Chapter Text
October in Boston always began the same way: in the morning the sky was drawn over with a dense grey veil, and by noon the wind from the bay scattered the clouds, laying bare a piercing, washed-out blue. Gwayne stood at the window of his second-floor bedroom and watched as the gardener raked the crimson maple leaves scattered across the perfectly trimmed lawn into heaps. The Hightower estate in Lexington dozed in the afternoon stillness, and only the barely audible hum of the heating in the ventilation shafts stirred the silence of their seclusion. Gwayne touched his fingers to the cold glass and rolled his shoulder slightly. His muscles still ached pleasantly after a workout in the basement gym, where he had spent nearly an hour pounding the heavy bag.
Arrion, a tall, dark-haired man from the graduate programme at MIT, had called him around six and asked if he was free tonight, and Gwayne, tired after a long day at the architectural firm where he and his colleagues had been wrestling with a project for the renovation of an old warehouse in the South End, had replied that yes, he should come over. Ormund was supposed to be attending some charity dinner organised by their mother's foundation, and Gwayne reasonably assumed that his cousin would not return before ten. Arrion arrived around seven. They had a glass of wine each in the small sitting room of the west wing, talked about a new exhibition they both wanted to visit, and then went upstairs. Everything proceeded smoothly and calmly until the moment Gwayne heard the heavy front door slam at exactly a quarter to nine.
Arrion, who was just pulling on his jeans, raised an eyebrow questioningly.
"It seems my cousin has returned early."
"And?" Baratheon asked, not pausing.
"Nothing good," Hightower rolled his eyes.
Ormund did not catch Arrion in the bedroom, but already in the kitchen, where the man had gone down for a glass of water while Gwayne was taking a shower. Arrion was wearing Gwayne's unbuttoned shirt and his own jeans; he stood by the marble counter, drinking orange juice straight from the carton without even bothering to take a glass. Ormund, entering through the side door from the garage, froze in the doorway. He was wearing an impeccable dark green suit, tailored to order at an atelier, and a tie of burgundy silk, knotted in a perfect knot, but his face, when he realised that before him stood an uninvited guest, was the most loathsome of all possible expressions.
Arrion turned, met his gaze, and, being no fool, understood everything at once.
"Oh, hell," he muttered, setting the carton back on the counter.
Ormund did not utter a single word. He simply stepped aside, clearing the way, and stood motionless as the man, buttoning his shirt as he went, slipped past him and headed for the exit almost at a run.
Gwayne came down ten minutes later. He knew what awaited him, and that knowledge did nothing to increase his desire to hurry. He walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge, and took out a bottle of water, pretending that nothing had happened. Ormund followed him in and stopped at the threshold. The silence that hung between them was not merely awkward; Gwayne could physically feel its pressure.
"Hello, Gwayne."
"Ormund." Gwayne, without turning, took a sip of water.
He heard his cousin take a few steps and stop by the dining table, heard his expensive calfskin shoes creak, heard a cufflink give a quiet clink as he rested a hand on the back of a chair.
"I thought the dinner wouldn't end before ten," Gwayne said, with exaggerated indifference, hoping the trick would work and his brother would not once again set about casting out his demons.
"I left early," Ormund replied.
"Why?"
"Because I grew tired of listening to old fools discussing the merits of their kennels and comparing them to the merits of their grandchildren."
Gwayne finally turned around. Ormund stood with his arms folded over his chest, looking at him as though torn between desires. Between starting another hysterical scene and silently killing him.
"That young man who just ran out of my house," Ormund deliberately stressed the ownership of the dwelling. "Who is he? Another one of your friends?"
"Yes," Hightower was imperturbable.
"And you invited him here, knowing that I asked you not to do so."
"I thought you would be later."
Ormund tilted his head slightly to one side, and his eye twitched.
"It is not a matter of time, cousin, and you know it perfectly well. The point is that I asked you not to bring strangers into this house — strangers with whom you prefer to spend time in bed. I asked you, and you agreed."
"I agreed because you left me no choice."
"There is always a choice."
Gwayne took another sip and set the bottle on the table, trying to move calmly and deliberately so as not to give free rein to the irritation that was already beginning to rise inside him. There was, on the whole, little in his life that he hated as much as his brother finding an excuse to fuck with his brain.
