[ 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.
[ Quiet with disbelief, Aemond's words seeming to swallow all sound in the room. His heart is lead, now; dropping into his stomach, nausea rising in its wake.
Dorian grips Aemond's arms, pulling back enough to look at him, to search his face for an answer. ]
Youβve met my sister. Spoken with her, heard her speak true of what is to come.
She has seen my death, and soon. I know of it, and I know the cost of it.
[aegon will be king again. he dies, and aegon becomes king. aemond knows this, despises this, but heβs come to understand what helaena had meant when she said that having her killed would not change anything. hw could scorch the whole kingdom, and he would still die. this is the cost of ambition. the cost of fighting for the throne.
aemond is beginning to understand his place in it, and what his dying will mean for their victory. ]
It is something I need to face. The Stranger comes for us all, and I can only hope to die as a dragonrider, Dorian, but you have to understand. I march to my death when I leave here.
I told you, when we first met. My brother is king, and I fight for my king.
[ he doesnβt let dorian go. holds to him tightly, like he might hold to a lifeline. ]
Let me protect you. Please. As I care for you and hold you to me, let me do this too.
[ Soon. That's the word that sticks like a knife, lodging itself between Dorian's ribs. Aemond is so young, and though Dorian doesn't think of Aemond as a boy, he doesn't deserve to have time robbed from him like this.
Fuck your brother, Dorian almost says, though they've never met, and he knows what it is to put his life on the line for someone or something else. He might laugh, under other circumstances, or make some joke to lessen the blow: instead, all he can do is slide his hands down Aemond's arms, to clutch at his hands where they fist in his shirt. Both of them gripping each other like they'll disappear, if one lets go. ]
Then don't leave. [ There's a tremor in his voice, knowing the futility, the unfairness of this request. ] Stay in this--awful, wretched place with me, if it means you won't die.
Were that a choice I could make willingly, I would still go back. I have a higher call to heed.
[ there is no escaping duty. aemond would not make himself a coward by running away from his duty, no matter how genuine the love offered to him here. he is his mother's rage and his father's neglect, and together these two torments have sharpened him into a weapon that knows little else beyond the fire of his blood. he is fire and blood; the legacy of his family is carved into his bones, seeped into his very marrow.
it doesn't mean he aches for dorian any less. it doesn't mean he thinks poorly of their affections. he has what he has, and these things will remain under the balfours' keep. he knows he cannot take this with him when he goes. ]
Do not think this my dismissal of your affections. It is never that. I care for you, and deeply. [ he allows himself the weakness of touching dorian's cheek, as tender as anything he can give. ] Too many people have died for the war we fight. Too many sacrifices made. If I surrender now... You would not want a coward.
I know. [ Soft, without fight in it. Selfish as Dorian wishes to be in this moment, he understands. Even if this place were idyllic, without horrors, even if it offered him the chance to stay with these new loves forever-- Dorian has an apocalypse to help avert, back home. He doesn't know how the Inquisition fares without him, and he feels helpless in that.
Dorian tips his cheek into Aemond's warm hand and holds his wrist, pressing a kiss to the center of his palm, his lashes wet. ]
Forgive me the foolish, impossible fantasy that neither of us has a war to go home to. I'd rather not march to my death when I return, but it's possible I will.
[ He mirrors Aemond, lifting a hand to his cheek, thumb tracing the edge of his eyepatch, pressing lightly into the scar tissue below it. ]
I won't mourn you before you're gone. You're here, now. Real as anything.
Only my mother has ever cried for me. [ how poignant it is, isn't it, that someone should mourn him in their little ways. tears unshed, clinging to dorian's lashes. the very last of propriety, or pride, or some other emotion left unnamed in aemond's vocabulary. ] Save your tears. I am not dying yet.
[ soon. by daemon's hand, by daemon's steel, by caraxes's fire β does it matter how, if the the man who takes him is the same? the histories tell of it. the histories remember for him, for them, their glory ever intertwined in the watery grave that awaits. there is little room left for anything else, but aemond will prise apart the iron that binds them, so that dorian might find warm in the spaces between. ]
Perhaps you'll remember for the both of us, when we return. And you'll survive, and live for years to come, and I will be alone the dragon you think of fondly in your sleep.
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no subject
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
[ 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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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. ]
no subject
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.
no subject
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
[ 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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[ Quiet with disbelief, Aemond's words seeming to swallow all sound in the room. His heart is lead, now; dropping into his stomach, nausea rising in its wake.
Dorian grips Aemond's arms, pulling back enough to look at him, to search his face for an answer. ]
You-- Tell me I've misheard you.
no subject
She has seen my death, and soon. I know of it, and I know the cost of it.
[ aegon will be king again. he dies, and aegon becomes king. aemond knows this, despises this, but heβs come to understand what helaena had meant when she said that having her killed would not change anything. hw could scorch the whole kingdom, and he would still die. this is the cost of ambition. the cost of fighting for the throne.
aemond is beginning to understand his place in it, and what his dying will mean for their victory. ]
It is something I need to face. The Stranger comes for us all, and I can only hope to die as a dragonrider, Dorian, but you have to understand. I march to my death when I leave here.
I told you, when we first met. My brother is king, and I fight for my king.
[ he doesnβt let dorian go. holds to him tightly, like he might hold to a lifeline. ]
Let me protect you. Please. As I care for you and hold you to me, let me do this too.
no subject
Fuck your brother, Dorian almost says, though they've never met, and he knows what it is to put his life on the line for someone or something else. He might laugh, under other circumstances, or make some joke to lessen the blow: instead, all he can do is slide his hands down Aemond's arms, to clutch at his hands where they fist in his shirt. Both of them gripping each other like they'll disappear, if one lets go. ]
Then don't leave. [ There's a tremor in his voice, knowing the futility, the unfairness of this request. ] Stay in this--awful, wretched place with me, if it means you won't die.
no subject
[ there is no escaping duty. aemond would not make himself a coward by running away from his duty, no matter how genuine the love offered to him here. he is his mother's rage and his father's neglect, and together these two torments have sharpened him into a weapon that knows little else beyond the fire of his blood. he is fire and blood; the legacy of his family is carved into his bones, seeped into his very marrow.
it doesn't mean he aches for dorian any less. it doesn't mean he thinks poorly of their affections. he has what he has, and these things will remain under the balfours' keep. he knows he cannot take this with him when he goes. ]
Do not think this my dismissal of your affections. It is never that. I care for you, and deeply. [ he allows himself the weakness of touching dorian's cheek, as tender as anything he can give. ] Too many people have died for the war we fight. Too many sacrifices made. If I surrender now... You would not want a coward.
no subject
Dorian tips his cheek into Aemond's warm hand and holds his wrist, pressing a kiss to the center of his palm, his lashes wet. ]
Forgive me the foolish, impossible fantasy that neither of us has a war to go home to. I'd rather not march to my death when I return, but it's possible I will.
[ He mirrors Aemond, lifting a hand to his cheek, thumb tracing the edge of his eyepatch, pressing lightly into the scar tissue below it. ]
I won't mourn you before you're gone. You're here, now. Real as anything.
no subject
[ soon. by daemon's hand, by daemon's steel, by caraxes's fire β does it matter how, if the the man who takes him is the same? the histories tell of it. the histories remember for him, for them, their glory ever intertwined in the watery grave that awaits. there is little room left for anything else, but aemond will prise apart the iron that binds them, so that dorian might find warm in the spaces between. ]
Perhaps you'll remember for the both of us, when we return. And you'll survive, and live for years to come, and I will be alone the dragon you think of fondly in your sleep.
My handsome, clever man.