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Aemond sighs as he closes the apartment door, already knowing there’s no one inside it. He’s developed a sixth sense for it, for knowing when Luke is home and when he isn’t. His scent is still strong in the air, the familiar smell of pine and firewood that turns the flat from a place to live in to a home, but Luke is not there.
He walks further in, taking stock of everything as he goes. The coat rack is missing Luke’s favourite jacket, a dark blue winter coat Aemond got him for his birthday one year, and there’s a noticeable gap on the shoe rack, but other than that, all is as he left it this morning. The living room is tidy, with a cold cup of half drunk coffee on the table and Luke’s sketchbook left open next to it. The kitchen is similarly organised, with all the dishes washed and the cloth hung up to dry.
There is no note saying where the alpha went, but Aemond wasn’t expecting one. Luke’s never left one in the past. There’s nothing in the bathroom that points to the cause for Luke’s flight, and the bedroom is similarly devoid of clues. If Aemond didn’t know any better, he might have thought Luke simply stepped out to pick up milk or something from the corner shop.
But he does know better. Somehow, he just knows that Luke has ran again, the same way he knew that Luke wasn’t home. The only question is why.
The anger that boils in him at the fact that Lucerys has run away yet again is something he’s intimately aware of. It takes a few moments of deep breathing to get it to dissipate, but he does. This isn’t about him.
The omega takes out his phone, half hoping Luke might have texted him, but of course he hasn’t. It’s always Aemond that texts first, that asks if he’s okay, and he does so now. He waits a moment to see if Luke will reply, but puts his phone back in his pocket when no messages are forthcoming.
They have a system for this, set in place after the first three times Luke left without saying a word and Aemond called all their friends and families, banged down neighbours’s doors to find out if they saw him, and then phoned the police when none of that yielded results. Aemond will text him first and Luke must text him back in the first thirty minutes to let him know he’s okay, or the omega will call the police and get him reported missing.
He sighs again to himself, looking around the flat and trying to work out what happened this time. In the past, the reason for Luke running has always been obvious - saying ‘I love you’ for the first time, an upcoming anniversary, Aemond’s friends unthinkingly joking about hearing wedding bells - but he’s grasping at straws now. There’s nothing it could be.
Unless… If he found the-
But no, no, Aemond made sure to get rid of any of the evidence before Luke could catch sight of it. There’s no way he knows or even suspects. Which means it’s something else, something in their relationship that’s been going too fast and now Aemond has to figure out what it is and fix it.
Upon seeing Luke and Aemond together, most people would probably assume it was Aemond who had abandonment issues and was a known flight risk. They’d be wrong.
It’s an easy enough mistake to make. Aemond is closed off from other people, an unapproachable scowling menace on his best days and an outright terror on his worst. Contrast this to sweet, easy-going Luke who always has a smile on his face and a kind thing to say, it’s not hard to see why people think Aemond’s the problematic one.
Not that Aemond is a saint, or that he thinks Luke is problematic. Other people have said as much, mainly the alpha’s exes who Aemond’s never had the pleasure of meeting. But Luke has never been problematic to him. He is who is; a man who resembles an overly energetic golden retriever, friendly and excitable, with a tendency to run away when he gets nervous or scared. Aemond loves him, problems and all.
Still, that doesn’t mean he’s fond of his boyfriend’s habit of upping and leaving at a moment’s notice. He’d rather they be able to talk about it. And a small part of him had hoped they were past this. They’ve been dating for nearly seven years, living together for five, and it’s been ages since something had scared Luke enough that running was his first and only impulse.
He knows better than to take it personally, or to blame Lucerys. Healing is not a linear process. There are good days and bad days, and while they’ve had years of good days, it doesn’t mean there are no bad days left.
Luke has only too much experience with bad days. It all started back when he was ten and his father died in that horrible house fire. His family had been brought low by it, and lower still by the deaths of family friends Laenor and Laena.
For Luke, it had been the straw that broke the camel’s back. In the months following the funerals, Lucerys became convinced that everyone was going to leave him, that he’d be left alone with no one to rely on. Fears of abandonment quickly manifested from this.
He ran away a few times in his youth in the wake of the funerals, but he usually came back after two or so hours. Even still, it was enough to give his mother multiple heart attacks, and therapy had been quick to follow. Not that it had done much good. No matter which therapist Luke tried, it never seemed to work out. He had never been back to one since.
Aemond had tried broaching the subject of therapy a few times with Luke, but his boyfriend had never wanted to talk about it. “Stop trying to fix me! You can’t!” He yelled at him one time when he brought it up.
“I’m not trying to fix you, I’m trying to help you,” he countered as patiently as he could.
Luke scoffed. “By palming me off on a shrink? I’ve tried those before, it doesn’t work. Besides, you’re just going to leave anyway when you realise I’m too much work. Just- Just like everyone else.”
