Chapter Text
Received 2:01 a.m.
The boy’s not sleeping.
The boy — Aerion.
Baelor rarely had his phone on the desk during arraignments. It was unprofessional and disrespectful to the court; having it vibrate in your pocket warranted a lecture, a reprimand, or, rarely, a fine.
He'd taken it out of his pocket when he approached the bench. The court — the judge, colloquially — had been particularly liable to issue a reprimand lately. When he'd practiced in front of her during the day she was prickly but famously even handed. She treated her current circumstances like a punishment rotation; she'd had nights for the past month.
Baelor swiped the phone off the table and set it on his thigh.
At the table to his left, the prosecutor had her head tipped all the way back, draining the last dregs of her coffee.
Received 2:05 a.m.
I cant have him in the house. Not like this.
On the closed circuit television his client had two fingers clawing the inside of his left ear. Baelor made a note on his yellow pad.
Received 2:05 a.m.
I know you're at night court. Call me when you get out.
“Hello,” his client said. “I don't have much room in here, miss.”
Baelor rested his elbow on the table. It had to be Aerion. If Daeron went missing he’d need to be bailed out of the drink tank not get thrown out of the house after midnight.
“Miss,” The man groaned. He was arrested for indecent exposure and grievous bodily harm. He was well groomed but with no address in his file. “They're putting men in the walls.”
Baelor writes that down as well.
Received 2:06 a.m.
He hasn’t gone to uni in a week. You need to make sure he gets there.
Received 2:06 a.m.
He won’t go to the A&E.
This client was his fifth arraignment tonight. He was still scratching his ear. Despite the poor feed, Baelor could see blood under his fingernails.
“And they're going to do it to me, miss,” He said, voice cracking.
Sent 2:30 a.m.
Do I need to come get Aerion?
There was always a chance his brother messaged in a spurt of temper. Maekar took back punishments - groundings, volunteer hours, sent to rooms - so frequently that the only discipline his children ever got was an impulsive slap to the face.
Dyanna never let him spank the six. Seven knew it wouldn’t have done Daeron or Aerion any good. A bruised arse couldn’t cure misfiring neurons, disordered electric pulses, unbalanced chemicals or a brain structure malformed since birth. Violence would treat any of those things as well as industrial weed killer would beautify a small backyard garden.
Received 2:32 a.m.
yes.
Fuck.
He says he’ll stay with you.
He wasn’t home for three days.
Someone was vomiting in the men’s loo. The big, hacking sounds followed by a wet splash made Baelor’s own stomach lurch.
Sent 2:34 a.m.
And you didn’t call me?
Or report it?
If Daeron had been missing for three days Maekar would have called the police. But Daeron was more likely to find himself at the bottom of the Blackwater Rush than Aerion.
Sent 2:35 a.m.
Did you think he was with me????
I would have told you if he was.
Received 2:38
Fuck you. When will you be here?
The vomiting man came out of his stall while Baelor was washing his hands.
“Targaryen.”
“Ashford.”
Baelor was Martell y Targaryen just as Aerion was Dayne y Targaryen and Baelor’s own sons were Dondarrion y Targaryen. Rhoynish nomenclature adopted by the Dornish nine hundred years ago or there about. He stopped correcting the misnomer when he was in uni. Ashford couldn't even pronounce Baelor’s first name when he used it.
Baa-lor, the prosecutor usually said, sounding like a sheep being nipped by a herding dog, corralled towards a shearing pen by sharp, white canines. My esteemed colleague.
“Are you alright?” Baelor asked as Ashford braced his hands on the counter. He dropped his head over the sink. Baelor thought he was about to wretch again.
“Another dog case,” He groaned.
The last time Baelor sat across from him in court, it’d been to try a man whose dog mauled a neighbor to death.
A dog badly trained - recklessly trained. Badly bred too, he’d heard in testimony; genetics pressing it towards violence since it was a puppy, giving it an impulse for attack; for killing — no, almost a hunger for killing with such an overpowering prey drive, its stimulation apparent in the CCTV recording.
“I still have nightmares,” Ashford said. Baelor screwed up his face.
