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Dunk had never been to Summerhall. It was a pretty castle, closer to the Dornish style then anything else in the Stormlands with wide windows that befitted its status as a summer residence. Egg chattered as they approached, memories of an early childhood basking in the heat of the solar listening to his mother and her ladies. Dunk wasn’t paying much attention. A stone seemed to have settled at the bottom of his stomach. He did not like the idea of meeting Prince Maekar again, nor any other member of the royal family.
Daeron’s wedding would be a quiet affair, Daeron was far down enough in the succession that nobody wanted to spend too much on him. It was the bride’s second marriage as well. She had been Valarr’s wife, Egg had told him. A Tyroshi lady with pink hair (Egg had spoken much on her pink hair) whose father was wealthy and well favoured at court. “She could have been queen,” Egg had said. “But now she has to marry Daeron.”
They were ushered into a small quiet room away from the main courtyard when they arrived. A steaming bath stood ready and waiting for Egg to hop into, as well as a set of fine clothes.
“This will be your quarters” the steward told Dunk, gesturing at the bed in the corner. “Someone will bring you your meals.” Dunk nodded. Prince Maekar’s letter had made it very clear that he was to stay out of the way while they were here. Dunk’s height made him memorable in a way he could not be if he wished to keep Egg on as his squire. The less people that knew the better.
“It will only be for a week, Ser,” Egg after the steward had left.
“Are you not happy to home?”
Egg shrugged. “It will be nice to see my sisters, I suppose. And Father.”
“And wear nice clothes and have nice meals too I imagine.”
“Yes. Though I think I’ve grown rather used to hard salt beef, Ser.”
It was a lie. Nobody ever truly got used to hard salt beef but Dunk appreciated the boys reassurance as he made his transformation from Egg to Aegon. He’d even flushed a little pink in embarrassment as Dunk helped him into his fine silk doublet.
“I’ll come and see you after dinner, Ser” Egg said solemnly before he left for his Father’s chambers.
After dinner was, as it turned out, several hours away. A servant had brought Dunk a hearty meal as the Steward had promised but the room felt oddly large and silent without the boy. He had grown used to Egg, to his quiet companionship as much as his noise. It was the first time he’d been truly alone in a long time, not since that dungeon at Ashford Meadow. He shuddered. It felt too close here in his room in Prince Maekar’s castle, covered with Targaryen insignia while princes and kings ate upstairs. He lay down on the bed and tried not to dream.
The knock on the door made him start. He sat up as the door opened, looking down to Egg’s height and finding a pair of legs instead of a face.
“My son says you have kept him well and that he has learned much.” Prince Maekar sounded cold and terse.
“He is a good boy, your grace. A good squire.”
“Gods know he can’t be worse than the rest of them.”
Dunk shifted awkwardly. “We met Prince Aemon at the Citadel. He seemed a good lad,” he said tentatively. Prince Maekar scoffed.
“For a maester not a prince.”
They stood in silence for a moment, before Maekar sat down with a groan and gestured for Dunk to do the same. He does not look at me, Dunk realised.
“How is my son doing?”
“He trains well. He's getting better and better with the sword. And he's learning to be patient and less impulsive.”
“Good. Good.”
“He's clever too. Sometimes too clever for his own good but he's… well he's learning how to do that too.”
Now it came to it, Dunk wasn't sure what to say. He had thought it would be easy to talk about Egg but the words got lost on the way to his mouth and all he could think to say was that the boy was learning as he had learnt. Not in lessons but a gradual process you barely noticed til it was near done.
“My offer still stands,” Maekar said, pouring himself a goblet of the wine left for Dunk’s use. “You are welcome in my service.”
Was he? How long would it take for this castle to become stifling? Covered in dragons and a stench of grief that not even the wedding party could hide. For him to become as haunted by Prince Baelor's ghost as by all accounts Prince Maekar was.
“And I'll refuse you again, your grace,” he said. Ser Arlan used to say a hedge knight was the truest kind of knight-”
“And princes the falsest, yes I thought you'd say that.”
“I didn't say that,”
“Yes, of course and I'm sure you'd never even think it but nonetheless… I am a good knight, Ser Duncan. A good warrior, no man can deny that.”
