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His brother’s blood was sweet on the tongue. It streamed from Baelor’s broken nose and smeared across his mouth like a lady’s rouge, carmine-bright. Maekar licked it greedily from his lips and hungered for more.
Two of his fingers were askew, aching with every touch, but he pawed at his brother with wild animal want. Pried away Baelor’s hard black carapace to get at the red meat inside. Piece by piece: pauldron and rerebrace, vambrace and gauntlet, gorget and chestplate. As he had a hundred times before, Maekar went to his knees. The sabatons were slippers of midnight silk, and his brother’s gaze was molten iron dripping down his neck.
When he rose once more, Baelor had shrugged out of his mail. Blood had oozed through the delicate links to bloom across the gambeson beneath—a meadow of roses. He stared into a blossom as Baelor stripped him out of the steel skirt of his tasset. Then a huge, hot hand found the thin hose beneath, squeezing his thigh in a man’s grip, spreading him, revealing him. A rush of heat followed—outrage, indignation, something worse.
He shoved his brother away. Baelor, obligingly, went. He sat on his pallet and watched, curious and so very patient. His teasing smile had quieted to something fond. Unshamed, for Baelor was never ashamed of this, for all that the shame needed desperately to be felt. Maekar thought he might die if he had to endure that look any longer, the tender hand still kneading his thigh.
“Do you mean to make a sister out of me?” he snarled. There was a buzzing in his ears, a tingling on his skin. He could imagine his brother's fingers crawling higher, prying him apart. It made him shudder, roil, harden.
Baelor cocked his head, inquisitive. “Would you like me to?”
Maekar answered that with a savage strike, catching his brother by the throat and pinning him down. Even freed of its blackened steel gauntlet, his hand seemed an absurdly hideous, brutal thing at his brother’s throat. Thick-knuckled and scarred, fingers like a dog’s eyeteeth. When Baelor swallowed, warm, sweat-slick skin filled his palm.
His brother was blinking softly up at him, as trusting as a lamb. It was sickening. He did not fight even as Maekar tore him out of his hose, ripped the dark wool down his legs. There could be no mistaking what lay beneath for anything but a man: dark hair trailing down his stomach to gather at his groin; lean, muscled legs; the thing that speared up between them. Longer than his, as his brother was taller, but not as thick.
It was not so different from taking himself in hand. He told himself so, even as the heat of it scalded his palm. Baelor was still watching, heavy-lidded. Battle always left him languid. His brother could marshal men and play general for days on end, but once the danger had passed, he curled up like a cat and went to sleep. Dreamless sleep, Baelor confided once, since the war’s beginning. The only nightmares to be found were in the waking world.
Maekar tightened his fingers, and Baelor’s eyes darkened, more black than brown. He took a long, careful breath through the mouth. It filled Maekar’s hand like a gust of wind. No air left his broken nose but in a wheeze, choked with blood. Brusquely, Maekar reached out and gathered a smear of it on his fingers, brought it down to the alien hardness in his hand and anointed it.
Baelor let out a low moan at the first slick stroke, going limp as caught quarry. His eyes drifted shut. It was easier when his brother was not looking at him. Did not see him with his hand full of another man, wanting and wanton and naked in his disgrace. He wished for his brother in his mouth; he wished for himself to die.
All the while, Maekar rutted mindlessly in the crease of Baelor’s hip. The flesh there was as soft as men ever got, even rough with hair. His cock looked obscene pressed against his brother, weeping and smearing itself across that golden skin. Impossibly vile.
His hand spasmed tight again, and Baelor’s eyes fluttered open. Then, horribly, his brother was reaching for him. He jerked bodily away, scuttling across their tent like the wretched creature he was. It felt as though he were the one strangled, his breath coming so hard that black spots danced in his vision. His heart was clenched like a fist.
Baelor propped himself up on his elbows and looked down, still jutting hard against his belly. Still slick with blood. Wordless, his brother arched an eyebrow, like the sight of him crabbed on the ground was some especially droll jape.
Maekar bared his teeth in reply, and lunged to his feet. He shoved his brother back amongst the sheets. This time, he did not bother with a hand at the throat; Baelor had never feared that violence from him. Instead, he seized his brother's legs, throwing them over his shoulders and spreading them wide. He sat there for a moment, panting, staring down at his brother, daring him.
