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“Do you care to explain to me why I just witnessed Valarr’s armour being prepared?” Maekar hadn’t knocked before storming into Baelor's chambers, but Baelor had anticipated it. He could have singled out the sound of those loud, obstinate footsteps echoing down the stone hall from amongst the full courtly procession.
“As you have already astutely surmised, brother, it is to prepare it for use.” The obtuse comment brings a slamming of the door that rattles the room and promises further fury, but Baelor requires a few moments' delay to finish his missive. He is sure he shall not get the chance once they truly get into it and there were precautionary measures to set in place before dawn.
“Valarr shall not fight.” Maekar’s jaw sounds tight, clenched, as it does when he is moments from erupting. His shadow falls across Baelor’s desk but Baelor does not look up nor pause the scratching of his quill. “I know he shall not, as I have not asked him and have no intention of asking him, and I am well aware of his father’s thoughts on the matter. So unless the boy has suddenly obtained an extremely recent streak of independence, I am failing to see what the fuck can be occuring here.”
The steady stream of ink pauses at that last remark, a flare of annoyance momentarily disturbing Baelor’s hand, but he simply re-wets the nib and continues. “You are quite correct. Valarr shall not be fighting.”
There’s the creak of floorboards and clink of the various silver and metals on Maekar’s person. Baelor can easily imagine the ways his irritation is presenting itself. “If you mean to have that fucking apple cunt wear the armour of our House--”
“Of course I do not,” Baelor snaps, sparing his brother a look, eyebrow raised in a way that should immediately quell such an ugly thought. Maekar nods in a sharp jerk of acquiescence, accepting he has overstepped.
His countenance is as Baelor had expected and yet not. He cannot have slept in two days at least, and if he had it could only have been brief snatches, and yet he is undiminished, as alive and vibrant as he has ever looked. He’d had the same look of vigor on the battlefield when they were young men, many months into their bloody campaign. Eyes aflame with passion, purpose, and the knowledge of what he could inflict on others. Baelor had never desired anyone as much.
“If you do not wish me to continue to clutch for the meaning behind this fucking bizarre behaviour, you should simply come out with it,” Maekar states curtly. “Or is your desire to see me humiliated in my ignorance too tempting?”
Baelor sighs, signing off the scroll more abruptly than he would have liked, then reaching for the hot wax for a seal. “I do wish you would not be so quick to taking my every action as an intended slight against you, as I would not require even a single finger to list the occasions where that has been so.”
“And yet you keep your council to yourself,” Maekar sneers, “and let me keep my assumptions.”
Baelor tosses the sealed missive aside, sitting back in his chair to properly give Maekar his full attention. He steeples his fingers together like the spire of a sept. “The decision was a recent one, and one I did not wish to disturb your much needed rest with before what you are about to face.”
“Fuck that,” Maekar snaps. “And fuck you. You think I could find rest tonight? You think that was even a passing thought?”
“Still,” Baelor says evenly, “I did not wish to add to your burdens. You have… much that is asked of you.”
“And yet you do add to them!” Maekar’s fist slams down onto the desk, violently disturbing its contents. “What is the fucking armour for?!”
Baelor rights the over-turned ink pot before too much spills, blotting it absently with a stack of unused parchment. “The armour shall be mine to wear,” he states without inflection, rubbing together finger and thumb where the ink had caught him, spreading it rather than the intended removal.
Maekar might have looked less stunned if Baelor had struck him. Baelor is sure he would; he knows the expression Maekar wears when Baelor strikes him and it was not shock.
“But… but we have our numbers…” Maekar's face breaks into a rare smile, inflamed eyes becoming even brighter in the flickering brazier. “You shall take the Fossoway boy’s place! Keep the line of our House strong.”
Baelor finds he cannot look away from the ink stain on his skin. It has embedded itself in the whorls at his fingertips, as though it was intent on seeping beneath to become blood. “No. It is for Ser Duncan I shall be fighting.”