"Listen," he began. "I understand you don't like it. I understand you think it's wrong. But this is my house too, and I have a right to invite here whomever I want."
Ormund narrowed his eyes slightly, and Gwayne noticed that shadows had settled under his cousin's eyes, and that the stubble, always shaved to perfect smoothness, was just barely breaking through on his chin today. It was so uncharacteristic of Ormund, who regarded his appearance with almost feminine reverence, that Gwayne was momentarily distracted and missed the beginning of the next sentence.
"...not about the house. The point is that you continue to flaunt your life without thinking of how it reflects on all of us. We have a reputation. We have a name. And that name means more than your pleasures; stop, for fuck's sake, shaming me. How much longer? You know perfectly well that you are making my life difficult."
"My pleasures," Gwayne repeated, letting everything else pass him by. "Is that what you call it?"
"What else should it be called?" In his tone, the intonation Gwayne hated most of all broke through: a mixture of fastidiousness and righteous anger, directed at everything this fanatical virgin considered wrong.
Gwayne walked over to the table and sat down, picked up an apple from the fruit bowl, turned it over in his fingers, and set it back, fighting the urge to hurl it at his brother's forehead.
"You speak as though I hold orgies here every evening. One person came over: we drank wine, we talked. Then we went upstairs, where he..."
"I do not wish to know the details, damn it!"
Had he had his way, he would have sat his brother down on a chair, gagged his mouth, tied his hands behind his back, and recounted the details of his evenings until foam began to bubble from his ears in rage. With people like him, there was no other way. He would have moved out, except that this truly was his house too. So it had been decided to wear down his pious brother by attrition. So that he would be the first to flee the estate.
"You asked who he was yourself. I am answering."
"You are not answering; you are demonstrating your contempt to me."
"Contempt for what?"
Ormund gripped the back of the chair, and his knuckles went white.
"It is not I who sets the rules," he said slowly, as though explaining a simple truth to a child. "The rules are set by the order of things, which existed long before us and will exist after. There are certain boundaries, Gwayne. There are limits to what is permissible. And what you are doing goes beyond those limits."
"Because I'm gay?"
"Because you bring random people into our house, and I don't know what to expect from them. That man... That fucking beast, animal! I don't know what else to call people who don't know how to use glasses — he drank my juice from the carton, for fuck's sake."
Gwayne shook his head and rose from the chair. He picked up the aforementioned juice, looked his elder brother straight in the eyes, and simply poured it down the sink, throwing the carton into the bin, in case Ormund, in the grip of his emotions, decided to set it on fire. The conversation had reached a dead end, and he felt it as clearly as one feels an approaching rain by the ache in one's bones. Ormund had never known how to listen.
He only knew how to speak and to wait for his interlocutor to exhaust his arguments — often far more reasonable than his brother's — and tell him to go to hell.
"I don't want to continue this conversation," Gwayne said, sighing heavily. It truly was beyond his strength. "Let's just leave everything as it is and go to our separate rooms."
"No."
"What do you mean, no?"
"I am not going to pretend that nothing happened. I come home after a difficult day to find some faggot wandering around my kitchen. Do you think that's normal?"
"I think you're being far too dramatic."
"And I think you're behaving like a teenager who believes he can do whatever he pleases, without thinking how it will reflect on my piety and the piety of our family."
Gwayne felt something inside him tighten and begin to vibrate. He walked over to the window, looked out at the garden, at the darkening sky, at the rare lights of passing cars, and tried to count to ten, the way Alicent had taught him when they were children and quarrelled over toys. Having reached seven, he understood it wasn't helping and turned back.
"Ormund, what do you want? For me to swear on the Bible that I will never bring anyone here again? Fine. I swear it."
"You don't believe in the Bible."
"Then what should I swear on for you to leave me alone?"
It seemed a little more and they would break into shouting again.
Gwayne picked up his water bottle and took another sip, because his throat had gone dry. He suddenly realised that they stood opposite one another like two boxers, and that the distance between them was shrinking with every retort, and that if things went on like this, one of them would inevitably snap, and another fight would be unavoidable.
"Have you ever thought that I'm a person too?" he asked. "That I have feelings, desires, needs that are not limited to sitting in my room and praying with you before supper?"
