Archive of Our Own

The first thing anyone noticed about Maekar Targaryen probably was the scars. The pox had left its signature across the angular planes of his face.

At forty-seven, Maekar cut an imposing figure in the boardroom and out of it. His frame was thick with muscle that came from religiously punishing workouts at five a.m. every morning.

His silver-gold hair was cut short, matched by a precisely trimmed beard that squared off his already prominent jaw.

The beard was flecked with gold when the light caught it right, giving him an almost leonine quality that was entirely at odds with the coldness in those violet eyes.

He wore suits like uniforms. Brioni, mostly, in charcoal and slate, impeccably tailored to his broad shoulders and thick arms.

His ties were understated, his cufflinks simple platinum. Nothing flashy. Nothing that screamed for attention.

The problem was that speaking didn't come naturally to him. Not the easy charm his oldest brother Baelor wielded like a goddamn magic wand, making investors fall over themselves to throw money at whatever venture he was pitching that week.

Not the quick wit that had served Aerys before he'd retreated into reclusive paranoia.

Maekar communicated in clipped sentences, in action items, in results. He didn't do small talk. He didn't do camaraderie. He did his fucking job, he did it better than anyone else, and he expected the same from everyone around him.

Which made his position in the family particularly galling.

As the fourth son of Daeron Targaryen, Maekar had never been meant for the CEO's office.

That had been Baelor's birthright.

Aerys had gotten the CFO position. Rhaegel, before his mental breakdown and subsequent "retirement" to a very expensive Swiss facility, had headed up R&D.

And Maekar? Maekar had been given Summerhall Inc., the subsidiary that handled their South American operations.

It should have been an insult. A consolation prize. A way to keep him busy and out of the way.

Instead, he'd turned it into the most profitable division in the entire fucking company.

Ten years of brutal eighteen-hour days, of personally flying down to São Paulo and Buenos Aires and Santiago to close deals.

Of learning Portuguese and Spanish with the same grim determination he applied to everything else.

Of building relationships through sheer persistence rather than charm, because charm was something he'd never had and never would have.

The numbers didn't lie, and Maekar spoke fluently in the language of profit margins and quarterly earnings.

None of which made him any less of a fourth son.

None of which earned him the respect from his father that he'd spent his entire life chasing and never quite catching.

"You're too harsh, Maekar," Baelor had said more than once. "You can't just condemn people without understanding their circumstances."

Understanding.

As if understanding incompetence made it less incompetent. As if circumstances changed the bottom line.

But that was Baelor all over. He was all empathy and emotional intelligence, able to make a man feel valued even while extracting maximum productivity from him.

People loved Baelor. They respected Maekar. There was a difference, and Maekar felt it keenly even if he'd never admit it out loud.

The marriage to Dyanna Dayne had been one of the few things in his life that hadn't required strategic calculation.

He'd been twenty-three, she'd been twenty-one, and he'd seen her across a charity gala and simply... known.

It wasn't the thunderbolt the poets wrote about. It was quieter than that. She'd looked at his scarred face and smiled, like she saw something worth smiling at.

They'd married within six months. His father had called it impetuous. Baelor had called it romantic. Maekar hadn't called it anything because he didn't have the words, but he'd made damn sure she never regretted saying yes.

Dyanna had been dark where he was pale, warm where he was cold, patient where he was demanding.

She'd softened nothing about him. Maekar was who he was, and she'd never tried to change that. But she'd made existing less exhausting.

Coming home to her had been the one part of his day he didn't have to strategize or control.

She'd given him six children in ten years of marriage: Daeron, Aerion, Aemon, Daella, Aegon, and Rhae.

And then she'd died.

Ovarian cancer, stage four by the time they caught it. Eighteen months from diagnosis to funeral.

The doctors had used words like "aggressive" and "unfortunate" and "everything possible," but all Maekar heard was his wife screaming in pain that even morphine couldn't quite touch, asking him to make it stop.

He couldn't make it stop.

He'd been able to build a subsidiary from nothing into a powerhouse. He'd been able to negotiate contracts that saved the company millions. He'd been able to do every impossible thing his position demanded.

But he couldn't save his wife.

She'd died on a Tuesday morning at 6:47 a.m., and Maekar had held her hand and felt her pulse flutter and fade under his fingers.

Daeron had been thirteen. Rhae had been three. The funeral had been enormous. Daynes flying in from California, Targaryens filling the first six rows, investors and board members paying respects in the back.

Baelor had given a beautiful eulogy that had half the church in tears.

Maekar had said nothing. He'd stood there in his black Brioni suit. He'd thought: I will not survive this.

But he had.

He'd survived because he had six children who needed him, and because the alternative was unacceptable, and because Maekar Targaryen didn't know how to do anything except endure.

That had been eight years ago.

Daeron was twenty-one now. Rhae was eleven. And Maekar had spent those eight years trying and largely failing to be the father they needed instead of just the father he knew how to be.

Which brought him to his current problem: his children were, to put it mildly, a fucking disaster.

