In the Shadows of Ashford

by NoPlace35

Summary:

In those dark hours before their lives are upended, Prince Baelor Targaryen, Heir to the Iron Throne and Hand of the King, comforts his melancholic little brother, Prince Maekar. The Trial of the Seven looms. Tragedy lurks on the horizon. But before the pain dawn will bring, they have one, final night together. Not that they know it yet.

Or, the one where Baelor and Maekar get down to it like kinky little rabbits the night before the Trial of the Seven, and then have the worst week of their entire lives

Chapter 1

Notes:

Well. Not me dusting off my AO3 account to write AKotSK Targcest. I've never once shipped any other Targ sibling, but this smacked me upside the head. Truly, I'm an old man fucker at heart. You truly love to see it. During Lent as well 😭

I wrote this entirely in one sitting, so if there are any mistakes, I'm so sorry 😭

Anyway, as ever, enjoy!

Darkness had long since fallen over Ashford Castle, rain lashing its limewashed stone with a furious desperation Baelor Targaryen pretended wasn’t echoing in his own chest. After Maekar dragged Aerion by the scruff of his neck from that seven-damned hall, Baelor had suggested they all find their beds for the evening. They’d a long day ahead of them on the morrow. No doubt none were eager for it arrive. He’d retired to his chambers and dismissed all his servants, including the guards at his door. He feared he’d rage at his nephew’s folly, but he’d been too tired to do even that. Instead, he’d poured himself a healthy glass of wine and had settled in a chair by the fire to read. It would calm his mind and help him set aside some of that fear that clamoured for his attention deep in his chest.

His peace lasted, in all, around two hours. The door to his chambers swung open, cracking the latch into the oak-panelled walls with such force that Baelor suspected he’d need to pay for its replacement.

“Good evening, dear brother.”

Who but Maekar could’ve walked in here at this hour? None. And it was Maekar who'd nearly taken the door off its hinges, strong as he was. He entered in a flurry of silk and velvet, wound tight with rage. Baelor marked his page in his book with the tip of his finger, and awaited the oncoming storm. He didn't have to wait long.

“Aegon has gone to that blasted knight he’s determined to squire for,” Maekar spat, slamming the door behind him. Baelor resisted the urge to go immediately to his brother’s side. He would need a moment to vent his frustrations at a remove, else Baelor make himself the object of his brother’s ire. “Does he think I’m blind? Or stupid?”

With a calm that was entirely superficial, Baelor set aside his book on the small table beside his chair. It had been a terrible distraction, anyway. It wasn’t as if he’d done anything but read the same, short paragraph thirty times over as he worried for his family. “I suppose he knows you’d chain him to his bed to stop him leaving.”

Maekar threw up his hands. “He disappears for days. Here I am, losing my mind with worry, thinking he’s been abducted, injured, or worse. Then I learn from Daeron he’s been taken by some peasant knight, stolen from his brother by a thief in the night.” He began to pace, animated. “And now, having spoken to them both, I damn well know Aegon went with him, heedless of his station, his age, or the risk!”

It had been a trying few days for Maekar. What Baelor had dressed up as a leisurely excursion where they might spend some time alone together away from the prying eyes of the court had turned into a nightmare of its own. He missed his brother enough to petition their father to allow them an appearance at Lord Ashford’s tourney, claiming the visibility of their strength and unity as a family would reassure all. Of course, he should’ve known it would all go tits up immediately, and that Maekar’s children would be the cause. Truly, he should’ve left all but Maekar in Summerhall. Now, because of that folly, they could do nothing but await the biggest disaster to befall House Targaryen’s reputation since the Dance.

“Ser Duncan seems a kind man. Loyal. Brave. Fierce.”

“So fierce, he nearly broke my son’s fucking jaw. And now look at us.” He scoffed, though to Baelor it sounded more like a scream. “A trial of the fucking seven. This is madness!”

Baelor shrugged. He knew it was nonsense, of course he did. Aerion was too brash and too headstrong, and had gambled all their lives on this folly. And despite all they’d both tried to do to curb his poor behaviour, he was one man before them, and quite another before all else. Maekar, quite understandably, had an issue seeing his son as a monster. He knew Aerion was a prideful wastrel who was quick to anger and quicker to lash out. Maekar loved all his children, but he was not blind. He simply hoped, as Baelor once had, that Aerion might be able to channel such tendencies into something more productive. Once, he might have been stuffed into some armour and sent to the Dornish Marches, or to the Stepstones, or to fight endlessly against the Blackfyres.

Now, in peacetime, there was no such outlet. Watching his little brother pace a hole in the floor of his borrowed chambers told Baelor that Maekar knew it, as well. “It is Aerion’s right.”

“What?” Maekar spat, whirling around to face him. “It may be his legal right to drag us all into this mess, but that doesn’t make it right.”

Privately, Baelor didn’t think Aerion capable of anything right. He was his brother’s blood, and as such his own. Duty and good manners dictate that Baelor love him, and so he tried to. The boy made it bloody difficult, though.

“He’s as clever as you, my dear brother. He knows how to twist a situation in his favour. Ser Duncan is a hedge knight, landless and friendless. He will not be able to find six other men. Aerion will win by default, and the matter will be over by tomorrow.” It was a truth they all relied upon, though Baelor had less faith in it than his nephew. Nor, it seemed, did Maekar. Shrewd eyes caught how he trembled. Though if it were from fear or fury, Baelor could not yet discern. “Is it Aerion you fear for?”

Maekar waved him away. “Aerion may be a coward, but he can wield a sword well enough.”

Not so well as Ser Duncan, Baelor wagered, then immediately chided himself. Aerion was a terrible man and a worse son, but he was still Maekar’s boy. His death would devastate his brother, who had lost so much already. “Then what?”

“Daeron claims this hedge knight stole away with Aegon in the night.” They both knew it was a lie. Aegon was ten times as intractable as his father, and young enough still to be naïve to the danger of strangers. No doubt he’d seen the sorry state this mangy knight had made in that inn and had decided to go on an adventure. “To defend his honour, Daeron must also fight.”

Baelor frowned. “The boy is… troubled,” he settled on saying, watching his brother carefully. Maekar’s narrow stare in return told him all. His brother had heard the less kind useless Baelor had steered himself away from voicing. “He is in no condition to participate.”

