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The chamber intended for Prince Baelor could not even remotely compare to those found in the Red Keep. Nevertheless, it occupied nearly the entire floor of the uppermost level of Ashford Castle’s eastern tower, and Lord Ashford undoubtedly considered it the finest accommodation he could offer the heir to the Iron Throne and the King’s Hand.
Yet the Prince of Dragonstone was not a man who measured true worth by opulence. He valued simplicity far more: a sturdy table on which maps could be spread and battles planned, a solid chair that did not creak beneath the weight of armour. Wealth, which others took for granted as their due, he regarded as a tool. He would have lied if he claimed it was useless to him, but it was never essential. Extravagance bored him, and excess stung his eyes just as sharply as cowardice or falsehood.
That was why he liked the stark honesty of this place, the scent of beeswax candles and woodsmoke rising from the hearth on the opposite wall, where flames licked thick oak logs, casting warm, flickering light across the simple tapestry that hung above the mantel. The only truly imposing piece of furniture in the chamber was the enormous four-poster bed, its dark red canopy cascading all the way to the floor.
Baelor sat on the edge of the bed. He had already unbuckled his belt, removed his tunic, and set the Hand’s brooch down on the small table. He remained, however, in his linen shirt, open at the throat, and dark trousers. For a long while he said nothing, only turning the ring on his finger, giving his brother time.
Maekar stood by the window, both hands braced against the cold stone sill. He stared into the blackness beyond the glass, where the outlines of the tourney field, the tents, and the banners were swallowed by night. Moonlight glimmered faintly in his silver hair and did nothing to soften the harsh lines of his face. He looked like a statue, but Baelor knew that the only thing occupying his mind was the desire to master the art of summoning his lost sons back by sheer force of will.
At last he spoke, without turning his head.
“They should be here by now. They set out much earlier and should have arrived long ago. Egg is only nine, and Daeron has a head full of wine instead of sense. If anything fucking happened to them…” He slammed his fist against the stone with all his strength, which drew a grimace of displeasure across his elder brother’s face. Maekar had always struggled to rein in his anger, and it frequently spilled over into self-destructive acts.
Baelor rose quietly from the bed and crossed to his brother, stopping just behind his rigid back. He saw the fist clenched like a vice, the knuckles split and bleeding. “We’ve talked about this. They’ll be fine. Ser Roland will find them. Egg is clever, remarkably sharp for his age. And Daeron… Daeron is far more likely to find an inn than trouble is to find him.”
Maekar snorted loudly, bitterness twisting his mouth. “Yes, he’s not as flawless as Valarr. The only thing he’s good at is shirking duty, drinking himself into a stupor and fucking whores.” The words came out bitter and sharp.
Baelor decided to let the remark about his own son pass without comment. “He remains your blood, brother. He is still young. There’ll come a time…”
“That time has come right fucking now.” The younger brother growled, cutting him off. “As soon as he’s found, by all the gods, old and new, the bloody R’hllor and Mother Rhoyne, I’ll do whatever it takes to make him change. I’ll make a man of him even if I have to hammer it into his skull every damned day.”
“Maekar.” Baelor laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder and squeezed, firm enough to make the point clear: calm down. “Being crude won’t speed the process. Any more than insulting our host and the hedge knight helped bring the boys back.”
Maekar spun around sharply. He frowned when he realised how close they were standing.
“The hedge knight? Did you not hear what he said? I trust they will not be found dead. What the fuck was that supposed to mean?”
“I believe he meant no harm by it.”
“Of course, the soul of chivalry.” His voice dripped with sarcasm as he repeated the tall knight’s words to Baelor from earlier that day. “He slinks into the chamber, eavesdrops, and suggests my sons might be lying dead somewhere. And I’m supposed to play at courtesies like the heir to the throne? Oh wait… I’m not him, so I do not have to.”
Baelor did not step back, even though Maekar was clearly trying to shove him away with sheer belligerence. He met his brother’s eyes directly. He was the taller of the two, and now he used that advantage, leaning in just slightly.
“No. You’re going to let me do the worrying for you, if only for one night.”
