Chapter Text
The first time Aemond Targaryen truly grasped the concept of loss, he was standing in the rain at his father’s funeral while the love of his life told him she was leaving him. The day and the memory are gray, monotonous and drained of the color she brought into his life.
It’s not the loss of his father that teaches him the meaning of absence; he hopes the man rots in whatever hell the gods of his mother see fit to bury him in.
They'd scarred each other, let marks that would never fade, but he never thought she'd take a knife to his heart.
Pain echoes through him, breaking bones and rewriting his DNA as it goes, as the four little words he hears in his dreams change the course of his life.
I can’t do this.
She is leaving and he is still here, rooted to a woman who doesn’t want him, that he is fated to love forever.
now
Aemond looks to the ceiling of his office and counts to three. When it doesn’t do anything to lower his blood pressure, he tries again in Valyrian. Then Arabic. Japanese, French, and Spanish are equally useless. The artfully exposed beams and glass offer no answers, as cold and modern as ever.
He only gets to two in Russian before his older brother interrupts his peace again, voice crackling through the speaker of the phone on his desk connected to the intercom at the entrance to his office floor.
“I swear to god, Aemond, Mum will have my balls if I don’t talk to you face to face and it’s freezing fucking cold out here, please just stop pretending you can’t hear me and let me in-”
“Portia, please ensure that my brother does not gain entry to the office,” Aemond presses another button to speak to his secretary, tuning out Aegon’s pleading for entrance.
“Of course, Mr. Targaryen,” the smooth voice of his secretary responds, crackling slightly over the line. He values Portia’s discretion and organization, a must-have when his schedule is this crazy and his family has never been more famous.
Aemond tries to focus back on work, the march of the clock on his desk reminding him time is precious and of the essence, but the photographs he’s trying to analyze keep blurring with the building headache tied to Aegon’s increasingly frantic rant. Absentmindedly, Aemond rubs over his eyepatch and throws the pictures in a scattered pile on his desk.
Looking away from the smear of blood on the photograph in front of him, Aemond focuses back on the slightly slurred rant coming from his speakerphone while evaluating his schedule for the next few days. Aegon is supposed to be sober, but it could just as easily be the cold temperature he prefers to keep the floor at to dissuade visitors that makes his voice shake.
He has crime scene photos to review, merger contracts to review, a deposition to prepare for, and then there’s his mother’s custom cross to pick up from the jewelers for her latest charitable endeavor. Helaena’s next symposium on Blackburn’s Sphinx Moth is this week in Edinburgh, and he promised her he would be front row. Daeron has a match this weekend and he had a shipment he needed to ensure was properly taken care of for the seedier side of the company, not even to mention the talk he needs to have with Daemon for dropping off the face of the planet after blowing up a big deal two weeks ago.
Maybe, if he cared enough, he could scrape up ten minutes for Aegon, but he’d prefer not to alter his schedule for his screwup brother at all.
“-and I don’t wanna go any more than you do, but Mum is insisting that we all be there for this stupid fucking family dinner like I haven’t sat in a corner while Valaena and Daemon argue about her traveling safety and Mum and Nyra make eyes at each other a million times before-”
Aemond lurches forward, slamming his finger down on the button to unlock the lobby door before he can think better of it. He couldn’t have stopped the action if he’d tried, that animalistic part of his brain engaged the second he heard her name.
“Sick, thanks, Mate!” Aegon’s voice is already dimming through the speaker as he hurries into Aemond’s space.
He has maybe a minute before his idiot older brother bursts into his office. Aemond takes that opportunity to stroll to his expensively stocked bar cart and pour himself a healthy glass of scotch while he prepares himself. Normally, he wouldn’t torment Aegon by drinking in front of him, but he has a feeling he’s going to need the drink.
If her name echoes through his head, dredging up memories he savors too much to look at right now, the very least he can do is take the edge off.
