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He wasn't sure what he'd expected upon accepting his uncle's invite to return with them to Summerhall. Perhaps he'd hoped being amongst family would bring him some semblance of calm in their shared grief, or perhaps he thought the dreary weather and cold chill in the mountain air would feel sympathetic with the misery already filling him from head to toe. Perhaps he'd hoped it would make him feel something- anything- instead of numb and hollowed out.
Valarr had scarcely been here three days and he felt worse than how he'd felt on the road. He was glad he'd sent Kiera ahead with what had been his father's company; he couldn't stomach the thought of her loveliness getting swallowed alive by this place. It was so newly built and yet already drenched in misery- Dyanna had left a gaping hole in its foundations that hoped to sink him now, mourning the final parent he'd had. He hoped the three of them: mother, father, and Dyanna, were with one another now. He hoped they were in a better state than he.
The wind howled and hissed at him where he stood on the balcony, dressed much too lightly for the time of year and the weather for the highlands in the Marches. He'd hoped the cold would surpass numbness and hurt him in some way- a sting in his fingertips and an ache in his bones would have been divine.
"You'll freeze your arse off, get inside before I have to uproot your boots with a chisel," Daeron's voice was droning and low but the hand against his elbow was warm enough to jolt him. There was another hand against his waist, tugging his frigid fingers from the railing as he forced Valarr to wander back inside, where the air was scarcely warmer but thick as fog and suffocating in his throat. The air taste of misery, or perhaps that was just the wine on Daeron's breath.
Daeron looked like guilt personified- he'd tried to explain himself their first night together, when he'd sheepishly slunk into Valarr's room and bed and laid at his back as he had when they were children. He'd known what was to come, Valarr thought it would make him crackle with anger and disbelief but it just made him feel empty. He knew whatever grief he felt, Daeron would have been stomaching for weeks, waiting for whatever he'd seen in sleep to manifest itself.
It should have been Maekar, Daeron had whispered against the back of Valarr's head, his hair stirring with the other's breath and shaking hands against his sides- unwilling to embrace him but similarly unwilling to leave him completely. The sentiment was appreciated, but Valarr knew what his father would say to that: it should have been noone, for it should not have happened.
He looked up at Daeron now as he was turned, a hand sliding up his shoulder to cup his cheek. Daeron, he thought, for the sake of stirring the slightest curl of heat in his chest. He looked tired and pained from the stitches still holding his face together, and Valarr could tell he was drunk in the slight sway of his feet and the droop to his eyes, but he'd hauled himself up off whatever settee he'd been slumped in to check on him. Daeron could be sweet- clearly inherited from his mother and forced back out of him by his father, though dregs of it still remained.
"I'm leaving this place," he muttered before the thought had fully set itself in his head. He watched Daeron's face fall and took no pleasure in seeing it.
"I-is that wise? You're—"
"The heir, likely Hand of the King," Valarr answered for him, resisting the urge to spit as if the titles tasted of ash on his tongue. "This… place brings me no peace or respite as your father seemed to have hoped it would."
Maekar, he could not bring himself to say the name. He knew Maekar could not have meant it, but intent hadn't slowed the mace as it struck the back of his father's helm.
"It's never done such a thing, I'm afraid," Daeron admitted with a welling sadness in his pale eyes- though one remained flooded with blood and half shut. "How do you think the Keep will make you feel? If grief haunts you here it'll be no easier where he lived."
Valarr shrugged, staring at a thread that had pulled away from Daeron's doublet and now sat out of place, begging to be grasped and trimmed away. "I'll need to return eventually, what point is there in delaying?"
Daeron stared at him, eyes flicking over his face as if he were trying to shove aside Valarr's despondence to find something beneath it all. There's no end to it, Valarr wanted to tell him, the grief is bottomless.
But they'd both lost mothers, Daeron knew well what Valarr was feeling, and he needn't be reminded.
"Do you know where your father is?" Valarr asked as Daeron opened his mouth to reply to him. He watched his brow twitch and his face twist into confusion, "I'd like to tell him as I've told you that I'm leaving, I'll of course need supplies for the road."
He'd brought some men along with him from the main caravan headed back to the capital, and he'd rather not starve to death or have to stop along the way if he could avoid it.