And Aemond had sighed because he’d heard that one before. It was a familiar refrain Lucerys said when he was having one of his bad days.
“Luke-” he started to say but Lucerys hadn’t wanted to listen, and left. Aemond didn’t hear from him again until the end of the day, didn’t see him until four days later, and hadn’t brought up therapy since.
Running had always been what Luke fell back on when he felt things were spiralling out of his control. He knows that’s what it’s about it. Running away gives Lucerys a sense of control, a reassurance that he still has autonomy over himself, even if he doesn’t have it over anything else.
It’s also about choice. When people left him in the past, either because of things outwith anyone’s control, like death (Harwin, Laenor, Laena), or because they simply decided they didn’t want to be with Luke anymore (all those good-for-nothing exes Aemond wishes he could meticulously torture), Luke didn’t get a say in it. By choosing to leave first, he retains that sense of control and the logic is that it will hurt less if he’s the one who decides to leave.
And it’s in this that his fear of commitment goes hand-in-hand with his fear of abandonment; he doesn’t want to commit himself to anything or anyone that he thinks is going to leave him anyway. Which means relationships can be a bit of minefield at times. Running always seemed like the simplest solution.
Of course, all it really does is create more problems, and Luke himself saw that. They’d been working on it, slowly, bit by bit. He was getting better, dammit, so why was this happening now?
The deadline for the thirty minute mark approaches, and Aemond feels closer and closer to ripping his hair out by the root in frustration. It’s just when he’s about to give up and call the police that he gets a text.
The phone is in his hands the minute he feels it vibrate, unlocked and open on his chat with Luke. There were three messages waiting for him, each one sent right after the other.
Lucerys 💜
Be back soon
Please don’t worry
Love you ❤️
Aemond waits a moment more to see if the alpha will text anything else, but nothing happens, so he sends his own text in response and slides down onto the sofa. He gives himself a minute to process the relief and frustration still coursing through him before forcing himself to get up and make dinner. It’s the absolute last thing he wants to do, but the alternative is sitting still and waiting for Lucerys to come back, and that doesn’t seem all that appealing either.
He makes pasta, setting some aside for Luke when he gets home, then checks his phone. He eats and checks his phone. He showers and checks his phone. He gets dressed in his pyjamas and checks his phone. He tries going to sleep, but the bed feels too empty without Luke, too cold. So he gives up on sleep and checks his phone.
Then he drags the duvet in from the bedroom to the living room, sticks on some nature documentary, and waits.
And waits, and waits.
———
Aemond doesn’t even realise he’s fallen asleep until he starts waking up. He blinks at the dark room around him, not recognising his surroundings for a moment. Then he blinks again and the red standby light for the TV stares back at him, as the sounds of someone entering the flat reaches his ears.
The omega sits up on the sofa, leaning to the side table and switching on the lamp just as Luke quietly opens the door to the living room.
The air stills as they take each other in. Some distant part of his mind registers that Luke’s carrying a shopping bag with him but he doesn’t really focus on it. He’s too busy breathing a quiet sigh of relief at seeing Luke home. It always uncoils something inside him whenever his alpha comes back.
“Hey,” he says quietly, voice hoarse from falling asleep.
“Hey,” Luke replies in the same, soft tone. He moves deeper into the room, walking carefully as though he doesn’t want to frighten Aemond. All Aemond does in response is make room for him on the sofa, the duvet becoming a little tangled. Lucerys sits down slowly, the bag rustling in his hand. They don’t speak for a few moments.
“I’m glad you’re back,” Aemond confesses, giving his boyfriend a small but sincere smile.
“I’m sorry for leaving,” Luke replies, his face full of regret. “I- I didn’t mean to make you worry.”
“I always worry about you. That’s just what you do when you love someone. You worry about them.”
There was a time, not too long ago, that Aemond would quite literally rather cut out his own tongue than talk about his feelings so candidly. But years of therapy have mostly quelled this thought process, allowing him to be the kind of partner he should be if he wants to be in a stable, healthy, loving relationship. And he does want that. He wants that with Luke.
Lucerys doesn’t offer a reply and they lapse into silence. After a few tentative - seconds, minutes, hours, Aemond really doesn’t know - he ventures, “Can we talk about it? Why you… What happened?”
He watches Luke stiffen slightly and then purposefully relax. “I… Yes. Yes, of course, you- You deserve an explanation.”
Even after saying that, Lucerys doesn’t speak again for a while. Aemond doesn’t rush him, even though he wants to so badly. Patience has never been his strong suit, but he knows how important it is in situations like this. He has to give Luke time to figure out what he wants to say.
He’s feeling pretty mellow, now that Luke’s home and he’s not worried something might have happened to him. And that’s part of the reason why his stomach completely drops and a muted panic wracks his being when Luke says, “I know about the baby, Aemond.”
