Archive of Our Own

Long before Aerion Targaryen ever breaks into his younger brother Aegon’s room to shove a knife down his pants, he tries it on his elder brother Daeron, first.

The thought process had gone something along the lines of how Daeron was older, somehow more important than Aerion despite his drunken demeanour and shabby appearance. It would be something of a conquest, if he could frighten and tame the important beast that was his elder brother. Show dominance, and so forth.

It was only when he was in his elder brother's chambers, knife slipped underneath the sheets and sleep clothes to rest against Daeron’s tanned skin, that he thought to reconsider.

“M‘what?” Daeron murmurs, seemingly apparently disinterested by the cold metal slowly worming its way down his pants.

Aerion narrows his eyes and presses it harder against him. The blade finally catches, and Aerion watches, satisfied, as Daeron jumps to full awareness when he recognises the feeling.

He does it flounderingly, dirty blond hair being pushed out of his mouth with a clumsy hand and pale eyes widening to stare frantically at the unknown assailant. His other hand snaps down to clasp at Aerion’s forearm, with surprising strength, but he doesn’t quite manage to push the blade away entirely from his cock.

It makes Aerion want to smile, yet he does not, knowing even the shadows of the night couldn’t hide the brilliance of it.

Aerion hates his elder brother, more so than he hates any one of his other family members.

The girls are unworthy of even mentioning, Aemon is boring beyond compare, and although Aerion’s favourite pastime is to torment Aegon, it’s borne out of genuine joy at the little prick’s distress.

Daeron, however, is different.

He looks nothing like any one of his brothers, or even their cousins. Aerion can look past dark hair with light streaks like their cousin Valarr or their uncle Rhaegel, can ignore the Dornish colouring of his other uncle Baelor as heir to the Iron Throne, but the dirty blond Daeron doesn’t bother to upkeep irritates him when he sees it amongst the fine silvers his other brothers possess. Daeron’s skin is tanned, like a peasant that has toiled in a field and not a Prince, and his eyes, a pale purple so light they look blue in the day, fill him with dizzying rage.

Daeron is nothing special, visually. He’s a drunk, gaze always drawn to a whore, or his cups, or faraway when he speaks in riddles of dragons dying and red stars falling. He’s a disgrace to the Targaryen name.

And yet… And yet he is still the eldest son (of fourth son, true), and has always been mentioned above Aerion when it counts.

It drives him mad that somehow Daeron in all his uselessness shines brighter than him.

“What is–” Daeron starts to say when the silence stretches too long. Despite his light eyes being wide in awareness, his voice is slurred, still drunk.

Aerion can’t hold back his sneer.

“How useless does one have to be to stay so helpless with a knife to your cock?” he spits, his voice deeper than it usually is, probably on account of the nighttime fueling his braveness. “Truly, I should cut it off, make you a wife instead. It would serve you better as lamp fuel than the indignities you spread against our family name with it.”

Against all odds, Aerion feels the cock under his blade twitch, and slowly begin to harden.

He makes a disgusted face and looks down at his position hovering over his elder brother’s body, in between his thighs and hand shoved down his pants. They’re even under the covers, like Daeron is a shy maiden and Aerion the gallant man to indulge him.

Hm. Almost as interesting as it is compromising.

“Such sweet words for me,” his brother murmurs back, grip relaxing on Aerion’s wrist. “To which brave boy do I owe the pleasure?”

The fucking fool even lies back into the bedsheets once he’s finished speaking, as if unconcerned by the knife and the threat Aerion poses to him.

Then, Aerion narrows his eyes. Daeron does not recognise him, knows nothing but the hand (wrapped around a knife) down his breeches, and the masculine voice murmuring vague threats in his ears.

He takes a moment to be bowled over by the sheer dirtiness of the encounter.

Has his elder brother truly degenerated so far he is comfortable with bedding men as well as women? Does the prospect of a blade pressing hard enough to draw blood against his cock somehow make him harder rather than send him screaming? Daeron does not know it’s his brother threatening him, thinking him a stranger. A male stranger sneaking into his bed and threatening to cut his cock off and bed him.

Aerion withdraws the knife with a shaking hand, suddenly finding himself unmoored and untethered with all the information presented to him.

He goes to stand up, but is grabbed once again by Daeron’s thin fingers.

“Leaving so soon? I am not drunk enough that I don’t recognise a good time offered freely,” he says, and this time, he doesn’t sound slurred or drunk, just like he had said.

Aerion takes a second to stare down at his brother, kneeling between his thighs in a mimicry of bedding him. The darkness hides most of his facial features, but a strip of the moonlight makes its way through the curtain to shine nearby Daeron’s head on his pillow. It reflects off his eyes, making the light purple even paler, almost as if his eyes are white, shining with something unnamable. Aerion, for a second, almost thinks his brother is handsome.

He shakes it off though, and instead uses his knife to stab Daeron in the thigh, just enough to bleed, but not enough for him to need the attention of the Maester’s.

Daeron lets out a small shout, but smothers it with his own hand. Aerion sneers at the way his erection hasn’t flagged at all throughout the conversation.

“Pathetic,” he hisses, before removing himself entirely from the bed and making his way to the hidden passageway within the walls that he had been using to navigate the Keep recently.

As he leaves, he thinks he can hear Daeron mutter the phrase Aerion had unwittingly revealed earlier, about ‘their’ family name. He ignores it, continuing to turn tail and run. Even a dragon knows when to cut its losses.

The next day finds Aerion in the private luncheon hall alongside the rest of his siblings and uncles and cousins for their monthly luncheon their grandsire, the King, hosts.

Often they do not have to attend, considering their whole family has been essentially banished to Summerhall, but whenever they are in the Keep, they find themselves here.

Usually, Aerion does his best to not attend. His father usually lets him get away with it too, giving into every one of Aerion’s demands with ease, based on some softness for the similar features Aerion shares with his late mother Dyanna that his siblings don’t have.

But this morning his father had dragged him there with one hand, and the other on his sword as warning. Muttering something about how Aegon, the prick, was coming down with something so Aerion had to show up to preserve face.

His father Maekar is a prideful man, for a fourth son, Aerion often thinks. All about appearances, coming to extended family events with his four sons if possible and obedient daughters, as if having so many children that look exactly like typical Targaryens will hide the fact he’s a widower and weaker than the rest of his Martell-appearing brothers with their definitely alive wives.

For that, Maekar is a fool. King Daeron won’t respect him any more than his other children because he continued the dynasty. If anything, he’s probably thinking of ways to send Daella, Aegon, and Rhae away so they cannot threaten Baelor or his son’s eventual reign.

The luncheon itself is nothing special, with the typical giant roast with Dornish side dishes scattered around a large table in memory of the late Queen Myriah. His uncle Baelor and his sons sit right at the top of the table next to King Daeron, his other uncles Aerys and Rhaegel on opposite sides of the table, Aerys with his head buried in one of those damn books and Rhaegel being bullied by his wife into acting like an acceptable member of the royal family. Aerion himself is sat beside his father, who is stone-facedly trying to ignore his nephew and niece Aelor and Aelora on the other side of him as they try to steal the last piece of roast from his plate. Across from Aerion is his sisters, Daella and Rhae, heads bowed as they talk to each other quietly, Aemon pretending as if he isn’t listening intently from beside them.

What he’s been trying to ignore at the opposite end of the table from the King and to Aerion’s right, facing the old man as best as he can with four cups of wine already downed in ten minutes, is Aerion’s older brother Daeron.

He would laugh at the pathetic display of his brother, but knowing it would only irritate his father further, wisely keeps his mouth shut. He refuses to think himself cowed from their encounter last night.

The King, apparently having enough of the idiocy at not even noon, clicks his tongue.

The table falls silent.

Maekar moves to stand up, as if to discipline his son at the unspoken direction of his father, but is stopped by Aerion wrenching himself into a standing position first.

It draws a raised eyebrow from his father, but a glint of approval shines in his eyes. Aerion basks in it, knowing he only gains the privilege of tormenting others because his father is sick in the head with grief and can only see him as perfect.

Unfortunately, he has to actually do something to upkeep that image every now and again. Like now, for instance.

Aerion smiles at the King, and moves away from his seat to slip behind his elder brother and put a hand on his shoulder threateningly.

“Your Grace,” he starts, keeping himself steady. “May my brother and I be excused?”

He doesn’t bother trying to lie about an event they have to attend together to make their departure more believable. Aerion is an excellent liar, which means he won’t bother to give a weak one. An omission is oft better than a shoddily thought out lie.

The King clicks his tongue again, eyeing them with those toad-like purples of his, before waving a hand in acquiescence.

He turns back to Baelor and starts rambling about some tax or other. Taking the cue for what it is, everyone else at the table, sans Aerion’s direct family, return to their own conversations as well, as if the interaction never happened at all.

It rankles Aerion’s pride, knowing that they’re so low on the line of succession that two Princes can walk out of a family luncheon without a hint of an excuse. He ducks his head to hide the vicious glare he sends the old bastard’s way for the disrespect. Aerion hopes he dies miserably.

Daeron, seemingly already well on his way to being drunk, doesn’t make a sound when Aerion’s grip turns bruising and he drags him out of the room and down the quiet corridors of the Keep.

When he finds a private room he knows they won’t be disturbed in, he shoves the moron through it and slams him into a wall when he’s sure they’re alone.

Daeron lets out a weak cry when his head connects heavily with the stone details on the wall, eyes scrunched up and hands coming up to touch the back of his head.

Aerion presses himself forward, seething with rage, caging his elder brother against the wall. He notes absently that despite the two year age gap, they’re the same height.

But Daeron is scrawny and thin for an eighteen-year-old, drawn from his past wanderings and the way he’s been drowning in his cups since he was twelve. Aerion, at sixteen, boasts a slightly larger frame than his brother, though he’s still slim. Perhaps if Daeron deigned to actually eat food or train alongside Aerion and his father, he might have something to show for his age.

As it stands though, he’s pathetic and weak, hands cupping his head in pain as Aerion pins him in place without much thought.

“You moron,” he barely refrains from shouting, instead digging his hands into Daeron’s loose shirt collar. “You fucking imbecile! Showing up to the luncheon looking like a damn lunatic, drinking yourself stupid in front of the King, and then making me drag you out in front of everyone? You’re truly pathetic, brother.”

He spits the last word like it’s poisonous, using his leverage to shove Daeron back onto the wall. He wishes it would smash the idiots head to pieces and splatter his brains across the Keep. It would serve better as decoration than keeping him alive.

Daeron’s not looking at him, head bowed as he tries to regain his handling on the room.

Aerion doesn’t give him the chance, freeing a hand to grab at Daeron’s jaw to force his gaze to meet him.

When they focus up, those hideous pale eyes look at Aerion's own dark violet ones with surprising clarity. He’s knocked off kilter when he realises that Daeron is looking at him with a calculating gaze, as if trying to see right through Aerion.

“It was you, last night in my chambers, wasn’t it?” Daeron says more than asks, as if he already knows the answer.

Aerion freezes.

“What,” he says, surely looking dumbfounded.

Daeron’s face still has that shrewd look on it, pale eyes narrowed and messy hair only serving to highlight the shadows on his face.

“You were in my bed last night,” Daeron continues, voice steadier than Aerion has ever heard it. “Threatened to cut my cock off. I thought the way you spoke was odd, alongside the way you disappeared into the passages like you knew what you were doing. And then I dreamt of a fire flickering out in front of me, burnt down to embers across a sea.”

Half of Aerion’s brain is hung up on the idea that his brother, unlike most people, sees Aerion for his true self, a flame, a dragon. The other half of his brain is still moving sluggishly through the surprise that his stupid drunkard brother apparently has enough smarts left to put together the clues as to who was sneaking in his room last night.

Like he said though, Aerion is a Targaryen, he is the embodiment of fire and blood, and he is not one to be cowed by idiot elder brothers.

“So what if I was?” Aerion demands, throwing Daeron’s head away from him using the hand that was previously frozen on his jaw.

In yet another surprise, Daeron’s expression glazes over again, till he looks like the stupid drunk he was only minutes ago at the luncheon table. Up this close, Aerion can’t help but notice the smell of wine on his breath, and he wrinkles his nose in disgust.

“You tormented me twice, last night,” his elder brother says quietly, distant. “Tore away my opportunity for a good distraction and then kept me from sleep with terrible dreams.”

Aerion has never felt guilt in his life, and does not feel it now.

He sneers, spitting his usual venom with ease. “It’s not enough that you embarrass me and our family in front of Grandsire by being drunk at every opportunity, but now you have talks of being a deviant too?”

Daeron laughs, cheeks growing a ruddy red. “Like you don’t also have your faults. Who was the one who crept into my rooms in the first place to stick a hand down my–”

Aerion’s sure the next half of that sentence would be to some degree on how he had been the reason Daeron had gotten hard and wanting in the first place, but he doesn’t give his brother a chance to finish it.

He lets go of Daeron’s collar to dig his fingers into the small stab wound from last night, intending to cause as much pain as possible.

Except, instead of squealing like a pig, Daeron instead throws his head back and moans like he’s being paid, skull bashing against the wall again and hips twitching beneath Aerion’s grasp.

Once again, Aerion is stunned. Twice today his brother has surprised him by acting completely out of Aerion’s expectations.

“What is your issue?” he manages to reign himself in enough to spit at the deviant possessing his brother.

It’s only when he’s pressed so close to him that he realises there’s been a small margin of error in the whole interaction.

Aerion was supposed to threaten his brother into submission and continue on with his day, perhaps go torment Aegon or beat up the stable boys for ‘sword practice’.

What he wasn’t supposed to do, was get his cock hard by slapping around his elder brother.

Because that’s what he is, when Daeron’s thigh slips between his own on accident. He realises with a jump that his cock is straining in his pants, visible to everyone who could walk past.

It seems Daeron notices at the same time Aerion does too.

He laughs, the sound odd coming from his mouth, before leaning back against the wall and grinning smugly at Aerion.

“I’m well into my cups, you see. I’ve never been known for making good decisions while drunk,” he offers lazily to the previous question, hand trailing absently to drag across Aerion’s hard cock as light as a feather. “But what’s your excuse, brother?”

Aerion snarls, suddenly humiliated. He’s not one to ever feel small, but in the face of his elder brother's placid expression, he feels like an ant. He hates it.

Doing what he does best when upset, Aerion lashes out.

It sends Daeron reeling back into the wall with the force of the slap, and he lets out a small cry with the pain. Aerion hisses through his teeth.

“You will tell no one,” he threatens, deadly serious. “Not a soul!”

Daeron, recovering faster each time Aerion lays hands on him, simply rolls his eyes.

“Stop being such a stick in the mud. Loosen up, brother, have some fun,” he cajoles, leaning his full weight back into the wall and moving his thigh away from Aerion’s cock. “I’m drunk enough that I care not for your depravities.”

Finding the words absurd, Aerion laughs cruelly. “My depravities?”

Daeron hums consideringly. “Our depravities, perhaps. Why don’t I find you a nice whore, and you can get rid of this itch you have going on. I’m sure someone would be willing to put up with the cruel treatment for a bag of coins.”

A sick idea roots itself in Aerion’s mind.

“Why have need for a whore when my brother is in the same predicament as I?” Aerion very slowly says, smile stretching across his face at the sight of Daeron’s confusion and shock.

“What are you talking–” Daeron begins but is cut off by a moan when Aerion grinds his cock against his.

The feeling sends Aerion’s eyes fluttering shut, pleasure sparking dully across his nerves. He does it again, just to hear the way Daeron attempts to smother another moan

“Oh,” Daeron says with feeling, hips twitching so hard Aerion has to hold him to the wall to steady him. “That’s what you mean. This is a level of degeneracy that not even our kin have indulged in, you know.”

The words are soft-spoken. Daeron’s eyes are half-lidded and his mouth is open slightly as he pants through the residual pleasure from the brief interaction of their breeches.

Aerion’s expression twists. “To be fair, you started it. Take responsibility, brother.”

Daeron looks cross for a second at the mention of having to bear any semblance of responsibility, before Aerion shuts him up with another grind of their cocks together. He shudders forward so his head is on Aerion’s chest, fingers flying down to wrap around Aerion’s wrists on Daeron’s waist, but there’s no strength behind it. Otherwise, he’s stock-still against the wall.

Aerion feels victory surge through his veins at the unintended submission. He isn’t exactly sure on why he’s chosen this direction for the encounter to go, but he has to admit, it feels more than good to push Daeron around and have the man just take it.

Wanting more, Aerion grabs Daeron’s hair from the back of his head and forces him to bare his neck.

“Fuck, don’t you dare–!” Daeron tries to say but is cut off by the gasp he lets out when Aerion nips at his throat.

Aerion doesn’t pay attention to the weak protests, knowing that Daeron would struggle more if he wasn’t so fucking pathetic for it. He pulls at the skin of his brother's neck with his teeth, tugging and stretching as Daeron unconsciously begins to rock their hips together, chasing friction to match the pleasure the freak must be feeling at the pain on his neck.

“There you go, brother,” Aerion grunts, starting up a vicious grind. “What whore could compare to you?”

The words are mean, but Daeron, unlike usual where he would look cross, simply moans and pushes himself up into Aerion’s space further. Aerion licks a stripe across Daeron’s skin in response, tasting the sweat there like a secret, their shared blood thrumming through his veins intensely.

Daeron is moaning quietly now, hands on Aerion’s wrists pulling him closer, that dizzying heat between them making him feel light-headed.

“Don’t stop– fuck!” he says, voice wrecked.

Aerion laughs, the sound cruel even to his own ears. “Token protests gone now that your dick is getting wet, brother?”

“Stop calling me that,” Daeron whimpers, and Aerion has to push him even further into the wall to keep him from collapsing. “Not while we’re–”

He’s cut off by Aerion sucking a mark high up on Daeron’s neck, impossible to cover with any kind of collar. Daeron’s legs give out entirely, Aerion feeling them shake from where his own body is holding him up.

“You are disgustingly pathetic,” Aerion hisses, suddenly impossibly close to coming. “I should have been the first born son. You should not have even been born.”

It’s with those words that Daeron lets out a pathetic cry and must come, judging by the scrunched up expression on his face.

Aerion feels himself reach his crest at the sight of his brother so lowly instantly.

He buries his face in Daeron’s neck and bites as hard as he can while he works his cock against his brother’s. Daeron’s hips twitch weakly beneath him, a sob wrenching out the man’s throat from the pain and continuous assault on his no-doubt sensitive cock.

It’s in the dark and sweaty space between Daeron’s dirty blond hair and neck that Aerion hears the response to his earlier words.

“You are just as sick as I am,” Daeron says with a laugh, sounding blissed out and fucked stupid. “I may be a deviant for being drunk, but you’re the freak who keeps crowding me like an animal in heat. Little Aerion, always following behind me doggedly.”

The words are cruel, and so unlike the quiet and pathetic man Daeron is sober.

In response, Aerion uses the most force he’s ever used against Daeron, forcing his hand into a fist and striking his mad brother right across the face.

It sends his head once again smacking against the stone, and this time, he doesn’t recover well. He doesn’t even make a sound as he seems to lose consciousness for a long moment, propped up only by Aerion’s thigh between his legs and eyes rolling back into his head.

Aerion stares at his own hand in brief shock and then at the quickly blooming red patch on his brother's cheek. No doubt it will bruise nastily.

Finally, Daeron makes a grunting sound to signify his consciousness, slipping away from Aerion to crouch on the ground, cupping his cheek tenderly.

Shit. Aerion may have gone too far this time.

“You’re quite the monster,” Daeron says after a long moment, mirroring Aerion’s inner thoughts perfectly. His voice is void of any feeling or drunkenness.

Aerion knows. He knows his brothers hate him, but he really does not care. He’s a thousand times better than the whole pack of soft-bellied morons. He acts accordingly.

“And you’re a coward. If you hate me so much, why did you take it like a whore?”

Daeron hums, head still bowed and expression hidden. “I wonder.”

Aerion doesn’t see Daeron for a whole week afterwards.

He disappears somewhere into King’s Landing, no doubt to drink himself stupid to try and forget.

Aerion does not seethe when he thinks about all the other men his brother must be entertaining. But he does wonder in the darkest part of the night if these random strangers know how to make Daeron hard as quick as he does, if they know he gets blissful and empty-eyed when his hair is pulled, or that he likes to be held down like he’s something to be owned.

He wonders if those fictitious nobodies are just as turned on at the thought of dominating a Prince, making him cower and beg and come while spitting on him all the same.

The thought of someone else thinking themselves above his brother sends Aerion into a rage so intense, his father has to personally call the Kingsguard to subdue him when he loses himself during a spar.

Humiliating, but it’s made worse when the chosen punishment is to find said brother and drag him back to the Keep for the memorial service in honour of their mother, Dyanna Dane, who died five years prior.

He knows the punishment is lenient, far too lenient for the damage he wrought onto the stable boys and the duelling instructors nearby.

But it still makes him furious that he’s dressed in a dark cloak and scavenging the fucking brothels of the Street of Silk for one Targaryen Prince.

He’s gone through most of the street, flashing a vicious purple-eyed glare at anyone who dared look too close, and finally comes across one that has a whore out front who takes one look at the pale hair hidden underneath his cloak and gestures with her head to the building behind her, rolling her eyes the whole while.

Aerion sneers at her, resisting the urge to slap that smug look off her powdered face, and marches into the building like a man possessed.

He sneaks through the hallways, slipping past hands that grab at him and wrinkling his nose at the fake sweet perfumes attempting (and failing) to drown out the smell of sex and sin. He doesn’t spare more than a cursory glance in each private room he happens across, ignoring the debauchery and the expanses of flabby, sweaty skin around him.