"I'm not sure he'll want to see you, I can fetch a—"
"He'll see me," Valarr interjected, collecting Daeron's hand from his cheek to hold in his own, brushing a thumb over his knuckles. "I'd like to speak with him before I go. I don't know when we'll see one another next."
"You wish to see Maekar before you go," Daeron huffed, utterly incredulous.
"I've already seen you, haven't I?"
Daeron's jaw clenched and he grasped at Valarr's hand, swallowing thickly whilst looking as if he was desperate to say something. Valarr sucked his bottom lip into his mouth and dug his teeth in until it stung and beaded with blood as he waited. He didn't know what he expected nor what he wanted, but it was enough to keep his feet rooted to the spot.
Daeron pulled his hand free and drew Valarr into his chest, arms sliding across his shoulders in a stiff but warm embrace. The backs of Valarr's eyes ached and his throat twisted itself into a painful knot as he relaxed into the embrace, pulling in a deep breath that smelled of Daeron and the wine he'd been drowning himself in. He smelled wrong in a way Valarr could not pin down until he realised what was amiss: he didn't smell like his father- that deeply familiar scent that he couldn't ever imagine forgetting whilst knowing he inevitably would. Daeron didn't smell wrong, he just didn't smell right.
"Stay, just a day longer," Daeron whispered against the shell of his ear, and Valarr knew his breath would have stirred that pale streak of hair: another thing that would remind him of his father forever and near as unbearable as the colour in his own eyes.
"I cannot."
Daeron clutched him firmer and Valarr pressed his hands up between them and pushed until he relented. "He'll be in his chambers, he tends not to stray far from them when he is in a dour mood."
'Which is often' remained unsaid between them.
"You were always Maekar's favourite son, Valarr," Daeron murmured softly, a sad curl to his mouth as he grasped Valarr's cheek once more and pulled him closer to press his lips between his cousin's brows. "If you decide to stay after all, I'll have you as long as you need."
The servants were more and more unwilling to look at him as he crossed the holding, a heaviness to his steps and a hunch to his shoulders. Everything looked so damn cold- the light that filled the halls held no warmth or comfort to them, and the still air seemed to reach out to him and press in on him. I'd go insane living here, he thought.
He couldn't remember it feeling so hostile here when he was younger, but that was before Dyanna and his mother's deaths, before Aerion discovered his mean streak and he and Daeron spent their days wrestling in the gardens and chasing one another through these cavernous halls. It was as if she'd taken all the life from this place with her to the beyond, leaving it a cold, empty husk.
He found Maekar in his chamber just as Daeron had promised- dressed down to a degree Valarr had never seen him and looking as worse for wear as he had in the hours after the trial. Serves him right, Valarr caught himself thinking before he could dash such a thought from his mind.
Maekar's back was to him, hunched at a desk with a hand pressed to his pale hair and the other laid out atop a blank piece of parchment, the quill waiting in its pot of ink. Valarr pulled the door shut behind him and stepped further into the room, a slash of nerves across his stomach as he swallowed and pulled his words from deep in his chest.
"I'm leaving, uncle," he announced in a voice that felt much too loud and much too unsure.
He watched Maekar lift his head wordlessly, the movement the only sign he'd heard Valarr at all.
Unnerved by the acknowledgement without response, Valarr felt pressed to speak again, though it only served to rattle him all the more in that if he were even half the man his father was, he could stomach a little silence. "There's nothing for me here, I cannot stay a day longer."
More silence, and Maekar's hand twitched atop the parchment, "nothing for you?"
The flatness of his tone irritated Valarr so acutely he was for a moment taken aback by the flood of emotion in his blood, bursting through the thick layer of indifference he'd settled into. "This place smells of misery and rot and I…" cannot look at you, uncle.
"You what?"
His tone gave nothing away save for defeat and it bothered Valarr worse than if he'd leapt to his feet and started berating him. When he didn't offer a response, Maekar swallowed with a quiet sigh, "you don't wish to be near me? You cannot look at me?"
"It is as you say."
Maekar made a low sound- too harsh to be a chuckle but too weak to be a snarl. "I'll have to bear the ire of those that can the rest of my days, nephew, and you will have to bear the comparisons I have my entire life. I'd not be able stomach the sight of myself, either."
