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"So, Maekar, how did the knife-throwing go?"
Maekar's hand stops halfway to his mouth, the spoon he's holding overspilling with rich soup. He's tired to the bone, slept terribly last night for no apparent reason, and he's fucking hungry, and the soup smells amazing, but the fool Aerys is has something to say — as per always, when he's not required to speak, and as per never, when he's actually expected to.
"What fucking knife-throwing?" He snaps out and swallows the spoonful of soup in one gulp.
He's pretty sure father sighs somewhere off to the side, chastising both his table manners and language, but he's heard his spiel enough times to be able to drown it out.
Aerys, to tell the truth, looks genuinely confused, eyebrows drawn together the same way their father's do when he's trying to understand why his oldest and youngest have to go on a very urgent and very important ("A matter of the realm's security," Baelor once said in jest, and Maekar nearly drew blood with how hard he gripped his shoulder) hunting trip. His eyes jump from Maekar, to Baelor, to their father, mother, Rhaegel, back to Maekar, then to Baelor, and to Maekar once again, as if they're panicking rabbits.
(Sometimes, Maekar wonders if the brothers he's stuck with are some sort of a mocking jape from the gods. Baelor, a problem rather personal to Maekar and not the others; Aerys, unreadable and unreachable, and Rhaegel, who's… Rhaegel. Maekar loves them, deeply and fiercely, but they're a lot to deal with. Especially since he's "supposed" to respect them, as the youngest. Fuck that.)
"The practice you were supposed to go with Baelor?" Aerys' eyes flit back over to the eldest. "The one you told me about when we were leaving breakfast?"
Maekar could groan, outloud, and put his head through the table.
Baelor, Baelor, fucking Baelor. Always doing something for the greater good, as he's taken to say, to pacify and smooth over. Well, the greater good has come to bite them in the ass.
He dares to throw a quick look at Baelor, who looks utterly unmoved — to an untrained eye, at least, because Maekar knows his brother, and the subtle flaring of his nostrils and the way his eyes jump up immediately as he feels a pair of familiar eyes on him tell Maekar they have to improvise, and fast.
What the fuck have you gotten us into?
Sorry.
I'll show you when you can stick your sorries up.
Sorry.
Maekar rolls his eyes. The air above the table suddenly buzzes with tension, like grasshoppers singing their song on a summer night, and mother is suddenly taking very deep care to cut her meat carefully, while father's had the goblet of wine at his mouth for the past minute.
He can't say Baelor said something and did something completely different, because they did disappear, together, and someone surely saw them going into the armory and out of it, in a slightly more disheveled state.
(Slightly is a light term to use.)
And then, he watches in increasing horror as Baelor opens his stupid, overly confident, golden-tongued mouth.
"A helm fell on Maekar in the armory." Baelor says, sure of his words and with no trace of hesitation, even a small smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "I thought it wouldn't be wise to expect precision from him if he just took a hit on the head, so we just went about the woods, checking the traps. Breathing a little fresh air in did him good."
He kicks at Maekar's ankle playfully underneath the table. Maekar kicks back.
"With no servants?" Father says, at the same moment as mother leans over to press a hand to Maekar's forehead with a worried "on the head?".
Father puts his goblet down. It's still half full.
"It did?" Rhaegel pipes up from above his dinner — he has clothes on today, at least — and looks right at his face, eyes that are a mix of their parents, light brown, sands of Dorne. Maekar can never escape their scrutiny, how he bores deep into him with easy words. "You don't seem bruised."
"Or concussed." He adds. Because he's not. The nearest thing he could get a concussion from was Baelor slamming him against the armory wall in a frenzied—
"Maybe because it's his natural state, makes no difference to his intelligence." Aerys mutters under his nose, loud enough so that Maekar can hear.
He hears the blood rushing in his ears as his head snaps around, braid hitting something — probably Rhaegal, untintentionally — with the momentum.
"What did you just say?"
"Maekar—"
"We barely squirmed our way out of that," comes out of a dark corner somewhere in the upper parts of Red Keep, where only people familiar with it would know the way to — or if they found it as children, chasing each other during rainy autumn days.
"And—" a wet smack sounds out, accompanied by a shaky swallow, "whose fault is that?"
"Hmm. Let me think about it, brother mine."
"It's brother mine now," smack, a moment, barely enough to catch breath, smack, "stop interrupting me—"
Smack,
"—or I will show you exactly and in detail where I'd like your apologies to be."
"We both know you like taking it more th—"
Smack, dryer this time.
"I will set you on fire."
"Alright," with a wide grin audible in his voice.
"I will bring the dragons back solely to set you on fire in the middle of King's Landing."
"Alright." Smack, smack, smack, a low moan stuck somewhere between lips like a captive. "But wouldn't you grant your favorite prisoner a last meal?"
Something hits the wall with a heavy thud, and a low giggle follows one furiously blushing Maekar Targaryen as he nearly runs out of an abandoned loft near the castle's roof. "Last fucking meal he says, as though we almost weren't eating our last meal, the fucking sex-crazed maniac—"
"Maekar!"
"I don't want to look at you!"
"Maekar!"
"Or hear you!"