“No, your grace. Everyone knows of your prowess in battle.”
Maekar nodded, watching the reflection of the candlelight in his wine.
“I heard you got wiped out by that old snail at whitewalls. And Aegon says you have not entered the lists since.”
Dunk flushed.
“I killed Black Tom Heddle.”
Maekar rolled his eyes.
“Yes the same way you beat Aerion, by being half a giant. You have no technique Ser Duncan.”
Dunk tried not to notice the way Prince Maekar's voice tightened at Aerion’s name, the way he seemed to flinch at the memory of the tourney. Maekar was right too, he won his fights by sheer strength. It worked. Nobody cared about technique in battle but a knight who could only rely on one thing was weak.
“I could teach you things this Ser Arlan of whatever the fuck it was could not dream of.”
“Pennytree. Ser Arlan of Pennytree.”
Maekar shrugged and continued to stare at the wall behind Dunk’s head as he had for the duration of his visit.
“While you are here, I will give you some training. If Aegon refuses to learn from anyone else I might as well make sure he learns something proper. And gods know I need a break from all these fucking wedding preparations”
A servant came to fetch Dunk in the afternoon the next day and gave him directions to a valley just outside the castle walls. Prince Maekar was waiting for him, stripped down to just his shirt and breeches. He did not speak upon Dunk's approach but handed him a blunt practice sword.
Maekar spent the first fifteen minutes correcting Dunk's stance, the blunt sword tapping at him til Dunk was certain he'd be covered in bruises before they'd even started. When he was finally happy with Dunk's stance he asked Dunk to attack him, but every time Dunk did he'd parry, bringing his sword to Dunk’s throat, his stomach, his thighs, the space between his ribs where his heart could be found, innumerable in comparison to the amount of times Dunk had managed to hit him.
Prince Maekar did not seem to have even broken a sweat. He spoke little, offering small sharp bits of instruction only after allowing Dunk to make the same mistake several times over.
It frustrated Dunk, how unaffected Maekar was, but it only served to make him sloppier, his attacks more aggressive and straightforward and more easily parried til he finally put his full strength into it, pushing past Maekar’s parry and sending him stumbling into the dirt. Maekar scowled.
“This is pointless exercise if you refuse to partake in it. Besides you were too focused on breaking my parry to notice my dagger at your stomach. If this were a true battle you'd be dead. Again.”
Dunk wasn't entirely sure that was true, he was sure he'd have noticed though Maekar had held his dagger in his hand as he stumbled, but he went again without answering. He was improving. He was making more hits and perhaps more significantly, Prince Maekar looked like he was having to put some effort into countering him, his face contorting as he concentrated.
For the next few days, in the afternoon Dunk would make his way to the valley for training, parrying the prince or watching him tilt lances against a practice dummy and call out where he thought the lance would hit. Maekar was not an easy taskmaster. He seemed able to find the worst of the bruises he'd given Dunk to hit again the next day, the flicker of a smile flashing across his eyes as he watched Dunk wince in pain.
Dunk spent the day of the wedding alone running through the drills Maekar had given him, imagining the straw stuffed dummy was Maekar himself. He was not a kind teacher, and his chiding made humiliation curl in Dunk's belly. Maekar's instructions doubled as insults more often than not, bitter words that like the bruising seemed intent on causing Dunk pain. Punishment for what lay between them.
The wedding feast was still going when Dunk returned to his chambers, he could hear the merriment as he walked through the halls, laughter bouncing off the tapestry lined walls, growing more and more distant as he approached the chamber that had been assigned to him. The silence seemed louder than the laughter.
When he reached the chamber there was food waiting for him. It was warm and filling, better than anything he'd eaten for months. He could not deny that even as he wondered what they were eating at the feast. He should not, he knew, feel excluded. There was no world where he sat at a table in the same hall as a king. And even if he had been allowed could he truly look at King Aerys knowing he was the reason his brother was dead. With Maekar at least there was a sense of shared responsibility, the role they both played lying raw between them unspoken and untouched but there nevertheless.
He’d take Egg and leave as soon as he could. The boy had visited Dunk often, chattering on about things Dunk could barely bring himself to pay attention to. He did not mention Prince Maekar's lessons to Egg and the boy spoke little of his father. Did he hold Egg partially responsible too? For running to a hedge knight instead of his uncle. There were many Prince Maekar could blame if he wished to alleviate it from himself.
