Chapter Text
It feels like a very long time before he is taken to see the prince. A fortnight, maybe. In reality, it is the same day, just before dinner time, which helps explain the ache in his belly climbing the stairs behind Lord Ashford. Though at this point it is nearly impossible to differentiate that ache from every other in his body. His head still throbs, though his vision cleared some time ago.
Ascending yet another flight of stairs, Dunk can feel his heart pound in time with the pressure in his temples. The royal retinue had quickly removed the prince after he fainted beside the field. Then came Lord Ashford and his steward, both looking very pale and shaken, but announcing from the stands that the prince had regained consciousness, and would merely be spending an extra few days at Ashford to recover his full strength. The tourney crowd had been very solemn indeed at this news. There had been no celebrating his victory, and secretly Dunk is glad.
He closes his eyes. He can still see the prince swaying, and falling.
"Rise, Ser Duncan."
He opens his eyes. He doesn't know how he got here: kneeling beside a bed in a dark room, a fire guttering somewhere behind him. It throws stark shadows across the face before him. Shadows, or bruises? Both, he decides. They deepen the hollows beneath Baelor's eyes, the planes of his cheeks, the cut of his jaw. The blood flaking at his left temple and sideburn shades his hair more black than the peppered grey and brown Dunk remembers. His neck is mottled dark down the same side, and there are bandages wrapped around his nape.
"You may leave us," the prince tells Lord Ashford, and distantly, Dunk hears a door close.
"Rise," Baelor says, again, and this time Dunk can hear how rough his voice sounds.
"I don't know if I can, my lord," he admits, wavering. "Your grace! Ser. Er—"
Baelor waves a hand, and Dunk closes his mouth firmly. It makes his head hurt, as does the little shake he gives it to try and clear it. He won't be doing that again.
"Stay, then," the prince allows. "And listen."
Dunk nods, immediately, inspite of his previous determinations.
"You fought well," Baelor says, extending his hand, and Dunk takes it gratefully. It feels like an anchor, gives him something to focus on besides all the pain brimming up in his body. Baelor's knuckles are cracked and scabbing and his palm is hot. He squeezes Dunk's hand and Dunk could laugh with the relief of it.
"Nothing like you, your grace," he says. Not that he had seen much of anything on the field that wasn't either between Thunder's ears, or Aerion's plate gilded with mud.
Baelor snorts. It reminds Dunk oddly of Sweetfoot.
He's still holding the prince's hand, he realizes, and lets go reluctantly. Without the touch, he's suddenly aware of the cold leeching up his body from his knees against the stone floors.
"Sit," Baelor says, and reaches out to him again. But Dunk is too afraid they'll both end up on the floor to accept the offer, and braces himself against the bed instead, heaving himself up. "Here," Baelor adds, and his fingers find Dunk's wrist, guiding him down on the edge of the mattress. A mercy, because the change in elevation has Dunk queasy. "Here," Baelor says again, and a tankard is pressed into Dunk's hand. The watered wine does help, until he realizes he is drinking from the prince's own cup.
"Oh, I cannot—" he starts, and Baelor gives another little huff.
"You can. What is a cup when you've buried my nephew in the mud?"
"Oh," Dunk says, dismally, "your grace—"
"As I said, you fought well." Baelor's tone is firm, and Dunk takes another cautious sip rather than contest it. "There is no shame in it, Ser Duncan."
"Dunk. Just Dunk," Dunk corrects. It feels important, now. "Egg—Prince Aegon, I mean, is the one who called me Ser Duncan. I don't know rightly what my parents meant for my name to be, but I've only known it to be Dunk."
He dares to look up at the prince only after a moment's silence. Baelor Breakspear is smiling at him. "I have found it is often the names that others give us that stick harder than the ones we are born with. Whether we prefer them to or no."
"Do you not prefer..." Dunk trails off, unsure of what he is even asking.
"My own sobriquets are more of additions than changes to my given name itself," Baelor acknowledges. "So it is easier for me to ignore. None who know me call me 'Breakspear' to my face— or, none but my brother when he means to vex me."
Dunk is still absorbing. "I don't know what that word means," he admits. "Sobri—?"
“Ah,” Baelor nods. “Sobriquet. Just another word for a name or a title. Fancy, isn't it? An invention of the maesters, I'm sure."
His tone is so warm, so easy, that Dunk's well of shame has nowhere to go, and ebbs away as quickly as it had risen.
"And you?" Baelor says, quietly. "Do you prefer 'just Dunk'?"
