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Everything happens in slow motion.
There’s a sound like a whip cracking through the air, familiar. Alicent’s head turns, searching for the sound, her own gun raised, searching, searching-
The suspect, the man they’ve been chasing for over two months, is just yards away, a face she’s memorized in her sleep, dreamed about night after night, and now, his face is twisted, unfamiliar, compared to the icy, disinterested expression he always wore in Alicent’s ruminations. Now, he’s all anger and rage- and that’s all she can take in before-
There’s another gunshot.
The suspect crumples like a marionette, and Alicent can do nothing but stand there and watch him fall.
She can’t take her eyes away.
She thinks that she must be dreaming, because in no world has she imagined it being this easy, months of research and databases and agonizing over every minute detail to end like this, with just two shots fired.
Agent Targaryen- who has always been faster, a better shot, a better observationist, a better everything - lowers her still-smoking gun, turning to Alicent with a victorious grin that quickly fades to horror-
It’s the unfamiliarity of that look in Rhaenyra Targaryen’s eyes, a sudden fear- that flips the switch, snaps Alicent back into real time, and with it, the extra noise comes rushing in, too, and everything is loud-
And she can’t put a finger on what’s changed, what’s different, and her thoughts crack under the weight of it, the wrongness of it, and then her thoughts shatter shatter into nothing but pain- a searing kind of pain that starts in Alicent’s stomach and burns-
She stumbles. Her hand goes instinctively to her abdomen and comes away red.
//
Black SUVs on a crime scene are never a good sign, is the first thing Alicent Hightower learns once she’s passed the detective exam.
“Everything you’ve learned about the hierarchy on scene, everything you’ve been told about your authority, goes out the window when the feds arrive,” Orwyle had told her, his jaw set, a resentment burning in his eyes. “They’ll come in like they own the place. They’ll take your notes, everything you’ve spent weeks building in the case, rip it apart with some fancy lingo of theirs. If you’re lucky, they’ll solve the case and take the credit. If you’re not lucky, they’ll fuck up every ounce of goodwill you’ve built up with your sources, your witnesses- and they’ll leave it even worse than they found it.”
She thought that he was exaggerating at the time. Thought that the federal and local rivalry was something drummed up for television, that if they were all working toward solving the case, surely they would get along for justice.
How naive she was.
She managed to avoid the federal bureau until three years into wearing the detective’s badge. The case that ends up breaking the streak is one she doesn’t think she’ll forget any time soon- a father whose wife and two children went missing, a neighbor who insisted that it wasn’t a routine case-
And it wasn’t a routine case- not when they find footage of the father returning home late at night to load something into his pickup truck and disappear into the night.
The feds descended on the case within hours of Alicent putting out a BOLO on his car, with their bright red and blues and black cars that barely made any sound when they peeled onto the scene, and out stepped an agent with hair so light it’s silver, cut short and worthy of a K-pop album cover, wearing sunglasses that Alicent knew for a fact are more expensive than her own day’s work-
“Agent Rhaenyra Targaryen,” the agent said, with a sideways smirk, the introduction and outstretched hand directed at Officer Cole, Alicent’s junior partner. “You must be Detective Hightower.”
Alicent has never loathed someone upon meeting them, but she thinks that her first meeting with Agent Targaryen might come awfully close.
//
When Alicent comes to, it’s to the tickle of grass on her neck.
Strangely, she doesn’t remember laying down. The ground is cold- it’s only just begun to frost overnight, and the day has been reasonably warm, but the ground is still cold and dewey - it seeps through her wool blazer, and she shivers.
“Hightower, open your eyes,” someone is saying- ordering, really- and something in her knows she should be angry, defiant, but she’s tired. “Open your eyes.”
They’re worried.
It’s strange, that tone- and Alicent opens her eyes, needing to know why-
She’s staring right into bright violet eyes, leaning over her.
“There you are,” Rhaenyra says, and is that relief?
“Where else would I be?” Alicent says, tries to snap, she can’t. She’s tired.