Dunk pushed his empty plate away and made for the bed. It was too soft a bed. It seemed to swallow him, using the fatigue from Prince Maekar's lessons to entrap him in the feathers til sleep overtook him, heavy and hazy and disarming.
He could blame the bed for his missing Prince Maekar's knock, to awakening to find the prince staring down at him. It unsteadied him that he had not woken at the noise, it could cost him his life beneath a hedge.
Prince Maekar was drunk. Or at least a little tipsy. Dunk could smell the alcohol as he rose, inadvertently, to be face to face with the prince. Maekar did not step back, did not move as courtesy dictated he should to allow Dunk to shake himself awake and remove himself from the bed. Prince Maekar's eyes were lighter than Eggs, but not by much.
“What is it, Ser Duncan, that brings my family under your spell?”
Dunk resisted the urge to close his eyes and lie back down. He did not want this, he had been content to let it lie unspoken, had thought Prince Maekar had been too, the wound too large and barely scabbed over to be handled. When he didn't speak Maekar reached forward to clasp his jaw in his hand.
“Well? It must be something to make my son give up the life of a prince for hard meat and hard earth, for my brother to give up himself. Even Daemon Blackfyre was fond of you if what my uncle says is true. Are you a dragon killer, hedge knight? Dornish perhaps? A descendant of those who brought down Rhaenys and her dragon and killed Daeron the first and resisted us till my father brought them into the kingdom. What irony that would be, when they said my brother was more Dornish than dragon. Or perhaps your ancestors were those that stormed the dragon pit and killed princes and dragons both. Yes, that is more likely, you are from Flea bottom.”
Dunk could almost taste Maekar's breath, he was so close now. He did not speak. He could not say it worried him too. I dreamed of you, Prince Daeron had said. And Daemon Blackfyre too. How many Targaryen’s had dreamed of him? Perhaps one of his ancestors had killed a dragon and this was the gods punishment, for him to haunt them and be haunted by them, entwined with them in a way no hedge knight should be.
“Speak boy!” Maekar snarled, harsh and half whispered and still loud in the silence. He shook Dunk slightly.
“I don't know, your grace.”
Maekar let go of Dunk’s face and stepped back.
“Of course you don't. How could you? You are nothing but a fucking hedge knight”
And then Maekar kissed him. It took a moment for Dunk to respond, to realise what was happening. Maekar's mouth was hard and his beard tickled Dunk's face. Dunk had never kissed a man before. It was not so different from kissing a woman once he recovered himself. He suspected the ferocity of the kiss, the way Maekar almost seemed to bite, was specific to him, to this moment for surely Maekar had not kissed Egg’s mother like this. He should push him away, tell the prince that this could not happen, that he did not want it. Instead he allowed his hand to cup the back of Maekar's neck, to meet the ferocity of Maekar's kiss with his own.
They were both panting when Maekar pulled away, turning around to face the fire. Dunk watched as he removed first his belt, then his surcoat and doublet all placed neatly on the chair. He placed a vial of oil on the table.
Dunk had never been with a man before, had barely been with a woman. He knew of it, had seen it even, desperate men rutting against one another before a battle but he had given little thought about it himself. Daemon Blackfyre had wanted it though and he suddenly realised, he might have let him if he hadn't been so caught up in the tourney, his mind slowed with drink. There had been other men too, if he was honest, knights whose forms he'd watched for more than just technique.
His breath started to quicken. Dunk the lunk, thick as a castle wall indeed. Maekar had turned back around to face him, naked now. He was not as handsome as his brother nor as pretty as his son but it was the strength that attracted Dunk, the hard lines of his broad shoulders and the sharpness of his jaw, the memory of the way his body moved in combat.
It was not, Dunk also realised, the first time Maekar had fucked a man. Who had it been, he wondered. A boyhood companion? A whore? A member of his household? His brother. It came unbidden to his mind before he could stop it. They were Targaryens after all, it would not matter to them if they were brothers when if they were brother and sister they would have wed. He could picture them together. He tried not to.
