Archive of Our Own ^beta

i. One day, Viserys woke up and he was taller than his wife.

Of course, he didn’t notice until a few moons later, when he went to kiss her before breaking his fast and found that he had to lean down to reach her lips. “Larra!” he exclaimed, delighted. “Have you shrunk recently?” The comedy was double, for Larra was eight moons full with their third child, and therefore had been doing nothing but growing lately.

“A fine achievement, husband,” she murmured, as was her wont. Seldom did his lovely wife ever raise her voice even to normal levels. “Now you only have to surpass your kingly brother.”

Viserys smirked. “Oh, he and I will never see eye to eye on that front,” he said. Aegon was six feet and two inches at least, and looked down upon most by virtue of his stature as well as his title. “But you have good reason to bring him up. I must go tell him of this excellent news. Good-bye, my treasure,” he said, swanning from the room, though not before giving her another lingering kiss. Her tongue always tasted sweet. He would have loved her for that alone.

He went to his brother’s rooms single-mindedly. Blessedly it was not a large distance, with the king himself having stipulated he be no more than a few minutes’ walk from Viserys’ rooms. The door was still oak and golden-barred, and locked, and he knew Aegon tended to stay late in bed more mornings than not. Asleep - probably not - more likely he studied the cracks in the ceiling, trying to make sense of it all. Perhaps Viserys’ anticipation had been misguided. The worst night terror he ever had was one that visited him every few moons, the one where he opened that oak door to find a bloodied knife and slit wrists. Dark were those dreams. Silent were his screams that woke him up, and the woman next to him who shared his bed.

Yet it was, at that door, distinctly not silent. Rather, strident calls emanated from the inside, enough to raise alarm bells in his head, to clutch at Ser Dennis’ white cloak and call for aid. The knight was standing a respectable distance from the entrance, but Viserys could not afford to be respectable when danger might be present.

Or -

Or it could be something else entirely. A private smile played at Viserys’ lips as he listened closer, catching a cascade of shallow, abortive moans. Sounds of pleasure, certainly. His brother was well beyond the age where a boy discovers himself, and so he chose to take it as a sign of progress and a step toward well-being, if Aegon was now getting to know his body and its needs rather than depriving himself as he did with food and wine and other tangible forms of joy.

Still, then, why did he sound so pained? In what manner did he stroke himself? With sharpened nails to weld scratches into his skin? Maybe he did not touch at all, and instead rubbed himself desperately against his bedsheets, humping the post like an animal would. Or maybe he just waited in self-imposed torture, hands splayed to the side as if they were bound, while his cock stood neglected and angry. It would be like Aegon to turn ecstasy into woe.

Then there was another possibility - one half-exciting, half-terrifying - that Aegon was in fact not alone in his chambers. That he had brought someone inside. It would not be his bride, she was a child if there ever was one, pretty and smiling and insipid in a way that made Viserys grind his teeth. (If a daughter grew in his wife’s belly, she would not be thus.) But he could’ve paid a whore, some piece of skirt he slipped coins to and led through the castle’s secret tunnels. She could wake him in the morning with her mouth, wear his pendant around her surely lovely neck.

In a reversal of their typical roles, Viserys only knew about the tunnels because Aegon told him. He and Joff had quite literally stumbled across them during their time in the Keep, finding all the ways in and out. They would spend their days winding their way through the halls and doors, rather than bear witness to Mother picking the scabs from her limbs.

Viserys remembered Joff the best of his chestnut-haired brothers. Luke died too early and Jace spent the war standing tall, making the north bend to his will. Joff was there, though, holding them tight, promising him his egg would hatch one day, and asking did he have a name for it yet?

Zaldrīzes, he would pronounce, and Joff’s brow would quirk as he reminded him he couldn’t name his dragon dragon.

Aegon assured him that they amused themselves well in those days, busying themselves with the dozens of cats the castle housed. Viserys said the same about his own years in captivity, and they didn’t discuss it much beyond that.

But no, he thought it highly unlikely that his brother had any company. Aegon hardly spoke at length to anyone, let alone allowing them to lay their hands on him. Even servants were dismissed - it was Viserys who dressed him, prepared him for bed, witnessed him in states unbecoming of a king, even a boy-king. If Aegon was going to ask anyone to aid him in this task, it would be Viserys.

Suddenly, Viserys looked down to find his cock in hand. Only, it wasn’t his, the organ he’d come to know so well with its mushroom head and large sac hanging just below. It was longer, somewhat thinner too, with a paler thatch of hair at the place where it joined to his hip. Wide-eyed, he came to realize that it was Aegon’s cock, with his own fingers closed around it, touching in time with Aegon’s noises of pleasure, muffled though they were. He blinked, then shook his head, and when he cautioned to look again his trousers were thankfully tightened safely, though the bulge that stretched them was indecent and utterly unsuitable for polite company. Even Ser Dennis was all at once far too close.

His meeting with the council would have to wait. He turned around and walked back in the direction of his rooms.

ii. “This gown wants for a shawl,” Larra told her maid, frowning at her bare shoulders in the glass. The girl nodded - she was as mute as Sandoq, though in possession of a tongue where the shadow was not - and began rummaging through the wardrobe, searching for a swath of fabric that matched the dusky rose of her lady’s dress.

Larra waited a minute, making slight adjustments to her silhouette. The day’s style required a dropped waist and an emphasis on the hips, but when her belly fell out in front of her she hated the sight. Therefore her robes sat belted just below her breasts, with layers of sheer chiffon to caress her stretched-out skin. The scarf would sit around her neck, draped over her shoulder blades and hung low to give her better posture, stature like a pillar.

