Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Dunk thought it was about his entry when a servant from the keep told him Prince Baelor wished to speak with him, late that first night when he was several ales deep. He bade Egg wait in the tent and followed at the servant’s heels.

He'd been thinking about Prince Baelor’s kind words all day—his memories of Ser Arlan, and the confident yet magnanimous manner in which he spoke that was so unlike that of his brother and his brother's sons—but Dunk thought of those words morosely and without purpose, with a longing that sat hard in the pit of his gut. He was becoming disillusioned with noble folk, to say nothing of princes, and to encounter not just a prince but a crown prince who acted with such warmth and honour was… troubling. The rarity was what troubled him, and was why Baelor stirred within his mind. That, and Baelor's sharp, mismatched, wandering eyes. Dunk had never seen a man of stature so willing to let mirth and pleasure dance upon his face like firelight.

The servant led him into the keep and Dunk hunched into the shadowed room he'd indicated, where the fire that blazed in the hearth bled its warmth into his bones. It also made him acutely aware of his filthy clothes and face and hair, and his ripe smell. It had been easier to ignore in the cold.

Prince Baelor was at the desk, reading, lit up by candlelight. Dunk strode into the room and dropped to a knee in front of the desk.

“You called for me, your grace?”

“Rise,” said Baelor, in his reedy voice, “there is naught but us here, Ser Duncan. Rise.”

Dunk looked around as he stood. It was true; the small room was free of servants and separate from any bed chambers. He supposed a royal family coming to visit was an occasion for multiple rooms. Dunk never had even one room.

He stood as straight as he could manage as Baelor laid his book flat and stood to regard him. The back of Dunk’s neck was sweating so that a bead of sweat rolled between the rough weave of his tunic and the valley of his spine, tickling. He resolved to not shift.

Baelor said, “Do you know why I've brought you here, Ser Duncan?”

“My— The lists, your grace.”

Baelor chuckled. Dunk didn't know if that was good or bad. Baelor cast his eyes down and moved away from his chair.

“No, man. That was my mistake, I should have known you would be sick over that. Be at rest, truly. Your place is secure.”

Tension bled from Dunk, if for only a moment before a new tension claimed its place. If not the tournament, then what? Baelor was smiling. He didn't seem like the type of man to draw out punishment, but Dunk couldn't imagine what good thing a prince might have to say to him. Perhaps Ser Arlan owed him a debt.

Baelor moved to a heavy flagon and poured a measure of what looked to be wine into two clay cups. Dunk nearly looked around to see who else the prince was passing the cup to, until their fingers met.

“At ease,” Baelor said, his eyes glittering, “I swear it. You have done nothing to merit punishment, and I have requested your presence here for no foul reason.”

Dunk didn't drink; already his vision swam faintly before him from the ale and his nerves. Baelor drank, tipping his head back to swallow the full cup. Dunk watched. Baelor lowered his cup and smiled, with black wine in the valleys of his crooked teeth. For a moment, he looked like a little boy.

He said, “I am going to be frank with you, as you seem to me a man who appreciates straightforward speech.” The finely spun silver in his hair gleamed in the firelight as he turned. “You please me, Ser Duncan The Tall. You have a bare honesty about you that is challenging to look at, in the same way that dropping into ice cold water is deadly.”

“Is that a good thing, your grace?”

“Ice water can be bracing. Refreshing.” Baelor looked him in the eye. “It can also be dangerous.”

Dunk dropped back to a knee without thinking, sloshing his wine.

“I swear, ser, I pose no threat to you, I would never. I’m no danger.”

“Not that kind of threat, Ser Duncan. Please. Rise.”

Dunk rose. Baelor had come around the side of the large desk. Dunk looked down again without thinking, and Baelor scoffed softly.

“I mean that you are chink in my armour, boy. A vulnerability.” He sucked his teeth. “You say what you think. I imagine you know no other way.”

“Aye, ser, to my own detriment, I'm told.”

Dunk's head was spinning the way it did when he tried to follow a thread. He kept looking down.

Baelor said, “I take not of drink, nor smoke, nor whores. My debts are my own. I…” An olive-skinned hand holding a cup drifted into Dunk’s vision. “Drink, man, you unsettle me. What must I say for you to believe yourself safe?”

At the command, Dunk drank so quickly the clay cup clacked against his teeth; it was thick sweet blackberry wine. He tried to keep his wits about him.

“No, your grace, I believe myself safe. But… I’m afraid I'm not following this talk of vice and danger and pleasure.”

Baelor moved around the side of the desk, the fabric of his rich doublet whispering softly. He came to stand directly in front of Dunk so, looking down, Dunk saw only the crown of the man's head. The effect of looking down upon a prince twice his age was dizzying.

After what seemed to be an unbearable span of silence, watching the firelight flicker over the prince's thin hair, Dunk ventured, “Your grace?”

Baelor chuckled. 

“I have not been direct enough. That is no fault of yours.” 

Bare fingers lifted Dunk’s chin. He found himself looking into one blue and one brown eye, set in a fine-boned face. Thin sun-weathered skin and a tired countenance befitting of a king. His left eye looked black in the dark.

Crown Prince Baelor of the seven kingdoms asked him, “Have you ever laid with a man?”

Dunk's mouth went dry. “I never laid with anyone, ser.”

His answer was instant and true. Baelor's hand fell, but he did not move away. 

“You need not be ashamed of that. You are a young man, after all, and not yet wed.”

The fire in the hearth seemed to flare up and sweat poured down Dunk's back. He didn't say how long he'd known his own hand and dreamed of people he'd seen in passing towns or theatres, women and men who looked like creatures from another realm. They looked not unlike Prince Baelor, with his poise and elegance and grooming.

Baelor asked, “Would you like to?”

“I— Yes, I should think so, ser.”

Dunk's whole body was buzzing. He knew he'd gotten confused somewhere but he wasn't sure where. Baelor leaned back against the desk and Dunk kept his eyes on the floor, on Baelor's shiny boots. He tried to challenge himself to look up further, perhaps at his calves, if he was feeling brave.

Baelor said, “You can look at me. If I have offended you, I apologize.”

More than anything, the thought of a prince apologizing to him made Dunk look up. Baelor was so close he could have reached out and touched him. Baelor’s eyes were on his and stayed there as he took Dunk's cup from his numb hands and set it on the desk next to his own. His voice was hushed and low.

“By all the gods, you are beautiful.”

Dunk was mortified. His face flushed so hot it prickled at his ears and poured down his neck. Because Baelor bade him to, he did not look away, but he couldn't speak. Baelor's eyes wandered over his face.

“Has a woman truly never desired you? I find that difficult to believe.”

“T’be honest, I don't think I'd know it if she did, your grace,” Dunk managed.

Baelor smiled. “Thick as a castle wall.”

“Beg your pardon, ser.”

“No, I jest. It is… sweet.” Baelor took a long, slow breath. “Many men of noble birth fancy themselves handsome, but what they have is power and ugliness. My nephews come to mind. But you—”

Dunk couldn't stand it. He dropped to his knee again.

“I am not a noble, ser, I have no power and I have nothing to give, I— I am—”

Baelor's hands landed lightly on his shoulders. “—only a hedge knight. I know. Rise, Ser Duncan, please.”

Dunk rose. He felt sunburnt and his heart raced as if he'd been sprinting. As he stood, Baelor's hands trailed down his chest and then fell away. The feel of them blazed a path down Dunk's body that lingered long after they were gone.

Baelor said, “You are a hedge knight, yes, and I a prince. But I have invited you here as a man would invite any other man to his chambers, and our standing matters not. Do you understand?”

“With… difficulty, ser.”

Dunk didn't know how to tell a prince that he had the wrong man. He didn't think princes were told that very often. If a prince had a man, he was supposed to be the right one, but Dunk was nobody, not for this. He didn't know how he'd tricked him. 

Baelor hummed. He raised his hands and said, very gently, “May I?”

Dunk nodded quickly, wincing at himself—he didn't know how eager to be, how to seem, how to speak. None of this was happening to him.

Baelor reached up and touched his soft hands to Dunk’s neck; softer than his own work-roughened hands, but firm and strong. His rings were warm from the heat of his body. Dunk's eyes fell shut. He slouched a little to make them more of a height.

“You are a hedge knight,” Baelor said again, mumbling, “who pleases me greatly.” His fingers stroked Dunk's hair back from his nape. “Have you not the faintest idea what you do to me?”