Something pulled tight in his chest then, a sharpness digging into where he felt most bared and raw and vulnerable. Pity sounded distasteful on Maekar's tongue and Valarr pressed his fingers to his mouth as if to hold the anger bubbling sudden and consuming in his chest. Slowly, his uncle rose and turned to him.
"What's that I hear?" he started, his voice strained and too-loud in the flat silence of the room. He stared at Maekar and felt his rage stir faster and wilder, his heart thumping and forcing hot blood through to parts of him he'd thought had gone numb forever. The cuts on Maekar's face and the bruising tinting the sickly paleness of his skin looked pathetic considering his father had been left with half a skull. "You cannot hide behind self-pity. You killed him. You are the reason he's being sent back to King's Landing in an urn as opposed to—"
The anger changed halfway up his throat like the turn of a breeze, and suddenly his eyes burst with hot, gushing tears. "You took him away from me and you bring me to this… tomb and you hide away in your chambers as opposed to begging me for forgiveness," he continued even as his breaths heaved and made speaking without stumbling impossible. The nothing he'd been wallowing in had turned to uncontrollable rage and he was as relieved as he was mortified as it came and came and came.
Maekar faced him, but his eyes remained stuck to some indeterminate place along Valarr's shoulders, his gaze hollow and hard and unseeing. "You can't look at me, either."
His eyes snapped up at having been prompted, and Valarr wanted his lip to curl into a snarl and meet him in his anger but he merely stared, "Valarr—"
"Don't say my name! Do not think to use the name he gave me," Valarr snapped, palming viciously against his teary eyes and hating the wetness that only continued to spill. His head had begun to throb and yet his chest refused to cease with its incessant and relentless seizing. "He's gone and I'm stuck with… first mother and now him I do not know what I've done… I shouldn't…" he wiped at his face again and felt his feet stumble as he swayed, head pounding as if his tears had filled his skull and churned like a bay in a storm. "He wouldn't want me to hate any of you but I do, I hate Aerion and I hate you and I hate that fucking," he whimpered and sucked in a breath that lodged itself in his chest and burned, "that hedge knight. Everything you and your son touched is ruined… all for pride and vanity and honour my father alone could have championed. I am not him, I am not above hatred."
He sobbed, the words fell away from his tongue and he sobbed until he wailed through gritted teeth, this indistinguishable blurt of raw noise and pain and anger. Valarr pulled his arms close to his body and gripped his elbows tight enough to hurt as he whimpered and cried. His eyes squeezed themselves shut to try and halt the flow of tears but it was a vain effort.
The hands that rested against his shoulders were cold and large, pulling him up and against the firm line of Maekar's body as Valarr wept. He had half the mind to shove and fight as his shoulder bumped against Maekar's chest, but all he did was fall against it- defeated and exhausted from his fit. His breaths still hitched and hacked and caught in his throat, but as he leaned his forehead against Maekar's shoulder and those broad hands settled against his back he felt that frantic hysteria leave him.
He ached all over, like he'd plunged his hands into his chest and ripped everything out of himself. Maekar didn't speak as Valarr settled- as much as he could settle- and let that hollowness fill him again. It was after he finally took his first proper breath that he forced his eyes open, tears having stuck his eyelashes together as they dried.
A sad glint of silver caught his eye, familiar in a way that made his stomach drop as he reached up to touch over the pin his father wore with his Hand's pin- long and ridged like the tail of a dragon. The Hand's pin would have been sent back with the rest of his belongings, but here the accent to it sat on Maekar's surcoat. He stroked over the ridges and swallowed, voice thin and rough when he spoke, "you don't deserve to keep this."
He could only be addressing Maekar, but he spoke quietly enough he sounded half as if he were talking to himself. An empty chair very likely waited for him back in King's Landing, and a pin that would never sit as well attached to him as it did for his father.
"It would have been cast aside as some bauble," Maekar responded with no lack of disdain in his voice, "I would give it to you if you did not have so much of him already."
Valarr scoffed. He could have all the clothing and weapons and trinkets of his father's that he wanted, all they would do is serve to make him sicker and sicker with grief. His uncle hoarded all he could of Dyanna in tapestries and furnishings and keeping Summerhall done up like a funeral parlour- would he do the same for Baelor if given the chance? Did he like to wallow in that misery?