One sip into the smooth liquor and Aegon is stumbling into his office, awkwardly bowing at Portia’s slim form. His secretary is staring at the distinct Targaryen features juxtaposed with Aegon’s musty form in torn clothes that have seen better days, brows furrowed in confusion.
“Why are you bowing at my secretary?” Aemond tightens his grip on the crystal glass as the door glides shut behind his unwelcome visitor, turning his back to the view behind him.
“I dunno, isn’t that what you do for a pretty lady showing you where to go?” Aegon tugs a rumpled beanie off his head, the same silvery locks that Aemond has disheveled and in need of a good wash.
“No. It is not,” Aemond grits out, taking another mouthful of scotch if just to keep him from asking Aegon what he so desperately wants.
“Huh. Well, she’s right fit, do you think she’s-”
“Aegon. What do you want?” Aemond raises his one good eyebrow at his brother.
“Right. Right. Can I have some of that?” Aegon points hopefully at the bar cart like Aemond doesn’t know about the enforced sobriety Alicent has him on.
Of course he knows. It was his idea that he’d sold his mother on during their weekly brunch updates.
“No. What do you want?” Aemond’s voice is cold.
Aegon huffs. “No need to be a twat, I was just asking. Family dinner, Mother said if I don’t get you there I don’t get this month’s allowance, so I really really really need you to come. It’s tomorrow night at Mum’s place.”
“What’s special about this family dinner?” Aemond prods, holding out the scotch glass teasingly. It's cruel to taunt Aegon like this, but he finds desperation crawling up his throat.
“Some welcome back dinner for Valaena since Daemon is making her-,” Aegon mutters before his eyes widen theatrically and he looks at Aemond with dawning comprehension. “I knew you had a reason to let me up! Have you seen her since-?”
“No,” Aemond says shortly, downing the rest of his drink. “I haven’t seen Valaena in years.”
“No, I probably should’ve remembered that, shouldn’t I? My bad, sorry, should’ve figured you hadn’t seen her since she cut your heart out of your chest, stomped on it in thousand-pound shoes, and promptly left the fucking country. Of course that was the first and last proof I ever saw that you do, in fact, have a heart, so really it’s weird I forgot-”
“Aegon,” Aemond warns, but there is no stopping the flood of words out of his brother’s mouth. Aegon isn’t breathing between words, a sure sign he’s ramping up to a truly unstoppable ramble. Not even the violence in Aemond’s voice is enough to stop this now.
“Not every day a girl demolishes Aemond Targaryen like that, but wow, did Valaena work you over. I guess she’s moving back now, but I can see by the vaguely murderous gleam in your eye that nobody told you yet and I’m so glad it gets to be me. You look like you swallowed glass. I can’t believe you haven’t seen her since, what? Dad’s funeral?! I forgot she avoids you like the plague when she’s back. Oh shit, does that mean you haven’t seen the tattoo? Or the tits? I wasn’t meant to see either, but I walked in the cabana at the beach house without knocking and fuck , she has grown up-“
In one smooth motion, Aemond flicks his wrist out, the heavy crystal glass soaring across his office with pinpoint accuracy. The glass collides with Aegon’s right eye, a resounding thunk echoing off the glass walls of his office.
“Fuck!” Aegon howls, clutching his already swelling eye and hopping around like that’ll relieve the pain.
“Watch,” Aemond says silkily, turning back to his bar and collecting some ice in his handkerchief, “how you speak about her. If I ever hear you disrespecting her or mentioning her tits again, I’ll take your eye like she took mine.”
Aemond presses the makeshift ice pack none too gently against his older brother’s eye socket. “Now, be a good little lapdog to Mother and let her know I’ll come to dinner and you can have your allowance. Ice that, or don’t, just keep her name out of your mouth.”
He vividly recalls just how mind-blowing the sight of Valaena shirtless was, but that was before she had gotten a tattoo. Focusing back on his brother is hard when it’s been five years without her touch, but his banked rage at Aegon’s crude comments about her have him staring at his brother with fire in his eye.