Daeron, his eldest and heir apparent to his position at Summerhall Inc., was a stoner with a prescription pill habit and claims of prophetic dreams that his psychiatrist insisted were prodromal symptoms of schizophrenia.

The psychiatrist, Dr. Alys had been gently suggesting antipsychotics for two years now. Daeron refused to take them.

He said the dreams were real, that he saw things that came true, that the medication would blind him to visions he needed to see.

Most fathers would have dismissed it as drug-induced delusion or mental illness or both.

Maekar... wasn't sure.

There'd been too many instances of Daeron knowing things he shouldn't know. Calling Maekar the night before a deal fell through in Chile, saying, "Don't sign it, Father. The copper mine has groundwater contamination. You'll lose millions in remediation."

And he'd been right.

Or the time he'd texted Maekar at two in the morning: "Rhae's going to break her arm tomorrow at gymnastics. Left ulna. Clean break."

Maekar had kept Rhae home from practice with some invented excuse, and she'd been furious with him... until her best friend fell off the balance beam and broke her left ulna in two places.

Coincidence? Maybe. Probably.

The rational part of Maekar's brain said yes, absolutely coincidence or cold reading or lucky guesses.

But Maekar had Targaryen blood, and Targaryens had a long, strange history. His great-grandfather had claimed to dream in flames.

His aunt Daenerys had talked to her stillborn babies' corpses for three days before the family had her committed. Madness ran in the bloodline.

Maybe Daeron's dreams were madness.

Maybe they were something else.

Either way, Maekar didn't know how to help him except to enable him. He kept him on the payroll despite his frequent absences.

He made sure he had enough money that he didn't have to work but not so much he could kill himself with it, and quietly intercepted the worst of his disasters before they became company liability.

He didn't know how to talk to Daeron about any of it.

Didn't know how to say, I believe you, son, without sounding patronizing or delusional himself.

Didn't know how to express concern without it coming out as criticism.

So he stayed silent and watched his eldest son slowly destroy himself and hated his own impotence.

Then there was Aerion.

Christ, Aerion.

His second son was twenty, beautiful as a fucking knife, and utterly without conscience. Where Daeron was self-destructive, Aerion was destructive outward.

He was slim, average height, with silver-gold curls that he wore artfully disheveled and violet eyes so deep they looked purple in certain lights.

His face was all sharp angles. He had high cheekbones, imperious brow, straight nose that had never been broken despite his penchant for finding trouble. His skin was pale and perfect.

Aerion dressed like a peacock: designer everything, bright colors, reds and golds and yellows.

His suits were custom Dolce & Gabbana, bordered in scarlet satin, worn with open-collared silk shirts and leather shoes polished to a mirror shine.

The boy was cruel in ways that genuinely disturbed Maekar. Not hot-tempered cruelty like Maekar's own impatient harshness.

Cold cruelty. Calculated.

There'd been incidents throughout his childhood.

A maid fired for "stealing" jewelry that Aerion had hidden himself, just to watch her cry;

A classmate's scholarship mysteriously revoked after the boy had scored higher on a test

A girlfriend's nudes leaked online the day after she'd broken up with him.

Nothing provable. Nothing that couldn't be explained away as coincidence or someone else's malice.

But Maekar knew. He'd looked into those deep violet eyes and seen something that didn't flinch, didn't regret, didn't feel anything except perhaps a faint amusement at the chaos he'd created.

And yet in front of Maekar, Aerion was all smiles and impeccable courtesy.

"Good morning, Father." "Of course, Father." "You're absolutely right, Father."

Never a hair out of place, never a foot wrong.

Maekar didn't trust him. Couldn't trust him. But he was his son, and Maekar didn't know what the fuck to do with that.

His third son, at least, was straightforward. Aemon was eighteen, brilliant, and had made it very clear by the age of nine that he had no interest in the family business.

The boy had always been small for his age, slight and dark-haired like his mother, with her warm brown eyes instead of the distinctive Targaryen violet.

He'd been quick-witted even as a child, reading at a college level by age six, correcting his tutors' math by age seven.

He spoke softly. He never rose his voice, never needed to but there was something in the quality of that quiet voice that made people shut up and listen.

Maekar had seen it happen in family dinners: Aemon would murmur something, and the entire table would fall silent to hear what he had to say.

It wasn't charisma like Baelor's. It was something else.

When he'd announced at nine years old that he wanted to study medicine, specifically neurology, Maekar had tried to talk him out of it.

Not because he didn't think Aemon was capable but because it felt like a rejection. Another Targaryen son who didn't want what Maekar had built.

But Dyanna had been alive then, and she'd sat Maekar down and said, "He's not you. He's not meant for this. Let him go."

So Maekar had pulled strings and gotten him into a prestigious medical research program affiliated with Stanford.

Aemon was there now, doing something with neural pathways and psychopharmacology that Maekar didn't pretend to understand.

They spoke once a week on the phone. Usually brief, polite conversations where Aemon updated him on his research and Maekar grunted appropriate responses and they both pretended this was an adequate relationship.

It wasn't. But it was what Maekar knew how to do.

The girls, Daella and Rhae, were easier. Relatively speaking.

