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When the heir of the rightful Queen of Westeros slides down from his dragon, Cregan thinks Oh, I’m in trouble.
Rumors, even though Cregan hardly entertains them, are not untrue. The boy does not look like a Velaryon or a Targaryen. His dark brown hair is windswept, curling around his ears and the second thing Cregan notices is that Jacaerys is severely underdressed for the northern snow.
He can see the people watching from different points of the yard of Winterfell, the dragon is small compared to the legends and drawings Cregan has seen during his lessons with the Grand Maester, but it is still breathtaking.
Jacaerys looks a bit like a child when he dismounts - Cregan sees his silhouette moving against the sun, he takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders - eyes moving over the yard nervously.
There isn’t a spark of recognition when he sees Cregan - and still he moves forward towards where he stands. Cregan steps forward - his furs grazing the frozen ground and it doesn’t feel like anything is about to change.
-
After the feast he finds Jace alone in the courtyard, under the full moon.
His body is easy, leans into Cregan when he approaches him and at the same time he realizes it makes his throat burn, the sudden realization of how long it will be before he sees him again. It’s the same thing over and over again.
“My prince,” is all Cregan offers and when Jace turns to look at him, arms pressed side by side even with the furs between them. He doesn’t need to search too far into his mind to conjure the feeling of Jace’s skin and how it feels pressed against his.
“Lord Stark,” Jace says back with a solemn tone that Cregan had only heard on his first day in Winterfell. “The hour is quite late.”
But his body betrays his tone, Jace’s gloved hand falls between them and his finger grazes the back of Cregan’s hand, tracing the same path it always does. Jace is blunt in a way Cregan is not, he always phrases his wants into actions impossibly sweet even when his words might be rotten.
His eyes are a shadow of dark brown, close to the point of black in the dim light. Cregan wants to ask him not to leave but he knows he cannot. The ask is not his to make - and he knows the sense and call of duty.
Still he has wished over a thousand times over in the last fortnights, for him and Jace to be nothing by commoners with no commitment to the realm, to their people. Two pirates in a lost ship in the Iron Islands.
“Will you join me in my chambers?” Cregan asks in a low voice, just like he has every night after the first one.
-
Cregan stares at Jacaerys in the courtyard after the raven arrives.
His hair looks wild, curling around the neck of the heavy furs he needs to wear to withstand the cold. His nose is red and so are the tips of his ears, and he is laughing along with Rickon while trying to avoid his wooden sword. The parchment in his hands feels like it weighs a million stones.
He knows the moment Jacaerys reads it everything will change. It feels almost like he is mourning the person he sees standing there - the person that Jacaerys will cease to be once he finds out his brother is dead.
They’ve been living outside of time, outside of whatever is going on far away from the stone walls of Winterfell. This raven has brought them back to reality - and one cruel enough to take Jace’s dear brother from his side.
He thinks of Jace’s hands the night before - beautiful and quick and clever. Delicate and slender, Cregan oftentimes marvels at how he wields a beast so deadly with them. They are lover's hands, if ever he saw lover's hands. The hands which unbuckled and unlaced and slid into his bed as naked as the rest of Jace.
The scar in his hand from the oath they swore still aches, and he thinks - how cruel are the Gods and yet how lucky he has been to have this even for a short time.
Rickon laughs when he spots Cregan and runs towards him - his mouth filled with happiness and Jace walks behinds him smiling, absolutely unaware.
Later - when Cregan guides him to his chambers and passes the paper in silence, Jace clutches the bedpost to stop himself from crumbling to the floor. Chooses to fall into Cregan’s arms instead and hide his sobs against his chest. The parchment with the scribbled sentence from the Queen falls to the floor unattended.
Jacaerys you must come at once. Lucerys has been murdered.
-
The hunts are Cregan’s favorite activity these days - mostly because they can do it alone.
Jace is different when they are alone - or at least since they have become closer. He seems to have let go of the heir of the Iron Throne persona and lets himself be - Jace. If only for a few hours. When they go back within the walls of Winterfell, the shadow that falls over Jacaerys returns immediately.
"What are you so afraid of?" Cregan asks him one night, while they sit quietly in front of the fire in his room. He knows it's something else, something beyond his nightmares of ghosts of the past and being drained from the inside.
"Nothing," says Jace, and he turns his head and smiles sweetly. And a girl at a tourney, a fresh white rose in her hand or in her hair might have believed it. Anybody might have believed, but Cregan of all people knows where the Prince ends and Jace begins.
