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Maekar Targaryen is a man of practice and experience. He's spent years perfecting his swordmanship, every aspect of it, so he could fight even while bound and blindfolded; he can recite the Targaryen family tree even while asleep He's read books on proper omega conduct, just to huff at the ridiculousness they spouted, because damn him if he doesn't at least try.
So, six children in and the seventh about to arrive, he knows what he is doing when he recognizes the tell-tale signs of labor. One that's approaching much faster than he'd like, because it's been, what, barely four and a half hours since he felt the first strange pang. He dismissed it at first, a false labor pain brought on by the horse ride (one he quite frankly fought off Baelor, who wanted to make him sit in the carriage all the way to King's Landing, completely beneath Maekar's dignity) not unlike he's experienced before — but the midwives say that with every labor, the child's way is paved more and more, and they come faster. He suspects that it's, in fact, not an old wives' tale, but the truth, if the speed with which the child is attempting to release itself of the confines of his body says something.
He's been through this, he's fine. As fine as a man in labor, in a pitiable lord's pitiful castle, in pitiful Fuck-Knows-Where-Lands, where they had to divert when the pains became less of a "fake labor" and more of a "Baelor, I must admit…", where he has nothing familiar but the clothes on his own back and his brother, can be.
And he would've been even better off if his shit-for-a-brains of a brother would get on with the program.
"Baelor."
In all honesty, Maekar can understand his brother's behavior around this. Valarr's birth was a horrific, bloody affair, from both Jena and Baelor's recollections, so much so that the maesters weren't sure afterward if she would be able to fully recover and carry another babe. Their next child wouldn't be for nearly nine years, Valarr growing into a fine, brilliant boy, but a lonely one — not for the lack of Jena's enthusiasm, but rather Baelor being very cautious about putting her through that again.
Matarys' birth wasn't as terrifying nor difficult as Valarr's, but chidlbed fever took root in Jena nonetheless, and it was not even a sennight before the infection took her.
Maekar can see why Baelor would be overly nervous about this, and could empathize with the alpha. But he's not the one giving birth, and Maekar would appreciate if he would stop pacing like a maniac around the chamber, murmuring to himself, pretending not to be panicking furiously — and failing miserably, a blind and deaf man could feel his nerves simply from the thumping of his boots on the stone floor — because if he hears one more thick swallow from his brother-husband, he'll have to throw him out.
"Baelor." He tries again, a growl in his voice forcing his brother to snap his head to him. He looks like he's about to be sick all over the floors, like way back when they were whelps and a nasty case of stomach sickness swept through Red Keep.
Instead of encouragement, or comfort, or quite frankly anything else, "which birth was your longest?" bursts out of Baelor.
"What the fuck?"
Maekar looks at him, mouth open on a pant, fangs out all the way, as they usually do during labor, so the omega can protect themself from any danger — and from the way Baelor recoils, his glare must be scathing and personally threatening to have him gelded.
He lets out a long sigh, ending on a pained moan and Baelor shoots up from where he's stopped, circling him like an overeager student midwife, and Maekar wishes dearly he had a sword on him right now, so he could keep Baelor at an arm's length with it, because his words clearly aren't being listened to.
"I, simply—" Baelor clears his throat, which Maekar knows is him being thrown off his track and trying to gather his words. Which would be endearing and sweet to witness in any other fucking situation. "I wished to know the approximate time of the babe's arrival."
Maekar wants to hit him with something. Truly. Call him a traitor of the royals, but he'd get his head cut off happily, knowing that his alpha had been dealt a rightful blow. "Baelor, this fucking monster you've put in me is trying to get out as soon as possible. Approximate time of arrival is right fucking now. I almost feel them in their crib already. I swear—" is all he manages out before another pang comes, and he leans heavily on a travel chest, letting out a low hum as he rides it out, hips rolling in circles as he does.
Baelor looks like he's been told the dragons came back, pale and clenching his jaw. Were he a dog, Maekar is sure he'd whine pathetically and scratch at his leg.
