Chapter Text
Luke is nineteen years old when he comes to terms with the fact that he's a freak.
It happens at one of the annual Targaryen Christmas parties, the one that virtually everyone who's anyone in all of King's Landing attends. In total honesty, Luke hates these parties—if he had his way, he'd never go to another one. But at nineteen, he rarely ever gets his way: he's still living at home, and his college education is being paid for by his parents. So he's gotta do whatever they want.
And apparently? What they want is to be here, for this stupid party. He'd call them all masochists to their faces, if he was any braver. Unfortunately he isn't, so instead he's just sulking in an armchair at the corner, with his third glass of the spiked eggnog, sullenly watching everyone else play the happy family that he knows they aren't.
"Cant wait for mom and Alicent to have another epic argument like last year," Luke grumbles, watching the two women in question act like the closest of friends (that they haven't been for longer than he's been alive).
Every year his mother and Alicent have a massive row, and although it has on occasion been about something substantial, more often than not it's a trivial misunderstanding. He always gets the sense that there's more to it than visible to the naked eye, but no one has ever bothered giving him the full picture, and he thinks there might not be much of a point now.
"Totally," Jace says without looking up from his phone. His brother has been loyally keeping him company, but it's pretty obvious that his patience has been waning for a while now. All of his responses have been generic and noncommittal, and Luke keeps catching him sending surreptitious, sidelong glances at Rhaena and Baela's direction.
Deciding to give his brother a break, and feeling more than a little tired, Luke sighs and gets on his feet. He's even swaying a little; that eggnog must be hitting him a little harder than he'd expected. "We've been here long enough to be seen, so I'm going to find a spare bedroom to crash in," he says, patting Jace on the shoulder as he leaves.
"Oh!" Hearing that, Jace looks up from his phone. probably for the first time of the night. He's got a sympathetic glimmer in his eye, like he knows all too well the urge to skip the rest of the party. "D'you want me to come wake you when it's time to open the presents?"
Luke pauses, considering the option. "Nah, don't bother," he says at last.
Jace nods. "Good night then, Luke."
Finding a spare bedroom should be an easy task in this massive manor, but for some reason his grandfather chooses to keep most of the rooms locked. When he was younger, his (now estranged) Uncle Aemond had showed him where they kept the spare key ring; that recollection comes in handy now, and it's still there under the fake potted plant on the landing just before the second floor.
He briefly smiles at the memory, but any positive feelings he derives from it are fleeting, and he chooses not to dwell on them. He's not close to any of his aunts or uncles, not anymore.
The first spare bedroom that he tries turns out to have been converted into an office. Just a glimpse at the leather chair and hearing the loud hum of a desktop computer has Luke hastily closing the door. If grandfather Viserys knew he'd gone in there, he'd be dead meat… probably.
"Who even needs this many spare bedrooms," he mutters, fiddling with the lock of the second. All the Targaryens were obscenely wealthy—his own mother and stepfather are no exception—but Luke has never seen any of their other relatives live quite as ostentatiously as his grandfather's family.
This room seems much more serviceable: a comfortable looking four poster bed, a space heater, and some cozy decorations that might even be only a century or so old. And once he's stepped inside, he can barely hear the racuous party any longer: clearly the soundproofing is top-notch. But peering out the window has Luke dismissing it out of hand: he doubts he'd be getting any sleep in a room like this with a prime view of the historic family crypt.
Which, who the hell even has family crypts on their property anymore? It's like some medieval aristocratic custom. Only the Targaryens. How fucking quaint.
(When he'd visited as a kid, he used to play with the others on the yard, and he always used the crypt as cover during hide-and-seek. He'd eventually learned the truth from an absolutely hysterical Aegon, and he's been mentally scarred ever since).
Skipping several bedrooms, Luke decides to try the one at the far side of the hallway next. The more distance he puts between himself and that insanely creepy crypt in the yard, the better. He has to dodge several clumps of seemingly randomly placed mistletoe to get there—he could only possibly have Helaena to thank for this predicament—and it makes him feel a bit like a cat burglar. Which is ridiculous, this is his grandfather's house.
He opens the door, and freezes.
