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They are half-drunk on Blackwood wine when the rain comes down.
Early evening, the sky a torrid blue, they had argued about it half-heartedly as the sun sunk behind the trees. Aeron is steadfast that the good weather will hold; whereas Davos is more practical. He woke this morning and felt the weight of the air and the curl against his nape; knew from the direction of the wind storm would come their way, but when brought to evidence, Aeron had merely scoffed at silly superstition.
It soured the mood, for all but a moment, until the first drops fell.
Davos steals back his flagon and tests his teeth on the delicate shell of Bracken’s ear. “Not superstition, just attention.”
Aeron looks like one of his weeping idols then, raindrops like tears. Davos drags his tongue across his cheek and revels in the shudder of Aeron so close. It has been a hot summer so far, temperate today, but Davos itches to devest his companion of a few layers and drags his mouth languidly down the column of his exposed throat.
Teeth nipping high on his collar.
Aeron shudders like a leaf, flushed and sleepy with the wine. His eyes green like those towers he prays to. His mouth turns, berry-stained and sugared-sweet, and Davos wastes no time in claim.
Mine.
He drinks from Aeron, fingers thumbing the carved horse heads of his cloak pin, the rough spun wool of his Bracken cloak offends him, and therefore, must be their blanket under the canopy.
“Not here,” Aeron sighs, breathless and frustrated, but sated a moment longer with another kiss.
“Where?”
Aeron bites his lip.
“Not here. We are too close to the road.”
The rain picks up in earnest now, long daggers from black clouds, piercing through the eve in the trees. They pull up their hoods, but Davos can still feel the needling of it.
Davos is about to comment again on his silly superstition when Aeron’s hand grasps his wrist tugging him up the hill from the road and down the other side. The ground quickly turns to mud on the steepness of the hill and Davos’ body tenses when his eyes make out the open – a rock quarry with a clear blue basin.
“You will drown me in the quarry for predicting the weather? I thought your people were through with that.”
Aeron looks like he might trip him.
“It is a sept.” Aeron calls over the thunder of wind. His hand pointing the way, sleeve dampening under the rain. “It’s safe from flooding and no one should be there.”
Davos stares on, unsure of this venture even as Aeron helps him down the quarry rocks and into the sept. It is a simple building, not like the drawings the maesters showed him of proud spires and seven-pointed stars. This one is smaller, colder, and stemmed red in the four corners.
Davos’ eyes adjust to the cool blue light once they are inside, chilled instantly. He had been here before – with his Lord and kinsmen – for the Lady Tully’s firstborn son; a ritual of bathing the babe in spring water that was not foreign to them, but took longer than strictly necessary.
He thought it odd that Lord Tully would hold such an occasion in such a plain hall, but his Lord had informed him that this was the very first foothold of the Seven in the Riverlands; the oldest and, therefore, deserving of the ceremony.
He wonders if he should feel touched that Bracken brought him here. Convenience be damned.
The hall is empty and quiet, save for the rain on the windows. The storm outside becomes a dull echo. Davos eyes the room, the red pillars and the benches set out in rows. He takes a final drink of the wine from his flagon and pours the rest on the floor as an offering. A kindness.
Aeron turns and Davos is already reaching for him; lips covering his own and he felt the shift immediately, a certain stiffness and the bend of an elbow keeping Davos from freeing Aeron of his damp clothes. He shall have to do the same soon. He would definitely catch chill.
He tries to recapture their earlier momentum, corralling the Bracken back like a stubborn bull, but even with the pull of his belt, Aeron protests. “You brought me here, Bracken.”
And that should be enough, but Aeron looks nervous, torn.
Like a child caught doing something he should not.
And Davos supposes he is. It is an old tradition to couple with your intended in front of a weirwood tree, but Davos had learned that, despite similar desires, those who follow the Seven were more modest in their coupling. And in a sept where a babe was washed with river water, this must be some grave irreverence.
Davos is delighted. “Oh, you craven.”
He says this as sweetly as he can and Aeron’s lips part, unable to speak, but mendable as he is, allows Davos to lay claim to him again with insistent hands and hungry mouth, guiding him further into the hall; that cool blue light and Aeron bends to him, like a reed in the wind. Giving for all he can be and Davos gathers him up.
Aeron would speak of debasement, but why bring him – a heathen, in his eyes – if he did not crave it?
Davos himself had fantasized about consummating in the old ways, bedded down into he cradle of the weirwood tree. He had chased the fantasy feeding details of gooseflesh and soft, shy skin and, lately, of Aeron's hair tossed back in a coronet of red, red leaves.
Davos finally gets to slip that pin from the fold and Aeron’s cloak falls from his shoulders in graceful ceremony and Davos groans, chasing him back, boot stamping on the offending gold. Aeron’s throat bares, a gasp, and then a slip of the tongue.
