Work Text:
The gardens were quieter than usual.
Sunlight lay in long pale bars across the marble paths, turning the white stone almost gold.
The roses were in second bloom, heavy-headed and soft, their sweetness mingling with the air.
Aemond walked with his hands clasped neatly behind his back, sword at his hip, steps measured and precise.
Beside him, Helaena drifted like a scrap of cloud caught at ground level, trailing her fingers over each flower as if greeting old friends, murmuring under her breath about beetles.
It was, objectively, a pleasant afternoon. The sort of day poets wrote about when they had nothing interesting to say.
It had been a year since his marriage to Lucerys Velaryon, and in all that time, they had managed not to claw each other’s eyes out. By the standards of their families, it was practically a love match.
A year. Long enough for a marriage to sour or to sweeten. Theirs had done neither. It simmered quietly, like a pot taken off the boil too soon.
He let his gaze travel down the path ahead, over the stretch of lawn to the stone bench beneath the pear tree—where Lucerys sometimes read in the mornings, curls catching the light, feet tucked beneath him as though he were still a boy on Dragonstone’s windswept cliffs instead of a prince in the very heart of the Red Keep.
They were not lovers, not enemies. Something infuriatingly in between.
They shared a bed, backs turned. They shared a table, cups passing between them in easy, practiced rhythm at breakfast.
They did not share much else… save for the occasional brush of lips that still managed to unmake him.
He had not expected even that much when Viserys had first insisted on the match.
To heal the rift, his father had said, eyes bright with fever and hope, as though binding green and black together in wedlock would mend years of grievance and suspicion.
The Blacks had been outraged, the Greens wary; but in the end Viserys had been king, and his word had been law. The deed was done.
Lucerys had come to King’s Landing with a small retinue and wide, anxious eyes.
The first weeks had been cold and awkward, every shared meal a balancing act between forced politeness and swallowed resentment.
Now… now there was a routine.
They rose, dressed, broke their fast together. They spoke of weather, of small matters from council, of Helaena’s latest brood of insects.
They retired together at night, lay on opposite sides of the same mattress with a sea of linen between them, and fell asleep to the sound of each other’s breathing.
And on rare days, like a coin tossed by a capricious god, Lucerys would touch him.
The first kiss had been almost an accident. They had been at court, the hall buzzing, when Lucerys had been called away to speak with one of Rhaenyra’s envoys.
He had turned to Aemond, hesitated, then leaned up and pressed a quick kiss to his cheek before stepping back.
Aemond had gone perfectly still. He had said nothing. Neither had Luke.
His nephew had simply dipped his head, cheeks pink, and walked away, leaving Aemond with the echo of soft lips on his skin and the distant roar of the crowd blotted out by the thud of his own heart.
Another time, after they had jointly navigated a thorny council matter about harbor tariffs without either set of their families breaking into open quarrel, Lucerys had smiled at him in the corridor—a small, relieved thing—and kissed him again.
Another brief brush of mouth against cheek, feather-light and over too quickly.
Each time, Aemond went rigid, schooling his features into neutrality by sheer force of will. Each time, he thought about it for days.
The boy kissed like it was nothing. A brief brush of lips to his cheek, a politeness, a courtesy… and it unraveled him for hours after.
It was both loathsome and a relief to admit—even if only in the quiet of his own skull—that Aemond found himself wanting more of those soft lips pressed against his.
Wanting, as if he were some starved thing and not a prince of the blood.
“You are quieter this week,” Helaena said suddenly, breaking into his thoughts.
She had stopped beside a cluster of pale yellow roses, her fingertip hovering just above a petal where a small black beetle trundled along.
She watched it with the same solemn absorption she might have given a prophecy.
“The gardens do not like it when you brood,” she added.
“The gardens do not care overmuch what I do, sister,” Aemond replied, dry.
“They listen,” Helaena murmured, not looking up. “Everything listens. Lucerys cares. He frowns when you are sharp and smiles when you are… less so.”
His spine stiffened a fraction. Of course she would bring him into it.
“Lucerys frowns over many things,” he said. “The wind. His letters from Dragonstone. Overcooked fish.”
“Not like this.” Helaena tilted her head, following the beetle as it crawled from petal to petal. “He is happier when he has kissed you.”
She said it like she was commenting on bees and nectar.
Trust Helaena to fix her violet eyes on the one thing he would rather die than name.
“I think you notice too much,” he said, keeping his gaze ahead on the path.
“You stand very straight when he does it,” Helaena went on serenely, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Like a boy trying not to lean into a petting hand.”
He had not thought himself obvious. He had trained for years to be a blade, not a lovesick fool noting every pathetic little want.
Yet here was his sister, trailing insects and truth like threads behind her, wrapping them around his ankles.
They walked on. A breeze stirred the leaves, carrying with it the distant clamor from the training yard.