“No, but Aerion insists. And honour demands that he fight. Daeron has acquiesced. Nothing I have said has moved them.”

Whatever madness gripped Maekar’s eldest, no Maester knew the shape of it, nor how to help him. When he was young, and freer from such troubles, Maekar and Dyanna had tried to comfort him in the aftermath of his nightmares as all parents did, with sweetened hot tea and sweeter reassurances. When those did nothing, they tried medicinal herbs, tinctures, elixirs and draughts. Some had granted the poor boy peace, if only for a night or two. Most did nothing to ease his torment.

Daeron had been happier, Baelor thought, before Dyanna’s death. Afterwards, tearful and terrified, Maekar had confided in him that his eldest had muttered riddles in his sleep the months before the sickness took her. Daeron would wake screaming for her, begging the gods to spare her. Maekar had soothed him, brought his mother into his chambers so he could see she was well. And then she’d died. And Maekar could not bring her to comfort his son, anymore. He could not say his dreams were only dreams. He was not a man who lied to his children, even to spare them pain. A strength, Baelor thought, and an unkindness.

Baelor glanced to Maekar then away again, staring into the fire. “You will fight too, then, I suppose?”

“They are my sons.”

“Aye.”

He had not felt so helpless in a long, long while. Perhaps, Baelor thought bitterly, not since the Battle of Redgrass, where he rode towards the rebel host, Maekar holding the line, not knowing if his brother was alive or dead in the chaos. Daemon had cut a bloody swath through Maekar’s van. He’d urged his steed on, the beating of five-thousand horses drowning out the noise as they closed in on the battle. Ten thousand men died in that nameless, bloody field. Every day, Baelor thanked the gods his brother wasn’t one of them.

Familiar guilt clawed at his chest. Baelor should mourn that ten thousand men had died that day. What was the life of one man in the face of such devastation? And yet, looking now upon his brother, he knew the loss of a hundred thousand could not pry naked relief from his belly.

“They will be fighting to kill, brother.”

“They will, of course,” Maekar said, waspish and coiled tight with fear. “And if any die, it will be the gods’ will, or some such horseshit. But I will not lose my sons, Baelor. Not while there’s still breath in my lungs.”

“The Stranger comes for us all,” Baelor told him, though not unkindly. Maekar bristled as if it were a threat, and Baelor held up a hand, forging ahead before he could retaliate, “You mean to protect them, I understand. But who will protect you?”

“The Kingsguard will fight. They are the other three.”

“Could you find no others?”

His question pulled a smile from Maekar, thin and wry. “I have not asked, in truth. Too many have been dragged into this as it is. The Kingsguard, at least, are well-trained, and they took an oath. And anyway, how many men would turn down an offer to beat the shit out of us, brother?”

“Yes, well,” Baelor conceded, for it often felt as if their family held onto favour among the smallfolk and the lords by their fingernails. This certainly wouldn’t help. Whether they won or lost on the morn, they would be poorer for it. “I do not like the idea of someone beating the shit out of you.”

“Only Aerion, then?”

“No. But perhaps it would calm him. You’ve done well to shield him so far, but-”

“I’ve coddled him, you mean?” Maekar cut in.

“I only mean to say that letting him experience the natural consequences of his actions is no bad thing.”

“And if Ser Duncan kills him?”

Baelor considered it, then discarded it just as readily. “He doesn’t seem the type.”

Maekar was not consoled. To be fair, Baelor would not have been either, were it Valarr or Matarys in Aerion’s place. But then, he supposed, his sons would never be in this position to begin with. His boys were the antithesis of his brother’s troublesome brood, six children who all seemed determined to shave years from their poor father’s life from stress. If the gods blessed the blood of the dragon with madness or greatness, Maekar’s line seemed overburdened with both while Baelor’s had been passed over entirely.

He would not voice the comparison, unkind as it was. Maekar had long compared the two of them. All their lives, he saw competition where Baelor thought there was none. Their mother’s doing, he knew. For all she denied it, she’d placed Maekar firmly in his brother’s shadow the moment he’d come screaming into the world. By then, Baelor was firmly her favourite. Their father’s too. It had not changed all their lives, no matter how hard Maekar tried to force them to love him. Baelor languished under their care and attention, received all their praise, and weathered none of their scorn. Aerys kept himself to his books. And Rhaegel, beloved by his youngest brother most of all, was hardly aware enough of the world around them to mind their parent's distance. Sweet Maekar was hardly even an afterthought in their parents’ eyes, called into their presence to be berated, or compared in poor terms to Baelor, who had taken a shamefully long while to realise their parents’ disaffection.

Grieved, Baelor pushed himself from his chair and approached his youngest brother, steps measured over finely woven carpet. He took Maekar’s hands in his, running his thumbs over those bony knuckles, noting how much colder Maekar’s hands were in his own, how those long, lithe fingers trembled against his. “All will be well, sweet brother.”

“That is fair for you to say,” Maekar groused, though he listed forwards a little into Baelor’s warmth anyway. “You will only spectate.” And before Baelor could even open his mouth to suggest otherwise, Maekar said, harsh, “You have no armour of your own. Do not even contemplate it.”

“Valarr has come with full plate, and we are not so differently sized,” Baelor reminded him. “But you are right, as always.”

“It would be folly for you to take part.”

“It would be.”

Do all knights not take the same oath? To protect the innocent?

Baelor shook Ser Duncan’s judgement from his mind and focused instead on his dear brother, who had weathered so much strife in his life, and seemed like to weather far more. “It would also be folly for you to ride tomorrow on so little sleep.”

Maekar ducked his head. It was such a rare show of submission from him, a thrill of warmth went through Baelor at the trust his brother had in him. “I cannot settle with such anxieties rattling around in my mind. I could very well lose two sons tomorrow.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.”

“You cannot promise that, brother. It might not be the will of the gods,” he said with derision, “but men are just as dangerous. And more fickle still. Daeron has not slept a full night, I would wager, since the day he was born. He is no accomplished warrior. And Aerion is arrogant to the point of hubris. He… we cannot win. Aerion must die to settle the score. I cannot bear the thought of it. And yet… were Ser Duncan to die in this farce cooked up by Aerion's foolish pride…”

“That would be a loss, too.”

Maekar shrugged, helpless. “Aegon would never speak to me again.”

