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143 AC
The wine goes undrunk at dinner that night. This is not surprising for the king; he has never enjoyed the taste nor the burn at the back of his throat; he says it all tastes like ashes no matter if it’s an Arbor vintage or a cup of the plainest brown ale. For Viserys, though, the hand over the top of his goblet is a rare occurrence. His years in Lys taught him the value of life’s finer pleasures, and he has grown fond of wine and even more so of toasts.
A cup for my children, and a cup for the realm, was his habit to say, and on the days when one or both of them was giving him grief he would add a third, for himself. But tonight it is his brother whose doings trouble him, and he seeks to keep a clear head, to ensure that none of his words are wasted on a king who so enjoys deafening himself to the world around him.
The table is set, the dinner served, and Viserys is waiting for his brother to say something. A futile exercise, as it turns out, a little game that he is losing desperately. Silence spurs his tongue.
“You were unspeakably cruel,” Viserys says as he cuts his meat.
Aegon doesn’t laugh - he never laughs - but instead gives a wry smile. “Unspeakable? Are you not voicing it now?”
They eat. The pig is tough and overly salted; the legumes are drenched in oils. The food drops down Viserys’ throat and sits in his stomach, unmoving in the acid. “Rhaena ought not to forgive you.”
“She will, though.” He doesn’t say it arrogantly, in fact, he sounds almost bored. “Her voyage from Oldtown will go much smoother by carriage. I’m not the only one who doesn’t care to see that beast of hers in the sky.”
Viserys sighs. “It was how you said it. You’re lucky she’s even making the trip, her having a daughter at each breast. Your nieces, and look at how you treat their mother.” The promise that Morning would find her rest among the ruins of the Dragonpit - he doesn’t know when Aegon had learned the art of veiled threats, and more than that, how to use them against cherished sisters, some of the only family they have left.
The knife in Aegon’s hand glints bright and sharp. “Remind me again how lucky I am.” He pushes his plate away, the meal less than half-finished. “If you’re going to read my letters, Viserys, you had best steel yourself for notions you find disagreeable.”
I do it in the hope I might get to know you better. I seek to read your mind as ink on the parchment. “Will you come to my chambers tonight?” It is an order dressed as a request. Aegon sits back up in his chair and looks him over from the other side of the table, head to foot.
“I have had trouble sleeping.” An understatement. Even as children on Dragonstone, Aegon rarely slept through the night. Viserys does not put much stock in the gods, but he must congratulate them on their design of his brother. He was melancholy to begin with, and you showed him all the horrors the world has to offer.
“I’ll sing you a lullaby, then.” Viserys is a father. He has dealt with unruly young boys for years.
Aegon shifts, still uneasy under the gaze of all the servants, their backs against the wall of the dining room. Is Viserys just another one of those servants, attending to a king who’d rather sleep through his best days and starve on his worst? Pity for Aegon, then, that there is one person who still cares for him. “If you’ll receive me,” he assents quietly.
Viserys snaps his fingers and the rats come running. “Clear the plates, please.” And fire that bloody cook, he adds to his ever-growing list of things to do.
When they are back his rooms, Viserys sits at his desk and props his feet up on a stool. Aegon remains standing, a beautiful man entirely uncomfortable in his beauty and his manhood. It will be him who gives in first, now. It must be.
“I have a confession to make.” He faces away from Viserys and speaks abruptly.
“Oh?”
“I have read your letters too.”
That seems impossible. As newly-named Hand, Viserys receives a mountain of correspondence every week, so much that he’s considered poaching one of the boys from the kitchens or the stables to go through it for him. But that would mean teaching him how to read, and the maesters are already full up to their ears teaching his sons their letters - oh, it is useless. He spends half the day licking his fingers to flip through the stack and the other half bandaging his papercuts and wiping the ink stains from his lips. Where Aegon finds the time, he doesn’t know. “Our sister - ”
“The one whose dragon you did not threaten - ”
Aegon interrupts his interruption. “There was a raven from Driftmark. Baela wants me to name her husband Master of Ships.” His displeasure is evident in the curl of his lip, pink and full like their mother and their brothers’.