"Would you had gone into labor if we stayed?" He questions, twisting the ornate rings on his fingers, resuming his pacing as the contraction of Maekar's womb recedes. Maekar would have answered "of course fucking not, you imbecile, babies come when they want to, and this one really wanted to come on the road, Seven forbid a second Aegon comes," if another pain didn't immediately arrive, sending him bending back over the chest before he properly straightens up. Baelor makes a hiccup-like sound, and his next words sound strained, like he's bending himself to sound every bit the calm and reasonable Crown Prince he is. "None of this would be happening if you didn't exert yourself. Isn't it too early? It is too early. The maester said it's less than a moon before he should come. We shouldn't have left so late, if we'd gone two weeks earlier, we would be at King's Landing already, and—"
"Baelor, gods damn you, look at me!"
Baelor, to his credit, turns around, but his eyes are fitful and worried as they flit around Maekar's frame — he probably looks like a gods-damned vision, sweating like a pig, red in the face, hunched over on shaking legs — and it's clear anything Maekar says will only stick partially.
Maekar wishes sighing right now wouldn't make him feel like the babe is about to fall out.
"I have given birth six fucking times. You," he points at Baelor, who's fiddling with his rings, wide-eyed, like a teenaged version of himself at his first council, "haven't given birth once." He manages to huff out, clenching his teeth as he wills his arms to hold him upright. A difficult task, seeing as most of his muscles are busy aiding the babe in its exit. "Help me up. Take off my damned clothes. Make yourself u—seful."
Baelor almost throws himself at Maekar, hands shaking more than Maekar's thighs as he raises his brother. (Reminiscent of Redgrass, where they dragged each other back to their tent on trembling legs and, in an euphoria-induced celebration, fucked like wild dogs in heat.) They waddle-walk over to the bed, Baelor acting like a twelve-year-old serving girl watching a birth for the first time, and shuddering almost as much as Maekar himself when he digs his nails into Baelor's arm when a pang comes.
"Push—" he manages to nearly whimper out, working directly against his body now, thighs shaking anew as he nearly gnaws at the alpha, "push on my hips. With your hands. It helps."
Baelor does so, warmth of his palms seeping through Maekar's clothes, and the relief washing over him is audible in the way his moans change their pitch. It's incredible, if for a short moment.
They finally, by the grace of the Seven, manage to make it to the bed, Maekar settling on his hands and knees with his arse towards Baelor, who drops to his knees and begins to frantically strip Maekar of his clothes, his rings catching at threads and snapping them as Baelor's shaking hands dance over him. First go the shoes, then the hose and the braies, which require a lot of moving around — and groaning, inadvertedly — from Maekar.
He's pretty sure he can hear Baelor apologizing multiple times. Oh, whatever the fuck is that idiot doing is not his foremost worry at that moment. He could stand on his head for all Maekar cares.
"We don't even have a maester here." Baelor mumbles through his teeth as the throws the breeches somewhere behind himself, but not before landing a worried look at the gory, wet mess in their crotch.
"The— the lord sent for one." Maekar reminds him. It's not fucking fun being the rational one while pushing out a pup from his own cunt, but someone has to be, if his brother decided to be a fretful maiden about this. Who knew a childbirth, of all their fights, broken bones sticking out of skin and watching spilled guts, seeing men dead, dying and calling for their mothers, would unravel the perfect prince.
"If something goes wrong—"
"Don't." Maekar growls out as his fingers twist in the bedsheets, eyes closing against more pain, squeezing his hips and pelvis in a tigth vice grip. They're coming awfully regularly, less than a minute apart now. The babe is opinionated on the time of their birth, or so it seems, wanting to see the outside world as soon as possible. Hopefully they're not shaping up to be another Aegon, Maekar isn't sure his heart can handle another of those. "Don't fucking will that shit into existence, you goat-fucking— Baelor!"
The end of his sentence goes high and shrill as the strongest yet wave of contractions hits him, making him recoil forward; he can feel himself making some sort of a long, wailing noise while the pain rocks him, his hips rolling on impulse, trying to shake out the internal pressure. A new wave of sweat washes over, making the remaining of his clothes stick to his skin; he recovers feeling in his fingers, at the tail end of the pang, he tugs at the laces of his doublet.