No, likely he wouldn’t. The boy had attached himself to Ser Duncan, and it was a fraternal affection the hedge knight returned. Baelor would be sad to see Ser Duncan die, of course. And he would be devastated for Aegon. But were Aerion to die… He wanted the boy to experience the full consequences of his cruelty and hubris, yes. But did he want the boy to die?

“I cannot win. I must lose one son in the defence of another. After Dyanna…” Maekar sighed. “I cannot weather such loss again, Baelor. I wouldn’t survive it.”

Despair shone in his eyes, spreading until it engulfed him whole. Baelor released one hand, and took his brother’s jaw in a strong, steady grip. He levered Maekar’s head up, so that he might meet that pale violet gaze. Those eyes he loved so well. “You will not lose anyone, my love. You won’t.” He swiped away a tear with his thumb. “If Aerion wins, Aegon will survive it. He’s only known Ser Duncan for a handful of days.”

“That is enough to forge a lasting bond. Especially in a child.”

“Bonds can be broken. Often at the end of a spear.”

“It cannot be that cold. Not for Aegon. You do not know him as I do.” He scoffed, a wet thing. “This would never have happened if Dyanna were here. They loved her much more than they love me. And she loved them better than I ever could.”

Baelor frowned. Maekar had a lot of love, buried deep inside him. A childhood beneath their cold mother and apathetic father had not lent itself to its ready expression, that was true enough. He often seemed cold. Acerbic. Baelor knew, beneath those defences, his brother had a soft heart that had been wounded too many times to be shown openly. “Do not say such things about yourself.”

“Why? Because they are true?” He smiled, small and heartrending. “I am a poor father to my children, Baelor. I am a poorer brother to you.”

“You are not,” Baelor said, firm. “How could you be?”

Maekar glanced to their joined hands, then to Baelor’s mismatched eyes. “Is this the love of a good brother?”

“Yes,” Baelor said. “For I am your brother. And I love you.” He took a step closer, his chest aching. “Fear for your sons clouds your mind. When this is over, you will see that they care for you as intensely as you do them, even if you all have trouble showing it.”

“Your brotherly love clouds your vision.”

“No, Maekar.” Mother’s cruelty clouds yours, Baelor wanted to say, but it was too cruel a truth to lay at his brother’s feet just now. All his life, Maekar had wanted to be loved. To be seen. And yet, he shied away from Baelor, who loved him best of all. “My love lets me see you as you are.”

Maekar scoffed and tried to pull away, but Baelor was stronger than he, and more determined by far to keep him in place. “Brother-”

“Hush,” he said, stern but not unkind. Maekar’s teeth met with a gentle clack. “You cannot rest tonight if you keep flagellating yourself, as is your wont. It is done, now. We cannot change it. Think not on it for the moment.”

Soft, tremulous, Maekar asked, “What should I think on, then?”

“Me,” Baelor said, pressing up to close the distance between them. Their lips met in a gentle kiss, open-mouthed. They separated only enough for Baelor to continue, “Think on this. On us. On the pleasure I will bring you.”

Maekar’s eyes flickered closed. His free hand came up to rest on Baelor’s chest, over his heart, feeling its steady beat. More centred, he quipped, “I thought I was meant to be sleeping?”

“We can sleep after.”

He didn’t give his brother time to reply. Instead, he used the hand on Maekar’s jaw to draw him in again, kissing him hungrily. With Maekar gone in search of his children, or tied up in knots worrying about them, they’d not had much opportunity to be together as Baelor would have wanted. Months spent alone in King’s Landing had borne down upon him. Their first night alone together in an age, their reunion had been rushed and over too quickly. A quiet, breathless thing in Baelor’s tent on the road to Ashford, fumbling together in the dark like two green boys barely past their majority.

Now, tonight, they’d the luxury of a bed. Baelor intended to use it. Swift desire made his head spin and his skin flush. He had half a second to wonder at how quickly Maekar stoked the fire of his ardour before those same flames burned all thought but pleasure from his mind. He licked into his brother’s mouth, ravenous, and began to steer him backwards, the length of their bodies pressed flush together. Maekar clung to him, jaw working beneath Baelor’s palm, and allowed himself to be led. As ever he would, Baelor thought, fond.

His brother’s knees hit solid oak, and then they were tumbling backwards onto fine linen and furs, tangled together. Baelor braced himself against his brother’s chest, his legs opening so that Maekar could settle comfortably in the cradle of his thighs. He could feel Maekar’s cock, hardening and heavy, pressed into his hip. He groaned. There were far too many layers between them.

“Up,” he commanded, levering them both up to sitting, hardly parting from him enough to speak. Maekar shifted to get his arms beneath him, and then they were upright, Baelor straddling his hips, their chests still pressed flush together. “Off,” he said, speaking almost into Maekar’s mouth. “Take it off, brother. I want to feel you.”

Together, they fumbled with the hooks of Maekar’s doublet. Baelor, dressed for bed, had on only his linen undershirt and loose breeches. His brother had evidently been prowling his own chambers before he came to Baelor’s, and was still entirely clothed. He ripped that crimson sash from his brother’s belt and threw it over his shoulder, uncaring of where it landed. Then, as Maekar succeeded in unhooking the first two clasps of his doublet, tore that fine leather belt from around his waist. It joined its brethren on the floor. Now unconstrained, Baelor greedily reached up and under his brother’s own undershirt, impatient for his prize.

Finally. His hands found warm skin. He groaned, long and low, and leant into kiss him again, and again, set on devouring him whole. Maekar rocked backwards at the force of his brother’s insistence, bracing himself on the mattress with one, strong arm, and continued to divest himself of outerwear while Baelor began to rake red lines into his pale skin with his nails. How easily his brother’s flesh yielded to him. How keen Maekar was to offer himself. The doublet fell away. They separated so that Maekar could pull his undershirt up and over his head, and he was barely free of it before Baelor was upon him again.

“You are eager this evening,” Maekar said, not complaining.

“I promised you a distraction,” Baelor told him, reaching to knot his fingers in Maekar’s ashen hair. He remembered when it had been long, down to his back. How Baelor had loved gathering it into his hands, holding it away from his face as his brother sucked his cock, or holding his head back so that they could kiss as he drove into him from behind. The memory shot through him as a fiery arrow. He moaned, low and wanton, and ground down into Maekar’s hips. “Will you let me fuck you tonight?”

