[ how do you explain to your lover that you've essentially confessed to your childhood idol that you care about them and also they are your uncle who is married to your sister? ]
We argued.
Have you ever confessed your affections to someone whom you should despise?
[ Dorian considers the question. Bull comes to mind, though they've neither confessed anything to each other nor does Dorian despise him, no matter what relationship Tevinter has to the qunari. ]
[ there are many ways aemond could answer this question. many ways he would rather not over these devices, too. he settles for the easiest, simplest one - simple only because it's so plainly true. ]
He's my half-sister's husband. Regardless of what I have or who I'm with, I have no claim to him or his bed.
Your family tree does have quite the tangle of branches, doesn't it?
[ The fact that Daemon's a married man does give Dorian some pause--mostly because he hasn't been asking every man he's fucked here whether or not they're unattached.
A married king, no less. ]
If I can be honest with you, I hope I haven't been unwittingly complicit in adultery. Do he and his wife have an arrangement?
[ an arrangement. aemond would scoff, but now he just worries heβs injured dorianβs integrity in some way. ]
There is no great expectation of fidelity among our line, beyond each other. More often the faithfulness of a marriage is the arrangement, and bastards are a common problem among our blood.
There numbers among us no more than twenty, trueborn, that yet live. Rhaenyra knows, and she kept lovers herself with her marriage previous, besides.
I do not want to cause you offence in this. If you should find yourself engaged with another and wish to be faithful with them, I would not keep you from it.
You've been kind to me. More than I thought to expect from anyone, especially in that moment. I'd given my trust to another, and was made a fool in its aftermath. I thought
It doesn't matter what I thought, truthfully. It changes nothing.
[ a disfigured son, a thief, a boy pretending to be a man. when has it mattered to anyone that he'd played by the rules and lost his eye regardless? when has it mattered that he spoke the truth and punished for it? when has it mattered that he offered the only true gentleness he knows, and made to swallow its chewed up remains in the end? ]
My desire will empty you until you resent me for it. I am fire and blood. All I do is burn.
[ Dorian doesn't respond by text. He's angry and tired and hurt, Aemond's prodding hitting home despite Dorian's attempt at patience.
He knows where to look for him, though it isn't particularly safe to roam the halls alone right now. Dorian locks the door behind him, when he finds Aemond, frustration clear on his features. ]
You're an idiot, Aemond Targaryen.
[ Without preamble, crossing the room toward him. ]
An idiot and a hypocrite. Don't sabotage what we have with some imagined future transgression.
[ aemond is seated on what he knows now is a chaise longue, plush with its divoted upholstery and engraved frame. in the absence of electric power, they only have natural light to rely on. the pale light casts dorian in a blue-limned shape, leaching him of his golden tones. dorian doesn't deserve this. he should be out in the daylight, radiant as the sun itself.
despite his words, aemond holds his hand out for dorian to take, so that he might pull the man down and upon him. he wants him still, the desire curling around his soft parts like prey ensnared. isn't that the problem?
he wants. little good has ever come from aemond wanting. ]
[ Dorian doesn't take Aemond's offered hand, for once, smacking it away. He stands looking furiously down on him in this shadowed room, nostrils flared as he catches his breath. ]
You're doing a hell of a job with it, asking me what I'll do if you choose to leave after I've just told you I want to be with you.
[ Not only that he wants him: the choice of language is intentional. Dorian isn't thinking, now that he doesn't have to stare down at letters without a face behind them, words tumbling from him with full force. ]
I can be patient, and I understand what it is to feel like a monster. To be resented. But you will not take my agency in this, in us away from me, not when I've gone and fallen in love with you.
[ And the last hangs between them, the room deathly silent, but Dorian doesn't take it back; he simply firms his jaw and steels himself for Aemond's response. ]
[ what did it take his own mother to tell him she loved him? death, so many of it, her own and those of their family that she held dear. and aemond does not hold it against her, because theirs is not a family of tender touches and easily given affections. but if there is bitterness in the way aemond denies dorian this confession, it is not because of some perceived fault borne them. who could love him? not even his father. he is his mother's fury made flesh, burning all in his path.
his hand remains held out in shocked silence. all air has left him entirely; all sense has fled him as he stares up to dorian in sheer bewilderment. ]
Dorian. Dorian. [ his voice fails him, the second time. ] Do not be cruel like this.
Cruel? [ Dorian's voice does break, then. Some part of him understands that they're missing each other, somehow, that there's an understanding lost between their words, but you can't mean that strikes where it hurts most: all his life, his love negated, pushed into the shadows, an unseemly thing. ]
Is it cruel to give you an honest confession, when we might die any day from starvation or the roaming dead?