It takes him a few moments for speech to be possible. “W-What?” He clears his throat when it wobbles. “How?” Because there’s no way he could have found out about it. Aemond made sure to throw the pregnancy tests out as soon as possible, took care to wear suppressants that masked the faint milky scent on his skin, and took every precaution he could think of to keep this secret from Luke for a little while longer.
“Maester Gerardys called,” Luke’s voice cuts through his spiralling thoughts. “He didn’t tell me anything - patient confidentiality and all that - but he did talk about scheduling future appointments and stuff like that. And as I was thinking on why that would be and trying to get him to talk to me, he mentioned offhandedly that I should tell you to call the Prenatal Care Department at your earliest convenience and ask for him. And I just, sort of. Froze.
“And I started remembering all these things about you that’s changed over the past few weeks. That stomach bug you had a while back. The way you don’t want to eat your favourite foods anymore. The way your mood kept drastically changing all the time. And, I guess it all just sort of clicked.”
There is nothing but silence between them for several moments until Luke, very lightly, asks, “Why didn’t you tell me?” There’s no accusation behind the question, but Aemond responds like there is.
“It wasn’t like that, Luke,” he replies immediately, tone verging on desperate, “I was going to tell you - of course I was - I just, I wanted to wait for the right time and, I could never work out when that was. Something else always got in the way. And I just- I didn’t want to, to risk something-“ he cuts himself off, stopping that train of thought before it can become speech.
Luke seems to hear it anyway. “You didn’t want to risk something like this happening,” he finishes for him. Aemond nods, feeling guilty and wretched.
“I’m sorry,” he quietly confesses.
He’s unsure what to feel when Lucerys laughs bitterly. “Why?” He asks sardonically. “You were right; something like this did happen. I did something like this. I found out the love of my life is carrying my child and instead of being happy about it, the first impulse I had was to run to the nearest airport and catch the first flight to Winterfell.” He shakes his head. “I mean, who does that?”
“Probably more people than you think,” Aemond replies, knowing only too well Luke was hardly the first person in the world to struggle with commitment. Though granted, most people probably didn’t struggle with it to this degree. “And you didn’t though, did you? You didn’t catch a flight to Winterfell. You came back.”
That has to mean something. Doesn’t it?
“I was going to,” Lucerys confesses quietly, not quite meeting his eye. “I was already planning it all out; buying the ticket, calling Jace when I landed, figuring out what I was going to say to him when he came to pick me up. I was already preparing myself for the lecture he’d give me when I… When I thought of you, sitting at home, waiting for me and wondering what the fuck I did now. It made me stop.”
He sighs, bone weary and tired. And then, with deliberate care and delicacy, he picks up the shopping bag Aemond had mentally dismissed. He fiddles with it for a few moments, reaching a hand inside and messing around with whatever’s inside it. Then he sighs again, this time in some strange mix of frustration and determination, before handing the bag to Aemond.
The omega takes it, idly wondering what the hell Luke could have possibly bought for him. But as it soon turns out, it’s not for him at all. Aemond takes the article of clothing out of the bag, looking at the small onesie with a perplexed eye. It’s a deep purple dragon with gold detailings. The eyes are wide and white and oddly cute, the mouth red around the hood where the baby’s face would be, and the tail is the same purple as the rest of the outfit. It reminds him of the matching green and red dragon onesies he got for Helaena’s twins way back when.
For a moment, all he can do is stare. He lowers it to his lap to look at Lucerys, who seems to be trying to look at him without looking like he’s looking like he’s looking.
“Is this… Does this mean…” he’s trying to find a way to word it delicately, so that it doesn’t sound so scary, but he soon realises that it’s impossible and decides to go for his usual; blunt and to the point. “Does this mean you want to have this baby? With me?”
Luke sucks in a breath at that, looking away sharply before looking back just as quickly. “I, uh… Yes. Yes. I do. I really, really do.”
And Aemond can tell he means it. Luke hasn’t been able to lie to him in years. That doesn’t mean he looks any less terrified.
“It’s just…” he continues, as if reading the omega’s mind. He shakes his head hopelessly. “You shouldn’t want this with me, Aemond. I’m- Gods, I’m so fucked up. Like, I genuinely am so fucking messed up in the head, and there’s no way I wouldn’t fuck up any kid we have-“
“Hey,” Aemond interrupts, pretty pissed at the way Luke’s talking about himself. Being used to how low his self esteem is does not make it any easier to hear. “You are not fucked up. No, you’re not,” he adds when Luke snorts derisively. “You’ve got issues, yes, but those issues do not mean you are fucked up. You’re a good person, Luke. You’re so kind, and sweet, and funny. Literally everyone but you knows that. And it’s not like I’m much of a saint either.”
“You are, though,” the alpha argues earnestly. “You put up with so much from me. So much of my bullshit.”