Aemond focused on the sound, on the weight of his sword at his hip, anything but the heat creeping up the back of his neck.
“Do you not like it?” Helaena asked after a moment, as if inquiring after the weather. “His kisses?”
“It is…” He searched for something suitably indifferent, something that did not bare him outright. “Not disagreeable.”
The words sounded weak even to his own ears.
Lie, lie, lie. There were easier lies to tell, but his tongue refused to shape them. As if his chest did not tighten every time Lucerys smiled at him across a crowded hall.
“Not disagreeable,” Helaena echoed softly, tasting the phrase. At last she lifted her gaze from the beetle to him, eyes clear and unsettlingly sharp. “You watch his mouth very closely afterward.”
He exhaled, a sound more sigh than breath, half-exasperated, half-defeated.
“If he wishes to be… courteous in public,” Aemond said, jaw tightening on the word, “I see no harm in it.”
Helaena said nothing. Her silence pressed on him more than any question. They reached the bend in the path where the hedges grew taller, making a little corridor of green. Sunlight dappled the stone at their feet.
“It is merely—” he began, then stopped, teeth meeting with a faint click. He could leave it there. He should. A prince’s dignity did not hinge on—on this.
Helaena waited. A small spiderweb glittered in the hedge beside her, each strand lit up like silver thread. She watched it. Or perhaps she watched him through it.
Aemond’s shoulders drew in a fraction.
“I would not object,” he said at last, the words coming out low and flat, “if he were… less sparing with such courtesies.”
There. Said. Dragged out like a rotten tooth by his well-meaning, insect-obsessed sister.
He loathed how raw it felt, to admit aloud that he would take more, if offered.
More kisses. More of Lucerys’ easy warmth. More of what had never been given freely to him as a child.
It was humiliating, how rarely Lucerys kissed him and how greedily he hoarded each instance like a dragon with too few coins.
Helaena smiled then, small and secret, something knowing glinting in her eyes. But she did not look at him.
She looked past his shoulder.
“Less sparing with which courtesies, husband?” came a voice from behind them, amused and painfully familiar.
Aemond locked up. His shoulder blades snapped straight; his hand flexed against the small of his back, wanting the comforting weight of his sword hilt and finding only empty air.
That voice cut through his mortification like a blade through silk.
No. No, no. The gods would not be so cruel.
Helaena turned with tranquil innocence.
“Ah. There you are,” she said to the newcomer. “The gardens were listening.”
Lucerys stood a few paces down the path, curls ruffled by the breeze.
His nephew’s cheeks were faintly pink, whether from the walk or from what he’d heard, Aemond could not say. His mouth—damnable, soft, treacherously compelling—curved in a slow, growing smile.
Helaena tipped her head toward Aemond with a serene little nod.
“You should say things you mean where they can hear you,” she observed. Then, to Lucerys: “You should not starve dragons.”
And before Aemond could summon a single word to undo the last minute of his life, she glided away toward the roses, leaving them alone amid the rustle of leaves and the distant roar of dragons, his humiliation hanging in the air like smoke.
Lucerys did not come to him all at once. He approached by degrees, as if giving Aemond time to bolt.
First the sound of his footsteps on gravel. Then the sweep of blue and black in the corner of Aemond’s vision.
Then, finally, when Aemond forced himself to look up, the full sight of him in the sun.
Wind-ruffled curls, too long for court fashion and catching the light in bronze and gold.
Court robes slightly askew, as though he had been walking fast to catch up and had not bothered to straighten them before stepping into view.
A pink mouth that looked perilously capable of ruining the rest of Aemond’s day.
Aemond noticed all of it, against his will.
Lucerys stopped a step away, close enough that Aemond could see the faint flush along his cheekbones, the quick rise and fall of his chest.
His nephew’s eyes were dancing, but there was a softness there too, an almost shy pleasure.
“I do hope I’ve not been too sparing with my… courtesies,” he said lightly. “Dear husband of mine.”
Husband. Always that word, tossed so easily from Lucerys’ tongue. As if it did not set something aching and hopeful clawing up Aemond’s throat every time.
“My sister has a habit of… misreading things,” Aemond said. He was faintly impressed his voice came out even.
“Mm.” Lucerys tipped his head, curls shifting. “She said I kiss you and you stand like a boy waiting for praise.” His smile broadened, impish. “Is that a misreading?”
Heat crawled up the back of Aemond’s neck.
“She talks nonsense,” he said, every inch of him going stiff and princely. “You need not heed it.”
Run, some proud, unscarred part of him urged. Or sneer, make light of it, push him back with a jest about courtesy.
He did neither. He stood and waited like a condemned man before the sword, heart thudding far too hard for such a simple thing.
Lucerys took another step closer, sliding into his space as if he belonged there. When he spoke again, his voice was lower, more careful.
