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Aemond leaves a young man and comes back a child.
He seeks her out, frantically, as soon as he dismounts Vhagar. She knows to look for him when she sees the tremendous beast outside of the Keep. The murderous beast. She’s shocked when Aemond tells her of Lucerys’s death; she holds him, shakes him, kisses his jaw. Then she insists that they call for a meeting of the council.
The Prince repeats what happened to his nephew in front of the small council, his mother the Dowager Queen at his side. Aemond does not claim it was his intention to kill Luke, but does not offer to the men reunited the same details he told her, either. Alicent looks at him. He keeps a stern face, but he hasn’t stopped shaking since he landed.
“You only lost one eye,” Otto spits. He’s trembling too, with fury. “How could you be so blind?”
There is shame in her father’s eyes, Alicent knows how to recognise it. And also, she thinks, fear. For a moment, he looks at her; his composure lost, hurt or betrayal in those sad, clear eyes of his. Her children are not as dutiful as she was: her father is learning that his own blood, mingled with the blood of the dragon, can be difficult to tame.
Aemond looks down, paler than ever.
“Do you realise what you brought upon us?”
This time he snaps back. “You crowned Aegon.”
Alicent takes his arm. Tall, strong as he is, sometimes even she forgets he’s still just a boy. Put him under too much pressure, and he’ll talk back to his grandsire in front of the most powerful lords in the realm.
Lord Wylde snorts quietly, Tyland Lannister looks uneasy. It’s in front of them that Otto Hightower feels ashamed. He doesn’t care about Grand Maester Orwyle, who’s been looking at his marble ball, nor about Lord Strong’s opinion.
Larys offers nothing if not a sympathetic look of concern.
It is Aegon who settles the question when he enters the room. “You're back?” he asks warily of his brother. He’s quick to change his mood when he learns the news. Fear and amazement both colour his cheeks. “So now it begins,” he says hoarsely.
“Let’s make it a good beginning, Your Grace. We’ll have a feast,” Wylde proposes.
“A feast,” repeats Tyland Lannister, raising his head at the first mention of spendings.
Otto pauses, panting slightly, then closes his eyes. “Yes. Of course,” he murmurs. “We’ll announce this ourselves.”
Alicent looks at her boys. They’re both pale, only now understanding what the older men immediately grasped. They need to own this, to make it look like a victory, a conscious choice. They will appear cruel, but this way they can present this murder as a show of power; better than say they made a mistake. This is something they’ll never be allowed from now on, and her sons are going to learn it soon enough.
She wishes she could do something more for them, but right now she can’t. She looks at Aemond’s profile, at Aegon’s frown. She needs to let them be men now, in front of the others; she’s been the Queen Dowager for less than a week and already nobody cares to ask for her opinion. Her sons leave the room with their grandfather and the others hurriedly follow, not wanting to be confronted with her.
Lord Strong remains last. He hasn’t spoken a word, but his gentle face is still in place when he pulls himself up, and takes his slow steps towards the door.
“Your Grace,” he murmurs.
Alicent looks up at him, startled; he has the warmest voice right now. He’s stopped at her side. The sympathy on his features look sincere, different from the one he feigned before. “We are prepared for this.”
Or at least, he is, he seems to imply. Is it meant to be reassuring? He did the same on the ship back from Driftmark; came to give her comfort, in his terrible way. It was about Aemond, that time, too. If she thinks of her children, Ser Criston and Lord Larys are the men who come to mind; not Viserys, not even her father.
But Larys would have brought her that eye, not Criston.
“I’m glad to hear it, my lord.”
He smiles, bows, and leaves.
He does not seem to feel remorse for what he asks of her. He wants what he can have.
A surreal few days begin, frenzied with the preparations for the feast.
If Alicent had hoped to get more time with her sons, she is soon met with a different reality. She is welcome to keep company with Helaena, the new Queen, but the machine of war has started and its primary effect seems to be that men go back to being men and women, no matter how highborn, go back to being women.
Everyone is too busy. Except for the newly appointed Master of Whisperers, it would seem. Alicent has no idea how he manages to get any sleep. He’s present at every meeting and she glimpses him deep in conversation with her father, Lord Wylde or Ser Tyland. Larys is clearly behind a good part of the intelligence they discuss, and must surely be most occupied with the confessors in the dungeons. Still, he’s gracious and quiet whenever they cross each other’s path; he still succeeds in bowing to her at odd hours in the Holdfast, in the Godswood, smiling with his knowing eyes.