Viserys raises his eyebrow. “Alyn is the Sea Snake’s heir. Not an unreasonable ask, I should think.”
“Not to you, no. You’d be happy to sup with the jovial Lord Velaryon instead of dour me, reliving your days upon the decks of ships.” His brother has always been envious of Alyn. Perhaps it is due to his freedom, the lighter weight upon his shoulders. Or perhaps there is a simpler explanation, and Aegon too would quite like to come home to find Lady Baela naked and waiting.
He borrows Aegon’s grin from dinner. “You’re quite the jealous man, you know. You do a fair job of hiding it, but just below the surface you are seething.”
“And you can see the truth underneath all my clothes? I think you lived too long among the Lyseni, brother. You are beginning to sound like a whore.”
In an instant Viserys leaps from his seat and brings his hand to Aegon’s jaw, squeezing his mouth tight between his grip. Aegon is taller, true, but he is broader and stronger. “Don’t provoke me. Not here. In these rooms, you listen to me, remember?”
Aegon’s mouth relaxes into its customary frown. “I remember everything.” Slowly, deliberately, he takes a seat at the foot of the bed, spreading his legs just a little wider than normal, all the while keeping his eyes on his brother. Who is playing the whore now? Viserys thinks.
From here, it is a matter of choices. Leather or rope or silk. Clothed or naked or somewhere in between. As long as Aegon does what he’s told, he’ll get what he wants. Or at least what he needs.
They do this in Viserys’ chambers because Aegon needs to forget. Outside his doors his councilors beg favors and his sisters fray his nerves. Over in the Holdfast the little queen has flowered and the realm wants to see her round with child. In this bed, though, he is no longer His Grace, but merely a man; Viserys’ beloved if not quite his lover.
“Undress yourself.” Mere men do not get waited on hand and foot. Aegon heeds his instructions and starts with his boots, kicking them off to the side. They are followed by his trousers, his surcoat, his doublet, all black like a man of the Night’s Watch. For a moment, when he is nude from the waist down while his tunic remains, he looks almost a boy again, almost innocent. Then that is shed too and what is left is the cilice, and Viserys always, always, grimaces to see it. For Aegon to let himself be wounded within these walls is one thing, but to live with his sorrows clawing their way into his skin - it seems a terrible price to pay for the crimes of their kin. But he has sworn to pay it, and Viserys counts himself fortunate to be entrusted with this most secret and sacred thing.
It had started like this - Aegon coming to him, a year or so after his return home, with a mumbled request and a switch hidden behind his back. I do not want to touch myself, he’d said. It is not right. I shouldn’t need it. For a moment Viserys had wondered whether Aegon had meant for him to take the part of the dead whipping boy Gaemon Palehair.
Aegon, I am sorry. I know you miss your friend. But I’m your friend, too.
And Aegon had looked at him as if he had grown another head. You’re not my friend. You’re my brother. After some prodding, he’d admitted what he sought. He’d wanted to be hit, flogged, truly, so that the pain would overtake the pleasure and the blood that filled his cock would have to go somewhere else. When Viserys asked why he didn’t just do it himself - the handle was long enough - Aegon glanced away but did not equivocate. I can’t hurt myself as much as someone else could. My body doesn’t let me. He’d pinched his arm and winced. Flesh is such a selfish thing.
Viserys hadn’t wanted to hurt Aegon at all, but he took up the switch nonetheless. It wasn’t the first time he had been asked to be bigger and stronger than he really was. He’d struck softly to start, had kept his thoughts about Aegon’s muscled thighs to himself even as they pinkened up with each lick of the whip. When his brother had asked him to add more force, he’d refused, until Aegon commanded him as his king. On the hardest hit Aegon cried out and spilled all over the sheets anyway. Viserys had slept in his wife’s chambers that night, had woken her in the morning hard and leaking.
So they’d come to an agreement. Aegon would not have to indulge himself; doing so made him sick, but nor would he be blocked up from balls to brains because he couldn’t bear to put a hand on his own prick like every other boy of six-and-ten. The king had donned his hairshirt and only his brother had seen him without it.
