He looks at me like I'm lovely and I'm petrified
My insides are twisted and my head is fucked
And I have far too much to say
Does he feel the same?

-Nosebleed, Phoebe Green

This song is just everything to me for this chapter, so have a listen! Keep the reviews coming, because I love them and let me know what you think of this chapter and what's coming next ;)

Daenerys remembered the day that she and Daario had begun, or rather the day the idea was planted in her head.

She had heard the door shut in the living room as she got out of the shower. There was no word of greeting and so she thought there was no particular motive behind his visit today. The steam from her shower continued to blossom over the mirror and she was thankful for that; she didn't want to see the nervousness that sat behind her eyes.

"Oh, there you are," He greeted, as she left her room with a towel firmly wrapped around her. He was sat on the sofa with his favourite cat, Viserion, on his lap. The fact that Viserion was his favourite was not a coincidence. She knew she was feeding his egocentric nature by naming one of her cats after him, but if it made him happier then she had to do it.

"What are you wearing tomorrow night?"

Daenerys had been with the company for three years and had attended many of the events they held, as Marketing always got to go, but this was the first one where she would matter. As she was in Marketing you were automatically corporate and important, but when other members of her team didn't insist that she continue to work at the event and do the menial tasks, it was a sign that she was seen as an important member of the team.

This was why Viserys was probably asking about the dress. It was important that she look the part.

"I'll just go get it." She went and pulled out the pale blue, floor length chiffon dress that she had chosen so carefully with Missandei the weekend before.

When she returned, holding it up in front of her, Viserys had let Viserion go and was approaching her slowly.

"Hmm… put it on." He didn't seem as impressed by the dress as she was. She turned to go and try it on in her room when his voice rang out. "You don't have to leave the room."

She walked faster, pretending she hadn't heard him, but pretending was futile – he knew she had heard him, but he was letting it pass today.

Hurriedly she put the dress on, not treating it with the care it deserved. When she walked back out of her room, he was stood in the exact same spot waiting for her.

He walked around her in a perfect circle, criticizing anything he didn't like and appreciating the things he did like with his eyes alone.

"That'll do. I know someone who will be watching you closely tomorrow night."

"Who would that be?"

"Daario. I've noticed him looking at you."

She had noticed him looking as well, but it wasn't something she thought very much about.

"He's the new head of Strategic Operations, isn't he?"

"Yes, you should talk to him. If you want to make it in this company then you have to make friends with the influential." He had a point to make and when he had one to make, he spoke incredibly slowly making sure she got every word.

"Are you suggesting I just make friends with him?"

"Have a conversation and keep him entertained." He fixed one of her straps on the dress as he used his words in such a way to lull her into a false sense of normality.

"Well, I might not find him entertaining." Daenerys scoffed.

"Then you just pretend you do, you stupid -," He snapped, his mask had fallen like it so often did. She flinched, as she always did, but she was much better at hiding it now. "If you want us to one day be at the top of this company, ruling them all, then this is something you have to do. You're not going to get there with your mediocre work."

The seed was planted like a weed that would refuse to stop growing even though she didn't want any of it.

And now she sat in a Starbucks waiting to use that weed repellent once and for all.

As being early was such a critical thing to Daenerys, she was there five minutes before their meeting time. Keeping an eye on the door, she stirred her sugar slowly. In no time at all he would be walking through that door and she had to make sure her words came out exactly as she wanted them to – she couldn't afford to mess this up.

She had, of course, known this was something she would have to do, but Jon's words to her yesterday had sparked the urgency in her doing this now.

He walked through the door, practically grinning at her. He crossed the room to her and started leaning over to her before she leaned back in her own seat.

"Before you do anything, Joanne from Payroll is sitting right over there." She had picked a location opposite work to ensure that at least one person from the company would be there.

"How the hell do you know who she is?" He slumped in the seat opposite of her instead of sitting any closer.