Larys Strong has mastered the art of being in the company of women. He has done that by blending in with them and learning how to talk to them, of course, but maybe he himself does not realise how much he has picked up from them. In his manners, in the nuances. The way he moves, slowly, carefully: it is the way of a cripple, of course, but it has a certain grace. There’s a skill to it. The same skill women learn in order to not trip over their gowns, to not undo their hair, to never appear unladylike in front of others - in front of men, who represent a dangerous audience during the whole of a woman’s life. Their liking the show can be crucial; one never knows when their believing the show will become a matter of life and death.
And so does Larys, he moves as someone who learnt how to save energy, how to not be an inconvenience. How to not make a mess of himself. The softness of his voice, the time he takes to pick his words, his low hums, the little, tentative smiles. His rich robes, long and embellished, the chain flashing gold at his neck: even those details are somehow unmanly on him. He’ll never stride the halls in a hurry, he’ll never laugh loudly over wine, he’ll never fling her doors open in anger. He wouldn’t even if he physically could. Not just his clubfoot but his birth, also, prevented that side of him from ever developing.
But Alicent learnt long ago that he’s not to be thought of as a woman, nor as possessed of any of the kind qualities associated with the fairer sex. There is a distinct maleness to him.
First of all, he is dangerous.
And despite learning very early in her life that women can and will make terrible enemies, Alicent still feels that danger truly only comes from men. Real danger. That will see no reasoning, will understand no mercy, will accept no settling. That cannot be undone. The final danger: the violence without motivation, the thirst for blood, the sheer force. The abuse that will bring about no consequences, because the violence of men on women never does. The understanding that any man carries within, that hurting another being can be done just because one wants to.
This is something that Larys understands very well. He’s not careless nor dull, far from it; he uses violence and menaces cleverly, for a goal. Often aligned to her interests, even. But the way he disposes of this power, the ease with which he chooses to inflict pain, the risks he takes: he’s more of a man in this regard than Viserys ever was. His boldness and recklessness are in the little things, but she, more than anyone, has seen them many times, glimpses that scared and often impressed her.
Soldiers march behind their lord’s banner because they swore an oath, because they have to; because it’s a tradition going back generations. Men kill in the darkness at the order of Larys Strong and he himself is the only reason for it.
And then there’s the other thing. The last thing in the list, or the first, she feels sometimes.
He’s so clearly a man in the way he wants her.
Larys doesn’t try to impress like many men do. He likes beautiful things, but he’s not vain like Jason Lannister, and he’s never flaunting his prowess, his physical qualities like his late brother. It’s obvious: how could he? He has won no tournament, defended no lady, fought no rival. He cannot even ride.
He’s forced on his own, seated in his silks, clutched to his cane, all day long, looking at her.
And there is an intensity in that, a restraint. It makes her feel the realness of his power much more than swinging a sword could ever do.
She’s seen her share of that: warriors and knights, young and old, noble and sly, unblemished and scarred. Men can fight for glory, for hate, for futile reasons and sometimes for important reasons. But by now she’s seen it all.
Lord Larys Strong, on the other hand… the carefulness he uses when positioning his walking stick, the way his hands come together in his lap while he’s so clearly devouring her with his eyes. He moves his fingers slowly and she perceives that he’s feverish.
He waits for her to remove her stockings, he’s silent, but she can feel that he’s pressing his lips tight with all his determination.
What if he let go?
She’s scared of it. At the beginning she was also disgusted, shocked. Disappointed.
But she started wondering after a while. She thought the humiliation would never go away, and in a way that’s true, but the pain it brought her has somehow lost its edge. It’s not just that she’s by now used to it; it’s also because it changed, the way their pact works, and it did when she started feeling that she was not the only one being humiliated.
He does that to himself too.
She doesn’t think it’s her that became more observant; she believes he revealed it through his actions because he did not expect her to start noticing. To look. What had he told her so many years ago? When one is never invited to speak, one learns instead to observe.
She noticed that, after the second or third time he’d forced her to show him her feet and wait for him to come, he no longer appeared as thrilled by her shock. Her resignation made him quicker to release, angrier. But he did not direct that anger against her.
He would clean himself absent-mindedly, frowning, his eyes distant as if berating himself. He leaned heavier on his cane when he left, and she swears he started hunching more on it whenever he planned to make his request to her, as if already knowing it would bring him pleasure and hurt in the same amount.
