#it's a drabble dgdjhgsaj

[greeksorceress]

the thought and care he has put into methodically plan out this day is nothing short of laughable. the very same day he learned about rhaenyra’s departure to dragonstone, he started calculating how the reencounter would go.

aemond has spent years of his life now imagining his first meeting with his half-sister’s second son after the younger boy took his eye and his sanity with him. he has seen himself patiently waiting for the inevitable family reunion, holding his want for revenge long enough to have lucerys sleeping soundly in his bed and aemond attacking him in the middle of his dreams. 

fast and dirty and treacherous, just like lucerys himself acted upon him that night.

sometimes, the ire and resentment that threaten to rot him from the inside are enough for aemond to forget about any meticulous plan and just ride vhagar to dragonstone and burn it to the ground, like the madman lucerys has made of him. 

his favourite fantasy, however, doesn’t even revolve around him specifically, no. his most treasured daydream features his father caring for him like the parent he’s supposed to be and not the king who chooses favourites, demanding rhaenyra to handle what is owed to viserys’ second son. 

aemond is not stupid, though. he knows the last one of these confabulated possibilities is the most unlike to work for him, for nothing has ever been handed to him freely and effortlessly before. aegon has the name and the position to get him the things he wants, and also the things he doesn’t —but that aemond desperately needs—, and if it had been his older brother, he’s sure there would had been more repercussions for rhaenyra’s bastard. but he’s the second son, the spare, the one who isn’t granted neither love nor justice and just serves the purpose of standing in the shadows until he’s needed. 

still, he hopes.

 (hoping has never got him far, either.)

aemond knows the corridors and the secret passages of the red keep by heart. he has memorised the names and faces of the guards and their schedules and knows when both servants and royalty are supposed to be in bed. so, it’s easy to imagine lucerys trapped under his power and will if he were ever to come back to the castle. it’s always the first option with aemond, anyways, because who’s he if not a perfectionist —second sons don’t get the chance to be anything but—.

and then the day comes. helaena and aegon get married and lucerys comes back home to attend to the wedding. 

“i’m tired, mother. i shall see you in the morrow”, he tells her before departing himself from the festivity, noticing that rhaenyra’s children have already retired.

aemond has mapped out the exact path he’s following, years and years of submerging himself amongst the darkest corners of the keep finally paying off. he’s going to wait for the change of guard, and he knows everyone else will be wasted and high on wine and celebrations, having no intention of paying attention to any children that should be sleeping by now. the dagger he has chosen for this specific moment —he took two years to decide, but ended up electing the same that sliced through his own eye, because it seems that he’s a sentimentalist too— is safely secured under his belt.

he moves behind the tapestry dedicated to visenya that hides the almost invisible opening of the tunnel connected to the room that used to be jacaerys and lucerys’, the one currently inhabited by just the second boy, and only needs to take a swift look around the room to locate lucerys velaryon —strong, bastard, bastard, bastard— by the windowsill.

whatever aemond had planned for this moment dies before it’s even birthed. 

the moon shines on lucerys’ alabaster skin, illuminating his face and his doe eyes. he’s looking up toward the west wing of the keep, his cheeks resting atop his hands and his elbows firmly supporting his weight against the wooden rail of the windowsill. 

aemond knows what lucerys is contemplating, for his very own chambers are located in that exact wing. it shakes aemond to his core, because lucerys isn’t observing aemond’s territory with fear, keeping himself awake in a kind of a night shift in order to guard his own safety. no. lucerys is looking at aemond’s window, almost in a perfect diagonal line to this very room, with an expression that doesn’t take much for aemond to pinpoint and recognise.

lucerys’ eyes are wide and glassy, and his gaze is absolutely dreamy. he looks like he wants, like he longs, just like aemond does when viserys ignores him or mother and grandfather offer aegon something that aemond has been craving for longer, harder. he’s looking at the tower like a lover in one of the old poems that the maesters made them all learn, sighing and huffing as if his small heart cannot take the distance. like aemond looks at vhagar, or the iron throne from time to time. like aemond looked at viserys when he informed them that rhaenyra and her children were coming home. 

lucerys is glowing, there’s no better word for it, and aemond cannot stop looking. he laments his lost eye, and for the first time not because of fury. he wishes he had the full capacity on himself to completely soak in and burn this candid moment that lucerys is unaware he’s providing. he wants to remember how red lucerys’ lips are, and how many little dots complement his nose and cheeks. he wants to remember his sweet sighs, and the wind ruffling his curls. 

but more than anything, aemond wants to remember the look on his eyes. 

why lucerys would look at anything related to aemond with such longing escapes aemond’s mind, but it matters not. he’s looking at aemond like that, indirectly and secretly, but he’s doing that, and something hot and possessive blooms in his chest, as if he had been branded by scalding iron. he wants lucerys to always look at him like that, to look at aemond’s eye and face with the same need.

lucerys is more of an angel than he’s a human, like a vision materialised on earth to save aemond’s soul. aemond wants to consume him, wants to be saved and damned by that boy. 

the knife is heavy in his pocket, and it’s truly laughable how easily he has forgone his thirst for revenge and has replaced it with devotion. his resolve has crumbled, but he has forged his destiny. he knows it, he can feel it settling under his skin like an organism.

he doesn’t leave until lucerys is tucked under his covers and is finally succumbing to a deep slumber. he has been baptised, and he has a new god to worship —didn’t his own mother say that he was prone to obsession? what else could he do when he’s been provided with the representation of faith in flesh and bones?—.

aemond goes to sleep with a new resolution.

he wakes up when the sun is yet to be up, throat raw from screaming, the taste of the rain and the fire and the blood of a chase that was never meant to be heavy on his tongue.