Archive of Our Own

It was at White Harbor that the air truly turned cold. Too cold to sleep beneath the stars, that is. They'd been cold for the better part of two weeks, their breath and their mounts' steaming while they walked. Dunk had assumed the summer heat would follow them all the way to Winterfell at least, if not the Wall – but he was wrong. Now he found that he and Egg needed warmer cloaks than the ones on their backs and an inn for sleeping after a hard day's ride with the wind on the Kingsroad biting through their shirts.

Among other things, it would not do to return the little princeling to Summerhall with his fingers bitten off by frost.

Past the city gates, White Harbor frothed with life under a slate-grey sky. The sharp sea breeze blew off the harbor, and even at the gates, the air smelled clear and bright with salt.

Dunk pulled Thunder to a halt. A standpost rose from a three-pronged fork in the entry road, each arrowed bit of signage describing what lay where. He frowned, only able to make out some of the lettering. Beneath each word, someone had graved small symbols into the hard iron, but the standards were different from anything he'd seen south of the Neck.

"The harbor's that way, Ser."

Egg pulled Rain, leading Maester, up to a stop alongside Thunder and pointed down the fork directly in front of them. The boy wasn't shivering, but his skin looked strange and colorless in the flat, grey, fading daylight. His lips, Dunk thought, might have a tinge of blue.

His heart crabbed up at the possibility. Who knows what kind of cold dragons were meant to survive. Certainly no stories spoke of Old Valyria suffering bitter winters.

"Aye," he agreed. "And which way to a tailor's shop?"

Egg squinted at the sign. The sea breeze snapped at the hem of his thin cloak.

"This way, Ser."

He pointed to the forked branch to their left. Dunk wheeled Thunder about, then dismounted, and Egg followed suit. On they went, leading their mounts by the reins.

White Harbor's roads were wider, cleaner, and more well-cobbled than most of the rabbit-run alleyways in King's Landing. Occasionally, the wind carried a stink up from the fish markets somewhere down by the harbor, but there was no hint of anything like the reek of sewage and sweat and offal filth that Dunk had known so well in Flea Bottom. People milled past them on the cobblestone, some trucking covered carts, others carrying casks, baskets, or wriggling babes. Though their clothes looked to be thicker and sturdier, only a vanishing few were more richly dressed than Dunk himself. Smallfolk, everywhere – and yet the city glimmered, even in the gloomy day, as if the Bite itself had bathed the streets clean with salty mist and spray.

White Harbor, it seemed, had earned its name.

The road took them to an open-air market. Merchants and tradesmen hawked their wares at lacquered stalls and beneath heavy, oiled awnings.

"Here, Ser," Egg chirped, a few paces behind.

Dunk halted Thunder. Turning, he found the boy squinting at a small stall on a pavilion. A sign hung above the counter, bearing only an icon – a crudely painted skein, and even cruder scissors, the second encompassing the former in a manner vaguely reminiscent of heraldry. Dunk had been so lost in taking in the city that he'd missed this little shopfront entirely.

The cold wind lifted the hood of his cloak and bit his ears.

"Good eye," he told Egg. "Come."

He passed Thunder's reins to the boy. Egg looked about, curiously, half hidden in the cowl of his cloak, his eyes big and dark. The wind snapped between the stalls.

Blue lips, Dunk thought again – and concluded that he himself could endure the cold for a moment. He's big and strong, as everyone always said. Chapped ears were a safer bet than a frozen prince.

He tugged his cloak free, snugging it about Egg's shoulders.

"Here."

Egg, clutching both Thunder and Rain's reins, looked at him quizzically. The cloak was so comically long on him it may as well have been a giantess's dress. "Ser?"

"To keep you warm til we've a place to sleep."

"I'll be all right, Ser. Won't you be cold?"

"I've been colder."

This wasn't entirely true, but he'd slept on cold stone floors with rain-wrinkled feet. That seemed close enough.

Egg frowned at him, but Dunk approached the stall before he could argue. A wrinkled, salt-weathered man looked up from behind the stall's rough countertop. He set a small booklet of cloth samples aside.

"Good day, ser." Like so many men before him, he took stock of Dunk with a look of mild surprise. "Aren't you quite the sight. In need of a new tunic, I'd wager?"

Dunk colored faintly, aware of how he must look. Even with the plain surcoat he'd been gifted as a gesture of hospitality in a small town in the Riverlands, his tunic was nearly threadbare, travel-worn and travel-stained and not at all suited to the harbor cold. But silver stars don't fall from trees, and beds for the night would be the wiser purchase than a new tunic, as they would be for likely several nights to come. Cloaks were warmer than tunics anyway.

"No, ser. Cuts for riding cloaks. For myself and" – he nodded back to Egg, standing there with the horses and Maester, tiny in Dunk's giant cloak – "for the boy as well, if it please."

Thin white mustachios grew just along the line of the old man's upper lip, trimmed neatly and so short that they looked as if someone had etched them there in fine white and silver ink. They curled a bit when he smiled.

"Your brother?" he asked.

"I'm his squire!" Egg chirped, drawing closer.

Dunk laid a hand on his shoulder. "Enough of that."

The man, unruffled, turned to the wares stacked behind him. Bolts of fabric, rolled on enormous spools. Some colorful, most drab, all thickly woven. Tucked amongst those were dark, heavy pelts. Dunk was certain those would cost more than his life.

The old man bent to flick through a small case of tools. Then he straightened up, holding a long bit of marked string, spooled carefully.

"A boy with spirit does well in these parts," he said. "Come round here, squire, I'll need to take your measure."

Dunk took the reins and let Egg do as he was bid.

The tailor helped Egg step onto a small stool. He divested the boy of both cloaks, kindly not remarking on the state of either, and set about measuring him. Dunk felt only vaguely reassured that Egg was warmer under the stall's heavy, tarpaulin canopy than he would be standing in the cold.

While he measured, the old man conversed easily – to whose service do they belong? And, upon hearing the words 'hedge knight', he wondered aloud what brought them to White Harbor. Egg answered for the most part, his voice bright and friendly and proud. They'd ridden this way from the Riverlands. He'd never seen White Harbor before except on maps.