“At least I believe in the tangible.”
Davos huffs, pulling at the ties of Aeron’s tunic, knotted tight as if he were trying to make it a challenge for him. His body is stiff, swaying with battering wind.
“I think it an offense,” Aeron says, weak still, in conviction and tenor. He would never lead the charge of his kinsmen, knighted and timid as a calf. Davos meets his eyes and Aeron’s lips are tight. “What we—”
Davos presses his thigh between Aeron’s own, ankle hooked. “You think too much.” He declares and gives the Bracken a push and he goes sprawling back, arms like a windmill before crashing onto the cushioned bench. Aeron stares up at him, half-horrified, half-enraged, and it is as if they were children again and he would come up swinging.
Davos drops his own cloak and climbs onto the bench, giving Aeron no escape.
His eyes are still wide, glassy green. “You call me craven. This is a sacred place. In the eyes of the Seven,” he says to Davos’ shoulder, then chin, and finally his eyes, where he has the most trouble keeping. “Even if you do not follow the tradition of the high lords . . . you truly care not for this offense?”
Davos’ temper often burns short and something about Aeron burns it hotter, like a kettle blackened on the hearth.
The fact remains that Aeron brought him here.
A bedding between them and the gods.
He knows Bracken’s people were more ceremonious with their rituals. They stood on observance to the point of knees buckling, but it did not stop the hurt Davos felt when Aeron pulled from him. Dare call their coupling an offense.
Aeron’s beseeching eyes must read something in his face that Davos cannot hide. His body jerks, forehead snapping against his chin, and Davos’ hand lashes out. His hand clasps the nape of Aeron’s neck, damp still with rain and sweat before his fingers drag up into the ragged braid and pulls his neck to present like a pup to an elder.
A soft sound of surprise slips between his lips. Wandering eyes finally on him.
He has no right to his anger. Aeron is not his. Can never be his. But rejection burns a steady poison on his tongue and down his throat.
“Let me offend, then.” He makes his voice as soft as he can, a levy, but sweetness does not become him. He would rather raze this holy house than bow to Aeron’s idols. Aeron’s parted lips are his once again and he has him on the hook like a Tully.
Aeron pulls at the fastens of his vest and then his shirt over his head. His hand tightens in Aeron’s hair, his wet mouth hung open and Davos imagines sliding his cock along that wicked tongue. Wonders if Aeron would let him if he asked on bended knee—
Aeron’s nails scratch along his chest, pressing against his ribs to his navel and, praise be to the gods of old—
It pulls a staggered breath from his chest, half-relieved, half-tense. His hand in Aeron’s hair migrates to grip the bench-back for balance as Aeron begins to tug at his cock, slow and teasing. His hot mouth kisses his throat and Davos hisses a low oath. He can feel the press of Aeron’s mouth, kisses too light to bruise.
Davos wants him to bruise.
Wants it to hurt.
Wants it to leave a memory he can press with his fingers at night when he cannot find sleep.
“Faster, gods, faster, Aeron, please—”
Louder than their passions, a crack of lightning and shudder of wind shakes the foundations. A loud crash culls their attention with a knife’s edge.
Aeron’s grip on him flexes uncomfortably tight and Davos’ nails bite the bench. Heart still in his throat, his head snaps and he thinks he might see a shadow, retreating the red pillared corner, but nothing tangible ekes from the shadow. No man nor stone carved idol.
The sept is as quiet as when they entered, save for their breath and the rain against the windowpane.
He spots the offender immediately in the dark. A dusty tome, pages bent on the stones after slipping off the centered podium. He exhales.
“Book fell.”
It is so innocuous.
Aeron peers over the bench to confirm for himself, narrow eyes scanning the corners of the room, the dead stone carvings and then settles back on the book. His frown deepens and his hand slowly withdraws from Davos’ britches as he eases back against the cushions.
Davos chooses to ignore him lest he be nosed into annoyance once again and continues his slow surveillance of the hall. He had taken Aeron for his word that the sept was empty, but there is trusting and knowing, and Davos knows he saw a shadow lingering in the corner, hugging the beam of redwood that pillared this place, but there is nothing but those strange carved face in white stone.
Davos feels unsettled.
Perhaps a shade, or a ghost, something long-dead or half-dead in the shadows lingering on. Sustaining itself on the futile belief of the Seven.
Regardless, it is something old and no bother to them.
Aeron mutters a prayer below him, one of the Seven. Davos licks his teeth.
“I attended my cousin to Harrenhall once,” Davos whispers, frowning despite himself. It is not his best story, nor his best moment, but he and Benjicot promised never to speak of it. To each other. “’Tis an auspicious place. Half-wrecked by dragons. Ghosts and the lot rattling the floorboards. There is a witch-woman there who speaks in death. I slept not a wink.”