The back of the building, more luxurious and private than the rooms near the front, proves fruitful. Aerion finds his brother in one of those rooms, door shut tightly and gauze curtains swaying across the place like a dream.

Daeron is kneeling on the large bed in the centre of the room, propped up using his elbows, facing the door. His eyes are screwed shut in pleasure as a woman lays beneath him to suck his cock and another one kneels behind him with a hand buried inside of him. The bruise on his cheek has faded slightly, but the bite mark Aerion left last week is still visible to the naked eye.

Aerion freezes at the sight.

He cannot move a single muscle as he stares at where his elder brother is getting pleasured from behind and seems to be enjoying it immensely if the quiet moans he’s letting out mean anything.

He isn’t sure how long he stands there, door ajar behind him before he hears footsteps approaching and hastily slams it shut so that no outsider can see evidence of a Targaryen Prince being the one bent over and seemingly liking it. It would do irreparable damage to their father’s image if he ever heard. It would do damage to Aerion if he was caught here by someone too, watching like a pervert.

The sound seems to startle all three members of the room, and they all lift their gazes and freeze to stare directly at Aerion. The whore on Daeron’s cock pulls off with a wet sounding noise and the one behind him briefly stills her motions.

Aerion pulls the hood off his cloak, schooling his expression into something more venomous.

“Brother,” he calls, low and dangerous. “Father requests your presence at the Keep.”

Daeron’s gaze seems to be having trouble focusing on Aerion. His pale eyes flutter shut and he bites his lip when the whore behind him does something with her hand.

“F-fuck,” he mutters quietly before making a valiant attempt to focus. “I’ll be there tonight, oh fuck, I promise– ah!”

At the last exclamation, the whore must do something particularly pleasant, because Daeron is curling backwards onto her hand, rolling his hips in an attempt to chase the feeling she’s giving him.

Aerion’s eye twitches. “We’re leaving now."

The whore beneath Daeron slides out of the bed and floats across the room to him, bare breasts bouncing with every step she takes. She lays a flirtatious hand on Aerion’s shoulder, biting her lip.

“Surely the young lord would like to stay, just for a moment longer. We can make it worth your while,” she offers, voice coy and sweet.

It would work on anyone else, honestly. But Aerion is an arrogant man. He will not bed the whores his brother has just claimed, it would rankle his pride to be second to useless Daeron in anything.

“Not a lord,” Daeron calls from the bed, voice pitching higher as the seconds go on. “Just one of the many Prince’s–”

Aerion doesn’t let him finish. He pushes the whore in front of him to the side roughly, sending her slamming into the door with a cry. The sound makes the two on the bed freeze, and using that silence, Aerion lifts his cloak to showcase the sword attached to his hip.

“If you do not send those whores out this second, Daeron, I am going to make good on my promise to cut off your cock for real this time,” he threatens, tilting his head while staring them down, waiting for either Daeron to listen to him or grant him the opportunity to make him bleed.

Ever the coward, Daeron chooses the former.

He raises a shaky hand and gestures for both of them to leave. They do, hastily, but Daeron clears his throat and the one who had previously been sticking her fingers inside his brother silently picks up a pile of clothing that must be his, digs around in the pockets for a moment, and fishes out a large bag of coins. At his insistent nod, the whore takes the whole thing, and disappears from the room in a blink.

Now it’s just them, Daeron still on the bed on his hands and knees, Aerion shutting the door behind him with more grace than the last time. The thin and gauzy curtains hanging from the ceiling and sun's final rays serve to create a hazy, dream-like quality to the room.

Aerion pushes off the door and stalks to the centre of the room, where Daeron is looking at him with an appropriately shamed and slightly annoyed expression.

“You couldn’t let me have fun just once without coming to ruin it?” he complains, before shakily rolling onto his back and glaring balefully at Aerion.

In response, Aerion picks up the wine goblet left on the table and takes a large swig. It burns down his throat, instantly sending a wave of dizziness over him.

“It’s the anniversary of our Mother’s death, and you want to spend it in a whorehouse?” he says, making a face at the disgusting wine he just drank. “You’re a fucking disgrace. And your wine is shit.”

Daeron laughs. “The brothel wine is shit, you mean. There’s only so much one can afford for both good wine and good whores. I chose the whores.”

Aerion gives his brother a once-over. He looks like he’s had a good time at least, cock hard against his stomach and shiny with spit, legs spread as if they have no strength to them, belly soft and heaving as if he’s just run across the whole city, not gotten fucked from behind by a whore’s fingers. Daeron is surprisingly slim underneath his usually messy tunics, all blond downy hair and dusky nipples standing at attention. Aerion admittedly hasn’t seen him unclothed since they were children and the servants would bathe them together.

“Next time indulge in better wine. A good whore is as easy to find as grass in a field,” Aerion replies after a second, taking another swig of the truly terrible wine.

“Hear, hear,” Daeron mutters, closing his eyes and relaxing into the sheets.

Aerion frowns, suddenly remembering why he was here in the first place, anger that had been simmering suddenly at the forefront of his mind.

“Get up, you oaf,” he warns, kicking the bed. “Father said you need to be back before the service tonight.”

“And why exactly did he send you instead of a knight or squire? He must have known you’d only tear through the Street of Silk like a madman. You’re hardly an errand boy,” Daeron shoots back lazily.

Aerion stiffens slightly, but enough so that Daeron notices the silence stretching between them.

“You pissed him off, didn’t you?” he says wondrously, opening his eyes and twisting his upper body upwards to stare at Aerion. “Serves you right, you leech! Now you know how the rest of us mortals feel.”

Aerion makes up his mind.

“I’m going to fuck you now,” he states abruptly, unhitching his sword from its scabbard around his waist and dumping it on the floor.

“What the fuck!” Daeron yelps. He brings a hand up to cover his chest as if it’s going to hide the fact he’s completely naked and still rock hard against his stomach.

“I’ve been dragged to a brothel by my moron of an elder brother, who then proceeds to spout drivel at me so nonsensical it makes me sick,” Aerion says with a growl, planting a hand by Daeron’s hip and leaning over him. “I’m going to fuck you, and then we are going back to the Keep so you can repent to Mother at her memorial service.”

“Your logic is so skewed,” Daeron squeaks, voice high-pitched.

Aerion shrugs, climbing over his brother, untying his pants so he can whip out his already half-hard cock.

“Take responsibility,” he says in a saccharine-sweet tone, knowing the expression he has is no-doubt terrible judging by the flash of fear across Daeron’s face.

“You are fucking sick,” he argues back, but when Aerion nudges his thighs apart with his own and uses a hand to push him back down onto the mattress, he doesn’t do anything except wrap his arms around Aerion’s shoulders.

He holds back the urge to laugh at the position. It’s far more intimate than what he was going for. Daeron always fights back when Aerion has done this, but at the end of the day he’s useless. He may have his cups as an excuse but Aerion doesn’t think it will change the way Daeron clings to him like a limpet while he lines himself up with his brother’s hole.

The first tentative press of his cock inside that wet, shivering heat, sends a burst of arousal so strong through him, he doesn’t even need to try and reach full-hardness. Between one second and the next, he’s standing at attention so quickly he thinks he loses sight of the world around him for a second.

“Fuck,” he mutters, before sheathing his entire cock in Daeron in one motion.

“Gods!” Daeron gasps, clearly caught off guard.

He grasps desperately at Aerion’s shoulders, wrapping his arms tighter than before till they’re chest to chest. Aerion takes a moment to adjust to the way his brother’s insides cling to him so tightly, how Daeron is panting weakly in his ear and pulling him in tight to that same dark and quiet place between his neck and shoulder.

It feels so good, it might kill him, actually. Why hadn’t he done this earlier?

He says as much. “I should have done this years ago… You feel incredible brother.”

Daeron lets out a hysterical laugh. “This is disgusting, oh my Gods. Fuck, what if someone sees us?”

Aerion experiments with a shallow thrust. It shuts up Daeron, who chokes on a moan.

Deciding he likes it more when his brother is too busy desperately moaning like a whore to speak, Aerion sets up a fast pace, rolling his hips as far as he can into Daeron. It’s made only slightly more difficult by the way Aerion is still fully clothed, apart from his cock slipped from his pants.

He feels powerful like this, dressed in his princely regalia and thrusting into a naked Daeron, who has gone stupid from pleasure and can’t stop moaning and writhing on Aerion’s cock.

He uses his hand on Daeron’s hip to pull them tighter together, keeps pushing inwards and upwards, and stutters in his thrust when Daeron lets out a shout.

“Fuck!” he cries, practically convulsing in Aerion’s arms.

Briefly worried that he’s accidentally killed his brother with his cock, Aerion forces Daeron’s arms off him so he can lean back on his knees and stare down at the trembling heap his brother makes.

One of Daeron’s hands shoots out to grip Aerion’s hip, stopping him from pulling out and ending this whole farce.

When Aerion looks at him, briefly surprised, he finds a desperate and hazy look on Daeron’s usually stupid face. It almost makes him look pretty.

“Don’t stop,” Daeron begs, voice slurring. “Keep doing that, fuck.”

Aerion makes a considering expression. When Daeron blinks up at him slowly, hands uselessly clenching at the sheets below him now that they aren’t wrapped around him, Aerion shrugs, plants his knees so Daeron’s legs are spread out further, grips his hips bruisingly, and continues to fuck Daeron the way he’s asking for.

It takes four rough rolls of his hips for Daeron to make a desperate moan and come all over his own stomach, untouched.

Aerion grunts when he feels how his brother’s insides grip him tightly and pulse in time with the fluid spurting from his cock.

It feels incredible, so good in fact, Aerion can’t stop himself from continuing to thrust.

Daeron lets out a pained cry, eyes flying open from where they had unconsciously slipped shut in the face of his orgasm. His hands scrabble at the sheets blindly, pale eyes widened almost in horror as Aerion slowly and languidly thrusts into that same spot again.

It sends Daeron twitching all over, convulsing like he’s dying on Aerion’s cock. He’s letting out these pathetic, high-pitched sounds, as if he’s being punched every time Aerion rolls his hips into him. Aerion feels hot in all his layers, like he’s going to explode. A bead of sweat from his forehead falls, landing on Daeron’s stomach, mixing with the white fluids all over it.

“Ah, ah,” Daeron’s whimpering, but Aerion pays it no mind, single-mindedly chasing his own pleasure.

“You almost look pretty like this, brother,” Aerion mutters to himself, echoing his earlier thought process.

Daeron is hiccuping now, crying out as Aerion relentlessly pleasures him. His cock is pathetic and soft, spurting some kind of weak liquid as if worn out by coming too much but is unable to stop doing so. Aerion presses on his brother's stomach, above his cock, just to feel the way the soft flesh jumps under his hand and Daeron squeezes around him again.

“What a useless cock,” he continues to say, tightly gripping the damned thing with a disgusted expression, aiming to hurt as much as possible. “You truly would be better suited as my wife.”

Daeron makes a high-pitched keening sound. Aerion watches, amazed, as all his muscles in his body seem to lock up in pleasure. He holds the position for a long second, as if coming even though his cock is flaccid and nothing can even dribble out of it anymore.

Aerion admires the way Daeron trembles for a moment, until Daeron simply passes out.

He blinks at the sight of his elder brother belly-side up, so vulnerable and fucked into unconsciousness on the bed before him. Because of him.

Then, he comes so hard he blacks out for a second.

He wakes up with his head buried in that safe space between Daeron’s neck and shoulder like it belongs there, teeth embedded into soft skin in a way that definitely will be visible to others.

“What the fuck?” he murmurs to himself dazedly. Daeron obviously doesn’t respond.

Their eventual return to the Keep is lacklustre. It’s rare that their family is in King’s Landing in the first place, often only arriving here to mourn their mother at the burial site she has in the crypt, so it doesn’t draw much attention when two Targaryen princes slip into the castle, one with a hand possessively on the back of the others neck while he stumbles as if like a newborn foal.

They have to separate at some point to change into new robes, and by the time the sun sets, Aerion finds himself in the crypt with his family, sans Daeron.

Their father is further into the crypt, kneeling as he gives his personal respects to the late and dearly missed Lady Dyanna Dane, while Aerion and his younger siblings stand near the entrance, in the alcove their father told them they weren’t allowed to leave.

The doors slip open a fraction, spilling soft moonlight down the stairs leading to the crypt below ground. Aerion, previously disinterested in anything considering his favourite brother to torment was currently being bothered by their sisters, snaps to attention.

He watches, a smug grin growing on his face when the footsteps down the stairs sound shaky, as if needing to take every step one at a time.

Daeron appears in their vision soon enough, freshly bathed and dressed in the proper type of regalia for a royal of his station. He avoids eye contact with Aerion, arm seeming to unconsciously massage his lower back while he stumbles over to Aemon, Daella, Aegon, and Rhae. His hair is slightly damp at the ends, curling around his jaw. His collar is pulled as tightly over his neck as possible, but it can’t hide the corners of the bite mark that Aerion left on him.

“Did I miss it?” he asks Aemon, who despite only being ten years of age, always manages to act like he’s older than all of them.

Aemon raises his head from where he had been observing the cold stone beneath him. He gives Daeron a judgemental once-over.

“No,” he answers in that annoying know-it-all voice he always had. “Father is still paying his respects.”

Daeron heaves a sigh of relief so obvious, it almost sends him tumbling over. He flinches when he has to take a rough step to regain his balance, face paling as his hand jumps to his lower back.

Aerion laughs at the shaky appearance of his elder brother. Clearly the time he had spent away was to try and pull himself together after their… altercation.

“Daeron, are you drunk?” Rhae asks, seven-year-old obliviousness obvious.

Daeron winces but leans over to pat her head lightly. “No. You shouldn’t be so blunt either. It’s not very ladylike.”

Daella (nine and realising she can get away with being very annoying around their father) and Aemon look like they have something they want to say to that, but are cut off by Aegon (eight) launching himself at Daeron.

The little prick, despite the snotty nose he sports, worms his way under their elder brother’s arms and looks up at him with a stupid grin.

“Father said that if you didn’t show up by the time he was done, he was going to chain you to the basement in Summerhall until next year,” he says, voice bright while he regales the stormy threat their father had delivered before he had sent them to finish their prayers over here.

Daeron smiles at the little beast in his arms and runs a hand through his hair all familiarly. “Let’s hope he doesn’t. We have many more adventures to do in the coming moons, little brother.”

Aerion, no longer finding anything funny now that Aegon has managed to get a smile out of Daeron, taps his foot on the stones to draw attention to himself. He briefly preens at the way everyone stiffens when they remember the dragon lurking amongst them, but focuses on the way Daeron still hasn’t looked at him.

“Best go make amendments, brother,” Aerion says lowly. He snorts at the way Daeron’s hand unconsciously goes to his collar to tug it up a section higher.

“Right,” Daeron says, and before Aerion can poke any more fun at him, scuttles down the hallway to where their father is praying in their mother’s alcove.

Aerion watches him go with a sense of pride at the way Daeron’s legs are still shaking, unable to walk in a straight line even hours afterward. He imagines the marks he left on him, the hand-shaped bruises on his hips underneath that formal shirt, the bite mark half-hidden under his collar, the no-doubt sensitive feeling of an open hole between his legs.

Then, he has to stop thinking about it because he feels himself working up to half-hardness, and would rather die than let any of his stupid younger siblings see him like that.

“He’s definitely drunk,” Rhae whispers very loudly to Daella, who giggles in turn.

Feeling particularly magnanimous, Aerion snorts again, drawing their attention.

“He isn’t, I cut off his cups,” he whispers down at them. “Watch though, Father isn’t going to believe that.”

He ignores the incredulous and shocked looks he gets from all of them. He hates them all, sure, but it’s still nice to see them not talk back to him. He’s their elder brother, after all. He and Daeron are special, older by many years and more brilliant, especially compared to these half-baked morons.

Slowly, they all turn back to watch as Daeron approaches their father and kneels beside him wordlessly.

Maekar, kneeling at the altar for his wife with his hands folded in prayer, cracks open a violet eye and looks at Daeron critically.

Daeron must say something exaggerated, because it moves his collar slightly. Just enough that their father’s eyes jump to the mark and stay stuck there as Daeron rambles uselessly.

Of course, this far away, Aerion and the rest of them can’t hear what the ensuing conversation reveals, but Aerion can hazard a guess. Their father’s hand shoots out to grip Daeron by the collar, pulling it down to bare the mark to the crypt and their mother’s altar.

They watch as Maekar’s face grows a furious red, gesturing to it with his free hand as Daeron goes as white as their father’s hair.

He scrambles to cover it up, obviously trying to make excuses, but their father simply lets go and turns his gaze heavenward as if asking for patience. He doesn’t look at Daeron, waving a hand in dismissal and turning back to the veritable shrine of candles he’s put up for his wife.

Daeron surprisingly doesn’t turn tail and run at the clemency granted by their father, though.

Instead he hunkers down beside the man, expression hidden by his hair. Aerion watches, almost fascinated, as Daeron slips his hand over one of his fathers and leans over to whisper something at him. He notices how their father doesn’t throw his son off, despite his obvious reluctance to talk to him.

Daeron finishes whatever he had been saying, and then turns to the shrine, letting go of their father’s hand in order to clasp his own together in prayer.

Aerion wrenches his gaze away when he sees how their father seems to relax with Daeron by his side, humming prayers on behalf of their father and kneeling at their mother’s altar. It’s a beautiful scene, he notes distantly.

Unlike their younger siblings who have a singular year between them all in age, Daeron and Aerion had only each other for the first six years of their lives. Aerion was ten when his mother died, Daeron twelve. Even Aemon does not remember her, having been four when she passed, to say nothing of the other three brats.

Both Aerion and Daeron remember a life in Summerhall, with a loving mother and a father who smiled far more than he does these days. And it’s times like these, where Maekar so obviously leans (emotionally, if not physically) on his eldest son while he mourns his wife, that cements it to Aerion.

He should be over there, with them, making peace with Dyanna Dayne’s too-early death. It should always have been just Mother, Father, Daeron, and him, in the first place.

Suddenly, Aerion is so angry, he can’t bear to even face the scene.

Although his gaze was already turned he forces his whole body away from Daeron and their father, instead landing on where the rest of his siblings are talking to each other quietly in a circle.

That’s how Daeron finds them, however much longer it takes for him to finish sucking up to their father and make their way back to them all.

Aerion had been in the middle of bullying Aegon about something or other to the distress of all their other useless young siblings, arms crossed and expression haughty as he stood over them. Daeron had appeared by his side without him even noticing.

“Aerion,” Daeron greets.

Aerion refuses to admit it startles him, whipping around to glare daggers at the moronic fool.

“Daeron,” he practically spits, eyes briefly jumping to their father to make sure he is in fact still praying and won’t come over. “What.”

“Let’s go,” Daeron says, voice quiet, only for Aerion to hear. “Honour Mother’s memory in peace and leave him alone.”

Aerion rankles at the tone. Who the fuck does Daeron thinks he is, trying to tell Aerion what to do?

Anger burns brightly through him. He leans closer to his brother to whisper.

“You think yourself brave, now that you have information to hang over my head?” he hisses quietly. “When have you ever been able to tell me what to do?”

Daeron shakes his head softly. “And implicate myself? I am far too cowardly.”

Aerion jabs a finger into his brother’s chest to send him stumbling back a pace. “Then stay out of my way.”

“Aerion. I mean it. Let it go.”

Daeron’s mouth twitches as he speaks, pale eyes fearful. But he does not move any more, stealing Aerion’s attention away from their younger siblings in some pathetic attempt to shield them.

Unfortunately it works. If only because Aerion doesn’t want to draw his father’s ire at this very moment.

He narrows his eyes into a glare.

“My chambers. Later,” he barks in command, and then storms up the stairs to go back to his quarters without waiting for Daeron’s response.

Aerion’s anger abates when he fucks four orgasms in a row out of his brother, grinning like a madman as Daeron tries and fails to keep consciousness despite the way his body is at its limit.

The man hasn’t spoken since his second orgasm, the only sounds following being sobs that soon petered out into weak whines. At least Aerion had waited until he woke up again to keep fucking him.

Aerion likes seeing the way his brother scrambles, pathetic. Likes it more when Daeron is barely awake in Aerion’s bed and doesn’t stop him when he presses bruises into his wrists from grasping them hard or bites all across his neck and chest so he looks like he’s been mauled by a rabid animal.

He manages to draw blood on a few of them, which sends them into round five for Daeron and the second for him.

Daeron just takes it, not even protesting, even pulling Aerion closer when he spits a glob of Daeron’s blood at his chest like he disgusts him.

It’s well into the night by the time Aerion finally lets himself reach his crest, sated after tormenting his brother for hours.

He lets Daeron collapse in his bed, propping himself up at his headboard to look down at the man laying down beside him with a critical eye. He’ll kick him out later. Right now he wants to bask in the warm feeling after a good fuck, the fireplace casting shadows across the room and illuminating the contours of his brother’s body.

“A shame we have to leave the Keep so soon,” Aerion murmurs to himself, staring down at the way his brother is under a thin blanket beside him and fighting the urge to toy with a strand of his hair. “It’s so easy to sneak around here.”

He truly does enjoy his time at the Red Keep more than he does Summerhall. Summerhall is too isolated for him to truly relax, knowing he’s under his father’s watchful eye or having to play nice with his stupid younger siblings. At least in Kings Landing, Maekar is too busy following his brother and father around to bother Aerion.

Daeron, who apparently hadn’t been asleep, opens his eyes enough to squint up at Aerion dazedly.

