[His gaze refocuses and he turns just enough to look at Aemond. There is a small smile on his lips, but it is tighter than usual.]
I know, and I care about you. [That is why he wants Aemond to be safe.]
For a long time, I couldn't remember who I had been before I was dragged through those iron gates. It was like it was pulled from me and shut away in a very small, tight box.
I remember most of it, yes. ["Easier" might not he the correct term.
It's also less interesting than what Aemond says next. He knows the secondborn children are frail, and the hundreds of ways they can die, and sometimes they are born strange–but that was all of them and not from one family. He must not mean just the usual poor luck some parents have.]
In what way? [he is quiet and gentle, though he had already been fairly subdued.]
[ He shouldn't speak of things like this, they are matters for Targaryens ... but Adar has been honest with him, soothed Aemond's pride. He doesn't believe he will betray it to someone else to make his house seem lesser; that would be beneath the uruk, he thinks. ]
When there are many riders bonded and not enough dragons, children are born with features of dragons that should be alive instead. Wings and tails. Snouts. Sometimes when there are too many dragons and not enough people, if a new egg is hatched in a crib so the child may claim it from birth, it will have a human face but a white wyrm's body and attack the babe instead.
There is some blood-magic involved in it, the same kind that lets us bond with a dragon. I claimed Vhagar because no young dragon would take to me from the crib until I was ten, when it was too late for an egg of my own.
[He would have to talk to anyone else at length before he was even at risk of betraying anything... and even then, why would he? He listens, keeping his face as neutral as he can though the descriptions do make his face scrunch slightly as he tries to imagine them. The babe with dragon attributes is not so hard, but the dragon with a human face was a little more difficult.]
If the balance isn't maintained it hurts one of your children or the other. [Vhagar may be the size of a small hill, and older than any living Targaryen, but they still must have hatched and raised her at some point.]
Did they not want you because there is some kind of predestined pairing? If ever a dragon felt love, she seems to love you.
[ He nods to Adar's understanding, then a small smile settles as he mentions Vhagar. ]
She's so big, she counts for five dragons. In retrospect it makes sense no dragon would hatch for me.
[ Resting his temple on the edge of the bath by Adar, Aemond half-closes his eyes. ]
My aunt, her rider, had died and she followed my uncle back to Driftmark although he was riding Caraxes the Blood Wyrm. She went home with him because she wanted to, riderless. She slept on the dunes of the island.
I was a little boy when I snuck up on her in the middle of the night. She woke up and almost set me on fire but I shouted at her to obey me ... and she closed her mouth, and did. I climbed all the way onto her back while she watched. Then, although it was freezing cold and she would have been within her rights to ignore me, she flew when I asked her to.
[ His smile saddens. ]
The other children said I had stolen their mother's dragon, which was stupid. I could no more have forced Vhagar to bend to my will than a mountain, they didn't understand. In the fight, one of my nephews cut out my eye before the adults stepped in.
When I took her home I would sneak into the Dragonpit where she lived when I was not making use of her, and she would listen to me read Valyrian stories about her first rider, Queen Visenya.
[It sounds to Adar like the Targaryens don't actually know much about whatever ties them to the dragons, else why try to hatch a new one at all why Vhagar lives? But the words don't cross his lips, he doesn't even consider saying them as Aemond recounts his story.
A very victorious story until it isn't, which was how most true tales seemed to always go. He frowned. He could not imagine when he was young trying to cut his cousins in truth. Even now he had managed to mostly make the Uruk's get along, a feat much greater than he was comfortable admitting even to himself.]
I do not understand your family. [Because the only family he had ever known had loved him, be it elven or uruk.] Yet I do understand why Vhagar loves you. [You wreckless, cute thing.]
[I beg your pardon, is exactly what his sudden deer-in-the-dragonfire look says as it snaps back to Aemond, instantly, with uncanny speed. Certainly, people had loved him but no one had said so in a very, very long time.]
