Chapter Text
At first, Duncan had thought it was a joke.
A final, distasteful joke on the omega that nearly beat his face in and forced his cuirass to bend from the force of which Duncan had pressed his knees in, pinning the alpha in place.
It had only been when Aerion stared at him expectantly with the one violet eye that could still open, that Duncan had realized it wasn’t a joke. “Well?” Aerion demanded. “Won’t you answer your Prince?”
Egg was right, Duncan thought grimly. I should have killed you. Broke your head in and split you open like an overripe melon.
But the trial was over. No Prince Maekar to clout his son, too busy at Prince Baelor’s bedside where he’d been taken as soon as the helmet slipped off his broken crown.
No use crying over spilled ale now, Duncan told himself. There only lay an unpleasant crossroads in front of him, and an answer.
Duncan never considered himself to be particularly smart. Ser Arlan’s refrain constantly sounded in his head like a Septon’s bell, thick as a castle wall, slow as an aurochs.
Perhaps if he had been wiser, he would have never attacked a Prince of the blood to begin with. Would have recognized the violet eyes of a Dragon, no matter how baldheaded. Would have never stepped foot into Ashford Tourney in the first place.
Duncan was no wise man. Instead, he made the only choice that seemed reasonable and would spare him another Morningstar to the head.
“If it pleases you,” the words tasted like ash in Duncan’s mouth but he still forced himself to smile. The cut on the side of his brow twinged and broke open again, dribbling a drop of blood down his face. “My Prince.”
Aerion smiled back, like the baring of teeth. “It does. The wedding will happen on the morrow,” he said casually, as if Duncan’s world, his freedom wasn’t crumbling down around his feet. “We can’t delay our return to Summerhall, now can we?”
Duncan didn’t answer and Aerion shuffled past him, limping from where Duncan had nearly broken his leg clean in half.
Only one thought went through his mind, quick and bold like a flash of lightening.
I’m going to make you wish you were dead.
The Wedding Feast.
Duncan tore into a chicken leg with the ferocity of a hound who hadn’t eaten in several days. All this to say, not very prettily. Beside him, his husband, and wasn’t that just a queer word, eyed him with an expression that could be politely called disdain. As it were, Duncan chewed faster, swallowed, and burped.
Not so fun now, is it? Duncan thought maliciously. Marrying the Fleabottom Hedge Knight.
He smiled down at Aerion with a sweetness he didn’t feel. “Is something wrong, husband?” He asked, blinking in a way that made him feel distinctly foolish. He’d seen it in the whores passing by in Ashford, the way they rounded their gazes and batted their lashes.
Aerion seemed to turn something in his head. He didn’t say anything for the longest time, simply considering him with unblinking violet eyes. Suddenly, the disgust melted away and Duncan’s hackles immediately rose. Something changed, he thought. He’s realized something.
“No,” Aerion finally said smoothly. He smiled back though it was hardly kind. “Nothing at all.”
Duncan viciously tore into another drumstick. A piece of meat splattered onto Aerion’s plate. The alpha eyed it with revulsion and pushed the plate aside.
Duncan beamed. There still might be hope after all.
Of course, there was one part of weddings that Duncan had almost forgotten. It was when the torches dimmed low and the food was mostly eaten that he remembered.
“It’s time, Ser,” Donnel Duskdale said, appearing at his side with a gait not quite recovered, and already tugging at Duncan’s arm. He nearly snapped his teeth, if not for a group of omegas already giggling and swarming Aerion, who seemed to have expected their presence.
Aw shite. Duncan had seen a noble wedding only once - the bride had been carted off squealing and laughing by a handsy group of alphas loyal to their lord, and the groom by the bride’s handmaidens.
Unlike that bride, Duncan felt no such inclination to laugh. “I’ll knock yer fucking teeth out if you don’t let go,” he told the white-cloaked alpha firmly and raised his meaty hand threateningly. The alpha immediately raised his hands and backed up a step.
“No need to bloody an alpha for helping,” he said. “And I’ve been given orders to carry you to the bedding chamber.”
Duncan bared his teeth. “I can walk.”
