Work Text:
The great hall of Summerhall had never felt so small.
Dunk sat at the high table – a place he still could not quite believe was his – and stared at the wine glass in his hand as though it might bite him. The ruby vintage within trembled with each pulse of his heart. To his left, Prince Maekar carved his venison with the precision of a man who had once wielded a warhammer against rebels. To his right, Prince Aerion Targaryen – his Aerion, though the word still caught in Dunk's throat like a fishbone – lifted his own glass to his lips.
And did not drink.
Dunk watched from the corner of his eye. The first time, he thought nothing of it. Aerion had always been a theatrical creature, prone to gestures that meant nothing and everything all at once. The second time, Dunk noticed the way Aerion's throat did not move – the wine merely kissing his lips before the glass returned to the table, untouched.
The third time, Aerion's free hand drifted to his middle.
It was a casual thing, or meant to seem so. Fingers splayed across the silver-and-scarlet silk of his doublet, just below the ribs. A proprietary sort of touch, as though he were checking that something was still there. Still safe.
Dunk's brow furrowed. He shifted on the bench – a bench, at the king's own table, because Aerion had refused to let the stewards bring him a chair with a back, insisting that his love would sit as he pleased and damn the courtesies – and tried to catch Aerion's eye.
But the prince was looking elsewhere. At his elder, and younger brothers, who were arguing with a few lesser known Lords about various dispositions of the border levy. At the fire in the great hearth, which spat and crackled with a fury that matched the autumn gale outside. At anything but Dunk.
"Your Grace." Dunk pitched his voice low, beneath the clatter of plates and the drone of conversation. "Are you well?"
Aerion turned to him, and for a moment – just a moment – his composure cracked. There was something raw in those bright Targaryen eyes, something that looked almost like fear. Then the mask slid back into place, and Aerion smiled. Not his usual sharp-toothed grin, the one that promised pain or pleasure or both, but something softer. Something that made Dunk's chest ache.
"Quite well, my giant," Aerion murmured, and his hand – still resting on his stomach – gave a little pat. "Why do you ask?"
Dunk opened his mouth. Closed it. He was not a clever man; he had never pretended otherwise. He could swing a sword and keep his oaths and love a creature as dangerous as dragonfire, but subtlety was beyond him. So he said, honestly, "You're not drinking."
Aerion's smile thinned. "I find myself out of taste for wine this evening."
"You love wine."
"I am wine, or so my sisters tells me." Aerion's lip curled. "Brightflame, I am. Bright, and, burning, and –" His hand pressed harder against his stomach. "– full of fire."
The word ‘full’ hung in the air between them.
Dunk's heart, which had been beating steadily enough, began to hammer against his ribs like a prisoner demanding release. He looked at Aerion's face – pale, sharper than usual, with a flush along those high cheekbones that had nothing to do with the hearth's warmth. He looked at the hand, still pressed to the silk. He looked at the wine glass, standing sentinel and untouched.
And then Aerion did it again. His fingers traced a slow circle over his belly, a gesture so unconscious and so tender that Dunk felt his throat close.
An omega with a belly full of pups.
The thought came not as a revelation but as a recognition. As though he had always known, somewhere deep in the marrow of his bones, and had only been waiting for the evidence to surface. Aerion had been strange these past weeks – sleeping more, eating with a fastidious care that bordered on obsession, snapping at servants for the slightest whiff of strong cheese or smoked fish. Dunk had put it down to the prince's usual temperament, which swung between mercurial and murderous with little warning.
But this. This.
Dunk set down his own wine glass. The motion drew Aerion's attention, and those pale eyes fixed on him with an expression Dunk could not read – hope and defiance and terror all tangled together like a nest of vipers.
"Dunk," Aerion said, and his voice wavered. It never wavered. "Don't –"
But Dunk was already moving. His hand, large and calloused and scarred from a lifetime of sword-grips and shield-straps, reached across the space between them. He did not ask permission. He simply laid his palm over Aerion's, over the place where his prince kept touching himself, and pressed.
The silk was warm. And beneath it, just barely, there was a curve that had not been there a month ago.
Aerion went rigid. His breath caught – a sharp, wet sound that cut through the din of the feast like a knife. For one terrible moment, Dunk thought he would scream, or laugh, or do something else that would draw every eye in the hall to them.
But Aerion was a dragon, and dragons do not show weakness.
He turned his hand over beneath Dunk's, lacing their fingers together, and held on as though Dunk were the only solid thing in a world made of smoke.
"You know," Aerion whispered. Not a question.
Dunk's thumb moved of its own accord, stroking over the silk, over the curve, over the secret that had been growing between them in silence. "How long?"