[ His expression cools when Adar blanches and he looks away, leaning away to sit in the bath properly. Aemond clears his throat, running a hand through his hair to pull the damp through it again. ]
... I'm hungry, as you said. Could you please ask the servants for something hot when I'm done here?
[ Away, he should create space. Holy fucking Seven. ]
[In some other life, Aemond could have easily been an elf. He was vibrant and full of fire, beautiful, clever, and altogether too sharp sometimes. He felt too deeply. Yet Adar appreciated every bit of it, even when it exasperated him.
He manages only to open his mouth in time to nearly get a mouth full of bath water and definitely get a mouth full of Aemond, who he kisses back slowly and deeply, leaning up to better position them and avoid any further bathwater to the face as he strokes his fingers through Aemond's hair and pushes it back behind his ears.]
We will [ speaking in between kisses, ] eat dinner, [ it's very difficult, ] go to bed, [ and yet he can't stop smiling, ] and you will let me ravish you.
That is my plan for the evening.
[ How, with a busted arm and sore face, is up for debate but Aemond has never let a few injuries stop him. ]
Ambitious, [He doesn't imagine they will get to the last part, with the shock Aemond was in earlier it's every bit as likely that he will eat his supper and fall asleep. Adar cannot say he minds either way.] I will need to change first. [he says, pulling just a little bit away.]
Somehow I find myself soaking wet despite my lack of a bath.
[ Aemond's bath is awfully grimy from Drowner guts, otherwise this could have been sexy. He wrinkles his nose and concedes, judging it's time to get out before he prunes. ]
I asked them to fetch more chocolate from the castle, can you ask for it to be brought up too?
[ Chocolate is his new vice since he tried it a week ago. ]
[There will always be time for much cleaner, steamier baths. Adar smiles and kisses him one last time before getting up and making sure the towel is within easy reach for him.]
I won't be long. [And with that he ducks out again to go sort out the kitchen and clean himself up for the second time in an hour.
The servants will be there within fifteen minutes with trays of piping hot foot and of course, the chocolate, set aside from the heat.
Adar is not far behind, in a new pair of slippers and slacks and a dark grey tunic he hasn't bothered to belt this time. His hair is arranged a little neater than usual when he leans on the doorframe.]
[ Aemond has made himself comfortable on the bed with the chocolate first, sitting cross-legged with towel-dried hair braided over a shoulder: caught in the act of eating snacks before dinner, he slowly puts it in his mouth and agrees, ]
... The food is delicious.
[ The food is untouched! Dressed in a white shirt and slacks, his left sleeve is rolled up and his bandaged arm is resting on his lap. A smile lights up his face once he's through committing dessert-crimes and he looks over Adar with approval. All the scars, the marks, the torments visible on the uruk are not what Aemond sees, only the fondness and affection that is devoted purely his way with a protectiveness that is endlessly flattering.
He holds out his good arm, fingers sticky with sweets. ]
[He really was cute. Adar couldn't help but be a little amused at how he clearly hadn't intended to be caught with his hand in the sweets–as if Adar would care so long as he was eating something.]
I'm sure it is.
[If only he'd had any.
His expression is warm and easy when he comes into the room, pushing the door shut behind him and taking that plainly sticky hand in his own he brings it up to his lips and kisses the palm of his hand.] It is your stomach that concerns me, dear heart.
[ Feeling more sick with his arm hurting, he has admittedly avoided the food out of a hope to find his appetite elsewhere ... but he is tired, his limbs ache where muscles were pulled during the fight, and Adar is like a very warm pillow he wants to settle against. His hand twitches under the kisses and his stomach flips independent of his queasiness when he hears Dear Heart. ]
I will. [He considers the room for a moment, kisses Aemond's palm one more time before releasing it and going over and picking up a love seat to sit at the table instead of the chairs that were already set there, any of which he moves out of the way once the love seat is on the ground again.
Then he sits at one end, so Aemond has room to curl against him and use him as a pillow if he wishes.]
Come, there is surely something here you can stomach aside from chocolate.