The color had returned to his cheeks, Dunk noted, when the tailor finally set him off from the stool. And there was nary a note of blue about his mouth. That was good.

The man remarked that it's a long journey from the Riverlands to the Bite – that Egg must be a strong rider and a good squire. Egg all but glowed.

The tailor turned to Dunk.

"I think I'll be the one to take the stool this time," he said. "Come round."

Dunk hitched both mounts and ducked under the canopy, surprised at how much warmer it was even with this small buffer against the cold, salty wind.

It didn't take long, all told. Cloaks, the tailor told him, require only a measurement for his shoulders and his height.

"You can take your pick of what's here." The man stepped off the stool and gestured to his stock of cloth. "These ones here make for the best cloaks and overcoats.

Dunk wasn't sure how a man was meant to choose cloth. He gently touched the three bolts the tailor points out. Wool, all of them. All felt thick, dense, and well-woven to the touch. Two bolts were grey – one darker than the other – and one was a dark green.

"This one," he said, selecting the darker grey.

"Sensible," the tailor agreed. "I'll have them ready for you by morning. Twelve silvers for you, and five for the boy."

"No, just the fabric cuts, please," Dunk said, and the tailor looked at him quizzically. "A hedge knight is a poor man if he can't stitch his own clothes."

The tailor laughed. "Of course. Let me cut these for you."

"Thank you kindly, ser."

Egg swayed from foot to foot. Impatient, that boy. And eager to explore, Dunk was sure. Once the fabric had been sliced, rolled, and paid for, Dunk gently ushered him from the pavilion and back out into the sparkling cold.

Together, they unhitched the mounts and guided them back into the street.

"Ser," Egg chirped.

"Yes?"

"Are you well?"

"What?"

"You look weary, Ser. You have for three days. I counted."

"And how would you know?"

"Your eyes." Egg wrinkled his small nose, caught up in some thought. "My brother Daeron's eyes looked like that some nights when he had no drink to help him sleep."

"Enough about your brother," Dunk warned. Gods protect them should anyone hear the boy. Only one house in the realm kept the tradition of Valyrian names, and the good king hadn't been so long dead that Daeron wouldn't draw attention. "It's the cold, that's all. You don't need to worry."

Truth be told, his sleep had been poor for more than three nights. Ever since they crossed the Neck, strange, hazy dreams have come to him, clotting in his head like fog and leaving to him wake with an ache behind his eyes. Sometimes people appeared in the dreams. Ser Arlan. It's not the first time Dunk had seen him, but these dreams had a different quality. He ate with the old man, warm meat pies enjoyed on a summer night, but the moment seemed like light through silk. Insubstantial, somehow. The food tasted of nothing.

They didn't talk while they dined. Dunk tried to, but he had no voice.

Then a rain came, so cold he felt caught in a storm of icy needles. When that happened, the old man's image grew thin and insubstantial. Just a figure formed from silken grey wisps, whispering liar.

Other nights, it was Tanselle. Somewhere in Dorne, he found her again. She lay with him in a sturdy bed that had a window over it. He could see the bright and blue-baked sky. The heat of the day spilled through that window, dry and smothering, but it didn't matter. He pulled her to straddle him and she laughed and pushed his hair from his face. When she kissed him, she tasted like blood oranges. Rich and sweet and tart all in one. There was no rain in those dreams, but Tanselle turned to smoke in his hands - and he was left grasping at empty air, the taste of ash flooding his mouth. He coughed, trying to call for her, but the bed, the room, all of it became sand shifting under his back and burning like fire.

He always woke from those dreams with his heart racing, and an embarrassing sense of longing, and the taste of blood orange and ash still lingering in his mouth.

But Egg seemed satisfied with the mention of the cold and asked no further questions. Dunk thanked the gods for that.

They carried on. The first brush of evening had turned the sky an even dimmer shade of grey.

"Let's find a tavern," he told Egg. "We'll sleep somewhere warm tonight."

*

Somewhere warm did indeed amount to a small inn and tavern, discovered down a sloping alley. As the day faded, the sounds of the harbor drifted over the hard-hammered city rooftops and through the gaps between the whitewashed buildings. Dunk smelled frying oil and flour, thick in the alley. The scent of both reminded him that he and Egg hadn't eaten since they broke their fast on the edge of dawn.

"Wait here," he said, passing the boy Thunder's reins.

Inside, a sun-weathered proprietor looked him over without a smile.

"Do you offer stables, ser?" Dunk asked.

The man grunted, unimpressed. "Round the back. Five coppers per mount for the night."

Five, Dunk balked, but fished the fifteen coppers from his coinpurse nonetheless. "For three."

The proprietor bit one of the king's mint, then examined it in the dim lamplight. Satisfied, he took all fifteen and set them aside.

"And you'll be wanting a room for yourself?"

"Aye, with two cots if it please you."

"Don't matter what I please. If there'll be two of you, it's twice the cost for the night, no matter how many rooms. Twelve coppers for each of you."

And so it was.

Coin changed hands. One last trip into the blustery fall of night to see to the mounts with Egg, and then at last there was warmth to be had.

The inn's dining hall was small, but functionally so. A fire roared in the hearth and the earth-packed walls trapped the heat. For the first time in days, the Dunk's ears didn't seem in danger of turning stiff from the cold. He paid for a boot of dark, bitter ale for himself, and a cider for Egg, and battered fish for both of them, fried in oil and garnished with onions.

Egg dined happily and peered about the hall with all the curiosity of a boy on a new adventure.

Dunk ate slowly and wondered if he'd drunk his ale too quickly. Or perhaps the hall's warmth had soothed him too well. He fought the urge to slump forward, put his head on the rough wood of the table, and close his eyes.

‌My brother Daeron's eyes looked like that some nights when he had no drink to help him sleep.

The first time he'd met Daeron, the prince had also been face down on a tavern table. When he woke to fix Dunk with a baleful gaze, his eyes were red-ringed and clouded. Drink or no, sleep never served Prince Maekar's firstborn.

Dunk scrubbed at one eye.

A fine, pale fuzz was coming in on Egg's head. They'd have to shave it in the morning.

It took him a moment to notice the boy was speaking to him. A precocious recounting of the history of the city.