He laughs then, thought he feels cold at the memory of her hollow dark eyes, burdened with too much knowing. Her mouth spoke before her mind. You will die on the lands you protect, giving blood back to the Riverrun with your heart a stone’s throw away.
His fist tightens on the bench and he chances a look at Aeron, hair mussed and expression as stony as those carved faces.
By the Old Gods, and Bracken’s new—
“The storm is getting bad. We should go.”
Davos may not be privy to his Lord’s great council, nor will he ever be, but if he knew one thing, it was to shelter when a storm raged on. He grew up in the Riverlands, was bathed in its water, and wandered the hills as a child, and not even he would traipse out in the darkness that swirled outside.
Aeron’s lips pull tight.
Davos gives him a shove. “Scared of ghosts then, Bracken?”
Aeron’s lips bleach white in the dark. “Our kinsmen will be looking for us, Blackwood.” He snarls and gives Davos a shove of his own, peeved. His hand presses to his chest, either a futile attempt at modesty or beseeching once again. “As I have said, this place is sacred. To me and mine. I do not wish to debase it in such a way.”
Davos cannot help the bark of a laugh that cracks from his chest.
He trusts not the vows of chastity from any but seers and witch-women.
“You think us the first?”
Aeron scoffs. “Sacrilege.”
“Even if we were not,” Davos continues, louder than Aeron’s offense and faith. “It is not a secret to these walls. No ears of babes, the weirwood knows what two can do alone.”
And Aeron stares up at him, gagged by his own private horror. “The weirwood has no foothold here. The Seven do.”
Davos studies him, simmering, and finally pitying the venom that hung in each word, out of his hands, into the wool-spun evening.
It is what he cannot stand about Bracken.
He thinks himself so sweet in his belief; free of wrongdoing and ill-word, and it sticks under Davos’ skin like a splinter, worming until it is bloody. He is not dull; he knows what Aeron thinks of his gods and his House’s practices, sacrifices in blood. He had heard half as much from as many Bracken, but it never blunted his conviction.
At ten and three, he bled his palm into the roots of the weirwood and declared fealty to the Old Gods, the Old Ways, and House Blackwood, always. Lord Blackwood had been the one to bind his hand; that red band marking the transition from boy to man; the beginning of training, and the rest of his days.
Davos was good with his gods and knew they would protect him or keep him with the turn of the tide.
And he can feel them even now, in the heaviness of this baseless place, shaved stone like a blight of nature.
“My, pretty thing,” he exhales and Aeron’s body tightens like a nock of a bowstring.
Sweetness does not become him, but when naked fact stands in the hall, Davos cannot blind himself like the false idols in stolen stone.
He pulls himself up from his aching haunches, climbing close and closer. “Before your people laid claim here, this was a quarry of the Old Gods, wreathed in trees that bloomed bloody, faces so long with age they reached the rock at their roots. This was the holy place of my people, my gods,” His fingers graze up the smooth panes of Aeron’s chest, unblemished, untried, perfection. “My gods before yours found their foothold in the Riverlands.”
Aeron inhales, he can feel it, the sharp, petty offense he clings to like it will grant him the forgiveness he so craves. Davos rolls his body onto that palm, flattening Aeron on the weirwood bench, beneath his Old God weight.
“The wood hewn for this sept was weirwood bled red and the stone harvested from the quarry. It is an offense on its own.”
Red-gold hairs hang between his fingers like the silk of spiderwebs.
“Lies,” gasps from an inhale when Davos rolls his weight back.
“Oh, come now, Bracken.” Davos can feel his smile growing, malice lanced by teeth. His fingers crawl to that unmarked throat. “What use are lies when you and I were taught the same stories? Tully may be an indecisive cunt, but he does not shirk on history.”
A tongue clicks.
Aeron doing his best to look unaffected, but Davos can see the high color on his cheeks, filling under his palm. “Crass.”
“Not crass if it be true.”
“Mean, then.”
It cracks the tension and derails the argument and Davos takes it, annoyed, but unsurprised. It is just like Bracken to oath-break and flee when put to the sword.
Besides, they have had this argument before and they would have it again.
“You like my meanness. You preen for it.”
Aeron’s expression goes dazed a moment, dreamy of those long nights and lazy afternoons that came before. Aeron’s good faith denying himself the pleasure of a tumble, but Davos had pulled him back until they were rolling green together. Messy fumbling with harsh words and teeth splitting his lip. Davos had held Aeron at his nape like a cub and declared himself a rider of a Bracken stallion and should he not think his kinsmen should know?
He had been surprised by the quickness that Aeron had found his release, and hungrier for more.
His hands drag down to Aeron’s thighs, feeling the quiver of chilly skin and the near painful-looking arousal that had been earlier ignored. Davos digs his nails in, marking his own.
