Chapter Text
Aerion knows he has maybe ten minutes of solitude left before one or both of the children start trying to break down his bathroom door.
Ten minutes to pull himself together, to accept what’s in front of him—three plastic sticks, in a neat row on the black marble counter, spelling out clearly that Aerion—
Aerion is fucked. Happy fucking Christmas.
He had thought they could end it with dignity, quick and painless, but nothing about them had ever been dignified. Not at the bloody, violent mess of their beginning and certainly not in the last dying moments of what Aerion had once been certain would be the rest of his life.
They’d signed the papers two months ago, sitting silently across from each other in a glass-walled conference room at Valarr’s firm. Aerion’s cousin and the lawyer Baelor insisted on hiring for Dunk making painful small talk while Aerion avoided meeting Dunk’s devastated, heartbroken gaze.
It was supposed to be done, then. Everything agreed to. Ink on the page. The lawyers would handle the rest.
Aerion only ended up in the bathroom because he needed a minute. Needed to let out the ragged breath that had been choking him all morning. It was Dunk—idiot fucking Duncan, always showing up at the wrong place at the wrong time—who ruined it all by stepping in after him, meeting his eyes in the mirror, making something irrevocable crack down the middle of Aerion’s chest.
They’d been on each other in an instant, propriety and freshly signed papers be damned. The blood in his mouth, more than the kiss, made Aerion feel wild. It burnt like being seventeen again at the start of it all. It tasted like ash.
Dunk had cradled his face in one gentle, giant hand, even as he pushed roughly into Aerion’s body, made Aerion look at his face and didn’t even bother hiding his falling tears.
“I’m sorry, don’t leave, don’t leave me, please, Aerion, I’ll do anything,” he’d pleaded, and Aerion couldn’t say anything, could only pull Dunk closer, dig his nails in hard enough to hurt, and tell himself this was the last time.
Well. These things only take one time.
Aerion knows better than most.
Maekar had been apoplectic when he found out about Maegor, but it had already been too late by then. Aerion refused to listen to reason, and there was no hiding the bite either way. The tabloids had had a field day with it. The only Targaryen omega of his generation, mated and knocked up before his eighteenth nameday, and by a nobody Flea Bottom scholarship student no less.
Half the realm painted Dunk as an opportunistic social climber taking advantage of a wealthy omega’s heat, but it was Aerion, so they also thought he probably deserved it anyways. The other half spun a fairytale of it—the prince and the pauper crossing paths at Ashford Academy, a steady, gallant alpha to keep that beautiful, troublesome royal omega in check.
Aerion didn’t give a fuck what they had to say. Nobody needed to know how it really was. How they’d torn into each other at the start, two equally beastly creatures. How Aerion had chosen Dunk with his eyes wide open, and Dunk had chosen him right back, bloody teeth and all.
Maegor was a decision he’d made freely, despite all his father’s raging and accusations, and Rhaenyra too, three years after.
But this—this, Aerion can admit, as his own panicked breathing echoes off the tiles, was definitely a mistake.
///
“Where’s Uncle Egg, Muña?” Rhaenyra asks, her chubby fist pulling at the collar of Aerion’s sweater. The cashmere is definitely getting stretched out.
Rhaenyra’s really getting too big to be carried everywhere, but Aerion can’t help himself. Sometimes he wishes she was still inside him, a little dragon he could keep safe, instead of a curious child who is all too fond of his least favorite brother.
“Aegon is always late, you know this, sweetheart,” he answers.
At least she’s not asking about her father. It’s been six months of living apart, and Rhaenyra still has trouble remembering sometimes, doesn’t understand why she’s being shuffled between flats every other week, why Aerion no longer goes with her and Maegor to Papa’s games.
“But it’s Christmas,” Rhaenyra whines, wriggling in Aerion’s arms as she gestures to the décor around them. She’s certainly correct. Summerhall is decked out from the ceiling to the baseboards with holiday cheer, a glittering, real pine Christmas tree in each room and a thousand shiny baubles cluttering every surface. It all makes Aerion’s head hurt.
“It’s true,” Aerion hums. He drifts into the kitchen and hands Rhaenyra a snowman shaped cookie as a distraction. “You ought to scold him very sternly when he finally shows up.”
Rhaenyra grins around the sugary mess in her mouth, gleeful at the thought of raising a little hell. She’s Aerion’s daughter through and through. He loves her so much he thinks he might die of it sometimes. He wishes—
There’s no point in wishing. There’s only what is. He needs to call his doctor, make an appointment. It’s no use dwelling on any of this, on what it might be like for Rhaenyra to be a big sister, for their little family to grow again. They used to talk about having seven, in total. Aerion liked the idea of beating out his father by one. Dunk liked joking that they could have a full rugby sevens team.
No one ever understood, really, why Aerion had wanted so badly to keep Maegor back then, raging against his father’s wishes, risking disownment and public shame. And Aerion hadn’t felt the need to explain. What was there to say, who would be able to fathom it, how it had felt, huddled in that cramped bathroom with Dunk, the two of them bent over a stolen drugstore test, holding their breaths as the lines slowly appeared.
He’d looked up to meet Dunk’s eyes, and saw the fear on his face, but also the trembling joy, and thought, clear as day, Okay. I can do this if it’s you. And that had been that.
Fuck. How is it possible that at twenty-five, he no longer has any of the certainty or conviction he did at seventeen?
“Muña, does it hurt?” Rhaenyra asks suddenly.