[ His lashes are wet. This has happened so quickly that Dorian has to claw back some amount of shame in it; wanting to take Aemond's hand, but afraid of rejection, now, if he does. ]
[ no, he's notβ he's not going to do this a second time. aemond gets to his feet, all too serious, all too determined, pushing himself into dorian's space with the brashness that only his reckless youth can manage. the hand not taken finds anchor on dorian's cheek, both hands now, both grasping and refusing to let go because he will not lead them both to the edge this time.
he meant it when he said he wouldn't brook the hurt a second time. and he means this, too; ]
No, I am not letting you go. I want you, I more than want you, I seethe when I think of you turning away from me. Please, Iβ
[ he doesn't know if he can say it. the only one he's ever called to love is aegon, his brother, his king, and even then the love had been poisonous at its very heart. he doesn't want to doom dorian to such a hideous thing. but what words else does he have left? ]
I think of you with the same brutal desire I feel for the sky. If you mean it β Can I not want to protect you from me, too?
[ Dorian's heart is in his throat, as he hears Aemond's confession: not the same words as his, no, but a confession all the same. Aemond's hands find his face and Dorian's twist into the front of Aemond's shirt, as he drags him close for a desperate, searing kiss.
Dorian is always, always braced for rejection. He half-expects Halsin to wake up and not want him, feels the adrenaline flood his limbs with the thought of Aemond ending this.
He pulls back only enough to breathe, resting his forehead to Aemond's, a hand lifting to cup his jaw. ]
Of course I mean it. [ Husky with emotion, the hand in Aemond's shirt fisting tighter. ] I don't need protection from you, Aemond. I just need you to trust me.
[ it's the harder confession to make. what would it be like to trust someone without planning for their eventual betrayal? what would it feel like to accept someone's words at their given value?
aemond had made mistakes here, trusting strangers who proved themselves unworthy in the end, and he reels from the betrayal still. but the self-aggrandising perceptions of others are neither dorian's fault or responsibility. dorian is right; aemond hurts them both in taking his choices from him, and insults them both besides. he breathes against dorian's cheek and tightens his grasping hands into fists at the man's collar, anchoring them together as close as gravity will allow. ]
But you do need protecting, Dorian. I am going to die soon, and there is no way to stop it.
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I mistook Daemon for you. With the messages.
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We argued.
Have you ever confessed your affections to someone whom you should despise?
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[ Dorian considers the question. Bull comes to mind, though they've neither confessed anything to each other nor does Dorian despise him, no matter what relationship Tevinter has to the qunari. ]
I can't say that I have, no.
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[ it beggars explaining, so he might as well elaborate. ]
I meant to ask you to lay with me after sundown, to warm ourselves. The conversation got out of hand.
Is it greed that compels man to seek out what it should not? To desire beyond what it's been given?
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Do you think you're greedy for wanting him? Or wanting him in addition to what you have already?
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He's my half-sister's husband. Regardless of what I have or who I'm with, I have no claim to him or his bed.
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[ The fact that Daemon's a married man does give Dorian some pause--mostly because he hasn't been asking every man he's fucked here whether or not they're unattached.
A married king, no less. ]
If I can be honest with you, I hope I haven't been unwittingly complicit in adultery. Do he and his wife have an arrangement?
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There is no great expectation of fidelity among our line, beyond each other. More often the faithfulness of a marriage is the arrangement, and bastards are a common problem among our blood.
There numbers among us no more than twenty, trueborn, that yet live. Rhaenyra knows, and she kept lovers herself with her marriage previous, besides.
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Well, at least there's no danger of me siring or carrying a bastard with either of you.
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I would not lie to you, Dorian.
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You and I have already discussed your other commitments, and they don't bother me. Nor do Daemon's, if his wife knows.
Truthfully. I wouldn't lie to you, either.
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You've been kind to me. More than I thought to expect from anyone, especially in that moment. I'd given my trust to another, and was made a fool in its aftermath. I thought
It doesn't matter what I thought, truthfully. It changes nothing.
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[ Dorian doesn't like these devices for conversations like this. He wants to be able to see Aemond's face, take his hand. ]
Halsin and I... We care deeply for each other. But that doesn't change how I feel about you. Nor are you keeping me from anything.
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I have no wish to endure it a second time, Dorian. I am selfish and childish and covetous, and I am many terrible things. I am a monster of a boy.
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If you want the truth of it, I expect to be left. Because that's all I've ever known.
Whatever you feel you are, whatever anyone else has called you, you have not been a monster to me.
