Chapter Text
The fog rises over the horizon in thick plumes, having rolled in some fifteen miles ago on the winding country roads. It seems to thicken the closer Valarr gets to his destination, a suffocating blanket of obscurity, dissipating softly at the mercy of his headlights only to knit itself closed again behind him, erasing the road as though it had never existed.
Through the rearview mirror, he watches the landscape dissolve: pale fields swallowed by the low swell of mist, quiet farmhouses, power lines slicing through the rain-smeared horizon, sheep reduced to formless smudges of white against dark, muddied grass.
It is as though the world is thinning back to the root. The soft pulp of flesh stripped slowly from some vast carcass until nothing but the alabaster scaffolding of ancient bone remains.
Valarr lowers the window an inch despite the cold. Raindrops splutter through the gap, a thousand scattered sea-breeze whips across the high line of his cheekbone.
The air smells of peat and damp ozone and the distant burn of something metallic, as though the fog itself is inundated with rust.
Summerhall, soon enough, reveals itself to him. Not by sight, but by the subtle shift of pressure.
The road narrows without warning, hedgerows clawing at the flank of his car like the desperate arms of a mother welcoming its child back to the womb. Chip-seal and gravel fractures into older stone as the incline steepens, rising towards a crest that vanishes entirely, briefly, into white.
Valarr knows the turn without seeing it. His hands move before his eyes confirm it, a muscle memory honed in boyhood.
The wrought iron gates loom suddenly from the mist, coal-black spears slick with rain. One hangs slightly lower than the other. It always has. Some freak storm, leaving its damage prior to Valarr's arrival to the estate according to his uncle. The family crest sits stubbornly at their centre in cold, deliberate symmetry—the three-headed dragon watching with all six of its eyes.
A small gatehouse stands to one side, its windows lit amber against the white drift.
Valarr lowers his window fully before the guard can entirely step into the drive.
“Good evening, sir,” the man says, cap tipped, posture painfully straight despite the bitter wind clobbering at him. He is new. Or at least, newer than two and a half years of employment. Not one of the older retainers who had known Valarr as a knobbly-kneed teenager. “We were told to expect you.”
Valarr nods once.
The gates open with an old groan, the sound blending seamlessly with the howling gale. Like the age-old grumble of some ancient beast. He had not liked the sound when he first arrived here, fourteen, newly orphaned with a baby brother who did not understand why they could not just remain in London. Now, it is simply just another permanent fixture in the living tapestry that is Summerhall.
Stone crunches under the wheels as he slowly drives onto the property, the engine purring soft. Beyond the gates, the driveway curves upwards in a slow, deliberate arc, and the fog thins a little, the outline of the house emerging by degrees.
First, the roofline, grey-slate tiles and chimneys puffing out smoke. Then, the long central facade, windows dark and unblinking. The all seeing eyes that have followed him for years.
There never has been anywhere to go, not the courtyard, not the river, nor the moors, where it felt as though Summerhall did not watch. Only university gave Valarr any semblance of lasting privacy.
Ivy strangles large swathes of the east wing, thick and possessive. Where the stone manages to peek through its tangled arms, permitted it is not stained with damp, its pale colour shines with the reflection of distant light. The west wing recedes slightly from the main body, an architectural afterthought, or perhaps a secret kept at a measured distance.
Valarr does not let his eyes linger. Not on the west wing. Instead, he pulls into a spot between the family cars left for his Jaguar, and cuts the engine.
Silence floods in, even the storm seeming to hush. It feels almost indecent in its abruptness. The ticking of the cooling bonnet becomes conspicuous in the quiet, like a pulse left behind after the body has stilled.
For a long moment, Valarr remains seated, hands resting on the wheel. The fog presses softly against the windscreen, blurring the facade of the house into something half-formed.
Summerhall demands attention, insists it is looked at properly. He does not oblige it yet.
Instead, he exhales and leans back into the driver’s seat.
The car smells faintly of petrol, damp wool, and the ghost of old tobacco. A packet of Benson & Hedges rests in the centre console, gold lettering dulled from use. He prefers them for their restraint. Not harsh, not theatrical. Clean. Familiar. They taste like something you could smoke without thinking about it. Which is precisely the point.
He considers lighting one. Letting the smoke coil inside the car, thick and familiar. Letting it fill the confined space until the world outside is reduced to blur and ash.
