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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 9 months

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Comet Donati [Chapter 5: I Should Have Kissed You]

Series Summary: Sex, drugs, boy bands. You are a kinda-therapist recruited (via nepotism) to help Comet Donati through a recent crisis. Things are casual with Aegon, very not-casual with Aemond. Loosely inspired by One Direction.

Chapter Warnings: Language, sexual content (18+), drugs, alcohol, smoking, mental health struggles, bodily injury, sloths, public indecency, another important conversation on a balcony, angst!

Selected Chapter Quote: “I’m sorry about what happened tonight.”

Word count: 8k (+1 meme).

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @doingfondue @catalina-howard @randomdragonfires @myspotofcraziness @arcielee @fan-goddess @talesofoldandnew @marvelescvpe @tinykryptonitewerewolf @mariahossain @chainsawsangel @darkenchantress @not-a-glad-gladiator @gemini-mama @trifoliumviridi @herfantasyworldd @babyblue711 @namelesslosers @thelittleswanao3 @daenysx @moonlightfoxx @libroparaiso @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @mizfortuna @florent1s @heimtathurs @bhanclegane @poohxlove @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @heavenly1927 @mariahossain @echos-muses @padfooteyes @minttea07 @queenofshinigamis @juliavilu1 @amiraisgoingthruit @lauraneedstochill @wintrr13 @r0segard3n

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

There’s turbulence over the Indian Ocean as the jet staggers towards Singapore, pitching and reeling, dark clouds churning beyond the windows like the malevolent brew of a caldron. Each time the plane plummets fifty or a hundred feet, you clutch reflexively at your armrests and try not to think of Cast Away. No one else seems bothered by it; that’s what years spent on international flights will do to people, you suppose. It dulls their instincts, tames them, sands down vestiges of primeval survivalism like a file taken to canine teeth. Cregan is ostensibly napping beneath his sunglasses, Daeron is propelling Mario through a maze of toxic fumes, Luke is watching The Crown on his laptop with Rhaena and Baela, Jace is applying shimmering, gelatinous, golden under-eye masks with great care, Criston is answering emails, Aegon is being forced by the label to click through online substance abuse education modules and sighs dramatically and often. And Aemond…

The jet loses a dozen meters of altitude and your stomach drops. You stifle a yelp with one hand as tears—unwanted and unforeseen—prickle into your eyes. You peek across the aisle to see Aemond watching you with his gaze of two blues: one like a clear cool river, the other an otherworldly maelstrom like the atmosphere on Neptune, beautiful yet barren. His expression is intense and searching, his brow low. You try to ignore him. You try to collect yourself.

“Honeybunch?” Shelby croons. Yes, she calls him honeybunch, freaking honeybunch, and occasionally Honey Bunches of Oats. It’s almost as nauseating as the turbulence. He turns to her after the briefest of hesitations. Shelby is crouched by a table, her project for the past hour: artfully arranged red roses, glass bowls of fruit that she spritzes with a spray bottle of water—like you’d use to discipline a cat—to keep it glistening, and bubbling flutes of pink champagne. When the careening of the jet sends anything sliding precariously towards the edge of the table, she casually pushes it back into place. Shelby is no stranger to flying either. She is an angel, born with wings.

“Yeah?” Aemond says distractedly.

“Can you come over here for a sec?”

The jet shutters; ripples quake through your ginger ale. You swallow down a pathetic mewing like a wounded animal’s, swiping a tear from your cheek. You nestle against the window so no one will notice. “Sure,” Aemond tells Shelby, casting you another glance as he stands. He goes to her—gripping the backs of chairs to keep his balance—and, after looking back at you one last time, swipes one gleaming strawberry from a bowl.

“Don’t!” Shelby whines, knowing that now she’ll have to rearrange things.

If Aemond heard her, he gives no indication. He chucks the strawberry as hard as he can at Aegon; it hits the side of his head with a wet thump. Tiny black seeds pop free. Juice like blood stains his blond hair.

Aegon rips out his earbuds and spins around in his seat. “Okay, what the fuck?”

“Whoops,” Aemond says dully.

“How does someone do that by accident?! How does that even happen?!” Rubbing his head with one hand, Aegon stretches and peers around the jet. His eyes—not a blue like clear water, but a deep murky cobalt, a difference you cannot help but notice again and again like the stinging of a papercut—catch on you. “Aww, Stargirl, what’s up?” He drags himself over, knocked to his knees once by the swerving of the jet, and plops down into the chair beside you. “You okay? Don’t worry. I’m a good swimmer. I’d drag you to shore.”

You laugh, pressing a napkin to your eyes. It comes away shriveled and damp. “I’m sorry. We get tornadoes back home sometimes, I can’t stop picturing wreckage.”

“You should have seen this flight we took last year over the Pacific. The jet was practically sideways. Jace threw up like ten times.”

“Three times,” Jace says, peeling off his under-eye masks like little gold jellyfish with his feet kicked up on an ottoman.

“Ten times?” Aegon replies innocently. “Ten, you said?”

“Three, you idiot.”

“Ten?”

“Three.”

“Ten!” Aegon confirms merrily.

Jace holds up an under-eye mask and jiggles it in the air, soft and wiggling and shapeless. “Hey guys! This is what Aegon looks like naked.”

“I don’t want him getting any of the money from my donut merch!” Aegon shouts. “Criston? You hear that? Criston? Hey Criston? Criston?!”