Baelor looks like he can't decide between puking and just passing out.
Great.
(Is it so wrong for Maekar to hope he'd pass out, just so he'd have peace?)
"Take my fucking doublet off." The words take a moment to reach Baelor, but once they do, he throws himself to the task, crawling onto the bed alongside Maekar, tugging it off with a vigor reminiscent of the young alpha he once was. He untangles his undershirt, too, and Maekar groans at the release of pressure on his chest — no matter how many children he's brought into this world, his chest fills out the same time after time, and the only way to maintain any sort of dignity about it is covering it with layers.
Maekar sneaks a hand between his legs, closing his eyes and swallowing thickly as he touches his red-hot cunt. He doesn't feel a head, yet, which means he has somewhere between a minute and six hours of laboring. If the so-called lord splurged out on a mirror, he would've had a better way to gauge.
"Baelor." Maekar snaps his fingers at him weakly, trying to put his words between pants and moans of pain. His brother looks at him like he's a septon about to tell him the greatest mystery of the world, ears nearly physically straining towards him. "You'll need to check for how prepared I am."
Baelor nods so gravely one would think he was receiving orders to walk with his army into Stranger's arms.
"Put your fingers inside of me—"
"What?!"
"How the fuck do you want to do that elseway, twat? Ask the fucking babe how long it'll take for— fuck!— them to arrive? Ass, fuck, mother—fucking, Baelor!" He devolves into another wave of pain. This one comes on even stronger, like someone is wrenching his godsdamned womb akin to a wet rag, and his body draws his knees further apart, trying to accommodate even more pressure from the inside. A kind of a noise makes its way from deep inside, somewhere around his guts, and he pushes his forehead into the rapidly dampening sheets. "Baelor. Please."
He's not used to pleading. Baelor is not used to Maekar pleading, and so he rips the rings off his right hand's fingers so forcefully Maekar would've otherwise chided him for; as they stand, lay, he's more preoccupied with leading the imbecile to the correct place.
"Put two fingers i—i—hn." His brother-husband does, and even though the stretch of his thick fingers knocks the air out of Maekar on a typical day, he barely feels them now. "Try to feel out how big the exit of my inside is. Fuck. Fuck." He grunts, because he can feel another pang coming on viciously, and Baelor's fingers in him, and the way his cunt is clenching around them, which is not pleasurable at all. "How big is the gap?"
"Uh," Baelor says, sagely, his brows furrowed, akin to when he reads maps without his spectacles, before pulling out two bloodied fingers and making a large "V" with them. "Like this. Sort of."
He lets out a long, heavy sigh. Sort of, he fucking says. Next time — if he ever allows Baelor near his cunt enough for that to happen — he's not leaving Summerhall for three months before the estimated day of the babe's arrival. And three months afterwards. And another three before Baelor is allowed to sleep in their bed again.
He wants Baelor's head on a spike for putting him through this. He tells him as much.
"It's fine." Baelor says, without a smidge of humor, his voice swimming somewhere in the back of Maekar's mind as he tries, and fails, to be stronger than the next wave of pain. "You can have it."
Maekar stops talking after that. He stops thinking, mostly, too, because all of his energy and fortitude goes into the labor; the room could set itself on fire and he would be none the wiser. Even Baelor becomes sort of a shadow in the corner of his eye, a warm, moving presence somewhere far away, but one that's fine to keep around; some base instinct of his tells him that this one won't be a danger to him or his babe.
(Dyanna once told him that this part was the scariest to witness. She could bear all the cursing and throwing objects and insults, pacing around the chambers and telling her to rub his hips, massage his back, exchange the cool cloths, because that was familiar and expected. Her mother told her that when she herself was giving birth, she cursed out her father multiple times and crushed his hand while pushing, once even throwing him out of the birthing chamber as he was bothering her too much.
