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The first time Prince Aemond Targaryen beds a Strong Bastard, he wonders if such was the closest he could get to heaven.
House Strong is no more - he had made certain of that. His hands will never be free of the blood of the whole army of vermin unrightfully commanding Harrenhal's ancient great fortress for far too long, but it is not something that keeps him up at night. Only a real Targaryen could have had the honor and valor to rid the world of such a poor excuse of a house.
The home of his sister's greatest sin, the root of the overwhelming disgrace, which has plagued their family's name, is gone. And before that, Aemond had won an even greater victory. Rhaenyra's beloved bastard son had perished, wet and afraid, as the storm swallowed them both. It had only been Aemond who had emerged from it. The prince thinks, hopes, that he had felt more elation from it. His nephew, after all, had ensured that Aemond would live pathetically and incomplete for all his life. Aemond pushes the thought to the back of his mind as he squeezes the waist beneath his hands tighter. He would not let the boy spoil more of his joy, more of his life. Lucerys Velaryon is a spoiled coward in life and a pathetic whelp in death. He is merely a memory and Aemond should truly let him rot in his watery grave with his weakling of a dragon - a Velaryon and a Targaryen, at last.
His father, present or not, had always made him and his siblings feel minuscule next to his first-born. As if all of them were beneath her. Yet, here he is now; it turns out that whatever his older sister had had were not difficult to take for himself. Aemond has burned the home of his sister's lover, has taken her beloved son, and now, has a Strong bastard to warm his bed, too. With his triumph over House Strong comes a substantial prize. A witch, valuable to his cause and to him. The girl, no... The woman knows far beyond time and is wiser than most other people. Aemond fears that she had seen something of him, something he could not name, and found out how to trick Aemond into sparing her. For, truly, had he considered saving her before she looked up at him with large hazel eyes? Stopped on his tracks by the lady grabbing his right leg as she begs for mercy, he had next noticed the moles on her face. One sat by her left hairline, one at the left side of her proud nose, and one on her chin. They are different from his, but they are close enough. The blood of the First Men must really run potent. Her lips had been bleeding, only making them look more enticing. He took note of her modest clothing - black stays worn over a faded red linen gown. The woman had not looked very sincere in her dramatics, but Aemond did not really mind.
"A bastard of Lord Lyonel," one of his men had supplied.
The prince had quickly ordered that she be released from the grasp of his soldiers and taken to one of the larger rooms in the castle. A lady should be allowed to tend to herself.
The next time Aemond had seen her, she had been dressed in green. For a moment, he had hoped to see someone else in the color. Upon the thought, Aemond forces his mind back to the present.
He thrusts into the warmth enveloping his cock, dizzy with pleasure. Aemond cards his fingers through long dark locks and pulls. Alys moans wantonly from beneath him. Instead of feeling blood rush south, a shadow of a scream echoes in his mind. His pace weakens, bites Alys's left shoulder to ground himself. The salt he tastes is not of the storm or of tears, it is of the gorgeous crone he is fucking into; the moans he hears is not of pain, but of indulgence; and the skin beneath his fingers is warm, not cold. He stares into Alys's eyes and breathes a sigh of relief. Those, too, are alive. There is no reason for him to despair.
With a grunt and the sound of Vhagar's cry from outside, he comes and he swears that he almost enters heaven.
The last time Aemond Targaryen closes his eye as a prince, he hopes to see the person who had unknowingly started the war to greet him. He had deluded himself into thinking that the ghost who eluded him in the last two years of his pathetic life would finally grant him his presence as he sunk to the depths of a meager lake. The Stranger, perhaps, could be kind enough to take the form of Lucerys Velaryon.
The god was not.
It was unfair; Aemond had murdered the boy, he has come to accept that. Why had his nephew never haunted him? Never graced him with an arresting mirage? Aemond would have been content even with a terrifying specter or a chilling whisper in the wind. Instead, the kinslayer had to rely on his failing memory, stubbornly clutching at the fading face, voice, and violent touch of the boy whose death was supposed to bring him peace.
It is needless to say that the death of Lucerys had brought him nothing of the sort. While his mind had been split between his nephew, his eye, his duties, and his complicated emotions towards his family before what had transpired in Shipbreaker Bay, he had found himself incapable of sustaining any sort of productive thought after that stormy night. Although Lucerys no longer lived in the same sense as he and the rest of their wretched family did, he seems to continue living inside his uncle's mind - there, even if Aemond tries to saturate his days with kisses, and blood, and ever growing cruelties. A constant reminder of what he had and had not meant to do dances around his throbbing head. He is acutely aware of Dark Sister piercing the very same eye socket Lucerys had maimed in their youth. Despite his certain death, the prince laughs. More water seeps into his nose and mouth. How funny, he thinks, for him to perish in God's Eye with a sword piercing where his left eye used to be, murdered by his very own ruthless uncle.
As the murky water of the God's Eye fill his lungs and as he feels the muffled thud of his body against the bottom of the lake, Aemond almost feels alive.
He is, apparently. Aemond opens his eyes and sees that he is on some shore. He knows that Vhagar, the very same dragon of Visenya, had passed. He looks onto the crashing waves before him and considers approaching the sea to drown himself. One lifetime of guilt had not been enough for the gods; for unspeakable reasons, Aemond was certain that he is to carry such guilt, along with all of his memories, for an eternity. He thinks of Daemon, the man who his father loved more than most of his children. He wonders whether his uncle is truly dead, unlike him - his bones resting with Caraxes and what remains of Vhagar at the bottom of the God’s Eye. Aemond envies him; he must now be reunited with the boy whom he loved so dearly, that he had avenged him twice. He wishes that it had been him in his uncle's place. Lucerys would not welcome him with a smile, but he would have to look at him. That would have been enough.
Aemond drags his miraculously unscathed body across the beach, until he glimpses a small coastal village farther away from the waters. Barefoot, he feels as the soft sand becomes hard cobblestone beneath the calloused soles of his feet.