"I wish we could see the godswood," he said. A wistful look passed over his face. "They keep the old gods in the North, did you know?"

Old man Arlan had probably mentioned such in passing. Dunk conjured the memory. It was as vague and cloudy as the sky outside. He wasn't sure if it was real or if he'd told himself a story just now, filling in the blanks of his life with Egg's seemingly bottomless well of knowledge about the realm, its people, and its histories. The only person he'd ever met with more learning at such a young age was Egg's quiet brother, Aemon, when they'd visited the Citadel in Oldtown.

"I've heard that, yes." He broke off a bit of fish. Beneath the fried crust, white and flaky flesh awaited. It exhaled steam in thin coils. He ate it ponderously, then asked, "What of the old gods?"

"What of them?" Egg blinked. "I don't understand."

"What..." Dunk searched for the words, feeling foolish. "What are they? What is it to keep them?"

"The maesters say the children of the forest worshipped them first, that they believed the gods were everywhere in the trees and the rivers and the rocks. The children carved the weirwoods' faces. Then the First Men came and cut some of them down, but kept the children's faith after they made peace with them." He looked as if something had just occurred to him. "Aemon says that there are stories that the old gods could see through the trees and the children could too. The one in White Harbor is in a dungeon, though. I don't think we will be welcome there."

Dunk had never seen a godswood. He knew the high houses kept them even in the south, but he was a hedge knight and unlikely to receive an invite to the high lords' gardens. He tried to imagine these trees – weirwoods – with their carved faces. Then he grew as wistful as Egg looked just moments ago.

Egg chattered on in between bites of fish.

"The septons who lived when Lord Cregan Stark was Hand of the King wrote that the northmen are still half-wild because the trees make them have strange dreams. But Aemon says those are only stories that the septons made up because the septons mistrust everything outside the faith of the Seven."

"Well, perhaps there'll be a chance to see one of these trees as we move north."

Egg brightened. He returned to his food, clearly thinking of this future non-promise.

Dunk took another bite of fish and had to pick hair-fine bones from between his teeth. He reached for his ale. That was that.

*

Their room was plain. Whitewashed walls, a hard wood floor. Two beds, dressed in roughspun linen, and a tiny, recessed hole carved into the outer wall, full of lit pine shavings. The tiny fire crackled – the only light in the room – and everything smelled faintly of smoke and resin.

Their shadows flickered and jumped as they set down their travel packs.

Egg looked at the fabric they'd bought earlier, bound up tight against Dunk's bag.

"Are you going to stitch our cloaks, Ser?"

"Yes."

"Will you teach me?"

"Aye, tomorrow."

At a tourney that lived now only in gloomy memory, he'd taught Egg to mend clothes. The boy's stitching was still wobbly, but cloaks were simple enough items to use for practicing work more complex than merely patching and darning.

Egg wriggled out of all but his smallclothes and crawled into one of the beds. The mattresses weren't big, but Egg looked skinnier than he did the last time Dunk had truly taken stock of him when they swam in the Trident not so many weeks ago.

He thought again of blue lips. A shiver skittered through him.

But there was no blue now. Not Egg's lips, or fingers, or ears, or anywhere. He was a boy, hale and healthy, and he'd sleep in a bed rather than a stable or the hedges for the first night in several weeks.

Dunk shed his own clothes, travel-dusty as they were. Perhaps tomorrow he and Egg would find somewhere to have a wash, though he dreaded how cold the water would be.

Tired to his bones, he crawled into bed. A hay mattress. Better than hard, half-frozen ground, or drafty stables. He closed his eyes, listening to the walls creak and settle around them. Just beyond the door, life carried on in a murmuring rhythm.

The last thing he truly heard was Egg, humming a quiet tune.

*

He wakes beneath a tree.

High above him, red leaves fan out like translucent rubied wings. So many of them he can't see the sky.

He sits up and finds himself cradled in a nest of those leaves with roots as white as bone rising up around him. A forest in every direction. White trees and red foliage and ethereal mist, lifting like a veil. Bright and silver and blind.

He's shirtless, but no leaves stick to him. A breeze whispers through the treetops and his skin prickles.

"Ser Duncan."

He startles.

Prince Baelor Targaryen, Hand of the King, and heir to the Iron Throne, steps out of the mist. Slatted light seems to adorn him, falling through the canopy of leaves only for him. A mantle woven of wan shears of sunshine hangs from his broad shoulders.

"Your Grace," Dunk breathes.

Baelor smiles. It's the same soft smile that Dunk glimpsed through a crackling white haze of pain. While he swayed on his knees in the mud before the blood of the dragon and promised–

"Come with me," Baelor says. "You must be cold out here."

Another breeze, rustling the trees. Is he cold? He can't quite say, but the breeze sends a frisson down his spine, and he rises to follow the prince garbed in ribbons of sunlight and a long black coat. The coat is same that he'd worn when Dunk first met him, worked with dark and intricate stitching down the front.

Baelor's feet make no noise on the forest floor. Dead leaves and humus crunch under Dunk's.

They reach the limit of the trees and step into a sprawling room, richly furnished beyond anything Dunk has ever seen.

That makes no sense, he thinks. If I've never seen it–

Baelor turns to him. No more sunlight falling from his shoulders. At his back, high double doors hang open, revealing a balcony or a pavilion where a night sky, alight with a full moon, arcs in a glassy dome over the whole world. Baelor's coat is gone too. He wears only a loose linen shirt and dark breeches, like he's just returned from a day of hunting or hard riding. The plainness of his clothes, like his dark – if greying – hair, makes him look more common man than Targaryen heir.

But Targaryen heir he is, with all the respect that station demands.

All at once, Dunk feels presumptuous. He drops to one knee and tips his head in deference.

"Forgive me, your Grace. I–"

"Rise, Ser. What is there to forgive? Your service to my family? Your care for my nephew?"

Dunk has no answer for that, so he does as he's bid. A warm breeze stirs through the open doors. A sadness passes over Baelor's face like a pale shadow.

"I know my brother is...difficult," he says. "But he's grateful as well. Aegon needs the world – as Maekar did, and should have had."

Dunk isn't sure what to say to that either. Baelor sighs and the sadness lifts.