Daella was fifteen, dark-haired and violet-eyed, quiet and bookish like her mother had been.

She went to Westfield Academy, got straight A's, had a small circle of friends she'd known since childhood.

She didn't get in trouble. Didn't demand attention. Came home, did her homework, read fantasy novels in her room, and emerged for dinner with polite conversation before disappearing again.

Maekar worried about her precisely because she was so easy. He couldn't shake the feeling that he was missing something. That her quietness was less contentment and more... absence.

Like she was going through the motions of being a teenager without actually engaging with the world around her.

But he didn't know how to ask. Didn't know how to bridge the gap between the distant father he was and the present father she might need.

So he made sure she had everything material she could want and told himself that was enough.

Rhae, at eleven, was still young enough to be unselfconscious. She looked like Dyanna. She had same dark coloring, same warm smile and she was fearless in ways that regularly gave Maekar heart attacks.

She did competitive gymnastics, threw herself off balance beams and vaults with complete confidence that she'd stick the landing.

She argued with her tutors. She demanded to know why she couldn't learn to drive yet. She hugged Maekar unselfconsciously when he came home from work.

He loved her for it. Dreaded the day she'd learn to be careful around him like the others had.

And then there was Aegon.

His youngest son. His baby. Fifteen years old and in his second year at boarding school, Westfield Academy like his sister.

Aegon had enormous eyes. The kind of eyes that looked almost alien in his thin face, large and dark and so deeply purple they were nearly indigo.

His features were delicate, almost pretty, with high cheekbones and a pointed chin that he'd inherited from Dyanna's side of the family.

He was skinny in that teenage-boy way where his wrists looked too thin for his hands and his clothes never quite fit right because he was growing too fast to keep up.

His hair was the distinctive Targaryen silver-gold, fine and straight.

Which was why he'd shaved his fucking head.

Maekar had gotten the call from Westfield's headmaster three months ago. "Mr. Targaryen, I'm calling to inform you that Aegon has violated school dress code policy by shaving his head without permission. We'll need you to come in for a meeting to discuss appropriate consequences."

Maekar had driven up to the school. It was a two-hour trip from the city. He'd walked into the headmaster's office prepared to be furious.

And then he'd seen Aegon sitting there with his head completely bald, his enormous purple eyes looking even bigger without the frame of hair, his skinny shoulders hunched defensively... and looking so much like Dyanna in that moment that Maekar's carefully prepared anger had evaporated like morning frost.

"Why?" he'd asked.

Aegon had looked at the floor. "I don't want people to know I'm a Targaryen."

The headmaster had launched into something about school pride and family legacy, but Maekar had held up a hand to silence him.

He'd looked at his youngest son.

"All right," he'd said. "Keep it shaved, then. But you maintain it yourself. I won't have you looking slovenly."

The headmaster had sputtered. Aegon had looked up with those huge eyes, startled and wary and tentatively grateful.

That had been three months ago, and Aegon had kept his head meticulously shaved since then.

He looked odd but he seemed... lighter. Less burdened.

Maekar didn't understand it.

Didn't understand why his son would reject the Targaryen name that Maekar had spent his entire life trying to prove himself worthy of.

But he'd learned that sometimes understanding wasn't necessary. Sometimes all you could do was accept.

All of this. All six of his children with their respective disasters and difficulties, might have been manageable if it weren't for the Blackfyre lawsuit.

The goddamn Blackfyre lawsuit that had consumed the last three years of his life and showed no signs of reaching resolution.

It had started simply enough: Daemon Blackfyre, illegitimate son of Maekar's grandfather through an affair with a secretary, had sued for a portion of the family company.

Not an unreasonable claim on its face. He was blood, after all. He'd been raised by his mother in California, had built his own successful tech company, wasn't asking for control or even a board seat. 

Baelor, in his infinite fucking wisdom, had wanted to settle. "Give him something," he'd said during the first board meeting when the lawsuit had been filed. "He's family, Maekar. Let's not air our dirty laundry in court."

Maekar had disagreed. Violently. "He's not family. He's a bastard with no legal claim to anything. We settle now, we set a precedent for every other illegitimate Targaryen to come out of the woodwork with their hands out."

"You're being harsh."

"I'm being practical."

They'd compromised, which meant they'd done it Baelor's way because Baelor was CEO and could pull rank when he wanted to.

They'd offered Daemon a settlement: five million dollars, no company stock, and a confidential NDA.

Daemon had countered with fifty million and five percent stock ownership.

And the war had begun.

Three years of depositions and discovery and legal fees that had topped seven figures and kept climbing.

Three years of having their family's dirty laundry indeed aired in court. 

The affairs and illegitimate children and shady business dealings from thirty years ago all paraded in front of judges and juries and a salivating media.

Three years of Maekar and Baelor managing the crisis together. Maekar handled the legal strategy and the hardball negotiations. Baelor handled the PR and the emotional damage control within the family.

It should have brought them closer. Instead, every strategy session turned into an argument about methods and ethics and how far they were willing to go to win.

