Work Text:
Lyonel, technically, knows how to take care of a pregnant omega.
He's not stupid, and he's not a terrible fucking ignorant about all things outside feasts and sex either, no matter what his sisters claim. He knows the how-to, especially the part that results in a pregnancy, and his father made sure after his heir presented as an alpha to lay out the basics of being one. Lyonel still shudders when he remembers the stilted talk, the long pauses his old man would take between words, and his own three-and-ten years old self buzzing across the table with hormones and nerves, fresh off his first rut.
It's just… He's never been around that many carrying omegas. Or betas, for the record; he was the second youngest of his siblings, and therefore had no memory of his mother's pregnancy, and then, he just didn't manage to stumble by any — when his sisters would be with their children, they would either be at their husbands' estates, or, in the rare event they came to Storm's End, they weren't keen on educating him about it.
So, by the time he manages to entangle himself with a certain giant hedge knight and just so happens to impregnate him, he knows the rudimentary parts. Great urge to nest, enormous appetite, possessiveness bordering on viciousness, all that. Everybody knows these parts, even if they never learned, the instincts are enough to guide the biggest idiot through a pregnancy, a thoroughly natural state of things. So Lyonel can rely on his instincts, if as cautiously as he'd step onto a frozen river. He's sufficiently prepared.
Dunk looks at him with such enormous trust in his eyes Lyonel sometimes feel like he's going to choke on all of it.
He's fine.
He's fine, and that's what he tells himself when Dunk and Egg roll into Storm's End on an awfully wet, muggy night, late summer after Ashford.
Dunk is nearly vibrating out of his skin with nervousness, throwing his scent out and drawing it back in, as though he can't decide on something, until he leans over the intricately carved great hall table where the two of them — Egg already gone to sleep, curled up in the guest chambers as though there is nothing malicious in the world waiting to eat eager squires — are eating an awfully late diner, alone in the empty room, ceilings that remember Lyonel's ancestors looming tall over them, and he confesses.
He's with a bastard.
Lyonel's bastard, to be specific, though Lyonel himself had no qualms about naming himself the babe's father right away before the nearest septon. Child made on Lord Ashford's lands, during that gods-damned, unfortunate tourney a few moons ago, a child with, it seems, their destiny already written for them. By their two parents, a hedge knight and a heirless lord. Truly a couple made up as a jape by the gods.
From the expression on the poor omega's face, light eyebrows drawn tightly together and blue eyes hazy with unshed tears, hunched over himself and visibly holding back trembling, as though he's certain Lyonel will have him gutted by the morning and thrown off the cliffs, and Egg sent back to Summerhall, to his father, and—
"Buck." He clasps both his hands over the one Dunk has laying on the table, in a selfish attempt to comfort Dunk and pacify the growling alpha inside of himself. He allows himself to drink in the difference between them — Dunk's hand is larger, his fingernails slightly dirty underneath, where they aren't bitten to the quick; Lyonel's hands are smaller, but wider in some ways, knuckles bulging where Dunk's fingers are the same width the whole length, light dark hairs covering the top of them, light catching and twinkling on the rings he wears.
Dunk's eyes don't look up. He barely reacts as such, misery in his scent coating the inside of Lyonel's mouth as the alpha fights through the urge to grab, mate, claim, to put Dunk in his den and never let him feel such suffering again. Dunk just flinches slightly and draws even deeper into himself. "Dunk."
"M'lord," he manages out, through dense sobs in the back of his throat.
One of his large hands, the one not held hostage by Lyonel's, had — consciously or not, doesn't particularly matter — migrated to cover the underside of his slightly swollen belly.
Lyonel hadn't felt that way for a long, long time. As though Dunk has a very good aim with a bow, and keeps shooting Lyonel in the stomach, time and time again, sometiems up to his chest, piercing his heart; every single little cry he doesn't let out is an arrow in his gut.
"I am not the kind to kill my bastards." A monumental shiver passes through his hedge knight's monumental frame, and a for a moment, just as something sweet and unreasonable blooms in Lyonel's chest. He wants to wrap him in the thickest of quilts in Storm's End and rock him like a babe, and the thought nearly makes him laugh outloud. "For as long as you want to, you will be safe within the Stormlands. No enemy shall you find here, and no enemy shall find you."