The ensuing silence is thick. Baelor has met a great many unpleasant things unflinchingly and yet this is one he had hoped he would not have to face until its reveal was unavoidable, and Maekar’s feelings of betrayal and anger could be solely focused on him in a way that would aid both their cause. And spare him this.
“Surely you jest,” Maekar says, voice low enough to be a whisper but too coarse to ever be anything so gentle. “Surely you do not intend to stand against your family? Against--” He turns suddenly, pushing off the desk with force. The need for immediate action has always been Maekar’s foil. His heart is always too open and too quick to steer him. Baelor adores him for it as much as it causes him grief.
“It is because of my family that I do this.” Baelor stands too, moving around the desk, not wishing for the imbalance that came from his sitting and Maekar’s standing, both physically and in symbol. “This is not something I do lightly, nor without full consideration. I have agonised over this, brother.”
“Do not speak to me of your agonies!” Maekar whirls on him, stepping forward and jabbing a finger into his chest. “This is no act for the supposed good of our family. No one is asking this of you. There is no need for your oh so noble intervention. I have seen to everything, I have protected us. The boy will find his numbers amongst the rabble. You set yourself apart for nothing!”
“I fancy he shall not,” Baelor says calmly. “Our fortuitous gaining of a lord has no doubt reduced him to six, if that.”
Maekar’s face, if possible, darkens further. “You think I relish such opportunity. A chance to prove my line. Do you truly think I wish for this ancient farce of an execution? That it pleases me that Aerion has forced my hand into the butchering of some fucking idiotic dolt who bloodies a prince over something pretty? Of course it does not! But I would not let such slights against us go unchallenged. If we do, what next? Another rebellion? Another fucking Blackfyre thinking they can challenge us? I would keep us strong. I would keep us united.”
Baelor shakes his head, smoothing a hand down his beard. “That is not the danger here, Maekar. You do not see, you were not present for the grotesquerie of Aerion’s joust. You did not witness the simmer of discontent for the Crown that is already seeded here.”
Maekar scoffs dismissively. “You are basing this off a rowdy crowd at a torney? Are you equally unsettled by fucking in a brothel?”
“Think of it.” Baelor begins to pace, hands clasped behind him, retracing steps he has well worn into the boards these past trying days. “What happens when a green hedge knight in rags is butchered by our hand or cannot muster the numbers and is executed without trial? Or if one of his volunteer Knights from a House of actual renown is felled for his cause? All for protecting an innocent, a foolish one, yes, but an innocent nevertheless, who has been entertaining the masses for days now. Ashford tells me their troupe is a staple here, well liked and well known. Who shall be remembered as the injured party by the smallfolk? Even” -- Baelor adds pointedly, anticipating Maekar’s impending interruption -- “even if Aerion was indeed slighted. And the honour of a wooden dragon besmirched.”
“So the answer is to undermine our House?” Maekar demands, incensed. “To stand against us? Create your own skirmish? Fight my children?”
“This spares us from having the matter be about our House. This is about right and wrong, and the perception of true justice being done by a higher authority than even the Crown. Even if the hedge knight falls, no full blame can be placed with us, for it will not be the united front of the Dragon House against one man, it will be the will of the gods.” Baelor pauses his pacing to turn to him, imploring Maekar to understand. “What would resonate more? A show of unwavering strength in peacetime or being seen as the aided vessel for righteousness?”
“You speak so coldly,” Maekar hisses. He has all the appearance of a dog kicked one too many times, its heartbreak turned to retribution, hackles raised. “So easy it is for you to turn your back on your family as long as the outcome is favourable for you. How disposable we are.”
“That is untrue.” Wounded and wishing to soothe, Baelor takes a step towards him but Maekar retreats. His eyes have become red-rimmed and terrible, filled with heated accusations and betrayal.