He stood, looming over Donnel and all the other alphas who had somehow lingered close. Even Prince Valarr, though his face had a sour expression to it, like he found the entire thing distasteful. Aerion was already being tugged out of his chair and led down the hallway, undressed by soft hands with sweetly scented omegas crooning and cooing at how handsome he looked.
Duncan was no such pretty beast. Still, tradition bade him to reluctantly shed his worn green tunic, and beneath it, his under tunic which had seen better days.
An alpha whistled in the back to uproarious laughter. He stiffened, fighting the urge to lunge at the crowd and see who laughed next. “Lead the way, Ser,” he told Donnel stiffly, holding the clothes close to his chest like it might protect his chastity.
The bed chamber had been prepared graciously by the Lord Ashford. It was perhaps, hardly grand for a Targaryen prince, but it was better, larger than any room Duncan had ever seen before, lit with torchlight and beautiful silken tapestries. And of course, the bed - a white sheet had been placed in the middle, and Aerion himself lay atop it nude, waiting for him with lazy confidence.
“You’re still dressed,” he drawled. The omegas tittered.
Duncan stiffened. “Took my tunic off, didn’t I?” He asked defensively.
Aerion smiled. “Don’t be shy, now.” He leaned up on his elbows, cock heavy against his thigh. “You should be familiar with the feeling by now. Crawling on top of me. You had no such compulsions during the Trial.”
Duncan’s ears went red and his tongue went thick and heavy in his mouth. “I - you,” He growled finally in frustration. I should have beat your face in, he thought grimly for the nth time. Should have crushed you like the prissy little thing you are.
Aerion seemed to have read his thoughts because his smile went wider. “Too late for regrets,” he told him. “Come. Undress.”
Duncan grimaced. He pulled off his hose and then, reluctantly, his braies, blushing harder when a few alphas peeked through the door and made a yowling sound, like a cat in heat.
“Shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you!” He said, raising his fist. The alphas just as quick scattered and then regrouped when it was clear he wasn’t going to chase them.
Aerion seemed to have initially found amusement in his embarrassment but now he seemed much more interested now in raking his heated gaze up and down his body, cataloging the bruises and cuts he himself made during the Trial.
“Leave us,” Aerion finally demanded, and the crowd obeyed, although not without a few bawdy japes and leering grins. Blessedly, no one had groped him, although he was sure a few would have tried if he hadn’t threatened to beat faces in. The door closed behind them with a finality Duncan did not like.
Duncan stood, trying not to shiver as Aerion finally deigned to stand, the bed creaking under him as he got up.
“You looked much bigger with your armor,” Aerion commented, and his hand trailed down his belly where it still held a cut from where Aerion had dug into him. “Although, I suppose you’re still quite big without it.”
The hand trailed lower. Duncan gritted his teeth as his fingers, warm for someone so cold-hearted, traced the divot of his hip. “So I’ve been told so before, my Prince,” he said coolly.
“Husband,” Aerion corrected him. “I did so like it when you called me that at the wedding feast. I’d like to hear it again.”
Duncan kept his mouth stubbornly shut. He wouldn’t so much as give him the satisfaction.
Strangely enough, Aerion seemed amused by the disobedience, as if he were a misbehaving palfrey. He didn’t comment, just kept his steady exploration downward. Duncan’s breath hitched, his heart thumping hard as it all began to sink in exactly where this was going.
“Lay down,” Aerion finally said, dropping his hand. The place where his hands once lay felt cold now. Duncan told himself he was just imagining it. “I don’t care much to keep on having to break my neck to look at you.”
Reluctantly, Duncan lay down on the bed. It creaked ominously under his weight. He wasn’t sure how to position himself, wasn’t sure of anything really.
The old man hadn’t explained much, aside from telling him to keep his pants up and make sure no one sniffed him, and the whores he’d asked once in an unusual fit of bravery had just giggled at him and told him kindly he’d find out when he was much more grown. Well now he was grown and he wasn’t quite sure what to do.
Aerion crawled atop of him, eyeing him with the sort of gaze that better belonged on a conqueror than an alpha he’d beaten silly not even a few days prior. “Don’t look so nervous,” he chided, leaning down to mouth at his jaw. Duncan shivered, and something in his belly tightened at the sensation. “I could hardly be your first.”