The beast he has been keeping caged for years rattles at the end of its leash, scenting blood in the air.
“Gods,” Aegon wheezes, taking the ice pack from him and pressing it more gently against the already purpling flesh, “nearly five years later and you’re still pussy whipped for her. You know she’s been with Dal-”
By the time Aemond has wrapped his fingers around the next glass on his cart, Aegon is sliding out of his office, that infuriating half-drunk giggle following him out.
The second Portia lets him know that Aegon has left the office floor, Aemond is collapsing in his chair, twisting the signet ring around his pinkie. Memories of pale purple eyes haunt him as he stares uncomprehendingly at the unobstructed view of London laid out in front of him. The view is lost on him as memories of the best years of his life fight for supremacy.
Obsession has him in its grip, memories like vices tightening around him. It feels familiar, takes him back to a time when his control hadn’t been so ironclad.
He really needs to finish his markup of the contract and call his contact at Scotland Yard and tell Daemon to go fuck himself, but he finds himself opening a new incognito browser on his laptop, typing in her name.
Valaena Velaryon.
As usual, there’s not much about her specifically. Plenty about her work, result after result of photographs she’s taken, awards her art has won. There’s articles about their family, speculation about the elusive only daughter of Rhaenyra Targaryen. The only readily available information about her is that she’s Lucerys’ twin, that she’s a prominent and celebrated wildlife photographer, that she attended Oxford and Harvard. There’s a Reddit he hopes isn’t seriously speculating on whether she actually exists.
But there’s something new on the Reddit thread, something he hasn’t seen before. When he clicks on photos, there’s a link to Rhaena’s Instagram. His cousin is probably what Helaena would call an influencer, with followers in the millions, page littered with pastels and aesthetic photos of her family, her hobbies, all the places she travels for work.
This photo is recent, posted yesterday, something he would’ve seen if he had social media of his own.
It’s taken from behind, the tall and elegant forms of Rhaena and Baela facing the camera, wide smiles across their faces. They’re both wearing swimsuits on the deck of what he’s fairly certain is Corlys’ favorite yacht. Nestled between them is a much shorter form facing the dramatic vista of the ocean, a waterfall of silver curls he’d recognize anywhere spilling down her back. He knows the silky feel of those curls intimately and sometimes thinks he can smell them in that space between waking and sleeping. A large fluffy towel is wrapped around her in the photo, obscuring any indication of her shape, just adding to the mystery.
She’s not tagged, but Rhaena captioned it with lots of multicolored heart emojis and the word sisters in Valyrian, enough to set internet sleuths speculating and Aemond’s heart racing.
Aemond’s knuckles are white when he slams the laptop shut and grabs his car keys.
“Portia, clear my schedule for the rest of the week,” he orders as he sweeps out of his office, coat in hand and wallet in pocket. Portia looks up at him in concern, given that it’s a solid five hours before he usually even entertains the thought of leaving.
“Sir? You want me to reschedule with the Ministry of Jus-”
“Clear it,” Aemond calls over his shoulder, already deep in the throes of planning.
By the time he makes it to his car, he’s lost in the thrall of jasmine and lemon again.
To his extraordinarily bad luck, there’s a sleek blue car he recognizes in front of Rhaenys and Corlys’ estate. Driftmark is far enough out that he doubts its a coincidence that their car is here.
To his even worse luck, the driver of that car is exiting the front door as he pulls up, though he supposes he should be grateful that Corlys’ truck is missing at least.
That seems about right. She comes back, but the other shoe must drop because he has never known a day’s peace in his life and Jacaerys Velaryon has never been inclined to let it be.
Already sensing the confrontation, Aemond can’t resist antagonizing. Exiting his own car, he leans against the hood of Jacaerys’ car, looking at his nephew through the dark lens of his sunglasses.