The corners of Rhaenyra’s mouth turn up, but only for a moment. “You’ve been shot, detective. The paramedics are on the way.”
Alicent’s brows furrow.
Shot.
She always imagined being shot feeling very different from this. When she’s watched other people get shot, there’s a kind of energy to the aftermath, a frantic kind of fear they have in their eyes.
She just feels… numb.
Her stomach hurts, and something’s pressing down on it, and it’s heavy, like there’s a fifty-pound weight on her, determined to press her into the ground, and even deeper.
She squirms, trying to get away from it, get away from the hurt, and the movement sends a sharp spike of pain lancing through her body.
“Get- off,” she begs. She doesn’t know what it is, why it won’t move, no matter how much she tries to get it to move. She knows she’s being childish, but the pressure-
“It’s just me,” Rhaenyra says, softer than she’s ever spoken to Alicent, and regretful, even. “I have to put pressure on you to slow the bleeding down. That’s all it is, just me, alright?
“No, no, get it off-”
Alicent squeezes her eyes shut. It’s not alright. She can’t breathe. It hurts, and it’s frigid, frigid and getting worse.
“I can’t. I know it hurts. I have to do this. You know this. Remember your training.”
Rhaenyra seems insistent, and she always gets her way, and Alicent is bitter, but she’s exhausted, and so she stops fighting-
//
“I’m Detective Hightower,” Alicent had said, her jaw clenched, and stuck out her hand.
It was quick- but Alicent caught it, the ever-so-slight raise to Agent Targaryen’s brow before she managed to wipe her face clear of a response.
“My apologies,” the agent said smoothly, shaking Alicent’s hand. “A misunderstanding on my end. This is my unit-” she rattled off four other names- “And we’ll be taking over command of this case from here on. I don’t know if your sergeant informed you yet, but someone called in the license plate you were looking for. He’s crossed state lines, looking to end up somewhere near Driftmark. We’ll need access to your files, and any other evidence you’ve managed to compile about the case in the meantime.”
It was almost as if Agent Targaryen was reading off the damn checklist of things Orwyle tried to warn her about. Alicent wished she’d paid more attention.
She didn’t miss the subtle jab to Agent Targaryen’s words, either. Managed to. Like they were incompetent just because they didn’t have the same fancy technology and funding.
“We’ll have Larys send over the files,” Alicent said, lips pressed into a thin line.
“Fantastic. Connect him with Agent Velaryon here. Meanwhile, take me through the scene.”
“Officer Cole, please inform Officer Strong that he is to send Agent Targaryen all of our files on the Lannister case, and get the rest of their team set up in our headquarters,” Alicent ordered, with a pointed look to Criston, whose cheeks are flushed, and looks like he’s about to start salivating over the silver-haired agent in front of them. He deflates almost immediately, but nods. “I will walk Agent Targaryen through our scene.”
Two can play at this game.
//
Alicent loses track of time staring up at the sky, watching the clouds drift lazily across her field of view. It can’t have been longer than a minute or two, but it feels like an eternity.
She can hear Rhaenyra speaking, but it’s muffled.
I’m at the park --- the corner of --- and Pine --- come quickly, please--
A gust of wind blows a strand of Rhaenyra’s silver hair into her eyes, and Alicent shivers.
“I’m cold,” Alicent mumbles, her fingers blindly fumbling for a place to grip onto Rhaenyra’s arm, because she doesn’t know how else to name this, what it feels like, the emptiness and the fatigue, and she needs Rhaenyra to understand, to do something about the chill that’s seeping into her bones-
“I don’t have an extra jacket, I’m sorry,” Rhaenyra says, and sounds genuinely apologetic.
Strange.
Alicent knows she’d been wearing one. She’s made an effort, to notice those types of things, and especially when it comes to Rhaenyra, lately.
Where did her jacket go, then?