Duncan opened his mouth than thought better of it - clamping his lips shut. The motion caught Aerion’s eye and he looked delighted. “Am I?” He asked, leaning closer. His breath wafted against his cheek. “Your first?”
“N-No,” Duncan stammered. He hoped his ears didn’t give him away.
Aerion just grinned. “Liar.”
He couldn’t help a low whimper as Aerion kissed at his chest, mouthing at his teats, his hands tightening on his hips.
“Has anyone told you,” His hips thrust helplessly once against the firm press of Aerion’s body before stilling, embarrassed by half at how easily his body gave way to the alpha’s ministrations. “You have the sweet eyes of a very pretty whore.”
Gods, would this alpha never shut the fuck up? Whatever pleasure Duncan felt immediately receded and was replaced by irritation. No omega liked being called a whore, especially not Duncan.
He reached down with a trembling hand to tangle it into silver-gold locks, pressing the alpha up for a mouth bruising kiss. Aerion took to it passionately, his teeth nipping at Duncan’s lips.
When Duncan finally allowed Aerion to lean back, he spoke up breathlessly. “Please stop talking,” Duncan told him seriously, raising himself up on his elbows. “This feels so much better when you stop talking.”
Aerion looked deeply offended. Before he could speak and call Duncan something equally insulting that would have the omega punching the alpha’s lights out in the marital bed, he kissed him again.
Blessedly, there were no more words after that.
A few days later, Duncan had conferred with the only omega he knew in Ashford that wouldn’t laugh at him. Or well - much.
Red - “It’s Rowan Fossoway now,” she primly corrected him, smiling in that lazy way that usually had alpha husbands perking up and omega wives bristling - had laughed only for a few minutes before she heard his request out seriously.
“Now why in the Gods’ green earth would you want to be set aside?” She finally asked, tilting her head in a way that made her look distinctly catlike. “Most omegas kill for this sort of thing, you know. Many omegas have killed for that sort of thing - you hear that sort of shite in songs all the time.”
“I’m a knight,” he hissed back. “And he’s been treating me like some kind of - some kind of wife!”
“A hedge knight,” she drawled. “Which honestly speaking is barely a knight at all. At least as a wife, they’d have to make you some sort of household knight. Keep you close and all that.”
He supposed that was true, but dread lingered in his mind, for all that it wasn’t much good for thinking. “What if he doesn’t let me continue?” Duncan said quietly. “He could. He’s my lord husband now. He could command me to keep to home and hearth, to never lift a sword again.”
Rowan’s face softened, the same way it did when he first met her and said with a trembling voice, I’m only asking for a bit of help.
“Alright,” she finally said. “I’ll help you but only if you keep me and mine out of it.”
Duncan nodded furiously. He would keep his mouth shut even if they pulled his fingernails out.
He really hoped they didn’t pull his fingernails out. It seemed like it would make holding a sword awfully hard.
The first step, Rowan told him, was moon tea, lots of it. “You can’t get a court maester to brew it,” she told him. “They’ll be watching you, most likely. No, you’ll have to find your own man to brew it or something of the like. Plenty of whores in Kings Landing who drink it, that’s for sure. For now, you can take what I’ve got.”
Duncan had taken the glass bottles gingerly in his large hands. They would last him a few moons, so long as Aerion wasn’t too amorous. He nodded, slipping them carefully into his awaiting bag.
“Second,” Rowan said with the knowing voice of a seasoned whore. “Alphas hate it when omegas are clingy. Absolutely abhor it.”
“Do they?” That surprised him, but he supposed he didn’t know enough about what an alpha liked or disliked to refute the claim. “Like… like hugging?”
“Among other things,” she said. “Hugging their arm when they want to go hunting, whining when they’re busy with their ale or their papers, not letting them out of your sight in a fit of jealousy. That sort of thing.”
“Does that really work?” Duncan asked curiously.
“Certainly,” Rowan told him. “Seen it happen without fail to plenty of wives. That’s why their husbands come to me, ain’t it?”
That was true - if anyone knew the temperaments of husbands and how to drive them into her arms, it would be Rowan. Duncan nodded decisively. “Alright. Anything else?”