Maekar huffed, arching into Baelor’s hand. “You don’t normally ask my opinion.”

“This is about you, my love.” He dipped to mouth at Maekar’s neck, gently tugging on his hair to grant himself better access. Maekar shuddered below him, hips rocking upwards as Baelor began to suck deep bruises into his unblemished skin. “Your pleasure is my focus. Not mine own.”

“I do want you to fuck me,” Maekar said, less abashed by far than he’d been when they were younger, when he’d flush and stutter out his desires under duress.

Baelor understood it then, as he did now. Maekar was a man who’d moulded himself to need very little. Baelor knew that did not mean he needed nothing at all. Sometimes, he needed to be taken apart and put back together again. Other times, he needed something gentler. Baelor tried to make himself available to provide both, but the physical distance between them these last years made fulfilling his brother’s more intimate needs a challenge. They were no longer in the same wing of the Red Keep, separated only by the thin, narrow arteries of service corridors and hidden doorways. Summerhall was a long way from King’s Landing. He could never visit often.

“I hear a conjecture in your voice, sweet brother.” Baelor set his worries aside and nipped at Maekar’s skin with his teeth, making him hiss. “Tell me what makes you hesitate.”

Maekar’s hand came to his back, fisting in his linen shift. “I must sit on a horse tomorrow.”

“I can be gentle.” Baelor kissed where he’d bitten, laving the mark with his tongue and tasting sweet, tangy iron. The blood of the dragon ran hot. Even a drop of it set his own blood aflame. Maekar’s always had. “I can make love to you until dawn, sweet brother. Make it slow. Make it last. Until we know nothing but each other. Nothing but the feel of our bodies made one, whole again, until we know neither where I end and you begin.”

Maekar moaned, a shattered thing. It was such a rare sound from his usually quiet lover that it punched all the air from Baelor’s chest. “Yes.”

He lifted his head from Maekar’s neck and kissed him again, and again, determined to draw more of those precious sounds from him. He slid a hand down to that toned, thin chest and pressed a thumb over a dusky nipple, pulling a breathy gasp from Maekar instead. Close enough, he thought, circling it slowly, then pinching it between blunt fingernails. In the low firelight, he could just about see the mess he’d made of his brother’s throat. Enticed by the vision of his pale skin marred with marks of his ownership, he folded himself to take Maekar’s collarbone between his teeth. Delicate skin yielded to his bite, the sharp tips of his canines piercing sweet flesh.

Above him, Maekar’s head dropped back, his mouth open in a soundless groan. Those long fingers came to rest in Baelor’s short hair, nails raking over his scalp. He hummed, pleased, and moved further along, a string of red welts and impressions of his teeth littering his brother’s chest until his exploration led him down far enough to take a nipple into his mouth.

This time, Maekar did make a noise, something throaty that fell from him on a shuddering exhale. Pretty, Baelor thought, delirious at the taste of his brother’s soft, downy hair and salty skin under his tongue. He bit down and felt as Maekar arched into his mouth. He’s so pretty. Could’ve been mine, if he were a woman. Could’ve filled him over and over with my seed, given him eight children. More, if the gods saw fit. Then all would know he was mine. None could come between us again.

He hollowed his cheeks as if he were a babe sucking milk from his mother’s breast. Reality told him his brother could not nourish him thus, but that doused the fire in Baelor’s belly none. He suckled with greed, determined to draw forth something from his brother’s teat, grasping at his narrow waist. He lamented that there was not much to grip on his brother save his tits, strong with muscle, and his arse. Maekar was long and lean, all sharp angles. There was no softness in him; not in his personality nor in his body. Too often, Baelor relished the lash of his words and the hard plane of his body, marking each place his brother’s bones dug into him as they sparred as often as he sought to draw forth his caustic ire. But there were times, he thought as he dragged his brother impossibly closer, where he wished he might stake his claim on Maekar more visibly. More… permanently.

These desires often faded as the haze of his lust receded. His brother was fecund, if not in the way Bealor often wished him to be. In truth, given the illicit nature of their relationship, that was a mercy. Were he indeed a sister, if he’d a wet cunt and full breasts, Aegon IV would not have been the only one among them with a small army of bastards. And well… were Maekar not as he was, tall and lean with a pretty cock to match, Baelor would not have taken to him so readily. There was a reason he’d given his own lady wife two children and no more, why he’d left her behind at the capital in a cold bed. And, he thought bitterly, a hand branded on his brother’s lower back to lock him in place, there was a reason their parents had sent Maekar all the way to Summerhall and sold him off too young.

The reminder of their forced separation infuriated him as much as it spurred him on. Soon, he thought, he would be King, not Father. And then Maekar could return to his side, where he belonged. Where he would stay. He would be Baelor’s Hand, and there would be no hour of the day when they were apart. No moment in the night when they slept alone. Maekar was his, as he was Maekar’s. From this day, Baelor thought, wild, to the end of my days. Those were the words he should’ve spoken to his brother. Perhaps he might have, had they stolen away to Dragonstone with a priest of the Fourteen as they’d always said they would. Surely they couldn’t have taken him from me then. They wouldn’t have sent him away.

Angry and grieved, Baelor shifted a little to the right and bit down. Hard. Maekar keened beneath him, visibly torn between leaning into the pain and wrenching himself away from it.

“Ah, fuck.” His nails dug into Baelor’s scalp, anchoring him despite his protestations. “That hurt, you bastard.”

Baelor hummed but released him, the seal of his lips breaking with a wet smack. Maekar’s grip gentled, and Baelor sat up to view his handiwork. Maekar was a patchwork of reds and, in one or two places, mottling purple and black. A ring of blood began to form on the meat of his left breast, pearls of red that swelled and swelled, until their fattened weight set them on a winding path down his chest. Pleased, he shifted to flatten both hands over Maekar’s chest, mapping the ridges and furrows of his prominent ribs.

“You should eat more,” he said, trailing his eyes from the crimson halo at his chest, down the flat, toned plane of his stomach to what his breeches hid from his view. For half a moment, he imagined his brother as swollen as the blood blooming on his chest, heavy with his seed. He blinked, and the image was gone. The fire, however, remained. It was nothing to reach a hand down to that empty place below his navel.

Maekar rolled his eyes. “I do not understand this obsession of yours.”