The village is quiet. The children politely avert their gazes whenever their inquiring eyes land on his disfigure face. Good. He does not wish to feel even more naked than he already does. Dressed in a plain and scratchy linen tunic, he comes to acknowledge that he is no longer a prince. When noblemen and common folk alike used to cower before the one-eyed prince with one sapphire eye commanding the largest dragon in the realm, the people here pay him little mind. His left eye socket closes around nothing, his sapphire either lost somewhere in the lake where he supposedly died or taken by the cruel hands of the gods who have cursed him back to the land of the living. He must look like any fortunate casualty of the war, escaping death with only an eye and an ugly face as a payment. The longest anyone has looked at him during his walk was when an old lady, her gray hair tied into a braid with a scratchy spare fabric, had asked him if he was lost.
"No, Ma'am," he politely answers, bowing his head.
Thunder rumbles from afar, but it takes no great sailor to know that the storm is quickly approaching. He hopes that there is an empty cave nearby or perhaps, even a shed somewhere in the village.
The old lady lightly takes his hand. "Do you have anywhere else to go?"
Aemond swallows and contemplates if he is humble enough in this life to accept help.
He is, it turns out. He settles in one of the rooms in the old lady's cottage.
"It used to be my son's," she explains as she carries fresh towels and linens inside the room.
Aemond does not have the heart to ask what the past tense of her words meant. He, instead, takes the towels and linens wordlessly and sets them on a wooden table.
"Tomorrow, I can take you to his home. No one lives there, now."
He fidgets with his hands, uncomfortable at the words that must leave his mouth. "I have no money to pay you."
"Worry about it some other time. You can just gather and carry some firewood for me in the mean time."
"Thank you, truly," he murmurs with a hoarse voice.
The old lady smiles kindly, her missing teeth creating dark windows between her yellowing ones. "Tell me if you need anything."
With a click of the door, she is gone. Aemond is, once again, left all alone.
The first time Aemond earns enough coin, he does what every depraved soul does to escape, to feel. He visits the only brothel near the village with his heart racing. He does not give the bag he hands the madam a second look - he could live off of mushrooms and nothing at all.
"Your preference?" She asks as she scans him from head to toe.
"Short. Brunette," he replies embarrassingly quickly.
Her eyes land on his missing eye and shakes her head. "Up the stairs, third door to your right. I will send someone up."
The someone in question was a girl. Aemond attempts to hide his disappointment; he was told that there were young boys in the brothel. His companion, as promised, was petite and had dark brown locks. Her hair is in waves, which Aemond counts as a consolation for himself. She bares herself, her plain shift falling to the ground stiffly. Her face, although pretty, is all wrong. She has heavily-lidded blue eyes, a long nose, and thin pink lips.
No matter. He can make do.
He tells the woman to get on her hands and knees. It is easier to imagine someone else without a face to look at.
As he sinks his cock inside the lady's welcoming cunt, he feels his stomach clench and his eyes roll to the back of his head. He has forgotten the pleasures of the flesh, his days only intended for hard labor. The new callouses on his hands are not from sword-fighting, but from hoisting nets in the morning and handling a blunt axe to cut down trees in the afternoon. He almost does not care that the voice he hears moaning is too high and too exaggerated.
He keels over, his chest touching the back of the woman. He grabs the long dark locks underneath him and shamelessly asks.
"How much for you to cut your hair?"
The last time Aemond had visited a brothel or a pleasure house of any sort, he realizes an annoyingly painful truth.
He frequents one or two in every lifetime, before he needs to move away and start all over again. The owners and the concierges all come to know his preference.
"A petite brunette, please," he would say without blinking. He had said the phrase and every imaginable variation of it for thousands of years. To this day, he is yet to find someone truly close enough.
The fleeting arrangements provide ample satisfaction. He never hurts them, only takes what he has paid for. The closest he had gotten to violence was with a boy, a few hundred years from when he opened his eye on that nameless shore.
He had been nervous, his small hands repeatedly smoothing the silky shift he had been wearing. Aemond, at that point, could thankfully afford some of the best services. It would have been embarrassing to be immortal and to fail to achieve a more comfortable life for oneself. Better clothing for the whores came with the better services, it had turned out.
"Are you only going to stand there?" Aemond had grown impatient. He recalls the root of his sour mood - a negotiation with the port authorities gone south. Even hundreds of years later, Driftmark seemed to find a way to wrong him.
The boy had shuffled towards him. He could see tears on his eyes and had, then, concluded that the boy must be new to such a life.
Aemond should have been kinder, truly. But, the thought of sullying a virgin had awoken something in him, turning him back to the beast he was during the time when dragons still danced.
He had thrown the boy to the bed, ripping the shift off of his small body. His hands had been more eager than they usually were, mapping the pale skin of the boy with selfish touches.
"Please," the boy had tearfully said. "Wait a moment, Sir."
Aemond had not paid his pleas any mind, only continued to thrust inside the boy's hole eagerly. He could already see parts of his skin begin to bruise from Aemond's tight grip. He fucks the boy on his back, the first time he had even considered facing his companion during such dalliances. He stops himself from sinking his thumb into the boy's left eye socket and contents himself with wrapping his right hand around the boy's throat.
He had apologized afterwards, knowing that such did not matter. He had still hurt the boy and perhaps, sullied sex for him permanently.
Aemond had reached for the pockets of his wool trousers. Once he had retrieved a bag of coins, he had handed it to the boy.
"You do not have to tell your employer," he had simply said.
Although prepared to leave, he had indulged the sudden thought in his head. He had turned back towards the boy, who was now dressing himself up.
"If you wish to work," he began. "Not like this - you can find me in the red structure by the old castle."
The boy seemed to have truly considered his words, then flashed a grateful smile at him. "I think I will."
It had taken him months before he attempted to visit the pleasure house again. He never did stop, though. Not then. He finds himself unable to form any real connection in any of his lives. What for? He was sure to outlive them all, once again.
Entertaining himself every once in a while with temporary companions had been enough - almost enough.