"I'm memorising the faces, names and job titles of all employees. It's something I should know."

"Fuck, you have been a busy bunny, haven't you?" He leaned forward and picked up his black coffee, giving Daenerys an appreciative smile that she knew what he would like. It wasn't bloody hard to know that though. "Speaking of, shouldn't you be spending your lunch in the office as you normally do? Where have you been?"

"Yoga."

She had actually been taking Viserion to the vet as he was due for one of his injections, but he didn't need to know those personal details about her life anymore.

Daenerys hated dropping any of her cats off for check-ups and injections, because then they would have to stay there for the rest of the afternoon until she could pick them up after work, as she didn't have time to go to the vet, back to her house and then back to office. Due to this she usually took a holiday from work just to sort them all out to go to the vet, but Viserion was due to go and she definitely couldn't take time off work now.

"I'm happy you –,"

"Jon knows about us."

Daario's face was frozen for a few seconds as if she had pressed pause on this scene, but then he shook his head, beginning to comprehend it.

"What? You mean…"

"He saw us on Friday and guessed."

"Well, what's he going to do?" He took his face in his hand and seemed to be massaging his cheeks. It was clear the worst possibilities of what this meant were rolling around in his head.

"I don't think he'll do anything, but… obviously it's too dangerous for us to keep doing this when it's such a critical time for me. He found out and who else could?"

Daario didn't want to put his job in jeopardy. This was something Daenerys knew and was willing to wave a threat to his job in his face.

"Yeah… Yeah, you're right. So we need to be more careful. Well, we shouldn't be meeting across the road in a…"

His voice drifted off before he got to the word café, as if he realized this wasn't a game plan meeting. It was as if the wheels were finally turning to realize they had never met in a café before and if it was just a plan of how they needed to be more careful then they would have met after work at his or hers, so then they could still have sex, but this was all carefully planned to avoid doing just that.

"Shit, you want to take a break?"

No, she wanted to end it, but he was just not getting to that conclusion fast enough.

"Daario, baby," She bit down on her lip after saying that. She hated that she was resorting to that word to soften the blow and make it seem like she cared. "You know I'm more than happy to put this on pause, as long as you know that we're both in this for sex. This isn't a relationship."

"But we can be in a relationship after this is all over and you've won." The disappointment wasn't only visible in his face, but in every word he spoke.

"We can consider that," Although Daenerys thought she had planned everything she needed to say to him, she was now struggling with what she needed to do now to make sure he would be as fine as possible with this news. "But I'm not sure. I really can't be distracted thinking about it now. Can we wait until after this is over? Please?"

His response to this question was vital. If he allowed her to think about it then he couldn't screw her over in the coming weeks, because then there would be no chance for them in the future. If he wanted a direct answer now then she would have to tell him the whole truth and her chance at the promotion would be done.

She knew she should have never got herself in this position, but she didn't know until a few days ago that was a position she was in – she didn't know that Daario was wanting a relationship with her, it was the last thing she could have expected.

Although her brother wanted her to use Daario for personal gain in the office, since her brother had gone, there had been little opportunity for her to do that and so she used his body instead. She didn't want a relationship with any man, but women have needs and Daario was seemingly perfect for it because he didn't want a relationship either. How wrong had she been?

Jon was right. Sex or promotion – she was using him.

She didn't want Jon to see her like that and with this he wouldn't. Or she hoped he wouldn't.

"Okay," It felt like her breath had been held for an eternity to hear Daario to say that. She was safe. "But if you want to fool around before this is over, I wouldn't object."

"I'm sure you wouldn't," She said with a roll of her eyes before giving him a small smile. "Thank you, Daario. I'll see you back in the office."

She gathered up her bags and didn't spare a glance at her untouched coffee, but instead smiled fondly at Daario who was looking up at her with the same sort of smile. She trusted him more in that moment than any moment before to not mess her around, but there was also something there behind that smile of his that suggested that he knew that this was maybe the end.