And yet, Baelor thought, swallowing heavily, Maekar often indulged it. “You cannot tell me you haven’t thought about it?”

“Not seriously. And not since we were much younger.” He let his head loll to the side. Some of his hair fell forward into his face. He laughed. “Back then, I always felt as if you were fucking me hard enough to make a child. And then I learned you were.”

“Mother could not have separated us if I had,” Baelor said into the space between them. Pain danced in Maekar’s eyes, but it was an old ache in them both, by now. Baelor pressed down a little over the space his brother’s womb would be, where his seed would quicken and grow. “I’ve always liked the thought of it. Of making you so irrefutably mine.”

“I am yours, brother.”

“I know. As I am yours.” He licked his lips, tasting Maekar’s blood. “We have enough children between us, besides, and I love them dearly. But…”

“But?” Maekar prompted after Baelor’s silence stretched a little.

“But,” Baelor said on a sigh, “I cannot help but want it. We are the blood of the dragon. And dragons are covetous by nature.”

“I have never known you to covet anything.”

“I covet none more than you.”

He leant in to kiss him again, sighing in contentment when Maekar kissed him back just as fiercely. How he wished they could be together in this way always, that duty and society did not separate them. If any should discover them, it would ruin them both. Sometimes, when his nights were loneliest and the weight of his parents’ expectations the heaviest, he felt that ruin would be worth it, to flee to Summerhall with his sons and leave the weight of the realm behind him.

Maekar hummed into his mouth, then pulled back, mischief alight in his eyes. “Perhaps if you fuck me well, it might take.”

Baelor blinked dumbly at him. Realisation trickled in slowly, then flooded all his senses all at once. It wasn’t often Maekar led this type of play between them. It was something Baelor growled into his ear while Maekar lay beneath him, moaning and incoherent. All the blood in him ran south so fast, he swayed on his brother’s lap, lightheaded. “Do you think?”

He sounded breathless even to his own ears. Desire throbbed at the apex of his thighs, his cock now straining against the fabric of his breeches. Maekar affected a coquettish air, and it was not an inconsiderable achievement. His eyes were wide and wet as he gazed up at Baelor through the pale fan of his eyelashes. His pupils had expanded to devour his irises, the purple rim so thin they looked entirely black.

“We are young enough,” Maekar said, in a strange sort of tone that shot down Baelor’s spine like a bolt of dragonfire. He took Baelor’s hand in his own and pressed it more firmly into his stomach. “Surely I could give you another?”

Yes, Baelor thought through a haze of arousal so thick, it was a marvel he could think anything at all. Yes. Yes. Another child. Another, and then another, Maekar swollen with my child and riding my cock. Sensitive. Insatiable. Mine.

The breath stuttered from him as the image crystallised in his mind. His cock jumped where it was trapped between them. Warm, thin liquid wet his thigh.

“I need,” he said, hardly able to speak. “Fuck, Maekar. I need you. Now. Right now.”

“Then take me,” Maekar said. “Fuck me. Breed me. Put a child in me.”

Baelor sobbed. He crashed their mouths together, pushing Maekar back down onto the bed. Any thoughts of working him slowly flew from his mind. If he’d envisioned a steady, gentle coupling when he’d promised to make love to his brother, all notions of tenderness were swallowed whole by lust.

At the force of his shove, Maekar’s arm buckled. The breath punched from his lungs in a winded oof, and Baelor swallowed the noise as he began to tear at the laces of Maekar’s breeches. Unmoored entirely from all sense, he began to rut against Maekar’s thigh where it pressed between his legs, need coiling tight within him, gathering low at the base of his spine.

Maekar lifted his hips so that Baelor could slide the last scraps of fabric away from his body. While he kicked them to the floor, Baelor stripped himself of his nightclothes, baring his skin to the musky, sweat-dampened air of their bedchamber. They came together again with a gasp of pleasure, Maekar shifting to better align them, their cocks sliding against each other as Baelor set a steady rhythm.

There was barely enough time to speak between their kisses. Baelor was unwilling to let Maekar’s mouth go far from his, unwilling to give up the taste of him. And yet, he was just as unwilling to let his brother go unpraised. Nor could he lose the thread of this fantasy Maekar had so kindly gifted him. He reached down to take Maekar in hand, feeling the heat of him, the wetness at the tip. He spread that thin slick down his long shaft, marvelling at the feel of such soft, velvet skin under his palm and the rigid hardness beneath.

“Ah,” Baelor gasped, pleasure spiking as he grasped at the edges of the imagined reality they had conjured here together and pulled it tight around him. “Look at you. So beautiful. So willing.” He squeezed his brother’s cock a little harder, listening to his sweet moans. “You are so wet for me. Virile. Fecund.”

Maekar shuddered, fucking up into the tight ring of Baelor’s hand. There was too much friction and not enough glide, but he seemed to chase the burn of it. He made soft, gasping little noises as Baelor stroked him, eyes shut and his head thrown back. His neck was an expanse of soft white dotted with bruises, a collar of the finest ermine Baelor had ever seen. He dipped to bury his nose in its heady warmth.

“This is how we were made to be, Maekar. How we should always be.”

“Always yours. Always full. Full of your cock. Full of your seed. Claimed. Marked.” Maekar gasped, back arching as Baelor bit him again, harder than before. “Fuck, brother. Let me always be with your child. One after the other. So that there might never be any doubt that you fuck me so well.”

Baelor had to press his eyes closed and still himself, else Maekar’s words hurl him over the edge too soon. His hips stuttered anyway, his cock leaking. The fantasy was too strong to pull himself back now. “I’d take you every night, and every morning. Make you ride my cock on the Iron Throne, there before the entire court.” Maekar clawed at Baelor’s naked back as the image settled into his mind. Baelor rubbed his thumb over the slit of his cock, smearing his brother’s seed over his hand. “They would all see your beauty. How well you take me. How badly they’d want you, sweet brother. But they’d never have you. Never.”

“No.” Maekar writhed beneath him. “I’m yours. Only yours.”

A feral noise left Baelor’s throat. He scrambled to sit up, dragging Maekar up onto his elbows as he slid down his brother’s body. Maekar, his chest heaving, watched him curiously. He’d evidently thought Baelor would dispense with the preamble and fuck him swiftly. Ruthlessly. But Baelor kissed his hipbone with only a little teeth, and bade him move higher up the bed.

