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Dunk is nearly always gone by the time Baelor wakes up of a morning; out of bed before dawn is even a rumor on the horizon, the owls and nighttime insects still making soft sounds in the darkness. "I may be your kept man now," he says, teasing, coming back into their kitchen at the far more reasonable hour of eight with his shirt sweat-damp and the pink flush at the tips of his ears that tells Baelor he once again forgot to apply sunscreen there despite repeated exhortations, "but a farm's a farm. Cows don't much care if the farmer's husband's on the Ten Richest Men In The Country list."
"I barely make the top fifty," Baelor argues, but to no avail. Dunk has run his father's farm since he was old enough to throw a bale of hay, which is to say nearly all his life. Throughout their long acquaintance-turned-friendship-turned-courtship-turned-marriage, started when Matarys and Egg and his sisters first learned to ride at Pennytree Farms, Dunk has never ventured more than a few hours' drive from home. Seven cows, twelve horses, three miniature ponies, one extremely opinionated donkey and an ever-evolving assortment of barn cats, chickens, and semi-feral pigs (who aren't so much farm animals as ersatz guard dogs) — the whole of it is Dunk's responsibility, and one he will not shirk no matter how many PowerPoint presentations Baelor has put together to illustrate the wisdom of hiring an assistant.
"An assistant?" Dunk laughed, pulling Baelor into his lap and kissing him, his hands warm and possessive (and what a thing, still new and nauseatingly thrilling, to be something Dunk held tightly). "You think I ought to put out a sign by the road? 'Assistant farmer wanted'?"
Baelor, too busy kissing him back, declined to reply that he'd already mocked up several posts on various websites, ready to go the moment Dunk said yes. He never did, but Baelor still has them somewhere on his laptop.
In the five years since a rather embarrassingly fulsome wedding (held — of course — on the farm, Dunk's favorite horse Sweetfoot acting as flower girl), Baelor has found himself strangely content with the routine of his life here. He still has his flat in the city, goes there often for days or even weeks at a time; for just as Dunk has his duty to his cows and horses, so to does Baelor to his shareholders and employees at Dragonstone Holdings. He still travels the way he likes best, with his children or by himself, content with either the bickering susurrus of a Targaryen brood or the soft solitude of his own company. But now he gets to send photos and videos of Lisbon or Tokyo or the Grand Canyon — or Trafalgar Square — to Dunk, who sends him back a bewildering assortment of emoji reactions but will also indulge "my GenX senior citizen" and call him to talk, sometimes for hours, while they're a thousand miles apart and going through the rhythm of their lives apart. They'll be together soon enough.
Still, this is rare: to wake up while Dunk is still fast asleep, his arm flung over Baelor's chest and one leg hooked around his waist. There's good reason for it: Sweetfoot finally gave birth to a live foal last night, Dunk and their neighbors Rowan and Raymun (along with their extremely diligent eight-year-old girl, Humphrey) as well as Egg all taking turns walking her about the stall and soothing her as the veterinarian did whatever it was that veterinarians did in order to ensure a safe delivery.
"'Whatever it is veterinarians do'?" Dunk yawned into his ear at about three in the morning, having stumbled up the stairs with news of a healthy filly that had stood up in the first ten minutes (apparently that was important) and was busy nursing already. "Didn't you read any James Herriot when you were young?"
Baelor arranged the covers over him instead of replying honestly that before Dunk, Baelor had never so much as set foot on a farm, being firmly attached to modern conveniences such as pavement and restaurants and tailored suits. Fortunately, Dunk was already fast asleep, exhaustion finally dragging him down to rest.
Which means Baelor now has the opportunity to study his husband in the early morning light, Bastard the rooster heralding the sun's arrival a bit late as was his wont but the farm otherwise quiet. Dunk's mouth is slack and soft, the wrinkle between his eyebrows eased into a slender line. His hair is growing long again; soon he'll be due for what he calls his "shearing," done at the same time as Raymun's sheep (and, Baelor knows, with the same clippers) that takes his hair down to somewhat alarming stubble for a month or so before it turns into the familiar shaggy mop. His freckles, so abundant on his forearms and neck and face, fade into pink-white skin on his chest and upper arms, the hair there an even brighter red for some reason that Baelor has never been able to discover but has spent many an hour appreciating. The sheets cover the rest of him, but Baelor can feel the warmth and weight of his thigh, his rough heel scraping against Baelor's shin. He is, quite simply, perfect.
Baelor frowns.
The farm is quiet.
Too quiet.
At this hour, if Dunk hasn't gone out to the cowshed and seen to his "harem," as he insists on calling them, they're mooing in irritation loud enough to wake the dead. Bastard is still crowing but there's no banging on the stall door from Thunder, their resident hellion, out in the stable; no cacophony from the pigs or from Chlamydia the donkey.
