Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

BEFORE THE CHAMPIONSHIPS  

National Tennis Centre, Roehampton.

"Whew! Good sesh." Rhaenyra tosses Alicent a towel from her racquet bag as they leave the practice courts. "I’m gassed."

Alicent catches it, wipes the sweat off her face, then slings it around her neck. "Weren’t you just saying you think this is your year? You won’t be winning Wimbledon if you’re wiped out from playing points."

Rhaenyra swings her hip into Alicent’s with a dismissive scoff. "I think I’ve played about ten matches in my whole career that wrecked me like my average hitting session with you does. You’re a bloody wall." 

Rhaenyra is of course exaggerating, and she says it like a complaint, but Alicent knows it was intended in praise of her defensive capabilities. She pats at her cheeks with the towel again, too aware of their tendency to go pink whenever Rhaenyra compliments her (which is unfortunately, blissfully frequently). "You don’t hit as hard as you would in a match,” she argues. “Of course the balls are going to keep coming back at you.”

"God, I am so lucky to have you." Rhaenyra tugs out her ponytail, shaking out the pale blonde hair stuck to her scalp. It cascades perfectly around her shoulders as Alicent watches on, breath catching in her chest, wondering how and why L’Oréal hasn’t scooped her up for a campaign yet. "A best friend who is also essentially a sentient ball machine. Incredible dual function."

"So stupid," Alicent says, shaking her head. The words are directed less at Rhaenyra than her own heart, which is throwing itself eagerly against her ribcage.

It will settle down soon, she’s sure. Once she’s gotten used to being with Rhaenyra again and reshored her defences. The first few days are always the most difficult; she likes to spend her time apart from Rhaenyra trying to convince herself she isn’t in love with her anymore, and so on reunion has to go through the process of having this notion rapidly, rudely debunked.

"I’ve missed practicing with you, though," she adds casually as she can, padding her confession with extra words. "I know we were just playing points, but that’s the best I’ve felt on a court in ages."

"Are you not gelling with Westerling? I thought he did a good job with Armstrong, and her playstyle wasn’t a million miles off yours." Rhaenyra frowns at her in sudden concern. "You had that 125 final during the French. And that run in Morocco. I thought you were looking great, until, well - you know. But she's top thirty, ended up winning it, right?"

"She murdered me in that third set," Alicent recounts, glumly. She looks sidelong at Rhaenyra, unable to help herself from staring at her friend’s profile; her chest feels very warm, stomach chewing itself over. "I can’t believe you watched all of that."

"Only Rabat. Sky doesn’t show the 125s." Rhaenyra glances at Alicent, then whips her towel in her direction. "Put those big eyes away, it’s not a big deal. I miss you when we’re on the circuit, you know? So I catch your matches when I can. And I think you’ve been playing nice tennis."

It’s a big deal to me, Alicent wants to say.

She pivots back to the original subject instead, worried at what else she might give away if she folds to her sentimentality. "But yeah… Harrold’s great, I’m definitely feeling better than before. But I mean, missing out on the French was shit, obviously."

She swallows down her embarrassment. Sometimes Alicent feels like a kid complaining to an adult about her playground problems when she and Rhaenyra discuss her career. Losing in the third round of qualifiers for a slam is hardly something Rhaenyra has to worry about, given she is much more concerned with winning them.

"Do you get direct entry for Wimbledon? Or are you getting a wildcard?"

"Wildcard." She almost hadn’t needed it, being only a few ranking spots below automatic qualification for the main draw. At least she has the benefit of a bonus spot awarded by the Lawn Tennis Association this time, purely by virtue of being British. "And for Notts and Birmingham."

Rhaenyra hums contemplatively. "I’ve got a good feeling about this grass season for you.”

"Based on what?"

"The fact you’re an angel and you deserve it. The fact you ditched your dad, finally." Rhaenyra looks back over her shoulder before pushing open the locker room door, holding it wide for Alicent to pass. "And the fact that the whole time we were just practicing? I was not pulling my shots."

Edgbaston Priory Club, Birmingham

Alicent had done better than she expected in her first grass warm-up in Nottingham, making the quarters before losing to the second-seed, world number twenty-three Wiktoria Balicka. It wasn’t a bad loss. Balicka is a poor matchup for her game: a seasoned doubles player, comfortable at the net, with a brilliant touch and a penchant for a well-timed drop shot to draw Alicent away from her beloved baseline. Even then, it had been a close match, going all the way to a final set tie-break. The relative success buoys her going into the Birmingham Classic, another WTA250. Rhaenyra is playing this tournament too, which makes Alicent even gladder to be there, especially since she’s safely consigned to the opposite side of the draw. Having Rhaenyra around makes her more optimistic about her chances of making a decent run – she always feels better for the constant, bolstering abundance of her support.

At present, Alicent is dashing repeatedly across a freshly uncovered practice court, her thick braid swinging against the ridge of her back each time she rotates into her backhand. Despite the pace, her breathing remains steady. The tennis ball thwacking against her racquet strings punctuates the quiet morning, acting as a metronome to pace her footwork against.  Keen to take some of the lessons from the previous tournament and work out how to build on them going forward, she’s up running drills with Harrold Westerling, her coach of the last few months. The atmosphere is still sedate at the club with the gates not yet open to visitors, and it seems she’s gotten off to an earlier start than her competitors too – there’s nobody else out practicing yet, though she can’t imagine that lasting for long. A pigeon flutters down to sit on the fence as she sweeps a glance across the otherwise empty courts, tilting its head at her curiously as if to spectate.

"Focus on yourself," Harrold reprimands her when the ball shanks off the side of her racket, but he’s laughing as he sends another at her. "There’ll be bigger distractions than a pigeon during your match later."

Alicent nods and forces her head back into the drill, chasing down each ball her coach hits to opposite corners of the court until they break for a drink. "Can we practice some volleys?” she asks. “Balicka caught me reluctant to step into the net a few times last week and I reckon it cost me. I know I’ve got the legs to outrun most, but I need to be ending points earlier when I can."

Harrold grunts his approval. "I emailed last night about working on confidence coming forward."

She had seen that notification but forgotten to actually look at it. "Sorry. I was at dinner with Rhaenyra."

"No problem," he assures her with a shrug. "I just meant it’s good to see our instincts aligned. Actually, I wanted to talk to you as well about how we can work on transitioning sooner out of defensive positions, without making too many adjustments…"

It’s cloudy but bright, the sun threatening the clouds, when she’s instructed via tannoy to make her way to Court Number One for her opening match of the tournament.

Alicent first played in this tournament when she was seventeen and the LTA had decided her Junior Wimbledon title the year before was enough to start giving her a shot at pro events, and she had been dangled before the British public as their chosen rising star for a while. Nine years later, she doesn’t need the steward to show her the way, but it’s nice at least to have someone to clear her path through the light crowd. Curious faces squint in her direction when they realise a tennis player is coming through. A few people seem to know who she is, whispering as they point her out. Alicent wonders absently what they were saying.

When they reach the court entrance, she thanks the steward. Her opponent is there already stony-faced and staring straight ahead. Bouncing on the balls of her feet, waiting to be called onto the grass, she runs through her game plan one more time. The odds seemed tipped in her favour – the seed she was drawn against pulled out of the tournament early that morning, so she’s playing Lisa Perez, a lucky loser with a ranking not all much higher than hers. The American is in theory very beatable; Alicent has a strong head-to-head against her and perhaps more meaningfully, she is one of the few players Alicent has reliably gotten past since she began sliding down the rankings.

Perez is a big hitter and will certainly be planning to break through Alicent’s weaker forehand. But even if she succeeds in doing so, she’s error-prone and nowhere near as fit as Alicent. If she can extend the points, force her opponent side-to-side and expose her movement….

Alicent would never go as far as liking her chances, but nor does she hate them today. It might prove a nice opportunity to get into the groove of the tournament. To adapt to the conditions here, to reboot the momentum she started to gain in Nottingham.

The sun breaks through the clouds as the umpire calls Alicent’s name, welcoming her to the court. She squints into the brightness, walking out to a smattering of applause and offering a brief wave to the audience – some seated, some just now trickling into the standing zones – to thank them for it. She takes her time laying out her things the way she likes, making sure everything that should be in her racquet bag is there, very aware of the fact Perez is already waiting for her at the net. It’s a power play: I’m ready, aren’t you?

Alicent has played the American too many times to let it faze her. She springs light-footed onto court, sidestepping to the net, jumping with high knees while the umpire leads the coin toss. It’s a counter, a demonstration of her own strengths. Try and keep up with me.

Her opponent correctly predicts ‘heads’ and chooses to serve first. In theory, it’s Perez’ advantage, but Alicent never minds receiving to start. It takes some pressure off the beginning of the match, removing the risk of the first game on the board being a break of serve against her. They exchange shots for a few minutes to warm up. Alicent fights the urge to roll her eyes at how hard the American is hitting it, in what is likely another attempt to rattle her. Then it’s back to their benches to hydrate before the umpire ends the warm-up and calls for the match to begin.

Focus on yourself, she thinks about Harrold saying this morning, tamping down the prickle of irritation she’s already feeling towards her opponent. Ignore her. Play the ball that comes at you.

Alicent crouches low, ready to receive serve, her shadow stretching across the still pristine baseline. By the end of the week it would be only sparsely green, the grass worn down. For now, she breathes in the sharp vegetable smell of it, hoping the scent will activate her muscle memory – the countless drills Harrold had put her through in their prep at the National Tennis Centre, practicing with Rhaenyra, her matches in Nottingham.

Perez hits her first serve too flat, and it goes long. "Fault!" the linesman cries out.

Alicent suppresses a smile, keeping her game face steady. Perez is tall and strong, and her first serve can be a real weapon. But her second serve is an inexplicably nervy, attackable thing, with one of the biggest drop-offs in speed on the tour. Sure enough, the ball she sends in is a gift, bouncing right into Alicent’s strike zone. Her return – an angled cross-court forehand – wins her the first point of the match.

Perez must have decided to channel the frustration of that first point into her next serve, because it flies at Alicent like a rocket. Her reflexes are just enough to send it back, though it’s not a great shot; the answering volley would be a winner against most players, but Alicent is fast. She reaches it, barely, lobbing it back over her head. It lands just inside of the baseline, inch-perfect, too far away for Perez to get to.

The next two points are hers too: with them, a break to love. The spectators’ early, polite applause sharpens into cheers at the Brit getting her nose firmly in front from the first. It’s an advantage of the England-centred grass swing – home crowds, and nearly guaranteed support. Their energy carries Alicent through her own service game, a routine hold to back up the break of serve.

0-2.

Perez manages the same on her second try. 1-2.

With Perez finding her footing in her second service game, the match becomes more demanding. Forced to run the length of the baseline again and again, Alicent’s legs and lungs quickly find themselves tested. Perez hits with intimidating power, but Alicent slides athletically into her shots in a manner that is not advisable on grass, determined not to give her any easy points. She shifts course again and again, retrieving ball after ball, keeping it in play. For every shot Alicent gets back, Perez’ grunts grow louder and longer, until they border on hindrance. It’s getting annoying, actually, to the point she would have reasonable cause to complain to the umpire, and might if it weren’t for the fact she didn’t want to let her opponent know it was bothering her.

It isn’t irritating enough to cost her anything. She takes the first set with that single break of serve, six games to four, and heads back to her bench to have a drink and suck down an energy gel.

A wild cheer goes up from Centre Court, raucous and long. Alicent smiles reflexively. Only one woman in tennis could extract a response like that from a generally reserved British crowd – drawing screams at a little tournament like this, making it sound more like the bloody Rod Laver Arena. She looks over at the tiered seating blocking her view of the show court and raps her knuckles to her temple. It’s something she and Rhaenyra have been doing since they were kids – half a joke, half superstition. See you in the next round, knock on wood, they would say back then, before fighting and falling over each other trying to tap the other’s head first. Both were and remain competitive to a fault, of course; a hazard of the trade.

Alicent imagines, hopes, that Rhaenyra could somehow sense it – that she knows Alicent is thinking of her and wishing her luck, no matter how little she needs such a thing.

The umpire calls time. Alicent returns to the court, springing on to her toes to stretch her calves. With the American having vented her anger on her team during the changeover, it’s like she was facing down a different opponent, right from the opening points of the second set. Perez, re-centred and determined to turn the tide in her favour, unleashes her lethal forehand. Where she flung errors before, now she strikes with pinpoint accuracy. Every serve is a first serve, and every ball paints a line, pushing Alicent beyond her limits; she’s close to unplayable in that first game, and holds to love.

1-0.

1-1.

2-1.

2-2.

3-2.

Every game after the first is hard-fought: strength against speed, power versus endurance. Perez is overtly frustrated by Alicent returning balls that should have been winners and Alicent is tired from chasing all of them down. She could really do with a quick hold to reset and catch her breath, but instead she’s down 30-40, facing the first breakpoint on her serve.

She’s just tossed the ball to serve when the cheers drifting across from Centre Court cut abruptly into the kind of murmuring hush every athlete is terrified of. Alicent mistimes her swing badly. The serve lands so wildly out that a faint ripple of laughter goes through the spectators, despite the crowd leaning heavily in her favour. Her cheeks flush with embarrassment. A miss that bad is usually something to laugh off – a display of good humour to endear herself to the crowd – but Alicent doesn’t have it in her. She’s far too worried; the show court remains quiet, and she was wonders desperately if Rhaenyra is alright.

Perez seizes the opportunity, capitalising on Alicent's momentary lapse in focus to secure the break with a resounding cross-court return against her shaky second serve. The American's fist punch the air in triumph as she practically skips to the back of the court to towel down her hands. Alicent thinks she might hate her. The scoreboard changes to reflect the break – this time, against her. 4-2.

Reluctantly, Alicent meets Harrold’s gaze; she double takes upon realising he wasn’t frowning at her. He doesn’t look annoyed at all. He’s smiling, in fact. Encouragingly. He points at her and raised his eyebrows, emphatically mouthing his words from earlier. Focus. On. Yourself.

He seems taken aback by her involuntary glare of derision.

Alicent is almost sorry for it. Almost. But he needs to understand that the possibility that Rhaenyra is hurt is in no way comparable to a pigeon, or her opponent’s antics, or the atmosphere of the crowd. Caring about the wellbeing of Rhaenyra Targaryen is at the core of who she is, and no amount of coaching, no winning mindset, will ever overcome that truth.

She exhales deeply, trying to stay calm as she moves back to the baseline with the pressure mounting. Down a break, the rest of the set grew much more daunting. Alicent can’t let Perez keep the advantage. She needed to win the match in straight sets. It’s been a painfully long time since she’s won a decider.

Motivated by the break, the American serves with renewed confidence. Her groundstrokes are powerful and precise as Alicent scrambles across the court, trainers scuffing the grass as she tries to anticipate Perez's moves. It proves difficult; her mind keeps drifting helplessly back to Rhaenyra. Whether she’s alright, or if she’s hurt. What would it mean for her Wimbledon chances, if she was?

Perez takes the first point of the game after a gruelling rally; Alicent overreaches, losing her balance and sending the ball out wide. As it falls into the doubles tramline, a huge cheer goes up from the adjacent show court; she has to laugh at the flood of relief that overcomes her –never before in Alicent’s life has that been her prevailing emotion after losing a point.

She rolls her shoulders as they reset for the next point, shaking out the tension, designating her melodramatic freak out over. Another burst of shrieking applause from Centre Court tells her that if Rhaenyra was even down to begin with, she’s up again now, and well enough to be winning points.

Alicent better sort herself out and do the same. Rhaenyra would kill her if she lost this match on her account.

"How’d it go? Did you win?"

Alicent twists around, almost falling off the stationary bike she’s cooling down on as Rhaenyra walks grinning into the recovery room. "What the hell happened? Your court went all scary quiet, I thought you were hurt."

"Huh? Oh." Rhaenyra shrugs, dropping her racquet bags and parking herself on the bike next to Alicent as her team follow her in. To Alicent’s horror she shushes – actually shushes – her coach, Rhaenys Velaryon, an all-time great in her own right. Alicent turns panicked, apologetic eyes to Rhaenys, whom she has never quite gotten used to being in the same room with, even after all these years. She receives an conspiratorial, indulgent eye roll, directed at Rhaenyra, back. "Took a tumble and called a physio just in case. No harm done though, fit as a fiddle. Did you win?"

"Yep," Alicent confirms. "Took the first. Went down a break in the second, when the noise from your court distracted me, but pulled it back for a tiebreak, won that."

"You’ve got to focus on yourself while you’re playing, Alicent. It’s sweet of you to worry, though." Rhaenyra leans sideways and flicks Alicent’s plait fondly, eyes tracking its swing. Then she sat up haughtily, lifting her chin with a sniff. "I won as well, by the way, not that you asked."

"Somehow I doubt you would have walked in here so cheerfully had you been booted out of a 250 by a sixteen year old qualifier in the first round."

"She was pretty good! Future top-twenty, I reckon."

"Score?" Alicent’s second set had taken a little over an hour, dragged out by the tie-break, but Rhaenyra’s match had started a few minutes into it. It must have been exceptionally short to barely outlast it.

"Six-one, six-oh."

"Poor girl," Alicent comments, gaze drifting towards the second set of bikes across the gym, where the teen Rhaenyra had been playing is working through her own cooldown. She seems in high enough spirits, laughing with a woman who could be her mum, or coach, or both. "You never can take it easy, can you?"

"Who’s to say I didn’t?"

Alicent knows Rhaenyra better than that, though. She doesn’t have it in her to try anything but hard: she has too much respect for herself, for the sport. And to be fair to Rhaenyra, the kid was probably grateful for a shellacking from one of tennis’s biggest stars.

"Dinner, tonight?" Rhaenyra shrugs off her team’s attentions one last time to call after Alicent, when Harrold calls her off the bike for the next step in her post-match recovery. "I booked that Italian place you like for seven."

"Seafood risotto is a bold choice," Alicent criticises, eyeing Rhaenyra’s meal suspiciously. "In the middle of a tournament?"

"Come on, it’s a 250. It’s not like it’s a major." Rhaenyra looks gleeful as she snaps the head off a prawn, eyes flicking upwards rapturously at the taste of it. Alicent swallows her forkful of polenta down hard, struck, as she occasionally finds herself, by Rhaenyra’s gorgeousness: it’s not fair when she darts her tongue out like that to savour the taste, lips glossy with olive-oil, lit like a painting by the candle between them. "God, this is good. Would be worth getting food poisoning." She badly misreads Alicent’s pained expression. "Oh, relax, Alicent, it’s a nice restaurant, it’ll be fine. We all eat sushi every day, anyway."

"Shellfish, though," Alicent hedges, finding her voice. "My dad…"

No molluscs, no crustaceans, not during the season. He’d set that rule when she was thirteen and discovered moules-frites at a tournament in Normandy, having been furious with Rhaenyra’s mum for allowing it, though she’d been fine. She’d won that tournament in straight sets in the final against the local favourite. And she’d never forgotten that meal.

"Pshhhh." Rhaenyra spears a clam on her fork, leaning forward over the table to brandish it in front of Alicent. "He was paranoid. Let yourself live a little."

And really, what is Alicent supposed to do, with Rhaenyra angled towards her like that over the table, the flickering candlelight making her eyes shimmer like a sunset over water? The dare in them is clear, but playful. Rhaenyra will back off if she asks her to. Instead, Alicent parts her lips obediently, leaning in. Rhaenyra’s gaze falls to them, precise in her delivery as she feeds her the bite. It’s as delicious as promised, tasting of the sea and all that it’s absorbed from its sauce; the umami tomato, the sharp cut-through of wine, and behind it all, a faint kick of chili.

"Good?" Rhaenyra asks, her voice low.

"Very." Alicent feels warmer than the light heat of the dish can account for. She breaks eye-contact to look at her own meal, a very serviceable chicken cacciatore. It’s not what she had really wanted to order. "I should have got the spaghetti alle vongole."

"Your favourite."

"Mmm."

"We’re here all week. Can always come back."

"Could lose tomorrow, and then it would be back to Roehampton."

"Not happening," Rhaenyra insists. "I’ll see you in the final, and then we’ll get clam pasta to celebrate. I’m manifesting it."

"Only one of us would be celebrating," she points out.

"We’d be celebrating the tennis." Rhaenyra pokes her tongue out. "And the two of us in a final together. When was the last time?"

"Adelaide, four years ago," Alicent replies easily.

"Oh yeah," Rhaenyra says, though it’s obvious she remembers perfectly well. That woman has never forgotten a match. "You trounced me."

"Stupid. It was close." A three set-battle, the last time Alicent had won a 500-level event.

"Well," Rhaenyra says, airily. "Guess I’ll be looking to get my own back this week."

"And if one of us"—if she—"doesn’t make it?"

"Well, there’s always Wimbledon, if the draw works out." Alicent tosses her napkin across the table, an exasperated dismissal of the idea. Rhaenyra plucks it from the air before it can hit her in the face. "You know, it feels like we’re the only people here not on a date," Rhaenyra comments, casting her gaze around the intimate little restaurant.

"Ha ha," Alicent says more than actually laughs. She had noticed that a while ago, too. "Maybe not, though. I mean, we probably looked like we’re on one with you feeding me just now, and we’re just friends."

"True." Rhaenyra turns her attention back to Alicent. "You want another bite?"

Whatever techniques Rhaenyra is drawing on in her attempts to manifest an all-Brit final, it seems to be working. Alicent is in quiet disbelief at how easily she gets through the round-of-sixteen, then the quarters: two-straight set wins on Centre Court with the crowd ever more strongly behind her. Her athletic defence, as much as it can frustrate her opponents, often leads to long, exciting points and she’s pulled off some miraculous gets. The crowds seem to appreciate it; she spends so long signing tennis balls for fans after her quarter-final that Harrold has to pull her away for her recovery routine.

The semi-finals tomorrow loom large. What Alicent would really like to do after her evening match is to carb-load and go to sleep, but her success so far is forming the basis of a special interest story for the BBC’s local coverage, so first she has to go speak to the press. She joins the interviewer at a makeshift news desk and adjusts her hair self-consciously in front the camera, still a bit damp from showering.

"We’re here speaking with Alicent Hightower, the British number four, and a former champion here in Birmingham. She’s one of the two Brits remaining in the competition – the other, of course, is British number one, world number two, and three-time slam winner Rhaenyra Targaryen. Alicent, is it fair to say your performance in the tournament this year is perhaps more of an underdog story than hers?"

"Well, when you lay out our CVs like that…"—she rolls her shoulders and laughs good-humouredly, drawing appreciative chuckles from the camera crew—"I mean, as you said, I’ve won here before. This tournament was my first pro event, and also where I won my first title on the tour, seven years ago now. But it’s also true that I’ve hit a rough patch in terms of results in the last couple of years. It’s a special place for me, so it’s nice to regain a bit of form here. I’ve beaten a couple players ranked higher than me, now, so I guess I would have been the underdog going into those."

"You’ve certainly looked impressive on the court. What would you say has been the key to your success so far? You recently hired a new coach…"

Alicent smiles. "Harrold is great, yeah. I’d say it’s a bit of a mix. I’m working really hard on some weaker areas of my game, and I had a nice little run in Nottingham that built my confidence coming into this tournament. I’m enjoying the grass. But yep. Hard work, determination, trying to trust I can get the job done. And the support from the British crowd is always a boost."

"We mentioned Rhaenyra Targaryen before – she’s a good friend of yours, yes?"

"Yes. We’ve known each other a long time. We’re close."

"She’s been gliding through her side of the draw, looking very impressive."

Alicent waits a moment for an actual question to come, before realising the reporter is looking at her expectantly. Alicent nods, once she catches the unspoken prompt to… what? Wax lyrical about Rhaenyra. She can certainly do that, even keeping it to the tennis. "She's an incredible player, as we all know. It’s always inspiring to see her perform at such a high level. We’re mates, but I also have a huge amount of admiration for her as a player, and as a fan of the sport. I think everyone expected her to do well here and I’m happier than anyone to see it."

"She’s one of the favourites going into Wimbledon, do you have any thoughts on that?"

She makes eye contact with Harrold, standing behind the guy with the boom mic. He raises his eyebrows.

"Well, of course, Wimbledon is special for any British player. It's the most prestigious event in tennis, on top of it being home, and I think every player, me included, dreams of success there. Rhaenyra’s no exception. And it’s absolutely right that she’s a favourite. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see her lift the trophy. I’d be so proud – I mean, I always am. But like I said. Wimbledon’s special. Rhaenyra is too."

"And what about the possibility of facing her in the final if you make it through your match tomorrow? It would be first all-Brit affair in the history of the tournament, and you’ve mentioned you’re close off the court. How do you prepare for a match against someone you know so well? Is it harder to compete?"

Alicent pauses, considering her words carefully, wanting to strike a balance between honesty and diplomacy without sounding pessimistic. "Facing Rhaenyra in the final would be a challenge, of course.  We know each other's game inside out, and we practice together a lot, so it’s an interesting one. I obviously have the utmost respect for her as a player and a friend, but when we step on that court, it's all competition. Rhaenyra would be seething at the suggestion either of us would go easier on the other because we’re close. But yeah," she laughs. "I’m not going to pretend it wouldn’t be a big ask to take her on. She’s in great form. She’s been manifesting a face-off though, so clearly she thinks it would be fun."

"And the semi-finals tomorrow?" The reporter apparently remembers what this interview was supposed to be about. "How are you feeling about those?"

Alicent takes a second to refocus, thoughts still partly lingering on the prospect of facing Rhaenyra in the final. She shifts in her seat, adjusting her posture to engage more fully with the interviewer. "The semi-finals tomorrow will be a fight, no doubt. I’ve never played Taylor before, but from what I’ve seen and heard she’s a really tough opponent. I'm going in with the same attitude that got me through the previous rounds, though. I need to stay true to my game and trust in the hard work I've put in."

As the interview wraps up, Alicent thanks the reporter and turns to head over to Harrold. "Was that alright? Been a minute since I’ve done more than a quick post-match presser."

"Your media training held up," her coach says. "I only wish they’d focused on you more. You deserve it, the shift you’ve been putting in this tournament. I’m proud of you"

"Aw." She feels awkward in the face of his praise. "Thanks."

"Get an early night tonight," he suggests. "Big match tomorrow."

"Will do." Alicent hesitates for a moment, before leaning in for a hug. Their coaching partnership is pretty new still, only a couple of months old, and they’ve not yet broached physical affection beyond a pat on the shoulder or a high five. But she’s grateful to him, happy to have him in her corner.

He accepts the hug. It’s brief but warm, and Alicent is very glad she went for it.

Sleepover?

She sends the text to Rhaenyra as she’s brushing her teeth, hoping she’s caught her on time. In contrast to her laissez-faire approach to her diet, Rhaenyra is deeply uptight about her sleep schedule. Thankfully, she doesn’t mind where she gets her nine hours, her own bed or Alicent’s, as long as she does. Alicent has barely finished up in the bathroom before there’s a knock on her hotel room door.

"I was about to ask you the same thing," Rhaenyra says, when she opens it. "We’re so in sync."

"How come?" Alicent very much doubts their reasons are the same; for her, it’s that she’s worried her nerves for tomorrow's semi-finals will disrupt her rest and she always sleeps better when Rhaenyra is with her.

"Had a feeling you might be feeling some kind of way about tomorrow. The thought of you tossing and turning would have had me tossing and turning, and then we’d both be screwed up for our matches." Her tone is light, but her gaze is steady and sincere. "Sleepover avoids all that. I do want to be asleep relatively soon, though."

As Rhaenyra hangs up her dressing gown, Alicent slips onto her side of the bed, over the covers. "Thanks for being here. I know it’s just a 250 but tomorrow feels… really big. I don’t know."

Rhaenyra draws the curtains before sliding into bed beside Alicent. "You don’t need to play it down. I get why it's a big match for you."

Alicent shifts slightly, clenching her fists into the sheets. "It’s been so nice playing well again. I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Rhaenyra’s gentle touch, just a hand on her arm, is grounding and dizzying at once. Alicent relaxes her hands, ceasing her torture of the bed linen. "You've been playing great and you’re way off your ceiling still. The last few years, that’s the fluke, Alicent."

She sighs. "I hope you’re right."

"How was that BBC thing you were doing?"

"Alright, pretty quick. I think they wanted to talk about you, mostly."

Rhaenyra’s nose wrinkles disdainfully, mouth twisting. "Bastards. I’m sorry."

"They weren’t rude about it or anything." Alicent shrugs. "Besides, I don’t mind talking about you."

Rhaenyra hums. "What did you say about me?"

Nothing particularly exciting, for the most part, just easy truths: Rhaenyra’s an excellent player and has a good chance at Wimbledon. She won’t find that interesting, so Alicent twists another snippet. "Oh, not much. Just that I won’t take it easy on you in the final."

Rhaenyra laughs, delighted, and then her voice is silkily pleased, proud, full of praise: "That’s my girl."

That’s my girl, Alicent repeats internally. She thinks it might loop around her head forever.

Alicent turns out the big light to hide her blush, which she feels growing more violent by the second. Why, for the love of God, did Rhaenyra have to say that, like that? She’s thankful for the low light as her cheeks burn, wondering if summoning Rhaenyra to her bed tonight was a mistake. She might be even more distracting than the looming spectre of tomorrow’s semi-final.

"Alright then.” Rhaenyra sounds a little nonplussed by how unceremoniously Alicent plunged them into darkness. “Less yapping, more sleep I guess." Rhaenyra flicks off her own bedside lamp, then scoots across the bed to drop a kiss to Alicent’s cheek. The press of her lips is like a brand. "Goodnight."

"Goodnight."

Alicent’s fears that she won’t be able to sleep fade away as soon as Rhaenyra settles against her back, an arm slung easily over her hip. It’s an instant comfort – part weighted blanket, part familiarity. Rhaenyra serves to lift her up so often, but like this, her quiet presence is grounding. The soft rise and fall of Rhaenyra's chest against her back lulls Alicent into peace, her tense muscles relaxing until she feels liquid and drowsy. Sleep takes her quickly, easy and dreamless.

Chapter Text

BEFORE THE CHAMPIONSHIPS

Edgbaston Priory Club, Birmingham

As always, Alicent’s perfectly trained internal clock wakes her up five minutes before her alarm is set to sound. Usually she wouldn’t wait for it to sound before getting up, but with Rhaenyra in her bed she just rolls over to look at her instead. She must have shifted away at some point in the night. Still sleeping hair splays over the pillow like a halo, silver-gold against the starchy white. Alicent watches her sleep for a little while, letting herself enjoy the warmth that floods her chest. It feels nice to be in love sometimes, in the quiet moments where she can bask in it unwitnessed, a respite from worrying what it would mean if it was no longer a secret.

What would her family – her father – think if they found out? Would she lose Rhaenyra entirely, would things stay the same, would they land somewhere in the middle? Or – the slim, impossible dream she does not allow herself to dwell on: that Rhaenyra might hear her confession and make one of her own.

She shakes her head, cheek pushing into the pillow. It’s too big a gamble, when she can sustain herself perfectly well with moments like these.

Alicent knows she should get up, start her day, begin gearing up for her looming semi-final match, but a larger part of her is reluctant to disturb the tranquility of the morning. Alicent reaches out to brush a lock of hair away from Rhaenyra’s face where the strands have fallen across her mouth. She stirs slightly at the touch, a soft sound escaping her lips as she blinks awake. Her blue-violet eyes meet Alicent's, heavy with sleep. "Morning," she murmurs, a dreamy smile stretching the corners of her lips. "Your hair looks ridiculous. What’s the time?"

Just as she asks, their twin alarms start to beep from opposite nightstands. Alicent pats at her head self-consciously as she reaches to silence hers. Rhaenyra, on the other hand, makes no attempt to move. The grating ring of the alarm continues to sound, while Rhaenyra smirks at her.

"You are so annoying," Alicent informs her with no bite, rolling her eyes. She clambers across Rhaenyra to get to it herself, and once she’s silenced it, goes to scoot across the last of the mattress. Before she can at last get out of bed, Rhaenyra’s hands land firmly on her hips, halting her in her tracks. Alicent is frozen over her, a leg on either side of her thigh. Alicent’s heart falters at her predicament: first it skips a beat, then overcompensates for it, hammering out a drum solo against her sternum.

"Semi-finals today…" Rhaenyra squeezes Alicent’s sides, reassuring and intimate. "You’ve got this."

"Thanks," Alicent manages clumsily, her tongue feeling fat in her mouth. "Now get off of me."

"Feels like you’re on top of me, from where I’m lying, but—"

"Rhaenyra."

"Alright, alright," Rhaenyra says in conciliation, her grip turning so gentle as to no longer count as one at all. "Just… I just wanted to say I’m proud of you."

"It’s a 250 semi-final." Alicent is in theory free to move now but feels no more able to. Rhaenyra’s earnest gaze holds her in a trance. "Hardly the pinnacle of my career." Although, if she wins the match, it’ll be her deepest run in a tour-level event in almost two years, her first final since she’d won in Cleveland the August before last. Her stomach lurches at the idea of it, paying zero deference to her attempted nonchalance.

"That’s kind of my point,” Rhaenyra counters. “Seeing you rebuild from the ground up, doing well, playing so well again here, building on your result in Notts... I know how hard you’ve worked to get back to this point." Her expression turns pointed. "And how brave you were to drop your dad."

"Rhaenyra…" Alicent says, warningly.

"Not slagging him off this time! I’m just saying"—Rhaenyra’s hands leave Alicent’s side entirely, so she can hold them up defensively instead—"that you’ve been incredibly strong in the fall-out from that, and I admire it. You. Your dedication to the game, despite everything. All of that, that’s what I’m proud of you for."

Alicent needs to remove herself from this situation before she does something rash, like kiss Rhaenyra hard on the mouth. She partially achieves that imperative. But she can’t keep herself from relaxing one of the arms propping her up so she can drop her lips to Rhaenyra’s forehead. "Thanks. You big sap." She slides finally off the mattress, turning her face away to hide its colour, hurrying to the bathroom to compose herself.

"Want me to braid your hair when you’re done in there?" Rhaenyra calls after her. "I wasn’t kidding when I said it was a mess."

Rhaenyra plaiting her hair on a match-day morning is ancient tradition at this point. Alicent sits at the vanity. Rhaenyra stands behind her, wearing her pyjamas and a jumper she’d stolen from Alicent’s suitcase while she was in the shower. She’s succeeded at reining in Alicent’s bedhead to something half-tame, which is always the least enjoyable part. Now Alicent closes her eyes and enjoys the gentle tug of Rhaenyra's fingers, weaving her hair into a French braid.

"You’ve not played her before, right? Maria Taylor?"

"Nope. Watched back her match on the iPlayer yesterday though. A bit like you? All-courter, one-handed backhand. Not many of you left on the tour."

"Mm, a dying breed." It’s difficult, with the power so many of the women hit with now, the level of topspin, to absorb the pace of the ball with one hand. Rhaenyra’s backhand is one of the most beautiful aspects of her game though, both visually and in its effect. She has a deft defensive slice, as one would expect from a one-hander, but it’s special for its versatility beyond that, the way she’s able to produce pace, spin, winners from anywhere on the court. "She pretty much only slices with it, though. She’ll move you about, but with your footwork she shouldn’t be too much of a danger on that wing, at least not in terms of power."

"You don’t sound convinced by her," Alicent notes curiously – there’s something disgruntled and dismissive in the way she speaks about her.

"I mean, she’s good, don't get me wrong. But if you can get into a rhythm early, force her to go for more, take risks, you'll have the upper hand.  And she doesn’t disguise her shots well. And she’s pretty cocky, for a kid, but she tends to crumple when things don’t go her way." Rhaenyra shakes her head with a little laugh when Alicent catches eye contact through the in the mirror, her eyebrows raised way up. "Also,” she explains more honestly, “journos keep oohing and aahing about whether she’s the new me, and it’s really bloody annoying. Just because it’s been a few years since I-"

She stops abruptly, but Alicent knows what she had been going to say anyway. It’s been a few years since she’s won a slam: Rhaenyra’s own personal slump, albeit on a very different level to Alicent’s. She’s had a lot of deep runs and come very close a few times, making three finals in the last three years. The worst of them, a heartbreaker at Wimbledon when Rhaenyra injured her shoulder 5-2 up in the first set. It had been one of the worst days of Alicent’s life, stuck in that player’s box, forced to watch her best friend openly weeping in pain and devastation through her service games. She hadn’t won another game the whole match, and playing through to the end had done enough damage to rule her out of the US Open that year too.

Tennis can be cruel. It’s winner takes all, and there’s no glory in coming second. The press has a short attention span and a penchant for pulling players apart. The only thing they love more than a star being born is accusing others of fading. After a slam a year for three years, Alicent knows Rhaenyra feels what the media have branded a ‘drought’, even if she rarely says anything to her about it.

"You can talk to me, you know," Alicent offers, swallowing the bitter taste in her mouth. She would give her racquet arm to have one major title, let alone be wondering where her fourth might come from.

"I know. But it’s fine, really. Just the press being annoying, what’s new?" Rhaenyra dismisses the matter out of hand. "Also," she adds, what had been a small smile turning sharp as she ties off the end of the finished plait. There’s a sharp tug at Alicent’s scalp. "Are you aware you’re going grey?"

"Stop it, seriously?" Rhaenyra dances away from her as Alicent pushes up from the vanity bench, grabbing for her the blonde’s wrist. Catching up to her, Alicent inspects the hair – silver and wiry. "God, I guess that’s what a week with you does to a girl. Were there more?"

"Just a couple. You have so much hair though, never would have noticed if I wasn’t sifting through it." Despite the reassurance, it’s clear from the undiminished gleam in Rhaenyra’s eyes that she’s not going to let the incident fade without getting the last word. "I wouldn’t worry about it, though. I always knew we’d grow grey together… Only," she says, with the musing affect of a philosopher, "I didn’t expect to be twenty-six when it happened."

"Oh, fuck off." Alicent aims a shove at Rhaenyra, who catches her by the forearms, pulling her in for a hug; laughing, Alicent falls into them instead.

It’s a glorious day for tennis, blue skies and sunshine. Alicent feels well-rested and limber, and had worked out some of her nerves on the practice courts with Rhaenyra earlier, hitting points to warm up – what better way to prepare for a match against an all-courter than to play with a much better one? – so she’s feeling good as she’s called onto Centre Court to the cheering of the audience, the memory of Rhaenyra rapping her knuckles lightly against Alicent’s forehead for luck fresh in her mind. She doesn’t need it though, she sternly reminds herself. Luck. Not when she has the game, and the form, and way more court experience than the nineteen-year old who’ll be on the other side of the net.

The pre-match rituals begin. New Zealand’s Maria Taylor paces quickly away as they step onto the grass to claim the bench further from the court entrance. For luck, perhaps, if that’s where she’d sat for her steamroller of a quarterfinal. Where she’ll sit down during the changeover makes no difference to Alicent. It’s not something that plays into her own superstitions, few as they are: she always takes a moment to hold her mother’s old cross necklace to her lips before stepping onto court, and when she’s at her bench she makes sure her water bottles are aligned perfectly straight.

Called to the net, Alicent bounces to get her muscles warm. Across from her, her opponent, lithe in her Nike dress, mirrors her movements – she’s equally light on her feet, high knees and buttkicks and hops side-to-side as the umpire runs through the protocols. Taylor wins the coin toss and surprises Alicent by electing to receive first. As they warm up, exchanging forehands to begin, Alicent is struck by how young her opponent looks – baby-faced but determined, with a set to her jaw and an intensity in her eyes. Just nineteen, and comfortably in the top twenty of the rankings, the second seed in this tournament behind Rhaenyra. Experience is helpful in a lot of ways, but there’s a freedom to playing at that age that Alicent knows she will never recapture. Before the grind of the tour and all the heartbreaking losses take their toll, before it starts to feel like the clock is ticking on achieving what you’ve dreamed of.

One clock is running down. The umpire calls time on the warm-up – there’s no more time for philosophy.

Alicent’s opening serve is good, the ball slicing cleanly through the air, aimed right at Taylor’s body. It’s a declaration of intent – a promise that there’ll be no easing into this match, that her sweet-faced youth won’t make Alicent play any more nicely than she would against anybody else. The teen handles it well, with reflexes as quick as Alicent had expected from watching her yesterday. Even so, the shot coming back at her is far from a winner. It flies short and high, and Alicent steps in from the baseline to put it cleanly away with an overhead – except Taylor is fast, faster than Alicent thought, running back and managing to thwack the ball back into play behind her back when it bounces high. It’s probably as much luck as execution that the shot is in, but Alicent grits her teeth anyway as she hits it back. The rally extends into a long back and forth: Taylor looks for winners, and Alicent angles her shots in a way that will prevent them, waiting for a chance to open up for her. It does, eventually, and her cross-court backhand is blisteringly fast, bouncing out of reach and hitting the backboard of the court with a thwack.

The spectators in the stands erupt into applause at the end of the exchange. They’ve tasted the prospect of a match, a battle, and it’s only the first point. She steals a quick glance at Harrold in her player’s box, bolstered by his thumbs up. She should have ended it with that early overhead smash, but a point is a point, and she’d worked her point construction well.

Alicent settles into the set as it goes on, playing her percentages perfectly, barely committing an error. She owns the baseline, hugging it when she can to maintain some aggression, only dropping back when the Kiwi starts firing forehands at her. It’s not often that Alicent plays someone with speed or agility to rival her own. There’s a key difference, though, in that the nineteen-year old’s movement is inefficient, her footwork poor. She’s going for every ball but often reaching them off-balance. It’s a doggedness that might win her a few points now but will exhaust her eventually, so Alicent exploits it, extending the rallies and sending her shots to opposite corners of the court, making Taylor run.

It’s a close set, but Alicent clinches it seven games to five, breaking Taylor as she serves to stay in the set.

During the changeover, she wraps herself in a towel to stay warm. Despite the sunshine, a mean breeze has picked up – even in the summer, sustaining perfect weather for a whole match is a big ask in England. Alicent thinks about the adjustments she’ll need to make on her serve as she peels her banana – she has a pretty high toss, vulnerable to being taken by the wind. She’ll need to be careful if it lasts.

Once she’s hydrated and eaten half the banana, she rummages in a zip pocket of her racquet bag. Rhaenyra had given her a note to read between sets before they’d parted. Alicent somehow doubts it’ll be the tactical advice Rhaenyra insisted it was. She opens it to find only one word written: ‘WIN!’. The little slip of paper, marked with the letterhead from the hotel they’re staying at, is embellished with doodled stars. Alicent smiles stupidly at it, warm despite the wind. It’s certainly not the worst advice she’s ever been given.

The wind is showing no signs of letting up second set commences. It affects Taylor badly on her opening service game. She’s mouthing off to her box between failed tosses and lost points. At 0-30, a warning from the umpire for a time violation only adds to her visibly mounting frustration. Her hurried first serve lands in the net and her second attempt flies wildly long, caught by a gust. Three break points makes for a very nice start to a set, and even more satisfyingly Alicent converts the first with a return so good that it draws delighted, awed oohs from the crowd, the volume growing as Alicent throws a triumphant fist in the air.

It sets the tone for the rest of the match.

Taylor has been shaken by the weather, exhausted by her own determination to chase every ball, and maybe even thrown off by the fact she’s lagging behind a player ranked so far below her. She practically defeats herself in her desperation to win, her frustration turning into wilder and wilder risks, the variety in her game that should be an asset causing her to flail for want of the right choice. Alicent is inconvenienced by the wind as well, but it doesn’t stop her from playing her game, only to adapt it: she hits with more spin when she’s playing with the wind, then flatter against it.

The second set progresses with Alicent controlling almost every point from the baseline, outmanoeuvring her visibly tiring opponent. The Kiwi’s shots lose their accuracy as she struggles to keep up with Alicent's sheer consistency. Every so often, Taylor manages to pull off a spectacular winner, showcasing the talent that had brought her to this stage of the tournament. Other than trying increasingly desperately to make those miracle shots, there’s not much she can do. Alicent is too relentless, too prescient, too precise. It’s one way traffic.

"Game, set, match, Alicent Hightower."

7-5, 6-3.

It’s the sweetest victory she’s tasted in a while. For once the satisfaction doesn’t come from having been forced to fight tooth and nail for it, but because from the moment Alicent stepped on court, she hadn’t doubted it was within her grasp.

She had almost forgotten how fun watching Rhaenyra play is. It’s different on a hotel room television than it is in person.

Rhaenyra is a showman and technician both, blending finesse and power, never failing to work the crowd, redirecting their energy into her strokes. Her opponent, Liu Min, is no slouch either, aggressive from the baseline and fearless in going for winners. She’d managed to take Rhaenyra to a tie-break in the first, which Alicent is grateful for; the extended set gave her enough time to make it out of her recovery session to catch the start of the second. It’s proving far less evenly matched than the first.

She’d not seen the first set, so she doesn’t know if Liu is dipping, or Rhaenyra has found another gear – either way, even early in the second, Rhaenyra's dominance is becoming apparent. Liu fights valiantly for each point but it's clear that she's outmatched.

Tomorrow, she thinks, as Rhaenyra secures an early break despite Liu’s best efforts, taking the lead 2-0. They’ll have the final tomorrow.

Alicent had fallen in love with Rhaenyra on the court, and she’d fallen in love with tennis with Rhaenyra across the net. Watching her play, so gorgeous in her element, reminds her why. Leaning forward helplessly in her seat, she itches to be closer, greedy for the girl and for the game. Aching to be out there, to feel the electricity of being the player opposite Rhaenyra, to be the one countering each stroke of the racquet with one of her own, her partner in the dance. She’s excited for tomorrow, whatever happens – whether she can pull off an upset, or if she gets demolished, it doesn’t matter. Rhaenyra was right, in that restaurant. The two of them, on court together, chasing a trophy. It will be worth celebrating.

Her daydreams of tomorrow’s final die at 7-6 (7), 3-1.

"Rhaenyra Targaryen retires due to injury."

Chapter Text

"Rhaenyra Targaryen retires due to injury."

Alicent doesn’t know what happened. There had been no clear incident, no preceding drop in the level of her play. All she knows is that Rhaenyra held her serve and then turned to her box, shouting up to Rhaenys in Valyrian. When the umpire had warned her for speaking with her coach outside of a changeover, she’d told him she was retiring. The rest of spectators seem as confused as Alicent, their low murmurs of discontent only giving way to applause as Rhaenyra exits the court with a wave.

Alicent feels sick at the thought of Rhaenyra injured. Not now. Not before Wimbledon. 

Rhaenyra almost never retires. Alicent can only think of a couple of times on tour that she has – once when she turned her ankle so badly she could barely stand, once after literally throwing up into her towel bin. Maybe she’d learned a lesson about playing through injury by missing that USO two years ago and is being uncharacteristically cautious. Or maybe – even though Alicent couldn’t see what had gone wrong – she had actually badly hurt herself somehow

The ‘player’s box’ at a small club like this is only a row of designated seating. In with the crowd instead, she has to contend with them in her desperation to reach Rhaenyra. They’re so slow, filtering out in sluggish disappointment. She should have just vaulted down the tiers onto the court and taken the player’s entrance; Rhaenyra’s team are climbing down now, but Alicent’s gotten herself trapped in the aisle.

Some of the spectators obviously recognise her from her match earlier, but nobody tries to stop her for a chat as she pushes through; a couple of mouths gape like they’re thinking about it, but their jaws snap shut after a moment. Perhaps the urgency she feels is spilling into the air around her, warning them it wouldn’t be wise to interact.

When she finally escapes the stands, Alicent is glad for her intimate familiarity with the club; she knows a shortcut entrance to the player’s area round the back of the building. Flashing her pass at the security guard too quickly for him to reasonably be able to look at it, she shoves rudely past him in her haste. Her rushed steps echo harshly down the corridor on her way to the medical area, but another sound – much less harsh, much less expected – floats to her from the conditioning room.

Laughter. Rhaenyra’s laughter, at that.

Alicent changes course, pushing against the swing-door into the gym. And there she is, on a stationary bike. Laughing.

Relieved and confused in equal measure, Alicent stops in the doorway – the knot of worry in her chest begins to unravel, but she doesn’t understand, and that tangle gets tighter. Rhaenyra seems pretty unscathed, and her team seem in good spirits as well. "Something funny?" she asks uncertainly.

"Alicent!" Rhaenyra turns to her. "Hey."

"Hey? You just retired from your match!"

Rhaenyra smiles at her like nothing out of the ordinary just happened. "You got here so quick, did you run?"

Alicent huffs in disbelief. "For God’s sake, Rhaenyra! Are you alright?"

"I’m fine." She shrugs her shoulders, nonchalant as she cycles. "Just a precaution. My wrist was a little stiff after warming up this morning. Was feeling it a bit in that last game, and Liu’s a big hitter, didn’t want to risk anything… Greg doesn’t think it’s anything too serious, though."

"Why wouldn’t you just ask for a medical time out and take something for it? Before retiring? You were ahead, you were playing great!"

Greg, Rhaenyra’s physio, answers for her. "We chatted about it before the match. That Rhaenyra should make the call, if she felt a twinge." He keeps his voice calm, level, reassuring. Like he’s practicing his bedside manner, a doctor talking to a frantic spouse. "Erring on the side of caution ahead of Wimbledon, and this way there’s a whole weekend between now and Eastbourne."

Alicent nods slowly, processing the explanation. The tension coiled tightly through her begins to unwind further, glad Rhaenyra’s alright, but a new disquiet slides into the spaces it leaves behind.

"Sorry if I scared you," Rhaenyra offers.

"It’s okay. Just glad you’re alright."

"Shame about tomorrow," Rhaenyra says so casually. The blitheness lodges between Alicent’s ribs, deep as a knife.

"It is a shame," Alicent agrees softly, trying to mask her disappointment. Apparently it’s much greater than Rhaenyra’s, even after she’s been hyping the possibility up all week. Alicent had done her part in making it a reality, despite her doubts she could. She watches as Rhaenyra continues to pedal, seemingly unbothered. "I was looking forward to it."

"You’ll be great tomorrow, though. I’m excited to get to watch you."

"Yeah, thanks.” Alicent feels wobbly suddenly, like she might cry. She gestures at the bike, Rhaenyra’s team. “Right. Well, I’ll leave you to it."

"See you later? Back at the hotel?" Rhaenyra asks.

Alicent shrugs noncommittally, managing a smile and a wave as she retreats from the room. She bites hard on the inside of her lower lip as she wanders back to the player’s lounge, where she’ll probably find Harrold.

Yesterday, Rhaenyra had validated her nerves. I get why it’s a big match for you. All she hears now is the last of it.

For you.

This tournament had never been serious for Rhaenyra. Part of her had known that all along – a 250 is small-fry. Rhaenyra is ranked second in the world. She’s only here out of some mix of loyalty to the LTA, an exorbitant appearance fee, and the opportunity to hang out with Alicent. It’s a diversion, not a proving ground, and the title itself means next to nothing for her. Of course, it’s easy for her to give it up over a twinge, even from up a set and a break in a semi-final. Alicent understands the decision. Rhaenyra has her sights set much higher this summer. It doesn’t take the sting from it.

She feels exceptionally glum, sitting on the bed in her hotel room, watching back Liu’s matches from the tournament. Her own semi-final victory, which she had valued so greatly, feels emptier after Rhaenyra’s retirement. Now all she can think about is the gulf between them. There hadn’t always been one.

Her phone buzzes against the sheets by her side. Think of the devil and she’ll send a text.

Just got back to the hotel, it says. Dinner?

Ate earlier! Sorry

Oh fairs. Want to warm-up for your match tomorrow together? Greg says my wrist is fine for practicing 

Already booked a hitting partner

Oh ok

Alicent sighs, trapping the loose skin of her thumb knuckle between her teeth. It’s not really Rhaenyra’s fault that she’s upset. Alicent does understand her reasoning, especially with the blinding power she’s watching Liu Min hit with on the hotel television. It’s logical for Rhaenyra to want to avoid aggravating even low-level inflammation with match play. But on the other hand, they’re all pretty much carrying minor injuries on tour, all the time. Most would push through the kind of discomfort Rhaenyra’s describing for the chance of a title.

Even so, she follows up her rejection to soften it. Her misery doesn’t need company. Wanted to practice against someone more like Liu, hitting big from the back. Her backhand v diff to yours

True! Makes sense :) How are you feeling for it?

Alicent ignores the message, throwing her phone back against the duvet, and rewinds the points she’s just missed. The volume of the crowd suggests they might have been interesting.

It’s only later when she’s climbing into bed, double checking her alarm is set, that she sees Rhaenyra has been texting her through the evening.

Sleepover again?

??

I’m turning in btw. Goodnight

The last of them was a half hour ago. Alicent debates leaving the texts unanswered; it wouldn’t be much of a lie if she told her tomorrow she hadn’t seen them before she went to bed, and Rhaenyra’s already sleeping anyway.

She gnaws her lip, staring at the chat until her guilt takes command. Sorry, just saw these. Sleep tight

Alicent attempts to find sleep herself but can’t settle. She’s nervous and deflated and her muscles won’t relax, tight with anticipation for tomorrow. Not the excited kind she’d felt earlier, sure she’d be facing Rhaenyra. There’s suddenly no upside to failure – no history, no on-court chemistry, no friendship to celebrate. Only a title, there for the losing.

And then there’s that cruel little voice in her head, that’s moved past tennis, onto more existential things. The idea of losing Rhaenyra, creeping in as it does. It would be so easy for her to leave Alicent behind. She’s rich as sin, probably destined for a damehood when she retires, sooner if she manages to win Wimbledon. And Alicent is… middling. Managing to make a living playing tennis is no mean feat, but her name won’t be remembered in the annals of history. She won’t be in any hall of fame.

It feels sometimes like she’s fighting against a current, Rhaenyra drifting ever further from her. How long until six weeks in the summer and snatches of each other at other tournaments isn’t enough to maintain their closeness? And worse – if Rhaenyra met someone, how much room would be left for Alicent? Even the grass season wouldn’t be theirs alone anymore, another body for Rhaenyra to share her meals and her bed with.

Alicent takes to methodically tracing the ceiling’s cornicing over and over to stop herself from thinking, her eyes long since adjusted to the dark. She's still at it when a gentle knock on the door startles her, awake enough that it’s easy to convince herself up from under the covers.

She opens the door to Rhaenyra, smiling uncertainly in her pyjamas. "I was still awake when you texted, so I thought, maybe…?"

A weight leaves her shoulders, one she’d been too stubborn to remove herself. "Please. I can’t sleep at all."

"Me neither."

Rhaenyra grabs her hand as Alicent steps aside to let her in, leading her back to her own bed then crawling over it to her long established side. Alicent follows. The mattress dips as Rhaenyra settles at her back, ever the big spoon. Her warmth seeping into Alicent’s side is a balm, like sliding into a hot bath, coming home to a roaring fireplace in the winter. 

"Alicent?" Rhaenyra asks, already sounding halfway asleep. It’s past her bedtime, after all.

"Mm?"

"Are you upset with me?"

"No," she lies, because she really wishes she wasn’t. She reaches back to cup Rhaenyra’s cheek, resting by her shoulder. Her thumb traces Rhaenyra’s cheekbone, down to her jaw. The rules are different, in the sleepy dark, for the touches she’ll steal. It hardly counts if she’s not even looking. "Just a bit nervous for tomorrow.

"Okay." Rhaenyra is quickly succumbing to her drowsiness, her response half-slurred. "Love you."

"Love you too."

It’s been a while since Alicent made a final. The number of people who reach out to her ahead of it is a pleasant surprise. Friends from the tennis world, mostly - the only ones be keeping an eye on smaller events like this one. She thanks them, makes vague plans to see a few of them – other players, old hitting partners – at Wimbledon in a couple of weeks. Alicent’s in the middle of responding to one of her old coaches from the club she and Rhaenyra grew up playing at, when a text comes through that startles her so badly that she drops her phone.

Her dad. He’d blocked her number three months ago, and she’d heard nothing for him since. But there it is.

I’ll be watching today. Good luck.  

She bites the inside of her cheek to stop her growing smile. Rhaenyra frowns at her from across their breakfast table, poking at Alicent’s shin with the toe of her shoe. "Who are you texting?"

"Oh," Alicent says. She doesn’t really want to tell Rhaenyra, lest it turn into a lecture of caution. It’s nice that her dad is finally reaching out. That he’s wishing her well. She puts her phone face down on the table. "Was just a good luck message. Nobody you’d know."

Alicent wonders if Rhaenyra suspects, trying not to squirm as her gaze lingers in scrutiny. She’s relieved when the blonde lets it go with a shrug, turning her attention back to her cereal.

Alicent practically vibrates with nervous energy as she heads onto the court. Shifting her weight between the balls of her feet, she attempts to channel it into something useful, warming the muscles in her calves. She waves to the crowd as they cheer her. The volume and enthusiasm levels are starkly higher than the spattering of applause she’d received in the first round. She’s a fully-fleshed out set of narratives to root for now, not only a name next to the union jack: the last Brit standing, the underdog seeking to prove herself against yet another top-twenty player, the once champion out to restore her title.

The match is preceded by the usual routine – managing her bench area as she likes it, the coin-toss, the warm-up. She’s serving first. Alicent bounces the ball on the baseline, first with her racquet, then her palm, sparing a glance to the crowd before she starts her service motion. She’s seeking Rhaenyra, of course, who responds predictably with a touch of her knuckles to her temple and a jerk of her chin. Good luck. Get on with it.

Alicent smiles to herself, then delivers an ace to open the match.

Nothing about the set is easy: Liu Min hits hard, but also hits smart, partially neutralising one of Alicent’s key strengths – her ability to anticipate her opponent’s next move – by being strategically unpredictable. It’s a frustration. Not insurmountable, but Alicent needs to be more alert, think faster, move quicker, make sure she’s ready to react when the ball does leave Liu’s racquet.

A short-angled forehand comes at her, and she has to slide halfway into the splits to reach it. It’s a miracle she even tips the ball back over the net, let alone what she manages next – rolling back out of the awkward position to run back to the baseline where Liu lobbed it, and slamming a backhand back across the court. Her opponent didn’t even move from her spot, so sure she’d already won the point; she’s a good sport about it, miming applause against her racquet.

Alicent manages to clinch a single break to win the set, serving it out with an ace. It’s a pleasing mirror to the opener, she thinks, and the spectators seem to agree, Rhaenyra not least of them: Alicent can hear her yell in Valyrian over the claps and whistles. Māzigon va.

She’s picked up very little of the language of the tiny Eastern European country Rhaenyra’s family immigrated from, but she knows that one, as does any tennis fan.

"Come on!" Alicent echoes loudly, throwing a fist in the air as she heads for her bench.

The second set progresses in the same vein, each point hard fought for, and Alicent once again to gain the crucial advantage by breaking Liu’s serve. She’s gotten a little lucky, she thinks – something’s off for the Chinese player today, her first serve percentage much lower than she achieves usually. With each rally turning into a battle of attrition, pouncing on the more conservative second serve has been the decisive factor in both breaks.

Alicent is up a set and a break, six games to five. All she has to do is hold her service game, and the trophy is hers.

Thirsty as she is – the warm day is sweltering now, sticky and humid under thick white cloud – she wishes she didn’t have to wait the ninety seconds for the change of ends. She wants to power through, try to clinch it. Momentum is everything in tennis: battling for it, fighting to hold onto it, struggling to get it back. She’d rather not lose it now. Despite her reluctance for the break, she makes the most of it, sipping at her electrolyte-laden water as she knows she should, taking the weight briefly off her tortured legs. She flicks her thumbnail repeatedly, rapidly, a deliberate habit to keep herself from picking at the cuticles there.

The title is as little as four points away, if she can hold to love.

Play resumes. Her first serve is good, kicking wide and forcing Liu to take the return on the stretch, unable to generate her full, dangerous power. She runs in to cover the court she’s left empty, and Alicent slices it back to the deuce court, into space where she had just been. 15-0.

A rally that Liu almost wins with a drive volley at the net, Alicent getting her racquet to the low bounce just in time. Her half-volley lands beautifully on the corner of the baseline. 30-0.

A blistering return of serve, straight down the line. 30-15.

An unforced error from Liu, sending an overhead smash into the net. 40-15. 

It's two championship points; two chances at the title. But the moment gets to her. Instead of constructing her point, building up to a winner, Alicent takes a wild chance and over hits, too eager to put the game to rest. 40-30.

Liu puts away another blinding return. 40-40.

"Fuck," Alicent mutters under her breath, as the scoreboard shows the deuce. She rolls out her shoulders, shakes out her legs, steadies her breathing. God, what would her dad be saying, watching at home, as she wasted her opportunities? She knew she should have gone down the T for that last serve, that she had gotten too predictable with going out wide. "Fuck."

Alicent overshoots her first serve. She grits her teeth and sends her second ball in faster than she normally would, leery of how she’s been punished by Liu’s brutal returns this game. It’s good enough to force a rally, at least. Alicent is careful in her placements this time, making sure she keeps the ball out of Liu’s strike zone, stopping her from unleashing her power.

Instead, Liu wrong-foots her with a backhand drop shot – the first she’s attempted all match. It’s almost unfairly textbook, its trajectory over the net like a river cleaving to a waterfall. Alicent runs, lunging, but she’d been all the way back behind the baseline. The ball dribbles limply off her racket frame.

Advantage, Liu. Break point.

Her serve, so reliable all match crumbles, two balls going into the net. The double fault sends them to a tie break for the second set.

A bead of sweat trickles down Alicent's spine. She tightens her grip on her racquet and bounces on the balls of her feet, her muscles coiled. Liu Min tosses the ball high into the air, racquet arcing gracefully as she serves. The ball hurtles towards Alicent’s body, a blur of yellow against the pale grey sky. She shifts back and to the side to stop the awkward shot from jamming her angle, and her racquet strings connect with the ball with a satisfying thwack.

The rally begins. They’re both playing cautiously – in line with her usual game, but not Liu’s. It makes Alicent edgy, because it’s harder to predict when the attempted winner will come. It’s a false sense of security, rather than the surety she’s under gunfire. The scoreline seesaws, neither managing to create a gap. Alicent gets a mini-break, and Liu gets one right back, for 5-5. Alicent wants to scream.

The stretched-out set, twelve games and this gruelling tiebreak, is taking a toll on them both. Liu looks as sweaty as she feels, and Alicent wants nothing more than to sit down for far longer than the two minutes she’ll get if, God forbid, this goes to a third.

It's now or never. Alicent pours every ounce of will into the next point, her focus narrowing to only the ball and the woman opposite her. The rally stretches on, until Alicent chases down a biting slice, whipping a backhand up the line - it whispers past her opponent’s racquet…

— and lands just behind the baseline. Alicent’s stomach lurches, knowing what her error means.

On set point, her opponent miraculously recovers the quality of her first serve and Alicent barely manages to return it. The ball floats short, and when Liu steps in for the volley, there’s fire in her eyes.

Alicent watches the ball sail past her outstretched racquet, dread settling in the pit of her stomach. The shot was good. It’s going to land right inside the baseline. She knows before the umpire's call that she’s lost the set, already trudging miserably to her bench. She sits heavily, throwing a towel over her head to try and re-centre. It quickly becomes suffocating, so she wipes her sweaty face and neck and rejoins her miserable reality – the fact she’s facing down a third set in her first final in years. Alicent stares at her racquet, tracing the grip with her fingers, and decides she hates it. She switches it for another, hoping this one might be less cursed.

"Get it together," she tells herself, taking a sip from her water bottle, sparing a glance to her box. Maybe she should go over there, have a quick tactical exchange with Harrold, but she really can’t face it. Especially not with the way Rhaenyra is frowning across the court, visibly let down by Alicent’s failure to live up to the supreme level of faith she has in her.

"Time," the umpire calls. Alicent forces herself to her feet.

She loses her opening service game with a break to love: two double faults, an unforced error in a lob that goes long, and an undeniable blinder of a return on her final second serve.

Alicent watches the ball hurtle past her, her feet rooted to the ground. The response from the crowd for Liu is tepid, the energy in the stands petering out with the turned tables. She can't bring herself to look at Harrold or Rhaenyra in the stands, fearing the disappointment she’ll see on their faces.

"Game, Liu," the chair umpire calls, confirming the early break.

Alicent hardly hears it, too busy running through her new game plan. Her serve has abandoned her, and her attempts to go big have cost her. Like on championship point, when she gave Liu the set point in the breaker. She needs to play it safe, avoid taking those risks. If she can just get the ball back over the net, she can let her opponent make the mistakes.

She dials up her defense, trying to guarantee no ball that isn’t an outright winner gets past her, and hopes for unforced errors from her opponent. Frustratingly, they don’t come – Alicent’s own high percentages are dropping as she makes increasingly desperate retrievals, but her rival’s are on the rise, an improbable number of winners painting the chalk.

She’s forced further and further behind the baseline by Liu’s heavy shots, until she couldn’t get on the offence if she tried. Her arms ache from absorbing the endless power, and she’s putting her legs to work beyond what even she’s capable of.

The idea she might win the title sifts away, sand between her fingers. But if she keeps running, she might at least get the next point, and the next. The strategy wins her a couple of games, but it isn’t enough to keep her from trailing.

Serving for the championship, her opponent is a shark that’s scented blood. She does not falter as Alicent had. She’s playing with precision and power, leaving Alicent scrambling. When she does manage to get the ball back in play, Liu is there to finish the point with a crushing forehand.

"Game, set, match, Liu."

Alicent drops her bag onto the floor of the unoccupied men’s locker room, and selects a racquet, testing its weight in her hands. She looks at it with enough venom it might as well be her own reflection. And then she screams.

She smashes the racquet downwards as hard as she can, slamming it again and again against the floor, until the frame bends and the strings snap, and she can no longer strike the ground with sufficient contact as to be satisfying. Tears threaten, and her muscles shake from the effort of holding them back, so she stops trying. She tosses the broken racquet away and sits heavily on the bench, pressing her face into her hands, letting the tears flow into her palms.

On paper, it’s hardly the biggest loss of her career, but it stings nearly the same. Losing the bronze medal match at the Olympics three years ago was worse, but other than that she can’t remember feeling much more wretched than this.

She’s not sure she can take much more disappointment.

"Give me five more minutes," Alicent manages to say, not looking up as she hears the door open. It’ll be Harrold, here to force her into her post-match recovery routine. It’s a casually brutal part of the sport, that win or lose you have to get on that bike, often next to the player you’ve just been on court with. She doesn’t have it in her right now, to see the woman she lost the title to, had just been made to pose for photos with, holding the glass bowl awarded to the runner up; she needs to gather herself first, find her composure.

Instead of the hinges creaking shut, footsteps advance towards her. They’re Rhaenyra’s, not Harrold’s. It’s a gait she would recognise the rhythm of anywhere. Alicent doesn’t move her head from her hands, and Rhaenyra doesn’t say anything, but she sits next to her on the bench and wraps her arms tightly around her. That’s all it takes for Alicent to start crying again, spine convulsing against Rhaenyra’s side as she sobs.

"Shh, shh, it’s okay." Rhaenyra’s hand runs through her hair, murmuring reassurances to her like she’s a child with a scraped knee. "It’s one match. You’ve had such a great tournament, babe. We all lose sometimes. I know it sucks in the final, but you’ve played so well this last week. You should be proud. I’m proud."