Both their colouring, Baelor has always thought, is quite the reverse; Maekar was all hot flame and black passion of Dorne while Baelor was the cold, hard silver and quiet, pale moonlight of Valyrian hair.
He stiffens, clenching the hand left half-raised and spurned. “Do you think so little of me, brother?”
“What I think,” Maekar says, voice clipped and concise, “is how this paints you as the victor no matter the outcome. I think of how you have ensured a way for your favour to grow and the people’s adoration for you to go unchallenged. How noble, how superior you will look when compared to your lessers across the field. How brightly you will shine when our blades meet and how dull I shall seem, as it ever was.”
“Never has that been my intention or my will.” Baelor takes another urgent step, reaching for Maekar again but he snatches away. “Never would I slight you to keep favour for myself. I would crawl for you. You know this, you know how much--”
“I know no such thing!” Maekar spits with real venom. Twin tears spill, his face twisted with rage. “You do not love me. There is no love in this.”
“Love? Love?!” Baelor’s voice rises, for the first time in recent memory. “All I am is love for you!” Real, burning anger bleeds right through the well-trained composure; the black ink diluting all the red. The weight of it that has been mounting these past gods' accursed days in this backwater town and its many insufferable trials is finally, finally, too much to bear. He claims a step forwards, daring Maekar to deny him it, body primed with a mounting tension that feels too large for this small, insignificant room.
“Do not dismiss me like I am nothing, that you are nothing. You are my fifth limb. My soul cleaved in two. You think I could so easily forget the love for my very being? My every action is to ensure you are preserved, that we are all preserved. I do not think in days or weeks, of minor slights and grievances. I think in years, in legacies. Years of having you, safe, protected. Of keeping our family whole. We are not invulnerable yet we cannot afford to be anything less. We must remain above reproach, above the pettiness of others. And I shall see it done. For you.” He grabs for Maekar’s wrists again and this time is not denied. He uses his hold to shove him roughly against the wall, their hands trapped and interlocked between them. Again there is no resistance. Maekar’s eyes are wide, almost black in this light, glittering like oil ready for the torch, his lips parted, breathing laboured.
This is far closer to the look he gets when Baelor strikes him.
“You are mine to hurt,” Baelor murmurs, voice lowered but no less impassioned, “mine to keep. Mine alone. There is no circumstance that I would allow us to be threatened by usurpers again, to allow any other to have power over us. I shall do the impossible to ensure this; force the world into something good and worthy and lasting. And if I must do something ugly, something you perceive as cruel and unloveable to aid this result, then so be it. But nevertheless I shall do it. I am the thing that can, I have made myself so. To spare you from ever having to be anything but as you are.”
Maekar swallows thickly, eyes darting across Baelor’s face. Baelor can feel the thundering pulse of blood in the wrists he clutches.
“So, do not say I do not love you.” His breath has also quickened, his blood surging, voice thinner than he would have liked. “Do not dare.”
“Yes,” Maekar breathes and it is nothing but an invocation, a plea. “Yes. Brother.”
Baelor kisses him as there is nothing else to be done. He kisses him thoroughly, deeply, as deep as two people can be merged. Maekar clutches at him equally hard, and it is suddenly as it was when they were boys and sex and sparring was so intertwined on occasion it was unclear where one started and the other ended. The taste of blood, for a long while, was intrinsically tied to the taste of a kiss.
Baelor steers them to the direction of the grand bed at the far end of the room, shedding pieces of clothing in rips and tears as much as unfastening, not willing to part for long enough for competency. Maekar attaches his teeth to the joint of Baelor’s neck now bared to him and they do not reach their destination, instead dropping to the ground to claw at each other like animals, like dragonlings in play, unconcerned with gouging the other.
Maekar pushes him onto his back, planting himself over him. He is large and heavy and strong, and Baelor groans as his arms are held above him, pinned as the rest of him, as Maekar returns to gnawing on his neck, teeth merciless.