She turns her head, looks down, at Rhaenyra’s white button-down. It’s stained with something red, toward the bottom of her sleeves, and then Alicent follows the sculpted lines of Rhaenyra’s arms to her own stomach, where Rhaenyra’s federal bureau jacket is soaked in blood-
Alicent’s heart lurches, and she thinks she might throw up, then, at the blood, Rhaenyra’s jacket saturated in it, so dark it’s almost black, on her hands, too-
She’d forgotten.
Somewhere, she’d forgotten she’d been shot.
It scares her, maybe more than the blood, that she can’t remember, despite being told before. The memory of it slips through her mind like water. The last few minutes are hazy.
Her chest heaves, and reflexively, she tries to sit up, tries to get away from the suffocating panic, but she can’t, Rhaenyra’s pressing, pressing her down.
She’s never felt so helpless.
“Hey,” Rhaenyra shushes. She lifts one hand to cup Alicent’s cheek and brush an auburn curl out of her face. “It’s alright. I’m here with you. You’re going to be okay.”
I’m not, Alicent thinks. She’s seen plenty of blood on crime scenes, but she’s never seen so much blood like this, still warm from the body it’s leaving behind.
There’s something terrifying about watching her life spill onto the hands of someone she barely knows, knowing that she’s probably going to die here, on the grass of a random park she’s never been to before.
She thinks of her mother, then. Wonders what her last words were, when she knew she was going to die, too.
“R-Rhaenyra-” she croaks, but the name barely manages to leave her mouth. Her lips are dry. She tries to wet them, but it doesn’t help.
She’s so cold.
“Rhaenyra,” she tries again, and Rhaenyra looks down at her, with those violet eyes, full of concern and so gentle, and Alicent forgets what she wanted to say. “I’m cold,” is what comes out instead, again, bewildered, lost, but she is - so cold, and tired, and she knows she’s supposed to fight something but she can’t remember what it is.
“I know,” Rhaenyra says, and she looks ruined. “Just a little longer, Alicent, I promise.”
It’s the first time she’s ever said Alicent’s name.
It’s nice, Alicent decides. Nicer than ‘Detective.’
//
When the case proved longer than they all (clearly) thought it would be, they fell into a reluctant pattern.
Alicent, as it was with every case she works, was the first to show up to the bullpen every day, and the last to leave.
But as the days stretched into weeks, and the weeks stretch into months, Agent Targaryen became a ghostly presence beside her. They don’t speak, especially the first few times Alicent arrived to find the agent already there- but they work in the same spaces, dancing around each other, around the boards, around the files.
The first breakthrough they get was from Agent Targaryen, and Alicent was unreasonably bitter about it.
She’d been through the suspect’s financials multiple times- and yet she’d missed the very thing that began pulling the pieces of the case together, stringing connections between the house, the car, the gambling debts.
The new evidence started to pile in, Agent Targaryen dogged about pursuing every lead. She worked her team to death, and Alicent’s team, as an extension of it- but Alicent was unwilling to relent, too. She refused to let the case she’s poured her soul into become another win in this agent’s portfolio alone, when she used to go to church with the wife that was murdered.
They were close.
One more breakthrough-
And they lost him again, after a near 24-hour day on the road and back, barely eating, barely sleeping.
He slipped through their fingers, and Agent Targaryen was furious, throwing her files onto the table when they return, the papers scattered across the floor.
“We’ll regroup tomorrow,” Criston said, melancholic, and she turned on him, a fire blazing in her eyes.
“Today,” she said, in a snarl. “We’ll regroup today, because your department cannot get their fucking act together, and it has cost us days- maybe weeks- more trying to track this man down. You do not get to go back to your little apartment and lick your wounds when there is a murderer on the loose. And you-” she spins on Larys. “You swore up and down that you left no breadcrumbs alerting him to-”
“That’s enough,” Alicent snapped. She rarely shouts, and this wasn’t a shout, either- but the hubbub in the room silences immediately at the chill in her voice. “Officers, get your paperwork in order and be back by 11 p.m.”
A moment of hesitation.
“Do it now.”
They obey, scurrying away like mice, none of them brave enough to look Alicent or Agent Targaryen in the eye, and though Alicent has given the federal agents no orders, they, too, fade away into the recesses of the bullpen.