After he'd enter that last phase of birth, Maekar would do none of these things. The maester said, —following Daeron's birth that scared multiple maids out of their minds, when he stopped responding and curled as far away from them as possible, catching the child with his own hands and snapping his teeth viciously towards anyone that dared to get close, his scent rancid with an amalgamation of fear and rage — that while it was not something common nowadays, an omega returning to their most base instincts and choosing to give birth alone was perfectly normal.
Dyanna didn't mind. She was beaming, petting Daeron's fine blond hair, has been since she was the first person allowed by Maekar's omegan instincts to get close and hold the baby. He snarled and growled at everyone else who tried, and Dyanna herself had to give out enough pheromones to fill the room so he wouldn't try to claw her eyes out.
Seeing him transition into a state where he was animalistic, as close to his instincts as one could get, delivering his children into his own hands, was deeply unnerving, even six children in, and he knew that if he ever saw Dyanna — or Baelor, now — like that, he'd be terrified too.
He can't think about that, now, or Baelor's feelings towards it, courtesy of the child making its way out of him.)
He's faintly aware that he is making all sorts of noises, moaning and sobbing and growling and fuck-knows-what-else, writhing on the sheets as his muscles clench and unclench, shifting forward until the cold of the stone wall hits his skin. He doesn't even have to make much of an effort himself, because his body knows the rhythm of this dance so thoroughly at this point, so he just lets it work on its own, like a leaf dancing on an autumn squall. Feels the babe moving inside of him — it's always such a queer thing to feel, one he's experienced with all of his children, being able to nearly touch them before they're even here, something beyond a simple bond forming in that moment when it's just the two of them in the world — feeling—feeling—feeling and knowing when the babe is just on the precipice of slipping out.
Then, something shifts internally, and the head of the babe is just at the doorway of Maekar's cunt; Maekar clenches his teeth through the haze, makes a sound that he can't quite name, between a whine and a growl, but it reverberates through his body regardless, and begins to push with a renewed energy from somewhere deep in his body.
The circumstances, Baelor, the crown and succession line slip somewhere far away when the babe slips out, shoulders following the head easily, into his hands with a furious scream at the sheer audacity of leaving the warmth of their mother's womb.
Maekar could not care less for anything the king himself, or the Seven, or anyone else have to say in that moment, for he's already scrambling to shift himself onto his knees, at the very corner of the mattress shoved against the wall — he has his nest in the same place at Summerhall, soaked with the scents of his pups and mate, he had his first one there in Red Keep, mother and Rhaegel helped him build it —, thoroughly enchanted by the babe, writhing in his hands, red and wrinkled, tiny and alive.
Its wiggling its long, thin limbs, still covered in various fluids, but it managed to already make Maekar fall in love with it. Nine months ago, when he accepted the risk, three months ago when his stomach first quickened.
He passes a palm over the top of the babe's head, scent-marking him once more, despite it being soaked in his scent from the past nine months; brings it up to his chest as the afterbirth begins to exit his body, rubbing his face against the babe's, listening to its' pitiful screams get quieter and quieter, until the remnants of the pregnancy are expelled and the babe is making no more noises than puppy whines and chirps.
"Alpha." His voice is hardly his, scraped raw.
Baelor's whole being hones in on Maekar. "Sweetling. Omega." He chokes out, his eyes glazed over with tears as he shifts uneasily in front of the bed, and had he been in full control of his mind, Maekar would've rolled his eyes.
Alas, he just trills at Baelor, who happily takes the invitation to the pathetic excuse of a nest — the lord's thin blankets and a singular heavy cover, two pillows and Maekar's own clothes crumpled into a bloody mess, making a crescent shape around Maekar, the babe, and now Baelor — and takes the child with a familiar, if a bit rusty ease and a tearful "hello", which does squeeze Maekar's heart, especially when paired with Baelor running his thumb over the babe's face gently, letting his wrist scent gland rub against the side of its head.
The two of them lean against the headboard of the bed, Baelor deeply focused on settling the pack bond with the babe, Maekar re-learning how to take a deep breath and unclench his muscles. The child (they should've chosen the name before it was born, he and Dyanna would fight about it all the way to the birthing chambers) makes an uneasy sound, then, trying to figure out how to make a pack call.