“Don’t pretend you care.” He brushed past Baelor and began to pace the chamber like a maddened warhorse. “They’re not your sons who’ve gone missing. It’s not you who has to feel ashamed and lose your bloody mind because you forced your firstborn to prove himself at a tourney!” His fists clenched and unclenched in turns, primed for violence. He wheeled back toward the window, looking for all the world as though he meant to confront the stone wall again.
Baelor watched him for a moment. Then he made up his mind.
He stepped up behind Maekar and wrapped him in an iron grip, seizing his hands and locking them firmly across his brother’s chest.
Maekar went rigid. For an instant Baelor was certain his brother would wrench free. But he did not.
“Let go.” Maekar growled, the words scraping raw and hoarse from his throat.
“No.”
A moment passed, then another. The only sounds in the chamber were their breathing. One calm and even, the other ragged and hurried, as though Maekar were fighting a war inside himself. At last, very slowly, his brother tipped his head back, and a heartbeat later let it come to rest against Baelor’s shoulder. His eyes were closed, his face slack with resignation.
“What a failure of a father I am,” he whispered, allowing himself the rare vulnerability. “I can’t even keep my own children in line. Dyanna should be here with them instead of me.”
Baelor did not answer at once. Instead he tightened his hold and turned his head toward the scarred cheek beside his own. He felt the faint tickle of pale beard against his skin.
“You’re not a failure.” Baelor said finally, his voice just as quiet. “You’re a man and that means you make mistakes, the same as the rest of us. But you try. You do your best to raise them right. Daeron is lost, yes, but that doesn’t mean you’ve lost him. He simply hasn’t found where he belongs yet. You gave him time to discover it. You tried to steer him onto the proper path, it’s not your fault he keeps straying from it. Aemon is good and wise, even if he’s a little shy. He’ll make an excellent maester.” Maekar snorted in displeasure. Baelor knew exactly how deeply their father’s decision to send the boy to the Citadel had wounded his brother. “Daella has so much of Dyanna in her, but I see your stubbornness there too. Aegon is brave and curious about the world, he has real potential. And Rhae is a delightful little girl we perhaps spoil just a touch too much.”
“And Aerion?”
The name hung between them like a hanged man left for the crows to pick at.
The second son of his brother was an arrogant, capricious and vain young man. Baelor never tried to sweeten the truth or dress it in gentler words, which was the most frequent cause of friction between the brothers. Aerion was not “difficult,” not “complex,” not even “wild” in that noble sense in which dragon’s blood can be wild. Maekar was wild in precisely the way one saw when watching him whirl through battle. Majestic and untameable. Baelor’s nephew was simply cruel. By choice and by preference. The only time a genuine smile appeared on his face was when he had hurt someone. He was as unstable as fire touching dry straw: burning high and beautifully, but leaving nothing behind except ashes. His vanity had nothing to do with excessive care for clothing or manners. It manifested in an insatiable need for admiration and worse, for fear.
And yet Maekar placed great hope in him.
Not because he was blind. Maekar saw more than he cared to admit. He saw how Aerion tormented servants for amusement and burned animals alive so he could watch, fascinated, as they died in agony. He saw it all and felt sick. More than once he had disciplined Aerion, often with force. But deep down he still believed the wildfire running through the boy’s veins could be harnessed.
Daeron was soft, perpetually drunk, forever fleeing the responsibility that came with being the firstborn son. Aerion did not flee. He was swift, ruthless and intelligent in his cruelty. In Maekar’s eyes, that very quality made him the raw material of a true dragon, if only the poison buried deep inside him could be turned against the enemies of the crown rather than against his own subjects.
“Aerion…” Baelor repeated the name, weighing it on his tongue. “Aerion is different.”
Maekar tensed in his arms, as if he already knew exactly what his brother was thinking. “Sometimes I think I see myself in him. But other times…”
“I know you’d like to see your own strength and anger reflected in him, but he is not like you.”
“He is my son!” Maekar snarled, jerking violently. His body arched like a drawn bowstring, the back of his head came within a hair’s breadth of striking Baelor’s already-twice-broken nose. He was strong, he had always been strong. For a fraction of a second Baelor was convinced his brother would break free and flee so he could continue punishing himself in solitude. He poured every ounce of his own strength into the hold, gripping Maekar with the same certainty and resolve he would use to brace a shield in battle. Maekar thrashed once more, an elbow drove into Baelor’s ribs, nearly stealing his breath, but he did not yield.