“You do not berate my team members in front of me,” Alicent said, turning on the agent when she’s certain everyone has left. She kept her voice level. She knew that fury will get her nowhere. She learned that the hard way in this department- and in many ways, Rhaenyra Targaryen is much like the men she’s climbed the ladder beside. Headstrong, and just a little insecure. “That is my responsibility, not yours.”
“Then get your fucking officers into line, detective,” Agent Targaryen spat. “What happened out there cost us-”
“I’m well aware of what tonight has cost. I’m also aware that the lack of respect you’ve given to my colleagues is wildly unprofessional and immature. If you want to have any success at all in solving this case, you grant us the same respect you grant your agents. Otherwise, they will not come to you with information, and they certainly will not inform you when there are mistakes being made that could get people killed.”
“Understood,” Rhaenyra said, after a long moment, meeting Alicent’s gaze. Alicent could read the truth in them, the silent solidarity. Respect, even.
I hear you, her eyes said. She wasn’t deflated, but a little less fiery. But then, stubbornly- “You still need to get your technical analyst under control.”
Alicent, against her better judgment, laughed, a dangerous laugh. “Oh, I will.”
//
Alicent doesn’t know when she fades away, but the next time she's back, blinking, she’s in an ambulance, and there’s a flurry of commotion around her.
The sirens are a wailing cacophony in her ears. Every bump in the road is torture.
“Welcome back, detective,” the paramedic says, from where he’s leaning over her, and she tries to manage a response, but the only thing that comes out as a wretched gasp.
The pain is all-consuming now. She can’t even feel the cold. She thinks that might be a bad sign. Her abdomen is on fire. There’s something fighting in her chest, something suffocating. She can’t breathe.
“Can’t -- something for the pain -- she’s hurting --”
Her head lolls to the side, and Rhaenyra is there, her hand, bloody, on Alicent’s forehead, smoothing hair off her face. She looks anguished, desperate.
“R-rhae-” Alicent tries. She thinks she might be crying. She feels something wet on her cheeks, but knows it could very well be blood. There’s so much blood. She can’t even feel the pressure on her stomach anymore, if it’s still there or not. Her vision is hazy, tunneled. She tries to focus.
“We’re almost there,” Rhaenyra says. Her hand on Alicent’s face is the one bright spot, in all this pain. “Hold on, okay? Just hold on.”
Hold on for what?
Alicent’s not sure if there’s anything to hold on for, after all this. It’s agony, every moment, agony, crawling through her, and she needs it to be over, needs to wake up and have this be a dream-
But there’s so much blood.
Her dreams haven’t ever had this much blood.
“‘M scared,” Alicent whimpers, her throat tight. She’s on fire, her stomach and her chest. She’s never felt pain like this before, it’s hungry, devouring her alive-
Rhaenyra’s expression crumbles.
“You’re going to be okay,” she says, insistent. Neither of them know who she’s trying to convince more. “You’re going to live, and you’re going to keep yelling at idiotic men who try to tell you what to do. You’re going to yell at me for this, too.”
I won’t yell, Alicent wants to tell her, not when she’s been so gentle, so sweet, and she’s never felt this cared for, not in a long time, and wildly, she thinks that it’s a shame that she has to die for it.
//
They got drinks, once, two months and one week into the case, when they were the last left in the office and it was pouring rain. It was a waste of a day. They spent the whole time talking themselves in circles and get nowhere, and so they end it in a hole-in-the-wall bar instead of the bland walls of the bullpen.
It was the first real conversation they had. They talked about the case some, but it’s kept vague, knowing that the public ears are listening and they know it’ll get nowhere productive.
It’s at that bar, sitting at a sticky wooden table and drinking shitty beer, that Agent Targaryen became Rhaenyra. Alicent’s not sure when the switch happens- it might have been be one pint in, when Agent Targaryen apologized for her short temper that day.
It’s an anniversary, she said, and Alicent knew the weight of the words well enough herself to know that it’s not marriage she was referencing.
