Chapter Text
He doesn’t have to dream the future to see the things that others seem to miss, Daeron knows.
He hadn’t dreamt of his brother’s return to Westeros, for one – he would like to think that such a gift would be saved for something a little more noteworthy than that – but he can feel the stench of Aerion’s presence as soon as he steps into the Red Keep after a fortnight’s absence, and it follows him down corridors and in and out of rooms, in the fractured conversations of maids and cooks and guards.
“—a pity you weren’t all there, it was such a sweet sight—”
“—knelt right there at the dock and kissed His Grace’s ring—”
“—must have seen a lot to endure such a change—”
“—as radiant as he ever was, though his moods have eased somewhat—”
“—would not believe what Giya saw the other day—”
“—Seven strike me if I’m lying! That old foolish business must have been forgotten—”
“—spoke for hours, and both emerged in much better spirits—”
On and on it goes, twisting up staircases and out of windows, whispers scurrying past him like mice. If the picture they’re painting is in any way accurate, then his brother needn’t have bothered to come home at all – he should have joined a theatrical troupe somewhere in Lys and explored his lifelong talent of putting on an act rather than tormenting his family and household with it. Alas, there’s no one he can share that sentiment with: by the time he makes his way to the dining hall to break his fast, Aerion is already there, on their father’s left side with a smile so sweet that it could melt the heart of a statue.
And, on the matter of statues...
“I admit I’ve always been a suspicious man,” he ventures, “but I somehow doubt that the Free Cities have the magic necessary to send us back a fully changed man.”
Ser Duncan, towering menacingly over the entryway even as he’s pressed against the wall and wearing his most welcoming, good-natured expression, seems to go through a rather fascinating journey of emotions written out on his honest face before offering, “I would doubt that too.”
Something in his tone makes Daeron stand on edge. “Has he misbehaved already?”
“No, m’lord,” the knight says hastily. “Not at all. He’s been a right proper prince all week. Batting his eyelashes at the King until it earns him a smile. It’s relentless.”
“Ah.” So nothing much had changed, after all. Aerion’s bids for their father’s approval had been never-ending since a rather early age; Daeron had been the occasional recipient of similar attempts at affection and had indulged them to a point, only pulling away when it had become clear that there is no show of love that would stop his brother from being monstrous. It hadn’t helped much – or stopped the brother in question, in fact – but it had made existence a touch more peaceful, especially in Aerion’s five-year exile. Seeing him here again, allegedly a prince reborn, is more unnerving than it could ever have been a source of relief. The knight next to him, on the other hand, had become just that – a kindred spirit of sorts, understanding in ways Daeron never would have predicted, and if the aimless conversations late at night, wandering between his tales of prophecy and Ser Duncan’s stories from his tie on the road with Aegon, had evolved into them sharing each other’s beds on occasion, that’s for him to cherish and for Aegon to never, ever find out.
“Do keep an even closer eye on,” he gestures vaguely at the hall – his father, his entire brood of siblings and every unique issue in need of monitoring that they all have between them, “this in the next few weeks, if you can.”
“Certainly, m’lord.”
He’s dutiful as ever, dedicated and disciplined and painfully earnest, but Daeron can’t help another inquisitive look at him before he makes his leave – there’s an unease lurking between the surface, something nameless and heavy, and it’s of the same sort that seems to have infected everything in this keep in the last week or so.
He might, of course, be wrong, Daeron muses, for if the knight sees his suspicion for what it is, he doesn’t say anything at all to prove him wrong. He could be looking for clues where there aren’t any, trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. It is possible, in theory.
It’s also, historically, rather unlikely.
~.~
Rapidly climbing up the line of succession had had minimal perks to show for it so far, Aerion had found upon arrival.
He had missed Westeros – separate, isolated bits of it, in any case. The penance his several years of exile had meant to bring had never quite materialised, but he’d learnt to pretend better. He had missed the reverence that his title brings him here, tenfold more powerful at home than it had ever been in Lys, but the unrestrained freedom he’d found there had been exhilarating, feeding the perpetual restlessness under his skin, only making him greedier for more of that same freedom in turn. The righteous, sharp fury that he’d employed before had had to be replaced with something far more carefully restrained; explainable and understandable to the common man lest it be confused for casual, thoughtless cruelty and now, in the first days of his return, he has to restrain himself from that, too. Every word, every smile has to be painstakingly placed, the pressure of his father’s studying eyes making him dance to any tune His Grace plays for him.
Distance makes the heart grow fonder, he’d always heard people say, but his own heart had never grown cold in the first place and his father seems to have understood that, at least, enduring his son’s neediness with the appropriate care. He hasn’t the faintest clue what the King’s court thinks happens to a man in the Free Cities, but they seem borderline convinced that he had been born anew there.
It suits him just fine. The relief of it has made everyone significantly more pleasant towards his presence in the Red Keep and the change is drastic enough that the few remaining dissidents catch his eye all the more often for it. Getting a taste of being wanted had made him insufferably hungry for it and he’d set out to slither into the good graces of anyone who might resent him but not actively want him dead. The most salacious rumour he’d heard in the days since his arrival had only sped up the process of deciding where, precisely, he should start.