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[ a disfigured son, a thief, a boy pretending to be a man. when has it mattered to anyone that he'd played by the rules and lost his eye regardless? when has it mattered that he spoke the truth and punished for it? when has it mattered that he offered the only true gentleness he knows, and made to swallow its chewed up remains in the end? ]
My desire will empty you until you resent me for it. I am fire and blood. All I do is burn.
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He knows where to look for him, though it isn't particularly safe to roam the halls alone right now. Dorian locks the door behind him, when he finds Aemond, frustration clear on his features. ]
You're an idiot, Aemond Targaryen.
[ Without preamble, crossing the room toward him. ]
An idiot and a hypocrite. Don't sabotage what we have with some imagined future transgression.
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I'm the idiot now, am I.
[ aemond is seated on what he knows now is a chaise longue, plush with its divoted upholstery and engraved frame. in the absence of electric power, they only have natural light to rely on. the pale light casts dorian in a blue-limned shape, leaching him of his golden tones. dorian doesn't deserve this. he should be out in the daylight, radiant as the sun itself.
despite his words, aemond holds his hand out for dorian to take, so that he might pull the man down and upon him. he wants him still, the desire curling around his soft parts like prey ensnared. isn't that the problem?
he wants. little good has ever come from aemond wanting. ]
Dorian, please. I don't mean to push you away.
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You're doing a hell of a job with it, asking me what I'll do if you choose to leave after I've just told you I want to be with you.
[ Not only that he wants him: the choice of language is intentional. Dorian isn't thinking, now that he doesn't have to stare down at letters without a face behind them, words tumbling from him with full force. ]
I can be patient, and I understand what it is to feel like a monster. To be resented. But you will not take my agency in this, in us away from me, not when I've gone and fallen in love with you.
[ And the last hangs between them, the room deathly silent, but Dorian doesn't take it back; he simply firms his jaw and steels himself for Aemond's response. ]
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You can't mean that. You can'tβ Love isn'tβ
[ what did it take his own mother to tell him she loved him? death, so many of it, her own and those of their family that she held dear. and aemond does not hold it against her, because theirs is not a family of tender touches and easily given affections. but if there is bitterness in the way aemond denies dorian this confession, it is not because of some perceived fault borne them. who could love him? not even his father. he is his mother's fury made flesh, burning all in his path.
his hand remains held out in shocked silence. all air has left him entirely; all sense has fled him as he stares up to dorian in sheer bewilderment. ]
Dorian. Dorian. [ his voice fails him, the second time. ] Do not be cruel like this.
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Is it cruel to give you an honest confession, when we might die any day from starvation or the roaming dead?
[ His lashes are wet. This has happened so quickly that Dorian has to claw back some amount of shame in it; wanting to take Aemond's hand, but afraid of rejection, now, if he does. ]
I won't rescind it. I can't. I do love you.
But if you don't want me, please tell me now.
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[ no, he's notβ he's not going to do this a second time. aemond gets to his feet, all too serious, all too determined, pushing himself into dorian's space with the brashness that only his reckless youth can manage. the hand not taken finds anchor on dorian's cheek, both hands now, both grasping and refusing to let go because he will not lead them both to the edge this time.
he meant it when he said he wouldn't brook the hurt a second time. and he means this, too; ]
No, I am not letting you go. I want you, I more than want you, I seethe when I think of you turning away from me. Please, Iβ
[ he doesn't know if he can say it. the only one he's ever called to love is aegon, his brother, his king, and even then the love had been poisonous at its very heart. he doesn't want to doom dorian to such a hideous thing. but what words else does he have left? ]
I think of you with the same brutal desire I feel for the sky. If you mean it β Can I not want to protect you from me, too?
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Dorian is always, always braced for rejection. He half-expects Halsin to wake up and not want him, feels the adrenaline flood his limbs with the thought of Aemond ending this.
He pulls back only enough to breathe, resting his forehead to Aemond's, a hand lifting to cup his jaw. ]
Of course I mean it. [ Husky with emotion, the hand in Aemond's shirt fisting tighter. ] I don't need protection from you, Aemond. I just need you to trust me.
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[ it's the harder confession to make. what would it be like to trust someone without planning for their eventual betrayal? what would it feel like to accept someone's words at their given value?
aemond had made mistakes here, trusting strangers who proved themselves unworthy in the end, and he reels from the betrayal still. but the self-aggrandising perceptions of others are neither dorian's fault or responsibility. dorian is right; aemond hurts them both in taking his choices from him, and insults them both besides. he breathes against dorian's cheek and tightens his grasping hands into fists at the man's collar, anchoring them together as close as gravity will allow. ]
But you do need protecting, Dorian. I am going to die soon, and there is no way to stop it.
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