His hand remained against Maekar's chest, feeling over the edges of the pin. He sucked in a deep, steadying breath and turned his face into his uncle's chest, though not out of some desire to be held.
He smelled like his father beneath the scent of leather and silk and metal. Valarr could not explain what his father smelled like but it sat in the back of his throat now and he parted his lips as if to taste it. He breathed in again and felt his eyes prickle anew.
You were always Maekar's favourite son, Daeron's voice whispered at him as he felt Maekar's hand slide slowly across his back. How ironic that Maekar wouldn't be able to look upon him again without seeing his father, eyes open and unseeing, then swallowed by flames and reduced to ash. Any fondness or affection or desire would be smothered by grief, chewed up by Maekar's guilt and the pain that'll never truly fade. There was a reason kinslaying stood above all the rest of man's many sins.
He despised that he couldn't silence the voice inside that urged it was deserved- that he should feel this pain so acutely and feel sickened by the sight of the son he left without a father. That voice was his own and shouted to remain the loudest in his head, but there were others- softer and sadder and entirely his father's, that pressed upon him the fact that Maekar had lost a brother, and perhaps the one person in the kingdom that had loved and valued him most of all.
Their pain was alike, he supposed, as much as it angered him in part. He closed his hand around his father's pin until the ridges bit into his hand. Maekar's own clutched his shoulders firmly, and then Valarr felt a pressure at the crown of his head and a soft puff of breath against his scalp. He heard the quiet rush of a deep inhale as Maekar breathed him in where he smelled most like himself; he wondered if Valarr smelled like Baelor as Maekar did, if Maekar felt that brief rush of relief before it was again swallowed by longing.
What would be crueller? An excess of resemblance, or the complete lack of it? Did Baelor think Valarr looked more like his mother, had it killed him to look at his own son after she died? Had he seen her loveliness in the paleness of his skin and the softness of his cheeks and the freckles over the tops of his shoulders and in the hollow of his throat?
If it did, he hadn't shown it- for he'd been greater than Maekar and Valarr and most men that burdened the earth with their steps.
Valarr swallowed thickly and leaned his head back off of Maekar's chest, slowly forcing his gaze up to meet his uncle's, though the dark, heavy grief in his eyes proved hard to meet for long at all.
"Do I look like him, uncle?" he asked, with a pathetic little quiver in his voice.
Maekar's jaw clenched, the muscle tweaking at the hinge of it beneath his beard, and Valarr felt his stomach roil as he made himself keep the other's gaze, though he wished only to shrink away from it. Even with the animosity he could not shake, his uncle was imposing and fearsome, especially in his grief. He sucked in a breath so sharp and deep that Valarr wondered if his ribs still bothered him from the trial. Maekar's hand was still cold as he cupped the younger man's cheek, a thumb brushing across a cheekbone.
"You look like your mother, but you've always reminded me more of him. When he was younger, more… spirited."
Valarr's voice could hardly rise above a whisper, "why can't you look at me, then?"
Maekar inclined his head until their foreheads pressed together. For a moment Valarr had wanted to rear back and shove him off and chastise his uncle for laying hands upon him and perhaps tempt himself into another bout of shouting and crying, but Maekar spoke sooner, tilting his face against the younger man's until their noses bumped, "I do not deserve to look at you."
No, you don't, Valarr thought with his teeth in his cheek to keep himself from scoffing. He could feel Maekar's beard against his skin and though he wavered as if he desperately wanted to press closer, he resisted. Now was the time he obeyed honour and decency? Now? Not then?
Valarr's lip trembled, Maekar's hand squeezing dearly at his cheek, his other hand having dropped to clutch the boy's elbow. 'Deserve' struck him in a curious way; to say he merely should not look at Valarr was simple and neutral and distant, but deserve was personal and intimate and rendered him mute. It implied Maekar wanted to look, but thought to deny it to himself- to rob himself the privilege.
Daeron's own admission came to mind again, and when he eased his eyes open there was wetness gathered in his uncle's own.
