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Luke sits in the car while Aemond gets the room. He fiddles with the buttons on the radio and tries to ignore the pressure building at the base of his spine. He’s curled nearly into a ball. His knees are pressed against his chest. He can feel his own heart pounding against them. Something about this isn’t right.
He lets his head bang back against the head rest. Something about them isn’t right.
They’ve been at this for so long, even the motels they cycle through to keep themselves anonymous started to recognize Aemond as a repeat guest. They take turns now, renting rooms for an hour at a time, two, maybe, if they’re sure they won’t be missed.
The problem with being two otherwise reliable sons is that they are often missed.
Luke has a ballcap, hoodie, and sunglasses on. His hair is pulled back and his clothing is no longer deliberately nondescript, but actively misleading. The ballcap is for a high school he didn’t go to, and the hoodie is secondhand knock off designer. Their disguises got more elaborate as the questions got deeper and felt less like curiosity and more like traps. The thrill of sneaking around is gone, long since replaced with exhaustion and the creeping feeling that this will all end terribly. Not because either of them wants it to, but because that will be the only way.
“C’mon.” Aemond taps on the window.
Luke turns the car off and gets out. He stretches side to side and looks out at the other cars in the lot. He used to think their business was no worse than anyone else’s. He used to revel in a secret that everyone there was in on. Now, he sees dozens of people like them, willing to ruin everything for an hour in hell. But none of them are fucking their family, are they?
Aemond lets them into a room with a sticky door and the oppressive smell of cigarettes.
“Do you remember the time?” Luke asks as he takes off his shoes. The carpet feels sticky on his socks, so he keeps them on.
“Which time?” Aemond smirks.
For all Luke’s worries, for all his doubts, Aemond’s little half-smile works like a remedy.
“The time you paid that woman to watch.” He smiles. For as hot as the experience was, they’d never done it again. Paranoia set in not long after. Luke wouldn’t say it wasn’t worth it, he isn’t sure how much Aemond paid her, but it didn’t make things easier. Their hunger to be free and out had never been harder to satiate than in the months that followed the encounter.
“Yeah. I remember.”
“Do you think she told anyone?”
Aemond throws his hoodie on the ground. Their clothes and the bedding are going to end up there anyway.
“Does it matter?”
Luke goes over to the bed. Aemond sits next to him and Luke puts his hands under his uncle’s shirt. He runs his hands along the warm skin, inching up and up until the fabric is bunched under his armpits and his hand is over Aemond’s heart. It’s beating so fast.
He’s happy for a second that the thrill is still there for Aemond. That there’s something fun. Luke hasn’t had fun in so long. His head hasn’t hit the sheets with an enthralled bounce and he rarely, if ever, rolls back onto Aemond giggling.
“Let’s do it again.” He used to say.
“How long can we do this before someone tells?” He says now.
Aemond’s shirt joins Luke’s on the floor.
“I don’t know.” Aemond reaches out. He holds Luke by both sides of his neck. He strokes his thumbs over his cheekbones and Luke feels himself flush red and hot. “I know we’re not going to stop until they do.”
How very romantic, and doubly grim.
“What if we don’t?”
“Why so many questions today?” Luke is wasting time, precious time. Aemond is nipping at his neck like the truth of them nips at their heels.
“Jace looked at me.” A few days before, when Luke was preparing his lie to be there, his older brother stopped and looked at him. It was the type of look that Luke had seen before, moments before he got in trouble. The next time he saw Jace after those looks, he was hiding behind their mother, unable to look him in the eye.
“And?” Aemond pulls back from his neck to make sure Luke sees it when he rolls his eye.
“You don’t get it.” Aemond’s brothers don't take interest in his life. They can't throw him under the bus when their closets are brimming with their own skeletons. Aemond has just the one; nobody ever goes looking for it.
“Then stop talking about it.”
Luke opens his mouth to refuse, and finds himself full of Aemond. His lips are on his. His tongue has captured his mouth.
He gets pressed against the threadbare sheets and flat pillow.
He gets this so infrequently he may as well enjoy it.
Luke grasps at Aemond’s shoulder and pulls him down. He grinds their bodies together and imagines a world where they are so close no one could dream of separating them.
They are sneaky, and sweaty, and needy. Aemond has them both naked and rutting together before Luke remembers the point of his original question.
Aemond is inching down his body when it comes back to Luke.
“What if we don’t stop? What happens if they find out, and we just keep doing this?” Losing control of their secret is one thing. If Luke lost Aemond, he wouldn’t be able to function.
“They won’t find out.” Aemond kisses all over his belly. He kisses the head of Luke’s half-hard cock. He pushes Luke’s legs onto his shoulders and kisses the inside of his thigh. “You know this would end if they did.”
He’s being pragmatic, with his sad, sweaty frown and resignation to the proposed end of a great love.