“Be demanding,” she added, smiling when he grimaced. “Alphas hate it when their wives are high-maintenance. Ask for silver and gold rings, imported furs, the works.”
He tried to imagine himself storming up to Aerion and demanding a fur, and couldn’t see it. He had barely mustered up the courage to speak to the gamekeeper when he’d first arrived at Ashford Tourney.
“You’re going to have to look the part soon enough anyways,” Rowan said breezily, leaning back on velvet cushions. She seemed to have caught his unease. “Might as well get some nice silks, a gold cuff or two, and the alpha out of your hair while you’re at it.”
Again, a frighteningly good point. “I’ll try,” he finally answered when she looked at him expectantly.
“Good lad,” she said, patting him on his broad shoulder. “Now go drive that white-haired bastard miserable.”
The Noble.
Duncan started his marriage plot with an unsuspecting noble who had come to pay his respects to the newly wedded couple. In hindsight, the choice to involve the lord may have been in poor taste, considering the alpha had opened his hall to the Targaryen household and large retinue on the very long journey to Summerhall. But Duncan had been desperate and Aerion pleasant enough, especially with his father still looming and obviously displeased.
The noble had been quick to turn talk to taxes and grain stores and all the things that made Duncan’s head spin.
So he spoke plainly, as was his usual way. “I believe my husband to think me hideous.”
Aerion looked at him like he’d just smacked him over the head with a stick. The expression just as quickly smoothed. “I,” Aerion said slowly. “Do not.”
“You do,” Duncan insisted. “You said I was a big lumbering oaf.”
“You are a big lumbering oaf,” Aerion replied sharply. “I did not say you were hideous.”
“That’s basically the same thing, ain’t it?”
“We can talk about this later.” Those words sounded distinctly ominous.
“I want to talk about it now,” Duncan told him then beamed brightly at the noble who looked distinctly off-footed. “Ser, tell me, do I look hideous to you?”
“I-I,” his eyes looked at Aerion helplessly. His husband offered no quarter on that end. “No?”
Duncan cooed. “That’s so kind of you to say, Ser,” he said and risked a pat to the other’s arm. Aerion’s fingers twitched. “Much kinder than my husband, that’s for certain.”
Those eyes darted back to said husband. “I’m sure your lord husband is simply… shy,” he finally settled on saying. Duncan nearly burst out laughing but refrained last minute. “As most newly wedded alphas are about such things.”
Duncan gasped. “I’ve never thought about such a thing.” He looked at Aerion. “I didn’t know you were shy!”
The noble looked like he wanted the ground to swallow him whole.
“I did not seem to think myself as such either,” Aerion said silkily. “What an… interesting observation you’ve made.”
“I meant no disrespect, my Prince,” the noble said quickly. “I only meant - well, as a once newly married alpha myself-“ He mopped at his forehead with a silken sleeve nervously. “No disrespect, my Prince, none at all!”
The more the older alpha stammered, the more displeased his husband seemed to get. Finally his irritation seemed to have hit its peak because he kissed his teeth. “Very well, you meant no disrespect, now fuck off with you,” he said in a manner that reminded Duncan very much of how he’d first met his father-in-law.
The noble just as quickly scampered away and all of Aerion’s not inconsiderable attention was on him. “And exactly what game do you think you are playing?” He asked slowly, as though Duncan would miss a word if he spoke too fast.
Keep your nerve. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he lied. Aerion’s eyes slitted, like he could practically smell the falsehood.
There was a long trailing silence, but blessedly, strangely, Aerion didn’t press. He just looked. “I never said you were hideous,” he repeated, as if it mattered.
Duncan opened his mouth. Closed it. How did one respond to that?
”I see,” he settled on saying dumbly. Aerion’s lips quirked up once before it flattened once more.
”Go back to our chambers,” Aerion commanded, already turning in place and walking to where the lord had already disappeared. “See yourself undressed. I desire to have you tonight.”
Duncan’s face went bright red at the proclamation. Gods, did anyone hear that? He looked around surreptitiously and earnestly hoped not.