She still hated it, still felt dirty and hollow after it, and he looked at her before leaving as if that was entirely what he wanted. But she knew now that this torture was meant for both of them. And she understood that she needed not fear he would ever cross the room and touch her, force her in any other way, for his aim was to indulge in his own shame and amplify it by bringing her with him. He would never try and take her by force like a normal man would a woman, because he knew he was not a normal man and wanted her to feel like she was not a normal woman, either.
To a certain extent, this violence he used against both himself and her was, also, something that made him more of a man in her eyes.
Hence the question: what if he did what a normal man would do?
For all his self hatred, he clearly wants to. She feels it’s more evident when they’re not alone, when he cannot ask anything of her, so he just watches. And in watching her he lets a world of signs escape his face: he looks at her as if he was her betrothed, longing to give her his name and tell others “Here comes my lady wife”; her lover, burning to be back in their bed, trapped between her legs, sucking at her fingers; her servant, kneeling at her feet, kissing her dress.
Sometimes he smiles, the ancient softness in his eyes, when she enters the small council chamber, fully dressed for a meeting; sometimes he smirks with pride at her words or looks at her, politely challenging. They rarely really talk to each other in public, despite often being together, and Alicent thinks this also is for the same reason: because he likes to keep himself at a distance whenever he allows himself to feel for her, and only get closer in the way he knows how to.
So, to go back to her original question. What if she forced his restraint? At the beginning she thought it would be suicide: he was already hurting her so much as it was, why would she risk unleashing an even darker part of him?
But now she’s certain this is not how it’d go. If anything, because her acting in an unforeseen way would break the rules of the game. He would have to think quickly, to act on impulse. What would it be like, making him lose control?
(She knows of course she's being silly. She's got in herself the worst of an old matron and of a naive maiden, at the same time. Still fantasising about being loved by a man who will think only of her and do anything for her sake; still asking herself what life would be like, had she been a less virtuous wife, a less devoted mother.)
He’s been working on Mysaria's net, often coming to his Queen with news, as he goes through it like wildfire. It’s become almost a habit in the last week, having the Master of Whisperers showing up with tidbits of information, so much that when tonight he comes to sit down in front of the fire, Alicent doesn't wait for instructions and simply starts massaging her stockinged feet.
Larys freezes for a moment, immediately mesmerised, his hand still on the cane he’s propping against the seat. She is familiar by now with the way he starts staring at her while talking, as if he’s able to speak without really being there, his feelings and thoughts focused elsewhere.
“Are you…” he begins, his voice almost dreamy, “perhaps, interested in the way I resolved the problem we discussed last night, my Queen?”
Alicent closes her fingers against her ankle, stopping her movements to look at him. He’s still gazing at her foot, but brings his chin up in answer to her silence.
She has serious eyes, worry at the sides of her mouth. “I am, Lord Larys. Of course.”
He still has that face, the transfixed one; his eyes not blinking, pupils small and eyebrows slightly raised, the mouth carefully opening to lick his lips. She can imagine the rest, the things she cannot see: his heart starting to beat faster, the fingers twitching while his arousal grows. And his mind running away to some other place, lest he allows himself to see in her anything more than a means to an end. He expects her weary face, he counts on her discomfort.
He starts talking: “The last one of our little bees, it turns out…”
She puts her hand on the back of her foot, pushing it further towards him on the table. He stops, smiles to himself, resumes: “...could be convinced to accept a new keeper, with the right price. I paid that price, as we agreed yesterday. It has already proven a fruitful bargain.”
And he stops again, waiting. But this time she doesn’t move.
They look at each other, and when Larys realises that her expression has changed, he starts coming back. She sees that he’s looking at her now, for real: trying to decipher her intentions. He’s not pleased but he sees her. She used to like that, having him actually see her.
“Do you not wish to learn how, Your Grace?” he asks, just the slight hint of menace in his voice.
“I’m very tired, tonight, my lord. But yes, I would like to hear everything you have to say.”
She’s still in the same pose, foot in front of her, her arms behind her to prop her on the loveseat, offering herself. But does not make a move.
His mouth twists for a moment, he furrows his brows. Then he turns around, already picking up his cane, calmly. “Do forgive me, my Queen.” He stands up, taking his usual stance; though this time she’s certain that he’s keeping his arm on his stomach so as to hide his erection behind the long sleeve.