His eyes are on Dunk again, every bit as warm as his voice had been a moment before. Dunk licks his lips. "Nobody's asked," he says. "I reckon I— I like Duncan well enough, when they say it in the stands? But maybe if I— to those who knew me," he finds himself stammering, suddenly, face gone hot.
Baelor waits out his embarrassment, and Dunk gulps against the lump in his throat. "You could call me Dunk," he decides, finally, trying to steady his voice. "If you wish, your grace."
Baelor is still — still! — watching him, when he lifts his eyes again. "And you would like that?"
"Aye," Dunk says.
"Alright, Ser Dunk."
"Oh," Dunk says, "you needn't—"
"You have earned it." Baelor tips his head back against the pillow, closing his eyes. “And I like it.” His voice is softer, now, like he's putting less energy behind it.
He must be very tired, Dunk realizes. “I should go, your grace,” he says, trying to keep his voice to a similar low pitch. “And let you rest.”
“Not yet,” Baelor says, firmly, though he does not move. “I wanted to talk to you about your squire.”
“My—” Dunk blinks.
“Indeed. Aegon has already snuck in here to inform me that he will not be parted from you, regardless of what his father may wish.” He holds up a hand, as if anticipating some reply. “And I am inclined to agree. It will be good for him to squire for someone less bound by our family’s foibles.”
Dunk takes another drink of the prince’s cup to keep himself from interrupting.
“And yet,” Baelor seems to hesitate, here, but only momentarily. “I believe you also may have much to learn. And I would give you that chance, unburdened from the challenges of a hedge knight’s path.”
An uneasy feeling is starting to tingle in Dunk’s fingertips. It flops like a fish in his belly. It pulls his shoulders up. “Your grace,” he says, slowly. “I already owe you more than I can ever repay. You’ve saved my skin, today. I'd have lost everything without you taking my side.”
Baelor opens his eyes at that. “We do not know what might have been,” he says, softly. “The gods may have had some other plan for you, if I had not—”
“Aye, the gods would've taken me, dead, if you had not.” Dunk knows his voice is too loud, from the crease of the prince’s forehead, the way it seems to echo between them in the room. “Please, your grace, there’s no need to pretend elsewise. I owe you my life.”
Baelor simply watches him, his eyes serious.
Dunk sets the empty cup down, the better to twist his hands together in his lap. “I don't know exactly what you're thinkin’, but I know that I already owe you too much. I've nothing to—”
And it comes to him, sudden as the shooting star across the night sky.
As clear as Baelor’s blue right eye.
He sinks to the floor again, kneeling, fumbling for Baelor’s hand in the sheets. “Will you have me, your grace? It's all I've got, it's the only way. I'm young, still, I’ll serve you the rest of my days. I owe you my life, and you’ll have it, won't you?”
“Dunk,” Baelor says, through the buzzing in his ears, the sweetest sound he's ever heard. “Dunk.”
Dunk looks up. Baelor’s face is impossibly near — he's swung his legs over the side of the bed, and is leaning close above him, cradling Dunk’s hand in both his own. “Ser,” he says, and shakes his head. “Gods. You are young.” He sighs.
Dunk thinks suddenly that the prince’s face looks very pink. As if he's—
“Your grace,” he says, worried, “are you ill? You look flushed.”
Baelor stares at him, and then — he laughs. “No,” he says. “No, Ser Dunk, I am… flattered, at your earnestness. Your desire to serve me.”
There's something about his tone that feeds that queer feeling from before, and the back of Dunk’s neck prickles. “I do,” he insists. “I do want that, your grace.”
Baelor tilts his head back, grimacing, and Dunk watches as his throat moves gracefully with a swallow. Could he feel the prince’s pulse, just there, at the hollow of his neck? He has to wet his lips, mouth suddenly dry.
When he looks back, Baelor’s eyes are on his mouth.
It's a quieter revelation. Like a buckle cinching, sliding perfectly into place. And yet no less profound.
“Oh,” Dunk says. “Do you want that, your grace? For me to… serve you?”
“No,” says Baelor, too quick, his hands clutching Dunk’s tighter reflexively before he tries to let them go. “No, I would not— I do not ask that.”
Dunk holds them fast, bringing up his other hand to catch loosely, so loosely, around Baelor’s wrist. “You need not ask,” he points out, “If it is offered freely.”
For a terrible moment, he thinks Baelor will push him away. Will send him back to an elm tree and an open sky that could only feel lonely now.
When he does not, Dunk makes his decision.
“I am,” he says, firmly. “Offering freely.” He recalls the words he had spoken only minutes before. They're just as true, a second time. “Will you have me, your grace?”
Baelor’s mouth is very soft against his. Dunk had not had time to anticipate it. Even watching him lean down, he had not parsed the motion, what it meant. What it was.
