Chapter Text
Aemond always starts with a cut. It’s not a deep cut, but it isn’t shallow enough to heal clean. It hurts for a moment. A little spark of true agony, when the little obsidian blade dips in and leaves a small nick on his shoulder blade, next to the last one, that has scabbed, and the one before, that has peeled, and the first three, that have healed and begun to scar.
Lucerys bites his cheek and doesn’t make a noise when Aemond does it. There is some significance to this ritual he doesn’t quite understand, but he knows that Aemond appreciates his silence for this part. Aemond presses a piece of cotton to the wound and applies a plaster. Sometimes, when there is enough blood to run down from the cut, Aemond will catch it on his thumb. Lucerys has caught him licking it off like raspberry syrup.
Is it strange, this thing they do? Certainly. If De Sade had made it through the French Revolution and met up with Byron’s crew later in the century, they might have dreamt up this particular brand of fuckery. Minus the actual fucking. Because that is very much not on the table, despite everything. Luke has asked.
Is it healthy? Hell no. Apart from the very real bodily harm he is regularly subjecting himself to, it feels too much like tearing at old wounds that should have healed long ago. Wound. Aemond’s wound, specifically. The one Luke graced his face with when he was five and Aemond ten and there was a fight about something Luke doesn’t even remember. Aemond lost his eye. Luke didn’t lose shit. Which is why he’s pretty sure that even though he is the one currently bleeding – Aemond’s thumb is there to catch the drop of blood running down – he’s not the one the dynamic is hurting.
Is it dangerous? Maybe. The dynamic might be designed to hurt Aemond, but that doesn’t mean it won’t backfire on him in the end. He has seen sides of Aemond that scare him a little, not least his readiness to cut into his skin like it’s cake, and he has the sneaking suspicion that he might be escalating, and he really, really doesn’t want to think this thought all the way to its conclusion, because dammit – this is what it boils down to.
Is it hot, what they do? A great, resounding yes, ladies and gentlemen. He’s not even sure what it is, precisely, that turns him on. What matters is, after the fifth time now, Lucerys Velaryon is pretty sure he has developed an addiction.
Now, when it comes to describing what they do, Luke thinks it’s best to start back at the beginning. Because this is very much about the eye incident. About the pain of that old wound.
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You see, it wasn’t like Aemond lost his eye and Luke’s side of the family lost visiting privileges to the old family home. It happened more gradually. In fact, there was a time when it even seemed like all would be well. Like he and Aemond were getting along, even spending time together.
At least, that’s what the adults thought. What really happened was this: a week after the thing with the eye, Aemond came to him in the middle of the night. He had that little obsidian knife with him then, too, probably bought it on some family holiday. Luke woke to the feeling of it pressing against his eyelid. He was so scared he wet the bed. He’s not proud of that.
Aemond said something along the lines of “You hurt me, bastard” – He liked to call him that – “You owe me a debt. Give me your eye and we’ll call it even.”
Luke doesn’t remember what exactly he said or how he said it. He always imagines Aemond talking in a comically deep voice, as if he tried to appear more threatening. Anyway, he had offered Luke a choice. Pay the entire debt right away, which probably meant that Aemond was going to try and gouge out his eye with that glorified arrow-tip, or pay it in instalments. And he had said instalments, Luke was pretty sure, because ever since then there had been something bizarrely loaded to him about the idea of not paying for something all at once.
Back then, Luke, scared little kid that he was, agreed to pay in instalments, and so they had entered an arrangement. It wasn’t as neat as the one they had now. No weekly appointments or expectations. It was more about Aemond’s whim. They had this little sign. Aemond would look at him and tap his eyepatch and Luke would know he would be waiting for him.
At first, Luke thought Aemond was only going to hit him, and he did, the first few times. Hit him or kick him where it hurt but wouldn’t seem unusual. His shins, for example, or his elbows. He would cry and Aemond would be satisfied for a while. Until he wasn’t.
One time they were alone at home, and somehow, Aemond ended up on top of him, digging his knees into his upper arms, squashing the muscles and making them burn, and when Luke began to cry he slapped him and told him to shut up.