Rhaenyra is being – is always – so lovely to her, and it’s sweet until it curdles, turning sickly. Alicent shakes Rhaenyra off, her tears giving way to anger again at being so condescended to, treated like she wasn’t to blame for the result. "Stop it. I lost it. I gave that match away. Don’t coddle me, be honest. I was shit."

"You weren’t shit—"

"Fucking hell, Rhaenyra! What did I just say?"

Rhaenyra’s eyes narrow as she leans back to be able to look properly at Alicent. She doesn’t speak for a moment, but Alicent can see the twitching in her jaw. "Fine," she says eventually. "You fucked it. Happy?"

"I…" Part of her is soothed by the admission. The flicker of irritation that had flared into her outburst quenched by the validation. Another part of her is even more annoyed. She’d wanted to fight, but she hadn’t wanted to be on the side of having to defend her own dogshit performance.

Rhaenyra’s eyes search hers. “You really want me to be honest about how that match ended?”

Alicent nods, resolute. It’s still a slightly bewildering feeling, stepping off court and not being told everything she needs to fix, all that she’s done wrong. Being braced for a post-match dressing down is so entrenched in her that she’s not quite sure how to work through a tough loss without it. It’s a barrier to catharsis. Maybe she can admit that her father’s methods weren’t always the most constructive, but there’s a part of her that still craves it. How can she be better, if she doesn’t address her mistakes? If the people around her aren’t honest?

"I knew you were going to lose about thirty seconds after you stepped out on court for that third set,” Rhaenyra informs her bluntly. “It was obvious that you’d decided to stop playing tennis and started playing yourself. Like, boo-fucking-hoo, you haven’t won a three-setter in a while? I don’t care, nobody cares. It’s a stat. You should have bloody tried."

Anger rises in Alicent’s throat so it feels hot and tight, spitting her retort back at Rhaenyra, an outlet for the adrenaline still pumping through her. "You think I didn’t try? I must’ve run about five kilometres in the third."

"Yeah, because you gave up on ending any points yourself." Rhaenyra stands up with a roll of her eyes, pacing like she’s leading a seminar. "You barely even attempted to hit a winner, you weren’t trying to construct your points, you weren’t even trying to force the errors. Just, I don’t know, passively praying one would come and running at the ball. It’s one thing having a defensive game, Alicent, and yours is one of the best, whatever the rankings say. But that was just…. Ugly. Defeatist tennis. You’re smarter than that. You’re better."

"Evidently not," Alicent says, resenting the ugly, snotty sniff she makes trying to swallow back more tears. It doesn’t work. Her shoulders slump, and she starts crying again.

"Jesus, sorry." Rhaenyra stops dead in her tracks. Her voice gentles. "I didn’t come in here to tell you off. It’s just hard to watch, sometimes, when I can see how close you are and you just"—she reaches out, flexing her hands in the air, as if grabbing at some imagine trophy, and then drops them to her sides—“don’t take it. Sometimes I think someone just needs to like, bonk you on the head with the trophy mid-match, stop you thinking so much." She lowers the side of her hand against the top of Alicent’s bowed head, a slow-motion karate chop, and Alicent feels her lips twitch up despite herself. Rhaenyra sits back down on the bench next to her, dropping her chin to Alicent’s shoulder and pressing a kiss to her cheek, hard against the bone.

"You’ve really had a great tournament, Alicent," Rhaenyra adds, quietly. "I hope that’s what you take away from it. Everything up until that third set. The first set today, especially. I was in awe. That backhand was firing. And your footwork, babe! Phwoar."

Alicent laughs, feeble and wet. "Can we still do seafood spaghetti tonight?" she asks. "Even though I don’t have anything to celebrate."

"Commiseration clams for you," Rhaenyra agrees. "But you’ll have to indulge me when I order us some champagne."

"And what exactly are you toasting to?"

"You, of course," Rhaenyra continues before Alicent can think of something self-effacing to retort, her arm warm around her shoulders, squeezing her tightly. "I live in celebration of you, Alicent Hightower, whether you think you’ve earned it or not."

Alicent stares helplessly at her for a few seconds. Rhaenyra doesn’t know that she has Alicent’s heart in her fist, that she’s squeezing it to the point of bursting. Alicent starts to cry again. This time, it’s not because of the title she failed to win, but because she’s so, so in love with this woman, her best friend, and she doesn’t know what the hell she’s supposed to do about it.

Chapter Text

"It is such bullshit that they didn’t give you a wildcard for Eastbourne." Rhaenyra’s fuming as she chucks her stuff into a suitcase. Alicent’s already packed up to go home to Wimbledon to train for the championships.

"They were decided two weeks ago," Alicent says miserably, sitting at the foot of Rhaenyra’s bed, apparently as moral support to convince Rhaenyra to get her act together and pack. "Three wildcards to give, and I was Brit number four until yesterday. I was never gonna get one."

The final in Birmingham has her in third, now, overtaking Sophie Peterson, a twenty-two year old just starting out on the tour after playing college tennis in the US.

"Idiots. You’re better than them both put together."

"They always go by ranking. And to be fair," Alicent adds, "Soph didn’t get one either, because Auclair’s doing her retirement tour, and they have some reciprocal wildcard swap going on with the French federation."

"To be fair," Rhaenyra mutters in a high-pitched mockery. Alicent reaches back and grabs a pillow to throw at Rhaenyra, who allows it to hit her. "It’s so stupid. And unfair. And now I don’t get to hang out with you for a whole week. Unless you wanna come be my hitting partner?"

Alicent shakes her head. "I need to focus on my game, going into Wimbledon. I’ve got stuff to concentrate on with Harrold. It’ll be easier at the club."

The dark cloud over Rhaenyra’s countenance clears somewhat. She pouts at Alicent. "Makes sense. I’ll miss you though.”

It does suck she won’t get to play in the Eastbourne WTA500. It’s a higher-level tournament, so the draw is stacked compared to the two 250s she’s just played, but worth more points for the same reason. Two wins there would have been enough to see her back into the top hundred before Wimbledon. With a half-decent draw she might have secured them, carrying good form on the grass so far. But still, a week ahead of her home slam, and she’s feeling more optimistic than she has in a while that she might not be making a first round exit.

"Make the semi-finals and I’ll come down for a couple days," Alicent promises, because she’ll miss Rhaenyra too. She raises her eyebrows. "Been a while since I watched you lift a trophy."

"You got it," Rhaenyra says, zipping her bag with a flourish.

Alicent gets the Sunday off to mope, but it’s back on the court early on Monday morning. Or at least, that’s what Alicent expects. Instead, Harrold walks them right back to the training centre’s cafe, and buys her a coffee. It’s decaf. Caffeine has never sat right with her, so is only ever in the mix on a match day when she can shed the nervous energy through extreme exertion.

"I thought maybe it would be good to chat, before we get to drilling," he tells her, kindly. The only experience she can compare his demeanour to is the one bereavement counselling session she went to after her mum died. Horrendously empathetic, to the point it makes her itch. "About Saturday."

It was inevitable that they’d talk about the final because he’s her coach and it’s his job. But it’s so horrendously blatant where she went wrong – Rhaenyra had torn her a new one minutes after it happened, it’s not like Harrold would have had to carefully review the match footage again – that she can’t help but feel it’s hardly worth it. And if he’s going to be so nice the whole time, she’ll crawl out of her skin.

"So. What do you think happened out there?"

Alicent makes up her mind. She’s going to kill herself right in front of him.

"Harrold.” Her voice is pained. “You sound like a primary school teacher."

"Am I overcompensating?"

"A bit."

"Alright." He sighs. "Well. It’s a confidence issue, isn’t it? Tricky to navigate around without making it worse."

"Could it be worse?"

"You could crumble in every set, instead of just the third."

She laughs, so relieved at the change in tone that the reminder of her choke doesn’t even sting. "I could, couldn’t I?"

"I came armed with statistics and emotional support. And since you don’t seem keen on the latter… did you know that even counting the last year, you have one of the better three-set win rates on the tour? If you exclude it, you're in the top five among active players. Of course, only looking at this year you’re tied with a few players for dead last—"

"So I used to be able to come in clutch. And now I can’t." That’s not news to her.

"Think of it like—recent matches, that’s weather. The climate though, that’s your career. That’s your ability to win in those moments. Give it time. Adjust back to your median. There’s nobody on the tour fitter than you. Stronger, sure, plenty. Faster, not many. But your stamina is right up there, and you should be winning those third sets by virtue of having more in the tank.

"You covered a kilometre and half in that third set. Players cover less than that in a match. Liu ran less than three hundred metres in the same time. You play differently, with intention, and you’d have wiped her out."

"That’s what I was trying to do. My shots weren’t working."

"How would you know? You stopped making them."

"My serve—"

"All of your serve stats were better than hers, across the match. Roughly even in the third."

"But—" Alicent sighs, drops her chin into her hand, elbow on the table between them. She should have stuck with her game, she knows that, of course she does – and maybe it’s true everything hadn’t been falling apart as severely as she thought. Only… "It felt bad."

"It will, sometimes. That’s tennis."

"I feel like my arms are about to fall off," Alicent complains, "and it’s too hot. I can’t think."

"Good," Harrold says. "I’m more interested in how you play when you feel terrible, to be honest. Not all that much for me to suggest when you’re in a good mood."

It’s alright for him to say – he’s not the one hitting with her today. One of the LTA-employed practice partners is over the net from her. The balls he sends her way are heavy with topspin, much more draining to return than the flatter shots favoured by most of the big-hitting women on the tour.

"Grab a drink." Her coach takes a little pity on her. "Then we’ll go again. Try to finish the rally in five, this time."

He’d been making her play ten shots before ending the rally before. At least the shorter points might give her poor arms a break, even if she’ll have to think more about where she’s putting the ball.

Her watch buzzes on her wrist with a text from Rhaenyra. It reminds her: "By the way, I told Rhaenyra I’d go down to Eastbourne, if she makes the semis."

"Friday and Saturday?"

She nods. "Yeah, I’d be back Saturday evening."

"The draw’s Friday morning," Harrold says, thoughtfully. "Hitting with Rhaenyra definitely isn’t the worst prep you could do for Wimbledon, and I assume the organisers will let you use the player gym. You know what you’re doing. I’ll use the time to look at your path through the tournament, do some research on the players."

"Brill," she says, and takes a grateful glug of her water. "Thanks."

"The two of you are very close, aren’t you?"

"I mean." She tries not to blush. "We’ve known each other a very long time."

"What if the draw comes out, and you have to play her in the first round?"

Sink into despair? she thinks. But she shrugs. "I’ll shake my fist at the sky, I guess. And then try to win it."

"Good." Harrold’s nod is pleased. "I did wonder, with her withdrawing in Birmingham, but fine for Eastbourne…"

"She was being cautious," Alicent says, defensive on Rhaenyra’s behalf, shaking her head at the implication. Rhaenyra would never.

"As you say." Harrold shrugs. "I know when I was working with Carol"—Carol Armstrong, who he worked with until her retirement a few years ago—"she struggled when she had to play Paula."

"That’s hardly the same thing," Alicent argues, the world blurring for a moment. Was he accusing her of something? "They were married."

Alicent still has the TV on, the commentators still going over the quarterfinal highlights, when her phone lights up and starts to buzz.

She smiles, like she does every time Rhaenyra calls her, at the contact picture filling her home screen. It’s from back when they were kids, when the blonde was a little elf of a thing, cheesing at the camera with the first doubles trophy they won together. Tracing her thumb over it, fond, she takes her time answering the FaceTime.

"Finally," Rhaenyra says, when Alicent eventually does. She’s sweaty, fresh from the court, resting forward on her forearms; she must be in the conditioning room, warming down. "You always take so long to pick up."

"Sorry for having a life," Alicent says, like she hadn’t just been staring at a memory. "What’s up?" she says casually, just to goad Rhaenyra.

Rhaenyra pouts at her through the phone, the exact faux-hurt expression she’d wanted to provoke. "You weren’t watching?"

"Watching what?"

"Har har. I can hear your TV in the background, you know." Alicent reaches for the remote, and the screen fades to silent black. "So you’ll come?"

"I promised, didn’t I? Besides, I booked my train ticket before we left Birmingham."  As if she’d play with the advanced ticket savings, when Rhaenyra making the semi-finals was such strong odds.

"I would have gotten you a car."

"It probably wouldn’t be any quicker, and God knows our carbon footprints are bad enough as it is."

"Would be more convenient, though, no? Bringing you right to me, door-to-door."

"The train is fine, Rhaenyra."

"Did you book a hotel, too? I thought you could stay with me, I’ve got a suite."

"No," Alicent lies. Her deposit hadn’t been all that much, anyway. "Sounds good."

"When’s your train? Tonight?"

"Early tomorrow."

Rhaenyra frowns. "Oh. What if I–?"

"You’re not getting me a car, Rhaenyra. I’ll see you in the morning."

"But–"

"Alright, bye, I know Rhaenys is probably waiting to go over the match with you."

"Yes, thank you Alicent." Another voice filters down the line, slightly muffled, but wry and impatient. "Listen to your friend, Rhaenyra."

"Alright, alright," Rhaenyra concedes. "Will you get here in time to hit with me before the semi?"

"If there’s no delays, then yeah, I should do. Okay, bye for real."  Rhaenyra’s mouth opens again, but Alicent hangs up before she can come up with another conceit to keep her on the line.

Devonshire Park Lawn Tennis Club, Eastbourne

Alicent’s faint hopes for a decent run at her home slam wither when she sees the draw on the Friday morning. She’s a wildcard rather than a seed, which makes her chances of running into early trouble greater. Unfortunately, she isn’t a statistical exception.

"Fuck," Alicent says, looking at her possible run.

She’s facing the 16-seed in the first round; the second could be a qualifier but is more likely to be the defending champion and fifth seed, Karolina Růžičková. It’s harder to guess beyond that, the possibilities doubling each round, but a quick scan tells her she’s unlikely to face anyone outside the top-ten in the rounds of thirty-two and sixteen, and after that… well, there’s not much point in thinking that far ahead. She’s never even made it past the second round before. Wimbledon has been least successful Slam historically. "My quarter is stacked."

Rhaenyra is lying on the grass of the practice court beside her, as they take a break from hitting ahead of her semi-final match. She isn’t bothering to check her draw. She only ever looks at her path to the final around the quarters, delaying finding out who she’ll be playing until a little before the match in the earlier rounds, when she can.

"What half of the draw are you on?"              

"Bottom."

"Noooooo," Rhaenyra whines. As the second seed, she knows that’s where she’ll be too.

"Not your quarter though, relax."

"Won’t relax," Rhaenyra says sulkily, shifting to lay her head on Alicent’s cross-legged thigh. "If I have to play you, I didn’t want it to be before the finals."

Alicent laughs. "Babe, you won’t have to play me. The earliest we could meet is the semis."

Rhaenyra lifts her head slightly, her brow pinched. "Those are before the finals, last I checked."

Alicent searches for signs of anything patronising in Rhaenyra’s expression but finds none. Her friend’s belief ties her tongue in knots, aches in her chest. "We both know I’m not making the semi-finals," she says, once she unlocks her jaw. "The warm-ups were fun, and it’s nice to have had a bit of rhythm again, but…"

Rhaenyra sits up very abruptly and tucks her finger under Alicent’s jaw, forcing her to look her in the eyes.  "You’re a brilliant player, Alicent. There’s nobody on this tour you can’t beat when you’re at your best."

"Rhaenyra, be serious." She’s been playing well, but that’s different than having to string together probably five top-twenty wins in a row just to make the semi-final they’re talking about. It’s a draw that would have Rhaenyra’s chance at the title look a little dismal.

Rhaenyra rolls her eyes, dropping her hand from Alicent’s chin. "God, I hate your dad."

Alicent’s immediate instinct is to scold, her mouth immediately opening before she’s even fathomed what she wants to say.

"No, sorry, I do." Rhaenyra puts a finger against Alicent’s lips. Her chest feels like it might cave in on itself. Surely her cheeks, burning at the contact, will betray her. "Aside from all the recent shit. He wrecked your confidence. You were better than me! When we were younger, you were better."

Only because their playing styles, Alicent thinks. She’s athletic. A retriever, a defensive counter-puncher – she’s been accused of being a pusher, before, a derogatory term for players with no weapons other than their ability to stay in a rally, though she thinks that’s unfair. Nobody makes it to the pro tour that way. It’s a strategy that doesn’t work so well on the senior tour as it did in juniors, back when the player that ran down the most balls and hit safe shots back generally won. Rhaenyra’s game is much more aggressive; she’s an all-court player with that magic one-handed backhand and one of the best forehands on the tour. It’s a style she grew into; Alicent’s is a style she didn’t grow out of.

"It’s not just the way we play," Rhaenyra says, evidently reading the dismissal in Alicent’s expression. "Your defence is crazy, your backhand is deadly, your serve is great. It’s your mentality that sucks." Rhaenyra pauses, then shakes her head at herself. "That’s not entirely fair. Your work-rate is massive, even when you get behind. Your belief sucks.

"You don’t think you can win, so of course you don’t. You second guess yourself. You lose points you shouldn’t, because you can’t decide what to do, or get it in your head the match is over before it is, because you’re so traumatised by what an enormous arsehole your father was to you. That title in Birmingham was yours. You got in your head and you gave it away, because of all the bullshit he’s put in your head."

"Stop it, Rhaenyra. He’s my dad."

"He’s a prick!"

"I said, stop it!" she snaps harshly. "I didn’t ask for a lecture."

Maybe there’s some truths she can recognise in the rant, but it doesn’t sit right with her when Rhaenyra puts all the blame on her dad. At the end of the day, if she were better, had a career more like Rhaenyra’s, he wouldn’t have been so tough on her. It’s difficult to say what was the chicken and what was the egg between her fall in form and crisis of confidence, really.

With her drop from the top-100, and increasing pressure on her from the LTA, her hand had been more than a little forced when it came to replacing her father as her coach. If she’d have thought there’d be no repercussions, it might not have taken her so long. But despite her fears, she hadn’t expected him to go scorched earth on her and cut all ties. She’d thought that ultimately he loved her enough to stay with her. That he’d find a way to be okay with just being her dad.

She’d hoped, when he reached out in Birmingham…  Alicent shakes her head. He hasn’t replied to her since the loss.

"Sorry," Rhaenyra says, although it’s sullen. "I do think you can do well at Wimbledon, though. That’s what I meant to get across."

"I’m not just being self-deprecating. I know you don’t want to look at the draw, but mine is objectively brutal."

"Still. I believe it."

Alicent doesn’t want to fight, so she shrugs off the pep talk – or was it a reprimand? – facetiously, unsure what else to do with the twisting in her gut. "Well, then," she says, with no small amount of sarcasm. "I look forward to destroying you in the semi-finals."

Rhaenyra smiles at her then, the sulk gone from her face to be replaced with a sharp grin, her blue eyes bright in the sunshine as she chooses to take Alicent’s words at face-value, taunting back: "Yeah? I’d like to see you try."

"I’ve been wondering about something," Rhaenyra says to her. They’re tangled on the sofa in the hotel suite later that evening, celebrating the semi-final win with room service pizza. Some crappy Netflix original they’ve paid approximately zero attention to playing is on the television for the sake of background.

"Oh?" She twirls a lock of Rhaenyra’s hair around her finger, where her head rests on Alicent’s midriff. The curl drops out of it the second she lets it go. "To do with me, or?"

Rhaenyra nods. Alicent can feel the motion of it against her fluttering stomach. "Yeah. I ran into Criston Cole in Paris the other week. He said you guys were thinking of getting back together? Or implied it at least."

"What? What did he say?"  It’s not true, obviously. Criston had barely been more than an adequately handsome experiment to begin with, a trial to confirm what she’d come to suspect: that she was a lesbian, that she couldn’t feel something for a man if she tried, that she was completely head over heels in love with her best friend. She’d broken up with him for the same reasons she’d ever agreed to date him.

She looks down at Rhaenyra, upside down from this angle, the faint glow of the television illuminating her like something far more romantic – moonlight, perhaps. Her eyes shimmer like soft solder under a torch.

"That you’d gone for dinner together in Rome? I was waiting for you to bring it up. Like, if it’s early days again. And I know I was never his biggest fan, when he was with you, so I get why you’d be cautious about telling me, but—"

"Rhaenyra. I’m not getting back with Criston. We just caught up over dinner." She had made it very clear it was nothing more than that, when Criston asked. But of course he couldn’t spare an opportunity to wind Rhaenyra up.

"Okay." Rhaenyra picks up Alicent’s hand from where it’s petting at her hair, playing with her fingers. "You’d tell me, though, if you were seeing someone. Right?"

"Sure, if it were anything serious"—she fakes an itch to free her hand, scratching a random spot on her thigh, because the way Rhaenyra toyed with it was too gentle, too intimate to bear—"but I’m not looking for anything at the moment. Focusing on tennis, and all that."

"Sure," Rhaenyra echoes. There’s a relief there. In truth, Alicent has always wondered about Rhaenyra’s dislike for her ex-relationship with Criston – if something still lingered for the blonde after the messy hook-up she’d had with him when they were teens. She’d sworn several times though, that there were no feelings of the sort.

"What about you?" she asks reluctantly, since it’s the topic. "Any romances brewing?"

Rhaenyra snorts. "Don’t think I’d be spending all my free time spooning you if there was."

Alicent's stomach twists. "You’d ditch me so easily for a boyfriend, would you?"

"Don’t be stupid, I’d never ditch you. I just mean…" She peters out. "I don’t even know. That I’d have to ditch them slightly less than I’d be tempted to. To be polite."

"It would be normal though, I was joking. Of course you’d want to spend time with the guy you’re seeing."

Rhaenyra hums, but otherwise doesn’t speak, twisting onto her side so Alicent can see less of her face. She says something very quietly.  Quietly enough that Alicent can’t be sure she heard it correctly.

 "Pardon?" she asks, feeling like she might catch fire.

"Nothing. Never mind." Rhaenyra slides off the sofa. Alicent automatically bends her knees to stretch her leg muscles, which start to regain feeling once Rhaenyra’s weight shifts away. "I’m going to the loo. I’m putting the kettle on, do you want a cup of tea or anything? There’s regular decaf, or a couple of weird herbal ones too, I saw earlier, so there should be something you like. Mint or chamomile. Or rooibos"—she mangles the pronunciation—"you drink that, right?"

"Yeah," Alicent says, wanting to reach out and make Rhaenyra stay, to interrogate that murmur. Wanting near equally for Rhaenyra to go in the hopes that her skin might stop prickling, that the pressure constricting her throat and lungs might abate. She manages to suck in enough air to reply. "Rooibos is good."

Rhaenyra’s hushed voice rings in her ears until the near inaudible words fill her senses like a scream, real or wishful thinking. 

And what if it wasn’t a guy?

The Eastbourne final is a beautiful match of tennis. Alicent’s view could not be closer – there’s no players’ boxes at all, just chairs laid out on the side of the court, the action almost within touching distance. The same grass Rhaenyra stands on by the baseline is growing beneath Alicent’s feet. It’s a hot day, and when the change of ends favours her, she can see the individual beads of sweat forming at Rhaenyra’s scalp, running like tears down her cheeks and the elegant line of her throat.

Mysaria Lys is one of the smartest players on tour, so this was always going to be a difficult match, even for Rhaenyra. She’s in great form today – constructing points well, refusing to get trapped in return by any strategy Rhaenyra can level at her. Rhaenyra’s advantage is in her superior technical ability, and her uncommon ability to produce magic from almost thin-air, finding winners where she has no right to.

It’s exactly the final that Alicent had wanted to play against Rhaenyra in Birmingham – every point on a pendulum, a syncopated back and forth drawing gasps from the packed stands. She holds an intense jealousy for Mysaria, watching her occupy that space with Rhaenyra. She wants to crawl into her skin and claim the chemistry of the court for herself.

It’s worse, when the match ends – happily, in Rhaenyra’s favour – and their embrace at the net seems to stretch out, Rhaenyra’s eyebrows lifting in amusement at something the other woman whispers to her, smiling and good-humoured even in defeat. Something about their last meeting, perhaps; it had been Mysaria who defeated Rhaenyra in Roland Garros, in the quarter-finals.

The bitterness flees quickly, though, once Rhaenyra has shaken the umpire’s hand, as she must, because then her best friend comes running straight to her, and there’s no room left for anything but pride, joy.  Alicent only realises she had advanced a couple of steps forward herself when the impact of Rhaenyra’s body, hands landing solidly around her ribs, knocks her right back.

"You were brilliant," she says, and squeezes her close, despite the sweat; her own cheek is wet just from touching Rhaenyra’s when she pulls back. "Congratulations! That was brilliant. You were – so brilliant." She apparently can’t remember any other words.

"Thanks for coming," Rhaenyra says, still half-breathless. "This wouldn’t feel half as good without you here. I might not have won."

"I’m not sure I have that power." Alicent dismisses the sentiment with a laugh. "You’ve never needed a good luck charm."

"I didn’t say anything about luck, did I? I’ve been showing off for you since we were ten and you were the best player at my new club. I’m always better when you’re watching."

"Well, consider me impressed." Alicent’s heart thuds, its beat echoing through her ears. What she had heard, or misheard, last night is making her question things she never has. Rhaenyra and Mysaria at the net. Rhaenyra’s hands on her torso. Rhaenyra, showing off for her. Since they were kids, she reminds herself. It’s not more than that, the reverberation of their dynamic from back then, when Rhaenyra had been so fiercely determined to befriend her. “Now go hug your team, you’re being rude."

"Yes, ma’am," Rhaenyra says, disentangling, then launches herself at Rhaenys instead.

Chapter Text

THE CHAMPIONSHIPS - ROUND OF 128

They head back to London soon after the Eastbourne final, only hanging around long enough for press and recovery. Wimbledon starts on Monday, although neither of them have their first match until Tuesday, and so that’s the immediate focus, no time for an extended celebration.

It’s lovely to be back in her little flat, as willing as she had been to leave it for the sake of Rhaenyra’s triumph.  It’s hard to believe it had only been one night, with yesterday’s early start and today's evening return. But now Alicent officially has zero plans to be anywhere else for at least a few weeks. Being home long enough to actually unpack is a rare luxury, and the sole procrastination she allows herself before getting started on doing so is a sacred ritual: setting the kettle boiling for a cup of tea to mark her arrival home.

Her weekender bag from the night away is dealt with easily enough, worn clothes tossed in the dirty laundry basket and her travel toiletry bag slotted back in its spot in the bathroom cupboard, and her tea is the perfect drinking temperature by the time it’s sorted. More problematic is the large, mostly unpacked suitcase she’d been dragging with her around the European clay circuit. Once neatly organised into cubes, she’s rummaged in it enough to pick out individual items that there’s been a descent into chaos.

She wishes Rhaenyra were here to prattle on at her about this, that, or the other, exactly distracting enough to make the task mindless. Instead she connects her phone to Bluetooth and plays her Wimbledon playlist, which is really just a microcosm of what they’d been listening to that summer when she’d won both the singles and doubles junior titles. Rizzle Kicks, Paolo Nutini, Katy B… it takes Alicent back to a time when she felt like she was bubbling over with potential, making her feel invincible. Pulling the playlist out hasn’t worked, yet, but she holds out hope.

There’s one section in her bag that doesn’t really need touching, because everything stays in it always, yet her fingers find the zip anyway. It’s a precious pocket of sentimentality that she carries with her wherever she goes: memories of places, and people, things to look at when she feels homesick. When she misses Rhaenyra. She has to be careful opening and closing it now not to catch anything inside in the teeth of the zip— it’s getting full. An uptick in postcards these last couple years, an attempt to counter the distance when they play different tournaments. The most recent is from Sacre Coeur up on Montmartre, during Roland Garros last month, and it stirs conflicting feelings; a reminder of her failure to qualify, yes, but Alicent also doesn’t know how she feels about Rhaenyra retreading their traditions without her, leaving her behind.

In this same pocket are years worth of tourist caricatures of the pair of them, drawn in Place du Tertre, the square below the basilica. Alicent’s eyes are always bugged, the bump in Rhaenyra’s nose is always exaggerated, and once an artist hadn’t stopped to ask what they were to each other and drew them with hearts for pupils. Did Rhaenyra get one alone, this time, or didn’t she bother?

She forces herself to put the postcard back, and draws the zip shut, instead turning her attention to the tangle of clothes. There’s nothing for it but to shove everything in the wash, she decides, too much of a bother to distinguish dirty from clean, so she sets about sorting the colours. She’s almost done when her phone rings.

“Hey.” It’s not a Facetime, so she lets her smile grow stupid at the sound of Rhaenyra’s voice. “Did I leave something of mine in the car?” 

“Yeah,” Rhaenyra says with a sigh. “Me.”

Alicent laughs, but feels a little shaky at even the suggestion Rhaenyra is hers to be left behind. “Done already? That was quick.”

For some reason Rhaenyra hadn’t bothered to grab her accreditation for the Championships ahead of time; Alicent had sorted her own back when they were printed, weeks ago. It’s lucky they stay open late-ish, else she’d have to contend with a crowd when players descend en masse tomorrow, a day ahead of play starting. 

“I wish. Stuck in a bit of traffic at the minute. Should be there in a sec though.”

“So why are you calling? Just bored?”

“Anticipating being bored. Can I come over when I’m done?”

“To stay?”

“If you’ll have me.”

Alicent catches sight of herself in the mirror, twirling a curl around her finger like a rom-com cliche and hastily drops it. “I don’t know,” Alicent says. She doesn’t mean it, but there’s a thrill to feigning she might deny her, a pretence of power. It’s the best she can manage— to actually make Rhaenyra persuade her before she folds to whatever she wants. “I’ve got one of my homework videos to watch tonight.”

Harrold makes her these digital reels he puts together before matches — some clips of her, her opponent, references he thinks will be useful— narrated over with his thoughts and advice. She always finds watching his videos very relaxing, like when she was a kid home sick from school and the BBC’s children’s channels would focus on gentle educational programs.

“Promise I’ll behave myself. Maybe I’ll even be helpful! Making insightful comments to your benefit and all that.”

Maybe she would. And maybe while she offered her wisdom, Rhaenyra would lay her head in Alicent’s lap like she likes to do, and maybe Alicent wouldn’t hear a word she says, because she’d be too busy contemplating the crook in her nose and resisting the urge to run a finger along its ridge— and then maybe she’d think about how dangerous that would be, of how close the tip of that glorious nose is to Rhaenyra’s mouth, and really—

“No distracting me,” she says, knowing it’s a fruitless demand. Rhaenyra could distract her from the other side of the world.

“I would never!” Rhaenyra lies easily, and then her tone becomes more contemplative. “Looked at your draw, by the way, and I really do think I could be helpful. I’ve played pretty much everyone you’re likely to come up against a couple times this year.”

”What?” Alicent’s mouth goes dry. “You think looking is bad luck.”

”I looked at your draw, I got Rhaenys to send me your quarter. And since you’re winning it, it doesn't matter who else is in it. I don’t know, you seemed pretty shaken by it. Figured I should have a look.”

“Mm.” There’s a fluttering from her stomach to her chest, and no words can get past the butterflies to reach her lips.

“I’m sorry for being dismissive of you. You were right,” Rhaenyra says. “It’s pretty brutal.”

”I know.” She’s still stuck on it – Rhaenyra, who once publicly cussed out a journalist for telling her her draw at the Miami Open, had deliberately looked at Wimbledon’s, the tournament that meant the most. 

Maybe just the one quarter– but that’s still a lot of information Rhaenyra categorically did not want to know, a list of players she won’t be running up against in the early rounds, her potential semi-finals and the likelihood of them coming to be. It’s not like she wouldn’t have caved to having her over anyway, but Rhaenyra had looked at a Wimbledon draw for her, all because she’d been a little shaken. It makes her feel queasy, like she’s eaten too much birthday cake. She wants another slice.

“Alright, fine. Come over. Since you did such a good job today.” She smiles wider as she gives in, biting down on her thumbnail. “I was going to order food— pizza okay?”

“Ooooh, from where? Volcano?” There’s a clunk-y noise down the line, like a car door shutting, some distant voices — Rhaenyra must have reached her destination.

“I was thinking La Tierra, but—”

“No, no, that’s great. You know the one I like with the—”

“Spinach, mushrooms, artichoke, extra olives. And I’ll get the chilli oil.”

“God,” Rhaenyra sounds slightly breathy down the line, likely rushing to make it to the accreditation desk before it shuts. “I love you so much.”

“Yeah, well,” Alicent says, grateful for the distance that keeps her blush secret, fantasies about hearing those words in that voice in other contexts spiralling out from each other in fractals, to be seized upon in later daydreams. Meant so innocuously, but so scorching. “Get here before it’s cold.”

“Did they give that to you without the pin?” Alicent asks, when she opens her front door to find Rhaenyra doing her best UberEats rider impression, a hold-all slung over her shoulder like a thermal bag, and two pizza boxes propped in her arms, a brown paper sack on top.

“Last four digits of your phone number, isn’t it? Took a guess. Killer timing, though.”

“Perfect,” Alicent agrees, letting her in. Rhaenyra trails after her to her kitchen, body barely a breath away in the confined space as she squeezes past; the entrance is bottle necked where against the odds her IKEA Strelitzia has thrived under the care of the neighbour’s kid she pays to water her houseplants. Doing too well, if anything. “Boxes or plates?”

“Box is fine for me, but plate if you’re getting one. And—”

“Cutlery, I know.” Bless her, the weirdo— perfectly happy to eat pizza from the box, but refusing to do so with her hands. She’d be getting a plate anyway, though. Alicent has seen too many mishaps when structural weakness in the cardboard and pressure from a knife and fork have led to a box flipping off Rhaenyra’s lap and spilling the pizza. She doesn’t much feel like having to get her upholstery cleaned again.

Rhaenyra knows the kitchen as well as she does; she drops the boxes where Alicent is ready to plate up and goes for the high cupboard. “Still or sparkling?” she asks, fingers closing around the neck of the carafe there. Alicent’s stomach aches, watching Rhaenyra navigate her home the way she always does, part of the furniture.

”Sparkling?”

“Nice.” There’s San Pellegrino in the fridge, and relatively fresh lemons, and ice in the freezer, and Rhaenrya finds them all. Alicent watches her grab a chopping board and knife, then slices even circles from the fruit, distracted by the easy precision of her elegant fingers. Only when Rhaenyra gets frustrated at the ice cube tray, slamming it against the edge of the counter to dislodge its contents, is Alicent jolted back to herself, remembering she has her own task.

“Got a side salad, if you fancy it?” she says, fumbling with the rolled top of the paper bag, still clumsy from her distraction.

“Stunning, thanks.”

She dishes up a plate each— they can always go back for more, if they want— and heads back to the living room, hesitating by the little table before settling on the armchair. Laps will do. Rhaenyra frowns as she puts the carafe and glasses down on coasters on the coffee table, and takes the empty sofa, stretching her legs along it. Alicent passes over her plate, cutlery jangling against the china, and wishes she’d sat on the couch too, that she was tangled amid Rhaenyra’s limbs. But she really should do her prep work, and she’s been feeling… Prickly, almost. Since last night, when Rhaenyra had-or-hadn’t suggested she might be with a woman. Like the heat that has lived within her for so long has taken up residence just beneath her skin. She doesn’t think she would take in a word of Harrold’s advice if she was touching Rhaenyra. Worries it would be so dizzying that she might do something stupid.

“Is it okay if I put on Harrold’s video? Or do you want to wait until we’re done eating.”

Rhaenyra approves with a thumbs up, jaw working furiously at her mouthful of pizza; Alicent had spoken to her at exactly the wrong time, and now she’s suffering that thing where a bite takes an inordinately wrong time to chew. It’s dizzying, and stupid, the range of ways Alicent admires Rhaenyra as she struggles: riveted by the movement of her sharp jaw and the chilli oil glistening on her lips; fond of the vexed pinch of her brow; amused by the way she rolls her eyes, and how she matches the motion of her chewing with impatient gesturing. Rhaenyra laughs— half exasperated, half triumphant—as she finally swallows. “Mmngh…. Oh my god, sorry. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. I said I wouldn’t get in the way of your prep.”

Rhaenyra actually is as helpful as she promised, even if Alicent has to keep pausing as she speaks over what her coach is saying through the speaker. It’s pretty long, hashing out some of the lessons from recent grass tournaments, and then considering how to apply them to her first round match. “She’s kind of like if you weren’t an antelope-ish freak of nature… great defence, plays smart, constructs points very well but she won’t be sliding all over the place like you. A bit more aggressive, I guess, takes stuff early, great timing. But her forehand can break down under pressure. You’d come out on top in an extended forehand rally, I think, if you got your margins right. You don’t have the same tendency to spray errors.”

“Can happen if I get tired.”

“That’s what I mean, though. She’d get tired first.”

“Hmm,” Alicent says. It’s not her preferred way of doing things.

“Hang on,” Rhaenyra reaches back, fumbling a hand around Alicent’s wrist as she leans forward to press the spacebar on the laptop casting to the TV. “Sorry, change of subject. I know I said I wouldn’t interrupt your homework but I wanted to say something.”

“Oh?” Alicent says, sitting back into her chair. Rhaenyra’s fingers skim her palm as she pulls out of the loose grip. She wants to grab them, bring them with her.

“I’ve been thinking about when we were talking yesterday.”

The air vacuums out of Alicent’s chest like her lungs might collapse — what she’d thought she’d barely heard, the possibility Rhaenyra had mumbled a coming-out. What if it wasn’t a guy? 

“Last night?” she clarifies, with a fat tongue.

Rhaenyra pauses. “No. In the morning, when the draw came out.” 

Alicent feels her shoulders sag in relief and disappointment, and she hopes it’s not as visible as she feels it must have been. The Schrödinger’s cat of Rhaenyra’s potential bisexuality remains in its box. She isn’t even sure what she wants to be inside— whether a world where she has a slim hope of a chance is worth the agonising possibility that even if Rhaenyra could want her, she doesn’t, and won’t. 

If she had heard right… something (someone, some cruel part of her whispers) must’ve happened, for Rhaenyra to discover it about herself. It’s an idea that is more gutting than the perpetual state of impossible yearning that she’s grown accustomed to, has long since accepted.

“What about it?” She buries the whole subject as deep as she can, and returns to the conversation at hand.

“I feel like the vibes were off. I mean. I think I took it too far, with the stuff about your dad.”

”You already apologised,” Alicent points out.

”I mean, yeah, but I didn’t mean it, then. I do now. Sorry. Even if I still feel like—”

“Rhaenyra.”

”— that I took the stuff about your dad too far. Sorry.” She’s sheepish at having to be prevented from undermining her own apology. 

“Thanks.” It’s not a great apology, as they go, but it means something for Rhaenyra to try. 

Rhaenyra gets to her feet, shaking out her legs to get feeling back in them. The way she turns to Alicent is a little awkward, uncharacteristically.

“I think I’m going to turn in, if that’s alright. Your homework is more thorough than I expected.”

“Alright, goodnight. You know where everything is?”

The tips of Rhaenyra’s fingers skim over the back of her hand, resting on the arm of her chair. “Goodnight. Yeah. Am I crashing with you, or?”

“Do you need to ask?” Alicent questions, and she gets a funny little smile in return.

“Guess not.”

“Wasn’t expecting you to still be awake,” Alicent says, grateful that she is, that she gets to see Rhaenyra rolling over to face her with a slow, sleepy smile, reaching out to flick on the bedside light.

Rhaenyra loves to wear satiny blues to bed, and she’s always transformed in them. So often in daylight she’s dressed in dark colours, black and oxblood. As far as Alicent’s concerned, as far as she knows, as far as she lets herself think (for her own sanity, she never asks how Rhaenyra spends her nights when they are cities apart), this soft, ethereal version of Rhaenyra is hers. Wearing silk pajamas that had been lovingly folded in Alicent’s drawer, washed and dried after the last time Rhaenyra was at home amid her sheets.  She looks almost made of mist, pale blue and blonde in the dim light, but she’ll be solid and warm curled around Alicent’s back.

“Your speaker connected in here instead of the bathroom for a few seconds. Had Timber blasting in my ear suddenly.”

Alicent stifles a laugh at the image, Rhaenyra startling awake to Pitbull. “Oh God, sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. Probably would’ve woken up when you came in anyway, was just a bit more jarring.” Rhaenyra sits up a little, flipping back the top of the duvet to make it easier for Alicent to slide in. “Is that still your Wimbledon playlist from— God, what, 2013?

“The classic, yeah.”

“Such a creature of habit,” Rhaenyra says, voice fond as she slides back onto her pillow, cheek resting on the back of her hand. “Ever consider mixing it up?”

Alicent mirrors her, and presses a cold foot against Rhaenyra’s warm calf. She doesn’t react. It’s likely she’d been expecting it. “It’s immaculate as is.”

“Even really good things can be improved upon, I think.” The way Rhaenyra’s eyelids droop, sleepily, Alicent could almost imagine she’s looking at her lips. That they’re lovers in bed together, sharing pillow talk before drifting into dreams, instead of friends discussing Spotify. “You could add to it. It’s been nearly ten years since then.”

“It’s a perfect playlist,” Alicent insists, defensive of her precious nostalgia trove. “Why would I mess with it now?”

Rhaenyra closes her eyes properly. Alicent seizes the opportunity to greedily take in the details of her face, to stare unobserved. No sculptor could have created a finer thing. She has to hold herself back from stopping her, when Rhaenyra rolls over to lie on her other side, bereft at having her view interrupted. She watches as her friend fumbles blindly for the lamp switch, and then the room is dark.  

She wants to drape herself across Rhaenyra like a cloak, but she’s taken herself across to the far edge of the bed, and Alicent doesn’t quite know how to close the distance. It’s not what they do— normally she can rely on Rhaenyra to curl up against her spine. She rolls over the other way, thinking maybe Rhaenyra will take up her usual slot against her back. She doesn’t, for almost an hour, according to the digital clock on her bedside table, Alicent watching it sleeplessly, waiting. When an arm finally falls across her waist, a warm body breezing against her back, dreams find her at last.

“Would you get that camera out of my face? I look like a ghoul.” Alicent throws a hand towards Rhaenyra, disturbing her leisurely morning perusal of her emails, mid-replying to her agent about a post request from one of her sponsors.

Rhaenyra fights her way past Alicent’s outstretched arm to tap her solidly on the forehead with an index finger. “God help the rest of us if you think you’re a ghoul.” Rhaenyra drops her phone with a pout. “You don’t want to be in my day in a life?”

“Maybe later. Not at 7am. Is this for TikTok again?” Alicent refuses to download the app, even when it means the links Rhaenyra constantly sends her don’t open properly.

“It’s fun. I like taking some of the mystery out of the behind the scenes of it all, people find it interesting.”

“It’s okay to just admit you’re an attention whore.”

“I mean, famously.” 

“Whatever.” Alicent imagines what the recording would look like out of context, the two of them curled up together, matching bedhead. “I don’t think your followers need to see us waking up in bed together.”

“Could be kind of funny to see what people say, no?” Rhaenyra picks her phone back up, focusing on the screen. “Imagine they did think we were together. I mean. Would be mad, right? Given you’re—”

“You’re going to be late to meet Rhaenys if you don’t head back to yours, already,” Alicent says, proud of how steady she keeps her voice. The idea of provoking rumours and media speculation about their relationship as part of some bit makes her burn with an internal humiliation. “Go start your little video in your own house.”

Rhaenyra concedes with a sigh, getting up. “You free tonight? Need to log where I’m gonna be.” 

One of the joys of professional tennis— having to submit where you’ll be for an hour-long window each day, so doping control can randomly decide whether to have you pee in a cup. 

“I’ve plans, sorry.” Alicent doesn’t elaborate, because the invite she’d received for dinner with their old club coach had been open to Rhaenyra, and she hadn’t passed it on. It had been too long since she’d gotten to catch up with Diana in person, and Rhaenyra is a distraction, even if that’s only partially her fault. 

Rhaenyra doesn’t press her further on what those plans are, just pulls a face, and starts rummaging in Alicent’s dresser for something to wear without asking. Alicent might have complained, or made some teasing jab about Rhaenyra being far too comfortable a house guest, but there’s a slim chance it might deter her from doing it… and then Alicent would be deprived of the sight of her in her clothes, and the pleased, proud, possessive feeling it invokes. 

(Enjoyable, as long as she can stop herself from thinking about the fact that Rhaenyra probably sees it less like taking her boyfriend’s clothes and more like borrowing from a sister. Then it makes her feel a little perverse, to take such gratification from the view).

“Lunch?” Rhaenyra asks.

“Couldn’t get a court, so we’re going to Roehampton this morning. Will be over there by one or two, though. I’ve got my presser at three.”

“I’m on the practice courts till half-past one, but hopefully I catch you in the player’s restaurant?”

“Who are you hitting with?” 

“Mysaria.”

Alicent twists the sheets between her fingers. The woman had been so charming and practically gushing about Rhaenyra in her runners up speech yesterday, bringing up the French Open like meeting in two big matches in short succession meant they had a history.

“When’d you have time to organise that? Do you guys text now?”

Rhaenyra increases her attention on the drawer, like she’s searching for something particular. “Sometimes. We were at a really boring sponsor event together in Madrid, bonded at it. But she just asked me at the net yesterday.”

“Right.” She knows it’s ridiculous, and unreasonable, but Alicent wants to hiss. Of all of the new friends for Rhaenyra to make — she had to choose one that’s model-beautiful, openly queer, and rising in the rankings: tailor-made to stoke all kinds of dark feelings in Alicent. “That’s cool.”

“Yeah.”

Rhaenyra settles on Alicent’s old school leaver’s hoodie, and it soothes some of her simmering jealousy— because what a thrill, with HIGHTOWER plastered on the back. When she leans in to hug Alicent goodbye, Rhaenyra smells like her detergent.

Rhaenyra pulls back from the embrace and looks at her face for a moment, thumb under Alicent’s chin. “Ghoul,” she tuts, fondly, disbelievingly, shaking her head, and Alicent feels beautiful, even with sleep still in her eyes.

She doesn’t get lunch with Rhaenyra, because Rhaenyra is having lunch with somebody else. Of course, there’s nothing actually stopping Alicent from parking herself at the seat next to her best friend. They never specified it would just be the two of them. Only she fears the twisted possessiveness curling in her gut might drive her to be nasty to a woman that has done nothing wrong except dare to sit opposite Rhaenyra while looking gorgeous. And god, they both do. Like a pair, in their matching training gear, identical but for inverted colour ways. She could curse whoever was responsible for signing them to the same brand.

The worst of it is the little cardboard carton on the table in front of Mysaria, between them— strawberries and cream, the Wimbledon classic. Except it’s one of their traditions, sharing strawberries on the first day of play. And there Rhaenyra is, a day early, and Mysaria is spearing a strawberry on a wooden spork and leaning over the table—

Alicent can’t bring herself to watch, glaring instead at the selection of pre-packaged sushi in the refrigerated grab-and-go section. She chooses a couple of things, pays, and heads outside to eat alone under the grey clouds. Rhaenyra spots her as she’s leaving, and Alicent pretends not see her wave.

There’s more journos in the press room than she expected, but she supposes relative success in recent home tournaments have drummed up some interest. She really cannot be arsed with it today, isn’t in the mood for their inane quizzing— her training this morning had felt unproductive, and then there was the strawberries of it all. At least she has dinner with Diana to look forward to, this evening.

“Welcome to the press conference for Alicent Hightower, please raise your hand and state your name and organisation when asking your questions,” says the chair, before starting the interviews off gently. “Alicent. Is it good to be back at Wimbledon?”

“Of course. No place in the world like it, being here has always been the dream.”

“Carl Thomas, BBC. What does the dream look like for you? You’ve had a strong showing this grass season— do you think you could be a dark horse in the tournament?”

It’s a bit of a daft question, at least the beginning. “It’s a tournament, the dream is always to win. And it’s Wimbledon— the one every player probably wants the most. I’ve been playing well on grass, but I’ll be taking it a match at a time. I mean— who knows?”

The next to ask a question is a Danish reporter— Alicent expects she’ll ask about her first round match against Freja Fiske, and she’s right.

“Yeah, great player— obviously a tough draw to face a seed in the first round, but it happens. I think she was playing well on the grass in Germany and got unlucky running across Vidal so early, but you know, feeling okay about my own form at the moment. Won’t be an easy match, I’m sure, but you’ve just got to give it your all on the day.”

An American from the Tennis Channel brings up her failure to qualify for Roland-Garros, and then makes some vague insinuation she wouldn’t have made it here either without the wildcard. 

“Was there a question?” she asks.

“Do you think you would have made it through qualification here, when you couldn’t in Paris?”

She wishes her eyes were lasers, that she could burn a hole right through his stupid head. “It was rough not to make it to the main draw in France, but I mean — the player I lost to qualified and made it to the fourth round. She was playing great. And I’ve beaten some good players this grass season, I’m pretty sure I’d have been alright. I don’t feel bad about having a wildcard.”

“Betty Hall, Sky Sports. You’ve had a couple of good runs this grass season— do you attribute that to having more experience than many players on the surface, as a Brit? Or perhaps your recent partnership with your new coach?”

“Bit of both. I’m lucky that the club I’ve been at since I was a kid has a couple of grass courts, and access to LTA facilities is obviously a bonus. But I also played a lot of good grass players. Having that advantage on the surface is one thing, but translating it into results… yeah, working with Harrold Westerling has been super productive, I think. Really insightful guy, and we get on well.”

And then the questions turn to Rhaenyra, posed as relevant under the veil of their friendship — her likelihood of winning, what it’s like to practice with her, be friends with her, whether they’ll be seen supporting each other at matches.

Alicent loses her patience with it, especially since she’s still stewing over what she saw in the Player’s Lounge. She doesn’t want to think about Rhaenyra right now. Being peppered with questions about the British number one… she’s used to it, given her lower ranking makes her considerably less interesting to the wider public. Normally she’ll smile through it; she’s never found it difficult to speak warmly of her. Today it rankles.

“I’m not actually here to talk about Rhaenyra, you know. She’ll be here tomorrow.” She looks at the moderator, who gracefully closes out the session.

“Diana, it’s so good to see you.” The hug from her former club coach is as warm as she remembers, and she sinks into it, a balm on her previously bad mood. “I love your hair.” The woman has worn it long for the twenty-odd years Alicent has known her, as far as she can remember— memories of when she first joined the club are all a bit hazy— but it’s cut to her chin now.

“Thank you— always lovely to see you.” As Di pulls out of the hug, she stops with her hands on Alicent’s shoulders, taking her in, and a palm briefly cups her cheek with a maternal fondness that makes Alicent’s chest hurt. “You look well.”

It’s been almost a year since she’s managed to catch up with her in person, and she kicks herself mentally for it, as she does whenever she leaves it too long; it’s like she forgets, in absence, how important this woman has been to her, especially in the years following her mum’s death. Reunion always brings a palpable comfort. She steals another hug, before letting her go.

“Do I? I feel knackered. Been a long year since I last saw you.”

“Yes, you gorgeous thing. Just like your mother.” Alicent is much too old to be having her cheek pinched, but she allows it anyway, from a woman who has known her since before she could lift a racquet. “Dinner’s just keeping warm in the oven, by the way.”

“Oh, am I late?”

“No, no, I was just eager. I don’t often have the chance to cook for anyone, since Pete and I split.”

“Criminal. You’re far too good a cook.”  

Alicent follows her through to the familiar dining room, and sits down in the seat she’s indicated to. It’s not long before there’s a serving of lasagne in front of her, salad and garlic bread to help herself to on the table between them. She accepts the offer of a small glass of red, to toast with, though she’ll make the switch to sparkling water, after.

“Cheers,” she says, tilting her glass until it dings! off the other woman’s. “And thanks so much for having me. Sorry it’s been so long.”

They manage, as they eat, to find things other than tennis to talk about after that. It’s nice, and a rarity in Alicent’s life. Di’s kids, who Alicent had looked up to growing up, and their babies. The new places Alicent has been this year— at least those where she’d manage to spend a day away from the tournament site. Diana’s trip to Australia, and her war on the slugs attacking the vegetable patch. 

Alicent’s just finished filling Diana in on what her brother’s been up to, the riding school he’s opening with one of his Olympic teammates, when the subject turns more painful.

“How’s things with your dad? Can’t have been easy making the decision to switch coaches.”

Alicent’s knife scrapes harshly against her plate as she gathers a mouthful on her fork, making her wince. “I mean. There’s not really things with my dad, anymore.”

“You mean…?”

“Cut me off. I’ve had one text since I told him at Easter, and he ignored my replies to that. He didn’t say he was disowning me, but…”

“Oh, darling. He never mentioned that.” Diana gives her a sympathetic look. “I’ve known your father— God, far too long. And we’ve had our moments of disagreement.” Alicent knows that, is grateful for it, the way her club coach had pushed back against some of her father’s harsher strictures at junior events. “I don’t know if it’s helpful to hear right now, but that man adores you. He’s just… obnoxiously proud. He’ll come around eventually, if you let him.”

“If I let him?” 

“Don’t think I’m letting him off, when I say he loves you. He’s never made your relationship easy, and this…” she shakes her head, eyes going hard, lips thinning in disapproval— “must be very hurtful. It’d be understandable if you wanted to keep the distance up, even when he does swallow his pride. As I’m sure he will.”

Alicent has gone from spending hours with her dad every day for as long as she can remember, to not seeing him at all. It’s been like being left outside in the cold. She’s pretty sure if he even cracked the door open she would be fighting and begging her way back in.

She swallows her forkful and her eyes burn. “I miss him. I’m always looking for him in the stands, or I watch some match and want to break it down with him, and then when I do well— yeah, he could be a bit…”

“Draconian? Tyrannical?”

“Stern.” Alicent laughs at the input, though; it’s not like with Rhaenyra, when it rankles. Diana and her father have known each other longer than she’s been alive, and she knows even when at odds there’s a respect there that her best friend lacks. “Yeah, that. But when I did well— the feeling when he was proud of me—” how long had it been since he last was?— “best feeling in the world, nearly.”

“And how’s working with Harrold Westerling?”

Alicent finds a smile, though she’s still feeling wobbly. “Oh, he’s really great. The one thing that makes it all bearable I guess, that switching coaches is going well. I’ve been playing a bit better, and he’s so… nice? Kind of reminds me of Jakob, even.”

Jakob had been the kiddies’ coach at the club, a big, bearded German man and a total teddy bear, even as he insisted on speaking to all of the children like adults. 

“Ah,” Diana says, eyes misting a little bit. “Nice to know there’s people out there like him. And even better to know it’s working out for you.”

“I mean, yet to win anything, and still struggling in the rankings but…”

“You were looking good in Birmingham, until the very end there.” 

She huffs, a bit amused, a bit exasperated — everyone talks around the third set of the final like some unspeakable thing, before the memory of the loss turns her bitter. “Yeah… that was a tough loss to take, I can’t lie. Could’ve really done with it.” 

Maybe she says it a bit less casually than she intended, because Diana puts down her fork to squeeze her hand, and makes a welcome change of subject.

“How is Rhaenyra doing? I was watching the Eastbourne final— still thick as thieves, then, the way she leapt on you.” She pauses. “Nothing changed between you since I saw you last?”

“No, no, we’re good… I mean, it’s been a bit trickier keeping up with each other recently. Not been in the same place as much, given, you know.” She gestures at herself, and then vaguely towards the stratosphere. “But you know what we’ve been like since we were kids. It’s the same still, when we’re together.”

“I’m glad.” Her hand touches lightly on Alicent’s arm, hesitating there briefly before withdrawing. “I’m proud of you. I appreciate it can’t be easy, the way things have been going for you on the tour. It’s good you haven’t let it come between you. Even running rec leagues, I see jealousy get to people sometimes.”

“Yeah, well… I love her too much, for that.” The truth is Alicent isn’t some paragon, possessing an incredible generosity of spirit; she is jealous, she does resent their differences in success, as much as she tries not to. But even if a rift ever does open between them because of it, she knows she’ll be clinging to the edge until her fingers bleed. “When did you speak to her last?”

“Oh, a while ago. Sometime last year? She’s not as good at answering her phone as you.”

“She’s busier,” Alicent defends, although Rhaenyra never fails to call her back. “Sorry, I didn’t pass the invite on, or she probably would have come tonight. Was being selfish, wanted you to myself.”

“It’s alright. You always were my favourite, anyway.”

“How many people do you sign up to the club with her name?” Alicent asks, half pointedly, half genuinely curious. “Feels like she should have snagged the top spot by now.”

“We developed two active WTA players at Merton Lawns, Alicent, and we’re proud of you both.” Diana says sternly. “Which is very clear in our promotional materials.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Alicent says, though she’s warmed by it. 

“The girls are still talking about when you came and ran that session with them a couple years ago.”

“Oh, yeah? They were sweet.” It had been a really lovely day, an almost coming-of-age experience, going back to the club to spend a day with the club’s junior girls— running drills and hitting points, messing about on the courts with teaching games. It was fun. Fulfilling. “I'd love to come back again.”

“Georgia has completely transformed her backhand after the advice you gave her. Worked so hard on it.”

“The ginger one? She was really good.” Besides from the fact the mechanics of her backhand swing were so at odds with her Eastern grip, if she’s remembering it right. “That’s good.” 

“You're always welcome back, of course. To visit, or… More permanently. There’s a place for you at Merlaw. As long as I’m directing the place, anyway.”

“Coaching?”

“We’d be lucky to have you.” Diana opens another bottle of sparkling water, the metal lid twisting off the dimpled glass with a sharp, fizzing exhale. “Look, I know the tour can be tough, especially further down the rankings. So whether that’s in a few years, or…” She trails off, and Alicent understands her meaning. “Will I fill you up?” she asks, gesturing with the Perrier, and Alicent pushes her glass forward in acceptance.

“Thanks.”

It’s something to think about.

Monday morning at the AELTC is a whole different energy to the day before. Rhaenyra could never do what Alicent is now— wandering the grounds with relative anonymity, drawing little attention without a racquet bag over her shoulder.

If the grounds had felt like they were crawling yesterday, with everyone who works here and all the players arriving, then today they are heaving, though the gates aren’t long-since opened. It’ll only get busier as the Queue moves up. It’s gloriously sunny, in contrast to yesterday and never a guarantee for summer in London, which of course means the atmosphere is immaculate — British sports fans and good weather are always a jubilant mix.

Alicent allows herself to bask in it, just a little. Playing in Wimbledon is a dream by itself and she’s grateful even to be here, never mind how the tournament turns out. She’s carrying a little cardboard box of strawberries and cream, the opening day tradition started when she and Rhaenyra had entered their first junior event here. The fruit tastes somehow sweeter, acquired from the competitors’ restaurant, than they ever had from the public stands, enough to cover the bitterness of enjoying them without Rhaenyra. It gives her a sense of place, serving to remind her that this tournament she’s competing in is the same one she’s been coming to as a spectator since she could toddle

She finds a spot on a low wall, to watch the crowds go by, finding a few minutes of fascination in watching Rufus the Hawk out scaring pigeons from the roof of Centre Court.

“Excuse me, can I get a photo?”

Alicent starts before the voice registers, and turns to shove Rhaenyra lightly in the ribs. “Made me jump.”

“You’re always jumpy.”

Rhaenyra, to be fair to her, is doing a better job at not being recognisable than Alicent had thought she could. On the flip side, it means that she looks conspicuously like someone trying to go incognito, in huge sunglasses and a face-mask, blonde hair scraped up inside a baseball cap, pulled low with the hood of her jacket over it.

“How’d you find me?” Alicent says, and then remembers Rhaenyra has her location on her phone. Silly of her, given she spends plenty of time looking at the Find My Friends screen herself.

Rhaenyra taps the phone loosely cradled on Alicent’s lap and unloops her mask so it hangs from one ear. “Can’t believe you’re doing day one strawberries without me,” she says, and steals one, coated in cream. It leaves an unfairly tempting smudge of white against her pink lips. 

“I didn’t think we were doing it this year,” Alicent says, thinking about Mysaria leaning across the table, and doing a good job of keeping the memory of it out of her voice. 

“What do you mean? Why wouldn’t we be?” Rhaenyra frowns, before darting in for another. “Oh well, I guess this counts now.”

“You’re going to get us swarmed by tennis fans trying to solve the mystery of who the person so obviously in disguise is. Might’ve well as rocked up with a newspaper and those fake moustache glasses.”

“Think I could pull them off?”

“What couldn’t you?” 

“Correct answer.” Rhaenyra sways against her, so their shoulders knock together. “Really, though, you were just conveniently close to one of the clubhouse exits, so didn’t have to brave the public too much. I’ll fuck off if you genuinely want a bit of peace.”

“It’s alright.” She spears the last strawberry on her spork, offering it to Rhaenyra who takes it precisely between her teeth. “Just about done, anyway. How are the dressing rooms?”

Rhaenyra rolls her eyes. “Icy, as always. Everyone is trying to psych each other out. But Mysaria is an ally, at least. Promise me you’ll beat Růžičková if you meet her second round though, she thinks being reigning champion gives her the right to be an absolute dick.”

“You’re always welcome to come slum it with me in the dungeons,” Alicent says, trying once again not to read into Rhaenyra’s burgeoning friendliness with Mysaria Lys. Trying once again not to get too jealous at the idea of the luxury changing rooms, reserved for the top sixteen seeds and previous champions, while she and the rest of the rabble contend with the (perfectly decent) regular ones. “We’re friendly down there.” 

“Alicent, you know I love you. But there is cake served on silver platters and people there to run baths for me on request. You’d have to drag me out by my hair.”

“How was your presser?”

“Tedious, mostly.” She grins sidelong, as they fall in step back towards the player area. “Though if you start getting questions about whether you’d ever play doubles with me again, that’s my fault.”

They’d both drifted away from doubles pretty quickly after turning pro, especially given how quickly Rhaenyra started winning singles titles. 

“Oh, to relive our teen glory. How’d that come up?”

“Told them I had won a title here, once upon a time.”

“Pinnacle of your career, junior doubles.”

“You joke, but top five, easy.”

“You have twenty one career titles and multiple slams.”

“Didn’t say top three, did I?” She tucks her hand into the crook of Alicent’s as they walk. “And I didn’t win any of those with you.”

“You are the most sentimental woman alive.”

“I’ve got a lot to be sentimental about.” Rhaenyra juts out her lower lip, thoughtful. “You know, I was kind of joking when I brought it up? But maybe in the off-season we could try and remember how to play doubles... come back here next year and win the real thing… and there’s the Olympics, they’ll nag me to play doubles with somebody anyway, I’m sure.”

There she goes, getting carried away on a whim. Neither of them have played doubles—aside from the occasional mixed at Slams, but that’s its own thing— for years, and Rhaenyra already has them winning Wimbledon and going for gold.

She thinks about it, and about what Diana had offered last night. Two very different futures, one much more grounded than the other.

“It’s a nice idea.”

Rhaenyra glances at her, deflating at the lack of enthusiasm. “Was just a thought.”

"You’ll want to target her forehand," Harrold suggests.

"What are the odds her coach is telling that to her?" she snipes, light on her toes as she quicksteps through the training ladders. Her tone surprises her; she’d never have spoken to her dad like that. "Sorry. I just mean, that’s my weaker wing too."

He takes Alicent’s snappiness in stride, which makes her feel worse. "She’ll leak errors. Yours is attackable, sure, but you’re landing your shots in at least. She’s not a particularly heavy hitter, you’d outlast her before your shot broke down and became a liability."

"Rhaenyra said the same," Alicent admits.

“What’s up with you today?” Harrold asks her. “You seem off.”

“Just nervous.”

“I don’t think so. I’ve seen you nervous, and you get too in it, if anything. Your head’s not here today.”

Alicent falters for a second, steadying herself before she nearly trips on one of the plastic rungs laid on the grass. Harrold’s right, she’s dropped her intensity in her distraction, thinking about Di’s offer the night before. She ups the pace of her exercise and mulls, ignoring Harrold’s concerned gaze while she considers a question that’s been gnawing at her for a while.

”Why did you want to coach me?” she asks after a time, and her steady voice is testament to her fitness regime, even as sweat beads down her neck and her heart works hard.

He’d come out of retirement as a travelling coach for her, after taking up a development role with the LTA when Armstrong stopped playing, and she’d never been quite sure why — even at the end of her career, his previous player had never dropped below the top-fifty, and she’d had two Slams to her name. Alicent was, by any measure, a downgrade, even if her style bears a resemblance to Armstrong’s on paper.

“Why wouldn’t I?” he answers, unsatisfyingly. She spares him an unimpressed look as her lungs burn. “Look. Focus on this first, I want to see you push through while you’re clearly distracted by something. Then we can grab a drink and chat.”

The player’s restaurant is bright and busy with players and their teams taking a break from preparations. Her smoothie is cold and delicious, made with Greek yoghurt for the dual benefit of protein and a pleasant, dessert-like creaminess. She could almost use a spoon instead of the thick paper straw she’s drinking from, the back-up for when it inevitably goes soggy laid on a napkin beside it.

“You’re underachieving,” Harrold tells her, without preamble, without easing back into the conversation and her earlier question, and she almost chokes on a glob of blueberry-and-banana.

“Oh,” she says, though it’s not exactly news to her.

 “I thought it was a massive shame. And that I could help.”

“But… why? What even made you notice? It’s not like I was taking the tennis world by storm before I dropped off.”

He looks at her in a way that makes her shy; it couldn’t be any clearer that he considers her more than worth his time.

“Before anything else, I’m a tennis fan — before I was a player, before I was a coach. I’m always keeping an eye on new talent, home-grown especially. I was excited to see what seemed like the most promising generation of British players in decades make their mark.”

It’s true that it’s a good time for British tennis — Rhaenyra world number two at the moment, Criston Cole and Harwin Strong both in the top-ten on the men’s side of things, all of them and Alicent, who’d seemed briefly promising, coming through the juniors at more or less the same time.

“I was there when you won your Junior titles here, did you know that?” She hadn’t. “Of all of you, you were the one I was most looking forward to seeing on the pro tour— obviously I’ve been working in the women’s game for years now, and I’m partial to a player with your sort of game.”

“Because it’s like Armstrong’s?”

“Because it’s tenacious. Because it’s smart. I’m not trying to relive anything by coaching you— it’s just that you both happen to share traits that I admire and enjoy working with.”

“I fizzled out.”

“No,” he disagrees. “I don’t think you’ve ever hit your stride. It’s different.”

She frowns at that. “I had a decent ranking, before. A few titles.”

“Career high of twenty-two?” He makes a pah sound, and sips his coffee, then winces. Too hot, she presumes. “If you consistently played at, I don't know, eighty-percent of your top level, eighty-percent of the time, you’d be top five and regularly making deep runs in majors. At a minimum.”

Her mouth does a weird thing around her straw; she can feel it, though it’s entirely beyond her control— some twisting, quaking situation that she’s not sure is an urge to laugh or to cry. She purses them tight and draws in a long sip to get ahold of herself. 

“You really think I could do it?’ It’s a high level of consistency to ask for, given what she currently produces, but he seems so certain, so confident in the levels she could reach.

“I think you could, if you thought you could. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah.” She tears the corner off her napkin, rolls it between her fingers, fidgety. “But I did once. Believe I could be a challenger. And I wasn’t then either, really.”

He laughs, and shakes his head, smiling as he takes his coffee, like she’s told a joke.

“What?”