“Be still.” Baelor rarely used the tone of the Hand of the King on his younger brother, but it worked. The struggling stopped. In its place came an almost startling calm.
“Or what? Will you punish me?” Maekar asked quietly, a trace of mockery in his voice. It was so typical of him. The very moment Baelor claimed Aerion was nothing like his father, Maekar displayed the only traits they truly shared: the sudden, unpredictable shift in mood, and that razor-edged provocativeness.
“Maekar.” The warning came low and firm.
“Go on, then. Do it.” Maekar turned his head just enough to look back over his shoulder. His lips curled into a crooked, taunting smile. “You’re the King’s Hand. You represent the king at this tourney. I’m supposed to obey you… aren’t I?”
Maekar pressed his back more firmly against his brother’s chest, his hips giving a slight, deliberate twitch backward. Baelor drew in a sharp breath through his nose.
“Stop.”
His defiant brother gave a short, throaty laugh. “Stop? And you? You’re holding me like a vice. I can feel you behind me… hard. And you’re telling me to stop?”
He rolled his hips again. Slowly. Deliberately. Grinding back against Baelor’s groin through the fabric. Baelor’s jaw clenched. One hand still locked around Maekar’s wrist, the other slid lower to his hip, gripping hard enough to pin him in place and prevent any further movement.
“It’s almost funny that you bear the name of Baelor the Blessed,” Maekar went on, the provoking smirk never leaving his face. “Everyone thinks you’re nearly as spotless. Only I know what you’re capable of when no one’s watching.”
Baelor let out a rough, rasping laugh, genuinely amused by the words. He dipped his head and caught the lobe of Maekar’s ear between his teeth. Not hard, but enough to make him shudder and let out a soft, involuntary gasp.
The brothers had always been close, despite being complete opposites. Eldest and youngest. Different as day and night, yet able to understand each other without a single word. Sparring together had always sent the blood racing faster, but at their father’s court neither had dared cross that final line.
It had happened only once, after the Battle of the Redgrass Field, when they had crushed the Blackfyre rebellion together. The battle that gave them their names: The Hammer and The Anvil. They had stripped off their heavy armour, tended each other’s wounds. Adrenaline, joy, and sheer relief that neither brother had suffered anything mortal swirled together in a wild dance of victory. The Prince of Dragonstone still did not know to this day which of them had made the first move. He only remembered the pleasure, so deep it stole his breath. Maekar’s body beneath him: alive, warm and strong.
Afterward he had told himself it was a moment of weakness. It had not come so easily to his brother, but both of them had duties to the realm, to their wives, to their children. The marriages, though arranged by their father to bind Westeros even tighter, had been good ones. The distance between Dragonstone and Summerhall had been both a mercy and a curse.
“So that’s why you’ve been provoking me all day, little brother?” Baelor whispered, letting a warm stream of breath ghost directly into Maekar’s ear. “Because you miss it?”
The hand that had been holding Maekar’s hip slid lower, to his groin. Baelor paused just above the pronounced bulge in his brother’s trousers, fingers resting lightly against the fabric. He neither stroked nor squeezed, yet Maekar twitched involuntarily anyway. His hips jerked forward of their own accord, chasing the touch. Baelor took his time. With maddening slowness he traced the full length of the hardness beneath the cloth, fingertips dragging from base to tip, where the material had already darkened with dampness. There he stopped. Then pressed lightly with his thumb.
Maekar made a low, choked sound. Something caught between a growl and a sigh.
“Stop… teasing.” His brother forced out through clenched teeth. But his free hand shot down and clamped around Baelor’s wrist. Not to push him away, but to hold him there. As though he feared the hand might vanish at any second.
Baelor dipped his head.
“Tell me.” His lips brushed the nape of Maekar’s neck in the lightest of kisses, then teeth followed, biting harder, marking the skin before soothing the spot with a slow lick. “Tell me what you want.”
“Fuck me.”
The King’s Hand smiled despite himself. “You already said that today.”
“And I meant it then, too.”
Baelor released his brother from the iron embrace. Gave him a moment, space to reconsider exactly what he had just asked for.