A fortnight. A moon's turn. "Long enough." Aerion's jaw tightened. "I meant to tell you. I meant to find the right moment, the right words, but every time I looked at you I –" He broke off, shaking his head. "You are a knight. You have your oaths, your honour, your duty. I thought – I was afraid –"
"That I would leave?" Dunk's voice came out rougher than he intended. "That I would turn my back on you and our –" He could not say it. The word child stuck in his teeth like gristle.
But Aerion heard it anyway. His grip on Dunk's hand tightened to the point of pain. "You are a fool, Ser. The most beautiful fool I have ever known, other than myself; though I am not a fool." He laughed, and there was no mockery in it – only wonder, only fear, only a love so fierce it burned. "I am pregnant. With your pups. With your pups, Dunk. Do you understand what that means?"
Dunk looked down at their joined hands, at the curve beneath, at the future taking shape in the space between one heartbeat and the next. He thought of his own father, who was likely a thief or a criminal, as was common for men in Flea Bottom; and inevitably hung for his crimes. He thought of Ser Arlan, who had taken in a nameless boy from Flea Bottom, and made him into something more. He thought of honour, and duty, and the oaths he had sworn to protect the innocent and defend the weak.
And he thought of Aerion, sharp-toothed Aerion, cruel and brilliant and broken and his – carrying his blood, his name, his legacy.
"I understand," Dunk said, and lifted their clasped hands to his lips. He pressed a kiss to Aerion's knuckles, then to his wrist, where the scent of dragon's blood and winter roses lay thick against the skin. "I understand that you are mine, and I am yours, and nothing – nothing – will make me walk away from that."
Aerion's eyes glistened. He blinked, once, twice, and when he looked at Dunk again his expression had shifted into something almost like peace.
"Good," he said, and his voice was steady now, sharp as Valyrian steel. "Because I have already told my father. And my brothers. And the entire court, for all I know – servants talk, and I have been obviously indisposed." He pulled his hand free of Dunk's, only to place it back on his stomach with deliberate care. "You are the father of my children, Ser Duncan. You sit at the high table. You will sit at the king's table, when we return to court, and you will endure my sisters, and brothers’ questions, and my father's glares and the endless, tedious congratulations of every lord and lady in the Seven Kingdoms."
Dunk swallowed. "Your father knows?"
"My father is furious." Aerion smiled – the sharp-toothed smile now, full of malice and delight. "He said I have shamed the house of Targaryen by lying with a common hedge knight. I told him that you are no common anything, and that if he wished to shame someone he should look to his own second son, who thought to drink wildfire." He tilted his head, cat-like. "He did not appreciate that."
"You told him –"
"I told him everything." Aerion's hand smoothed over his belly, a slow, possessive stroke. "I told him that you warm my bed, and share my name, and fill my belly with your seed. I told him that if he harms you, I will burn his precious Summerhall to ash and salt the earth where it stood. I told him –"
Dunk kissed him.
It was not a gentle kiss. It was not a courtly kiss, the kind minstrels sang about in ballads of forbidden love. It was desperate and clumsy and tasted of salt – from Aerion's tears, which were falling now despite his best efforts, or from Dunk's own, he could not tell. He kissed Aerion like a man drowning, like a man saved, like a man who had just learned that the world was larger and stranger and more terrible than he had ever imagined.
When they broke apart, the hall had gone quiet. Every eye was on them – Maekar with his fork frozen halfway to his mouth, Daeron with his jaw slack, Lord Ashford with an expression of profound discomfort. Even the servants had stopped moving, their trays held aloft like offerings to a god they did not understand.
Aerion looked at them all. His lips were red and swollen, his cheeks wet, his hand still pressed to the swell of his belly. And he smiled – not his sharp-toothed smile, not his cruel smile, but something radiant and terrible and utterly, completely human.
"Continue," he said, and his voice carried to every corner of the hall. "My betrothed was simply congratulating me on the news."
Dunk's face went scarlet. "Betrothed?"
Aerion turned back to him, and his eyes were soft again – soft in a way that made Dunk's chest ache and his stomach flip and his whole body burn with a need he could not name. "You did not think I would let you get away with simply holding my hand, did you? No, Ser Duncan the Tall. You will marry me. You will stand before the Seven and the realm and declare yourself mine. And then you will hold my hand while I scream at you for putting these pups in me, and you will hold my hand while they crown me, and you will hold my hand when we are old and grey and our grandchildren ask how a hedge knight and a dragon ever came to love each other."
Dunk stared at him. The hall stared at him. The fire crackled, and the wind howled, and somewhere in the distance a hound bayed at the moon.
"Alright," Dunk said finally, because he was a simple man, and because Aerion was looking at him like he was the only thing in the world worth looking at. "Alright."
Aerion's smile softened into something almost shy. He lifted Dunk's hand again, pressed it flat against his stomach, and held it there.
And beneath Dunk's palm, warm and small and impossibly alive, something fluttered.