"Your feelings and desires are your own private matter. I do not pry into your soul. I only ask that you do not flaunt them in the house that belongs to our family."
"Our family," Gwayne repeated. "You speak as though I'm adopted. As though I'm here on sufferance."
"You are my cousin. But sometimes it seems to me that you forget that."
Gwayne could have launched into another tirade, tried to prove something. But instead of what he had done countless times before, the young man chose a fail-safe tactic:
"Go fuck yourself."
Gwayne's voice came out sharper than he had intended, and Ormund jerked his head as though he had been slapped. The kitchen fell silent, and in that silence Gwayne heard the radio playing softly upstairs, in the master bedroom.
Ormund looked at him with a long, heavy gaze, and then turned and walked out of the kitchen without another word. Gwayne was left alone. He finished his water, put the bottle in the sink, and braced both hands on the edge of the marble counter, staring out of the window at the dark garden and trying to understand why every conversation of theirs ended the same way.
Could a person truly be that narrow-minded?
And his cousin, time and time again, proved that he could.
He didn't know how long he had stood there, but when the clock in the hall struck half past nine, he straightened up, ran a hand over his face, and went to the library, hoping that no one would disturb him there. The library was the only place in this enormous house where he felt truly at peace. Tall mahogany bookshelves, filled with books his great-grandfathers had collected, antique globes, a massive writing desk with a green baize top, and a fireplace no one had lit for many years — all of it created an atmosphere of seclusion and security. Gwayne sat down in the leather armchair by the window, picked up the unfinished novel from the side table, and tried to immerse himself in reading.
Gwayne did not hear footsteps, only felt a movement of air and a barely perceptible change in the light, as though someone had blocked the light from the corridor. He raised his head. On the threshold stood Ormund. He had managed to change and was now wearing a house robe of dark blue velvet with his initials embroidered on the lapels, but his face remained as tense as it had been half an hour before. In his hand he held a glass of something transparent.
Gwayne arched an eyebrow cynically.
Ormund walked inside and sat down in the armchair opposite, set his glass on the little table, and for some time stared in silence at the dark hollow of the fireplace.
"I don't want you to fall asleep in sin."
"And?"
"I forgive you."
"What the fuck?" Gwayne marvelled.
"You grew angry, having refused my guidance. Anger is the most terrible of the deadly sins. I forgive you." Ormund took the glass in his hand, but did not drink, only held it up to the light and looked through the clear liquid.
Gwayne set his book aside and straightened in his chair. He had not expected such a turn. Ormund usually retreated into a deep defence after quarrels, locking himself in his room or driving off into the night, returning towards dawn. And now here he was, doing something terribly strange.
"You were wrong," Ormund continued. "But I truly do demand too much of someone like you. It is your life, and your decisions, and..." he faltered, searching for the word, "and your relationship with God."
"Thank you," Gwayne said, hoping his cousin would catch his sarcasm.
"But there is something else."
"What else do you want?"
Gwayne did not clink glasses with his bottle of water, merely nodded and leaned back in his chair, feeling drained. They spent the rest of the evening in the library almost peacefully: Ormund finished his drink, Gwayne finished a chapter, and when the clock struck eleven, they went to their separate bedrooms without wishing one another a good night. Perhaps they both hoped the other would die in his sleep.
But that did not happen.
Gwayne woke at seven in the morning to a knock on the door, sat up in bed, and his first thought was of their pact the evening before. Outside the window, a fine rain was drizzling, and the wind flung the drops against the glass, creating a rhythmic, lulling noise. Gwayne washed, put on jeans and a heavy-knit jumper, and went down to the small dining room. Ormund was already seated at the table, dressed in an immaculately pressed shirt and grey trousers with creases, and before him stood a cup of black coffee and an open laptop with stock reports.
Seeing Gwayne, he closed the laptop and stood.
"Good morning," Gwayne said, approaching the table.
"Good morning," Ormund echoed.
They stood face to face, divided only by the corner of the dining table, and the silence in the room was palpable. The housekeeper, sensing something amiss, had prudently retreated to the kitchen and switched on the extractor fan to drown out any sounds from the dining room.
Gwayne looked at his cousin and said:
"Go on, then, if you really want this."
Ormund nodded and slowly and solemnly walked around the table.
"Are you ready?" Ormund asked.