"We leak the affair timeline," Maekar had said six months ago, laying out documents on the conference table. "Show that Daemon's mother was sleeping with three different executives at the time of conception. Cast doubt on the paternity itself."

Baelor had stared at him like he'd suggested murder. "That's... Maekar, that's vicious. His mother is dead. We'd be destroying her reputation to score points."

"Her reputation isn't our concern. Winning is."

"At what cost? When does our victory become Pyrrhic? When does our brutality make us worse than what we're fighting against?"

"When we lose the fucking company."

They'd compromised again. Didn't leak the full extent of the affairs, just enough to introduce reasonable doubt about Daemon's claim.

It had worked. The judge had ordered DNA testing, which had confirmed Daemon's paternity but had bought them time while it was processed.

The lawsuit was still ongoing. Daemon had refused every settlement offer since then. The trial was scheduled for this fall.

And Maekar was so fucking tired of it all.

Tired of the legal battles and the family drama and trying to be a father to children he didn't understand while building a legacy that half of them didn't even want.

Tired of living up to expectations he'd set for himself that no one else seemed to require of him.

Tired of being the harsh one, the cold one, the one who did what was necessary even when it made everyone else uncomfortable.

He was forty-seven years old, and some days he felt ninety.

Which brought him to this particular clusterfuck of an evening.

It was a Thursday—7:47 p.m. and Maekar had been in his office at Summerhall Inc. headquarters going over quarterly reports when his phone had rung.

The screen had displayed "Donnel Duskendale". His head of security for the Targaryen family properties.

"Sir, we've received a noise complaint from one of your properties. The Targaryen Towers penthouse."

Maekar had frowned. The penthouse was in Aerion's name. "What kind of noise?"

"Neighbors reported loud crashes, possible altercation. Building security investigated but didn't enter the unit. They're requesting family presence before involving police."

"I'm on my way."

He'd grabbed Willem Wylde, his chief legal counsel who'd been working late in the adjacent office and met Donnel in the parking garage.

The drive to Targaryen Towers had taken twenty minutes through evening traffic, Maekar's jaw getting tighter with every red light.

Please let it be a party gone wrong, he'd thought grimly. Please let it be anything except another one of Aerion's incidents that I have to cover up.

Targaryen Towers was a luxury high-rise in the financial district. It was thirty-five floors of condos ranging from merely expensive to obscenely so.

The penthouse occupied the entire thirty-fifth floor: four thousand square feet of polished hardwood and floor-to-ceiling windows and furniture.

Maekar had paid for all of it.

They'd taken the private elevator up, Donnel's security key card bypassing the need for a code.

The elevator had opened directly into the penthouse foyer, and Maekar's first thought had been: Fuck.

The place was destroyed.

The glass coffee table in the living room was shattered, shards scattered across the white rug like ice. The leather sofa was overturned.

A lamp lay broken against the wall, its shade dented and torn. Books from the built-in shelves had been swept to the floor in heaps.

One of the abstract paintings—a genuine Rothko that Maekar had bought at auction for sixty thousand dollars—hung crooked, its frame cracked.

It looked like a tornado had touched down inside the penthouse. Or like two people had torn the place apart fighting.

"Christ," Willem muttered beside him.

Maekar's trained eye catalogued the damage automatically: fifteen thousand in furniture, sixty for the Rothko, another ten for incidentals, plus whatever structural damage might have occurred. Six figures of destruction, minimum.

His hands clenched into fists at his sides. Aerion was going to get an earful about this. 

That's when he heard it.

A sound from down the hallway. A muffled choking, gasping noise that sent ice water through Maekar's veins because it sounded wrong, sounded distressed, sounded like someone couldn't breathe—

He was moving before conscious thought caught up, striding across the broken glass and overturned furniture toward the hallway.

His heart hammered against his ribs. Behind him, Donnel called.

Telling him to wait, to let security clear the scene first but Maekar ignored him.

The noise was coming from the master bedroom. The door was closed but not locked.

Maekar grabbed the handle and shoved it open hard enough that it banged against the interior wall.

And stopped dead.

His brain tried to process what he was seeing. Tried to make it make sense.

Aerion was on the bed. That much was clear. His second son was on the bed wearing nothing at all.

His silver-gold curls were disheveled, his pale skin flushed pink, and his eyes were half-closed.

And there was a man behind him.

A very large man, tall and broad-shouldered, completely naked, with his hands wrapped around Aerion's throat.

Strangling him.

Except—

Except Aerion wasn't fighting. Wasn't struggling. His back was arched, his head tilted back against the man's shoulder, and the noise he was making wasn't distress.

The man's hips were moving. Rhythmically. And Aerion was taking it, hands clenched in the sheets, throat constricted under those large hands, making those helpless choking sounds that were somehow also moans of pleasure.

Maekar's brain finally caught up with what his eyes were seeing:

Someone is fucking my son.

No—

Someone is fucking my son while choking him.

No—

That someone is Duncan. The man Aerion sued. The man Baelor defended. The man from Ashford.

And that's when both of them noticed they had an audience.

The man looked up first. His eyes went wide with shock, and his hands immediately released Aerion's throat.