In another surprise, Lucerys is following behind his older brother, those steely gray eyes already driving into Aemond. His nephews line up, a united front of crossed arms and disapproving expressions on the gravel driveway.
“Nephews,” he drawls, Luke stiffening at the arrogance in his tone. Gods, Aemond hates the way he has the same slant to his eyes when he’s annoyed that his twin does.
“Uncle,” Jacaerys grits between clenched teeth. “She’s not here and she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Pity. I’m sure my sweet niece will find me eventually, she never could resist what I have to offer her. Now, get out of my way before I move you,” Aemond straightens up to his full height, though he’s only an inch or so taller than Jace. It's taken years, but the Strong boys have finally grown into the height of their father, though they still move out of the way easily when Aemond asserts himself.
“Watch how you speak of my sister,” Lucerys grunts out, voice low and threatening even as he moves aside for Aemond to proceed up to the house.
“I’ll see you all at dinner, hm?” Aemond taunts, sauntering up to the house in a blatant show of disrespect. He can hear his nephews grumbling at each other as they get into the car, the sound of peeling tires following shortly after.
Aemond doesn’t bother to knock and lets himself in when he gets to the ornate driftwood door.
Rhaenys house smells like sea salt and vanilla, warm scents from his childhood, from running through these halls after the twins. If he looks above the fourth stair leading up to the second floor, he’d find a picture of her with him in a headlock when she was no more than eight years old, Baela sitting on his legs. He has to tear his eyes away from the glimpses into happier times, to focus himself back up on the reason he came all the way out here. Making his way through the massive estate decorated with trophies of all of Corlys’ sails and Rhaenys’ achievements at the company, he follows the scent of lemon bars to the glass back doors spilling sunlight across the marble floors.
The woman herself is sitting on the balcony overlooking her garden, Meleys at her feet, a lemon bar in one hand and thick file in the other. Rhaenys’ hair is in her standard updo, dressed well in a pale blue suit and heels even though she’s in her own home.
Upon his entrance, she turns around and throws the rest of her lemon bar at him.
“Was wondering when you’d show up,” Rhaenys says wryly, grabbing herself another lemon bar from the plate in front of her as she picks up a thick stack of papers from her file.
“How long have you known?” Aemond settles into the chair next to her, giving Meleys a gentle scritch between her ears as he folds his long body in.
“Not as long as you’re suspecting. Believe me when I say I wasn’t expecting this either. Are you going to be a problem?” Rhaenys looks up from her file and raises one elegant eyebrow at him.
“Do I need to be a problem?” Aemond fishes for information, but Rhaenys knows his tricks. She should, she taught him half of them back when he’d been inseparable from her granddaughter.
“Aemond,” Rhaenys straightens up, that ice-cold glare that makes her the queen of the board room aimed at him. “The grandchild I see the least is finally coming home. My son’s only daughter. This is for real, she is back this time, not off to galivant to parts unknown in a week. Let me make this very clear to your thick caveman brain: if you scare her into running away again, I will personally ensure your other eye ends up a treat for Meleys. Do I make myself clear?”
On cue, Meleys stirs at Rhaenys’ feat, staring at Aemond with disconcerting amber eyes. Aemond scowls at the enormous dog, but she does not do anything else but blink slowly at him. The control he’s spent years cultivating is strong, but he can feel the leash he has around himself fraying. He’d spent the whole drive over here running over every moment from the day Valaena left him. She’s so close now, but still so far away, it makes his skin itch and his knuckles whiten.
“She left me, Rhaenys, I didn’t force her to leave,” Aemond admits, peeling his orange in thick strips.
“And why did she leave, hm?”
“Don’t ‘hm,’ it’s my sound,” Aemond tosses the orange peel on the table, the sweet smell filling the air until he can’t smell lemon anymore.