He doesn’t. The house has its own smoke.
It does not need his.
His reflection stares back at him from the rearview mirror. He adjusts it. The interior light remains off; he prefers the grey honesty of natural light. It flattens nothing. Forgives nothing.
Valarr studies himself with a clinical eye.
He is clean-shaven, deliberately so. The absence of stubble sharpens his features, makes him appear younger at a distance and older up close. He tilts his head slightly, examining the shadows beneath his eyes.
He looks tired.
Not dramatically. Not ruined. Just worn in the way of someone who has not slept deeply in years, which should be concerning for a twenty year old. There is a fine tension at the corners of his mouth that does not fully disappear even when he smiles.
His collar shifts as he adjusts it, and instinctively, almost involuntarily, he stretches his neck slightly to one side.
There.
A faint mark, barely visible unless one knows precisely where to look. The slightest smear of mauve low on his throat, just above the clavicle. Not bruised anymore, more memory than injury. Kiera’s mouth pressed too hard into his skin the last evening he saw her, half-laughing, half-possessive.
He presses his thumb against it now as though testing whether it still exists. There’s a faint, dull sting confirming that, yes, it does in fact exist. He releases it.
Carefully, Valarr straightens his tie.
He has dressed deliberately for this return. A charcoal wool overcoat tailored close to the body. Beneath it, a navy jumper over a crisp white shirt, collar sharp against his throat. The trousers are dark, pressed. Polished black Oxfords dusted faintly with road grit. He dresses like someone accustomed to being watched, or judged, even when no one speaks.
He does not wear denim here. Denim is for university pubs and Kiera straddling his lap in some overheated corner booth, her laugh bright and careless as he downs a pint and loudly debates the merits of dissertations and lectures and which tutor fancies which student. Denim is for sticky floors, and cigarette smoke that belongs to everyone. For the illusion of looseness. For being one among many, not the eldest of a flock.
Summerhall demands structure. Armour.
He runs a hand once through his hair, neatly styled, parted without vanity. There is nothing flamboyant in his appearance. No excess. No softness.
The house looms once more in the windscreen.
Valarr finally gives in, pocketing the cigarettes, sliding the rearview mirror back into place, and opening the door. Cold rushes in at once, heavier here than on the road, damp and insinuating. And as he steps out, the fog closes around him immediately, swallowing the shape he leaves behind.
There’s a footman by his side right away, umbrella raised against the thin sheets of rain. The gravel shifts between their boots as they make their way to the old stone stairs, but before Valarr reaches the steps, something catches his eye: a narrow, wavering light in one of the upper windows of the west wing. A solitary flicker in that side of the manor, at an hour as late as this.
Valarr knows, with complete certainty, who is up there. There is only one person who ever spent their time in that hollow, haunted hovel.
Aerion. Back from Eton.
The thought is automatic, and he almost hesitates. Almost allows himself to turn back, to climb back into his car and drive straight past the gates and pretend nothing has changed. But the fog presses in, thick as wool, and the front door swings open to reveal Matarys, haloed by soft chandelier light.
Real, unguarded joy finally floods Valarr for the first time since he drove onto the property.
Matarys does not wait for permission or decorum. He barrels down the steps, nearly slipping on wet stone and giving Valarr a heart attack in the process, eventually coming to collide into Valarr’s middle with all the graceless force of twelve years and unfiltered devotion.
“You’re late,” Matarys accuses into his coat, frowning even as his arms lock tight around him.
“I said evening,” Valarr replies, one hand steadying the back of his brother’s head. “I believe it is evening.”
“It’s practically night!”
“And yet,” Valarr murmurs, “I’m here, aren’t I?”
Matarys leans back to look at him properly, eyes bright in the chandelier glow spilling from the open door. He has grown. Taller. Thinner in the face. There is something of Baelor in the line of his jaw that makes Valarr’s chest tighten unexpectedly.
“Your hair is longer,” Matarys says.
“And yours is shorter.”
Matarys grins, pleased at being noticed. “Uncle Maekar says I look more respectable like this. The long hair made me look pretty.”
He says the word ‘pretty’ like it’s a grave insult, button nose scrunched up in childish contempt.
There’s a minute tightening in Valarr’s gut. Brief and sudden, his mind betrays him.