“We’ll be back,” he replies, voice hoarse like he’s been screaming. “The red dragon dies atop the giant, you see.”

“What?” Aerion asks, mystified.

“Father is forcing me to attend my first tourney by myself,” is what Daeron says instead of explaining the cryptic nonsense he had just spoke.

Aerion shrugs and decides to let it drop in favour of this new piece of information. “You’ll hate it. I’m surprised you haven’t run away yet.”

He’s in a surprisingly good mood after their coupling. He may have to do this more often, if it makes enduring Daeron’s pathetic presence more bearable.

“Give it time,” his brother mutters, drawing him out of his pensive thoughts. “If he yells at me for not doing well, I’ll never attend another one.”

Aerion snorts. “You don’t have much say in that brother. You haven’t exactly made Father all that proud recently, he’s going to force you to a hundred of them in an attempt to straighten you out.”

He thinks of the way Maekar glares darkly at his eldest son when he catches him drunk in the middle of the day. Most would be inclined to say it's just a bout of teenage angst that drives Daeron to drink, but Aerion knows that it hides some other, demented part of his brother that he won’t ever allow to show. Both he and their father remember what Daeron was like before he picked up his cups. Aerion is apparently just more lenient with his brother than Maekar.

Daeron rolls over so his back is to Aerion, hiding his facial expressions. “I do not wish to go.”

Reclining backwards into the pillows propped on the headboard, Aerion shrugs. “Well I can’t save you, brother. You’ll have to suck it up and actually try, lest you piss him off more by doing terribly.”

His brother sighs. “Despite how crazy you are, you ought to be the one attending the jousts. You’d make him proud.”

Aerion hides the way he preens at the words with a cough. “Do your best to not shame our family name, at least.”

Daeron doesn’t move or speak for a long moment. It goes on for so long that Aerion actually plants a hand on the bed and leans over to check his brother hadn’t fallen asleep on him mid-conversation. He can’t kick the fool back to his own chambers if he’s asleep.

When he focuses in the dim lighting, he finds Daeron’s eyes are open, staring almost unseeingly at where Aerion has leaned over him. Daeron’s mouth is pinched, brows furrowed, stupid dirty blond hair sticking to his forehead with sweat from the effort of their previous activities. The low lighting evens his skin tone, til he looks like a bronze statue instead of the peasant Aerion likened him to previously.

“You look so much like Mother,” Daeron whispers at him.

Aerion has heard it before. Can recognise the similarities, remembers the way his mother would trace his nose with her finger and say they were the exact same.

Then, he makes a face, eyes flicking down to the mess of come across Daeron’s stomach and down his thighs from his hole. “Terrible timing for such a realisation.”

That somehow manages to startle a laugh out of Daeron.

Aerion watches, transfixed, as his brother laughs out of genuine mirth at something he said, untainted by their depraved encounters previous. It makes him look younger, less like a local drunk at a tavern and more like the little prince Aerion remembers his elder brother being.

“You’re right,” Daeron agrees, quiet joy shining through. “That perhaps would have been more useful earlier, before we began all this.”

The words send a chord through Aerion’s mind. Now that he thinks about it, this marks the third time they’ve done something like this, without being able to define what it is exactly in the first place. He aims to resolve that.

“All this?” he prompts, sliding down so he’s laying on his side, propped up by his elbow and tilting his head lazily at Daeron. “What exactly would you call this, brother?”

Daeron makes a considering noise, less panicked than Aerion thought he would be. “Stress relief, perhaps?”

“I’m not particularly stressed, and neither are you, despite all your complaining,” Aerion says, shutting him down.

“Then were the two times we’ve had sex just an accident then?” Daeron says with a roll of his eyes, visible clearly when he rolls onto his back so Aerion is leaning over him. “Slipped and fell into your brother accidentally?”

“Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence,” he recites boredly.

Daeron flicks Aerion’s bicep lightly. “The first time also counts, which makes it three. A pattern. I had protests, but you kept pushing.”

“You wanted it, shut up,” Aerion argues, vaguely annoyed now. “We’re just having some fun.”

“You’re having fun,” his brother says, exasperated. “I’m the one being tormented for hours while you get your rocks off.”

Aerion leans down so he’s close enough to his brother’s face that he could no doubt count his eyelashes. Daeron looks momentarily scared at the proximity, but Aerion pays it no mind, simply staring down at his brother to get a read on him.

“…I think you want to be tormented just as much as I like doing it,” he says. “I haven’t the faintest idea why, but it makes sense that you’re pathetic and fucked up here as well.”

Daeron looks briefly hurt by the words before he smooths out his expression forcefully. He blinks slowly up at Aerion.

“Then maybe it is just stress relief,” Daeron finally murmurs, diplomatic in a way Aerion hasn’t seen on him ever, “of the terrible, depraved kind. The kind that would get our cocks cut off if Father ever found out and get us disowned.”

Aerion briefly delights in the image of his fantasy of his elder brother having his cock cut off so he could be Aerion’s wife, but has to bury it when he truly thinks about the ramifications.

He finds he does that often these days. Losing himself to his delusions and being unable to think of the consequences to them half the time. He thinks something might be wrong with him, ever since his mother died and his father abandoned them in a suddenly freezing cold castle, but can’t find it within himself to care. Aerion is a dragon, and has no need for thinking about ‘what-ifs’.

Except he does have to think about it this time. He’s not in a position where he could get away with the secret getting out.

Their father would be disgusted, but Aerion disagrees with the idea that they’d be treated so harshly. More likely, Maekar would separate them, and would then bury any mention of it in order to not lose face in front of his family.

“It’s not that serious,” Aerion says, raising an eyebrow. “Besides, it just gives us more incentive to keep it a secret. You’ll have it worse than me if news gets out that you take it up the ass, brother.”

Daeron tilts his head at him, questioningly. “We’re going to continue?”

Smiling sharply, Aerion reaches with the hand not propping himself up to poke at the spot between Daeron’s legs, filled with his drying fluids and the oil Daeron had made him use to open him again. He stares down at the almost beautiful sight, feeling how disgusting this whole thing is sink into his bones and stoke the fire simmering under his skin.

“And give this up?” he asks. “I think not. You can protest all you want, but I know you’ll keep letting me. Especially if you’re in your cups, like the first time.”

“Don’t count on it,” Daeron mutters, but it sounds weak and they both know it.

Aerion, satisfied, removes his finger from Daeron’s ass and rolls over to lay on his back and stare up at the ceiling. He puts his arms behind his head and grins sharply, content.

“Come to my chambers again tomorrow night,” he orders, slipping his eyes shut and relaxing.

“I won’t,” his brother states, scandalised. “You do remember that Aegon and Aemon’s chambers are nearby, right? I’m surprised a wandering guard didn’t break down the door with all the racket we made.”

Thinking about it briefly, Aerion agrees. He shrugs as best he can, eyes still closed.

“Fine. I’ll go to yours. Your chambers are more isolated than mine, anyway. Poor Daeron, pushed to the edge of the castle so he doesn’t disturb his family with his whoring and drinking.”

“You’re an ass,” Daeron grunts, but falls silent and doesn’t argue anymore.

Aerion feels particularly victorious. He wonders how long this will entertain him, completely forgetting to kick Daeron out of his room as he falls asleep.

Despite the vehement protests Daeron had put up the first few times they did it, he lets Aerion fuck him anytime he wishes over the next year.

Aerion thinks Daeron is a coward beyond compare. Thinks he’s just as sick as Aerion if he keeps letting him do this, make him bleed and cry and come so much his cock turns a permanent angry red whenever Aerion so much as looks at him.

He fucks his brother twice more in the day they remain at the Red Keep before they have to return. Once on the way back to Summerhall with their family in an inn, wrapping a hand around Daeron’s neck as he fucks him while their father sleeps in the room beside them. When they get back to Summerhall, Aerion gives Daeron a singular hour to retire to his end of the castle before he’s accosting him in a servants closet, and then again in the stables after their father attempts to teach Daeron to man up, and then again that night after their return feast.

He’s insatiable, Daeron often mutters disapprovingly, but in the moons following, bends over wherever Aerion wants him to, as long as he’s had at least one goblet of wine and is satisfied no one else would stumble across them.

Aerion manages to sneak rope into their coupling sometimes, tying his brother up and making him take it, or sometimes a knife, cutting thin lines of blood down Daeron’s chest that he can’t explain away without revealing anything about their affair so he has to stay in the castle and not go out to drink.

Some nights, Daeron even asks Aerion to hurt him, a slap here and there, a bruising hand around his wrists, cruel words whispered between rounds so Daeron can’t think.

Aerion isn’t one to question it, really, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth.

But a year later, after his own coming of age and subsequent allowance to attend tourney’s with his elder brother, Aerion finds himself fixated on the reason why Daeron wants to be hurt as much as Aerion wants to hurt him.

The whole demented debacle between that foolish hedge knight and his stupid youngest brother Aegon had irritated him, but the night before the trial had been more enjoyable.

Aerion had dragged his brother (finally found after a week spent in ditches no doubt) into a Targaryen tent, avoiding their father’s judgemental eye the whole way, and had promptly dumped them both at the table in the middle of the room with a candle and a large keg of wine to share between them both. Technically they should both be in the castle walls, but Aerion knew the tent was empty and had ordered all members of the Targaryen travelling party to take a walk until tomorrow dawn.

Daeron, seemingly very lost, looks at him with an incredulous expression when Aerion starts pouring their wine. The candlelight highlights the greasy ends of his hair, and Aerion makes a face.

“What is this?” Daeron asks.

In the past year, they’ve gotten closer to each other, what with all the sex they’ve been having, so Aerion is able to actually let his brother get away with being aggravating and not instantly being grateful he’s voluntarily spending time with him. Aerion gestures to the wine and then to the small tub left out for him in the corner of the tent.

“One last hurrah,” Aerion mutters, before glaring at his brother’s sloppy appearance. “You need to have a bath, and if I find myself willing enough, I might share some of the fine wine that was procured for me.”

Daeron shrugs, easy, and hauls himself up from his chair to stumble to the tub. Aerion watches as his brother bends over to dip a hand into the water. He retracts said hand with a hiss barely a second later.

“You can’t expect me to bathe in cold water,” his brother complains, whirling around to make an upset expression at Aerion.

Aerion raises an eyebrow and lifts the goblet filled with wine in his hands to his lips. “Either bathe, or get out. I’m not sitting here for a second longer with you while you reek of shit mead and mud. Besides, cold water is probably a luxury compared to the places you’ve been sleeping for however long your disappearance was this time.”

Daeron grumbles like he’s insulting him, but with a longing glance at the wine in Aerion’s hand that he’s drinking from leisurely, he obediently begins to strip.

There’s nothing remotely sexy about it, Aerion thinks glumly. Even if his intention was to genuinely clean his brother up so he didn’t kill their opponents via stench alone at tomorrow’s trial, Daeron could have at least tried.

Though, Aerion continues to muse as Daeron folds his tanned limbs into the freezing water with little more than a small hiss at the sensation, his brother doesn’t seem all that present in the first place.

Sometimes when Aerion manages to wring more than three orgasms in a row from Daeron he gets all lost in his head, in a way that is distinctly different from when he’s in that terrible place in his mind that tortures him. Aerion’s spent enough time fucking his brother recently that he can tell quite easily when Daeron slips into that tormented state of mind. Usually, he’ll ask Aerion to hurt him as a means of grounding him, but if he isn’t around, Daeron has been known to drink himself into a stupor (or before their arrangement started up, seek out the companionship of whores).

Tonight, Daeron is in a bad state, lost from a week of drinking and not sleeping, sunken eyebags on his wan face and hair a mess. His limbs, though still tanned, are looking thinner than the last time Aerion saw them. He’d even go as far to say Daeron’s ribs are sticking out more than usual. It’s unnerving to see such a hideous monster possess the pathetic but brightly shining elder brother of his.

Aerion knows that he can help Daeron slip into a better headspace, one that is far more conducive to Aerion’s pleasure. He likes his brother pathetic and weak, but what Daeron is when he’s been on a bender is someone else entirely.

It’s not Daeron who he sees, dunking his head under the water and holding it for some terrifyingly long minutes. It’s the terrible and tormented skeleton who has nonsensical dreams that come true.

Aerion throws himself out of his chair and towards the tub when he realises Daeron has been under the water for too long.

He winces at the harsh impact of his knees on the wooden platform underneath the tub as he kneels over it, mind racing. How the hell had Daeron even fit all the way in there, the tub is fucking tiny.

Ignoring his sleeves that are no doubt about to get drenched, he thrusts his arm into the water, grabbing his elder brother’s hair as purchase and hauling the fucking idiot up out of the tub into the air.

Daeron gasps wetly, choking at the abrupt change and then the water no doubt in his lungs. He hacks and sputters and almost vomits out half the fucking bathwater as Aerion glares down at him, outraged.

“Did you really think you’d die from a fucking bathtub?” he spits, making an incredulous expression. “Wait, better question, why would you possibly try to drown in my bathtub? Trying to give me a kinslaying charge on top of this whole trial bullshit I have to deal with?”

His brother, in response, makes a wet gurgle. “‘S my fault about the hedge knight. ‘Trial was your idea though.”

Aerion’s still holding his brother above water via the grip on his wet locks, which appear a boring, common brown with its wet quality in the low lighting.

He feels slightly shaken, but buries it. Daeron has a penchant for dramatics, hence why he runs away at every opportunity to do so, why he drinks himself stupid, why he had been muttering about dragons falling atop of mountains and the like since he was a child. If Daeron truly wanted to die, he wouldn’t be here in the first place.

His presence means that he wants relief from that sickness in his head, but Aerion cannot link it to why he’s trying to hurt himself.

If he wanted a distraction, Aerion had supplied the far-away tent and the wine. All Daeron had to do was accept it graciously, and he would have fucked the issues right away for the both of them.

“And yet you don’t see me trying to drown in bathtubs because I made you wash in slightly cold water,” Aerion shoots back, taking the chance to gather himself and show a strong front.

Daeron shrugs, twisting so that his arms rest on the edge of the tub and Aerion doesn’t have to hold him up any longer. It puts them face to face, Daeron folded almost childishly into the comically small bathtub, and Aerion on his knees next to it, his shirt doused in water and clinging uncomfortably to his skin.

“I aim to subvert expectations,” Daeron eventually replies.

Aerion sneers. “You have been a disappointment, you mean. A mellow one at that. You’re weak-willed, yes, but far from someone who would give up at something as inconsequential as this.”

The unspoken question on why Daeron still lets Aerion bleed and bruise him echoes unsaid. Daeron, though, once again showcasing he’s far more witty than everyone thinks him, picks it up easily.

“I don’t think I like the pain so much as I like the physical reminder you’re still here,” Daeron mutters, eyes getting that far-away look like he’s halfway across the continent. “The flame burns weaker every time I close my eyes. Two little flowers wither in the winter before they fully petal. A crown melts in an empty hall. The red dragon dies atop a giant. Over and over and over the red stars fall–”

Aerion slaps his brother, hard.

And Daeron being the pitiful man he is, takes it like a whore, moaning softly and closing his eyes as if in bliss.

Using their closeness to lean over and grab Daeron’s hair again, he leverages their faces together, searching those pale purple eyes calculatingly.

“Cease your ramblings,” Aerion finds himself murmuring, almost gentle if not for the way he’s almost ripping Daeron’s quickly drying hair out of his skull. “You are irritating me.”

“When you hurt me, it sometimes feels good,” Daeron continues, with no heed to Aerion’s instructions. “I’m not saying I enjoy it all the time, but you certainly seem to. You’re happier afterwards. You don’t torment Aemon or Egg for a few days when I take it especially well, and Rhae even says you smiled at her once while returning from my chambers. I can handle some bruising, it helps remind me that I am still alive, that you’re all still alive… But you flourish in violence, brother.”

Aerion stands up abruptly, stalking back over to the table and the wine to take a large swig. “Truly, do you ever shut up? Hurry up and get out of the water.”

There’s a splashing sound and then a wet footstep on the wooden platform surrounding the tub.

“There’s no towel,” Daeron says water dripping onto the wood audibly with every second he spends out of the water.

Aerion takes off his shirt, which is still dry in places, and throws it at his brother without looking.

Daeron makes a humming noise. He doesn’t complain, seeming to understand that Aerion is upset with him, and starts drying himself with the offered shirt like Aerion intended if the rustling is anything to go by.

There’s a long moment of silence as Aerion stares at the tent flap opposite him, tightly shut now that they’re both inside. The noise of the tourney is ever-present, but muted behind the thick canvas and distance from their camp to the rest of the drab nobles and knights attending.

He jumps when he feels Daeron’s arms rest on his shoulders and spin him around slowly.

Daeron’s standing in front of him now, naked from the waist down, Aerion’s shirt sitting loosely across his shoulders where it had been tight against Aerion. His hair is damp still, curling around his jaw and tucked back behind his ear with a tanned hand. He’s just looking at Aerion, this weird expression on his usually pathetic looking face, pale eyes staring at him through long lashes.

Aerion raises an eyebrow when Daeron’s arms settle themselves around his shoulders, almost like a hug. They’re practically chest to chest.

“What?” Daeron asks, challenging, when he notices Aerion’s stare.

Aerion pointedly looks down at where Daeron’s practically wrapped around him. “What ever happened to ‘Aerion you’re insatiable, and you are the only one having fun doing this whole depraved thing’?”

He pitches his voice up to mimic a girl, and it has the intended effect of making Daeron click his tongue, clearly annoyed.

“It’s not like I’m having any fun right now,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “You’d have to actually do something for that to happen.”

Aerion, seeing the dare for what it is, wastes no time in hauling his brother over his shoulder and walking to the bed.

And Daeron, much like the girly impression Aerion had made of him earlier, lets out what can only be considered a squeak at the treatment. Aerion notes with glee how Daeron’s closed fist strikes his shoulder, in a move that is exactly like a maiden’s.

He can already tell how he wants to have Daeron tonight, on his back, in Aerion’s shirt (that is just on the side of deliciously too big on him), preferably with some shyness from his brother at what Aerion is doing to him. The theme is perfect for him tonight, considering he hasn’t been able to fuck a wench since before they set out for Ashford Meadow from Summerhall. His brother is clearly a willing substitute, or he wouldn’t have given Aerion those eyes, considering Aerion is developing a sick response to even getting his brother’s eyes on him at any point, let alone a doe-eyed kind of seductive one.

“Put me down you fucking oaf!” Daeron hisses at him, putting up those pretenses he always does.

Aerion shrugs, jostling Daeron on his shoulder with the movement. Then he dumps his brother in the middle of the bed and crawls right over him without giving him a second to breathe.

“Oil,” Aerion orders as he leans over Daeron, putting a hand on his thigh to forcefully spread his legs.

He takes a moment to admire the almost pretty picture Daeron makes (he thinks that quite often these days, which is proving annoying because he isn’t supposed to, but whatever). His skin is slightly flushed from exertion as compared to the pale blue he had been turning while in the tub, Aerion’s shirt is big around the shoulders, serving to make him appear slimmer, and his expression is open as he looks up at Aerion like he’s waiting for whatever he chooses to give him.

Aerion groans and reaches over the bumbling hand Daeron is using near the pillow to search for the oil to snatch it up himself since his brother is taking too damn long. In his mind, Aerion’s already on step four of their coupling, and physically, they’re nowhere near that.

“Fucking useless,” he mutters under his breath, ignoring the way Daeron’s voice hitches at the words and his pupils grow to almost completely take over the pale purple of his irises.

He nudges Daeron’s thighs apart further with the possessive hand splayed across one of them, coating his free hand up with oil as he does.

The first press of his finger inside his brother is easier than it had been the first time he had done it to Daeron himself, mostly on account of the fact Aerion has been systematically stretching him out for an entire year.

Of course, Daeron is tighter than usual considering it’s been about a week since they last saw each other. But Aerion is delighted to find this out, rather than frustrated. It means that Daeron has yet to visit a pleasure house in his time away from Aerion, or at least has not given anyone else the pleasure of seeing him cock-drunk and pathetic.

With practiced ease, Aerion finds that place that drives Daeron wild and begins to relentlessly rub across it, slipping in another finger as he does.

“Fuck! Go slow,” Daeron asks, his breathing loud in the otherwise silent tent.

Aerion does no such thing, staring down at where Daeron’s cock is beginning to fill out in harsh twitches and milky spurts of fluid across his stomach. It looks painful. He continues to fuck across that spot, not even focused on stretching Daeron out at this point, just to watch him squirm.

“Aerion, fuck, slow down! I’m going to–” Daeron continues to argue, hand coming down to grip Aerion’s wrist.

“Go on,” Aerion says, redoubling his efforts.

“Ah, fuck– Aerion!” Daeron moans, before his limbs lock up and he’s shooting off against his stomach.

He only just managed to get fully hard. Aerion has pumped one out of him without enough time for either of them to reach fullness. He narrows his eyes consideringly down at Daeron.

“Are you sated, now?” he asks, tracing his gaze across the way Daeron is slumped into the bed.

Daeron opens an eye to squint at him, annoyed. “Gods no. You barely did anything and I already came! I told you to wait.”

Aerion grins. “Excellent.”

He flexes the two fingers inside his brother, and begins to work on stretching him out properly this time, using his free hand to pull down his pants enough to pull out his cock and begin to stroke it in time with his movements.

Daeron makes no more complaints, or even really speaks much. He’s not moaning or writhing like usual when Aerion continues to finger him, probably on account of the fact he’s purposefully avoiding that spot that drives Daeron crazy. So far, Daeron is just lying there and taking it as Aerion works him up to three and a half fingers, occasionally twitching restlessly and moving his hips in tiny increments.