Aerion startles, realizes he’s been absentmindedly rubbing his thumb against the scar on the side of his neck. His daughter blinks up at him with wide, purple eyes, reaches out a pudgy hand to poke at the same spot.
“Owie,” she clarifies, ever helpful.
Aerion huffs out a helpless laugh. “No, sweetheart, I’m okay.” Some nights the bite throbs so painfully he can’t sleep. In his worst moments, he fantasizes about taking a knife and carving the damn thing right out of himself. “Why don’t you go play with your brother, hm?” He lowers Rhaenyra gently to the ground, and she darts away immediately, easily reassured and eager to dig through the obscene amount of toys she received last night.
Per tradition, they’d opened presents on Christmas Eve, and as the only grandchildren in the family, Maegor and Rhaenyra had in typical fashion been spoiled beyond belief. Just the presents from Grandpa Maekar alone had been enough to fill the cavernous space under the twenty-foot tree in the Great Hall.
Sweet Maegor has been preoccupied all morning with his brand new set of dragon figurines. The last time Aerion checked in on him, he’d concocted a story about the biggest of the beasts befriending a kind-hearted knight.
Aerion hadn’t had the heart to tell him that dragons only know how to devour, to burn.
“You know, I dreamt of a dragon egg last night.”
Aerion jumps. When he isn’t clattering through life in a drunken stupor, Daeron has a way of moving without a sound that is deeply, deeply unnerving.
“And what does that have to do with me, dear brother?” Aerion sneers, ignoring the churning of his stomach.
Daeron hums, undeterred, “Nothing, maybe. It didn’t hatch.”
Aerion is going to be sick. “Okay.”
“It’s funny though,” Daeron brushes past Aerion to grab an apple out of the bowl on the kitchen island. “The egg was sitting in the snow. It was hot to the touch, but nothing was melting around it.”
There’s no world in which Aerion has the patience to help Daeron decipher his cryptic dreams. He doesn’t need rambling prophecy when he has a very real personal crisis to deal with. Never mind that Daeron is looking at him with that strange, knowing expression he wears sometimes.
He’d been the one to call Aerion two days after that first heat he’d spent with Dunk. Aerion had half expected his brother to be calling from the drunk tank again, but Daeron had only said, “I dreamt of an elm tree on fire,” which meant nothing to Aerion.
“It was flowering, Aerion,” Daeron had continued, deadly serious and sounding sober for once.
Four months later, when Aerion finally fessed up to being pregnant, he’d been the only person in the family who seemed wholly unsurprised.
Aerion squints at his brother now, and Daeron just stares back, biting into his apple.
“What—” Aerion starts, but Daeron shakes his head, like he’s dislodging last night’s dreams from his skull.
“Happy Christmas, brother,” he says with a shrug, and saunters out of the kitchen, apple in hand.
Aerion blinks after him. What the hell.
///
It’s already past noon, the whole family gathered in the formal dining room for lunch, and Aegon’s seat is still empty.
Any other year, Maekar would be furiously shouting down the phone demanding to know his youngest son’s whereabouts, but everyone in Aerion’s family seems to have tacitly agreed to be on their best behavior this Christmas.
Daeron is shockingly holiday-sober, Aemon is adhering to their father’s no-phones-at-the-table rule for once in his life, and Daella and Rhae are sweetly entertaining the children with tales of their latest trip to King’s Landing.
The happy chatter isn’t enough to distract from the way Maekar has been shooting looks at Aerion since the meal began, his brow furrowed in concern, as if he’s worried Aerion is going to have a breakdown right there at the table.
Every time the kitchen brings out a new dish, Maekar makes sure to personally place a portion on Aerion’s plate. It does not escape his notice that the menu seems to consist of all his favorite foods—honey duck, maple glazed salmon, winter squash with walnuts, stuffed grape leaves.
Everyone is being so careful around him, so fucking nice, it grates on his nerves.
He’s just about to snap, to demand that his father stop coddling him, when the loud bang of the front door getting thrown open travels down the halls, along with an irritating and all too familiar voice shouting, “Happy Christmas!”
“Uncle Egg is here!” Rhaenyra shrieks, and both children scramble towards the foyer, lunch fully forgotten.
Aerion sighs as he rises to follow them. He’s not supposed to curse in front of the children, but Aegon truly deserves a strong tongue-lashing for his bohemian attitude towards punctuality. It’s unbecoming, and sets a bad example for—
“Papa!”
Aerion freezes. He must be hallucinating. There’s no fucking way—
The excited shouts from Maegor and Rhaenyra rise in pitch, unmistakable, “Papa, Papa! You came! You’re here!”
Aerion forces his legs to move, turn the corner. He’s going to throw up. The scar on his neck burns, sharp and painful. He still doesn’t believe it until it’s in front of his eyes—his ex-husband kneeling on the festive welcome mat, the children wailing with excitement as they hug him, Aerion’s useless brother watching, bemused, as he sheds his coat.
“What are you doing here?” Aerion hears himself ask. His lips are numb. He feels like the stones of Summerhall are crumbling beneath his feet, the floor tilting away.
Dunk looks up from where Maegor and Rhaenyra are crowding around his feet, the smile slowly slipping off his face as he takes in Aerion’s genuine shock and confusion. He looks just as horrified as Aerion feels. “Egg said—you—you invited me.”
Aerion bites his tongue so hard he tastes copper. They promised. Not in front of the children.
It doesn’t matter. He can see from Dunk’s expression that he recognizes the lie in what he just said.
Seven hells. He is going to kill Aegon.