It is funny, he thinks. For Lucerys Velaryon's plain features, he sure is difficult to come by. He has grown old and he hopes, much wiser, yet he is still not inclined to ponder why he wants to fuck the nephew who had taken his eye and who he had killed. If it was up to Aemond, he never would. After all, it seems as if he would never meet Lucerys again. Seeking him out in brothels, pleasure houses, and even in the streets would not bring his nephew back.
The gods had proven to be draconian beings who must truly hold grudges. His punishment is much crueler than merely walking the Earth alone with the unnameable ache of his, for he had seen and met many of the people from his first life - all, except Lucerys. He had felt and continues to feel as if he waits with bated breath for something that would never be his.
Viserys Targaryen had come to his home once, dressed in an expertly tailored tweed suit, dark wool coat, black leather brogues, and a black top hat reserved only for wealthy gentlemen. He had been one of the guests' companion.
"Beautiful home, dear boy," Viserys had complemented.
Aemond had found that the years had dampened whatever maudlin sentiments he had harbored for his father into a dull ache, for he did not wish to see the healthy older man before him transform back into the decaying corpse tucked away in his memory.
He looks at his father, who was surveying the vineyards before their eyes. Aemond wonders if this is how it would have felt had his father been proud of him, back then.
"Thank you. I am glad that someone else sees its charm."
"Why, of course!" Viserys had exclaimed. "The dragon bones in your foyer fascinate me the most. However did you get your hands on them?"
"A few favors," he had discretely answered.
"My daughters would have loved them. I had three, you know? And two sons."
It seemed like a cosmic quip, Viserys having the same number of children in this life, only the opposite number of sons and daughters.
"Unfortunately, I have outlived them all."
An even bigger joke. At this, Aemond had felt himself choke, tears threatening to fall from his healthy eye. Did the gods find such a life funny - Viserys's children dying before him, his death presenting no opportunity for them to claw at each other for his legacy?
Viserys had turned to him, then. "No family of your own?"
Aemond had chuckled. How could he have one? "No, not now." Not ever.
"A shame. The laughter of children would make this home even more beautiful."
Aemond had locked himself in his bedroom that night, immediately after the last guest had left. He stared at his mirror, seeing the traces of his father's face in his. The next matter he could take note of had been the cracked mirror before him and his bleeding right fist.
He had met Alicent Hightower as Westeros approached the certain signs of economic depression. A disgraced socialite, his mother had been living the last few years of excess alone in her gaudy mansion.
Despite merely lounging at home, Alicent had been dressed in a lush black dress embroidered with sparkling crystals forming art deco patterns on the fabric. At its fringe, rows of clear crystals dangle in a silent dance. His mother seemed to not have been fond of the color green in that lifetime.
Aemond had come as a doctor. His patient, as reported by one of the staff who comes twice every week, had been neglecting her medication. With this, the socialite's complaints about her headaches became more often. Figures.
"Do you like parties, Doctor?" The mother from his past life had asked as he listened to her faint heartbeats through his stethoscope. "I love them."
He finishes counting the times her heart pulsed. "Crowds overwhelm me."
She hums. "Like my son."
Aemond had hoped for her to stop sharing about her life; it was not his to carry this time around.
"What are flashy houses like this for if not for sharing with friends?"
Aemond had suspected that the home had been more for showing off during his mother's glory days. Alicent's far-from-humble mansion had been littered with classic paintings and gold-lined vases, standing amidst a sprawling green field of overgrown grass, and nowhere can one see a trace of The Faith of the Seven. Whether she had just been strikingly different from the Alicent whom Aemond had for a mother or whether her disposition had been merely one which his mother had hidden from them, Aemond would never know.
He had simply advised her to take her medication as instructed and prescribed new painkillers for her. Her son from long ago had feared that arthritis had already been waiting to manifest in her brittle joints.
The foot stool he had been sitting on was comfortable, but well-worn. If one would look closer, the impressive furnitures and trinkets around the house were already old, their beauty chipping away as time weathered them - much like his mother. The house, itself, had mostly fallen into disrepair.
With a wrinkled hand, she had dismissed him. "Thank you, Doctor."
Before Aemond had stepped out of the mansion's ornate double doors, he had written and left a cheque for Alicent for one of her maids to discover.
He recalls meeting Aegon in one of the brothels he used to visit long ago, before he had met either of their parents. His older brother had been nursing a pint of ale, a giggling maiden in his arms. He has not actually met Helaena. But, he did see a blurred photograph of hers in a newspaper once. The art of printing had not been as sophisticated as it would be later on. His older sister had been a part of a team of brilliant scientists who had uncovered what types of insects had been fossilized and found underneath the ruins of The Red Keep. Daeron, the sibling he saw the least of in his first life, had been more present than the others. He had encountered his younger brother twice already; once as an arrogant heir to a real estate fortune when the middle class had first risen in number and once as a soldier lying on one of the hard beds in the makeshift infirmary where he, too, had been recovering from a gunshot wound on his abdomen.
Aemond had silently offered the flask from where he was drinking.
"Thank you," Daeron had replied with a raspy voice.
"Don't worry about it."
His brother huffs. "I have more serious things to worry about. I think they are considering cutting my leg."
"War's a bitch."
They had sat in silence afterwards. The next morning, Aemond had woken to an empty bed next to his. He stops himself from asking what had happened to the man with a bleeding leg from the previous night.
Aemond had once attended a class on law with Jacaerys as another student, the room full of self-righteous men in expensive suits. Westeros had just dissolved the monarchy, then, and young minds clamored for an opportunity to rebuild the nation. He had once held a door open for Joffrey, the youngest of his sister's bastards taking after their real father even in his next life.
During a walk in one of his trips to Pentos, he had come across a bespoke boutique with large flower arrangements at its storefront. He peeked inside and there the dragon twins were, happily chatting with their customers.
Aemond had also received help from Harwin Strong once, when his car broke down in the desert leading to Dorne. The man had exited his truck, trudging towards Aemond with his eyes squinted against the sun.