He would bleed out here on the floor in bliss, throat torn out from love, and their trial can proceed however the gods now see fit without him.
His wrists are released and he can feel Maekar moving above him, the awkward press of an elbow in his side. Long, slender fingers dip into his mouth that he opens willingly, trying to lick them, swallow them, but they do not stay, using him only as if he were the ink well.
The bite at his neck becomes open mouthed panting, the distracted flickering of a tongue over the deep, lasting impressions of teeth. Baelor’s hands find the wings of his shifting shoulder blades, feeling the motion of where Maekar is twisted back, opening himself up for him.
His head drops back to the hard wood with a deep groan. It spins but not from the impact.
When Maekar rises over him, seated over where Baelor’s heavy cock curves and drips onto his stomach, he takes hold of both his wrists again. His hair falls in his fierce, wet eyes where he gazes down at him.
“Say it again,” he says in the rolling sounds of High Valyrian, voice breaking a little. “Tell me it is all for my love.”
“All for you.” Baelor says without pause, spoken in the language that, too, is only theirs. “My love. Always.”
Maekar rides him how Baelor imagines he would have ridden his dragon, with perfect, rhythmic ease and the starved eagerness of something eternally to prove. The slam of their hips, their echoing gasps and grunts, and the creak of the boards beneath them fill the room. Maekar's jutting cock bounces and weeps between them, urgent and pretty. Baelor wants to touch him as badly as he wants the vice-like grip clamped on his wrists, making him powerless to do so.
Maekar does not last long before he starts to lose himself, neck tipped back, exposing the fang-white column of his neck, glistening with sweat, and the pretty slackness of his mouth that cannot keep silent. Baelor can look nowhere else.
He spills over both their stomachs shortly after, clamping up tight around Baelor’s cock and wrists, hips jerking and bucking, groaning as though in raptures. Baelor allows him the time to unfurl and collapse onto his chest, rubbing his back soothingly until his shuddering ceases.
Then he plants both heels firmly on the floor, wrapping arms tightly around Maekar’s waist, and shifting the stack of their hips into better alignment to allow Baelor to begin fucking up into him with abandon. Maekar’s jolting whines and gasps are sweet in his ear and he is pliant and warming in his arms. An inhuman hunger turns Baelor brutal, makes him take and take, as he can take nothing else for himself, thrusts savage and greedy. Clutching Maekar unyieldingly tight to him, as though he shall lose him sooner than with what dawn brings. He puts his mouth to the throbbing pulse at his neck and tastes the wonderful life found there. All salt, sweetness, and survival. He could weep from it.
He wishes it to last until they must be physically prised apart, but he cannot, not with how tight and warm and welcoming Maekar is for him, how he whines and drools with every sharp slap of their hips, how he can feel the hot pulse of Maekar’s blood on his skin and from within. He grips him impossibly tighter as it overwhelms, and he spills his seed as deep inside of him as he can fit. It feels as momentous as when they had first tumbled into bed, inexperienced but utterly devoted, or when they had lain together the night before their victory at Redgrass, whispering promises of finding each other in the next life and the next, or when Valarr and Matarys had been conceived. He had known then, instinctively, lines were being drawn far beyond him.
They share breath for some time longer, Baelor absently kissing the base of Maekar’s neck where his face is buried, until with some heavy grunting Maekar rolls off him to sprawl beside him on the floorboards. Baelor misses the weight of him immediately, but is pleased to have the full expansion of his chest to drink in much needed air.
He enjoys the stillness of listening to Maekar’s breathing slowly settle and feeling the rise and fall of his own under the palms resting on his stomach. The floor is exceedingly grounding beneath him. It feels like the only peaceful moment they have achieved since their arrival.
“I knew you intended to diminish me.” Baelor turns sharply at the words but finds Maekar grinning lazily at him, lip curled back. “I shall be hobbled upon my horse for the trial.”