Prince Maekar moved forward. Dunk flushed at the feel of his cock against his thigh. It was only half hard but it was a decent size, Dunk thought, not as big as his own but still. Did the prince expect him to take it inside of him? Or would they rut together as he had seen other men do. He would, he thought, prefer the latter.
He was jolted out of his thoughts by the feel of Maekar’s hand on the bare skin of his waist, reached under his shirt. The hand found a bruise and pressed, making Dunk grimace. Maekar almost smiled. He allowed Dunk to remove his shirt completely, to shove off his breeches while he admired Dunk’s mottled skin before he pushed him onto the bed and kissed him again.
It was a little softer this time but Maekar’s hand sought out bruises to press as if to compensate for it. Each time he did so it sent a shock to Dunk’s cock til he was hard against the prince’s stomach. Maekar pushed him back onto the bed, straddling him, only breaking the kiss to reach out to grab the vial of oil off the table. Dunk braced himself for the feel of Maekar's hands against his arse.
Instead, he realised Maekar had reached back to finger his own arse. He watched Maekar as he did so, the concentration, the flicker of something as his fingers entered his body, the way his back arched and his cock twitched. Maekar caught Dunk’s eyes and grunted, removing his fingers to grab Dunk's hand, pouring the oil over his fingers as he guided them to his hole.
Dunk’s fingers were larger than Maekar's and he could only insert one at first, hot and wet and tight. It made his own cock twitch in time with Maekar's. Maekar's hand never left his arm, gripping and guiding with his thumb pressed firmly against yet another bruise he had caused. Dunk added another finger at Maekar's instruction, and then another until Maekar removed them all together and took hold of Dunk's cock, holding it steady as he drew himself down upon it.
The ghost of both their cries filled the room, held back inside them as they joined together, neither of them willing to let it out. This was not like fucking a woman, though again Dunk wondered if that was as much because it was Maekar as because he was a man. Maekar's body was muscle, hard and tense beneath Dunk’s fingers. His face was similarly harsh, there was no soft smile, no gasps of pleasure. His pleasure was buried beneath a permanent scowl, hiding in a clenched jaw and screwed up eyes. He rode Dunk as skillfully as he would a horse and with less attachment, chasing his own release with seemingly little concern for Dunk's. He did not really need to, the tight heat of his arse and the clenching of his muscles more than enough but still Dunk wished Maekar would kiss him again, or perhaps just look at him. He closed his eyes, trying to imagine it was someone else on top of him, Tanselle or Rohanne or Prince Baelor himself in his brother's place. Prince Baelor would be a far gentler lover, Dunk was sure. Gentle and caring and so much kinder than his brother.
“Did my brother fuck you?”
The question startled Dunk, forcing him from his imaginings. Was this what this was about, an attempt to one up his brother, to possess Dunk in a way his brother had not. He shook his head.
“But you are his man all the same and you still will not be mine.”
“I look after your son,” Dunk said. It took both of them by surprise, almost a concession, and acknowledgement of the way they could not separate themselves from each other. Maekar moved his hips in a way that made Dunk gasp.
“Would you be my wife then Ser Duncan?”
Dunk shook his head and gritted his teeth. Maekar had resumed riding him again except now he seemed more aware of Dunk beneath him. His hands ran across Dunk’s chest, brushing his nipples.
“No? We are bound together by our child are we not? I made him like this, with my Dyanna on top of me.”
Dunk grunted. He wondered what Maekar would do if he turned them around so Maekar was on his back beneath Dunk. He could kiss him then, silence him with his mouth, let him consume Maekar as Maekar consumed him. When they did this again he would. He would have Maekar on his back, rake his nails down his chest, take him in his mouth till he cried out with pleasure. He wanted him. He was right, they were bound together both as fathers to their child and in their guilt.
For now though he settled for reaching out to grasp Maekar's cock and enjoy the way it seemed to startle him, the way he could not help but buck into Dunk's hand, his arse clenching as he did so. It did not take long for Dunk to bring Maekar to his peak, cumming across Dunk’s stomach. It made him cum too, releasing himself inside the prince.
Maekar collapsed beside him, panting. They lay together for a moment until Maekar stood up, collecting himself as he cleaned and dressed. Dunk watched him from the bed unmoving. It was only with his hand upon the door that Maekar began to sob.