The whole room is awash in a sensual red glow from an infrared lamp overhead, a feature Luke has only ever seen in older houses like this one. But it seems the room's inhabitants are making good use of it—there are two bodies on the cal king bed, entangled, and they are moving together in a syncopated rhythm.
And normally, this is where Luke would hastily close the door and leave them to go at it. It's what common sense dictates, and in fact, his brain is loudly yelling at him to do just that. But he finds that he can't look away, he's been paralyzed. Because there on the bed, fucking some stranger with languid thrusts, is his uncle Aemond.
It's not a sight he's going to be forgetting anytime soon. His uncle's muscled, corded arms are on either side of the woman, caging her against the bed like he's some sort of rutting, feral beast. His mane of Targaryen silver hair is sweaty, mussed up, and plastered to his broad, muscled back. He looks utterly glorious—like some barbaric conqueror that's enjoying his spoils of war. The whole scene wouldn't have looked out of place on the cover of one of his mother's bodice rippers (the one she denies having but he's sure he's seen them lying around the house).
And Luke just stands there at the doorway, utterly enraptured. His mind is blank and he can't move a single muscle; he just watches in awe as his uncle sensually rolls his hips to a lazy, well-practiced tempo, all the while caressing his partner carefully. Aemond seems to be damn good at whatever it is he's doing, if his partner's reactions are any indication: she's moaning breathily as they writhe together, her slender hands snaking their way up and down his defined shoulders, as if she can't get enough of him.
She's calling Aemond's name in a throaty and desperate voice, her words helplessly reverent like a prayer or a mantra; he's answering her with low, soft, and indistinct murmurs, with ephemeral and transient promises. And the sound of them together is so obscene, it's driving Luke fucking crazy, and he can feel himself hardening in reaction to the sight.
"Oh fuck." Before Luke can even think, the words are already tumbling out. Thankfully, they're nearly inaudible, and don't give him away. He paws at his own crotch in dismay. Was this really who he was? He'd always thought himself relatively normal in the scheme of things, especially considering the general weirdness of his extended family, but was he really some kind of freaky pervert that got off to watching his uncle fuck random girls in swanky guest bedrooms?
(Considering his mother's taste in men, it might be an inherited predisposition. Either way, it was definitely something he was going to have to keep to himself. Like, forever).
He watches as Aemond easily picks the woman up and flips her around, taking her from behind instead. It should be mentally scarring, and to some degree Luke thinks it probably is, but mostly he just finds it hot. His horny imagination is running wild, much to his horror: he can't help but to wonder what it must be like to be fucked like that, to have Aemond manhandle him roughly. It's a mind-shatteringly titillating thought, which isn't something he's keen on examining too closely.
The woman releases a sound halfway between a moan and a scream, pitching forward limply, and now Aemond's arms around her are the only thing keeping her upright. She must have just orgasmed. Fuck.
I'm a freak, he thinks, numbly and distantly. A perverted freak with incestuous fantasies and desires. Oh my god. Oh my god. Why couldn't he have inherited his mother's Targaryen white hair instead???
Luke comes to his senses at last, which really means that he's finally come to the (probably highly obvious to anybody else) conclusion that he needs to leave. Because every second that he's standing in the doorway like an awkward creep is a second that he could potentially be caught, which would be BadTM. It's not a confrontation or conversation he's particularly interested in having.
He carefully takes one step backward, and then another. Luke's eyes are trained on the copulating couple at all times, ready to freeze if there's even a hint of them hearing him.
Another step backwards lands him on a particularly old floorboard, which creaks horrendously. Just his fucking luck. Aemond and his paramour freeze, and Luke's heart sinks like a rock.
Aemond looks up sharply, his single eye sparking in recognition as it zeroes onto Luke. He pulls away, carelessly dropping the woman back onto the bed, and Luke can't help the desperate sound that he lets out as he watches Aemond's cock—slick with lube and precum, veiny, and impossibly enormous—emerge from the pussy it had just been buried in. Thick and heavy, it hangs in the air, and even waves a tiny bit when Aemond moves. Luke can't keep his eyes away from the single string of fluid that still connects it to the woman's vagina. Aemond had been fucking her bareback. Is that cum? God, the image in front of him is just so damnably hot.