Baelor's touch felt so good Dunk could hardly stand. He'd had women stroke him in such a manner before, so drunk at a tavern they fell into his lap—always set politely on their feet again with the barest hands at their waist, as any knight would—or whores, sometimes one who had finished with Arlan, who would stroke his arm and ask if all the parts of him were just as big—but never a man, never hands as strong as Prince Baelor's nor attached to someone so… Dunk didn't know what to call him. Handsome, he supposed, but that didn't seem to cover the breadth of it. His commanding presence was stifling and oppressive in its power, and that was handsome, too.

Dunk tipped his head down; at the invitation, Baelor trailed his fingers down his jaw. Dunk swallowed loudly.

“Begging your pardon. I am not comely, your grace. You mock me.”

“You are mistaken on both counts. In truth… I thought of little else after you left here. Little save this fresh-faced young knight, as big and strong as an oak, who seemed so eager to please me.” Baelor's voice turned sweet and soft as he stroked the lines of Dunk’s face with the backs of his knuckles, so sweet Dunk still would have thought himself mocked if he thought Baelor a liar. “You captivated me so completely that I ordered you to my chambers like some impudent young princeling and frightened the life out of you.”

When Baelor began to trace the shell of Dunk's ear, his cock stirred. He squeezed his eyes shut and his face burned. He was past help; it thickened and rose the front of his tunic. Baelor's hands smoothed down his broad chest and he wondered if the prince looked down, if he saw. Surely it was what he wanted, but if there was a rulebook, Dunk couldn't read. 

Baelor gripped his waist, at the fat and muscle there, and Dunk felt him shift closer.

“Your humility is arousing. I don't know what that says about me. You are so young, and so green. You can scarcely meet my eye.”

Dunk still had his eyes shut. “Can't at all, really.”

“And why is that?”

Baelor drew him down with gentle pressure on his neck until Dunk's chin was nearly against his chest. He could feel Baelor very close, and smell the wine on his breath. 

“I—I feel a fool, your grace. Always, like, but—here, with you, I—”

“I am the fool,” Baelor whispered. He took one of Dunk's hands in his. “Feel what you do to me, without a touch.”

He guided Dunk’s hand between his legs and fit it against his cock, laying fat and thick up the line of his hip and straining his fitted breeches. Dunk shuddered and curled his shoulders in. Baelor pressed on his hand. His head bowed to rest at the middle of Dunk's chest, his hair smelled of smoke.

Dunk shifted his fingers under Baelor's hand. His face was so hot his eyelashes could have caught fire and he blinked open his bleary eyes to see the crown of Baelor's head just below him and he couldn't help it, he bent lower and pressed his cheek to his skull, put his mouth there and moved it against his neatly shorn hair for the feel of it.

“What”—he didn't know the right words, not for anyone and certainly not for a prince, but he lacked the skill to go it alone so he tried, he tried—“what would you have me do now, ser?”

Baelor turned his face against him so his mouth ran over the rough filth of Dunk's tunic, and made a soft low sound better than any struck chord Dunk had ever heard.

“Were you not you,” Baelor began slowly, still holding his hand firm and encouraging him to knead, “and I not myself, and I approached you at a tavern… What would you do with me then?”

Dunk's free hand dropped to Baelor's shoulder, then fumbled to his waist. Honesty was not an option. Dunk groped for another answer. It felt like yanking at the reins of a horse desperate to dash its brains on the canyon floor except he was the horse and nobody held the reins, but like as not, this would kill him just the same.

Dunk said hoarsely, “Whatever you asked of me, your grace.”

Baelor freed a hand and curled it around Dunk's hip, pulling him in so Dunk stumbled a half step forward and Baelor hit the desk behind him.

“Not your grace. Not at this tavern we find ourselves in.” He was breathless, his voice like gravel. He gripped the back of Dunk's neck and drew him down until his short beard tickled Dunk’s ear as he spoke. “I am Baelor. You are Duncan. How would Duncan have his way with Baelor?”

Dunk shut his eyes tight, his jaw trembling. He turned his head and Baelor's open mouth slid along his cheek. His face was hot even against Dunk's own burning skin. Brains spilled on the canyon floor. The head of his cock bumping Baelor's hip and already weeping. 

Baelor grabbed his face in one harsh hand and twisted him closer, digging his thumb in under his cheekbone so his mouth fell open. 

He hissed, “Had we some grease, and a door with a latch, I would ride you like a stallion.” He bared his teeth against Dunk’s cheek. “Until sweat stung your eyes. Until the room stunk like a slaughterhouse.”

Dunk groaned. All at once he grabbed Baelor's head in both hands, hard, and the sound the prince made—just an exhale of breath, rough and gusty—was full of so much pleasure and satisfaction that it would echo in Dunk's ears for years to come. 

He stooped low and opened his mouth against Baelor's neck, driven by nothing but desire and the urge to feel and, distantly, a vague sense of how these things were done; he kissed the hot, soft skin there, unwashed and salt-tang-gritty after a day of riding, open-mouthed, teeth grazing. He gathered Baelor to him for the same reason, crushed him against his chest for the dizzying pleasure of another body so solid against his own, and felt Baelor fold his arms around his neck.

Baelor tipped his head back and Dunk sucked at the long, elegant column of his throat, dragged a hand down his back and gripped the back of his thigh, lifted, clumsily brought their hips together. He felt like an animal pawing at him like this, but when he drew back to mouth at the furred line of his jaw, he saw Baelor was grinning. 

“I weigh nothing to you, do I?”

Syrupy and pleased as a cat with a mouse in its claws. Dunk realized Baelor's feet weren't on the floor.

“Begging your—”

He went to put him down, but Baelor grabbed his face again and dug in his nails. Dunk froze. Baelor spoke through gritted teeth.

“Beg nothing, boy.” He twisted Dunk's face so their noses brushed, so close he was just a smudge of charcoal. “Understand? Make me beg.”

Baelor kissed him on the mouth, a searing crush of heat and clicked teeth with his thumb and fingers still clawing at Dunk's face. Dunk had never been kissed but he'd seen it and it was like his body moved on its own to fall into the warm wet stroke of Baelor's mouth, slotting in where Baelor bade him, clutching at him with all his might. He tasted of the blackberry wine, and metal, and meat, and he made this wonderful low sound in his throat like a wounded animal. Dunk felt like he'd been kicked in the head.

Dunk picked Baelor up by his thighs and dropped him on the desk, where books toppled and knocked over a candlestick; Baelor reached back without looking and slapped the fire out before it caught, and Dunk moved with him, desperate, now that he knew, to keep his mouth on his. He dragged Baelor to the edge of the desk and humped clumsily against him, sucked in a shaking breath and felt Baelor's hands grope maddeningly down his chest. Baelor tipped his forehead against Dunk's and broke their kiss.

“I like my men… big,” he said, breathing hard, “and, gods above, you are the biggest I have seen.”

Dunk looked down at their bodies together stunned dumb as Baelor deftly unlaced his breeches. His elegant hands made Dunk feel like a lumbering giant.

Baelor said, “Big all over, I see,” positively breathless as he took out Dunk's cock. “Perhaps it's good we can't fuck. You might have punctured my lung.”

Dunk couldn't think, he could hardly stand. He planted a hand by Baelor's hip to hold himself up and watched—watched, out of his mind, as Baelor wrapped a hand around his cock and grinned like a boy with a treat, and Dunk did that. Baelor's grip was slow and tight and he stroked once down to the base so his foreskin rolled down the pink head of his cock, and Dunk came. 

Dunk groaned and hunched over Baelor to rest his face against the top of his head as the pleasure of it roared through him. Baelor kept stroking him, gentler now and better than anything Dunk had ever dreamed.

Baelor chuckled, “Then again, perhaps not.”

Dunk was mortified. His face could have fried an egg.

“I am so sorry, ser, I never— Oh, gods, it's on your—”

Baelor kissed him and Dunk moaned, grateful; kissing was an unexpectedly heady thrill, one Dunk was not eager to give up. Baelor pulled him in by his cock, until he'd leaned back on his elbows and Dunk stood right at the table’s edge. Dunk made an educated guess and started fumbling with Baelor's breeches, for which he was rewarded with another one of those pleased groans Baelor kept giving him.

Dunk got them down far enough to get his cock out; another groan, this one with a surge forward and a hand in his hair. It felt good to hold it, hard and hot as a branding iron, and Dunk—went with it, because for reasons completely beyond him, Prince Baelor seemed to enjoy his boyish bumbling, and so what his gut told him to do must have been the right thing. 

He picked Baelor up with two hands under his ass and lifted him so high the man clutched at the edge of the desk to keep from spilling off the far side, and higher until Dunk only had to duck his head to bring his cock level up to his mouth. 