And now the prince is kissing him.
Dunk tries to kiss him back, fumblingly and too aware: too conscious of the tangle of their hands caught between them, of the cold ache in his knees, of the roughness of his lips against the prince’s softer ones.
Baelor groans, and Dunk pulls away immediately, letting go of the prince’s hands to spread his own across Baelor’s thighs for support, in case he is feeling lightheaded again. “Your grace?”
“No,” Baelor says. “It was not for pain.” He smiles, wryly. The flush from before is working its way down his throat, and Dunk wants to lick it.
Still, he wants to kiss him more. And yet… Being kissed by a prince is one thing. Kissing the prince himself seems quite another. He hesitates.
Baelor slots his fingers between Dunk’s, still spread wide on his legs, and squeezes. “We need not,” he begins, just as Dunk summons the courage to press his face up, and the rest of his words are lost between their lips.
Dunk does not know how long they kiss, then. They do not stop for groaning, though there is plenty of it from both of them. They do not stop for talking, for which Dunk is grateful, for he has used all his words, he thinks. They barely stop for air: Dunk’s lungs are burning, but it is the sweetest pain that registers in his body at present.
He is vaguely aware of Baelor’s hands moving to his shoulders, and then to his hair. He is more aware of his own hands, though he does not remember giving them permission to move: between one kiss and the next he finds them at Baelor’s waist, and then there are more kisses and they are tangling the laces of his thin sleeping breeches.
Baelor kisses him still, and Dunk must be the one to pull away in the end, burying his face against Baelor’s thigh and panting. “Please,” he says, without planning to, without any further plan. “Please.”
Baelor leans back on one hand, and the other cradles Dunk’s jaw. He nods, once, lips tight. His mouth is so red that Dunk wants to bite it, but it is out of range now. He bites at his thigh, instead, through the thin cloth, and nuzzles his way further up, to Baelor’s hip.
When he is still struggling with the accursed laces a moment later, Baelor lets his face go with a little pat, and untangles them himself. “Thanks,” Dunk says, thoughtlessly, and then, “seven hells.”
He doesn't remember putting the prince’s cock in his mouth. Time seems to skip, as it did on the stairs, and suddenly he is pulling back to suck at the tip, licking a bead of salt from the slit. His jaw aches deliciously, and his knees are burning, and his heart is so full it might burst. He surges forward again, trying to fit more in his mouth this time.
Baelor’s hand is so gentle in his hair, cupping his ear, his thumb tracing the shape of himself in Dunk’s cheek, that Dunk could cry with it. No one has ever been so sweet to him. He hopes that he is being as sweet for the prince, and redoubles his efforts. Moving his head no longer hurts, or not enough to warrant notice when there is so much else to feel.
The sloppy noises of his mouth seem very loud in the room, but Baelor doesn't seem to mind. He’s encouraging Dunk now, softly, his voice thick. “Just like that,” he says, and, “there you are,” and, making Dunk shudder all down his spine, “so good, ser.”
Dunk pulls back to lave his tongue against what he can’t get in his mouth, held carefully in one fist as the other keeps hold of Baelor’s hip. “I've never sucked a cock before,” he admits.
Baelor makes a strangled sort of noise, but his face is slack when Dunk looks up to check. “Not for pain?” Dunk asks, grinning, and the corner of Baelor’s swollen, red mouth lifts in agreement.
The prince’s cock twitches against his cheek, and Dunk can't resist turning to kiss it wetly. It's such a good cock, thick and curving up as if just for fitting into his mouth again.
He finds a rhythm once more, and Baelor’s legs begin to shift against the bed. One slides neatly along Dunk’s thigh, pressing up and in against his crotch, and with the contact Dunk is suddenly, dizzyingly, reminded of his own cock.
He shivers, rocking forward, and Baelor’s voice picks up again. “Yes, like that. I can feel you, gods be good. I want to see you, too, I would watch you take that big cock in hand, touch yourself for me. I want to see you come all over yourself—”
Dunk chokes, and it has nothing to do with the cock in his mouth. He ruts artlessly against Baelor’s shin, once, twice more, and comes in his breeches. He feels Baelor go still under him, and then his careful hands are easing Dunk back, one supporting his chin and the other curling around Dunk’s on his cock as he comes across Dunk’s face.
Dunk licks his lips, dazed, staring up at him.
Baelor’s thumb catches a droplet of his come, just at the edge of Dunk’s mouth, and Dunk thoughtlessly sucks it into his mouth, tongue pressing against the pad of his finger. He tastes like salt, and life, and his vows.
“So,” Dunk says. “Will you have me?”