"Can I help you, lad?" His sister's lover had been dressed in a white cotton tunic tucked underneath dark blue jeans, which flared at its ends, held up by a thick tan leather belt. Harwin's tan leather boots kicked sand everywhere as he approached.
"My car would not start." Aemond looked back at Harwin's truck and saw a peace sign painted on one of its doors. 'A hippie,' he thought.
"Can I take a look at it?"
Aemond had wordlessly stepped away and gestured to his car.
From the distance, the truck's door opened and out comes a silver-haired woman. To Aemond's astonishment, it had been Laena Velaryon who had stepped out of the vehicle. She had been dressed in a cream crochet dress and dark brown braided sandals. 'Hippies,' he corrected himself.
Her hand was stroking a bump at her belly.
"What is it, babe?" She wore her red flower eyeglasses to shield her eyes from the sun, the matching red floral earrings she donned dangling at the motion.
"His engine overheated," Harwin called back. "This will be quick," the man had said to him. "You can go on inside the truck, while I deal with this."
Aemond had been fortunate that Harwin had not secretly been a murderer, for he had approached the truck without a second thought.
Of course; there, on the back seat, sat Rhaenyra Targaryen, her silver hair braided around her head. Her red-painted toes had rested on the driver seat's headrest as she inspected a postcard from Driftmark. Aemond noticed that her dress had matched Laena's, although his older sister wore a red suede vest over hers, its gold buttons matching the gold hoops hanging from her ears.
"New friend?" She had inquired to Laena, who was entering the passenger side door.
"Just chilling until his busted car starts up."
Rhaenyra had merely hummed.
"Are you queasy?"
Aemond was about to answer, but he had realized that the question was addressed to his older sister.
"Nope. Just wondering when the baby will start showing," she had explained as she tapped her stomach.
Gods above.
Decades later, he would meet Rhaenyra once again. She had been an adviser to a progressive female candidate running for presidency at the beginning of the new millennium.
Rhaenyra, when spared of the deaths and losses of her loved ones, had proven to be an effective leader of some sort. It had been her suggestion to raise the budget for public education in Dragonstone and when her candidate had won her seat, Rhaenyra had suggested that they also focus on reviewing the outdated curriculum used in Westeros. He had sat in a meeting with the president's cabinet, which Rhaenyra had been a part of, to offer his counsel and expertise on Westerosi History and Archaeology.
As he had exited the glass doors of the conference room, Rhaenyra's voice could be heard addressing her constituents.
"Alright. Now that the first agenda has been sorted, we can start on the reproductive health bill, then on the public housing program. Those have been stuck in review for far too long."
Aemond had wondered if they had truly robbed Rhaenyra of what the gods had intended to be hers and, in turn, had also robbed the realm of something that could have been great.
He neither needed, nor wished those scars to reopen. Quickening his steps, he had entered the elevator, left his nagging thoughts on that floor, and promptly stepped out at the ground floor, calmly walking towards the skyscraper's automatic glass double doors.
Driving his car back to the university, he had passed the street where one of the brothels he used to frequent had stood once. He had not been in one for years, happy to fuck his fist when he absolutely needs an outlet. The difference had been very little, for the company they had provided had not been the one which he sought and prayed for.
The feeling, which dawns upon him afterwards, is closer to despair than to satisfaction. It is, however, better than feeling nothing at all. During those nights, he gladly welcomes the roar of Vhagar in his dreams. He could feel the rain against the leathers he wore, hear the angry rumble of thunder, and see lightning illuminate the treacle-dark sky sharply. His heart beats painfully against his chest as he pursues his nephew, who is atop a pearlescent and golden dragon. Lucerys never glances back before he wakes.
The first time Aemond Targaryen had felt alive in a long while, he stares at the ghost who had finally took pity on him and manifested before his eyes - though only one works. Except, he cannot be a ghost.
Aemond is sitting on the cemented road, his palms scratched with his effort to break his fall. The ache on his right leg, where most of the impact had been, is all too real. The trees around them are real, the sounds of the chirping birds are real, the smell of the spilled coffee on his dress shirt is real, the blood he tastes on his tongue is real, and the leather briefcase he could still feel at the tips of his fingers is real. The large hazel eyes staring worryingly at him are real and the soft hands cupping his face are definitely real, too. The slim fingers graze the straps of his leather eyepatch.
"Are you alright?" Lucerys looks... Like Lucerys. He is slightly taller, but Aemond's fantasies had mostly been true. He remains slight and frail, like those twinks in the porn videos he watches almost religiously. His long lashes curl attractively, framing his glassy eyes. Aemond takes note of the red lining his nephew's eyes. Whore. Moles pepper his porcelain face, the most prominent ones sitting on the right side of his upturned nose and just below the right side of his pink lips. From underneath the black knitted sweater, which is far too big on his nephew, another mole peeks from Lucerys's right collarbone.
Aemond continues to stare dumbly at the boy.
"Mister?"
He wants to shake Lucerys, scream at him and berate him for all of the years of suffering he had damned upon Aemond.
Lucerys loses his patience easily, much like he did in his first life. Aemond recalls the boy angrily closing a book whenever he could not pronounce a new word. "Alright," Lucerys says resolutely. "You seem to be alright enough to sneak a look beneath my sweater, so I will leave you be."
"I am injured," Aemond blurts out.
Lucerys shoots him an annoyed stare. "You're not bleeding and," he assists Aemond up. "You can stand perfectly well."
"You still hit me with your bicycle," Aemond argues. He needs to think of a way to prolong this conversation.
"I can't pay for damages," his nephew desperately admits, his gaze lowering to the ground. "A car hit me on my way here and I am already running late for my first day at work."
Only then does Aemond notice the cut on Lucerys's right eyebrow and the misshapen handle of his white bicycle. One of the gold screws securing a fucking basket on its front had come loose.
"Please." The distress boiling under his nephew's skin has become evident. Is this what they will always be - an endless loop of debts?
"A coffee will do," Aemond says. "A replacement for the one you spilled."
Lucerys merely nods. "Thank you. But, can I pay you through my phone? I don't have any cash. It's dangerous for students, you know?"