He takes a step towards the secret door he always uses to come in, looking down while Alicent follows him with her eyes, and goes on in his cheerful voice: “In my haste to bring you this news, I forgot what a difficult moment this is. I’ll leave you. Please rest and…” He stops at her side, just like he did in the small council chamber. “We will resume this. Another day, when you’re in a better disposition.”
She looks back at him. He’s quick to recover, always in control.
“Lord Larys,” she says.
He looks expectant.
“Your Grace?” he answers politely.
“Why don’t you do it?”
He does not understand, not yet. “What would you have me do, Your Grace?”
Alicent feels tired for real; almost disappointed. So she makes a sudden decision. She rotates on her seat, moves her leg in his direction and rests her foot on the floor, the big toe almost touching the club foot.
"Why don’t you take that off?" she asks, and despite frustration being a major part of her motivation, she cannot help but make her voice lower, sultrier.
She knows Larys Strong doesn’t love her, she knows he’s a twisted creature only led by his own demons. She knows he could hurt her, that he can’t be trusted. He might even be insane. But he’s been offering himself to her, over and over, as an ally, a friend, an accomplice, even a strange kind of lover, abusing her while asking to be used. She could take what he’s got to offer, just this one time. See how it makes her feel. See if she can take a little part of him out and contribute to the pain he seems so keen to inflict upon himself and others.
(She does think that it would be exciting if he reacted in a certain way. If he looked at her as if she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen and confessed that he had just been waiting for her to ask him this. In his own sick way he did not mean to hurt her, he was just respecting her. Now that she gave him permission he would serve her, adore her.
She would not even have to worry about sinning or forsaking her duties, because he would be so pure, so devoted. He would be like Ser Criston, really. He would kiss her feet and she would feel beautiful and relieved.)
Larys is frozen, but this time not because he's lost in his fantasy. Again, he looks at her. And he’s so tall that he towers over her: so naturally imposing, right when he was simply taking his leave, as if he cannot help showing his real strength.
He clenches his cane, slowly. She’s not sure why. This is uncharted territory.
Alicent clears her throat. “Lord Larys. I know we have an… arrangement. I’ve not always liked the rules, but I respected them, didn’t I? I’m now suggesting we… consider new ones.”
“Is this in jest, Your Grace?” His voice is very low and very cold.
“Why would I jest?” She’s a little short in her answer. “Have you ever led me to believe that I could jest about such things?”
Larys keeps still, clearly thinking. He squares his jaw. If she didn’t know better she’d say that he’s a little scared.
He finally looks down at her foot so close to his. And this time she knows exactly what he sees: his own shame, his deformity, and her healthy body, together. It’s painful.
Enraging. Enflaming.
His eyes are dark and burning when he looks at her, and his hand on the head of the cane is desperately livid.
“What would you have me do?” he asks again, but this time he has another voice. It’s as dark as his eyes, throaty. There’s desire in it, but rage, too. It’s as if he cannot let the opportunity pass, but already hates himself because he knows in the end he will be defeated and derided once again.
Alicent swallows. “Did you want me to remove my stocking?”
He breathes once, heavily. “Yes.”
“Then do it. Do it yourself.”
Obviously, he’d have to let go of his cane in order to do that - to kneel, painfully, on the hard floor. He looks at her, and she can see that he’s hurt. He still thinks that she’s mocking him, that she has found a way of taking back the power he had gained over her.
And she should, she briefly considers. This was not what she intended - it was not a plan, and she’s not certain how it will work out, but it looks as if she’s stumbled upon a way of putting the Lord Confessor back into place, maybe just for one night. Why not use it? He could retaliate, but what of it? A part of her feels that there is nothing he can do that will scare her anymore. She should seize this moment.
Defeat on his face is something she hasn’t seen in many years, and brings back distant memories. The day Aemond’s eye was put out, she refused the help the Lord Confessor offered, and he looked at her like this. Wounded.
It seems he feels rejected whenever she does not need him - that he would feel needed while forcing himself on her like he has during this last year is certainly worrying, but she also feels pity. For both of them. For him and his sickening needs; for herself and her ability to understand him.
For her own needs and instincts.
(She wants to caress and be caressed. She always hoped to receive in return that which she’d already given; she tried that with her father, with Rhaenyra, with Viserys. She gave obedience, honesty, friendship. Love.
It didn’t work then and she knows already, as she starts to speak, that it certainly won’t work now. But she’s delusional, she always has been. She cannot help but feel that, if he were to actually touch her, she could try and feel something. And for this side of herself she feels the utmost pity.)