At least, that was the intent. When she turned her head again the girl was on her way out, and her husband in her place. Viserys dismissed her with a wave of his hand and attached himself to her side once more, licking the salt along her skin with intent.

“Dearest,” she said. “I did not think you would return so soon.” The hours were quiet without him. He did enough talking for them both. They only wanted to hear him, regardless.

“I forgot something,” he replied, nuzzling in.

She twitched at the touch. “What would that be?”

“This,” he said, reaching for her wrist, dragging her hand to cup his groin. “I need you, love, come on.”

She laughed, awkward, forced. “Yndros, are you so insatiable? You had me on my back -

“ - Three days ago, my sweet, too long. I want your mouth on me,” he said. “I find myself overcome with desire.” Desire. There were a dozen words for it in Lyseni, and the one her husband used was reserved for bodily cravings. He may well have satisfied himself with a hole in a wall, but he would not accept that. Instead he worked at his laces, letting himself spring free and beginning to thrust into her dry palm.

“Is it so? You went to see your brother and now you weep from your cock. You are a Targaryen,” she said, one eyebrow raised and no hint of a smile. Neither did she pay any regard to Viserys’ aspect, which was slowly turning cold. “Leave it, husband. Or take care of it yourself. I have appointments to attend. ”

“Breakfast with the ladies of court?” he asked mockingly. It startled her. Though he enjoyed a clever turn of phrase or a bit of unassailable charm, rarely if ever was he cruel. “Larra. I shan’t ask you again. Get on your knees.”

She held his stare for a moment - looking up.

It didn’t used to be this way between them.

When they were first wed he hid behind corners, frightened of her and unable to call her by name. Her father hammered it into her head that she must get his babe in her belly, and for three moons kept her under close watch so she would not think of bearing any violet-eyed bastard. If need be, he would promise, he’d stand guard himself.

At night she would be permitted to go to the little pet’s rooms, and they were granted the privacy of a curtain to shield their marital bed. The first night he could do nothing but cry for his mother. The second he sniffled and turned into his cushions. The third, she tangled her fingers in his hair and asked if she might teach him how to kiss.

I know how to kiss, he’d said, voice hard. They showed me - in the pillow house, the lord and Roggerio too. They said I am two and ten and it was past time I learned.

Two and ten. It stuck in her throat, but there were boys and girls younger than that in those places. Did you see what else they did there? In the pillow house?

The child nodded. They lay down with each other.

I must - we must - she said, and stopped. It wouldn’t do to speak so truthfully. Would you like to lie down with me? she asked, glad for the darkness so no one would witness her shame too closely.

Viserys seemed to consider it for a moment. Likely he knew that no was no true choice. Can you keep touching my hair? Like that, please. Larra.

One week later she saw him nude for the first time, and once he became accustomed to her touch he fell apart in her grip. On the night of the full moon he rubbed against her cunt and spilled in seconds. Hot breath against her neck did not cease until the healer reported she no longer bled.

Now the boy was six and ten, a man grown. He bore her down with his gaze, and did not lend a hand to aid as she wobbled into her position of obeisance.

Larra looked down and studied the dark vein, the mark of motherhood that ran down through her navel, and he pushed at her lips, smearing them with the white from his cockhead. Knocking them apart, bumping against her teeth. For only a moment she thought of biting down. Then she took him inside.

No one had painted her face yet, so no powders nor rouge would come to stain the prince’s manhood. It was the saliva at the back of her throat she gathered to ease his way, the thumb she pressed into his hip to steady herself. All she might do on a brighter day, she did for him, because he liked it well, the bob of her silver head before him, the shiver when she let out a hot breath against his slick flesh. He gripped the knot at the base of her neck and pulled so she nearly gagged, and when she did he was gratified and moaned.

If it was the king who had worked her husband into such a state, she could not say she was surprised. They always looked at each other with such terrible longing, as if they did not live and breathe side by side, each and every day. It amused her also to know that Viserys had always steadfastly refused any intrusion into his arse, and that more like than not Aegon would learn the sensation of his own pillow between his teeth. It didn’t make her laugh, though.

It wasn’t that funny.

The pile of their carpet was thick and soft, as luxurious as she’d always been accustomed to. She focused on its gentle touch on her toes while her husband fucked her throat. She remembered Roggerio’s words, sickly sweet like blackberry jam in her ear: The boy’s all yours. Train him up, in your way. He will worship you. How badly she had failed, then - that he wanted this because he knew she would give it to him. She had shown him before. A hand for healing turned into a grip meant to bruise, and it was her fault.

A ghastly noise left her; one more touch to the back of her tongue and she thought she might give it all up. But at that moment he half-withdrew, fisting the base of his cock while he fed her his seed, confessing his climax as he always did. He liked it when she did the same, swearing while she clenched around him, but there would be none of that. Not this morning. When the last of it dribbled out she pulled off quickly and spat it onto the floor.

Viserys eyed the mess, slowly growing flaccid, trousers still open. “Larra, that’s disgusting.”

“Is this what disgusts you?”

A flicker of shame passed through his eyes. In a better world they would have said something. He coughed and cleared his throat, wiping it all away. “You are a good wife to me.”

If you ever left, I would miss your mouth. She kept it closed.

“I hope you will join us for supper tonight.”

With my brother, for whom it is so much more than desire.

Larra stood, bare feet to his boots. The bones in her toes cracked, weary under extra weight. She lifted her cheek for his kiss. “Where else would I go?”