That simply would not do. "No."
"What?" Lucerys says incredulously. A driver from inside a red car honks at them.
"Turn around!" Aemond screams as Lucerys wheels his bicycle to the large plaza from where Aemond had been crossing.
Lucerys takes out his wallet, shows its inside to Aemond. Aemond wishes it was a different inside of Lucerys's he was staring at. "I have nothing. See?"
"We can have that coffee together," he says plainly.
"Why?" Lucerys is clearly alarmed, not fond of people taking up his precious time.
"Because, it seems like it would piss you off."
A sound of an alarm from his nephew's smartphone interrupts them. Dismissing what could only be an alarm for the start of his work shift, Lucerys stares up at him. "Fine. Do you know this area?"
"I teach here."
"Good. I'm, hopefully, still working at the café near the library by four o'clock this afternoon. Just go there." Without so much as a goodbye, his nephew mounts his wobbly bicycle and pedals away from Aemond.
He, too, walks away - towards the Targaryen Centennial Building on the other side of the campus. On his way to his office, his own smartphone rings. The name, Daeron, flashes on the screen. This is the third lifetime he had encountered his youngest brother. Ironic, really, for him to share a more substantial bond with Daeron here than when they had been brothers.
"What?"
"I'm in love," Daeron stupidly says. He could hear the steam from the coffee machines on the background.
"Sure," he dismisses.
"This new guy," his brother begins. "He purposefully fucked up the drink of one of the customers."
"Shouldn't you be mad? That's bad for business."
"The customer tried to call the cops on two girls kissing inside the café," Daeron quickly explains.
Aemond imagines the scene in his head, chuckles at what he sees in his mind's eye. "Cool."
Daeron hangs up without another word, leaving Aemond no choice, but to begin grading the essays on his desk. He stares at the clock and disappointedly notes that it is still eight hours away from four o'clock.
Time runs much slower when you are looking forward to something. The gods hate Aemond, he is certain of it by now. Otherwise, he would not have to wait this long to see Lucerys again.
The café, it turns out, had been The Old Town - the one Daeron owns.
The scene that greets him as he enters the air-conditioned building does not amuse him. Daeron has one of his filthy hands on their nephew's waist, the other unnecessarily guiding the younger's right hand on the controls of the espresso machine. The girl at the front of the line is squealing, for some damn reason.
"Flirting on the clock," he interjects, just to ruin the mood. Fuck Daeron and fuck Lucerys for rubbing his ass against Daeron's front. Lucerys was not, actually.
His nephew glares at him. "It's only half past three," he complains.
"You know each other?" Daeron asks from the end of the counter.
"I owe him a cup of coffee," Lucerys says.
"He hit me with his bicycle," Aemond protests.
"Bet you deserved it," his brother adds. "This is Lucerys, by the way. He's new." Daeron raises both of his eyebrows, no doubt to signal that this was who he claimed to be in love with.
"I know."
"Huh?" Lucerys looks at him in confusion.
"You told me your name," Aemond explains. Lucerys had not.
Sensing Lucerys's lack of fondness for his friend, Daeron tells the pair to go ahead and get their coffee. He decides that the sooner they separate, the better.
"On the house," Daeron screams over the bustle as one of his staff sets the two drinks on the table where the pair chose to sit.
Aemond does not like that. The debt had been Lucerys's to pay for.
"Oh, no," they both say at the same time.
"Really," Daeron insists. "It's Aemond's first time here, either way. I should treat him."
With Daeron leaving for the back of the store, Aemond and Lucerys are left with no choice, but to address each other - at Aemond's relief and Lucerys's misfortune.
Aemond had not thought far enough when he had asked Lucerys to have coffee with him. They sit awkwardly in front of each other, Lucerys's eyes catching the gaze of his healthy eye every now and then.
"Student?" Lucerys obviously is; Aemond saw one of the required textbooks inside the basket of Lucerys's bicycle earlier. He just needed to break the silence.
"Yup. Post-Conquest History," Lucerys smiles.
"Hm." For the first time in a thousand of years, Aemond feels his tact and whatever conversational skills he has successfully honed and developed leave his body. "I might end up teaching you."
Lucerys sputters coffee out of his pout and looks up from his glass of sickeningly sweet iced drink, horrified at the prospect.
"I teach some of the subjects in the History Department," Aemond continues.
His nephew was obviously not a fan of the possibility. The boy's eyes study Aemond, lingering longer on the black eyepatch covering the left half of his face. Aemond registers something else, too - a quick passing of fear that is easy to miss. He wonders if such was due to to the ugly gash slicing through from his forehead to his left cheek or due to Lucerys, too, recalling something from long ago. Aemond selfishly hopes that it is the latter.
"Would be fun," Lucerys finally speaks. "Telling my classmates that I ran our professor over."
Aemond raises his left eyebrow, genuinely taken aback. Lucerys giggles.
Hands tightening on his own cup of warm coffee, Aemond mentally notes why Lucerys had to wait lifetimes before letting Aemond hear that sound again.
His encounter with his nephew did not last long, Lucerys shooing him immediately after the last drop of coffee had touched his lips. His nephew had barely even spoken as they sat together, answering most of his questions with either a hum or a shake of his pretty head. Aemond could wallow in his disappointment at Lucerys's indifference towards him. He wants to.
The last time Aemond had visited the red brick building at the edge of the Street of Silk, he tells himself that it would definitely be the last. He had grown tired of trying to fit in with this day's form of socializing. It had exhausted him, hearing the deafening boom of the rhythmic beats from the speakers and attempting to dance as sweaty bodies sandwiched him.
Tonight, he was there for a different reason - back in his older ways, it seems.
In this lifetime, Aemond would not get away with picking Lucerys up from the sidewalk and taking him home. To terrorize him or to fuck him, Aemond is not certain. He needs to think; he will not tail Lucerys like a kicked puppy begging for attention. The coffee earlier does not count, for his nephew had not paid for it. He is still indebted to Aemond, thankfully.