Which brings him back to the advantages and downsides of being accepted as one of the Dragon’s heirs again – the Kingsguard. With him, he’s sure they have the dual purpose of protecting both him and anyone he comes into contact with that could make him stumble into old habits, and while he cannot make a friend or an ally out of every single one of them, he’s not opposed to helping them stumble into entirely new experiences.
Or, to his not-so-mild annoyance, not always entirely new.
“My brother seemed thrilled to greet me home,” he remarks at the enormous knight clanging half a step behind him in his pristine white armour. “Has he already told you to keep an eye on me?”
“I don’t need instructions to keep an eye on my charges, m’lord.”
“No, no one could accuse you of negligence,” Aerion agrees just to watch the heat creep up Duncan’s face. He’s easily flustered and easier still to read even after half a decade of handling the dragon’s blood. His ease around Daeron had made him irrationally angry – seducing him had been difficult only in the sense that he’d had to fight his way past the knight’s set of stiff morality to get to the clear desire hidden beneath, but he’s yet to see him in any way relaxed in Aerion’s own presence; not even at the height of passion. He wonders if his brother had earned that and, after a moment of contemplation, had decided that he must have – Daeron had never given Duncan a reason to be careful around him despite the fact that he can be unsettling in his own ways. That particular privilege is saved for Aerion alone and he’s both wounded and inordinately flattered at that notion.
“He was wary of what you might whisper in His Grace’s ear is all,” Duncan, who appears determined to flatter him further still, admits. Aerion cackles, pleased.
“You may need to reassure him that I have no plans to overturn the natural order of this family. My pursuit of our father’s favour is not of a particularly political nature.”
He can see Duncan’s face furrow in confusion out of the corner of his eye, followed by realisation and then, in turn, replaced by profound disgust.
“You tell Daeron that by yourself,” he hurries to say, “and don’t go saying such things around the lad, I beg of you.”
“I have yet to exchange a word with Aegon.”
“For everyone’s good, that better remain that way, m’lord.”
He still remembers his honorifics occasionally, especially when provoked, while Daeron is just Daeron. It will simply not do.
“We’re here, Ser.” Aerion waits primly by the door of his own chambers until Duncan sighs and opens it for him. “Feel free to remain outside, if you wish. It’s rather cold out here, isn’t it?”
“You’re cold wherever you go,” Duncan remarks and Aerion can almost hear a note of reluctant, disgruntled fondness in his tone.
“A dragon is meant to be surrounded by fire.”
“I’ve had it lit for you, my prince.”
He would have snapped at him for the mockery – though he would have perhaps omitted the usual threats of flaying and whipping – but the fire in his chambers is, in fact, lit, and Aerion hurries to sprawl out over the wide expanse of his bed, sagging onto the satin in relief.
“Are you coming, Duncan? Into the bedroom or in the next half an hour, in general?”
An expletive floats up to his ears from the anteroom and Aerion smiles.
It’s so, so easy; corrupting something holy in a thousand small ways. It’s only his body pressed against Duncan’s, fulfilling a mutual need for something as of yet unspoken, but he knows that it eats at the knight’s conscience every single time, the secret of it heavy and terrible. It must burn and sting, but it weighs in its place like a chain in Aerion’s hand, tightly wound around his honourable neck. The thought alone makes him dizzy.
“You’re a dreadful little beast,” Duncan grunts as he finally follows him into the room, discarding his snowy cloak as he goes, the sight sending a thrill running through Aerion’s body. “Never consider anyone’s life but your own, not a single—”
“Now, Duncan,” he cuts him off, pushing him onto his back and crawling over his thighs to sit himself on the man’s lap, pawing at every part of his body that he can reach as he goes. “I can be accused of a number of things, I’m sure, but never of being an inconsiderate lover.”
Duncan shakes his head in wordless denial of any self-defence for his prince’s perceived flaws, his long, clumsy fingers struggling with the tiny pearly buttons of Aerion’s velvet vest. Had it been an undershirt, he would have lost patience with it a while ago and torn it off of him, Aerion knows from experience, but he’s always reverently careful with his finery, as if people would know that he had ruined it if something ends up destroyed. This one, in a bright, bloody shade of red and studded with glittering gems across the shoulders, is cut in a way meant to draw attention inward and towards the chainmail beneath. It’s exactly where Duncan’s eyes end up and his hands soon follow as the first layer is discarded and Aerion shivers at the sensation of the metal digging into his skin from each and every direction, shifting with each new touch. It gets him terribly wound up embarrassingly quickly and Duncan must see it, too – his gaze darkens where it’s locked with Aerion’s and he manhandles him until he’s the one on his back with one swift movement, each individual ring pressing into his overheated skin, hard and slippery all at once, whispering over his body like a hardened second layer, fluid and tantalisingly painful every now and again. He shakes his head and swats Duncan’s hands away when he makes to take it off of him and instead directs him down so that he can go for the laces of his breeches.