Maekar did. He turned, shifting backwards until his head lay on a mountain of pillows. Baelor rubbed circles into his thigh with his thumb, watching him. It wasn’t long until Maekar grew impatient. “You mean to stare at me all night?”

“They say a man’s seed can only take root if the mother first reaches her peak,” Bealor told him easily, settling on the bed beside him, his brother’s cock in his fist and his mouth watering. “We should care for you first. To give it a fair chance at working.”

He remembered all the Maesters had told him those long years where he’d produced no heirs. They’d thought it some lack of instruction. Mother had taken Jena on a tour of the gardens. He and Father had the most awkward conversation of their lives in the meantime. Father had asked him if he emptied himself in his wife during their lovemaking. Mortified, Baelor had gone to Maekar afterwards. His brother had laughed at him, loose-limbed on the chaise in his chambers with his long hair falling over his shoulders, and had said, “No, dear brother. Because you empty yourself in me.”

Maekar had been much more of a handful then, wilful and bright-eyed. That childish impetuousness had cooled over the years, but Baelor could still see that shine in his brother’s eyes now as he looked at him. “I don’t know if I can manage twice in one evening.”

“You can,” Baelor said, more of a command than a reassurance. At their middling age, neither of them could manage it in truth. But Maekar need only be fucked. As he was not doing the fucking, a hard cock was not a requirement. Baelor had coaxed peak after peak from him when he was soft before, driving relentlessly into that place within his brother that sent him wild. Maekar could certainly finish now, in Baelor’s mouth, and again on his cock. “You will.”

“Why does that sound like a threat?”

“It should have the air of a reward, I should think.”

He didn’t let Maekar reply before he took him soundly into his mouth, sinking down on his brother’s cock with gusto. He drove his nails into his palms so that he wouldn’t choke. He didn’t do this often. Not for lack of desire, but certainly for lack of skill. Maekar’s cock was not unbearably thick. But it was long. To bury him to the hilt in his throat, Baelor had to swallow several times to fight back a gag, and even then, he couldn’t make it all the way. A scarce two inches taunted him. Only once he’d managed to bury his nose in that thatch of pale hair that called to him, and his taste of victory had lasted barely a moment before the taste of bile came quickly to replace it. Maekar had not let him try again since.

Determined, Baelor hollowed his cheeks and resolved to take him deeper, rocking his brother in and out again until the tip of his cock brushed his soft palette over and over, bruising it. Another minute, and he slid a hand behind Maekar’s hips to coax him forwards, angling him towards the back of his throat. He felt a little like one of those sword swallowers Father sometimes invited to feasts. He’d watched in awe as they took flaming steel into their bodies, entirely down their throats to their stomach beyond. He should’ve asked for some advice, he thought as tears began to gather in his eyes. Maekar’s cock certainly felt long enough to reach his stomach. Surprisingly, the thought of being filled so didn’t discomfort him. He… wanted it. Badly.

He was nearly there and not about to give up. He pulled back for air, sucking in shallow breaths. Maekar lay above him, breathing just as heavily, covered in a fine sheen of sweat that glistened on his skin.

“Good?”

Maekar made some noise of assent, and Baelor let masculine pride embolden him as he leant down to try again. It felt so, so good when Maekar took him to the hilt. He wanted his brother to feel that pleasure now. He lapped at the tip, gathering Maekar’s seed on his tongue. He swallowed it, craving more. As much as his brother could give him. He sealed his lips around his cock and pushed his head forward. His throat burned. A tear fell. But then, then, his nose brushed coarse hair. He smelled his brother’s musk. Maekar threw his head back, crying out. Baelor breathed through his nose, saliva gathering in his mouth and dripping onto Maekar’s skin. The pressure in his throat was terrible, but incredible. He swallowed once, then again. He came up a little, a short break, then sank down, a little further, until the root of his brother’s cock was touching his teeth.

His cock jumped, feeling himself so full. But the rest of his body rebelled. His throat convulsed. Maekar keened, a broken sound. Baelor tried to keep himself there, but it was a fight. He choked around his brother’s cock. He coughed. He gagged.

“Ah.” Maekar ripped his head up, hands in his brother’s hair again. “Don’t choke yourself, idiot.”

Baelor ignored him, instead leaning down to suckle on the tip of Maekar’s cock. Truly, there was nothing like it. If his brother’s tits could not feed him, Baelor thought, aiding himself a little with his hands now, his cock surely could. A steady trickle of salty, bitter warmth coated his tongue, and he drank from him like a man starved. It didn’t matter that his jaw ached, nor that he was making a mess of them both. He bobbed his head, his cheeks hollow, mapping every vein and sinew with his tongue. Maekar groaned beautifully above him, praising him as he worked. Baelor pressed his hips to the mattress to stem the heat in his core, trapping his own cock between his body and silken sheets.

It didn’t take long for Maekar to unwind. Baelor let his fingers explore the tight draw of his brother’s balls before dipping further back, along the seam of his perineum that hinted at Baelor’s deepest, darkest desires, until he reached his prize. Fingers slick with spit and sweat, he pressed gently against that tight entrance with the tip of his finger, feeling Maekar shudder below him, hearing him groan. He circled it slowly, teasing him a little, working in earnest now towards his goal. Maekar’s breathing unravelled, unsteady and shaking. He began to rock his hips into Baelor’s mouth, small but uncontrolled movements. He grew louder, too. More desperate, chasing the precipice Baelor had been leading him towards.

Give it to me, Baelor thought, trying to press the words into his brother’s mind as he sped up his movements. Let me drink from you. Let me taste you.

“Brother, I-”

It was as far as Maekar got before his hips stuttered and his back arched. He moaned, a high, loud thing that tore at his throat. His cock jumped once, then again, his hips jerking up to ram the head of it obscenely into the back of Baelor’s throat. Baelor took it, humming in pleasure as his sweet brother finally came undone. Hot, thick seed filled his mouth, and Baelor swallowed all he could before the sheer volume of it overwhelmed him, leaking from the corner of his mouth to coat his brother’s hips and the sheets below him.

When he was done, empty and shaking, Baelor licked him clean, unwilling to waste a drop of something so precious. He tended to him as a High Septon might the High Altar in the Sept, diligent in his worship. Maekar let out breathless little sounds, an arm thrown over his eyes, overworked and overstimulated, the pleasure too close to pain to be good, but close enough that he could mourn it when Baelor moved from his softening cock to the juncture where hip met thigh.