“I was saying that before you were even a twinkle in Viserys’ eye. I take it from your diverting tactic that you either don’t know why she left or you’re too scared to tell me why,” Rhaenys observes, tossing her contract on the table to focus fully on him.
“She never told you why?” Aemond keeps his face neutral.
Aemond doesn’t know if it’s hope flaring in his chest or disappointment that Rhaenys doesn’t seem to know why. She’s not even here and she’s turning him inside out, fire licking at his veins at the very possibility of seeing her again.
All of his work is waiting for him, weighing down his shoulders, but here he is, at her remote estate, searching out answers he knows Rhaenys can’t give him.
“She didn’t tell any of us, which always made me think it was either so horrible she didn’t want us to hate you, or she was ashamed of herself. Which was it, Aemond?” Rhaenys nudges at his shin with her heels, the only person he’d let get away with that.
While Alicent had tried her best with him, he’d been more of a co-parent to her than a child. It was Rhaenys who had wiped his face when he fell, taught him to stand up straight, and encouraged him to exceed any and every expectation Viserys had ever thrown at him.
It had been Rhaenys who had known the true depth of his despair after she’d left him, Rhaenys to who he would still hesitate to lie to.
“I don’t know,” Aemond admits. “I replay it over and over again but I’ve never understood it.”
A moment of silence falls between them as she studies his face.
“Still?” She finally asks.
Aemond snorts, the same purple fire that had been smoldering for years but was reignited by his idiot brother’s rambling filling his vision for a moment. “You know the answer to that already.”
“I take it that you still have it, then?” Rhaenys muses, pulling a carton of cigarettes towards her, some pearl-encrusted lighter he would bet his whole fortune Corlys made for her in her hand.
He knows what she’s referring to, his most prized possession he wants desperately to give to someone else. Waiting to answer until she’s lit her cigarette and pulled in a deep drag, he weighs honesty to her.
“I do,” Aemond says in Valyrian as she breathes in the smoke.
“Then don’t fuck it up again,” she admonishes, blowing out the smoke in a perfect ring that drifts towards his face.
If he told her what he was thinking, she’d put out that cigarette in his good eye, so he just nods and looks out to the grounds where he’d lost an eye and fallen in love all those years ago.
Aemond counts down the hours until he gets to see her again, feeling her shadow over his shoulder for every second. Pale purple eyes follow him no matter where he goes or what work he tries to get done.
The biggest case of his career, the biggest merger of his career, and he’s lost in time to her. He works out, thinking of her. He reviews documents, thinking of her. He and Daemon get in a brawl at headquarters, he thinks of her.
After Helaena’s conference, he drives them back south from Edinburgh at speeds that have his serene sister letting him know that wrapping the car around a tree wouldn’t fix a broken heart. He drops his sister off at her apartment after she assures him she’ll find her own way to dinner and that he needs to shower off his bad energy.
With less than two hours before when he’s supposed to leave for the Red Keep, his parent’s estate, he does just what Helaena recommended.
He stands under the rain shower in his master bathroom, water as hot as it’ll go, regretting looking at that photo on Rhaena’s Instagram again. Now, all he can think about is what was beneath the towel, where that tattoo Aegon snuck a peak at is. He wonders if the pain of the tattoo made her wet, fighting off the jealousy that someone else was close enough to her smooth skin to permanently alter it.
It should’ve been him wielding a tattoo gun, marking her forever, inflicting that sweet agony he knows would excite her.
Memories of looking at this apartment together are recreated in the steam around him, filled with echoes of her sly voice asking him if he’d be able to get enough traction on the marble floor to make it worth her while to shower together.
They’d never gotten to christen the shower together, but he finds his mind wandering, picturing it now.
Without even really deciding to do it, his hand wanders to his cock.
He’s not surprised he’s hard, firm and insistent against the flat of his stomach. Rubbing his thumb over the weeping slit at the top, he pulls out a favorite memory, the first time she’d been able to deepthroat him.