“Do your modules,” Criston replies without looking away from his emails.

“Fine,” Aegon huffs. The jet is gliding over the ocean more smoothly now. Still, he says to you after smacking a single sloppy kiss against your temple: “Follow me. You can help.”

You accompany Aegon back to his seat and laptop, a neon green MacBook Air. Shelby is snapping photos to post on Instagram, recording clips for TikTok: the meticulously arranged table, her long fingernails decorated with palm trees and Merlions and the flag of Singapore, selfies of her and Aemond…always taken to show his good side, of course. Your guts twist with hostility, mistrust, envy, wrath.

As you pass Jace, he holds out his discarded under-eye masks. “Wanna touch?” Jace invites you, leering. You peel one gluey under-eye mask from his open palm and examine it. As you massage the pool of viscous gold, Jace ogles, dangerously close to drooling.

“So soft,” you admire. “So smooth. Not a single wrinkle.” Then you fling it back at Jace. The adhesive side sticks to his forehead. “Just like your brain.”

Everyone howls, even Cregan—not asleep after all—and Criston; he tries to choke it down until his face floods red. Aemond is staring at the floor, but he is beaming. Shelby recaptures his attention and begins posing his hand around a glass of champagne, readjusting fingers like a physical therapist stretching and flexing half-healed limbs. She gets to touch him. She gets to speak to him.

“You’re always so mean,” Jace tells you as he pries the under-eye mask off his skin, unfazed, simpering, flirtatious. “You might have to make it up to me one day.”

“Unlikely.”

“We’ll see.”

“We certainly won’t.”

Aegon shows you the quiz that has popped up in his modules. “Okay, Stargirl. Time to prove yourself. Does coke make someone’s pupils bigger or smaller?”

All you can hear is Shelby’s high, sing-songy voice; all you can picture are her exquisite fingernails skimming their way down the ridge of Aemond’s spine. “I honestly can’t recall at the moment. Go snort some and we’ll find out.”

Aegon grins. “Don’t tempt me.”

Fifty minutes later and under blessedly clear skies, the jet touches down at Changi Airport: 88 degrees Fahrenheit, 80% humidity. Aegon groans as he trots down the airstair, slides on his aviator sunglasses, and wipes away sweat—already beading on his pink forehead and wetting the hair at the nape of his neck—with the back of one hand.

“Jesus Christ, I need a Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino.”

“Do you really?” Jace jabs, and you don’t have to scold him this time. Baela gets there first, hissing something to him that is brief and fearsome. You’re only half paying attention. Once Comet Donati makes it through security, there may be paparazzi waiting for them inside the airport. Everyone knows this; it’s the same in every city and on every continent. And as Shelby strolls across the tarmac with one arm looped through Aemond’s, you cannot help but see—you cannot help but absorb like nicotine through the capillary beds of a lung—that she reaches out with those beautiful yet claw-like fingernails and taps the front pocket of his button-up shirt, black with white lilies, until he pulls out a pair of sunglasses and shields himself from the pitying eyes of the world with them.

And you think with puncturing clarity like a shard of glass through flesh: I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Pan Pacific Orchard Hotel is brand new. You can’t breathe without inhaling fresh paint, glass walls, the bakery, the greenery that climbs steel like a trellis, the roomy emptiness of starting over. You wake up tangled in a nest of white sheets that your body has heated into an inferno. You don’t remember your dream, only that Aemond was there. It was the opening of the door that woke you. Aegon stands in the slanting early-afternoon sunlight, vivid red swim trunks and matching Crocs, his sunglasses knotted in his hair.

You yawn and peer blearily at him. “Aegon? What are you doing?”

“Every day I wake up hoping you’re still here,” he says. And then: “We’re all headed down to the pool. You wanna join?”

You smile; you can smell him in the air, Axe body spray, Tiger Beer, sunscreen that he never seems to apply often enough to stop his skin from burning. You haven’t been with him—not in that way—since that day in Paris. But time never feels quite linear with Aegon. He swings wide and then comes in close again, and when he does it’s like he never left. He’s with you always, and never, and sometimes, and forever. “Yeah. Give me ten minutes.”

“Cool.” He turns and studies himself in the full-length mirror that hangs on your bedroom wall. His eyes wander down to his bare chest and belly. He frowns, pensive, far-away, critical. It is an expression that looks entirely unnatural on him.

“Hey.”

He spins back around, running a hand self-consciously down the front of his torso. “Hm?”

“I think you’re perfect exactly the way you are. I am wildly, helplessly, pathetically attracted to you. I would fight off twenty fangirls with my bare hands for you. I think you’re one of the most ludicrously gorgeous men I’ve ever met in my life. ”

He grins, radiant again. “One of them, huh?” And he winks at you as he clops towards the door in his Crocs. “Maybe it runs in the family.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“So. College applications season will be here in a few months.”

Baela looks at you, started. You’re in a whirlpool with her, Rhaena, Luke, and Aegon, sipping pina coladas and kicking feet idly beneath water misty with bubbles. “Okay?” Baela says. Her swimsuit is an elegant white one-piece that—unintentionally you think, unconsciously, and yet truthfully—closely resembles a ballet leotard.

“Elaborate?” Luke says, then slurps noisily on his pina colada.