Her head immediately wanted to go to thoughts of Jon and that close proximity yesterday in the lift and that she had wanted to kiss him yesterday, but she had to make a call.

She couldn't go running towards Jon to discuss the biggest decision she had made in the past few months, because that probably wasn't where they were at right now and she would only want to tell him so that she could kiss him… Was she really thinking about kissing him now?

He was an infuriating person as she couldn't figure him out, but that didn't matter when you just wanted to kiss someone.

Daenerys immediately made the phone call as she got out of Starbucks, if anything to just stop her thinking about kissing stupid Jon Snow.

"Dany!" The sound of Missandei nearly squealing down the phone at the fact that she was calling made her grin. "I am utterly swamped in paperwork at the moment. We're taking on a new client and it's just… never mind, speak to me and I will listen to the best of my ability."

Missandei was perhaps the only person Daenerys knew who had a busier work schedule than she did, but that was pretty much a given when you worked for a law firm. She didn't even think Missandei was being rude by not giving her the full attention she wanted, because she did the same thing frequently to her. They had a terrible problem with ringing each other at the most inconsiderate times.

"Missy, I won't keep you, but you know this event we're -,"

"Yes, I'll come!" Daenerys swallowed a laugh at her best friend's enthusiasm as she wanted to reply in complete seriousness.

"I may not have been inviting you."

"Well, please do, because I need a social event to be excited for!"

"Okay, I'm sure I can get you on the guest list." Daenerys replied, finally letting out a laugh at Missandei's pleas.

"What else?" She stopped to cross the road back over to the office building, scrunching her nose up as she was once again in awe of how well Missandei knew her.

"What?"

"You would have probably just texted me that, so there's something else." Even though she was supposed to be distracted by her work, she seemed awfully focused on this other bit of news that Daenerys should be giving her.

Although this had been the actual purpose of her call, it was something that was bound to lead to more questions if Missandei was as focused on this call as she appeared to be. And Daenerys wasn't sure she was ready for questions about what sparked this decision, however she had to come out with it now as Missandei was on her trail.

"I just ended things with Daario."

There was an audible gasp on the other end of the phone.

"Thank Christ!" Missandei knew that Daenerys never sought out a relationship and after quite a few years of being friends, she didn't expect anything else. That didn't mean that she liked her strange one year entanglement with this man. "Have you upgraded then? You wouldn't have ditched an easy thing like that for nothing."

She really didn't like how well Missandei knew how her mind worked, but at least she had a half-truth for why she ended things.

"Well, it was getting quite complicated with this promotion."

"Granted that wouldn't have looked great when it all came out." Missandei sighed, either from dealing with work or out of boredom with Daenerys' answer. "I'm going to have to go as something disgusting has come up in this file, so give me something to bide me over before I can call you up tonight about it."

Did she want to tell someone about Jon? Or did she want to keep it in until the issue with Jon went away forever?

She had now crossed the road and decided if she was going to discuss this matter further she would have to stay out of the office and so she leaned against one of the pillars outside the grand entrance. Checking the coast was clear, she began with a nerve filled voice.

"I think I like someone."

"Like someone? Okay, say no more. You liking someone is bizarre. You never said once that you liked Daario. Or anyone else for that matter."

"Calm down, it's nothing, really, I promise."

"It's something and we will be discussing further in the greatest detail imaginable, but who is it?"

"That's the thing… It's the person I'm competing with for the promotion." Daenerys was interrupted slightly by a loud laugh on the other end of the phone. She paused, waiting for Missandei to stop finding her situation so hilarious. "I don't want anything to happen, because that would be crazy and he doesn't even like me and -,"

"Maybe you should just find out. What have you got to lose?"

"Uhm… my job?"

"Hmm… Anyway I really have to go. Let's discuss this later, okay?"

"Okay. Bye."

She hung up and pressed the back of her head against her pillar. Well, now it had been said – the thought was out there and nothing she could deny in the future.