"You should eat. You've traveled far."

So they do, dining on food that has an insubstantial quality. If it tastes of anything, Dunk can't say. If he was hungry before, or is sated afterwards, he also isn't sure. But he feels drowsy. He sips from a goblet of shimmery wine and it floods his veins with a pleasant warmth.

He's sitting on a cushioned, elegantly upholstered bench – the kind with a high back and a multitude of pillows. He thinks of clouds and feathered mattresses and a soft, nonspecific form beneath his hands. It's enough to make him slump sideways, sleepy. He expects to rest on the cushions, but instead finds his head on Baelor's thigh, the soft weave of his breeches tickling his cheek.

"I think I'm dreaming," he murmurs.

Baelor's fingers comb through his hair and trace the shell of his ear. His hands are very warm. "A good dream or a bad one?"

"I don't know." He rolls onto his back, carefully. Baelor gazes down at him. Bright eyes, Dunk thinks. Alive. His heart seizes up and abruptly, desperately he feels for Baelor's hand where it rests at his temple, still brushing his hair. "You..."

"I?"

Something prickles in his throat. The room, the cushions, the summer breeze – it all smells of flowers, the pale kind that spring up after rain. But Baelor smells of skin, and sweat, and weathered linen. A man who traveled some great distance to get here. But from where? Dunk grips his hand, fingers wrapping long around Baelor's palm. It wins him a soft smile.

His blood runs cold, though he couldn't say why.

"Up," Baelor instructs, his voice soft and gentle.

Dunk realizes with a sudden conviction that he wants to stay where he is. To not part himself from this man who, his heart insists, might vanish at any moment.

Up – an echo, but he isn't sure why.

It's not his place, not the place of any hedge knight, to defy a prince of the realm.

He sits up and Baelor's hand slips from his hair, down his neck, to rest on his bare chest. Something flutters just behind Dunk's breastbone. The cold passes, exchanged for a flush that rises very abruptly in his cheeks. It seems improper to find himself this close to Baelor even though he'd been laying in his lap mere moments ago. The space between them, less than an arm's length, carries a new electric tension, and Baelor's shirt hangs loose, gapping at the neck enough to reveal his collarbones and sternum. Delicate bone, winged and elegant, rising and falling with the rhythm of his breath.

Dunk supposes he's seen beautiful men before. Even in Flea Bottom, the whorehouses were as fastidiously clean as was possible in the circumstance, and so were the women – and men – who worked within. Those men were beautiful, he thought, when he occasioned to glimpse them. Beautiful but distant, living in a world slightly apart from his, cocooned in veils and candlelight. Like the women they worked with, the men leaned out of windows or lingered in lintel shadows just long enough to catch a lonely traveler's eye – then disappeared like light flashing very briefly on water.

As a boy, those men startled him. He'd wondered if they had some predilection for their work or if, for some reason, their lives had deprived them of any other means to survive. Flea Bottom was hard and unforgiving. It didn't seem so impossible, only perplexing. What did they do? What did they want? Did they like whatever it was they offered or received?

If there were answers to these questions, he never knew. Some others appeared to find those men detestable. Slop cooks and butchers and tax collectors – they laughed at wanting to be made into women, or sneered at the idea that those men made women of the wanderers who sought their service when twilight fell.

Women, men – it don't matter. Every whore's the same whether they got a cock or a cunt, he'd once heard a goldcloak scoff. Filthy in their own way.

Dunk had pushed his questions and his curiosity aside. If he noticed men thereafter, beautiful or otherwise, it was only with a distant interest. They never stirred him the way women did.

Except–

Baelor, at Ashford, had graced him with the gift of entering the lists. Dunk could have kissed his hand in thanks. He could have done the same when the prince saved his life, first at the trial, then again when he forestalled Steely Pate's misguided attempt to tend to his wounds.

Wine, not oil.

The breeze tugs at the collar of Baelor's shirt. His throat dips in an elegant curve, right to its hollow. Beautiful doesn't suit him as it suited the pretty men lounging against door jambs.

Don't stare, Dunk thinks, feeling stupid. His mouth, hanging slightly open, must be giving him away. He closes it and makes himself meet Baelor's gaze, his chest burning with a strange, bright feeling. Baelor cups his cheek. He has calloused hands, Dunk notices. That's soothing though he can't say why.

A roughened thumb strokes his cheekbone in a steady, repeated rhythm.

Dunk thinks he should say something, but before he can, Baelor kisses him. It's unhurried and firm, and Dunk freezes where he sits, heart battering against his ribs. Baelor teethes very gently at his bottom lip, hand slipping down to his chest again, as if he means to steady the trembling thing caged there. The warm breeze stirs once more and that, and the soft press of Baelor's palm, is enough to unspool the tension from his shoulders and his spine. Dunk melts, either for the kiss or the touch, lips slightly parted again. Baelor takes it for the invitation that it is, however unconscious, and presses his tongue into Dunk's mouth.

This has a taste where nothing else did. Cinnamon and cloves and wine.

It's the easiest thing in the world to suck softly at Baelor's tongue and to go lax against the cushions at his back. He makes a quiet noise at Baelor's hand caressing his chest and his neck, gentler than Dunk might have imagined him to be–

–has he imagined this before? Heat flares in his belly, a fresh embarrassment–

as if he means to learn Dunk by touch alone. A slow, inexorable kind of study, while Dunk's hands hesitate, hovering somewhere in the air just above Baelor's waist. Dunk held him once, the full cooling weight of him when–

when–

That heat in his belly burns. What right does he have to a prince of the blood?

A middling but indisputable tightness winds itself up between his legs and suddenly he can't quite breathe.

He rears back with more force than he intends, grabbing at Baelor's shoulders rather than his waist. His mouth throbs, flushed from kissing. His face burns.

"I'm sorry, Your Grace." His breath and his words escape him. Dunk the lunk... "I–"

Baelor tips his head to one side. A muted, bemused look in his eyes. Calm, the way Dunk remembers him when they first met, and somehow faintly luminous.

Dunk's heart nearly stopped at that first meeting – he can never forget that. Like a stupid stablehand, he'd stumbled into a conversation he wasn't meant to hear. And because of him–

His throat burns.