He supposes he’d been lucky Larra hadn’t judged him - she never saw any shame in pleasure, and up until the end, they’d both been wanton for each other. When he’d explained in soft and gentle terms that Aegon had his own particular needs, she’d laughed her musical laugh and kissed his forehead. He really had loved her, his beautiful, strange wife, hadn’t he? The deep purple shade of the bruises adorning Aegon’s backside the week she left were proof enough of that.
It was an irregular thing. After that first encounter, Aegon had avoided his rooms for weeks, enough time for Viserys to procure his own flogger. When his brother returned he asked to be tied to a column and whipped, quite more like a king’s captive than a king himself. Viserys acquiesced and tore off two strips of fabric from his sheets - one to knot around Aegon’s wrists and the other to hold between his teeth and muffle the noises coming from his throat.
After that it was once every week or so. In the years since they’d started their little routine had changed some. They’d accumulated quite the collection of accoutrements, proper restraints made by skilled artisans, bone phalluses to stretch out around and silk knots for when a softer touch was desired. Occasionally Aegon would come in just to lay in silence and no more. And Viserys had stopped pretending like the sight of his brother on his knees and the sounds of his stifled moans didn’t get him as hard as anything, and sometimes he’d have Aegon watch as he took his pleasure.
(Then there was that delicious day when Aegon had removed the gag and opened his mouth wide enough to take Viserys’ cock. A poor attempt was made to suckle at it, and so Viserys had just let it lay in the warm wet of Aegon’s mouth as he sat against his headboard and calculated his household’s finances for the month. When he’d finished, Aegon was asleep - dreaming, by the look of it. Slowly and carefully he’d thrust in and out, praying that his brother wouldn’t wake, and he didn’t, not until seed filled his throat and he’d sat up with a start.
Don’t be angry.
Aegon had wiped the white from his mouth. Have you ever known me to be quick to anger, Viserys?
Viserys had never loved his sullen, sulky brother so much as he had right then.)
So Aegon is atop the bed with his legs crossed and his hairshirt shed, awaiting his instructions. How do you want me tonight? ask his eyes.
He answers in the form of questions and little musings. “You’re looking well, despite the abysmal state of our kitchens. Shapely thighs,” he says, sitting beside his brother and running his hands over his skin, “nice to look at, and nicer to feel.” A squeeze to the softer part on the inside of his legs, closer to his groin. Aegon’s mostly-limp cock twitches. “Shall I put you across my lap again? You’ll thrash against me, desperate for a valley to fuck into, but I’ll spread my legs wider and you’ll find only air.” As it happens Aegon had been right about one thing - he could sound very much like a whore when he put his mind to it. Viserys’ hand travels higher, up the flat plane of Aegon’s chest and resting on his collarbone. “Or would you like me to stop your heaving breaths? Just for a moment. I do not care to be a regicide.”
His brother shakes his head. This is neither a surprise or a disappointment. Viserys likes to lay out the options first, send out some ravens and see which ones are returned. There was something when he held his leg and molded the skin beneath his fingers. A little spark, and Viserys the steward tends to the fire. “Give me your thigh.” He administers a quick smack upon Aegon’s skin, the kind he thinks he ought to give to his eldest son from time to time, although his brother keens against it in a way wholly unlike a child. Blood rushes to the skin in the shape of Viserys’ hand. Something in him wishes the mark would stay there forever, the way bedslaves in the Free Cities were tattooed with hearts on their cheeks. He risks a bit of romance with a kiss to Aegon’s neck. The delicate sigh he receives in return is frisson, is delight.
“Brother,” he murmurs. “I’m glad you’re here tonight. I have something new to show you.” He is excellent at keeping secrets, and this is quite the secret indeed. At first he had been apprehensive - would this really work in the way that the velvet-clad merchant said it would? And there was the cost, and the presentation, and the number of moving parts. Aegon had been aroused before at the mere image of Viserys with rouge on his lips and kohl in his eyes. There was no need to complicate it with some foreign invention. But then he’d tested it out on his own flesh, and knew he could not deny his brother this, this wonder of wonders.