“You talk like you’re washed-up and middle-aged, sometimes.” He chuckles to himself again, puts on an old-timey American accent. “I coulda been a contender! I coulda been somebody!” He puts his coffee cup down and it rattles pointedly on its saucer. “Alicent. You’re twenty-six.”

“Twenty-seven next month,” she says, looking at her smoothie instead of him. He doesn’t argue with her, only waits. “A little older than Rhaenyra, and look what she’s done. And Vidal! World number one and she’s only twenty-two.”

“So you’d go down as a late-bloomer, versus a prodigy.”

“I’d have to actually bloom first, for that.” Alicent sighs. “It’s nice. That you believe in me. And for me, to dream that I could still achieve big things. But…”

“But?”

“I’m so tired of losing, Harrold. And grinding out all of these tournaments and barely breaking even. It feels like I’m kidding myself.” She chews the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just… close to done.”

“Can I ask if something brought this on? Or have you been feeling this way for a while?”

“I mean, it’s something I’ve contemplated before. Whether there’s any point in keeping going. But specifically today, now… I had dinner last night with— do you know Diana Jennings? Runs Merton Lawns, now, she was a coach there when Rhaenyra and I were coming up. But she mentioned that there’d be a job there for me whenever, emphasis on the whenever, I retire, which, like — I’ll need a second career, unless things change drastically. But I don’t know. The idea of it seemed… nice enough.”

“She suggested you quit?”

“No.” Alicent shakes her head. “Or not… not like that. I think she just wanted to make sure I knew I had more options than making myself miserable battling to make it on tour.”

“Are you unhappy? As a professional?” She dares to look at him, and finds no disapproval on his face. 

”Sometimes,” she admits. “Less so since you came on board?”

“I’m glad to hear the second part, at least,” he says. “Look, it’s not a decision to take lightly. But you’re allowed to do what you feel is best for you, and other than to say I’d love to see you keep playing, and to keep working with you, I won’t try to sway you on it. Of course, there’s nothing to say you couldn’t change your mind, and come back to it.”

”You wouldn’t be disappointed in me?”

”I’d be disappointed. But not in you.” He looks thoughtful as he sips his latte. “My first pro-coaching job, on the women’s side of the game, God, thirty-odd years ago now. I was working with a young woman and I thought she really had what it took, you know. So much potential. But she left the sport, after one season on the tour, because she got married and they decided they wanted kids right away.

“And I was angry about it, for a long time, about what I saw as a waste. But then I bumped into her, maybe a decade on— with her husband, and their kids. And they’d built a beautiful life, and she was happy.”

Alicent is a bit lost on what this has to do with her situation, the message he’s trying to relay. 

“My point is,” he clarifies. “There’s a life outside pro-tennis. There were things that player wanted more than success in her sport, and she didn’t regret taking another path. And you wouldn’t be wrong to choose to quit, even though I sincerely believe that if you stick it out, there’ll be a pay off.”

“I just don’t know anymore, if it’s worth it. If it’s sensible. But I still want it, the things I’ve always wanted.”

“A good sign, if you ask me,” Harrold says, with a shrug. “No need to rush a decision. And I’m happy to be a sounding board, if you need to work things out.”

“Thanks.” She squeezes his arm gratefully over the table.

“But not while you’re training. Full mental presence required, alright? If this might be your last Wimbledon on the tour, we’ll make it a good one.”

“Yessir.” She offers him a mock-salute, but her smile is sincere, feeling a little lighter with it off her chest.

“Does Rhaenyra know you’re thinking about quitting?” he asks, with a gossipy curiosity that tickles her, out of place with his grandfatherly vibe. 

“No.” She laughs, but it comes out more of a bark of alarm than anything else. “Oh, God, no. Yeah. No.”

Chapter Text

On Tuesday morning, Alicent downloads TikTok. She knows it’s ill-advised: the last thing she needs when she’s meant to be focusing on the biggest tournament on the calendar is to install a famous time-sucking, attention-destroying app onto her phone. She’s got her first match coming up this afternoon. But she’s been thinking about what Rhaenyra had said, when she was filming the other morning— that she was recording her whole day.  Alicent had said maybe she’d be in it later, and then hadn’t really seen her, stalking off to sulk at lunch. And that’s why she opened the app store, really. The realisation that she wouldn’t be in the video, but Mysaria would. They’d practiced together, they’d eaten together. 

They fed each other strawberries. 

It’s fine. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s not like Rhaenyra hadn’t eaten one from Alicent’s own outstretched fork the next day. And if it did mean something, then what does that mean, in turn? Although with her and Rhaenyra, it could all be written off as their long familiarity: how comfortable they are with each other, after so many years. So then — how has Mysaria achieved that same status, when it’s only been, what, two months since they apparently bonded in Madrid? 

Alicent hadn’t known her internal monologue was capable of sounding disgusted, but she hears the word like that in her head whenever she remembers it. Bonded. What the fuck.

Feeling wretched and rotten, she downloads TikTok and accepts the auto generated username with its string of numbers, the anonymous profile picture, before searching Rhaenyra’s name. She has a couple dozen posts, three quarters of a million followers, a blue tick by her name. 

The video opens with Rhaenyra ‘taking a morning walk’, which Alicent supposes is true enough, given the mile or so between their places. A brisk fifteen minutes or a leisurely twenty, that Alicent could navigate with her eyes shut. Rhaenyra is drinking from a reusable coffee cup— it’s hers. The brazen thief. She’d noticed the tiny cafetière she keeps mostly for Rhaenyra’s benefit had been used, washed up and set to drain by the sink, but just assumed Rhaenyra had made herself one and finished it while she was still getting up and ready; she’d been gone by the time she was out the shower. Apparently taking Alicent’s keep-cup with her. 

She pauses the video and closes the app for a second, opening the shopping list in her notes page to add to it. Whatever coffee left in her cupboard that Rhaenyra had been drinking the other day was probably stale; she needs to buy more, now they’re in London for the foreseeable.

Rhaenyra’s skin looks so pretty and luminous, camera held close, like all the light managing to squeeze through the canopy of clouds in the sky is drawn right to her face, in radiant contrast with the dark maroon of Alicent’s jumper. It’s a sight she should be used to, really; Rhaenyra has been stealing that particular hoodie for the best part of a decade. Alicent still wonders if that’s what she subconsciously hoped for all those years ago, when from all the colour options at her disposal, she chose one of Rhaenyra’s favourites rather than her own. 

Here she is doing her skincare routine — Alicent wonders whether anyone will think it’s strange that Rhaenyra saved it for after she’s already dressed and been out for a coffee and walk. And now she’s making breakfast. If it were anyone but Rhaenyra, Alicent would probably consider the video a little dull. Her voice is as ASMR-ready as ever as she narrates the little clips over a background track, though, which is a saving grace. Hardly a voice one could tire of. 

She presents a perfectly golden omelette, neatly folded, packed with veggies. Alicent’s stomach rumbles, and she forces herself off the sofa to head for the kitchen. She should have made Rhaenyra make her breakfast before heading out that morning; the girl only knows how to cook about three things, but she’s utterly mastered each of them. Today, she’ll make do with the high protein overnight oats sitting in her fridge.

Now a car is arriving to bring Rhaenyra to the site. Now she’s showing off a little bit of the club grounds. Now Alicent has to eat her own words (thoughts?) about the video being at all boring, because she’s become the sudden and helpless victim of shameless thirst-trapping: Rhaenyra in shorts and a sports bra at the main players’ gym, with the camera set low enough to make her legs stretch for days. 

It’s just maintenance work she’s doing too, avoiding anything too heavy, so she’s making everything look easy. Her biceps and the faint shadow of her abs flex as she catches then tosses a medicine ball to her trainer out of frame. In person, Alicent has become a bit desensitised to the sight of her exercising. It’s their job. They work out together plenty, and she somehow keeps her tongue in her mouth instead of standing there saying awooga, then.

It’s the framing of it that has rendered her so uselessly gay, she decides. The fact she can tell from the sly eyes to the camera that Rhaenyra knows exactly how good she looks, like a silent dare saying watch me, I know you want to. So this is what she does on TikTok that people are so interested in. Alicent needs a glass of water; her breakfast feels suddenly dry. Or maybe that’s just her mouth.

The way her body reacts to Rhaenyra when they’re together is one thing, and this is another. 

It’s not Alicent’s fault Rhaenyra is the touchiest person alive, and she supposes everything leans sweeter when they’re together, even when it feels painfully intimate. So much emotion, getting caught up in how in love she is, less purely— how to put it?— physical. Sexual, if she can stop being coy for a minute, even to herself. Alicent’s not an angel. She has desires beyond farmer’s markets and candlelit dinners and soft kisses. Her best friend doesn’t know where her imagination turns at night, and that makes her feel ashamed. Like a voyeur. None of that stops her from staring transfixed at her phone, wanting to learn what Rhaenyra’s collarbones, peeking out from the top of her sports bra, would feel like under her teeth. Would look like, after. It doesn’t stop her from wanting… Well. 

For her own sanity, Alicent drags forward on the little bar at the bottom when Rhaenyra starts stretching, having to skip back a little again to get to when the green of the practice court first comes on screen.

“Practice courts were really busy today,” Rhaenyra narrates over the music, “but luckily a friend— there she is, over the court— Mysaria Lys, was willing to share her court time and hit points with me.” Just baseline exchanges recorded from a distance, Mysaria barely visible across the net, until the next clip comes and it’s those matching outfits and arms around waists— they’re clearly posing for photos, probably for Instagram, whether theirs or for the tournament’s account. Maybe their sponsor, dressed in inverse training kits as they are.

It’s fine, whatever. But do they have to look so cosy about it? Alicent wonders if the pictures are posted anywhere. If they capture the way they’re leaning together and laughing, and how Rhaenyra’s hair is caught in a shaft of light. Alicent doesn’t think anything has been funny enough in history for Mysaria’s head to be tossed back the way it is. She has a spectacular jawline. 

"I don’t think I’m really allowed to show you inside here…” Rhaenyra says, when the locker room door— the fancy one, for the top seeds, that Alicent has never seen in person— appears on screen. “But…” A sequence of half-second clips pop up. God. She’s seen longer videos of it before, courtesy of Rhaenyra, but it’s always striking. The top sixteen and former champions get to spend their fortnight in what is essentially a spa, while the rest of them have a big open locker room back two floors down. And the cakes, laid out on shiny trays, look better than she remembers. Mysaria is in one of the clips again, pushing on the saloon-style door of one of the plush-benched cubicles so it swings.

And then the player’s restaurant. Alicent puts her bowl down, spoon clattering loudly enough to make her wince. Rhaenyra’s showing off her bowl — pesto chicken pasta, ever an athlete’s favourite, barely visible underneath the amount of baby leaf spinach she’s added, and a plate of fruit — and explaining how the restaurant works, each player given a generous allowance.

“And of course, since it’s Wimbledon, there’s a whole fridge dedicated to strawberries and cream. I didn’t get any, because Alicent— Hightower, that is, she’s a player here too. Everyone check out her matches! Yeah, we have a bit of a tradition around sharing a portion on opening Monday. But Mysaria did, and I was very jealous, because look how good they look.” The woman in question leans across the table as Alicent had seen her do, and… brings her wooden fork up to the camera to show off the glossy fruit, before pulling back, and eating it herself.

Oh.

Oh, she’s so stupid— she has to laugh at herself. Then she bites her lip. Poor Rhaenyra, confused to find Alicent eating her strawberries solo. At least she’d come to find her, and their tradition hadn’t been skipped for nothing. And how sweet that she had come looking.

She doesn’t even bother with the rest of the video, shutting the app and then deleting it entirely, her raw nerves soothed. At least partially. She’d been jealous before the strawberry debacle that wasn’t, anyway. And there is how they were draped over each other, having their photo taken on the practice court.

She opens Instagram, kind of annoyed with herself for how quickly she pivoted from relief to her old unease, but— she’s not been betrayed at least. It had hurt beyond the romantic; there was something far more playground to it. Like having your best friend choose to work with someone else in class, and being left partnerless. Or getting picked up from a birthday party and realising other girls have been invited to stay for a sleepover. 

The tradition started years before Alicent had put it together that she was in love with Rhaenyra, though that realisation (it’s insane to her now that it took her until she was twenty-two to figure it out) had definitely come years after the falling. Her green-eyed monster had never been limited to Rhaenyra’s love interests; she’s as territorial and possessive a friend as she supposes she would be a lover. Her best friend. Hers. She’s never learned how to share her, in any capacity.

It’s confusing trying to disentangle it all— to work out what hurt would remain if Rhaenyra is straight, as she’d always believed, and she and Mysaria truly are platonic. But she supposes she can afford them some grace, given she’d falsely convicted them of a crime. Such an egregious one— eating berries. The villains. Alicent sighs.

The photos of them at the practice courts aren’t on Rhaenyra’s page, so she searches for Mysaria’s. She gnaws at her thumbnail for a second before pressing follow; it’s the grown-up thing to do. Her best friend’s new friend, likely to show up again at their lunch table. Maybe Alicent would actually sit down next time. Mysaria hasn’t posted the photos from Sunday either, but she finds herself scrolling her feed. Considering her. It’s mostly sponsored posts, photoshoots, professional match pictures, but every so often there’s an arty little photo dump, from whichever city she’s been playing in. The recent ones are probably the only cities Alicent couldn’t identify at a glance; she’s always in England for the whole grass season, never going to the German tournaments. And then, before that, Paris.

She flips through the carousel. Mysaria had had a great run to the semis at Roland Garros, and her triumph over Rhaenyra in the quarters was probably the upset of the tournament. Managed to fit in a lot of sightseeing, though— the Eiffel Tower, of course. The Louvre. The Seine glittering at night. The windmills at the Moulin Rouge, Sacre Coeur. Scattered through with exquisite patisseries and snapshots of urban Paris. Someone faceless clinks a glass of wine against Mysaria’s across a candlelit table.

Alicent thinks she could recognise Rhaenyra from her hand alone, but she doesn’t need to— what had once been Aemma’s watch, slender and golden, shines on her wrist.

All of her misery comes back ten-fold, when she sees the branding on the drinks list tucked under a bowl of bread. She knows the restaurant well, having eaten there plenty of times: a tourist trap of reasonable quality, right on the Place du Tertre. The postcard Rhaenyra had sent her of Sacre Coeur… she hadn’t been alone when she bought it. She hadn’t had strawberries with Mysaria instead of her, but actually, this is so much worse. Candlelit dinner, in a place she’d thought was special to the two of them, while Alicent had been at a 125 in Morocco, struggling not to cry whenever she got a notification about the French Open.

Did they have their caricature drawn, too? All of the portraits they’ve ever had done, Alicent’s insisted on keeping herself. She wonders if Rhaenyra has a sketch of her own, now, with someone else beside her.

‘Woah,” Rhaenyra calls over the net, bending reflexively out of the way when Alicent sends yet another brutal body serve at her. So frustratingly graceful. Elegant, as she does it, like a reed in the breeze, so much natural ability and coordination. She’s stupidly fucking beautiful, with her ponytail swinging like a pampered show pony. Alicent wonders how she’ll braid it ahead of her match, if she’ll do the pretty twists down the sides like she sometimes does. “That bounced long, by the way.”  Alicent serves at her again. This time Rhaenyra deflects it quickly with her racquet, and it bounces into the ground ahead of her, rolling into the net.  “I didn’t realise we were here for target practice. Or that I’d be the designated bullseye.”

“We’re hitting points,” Alicent says. “You’re supposed to be getting them back over the net.”

“Are you alright?” Rhaenyra lets her racquet hang limply downwards instead of getting back into position to receive another serve. “You’re being pretty intense.”

“Just want to get properly warmed up for later.”

“Are you nervous?” So sympathetic. Such a gentle face. 

“No more than is reasonable.  Look, we’ve got limited court time. I’m not looking to chat. If that’s what you feel like doing, go find—” Mysaria. She narrowly avoids spitting the name like poison— “someone else. and I’ll see if one of the practice partners is free.”

It was a bad idea to come right to this hitting session, fresh from seeing the Instagram post, feeling petty and wounded and wronged. Rhaenyra looks back at her: baffled, hurt, indignant, before her features go stony.  She lifts her racquet to indicate she’s ready for a ball. 

“Shoot me for caring, I guess. Let’s just get on with it, then.”

Later, when they’re done, Rhaenyra heads off for her conditioning session. She grabs her things from next to Alicent’s without so much as a wave, and Alicent feels herself swaying after her like a compulsion, so accustomed to her best friend’s physical affection that her body expects it on parting, even as she’s still quietly seething. She balls her fist at her side. They both have matches in a couple of hours. Biting the inside of her cheek, she lifts a hand to readjust the band of her visor. If she happens to touch her knuckles to her temple as she does so, as she watches Rhaenyra go, well then.

“Trouble in paradise?” Harrold asks her. The look she gives him is enough to have him turning away briefly, tugging somewhat nervously at his short beard. “…I think that body serve could be a good tactic in your match later, you know, but let’s just rally a little, for now. I’m too old to be jumping out of the way like that.”

She’s called to her match about a half hour after her ‘not before’ start time, the players prior running just a little longer than the schedulers anticipated. She and Harrold, and the steward and guard leading them, are heading to court three: a show court with stand seating, the largest of the non-ticketed venues. As they walk, her attention falls on a pair of men walking a little ways in front of them, and her heart does something like a tower-of-terror ride, jumping into her throat then falling all the way into the pit her stomach.

“Dad,” she says, too abruptly, too loudly. She says it before she has thought about whether she should at all, or if she’d be better off keeping silent and watching him go on his way. It bursts from her, involuntary, on seeing him turn to his companion, identity clear in profile; perhaps the reason she’d been looking at him at all— just another smartly dressed man walking around Wimbledon in front of her— was a sense of familiarity, even from the back, a recognition of his gait.

Otto Hightower turns around, and his surprise (visible only through a fractional bulging of his eyes) lasts for just half-a-second before there’s a smooth smile in place, and he strides back towards her, enveloping her in a hug that could make her sob. What makes it all the more gut-wrenching is she knows that he’s only doing it as a performance for the well-appointed man he’d been walking with— a client perhaps, or a potential one. Even if she’s not everything he wanted her to be, she’s enough to show off in a place like this. If they were alone, and he were happy to see her, it would be a weighty squeeze of his hand on her shoulder, and maybe a kiss to the top of her head. Otto Hightower is not incapable of affection, but hugging like that… it’s not how he shows it. It feels good, anyway, and he still wears the cologne her mum had liked way back when. It’s a comforting smell.

She doesn’t hear whatever he introduces his companion as, drifting back into the present moment with “…and this is my daughter, Alicent. I mentioned she’s a player.” A pause. “And her coach. Harrold Westerling.”

“Hi! Nice to meet you both!” The man is American, with all the jarring enthusiasm to go along with it, probably about twenty years younger than her dad. “You have a match now?” She nods, smile frozen as he swings her hand as he shakes it. “Real shame we’ve got an appointment with Centre Court. Otto, you didn’t tell me you were skipping out on your daughter!”

“I knew how keen you were to see Lannister in action, before you fly back home,” Otto says, before looking at her again. “But yes, it’s a shame, isn’t it? Maybe if the match on Centre ends quickly, I’ll be able to see the end of yours, Alicent.”

Don’t, she should say. She doesn’t need him to attend out of pity. Or worse, because it will make him look good in front of the businessman he’s courting with his debentures tickets. She should tell him to fuck off, and ruin whatever deal he’s doing.

“Please do,” she says, instead, and shame crawls under her skin like ants at her own lack of spine, how much she really would love for him to want to watch her play. “I’d really like that. I can tell them to let you up to my seats, if there’s a queue to get into the stands.”

Both men smile at her— the American beaming, and her father tight-lipped. They won’t be coming to her match; it’s the men coming up on Centre Court, with two players in good form, and since they’re at a Slam, it’s best of five. It’s incredibly unlikely Alicent’s match will end before theirs, but maybe that’s for the best, because at least she won’t have to cope with it if her dad didn’t show up anyway.

“Miss Hightower,” the steward accompanying them, a gentle reminder she’s supposed to be on the move. 

“I’ll text you later,” her father says, more gently than he has anything else, and she wishes it didn’t provoke a hopeful giddiness, like a pet dog being promised a walk. She feels pathetic, rolling over for the slightest bit of attention from him, but she’s been so starved of it these last months, and the ache of missing him is even sharper with him in front of her. “Good luck today.”

“Thanks,” she says. “Speak then, then. Nice to meet you,” she adds to the still nameless (to her, at least) American, because she was raised with manners, although she has truly never cared about anyone’s presence less in her life. As they walk the rest of the short distance to her court, she can feel Harrold’s eyes on her and avoids looking at him. She’s not going to cry. She’s not.

Alicent wipes her palms pointlessly against the skirt of her tennis whites, switching her racquet from hand to hand; they were already perfectly dry, given that post-warm-up she’d methodically brushed every inch of bare skin over with a towel. An iconic tournament branded one, in purple and green. Rather, the wiping is a nervous habit. Wimbledon, match one. Her opponent’s opening serve. She shakes her head and jumps on the balls of her feet, falling naturally into her stance to receive serve, racquet balanced in two hands. The sun is back out, after the grey of yesterday and this morning, falling lopsidedly across the court. She’s in the shade now, but it will make things tricky, transitioning from the relative cool and dim to the brightness bisecting the grass. 

Across the net, unfortunately, is a striking blue-eyed blonde; thankfully, that’s as far as the similarities go to her so-called best friend. 

(Not so-called, her internal monologue corrects, defensive even against her own internal slight against Rhaenyra. That’s not fair of her to even think. She’s still her best friend, categorically so, even if Alicent’s upset right now.)

Freja Fiske is impressively tall and has a sweet ski-slope nose. The roundedness of it contrasts with and enhances the razor sharpness of her fine bone structure. Unlike Rhaenyra, her brows and lashes are as light as her hair, though that’s a little darker than platinum. Very pretty. A lesbian, according to whispers on the tour. She’d been sweet, before the match, friendly rather than coldly focused like many players are. Alicent wishes she wasn’t entirely unmoved by all of it. Heart and body so stuck on Rhaenyra she can’t even muster a harmless little crush on a beautiful woman. It’s not fair.

Ugh. Rhaenyra needs not to be in her head right now. She scuffs the toe of her shoe against the perfect grass on the baseline, a first wound inflicted on the groundskeeper’s fine efforts; the patch is doomed, regardless, to be sparse dirt well before tournament’s end. She’s just quickening its fate.

The Dane tosses the ball skyward, bringing her racquet down on it for a crushing first serve, opening the game with an ace— Alicent’s uncharacteristically slow in her reaction, so can’t get her racquet to it, though it’s a close thing. It shouldn’t have been unreturnable. If she’d have been a fraction quicker, she’d have gotten to it. She taps the frame of her racquet lightly against her calves before they reset for the next point, as if it will tell them to wake up and be faster on the spring next time. She’s glad her father isn’t in the audience.

The next point is Alicent’s, although it’s more luck than skill; the serve is, if anything, more blinding than the ace prior, but she gets her strings on it, just. She isn’t much in control of its trajectory, and all the power is in the ricochet, but it dips just over the net and barely bounces. Fiske is lanky, not great at changing direction, and hadn’t been able to anticipate where the rogue ball would go; she’s nowhere close to it.

Two short points to open the match, and then the rallies begin: long and cautious, from them both. Probably not the most riveting match for a spectator, when so much of it is mental. It’s fun for Alicent, though. Like chess. Thinking about what she wants to do, considering what Fiske is trying to do, putting a stop to it. It’s kind of exhilarating, and everything else tangled up in her head is pushed aside in favour of strategising, her senses coming into keen focus. Everything is important, from keeping in mind where the shade is, to diagnosing her opponent’s shots (even when the strokes are disguised, and she’s better at that than Alicent had realised coming into this) from the sound of the racquet contact. 

They stay on serve, going to deuce multiple times in most of the games, though there haven’t been many break points. It’s comfortable enough in an evenly matched sort of way, each of them keeping up with the other while not exerting any real pressure. It gives Alicent confidence — on paper she’s very much the underdog versus a top-20 player with a decent history on grass, but she doesn’t feel it, even when they get to 4-3, and Alicent finds herself down love-to-thirty on her serve.

Freja has been a little off-balance perhaps, up to then, failing to press her advantage a couple of times; it’s probably not often she comes up against a player more defensive than her, and it’s taken her a little while to pivot her mindset. But she’d taken the first two points of this game with a more confident aggression, and that changes things for Alicent too, ramps things up a notch. The time for comfort is past. It’s easier said than done, though, to adjust like that. They fall into another protracted rally, trading backhands. Alicent moves across the grass as though on autopilot, attempting to keep her breathing steady, despite how early her opponent is taking her shots, giving Alicent less time to recover her balance. She focuses on keeping the ball deep, giving herself a bit more time against the Dane’s unrelenting backhand, but she’s forced further behind the baseline than she’d like to be anyway. If she just had a chance to stand still, she’d be able to hit one back just as brutally, but she’s well off the front foot now.

She hits a lob that’s a little desperate— she’s found herself in the unshaded half of the court, facing the sun, and can hardly see despite her visor— and Fiske leaves it, thinking it’s going out. It doesn’t, dropping onto the edge of the chalk, called in by the umpire and confirmed by the Hawk-Eye when the Dane challenges it. With an ace on the next point, she destroys the foothold her opponent had dug for herself in the game. Back on level pegging. Time for a deep breath, to shake out the shoulders, and pretend the game is new. 

A little while later, and she’s secured the hold for 4-4. If Alicent wants to avoid a tie-break, she needs to get this next break of serve — otherwise come the next game she’ll be serving to stay in the set for six-all. She glances towards Harrold, who gives her a thumbs up, but raises his eyebrows a little quizzically at her; she’s playing well… but not how they’d discussed.

Alicent looks away again, feeling a bit embarrassed. She’s being petty, wanting to win without implementing Rhaenyra’s advice, even though it’s the same tactic Harrold had advocated for. She has hardly hit a ball to Fiske’s forehand, choosing instead to face down her strong, and much more reliable backhand. It’s only she can see Rhaenyra’s smug little face thinking herself a tactical genius, if it works. Told you I’d be helpful. A little upwards jerk of the chin, her hand pinching Alicent’s waist for emphasis, and because she’s always gotten a thrill out of making her jolt. She’d laugh afterwards at the weak glare Alicent would send her in retaliation, too indulgent, always, to land like a blow. It’s the kind of thing she might find cute were she not still thinking about her friend’s little Sacre Coeur date.                                               

“Time violation warning, Miss Hightower.”

She jerks her gaze up from the towel bin, where she’d gotten carried away in her contemplation. She’s late getting back to play. It’s not even a changeover; she’d only meant to take a few seconds between serves to dry her sweaty hands, improve her grip on the racquet before the next game. Waving an apology to Fiske, she jogs the few short metres back to the baseline. The receiver is meant to be ready to play to the server’s pace, and Alicent for her part hates it when opponents dawdle between games or points. Some do it deliberately, to break the other player’s momentum, though she considers it unsporting. Rhaenyra isn’t above it— it’s something she’s criticised for, from time to time— although even Alicent’s never been quite sure if it’s tactical or if Rhaenyra is simply unable to accept a world that does not move to her rhythms, even when the regulations of the tennis court rule against her.

And now she’s distracted again, even as Fiske pulls into her service motion. Alicent gets a grip just in time, stretching wide to catch the ball on it’s bounce. It skids low on the grass, but she manages to flick it up just high enough to clear the net, just deep enough that it’s not easy work for the other woman, who comes forward slightly from the baseline in order to answer with a sharp crosscourt forehand. It’s an aggressive move, getting Alicent on the run right away. She’s ready for it though, saw it coming, and reaches it with ease enough to send it back with a gorgeous short-angled slice that her opponent gets to just a little late, dumping it into the net. The next serve is powerful, hit down the T, but Alicent’s anticipation for it is great and her return soars back. The twenty shot exchange that follows is gruelling; the crowd are loving it much better than her lungs are, that’s for sure, but finally she sees her chance. A slightly shorter ball allows her to step in and drive a backhand down the line, her most beloved shot. Fiske is stranded cross-court when it kisses the line, watching it helplessly. As clean a winner as there ever was, and the applause is raucous.

Until this point, she’s been too insular, too focused, to remember another advantage she has— a home crowd. She won’t forget again. Yelling a ‘let’s go!’, pumping her fist, she looks up at the nearest stand — they eat it up, and celebrate the point again with her.

Alicent starts to slide more shots across to the blonde’s forehand. She never extends a rally there, targeting it sparingly. She’s left it too late in the set to start trying to break it down now; she’ll save it for the second, so Fiske has no chance to wise up to the plan and adjust her strategy on the changeover. But she can start getting a feel for it, at least. It’s more solid in some senses than Alicent’s loopy one, coming back hard and fast and flat over the net, but Alicent can see why it can falter— her grip is pretty extreme, which might allow her to find that pace, but cannot be easy on the wrist. 

Alicent manages that decisive break; perhaps the choice to throw in more shots to the deuce court so late in the set messes with Fiske’s ability to anticipate what she’s going to do, but it’s not too much of a struggle— she converts the first of two break points. Riding the momentum, the high of the break and the crowd’s exhilaration, she holds her serve to take the first set.

On the changeover before the next, she waves at Harrold with her right hand, and then gives a thumbs up, letting him know she’s going to do what they actually talked about now. He returns the gestures and shrugs, probably happy enough with how she’s playing, having taken the first set, only facing down two easily-dealt-with break points.

Alicent’s serve to open the second set is good, but her opponent’s return is better. The rally starts like so many others have—Freja with a deep backhand forcing Alice to retreat, to react rather than dictate. She’s not having it this time, and takes it with a forehand to send it cross court again. The next ball comes to her backhand. She’d expected it; if everyone else can see that Fiske should avoid exchanging forehands for too long, even against Alicent, of all people, it makes sense she’s gotten good at avoiding doing so. 

Luckily, the shot it sets up Alicent’s bread and butter, and she fires off a winner much earlier in the point than she’d usually turn anything aggressive. Might as well keep it up, she thinks, and sends her next serve right at the Danish player’s body. She manages to jump out of the way, but only just, and her return lacks power. It comes at Alicent slowly enough that she finds within herself a distinctly whippy across the court forehand, the ball almost seeming to hover in the perfect position for her to pounce on it. It’s powerful, and she imagines pretty, the kind of strike that even Rhaenyra would be crowing over having made. There’s only Harrold in the seats assigned for her team, but that’s alright, when she sees him jumping out of his seat at the shot, fist in the air. One for the highlight reel, she thinks. She can imagine the commentators asking where the hell that shot came from.

On the next couple of points, she knuckles down on the original plan, drawing Freja into a rally so she can start testing the forehand more consistently, and get an idea of the lengths she’ll go to avoid it. Not too far, yet, with her wrist still strong, but Alicent can tell there’s something nervous creeping in. She’s more tentative again, defaulting to defence, trying to draw errors from Alicent rather than wear that wing down so early in the set. Unfortunately for her, Alicent— when she’s on, at least, and she feels on— doesn’t make many. In a game of attrition, she’s like to come out on top. And she does, holding her serve easily to love, the first time in the match either of them have done so.

There’s two benefits to pressing her opponent’s forehand, as she sees it— the much discussed tendency for it to become error-prone, and the decisions Fiske will make to avoid pressure that could turn it into a liability. If she can keep both in mind, be smart about it, then she can dual wield the weaknesses against her. 

As the set goes on, Freja tries to reassert herself. It’s in vain, because Alicent is like a dog with a bone now, redirecting every shot she can to her opponent’s forehand. When, in the fourth game, what should have been a sitter for the player sails wide, Alicent’s eyes narrow, locking in: she knows she has her in her sights. And sure enough, as she increases the pressure, shots on the forehand wing start getting sloppy; Fiske puts herself in awkward positions, running around her forehand to hit inside-out with her backhand. It’s a rare thing to see; players are much more likely to use a forehand to cover their weaker backhands that way, but it’s a move Alicent can execute well. She’s more graceful though, never ending up quite as wrong-footed as her opponent is finding herself now.

It’s obvious as the frustration mounts; frequent glances to her box, muttering to herself between points, the towel going over her head on changeovers. She gets a warning from the umpire when she swears at a shanked shot on her forehand. The Danish player maintains great presence of mind when the ball is in motion, however, only bending to the pressure between periods of play, and her placement remains meticulous and strategic, putting shots where even Alicent can’t reach. With her height, her serve is a very consistent weapon, winning points outright often, or at least ensuring Alicent starts out at a disadvantage. Fiske manages to hang in there to hold her serve three times before Alicent finally gets the break for 5-3. If she was even marginally slower in movement or reflex, she reckons she’d be trailing. But she isn’t. 

She soon finds herself with two match points, serving for the set, 40-15 up.

And then frustratingly, she double faults. A bit too impatient maybe, with the finish line so close, taking an unnecessary risk on her second serve. Two balls in the net is a bit of a damp squib compared to the triumphant end she’d been imagining. The second match point (not particularly stylish, as she veers from the recklessness of her serve back to playing percentages) goes better. It takes six shots each before the blonde finally loses her cool, making a rare error of judgement, attacking a ball she doesn’t really seem to have a plan for other than hitting hard. The attempted winner soars long, and it’s game, set, match.

Just the one break, again, in the second set, despite successfully dismantling Fiske’s forehand. It’s enough.

6-4, 6-3.

Back in the top-hundred of the rankings, or she will be when they update at the end of the tournament. Through to the round of sixty-four. Thirty-three thousand pounds sterling better off. Even the very first match of a grand slam is kind of a very big deal. 

It’s obvious Fiske feels the same, her chin wobbling as they shake hands over the net, once Alicent is finished celebrating towards the cheering crowd. She feels bad for her on some level, but— it’s sport. They’re professional competitors, and Alicent had overcome her in a fair match, not like when you have to beat down on someone clearly struggling through pain. The victory is too sweet for much else.

"Alicent Hightower, everyone!” The on-court interviewer is grinning wide and the audience applaud wildly again as she joins him. “You’ve just won your first match at this years Championships. How does that feel.”

"Yeah…” Alicent says, still panting a bit from the exertion of the match. Her smile is so big it hurts. “Really bloody good.”

Rhaenyra comes into the gym when she’s halfway through her warm down, and drops out of the laughing conversation she’s having with her team when she sees Alicent. She looks at the empty bike next to her for a full three seconds of standing still, and then heads briskly to the other side of the room with a crease between her eyebrows. She hadn’t even wanted Rhaenyra to come over to her, so why does she feel suddenly sick? Maybe the way the corners of Rhaenyra’s lips had twitched downwards, quivered there, before she turned away.

Harrold has to tell Alicent to chill out, when her response to the stress that cuts through her winning mood is cycling harder than she should— the point of the post-match exercise isn’t pushing her muscles to the brink. At least they’d both won. A small balm to the discomfort of being on the outs with Rhaenyra: such a rare thing, and not one she’d mind going extinct.

Her dad does text her— right when she’d thought he wouldn’t, when she was about to give up on waiting in her little living room in the dark, chewing a nail and looking at her phone, lying face up on the arm of the chair she’s curled in, its glow the only light in the room.

It was good to see you today. Watched your match when I got home— good agility and very smart in the second set.

She shouldn’t be surprised. He’d said he’d text her, with no conditional, so of course he had. He never lied to her; he’s far more likely to tell truths she’d rather not hear. Alicent waits a couple of minutes for a second message: the but, and the list of things she’d done wrong. It doesn’t come. 

Thanks, she types, and because she’s not above being petty, even to her own father: I had good advice from Harrold and Rhaenyra. 

It’s both true and bound to annoy him greatly; his replacement, and the woman who’s been a thorn in his side since she was in primary school.He ignores it, but does reply in order to ask if she’ll have time the next day to meet with him, and they make plans to talk over a drink in the afternoon. It’s stupid how nervous she is about it, especially after she’d already had the ice-bucket shock of seeing him thrown over her earlier. Hopefully, they can begin to heal things. He doesn’t seem angry anymore, at least.

Early on Wednesday morning, before the gates have opened to the public, Alicent and Rhaenyra perch on the grass of an otherwise empty Aorangi Terrace. (Martell Mound, as it’s better known, and Targaryen Tor, as it’s been most recently dubbed, in honour of Britain’s most successful active player). 

Alicent had woken up calmer than yesterday, feeling guilty about how she’d acted when they’d been practicing together, a little haunted by Rhaenyra’s baffled hurt. The subsequent avoidance in the gym, warming down. Maybe winning her match helped too, to improve her mood. It still stings if she starts thinking about it too hard, but also… maybe visiting a popular tourist destination with someone other than her isn’t a knife in the back, even if it had hurt her feelings. Besides, if she’s going to keep beefing Rhaenyra for going to Montmartre with Mysaria, Alicent would have to at least tell her just why she’s so upset, and she’s absolutely not doing that, so…

She’d sent an olive branch in the form of a text, an invite to hang out. She’d greeted her with a long hug, and once Rhaenyra relaxed into it, she knew she was forgiven. So easily, without words.

(“Sorry for being a cow yesterday,” she’d said, anyway, a murmur against Rhaenyra’s soft hair, worn loose so infrequently that it’d been a rare treat to half-suffocate in it, with her chin on her shoulder. Green tea and tangerine, it smells like. “I had a lot on my mind.” And then, to entice her back on side even further: “You know, the advice you gave me on playing Fiske was really good.”

It goes down exactly as she imagined— that pretty smile, pleased-as-punch, that proud chin— except she manages to squirm away before Rhaenyra can prod at her waist, and then Alicent’s laughing as Rhaenyra chases her, all the way to the perfect spot to sit.)

Being here is a throwback to when they used to come to the tournament as kids. Even at the start of their pro careers, they had. Rhaenyra could never come here to watch a match on the big screens now, not without causing havoc. Alicent would have to fend off photos and a few autograph hunters herself. But they can still sit together here, while the grounds are quiet, and drink in the fact that their matches get played to the crowd here. They will be tomorrow.

It’s kind of crazy. Her match tomorrow is on No. 1 Court, where she has only played once as an senior. She’d won her Junior titles on it, too. She thought perhaps she’d make her Centre Court debut, given she's a home player facing the reigning champion. But, as per tradition, Růžičková had played her opening match there. They like to have some rotation in the top billing in the early rounds, so Alicent’s out of luck. Still– the Wimbledon show courts. It’s the stuff some dreams are made of, and she’s grateful to be there at all. It’s a step up, even, from the No. 2 court she’s a bit more familiar with from previous years— it has the option of a roof, which means even if tomorrow’s weather forecast is right, she won’t have her schedule messed around with rain delays.

Alicent wonders what Rhaenyra is thinking, as she looks down at the grounds, sitting in the iconic spot renamed for her. She wonders if there’s another world, where it's Hightower Hill the two of them sit on– whether there’s any chance it could still happen in this one. She tips her cheek onto Rhaenyra’s shoulder, and confesses what she’s been keeping from Rhaenyra. Or— one of the things. The most recent thing. Other than the run in with her dad, anyway.

“I got dinner with Diana on Sunday night,” she says.

“Diana? Di Jenning?” Alicent can hear Rhaenyra’s pout. “Without me? That’s why you were too busy to hang out?”

“I keep in touch with her.”

“I’m very busy,” Rhaenyra defends, weakly. “And she always liked you more, anyway. Teacher’s pet.”

“Well then, it makes sense we’d still be in contact then, doesn’t it?” Alicent waits patiently for Rhaenyra’s objections at being left out to fade and tries to tamp down the guilt. She could have invited her. 

“Did she move after the divorce? I was snooping on your location a little bit,” Rhaenyra admits, and it curls warmly in Alicent’s stomach to know that she wonders about her when they aren’t together, takes the time to trace the shape of her movements. Alicent’s equally guilty of similar mild stalking. It’s fine; they both shared their locations freely. “I didn’t recognise the address.”

“Yeah, a couple years ago now. Really nice place.”

“How is she?”

“She’s good. Directing the place herself, now. Pete decided to retire after the split.”

“Oh, good for her.” She looks a little guilty at her failure to stay in contact. “I should go back to the club… sign some stuff, meet some kids. Been a minute.”

“It’d be appreciated I’m sure.” Her forearm is balanced on Rhaenyra’s knee, and she taps anxiously at the shin below. “She told me there’s a job for me there, if I want one, actually.”

Rhaenyra snorts, like she’s never heard something so ridiculous. “Like you’d quit the tour to go teach.”

“I mean…” she says, lightly as she can, like it’s not really that big a deal. “I’m thinking about it.”

Chapter Text

Alicent Hightower is taller than Rhaenyra and the best player at her new club. She’s got red hair and huge brown eyes that make Rhaenyra wish hers weren’t blue. She decides right away that Alicent will be her friend.

Alicent isn’t shy, exactly, but she’s always quiet and laser-focused on their lessons. Not part of the gaggle of other girls at the club. Everyone wants to be Rhaenyra’s friend too, of course— she’s the new girl, and she’s funny, and fun, and pretty, and really good at tennis like her famous family, and she lives in a mansion near the All England Club with a pool, and their very own court in the garden. 

Even Alicent wants to be her friend, thrillingly, though she’s not so forward about it, and not immediately. Not until Rhaenyra starts to seek her out, to compliment her skill, her hair, her pretty new tennis dress, in front of the others. But after that she always glances quickly at her when they’re told to get into pairs, thinking she can’t see, and she smiles when Rhaenyra suggests they work together, never can quite hide her frown when someone grabs Rhaenyra first. 

With every training session she drifts to stand closer and closer to Rhaenyra while Diana talks at them at the start, until one day she’s close enough for Rhaenyra to loop their arms together, and then that’s it—they’re best friends, and everyone knows it. 

Alicent Hightower pushes Rhaenyra to be better. She runs faster and for longer than Rhaenyra can hope to, so she starts to look forward to fitness sessions just for the privilege of chasing after her. She’ll only indulge Rhaenyra playing around in practice for so long before she gets an elbow to the ribs and a severe look telling her to concentrate, and Rhaenyra finds she’s the better for it, improving her game rapidly. Who knew applying yourself to your full ability could be so rewarding? There’s other good players at Merlaw, but by the time they’re twelve or thirteen it’s obvious the two of them are going to be heads-and-shoulders better than any of the other kids that train there. They’re in a league of their own, placing well at national tournaments against girls older than them. 

As much as her work ethic has improved to get somewhere close to Alicent’s, sometimes Rhaenyra wins the day. Instead of getting shushed, she manages to get Alicent to dissolve in helpless giggles in the middle of training, bent over and clutching her stomach. Diana will look on, half-exasperated and half-smiling, unless she takes it too far and then the whip gets cracked. Otto Hightower glares at Rhaenyra from his place among the parents who refuse to leave the coaches to their jobs. He’s the worst of them, always watching from the sidelines, then pulling Alicent apart if she fails his expectations somehow. 

Rhaenyra is scared of getting Alicent into trouble when she succeeds in distracting her. But she’d said as much once, and Alicent had held her hand and told her she better not dare to stop. It’s worth a bit of a scolding, she said. She loves their inside jokes. It keeps training fun. It distracts her from everything going on with her mum, all the tests and scans she’s been getting lately.

And it is worth it, isn’t it, Rhaenyra thinks, when she can literally just whisper a single word to Alicent and have her shoulders shaking at the back of their group session. Sometimes she doesn’t even remember why they found whatever it is funny to begin with, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s almost better that way— that they couldn’t even begin to explain it to anyone outside of the two of them.

Alicent Hightower has a territorial streak and is not particularly excellent at hiding it. Never had been, when Rhaenyra thinks about it, even before there were declarations and friendship bracelets, in the earliest tentative days where Rhaenyra was trying to charm Alicent into wanting to be her friend, and everyone else was trying to charm Rhaenyra. She likes having Rhaenyra to herself, and Rhaenyra doesn’t like anyone else half as much as she likes Alicent, so it works out. Usually. The occasional snippy spell, like when Rhaenyra had once described a couple of girls from her school as her best friends— obviously she meant, like… within the category. Her best school friends. Ranked very distantly below the real thing. Even after Alicent had gotten over it, she’d bring it up if she was feeling a little bit grumpy, or Rhaenyra got distracted on her phone when they were hanging out.

("Texting your ‘best friend’?" she’d ask, all disgruntled with her eyes rolling, audible speech marks around the offending term.

"Yeah," Rhaenyra would say, and Alicent’s phone would light up with a message a moment later: ‘<3’ or ‘love you’ or ‘you GOOSE’. And Alicent’s sulky little expression would twist and turn, trying to stop herself from smiling, easily brought back onside.)

The issue at hand now is her cousin Laena’s upcoming visit. Viserys had suggested it, and she’d jumped at a chance to spend her summer in London—

"The whole summer."

"Yeah, that’s what I said."

"And she’s just going to be around the whole time?"

"Oh, come on. Laena’s a laugh, it’s fun having her about."

Alicent’s face screams is it? Which to be fair, Rhaenyra does understand, because it’s how she feels when Alicent’s older brother used to come back from his boarding school, or his university now, and all it is is Gwayne this, Gwayne that. She hates losing half of Alicent’s attention.

"I know you think so, given you spend all your time giggling with her when she’s here. I’ve barely met her brother, or your uncle! I don’t get the jokes. And she doesn’t get ours." Her face grows even more cross, eyebrows meeting at the furrow. "And it would be worse if she did!" 

Had she really annoyed herself further, imagining having to share their inside jokes? 

Rhaenyra has to stop herself from grinning; she finds it so funny, and kind of flattering, when Alicent gets all mine mine mine over her. She does feel a little bad. It’s true she sees her cousin infrequently enough that a lot of their camaraderie is based on things that happened at family gatherings years ago. Oh my god, remember Laenor’s face when…

But they do also really get along, always clicking despite their limited familiarity with each other. She hopes it won’t be an awkward summer, if Alicent is set on being annoyed when Laena inevitably tags along with their duo.

"Sleep over at mine the next couple of nights, before she comes," Rhaenyra bargains. "So it's just the two of us." She reaches for Alicent’s wrist, looping her finger and thumb around it, tugging at it so lightly that Alicent doesn’t really need to stop zipping up her racquet bag and turn back to face her. The motions are her own choice. "And—" this is the winner, Laena’s principled stance against the family trade— "she still doesn’t play tennis. At all. Ever. Not even for fun." 

Alicent looks at the sky and pushes up her lower lip, head wobbling brattishly, as she reluctantly comes around with a sigh. "Well. That’s good. I guess."

They play a lot of tennis. There’ll be enough time for the two of them. Rhaenyra puts her palm against Alicent’s and Alicent laces their fingers together, so Rhaenyra knows she’s not too mad anymore. Even if she does give her a look first.

Alicent Hightower sleeps in her bed for two weeks straight after Aemma dies. Even Otto eases up on her, just this once. It’s summertime, no school to separate them anyway, but he goes as far as giving her permission to miss practices to remain glued to Rhaenyra’s side. Not necessary, considering the court is the place Rhaenyra most wants to be. She misses only a day before she insists on her usual gruelling schedule, making sure to smile and hit harder when anyone tries approaching her with anything like sympathy. Be normal. Everyone be normal.

On the court, Rhaenyra can manage it. Tennis is the same as it always has been. Off it… she’s not quite sure how to ‘be’ at all. It’s… confusing, the interruptions to her daily rhythms. Like all the furniture has been moved by a couple of inches and she keeps stubbing her toe on routes that should be familiar.

No waltzing into the kitchen after practice to kiss her mum on the cheek and raid the fridge for snacks even while actively asking when dinner will be ready; no being told soon and save your appetite (as if it knows an end). Can’t distract Aemma from her crossword under the pretence of helping, the need to read the newspaper’s puzzle page over her shoulder a perfect excuse to curl into her side on the sofa, now she’s a teenager and cuddling with your parents is meant to be embarrassing. Nobody tells her off for leaving her shoes wherever she’s kicked them off, or the debris of tennis gear that accumulates in the hallway. Ponytails replace plaits, because the soft hands that spent so many mornings weaving love into her intricate hairstyles are gone. Will never again pet her head, or touch her cheek, or rest easy on her shoulder. There’s no licked thumb reaching out to wipe schmutz from her face, while Rhaenyra squirms away and rubs at her chin herself. The teapot is always empty, and not magically full whenever Rhaenyra wants a cup, like it had been before. Every night before bed, her steps falter in front of the empty living room, years of muscle memory made useless— she won’t find Aemma in there to say goodnight to, sitting with the big light off, watching one of her interior design shows or reading by the light of the side lamp. She’s barely seen her father, not between his grief and all the relentless administration that plagues the bereaved like an aftershock.

It’s a strange thing, losing the first person you run to when you’re feeling lost. Alicent steps up as the second, understanding what Rhaenyra needs, somehow. Baffling, since Rhaenyra is not good or predictable as a bereaved daughter. She makes too many jokes. Can’t stop thinking about the tennis tournament scheduled for the weekend. Hasn’t cried since the initial shock, when she thought she’d never stop, that the violence of it would cleave apart her chest and she would die too, right there on gravel of the car park at Merton Lawns Tennis Club. That’s where she’d been told, by her father’s driver before he took her home, where she’d waited for hours while her father was still at the hospital with ‘some things to sort out first’. 

But Alicent is exactly what Rhaenyra needs her to be: there.

Alicent had been much better at grieving her mother. Crying easily, cathartically. Articulating her feelings and being gracious when people were kind to her. Brave enough to deliver a reading at the service, voice wavering beautifully with everything barely held back, and then letting the tears fall in pretty silence in the pew. The perfect, tragic image of a loving daughter. 

Aemma is still in the hospital morgue, waiting for a medical inquest into what went wrong with the birth, exactly, whether the medical team had made any mistakes. It might be weeks yet before a funeral. Rhaenyra feels stuck. Like that initial agony had only been a howl of outrage against an ugly, awful lie that someone had dared to tell her. Like her mum’s just away. Like she’ll be home soon. Like she never existed at all, like Rhaenyra made her up.

It’s only been two weeks, and it already feels like she’s forgetting, even though she thinks about her all the time. Constantly at the back of her mind, like the buzz of a mosquito in the dark, but she can’t summon any feeling about it. It’s all in the abstract, like Aemma Targaryen was a concept, rather than a person. She looks at the world and thinks about her mum’s prior place in it with a sort of detached consideration, the way the people in the decorating shows she used to watch would squint at a wall and think— hmm, perhaps a nice neutral taupe, eggshell finish? 

Alicent sits cross-legged on the floor, with Rhaenyra’s head in her lap, a few old magazines splayed out around them where they’ve been doing the quizzes. They have the tennis on Rhaenyra’s laptop, one of the warm up tournaments for the US open. Rhaenyra’s older cousin Laenor is losing a match he shouldn’t be, looking distracted and agitated, and she wonders if he’s more upset than she is over his aunt’s death. They’d gotten along well. Weren’t even blood related, though.

"I don’t know what’s wrong with me," she says.

"Because there’s nothing wrong with you." Alicent’s reply is quick and insistent, and Rhaenyra knows she knows what she’s talking about. 

"I think," Rhaenyra says, stopping and starting again. What a terrible thing she’s about to confess. "Sometimes I think... I think I must not have loved her enough."

"Oh," Alicent says, and then her entire face crumples. It’s not just her eyes growing a bit wet, the way she’s starting to cry. It threatens like a rainstorm. "Oh, Rhaenyra. It’s not that at all. It’s not."

"Promise?"  Rhaenyra thinks maybe Alicent can remember better than she does, given two weeks ago feels like a whole other life. Maybe whoever she was two weeks ago had loved her mother better, and she’s just forgotten. "I feel so evil for it. Like I’m rotten." She stares at the ceiling instead of her friend, so she doesn’t have to look at her when she admits the guilt that has been gripping her.

"I promise," her friend swears, and a fat tear rolls off the tip of her nose onto Rhaenyra’s cheek as she looks down at her. Oh, good, Rhaenyra thinks— finally a tear stain of her own. "You’re not rotten. You love her so much."

"Do I? She’s dead. I’m not even sad." 

"You might not feel it, right now." Alicent smooths back the baby hairs too short to be wrangled into Rhaenyra’s ponytail. "Doesn’t mean it’s not there." 

Rhaenyra ponders that. Like that lady who got her leg bitten off by a shark and hadn’t realised until she was back on the shore. But that’s different. That’s nerve endings, and biology, and adrenaline not— not having no feelings about your dead mother.

"I love you," Rhaenyra says, because she can feel that well enough. She takes the hand petting her hair to hold it between both of hers. "Thanks for putting up with me." She braves those eyes again. "Sorry."

Alicent claps her free hand quickly over Rhaenyra’s mouth as she apologises. "I love you too. Don’t you dare say sorry. Of course, of course I’m here for you. You were for me."

Rhaenyra had tried, but being twelve and utterly inexperienced with death hadn’t made her the greatest comfort, she’s sure. She’d just been obsessed with trying to make Alicent smile, or laugh, which… she’d kill anyone for trying that with her now. Every interaction people try and have with her feels so forced. Sometimes it’s like they’re trying to provoke her into feeling something she can’t— you must be so devastated, I can’t imagine how much pain you’re in— or else they’re dreadfully encouraging: time will help heal, I know she’s so proud of how strong you’re being, one day at a time. Worst is when they use her as a substitute for a gravesite, unloading their own weepy babble on her instead of waiting a few weeks for a mound of dirt in a cemetery to prattle on at. I loved your mother, look at you, you’re the spitting image, I already miss her so deeply, so tragic, so unfair, what a dear friend she was, you know she was a great help to me when, oh, before you were even born!—

She despises them all for it, everyone bar her best friend, who’s just following the current of Rhaenyra’s whims. It makes her wince to think about how annoying it must’ve been, her insistence on acting like Alicent’s personal jester back then. Certainly it must have been deeply grating. Although Alicent insists it had helped.

"I’ve got some stuff…" Alicent sounds like it’s just occurred to her, but Rhaenyra knows her better than that. It’s a considered announcement. "That the hospice gave me back then. Booklet things, about grief, and how it can look different than you think. You’re normal, you’re not wrong, and you’re not alone and— I brought them with me…I didn’t want to just shove them at you, but maybe they might help?"

Her dad had dropped leaflets like that outside her door, when he’d gotten back from the hospital that first night and she’d thrown them away. But if Alicent thinks they’ll help…? She’ll look at them.

Later, though. 

For now, she looks at Alicent’s hair, long and unruly. Gravity drapes it like a curtain around Rhaenyra’s face as Alicent leans over her; she loops a finger through one of the loose curls and thinks about how grateful she is that they met. She’d be lying here alone with her emptiness, if Alicent wasn’t here, filling her senses; commanding her whole field of view, the scent of her Britney Spears perfume in her lungs.

"Let me plait your hair," she says.

Rhaenyra isn’t sure she’ll ever want anyone else braiding her own hair again; imagining that is the one thing that has her close to feeling something, if only a dullness in her chest, sitting there cold and heavy as a rock. But she doesn’t want to lose the ritual entirely, either. Maybe she can be the one sitting on the other side of it, saying I love you with care in her hands, like her mum had taught her.

Alicent Hightower closes her eyes and holds her mother’s cross pendant and prays before she steps on the court. Sometimes she wears stud earrings that match the necklace— the pair Rhaenyra had bought her as a gift for her Confirmation, whatever that was. It had been the second mass Rhaenyra ever attended; the first was Alerie’s funeral, two years before her own mother’s last summer.

Alicent goes every week, and never complains, even though she has to go to the Latin mass on the Friday evening, because they always have matches on Sunday mornings. She tells Rhaenyra she likes it, so Rhaenyra goes along to her third service to see what it’s all about. In turn, she endures ninety minutes of torture, with Otto Hightower glaring at her as she tries not to fidget. But Alicent does look heavenly knelt in the pews, so she concludes that perhaps there is something to religion after all.

Alicent mouths along with the Latin prayers and chants the creepy creed thing with the rest of the congregation, except she doesn’t need the book like most do. She smiles warmly at the priest as he shakes everyone’s hand on the way out. 

Alicent really does like it, does believe in it, Rhaenyra realises, and though she wants to respect it, there’s something about it that makes her uncomfortable. 

She can’t quite put her finger on it, until they’re drinking tea and eating biscuits in the parish rooms, and she realises Alicent acts differently here, throwing up a new and reprehensible distance between them. She shakes her off three times: when they’re sat together and Rhaenyra dips her head to her shoulder; when she tries to loop their arms to stand as they usually do; when she ducks a goodbye kiss to the cheek as Rhaenyra’s driver arrives to take her home. 

"I mean, the people are nice but they can be a bit judgy… old-fashioned, you know?" Alicent says, when Rhaenyra brings it up later, feeling sore over it. "Obviously, we’re just friends, but I didn’t want anyone to think that we looked— you know." Gay. "Not that there’s anything wrong with people who are," she adds, hastily. "But we both like boys. No point in causing any drama." 

Alicent has been playing like a force of nature, this Junior Championships. Rhaenyra half-reckons she could leave the court right now for a nap, and would still come back to find them victorious. Not a hypothesis she’ll test, in the middle of their doubles’ final, but still. Tempting as it is to relax and marvel at her best friend, it makes Rhaenyra raise her game, too, refusing to be left behind.

Terrible news for their opponents, already finding themselves badly outmatched. How daunting it must be for them, facing down a Targaryen and the girl who has been utterly wrecking everyone she’s faced in the singles. Knowing this is practically just a warm-up, for her next final tomorrow. Rhaenyra grins and throws down an overhead smash to win yet another breakpoint. They should be trembling in their court shoes.

Alicent’s hand lingers after the high five as they reset, locking their fingers briefly. "Killed it," she says, in a hushed tone because she’s more polite than Rhaenyra, and less prone to crowing. The point before Rhaenyra had yelled a celebration at this absolutely wicked volley Alicent had hit—

She needs to save the reminiscing of highlights for later. There's still more tennis to be played. Rhaenyra serves first in the next game, so Alicent crouches low by the net, trusting Rhaenyra not to hit it short into her head. She puts her left hand behind her back, and Rhaenyra looks for the signal— the call Alicent will make, for where to place the serve, so they have the advantage of being on the same page. Personally, she reckons out wide is the best choice— and sure enough, Alicent drops her pinky finger down, and then closes her fist again; she’ll stay and cover her side of the net, instead of moving into poach anything coming back across court.

It’s a good call, and a good serve, and an easy point. Alicent barely has to move to hit the return back, Rhaenyra retrieves a lob, and then Alicent puts it away at the net.

The way they sense and predict each other on the court is almost preternatural. Rhaenyra is certain they aren’t always this great, but it’s a brilliant time to fall into such a purple patch. She’s celebrating the win in her head long before they actually clinch it— and then when they do, she tackles Alicent to the ground like they’re playing bulldog.

"Sorry," she says afterwards, remembering Alicent still has her singles’ final tomorrow and probably doesn’t appreciate being knocked down with enough force and enthusiasm that Rhaenyra genuinely believes she could have brought down a small tree. "I got excited."

Alicent looks up at her from the grass and throws her arms around Rhaenyra’s neck, so she has to lie down too, practically on top of Alicent. "Don’t think you broke anything. But I’m going to have grass stains all up my arse in the photos, so thanks very much for that."

Rhaenyra grins against Alicent’s cheek, breathing in the scent of her skin and the verdant court beneath it. "I’ll look at them and remember being exactly here."

Alicent Hightower has a boyfriend, a family friend from church, so Rhaenyra gets one too. It’s easy enough to flutter her eyes at the best-looking guy at her sixth form until he asks her out: sweetly nervous, red-faced, sweaty-palmed. He’s nice and she likes him well enough. She learns in short order how good it can feel to be touched. How much she likes to touch in return. Coaxing a willing body into the reactions she wants… it comes as naturally to her as guiding a ball against her racquet strings, and it’s just as fun. 

She and Alicent are buying sweets for a sleepover when she thoughtlessly tosses a box of condoms into the basket— she’s going to his after practice tomorrow— and her friend looks at her in horror, like she’s something alien or abominable. Rhaenyra remembers (too late) the devout catholicism of it all. Loads of her school friends are having sex, but Alicent says with a sharpness that she and Jake don’t really do that sort of thing, even though she’s technically the year above Rhaenyra and Jake’s older, has just started uni.

Which, what’s really the point, then? Going on dates is nice, she supposes, but hardly as good as being on the court or using the precious free time she has left between tennis and A-levels to hang around with Alicent. 

Alicent shrugs and says something vague about going to the cinema and holding hands, when Rhaenyra asks what it is that they do do then. They kiss, sometimes, too, she adds. 

"We do those first two things. Like, all the time."

Alicent goes red as a beetroot and rambles something about how it’s different with boys. She doesn’t hear most of it, because she’s for the first time seriously struck by how much she wants to kiss her best friend. To be the one taking her on dates. She’d be a better boyfriend than Jake, she’s certain.

Alicent Hightower is playing in the main draw at a WTA-level tournament and as much as Rhaenyra wants to be a good friend about it, she is so envious it feels like there are ants crawling beneath her skin. 

She understands why the LTA had chosen to give Alicent the wildcard. She does: she’d won the junior title at Wimbledon the year before, Rhaenyra had only made it to quarters. It’s that simple. Only she’d convinced herself she’d get through qualifiers and be there alongside her, and she hadn’t, and it sucks.

It doesn’t help that looking at Alicent triggers something aching in her chest these days… or it always had, maybe, but it hadn’t been so uncomfortable before she’d understood it for the heartsickness that it is. Not realising the gravity of it. Like noticing a mole for the first time and wondering if it’s always been there, or if it’s new, and deciding whether to be worried.

Alicent has just finished her A-levels, and she’ll turn 18 this summer. If Alicent was only a single week younger, then they’d be in a shared boat, another year left of studying. As it is, she feels a little bit adrift. 

Thankfully, she won’t be left fully behind next year— her father agreed readily enough to tutoring arrangements so Rhaenyra can leave school and ramp up her tennis commitments. They’ll travel together, and play the same events: ITFs; 125s, the women’s tour’s equivalent of the ATP Challenger series; qualification tournaments for WTA contests. It still makes her feel reluctantly kiddish, that she’ll have lessons and homework while Alicent is a real, proper adult.

She looks more the part everyday, too. Not a glow-up, as such, because she’s always been lovely… but she’s coming undeniably into a different kind of beauty, and one that feels much less accessible to Rhaenyra. Despite being taller, at long last, than her friend, she’s still babyish around the face; a gangling quality to her. They’d taken a photo together a few weeks ago, printed out on Alicent’s pastel blue polaroid camera, and it’s the first of them together that Rhaenyra has ever wanted to tear to pieces, even all through the mess of puberty, because Alicent had had her hand in her hair and it had felt so nice… but then to see it on film— she’d looked so much younger. Like a little sister, having her head ruffled. It kind of made her want to die. 

Rhaenyra knows the months between them are nothing to Alicent, that she doesn’t feel there’s a difference, but it struck a nerve anyway. Killed the idea she’d had that night that she might confess that she really, really wants to kiss Alicent. Doesn’t make it any less true, as she watches Alicent put up a valiant, futile fight in her second round match against the tournament’s reigning champion.

It all just feels very complicated right now. She’s never resented Alicent anything before. She’s looked up to her, in truth, ever since they were little; a natural admiration leading to emulation. That knowledge muddles uncomfortably with her feelings of immaturity. Rhaenyra doesn’t want to be chasing her anymore, like when they used to run laps around the local athletic tracks, and Alicent would drift further and further from her the longer they ran. She wants the gap closed and non-existent (selfish, selfish, she wants to inch out in front), and she wants the rest of the pack so far behind they don’t ever stand a chance of reaching them. She wants to be the best, and she wants to be the right kind of beautiful, and only one of those seems like something she can meaningfully work towards.

"Rhaenys," she says, during the second set changeover. They’re sitting in the hospitality seats, her aunt technically at the tournament working, joining Rhaenyra for her friend’s match since she’s not covering the commentary for this one. Her aunt, one of the all time greats, with her trophy room, and her gold medal; she used to let Rhaenyra wear it, but never let her pretend it was hers. "When I go on tour full-time, I want you to be my coach."

Alicent Hightower is a blanket thief. That’s why Rhaenyra has to press close against her back while they sleep, both heads on the same pillow. So she’s not left out in the cold. 

Only it’s summer, and she’s sweating, no blankets to speak of– she has to have something over her while she sleeps, so she lets the thin sheet bunch up to cover her hip, leaving her free arm and her legs bare. It’s stifling. Alicent still won’t let her peel away. As much as she generally loves falling asleep spooning her best friend, there is a temperature ceiling on her enjoyment of it that has been long breached. She tries, rolling onto her back so only one arm is trapped under her body heat, but Alicent– still asleep, somehow, in this sauna– follows, her face falling into the crook of Rhaenyra’s neck and body falling half on top of hers. Rhaenyra feels desperately trapped, like she has a cat fast asleep on her lap, except the cat is also a hot water bottle, and also the girl she’s in love with, sweat-slick thighs suddenly straddling Rhaenyra’s leg, both of them sleeping (or trying to) in nothing but shorts and vests.

If there’s one thing in this life Rhaenyra holds sacred it’s her sleep schedule, her dedication to a cool nine hours every night. She plays in the morning, and she’ll be lucky to get six, at this rate, even if she extricates herself. She tries, experimentally, to shuffle away again; Alicent makes this sad, needy, little sound, fingers grasping at Rhaenyra’s shoulder like she’s a duvet to hog; Rhaenyra’s limbs lock up, her traitorous heart forbidding her from ever provoking such a bereft noise from Alicent ever again. 

She accepts her fate, and the fate of everyone who will have to be around her tomorrow on so little sleep.

If there’s one thing in this life Rhaenyra holds sacred–

Alicent lets out a little snore, burying her face further into Rhaenyra’s neck.

Alicent Hightower is an enormous sap, and Rhaenyra is obsessed with her for it. 

They’d almost missed their flight home, because the plane was so full the airline wouldn’t accept overweight baggage, even with the sway normally granted by Rhaenyra’s platinum membership card. It’s the kind of memory that Rhaenyra thinks she will think of sporadically for the rest of her life, and stop what she’s doing to dwell on, lips twitching. Alicent, frantic, kneeling on the ground by her bag and looking at toiletries, pieces of clothing, pairs of shoes, and saying yep— those can go, while refusing to part with the awful, gaudy snowglobe Rhaenyra had bought her in Miami. Massive, with sand instead of snowflakes and a pair of alligators in swimming trunks and shades playing beach tennis. It cannot possibly weigh less than half a kilo, would solve at least half her woes if she ditched it, and yet Alicent is shoving ankle socks into the plastic bag of things she’s throwing away, arguing that she can just buy more once she’s home. Rhaenyra had tried to take actions into her own hands, scooping it up and jogging for one of the departure hall’s bins, but Alicent (faster, always) had caught up with her before she could, catching her around the middle with an aggrieved pout to reclaim it. Returning to her half unpacked disaster zone, she’d placed the thing gently in her lap, guarding it from any further thefts: it, and they, had made the flight in the end.

"Could you at least put it in your spare room?" Rhaenyra bargains once they’re back home, watching Alicent shuffle things around on a shelf in her bedroom to make space for the snowglobe. Sandglobe. "It’s an eyesore, I don’t want to have to look at it."

"You’re the one that bought it."

"To make you laugh! I didn’t think you’d keep it."

