Chapter Text
When Duncan snapped his eyes open, he felt like his head was splitting apart. He’d always thought that "feeling like your head’s been split by an axe" was just a figure of speech, but as it turned out, whoever came up with that metaphor must have also consumed a mess of cheap alcohols before crashing into bed unconscious. Staring up at the ceiling, which was still spinning, Duncan tried to piece together any scrap of memory from yesterday afternoon and evening. But aside from flickering neon lights and deafening party music, his mind was a total blank.
"Better get up and shower first," Duncan muttered. He knew his own drunken antics all too well. Stripping at a bar was just the warm-up; his wildest stunt involved diving into a river in twenty-three-degree weather on a drunken whim. It had terrified his friend, Raymun Fossoway, who nearly jumped in after him. "Speaking of Raymun... did he drink a lot yesterday too?" Duncan struggled to haul himself out of bed. It was then that he noticed something: there seemed to be something extra on his left hand.
"Wait... did I have this many rings before?" A sense of dread began to churn in Duncan's gut. There was a ring on every single finger of his left hand. Curiously, while three of them differed in design, they all bore the same engraving: a three-headed red dragon. As for the other two, one featured a stag, and the other is an apple.
"God... don't tell me I went and robbed some random passersby while I was wasted!"
Duncan stared at the rings (they were clearly worth a fortune) and felt his sanity slipping. He was only supposed to be in Las Vegas for the tournament Old Arlan had signed him up for. After three days of losing streaks, he’d finally managed a single win, only to get swept up in the Carnival and miss his flight home. Now, he was looking at potential jail time. "Old Arlan is going to skin me alive," Duncan groaned. As he let his hand drop in defeat, the five rings clinked against each other with a heavy, metallic thud.
"Raymun! Raymun must know what happened!" The thought of his friend struck Duncan like a bolt of lightning. Raymun had come along as his assistant for this trip; even if he’d been hitting the bottle too, surely he’d remember something from last night. Duncan scrambled clumsily out of bed and began rummaging through a chaotic pile of clothes until he finally unearthed his phone. Thank the Gods—it still had twenty percent battery. ("Is this a miracle? I actually didn't lose my phone this time.") The screen was plastered with unread notifications. Half were from Raymun, along with several missed calls. The other half, however, came from contacts saved only as emojis—icons that matched the rings on his fingers exactly. Forcing himself to ignore those looming omens of disaster, Duncan dialed Raymun’s number with trembling fingers.
"Seven Gods, you’re finally awake!" Raymun’s familiar voice crackled through the phone as soon as the call connected, layered with the same gravelly rasp of a hangover. "Are you okay, Duncan? Do you need me to come up? I knocked earlier, but I didn't want to barge in if you were still out cold." As considerate as ever, yet today, Raymun sounded almost... overly eager.
"To be honest... I feel like hell. My head is killing me," Duncan said, "but there’s a much bigger problem right now. Raymun, what the hell happened last night? Why did I wake up with a fistful of rings?" Duncan yanked the rings off one by one and tossed them in a heap onto the bed before sliding off the edge to sit on the floor.
There was a sudden, awkward pause on the other end. "Oh... I, uh... I thought you'd remember," Raymun stammered.
"How could I? You know how much I tossed back last night. I’m pretty sure I ordered everything on the damn bar menu!"
After Raymun confirmed for the third time that Duncan had truly blacked out, he took a deep breath. "First, you started dancing with this tall, curly-haired guy in the bar. He’d been staring at you for ages. Then, the two of you just... vanished. An hour later, you reappeared, and he was holding up your hand, announcing to the whole place that you two had officially registered your marriage."
"Are you shitting me?" Duncan’s head still felt like it was being split by an axe, but his mind was now painfully sober.
"I wish it were a joke! I should’ve realized the way he was looking at you wasn’t right. I never thought a Baratheon would be so depraved that taking advantage of a man in that state!"
"Wait... did you say Baratheon?" Duncan picked up the ring engraved with the stag. Only then did he notice the band was a perfect fit for his ring finger. "Please tell me I didn't just marry a Baratheon."
"Uh, yeah. You remember him, right? Lyonel Baratheon. The guy from the game who kept laughing his head off while pummeling people."
"Of course I remember him! Then what about these other four?! And why are three of them almost identical?!"
"Well, after a while, you said you had to hit the restroom, but then you pulled another vanishing act for an hour. I went to ask security, and they said they saw you leaving with a guy with silver white hair. I called you a dozen times, and when someone finally picked up, a man’s voice told me you were busy at the moment. When I asked for his name, he said he was—"
Raymun’s voice cut out for a split second as a low-battery warning popped up on the screen. Duncan immediately swiped the notification away, but still didn’t hear the name.
"...I'm telling you, those Targaryens are completely unreasonable," Raymun’s voice rushed back in. "It's one thing for three of them to register with the same person, but a father and son marrying the same man? That’s unheard of!"
"Targaryen..." Duncan stared intensely at the three rings. Fragmented memories began to flicker through his mind. A deep, masculine voice gently telling him to stop crying, whispering that he had no idea how charming and unforgettable he was. Then, another slurred voice: "Don't forget your phone, darling. We'll be needing that to stay in touch..."
"Please, just let it not be Aerion Targaryen," Duncan muttered in despair.
On the other end of the line, after finishing his rant about the Targaryen trio, Raymun switched back to a consoling tone. "I bet it was just a system glitch that let the registrations go through. Once the government offices open or those clerks sober up, I’m sure everything will be cleared. Probably."
Duncan could only nod helplessly. At least he hadn't gone on a mugging spree; at worst, he’d just registered marriages with five different men... These people were insane. How could they just grab a random passerby and get hitched? He decided to chalk it all up to a collective drunken mania, refusing to let his mind dwell on it any further.
"By the way," Raymun’s voice suddenly grew strained, "actually... we registered too. That apple ring is mine. It’s my new sigil. Not a red apple, though, it’s a green—"
Before he could finish, the phone screen went completely black. Duncan remained frozen in his calling stance, his mind already drifting a thousand miles away.
"Old Arlan is seriously going to slaughter me." Duncan closed his eyes in despair. Now, his only hope was that his five husbands would sober up fast and file for divorce. After all, there was no way in hell he could afford to support that many people.