The alpha part of his brother's brain seems to be still functional, unlike the logical part, and he passes the babe without fussing. Maekar presses its little reddened face against his left nipple, and with some prompting, "it's right here, you little dummy," they begin to suck eagerly. (He's vaguely reminded of his other children's first forays into taking food from him, how Aerion kept biting at his nipples — which was ridiculous, seeing as he only had gums back then — and Rhae was born so early she barely had the instinct to suckle, which had him barely sleeping for the first two weeks and terrified any want for future children out of Maekar. Yet here he is.)
"Thank you for giving me another child, my dearest. My sweetling. A son." Baelor, the cause of his current problem says, voice thick with tears as he presses a long kiss against the side of Maekar's head, where sweat slicks his hair to his scalp. The alpha breathes in, deep and appreciatory, like the smell of an omega just out of labor is the most glorious scent in the world.
Their son. Their little prince.
Maekar chuffs happily.
A fifth-third son. One that doesn't need to worry about taking over the mantle of the heir, of holding the realm on his own young shoulders. He will be able to take whatever route his heart desires.
Maekar looks back down at the babe, face smushed against his mother's breast, tiny nose and tiny eyes without their own color yet, just dark blue, and cheeks he'd like to see fill out in the future (knowing how all of his children ended up ridiculously plush before they stood and shucked off the baby fat with rambunctious adventures, he'll likely get his wish), and—
The baby is bald.
All energy suddenly is sapped from Maekar, like an entire army stopping just before marching off a cliff. His youngest is bald. No hair in the slightest, not even a shadow of an eyebrow, as he runs his fingers over his skull — just bloody, smooth skin, without blemishes, and a darkened circular soft spot in the middle.
"The gods are mocking me." He finally gets his throat to work with him, not against, even if his words are rough and barely audible with how raw he's screamed himself. Baelor makes a questioning sound, shuffling ever-so-closer. "First, one child becomes bald to run away and play hedge knight, and now another one is born with no hair?"
Baelor's shoulder jump with barely restrained laughter. He kisses Maekar's sweaty temple again.
"Maybe it's Egg's way of saying sorry for running away."
Maekar nearly growls, though it's more playful than not. "It better fucking be, the brat. I ought to have him dragged here by his braies."
Baelor smiles, and they fall into a comfortable, long-forged silence. They used to sit like this as children, too, pressed together from shoulder to ankle; Baelor working on his princely duties, filling out his lessons or the like, and younger Maekar fighting sleep just to stay up with his older brother for longer. His brother would tell him to go to sleep, and Maekar would whine like the spoiled brat that he was that he was not tired, in any way, and would fall asleep anyways in about the next five minutes.
"Do you have a name, beloved?" Baelor asks, sudden, as though reminded of something by the whisper of the wind. He wouldn't be surprised if Baelor, in fact, could hear the wind talking to him, that would explain how he seemingly knew every enemy's next move.
"No." Maekar admits. A smile curls at the corners of his lips. "I'd ask you, but seeing what you'd named your sons…"
Baelor's eyebrows draw together as his head lolls further downward, until he can rest his cheekbone against the jut of Maekar's meaty shoulder. The matter of his sons' names had been discussed at length, with many people, and he's stood firm by his … questionable choices. "Valarr is not as awful as the court says. Neither is Matarys."
Maekar clicks his tongue. He remembers Valarr's naming being the talk of the court for the first two moons after he was born, and Matarys' too, to a lesser extent, overshadowed by other matters. "Surely."
"Surely so." Baelor muses. Looks off to the side, which tells Maekar that he, in fact, put a monumental effort into finding a name that would be ridiculous enough for him to like and normal enough for Maekar to accept, because during their first discussion about this Maekar refused to name the child anything he slightly disliked, and had the upper hand on Baelor on this, because one of them was pushing the babe out, and it's not going to be you, Baelor. "I did, in fact, think about names—"
"Of fucking course you did."