A dark dormitory room at Eton, curtains half-drawn. The hush of boys feigning sleep. Pale hair tangled between his fist. A body on its knees. The delirious, ruinous warmth of a mouth. The way shame had come later, a souring in the afterglow, crawling up his spine like the icy water of the river at the edge of the estate, where he, Aerion and Daeron used to play as teenagers.
Valarr shoves the memory down as best he can.
His own hair has never been truly long. Perhaps longer than the crew cuts Eton administration favoured, but never long enough to invite raised brows. Matarys, he remembers faintly, will be enrolled there come September. A good thing, then, for Uncle to take initiative.
His mouth curves faintly. “Well, if Uncle Maekar says so, it must be true.”
Behind them, the footman clears his throat gently, still holding the umbrella aloft. Rain taps insistently against the fabric.
“Shall I have your luggage brought in, sir?”” he says.
“Yes, thank you Roland.” Valarr straightens slightly, the shift subtle but immediate, affection folding back into composure. “And the car left where it is.”
“Of course, sir.”
The front door remains open, warmth spilling outward in a golden pool against the grey. The butler—Mr. Yormwell, seemingly as ancient as the stones of the manor themselves, unchanged by time—stands just inside, hands clasped neatly behind his back.
“Master Valarr,” Yormwell inclines his head. “Welcome home.”
Home.
The word settles uneasily underneath Valarr’s breastbone. He smiles anyway, thanking him as he removes his gloves slowly.
They are old things, dark brown leather softened by decades of wear, the lining thinning at the fingertips. They had belonged to his father once. The creases across the knuckles do not align perfectly with Valarr’s own; the leather remembers a different hand. He slides them off with care, folding them neatly and handing them to the valet along with his coat.
Beside him Matarys bounces on his heels, regaling him with a tale of all he’s missed in his time away: cricket scores, a newly hired Latin master, schoolyard injustices and a football match won unfairly. He talks without pausing for breath, and it fills Valarr’s own lungs with a sting that is not so much breathlessness as it is the settled ache of distance finally diminished.
It is a bittersweet sight, seeing his brother now.
Valarr had not meant to return this winter.
Third year at university had provided a convenient excuse. Essays, obligations, a girlfriend. He had timed his visits carefully these past two years, ensuring they never coincided with Aerion’s holidays from Eton. A logistical dance. Sensible. Mature.
Then, Matarys called.
I miss you, he’d said down the crackling line, sounding very much like the baby brother he’d held close at their father’s funeral, all wobbly voiced. You’re never here when I’m here anymore. It doesn’t feel like Christmas.
For once, Valarr had found he could not deflect.
Perhaps it was time to man up and face it. The past was the past. Teenage mistakes did not matter, and Aerion was his cousin. His kin. A few weeks of shared company may do them some good. Remind them of propriety.
From the far side of the hall, the clock in the long-case cabinet chimes the quarter hour. The sound reverberates faintly through the stairwell, a thin metallic echo that seems to stretch longer than it should.
Yormwell gestures inward with restrained precision. “Your rooms have been prepared, Master Valarr. The fire has been laid.”
Valarr nods. His rooms.
The ones nearest the west wing. An old nursery converted after he moved here, all his after a handful of months sharing Aerion’s room, subjected to all sorts of petulant bickering from his cousin. East-facing windows, long corridor, a thin wall separating his chambers from the beginning of that narrower passage which leads toward the west.
Aerion’s rooms are fully within the west wing itself. Always have been. Closer to his mother’s old quarters.
Valarr does not allow himself to linger on that.
“Your uncle is in the study,” Yormwell adds. “He will expect you once you have settled.”
“Thank you.”
Matarys opens his mouth to continue his story but is interrupted by a sudden commotion from the staircase.
Aemon appears first, descending with deliberate calm. Daella follows close behind, skirts swishing, sharp-eyed and assessing. Aegon comes at a half-run, nearly tripping over the final step, and little Rhae lingers at the top before darting down when she sees Valarr properly.
They do not stand on ceremony; they swarm him.
“Hey there, champ,” Valarr greets, steadying Aegon by the shoulder before he can collide with his ribs. “You’re taller.”
That seems to make the boy brighten, “Father says I shall outgrow all my brothers at this rate.”
Valarr snorts, that would not exactly be difficult, at least, where Aerion was concerned.
Daella folds her arms. “You look tired.”
“That’s the university education,” Valarr says lightly.