If the gods were kind, it’d be reality, with her wet hair sticking to her perfect curves, pink tongue open as he guides his cock into the warmth of her mouth. She’d moan around him, tears gathering in the corners of her eyes as he tells her how pretty she looks taking him.
Aemond gets lost in the memory, in the fantasy, hand working up and down his aching cock. It’s not the same as her touch, but it’s something, and he finds her name on his tongue as pleasure races down his spine.
She’d always known exactly how to work him, small hands twisting, tongue so wet and soft against him.
Fuck. This little fantasy isn’t doing him any favors, but it is taking the edge off.
Maybe if he lets himself think of her now, he won’t shove her into the nearest bathroom and ruck her skirt up and bury himself inside her cunt until she came all over him and pleaded for forgiveness for leaving him.
As the pit in his stomach tightens, he finds the fantasy shifting. If he could, he’d pin her scarred face against the glass wall, place his palm on the small of her back and push until she arched out that perfect ass to him, like an offering and a promise all in one, pretty pink pussy glistening in the low light.
She’d beg. She always begged in the end.
He comes, her name on his lips, to the memory of her begging for his cock to split her open, hand pressed to the wall for stability. His seed is wasted down the drain when he wishes it was dripping out of her swollen cunt, but at least he’s not in danger of fucking her immediately now.
As soon as he can breathe normally again, he turns off the shower, slinging a towel around his waist and drying his hair with the other. All peace of his orgasm is gone when finds the next surprise the universe has left for him.
“You haven’t had sex since she left,” Daeron laughs at him when he emerges from his room to find his little brother sprawled on his couch, Vhagar on his lap.
Traitor cat.
“The next time you bring that up, I’m telling Mother how you really got Tessarion. Why are you even here?” Aemond snarls, whipping his towel at his brother’s head. Daeron dodges artfully, curls jostling slightly.
“Mother sent me to make sure you’re actually coming tonight. It’s the first time the whole family has been together since Viserys died, blah blah blah,” Daeron laughs, Vhagar butting her head against his chest to get more pets. His grizzled old cat didn’t like many people, but she did love Daeron.
And Valaena, but Aemond buries that thought.
“I told Aegon I’d be there, I meant it. Now give me back that key, that was for feeding Vhagar when I’m gone only.”
“No, you said ‘emergencies’ and I think this qualifies as an emergency. The great Aemond, celibate since the love of his life disappeared over the horizon, jerking off in the shower like a teenager at the possibility of seeing her again-”
Vhagar scatters with a hiss when Aemond wraps the towel around his brother’s neck and pulls him over the back of the couch. Daeron crumples down on the ground with a muffled groan, in pain but not permanently hurt. Aemond was more careful than that, but he was sick of his brothers bringing her up to him.
“Jesus, okay, sorry, I forget that you do all that fighting shit for fun. I will keep my comments on your sex life to myself, try not to tell Mother you’ve been sinning, and not repeat Aegon’s mistake of telling you how hot Valaena has gotten, you can see that for yourself tonight. I’m gonna go pick up Hel, don’t be late!” Daeron scrambles to his feet, rubbing the red stripe on his throat that’ll fade before he even gets to Helaena’s apartment.
Aemond curses his infernally close family as Daeron waltzes out of his apartment with the grace of a professional athlete. Getting dressed, he makes sure to cover the tattoos she hasn’t seen yet, to build his own armor.
While he doesn’t feel half feral anymore, he feels anticipation building in his veins, a heady sizzle, a steady drumbeat of her name.
Daeron had been right, of course, but that’s not really something his little brother gets to comment on. It’s not something anyone gets to comment on. Valaena is finally back, he needs to focus on that, on how to keep her.
The last thing he needs is his brother commenting on his sex life or hearing him jerk himself in the shower to thoughts of the woman who broke his heart.
The woman he has no intention of ever letting go of again.
