(Another fic snippet from the 30 year situationship wip, same one this is from. I am plugging along, real life was homophobic and got in the way for a minute)
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233 AC
The Great Council is over.
Aegon will be king.
His squire, his little Egg. Aegon, Fifth of his Name, King of the Andals and the Rhoynar and the First Men, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.
It was the only conclusion that made sense, with Daeron and Aerion gone before their father, but it still doesn’t feel any more real.
Lyonel had sat the council with the other lords, but that was hours ago, and he has been deep in his cups ever since. Not the sweet, languid sort of drunk where he just wants to laze about and fuck and whisper sweet things into Duncan’s skin. They've passed that hours ago, and gone on to something darker, uglier.
Many believe Lyonel to be a simple man. Others, a madman. A man who laughs in revelry and in war, who delights in fighting and drinking, whose presence can command a room- as true a Baratheon as ever lived. Duncan knows better. There is hurt in him, running beneath his skin like lightning-scars, and he can fall into black moods, especially late at night. Duncan knows the signs of them well, knows the hunched shoulders and heavy, dark-ringed eyes that seem oddly far away.
It worries him, when Lyonel gets like this.
He has long since set his own cup aside. There is too much to think of, to take in. They are still half-dressed, cooling from rutting like desperate boys as they always do when the gods bring them together, but the silence between them is tense and uncomfortable. When Lyonel drains the last of his wine, he reaches immediately for the jug to refill it. Duncan catches his wrist.
“What is this?” he asks softly. Lyonel will not meet his eyes. Duncan wracks his brain, trying to work out what he could have done to upset him, but it comes up blank. “Will you not tell me what troubles you?”
“Mallister and Waynwood are dead,” Lyonel says flatly, tearing his hand from Duncan’s grasp and pouring Arbor red so gracelessly that it sloshes over the rim of the cup.
Duncan blinks, frowns. It is not the answer he had expected. “I know that.” It had happened months ago, now- two White Swords, dead at their king’s side in the Storming of Starpike. They had been mourned, their names and their ends inscribed in the Book of the Brothers, their positions left vacant until the question of succession could be settled. “What of it? I hadn't thought you knew either of them well enough to mourn like this. ”
Lyonel stares at him, his dark eyes unreadable beneath his messy gray curls. “And your boy Egg is king.”
“In no small part thanks to you,” Duncan protests, slow and bewildered, picking through the words in his mind. It feels as though he is missing something- it is not as common a feeling for him as it once was, but he still mislikes it. “You argued for him, louder than anyone.”
“I did that for the good of the realm.” The words are barely intelligible, slurred as they are, but the resentment in them is plain. “What other options did we have, so long as they must be Targaryens? Babes and simpleminded children? Aerion’s get, named for a king madder than he would have been?” He chuckles nastily, lounging back in his chair and letting his head tip back toward the ceiling. “Perhaps Blackfyre’s head could rule, if only it could still speak.”
Duncan takes advantage of the moment unwatched to move the wine jug to the floor behind his own chair. Lyonel is being spiteful, but he is not even being honest. He and Egg have visited Storm’s End many times over the years between their far-flung travels, and Lyonel had taken a shine to the little prince, once he’d gotten to know him away from his family. The same cheek that Duncan had often threatened to beat out of him- and never would, which the boy well knew- had delighted Lyonel, who had allowed him to talk back freely in his presence, purely for the amusement it brought him to scandalize his stuffy old castellan and the vassal lords he did not particularly like.
When Egg was four-and-ten, they had stayed nearly half a year to give Duncan time to recover from a broken sword arm- the longest he would ever spend there. Once he was fit to travel, they had together gone south to Griffin’s Roost and to Crow’s Nest, where Lyonel’s wife and children were on an extended visit with her lord father, and gone hunting and hawking in the rainwood as Lyonel had once wished. Duncan had not found that he had much talent for either, but Egg had as keen an eye for birds and rabbits as he did for fish and a sharp natural aim, and he had chattered on excitedly after about how much better fed he'd be able to keep them on their next journey.