“Hazard of the job,” Baelor told him. Ashford nodded, not looking at him.
“How's your daughter?” Baelor asked.
“As good as a thirteen year old can be,” He said. “And less moody than the rest of the good kids.”
Baelor thought of Aerion as a pre-teen.
He was not a sweet boy. He was arrogant, clever, and already mean. He liked fishing. He liked quiet — likely part of the reason he liked fishing and liked Valarr, for that matter. Both his eldest and Aerion were quiet children. Valarr had become a quiet man.
Aerion might have become one.
The boy once described being fourteen as feeling like a loose roof tile tearing slowly off its nail. Baelor thought it an apt metaphor for Aerion’s general adolescence.
Perhaps for his whole life.
2:41 a.m.
I just called you. Pick up.
“They kept you fucking late,” Maekar sounded more tired than angry.
“So late you could say they kept me early,” Baelor turned the key in his car’s ignition.
“You think I don't know that?”
“Brat,” Baelor replied, too tired to filter his thoughts. “Do you still need me to come get him?”
“Yes,” Maekar said. “He hasn't taken his fucking -”
There was a muffled voice in the background.
“I don't give a fuck if you took that an hour ago. You were off everything for three - it doesn't matter! How long it takes to leave your blood doesn't matter, do you understand that?” Maekar snarled.
“Maekar,” Baelor said firmly. “What else has he done?”
“Stumbled through my door after midnight,” Maekar replied. “He had a baggie in his jacket.”
“Coke or weed?”
He heard Aerion say something in the background, likely offended that Baelor would suggest he smoked something as foul smelling as weed. The boy was sensitive to smells, as sensitive as the snake that lived in Baelor's rose bushes, flicking its tongue up at birds in his oak tree. As sensitive as a dog barreling down a sidewalk towards a woman with a musky perfume.
“Cocaine. Fuck,” Maekar said.
Baelor pulled out of his parking spot.
“Is he manic? Do you want me to drive him to A&E?”
More muffled protesting.
“Don’t be a brat, Aerion,” Baelor whispered to himself. He thought of Rhaegel, who was the opposite of a brat, tucked up in his bed in his group home, drugged to sleep under a weighted blanket with metal guards over the door handles.
When Aerion first moved into Baelor’s house — sixteen, angry and not floridly psychotic for the first time in two years — Baelor had thought Aerion would end up in a room next to Rhaegel.
Aerion might still end up there.
Baelor flicked on his turn signal.
Sent 3:03 a.m.
Text me your gate code.
The gate to his brother's neighborhood had motion activated floodlights. He had to blink through the initial seconds of blindness.
Jena hated that light. She hated driving at night, needing glasses for her astigmatism. Glasses that she always forgot to wear.
He still kept them in his glove compartment next to a vape pen. He was not certain if it belonged to Valarr, Matarys or Aerion.
The joys of housing young men on their breaks from uni. They forgot underwear under their beds; crumbs in the couch cushions; cereal behind the oven; urine on the bathroom floor and shirts in the wash machine. But when they were away he had to stop himself monitoring their locations — waiting for the phone call from Valarr or Matarys that they'd heard something that wasn’t there, that their laptop talked to them or the government was stalking them. It was easier to deal with the stink of their bodies and the messes in their rooms than that fear.
Maekar had gotten that call twice, Baelor reminded himself. Baelor only had two boys. He didn’t know what he’d do if he had to answer that call twice.
Received 3:05 a.m.
209
Maekar's yard was surrounded by expensive, neat hedges. Dyanna loved her garden. She kept every plant cropped and confined to its precise allotment of earth when she was alive.
As Baelor pulled into the driveway, he saw a ball flying into a flowerbed.
Four people froze in his headlights.
Daeron was shirtless, his sweats hanging loose around his thin hips, scars under his pecs red and angry. Daella stood to his right, Rhae to his left and Aemon appeared to be chasing the ball.
Their pale eyes almost reflected the light like cats. His nieces and nephews had mauve or lilac eyes. Save Aerion, if Baelor were to think about it he'd call Aerion's eyes heather, prettiest in flushed cheeks with his head on a navy pillowcase.