When Aerion is finished, he dumps another glob of oil over his brother’s hole (earning a baleful glare, but again, no complaints) and wipes his oily hand on the fleshy meat of Daeron’s thigh to make it less slippery.

Aerion pauses.

Daeron gives him a confused look when he doesn’t immediately push in, before yelping when Aerion once again manhandles him so that he’s kneeling over Aerion’s thighs.

A riding position, Aerion thinks gleefully. Even if he feels much like a horse, there's a unique kind of beauty to Daeron kneeling above him, eyes wide from how exposed he is.

He winds his arms around Aerion’s shoulders and slaps his back once in reproach.

“Anybody could walk right in and see me!” he hisses lowly, looking back at the flap
of the tent with wide eyes.

“They won’t,” Aerion replies with a roll of his eyes.

“Someone will see us, will see me like this–”

Daeron tries to argue again, but Aerion shuts him up by lining his cock up and sheathing himself entirely in him.

“–Oh fuck,” his brother murmurs, before going pliant in his lap, slumping over so his head is resting on Aerion’s shoulder.

“You’re very argumentative tonight,” Aerion mutters as he sets up a series of short thrusts, gripping Daeron’s hip tightly. “Are you upset by something? I don’t really care, you see, but you’ve been more aggravating than usual.”

As he speaks, he uses his leverage on Daeron’s hip to encourage him to ride him properly.

Daeron’s thighs flex beautifully as he ever so slowly picks up the hints Aerion is giving him and begins to move up and down in earnest. He lets out a small whine, dissatisfied.

Aerion doesn’t roll his eyes again, if only because he thinks he’s going to give himself a headache if he does. “Arch your back, you idiot. Neither of us feel anything when you hunch like a troll.”

His brother does as he’s told, and it’s like a flame has been lit.

Suddenly he’s moaning, thighs shaking as he speeds up his movements and head falling back to expose his neck. Aerion latches onto the side of it with fervour, thrusting his hips in time to bury his cock deeper in Daeron.

“That’s it,” Aerion says with a snort.

He bites Daeron’s neck harshly, and Daeron’s hand scrambles down to his cock to wrap around it.

Aerion opens his eyes from where they had unconsciously slipped close, and keeping his cheek and forehead pressed Daeron, looks down at where he’s jerking himself off furiously.

It’s unbelievably hot, watching Daeron’s hand disappear and reappear from underneath Aerion’s shirt, the largeness of it covering most of his cock but letting the head peek out from Aerion’s point of view. He pants against Daeron’s neck, feeling like he’s run a marathon as he speeds up his thrusts.

Aerion buries his smile when he notices the way Daeron’s thighs are shaking and flexing, unable to keep going much longer. It’s a tell-tale sign that his brother is about to come.

Just like Aerion predicted, Daeron does just that not a moment later.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Daeron is whining as he does, back arching further into Aerion.

Aerion groans in answer, feeling hot all over despite his lack of shirt and boots.

When Daeron takes his hand off his cock, Aerion makes a disapproving noise.

“Don’t stop on my account,” he orders lowly, staring down at Daeron’s cock as he feels himself approach his crest. “Keep touching yourself.”

Slowly, and with shaking hands, Daeron obliges.

He wraps a hand around his cock, still bouncing weakly on Aerion’s lap, and lets out a loud sobbing noise when he strokes himself. He folds himself over the other way, burying his face in Aerion’s bare chest as his hand moves at a snail's pace. His hot breath ghosts across Aerion’s skin as he twitches and moans like he’s being stabbed, and he looks down in order to get a better look at his brother.

Instead of pleasure though, Aerion finds Daeron crumpled against his chest with his face wet with tears. The startlingly unsexy kind when paired with Daeron’s scrunched up expression.

Impulsively, Aerion rears back just a bit at the overt display of emotion. Gods help him.

“Are you crying?” he asks, feeling like the world has narrowed down to where he’s still buried to the hilt in his brother, frozen, unable to move.

Daeron shudders through another sob. “Make it stop. Gods, make it stop.”

Aerion doesn’t think he’s talking about the sex or the pleasure he’s experiencing. They both know it’s always too good to stop, hence why they always come back for more despite how depraved and fucked up it is.

“Make what stop? Use your words, brother,” he says meanly instead of offering any kind of comfort. Aerion’s useless at comfort, hence why he simply fucks his brother instead of dealing with his feelings normally.

Daeron chokes on another sob, but listens enough to lift his head and be face to face with Aerion. His hands twist into the short hairs at the back of Aerion’s neck.

“Make it stop,” he repeats again, nonsensical. “The dreams, I can’t– I don’t want them, make it stop–”

Aerion bullies his way into Daeron’s face trying to read his brother, see what he needs.

It’s with that movement that he gets an idea, and without thinking goes through with it.

The first press of his lips to Daeron’s is surprisingly gentle, all things considered with both of their history.

Aerion has never kissed anyone. He hasn’t a clue what he’s doing, but he must be doing something right when he leans back to lick his lips and then dive back in to slide their now spit-slick mouths together, because Daeron makes a pathetic noise and comes immediately.

Gods that never gets old, Aerion thinks with a groan as his brother clenches around him.

He loves when he catches Daeron off guard where he can’t help himself but reach his crest. It makes fucking him through it and afterwards even more enticing.

But this time, because they’re kissing, Aerion can’t concentrate enough to move his hips, still hard inside his brother.

“Daeron,” he calls, trying to get his brother to focus on him.

Daeron is still sobbing softly, head bowed now that Aerion isn’t kissing him to keep it up.

Aerion clicks his tongue, but remains still anyway.

“Daeron,” he says more forcefully this time.

Finally, Daeron looks up at him, nose running and eyes red. He’s looking at Aerion like he’s the only thing keeping him tethered right now.

Aerion isn’t sure what this feeling is inside of his chest, why he feels like he should protect Daeron right now, instead of tear him to pieces like he usually would.

“…M’yeah,” Daeron replies, voice horse. “Why’d you stop?”

“Because you’re crying all over my cock and I find it hard to stay in the mood,” he answers. It’s not the truth, just something to the left of it.

Daeron makes an appropriately wet-looking expression. “I’ll– fuck– I’ll stop, I promise, just don’t kick me out–”

“Shut up,” he interrupts soundly. “What do you need, Daeron?”

His elder brother makes a terribly vulnerable expression. It sets Aerion’s skin on fire in a way that their previous fucking hadn’t.

Having Daeron naked and wrecked beneath him is nothing compared to the way he carefully lets show his innermost feelings on those pale blue eyes of his. It’s like thrusting one's whole body into a red-hot kiln, as opposed to standing near an open fire. Completely different, and now that he’s had a taste, he isn’t sure what to do with it.

“I don’t know,” Daeron whispers.

Aerion holds back the urge to tell him he’s a useless fucking moron, and instead lays Daeron down on his back to climb over him. It’s an uncomfortable angle for him, stretched above his brother and pressing him down into the mattress, but he sees the way the furrow in Daeron’s brow relaxes at it so he doesn’t complain, filing the information away for later.

“Soft and sweet it is,” Aerion mutters, unhappy with the direction of their coupling overall, but feeling some base instinct in him to try and fix Daeron.

If he has to fuck his brother slow and gently instead of the rough one he had planned, so be it. He has a feeling that Daeron might not ever let him in again if he doesn’t perform well tonight.

So he hitches one of Daeron’s legs over his shoulder and presses a chaste kiss to the fold of his knee.

Admittedly, he’s doing a lot of firsts tonight. His first time kissing someone, his first time being sweet with a fuck instead of hard and rough, and he’s doing it all with his elder brother.

Sometimes, he thinks to himself as he starts up a slow rhythm that grinds gently on that spot inside Daeron, he wants to tear his elder brother apart.

He truly hates him, but for some reason, has become fixated on the feeling that being with Daeron gives him. It drives him mad. He wants all of Daeron, to possess and own him, shine brighter than he ever will, and douse that flame with his own hands.

“Aerion,” Daeron sighs quietly when Aerion starts giving it to him good.

“Where were you earlier?” Aerion replies. “Before you snuck back into the castle. You were somewhere. Tell me, brother.”

Daeron looks blissed out and drunk off of it all, head lolling back into the bedsheets like he doesn’t have the strength to keep it up.

“Following Egg,” Daeron eventually answers.

Aerion doesn’t pause in his thrusts, though he wants to. He wants to hurt his elder brother for daring to mention that upjumped moron, but exercises momentous strength in order not to.

Instead he lightly nips Daeron’s shoulder.

“Don’t bring him up,” he orders roughly, body still gentle as it takes Daeron.

Daeron’s stomach is twitching, soft and tanned skin rolling hypnotically under the candlelight. Aerion runs a hand down it, feeling arousal spear down his spine at the sight of Daeron’s body underneath his, the way his skin pushes up against his palm like it needs the contact.

It’s depraved to find his brother this attractive, he thinks. No one in the whole of Westeros would say Daeron is the most handsome of all their family members, but good Gods does Aerion want him. There’s a beauty hidden beneath those tormented pale eyes and wan skin underneath them. Untold stories written across the unblemished and soft skin of his chest and stomach, hairless and pretty.

Daeron would truly be suited as a wife, but Aerion likes him like this too, obviously male and sweaty and dominated like something to be owned. Conquered.

“Aerion– fuck– please,” his brother whimpers quietly between them. His hand scrabbles at the sheets and then at Aerion’s shoulders.

Aerion rolls his eyes even though he said he wouldn’t anymore, and doubles down the grind on Daeron’s sweet spot. It doesn’t exactly feel that great for him, but Daeron is moaning like a whore and his cock has filled out weakly.

Seeing that there’s that same furrow on his brother’s brows that was there just before, he leans down so their faces are right in front of each other. Even though he’s getting the only bit of gentleness Aerion has ever had, Daeron is still greedy for more apparently. Can’t just have a sweet and selfless fuck, he also needs more to distract him. Aerion hates him and his greed more than anything, but chooses to indulge it like this anyway. Fucking pathetic.

Gods help him.

Before he thinks anymore, he closes the gap and starts kissing Daeron as best he can while still giving it to him good.

It’s more nerve wracking this time, more depraved and perverted than simple stress release. It’s incest of the highest degree. And if Daeron had been born a woman, then sure, Aerion could have him like this without feeling weird about it. But it simply isn’t done, not in three generations at least.

Underneath him, Daeron’s lips part on a gasp. Aerion intuits this is the part where they start the tonguing he’s seen whores do at brothels, and tries his best to replicate it.

It takes Daeron a second to begin to catch up with what Aerion is doing to him, but eventually he begins to reciprocate. Aerion is equal parts annoyed and delighted to find that Daeron is obviously much better at this than he is.

He licks into Aerion’s mouth expertly, rolling his tongue in a manoeuvre that sends Aerion’s hips twitching into him on a proper thrust instead of the grind he had been doing.

Daeron moans encouragingly and pulls them ever tighter together, so that he can kiss him harder, until Aerion can think of nothing except the tongue in his mouth and the tight heat around his cock.

He feels insane, lost in a haze of heat, gripping onto Daeron tightly and keeping that steady rhythm going as Daeron laps into his mouth like a man starved.

His brother must be feeling incredible as well, as soon enough Aerion feels him beginning to spasm in that particular way.

He leans back the smallest amount, ignoring the way Daeron’s lips chase his desperately, to watch his brother reach his peak.

That familiar white fluid leaks from Daeron’s cock in waves, and Aerion groans at the sight. His brother’s insides match the waves, clenching and unclenching around Aerion’s cock, the wet and shivering heat wrapping him cozily.

Aerion, finally deciding his magnanimity has reached its limits, begins to thrust fast and deep into Daeron.

Daeron’s hands dig bloody lines down Aerion’s shoulders, which in turn makes him moan and begin to chase his pleasure harder. It only takes a few more thrusts before he’s following his brother into pleasure and collapsing on top of him.

Daeron makes a blissed out noise and Aerion rolls off of him to lay beside.

He ends up with an arm curled around Daeron, a mimicry of a lovers pose. It feels poisonous, but Aerion is so exhausted from the extended coupling and the events of the past day that he doesn’t bother moving when Daeron shuffles so his face is pressed into Aerion’s bare chest. The threads of Aerion’s shirt still on Daeron tickle his sides slightly.

“…We will see each other only thrice in the next ten years,” Daeron mutters into Aerion’s skin after a long moment of quiet.

Aerion, who had been well on his way to sleeping, only lets out a breath of air. “Stop your nonsense. I am going to torment you for the rest of your life.”

Daeron makes a sad kind of sound. “I don’t think so. You’ll be sent away.”

Finally, Aerion wakes up fully at the words.

He lifts his head to look down at where his elder brother is still lying on his chest with an incredulous expression. “Where in the seven hells could you have possibly heard that?”

Daeron only hums in answer, won’t look him in the eye, dirty blond hair hiding his face.

“Dreamt it,” he says simply.

“Not this again,” Aerion spits, pushing Daeron off him to sit up and run a hand through his short hair roughly.

He knows he’s being more aggressive than the moment calls for. But the words his brother speaks makes him uncomfortable for some reason.

He thinks back to the last time his brother had shared what he had dreamt of, remembering the way the mourning bell had tolled through Summerhall for an hour. He hadn’t believed Daeron then, and look where that had gotten them all.

His indecision manifests as anger, luckily enough.

Daeron sits up too, but turns his back to Aerion. He hunches his shoulders, appearing almost fragile in the low light. Like he’s going to disappear with even the smallest gust of wind.

“You know that my dreams are not like yours,” Daeron whispers into the quiet of the tent. “You will leave me, brother. Your foolishness has doomed us both.”

Aerion laughs, the sound terrible.

He watches as Daeron’s back stiffens, but cannot find it within himself to care. Aerion uses his cruelty as armour, can feel the way it wraps around him like an old friend when faced with the inane and useless drivel his brother is spouting at him.

Gods he cannot believe he almost fell for it, for that soft moment shared between them. Cannot believe that only a year of fucking had turned him so weak.

He stands up abruptly, reaching for Daeron’s wine-reeking shirt he had taken off before his bath and throwing it on himself roughly.

“You sound fucking crazy. Gods know I’d be better to be rid of you,” he spits, venom returning to him as easily as breathing.

Aerion doesn’t bother to air out any of the hurt that he feels, deep beneath the tough scales that guard his heart. He has no need for such useless things.

He is a dragon, the blood of a dozen kings and dragon-masters. He does not simply feel hurt, especially not by failures of eldest sons that spend their lives buried in a wine goblet like his brother.

All that he does when faced with the situation, is pull on his boots with more force than is probably necessary, and march his way to the tent flap, intent on leaving all those emotions behind him.

“Only twice now, Aerion,” Daeron calls, no doubt still on the bed, reminding him of the ominous prophecy he had spouted before.

If Aerion didn’t know better, he’d say he sounds upset.

More than likely, he started drinking the second Aerion turned his back from the wine goblet left on the stand nearby, and the waver in Daeron’s voice is because of his drunkenness.

Aerion doesn’t look back, heading for the section of camp he knows the whores gather at, furious.

Aerion yields in the trial the very next day.

He does not remember doing so. Doesn’t remember much of anything in the day that follows, laid mostly unconscious in his sick bed, healing with his father hovering in vigil sometimes when he opens his eyes.

But at some point during the early morning, his father is no longer there, the comforting yet foreign presence of a guardian Aerion lost when he was a boy.

Instead, he opens his eyes in the darkness to find a pale blue staring at him unblinkingly from his bedside.

“You look terrible, brother,” Daeron says to him, emotionless.

Aerion feels much like he’s dreaming. The maesters have been pumping him with every kind of pain suppressant they know, including a startlingly good mix of milk of the poppy and wine. He tries to blink, but only one of his eyes will open enough to stare properly at the spectre haunting his bedside.

“Fuck you,” Aerion manages to slur, but immediately resolves to be quiet afterwards as it hurts too much to continue speaking.

Daeron sighs and sits down on the bed, but he’s so far away that Aerion cannot feel the dip in the mattress from it.

“Don’t try to speak too much. I thought I’d just come by to say my piece, make sure you are still alive,” Daeron continues to mutter, wincing slightly. “Father said he is to send you to Essos. He muttered something about Lys of all places. If he truly wanted to straighten you out, he’d send you to the fucking Wall, but instead you’re going to Lys. No doubt you’ll father a dozen bastards from those Lyseni whores everyone oft raves about, and come back sated and sane.”

The words, remarkably enough, sound bitter to no end.

Aerion cannot tell why though, for the life of him. Is Daeron jealous of the chance to go to Essos, or…?

“I’m sure they’ll all treat you well. Pure Valyrian pedigree such as yourself will be well sought after in such a place, though there’s no end of run-of-the-mill Valyrian colourings there. You’ll be surrounded by perfect little pale haired wenches and you’ll have the time of your bloody life while the rest of us are stuck in fucking Summerhall while Father kisses ass in the Red Keep for killing the King’s favourite son.”

Aerion doesn’t comment on Baelor’s death, still working up the strength to speak and ask about the jealous tint to Daeron’s words.

“You weren’t always such a tyrant, Aerion,” Daeron continues quietly, completely at odds with his last sentence. “You will not stay this way either. Hopefully. Time overseas may yet temper you.”

“‘Won’t sleep with ‘em,” Aerion manages to grunt out.

Daeron freezes.

“Won’t sleep with who?” he asks, nervous sounding.

“Whores,” Aerion replies, and then sends himself into a coughing fit with how dry his throat is, which unfortunately hurts.

In response, Daeron is quiet for a long moment.

Then, he leans over the bed to press the lightest of kisses to Aerion’s temple. He barely feels it through the suppressants he’s on, but it leaves a lingering burn across his already heated skin. A misplaced piece of affection, twisted and possessive in a way that Daeron usually never is.

“You will,” Daeron says, both parts absolute and resigned. “It is in your nature. Loyalty is not something you possess, this I know well.”

“‘Fuck does’at mean?” Aerion slurs, offended but also genuinely confused on the meaning of the words.

“I see the embers spread across the sea, little pieces of yourself in a hundred new flames. I’m loath to admit that it is part of the reason why you leaving is of no importance to me. I detest that you’ll father a thousand bastards after all you’ve done in the past year is whisper how you’d much rather take me to wife instead. Even if our affair was short and tumultuous at best, I’ve grown quite accustomed to being yours, and you mine. I’m off-put by your willingness to move on, despite the fact it hasn’t happened yet.”

His brother’s voice is rough, like it pains him to speak so.

Aerion has the sudden insane impulse to sit up and check his brother over. Was Daeron injured in the trial? Is it severe? But he cannot gain the strength to open his eyes any longer, only being able to lay weakly in the bed.

“Won’t,” Aerion tries to reiterate hoarsely.

Daeron stands up then, stumbling in the low light so he has to grab the poster of the bed.

“I’m drunk, as you can tell. Pay no heed to my words, Aerion. I will see you… well, sometime in the next ten years I suppose. Have fun in Lys. Do try to remember you’ll eventually have to come home and deal with the consequences of all this.”

With that, he leaves.

Aerion closes his eyes, unsure if he was even awake to begin with, feeling as though he dreamt the whole confusing encounter.

Aerion’s first year spent in Lys is spent in the modest house his father had bought for him, drinking himself stupid and beating the knights assigned to him into the ground every chance he could.

He doesn’t touch a whore, just like he’d promised himself when he woke from his injured slumber in Ashford, though the servants eventually start bringing them to him in an attempt to curb his temper.

That of course makes him more angry, so he beats them all twice as hard to make up for the uncomfortable tent in his trousers at the sight of dirty blonde hair and tanned skin on some of them.

But at some point, Aerion grows restless.

His second year in Lys, he joins the Second Sons, and lets out all his frustrations on the battlefield instead. He makes a name for himself early on, and then he has crowds of pretty blondes and silver-haired women looking at him more favourably every time walks by.

It’s on his third year in Essos, on the road somewhere, that he hears his first whisper of what his brother Daeron has been up to in Aerion’s absence.

His brother’s drinking gets exponentially worse in the next few years, he hears.

Everyone knew Daeron was a drunk, called him names when he stumbled into places with a stupid grin and a light flush on his cheeks, laughed when he made a fool of himself at banquets or tourneys.

But at some point, it starts to become… almost concerning to other people.

Aerion can imagine it in the knight’s eyes when Daeron’s drunk light-hearted ramblings turn deranged and gloomy. Thinks about how drinking in a tavern surrounded by whores turns into a keg of wine in his room at all hours, sapping the colour from his skin and leaving him sallow and sickly that it alarms the maesters.

Daeron the Drunken was no longer a title lovingly bestowed by Daeron’s companions in his drinking. It became an insult, whispered across both Westeros and wherever the Second Sons stole Aerion away to in Essos..

And unlike the rest of the small-minded morons who insult his brother behind his back, Aerion knows why Daeron started drinking in the first place, can almost forgive him for his patheticness.

He was there the day of their mothers death, when their father had locked himself in his chambers with the maesters and their mother in a desperate attempt to save her from her sickness. Their younger siblings had all been under four years old, and had no clue what was happening, but Aerion was ten, his brother twelve. They knew what was going to happen eventually.

A long search of Summerhall found Daeron in a servant corridor of all places, his first bottle of wine in one hand and his sandy blond hair half-pulled out of his skull by the other.

Aerion remembers it like it was yesterday. Remembers the way his brother had looked at him with terrified pale eyes and said he dreamt their mother would die today. Aerion didn’t believe him at the time, had thought the maesters gave her another week or so.