Alicent glances incredulously at her like she’s stupid. "I’ve never not kept anything you’ve given me." It might be an exaggeration, but she does have quite a collection in the box beneath her bed: old birthday cards, scoubidou bracelets knotted at sleepovers, the god awful keyring Rhaenyra had made for her in year nine D.T, a scattering of burned CDs. "As if I wouldn’t."

Rhaenyra looks at the ridiculous snowglobe, the lurid alligators within the glass, and then at the shelf it sits on, scattered with years of collected trinkets— none so large or hideous (except one little gnome creature, but at least he’s small). She can recount the history of almost each one of them, she realises— memories tripping over themselves to make themselves known: she and Alicent, she and Alicent, Alicent, Alicent, Alicent.

"I think if I just keep the paper things, then that will be alright, won’t it? They sit flat, aren’t heavy…"

"Wouldn’t be heavy on their own, but since you insist on hoarding the equivalent of the Encyclopaedia Britannica…"

Alicent pulls a face, and sinks gracefully to the floor next to her big suitcase, legs crossed. "Come and help me sort through it, then. I need someone less sentimental than I am."

Rhaenyra’s not sure she’s that, as she looks at Alicent. Her lips spread into a broad smile despite herself, as she settles on the floor next to her best friend. She’d spend a lifetime sifting through brochures and site-maps and restaurant business cards as long as her knee was brushing Alicent’s. "The postcards and the polaroids and the Paris stuff," she suggests. "And the rest we condemn." To a box under Alicent’s bed, rather than the recycling, she imagines, hoarder that she is.

Rhaenyra has never been in the habit of collecting souvenirs herself, but she does have a hoard of her own, of sorts. A cabinet in the currently sparsely filled space she’s decided will become her trophy room, much more highly curated than Alicent’s eclectic collection of odds and ends: all tennis-focused. Photos of her gripping baby fingers twisting in the strings of a racquet head, then old enough to hold her first. Her first medal, her first newspaper clipping— and then the rest, and then she’s ten, and Alicent’s there too. Merlaw newsletters with their scorelines, DVDs with shaky camcorder footage from tournaments, the programme from Alicent’s first tournament in Birmingham, all that followed from there. The story of both of their careers in mixed media.

She returns to task, briefly looking at the caricature she picks up before placing it in the ‘keep to carry’ pile. It’s her favourite, the most recent, where they have hearts where their pupils should be.

"I love that one," she comments; Alicent squeezes her knee with a soft hum.

Alicent Hightower swears so rarely that when she grabs Rhaenyra’s shoulders on an outrageously hot day in Melbourne, shaking her and yelling you fucking did it! directly into her ear at a hazardous volume, it’s shocking enough to cut through all the noise and the disbelief, and make it really sink in that she has, in fact, fucking done it.

"Australian Open champion Rhaenyra Targaryen!" Alicent says, barely any quieter than her initial yell. There’s a feverish look in her eye that makes Rhaenyra’s head spin and she thinks the only way she could possibly make this feeling better is if she leaned in and kissed her. She does, sort of: on the cheek, with bruising pressure. "Slam winner Rhaenyra Targaryen!" Alicent is grinning like a mad woman. Rhaenyra loves her. "Fuck," she says again, looking at her like doing so is something brand new. "You’re brilliant." And then the hands on her shoulders slide down her back and pull her with such force into a hug that the collision of their chests is slightly painful. Rhaenyra grips her just as tightly back, worried her fingertips might leave bruises, but she’s so tightly wound on the adrenaline of winning a slam that she’s not quite in control of herself. So, default mode— clinging onto Alicent like her life depends on it.

"You next," Rhaenyra says, because she wants to be on the other side of this as well. Wants to win, wants to watch Alicent win, too. Nobody expected this from her, not this time— but they know what she can do now. They need to see what Alicent is capable of, too. Though-- maybe she should win one more first. Just to have a buffer.

"I think I’m monopolising you," Alicent says, not loosening her hold even a fraction. "But I’m not done yet. Sorry."

Rhaenyra squeezes, if possible, even tighter. Everyone else can wait— her team, her family, the organisers, although she probably still has a bit of time before the stage is set and the speeches start. She’s the Australian Open champion, and Alicent Hightower was there to see her win it. 

"Yours as long as you want me." Alicent’s fingers dig into her spine.

Alicent Hightower is so blisteringly gorgeous that it’s frankly absurd. This isn’t news to her of course, but Rhaenyra can’t help thinking it again as she pushes up halfway out of the pool. Rivulets of water conspire with the sunlight to define the details of her toned arms as she leans towards Rhaenyra’s lounger, just close enough to flick water from her fingers so the drops hit her toes. She pulls her knees to a right angle, out of reach.

There was no need for that; Alicent already had her attention. How could she not? Rhaenyra tells her as much, then puts her book down to mime a phone call: "Hello? Baywatch? Do I have a casting prospect for you…"

Alicent tells her to shut up and drops back into the water so only her chin is above the tiles. "I knew I should have bought the other one."

Rhaenyra wishes she hadn’t made the joke as the low-cut red one piece dips out of view. Too horny. She reassures herself with the fact she probably would have made the same comment if it were another friend in the same suit, even one she isn’t catastrophically attracted to; the swimming costume itself begs for the reference to be made, regardless of its wearer. 

"Noooo, I’m sorry. I only meant you look gorgeous." Rhaenyra inspects her a bit more closely, frowning. "You also look sunburned."

"I’m just— I’m embarrassed, that’s why my face is red."

"Push out of the water again, let me look at your shoulders." Alicent reluctantly does, and it’s as she thought. "You need to reapply. Come on, get out a second, I’ll get your back for you."

As tennis players, they spend a stupid amount of time in the sun; Rhaenyra is pale compared to most of the tour, and religious with her SPF, but even she has the typical tan lines around her feet and the shape of a tennis dress, milky white racer-back stripes criss-crossed over her back thanks to the shape of her favourite sports bras. She burns more easily than Alicent, who looks sun-kissed most of the time, turning golden more readily than Rhaenyra. Turning lobster now, though, probably not helped by rays bouncing off the pool water — her upper arms, and the tops of her shoulders have definitely caught the sun. She hasn’t seen Alicent’s back yet, but it’s likely seen the worst of it given she’s been swimming lengths on her front.

Alicent gets somewhat reluctantly out of the water, obviously still shy about her swimsuit; Rhaenyra spares them both by digging around in the bag she’d dropped next to the sun lounger, making a meal of looking for the bottle of lotion thrown in it earlier. By the time she looks up, Alicent has tied a sarong around her waist, looking a bit more comfortable for the cover, sheer as it is.

"Hold your hair out of the way for me," Rhaenyra tells her. Alicent has tied up in a bun but there’s so much of it, so heavy even when not waterlogged that it droops over her neck, and there’s loose tendrils plastered there anyway. Squeezing a dollop onto her palm, she rubs her hands together briefly, and gets to work, meticulous in it. Her neck, the backs of her arms, where the costume dips low, right to the small of her back. Her shoulders. Rhaenyra lifts a strap to get underneath it—

"What are you doing?" Alicent blurts, twisting around with an alarmed look on her face. Rhaenyra takes a half-step back, bewildered, calf pressing into the plastic bed of the sun lounger. She was just making sure to get under the straps, like you’re supposed to— she didn’t mean to… was that overstepping? She’s sure she’s always done that. Like she’d been taught as a kid. That’s not new, surely, she’s applied sunscreen for Alicent hundreds of times, probably. She doesn’t understand the accusing panic in Alicent’s eyes. Unless— unless Alicent’s onto her. Has some inkling that Rhaenyra wants her in ways that she shouldn’t, and it’s changed how she’s allowed to touch her.

"I was just— getting underneath the strap? So you don’t burn by the edges?" She lowers her hands awkwardly. Alicent laughs, but it’s stilted.

"Yeah, no, of course. Sorry. I think the sun is getting to me more than I thought. Thanks." She shakes her head and turns back around. "You can, um. Carry on." 

Alicent Hightower is too good for her, as a friend or a lover, and would never be interested anyway, at least according to Otto. True or not, that won’t stop her from taking advantage of the fact Alicent herself seems perfectly happy in her company. All the ways in which her best friend yields to her father’s judgement, and their friendship had never once faltered for his disapproval.

"She’s not like you, you know," he tells her one day, when they’re sat reluctantly together in Alicent’s player box. His eyes never leave the court, darting left and right in time with the ball. "She doesn’t love you like you do her. She won’t. And you wouldn’t deserve her if she did. You never have warranted the time she gives you."

"I have a boyfriend," she says. "And you don’t deserve her either."

Otto doesn’t look at her, but the corner of his mouth flicks up, just a little. She huffs a little laugh through her nose in turn. Both on the same page for once, thinking the same thing: like either of those things matter.

Alicent Hightower beats her in the final of the Adelaide WTA500 and Rhaenyra can’t even be mad about it. She’ll probably have a scream into her pillow later, when the sense of losing sinks in, which does traditionally drive her to madness, but the defeat does not currently feel like a loss. She isn’t upset, or angry, or despondent.

Instead, despite the fact that she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to breathe normally again (panting so hard her lungs rattle) and her legs are completely shot (jellied like they’ve been shot at close range with a paintball gun), she wants to go again. Demand a rematch, not as a sore loser, but because she’s greedy. Because two and a half long aching hours had gone by and it wasn’t enough.

She’s won a grand slam final and yet she’s still never played a match so overwhelming. For once, she’d barely been aware of the crowd, normally such a driving force behind her strokes, her desire to show off. With Alicent across the court though— well, why would she seek admiration from anyone else? 

Hardly one to be outshone, Rhaenyra can admit she was outplayed today, and not through her own fault; when Rhaenys pulls out the videos from this match they’ll look at each other and shrug and say, yeah… not a lot to be done about that. It was like picking a fight with the oncoming tide. The first set had been hers, starting off with an early break that she’d quickly realised was little more than a plank to cling to when the relentless waves began. 

Rhaenyra isn’t sure she’s ever seen Alicent play so aggressively… it took her wholly by surprise, running from one wave to find another sneaking up right behind. She’d taken her shots so early, giving Rhaenyra no time to think or rebalance. No way Rhaenyra could have planned for this, but she adjusted best she could, taking her own step behind the baseline. Flexibility on the court is her strong suit, an ability to adapt and surprise. Except, try as she might have, it was like someone told Alicent the choreography before the match; she had an answer for almost everything, Rhaenyra with increasingly desperate gambits to stay in it. Coming in clutch during break points in the first set, she had managed to hang in there for 7-5. 

The rest of it, it’s like she’s playing tetris with her phone screen never less than two-thirds empty. The adrenaline of it gripping the back of her neck, hoping desperately whatever shot comes over the net will be something she can do something with, regain a bit of ground—

Rhaenyra thinks she played the best tennis of her life, this match, under so much pressure. Highlight reel stuff, shots behind her back, at full reach, swapping her racquet between her hands to hit a forehand out left to take Alicent by surprise… Her best tennis and it hadn’t been good enough against her best friend, glorious in her composure and consistency, the swift brutality of her backhand, the sureness of every shot. That’s why she wants a rematch— to prove herself worthy.

As the adrenaline fades, the world reforms around her; it’s no longer just Alicent, a net, and white lines on blue paint, and she resents it for that. What need is there for anything else to exist? She’d had all of her essentials laid out before her, and had entirely forgotten she was being made to share it with grandstands of spectators. It strikes Rhaenyra that she’s never found herself with a massive, stupid grin on her face after losing a competitive match before, let alone a final. But god, what a match. What a girl. What a game. She fucking loves tennis and she fucking loves Alicent Hightower.

"I am going to be in an ice bath for days," she tells Alicent, clinging to her at the net, "and I will savour every minute of pain, remembering this match… remembering how you’re going to look holding that trophy." She imagines it. The last time she’d gotten to be so close to Alicent being handed a title— right there, on the court— their doubles trophy at the Junior Championships, way back when. 

"You’re a freak," Alicent tells her, and kisses her cheek. "Stop reminiscing about something that hasn’t happened yet."

"You think I’m a freak now," she says, as they part, to go thank the umpire, "you just wait until they let me give my runner-up speech."

Alicent’s eyes go wide, but she doesn’t have time to reply because they’ve reached the umpires chair, and after thanking him they go to their respective benches, on either side— although Alicent goes to her dad first; he leans over the barrier between the court and stands to place a hand on her shoulder as he talks to her, smiling, and even in the shade of the bleachers she looks like she’s standing in the sun.

When the organisers are ready, they call them up to receive their prizes, and give their speeches, and Rhaenyra can’t stop herself from smiling, lips twisting; she can feel Alicent’s glances at the side of her head, the don’t you dare embarrass me of it all. For all the finals she’s played in her life, she’s always thought it was kind of bullshit making the loser give a speech, right after defeat. They’re all deeply competitive people. But today she relishes it. They hand her the tiny runner’s up trophy, a miniature of the real thing, and looking at how red her arms are from the exertion still, she wonders at the colour of her face. She’s going to make sure Alicent’s is the same, once she’s done waxing lyrical.

The poems all appear in her head as she looks directly at her, already flushed and bashful in anticipation of whatever Rhaenyra is going to say. Rhaenyra decides to take pity and have mercy on her. She won’t point out to the crowd just how fucking beautiful she looks, call for three cheers, hip hip hooray, and one for luck; not that she needs it, given she’s so bloody brilliant. It would have been funny, though, watching her turn purple and breathe through her nose in mortification; she’d pretend to be so mad about it later, before kissing Rhaenyra’s cheek and calling her sweet. 

Alicent pretends not to want recognition for her talent and hard work— so humble, it’s just her job, they’re all dedicated to the sport, she’s just glad she could put on a good show for everybody— but she does, Rhaenyra knows it. She wants the trophies and for the crowds to love her, and she plays better when they do. Signing autographs she bites her lip to keep her smile small and polite instead of wide and flattered, and she glows when her dad tosses her a scrap of his satisfaction.

It’s beyond Rhaenyra why the stadium isn’t chanting Alicent’s name loud enough to drown out the speech she’s about to give. Had they not seen what she’d just done? How she’d just played? If it had been a slam final it would have gone down as one of the greatest of all time, but at a WTA500 it’ll only be discussed among a smattering of hardcore tennis fans. 

(Of course, if it had been a slam final… Rhaenyra mightn’t be so cheerful in defeat.)

Rhaenyra won’t pull anything stupid, as much as she wants to. She’ll keep her words light and simple, in keeping with the occasion, and tease Alicent beetroot later. 

"First of all, I have to say congratulations to Alicent. That was a brilliant match, for us both, I think. And a very deserving win. Based on how you played today, of course, but also the rest of it…" Alicent will know what she means by that, but she realises the crowd might need context, managing to tear her eyes away from Alicent’s face for a second (she’s shaking her head, but she’s smiling) to explain. "I know how hard you work every day to be as brilliant as you are, and it’s a privilege to share a court with a player of your calibre, with so much grace and discipline… You encompass everything I love about this sport. I’m so glad to have been playing at your side for so long." She clears her throat. "The atmosphere has been amazing, thank you so much to everyone who came out to watch, the crowd makes such a huge difference—"

She’s glad she was already red, because the warm weight of Alicent’s gaze is like a brand.

Alicent Hightower had always been a McFly girl.

If you’d have forced her hand, during the great playground schisms of the 2000s, Rhaenyra would have said she leaned a little more Busted. Mostly she just took affront at the idea that she had to choose which one to like; regardless, Busted disbanded a couple of years before they met, their relevance only really lurking on school disco playlists and the background music in HMV. 

McFly though… They released their greatest hits album right around the time Rhaenyra moved to south west London. They’re the boy band that she and Alicent had spent hours dancing around to in their bedrooms, the ones that featured in the tween magazines they hoarded. It’s the kind of nostalgia fodder that bakes into an eternal affection for a band.

Which is why when Harwin gives her two tickets he’d gotten for the one-off show they’re doing at the O2 as part of her birthday present, her response— even as an adult woman, and not a tween— was to give a little shriek. "Oh my god, where’s my phone— I need to text Alicent, she’s going to be so excited."

And then Harwin frowning— "I thought we could go together?"

"Oh, babe," she’d said. "I’m sorry, but no."

Giving her both tickets for her birthday had been the mistake, if he’d wanted to be the one coming with her. Because why would she choose anyone in the world but the woman beside her, every lyric on her lips, smiling and laughing and looping her arms around Rhaenyra’s middle every time they play an old favourite. 

If she has to close her eyes as she sings and sways along to ‘It’s All About You’, because there is something so painful building in her chest having Alicent mouth the words at her like she did when they were kids, eyes all soft and shiny and oblivious— like it isn’t a love song— knowing she doesn’t mean it like Rhaenyra does, then, well. It’s the kind of agony she’ll choose every time, with Alicent happy and their arms around each other's waists. Alicent’s head falls to her shoulder as the song concludes. Not before pressing a kiss to her cheek.

She’ll choose it every time.

Alicent Hightower is something— she’s being cagey about exactly what — with Criston Cole, and Rhaenyra thinks she might go insane. Which is kind of horrendous of her, given she has a boyfriend she maybe loves, and is meant to be getting over Alicent, at least in that sense. There’s no getting over the fact that Alicent is sewn into the fabric of her. She’d thought maybe at least she’d managed to stop salivating over her best friend, except now she’s frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog, and as much as she’s no fan of Criston, she knows it for what it is: it’s not a noble urge to protect Alicent from a man that isn’t good enough for her. It’s jealousy, pure and simple. Dirty. Complicated. 

Worse still is that it means the four highest ranked British players are coupled up, which the press eat up. From the reaction you’d think they’re the second coming of ABBA, or something; every tournament she’s asked about whether they go on double dates, and eventually it’s been spoken of so often that it manifests into an actual plan. It’s ghastly.

She realises she wants— and she supposes that objectively it’s unreasonable, though it seems sensible enough to her— to be the only person Alicent has anything with. Everything with. She’s long since reconciled with the fact she can’t have all she’d like— and working to do so had been a task like taming a dragon, for an only child like her, spoiled from birth. But she’s never had to deal with anyone else having a claim on her best friend, really, either. A few hook-ups and dates, sure, but Alicent hasn’t been in an actual relationship since they were in school.

It's like… coveting cake. One thing to know there’s none in the house and the shops are closed, and making do with another sweet and delicious thing, even if it doesn’t quite sate the craving. Like bread and honey— akin to cake, in a way: something close to sponge to sink her teeth into and sugar to savour. As much as she enjoys being with Harwin. As encompassing as friendship with Alicent is. But it’s quite another entirely to have to sit and watch someone else get to eat what is possibly the finest act of baking the world has ever seen, right in front of you, like something from a spread of wedding photos in Vogue. And maybe this metaphor has gotten away from Rhaenyra. Maybe she’s hungry, and the service at this stupid restaurant she doesn’t even want to be at is agonisingly slow.

On a personal level, Rhaenyra considers Criston Cole to be an absolute loser, when she’s forced to consider him at all. But he’s also handsome, and having a really good year on the court, which makes him a pretty hot commodity. She just didn’t think Alicent of all people— smart, sensible, and so stratospherically far out of his league it’s not even funny— would fall victim to the thirst-trap billboards of the man in Calvin Klein underwear. The first-hand knowledge that the guy is actually a pretty decent shag (despite all of the messy teenage slutshaming that Criston swears he has grown past, though he never actually apologised for all the names he called her for not wanting to date him) adds insult to injury. 

He’s holding Alicent’s hand on the table, and twice he has kissed her palm, then glanced at Rhaenyra. She’s going to have to book an appointment with her dentist, the way she’s gritting her teeth to avoid giving him a reaction.

The double date is probably the nail in the coffin for her relationship with Harwin. Alicent is not the kind of woman one can ever be over, she finally accepts, and it renders her incompatible with a man practically ready to pick out an engagement ring. They last longer than Alicent and Criston, at least.

Alicent Hightower has been crying. At least, Rhaenyra thinks she has, from the faint redness around her eyes. Rhaenyra’s just arrived back to the rented apartment they’re sharing to see her on the sofa, staring at the blank wall and picking at a loose thread on the pillow held tightly in her lap. She doesn’t say anything when Rhaenyra sits beside her, only drops her head onto her shoulder.

Rhaenyra’s never been the best at sitting in silence, but she bears it as long as she can before she asks about it. "You good?"

Alicent snorts, and knocks her head against Rhaenyra’s cheekbone. "Peachy." Rhaenyra waits a little while again, thinking she’s opened the door enough that Alicent might creep out of whatever lonely place she’s occupying in her head. "Just… training was hard, today. Been trying to change the mechanics on my second serve a bit, but it’s not coming together. Tensions a bit high going into the tournament. I drew Brecht first round so my dad’s not happy."

Otto Hightower is rarely happy with Alicent it seems; at most satisfied, and then his focus moves on to the next task that she can fail or succeed at. It’s infuriating to witness, the way only Alicent’s losses are allowed to linger, while victories barely count past the shake of the umpire’s hand.

Rhaenyra shakes her head. Brecht’s a good player— she’d come up against her a few weeks ago; a good match, she’d enjoyed it. Ranked higher than Alicent, but not capable of anything so dazzling, Rhaenyra’s sure. There’s a lot to be said for skilful consistency in the WTA. "You can beat her." Alicent looks doubtful. Rhaenyra twists their ankles together, kicks her leg up so they both swing up outstretched, together. "When I played her back in Stuttgart—"

Alicent sighs and unhooks their ankles her foot falling back to the ground. "I’m not as good as you, Rhaenyra," she says it plainly, like it’s fact, after a reluctant moment, like she’s just been made to hand over a card kept close to her chest. "There’s no point in pretending otherwise," she adds in a dull, monotonous voice, like she’s reciting a quote. Rhaenyra can deduce whose.

Alicent Hightower might just be a miracle, a triumph against nature and nurture. It’s hard to believe Otto could be even partially responsible for bringing something so good into the world; it might be enough for Rhaenyra not to despise him, if he didn’t seem so hell-bent on destroying his daughter’s self-confidence.

Alicent Hightower is there when she loses the Wimbledon final, and she’s there after, too. Rhaenyra stays on court just long enough to give her runner’s up speech, totally incapable of hiding how distraught she is. Afterwards, there’s an ambulance waiting for her. She refuses to get into the emergency vehicle before Alicent finds her, which doesn’t take long; she’s running as she turns the corner, and then she’s closed the distance and her arms are tight around Rhaenyra’s waist, careful not to jostle her agonised shoulder. The smell of Alicent’s hair, as she starts to sob into it, is maybe the only drug in the world that could begin to dull the pain, she thinks. 

(And then they give her morphine, and she reluctantly accepts that yeah, okay, modern medicine deserves some credit too.)

She’s told no competitive tennis for at least three months. Lucky, the doctor has the nerve to call her. Lucky that playing through the pain hadn’t injured her beyond recovery, only ruled her out for most of the rest of the season. 

Alicent holds her hand and Rhaenyra isn’t sure how she’s supposed to let go, as her vision swims and wobbles from both the outrageous pain and the thought of a path only narrowly avoided. She never has to figure it out: Alicent steadies her, palm-to-palm, long after they leave the hospital. She’s there when she goes to bed, drowsy from the painkillers, and again when she wakes, greeting her with a squeeze of their laced fingers and an exhausted smile.

Alicent Hightower is an absolute drill sergeant when it comes to making Rhaenyra follow her treatment plan to the letter. Rhaenyra owes Rhaenys a thousand apologies for ever complaining about her coaching being rigorous or demanding, because her aunt’s methods are nothing compared to Alicent seeing her through her recovery. She half-regrets deciding to follow Alicent around North America for the pre-USO swing; she doesn’t let her get away with anything.

If she expects her best friend to chill out once she’s out of the sling, she’s wrong. Someone needs to explain to Rhaenyra why Alicent’s phone rings out in alarm at the same time as her watch buzzes on her wrist, reminding her it’s time to do the exercises her physio gave her to do before bed, because when did she even get her hands on the schedule? Won’t let her finish the episode of Kardashians she’s watching first, even though there’s only five minutes left. Watches like a hawk, to make sure she’s doing all of them properly, in number and effort; she glares balefully at Rhaenyra if she slacks off just a little. She manages her medication like she’s a nurse at an old people’s home, too.

It’s all lightly suffocating, but also sweet. Once she catches Rhaenyra holding a tennis racquet, wincing as she ghosts the motion of a swing— slowly and not with any force, just to test out how it feels— and Rhaenyra for a moment is genuinely afraid of the irate look on her face, the two of them just staring at each other for a few fraught seconds. 

(Alicent only takes the racquet from her hands, touches her cheek, and pleads with her to be patient, anger fading to something softer).

Rhaenyra tries to tell her to stop worrying so much about her, when she has tournaments to play in, to focus on, but Alicent is having none of it. That look she gives her. She loves it so much. Bossy, a little annoyed, with so much love behind it— stop arguing with me, you idiot, and accept the fact I care about you. She’s on the end of it more now than she has been since the weeks and months after her mum died, once Rhaenyra’s coldness had dissolved into devastation, and she’d kept trying to deal with it alone, not wanting to bring her friend down with her.

Maybe Alicent actually welcomes the distraction. Things aren’t going so well on the court. It’s hard to watch, sometimes— almost visible, the way Alicent will be looking just fine in a match and then something will come over her; she goes from sharp to hazy, and then like clockwork, all the panicked glances at her box start to come. Rhaenyra does her best not to seem worried, to smile and nod and encourage, but Alicent is never looking at her in those moments. Only at her father and the disapproval etched into his face, which makes things worse. Obviously. 

She loses in the first round in Toronto, then Washington, and then fails to qualify in Charleston— although in her defence, it had been a really stacked main draw, and a lot of good players suffered the same fate.

"You really don’t have to keep fussing over me, I’m fine." Rhaenyra sighs in front of the vanity as she gives up on trying to tie her hair back with one hand, reaches again for the headband she’s been relying on to keep it out of her face. Maybe she’ll cut it off; she’s always wanted to try it short, but likes being able to tie it back properly for matches, enjoys the pendulum swing of it as she moves across a court. Doesn’t like the idea of it plastered with sweat to the back of her neck. But tennis season will basically be over before she’s allowed to play again, so… 

"What if I want to fuss over you, have you considered that?" Alicent says, hovering. "Let me tie it back for you, yeah? I can french plait it, even, if you like. Not as well as you manage mine, but—"

In the years since her mum died, other people have done her hair. Of course they have— she’s done a lot of modelling at this point, and sometimes they don’t want her doing her own. She’s been a bridesmaid, for Laena. But she always endures it like a trip to the dentist. More than a decade and it’s still the thing that makes her tuck her thumbs in her fists and try not to weep.

But it’s Alicent, the only person she lets play with her hair at all; she’s always found that relaxing, surely it wouldn’t be so different... and she does want it up and off her neck. It’s hot here in Cincinnati.

Rhaenyra blinks and bounces her knee. "Alright."

Her reticence at having her hair done isn’t a secret to Alicent, though Rhaenyra doesn’t know if she’s ever actually verbalised it. Generally she doesn’t have to when it comes to her best friend. Wordlessly, Alicent comes to stand behind her, leaning round to take her hairbrush from where it lies on the dressing table. And God, Rhaenyra must have been doing a worse job than she thought at detangling the back of her hair because gentle as Alicent always is with her, she’s wincing at the pull of the bristles.

"Sorry," Alicent says, each rough tug of the brush followed by a soothing stroke of her cool fingers. 

Rhaenyra shakes her head at Alicent in the mirror to absolve her– not her fault, nothing to apologise for. The slight pain is helpful, if anything, keeping her mind off of the rising flood of old grief, currently lapping somewhere around her ankles. Once Alicent is satisfied, she takes to the plaiting. It makes Rhaenyra smile to see how deeply she’s concentrating, the deliberateness with which she gathers each section of her. Her work is neat enough, but very slow; Rhaenyra is much quicker on her own hair, when she can get to it, but she supposes it should be a surprise Alicent knows how to do it at all, given she’s always had Rhaenyra doing it for her.

Having her hair plaited by Alicent is much less objectionable than any of the other times she’s had it done over the years– she can enjoy it even, the feel of her hands in her hair– but it’s also inherently more vulnerable; she has little guard to even try to muster in front of Alicent. Her best friend doesn’t acknowledge the tears that sneak up on her silently, except to swipe them away with the back of her thumb.

"Thanks for looking after me," Rhaenyra says, once Alicent’s finished, because she sometimes forgets to be grateful, and she wouldn’t want all of the complaining she does about Alicent’s coddling and bossing about to be the only message that she gets across. It’s mostly for show anyway, all the moaning. Alicent probably knows.

"Easiest thing in the world," Alicent shrugs, tugging lightly on the end of the plait she’s just tied off. Rhaenyra’s chin tilts up as she does, a marionette in the mirror. She’s pretty sure that can’t be true; not being able to play, or do everything for herself— reach behind her head, for example— is getting to her, and it’s no secret she can act like a brat at times. 

Alicent’s gaze drifts distant and her lips twitch into a smile, but it doesn’t look happy. "What?"

When she laughs, it’s a miserable, self-deprecating thing that Rhaenyra despises. "I wish playing tennis would come as naturally to me as babysitting you does."

"Babysitting?" 

"Wasn’t really the point of the comment, Rhaenyra."

"I know." Rhaenyra shifts on the stool a little, resenting the fact she can’t reach back for Alicent’s hands, so she can hold them over her shoulders while she thinks about what to say. She’s been waiting for Alicent to be ready to talk about the last couple of months of results, the points she’s losing dropping her to just barely inside the top-fifty. She’s been comfortably ranked between twenty and thirty for like, the last four years, so it’s a notable drop. Even with all that time to prepare, she hasn’t come up with anything adequate.

"I think you should think about a new coach," Rhaenyra says, a spark of hope catching in her chest when Alicent doesn’t dismiss her out of hand, gaze turning distant in the mirror.

Timing is a cruel thing.

Just when Rhaenyra thinks she’s almost gotten through to Alicent about the wisdom of firing Otto, sensing the crack in her resolve and with little else to do but spend her time bothering her best friend, the worst possible thing happens: Alicent wins the title at the Cleveland 250. Effusive praise and gratitude towards her dad in the victory speech signal a dreaded return to square one.

"Yeah, no, I think everything’s fine," Alicent tells her later. "Leave it, would you? I know it’s different from how Rhaenys does things, but it works for me."

It doesn’t; Rhaenyra doesn’t want to call Alicent winning anything a fluke, not when she has the talent in spades, but the real fault in her best friend’s game recently has been her lack of consistency. She feels a little sickened when she’s not surprised it doesn’t last; her unwavering faith in Alicent’s ability to win against any odds weakening after so many years, chipped away at by the reality of what’s been unfolding in front of her since her injury. Before that she’d been admittedly blind to it, not countenancing the idea it could be anything more than a brief dip. 

Alicent crashes out in the second round of the US Open, losing a lead of a set and two breaks. Rhaenyra fights desperately to school her face into something consoling, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s not Rhaenyra Alicent is looking at, when her shame sets in, but the empty seat her dad– her coach – had left behind, after he skulked off halfway through the third set.

Rhaenyra has never been so angry in her life, physically shaking with it, eyes burning and a scream trapped in her throat. She grips the back of the seat in the row in front and resents that the moulded plastic does not warp under her trembling fingers. She watches Alicent, her vacant expression as she blindly packs things back into her racquet bag. Rhaenyra can see a sharp corner of pink, rising from the pocket of it: the card she’d given Alicent this morning, wishing her a happy birthday.

Alicent Hightower has the patience of a saint. It’s clear from how she handles all of Rhaenyra’s tantrums and dramatics, when finally she gets the doctors permission to pick up a racquet again, thinking madly that she’ll be in any kind of form in time for the WTA finals in November. She’d had a strong enough first half of the year, deep runs in the three slams she’d played in, that even missing everything after Wimbledon she’s still ranked fourth. It helps that she wasn’t defending many points at the US Open, but she lost a fair amount from the warm-ups and then the East Asian swing… all those points in Wuhan, just before she was able to come back. 

"What is the fucking point?" she grumbles, lying on the cold court after twenty minutes of playing terribly, out of breath and screwing up her shots. "I couldn’t beat a vaguely talented child. I’m going to quit."

"Firstly — yes, you could. Secondly, why is that your reference point?" Alicent pokes her ribs with her racquet, having crossed over from her side of the net. "And get up. You’re not quitting."

"How about I just quit for the next five minutes…?"

"You have thirty seconds, and then I’m using you as practice for my serve placements."

She’ll do it too, Rhaenyra knows. From experience.

"God, you’re so mean to me." She starts a mental countdown to make sure she gets up on time. "What did I ever do to deserve you?" 

Later, in the hotel suite they’re sharing, Rhaenyra is feeling pensive. It was always going to be a long shot, regaining any sort of form with only a few weeks of clearance to play at full throttle after months out.

"I think I should just pull out," Rhaenyra says. She digs her toes further beneath Alicent’s thighs on the sofa, seeking warmth for her feet. They haven’t worked out the air-conditioning controls yet, and it’s freezing. "I’m not fit, yet. I’m not good enough."

Alicent hums. Her cold hand rubs Rhaenyra’s shin, up the leg of her trackies. "Your shoulder is healthy enough, right? Greg and the doctor are happy enough for you to go ahead?" 

"Yeah. It’s just my match fitness. So rusty."

"I think you should play."

Rhaenyra pulls a face. "I won’t get past the round robin."

"It’s the WTA finals, Rhaenyra. Some people would kill to be there." Rhaenyra looks away, remembering Alicent has never played the event; it’s the top eight players of the calendar year only. "And not like losing is the worst thing in the world." Rhaenyra has always kind of thought it is, but she doesn’t say it. Alicent lifts an eyebrow, as if daring her to disagree. "Besides, they’ll dress you up, take nice pictures. You wouldn’t want your legion of adoring fans to miss out on the photos, would you, after they’ve been so deprived of you?" She’s very droll as she says it, and she leans over to flick Rhaenyra on the temple, a warning not to let the sarcastic comment feed her ego. Too late.

"Do you count yourself among them? My adoring fans?"

Alicent rolls her eyes, twisting her mouth into that you’re so annoying but I love you anyway grimace that Rhaenyra is so fond of. "Duh," she says. "I was the first."

Alicent Hightower looks at her with more feeling, touches her with more reverence, tolerates her foibles better than any lover she’s ever had, and sometimes Rhaenyra wonders. 

It’s a dangerous thing to do, because there are days when she could almost believe the fondness in those doe eyes is more than fond, that the way Alicent’s face goes hot when Rhaenyra says something that could be construed as flirting actually means something, other than the fact Alicent has always been easily riled up. 

Alicent must know, on some level, how Rhaenyra feels— she’s sort of pathetically obvious about it. It’s been pointed out to her before, by Rhaenys especially, but Harwin too, when they broke up. She thinks Criston knew, or knows. Otto Hightower certainly does. Even back at school, there were whispers she had a girlfriend who went to her tennis club; intended cruelly, though she’d not much minded them. She’d been too popular and too busy with training, and the suggestion Alicent would want to be with her could never work as an insult, even before it was something she knew she wanted. 

Beyond keeping everything unspoken, Rhaenyra has never really cared about doing much to hide it, to act any differently than she feels like in the given moment in the name of subtlety. As long as Alicent tolerates her, loves her in spite of it, what does it matter? She’s not sure she’s capable of restraining herself anyway. Discipline has never come easily to Rhaenyra. She saves all that she has managed to scrape together over the years for the court and her sleep schedule. Alicent, on the other hand, is a constant indulgence.

Rhaenyra has never been accused of being risk-averse in her life; criticised for the opposite, yes, often. That Wimbledon final… she’d been stupid, not to retire. She’d felt the severity of the injury. But what if it never happened again, and she only had one chance to play a final there? 

There’s way too much at stake, with Alicent. Alicent, with her conservative family… raised with traditional values… holding her father’s opinions and approval as gospel.  

Not that she goes to church really, anymore. And she’s not homophobic, Rhaenyra knows that. They went to Laenor’s very gay wedding together, and Alicent had been as weepingly emotional as anyone, when he and Joffrey had exchanged vows. But it’s different, isn’t it? When it’s someone else, from a distance, versus having it directed at you and sharing your bed at night. To have it be your best friend miserably failing in attempts not to stare at your lips. She’s seen glimmers of it: Alicent pulling away if Rhaenyra comes on a little too strongly, even when she doesn’t mean to.

Alicent is so expert at deflecting her flirting, ignoring it entirely if needs be. Permissive of it, but not crossing the line herself. Anything to maintain that thin veil of plausible deniability over Rhaenyra’s blatant infatuation, to allow them to carry on the way they have since before they were old enough for anything as messy as feelings. 

And it’s enough, isn’t it? It’s good. They’re good. They’re so good.

Chapter Text

Alicent Hightower is never around anymore.

It’s a very selfish way for Rhaenyra to regard her best friend’s slump in form and tumble down the rankings, but then again, she’s always been that. 

A day or two together in early rounds isn’t enough. Especially when they might not even be registered at the same one next, especially with these big two-week 1000s tournaments. Too many are compulsory for Rhaenyra, at the top of the rankings, or else she might be tempted to follow Alicent to smaller competitions. Maybe she could vulture her way back to world number one, dominating the weaker draws.

The run of poor performances hadn’t seemed so bad at first. People had dips sometimes, and Rhaenyra had been out injured, so she was following Alicent instead of the tour. It sheltered her from the consequences. But it’s been two years now since that summer, and Alicent had almost dropped out of the top-200, only now clawing her way closer to double digits again. Just a rough patch. Just give it some time. Attempts at encouragement ring falser with every re-use. 

Rhaenyra misses Alicent. She misses her like she imagines she would a limb, like she’s hobbled by it, like she can feel the phantom of her. Alicent’s spare vibration dampeners somehow ending up in Rhaenyra’s racquet bag. A flash of red hair on the practice court, but not hers. On her phone there’s blue bubbles in rapid succession and then hours apart, meridians separating them in time as well as space. Half-empty beds; re-downloading Raya, to fill a void; waking up to pillows dented differently than they would be under Alicent’s cheek.

Rhaenyra finds out what other players are talking about when they say the tour can be lonely. Skill issue, she’d always thought before. Just befriend a fellow future pro when you’re ten years old, and keep her as close as humanly possible.

She’s lonely. She’s so lonely. And when Mysaria Lys strikes up a conversation with her at a sponsor event in Madrid, Alicent having been knocked out in the first round, she’s— charmed. In a way that feels only half-familiar. Mysaria is funny, intelligent. Gorgeous. Making the drag of the evening a bit less dire, and when the first opportunity comes to slip away, she doesn’t take it, because suddenly she isn’t bored or alone. She’s… interested, with someone interesting.

Rhaenyra’s no stranger to wanting, hasn’t been celibate in the years she’d spent holding a torch for her best friend. Once she’d discovered sex, sensuality, there’d been no going back for her, but Harwin was the last time she saw anyone seriously: dates, definitions, drawers at each other’s places. It’s been more than two years since they ended. But there’s been other men, before, after. 

Intimacy, she’s learned, comes in all sorts of flavours; many requiring nothing deeper from her than enthusiasm. One night stands, friends with benefits. Flings, when there’s some deadline to them; Rhaenyra isn’t immune to enjoying a surface-sort of whirlwind romance, the kind that stings and sputters out when its time is up, a little bit of emotional connection to go with her physical satisfaction. If hearts have been broken, then it’s not her fault— she’s always clear she’s not looking for a relationship. 

Sticking to men had always been a semi-conscious choice. Rhaenyra has never been with a woman, despite plenty of opportunities over the years, despite knowing her attraction to them did not stop with her best friend. It was easier for one thing; no effort at all required, really, to have a man in her bed on a whim. Invited less comparison, for another. 

(It had been bad enough learning what it was like to tangle her fingers into Harwin’s long-ish curls while in the throes of it all, and then plaiting Alicent’s own—softer, longer—before her match the next day. Fuel is one thing her imagination has never lacked, and for the most part she does avoid adding to the fire, even if she warms herself with what’s already burning.)

Dating a woman would change things. It just would. For Alicent to even know she’s bisexual might fuck things up between them, wound their easy intimacy. There’s nothing they do that they haven’t always done, since they were primary school kids— cuddling, kisses on cheeks, heads in laps, hands in hands. 

So Rhaenyra has romantic feelings. That doesn’t change that at the core of things, it’s their friendship that drives her actions, that the way she touches Alicent is an instinct forged over more than fifteen years. Maybe the feel of Alicent’s fingers laced with hers makes her heart beat a little faster, but isn’t why she intertwines them. Pressing up behind her in bed and kissing her cheek, knowing she’ll fall asleep easier for it. It’s just how they are, how she breathes. You’re my best friend. I’m never more comfortable than at your side. I hope your dreams are sweet, I hope that they come true. 

Rhaenyra has never been afraid of much. She’s not sure she even knew what fear was before her mum died, and she’d been made to look down the barrel of a whole life without her. With Alicent, she’s so scared of how it will feel if she has to stop. Emulate the stilted, half-baked sort of friendship other women have, where they exchange one-armed hugs at the beginning and end of brunch and then go their separate ways again. If all of the natural expressions of her love for Alicent are suddenly assigned an ulterior motive… It would be like putting their friendship in a straitjacket, and then Rhaenyra would probably need one too.

But— but… 

Alicent isn’t here. And Rhaenyra isn’t blind. And Mysaria is very nice and very, very beautiful. And, unless Rhaenyra is so delusional that her ego is entirely beyond saving, flirting with her.

She’s interested. And Alicent wouldn’t ever have to know. Alicent isn’t here. Alicent’s never here.

The event is actually winding down now, and leaving without sneaking off would be perfectly socially acceptable. They’re both lingering, though, in a way that’s exciting— each trying to preserve the little thread that’s formed between them, neither wanting to be the one to take a pair of scissors to it. Her boyfriend in sixth form lived in Tooting, but always used to walk to her tube station with her, even if it was in the wrong direction, to make their dates stretch out— right from the very first one, when he’d used the time to gather the courage to kiss her.

“Where are you staying?” she asks, not thinking about walking her home. Mysaria says the name of a hotel Rhaenyra has used before, right across the city. 

“This might be horribly forward,” she says, with overly affected coyness, tongue-in-cheek with it. She’s come to understand just how much damage she can do with a come-on, a sly look through her lashes, the light touch of her fingertips against a hip. “But that’s a long journey. And the apartment I’m renting is just around the corner.”

A lovely flush slides up Mysaria’s neck, but her eye contact doesn’t waver. She smiles, tips her chin. “Is there an invitation there?”

Rhaenyra matches the expression, mirrors the tilt of Mysaria’s head. She hums, pretending to consider, and Mysaria reaches out, subtly. Their fingers touch in the narrow space between them, held low below their hips. “Several, I think.”

Alicent Hightower in Italy is something to behold. 

Rhaenyra doesn’t know if it’s some quality of the light, or the backdrop, or whatever else, but she is always particularly spectacular whenever they step foot in Rome. During the extra days Alicent had spent here for the qualifying rounds ahead of Rhaenyra’s arrival, some of that magic must have already seeped in — there’s a brilliant, holy glow to her. Rhaenyra feels like she’s still looking at the stained glass in the cathedrals they’ve spent the morning tripping through.

There must be more pictures of her in this city than there are of anyone else in the world, because Rhaenyra every year finds herself trailing behind her like a paparazzo, demanding poses every five minutes. 

“I’ve got enough pictures in front of the Trevi Fountain, I think, after all these years,” Alicent says. Rhaenyra wants to argue. Not in that outfit. Not with your hair curling just like that. Surely, your eyes have never looked quite as beautiful as they do now, big and bright in the sunshine, wide and appealing as a calf’s. Slipping her hand into the crook of Rhaenyra’s elbow, Alicent urges her forward into the crowd. “Come on, let’s just toss our coins and go. It’s so busy today.”

“Told you it would be.”

“I know, but we might not get another chance.” The implication being that she won’t be in Rome for long. 

Don’t be such a fucking pessimist. 

She bites her tongue instead of saying it, and hangs back to take another shot of Alicent weaving through the crowd; just out of focus, hair blazing like a penny in the sun.

“I remember a time you used to insist on chucking three in,” Rhaenyra comments, once their fifty cent coins have been thrown over their left shoulders to splash into the water. “When exactly did you give up on your dreams of manifesting an Italian husband?

Alicent rolls her eyes. 

Rhaenyra holds the side button on her phone, set to shortcut to the camera. “Do that again.” 

“Oh for God’s—” Alicent starts, when she realises from Rhaenyra’s smirk she’d accidentally followed the instruction, sticking her hand up against the camera. “What are you even going to do with all those?”

“Cherish them.” She sticks her tongue out. “Just capturing the memories, you of all people can’t begrudge me that.”

“Doing a shit job at it, given that anyone looking at your camera roll wouldn’t even know you were here.” 

Rhaenyra wonders, as she does whenever Alicent swears, when exactly she’d gotten over her sweet reluctance towards it, at what point she herself had stopped being surprised by it. It’s been years since it’s taken her aback, but it does always register, still, as a thing that has changed.

“My presence is implied,” Rhaenyra counters, “since I’m always following you around.”

Alicent’s eyes narrow a fraction as she looks at Rhaenyra, and she can’t decipher the expression before it clears. “Give us your phone, then. A selfie for the sake of posterity.”

Could be a dangerous thing, a photo of them both. She’s sure she’s looking at Alicent too honestly today. Maybe it’s Rome, maybe it’s the headiness of reunion, maybe it’s that recent experiences are sending her mind into the gutter at the sight of Alicent flushed and sweaty under the burning sun. Alicent’s warpath, chopping through the itinerary of places they need to visit, has spared her any scrutiny for it, letting her observe and admire and imagine from a few steps behind. 

Her grip on her phone case loosens automatically as Alicent takes it, and despite her apprehension at what will be captured within the pixels, it’s natural as breathing to slip an arm around Alicent’s waist, and turn into the field of view together. Their cheeks press together tightly enough to squash the shape of their smiles, and Rhaenyra can’t help but drop a kiss to Alicent’s. At least her eyes are closed when she does, hiding whatever sentiment might otherwise show.

“Did you take a burst?”

“A few lives,” Alicent says, pressing her thumb down on the screen and making the picture move. Rhaenyra’s lips skidding along the skin of her cheek before they find its hollow. “Don’t post anything without letting me check you got the best thumbnail.” She selects the photo, and the ones by it, and forwards them to herself. “You always choose the one you look best in.”

“Have to give myself a fighting chance when I’m standing next to you, don’t I?”

“Oh, shut up—”

“Excuse me, sorry to bother you—” they’re interrupted by a man tapping Rhaenyra on the shoulder, his English lightly accented — “would I be able to get a picture also, please? I’m in Rome for the tournament, I’m a big fan.”

“Oh—” Rhaenyra starts, remembering there’s other people here but Alicent, shaking her head and putting on a grin. “Yeah, of course. Thanks so much for your support.”

The man holds his phone out to Alicent. “Would you mind taking it?”

“My friend Alicent’s a player too, actually— we could make it a selfie?”

“Oh! Yes, sorry. Yes, that would be great—”

”No, no, it’s fine,” Alicent has already retreated a couple of steps, to get a better distance for the lens. “You guys look great. There.” She hands the phone back, looks at the interested crowd starting to hover in their direction, and tilts her head to the side before slipping away from the disorderly queue, leaving Rhaenyra to the sharks.

Another man comes up with his phone camera open, follows her gaze as she cranes her neck. English. “Alicent Hightower, right? I saw her win in Birmingham however many years ago, now.” Five, her brain supplies the information immediately. The man’s eyebrows furrow slightly, and Rhaenyra strains the edges of a smile that had been genuinely pleased when he’d known Alicent. Now his face is saying something along the lines of what happened to her?

“You are a big fan,” she says, as she leans into the field of view of his phone camera. “Attending tournaments all over the place.”

He says some more nice things, and she tries her best to pay attention, but she can’t see where Alicent went to. And she’d taken her phone. And there’s definitely a little scrum forming for photographs now. She smiles and bears it. She’s certain it’s not her warmest performance, trying to speed through as she is. 

Once she’s freed herself, she manages to find Alicent only by the virtue of the fact she’s wearing her smartwatch and can call without her phone. The description Alicent gives her leads her to where her friend sits glumly on some steps by a nearby Sephora, waiting. When she notices Rhaenyra, her expression changes, becomes less despondent; she musters a smile, even. The part of Rhaenyra that had been irritated by her disappearing act deflates. She’s more familiar than she’d like to be with Alicent’s brave face, but it’s not often she actually watches her put it on. Doing so makes  it much harder to forget that she’s struggling with stuff Rhaenyra can’t relate to. That she makes worse, just by  existing.

As she opens her mouth to speak, the last of her frustration makes itself unfortunately known, spilling out in a sigh. She doesn’t mean to sound so chastising. “You didn’t need to run off like that.” 

“I hate so much when you do that, Rhaenyra.” Alicent’s shoulders hunch briefly, and she stares at her hands, spread wide against her knees. “It’s just uncomfortable for everyone..” 

“No, but, the guy after—”

“Stop it.”

“He knew you! Saw you when you won Birmingham.”

“Still wouldn’t have stopped me for a photo, Rhaenyra. That’s— trivia, not fame.”

“You can’t know that,” Rhaenyra argues. He’d been a big tennis fan, clearly. “Can I have my phone back, please?”

“Right, sorry.” Alicent extricates it from her back pocket and hands it over.  “And no, maybe I can’t. But that first guy? He definitely wasn’t excited about meeting me. ”

Rhaenyra glances at the display for just long enough to feel relieved that no messages from Mysaria have popped onto the lock screen, and an additional fraction of a second spent feeling stupidly guilty about the relief. She puts it in the pocket of her bag and zips it shut.

“It feels weird, having you take pictures of me with fans.”

Alicent raises an eyebrow. “So I get to be excruciatingly embarrassed, so you don’t have to feel weird.”

That’s hardly fair. “I’m trying to be supportive, introduce people to—“

“You just admitted you do it because you feel weird, Rhaenyra. It’s awkward. It’s always going to be awkward. Let it be on my terms, at least— I’d rather just… take the photo, instead of seeing it on Twitter later with my face cropped out.”

“Right. Well, like I said. I’m sorry.” 

Alicent looks at her for a second. “You never—“ she stops, and gets to her feet.

“Never what?”

“Never mind.”

“Well, if anyone else asks for a photo, I’ll say no.” 

“You don’t have to do that. That’s not what I’m asking.” Alicent presses her knuckles briefly to the bridge of her nose, and the skin there stays white for a moment once the pressure’s gone, drifting back to a uniform pinkness that Rhaenyra hadn’t noticed. Caught by the sun, a sweep of blush over the middle of her face. Rhaenyra’s fingers itch for her camera again. She has just about enough wisdom to hold back this time, instead digging in her bag for the little tube of SPF moisturiser inside it, and pushing it into Alicent’s palm. She looks at it, and then Rhaenyra, and her shoulders sag. “I just wish you’d leave me out of it.”

“Alright, promise.” Rhaenyra doesn’t quite know where to go from here, the intrusion into their outing having pushed them a little ways into the awkward canyon they try to skirt the edges of. She strains her neck back over the crowd, trying to remember the next spot on the itinerary Alicent had passionately described over breakfast cappuccinos. “Where to next, then?”

She swipes a stark white line of sunblock across the bridge of her nose. “The hotel, I think.” 

“I thought you wanted to—”

“It’s too hot,” Alicent says. “Let’s just go back.”

Alicent Hightower doesn’t qualify for Roland Garros. 

Rhaenyra’s the one who breaks a racquet over it, venting her disappointment until the thing is satisfyingly crumpled, strings like snapped tendons on the hotel room floor. 

Rhaenyra had just taken a rest week instead of playing in Strasbourg, which actually mostly meant cramming in about a million commercial engagements. Alicent had been playing the 250 in Morocco. She’s only seen her on the television and her phone screen in the two weeks since they were together in Rome. Rhaenyra had been looking forward to time with her at last, to finding a day to scoff pastries by the Seine and walk around Montmartre as they always do, taking the funicular railway up to Sacre Coeur instead of walking to save their legs for their tennis.

Instead, Alicent leaves the city after losing in qualifiers, off to play an ITF tournament to get at least some ranking points out of the fortnight. There’s no other proper tour level events on, not in the middle of a major. 

It’s only very narrowly that she holds herself back from saying fuck the measly points Alicent might scrape together at a tiny contest like that, prevents herself from suggesting she stay to watch and hit with her. A similar suggestion earlier in Alicent’s rough patch, if it can still be called that, had provoked such raw umbrage (both in her expression and a verbal rejection that had been no less scathing for its measured language) that Rhaenyra had only needed the lesson once to learn it. Alicent’s her own player, not part of Rhaenyra’s entourage. 

For all her life, Rhaenyra has leaned towards the selfish. Has never quite become accustomed not to getting her own way. But she bites her tongue, again, and watches Alicent get on the RER to Charles de Gaulle where Rhaenyra’s plane had only touched down that same morning. 

Back at the hotel, she stops in the bar to sulk. Sitting up on a high stool, she occupies herself with pressing her thumb into the divots of the dimpled glass neck of her Orangina bottle. Rhaenyra swigs from it like it’s a real drink, as stiff as she wishes it were.

That’s how Mysaria finds her. It shouldn’t be too surprising to run into her, given half of the top-fifty must be staying at this hotel, but she feels a warmth seize the back of her neck when the seat beside her is suddenly occupied.

“Fancy meeting you here.” Mysaria’s smile turns appraising as she takes her in. “With such a scowl on your face— Paris not agreeing with you?” 

“Sorry, what was that?” Rhaenyra pokes the straw she’d left lying on a napkin beside her drink into the neck of her bottle and takes a sip. Mysaria’s eyes drop to her mouth, as she’d wanted. “All I heard is that you fancy me.”

Mysaria laughs. It doesn’t make her brain go blank like TV static, like it does at the sound of Alicent’s— because nobody laughs like Alicent, when she’s really, full-throated, laughing. When she’s cajoled beyond the little exhale through her nose that she normally limits herself to, and instead goaded into tossing her head back, lips stretching so far as to look like she could scream with it. Some people do shriek, when they laugh, but Alicent’s is a deeper sound, right from the belly of her. One that makes Rhaenyra want to press her hand against the tautness of her stomach, over her diaphragm, so she can feel the birth of it under her finger tips—

—but it’s a nice laugh. Mysaria has a nice laugh. It pushes the things she’s been ruminating on somewhere to the back of her mind.

“I don’t think that’s what I said.” An ankle hooks around Rhaenyra’s, and her stomach jumps pleasurably. The pull of it swings the barstool around slightly, so their knees knock together. “But I don’t think I’ve made it much of a secret, either. If I failed to get the message across clearly enough in Madrid, in Rome…” 

“Perhaps I’m a slow learner.”

Mysaria laughs. “I think we disproved that in Spain, no? But,” she says, hand landing on Rhaenyra’s thigh, “if I haven’t made my position sufficiently clear…”

Heat coils in Rhaenyra’s stomach; she drops her hand onto Mysaria’s, sliding both provocatively inwards. “I think I could stand another demonstration.”

Alicent Hightower is apparently seeing Criston Cole again. Which… not on her bingo card for the year. But it’s cool. It’s fine. She can be normal about it, given the normal response to one’s beautiful perfect angel of a best friend dating an absolute dickhead is to feel deeply perturbed, vaguely homicidal, etcetera etcetera.

What could have possibly compelled Alicent to date him again? It’s been years. And he should have lost whatever pretty privilege he coasted along on when he got that stupid haircut.

“Whatever, Criston,” she says, like she’s not fuming. “You went for dinner, so what? And while, yes, that alone could be construed as a sign that she’s lost her fucking mind, it hardly means you’re back together. ”

“You don’t think it’s weird she didn’t tell you about it?” Smug, with a gleam in his eyes. Oh, she hates him. She hates him. Her left hand is gripping the frame of her racquet so tightly she’s worried it might endure a stress fracture. The frame or the hand. Either. Both.

Rhaenyra doesn’t want to consider when Alicent found the time, because even the cursory thought reveals the answer. Her best friend had only been granted one night in Rome without Rhaenyra’s attention glued to her, and she’d apparently immediately taken the opportunity to go out with her old boyfriend. When Rhaenyra hadn’t been in their hotel, but—

Think of the devil. There’s footsteps behind her, and then fingers trailing lightly across her back, a subtle ghost of a caress. Mysaria, of course. She looks at Rhaenyra and her expression so clearly reads as ‘is this man bothering you?’ that she manages half a smile (which— in the presence of Criston Cole…? A modern miracle). She rolls her eyes. Yes, of course. Look who it is.

Mysaria smiles sweetly at him, and maybe they’ve had a run in before too, because he looks thoroughly untrusting of it. In short order, his wariness is validated. “Criston Cole. Never a pleasure.” 

“You two are friends?” Criston looks to Rhaenyra, ignoring Mysaria. “You don’t have plural friends.”

“I have friends, you’re just not one of them. Which is why I don’t understand why you’re still talking to me.”

“I thought you’d be interested in hearing about what Alicent is up to, you know, given that you’re drifting apart. So much distance between you.”

“Oh, fuck you. She didn’t say that.”

“It was implied.” She echoes him under her breath in a childish mockery, folding her arms over her chest.

Mysaria interjects. “Such a pity you had to withdraw in Miami, Criston. The flu, was it? Must have been a bad infection to keep you out all through Monte Carlo. Although— I heard you were managing to enjoy yourself on holiday, so maybe not.”

Rhaenyra blinks, at Mysaria, and then Criston. For all his faults, Rhaenyra hadn’t thought him the type. The tension in his stance makes it seem like Mysaria’s poking at something sensitive, though. Accidental contamination, maybe, or a slip-up. Nothing he’d want public knowledge, in any case, especially if the ATP are covering it up.

Criston swallows hard and stares at her. “What do you want, Mysaria?”

“Right now?” Her smile is sugary again. “For you to fuck off.”

He does. God, he actually does! Miracles on miracles. After Rhaenyra had been telling him to get lost for the last five minutes, waiting for Rhaenys to get back from wherever she’d wandered off to take a phone call.

“My hero,” Rhaenyra says, with a faux-swoon, when they’re alone. She rests her hand on Mysaria’s bicep. Friendly enough, for anyone looking on. She admires the feel of it, gives a gentle squeeze; the other woman raises an eyebrow, and Rhaenyra doesn’t think she imagines the flex beneath her fingers. 

“Had to assume you weren’t conversing with that man out of choice… I’d like to think your taste is better than that, for the sake of my own self-esteem, if nothing else.” Rhaenyra tries not to grimace, remembering being nineteen and stupid; she’d rather preserve Mysaria’s overly generous assessment of her.  “What was he bothering you about?”

I’m pretty sure he knows I’m in love with my best friend and wanted to torment me with the idea of them getting back together.  Probably not the move, to say that to the girl you’re sleeping with, even if it’s casual.

“Used to date a friend of mine… I wasn’t a fan of the relationship, would you believe? He was implying they were rekindling things.” Rhaenyra pulls a face. “I don’t want to think about it. How can I repay you for the rescue?”

“I can think of a few ways.” A suggestive smirk, that isn’t followed up on with her request: “But— I’ll say your time, this evening? Outside of the hotel, perhaps. I believe we said this was going to be a friends with benefits situation, no? I fear we’ve been imbalanced in our approach to it.”

“An evening out as mates, then?” The idea warms her, though there’s a non-zero level of disappointment. “I do have a bedtime I’m fairly religious about, but I can be free from say— five?” 

Mysaria smiles, considers. “Let’s not tip the scales too far the other way. We can still make time for the benefits, after, I think.”

“Oh, good,” Rhaenyra says, and blushes when Mysaria kisses her cheek in farewell. 

Alicent Hightower had, once upon a time, back in their teens and let loose on the city, turned the full force of her Bambi gaze on Rhaenyra to convince her to sit for a caricature in a hellishly busy tourist trap in the north of Paris. 

Overpriced. Tacky. All the artists had queues. Rhaenyra was hungry and wanted dinner. Her arguments had all crumbled under the power of those big brown eyes. 

She’d been glad for it after, when Alicent had been practically glowing in her pleasure at the end product. So much so, Rhaenyra had handed over the forty euro herself before Alicent could fish her purse out of her bag. Pittance to pay someone who made Alicent that happy, and she’s hardly scrimping and saving her pocket money.

“I’m still keeping it,” she’d been informed, Alicent taking her arm as they headed for a restaurant at random. “You can wait until next year, if you want one yourself.”

It had seemed fair enough, given she hadn’t wanted one to begin with, until the next Roland Garros rolled around and Alicent had claimed that one, too. And the next, and the next, and the next. And all the rest. They shared hotels often enough for her to go digging around in the ridiculous memory compartment of Alicent’s suitcase whenever she wanted to see them, at least. Until recently, anyway. 

In so many ways the scene she finds herself in is a familiar one. The whole evening had been familiar. She’s walked on the cobblestones of Montmartre so many times, been in the basilica almost as often, ended so many an evening in this square, passing a picture over a candle lit table on this same restaurant patio on the Place du Tertre, as she is now.

“You should keep it,” she tells Mysaria, handing back the sketch. “I’ve had a couple of these done before.”

“Oh? I always thought of caricatures as the kind of thing people sit for once and then slightly regret. But…” She takes a sip of wine, her eye contact over the top both devastating and the wrong shade of brown. “I imagine it helps that you’re so gorgeous. Difficult to really make a joke of good looks like yours.” She’s one to talk— the artist had chosen primarily to exaggerate her sharp cheekbones, all the angles of her face that Rhaenyra found beautiful. Big eyes, too. But not like they always draw Alicent’s, half her face, like a bug.

“Maybe if I was insecure about my nose,” she says lightly, tapping the page where the crooked outline of it looms large. “But I quite like it. Though, there was this one year where the guy went in really hard on making my mouth wide? That threw me.” Until she’d remembered just how hard she’d been smiling, because the artist had won their custom by promising a discount for the ‘charming couple’. She realises the implicit admission of this one year when Mysaria tilts her head. “It’s sort of a tradition I have, to get one done here during Roland Garros.”

With Alicent. The guilt she’s been contending with all evening closes its fist around her neck. It had started so innocuously— meeting in the lobby of the hotel without any real plan, Mysaria making a suggestion.

( “Somewhere in Montmartre? All this time playing in Paris every year, I’ve never seen Sacre Coeur up close. It would be nice to have someone to enjoy the view with.” Fingertips on her waist, light and brief so nobody walking past them would notice. “And of.”)

Rhaenyra had nodded in somewhat of a daze, mentally fast-forwarded to the end of the night, only really realising what she’d agreed to when they were already on the Metro.

Objectively, it’s been a lovely evening, perfect weather and the conversation flowing as easily as she’s come to expect with Mysaria. But she’s been simultaneously running on a kind of autopilot, trying to overcome the part of her brain saying traitor traitor traitor every time they hit a place or landmark that belongs to Alicent. She hadn’t realised how big a deal it would feel, being here with someone else, until she was. Which— it’s not fair really, because these are all very normal tourist spots, and she and Alicent are— not only, or just, because that wouldn’t begin to do it justice— friends. She wouldn’t baulk at a dinner date somewhere she frequented with anyone else (not that there was anyone else, really). 

In Rhaenyra’s memory, everything she does with Alicent becomes so indelibly associated with her that there’s entire corners of the world sectioned off with what feel like reserved spaces: Alicent line, do not cross. Secrets shared at a sleepover— for me and you only. She looks at the drawing in Mysaria’s hand and it feels egregiously like a trespass, even if the rest of the evening could be excused.

Alicent wouldn’t like this, Rhaenyra treading their traditions with someone else, and Rhaenyra doesn’t know if she regrets having such a nice time, or if she wishes it could have been even better, guiltless. If it were just this one thing ( sorry, caricatures in Paris are kind of special for me and Alicent ) it wouldn’t be so big of a deal. But no self-respecting partner would be okay with the number of rites and sacraments held sacred between them, the volume of time and consideration they each dedicate to the other. Their relationship is on a pedestal above all else, save for tennis itself. It makes seeing anyone else properly untenable, unless she wants to be hopelessly unfair to them.

Rhaenyra has always known it; she’s never cared.

Not that this is a date. Just a hang-out, between two women who’ve been having fun, no-strings attached sex. It kind of feels like a date, though. Part of her thinks it would be nice if it were. She likes Mysaria a lot. She could imagine them falling into something good, and easy, and simple, if it weren’t for the Alicent of it all. She’s so gorgeous, and her eyes are so warm as she looks at Rhaenyra from across the little table, cramped enough on the busy terrace that their knees brush. Rhaenyra wonders.

“If I hadn’t said I was looking for something casual…” she starts, impulsively, shuts her mouth for a second before powering through. “What would you have wanted from me?”

Mysaria’s eyes narrow slightly, her smile dipping at its edges. “I don’t get the sense you’ve changed your mind. 

“Right.” Rhaenyra picks up a lump of bread and tears at its spongy flesh. She rolls the scrap between her fingers until it’s as compact and pliant as dough again.

“You haven’t?” There’s a reluctance to the question, like Mysaria didn’t really want to ask. Rhaenyra doesn’t really want to answer.

“No.”

“Quite an unfair question to ask given that, no?” Mysaria picks up a piece of baguette too, actually bites into hers instead of shredding it. She chews and then washes it down with a sip of water, all the while watching Rhaenyra in a way that makes her feel very perceived. She sighs as her glass hits the table again. Rhaenyra leans across with the glass bottle to refill it. “This would be a date, and not our first. I like you, for reasons that escape me at this moment.”

“Ah.”

“That’s it?” 

“Was just wondering how selfish I’m being. I like you too, by the way, really.” 

Mysaria casts her gaze up at the canopy hanging over their seats, mouthing something Rhaenyra can’t understand. Praying for strength, maybe, in the face of Rhaenyra’s mess.

“Well, if we’re asking awkward questions. Why so set on casual? We’ve been enjoying each other’s company, I think. We could be a good thing. I’m not going to sit here and try to convince you into it, but… I’d like to know what exactly is holding you back.”

“We are — I am. Enjoying your company.” Rhaenyra drums her fingers on the table, wondering why she started this. “I just don’t have space in my life for a relationship right now.“ 

Mysaria just keeps looking at her, sharp and scrutinising, and it makes Rhaenyra feel like she has to keep explaining herself, to satisfy the question still in that gaze. But how to describe the reason?

There’s someone else. No, not a lover. Not an ex. Not someone to have a capital-F ‘Future’ with, in the way I might build with someone like you, but she’s who I’d choose, even in lower case.

“I just need to focus on my tennis, you know….?” She internally cringes, as Mysaria continues to look at her, She wishes Mysaria would just take her at face value. “Sorry.”

“Listen,” Mysaria says, with a sigh. “I enjoy your company. I enjoy the sex.I haven’t found that to be a Venn diagram that overlaps as much one would hope. But you were up front about what you wanted from this, which I appreciate, even if this conversation felt unnecessary. I’ve got a match tomorrow, and I was betting on ending up in bed with you tonight. I play better when I’m not pent up. So— ” She lifts her glass of red wine, and Rhaenyra raises her own in turn— one small serving of luxury on a school night. “Let’s just enjoy ourselves, yes?”

She’s sort of perfect, Rhaenyra thinks. It’s a shame she isn’t Alicent.