But maybe the switch is more like two pints, or even three, in, when they’re both trying and failing to play pool, sending shots wide on every turn, and Alicent told the agent about her father, and how he never wanted her to be a detective, and how she did it to prove him wrong, and maybe one day she’ll solve her mother’s murder.
She thinks it’s the understanding in Rhaenyra’s gaze that solidified the change, when Alicent reminisces about Otto’s vitriol when Alicent announced she’d be studying criminal justice.
“My parents approved,” Rhaenyra confessed, while she lined up her shot on the striped seven. “But they don’t understand that the successes in this job… they’re rare. They expect a lot, and I need this case to work. To make them understand how important it is. All those missed family dinners.”
Alicent got it, too.
They stayed far too late into the night, long enough that they’ve long since finished the oily fries and burgers they ordered, and long enough for Rhaenyra to sober up and drive both of them home. She dropped Alicent off at her apartment building, and for a split second, Alicent caught something new, a different kind of spark in Rhaenyra’s eyes, but then it fades.
“Goodnight, detective,” Rhaenyra said, with a familiar wink, and Alicent’s shoulders slump in what might be relief.
“Goodnight, agent,” she returned, before hopping out.
Rhaenyra waited in the driveway until Alicent’s stepped inside. Alicent waved from just inside the door, but she didn’t get one in response, which is fine.
It was likely difficult to see through the window, anyway.
Four days later, they were back in the precinct, like clockwork.
Larys found something.
A new lead, a small park of protected land on the edges of the city. Weirwoods, they call it. Someone who says he saw the suspect a few days ago.
Alicent and Rhaenyra didn’t even need to look at each other to know that they’re going. It’s routine by now, to check leads like this themselves. To be sure. To see if they can at least understand where their suspect is going, now that they’ve missed him yet again, and try and figure out what he wants.
(He hasn’t left.)
(They don’t know that.)
//
For the third time of the day- at least, she thinks of the day, Alicent wakes to Rhaenyra beside her. This time, she’s fast asleep, slumped in what looks to be an extremely uncomfortable, plasticky chair and a sweater Alicent has never seen.
Alicent takes the measure of her, carefully, needing to be sure.
There’s no blood. Not on her clothes, or her hands.
It’s a relief.
The overwhelming chaos from before is gone. The room- and it’s a room, not an ambulance- is painted in a dull eggshell, and it’s quiet, save for a monitor beeping in her ear.
She feels sluggish. Her body feels strange, heavy- but not in the same, crushing way as before. Just slow, like she’s underwater.
Alicent tries to lift her hand, and can barely manage to get it off the mattress. It’s enough to make a monitor let out a new beep, and Rhaenyra jolts upright, looking around, frantic, before her gaze settles on Alicent.
“You’re awake,” she breathes, scooting forward to read her elbows on the bed.
Alicent swallows. Her throat is dry. Her head is reeling, and the monitor beeps and beeps-
“Shh,” Rhaenyra says. She takes Alicent’s hand, strokes her thumb across the back of it, over the IV line. “You’re in the hospital. You had emergency surgery. There was pretty extensive damage to your abdomen, so you’ll want to take it easy, okay?”
She’s not sure she could do anything more than easy even if she wanted to. She’s exhausted, and her lower torso feels tight, and wrong, if she presses on it-
“Don’t do that.”
It’s the most firm Rhaenyra has been with her in- Alicent doesn’t know how long. Since she got shot is becoming her most accurate measurement of time. There’s a real fear in Rhaenyra’s eyes, too, in the way she watches Alicent, like she would watch an escalating situation in the field. Like she’s afraid something might happen.
“I’m sorry,” Alicent croaks. For scaring you. For not picking up on the weapon earlier. For getting shot. But Rhaenyra shakes her head.
“Don’t apologize. I should’ve known to vet the source better, checked Strong’s work,” she says. “If we had, we would’ve known to bring more backup.”