“Is it amazing?” Aemon demands, eager as ever when it comes to knowledge of any form. Eternal little bookworm.
“Yes,” he says, ruffling his pale hair. “You would like it.”
Rhae slips her small hand into his, as she used to when she was a toddler, peering up at him as though to confirm he is real. “Will you stay the whole time?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart.”
Only then does she relax.
Valarr’s gaze sweeps them once, instinctively counting. Four. Not six.
No older brothers.
“Where’s Daeron?” he asks casually, as though the absence has only just occurred to him.
Aegon snorts before he can stop himself.
Rhae answers instead, honest and unfiltered. “He’s down in the village.”
Valarr nods slowly.
The village. Which really means the pub. Which means he is likely three pints deep already, maybe more. The same wooden bar. The same sour ale. The same red-faced men who clap him on the back as though he is a fixture.
Some things, it seems, will never change.
He presses his lips together briefly. “Right.”
There is a pause. The creak of floorboards upstairs.
The sound fills Valarr with a cool, heavy dread that sinks into his stomach with the grace of an anvil.
He keeps his tone easy when he asks the next question. “And Aerion?”
The temperature shifts. It is subtle, but it is there. Aemon’s posture tightens almost imperceptibly. Daella’s eyes flick, involuntarily, toward the corridor that leads west. Matarys grows quieter.
Aegon, however, scowls openly.
“He’s in his room,” he says, voice hot with acrimony. “Got back from Eton two nights ago.”
The words are edged. Resentful. Some things really do not change.
Valarr feels the knowledge settle in him like a stone dropped into still water.
Matarys murmurs softly, as though he’s afraid to be heard. “He’s been in a mood.”
“When isn’t he?” Aegon mutters.
“Aegon,” Valarr warns softly, bringing a hand down on the boy’s bony shoulder. “It’s Christmas, not even Aerion can ruin that.”
Aegon shoots him a look that very clearly shows he does not agree, but he does not say anything further, and it feels as though the aphotic squall that follows any mention of Aerion, scatters at long last.
But somewhere down the corridor, beyond the lit hall, beyond the reach of warmth and chatter, the west wing waits. And though the house hums with welcome, though his cousins press close and Matarys begins again to recount some trivial drama, Valarr feels it.
The awareness. The lingering presence.
Like a match struck quietly in another room. He does not wish to stick around and smell the smoke.
It takes a little fuss to eventually shepherd the children into the drawing room, but Yormwell’s soft insistence that dinner will not delay itself indefinitely, even for reunions, seems to do the trick. And then, Valarr finds himself trudging up alone, down the corridor to his rooms.
It is much quieter than the entrance hall, but there is little comfort in soundlessness that is so heavy that it presses on the body, so absolute that it feels more like an echo of something awful than true quiet.
The carpets are thicker here, footsteps absorbed before they might properly form, and the chandeliers give way to wall sconces, narrower pools of light, deliberate and spaced. Portraits of long-dead ancestors line the walls, watching with their startlingly pale hair and dulled, violet eyes, their gilt frames catching the glow like haggard halos of past lives.
Roland has already taken his luggage ahead, which is a relief. Valarr would like to be alone, if only for a moment, amongst his things. His old room. A required momentary privacy to prepare himself for whenever Aerion decides to join the fray.
As he reaches the bend, he feels it again. That prickle. That awful, lingering sense of being observed with intent.
Valarr does not turn immediately. He pauses instead at a narrow console table beneath a gilt mirror, adjusting his cufflinks with deliberate care. Gold on gold. His father’s signet ring glints as his fingers move.
For a moment, he is distracted by the way it catches the light. Gold, heavy, engraved with the family crest worn nearly smooth. It sits comfortably on his finger in a way it did not when he was fourteen, no longer sliding like it used to. He turns it once, absently, watching the dull gleam before bringing his gaze up to the mirror.
There, in the dim reflection, beyond his own shoulder—
A shape. Still. Leaning.
Valarr sees not the boy, but the ember first, pulsating in the dark like a watchful eye.
Aerion, himself, stands at the mouth of the west corridor as though he has grown there, like some particularly stubborn strain of mold, equally as hazardous to the health, half-claimed by shadow. The lighting does something peculiar to him; it hollows his cheeks, sharpens the angles of his face until he looks almost ecclesiastical.