As a rule Aegon does not ask many questions, being so fearful of the disasters that answers may bring. But Viserys can tell his curiosity is piqued, and he doesn’t want to keep him waiting. He rises from the bed and opens his wardrobe, retrieves the box that sits on the shelf, and presents it to his brother as a gift, lid tipped open wide.
Aegon observes the display. “I’ve never seen anything like these,” he says, picking up one of the dozen glass cups and holding it to the light. “You’ll have me drink something, I suppose. Some elixir that will put me in a deep sleep and you can have your way with me.”
It’s not accusatory, his tone, but Viserys flushes anyway. “Not quite. You see, if one puts fire into the cup and presses it to the skin in the right way, the blood will rush to the surface, making it tender, and bruised - ”
“And reactive,” Aegon finishes, catching on. “Put that on my cock and I’ll get hard in no time.”
“Precisely,” Viserys nods. “Though it won’t go directly on your cock. Near it will suffice.” Privately, he feels himself twitching in his pants, and doesn’t understand how Aegon is still soft between his thighs. He supposes that is what makes them brothers and not two halves of one soul or whatever it is lovers are meant to be.
Not that it matters. Aegon is a different man. That’s what makes this work, isn’t it? I can’t hurt myself as much as someone else. The blood they share will pour from his brother’s skin and Viserys will taste it. He couldn’t ask for much more.
He eyes Aegon on the bed. “Leather tonight. I shouldn’t like to find my silks burned away just because my hand slipped.” Back to the wardrobe he goes, this time to the drawer on the right that holds the belts with the extra holes, the ones that tie tight enough to fit around Aegon’s slim wrists and limber ankles. When he turns back Aegon is already complying, his arms and legs splayed out in an X. It’s so inviting that Viserys cannot bring himself to miss the coaxing and pleading of their early encounters, the slow push and pull before Aegon would allow himself to lay bare on a featherbed. Luxury suits me ill, he’d complained, though Viserys had noted the weight of that golden pendant he liked to wear to court.
Nudity is its own kind of luxury, he thinks. To allow complete exposure of one’s skin to the air and all other elements - to any harm or any pleasure that might be bestowed upon it - it was not a privilege anyone could claim. Aegon’s nakedness, in particular, was something only Viserys had the honor of seeing, of holding across his knees and spanking the skin until it warmed over in his palms. A marble statue for his molding alone.
The statue lets out a small noise, more than a breath and less than a cough. It’s not a request, not even a word, but it is close enough to insolence that Viserys is not about to ignore it. He reaches into the drawer and collects the restraints, feeling the cool steel of the plackets in his fingers. Perfect, he surmises, and before he belts the loop around Aegon’s ankles he gives the bottom of his foot a thwack, buckle first, relishing the gasp it elicits and the way the thin skin smarts at the contact.
You’re not playing fair, Aegon would say, if he was allowed to say much other than thank you or brother or yes, please. If not that, he is permitted to moan or whimper or whine, all those sounds that make Viserys’ stomach flip over in the cavern of his organs. Anyways, if it were really so improper - the wrong kind of pain - he would know. He just would.
“Should we get started or must I continue to play the bastonade?” From the other end of the bed he can see hair flopping about as his brother shakes his head no. “Good.” One by one he tightens the belts around Aegon’s limbs and hooks them to the posts of the bed; right ankle, left ankle, left wrist, right wrist. On the last one he stands back to admire his handiwork. Lysandro would have been terribly proud. He caught a prince, but I’ve captured a king.
Aegon really does look glorious like this; Viserys’ only regret is that he truly is stuck facing the ceiling and cannot move at all, least of all turn over. That way Aegon could rut into the mattress while Viserys gives him a proper spanking for his wanton disobedience. Alas. They are young men and they have time in abundance. To extend Aegon’s wait even longer, he takes the opportunity to shed himself of his courtly garb, the several layers of heavy damasks and brocades he wears now that it is once again winter in Westeros. And unlike his brother, whose leathers and linens lie haphazardly on the floor, he takes the time to fold his things, to stash his boots in the far corner, all that a proper servant would do.
