Chapter Text
Most tourney grounds were a bore as he already observed during his twenty years alive. Lords and ladies trying to make themselves appeal to the princes. The amount of marriage candidates he has been offered was numerous, one more fragile and petite than the last, weak, all of them. Most high borns lacked backbone just like the filthy low borns.
Everyone was alike in qualities Aerion disliked, and the people he has grown a liking to tended to end up being already married and way under his station. His father had chided him many times about him being too picky for someone who was the second born of a fourth born.
The hypocrite that father is, he and mother liked each other before their union, so who is he to make lectures about picking someone who was convenient and easy.
Aerion wasn’t even picky about presentation or height, size, anything. Even the whores he enjoyed looked different from each other, mostly beta women based on availability. Pale, dark, skinny, fat, tall, short it was all the same to him as long as he was pleased.
There were rumours of him hurting or killing working girls, mostly untrue, the former happened once when a woman insulted his uncle, and the latter never happened. It was useless to punish the people who did good work for him, and why would killing someone who is defenceless make him euphoric when humiliating lords was a way better past time. Unless of course, the weak person insulted his house, that was a different story, maybe that protectiveness over ‘most’ of his family was part of his alphaness.
Call him delusional, but he believed that there was someone who would make him burn, if not with love then with hatred. Someone who matched his soul and not his wealth or status. A true partner, even if he and his family were repulsed by this person on a royal level, he still would not care if that small park ignited him.
Don’t get him wrong, he did look down on the disgusting common folk of the realm, they were beneath him, but so were the nobles, for a human cannot compete with a dragon, no matter how hard they tried.
Valarr and Kiera have fucked off to somewhere so it was only him, his father and uncle, and the worthless knights with them, who have arrived in front of the castle together.
The stable boy, uh, man was looking up at the arriving group with what one might call stars in his eyes. He was huge even from the back of a horse, probably made his parents go into debt from the amount of food he must have needed.
“Boy, stop gaping. See to my horse.”
“I’m-I’m not a stable boy, m’lord.” Well, he was in fact dressed more like a vagabond, so maybe a serving man instead.
“Not clever enough?” The question visibly made the oaf squirm in his own skin.
“Um…” Maybe questions were too much for his small mind, then direct instructions were the way to continue this useless conversation.
“Well, if you can’t manage horses, then fetch me some wine and a pretty wench.”
“Oh, m’lord pardons. I’m-I’m no serving man, either.” The giant continued as Aerion got off his horse. “I have-I have the honour to be a knight.”
That’s funny, there were certainly things one cannot make up with pure strength alone, such a thick headed man, a knight? Laughable.
As he turned around the size of this filth was still shocking, almost two heads taller than the prince himself. The even more surprising thing was the lack of a personal scent, maybe he was just too far away, or maybe the culprit was the stable smell.
“Oh. Well… knighthood has fallen on sad days.” The jab landed, the boy’s face got red, like an overripe strawberry, his mouth still open like he was waiting for a spider to crawl inside. As much as he would have liked to stay and make the ‘knight’ run from humiliation, he had more important duties to attend.
Someone will surely deal with his unruly mount in that time.
Or… not, since he heard neighing and yelling, well it doesn’t matter, their problem now.
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The rest of the day was rather boring, everyone was preparing for the jousts. The only amusing thing told to him was the story about a huge oaf of a man intruding on his father and uncle to ask for verification into the games. As funny as it was to think that it might be the towering man he met that same morning, it was probably another idiot, there seemed to be no end to them in the Reach.
After the sun went down he was ordered by his father to the stands, where he had to watch the good boy Valarr going lance to lance with some nobles who did not matter. The only things he could remember from that night were the disgusting Tully fish stunt, the sheep fucker joke, Lyonel Baratheon’s obnoxious laugh and a strange bald boy sitting on a huge man’s shoulders. He almost recognized something in the two, but he was too far away, and by the time he gazed to where they were, both of them vanished.