[ Aemond is predictably at Adar's side in an instant, bringing up a chocolate to tap him on the lips with. Cosy, their firelit getaway from two violent, unforgiving worlds. ]
[He wraps his arm gently and comfortably around Aemond's shoulders as soon as he sits with him, drawing idle circles on his sleeve as the sit there in comfortable familiarity. Still, somehow, he doesn't expect the chocolate pressed to his lips. Though he kept the thought to himself he couldn't help but feel very strange about being cared for to this degree. He had been kept alive, kept (relatively) well by others at various points in the last several thousand years but never with such genuine sweetness.
So he tries the chocolate, lets it melt on his tongue for a moment while he tastes it before actually eating it properly.]
It is like nothing in my world that I have ever tried, but it is very good.
You cannot keep flattering me, I will be a pancake before long.
[ He kisses him chastely, laughing under his breath. As promised, he starts nibbling at the real food with Adar a warmth at his side, a strong arm at Aemond's back. ]
Ah yes, another one of my many terrible deeds. [You can't stop him.
Adar picks up a strangely delicate sandwich triangle and takes a bite of it, while trying not to make it obvious how difficult a fucking question that was. In the end he cannot think of anything specific, anyway.]
All of the food in Aman was beyond description. Better than anything grown or hunted elsewhere, though the food in Beleriand was not bad, either.
[As he speaks, he does remember something.]
My mother used to grow strawberries outside the kitchen window. They were small and sweet and endless in number.
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I know, and I care about you. [That is why he wants Aemond to be safe.]
For a long time, I couldn't remember who I had been before I was dragged through those iron gates. It was like it was pulled from me and shut away in a very small, tight box.
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[ The water drags on his hair as he sits forward, hooking an arm over the edge of the tub. He pipes up about a taboo subject from his own house. ]
Sometimes ... Targaryens are born wrong. Deformed.
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It's also less interesting than what Aemond says next. He knows the secondborn children are frail, and the hundreds of ways they can die, and sometimes they are born strange–but that was all of them and not from one family. He must not mean just the usual poor luck some parents have.]
In what way? [he is quiet and gentle, though he had already been fairly subdued.]
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When there are many riders bonded and not enough dragons, children are born with features of dragons that should be alive instead. Wings and tails. Snouts. Sometimes when there are too many dragons and not enough people, if a new egg is hatched in a crib so the child may claim it from birth, it will have a human face but a white wyrm's body and attack the babe instead.
There is some blood-magic involved in it, the same kind that lets us bond with a dragon. I claimed Vhagar because no young dragon would take to me from the crib until I was ten, when it was too late for an egg of my own.
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If the balance isn't maintained it hurts one of your children or the other. [Vhagar may be the size of a small hill, and older than any living Targaryen, but they still must have hatched and raised her at some point.]
Did they not want you because there is some kind of predestined pairing? If ever a dragon felt love, she seems to love you.
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She's so big, she counts for five dragons. In retrospect it makes sense no dragon would hatch for me.
[ Resting his temple on the edge of the bath by Adar, Aemond half-closes his eyes. ]
My aunt, her rider, had died and she followed my uncle back to Driftmark although he was riding Caraxes the Blood Wyrm. She went home with him because she wanted to, riderless. She slept on the dunes of the island.
I was a little boy when I snuck up on her in the middle of the night. She woke up and almost set me on fire but I shouted at her to obey me ... and she closed her mouth, and did. I climbed all the way onto her back while she watched. Then, although it was freezing cold and she would have been within her rights to ignore me, she flew when I asked her to.
[ His smile saddens. ]
The other children said I had stolen their mother's dragon, which was stupid. I could no more have forced Vhagar to bend to my will than a mountain, they didn't understand. In the fight, one of my nephews cut out my eye before the adults stepped in.
When I took her home I would sneak into the Dragonpit where she lived when I was not making use of her, and she would listen to me read Valyrian stories about her first rider, Queen Visenya.
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A very victorious story until it isn't, which was how most true tales seemed to always go. He frowned. He could not imagine when he was young trying to cut his cousins in truth. Even now he had managed to mostly make the Uruk's get along, a feat much greater than he was comfortable admitting even to himself.]