Normally, Aemond dreads family dinners. Before his father died, it wasn’t so bad beyond the blatant favoritism his father showed Rhaenyra and the way his mother turned her nose up at everything, because Valaena was with him. He could look past the slights, the disrespect, the apathy and outright abuse his father hurled at everyone but Rhaenyra because she was with him. At first, just as childhood companions and then it was more , as they finally gave in to the inexplicable draw between them.
After his father died and she left him, he grew to hate those dinners, his sister’s family and his own gathered around that too-big oak table engraved with half their family tree. He’d run his hands over the carving of Valaena’s name and pretend. Dinner was silent and cold and reminded Aemond of the empty spot next to him and what he had lost.
Driving so fast to the Red Keep that he arrives early, Aemond kisses his mother’s cheek and exchanges meaningless pleasantries with Rhaenyra in the familiarity of his childhood home. Corlys nods at him from the bar, Daemon scowling at him like usual when Aegon and Viserys rush him. Baela gives him finger guns, as close as she gets to affection, bypassing him immediately to chat with the newly arrived Helaena and Daeron. Aegon is late, as per usual, but he’s not the latest one.
Tension lingers in the air, even as little Viserys insists on riding on his shoulders. The smell of Rhaenyra’s favorite meal that Alicent probably spent hours on permeates the whole home, overriding the smell of cinnamon he associates with his mother.
Finally, when he turns around from an elaborate spin he’s throwing little Viserys through, she’s there. Coming to an abrupt halt, he sets Viserys down gently, his nephew’s giggles fading from his ears.
Valaena is tucked into the corner, half hidden behind her twin brother’s broad back, Jace at her side.
It feels like he’s been struck by lightning. Details fly through his brain in dizzying succession.
Her hair is longer (he knew that from his internet stalking), there’s a bruise that spans from her jaw up to her scarred eye (he didn’t know that but it makes rage fly through him), she’s wearing heels that still have her as the shortest one in the room outside of those under the age of ten (some things never change).
In the years since he’s seen her, she’s grown up. Her lips and chest are fuller, cheekbones high and proud. There are more piercings trailing up her ear, rings on nearly every finger. Her dress covers her arms, leaving her collarbone exposed, the hem of her dress swinging above her knees, offering tantalizing glimpses of thigh.
But it’s her eyes, still so big and expressive in her face, that nearly stop his heart.
They’re trained on him and full of memories he feels in his bones.
Valaena.
before
“-Aegon, if you just applied yourself like Nyra does, you’d be in line too! Look at your sister, she has a family and runs the company and a Ph.D. and you’re a drunk wastrel! Useless, useless children draining me to my grave! I have been cursed with a burdensome family, traitors and ingrates with no potential and no future!”
“Viserys!” Alicent snaps at the same time a small hand wraps around Aemond’s under the table. “They’re your sons!”
“They’re useless, as are you. Rhaenyra is my only child,” VIserys spits out, little flecks flying out of his mouth to darken the tablecloth.
“Father, please, don’t. I think we should just go-” Rhaenyra stands, Daemon’s hand in hers, looking distinctly uncomfortable at the fight brewing at the table, at Viserys dragging her into it.
What started as a celebration of Aegon’s three months sober has descended into unmitigated chaos.
It reminds Aemond painfully of the night he lost his eye, but this time it seems like Nyra might at least be on his side. But Viserys is deep in his cups to dull the pain, ironically reflecting the very failing he is yelling at his son for.
Aegon sits, slumped in his seat, fresh out of his first stint in rehab, and takes it.
Aemond cannot bear to watch it any longer. He stands abruptly, chair scraping over the floor until everyone in the room is watching him.
“He’s trying, which is more than I can say for you,” Aemond doesn’t yell, but his voice has no kindness. Valaena’s hand is still in his, squeezing and supporting as he stands up to his sperm donor.