Baelor moves, gently disentangling himself from Dunk's hold. Not to leave, as it happens, but to pass his hand down Dunk's arm.

Don't stop.

The thought flashes through his mind, unbidden and unexpected, and Dunk's insides could curdle with shame. But Baelor, indeed, does not stop. He rests his hand atop Dunk's own, long, sure fingers gently brushing his knuckles.

"Your Grace," he tries again, drawing in a deep breath. It doesn't help. "A man– I've never lain–"

He thinks, inanely, of Lady Rohanne Webber. He'd never lain with a woman either, and he hadn't been half so afraid of that. In a distant way, he'd worried that he might hurt her – and instead she smiled and laughed (quietly, they couldn't be found out) and guided his hands to show him what she wanted. But she was Rohanne and, as old Arlan said when he was in his cups, no two women are the same.

And Baelor isn't a woman.

"What is it to me, what you have or have not done?" he asks. "You're here now. Do you regret it?"

The lamplight catches on the column of his neck where it ascends to his jaw. The dark, close-cropped beard that lends him a stately air, begins right at that juncture. Dunk wants to kiss the tender skin there and feel the stubble scratch on his mouth.

But what next? And how?

How could you not know? something whispers on the breeze. How many daydreams have you had? How well do you remember holding him?

"I've missed you," is what he says into the horrible, humiliating quiet.

"Ser Duncan."

Baelor's voice pulls him back to himself, out of some silt-slip moment where he'd disappeared into and under the waters of his own mind. The room comes back into focus and the soft light paints itself on Baelor's face in a wash of gold. No, he isn't beautiful, Dunk thinks, but he is heartbreaking and handsome all in one – the strong planes of his face, his arresting eyes, and the whole of his body, roped with the strength of knights and heroes out of stories, the kind that Dunk, towing after Ser Arlan, had so desperately wanted to be.

His heart skips a beat. He thinks of a bleeding, blinding sunset, then lurches forward, propriety and gods be damned.

If he kisses too hungrily, it's not because he intends to. He cradles Baelor's face in both his hands – maybe to steady himself, maybe just to touch his prince, to be sure he's real, and here, and alive alive alive.

Baelor laughs very softly against his mouth, but it's a happy sound. Raspy on the edges. His knuckles brush the plane of Dunk's abdomen, and the muscle there flutters then bows inwards. Ticklish, perhaps, but also uncertain. The strange asymmetry of wanting and then having and then not knowing what to do upon receiving. Except, of course, to press on.

He drags his mouth, wet and hot, over Baelor's cheekbone and down to his jaw, to the bit of skin he'd wanted. He was right. Baelor's beard tickles. Scratches a little. A feeling he welcomes as much as the corded pull of Baelor's throat, muscle working around swallowed sounds underneath his mouth. Baelor brings a hand to rest on the back of his head, gripping his hair just enough that Dunk feels the tug on his scalp.

He moans softly without meaning to. The sound flattens damply against Baelor's skin. Maybe in response, Baelor's free hand, the one already making his stomach flutter, glides along the hem of Dunk's breeches. His fingers fit so neatly into the wells of Dunk's hips, touching and dipping along sensitive skin, teasing at something.

Please, Dunk thinks, though he can't summon up the will to speak it. He drops his forehead into the hollow of Baelor's shoulder, embarrassingly out of breath.

One hand fastens tighter in his hair. The other hooks fingers into the laces on his breeches. Quick work.

Dunk shudders when the fabric loosens, and he squirms when Baelor's hand slips in to find him already heavy and half hard. All at once, he's embarrassed again even though he knows that this is how it works. This is what's supposed to happen, what he wants to happen. What Baelor wants to happen, likely–

Sure fingers curl around his cock. He gasps one ragged breath against Baelor's shoulder. Still, despite himself, he twitches away at the hips, or at least tries to, like he can have two things at once. This man to hunger over without having to reveal whatever suddenly seems so humiliating about the shape of his own body.

Maybe in answer to this, Baelor tugs his head up, hand fast in Dunk's hair. It hurts, but only just. Baelor's touch, even like this, is firm and steady rather than cruel. He cranes Dunk's neck at an angle odd enough to be slightly uncomfortable, and Dunk finds himself meeting his gaze, hot and dark and intense as it is. His stomach swoops.

With calm, deliberate certainty, Baelor pulls him close until their mouths nearly touch.

"Remind me, Ser Duncan, of what you told me." He holds Dunk's hair so tightly that Dunk is sure he couldn't move, even if he wanted to. "After the trial – what did you say to me?"

"I am your man."

"Then be mine."

The next kiss is bright, warm, and hungry, and Dunk has no urge to fight it. Held steady by Baelor's sure grip, it seems suddenly that there's no need for shame or fear. The bench beneath them has become a bed and the walls of the room soar very high, rolling in places with the tall, cylindrical shapes of white-bark tree trunks set into the stone like columns.

Baelor presses Dunk onto his back. When he breaks their kiss, spit strings between their mouths, argent like spun moonlight. It snaps and Dunk looks up at Baelor leaning over him, straddling his hips, and smiling again. He pulls his hand from Dunk's hair and rests it on his cheek once more. Then he sets one roughened thumb against Dunk's bottom lip, slipping and smearing the spit there.

In answer, Dunk settles his hands at Baelor's hips. Soft linen bunches up just enough for him to brush his fingers against warm skin. He's strong all over, Dunk thinks, feeling the ripple of lean muscle under skin and the fat that settles onto a body with age. Not like Rohanne, or Tanselle, or even the lovely man-whores of Flea Bottom. All his life, Dunk thought he'd only wanted something soft, or at least softer than him. But Baelor draws in a breath when Dunk works his hands completely under his shirt, smoothing up the hard planes of his back. It's a touch Baelor meets by pressing his thumb into Dunk's mouth, pad catching on his bottom teeth– and yes. This is something new to want, and Dunk wants it very very badly.

