Work Text:
“You taste as lovely as I remember,” Duncan mutters against the thin, unmarked skin of his nape.
Aerion can’t answer right away. He’s still trembling all over from the thorough tongue-lashing the knight just gave him between his legs. He’s barely been back at Summerhall a full day, and already he seems set on carving him through. He supposes it’s partly his own fault. Maybe he’d teased him too much during supper. He’d been giving him looks all evening, rubbing the ball of his heel against Duncan’s ankle under the table where no one could see.
It took very little convincing to get him into his bed. Aerion had mocked him for his eagerness, though if he were more honest with himself, he’d admit that he's been thinking about his cock nearly every day since he and Aegon left for Dorne.
(Two moons. Too long.)
“It’s hard being away,” Duncan goes on. His gigantic arms tighten around Aerion, pulling his back flush to his chest. Says much more quietly, almost shy, “Though I doubt you even notice when I’m gone.”
Aerion would roll his eyes if he had the strength. He groans instead, letting his head fall back against Duncan’s shoulder.
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Could it be that you miss me, too, when I take to the road?” Duncan asks, a fond smile in his voice.
How many years have they been doing this? Long enough that the ache of parting has become a certainty. A constant. Aerion had learned from a young age that life is unfair. A balance that is ever changing, ever moving. A prince and a hedge knight, a high-born omega and the low-born urchin from Flea Bottom, an affair that began in secret when they were little more than ten and six. Their relationship is built on an impossibility, and even after almost a decade, Duncan still goads him into affection. Tries to pull words from Aerion that would have him sooner cut out his own tongue.
“You grow overly-sentimental in your old age, ser,” Aerion manages at last, his voice still thin from the pleasure wrung out of him. “Do not presume you know what I feel or don’t when you’re not around.”
Duncan huffs a laugh against his skin. The sound vibrates low through his chest. “I’m only tellin’ you how I feel.”
“It’s most unbecoming.” Aerion bites the inside of his mouth. “And anyway, I am certain you find ample distractions on the road.”
“You know I don’t,” Duncan says, something wounded in his words. He shifts, pressing a lingering kiss just below Aerion’s ear before easing back enough to look at him. Even in the dim light, his eyes are earnest. “Ain’t nothin’ out there as pretty as you.”
Aerion looks away. He can feel his traitorous skin burning. For a moment, he remembers Ashford. The shaded woods, the tree Duncan had ravaged him against in the dark. He’d called him pretty then, too. He’d said a lot of things. Boyish fantasies that Aerion never allowed himself to believe in.
“Don’t be disgusting.”
“Is the dragon prince blushing? The Bright Flame?” Duncan murmurs. “Mayhaps he does miss this poor, filthy knight when he’s away.”
“I would never miss you.”
Duncan leans forward, brushing his lips once more along Aerion’s nape, still unblemished despite his age, despite so many offers from alpha lords to Maekar for his hand. “If that’s true,” he grouses, “you wouldn’t be shaking whenever I so much as breathe on you.”
Aerion stills. His body betrays him. It always has where Duncan is concerned. He inhales, steadying himself, and turns in his arms so they are face to face. The hearth is dying. There is barely any light left in the room, but still, Aerion can see the spark in the alpha’s eyes shining.
“Enough.”
“You’re embarrassed," Duncan murmurs, nipping at his bottom lip before finally kissing him fully on the mouth. It pulls a broken whine from Aerion as he tastes himself, heady and tart. Has him chasing after the alpha when he pulls away. “How adorable.”
Aerion sucks his teeth. “I said enough talking,” he says. He wraps his arms around Duncan’s shoulders. Again, he itches with warmth. Hates the flicker of comfort he feels whenever he lays his ridiculous hands on him. “There is more I would have of you, yet.”
“As you say, your grace.”
Duncan lets himself be pulled. Lets Aerion do as he wills with him, getting on his back and allowing him to straddle his middle, slick and spit rubbing on the skin of his stomach when Aerion rubs his cunt against him. The ease with which he does so makes his chest constrict. He finds himself distracted as he fucks himself on Duncan’s cock. Those thoughts again, the ones he prefers not to entertain. The words echo in his ears like a taunting chant- I doubt you even notice when I’m gone.