“Turn around,” Baelor said at last, once it became clear Maekar had no intention of changing his mind.
He didn’t need to repeat himself or raise his voice for people to obey. That polite but unyielding tone of his was always enough. Maekar, who loved to be difficult, complied without protest this time.
They stood face to face. His younger brother’s pupils were blown wide, cheeks carrying the faintest flush, lips parted without conscious thought.
“Hands at your sides. Don’t move until I say so.”
Maekar lifted one brow in a small, deliberately provoking gesture. But the hands dropped anyway.
He stood perfectly still. Tall, straight and proud.
Baelor raised a hand to his face.
His fingertips stroked the cheek with aching gentleness, as though the skin might bruise under anything firmer. Maekar’s mouth twitched; he was already opening it to spit, without a doubt, something sharp and vicious, something that would hand him back the reins –
Baelor slid his thumb between those parted lips and pushed it all the way in.
“I said don’t move.”
Maekar froze. His eyes narrowed by the smallest fraction. Tenderness had always been a foreign language to Maekar. He didn’t know how to accept it. He didn’t know how to give it back. Yet gods knew he deserved it more than most. Baelor felt the warm rush of breath against his thumb, felt the flat of Maekar’s tongue brush the pad with every shaky exhale, but otherwise his brother obeyed.
So he let the rest of his fingers continue their slow journey over the pockmarked skin, the scars the pox had left behind. The texture was uneven beneath his touch: small, rough, pale hollows. He traced every one of them with deliberate care, committing each centimetre to memory.
Only when he felt Maekar begin to tremble beneath his hand did he stop.
Maekar was staring at him now with eyes gone soft and glassy. A thin thread of saliva had slipped from the corner of his mouth, slid down his chin, and continued along the inside of Baelor’s wrist.
“Good boy,” the older brother murmured, voice warm with genuine affection. “You may move now.”
He closed his lips around the thumb and began to suck, hard, obscene and deliberate, never breaking eye contact. It was a challenge and plea wrapped in the same hungry gaze. Baelor withdrew his thumb with a wet, audible pop. He dragged the slick pad slowly across his brother’s lower lip, smearing saliva in a glistening trail. Then he turned his attention to Maekar’s clothing.
He unbuckled the leather belt at his waist. Slid the jerkin from broad shoulders. Loosened the laces of the shirt and parted the fabric, revealing the scarred expanse of chest beneath. Marks earned in a dozen battles, pale lines etched across muscle. Baelor traced one of them with a single fingertip: a long, faded scar that ran from the collarbone toward the right nipple.
Maekar drew in a shaky, uneven breath.
“On your knees.”
There was no hesitation. He dropped to the cold stone floor with the fluid grace of a predator he truly was. Some might have called his beauty harsh. To Baelor he looked like a warrior sent down by the gods themselves. In this state, though, he wore an utterly profane aspect. The King’s Hand was privately grateful for the iron control and patience he had cultivated over years.
Maekar did not lift his gaze. He stared at his brother’s groin with such intensity one might have thought he believed he could untie the laces by sheer force of will. Breakspear knew he was waiting for permission.
“Go on.”
His fingers trembled slightly as he began to untie the laces of his trousers and Baelor did not miss it. Not from fear, but from the burning, desperate need Maekar kept so carefully hidden behind pride and sharp words. The fabric slid down to mid-thigh, taking the linen smallclothes with it. His cock sprang free: hard, flushed, a glistening bead of pre-cum already crowning the tip.
Baelor watched Maekar’s throat work as he swallowed hard. This time his brother did not wait for permission.
He leaned forward and at first only brushed his lips against the head, smearing the slickness across them. Baelor remained utterly still, though inside he was shaking with the intensity of sensation. Then Maekar’s wide, warm tongue dragged slowly from root to tip in one long, deliberate stroke.
He opened his mouth wider. Lips wrapped around the foreskin, he slid down inch by inch until he had taken the entire length, gagging only faintly at the end. He held there, nose buried in Baelor’s pubic hair, breathing harshly through it. Every time Maekar swallowed around him, the tight ripple of throat muscles threatened to undo Baelor completely.