Aemond is already familiar with the establishment he had chosen to visit. Delight offered discreet services, the larger part of the building being a bar and a dance floor with white and purple strobe lights flashing and illuminating the space. Towards the back, a singular dark cherry door greets him. The security guard checks his identification and wordlessly lets him in.
"Aemond?" Qoren Martell exclaims, dumbstruck. "I never thought I would see the day."
The silver-haired man nods at the Dornishman. "Neither did I. We were both wrong."
Qoren claps him on the back and hoots. "Praise The Seven!"
Aemond does not flinch at the blasphemy the same way he would have as Alicent Hightower's son.
"What can we do for you on this fine evening?"
A sharp look is shot towards Qoren, who continues to sip on his glass of rum. "Only what Hugh Hammer advertises your business offers."
Qoren laughs. "I know, I know." He sets his glass down on one of the tables in the receiving area and drags Aemond towards one of the golden elevators. "I meant, what's your style?"
Aemond remains confused.
"Your style? What are you into? Who are you into? Who should I send up there?" Qoren exasperatedly blabbers at him.
Oh. Aemond knows. He has said those words aloud thousands of times. "Petite, dark hair. Preferably hazel eyes."
"That's fucking specific." Qoren pulls out a key card from his front pocket and hands it to Aemond. "I'm only letting you use the most expensive room for free, because you are a virgin and any friend of mine deserves to try the imported marble jacuzzi in that room."
Aemond stares at the black card on his right palm, a gold sun pierced by a red spear embossed on its front. Below it, the words, 'Sunspear', stares back at him in raised gold serif letters.
"Head on up, then."
True enough, a peach-tinged marble jacuzzi with gold accents sit by the far end of the large floor-to-ceiling window of the room. The floor is a glistening black, the bed is covered with fine black silk, and the covers are of heavy midnight blue velvet. The wood of the furnitures are all ebony, shined until Aemond could faintly see himself reflected on their surfaces. A far cry from his first voluntary night in a brothel.
He could not rid himself of thoughts of Lucerys, which brings him to where he is now. He needs a body against his when he thinks of his nephew, this time.
Aemond reconsiders his assumption that the gods hated him once the mahogany double doors open. A boy, dressed in a sheer Myrish Lace shift, enters. He clutches a fur coat around himself and his dark curls bounce against his shoulders as he faces his client.
The very same pair of hazel eyes Aemond has dreamt of and prayed for widen with surprise.
"It's you," his nephew croaks.
"It's me."
Unsure of what to do with the parcel dropped on his lap, Aemond wets his lips. Lucerys's eyes are slightly unfocused, glazed over with moisture. The boy clears his throat and walks forward. He stares at Aemond, blinks at the hope that he would change his mind and say that he was messing with him. Aemond's thin lips remain sealed.
The first to go is his fur coat. "This is so embarrassing," Lucerys complains under his breath. Aemond could ignore the narration of his thoughts, but he has neither the discipline, nor the strength to do such.
"Why," the older man bites. He feels his trousers tightening as Lucerys fumbles with the laces in front of his flimsy shift. His nephew's collarbones are sharp, protruding against milky skin in what could only be a painful manner.
His nephew raises his eyes, incredulous. He ultimately ignores Aemond's question.
After a few silent moments and only a few laces undone, Aemond loses the thin self-restraint he swore to stretch for Lucerys the moment the boy had entered the cold room. "Come here."
"I'm not done yet," Lucerys snaps. He sways on his feet slightly, his head lolling to one side more than twice in his attempt to undo his clothes.
Right then, Aemond realizes. The boy had been drugged, whether willingly or not. "That's fine. I said come here."
Lucerys sighs and drags his pale feet towards his uncle, hesitating before his thighs brushed against his client's knees. Aemond steadies his nephew's face with a firm grip of his right hand, his left hand settling on the boy's small waist. He feels Lucerys's ribs beneath his fingers, too thin for his own good. Even as a prince, Lucerys had never been built like the rest of them. His shoulders had not filled out and his height never did reach beyond his own mother's head. 'He never got the chance to,' a traitorous voice echoes in Aemond's mind. He ignores it, choosing to pull his nephew closer. Aemond wonders if Lucerys had been this fragile even in their first life.
He forces his nephew to look at him, his fingers digging against Lucerys's jaws and cheeks. "Are you high?" Aemond could not think of any other way to phrase his inquiry.
Lucerys, taken aback, seems to have gained some clarity. He laughs and his head blessedly falls on Aemond's shoulder. He recovers, looks back at the older man. "Just some molly," he says without mind. "And whatever's in the tea."
Genuinely surprised, Aemond speaks again. "Didn't think Qoren had it in him."
"Oh, he has a lot in him," Lucerys pitches in. "How do you want me?"
Aemond hopes he could say that he had done the honorable act - tucked his nephew in for a much-needed sleep. He is, however, not above bedding a very high and slightly out-of-himself Lucerys.
He wants to press more about who his nephew opens his legs for, but he decides to hold his tongue for now. "I want to see you," he answers honestly.
Lucerys seems fairly endeared. "I need you to be a bit more specific."
"Does Qoren fuck you?" Aemond ruins the mood, even as he shamelessly nuzzles Lucerys's neck.
"One more statement out of line and I'm calling security," his nephew warns.
"Right. Sorry." He pulls Lucerys by his left thigh, guiding the boy over his lap. He hears a breath hitch. "Like this."
Lucerys adjusts himself, raises his nightgown around his hips.
Aemond feels and glimpses the black lace panties his nephew wears. He grinds up, groaning against the juncture between Lucerys's neck and left shoulder.
"This position often means I'm expected to do all the work," Lucerys comments.
Before Aemond could consider what he was about to say, his mouth opens. "I'm paying you."
His words seem to rattle his nephew's senses, ruins whatever illusion he might have had about all this. He recovers quickly, gyrating his hips back against the man he did not know to be his uncle. "I hope you tip well," Lucerys remarks. "My textbooks are not cheap."