How wrong he is. Aerion would never admit it, but the years have taken a devastating toll on him. The awful truth is, he does miss Duncan when he’s gone. Misses him so much, it borders on painful. The silence is too loud, the nights cold and long. When had he gotten so used to his massive frame warming his bed? What had started as a mindless tryst has grown into something horrifying. A terrible pattern. As time has gone on, Duncan has grown softer, and Aerion has grown addicted to it.
“There,” Aerion whimpers when Duncan thrusts up into him, and his breath is punched out of his chest.
“You look so beautiful,” the alpha whispers. It’s too sweet. It does not belong between the likes of them, but Aerion does not stop him. “Just for me. Mine.”
No, no. He wants to say. Do not be so kind. It will just make it harder.
Aerion leans forward. Suddenly, Duncan’s gaze on him feels too much. Heavy as his hands had been on him that first night, all those years ago.
For as savagely as he fights, Ser Duncan is actually quite a gentle lover. Aerion doesn’t know whether this fact pleases him, exactly, though it is most definitely vexing. Sometimes he wonders if his absence would be so terrible if he were rougher with him. A brute that only took what he needed and left nothing for Aerion in turn.
All this tenderness is poison. It will seep into him, weakening his defenses. It will make Duncan’s eventual departure feel less like a gentle gnawing and more like being cut in two. He stills his hips, the motion ceasing the slick glide of their bodies moving in twain. Duncan’s hands, which had been resting on his waist, tighten in confusion.
“My prince,” the knight rasps, his brow furrowed. “What is it?”
Aerion pushes himself up, his palms flat against the broad expanse of Duncan’s chest. He looks down at the alpha, at the open, honest concern in his eyes, and a surge of violent frustration rises in his throat. He wants to wipe that look off his face. He wants to see something else, mayhaps something that won’t leave a scar when it is gone.
“Don’t be so gentle with me,” Aerion says, his voice low and sharp, a stark contrast to the breathy whimpers of seconds before.
“What?” Duncan’s hands rise up to his waist, grabbing him to leverage himself up. The tips of their noses touch, and Aerion reels back like a snake. “I don’t understand.”
“You heard me.” Aerion’s nails dig slightly into his skin. Relishes the wince it draws. “I want to try something new.”
“Alright,” Duncan says warily. “What would this new thing be, exactly?”
Aerion considers him from under the fan of his lashes. In this position, he’s looking down at the alpha. It emboldens him, just a little. “I want you to force yourself upon me. Pretend you’re raping-”
“Absolutely not.” Duncan immediately shakes his head, doesn’t let him finish before he’s gently pushing Aerion off of him. “No.”
“Think of it as a game!”
A flicker of alarm crosses Duncan’s face. “Aerion, I- I don’t want to hurt you.”
At this, Aerion huffs humorlessly. “There was once a time you took no issue in hurting me.”
And it’s true. In Ashford, Duncan had kissed him with his fist the day before kissing him with his mouth. During their coupling, Aerion had still felt the ghost of the bruise he’d left. It’d excited him, then, though the hedge knight had buried apologies into him like prayers to the Seven.
‘Sorry,’ he’d said. He’d had no idea the second son of Maekar Targaryen was an omega, heat triggered by his scent, his rage, the size and power of him.
‘Take responsibility,’ Aerion had told him back. ‘This is your divine punishment, to be beholden to someone as wicked as I.’
“That was ten years ago,” Duncan says, voice caught between disbelief and confusion. “What has gotten into you, exactly? Why would I harm you?”
“Because I want you to,” Aerion hisses, the admission a raw, desperate thing. “Because I’m telling you to. I want you to be rough with me. Stop handling me like I’m some blushing maiden and take what you want.”
The words hang in the air. Duncan flinches as if struck. “But all I want is you. Aerion, I lo-”
“No,” Aerion cuts him off, his voice trembling with a fury he can barely contain. “Stop it. That’s not true. You don’t. You can’t, so stop pretending.”