He tries to do three things at once: service Baelor's thumb, tear off his shirt, and sit up. He achieves the last, and Baelor lets his hand move and drag a wet smear over Dunk's cheek rather than choke him. The shirt, it seems, is a lost cause. It half lifts, then catches somewhere on the way, then tears very cleanly until it hangs off Baelor's shoulders like a pale mantle. It earns Dunk a hungry kiss before he can apologize and he grasps at Baelor in answer, breathless. Knees still planted on either side of Dunk's hips, Baelor lets him cling and pull. His chest comes up against Dunk's, warm as a furnace. He takes Dunk's face in both hands as if he means to hold him in place, or at least guide him to a place. Dunk can't quite bear to be bidden and chases a kiss anyway, teeth catching on Baelor's bottom lip enough that he gasps a soft moan into Dunk's mouth.

"There you are," he breathes when Dunk breaks the kiss to go for his neck again.

Dunk isn't sure what that means or why Baelor sounds so pleased about it, but he wants desperately, desperately, to be closer to him. He tracks bite-kisses down Baelor's throat until he reaches what remains of his shirt's collar. Baelor strokes his hair with a soft, breathy laugh.

"Do you mean to tear that too?"

Dunk meant to do nothing at all, really. At least not in a way he'd thought about. Instinct, or something like it, drove him to this and for the second time, Baelor's voice has pulled him back from a slippery haze. He shucks his fingers under Dunk's chin to make him look up.

"Let me help you." Baelor dispenses with what's left of his shirt, then smooths both hands over Dunk's shoulders, drawing in a deep breath. "I was right about you."

The slight distance between their bodies is enough to make Dunk feel more than a little crazed. "Right about me?"

"Strong as an aurochs," Baelor murmurs.

Rohanne, likewise, had gasped at his strength – something Dunk had always taken for granted. Had, in fact, learned to mind with an almost reflexive preoccupation. In Flea Bottom, with Rafe and Pudding and Ferret, he'd been a terror, and his size an advantage. How many teeth had he knocked out in squabbles in an alley? How many other boys had he run off, looming taller than the rest of them, when they dared to intrude on the corners and the muck that he and his friends had claimed as their own? If kings could decree whole tracts of land for a lord or a prince, why shouldn't orphans do the same in their rabbit-run alleyways? It wasn't until Ser Arlan took him in that he learned to bring himself to heel. The old man was smaller than him, but entirely unafraid of Dunk's size and strength. One sharp thwack to the back of his head caught him unawares in a moment of blinding rage. Rage brought on over some slight to Arlan's honor.

My honor needs no defending, boy. And if it did, why would I ask an oaf to do it?

The shame stung, then burned, then stayed with him from that day forward. Ser Arlan drank and whored and cursed the gods in his foulest moods – but never did he menace anyone who hadn't taken a stand against him. And he only hit Dunk when he'd deserved it.

He would be knightly, he had resolved. He would learn to temper his body into gentleness.

But Rohanne had gasped happily when his impulses got the better of him and he tugged her braid to chase a kiss. She laughed when he lifted her like she was weightless as a feather, letting her wrap her legs around his waist. And when they tumbled into a mat of hay, their clothes recklessly discarded, he tried to hold her the way he imagined a lord might hold a lady until she made a frustrated noise and dug her nails into the meat of his chest.

All my husbands have been gentle, ill, or old, Ser, she'd said, squirming beneath him. I would like to be ravished as in singers' filthiest songs at least once in my life.

Then, as now, he understood.

He glides a hand up the back of Baelor's neck, a sparkly feeling running through him when his fingers trip on scar tissue right at the base of his skull. He thinks of blood and his mouth waters despite his stuttering heart. He presses his fingers against the ridged seam of skin snaking its way up into the prince's hair. Baelor's hands spasm on his shoulders, eyes fluttering. A strange, vacant look passes over his face for a moment, but his breath quickens until it breaks up on a moan. It's all Dunk can do not to yank him close again like a starved beast – but he does pull. One arm around Baelor's waist, until they're flush along their torsos and Baelor can tip his head forward. His mouth brushes Dunk's. Dunk curls his fingers against that scar, digging blunted fingernails in. Baelor pants and paws at him. One hand drags at Dunk's neck with the slack imprecision of a drunk man.

"That," he groans when Dunk presses even harder. "Yes– There–"

Time flattens out. The world turns white. Dunk grips his prince and bites into messy, starved kisses. Baelor glows faintly, hot as fire in his arms. It should burn, Dunk thinks – but it doesn't. Baelor only warms him. Dunk keeps kissing, keeps grasping, keeps pressing, until it seems his fingers sink into the scars to touch at something secret, thick, slippery, and dark. His stomach drops. His thoughts spray apart, constellatory and bright, incoherent at this discovery. Touching Baelor where no one can caress any living soul.

Your man, Dunk thinks again, mouth gone half-slack for Baelor's kisses, for the intrusion of his tongue. Yours, yours yours.

Baelor's hand drops from Dunk's neck to find the puckered white skin on his flank where Aerion's lance drove point and mail into his body. Just as Dunk unseamed the scar at the base of his skull, so too does Baelor sink his fingers into that healed wound. Skin parts like silk and Dunk's whole body spasms. His vision blurs. The white world becomes whiter and brighter, bursting with stars, and he loses command of his hands and drops his head to Baelor's shoulder, shivering violently.

Baelor twists his fingers a bit and Dunk's body opens up for him. He answers with a helpless moan, his hands slipping to rest against the small of Baelor's back.

One moment I feel drunk, he'd told Pate after the combat. The next, like I'm dying.

It doesn't hurt, but he does feel drunk. And if he must die, he would die like this, in Baelor's arms. There's a strange pressure on his insides, Baelor's fingers sinking deeper. Another moan escapes him, hot and damp against Baelor's skin, and Baelor answers him by cupping the back of his head and working his other hand inexorably. Until, Dunk thinks, he must be buried inside him up to the wrist. He gags on a half-voiced sob. Baelor pets his hair.

"You are a good man, Ser Duncan. As brave and true as any could hope to be."

"I–"

Baelor's hand curls as if grasping something in Dunk's gut. He sobs again. Heat floods his pelvis in a blood rush and he shakes his head helplessly, his cock so hard it seems almost shameful. What to do with such flattery from a prince? He wouldn't know. He only wants to be deserving of it, to have earned it in some way, to–

Baelor flexes his hand and all thought abandons Dunk again. He moans through his tears and drool bubbles from his wet lips. In answer, Baelor kisses his temple.