Aegon already knows where you’re going. He chuckles into one closed fist; you can see yourself reflected in his sunglasses. In the massive main pool punctuated by an arcing bridge and a miniature island, Cregan is lounging on a float shaped like a pineapple and eating his way through a heaping plate of juicy slivers: papaya, mango, starfruit, banana, lychee, rose apple, dragon fruit. Criston is sitting under an umbrella and reading a New Yorker profile of shipping tycoon Viserys Targaryen—a Greek by birth and a Brit by choice—with narrowed, vexed eyes. Jace and Daeron are attempting to do a TikTok dance for Shelby to post on her account and repeatedly screwing up, laughing hysterically and pushing each other into the pool. She always wears eye-catching patterns, leopard prints and retro geometric shapes and plaids and Swarovski crystals and tassels. Currently, she is dressed in a scarlet bikini and a sheer coverup of tropical flowers. Her blond hair flows down her back and swings like a horse’s tail when she leans in to direct her cast, pointing and waving. You see her like this, not in whole but in pieces: long beachy waves, nimble ankles and wrists, lip gloss, veneers, sugary perfume, tall like Aemond. Shelby has no idea why you’re here. She made a few tentative inquiries—So who introduced you to the band? So how did you and Aegon meet?—before being discouraged by the ensuing stilted silence. Aemond rarely acknowledges you. Presently, he is wading in the pool up to his chest, occasionally talking to Cregan but otherwise content to be left to his own…reverie? Observations? Machinating? Brooding? With his sunglasses on, it’s difficult to tell.

Back in the whirlpool, you ask Baela: “What if you applied to a few ballet programs?”

“What?”

“Just to see what happens. Just to have options.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t do that.” She says this so quickly it’s clear that it’s a reflex: something she does not think about, something she’s trained herself not to.

“Sure you could. You click a few buttons and it’s done.”

“I’d have to send in video clips and stuff.”

“Okay. Rhaena and I will help record you.”

“Absolutely,” Rhaena agrees right away. She drinks her pina colada with large, skittish eyes, watching you like you’re poking a tiger, a viper, and dragon. She’s tried to have this conversation before. She knows how it usually goes.

“I’m really not in shape right now,” Baela protests.

“You still have time to work on that. It’s only July.”

“And who says I want to work on it?” Baela snaps. “Have I ever mentioned ballet school? Have I ever said that I want to go?”

“But you do,” you say simply.

She frowns as she casts her gaze across the pool. Beefy men dressed in black—security guards, some employed by the band, some by Shelby—mill around aimlessly like ants when you lift a rock.

“I think you should apply,” you tell Baela.

“I can’t,” she replies, pained.

“Why not?”

“Because.” She’s flustered, cross. Rhaena and Luke look between the two of you anxiously. Aegon just smiles and gnaws on the hunk of pineapple that came perched on the rim of his pina colada. “Am I supposed to send Rhaena off into the world without me? Nothing against you, Luke, I like you, I trust you, but when you’re on stage or in an interview you can’t watch out for her. What if something happens to Rhaena? Or what if I go back to school and I’m a failure? What if I humiliate myself? What if I’ve lost whatever talent I once had? What if I couldn’t keep up with my classmates? What if I get injured and have to drop out? What if I’m too old, or too out of practice, or what if I don’t even enjoy dancing anymore? What would I do about the band? What would I do about Jace?”

“Those are all valid concerns,” you say. “But they’re also concerns for after you’ve applied to schools. If you get acceptances, that doesn’t mean you have to go. But it does give you options. And options are always good.”

Baela shrugs. She catches handfuls of bubbles in one cupped palm, preoccupied. “It just seems like a waste of time.”

Aegon snickers as he tosses the pineapple rind over his shoulder. One of the security guys snatches it up off the concrete and throws it in a trashcan. “Baela, please babygirl, don’t give up on your dreams for freaking Jace.”

“And who the fuck solicited your life advice, blond Nikki Sixx? If I want to know what Narcan feels like, I’ll ask you.”

Aegon sighs, rubbing one eyebrow. “You are never going to let that go.”

“I bet you’d get in,” Luke tells Baela. “To at least one school. You’re too good not to, even with the time off. Rhaena’s shown me old recital clips. You were fantastic.”

“Were,” Baela mutters. “Past tense. Very distant past tense.”

“If you don’t get in, then you know it’s off the table,” you say. “And you’re in the exact same spot you are now. But if you do get in, you have time to figure out what to do with that information. You have nothing to lose except application fees, and I don’t think those are much of a barrier for you, oh great connoisseur of Gucci and Hermès.”

“I’ll think about it,” Baela replies, and her intent to end the conversation is clear. A few awkward moments creep by like afternoon shadows stretching across pavement. “So, what are we doing for dinner?”

“Something quick, right?” Luke says. “Takeout? We have a meet-and-greet in two hours.”

“Jollibee!” Rhaena exclaims, clapping her hands. “They have coconut pineapple pie!”

“Chicken Up,” Aegon says.

Luke laughs. “What the hell is a Chicken Up?”

“A chicken restaurant.”

“Groundbreaking” Baela quips.

“I’ve been to one in Seoul. Great wings.”

“But…but…Jollibee!” Rhaena pleads. “I need a coconut pineapple pie!”

“You’re literally drinking a coconut pineapple smoothie right now. When am I supposed to get my wings?!”

“Out of loyalty, I will have to vote for Jollibee,” Luke informs Aegon apologetically.