When Viserys looks back, though, he sees Aegon is hardly straining against his bindings, and that simply will not suffice. He lifts the chest with the rest of the necessary materials and puts it beside Aegon’s form, then takes his own place between his brother’s legs. He’s awfully tempted to do some light fondling, the sort of thing children often play at, but that isn’t what he promised, so he takes the jar of oil and spreads it out over his hands, massaging it into Aegon’s thighs, up to his hips and above his groin. It makes his brother’s skin gleam by the candlelight, like it’s the flesh of some sea nymph that Viserys is kneading and not his own kin. But to Aegon this is pleasing in the way of fair tides in the Narrow Sea - better than nothing, but too distant to make any real impact. Viserys digs in his fingers a little deeper, pressing his nails into skin and leaving half-moon marks. His pretty cock is still soft. It is time to get to work.
He lays out the rest of the tools - wrought iron tongs, rolled-up balls of cotton fabric, a candle with an unburnt wick. Gods, but this is an awful lot of trouble. He hopes it is worth it, the rising from his place of comfort to go and light the candle from the fireplace, the soaking of the cotton in the oil, the tight grip around the fabric with the pincers, and finally, at long last, the lighting of the fire in the glass jar. Just for a moment - the merchant’s demonstration couldn’t have been more than a second or two - and then the rim of the cup meets Aegon’s pale and perfect skin and draws a gasp from his wide open mouth.
“It’s cold,” he says, and Viserys watches with eager fascination as the juncture between leg and groin turns pink into deeper red as the blood rushes to greet the new sensation.
“It’s some alchemic design. As the fire cools, it creates a pocket of air, and calls all the body’s humors up to it. It’s not so dissimilar to, say, if I did this,” and he leans down, places his lips to the inside of Aegon’s other thigh, and begins to suck, to pull with force until he is satisfied with the groans of the writhing creature below him, until he notes the distinct stirring of the organ that lay beside his cheek. “But it is more efficient. And as you know, I am nothing if not efficient.” And for good measure, he tucks his teeth under his lips and swallows Aegon down to the root, kissing the tip with the back of his throat.
Aegon curses. “Seven hells, Viserys,” he pants, jerking his hips up as best he can in defiance of his lack of mobility. “Fuck - that’s good,” he says, and he seems happy enough to have this be the game, but Viserys isn’t, and Viserys is in charge here. He pulls off, lets his brother suffer the consequences, and leans back to retrieve a second cup from the chest.
After setting it alight, he puts it on Aegon’s other thigh, and judges the first cup ready to remove. The skin left behind has reddened in a perfect circle, is hot to the touch, and the space between Aegon’s breaths gets just a little shorter when he presses on it. Part of him wants to see what would happen if he put the cup on the same spot two, three, four times in a row - but he decides against it. He doesn’t want to damage his brother’s beauty, not permanently, at least.
With four cups on Aegon’s body - two on either side of his cock, the other two a bit farther up on his hips - his brother is still a lovely sight, but the novelty is beginning to wear off. Viserys glances back in the box and takes hold of an instrument he’d heretofore neglected, a tiny dagger, smaller than his own thumb, with the thinnest blade he’s ever seen. When he touches the tip it pricks his finger and a bead of red bubbles within the spiraled lines but does not spill over. The cut isn’t deep enough to draw much blood. Unless, of course, it was forced out.
“Aegon,” he says suddenly. “Do you trust me?”
His brother looks back at him curiously. We were boys and we hid behind the rocks on the beaches. I leapt into your arms on the docks. I gave my name to your son. Or perhaps he is thinking: My royal cock is hard and naked and you are holding hot pincers. “Completely,” he answers.
All is well, then. He chooses a clean and unblemished spot, dips the blade into the flame to clean it of any contaminants, and tests a jab into Aegon’s flesh. When his brother doesn’t stir, he tries another one. Then a tremendously stupid idea comes into his head that he is too old to indulge in and yet too young to ignore, and he continues to break the skin until the drops of blood form a V.
Now suitably branded, Aegon is ready for the last step. Viserys brings the last cup forth, douses the cotton in flame, and lets the fire bloom in the glass for an instant. He rests it on the wounded skin, turning it slightly as a key into a lock, then witnesses the splendor of the vessel filling with deep red ichor.