"I would have your mouth, Ser."

Lightning seems to pulse through his whole body, bursting from the wound Aerion dealt him. Even so, he wants nothing so badly as to fulfill this command. Baelor withdraws his hand and Dunk half-expects there to be blood or viscera in its wake, but there isn't. There's nothing, not even the tender blush of pain. Just the ghost-feeling of Baelor within him, undoing him and changing him in some irreversible way.

Another kiss follows, perhaps to steady him, but Dunk feels half-mad and beyond steadying. He loops one arm around Baelor's waist and flips them. Baelor laughs when he hits the bedding. Short and surprised at first, mostly a gasp that then modulates and becomes thinner and deeper when Dunk pushes to rest atop him, settled between his thighs with the roughness of a boy at play and less care than befits a prince.

Hungry, Dunk kisses him. This time it's Baelor who accedes. His mouth falls slightly open, either in invitation or surrender.

The world turns to mist. In this place, there is only the man Dunk would belong to and whose body he would tend until commanded otherwise.

Teeth drag on skin, over Baelor's chest then stomach. He sucks and kisses and nuzzles his way down, following the rush of dark hair. It tickles. Dunk breathes deep between his kiss-bites. Baelor pets his shoulders in answer.

"Very good," he says gently, and Dunk's heart clenches.

When he reaches the hem of Baelor's breeches, he glances up. Baelor looks down at him with heavy-lidded eyes. A halo of red leaves spreads out behind his head, bright as rubies and Dunk thinks please stay before he attends to the lacing on the breeches. When they come undone and Baelor falls free, Dunk's heart skips. His mouth waters. Be it as it may that he's never done this before, he has a sudden need to divest Baelor of what remains of his clothes before he sets to work. It takes some squirming to tug his breeches off without having to move too far from him, but then the deed is done and Dunk can crawl between his legs again and relish the feeling of Baelor's bare thigh against his shoulder.

Having no map for this, he follows impulse instead, twisting to kiss and lick at the crease of Baelor's groin. He'd cut Aerion here in a haze of rage and desperation, drunk on his own pain. Lord Lyonel had laughed about it later. Any deeper and you would have bled the boy like a stuck pig. He leered like he relished the thought. In the aftermath, with a clearer mind, Dunk knew Lyonel's observation was correct. He really had meant to kill Aerion.

He he isn't sure what he means to do now, but he knows one thing for certain. Life – and death – pulses here.

When he gathers the hot skin between his teeth, some muscle thrums in Baelor's leg. Dunk bites down harder. Baelor arches under him, thighs working. The noise he makes sets fire to Dunk's veins. Baelor smells and tastes like sweat and skin and – yes – blood, and Dunk thinks that he could stay here forever, could press closer or bite harder, sink his teeth into soft tissue until he breaks skin and reveals something bright and red and forbidden, his face slick with a triumph no one else has ever tasted. But Baelor's long fingers have his hair twisted up so tight it feels as if he might go blind from the pain. His cock weighs heavy against Dunk's cheek. Those two things together are all the reminder he needs.

He unhooks his teeth from that pull of muscle and Baelor bucks under him with a broken laugh that catches somewhere in the back of his throat. His hands go slack in Dunk's hair and Dunk can see his own work almost immediately. A ring, shaped like his teeth, dug into Baelor's skin. Paler than the rest of him at first but then rushing dark with the return of blood. Dunk licks his lips, his vision dimmed on the periphery. A hungry, wanting ache travels from his mouth to his groin. A sense memory settles over him – the rush of tussling other boys to the ground in dank alleyways. The same ache when he threw them on their backs. There'd been nowhere for that feeling to go except for it to swell in his chest, but now–

Baelor's thumbs trace the shapes of his cheekbones. It's a gentle touch, but his hands tremble.

"I'm not accustomed to begging," he says, his voice wry, breathy, and fond.

Dunk lurches forward in answer. He isn't sure how to be delicate, so instead elects to wet Baelor's cock from root to crown in something approximating worship. He licks and kisses and licks more with a strange, almost overwhelming hunger. His face grows slick, then tacky, with smears of his own spit and the cloudy, glittery spill that Baelor's body provides. It's salty, Dunk is surprised to learn. Bright and sharp on his tongue where so little else in this pale, misty, nowhere place seems to have a specific flavor or form.

Once he's had his fill of this messy exploration, once he's set Baelor's whole body to flexing with deep, scattered breaths, Dunk takes him properly in his mouth.

Rohanne hadn't done this for him – and it didn't occur to him to ask it of her. Because of this, he doesn't know what follows except to try to slacken his jaw and suckle at the same time. It feels briefly impossible, but Baelor moans regardless. A gut-deep sound that makes heat pulse in Dunk's gut. One of Baelor's heels kicks in a mindless reflex against Dunk's flank and then he arches up. Dunk nearly chokes, but Baelor leaves him no room to pull away, keeps his hands firm on Dunk's head. So he tries to provide. His eyes water when Baelor hits the back of his throat.

"Gods."

Dunk's stomach convulses. It's all he can do not to gag – but then he does anyway, briefly, before Baelor withdraws enough that he can nearly cough and half-breathe through his nose. A wet, garbled sound gets caught in his mouth, chambered between his tongue and Baelor's cock. He's making a mess, he's sure, for all that he can consider the matter, but he tries to press closer, wanting to prove his worth or willingness or both. Baelor is still half in his mouth, hot and thick with want, and Dunk will choke for however long is required if it means he's shown himself capable of doing the right thing the right way.

It turns out he need not worry.

Baelor rolls his hips and Dunk's vision blurs again. He tries to meet it with enthusiasm rather than shrink from the anticipated lurch in his gorge. It helps. His throat resists it – drool sputtering each time Baelor thrusts – but that visceral resistance is familiar. It happens the same way the body recoils from a kick, but winds itself forward into the greater violence of a fight that leaves skinned elbows, bruised bone, snapped noses, and bitten tongues in its wake. Chasing the thrill that comes only from playing at breaking other bodies open.