So, why can’t he be pragmatic in understanding that there is no world where no one finds out?
Jace looked at him. It’s only a matter of time.
Aemond’s slick fingers touch around Luke’s hole before they fit in one-by-one. Luke feels split in two by the emotional pain and the physical pleasure.
“Stop thinking.” Aemond says, not pragmatic, but kind. He pushes Luke’s legs from his shoulders. He crawls up him again, laying kisses and secret hopes and dreams for them all over.
When he kisses Luke again, it isn’t like the first time. He doesn’t feel shut up or dismissed. He feels soothed. He feels forcibly taken out of his own head and put somewhere where he can just be held.
Aemond gives his cock a few slow pumps with his hand and Luke comes hurdling back to his physical self too soon. He’s never wanted anything more than Aemond. He loves Aemond. He loves this. He needs it more than anything and even though Aemond just said the opposite, he’s not willing to ever let this end. They can ruin each other. They can end each other. But they will never end this.
“Fuck me.” He cries when Aemond lets go of his dick and trails back down to his hole.
“Let me open you more.”
“No.” He wants to feel it. He wants to own the imprint of Aemond in his body and carry it with him forever. He doesn’t feel much of this after, anymore. The scratchy sheets and dusty carpet stick around longer than their love.
“I love you. You know that?”
His uncle loves him.
Luke nods.
“I love you, too.”
Aemond thrusts inside and Luke feels something in him dislodge. The pain in his spine flies out through his mouth, broken off in a sob. His arms flail out. He pulls Aemond back to him and howls into his shoulder as he moves.
He used to think it could never get better than this. Now, he knows that this is the best it will ever be. The optimism he used to hold is gone.
The first knock at the door is tentative. When Luke thinks back on it, he’ll remember it as disbelieving. The second knock is harder, and it ruins his life.
“A surprise?” Luke asks hopefully. Aemond shakes his head, pale as the moon.
They get out of bed, sweaty and still hard. They dress quickly. The pounding gets more frantic. He wishes the person outside would say something, and the fact that they don’t tells Luke all he needs to know.
This is it.
Luke checks the mirror in the room briefly before going to the door. His lips are swollen like his eyes get after a long night of thinking of Aemond.
It’s Aemond that’s finally brave enough to open the door.
“Jace?” Aemond only gets out the one word before he’s being shoved back into the room. Jace slams the door behind himself.
“I can’t fucking believe it.”
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Shame and anger wrap themselves tightly around his vocal cords and taunt him to tears.
“Me? What the fuck are you doing here, Luke? I don’t know what I thought I would find when I followed you, but—”
“You followed me?”
“You came to a seedy ass motel to do God knows what with our fucking uncle?” Jace’s voice booms where Luke’s cracks, but that isn’t the only crack in the room.
Jace gets close to him, spitting in his face as he yells, and then Aemond is on him. He punches Jace. Jace wheels around and punches him back.
Their fight causes so much noise that Luke is more afraid of the police showing up than just their parents.
“Do you know how much trouble you’re in? Do you understand what the fuck you’ve done?” Jace shoves Aemond up against the wall. Luke tries to get between them, tries to get Jace to let go, but he shoves him away.
“We didn’t do anything!” Aemond breaks away and is winding up to hit Jace again when Luke fits himself between them, facing Aemond.
“He’s my brother.” He says and hopes that still counts for something.
He turns around and looks at Jace.
He shakes his head.
“I can’t believe you would do this.” He’s bleeding from his nose. Aemond is bleeding from his lip. Luke shares blood with both of them and hates himself for being the reason why it’s been spilled.
“I love him.” He says. There’s nothing to deny. He wouldn’t, anyway. He was done hiding two years ago, in a motel like this one, with a woman who looked excited, not horrified at his words.
“Don’t tell Mom.” Luke holds onto Jace. He begs him with his hands digging into his shoulders. “Please don’t tell Grandpa.”
Jace looks at him. Luke has never seen eyes like that. He’s seen anger and pain and loss. He’s seen joy and love. He’s seen twenty-two years of eyes, Jace’s eyes, and never have they looked at him like that.
“Luke.” He holds Luke like Luke holds him. They’re still brothers, though Jace looks at him like he’s never seen him before. “They know. Everyone already knows.”
He stumbles back.
He trips and falls at the mess of hoodies and shoes and sheets discarded on the ground.
Everyone could be their family. It could be only their parents and Aemond’s. Everyone could be the whole goddamn world.
Aemond grabs Luke as he falls. They go down together. Luke always knew they would.
Luke looks at him once they’re on the ground, tangled together in their mess. Jace doesn’t exist for a moment. Nobody does. Maybe that was always their problem.
This is the end, and all Luke knows are the arms circled around him, the eye looking into his own, and the lack of regret in his heart.