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The next day started quite beautiful, the sun was up early and so was Aerion. For some unexplainable reason the prince felt the need to take a walk amongst the tents that filled the road leading to Ashford castle, despite having no good reason to even leave his room before training for the midday joust. His father left that morning to find his idiot brothers, so there was no one to bother him anyway.
He wanted to have an uninterrupted walk so he decided to take some poor servants, ugly drab cloak to cover his hair and fine clothes, by the time he was ready the sky has gotten a bit darker anyways, so he wouldn’t draw many eyes onto himself. Half the commoners had no idea what he looked like anyway.
As luck would have it, he saw the knight again, standing by a stand that was selling eggs and birds.
“No, no, no, no, no. Um, uh, goose eggs. Just… just the eggs.” The merchant and the knight clearly had problems communicating. From his blue beard Aerion could tell that the man selling the waves had to be Tyroshi, which must be the reason for the misunderstanding. “No, no, no, uh… Shit, um, goose eggs, like… Just the…”
By that point the oaf was imitating birds laying eggs, like a strange interpretive dance. What an absolute fool. The only thing stopping his act was a tall lady walking by.
The egg laying man, thanked the seller, then turned to the girl. That made Aerion slightly irritated for some reason, even if he was deliberately hiding himself.
“Do you like goose eggs?”
“Your shield will be ready this evening, ser.” Ouch, this rejection was worse than the one time drunk Daeron tried flirting with Kiera before her and Valarr’s wedding.
“Th-Thank you.” Since the woman walked away, now was his time to step out of the shade of the tent he was halfway standing under. He wished to talk to this moron, maybe ask if he was the one who visited the castle to beg for confirmation on his knighthood, and to ask for his name also.
The hopes of this happening were dashed when he saw a young hooded child approach before him; he did not want anyone else to know of his whereabouts so he quickly left back to his chambers instead of waiting, he had a joust to take part in anyway, and maybe he’ll see the giant there.
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Baelor was sitting on alone without any other Targaryen’s watching Aerion. That made him want to act out, he could just feel the annoyance already coming of his oldest uncle, he could almost smell it too, if not for the wind.
The horns were blown as he entered the grounds. The herald with his too loud voice, announced him, as if he needed to be introduced while wearing his armour and sigil.
“Son of Meakar, grandson to King Daeron the Good and Prince of House Targaryen, Prince Aerion Brightflame.” Cheering, but the kind that usually belongs to people who you tolerate instead of like. He will show them all.
Looking at the onlookers he noticed his knight again, with the same boy who looked too familiar to Aerion still. He’ll have time to get closer to the face later, now he had Valarr to irritate for a bit before he starts for real.
“Cousin.” His olders cousin stands up, but with almost no acknowledgement of the other prince, he doesn’t even say anything, no fun.
“Not to worry. I won’t embarrass you today.” So he moved on to Ser Humfrey Hardyng’s tent.
“Come out, come out, little knight. It’s time you faced the dragon.”
He decided since Valarr didn’t want to play, he would have another playmate, maybe that will make the commoners cheer for him, but this time for real.
So he charged at the other man, and then decided to make the stakes higher, so he cheated a bit and leaned away from the lance. That clearly made the filthy crowd even less happy with Aerion.
Okay, the dragon will show them something to jeer at, if that’s what they wanted. He held his lance lower; it will surely make for a great display of dominance, to indispose of the Hardyng from this tourney.
The crunch and the sound of the horse in pain almost made him cringe, almost. That feeling was muted by the victorious joy of a job well done.
That feeling was short lived, Baelor looked away, the commoners jumped the fence and started throwing things at him and startlingly the one that hurt the most was not seeing the big man in the crowd anymore. This also gave him no chance to look at the boy at his side, yet that only made him even more curious, he looked oddly like Aegon from far away, maybe Aerion’s eye was playing tricks on him.
The rain started pouring and he was led away by the white cloaks who opened the crowd of angry folk in front of him.
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Only when it got dark did he try the same trick as he did in the morning. He tried looking for the oaf, but didn’t seem to notice him anywhere, maybe in a different lord’s tent, or under the whore’s roof, maybe at the puppet show or some other mindless entertainment pavilion.