"Lucerys?" Aemond raises an eyebrow in a silent challenge, as if he's expecting Luke to bolt any second now. Which, he definitely would if his legs were working at all. But they aren't, they're fucking leaden, and he's practically locked into place like an idiot.
Luke's throat is so dry. He gulps reflexively. He's so fucked.
Aemond doesn't take his eye off Luke as he stands, running a hand through his long hair to smooth it back behind him. Just that motion shouldn't be as sexy as it is, but Luke's left all pretensions of normalcy and good sense behind.
"I think you should go now," Aemond tells the woman, his voice smooth and completely unbothered, as if he hadn't been balls deep in her less than a minute ago.
She frowns. "You didn't get off though," she says, and she reaches out her hand to take hold of the base of Aemond's member. It doesn't look like she can wrap her hand around the whole thing, not to mention how crazy long it looks: she could have had both her hands on it and there would still be a substantial length leftover.
That's not a human dick. No way. It might have been shaped like one, it might even look like one, but Luke knows that no human has a cock that fucking big. What would it feel like to have something like that inside of you? Luke's not a virgin, but he's never had anything remotely close to that size either.
Is his mouth watering? He hastily wipes away any evidence of drool with his sleeve.
The woman seems to take Aemond's silence as tacit encouragement, because she begins to lazily jack his cock, up and down. Her instincts were mistaken though; he irritatedly takes her wrist and pulls it away from his person.
"Are you deaf? I told you to leave," Aemond snaps, hunting around the room for his trousers.
His harshness makes the woman pout, but it's clearly effective: she quickly gathers her things and departs, viciously glaring at Luke and body checking him on her way out the room. She must have (probably correctly) assumed that he was the reason Aemond was kicking her out.
A shadow looms over Luke while he's watching her go, while he isn't paying attention, and he jumps a little when he notices.
"Holy fuck!" He swears.
Aemond stands tall even though he's leaning casually against the doorframe. He's looking at Luke with a single raised eyebrow and a derisive expression in his eye. His arms are crossed before him; he looks both sexy and insufferable at the same time. Luke wants to kiss him. Luke wants to punch him.
"You didn't have to kick her out you know," Luke says, because he wants to project a coolness he really doesn't have. "I could have left and you two could have kept at it."
"Nah, I was getting bored anyway," Aemond replies dismissively.
"Didn't look that bored," Luke mumbles under his breath, and then regrets it immediately because Aemond looks positively gleeful.
"So little Lukey is a voyeur," he says tauntingly. "Who would have thought?"
"The hell I am! Go fuck yourself!" Despite his denial, Luke's blush gives him away. There is really no better word than voyeuristic to describe his actions tonight.
"And a liar too. Cant believe a sanctimonious bitch like Rhaenyra raised a little pervert like you." He leans in close, until his breath gently warms the side of Luke's neck. "But maybe you got it from your daddy, hmm? A chip off the old block. Laenor would be proud. Well, how was it? Did you see anything you liked, Luke?"
To his horror, before Luke can stop himself, his eyes stray down to Aemond's pants where his monstrous erection must have been haphazardly put away. Luke shuts his eyes, and hopes against hope that his uncle hadn't noticed.
Incredulous, ridiculing laughter proves that he has no such luck. "You did!" Aemond crows, and Luke just flinches in humiliation.
"That's—that's not it," he says defensively. "It's just—I couldn't stop looking. At that, that thing. It's so fucking—" Catching the intrigued look on Aemond's face, Luke clamps his mouth shut sullenly, unwilling to elucidate any further. He'd already been embarrassed enough today.
"Big," Aemond finishes for him, mirth in his voice. He looks like the cat that got the cream, like he can't believe his luck. "That's what you were going to say, isn't it? Couldn't stop looking at my cock because it was so fucking big."
"That's not what I said! You're twisting my words." Luke balls his fists, indignant even though Aemond is right on the money.
Sensing weakness, Aemond raises an inquisitive eyebrow. "Oh, am I?" He says it with the most offensive iota of condescension.
"I'm not having this conversation right now," Luke raises his arms in the universal gesture for fuck no. "I'm going to leave, and we're gonna pretend this never happened. And lets not bring it up ever again."
Aemond looks at him mildly. "Mmmm," he says, "no."