It’s clearly something Rhaenyra’s been thinking about, the way she grits the words out, and Alicent wishes she could tell her- really tell her- that it’s not her fault, and it’s not Larys’s either, but that heaviness is back, settling deep into her bones, her chest, her lungs.
She tries to fight it.
It terrifies her. Throws her back to not long ago, bleeding, staring up at the sky, trying not to- to fall asleep, to die, she’s not sure-
“Alicent,” Rhaenyra says, quieter, now. She tucks Alicent’s hair behind her ear again, squeezes her hand. The ambulance- “It’s okay. You’re on a lot of pain medication. The doctors said it would make you sleepy. It’s okay to rest.”
Alicent tries to shake her head, insist that she’s not tired, but she is, in a way she has never been before, in a way that if she closes her eyes and Rhaenyra isn’t here to watch her, she just might drift away.
“I’m here. It’s alright.”
If Rhaenyra says it’s alright, Alicent thinks, maybe it is. She said it was alright, under the Weirwood trees, and it was.
//
“-- you’re one to talk, letting her go in there without her vest, and not sticking with her, what the hell were you thinking?”
It’s the shouting that startles Alicent awake, wrenching her out of a deep, dreamless slumber and into the clinical, harsh room and fluorescent lights, and a persistent, throbbing pain in the pit of her stomach that hadn’t quite been there the first time.
It takes her a moment to orient herself, to identify the voices as Rhaenyra and Criston, just outside her room. She can see them through the window, chest to chest and faces beet red-
“Larys said it was clear-”
“And you believed him? I thought we made it clear that we should never trust Larys fucking Strong to provide accurate information on his own. I don’t care how close you are, even if you shared the same damn womb, I would say the same. You should have made sure of who he was, that he wasn’t our suspect’s damn brother. She died, Cole, do you understand that?”
Her stomach twists.
She clenches the sheets, tries to focus, but she keeps thinking about the park, the strange man on the bench, Rhaenyra, just a few steps behind her-
The monitors scream.
Rhaenyra’s voice stops, and then there are people, so many people around her-
Sedation -- she’s scared, Alicent -- okay --
//
She’s discharged nearly a week later. Leaves in a wheelchair, headed to Rhaenyra Targaryen’s apartment, of all people.
“She won’t be able to leave unless it’s into the care of a family member or friend,” the doctor had said, and the silence that followed had been deafening. Alicent had been barely awake, too hopped up on pain medication to do much, but-
“Not my dad,” Alicent had tried to say, begged . Gwayne Hightower didn’t pick up the phone, and Rhaenyra nearly bit off Criston Cole’s head when he tried to suggest that he do it.
“I’ll take her home,” Rhaenyra said, in a way that didn’t leave it up for discussion.
“At least take me out to dinner first,” Alicent slurred, and Rhaenyra had laughed- really laughed, for the first time in a long time.
“When you’re better, I will,” she said, and it sounded oddly like a promise.
Rhaenyra settles Alicent onto the couch of her apartment in an enormous mess of blankets and pillows. “I’m sorry that I don’t have a guest room,” Rhaenya says, running a hand through her frazzled silver hair. “You’ll sleep in my room at night, this is just temporary.”
Temporary, they both know, means a few weeks at least.
“Thank you,” she says, sincerely, and Rhaenyra gives her a hesitant smile.
“Any time.”
//
Alicent is miserable.
At first, the antibiotics she’s on fuck with her, make her disoriented and dizzy, and she can barely move or risk opening her stitches.
Rhaenyra fusses over her, fetches her water, helps her sponge down her body when she can’t stand feeling dirty anymore, dresses her in a soft, oversized sweater (to not catch on her stitches, she says with seriousness). It’s strange to see her so attentive, but then again, Alicent should have known she would be diligent.
She’s the same way in the precinct as she as at home- just… softer. Kinder.
Especially about the dreams. She’s so kind about the dreams, about Alicent waking her night after night. They begin about two weeks in, when her body has recovered just enough to want to fill in the spaces in her sleep, and those are the worst kind- frenzied, hectic, incomprehensible-
She wakes up sobbing, Rhaenyra kneeling at her side, worry in her eyes- are you in pain-
And yes, she is, she is in pain, but she’s not sure if it’s more the memory of it, or if it’s real.