He looked inside most of the bigger noble houses tents, Baratheon, Tyrell, Dondarrion, Tully and all others, nothing. Then the whore pavilions were the next, still no sight of the hard to miss giant. One of the omegas offered herself, he rejected her, wanted to also say something disrespectful since his irritation was getting stronger by the minute, but realized that asking might be a better choice.
“Tell me- ?”
“Beony.”
“Tell me Beony, have you seen a gigantic idiot sulking around, I will pay a stag for information.” The lady of the night considered it.
“For what reason might I ask?” Too many questions already, did it matter?
“Do you want a stag for free or do you not whore?”
“Fine, hand it to me, then I’ll tell you about your knight.” So she did know him, finally a lead, it didn’t even matter that she was disrespectful.
“Here, but I hope you will give me proper information.”
“I always deliver what I promise, prince.” She bit the coin to check its validity, as if a dragon would ever give out fake coins. “I saw him around less than an hour ago, was with some child, the young boy left for the dornish puppeteers tent, he is probably still there.”
He left the tent fast, without thanking her, the stag should be fine enough, whores worked for money, not for pretty words.
The pavilion was easy to spot, and there were many people standing around it, and much more laughter could be heard from inside than from the drunk and whoring tents around it.
As he entered he was hit with a scene of the girl from the morn’ dressed as a knight fighting a dragon, if he wasn’t here on a different business, he would break the puppets or the puppeteer’s fingers, disgraceful, but he was looking for the boy. He soon spotted the familiar cloak, even in the dark.
The child also saw him, and his face read as pure horror. Aegon, of course the little wretch had something to do with the man he was looking for. The thought of his younger brother being around his knight more than himself made him irrationally angry. He didn’t even notice what made the crowd in the pavilion gasp behind him as he dragged Aegon outside.
“You impudent little rat. What’s happened to your hair?”
“I cut it off, brother. I didn’t want to look like you.” Damned boy, if he talked bad to the oaf about Aerion, there will be no end to his suffering.
“Take me to your knight, NOW!” He could try using his alpha voice instead of yelling, but that would have no impact on someone yet to present so he decided against wasting his energy.
“NO, you’ll hurt him!” The bald nine year old was struggling against his hold, close to tears.
“Take, me, to, HIM!”
Before his idiot younger brother could answer, Aerion felt a fist connect with his cheek, knocking him to the ground. He was so mad he shouted at the perpetrator before he looked up, he could feel all his teeth in his mouth and blood too.
“You’ve loosened one of my teeth. So, I’ll start by breaking out all of yours.”
Then when he looked up he changed his mind, it was the big man, angrily looking down at him, probably only noticing now that the person he hit was a prince. That made Aerion smile, he now knew that he needed the giant at his side, if not, then he would find a punishment befitting of a traitor.
“Egg stay behind me.” The knight was still pushing the child behind him, well of course he probably thinks Aegon is just a common orphan, that made the older prince laugh out loud, amusing this situation is.
He stood up and got into the face of the man that struck him.
“Stupid oaf, I hope you know that the boy you are standing in front of is a prince from house Targaryen, my brother.” The idiot looked confused at that, his big blue eyes searching Aerion’s bluish-purple one’s, almost sadly. “Why the sad face, did he lie to you? Of course he did, he is nothing, but a liar.”
That made Egg stand between the two, to separate them, that had no use, since they were both above his body, looking at one another.
Then he smelt it, the distress of an omega mixed with anger, not strong, but just enough for a blood hound like Aerion. This also tickled the prince, chuckling into the face of the now slouched knight.
“I didn’t know they made them in this size, how curious.”
“What?”
“An omega knight? Do you also believe in fairy tales? You do know that striking a prince deserves punishment? Cutting the offending hand off.”
The omega did not respond to that, clearly shaken by the consequences that were laid out for him, but Aerion would not ask for that, no, he had something else in mind.
“Both of you will follow me back to the castle, or I will have the Kingsguard drag you there, and that won’t be as nice.”