"And I have, ahem, thought about the matter of the name, as he's the first of both of ours and it calls for a special name, as was expected of me—"
Maekar cuts in, again. "Speak plainly, fool."
Baelor gracefully glides over the insult, again. "What do you think about Daegon?"
Huh.
Daegon.
Pretty similar to Daeron, if Maekar is to say, but somehow the babe already looks like the name fits him. Daenegon, he repeats in his mind, watching the gentle rise and fall of the babe's chest, as he barely clings to consciousness with pink, wrinkly fingers and tries to suckle on his teat further. Eager like his father, huh? Daeron probably won't mind sharing a similar name with his younger brother-cousin, if he's aware for long enough to actually process the news.
"Daegon." Maekar smiles weakly at the babe, who opens his milk-wet mouth and makes a little cooing noise before he pipes down, again. There's no telling what their boy will boy grow into — which of them he'll take more after, Baelor's reason or Maekar's ire — but the name seems to fit his ruddy cheeks and Baelor's high forehead. "'s a strong name."
"He'll be the first of his name." Baelor says, the pinky finger of his right hand rubbing at Daegon's ear. Yes, that fits quite right. They have all night to try this name, any others, out. "Not the first of his nose, though. It's all yours."
Maekar huffs, shifts so Baelor's chin stops digging into his shoulder, and swallows a sudden twinge of pain in his cunt at the movement. "Poor babe."
"I love your nose." Baelor rumbles against him. A pleasant shudder passes through Maekar at that, alongside a new wave of his husband's scent. He smells of freshly polished steel, sea salt and smoke in rain, in some way; and while their mother's spice-tinted Dornish scent runs deeper underneath Maekar's own, it's very much present in Baelor's — not the way some alpha make Maekar's nose twinge and sneeze, but instead like a warm, burning blanket, something which satisfies his omega to no end.
Maybe it's because of the dragons and their love for fire and smoke. Maybe it's just his instinct, which now makes him want to lay on Baelor's chest, nuzzle at him and sleep for the next week. Hopefully, he'll be able to build a semblance of a nest, and his omega will stop pacing and pissing both of them off with its nervousness.
He's nearly asleep, mouth slightly agape as he's surrounded by Baelor and Daegon's milky, pliable scent, mewling when he detaches from his teat for a final time and curls up into that warm space where his parents' chests touch and their scents mix together, when something finally moves in this good-for-fucking-nothing castle.
"Your grace—"
Both of their heads snap up at the poor servant at the door, a young girl no older than twelve, wide-eyed and skinny and definitely sent here because neither of them would attack an unpresented pup. Maekar's ire riles up in him once again, strong as if it never left. He's almost, nearly sure that Baelor's scent also gains an acidic edge to it, signifying possession, and doesn't that make him stupidly giddy, like a girl watching her freshly betrothed knightlet, to have an alpha claim him as his.
Even if the alpha has been his his whole life.
"Oh, fuck off!" He yells out, waving the girl away, and sighs when she yelps, slamming the door shut, audibly running down the corridor. He can feel a headache growing and leans back into his husband.
Baelor kisses his cheek, then the other and smoothes out Maekar's hair — he doesn't even want to think about the state of it, how many knots he's gotten, Seven save him — before leaning forward and kissing Daegon's bald fucking head.
"You should probably let them check on you." Baelor reminds him, sliding back into his composed, rational persona, and Maekar kind of wants the nervous wreck of Baelor back.
"As long as nothing is falling out of my cunt, it's fine. Do you think I give a shit?"
Baelor smiles, stupid and bright, and nuzzles against Maekar's mating mark, sighing as more scent leaks out; he laps it up as though he's an overeager, teenage alpha being presented with the sight of an omega's ankles. "Absolutely not, my beloved."
Maekar wraps an arm around his waist, making sure that Daegon is settled nicely and comfortably, before turning once again to his alpha and placing a quick kiss on his lips.
Baelor's scent ripens with happiness.
"Don't think that this means you're welcome in our marriage bed any time soon."
"Wouldn't dream of it, wife."