“Now, dear craven, will you be good for me?”
Aeron does not make him wait for his assent. A quick nod.
Davos leans down to their tangle of clothes, hip pulling with the sudden shift until he finds the vial of oil, he had snatched from the younger Blackwoods after they had stolen into the sept and riffled for treasures. It would be better if he was caught with this than them, and it proved fruitful during times like this when he wished to couple completely.
He climbs back onto the bench, steadying himself and his slick fingers.
Aeron is no longer looking over his shoulder.
And Davos pins him with his palm, enjoying the sweet rise of his chest as his fingers tease. His body pulls taunt, a shift of hips and heat and whines, and Davos is enamored with him all over again. How can he be cross when the Bracken sings for him?
“There you are, sweet boy.”
The endearments roll off his tongue like honey, allowed in these moments of intimacy, a face he can only show when completely bare. His fingers work against Aeron’s tightening walls, pressing for the spot that will make him dreamy and sweet; just pliant enough for his cock.
Aeron’s thighs shake, foot slipping on the stone, and an unfettered whimper slips from his mouth, soft as a song.
“You sound like a whore.” He mutters, fingers working faster with his rolling tongue. His palm on Aeron’s chest drags up to his throat again, planting against that rosiness that makes Aeron’s walls tighten on reflex. “Fucking mine, all mine.”
Aeron sings out another warbled note, unconfined by the clasp of Davos’ palm.
Davos descends upon him, on that mouth that hung wet, filthy, and empty and Davos wants to devour him whole like an offering. He sucks his tongue into his mouth, pressing himself fully, cock dragging between their abdomens and Aeron shudders, a sharp cry, not relief, but restrained pleasure.
Davos presses his fingers tighter until tears stream from his eyes.
He could do this for hours, he could, but his patience had been tried against Aeron’s faith, and he no longer wished to wait.
He pushes up Aeron’s leg, finding a hold in the crux of his thigh, and drags his teeth across his knee, a well-wish, a scrap of teeth. He can feel his cock ease when he takes himself in hand, gives himself a few long strokes in reprieve. Aeron watches him with eyes gone glassy.
He entertains the idea of continuing his pleasure like this and releasing himself on Aeron’s belly and red-red throat. Maybe even his lips. However, even Davos would find that wanting, so he eases himself into the cradle Aeron’s thighs, and he opens for him like a flower.
For a moment, there is an absence of sound, like a dream. Cold rushes down his spine.
He wants to snap his hips, be mean to Aeron who revels in his cruelty. He wants to make the Bracken knight cry, and curl, and hiccup on his cock like some wanton thing, biting against his palm, but once again, greater pleasures stay his hand. Davos feels the meanest he could be was to fuck Aeron slow as a song, making the hips ache and back arch with slow rolls of his hips. A sacrifice for his broken.
He rocks his hips slow, curious, and finds Aeron pliant. Nails find his shoulders, and slide along his nape, into his hair. A rough tug and Davos nearly caves to give Aeron what he is asking for, hands and knees, impersonal. His hips stagger at the thought and the sound Aeron makes is a chorus. “Fuck.”
He plays with Aeron and slow rolls of his hips, but he enjoys the hung breath and grasping hands. Aeron's own cock caught between the them, untouched, but drooling from the red tip. Davos steadies a hand on Aeron's hip, correcting the angle, and considers putting a hand on Aeron cock, but just as quick, Aeron’s lips press against the skin of his throat and Davos can feel teeth.
It will be his alibi for when his sisters and kinsmen question him later. A bawdy grin dismissed with his youth; a cloak of protection to keep him safe from this wind.
Aeron’s thighs squeeze around his hips, ankles locked behind him and Davos curls his fingers to feel that grip around himself and shudders. He will not last long like this.
He is not sure how much longer he can beg off alone.
His sisters, though disgusted, note the times in which he is gone and when he returns unmarked. His cousins remark amongst themselves that they never actually see Davos in the brothels they frequent, and are starting to dream up ideas of him to have a sweetheart in the Tully lands. They name a scores of bonny girls, but Davos never indulges the rumors.
Should Lord Samwell hear of it, he will demand honesty, not a craven who sneaks off to fuck maidens in his liege lord’s field.
But even then, Davos cannot find himself to care because this wrongness, as Aeron so aptly puts it, is hard master to bend to.
Because just like the rain, Davos can feel this and knows, deeper than knowing, than the blood and prayers that divide their Houses, that Aeron is his. Pulled taffy-soft from the earth, molded and imbued with the same fire as he. Though he calls himself Bracken - before the end of the night - Davos will wrap Aeron up in his cloak and sigil, and murmur his prayers to the four corners of the hall; that Aeron Bracken be his, and his alone.
A binding faster than blood.