But Dyanna Dayne died not an hour later with the mourning bells running through Summerhall, and Daeron’s head stayed buried in his bottles during the moons time it took their father to leave his mourning seclusion, never leaving the comfort he found in it fully, even years later.

So when Aerion hears about Daeron the Drunken’s outlandish escapades with a whole street’s worth of brothers from the neighbouring continent, he tears apart the tent he shares with his fellow sellswords, and goes into the city to find a good fuck.

Nine years, Aerion spends in Essos.

Six of those nine years, he fucks his way through half the population of dirty blonde haired whores in pleasure houses.

He thinks of his brother when he finds one that has his hair and those pale eyes, and probably fathers more bastards than fucking Aegon IV Targaryen across the Free Cities.

He tries not to think about how Daeron had predicted that he would do exactly so.

Aerion is twenty-six when he decides to call it quits and return to Westeros.

He tells himself he had only answered the missive of his father because he had wanted to return to what is rightfully his, but in all truth, he was desperate to return to his home, to Summerhall.

The Second Son’s had begun to bore him, and the Lyseni whores that were always his favourite had proven grating when he’s slept with all of them enough times to begin to remember their fucking names like they deserved that kindness.

Besides, he had heard that his uncle Rhaegel and his cousin Aelor had passed within two years of each other. His father Maekar was named the King’s heir, but not his Hand.

Aerion, against all odds, was now third in line to the throne.

A decade ago, he had berated his father in his head for trying to please a King that would never take him seriously as a fourth son. Now Maekar was important, and he had finally deigned to call his second son home.

This is how Aerion finds himself sneaking through the back entrances of Summerhall, a day ahead of the rest of his travelling caravan, the nightfall wrapping him in shadows so that he won’t be discovered.

He thinks himself quite funny, tip-toeing through the stables of his childhood home, no longer a boy but rather a twenty-six year old man, all to see how the castle has changed without him.

He doesn’t mean to stumble across his elder brother of all people in his traipsing.

He had truly meant to simply slip into the dinner hall during a meal, perhaps into his fathers study and wait in the chair by the fireplace for his old man to appear. But instead, he’s thinking back onto a youth spent trying to no avail to understand why Daeron’s eyes were so different to his own (what worlds he sees when he closes them, as opposed to their truly terrible colour, that is).

At ten, Aerion had been confused as to why Daeron chose the bottle. At twenty-six, he knows that this is his brother’s chosen punishment.

Daeron heaves once again, drawing Aerion’s attention back to the way he’s kneeling over a water trough in the stables and heaving his guts out into it.

They have not seen each other in nine years and Aerion is no longer the seventeen year old boy that Daeron last saw at Ashford. He’s grown taller, filled out even more muscle that he didn’t have as a youth. He’s a damned good fighter now too, far beyond what he was before. He’s grown.

He can’t exactly see how Daeron has changed in their time spent apart, considering he’s vomiting so hard right now, he hasn’t taken a moment to breathe in a whole minute. He should be worried about passing out in his own sick any second now, honestly.

Aerion makes a face. Pathetic, he thinks disgusted.

When Daeron finally finishes heaving, he falls back onto his ass and leans back on his palms to watch the sky. His back is still to Aerion, so neither of them can really see each other, but it doesn’t do much to hide the way Daeron’s clothes hang off his body and his dirty blond hair is shorn shorter around his ears compared to the long locks he had favoured in their youth.

“I dreamt of you,” Daeron says to no one in particular after a long moment of silence.

Old enough now to be unphased by the fact he’s most likely been discovered, Aerion simply raises an eyebrow and pushes off the shadowed stone wall of the stable he had been leaning against to observe his brother.

“I would say I’m flattered, but to my knowledge, your dreams are drunken hellscapes that you’ve been pretending actually mean something our whole lives,” he answers the call, walking up so he’s standing next to Daeron.

Daeron turns his head and looks up from his position still on the ground.

Aerion is immediately struck by the ghastly sight of his elder brother. His face is pale, far paler than he had ever been, even as a babe, and he looks visibly older, the smallest of wrinkles hanging around his cheeks when his face stretches into a drunk and lopsided smile.

His eyes are perhaps the worst part, though. Daeron’s eyes had always been paler than the typical dark violet Aerion and his other siblings sported. But now they look so light they almost appear white, surrounded by yellow sclera that sends an uncomfortable shiver down his spine.

Aerion unwillingly thinks back to the time he had snuck into his brother's chambers to hold a knife to his cock in jest. His brother’s eyes had been pale in the moonlight then, yet right now, even the moonlight cannot hide the distinct lack of colour in those eyes.

Daeron looks more like a ghost sent to haunt Summerhall than the somehow brilliantly shining waste of an elder brother Aerion remembers.

“You look like shit,” Aerion blurts out, unable to help himself.

Daeron snorts. “Gods, I almost forgot the way you have with words.”

Aerion rallies himself admirably and simply shrugs in response, turning his head so he does not have to make eye contact with the spectre sitting next to his boots.

“Surprised you remembered me at all,” he says in response, the words turning bitter. “You never wrote.”

“Neither did you,” Daeron replies as easily as breathing.

Words flow between them almost as well as they did a decade ago. Like this isn’t their first conversation in almost a decade. Like the time apart hasn’t changed anything.

But it has. Aerion is far better than he was before he left, now with the skills to back up his arrogance, and Daeron is… well, Daeron is certainly different as well.

“Was doing better things,” Aerion says with a wave of his hand, aiming for nonchalant.

“Fathering bastards and terrorising the Free Cities, I imagine.”

Aerion wrinkles his nose. “I joined the Second Sons. Rode to battle many times and made a name for myself. What did you do, brother? Drink yourself half to death? You look fucking pathetic.”

His brother looks dead, is what Aerion thinks, hazarding a glance at the man.

Daeron is still looking up at him, like he doesn’t dare to look away for even a second.

“It’s true, I find myself drunk more than oft these days,” Aerion says with a tilt of his head that almost makes him look younger, making Aerion’s chest constrict the smallest amount. “I have this recurring dream lately, you see. My bed is on fire, whenever I close my eyes. I think there is someone in it. And they burn alongside the whole room, and I do too. I burn in my bed, except it only hurts them, and not me. The room, the bed, the person, and me. We all burn.”

Aerion takes the rambling words with a grain of salt, only raising an eyebrow. “You sound like me.”

Daeron laughs, throwing his head back and blessedly closing those demented pale eyes. “I do not. You’ve always been cruel, Aerion. I have always been crazy. We are vastly different.”

“Am I the person in your bed?” Aerion asks, switching tracks. “The one that is fire?”

Daeron stares at him, unnerving and unblinking. Aerion is not unsettled per se, as he’s seen true atrocities in his time in Essos, but one could say he’s decidedly uncomfortable with this Daeron.

He remembers his brother being haunted by dreams and ghosts much of the same as a teenager, but there was never the easy confidence that he seems to radiate now, almost like he’s accepted it all as a part of him. This Daeron seems to have grown accustomed to his oddities. Perhaps he dreamt he was fucking normal for once.

“I don’t know,” Daeron admits after another long pause. “You have always burnt brightly, little brother.”

Aerion is bowled over by the term of address. Daeron has not called him such… well, not in any kind of recent memory.

It sounds fond, spoken from Daeron’s traitorous drunk mouth. An endearment that Aerion is no longer privy to, does not deserve.

“Of course I do,” Aerion says in response, stumped by the change in mood. “I am of the dragon.”

“If I was a dragon, I would be the truly terrible kind, the one that does not fly and simply lays eggs in the dragon pit all day until the Smallfolk tear me to pieces when they grow hungry,” Daeron muses, head lolling back.

“What in the seven hells are you yammering about?” Aerion asks, incredulous.

Daeron makes a small humming noise. “Have not an idea. M’drunk, y’see.”

“I can see that.”

Aerion makes a disgusted face at how terrible his brother looks. He looks skeletal, truly. Wan and pale and shaking ever so minutely. His appearance almost makes Aerion as uncomfortable as it makes him angry.

What right does Daeron have to destroy himself? Aerion owns him, and that means Daeron should not have the ability to fall apart whenever Aerion isn’t there to drag him back into line.

“The smallfolk are quite hungry this year. The autumn has been surprisingly long,” Daeron says conversationally.

Aerion sneers. “You need to go to sleep. This is fucking pathetic.”

He grabs Daeron by his shirt collar to wrap an arm around his midsection. He’s briefly paralysed by how light Daeron is, how thin he feels even through his baggy clothing. Daeron doesn’t smell all that nice from this close, reeking of vomit and wine, and his head is bowed towards his chest as he lets Aerion manhandle him so he’s leaning on Aerion while he tries to move them towards the castle doors nearby.

“I think they will rebel in the coming year. Or something of that variety,” Daeron continues, dead-weight across Aerion’s shoulders. “Rhae mutters about it often, whenever she returns from her not-so-secret escapades in the town over.”

Aerion, having successfully dragged them into a hallway and shut the wooden door behind them, makes an aggravated sound when he realises they’re on the other end of Summerhall from the sleeping quarters.

“Fuck me, would you shut up Daeron?” he barks, annoyed.

Daeron leans further into Aerion, head lolling to the side to tuck near Aerion’s neck.

“She oft thinks she’s being discrete, but both Father and I have caught her coming back. I think he’s given up on policing our poor sister’s maidenhood.”

Aerion groans.

Ignoring whatever drunken drivel Daeron is spouting, Aerion begins to walk them towards the right section of the castle.

On his way, he surprisingly doesn’t stumble across many servants. Odd for the time on night, but perhaps they’re resting to prepare for his supposed arrival tomorrow. Unluckily for them, Aerion is already here.

Once further into the castle, he manages to make it to the last place he remembers the sleeping quarters to be.

He happens across only a single knight, even though he had carefully been avoiding the patrol routes.

When the knight, unrecognisable to Aerion, turns the corner and sees a barely-awake Daeron draped over Aerion’s shoulders, they make an aborted noise and move to unsheathe their sword.

Aerion glares at them fiercely, making sure his purple eyes and white silvery hair are on display.

The knight makes a visible shocked expression from under their helm. Aerion rolls his eyes in response.

Not a single word has been spoken, and he wants to keep it that way. He’s slightly afraid that Daeron will wake up again and start rambling about something or other. Daeron is much more tolerable when he’s barely awake.

‘Fuck off,’ he mouths at the cunt.

The knight makes a saluting gesture and stumbles off.

Aerion takes a brief second to be appalled at how easy that was. What if Aerion was a Blackfyre pretender attempting to murder his brother instead of send him to bed? What would have become of his elder brother under the truly pitiful knight’s protection in Summerhall right now?

He shudders to think of it. Knighthood truly seems to have fallen on hard days.

“He looks like shit,” a voice says from a small alcove right next to them, startling Aerion from his spiralling thoughts.

He whips his head around to survey the threat and finds himself facing a young girl, barely on the cusp of adulthood, with pale silver hair similar to his own and light purple eyes.

She looks vaguely familiar, dressed in deep purples and flowing robes fit more for a night out rather than the middle of the night in Summerhall. She’s tucked into the shadows, ornate robes hiked up around her ankles in a very peasant-like manner, a dichotomy.

“Who the fuck are you?” Aerion gathers himself enough to demand.

The girl in question, leaning against the stone wall, raises an eyebrow and crosses her arms daintily.

“Have you forgotten what your own sister looked like?” she says with a judgemental look. “You also seem to have lost your manners, brother. Do they not have polite society in Essos?”

Aerion, grown man that he is, does not gape. Instead, he blinks twice in shock before making an incredulous sound.

“Rhae?” he tries.

The girl finally smiles at him, the sight sharp and witty. “Correct. There was only a small margin of error anyway. If you’d guessed Daella, I reserve the right to punch you.”

Unable to think of a response that doesn’t involve dropping Daeron in order to rip his sister's hair out, Aerion narrows his eyes into a glare.

“Daella perhaps would have been useful in telling me where in the seven hell’s Daeron’s fucking chambers are. If I don’t find them soon I’m going to dump him in a servant corridor and be done with the fucking fool.”

“Chambers got moved from the last time you were here,” Rhae answers conversationally.

Aerion groans and adjusts his hold on his useless elder brother. “Where?”

Rhae shrugs, the expression distinctly unladylike. “East end, third floor. Father put him in the most difficult room in an attempt to force his hand about the drinking. Can’t go to sleep drunk if you are sober by the time you reach the damn place.”

Unable to help himself, Aerion actually barks a laugh at her words.

“When did you get funny?” he asks after he’s done, slightly incredulous.

In return, Rhae smiles. “I managed to get a laugh out of even Aemon, once.”

“I was unaware he even knew what a laugh was.”

Rhae snorts, the sound startlingly similar to Aerion’s own. “The Citadel somehow managed to instil something that relaxes the stick around his arse. Maybe all that milk of the poppy they make.”

Aerion rolls his eyes, unable to help the mean grin on his face. He loves a good mock of someone else. Always makes him feel better.

He’s loath to admit that his younger sister, whom he’s been entirely uninterested in in his life thus far, may actually have flourished into something more interesting. She’s still odd-looking, like if their father had long hair and a mischievous grin to him, but she’s grown up well, he thinks.

“When he gets called back, make sure to do it again so I can see,” he orders, and Daeron makes a half-awake groaning noise in agreement. “I’d best start the trek to his quarters. Dump the oaf and go to sleep myself.”

Rhae makes a considering expression.

“Egg’s rooms are down the hall, you know,” she says conversationally. “He’s never here, but Father keeps all of our rooms perfectly stocked in case you decide to come home on a whim. Yours is on the second flight, eighth corridor from the main. But dump Daeron in Egg’s first, maybe. He looks half-dead.”

Aerion’s good mood is shattered instantly with the mention of his youngest brother. How he hates the brat.

But it seems that it may be his best option. He is tired and sore from the long journey to arrive at Summerhall, and wants nothing more than to dump his useless elder brother somewhere to sleep. At least from Rhae’s words, the little beast Aegon isn’t here to aggravate him any further.

“I will do so,” he eventually replies, nodding tersely at her in recognition.

She waves a hand and turns back to continue down the hall she had been leaving for.

“I shall see you on the morrow,” she says, and he realises that she definitely looks as if she’s sneaking out instead of going to sleep like the rest of Summerhall is. “If you haven’t murdered Daeron and run back off to Lys, that is. They say the whores there are spectacular, so I wouldn’t blame you.”

With that, she disappears, not even giving Aerion the opportunity to be incredulous at the insane words she had just spouted.

Daeron makes a pathetic sounding noise.

Aerion sighs, and begins to lug them down the hall to where Rhae had directed them.

In quick succession, he manages to find the room he assumes is Aegon’s, dump his brother on the bed, and make his way to the candles on a small table to see if he could set up some lighting. By the time he’s lit half of the brass and also managed to use the old wood in the fireplace to heat up the room to begin heating up the room, the clouds have overtaken the moon in the sky, the small amounts of light coming through the window dying out.

Aerion spares a thought for his younger sister, apparently sneaking out in the middle of the night, especially if it’s pitch black. He knows well now of what happens to young girls in the darkness.

Daeron starts up a very worrying heaving sound from the bed, and all thoughts of the girl instantly fly from Aerion’s mind.

He stalks over, crossing his arms across his chest and staring down at where his brother is slumped, face first on the bed. At least the bed is made, and his brother has not vomited just yet, he thinks exasperatedly. There’s a bedpan no doubt nearby for the drunk to use.

“Up, you oaf,” he orders harshly. “There’s no water nearby and I’m not waking a servant for you, so you’ll need to make do until morning. And you should not sleep in those clothes. You fucking reek.”

Daeron snorts into the bedding. “Can’t move my hands. Help me?”

“Can’t, or won’t?” he fires back. “Besides, you aren’t a child.”

“Y’treat me like I am, little brother,” Daeron replies in a sing-song tone.

He doesn’t make a move to sit up and let Aerion undress him easily though.

Aerion makes an aggravated expression at the effort he has to now put into this whole endeavour, but kicks off his boots so he can climb onto the bed and kneel over his brother after a moment. He rolls Daeron over, who goes easily with the movement. His eyes are closed, but he makes a noise in awareness when Aerion knees him not so kindly in the side to check if he truly has fallen asleep.

It feels almost familiar, on top of his brother like this, working at his clothes.

Except, when Daeron’s shirt is unbuttoned from a rough hand, the conclusion that Aerion had arrived at earlier that Daeron is very unwell becomes true.

Daeron’s previously tanned skin has become noticeably paler and wan, with terrible waxy undertones to the skin. Aerion remembers the yellows of Daeron’s eyes from their brief eye contact earlier, and feels his stomach turn when he thinks about how they had never looked like that before. Daeron had been slim once, almost pretty and delicate. Now he was skeletal and terrible, bones protruding from under his skin in an obvious manner.

He runs a hand down his brother’s chest with a harsh frown marring his face.

“Have you eaten at all in the past decade since I last saw you?” he asks sarcastically, unable to help the jibe.

Daeron doesn’t open his eyes. “It was nine years. Not quite a decade.”

Aerion feels something stir in his chest. Daeron had been counting.

And sure, Aerion had been doing the same, but it’s nice to see that he wasn’t the only one feeling their distance. In fact, it actually feels wonderful knowing that Daeron seemingly cared more for their time spent apart.

He truly is pathetic. This is why Aerion has to fix him, make him better.

He’s uncomfortable with the idea that Daeron is destroying himself like this. He belongs to Aerion, had given himself over to him willingly when they were younger. What right does he have to destroy himself so?

“My point still stands,” Aerion says, lifting Daeron’s skeletal chest up in order to properly slip his shirt off.

Once shirtless, Aerion shuffles further down in order to take off Daeron’s boots and pants, pulling them off in a swift motion in order to not feel too much like a servant. He’s a prince, for Gods’ sake. He shouldn’t have to undress his older brother like he’s a babe.

Once fully undressed, Daeron lifts up on his elbows to look at Aerion. He’s stretched across the bed and giving him a look, that in any other circumstances, probably would have led to Aerion fucking him senseless.

But Aerion hesitates when faced with the situation.

It’s not that he doesn’t still desire Daeron… But just not like this.

Daeron looks disgusting this skinny and pale. His drinking has turned him into a shell, yellowed in places and waxen in others. Aerion cannot abide by bedding him in a state like this. It’s simply gross.

Of course, his brother notices the pause. He blinks, eyes looking almost silver in the low lighting.

“You don’t want to?” Daeron asks, confused. “I am quite sure I remember you being near insatiable a few years ago.”

He makes a face, moving off the bed in order to stand beside it, still holding Daeron’s pants.

“You’re sick, brother,” Aerion says, and his voice is far quieter and softer than he had originally meant it.

Daeron laughs then, the sound bitter and slightly mean. It’s reminiscent to the brief flashes of cruelty his brother had shown in their youth, only done carelessly and when all other facades had been dropped. Underneath all of Daeron’s uselessness, is a sharp tongue to match Aerion’s own. He thinks they got it from their mother, outspoken and blunt woman that she was.

“I thought we were depraved together, brother,” he replies, emphasising the title back and shifting the tone to sound more mocking.

Aerion glares, aggravated. “Shut up. You won’t get me to fuck you like this. I have my pride, and it is below me to bed someone who looks like they’re on their deathbed.”

“Got spoiled by those Lyseni whores?” Daeron shoots back.

Stalking his way around the bed so he’s closer to Daeron’s head, Aerion leans down so he’s right above the man.

“Making me angry won’t make me hurt you either,” he says lowly. “Man the fuck up, and fix yourself. I will have no part in your wretched display.”

He straightens, furious enough to begin to stalk right out, but is stopped.

When he looks down, he sees Daeron has flipped himself around and stretched a hand out to grab desperately at Aerion’s own. His fingers are thin and knobby wrapped around Aerion’s own. They grip him hard enough to bruise, in a surprising show of strength from his weak elder brother.

“Don’t go,” Daeron pleads, desperate. “I won’t ask it of you anymore… But don’t leave me alone. The flames will burn me.”

Aerion narrows his eyes. “They will not. The fireplace is barely lit as is.”

Daeron makes a terrible sound. “It will burn me. The bed. I don’t want– don’t leave me alone. Please, Aerion. Little brother.”

And against all odds, against everything he’s been taught and learnt from his travels, Aerion does not leave the damn room like he had wanted to.

He sighs.

“…I will stay,” he promises quietly, knowing he can leave when Daeron falls asleep anyway.

At the words, Daeron slumps into the bed again, letting go of Aerion’s hand.

“I was always under the impression that the flame dying out was the worst thing that could happen in my dreams. But Gods, Aerion… The wall of fire I see is far worse. Who knew fire could be terrifying to a Targaryen?” Daeron mumbles as he situates himself under the covers.

Aerion himself, seeing that there was no chair nearby for him to sit, rolls his eyes and sits on the other side of the massive bed.

“You were never much of our likeness, anyway,” Aerion says lazily.

He closes his eyes and leans back against the headboard, tilting his head back and relaxing. He hears Daeron settle beside him, not close enough to touch, but enough so that he can feel the dip of the bed from his body weight.

“You and who? You were the only one concerned with remaining pure and Valyrian brother.”

Aerion hums disinterestedly. “Then I suppose I am the one true Targaryen. The rest of you are bookish and odd and scared of those below you.”

Daeron, sounding distinctly sleepier, chuckles quietly. “I won’t disagree. But the rest of our family have grown quite different in the past nine years. You may find yourself surprised, may enjoy their presence.”