He started to pull back and the movement made Aerion finally open his eyes and turn his head.

Their eyes met. Aerion's face went through several expressions in rapid succession: shock, mortification, defiance, and finally settling on a kind of brittle composure.

"Father." Aerion hoarsed. "This is... not what it looks like."

"It looks," Maekar heard himself say, "like you're being fucked and strangled simultaneously. So unless my eyes are deceiving me rather dramatically, it's exactly what it looks like."

Behind Maekar, he heard Donnel and Willem arrive in the doorway. Heard their sharp intakes of breath as they processed the scene. Heard Donnel mutter something that sounded like "Jesus Christ. " 

Maekar didn't turn around. Kept his eyes locked on Aerion, who was still impaled on Duncan's—

No. He wasn't going to think about that. 

"Both of you," he said. "Get dressed. Now. You have five minutes, and then you're going to explain to me what the fuck is going on here."

He turned on his heel and stalked out of the room, pulling the door shut behind him with enough force that it shook in its frame.

Donnel and Willem were standing in the hallway looking shell-shocked. Behind them, Maekar could see building security personnel hovering near the elevator, trying very hard to look.

"Clear the apartment," Maekar ordered Donnel. "Security personnel out. Now. This doesn't leave this room, understood? Anyone breathes a word of this, they'll find themselves unemployed and blacklisted."

"Yes, sir." Donnel immediately started herding the security team toward the elevator, making stern pronouncements about confidentiality agreements and legal consequences.

Willem was still staring at the closed bedroom door. "Sir, I don't—I mean, should we—"

"We should wait," Maekar said flatly. "And then we're going to have a conversation." 

He walked back into the living room, crunching over broken glass, and sat down on the overturned sofa after righting it.

His hands were shaking. He clasped them together on his knees and stared at them until they steadied.

Get it together. You've handled corporate espionage, hostile takeovers, your wife's death. You can handle your son having sex with a man who's currently facing a lawsuit from him. You can handle this.

Except he couldn't. Because this wasn't business. This was personal, and Maekar had never been good at personal.

Five minutes stretched into seven. Maekar was considering going back and physically dragging them out when the bedroom door finally opened.

Aerion emerged first. He'd put on black slacks and a crisp white shirt unbuttoned at the collar.

His silver-gold curls were still disheveled, and there were visible red marks on his throat where Duncan's hands had been.

Maekar felt something hot and violent surge in his chest at the sight of them.

Duncan followed a moment later, and Maekar got his first good look at the man who'd just been—

No. Not thinking about it.

Duncan was massive. Tall. He had to be six foot four, maybe six five with the kind of build that came from actual physical labor.

His shoulders were broad enough that he had to angle slightly to get through the doorway.

His face was young, younger than Maekar had expected, probably mid-twenties and handsome in a rough sort of way.

Square jaw, straight nose that had definitely been broken at least once, brown hair falling over his forehead. His eyes were blue, bright blue and currently terrified.

He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that strained across his chest. On his feet were work boots, incongruous in the expensive penthouse.

"Mr. Targaryen, sir, I can explain—"

"I doubt that very much," Maekar cut him off coldly. "But you're going to try anyway. Both of you. Sit down."

Aerion moved to the leather armchair. He sat with his usual grace, crossing his legs, arranging himself like he was posing for a photograph. 

Duncan remained standing, shifting his weight from foot to foot like a schoolboy called to the headmaster's office.

"Sit," Maekar repeated, pointing at the sofa. "I don't like craning my neck."

Duncan sat. The sofa creaked under his weight.

They stayed there in tense silence for a long moment with Willem hovering anxiously near the windows.

Maekar looked at his son. Looked at the boy he'd raised and realized he had no fucking idea who he was looking at.

"Would someone," he said with deadly calm, "like to explain to me what I just witnessed?"

Aerion opened his mouth but Duncan spoke first.

"It's my fault, sir."

"I should've—we should've been more careful, like. Should've known someone might come up. I take full responsibility, sir. It's on me."

"Is it?" Maekar's eyes didn't leave Aerion's face. "Because from where I was standing, my son appeared to be a very willing participant."

"I was," Aerion said flatly. "Don't let him take the fall for this, Father. We're both adults. We're both here of our own free will. What we choose to do in private is none of your concern."

"It became my concern," Maekar said, "when I received a call about a disturbance at a property that I own, walked in to find six figures worth of damage and my son being strangled during intercourse. It became my concern when I realized the man strangling him is the same man you sued three months ago or have you forgotten about that particular detail?"

Aerion's composure cracked slightly. Just a flicker across his features. 

"The lawsuit was dropped," Aerion said. "Uncle Baelor saw to that."

"Baelor saw to it," Maekar repeated slowly, "because he was cleaning up your mess. As usual. So you're telling me that after Uncle Baelor defended this man from your spurious assault allegations—because they were spurious, weren't they, Aerion?—after all of that, you're now... what? Fucking him? Is that the appropriate term for what I interrupted?"