Luke, gone quiet with shock, stared up at him and felt a strange, golden sensation spread in his stomach. And that’s the story of how little Luke Velaryon discovered kink before he even knew what sex was while his oblivious uncle was only in it for revenge.
Aemond got more creative after that, but it didn’t last. They were discovered a while later, in one of the house’s many bathrooms, Aemond pushing little Luke’s head repeatedly under water in the tub, making him choke and sputter, and there was a big crisis meeting, complete with heavy drinking and adults flinging insults at each other and all the kids in the house trying to listen at the door.
So it was then that Luke had moved out with his brothers and his mom and creepy uncle Daemon, who hadn't turned out to be all bad (Luke still sends him Christmas cards every year, even now) and he didn’t seen any of his other family for years. And then when shit hit the fan ten years later, Aemond was abroad, or somewhere south, anyway, studying something. He didn’t even come back for the funeral. Then again, Luke didn’t go, either.
So he didn’t see him for fourteen years, and yet here they were. Lucerys looked at the roses strewn on the ground. The thorns looked mean, but the flowers were so pretty. Aemond always had the most beautiful flowers.
The timer is already ticking, or rather, trickling. It’s one of those decorative hourglass ones, large, with a gilded frame, black sand falling down to pool at the bottom. One hour. Maybe fifteen minutes have passed with Aemond piling a small fortune’s worth of roses on the floor and tying Luke’s hands behind his back. That leaves forty five minutes. Luke swallows when a large hand grasps his shoulder. A long time to be kneeling.
The hand slowly pushes him down and Luke goes. The leaves tickle for half a second. Then the thorns bite. He winces and almost falls over but Aemond has his wrists, pulls them up behind his back and puts the ties on a hook that’s meant to hold a flower pot, probably. It’s high enough that he is forced to bend slightly forward, head lowered as if in supplication, the barest hint of strain on his shoulders. Then Aemond’s hands are gone. Luke breathes and tries to relax.
He’s wearing his boxers. Mostly, he doesn’t even take off his trousers for this, but they would afford protection from the thorns and that would be cheating. They would also hide the way his cock has been taking interest, better. The black fabric of his boxers is tenting slightly. He nearly always got hard from this at some point, embarrassingly enough. He’s sure Aemond is aware of it, but he’s never commented or even acknowledged it.
With a little groan, Luke shifts the slightest bit to try and evenly distribute his weight. New pricks of pain shoot through him as his shins take more of the weight. The skin at his knees itches already. With a furtive glance to the side, Luke checks the hourglass. He expects this will be agony before the end.
Aemond’s feet appear in his field of vision. He crouches down. Luke doesn’t look up, embarrassed that he’s hard, but also already swimming in that strange haze that makes it all worth it. Aemond is probably taking a few photos. He sometimes does. Other times Luke has heard a pencil scratching on paper, and suspected he was the subject of a sketch. What he does with the evidence, Luke doesn’t know. It’s not like he can use it to blackmail him. There’s no one he could send it to who would be shocked, and Luke seriously doubts that even on their slowest day, the local newspaper would even consider “Owner of Insignificant Tattoo Studio is Into Weird Kinky Stuff” a headline worth printing.
After a while, the warm tingling following in the wake of the sharp pricks to his skin goes away. His erection flags. Luke doesn’t need to glance at the hourglass. He knows how long he can maintain arousal like this. About fifteen minutes. The pain in his shins and knees it turning cold, the uneven stems he’s kneeling on now worse than the little thorns. Instead of warmth, icy shocks shoot upward and through his spine. Luke closes his eyes tightly, flexes his hands. A whimper escapes.
Aemond’s voice is like a caress, though he doesn’t mean for it to be. “Does it hurt?” He always asks that at some point.
“Yes,” Luke breathes, and shivers with it. A sudden wave of pleasure washes over him and nubs him. The brain provides. He will get through this.
By the time the last grains of sand run through the hourglass, Luke is sweating and shaking, cold and in pain, his knees and shoulders stiff and aching, his hands falling asleep. Where he has been kneeling on the roses, his flesh feels raw, almost like it’s flayed open, way worse than the few picks and bruises he’ll actually have. But his vision swims with tears and blurry as everything is the red of the roses almost looks like bloodstains, like he’s kneeling in a puddle of blood from his ruined legs. It’s a powerful and scary image and Luke feels bile rising in him for a second, but all that escapes him is a moan of pain.