Your next journey, eh? Lyonel had asked with quiet disappointment, low enough that only Duncan could hear.
We've not seen the Westerlands yet, Duncan had responded- an evasion of Lyonel's real question, as he had done many times, but answer enough.
Lyonel had even taught the boy the rudiments of sailing in Shipbreaker Bay and up the coast, though Duncan had forbidden them to go further than Massey's Hook, and only when the weather was at its mildest- he was still responsible for the boy’s safety, after all, even with his arm all splinted and useless.
And years later, as men grown, they had fought side by side and feasted after, and toasted many a time to their friendship. You aren’t half bad for a dragon, Lyonel had often teased in his presence, now that your hedge knight has filed down your fangs. It had always gotten a rise out of Egg, led to another round of good-natured banter between them. But one night, they had sat at the end of a banquet table, catching their breath from the dancing and revels, and watched Egg with his sons. Prince Duncan, old enough to walk, dragged him about by one arm, and little Prince Jaehaerys was curled half-asleep in the other. Aegon's eyes were bright with affection and laughter, and he listened to Duncan's toddling babble with rapt attention, nodding solemnly as he was shown things he'd seen a thousand times.
You did well with him, Lyonel had murmured- contemplative, with a private, fond smile that Duncan usually only sees when Lyonel looks at his own children. He is everything his father is not.
Don't let him hear you say that about his father, Duncan had whispered in reply, but he was smiling, too.
No, Lyonel likes Egg, Targaryen or no. He is not the sort of man to have merely pretended all these years. He is being cruel, needlessly so, and Duncan still doesn’t understand why.
“You got what you wanted, then.” He picks up Lyonel’s limply curled hand, rubbing his thumb gently into the other man’s palm, tracing sword-calluses as familiar as his own. There is no response, no answering tenderness, and he pushes down the tight spike of anxiety in his chest. “So what is the problem?”
There is a long, heavy pause before Lyonel finally answers. “Tomorrow. He will name you to his Kingsguard.”
Oh.
Duncan freezes, his grip on Lyonel’s hand falling away.
Still thick as a castle wall, damn you, even after all these years.
“I..I would not presume that,” he says hesitantly. He has never been a good liar, but this is not a lie, not really. It feels obvious, now that Lyonel has said it aloud, but at the same time, it feels impossible to believe. Every boy dreams of serving in the Kingsguard, he had once told Jon the Fiddler, but many boys dream of riding dragons or sailing to Yi Ti and Asshai as well, each just as unlikely as the next.
Lyonel laughs bitterly. “False modesty doesn't suit you.”
Duncan shakes his head- eyes wide, heart racing along with his mind. “It’s not that, it’s just…” He truly hadn't thought about it, not seriously. Not beyond such idle fantasies, and those had died long ago. King Aerys had never looked twice at him, had likely never even known he existed. And King Maekar had come to tolerate him over the years, to value his prowess in battle and perhaps even to respect his devotion to his son, but he never would have chosen him as a protector of his own. The circumstances by which he and Egg had begun their partnership- and the shadow of Baelor Targaryen- had hung too heavily between them for true trust or love to grow.
But now Maekar is dead, like his brothers and nephews and sons, and Egg is the last of them, left to carry his grief onto the throne.
And Duncan…
Maybe he was foolish, not to consider the possibility- but then, Egg was never meant to be king. And Duncan is as unlikely as he is, in a way. They have sworn themselves to princes and lordlings and landed knights alike, won victories in battle and done good in smaller, quieter ways, but no one among the highborn has ever been able to look beneath the roughspun clothes and Flea Bottom accent and really see him the way that Egg does. The way that he always has. No one else- certainly no other king- would have ever seen Duncan as worthy of such an honor.
No one save Lyonel, a treacherous little part of his mind points out, but it makes no matter. He has never been able to have both.
He blinks. He has been silent for too long. “It’s just,” he stammers out, “he’s never spoken of it. Not once. Not to me.”
Lyonel shakes his head, smiling miserably. “My dear, foolish man,” he says, almost pitying. “He probably thinks it so obvious that he does not have to.”
