy things to her if given the slightest, most minute chance in the entire world. But they're roommates, and she's his sister's best friend, and both Bran and Rickon worship her, and Jon and Theon think she's the eighth wonder of the world, and even Mum likes her. She's been up at Winterfell for four of the last five Christmases, he and Sansa have stayed over at her place in the Reach, she takes Arya out for axe-throwing and beers whenever the little hellion comes down to visit. She's in their lives, permanently, probably intrinsically, and while that doesn't bother him, the fact remains that she's never, not once, not even for an instance, indicated even the slightest hint of interest in him. She flirts, of course, because she's Margaery, flirting is an instinct to her, she can't help but make herself the most fascinating woman in every room she walks into. But he's seen her on nights out, seen her when she flirts with a guy she's actually interested in, and there's a world of difference between that Margaery and the one who teases him and rumples his hair (standing on tiptoes, because she's so bloody small) and frequently throws popcorn at his face for talking during her movies. And if she's never made a move, he won't be the one to do so, and put her in the awkward position of having to turn him down, and then make her feel uncomfortable with ever hanging out with them again. Sansa would kill him, for one thing, and he'd deserve it, creeping out a girl like that. Besides, she gets more than enough propositions all the bloody time, from everyone - from baristas, waiters, people at clubs, men on the train, guys at the gym, even from those appalling creeps she works with. He doesn't want to add to that; he wants her to never feel anything other than safe around him.
But he does think of her in the bathtub. Tries his damnedest not to, but does. As a result, it takes twice as long as per usual to finish writing up his motion.
The nature of criminal work means that frequently, his mornings are spent in court, and then his afternoons and early evenings are taken up with paperwork and preparing for court the next day; even as an executive, not yet a qualified solicitor, it's a lot of bloody hard work. The longer court runs, the longer he usually has to stay in the evenings to make sure everything's covered for the following day. Even if he had the time to have a social life, the job would stop it in its tracks about ninety percent of the time.
Tonight isn't too bad, comparatively; he finally polishes off his to-do list around seven - could have been done a good twenty minutes earlier if his caveman brain hadn't been distracting him - packs up, and heads for home. Luckily, there's a direct metro line from just outside the office to the top of the hill, where their flat is; Margaery works on the other side of the city, and usually has a forty-minute commute ahead of her both ways.
Far better than her working in a shithole like Flea Bottom, he thinks grimly, passing another cackling band of junkies on the corner by the metro station.
It's always a balm to get home after a long day, and tonight is no different. Their apartment building is still bustling with life, neighbours coming to and fro, and a few sitting out on the balconies, bundled up against the evening chill; he calls a hello to Saffron, who lives two floors down, and to Ms Chatanall on his way down the hall.
The fifth-floor flat is full of the best smells when he walks in, making his stomach growl ferociously. Oooh, Margaery's made that honey-baked spicy chicken he loves so much, bless her. The Cokes are in the fridge, the rum on the countertop, the table laid and the delightful smells issuing forth from the kitchen, her wine in the cooler - and no sign of Margaery.
She must still be in the bath, he muses, opening the oven for a quick peek and a fresh waft of the smells that make his mouth water. Another five minutes by the oven timer, so he heads for his room to change out of his work suit and shoes and take his bag apart.
His door to the bathroom is ajar, however, and there's no sign of her. He frowns, glancing at his watch; she's definitely home by now, and she never leaves the oven on when she's out, so she can't be at the gym. Maybe in their tiny laundry room? Though she's always singing when she does the laundry, and he doesn't hear her.
He's hesitating, frowning a little, in the door to the bathroom, when he hears it. Through the wall, the wall connecting the bathroom to her bedroom, a low moan.
His stomach drops. His pulse picks up as if he just leapt off a roof.
Another moan, louder, and this one accompanied by the squeak of her mattress strings. Oh - oh God, her bed is against that wall, just on the other side of -
His thoughts are cut off by another moan, this one higher in pitch, almost a whine. Immediately he can't help but wonder what caused the change; a shift of angle? A squirm of her hips? And now his brain is conjuring up images of miles of soft brown skin and the sheets twisted around her legs and no no no, bad, this is very bad, this is -
His shoulder whacks the bathroom door as he turns hurriedly away, and he hisses through his teeth, desperate not to make a noise, not to startle her in the middle of what is very clearly private time, unless - oh please God no, unless she isn't alone - but now that he's listening, ears pricked, mouth fucking watering, not only can he not hear anyone else, but he can hear the faint, distinct buzzzzzz of vibrations.
Oh dear sweet Mother above, this is how he's going to die. He's going to have a heart attack and fucking well die, right here on the bathroom floor, all from hearing that buzz-buzz-buzz and those whines that sound like she's begging and the creak of her mattress and those low, melting moans -
"Please," she keens, her voice faint but clear through the wall. "Please, please..."
Robb muffles a groan into his own hands. How in the name of all sanity is he supposed to go on living after this, he's going to have to send himself to the Wall, to the coldest reaches of the North, because his cock is definitely taking an interest in that sound, has apparently already decided that the sound of Margaery pleading is for him and him alone, and he is a monster, a creep, he is so going to hell for this -
"Robb!"
His jaw drops. That - that was unmistakable, even through the wall, that was almost a squeal, high-pitched and -
She groans, a deep sound that comes from the chest, almost pained. "Unnngh, Robb, please...please..."
...oh.