When Aemond’s hands return to free him, Luke can’t suppress a grateful whimper. His bound hands are lifted off the hook and Aemond slowly lowers them. Luke grunts at the pain in his joints. Instead of getting up, he lets himself collapse to the side, rolling off the heap of flowers. Thorns that had been embedded in his skin come loose and Luke winces. Tears escape the corners of his eyes when he shuts them tightly against the ceiling light. He’ll need time to recover now.
The floor is concrete, soft in its solidness, warmer than tiles. There is a rustle and then Luke feels himself wrapped in crinkling foil. One of those shiny gold and silver emergency blankets. He hums and then drifts off for a while.
---
He doesn’t dream, exactly. It’s more like a fantasy, but exhausted as he is, he loses control over it and his brain takes over, completes it for him so he can be a mere spectator. It’s a continuation of the scene. A slight alteration. Instead of merely watching him kneel, in this version Aemond comes to stand before him and pulls his head back by his hair. Pulls him forward and presses his groin against Luke’s face. Pain shoots through Luke’s knees as his weight is shifted and he moans against the growing bulge. His mouth waters.
Aemond’s cock is really big. In his fantasies he always is. He takes it out and rubs it against Luke’s face, and with Luke’s lips pressed to the base it tickles along his ear, giving him a good estimate of its length. Then Aemond draws back, still holding him by his hair, and presses the tip against Luke’s lips. Luke kisses it. Tastes salt.
“Look at me, Luke,” Aemond says and Luke raises his eyes, meets Aemond’s one. It’s narrowed in an intense stare, a mixture of contempt and hunger, dark. “Open.”
Luke opens his mouth, and Aemond slowly pushes inside. Even if it’s just in his mind, Luke can taste it. Salt, musk, the faintest hint of body wash. His lips stretch wide around the considerable girth of him, and he watches Aemond’s eye widen. A thumb comes to circle his lips, feel the stretch.
The pain in his legs is completely forgotten. Instead there is Aemond, pushing into the back of his mouth, and then impossibly deeper, forcing his throat open like it’s meant to be fucked. And then he starts actually fucking him.
Now the pain returns. Aemond doesn’t thrust forward but takes Luke’s head in his big hands, fingers digging into his skull, and pulls out, then pushes his head back down, dragging him forward, then pushing him back again. The movement rocks Luke on his knees and it hurts, hurts with fresh, stinging pain every time as he chokes and gurgles on Aemond’s cock.
He’s drooling long strands of saliva running from his chin, and Aemond gathers some of the moisture and smears it around his mouth. “Your pussy is all wet for me, bastard,” he croons and then slams in with three quick, deep thrusts that drive home the point that that’s what his mouth is now. A wet cunt for Aemond to use. It’s this thought that has Luke coming in his boxers on the floor in the back room of Aemond’s flower shop, the heel of his hand pressed against his twitching cock.
Fuck, he thinks, as his mind slowly returns to the present. Normally he manages until he’s in bed or in the shower. Maybe he shouldn’t have edged himself twice that day, once in the morning and once half an hour before coming over. But he had been so horny from the nervous anticipation, and he knows from experience that the pain was worse to bear if he got off beforehand.
The first time, was so embarrassed when he got hard that he tried to circumvent it the next time by blowing it all off beforehand, masturbating until he couldn’t get it up, before he had crossed the street to the flower shop. That second time was the worst time of all. He almost called it off after that. Something about the low that comes after the euphoria of cumming makes the pain all the harder to endure.
Luke blinks his eyes open and slowly sits up. The emergency blanket glimmers golden and crinkles. It looks funny, makes him smile. Aemond sits on a decorative garden chair it a corner of the room, reading. He’s always there as Luke recovers. A mute presence like a personal guard.
Luke takes a sip from the water Aemond put on the floor next to him at some point. It tastes funny because Aemond likes to add some electrolyte powder. The first time he saw him do it he thought of the stuff you add to water for cut roses and it made him feel weird. Cared for and objectified and unsure how to feel about that. By now he is pretty sure he loves being treated like a thing by Aemond, but the thought is still disturbing.