“You seem pleased with yourself.”

Baelor grinned into his skin, nipping him playfully. “Am I not allowed to celebrate a job well done?”

Maekar couldn’t argue with that. Baelor sat up, hot and flushed and needy, and stared down at his little brother ensconced in an embrace of soft pillows and softer sheets. He brought a hand to his stomach again, using it to brace himself as he leant over him to kiss him. Maekar grimaced at the taste of himself in his brother’s mouth, but kissed him back as enthusiastically as ever. The tip of Baelor’s cock brushed his thigh, then up to the rise of his hipbone. Maekar hummed into his mouth and shifted to take him in hand, his fingers calloused and rough. Perfect. Baelor moaned, rolling his hips into his brother’s fist, chasing sweet friction after denying himself so long.

“So,” Maekar began, watching him through half-lidded eyes, the glow of his orgasm flushing his cheeks. “I have peaked, dear brother. Might you try for the child, now?”

“Yes,” Baelor said in a breathless rush. He’d oil somewhere. He’d packed some of that sweet-smelling, herbal concoction he’d heard so much about. It was thick and viscous, warmed with some red spice from Lys and whipped into a smooth butter. He had it on reliable authority (Father’s Master of Whispers) that Lyonel Baratheon used nothing but this imported finery for his, ah, joint pain. Baelor had, of course, set about acquiring some immediately.

He slid from his brother and moved to the corner of the room, where the servants had set aside all sorts of eclectic things Baelor insisted were medicinal alone. He found the ornate, glass jar with ease beside some other vials of oil and tinctures. Some were for his aching knees. Most weren’t.

“This is new,” Maekar said when he returned, eyeing the jar with anticipation and a healthy dose of wariness.

“Lysene,” Baelor said. He climbed onto the bed beside him, his chest flush against Maekar’s arm. “Open your legs. It’s meant to ease the strain of our coupling some. And increase our pleasure.”

Maekar let his knees fall open, smiling. “You need assistance in that department?”

The lid dropped to the bed, and Baelor fixed him with a look full of promise. “You know full well that I do not, little brother. Do not vex me while I might torment you still.” He swiped a finger into the balm and felt it yield to him, the warmth of his skin turning it to a slippery, milky oil. As it lingered on his fingers, they began to tingle. A curious sensation. “Shall we try it?”

“Do as you will. You always do.”

Baelor smiled, gathering more balm into the palm of his hand. He knew his brother so well by now, he could reliably divine what Maekar needed before he himself did. “You will enjoy this, I think. Lift your hips a little for me.”

Maekar did as he was told. Baelor, pleased, kissed him in reward. He rubbed a slow circle around his brother’s hole, slicking him, then pressed his finger inside. Maekar tensed, discomfort not yet leading to pleasure.

“Are you still too sensitive?”

“A little,” Maekar hissed. “Keep going.”

Baelor did, sliding his finger in and out, going a little deeper each time. It wasn’t long before Maekar curled sideways into his chest, attaching his lips to Baelor’s neck and humming into his dark skin.

“Another.”

He added more oil, then a second finger, moving slowly to see if the stretch edged into pain. Maekar showed no signs of discomfort now, though, instead gently rocking back onto Baelor’s hand, mouth open, breathing hard.

Baelor kissed the crown of his head. The desperate need he’d felt earlier had banked into a steady heat. It wouldn’t take much to catch it into a roaring flame, he knew, but for now, his brother’s comfort was more pressing than his own desire.

As he began to stretch him open, the muscles in his forearm aching a little from overuse, the gentle warmth the oil brought with it began to burn in earnest. He moved faster, experimenting, seeking that wonderful part of a man’s anatomy that brought them such pleasure. The increased friction was no help in soothing the heat. If anything, it made it hotter. Sharper. Maekar hummed, feeling it, then hissed. Then, after a minute more, he tried to shift away from it, trapping himself snuggly between Baelor’s fingers, spearing him open and that hard plane of his body.

“Too much?” Baelor asked.

“No. I- Ah-” His eyes rolled back a little, eyelashes fluttering. Baelor watched him, fascinated, as his stomach muscles contracted, then released again, the movement gripping his fingers in a momentary vice. “It… I don’t know. It’s…” Baelor found his prize, and he keened. “Fuck-” His back bowed. He scrambled for purchase against Baelor’s chest. “I can’t…” His voice broke. “Brother, please.”

“More or less?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know,” he whined, clenching then releasing again and again. He shuddered as a ragged moan tore from his throat. His fevered forehead cracked into Baelor’s jaw. “I need… I need more. I need it to stop. Gods, I-”

Baelor added a third finger, slick and hot. Maekar wailed. He kicked out at air, writhing. Between them, Baelor could feel the heavy press of his cock against his thigh where he stirred for a second time.

“Please,” he begged. “Please. Please.” His nails raked over Baelor’s chest. “Fuck me. I need you inside me. Please, Baelor. Please.”

“Hush, brother. I will. I will. Roll onto your back, my love.”

Maekar went, and Baelor sat up, fumbling with the jar to slick himself. Whatever dark magic filled that oil, it had his brother moaning and writhing as he lay untouched, clenching around nothing as pleasure wracked his frame.

“You are as fair as any portrait. More lovely than the finest tapestries,” he said, the words spilling from his mouth as he wrapped a hand around himself, spreading slick oil. “Gods, Maekar. I wish you could see yourself. I would keep you like this forever if I could.”

Maekar growled, cracking open a glassy eye. “If you do not touch me now, I will rip off your cock.”

Baelor barked a laugh. There was his beloved brother. Pleasure had not sent him so far into delirium that it removed his bratty insolence. “Far be it for me to keep you waiting, my darling. You promised me a child. I would put one in you.”

He slid home in one, easy thrust. Maekar howled like a bitch in heat, bearing his neck to Baelor’s teeth. He set a brutal pace, spurred on by the pretty sounds his brother kept making, too desperate now to luxuriate in the warmth of Maekar around him. Maekar hooked a leg around his waist, his ankle digging hard into Baelor’s spine.

“Harder,” he said. “Fuck me harder.”