Aerion kept speaking. “In the meanwhile, I will find our gracious host… no doubt he’ll report the account to my father,” he talked to himself in his usual graceless way, but Duncan merely paled.
He’d forgotten about Maekar. Shite.
The failure had stung more than his hips the next morning. The moon tea tasted just as bitter.
The Great Hound.
One of the first things Duncan did upon his arrival to Summerhall was request the Kennel Master for a dog. Not a small, biddable thing, like the ones young noble omegas held as they conversed, nor the hunting dogs made for bringing down stag or boar.
No. He wanted a companion, and ideally, a thorn in Aerion’s side.
The dog he received was a big, gigantic slobbery hound that liked to leap up atop the bed, no matter what anyone did to chase it away. She was a solid girl, sturdy tail thumping against the sheets at all manner of night, and during the day, running around the Keep wreaking all sorts of havoc with the privileges only a dog of a Prince’s wife could get.
She also, as Duncan was pleased to note, absolutely adored Aerion.
Aerion, as a matter of speaking, did not adore her back.
It didn’t stop the hound from chasing after him, placing its big head atop his knee when he sat and rising on its hind paws to lick at his chin when he stood. Aerion had shoved at her head many a time, elegant features rearranging in disgust.
”I will send the Kennel Master for a new dog,” Aerion told him once after he’d changed his doublet for the nth time. The last had been stained with drool and the one before that, with muddied paw prints. “Not this awful creature.”
Duncan gasped. “Absolutely not!” He rubbed at her big ears, smiling when her tail whipped at Aerion’s shins. “I love her!”
Aerion sniffed, stepping aside to avoid the next whack of her tail. “She is ill-trained. How the Kennel Master thought this was a suitable beast for a wife of a Prince is beyond me.”
”She’s not ill-trained!” She was. “She simply has spirit!”
”The Kennel Master will come for her tomorrow,” Aerion told him. “And he will bring a selection more suitable than this… thing.”
Duncan’s heart pounded and he clutched the dog tight. She whined in his arms, pawing at the crook of his elbow. “No!” He said. “If you get rid of her, I’ll take to another room!”
Aerion froze. The silence was thick in the room, like a fog rolling into a marshy bank.
That was good, wasn’t it? Duncan thought nervously, waiting for Aerion to speak again, to tell him to begone from his sight with dog in hand. If he wants to be rid of the dog, he’ll have to be rid of me too.
”Why are you so insistent upon this creature?” Aerion finally asked. Duncan blinked, trying to get the slow gears of his head to work.
”She - uh,” Fuck, he was blanking. “Reminds me of my old mare. Sweetfoot.”
Aerion looked at the dog who was now trying to wriggle out from Duncan’s grasp. “Sweetfoot,” he repeated, as though he was trying to figure out whether he’d heard correctly. “The dog reminds you of your mare, Sweetfoot.”
”Yes,” he said seriously. “I miss her. They have the same eyes.”
“Right.” Aerion sighed, running his bejeweled hand through his hair. “Of course they do.” He seemed to contemplate something. “As it seems you’re so damn insistent upon keeping the damn thing, I will allow it.”
Duncan’s heart dropped. “O-Oh?” He stammered. This wasn’t going to plan. “How gracious of you, husband.”
”I will still send for the Kennel Master tomorrow,” Aerion added. “It is still an ill-mannered creature and I won’t consent to having it run around wreaking havoc throughout Summerhall.”
Damn it all. “Right.”
Then, apropos of nothing - “Whatever did happen to that mare of yours?”
Duncan blinked. “The mare?”
“Sweetfoot,” Aerion reminded him patiently, though he said the name like it was something foul. “What happened to it?”
”Oh.” He didn’t like thinking of it too much, of the broken promise he’d made by that fence. She was still out there in Ashford no doubt, in a field, toiling under a patient hand. “I sold her for my first set of armor during the tourney. I was planning on purchasing her back with any ransom I’d won, but…”
The trial. The marriage.
Many of Duncan’s dreams never came to fruition. It was just the way of things for men like him. He trailed off and shrugged.
Aerion hummed. He didn’t say anything more, but neither did he press Duncan to send the hound away.