“And you put up with just as much from me. Relationships are give and take, Lucerys. I mean, do you think anyone else would put up with my anger issues and need to be in control as well as you do?”
“But that’s different-“ he starts to protest but Aemond cuts him off again.
“No. It really isn’t. We’ve both got issues, Luke, and yeah, maybe yours are little more… prevalent than mine, but, it’s still the same idea. Neither of us are perfect. That’s not what this is about.”
“Then what is it about?” Luke asks, finally getting to the right question.
Aemond takes him in for a moment, the alpha he’s chosen to spend the rest of his life. There’s been many people in his life who had thought Luke was a bad match for him. Mother hadn’t cared for him in the slightest. Grandfather had already picked out a handful of alphas who’d be a better match for him and who he should leave Luke for. Daeron had thought Aemond too good for Luke, and Aegon had thought the whole relationship would crash and burn in a matter of weeks. Only Helaena had seen what Aemond saw in Lucerys from that first moment they met.
“You’re good for him,” she told him with a serene, almost secretive smile. “And he’s good for you. You balance each other out.”
And she was right. When Aemond got stressed about work or angry about how little his father seemed to care for him, Luke was always there, telling him to breathe, to relax, to remember how much he loved him. Luke’s the one who makes him eat when he gets too caught up in audits and quarterlies, the one who holds him close when his insomnia is running rampant. He’s the one who makes Aemond smile everyday, who makes him laugh until he can’t breathe, when before he could go weeks without so much as a vaguely happy expression gracing his features.
And Aemond’s there when Luke wants to run, when things get too serious and he thinks he has to abandon everything before it abandons him. He calms him. He keeps him grounded. He helps him realise that even if things are scary and serious, it doesn’t mean they’re bad.
“That we’re good together,” he says. “That it’s not a ‘you vs me’ situation, it’s an us together trying to make this work. And I know this is scary; hells, it’s supposed to be scary. We’re about to bring a whole new person into the world that we’re going to be solely responsible for. It’s okay that you’re scared. I’m scared too. But we’ve got each other, right?”
He leaves the sentence hanging open, despite how much he doesn’t want to. Thankfully, Luke doesn’t keep him waiting long.
“Right,” he agrees, and though he still looks terrified, the panic seems to have dimmed just a bit. “Right.”
“So we’re doing this?” He asks because he needs to be certain that Luke wants this as much as he does. “We’re having a baby?” And even just saying the words is enough to make his heart flutter with hope.
“Yeah,” his alpha says after only a moment of hesitation. “Yeah, let’s- Let’s have a baby.”
A smile, small but so genuine, steals over his face and is mirrored on Luke’s. And it’s enough. It’s more than enough.
Or so he thought, until Lucerys starts speaking again. “And. Ibookedanappointment.” He says the words quickly, like if he doesn’t he’ll never be able to get them out.
“An appointment?” He questions to make sure he heard him right. At Luke’s nod, he continues, “With Maester Geradys?” He smiles slightly, wondering what bringing Luke to the next ultrasound will be like.
His next words completely floor him.
“With a therapist,” Luke corrects quietly. “Mum recommended one.”
Aemond has to blink rather rapidly a few times to get his brain to start working again. “You… Phoned your mother?”
“Drove to her house actually.” Rhaenyra lived nearly two hours away from their flat. “That’s what took me so long to get back. Well, that and getting the onesie. And enduring her rant when she found out the reason I was visiting.” Luke chuckles a bit sheepishly. “She wasn’t exactly impressed with me trying to do a runner after I found out you were pregnant. She’s also very excited to be a grandmother. It’s been an emotional evening.”
I’ll bet he thinks wryly.
He hums lightly. “So… Therapy?” He tries not to sound too happy about it but it’s hard. Aemond knows firsthand how much therapy has helped him overcome so many issues and he’s glad that Luke’s finally taken that step to helping himself deal with his problems more effectively.
Luke swallows hard but nods again. “Yeah. I- I want to be here, Aemond. For you. For our,” another hard swallow, “Pup. I don’t want to keep running away at the first sign of trouble. I want to be here for the long haul,” he admits, and the omega feels the tension slip from his shoulders like water off a duck’s back.
“I want that too,” he says, reaching out to take Luke’s hand.
Lucerys grips onto it like it’s a lifeline. “Are you sure? It’s not too late to run,” he jokes, as if the tension isn’t tight around his eyes, as if he isn’t holding onto Aemond’s hand like it’s the only thing tethering him to reality.
“I wouldn’t even if I could,” he tells him quite honestly. “You’re mine, Lucerys Velaryon, and if you think I’ll let you walk away without a fight, think again.”
And the way Lucerys completely relaxes at those words, the way he all but collapses into Aemond’s arms, taking care not to put any pressure on his stomach, is worth more to him than all the gold in the mines of Casterly Rock.