“Uncle Baelor!” Daella waved but none of them ran to him when he got out of the car. They all seemed to grow more solemn by the year. If their mother's death hadn't caused it; Daeron's first hospitalization did; or his second — or Aerion's first.
They all looked so much like their father, save Daeron. Even the scruff on his jaw couldn't hide his resemblance to his mother, though Baelor will never tell him that. All boys wanted to look like their father.
“Good morning,” Baelor said. “Where's your father?”
“In the kitchen,” Rhae told him. “He's drinking coffee.”
“Espresso,” Daella corrected her. “Kepus doesn't drink coffee, he drinks espresso.”
Baelor thought he needed an espresso.
“Best get that ball,” Baelor told them.
“Go around the back,” Aemon said. “The front door is locked.”
“Are you lot alright?” Baelor didn't expect to hear anything other than the yes he received but he didn't expect anyone else would have asked.
Received 3:07 a.m.
Tomorrow we need to discuss your case load. Call me once you're in office tomorrow.
Baelor stuffed his phone in his pocket. His supervisor wouldn’t be expecting a response before seven at night.
It didn't surprise him that she was still awake nor that her exhaustion bled through her texts.
Baelor tried to think what could be wrong — there was a murder on the news a fortnight before. A vicious one where the body was found by a child.
The DA and public defenders had the same process for selecting lawyers in high profile cases; seniority, skill, charisma, appearance. Baelor thought he'd be asked to move to days and take the lead for the defense. He'd done it before.
The body in that case had been a child’s.
It had been three years ago; in the last months of a five year Summer – the same time Aerion first moved in with Baelor.
Baelor knocked on the sliding glass door to the kitchen. Two heads turned. His reflection in the glass overlaid Aerion's face. The boy was sitting up straight at least. A hitherto unrecognized tension loosened in Baelor's chest.
“You look like shit,” was Maekar's greeting when he opened the door.
“You look worse,” Baelor smiled grimly. He clapped his hand on his brother's shoulder.
“Aerion,” Maekar said. “Let’s go.”
There was espresso on the counter. Two cups, in fact. And a container of nuts that Aerion was picking through. Baelor felt relieved the father and son were both calm enough to sit together.
Aerion's face twisted into a scowl as the door slid shut.
“I heard you weren't feeling well,” Baelor said.
“I don't want to go to the hospital,” Aerion replied. Baelor raised an eyebrow at Maekar.
“He hasn't slept in three days,” His brother reiterated.
“Right,” Baelor replies steadily. He turned pointedly to his nephew. “I am not taking you to A&E.”
“Are you lying to me?”
“Aerion,” Maekar said. “If you manage to sleep at your uncle's, he won't take you.”
Aerion drummed a finger on the counter, eyes narrowed to slits. Aerion was nineteen and did not meet the minimum requirements for a conservatorship — unlike Rhaegal. Three years ago this little, vital battle would have been easily won. Maekar hadn’t needed to bargain with Aerion; beg and bother and prod until someone’s temper snapped.
He could simply order.
Baelor gave Aerion a pointed look.
Aerion poured more nuts into his palm.
“Do you have your things packed?”
Aerion lived in the basement with locks on the outside of the door and one small window that he could theoretically wriggle his thin hips through in case of a fire.
If Aerion tried to escape a fire. At his worst he'd believed himself to be fire proof.
Baelor shouldn't have let Aerion move back. At Baelor's house he had a room – two rooms; Matarys’ for his clothes and toiletries and computer and Baelor's; where he slept. And the pull out couch when Baelor's sons were home and the shower he occasionally used two, three times a day. He didn't need to disappear to drink or have sex – Baelor stopped himself.
Aerion tipped his head to the side, eyes fixed on Baelor. The boy looked rumpled. Baelor nodded to him then jerked his head towards the door.
“Yes,” Aerion slipped off the stool. “Fine.”
Baelor heard Maekar's sharp exhale. His brother's heart had to be racing — had to have been racing for hours. Baelor turned and grabbed Maekar's upper arm. His brother was stiff with anger.