Baelor's eyes went wide. “Wh—”

Baelor wasn't heavy, he could have held him for an hour, easier when he dropped his legs over his shoulders. Dunk licked up the length of him. His cock tasted the way his mouth did, metallic and sweet, and the head of his cock and his balls were deep purple-red like cherry wine. He took him in his mouth the way he'd seen done.

“Teeth,” Baelor admonished him softly.

Dunk adjusted. There was a wooden thunk as Baelor's head fell back to the desk, and he reached up to clutch at Dunk's arm, which felt so good that he started to get hard again; it was a heady rush to make someone feel so good, and a prince at that. He brought his hips up to his mouth as he sucked, in long, slow pulls, listening to what made his breath hitch and his thighs flex. He looked at him once down the long, arched line of his body, but Baelor was watching him and breathing hard and Dunk couldn't stand to look back.

“You're a”—Baelor broke off, bucked—“a—quick study.”

Dunk started to sweat, as much from the praise as anything else. He started to like the feel of it, the brush of his cock head at the back of his throat, the way his blunt fingers would scratch at his arm when he did something good, and he wished he had a third arm so he could bring himself off when he did it. He tried to put Baelor down once, but he got a curse and pulled hair for it.

His spit made an obscene wet sucking noise and Baelor's breath came harder. His own cock was leaking onto the desk and he rutted his hips forward for relief. He crushed his face into the short wiry hair in his crotch so he could get his cock down his throat—Baelor thumped a fist against the desk, dragged a hand through his hair—and he couldn't breathe, but he didn't have to. There was bitter on his tongue and then his mouth was full and he was choking on it, tears blurring his eyes, a signet ring snagged in his hair.

He gagged, swallowed, spit. Once Baelor became a dead weight in his arms, Dunk lowered him to the desk. He rubbed a hand over his mouth and permitted himself to look: Baelor's face was flushed, glowing with sweat, and his big lovely teeth shone in the light as he laughed.

“Ye gods, man.” Baelor wiped his face with the back of his arm. “You’ve been blessed in more ways than one.”

Dunk couldn't imagine what those ways were. His strength, perhaps. He couldn't think straight with his cock so hard; he gave himself a few quick strokes to take the edge off, then stopped.

“Ser?” he croaked.

Baelor craned his neck to look at him, then smiled.

“Ah. The vigour of youth.” He pushed himself up to seated with a weary groan, then spun around to swing his legs over the side of the desk. More papers fluttered to the floor. “Come here.”

Dunk kept his cock in his hand as he hurried around the desk. He expected—he didn't know what he expected, he didn't know the steps to this intricate dance, but he didn't expect Baelor to kiss him, and still Baelor drew him in between his knees, pulled him down and kissed him for a long beat; slow, deep and warm. Then he pulled back, spat in his own hand, and took up Dunk’s cock.

“Try not to get it on me, if you would,” he said into his ear.

He started working him quick and tight in his fist. Dunk slapped a hand down on Baelor's thigh without thinking, anything to hold onto, and hung his head between his shoulders. It was so good he couldn't think, so much better than his own hand, it was all he could do to keep his knees from buckling, to stand the raw sticky sharpness of it and the smell of Baelor's skin where Dunk ground his nose into his temple.

“The stamina will come,” Baelor murmured, shifting his slick fingers. “Until then, dirty old men like me will find it very charming.”

Dunk closed his hand over the head of his cock as he came so it dripped onto the floor. Baelor sighed and nosed at his cheek and let him fuck his fist, his shoulders shaking. He flexed his hand on Baelor's thigh. His ears rushed with blood. After a spell, his cock softened in his hand and they both went still and quiet.

Dunk's whole body throbbed. His thoughts unravelled and drew apart like spun cotton. His throat was dry. Surely he would have to let go, at some point. Any moment. But for now Baelor's cheek was against his and his breath was still coming a little fast and it was… nice. He wondered if it was always so nice.

“Are we… done, ser?”

Baelor hummed in assent and let him go. He slid off the desk, tucked himself away and did up his breeches, then fell boneless to the chair at the desk. Dunk, having not been dismissed and not sure he could stand any longer, sat on the floor at his feet with his back resting against a leg of the desk. The cool stones beneath him were a salve.

The prince reclined with his head lolled back and Dunk took the chance to study him. Strange, he thought, the way lust changed things: Baelor was handsome, to be sure, but Dunk noticed his big, floppy ears for the first time. He looked like somebody's father, which, he supposed, must have been true. The thought was sobering. Dunk never knew his father, but he didn't think he'd want anyone fucking him.

His bent knee rested against Baelor's. The man sighed and palmed it.

“It’s good to use your throat.” He petted Dunk's leg and swallowed thickly. “You've not felt it yet, but…”

He trailed off. Dunk blinked the sweat from his eyes. 

“Ser Arlan said I had the throat of a thirty stag whore,” he said. Baelor cracked an eye and looked at him. “Not, uh, not—not ‘cause of this type o’ thing, mind, just ‘cause of the way I'd choke down food. He never, uh—”

“Fifty stags,” Baelor sighed, closing his eyes. “Eighty with some practice.”

“Thank you, ser.”

“The pleasure is all mine.”

Dunk felt like he wavered in and out of consciousness. It was always good to get release but it had never been so all-consuming when he was by himself, such that he felt wrung out and used up when it was over. His mouth was raw and swollen and the muscles in his arms and back ached.

Baelor said, “My brother thinks it will be the death of me, but I’m careful. As if a whore couldn't hide a dagger as well as a stable boy.”

He groped blindly towards Dunk. When Dunk sat forward to meet his hand, he sifted fingers through his hair.

“Stable boys, ser?” he ventured. Baelor chuckled.

“Not since I was young.” He drew Dunk in so his head rested on his knee, like a hunting dog. “My first looked like you. A big, red-haired boy apprenticed to my father's stablemaster. Freckled down to his arsehole and hung like the horses he kept.”

Dunk was going to say, I'm not freckled, and ruled against it. Baelor fitted his hand along the curve of his skull.

“Now, I permit myself the occasional indulgence of a sad, old pervert.”

“You're hardly old, your grace.”

Baelor rubbed at his eye with a knuckle. “I feel much older.”

Dunk nearly nodded off against his warm thigh, with that heavy hand on his head. An ancient memory of his mother swam just below the surface: a rug, a chair, a song. The heat of a hearth and the drowsy weight of wine.

“So. I am your grace once more,” Baelor said.

Dunk raised his head. “Are you not?”

Baelor was quiet for a long time. Eventually, he touched Dunk's jaw and lifted him. 

“I suppose I am.” He rose to his feet with the weariness of a man suddenly much older. “We do what we must.”

At the door, Dunk regained enough mind—perhaps not the right mind—and dropped to a knee. He snatched Baelor's hand in both of his and, before he could think better of it, pressed his mouth to it. 

Baelor chuckled. He ran his free hand through Dunk's fringe. 

“A bit funny to kiss the knuckles of a man who's finished in your mouth, isn't it?”

He might as well have struck him. Dunk managed, “Your grace.”

Baelor laughed again. He drew Dunk to his feet and squeezed his arms.

“Good luck tomorrow.”

Dunk bowed lowly and went to stutter out something else. Baelor turned him around and nudged him back down the hall.

When Dunk returned to the tent, he found two old drunks weaving over full cups of ale, one young couple necking voraciously, and Egg. The boy sat alone playing three men's morris against himself using acorn caps and pebbles on a board scratched into the table. Pebbles were winning.

Dunk sat so heavily beside him that the acorn caps scattered. Egg startled, then rounded on him.

“I thought you dead in a ditch, ser! What was all that about?”

Dunk motioned to the bar woman for an ale, and when she ignored him, pretended to stretch his back. He was red-faced and beaming and he didn't know what to do with his hands. After a span of pleasant fumbling, he put his hands on his hips and leaned in close to Egg.

“I just got laid.”

Egg’s face lit up like a lantern. “Ser Duncan!”

Dunk puffed up his chest. He'd seen other men do it often enough.

“Well and thoroughly laid, my young squire! Twice!”

“You didn't!”

“It was like something out of a stage play, I swear to ye. A dirty limerick at best.” He got a dreamy look in his eyes and held out a thespian’s hand. “The prince and the stable boy.”

Egg drew back. “Prince?”

“I was the stable boy. Do keep up.”

Egg's face brightened once again. “You mean you bedded a noble woman?”

“Almost.” Dunk grinned. “Can you keep a secret?”

He put his face near Egg’s and spoke quietly for a while. When he was done, what little colour Egg had drained away.