Then there are the appointments, where doctors poke and prod at Alicent’s injury, assessing, picking at her, even.
She leaves despondent every time. She can’t muster the will to respond to Rhaenyra’s questions.
She wants to go home. To not have to rely on someone to help her get dinner, to take a shower.
It’s a slow climb to full health. Turns out getting shot in the stomach and having damaged organs is not exactly a fast track back to work- a fact that she bemoans to Rhaenyra nearly every day.
Rhaenyra is patient.
Alicent is not.
“I can’t believe they have a case and I can’t even work the desk,” she pouts, sitting at Rhaenyra’s breakfast nook, kicking her feet petulantly while Rhaenyra fiddles with her cute little stovetop coffee maker.
“You know you’re not cleared yet,” Rhaenyra reminds her, for the fifth time this week, and slides a mug over- a dash of cream, a spoonful of sugar. “Soon.”
Soon, Alicent tries to hold on to, when Rhaenyra leaves for work, and leaves Alicent to stew alone, in her massive apartment alone.
//
They start taking walks around Rhaenyra’s neighborhood when Alicent is cleared for ‘non-strenuous activity.’
It’s nice to be outside and not cooped up. The first day she’s allowed, Alicent practically shoves Rhaenyra out the door the moment she gets home from the bureau, and Rhaenyra gamely plays along- but not before tucking a knitted hat and scarf around Alicent.
It’s colder out there than before, she says. Before you got shot, she doesn’t say.
Rhaenyra’s neighborhood is beautiful. The sun has just begun to set, so it’s just a little chilly-
Cold, she was so cold-
No. She’s warm, dressed in Rhaenyra’s coat and hat.
The walk is slow, and Alicent feels pathetic. She has to lean on Rhaenyra the entire time, and sit on the wall of someone’s garden when they’re not even halfway around the block.
“My friend Sansa lives here,” Rhaenyra says, while they wait for Alicent to catch her breath. “She has these lovely dogs. It’s unfortunate they’re not out, I’m sure they’d love to meet you.”
Alicent’s not so sure about that. The thought of dogs- or anything- coming near her makes her stomach churn.
She resists the urge to cover her abdomen.
When they get home, Alicent goes to the bathroom, and just stands there- for minutes, hours- she’s not sure. Her hands flit over the bandages wound around her waist, fiddling with the ragged edges, and for the first time since getting shot, she feels something other than tired-
She thinks it’s hatred. She hates her stitches, the scar, how weak she feels-
“Alicent?”
The door opens before Alicent can put her shirt back on.
For a moment, Rhaenyra just stands there in a sort of shock, staring at Alicent, who’s in just her bra and her bandages and her sweatpants, before she’s cautiously coming in, shutting the bathroom door behind her.
Alicent presses her lips into a thin line, tears burning, burning, but she won’t cry, won’t meet Rhaenyra’s gaze, not even in the mirror- but then Rhaenyra’s arms are around Alicent, pulling her in, gentle, always gentle, hands around her waist, above the bandages, Alicent’s back against Rhaenyra’s chest, Rhaenyra’s head tucked over Alicent’s shoulder.
Only then does Alicent let the tears fall.
“I hate this,” she whispers.
“I know,” Rhaenyra says softly, her breath tickling Alicent’s ear, and then, she kisses Alicent’s freckled, bare shoulder, and Alicent’s heart flip-flops at the startling, unexpected intimacy of it-
//
More weeks. More medicine, more check-ups, and then, Alicent’s finally, finally cleared for desk duty and ‘moderately strenuous activity.’
Whatever that means.
Rhaenyra takes her out to celebrate, and it’s not a bar, like Alicent had been imagining, but a quaint little restaurant tucked out of the way in the city, with candles flickering in every alcove and a bottle of wine on the table.