“Don’t get me started on you, Aemond, you won’t like where that ends,” Viserys threatens, nearly upending his own wine glass as he lurches towards his second son. Alicent leaps up, putting herself between Viserys and Aemond as Daemon helps a very pregnant Rhaenyra to her feet.
“Fuck you,” he says calmly to his father before turning and marching out, the loss of the warm little hand more painful than anything his father could say to him.
In a blind rage, muscle memory takes him through the winding halls of his father’s estate, out the back door, into the crisp chill of the night. For once, it’s not raining, the sky is clear, a full moon dominating the heavens. He’s pacing to the outskirts of the grounds, right on the edge of the twisted forest when he realizes there’s someone behind him.
He whirls around, fast and tall and strong even for a boy of seventeen, pressing his pursuer against the bark of a tree before he even realizes what he’s doing.
Valaena just stares up at him, lavender eyes trusting and wide, unconcerned with the way Aemond’s hand is on her throat and the other one is drawn back as if to strike her.
“Are you going to hit me, Aemond?” She says in Valyrian, relaxing back into the bark of the tree even as his hand flexes around the column of her throat.
He drops his elbow, straightens his hand out of the first like her words had burnt him. “You? Never, unless you asked me. Viserys? Maybe.” He pauses. “I thought Rhaenyra and Daemon were leaving.”
“They are. I told them you’d bring me back later,” Valaena says simply, her warmth soaking in past the chill of the night air.
Her hand finds his, filling the empty spaces between his fingers with hers. Some of the anger leaks out of him, falling down as inconsequential as dew drops evaporating in the morning sun. Neither of them moves to put more space between them, and Aemond finds his heart racing, his mind racing back to the dark of the night when his thoughts about her bleed into something primal and hot.
“I’m not going to tell you it doesn’t matter, because you deserve better. But I do want you to know that you are the best man I know, and that you did all that on your own. You’re smart and strong and witty and cunning and honorable and none of that is because of him .”
The words wash over him like falling into a gentle sleep, easing away the rage until his breathing evens and he can think straight again. He’s wrapped in her wake, lost in her eyes, wouldn’t have been able to move if the world had been on fire for all the intensity simmering between them.
When he regains the ability to speak, he smiles down at her, a soft thing he only ever has for her or Helaena. Her lips twist up to match him, pulling him down into that dangerous path.
It’s a path paved with bad intentions, with fantasies and feelings he has no idea what to do with. Some of it is dark, obsessive, a beating refrain of ‘mine’ on repeat. Some of it is soft and warm as sunlight, easy and instinctive. He already knows he feels possessive of her, far more possessive than is healthy, but when her hands brush his elbows in comfort, caution is thrown to the wind. What are consequences, the possibility of more of his father’s disappointment, of her own father trying to kill him, of being inexplicably bound to the possibility that she tastes as good as she looks?
He’s being pulled in, past the edge of sanity. Valaena is looking up at him, so trusting, so open, lips just slightly parted.
“Honorable?” He says as a last-ditch effort to stop himself from sailing past the point of no return.
“Honorable,” Valaena confirms, this little mischievous glint in her eyes.
“The way I’m thinking about you right now is not honorable at all,” he mutters, still staring at her lips.
The hurt of the fight with his father, the things Viserys had said, no longer exist.
“Well, I didn’t say you were honorable all the time. I actually like you best when you’re not being honorable-”
She hasn’t even finished her sentence when he gives up on resisting, pressing his lips to hers and finally tasting her.
Honey, lemon, fate.
Valaena makes this little gasp into his mouth that has him hardening in his trousers, her arms thrown around his neck as he presses her further against the tree. She clutches him like he’s a lifeline, lips moving against his, learning quickly as he consumes her.
As she gains confidence, she pulls him in closer, hands tangling in his hair.
When he finally finds the will to pull away from her, they’re both gasping for breath, Valaena’s arms tight around him.
Her tongue flicks out against his throat, sealing their fate, for better or worse.
Now that he’s tasted her, he will never let her go.