He sees the turmoil in Duncan’s eyes. The knight is a man of simple truths and steadfast loyalties. This is something he doesn’t understand, a language he doesn’t speak, but one Aerion is well versed in. Cruelty.
Duncan, for a blink, looks as if he will get up and leave. His nostrils flare. His fingers curl around the linen that lies rumpled between them. But then he’s reaching for Aerion again, jaw tense.
“Alright,” he whispers. “Fine. I’ll do as you ask of me, if it pleases you.”
Duncan doesn’t say another word. He pins Aerion to the bed, driving him down against the pillows, looming over him. His shadow is swallowed by the dying light, and it’s hard to breathe, staring up at the dark shape of him. Before Aerion can catch his breath, a strong hand is gripping his wrists, pinning them above his head with bruising force.
“Is this what you want?” Duncan growls, his voice dropping, rougher than Aerion has ever heard it. He looms over him, his chest heaving, eyes dark with a ferocity that makes Aerion’s breath hitch. “Is this the treatment you crave?”
Aerion struggles against his grip, testing the give. He can not move an inch.
“Yes,” he says, whisper-quiet.
“You’re a pretty little thing,” Duncan says lowly. He buries his face into the crook of Aerion’s neck and inhales. “You smell so lovely, m’lord. How can something so precious be out by themselves, all alone?”
“I-” Aerion’s throat closes up around his words. He is disoriented, even though he’s the one who asked for this. He croaks, finally, “I am not alone. You’re my knight, aren’t you?”
Duncan chuckles darkly against him. “You are far too trusting, my prince.”
“Am I?”
“Aye.” And then Duncan is lifting his leg with his free hand, palm hot under his thigh. Opens him with such ease, it dizzies him. He grinds down against Aerion’s cunt, his length hardening quickly between his wet folds. He’s looking down at him, unreadable.
Aerion swallows with some difficulty. “And why should I not trust you?”
“You don’t know the dirty things that cloud my mind,” Duncan whispers. “Sometimes, I touch myself thinking about taking you against your will when no one’s around.”
“Is that so?”
“‘Tis so.” Duncan sinks the tip of his cock inside him, just enough to stretch Aerion’s entrance, before quickly pulling back out. Aerion whines. Wants to pull him back in all the way, wants to feel him in his throat. “And look, no one’s around now, are they?”
“No, they’re not,” Aerion agrees. “So. Take me.”
Maybe it’s the wrong thing to say. Duncan’s brow dips, eyes downturned. But it is there, and then it is gone, and then he’s entering him. It steals the air from Aerion’s lungs. He is almost glad that there is no time to adjust, to think. Duncan does as he wants. There are no whispered words of affection. Nothing at all but the guttural sound of the man above him, the slap of skin on skin. The sensation of being cleaved in half.
Aerion’s body sings with it. His back tries to arch off the bed, but Duncan’s weight keeps him pinned. A strangled cry escapes him as the spot inside him that blurs his vision is driven into.
“Is this what you wanted?” Duncan grits out. His voice is raw. Ragged against Aerion’s ear. “Does this sate you?”
His grip on Aerion is tight, his thrusts into him are hard and fast. But his touch remains careful underneath it all, his gaze full of a worried tenderness that makes Aerion want to scream. Even pretending, the alpha can not seem to truly bring himself to cross the boundary between pain and pleasure. It isn’t enough. It is the opposite of what he needs, because it makes Aerion only want him more.
“It’s a fine gift, for now.” The words are out before he can stop them, a weapon forged in the heat of his frustration. He glares upward, pinning Duncan with a cold, disdainful stare. His vision is swimming with salt-wet tears. He ignores it. “My father grows tired of waiting for me to choose a mate. He’s sending ravens to all the High Lords of the Realm. He’s looking for an alpha lord to marry me. Someone of my own station. It’s only a matter of time before I’m wedded and bedded by a husband, so take what you can get, now, you foul beast.”
The effect is instant and delightful and terrifying. The warmth in Duncan’s eyes vanishes. The air in the room grows thick and heavy, charged with alpha fury Aerion has only ever seen glimpses of before. The scent of burnt wood fills his nostrils, so potent it makes his head spin.