Smoke unfurls around him in slow delicate ribbons, blue in the moonlight, serpentine as it coils lazily towards the ceiling. Reptilian, the way it gathers in the hollows between sconces. The cigarette sits elegantly between his thin, pale fingers. Not the gold restraint of Benson & Hedges, not the thick simplicity of Marlboro Reds. No, a slim white stick with a dark band near the filter.
Sobranie, Valarr notes dimly. Of course.
The sort of cigarette chosen not for taste but for theatre. Expensive and as ostentatious as a signet ring worn on the wrong finger, faintly sweet on the inhale, almost perfumed. Burning hot, quicker than most. The paper is thinner; the ember brighter.
It flares as Aerion draws on it now, and in that flare, his face is illuminated.
Pale silver-gold hair, shorn brutally short. Shorter than Valarr has ever seen it. It exposes the sharp architecture of his skull, the clean, severe line of his jaw. Without the softness of longer hair, his features are knife-fine. High cheekbones, sharp nose. A lean, almost feral thing underneath it all.
His eyes lift. Violet, clear and cutting, like that of every Targaryen ancestor of note. Maekar’s eyes, set in a younger, crueller face.
They fix on Valarr in the mirror.
“Well,” Aerion says, exhaling slowly.
His voice has deepened since Valarr last had the misfortune of seeing him, still that lazy, well-bred public-school drawl, vowels rounded and languid, but there is something coarser threaded within it now. Something that drags faintly, as though each word is amused by itself. A habit of lingering too long on the wrong word until it sounds mocking, indecent.
“Look what the fog’s coughed up.”
He is taller than Valarr remembers, but still small for a man grown. Or perhaps simply thinner. Eton has pared him down to something Valarr does not wish to be alone with. It seems he has no choice in the matter, however.
He turns slowly and inclines his head ever so slightly in an attempt at indifferent civility, “Aerion.”
“Cousin,” he says in that awful treacley way that makes Valarr’s skin feel too tight around his bones. “I didn’t expect you to show your face while I was still contaminating the premises. You missed the Michaelmas hunt in September. Father was disappointed.”
Valarr does not deign any of that with a reaction, instead he focuses once more on the bright burn of the cigarette in Aerion’s hand. “You’re smoking indoors.”
Aerion glances lazily at the sconce above his head, then back at him. “I’m in the corridor.”
“You’re in the house.”
A corner of Aerion’s mouth lifts. “Christ, you sound like a prissy little prefect, you know that right?”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.” A careless flick of ash; it scatters over the carpet without apology. “It’s stone, Valarr. Not tinder. It’s hardly going to go up like kindling.”
The ember brightens again as he inhales. It lights his eyes from below, turning the violet almost feverish for a second before dimming back to cool clarity. Valarr finds himself watching the way Aerion’s delicate fingers curl with a focus that borders on fascination. Not casual, not idle, but repulsive in its intent. Aerion seems to notice, and his gaze drags over Valarr in turn. Slow, insolent, taking in the navy jumper, the pressed trousers, the careful neatness. It lingers at his throat half a second too long.
“Horrors do not cease” Aerion says softly, almost conversationally. “You look like someone’s young MP.”
Rich, considering Aerion is basically dressed the same, minus the tie.
“Eton hasn’t improved your manners,” Valarr replies evenly.
“Eton improves very little.”
That much, Valarr will happily agree to. Still. A stupid little part of him does indeed wish to know how Aerion is doing. He wishes for there to be any form of normalcy between them, a return to their youth, to life before Valarr ruined whatever childhood camaraderie they possessed.
“How is it, truly?” He asks, tone controlled, if a little soft.
“Oh, you know. Character-building.” He exhales slowly, eyes never leaving Valarr’s face. “Same braying idiots. Same ancient masters pretending Latin matters. Same boys convinced they’re destined to run the country when they can’t even run a bath.”
A faint shrug.
“I did manage to set off a fire alarm.”
Valarr’s gaze sharpens. “By mistake?”
Aerion smiles. It is not a kind smile. Valarr suspects Aerion is not capable of anything that does not come with a poorly concealed knife edge to it.
“One of the lower boys thought it clever to move my things. Hid my trunk. Smug little bastard,” he sneers, though there is a sick detachment to his voice that Valarr is more perturbed by. “So I thought I’d see how flammable his curtains were.”
Valarr goes very still.