"Among others," Aerion said with a curl of his lip. "Yes, Father. We're fucking. Regularly and enthusiastically. Is there anything else you'd like to know? Positions? Frequency? Whether I—"

"Aerion." Maekar stopped him. "Do not test me right now. I am hanging on to my temper by a very thin thread."

Aerion subsided, but the defiant glint remained in his eyes.

Maekar turned his attention to Duncan, who looked like he wanted to sink through the floor. "And you. What's your name?"

"Duncan. Ah, Duncan, sir." He stumbled slightly over the words. "Everyone calls me Dunk, but—"

"I don't care what everyone calls you. I care why you think it's appropriate to have violent sex with my son in an apartment I pay for, causing property damage that'll cost me six figures to repair."

"The property damage was... earlier, sir. We had a row, like. Nothing to do with the—with what you walked in on."

"A row." Maekar said. "You had a fight that destroyed my apartment, and then you had sex. Do I have that sequence correct?"

Duncan nodded miserably.

"And during this sex, you were choking him." It wasn't a question. "Hard enough to leave bruises. Hard enough that he couldn't breathe properly. Do I also have that correct?"

Another miserable nod.

Maekar felt that hot, violent thing surge in his chest again. Felt his hands clench into fists.

It took every ounce of his considerable self-control not to get up and physically throw this man out of the apartment, out of the building, out of his son's life—

"It's consensual." Aerion cut. 

"Before you work yourself into a frenzy about assault or abuse or whatever medieval protective instinct you're currently experiencing, let me be very clear: it's consensual. I like it. I ask for it. Rather specifically, in fact. Dunk is simply accommodating my preferences."

Maekar stared at his son. 

"You like being strangled during sex," he heard himself say.

"I don't like it, Father. I require it. I can't—" Aerion paused.

"I can't finish unless there's an element of... control."

Maekar felt his head throbbing before he looked at Duncan. "And you provide this... accommodation."

"I do, sir." Duncan said almost whisper. "I'm careful, like. I know how to do it safely. I never push past what he can handle. I stop the second he signals me to stop. There's rules, boundaries. It's not—it's not what it looked like to you, sir."

"It looked like you were killing my son."

"I wasn't. I wouldn't." Duncan's eyes met Maekar's. "I know it seems mad, but I swear on me mam's grave I'd never hurt him. Not really. Not past what he needs."

What he needs. As if being strangled was a need.

Maekar closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, Willem was still hovering near the windows, looking like he desperately wished he was anywhere else.

Donnel had returned at some point and was standing near the elevator with his arms crossed.

Three witnesses to this disaster. 

"Donnel," Maekar said without looking at him. "You and Willem can go. We'll discuss the property damage and security protocols later. For now, this conversation remains private."

"Sir, I really think—"

"That wasn't a request."

Donnel clearly wanted to argue but then said, "Yes, sir. We'll be in the lobby if you need us."

They left. The elevator doors slid shut with a soft chime.

And then it was just the three of them: Maekar in his suit, Aerion in his disheveled shirt, and Duncan in his work clothes, surrounded by the wreckage of the apartment and their respective bad decisions.

Maekar looked at Duncan again.  Trying to see past the size and the rough exterior to whatever it was that had captured Aerion's attention.

Because his son didn't do anything without calculation, without reason. There had to be something here beyond just physical attraction.

"Donnel suggested," he said slowly, "that we could report you to the police. Make a case for attempted murder. We have three witnesses who heard my son choking. We could make that case very convincingly, regardless of what Aerion claims about consent."

Duncan went pale. "Sir, please—"

"It's fucking nonsense."

"I'm not a victim, Father. I'm not some helpless girl who needs rescuing from the big bad man. I'm twenty years old, legally an adult, and I'm telling you explicitly that everything that happened here tonight was my choice. You can't weaponize the legal system against him for providing what I asked for."

"Can't I?" Maekar raised an eyebrow. "Willem seemed to think we have a case. Three witnesses. Visible bruising. Your hoarse voice that clearly indicates choking."

"You wouldn't." But there was uncertainty in Aerion's voice now.

"I might. If I thought it would keep you safe."

"Safe from what? From being happy? From being satisfied? From finding someone who actually understands what I need instead of judging me for it?"

Someone who actually understands what I need.

As opposed to his father, who'd never understood any of his children's needs, who'd been too harsh and too distant and too emotionally constipated to connect with any of them in ways that mattered.

He looked at Duncan again. The man was watching Aerion.

"Do you like him? " Maekar asked. 

Duncan blinked, "Sir?"

"My son. Aerion. Do you have feelings for him?" Maekar said. "This isn't just sex for you. Is it?"

Duncan's face flushed red. "I... yeah. Yeah, I like him. A lot, if I'm honest. I know that's probably mad considering who he is and who I am, but—"

"But you do anyway."

"I do." Duncan said. "He's brilliant and infuriating and completely mad sometimes, but I like him. All of him. Even the parts that are difficult."

Maekar looked at Aerion, whose face had gone completely blank.

It would have been funny if it weren't so fucked up.

"And you," Maekar said to Aerion. "Do you feel the same?"

"That's none of your business."

