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Tonight, Luke would dream of Jason Redwyne with hair darker than his family’s deep burgundy and eyes like the sea. The thought comes to him he as he leaves the guardtower, and it makes him laugh.
He is the most handsome man Luke had ever seen, three years his senior and a knight already, Luke cannot help but be a little taken with him.
It’s natural. Jace admired many men.
It’s natural. His mother’s first husband loved many more men.
He is not sure where that affection lies, wanting to lie with or lie within Ser Redwyne. It’s attraction or admiration, but he cannot say which. All his flirtations had been innocent, sweet enough as jokes, easily dismissed with charm and blue-blue eyes.
It is safe in the way his intention are dismissed.
Besides, he could not have Jason Redwyne.
He needed someone of noblebirth. Or, nobler birth.
And even so, Luke had decided long ago that he would never take a lover, but be true to – well, Rhaena, first foremost and always. However, he supposes that now, he shall have to make the same vow to someone else. Someone new.
The thought makes him shiver and he thinks of Jason’s smile, his soft hands, and closes those feelings in a tight box.
He just wanted to be near him.
The corridor outside the knight’s tower is cast in shadows, but Luke can make his way in the dark, passing over torch and then the next until he comes to the curve of the first staircase. He sways, then steadies himself on the railing; gathering his bearings as the room spins and he tastes the sour reminder of dinner.
Drinking in Fleabottom had been a choice indeed. Continuing to drink with his grandsire’s guards had been another.
For one, alone, and for two, heartsick as he was, Luke can feel the bubbling of bad decisions before they are mad. He can see the windwhip of Arrax, the sharpness of his mother’s tongue, the pulse of a headache.
He makes his way down the stairs, fixated on the dragon pit, a city width away and all he wants. He inches his way along the corridor, cup still in hand, and catches a particularly interesting tapestry and studies it a moment, trying to make sense of the stitching and depiction.
Must be one of Queen Alicent’s additions to their halls.
He cannot quiet tell what – or who – it is, but his mother often said that the Faith’s hands weren’t good for much but folding and pointing. Supplication does not an artist make.
“What are you – oh, it’s you.” Luke startles, nearly losing his drink before whipping around to find a dark figure stalking towards the staircase, pulling off his riding gloves. “I thought you were Aegon, too in his cups. At last, we have found a familial resemblance.”
Luke recovers, fingers curling. “Uncle.”
“Nephew.”
The same greeting every time.
Luke can feel the heat under his skin, sick.
“I did not realize that you had returned to court.”
Aemond’s head tilts in a way Luke finds distinctly reptilian. His mouth firm, his jaw tight – he is a cool, coiling beast and one may never know how or when he will strike. Aemond is a creature to be circled carefully, never tolerating a jilt or a jape, but sullenly looking on only to return the insult two-fold.
There are raindrops on his coat. Frizzing his fine hair.
He hasn’t seen him since the king’s last nameday.
Aemond pulls at the finger of his gloves, paying more attention to the stitching than Luke’s bleary stare.
“I have just arrived back from the dragon pit. I was on my way to present myself to the Queen when I heard your racket.” Aemond looks back to the alcove where the torchlight casts long shadows. His upper lip curving in disgust. “So you are, in fact, celebrating the marriage of your betrothed to another man?”
I forget how fast word travels here. Luke closes his eyes, curls his fingers around his cup and turns, expression stony. He leans heavily against the railing under his hand.
“Well, since the Lord Hand is enjoying the good port ale this evening, I should think your grandsire is celebrating as well.” Aemond’s lips thinned, smiling.
“A curious assumption that.”
“Not an assumption,” Luke intones, “I saw the it being brought to his rooms.” He points to the floors above, a tangle of sleeping mice. “I suspect he will be quite irritable tomorrow. No time for second sons and their mischief.”
Aemond steps closer, eating his progress. “Oh, find yourself lurking about the castle lately?”
Luke finishes the last of his drink, sighing heavily with the dregs and laughs. “Well, when you leave your dark corners unattended, I do find room to watch.”
“And what else have you observed in your short time back, Lord of Driftmark?”
“Not lord, not yet,” Luke tusks, and smiles. “But I find that I am quite well-liked by your housestaff. I believe they call me the Pearl of Driftmark here, isn’t that lovely?”
Aemond sucks his teeth.
“Craven to enjoy the lavish of attentions.”