“So you do not like it, then?” he asked. “When I kiss you?”
He let the question hang between them, soft but earnest.
No. He did not like it. He craved it. He burned for it like an idiot, replaying the brief press of lips long after decorum demanded he forget.
A dragon should not chase scraps. Yet here he stood, wanting to deny and confess in the same breath.
“Whether I like it or not is irrelevant,” Aemond said, the words coming out stiff, brittle around the edges. “You are under no obligation to—”
“You are my husband,” Lucerys cut in, gentle but firm. “I am allowed to know what you like.”
That alone punched the breath from him more effectively than any blow.
For a moment they simply looked at each other.
The garden seemed to narrow, the distant dragon calls receding until all that remained was sunlight, the smell of roses, and Lucerys’ face upturned toward his.
Then Luke moved.
He lifted one hand, very deliberate, as if giving Aemond every chance to step back. Fingers curled in the front of Aemond’s doublet, just at his collar, the warmth of his palm seeping through the fabric.
His nephew’s other hand came up, hovering for a heartbeat before settling against Aemond’s jaw, thumb resting just below his ear.
“If you wanted more,” Lucerys murmured, lashes dipping, “you could have simply asked.”
Aemond had just enough time to think absolutely not before Lucerys leaned in and kissed him.
Not the chaste courtesy of the hall. Not a quick brush to be filed away and savored later. This was full, firm, a lingering press of mouth to mouth that shattered every thought he had like thin glass.
Soft. Gods, he’d known they were soft, but knowing was different from being caught in the press of them like this. Warm. Certain. Far too sweet for a man who had been given to him as an olive branch and obligation.
He had imagined this, once or twice—more than once, if he were honest—in the privacy of sleepless nights, face turned to the dark while the boy beside him breathed evenly.
It was nothing like imagining. It was worse. It was better.
Lucerys tasted of citrus and whatever sweet pastry the kitchens had ruined him with at breakfast. His lips moved against Aemond’s with careful pressure, not demanding, not timid, just there, as if kissing his husband in the gardens were the most natural thing he had ever done.
Aemond’s hands, traitorous things, abandoned their disciplined clasp behind his back. One came up to grip Lucerys’ waist, fingers curling into the fabric as if to anchor them both.
He meant only to steady him. Somehow, “steady” became “hold,” drawing him closer until there was barely any space left between their bodies.
The world narrowed to the slide of lips, the mingled breath between them, the faint, helpless sound Lucerys made when Aemond finally, finally kissed him back properly—tilting his head, answering that soft pressure with his own.
He realized, with muted horror, that when Lucerys began to ease away, he was the one leaning forward, the one chasing the kiss.
Lucerys’ mouth curved briefly against his, a smile he felt more than saw, and then he pulled back, just enough that their breaths still mingled.
“See?” he said softly, eyes bright, a hint of wickedness in them. “Not so disagreeable, is it?”
Aemond’s tongue fumbled for a cutting retort and found nothing.
Before he could scowl or summon words, Lucerys shifted the angle of his hand on Aemond’s jaw, turning his face slightly. The familiar move—practiced now, muscle memory from those rare moments at court—came almost of its own accord.
He pressed one long kiss to Aemond’s cheek, the same spot he always chose in public.
It should have felt the same as before. It did not. Not now that Aemond knew what that mouth felt like on his.
Something in his chest gave a small, traitorous lurch.
Lucerys stepped back a little then, enough to look him over from a more comfortable distance. His eyes were dancing outright now, delight and fondness mingling with mischief.
“Very well, my dear husband,” he said. “Since you’ve suffered a year on such meagre rations…” His lips quirked. “I shall make amends.”
“Amends?” Aemond managed, wary, his heart still pounding against his ribs.
Lucerys began to turn away, then thought better of it and walked backwards a step, keeping his gaze on Aemond’s face.
“I fully intend to drown you in kisses from now on,” he announced, as if proclaiming a minor change in household arrangements. He gave a little bow, almost courtly, almost mocking, then added with a quick wink, “Best fortify yourself.”
Then he spun on his heel and strode toward the keep, cloak flaring, humming some nonsense melody under his breath.
Within moments he was half-lost behind the hedge, only the occasional flash of blue visible between leaves.
Aemond stayed where he was.
He stood in the middle of the path, heart still racing, doing his level best to look composed in case any servants rounded the corner and found him there.
The effort was somewhat undermined by the way his hand lifted of its own accord, fingertips brushing his own lips, then his cheek where Lucerys had kissed him.
Drown him in kisses. As if that were a threat and not a benediction.
He should have been furious at being overheard, maneuvered, kissed senseless in his own gardens.
Instead, Aemond found himself already listening for the sound of soft boots returning along the gravel path.
For once in his life, he thought, he would not mind drowning.