Alicent Hightower is the smartest player Rhaenyra’s ever encountered, but Mysaria Lys comes close. 

In the quarter-finals of Roland-Garros she gets to experience what’s been a hot topic of conversation in the tennis community this year: the real step-up in Mysaria’s technical play, and how it has meshed so dangerously with her razor sharp tennis IQ. In the course of a season, she’s gone from being a relative non-entity (if occasional giant-slayer) to being seeded at slams. 

It’s not the first time they’ve met at a tournament, and Rhaenyra leads the head-to-head five to one, but she’s never played this iteration of her. 

More than that— right here, right now, on the court they share, she’s playing like she’s got something to prove. 

Rhaenyra wonders if it's sheer determination to make the next round, her own status as Someone To Beat, or something more personal to the way Mysaria is smashing overheads at her body instead of the empty court. Either way, it’s fucking electric playing her, and Rhaenyra has a smile on her face right up until she faces down a set point on her own service game at 5-6 in the second. She loses it, and then her humour, and then the match, in a third set she can’t even call particularly close.

Out of the French Open in the quarter-finals. The further she gets from her last major title, the more distant the next seems.

In her pressers, she keeps talking a big game: I feel good, I’m playing well, I’m winning tournaments, it’s a matter of time before another slam. But that’s twelve majors she’s believed she could win that have been and gone since the last, here in France three years ago, and every consecutive exit is a compounding sort of loss. She’d just turned twenty one when she won her first Australian Open, and it was her main draw debut there, only her third major ever. The next two years a slam each, and she’d wondered if it wasn’t as hard as people made out, or if she was just that bloody good. It doesn’t feel easy now.

“Good game,” she tells Mysaria, with a brief hug, keeping it together just long enough to be warm at the net and polite in shaking the umpire’s hand. It might be the quickest she’s ever gathered her things and taken herself off court though, fighting the burning in the bridge of her nose. 

In the safety of a locked toilet cubicle, she breathes into her hands until the urge to cry subsides. It settles instead into a very dedicated sort of sullenness, diamond-hard. Only Alicent can make the slightest dent in her sulking, when it hits like this, but she’s not here.

In the gym, Rhaenys barely tries to speak to her, for which she’s grateful. Tomorrow she’ll have to endure conversations, start thinking about what’s next, but right now she’s glad to be left alone. Or would be, if Mysaria weren’t approaching, practically swanning over, fresh from her on-court interview. 

“Congrats again, Mysaria, but I’m afraid I’m in sore loser mode right now.” Rhaenyra thinks she should have clocked from the fact her own team are giving her space that she’s not in the mood for chit chat, but she’s grown fond enough of the other woman that she forces a tight smile. She can’t imagine it looks anything close to sincere. “Going to need two to three business days before I can be normal about this.” Despite the tongue-in-cheek varnish of her language, she’s serious.

“Good match,” says Mysaria, making her bristle. Rhaenyra imagines snapping away the bike handles she’s gripping so tightly and throwing them at her, but the other woman leans in close, unperturbed. “I’ve never wanted you more.”

Well, I‘ve never wanted you less, she wants to say. 

It would just be to make Mysaria feel shit, because, ugh, it would be a lie. The chemistry on the court had been palpable, thrilling even, until the match had drifted away from her. But it still prickles under her skin, and the feeling of being in those points with Mysaria hasn’t quite yet faded. “Ugh,” she says. 

Mysaria raises an eyebrow and a corner of her lips, amused. Horrifically condescending. Kind of hot. “Well. You know where my room is.”

Rhaenyra does. She makes her way there a couple hours later, despite all her best intentions to sulk, and finds that working her frustrations out on the mattress isn’t the worst coping mechanism she’s ever stumbled on, even if one she probably can’t make a universal tactic of.

“What a day,” Mysaria says, flopping over onto her side so her nose is close to Rhaenyra’s, and Rhaenyra is once again struck with the feeling that she’s trying to rile her up, like when she’d been brazenly toeing the edge of unsportsmanlike behaviour on the court, and tilting her head in challenge when Rhaenyra raised an eyebrow. Making her wait before points, hitting at her, even close to the net, pushing at her mentally and physically. “Great sex, making a slam semi-final.”

“Fuck you, actually.” 

She thinks Mysaria might be about to kiss her, fears it might make her soften, when she wants to keep nursing the embers of her frustration; post-orgasm, she is considerably more relaxed than she’d felt earlier, and she’s kind of annoyed by that fact. So instead of allowing it, she pushes onto her elbow and leans over Mysaria’s shoulder to pick up her phone. Messages, messages, always so many messages. She ignores them and opens the sole pinned chat. 

Been long enough yet?  

She exhales sharply through her nose, almost a laugh, but really just— fond. The text had come through only a few minutes before. Alicent is always so good at predicting her mercury, giving her space until she’s ready to receive a little comfort. She only wishes it were a knock on the door instead.

Barely, she replies. How was your match? Haven’t looked at the scores yet.

The dots pop up instantly.

Won :), and then: You okay? Quick facetime?

“Is that Alicent Hightower?” Mysaria peers over her shoulder, poking her shin with her foot, under the top sheet. Rhaenyra tilts her phone away. “Are you really texting your girlfriend while you’re naked in bed with me?”

“Alicent isn’t my girlfriend.”

Yeah, gimme a few

“But you wish she was.” Rhaenyra drops her phone onto her bare chest and tilts her head so she can look at Mysaria. She hadn’t levelled the accusation like a question— more like a red dot trained on Rhaenyra’s forehead. 

“She’s my best friend. We’ve been best friends for fifteen years.” It’s a deflection, not a denial, which was never going to be lost on Mysaria, who communicates as much with a cutting eyebrow. “I don’t!” she adds, too late.

“Liar,” Mysaria says.

“Shut up.”

“Does she know?” Mysaria taps her own chin, considering Rhaenyra like some abstract art piece she’s trying to derive a universal truth from. “No,” she realises. “No, she—“

Rhaenyra’s lips succeed where her words failed, getting the other woman to stop talking. Mysaria bites as she kisses her back, leaning over her. The heel of her palm presses against the bone of Rhaenyra’s shoulder, pushing her into the mattress.

“You brought her into the bed, Rhaenyra,” she says, pulling back just enough to speak. “That’s fine. But I should get to be involved too, no?”

The lump of coal that’s been sitting in her chest since that game, set, match against her folds in on itself under Mysaria’s pushing— it pressurises into something much harder, and shatters. She shoves, bodily, freeing herself— Mysaria beneath her, now, with a breathless, triumphant sort of excitement on her face. Rhaenyra hopes it stings, as she sweeps up her phone from the mattress and climbs out of the bed. She thinks it does, the way Mysaria’s smirk vanishes, as Rhaenyra pulls on her trackies and a thieved jumper of Alicent’s.

“I said I’d FaceTime her. And, no,” she adds, white-hot. “You don’t get to be involved.”

Fishing her earphones case out of her pocket, she settles in the corner of the sofa, tucking her feet beneath her.

“Seriously?” Mysaria asks, from the bed.

“I didn’t think we were finished? I can go if you like.”

“No.” Her disbelief morphs slowly into a smile and she settles her head against the pillow. “Carry on. Use the speaker phone, if you like.”

Rhaenyra rolls her eyes and puts her earphones in, ignoring Mysaria’s pout. With her thumb over Alicent’s contact, she pauses. “She doesn’t know about you.”

“You’d like to keep it that way, I presume?”

“Yeah.” Rhaenyra looks at the photo saved against Alicent’s name. Years ago Alicent had set their contacts to match. Rhaenyra switched hers out after— close enough at a glance that she doesn’t think Alicent has ever noticed: her singles trophy clutched to her chest, instead of their doubles. Fierce, confident, triumphant in a way that Rhaenyra has never forgotten. “I don’t want it to be weird.”

“Right,” Mysaria says, shifting to sit up and lean against the headboard, sheets falling away from her bare chest. “It would be terrible if this situation were to get weird.”

Rhaenyra sticks her tongue out. “With her.”

“Naturally,” Mysaria says. She stretches like a cat, Rhaenyra thinks. The languor to it. “Call your girlfriend, I’ll behave myself.”

Objectively outrageous thing to say, naked in bed with her tits gorgeously on display, making Rhaenyra wonder if she is in fact entirely mad. If Mysaria is, too. “Thanks,” she says, “not my girlfriend.”

She taps the call button, and hugs a cushion to her stomach, trying to quell its fluttering.

“Rhaenyra,” Alicent says in lieu of a real greeting, when she answers. She always takes so long to pick up. Rhaenyra has a bad habit of accepting Alicent’s calls too fast—she’ll be in the middle of conversation with someone else, or half-dressed, or more recently, won’t have adequately prepared herself for the head-rush of actually getting to talk to Alicent, to see her face in real motion, not just when thumbing the live photo on her lock screen. 

“Hi,” Rhaenyra says. “You look nice.”

Rhaenyra loves that she’s won a laugh so early. Disparaging, like Alicent thinks Rhaenyra is a total idiot; warm, because she loves her. 

“I just got out of the shower, so I at least look clean, I suppose.”

No, she does look nice, and not merely that— her hair is damp, and curling, her cheeks are pink, the tip of her nose is shiny. Her eyes are a little red, like she got shampoo in them, as is the skin under the neat lines of her eyebrows. Rhaenyra holds the cushion tighter.

“Congratulations on today, I need to see if I can find a stream to watch it back.”

“It was such an ugly win, I honestly wouldn’t bother.” Alicent’s chin is propped on her hand, shoulder coming nearly to her ear when she shrugs, like it’s nothing, but she smiles mildly, beautifully. “But— quarter-final, so that’s nice.”

Rhaenyra’s laugh comes out bitter. “Well, recommend winning it. Do as I say, etcetera etcetera.”

Alicent is quiet on the line for a few moments, just looking. The angle of the camera makes her eyes absurdly large, like a Furby, or something. “You alright?”

“Will be, when I win Wimbledon.” From the bed, Mysaria snorts softly. Rhaenyra cuts her eyes sideways in warning.

“Going to need you to get over it before that, actually,” Alicent says, in a conversational tone, corner of her lips tugging upwards.

“Yeah?”

“Grass swing.” She whispers it like it’s a secret, tucking her lips into each other like she does when she’s trying not to beam. Rhaenyra just does it. 

“Grass swing,” she whispers back, and then louder: “Fucking finally.”

“Fucking finally,” Alicent echoes, and lets her smile loose.

“I’ve missed you so much.”

“Me too. So need you to be on good form by the time we’re home, yeah? Get over the sulks before then.”

If she isn’t, she will be the moment they’re together again. “God, I hope you’re ready for me to be on top of you twenty-four seven. You’re going to be sick of me, I swear.”

“I’ve coped for sixteen years, Rhaenyra. I think I can handle a few weeks.”

Except Rhaenyra’s threat had been so sincere. She’s never had to miss Alicent so much, and— well, honestly, she’s been feeling slightly insane since taking up with Mysaria, her dreams all taking similar turns, and she just— the idea of Alicent close, and so soon, feels like presents laid out under the tree during advent. When the day comes, she knows she’ll have no restraint, clinging to Alicent’s leg probably, like a toddler. Don’t leave me alone again.

“Monday?” 

“Depends on how things go here. Might be home sooner.”

Rhaenyra is already booked to fly tomorrow, and firmly stamps out a flicker of hope that Alicent could be back earlier than the end of her tournament. “Monday,” she insists.

“Should I go to yours from the airport, when I do?”

“Just let me know when and I’ll pick you up— mine, yours, I don’t mind.” 

Rhaenyra spends as much time at Alicent’s flat as her own house, easily, considers them both home, scales tipping in favour of whichever her friend is occupying at the time. Alicent has her own bedroom at Rhaenyra’s, which she never actually uses, except to store spare things. They’d had fun decorating, at least.

“Can’t wait.” That furtive smile again.

“Me either.” Rhaenyra grins, so wide it kind of hurts, sure she must look stupid with it. If it were only Alicent, she’d think so what, or she wouldn’t consider it at all— but she can feel Mysaria looking in her periphery. She’d shuffle around, face away, but doesn’t want to risk the bed coming into view behind her.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look so happy after losing a slam match.” Her smile drops at the reminder, and Alicent pulls a face at the mistake. “Sorry.”

“Not your fault, is it? And you’re giving me something to look forward to.”

“She’s having an impressive season. Lys, I mean.”

Rhaenyra tries to blink only a normal number of times. “Yeah, she’s a great player. Was on one today, too, I’ll tell you that.” 

Something hits her knee. She looks down and sees her thong dangling from it; she assumes it had shortly prior been scrunched in the sheets somewhere. On the bed, Mysaria is pointing at herself, mouthing: me?

Rhaenyra flicks the underwear from her leg, and ignores her.

“On one?”

“I mean, hitting lines and running me ragged, but yeah, trying to rile me up I think— bit of gamesmanship to get in my head.”

“Doesn’t normally work on you,” Alicent points out. “You’re too pig-headed.”

“It didn’t.” She sighs at the admission. “She just outplayed me. Got in my own head a little bit, in the third set, too, which never helps.”

Alicent’s commiseration comes in the shape of a knowing laugh, eyes fluttering shut for a moment. “That’s not like you. Maybe you should stop talking to me. I might be contagious.”

“Wouldn’t stop me.”

“You proved that, I think, that time I had the flu.”

“Someone had to look after you.”

Alicent smiles.

“Look, I’ve got to go, actually— dinner reservation. But speak soon?”

“Call after?” Rhaenyra finds she’s not ready to let her go for long. “Got a little wiggle room in my bedtime now I’m out of the tournament.”

“You’re just going to fall asleep on the line, again.”

“Sing me a lullaby?”

“Oh, can it.”

“I’ll can it if you say you’ll call.”

Alicent rolls her eyes, smiling around her thumbnail, face close to her phone. “I’ll call.”

“Nice, alright. I love you.”

“Love you too.”

Rhaenyra stares at her phone for a second after the call closes, and then tips her head back against the sofa.

“How does she not know?” Mysaria asks. Rhaenyra lolls her head to the side to watch her, sliding off of the mattress and heading for the little tea and coffee station, grabbing a dressing gown from the open rail on the way. “She must know.”

“She must know,” Rhaenyra agrees, miserable all of a sudden, now Alicent’s gone again, feeling embarrassed at having been witnessed. She should have gone onto the balcony, or— no. She should have left all together. “I think she doesn’t want to.”

“Coffee?” 

Fair enough, Rhaenyra thinks, for Mysaria to divert the topic from that sad little confession.  

“Tea, please.“

“I’ll assume the English kind, will I? How do you take it?”

“Little bit of milk, please, no sugar. Thanks.”

They don’t speak, while Mysaria stands by the kettle, waiting. Rhaenyra stares at the ceiling, thinking and attempting to think less.

Mysaria passes over a steaming cup, holding it by the top, above the waterline, so Rhaenyra can take the handle without burning her fingers. “You meant what you said? That I outplayed you.”

“Yeah, of course,” Rhaenyra says, not without sourness. “You were brilliant. Didn’t need to resort to trying to piss me off at all. Didn’t work, anyway.”

“Just kind of turned you on?” Mysaria settles at the far end of the sofa, reaching out a leg to poke Rhaenyra’s with her foot. She concedes with a shrug, half a smile. A bit. A lot. “Thank you, by the way.” 

Rhaenyra grumbles, vaguely, not even sure what she’s saying as she does, just generally discontented at the state of things, complimenting a woman who just knocked her out of a slam. 

“Really. Means a lot coming from Rhaenyra Targaryen.” 

She says it teasingly, but with a sincerity that draws further honesty from Rhaenyra. “I think you’ll make the tour finals, if you keep playing like this.”

“Me too.” Mysaria sips at her coffee, and puts it down on the low table. “But nice to hear it from you.” 

Always so appraising, in the way she looks at Rhaenyra. Rhaenyra wonders what she sees, as she blows on her tea to cool it down— if she finds the puff of her cheeks charming or off-putting; if Rhaenyra had put her off already; if it even mattered. 

“I think you should tell her.”

Well, no.  

Rhaenyra scalds her tongue on a sip and puts the cup down reproachfully.

“I thought you liked me. Shouldn’t you be telling me to try and get over it?”

“I thought you liked me.” Mysaria is quick on the counter, sharp as a knife. “Shouldn’t you be, I don’t know, not telling other women you love them while I’m metres away, naked, in the bed we just fucked in?”

“When you put it like that it sounds bad.” Rhaenyra knows she’s pretty much given up the ghost on pretending she’s not in love with Alicent, but it still makes her wince to hear it put so bluntly— and besides: “I wasn’t saying it like that, though. I told you, she’s my best friend.”

“Well, you admitted it after,” Mysaria says. “‘She must know’, you said. I think I had the robe on by then, so not quite naked or in bed, but—”

You said it first, she wants to say, to go about in useless circles until there’s no point in talking at all

“Touché.” She sighs. “Okay, so. Sorry for that.” 

“Don’t be.” Mysaria stretches out, so her legs are straight, balanced on Rhaenyra’s lap. Rhaenyra plays with the ankle laid on her thigh. It’s bony and sharp, a surgery scar above it, before it leads into the definition of her calves. “You realise the whatever the two of you have going on has been a mystery on tour forever? Getting behind-the-scenes of it all… better than the sex, almost.” Rhaenyra pinches behind her knee, and she smirks without flinching. “I said ‘almost’.”

“A mystery?”

“People wondering what your deal is. Whether you were secretly together— I mean, I thought that you must’ve been, until you flirted back and told me you’d never been with a woman.”

Rhaenyra figures she’s come this far, and Mysaria’s put up with plenty from her; she can throw a bone, clear the waters. “She’s straight. I’ve been in love with her for— ten years?” She throws an arm over her face. “I’ve never said that out loud before.”

“In ten years? You haven’t told anybody?”

“No, I mean, people know. But I’ve never said it.” She laughs, sliding her arm down so she can smother the sound before it breaks. God, she’s pathetic. 

“Are you crying?”

“Probably.”

Mysaria withdraws her legs, and shifts across the sofa so she can properly occupy Rhaenyra’s lap. “Is it weird that I still want to fuck you?”

“Probably,” Rhaenyra says, with her lips against Mysaria’s neck. “Is it weird that I’m up for it?”

“No, not really.” Mysaria leans back as Rhaenyra pushes the dressing gown off her shoulders. “I’m not the problem here. ”

Rhaenyra’s scoff is lost in Mysaria’s mouth, and her hands are lost somewhere further south, and she’s well on her way to losing her mind when Mysaria pulls back, the same look on her face she’d had on the court. Rhaenyra knows whatever she says is going to be designed to get under her skin, probably more successfully than the gamesmanship.

“You know,” she says, “if you want, you can call —“

“Fuck off, Mysaria,” Rhaenyra says, but finds herself laughing along with her at the absurdity of it. Thinks she probably deserves it, even if it’s not something she can strictly bear. “None of that, yeah?”

“You’re no fun.”

“You know that isn’t true.” Rhaenyra slides her hands under Mysaria’s thighs, pushes her off her lap onto the sofa, pins her to it, hair splayed over the cushions. “Take it back.”

Mysaria rolls her eyes, her chest bare and flushed, heavy in its rise and fall. “I suppose you want me to say make me, do you, because—“ Rhaenyra kisses her hard, and slides a hand to the inside of her thigh, upwards, leaving it still, staring down into Mysaria’s inviting, heady gaze, until— “fine, you win, whatever, fucking make me, then. Jesus.”

Later, when they’re both on the floor, leaning against the body of the sofa, necks against the edge of the seat cushions, Rhaenyra can’t help but poke at it. “I dunno, kind of seemed like you were having fun.”

“You’re such an ass,” Mysaria says, and drops her head onto Rhaenyra’s shoulder. “I think you should tell her.”

“Can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.” A shaky breath. “I might die.” 

Mysaria blows air through her lips, dismissively. “Just because she might not feel the same way.”

“She doesn’t. But it’s not that really. If I could guarantee nothing would change, I’d tell her.”

“Change can be good.” Mysaria skims a hand over Rhaenyra’s ribs. “Don’t you want this with her? Want more?”

Rhaenyra shivers. “I couldn’t deal with having less with her. I’d rather keep where I am. Why are you so invested, anyway?”

“Horrible meddler by nature, apologies,” she says, not sounding sorry at all. “But also, something frustrating about the girl you kind of like—“ Rhaenyra notes the downgrade to kind of — “being hung up on someone else, and not even bothering to do something about it, so call me selfish.”

“I’m such a prick,” Rhaenyra says.

Mysaria hums her agreement. She rolls her shoulders, and then stands up, lightly kicking Rhaenyra’s side. “Time for you to get lost. Some of us have a Roland-Garros semi-final to prepare for.”

Alicent Hightower walks through the little customs gates into the arrivals hall at Gatwick Airport, and any plans Rhaenyra had to be normal about it fall away at the sight of her.

She’s physically unable to restrain herself from meeting her halfway; when she’s finally got Alicent in her arms again, they’re rudely in the way of travellers and trailing suitcases, forcing the stream of traffic to disperse around them.

“I wonder why I’m always having to buy new jumpers,” Alicent says against Rhaenyra’s ear, warm breath, warm voice, “and then I see you.”

“You should stop leaving them in my hotel rooms, then.” Rhaenyra shrugs, pushing up against the extra weight of Alicent’s arms, thrown around her neck. 

“I do not.” Rhaenyra smiles into the hair at Alicent’s temple at her failure to sound stern, at how she could feel Alicent’s own smile growing, in the flex of her cheekbone, pressed into the soft part of Rhaenyra’s. “You’re a thief.”

“They’re all in your room at mine,” Rhaenyra argues. “How can that be stealing?”

Alicent shakes her head and pulls back, just a bit, a sliding lean so her hands are on Rhaenyra’s shoulders, and they can actually look at each other— they’d collided too brutally, bodily, for anything like that. 

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“Grass swing.”

“ Fucking finally,” Rhaenyra says, and kisses Alicent’s face— her cheek, her forehead, her cheek again for good measure. “I love you,” she says. “I’ve missed you.”

I’m in love with you. She could say it, she thinks. She thinks about Mysaria telling her she should. The idea—the hope— it would usher in a change that would mean she could do what she really wanted, take Alicent’s cheeks in her hands, kiss her mouth, chapped from the dry aeroplane air. 

Alicent bats her away, laughing. “Yeah, yeah, love you too.”

“And missed me?”

“Be serious.” Alicent holds her hand, picking the handle of her suitcase back off the ground with the other. “I do nothing but miss you, these days.”

Alicent’s instinct when she takes Rhaenyra’s hand has never changed from when they were kids; she holds it like they’re bear cubs, paws instead of fingers, fingers curling around the side of Rhaenyra’s hand instead of interlocking. She looks up, bashful, when Rhaenyra wriggles her way into a more grown-up mode of hand-holding— only because she wants to be able to squeeze Alicent’s properly. “Six weeks at least now, right?”

“Like the summer holidays when we were at school.” Alicent’s head dips briefly against Rhaenyra’s shoulder as they walk. Rhaenyra has a car waiting to take them home to Alicent’s.“That’s how long I had you to myself for back then, too.”

“All yours all the time,” Rhaenyra feels the need to clarify. “But it’s nice it’s in person.”

“Don’t suppose you changed your mind on Nottingham?”

Rhaenyra sighs at the reminder that despite their nice little daydreams and the fact they’re at last in the same country for more than five minutes, they’re actually going to be separated almost immediately, Alicent leaving for the Midlands tomorrow night.

“No.” Registration will have closed, but Rhaenyra wonders whether she should nag the LTA for a wildcard. There’s not a chance they’d deny her it— if she showed the slightest bit of interest they’d be shoving one into her hands. She flexes her right wrist, where it holds the strap of Alicent’s carry on bag against her shoulder, and feels the little twinge that popped up in her first training session after losing at the French, and remembers why she hasn’t already. “I’d come with anyway, but I have to go to Salford—“ 

“BBC stuff?’ 

“Yeah, annual Wimbledon hype tour, I guess.” 

“I’m sure the One Show audience will eat you up. Excellent press for your SPOTY campaign.”

Rhaenyra elbows her. “Maybe I can stop off on the way back, come see you.”

“That’d be nice, if I’m still in it.”

“Alicent.”

“Rhaenyra,” Alicent says, mockingly. 

“I’m sorry about today.” They had spoken on the phone earlier, when Alicent was heading to the airport right from her match in Puglia, the final she’d lost there, had already talked about it a little bit. But it would feel wrong to ignore it in person.

“Trying to get my ranking up and I can’t even vulture properly.” Alicent looks towards her, offers a twisted little smile. Rhaenyra swallows the first response she has, that it isn’t vulturing to play 125s at Alicent’s ranking, aware it probably wouldn’t offer the comfort she intended. 

“A final, though.” Rhaenyra looks at Alicent, resolute, because she’s not really sure what to do but believe her ability will win out in the end, and let Alicent know she believes. “More to come.”

“It would be nice to see myself like you see me, I think.”

“Want me to try and describe it?”

“No,” Alicent says, blushing at the prospect. “Absolutely not.”

“Offer’s open.”

They reach the car, black and shiny, parked in the short-stay car park, and the driver takes Alicent’s luggage from them. “Thanks,” Alicent tells him, and then grabs Rhaenyra’s hand: again, where she’d let it fall in the hand-off. “And thanks for coming to get me.”

Like it was ever in question— an extra hour with Alicent, instead of waiting at home for her to be delivered to her. “Of course.”

It’s June, so though it’s late, the sun is only just setting as the car moves off. The sky is pinks and golds and the streaky clouds show off the light off to its best vantage, but Rhaenyra can’t help but watch Alicent, the way her hair glows as she dozes off repeatedly, helplessly, taken by the motion of the vehicle.

“God, sorry for being boring after you made the effort,” Alicent says, when her head once again knocks against the glass of the window and her eyes startle open. She’s had such a long day, Rhaenyra thinks, with the match, and the loss, and the travel. Alicent rubs her head forehead where she bumped it. “I really can’t keep my eyes open.”

Rhaenyra unbuckles her seatbelt, and slides into the middle seat, urges Alicent to tip the other way. “Don’t then.” 

A thousand times it’s been Rhaenyra falling asleep on Alicent— she can be the pillow for once. Besides, if Alicent is out cold, she can’t catch Rhaenyra struggling to keep her eyes off her, and Rhaenyra can’t really stare from this angle, so that helps too. Alicent kisses her shoulder, before her cheek lands on it; not long after she’s snoring lightly, steadily, no more push-pull of wakefulness.

It’s like Rhaenyra’s world has righted itself. Like all the empty places in her have been made complete, lonely rockpools overwhelmed by the onrush of a tide. Alicent loves her, she knows. Has to trust that that love can see them through anything, even a mismatch in the kinds they feel for each other. 

She’s finished holding herself back, she thinks. When the moments right, she’ll tell her. But maybe she’ll poke and prod first. Gauge the reaction she might get when she does, so she can prepare for it. 

Rhaenyra thinks about Alicent, rushing across the arrivals hall to knock the wind out of her, suitcase dropping painfully onto her foot. She thinks about her pretty blush, and their hands, joined again on Rhaenyra’s lap. She thinks about a text Mysaria had sent her earlier, as much of a meddler as she promised: how do you know?  

She doesn’t know. She’s never known. There’s always been— moments. Ones she pinched out like a flame, in fear of a dream. She lets the dream flare, quietly, warmly in her chest now. She’s going to tell Alicent she’s in love with her, and let the chips fall where they may, but not quite yet. 

First, a gift to herself: a little time to hope.

Chapter Text

Rhaenyra snorts, like she’s never heard something so ridiculous.

"Like you’d quit the tour to go teach."

"I mean…" Alicent says, lightly as she can, like it’s not really that big a deal. "I’m thinking about it."

"No," Rhaenyra says, her jaw set doggedly forward, staring down the hill. 

It rankles. One word, a dismissal. Alicent has been building up this moment in her head and that’s really all she gets? 

"Well," she says, tersely. "I wasn’t really asking for your permission." 

"I don’t care!" Rhaenyra snaps. "I don’t give it." 

Alicent flinches away. The sudden vehemence is jarring when seconds before Rhaenyra sounded very calm. Matter-of-fact, like she’d been asked a question with so obvious an answer that any elaboration would have been excessive. Now, she grabs at her arm, her nails digging in, eyebrows drawn sharply together. 

"It’s my life. Not yours." Alicent despises how feebly she says it. Wanting to match Rhaenyra’s vehemence, she fails to quite get behind her own argument. It feels false. Which isn’t fair, because it’s not. It’s true, but also— 

"It’s— it’s tennis, Alicent. It’s our life." The bite has gone from her voice, replaced by a tremor. Alicent thinks this is worse—Rhaenyra wounded, rather than gearing up for a fight. 

"Our lives..." Alicent tugs her arm out of Rhaneyra’s grasp. "Have not been one and the same for a while now. You know it." 

"Well— if you retire, so will I." 

Alicent has to laugh. Rhaenyra bleeds the game; almost her whole family does. It’s like they’re born for it, a dynasty hatched from tennis balls. It’s an absurd, rash ultimatum, even if Rhaenyra isn’t aware of it currently. But she is so deadly serious as she threatens it. Her chin jerks up and down in a series of sharp little nods, like a bobblehead on the dashboard of a car. 

"You’re Rhaenyra Targaryen," she points out. "You’re not quitting tennis." 

"You’re Alicent Hightower," she counters: mulishly, earnestly.  

Alicent heaves a sigh at the false equivalence; she can’t be bothered to argue with Rhaenyra about whether that means anything. "I’m tired. And I’m tired of losing. I’m barely breaking even financially—" 

"If it’s a money thing—" 

Alicent’s exasperated scoff is so loud that Rhaenyra cuts herself off. She regrets even bringing up money, when it’s so far from the key issue. She ought to have known Rhaenyra would latch onto it as something she could solve. "Don’t even finish that thought. I’m not leeching off you."  

"And if I’d be happy to let you suck me dry?" 

"Stop it."  

"No." Rhaenyra says, heatedly. "No, I won’t stop it. What, you’d quit on your life out of some— misguided sense of pride—" 

"Yes," Alicent cuts in, rolling her eyes. "Because God forbid I try to hold onto some dignity." 

"Just about everyone on the entire bloody tour is spending someone else’s money!" 

Alicent snorts. "My sponsors don’t pay quite as much as yours." 

"Then let me share!" Rhaenyra throws her hands up in frustration. They fall back down onto the ground beside her heavily enough to make her wince, though the grass should be a soft landing. "I don’t know if it escaped your notice, but I’m fucking loaded." 

"I’m not taking your money. Just— leave it." 

Alicent had relied on her family money without qualms before her dad cut her off. Whatever shortfall she might possibly find herself with at the end of the season would be a genuine pittance to Rhaenyra; one exhibition match in Saudi Arabia could probably command Alicent’s yearly winnings in a single appearance fee. Even so, the idea of being dragged along by Rhaenyra’s coattails feels gross, far more shameful than the natant privilege of a wealthy upbringing.  

"But—" 

"I’m serious, Rhaenyra, stop it, you’re pissing me off." 

Rhaenyra looks less than inclined to shut up, but does, if only for a second. She at least has the grace to change tactics when she speaks again.  

"Look, live rankings have you back in the top hundred already. Once you win tomorrow, or if you do even just okay in the North American swing, you’ll have direct entry to the USO. Surely, surely you’ll be in the black, even if you’re not minted." 

"If," Alicent repeats. She attempts to calm herself down where her hackles have risen and adopts a tone she means to be soothing. It comes across as exhausted instead. Maybe that’s better– more honest. "I’m not saying I’ve decided anything for definite. I’m just— thinking about my options. It isn’t just money." 

"Then what is it?" Rhaenyra sounds utterly flummoxed— why would anyone who could afford to play tennis for a living do anything else? She can’t see it. It’s so far outside of her world view. 

"It’s just…" Alicent doesn’t know how to explain. Especially to Rhaenyra, who often wilfully refuses to understand things she doesn’t want to. "It’s tempting. All of it. Good, steady pay. Reasonable hours. Settling in one place, making friends. Actually getting to live in the home that I pay the mortgage on. The prospect of not wearing my body into total ruin with nothing to show for it when I have to retire. Age, injury, whatever." 

"But—" Rhaenyra flounders. She shakes her head and looks up beseechingly. 

Alicent wants to cry. The pinched face, the confusion, the way her chin tilts down; Rhaenyra is twelve again, stuck on her maths homework and looking to Alicent like she has the answers.  

She takes one of Alicent’s hands in both of hers and holds it limply in her lap. Staring at it, she straightens out the fingers, one by one. Alicent lets her toy with them until she’s ready to speak again. It’s very quiet, when she does, but no less forceful for it.  

"You can’t quit tennis." 

"Rhaenyra…" Alicent says. Feeling achingly, desperately tender, it softens her exasperation. The name is drawn out on a sigh. "It’s not like I’m talking about leaving the tour to go work in a bank. It’s teaching at our old club. I’d have a racquet in my hand everyday." 

"That’s not the same."  

"No." She slips her head back onto Rhaenyra’s shoulder now she’s more mollified, unlikely to shake her off again. Cheek to her crown, Rhaenyra’s own tips against it. It’s easier like this than looking into her lovely, searching eyes, hurt and bewildered at the prospect of Alicent giving up on their shared dreams.  

Rhaenyra’s horror at the thought of her quitting is sweet in its way— but proof too, that Rhaenyra does not get it, having achieved so much of what Alicent is still chasing. Dancing way up on the summit and wondering why her friend isn’t taking in the view.  

"But maybe it would be better for me," says Alicent. 

"I don’t think I could really quit," Rhaenyra admits, walking back her earlier outburst. Her voice shakes. Alicent can’t help a soft duh. Rhaenyra flicks the knuckle of her captive thumb in retaliation. "But I’ll love it less, without you. Half as much." 

Alicent’s stomach lurches.  

"That’s not fair. Don’t say that." Rhaenyra’s shoulder shrugs under Alicent’s cheek, jaw clenching atop her head. "No, Rhaenyra, that’s— it’s not fair of you. When can I quit, then? I have to just keep killing myself on the tour for your pleasure for the next, what, five plus years?" 

Yes. The word hovers unsaid between them. That was always the deal. The two of them, and tennis, forever and ever and ever, sealed with a pinky promise. Alicent leans back and looks at Rhaenyra. Her lips are pressed so tightly together that they’ve all but disappeared, eyes squeezed shut too.  

They open suddenly.  

"Yes." She says it petulantly. Stroppily. Like if she were standing she might stamp her foot. "If that’s what it takes to keep you playing, keep you with me, yes. Do it for me. Please." 

"Rhaenyra." Alicent tries to sound reprimanding. Rhaenyra isn’t even attempting to understand, Rhaenyra is being selfish. But she wants to keep her with her, so when Alicent says her name it comes out plaintive instead. Trying again, she manages the sharpness she wanted. "Rhaenyra." 

Rhaenyra scrubs a hand over her face. Alicent watches her fingers shake; she can feel it with the hand Rhaenyra is still holding. She’s much more upset than she’s trying to let on, vibrating against the force of emotion she’s holding back. 

"Well— what did you expect me to say? Go ahead! Throw away everything we’ve worked for, give up on all your dreams, I’m totally, one hundred percent on board—" 

"No. Of course not." Alicent had expected Rhaenyra to blow up at her, really, to skid off into some diatribe about her father, to grip her tightly by the shoulders until she swore she wouldn’t leave the tour. She’d imagined it. Faltering in her own conviction with the full force of Rhaenyra’s presence bearing down on her. Swearing down that she won’t quit in exchange for a brief, satisfied smile. 

Maybe part of her had wanted it, for Rhaenyra to make the decision for her— and she had tried, refusing to give permission Alicent claimed she wasn’t asking for. But so quickly she’d pulled back, pleading and bargaining instead of bossing her about. She seems unmoored now, even as she digs her heels in. Letting go of Alicent’s hand entirely, her newly free hand joins the other on her face, knuckles pressed in fists against her brow.  

"I knew you’d be upset," Alicent says. "I just hoped you would try to understand." 

"Right," Rhaenyra says.  

"Will you? Try?" Alicent pulls her hand back from where Rhaenyra had abandoned it on her bare calf so that she can stop staring at it, and tucks it beneath her own thigh. Rhaenyra doesn’t say anything. "Look, I know you’re not happy about it, and I’m sorry for that, but— it’s my life Rhaenyra. Whatever I decide…? It can’t be about you." 

It feels wrong to say, when they’ve been twisted together like vines for so long that Alicent barely remembers what it was to be without Rhaenyra. But Alicent has been thinking about that too. How maybe she needs to extricate herself before being wrapped up in her best friend chokes the life out of her. How perhaps growing up means giving up. On tennis, yes, but more than that. That she needs to cast aside her own stupid fantasies that things might shift between her and Rhaenyra one day. Let go of  the idea that there’ll be a real future for them, a life to build together.  

It’s far more likely things will change in the opposite direction: that they won’t always be this close, that Rhaenyra will meet someone (maybe has met someone, a treacherous part of her reminds her) who’ll usurp her position as Rhaenyra’s number one. Alicent needs to at least learn to be her own first priority. 

Rhaenyra has dropped her hands from her face and is staring at Alicent in a way that makes it hard to look back. It’s a bit like the face she makes when she’s serving against a break point. There’s a focus and a fire, but also a trace of anxiousness in the flexing of her cheek that Rhaenyra would never show during a match. As long as Alicent’s known her, she’s chewed their insides when she’s feeling tense.  

Her mouth parts as though to speak, hanging open for a moment, tongue darting out to wet her lips before mostly disappearing. Alicent watches her bite down on it, only the pink tip showing between her teeth. Abruptly, she clamps her lips closed and looks away from Alicent, down to the ground, winding her knuckles through the grass. 

"What?" Alicent desperately wants to know what Rhaenyra was going to say. Probably something horrendously unfair again— make it about me anyway. Maybe Alicent will, if Rhaenyra keeps insisting that’s what she wants. At least then when it all blows up on them later, and Rhaenyra gets tired of Alicent trailing after her, she’ll be able to point to this conversation and remind her she asked for it. 

"Nothing," Rhaenyra says. "I’ll try, okay? To be alright with it. Of course I will. I love you, I want you to be happy, even if that’s not— with the tour." 

Alicent hadn’t realised her shoulders were up by her ears until she felt them sag. She can’t quite work out whether it’s in disappointment or relief. She’d been lying when she said she didn’t need Rhaenyra’s permission, blessing, whatever.  

She has nothing to be guilty for, but that’s never been an impediment to Alicent’s ability to feel it. "Is there— anything I could do to help you feel better about it?" 

"You are still only thinking, right?" Rhaenyra asks suspiciously. "It’s not something you’ve already decided on, and this is you… trying to soften the blow." 

"No," she promises. "Really. It’s just… an option. It’s been literally two days since Diana suggested it, I don’t even know how I feel about it. But I’d appreciate it if you left it alone." 

"No trying to convince you to stay with me?" 

Alicent’s stomach turns. "Exactly." 

"Well—" Rhaenyra shrugs, and then smiles, for the first time since Alicent first said she was thinking about quitting. It looks painfully false, but Alicent takes it for the olive branch that it is. The evidence of Rhaenyra’s promise to try. "I’d feel better if you won a slam first." 

Alicent rolls her eyes and lets herself relax, with the argument over for now. "But not this one." 

"Naturally since, you know, I’m going to. But maybe the US, or Australia—" 

"Both, even," Alicent says dryly. "Roland-Garros and next year’s Wimbledon too, while we’re at it." 

"It’s the Olympics next year, too." 

"Perfect, I’ll round out my deeply illustrious career so far with a Golden Slam. Love it. Inspired." 

"Means I’ll have to try for mine when I’m thirty-one, but—" Rhaenyra stops mid-sentence, and shakes her head. Her grin failing a little bit, it quickly reforms into another kind of smile. Smaller, more hopeful, less sure. A bashful quality Alicent wants to kiss. "I really did mean what I said, the other day, about playing doubles with you again and— I mean, God, I’m sure we’ll be so shit, but if it’s the last chance I have— let’s do the USO?" 

Alicent reels a little bit at the sudden change of subject. The pivot is unexpected enough to make her laugh, though there’s not really a joke aside from how crap they’ll probably be after all these years. It’s enough to be caught up in Rhaenyra. In the idea of them on the same side of the net again, one more time.  

"Don’t laugh," Rhaenyra says. "Say yes." 

"And you’d feel better about the rest of it, if I did." 

"I might." Rhaenyra’s fingers touch her wrist lightly. Alicent stops sitting on her own hand so Rhaenyra can rest hers on top of it. "But I only want to do it if you want to, too." 

"I said before, didn’t I? That it was a nice idea." Rhaenyra’s eyebrow lifts briefly; she lets it slide, allowing Alicent to pretend that that hadn’t been a dismissal. "Doubles in August then. It’s decided." 

Rhaenyra smiles at her. Alicent’s chest aches, violently, and she turns her cheek away. 

The big screens at the foot of the hill start to blink to life. Beside her, Rhaenyra sighs. 

"We should probably make a move—" 

"We should go—" 

"Yeah," they say, together.  

Rhaenyra gets up, then pulls Alicent to her feet after her. "I suppose it could all be worse," she tells her, bumping their hips together. "You could be off to become a pro pickleballer." 

"God."Alicent throws Rhaenyra a look, horribly offended at the suggestion even as a joke. "I’d literally sooner off myself." 

"Of course you would. You’re a woman of taste." 

Alicent looks at Rhaenyra and agrees.  

Her long legs, bare in shorts, a trace of mud on her knee where she’d knelt to stand. The grace of her toned, slender figure, proportioned perfectly; a walking, talking teleological argument for the existence of God. The distinguished, beautiful lines of her profile. The full view of her lovely features as she glances back at Alicent with a smirk, not quite reflected in her disquieted eyes. 

Rhaenyra’s hand dangles between them. Alicent wants badly to take it. Instead, she wipes her palms on her shorts and slides them into her pockets. After a moment, Rhaenyra’s disappear into her own, and Alicent loses the chance to change her mind. 

"Nice to see you without a storm cloud over your head today," Harrold says, when they’ve wrapped up on drills. He tosses her a full water bottle as she depletes hers. "Here." 

She catches it easily out of the air. Hot and exhausted from the practice, she glugs it down. The weather is too lovely, she thinks, taking in the burning sky, an uninterrupted blue. It’s going to have to break.  

"Thanks," she says once her thirst is quenched, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. "And sorry about that. Yesterday, I mean." 

Harrold shrugs. "You weren’t that bad." 

"To you." 

"To me," he says, like he’s one of the Chuckle Brothers. She laughs despite herself. He looks very pleased by it.  

"We made up, by the way. Me and Rhaenyra. I told her I was thinking about quitting." 

Harrold’s eyebrows lift briefly then fall back to their natural heavy droop with skepticism. "And that’s why you were fighting?" 

"We weren’t fighting." They don’t fight. Bicker, definitely. Argue occasionally, sure. There’s been a handful of times like yesterday, where they’ve been briefly on the outs. But they don’t fight.  

"That’s what you needed to make up about, then, I mean." 

"No— I mean. I told her after we had. This morning." 

"Alright," he says slowly. "But you were upset with her, before?" 

"I was just stressed, I think," she lies, wondering if she shouldn’t. If she should tell him exactly what’s been bothering her about Rhaenyra.  

Harrold is very easy to talk to. Alicent reckons in another life he would have made an excellent therapist. In this one he’s on her payroll for a different reason and it probably wouldn’t be fair to him for her to just— unload on him. As much as there’s a part of her that would like to. She imagines it would feel like one of those magician’s tricks, endless multicoloured handkerchiefs unfurling from where they’re tightly packed between her ribs. She thinks it would be easier to breathe without keeping everything stuffed away. If she could just tell someone, one person. I’m a lesbian. I’m in love with my best friend. It’s driving me up the wall.  

"I guess winning yesterday took some of the pressure off," she says with a shrug instead. "Like you said. Better mood today." 

"So how did Rhaenyra take it? You were worried." 

Alicent flicks at the lid of her water bottle, popping its spout in and out of where it tucks away. "About as well as I think it could have, I think? She argued a bit but said she’d try to be okay with it. And then," she adds, apologetically, "convinced me to play doubles with her at the US Open." 

He barks out a laugh, deep and rumbling. "Well, alright. Might have to brush up on my doubles knowledge if I’m going to be any help with that." 

"Oh, we’re going to be useless, it’s been forever."  

Harrold just smiles and shrugs, like being terrible isn’t the worst thing in the world. 

"Can’t pretend I quite understand your dynamic, but— you’re a lucky girl to have a friend like that. Someone who cares so much. I’m glad she took it alright." 

"I know," Alicent says, trying to convince herself.  

Despite being in an undeniably better mood than yesterday, and that things with Rhaenyra ended up okay, there’s a small part of her that’s grown increasingly discontent with how it went. A bitter seed that’s sprouted— nasty, contradictory voices in the back of her head, shouting over each other. Rhaenyra should have been more supportive off the bat. No— she should have tried harder to convince Alicent out of it. Would have, if she really cared.  

Deep down (not even that deep, the shape of it obvious, like the lump of a body under a blanket) she knows it’s not so much Rhaenyra’s response this morning that’s bothering her; there’s probably no way she could have reacted that Alicent wouldn’t begrudge. It’s a spillover of resentment.  

It’s that Rhaenyra is better than her. It’s that Rhaenyra knows so easily what she wants. It’s that Rhaenyra doesn’t want Alicent, the way Alicent wants to be wanted. Since Eastbourne (a murmured confession of liking women, all the evidence hence pointing to Mysaria Lys) she’s been chewed up by it like cud by a cow, a slow and steady grinding.  

Alicent had always thought it would be okay. That she could cope. As long as she had Rhaenyra in her life, as long they were close, she’d be able to bear the burden of being in love with her. Now, she wonders. Being with her, thinking of her, brings a sting: exhilarating, painful, leaving behind a constant itch. Alicent doesn’t want this developing grudge. She wishes she could cast out her entitled, indignant bitterness. She fears it might end up with her cornering Rhaenyra and ruining everything. Telling her fuck you, asking her why won’t you just love me back. 

"I know," she repeats, doubling down in defiance of herself. "I’m very lucky." 

"She’s lucky too," Harrold says. "And I’m lucky to have you as my player. I was worried after we spoke the other day that I’d have a distracted player on my hands all tournament. But you were brilliant yesterday and completely present this afternoon, even with what sounds like a big morning." 

"Told you I’d keep it off the court, didn’t I?"Alicent lifts her water bottle to her mouth again and hides her smile around its spout.  

Harrold is so free with his praise for her, never rations it, is always willing to repeat and reiterate. Dangerously, Alicent is starting to believe him when he does. She drops the bottle vaguely in the direction of her racquet bag once she’s done with it and then changes her mind, picking it up again only to put it away properly. While she’s there, she grabs a towel and wraps it around her sweaty neck. For a moment, she wonders whether to tell him where she’s going now— if it will be weird for him, or if he even cares. She thinks he will— care, that is— because it’s quite a big deal for her.  

"I’m meeting my dad, now." 

"After a shower, I’d suggest," Harrold says, raising his eyebrows. He raises his hands pacifyingly at her expression. "I hope it goes well." 

"I’m not— I promise you’re not out of a job or anything. I’ve just missed him." 

"You don’t have to explain seeing your family to me, Alicent." 

"I know. But… I just wanted you to know. I’ve been so glad to have you as my coach. I am lucky," Alicent says, not needing to try to convince herself of the truth of it this time. The hug she gives him is regrettably sweaty.  

Alicent warms down and showers in a mad rush and then promptly proceeds to squander the time she won herself by doing so. She’s meeting her father at one of the premium hospitality venues, on a balcony looking over the bustling crowds and the courts. She can see him up there, with nothing but sky behind him, barely more than a silhouette against the painful blue of it. Instead of going up to join him, she is circling around the building and the courts attached to it in distress, like a zoo animal prowling its enclosure. 

In her last, wide loop she had officially gone from early to on time to a few minutes late. To have handed him valid ammunition for criticism before they’re even sat down across from each other makes her nerves worse. The hope of minimising his disapproval is what finally forces her upstairs, crossing the balcony with a small wave in his direction.  

He stands when he spots her. "Alicent. Hi." 

"Dad." 

He pulls out a chair for her and she takes the seat awkwardly, thumping her knee against the leg of the table, showing considerably less coordination than a professional tennis player should. She attempts to turn her wince into a smile. "Good to see you again." 

Alicent doesn’t know if it really is or not. Comforting as it is to feel like she’s on the path to being un-disowned, the fact that she had been to begin with is an undeniable source of pain. It’s a very raw feeling, like scratching a bad sunburn. 

His chair scrapes against the floor as he sits down. "I’m glad to see you too, Alicent." 

Finding herself at a loss for words, she only nods; if she opens her mouth she might destroy the fragile civility of whatever truce her father has decided to enter with her. He powers through her silence.  

"I ordered for us. I hope you don’t mind— they had cloudy lemonade and I know you like it." 

There’s no mention of her being late, but he doesn’t need to say it; the decision to order without her serves to remind her that he had been left waiting. 

"That’s fine, thank you." 

"You played very well against Fiske yesterday." 

"Yes, you said so. In your texts."  

Alicent takes a small pleasure in the minute, frustrated flare of his nostrils. She’s not even meaning to be difficult, not really. The effort of keeping her hurt at bay is proving as tricky as she expected, however, and it isn’t doing wonders for her ability as a conversationalist. Originally, when they were making plans over text, she’d wanted to say— just let me come home. She’s very glad now that it had occurred to her that a neutral ground would be easier; if there were family photos staring down at her from the walls, her composure likely would have left her at once. 

"Yes, well. I meant it." 

"What about the Birmingham final?" she asks, pointed. "You never did get back to me after that."  

Her father looks surprised that she would bring it up. Alicent is surprised. She’d spent the evening and then days following the disaster waiting for some scathing text to come through from him, as suspicious of her phone as she’d been the shadows under her bed as a child, like if she looked there’d be something waiting there to hurt her. At least by asking outright before he brings it up, it means he can’t pull the rug out from under her. Only pick it up and beat her with it.  

He blinks at her, and suddenly looks much older than she’s ever thought of him as being. "What did you want me to say?" 

Their drinks arrive, and by some mutual, silent agreement they let the question wither in the space between them, buried under politely murmured thank yous to the waitress. 

Part of Alicent wants to dislike the cloudy lemonade set in front of her, especially when taunted with her father’s tall glass of Pimm’s, golden toffee-brown and brimming with fruit. Unfortunately, the first sip reveals it to be perfect: tart enough to make her cheeks water, sweet enough to cut through the sour, refreshing as a sorbet.  

"I had dinner with Di the other day." She holds the information out as a peace offering, regretting her combative turn. Diana is one of her father’s oldest friends— they both hold her in very high regard, something they can agree upon. "First time I’d seen her since she took over the directorship on her own." 

"Mm. Only ever a matter of time, really but there was all this palaver with the board, and the— well. I won’t bore you with the details. A real relief to know the place is in good hands, at last." Something about watching her dad drink through a straw stirs a mild amusement, the red and white helter-skelter stripes against his dark beard robbing him of his customary dignity. "She rang me, actually, after you had dinner." 

"Oh?’  

"She had some rather scathing things to say to me." 

"Ah." Alicent swallows around the lump in her throat and attempts to clear it. "I mentioned— well. That we hadn’t spoken in a while." 

"Regrettably so," he says softly, sadly, like it hadn’t been his decision. Like he hadn’t looked her in the eye and said get out of my house— you’re no daughter of mine. "I hope we can move forward."  

Alicent isn’t sure how to do that; she’s up to her neck in hard feelings, and stuck in the mud of them. She wants to. Or rather, she wants to go back. Before she knew her own father could cast her aside on a whim and only cared for his involvement in her life as far as it extended to tennis.  

"Perhaps I could come to your match tomorrow," he continues. "Růžičková… I suppose she hasn’t done much since winning last year, form-wise, but it would be foolish to underestimate her on the grass. That serve... How have you been preparing? I’d suggest you move an extra step behind the baseline— you’ll struggle to rush her, anyway, at least with your forehand—" 

"No," she says. The harsh scraping of her chair against the concrete patio is sudden and loud. Two women sharing a jug of Pimm’s on the table over look at her from over their noses, silently shaming her for her uncouth, unsophisticated display. How dare she make something resembling a scene, Alicent can imagine them tutting to each other. At the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, of all places. "I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think I have to go—" 

"Alicent," her dad says, calmly. "Sit down." 

Like a marionette, she does. Gripping the seat of her chair tightly, arms pressed to her side, she waits for him to speak.  

He sighs. "If you think it’s best I don’t come to your match, then I won’t." 

"Okay," she says, and releases the breath she’d been holding. The sudden dizzy nausea that had gripped her abates. "Thank you." 

"Why don’t you finish your drink?"  

It takes genuine effort to unpeel her fingers from her chair. The twisted weave of the wicker has left its pattern on the pads of them when she manages. The cool drink calms her down a little at least, the sharp sweetness grounding against the sudden panic she’d felt, the overwhelming urge to be anywhere else.  

"Before you do go, I’ve been meaning to say…" 

For a brief, hopeful moment, Alicent thinks he’s going to apologise to her. Pitifully, she thinks it would halfway bridge the gap between them: sorry, I shouldn’t have reacted like that. All it would take to get it the rest of the way there would be an I missed you, maybe if she was very lucky, I love you. Not that things would be perfect— but they hadn’t been perfect before. She just badly wants him to acknowledge those two things: that he hurt her, and she hadn’t deserved it; that he cares about her, as his daughter. Then she could forgive everything else. 

"You remember Grant?" 

"No…?" Alicent wracks her brain, trying to think who he means— there’s first name Grants on the ATP tour, surname Grants on both tours, but she doesn’t think he’d be talking about any of them. Tangential to her life, irrelevant to his.  

"The American I was with the other day." 

"Oh. Right, sure."  

"He was quite taken with you. Big tennis fan. I was wondering if you would go to dinner with him as a favour to me." 

Alicent flushes with she’s not sure what— anger? Shame? Embarrassment?  

"Are you really…" She takes a deep breath. "Trying to set me up on a date?" 

"Just a dinner." 

"With a man who is ‘quite taken’ with me." 

Her father rolls his eyes, and the disbelief that roils in her stomach is a nearly giddy feeling. She could laugh, cackle like a hyena at the audacity of it. Instead she sucks on her straw until the ice rattles against the sides. 

"He goes back to the US next week. Extended his stay for a few extra days to catch more tennis. I’m not ‘setting you up’. It would just be a nice little story for him, earn the company a little good will, hopefully ease along the deal we’re trying to make. Though, if you happen to get along, then—" 

"Is that— is that what this is? We’re only here doing this because I happened to run into you with a client, and I can be useful to you? I’m in the middle of a tournament. It’s Wimbledon. I don’t have the time— or the will—or—" 

He looks at her with a particularly cutting kind of indulgence, like she’s a toddler having a tantrum and not his adult daughter with very real grievances. "It was a request, not a command, Alicent. I can’t make you do anything. I just thought— it’s only dinner. You went to Diana’s the other day. I walked past Rhaenyra sitting in the window of a restaurant on Earl’s Court Road just last night… I didn’t think of it as some great imposition." 

"Who was she with?" Alicent asks, before she could stop herself, stuck on the detail like a CD with a particularly bad skipping point. Always stuttering over Rhaenyra, though she shouldn’t be close to her main concern right now. 

"A woman. Mysaria Lys, I think. Or someone who looked very much like her, at least." He looks at her curiously, raising an eyebrow. "I hadn’t realised they were friends." 

"Well. They are." She presses her knuckles to her temples. "Look. I really— Rhaenyra might be able to be a bit more relaxed. But Di was two days before my first match, and I really— I need my evenings. So." 

"Well, Grant’s in the country until the middle of next week, now, so you might have time before he leaves."  

Once you’ve been knocked out. 

Alicent’s indignation fizzles, leaving her tired. "I’ll think about it. If— you know. I do find myself with some more time." 

She stifles a flinch when her father’s hand lands warm and heavy on hers. "I’d appreciate the favour, Alicent, but it’s only that. A favour. It isn’t why we’re here." 

"No, no—I mean. I’m not saying yes. Just…" 

"You’ll think about it. Of course, of course. Tennis is the priority, as it should be." He pats her hand. "But all this about the dinner. It really was just a thought. I’ve missed you. I’m glad we could do this. I hope we can again?" 

Alicent shudders, blaming it on the ice cube she accidentally swallows having given up on her sodden, useless straw, instead of the sob that she deliberately does. "I missed you too. So much." 

Come over? We can plot our doubles domination xx 

Alicent wants to say no, to sit and stew in her confused feelings. It’s been a long, weird day and she’s utterly drained from it. The idea of leaving the soft dip of the sofa she’s nestled in is dreadful. But then she imagines Rhaenyra sitting at her kitchen island, thinking of Alicent, typing kisses into her phone, and gets up to find her shoes. 

Her phone chimes again. And have you had dinner yet? 

Presumptuous, she types. Haven’t said I’m coming yet. 

Will you? 

Alicent sighs. Feeling worn, she briefly contemplates getting an Uber. The risk of the driver making small talk with her sounds more tiring than walking a mile, she decides.  

Be there in 20. Haven’t eaten x   

After deliberating for a moment about whether she should add another x to match Rhaenyra’s first message, Alicent leaves it as is, and presses send. The reply comes quickly. 

Hooray! I’ll start cooking :) xxx 

Alicent thumbs-ups the message and slips her phone in the pocket of her slouchy drawstring trousers, deliberating over whether there’s anything else she needs to bring with her. There never is, when she goes to Rhaenyra’s— except for her keys, waiting for her on a hook by the door. 

The achingly hot day has turned into a gorgeous evening. The sun is far from setting, the sky still cornflower blue, but a mild breeze has kicked up to fight the heat. The light jacket she’d grabbed last minute stays draped over her arm as she walks in the direction of Rhaenyra’s. The route is familiar. Her apprehension is not. With every step, she finds herself wishing more and more that she’d stayed home and tried to settle herself.  

Alicent’s social battery has always been limited: she enjoys people, parties, all the rest of it. As long as she’s in the mood, as long as the mood lasts. When she’s done, she’s done—time to make an exit; French, if possible (although it rarely is;  Rhaenyra tends to be following her out, making her goodbyes to all the people wanting a piece of her).  

For Alicent, recharging usually means lying on the sofa with a cup of tea and something shit on the telly, preferably with the toes of her fluffy socks squeezed under Rhaenyra’s thigh and Rhaenyra’s hand tapping a rhythm on Alicent’s drawn knee. Her best friend has never counted against time alone, only enhanced it. Tonight, just the thought of being with her makes Alicent exhausted. That, in turn, makes her feel guilty. 

It gets worse, when Rhaenyra’s front door swings upon and she’s gathered at once into a hurried hug hello, squeezed tight like she’s been missed in the mere hours since they saw each other. 

"The omelettes— sorry! Did you forget your keys?"  

Rhaenyra beams back over her shoulder as she retreats to the kitchen in a rush, skidding across the marbled tile in her socks. Alicent closes her eyes as she leans down to untie her shoe laces. She plays the scene on her eyelids over and over: the flash of a smile, the warmth of her voice, the vanishing around the corner. Lately, she’s been doing that. Memorialising Rhaenyra like she’s the dead wife in a film montage. 

Shoes off, she trails into the kitchen. Rhaenyra looks up from the hob where she has two frying pans on the go at once. There’s a neat golden omelette folded in each; apparently no disaster had befallen them in their brief time left unattended. 

"Wanna eat outside? I set the patio table, but if you’d rather not—" 

"No, sounds good. It’s a nice evening." 

"Just let me dish these up and I’ll follow you out." 

Alicent stops at the fridge for a can of San Pellegrino, one of the blood orange ones Rhaenyra always has in for her. "Want a lemon one?" 

"Yeah, ta."  

Stepping into a pair of the slip-on shoes they keep side-by-side next to the doors, Alicent looks through the glass at Rhaenyra’s beautifully landscaped back garden. Not for the first time Alicent thinks about the absurdity of her keeping a five bedroom house she barely ever sees. She considers her own two-bed flat a luxury.  

But when she pushes the door open and is immediately met by the warm evening air, fragrant and full of flowers, she has to admit that a proper outside space is nice in weather like this. Alicent’s balcony is too poky to do anything but stand and lean against the wrought-iron railing, breathing in the fumes from the road. She takes her usual spot, at a right angle to Rhaenyra’s preferred seat: a view of the garden and the other. 

"Alright, watch out, plates are hot, they’ve been in the oven," Rhaenyra says when she appears in the French doors a few moments later, hands wrapped in tea towels. She frowns at the plates when she puts them down. "Hang on." She swaps them. "That’s yours." 

"What’s the difference?" 

"Didn’t have much green pepper left prepped, so it’s all in that one." She shrugs. "Couldn’t be bothered to chop another." 

"You could’ve split it," Alicent chastises, resenting how affected she is by the small gesture, the heat in her cheeks. "You like it too." 

"You’re the guest, right?" 

It’s what Aemma always used to say, gently rolling her eyes at Rhaenyra’s demands with a hand stroking through her hair, and turning to Alicent to ask whether she would like the left over crispy bits from the roast potatoes, or the last biscuit from the packet, or whatever it was that Rhaenyra was gunning for. Rhaenyra, pulling a face— it’s Alicent, Mum, she basically lives here— and Alicent, thrilled at belonging, letting Rhaenyra have what she wanted.  

Alicent has never wanted to be a guest at Rhaenyra’s table. 

"Thank you," she says, and reaches for the covered plastic dishes in the centre of the table. "Salads?"  

"Mm, from Winona’s." Rhaenyra’s preferred and very expensive delicatessen. "One’s a spinach-y something or other. New on the menu, I think. And then the potato salad." 

The one Alicent loves, and Rhaenyra only quite likes: she thinks they’re a bit heavy handed with the mustard seeds. 

"How was the rest of your day?" Rhaenyra asks her, as Alicent shovels some of each onto her plate.  

"Yeah, you know." Alicent aspires to nonchalance, glossing right over the whole meeting her dad situation. "Alright. I think I went a bit too hard in the gym yesterday. Sorer than I should be from just the match." 

Rhaenyra chuckles. "Took your bad mood out on the equipment too, huh?"  

"I apologised for that," she says stiffly. 

"I didn’t mean…" Alicent sees Rhaenyra’s hand move to cover hers where it rests on the table, and takes up her cutlery to dodge it. A burst of steam puffs out of the omelette when she cuts into it. It’s perfect— fluffy egg, cheese oozing between the prongs of her fork. "I know you were just stressed." 

"I know. Sorry." She nudges her foot against Rhaenyra’s ankle beneath the table. "Maybe I still am, a bit. This is delicious, by the way. Thank you." 

Rhaenyra smiles, letting Alicent off. "Professional tennis player, a bit on edge during Wimbledon. Imagine that."  

"I mean. Růžičková, tomorrow," she says, to drive the excuse home, though in truth she’s hardly given a thought to her brutal second-round match-up, too caught up in Rhaenyra and seeing her dad again. 

"You’re much better than her," Rhaenyra says, then doubles down against Alicent’s incredulity. "You are!" 

"She quite literally won this tournament just last year." 

"She got lucky. Or— it was a fluke. Like, she’s alright but… she’s not me, or Vidal or whatever. She’s not winning another one." 

"Top-ten player, Rhaenyra." 

"Barely, without all her points here," Rhaenyra shrugs. "She’ll drop out of it, when she can’t defend Cinci, either." 

"I’ve played her before, Rhaenyra. She’s good." 

"You’re better.”  

"You just don’t like her," Alicent says, shaking her head. "You can't stand that her name is on the Venus Rosewater, and yours isn’t." 

Rhaenyra stares at her for a moment, fork suspended in front of her mouth. Her eyes narrow. She takes the mouthful and chews it slowly, washing it down with a sip from her drink.  

"Two things can be true," she says, lighter than the tension held in her shoulders would dictate. 

The atmosphere gets a bit stilted after that, a silence taking shape between them. Alicent can’t really bring herself to try to fix it though it’s probably her fault. The food is lovely. The air is warm. Little birds dance in and out of the hedges. It’s much more pleasant to focus on that than how off-kilter she feels, or to try and fail to be normal. As much as she had wanted after yesterday for things to iron themselves out— believed they would after her apology— her morning optimism has dwindled, and she finds she isn’t actually, miraculously over any of it.  

For all its lushness, the garden can’t keep her attention long. Not with Rhaenyra sitting her in her periphery. Watching her carve her omelette into neat pieces, gathering salad leaves, pushing it all onto her fork, Alicent thinks about Mysaria. Whether she appreciates the way Rhaenyra wields her knife and fork like precision instruments, how she carefully balances each mouthful with a little of everything, the parting of her lips as she dips her chin over her plate to take a bite.  

In Paris, had Rhaenyra ordered the skate, like she often did? She dealt with the fine bones so well; when she would offer her fork over the table, Alicent always knew it would only be buttery soft flesh, no shards. 

She hates the way her longing for Rhaenyra keeps manifesting in anger, lately. All of it is rooted in the softest feelings she has. Mutilated by resentment, they’re brought to a point; it’s much more difficult to hide them, with the sharpness slicing through the shroud. 

"Criston Cole on Court One before you tomorrow," says Rhaenyra, eventually. Alicent almost rolls her eyes— to try and smooth out the awkwardness between them by bringing up Criston of all topics is a little bit insane. "Do you think he’s pissed that I’m on Centre over him?" 

"I don’t know." Alicent’s so used to it that it’s hard to imagine anyone seeing Rhaenyra having top billing as anything but the natural order of things. But Criston does immensely dislike her, so. "Maybe?"  

"Oh! I heard something about him a while ago." Finished eating, Rhaenyra lays her cutlery diagonally on her plate. She leans forwards on her elbows, head bent conspiratorially. Torn between the gravity urging her to shuffle closer and the reflex to flinch away to safety, Alicent remains stock still. "He had a shadow-ban for doping." 

Oh, that.  

"Just a contamination thing," Alicent dismisses with a shrug. "The investigation cleared him pretty quickly." 

"You knew?" 

"We went for dinner in Madrid, remember?" Alicent shrugs. "We caught up. I truly don’t think it was a big deal, the way he tells it." 

"Oh." Gossip knocked to nothing, the wind goes out of Rhaenyra’s sails. "Still. Not really fair he got a cover-up job." 

"Not like they wouldn’t do the same for you. How’d you find out, anyway?" 

"Mysaria knew—" Rhaenyra looks to the side and laughs, a little huff through her nose as her lips twitch up. Alicent wants to die, watching her drift into memory. "He was bothering me in France and she came and rescued me. Scared him right off." 

"That’s nice," Alicent says, putting down her fork and pushing up from her seat. "Give us your plate? I’ll wash up." 

"We can just stick it all in the dishwasher, don’t worry about it." 

Alicent is already gathering up the crockery. "Not the pans." 

"No," Rhaenyra concedes. "Not the pans." 

"Sit. I’ll get them." The way she grabs at Rhaenyra’s plate when she tries to help carry things inside is more forceful than it needs to be. She smiles and hopes it does not look as rigid as it feels. "No— sit, really. You made dinner." 