When Aemond looks at him – not during their encounters on the street or when other people are there. No, when it’s just them – he doesn’t feel human. Aemond seems to look right through him like he isn’t even there. There is nothing like the open hunger from his fantasies. Instead, there is a strangely vulnerable curiosity, or deep concentration, like Aemond isn’t really there at all. As if he is looking at him through a row of lenses, his gaze turned more impersonal with every layer of glass between them. He’s a specimen under a microscope and like a specimen, he feels like he hasn’t the faintest glimpse of what purpose could be behind his torment.
Luke pulls the blanket off. His boxers are black so the stain luckily isn’t very apparent. A rose is still stuck to his shin and he plucks it, biting his lip when the thorns come loose from his skin. Little droplets of blood appear, fresh red between the other tiny stains that have already coagulated. He gets up on surprisingly steady feet and stretches. His trousers are on the work table. Black cargo pants. He puts them on and turns to Aemond.
“White,” he says. “With those light pink peonies you had today.”
Aemond looks up from his book. “And a golden bow?”
“If you like.” Luke pulls the tank top over his head. “See you tomorrow, Aemond.”
It’s awkward, saying goodbye after what happens between them, even if he tries to make it light. His uncle can be abrasive, can be hard, but also polite and inquiring and curious. Luke has even seen him joke with a customer and smile, but the strange solemnity of their thing seems to drain every emotion out of him. When Luke turns once more to close the door behind him, he catches the familiar sight of prayer beads in Aemond’s hands.
---
When Luke comes down the stairs on the side of the building the next morning, Nettles is standing in front of the shop, squealing over the pretty flower arrangements and directing Aemond where to put them. They are quite a sight. The peonies are just opening up, round pink bulbs in a mass of white lilies and baby’s breath, the pots wrapped in pearly white paper and tied with a golden bow. Luke doesn’t know shit about flower arrangements but the way the lilies are cut to different lengths seems purposeful. Everything seems purposeful. It’s what made him fall in love with Aemond’s flowers in the first place.
He had just come back from a trip to the US when he noticed the former occult bookshop had finally been cleared out and a new shop had sprung up. The facade was green, with gold details and fake columns that looked very convincing and gave the whole thing a classical flair. The gold letters on the window read “Valyria”. Luke grinned at that, because wouldn’t it be funny if he told the new owner that just on the other side of the street lived someone whose family claimed to be descended from the ancient freehold. The mysterious island said to have vanished over two thousand years ago and then re-emerged in ruins at the very tip of Greece.
Luke has never given much credit to the family lore. His own pet theory is that someone from the Targaryen part of his family must have come up with it because people always assume their name is Armenian. And maybe it is. Who actually gives a shit? Luke doesn’t, anyway, but to his mom, and his grandfather it used to matter a lot. No, not Armenian. Greek. Valyrian, actually. They were weird about it in other ways, too. Sure, there were plenty of communities who preferred to intermarry but the tiny number of people claiming Valyrian descent in Europe if not the world meant that things got pretty incesty, pretty fast. Maybe he should consider himself lucky to have escaped it.
Curious, he walked over to the shop. There were two large vases with flowers in right at the door. They looked stern, Luke thought, if flowers can look stern. These did. Through the window he could see more arrangements and bouquets, pots on shelves and hanging from the ceiling, verdant curtains of leaves and stalks of bamboo and vivid little explosions of colour amid the green. It was so pretty Luke pressed his nose against the glass to see more.
He imagined having some of those arrangements in his little tattoo studio. How it would make the place that much more classy. Nettles would love flowers. They were her favourite theme for ink, her signature.
Suddenly, his view was obstructed as something moved in front of his face. There was a face behind the glass. Eyes stared back at him. No. Not eyes. Eye. One eye, so bright blue it looked almost lilac, and an eye patch, black as ink. Luke recoiled, his heart thumping wildly. It couldn’t be.
The shop’s bell dinged as the door opened and Luke turned to look at the shop's new owner. It was his uncle, Aemond Targaryen.