“Do you require a different position, my lord?” she asks gracefully. She stands up and gets to the sofa in front of the fire that's become his spot. She sits down, easily arranging her skirts around her so that only the feet stick out, resting on the seat. She puts her hands in her lap and looks up at him. “I think I prefer it like this. Can we proceed?”
Larys coughs sharply, as if he’s been holding his breath. “Whatever suits you, my Queen.”
He doesn’t look distant at all when he moves back towards her: he’s holding his eyes on her as if to prevent her from disappearing into thin air. He walks steadily, lowers himself on the cushion, rests carefully the cane on the usual nook; but as soon as he’s near her he reaches for her foot - the same one she offered before - and takes it in his hands, reverently. He puts it in his lap and just touches the wool, caresses it as if he needs to take baby steps into this.
Then he finally takes the stocking off and there’s the touch. He puts his palm to the sole of her foot, presses and slowly spreads his fingers open to massage her toes. He watches, tilting his head, smiling gently, as if he’s got something tender and precious in front of him.
He has elegant hands, she always thought so; Alicent understands now that he knows it too. He always intended to caress this beautiful part of her body with a beautiful part of his. She holds her breath, fascinated. His long fingers are warm, his gestures so careful. He’s taking normal, comforting pleasure in this - instead of seeking to degrade her and himself.
She puts forward her other foot.
He raises his head and looks at her in surprise.
“Go on, Lord Larys.”
And he tries to, even as she’s never seen him struggling so much to speak. “The… informant told me that, the last time the White Worm came to the tavern -”
“No, stop,” Alicent blurts out. “Not like this.”
Again, he moves his eyes, from the feet he’s cradling in his hands to her face. He has the uncertain look he used to have many years ago, when he couldn’t know that in their dealings he wouldn’t be the one to get hurt.
“Did I misunderstand your wishes, my Queen?”
She takes a deep breath. “I told you I was tired. You will tell me everything tomorrow, my lord.”
He looks at her, not daring to move. “You do not want to hear what I found out.”
Their voices keep getting lower and lower. "Not tonight."
“But do you want me to leave?”
Alicent hesitates. He’s frightening, that much is true: there is something of the animal in the fixity of his gaze.
He is a predator who’s to this day only shown her his skill at murder and maiming, and who’d have her believe it done for her sake. But he never revealed any ability to take pity, to let go. To stop.
Alicent watches him intently as she takes her feet off his lap and backs onto the arm of the sofa. Larys keeps painfully still but parts his lips when she takes herself from him, and furrows his brow. His eyes are wide. In the silence she can hear his rasping breath.
He only restrains himself with her, and she's about to ask him not to.
“Would you care to stay,” she murmurs. “I wonder.”
“My Queen,” he sighs. And this is yet another voice, one she has never heard: it’s pleading and lascivious.
She flinches. For some reason that voice brought a tear to her eye and a sinking, hot feeling in her stomach, between her thighs. She has been invoked thus, a few times, when she had just married and her husband needed to drown in her. She had thought it would become love, in the end. It hadn’t.
She gets on her knees to reach him, the way Larys could not, and straddles his lap before she can stop herself. “Yes,” she says, using her hands on his shoulders to steady herself. She’s not sure what she’s saying yes to; she’s already out of breath when she lowers herself to meet the hardness beneath his clothing. His hands are on her back before she’s even able to get at eye level with him.
Is this it, she thinks frantically. Are you it. Are you?
He looks at her, almost dazed, as if he doesn’t believe that this is real and doesn’t care. He kisses her before she can think of what to do next, forcefully, and she closes her eyes. Finally. Maybe she can enjoy this without thinking.
Larys opens her mouth with his, so hard that she’s pushed backwards. He bites her chin and she arches her back while he descends on her cleavage, his hands holding her hips. The strain is oddly pleasurable, and she finds herself widening her legs, opening her hands on his back in turn, fingers gripping at the fabric of his tunic. He has broad shoulders, if slim, and she discovers that this lean frame feels good to hold while he works on her. Male. For all his gangling looks, his muscles feel hard as they contract under her touch, and so does his cock.
She touches it through the fabric, and he inhales sharply, taking his mouth off her to look down at her hands, forehead pressed against her breastbone.
“These are not new rules,” he says. He sounds like he’s drunk, exhausted. “This is a new game.”
“Must it all be a game?” pants Alicent.
Larys raises his face and she realises she doesn’t want to close her eyes now.