In a single, fluid motion, Duncan flips Aerion onto his stomach. There is not even the ghost of gentleness now. His hands are like iron bands on his hips, yanking them up. The blunt head of his cock, still slick with Aerion’s silken heat, presses against him.
“You think another alpha will have you?” Duncan’s voice is a low growl, a rumble from deep in his chest that vibrates through Aerion’s very bones. He drives into him in one brutal, unforgiving shove.
Aerion cries out, the sound torn from his throat. It is pain, sharp and immediate, a shocking contrast to the careful, albeit hurried, pleasure from before. This is what he’d asked for. This is what he wants, is it not? There is no pretending. This is real.
Duncan sets a punishing pace, each thrust designed to mark and claim. This isn’t their typical coupling. He is fucking him. Using his body. It is a raw act of possession, and a part of Aerion revels in it, in the sheer, brutal force of it. But the pleasure is jagged, edged with a pain that is quickly overwhelming all else. He feels, oddly, adrift. He tries to turn his head, to catch a glimpse of the man behind him, to find some semblance of the Duncan he knows in this feral stranger.
“Duncan-” He whimpers, his voice breaking.
He reaches a hand back, a silent plea. He wants a kiss. He wants that small, tender anchor to hold onto. The omega in him is calling out. He wants the comfort he has just so violently rejected, but Duncan’s pace doesn’t falter. He catches Aerion’s wrist in a crushing grip and pins it to the bedding beside his head. He leans over, his breath hot and harsh against Aerion’s ear.
“Kisses are for lovers,” he snarls, his voice devoid of all its previous warmth. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it? To be fucked by an honorless, low-born alpha?”
Aerion’s breath hitches. A single, hot tear escapes, tracing a path through the sweat on his cheek. He feels the sob build in his chest, a terrible, shuddering thing. He squeezes his eyes shut. The rough drag of Duncan’s cock inside him is a relentless reminder of his own choices. He’s broken something. He’s shattered the careful illusion they’ve maintained for years, and he doesn’t know how to piece it back together, or if he even should.
After all, he deserves this. Goodness is wasted on him.
“Look at you,” Duncan grits, his rhythm faltering for a moment as he seems to lose himself in the sight of Aerion spread beneath him. “So desperate for it. My beautiful prince, begging for a cock like a common whore.”
The words feel like a spear in his side. Aerion’s forehead rests against the cool silk of his bed. “Mm. Yours,” he gasps out. “Yours, only.”
“Let us see how many lofty lords will want to marry you when I knot you full of me.”
“N-no.”
“Who would want a ruined omega carrying a low-born whelp in his belly?”
“Cease this at once.”
“Why should I?” Duncan snaps, his voice unyielding, pressing into Aerion and going still. “Hm? Why should I stop?”
He feels again what he did in that tent so long ago. Helpless, no fangs or claws. Not a dragon at all. This is, mayhaps, what he was meant to be all along.
“Because-” Aerion shakes his head, eyes screwing shut. He doesn’t know how to answer him. The despair is a cold tide rising in his chest. He is losing it all. He is pushing him away, and the terror of that thought is more painful than the brutal fucking he is enduring. He needs to pull him back. He needs to tether him here, forever. He twists his head, his voice a ragged, venomous whisper against the pillow. “Because I’m scared,” he says finally.
Duncan doesn’t say anything for what feels like an age. He stays pressed inside him, but Aerion keeps his face hidden, skin hot and wet with salt. His pale-silver hair sticks to his cheeks, lips catching together with the threat of crying. Pathetic, he thinks. What a mess he is.
“What are you scared of?” Duncan asks, so quiet that Aerion almost doesn’t catch it over the pulse in his ears.
“Of you leaving again,” Aerion says with an honesty that feels foreign to him. Will blame it, later, on the look Duncan had given him when he’d arrived through the Summerhall gates, all bright and warm, like a husband coming home to a wife. Had confused Aerion, is all. Had rendered him stupid, it seems. “I do wish you’d stop doing so,” he admits in a small voice.
He expects disgust. Or worse, pity.
