THE WAY you write Aerion is soo very peak >_< !!!! needless to say, I have many, many feelings towards how he is such a evil pathetic meow meow who is also somehow redeemed a little by how much he yearns? I dont know how you do it, but its such a fun concept ✨️
I would love to ask your thoughts on a possible role reversal au where Lady Stark and Aerion are wed and how he might react to a younger!baelor secretly yearning after his lady wife ? 👀 (possibly lyonel too if we really want to get crazy aha )
You’re crazy for this idea! Let’s get into it.
First of all, in this role-reversal, Aerion would be insufferable about you.
Because if Lady Stark is younger here, closer to Daeron’s age I’d imagine, and Aerion actually gets her—truly gets her, lawfully, publicly, in a way no one can contest—then it feeds every greedier, more possessive part of him instead of starving it. He becomes a hoarder with a crown on his head and a wedding band on his finger. Not calmer, exactly. Just satisfied in a way that makes him even more openly territorial.
And the thing about Aerion is that once he has what he wants, he does not become generous. He becomes watchful. Especially with you.
He’d be the sort of husband who is only really soft in one direction. Charming when he wants to be, certainly—devastatingly so, in fact—but that charm would sharpen depending on who is looking. For the court, he is dazzling. For his enemies, cruel. For everyone else, unpredictable. But for his lady wife? He is affectionate in that intense, almost indulgent way of a man who genuinely delights in his wife and wants the world to know it. He would touch her constantly. Bend to murmur in her ear in crowded halls. Kiss her hand for too long. Look at her in ways that make it impossible for anyone to mistake the depth of his appetite. Aerion does not strike me as the sort to hide desire once he has the right to display it. He would show her off like treasure and worship her like a private altar all at once.
So if a younger Baelor started yearning quietly from the edges of that?
Oh, Aerion would notice. Immediately.
That’s the nasty little joy of it. He has spent too long being the one outside the circle, the one starving, the one wanting what another man has. In this au, the wheel turns. Now he is the husband. He is the chosen one. He is the man who gets to touch and claim and sleep beside you while someone else stands at the threshold swallowing his feelings.
And Aerion, being Aerion, would not be gracious about that.
He would be annoyed first, yes, because Baelor yearning after his wife scratches at every possessive instinct in him. Not only because Baelor is Baelor, but because Aerion cannot bear the thought of replacement or intrusion in anything that touches his deepest hunger. Once LS is his, he would feel it with total, dragon-sick certainty: there is no room for another man inside what belongs to him. Not in her affections if he can help it, and certainly not in her body, her loyalties, the inner sanctum of her tenderness. He is not built to share that space with anyone else. The idea of being displaced, even a little, would drive him half feral.
And if the interest is returned even marginally? Then it stops being annoyance and becomes obsession.
Because Aerion can handle being envied. He even enjoys it. A younger Baelor looking too long, aching nobly and silently while Aerion lounges in the place he wishes he occupied? That would flatter every dark, triumphant part of him. But Lady Stark looking back—softening, lingering—drives him insane.
He would become sharper with Baelor. More mocking, more needling. Maybe not openly enough to rupture the family at once, because he is not stupid, but enough. Enough for it to sting. Enough for Baelor to understand, in every cool smile and every hand laid possessively on your waist, that Aerion sees him. Sees the wanting. Sees the danger. And resents him for daring to feel it.
At the same time, I don’t think Aerion would want Baelor driven entirely away unless he truly had to be. Because part of him would enjoy the victory too much.
There is something so Aerion about wanting his rival near enough to witness what he has. Near enough to watch LS laugh at Aerion’s shoulder, sit by his side, carry his children perhaps. Aerion would preen under that in the ugliest, most intoxicating way. It would be the old wound turned inside out: look at me now. Look who she chose. Look who she comes back to at night, look at who she loves.