“Is this a game?” she insists.
“It is.” He speaks softly, looking at her lips. He seems beguiled, his clear eyes as tender as they were when he told her he’d killed his family, because love is an encumbrance. “And it is not.” He kisses her again, sucks her lips, bumps his forehead into hers like a friendly pet. His hands move nervously on her thighs, squeezing her flesh through the skirt. He cannot resolve himself.
Alicent is sweating and her fingers are cold; she’s afraid of him and aroused at the same time. Now she must decide.
There are old rules that would help her, she has usually followed this path; but she’s on the other side now. Her husband is dead, she’s no longer the Queen; the future’s uncertain, only war surely approaches. She’s tired, she’s angry. Tonight she wants to act on her impulses.
She may never get this bold again.
Does she want this man? That’s another question, for another time.
Alicent lifts her skirts up to her knees, her hips already giving a small jolt in anticipation. He watches and breathes like he’s hanging on for dear life; his eyes are feverish, his pupils so small they make him look like a wolf. “Do give your worst, Lord Confessor,” she blows in his ear.
Larys grips her waist abruptly with his right hand while the left slides between them to search for her sex. She realises how drenched she is the same moment he does, and his low moan of delight makes her lightheaded. While he undoes his breeches, he pulls her so tightly to his own chest that she starts feeling breathless. He’s harsh, and she likes it. Likes the frantic, ungraceful movements he’s making to unfasten her undergarments - the Lord Confessor, the Master of Whisperers, ever so careful, like a woman. But he is a man. He cannot wait to get inside her.
When he does, she’s surprised at how pleasurable it immediately is, and gives out a strangled cry. She was ready for it to be a little painful; it always had been, in her marriage, especially in recent years, when so much time would pass between one encounter and the next. But she must admit she seldom was as willing as she is now.
He is the one keeping his eyes shut, now. He’s the one sweating, speechless. The strain on his face would be almost comical if Alicent wasn’t so dazed herself: she’s sitting on Larys Strong’s lap, pleasure mounting in her with each of his thrusts, arms around his neck like a girl making love in a field. Her hair is draped like a mantle on his back, like a lady’s prize to her champion in one of her books. This should feel really wrong. But it doesn’t.
It just feels good.
His breath breaks on her collarbones, and he grasps her nape to keep her closer; it seems essential to him that she presses against his body as much as physically possible. His groans grow louder and his movements erratic until he gives off a pained grunt.
“I can’t,” he pants, angrily, and without notice he moves to his right to push her with her back on the sofa.
“What -”
He doesn't answer but as he covers her, keeping his clubfoot out of the way, she realises it must have been bothering him. Does he hurt? It's just a quick passing thought - stop thinking - while she grabs his face, forcing him down for a kiss. She registers his surprise, his eyes glassy with fatigue and something else - hope? Relief?
Stop thinking. Alicent cannot believe how much she misses him now that he’s slid out of her. Her hands snap to his loins instinctively, she spreads her legs. “Don’t stop,” she commands, breathless.
He fumbles with their layered clothes and answers by re-entering her in one swift and deep movement, quickly going back to his rhythm.
Alicent knows she should hush, but for some reason her moan at the sudden sensation turns into a low, throaty laugh. Larys slows down, his quizzical expression already starting to look like hurt.
“Don’t stop,” she repeats, out of breath. “I’m not laughing at you.” She passes her hand on his cheek as a caress and wraps her legs around him, gloriously smiling, her eyelashes fluttering as she looks up above him, at her chandeliers, the ceiling of her room. She used to do that under Viserys, but what a difference.
She feels like such a fool, she feels like she’s seventeen. She feels like she never felt at seventeen.
She likes it; and it’s unbelievable how many things are changed by this simple fact. She always felt so helpless, since Viserys died… No, way before that. Always worrying about things she was repeatedly proven to have no power over. But tonight she’s powerful. Let them blame her, let them hate her. She doesn’t care tonight. Just because of this pleasure: this terrible freedom.
She even likes him. Right now, Alicent feels such tenderness for her murderous, dark servant, exerting his broken body on top of her, looking at her face as if he can’t believe the pleasure he’s giving her: she’s often been scared of him, but right now, she feels in her bones that he would never harm her.
He loves her in his own twisted way, her abuser. He’s not the only one in her life who has - loved her, abused her - but gods, has he worked hard to please her, compared to the others.