“It doesn’t hurt?” he asks, the question put to the room even though there could only be one recipient.
Aegon sniffs. “No. Not any more than the other ones. Why? What have you done this time?” Only Viserys doesn’t answer, just continues to observe the liquid leaking from the flesh in conjunction with the clear fluid that dribbles out from the slit of his brother’s cock.
“It’s rather fitting,” he says suddenly.
Aegon cranes his neck up. “What is?”
A nod down at the display on Aegon’s thighs. “Fire and blood,” Viserys explains, smirking and tracing a thin line under the seam of his sac with his little finger.
Aegon groans in a mix of pleasure and exasperation. “Oh, you’re incorrigible.”
When it is time to remove all the cups, Viserys is ready with a rag to wipe away the excess, though he hates to see it all go to waste. He allows himself a small taste, licking at the skin in the shape of the initial he drew, not even grimacing but relishing the metal sliding over his tongue. He is very nearly as hard as Aegon now, but there is one more thing he wishes to do before he sees them completed. He removes the rest of his clothes, the linen shift and breeches, and tosses them in the box along with the rest of the tools before setting it on the floor.
Back up on the bed, he straddles Aegon’s hips, letting his thighs take the brunt of his weight as he settles back. He makes a shallow thrust forward, then another, and on the third one he shifts higher to let his brother’s cock meet with his own. The result is another one of those pretty gasps, the kind Viserys wants to bottle and uncork on lonely nights. “I could fuck your thighs,” he says idly. “They’re wet enough.” He’d been generous with the oil, and the tender skin is slippery and soft as a woman’s parts. His thrusts continue.
“Please, brother,” Aegon moans, his voice thick. The want in his brother’s tone makes him sick with lust.
Without much warning, he scoots back farther, now putting himself on Aegon’s knees, and from this point of view he can see the full glory of their little exercise, the broken veins and spilled lifeblood, the bruises that will take weeks to heal and the heat emanating forth when he presses his hand into the flesh. “You were perfect, Aegon,” he says. “So wonderful. So very mine.” His head swoops down to plant a few kisses on Aegon’s abdomen. “I’m going to let you come soon. Is that what you want?”
Aegon nods, a bit frantically. “Yes, please, I want to come.”
Viserys’ grin is dark and mischievous. “And you will, brother, just how you like it.”
The king’s thighs are already flushed and tender, and they become even more so when Viserys sits up and brings his hand down to administer a sharp slap. His brother cries out loudly, but Viserys doesn’t care to muffle it, the sound doing wonders for his own arousal.
“Oh,” Aegon moans, when another hit comes, his hands flexing in their cuffs like he wishes he could just touch himself after all. But he isn’t that kind of man. He wasn’t raised to rule, and in a kinder world he would have been Jacaerys’ envoy or maybe his Kingsguard. There would have been no cattle show bride, no scheming Lords of Starpike. Just a head on a lap, a mother who loved them oh so much.
(Viserys wasn’t raised to rule either, but he spent too many years as a hostage to let people tell him what he should and should not want.) “You’re so lovely,” he whispers in between Aegon’s cries. A refrain of devotions like this threaten to fall from his mouth; every time his hand meets his brother’s skin he wants to describe how beautiful it is, cream colored softness turned red and angry by the brutality of his love. It’s all too much to say, so he raises up and and lets Aegon taste it on his tongue, a bruising kiss to remind him he is still there. He hasn’t forgotten the awful things he said to their sister, but in his kiss he tells Aegon that he is more than his pain and his sorrow. He hopes he hears it, hopes he feels it even when they break apart and Viserys moves back to continue his strikes to the rising welts.
Aegon’s very close, his impatience becoming more and more evident, his groans sounding less gratified and rather more desperate. But granting him easy mercy wouldn’t be right. His brother is a fighter; if he wasn’t, he wouldn’t be here today. As proof of his own conviction, he hovers his palm above Aegon’s manhood and watches him lash against his restraints trying to reach it. “Are you going to come? Or do you need my hand?”