"Darling," he murmurs, hating to do it but knowing full well that Dunk will have words with him if he doesn't, "wake up."
"Mm." Dunk replies, his arm and leg twined around Baelor tightening. "What."
"It's past dawn and your creatures aren't shouting for you," Baelor explains.
Dunk's smile is only half-visible, the other half of his face still buried in the pillows. "They're your creatures too," he rumbles, rubbing his nose against Baelor's shoulder. "Egg's taking care of it."
"Egg?" His nephew had arrived late last night for the foaling, though how much he'd taken part is unclear to Baelor, who was banned from any and all farm-related matters ever since what is only referred to as The Gate Incident, which nearly ended the courtship phase of their relationship.
"Mm. He knows what to do."
It's on the tip of Baelor's tongue to ask since when, but it would be impolitic — not to mention foolish — to question anything that allows him to have Dunk all to himself for a morning. "Well, in that case," he starts, smiling at his husband—
—who has fallen back to sleep.
Baelor shakes his head and brushes the hair from Dunk's brow, placing a soft kiss there. Perhaps he'll go and make them breakfast in bed, an indulgence he'd often enjoyed with Jena. Scrambled eggs and bacon for himself, dippy eggs and soldiers for Dunk, coffee and orange juice and the Sunday Times; even if they don't manage to have sex, it's still a morning worth having.
He manages to sidle out of bed despite Dunk's sleepy protests, padding down to the kitchen and turning on the coffee-maker. The kitchen was the one thing Baelor insisted on, when he agreed to move in with Dunk until death do they part (that, and a bathroom with hot water). In addition to the appliances, cabinetry, floors and insulation being improved, the south windows were enlarged, providing an excellent view of the various barns and sheds that made up Dunk's tiny kingdom. Baelor can therefore prepare the toast and eggs while entertaining himself with the sight of Egg, nearly as tall as his father now and with a seventeen-year-old's tendency to gangle, traipsing about the yard with little Humphrey trotting after him. It's an achingly familiar scene; a decade before it was Egg who ran along after Dunk, insisting that he could help. Perhaps that's all that farming truly is, an endless passing down of roles and responsibilities from one generation to the next. Baelor thinks about his own children, Matarys at university and Valarr already working at Dragonstone in their accountant department. Perhaps it's not just farming.
His brooding is interrupted by the sound of thumping on the stairs, and a few moments later Dunk's arms are wrapping slyly around his waist, his stubbled cheek and chin rasping against Baelor's shoulder. "What's this?" he says, his voice still scratchy and low.
"I should think it obvious." Baelor gestured at the breakfast tray, dug out from a cabinet after much swearing and contorting and now perched primly on the kitchen table.
"I really did marry up," Dunk chuckles, his hold now firm and, Baelor notes, distinctly uninterested in food. "Leave it, I've got a better notion."
Baelor leans back against him. Dunk's notion is better, but Baelor's never been one for letting him have his own way too easily. "I've already started," he points out. And indeed, the bacon is frying, Dunk's eggs are in the boiling water and he's about to put his own eggs into a pan.
Dunk makes a disagreeable noise, kisses him firmly on the back of his head, then lets go to stride over to the open window. "Oi!" he shouts. "Breakfast, you lot! Come on!"
Egg and Humphrey, bickering at each other in the chicken coop, look round until they spot Dunk. "I've still got to clean the stables!" Egg protests, and for the life of him Baelor will never understand where Egg came from. He sounds disappointed. His father gets a hot towel wet shave with a manicure every Tuesday.
"The shit will be there in half an hour, get a move on. And don't come upstairs," Dunk adds.
"Ugh," Egg complains, but he picks Humphrey and the egg basket up and maneuvers them out of the coop (despite Iphigenia's half-hearted escape attempt).
Dunk takes Baelor by the hand and drags him up the stairs as the backdoor opens, grinning and ignoring Baelor's half-hearted protests. "Come along, your grace," he says, "get yourself washed up."
Baelor, distracted by the sway of Dunk's arse in his joggers, feels his eyebrows lift. "Has this something to do with your notion?" he asks innocently. "The one which was so much better than breakfast in bed?"
"It has, at that," Dunk laughs, pushing him toward the en suite.
Historically, such notions have gone exceedingly well for Baelor, so he steps into the shower and washes thoroughly but quickly, giving himself a cursory toweling before slinging it round his hips and coming back into the bedroom.
Dunk is sprawled out sideways on their bed, naked amongst the rucked-up sheets, stroking himself with one idle hand with his other arm behind his head. At the sound of the door, he cranes his neck up so that he's watching Baelor upside-down; it gives his smile a curiously Cheshire-cat quality. "Took your time, old man."