“You're certain it was him?” Egg asked weakly.

“Of course I am! Crown Prince Baelor, Maekar’s brother.”

“Shh!”

“Gods above, I'd certainly know if it was Maekar I was—”

“Stop.”

“What?”

“I don't want to hear it.”

Dunk peered into the boy's strangely morose face.

“Are you passin’ judgement on me, Egg? Prince Baelor's a good-looking man by anyone's standards, and he's, well, he's a bit older, I'll give you that, but it's not as though I can get him with child.”

Egg stared down at the table with a haunted look like a man returned from war. He was young, surely, but he was a boy, and an orphan at that. Dunk frowned down at him.

“You'll understand when you’re older. There's—there's women and men, and then there's something else, and it's all just a bit of fun. All men do it, and knights on the road learn to take comfort where they can get it. It's not all learnéd courtesans and nobles’ daughters, you know.” He sniffed. “I'd not expected you to be so sheltered from the ways of the world.”

“It's not that,” Egg said miserably.

“Then what?”

After a long pause, twice as miserably: “Nothing.”

“Well, I know what you're thinking, that it ain't safe to be tumbling about with a prince, but I'm not like to make a habit of it. But—well, t’be honest with you, I think he was a bit sweet on me, gods only know why. Said a lot of lovely things about my face. And my cock. I think if we cross paths again I might try to bed him proper, with a bit of proper pageantry. I actually think I was quite good at it, he— Now what’re you making that face for?”

Chapter Text

Baelor strode with a spring in his step to the chambers where he would share breakfast with his brother. He had dismissed the guard at his door, with some reluctance on their part. He was finding Lord Ashford’s holdings to be most hospitable indeed.

The room was warm from the fire roaring in the hearth and cluttered with servants scurrying from plate to bowl to Maekar's empty cup. Baelor surveyed it all with the clear eyes of a man completely content, however temporarily, with his station in life.

A serving woman bowed clean in half and pulled Baelor's chair out for him. Baelor covered her hand with his where it rested on the back of his chair.

“We can look after ourselves for one meal. Please,” and here he pressed a honeyed sweet bun into the young woman's hands before turning to the room as a whole, “take a moment for yourself. Enjoy.”

He dismissed the servants with a smile and a nod, and with scattered nervousness, they bowed low and backed out of the room. 

Maekar looked up at him, squinting against the morning sun that slanted into his lilac eyes.

“What's got you so fucking pleased with yourself?”

Baelor aimed a thin, smug smile at his brother. “I had an excellent evening.”

Maekar snorted. He tore a chunk of bread from a flaky loaf and slathered it with butter.

“I didn’t think that was possible in this dump. Unless Ashford’s hospitality extends to letting you fuck his wrinkled old arse, he's not capable of showing us proper—” He caught the look on Baelor's face and froze. “No.”

Baelor just smiled at him. He'd told his brother time and time again that he wouldn't be so fun to torture if he didn't get so worked up, but even at middle age it hadn't stuck yet. 

“Not Lord Ashford,” Baelor said as he sat next to him. Maekar stared.

“My youngest is missing and you're knocking boots with the locals.”

“Aegon will be found. You know how he wanders.”

“Don’t distract me. Who was it?”

“You won't like it.”

Maekar sneered. “I never like it, that's not stopped you before.” He shook his head and went back to his bread. “Jena’s going to catch wind of this someday, you know.”

“Jena and I have an understanding.”

“Does she know that?”

“She does indeed. It excites her to hear about it all afterwards.”

“Ugh. You are so fucking— You're two-faced, that's what you are. Chivalrous to the smallfolk like something about of a fucking fairy tale, while I have to hear about all your sordid goings-on with serving girls and stable boys and—”

“And knights,” Baelor said lightly. 

He made a show of ignoring his brother’s incredulous stare. He carefully selected a wedge of hard cheese from the array of cheeses on the serving plate between them, then carved off a chunk with a paring knife.

“Knights,” Maekar echoed.

Baelor stabbed the chunk of cheese, popped it in his mouth and smiled at Maekar while he chewed. He raised his eyebrows once.

Maekar said, “You are un-fucking-believable. Do we not have have enough tongues wagging about who's fucking who in this family without you going and bedding every—”

“We were standing,” Baelor interrupted, with great pleasure. “No bedding, I'm afraid.”

Maekar scoffed and got crumbs all over himself. He had colour high up on his cheeks.

“Tell me it was one of ours, at least. If you can bind him to silence, maybe we won't have every minstrel from here to Lannisport singing tavern songs about how your miserable little prick bends to the left.”

Baelor plucked a grape from a nearby cluster, cold and firm. At his silence, his brother turned slowly towards him, his face a pale blur at the corner of Baelor's vision. The grape was delightfully tart. He picked another one.

Maekar said, “Baelor.”

The second grape was sweeter and he let it burst against his tongue.

“Do you remember yesterday, that tall man who came to see us here. The hedge knight.”

Tormenting his brother was sweetest of all. Maekar's mouth hung open.

“Him? The overgrown boy with a face like a shovel?”

Baelor frowned. “I think he has quite a lovely face.”

“For fuck’s sake, I doubt he's got half your years on him! I'm surprised he knew where everything went.”

“He figured it out in the end.”

Maekar turned away and made a disgruntled sound. Baelor watched the near translucent shell of his ear turn red. 

“I don't see why you can't just visit whores. Normal men visit whores. They've even got ones with the bits you've been so interested in fucking these days.”

“And how would you know about those bits?”

Maekar grumbled, “People talk.”

After a pause—giving his brother an opportunity to speak his mind, one he did not take—Baelor sighed. 

“It’s the humanity of the thing, you know that. For a moment, I get to enjoy one of life's greatest and simplest pleasures as any man might. To get a glimpse into the lives of the folk we rule.”

Maekar only snorted at this. “You will always be Hand of the King and Prince of Dragonstone, and if you think anyone forgets that for even a second, you're fucking mad. You could piss in their mouths and they'd thank you for it.”

Baelor decided, benevolently, not to mention the night a few years back where he’d been in exactly that situation. He also didn't speak of how Ser Duncan—after some prodding, it's true—had been so willing to treat him as a man, to seize him and crush him and speak to him afterwards of thirty stag whores. He also sat at his feet like a dog and slept briefly against his thigh, but Baelor got the impression that Ser Duncan might have done that with anyone. He seemed to trust recklessly.

Baelor said, “You’re hardly a paragon of virtue.”

“I'm also not the Hand nor heir apparent, you will note,” Maekar hissed. “Honestly, Baelor. The boy is so slow you should be ashamed of yourself.”

“Not slow,” Baelor said, considering this. “You think anyone who lacks your penchant for cruelty and abuse is a simpleton. Some men are just kind.”

“I'm sure everyone who puts their mouth on your cock is kind in your books.”

“It’s a kind thing to do,” Baelor agreed. 

Maekar threw his hands in the air. “You’re impossible.”

He hacked at a soft cheese with his knife and spread it on an uneven hunk of seedy bread; Baelor saw his indignance in the colour up his ears and down his neck and the stiff set of his shoulders. Maekar never relaxed, even more so than his brothers did not. It made him easy prey. Baelor leaned in and spoke softly.

“He barely had time to get it out before it went off. He did have another round in him, though, that was quite polite. And flattering.”

Maekar shouldered him away. “You disgust me.”

“I highly doubt that.”

Baelor's levity only seemed to irritate him more. Maekar threw his knife down.

“Everything’s so fucking simple for you, isn't it? Dashing Baelor Breakspear, with his honourable countenance and courtly manners, it's all coming up milk and fucking honey for him! Screwing his tavern wenches and tittering about it with his wife without a care for the realm or its— for his duties, for war, it's all so fucking cheap, isn't it, it's…”

He trailed off, his eyes going distant. His rage was thin, Baelor knew, because Maekar understood better than anyone the weight that Baelor bore across his tired shoulders, the troubles and worries and politicking that kept him rolling that boulder up the hill from day to sleepless night.

Perhaps Baelor had pushed him too far. He placed his hand over Maekar's where it lay on the table.

“Some things are truly just simple, brother. And men like us would be wise to take them where we can get them.” He tapped Maekar's scarred knuckles. “You'd know that if you took the stick out once in a while.”

Maekar sighed and all the fight went out of him. He scowled down at their hands and admitted, gruff, “It's not so easy for all of us.”

Baelor had told Maekar since they were young that he was handsome, strong, noble, whatever would make Maekar hate himself less at that precise moment. He didn't say it again. He rubbed a thumb over the back of his hand and tilted his head in until the soft wool of his beard nearly touched Maekar's ear.