Aemond wants to apologize. He wonders if saying that Lucerys owed him would have been better; it might have counted as dirty talk, at least. Instead of using his words, Aemond greedily trails his mouth upwards from Lucerys's shoulders, trailing kisses up his neck, to claim his nephew's lips. The older man sighs, a single tear falling from his right eye. Finally.
Their fickle gods might have simply been envious; neither Arrax nor Balerion could ever fuck Lucerys, unlike him.
Unresponsive at first, Lucerys eventually opens his mouth and permits Aemond's tongue to slide inside. The man slightly pulls away and bites at his bottom lip. Aemond surges back in quickly, his right hand pulling Lucerys's hips down and closer to his groin, his cock already hard and demanding. He peppers kisses to the boy's lips, his cheeks, his eyes, his jaws, his neck, his shoulders - everywhere he could reach. His client likes kissing, he notes. Lucerys hates how tender it all feels.
Aemond's right hand extends towards the side table, no doubt searching for the lube.
Lucerys breaks their kiss with a wet pop, a string of saliva connecting their lips. He feels lightheaded. "No need," he says with a hoarse voice. "I prepared myself."
He guides Aemond's right hand towards his ass, pressing his middle finger against the plug. He gasps at the sensation.
Aemond fondles the pearl at the base of the plug. He feels himself vibrate out of sick elation. Perhaps, his nephew was, indeed, meant to be the Lord of the Tides.
"Fuck," he groans, his other hand palming his nephew's cock. "May I?"
Lucerys nods breathlessly. The plug is pulled, another pearl revealing itself from inside his nephew's wet hole. Such earns unholy sounds from them both.
Aemond begins unbuckling the black belt securing his black trousers with his right hand, fumbling impatiently with the heavy gold buckle. His nephew's elegant hands soon land on his. It was Lucerys who successfully frees his straining dick.
Never the most composed in any room he is in, Aemond merely slides Lucerys's panties to the side. The older of the two eagerly forces the boy's thighs apart, rubs the head of his cock against the slick entrance. His nephew hisses as he feels a cool metal touch his already sensitive skin.
Lucerys glances down. Fuck. "Let me," he says with panic. "You paid me, after all," Lucerys throws back at the pathetic man whose lap he is currently using as a chair. He is not going to risk himself tearing at Aemond's Prince Albert. No.
Aemond feels bad at his earlier retort, truly. It was tasteless of him. However, his brain fails to form any rational thought - not when he is about to fuck Lucerys Velaryon. He feels his nephew tease himself against his cock, mewling obscenely. Aemond hardens further at the suffocating heat welcoming him.
"I want to," Aemond complains.
His nephew shoots him a judging look. "Can you wait, please?" Lucerys exhales. "You have a Prince Albert and you didn't even warn me. What was your plan? Stick it in and get it over with?"
It had been, more or less.
His nephew soon recovers, sinks himself fully on Aemond's dick. He begins moving his hips at a leisurely pace. He throws his head back and Aemond automatically takes it as a cue to bite the boy's slender neck. How could he not?
"Fuck," Lucerys curses.
"What now?"
"We forgot the condoms."
Aemond has no need for them. "I'm clean."
Still panting, his nephew replies. "Alright. Just remember to pull out later."
True to his word, Lucerys exerts most of the effort - setting the pace and clenching around him as he obediently grinds against his uncle. Not that he knows that they were kin.
Aemond feels the tension building at the pit of his stomach. Knowing that he is close, he bucks up into Lucerys, earning him a yelp. The boy takes it as a command for him to speed up, which he does. The sounds from where they are joined increase in volume as Lucerys lifts himself up and sinks back down repeatedly, lingering whenever he reaches the hilt of Aemond's cock.
His nephew continues to bounce, his moans becoming louder and his eyes becoming more heavily lidded. He whimpers - a complaint at failing to reach the peak he now craves, too.
"It usually does not take this long."
Aemond feels a sense of pride at knowing that he had, at least, out-lasted his nephew's other partners. "How can I help?"
"No need," Lucerys insists.
Despite already feeling his pleasure mount, Aemond kisses Lucerys and lifts him off of himself. "Lie down."
Ever the stubborn creature, his nephew shakes his head "You said you wanted me on your lap."
He chooses to ignore the tantrum. The nightgown falls back down again as he deposits the boy properly on the bed. He debated only lifting it up once more, but decides against it. With careful hands, Aemond fully unlaces the shift, revealing the ivory skin of his nephew in full view. The pink nipples at his chest quickly pebbles at the cold.
The drugs must be settling, for Lucerys begins whimpering like a bitch in heat. He squirms at the empty feeling. His greedy hands seek Aemond out, opening the buttons of his white polo in a trance.
Once he is free of the offending garment, Aemond turns his attention back to his nephew. Kissing down his taut abdomen, he bites inside Lucerys's thighs once he reaches them. He removes the black lace panties and pockets them, before removing his own eyepatch and discarding it without thought.
Lucerys's own dick springs free - fair, but pitiful next to Aemond's size. He lifts his nephew's long legs and mounts his thighs on his shoulders, enjoying the view from below. Without another beat, Aemond licks at his nephew's hole. The boy screams.
He takes his time licking at Lucerys's entrance, even opening his mouth to suck at the hole. His nephew shakes, his hands reaching for Aemond's head. Aemond moans at the sensation, glad that Lucerys is finally enjoying himself. He fucks himself on Aemond's tongue, keening generously.
Lucerys pulls his hair. "My clients aren't," he breathes out. He pauses for a few moments, raising his hips to meet Aemond's mouth. "Usually this giving."
"I'm not them," Aemond murmurs against the hole he is eating. He continues looking up at his nephew, silently pleading him to look at his scarred face and prosthetic eye. It was his doing; the least he could do was look at his work as his uncle pleasures him.
Aemond lowers his right hand from where it rests on the boy's left thigh, reaching for the boy's neglected cock. It only takes him three strokes for Lucerys to come with a soft moan. He feels cum drip from his own cock at the sound.