Daenerys checked her watch as she walked hurriedly to the photocopier. Great, she was running late to go to the vet all because she had been so busy with her actual job that she hadn't had the time to focus on any promotion tasks, most importantly a manager meeting she was expected to sit in on tomorrow.

She needed to photocopy the figures she was bringing to the meeting, then she needed to pick up Viserion and after that she would treat herself to a large glass of wine as she read over all the figures and notes for the meeting. She was currently unprepared, but that would change by the end of the night.

She pressed in the task on the machine and got out her phone to make a call to the vet clinic to ask them to hold on to her precious Viserion for five... or thirty extra minutes.

That's when the thing started beeping.

"What are you doing?" She looked at the screen to see the words any non-photocopier/printer savvy person would dread to see: 'Paper jam'. "No, no, no, please don't do that."

She placed her phone on top of it as she crouched down to find the root of the issue. She quickly thought she had found the piece of paper causing all this mess and victoriously pulled it out of the machine only to hear it still beeping.

"Why are you doing this to me?" A bang on the machine startled her up into a standing position.

Jon was standing by the now non-beeping machine with what could be described as an almost grin on his face. She found herself practically blushing at him being here now that she had told Missandei about him; it was as if she thought he had listened in on that conversation and knew how she felt, but to blush? How old did she think she was?

"Did you just fix it?" She asked incredulously, as the machine started spurting out her sheets.

"You just need to give it a tap in the right spot and it'll work." She was flushing now as if he was describing something far more scandalous than tapping a photocopier. They were discussing a photocopier – nothing else.

"That's a good trick," She said, turning away from his staring eyes to begin gathering up her sheets.

The thought crossed her mind that maybe she should tell Jon that it was over with Daario now, because after all he suggested that she should end things with him, so it would be right to tell him it was done and all was fair now, right?

A part of her did hope that being fair wasn't the only reason Jon wanted her to end things with Daario and maybe, possibly, he felt something inexplicable towards her like she did to him, but that felt like a reach, even for her.

"So –,"

"I –,"

They both let out a nervous laugh as they started speaking at the same time. Daenerys smiled, tucking a flyaway piece of hair behind her ear before gesturing that he should continue first.

"So is this for the meeting tomorrow?"

"Yeah, it is. I know it's not much to do, but..."

"You like to scare yourself before anything like this, I know."

She slowly nodded, looking right into his eyes now that looked friendly and warm for once, not the cold eyes she always liked to assume he had. Him knowing a little bit about her should scare her, because she didn't like many people getting to know her. That always got dangerous and everything about this thing she felt for Jon was dangerous, but she realized that she didn't want to think about that.

"I wanted to speak to you about something actually," Jon was smiling, as if intrigued to hear what she had to say and of course this caused Daenerys to become more excited about sharing this with him.

And of course her phone started buzzing right at that moment. She considered ignoring it in the fear that it might be Daario calling to ruin the moment of her telling Jon that things were over between them – he would definitely do something as annoying as that – but a glance at her screen told her that it was the clinic calling.

She glanced between the screen and Jon for a few seconds before holding out a finger to Jon.

"Sorry, I really need to get this." Jon nodded.

"We can talk later."

She walked away with the phone before answering it as she was never a fan of people listening in on her calls regardless of the topic of conversation.

"Miss Targaryen?"

"Yes, yes, that's me. Sorry, I know I should really be there now -,"

"Your cat has had an anaphylactic reaction to the vaccination given to him today." Daenerys felt her world slow down as her brain couldn't react to that, but every bone in her body told her this was terrible.

"What? What does that mean?"

All the lights in the conference room caused the migraine Daenerys had growing to throb harder. She knew this migraine was due to stress and lack of sleep, but she told herself that if she got through this meeting then she could get through the rest of her day.

A glance to her phone told her that she had no calls yet and instead of that calming her, it worried her more. She had left Viserion at the overnight clinic for an extortionate fee as she couldn't take him home due to this stupid fucking meeting.