“I'll call you tomorrow evening.”
Maekar twisted his neck. An almost draconic gesture that always made his neck hot.
“You should get some sleep.”
“Fucking hell,” Maekar sighed in reply. “You’ll fucking text me when you've got him home.”
“I'll fucking text you myself,” Aerion snorted
“Oh, now you've remembered how to?” Maekar replied
“I replied to –”
“Now you –”
“Aerion!” Baelor snapped. He squeezed Maekar's arm.
“Now I suppose you remember how to answer calls too, do you?” Maekar asked.
“It's Daeron who doesn't answer the phone,” Aerion replied flatly. Maekar seemed to hood up like a cobra – a dragon.
“Really?”
“What? Did you want to hear EDM music? Or rap? Or me getting fucked?” Aerion asked casually. There was a pause, both older men staring at Aerion. Baelor felt his face twist into a scowl. Aerion's eyes were fixed on him – that comment was for him as much as it was for Maekar.
“What the fuck did you just say to me?” Maekar replied.
And Aerion's mouth flattened into a thin line.
“Aerion, let's go,” Baelor stepped toward Aerion, putting himself between the boy and Maekar. When Maekar was quiet – when they both stopped yelling and the room went cold there was a risk of violence.
“I'm your father,” Maekar hissed. “Do you enjoy embarrassing yourself?”
“Wouldn't I be -”
“Aerion,” Baelor chose not to raise his voice. “That's enough.”
Aerion's mouth seemed to bulge out when he smirked like a greaser in an old film; more bravado and superiority than confidence. He grabbed his bag. Baelor couldn't look at Maekar. He needed to make himself look at Maekar.
“I'll tell you when we're home and when he gets to sleep.”
After Baelor fucked him – and he was going to fuck him irrespective of now many times he'd gotten fucked in the last three days - he was going to text Maekar all is well with Maekar's son cuddled up like a puppy under his arm. He used to do it regularly. Seven above.
“What?” Aerion said. “I would've thought Daeron did that.”
Baelor squeezed Maekar's arm a third time and looked at him, making a face, willing him not to react – to act like a parent – to tend Aerion in the same way they'd seen their mother manage Rhaegel’s worst episodes. Maekar gritted his jaw, Baelor saw the muscles clench through the shift in his beard.
“It's a miracle he hasn't gotten himself fucking pregnant, you know,” Aerion finished.
“Daeron -” Maekar began to respond.
“Daeron and the little ones are playing outside,” Baelor said calmly. Maekar groaned audibly.
“Fuck. What fucking time is it?”
“Three-fifteen,” Aerion replied, walking to the door. He didn't touch Baelor but he got near enough the older man almost shivered. His eyes stayed fixed on Baelor's face.
“Egg has swim before school,” Maekar said. “I told him to keep them all upstairs.”
“Egg wasn't with them,” Baelor replied. Maekar looked sharply at Aerion.
“What? I’ve been with you the entire time,” Aerion put a nut in his mouth.
“He even stood outside the bathroom while I showered,” Aerion volunteered. “And took all the razors out and the pill bottles.”
“A wholly rational action given the circumstances.”
Aerion shrugged.
Daeron and the little ones watched like ghosts when they pulled out of the driveway – like figures from a horror movie in his headlights. Valyrians, they looked like Volantine or Lyseni inbred Valyrians.
Baelor's late grandfather had been a racist bastard. The one time Baelor met him, Aegon had sneered at him. Blood will out, he said as if Baelor's dark skin made him something bestial. The truth was Baelor’s violet eye bore out the horrors in his family line.
Aerion was still eating his nuts.
The almonds cracked and the cashews crunched between his molars. Baelor thought it must have been the peanuts he picked out.
“Daeron can't stay on his pills for a week,” Aerion snapped. “I just did cocaine. It didn't even make me manic – it didn't even feel that good.”
“And you have not taken your -”
“I'm not going to do shit to Egg!”