“Craven, maybe, but one may think you an admirer of mine too, uncle.” Luke teases.
“Beg your pardon?”
Disgust on Aemond is such a palpable thing. He is so pale too that his fine Targaryen features make him nearly ghoulish in this half-light. A specter of rage, fanged and frightening, but Luke has never been too superstitious.
Luke grins, glad to be asked, and gestures to the eyepatch Aemond has worn since that night on Driftmark. He still remembers looking on when Aemond caught him alone years later and he got to see how his face had healed – or remained – scarred and puckered, pink eyelid wrinkled with stitching and a bright jewel in the empty socket. “That Velaryon sapphire you keep—”
Luke is not quite sure what is happening until it does.
One moment, he is leaning in Aemond’s space, dizzy drunk and mouth tipping wide and the next his head is cracking against the wall. His teeth are stinging. His tongue is bleeding.
He must have bitten it.
He hears a cup drop, but the sound is drowned out by the revel in the guardtower beyond.
Luke wipes the blood from the corner of his mouth, staggering to his feet. Aemond seizes him by his shirt collar and slams him up against the stone corridor. Although he hears no hiss of steel, Luke feels utterly pinned, under that violet gaze – once coveted, now so cold. His nails bite into Aemond’s wrists, steadying against exhaustion and fury.
“I am right here, uncle.” He whispers slowly, his High Valyrian arched and low, as sweet as a song, just as the maesters would say. He lifts his chin. “I am right here. And what shall you do about it now?”
“Shut up, you idiot.” Aemond’s grip on him does not lessen. “How long do you intend to sow your oats as some whorish prince?”
“Sow? What do you – oh, oh sow.” Luke squawks with laughter, dizzy from drink and the hit to his head. His Valyrian is hushed, mumbling, but still ringing in his ears.
It makes him think of those days in instruction. Maester Owyle making him roll his r’s in time with Luke’s.
“Oh, oh, Aemond, if I be a whore, pray, where are my conquests? My love-stained sheets? I believe I should have a lover or two, at least, before you dare call me whorish.” Luke laughs and Aemond shakes him again, once. His head snaps back against the flagstone and he groans, tender. “Hold me tighter, they may think you admire me too.” With a shift, he vaults his hips towards Aemond’s and laughs when Aemond jumps back from him.
His throat is scarlet.
“Wretched child!”
Luke leans back against the wall, feeling dizzy and sleepy, but all he can focus on is Aemond – lip snarling, anger so invigorating that Luke cannot help by bait him further.
“I will not.”
“What?”
“I will no longer sow my oats as some whorish prince.” Luke licks his teeth and tastes wine, sweet as blood.
Aemond has gone still again, that predatory stillness as if he were a hound after a rabbit. This tidbit of information he had not been privy to – that his mother had not made him privy to – and left Luke with the upperhand. “I am to be wed.”
“Who?” It comes out sharp, too sharp, and Luke barely dodges before Aemond is stepping towards him again, looming. “Who would marry you?”
It is a weapon he still wields, even though their height has evened in the last few years. He has filled out in the shoulders and calf, but Aemond is still so much taller than he. Especially when provoked to anger.
This strike and parry that never tires.
Luke meets his eye, smile prim as he can make it.
“I know not. It seems my good cousin’s gamble has allowed me the freedom to choose.”
“Who would marry you?” Aemond repeats and Luke’s mind whirls with the switch in language and then reels on the venom. “On the basis of birth aside, your repugnant nature—”
And Luke knows he shouldn’t, he really knows he shouldn’t, but he can either have Aemond’s tongue or his temper, and only one of those things will keep the peace.
“Perhaps, I’ll take you.” Luke says, grinning at the way Aemond’s mouth hangs open; slack, caught, aghast. “The King promised me the hand of any I wanted.” He continues, with a smile, he poses to ponder and then locks on Aemond’s tightened jaw. Molars grinding back. “Maybe he would give me you.”
Such an odd reaction.
“Maybe I could marry you and tear that green cloak from your shoulders. Maybe I can take you and finally break that piss-poor accent on my—” The fist comes as a welcome this time. Swift and sharp at the knuckles, skirting Lucerys’ running mouth and galloping thoughts.
He feels dizzy.
And his neck quite cold without Aemond’s hands to warm it.
When his friends find him, he is alone. A maester is called. His mother is called.
It is Driftmark again but without the blood debt, yet still unpaid.