Otherwise she could have taken the day off to be with Viserion to keep him under observation like the vet said he needed. It was very lucky that Viserion's reaction to the injection hadn't been anything worse, like death, but he had still suffered a seizure and vomiting.

He had never reacted like that before after an injection and if he had then regardless of this promotion she would have made sure she had been there with him the whole time. She did her best to spend as much time as she could with him last night though in order to make up for it. She didn't leave the overnight clinic until almost midnight and went in to see him that morning to see how he was doing.

Perhaps seeing him in the clinic, looking unwell, made her feel all the more worse as well.

"Morning, Daenerys," She had hardly noticed another presence joining her in the room as she was so zoned out. She was staring at her notes in the hopes of picking up some of the information she had written down, but it wasn't happening for her.

"Oh, good morning, Tyrion," She said, attempting to seem completely alert and ready for the meeting.

After Tyrion came in and took his seat, everyone else required for the meeting started trickling in. Daario took a seat next Tyrion and Jon came to sit right next to Daenerys.

"Are you okay?" He leaned over to her, the soft whisper tickling her skin. If this had been yesterday then her skin would have been on fire, but at this very moment she felt numb to everything. She nodded in response to him, refusing to look at him so that he couldn't see that she was lying.

"Well, good morning everyone. I would like to start this by welcoming Jon and Daenerys to our meeting today." It felt like an unnecessary comment to make as there were only five people in the room in total and Daenerys hated the extra attention to herself.

"Okay, Daenerys, how about you start us off with your findings?"

Well, this felt like an exceptionally cruel trick to be playing on her. Of course the person who was least prepared was being asked to speak first.

"Okay… If you'd like to look at these sheets that I've prepared on our highest potential clients and potential revenue they could bring with them." She stood up to hand out her photocopies and sat down slowly as she gave them time to look over it.

"We have invited key decision makers from the biggest potential clients to our event next week and hope they attend to make these figures a reality."

Like Jon had suggested yesterday this meeting wasn't a major deal, so they probably didn't care that much about her estimated figures anyway. She could just continue to skirt around the –

"Where are the increased costs to us from these clients?"

Never mind.

She could barely remember whether she had included that in her stupid sheet, let alone find it.

"Uhm…" She glanced down at her sheet, her eyes flitting desperately around the page until a finger pointed out exactly where it was. "If you look at the bottom of the table I have assigned the costs there."

"Well, thank you Daenerys. Moving on to Jon."

She sat in silence for the rest of the meeting with flushed cheeks. This time it wasn't out of a schoolgirl crush on Jon, it was pure embarrassment mixed with rage that he would point out those figures to her where everyone else could see how she was failing at the most menial of tasks.

Tyrion and the others stayed behind at the meeting, allowing Jon and Daenerys to leave first. She slammed the door behind them before sharply addressing Jon.

"Why did you have to help me? That was so much more embarrassing than me just getting it wrong." She stormed across the corridor floor, hearing Jon just behind her managing to keep up with her every step. She attempted to walk faster, but those steps kept following her.

"Sorry, I shouldn't have helped you?" He was being sarcastic with her. He didn't know that sarcasm when Daenerys was angry was not a good step. Instead of walking back into the main office, she took them down a side corridor and stopped in front of one of the stationery stockrooms.

She now looked back up at Jon to direct her total anger at him.

"Don't forget that this is all an observation. You might have thought you were helping, and yes, that's sweet, but they'll see that as you being stronger than me."

And just as she said those words, she realized she was being a complete bitch to Jon… again. He was being sweet and just helping her. The issues she expressed were problems with herself, not him. It wasn't his fault that she wasn't prepared and looked stupid for not knowing what she was talking about.

"Ugh, I shouldn't be shouting at you, I fucked it up myself."