“Are you jealous?” Aerion finds himself asking, surprised beyond belief. He pries open an eye to stare down at where Daeron is laid on his back with his eyes stubbornly closed as well.

Daeron had not appeared to be the type to be jealous years ago but back before Aerion left for Lys, hadn’t his brother been all out of sorts over Aerion’s future bed conquests?

“No,” Daeron says petulantly.

Finding himself equal parts delighted by their shared sickness and disgusted by being compared to someone as wretched as Daeron, Aerion frowns.

He’s confused by the mess of emotions he’s been feeling ever since he’s been in Daeron’s orbit once again. He had not felt whole in Lys, no matter how hard he had tried to fight and fuck it out of his system. Only back in his elder brother’s presence does he realise how much of a ghost he had felt like.

Almost as ghostly as how Daeron looks right now, pale and gaunt.

“I will not be back to Summerhall,” he states after a moment of contemplation.

Daeron, buried under the blankets, does not open his eyes to look at Aerion. “You only just arrived and you’re making such a decision?”

Aerion nods, even though Daeron can’t have seen it from the way his eyes are closed. “I’ll visit Father tomorrow morning, and continue on to King’s Landing.”

“…Why?” his brother whispers, sounding small.

Aerion thinks over his words, balancing the ideas of being truthful or kind and choosing to be venomous over them both.

“I don’t wish to see you until you fix yourself, brother,” he says, voice hard and commanding like he hasn’t been in years with Daeron. “The Red Keep will provide me with a distraction from your nonsense about flames and burning beds. You will figure yourself out, or never see me again. I hate this kind of pathetic appearance on you.”

Daeron doesn’t move, or breathe for a long moment.

“…You have always thought I was disgusting and pathetic,” is his eventual response. “What changed?”

“You did, you fool,” Aerion mutters. “You are more tormented than usual. You’ve gone beyond what I can fix.”

His elder brother is quiet at that, most likely ashamed.

Time stretches on, so long that Aerion reclines back into the headboard, counting Daeron’s breath as to see when he’s asleep.

When he’s sure Daeron has finally slipped into unconsciousness, Aerion finds himself possessed with the desire to simply look at his brother.

Daeron does not look any nicer in the low lighting. But at least he’s asleep now. It smoothes out the wrinkles around his eyes, making him look younger, like the twenty-eight year old he actually is.

He frowns and leans closer to get a better look at his brother’s forehead, intent on trying to see his brother bare, find all that has changed about him and note it all in the back of his mind. He feels obsessed beyond compare, lit up by an old flame he hasn’t felt since he left.

Daeron’s eyes blink open though, right when Aerion is perched over him.

Aerion blinks and raises an eyebrow. “Were you not asleep?”

He refuses to feel embarrassed about his snooping on his previously thought asleep brother. Daeron mirrors him by blinking as well.

“We will all burn,” he mutters, looking as if he’s seeing right through him.

He sounds vaguely distressed, voice rough and terrible.

Aerion sighs. “Shut up, Daeron. Go to sleep already.”

Daeron goes to open his mouth, no doubt to argue but Aerion leans down and presses a harsh kiss over his mouth instead.

They slot together as perfectly as they did nine years ago, although Aerion keeps his tongue inside his own mouth as to avoid the stench of wine from Daeron’s.

His brother makes a surprised but content kind of noise. He presses upwards the smallest amount, dried lips somehow impossibly soft against Aerion’s own.

When Daeron’s arms go to wrap around him though, Aerion slaps the offending limbs away and breaks the kiss.

He leans back, just enough to separate them but not enough that he’s sitting up straight again.

“I meant what I said, Daeron,” he murmurs between them, staring directly into those terrible yellowed and pale eyes. “You will cease your incessant ramblings of fire, and you will go the fuck to sleep.”

“You promise you’ll stay?” Daeron asks quietly, like a child.

Aerion kisses Daeron’s forehead, refusing to verbalise an answer.

Their mother used to do it to them when they were children, and the familiar gesture relaxes Daeron entirely. He must take it as some kind of promise, as he immediately closes his eyes and his breath evens out like he’s asleep again.

Aerion spends the whole night sitting next to his brother in bed and thinking about who and what they were after their time apart, and how they fit together now.

True to his word, Aerion had left early that very morning, after a brief but uncomfortable reunion with his Father in the training halls under the watchful eye of every knight, squire, and servant who happened to be up that early to attend to Maekar.

He had gotten his Father’s blessing and a letter of recommendation, and had been on the road to King’s Landing before the rest of his travelling caravan had even arrived at Summerhall.

Aerion spends the next year with no news from his family, fucking around in King’s Landing and training daily with the knights in the Red Keep. It’s quieter than he remembers from his childhood, all of his cousins dead in the past decade, and the current King childless. There are few Targaryens left in the realm these days, and the majority of them are at Summerhall with his father.

He unfortunately becomes closer to that Lord Bloodraven that is whispered about oft through the land in his almost lonely days at the Keep, which is how he hears about the first stirrings of another Blackfyre rebellion.

In no time, he’s hauling himself off to where prospective front lines are (pointed to him helpfully by said Lord Bloodraven).

The battles he fights in, so far only two (and looking to be minimal after this), are fucking glorious.

He had missed the way his blade would sing across the battlefield, spilling blood wherever he went, had almost forgotten what a good cause felt like to fight under. The Second Sons had given him a good standing point for battles, but nothing compared to having no limitations to what he could do in the field.

He fights with his sword, feeling more like a one-man storm as he fights, and when he grows bored of slaughtering with that, uses a mace, like his father.

His father fights beside him, and his youngest brother is apparently also somewhere nearby, but Aerion pays it no mind.

He feels so alive, ancient Valyrian blood coursing through his veins in time with his movements, almost hypnotic as he slashes and stabs and swings his way through the Blackfyre rebellion.

When the last of the bastards has retreated back to their boats to return to Essos, Aerion laughs so loudly, right there on the middle of the battlefield, he scares off the maester sent to attend to his wounds.

So worked up, he decides to join the clean-up crew, hunting down remaining rebels and slaughtering them for abandoning their cause and having to be hunted down in the first place.

It’s only the next night after the final battle that Aerion finally stops his rampage.

He’s in his own tent, his father reclined in a chair by the desk, cleaning and oiling his mace, thinking about how beautiful battle truly is. The good mood is only slightly ruined by the fact that his stupid younger brother (though not so little any more unfortunately) is here as well, perched on the desk and reading through some scroll or other that their father had brought with him. At least he’s silent, and Aerion can continue to sharpen his sword in peace over by his bed.

He’s sure that his father is only here to do damage control about Aerion’s reckless and wild actions during the fighting.

Unless he actually wants to just sit in silence for hours. Maekar is a difficult man to read the older he gets.

“My prince, there’s a guest–” comes from outside the tent, a guard standing vigil beginning to open the tent flap.

Aerion doesn’t have time to ask which fucking prince the idiot meant since there’s three of them in here, before the guard is being interrupted by the flap of the tent being thrown open.

Inside stumbles a figure startlingly familiar.

His dirty blond hair has grown longer in the year it has been since they last saw each other, baggy and airy clothing still more fitting for a peasant than a prince, and pale eyes are widened desperately as they scan the tent before settling on Aerion, now stood up, with red-rims to them.

“Aerion,” his one and only elder brother Daeron says, and it sounds like a prayer when uttered so reverently.

Aerion doesn’t even have time to be shocked before Daeron throws himself across the room to crush him into a hug.

He blinks, frozen stiff by the affectionate gesture.

Then, his gaze unwittingly jumps to where his father and brother are looking at the scene the two of them make with incredulity even stronger than Aerion’s own.

“What in the seven hells are you doing here?” Aerion hisses, hands hovering somewhere behind Daeron’s back, unsure what to do with his elder brother’s body outside of fucking it and uncomfortable with their audience.

Daeron unwraps himself from around Aerion, but doesn’t let him go very far.

Instead, he puts his thin and frozen fingers on either side of Aerion’s face, cupping his cheeks and pulling them face to face.

“The flame burned brighter than I ever saw it, I thought you’d– Gods above I thought you died,” Daeron is saying in rapid speed, hands still cradling Aerion’s face and eyes jumping across it manically, like he’s memorising it.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Aerion asks, confused.

Daeron seems to calm at the harsh words. He stares into Aerion’s eyes with something startlingly close to affection.

“You came back to me,” he whispers between them. “The flame did not go out. You burn brighter than ever, but you are right here. I am beyond grateful.”

“I am right here,” Aerion reassures for lack of better thing to say.

Their father clears his throat.

Daeron jumps backwards and away from Aerion with a squeak. Aerion takes a deep breath now that he isn’t so out of his depth with their closeness, though he feels like something is missing now that he doesn’t have Daeron right in front of him.

“What are you doing here, foolish boy? The battlefield is no place for you,” Maekar says, voice just to the left of concerned. He doesn’t stand up from his post.

Daeron straightens his shoulders, and Aerion blinks at the display of spine his brother shows. Since when had he been able to do that?

“I knew the fighting was over. Could hear the townspeople celebrating even from Summerhall,” he answers like he had rehearsed it.

“Summerhall is at least a four day ride,” Aegon jumps in, getting off his perch to approach his elder brother and put a hand on his shoulder as greeting. “Thought yourself ready for the battlefield, brother? It is good to see you.”

Aerion narrows his eyes at Daeron.

What the little beast had said was true. If Daeron had really heard news about the end of the fighting before he set out, he should not have arrived for another two days. That means Daeron had set out for them before the fighting was finished, no doubt at the heat of the battle.

He takes a closer look at his brother.

Daeron looks tired and worn, like he hadn’t slept, but Aerion can see the man is visibly healthier. His skin is that comfortable tan he had sported for the majority of their life, his clothes appearing less like they belong to a giant and more filled around the stomach and shoulders. His face looks a smidgen rounder, like he had taken Aerion’s comments about his disgusting weight into account. He doesn’t even smell like wine, or any kind of alcohol.

Daeron, for all accounts and purposes, has managed to pull himself together in the past year.

“Never,” Daeron answers their other brother’s question, sounding resolute. “I simply…”

He trails off, unable to think of an excuse for his insane ramblings about his dreams.

Both he and Aerion know well by now that their father has no concern for Daeron’s torment. He’s never believed Daeron (though Aerion hasn’t either honestly), which will put them in an uncomfortable position if what Daeron said earlier about only coming here because he had dreamt Aerion dead is to be believed.

Aerion ignores his discomfort at that, burying it alongside every other odd dream Daeron has told him of.

“I called him here,” Aerion interrupts, drawing all eyes to him.

He raises an eyebrow and cocks his hip, the very picture of knowing what he was doing and being unapologetic for it. His father looks at him inscrutably, the little beast looks at him surprised, and Daeron only gives him a look through his lashes. Aerion tries not to get hard at the sight, considering he’s still standing in front of his least favourite brother and their father.

“Why the fuck would you do that?” their father grunts. “You know he shouldn’t be here, especially if we hadn’t ended the fighting so quickly.”

Aerion shrugs. “I knew it would be over fast. Besides, he’s already here. No point in arguing over it now.”

Maekar gives him another look that probably translates to something annoyed, but Aerion ignores him.

Daeron’s shoulders have that hunch to them though, his previous braveness long gone in the presence of their father.

Both of them know how much of a hard man their father is, in a way that Aemon and Aegon most likely don’t. Just like how the younger ones don’t remember the smiling and open father they once had, they don’t remember the transition from that into the cold and worn man they all see today. Since Aerion and Daeron saw the brutal change with their own eyes, it’s often harder for them to deal with the overwhelming disappointment Maekar has towards his sons.

“…Sorry, father,” Daeron practically whispers.

Aerion can feel the way his expression twists at the words, instantly.

Fucking Daeron. Who the hell does he think he is, apologising to their father like the old cunt is worthy of it?

Aerion has never hated his father more than he does right now, feels it pulsing through him at the unintentional submission Daeron’s given Maekar when Aerion is the only one who deserves it. No one in the entirety of the known world is worthy of Daeron’s shame, except for Aerion.

“Shut up,” Aerion hisses under his breath, drawing his brother’s attention back to him.

Daeron makes a confused face, but obediently shuts his mouth, still giving Aerion that look like he can’t quite believe he’s alive and here.

“Aerion,” their father warns, but Aerion simply sends a cold look his father and brother’s way.

“Daeron is no doubt tired from his journey. He shall room with me tonight,” he orders, raising his chin in defiance, daring them to disagree with him.

Aegon looks confused at the tension between the three of them. Poor little Aegon, the youngest son, never having any idea of the way the family functions considering he abandoned them to follow his fucking hedge knight a decade ago. There will always be something he cannot see between Maekar and his two eldest sons, whom he dismissed as failures years ago and misses all the same.

Well, not that Aerion is a failure like Daeron. But he can see it in his father’s eyes after his return, knows that he’s uncomfortable with the way Aerion burns and flourishes in violence. They both know that he cannot have been too hurt by Aerion’s exile, if he was the person who ordered it in the first place.

“We can probably set up another tent for him–” Aegon starts, looking towards the entrance to the tent like it will help him.

“Will you go fetch one then, squire boy?” Aerion says, cruel. “That seems to be all you’re good for, fetching things and making obvious comments. Perhaps your time with that oafish hedge knight has degraded any wit you possessed before you left.”

Like he had predicted, Aegon looks briefly insulted by the words, even though he preaches passivity and calmness these days. His dark purple eyes, darker than even Aerion’s own, narrow into a glare and he frowns.

“Do not insult Ser Duncan,” he says, his steady voice overshadowed by the cross expression on his face.

Aerion rolls his eyes. “Then get out of my tent. I’m tired, and I want to go to sleep. Your presence aggravates me.”

Maekar stands up finally, the jostle of his clothing making them all whip their heads towards him. He steps forward until he’s in the middle of the tent, unlike Aerion and Daeron who are by his bed and Aegon who’s at the desk pushed into the corner.

He looks at each of them one by one, something unnameable in his expression. He lands on Aerion though, like he always will when it comes to making difficult decisions.

Daeron is spineless, Aemon passive, and Aegon the youngest and most distant to them all. When Maekar has needed something, Aerion has always been right there to enforce it for him.

“Send for a cot, for Daeron,” he says to Aegon, but he’s still looking at Aerion inscrutably. “Everyone will want to rest for another day before setting up or pulling down tents. We’ll set out for Kings Landing afterwards.”

Aegon nods at the instruction, fitting himself back into the quiet and presentable boy he is whenever around his father. He excuses himself without even a look at Aerion and subsequently Daeron, and leaves the tent to find that cot.

Maekar’s attention finally leaves Aerion to focus on Daeron, looking tired for the first time since they began fighting. Aerion is reminded of how his father has fought in more battles than years Aerion has been alive.

“One night, I will permit this childish behaviour,” he says lowly and with a dangerous edge to his voice. “After that, you will behave like the princes you are. No sleepovers or anything equally as girly.”

There it is, Aerion thinks exasperatedly. His father’s pride rears its big head once again, less concerned with why Aerion insists Daeron sleep in his tent, and more with what other people would think of two princes sharing tents and playing with dolls.

Not that Aerion thinks this is a sleepover, nor does he have any plans of playing with a doll.

The second that damned cot is delivered, Aerion is dumping it on a corner and pulling his brother into bed with him to make good on his promise to only fuck him when he’s fixed himself.

“Sure,” Aerion says disinterestedly, waving a hand almost in dismissal.

His father’s eyes flash, but Daeron shuffles forward to pat the man on the shoulder awkwardly.

“You did very well, Father. I’m sure the King will reward you handsomely,” Daeron says, like he has no fucking clue how to congratulate someone on doing well and had simply spouted the first thing that came to mind.

It works to confuse Maekar, making him shift from brief anger to incredulity again.

“He fucking better,” he spits. “Any more of these stupid rebellions and I’m sailing over the fucking sea to burn down Essos and draw them all out. Aerys is a fucking coward.”

Without further ado, he scoffs at the very thought of his own cowardly brother, and stalks out of the tent.

Aerion stares at the flap of the tent, the torches outside letting in the smallest amount of light through the gap.

He hears shuffling from beside him, and before he can think about it, Daeron is on him.

Daeron roughly connects their lips, sighing into his mouth at the first contact and immediately getting to work on trying to lick into Aerion’s mouth. And Aerion, like a trained dog, simply opens up, swallowing every little sigh his brother makes as they kiss harshly. The wet heat of his brother's mouth is by far the best thing about their whole tumultuous affair, he thinks. It matches the fire burning within him, warming and burning the same way a close brush with death does.

Aerion wraps a possessive hand around Daeron’s waist, and Daeron moans at the tight grip he has. He bullies himself closer into Aerion’s space and keeps kissing him like his life depends on it.

If Aerion is briefly shocked by how passionate his brother is, he tries not to focus on it too much. He thinks he prefers it this hard and rough anyway, giving him ample opportunity to grab Daeron’s hair with his free hand and tug on it until Daeron’s neck is on display through those plain robes he has on.

“You cannot wait until the little beast delivers the cot?” he murmurs into Daeron’s skin, biting harshly into that tan neck and burning his nose in his brother’s skin like he could climb right in and never leave. “It makes me think you almost want us to be caught.”

“F-fuck, Aerion,” Daeron moans quietly, hands gripping Aerion’s shoulders tightly to keep him from dying or whatever he was stammering about earlier.

Aerion grins wickedly against Daeron’s skin, before biting hard enough to make Daeron yelp. He soothes it with his tongue afterwards, pressing his chest closer to Daeron and slipping a leg between his thighs.

“Do you want him to see you like this? Want him to spread the word to the rest of the camp that you rode four days from Summerhall on a whim to get fucked by your younger brother?”

Daeron shakes his head, distraught, but his voice cracks on a moan when Aerion rubs his thigh harshly against his cock.

“–They apparently had a spare cot in the infirmary,” Aegon’s voice interrupts from the entrance to the tent.

Aerion manages to turn around and hide his brother’s far more disheveled appearance behind him in the split second he has as warning, making it just in time for Aegon to drop the tent flap behind him and lift his head.

He’s carrying the cot and there’s a completely innocent expression on his face. He clearly has no idea.

“You’ll have to scrounge some sheets from somewhere, but the cot is better quality than the one they were going to give me before I argued for this one,” he continues, placing the cot near the entrance of the tent with a huff.

He stands up and finally looks properly at Aerion, furrowing his brows.

“What?” Aerion barks.

Aegon raises his hands in a placating gesture. “Did you get into a row with Father? You look flushed. And why is Daeron hiding?”

Daeron’s knobby fingers poke Aerion’s back to tease him. Aerion grimaces.

“Daeron cried,” he lies outright, ignoring the squawk of indignation he gets for it and the harsh punch to a shoulder blade from his brother. “He’s ashamed of his truly pathetic demeanour and wishes you would get the fuck out of the tent.”

Aegon makes a mild huffing sound but seems to have calmed down in his brief time away from Aerion.

“He could tell me that himself,” he says with a roll of his eyes. “But as you wish. I shall see you in the morn, brother.”

It’s clear he’s only talking to Daeron, won’t even address Aerion as his brother, but Aerion doesn’t care. As far as he’s concerned, the prick lost his right to be considered Aerion’s blood when he chose to squire for that stupid hedge knight.

Daeron thankfully doesn’t respond, and soon, they’re alone in the tent again.

This time, Aerion makes sure the tent flaps are secured with cloth before he turns around and draws his brother towards the bed with an impatient hand.

When he’s there, he turns around to look at Daeron once again. Waiting.

Daeron does not keep him long.

“Fuck me,” he pleads quietly, looking at Aerion with impossibly tormented pale eyes. “I did as you asked. I ate more food than I possibly could fit, cut back the drinking, even started training in the yards to put on some muscle. You have to. Please, Aerion.”

Aerion tilts his head. “Show me.”

His brother make a whining noise in the back of his throat, almost unconscious, and does as he asks.

As opposed to many years ago, this time Daeron’s undressing is very enticing, purposefully done and masterful, truly. He unbuttons his shirt slowly, slipping it off his shoulders in order to give Aerion a show. The whole time, he’s biting his lip as he works on his pant loops, glancing up at Aerion as he works on getting out of everything except his small clothes.

“Those too,” Aerion commands, pointing at the small clothes and feeling his cock harden at the small nod Daeron does before he begins to strip down so he’s naked.

Once he’s fully undressed and standing before Aerion, Aerion grins.

He doesn’t touch just yet, walking around Daeron to spy the fine hair growing on his arms and down his chest, the way his ass has filled out since before Aerion went to Lys, making an almost proud face at how his upper body has gotten less skeletal and more like a normal human. He’s still skinny, but Aerion is beginning to think Daeron is not the kind of person who can put on weight very well anyway.

“I’d say you almost look pretty, brother,” he says with a nod, scanning the way Daeron’s nipples begin to harden with the abrupt temperature change.

Daeron crosses his arms over his chest, seemingly insecure. “Don’t jest with me right now. I’m far from being in the mood.”

Aerion rolls his eyes at the seriousness, but tones down his venom.

His brother has done well. He did everything that Aerion was implicitly asking him to the last time he saw him, has gone out of his way to make himself appealing once more to him, and for that, he deserves some grace. Aerion decides he will be nice tonight.

“‘Truly do mean it,” he replies, splaying a possessive hand over those pert nipples. “You’ve done well.”

“Don’t talk to me like a child,” Daeron shoots back, but he’s relaxed that tense line of his shoulders and is giving Aerion the look.

Taking the hint, Aerion closes the gap between them and captures his brother’s lips in a slow kiss.