Two months later, the Stable Master requested his presence. In a stall, meant for purebreds with long sturdy legs, stood his mare, chewing on an apple like she’d never left.
Duncan wept against her mane, and some hardened, wary part of him softened. From a walkway with a view into the stables, violet eyes watched him.
He looked up just in time to see the slow curl of lips before the alpha disappeared back into the halls.
The Alley Cat.
Duncan started to walk into meetings with the audacity of an alley cat that had never been told no.
And quite frankly, he was starting to wish someone would tell him no.
”Husband,” he said, walking briskly into the hall where Aerion was conversing in low tones with his father. Duncan girded his loins when Maekar shot him a blood-curdling look. “I have urgent need of something.”
”First the hound” Aerion drawled. “Then the mare. What is it my mate desires this time?”
Be demanding, Rowan had told him. Silver and gold rings, imported furs.
He swallowed thickly. “I would like some clothes,” he said, ignoring the way Maekar’s stare bored into him. “All the clothes I own do not suit for court.”
Aerion blinked. Then smiled. “Finally,” he said, as if the words pleased him. “Something reasonable.”
Gods damn it all.
“Why are you indulging this…” Maekar’s sneer deepened. Duncan tried very hard not to look. “Miscreant.”
“That miscreant is your goodson now,” Aerion said amused. “And he is correct. He should be well-dressed, should he not?”
”Tch.” Maekar eyed him like something crawled out of a refuse heap. “One can dress an ox, but it will still never be a dragon.”
Duncan told himself this was good - one less person to argue against the inevitable annulment. It still stung, but he was used to swatting off such things, like a horse’s tail swinging off gnats in summertime. Aerion seemed to find it much less amusing, frowning at his father.
“Father,” Aerion said quietly, a warning and a promise in one. They both looked at each other, two dragons sizing the other up.
Duncan looked between them, wondering exactly what was going on.
Maekar huffed first. “If I knew marriage would have tempered you,” he said gruffly. “I would have arranged something for you a long time ago and saved myself the grief.”
Aerion’s lips twitched. “You could have tried,” he allowed. “But no, marriage isn’t the reason.”
Maekar looked back at Duncan and the omega expected his gaze to find him wanting. It looked strangely grateful instead. “Do as you wish,” he finally said to his son.
”I was going to do it regardless,” Aerion told him loftily, only to receive a cuff for his troubles.
”We can finish our discussion later,” Maekar said, nodding meaningfully to Duncan. “Attend to your wife.”
Maekar gave Duncan one more searching look before he strode off, his steps ringing through the halls yellowed with sunlight.
”Here.”
Duncan blinked when Aerion grasped his hand, lifting it to place a golden signet ring into his calloused palm. It was a heavy little thing despite being barely big enough to fit around the first knuckle of Duncan’s pinky, and emblazoned with the Targaryen sigil.
”I will send the merchants to your quarters,” Aerion told him. “Order whatever you’d like with my sigil. They will know what to do.”
Duncan swallowed thickly. He looked down at Aerion beneath his lashes. “What if I buy a fur?” He asked him seriously.
”Then you have a fur.”
”Or a gold bangle.”
”Then you have a gold bangle.”
”Silk,” Duncan tried. “Velvet.”
Aerion looked at him, a little bemused. “Do you think your lord husband to be a pauper?” He asked, and closed Duncan’s slack fingers around the ring. “You must show me what you purchase. I do enjoy a good show.”
Duncan flushed to the sound of Aerion’s echoing laughter.
Damn the alpha. Damn him all to hell.
One Hundred Days.
“It has been a long while,” said Baelor, blessed Prince Baelor, whole and hale in the solar like he’d always been there. “I meant to arrive sooner to offer my congratulations to your union, but matters of the realm never cease.”
He immediately knelt, not daring to raise his head. While he ran mischief with his husband and his kin, he would do no such thing to Baelor, the alpha who’d put limb and life on the line for his own.
”Your Grace,” he said breathlessly. I’m your man, he’d vowed in that muddied Ashford field. It had never come to fruition, but he still felt that loyalty swell deep in his heart. “I’m glad to see you well.”