"Apologies, young man," Baelor says, their call and response an old joke now. Dunk will be thirty-three next month, Baelor fifty the month after that; the anxieties he once had about loving a man so much younger than himself have long since faded in the face of the knowledge that Dunk loves him in return.
"Apology accepted," Dunk says generously, and lifts his head to free his arm, beckoning. "C'mere."
Baelor does, making to climb onto the bed, but Dunk's hand lands on his hip. Baelor looks down at Dunk, still upside-down, still smiling, still beautiful. Always beautiful.
"Been wanting to try this," Dunk says, taking his other hand off his cock to pull and push at Baelor until he's standing right in front of Dunk's face. Dunk tugs the towel out of the way and heaves a happy sigh as Baelor's cock, flushed and stiff, presses against his cheek. "Oh, yes," he says, as if to himself, and presses a kiss to its base. The prickle of his stubble, so teasing when pressed against Baelor's shoulder, is maddening now, heat and discomfort paired with the slick warmth of his mouth.
Baelor swallows, sweat already at his lower back, under his arms, behind his stones. From this angle he can see all of Dunk's body laid out for him, a vista set to rival any in Tuscany. But he cannot touch. "Dunk—" he complains, or begins to, but Dunk chooses that moment to open his mouth against the head of Baelor's cock. Baelor's world narrows down to the feel of Dunk's lips and tongue and throat, drawing him in, swallowing him down.
Dunk had never been with a man before Baelor. The first few months of their courtship was a stop-start affair — mostly stop, in truth, Dunk panicking or tense or miserable to think he was doing something wrong. Baelor never begrudged his need for direction and encouragement, but he worried at Dunk's nerves, thinking perhaps his own desires were the only thing spurring on the relationship. That anxiety, too, has faded with time: with time has come experience, and with experience has come confidence. Not to say, a certain adventurous spirit that Baelor could have never predicted.
So he has no compunctions about placing his hands gently around Dunk's neck; one to cradle the back of his head as it dangles off the side, the other running his thumb along Dunk's bobbing Adam's apple as he strains to take more of him. "So eager," Baelor murmurs, rewarded with a high whine and the sight of Dunk's cock twitching, out of reach but even more tempting as a result. "So warm."
Dunk's hands come off his hips and grab hold of his arms, his grip like iron as his whole body writhes upon the bed. Baelor wraps his hand around the span of Dunk's neck, not squeezing — Dunk hates that — but merely holding, protecting, approving. He pulls out just enough for Dunk to suck in a ragged breath, the air hot against Baelor's shaft and stones, before slowly pressing back in. Dunk undulates in response, as though a great wave is passing through his entire body, and Baelor sets a steady rhythm, mesmerized: Dunk's mouth taking his length, the frantic working of Dunk's throat, the flush at his chest, the heaving of his ribcage and the drooling of his cock as it lies untouched and red and heavy against his stomach, the shifting of his legs as he tries to press himself further up.
"So soft," he croons, scratching his nails against the back of Dunk's skull. "Take it, then."
Dunk's mouth goes slack then, his hands squeezing at Baelor's wrists, asking and granting permission. All at once Baelor is at the edge of it, desperate and needful, and he shoves forward and empties himself into the blissful clench of Dunk's mouth.
"Good boy," he gasps, watching Dunk struggle to take it all, his hands still clamped around Baelor's wrists, holding him fast. He finally pulls away as Dunk begins to gag, trying not to laugh as Dunk sits up abruptly to cough and wipe at his mouth with one shaking arm. Instead he climbs onto the bed, kneeling behind him with his chin hooked over Dunk's shoulder and his arms wrapped around him, hands taking hold of him at last. "Very good boy," he growls into Dunk's ear.
Dunk's head is thrown back against Baelor's shoulder, his eyes squeezed shut. He's never good at words in bed, though he's by no means quiet. He is not quiet now either, moaning as his hips jerk up into Baelor's grip, every inch of him chasing his own pleasure now and blind to anything else. Baelor sets his teeth to Dunk's neck, right at the straining tendon, and Dunk comes with a high shout, his come striping his own stomach and thighs, the sheets, Baelor's hand. For a moment he simply sits there, dead weight in Baelor's arms and staring up at the ceiling. Then he blinks and turns to Baelor, still panting but his grin wide and blissful. "Woof," he says, brushing his nose against Baelor's.
Baelor laughs and kisses him, rearranging his now-pliant husband until they're lying (more or less rightside-up) flat on the bed. "That was an excellent notion," he admits, as Dunk curls up around him. They're sticky and sweating, their bed an absolute wreck, and from downstairs Baelor can hear the radio turned up loud to some terrible modern rock music — Egg's defensive maneuvers, no doubt, against the din they were making. He can't regret it, though, Dunk smiling up at him with his mouth red and bruised, matching the mark on his neck.
"Mm," Dunk agrees, pulling him close, before he falls asleep again.