Baelor would not truly let him do this. Would let himself be unmanned. A drop of sweat fell and struck his brother’s cheek, sliding down like a tear. It joined the mess of blood and slaver at the corner of his mouth. Maekar had never felt so wild. Baelor’s eyes only crinkled in amusement.
“There.” Baelor rubbed a hand across his flanks, like gentling a spooked horse. “There, little brother. You’ve nothing to fear.”
He still could not draw a full breath. Furious, he gathered up more of the mess on Baelor’s face and shoved it into his brother’s mouth. Rather than snapping his fingers off at the knuckle, Baelor’s teeth parted, and a warm wet tongue lathed at him. He thought he might die.
Then Baelor’s lips released him with a pop. “I trust you know where to put them?”
When he looked down at his hands, his fingers were pink and shiny with blood and spit. Shaking, he searched out his brother’s entrance. Stayed there, unbreaching, a cold sweat shivering across his shoulders. Tried to force them forward. Couldn’t.
“I cannot,” he managed at last. There was a horrifying quaver in his voice. “I cannot.” His brother’s legs were spread around his hips, perfectly pliant, and Maekar hated him for it.
It was as it had ever been: Baelor, letting him bark and bark, knowing he would never truly bite. It was better that way, his brother reasoned. Let Baelor be shouted at or struck or sullied, rather than some simpleton at court or the small council. Even without an appointment, Baelor had attended such meetings since he could carry an ewer of wine, listening in as the lords made and unmade the realm.
The training yard had been Maekar’s place, to make and unmake. His brother humored him there as well, let him slash with his sword and stab with his spear and crumple all with his mace. Opened his guard and welcomed the blows in. Took them like kisses.
Just as he always did, Baelor smiled warmly and drew Maekar into his arms. A hand settled just above his hip, at the muscled curve of his waist; another wrapped around them both. He rutted into his brother’s palm, the calluses soft with their blood-slick. A mewl escaped him, a womanish sound that made his gut quiver with humiliation. Baelor just shushed him gently, bending to kiss his brow, unconcerned with the way he fucked savagely into his fist.
Maekar spent himself there, on his brother’s belly. It caught in the coarse dark hair, gleaming pearlescent in the golden light of the brazier. Baelor followed with a soft sound, muffled into the crown of his head. He could feel his brother’s breath hot at his hairline, wet lips mouthing at his temple.
“So good,” Baelor breathed. “So good for me.”
A fresh wave of awful want went through him, but Maekar locked his teeth so not a whisper of it could escape. Baelor seemed to know anyway, stroking across the hard, tense hinge of his jaw. “So good to me, my Maekar.”
I will never let you inside of me, he thought viciously, defiantly. No matter what sweet words you prate at me. It made his stomach churn just to think of it.
The act must feel something like shitting, for that was all that was meant to come out. It was not like a woman’s sheath, with its natural slickness, its gods-made shape. Nor would any seed split in a man sprout. Maekar might’ve taken solace in that, but it would be just like Baelor to prove the gods wrong, to make his own miracle. His seed was such to plant a child in him anyway, to make him a woman in that most fundamental, terrible way.
Shaking and soft in his brother’s grasp, he imagined it. Their babe. A furl of scales and sin. His own misdeeds and ill wantings made flesh. Baelor would love it anyway, he was sure, as his brother loved him and all his loathsomeness.
Baelor would swaddle it as he did his own sons, and Maekar’s own: Valarr and Matarys, Daeron and Aerion. They were properly made, the product of a man’s righteous hungers. There was nothing between Maekar’s legs that wanted for the tearing and screaming of childbed. It ought to be you, he thought in fury, looking into his brother’s dark, tender eyes and growing hard again.
Without his leave, his legs had fallen open, inviting his brother’s touch. With one hand, Baelor stroked the delicate skin just below his navel. Then further down, to take him in hand, down, to fondle the stones below. Down, to a place he did not care to name. His cock was red and leaking, and his stomach was a churn of hate and want.
Baelor kissed him. His mouth tasted of iron, but his tongue was soft as satin. Everywhere, his brother pressed inside of him. Stretching him open, shaping him. His mind was full of horrors, and his body was full of his brother.
“What are you thinking of, sweetling?” Baelor asked when at last they drew apart.
Maekar shut his legs, firmed his voice, and said, “Traitors.”