Instead, a large, trembling hand comes to rest on the small of his back. He doesn’t move, buries his face deeper into the pillow, a wave of shame so potent it makes him sick. He has never felt so weak, so thoroughly undone.
Duncan’s fingertips feel soft as the flutter of butterfly wings on him. “I love you,” he says, suddenly, like a knife wound.
Aerion shakes his head. “Stop.”
“I do,” Duncan says, and then he’s moving again.
“Stop!” Aerion yells again, but his hands are now free, and he does not move them. They clutch onto the wool of his blankets. He does not resist when Duncan takes his chin in hand and moves his face, lips pressed to the corner of his mouth.
“If you want me to stay, you need only ask.”
Aerion’s breath hitches. He wants to scoff, to push him away and remind him of the impossible gulf between a prince and a hedge knight. But his body is too tired for the fight. His heart is too bruised. It’s been years of this. He turns his head fully, and this time, when their lips meet, it is Aerion who kisses him. It’s a clumsy, tear-soaked press of lips to lips, a surrender he never thought himself capable of.
“Don’t say that,” he whispers against Duncan’s mouth, the words a fragile plea. “Don’t say things you know are an impossibility, you fool.”
“Then I am a fool,” Duncan murmurs, his thumb stroking the damp skin of Aerion’s cheek. He shifts, pulling Aerion with him until they are lying on their sides, face to face, tangled in the ruined, sweated sheets. “As you always say.”
Like this, they can see into each other’s eyes as Duncan fucks him. Aerion sighs out a pathetic noise with every press. He can not look away, Duncan’s impossibly blue eyes on his own as he takes and gives, all at once. As blue as his mother swore the skies were above her bedroom window in Dorne. Freedom, safety. A world he’s never known.
Aerion barely has any warning when he spills. It dies in his throat, his body twitching as he clenches around Duncan’s impossible, large cock, nails biting into his shoulders. Can feel how soon his knot forms after, within seconds, and it catches before Aerion can fully come down.
It is the first time the alpha has come inside him.
There is time lost.
When Aerion comes to, he feels a strange wave of panic grip him.
The bed shifts as Duncan gets up. The rustle of linen, the soft pad of his feet on the stone floor. A moment later, a damp cloth is being gently pressed to the inside of his thighs. The touch is impossibly soft. A choked sob escapes him before he can swallow it down.
“Hush now,” Duncan murmurs, his voice rough, stripped of its earlier fury. “I’ve got you.”
After, Duncan crawls back into bed with him. Holds his battered body close. They lie in silence for a long time, the only sound the crackle of the long-dead fire. Neither seems to have the will to speak.
Aerion can feel the grip of sleep claiming him.
“I will have words with the king,” Duncan says finally, his voice a low rumble against Aerion’s hair. “If it pleases you.”
The omega makes a noise of protest despite himself. “What would you even say?”
“I would ask for your hand.”
“He will have you thrown in a cell for your insolence.”
“Perhaps,” Duncan concedes, his hand rubbing soothing circles on Aerion’s back. “Or perhaps he will see the sense in it. Egg is a man grown, nearly a knight. He does not need me to shadow his every step.” His voice lowers, “King Baelor has offered me a position as Captain of the City Watch. He trusts me. I am good at what I do.”
“And what of me?” Aerion asks, his voice muffled against Duncan’s chest. “Will you ferry me to King’s Landing whenever you yearn for a cunt to warm your cock?”
“No,” Duncan says, the word a fierce vow. He pulls back just enough to look Aerion in the eye, his expression deadly serious. His gaze drops to Aerion’s neck, to the pale, unblemished skin there. “With a title, I can claim you properly.”
Aerion’s throat is tight. He cannot speak. He can only nod, a small, jerky motion that feels like the bravest thing he has ever done. He lifts a hand, his fingers tracing the line of Duncan’s jaw, feeling the rough stubble there. He leans in and presses a soft, open-mouthed kiss to the side of his neck.
It is not a spoken acceptance, but Aerion has never been good with words.
Again, he thinks of the Ashford Tourney.
“Stay,” he’d begged Duncan, lost in his heat. “Stay with me.”
He repeats the words back to him, now.
The knight, ever faithful, does as he’s told.