She opened the stockroom door, as she honestly needed to escape the office and possibly cry to herself. It would be good if Jon left her alone now, but of course he wasn't going to do that. He stood in the doorway, as Daenerys found a box filled with paper to collapse upon.

"What is going on with you?"

He shut the door behind him, leaving them in the dimly lit close quarters of the stockroom. She clenched the sides of the box, feeling herself about to explode on poor Jon.

"My cat had a bad reaction to an injection yesterday and I should be with him right now instead of here." Her voice cracked as she was on the verge of guilty tears, so to cover it up, she tried to make a joke, as she glanced up at Jon. "Oh my God, I sound like a crazy cat lady."

She let out a shaky laugh, but instantly stopped when she realized it made her sound even more upset. Glancing up again at Jon, she saw him quickly approaching the makeshift seat that Daenerys had created.

"No, no, I have a dog and if anything happened to him I wouldn't be here." He sat down next to her and his arm hovered near her back, like he didn't want to comfort her too much or was scared of her reaction – she couldn't figure that part out. A thought in the back of her head told her that this was the closest they had ever been.

Finding out that he had a dog was blessed new information about him. It made him more likeable and made her relax as she knew he could relate to her current predicament.

"I should take the rest of the day off as that's over. I've never taken a single sick day, they owe me that much."

A silence fell between them, as Daenerys tried to wipe at her eyes discreetly. She was sure only a few tears had fallen out of her frustration, but she didn't really think it was wise to let Jon see her at most vulnerable; she also guessed it was too late for that.

"I thought maybe something happened with Daario and that's why you were upset."

Oh, God. She had wanted him to know about her ending things with Daario, but she didn't want him to think that it was something that would upset her.

"No! We're actually over." She snapped her head around to face him full-on, eager to correct him on this idea of his.

"Ah…"

She smiled at him, wondering what was there for them now that she had said that. It was difficult to gage his reaction as he looked away from her at that moment. There was a hint of a smile, but maybe that was just because he could see her smiling.

"Well, thank you for this. I'll never know how you can be so nice to me after how I've behaved."

His face was completely visible now and the way he looked at her in that very moment was something she had never experienced before. It was as if she was lovely and special and perfect and all of that petrified her so completely, but she still wanted to keep him looking at her like that.

It was so intense to look at someone when you were this close to each other. In fact they were so close that their noses were practically touching – if he had a nosebleed, she would probably be able to wipe off the blood with her tongue. A disgusting thought like that crossing her mind made her realize that she couldn't let this moment pass them by.

Her hand itched against his arm and his arm moved after like she had set off a domino reaction and then his hand was against her damp cheek. His thumb moved ever so slightly to carefully wipe at that dampness.

"I like crazy cat ladies."

The silliness of that got her letting out the lightest of giggles, but she was falling into him to finally eliminate the distance between their lips. It was the quickest of moments that would stay with her forever to remind her of the surprisingly softness of his lips, the reassurance of his hand on her face and the fact that she wanted it to go on for longer, but it was over.

Her eyelids had closed as if unable to stay open whilst she was lost in this moment. Now they blinked slowly open to see Jon was just opening his eyes too. His thumb lightly stroked her face once more as he started to smile down at her. Her eyes darted between his, still slow to react to what had just happened, but when her head caught up with the moment she moved back, his hand slipping from her face.

What the FUCK did she think she was doing?

On her list of life decisions kissing Jon Snow surely was one of the worst ones she had made, right? Not only was he her competition, but simply one peck on the lips was sending her head into overdrive. Missandei had said she never liked someone before and it was becoming apparent as Daenerys stared into his eyes that no, she had never liked someone before.

That was dangerous.

"I better go home then," She mumbled, unable to hide how flustered she was. She stood up abruptly, avoiding total eye contact.

"Oh, okay."

She wasn't waiting for an answer, because she didn't want anything to pull her back and luckily for her she was at the door as he said so she got the strength to open the door and walk out of it leaving Jon alone in the stockroom.