Luke blinks. "What do you mean no?" he demands stupidly. In all variations of this scenario he could bring himself to imagine, he'd never thought it would play out like this.
An intense look on his face, Aemond takes a step forward. Instinctively, Luke takes a step back in response. Another step, and then another, until his uncle has him crowded against the hallway wall. He turns to the side, only for Aemond's arm to shoot forward and trap him against the wall like one of those romcom heroines.
"Why should I pretend that nothing ever happened?" Aemond hums. "It's always good to have a little blackmail material. Especially on little Lucerys, so innocent that butter wouldn't melt in his fucking mouth."
Then, the look on Aemond's face gets so intense that Luke feels lost in it. He just stands there, waiting with bated breath, as Aemond brings his thumb up to his lip and just strokes it, gently, like he was touching something fragile. If this was a romcom, a kiss would surely come next.
Luke can't help it: he closes his eyes and tilts his head upwards in expectation.
The kiss never comes. Instead, there's a low chuckle. "You had a little bit of spittle at the corner of your mouth," Aemond explains, amused.
"Oh, fuck off!" Ears burning, Luke tries to shove his uncle off of him. It doesn't work: Aemond's body is stronger and well-built in comparison to his own frame, but he tells himself that the principle of the matter is what's important.
Aemond studies his face. "Did you really think I'd kiss you there?" he queries, his tone fascinated. "I know that your mother is fucking her own uncle, but you have to understand that it's not exactly normal behavior."
"Normal?" Luke scoffs. Being on the defensive for too long always pushes him into acting aggresssive to cover his embarrassment, and right now he's feeling enough of it to send him on the warpath. "You should know that isn't even part of the equation. We're Targaryens; there's nothing normal about us. Your siblings are literally married with kids. So why don't you take your normal and shove it up your fucking ass."
"Right, our family is fucking weird. So that means we can't be normal?" Aemond hums, more cheerful than anyone had a right to be in this circumstance. "Oh, right, I'd forgotten. That ship sailed for us that time you took my eye out with a letter opener."
Luke groans. "Oh, you're still hung up on that," he says. "Is that why you're being such an asshole right now? Because I thought we'd moved past that. You know. When we talked it out last year and all that."
It'd been a big thing for them. Very dramatic, a confrontation in the rain, lots of yelling and posturing involved. Aemond might have been extra psychotic and accidentally chased Luke into oncoming traffic. And then, he'd yanked him out of the way of danger in the last minute. They'd both been too embarrassed by the sequence of events to ever bring it up again afterward, but thinking about it still gets Luke's heart racing.
(In the true young adult way, it had been life changing for them, and had mattered to absolutely nobody else).
"It's an eye, Luke," Aemond says patiently, like he's talking to a particularly stupid child, but there's a twinkle in his eye that shows he's not entirely serious. "Maybe I don't hate you for it anymore, but I'm still going to hold it over your head for the rest of your life."
"Right, got it." Gritting his teeth, Luke trains his eyes on the ground. He feels so fucking stupid, like he doesn't have the most basic understanding of literally anything going on between them. And he feels hurt, which is literally the most ridiculous reaction he could possibly be having. He really doesn't know why he'd expected anything.
After that, the silence between them stretched awkwardly. Sensing that things had gotten weird, Aemond steps back to relieve the pressure between them, and deigns to break it himself. "As entertaining as your voyeurism was, I doubt that was your main objective here. Were you tired of the party already?"
He steps back into the room, grabs his shirt off the floor, and pulls it on over his head. Luke follows him in and perches on the bed. The bed that, less than five minutes ago, Aemond was just fucking a girl in. It's only mildly weird.
Luke lets out a long suffering sigh. "Got it in one," he mutters. "People being fake to each other, pretending that we all get along to keep our image squeaky clean for the plebs. Don't know how they do it all day. Just a few hours of it and I was already dying to get away."
"Well, it's a valuable skill to polish. You're going to have to learn to schmooze one day if you're going to take over Driftmark," Aemond remarks, sitting down next to him.
At the mention of grandpa Corlys's yacht manufacturing conglomerate, Luke grimaces. "Yeah… I'm not planning to do that."
Aemond looks at him sharply. "Does your mother know?"