Then he began to move. Pulling off almost to the tip before sinking back down until the head nudged the back of his throat again and again. Each deep slide drew a low, involuntary sound from Maekar’s chest.
Baelor threaded his fingers into the silver hair. He combed through it gently, almost protectively, nails scratching lightly over the scalp in reward. Maekar moaned loudly around the cock filling his mouth; the vibration rolled straight through Baelor’s spine and down to his toes. The prince closed his eyes for a heartbeat, breathing carefully through his nose to keep control.
He did not thrust. He didn’t need to. Maekar was doing it all himself with a fierce, almost frantic determination, as though he were trying to prove something to both of them at once. Baelor could see the fine tremor in his brother’s shoulders, the way his fingers dug hard into his own thighs because he was not allowed to touch himself. From time to time he glanced up, searching for his brother’s gaze and the assurance that he was doing well. That he was enough.
The sucking grew stronger, deeper. Cheeks hollowed, lips glided slick and tight along the full shaft. Finally Baelor’s hips began to move. Small, controlled thrusts forward that Maekar accepted without resistance, throat opening to take him.
The pleasure was blinding. Baelor tightened his grip in Maekar’s hair, the silent command unmistakable.
“Enough…” He rasped, catching Maekar by the arm to pull him to his feet.
He swayed a little, but Baelor quickly helped him steady himself, gripping his other shoulder as well. His lips were red, swollen, wet. He breathed heavily through his mouth.
Baelor drew him close and kissed him. The kiss was not gentle or cautious. It was hungry, almost brutal. Their teeth struck together, their tongues fought for dominance. The taste of himself in his brother’s mouth only intensified the heat low in his belly. Maekar moaned into the kiss, seized Baelor by the nape, fingers tangling in the dark hair so tightly it hurt. He yanked him closer until no space remained between their bodies. Their hips ground together, Baelor’s freed cock sliding against the hard bulge still trapped in Maekar’s trousers, each movement sending sharp sparks of mingled pain and pleasure through them both.
Baelor broke away first, just enough to draw breath. Their foreheads pressed together, nose to nose, hot exhales mingling in the scant air between them. He looked straight into his younger brother’s eyes. Long, unhurried. He wanted to tell him so many things, but they still had time.
“To the bed.” He said instead, softly.
They stripped each other on the way. Maekar lay down first. Firelight slid across his pale skin, tracing every scar, every sharply defined muscle, catching in the silver hair fanned out across the pillow. He watched Baelor approach with slow, deliberate steps until the older man stopped at the edge of the mattress.
“How do you want me?” Maekar asked in a low, hoarse voice. Almost shy.
“On your back,” Baelor answered calmly. “I want to see your face.”
Is my prickly little brother actually blushing? Baelor thought, barely suppressing a smile. He didn’t want Maekar to think he was mocking him. The flush was subtle, just the faintest shadow of red high on the cheekbones, but it was enough to make Baelor’s heart clench with something sweetly painful.
Baelor knelt on the mattress between his brother’s spread thighs. Maekar’s cock, long since leaking and achingly hard, lay flushed against his own stomach. Yet his brother showed remarkable restraint, he hadn’t once tried to touch himself.
Baelor glanced around the chamber, searching for oil, anything he could use to prepare his brother properly. The last time they had used sword-cleaning oil. He couldn’t simply walk out now in search of something more suitable.
He looked at Maekar. His brother understood at once.
“Just go in as I am,” Maekar said quietly. “I can take it.”
Baelor shook his head short and decisively. He would never hurt him like that. Never forgive himself if he did.
“No.”
Maekar opened his mouth, clearly ready to argue, but Baelor caught him by the hips and turned him firmly onto his stomach in one smooth motion.
“Baelor…”
“Quiet.”
He placed both hands on Maekar’s arse and parted the cheeks slowly, with the same calm, almost reverent care one might use to open the most precious of books. Before him he saw the narrow, darker line of the cleft. At its centre was the small, tightly furled entrance. Pink, taut, ringed by a faint halo of fine, pale hair. There was nothing rough or unlovely about it, it resembled a closed bud. Tight, sensitive, quivering faintly with every breath Maekar took.
Baelor eased the cheeks a little wider. The entrance opened just enough to reveal a deeper, warmer shade of rose inside.