“I saw a Five Guys when we were driving here from the airport,” Baela suggests.

“Oh, I love Five Guys!” you say…and then you realize how it sounds. All of you giggle so loudly that Aemond looks over at the whirlpool, a little intrigued, a little miserable. He sinks down into the transparent blue water, Godzilla retreating from his wreckage.

Baela teases you: “Like, all at the same time, or…?”

“No, definitely one after the other. I don’t want an audience.”

Aegon chuckles, low and devious. He sets his empty pina colada glass on the rim of the whirlpool. Then, unprompted, he takes off his aviator sunglasses and puts them on you instead. Strange.

Rhaena is saying: “Okay, but seriously, I cannot overstate the merits of Jollibee…”

Beneath the water, obscured by riotous bubbles, Aegon settles a hand on your thigh. You glance over at him. He glances back, so subtly that the others don’t notice; they are deeply entrenched in their dinner debate. Now Baela is pitching MOS Burger.

Aegon arches an eyebrow. Okay? he’s asking. In reply—and after a moment’s hesitation—you open your thighs a little wider for him. His lips curl into a furtive smile. His palm skates excruciatingly slowly over your skin, taunting, electrifying, fingerprints dragging lightly. He’s still carrying on a conversation with the others, gesturing with his free hand. You sip your pina colada and try to act just as casual.

“Look,” Aegon is saying. “I’m not gonna eat someplace where they serve spaghetti with hotdogs in the meat sauce. It’s unnatural.”

His fingers slip beneath your swimsuit bottoms. You gasp before you can stop yourself.

“You okay?” Baela asks with concern.

You nod, blood rushing in your cheeks, blood rushing everywhere. “Oh, yeah, sorry. I saw a bug.”

Luke says: “Man, the insects here are insane, some giant buzzing black-and-gold thing flew into my face earlier today and I almost cried.”

“A cicada,” you murmur. You grip the rim of the whirlpool and try to keep still, fixing your gaze on the palm trees that surround the pool, waving lazily in a hot humid breeze. “We have them in Missouri too. But ours are green.”

Rhaena is saying: “Apparently Singapore is famous for some super-rare beetle that’s been around for like 50 million years…”

Aegon’s expert fingers are circling, applying pressure, experimenting with different rhythms. He knows he’s found the right one when you suck in a breath and almost drop your pina colada; his smile is filling up his face, he’s fighting a grin. That feeling—a heat, a glowing, an unfurling like an opened letter—builds until it hits a blissful yet constraining plateau. It’s a ceiling, it’s a landing with no more steps. You stare at the swaying palm trees and try to relax, grateful for Aegon’s aviator sunglasses to hide behind. He’s half-watching you as he chats nonchalantly, wondering what more you need from him.

The conversation that whirls around you has revolved back to dinner: Shake Shack, Yoshinoya, Nene Chicken, Marrybrown, Wingstop.

“We should go somewhere that has vegan options,” you say shakily.

“What? Why?” Rhaena asks; she has forgotten, but you never do.

“For Aemond.”

You steal a glimpse of Aemond over in the main pool and see him taking a piece of starfruit off Cregan’s plate. Aemond bites into it—those pristine, glistening, golden angles—and wipes juice from his lips with the back of one hand. Then he looks over at you: two people pretending they don’t see the other, two pairs of sunglasses meant to render certain things invisible. And immediately, without planning to, you are thinking about Aemond touching you. You are thinking about his lips and his fingers, his shoulders, his throat, his eye devouring parts of you he’s never seen. You are thinking about where you would both be now if Reykjavik had never happened. And as Aegon’s hand works beneath the veil of bubbles, you are close, so close, agonizingly close. You are incapable of following the conversation. It takes everything in you not to moan and reach down into the roiling water to press him even more forcefully against you. His fingers glide through folds that are slick and achingly ravenous. Your pina colada is melting.

Someone makes a restaurant suggestion; you can’t register it. Aegon holds up the index finger on his free hand. “One moment. Allow me to consult my associate.” He leans into you, his hair brushing against your face, smelling like beer and sunscreen and pina coladas and Axe body spray. And he whispers as he pushes two fingers inside you and strokes you insistently with them: “Come for me, pretty girl. Right now.”

And while these words are in Aegon’s voice, for a split second you image them as Aemond’s; and then your climax shudders through you, silent by necessity but mind-numbing, a reset button, a deleted message, an echo chamber of nothing, nothing, nothing. For a moment, there’s no past and no future, no Kansas City, no Rome, no Reykjavik, no Singapore, no shame and no guilt and no desire for anything. And then slowly, like drops of rain, the world begins to fill back in again.

Aegon turns your face towards him so your lips are to his ear. You have to say something. “You’re unbelievable,” you exhale, so softly no one else will hear. “You can’t be real.”

He tells the others: “She says she votes for Chicken Up.”

When Aegon leaves the whirlpool, you follow after him a few minutes later, just long enough of a gap not to arouse any suspicions. You find him alone in the band’s private cabana and talking to someone on his iPhone. You kneel down beside his lounge chair and bend over his neon red swim trunks, palming him through the fabric—almost immediately, he is hard—and untangling the knot of the drawstring.

“Okay. Sounds good. I gotta go. Emma? Hey, Emma? I gotta go now. Yeah. See you soon. Uh huh. Bye.” Aegon hangs up and sets his phone down. Then he hooks a finger beneath your chin and lifts it. “What are you doing?” he asks, amused yet kind.