“You could take a turn with him,” Baelor offered. “Ser Duncan. He has a certain… aptitude for fealty, shall we say, that I think you would find quite intoxicating.”

As he had. Duncan's blue eyes that had been so hesitant to meet his own starving gaze that it drew him in as sure as ambrosia, the way he brought his cock up to his mouth like it was a meal. It drove him to lust and madness and more besides, a terrible desire to ruin and to be ruined in return. For a moment, he was not protector of the realm—a moment full to bursting with the easy, natural beauty of another body on his—he was simply Baelor of no notable house, free to make love over and over again to this big, sweet man who looked at him like he put the stars in the sky.

Maekar, widowed and soft, who loved fiercely and desperately, would have lost himself in it. Baelor was not giving him good advice.

Maekar choked out, “I'm not sharing with you.”

Baelor tipped his head. “Why not?”

Maekar grimaced and slipped his hand out from under Baelor's. Baelor caught it again, squeezed his fingers and grinned.

“Cock like a horse, brother. He had no idea what to do with it, mind, but he could be taught.”

Maekar snatched his hand back and turned away to hide his smile. “Fuck off.”

They sat in silence for a while. Maekar poured him watered wine from a heavy jug. He took some stewed stone fruits from a platter and ate, vaguely aroused now and ruminating on it. He wondered if he would see Ser Duncan in the tourney that night, whether he'd look up at him from the field and whether it would be too dark to see his cheeks flush. If Duncan was bold enough to come to his rooms that night, he wasn't sure he could turn him away, though it would be a dangerous thing to let him in. Prolonged exposure to that kind of devotion would become a vice.

“I still think these trysts of yours are dangerous,” Maekar said, not looking at him. It took Baelor a moment to reconcile their meanings. “If he'd wanted to hurt you…”

“I'll bed a waifish man next time if it would soothe your worries.”

“It's not funny. If not dangerous, then stupid. He’ll speak of you to anyone who buys him an ale.”

Baelor's mind wandered as he thought again of having Duncan in his bed, riding him until his thighs burned and Duncan's enormous hands at his hips were all that kept him moving—candlelight over his features, soft furs beneath him and those bewitching eyes fixed so hungrily on his, his mouth slack, big arms flexing, it pleases your grace?

Heat rose up his neck. Perhaps the situation was already dangerous.

“Ser Duncan is a good man,” he said, then bought time by taking a drink. “He doesn't plot or scheme. He has little to gain from associating himself with our family's depravity.”

“You don't know the boy.”

Baelor sniffed. “I’ve a good sense for these things.”

Duncan slammed his mug down so hard foamy ale sloshed over the side and onto the wooden table.

“—and kissing!” he said emphatically, his face red, “gods, I had no idea how good kissing would be! Raymun, have you been kissed?”

Raymun burped. “Aye. Aye, it's good, it's—”

“It's maddening is what it is! H—she—”

“Why d’you keep doing that?”

“—put hands in my hair and grabbed it, y’know, like—” He motioned with his own hands. “Gods above, I thought I was done for right then and there. Makin’ a person feel so—so good, like, that was, oh. It made me feel like a man.”

At Dunk’s side, Egg stared down into his untouched ale. Raymun looked from Egg to Dunk.

“And you’re certain you can't tell me who this mystery lay was? She's a noblewoman or some such, aye?”

Dunk looked down at Egg—who didn't meet his eye—and winked theatrically.

“Something like that. Eh, Egg?”

Egg frowned at his ale. Raymun looked between the two of them again. 

“What's wrong with him?”

Dunk winked at Raymun this time, sloppily, and said in a loud stage whisper, “I fear the lad’s a bit jealous.”

Egg put his face in his hands and screamed.

Chapter Text

Egg had one job for the day: to keep Ser Duncan away from his uncle. He couldn’t let his knight get new stories to tell.

They slept soaked by rain under the elm tree and woke to a similarly dismal day; Duncan turned fitfully in the night and now had a headache from drink. He was washing himself miserably in the stream while Egg sat under the tree wrapped in his cloak.

Well, Egg also had to get Dunk ready for the tourney, that was obvious, and that included soothing his nerves as much as physically preparing him. And he had to think of how he would stay far enough from the stands to go unseen by his family as he handed Dunk his lances.

Really, Egg needed to remain unseen all day, because the other thing he had to do was keep Dunk from learning his true identity. Dunk would be hurt and furious with him and he would abandon him back to his horrible family, and all of that was worse than listening to Dunk prattle on all moony-eyed about his favourite uncle.

Still: the more he had to hear, the closer those abacus beads ticked towards equal. Which was why he needed to keep them apart.

He didn't think it would be difficult with all the activity around the tourney, but that's what he thought upon their arrival to Ashford and look how that had turned out: hardly a day gone by and Dunk had made a spectacular mess of things. Not that it was his fault, mind—if Dunk was telling the truth, it was his uncle who had been indecent.

Egg rested his head on his drawn-up knees. His stomach gnawed with hunger, though he knew they would soon venture towards the tourney grounds, where he could snag something real to eat.

“Well, Egg?” Dunk said from the stream.

Egg looked up. Dunk was in the water up to his waist, beaming at him with his hands on his hips; he smiled, but his eyes were red and bleary. His enormous chest and belly were pale, but his forearms, hands and face were tanned nut brown. When his red-gold hair was wet and slicked back, his head looked misshapen. Egg didn't understand what his uncle liked so much about Dunk when he didn't even know him. Dunk was brave and funny and kind and those were good reasons to like him, but he looked ridiculous by any measure.

Dunk said, “How are you liking my odds today?”

The tourney. Egg believed in him, he did, and Thunder had come along nicely, but that didn't mean he wasn't afraid. He smiled at Dunk anyway.

“I like them, ser.”

Dunk continued to smile at him for a moment, then turned around and vomited into the stream. 

Egg followed Dunk through the field leading Thunder to the stables. He had his hood up and scanned as always for anyone who might recognize him, grateful, for once, for the way folk ignored children his age unless told not to. Blue smoke rose from cooking fires dotted around the tents and canvas flapped loudly against itself, heavy with the night’s rain. Dunk's nerves rendered him silent and Egg uncharacteristically followed his lead.

He knew for certain that nothing good could come of Dunk's introduction to his family. They would mock Dunk and call him stupid and poor because they knew nothing of honour or nobility, and they'd beat him blind him if Egg wasn't careful, or kill him, except— 

Except for his uncle Baelor, evidently, but that made Egg squirrelly for reasons even beyond the obvious. Egg's family used people up and then threw them away. He loved his uncle, but that fact remained.

Egg reminded himself: this was the last day of the tourney, from which, with his wits and a bit of luck, he would emerge unscathed. He would hold his tongue—maybe take up drinking, the way it seemed to help men forget their problems—and afterwards he would be rewarded with an honourable life on the road with his knight, sleeping under the stars and learning the way of things. The tryst with Egg’s uncle would fade from Dunk’s mind, and moreover, Egg would steer him away from future entanglements, seeing now how susceptible he was to obsession. It wasn't particularly becoming of a knight.

He didn't think he would have an easy time keeping Dunk untangled. He attracted a certain amount of attention without meaning to, and without being aware of it at all.

The stables were busy and loud and Thunder whickered softly as they navigated the tight aisles full of other horses led by other squires; Egg put a hand on his neck to calm him. He kept his hood up but he was less likely to be noticed in the part of the stables where regular folk put their horses, and his brothers never saw to their own mounts anyway. Anyone else who may have served his family would only recognize him by his hair and dress, and he tried not to think about how depressing that was.

Egg said, “The stable master asked that we put him in the back. This way.”

The crowd parted for Thunder as much as for Dunk's wide frame. Down at the end of the aisle a cluster of knights stood around a very large horse, deep in conversation.

Dunk breathed, “Oh, gods, it's him.”

Among the knights, Egg spotted a tall figure robed all in black and saw quickly by the shape of his nose and beard that it was his uncle Baelor, though he doubted himself at first because he was dressed so plainly. He appeared to be talking to the knights about the horse or listening to the horse be spoken of. Luckily, he appeared to be alone.

“Over here, ser,” Egg said quickly, tugging Thunder into an open stall.

Dunk took a few steps after him, but his head was turned all the way around to watch Baelor.

“What's he doing down here, d’you think?”

He sounded dazed as if he'd been hit in the head. Egg tried to keep him on track.

“Help me get his bridle off if you could, ser.”

“Who’s that he's talking to?”

“Don't know, ser. The bridle?”