As soon as she’s indoors, Alicent relaxes her face, poking her tongue into the side of her cheeks to stretch them out. Keeping her expression somewhat pleasant has left them tight. 

"Hey," Rhaenyra says, when she’s finished cleaning up and goes back outside. She’s frowning at her phone. Continues to do so when she looks up at Alicent. Scrutinising. "You’re staying over, right?" 

I’d rather not.  

She can’t say it. Not with Rhaenyra looking right at her like this, pretty blue eyes completely intent on her. 

"Can do. If you like." 

"I assumed you would? Thought we could maybe watch one of your films." She waggles her eyebrows to emphasise her offer— go on, you know you want to— falling somewhere between bribery and temptation. "Little Shop of Horrors, maybe." 

Sheer bribery, then. Despite herself, Alicent smiles. "You hate Little Shop." 

"I do not," Rhaenyra argues. 

"You woke up crying the first time we watched it and then barely slept for a week. 

"I was ten! And had a very vivid nightmare! Forgive me for not enjoying the experience of being eaten alive." She stands up and holds out her hand, and Alicent can’t find an excuse not to take it, so slips her fingers around her palm, allowing Rhaenyra to lead her to the living room. "I’m a big girl now, Audrey doesn’t scare me anymore." 

"Audrey II," Alicent corrects. "You seemed scared the last time we watched it." 

"What, a couple of years ago? Just a twenty four year-old baby… pre-frontal cortex not yet developed…" 

Alicent snorts. "God help us all if this is you fully cooked." 

Her sense of ease comes back under threat almost immediately. Rhaenyra lets go of her hand to sit down on the sofa, holding her arm open like a trap. If Alicent settled into it, it would close dangerously around her shoulder.  

Instead she settles at the other end of the sofa, using the arm as a headrest. "Too warm," she explains, but lets Rhaenyra draw her legs onto her lap, stretching out her bunched knees.  

"Is it on streaming or do I need to buy it?" Rhaenyra asks, reaching over Alicent’s shins for the remote control. She leaves a forearm balanced on them when she sits back, warm through the light weave of her trousers. 

"Are you still logged in on my Prime? I have it there." 

There’s a shortcut on the remote that takes her to the app in a second. "Fab." 

Alicent loves this film. Despite it, her focus keeps swaying to Rhaenyra’s profile. The position she’s in lends itself to it— she only has to straighten her neck, and it’s her direct view. Though they must have seen this together a dozen times, Rhaenyra is transfixed. She always is when they settle in for a movie. She’s also doing a valiant job at trying not to look frightened even though she can’t hide her eye twitching whenever the plant is on screen. She forgets to school her hands, though— when the dentist gets munched she grabs Alicent’s ankle, squeezing it tight, before turning around with a sheepish, caught expression.  

"Muscle memory," she explains. "Because it used to freak me out." 

"Uh huh," Alicent said drily, glad she didn’t need to form real words to make her point. Rhaenyra’s thumb stays soft against her ankle. Distracting as that proves, it’s when Mushnik gets eaten and Rhaenyra folds practically in half to bury her face in Alicent’s stomach that it’s really all over for her. 

The first couple of minutes are alright— Alicent is too busy laughing at Rhaenyra’s reaction to really register the proximity.  

"Shut up," Rhaenyra keeps saying, red faced with embarrassment, but smiling. "Shut up!" 

"It literally couldn’t be more of a puppet, Rhaenyra." 

"Shut up." 

Without thinking, too relaxed to stop herself, Alicent curls her hand in Rhaenyra’s hair where it’s half-falling out of the bun at the back of her neck. It’s so soft that a noise leaves her throat involuntarily. Awed by how lovely she is, to the most minute detail. 

"It’s alright, you’re safe," she says, trying to recover from it. "The big, scary plant can’t hurt you." 

"You’re so mean to me." Rhaenyra pouts, but starts laughing at herself too. "I don’t know why this stupid film always gets to me. I’ve seen it so many times. And like— no offence, Alicent, it is a stupid film—" 

"—offence taken—" 

"— and the effects are so…" 

"Unrealistic?" 

"Yeah. But every time. God. Why?" 

Alicent knows why. She sees it often, the ways in which Rhaenyra hasn’t changed since they first met. Of the pair of them, she’s done the better job of holding onto her younger self. She’s kept her self-confidence, so buoyant it borders on the absurd, blind optimism. She’s kept her sense of play, and is never afraid to be silly. And she’s held on to her less pleasant traits too— Rhaenyra is bratty, selfish, not above a tantrum. Naïve to problems she’s never felt firsthand. This film, her reaction to it. It’s just another way she’s stayed the same. 

Rhaenyra doesn’t move after that, only slides up slightly from Alicent’s stomach so there’s room for her to curl along the back of the sofa. Her cheek lands on her ribs, pulling up the fabric of her shirt with her cheek. It bares the skin at Alicent’s waist; Rhaenyra’s breath is hot against it, tickling. 

That’s how the heat starts, and when the problem comes. It crawls all over her (excruciating, lovely, awful) for the rest of the movie; the television may as well be turned off for how much Alicent takes in. 

A couple of hours of things feeling like they used to— easy— between them, and Alicent finds herself right back here, wanting more than she should. Imagining Rhaenyra tilting her neck a fraction so her lips land on the skin of her navel. It’s a betrayal. 

"You know you can talk to me about anything?" Rhaenyra says, once the film has ended, drawing a line with her finger across Alicent’s t-shirt, over the shape of her rib. For a moment, Alicent thinks she’s being called out, that Rhaenyra can feel the way her heart is racing from all the way down her rib cage.  "I know you’ve been finding the tournament stressful, and you’ve not had the easiest time of it lately. I’m here for you." 

"I know." 

"I mean it," Rhaenyra insists, forcefully. She does shift, then, but not the way Alicent had wanted. Instead her chin lands on Alicent’s torso so she can look up at her. The point of it digs painfully into the bone. "Anything." 

"It’s really just tournament stuff," Alicent says. "I promise. If there were anything I wanted to talk with you about, I would. Alright?" 

Rhaenyra looks dissatisfied with the answer, opening her mouth, then closing it, like she’s thought better of what she was about to say. "Alright." She sits up, and Alicent misses the press of her more than she should. "Love you," she says. She stretches and yawns, the strap of her tank top falling over her shoulder. "Bed time?" 

Love you, Alicent hears, over and over. 

Love you, she wants to say. 

"I think I’ll sleep in my bedroom tonight," she blurts. "So I don’t keep you up. Feeling antsy about tomorrow, I’ll probably be tossing and turning." 

"I don’t mind." 

"I do. And you should, you play earlier than me." Alicent smiles, tries to inject some humour. "And you’re famously a nightmare sleep-deprived, so. Act of charity on my behalf for anyone that has to deal with you." 

"My match is at half past one, it’s hardly early." Rhaenyra seems like she could argue further. Alicent is a little bit surprised she doesn’t. "Can’t make you, I suppose. If you change your mind, come in though. I’m sure I’ll fall right back asleep." 

"Will do." 

Alicent can’t remember the last time she slept in her own room here— maybe that time she had the flu? It’s more of a glorified, well-decorated storage unit than anything else, but Rhaenyra’s cleaner keeps it ready for use. 

Tugging open a drawer to look for something to wear to bed, the first thing she sees is her school leaver’s hoodie. The one Rhaenyra borrowed the other day, walking out of the bedroom with Hightower on her back.  

Suddenly, violently, Alicent is sobbing; she shoves her fist against her open mouth to destroy the sound. She bursts without warning like a pipe, pressure with no outlet. 

Gathering the jumper up, she presses it against her wet face. It smells freshly washed, but somehow still like Rhaenyra, which doesn’t make sense, because she’s fairly certain they use the same detergent. The unfairness of it makes her cry harder until she remembers the scented drawer liners the housekeeper dutifully keeps fresh, and then, as abruptly as she started, she stops. 

Standing there, shocked at herself and breathing raggedly, Alicent wonders what the hell she is supposed to do. Existentially and in this moment. 

All she can think of is to empty the wardrobe of her clothes. There’s an old hold-all of hers on the closet floor, and she stuffs it full. She has things of every ilk in this room, but she leaves most. Instead, she seizes nearly every one of her jumpers—the evidence of Rhaenyra’s habitual thefts— and pretends to reclaim them, as though Rhaenyra isn’t irreversibly woven into their knit. 

Once she’s done and the bag is zipped shut, she readies herself mechanically for bed, thankfully not rendered hysterical by her own pyjamas. For all her worries of not being able to sleep, when her head hits the pillow, she’s out like a light. 

The next morning, Alicent stumbles bleary-eyed into the kitchen and almost drops the glass of water she’s carrying. 

"Gwayne?!" 

Her elusive brother is sitting alone at Rhaenyra’s kitchen island with a newspaper and a cup of coffee like this is his house, and the fact he’s there is a completely regular thing that she shouldn’t be surprised by. 

"Alicent," he says, cheerfully, getting to his feet and meeting her where she stands, frozen in surprise. "Fancy seeing you here." 

Gwayne kisses the top of her head in greeting, as he so likes to do. He’d been a late bloomer, she’d had her growth spurt early, and he’d never quite gotten over having his little sister be taller than him until he was fifteen and shot up a foot what felt like overnight. Twice the age he was then and he still takes every opportunity to remind her that the height advantage belongs to him now.  

Alicent loves him very much. She hasn’t been quite so glad to see anyone since Rhaenyra met her in arrivals at Gatwick Airport a few weeks ago, with a smile so broad that it defied the size of her face. Cheek splitting.  

Alicent’s smile isn’t quite so large now. She won’t give him that satisfaction when he is already clearly so smug about having successfully surprised her, but she does pull him into a proper hug to grin against his shoulder. 

"I feel like it’s been forever," she says, pulling back. "What are you doing here? I didn’t think you were going to make it to see me this year."  

"Shifted some stuff around, didn’t I? And I’m pretty free all next week, too, so." He chucks her chin and she slaps at his hand with a scoff. "Can I stay with you, by the way?" 

"I’d be actively mad if you got a hotel," she assures him, before raising her eyebrow. "You heard about Dad, didn’t you?" 

"He left a message. I wanted to get here yesterday, be a buffer for it all, but—" He shrugs, wordlessly implying all that he’s been so busy with: training and competitions and the riding school he opened last year. "Also, I fear I may have dobbed you in with Rhaenyra." 

"Ah, fuck, Gwayne." 

Alicent can picture now, exactly when he had, when Alicent had wandered back outside after cleaning up dinner and found Rhaenyra staring at her phone, and then Little Shop, and shortly after that— you know you can tell me anything, right? 

"Okay but— in my defence, how was I supposed to know you hadn’t told her?" He looks at her, half-curious, half-frowning. "Why didn’t you?" 

She groans. "Because they’ve got— beef, I don’t know. She hates him, it wouldn’t have been helpful." 

"She hates him because he’s a cunt, and you always tell her everything." 

No, she thinks. I don’t.  

"Gwayne," she says sharply, out loud. "That’s our dad." 

"I know, I know— and I love him, I do, only…" 

He’s a cunt, her brain completes, in Rhaenyra’s voice. It’s the only way she can bring herself to think it. 

"I want to make things better, alright? So be nice." 

"I figured. Just… I’m on your side, alright? Remember that. Here for you, whatever you need." 

She hugs him again, abruptly, and then pulls back. "In that case. Make me a cup of tea, will you? I’m parched." 

"Well, I’m on the coffee, actually— no, fine, alright. Just. Put your eyes away, God. You’re so like Mum, it’s actually weird." She settles in on a swivel stool, and he busies himself with the kettle. "Still decaf?" 

"Mm, yep, thanks." 

Outside, the weather has taken the turn for the worse that she had expected. It’s truly bleak, after the sun. Thick clouds the brightness behind doesn’t have a chance of burning through, the way the rain falls in sheets. It’s going to wreak havoc on the court scheduling, she thinks. Luckily she gets to play her match under a roof. 

"Did you get caught in the rain this morning? When did it start?"  

"About half an hour ago," Gwayne tells her. She wonders if the onset of the downpour is what woke her up. "Very almost did, but Rhaenyra rescued me off the doorstep in time." 

Alicent twizzles in her seat, pushing back against the counter to fuel the spin. "That’s good of her." 

"She was very helpful in surprising you. Excellent being in cahoots with her, as always." He places a mug in front of her. Alicent remembers when Rhaenyra hadn’t liked Gwayne. The slow transformation into mutual fondness as they all got older, once they’d been able to start using Gwayne as a taxi service. "There you go, Your Highness." 

"Thanks," she says, curling her fingers around the mug. It’s one meant for coffee, not a tea cup, and she knows Rhaenyra would have something to say about it if she walked in. The distinction between them and its importance is one entry in a library of strong opinions she holds, seemingly purely for the opportunity to express them, and have them be known.  

"I wanted to come see you in Birmingham, for the final. I’m sorry I couldn’t." Gwayne’s demeanour dims. "I’m sorry I haven’t, since Dad—" 

"It’s alright. Not like I haven’t been out of the country most of the time anyway. Besides," she adds, raising her eyebrows. "Probably for the best, in Birmingham. Would’ve been a wasted trip." Gwayne kicks her quite hard in the shin. "Ouch, okay— my body is my livelihood, actually—" 

"Wouldn’t’ve been wasted," her brother insists. "It was a shame about Rhaenyra, though. Probably would’ve made a miracle happen to make that final— I’m still so pissed I wasn’t there for that one in Adelaide. Greatest tennis match of all time, probably." 

"Says the man who doesn’t watch any women’s tennis, unless it’s me playing. Misogynist." 

"I watch Rhaenyra sometimes?" 

"I still think that means you’re biased in your assessment, probably." 

"Come on. That was a really fucking good match." 

"It was," she concedes, remembering the trophy and the crowd and the way Rhaenyra had looked across the net. "And," she admits. "It was a shame. In Birmingham. I was pretty sad about it, actually." 

"At least whatever it was— her wrist?— didn’t end up serious. I mean, Eastbourne, duh, but I caught some of her highlights the other day too. Couldn’t watch live obviously, because it clashed with yours—" 

"Yes, yes, you’re an excellent brother." 

"She’s playing well. If I weren’t backing another horse—"   "Always comes back to horses with you, doesn’t it?" She makes the joke, but there’s a wormy feeling in her chest, a quiet, nagging voice at the back of her head. "It’s quite lucky, don’t you think? About her wrist being better." 

Gwayne doesn’t seem to pick up on her unease— the way she’s fishing, wondering if maybe he finds anything a little suspicious in it too, like Harrold had. "Well, that’s Rhaenyra for you, isn’t it? Victim to an utter catastrophe every few years and the rest of the time everything slides into place for her." 

"Yeah," Alicent agrees, feeling stupid and guilty for even letting the absurd thought surface. "But go on, let’s talk about you. I haven’t seen you since the opening— how’s the school, how’s Charlie?" 

Gwayne takes his leave when they’ve finished their drinks, promising to see her later— he’s going to get breakfast with a friend who lives locally before heading to the AELTC, getting out of her hair while she preps for her match. Just wanted to see her right away, because he missed her, and hadn’t wanted to throw a curveball at her by appearing without warning in her player’s box. Apparently he’s all sorted on accreditation, because Rhaenyra had called up last night and put him on her list, in case traffic was bad and he didn’t make it here on time this morning. 

She’s showered and dressed when there’s a knock on her bedroom door. At Alicent’s leave, it opens, Rhaenyra popping her head around the frame. For a moment, Alicent feels nothing but achingly fond at the sight of her, grateful for her part in Gwayne’s surprise. Then she registers the apprehension on her face: the crease in her brow, the flickering corner of her mouth, and everything is complicated again. 

"Can I come in?" 

"Your house, isn’t it?" Alicent says lightly, but Rhaenyra doesn’t move. "Of course you can. Since when do you knock?" 

Immediately she regrets the question, with its obvious answer: since you started being a total weirdo. 

"Maybe I’m learning manners in my old age," Rhaenyra suggests, stepping in and closing the door behind her. She leans against it, hands behind her back. "Anyway. My house, maybe, but your bedroom." 

"Did you need something?" 

"Just to say the car taking me over will be here in fifteen. We can drop you off at yours on the way if you’ll be ready?" 

"Oof, thanks, yeah. The rain." 

"The rain," Rhaenyra agrees, and lingers, watching Alicent twist her hair back in a bun.  

They both speak at once: 

"Lucky we’ve both got a roof, isn’t it—" 

"Why didn’t you tell me?" 

Alicent blinks. "Rhaenyra…" 

"I mean, you lied. I was trying not to push, but— you said there was nothing—" 

"I didn’t lie," Alicent cuts in to correct. "I said I had nothing to talk to you about. I don’t." 

"Alicent," Rhaenyra says with a scoffing impatience. There’s a note of disdain to it, as though Alicent couldn’t possibly mean it, and she’s wasting Rhaenyra’s time by pretending otherwise. 

"Rhaenyra," she echoes. The entitlement irks her. "I mean it. I don’t want to talk about this with you. I would’ve, if I did."  

"Why not?" 

"Because."  

"Because what?" 

"Because," Alicent says, finally. "It’s really none of your business, is it?" 

Rhaenyra stares at her, a hand sliding out from behind her back to land on the door knob. It twists, and the hinges creak, a gap appearing at the jamb. 

"I guess not."  

Alicent shuts her eyes for a second, exhales through her nose, unable to watch Rhaenyra leave looking so wounded. "Okay, wait—" 

"What’s in there?" Rhaenyra, having turned to leave, pokes with her toe at the duffel bag Alicent placed there the night before to be picked up on her way out. "You didn’t have a bag yesterday." 

"Nothing," Alicent says, too quickly.  

"It’s full." 

"Nothing important. Just— y’know. Stuff."  

"Oh," Rhaenyra says, then. She’s looking at the open wardrobe and its near-emptied shelves. "Fair enough," she adds, still staring. "Your things, aren’t they?"  

Smiling thinly at Alicent, she turns to leave. "Quarter to, the car will be here." 

"Rhaenyra—"  

She stops immediately. "Yeah?" 

Sorry. I’ll put them all back. I’ll tell you all about how it went with my dad.  

"Thanks for Gwayne." Alicent hopes desperately Rhaenyra will take the olive branch. "I’m glad he’s here." 

"Sure," she says. "See you in the car." 

Alicent is through to the round of thirty-two at Wimbledon, having toppled the fifth-seed reigning champion to do so. She’s very happy about it. She is.  

She should be. 

She’s trying. 

There’s a ringing in her ears that she isn’t sure is a result of irritation or an impending migraine. It had started on her approach to the umpire after the sudden stop to the match, and intensified at some point during this post-match press interview. 

"How does it feel? Getting through to the next round against the defending champion?" 

Kind of like shit, she wants to say, sitting there and sagging at the shoulders like a deflated balloon. She makes the effort to straighten them, her father’s voice in the back of her head, lecturing her on the power of body language. 

"I’m really glad to get to play again, but of course nobody wants a match to end like that. I hope the injury is something that will resolve itself quickly and Růžičková can get back on the court soon." 

"Speaking of your opponent," the journalist carries on, Alicent sucking in a breath. Here we go. Could never even be the star of her own press conferences. "She was the favourite in the match today— how do you think her injury affected her on the court?" 

It didn’t. The whole thing was utter bollocks and terrible sportsmanship and I hope karma comes back to bite her in the arse. 

"Hard for me to say, really— I didn’t realise until she took the medical time out that there was something wrong– was trying to focus on my own game, you know?"  

It’s the most questions she’s been asked as a presser in years.  Making the third round is enough to have the British journos interested in her again and everybody else is frothing at the mouth at the dramatic end to the match. Each seems crafted to cut her, delivered off the back of a weak compliment or congratulations.  

Good job today, how do you imagine Růžičková is feeling right now?  

That was some nice tennis, do you think you can maintain this run of form? Your recent history…  

Congrats on the next round, you’ll be playing Mysaria Lys— tell us, how do you feel about that? 

Hi Alicent. Great day for the Brits! It’s well known you’re good friends with Rhaenyra Targaryen, the tournament favourite, who also won her match today— 

After the press conference, Alicent goes back to the locker room for her things. Seeing it so empty is strange, but it’s getting sort of late and the rain had written off nearly all of the day’s match play on the outer courts. Only a handful have been played on the covered show courts and all the women who’ve been part of them are allowed to use the luxury dressing rooms upstairs, except for Alicent. 

Rhaenyra is with her, and will not quit wittering in her ear about how the match ended, which happens to be the precise thing Alicent is trying not to focus on. She very desperately wants her to shut up. 

"God, I’m still so pissed off, actually. It’s such typical Růžičková. Vintage. She’s always like this," Rhaenyra complains, again, circling back even after Alicent had successfully diverted the topic to the drama in the men’s draw, where a seed had almost been disqualified for umpire abuse. Rhaenyra kicks the metal bin in the corner for emphasis: its lid clangs loudly, the body of it clattering against the wall. Alicent winces at the sound. 

Migraine, she thinks, stuffing her jumper into a racquet bag.  

Rhaenyra slumps down on a bench, huffing like she’s been wronged. 

"She did the exact same thing to me at the WTA finals last year," Rhaenyra continues. "And Mysaria said she did it when they played in Doha in February, as well." 

"And when exactly did you find the time to talk to Mysaria about this?" Alicent says, scrunching her face. "While I was with the press?" 

"I told you before. Růžičková’s been such a cow in the dressing rooms. We were having a bit of a vent about her over dinner the other night." 

"Charming thought, that," Alicent snipes. "The two of you bitching about other players." 

Rhaenyra gives her a funny look, likely recalling the many times she and Alicent have done the same. "Since when does that bother you?" 

"Look." When Alicent doesn’t follow that up with anything, Rhaenyra lifts her eyebrows and hands, as though to say I’m looking. "It’s just not necessary, alright? I won. Let’s leave it there." 

"But— you know what she’s done, yeah? She’s put this… question mark on your first top ten win in however long—" 

"Yes, thank you, Rhaenyra, for the reminder of how long it’s been—"  

And of course Alicent knows about the question mark. It’s all she can think about. Yes, she’d been commanding a solid lead, but larger advantages have been overturned, and Alicent— 

She can’t stop thinking about Birmingham. Two championship points, only to be broken at the last hurdle. How she’d crumbled from there. It might have happened again. Maybe it’s even likely that it would have— the pressure of facing last year’s winner, the raucous echo of the crowd under the closed roof, the steady pounding of the rain like blood rushing in her ears. 

But instead, Růžičková had handed the win to her and Alicent would never know if she could have done it. If she really would have pulled off the spectacular upset, playing what had felt like some of her best tennis. Whether she could have kept it up when it mattered. It shouldn’t be important— she’s through— but she can’t help but feel robbed. It might have been a turning point. 

"It isn’t fair. You literally beat the reigning champion… Playing so well, too, such gorgeous tennis, and people are talking about her instead of you. You do know she isn’t really injured. That she was just being a terrible loser?" 

"It’s whatever, Rhaenyra," Alicent tries to dismiss the topic for the umpteenth time. "I don’t want to talk about it, I told you." 

"It is not whatever," Rhaenyra grumbles. " Why am I more annoyed than you about this?"  

"I just don’t see how dwelling on it will help. Besides— for all I know, she is hurt, and then it would be me being shitty, so."  

Alicent sighs, leaning back on the bench, urging the conversation to come to an end. Looking at the clock on the wall, she closes her eyes in brief irritation at the answer it gives her. Not even eight o’clock and all she wants is to go to sleep.  

"I won," she carries on. "So it is whatever. I don’t care what people say about it. I get the money and the points. I’m through to the next round." 

Rhaenyra scoffs.   

"Come on, you don’t really believe she was being genuine," she insists. "Anyone with eyes could see she was faking. Like— a snaky MTO at a set and a break down to try and throw your momentum? And then retiring when you got another? No way, I’m not having it. She’s lucky she’s a half-decent tennis player because acting certainly isn’t her calling." She raps her fingers against the metal bench post to regain Alicent’s flagging attention. "And did I mention? That she does this all the time?!" 

"Yes, well." The ringing in Alicent’s ears grows sharper, closer. Irritation, she decides, finally. Something uglier and more resentful too, welling up from where it had been buried, tasting metallic. "I suppose you’d know about retiring with a fake injury, wouldn’t you?" 

"What?" Rhaenyra has the gall to ask, like she doesn’t know exactly what Alicent is talking about. 

"What?" Alicent echoes under her breath, with bite, and then continues more loudly. "Spare me, would you?" 

Rhaenyra stares at Alicent like she’s grown an extra head. 

"I might, if I had any clue as to what the hell you’re talking about," she says. "I’ve retired from, like, three matches in my whole career."  

The urge to fight fades into a quick regret as a horrified, horrifying dawning flickers over Rhaenyra’s face. 

Rhaenyra would never, she’d told Harrold resolutely, barely a week ago. "Rhaenyra, I’m—" Alicent tries to interject, but it’s too late.  

"You’re not—" Rhaenyra barely does more than breathe the words, like she’s unwilling to properly form them. "You can’t… You’re not fucking serious?"  

Her voice breaks as she swears, cracking into a harsh, high disbelief. She’s trembling violently, the way she always does when she’s upset, and has since she was a little girl. Emotions too big for her body.  

"You think I was faking it in Birmingham? I’d never. You must know, I’d—"  

She stops suddenly, and stiffens, the bewilderment in her expression fading to nothing, and barks out a laugh, harsh and abrupt like a seal’s.  

"You know what," she says, coldly, after a stretched out second of mutual staring. There’s a hard edge to her voice that only usually appears when she’s licking her wounds after a slam loss. "Fuck you, Alicent." 

"Excuse me?" 

"You heard me," Rhaenyra bites. "Fuck. You." 

"What—" 

"You’ve been so weird with me lately. Kind of awful, even. And I’ve been trying so hard to pretend you haven’t, that we’re normal, that we’re fine, but we aren’t. Are we? No— just shut up. I need to say this."  

Alicent snaps her mouth closed. A sense of doom falls over her; a sharp sting of retaliatory anger rises in her chest.  

You shut up, she wants childishly to bite back, balling her fists at her sides.  

Don’t do this is what she means by it. Don’t look at me. Just give me time, I’ll figure out how to be normal and then we’ll be fine, don’t poke at this, what if it all falls down— 

That’s how she’s felt, these last days, weeks, years. Like an increasingly unstable Jenga tower: the wobbling kind you have to hold your breath around because the slightest exhale might be enough to collapse it. Rhaenyra, her father, and every painful loss taking turns to poke out the blocks keeping her upright. 

"You heard me," Rhaenyra says again, with a different intonation than before. "In Eastbourne. When I tried coming out to you." 

Oh, Alicent thinks. No. No no no. 

"You only pretended not to—stop shaking your head, I felt it, don’t lie—" 

"No, I— I didn’t know what I heard. If I heard anything. You were mumbling—" 

"—and it’s like— you’ve been punishing me for it ever since!"  

Rhaenyra careens to her feet and honest-to-God stamps one of them, the sole of her trainer squeaking against the polished concrete floor. As she turns to pace, her long, fat plait flicks up behind her, swishing like a cat’s tail, hands wild in the air as she speaks.  

"I know it wasn’t necessarily something you wanted to know. But you’re my best friend, it’s not like I could keep it secret forever—" 

There’s an ache in Alicent’s throat. Her stomach hurts, too. The fluorescent lights overhead are cruelly intense and Rhaenyra still manages to look breathtaking beneath them, with her pink cheeks and shiny eyes.  

"Forever? How long have you known?" 

"God… Ages. Sixth form, some time." 

A decade. It floors her. Alicent had been braced for something painful and expected— a recent awakening. In Madrid, in April, perhaps. Mysaria Lys, gorgeous and out, laying on the charm, and Rhaenyra thinking: Oh… maybe? Yes? Yes. Yes… 

"Why," she says, reaching for her throat like it will aid her ability to speak, "did you never tell me?" 

It hurts more than the rest of it. Everything else she’d come to terms with– but that for ten years Rhaenyra’s been hanging onto a secret that she felt she couldn’t trust Alicent with…? It cuts a chasm into her perception of their closeness. What else didn’t she know?  

"Why didn’t I?" Rhaenyra repeats incredulously, eyebrows halfway to her hairline. "Because— because I was afraid of this! That you’d be all… repulsed." 

"Repulsed?" Alicent echoes, dumbly, uncomprehending. 

"Yes! Or— God. Maybe that’s not the right word, but…" Rhaenyra rubs at her face. "It makes you uncomfortable, don’t deny it." 

"Sorry," Alicent says, an expression of disbelief rather than an apology, as the realisation hits. "Sorry, are you accusing me of being homophobic?" 

"Not in general. But with this, with me, you’ve been so weird—" 

If Alicent weren’t so shell-shocked, she’d laugh. 

"—and obviously, there’s your upbringing," Rhaenyra continues. "And I know it’s different that it’s me, than say, Laenor, given our friendship has always been… intense—" 

Given, she imagines correcting Rhaenyra, that I want you so badly that sometimes it feels like I might die from it. But she doesn’t.   

"— but just because I’m bisexual, it doesn’t mean I fancy you," Rhaenyra finishes.  

It slices her open like a fish, vent to gills. Alicent’s insides sprawl invisibly across the locker room.  And Rhaenyra is still talking.  

"You didn’t have to withdraw from me like that— make it all weird just because I like women, like we weren’t perfectly fine before, like anything has even changed! It’s not— contagious, you’re not going to catch it from me—" 

"Christ, Rhaenyra, I don’t think I’m going to catch anything from you—" 

"You’re acting like it! It’s like— it’s been like you can’t stand me, half the time. I can’t do anything right, and you won’t talk to me!" 

"I’ve just been stressed," Alicent says, clinging adamantly to her refrain of the last few days. 

"Would you give it a fucking rest?!" Rhaenyra says, louder now, distraught.  

"I’ve seen you every day since then," Alicent argues. "Obviously I can stand you. You’re being dramatic." 

"Dramatic?!" Rhaenyra says, voice highly pitched. "I’m dramatic? When you literally threatened to quit tennis?" She stops to scoff, fists tightly clenched at her sides. "You spent a whole practice just— abusing me for no reason. You got back in touch with your cunt of a father, and didn’t tell me. You had strawberries without me on the first day—"  

Alicent finds herself staring. A cold sensation is creeping down her scalp, like she’s had an egg cracked over her head. 

Rhaenyra flushes. Distinct splotches appear on her cheeks like a painted doll.  

"Don’t look at me like that, like that’s silly to be upset about, just because it sounds—" She gulps down a breath, fists shaking. "It isn’t." 

She spins her clenched hands at her sides, taut little circles, winding herself up like a watch. With every turn the tension builds in her shoulders, chest rising and falling more violently. She’s almost shouting when she carries on, Alicent wide-eyed under the barrage. 

"And with your jumpers, this morning! Like— actual years, I’ve had some of them. And there’s suddenly something wrong with it, now that you know! And you flinch if I even mention Mysaria, like you’re disgusted at the thought of me—" 

"So you are with her then." The interruption lurches out of her, hot and demanding, before Alicent knows what she’s doing. Everything feels like it’s pulsing— her head, her heart, her lungs. "Mysaria," she clarifies uselessly. She utters the name like it’s her own dismal prognosis, with a defeated finality. 

It’s humiliating how she can’t stop herself from verifying. From thinking about it. The two of them in their matching kits, then nothing at all, somewhere between a nightmare and an erotic fantasy.  

"No. I mean, we have…we were—" Rhaenyra halts, then turns on her heel to look back. "That is so besides the fucking point!" 

"You’re right," Alicent says, blisteringly hurt. Her skin feels too tight, like she might burst out of it. "That is so besides the point. Everything you said is besides the fucking point. Have you ever considered," she continues, advancing on Rhaenyra and shoving a finger into her chest,"that not everything is about you?" 

"It fucking feels like it," says Rhaenyra, unrepentant. "It feels like it’s about me." 

"Of course it does. You think the whole bloody planet revolves around you, and expect everyone else to just— get with the programme."  

"Then what?" Rhaenyra challenges, folding her arms across her chest. "What is it about, then?" 

"Can’t it just be about me? I understand you’re very busy worrying about where you’re going to find a fourth slam title," she says bitterly. "But my life has kind of gone to shit lately. So yes, actually. I have been stressed! You know— between my inability to win a tennis match and my father disowning me a few months ago!"  

Her voice cracks at the memory. Rhaenyra lunges in with the same earnest reassurance she’s been offering unsolicitedly for years. 

"You don’t need him—" 

"He’s my dad! I want him in my life—"  

"He disowned you!" 

"I don’t know how to talk to you anymore," Alicent confesses. Miserably, she watches Rhaenyra sway back like she’s been shoved. "You don’t get any of it. You’re brilliant. You win. Everybody loves you." 

"What am I supposed to do?" Rhaenyra says, archly. "Start throwing my matches?" 

"Fuck off," Alicent says. 

"No, I’m serious." She laughs breathlessly, with a furious giddiness. Amidst it all, the sound still makes Alicent dizzy. "You’re in a bit of a rut so now the last fifteen years mean fuck all?" 

"I am not," Alicent says fiercely. "In a ‘a bit of a rut’. This is exactly what I mean when I say I can’t talk to you. You can’t face up to the reality that you have left me behind, so we only ever talk around it, like it's a blip. It’s not! It’s my actual life. It has been for years!" 

"So catch up. Fucking hell." Rhaenyra says, like it’s easy, just because it had been for her. She presses her hands against her eyes. "I don’t know what I’m supposed to say." 

"Don’t then," says Alicent.  

"Right, right, of course– because you can’t stand talking to me, anyway!" 

"That is not what I said–" 

"Did you really believe it?" Rhaenyra cuts in abruptly. "About Birmingham? Or were you just being awful?"  

"I–" Alicent hesitates. She doesn’t know. "It’s not exactly far-fetched," she says finally. Whether or not she believed it, it was believable in the objective sense. "That you’d take pity on me." 

"I didn’t. I wouldn’t. My wrist really was injured, still is a bit really and— come on, Alicent. We’ve known each other forever. You know me! I’d never!" 

"Maybe we don’t anymore," says Alicent. She thinks of the tour and how achingly lonely it’s been these last couple of years. She thinks of all the things they haven’t told each other. "Know each other." 

"So talk to me! You can talk to me."Alicent snorts. Rhaenyra frowns. "You can. Even if it’s about your dad, or something stupid like quitting tennis. I told you earlier, I’ll always try—" 

"It’s not that," Alicent says. "It’s just a bit rich, is all." 

"What do you mean?" 

"Nothing," she says. 

"Alicent." 

"Ten years?" It pounces out of her, from where it had been lying in wait. "You’re gay. You’ve known it for ten years. You never told me. But for me not to share my every thought is some kind of— thought crime against you." 

"I knew it," Rhaenyra says, with an immediate, vindicated triumph that sends Alicent into a scoff. "I knew you were being weird." 

"Because you kept it a secret!" Alicent exclaims. "For ten years! I couldn’t go two days without telling you about Diana’s job offer." 

"I was scared." 

"Because you think I’m a homophobe—" 

"Because I didn’t want anything to be different!"  

"Grow up," Alicent says, a heated feeling rising in her like a tide. "Grow up, Rhaenyra. Not everything can be the same as when we were younger." 

"Why not?" Rhaenyra asks. "Why can’t it be? 

"It was nice yesterday," she insists. "When we were watching the film. Wasn’t it? The nicest it’s been lately? And that was the same." 

Alicent remembers her body head-to-toe on fire, like a multi-wick candle sparked to life by Rhaenyra’s breath on her stomach. How she spent the last half of the film unable to breathe, watching Rhaenyra watch the screen.  

Nice, Rhaenyra called it, damning Alicent with faint praise. Her Year Six teacher would have scratched through it and told her to remember her vocabulary words. Alicent has a thousand alternatives to nice. Torturous, devastating, sublime.  

"Nice," Alicent echoes hollowly. She supposes it’s true. It doesn’t stop her stomach churning. 

"I can’t do this," she realises out loud, her anger cleaving in half. She lets out a sudden dry, sob. "I can’t pretend anymore. I can’t be friends with you the way we were. We need to accept that we've grown apart… that it’s not sustainable to— keep acting otherwise." 

"Alicent?" Rhaenyra says, almost baffled, like she’s trying to work out where the joke is. "Be serious." 

"I am." 

"No," Rhaenyra denies. "You aren’t. You have to be joking." 

"You were saying to me yourself the other day change can be good," Alicent points out. "We’ll always be friends, Rhaenyra. Like," she swallows, "like family. But—" 

"No," she says. "No. Alicent?" 

"I’m sorry—" 

"You know you haven’t said you love me back?" Rhaenyra says, trembling. "Since I told you?" She stops and looks at Alicent, expectant and fearful in equal measure.  

"Would you look at me?" Rhaenyra begs. "Please, Alicent. Look at me." Alicent doesn’t. She closes her eyes and sits silently. "Please. 

"Fuck you," she says after a time, voice hard. "Seriously?" 

On the bench slat next to Alicent, she can feel the residue from an old sticker under her fingertips. She scratches at it until the gummy paper comes away under her nail and the wood is smooth again. Taking a deep breath, she opens her eyes. 

"Look, it’s not that big of a deal," she lies. 

" Not that—" Rhaenyra’s voice cracks incredulously.  

"Obviously I love you," Alicent relents, finally, much more easily than she expected. It doesn’t sound like the confession she feared.  

"Not like I love you," Rhaenyra says. "Or you wouldn’t do this." 

No, Alicent thinks. More. Too much. So I have to. 

"I’m not doing anything. I’m just— acknowledging that our old friendship doesn’t fit anymore, we’ve grown out of it—" 

"You’re breaking up with me!" Rhaenyra almost howls.  

It isn’t true. They aren’t together to be able to break-up. Except it does feel like it, Alicent realises. A fifteen year relationship, reduced.  

"I suppose I am," she says, with the heaviness of an ending. "It doesn’t— please, Rhaenyra, it doesn’t have to be a bitter one. I still want to be friends." 

"You’re bitter," Rhaenyra retorts. Her voice, her eyes are diamond edged. "You’re jealous. That’s why you’re doing this. You can’t handle that you’re a—"  

She inhales sharply. "You’re a fucking loser, Alicent. 

"Do you want me to be sorry? That I’m better than you. Would that make you feel better?" Her lips twist into a facsimile of a smile. "You can even have one of my AO trophies if you like. I’ve got a spare! Would you be able to talk to me then?" 

The blood rushes in Alicent’s ears like the screaming of a kettle. She wants to argue or defend herself or beg her to stop, but even metres apart it’s like Rhaenyra has her fist around her windpipe.  

You’re a fucking loser. I’m better than you. How long has she been waiting for Rhaenyra to realise exactly that? 

"This is so typical of you, actually," Rhaenyra says, with a brutal, simmering pleasantness. Like one of the bitchy, popular girls at school who’d smile prettily while cutting you to the bone. "To just write something off when faced with a little bit of adversity. Us. Your matches. Tennis, on the whole. God, it’s like you’re addicted to being miserable."  

Her eyelashes flutter as she blinks rapidly, like she’s clearing her vision and seeing Alicent as she really is for the first time.  

"Rhaenyra, please—" 

"You’re pathetic." 

Motion sensored lights tick on overhead as Rhaenyra walks away across the huge locker room. Alicent watches each burst to life when Rhaenyra comes close. She wonders how long she’ll be sitting here alone before the one above her goes dark. 

Rhaenyra stops in the doorway to look back. For a moment Alicent thinks she’s going to say something that will miraculously fix whatever the hell has just happened, undo what Alicent said, untwist the knife she lodged between her ribs in retaliation.  

"We aren’t family, Alicent," she says. "We never have been. And you’re not my fucking friend either." 

You’re no daughter of mine, her father had told her. It’s been bouncing around her skull for months, leaving nothing untouched.  

You’re not my friend, Rhaenyra says, and eclipses the worst moment of her life, swallowing it whole. 

Chapter Text

 Alicent is out of milk.

This is a rare occurrence. It’s unusual for her to be missing anything important, thanks to the running mental inventory she keeps of her fridge and cupboards. But this morning she had opened the fridge door to its glaring absence. She can safely assume the reason: Gwayne’s penchant for munching through a vat of cereal before bed, which will apparently never die, despite the fact his student days are so far behind him that it’s frankly embarrassing. 

Worst of all, because it’s milk that she’s missing, Alicent has to go to the shop before even having had a cup of tea; the disruption of her morning ritual feels like an act of violence. An extra kick in the teeth awaits her at the corner shop in the form of the shelves of the fridge, which are frustratingly bare, save for a couple of gargantuan four-pinters kicking around at the back. The ones that Alicent has never been able to comprehend the point of, because surely nobody is getting through those before they turn sour. But then she remembers not everybody is perennially, achingly single.

Half-heartedly, Alicent considers going to the Big Tesco. Not much farther to walk, but always for some reason an absolute nightmare on Friday mornings—just crawling, like all the local mums had come together for a forum on when to do the weekly shop, so now all of them flock there at once. Deciding she can’t be arsed to deal with the melée, Alicent picks one of the massive bottles up. She hefts the weight resentfully before tucking it more securely under her elbow. If she ends up pouring it down the sink, all gross and curdled, then so be it. Or else, she imagines, in an attempt to cheer herself up—she could sit Gwayne down in front of a reservoir’s worth of bran flakes and force him to get through every last spoonful, looming menacingly behind him and mocking his protests. Like that scene in Matilda with the chocolate cake. It would serve him right for finishing her milk off to begin with. 

The fantasy falls away as she turns down the aisle leading to the counter. The shopkeeper, grinning, greets her by name. 

“Alicent! Good morning! I saw your match yesterday.”

“Hiya, how are you? Lovely morning out, isn’t it?”

Despite having been exchanging small talk with him for years now, Alicent doesn’t know his name. The feeling of it being too late to ask intensifies every time he stops her for a chat, so she once again doesn’t, and hopes her weak smile will adequately requite the familiarity.

“I mean, I’ll level with you. I’m more of a cricket man myself,” he carries on, like she hadn’t replied at all. “I do like Wimbledon though, tradition and all that, good for local business, ha! But not as much as my mum, she can’t get enough of it!”

“Oh, that’s nice.” Alicent nudges her items closer together on the counter, hoping that he will stop ignoring them in favour of emphatically waving his barcode scanner around his head, like he’s batting at invisible bees. If he’s going to insist on drawing her into small talk, he can at least get on with his job and honour the actual purpose of the interaction at the same time. 

“Yep! That’s actually how I ended up watching you. She sat on her TV remote yesterday so I had to go round and put it back on BBC One for her—she’s never been able to work the telly out, bless her.  So said I’d stay for a cuppa, and suddenly there you were! Got so sucked in, I stayed for dinner, too.”

”Really,” she demurred. Usually Alicent can appreciate his sincere friendliness a little better than this. But seriously. It’s London. Service with a smile should be the upper limit of courtesy. Keeping up her own smile, polite and frozen, is hurting her cheeks. She considers it penance for her uncharitable lack of tolerance this morning. Even through her irritation she feels guilty; he’s only being friendly, she futilely reminds herself, no less on edge for it. “How funny.”

“Innit!” he cheerfully agrees. “And when I told her I knew you, she wouldn’t believe it. She said—that’s Alicent Hightower, I’ve been watching her for years. And I said—well, she and Rhaenyra Targaryen are in my shop all the time, every summer and over Christmas—“ 

He must finally catch onto her growing impatience, because he stops mid-flow with a shrug. “Well, it’s just funny, isn’t it. Or maybe not. Probably you know more people on the telly than I do. I’ve just got my two favourite tennis players.” He stops again, and then: “Baklava?”

Alicent frowns at the nonsequitur. ”What about it?”

He blinks and considers her for a moment, like he is trying to work out whether she’s stupid. “Do you… want some? Special occasion, isn’t it? Big surprise win last night, something to celebrate? I thought—I mean, the commentary… and then Clare Balding was practically frothing at the mouth talking about it after.”

”Oh, right,” she says, blinking back. “Baklava. Yes. True. I suppose it was.” She hesitates. “I’ll have a tray then, yes.”

Really, it was Rhaenyra who had been insistent on marking special occasions and celebrations with the fresh baklava they sell here. Alicent’s never been sure if it’s made by family, or if it’s shipped in from somewhere and the packaging just happens to be very nondescript. But it is excellent. And maybe she does deserve a treat. After all, she had been playing very well yesterday, regardless of how the match ended. 

“These are on me, by the way.” The owner waved the clingfilmed tray of pastries in the air before popping them into a bag for her. ”Tell Rhaenyra I said hi, would you? And congrats to you both! Mum said she won as well, but I missed that one.”

She hums. Polite, but without committing to his request. “Thank you,” she says. “That’s very kind.”

Bell ringing over the door as she steps back out into the street, Alicent blows air through her cheeks. She attempts not to dwell on the likelihood that, having unconjoined herself, she might never tell Rhaenyra ‘hi’ for someone ever again.

It’s a very nice morning out. The kind where one can step outside and forget they’re in dreary England, because the air is sweet and balmy and it smells like summer holidays. It rankles a bit. Because, well—it’s a bit insulting, really, that the universe decided the dissolution of her and Rhaenyra’s friendship wasn’t worth marking with even a touch of pathetic fallacy. She should be trudging under a grey sky, or persevering through a summer storm. As it is, the sky is blue and the birds are singing, and even this early the streets are starting to get busy.

Alicent rolls her shoulders as the sun’s warmth settles pleasurably across them. Maybe it’s a different kind of sign from the universe, she decides, pushing them back and standing tall. 

Alicent Hightower and Rhaenyra Targaryen are no longer friends—still the world turns. Still life goes on. 

“Jesus wept,” Alicent mutters to herself as she turns the corner onto her street, having been allowed about five hundred metres of tranquility before having her new, tentative sense of peace tested. And then, louder, as she gets closer: “Go away, Rhaenyra.”

Rhaenyra turns around with a start, from where she’d been standing at the foot of steps to Alicent’s building, staring up at it. In her hands are two to-go cups from Alicent’s favourite cafe.

 “Alicent!” she calls out, with a false, fluorescent brightness. “Hi.” 

 She looks awful. Sallow. The shadows under her puffy, red-rimmed eyes are darkly bruised. It reminds Alicent of when they were nineteen and Rhaenyra had gotten her nose broken in a particularly violent game of rounders. 

“You look like you’ve been mugged,” Alicent says, before she thinks better of it. As soon as it leaves her mouth, she regrets it—not because it isn’t true, or because it makes Rhaenyra wince, but because she shouldn’t be engaging at all. She should go inside without another word, before Rhaenyra can start looking at her like—exactly like that. Rhaenyra likes to accuse her of being all eyes, then underestimates the effect of her own, catching the light, captivating as sea glass.

“You look—lovely. As always.” 

Rhaenyra delivers the compliment earnestly and with a smile, obviously intending for it to placate Alicent. It does not. Rather, it badly pisses her off that Rhaenyra would just show up at her door like nothing happened, all charming and contrite, and so flatteringly discomposed—

Alicent grinds her teeth together and looks to the sky in an appeal for strength. She does not need this this morning.  She refuses to do it. Unsuccessfully, she attempts to push past Rhaenyra, who doesn’t budge an inch, stubbornly blocking the steps up to the door. 

“Celebrating something?” Rhaenyra asks conversationally, tilting her head at the blue plastic bag hanging from the crook of Alicent’s elbow, the white polystyrene tray poking out the top of it.

Alicent can’t help it. She scoffs in exasperation. ”Yes! A nice quiet morning with nobody accosting me on my doorstep.”

”So much for that,” Rhaenyra says wryly, frustratingly letting herself in on a joke intended as a jab. “Best laid plans, and all—“

”Move,” Alicent says impatiently. “Get lost, I’m serious, let me through.”

Rhaenyra’s demeanour changes then, having apparently decided that ignoring the fact they had left things on decidedly awful terms the night before shouldn’t be her strategy du jour. All at once, it’s like the sun leaches out of her, bravado turning blue. In the next moment she is much smaller and younger-looking, and even harder to resist. 

“Alicent,” she says, much more beseechingly, with a weight that was missing before. Her shoulders sag, chin tilting down in supplication, as she comes at Alicent from another angle. “I’m so sorry about last night. Really, truly.” She holds out a cup. “Peace offering? They’re still hot. Or warm, at least. Can we please talk about it?”

Squaring her shoulders, Alicent ignores the offered drink. “No.” 

Despite this being exactly what she had intended to say, a part of Alicent is surprised to actually hear it spoken out loud. When it comes to denying Rhaenyra something, her convictions have been historically prone to getting lost on their way out of her mouth.

”Please?” Rhaenyra counters, somehow even more imploringly than before. “We need to talk, you know we do. And you wouldn’t answer your phone.”

“Maybe you need to talk,” Alicent says. “I’m all good, actually. So if you’d just let me past, thanks—”

It’s frankly unfair, the pathetic look Rhaenyra turns on her then. It can’t be contrition, no matter how prettily she plays at it, no matter how she prostrates herself. Despite the impression she’s giving, gentle as a hand smoothed over sand, Rhaenyra bulldozes over Alicent as forcefully as ever.

“I really am so sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t have said anything last night, with your match going how it did. Let alone all those things I don’t even believe.”

“Oh? Which parts didn’t you believe?” Alicent shoots back primly. “Out of the observation that I’m a jealous, pathetic, homophobic loser?”

“Any of it,” Rhaenyra says, with an unbearably hangdog expression. “Or—not like that. Not how I said it.”

Alicent is sure her face twists into one of derision. Rhaenyra had said it all pretty straightforwardly. “How did you mean it then? No—“ she interrupts Rhaenyra before she can answer, changing her mind. She won’t fall for Rhaenyra’s bait. “Actually, save it, it doesn’t even matter.”

“I don’t get it,” Rhaenyra says, chin lifting and frustration starting to seep into her voice. “We can talk. We can fix it. You said not talking was the problem! So let’s start!” 

“Would you listen? I don’t want to ”

“Look—can we just—“ Rhaenyra holds out one of the cups again, insistently. Alicent shoves her hands in her pockets. “Come on, Alicent!“ 

“Keep your peace offerings, Rhaenyra,” she says tiredly. “There’s no point—it’s done, it’s for the best. Let’s both move on with our lives.”

“No!” 

Until then, they’ve both maintained a polite volume, but Rhaenyra half-shouts her refusal. Then when she speaks again, it is quieter than it was even before, like she doesn’t trust her own voice and is overcompensating for it, though it remains very urgent.

“You are my friend, you are. My best friend.” Her hand comes to Alicent’s elbow. Alicent shakes it off. “Please, Alicent! I’m sorry!”

“I don’t care.”

“Stop it!”

“Stop what?” 

Rhaenyra gestures so wildly at Alicent that liquid sloshes out of the cups and over her hands. The drinks must have cooled enough not to scald, or else she’s so distracted as not to react to the heat. “Pretending. Acting like you’re fine with this. Like this is okay.” 

“I’m not pretending,” says Alicent.

Tears well up in both of Rhaenyra’s eyes at once, hovering in streams at her water line before bursting their banks, slightly out of sync. Alicent watches them race to the bottom. 

In another life, a day or a week ago, Alicent would have stepped forward to wipe them away. Watching her best friend cry and doing nothing about it feels like anathema, like the violation of a sacred oath. Maybe it is. One that she had made a very long time ago, at their second ever sleepover, when she wrapped her pinkie finger around Rhaenyra’s and promised they would be friends forever.

Rhaenyra wipes her tears away herself, pressing the backs of her fists against her face, leaving them there as she speaks again. 

“I understand why you’re angry,” she says shakily. “I’ll go away. I’ll leave you alone for a bit. But please, please just tell me we’ll be okay first. That you don’t completely hate me.”

The easiest thing for Alicent to do would be to give in: I know you’re sorry, me too, of course we’ll be okay. She could slip very comfortably back into Rhaenyra’s chokehold. But it would be temporary. Her resentment would fester indeterminately before rising up again, like a hydra with a new and more venomous head. It would be worse for them both in the long run, to let the rot keep growing. Cauterisation is all there is for it.

“It’s not that I hate you,” Alicent explains, and Rhaenyra lowers her hands a little bit. She peers blearily out from behind them, a trace of hope starting to form on her face that Alicent cannot emotionally afford to let grow. She tramples it hurriedly underfoot, like a cigarette dropped ill-advisedly at a petrol station. “It’s that I meant everything I said last night.”

Rhaenyra’s brow furrows, lips parting a little stupidly, like she’s trying to work out what that means. As if Alicent hasn’t been telling her.

“I’m done,” she clarifies. “Not because of what you said. Because of what I said. And the truth is,” she swallows hard, then speaks clearly, unwaveringly, and in a way, it’s as honest as she’s ever been. A confession of sorts. “The truth is I haven’t wanted to be your friend in a very long time.”

Rhaenyra gawks. The word, though its ugliness would normally preclude her from associating it with Rhaenyra, is the only one Alicent can think of to describe it—the slack, shocked opening of her mouth. The flare of her nostrils. The incredulous lack of comprehension in her eyes as they roam Alicent’s face; whatever she’s looking for, she must not find it. She sucks in a breath, shoulders coming up to her ears like the air was pulled right into them. For a moment she looks ready to burst. And then she does.

“One stupid fight and sixteen years is just—nothing?! I mean, what are you even talking about?” Rhaenyra shouts, very indignant, even as her voice cracks. “You’re lying. If being my friend was so—so fucking unbearable, then why—we were fine until recently—maybe there was some stuff we should have talked about more, but we were fine. You were reaching out to me!“

She’s trembling again, Alicent notices, as she always notices, given half of her brain has long been given over to taking in the most frivolous details about her. 

(She’s not wearing her watch, and there’s a set of red lines over her throat where her nails have scratched over her own skin, and she must have changed the laces in her shoes, because the aglets aren’t frayed like they were when she wore them on Monday.)

Yesterday, this awareness had made everything more difficult as she registered every facet of Rhaenyra’s woundedness. But there’s something sickly thrilling in seeing her desperation now. Alicent has set her course, gone against Rhaenyra’s wishes, and Rhaenyra has already said aloud all of the things that could hurt her most. 

It is the first time in a very long time, if ever, that Alicent feels she’s the one with the upper hand between the two of them. It stirs something ugly inside of her, which seizes on her frustration—her need for this to be over with, for this conversation she’d been trapped in to be brought to an end. And maybe she wants to hurt Rhaenyra too. For what she said last night, yes, but unfairly or not, her anger is more than that. It’s the black spots on her love for Rhaenyra—seeds of spite parasitising her heartache. They’ve never quite sprouted, but she feels the lumps of them sometimes, like peas buried under a pile of mattresses. Wasn’t it an injustice? Rhaenyra made Alicent fall in love with her, then didn’t follow her into it. Alicent would have gladly gone with her anywhere.

“What was it you said?” she asks, head tilting as she recalls the pleasantness with which Rhaenyra had eviscerated her the night before. That tone isn’t quite what she achieves. She sounds too tired and too sour for that. All the same, it bites. Slowly, she taps her chin in false contemplation. “Right, yes, I remember!” 

In the back of her mind, there’s a voice telling her not to say it. As she finishes the thought, she wonders if Rhaenyra had ignored a similar one yesterday.  

A tight, vicious smile. “I’m addicted to making myself miserable.”

Rhaenyra flinches. The movement shudders through her whole body, and this time, when Alicent pushes past her, it’s easy. Arms limp at her sides, she bows to the pressure of Alicent’s shoulder with all the rigidity of a curtain.

Alicent climbs the steps to the front door. Just as she turns her key in the lock, Rhaenyra softly calls her name. She looks back around, despite herself, and notices how pale Rhaenyra’s flushed face has turned. 

One of the cups sits on the first step. Instead, Rhaenyra is holding out the tray of baklava, staring at it like it might grow teeth.

”It fell out of the bag,” she says, lamely, looking up.

“Ah,” Alicent says, hovering awkwardly, her escape foiled.

“I didn’t realise—” Rhaenyra starts, and then stops, as Alicent comes back down the path. Her voice is awful. Small. Somehow very flat and very earnest at once, slow like she’s struggling to say anything at all. For a moment, when Alicent reaches to take it from her, both of their hands on the packaging, she doesn’t let go. “I really am sorry then. For all of it. I didn’t know.”

Rhaenyra crumples, suddenly, folding into herself. And then she turns and leaves, steps gaining speed as she retreats. She’s jogging by the time she turns the corner. Alicent stares at the spot where she disappears. A queasiness begins to stir, somewhere deep in her chest; she turns back and goes inside, swallowing the feeling down.

“Early start for you,” Gwayne says, coming into the kitchen just as she’s filling the pot with boiled water. He nods to the shopping bag on the countertop. “Been up and at ‘em already?’

She turns for a moment to glare balefully at him. “Someone finished all the milk yesterday evening. Without considering that his sister—who is very kindly putting him up for the week—might quite like a cup of tea in the morning.”

“Sounds like a right twat,” Gwayne says, in what is apparently as much as she is going to get by way of apology. 

“Although,” he adds. “Also. Also, in his defence—somebody else probably told him that she was going to swing by the shop on her way home from her match and pick up some more. And then didn’t. And unfortunately, by then he had probably already gotten into his PJs and eaten his cornflakes. So.”

“Right,” Alicent says. “Well.”

“Truce?”

“Fine,” she says. “Do you want coffee?”

Alicent starts making it before he can answer—somebody has to drink the stuff she bought the other day. The brand new packet she takes out of the cupboard has a map of Guatemala on the front, at least until she goes to open it: when she does, the foil splits halfway down, bisecting the country and spilling coffee grit over her countertop. 

Gwayne winces, pulling air through his teeth sympathetically.

“They have got to come up with a better design for coffee packets,” says Alicent. Despite her best efforts at nonchalance, it comes out strained. “And for rice. Don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Gwayne agrees readily. “Total nightmare.”

He abandons the doorpost he had been leaning on to take a couple of steps forwards, only to halt awkwardly in the midst of her overgrown strelitzia. 

 “I should probably ask whether you’re alright,” he says. Then, when she very reasonably doesn’t answer what wasn’t even a question, he rolls his eyes at her, and follows up with a great deal of exasperation. “Are you alright?”

She spoons coffee into the cafetière, then tops it up with what remains in the kettle. It’s just more than enough. “Yes,” she says. “I’m grand, ta.” 

An exhale through his nose. “Alicent…”

“Gwayne.”

“Oh, come on. Am I really supposed to pretend I didn’t hear you crying last night?”

“Yes,” Alicent says tersely. “Clearly. That is very obviously what I wanted you to do, so—“

Gwayne folds his arms over his chest. “Well. Tough. I’ve brought it up now.”

There really was no mercy for her today, she thought ruefully. 

“I’d rather not get into it,” she argues weakly, though she possesses little hope that her brother will let it go; he possesses a chronic, odious concern for her well-being.

“Tough,” he repeats, staring her down. Refusing to budge, much as she expected. 

Unfortunately, it is an expression he inherited from their dad, which means it’s highly effective against Alicent. She tries not to twitch under it, focusing on the drinks, feeling his eyes on her all the while. When she can’t take it anymore, and no longer has the excuse of waiting for the coffee to steep, she turns back to him. In a mirror of his pose, her arms come across her chest. Distantly she wonders if the shared battle stance is nature or nurture. Her father always did it too, sitting or standing, when he watched her play. Moving her hands to her hips, Alicent purses her lips.

 “Dead set on being a bother, are you?” she says, with a despicable resignation.

“You know me,” he says, suddenly more jovial now he can sense her oncoming capitulation. “Putting the bother into brother since—what year was it you were born again?”

“Nineteen ninety-six, you twat.”

“Ah yes, since nineteen ninety-six.” 

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t fight too hard when a corner of her mouth tugs upwards. It’s brought rapidly back down as she begins to explain. “Alright, look—just… So, first of all, it’s fine, I’m fine. I had a bit of a row with Rhaenyra last night, is all.”

Gwayne looks at her skeptically.

“A bit of a row…?”

“A falling out.”

“A falling out.” He repeats her like it’s not a concept he’s heard of before. “Like that summer her cousin was down?”

“No.”

“Like that time you told on her for trying a cig?”

“No,” she says, sharply, still cross at the memory, at how stupid Rhaenyra had been to treat her lungs like that, even though she swore it was only once—

“Well then, like when—“

“Not like that either,” Alicent cuts in, before he can keep on with his laundry list of every squabble they ever had.

“Then like what?”

“Like—like nothing! Alright? You asked what it was, now you know, let’s move on. Christ.” 

Gwayne pulls a face at her sudden hostility and scoffs, looking offended and vaguely betrayed, like he used to when she would rat him out to their parents. “Well, pardon me for caring!” he says sarcastically. “Won’t make that mistake again.”

“No—“ Alicent sighs as she presses down on the plunger of the cafetière. “No, I’m—sorry. Sorry. Just grumpy. Haven’t had my morning tea yet and all that.” She pours a cup of coffee and holds it out to him, her voice deliberately, overly pleasant. “Thanks for asking. I’m not in the mood to talk about it, but I appreciate your kind concern.”

“…and I’m an excellent brother who you should be nicer to?”

“And you’re an excellent brother who finished all of my milk and shouldn’t push his luck,” she says pointedly.

Gwayne relents and ditches his pout for a grin, stepping forward to take the cup from her. With his other hand, he chucks her chin. Presumably with comforting intent, although it categorically does not improve her mood.

“Cheer up, duck. I give it until lunch before she wants to make up again.”

For a moment, she fizzes over with a feeling she can’t quite name, or work out where she’s supposed to put it. She thinks if she opened her mouth it might all pour out of her in a scream. But it dies as quickly as it came, so she doesn’t act on it at all. 

”You’ve been in the Midlands too long,” she grumbles instead, grouching at the pet name. 

“I’m in South Yorkshire, thanks. Only by about half a mile, mind, but still.” He sips his coffee, looks at her appraisingly. “Oh, you little sad sack, it’s alright! We’ll have a nice night in, I’ll make us dinner. Special pasta!” 

Alicent doesn’t know which part to object to first. She deliberates on it for half a second, and decides to let the ‘sad sack’ comment slide off her back, having recently been called much worse. Instead she focuses on the more worrying part of what Gwayne said: his threat to cook. 

“Oh God,” she says, thinking of the Frankenstein-esque pasta dish he used to cook when he babysat her. “Please do not.”

“Don’t be silly,” Gwayne chides. “You love special pasta.”

“I loved it when I was nine. My culinary tastes have since refined.” 

“Yeah?” he asks, flinging an arm out dramatically. He grasps at the handle of the refrigerator, opens it, and gestures at the contents demonstratively. “So why,” he continues pointedly, “is your fridge full of cheese strings?”

“Because,” she tells him haughtily, snatching one from the shelf before he can close the door on her hand, “because they are an easy high protein snack, and I am a professional athlete—“

“No,” he refutes, “you just like peeling them into fountains. Because you’re a little baby.” He pauses briefly and then frowns as his brain catches up with what she said. “Also, I’m literally an athlete too?”

She snorts. “Your horses are athletes, you just sit there.”

Gwayne glares at her and stands up straight, shoulders back. “Hit me in the stomach—go on, you’ll regret saying that, core of steel—“

Alicent pours her tea, steeped enough at last and doesn’t dignify his challenge with a response. Waving the little purple packet in Gwayne’s face, she pushes past him and through the foliage of her pot plant.

“Can’t risk your racquet hand!” Gwayne calls after her as she heads for the living room. She has just enough time to savour her tea, then she’ll need to get ready for training. Because she’s a real athlete. “Just like I thought—”

It really is a beautiful day out. The wisps of cloud that had threaded the sky earlier in the morning have burned away and the sunlight soaks the sky into a rich, proud blue, so intensely bright that it almost circles back around to being dark. 

Alicent is squinting up at it from under her cap, trying to place what the hue reminds her of, as she sits on a bench waiting for Harrold. Early, as usual. Spots dance across her vision as she does. Basking in the warmth has left her so lethargic that she can’t even bother to fish through her bag in search of sunglasses. It is an unfortunate state of affairs considering that she has to go and play tennis in about ten minutes. 

Alicent yawns, taken fully over by it, stretching as her jaw hinges open behind her hand. The enhanced supply of oxygen apparently does wonders for her—by the time her mouth closes, her musings have resolved themselves. 

The courts at the US Open. That’s the shade of blue. 

Her reverie is broken by a friendly voice from behind her. “Couldn’t get a practice court at the Club, either?”

“Ha, no,” she says, though in truth she doesn’t mind. Being at the National Tennis Centre instead of the AELTC is for once more of a relief than mild inconvenience; she won’t be running into Rhaenyra or her team here. “Absolute bedlam trying for a slot.”

“It’ll ease off as we go into the second week,” Criston Cole says, coming around to the front of the bench. He swings the racquet bag off his shoulder and sits down next to her.

“Got to make it there first,” Alicent deflects with a shrug. Furtively she pushes her knuckles against the wooden bench seat, embarrassed at the thought of being caught warding herself from jinxes. Then, having screwed her eyes momentarily shut to kill off the worst of the blobs in her vision, she opens them and turns to face him properly. “How are you? It’s been a while.”

“Can’t complain! All that investigation stuff we talked about before is fully out of the way now, so it’s been nice just to focus on playing again. How about you? Seems like you’re on a bit of a hot streak…”

“If you say so,” she says, with a light laugh, counting out her recent ‘achievements’ on her fingers. “Reached a final,” she said, lifting her index, “then I flunked it.“ She pushes it back down again. “Won my first two matches“ —- two fingers up — “but one was a retirement—”

Criston catches her hand before she can bring her middle finger down again.

“I caught the highlights last night, Alicent,” he says disapprovingly, forcing her to hold eye contact with him as he reassures her. “You won that fair and square. You were brilliant.”

“Well,” she says.

“Well?”

“Thanks,” she says stiffly. “I appreciate it.”

“You are truly terrible at taking compliments,” he says, shaking his head. 

“Guilty,” she says, and Criston sways into her shoulder companionably. She bumps his back, feeling fond enough to be surprised by it.

“You know,” Criston says, “I was going to reach out about playing mixed? But then Davies got in touch with me about it first, and…” He smiles a little bit apologetically. “It made sense.”

“She’s a much better doubles player than me,” Alicent admits of the British number two, who probably counted it as her primary discipline. “I don’t mind.”

“Don’t like her half as much, though,” Criston says conspiratorially. “We could do USO maybe? Unless me and her win here. Then I think I might be hitched to that wagon.”

“Maybe,” says Alicent.

It’s funny. When she made the connection between the colour of the sky and the blue courts in New York, her first thought had been that she wouldn’t be playing doubles on them after all. 

“Maybe?” Criston echoes. 

“I’ll let you know,” she says, too many feelings tangling together to work out what she actually thinks about the idea. 

“Can I try and convince you over dinner?” he asks, with his head tilted to the side like a puppy and his smile oozing charm.

“Criston…” she says warningly. They’ve been here before. “Not happening.”

“Alright, alright, I hear you.” He holds his hands up in surrender as his gaze shifts past Alicent to look into the wistful middle distance. “I mean it about the doubles, though, still. Really thought we were kind of a good team, before. It’d be nice to share a court with you again.”

Alicent frequently finds herself baffled by Criston’s nostalgia towards their relationship. When she recalls how poorly she’d been able to even pretend she was into it, it makes her wince. Towards the end, he’d tried to kiss her at crazy golf, and Alicent, without a thought, had hit him hard in the shin with her putter. At the time, registering what she’d done was mortifying—now the memory pulls a helpless chuckle out of her.