"It became my business when I walked in on you being fucked and strangled. Answer the question, Aerion. Do you care about this man?"

"Yes," Aerion finally bit out. "Yes, I care about him. Satisfied?"

"No," Maekar said honestly. "Not remotely. But at least now I know this isn't just meaningless risk-taking or another one of your manipulative games."

He stood up from the sofa, brushing glass from his suit pants. Looked at the two of them. 

"Here's what's going to happen," he said. "First, you're going to stop meeting here. This apartment is finished. I'll have it cleared out and sold. Too much exposure, too much risk of exactly what happened tonight happening again."

"Father—"

"Second, if you're going to continue this relationship—and clearly you are regardless of what I think—you're going to be more careful. I don't mean careful about your sex life specifically, though Christ knows you should be. I mean careful about visibility. About who sees what. About protecting yourself and by extension this family from exposure we don't need."

He paused, making sure they were both listening.

"Third, Duncan." He looked at the big Irish man. "You're going to be responsible for his safety. I mean that literally. You're clearly the rational one in this. Aerion is impulsive and self-destructive and entirely too comfortable with risk. You're going to be the one who makes sure he doesn't get hurt. I mean. Beyond what's apparently part of your... arrangement."

Duncan nodded slowly. "I can do that, sir. I swear it."

"See that you do. Because if something happens to him—if he ends up in hospital because you didn't know when to stop, or if this becomes public in a way that damages him or this family—I will make your life a living hell. I don't care how much he cares about you. I don't care if it's consensual. I will destroy you without a second thought. Do we understand each other?"

"We do, sir." Duncan said. "I'll keep him safe. You have me word."

Maekar nodded once. Looked at Aerion. "And you. No more lawsuits against him. No more games. If you're going to do this, commit to it honestly or not at all. I'm tired of cleaning up your messes."

"The lawsuit was months ago—"

"I don't care. I want your word that you're done using the legal system as a weapon for whatever twisted games you play."

Aerion's mouth thinned, but he nodded. "Fine. You have my word."

"Good." Maekar turned toward the elevator, then paused. Looked back at them. "Does Aegon know about this?"

The silence that followed told him everything.

"He doesn't," Maekar concluded. "Which means you get to be the one to tell him, Aerion. Not me. Not Duncan. You. Because your brother deserves to know that his older brother is in a relationship with the rugby coach he befriended in Ashford."

Aerion's face went through several rapid emotions. "How do you—"

"I know everything that happens with my children, even when you think I'm not paying attention. Aegon met Duncan at that school trip. Duncan was his coach first. And now you're fucking him. That's going to be a very interesting conversation for you to have."

He stepped into the elevator before Aerion could respond. Pressed the button for the lobby.

"Fix the apartment before you leave," he called as the doors started to close. "Or pay for the damages yourself. I'm done funding your destruction."

The doors slid shut, leaving him alone in the descending elevator with his racing heart and the image of his son's bruised throat burned into his brain.

Christ, he thought wearily. My children are going to be the death of me.

◆◇◆◇◆◇◆◇

Three weeks later

The gathering three weeks later was exactly the kind of event Maekar hated: mandatory family dinner at Baelor's estate, ostensibly to celebrate Rhae's upcoming birthday but really just an excuse for his older brother to play patriarch and make sure everyone was maintaining family unity.

Maekar had tried to beg off. Work excuses, travel excuses, any excuse that might let him avoid the awkwardness of seeing Aerion and Duncan in a social setting.

Baelor hadn't let him. "You're coming. All your children are coming. We need these touchpoints, Maekar. Family matters."

So here he was, standing in Baelor's obscenely large living room with a gin and tonic he wasn't drinking, watching his scattered children pretend to be a functional family.

Daeron had arrived high, well... not obviously so, but Maekar could tell from the slightly glassy quality of his eyes and the way he moved just a fraction too carefully.

He was planted on one of the sofas, nursing a beer and looking like he desperately wanted to be anywhere else.

Aemon had flown in from California, looking thin and tired and carrying a medical journal he'd been reading on the plane.

He was currently trapped in conversation with Baelor's wife about neural research that was clearly going over her head, but he was too polite to extricate himself.

Daella had Rhae in tow, both of them dressed nicely but not extravagantly. Daella in a simple blue dress, Rhae in a skirt and blouse combination that she kept tugging at uncomfortably.

Aegon stood near the windows, his bald head catching the light, looking small and lost in a room full of people he was related to but didn't seem to know how to talk to.

And then there was Aerion.

His second son had dressed for maximum impact, as usual: a crimson suit that probably cost five thousand dollars, with a black shirt underneath that made his pale skin look even paler.

His silver-gold curls were artfully styled. His deep violet eyes were lined with just enough kohl to make them dramatic without looking feminine.

And standing next to him, looking wildly out of place in khakis and a button-down that strained across his shoulders, was Duncan.

Dunk, Maekar corrected himself. Apparently that's what everyone called him.

Watching them together was... educational.

Maekar had expected Aerion to be his usual self: cool, controlled, maintaining perfect social distance while making it clear through subtle cues that Duncan was his possession.