Baelor had never been gladder to do as he was told. He braced himself with one hand on the solid, oak headboard, and wrapped the other around his brother’s poor, abused throat in a tight grip. He drove into him hard and fast, the burn of the oil making his teeth clench and his jaw ache. Maekar keened, then cried, then sobbed. And then, when Baelor all but folded him in half, he began to whine, these small, little sounds Baelor had never heard from him before. They punched from him each time he hit home, driving Baelor wild.

He couldn’t feel how Maekar’s nails raked down his back. He couldn’t feel how badly his thighs and stomach were burning. He knew only those high, rasping whines that filled his ears, the slap of skin on skin, and the tight press of his brother around him, slick and hot.

“I’m not-” Seven hells, that oil burned. “Darling, I’m not going to last much longer.”

Maekar, his eyes closed and his head thrown back, was beyond speech. Baelor took a moment to watch him. Each snap of his hips jerked him backwards, ricocheting through his entire body so violently, he’d braced himself with a hand on the headboard beneath Baelor’s. It was then he became aware that it was smacking hard into the panels behind it, no doubt chipping steadily away at lacquered oak. The crack was muffled somewhat by the tapestry that hung before it, but not so much that any walking past his door wouldn’t know exactly what he was doing in here. And by how loud his brother had become, there would be no doubt as to who Baelor was doing it with.

“I think the whole castle can hear you, my love.”

Maekar only groaned, nails digging into Baelor’s shoulders. “Let them,” he managed eventually, his voice as wrecked as the rest of him. “Let them know who I belong to.”

“Mine,” Baelor told him, tightening his grip around Maekar’s throat to the point it must’ve deprived him of air in earnest. “You are mine, Maekar. My brother. My blood. My whole heart.”

“Yes.”

He pushed himself upright a little more, bringing his hand from the headboard to his brother’s stomach, imagining for a moment that he could feel how his cock bulged beneath his hand, as it had when they were younger, and Maekar ate so little.

“See how I fill you? How pretty you look on my cock?” The thread of reality he’d held onto so tenuously since he’d first kissed his brother this evening slipped entirely from his grasp. He pressed harder into the skin above Maekar’s womb, nails digging bloody crescents where he gripped him, his fingertips leaving bruises in their wake. “Will you let me breed you, my brother? Will you give me a son? An heir to our birthright. A boy with your hair and my eyes, a perfect blend of us both. And then another, if you’d like. And another. As many children as you could take. As many as I could fuck into you.”

Maekar sobbed, affected by a past that had never been and a future they could never have. He grasped tight to his brother’s forearm, chin lowered to rest on his wrist, breath coming in shallow, difficult puffs where Baelor held him down. He locked their eyes together. “Anything,” he moaned, lost to pleasure himself. Every exhalation was a moan, now, punched from him by the strength of Baelor’s hips hitting his. “Anything, brother. Anything you want.”

Anything Baelor wanted had rapidly narrowed to the peak of his brother’s pleasure, as well as his own. “You’ll know nothing but pleasure. No hardship. No pain. Only me. Only us. Our pleasure. Our joy. Our love.” His rhythm stuttered. He could feel that knot of heat in his abdomen curling tighter and tighter, threatening to snap. He dropped his head, fighting the inevitable. With Maekar so tightly wound around him, he couldn’t hold himself back any longer. “Finish for me, brother. I want to see you.”

Intractable, stubborn Maekar had no issue following this command. Two more brutal thrusts, and he spilled over his stomach untouched, back in a high arc and screaming Baelor’s name. As his climax rocked him, tightening him into a vice, Baelor was hit by the sudden apex of his own pleasure. His vision whitened. His fingers went numb. For a moment, there was nothing but ringing in his ears. And then he crashed back into his own body, limbs buckling, and he collapsed atop his brother in a heap.

They lay together in the aftermath, sweaty and sticky, still joined together as reality trickled back in from the world outside. Maekar’s hand, shaking something terrible, came up to lay on the back of Baelor’s head, just at the nape of his neck. Baelor turned his head into his brother’s chest in turn, kissing where he’d bitten so cruelly earlier.

“Do you think it worked?”

Maekar laughed, reedy and thin. Baelor wagered he’d worn his voice out moaning so loudly, though his own throat felt no less abused. “I suppose we must wait a few months to find out.”

He snorted into his brother’s chest, easing himself out of him before settling back down. “Best we keep trying, then. In case it didn’t take.” Still, as the haze of lust drained away, Baelor couldn’t help but frown. “I’ve made a right mess of you.”

“I enjoyed it,” Maekar said. He began to card his fingers through Baelor’s hair, petting him like a dog. “Who knew the great Baelor Targaryen had a taste for human flesh.”

“Only yours, dearest one.”

Maekar hummed. To Baelor’s ears, it sounded pleased. “You’d best hope no one need pry me from my armour, tomorrow, else poor Lord Ashford’s Maester may think a savage beast has ravaged me.”

“If a dragon is savage,” Baelor said, then processed his brother’s words in their entirety. “Nothing will harm you tomorrow, brother. And if you are hurt, my Maester will tend to you. Not these…”

“Backwater brutes?” Maekar offered, only halfway jesting. Baelor bit him again, right where a dark bruise bloomed, and he yowled. “Ow! Bastard, I take it back. You are a brute. And a savage. Get off me, you lout.”

Baelor laughed. He couldn’t help himself. “I may be so, my darling. But I am your brute.”

“You are my brother. I am bound by sacred oath to love you.”

“Yes,” Baelor agreed happily. “Just as I am bound to love you. Forever. Truly and deeply. From this day, until the end of my days.”

“Shut up,” Maekar scoffed. He shooed Baelor until they were rearranged under the sheets, Baelor’s head still pillowed on his chest. “Go to sleep now, will you? I’ve a stupid trial to fight later.”

Baelor smiled and settled atop him, tangling their legs together. Maekar’s heart beat in a steady thump beneath his ear, the sweetest of lullabies. “Good night, dear brother.”

“Goodnight, you idiot.”

He was asleep before he could laugh.

Notes:

Never in my entire life have I written something this filthy, but when the muse calls, I must obey. Or something. Idk. Anyway, I enjoyed writing this, even if I'm a bit rusty at writing smut. Let me know what you think! ❤️

There's a second part to this sitting on my hard drive that's post-Trial, so let me know if ya'll want to see it.