I do not understand your family. [Because the only family he had ever known had loved him, be it elven or uruk.] Yet I do understand why Vhagar loves you. [You wreckless, cute thing.]
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[ He turns his head, bringing a finger up to twirl around Adar's hair where it falls over the edge of the tub. ]
... You ought to understand why I love you.
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I–
Hmm.
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... I'm hungry, as you said. Could you please ask the servants for something hot when I'm done here?
[ Away, he should create space. Holy fucking Seven. ]
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Even if he hadn't, he would not have moved. He's clearly hurt Aemond by being surprised and that doesn't settle well with him.]
I do not know why you love me, or that anyone could anymore. That is why I... Aemond.
[Feelings are easy to know and hard to speak, for the old Uruk, but he swallows his intense fear of the vulnerability they cause and continues.]
I love you too.
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You do?
[ He doesn't wait for an answer, surging with a wave of water to kiss him, cupping his cheek. ]
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He manages only to open his mouth in time to nearly get a mouth full of bath water and definitely get a mouth full of Aemond, who he kisses back slowly and deeply, leaning up to better position them and avoid any further bathwater to the face as he strokes his fingers through Aemond's hair and pushes it back behind his ears.]
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That is my plan for the evening.
[ How, with a busted arm and sore face, is up for debate but Aemond has never let a few injuries stop him. ]
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Somehow I find myself soaking wet despite my lack of a bath.
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I asked them to fetch more chocolate from the castle, can you ask for it to be brought up too?
[ Chocolate is his new vice since he tried it a week ago. ]
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I won't be long. [And with that he ducks out again to go sort out the kitchen and clean himself up for the second time in an hour.
The servants will be there within fifteen minutes with trays of piping hot foot and of course, the chocolate, set aside from the heat.
Adar is not far behind, in a new pair of slippers and slacks and a dark grey tunic he hasn't bothered to belt this time. His hair is arranged a little neater than usual when he leans on the doorframe.]
I think they did well...
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... The food is delicious.
[ The food is untouched! Dressed in a white shirt and slacks, his left sleeve is rolled up and his bandaged arm is resting on his lap. A smile lights up his face once he's through committing dessert-crimes and he looks over Adar with approval. All the scars, the marks, the torments visible on the uruk are not what Aemond sees, only the fondness and affection that is devoted purely his way with a protectiveness that is endlessly flattering.
He holds out his good arm, fingers sticky with sweets. ]
You must be starved, come and sit.
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I'm sure it is.
[If only he'd had any.
His expression is warm and easy when he comes into the room, pushing the door shut behind him and taking that plainly sticky hand in his own he brings it up to his lips and kisses the palm of his hand.] It is your stomach that concerns me, dear heart.
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I will eat if you eat with me.
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Then he sits at one end, so Aemond has room to curl against him and use him as a pillow if he wishes.]
Come, there is surely something here you can stomach aside from chocolate.
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[ Aemond is predictably at Adar's side in an instant, bringing up a chocolate to tap him on the lips with. Cosy, their firelit getaway from two violent, unforgiving worlds. ]
Try it.
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So he tries the chocolate, lets it melt on his tongue for a moment while he tastes it before actually eating it properly.]
It is like nothing in my world that I have ever tried, but it is very good.
But not nearly as good as you.
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[ He kisses him chastely, laughing under his breath. As promised, he starts nibbling at the real food with Adar a warmth at his side, a strong arm at Aemond's back. ]
What was your favourite thing to eat back home?
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Adar picks up a strangely delicate sandwich triangle and takes a bite of it, while trying not to make it obvious how difficult a fucking question that was. In the end he cannot think of anything specific, anyway.]
All of the food in Aman was beyond description. Better than anything grown or hunted elsewhere, though the food in Beleriand was not bad, either.
[As he speaks, he does remember something.]
My mother used to grow strawberries outside the kitchen window. They were small and sweet and endless in number.
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