“Taking care of you.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

Your hands go still; your face is lined with wounded bewilderment. “You don’t want me to?”

“Well obviously I want you to,” Aegon says. “But only if you’re really into it. Not just because you see it as a debt to be paid. This isn’t about reimbursement. This isn’t an ATM transaction. And, you know…” He shrugs, rueful. “I can tell you’re kinda going through it. And you’re the one who needs to be taken care of right now. That’s cool. That’s not a problem.”

You sit back on your ankles, feeling guilty but undeniably relieved. “It seems unfair to you.”

“Stargirl, I don’t mean this in a braggy way, but at all times I have a line out the door of women begging to take care of me. I think I’ll survive.”

“Okay.” You smile up at him. “Okay, Aegon. I get it. Thank you.”

His sunburned brow crinkles. He is confused. “For what?”

~~~~~~~~~~

Comet Donati is scheduled to play three nights at the National Stadium. On the afternoon of the second show, Luke and Rhaena go to Fort Canning Park to explore the archaeological excavation site, Jace and Baela depart to procure his tattoo to commemorate Singapore (a Merlion on his left pec), and you, Aegon, Cregan, Criston, Daeron, Aemond, and Shelby receive a private tour of the Mandai Wildlife Reserve to promote the conservation of endangered Southeast Asian species. There are conversations with the staff and generous gift baskets and photo ops—which each time you quietly step out of the frame for, while Shelby steps in—but what snags in your mind, what you will remember forever about this day is Aemond. Because when he holds the animals, he lights up like you haven’t seen since those YouTube videos of Comet performances before the accident in Tokyo; he becomes at peace, he becomes whole again. He lets a blue tarantula creep across his palm and forearm, he feeds pumpkin slices to Asian elephants rescued from circuses, he walks around with Bunny the sloth draped over his chest like a napping toddler. And he smiles wistfully the whole ride back to the hotel…even when Aegon makes Criston stop the Escalade at Starbucks so he can get a venti-sized Double Chocolaty Chip Frappuccino.

Shelby likes to be in the front row with you, Baela, and Rhaena, but she spends less time dancing and cheering than she does taking selfies and recording video clips. During your now least-favorite song, A Girl Named After A Car, you spend a few minutes covertly scrolling through Shelby’s latest Instagram posts. She’s been sharing Stories relentlessly, but her last photo is from the private jet: her beaming smile, Aemond’s more reticent one (and only his good side, his smooth cheek and clear river-blue eye), a meticulously-arranged bouquet of flowers clutched to her chest like a gift. The comments are a waterfall of praise worthy of a saint. I was praying you two would get back together! You have such a kind and selfless heart, Shelby! You are so good for him! You are so brave! Thank you for showing the world that beauty is only skin-deep! Like she’s goddamn Mother Teresa. Like she deserves an Olympic medal for finding the strength to love him.

And you think once again, not for the first time and not the last: I hate her, I hate her, I hate her.

After the concert is a ritual, like drawing a pentagram or burning sage. People converge in Jace’s suite to mingle and drink and smoke and find someone to fuck if that vacancy isn’t already filled. You loiter by the bar even after you are handed your Bramble, a drink that should be poisoned by the fact that Aemond introduced it to you; but you can’t stop craving it. Criston is pacing and trying to make a call out on the balcony; from the look of his expression, the person isn’t answering. Cregan is in a velvet lounge chair with three models on his lap; they are taking turns feeding him the dripping cherries that bob in their cocktails. The rest of the band is sitting nearby and discussing their plans for next year once the tour has ended. You overhear Rhaena saying that she wants to visit the Mammoth Site in South Dakota. Luke wants to finish writing a new album. Aemond is conspicuously quiet.

Security guys float through the room between currents of musicians, label executives, friends, acquaintances, assistants. Shelby has her own detail that follows her everywhere; approximately every eight hours they switch out and new faces show up. Sometimes you recognize them from a prior shift, sometimes not. They look through you like you don’t exist at all.

A seat is waiting for you between Aegon and Baela, but you are in no hurry to sit opposite of Shelby and be forced to bask in the radiance of her flowing zebra-print dress, red-lipped, California-sun perfection. As you procrastinate with your Bramble, you listen to Daeron ask her about the Met Gala next May.

“Yeah, I finally made it onto the planning committee!” she gushes.

“Yay!” Baela trills, palpably sarcastic.

“Make it donut themed,” Aegon slurs. He has had a lot of Tiger Beers.

“I was thinking a masquerade ball, actually,” Shelby says, then looks at Aemond and settles a hand on his thigh. “We can go together, honeybunch! The timing never worked out before, but I’ve always wanted to attend with you.”

Luke asks: “And what’s the inspiration for the masquerade ball…?”

“Well, you know.” Shelby gestures vaguely. “Aemond won’t have to feel bad.”

Because everyone will be wearing masks. There is a long lull as people piece together what she means. Jaws drop open. Eyes grow large and then blink at her, incredulous, appalled.

Finally, Jace chuckles awkwardly. “Oh fuck, did you really just say that?” He looks around at everyone else. “Did she really just say that?! I mean, I wouldn’t even have said that!”

“It’s fine,” Aemond says, getting up off the couch.

Shelby reaches for him. “Honeybunch, wait, you know I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine,” he repeats roughly. He takes his Bramble with him as he escapes to the balcony. Criston returns inside just as Aemond goes out.