“Don’t make that face. They weren’t that flammable,” Aerion adds after a beat, mock-reassuring. “Just singed. The masters were terribly upset. All that shrieking and rushing about. You’d think the place had gone up like bloody Rome.”
There is something in his eyes when he says it, a glint, sharp and private. A secret thrill that Valarr has seen many times in his life, always accompanied by Aerion committing some foolish, half-baked act of insanity as a cry for attention.
“You could’ve been expelled,” Valarr says quietly.
“Please.” Aerion takes another drag. “Half the place is built on the understanding that nothing truly happens to us. A bit of smoke, a stern letter home, everyone moves on.”
His gaze flicks over Valarr again, and this time the serrated edge of cruelty hones on him instead.
“You would’ve hated it this term,” he adds lightly, as if beginning some harmless anecdote. “All terribly homoerotic. Rugby in the rain. Boys half-naked in the changing rooms pretending not to look at each other. The masters love it, apparently it builds character.”
His gaze flicks down Valarr’s frame and back up again, swift as a lash.
“Probaby too much proximity for you. You always were so frightfully timid.”
Valarr does not rise to it. He has spent over two years toiling to curb the instinct to react to Aerion’s barbs. Aerion has always fed on reaction. On the flicker in someone’s eyes when he says something foul enough to bruise. Praise, outrage, disgust; it is all the same so long as it is directed at him. Hungry little creature, rotten to the soft, fleshy core of him. Horrid thing. With the opportunity to test his mettle before him now, Valarr refuses to crumble.
“I doubt I would’ve found it remarkable,” he replies, tone even. “Boys at school behave like boys at school.”
“Yes.” Aerion studies the smoulder at the tip of his cigarette as if it is the more honest companion. “They do.”
The smoke curls between them, a thin shifting veil. It smells faintly sweet, cloying, and does nothing to disguise the sharper scent beneath it. Soap, starch, something clean and old-fashioned clinging to Aerion like armour. Whatever new cologne he’s picked up, the sandalwood and musk, sharp against his skin.
“And besides,” he adds, “I was not timid.”
Aerion’s brows lift, amused. “No?”
“No.”
A pause. Aerion studies him through the smoke, head tilted slightly, as though assessing a horse’s teeth. The ember glows again; he draws deeply, deliberately, the tip of the Sobranie burning almost white-hot for a heartbeat.
“Funny,” he murmurs. “Memory’s a slippery thing.”
There is something in the way he says it that is not loud, not vulgar. Simply pointed. Valarr feels the blood drain from his face despite himself. He hates that Aerion can still do that. Hates that some part of him will always be eighteen in this corridor, breath caught, pulse rabbit-fast, convinced he has irreparably stained something sacred.
“If you’re bored, which I suspect you are,” Valarr replies, voice as smooth as polished glass, “I would suggest you find someone else to terrorise, yes?”
Aerion pouts. Actually pouts, the wretched thing. His mouth softens into exaggerated offence, violet eyes widening faintly in mock injury. It is absurdly reminiscent of the boy who used to knock over crystal at dinner just to watch the adults bristle.
“Who said I was bored?”
“You have never been subtle, Aerion. Nor have you ever abided peace.”
Aerion snorts, the sound is inelegant. Ugly in a way that makes something low in Valarr’s chest twist painfully. Confusing and disgustingly fragile.
“Thank Christ for that,” Aerion says. “Peace is for the dull and the dying. I’d loathe to end up as sanctimonious as you, cousin. Wandering about looking as though you’ve swallowed a church.”
Then, horrid creature that he is, he steps closer. It is not an abrupt movement; it is measured.
Heat pulses in the small space between their bodies, a living, aching thing that Valarr can feel through wool and cotton. An awareness that is less touch and more voltage. Accusatory in its essence.
He wishes, with a ferocity that startles him, that he could seize the heat by the throat and strangle it. Crush it down and squeeze, squeeze, squeeze until it bursts and none of this choking rot remains.
He does no such thing.
Instead, Valarr grits his teeth, refusing to tense. Refusing to play Aerion’s stupid games.
Because it is always a game with him: bait laid carefully, barbed but wrapped in silk. Aerion has always been deft that way. Even as a child, when he wanted something—attention, approval, simply to be looked at—he would not ask for it plainly. He would break someone else’s toy. Say something outrageous at dinner. Tug at Valarr’s sleeve until the stitching strained and then feign innocence when scolded.