Dunk's eyes slowly rise to meet his, and his scent loses some of its acridity, a thin trail of ripe summer berries undercutting the misery wrapped around them. He nearly smiles, even.
And right after, he turns rapidly and vomits all over the stone floor.
Lyonel hadn't laughed so hard since that night in his tent at Ashford, when they danced and chased each other around. His chest is so light he thinks it might burst. Dunk joins him in the encompassing mirth at some point, wiping vomit from the corner of his mouth with a sleeve of his tattered, simple tunic, and that simply won't do, so he shoves aside the confuddled servants and personally drags Dunk to his chambers.
And so Lyonel keeps being fine. He's fine, he's alright, even, as his beautiful buck grows and glows beneath Stormlands' dark clouds. His locks, as golden as though Dunk climbed up to the sun and took a ray of it to braid into his hair, grow exponentially faster than Lyonel would expect them to, and reach Dunk's chin by the first turn of the moon. The enclosed space of Storm's End works for and against Dunk both — his instincts need small spaces to squeeze in, hidey holes that please his omega brain that he wouldn't find out there next to the hedges, but Dunk's nature calls out to the road and forest and fresh air.
They compromise. They ride horses, a lot, they spar, albeit more cautiously than Dunk would like them to, and in the later months, when Dunk's too sore or off-balance to keep himself on a horse, Lyonel relearns the ways around the woods surrounding his keep. He also learns that reigning his alpha instincts in is a heroic task, especially if the omega is carrying his babe, and he spends a good half of the time around Dunk physically wringing his hands so he doesn't just grab the omega and kiss the daylights out of him, unaccustomed to not simply taking whatever his heart desires.
But Dunk has not said anything about mating — or staying at Storm's End, really, that part just simply happened — so he doesn't push. He will not make Dunk uncomfortable with his idiotic, overbearing instincts, no matter how loud they scream.
The babe doesn't show a lot. Just a simple swell beneath Dunk's clothes, but the maester and midwife assure them that with Dunk's stature it's to be expected, that while his body might not present the bairn outwardly, it's hale and healthy inside — as evidenced by the voracious kicking they delight in doing. Apparently, they also refuse to fit into the old wives' tales about predicting gender, because while Dunk running hot and constantly craving sweets would indicate a girl, his skin seems to glow at all times and headaches come and go in the mornings and before storms, which would tell them the babe is a boy.
"No matter," he told Dunk once, when they had an afternoon free of obligation and just so happened to end up in Lyonel's chambers. He tapped gently on his stomach and received a not-so-gentle kick in return, Dunk chuckling under his breath. "The child could be born with no genitals and I'd love them the same."
Dunk rolled his eyes fondly, pursing his lips before smiling and saying, "But you speak of daughters often."
A grin sprouts on Lyonel's face, and he turns his face to his chest to hide it. "Aye, clever beast, I do."
He wants a daughter. His father always doted on his girls more than him and his younger brother, and while it was somewhat expected, but he always watched his hands gentle when he touched his sisters' hair, shoulders, when he kissed them on their temples and oversaw every betrothal with a morose face and a tight grip on wine goblets.
So Lyonel wants a daughter to dote on and spoil, to be gentle and loving with. One with Dunk's golden hair and big blue eyes, his enthusiasm and zest for life. A little terror for the still halls of Storm's End.
Lyonel, technically, knows how to take care of a pregnant omega.
His point stands, as he nearly skips towards their shared chambers (they might actually be his, but he and the hedge knight have shared them often enough he might as well consider them theirs) after a long day of mind-numbing lordly responsibilities, such as revising the grain stocks for the approaching winter (terribly boring, and each letter on the scrolls reminded him that he's not with Duncan) and riding out to some outpost a whole afternoon away to witness the western wall of it crumbled.
As he stood against the evening, ass-whipping cold wind, watching as one of the puny beta guards ramble about how much it would cost, and the necessity to establish another outpost, he wondered what the fuck he must've done to the gods to anger them such, so his punishment would be this.