“What’s his problem?” Criston inquires. Nobody answers.

Shelby sighs and—as furious blood swirls hot in your veins—approaches the bar. “Can I get a gin and tonic?” She takes out her phone, scrolls for a while, sighs again. You are glaring murderously at her. Shelby doesn’t even notice. The bartender slides her a tall glass full of clear carbonated liquid, ice, cucumber slices. She takes a picture of it before she plucks out the straw, lays it on the counter, and swallows a single, ladylike sip straight from the glass. She says to the bartender: “Drinking out of straws gives you wrinkles, you know.”

You say to her suddenly: “What is wrong with you?”

Shelby turns to you, startled. “Excuse me?”

You take a step closer, your pinkish Bramble still clasped in your hand. “I’ll ask again: what the fuck is wrong with you?”

She’s backing away, jumpy, clicking in her black heels. “What are you talking about?!”

“How dare you say something like that about him. In front of him.”

“Oh, so now I’m a bitch?” Shelby snaps. “Because I want him to have a good time at the Met Gala? Because I don’t want him to be humiliated?”

“No, because you think there’s anything humiliating about him at all, that’s what makes you a bitch—”

She shoves you backwards, only a few steps. You throw your Bramble in her face. She screams like you’ve stabbed her; it’s a scream that says I don’t know what it’s like to be hurt. And instantaneously, one of her security guards has his monstrous hand around your wrist.

You hear the pop before you feel it: bubbles bursting, tethers snapping. Then the pain explodes into your consciousness like a flashbang grenade. You’re shrieking, and suddenly there are voices all around you and people tugging in every direction. The security guy still has a grip on your wrist; each time he moves, he yanks you along with him, igniting fresh flairs of agony, impossibly red Morse code.

“No no no no no!” Aegon is shouting, pawing at the security guy. “She’s with us, she’s with us—!”

“Let her go!” Criston booms. Rhaena is crying. Baela is punching the security guy in the kidneys. Comet’s security guards clash with Shelby’s security guards, a miniature civil war. Within seconds the misunderstanding is resolved and you are freed. You are engulfed by Aegon and Criston, who try to examine your wrist; you are holding it gingerly to your chest, not even aware that you are sobbing. Baela is berating the rogue security guard. Rhaena, Luke, Jace, Daeron, Cregan, and Cregan’s soon-to-be one night stands are gaping at the scene. Shelby is being comforted by several fellow influencers; they coo sympathetically and give her napkins to mop the Bramble from her face.

Aegon, drunk but not far-gone, coaxes your wounded arm from your chest. “Shh, shh, you’re okay, let me see it…”

“Broken,” Criston pronounces. “Or dislocated. Time to go.”

“I can’t go home,” you say, petrified. Your thoughts are muddled by shock and pain.

Criston shakes his head. “No, not home. To the hospital.”

“I can take her,” Aegon volunteers, lurching as he grabs a barstool to keep his balance.

“No!” you, Baela, Rhaena, Luke, Jace, Daeron, and Cregan burst out simultaneously.

“I’ll take her,” Criston says. “But you can come along, if you behave yourself and don’t try to steal morphine or anything. Bartender, I need ice…”

There is a commotion as Aemond bolts in from the balcony, moments too late. He looks at your swelling wrist, Shelby dripping with a Bramble, Baela taking a cloth full of ice cubes from the bartender and passing it to Criston. “What happened?!”

Aegon seethes as he pushes him aside: “Ask your fucking girlfriend.”

And Aemond watches, thunderstruck and horrified, as Criston escorts you out of the suite with Aegon and Baela following like shadows. When you glance back at him, he is growing smaller and smaller, like an object fading away in the reflection of a rearview mirror.

Under bright white lights, a gentle and mild-mannered Singaporean doctor maneuvers your bones back into place. It feels like you’re dying; Aegon tries to distract you with stories of shenanigans from tours long past, Baela finally begins to talk about ballet schools, which programs she likes and which she doesn’t and what exactly she’ll have to show in her audition tapes. The doctor informs you that you have a mild dislocation, no surgery needed, no cast, only a splint. He tells you to rest it and try to keep it elevated. He gives you pain medication that doesn’t do enough.

“That is an interesting saying,” the doctor says when he glimpses your tattoo, black ink between the straps of your pale pink dress, like the color of a healthy lung or brain: I’ll come back for you if it kills me, Comets clip by again after eons and so can I. You try not to think about these words. You don’t know what to make of them anymore. “Is it from a poem? Or a movie?”

“From a song,” you reply, studying the tiles of the floor. “One I used to love.”

Criston goes to pay the bill. Baela goes to get you a soda from the vending machine. “I’m sorry,” Aegon says miserably when the two of you are alone in the hospital room. Beer and remorse sweats out of his pores. “I’m sorry I fucked everything up in Reykjavik.”

“I know, Aegon. I’m not mad at you.”

“I shouldn’t have said it. I had way too much Icelandic beer, that was my bad. But it was supposed to be a compliment.”

“It was kinda sweet. In an unhinged, debaucherous sort of way. An Aegon way.”

And he burrows his head against your chest, and you comb your fingers through his messy blond hair with your uninjured hand, and you wish you understood why the coincidences of the world had brought you together if it was only a blip, an error, a momentary crossing of orbits before you returned to your designated places on opposite ends of the universe.