Luke's grimace deepens. "I haven't figured out how to tell her," he mutters. "But I will. After my degree is completed and I'm not beholden to the family anymore." He just wants to live a normal life, free of all the freaky intrigue and politics that his family is mired in. Is that such an impossible thing?
Hearing this, Aemond's face softens. "Don't know how to tell you this, Luke," he says pityingly, "but as a Targaryen, you're always going to be beholden to family, in one way or another."
With a despondent sigh, Luke allows himself to fall backwards in an exaggerated caricature of hopelessness, anticipating the restful cushion of the high quality mattress.
Only for Aemond to quickly reach over and grab him back.
"Whoa, uh, I would not do that," Aemond cautions. "We got kinda messy here, there's all kinds of fluids on there. You don't want that on your clothes, right?"
Luke flushes, and sits ramrod straight. "Oh, gross. I can't believe I forgot." He sighs and rubs his face. "Fuck, what's a guy got to do to find a place to sleep around here."
Aemond has the grace to look guilty. Which he should, he and his partner veritably ruined the only guest bedroom to meet Luke's (admittedly picky) standards.
"How long you think this party is gonna last, three or four hours?" Aemond asks consideringly. "If it's not for very long, then you can crash in my old bedroom. As long as you don't touch anything."
Luke blinks. "Wait, really? Oh man, I could kiss you."
"Hey," Aemond flicks his forehead. "Just looking out for my nephew. Don't fucking make me regret it, dumbass."
"Stop, okay? Just stop." Rhaena shakes her head emphatically. "I can't fucking stomach another word."
Luke frowns. It was practically a ritual for them to meet up at the Student Union during their free block between classes to catch up and vent, and he can't believe she's going to deprive him of this outlet. "Some supportive friend you are," he berates her.
"I'm a perfectly supportive friend," Rhaena insists. "And I'm absolutely willing to talk about any subject that isn't Aemond's gargantuan dick."
"I haven't even been talking about that for the last ten minutes," he complains. "I was talking about how jealous I was of his vintage record collection. Shows how much you were listening."
"Oh, were you? Must have gotten lost between your soliloquies dedicated to his dick."
He gawks at her. "You're exaggerating," he declares.
"I'm really not, but okay," Rhaena resumes digging around in the yogurt cup, even though her appetite is clearly gone. "You're down bad, Luke."
The fire kind of goes out of him after she says that. "You think so?" He asks, feeling lost. His mind starts wandering back to when Aemond had pinned him against the wall and Luke had thought he was gonna get kissed. Which, he supposes that says enough.
"Yeah, you're down atrocious." Rhaena shakes her head. "At this point, I'm rooting for you just so I don't have to ever see or hear you be this obsessive again. Because it's fucking weird." She pauses. "Wait—you're definitely going to tone it down, right Luke?"
But her question doesn't even register in his mind at this point. He's pondering his own feelings on the matter.
He doesn't think it's really an infatuation like she'd been implying. It was more of like… like a curiosity. Kind of like seeing Sasquatch and then losing your mind over it. Because Aemond's dick is somehow at that level of unbelievability.
"Hey… hello? Earth to Luke, do you copy?"
But you know, he just needs to get it out of his system. Maybe by fucking it out of his system. That sounds like an exceedingly effective way of handling things. Because that's the thing about cryptids (like Aemond's dick): it's all about the mystique, all about a fetish for the unknown. Once you have a taste of it, you come back down to the earth, back to your senses, and your obsession abates. He could go on with his normal life in no time at all.
"Luke?"
Okay, so maybe he has been a little preoccupied with Aemond's monster cock. Who wouldn't be? After seeing something like that, if you didn't have a healthy dose of fascination, then you were stone cold dead. Or asexual. Whatever; Luke is neither of those things, and he's extremely interested. He can admit that to himself now.
"Luke, are you fucking kidding me right now—"
There's still that small little incest barrier, but come on, not like it was unheard of! They're Targaryens! If anyone objected he could just point fingers at his mother for being a bad influence, and it wouldn't even be a lie! Everything was coming together: this is simultaneously the best and the worst possible idea that he could have come up with.
"LUKE!"
"Rhaena," he says, grasping her hands, eyes crazed. "I've got a plan."