For a moment Baelor simply looked. With fascination and with the awareness that this most intimate, most hidden part of Maekar had never been shown to anyone else in such a way. That it was he, Baelor, who was the first and only one to see his brother so completely defenseless.
“Stop… staring.” Maekar muttered, voice thick and strained, face half-buried in the pillow.
In response, Baelor leaned down until his breath ghosted across the parted skin. First he kissed the inner curve of the left cheek. Slowly and tenderly, wanting to soothe the fine tremor he could feel beneath his lips. Then the right cheek. Only after that did his warm, sure tongue glide along the full length of the cleft in one long, deliberate stroke. He heard a choked gasp.The body beneath him jerked, hips lifting instinctively toward his mouth.
“Do you like that?” Baelor whispered against the skin, a satisfied smile curling his lips at the unguarded enthusiasm of the reaction.
He resumed without waiting for an answer. With focused, circling motions his tongue teased the tight ring gently, but relentlessly. He tasted salt and sweat, the raw, faintly musky flavour that was purely his brother, and it made his own cock throb harder, though he hadn’t thought that was still possible. He licked long and patiently, tracing slow orbits, allowing himself to explore that sensitive place. Pressing just enough to coax the muscle to yield. He gathered saliva in his mouth to release it thickly right onto the center of the anus and only when he was certain it was sufficiently moistened did he push his tongue inside. At first he slid it in shallowly, but the increasingly wild, muffled-in-the-pillow moans encouraged him to deepen the penetration. Maekar clenched his fingers in the bedding, alternately cursing Baelor with an exceptionally creative string of swear words, only to let out soft pleas moments later.
Baelor kept at it until the entrance had softened completely, slick with saliva, relaxed and pliant beneath his mouth.
Only then did he lift his head. He licked his lips slowly, savouring the taste of his brother still clinging to them.
Baelor turned Maekar onto his back once more. It took a little more effort this time. His brother’s body had become a trembling, beautiful wreck beneath him. He helped him slide higher against the pillows, brushing aside a damp strand of platinum hair that clung to his forehead. Maekar gazed up at him through half-lidded eyes. That familiar rebellious spark still flickered there. The one he always used to mask his own embarrassment.
The Prince of Dragonstone leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to the small furrow between his brows.
“Bastard.” Maekar rasped, but the corner of his mouth twitched upward in a reluctant smile.
Baelor laughed warmly.
“Shall I pour you some wine?” He asked his younger brother, the genuine concern clear in his voice.
Maekar refused with a small shake of his head.
The Hand did not linger. He settled once more between his brother’s thighs, feeling deep in his bones that this was where he had always belonged. Slicked his fingers generously with his own saliva and eased the index finger inside to the first knuckle. When he met no resistance, he slid it all the way in. Maekar let out what sounded like a sigh of pure relief.
The second finger followed soon after. Baelor began to move them in slow, rhythmic strokes, stretching that warm place that seemed to draw him deeper with every gentle curl. A slight shift of angle made Maekar arched sharply off the bed, moaning shamelessly loud. His cock jerked visibly, a thick bead of pre-cum slid down the shaft.
“There… there… please.”
“I know.” Baelor whispered. He kissed the inside of the thigh, the sharp line of the hip, the soft skin of the lower belly, leaving wet trails in his wake.
Maekar started to rock his hips in time with the fingers. At first tentative and slow, then bolder, chasing the pressure with growing urgency. His eyes were half-lidded, yet they never left Baelor’s face. When he looked perilously close to the edge, Baelor withdrew his fingers.
“Fuck!” Maekar shouted, trembling feverishly. He fixed his older brother with a murderous glare. Full of desperation, frustration and anger, but still laced with a silent plea not to stop.
Baelor didn’t wait any longer. He positioned himself between his legs. The head of his cock pressed against the saliva-slick, relaxed, ready entrance. His younger brother closed his eyes.
“Look at me.” Baelor said softly to Maekar.
Obediently, Maekar opened his eyes. Their gazes locked.
Baelor entered slowly, very slowly, centimetre by centimetre, feeling Maekar take him without pain, only with a deep, quivering sigh. When he was fully seated inside, he stilled. He leaned down to kiss his brother on the mouth, but Maekar turned his head aside. Baelor’s lips met his cheek instead.