”Rise.” A gentle hand touched his shoulder and he dared a peek to see a gentle smile bestowed upon him. “You need not be so formal with me. We are family now, are we not?”
He swallowed. “Aye.” And slowly, reluctantly rose. “Your Grace, I-“ What could he say that could possibly convey the depth of his gratitude? His devotion? “Thank you,” he finally said. “For what you did for me that day.”
”I should be the one thanking you,” Baelor told him. “And offering you an apology from our House.”
An apology? He blinked. “I don’t know what you mean, your Grace. What is there to apologize for?”
”My son spoke to me once I woke from my sick bed,” Baelor said. His dark ring glinted in the light as he twisted it, thinking of his next words like a game of Cyvasse. “He told me of your wedding. He said…” His mismatched eyes went away here, as if remembering the very words. “You had bared your teeth at the crowd.”
Duncan could still feel the eyes on him, his cheeks red with the humiliation of it all. A mummer’s wedding on the eve of what should have been a victory.
”Valarr is a good son, a good alpha.” Baelor walked to a waiting chair, sitting with a low groan. It seemed he hadn’t fully recovered from his wounds. “But even good men falter. He confessed to me that he did not interfere. Let them burn each other, he said.”
”I do not blame him, your Grace,” Duncan said. “If that be your meaning.”
”You’re kind,” Baelor told him. “Kinder than most would be in your position. It does not change the fact that our family has shamed you.”
”I have not been shamed.” And most strangely, he hadn’t. Aerion had kept to his vows despite Duncan’s best attempts to push him away. “My lord husband treats me well.”
Baelor smiled. “And yet, here you are attempting to be rid of him,” he said plainly.
Duncan stiffened. Looked away, the tips of his ears turning damningly red. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, your Grace.”
“Do you, now.” Baelor seemed to have found sitting more tedious than standing because he stood again slowly, nearly wobbling in the motion. Duncan lurched forward, catching him neatly when he stumbled. “Ah, thank you, Ser Duncan.”
“T’was nothing,” he said, releasing him only when he thought he could manage on his own. “Should you be standing right now, your Grace?”
“I will manage,” Baelor replied, straightening up gingerly as if the very motion caused him pain. “As I have done before.”
“Aye, your Grace.” Duncan stood restlessly, waiting for Baelor to speak his thoughts. He wouldn’t rush him for the world, but he did hope the young Prince would speak plainly.
“You did not come to me.”
“Your Grace?”
“With a request for an annulment,” Baelor said patiently. “Why?”
Duncan blinked. Opened his mouth and closed it. Why indeed? “I didn’t know I could,” he finally said truthfully. “I just knew my lord husband could put me aside, if he willed it. Wasn’t sure of much else.”
“I see.” Baelor watched him carefully. He seemed to be searching for something, but Duncan wasn’t sure what. “Do you wish for an annulment, Ser Duncan?”
Yes. It was on the tip of his tongue - all he needed to do was say it. His throat bobbed.
He wasn’t meant for much thinking, he knew that much. He usually followed the orders of better men, and when that failed, his instincts. There was no order given here, and his instincts warred with each other for reasons he couldn’t quite understand.
“I don’t know,” he finally confessed. “He’s like a wild fire, my husband, but sometimes he’ll bank like a hearth fire and I’ll wonder how I ever thought to be afraid of being burned.”
Baelor watched him still with those endlessly patient mismatched eyes. “You know,” he said. “Aerion used to be quite the glad child once.”
That surprised him. “Was he?”
“He was,” Baelor confirmed. “He adored fishing once. Maekar used to write to me often from Summerhall, complaining endlessly of Aerion running off into the nearby woods with a fishing rod and not a thought to the coin that went into the Maesters teaching him.”
That was… hard to imagine. He tried imagining Aerion as a child and all he could think of was Egg, stubborn, impertinent little Egg with a heart too big for his body.
“What happened?”
Baelor shrugged.
“Who can truly say? By the time I saw Aerion on his twelfth name day, he was already quite the little beast.” He paused, rolling something or the other again in his head as he was wont to do. “His dam had died a few years prior. Maekar had turned hard after she died - harder than he was, anyways.”