“Let me,” she murmurs, almost to herself, pushing at his chest. Larys puts up no resistance. She understands why he’s silent: she’s finally managed to shock him out of his careful ways. He just watches as she slides from under him, leaving him crouched on her sofa, face undone, hands trembling. His cock is still painfully hard.
She’s in no better condition: her hair is dishevelled and her bodice out of place. Her flesh burns as her skirts brush against her sex and thighs; her linen underclothes, whose strings he has untied, slips down her left leg. Alicent kneels on the floor and outstretches a hand.
“Come, my lord.”
He gets on his knees this time, quickly deciding to renounce retrieving his cane. Just minutes ago he looked at her with distrust, but now he gets on the floor with no hesitation, just a wince when he strains the muscles on his bad leg. Does he realise she poses no danger? Does he just not care as long as he can have her?
But the balance of power has shifted, they both feel it, and maybe they will only allow it as long as they don’t talk, so that they can later forget. She is the one who needs to be gentle, now, and gently she gets closer on the carpet. She helps him remove his coat that pools underneath them on the floor, and lowers his trousers so that she can straddle him again.
Only this time she calmly pushes him to lie down, glances back to check that his foot is resting in a comfortable position, and proceeds to open a few buttons of his shirt. His chest is hairy - she already knows that much: he struggles even to be clean-shaven, to tame his hair. Alicent never expected to find it endearing, though - such a man, she thinks tenderly as she slides her hands from his chest to his belly and lastly his manhood. He’s so tall, he has large hands; and he just proved he doesn’t lack virility. He would have made such a man.
She takes him in hand, gives a couple strokes that have him roll his head on the floor, then guides him inside her for the third time.
Keeping watch over him from under heavy eyelids, starting to rock her hips, Alicent reaches back to undo her own buttons, running in a long line on her back. Then she slips her arms out of her mourning dress, just enough to reveal her corset and expose her shoulders to the warmth of the fire.
Larys lets her set the pace, but his hands rise to caress her back, forcefully, as soon as he knows he can touch her bare skin. At this moment Alicent understands that he’d like to do more: to see all of her, touch all of her.
It’s an inflaming thought; that even as he’s already taking his pleasure, he still wants more from her. She looks at his face and realises that he’s looking back - not at her body, at a goal he’s reached - at her. He’s finally filling his eyes with the vision of Alicent Hightower beside herself with desire. Teeth on her plump bottom lip, brown eyes moist and teary lashes; chest rising in a ragged breath, thick curls brushing against the exposed tops of her breasts. He’s taking it all in while he caresses her hips and she feels, for a moment, truly beautiful, in a way she has never felt before.
“Larys,” she whispers.
His eyes widen. She has not called him such, without his title, since forever. But it feels silly, now, to pretend.
Alicent places her hands on his, squeezing his knuckles. She wants to say something, but doesn’t know what or how. Fear and amazement grip at her throat, together with the shuddering sensation of their joint bodies, of his gaze fixed on her. She looks down on him, half terrified, half exhilarated. He makes her feel as if she can do whatever she wants.
“Such mystery,” Larys murmurs in his silky voice, as if talking to himself. He’s smiling at what he sees, apparently content.
Alicent realises they have been doing this for half an hour maximum and they have been able to understand each other in a way that she never experienced with her husband, during twenty years of marriage.
(It’s not to say that she was never able to feel pleasure with Viserys: after a while, she got the hang of it and tried to enjoy herself at least a little bit. But it was never like this. Viserys was making love to a ghost, or maybe to whatever image of her he still had in his mind; he acted as if giving her pleasure was something he would be ashamed to do, something that would make her become real.)
Larys Strong, on the other hand. Having him inside her makes her feel as if she’s taking, not being taken. He feels as if he’d make it his duty to serve her thus every night, should she ask for it. There is no fear on his face, and whatever shame there was, right now she has wiped it away. There is only want and need.
Why the feet? she thinks in a sudden moment of clarity. Why did he not ask for this, instead? The thought makes her almost angry, and she starts moving quicker. Her lover answers from beneath her, tilting his hips up to meet her own. Soon she’s curved over him, hands to both sides of his face, and he’s gripping her so strenuously that she’s sure he’ll leave a bruise. She stretches along his body and kisses him, languidly. The firelight softens his traits and the little lines under his eyes. They breathe into each other’s lips, more and more laboriously, the sounds of their coupling filling the air.
“Don’t hold back.” They’re slick with sweat, and she can feel shivers going through his body. “I’ll have tea in the morning.” The hint of tenderness in her voice is almost lost through her panting.