“Poor, pretty Daeron,” he murmurs against his brother’s lips. “Needing me to fuck you so you keep all thoughts out of that tormented little head of yours… Had you been a maiden, I would have long asked Father for your hand, I think.”

Daeron moans, the sound long and drawn out. He presses impossible closer, twining their tongues together wetly and nudging them impatiently towards the bed.

“Don’t tease,” he orders against Aerion’s lips.

Aerion laughs meanly at how bossy his brother is being today. But he lets Daeron shove him onto the bed and begin to undress him hastily anyway. He cannot deny he himself is desperate to fuck Daeron again. It has been ten years after all.

They lose themselves to the heat of it all, hips grinding and legs tangling as Daeron pushes Aerion until he’s reclined on the mattress and he’s straddling him.

“Did you bring–” Aerion begins to ask.

Wordlessly, Daeron stretches himself beautifully in order to reach his pants laid out on the end of the bed.

Aerion watches, mesmerised at the long lines of his brother’s torso, the way his golden skin flexes in the candlelight from the movement, the small muscles dancing underneath fleshy skin, and then locks onto the small vial of oil that Daeron has procured from his pants.

“I came prepared,” Daeron explains breathlessly, before moving back to kiss Aerion senseless.

He feels more than sees Daeron begin to prepare himself with the oil. His brother’s knuckles brush Aerion’s thighs and he moans helplessly into Aerion’s mouth as he continues to do his best to devour him.

And in turn, Aerion lets him. Doesn’t try to smother those moans, or stop the way Daeron is twitching and rubbing all over him while stretching himself.

He wants the whole world to know, he thinks.

His recent brushes with death and the way he’s been plagued by thoughts of his brother the whole while have illuminated to him that Aerion should live more on the edge. That if someone finds them… Well, what are they going to do?

Aerion will kill anyone who dares to say that what they are doing is not beautiful or right. It feels far too good to be anything but perfect.

Soon enough, Daeron is lining himself up with Aerion’s stiff cock, and in one swift motion, he seats himself fully on it.

“Seven hells Daeron!” Aerion can’t help but gasp, breaking their kiss to slam his head back into the mattress dazedly.

“Finally,” Daeron mutters to himself, before starting to bounce.

Half of him is gone, Aerion thinks, lost. That tight wet heat is engulfing him, and for the first time in a decade, Aerion feels fully sated with sticking his cock in someone.

Daeron’s thighs are flexing, strong muscles roiling under his skin and contorting under that golden flesh. Aerion tightens his grip on them, determined to leave a mark, to bruise and pain and bite. He wants to consume Daeron whole. The thought tethers him.

All too quickly, Daeron reaches his climax, having been hitting that spot inside himself that makes him lose it every time with ease apparently. Or maybe he had just been that riled up.

When his brother starts to shake in that familiar way and come, Aerion slams his hips upwards in order to press harder on that spot. Daeron cries out loudly as Aerion grinds tightly against that spot, hands scrabbling on where they’re perched on Aerion’s chest like he’s losing sanity.

When Daeron has finished shaking and moaning his way through it, Aerion, still rock hard, flips them over so he’s over Daeron.

“There we go,” Aerion muses almost to himself, before lining up again and thrusting in roughly. “As beautiful as you are up there, I think I much prefer it like this.”

He picks up Daeron’s thighs with his forearms, spreading him wide and spearing him on his cock, hips slapping roughly against him.

“Fuck, fuck,” Daeron cries, hands coming up to grip at Aerion’s hair tightly.

Aerion fucks him harder, nudging him so he wraps his legs around Aerion instead of him having to hold them in place. This leaves him free to drag his nails down Daeron’s chest till he bleeds and pull him impossibly closer so the blood spreads across the both of them. He feels the warm blood mix on his own chest, and bites harshly at Daeron’s earlobe in response.

“Like that?” he groans, feeling his brother's insides clench around him tightly and almost coming right there.

“Yes– Gods– Aerion!” Daeron cries, his voice definitely audible for anyone who would be hanging outside of their tent.

But Aerion does not care. He keeps up the pace, doing his brother good and hard.

He hears Daeron cry out loudly, signalling he’s coming once again, and smiles against his brother's neck. So soon after the first is no doubt painful, and Daeron always feels the tightest inside when he’s trying not to cry a little.

Daeron lays limply against the sheets once he’s finished coating their stomachs with his seed. Aerion leans back just to look at the way his brother’s pale eyes are fluttering, desperately trying to remain conscious while he’s relentlessly pleasured from the back.

“Fuck,” Aerion groans and leans back down to rub his cheek on Daeron’s, wanting to be impossibly closer.

His brother makes a content and slowly warming kind of sound, wrapping arms around Aerion’s shoulders and tugging him further down so he can whisper in his ear. His cock, still hard and probably going purple from how much effort it takes to remain so, rubs against their stomachs hotly.

“I wish I had been born a girl, sometimes,” Daeron whispers at him, a secret, dirty and painful in the way Aerion should not have had to hear it. “Then you could marry me, and take me every day. I would birth you an army of sons. You would never have to leave my side, ever again.”

Aerion bites harshly into Daeron’s neck, high enough it will be visible to everyone who could glance at his brother at the surge of arousal that sings through him.

He sometimes wishes the same thing, back when they had begun their coupling initially.

But then he sees Daeron for the very much male he is, the way his body contorts and holds secret strength, how he does not cry and beg the way a maiden does unless Aerion has been bullying him for hours, the way Aerion does not have to be careful with any aspect of Daeron as they are blood and are unable to truly do damage to each other, and he is grateful that his brother is well– his brother.

“I told you that I would torment you until the day you die,” Aerion reminds him just as quietly, his voice coming out breathless due to how hard he’s still fucking him. “Besides, what woman could compare to you? Your cock is useless mostly, but I still find it beautiful when I can do this.”

As if to illustrate, Aerion leans back the smallest amount so he can grip his brother’s cock in his hand in a painful clench. He twists his hand up and down it roughly, completely dry, and watches as Daeron’s face twists into a sobbing face.

“Fuck!” he cries, clutching at Aerion and shoving his cock further into the cruel treatment Aerion is subjecting it to. “M’close! Keep–fuck! Aerion!”

Aerion drags his nails harshly down the shaft of it, praying it will bleed.

Daeron comes with a pained shriek.

Immediately afterward, Aerion follows, collapsing on top of his brother and groaning long and low into the tent.

“Someone definitely heard you,” Aerion mutters in the aftermath, feeling that warm glow sing through him.

Daeron, still wrapped around Aerion and panting like he had run all the way from Summerhall instead of riding, makes a vague sound in response.

Aerion proudly twirls a strand of Daeron’s hair around his finger.

Slowly he manoeuvres himself, still inside Daeron and unwilling to leave it despite being soft now, till they’re laid side by side, facing each other. Daeron throws one of his legs over him in a mimicry of an embrace, and it surprises Aerion how okay he is with the display of possession almost.

“You should come back to Summerhall,” Daeron implores between them after a long moment of blissful silence, blinking slowly at Aerion. “Don’t go back to the Keep. Stay with me, instead.”

Aerion tilts his head, relaxes into the mattress the smallest amount. He thinks on it for only a moment before deciding.

“Okay.”

Daeron’s whole face lights up. “Truly?”

Shrugging, Aerion swipes his thumb over Daeron’s lower lip, memorising the way it looks.

“I am loath to give you up again. Try not to piss me off again, brother, and we won’t have to wait this long to be with each other again.”

Daeron doesn’t even get cross at how Aerion is blaming him for their time apart. He only nods and leans closer to Aerion.

“We’ll have ourselves a merry time there, you’ll see. Father moved his rooms to the second floor of the castle, meaning you and I would be the only ones on the third floor,” he says, a teasing lilt to his voice. “Perhaps you might find yourself enjoying the space more than that dreadful Red Keep.”

Aerion carefully doesn’t think that Summerhall would only be enjoyable if he’s around Daeron. He knows if he had returned to just be stuck with his other siblings, he’d never even consider it. Kings Landing treats him well but… Well, what is the Keep to his elder brother?

“Maybe,” is what he says instead.

Then, he kisses Daeron to shut him up and rolls them over for another round.

In 221 AC, King Maekar, first of his name, ascends to the Iron Throne after the death of his elder brother King Aerys.

It feels unreal, Aerion thinks as he sits in the King’s chambers with all his siblings, clustered around the table having a private dinner away from the ever watchful eyes of the Red Keep.

They’re all still dressed in their regalia from the coronation earlier, considering their father (the King now) hadn’t wanted a large banquet and instead sent the funds to further strengthen their military. Maekar is at the head of the table, crown heavy on his head, Aerion (sulking) and Daeron (nursing a sore lower back from an hour previous with Aerion) on either side of him in the same positions that their cousins Valarr and Matarys used to hold for their grandfather King. Beside Aerion is Rhae for some gods forsaken reason, Aemon on her other side. Next to Daeron sits Aegon and then Daella. All of them are sitting in comfort, filled with the occasional chatter from Rhae and Daella or comment from Aegon.

It’s surprisingly peaceful.

Until it’s not, that is.

“The realm is in need of more Targaryens,” Maekar says out of nowhere somewhere near the end of the luncheon.

All of their heads turn to look at him, confusion and curiosity burning in his siblings' gazes. Aerion himself is interested in where this is going, thinking that there are actually quite a few Targaryen’s sitting at this very table.

Maekar looks at his children one by one, before settling on his wine goblet, empty and purely decorational, clearly wishing it was not such.

“I have arranged a line of suitors for Daella and Rhae. You will go through them, find one that you believe will suit you well, and wed,” he continues, looking at his daughters with something close to apology.

Daella raises an eyebrow at their father. “Are we expected to pump out babies immediately? Or do we get a grace period?”

Their father grunts, turning back to the goblet. “The latter. However, we are in need of an heir.”

The words sink in. All of them freeze.

“An heir?” Rhae asks, obtrusive as always.

Maekar sighs, and Aerion immediately has a terrible feeling settle in his gut. Their father looks at Daeron with a hard glint in his violet eyes.

“You are now Prince of Dragonstone, Daeron. You will inherit when I am dead, and your children after you,” he says with gravity, though he looks as if he wants to finish that sentence with the word ‘hopefully’, no doubt remembering the fate of his own brothers. “To get there though, you need to actually have children. I’ve arranged one so.”

Aerion’s grip tightens impossibly on his knife. He stares at his brother, frozen, feeling most like the world has come crashing down around him.

Daeron’s pale eyes are locked on his plate. He won’t look up.

“With who?” he asks, voice quiet.

The room fades out from around Aerion. He’s stuck on the odd way his elder brother delivered the words, the way his shoulders hunch the smallest amount.

“Kiera, of Tyrosh,” Maekar answers after a long moment of silence. “Valarr’s widow. She has a considerable backing behind her, and would make an excellent Queen.”

Aerion finally manages to place the tone of voice Daeron had just seconds ago.

He’s resigned, the fucking bastard. He’s not even going to fight. Just passively accept whatever their father has planned for him because he’s too cowardly to say anything otherwise.

‘Say something,’ he demands in his head, but is too busy reeling to even breathe out loud. ‘Say no.’

He can almost see the desperation matching his own in his father’s eyes. As if begging Daeron to say something, fight back. Do anything to stick up for himself, just this once. No normal man would accept his cousin’s widow for a wife, not even a shame filled one, and they both seem to be waiting for Daeron to be a fucking man for once in his life.

But it never comes.

“As you wish,” is all Daeron has to say.

Aerion feels himself come back to his body in one fell swoop.

He stabs the knife in his hand into the table with a loud thunk, ratting every piece of silverware on the table. He doesn’t even blink, too busy staring at Daeron.

But he can’t speak. He finds himself frozen once again as Daeron’s pale gaze looks up from his plate finally, staring at Aerion with that same resigned look that matches his voice.

“Aerion,” Daeron whispers, using the gentling tone he usually uses during their coupling. Their family is unfamiliar with it, but Aerion can see the faces they make at it, unsure of what it means or why it’s being used.

Abruptly Aerion stands up.

And then he leaps across the table to grab Daeron by his shirt collar.

The room descends into chaos as his abrupt movement startles the dishes and drinks all over everyone present. Rhae is pushed almost off her chair by his chair toppling over behind him, and Daella shrieks loudly when Aemon’s goblet drenches her from across the table, no doubt pissed about her ruined dress. Aegon immediately leaps to his brother’s defence, throwing a knee on the unsteady table to try and pry Aerion off Daeron, and Maekar stands up to do much of the same.

“Aerion!” their father thunders, voice harsher than Aerion has ever heard it, but he doesn’t let go. “Let him go!”

“You fucking bastard,” Aerion hisses, voice surprisingly controlled despite how out of sorts he feels. “Say something!”

Daeron only looks at him passively, limp in his hold, those haunting pale eyes staring like it will make a difference. Like Aerion will ever forgive his brother for this.

‘I’m sorry,’ he mouths, so their family cannot hear that piece of vulnerability they share.

Aerion punches him.

It sends Daeron’s head snapping to the side, his collar still held tightly in Aerion’s grip so he cannot collapse like he clearly needs to with the force of it. He makes a pained grunting noise, but doesn’t make any kind of move to retaliate.

Typical Daeron, useless to the very end.

“What the fuck!” Aegon shouts and finally manages to pry them apart.

The Kingsguard have burst into the room, grabbing Aerion around the middle and pulling him away from his brother, their siblings all in varying states of disarray around them. Aemon has pulled Rhae away from the mess, shielding her behind him, Daella vaulting backwards to move away from the table entirely with a white face but composed nonetheless. Aegon is pulling Daeron away and trying to get a good look at the no doubt vicious and swollen mark on his face from the force of the punch, Aerion struggling in the grip of the Kingsguard to give him another one, the fucking prick.

And Maekar is standing at the head of the table with an expression so wretched, he looks to have been aged a hundred years.

“Are you or are you not Princes of the fucking realm?” he roars. “Behave yourselves! You are acting like fucking common folk!”

Silence settles over the room instantly.

Aerion manages to worm out of the hold of the Kingsguard, panting and out of breath. He shoves the upjumped bastards away from him, sneering.

“You will wed him to our cousin's widow?” Aerion says in the silence, staring at his father like he’ll take back the words. “Do you fucking jest? It’s undignified and fucking stupid!”

Maekar slams his palms on the table. “Who will you have him marry then? Truly, Aerion, since you think yourself so knowledgeable, guide me to a perfect match for him!”

Aerion’s expression twists.

It would be stupid to say what he truly thinks of when posed with the question. Unbelievably stupid and downright blasphemous.

But the first person that Aerion thinks of, of course, is himself.

If Daeron had been born a girl, none of this would have had to happen. He would have been wed to Aerion, and they could give the realm a whole fucking army of Targaryen babes. There would be no question of marrying widows and selling Daeron off like livestock because Aerion would have gotten him pregnant all those years ago in King’s Landing the first time they had slept together.

But instead, they are both male, therefore incapable of birthing heirs, and Aerion has to look his father in the eyes and pretend it doesn’t feel like being stabbed to admit he wishes he could marry Daeron instead.

To save himself the embarrassment of answering, Aerion makes a disgusted scoff and turns his whole body away from his family.

He realises then, that he’s shaking with rage. His fists are still clenched, nails no doubt embedded into his palms hard enough to bleed, and he feels his muscles jumping from how tense they are, roiling beneath the surface of his skin like coiling snakes. He’s just so angry, a vibrant flame of wrath.

A hand lands on his shoulder, cold and thin. Daeron’s, Aerion realises as he turns around to look at him.

“Aerion,” his brother says again, like a stupid stable hand that’s been kicked in the head too oft and now can only say one thing.

He looks imploring, pale eyes looking at him through his lashes, shoulders hunched forward slightly defensively. Resignation is a terrible look on Daeron, Aerion thinks nonsensically.

“Fuck off,” Aerion hisses back.

He doesn’t step away from the touch though. He feels wired, and the only thing that seems to calm him these days is his brother’s touch.

“Don’t be so wroth,” Daeron says, voice quiet and sombre. “We should talk more, perhaps privately?”

Aegon makes an incredulous sound from behind them both. “And leave you alone with him? Are you mad, brother? He just attacked you!”

Rhae leans around from where she had been hidden protectively behind Aemon, and makes a clicking sound with her tongue.

“Just think, Egg. If they kill each other over this whole betrothal business, then you’ll inherit the crown next. It’s a win-win if you ask me,” she states, matter-of-fact and bored. “Truly, I don’t know why you’re both acting like such children.”

Daella hums, as composed as she had been before. “Marriage is far from the end of the world for you men. Rhae and I are the ones who will be sent away from home and will most likely die in the childbed.”

Maekar slams his hand into the table again.

“Watch your words. There will be no talk of any of my children dying,” he says, voice harsh and unforgiving. “Daeron will wed that damn Tyroshi woman, my daughters will marry their suitors and stay in Kings Landing with me, and Gods so help me Aerion will stop throwing this fucking tantrum!”

Daella makes a pleased hum at the words.

“And the childrearing?” she asks, righting the course of the conversation easily.

Aegon coughs into his fist, primly. “Surely that can be held off? Betha and I have already had a son.”

“Some fucking Targaryen son you have too,” Aerion sneers under his breath. “Named after a hedge knight and without a speck of Targaryen colouring.”

“What was that?” Aegon demands, suddenly no longer the polite little brat he usually is. He stares unblinkingly at Aerion from across the table, not giving him a single bit of courtesy.

“Nothing!” Rhae says, shouldering her way in between the two of them and raising her hands to block off their staring contest. “He said nothing.”

Aerion buries the urge to push her into a wall or something. He is far from some maiden in need of rescuing, he doesn’t need his youngest sister jumping to his defence like so. It’s embarrassing.

He says as much. “Don’t speak for me. I am perfectly capable of insulting someone without your input, sister.”

Rhae turns around and looks briefly touched. “You remembered that I am your sister?”

Daeron snorts at the warm look on her face. That draws all eyes back to his pathetic elder brother, and Daeron stiffens under the attention.

Aerion’s wrath, which had previously settled down to a simmer, instantly sparks into a raging inferno again.

He throws Daeron’s hand off of him, having gotten too used to the contact, and takes another step away from him. He doesn’t turn his back any more though, forcing himself to maintain eye contact and stay strong in the face of his (admittedly out-of-touch) anger.

“Marry the whore if you must, and be an embarrassment,” Aerion spits, pointing an accusing finger at Daeron. “But do not think to speak to me again with such little honour. I swear it, Daeron. I’ll never speak a kind word to you again.”

“When has he ever spoken kindly to anyone in the first place?” Daella whispers loudly enough for everyone to hear.

Aegon narrows his eyes and whispers back. “He must be in love with the Tyroshi woman. There’s no other explanation on why he’s so obsessed with the marriage.”

Aerion ignores them all, instead holding eye contact with his elder brother.

He needs Daeron to understand that Aerion is being serious. That he’s been serious about this only once before, and he can make that painful distance happen again if Daeron doesn’t at least try.

Daeron breaks eye contact.

“It would be an advantageous match…” he says slowly.

Aerion should have known better.

Taking a long second to regard his brother, feast his eyes upon the sight of him just once more, Aerion resigns himself to where they head.

He has spent most of his life entangled with Daeron, not just carnally, but now that he’s old enough to recognise it, emotionally too. Daeron has been the only one in his life to simply take Aerion in all his brilliance, and not be put off by his cruelty or intolerance. And Aerion has been giving Daeron exactly what he needs for decades now, fixing him and uplifting him the best he could.

But in the face of what their dear father wants, of course it does not matter.

Aerion has always basked in being their father’s favourite, knowing that he could get away with anything. He should have known that eventually, Daeron would crave exactly what Aerion has taken for granted this whole time.

Maekar Targaryen’s approval is a dangerous thing, Aerion realises, and he hates the man, truly and deeply, for the first time in his life because of it.

“Fine then,” Aerion snaps.

He doesn’t give the prick another look, before marching right out the door, much to the unhappiness of everyone else in the room.

“Aerion!”

He hears his father and Daeron calling after him, even not-so-little Rhae doing the same, but doesn’t turn around.

He keeps marching, until he’s at the stables. There, he tells the stableboy that he’ll be travelling, and that if his father asks after him, he’ll be back eventually. The horror filled look at the responsibility on the boy's shoulders he gets doesn’t even cheer him up.

Aerion rides his horse out of the Keep and Kings Landing that very same day, a singular bag of coins in his pocket and a sword on his hip, ready to walk the damn horse to death to forget about the terrible day his father was crowned King.

He tries, and fails, to tell himself he feels nothing.

It takes a year for Aerion to decide to speak to Daeron again.

Apparently, much to his hatred, his brother had gotten married in a quiet ceremony to Kiera of Tyrosh and pumped out a child in their time apart.

Maekar had called all of his children to Summerhall, which Daeron had called his seat instead of Dragonstone, to celebrate the birth. Aerion had encountered his youngest sister Rhae on the road, which only furthered to aggravate him by the time they made it into the damn castle. She had been returning just like him, though this time she had a husband in tow, some useless lord that wouldn’t even look at Aerion, let alone spar with him to test his worthiness of Aerion’s youngest sister.

So when Aerion is herded into a guest receiving room alongside his sisters and their brand new husbands, Aemon, returned from the Citadel, and their father, the King, he’s already at tipping point. At least Aegon has yet to arrive. The thought is the only thing that keeps him tethered.

When his brother’s wife (and doesn’t the phrase make him wroth beyond compare) makes her way into the room with the little babe in her arms to show off, Aerion cannot bring himself to look at them.

He hates her. Hates that she was able to see Daeron at his weakest, most vulnerable, could see and feel his brother in the way that only he was able to do previously.