When he steps into the room and closes the door behind him, putting the bar in its place — another part that Dunk brought with him, his protectiveness the force of a storm, he pestered Lyonel until the room had a bar installed on the inside, "just in case," — and listening for any indicative sounds.
Nothing. Which is strange, because Dunk's entire existence makes a little noise at the very least, even when he's asleep he's sighing and turning and mumbling ot himself, and when Egg wiggles his way in there his mouth does not shut for a moment. But there's not even a candle lit, as he looks deeper into the room, the bed pushed up against a wall at Dunk's insistence a couple sennights ago, bathed in complete darkness.
He steps deeper, calling out a soft "Dunk?" in case the omega is asleep deeper than usual. Or maybe he ended up underneath the bed again — that night will make a fucking hilarious story some day, but it was definitely not funny when he woke up with the distinct memory of Dunk in his arms and no Dunk in his arms that morning.
His foot, damn it, steps on a board that protests loudly, creaking.
Dunk snarls.
Lyonel's steps come to a grinding halt, hands flying up in submission, palms towards the general direction of the nest as his alpha freezes.
An omega's snarl is a powerful thing, and severely underestimated by most. Lyonel hadn't been on the receiving end of it many times — most times were as a child, when he'd annoy his older sister and she'd try out her snarl on him; though, he's seen alphas shaken up when an omega snapped at their leering and harrassment. It's a primal, deep thing, designed by nature to scare off predators, turn them pliant so the omega can sink their claws into them or run.
And Dunk's snarl, gods, Mother, anyone who can hear him, is fucking intense. Like a wave of ice-cold ocean water washing over Lyonel, making him stand still, he can feel his brain turning into mush under the sheer power of it.
Submit, submit, submit. Turn over on your belly and let him taste your yield.
The next wave of Dunk's scent that reaches him is acrid, burning, like Lyonel just stepped into a meadow on fire. It makes him all the more desirable in some twisted part of Lyonel's brain. His omega, so strong, so fierce. Will be such a good mother to their pups.
Lyonel blinks rapidly, trying to get his eyes to accustom to the darkness of the room. The only light coming from behind the windows, looking out at the ocean, the moon shining only faintly behind clouds. Dunk's form comes into his sight slowly, manifesting from the darkness like a beautiful ghost — or maybe a cunning witch, fuck, maybe he is a witch, put a love spell on Lyonel and his cock — and shoved into the deepest corner of the bed agains the wall, curled protectively over himself, over his bump.
Dunk looks as though he doesn't quite understand what is happening to him, eyes glazed over and flitting around Lyonel's form, the room, back on Lyonel, trying to make sense of the situation.
"Heyyy, buck, it's alright—" Lyonel tries to start — to neither avail nor success, as Dunk bares his teeth once again, his canines dropped into sharp points, and growls even louder.
In all fairness, Lyonel did not expect this. Sure, he knew Dunk was more connected to his instincts than the average omega he'd laid with before. He was more connected to his nest and scents in it than Lyonel's older omega sister, and he was very observant about every single change of scents around them. But Lyonel just… loosely assumed it was because of his upbringing in Flea Bottom, and having to protect himself from a very young age with everything his body had, and that once he had comfort, an alpha and a semblance of a pack, they would get the memo that they weren't necessary for his survival anymore, and fade to normal levels, so he and Dunk never talked about it.
As situation at hand clearly presents, his insticts didn't get the memo of safety. And they should've talked about it.
"I am not going to do anything." He begins to lower himself to his knees, which creak in protest — damn his age, damn the joints, he has a mate to appease — and cranes his head to the left, showing off the scent gland on his neck, pushing out scent tinged with safe-calm-known, restraining himself for once. Dunk's growl lessens slightly, but he's still wound tight, like a hedgehog wrapped around itself. Hedge knight, hedgehog. Haha. "We can stay like this all night, Dunk. I yield. You are in control here."
And he is. Lyonel would shrivel up and die on this floor, on his knees, if Dunk would be pleased with him.