Only harm would come of this- he was already harming himself being here, as if to hope to tempt an admission out of his uncle- some way to shift the blame off himself. His uncle could hurt him. It most certainly would make leaving and returning to King's Landing more akin to dragging a serrated blade instead of a sheer one from his side- ripping the flesh open anew and promising to heal uneven and slow and nasty.
But he could also hurt his uncle. He would feed Maekar's guilt and make it all the more ravenous. It would not be solely Valarr that had something to lose with the turn of his head and the press of his lips.
It would hurt his wife, even if she never came to know it occurred.
He deserved to ache, his father died in his armour. Perhaps the pain would shove the numbness from his bones.
Valarr dragged their mouths together with a broken sigh dying in his throat, the slide of lips immediately forceful and harsh and definite as Valarr dug his fingertips into his uncle's shoulders and Maekar's other hand slammed against his side, hauling them closer together. Valarr winced at the drag of the other's beard against his cheeks and the sharp threat of his teeth against his lips, breathing out sharply as he squeezed his eyes shut again and let his mouth ease open. It was a painful kiss- a devastated kiss- hoping to bear their hurts to one another in a way the other could feel. This is how much it hurts, the snap of Maekar's teeth and the suck of his lips and tongue told him.
He grasped a hand at Maekar's hip and tugged them closer, letting his own teeth catch and drag against Maekar's mouth: this is how much it hurts, he thought back.
Valarr had no apologies for him.
He waited for the other to return to himself and push them apart and apologise, but Maekar was not the infallible, honourable man Baelor was. He'd resolved to see this trespass through before their lips had met, still Valarr waited even as he was pulled and turned and shoved over the very table Maekar had been sat at.
How long had he privately, secretly wanted to do this? He wondered whether Valarr's pleasure ever factored into his thoughts, or if Valarr was just some pretty, poor copy of his brother and that had earned his favour. He couldn't tell if he wanted to care- if he deserved the right to care whether his enjoyment would start to matter less and less.
Valarr pressed his face against the table, his heavy panting betraying the creeping apprehension that had settled within him as Maekar hooked his fingers in his breeches and tugged, dragging them down over Valarr's arse, baring his pale thighs to the stagnant, cold air of the room. He could hardly hear a thing above the roar of his blood in his ears, but there was a probing wetness against his hole- spit, he assumed- and he grit his teeth together and scarcely swallowed a whimper as his uncle's fingers breached him. He knew how men were taken by other men, he knew fingers before a cock was a mercy, even if it hurt and dragged against his insides. They retracted and returned wetter, sliding easier into him this time, though deeper than before.
He moaned, a sound that surprised himself as Maekar moved to shift them out of him again. There was a deep pang of pleasure from inside of him, and he felt his cock jump where it had landed between his waist and the grain of the table. A hand smoothed up his back under the layers of his clothing, and the chill to Maekar's hand tempted a sigh from between his lips. He was being eased like a labouring mare and it bothered him as much as he accepted it- he appreciated the gesture, at least.
"It's not going to hurt," Maekar said with a trembling, soft voice. It had already hurt- did so every time Maekar spread his fingers and when he finally added a third. It hurt, he wanted to say, even as his uncle bent his fingers in that same, delicious way and made up for it all. He reached up and slammed his hand down over Maekar's wrist through his clothing, holding him with a keening whine as his uncle crowded up against the back of him, his cock hot and firm and throbbing against the back of one of his thighs, yearning to be released.
Maekar shushed him as he yanked his hand out from under Valarr's clothing, reaching between them to lower his breeches enough to pull his cock free and let it bump against the inside of one of Valarr's thighs. An arm slipped up underneath his chest and tugged until he could press his hands beneath him and could feel Maekar's own clothed chest against his back. He shuffled his feet apart as he felt Maekar shift against his arse, hand still fussing and nudging the wet tip of his cock up between Valarr's thighs.
Neither said a word as Maekar pressed his cock into him, too dry even with spit but agonising in a way that forced aside all the noise and anger and frustration within him. His jaw fell open in a thin gasp, grabbing hold of Maekar's forearm as his hips pressed on and on until he was fully buried within the younger man. He settled against Valarr with an abrupt, keening groan, chin hooked over his shoulder and his beard scratching at Valarr's cheek.