“Is everything all right?” He asked, suddenly concerned.
“You’ve been teasing me all fucking day,” Maekar answered in a low voice. There was no real anger in it. “I’m just returning the favour.”
“I’m sorry,” Baelor replied with mock innocence. “I feel so very…” He kissed the line of Maekar’s jaw. “…very…” He bit down on the side of his neck, sucking a deliberate mark into the skin. “…sorry.” He caught his brother’s nipple between his teeth and tugged gently. “Will you forgive me?”
“I’ll forgive you if you fucking move!”
Oh, there he is, Baelor thought.
So Baelor obeyed his brother’s demand.
He thrust in to the hilt and withdrew almost completely. Harder, faster, but still with that deep, unshakable tenderness. One hand wrapped around Maekar’s hard, pulsing cock and began to stroke in perfect time with the rhythm of his hips.
He looked at his brother again.
Maekar’s eyes were wide open. Wide with wonder and something achingly fragile. The deeper Baelor drove, the more often the head of his cock dragged across that sensitive spot inside, the more vulnerable Maekar became. His breathing fractured, his lips trembled, sweat slid down his temple, his cheeks blazed with colour. Gods, how much Baelor loved him. He tried to pour every bit of it into the honest, burning intensity of his gaze.
Suddenly Maekar turned his face away again.
“Look at me.” Baelor said quiet, but firm, releasing his brother’s cock.
Maekar swallowed hard. Slowly, with visible effort, he turned his head back. Their eyes met once more.
And then Baelor saw it all at once: shame, relief, love, fear, raw need. Everything tangled together in those violet eyes.
He picked up the pace, just enough. Every thrust now struck that precise place inside his brother with devastating accuracy.
“Let go,” he whispered. “Let go. I have you.”
He moved deep, hard, fast. His own hips trembled with each powerful drive. Sweat ran in rivulets down his back. Maekar arched sharply off the bed, eyes squeezing shut for a heartbeat, mouth falling open in a soundless cry.
His brother came untouched. Purely from the penetration, from the relentless stimulation of that sweet spot buried deep inside. Semen spilled hot and thick between their bellies, painting their skin in heavy streaks. His body clenched around Baelor’s cock so fiercely, so rhythmically, that Baelor lasted only a few more heartbeats.
He came deep inside his brother with a low, guttural groan. Filling him to overflowing, as though he wanted to leave a piece of himself there forever.
He collapsed onto his younger brother with the full weight of his body. For a long moment they lay motionless. Entwined, slick with sweat, trembling.
At last Baelor shifted to the side. He drew Maekar close so that his brother could settle comfortably in the circle of his arms. Maekar pressed his face into the hollow of Baelor’s neck. His breathing came uneven and ragged.
They stayed like that in silence.
Baelor decided to break the comfortable quiet. To return to the conversation they had left unfinished.
“Yes, Aerion is your son. You gave him life, but you did not make him what he is.”
Maekar pulled away. He rolled onto his side, presenting his back. Baelor let out a soft, resigned sigh. He had not wanted the night to end on this note.
Neither of them spoke for a time.
“I know he can be cruel,” Maekar whispered at last, “but…”
The Hand propped himself up on one elbow, looking down at his brother.
Maekar had curled inward on the mattress. Despite his powerful frame he suddenly looked small and vulnerable in a way that twisted something deep in Baelor’s chest. He wrapped both arms around his brother from behind, holding him tightly, protectively.
“You love him.” Baelor finished softly. “The septons say we must love our brothers. The rule surely applies to our children as well, no matter what they become.”
“And you?” Maekar asked so indistinctly that Baelor had to lean closer to catch the words.
“Hm?”
“I know you love your children. But do you love your brothers?”
A faint smile touched Baelor’s mouth. He recognised the real question hiding behind the one Maekar had asked aloud. His brother would never voice it directly.
“Yes,” he answered gently and sure. “I do.”
Baelor tightened his embrace, weaving their legs together. Laid his palm over Maekar’s heart and felt the rapid, unsteady beat beneath it.
“I love you, Maekar,” he whispered straight into his ear. “After all… what is a hammer without its anvil?”