Dunk's eyes flit around Lyonel, the room, the nest, trying to ground himself, but they have a glaze over them that proves his efforts futile. He looks far away from here, floating, almost, as though he's trying to see from behind a blindfold.
His eyes snap to the door and stay there, and for a moment, Lyonel thinks he might be told to leave. His heart thumps selfishly and painfully at that, but if asked to, he'd roll himself out the door without looking at Dunk back once.
"Som'un… nest." Dunk forces the words through his throat; he sounds like making himself talk is painful, and bites at his bottom lip.
Nest. Dunk. Nest. Dunk's nest.
"Someone was in your nest?" His own canines scrape his lower lip as they begin to slide out fully, but he reigns the rage in his scent back in. The last thing he needs is Dunk backing out again at the smell of his anger, even if it's in his defense. An omega as feral as Dunk is tonight will not ask him questions about the recipient of his fury, he'll just claw Lyonel's eyes out and deal with it later.
Dunk shakes his head vehemently, breathing in and out deeply, his eyes sharpening and brightening in the way when he focuses on something — sparring with Lyonel, Egg's incessant yipping, his letters. His lower lip looks chewed up and red when he releases it from between his teeth.
"Not in. Took apart."
Took apart. They took apart Duncan's nest.
Lyonel is going to put every single servant in Storm's End in the dungeons. No, in the stocks; he'll leave them hail or hell, for trying to do anything that put Duncan in any sort of distress, that made him anything less than shining from happiness, that they dared to try and disturb his nest, his Seven-damned nest, everyone knows how much omegas put into their nests, and Lyonel will rip them to shreds himself, will delight in the violence and bring their bones to Dunk so he'll see how well he can provide, his nest—
Dunk is staring at him.
They both open their mouths at the same time;
"I don't—"
And close them in tandem, too.
A small smile begins to take shape in the corner of Dunk's mouth, and a thoroughly warm and thick feeling pours through Lyonel's chest, like someone fed him molasses.
"I don't know what…" Dunk takes his bottom lip between his teeth again, and looks so sweet, so Dunk, with his ears pinkening and his hands nearly subconsciously kneading the blanket thrown over the right side of his lap. "Pardon me, s— Lyonel. I don' know what came over me, to act like that."
Like what? A terrified, nestless omega?
"The only person who should be sorry right now is the fucking servant who tore up your nest." He grinds out from between his teeth. "The only person who should be groveling for your forgiveness now should be me, for allowing such a rat into Storm's End."
Dunk blinks. Then blinks again, and his eyes — still glazed over, though brighter than they were earlier — search Lyonel's face for the signs of deception, or maybe a jape.
They must not find it, because he takes a shaky inhale.
"You— I mean— You cannot mean that."
"Don't tell me what I cannot do."
That's a step in the very fucking wrong direction, his brashness, as Dunk backs up slightly, hackles rising to the surface again. His scent doesn't change back to the nearly fetid smell it was when he first entered, but the sweetness abates from it, leaving something burnt and sticky.
"Mother's tits— No, that's not what I meant. I heard that someone messed with your nest, and it's not right, no one has the right to touch it if you don't want to!"
Dunk is silent for a moment, eyes stormy in the way that betrays him thinking deeply, careful with his words.
"But why?"
Lyonel's mind seems to stop at that, the sanctity of an omega's own place that had been ingrained in him since childhood crashing with whatever bullshit Dunk learned on the road and will, inevitably, tell Lyonel as if it's the truth.
"Because it's your nest?"
Dunk cocks his head to the left, as if a change in literal perspective will help him understand. Lyonel's heart speeds up.
"And what is the matter of it? 's just a bunch of clothes rolled up together and thrown into a corner, I mean, se— Lyonel, it cannot look any pretty, and in a lord's bedchamber's just an eyesore. I understand why they cleaned it up. 's alright." He rambles on and on, scenting and taling as if it's a typical thing to do.
Lyonel's entire chest caves fucking in. Well, not literally, because it would be rather worrying and a situation worthy of calling a maester — but it's a near thing, the way his lungs spasm. He cannot draw a breath in nor out, and it cannot be, Duncan cannot think that honestly, but when had the hedge knight lied to him? When had he said something to soften the blow, when had he been anything but a painfully truthful man?