Baelor let the shout sit between them as he turned onto the highway ramp. It was jammed with red rear lights but not gridlocked. Just along a bend he could see the flashing of an ambulance and police cars.
The changing light would have made Jena squint or even shut her eyes for a moment.
When they pulled her out of the car she hadn't been wearing her night glasses.
Baelor looked at Aerion.
His face was worried, eyes wide and pink mouth half open. The pink was a shade lighter than Jena’s lips. Aerion blinked at him.
Baelor decided to say nothing. He was a patient man. Even if he were not off his antipsychotic, Aerion could be more reactive than a dog listed for behavioral euthanasia. His skin pebbled in cold terror at the idea of Aerion dead. Dead on some table with a towel – an autopsy table, a vet’s examination table – and Baelor would have to identify the body. He hadn't needed to do it for Jena. He made himself stop.
The ambulance was for a three car wreck on the opposite side of the highway. Aerion craned his neck around Baelor to see. There was an innocent curiosity in the way his brow knit.
He wondered what Aerion would do with a dog. Maekar and Dyanna kept cats and Baelor's last dog died a year after Jena, before Aerion had to move in for the first time – when Baelor lived in the old house, Jena's childhood home. Egg said Aerion tried to kill his cat shortly before Aerion put a knife between his legs. He didn't know if Aerion's admitted to that with any of the therapists or psychiatrists.
“I don't want to go to A&E,” Aerion said.
“I will not take you if you sleep,” Baelor replied. “As your father and I agreed.”
“Am I -”
“I will not repeat myself again.”
“Of course you fucking won't.”
Baelor gave him a pointed look. Aerion raised both his eyebrows. Aerion pulled his phone out of his pocket and spoke slowly. “You won't repeat it now but you'll repeat it tomorrow. Then father will repeat it and Daeron and my doctor and then I'll hear it from one of my fucking professors in the middle of fucking class -”
“Imagine you hear it?”
“Like I can tell the difference,” Aerion replied. “When it gets bad – I can't. You know I can't. You know I'll hear them telling me something else – something just for me.”
“A voice will tell you what you hear,” Baelor corrected.
“That's not how you're supposed to speak to me,” Aerion cooed, typing quickly on his phone. Each letter made a soft bloop sound. Baelor kept his eyes on the road. “You're not supposed to question the - delusions.”
He said delusions like it was painful, raking over his tongue and tonsils, stretched by his lisp.
“You’re wrong,” Baelor replied. “I am not your psychiatrist nor your therapist and if you are having delusions I need to take you to A&E, don't I?”
Aerion said nothing. His phone continued to bloop.
“Aerion, I asked you a question.”
“I don't want to go to A&E.”
“And I will not take you there if you sleep. That has already been agreed upon,” Baelor repeated then sucked a breath in through his nose. It was shallow, one nostril didn't work. “Your father would have called an ambulance if he thought you needed it.”
“Dad’s angry I went to a party,” Aerion said. “Seven knows he’s fucking done coke. Seven knows he and mum did worse than coke – and Daeron. Egg too. I bet Egg’s smoking grass. Aemon is. It fucking reeks.”
“Three days is much more than a single party. The difference between you and your younger brothers –”
Aerion snarled. “I'm reminded every fucking day!”
Baelor paused, lips pressing into a thin line. Aerion sniffed. The boy rarely cried. Baelor doubted he was going to now.
“The difference is you can call me and I won’t tell Maekar – regardless of how intoxicated you are,” Baelor said.
“Why? Because you've gotten me drunk before?”
“Because you are an adult.”
“Because you've had sex with me?” Baelor looked away from the road. Aerion was staring down at his phone, his red tongue between his teeth. “Or because you want to have sex with me again?”
“Because you are not a child,” Baelor said.
“Dad treats me like one. He gives less of a fuck about what Egg’s doing than what I am,” Aerion replied. Baelor wondered if he should tell Maekar that Aerion said that. “He does a lot of shitty things, you know.”
“If I was concerned you were missing for three days would I be shitty?” Baelor asked. Aerion turned his phone off, his face going dark, save for the wet on his mouth reflecting the blue light from the car console. He licked his lips – thick lips, like his father's but set in a more delicate face. Baelor felt blood warm his groin.