He gives his nephew a kiss on each thigh, then comes up to claim his lips, too. Lucerys, boneless and pliant underneath him, massages Aemond's neck with his left hand. "Just give me a moment." His chest rises and falls rapidly.
Without warning, Aemond pushes his cock inside Lucerys's tight heat - to the hilt, in one swift motion. Aemond had already given; it was his turn to take.
This seems to wake Lucerys, his hazel eyes turning more alert. He looks... Betrayed?
Aemond is not in the right mind to process that. He pulls out fully, relishing every scrape of his cock and its piercing against his nephew's walls. Lucerys whimpers, a tear falling from his left eye. He looks painfully beautiful. Aemond wants to lick his tears, then kiss his eyes. He thrusts back in as steadily as he could, set on chasing his own pleasure, yet also wanting their tryst to last.
He soon finds the spot that makes Lucerys scream uncontrollably, his thighs tightening further around Aemond's waist. As a murderous regent, Aemond had technically won many battles. None of the prizes he had won had made him this exhilarated. He quickens his pace, spurned by his nephew's carnal moaning and mewling against his left ear.
Lucerys opens his eyes, stares at Aemond's face as he gets pounded. Aemond pecks his lips once, twice, before he is brave enough to hold his nephew's gaze. He feels soft fingers cover his left eye socket, the thumb stroking the cheek beneath where his eye should have been.
"You look like someone I know," Lucerys says between breaths.
"Who?" Aemond challenges.
"Someone from a dream."
Lucerys lifts his hips up, meeting Aemond halfway as he rams into him. The pleasure makes Aemond's head spin, almost makes him swear that he sees from both eyes, forgetting that one of them has long been gone.
His thrusts become shallower, feeling his own peak mount. "How can I help?" It was Lucerys's turn to ask.
Aemond kisses him once more, then brushes his nephew's nose with his own. "Call me uncle," he demands.
The boy beneath him is briefly taken aback, his hole tensing even more around Aemond's cock. "Freak," he accuses. "I swear. I would report you to the student board," he giggles.
"For what?"
"Fucking a student."
"You are not my student."
Lucerys rolls his eyes, brushes a wayward silver strand of Aemond's hair away from his face. "The cops, then. For fantasizing about your nephew."
Aemond pushes in particularly forcefully, as if trying to prove a point. "I wish I had fucked him sooner," he says as he raises Lucerys's right wrist above his head, pinning it against the pillows. Aemond mourns how no one had thought of betrothing Lucerys to him. He would have been content, he thinks.
If the boy had been alarmed, it did not show on his face. Lucerys nods, resumes the motion of his own pelvis. He rubs his cock against Aemond's hard abdomen as he clenches around him.
They move together, Lucerys arches his back as he pulls Aemond's hips closer together. Their lips automatically find the other's, unable to part for long. Their pace builds again and feeling that Aemond is about to reach his own peak, Lucerys breaks the spell. "Pull out."
Aemond seems to be deaf to his voice. His grip turns even more punishing, Lucerys knowing that his waist, arms, and wrist would be bruised by morning. The older man had also taken liberties with his neck. He mentally notes that he must wear a turtleneck tomorrow.
"Pull out," he repeats. The man above him disregards his request, lost in his own pleasure. "Please, Qȳbor."
With a reverberating groan, Aemond comes inside his nephew - his seed filling Lucerys up and spilling out onto the silk sheets. Lucerys soon follows with a loud scream, his squelching hole fluttering around Aemond's cock, white streaks painting the skin between them.
They both try to catch their breath, Lucerys still embarrassed at the sound he had just made. "I told you to pull out."
"I will take you to the hospital. Tonight, if you want," Aemond dismisses.
"That is not the issue and you know it," Lucerys accuses him.
Aemond pulls out, then; Lucerys whines at the emptiness he feels.
More come and blood leak out from inside of him, staining the sheets beneath them.
"Sorry," Aemond murmurs against Lucerys's swollen lips. "I will pull out later." He lays beside his nephew, pulling him closer. He rests the boy's head against his chest.
"You are awfully confident that we would be doing that again."
"Why not? The night is still young and Qoren promised me that jacuzzi." Aemond also wants to fuck Lucerys as they both face the mirror hung by the wall opposite of the foot of the bed, but he does not need to share that now.
"I'm about to pass out," Lucerys yawns. He disentangles himself from Aemond and faces the other side of the bed. "You can leave whenever. Just cover me with the blanket, at least."
Aemond drags him back, unwilling to part with his nephew now. "Already?" Aemond truly wants to take him home; Delight was not a bad or dirty place, but Lucerys deserves better than it. Far better. He intends to buy the boy back, although he suspects that such is neither the politically correct way to phrase it, nor is it what he must actually do. The affair would probably merely require him to pay for whatever sum of money is printed on some contract Lucerys had signed at the beginning of his employment. It was not a worry or a bother.
"Just let me nap, then," Lucerys replies. He now faces Aemond again, his fingers tracing the silver-haired man's face.
"Be quick. I might fall asleep, too."
Lucerys settles further beneath the covers, surprised as Aemond snakes his arms around his small frame. "Alright."
Aemond rests his chin atop his nephew's head and lets both of his eyelids fall. The peace is easily broken, Lucerys deciding to squirm and raise himself up on the pillows.
In an utterly unexpected shift, Lucerys places a kiss upon Aemond's left eye socket, his lips warming the prosthetic resting within it. Although Aemond had not been prepared to receive such an affectionate gesture - never had been, he arrives at an epiphany all the same.
The first time Aemond Targaryen had learned something new in thousands of years, he feels tears continuously fall from his healthy eye. Lucerys looks at him with confusion, his fingers wiping the salt away.
Although he feels unworthy, it turns out that Aemond Targaryen could indeed draw closer to heaven. As Lucerys places another kiss on the socket where his left eye would have been - where it had rested a long, long time ago, Aemond begins to breathe again. No choir sings psalms from Old Valyria or hymns for The Seven and no god appears before him. Still, he knows. This must be heaven.