Once, he threw Aegon’s brand new kitten down an estate well and laughed manically when the little boy burst into helpless sobs. He’d always had that monstrous thread in him, right from the very first day Valarr laid eyes on him.
Now he smokes imported cigarettes in the west corridor and pretends indifference as his eyes drag slowly, deliberately, over the line of Valarr’s body. And Valarr, damn his stupid, treacherous soul, cannot help but look back.
There is an ascetic severity to Aerion in the dim light. Almost monastic, his father’s dubiously golden boy, were it not for his mouth. Pink and soft, lips bitten raw, a bad habit he has never broken. It ruins the illusion entirely, that spoiled mouth.
Sudden and unwelcome, that old dreadful sensation dribbles its way down Valarr’s stomach, settling like an overheated anvil in the very pit of his being. A buzzing heat under his too-thin skin. Wild, feral thing; hungry, greedy beast. He looks away from Aerion’s plush mouth before the feeling spirals any further.
“You’ve filled out,” Aerion says abruptly. “University must agree with you.”
Valarr stiffens almost imperceptibly. Aerion notices. Of course he does.
“Don’t look so alarmed,” he adds. “It wasn’t a proposition. God forbid.”
The word god is laced with faint derision, as if piety itself were suspect. Valarr meets his gaze. “Is that what you think I’m expecting?”
“I don’t know what you expect,” Aerion replies. “You left rather abruptly.”
Ah, there it is. The splinter in the skin. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just a clean incision.
“I went to Cambridge,” Valarr says. “It was hardly the moon. I didn’t see the need for a procession.”
“Yes. Of course. Father was very proud of you, in case you were wondering. So proud he has been all too willing to indulge your holidays spent away from home,” Aerion flicks ash onto the carpet without looking down. “But you might have managed the odd letter for your dear little cousin,” he adds. “Given the…circumstances.”
Valarr feels heat rise, immediate and unwelcome. “It didn’t seem appropriate.”
Aerion lets out a soft, incredulous laugh. “Appropriate.” He rolls the word around as though it is a particularly odd tasting hard candy. Or perhaps bile he cannot quite manage to swallow back down. “Is that what we’re calling it?”
Valarr does not answer.
He feels a primordial, coiling shame stir. Not only for staying away for so long, not only for that summer—never named, never spoken—but for the way it fractured something implicit between them. For the silence that followed. For the relief he felt when distance made it easier to pretend it had been an aberration rather than a choice.
“I didn’t leave to spite you,” he says.
Aerion’s brows lift slightly. “Is that what you think this is about? Do you truly think I give a toss about you skipping off to write Latin essays and join rowing clubs? You are not that important, cousin.”
“What else could it possibly be about?” Valarr says, though the answer hums between them like a live wire.
Aerion considers him for a moment. The vanity is still there, he stands a little too straight, chin angled to catch the light, but beneath it is something less certain. Anger, yes, it sits in the tightness of his jaw. But something else too, something less comfortable. Not wounded exactly. Not pleading.
Accusing.
The west wing yawns at his back like a dark lung.
Valarr can feel it like a pressure. The pull of it, the dark depths calling his name. The soft hush of Aerion’s haggard breathing.
The door at the end of the corridor, the one with the faulty latch. The way the curtains had been half-drawn. The air too warm for June. He does not see it in pictures. Only in fragments of sensation: breath too close, fingers digging into his shoulder, the dizzying drop in his stomach when he realised the line had already been crossed.
“You were going back to school, I was going to uni,” he says quietly. “It seemed better.”
“Better,” Aerion repeats.
“For everyone.”
Burning, the mawkish memory that rises. That old, creeping heat beneath his collar, the sense of standing too close to something that cannot be undone, the cliff-edge at the ends of the estate overlooking a choppy winter storm.
The thought of that night before he left for university sits under his skin like a splinter. The press of breath, the shock of wanting, the sudden dizzying rightness of it followed by the cold plunge of comprehension, the immediate, choking awareness of what he had done. Reached first. Crossed first.
He has since folded it away like contraband, carried it as an indictment, tried helplessly to categorise it. File it under error. Youth. Temporary insanity. He has built two years of restraint around excuses like scaffolding.
Aerion has never bothered to file anything ever. He does not hoard grievances in drawers like private relics. He sets them out plainly, one by one, on the table between you, and dares you not to look. Because to look away, to pretend, is, to him, an unforgivable sin.