Baelor's hands crown his head without pulling his hair. Just holding him, firmly, in this place while he fucks his mouth with a precise brutality. Dunk's throat burns. So does the delicate tissue high up in his nose, irritated by half-inhaled spit. But it seems a purifying pain. The sharp, broken noises Baelor makes and the way he seizes slightly each time Dunk attempts, and fails, to swallow around him are all worth whatever toll he must pay with his body. Choking on sobs, he digs his fingers into Baelor's thighs and lets him take what he will.

The mist glows and pulses around them. A scattering of light, like flickering flames. Dunk senses it somewhere beyond his tears, like a counterpoint to the rhythm of Baelor's body.

And then it ends. Sooner than Dunk would like, and with a sharp, soft gasp. Baelor's spend floods his mouth in a warm jet, so close to the back of his throat that he nearly retches trying to swallow it. Even so, he doesn't want to pull away. Not that Baelor lets him anyhow. His fingers rake over Dunk's scalp, sharp as claws. A voice sparkles on the edge of his awareness – my fingers feel like wood – and Dunk presses closer, choking and clinging. Dark, wiry hair scratches at his nose. It doesn't matter.

In time, Baelor grows soft and his hands slip from Dunk's hair. He laughs, breathlessly, when Dunk finally sits up in a clumsy scramble, and he makes no effort to pull away when Dunk grasps his wrist.

"A good dream, then," he murmurs.

Dunk doesn't want to be dreaming. He kisses Baelor's fingers, palm, and the inside of his wrist, feeling frightened. His face is a slick mess, but that seems unimportant now. His heart hammers at his ribs until Baelor cups his cheek very gently.

"Come here," he urges in a soft, even voice.

Finally, Dunk looks at him. A faint smile greets him, the same that Baelor wore when Dunk knelt to beg his permission to enter the lists in a small midland tourney half a lifetime ago. The red leaves, the fanned halo beneath his head, grows redder, and brighter. Baelor glows too. A soft, reddish light that emanates from behind his sternum and articulates fluted bone and a web of delicate blood vessels.

When Dunk doesn't move, Baelor grips the back of his neck, squeezing the muscle there with the same assured firmness.

"Come."

Dunk meets him with a needy kiss, steadied only by the way Baelor sucks at his lip and licks into his mouth in a sleepy languor. His hand stays where it is, gently squeezing and massaging the nape of Dunk's neck. This, and the warmth of Baelor's body pressed against his, is enough to quiet the thrumming fear in his veins. Baelor lays lax and calm beneath his weight. Hazily, Dunk wonders what it would be like to fuck him – or to be fucked by him. Something buzzes in his gut at that.

Baelor pulls back slightly. But he hooks one leg over Dunk's hip as if he knows Dunk's mind. With the same, affectionate hands, he smooths both thumbs over the salty smears on Dunk's face – tears, saliva, half-swallowed spend.

"You make a lovely mess, Ser Duncan."

One thumb traces the curve of Dunk's bottom lip again. He mouths at it reflexively, eyes fluttering.

"Gods," Baelor breathes. "I would have spoiled myself with you – or ruined you. Perhaps both."

You can, Dunk means to say, but the words evaporate like smoke off the sea before he can give them life. Whatever you want, you can.

His cock, tucked against the low hollow of Baelor's hip, is so hard it hurts. That seems an honor. He lets his eyes close and he sucks softly at Baelor's thumb, adrift on a close, pulsing feeling until a chill runs down his spine, bright and clear as freezing water.

Then the taste of blood floods his mouth.

He gags, eyes flying open. Beneath him: only red, wet leaves and a bloodied pelt of scales as pale and translucent as milkglass. When he scrambles to sit up, he finds white roots, as fine as small bones, sprouting from the long-healed wound in his flank. His fingers, he sees, are smeared in something soft, pulpy, and grey.

Cold. Cold everywhere.

Beneath the shade of a silent white tree, he screams.

*

He seized awake, jolting upright in the ruddy gloom. The pine filings in the little hearth had burned down to a dull, sullen glow. Red light oozed across the floorboards.

Casting about, panicked for a reason he couldn't quite remember, he tried to make sense of where he was and how he arrived here in this– This– 

White Harbor. The small inn. Egg was asleep in the other bed and a few pine shavings hissed and burned out with a little pop.

Dunk's eyes stung. By increments, he became aware of his own body, like he left it somewhere in the smeary night and had only just returned to it in a plummet out of the sky. His heart clapped out an erratic rhythm and his hands were clammy and cold. His legs felt leaden.

And under the roughspun blanket, his cock was half-hard.

For one blurry moment, he feared he might be sick.

Desperately, he thrust a hand under the blanket and squeezed until it hurt. Tears sprang to his eyes – whether from the pain or the shame, it was hard to say. It seemed to take a torturous amount of time for his cock to soften, but soften it did, and then he was left only with the need to breathe slowly through his nose so as not to endure the horror of waking Egg.

Once his heart had settled, he tossed his blanket aside, quiet and careful, and grabbed his breeches off the edge of the bed. Half dressed, he made for the door, picking up his boots on the way. Out on the street, the night was bracing cold. More's the better, Dunk decided, shivering. The biting seaside air felt good and right. Ser Arlan was never much for praying, and so in absence of the words to ask the gods to quiet his thoughts or drive the half-formed memories of dreams from his mind, it seemed to Dunk that the cleansing cold was the next best thing.

A scud of clouds passed by the high, full moon, and blued shapes glided over the rooftops and the narrow alley street. Dragon wings, Dunk thought, and an icy feeling traveled down his spine, brought on not at all by the chill in the air.

A dead dragon, Daeron had said the night before the trial. Dunk had thought dawn would surely bring his execution, and his fear of that in turn made him forget Daeron's prophecy. He hugged himself and wondered what sort of man he was to dream of debauching the prince who gave his life so that Dunk might live.

The empty, moonlit night offered no answer but the saltbitter breeze. There were no dragons here – nor gods either. At least not any he would know. ‌The trees make them have strange dreams. Dunk shivered again and his breath went away in steaming clouds. His fingers had gone numb.

Nothing to do for it but go back inside, the taste of blood faint on his tongue.