And, oh, Alicent had not thought about her throwaway, drug-hazed joke and Rhaenyra’s promise of dinner in months , but everything slots into place when she’s staring into Rhaenyra’s lovely lavender eyes over filet mignon and creme brulee. These past few weeks, the lingering touches, that moment in the bathroom-
She knows she’s missed something enormous, then.
She thinks back on the past days and weeks and her stomach hurts, not with pain, but with something else-
“When are you thinking of going home?” Rhaenyra asks, so casually that Alicent almost misses the look in her eyes- desperation, almost.
“I don’t know,” Alicent says, honestly. Thinks that home, lately, has been Rhaenyra,morning coffee, nighttime walks to look at the holiday decor, more than her own apartment. “Not for a bit, I think.”
She very kindly does not point out Rhaenyra’s relieved smile.
She doesn’t fight Rhaenrya on the bill, either, knowing she won’t win, but wishing she could pay for tonight and more- doesn’t know how, really, to repay what it meant to be cradled in Rhaenyra’s arms while she bleeding, dying -
But she shoves that memory down.
“Care for a walk?” she asks with the same casual air Rhaenyra had at dinner when they get home- and it is home, she knows now, with complete certainty.
Rhaenyra doesn’t hesitate before saying yes.
They hold hands the entire way around the first block, and then the second, and the third, and it’s normal for them by now, fingers interlaced, but Alicent is buzzed, jittery, even, and more alive than she’s ever felt since dying in that ambulance.
When Rhaenyra closes the apartment door behind them, Alicent turns to her, aflame, burning, hesitating only once before she closes the distance between them and kisses her, relishing in the soft give to Rhaenyra’s lips and the taste of red wine as Rhaenyra kisses back, her hand settling on Alicent’s waist, always gentle-
“Do you think moderately strenuous activity extends to sex?” she asks, chin raised, challenging, when they part, and Rhaenyra’s mouth opens in shock and just a little bit of awe, before she’s laughing, free and unburdened and joyous-
“I think we’ll just have to see,” she says, with a mischievous glint, but still, it’s soft, the way she kisses Alicent again.
//
Rhaenyra’s careful in shedding Alicent’s coat and hat and jacket, careful and determined, undoing each button on the sage green button-down Alicent wore to dinner, and even more careful when she pushes aside the shirt to reveal the puckered hole and jagged stitches left behind by the bullet and the surgeries-
Rhaenyra’s eyes darken.
Blood-
Alicent’s throat tightens, and she looks away, looks up at the ceiling-
But then Rhaenyra’s lips are on Alicent’s stomach, slow and feather-light, and even though Alicent’s not looking, she knows what every motion follows, and she despises it, at first, but the feeling of Rhaenyra’s lips is tender, and nothing like the pain-
When Alicent is brave enough to glance down, Rhaenyra’s staring back up at her, heady and unwavering, as she runs her tongue down the incision scar left-
Alicent whimpers.
“You’re beautiful,” Rhaenyra murmurs, her breath from her words tickling Alicent’s stomach, and she shivers.
“Rhaenyra,” she says, like a prayer- “Please.”
Rhaenyra’s quick to slide Alicent’s pants off of her, then, followed by her panties, and then she’s laid bare on the mattress as Rhaenyra braces herself above Alicent with one arm, and slides one, then two fingers into her, curls them as she thrusts, over and over, again-
“I love you,” Rhaenyra says, as Alicent gasps, clinging to Rhaenyra, hips chasing the pleasure, the white-hot coil of want at the pit of her stomach, so, so different from the cold, and the pain- “I love you so much it scares me.”
“You scare me, too,” Alicent says, eyes squeezed shut, breathless, and she doesn’t say love, not yet, but she thinks Rhaenyra hears it anyway when she trembles and shatters apart on Rhaenyra’s fingers.
She knows for certain minutes later, when she eats Rhaenyra out, thrusts her tongue into Rhaenyra’s cunt, kisses her filthy, the taste of her between them, and hears Rhaenyra cry out her name, again and again: Alicent, Alicent, Alicent.