“Alright then,” he says, sounding a little put out. “Guess you don’t agree, that’s fine.”

“I’m a lesbian,” she tells him, apropos of little, admitting it now with about as much thought as she’d given the swing of her club then. “But maybe we can play doubles.”

He blinks at her.

”Sorry,” she says. “Those were two unrelated thoughts.”

“No, no,” he says. “Right you are then. A lesbian.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re not with—”

“Not with anyone,” she clarifies. His face does something odd she can’t come close to interpreting, like someone having a reaction to a hand of cards. “Nobody knows, really. If you wouldn’t mind—”

“Yeah, no, not a word from me about it, not to anybody,” he promises, a strange cheerfulness catching up with his surprise. He pats her a little awkwardly on the shoulder as he gets to his feet. “So—I’ve got to go meet my trainer. But doubles, maybe. Text me when you know.” He gets up, and looks at her for a minute, like he’s deciding something. Then he sweeps her abruptly into a hug, short but very tight. “Sorry for the flirting, then. Won’t happen again.”

For a terrible moment Alicent thinks she might cry, something warm and unnamable building in her chest. But she swallows it down, and the feeling passes. “It better not,” she says, only a little thickly. “Good luck tomorrow.”

Only when she’s alone on the bench does Alicent register the way her heart is racing. To have after years admitted it aloud to someone else—to Criston, of all people—

A secret she’d been sitting on for years. It really hadn’t been all that bad, she thinks.

When she gets home from training, Alicent wants nothing more than to stretch out on the couch and relish the slight ache of her muscles. Hitting practice isn’t usually so intense during tournaments, with the need to stay fresh, but Harrold is convinced that if she means to win her match tomorrow she needs to find a way to be more aggressive than usual. Alicent’s arguments against it—the fact he knew when he signed on that she’s a defensive player, and that the middle of Wimbledon is hardly the time for a shift in playing style—had been countered, quashed, and then gotten her in trouble.

(“—and you knew when you hired me I wanted to expand your game. I’m not saying you should make any drastic changes. Only to remember you’ve got some brawn to go with those brains of yours. Like with your backhand down-the-line. You trust that. Just give it a go.”)

If she’d done her homework before practice like she was meant to, she’d have known his plan for the session. Only she hadn’t, because said homework was watching a montage of videos of Mysaria Lys, the person she wanted to think about least in the world, and who she would have to face down tomorrow. Alicent still thinks skipping it was a fair decision given the extenuating circumstances, but she could hardly explain to Harrold why, so she only seemed ungrateful for the work he put in. To make it up to her coach, she had committed to the session of out and out ball-bashing (which had been surprisingly fun) and sworn to watch the prep when she got home (which she anticipated being just the opposite). 

Despite her reluctance, Alicent keeps her promise. She powers up her laptop, resting it precariously on the arm of the sofa, which she would never usually do. Maybe some part of her is hoping it will fall off and break to give her an excuse not to watch. No such luck; it stays frustratingly balanced as she finds the email attachment, opens it, and presses play. The video opens with a montage, a highlight reel backed by royalty-free music and Harrold's deep voice, like a teaser trailer. 

"Mysaria Lys, world number fifteen, used to play for Germany but competes now under the Argentinian flag—"

It's nothing Alicent doesn't know: in recent history— back when Alicent was one to watch, and Mysaria was largely unremarkable, knocking around the lower half of the top-100—Lys was primarily known as an inconsistent giant-killer, occasionally surfacing with a shock result. She would topple a top-seeded player at a tournament, then fizzle out again. In his voiceover, Harrold is suggesting these upsets were a sign of the player she had the potential to be, and has now apparently become. 

“Not a lot to say about your head-to-head,” Harrold says dismissively, giving Alicent’s history with Mysaria only cursory attention, “given you two only met the once and circumstances are obviously different—but briefly, for the sake of thoroughness—”

Even with the excitement factor propped up by the heady atmosphere of Stuttgart’s indoor clay, the match on her screen makes for very boring viewing. Each of them had been on the extreme defence, trying so hard to play it smart that they instead looked stupid—dull, uncreative. Alicent doesn’t recall much about it. Only that it had been very long and very tiring, and that she had scraped the win.

"We don't want a match like this tomorrow," Harrold says through the speaker, as close to disdainfully as she’s ever heard him sound about her tennis. "And I very much doubt she'll give you one, so.

“The biggest change Mysaria has made to her game since you played her,” Harrold continues, the footage changing to more recent scenes, “is that while she was always good at predicting what opponents would do—now she uses that differently. Sets up traps and then pounces, so to speak, rather than making extra balls to try to force the error.” 

Alicent can see it in what he’s showing her—Mysaria’s uncanny ability to always be in the right place for the ball, how her own placements and variations in power invite a certain kind of shot, while subtly creating pockets of space in the court for her to rocket or tap or lob a ball into, out of reach.

“Versatile,” Alicent murmurs to herself. Though the clips here are designed to be demonstrative of Mysaria at her most dangerous, the confidence across a range of shots is clear. Eights across the board, rather than tens in a couple of elements. 

“She’s got a versatile game,” Harrold agrees with her, pre-recorded, “and she’s been very consistent this season. Except—“ he laughs—“and keep your focus on Lys here, we’ll get to breaking down Rhaenyra’s game when you make the semis—“

Immediately, Alicent bristles.

Maybe his joke wouldn’t be so irritating if not for being so on the mark. If while he chuckled, her gaze hadn’t been tempted away to the wrong side of the screen. To Rhaenyra in this year’s Roland-Garros kit, sharp and cool and beautiful, in the blacks and reds she’s long favoured, that she wears on court like war paint. 

On her laptop screen, Rhaenyra serves, body coiling and uncoiling like a spring, and Alicent shifts uncomfortably, resenting how the sight makes her feel. Turned on, perverse for it. 

“Take Lys’ position on receiving serve—how she called it, rushed her, took the time away—much more aggressive than is typical, this whole match really, you’ll see—look, Rhaenyra is on the back foot right away here—“

It isn’t often Rhaenyra can be caught so far behind the baseline on her own service game. Contrary to the unreadable mask her face had been in previous clips, Mysaria is smiling. The expression is transformative. It makes her seem less untouchable, even more beautiful. Rhaenyra is sweaty and scowling as she darts behind the baseline yet again. The desperate shot she manages flies high and short; Mysaria comes in for the overhead smash as Rhaenyra rushes forward again. Instead of directing it into any of the vast amount of free space on either side of the court, she crushes it towards Rhaenyra, who can only get her racquet up in time to shield herself from the ball. It dribbles to the ground in front of her. A glimmer of something amused and admiring tugs at Rhaenyra’s mouth. Then she remembers herself, the fact she’s just lost a point, and goes back to glowering. Alicent wishes she hadn’t noticed it. 

Initially, Mysaria’s play—its gallingly poor sportsmanship—had made her angry. Rhaenyra’s reflexive, self-thwarted smile draws an ache instead, because the expression is familiar. The one Alicent sees when she manages to get a shot past Rhaenyra that she will crow about later, will continue to reference delightedly weeks or months or years after the fact: God, Alicent—remember when! 

Alicent hates that Mysaria earned that. She wishes very badly that if Rhaenyra had to choose anyone, it could’ve been someone who did not play tennis, or at least did so badly. It’s not fair that she’s found someone who apparently suits her on and off the court.

“From what I’ve seen and read,” Harrold continues to narrate, “this match was a complete departure from what she’s shown on the court before—not much Rhaenys could have done to prep Rhaenyra for it, really. A complete surprise in approach and quality. But it’s important you see it so you know she does have this kind of aggression up her sleeve. And she’s not above shithousing, so don’t let her wind you up.”

Alicent is wound up already. She skips back a couple of minutes and watches the rally again, Mysaria leading. She wonders if they were fucking already at this point. If this is what it was like when they did, or do: Mysaria dictating, Rhaenyra reacting. Or if it’s something else. Alicent shifts, folding her feet beneath her, and bringing the computer onto her lap. Her laptop is old, and the fan is running warmer and louder than it probably should, uncomfortably hot against her thighs. 

Then the red clay of Philippe Chattrier gives way to the green grass of Devonshire Park: the final in Eastbourne.

“You were there for this one, I think—” Harrold began. He carries on talking, but his words slip her attention as she focuses on the screen. 

She had been there. Every so often she glimpses herself in the background of a shot, leaning forward in her chair. 

It’s funny. She looks so impassive whenever the camera lands on her, when in her head she’d been half in rapture as she watched. Lost in admiration of the whip of Rhaenyra’s forehand, the way she slid so inadvisably yet inexplicably gracefully over the grass, the beads of sweat running down her throat, the deftness with which she wielded her racquet. Even now Alicent feels keenly, breathlessly connected to the match. In her sporadic appearances on screen, her hands seem to be resting on her thighs. In truth they had been shaking with second-hand adrenaline, and she had been pushing hard against the muscle there to keep them still. Now one palm lies flat and forceful on the base of her laptop as she leans closer, chewing at the thumbnail on the other.

Distinctly, she remembers wishing she could crawl inside of Mysaria’s skin, even then, before she’d known anything else, wanting to claim her place on the court. Just watching Rhaenyra had made her swear like she was the one over the net. Pulse racing. Blood pumping. Heart pounding.

On her laptop screen, tiny and only fractionally as beautiful as she had been in real life, Rhaenyra is playing like nobody else can. Harrold talks over it, but Alicent barely registers his voice. The narrowing of her senses is a familiar, typical phenomena. Nothing else has ever mattered much to Alicent when Rhaenyra is in front of her with a racquet.

Alicent shivers as Mysaria hits a lovely drop shot that Rhaenyra returns—a miraculous get by any measure—before springing back to cover the court. She remembers this point. Its culmination, her struggle to find breath after bearing witness to it. The perfection of it had struck her like lightning. It does now. 

Rhaenyra, even with so much ground to cover, finds her space early. The footwork that brought her there was so immaculate that Alicent, on seeing it in person, had sighed. Like a cracked whip, her hair snaps over her shoulder, from right to left. Surging one-handedly into the ball, she drives into the movement through strong legs. The strings of her racquet meet the ball in a bruising kiss. The momentum rushes through, one to the other, and the ball flies off Rhaenyra’s backhand, spinning head over heels to the far side of the court, where it bounces, inch perfect, in a painted white corner. The backboard rattles its applause.

Alicent skips back, and plays it again. And then once more. And then her finger slips, and she goes back too far, so she sits and waits and watches until she can see it again. 

“God,” Alicent says aloud to herself. The sound is strangled and startlingly loud. 

Swallowing, she closes the lid of her laptop and puts it down on the coffee table. This is why, she thinks, putting her hands on her stomach as if the pressure from them can do anything to curb what is roiling through her. Awful, irrefutable desire that is entirely beyond her control. This is exactly why Alicent cannot be her friend. She can’t even watch her play tennis.

The buzzing of the intercom startles her as she stares at her closed laptop. Not expecting anybody, she approaches her door with an unfounded caution. For a moment, her hand hovers over the receiver like it might bite. Then she realises she’s being stupid. Rhaenyra has never once bothered ringing up before letting herself into the building. Usually, she barges right into Alicent’s flat, unless she’s feeling particularly polite, in which case she might knock on the front door. 

Alicent only realises her mind has drifted when the intercom buzzes to life again and she realises she missed the first call entirely. She seizes the handset in a rushed move, unable to quite shake the foolish notion Rhaenyra has somehow sensed her preoccupation and manifested outside her flat again. 

“Hello?” she asks, weakly.

“God, you took your time answering.”  

Her shoulders sag. It’s only Gwayne. “You have my spare key, don’t you?”

“My hands are full!” he says. “Had to press your doorbell with my nose. Twice, actually. Missed the first time—the guy in the flat below you is a prick by the way, would not let me into the building. Which, speaking of—“

Alicent presses the button to let him up, and her brother’s voice is replaced by the whirring hum of the unlocking mechanism. She opens her front door too, then picks up her laptop from the coffee table and stows it back on her desk in her bedroom. Then, feeling ridiculous, she changes her mind and puts it away in one of the drawers, out of sight and hopefully out of mind. 

“—you would live up four flights of stairs, wouldn’t you? Bloody masochist.”

Gwayne, huffing and puffing, comes in the door just as she reenters the hallway. He thrusts a bright pink, pig-printed Marks and Spencer’s bag-for-life into her arms and then, with a sigh of relief, rebalances the large cereal box and two bottles of wine tucked under one of his.

“Not doing wonders for your ‘athlete’ claim,” she says, gesturing at his red-face, “with all—this.”

“So rude. All of this” — he points at the bag he gave her — “is for your dinner.”

“I’ve got a match tomorrow, you know. Not sure I can let you poison me.” He blows a raspberry at her. ”And the Cava—“

‘—is for me. I got you an Appletiser. It’ll look close enough when it’s in the glass.”

She perks up at that. It’s been ages since she last had one. Maybe since the canteen at school. ”Oooh…”

”Exactly,” Gwayne affirms, triumphantly. “Oooh.”

Credit to Gwayne, dinner is delicious in the end. He didn’t follow through on his threat of cooking Alicent’s questionable childhood favourite. Instead she's presented with a bright plate of pink salmon, vibrant green stems of broccoli, and sweet potato. She feels healthier just by looking at it, heartier for the eating of it, and happier for the company it came with. 

Afterwards, strangely embarrassed by her own gratitude, Alicent hovers in her little kitchen, watching Gwayne load the dishwasher so inefficiently it makes her wince. “Thank you for dinner,” she says, awkwardly, for the umpteenth time.

“You already said that at the table,” he says, dismissively, to her great frustration, “about twelve times. Now please— would you go and sit down? You’re making me nervous, being all” — he waved unhappily in her direction — “there.”

“No, I mean,” she tries again, taking a deep breath. “I mean, thank you, Gwayne. Really really.”

“No, yeah,” Gwayne says, in a softer voice. “Of course.” He clears his throat and points to the dishwasher, back to his usual irreverence. “I think I fucked that, by the way. You might want to—” 

He cuts himself off as Alicent laughs, already moving, itchy hands reaching to restack the mess he’d made of it.

Alicent is brushing her teeth, in better mood than she had been when she was in the same position this morning. Her day had been surprisingly bearable. The idea that early, warm spill of morning sunlight on her shoulders had been an omen to trust had dissipated upon seeing Rhaenyra on her doorstep, but Alicent was coming around to it again. ‘For the best’ was beginning to seem like it might feel true at some indeterminable point in the future, like she’d finally gotten an appointment to speak with a specialist about a long-nagging worry, a road to recovery opening up before her.

Alicent is washing her mouth free of toothpaste foam when from down the hall comes a crash, then a yelp, a cry of “Oh, fuck me!”,  and then, louder still: “Alicent! I broke something.”

“Yes,” she calls back snidely, “I have ears, thanks!” In no rush, she pats her face dry before going to assess the damage in the spare bedroom. 

Alicent is not particularly stressed, thinking there isn’t anything in there she much cares about, until she remembers the old vase of her mother’s that sits on the mantelpiece above the blocked up fireplace. Instinctively, she knows it must be that, because that would be the worst thing. As she walks down the hallway, Alicent squeezes her eyelids tightly shut, then practices schooling her expression. Gwayne didn’t mean to. He obviously didn’t mean to. 

Oh, what a shame, she imagines herself saying mildly, clasping her brother’s arm briefly in the face of his guilty consternation. It’s alright. Accidents happen.

It’s with great apprehension that Alicent opens the door, and Gwayne’s apologetic expression barely registers. She pushes past him, only realising her shoulders had bunched up around her ears when a relieved sigh brings them back to their usual position. The vase is where it normally stands on the mantelpiece, in perfect condition, home to a pretty bouquet of dried flowers.  

“You clumsy git,” she scolds him lightly, plainly relieved. She smiles reassuringly at Gwayne, then looks over the room for whatever had broken. “Alright then. What was—?” 

“Alicent?” Gwayne’s arm lands on her shoulder as she abruptly trails off, having been confronted with her answer. “I’m really sorry…” he says cautiously, almost like a question.

“No, it’s okay,” she says, brushing past him. 

A sigh of relief from behind her. “Oh, phew. Hah. Better that hideous thing than mum’s vase, hey? Might’ve broken it deliberately if I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

Beginning to tremble, she repeats herself. “It’s okay.”

Gwayne’s hand, outstretched, falls to his side. His voice becomes unnerved. “Alicent—“

“What a shame,” she says numbly. “It’s alright. Accidents happen.”

 Easing to her knees, she sinks back on her heels. The carpet is wet and sandy, sharp with glittering glass. She takes two neon green alligators in her hands. One holds a tennis racquet; the other has lost its arm. 

Alicent bursts into tears. Or rather, thinks, alarmed by the violence with which her sobs come—they burst out of her. Battering against her chest, then breaking through with a life of their own.  Gwayne kneels beside her, his arm wrapping tightly around her shoulders. 

“It’s only—“ she starts to explain, when her sobs have subsided to ragged breaths, only to promptly break down again. Half-blind from crying, a tiny and distant part of Alicent concerned with survival wonders if she might suffocate on her own snot, which bubbles out of her nose and slides back down her throat. “It’s only that—that Rhaenyra…” she stops again, gasping on her name like she’s coughing up something sharp. “She gave me that snowglobe. Rhaenyra did.”

It shouldn’t have been in here to begin with. Rhaenyra must have stolen it out of Alicent’s bedroom again the last time she was here, making what turns out to be the final move in a long-standing war: Alicent displaying it in full view, Rhaenyra, calling it an eyesore, hiding it away. Alicent doesn’t understand how she hadn’t noticed it being gone. She always, always notices, so quickly Rhaenyra laughs at her for it.

Gwayne strokes her hair.  He must be very confused, she thinks, as she barks up a miserable laugh at her own pathetic state. “I know,” he says softly, powering through his lack of context, “I remember.”

Alicent remembers too, like it was yesterday. Rhaenyra’s mad glee at showing her the ugly thing. How that had transformed it into something precious, worth emptying her bag for in the middle of Miami International Airport.

“It’s broken,” she says.

“I know.” Gwayne sounds as sorry as she’s ever heard him. “I’m really so—it was on the edge of the desk—my elbow…”

Alicent stops him, a harsh shush, unable to bear the apologies, not when—

“It’s my fault,” she confesses. “I broke it.”

“Um,” Gwayne begins, then takes it no further. His stilted confusion hangs awkwardly between them.

Vigorously, she wipes at her eyes with the backs of her hands until the tears burgeoning there again go away. Feeling suddenly, unreasonably cross with her brother for not immediately understanding her meaning, she scoffs in his direction. “Not the bloody snowglobe. I told you—me and Rhaenyra—”

“—you said you fought.”

Alicent chokes on a strangled laugh.“We sort of—broke up. We’re done. Not friends anymore.”

“…what do you mean?”

Alicent puts the stupid alligators down in the mess and puts her hand on her knees. Shifting slightly, she realises one is bleeding; she must have knelt on some glass, but it doesn’t hurt. All the pain she feels is concentrated in her chest, and behind her brow, throbbing like the start of a migraine.

“What I said!” she snaps, frustratedly. And then her anger craters, melancholy seeping up and through like lava, viscous and oozing. It sears every place it touches. She’s not sure she’s ever felt this type of sadness before—it’s all red, like the haze of a fire, rather than blue, and it is prominent in her voice when she speaks again. She reaches out and touches a shard of glass, too delicately for it to break her skin. “Rhaenyra isn’t my friend anymore.”

“Alright,” Gwayne says, with a slow, tight control. “Can I ask why now? Or am I still—giving you space about it? Or whatever it was I was doing.”

The thought of explaining lodges a lump in Alicent’s throat. She clears it with a sad, wet cough. “I need to clean this up.”

Gwayne’s hand comes over hers to hold it still. “I’ll do it, let me get a dustpan. The uh—sand, though. And the glitter. Might be a hoover job for the morning, once it's dried.”

“No,” she says sharply. “It’s all got to go in a box. I’m not—not just putting it in the bin.”

 “Alicent. You can’t keep a box of broken glass.”

His voice is stern, gentle, and immensely aggravating. It riles Alicent up immediately. She wants to hiss at him, like a cat with its fur being stroked backwards. 

“I can do what I like,” she says stiffly, through her teeth.

If Gwayne thinks she doesn’t know he’s rolling his eyes, he’s wrong; she can hear it in his voice. “What are you going to do? Pick up every grain of sand from the carpet?”

Yes, Alicent thinks. If she has to, she’ll stay right there on her bleeding knees, scraping at the weave until her nails are raw too.  

“No,” Gwayne tells her, as though he can read her mind, in a voice that brooks no dissent. And maybe he is an athlete, she concedes, when he pulls her easily to her feet by her armpits, despite her best efforts at remaining a dead weight. “Come on. Look at your knee. Let me patch you up.” 

He pulls her into the hallway, then hesitates, not knowing where to bring her. 

“It’s fine,” she says. “I can deal with it. Just a little cut. I can manage.”

He pats her head like she’s a toddler. It’s comforting, to her great embarrassment, so she shies away from the touch with a scoff. “There might be glass in it,” he reasons. “It’ll be easier for me to see.”

So she relents, taking him to her en-suite, where she tries very hard not to look at the plastic bag of things she’d just packed away. Gwayne pushes her to sit on the closed lid of the toilet seat, and starts rummaging through the cabinet below the sink. In her pyjama shorts, the plastic is cold against the backs of her thighs.

“So,” Gwayne says, after tending her knee for a time. Finished inspecting the cut for glass, he puts his tweezers down and picks up the antiseptic. He smears it on generously, making her hiss at its sting—or, Alicent considers, it could the sting of what he says as he does. “You and Rhaenyra aren’t friends anymore.”

“No,” she confirms, blinking back a fresh prickling behind her eyes. “We aren’t.”

His focus is on her knee, dabbing the excess Savlon away with a cotton pad, drying the greasy skin. He’s overly concentrated on it. Purposeful, she’s sure, to make it easier for her to speak. “What happened?”

“We argued after the match last night.”

“Why?”

Alicent doesn’t know where to start. It’s a complicated question, given all the resentment that had led to the detonation, a gathering of dry kindling. But she begins with the spark. 

“Well,” she says, hedging a bit. It hadn’t been her finest moment. Gwayne, she knows, will recognise why. “She just—after the match, I was already pissed off about how that ended, and she wouldn’t stop talking” — Gwayne, despite how careful he’s being, can’t quite hide the swift raise of his eyebrows, the quirk of his lips, so obviously wanting to interject with a quip about Rhaenyra running her mouth not being anything new — “about the match, about how I deserved to win it, about how Růžičková was being a sore loser. Which—yes, I can admit, stop it. I know it’s true, I do.” 

She kicks Gwayne lightly when he opens his mouth to interject, and he closes it again. 

“But I couldn’t stand hearing it, I snapped. I said… about when she retired in Birmingham, in that semi-final. I accused her of faking it so she wouldn’t have to play me.”

“Alicent,” Gwayne says, quietly appalled, as much as he tries to temper his evident judgment. “You didn’t really think—”

“No,” she says, “I don’t know.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her sleeve, breathing in and out until it stops feeling shaky. “It’s embarrassing. She pities me, I know she does—it didn’t feel totally out of the question.” Remembering the shock on Rhaenyra’s face makes her feel sick. “Maybe it should’ve. But I said it, then she said things, and I said things, and Gwayne—you have to understand this was… a really long time coming. Sudden but like…” She flounders for a moment. “Like—how we know the San Andreas fault is going to slip and cause a huge earthquake. I knew it was going to happen. That we wouldn’t last forever. Just…not when. Or how.”

Losing Rhaenyra was inevitable; that it would be so swift and savage had come as a surprise.

“Why?” Gwayne can’t hide his incredulity. His hands fall from her knee into his own lap. “Since—since when?”

“I don’t know, Gwayne,” she says tiredly. “When I dropped out of the top-100? When I stopped making main draws? When Rhaenyra won her third, second, first Major?” She twitches as Gwayne smooths a plaster over her cut knee, then sighs. “It’s all just been borrowed time. I’ve known that for ages.”

Feeling too raw already, Alicent doesn’t give him the real answer: that the first crack came when she fell in love with Rhaenyra. That if she hadn’t gone and done that, their friendship could have weathered anything, but instead she had given the rot a way in, and somewhere to take root.

“I don’t get it,” he says after a long moment. His face is confused, and contorted slightly, like he’d been trying to digest her words and come up with heartburn for his troubles. “You’re—obsessed with each other? Have been since you were tiny.”

“I know,” Alicent says, quietly. She swallows very hard against the ache creeping all the way up her throat from her chest. “That’s why, really.”

“I still—what did you say to each other?”

His first point was better, Alicent thinks. He’d hit the nail squarely on the head with it, mattering far more than anything said, and the root of everything that had been said.

“Try and imagine it, Gwayne. Being obsessed with someone who’s—who reminds you of everything you want and don’t have.” She opens her eyes, which had at some point drifted shut, and looks at her brother. “That’s the problem. It’s too much. It’s been too much for too long.”

For a long time, he just looks at her, with his eyes so like their father’s, but much more gentle. Then he sighs and smooths the wrinkled edge of the plaster, making sure it’s stuck properly down.

“It’s for the best,” she says, when his silence stretches out. “Like I said. Something had to give.”

Gwayne, getting to his feet, looks down at her. “Does it feel like it’s for the best?”

“It has to be,” she insists. It’s what is. “I just had—a moment, alright? With the snowglobe. That’s all.”

“What if she wants to make up with you? What will you say?”

Her brother’s voice is so neutral as to sound restrained, holding back for her sake. Alicent can imagine all the things he must be thinking. That she’s out of her mind. The absurdity of doing this in the middle of Wimbledon. Probably his own heartache at the idea he’ll lose Rhaenyra too. If she were a better person, Alicent wouldn’t make Gwayne choose. She hadn’t let him cut off their father, when he cut her off. But she wouldn’t be able to look at him, Alicent thinks, if he got to stay friends with Rhaenyra.

She blinks, kicking her leg to test the flex of the bandage. “Hmm… probably I’d tell her to fuck off and that I hated being friends with her.”

“Alicent,” Gwayne murmurs, dismayed, “you didn’t.”

“It’s for the best,” she repeats herself. “Really. It is.”

Even if she changes her mind now, decides she could, after all of this, find a way to be okay with only being Rhaenyra’s friend, she can’t see a way back from what they’ve said to each other. And she isn’t changing her mind, even if now that she’s crossed and burned that bridge, the grass left behind is already starting to seem greener again. Living on the other side of it, she reminds herself, had felt like a drought too.

Wordlessly, Gwayne pulls her to her feet and into a hug. Whether or not he agrees with her reasoning, she recognises the silent promise in it. He’s on her side.

“It’s sad,” she says, wanting him to understand she’s not just talking irrationally, “I do know that, Gwayne.” He squeezes tighter then; she shudders against his comfort. Her voice breaks, thick with tears again. “I’m sad,” she confesses, at last. “I’m so—“

Alicent doesn’t get the word out past a sob that cracks her open. The truth of it washes over her again, as it had on seeing the shattered snowglobe; the double break of a wave, one that had for most of the day been suspended, curling, over her head. The force is crushing, and shocking, and she feels very foolish for not having expected it.

A very long time ago she had sorted carefully through a plastic book of pamphlets still in the organiser on her desk, found what she wanted, and taken a careful highlighter to the parts she wanted Rhaenyra to see. It’s common to feel emotionally numb while grieving, especially in the days or weeks after your loss.

It had only been a day for Alicent, but she really should have known.

She cries, for what might be ages or might only be a little while, on Gwayne’s shoulder. At some point amidst the throes of it, a little gap opens up, and fills with embarrassment. Her brother must think her a total idiot, to be such a wreck over something she is claiming to be a positive. Eventually her mortification wins out over her misery, and her tears dry up. Giving a self-deprecating laugh as she steps back, she waves off the lasting concern on Gwayne’s face.

“I should go to bed,” she tells him, squinting through sore eyes. “Big day tomorrow, all that.”

Gwayne offers all sorts of things—to stay up and talk, to make her a cup of tea, to sit in silence and watch an old favourite tv show with her—but she brushes him off. There’s nothing for the feeling but to keep crying it out and hope for some catharsis, and she’s gone beyond the point where she can bear an audience for it. He goes, reluctantly, and she switches off the light.

Alicent climbs into bed on the wrong side, and puts her head in the place where Rhaenyra used to rest hers. It smells of the stupidly expensive shampoo that there’s two open bottles of in Alicent’s shower. Burrowing into the pillow, it’s easy for the tears to come. 

“It’s for the best,” she whispers wetly against the silk. “Something had to give.”

Chapter Text

Alicent’s final hitting practice before facing Mysaria goes abysmally.

“Alright! Great job!” Harrold says to her when it’s done, reaching out to clap her on the shoulder. Alicent twists to avoid his hand. 

“Don’t,” she says tersely.

Harrold reels back in his surprise, like a turtle pulling its head into his shell. If Alicent were in a better mood, she probably would have laughed. She is not, so she keeps on glowering. “Don’t what?”

“Patronise me.” 

His brow furrows. “Alicent—“

Alicent cuts him off by whirling around and throwing her racquet towards her bag. It misses the opening, and the flexible leather absorbs its momentum, so it doesn’t even bounce satisfyingly. Instead it slides anticlimactically down the side of it onto the grass. It looks melancholy in its resting place, somehow, like it should have arrived there with a whomp whomp. 

After a moment spent ascertaining whether the failed target practice would be the extent of her tantrum, which it is, Harrold repeats himself. 

“Alicent,” he says levelly, “you did do a great job today.”

Alicent is already horribly embarrassed by her outburst, but finds herself unable to curtail the fierce tide of it, flushing red from her heated ears all the way down her arms. Her anger. Her self-directed loathing. The general mortification spilling out of her. Those sorts of feelings are supposed to bury themselves, like nuclear waste left to decay in deep geological storage, as she smiles and says ‘yes, Coach!’  

“I was shit!” she argues, desperately. “I can’t play like you want me to. Every other shot was going out—if I go out there and try to be aggressive it’s going to be—I won’t just lose, it’ll be… I’ll humiliate myself, I can’t—” 

“Alicent,” Harrold says again, like an old action figure with its string pulled. Or—no. Look at him, all burly and kind. A Build-A-Bear with a squeezable voice box. “Are you alright?”

She blinks at him until her frustrated disbelief has faded enough that she’s certain she won’t scream the moment she opens her mouth. 

“I’m going to lose,” Alicent informs him of the obvious, “because, as you informed me yesterday, my play style is boring and predictable, my forehand is shit and useless, and my—”

“As I said, is it?” Harrold sounds unimpressed now, his arms folding across his chest. 

“You implied it,” Alicent fires back, though it comes out sulkier than she intended, which makes her eye twitch. She has to force herself to stop grinding her teeth, imagining how disappointed her dentist would be with her at their next appointment. He’d threatened her with a mouthguard, last time. She chews her cheeks instead, already feeling as sour as if she were chewing a lemon, and supposing she might as well look like it, too.

“I’ve seen you be defeatist before. I’ve never seen you so angry about it.” His head cocks to the side, pointedly curious. “Unless something else is the matter, and you’re projecting. Which would be a shame, since we agreed you’d keep your focus on tennis when you’re on court.”

Like it’s that easy. Like tennis isn’t her whole life, weaving intimately through every off-court issue she has—the crumbling foundation of her self-belief, the fall out with her father, her draining bank account. And Rhaenyra. 

“I am talking about tennis,” she deflects. “About how you think I can’t win playing my game. Instead you’ve had me blasting balls out of the court two days in a row.”

“You’re getting more in than out, Alicent.” 

He rubs the heel of his hand over the prominence of his brow, shutting his eyes briefly, and she realises how frustrated she’s making him. It sparks two opposite desires: to push, until he snaps and reveals exactly what he really thinks of her, and to pull back, apologise, and do whatever he tells her. She acts on neither, roots herself instead in the simmering limbo between them, where she’s sorry for being angry, and angry that she’s sorry. 

“God knows how you’re going to take this, in the mood you’re in,” Harrold carries on, “but yes, I do think if you want to win this, you’ll have to risk a positive error now and then. Attacking with good intent, going for a winner when it’s tactically sound. We’ve been working on offensive transitions for weeks, and suddenly it’s a problem when I ask you to try to attack a ball.”

Alicent scoffs, rolling her eyes, then realises she’s become an echo of her father, who had never believed in such a thing as a ‘good’ error. Call a spade a spade, Alicent. An error is an error, don’t make any. 

“But what do I know?” Harrold carries on, a little heatedly. “I’m only your coach. Never mind that I’ve helped players win slams, including this tournament. Never mind that I’ve put hours of research in to figure out the best strategy here, and many, many more with you on the court, seeing what you’re capable of.”

There’s a tense moment. Alicent considers doing something dramatic, like flouncing away without a word, and Harrold stares at her like he half-expects it. But then she sighs, feeling half of the tension drop out of her body with the exhale.

“I’m scared,” Alicent finally surrenders her hostility, and it’s a relief. She’s always been far more adept at admitting fault than outsourcing it. “I really want to win this match. Sorry. I shouldn’t be taking it out on you.” 

“I know making the second week is a big deal,” Harrold states, immediately calm and kind again, the apology accepted with ease. “I understand.”

Her sense of shame intensifies; it’s true making the round-of-16 would be the furthest she’s ever gone here, and a brilliant result, but she can hardly think that far, not when she’s stuck on this round, this opponent. The fact that if Mysaria Lys beats her on the tennis court, which she is the bookies’ favourite to do, Alicent may well curl up on the grass and die. 

“Do you want to talk about it over lunch, or are you running off to catch the start of Rhaenyra’s match?”

To her horror, Alicent feels her face crumpling. 

“No, I’m not watching her,” she says, taking a deep breath, evening out her expression and trying very hard to sound nonchalant, in the vain hope Harrold hadn't noticed her first reaction. 

No such luck. Her chin wobbles as she looks up at him, and it’s like she can see the jigsaw pieces clicking together behind his eyes. Without a word, Harrold bends down and packs her bag up for her, before lifting it onto his own shoulder. 

“Come on,” he tells Alicent firmly. His arm hovers at her back for a moment before she sinks into it, accepting the comfort around her shoulders. “Lunch. We’ll chat.”

“You know this tournament isn’t about Rhaenyra, right?” Harrold says, looking at her very seriously over his poke bowl, once Alicent has given him a similar spiel to the one she had Gwayne the night before.  

In some ways, Alicent feels as though she’s been working with Harrold forever. Now she’s reminded it’s only been a few months, mostly spent a desolate distance from Rhaenyra, and that this means he is missing a decade and a half of context and several closely-held secrets. It stops him from understanding that literally everything is about Rhaenyra, even when it actually isn’t, which leads him to saying inane, useless things like that. He can’t relate to the problem of not knowing where you end and another person begins. Alicent had been in a three-legged race since she was ten, and now she’s missing half her body and dealing with a limb that hasn’t moved independently in over fifteen years.

“If you want to win this,” he tells her seriously, “you can’t let yourself be distracted by Rhaenyra, or anything else that’s happening off the court. It has to be about you. Second week. That’s the goal. So no losing your head, alright?”

Alicent thinks she lost it a long time ago, or at least a good chunk of her reasonable mind from within it, and she’s been walking around with Rhaenyra crammed inside her skull where it should be instead. She very much doubts there’s time for a full exorcism before the match. She nods anyway, banishing the idea of her, attempting to concentrate on what matters most now: the tennis. 

(The swing of a racket. A flash of fuzzy green coming at her blindingly fast. A chest full of exertion, and her arm at full stretch. The thud of the ball against a worn patch of grass. A grunt, and then a triumphant cry—

An embrace over the net. Warm breath on her ear. Shining blue eyes and Rhaenyra’s voice saying: God, look at you. Brilliant.)

“Then I’m fucked,” Alicent states, despair turning her voice painfully high. “It’s always been her. Tennis has always been about her.”

It’s almost a bigger secret than the fact that Alicent is in love with her. That in the months before Rhaenyra joined the club, she had been working up the courage to tell her parents she wanted to quit. That the dream of this—playing for real—was her father’s first, and had only become Alicent’s once she met Rhaenyra, who had always been spilling over with her own aspirations. Shortly after that it had seeped osmotically under her skin and altered her on a cellular level. Ever since, all she’s cared about is tennis and Rhaenyra, Rhaenyra and tennis.

A panic sets in. The thumping of her heart feels so violent it would not surprise her if Harrold could hear it well enough to tap his feet to the rhythm. Of course there can’t be one without the other—and she’s already lost Rhaenyra—

“Harrold, I fucked up,” she chokes out. As she does, he reaches over the table to put his hand on her forearm, warm and grounding, and it’s the only thing that stops her from spiralling totally out of her body. “She didn’t want this, I thought I did, I—” 

He squeezes her arm. Alicent pushes her feet against the floor, flexes the rubber soles of her shoes, and fights back a shudder.

“It’s alright,” Harrold says. “You’re alright.” Alicent’s incredulity at this is such that she feels it twisting her features to a cartoonish degree. “You said it yourself just now, didn’t you? That it’s for the best.”

She gapes at him. Because yes, she said that, but— 

“I’m lying,” she tells him sharply, actually offended he would believe otherwise. “I’m so obviously lying.”

Rhaenyra had known that. Gwayne had. Even Alicent, desperate to convince herself it was true, had known. Harrold taking it as fact is jarring and unwanted, and Alicent wonders what that says about her. She’s been going around repeating it like a mantra. Wearing the phrase like a crown of thorns. Wanting, she realises, her martyrdom to be recognised.

And to what end? Machinating her own misery, like the prospect of a life without Rhaenyra isn’t in every way worse than what she’d had: the lion’s share of her best friend’s love. Alicent feels naked as the emperor; Harrold is telling her she has clothes on.

“Okay,” Harrold accepts, taking it in stride. “So why’d you do it then?”

“Well,” Alicent fumbles, “ she— ” But she knows that isn’t fair, not really, even if Rhaenyra had been the one to pour petrol over Alicent’s cauterising flame and blow everything to smithereens. “We,” she starts again, then takes a breath. “I—”

She stops. Thinks about what she’s about to say. Wonders if she should. Whether it’s an unprofessional thing to vent to your coach, or if the walls have ears. There’s nobody on the surrounding tables, Alicent assures herself. It’s only her and Harrold here, and the truth that’s been trying to gnaw its way out of her for years.

When the confession comes, Alicent finds herself whispering. Her vocal chords haven’t caught up to the fact she’s breaking the super-injunction she placed on the topic herself, years before. 

“I love her,” she breathes out, shakily and without voice. “I’m in love with her.” 

“Pardon?” Harrold asks. He’s squinting like it will help him hear better. “I didn’t catch that.”

Alicent stares for a moment, then laughs, helplessly. It wasn’t disbelief that had him questioning her,  like it had been when Rhaenyra came out to Alicent. He really hadn’t heard her, she can tell from his face, and she understands then the difficulty of repeating yourself after an admission like that. But she’s said it, finally, and what’s the point, if it isn’t heard?

“I’m in love with her,” Alicent repeats, properly this time, staunchly. “With Rhaenyra. I have been for years.”

Harrold frowns. 

“I mean,” he says, testingly, chin tilting inquisitively. “That’s normal, after a break-up. Those feelings don’t just go away.”

Alicent almost spits out a sip of water. With some difficulty, she swallows it without choking. “What?”

“What?”

“I mean— what? ”

“You can’t expect to just get over someone because you’ve ended things. Especially someone you’ve been with for so long—” 

Alicent coughs out a strangled noise, the distant cousin of a laugh. Harrold looks at her, patience etched on his face, nodding encouragingly at her. 

“Alicent, it’s alright. You don’t have to pretend. You can talk to me. I’ve known all along that the two of you are more than friends.” Alicent flinches. “Were,” he amends in response to her reaction, and even through her utter discombobulation, Alicent feels it twist in her stomach. She barks out an actual laugh then, bitter-sounding as it is.

“Well,” she manages. “Someone could have told me that.” Shaking her head, Alicent rids her mind of the wry, perverted little voice thinking of the perks she would've taken advantage of, if only she’d known.  “Harrold,” she clarifies. “We were friends.  We’ve only ever been friends.”

For a moment, he seems very much like he’s going to accuse her of lying. His lips part, then close again, and he shakes his shiny bald head, face scrunching up. “Uh—um. Oh.” He scratches his beard. “I really thought—”

“Yes, well. You thought wrong,” Alicent interrupts, more sharply than intended. “She’s not interested in me.” 

“Is she straight?” 

“Bisexual, apparently,” Alicent corrects, kicking the leg of the table hard. She wonders if she should feel guilty for outing her, but it seems Harrold had them both clocked anyway, even if he misinterpreted it from there, so she tells herself it’s fine.  Selfishly, she needs it—someone she can tell it all to, who doesn’t see Rhaenyra as family. “She told me last week after apparently knowing for what—ten years?”

“And she knows that you’re—”

“—a lesbian,” Alicent clarifies.

“—in love with her?” Harrold finishes his own sentence. 

Alicent blushes. “No. Not—no. Not either.”

“Then why don’t you tell her?”

“Because it’s embarrassing. ” Alicent laughs, the sound empty, as a sharp swell of devastation blooms somewhere in her middle. “I told you, she doesn't see me like that.”

Harrold looks at her skeptically. “Are you sure?”

“Well, she said, and I quote, ‘I don’t fancy you’. Unprompted. So, yes. Quite sure, actually. And she only came out to me in the first place because she’s seeing Mysaria Lys.” Harrold winces, and Alicent smiles tautly, though she’s not sure for whose benefit. “Context, for you, I suppose. On why I’ve been so crazy.”

“It certainly shines a certain light on the last few days.” He raises an eyebrow, a corner of his mouth lifting with it. “How was watching your homework, yesterday?”

Alicent is briefly caught up in furious disbelief that her pathologically nice coach would laugh at her plight. And then she snorts, folding her head into her hands. She’s smiling too, when she looks up again, able to find a dark sort of humour in her situation.

“Yeah. Shit, actually, thanks for asking.”

“How shit?”

“Very,” she says pointedly, warning him not to push her brittle amusement too far.

Harrold leans back in his chair. “You should take it out on her in your match.”

It’s a far cry from his original advice. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to make it about anything happening off-court?”

“Changed my mind. Recontextualised that practice with Rhaenyra the other day. Found out that Lys is directly involved. Etcetera.” Harrold shrugs. “Use it. You’re good when you’re mean.”

“When I’m mean ?”

“Yep,” Harrold confirms simply, but he can’t quite keep the smug note out of his voice. “You hit the ball harder. Now eat.”

A great huff of air leaves Alicent, half-amused, half-resigned. She actually picks up her fork at last, pulling her bowl towards her. “Fine,” she tells him, annoyed and motivated and resigned and grateful all at once. “You win.”

Alicent’s name is called over the tannoy, welcoming her onto the No.2 Court, and she almost misses her cue, because Mysaria Lys has just smiled at her. Full and broad and friendly, like she might have been on the verge of saying hi before Alicent wrenched her gaze away, not the tight lip-press you might give an opponent when you’ve made accidental eye contact. Especially when you’ve only made that eye contact because your opponent keeps helplessly sneaking furtive glances at you across the player tunnel. Which—what kind of fucked up mind games is Lys planning on playing? They aren’t friends by any measure. Just because Alicent had followed her on Instagram, which she immediately regretted, for the record—

And then she has missed her cue, and a steward clears their throat, and there’s a musical laugh from somewhere to her left, which must be Mysaria, so Alicent is already psyched out and flushed with embarrassment when she hurries onto court. She imagines this had been her opponent’s plan all along. Alicent berates herself for slipping right into it.

The sun, beating fiercely overhead, cuts the court in half. One side of the net glimmers green. The other is duller, and the parts where the grass has worn thin seem balder there, brown patches looking almost grey though they’re tawny in the light. Alicent takes advantage of being first out of the tunnel to take the bench in the shade, willing her hands to stop shaking as she sets out her things. For the life of her, she can’t remember ever having been this nervous for a match before, not even the bronze medal match she’d lost in Tokyo, when she’d squandered probably the biggest moment of her career.

Mysaria’s name is called over the tannoy. Alicent doesn’t look up, only concentrates on the fact the applause is much more meagre than her own had been. The crowd is on Alicent’s side. It’s a small blessing, to be favoured and the underdog, in some ways. Alicent had always been better at finding a gritty comeback than being a frontrunner, at least until recently. She could admit to herself, if nobody else, how much she relished spectator support, too, how energising it can be when her limbs grow tired.

After a little while, the umpire calls them both over, and they come together for the coin toss, separated only by the net. Despite how carefully she has already studied it on social media and the fact she’d been stealing sideways glances inside, Alicent finds herself afraid to look at Mysaria’s face from so close. The rest of her, she puts together like a mosaic. Lys glows in the sun, her remarkably even tan showing off how toned she is, the lovely musculature of her arms and calves. The white dress she wears is similar in silhouette to Rhaenyra’s kit for the tournament, though its neckline is a scoop, lacking a collar. Her dark hair is thick, pulled back in a ponytail that swings as she jogs on the spot, lustrous like silk. When Alicent does dare look up, she exhales sharply through her nose. Mysaria’s face is, of course, as perfect as the rest of her.

“Heads,” Alicent says stiffly, at the umpire’s prompting, and it is. She chooses to serve first. Desperate for her limbs to loosen up, she half jogs, half side-steps her way back to her bench, although she knows Mysaria will be waiting to warm up.

She hunches over her bag over the pretense of looking for something and closes her eyes, grasping for the cross around her neck. Busy casting sideways looks at her opponent, Alicent had for the first time forgotten to think of her mum before stepping onto court. For over half of her life now, she’s been praying to her mother before matches. Usually she seeks something specific—composure, strength, the comfort of the unconditional pride and love that is lost to her. Today she needs all of it, and doesn’t know how to go about asking. 

When Alicent was little, she always churned with nerves like this, to the point she started to dread tournament days. But she didn’t have to ask for anything then. If she turned around she’d be given all she needed, swept up by one of her mother’s perfect hugs. Despondently, she fiddles with the necklace; sometimes a spectre just can’t measure up. There’s only one person who has ever brought her similar comfort.

In her mind’s eye her mother’s gentle face gives way to Rhaenyra’s—crumpled at first, like it was yesterday, and then younger and grinning, rapping her knuckles against Alicent’s head. Then she remembers gripping a trophy as Rhaenyra, holding a smaller replica, lifts it towards Alicent like a toast. The corners of the cross dig into Alicent’s palm. Please, she thinks, for a desperate moment. And then she goes to her side of the court, to hit purposeless balls back and forth with a woman she can barely stand to look at. Her muscles don’t feel like they’re getting any looser.

“Time,” the chair umpire declares. “Let’s play. Hightower to serve.”

Alicent dries her already sweaty hands on a provided towel, then goes obediently to the baseline on the dimmer side, smoothing the dirt there beneath her toe in search of any divot that might trip her. A stiffly poised ball kid waits to deliver balls to her, and she takes three on her racquet, testing each—she sends one back, tucks one into the shorts under her skirt, and bounces the last against the ground.

Bringing the ball to her strings, Alicent grounds herself by pushing them together, feeling the familiar tension. Across the court, Lys wraps long fingers around a white overgrip, racquet balanced in two hands. She bounces on her toes with her feet shoulder-width apart. Her choice of position, close to the baseline, is an aggressive one; it signals an intent to punish any weakness offered up to her. 

Alicent’s anxiousness shows in her unsteady ball toss, setting up her serve—it flies up at an angle, too far forward for her racquet; she signals an apology for the false start as she lets it fall back to her hand, although it rankles to mind her manners against Mysaria. Having taken a step forward to catch the ball, she readjusts her feet again, pointing her toes just so, forcing herself to calm down, to breathe, to remind herself she knows perfectly well how to do this. 

Her next ball toss flies straight up, and the serve is good. Mysaria’s return is too rushed, and flies long. Alicent feels herself begin to settle. It’s just a tennis match, she reminds herself. Like any other. It doesn’t matter who is across the net or what’s at stake. She just has to play the ball.

“Fifteen to love,” says the umpire.

Instead of celebrating, Alicent readies herself for the next point. Satisfaction blooms when she notices Mysaria’s new receiving position, which is maybe a foot back from where she’d started the first point. It’s more neutral than defensive, but it’s nevertheless a concession.

This time Lys is ready for the flat serve that Alicent sends her way. It cracks hard against her strings, flying back deep across the court. Alicent reaches it. A rally begins. 

Mysaria, as Alicent had already known, is clever. Their strategies are alike, each watching for the advantage and ready to capitalise on it when it comes, and each of them, at least for the moment, deadset against being the one to slip up. A typical defensiveness for Alicent, while Mysaria is likely on guard after her initial misjudgement of what Alicent could deliver on serve. The point becomes edgy and protracted—the ball being pushed over the net like pawns on a chess board, neither taking risks as they try to figure the other out. It’s not a million miles off what playing Fiske, another strategic player, had been like before Alicent went after her forehand, only Mysaria lacks a similar weakness to attack.

The point ends in Alicent’s favour when a deep ball skirts past the edge of her baseline; she lifts her hand up just as it’s called out. If there hadn’t been a gust of wind at precisely the wrong time, the shot would have been impeccable. Mysaria looks hard at Alicent for a moment, but doesn’t challenge the linesman.

On the next point, Alicent’s first serve goes long. Hit with spin, her second lands wide but in, forcing Mysaria wide; it leaves the court open. Alicent hits it past her into the empty space. Mysaria gets a point back afterwards, hitting a clean winner along the tram line, but Alicent takes the game in what turned out to be a relatively straightforward hold. She grants herself a sharp nod of satisfaction as they switch ends.

It’s hotter in the sun. Much brighter too, of course, so Alicent tugs at her visor and blinks until she can see better, eyes adjusting now that she is in and facing the light. She sweeps her ponytail away from her sticky neck, rueful she hadn’t plaited it, but she hadn’t been able to bear the idea of doing it herself.

Mysaria’s serve, not as fast as Alicent’s, is deceptively dangerous for its precision, falling almost precisely at the T with an erratic bounce that Alicent fails to predict. Despite this, she gets to it, just, by grace of practiced, efficient feet and her rapid reaction speed. The return is far from her finest—barely a swing to it, more a ricochet off her racquet strings—but it gets over the net at least. Alicent darts back, behind the baseline, ready.

Lys, decisively on the front foot in a rally for the first time, begins what seems to Alicent as a game within a game. Certainly with some of the balls Alicent is putting back over, Lys has had opportunities to end the point. And yet she doesn’t. Instead, she pushes Alicent out wide and then the other way, like she is dictating some twisted kind of bleep test in the middle of a match. Alicent, further and further behind the baseline, keeps expecting some kind of sudden disruption of the pattern: a ball to the empty forecourt, dripped just over the net, or slammed behind her as she swings back to cover the court left open. 

It doesn’t come. Instead, Alicent sees an opportunity when Mysaria slightly mistimes her swing and the ball does not land quite so deep or wide, punishing the slip with a forceful backhand. She wants to yell—come on! or let’s go!—but instead she is panting, on only the first point of the second game. She frowns as she returns to equilibrium, recovering quickly from the intense burst of exertion.

Across the court, despite having lost the point, Mysaria’s lips curl up, only slightly, but stark compared to the mask her expression had previously been. Like she had been trying to see something, and did. 

Alicent steadies her breath, pretending not to be rattled, and readies herself. Springing sideways with her racquet out, she manages a solid, satisfying return on a serve sent out wide, which comes back again solidly, and probably satisfyingly, from her opponent. It’s another long point. To Alicent’s relief she doesn’t need to run half so much to win it—pushing Mysaria a little further behind the baseline than before, she whips the ball in at a shorter angle, and Lys has no time to reach it.

Up a game, and taking thirty points on her opponent’s serve is a good way to begin a match, Alicent thinks, but it very predictably does not last. Mysaria comes back to hold her serve. Then, finding herself down love-to-thirty in her own service game, Alicent kicks herself for being a jinx. Like Lys, she manages to claw it back, although it’s alarmingly hard-won, and she’s panting at the end of it. 

It’s what Harrold warned her about, she realises, despairingly—Mysaria knows how Alicent plays, and is using it against her. She’s not offering Alicent any power to redirect with a swift, technical backhand, no obvious openings to step in and try something more aggressive, like Harrold had urged. Instead she’s running Alicent ragged, relying on her commitment to getting every ball she can back over the line. Toying with her, like a cat with a mouse. 

Alicent tries to rip a ball, hard and flat—it flies into the net. She goes for a short angled winner on her forehand. It shoots wide, into the tramlines. Cowed, she’s too afraid to try again, although she knows she needs to try, or else she’s giving Mysaria exactly what she wants. Frustration wells up in her, because she’s not playing badly at all. In fact, she’s playing good tennis. The problem is that it’s the tennis expected of her, and Mysaria—at least when she’s on the front foot, the one dictating the play, making Alicent move—has the ability to hang in those long rallies, and the skill to end them without overplaying her hand.

The set carries on. Even playing well, each of Alicent’s service games feels increasingly desperate; her defence has been heroic in seeing off multiple breakpoints, but she hasn’t managed to earn herself a single opportunity when Mysaria has the advantage of serving. Lys, for her part, is not faltering. It feels like it’s only a matter of time before she hits a new level and buries Alicent completely. It’s palpable in the mood of the crowd. They cheer wildly for each little win of Alicent’s, patronising rather than bolstering, then offer a nervy spatter of applause when her opponent hits an out and out winner. It starts to piss her off, because Lys is the one who deserves their applause. 

Alicent thinks Mysaria’s strokes are elegant. She thinks her footwork is beautifully efficient. From this distance she dares to look at her face and thinks the blank concentration there, giving nothing away, even as she wins another excellent point, suits her very well—she is so perfect as to seem painted. 

Alicent would feel better if there was something ugly about the other woman. Even if it were her tennis. Perhaps especially.  

At 4-3, still with her nose in front by virtue of serving first, it’s back to her bench for the changeover, wiping her face, sucking up an energy gel, trying to get as much liquid down as she can in the time she has. It’s difficult not to be aware of just how much she’s been sweating, especially when it’s her turn in the sun. 

Towelling off her arms from shoulder to fingertip, Alicent pauses in her practiced motions as a murmuring draws over the crowd—and then a wild cheering. She doesn’t understand why. Expecting her opponent to be equally thrown, Alicent glances over. Mysaria isn’t confused. She’s smiling up at the stands, towards her coach and friends and family, fingers wiggling in a wave that is distinctly flirtatious. 

Alicent looks up too, and the towel she is holding slips out of her hands. Bending to pick it up, she half-expects that when she looks up, she’ll realise she was mistaken. But she isn’t. Her eyes slide sideways to Gwayne, sitting with a couple of his friends, and it’s only when she sees his barefaced rage that she really believes it.

Rhaenyra. Here for Mysaria. Alicent is winded by it. 

Since meeting as children, Rhaenyra’s support has been unerring and incontrovertible, so forceful and sincere as to sometimes be too much. Even when Alicent used to wish she would back off, the intent had been a comfort; Rhaenyra had her back, in all things, for good or ill.

It’s the one sacred truth that Alicent’s insecurities have never touched, because to call it into question would be preposterous, utterly beyond the realm of reason. Even in her many nightmares about a future where they had drifted apart, there had been good will. The agony had come from the distance of it—a passing good luck or congrats! bumping into one another in a locker room before Rhaenyra forgot her again. Not this. She’d never imagined this.

Harrold catches her eye, expression steadfastly calm as ever. Behind his beard his cheeks might be redder than usual, but it’s hard to tell. He nods at her, then brings his fist against his open palm. She knows what he wants from her, but she’s already been trying and failing to find the aggression he’s encouraging, and she can’t imagine it getting any easier now. She feels lightheaded and heavy with misery all at once, somehow adrift and stuck, like a helium balloon tethered to a weight.

Nodding feebly, Alicent vigorously towels down again, not stopping until the changeover is up, even though the friction starts to feel fierce against her dry skin, rubbed red. The colour might not fade, given she’s probably scoured herself free of sunscreen. 

Rhaenyra always hated seeing her burnt. Now she probably doesn’t care at all.

As the ninety seconds they have for the changeover runs out, the umpire implores the excited crowd to settle. Alicent takes her place, waiting a couple of feet behind the baseline, but she’s just as worked up as the spectators—can’t stop staring at Rhaenyra, sitting up straight among her opponent’s supporters, wearing stupid, detestable sunglasses. They’re a pair Alicent has always hated; so reflective as to make it impossible to see her eyes, big enough they block more of her face than anything should be allowed to. 

Rhaenyra’s chin is perfectly centred as she stares down at the court. Alicent can’t tell which, if either, of her and Mysaria has her attention. Both options seem equally terrible for a moment. Then Alicent changes her mind, deciding the latter is likely true and infinitely worse. 

She shakes her head. Lys is waiting and the clock is running down, so it’s not like she has much choice. Alicent flexes her fingers as she signals her readiness for the ball, although she is far from prepared for the point. 

A new game begins with Mysaria’s serve. Alicent moves too slowly, and what should never have been an ace sails by and becomes one. Alicent hits her next return into the net. 

On the third point, she manages a short rally. Pushed out wide, Alicent runs to cover the court left open; Mysaria hits it back to where she’d just been standing. A lovely play that is appreciated loudly by the crowd, despite the fact they are supposedly on Alicent’s side. She can’t help but look up to see if Rhaenyra is celebrating too, but it’s impossible to tell if she’s even smiling; she has her elbow on her knee, her chin in her hand, and her hand covering the lower half of her face. Between that and the glasses there’s nothing of her expression to be discerned.

Mysaria serves for the game. Alicent sends it into the net again for a hold to love, in under two minutes.

Then, Alicent’s own service game. Though her actual serve is fine, it’s nowhere near good enough to keep her from trouble, not when every rally is a desperate matter. She’s been left stupid and without foresight, like a remote control robot with a signal lag, not quite sure where her body is even receiving its directions from. At 15-40, Alicent hits her first and then second serve into the net. With a double fault, it’s the first break of the match.

“Game, Lys,” says the umpire. “Lys leads five games to four.”

Alicent doesn’t look to Harrold or to Gwayne as she goes back to her bench. She doesn’t even look at Rhaenyra, though she is somehow sure that if she did, those reflective glasses would be pointed right back at her— she feels like an ant suffering under a magnifying glass. Keeping her eyes on the grass, she only looks up in response to a gentle caution from the chair umpire, a reminder to watch the clock between points; she’s been spending too much time agonising over Rhaenyra when the ball’s out of play.

Throwing a towel over her head immediately upon sitting down is a concession, a public display of how shaken she is. Tennis can be so psychological; her visible lack of confidence will embolden Lys. In the blessed, stuffy dark, her nerves finally ceasing their jangling, Alicent can’t bring herself to care.

“I hate you,” Alicent says aloud, muffled by the towel falling against her mouth. “You utter bitch,” she tries, attempting to sound decisive with it. “Good riddance. Don’t need you. Mysaria can have you.” 

Inhaling sharply, like she could suck the words back in, Alicent realises her head is shaking in vehement denial of her own words. She laughs in disbelief at herself.

“For the best,” she says, like she’s been saying, except this time it’s with disparaging disgust at her own stupidity. “I better win this, Rhaenyra” she carries on, waveringly, voice sounding very loud to her ears, trapped as it is within her little cave, “or I might not forgive you for it.”

And then what would she do? Alicent sobs exactly once—coughs it up like a tonsil stone—thinking about it. The total, unmendable severing of what currently stands dangerously frayed. Being left half of a whole forever: in love and alone, with no hope of recourse, no consolatory friendship. It’s wretched and galvanising in equal measure.

Alicent hopes this burning of the olive branch Rhaenyra brought to her yesterday is only that—that the tree it came from, or the grove, still stands somewhere. If it does, and she wins, Alicent will go to her and take it with both hands. And then she’ll put it down somewhere safe, freeing them up to throttle Rhaenyra for being such a total cow. To grab her by the cheeks—squarely between her palms, pressing so firmly they bulge out—to tell her she better not ever fucking dare to pull anything like this again. Not if she knows what’s good for her. 

And what’s good for her is Alicent, not Mysaria Lys, who is at present heading early to the baseline with an easy, ruthless air of determination, like a farmer experienced in putting down lame animals.  

Beautiful, awful Mysaria Lys, standing poised with her ball against her racquet strings, ready to serve. Rhaenyra wants her, Alicent tells herself. It isn’t Mysaria’s fault she’s such a stunning woman—so exceptionally attractive, Alicent needles herself, that after ten years of effective heterosexuality, Rhaenyra simply had to act on the latent lesbian feelings she has apparently been harbouring for a decade. Mysaria shouldn’t be blamed for it, nor for the fact Rhaenyra apparently enjoyed her company outside of the bedroom as well. She shouldn’t. 

But the truth of it is that Alicent has never been a particularly reasonable person when it comes to her best friend. Not level-headed, like she’s always strived to be on the court. Curling her lip, and then her fingers around her racquet, Alicent decides to blame Mysaria for everything anyway. At least for the moment. Whatever happens with Rhaenyra will happen later. But if she wants to grind her best friend’s lover into the court, which she very much does, then this is her chance.

Take it out on her, Harrold had said. Alicent had thought she’d been making an attempt at doing just that, but with spite swelling within her, she realises she’d been holding back—caught up on her nerves, or resisting under some pretense of respect. For her opponent, her sport, her self. Now, Alicent goes to the place in her mind where she tries to contain her bitterness, and gives it a hard shake. 

This woman across the net is responsible for breaking them, she tells herself. It surges through her, frothing and foaming, as Mysaria lines up her ball toss.

“Come on! ” she yells, when she slams Mysaria’s first serve of the game with a forehand so uncharacteristically hard and flat that the backboard shudders like a crack of thunder. 

“Let’s go! ” she crows, when she wins the next rally with her favourite shot of all, a beautiful backhand down-the-line, right down the line, painting the chalk. 

“Nice!” calls Mysaria over the net, applauding with her racquet appreciatively. Her magnanimity fuels Alicent’s malice, and she gives herself into it. She swears under her breath whenever Mysaria wins a point, and doesn't suppress her smirk at unforced errors. It’s poor sportsmanship—ugly, nasty. It’s liberating. She earns herself one break point, which she loses, and then another, which she vows she won’t, and doesn’t. 

Just like that, it’s level again, five-five, and Alicent has some room to breathe.

Her own service game goes by like a dream, as swift and brutal as Mysaria’s had been when they first stepped out after Rhaenyra’s appearance. The scoreline stands at 6-5, Alicent with the lead; the set will go to tiebreak at the very least. If she can break Mysaria’s serve again, she’ll save herself the trouble. Although—after the Birmingham final, she has a bone to pick with tie-breaks, too. She quite fancies a 7-6 (7-0).

If Alicent had known before that jealousy could be a performance-enhancing drug of this calibre, she might have developed an unethical habit of imagining her opponents in compromising positions with Rhaenrya ahead of her matches. It’s a trait she’s long detested in herself, but now, unleashed on the court, it serves her beautifully. She feels like a shark in bloodied water. Intensely in her body, devoid of inhibition, hungry for it—not just the win, but a decimation.

Alicent doesn’t get to redeem herself for her last tie-break. In the final game of the set, Alicent breaks Mysaria to love. Clever redirections of the ball can’t save her, not when Alicent reaches each in time, her legs feeling fresher than they did when the match started, and takes them bravely on. No errors, positive or otherwise, come from her racquet—Alicent takes it, with three clean winners and a mistake she forces from Lys’s racquet. 

“Set, Hightower, seven games to five,” says the umpire. 

Alicent yells in wordless satisfaction, the whooping crowd drowning her out.  When she looks at Mysaria’s face, her measured, mask-like neutrality is slipping into something shell-shocked. 

“COME ON!” she shouts, not done celebrating, spurring another round of cheers. Then she shouts again, louder, in Valyrian this time—Rhaenyra’s calling card. Alicent looks up to her in the crowd, defiantly, laying her claim on the celebration, and her best friend as an extension. Mine, mine, mine. 

Alicent sees it then, through a poker face that would fool most: the tiniest of smiles, despite Rhaenyra’s best efforts to maintain her straight face. Pleased and proud. Irrepressible. Alicent needs another set yet to win, but knowing that does nothing to curb the victorious feeling rising in her like a tide. 

It’s not over. It’s not over. They’re not over.

It’s a jubilant, exhilarating relief at first. Then Alicent feeds it to the flame lit beneath her, thinking about how she’s going to shout at Rhaenyra later, and Rhaenyra will let her, taking all the righteous fury Alicent has to vent. It’s so much easier to be angry with Rhaenyra when there’s the prospect of reconciliation, and more invigorating. The sharpness isn’t dulled to an ache by the idea it will last forever.

It seems she’ll need the fuel too, to keep her energy going; Mysaria asks the umpire for a toilet break in the hopes of killing Alicent’s momentum going into the next set. It’s a classic move, which everyone will see as desperate and tactical, which it is. Alicent snorts derisively as Lys leaves, deciding to call it a win. 

Which it is, in the end. A decisive one.

Up five games to one in the second set (one game that will haunt her, the idea that she’d ceded Mysaria the slightest bit of ground, allowed her to save face by avoiding a dreaded bagel) and forty points to love, she has three match points on her serve. She needs only the first.

Alicent’s knees bend as she drops her racquet, then takes it back behind her shoulder. It cuts through the air like the edge of a penny as it swings, and with a snap of her wrist she pounces on the ball. Her arm comes through and down and the ball flies away, hard and flat. It bounces deep in the deuce court service box. A split second later there’s a thud as it hits the backboard, unreturned, thunderous. 

The crowd, and Alicent, echo it, and that’s that.

“Game, set and match, Hightower,” says the umpire. “Two sets to none. Seven-five, six-one.”

“Very well played,” Mysaria says at the net, insultingly unperturbed, catching her Alicent’s purposefully limp handshake with a firmer grip, forcing Alicent’s attention to remain on her. “Look—Rhaenyra’s devastated, you know.”

The triumphant smile that had not quite left Alicent’s face since her winning ace falters. The fire that had fuelled her performance hasn’t yet abated, throbbing through her like a war drum, and flares hotly at Mysaria’s nerve, her presumptuousness, how arrogant she is in explaining Rhaenyra to her. Before she can start a fight she knows she’ll regret when the adrenaline fades, Alicent veers sharply around, like an animation missing a few frames. It is a supreme act of self-control. As she approaches the chair umpire to shake his hand, her polite smile is close-lipped, lest she bare her teeth at Mysaria, or else really satisfy herself, and rip her throat out.

“Thank you,” she says to the umpire politely, then throws Mysaria one last, hateful look before returning to her bench.

Alicent guzzles down a full bottle of water before she takes a breath, knowing she’ll regret it when she settles down on an exercise bike for half an hour, but unable to help herself. She isn’t usually so rabidly thirsty after a match; however, she also isn’t prone to grunting as forcefully as she did today, or celebrating winning shots so fiercely. 

She takes three swigs from another bottle, fresh from the icebox, then takes off her visor and dumps it over her face and neck and arms. Her shaded seat is in the sun now. Alicent can practically feel the water sizzling off her skin, which stays red. She towels down, then presses two fingers to her forearm. When she lifts them, they leave a pale, lingering mark. Sunburnt.