What happened to this poor man? Lyonel knows the groundwork Dunk had told him, no hedge knight comes from a title and a maid feeding him with a silver spoon, and yet, he assumed that Duncan had the same experience with his designation as other omegas. That he was allowed to be the same as other omegas.
Of course fucking not, you nutsack, he screams at himself internally, yearns to keep the knight in his nest for the remainder of their lives, surrounded by the happy scents of them and their pups, of course, of-fucking-course.
"When me and Ser Arlan were on the road, I wouldn' nest." Dunk starts, but his words are so fucking unsteady, and he avoids Lyonel's eyes like they're a dragon's staring at him. "Don' think I ever properly—properly nested. We didn' stay in one place for long enough, and if we did, what good could I make of it? Our cloaks?" He scoffs at the thought.
Lyonel could cry trying to picture that. He can actually feel a lump pricking at the back of his throat when he thinks of it — little Dunk, his heart larger than his body, just after his first heat, shivering and fighting his instincts to nest and burrow down, and having to just keep doing. He can understand, on a pure technical level, why Ser Arlan would do that, an omega nesting was one less man to fight if they were attacked, and out in the open it was dangerous to sleep in a nest, as it allow for one to ender a deeper sleep.
His alpha does not understand it, screaming at him find that man who hurt his omega so gravelly and rip his throat out. Dunk probably wouldn't appreciate it, especially seeing as his Ser is long dead and gone to the world.
"And then, Ashford happened, and Egg, and," he makes a wide sweeping motion with his arms, pointing out the nest, himself, Lyonel, with a mirthless laugh, "and now I can't think of anything else, just that I need to build a burrow for the pack, and I don't even 'ave a pack, and 's all so stupid, and I'm— I— you know— Argh."
Fucking Seven. What did the life of a hedge knight fed this poor man?
"Duncan." He shifts forward, just a little, to relieve the tension in his screaming knees, but doesn't dare to rise up in the slightest. When his eyes catch Dunk's, he makes the eye contact between them intense, so the omega can't pull away from it (and he can feast on every emotion he sees in those beautiful, spring sky-blue eyes).
He tries to parse through the multiple voices screaming in his head to murder and rip and pack and omega and pup, tries to come up with the proper words that won't scare Dunk away with their intensity but will force him to realize the enormity of what he's done.
"If I were to go to Egg, right in this moment, and ask him who his pack is, he would say it's you."
Dunk honest-to-the-Seven whimpers.
It's a pathetic, lovely thing, Lyonel wants to bite into the feeling it brings, and brings on a wave of mixed scent, as if Dunk can't decide what he's feeling and is actively trying to parse through his emotions. Which, likely.
"Duncan, you incredible fucking creature, madman, you've built a pack from nothing. That's the type of stories ballads are sung about. That's, Duncan, Dunk, you deserve a fucking mountain of gold and a— fucking sword made of the most precious cuts of gemstones, Mother's cunt, you could ask to be treated like royalty and I'd roll over like a hound and call you 'Your Grace'."
Dunk's eyebrows furrow, but the bright red flush that had overtaken his face betrays him. "I don't want a mountain of gold."
"That's the fucking thing about you!" Lyonel near-yells in pure delight, and the joy in his guts only grows when Dunk doesn't flinch this time at the increase in volume and his hands flapping about, gesticulating; the words blab out of him with no control, as if he's drunk, but the only beverage he'd drunk the entire evening was wine, and it's impossible, and it's Dunk, and Dunk is impossible. "You're so humble, so kind to everyone and everything, to the smallest fuckin' bird you find on the side of the road, and yet you refuse to believe you are worthy of the same. Seven damn it, Dunk, you do have a pack, it's Egg and the pup you're growing, and all you have to do is accept it."
And then his eyes bore into Duncan's, whose, to Lyonel's growing horror, begin to fill with tears. There you go, dumb big stag, you charged and squandered all the chances you might've had otherwise. You cannot control your
"And you?"