“I’ve made your work easier for you, knight,” he gasps out, lifting up his hips so that the fabric can be pulled down and off of his legs. Duncan gives him a questioning look and then groans when one of his hands, wandering its way between Aerion’s thighs on what must be a habit by now, finds him already prepared for him. Aerion watches him process that as he gets a hand on his own cock, by now painfully hard, and bites back a moan at the first blunt intrusion of those thick fingers inside him.
“We were just at breakfast,” Duncan says, surprisingly shaken by his discovery. “When did you have time—”
“Earlier this morning.” Aerion pushes back against his touch. He’d thought of nothing but this as he’d opened himself up on his fingers an hour or so ago, so aroused that he’d barely gathered the strength to actually make it down to the great hall for a fruitless round of niceties, the sight of Daeron encroaching on his territory doing something wondrously terrible to his insides. “I thought I would spare you some of the usual fumbling about.”
He wonders if Duncan would ever make the connection that he’s in the process of agonising about voicing – that he had thought of him outside of the cradle of this bed, here and now. It’s a dangerous line of thought, and one that is likely to only inhabit his mind; a small blessing.
“Thank you,” Duncan says and he laughs, relieved at the straightforward simplicity of that sentiment. One of his hands rests on the bedding, propping him up while he pushes a second finger inside him after covering it with even more oil, making a mess of the sort that Aerion had very much tried to prevent and he’s just about to snap at him for it when he whines instead, the abrupt loss of any touch quickly replaced by the head of his cock splitting him open. “Thank you— Oh, fuck.”
Aerion hikes his legs up to wrap them around his knight’s waist, the weight on top of him unsettlingly grounding. He feels sated and overfull, some part of him quieted down for at least a little while as he can only cling to the man above him, arms wrung around his massive shoulders, tipping his face up in a wordless command for the only thing missing. Duncan complies, chest pressing against Aerion’s as he hauls him upwards for a ferocious, sloppy kiss, the arm not used for keeping his weight off of him wrapped around Aerion’s waist and forcing him into the air, suspended on nothing but Duncan’s relentless need to hold him close. It makes him dizzy with want – it’s so often that his body feels like a cage of sorts, restrictive and loud in its desires to bite and scratch and scream, that he had never imagined that the cage of an embrace would feel so stupidly, unthinkably good. He could cry.
He doesn’t – closes his teeth around Duncan’s lower lip again, grinning wildly as he watches him curse, groan and bleed, but it gets him precisely what he wants: each thrust sends sparks up Aerion’s spine and he reaches between the tight press of their bodies to get a hand on himself again and this time, it’s a means to an end – he can feel, can almost taste how close they both are and he only needs a little more, only—
“What was that?”
Aerion closes his eyes. He’s a new man now, he reminds himself. He needs to be, at least for the time being. He can’t set people alight or cut their tongues – or other, more crucial equipment – off. He cannot.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“There’s someone at your door.” He makes to stand up or perhaps rise up to his knees to peer over into Aerion’s drawing room, and promptly collapses back on top of him when Aerion tightens his hold around him vengefully.
“And what of it? They can wait. No one would dare enter without an invitation.”
“Invitation or not, I think—”
“Duncan, have I ever given you the impression that you’re in this room to think?”
A pair of wide, troubled blue eyes stares down at him. “I think there’s someone in the other room.”
“There’s no on here,” Aerion hisses back, lowering his voice subconsciously. “Have you not sworn an oath to serve the King’s family? I have not distracted you from your duties, wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s a very broad definition of—”
“It’s the only one I have for you.” He clenches his thighs and pushes upwards like he’d urge on a horse, reaching around to land an impatient slap on Duncan’s backside. It works like a charm – he can feel his cock twitch inside him as his eyes flutter shut. “Move.”
He does, picking up speed again almost as if he can’t quite help himself. For all of his conviction that they’re being watched, he wants this – him – too much to stop and Aerion nearly comes from that thought alone. To have his mere presence, his every touch be so fervently craved is intoxicating and he wants more of it; wants it sinking into his skin and rushing through his blood, the devotion laced into Duncan’s feverish kisses more delicious than he had ever expected it to be.
“My prince,” his knight gasps now, and Aerion can tell that he’s losing what little grip he has on his self-control rather quickly. It’s in his voice, but in his address, too – the only time he ever takes the trouble to refer to him with such veneration seems to be in this bed. “Please.”
It’s impossible to tell what he’s begging for when there’s so much happening all at once, all of it assaulting his senses, but he nods anyway, sheltering his face in Duncan’s shoulder so that he doesn’t have to look at him or be dissected by his gaze. This way, he can only feel and feel he does, his strokes turning frantic until his climax finally washes over him, making him gasp and shake and cling to the man in his arms until he can sense him follow suit – Duncan buries himself inside him one last time with a drawn-out moan, collapsing on top of him a moment later. It’s too much and for once, the notion of it isn’t as intolerable as it had always been. Aerion allows himself to sink into it, breathe it in, achingly aware of the fact that’s all on borrowed time.
Soon, he promises himself. Soon he’ll push him off and send him to investigate whatever it is that he’d heard. He certainly has to do it before Duncan actually falls asleep on top of him, and then he would gloat as the shadows that the Kingsguard seems to imagine behind every corner would inevitably turn out to be a mirage.
Soon, he thinks, but not quite now.