“You’ve always been very good at disappearing when things become inconvenient.”
The cruelty lands because it is almost true. Heavy handed as an open palmed slap.
For a brief, brutal moment, Valarr no longer stands in the corridor, but rather by a grave, dressed in black wool beneath a pitiless sky, the rain pelting down, the mud slick beneath his perfectly polished boots. His father’s coffin lowering inch by inch while he stands too straight, too composed, knowing he had not been there in the end. There had been time. There had been trains he could have caught from Eton.
He had chosen not to.
The shame resurfaces now, metallic and choking. And Valarr, for all his composure, does not remember deciding to move.
His hand comes up, fisting into the front of Aerion’s shirt, and he shoves him back. Not hard enough to injure, but hard enough that Aerion’s shoulders knock against the wall with a dull thud. The sound echoes down the corridor.
For a second, they both freeze.
Aerion’s cigarette has dropped from his grip and landed on the carpet. The boy’s gaze follows it, and for a moment, the ember flares stubbornly against the wool, threatening flame before finally dying with a hiss under the crush of his heel. The motion is almost tender, if not for there being something unsettling in the way Aerion watches the last thread of smoke unravel, as though he is not just putting it out, but memorising the way it dies.
Then, before Valarr gains the sense to step back again, Aerion shifts his gaze to where Valarr’s hand twists in his collar. The smile that follows is amused and terrible.
“Well,” he says lightly, though his pupils have blown wide, “there he is.”
Valarr’s breath is coming too fast. He hates that. Hates that Aerion can pull something feral out of him so easily. Hates that the contact, even this, sends a sick, electric current through his veins.
“Do not,” Valarr says, voice tight, “reduce my life to something so glib.”
“Your life?” Aerion echoes, brows lifting. “God, you make it sound operatic. I’m not reducing anything. I’m simply pointing out a pattern.”
Valarr shoves him again. Harder.
Aerion’s head knocks faintly against the plaster. It sends a satisfying frisson of heat through Valarr that he ought to be ashamed of, but the feeling is near impossible in the face of Aerion’s blithe laughter. A short, breathless sound that is half delight, half something uglier.
“Careful,” he murmurs. “You’ll bruise me, and then we’ll both have something to explain.”
Valarr releases him as though burned, as though contact itself is incriminating. They stand there, the air between them scorched.
“You think I left because it’s convenient?” Valarr demands. The composure has cracked; something hot and raw shows through. “You think it’s ease?”
Aerion dusts imaginary lint from his sleeve. “I don’t particularly think about why you left,” he says, too quickly. “People bugger off. That’s just life. Besides, I prefer the quiet to your moping.”
The indifference is so deliberate it almost glistens, like stage makeup under harsh lights. It reminds Valarr, absurdly, of scraped knees on the moors. Of Aerion at twelve, jaw clenched, eyes bright with unshed tears, daring anyone to notice. He would bite if you asked whether it hurt.
The memory scrapes something tender loose.
Valarr exhales. Some of the heat drains out of him, leaving behind only a heavy fatigue.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” he says quietly.
Aerion’s expression changes at once. “Don’t,” he spits out, venomous.
“It was my fault.”
“Oh piss off. As if that makes it some noble little tragedy and not the equivalent of a subpar wank. It meant sweet bugger all, Valarr. Fucking nothing.”
“You were younger, I—”
“I am not even three years younger than you,” Aerion snaps, voice hard. “Don’t you turn me into some teary-eyed little bitch for your guilt trip. It’s tedious.”
Valarr opens his mouth. Closes it again. What can even be said to a stone wall?
Aerion shoves past him, shoulder knocking deliberately. shoulder jarring deliberately against his own, just enough to leave the memory of contact lingering. “Dinner’s in ten,” he calls over his shoulder, the words clipped. “Try not to faff about too much. Wouldn’t want your theatrics bleeding into the pudding.”
He doesn’t look back.
Valarr remains rooted, staring down the empty hall. The faint charcoal-smear where Aerion’s cigarette had kissed the carpet seems to pulse in the dim light; around him, the house feels impossibly large, its corridors stretched and yawning, full of doors that never quite shut, secrets folded into every shadowed arch.
He stands there long enough to feel the chill crawl down his spine, to hear the faint creak of a distant shutter, before finally moving.
He does not look back at the west wing. He tells himself that is brave.