Dunk's hands wandered blindly to fumble the bit from Thunder’s mouth.

“Would it be improper for me to talk to him? I’d only make a fool of myself, and him as well. There's people around, he can't be seen talking to me.”

“Very true, ser, very smart. Why don't you head outside and I’ll get Thunder settled?”

“I suppose. Oh, fucking hell, he's seen me. He's coming over here! Egg, you keep your trap shut or I'll have you— where are you going?”

Egg crouched behind Thunder and ran from the stall with his heart pounding in his ears. His uncle would recognize him in a second, he couldn't let him have even a glimpse. Egg darted past the few people who walked down this last aisle in the stables and, panicking, ducked into an empty stall a few away from Thunder, next to one that was being used for tack storage, old saddles stacked high on mounts and bridles hanging from pegs across the ceiling, tall stacks of buckets and brooms and shovels.

He heard his uncle's voice. “Good morning, Ser Duncan.”

“Your grace!”

A thump as Dunk knelt, then a rustle as he rose. After that, nothing. Egg wished he'd come up with a secret whistle to use with Dunk so they could contact each other across distances: Egg could have gone outside and made the call and Dunk would come running, alone.

“What brings your grace to the stables?” Dunk asked. His voice cracked. Egg winced for him.

There was a moment of strange silence. Egg didn't dare peek out of the stall, but from where he knelt in the hay, he saw a groom walk by with a squire. Then, nobody. 

Baelor said to Dunk, “I was wondering if you might come with me for a moment, ser.”

“Your grace?”

“Not far. Come.”

They were coming towards Egg’s stall. He pressed back into the partition and tried to make himself small, just daring to look out from beneath his hood.

He caught a glimpse of his uncle as he walked past, his dark skin gone slack with age and the glitter of white in his dark hair—he was so old, he was nearly a grandfather. Egg didn't understand any of this. He thought of his aunt Jena back at Dragonstone, whom he'd always liked, and felt bad for her. Now that he thought about it, his aunt was very big and tall and red-haired, which posed some questions he didn't want answers to.

Dunk followed at Baelor's heels. 

Egg prepared to follow, but he saw Dunk stop just past his empty stall; he scurried to the far side behind a bale of hay to remain hidden. Baelor hummed like he was thinking. 

Then: the hardware on the hanging bridles clinked as they entered the stall full of tack. Egg craned his neck up and saw his uncle's dark hand above him for a moment as he parted the harnesses.

Egg looked frantically down the aisle, what of it he could see. Nobody at the moment but the stables were crawling with squires and grooms and it was only a matter of time. People would have questions about why the crown prince begged a quiet moment with a hedge knight. 

Dunk cleared his throat.

“What… what can I do for your grace?”

Silence. Leather creaked, a saddle shifting as someone put a hand to it.

Baelor, hesitant: “Now that I have you, I am not sure.”

A longer silence. Shuffling, another creak of leather, somewhere. Then Dunk's voice was low and shy.

“I have—thought of you.”

Baelor said, “And I you.”

Egg put his head in his hands. 

“Good things?” Dunk asked.

Baelor assured him, “Very good things.”

Hay crackled under a footstep. Another.

Dunk said, “Are we still at that… that tavern, you mentioned?” And then here, so hesitant that it was clear he was not sure he should say it, “Ser Baelor?”

Egg had no idea when they would have gone to a tavern together or how they'd become so familiar. Maybe this had been going on longer than he thought, but how?

It took Baelor a moment to reply, like he was surprised.

“I would like to be.”

Duncan choked out his words like it had taken effort to keep them back. 

“Oh, thank the gods.”

A muffled groan then, a sound almost like a slap, a breath. Another groan. A quiet, wet sound. They were kissing.

Egg covered his ears and shut his eyes tight. He prepared to spring up and run, but he froze: if they stayed there together, they might speak, and if they spoke it might be of Egg. Just as bad, they might be seen. The stacks of supplies would do little to shield them from anyone who got too close, what were they thinking? Egg had to get Ser Duncan away from his uncle, immediately, without revealing himself.

The harnesses jangled around them and then, alarmingly, Egg heard his uncle laugh.

“I came looking for you. Only for you. Is that not mad?”

“Wh—”

“Without intent. My feet carried me and I found I was searching for you in the meadow, head and shoulders above everyone else, you drive me absolutely—”

More horrid sounds. Egg frantically scanned the stall for anything he could use. He could kick at a rusted metal bucket across from him, but that might bring others over and they would all see Dunk and Baelor together, which he didn't want, and besides, the two of them would just look over the stall at the noise and see Egg crouched in the hay. He had to think.

Baelor’s voice drifted over. “I fear I have been—indelicate, I—”

“No—no, I'm who—”

“I've told my brother of you.”

Now his father knew! Egg's face burned so hot it hurt. Why was everyone in his family so depraved? Why was it always his problem?

“Only broadly, a”—a kiss, a swallowed sound—“a habit, from our youth, he's—he is easily annoyed. Frigid.” Smooch. Gasp. “No need to look like that, he's harmless. Ah, well, not harmless—”

Think, think, think. He could run outside, find a page and tell them to ask for Prince Baelor in the stables, so then somebody else would— no, they'd only be caught. He could instruct the page to yell very loudly for Prince Baelor as he searched the stables, but a request so strange and improper might lead a curious page to sneak about looking for the prince instead, and then once again, they'd get caught.

Duncan hardly had the breath to speak. “Really, your grace, you can't—you cannot mean all this, I—”

“You call me a liar?”

“No! No, ser, only—only—”

Egg turned around to look for a gap in the boards through which he could stab Dunk's leg with his belt knife and found none wide enough; by pressing his eye to a knothole, he could see a slice of Dunk's calf with his uncle’s black robes swirling about it, not close enough to poke at and a stupid plan anyway. They might stop if one of them had a dagger sticking out of his leg, but he couldn't be sure of it.

“Only what?” 

His uncle used the same gentle, goading tone he used to coax shy children to speak. Egg would never be able to hear it again. 

Dunk said something garbled that Egg, with great fortune, could not make out.

There were no more words for a while. Egg could burn down the stables with everyone inside. He could jump off its roof and maybe the sound of his body exploding on the ground would make them stop pawing at each other for a moment. Once he was dead, they would be so ashamed of themselves. He would be remembered as a good squire, a loyal nephew and a passable son.

“Believe me when I say,” this from Baelor, “that I have been thinking about this”—a whistling harsh intake of breath from Dunk, the rasp of fabric—“since the minute I woke.”

Movement, clothing, shf, shf, and a handful of mumbled words too low to be heard. A snorting breath, or maybe that was one of the horses.

“Either you’re worthy of my attention, or you’re disagreeing with me. Which is it?”

Silence. Then a few short syllables in answer, repeated with a breathless religious fervor.

The partition between the stalls creaked as weight was put against it from the far side. If Egg was lucky, the stall would break and fall on him and smash his idiot skull to pieces.

“I—I can't, ser, not here, it—agh—” and then something unintelligible. A short, sharp, high noise. A loud thump. Egg covered his ears as if that would make it all stop and still he felt a second thump rumble through the wooden partition. 

Egg kept his hands over his ears for what felt like a good long while. If he survived the next few minutes, he would have to find a new knight. He wasn't sure he could look at this one ever again.

He peeled his clammy hands off his ears. His uncle and his knight were still behind him, but quieter now. Baelor's reedy mumble made it to his ears.

“And what's interesting,” he was saying, muffled, “is that my brother turned a very curious shade of red when I spoke of you.”

Egg's heart stopped. His vision went dark at the edges and tunneled as though he were at the end of a very long, narrow hall.

Baelor said, “What, ah… What do you think of my brother, Ser Duncan?”

Later, Egg would not remember leaping to his feet; by some blessed survival mechanism, he would forget over time most of what he heard while crouched in the hay. But he would always remember seeing Ser Duncan's face come into view over the top of the stall as he stood—and how small his tall, broad uncle looked against him—and watching his face turn in slow-motion from terror, to horror—

“DON'T!” Egg screeched.

—to an incensed humiliation. Dunk snatched his hands away from Baelor like he'd been burnt.

“Egg! You—you little—!”

His uncle's eyes widened in recognition.

“Aegon?”

Egg squeezed his eyes shut so he didn't have to see the look on Dunk's face. He regretted not jumping off the roof.

Three chairs were arranged in a row facing a table, in a large, dim room with no fire in the hearth and no attendants underfoot.

Egg sat folded in half with his hands over his face and his face touching his knees. His feet didn't touch the floor. His right ear throbbed brightly where his uncle had used it to pull him all the way to Lord Ashford’s keep. 