Baelor lets out a quiet huff of laughter. “You have ridden perfectly well with worse.”
Maekar hums lethargically. “You made habit of taking me from your cock and placing me on horseback throughout the rebellion.”
Baelor bares his teeth in a grin. “You did get my blood up so, seeing you resplendent in armour.”
“I shall be in it on the morrow, when we shall be at odds.”
Baelor nods against the hard wood, smile fading. Their shared sweat is cooling on his skin, along with their drying spend; Maekar’s tacky and matted in the hair on his stomach, his own smeared on his thighs where it had leaked out of Maekar. All things end in some form of discomfort. “Like the war games we played as children.”
“Only the gods bid that now we should aim to kill each other.”
“Have you ever struck at me, brother, and not intended harm?”
Maekar falls quiet at that. He lifts the hand lying between them, arm bent at the elbow, reaching for him, and Baelor clutches it fiercely in his own, fingers linked tightly. The ink is still upon Baelor’s fingertips but it does not transfer. The stain is for him alone.
“Aerion’s joust,” Maekar asks, somewhat hesitantly, “how bad was it?”
Baelor considers this. “Some rocks were thrown… some fruit, I think. The majority aimed at Aerion. The barricade of the grounds fell in the crowd’s surge. The King's Guard intervened to shield him, otherwise I think he would have been lost to it. He had lanced Ser Hardyng’s horse in the neck. I ordered him give him his own.”
“For fuck-- So Aerion does not even have his own mount?!”
Baelor hums in confirmation. “Expect to see Ser Hardyng beside Ser Duncan. The horse was not enough to make up for a ruined leg.”
“You mean beside Ser Duncan and you.”
Baelor says nothing. The Father was indeed cruel in his judgement that he would see them face such a trial in opposition. Perhaps it was retribution of all the false harm they had done to each other over the years for no reason other than to excite. Was it treason to wound a member of the Royal House if it is done willingly and met with great joy? He supposed in a few hours they shall find out.
Maekar releases his hand and sits up with a groaning effort, pushing his silken hair from his eyes, leaving it tousled. Baelor admires him, running a palm across the broad expanse of his muscular back. “Do not hasten to rise, Maekar. I should like to spill inside you again before the light.”
“Later,” Maekar says bluntly, already reaching for his clothes. “It seems we face two options. At dawn, we go out and try to kill each other, or I go and find my idiot son and explain how very stupid he is being and how it would be a very good idea to withdraw his accusation. Ideally before the crowd gathers to spare any further embarrassment.”
Baelor is sitting up in a moment, watching him intently. “You would do this? Could you convince him?”
“Fuck knows. He is as fixated on his foolish ideas of the pride of the dragon as he is pig headed.” Maekar pulls his tunic over his head, rumpling his hair further. “But if we are united in the thought that this is what is best for the future of our House, no doubt I can force him to see reason. Even if I must operate the boy’s mouth to say the words myself.” He scoffs. “A shame all the decent puppeteers no longer have fingers left to aid me.”
“We could compose a statement for Ashford, of further witnesses coming forwards to aid Aerion in seeing the clarity of the matter. A show of the great empathy of the dragon. And a real kidnapper of Aegon can be conjured and privately dealt with, so privately no one need know they are but smoke, so no honour need be lost for Daeron or Aegon either.” Baelor twists his ring on his finger, mind racing, course correcting, finding a dozen new answers and a dozen new paths out of this mess under these new variables. “This… this would be a very fine solution indeed, Maekar, if you can make it so.”
Standing freshly redressed and somehow utterly unrumpled save for his artfully dishevelled hair, Maekar turns to him. “I had better make it so then.” He bends to take Baelor’s chin in his hand and claims a gentle kiss.
“We shall have to find another matter to kill each other over, brother,” he murmurs with a private smile.
Baelor returns it, his heart fluttering like it was a marriage promise. “Yes, I suppose we must.”