In the elevator, as the four of you zoom up to the top floor where the band’s suites are, you check your phone to discover that in addition to well-wishes from Luke, Rhaena, Daeron, and Cregan, Jace has sent you a WhatsApp message: A meme to make you feel better…

“Ugh,” you groan, and toss your phone back into your purse. You try to ignore the fact that there is nothing from Aemond, not a single word, not a missed call, nothing.

“You good?” Aegon asks.

“Yeah. The drugs the hospital gave me aren’t quite cutting it.” That’s very true, although that’s not the whole problem.

“You want some Vicodin?”

“No thank you, Aegon.”

“Oxy? Percocet? Klonopin? Codeine? Demerol? Coke? Speedball? Valium? Weed gummies?”

You blink at him as Criston and Baela stare at the elevator walls, trying not to listen in. “I think I’ll just go to sleep now.”

“Okay, Stargirl. Sure. Whatever you want.” He grabs your face, lands a kiss on your forehead, staggers off to his suite when the elevator doors ding and open. You walk in the opposite direction to yours after thanking Criston and Baela. As you pass Aemond’s suite, you can hear people arguing inside, heavy footsteps and sharp words.

“You need to get better control over your people,” Aemond is saying.

“Who even is she?! I know she’s not Aegon’s girlfriend. Aegon doesn’t have girlfriends.”

There is a gap of silence, and you wonder what Aemond will tell Shelby. She’s a fan, she’s an employee, she’s a groupie, she’s a slut. At last he says, drained: “She’s a therapist.”

“Oh, for you?”

And you can hear Aemond sigh through the door, perpetually a broken thing now, forever someone in need of being stitched back together; they got the flesh back in December, but the soul is still unmended.

You go to your suite, wash the night off of you, and pull on your Cookie Monster pajama pants and an oversized One Direction t-shirt. You can’t sleep yet; the pain in your wrist is too bad, the chaos in your mind is too loud. You take another pill from the bottle the doctor gave you and go out onto your balcony and sit in the sounds of Singapore past midnight: sparce traffic, buzzing cicadas, the ocean, the wind rocking the palm trees. When you hear the sliding glass door open, you aren’t sure who to expect: Aegon, Baela, Criston, Cregan, Jace. It is none of these people. It is Aemond. He stands there rigidly, like he hadn’t planned to get this far. He is in black—as usual—but he wears no sunglasses.

“Criston really needs to start keeping a closer eye on those extra room keys,” you say.

“I’m sorry about what happened tonight.”

“You don’t need to pretend to be worried about me. It’s fine, just leave.”

“I feel responsible.”

“I’m not someone you consider worthy of concern,” you say. “You want me to be honest with you? You want to keep a running list of my sins in your little black-paged notebook? Alright, sure. I’ve been hooking up with Aegon. Only after Reykjavik, and not…like…all the time or exclusively or anything. But occasionally. And I know exactly what you think of me and how I’ve chosen to live my life. So don’t come out here acting like you care when you clearly don’t.”

“I know what you told Shelby. I don’t…” He stares at you, a little mystified, a little grateful. “I don’t understand why you keep defending me after what I said.”

Because I believe you deserve better. And I care about you. And I can’t stop. And honestly it fucking sucks and so if you could just leave, that would be great. “That’s just what I do.”

You expect Aemond to go. Instead, he sits down in the other chair, lights one of his Benson & Hedges cigarettes, takes a drag and exhales smoke in a long, slow breath like a hushed confession. “I once asked what made you want to be a therapist.”

“And I didn’t tell you.”

“No.”

Your eyes list to him like a ship in a storm, groggy, clawing for purchase. “Do you still want to know?”

“I do.”

The night sounds like wind in clattering wet leaves, car horns and rolling tires, ocean waves, indistinct echoes of laughter like a memory. Aemond waits for you, patient, eternal, or at least so long-lived it’s practically the same thing. You wonder what he sees when he looks at you like this. You wonder why you can’t outrun what you feel for him, a curse or a spell or both tangled up together like veins beneath skin. “I had a boyfriend when I was in high school,” you say. “And I took pictures for him. Because he asked me to, yes, but also because I wanted to, because it made me feel desirable, and powerful, and like I was choosing to share something special with him. No one talked me into it, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. And when we broke up, he sent those pictures to his friends. And they sent them to their friends, and they sent them to their friends, and I’m sure you can do the math from there.”

Aemond doesn’t look disgusted or horrified or pitying. He looks furious, and not at you. “That’s illegal, right?”

“In some places, sure. In Missouri? Ten years ago?” You smirk cynically, shaking your head. “The only person anyone was condemning was me. And it wasn’t just the students. They said things, obviously. They wrote notes and they whispered. But it was the teachers too, and the parents, and the administrators. It was everyone. Staring at me. Talking about me like they understood who I was.” You meet Aemond’s eye. “And you called me a slut.”

He voice is hoarse. “I didn’t know.”

“But you still said it.”

“What I said…” he sighs shakily, rubbing his face with one hand. He crushes the end of his cigarette beneath his Adidas sneakers and then lights another. “What I said wasn’t a reflection on you or what you did with Aegon. That’s not what it was about. It was about me, it was about how I interpreted things, and…I mean, you get that, right? You know that. You’re a professional. I took what Aegon told everyone and I bounced it off a few mirrors and ran it through my filter of how I’ve been taught to believe the world operates, and that’s why I said what I did in Reykjavik. It wasn’t about you. It wasn’t true. And I could never express to you how sorry I am.”