Some days, he knows that better than he knows himself. Perhaps the Lord of Winterfell doesn't end anymore. Perhaps that's how it should be.
"Liar," he says.
When the heir to the Iron Throne smiles, girls blush. There's a way that Jace smiles that he saves only for Cregan when they're alone together like this. It's a private thing, and Cregan guards it. Jace smiles and then he leans forward and rests his head against Cregan’s leg. His hand finds the back of Jace’s neck, stroking through the soft hair there.
"Losing everything," he says, quietly and, though Jace can't see him, Cregan shakes his head.
"We will see each other in King's Landing," Cregan says, and he means it, war or not, and all the dragons of the world be damned. In the worst of cases he hopes their heads will share the same chopping block.
-
Two days after Jacaerys arrives, Cregan realizes he has started thinking of him at the most inconvenient times like when he is in a council meeting or when he is staring at the kitchen maids over the dinner table.
After Jace leaves, he thinks about him when he is walking around the forest and steps on a patch of wild red flowers. After a moment he turns around wanting to stomp them, to unload any sort of anger on them - but instead watches them stay stubbornly alive.
After Jacaerys leaves, Cregan has an ache in the back of his head for a week straight.
He takes more hours of training, spends more time with his son and tries to ignore how his existence appears to have been changed by a fortnight with a southern boy.
There are times when Cregan sees him. Crowded in the dining hall, full of people, he feels a burning in his chest like he is about to catch a glimpse of his hair or the gleam of his brown eyes. It’s always a trick of the light, though. Always.
He remembers the last time he saw Jace - the moment before leaving. That morning he had watched Jacaerys sleep, his face gaunt from crying. He had thrashed around under the heavy furs of Cregan’s bed all night, trying to wake himself up from bad dreams.
A lot of early mornings he spends looking at the sky, hoping to catch the shadow of his beast against the cloud. Hoping to stop hoping for something that cannot happen - to catch his feet and finally take a breath.
He feels like he has been holding them all in, waiting for the day Jacaerys gets back.
-
The oath is done in the Godswood, under the weirwood tree.
It’s not planned - and Cregan is grateful they are alone. Truly alone. His bannermen might be far too lax to overlook whatever has been going on in Winterfell for the past fortnight but there’s a limit to their willful ignorance.
When the Valyrian blade slides against Jace’s palm he smiles - in a wistful way that almost makes him look like a child longing for home.
“Is this how you swear oaths of brotherhood in the North?” Jace finally speaks quietly, his red blood dripping onto the snow below them. “This is how people married in Old Valyria.”
The blade almost slips out of his hand when he is running it through his open palm. Suddenly all he can see is the sharp end where his and Jace’s blood are mixing. He grabs Jacaerys bleeding hand and presses - wanting to be as close as possible - thinking in some way he can feel some part of Jace entering him and staying - burrowed deep inside the wound.
“How would the ceremony happen?” Cregan mutters licking his lips - hands still pressed together. “If I was to make you my wife?”
Jace gasps - and for a second Cregan thinks he has pushed this thing between them, whatever it is, too far. He pulls away and second later - before the apology can come tumbling out of his mouth, Jace raises his bloodied palm and spreads the blood against Cregan’s mouth.
“The participants are wed,” he murmurs, pulling Cregan closer, “by blood,” and Cregan can barely hold off anymore, moving his hands under the heavy furs Jace wore for the day. “And fire.”
The blade falls on the snow, covering the ice with blood.
When Jace kisses him it feels more like a bite. He can taste the blood in his mouth - he can feel the fire that always alights inside him whenever Jacaerys is near. He doesn’t remember longing for his wedding night as much as he longs for Jacaerys now - as much as he has longed for him all this time. Longs there was a way for the gods to favor them, a way for Jacaerys to truly be his bride - kept away in Winterfell, safe from the war that wages in the South.
But he is a Lord and Jacaerys is a King in the making. He knows duty binds them, knows he cannot say these things. So he leans in and kisses him, eyes slipping shut. It promises many things – maybe too many – but he holds on.
-
It snows the day the raven arrives with the news of the Battle of the Gullet.
Cregan burns the parchment in the fire of his private chambers. Mourns the childish dream of summer in The Red Keep - of Jacaerys on the Iron Throne.
He understands his obligation - and he intends to follow through. In the morrow.
But just for a night - he sits under the weirwood and thinks of how the snowflakes caught in Jacaerys hair the afternoon he arrived.