Baelor leaned back with his eyes shut tightly and his thumb and forefinger pinched at the bridge of his nose. His jaw clenched as though he were in an enormous amount of pain. 

Dunk stared at the floor with his hands clasped between his knees. Sweat visibly soaked the collar of his tunic. His face was the colour of the plumage of some exotic birds.

Maekar stood leaning against the table with his arms crossed over his chest as he regarded the other three with contempt hot enough to quench a blade.

“Which one of you fucking imbeciles wants to go first?”

“Maekar,” Baelor warned, not opening his eyes.

“I'll get to you. But you!” Maekar rounded on Dunk. “You kidnap my son and you—you expose him to—”

Dunk blubbered, “I swear I didn't know he was your son, your grace!”

“His eyes are fucking purple! Do you live under a rock?”

“Sometimes!”

“I told you I lied!” Egg wailed into his hands. “I followed him, it's not Ser Duncan's fault, Father, please—”

“Oh, little prince runaway is making demands now, is he? You're not too busy peeping?”

Baelor said mildly, “He was trying to help.”

Maekar turned to face him. “The stables, Baelor?”

Dunk couldn't bear to look over at Baelor, hadn't yet at all, so he only knew that Baelor didn't say anything in response and not the look on his face. He could only imagine the humiliation he'd find there.

“This is a fucking disaster,” Maekar grumbled.

Maekar had a hand over his face and his head hung between his shoulders. It looked like only the table behind him held him up. He was shorter than Baelor by half a head, so when he'd first screamed in Dunk’s face when they were led into the room, he'd not reached his chin. Dunk had expected him to be taller.

“My nephew,” Baelor said slowly, and surely he knew each second of the word was like a kick to Dunk's stones, “deliberately deceived Ser Duncan, and Daeron has already said he lied about the kidnapping. The matter is settled outside of the wounds to our collective pride.”

Maekar seemed stung by this. “Settled?”

“There is nothing left to do. Would that I could turn back time and know that Aegon was furtively squired to Ser Duncan, I may have…”

Here, Dunk looked at Baelor. He'd been an idiot for believing that the prince felt anything for him other than a passing favour given because it was simple, because he was simple, and now, when things had become complicated, that Baelor might hesitate for even a moment before denouncing him completely. Dunk at least wanted to see it happen, to drill the hope out of his thick skull.

Baelor was already watching him. Dunk couldn't read his expression but he knew at once that it was not cruel, not disgusted, and possibly that he was trying to make it warm and reassuring—with limited success—like a stable hand trying to soothe a spooked filly. He realized for the first time that Baelor's right eye, in proper light, was probably purple. 

Baelor kept his eyes on his as he finished, “I may have done things differently, but they would have occurred none the less. You have my word.”

Dunk's heart beat at his ribs like a caged beast. Over Baelor's shoulder, he saw Egg—Aegon, how humiliating—watching him and Baelor with a queasy expression. But he didn't look angry, so maybe Dunk didn't have to be angry with him either. Maybe lying about being a prince was the same as laying with someone's uncle.

Maekar said, “What of Aegon’s squiring? You cannot expect me to let him go with this lunk. He's to squire for Aerion.”

Egg sat up, his face red. “I hate—”

“And I hate being interrupted! Leave us. The guards will take you to your quarters, and may the gods help you if you sneak out again.”

Egg looked to Dunk as if to appeal for help and it hurt Dunk's heart because he couldn't give him any. “But—”

“I am not asking, Aegon. Have a bath while you're there, you smell like a latrine.”

Egg stomped out of the room; when the door swung open, Dunk caught a glimpse of the gleaming white armour of the kingsguard before Egg scurried out. He knew Egg would be safe with them, but he also wanted the boy to be happy, truly happy in the long run, and he didn’t know how to make that possible. His head was still spinning with all this change. 

With Egg gone, he was left alone with Maekar and Baelor. Dunk wiped his sweaty hands on his thighs and tried, for Egg.

“Prince Maekar, ser, your Egg”—Maekar rounded on him, furious—“Prince Aegon, I mean, he’s a good lad, your grace, a good squire and smart as a whip. Given some room to roam, he might—”

“Are you giving me parenting advice, hedge knight?”

Dunk shut his mouth so quickly his teeth clacked. Maekar stalked towards him.

“I’ll ask your advice when I want to drain my brother's balls, you fucking peasant. How dare you—”

“Maekar.”

He stopped dead at Baelor's voice. Baelor rose to his feet unhurried, a wall of placid grace for his brother to dash his frothing rage against. Maekar flung an arm out at Dunk while he shouted at Baelor.

“You don't know him! Screw him ‘til it falls off, but we're talking about my son!” Then he spat at Dunk. “You’ve got a taste for Targaryens now. How do I know you won't force yourself on him while you're out there? Make your way through the rest of the family like a fucking—”

Dunk saw red, and then Maekar's collar was in his fist. 

He had it wrenched up under his chin and they were so close they shared breath. Maekar just stood there and stared him down in turn, hot with anger, taut as a bowstring.

“I would never—ever—do that to him.” Dunk spoke slowly, quietly, with a lifetime of threat on each word. “And if you ever say it again, I'll knock your teeth down your throat.”

A brooch on Maekar's collar had stabbed into his ring finger but he didn't dare let go. He expected Baelor to come to his brother's aid, but all was still. 

“You forget yourself,” Maekar ground out through his teeth.

Dunk said, “I do not.”

Maekar’s eyes were wild and he bared his teeth like a rabid dog, but when Dunk didn't back down, there was a flicker of—something, over his features, and for a moment Dunk found that he looked very much like his brother. He wondered if this was the same shade of red Baelor had seen on him.

“Heel your dog,” Maekar said to Baelor, though his eyes were still on Dunk. 

After a beat, Baelor's hand landed at the small of Dunk's back.

“That's enough, Duncan.”

His voice was warm and close and stern and Dunk couldn't help it, he shivered, and of course Maekar felt it. Shock flickered over his features before settling into a pained grimace. His ears were red.

Maekar shoved him away; Dunk let him. 

“He is my son,” Maekar said again, to Dunk this time. Unlike the time before, he said it as a father. “My last son.”

Dunk just stared at him. He'd heard horrible things about Maekar's other sons, even just at this tourney alone. He still couldn't believe Egg was a part of all that, and it pained him to even imagine that one day Egg might— but, it must have pained Maekar as well.

“Ser Duncan.”

Baelor's warm hand came up under his own. Dunk looked down to find a small wound in his finger from the brooch, a scrap of torn flesh and a thin, steady drip of blood down the side of his hand and onto the stone floor. Baelor's cupped hand stymied the flow. Dunk was bleeding on a prince and it felt almost as intimate as kissing him. 

“Have someone take you to the maester. Tell them I sent you. I'll ensure the kingsguard know of you.”

Dunk's face got hot. Maekar scoffed.

“This is the seductress who's tied your cock in a knot. A boy who blushes over words. You're mad, Baelor.”

Baelor said something to Maekar in another language that Dunk could only assume was Valyrian; it was captivating. Maekar's eyes cut over to Dunk and he replied in the same. Baelor rolled his eyes and said something else, short, before turning to Dunk.

“I apologize for my brother. I swear he is a good man, albeit one that forgets his manners, often and with great pleasure.” He released Dunk's hand. “I hope this doesn't affect your joust this afternoon. You have challenged Tybolt Lannister, have you not?”

Dunk had forgotten about the lists in all the chaos with the princes. Reminded, a wave of nausea washed over him.

“Yes, your grace.”

Baelor smiled up at him. “I wish you the very best of luck.”

Worse was the reminder that Baelor would be watching. Dunk had not known how to even begin to want someone like Baelor when he'd first called him to his chambers. The sheer concept of being with someone like him swam before his eyes like letters he couldn't read; something that could be parsed by others, he'd heard, but surely never by him. But somehow, in a day and change, he had started to want without even meaning to, and now he didn't know how to stop.

The clouds in the dark sky were swollen with rain as Dunk sat sprawled and panting in the dirt outside a tent near the jousting area. His chest plate had a dent in it the size of a man's fist, his ribs were bruised, his thighs ached from riding, he had dirt in his teeth, and based on the way Egg fussed over him after his last match—for his father had allowed him to squire for Dunk at Ashford only, provided he remained incognito in his shabby cloak—he had at least one cut on his face, although he couldn't remember when he'd gotten it.