Larys deepens his frown. “I want you to… be satisfied.”
“I am.”
“I mean -”
“I know what you mean.” She covers his mouth with her hand. “It won’t happen tonight.” And before he can argue again, she bends down for another kiss, biting his lips, lifting herself so that his length plunges in and out of her in a few final thrusts that she knows will make him delirious. He shudders calling her name among uncontrolled moans. Not my queen, nor any other pleasantry.
Alicent.
It feels incredibly good to push him to climax. A reversal of the fear and shame he gave her; and though others could argue that he’s the one getting the best out of the bargain, she relishes having such power. Tonight was no little feat. As for her release, she’s used by now to doing without.
She never quite understood it with Viserys. Her pleasure was rare, silent. Bitter. His was unmistakable, if brief; but after a while - after learning that it was supposed to hurt and she was supposed to bear it - she could not bring herself to feel happy or proud anymore.
(Afterwards he would always tell her how good she had been, how beautiful, how kind. He immediately went back to treating her like a father; she suspects that this was also why he had ended up deserting her bed. Because she was by now too much of a woman for him to trick himself into believing that she did not understand.)
But now, looking into Larys’s face - blissful, incredulous, raptured - she begins to understand how it must be. The final gift for a lover, the joy a lady can bestow on her knight. Something worth giving, that she still possesses.
His pleasure is a welcome sight.
Even as she feels so hollow.
At some point during their last frenzy he rested his hands on her knees, and suddenly Alicent feels it all. Now that he’s catching his breath, his body still, now her room is quiet and she feels all the sounds, all the friction, all the smells reminding her of what they’ve done. The sweat getting cold on her shoulders and her cheeks; her muscles aching, every spot where they touch; the uneasiness getting a hold of his face.
“My Queen,” he spells carefully.
She’s glad he understands, once again.
“My lord.” One last time she passes her fingers on his cheek and his chest. “I am very satisfied, my lord. Very.”
The darkness is coming back to his eyes. Larys rakes his fingers through his hair, instinctively, then props himself on his elbows. “You’re not.”
Alicent gently disentangles herself from him and stands up. Her exerted knees are weak and she needs to grasp the back of the sofa to steady herself. She feels his seed inside her - it brought prayers to her lips whenever that happened with Viserys, prayers that it would not mean another child - and pushes her thighs together.
Larys is looking at her and Alicent suddenly remembers that he’s a dangerous man and she will fear him again, come morning. She doesn’t want to make him unsatisfied. But now she has a better understanding of the hurt behind his threats.
She picks up his cane and goes back to him. He’s already taken a handkerchief out of the mess they’ve made of his long sleeved coat, and is cleaning himself. She kneels at his side, resting the cane on the stone with a gentle thud, so that he can get it himself.
“Our game has given me great pleasure, my lord. I owe you. As I always do.” She talks looking at him intently, seriously.
He nods, eyes locked with hers. “I’m your servant.”
“And my ally. Nobody could ever fulfil this role as you do.”
She means it. He has made himself irreplaceable, in whichever way they choose to look at it.
Larys is still wary, but at these words his eyes look bluer and he smiles his quivering little smile.
(She often wonders, now that she's old enough to be a grandmother, why can she not have at least this for herself: if she cannot have happiness and love, at least to make a man unhappy, the way Rhaenyra did with Cole?)
She knows him now. It’s a nice feeling to bring with her around the castle. She knows parts of him that others don’t.
Not the people in the small council, at court - the men he never jokes with, those who regard him as little more than a eunuch. And not women - has he ever slept with anyone, here? Any lady, any maid? Any whore? She realises she always took for granted that he hadn’t - that unfortunately she was the only one he cared for. Now she finds herself surprisingly annoyed at the possibility.
Alicent has discovered that she, too, likes to watch him, now that she covets what he’s got to offer, just as he coveted what was in her. It took him less to see her than it took her to see him, but then again, she never denied having been a silly little girl.
It may not be so glamorous, not so chivalrous this thing that they have - but she starts cherishing the idea that it’s theirs. She renounced her dreams of valiant knights long ago, believing that they existed, yes - just out of her reach, destined to serve others. Princesses like Rhaenyra. But now she wonders if she got it wrong - for who was Larys, if not her champion? Maybe this is what a real knight looks like.
And she is his lady - her, too, imperfect: older than she’d like, disillusioned and tarnished.
But she does reward her servants.