It was here that Baelor’s expression hardened, and Duncan could see how such an alpha was named Breakspear. “If you ever decide this union to be a shackle too heavy, a burden too large, there is no shame in it. I will release you from your vows. No one will question your honor in the matter.”
“Won’t they?”
“They won’t,” Baelor told him firmly. “And even if they did, you would stand tall regardless.”
That tore a reluctant smile out of him. “Thank you, your Grace.”
Baelor shook his head. “Uncle,” he corrected. “You may call me Uncle.”
Duncan’s throat tightened inexplicably. He had no family, no pack to speak of. The closest he ever had was Ser Arlan, and even that… he blinked rapidly, his heart suddenly full and aching in his chest. “Aye,” he finally managed to say. His vision blurred and he hadn’t the faintest idea why. “Thank you, uncle.”
By the time Duncan had returned to his chambers, the sun had already begun lowering into the horizon. He had been quite content to speak with Baelor rather than suffer the quiet corners of his room, and it had gladdened his heart to see the older alpha well and hale.
He set about lighting candles across the room, when a voice spoke from a shadowed corner. ”I heard you speak with my uncle.”
Duncan froze. In Aerion’s hands, he played with an empty bottle of moon tea, turning it around in his hands like an old river stone he wasn’t sure he wanted to skip or keep.
He wet his lips. A strange, panicky nervousness overtook him, his vision blackening at the edges like it did during the Trial, when all he could hear was the dying cries of horses and men alike.
But Duncan was no coward. He faced seven and lived, and he would face his husband too.
You should have done this from the start. You never should have let it go on this long, his heart whispered.
”And what would you have me say, my Prince?”
Aerion looked up. His eyes were red-rimmed. “You never meant to stay, did you?”
And that, more than anything, tore the many unspoken words out from his chest, like a pus finally being lanced. “I never expected you to stay.” The truth spilled out from him then, like a torrent of words he wasn’t even sure made rhyme or reason. “You, a Prince of the blood, a Dragon, and you keep on - I got a fucking dog for gods’ sake and you won’t-“
His breath came out in one ragged swoop.
”Why did you marry me?” He asked, suddenly furious. As though Aerion had any right to be hurt. “If not to humiliate me? To own me like a stallion that needed breaking?” The words felt bitter in his mouth. “And you have the audacity to ask me why I never meant to stay. You were always going to leave first, I know it.”
It wasn’t a second longer that the last word left his lips that Aerion surged forward, kissing him fiercely. Duncan could vaguely hear the crack of glass against the floor as Aerion pressed him up against the wall, the stone cool on his back.
When he finally relinquished him, Aerion stared at him with deep violet eyes. “This is me telling you I am never going to leave,” he said and something in it trembled. “And this me, asking you to stay.”
It was no order. No demand to heel.
Duncan could say no. He could break out from Aerion’s grasp right now and run to Baelor’s chambers, ask for an annulment and his royal protection. Baelor would provide it to him, Duncan knew he would.
But Aerion was asking for the first time in his life of something he could have commanded from the start.
It didn’t fix anything. Not how they met, not how they married. But…
He remembered the warm touch of his husband’s hand. I never called you hideous. The way he pressed into him that night like he needed to make Duncan believe it.
The hound, slobbering all over velvet doublets, and Aerion staring at the thing like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her. The way he’d pet regardless when he thought Duncan wasn’t looking, rubbing at her ears or the spot near her collar.
Sweetfoot, his precious mare, with her knobby legs and big hooves, standing in the stall like she’d always been there. The lingering trace of a smile up on the walkway.
The way he’d slipped off his signet, pressing it into his hand. Teasing and sweet in turn, even as Duncan appeared in the most ridiculous of things, as though it never occurred to Aerion that it was silly.
Aerion had been quite the glad child once, Baelor had told him not even a few hours prior.
Duncan had no mind for words and he’d used up what little he had on his tirade from earlier. Instead, he kissed him, as though what was in his heart could be conveyed through his lips, his hands. Aerion met him gladly, hungrily, hands tight as though he could hold him forever.
Maybe he could be glad again, Duncan thought and for once, he didn’t find the idea of forever so frightening.
He simply kissed back harder.