Aerion knows that Daeron still indulges in whores sometimes when Aerion has not made it in time for something to happen. He hates that too, but knows that Daeron only does it out of desperation, when he’s drunk and beyond rational thought.

Daeron fucking his wife, however, is a very different thing.

The woman has a title Aerion could never get. Daeron and his affair is a secret and demented thing, but the realm praises the Tyroshi whore for getting knocked up like she’s the first woman to have ever done so. Aerion would have given Daeron a thousand pregnancies if the man had been his wife instead.

“Where is Daeron?” Maekar asks from a lounge with the babe in his arms, Aerion’s sisters fussing over them both and Aemon quietly checking in on Kiera’s health like a good maester would. “He should know better than to hide when guests are about.”

Daella makes a tutting sound. “Father, we were born and raised here! How could we be guests?”

Rhae giggles, absently batting away her husband’s hand that tries to settle on her waist. “Besides, Daeron is no doubt tired from his tumultuous and difficult labour. We shan’t disturb him while he recovers, his wife can do all the hard work.”

It manages to get a laugh out of everyone at his brother’s expense, even Aemon, the proper prude he is, coughs into his fist to hide a grin. Maekar lightly pinches her cheek, the most affectionate he has been since they were babes, most like.

Kiera makes a demure laughing sound before answering.

“He’s in his study,” she says in that deep and melodic voice she has. “Most likely got lost in his papers, once again.”

Aerion rolls his eyes. That’s probably just a front for Daeron drinking himself stupid in the damn place. He wouldn’t know how to do paperwork if it killed him. Aerion’s been painstakingly getting him through it every time he visits.

He stands up, which draws all the attention to him, even though he hadn’t meant to. He refuses to be cowed by the questioning looks his family sends his way though.

“I’m going,” he says by way of explanation for his future absence.

Maekar looks unhappy with his rudeness. “You only just arrived.”

Aerion refrains from rolling his eyes again, if only because he should not do it so often in front of his father. The man is already trying to lock Aerion down in one place, shoving women his way and hinting at the idea of settling down and having children. Aerion has no doubts that he will be stifled much in the same way Daeron is by it, and won’t give his father any more opportunities to try and parent him at thirty years old.

“To find Daeron,” he explains boredly. “My horse will need to rest for another few days.”

A more approving glint appears in Maekar’s eyes, and he nods in acceptance. “Go, then.”

Aerion begins to turn around to face the door and make his way to Daeron’s study, when Kiera launches herself from her chair, babe once again back in her arms.

“I’ll take you there,” she announces, a hard look on her foreign face.

Raising an eyebrow, Aerion stops in his tracks, only looking at her and refusing to acknowledge the babe. “I am well-versed in this castle, in case you forgot. I can find him by myself.”

Kiera shakes her head, stubborn apparently. “It is fine. You have not had the chance to get to know the babe.”

Aerion sends an incredulous glance at the rest of the occupants of the room, who are far more devastated by the idea of the babe leaving them than Aerion is of it.

But no one says anything. In fact, Maekar has immediately turned to Rhae, cuddled up against his side like a child once more, and started speaking of her own children. She rolls her eyes at him in a way disturbingly similar to Aerion’s own expressions.

“…If you insist,” he says at her, lip curling in distaste as he turns around to continue his way to Daeron’s study.

She follows behind him silently as he walks through the familiar halls of Summerhall, taking the stairs two at a time in a vain attempt to lose her and continue on without the wench.

But she keeps on his heels like a single-minded dog, never once losing him despite how much he wishes she would.

The woman isn’t stupid. She probably has a good enough idea that Aerion is fucking her husband, and has been doing so for years. Or if not that, then at least that Daeron relies far more on Aerion than he ever does her.

It must sting her pride to be forced into a loveless match unlike her previous marriage, and then on top of it not even be all that important in the grand scheme of things. The woman is future Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and she has not one person who cares for her as a person, relying on her advice and instructions. People turn to Aerion when his brother is being unacceptable, and it has been that way for decades. Kiera will never be able to worm her way in like Aerion has, and it must frustrate her.

When they make it to the study, Aerion simply walks in without knocking, holding back the urge to close the door in her face behind him.

It takes a moment for him to adjust to the afternoon sun streaming in through the open window, unheard of usually for Daeron. The first thing he notices is the addition of a crib for the babe next to the large wooden desk that was not there last time Aerion was here.

Speaking of the desk though, that is where Aerion finds Daeron, papers scattered over the edge of it and wine goblet in hand. His hair is unbrushed and messy, formal robes pulled away from his collar to expose part of his reddened chest from the heat, and his head is pressed against the wood of the desk like he’s asleep.

The slam of the door on the stone wall from Aerion’s entrance jolts him however, and his head snaps up to see Aerion standing over his desk with his arms crossed and a peeved off expression no doubt on his face.

“Aerion?” he asks, seeming surprised.

Aerion finally allows himself to roll his eyes again. “Surprised? Father called us all here. You should have known I’d come.”

Daeron makes a confused sort of noise. “He did? Is he here?”

Well that’s more concerning than Aerion thought.

He narrows his eyes at his brother, taking the chance to really look at him.

He looks worse than the last time Aerion saw him, the golden hue to his skin and muscle he gained during the Blackfyre Rebellions long gone in the face of whatever slump he’s gone into after marrying that Tyroshi woman.

He looks ill, once again. And Aerion is loath to see it.

When the door behind them closes rather abruptly, both he and Daeron’s attention is drawn to how Kiera of Tyrosh is standing over the crib, having just deposited her infant daughter into it. She straightens up to look at Aerion with a challenging expression on her face.

Aerion hates her.

“You can fuck off now,” he orders the damned woman, wanting her gone while he talks with Daeron.

At the harsh words, she makes an appropriately scandalised expression, her pink hair tied tightly to keep those odd strands out of the way.

“Excuse me?” Kiera asks, polite still, but her fierce expression says otherwise.

Aerion walks closer to the crib, and reaches one hand down to the babe, lightly touching her soft cheek. He doesn’t look at Kiera, the threat unspoken but no doubt heard loud and clear.

“I said, fuck off,” he says, this time with a harsher tone of voice. “Leave. I want to speak with my brother alone.”

Kiera’s expression grows incredulous at the words, and she turns to face her husband with a look that is just screaming for rescue.

Aerion peeks over at his brother, to confirm for his own eyes what he already knows to be true.

In turn, Daeron does not look up from the wine goblet suddenly in his hand once again. He doesn’t even stand up from his chair. He sits there, shoulders slumped and head bowed to avoid her eyes. His hair hides most of his expression, but Aerion can see the discomfort roiling off him in waves.

“You should help prepare our father’s rooms,” he says quietly instead of jumping to her defence valiantly like she so clearly wishes. “The King must not be kept waiting.”

Aerion cannot hide the victorious grin on his face at Daeron’s dismissal of his wife. At the end of the day, the woman will never compare to Aerion. He and Daeron are blood, and she is nothing but the wench their father forced Daeron to marry.

He looks back at her and sneers when her expression grows stone cold at the blatant disrespect. She won’t speak out against Daeron, however. She has no choice but to comply with his words.

Without a word, she glares right back at Aerion, and storms out of the room, slamming the door behind her.

Aerion whistles, letting her anger roll right off him. It is of no consequence to him if some foreign woman dislikes him. She may be Queen one day, but Aerion is the blood of the King and will damn well act as he pleases. Daeron will always defend him over his wife, anyway, just like he did then.

“They do say those Tyroshi whores have more fire in them than most,” he comments with a shrug.

“Don’t call her a whore,” Daeron mutters weakly.

Ignoring him, Aerion leans over the crib to pick up the babe that he had been poking before. Might as well, while he’s here, right?

She doesn’t make a fuss, only letting out a wet dribble of spit and widening her eyes at him as he adjusts her so she’s held in her swaddle in his arms in a way that (probably) won’t snap her neck.

Vaella, they say her name is. A simple, unproblematic babe, an easy labour but difficulties with nursing. Or so he’s heard, not that he had asked around.

As she frees a hand from her swaddle, she puts it right in her mouth to suckle it, and he thinks she appears to be far more stupid than other babies. His sisters and even his dim-witted brothers were more aware of their surroundings than this babe. She hasn’t even blinked.

He stares down at her critically.

“She looks nothing like you,” Aerion eventually says.

The words ring in the room, previously dead silent while Aerion stared at the babe in his arms. She has darker hair than anyone in their family, even their own mother, had had.

Daeron doesn’t look up from his cups. “She has my eyes.”

Aerion squints at the babe. “No she doesn’t.”

His brother sighs, worn. “She looks like Kiera.”

Aerion sneers at the mention of his brother’s wife. That insipid fucking woman. Doesn’t even have the ability to birth a child that at least looks nothing like her, giving them all the respite of seeing her stupid face everywhere.

“Convenient,” he spits, before gesturing for his brother to take his ugly child from him.

Daeron does so, stumbling slightly in his haste to stand up.

Aerion rolls his eyes at the display. He hates the child, hates everything she stands for, but he’s not going to drop her. He doesn’t need a kinslaying accusation at his feet so soon after the latest Blackfyre Rebellion, knowing many in the court are dissatisfied with the way he advocated heavily for Aegor Rivers’ execution.

“The maester’s say she’s remarkably well behaved for a babe her age,” Daeron says once he’s got his child in his arms, rocking her gently. “Never fusses, this one.”

“So she’s stupid,” Aerion hazards.

He feels triumphant when Daeron sighs and doesn’t argue.

The feeling diminishes however when he sees how his brother’s hands are shaking and his hair hangs limply around his face. He doesn’t look well anymore, hasn’t looked this bad since Aerion first came back from Lys a few years ago.

“Sometimes I think it had to have been my fault that she has not developed as well as other babes,” Daeron confesses quietly. “I never had to worry about heirs and spares before, and drank the vitality out of my seed. Or at least, that’s what I’ve heard the milkmaids muttering.”

Aerion stares at his brother without blinking, that same old unnamable feeling crawling down his spine.

“You could have their heads for treason like that,” he says instead. “…You should have run away, brother. The crown will not suit you, or the girl.”

Daeron sighs. “She will be wed to the first son I have. I do not wish to get Kiera pregnant again so soon however. She will need to recover.”

In perhaps the most kindness he’s ever shown, Aerion does not point out that Daeron most likely just doesn’t want to have sex with a woman again, let alone the wife he was forced to marry. His cock is useless, really, only good for shooting off untouched against his stomach while he’s pleasured from behind.

Daeron was not made for such heavy responsibility, Aerion thinks. Marriage and the child he was forced to have, have sucked the life out of him entirely. He deserved to be squirreled away by Aerion and protected from any type of duty.

If only Aerion had been born first, they all would have been happier. Daeron would have thrived as a second son, and Aerion is a brilliant and beautiful flame that should have been the most important son on account of his birth and not just his achievements. It would have saved them from the unkind way they age, the aching joints and growing wrinkles and jaded and quiet conversations that suit old men rather than the thirty and thirty-two year olds they are.

“…What happened to us,” Aerion breathes into the air between them. The last piece of softness he has, reserved only for his elder brother.

Daeron looks like he ages a decade in the seconds it takes him to look at Aerion. His gaze is paler than even when they were young, almost a grey colour instead of the pale purple that had always irritated Aerion to no end. Lifeless, like Aerion had just thought before.

“Time came for us,” he replies, just as quietly. “As it does for all.”

“I hate her,” Aerion states, stepping back in order to give himself some space from the tumultuous mess of emotions he had briefly just felt himself swamped by. He gains control of himself masterfully, slipping back into the indifferent and cruel scales he occupies.

His elder brother laughs. “Time?”

“The whore and her daughter,” Aerion answers without missing a beat.

Around others, Daeron would fight back at the words. But he’s allowed to be mean and petty around him. He gets a cruel streak just as bad as Aerion when he’s lazy enough to not try and be kind. Daeron is not the kind of person who is nice for no reason, after all.

He laughs. “You truly should stop calling her that. She is smarter than you give her credit for.”

“Never said she was not smart. Just that she’s a whore.”

Daeron smiles at him, but it looks brittle, weak. Even a year ago it would have been more full, would have lit up his whole face and made Aerion feel even the smallest bit proud on the inside. Now it serves to make him slightly uncomfortable again.

“Will you stay with me, this time?” Daeron asks. No doubt he means staying in Summerhall instead of visiting every four or so moons.

Aerion gives his brother an annoyed look. “Why? I will not be kind to you, after what you’ve done.”

Daeron makes a small sound of affirmation. “I do not eat or sleep these days. I worry that if I do not see you every few weeks, I may never see you again. I’m being tormented by dreams, Aerion, and you have proven time and time again that you are perhaps the only cure.”

He stares at Daeron for a long moment after the confession. It does not move him, like it would have had they been even a decade younger. It makes Aerion feel old, weathered and worn by time and their struggles to find each other across the incompatibilities they’ve always had.

He thinks Daeron has grown further away with every passing year, despite their desperate fighting to do otherwise, and the thought of going any further makes him harsh and cold.

Aerion feels much like his father, in those seconds.

Then he sighs, and takes yet another step back to get some more space between them.

“I won’t stay in Summerhall all year,” he acquiesces. “I’ll visit monthly, instead of our usual couple moons. I have my own residence near enough.”

Daeron does not look as grateful as he could be, but Aerion had expected it. Daeron has always been good at taking whatever Aerion has given him, even if it’s nothing but scraps of cruelty disguised as affection.

“Okay,” is Daeron’s response.

He doesn’t say thank you. Aerion wouldn’t want him to anyway. His brother is already pathetic enough, he has no need for such useless platitudes to Aerion.

Aerion is thirty-one years old when the news arrives.

He had been within the walls of the Red Keep for some reason or other, visiting his Father alongside most of his other siblings. In fact, he had been in the middle of an afternoon spent reclining in his chambers, knowing majority of the brats were congregating nearby while they waited for Daeron and Aemon (who had chosen to be his maester in Summerhall) to arrive.

The pox, the servants whisper when the news is delivered, caught from a whore.

Aerion’s first and only thought is to disagree entirely with the idea. Why would he had caught the pox from a whore when Aerion was giving him much better sex on the regular, without the risk of catching something by a lowlife and common wench?

Whatever the case, Daeron Targaryen, Prince of Dragonstone– or Summerhall, whatever inane bullshit he had come up with while trying to find absolution in a wine keg– is dead.

Aerion laughs and laughs and laughs when he truly understands what the bearer of the news had been saying, the fire in the corners of his vision dampening with the quiet knowledge that his brother is dead. He does not really hear how the sound of his laughter echoes throughout the Keep madly, does not care.

The messenger had looked terrified, and soon enough, Aerion finds his father, the withered old thing, in his chambers with all of Aerion’s siblings in tow.

Even that bastard Aemon has arrived, no doubt the one who had brought the news in the first place. Hadn’t Aemon been travelling with Daeron, tasked with tending to his ailments and guiding his hand through his duties when Aerion wasn’t there to spoonfeed information to him?

There’s red-rimmed eyes all around, especially from the girls as they clutch at each other and at Aegon’s fucking wife who is also here for some reason.

But the atmosphere turns strange when they all realise that the laughter is coming from Aerion, collapsed by the lounge and leaning on a small table, still laughing like a madman.

“Aerion,” his father’s voice calls, brittle and fucking old.

Aerion doesn’t even turn to look at him, finding himself barely in control of his body.

Daeron is– Gods above, Aerion had seen him just a moon previous, having left him sated and sane in Summerhall before making the earlier journey to Kings Landing to visit their father. He had told Aerion of that odd dream of burning flames and withering flowers. Aerion had pressed bruises into his skin in response, hard enough that they would last weeks if Daeron was careful with them.

He wonders, insanely, if the bruises are still there.

If Daeron had pressed hard on them to bring back painful bursts of blue and purple across his wrists and hips in an attempt to keep feeling Aerion even in their distance. If they would still show on his cold body, despite the purpling hues that corpses tend to get anyway. If someone would question how he got them, and write it off as the whores handiwork and not Aerion’s.

There is suddenly a warm hand on his cheek, thumb swiping across the under parts of his eyes almost tenderly.

“You’re crying,” the voice says, and Aerion looks up to find his obtrusive, loathsome littlest sister Rhae bending herself near in half to touch him.

Aerion freezes, mid-laugh.

It’s then that he feels the tears slipping down his cheeks and onto his neck, the way his eyes are burning and his nose feels like it will start running any second now. He feels his expression twist into something deeply shocked.

Rhae keeps her hand on his cheek, and her expression is equal parts upset and sympathetic.

“I know you two were the closest,” she murmurs at him, gentle in a way she’s never been with him, or with anyone considering she’s much more insensitive than any of her brothers. “You are allowed to be upset. But stop that laughing. You’ll piss Father off.”

The last sentence snaps him out of it, partly because of the familiar crassness that is central to not-so-little-anymore Rhae, and partly because it reminds him that his father is in the room with him. Their whole family is.

He whirls around to look at the bastard. Finding their gap not too far as to be stopped before he can reach him, Aerion stalks up to the man and grabs him by his stupid fucking collar, much to the shock and outrage of everyone else present.

“Why did you not keep him safe inside the castle?” is what he finds himself hissing, vengeful and cruel as he’s ever been. “Was he not your heir, someone that did everything you asked of him even when it killed him to do so? Some fucking father and King you are!”

He has to lean down to get up in his fathers face, he notes distantly, age having curdled and shrunk the man far more than Aerion’s own intimidating height.

Ignoring the way the room seems to have faded out around him, Aerion focuses on his father. He isn’t sure what expression he’s making as he does, only that his father seems to break under it, wrinkled face crumpling and tears welling in those toad-like violet eyes that are so similar to his own father’s, King Daeron’s.

“What father outlives his own son?” Maekar heaves out nonsensically in response, gruff voice withered and torn. “It should have been the other way around, I should not have had to see the day my children were buried–”

He closes his eyes as he speaks, unable to look upon Aerion’s wrath for a second longer it seems.

Aerion makes a desperate sound of pure rage in return.

“It should have! You old, decrepit beast! In what world do you still stand and Daeron–” he abruptly cuts himself off, choking on his elder brother's name.

He throws his father’s collar away, stumbling back so he’s seated on that lounge nearby he had been by.

It’s stiff, uncomfortable. He thinks he remembers Daeron saying something about how the lounges in the familial quarters in the Keep were all recently replaced due to Kiera’s nagging about what was fashionable. He puts his head in his hands.

“…Why him?” he spits out, so out of control. “Those pathetic fucking whores, I’ll have all their heads for what they did!”

“You cannot kill them for offering Daeron a service,” Aemon, ever the diplomat, says quietly.

Aerion picks up the vase next to the lounge and launches at his stupid fucking brother’s head. No one screams, or even flinches. It sails too far to the right and smashes uselessly against a wall. Daella side-steps it calmly, even.

“I can kill them for killing my brother!” Aerion screeches, sounding deranged even to his own ears. “For fucking my brother! My brother! Mine! I owned Daeron, I was the only one who knew him, and they took him from me!”

“Calm down, Aerion,” Daella orders from nearby, that Targaryen stubbornness finally making an appearance in the usually disinterested woman. “You’re speaking nonsense and distressing us all.”

Aerion slumps back into his lounge, staring up at the ceiling and feeling a million things but being unable to name a single one of them anymore.

He doesn’t even feel angry anymore, he thinks. Something just to the left of it sits in his chest, where his elder brother used to occupy with his stupidity and weakness that Aerion found so endearing.

“Who in the world could give me a new brother?” he mutters into the air, spent. “You lot are fucking awful, snotty goody-two-shoes brother’s and weak-willed women who got sent away the second Father found someone willing to put up with you. My mother is long dead, and my father a walking crypt. I had Daeron, and now those fucking whores have taken that from me too. I am going to burn them alive.”

Aemon is the one who breaks the silence that descends over the room.

He seats himself down on the lounge next to Aerion, far away that Aerion cannot grab him and wring his neck, but close enough that the cushions dip with the force of it. Aerion distantly notes that he had not gone to support their father after Aerion had thrown him back. Not one person rushes to King Maekar’s side, not even Aegon, usually so intent to suck up to any person in their family that isn’t Aerion.

“I was there,” he says to Aerion, not looking up from the way his hands are twisted in his lap. “When he died. I could not save him, despite all that I have learnt. I am unsure if this is perhaps the right thing to tell you… but he spoke of you, before he died. He called for you.”

Aerion does not move, does not look away from his ceiling.

He thinks to himself, feeling the roar of flame beneath his skin as present as ever, that his brother was a pathetic man and it seems nothing Aerion had done had saved him from that fate.

‘Daeron dreamt of your death, of all of your deaths,’ he wants to scream, ‘all of them except his own.’

He had never thought Daeron would go first. Had thought the weak bodies of his sisters would force them to an early grave, had imagined Aemon withering away in the Citadel, had fantasised about killing Aegon with his bare hands from the second the ugly babe had been born.

But he had never once thought of his pathetic and tormented older brother dying before all of them.

Daeron had spent the entirety of his life in his cups in an attempt to drown out the dreams of his loved one’s deaths. Maybe it was a mercy that he never foresaw his own.

The thought drives him so apoplectic with rage that he doesn’t remember the next hours, days, weeks of his life. He must attend the burning with his family and Daeron’s insipid fucking widow and daughter, but the memory is muted. He must accept his role as heir to his fathers throne too, but cannot feel the way the responsibility settles on his shoulders.

Blissfully, the only thing he feels in the time after Daeron’s death is the sweet and terrible burn of wildfire licking down his throat to kill him too.