“If I still lived with you, I’d come home,” Aerion said. “I asked Dad if I could come back but he's still thinking about it.”
Baelor sighed. They were two exits away from his new house – the one with two guest rooms, not three.
Not Jena’s house.
“You didn't think to ask me first?” Baelor asked.
“What? You don't want me in your house?”
“Is that what I just said, Aerion?”
“No,” Aerion replied, sullenly. Baelor swallowed, throat audibly clicking. He detested managing Aerion when he was trying to be manipulative – the boy had what could be called a low cunning. Aerion was clever enough to know he wasn't half as clever as he often pretended to be.
At least, when stable.
Stable, medicated, good, sane, clever.
“If you'd asked me,” Baelor said. “We could have approached Maekar together, with a plan.”
“You think I didn't have a fucking plan?”
They were one exit away now. Baelor blinked quickly. The lights over the sign were especially harsh. He thought of Jena and the way street lights gave her auburn hair a sheen of copper.
“You really think,” Aerion snorted. “I didn't have a plan? You think I didn't spell out that you live closer to campus? Or that I can have friends over? Or that I don't need to be watched every single day or around the children? Or have to confirm I've taken my meds. Three times a day. He makes me check in three times a day.”
“And when your plan didn't work you went on a bender to get what you want?” Baelor said harshly.
Aerion let out a rude huff. “That's not what fucking happened.”
“Then what did happen?” Baelor gritted out. Aerion leaned his head back against the headrest. Baelor saw his pronounced Adam’s Apple bob – he hated it at that moment. His cock started to push under the seam of his pants. His nephew liked a hand around his throat when he was being fucked, something constricting, solid, grounding. Something to pull focus from the cock bullying its way into his tight little arse. Baelor wondered if he'd like leather or rough, woven cloth buckled tight over that pretty neck – a dog collar with a leash pulled so taunt it forced his lean back into a rigid arch.
“I was invited to a party so I went. Then I kept getting invited to after parties,” Aerion said.
“After you'd been off your antipsychotic for what? Four days?”
“Two. I'm not Daeron. I can –” Then Aerion stopped.
“You have a social worker. Daeron doesn't,” Baelor almost reminded him that Daeron never put a knife between his little brother's legs. Daeron never threatened to castrate someone. Daeron never tried to break a fellow patient’s fingers. Daeron just imbibed, smoked and fucked whoever he could talk or pay to grope between his legs.
“You mean I hurt people and Daeron doesn't.”
“Yes,” Baelor acknowledged.
“Would you like it if I hurt you?” Aerion replied. Even though the off ramp was empty, Baelor flicked on the turn signal to change lanes. “If I leaned over and bit you right now. What about if I grabbed your throat?”
There was a beat of silence as they flew down the ramp to the red light. Baelor kept his eyes on the road even as his pulse started to race.
“I'm sorry,” Aerion said. Baelor gripped the steering wheel so tightly it almost hurt. There was no one begging at the corner. Baelor exhaled slowly, looking at the empty corner with weeds growing between the sidewalk cracks. He could see them clear as day in his headlights.
“The past two weeks,” Baelor said. “There's been a man who talks to himself standing here.”
“He's probably found somewhere to sleep,” Aerion replied. “You sound like my father trying to tell me how lucky I am.”
Baelor hummed non-committally. “Do you realize you're lucky?”
Aerion huffed. In the glow of the stop light his mouth looked obscene and his eyes were sunken into his sharp cheeks. Baelor admitted to himself he liked Aerion's thinness, his boniness – how easily his body gave under Baelor's hands and how well he folded under Baelor's broader frame. If Aerion ever attacked him Baelor could toss him away like a pillow.
“Do you realize you're being patronizing?” Aerion sneered at him. Baelor gritted his teeth. “And it doesn't help.”
The light turned green.
Sent 3:46 a.m.
We're home safe.
Received 3:46 a.m.
How is he?
Sent 3:47 a.m.
Very tired. Not as angry as I thought.