Ormund swung and struck him with an open palm across the left cheek. The sound was sharp, almost ringing, and Gwayne, who had been expecting a heavier blow, was surprised at how weak it proved to be. His skin flared, but the pain was bearable; Gwayne, without flinching, simply accepted it and nodded.
"Is that all?"
Ormund lowered his hand and looked at him, smiling.
They sat down to breakfast and hardly spoke. Ormund browsed the news on his tablet, occasionally commenting on it under his breath, while Gwayne ate his porridge, glancing out of the window and trying to remember what day it was and whether he needed to be anywhere besides work. Around ten in the morning, as he was finishing his second cup of coffee, the phone in his jeans pocket vibrated. Gwayne glanced at the screen and saw his sister's name.
"Hi. Is it urgent?" he asked, answering the call.
"Are you home?"
"Yes, I'm home. What's happened?"
"I'm in Cambridge right now; we've just come from the lawyers. I haven't got the strength to tell you over the phone. Can I come over?"
"Of course."
Gwayne hung up and looked at Ormund.
"She's on her way," he said.
Ormund, hearing this, raised an eyebrow and set his tablet aside.
"What is it this time?" he asked.
"I don't know. She said she'd been to the lawyers. It seems things are really bad with Viserys."
Ormund rolled his eyes.
"That man is a walking catastrophe," he said. "But her husband is the curse of this family, and the sooner she rids herself of him, the better for everyone."
"A divorce could drag on for years. And cost a fortune."
"We have a fortune," Ormund shrugged.
Gwayne wanted to object that the fortune belonged first and foremost to Ormund's father and his uncle, not to them.
Alicent arrived forty minutes later. Her grey Lexus with Massachusetts plates swept into the driveway and stopped before the main entrance so abruptly that the gravel sprayed from under the wheels, and several small stones pinged sharply against the undercarriage. Gwayne stepped out onto the porch to meet her, shivering in the damp, and understood at once that his sister was holding on by the last of her strength.
Alicent looked as though she had not slept for several nights in a row; her auburn hair, usually arranged in a neat low bun, was escaping in untidy strands that framed her gaunt face. Her expensive trench coat was creased as though she had sat in it on a hard chair for no fewer than six hours. Deep shadows had settled under her eyes, giving her gaze a hunted expression. She opened the rear door of the car and helped Daeron out; the boy was pressing his hands to his chest with both arms. He looked at the house with wide-open eyes.
They entered the house through the front entrance. The housekeeper, forewarned by Gwayne, was already waiting in the hall and immediately offered to show Daeron the playroom, where the old toys of his older brothers and sister were kept. Daeron looked questioningly at his mother. Alicent nodded and gave him a little push towards the housekeeper's back, promising she would come and check on him soon. When the boy had vanished around the bend of the corridor, holding the housekeeper's hand, Alicent walked into the sitting room, sank onto the sofa, and covered her face with her palms. Gwayne sat down opposite and waited, asking no questions, understanding that his sister needed to gather her thoughts. Logs crackled in the fireplace, lit on account of the raw weather, and the orange reflections danced on the Persian rug, creating a sense of cosiness that was utterly at odds with the moment.
"He filed first," she said at last, taking her hands away from her face. Her voice was colourless. "We hadn't even managed to work out a joint strategy before his lawyers had already sent the notification. He's accusing me of marital infidelity and demanding sole custody of all four children."
Gwayne frowned and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He had known Viserys long enough not to be surprised by such baseness, yet the scale of what was happening was still staggering. Viserys had never been openly cruel; his weapon had always been a soft, enveloping passivity, an ability to shift responsibility onto others' shoulders and present himself as a victim of circumstance. But now, with a young mistress on the horizon and the prospect of holding onto the capital left to him from his first marriage, he had apparently decided to act decisively and with no regard for decency.
"What evidence?" Gwayne asked.
"Photographs. Supposedly of me meeting Criston in a hotel."
Gwayne rubbed the bridge of his nose, considering what he had heard. The situation was worse than he had assumed. Viserys had clearly been preparing for this step in advance and had covered himself from all sides. He had connections in the Massachusetts judicial system, knew the right people, and knew how to present himself in a favourable light. Alicent, for all her inner strength, had always lost to him in public battles, because she did not know how, and did not wish, to play dirty games.