His head snaps up from where it, somehow, began to hang limply, staring at his own hands laying flat on his thighs.
"What of me?"
"Would you be," Duncan blushes, furiously so and his ears seem bright red, though his voice is still thick with tears, "my pack, too?"
Then he seems to realize the weight and importance of his question, because his still moisture-filled eyes get as big as a Targaryen's ego, and a thin, high sound leaves his lips — subconsciously, Lyonel thinks, because Dunk doesn't seem aware of it, his mouth barely moving, jaw clenched tight.
He must have been an excellent man in a previous life, or maybe he accidentally saved a life blessed by the Seven, or some God, Old or New, was watching over him and decided to bless him with the greatest gift a man of his standing could receive. No great, ancestral castle and a large swath of fertile land and calm smallfolk to rule over, nor a Dornish bred stallion who could outrun a dragon, nor
He was blessed with Ser Duncan the Tall. Someway, somehow, he was deemed worthy of such an honor, to plant a child of theirs in Dunk's womb, to have Dunk ask him to join his pack, to have those terribly sweet eyes and terribly tempting scent begging him.
As if Dunk ever needed to ask anything of Lyonel. As if Lyonel would ever refuse him anything.
He wets his lips.
"If you'd want me to." He begs, voice sounding all hoarse and rough, all wrong, but Dunk's face lights up like a whelp's when presented with his first wooden sword irregardless. He reaches forward, then his arm wilts, as if in doubt, but his scent sweetens and sweetens and sweetens when Lyonel grabs his hand — with none of the gentleness his father advised him to treat an omega with, poor bastard is probably rolling in his grave — and stays on the ground, feeling blessed as he stares at Dunk's glowing, grinning face.
If Dunk told him to, he would, in all likelihood, sleep on the floor next to his bed until the day he finally croaked. His knees and back might protest at that, but it would be a life beautifully spent.
Dunk's hand twitches in Lyonel's hold before squeezing. Thick callouses where he holds swords, damp palm, the faint, barely-there hairs on his fingers. Lyonel squeezes back.
"I would."
"Whuh?"
This is not how he wanted to project himself as a capable potential alpha and attentive father to however many pups Duncan would want — this one or twelve more, he's down for any number — and he can already smell his scent going slightly sour at the embarrasment his alpha feels.
Dunk, though, smiles at him like he's a particularly sweet kitten to be kept and pampered. Lyonel cannot deny this makes him… feel something.
"I would like for you to be in my pack. Or me 'n Egg in yours, doesn't matter."
He's like a gods-damned dog presented with a hearthy bone, his non-existent tail nearly non-existently wagging. "Say that again."
"I would— Lyonel!" Duncan squirms as Lyonel throws himself at him, laves his tounge over his scent gland, in pure happiness, pure alpha, fuck, his instincts are screaming ten different things at him right now but all he wants is that excited-fuzzy-bubbling joyful scent. "Lyonel! Fuckin' hells!"
He rubs his whole face against the wide planes of Dunk's neck, inhaling the gorgeous mix of Duncan, down-to-earth, unlike many of the courtierly omegas who are simply sweet and flowery — Duncan carries the smell of soil with him, the air right after a heavy downpour, custard and something wood-y Lyonel doesn't quite have the time to delve into right now. He's busy trying to trap Duncan's fluttering, giggling body underneath himself.
They finally fall back, somehow, with Lyonel ending up in a chokehold made of Dunk's strong, warm arms — and what a death that would be, a joyous one for sure, nearly as magnificent as being strangled with a bosom; when he shares that thought with Duncan, the reaction he gets back isn't nearly as enthusiastic as his was — and the omega doesn't even seem taken with an intrustion into his nest.
When Lyonel lets out a questioning sound, since Duncan hadn't said yes, but he hadn't said no either, the man of the hour blushes. His scent changes, again, falling into something melancholic and insecure once again, like a mist suddenly enveloping Storm's End, but it's all undercut with so much damn joy.
Lyonel's alpha could howl in happiness. He made his omega happy, comforted, not sad anymore! He's a good mate! He'd proven himself!