“No,” he breathes, “Want your cock, please, Viserys. Want to feel it.”
And it’s a pitiful thing to admit, but Viserys doesn’t think he’d last longer than a few seconds were he to enter into his brother’s tight heat. So he compromises, sliding up to hold them together once again, oiling his hand with the jar from before. With one hand on Aegon’s chest for balance, he strokes them in tandem, not caring about starting slow, because he needs to see the ecstasy on his brother’s face when he finishes. Needs himself to see what Aegon looks like when there’s spend spattered on his torso, both his and Aegon’s own, covering him, clothing him. Flesh is a selfish thing, and Viserys has never been more grateful that their basest desires have brought them into this bed.
He’s glad too that after all of that - the glass and the fire and the blessed violence - Aegon is the first to go, letting out a guttural moan while ropes coat his chest. A few drops land on Viserys’ cock, hot and plentiful, so he spares his brother the added agony of overstimulation and uses his come to find his own release in moments. Though the sensation is all too familiar, known to him since the Rogare palace where unbeknownst to him the head of the household would watch through a hole in his wall - it seems another thing entirely with Aegon’s eyes on him, a realm of pleasure accessed only a few times in a man’s life.
“Perhaps a few more in a prince’s life,” Aegon muses, and Viserys pinkens, not realizing that he’d spoken such thoughts.
“Oh,” is all he manages to say, his normal eloquence suddenly absent. “Yes, I suppose.” Though that wildly covetous part of him wants to keep his brother chained up while he goes and finds every half-decent portraitist in the city, paying ten thousand dragons to whomever best captures the king in his resplendence, he reels it in and lifts himself from the bed instead. There’s no towel that isn’t already covered in blood and oil, so Viserys picks his shirt off the ground and uses that to wipe Aegon’s body of seed. Unlike before, he is gentle, almost fatherly in his motions, and when Aegon is clean and new again Viserys unclasps his wrists and kisses them sweetly. Bit by bit the world is reset - the belts returned to the wardrobe, the candles blown out, and Aegon gets a clean linen shift to wear, having endured enough pain that evening to forgo the cilice.
Most nights Aegon returns to his rooms. On rare occasions he stays to sleep. Such an occasion this seems to be, as the king tucks himself into the crook of Viserys’ arm. Everything is peaceful - even the sound of servants shuffling is gone from the hallways - but the pin of the Hand has somehow stuck itself into Viserys’ breast, and now he must ask the question he has been avoiding for a fortnight.
There is no way of dancing around it.
“How are you going to bed your wife, Aegon?”
Aegon turns around, frowning. “We haven’t been doing this so long that I’ve forgotten what a cunt is, Viserys. I think I am clever enough to figure out how the act is carried out.”
“That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”
“Slide the whip under her door. Mayhap the pretty little thing will figure it out herself.”
Viserys almost smiles, only because Aegon has no idea how much he sounds like their father. Truthfully, Viserys doesn’t know either, but he thinks Baela and Rhaena would be greatly amused.
“Do not fret, brother.” A useless thing to say - Viserys frets about everything. “I will make sweet love to her like all the poets say.”
A small silence. Viserys breaks it again. “But you don’t love her - ”
“No. I don’t. It doesn’t matter.” He props himself up on his elbow so he can gaze upon his audience. “That’s the thing about ruling, really. It doesn’t matter what you want. There are only things you must do and things you must not.” Aegon trails his finger down the middle line of his brother’s chest. “This is what I want. And I have it.”
“You have it,” Viserys agrees. “As long as I’m here, it is yours.”
A tiny piece of woe leaves Aegon’s face, escaping the lines of his forehead and disappearing into the night. “Good. Now, my prince,” he says, leaning back down again and sliding his arm down so it lies between their bodies. “Can we sleep?”
And Viserys remembers, then, on Dragonstone, the way Aegon would creep into his bed at night, the cavernous room they shared all too frightening for a sad little boy. By morning, when all the servants came, he’d be gone, the mattress turned cold, and Viserys would wonder if he’d dreamt it. But even if he had - how sweet a dream.
“Yes, my king,” he says. “Yes, brother mine.”