That's how Aerion operated with people. He collected them, displayed them, used them for whatever purpose they served, and discarded them when they stopped being useful.

But that's not what Maekar was seeing.

Aerion was standing close to Duncan, not touching, but close enough that their shoulders nearly brushed.

And he was... listening. Actually listening when Duncan spoke, head tilted slightly, a small genuine smile playing at his lips that Maekar had maybe seen twice in his son's entire life.

Duncan was telling some story. Maekar couldn't hear it from across the room, but whatever it was made Aerion laugh.

A real laugh. The sound was so unexpected that several people turned to look.

Then Aegon approached them.

Maekar watched his youngest son cross the room, shoulders hunched slightly and tap Duncan on the shoulder.

The big Irish man turned, saw Aegon, and his entire face lit up.

"Egg! Christ, look at you! You've grown since Ashford, yeah?"

He pulled Aegon into a hug that lifted the skinny fifteen-year-old off his feet. Aegon laughed and hugged back with an enthusiasm Maekar almost never saw from him.

"It's only been three months, Dunk," Aegon said when he was set down, but he was grinning. "I haven't grown that much."

"You have though. Look at you, all proper now. Bit different from the bald kid following me around Ashford, innit?"

They fell into easy conversation, and Maekar watched Aerion watch them. His son's face was carefully neutral, but there was something in his eyes, maybe, or guilt.

Then Daeron wandered over, beer in hand, moving with that careful slowness.

"Who's this then?" Daeron's words were slightly slurred. "Egg's new friend?"

"Duncan," Dunk introduced himself, extending a hand. "You must be Daeron, yeah? Egg talked about you. Said you have... interesting dreams."

Daeron's glassy eyes sharpened slightly. "He told you about that?"

"Aye. Said you see things before they happen sometimes. Must be quite the gift. Or curse, depending."

"Both," Daeron said after a moment. "Definitely both."

And then Duncan asked, "What do you see about tonight then? Anything interesting?"

It was said lightly, like a joke, but there was genuine curiosity in his voice. 

Daeron studied him for a long moment. Then he smiled as rare as Aerion's laugh had been.

"I see that you're good for him," he said, nodding toward Aerion. "That's enough for tonight."

The four of them stood there, talking and laughing like they'd known each other for years instead of months or weeks.

He was kind to Aegon. He asked about school and friends and whether he was still shaving his head ("Aye, it's a good look on you, makes those eyes of yours even bigger").

He was respectful to Daeron—asking follow-up questions about his dreams, not in a humoring-the-crazy-person way.

And with Aerion... with Aerion, he was careful. Attentive without being possessive.

Maekar stood across the room and watched this man be better with his children in thirty minutes than Maekar had managed in their entire lives.

Aemon eventually joined the group, drawn by his siblings' laughter. Maekar watched Duncan greet his third son with the same warmth he'd shown the others, asking about his research and actually understanding the technical terms when Aemon launched into an explanation of neural pathway mapping.

Even the girls gravitated toward the group eventually. Rhae bounded over with her usual enthusiasm, demanding to know who this tall man was and why Aegon seemed so excited.

Daella followed more quietly, but she smiled when Duncan complimented her dress. 

All six of Maekar's children, gathered around this stranger, laughing and talking and looking more like a family than they ever did.

Baelor appeared at Maekar's elbow, holding his own drink. "A penny for your thoughts?"

"Duncan." Maekar said. "The man Aerion sued. And is now apparently dating."

Baelor's eyebrows rose. "The Duncan I defended? Good Lord. That's quite the development."

"You could say that."

They stood in silence for a moment, watching the group across the room.

"He's good with them," Baelor observed.

"Yes."

"Better than I am, possibly."

"Yes."

Baelor glanced at him. "Does that bother you?"

Maekar took a drink of his gin and tonic. It had gone watery from the melted ice. "I don't know what bothers me anymore, Baelor. I just know I'm watching a complete stranger connect with my children in ways I never have, and I can't decide if that makes him a threat or a gift."

"Perhaps both," Baelor said quietly. "Most important people are."

They fell silent again.

Across the room, Duncan said something that made all six children laugh simultaneously.

Even Aemon, who rarely laughed. Even Daella, who was usually so quiet.

Maekar thought about those bruises on his son's throat. Thought about the destroyed apartment. Thought about walking in on them and wanting to kill Duncan for daring to put hands on his son.

But he also thought about Aerion's face when Duncan had said he liked him. 

I'll keep him safe, Duncan had promised. You have me word.

Maybe, Maekar thought, that was a promise Duncan could actually keep.

Maybe that was enough.

He finished his watery gin and tonic and set the glass down on a nearby table.

"I need another drink," he said to Baelor.

"You've barely touched that one."

"I know."

He walked toward the bar, giving the group of his children a wide berth. But as he passed, he caught Duncan's eye. The Irish man stiffened slightly.

Maekar gave him a slight nod. Just that. Nothing more.

Duncan's face relaxed. He nodded back.

And that, Maekar supposed, was as close to a blessing as he knew how to give.

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