"I might not be the best at bein' in a pack." Dunk finally says.
"What? Nay, Duncan—"
"I don't even know when someone enters my nest, how good of an omega can I be?"
The exhale that leaves Lyonel is long and loud, but he keeps projecting a soft, non-angry scent (just in case, he tells his alpha, but it might as well be so the wild animal in his chest doesn't rip it apart) as he sits up and grabs at Dunk's hands, tracing his knuckles. "Duncan, Mother's sweet teats, when I came into the room at first you'd been ready to tear my throat out, weren't you?"
After a moment of surprised silence, "… aye."
"How's that not being an amazing pack omega? You were ready to kill me. Firstly, devastatingly hot," he flashes a wide grin at Dunk's rapidly reddening face, "and secondly, I have not experienced, in all my years of living and yearning for an omega such as you, anyone who'd be nearly as fierce and protective.
Dunk tucks his head into the crook of his neck with a soft, small hiccup indicative of a sob, his arms wounding around Lyonel's ribcage and pulling him as close as possible with his belly in the way. Lyonel's own body begins to purr and coo in comfort, very chuffed about being used not unlike a stuffed animal — deemed safe and comfortable enough by this beautiful giant of an omega that chose him, for no reason, could've had anyone and Duncan still chose him.
At some point, when Dunk peels his damp face away from Lyonel's collar and Lyonel shuts up the attempts at apologies Dunk tries to make. Lyonel rubs his face against Dunk's scent gland once, twice, almost crowding his entire front until the big man is smiling slightly again and a purr is building in his chest.
Then, on a whim, he licks at Duncan's hair.
"Lyonel!" He squeaks and tries to jump away, but Lyonel growls playfully and buries his nose against the hair and skin, smelling so wonderful, so Dunk, still licking and chewing gently. "Seven's sake, what are you doin'?"
"Grooming my omega." Lyonel smiles, pushing Duncan slightly harder into the bed so the omega stops tensing up for once and allow himself to rest. Which is a damn near impossible task, as Lyonel learned in the recent times, as the pregnancy makes Dunk even more aware and nervous, his omega working more than normally, trying to detect any and all dangers to his pup — he hopes some pressure and an alpha's scent will calm his instinct. (Lyonel knows it would work on him, when he was a little boy clambering into his parents' bed long after everyone went to sleep, nightmare still clinging to the edges of his mind, he'd feel that much safer if his father released some of his pack alpha pheromones.)
Dunk doesn't protest having Lyonel on him. In fact, the short burst of comforted-satiated omega Lyonel smells right after seems like the antithesis to a protest.
Eventually, sleep begins to claim both of them, comfort flowing easily between bodies. Lyonel attempts to shift off Duncan's chest, so he can breathe and move more freely, but when he does that, the omega releases a sad chirp and grabs onto Lyonel's shirt, stilling him in place with the sheer strength, no instincts needed, and turning his own head to face Lyonel with the wettest eyes he'd ever seen.
(His alpha preens and scowls at the same time. Lyonel isn't sure what the meddling beast means with it.)
"The pup is calmer when you're near."
Seven. Lyonel isn't old, but if Dunk keeps making statements such as these, his heart will give out eventually.
"Are they?" Lyonel grins sleepily, one arm wandering down to cup the barely-there swell of Duncan's belly. Warm, like sitting next to a hearth after riding through a snowstorm, smelling of milk. Were he not a lord, Lyonel would spend his entire life curled up underneath covers with a pregnant Dunk. "Little cunt, knows when their father is near."
Duncan's frame shakes with quiet laughter and he rubs his cheek against his pillow.
"I think they're asleep now." He says, quietly. One of his big, calloused hands lands on top of Lyonel's and begins to rub at his knuckles with a thumb, and then he's pushing himself backwards, to fit his back into the mold of Lyonel's front. "At first, when you're near, they kick and thrash. Much like you do, in fact, must be getting all that energy from you."
"Or they are hearing Egg's constant babble and bouncing 'round and are trying to imitate their older brother."
Duncan is quite posisbly sniffling slightly so at that.
"Aye. Older brother."