At the first snap of his hips, Valarr felt his body come alive against the heat and the sting and the ache. He whined when Maekar fucked into him again- great, heaving thrusts that shoved him forward and made up for their slowness in their depth and force. The table bit into the front of his thighs and Maekar's cock threatened to split him open and he whimpered even as his cock dribbled against the wood grain and his insides trembled around the intrusion.
There was something within him that yearned to be touched and grind against, and Maekar knew what it was and how to get at it. He curled his hips and slammed into it and Valarr felt his knees give, the older man's arm against his chest the only thing keeping him upright with the purposeful snap of Maekar's hips. His muscles clenched and coiled and pulled a groan from deep in Maekar's chest, a sharp inhale as if he intended to say something, before thinking better of it.
Shame sat in his gut like a stone as he was taken in the same manner a servant caught in the wrong place at the wrong time would be taken, his skin flushed and legs spread to allow his uncle in deeper.
Chalk it up to inexperience on Valarr's part and desperation on his uncle's that hurried the rock of their bodies together so soon. The breaths that fanned against his ear and cheek came faster, the hand against his chest squeezing and gripping whilst the other pressed between Valarr's legs, fisting around the base of his cock and stroking with a firmness that made his eyes bead with tears.
Maekar lurched against him, bending him down and over the table once again, Valarr's breaths wheezed and strained under the weight of the larger man as he humped against him, groaning into his ear as he chased his release. Valarr's forehead laid against the table, sweat sticking his hair to his skin and making his flesh prickle all over as Maekar fucked into him. He would miss the stifling warmth of his uncle atop him after, when his sweat cooled and seeped into his clothing and let the cold creep back into his bones. He wondered how the nights to come would relay this trespass back to him: necessary, or selfish.
Maekar grasped a fistful of his hair as he spent, hips shoving hard and mean against Valarr as he finally pushed himself over the edge and filled his nephew with heat and wet. His hand squeezed beyond comfort around Valarr's cock and all but pulled him along in release, though between the suffocating weight of him at Valarr's back and the too-tight grip of his hand, the numb hollowness of an unsatisfying release set in before he'd finished spending over his uncle's hand. Deserved, he thought with a wince.
"My boy," Maekar rasped as he pulled his cock from him, stroking up his back beneath his closing again, "gods," he added, voice shaking. His hands were softer when he stroked over Valarr's hip, stepping away to find a cloth with which to wipe away the mess he'd made of the boy's thighs.
It felt… strange. There was a warm trail leaking down from between his arse cheeks and he could feel it within him if he forced his head to quiet enough to focus on it. He let his mouth hang open to suck in deep, steadying breaths as he pushed himself upright, staring at his hands as Maekar approached him once again, shoving the cloth up against his hole. Valarr wondered if he would get it all, or if traces of him would remain.
With the cloth tossed haphazardly onto the table, Maekar crowded against Valarr's back again, fingers sliding down his hips almost indulgently as he grasped the hem of his breeches and smallclothes and worked them back up his thighs. His touch was gentle again, nothing like the frenzied, almost harsh way he'd clutched and held and yanked at him whilst he'd had him on his cock; Valarr felt the shadow of a comforting curl in his chest at the tenderness of the other man as he righted his clothing for him.
Maekar pressed his face against the nape of Valarr's neck, breathing him in and holding him by the waist. "Stay, rest… I'll…" his throat clicked and his hands squeezed at Valarr's clothing as he worked himself towards continuing, "please, stay."
Valarr's eyes slid shut and he swallowed the sharp lump in his throat, pressing himself back into the warmth of his uncle's chest. This place would kill him; it would scoop his innards out of him and replace it with a yawning pit of nothing, no matter if it was Daeron who crawled into his bed, or Valarr into Maekar's. They understood his misery, but they would prefer to wallow in it, drowning in grief in this horrid place. King's Landing would not let him live like that- duty and sacrifice would take their parts of him; he would have no choice in the matter.
He didn't answer his uncle, for he'd lifted his head and backed off of him and cleared his throat, "I can have your horse readied for you," Maekar offered instead, voice smaller than it had been when he'd pleaded for Valarr to stay.
"Ready it," Valarr said weakly, "there's nothing else for me here."