Tell me the whole story, you think, you plead, watching him like parched earth looks for rain. That you were afraid my feelings for you weren’t real. That you wanted me then and you still want me now. That you’ve never wanted anything the way you want me. But that’s not what Aemond says.

“What happened next?” he asks gently.

“What do you think? I had to be homeschooled. I lost every friend I’d ever had. I was terrified to leave the farm and go anywhere…to Walmart, to McDonald’s, to 7-Eleven, anywhere. And my parents…they’re Southern Baptists, okay? They tried to be supportive. They really did. They didn’t shame me, and that alone was a huge leap for them, and I’m very grateful. But they had no idea how to talk to me about what had happened. What they did do was find someone else for me to talk to. She was a therapist, and she saved my life. And when I got into UChicago, I decided that the only thing I wanted to do was help people in the same way.”

“Why didn’t you stay in Chicago?” Aemond says, bewildered. “I mean, why would you go back to Kansas City after the way people treated you there? So fucking closed-minded and hypocritical and…and…and evil? You were a kid. You were a goddamn kid and they tried to destroy you. Why would you go back there? You could have gone anywhere else. You still can.”

“I considered it,” you admit. “But my family has lived in Missouri for almost 200 years. It was once a place of opportunity, somewhere for people who had nothing to carve out a piece of the world and make it their own. Why should I let anyone banish me without my permission? And besides, I think Missouri could use more people like me. I can make a difference there. Someone like me in Chicago or London or Los Angeles or New York or Miami? I’m a dime a dozen. In Missouri, I’m part of the change. In Missouri, I can save people like I was once saved.”

“Hmm,” Aemond says. And then he smiles at you, kind and tender. “Pretentious.”

“Oh shut up,” you laugh, shoving him with your uninjured hand: his deep, warm, rolling chuckle, his broad shoulders that barely give beneath your palm.

His eye flicks down to your One Direction t-shirt. “And a traitor.”

Want me to take it off? you almost say. Instead: “As if you don’t idolize them. As if you wouldn’t deign to have a favorite One Direction song.”

“I couldn’t divulge information as sensitive as that.”

“Aegon tells me you spend a lot of time brooding to The Script.”

Aemond groans, but good-naturedly. You got me, his face says, surrendering. “True.”

“What’s your go-to crying on the floor song? Breakeven? Nothing?”

“The Man Who Can’t Be Moved. But now you have to give me one in return.”

“If You Ever Come Back. A certified tragic bop.”

He nods, thoughtful. He slides his phone out of his pocket to check it.

“Sexts from Shelby?” you ask with undisguisable vitriol.

“No. Favorite Coldplay song?”

You remember that night with him in Rome: the concert, the motorcycle, the lingering in the hotel room doorway as you waited for him to ask to stay. “Every Teardrop Is A Waterfall. What’s yours? You strike me as a The Scientist stan.”

“Viva La Vida,” he counters.

Of course. “I used to rule the world,” you quote.

“Now the old king is dead, long live the king.” He looks out into the city, streetlights and ocean and wind, sounds of the planet you call home. Again, you think of Rome. “I should have kissed you,” he says softly.

Your heart stops like a car against a brick wall, glorious euphoric shattering. “What?”

“My favorite One Direction song. I Should Have Kissed You.”

“Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah, that’s great.”

“Yours?”

You have to think about this. At last you decide: “Through The Dark.”

“Ah. A deep cut.” Aemond checks his phone again. “Look up,” he tells you.

“Why…?”

“Right now. At the sky. Look up.”

You go to the balcony railing and peer up into the sea of darkness and moon and stars. And at first you don’t see anything extraordinary…but then you do. There’s a thin flash like white ink on black paper, tracing its way along the arc of the Earth. There’s a visitor, there’s a time traveler. “What is it?” you ask Aemond, entranced.

He gets up to stand alongside you. “The Perseids. A meteor shower that happens every summer. They’re difficult to spot from a city. Too bright, too much light pollution. There are hundreds, but here we’re lucky to glimpse one or two.”

“But they’re always there,” you muse, remembering what he told you in Rome about the comet that gave the band its name. “Whether we see them or not.”

Aemond points up at the faint silvery glimmer in the indigo night. “The Perseids are from a comet too. They’re debris left by Swift-Tuttle.”

“Doesn’t quite roll off the tongue like Donati, does it? And no potential for cute donut merch.”

Aemond smiles. “Comet Swift-Tuttle is the largest object to cross Earth’s orbit so closely. Very, very closely. Luckly, it only swings by us every 133 years. It’s been called the single most dangerous object known to humanity.”

“I thought that was Jace.”

He bursts out laughing, gazing over at you with a face that in this moment he is unashamed of. “I’ve never met anyone like you.”

“I’m a universe away from Shelby, that’s for sure.”

Aemond’s smile dies. He clears his throat and puts out his cigarette. “I guess I should get going.”

“Yeah, I need to go to sleep.”

“Okay.”

He hesitates, he acts like he’s going to say more, he leaves you on the balcony as he retreats back to his own suite, his own life, his own past and future and secrets.

And before you crawl into your empty bed, you look up at the Perseids one last time as they hurtle through space and time and gravity, through a landscape of constellations that Aemond could tell you the names of, through the dark.

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