She believed in the truth, in the facts speaking for themselves, and that belief could now destroy her.
"What is he after?"
"Full custody. He wants to prove I'm an unfit mother, and then the court will leave the children with him. Aegon is already with him, you know. Aemond is at school, but Viserys can pull him out of there at any moment. Helaena..." Alicent's voice wavered. "Helaena is in a clinic; she needs peace, but if a court battle begins, she could be called to give testimony, and I don't know how she'll survive that."
Ormund entered the room. He stopped in the doorway and folded his arms over his chest, leaning his shoulder against the doorframe. Alicent, noticing him, fell silent and straightened slightly, as though expecting him to make some barbed remark about her inability to choose a husband. Ormund did, indeed, open his mouth, but thought better of it and instead walked to the armchair by the fireplace, sat down, and crossed one leg over the other. His face remained unreadable.
"You know what I've thought of Viserys and his whole clan from the very start. But let's be honest, little sister. Are you really blameless? Or were you, after all, screwing Cole."
"Get the hell out of here." Gwayne took his sister's hand in one of his and waved the other in his cousin's direction.
"You need a good lawyer. It's unlikely you have the money for one."
Alicent looked at her cousin with fury.
"Can you, for once, behave like a decent human being?"
"Of course I'll give you the money, why not. But on condition that you really did not commit adultery. Otherwise, you can deal with it yourself." Ormund often behaved as though he were talking to himself.
Gwayne shifted his gaze from his cousin to his sister and back. Right now it was more important to settle the practical questions. Daeron would stay at the estate; that was decided. The boy needed stability, a routine, and if the Targaryens tried to take him, it would be very problematic for them to do so at Ormund's.
"I am not going to discuss the details of my private life with you."
Alicent had indeed asked for Daeron to be left with them for an indefinite period.
Gwayne was already mentally drawing up a schedule: taking him to prep school in the morning, picking him up in the afternoon, reading him books in the evening, and making sure he didn't watch the news on television. Ormund, under Alicent's conditions, was to keep his distance, and although this was inconvenient and humiliating for him, Gwayne hoped his cousin would keep the word he had, with great reluctance, finally given.
Alicent stayed for lunch but hardly touched her food. She pushed the baked salmon the housekeeper had prepared around her plate with a fork and kept glancing at the clock. She had to get back to Boston, where a meeting with a new lawyer, recommended by some old family friend, was scheduled for the afternoon. Gwayne tried to persuade her to stay the night and rest, but she shook her head and said time was the one thing she didn't have enough of right now. After lunch, she went up to the playroom, where Daeron was building a castle out of wooden blocks, and spent about half an hour with him, sitting on the floor and talking quietly about something Gwayne couldn't make out. When she came back down, her eyes were red.
"I'll call tonight," she told her brother, standing in the hallway. "If you need anything, call me at once. And only me."
"I'll manage," Gwayne shrugged, smiling.
Alicent embraced him, pressed her cheek to his shoulder, and froze for a second. He could feel her trembling and silently stroked her back, understanding that any words would be superfluous just now. Then she let him go, straightened her hair, threw on her trench coat, and stepped out onto the porch, where the cold wind immediately flung a fistful of raindrops into her face. Gwayne stood on the threshold and watched her car pull out of the gates and turn onto Massachusetts Avenue, gradually vanishing into the grey veil.
By half past four, dusk had already gathered beyond the windows, and Gwayne had the lights along the driveway switched on so that any passers-by could see the way. Daeron was sitting on the rug before the fireplace in the sitting room, laying out coloured letter cards and trying to form a word out of them. Gwayne settled into an armchair nearby, pretending to read an architecture magazine, but in truth simply watching his nephew and thinking how strange life was.
He had always enjoyed spending time with Daeron.
Despite the fact that his relationships with his other nephews had never worked out.
Ormund did not come down for supper. The housekeeper said he had asked for a tray to be sent up to his study, because he had urgent business and did not wish to be disturbed. Gwayne did not try to find out the details. He and Daeron ate supper together at the large table: the boy ate macaroni and cheese, washing it down with apple juice from a tall glass, and talked about his brothers and sister. Gwayne listened, nodded, and asked questions, glad that his nephew, despite all the chaos surrounding him, had kept his childlike spontaneity.