He had been sitting for a long spell and still couldn't catch his breath. The matches were over for the day and grooms and servants hurried around him leading horses and carrying torches, buckets of water, hay and rags, as knights clanked by in armour half removed, most already toting around a cup of drink.

Egg would return shortly and then Dunk would get up. Any moment. He closed his eyes and the blessed dark behind his eyelids stilled his spinning head. It had all happened so fast he hardly had time to be afraid.

“Are you very hurt, Ser Duncan?”

Dunk jolted up. Prince Baelor's shiny black boots stood just beyond Dunk's muddy feet. 

“Not very, your grace.”

He tried to struggle to his feet and only made it up to a knee. Baelor's hand came into view, at first, he thought, bidding him to rise, but then he realized Baelor was helping him up. He shook off one of his gauntlets, put his sweating hand in Baelor's and let himself be pulled to his feet. The prince was strong enough to only stagger slightly under Dunk's weight.

Baelor struck him with one of his terrible-beautiful smiles in the shifting torchlight that caught the waves of silver in his beard. He was dressed in his finery with an intricately embroidered sash of Targaryen crimson at his waist. He wore a few more rings than usual and looked all the more lovely for it; the cool, smooth feel of those rings against the back of his neck was a memory Dunk quickly put aside.

Baelor said, “You leave the tourney as a champion. You must be very pleased.”

Dunk nodded hard. “It was only a bit of dumb luck, your grace.”

“You need not be modest, I was there. Your second tilt against Leo Tyrell was some remarkably clever work.”

Dunk's gauntlets were ill-fitted and the bandaged cut on his hand had stung as he readied his lance. He winced and shifted his grip at the last moment, which caused him to strike a neat blow under Tyrell's arm that unseated him so spectacularly he flipped in the air, entirely by accident.

Dunk decided not to correct him. He looked around furtively; knights and lords turned their heads to look at the crown prince of the realm as they passed by, visibly puzzling over his presence in the muddy field. The two of them stood off to the side of a main thoroughfare where Dunk had parked himself to rest. Through a gap in the nearby tents that loomed above, they could be seen from stands next to the tournament grounds, where some nobles still lingered over their cups.

Baelor said, “I trust you won't fault me for speaking plainly, but I did not imagine you would do so well in your first tourney.”

“Nor I. I—I should think it was due to your grace's well-wishes.”

“Good.” Baelor spoke quietly now, just loud enough for Dunk to hear from the perfectly proper distance at which he stood. “I am glad to hear you felt my favour, though it could not be openly given.”

“I did.”

He'd caught Baelor's gaze up in the stands no less than a dozen times, and each time, it bolstered his resolve as surely as any kerchief tied to his lance.

Dunk caught his gaze again now. Baelor stood tall with his hands clasped behind his back, the very picture of a prince, and only Dunk could see the way his eyes glittered dangerously. He'd looked much the same in the stables.

He said, “It is fortuitous that you did so well, and so unexpectedly. For now I speak to you with so many eyes on us, but of course we speak only of jousting. It’s the first time we've met.”

Dunk caught up after a beat. “Uh, yes, your grace.”

“And so when we are seen speaking again, people will think, ah, Prince Baelor has always loved to joust. No small wonder that he favours this talented young knight”—Baelor gestured towards the tournament grounds as if illustrating some point he wasn't making—“perhaps to mentor him.” 

“Of course.” Dunk sketched a bow as his part.

“And when you are seen tonight dining with nobility, they may think me eccentric, but they will not think me smitten, as the rumours may have run otherwise.”

A waking nightmare flashed before Dunk's eyes: a bumbling hulk of a man elbowing nobles’ daughters, spilling cups and dropping cutlery from his clumsy mits, stinking of fish from bathing in the stream. He'd speak too loudly or not at all, he would become drunk, he would sweat profusely.

“I—I don't think that would be wise, your grace. I know not of, of manners, or—tables—”

“Neither do they, believe me. You will blend right in.” 

And here Baelor spoke even softer, leaned in so slightly and put a hand to the dent in Dunk's chest plate as if he were inspecting it, maddeningly close yet not permissible to touch.

“And if our eyes happen to meet across the hall, only you will know that as I drink Lord Ashford's finest wines, all I desire is to once again lick my own seed from your tongue.”

Dunk got so hard so suddenly he was surprised his cock didn't ring out like a bell against his armour. The rush of blood south dizzied him more than all his knocks to the head.

“Jousting,” he managed to say.

Baelor moved away, his eyes crinkling in a smile.

“Jousting,” he agreed. He turned and motioned for Dunk to follow him. Dunk did, a half step behind.

He muttered, “Your grace has a wicked way with words.”

“Mm. Perhaps.”

Dunk resolved not to meet any of the eyes that attempted to meet his and question why a poorly-armoured hedge knight accompanied the crown prince.

Baelor said, “Get Aegon to take you for some clothes from Ashford's tailor. I am sure he has two shirts he can stitch together to span your shoulders.”

“I—”

“And a bath as well, I think.”

Duncan worked his jaw, trying to think of a suitable response. He wanted to please Baelor and he wanted to be a knight—his knight perhaps, though Dunk's hands would sweat when he thought too much about that—but he couldn't truly believe he was capable of any of it, and at the same time, he couldn't say no. Didn't want to say no.

He recalled the smell of leather and hay so warm all around them that morning, Baelor's hand in his breeches fitted against his aching cock, rubbing him cramped and clumsy like a boy. Dunk had grabbed his face so hard he smeared his lip back and exposed his teeth, and had answered the question put to him by panting into Baelor's mouth worthy, worthy, not because he believed it but because he feared Baelor would stop if he didn't. He wondered if Baelor hadn't tricked him into believing in himself.

Dunk said, “Yes, your grace.” 

Before he walked away, Baelor gave him another one of his funny little smiles that made Dunk feel like a foolish boy, and then he had to think about jousting for a while.

Egg found him there, staring after Baelor. Dunk didn't notice him until the boy flung a wet rag into his face, which he only just caught.

Egg said, “A knight’s got to have better reflexes than that.”

Dunk nodded his thanks; he'd not had much time to speak to Egg since Maekar chewed them out and he could hardly stand to look at the boy without wanting to fall on his own sword. He'd told him so much. About his own uncle.

Dunk started to wipe at his face and Egg sighed.

“You’re missing it completely. Here.”

He took the rag from Dunk. Dunk crouched down where he stood and was still too tall, so he sat in the mud and let Egg get to work.

“Egg. You know how sorry I am, don't you?”

“You've mentioned it.”

“I wouldn't have ever if I'd known.”

“I know, ser.”

“Or, I wouldn't’ve told you about it. Even if I knew you were you, not that Prince Baelor was your uncle, I'd not have said anything, but you said you were an orphan and orphans tend to, uh, know a bit about the world—”

“It's alright, ser.”

Dunk couldn't tell if he meant it. He sounded tired. His little hands dabbed at Dunk's brow and the rag came away red and brown, but not overly so. 

“Are you cross with me?” Dunk tried. Egg met his eyes, finally.

“No. I'm… I'm sorry I lied to you. I might've gotten you killed.”

“Well, you didn't.”

“But I might have. And now I'll have to squire for Aerion anyway and he's horrible, ser, father was saying that just last night he maimed some poor girl here, and I'll never have a moment to myself and I'll never get away, and I’ll—I—”

Egg sobbed brokenly and Dunk put his arms around him without a thought, brought him into his chest and let him cry there. He supposed his chest plate made for a poor pillow, but Egg didn't seem to mind. Dunk held him through it.

“I want to go with you,” Egg mumbled, miserable. Dunk gave the boy's shoulders a squeeze.

“Aye.” He didn't say how firmly Maekar had said no, nor how broken he had sounded at the prospect of losing his youngest. “We’ll think of something.”

He held him a while longer before Egg sat back, scrubbing at his eyes with the back of his hand. He looked thoughtful for a moment.

“You won't bed my father, will you, ser?”

Dunk reared back, trying to recall; the stables, that was what he meant by don't. He didn't think the boy had heard. Dunk had no idea what to say to that—his thoughts leapt from the Targaryens’ long history of bedding one another to Baelor speaking of his brother with Dunk’s cock still in his hand to Maekar's strange lavender eyes and how readily he let Dunk get into his space even as he called him a dog and a peasant—but, gods, two of them—

He’d been quiet for too long. Egg looked horrified.

“Ser Duncan!”

“I was thinking!”

“About what?”

“Nothing! Of course I won't!”

Egg regarded him dubiously, which he supposed he deserved. He clattered unsteadily to his feet and pulled Egg up after him.

“Never you mind all that. We've got to find a tailor.”