Rhaenyra will be so upset. 

Alicent’s close smile surrenders to full beam as she makes her way over to where Barbara Tully waits courtside to interview her, with her big BBC microphone and cameraman. The crowd applaud her every step and get even louder when Barbara says her name in greeting, so raucous there’s no point in even trying to speak further.

“Alicent Hightower,” she tries again, when there’s a lull, with the same result. Laughing, she gestures at the stands until the sound dies back again. “Alicent,” she says a third time, and finally the spectators see fit to let her carry on. “What. A. Match.”

“Yeah,” Alicent says, half-chuckling, overwhelmed and inarticulate. “I mean. Yeah.”

“I think a congratulations is in order—through to the second week, for what will be your first time, against yet another seeded player!” Barbara pauses for more cheers, as Alicent smiles, nodding her thanks. “It’s fair to say, I think, that the British crowd are right behind you.” Alicent waves, feeling giddy, forgetting she’d ever been annoyed by them. “So—what’s the secret, Alicent?”

“The—what?”

“The secret to the summer you’re having! What would you say have been the main factors in this resounding comeback of yours?”

Alicent blushes. “I think it’s a bit early to call it a comeback. But… I’m feeling really good on the court, yeah. There’s my new coach, Harrold Westerling—that’s been huge, actually. We’ve been working on counterpunching more effectively, and on using my own power, too, which—today, you know. Really helped.”

Alicent finds Harrold in the crowd; he winks at her, and she knows she’s forgiven fully for the morning’s dramatics. 

Barbora nods. “ So pivotal in this match, once you found your stride. Which—things seemed pretty even in the first set until Lys got the first break, and I think we were all pretty worried. But then you threw a towel over your head and came back from that changeover like a whole other player. What was going through your mind?”

“That I wanted to win,” Alicent tells her, which isn’t a lie, although her motivation had not been as straightforward as these things usually were. “And a feeling I had something to prove. Like you said—this is my first time making it into the second week, and I’ve had a tricky couple of years on the tour. I guess it let me find another gear for the rest of the match.”

The other woman keeps nodding again, politely, but doesn’t look entirely satisfied with the answer. “The eagle-eyed among the crowd, I think, noticed this,” — yet more whooping, less welcome this time, as Alicent figures where this line of conversation is going — “but we had a bit of a special guest in the audience today. Rhaenyra Targaryen, the British number one, three time slam champion. And a long-time friend of yours, yes?”

“My best friend, yes.” Alicent grits her teeth, but doesn’t let her smile falter, waiting for the gotcha— so why wasn’t she supporting you? 

“She scraped through that difficult match earlier, was visibly struggling with her emotions. Then she was sitting with Lys’s supporters, when we’ve grown accustomed to seeing her cheering you on.”

Rhaenyra shouldn’t have had a difficult match. She’d been playing a geriatric, washed-up qualifier she has a ten-to-nothing head-to-head against. 

Alicent’s cheeks feel very tight as she maintains her smile. “Was there a question?”

“Not as such.” Tully’s expression is pleasant, even as she gets invasive and personal in an interview that’s supposed to be about the match Alicent just played. “I just think,” she says, like it’s any real justification, “that tennis fans would be interested if you can offer any insight on that. As her friend.”

She says friend like there’s quotation marks around it, like she doesn’t believe it’s true anymore. Alicent is going to kill Rhaenyra when she sees her later, made victim yet again of her awful tendency to turn everything into a spectacle.

“I wouldn’t know about her match earlier, I was prepping for this one.” Alicent says firmly, stopping herself before she can delve into what exactly a difficult match means. Then she smiles, with a false ease that she’s long-mastered. “As for where she was sitting, during the match. Well. I think she got a bit lost.” 

Looking resolutely up at where Mysaria’s camp had been sitting, meaning to meet Rhaenyra’s eyes in challenge, Alicent realises she has ‘gotten lost’ again. She’s gone. It almost draws a frown. She’d been certain Rhaenyra would stay to hear what she had to say, see out Alicent’s victory, and maybe even give her a real smile, like a white flag. But she left. Alicent takes a deep breath, tempering her rising frustration into determination. She tosses her annoying, sticky ponytail—tells herself that come her next match, Rhaenyra will be braiding it for her again, doing her very best work to make amends—and gives a breezy laugh that she impresses herself with.

“There’s nothing to speculate about,” Alicent dismisses, with an airy certainty. She leans into the microphone, speaking to Rhaenyra, Mysaria Lys, the world at large. “Next match, you’ll see. She’ll be back in my box where she belongs.”

Chapter Text

Alicent has spent a significant portion of her life dutifully doing what she’s told is best for her, and rarely ever complaining about it. And yet, when she gets off the court and it’s time to head for the exercise bike, she almost rebels. There are far more pressing matters to attend to.

There’s Rhaenyra.

Although God knows where she disappeared to after the match. Because – and Alicent checks repeatedly as she pedals, just in case she was mistaken each time before – Rhaenyra has at some point stopped sharing her location (the bitch).

Alicent isn’t too concerned. She knows that after that little display Rhaenyra will come crawling back again. Between this and yesterday, she clearly can’t keep away.

She practices her magnanimous smile, imagines the sweet apologies, the thankful hug when she forgives Rhaenyra for her missteps. She’ll surely come looking for Alicent soon. It’s likely she’s waiting for Alicent to finish this hateful post-match recovery routine, so they can reunite properly. But that will be nice. It’s been a long few days since she last had Rhaenyra in her flat, belonging there as much as the furniture. 

And, she considers, if she's to indulge and yell at Rhaenyra just a little, better do it in the privacy of their own home. No need to risk getting overheard by some awful ‘journalist’ and having them spread rumours. Alicent would rather they believe what she said on court after the match – it was only Rhaenyra getting muddled up for a moment, losing her way, and nothing of lasting consequence. It is, in every way that matters, true. 

“Alright,” Harrold interrupts her musings. “Stretches, then you can shower off.” 

And then the rest of it, she gripes internally, swinging her leg over the saddle. It will be a long time yet before she gets home, the press happy to gobble up any time not sucked away by sport science’s latest recovery recommendations. But she’s got another match to play, and one after that, and one after that, and then – well, that would be the final.

She sucks in a breath, feeling giddy. Stranger things have happened.

“How are you doing?” Harrold asks her, eyeing her cautiously as she stretches out her shoulders. “You made the best of it, but that can’t have been—”

“Oh, no, I’m great.” His concern bounces off of her, unneeded. “Did you see Lys’s face sitting there on her bike? Shell-shocked. No idea what hit her.”

“But—”

“And Rhaenyra. God, she’s got another thing coming, but… she was rooting for me. It’s all fine.”

“She was sitting in Mysaria’s box.”

“But next time she’ll be back in mine.”

Harrold coughs. “Yes,” he says dryly. “You said that.”

Alicent pulls out of her stretch and hugs him. To his credit, he barely recoils from the sweaty embrace before committing to it. 

“Thank you,” she tells him fervently. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

He wheezes, and she loosens her hold a bit. He laughs fondly, if still somewhat breathlessly. “You’re welcome. For anything in particular?”

“It was your advice earlier – and I suppose the attacking drills, sorry for the whining earlier. But, God. Did you see me?” Obviously, he had, but Alicent is feeling something she rarely does: the urge to boast, to crow. “I got mean, like you said I should, and I hit big, like you said I should. And I – I blasted her off the court, how many times? Do you have the stats on how many winners I hit? I should become a big hitter. Should I become a big hitter?”

“We’ll work on it. And yes, twenty-two winners, twelve unforced errors,” Harrold tells her, laughing, and pats her back. “Okay, hip flexors next.”

He’s consulting a list of exercises in his notes app, even though Alicent has her routine down to a T – he isn’t a fitness coach, really, but he does try hard to wear every hat for her. 

Although – second week! She can probably afford to hire someone now. She’s tripled her winnings for the whole season in three matches, just like that. The thought of having an actual team is nice. A whole group of people guaranteed to show up for her every game.

For a moment, her smile falters. But it comes back again, as she remembers the feeling. Her fist in the air, and raucous applause.

The adrenaline keeps coming in fits and bursts. She snacks and downs electrolytes to sort out her body’s chemical composition or whatever, and time drags or rushes in tandem. The press conference is a complete blur. Week two, someone says, and it’s all she can think about. And then Rhaenyra’s name comes up (‘That’s two of you still in the ladies’ draw, could we be heading to an all-British semi-final?’) and she remembers that she’s wasting time. At least Rhaenyra knows exactly how long this whole rigamarole can take.

Harrold’s waiting for her after she gets out of press. “Alright, the ice bath’s waiting.”

“Do I have to?” she asks. She feels like a teenage Rhaenyra, arguing against having to freeze herself.

(‘My aunt was the best to ever pick up a racquet, and she never did this stuff, you know. I’m a Targaryen, I’m built different.’ Except said aunt was her coach – once Rhaenys read the science, she was the one ordering a sulking, shivering Rhaenyra to hold out for another minute in the ice).

“Yes. Then a nice massage, and you don’t have to see me again until tomorrow.”

“Did we get Orangi?” 

“Noon. Is that enough time for your breakfast?” Harrold asks. “I can try and see about a swap if not, things are thinning out.” He smiles, smug on behalf of both of them. “Not just any player can make the round-of-16, you know.”

Alicent preens, still buoyant enough that she weathers the reminder she’s seeing her dad again tomorrow without trouble. Gwayne will be there. And a practice court booked for midday: an escape route, if she needs it. 

When she finally makes it home, Gwayne greets her with a massive hug and some choice words about Rhaenyra. She laughs along with him, until he goes too far and she shuts him up with a glare. As she settles on the sofa with a cup of tea and enough custard creams to warrant a plate, her phone lights up with a message from her dad. It reads simply, ‘Bravo.’

Alicent grins, puts her phone down and watches how the steam spirals in front of the whirring fan. It’s still boiling out, but the air was so much thicker on her way home than it had been on court earlier. She wonders if Rhaenyra will make it over before the sky splits open – with the window wide open, she’s convinced she can smell a summer rain coming. 

“Are we going to do something to celebrate?” Gwayne asks her.

“I don’t think I’m meant to celebrate too hard, yet,” she says. “More tennis left to play and all.”

He rolls his eyes, plopping himself down in the armchair. “I wasn’t saying let’s go out on the lash. What do you want for dinner? We can order from somewhere posh, my treat. Although now I say that, one of us just came into a good chunk of money. And it certainly wasn’t—”

“Do you think of anything but food, ever?” she laughs.

“Horses,” he rebuts quickly. “And how proud I am of my dearest darling baby sister, of course. But really. I feel like we should do something. You were bloody brilliant today.”

Alicent bites down on her grin. “Yeah.” Maybe they should celebrate. Opportunely, she remembers the baklava the man down the shop (God, she really must ask his name next time, it reaches a point) had given her the other day. It’s the perfect evening for it. Or it will be, soon. “I’ve got a nice dessert in the cupboard.” Tucked behind her muesli, where Gwayne would never find it. 

“Shall we have it now?” he suggests. “While we peruse the apps.”

Alicent shakes her head, curling her legs up beneath her. “We should wait for Rhaenyra to get here.”

“You invited her over?! Alicent, I swear to God, if I see her tonight it’s on sight—”

“Then go somewhere else,” Alicent says, rolling her eyes. She takes a sip from her mug. Optimal drinking temperature, perfect brew, exactly as milky as she likes. A genuinely phenomenal cup of tea, if she does say so herself. “She’ll be here soon.”

“When did Rhaenyra say she’d get here?” Gwayne asks.

“She didn’t,” Alicent says impassively, not looking up from her phone. She and Rhaenyra have a holiday booked in Mykonos later this month, and she’s doing her research on the treatments offered at the hotel’s spa. “It won’t be long now, though.”

“How do you know if she didn’t say?” And then, more suspiciously. “Did she say she was coming at all?”

Alicent shrugs. “Not as such.”

Gwayne sounds suddenly as irate as he had earlier. “The absolute nerve of her ignoring your messages after what she pulled today—”

“Leave off.” She rolls her eyes and follows a link to information on private beach yoga sessions. “She’s not ignoring me, I didn’t text her.”

“So you know she’s coming… how?”

“Because!” Alicent says, and smacks her phone down on the coffee table. Gwayne’s incessant questions are taking all the zen out of her relaxation planning. “I do, alright?”

Some unintelligible grumbling – from Gwayne’s mouth, then his stomach. “Can we at least get dinner?” he bargains. He cuts Alicent off when she’s about to rebuff him. “So it’s here when she arrives,” he rationalises. “You know what she’d order, anyway.” 

“Alright,” Alicent concedes. She is very good at predicting what Rhaenyra will want to eat, it’s true. Although maybe she’ll punitively opt for what would be Rhaenyra’s third or fourth choice. For earlier, and for keeping Alicent waiting. “Fine.”

“Helloooo? Earth to Alicent?”

There’s a sudden sharp sting at Alicent’s temple, then a moment of vertigo as she’s wrenched back into reality. There, she sits on the sofa in her living room, legs folded beneath her and half-numb from lack of movement. A hairband lands on the sofa cushion next to her, pinging off her head. 

“Piss off, Gwayne,” she gripes.

She’d been lost in a daydream. In it, she’d answered her door to Rhaenyra, soaked through with summer rain, then snogged her senseless before Rhaenyra even had the chance to speak, knowing she’d be able to scold her right after. Alicent scrubs her hand over her face, hoping it will wipe the slate clean. It doesn’t, the daydream lingering, along with her arousal and her anger. At Rhaenyra, herself. Most acutely at Gwayne, for interrupting, just as it was getting really good – hands on waists, Rhaenyra’s slipping down, her own sliding up, under—

Abruptly, she stands up. It’s been years since she’s fallen into such vivid fantasy, one so difficult to shake off. 

Alicent picks up the elastic and flings it back at her brother. It bounces off his shoulder, when she’d been targeting his forehead, her aim rendered impotent by the adrenaline of the daydream.

“What do you want?” she asks, mortified, unable to fully cast away the suspicion that her brother can read minds, as she’d always secretly feared of her father. A genetic quirk inherited down the Y chromosome, perhaps.

For a moment, Gwayne looks all the world like he’s going to make some snarky comment about her terrible shot, but his face softens, and he holds himself back. He talks to her like she’s one of his nervier horses. “I said, we haven’t had dinner yet. It’s gone nine, Alicent, and it must be completely cold by now. Why don’t we tuck in?”

“You know where the fridge is. There’s milk. Have some cereal if you can’t wait to eat, you love that.”

“Alicent.”

She doesn’t know when he picked up this habit of just saying her name like that, but it was getting old really fast. “What?”

“I don’t think she’s coming.”

Alicent hates him for a moment, for daring to put voice to a thought she is desperately trying not to have. It’s taking much longer than she thought it would, her second cup of tea was nowhere near as good as the first, and none of the messages coming through cacophonously to her phone are people she cares about hearing from. 

She looks at the untouched takeaway bags and realises with a start that she can’t hear the rain anymore; the summer shower has been and gone. 

“I mean,” Gwayne adds, more lightly than before. “It’s Rhaenyra. She’ll be in bed by now.”

He’s exaggerating. Alicent glowers at him. “Not yet.” 

“Maybe you should give up on tonight. Maybe she’s waiting for tomorrow – in case you didn’t want to see her yet, after this afternoon.”

“Rhaenyra doesn’t do things on other people’s schedules.” 

“Okay, so… maybe she doesn’t want to see you right now?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alicent dismissed. Rhaenyra had been glad when she won. “She was glad I won,” she tells Gwayne, so he’ll know it too. “We’re still best friends.”

“I’m not saying she’s binned you off forever, but when Rhaenyra gets it in her head to be a cunt, she’s a cunt for days. Historically speaking.” 

When she got into beef with Gwayne, perhaps. Not Alicent. “What would you know?”

“I just mean – it might not be tonight. At least put a film on or something, Alicent. It’s depressing watching you stare into space.”

She doesn’t tell him her imagination has her more than sorted on the entertainment front, because she doesn’t think he’ll much appreciate where her mind goes when she’s lost in the middle distance. 

Besides, she doesn’t want to imagine anymore. She’s waited too long, and wants the real thing in front of her. And if Gwayne is right, and waiting here is a fruitless endeavour—

“You’re not seriously going to her today?” Gwayne’s incredulous tone is echoed in the scrunching of his nose as he watches her grab her phone, then her trainers, perching on the arm of the sofa to tug them on.

“I seriously am. You’re right, she’s probably being stubborn.”

“After what she pulled this afternoon? You’re going there? No, Alicent, grow a spine! And have some bloody dinner, you’re in match recovery!”

“I really don’t need this right now,” Rhaenyra says tersely, folding her arms across her chest.

Admittedly, Alicent’s certainty that Rhaenyra was ready to grovel had fallen apart a bit on being forced to be the one to make the first move; she isn’t quite expecting Rhaenyra’s face to crumple into picture-perfect contrition upon finding her on her doorstep. But she’d hoped for a ‘Hello’ at least. In fact, even a sheepish silence would have sufficed.

Alicent wonders if she’d woken Rhaenyra up. Like a good little player, she’d forced down a plate of food before jogging over here (which, alright, maybe she wasn’t supposed to do after a match, but the delay had her cutting it fine to reach Rhaenyra before bedtime). It looks like she might’ve – Rhaenyra’s pyjamas are rumpled beneath the dressing gown Alicent had bought her years ago, tatty around the cuffs now, one of the belt loops threatening to pull away. It would explain how grouchy she’s being.

But she’d answered the door too quickly to have been in bed, Alicent reassures herself. “That’s—”

Not why I’m here, she means to say. Although it is a bit. Priority number one, bind Rhaenyra back to her for life; priority number two, put the fear of God into her so she never dares to pull a stunt like that again. 

Rhaenyra doesn’t give her the chance.

“It’s been a very long day, and you’ve already made your feelings on me very clear,” she bites out. She looks, sounds exhausted, worse than yesterday, the blue of her dressing gown echoed under her red-rimmed eyes.  “I can’t imagine that whatever you have to say to me about earlier hasn’t already been covered. But here we are — I’m selfish, and evil, and a shit friend, and you’re glad to see the back of me. Etcetera, etcetera.” 

Alicent scoffs reflexively. “Rhaenyra—”

Clearing her throat, Rhaenyra tilts her chin, barely even moving her crossed arm to shoo Alicent. “There you are! Just in case it wasn’t said before, now it has been.” 

“ Rhaenyra— ”

“You were dead right about me, and you won your match anyway, so if you don’t mind—”

It’s so typical of Rhaenyra, Alicent thinks, listening to her and beginning to seethe again, to avoid ever being brought to rights like this – jumping in ahead of any rebuke, exaggerating and undermining it. Donning criticism like a mantle to be shed later, like a costume. Rarely ever listening, or engaging in any true introspection. Trying to argue with her has always been like a match picking a fight with its box. 

Very close to catching flame, Alicent opens her mouth to spit back at her. But when she does, Rhaenyra flinches. And with a lurch of her stomach, Alicent remembers that she didn’t come here to fight her at all. 

Or at least not mostly.

Rhaenyra huffs in surprise as she’s knocked back with the force of Alicent’s hug. “Oh – I thought…”

“I’m sorry.” Alicent holds Rhaenyra tighter, though she’s stiff as a board. She’ll be the bigger person if that’s what it takes. “I’m sorry, Rhaenyra.” 

She tugs on the crook of Rhaenyra’s elbow until it comes loose. With some difficulty, she manoeuvres its limp weight behind her own back, so Rhaenyra is hugging her back. Sort of. But after another moment, she is properly, with both arms, squeezing. Alicent shoves her nose under the neckline of Rhaenyra’s pyjama shirt, where the warmth always makes her lotion smell even better. It’s orange blossoms, tonight.

(Ortigia, she recognises it as – bought on a shopping spree at Liberty’s. Rhaenyra had dabbed a sample on her pulse point, then held it to Alicent’s nose for her opinion. A casual nod, because she couldn’t speak, and Rhaenyra bought the whole range, before Alicent led them to the cafe, dizzy and in dire need of a sit down.) 

Alicent breathes in even more deeply, squeezes her tighter, and waits. 

“Your turn,” Alicent prompts when she’s waited too long. “Say you’re sorry too.”

“I did,” Rhaenyra says against her hair. 

“About the match today.”

“I did. Just now.”

Alicent holds back a scoff and sighs. Rhaenyra has always loved to conflate a melodramatic mea culpa with a real apology. “You didn’t,” she informs her. “I promise you. You didn’t.”

Rhaenyra pulls back, and frowns. She glares up at her own furrowed brow, clearly thinking, trying to remember. Then her mouth draws into a pout. “Hm,” she says, not without a shadow of suspicion, unconvinced even by her own conclusions. But when she blinks, the doubt clears.

Alicent’s stomach flips. For all that Rhaenyra can be more pigheaded and avoidant than anyone she has ever known, the other side of that coin is a strength of sincerity she has never seen rivalled, and possesses no defence against. 

“Well, I am sorry,” Rhaenyra promises, with gravity, wielding the full breathtaking brunt of it. Her shoulders have dropped, her expression gone soft, that haughty mask gone. “I should never have come to the match earlier. I know that. I wish I hadn’t, Alicent. I’m sorry. Really.”

“I know,” she whispers, reading it all over Rhaenyra’s pretty, tired face. Unable to resist, Alicent cups her cheeks between her palms, framing the glimmering blue of her eyes. What a face. One that should be at all her matches, only not like that.  “I know you are.”

Sliding her thumbs over the silk skin of Rhaenyra’s cheekbones, Alicent realises how easy it would be. It would take barely a thing to push up on her toes, and let gravity pull her forward. A flex of her calves, a confession, a kiss. She curls her toes in her trainers, wondering if she could do it. 

Rhaenyra screws her eyes shut, and Alicent is denied the chance to get the measure of her bravery; it’s the only warning afforded to her before Rhaenyra bursts into tears.

Rhaenyra breaks out of Alicent’s arms to swipe at her cheeks disgruntledly. “For fuck’s sake,” she chokes out. “These bloody – waterworks.”

Alicent’s stomach twists at the sight. “Perhaps we should go inside?” 

It feels strange, being so hesitant to step inside of a house she has keys to. Even stranger is Rhaenyra’s obvious apprehension, even through the stream of tears that she seems deeply fed up with. How many times has Alicent been shoved or tugged through this very threshold, Rhaenyra so eager to have her there?

As it is, Rhaenyra takes a long moment to step aside, and not before glancing down the street. She might be more afraid of paparazzi than actually wanting Alicent inside. But Alicent goes in, follows Rhaenyra’s gestured instruction to the kitchen, and perches on her usual bar stool at the island.

Rhaenyra pours herself a glass of water, then leans on the opposite side of the counter. She stays there, head in her hands, until her shoulders go still. Then she looks up, with red eyes and an expression equal parts mystified and annoyed. “Alicent,” she says hoarsely. “What the hell?”

“You left before my on-court interview,” she says regretfully, certain she’d have to explain herself so much less if Rhaenyra had stayed, understood they were as each other’s as they ever were. “I don’t want to not be friends, Rhaenyra. You’re still my best friend. And you always will be, I swear.”

Rhaenyra eyes her no less warily, so Alicent leans across the counter to grab her hand, gripping it tightly, her thumb sliding over her wrist. 

“I love you,” Alicent says. It sounds, feels right, like finding the sweet spot on a racquet. When no response is forthcoming, she fishes for it. That answering swing. “Do you love me?”

Rhaenyra had seemed half in a daze. It breaks then, and she rears back, taking her hand with her. Looking past Alicent, she laughs harshly. “You’re actually nuts, I think. You are.”

“You do love me. I know it,” she insists. “Say it, though, Rhaenyra. Please, can you just say it?”

A stretched-out silence, and the inevitable snap. Rhaenyra’s nails rap against the countertop. “Of course, I love you. Obviously.”

“Good.” Alicent’s fingers twitch, wishing Rhaenyra hadn’t pulled out of their grasp. “Good.”

“Which I told you,” Rhaenyra emphasises with a sullen anger. “Yesterday, and the day before. Like a hundred-thousand-million times, to which you said, ‘Well, boohoo for you, because I’m sick of you, Rhaenyra, you’re a horrendous bitch and you make me – quote unquote –  ‘miserable’’.”

Alicent sits back in the bar stool she’d claimed. “Okay, well, I did not call you a horrendous bitch.”

“It was implied,” she snaps. Straightening up, she walks off, and in a much smaller voice over her shoulder adds, “And not really the worst bit at all.”

“Where are you going?” Alicent calls after her.

A thick wet sniff as she flounces off. “To get a tissue.” 

Left alone in the kitchen, Alicent sighs at the empty kitchen roll, before going around the counter to toss the cardboard husk in the recycling. She digs under the sink for a new one to replace it, and then glares at the full one on its holder, chewing on a knuckle, waiting for Rhaenyra to come back. The adrenaline from her win, which had buoyed her expectations perhaps unreasonably, is decidedly depleted now. 

This is not going so easily as she had first imagined. But she doesn’t know how to explain it properly without giving herself away. She thinks she might want to give herself away. 

Telling Criston she’s gay, telling Harrold everything… The secret feels heavier than before. Like being afforded a few seconds to sit down on a changeover and realising just how tired she is, the relief is marred with the knowledge she’ll have to get back up on sore legs in a moment. 

To get up and keep hiding from Rhaenyra. 

She releases her thumb from her mouth, shoulders drooping. The ground beneath their feet is wobbly enough without dropping another earth-shaking reveal. 

As it is, Rhaenyra is likely hiding from her, given the inordinately long time she’s taking to return. She proves too easy to find, though: as soon as she steps into the hall, Alicent notices the door to the little loo under the stairs is ajar. Inside, Rhaenyra is perched atop the closed lid, in deep contemplation of the crumpled tissue in her hands.

“Hi,” Alicent says awkwardly. “Were you planning on coming back?”

Rhaenyra blows her nose loudly. Tear tracks dry on her cheeks as she looks up, caught starkly in the overhead fluorescence. “Thought I should get a grip on myself first.”

“Why don’t we go to one of the living rooms?” Alicent suggests. “Where there are actual boxes of tissues. And cushions.”

“There aren’t any tissues.”

“Yes, there are.”

“Aren’t. They ran out”

“I restocked the other day, Rhaenyra, there’s a box in the front room, and the back – and there should have been one in the kitchen, actually—”

“I ran out! Okay?”

Alicent chews her cheek guiltily. Partially because it’s her fault Rhaenyra’s been so distraught, but mostly due to how much it thrills her that she has been. “Did you go into the cupboard in the big bathroom?”

“No.”

“Okay, well, that’s where the multi-pack is. There were some left the other day.”

“Right.”

Alicent tilts her chin towards the hallway. “So if you like, I could go get a box or two, and we could relocate somewhere more comfortable and with a little more room, perhaps.” 

Rhaenyra blows her nose again.

“Unless you want me to sit on you,” Alicent goes on, sounding thankfully sardonic instead of hopeful, bending her knees so they press against Rhaenyra’s thigh. It fails to spur her into action. “If you’re really attached to the bog roll, we can stay in the bathroom, even. You up on your throne, I’ll stretch out in the tub, if you need a change of pace, there will be all the Kleenex extra soft ultra-large a girl could dream of…”

Rhaenyra shoves at her leg with a snort. “Stop it.”

Alicent pokes out her tongue, relieved to have found a foothold, some sign of weakness. “Stop what?”

“Being silly.” 

 “I thought you liked it when I’m silly.”

Rhaenyra makes a funny face, close to a smile, but not. “I do,” she says, after a pause. “I like it loads, because I like you, Alicent—” 

It should have been gratifying, but it wasn’t; the joyless way she said it made Alicent’s stomach drop. She laughed nervously. “I should hope so—”

“—It’s just,” she interrupted, “I kind of always thought it was mutual.” A scoff. “Oh, don’t give me that look.”

“What look?”

“That one. Like I’m stupid.”

Alicent tries to smooth out whatever is so offensive about her expression and smiles. “Well, you must be a bit thick if you think I don’t like you.” 

The joke, for all its truth, lands badly. Alice learns in that moment just how high eyebrows can be raised, as Rhaenyra’s disappear somewhere into her hairline.

“Oh, yes!” she says, sounding suddenly incensed. “You’re so right... Ludicrous thought!  Only an idiot could possibly come to that conclusion about someone who doesn’t want to be friends with her, and told her exactly why, then doubled down on it. And then got on court in the form of her life, all the while—”

Alicent’s chest feels very tight, like something might burst inside it, or from it; standing there, listening to Rhaenyra accuse Alicent of not liking her, she is sure she has never in her whole life felt so misunderstood. 

“But I didn’t,” she confesses. “I didn’t tell you why!” And she won’t now. But she can get closer to it. 

Ignoring Rhaenyra’s look of disgust, she plucks the snotty loo roll from her hands and drops it in the bin under the sink, washes her hands, and leaves the tap on for Rhaenyra.

“That was so grim,” Rhaenyra sniffs. She gets up and sticks her hands under the running water anyway.

Alicent could not possibly care less about handling the tissue. She’s woken up countless times with Rhaenyra’s drool on her shoulder, and when Rhaenyra's mother’s death finally hit her, she cried herself to sleep every night with her nose running in Alicent’s hair. They’d thrice suffered the same outbreak of norovirus in the same hotel room. On nights out, they would cram together in one tiny loo in a pub or club and take turns to piss, and those same nights have more than once ended up with one of them holding the other’s hair back, bent over the bowl. Rhaenyra used to wait for Alicent to take a sip of water and then make her laugh so suddenly and violently she spewed it back out, or it came out of her nose, and suffering the splash zone never made her stop. Alicent’s favourite memories are all sweat-drenched hugs over the net, on top of each other on the grass, the clay, the hard court. 

“No, it wasn’t,” she primly disagrees. “Come on.”

When they reach the back living room (the one with the smaller, two-seater sofa, so that when Alicent pushes Rhaenyra onto the cushion and sits beside her, there’s nowhere for her to retreat), Alicent grabs Rhaenyra’s hands again, anchoring them together. Her knees press into her thighs because she’s turned away still. That’s fine. Alicent can talk to Rhaenyra’s profile. It’s a pleasure, albeit a distracting one.

She takes a breath, but it gets stuck in her lungs. She’s nervous. Worse than before she walked onto court today.

Gwayne’s objection to her coming here pops into her head – grow a spine, he’d told her. This is her doing that, finally facing the monster that has for so long lived under her bed. Coming to Rhaenyra, risking rejection, about to confess a secret she’s been crushed under for years – it might be the bravest thing she’s ever done.  

“You were right,” she begins, “when you called me pathetic.”

Hopelessly easy to bait, her eyes flash irritatedly to Alicent’s. Alicent has to suppress a triumphant smirk to stay solemn. “No, I—“

“And a loser.”

“Fuck off,” Rhaenyra bites out. “I was not.”

“And jealous,” Alicent admits, though this is much more painful than the others to speak out loud. It’s uglier, she thinks. And much less disputable. “No – it’s alright, don’t argue with me. It’s comparative, isn’t it? I’ve lost much more than you, and I’ve resented you for it. And it is pathetic what I did the other day. But I was scared. I am scared.”

Rhaenyra squeezes her hand. Alicent wonders if she knows she’s done it; her face is hard, still, as she stares doggedly at the fireplace. “Scared?”

“Do you remember when you first started training at Merlaw?” Alicent asks. “We knew for weeks you were coming, all anyone could talk about was that we were getting a Targaryen.”

It isn’t anything Alicent hasn’t told Rhaenyra before, in the early days of their friendship – learning the thrill that came from watching Rhaenyra preen over her popularity, her pride in her name and family. Rhaenyra only shrugs, tipping her chin.

“I think that first week you looked at me maybe twice,” Alicent recounts. “I was so shy, and everyone else was all over you. Then in the second, you asked me to drill with you, and I thought you just felt sorry for me, because the other girls didn’t like me—”

“—because you were so much better than them.”

Alicent takes a breath and nods. “Because I was better than them.” It would be idiotic not to admit that now, but all she can remember at the time is feeling intensely other, never trying anything but her hardest, because her dad was always watching from off-court, and excluded from the fun for it. “But they liked you, and you were better than them, too”—she shakes her head—“but that’s not my point. The point is – you asked me again. And again. And then you asked me to come over to play, and I was so happy, but I was so scared that you’d realise I was boring, and you wouldn’t ask again, and you wouldn’t want to be friends at practice anymore either.” 

When Alicent stops to breathe, she can see Rhaenyra running out of patience. But she finally thinks she knows how to say what she wants, and can’t help but say it all.

“It went away, eventually, and I wasn’t scared anymore,” Alicent explains. She smiles. “I think when you told Maia Hall – do you remember her, really tall, like ginger ginger? Never mind – anyway, she was always trying to pair up with you, and one day you gave her this look like you wanted her to go away, which I suppose you did, because you told her to piss off. And you know my dad, Gwayne said that to me once and got grounded for a week, and we were younger than him, so I thought it was so shocking that you said it. But then you came up to me like it was nothing and smiled, and linked our arms, and I realised you’d never once looked at me like that. That you weren’t pretending. I think – no, we did, we already had those half-and-half best friend necklaces by then – but that was still when I believed that we really were. That I was your best friend as much as you are mine.”

Rhaenyra squints at her. “Alicent, we were ten,” she says exasperatedly. “What are you talking about?”

“What I’m saying is that it came back. I got scared again. I don’t know when, exactly. The second slam, maybe – or when you and Harwin started to get serious, or – or – like I said. I don’t really know. But then my results started tanking, and you were still on top of the world, and it just got so much worse. And I’ve been scared,” she confesses, finally. “Just like, terrified that you’ll wake up one day and decide you’ve outgrown me, and you’d give me that look you gave Maia that day, and choose someone else. A new best friend. A partner.” She swallows so hard it hurts. “Someone who might be both. And so I thought I would say I’ve outgrown you instead.”

Rhaenyra’s expression is inscrutable, other than being some shade of displeased. “That’s – Alicent, that’s so stupid.”

Alicent starts to cry. “I know,” she says. “I know. But it’s true.”

Crying doesn’t quite cover it. She blubbers, like she had into her pillow when the snow globe broke. And as she sniffs soggily, she thinks about how Rhaenyra has run out of tissues, and how she only keeps tissues in every room because Alicent is allergic to dust, and that maybe – and that yes – leaning forward, she finds out there still is a half-empty plastic mini-pack in the drawer of the coffee table. She wipes her face. And then she starts crying harder because she might still have fucked it all up.

“I’m not homophobic,” Alicent sobs, almost intelligibly. “I promise.”

In reaching for the tissues, she had lost her hold on Rhaenyra’s hands. Alicent can’t bear it – the unmooring. So she does what she’s always done when she’s upset: crawls into Rhaenyra’s lap and buries her face in the crook of her shoulder. She clings, in case this is it. The last time she got to experience the comfort of it. 

But Rhaenyra doesn’t push her off, or object to Alicent weeping messily against her neck. “Okay,” she’s saying quietly, hand in her hair, between soothing, hushing noises. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”

They aren’t yet. Alicent knows that. But it makes her believe that they will be.

She sits back and wipes her face. Looks at Rhaenyra’s. The worst she’s ever looked, and still so beautiful to Alicent. “You look tired.”

“Yes, well. I haven’t exactly been sleeping well. Are you staying there?”

Alicent slides awkwardly off Rhaenyra’s lap. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s – it was fine, I just…” 

“It’s okay.”

“Okay.” Rhaenyra goes uncharacteristically quiet, studying her own hands for so long that it makes Alicent itch. When she looks up again, her eyes are piercing. “That won’t ever happen, you know. I would never – not without you deciding it like you did. I chose you then, and I think I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That I always would.” Rhaenyra’s hands are apparently fascinating again. “I never told you why Harwin and I broke up.”

“You didn’t.” Alicent tries not to sound sour at a secret never divulged to her, when she’d been so burningly curious at the time, and since.

“Well, he broke up with me.”

The only detail Alicent had been sure of was that Rhaenyra had done it – Harwin had looked so desolate every time she’d seen him for months. The gossip rags had gotten it wrong, too. She feels her mouth drop – for all Harwin’s faults, she hadn’t thought him an utter moron.

“It was because of you,” Rhaenyra says so quickly Alicent can barely distinguish the words. She takes a breath, speaking more clearly. “Because you came first for me, and he realised no matter how serious we got, you always would. That I was happy to be with him, but I liked you more, I loved you more. When I thought about growing old, it was you next to me in the nursing home, not me and him pottering about the garden, you know?”

“Rhaenyra,” Alicent whispers, not at all sure what to feel.

“It’s like… you’re the great love of my life, Alicent. It doesn’t matter that it’s only platonic,” Rhaenyra goes on, dropping the most wonderful and damning thing she’s ever said with a laugh. “That’s why I haven’t really dated seriously since. It’s just not fair to whoever. And it works for me. But it’s just so – it’s actually insane to me that you would think I would drop you. For anyone, ever, after everything, even without you knowing that.

“And actually,” she sounds suddenly less plaintive and more annoyed, “it pisses me off. And it kind of – it kind of really hurt my feelings when you suggested I pulled a Ruzickova at Birmingham, that’s in there somewhere. And also that I almost lost to Daniels today, of all the fucking people, and you were bloody spectacular—”

Alicent recoils. “Because I had to be?! Because of your nasty little stunt! Do you think I’d be here begging to make it right if I’d lost?”

“Begging.”

“Essentially!” Alicent screws her eyes shut and breathes in deep. “And I’d do it again, because I love you, and I shouldn’t have freaked out on you like that. But don’t act like you didn’t hurt me, too. Like you weren’t cruel. What you said in the locker room. Just like my dad, and you knew it.”

Rhaenyra blanches. “I didn’t think—“

“Of course, I did. Of course, I knew what you were doing.”

“I was upset,” she says defensively.

“I was upset.”

“I’m still upset, I think.”

“Yes, well. Me too.”

Rhaenyra flexes her hands, holding them up in the air in front of her, dispelling the tension in them. At some point they’d balled into fists. “I had a panic attack after we fought,” she confesses conversationally.

So had Alicent, hyperventilating on the same bench where it all went wrong. “I didn’t think you got them.” It might be a little bit evil how flattered she feels.

“I don’t. Or I didn’t. I fully thought I was going to die – as in, I was telling Mysaria she had to call an ambulance, and she was all, no babe, you’re having a panic attack…”

Alicent misses the rest of the anecdote, forced to fend off the flood of demons that flocked to her at the revelation that Rhaenyra had gone to Mysaria after that; it’s not entirely successful. If Rhaenyra is looking for sympathy, she doesn’t find it then.

“You know she posted your little date on Instagram,” Alicent says, a nasty note in her voice she can’t prevent. “In Paris. Place du Tertre. I saw the menu.”

Rhaenyra doesn’t say anything.

Alicent scowls. “I can’t believe you brought her there.” 

“It wasn’t like—”

“Did you get a sketch?”

“She brought me there, for one, and it’s literally one of the most popular places in Paris—”

“So you did.” A blunt, barked laugh, when Alicent wants to howl. “And you were acting like I’m crazy for worrying—”

“You are.” That violent sincerity again, dousing as water, Rhaenyra’s knees suddenly pressed into hers. “Okay?”

“I’m not agreeing to being called crazy.”

“Then you shouldn’t worry,” Rhaenyra insists. “Because it would be if you did.”

Alicent sulks. “What’s she like?” she asks sullenly.

Rhaenyra does not pick up on the cue to speak about how demonstrably inferior she is to Alicent. “Oh, you know. Funny. Super smart. Great player. Usually nice.”

“Usually?”

“She’s got a streak.” She smiles appreciatively in a way Alicent hates. “Like you.”

“Don’t act like you’ve not got one too,” Alicent argues. 

“I’ve got more than a streak, I think.” Rhaenyra’s mouth twists unhappily, and then she twists her whole body close. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, Alicent. What I said in that locker room — I just… I just wanted to hurt you.“ She says it disbelievingly, like she hadn’t known she was capable of wanting that. 

“Good job,” Alicent says, failing to sound wry.

Rhaenyra winces.

But Alicent has to get one thing off her chest, still. She’d imagined when she did that it would be a righteous tirade, but somewhere along the evening, she’s lost her soapbox. She only sounds wretched. “Today was worse, though. I don’t care if she’s your girlfriend”—God, could she be more of a liar—“but don’t do that again. Please.”

Rhaenyra holds out her pinkie. “Never. Promise.”  

Dutifully, Alicent wraps her own around it. Rhaenyra’s is longer and a little bit crooked, and the joints don’t bend in the same places. She holds on, like the length of the linkage might make the swear hold stronger. And because she can’t bring herself to let go, she pulls their hands, still intertwined, into her lap.

“She isn’t, by the way,” Rhaenyra says. “My girlfriend, I mean.”

“But you’re—”

“We were.”

“Right. Cool.” 

Rhaenyra shifts and nudges their shoulders. “But we’re just friends now. You can put her on like… Your Laena list. Beef-wise.”

Despite herself, Alicent snorts. “Stop it.”

“Although I do think you’d get on. If you gave her a chance.” 

“Sure,” Alicent lies. 

She doesn’t want to think about Mysaria anymore. Unwinding their little fingers, she holds Rhaenyra’s hand, and Rhaenyra shifts so that their fingers interlock. And then Rhaenyra stretches her mouth open and lets out the longest, loudest yawn Alicent has ever heard.

“Sorry,” she says, around another smaller one, pressing her free hand to her mouth. She blinks rapidly, then slowly, with heavy eyelids. 

Alicent wants to put her hands on Rhaenyra’s cheeks and squeeze till she bursts. Instead, she hugs her again, suddenly, overwhelmingly fond of the sleepy girl in front of her. The embrace isn’t so desperate as the others had been. Running her hand down Rhaenyra’s back, smoothing out the silky wrinkles in her rumpled dressing gown, it’s more like sinking into well-worn memory foam.

“Let’s go to bed,” she says. 

Rhaenyra lifts her head from the crook of Alicent’s neck with all the vigour of a sloth, eyebrows tilting upwards hopefully. “But — we need to talk. There’s so much we haven’t even touched. Your Dad, and quitting. The Birmingham thing,” she says again, sourly, though she had mentioned it, so perhaps Alicent had struck a greater nerve than previously understood. “Whatever… else”—she yawns—“there…was…”

“What if we don’t talk about it?” Alicent asks. “What if we write this whole thing off as a horrible, I don’t know… blip. It’s been”—she looks at the clock, and laughs—“literally it’s been fifty-one hours.”

Rhaenyra laughs softly. “Very precise. God, is that it?”

“Which is really no time at all. In the context of what, seventeen years.” Alicent reaches out to tuck an errant lock of hair behind Rhaenyra’s ear. “We’re best friends. That’s what matters. Let’s go to bed.”

But Rhaenyra pulls back. “You said that was the problem before. That we didn’t talk. That you couldn’t, that you can’t— ” 

She sounds increasingly upset, but not like before. Rather, in the wobbly, toddler-tired way she gets without enough sleep. A storm warning, before a tantrum.  She looks so tired. It must be such a huge effort not just to agree to sleep.

Alicent knows she’s probably right, but every resolution has almost tripped into a new argument. They both want to make it work; they’ve established that. She wants to rest for a while in this base camp before having to make the arduous climb through all there is to say. She knows what the view from the top, when they reach it, has to be: her heart laid out in full, the whole truth, the entire landscape of how she loves, wants, and needs Rhaenyra.

“After Wimbledon,” she whispers. A compromise. “We still have that holiday booked, don’t we?”

“Cancelled it,” Rhaenyra said. Another little yawn as Alicent rankles at the haste of it, and her wasted research. “But we can book a new one. Somewhere more private, maybe. Everyone ’ s going to Mykonos, it feels like.”

“The Riviera, maybe.”

“That would be nice. Nobody ever goes back to France after clay.”

“Except the French.”

“Well, yes. Pedant.” Rhaenyra glances at the door. “We will talk, though?”

“Promise. After Wimbledon. Come on. To bed with you.”

Rhaenyra’s steps slow unacceptably as they pass by ‘Alicent’s room’.

Alicent isn’t having any of it. It’s been too long — four wasted nights — since she last shared a bed with Rhaenyra, so she ups her own pace and heads for the one that is ostensibly Rhaenyra’s, but has always been theirs. On the way, the door to the trophy room is ajar; Rhaenyra steps in front, closing it before Alicent can glimpse inside.

“You don’t have to,” Rhaenyra says outside the bedroom. “I won’t be offended. Or at least not irreparably.”

“I always sleep better with you. You know that.”

Rhaenyra grumbles something dubious. She’s not yet as committed as Alicent to business-as-usual, it seems.

Alicent squeezes her arm through the non-existent space at Rhaenyra’s elbow, pulling her through the door. “How ready for bed are you?”

“Emotionally, physically, or in terms of routine?”

“All of the above.”

“Oh, entirely.” 

Alicent could watch her yawn forever. It’s probably a bit sick, how much she enjoys the intimate sight of her uvula. 

“Sorry,” Rhaenyra says, covering her mouth as she sits on her side of the mattress. “Once I start—”

Alicent yawns too. “Past your bedtime, isn’t it? Get under the covers, I just have to brush my teeth – oh. Is my stuff…?”

“There’s a bag in the cabinet.”

“Can I borrow some pyjamas?”

“Yours are still in your room, too. I haven’t touched it yet.”

Alicent stops at the chest of drawers anyway, takes hold of the handle. “And if I want yours anyway?”

Rhaenyra raises her eyebrows as she curls under the topsheet, kicking the duvet to the end of the bed on her side. “Finally seeing the silken light, are you?”

“Too hot for flannel. Nothing wrong with cotton. But, as a treat…”

Alicent gets ready for bed, fully expecting Rhaenyra to drift off as she does. She plots how she’ll subtly wake Rhaenyra as she slides into bed beside her, so Rhaenyra will know she’s there for the spooning. But when she comes back into the bedroom from the en-suite, Rhaenyra blinks up at her, so pale and illuminated in the soft glow of the bedside light. She watches as Alicent takes out her earrings.

“Why on earth are you still awake?” Alicent asks.

Rhaenyra only shrugs and shuts her eyes, burrowing into the pillow.

A soft laugh. “Alright, then.”

When she climbs into her side of the bed, Rhaenyra does not sidle up behind her. Too tired to endure a wait again, like the other night, Alicent clears her throat.

“Do you need a tissue?” comes Rhaenyra’s sleepy voice. Much to Alicent’s dissatisfaction, it sounds distant, like she’s facing the other way. “They’re gone in here too.”

Alicent rolls over. “Rhaenyra.”

“Mm?”

“Why are you all the way over there?”

“I don’t know,” Rhaenyra says, but doesn’t move. “S’hot.”

She can see Rhaenyra shrug in the last of the light, filtering through a gap in the curtains. Rhaenyra must’ve forgotten to roll the blackout down, which isn’t like her at all.  Alicent gets up and does it for her. When she slides back into bed, she doesn’t stay in her half. 

“Hi,” she whispers into Rhaenyra’s ear, trying to ignore how her stomach is flipping, hoping Rhaenyra can’t feel the acceleration of her heart as Alicent presses into her back. She winds an arm around her stomach. “This is a throwback, isn’t it?”

It was always like this when they were kids: Alicent holding Rhaenyra as they slept. She can’t remember when, why it switched. Maybe when Rhaenyra got taller. But it’s nice. She likes it a lot. Too much perhaps, but as her nose settles behind Rhaenyra’s ear, brushing the silky hair sweeping into its braid, she can’t help but think it makes sense. Hair-wise, if nothing else.

Alicent has always been bravest in the dark. She kisses Rhaenyra’s shoulder where her collar is slipping down. And then, because she’s greedy, she does it again. She wishes she could keep going, put her lips on every patch of skin they can reach, then roll Rhaenyra over and reveal even more of it. She wonders how far she’d get before Rhaenyra realised the kisses were crossing past their regular intimacy. The lobe of her ear, perhaps. Alicent shivers bodily, squeezing her eyes tight, suppressing the urge to try.

Rhaenyra tenses in her arms. “You don’t have—”

“Rhaenyra!” she says crossly, jabbing her sharply in the waist. “I am not a fucking homophobe. Stop being weird.” Her frustrated mouth flies ahead of her brain — unfortunately, its speed has long been negatively correlated with how much of her body is in contact with Rhaenyra’s. “What do I have to do to prove it? Do you need me to snog you?”

Alicent freezes, hoping the exasperation in the question would do enough to cover up how painfully genuine the offer had been. 

Except had it been genuine? She couldn’t possibly. What the fuck is she supposed to do if Rhaenyra says, yeah, okay? Give her a peck? Or an actual snog, no hyperbole? 

And what of tongue?

“Ha,” Rhaenyra says so stiltedly, Alicent worries she’s made it impossibly awkward, while berating herself for getting so ahead of things. “No, you’re alright. Point made, sorry.” 

But Rhaenyra tentatively lifts her arm, resting it on top of the one Alicent has over her waist, loosely winding their fingers together. She relaxes at last, melting into Alicent’s front. It’s so wonderful that Alicent forgets to exhale. When she remembers, it’s a great rushing sigh, and they’re left lying closer still. She wishes absently that someone could vacuum-pack them, leaving no space at all.

“I like this,” Rhaenyra murmurs. “S’nice.”

Reluctantly, Alicent closes her eyes. Even the back of Rhaenyra’s head is a hard sight to let go of. “So nice,” she agrees, her chest tight. She squeezes Rhaenyra’s fingers before letting them fall slack, listening to her breathing start to even out.  “Sleep tight,” she whispers. One last kiss to her shoulder. “I love you.”

With what must be the very last of her consciousness, because in the next moment, she lets out a snuffling little snore, Rhaenyra responds. “Love you more,” she says, so close to sleep she’s slurring.

How utterly impossible, Alicent thinks, resisting the urge to poke her awake and argue it. Instead she smiles ruefully to herself, not tired enough to sleep yet, glad enough to hold Rhaenyra as she does. She’ll make the truth known in the morning.

Chapter Text

Alicent’s body clock wakes her up as it always does, ten minutes before her alarm. She dreads it. Her phone is a ticking time bomb all the way over on her nightstand, across the expanse of mattress that had been left empty the whole night. She’ll have to traverse it to silence it, but before she can do that, will have to extricate herself from a very pleasurable situation: Rhaenyra, sound asleep in her arms.

It’s not that she’s comfortable, per se. She’s lost all sensation in one arm and most in one leg. But she makes up for the localised lack of feeling by brimming over with it everywhere else: what a relief it is to have Rhaenyra back; how happy Alicent is to be holding her again; and if there’s a stirring in her chest, and low in her stomach, surely nobody could blame her for enjoying it too much to move.

Nobody but herself, anyway.

The guilt seeps in as the cylinders of her mind wake up and begin to fire. Each finds a different point of bodily contact to fixate on: the crush of her chest against Rhaenyra’s back, their nested knees, the hinge of her own body, how it cradles the curves of Rhaenyra’s. She isn’t meant to notice these things. Over the years, she has gotten very good at not noticing these things. But for some reason this morning the curtain refuses to come down. She can’t ignore any of it, or even pretend to. Her unrepentant body adjusts to accommodate Rhaenyra, shifting in her sleep. It presses its lips to the top of Rhaenyra’s head, breathes deeply the scent of her shampoo, considers letting its fingers skim along the hem of Rhaenyra’s pyjama shirt.

Stop it, Alicent tells herself sharply, with all the vim she can muster, imagining a fierce spritz of water to the face. It doesn’t work. A fire hose could probably do it, she thinks, should it manage to knock her head cleanly from her shoulders. She blames her unruliness on the lingering of whatever beast had seized her yesterday, turned her inside out, made her bold. Made her the kind of woman who wanted, and took what she did want, uninhibited in a way she’d never felt sober. She pays for it now as if she hadn’t been – memories drifting in like it’s the morning after the night before, making her cringe.

I love you. Do you love me? You do. Say it.

Groaning under her breath, Alicent wriggles carefully out of their entanglement, flopping over onto her usual side of the bed. The sheets and pillow there are blissfully cool, and she has the space to shake the pins and needles out of her limbs. Her stolen camisole is plastered to her front. She plucks at it to let the cold air from the fan blow over her stomach, then reaches for the phone on the side. She cancels the alarm. For a minute longer, she lies there, appreciating the breeze, appreciating Rhaenyra’s back, too. Sharply bladed, kissed and clung to by the drape of her silk shirt, the bottom of which is rucked up to her waist and fluttering temptingly in the flow of the fan, the top sheet scrunched down by her hips. Alicent watches the hem ruffle, wishing it was her fingers playing with it. She would dissolve into that breeze, if she could.

Alicent brings her hands over her ears at that thought, as if she could deafen herself to her more deranged inclinations, if she could just be normal for a moment. Sadly, she cant’t, so she sits abruptly up and scrambles to the edge of the mattress. Horrible perverts must not be rewarded with the luxury of an extra five minutes in bed.

Rhaenyra stirs as she gets up, but miraculously doesn’t wake, only unwinds into the vacated space, murmuring, a soft, feline sound. The temptation to curl back in is stronger than ever, and more vital to resist. Alicent tears her eyes away and creeps out of the room as quietly as she can.

When Rhaenyra won her first slam, she bought herself this house as a present. Far bigger than her one-person household and frequent absence justifies, she’d made the excuse that it was really for the two of them, so she and Alicent could stop returning to their family homes for grass season and the off. They’d been starting to rankle at it. To Alicent’s mind, the solution to this would probably have been to rent a reasonably sized flat; the sort she later acquired for herself. But Rhaenyra, as in all things, had gone hard, then home. To her new home, propelling herself several rungs up the property ladder in one leap. The five bedroom house had too many reception areas and a kitchen that far outsized its owner’s ability in it. Rhaenyra had needed to hire a housekeeper and a gardener to help her manage it. It cost her a year’s prize money – and then she’d brought in the interior designers.

But she’d loved it, and still does. Alicent thinks the only part of it Rhaenyra would change would be to put her trophy room on the ground floor. She loves nothing more than when guests go in to gawk at the evidence of her success, but as it is, she always has to usher them upstairs first, which makes her penchant for showing off rather unsubtle.

For her part, Alicent has seen the room a million times. She peeks inside every time she walks by the perpetually open door to take pride in – or resent, depending on the day – the glass cabinets where Rhaenyra keeps her trophies. But when her head tilts round today, Alicent is confronted with solid wood, inches from her nose.

She remembers how Rhaenyra had pulled it shut as they walked by last night. At the time, she’d been too preoccupied to give it much thought; now it begs a question.

The room, in its usual state, comprises three walls of display cabinets. They brim with trophies, medals, plates, the keys to a Porsche, proudly exhibited. Filing cabinets take up one corner, storing paper paraphernalia, newspaper clippings, long-cashed cheques, old tournament passes. The fourth wall is a gallery, artfully arranged memorabilia, framed photos. Of Rhaenyra, of Alicent, of them together. A few other faces that don’t matter as much.

Air spikes into Alixent’s lungs as she pushes open the door, taking it in. The trophy cases glimmer as pristinely as ever, the filing cabinets sit primly in their usual spot. But the gallery wall…

The display is wrecked. Every other frame hangs skew-whiff or doesn't hang at all, littering the floor beneath. A few are woodenly broken, splintered like bonfire scrap, but all of them shattered. The carpet is dewy with glass. Turning over a photo frame with her foot, Alicent sees her own smile beaming up at her through the cratered glass, broken in the tooth. All the targets have her face in common.

The murder weapon, Alicent deduces, is the tennis ball sitting by her foot. Flat, it rolls dully away when she kicks it, only to bump into an old racquet and dribble to a stop. The racquet used to be on the wall, too. Now, it lies unceremoniously on the carpet amidst the wreckage. Above it, there’s a bright imprint, an outline where it had for years protected the paint. Alicent bends down to pick it up. Faced with gravity, it crumples in on itself, cracked, the frame swinging from its strings. She cradles it like it’s a newborn, supporting the head. Resting flat on her forearm, it holds almost whole again.

It had been the very first thing Rhaenyra hung on that wall, before she’d gotten bored and delegated the frame arranging to her interior designer.

Finally, she’d said to Alicent, producing it triumphantly. Somewhere to put this.

Alicent hadn’t recognised it at first. She had been nonplussed, then moved, then squirmingly, delightedly indignant; where did Rhaenyra get off calling her sentimental when she’d kept that? A racquet from their Junior Wimbledon run years before. The one Rhaenyra had hit Championship point with.

A lump takes up residence in her throat. “Bloody hell,” she mutters mildly around it, thick-voiced. Better to be disapproving than bruised by it, she reckons. Rhaenyra is too old to be throwing tantrums and smashing things up, and there’s no use in having her feelings hurt by a hissy fit.

It’s inconvenient, then, that Alicent’s eyes begin to burn anyway. The tears spring up and fall with no regard for her sound reasoning, her feelings hurt all the same.

Overcome, Alicent doesn’t want to look at the carnage anymore. She wants to shower and let the water run over her face until not even she knows if she’s crying still, in a place where it wouldn’t count if she were. But when she turns around she jumps half out of her skin, the racquet slipping from her fingers and hitting the floor, its limp strung parts hitting the ground asynchronously, a soft thump each.

Rhaenyra is in the hallway, scowling her way down it.

“You snoop. You weren’t meant to…” In the moment she meets Alicent’s wide wet gaze there’s a faltering, but then her mouth thins, and she doubles down, even in the face of that sogginess. “You weren’t meant to see this. I shut the door for a reason, you know.”

Wiping at her face would look dramatic, Alicent thinks, so she doesn’t. If Rhaenyra won’t respond to her sodden cheeks, she’ll pretend they’re dry too. Stiffly, she lifts her chin. “You’re supposed to be asleep.”

“Wouldn’t that have been nice? Unfortunately, Lurch, I could hear you being nosy and thought I'd better get up.”

Alicent isn’t often accused of being heavy-footed. Only ever by Rhaenyra, who insists she can hear every step Alicent takes about the house, mostly to accuse her of ruining a lie-in. “It’s not my fault you have creaky floorboards.”

“You could try to avoid them.”

“I do!”

“And you always open doors so aggressively—”

“You’re just a horrendously light sleeper,” Alicent dismisses defensively. “And you exaggerate.”

“Well, you’re horrendously nosy. And I got up because I thought I should explain.” She makes no attempt at it, though, going silent, chewing her cheek.

“I think I’ve got the gist,” Alicent says eventually, looking pointedly at the racquet she’d dropped..

Rhaenyra frowns. “You weren’t—”

“Meant to see. Yes, I get it.”

“Well you weren’t.”

“I said ‘I get it’.”

Rhaenyra’s frustration, as it often does once running into a wall, changes course, like a very disagreeable Roomba, fluctuating into condescension. “Curiosity kills the cat,” she says haughtily, taking the tie off her plait, running her fingers through her freed hair. “As they say.”

It’s such a classic tic of a cornered Rhaenyra – like a squid’s ink, a lizard dropping its tail. The tip of her neck, the ripple of blonde like an airing of a sheet, the neat cascade into place, lend her an unbearable, untouchable insouciance. The ability to recognise this has never helped Alicent. It has the desired effect on her every time, leaving her motion dazzled, then tipsy-turvy tense and suddenly the unreasonable one, alone in agitation.

Alicent does wipe her cheeks then. She stopped crying when Rhaenyra began prodding at her, but the drying salt itches, and Rhaenyra getting all uppity itches more. Picking a row and pretending she’s above it. Alicent is determined not to feed into it this time. “Can you not?”

“Not what?”

“I don’t know. Be a prick?”

“That’s not fair,” Rhaenyra says, but she does at least lower her chin, so she’s not looking over the tip of her nose. “You’re being unfair.”

Alicent thinks saying that is unfair. Rhaenyra is the one who smashed Alicent’s face in a dozen times over, and hasn’t done anything to help her feel better about it. Like, a hug might have been nice. An apologetic look, or a reassuring word. “I’m literally not doing anything,” she argues. “I haven’t even said anything. Can you let me through? I want to go shower.”

“I was upset.”

Alicent wonders whether this is karmic retribution for her secret thrill at the idea of Rhaenyra drowning in tears, inconsolable at the loss of her. This discovery feels much less flattering. “Okay. Excuse me.”

But Rhaenyra doesn’t move. “Did you see my score yesterday?”

“No…” Alicent had been too convinced Rhaenyra was about to show up and fix things to look into the second-hand specifics of her match online; why would she, Rhaenyra’s best friend, ever need to consult a match report about her? Rhaenyra would tell her all about it herself, just wait. “I mean, they mentioned in my presser it went to three, but—”

“Two, seven, seven,” Rhaenyra bites out the scoreline. “And the second went to a tiebreak. To ten in the tiebreak.”

Alicent grimaces. Rhaenyra had double bageled Daniels at Eastbourne not even two weeks ago. “That’s—”

“She had seven match points against me. And I probably only actually saved two of them, she chucked away the rest. Three double faults and two of the worst dropshots I’ve ever seen—”

“Rhaenyra—”

“I was so close to losing, Alicent, you don’t even know. And the worst part is, I was out there like, what-fucking-ever. Who cares, just get me off this court.”

“It’s Wimbledon.”

“Gosh,” Rhaenyra says, viciously droll, chin jutting out. “I hadn’t realised.” Then she stops, shakes her head. Sighs out her ire and, sucking in new air, mellows. Her voice isn’t so sharp when she opens her mouth again. “I mean, exactly. I was getting my arse handed to me by a pensioner on Centre Court, and I was crying again – on camera, which is bloody embarrassing, the guy had it right in my face. And I was just thinking… I can’t believe she’d do this to me, now. She knows what this tournament means to me, how badly I want it. Except at the same time it didn’t mean anything anymore. Well, it did, because I was so mad at you for it. But not like it should.” She kicks the skirting board. “That doesn’t make sense. Does it?”

“Not really.”.

Rhaenyra glares at her.

“Sort of.”

“Well, I know what I mean,” Rhaenyra insists, which has always been the bar she sets for explanation, which Alicent has always had to satisfy herself with. “And then I go – I go do what I did, because I thought, surely she’s at least a little fucked up about this too. And if you weren’t, I hoped it would make you. And instead you’re bloody Wonder Woman. And you’re taunting me—”

“What?!”

“The Valyrian! Like, okay, fuck you, Rhaenyra, you really thought—”

Alicent laughs incredulously. “That wasn’t… Rhaenyra, I wasn’t taunting you, I was…” Staking a claim, she thinks, unable to keep the blush from her cheeks, hoping they’d been red enough already to hide it. “Asserting myself. Against her, for you. You were meant to hear it and know…”

“Know what?”

Everything, maybe. All the things Alicent will have to tell her soon. “That I didn’t want us to be over. That you should have been sitting with my people, and you should have been cheering so loud then, and I should be hearing you yelling it for me. Like – like normal.”

“That would be quite the leap,” Rhaenyra points out, “from what you told me the day before.”

Alicent hears a distressed sound scratch out of her throat, and hates it. “Well, you should never have believed me to begin with!”

Alicent still can’t really believe she had. Even now, as they’re sliding into another argument, she has to control the muscles in her face against a slack-jawed inclination to adoration, provoked by mere proximity. Over half her life spent taking any opportunity to cling to her side, all the hours spent hanging on the telephone. Yes, she’d tried to drive the hammer of her lie home, but how could so many years of evidence be undone in a day?

“You were very convincing,” Rhaenyra says coldly. “And with how it had been, before that, how weird you’d been?”

“I don’t want to fight, Rhaenyra,” Alicent says, more steadily than she feels. They’ve been mutually conscious for about five minutes, if that. “I wasn’t trying to mock you, I’m sorry you thought I was. I’m sorry that you felt like…” Her jaw twitches at the idea of the destruction behind her. How fucking delusional she’d been yesterday, certain Rhaenyra was moments away from brightening her door, waiting for her with impatient thrill. And all the while Rhaenyra had been smashing her face in with a tennis ball, over and over. “You needed to do that.”

Rhaenyra remains dubious, saying nothing.

“Good morning, by the way,” Alicent adds, more gently than she really feels like being. She’s spiky too. But if she offers a soft cushion for Rhaenyra, perhaps the needles can all be put safely away. “Did you sleep well?”

The question pulls an incredulous huff from Rhaenyra. She pokes the carpet bar at the threshold with her toe, then Alicent’s shin, a pseudo-kick to it. Then she looks up again, poutily. “I did, actually.”

Alicent steps in closer. “Well,” she says, holding Rhaenyra’s gaze, softly kicking her back, in the ankle. “I’m very glad.”

Rhaenyra’s eyes defrost quickly. With the crooked twist of her mouth the look in them makes her very sweet, a little bit scolded. She makes the same face when Alicent grabs for her before she can cross carelessly into traffic; Rhaenyra always pretends she’d never been about to cross, obviously, or there hadn’t been a car coming, too quickly, too closely.

“Good morning,” Rhaenyra says, a tad sheepishly. “Hi. ”

“Hi.” Alicent offers a wry smile. “Not the best start we could’ve made.”

“It wasn’t, was it? Sorry. You weren’t…” She laughs. “Did I mention you weren’t meant to see this?”

“It’s alright,” Alicent ventures slowly, unfolding her arms, lifting them. “As long as you make it better?”

God, she sounds like Criston used to, when they were younger. Where’s my hug? But she wants one, and Rhaenyra steps into her open arms, melts.

Alicent wonders if this might be better than if they hadn’t bickered this morning at all. Match lit, flame catching, no booming gas leak combustion. Readily extinguished. Her sigh is one of relief. Frames can be replaced; they can play doubles together again. And they don’t really need mementos like that anyway. She thinks of her own, inadvertent, more irreparable shattering. A snow globe, a racquet. Each a fossilised moment, archived.

Alicent is the great love of Rhaenyra’s life. Which… well, for all the times she’s thought herself crazy in her life, Rhaenyra saying that is the kind of thing that might see her finally off to an asylum, so she can’t think about it too hard. Rhaenyra being the great love of her own, is, of course, not news.

But the mutuality…?

She can’t call it a commitment. But Rhaenyra had said it, hadn’t she? You’re the one I see myself growing old with, or something to the effect. So it’s okay, Alicent decides, to lose a thing or two. It’s making room for that future.

Vainly hopeful, she can’t quite quell the part of her that wonders if it could be an evolving exhibition. If one day, Rhaenyra will hold her just like this, and notice the sublimity of their bodies held close, and the thrill of realisation will make the hairs on her nape stand up. If she’ll ever slide her hand around the back of Alicent’s neck, find the same ecstatic evidence and know, and feel it too, and experience it with her at last. If the cartilage in her knees will turn to marshmallow, bonfire in her belly, spitting butterflies like embers, fluttering convection, the race of her heart.

“I’ll go halves with you,” Alicent murmurs over a rush of blood in her ears, pulling herself out of the dangerous embrace. “On new frames.”

Rhaenyra scoffs, cheeks tinting embarrassedly. “Don’t be silly.”

Alicent believes she was never meant to know about the destruction. But now she does, and in a strange way, wants her own small stake in it. “I’ve got that big second week money now, remember?”

“Right,” Rhaenyra says, voice much softer than Alicent’s exaggerated levity. “I never said congratulations.”

“Not too late.”

“Right, so true.” She takes Alicent’s hand and squeezes it. Her intensity of expression is such she seems almost angry again, eyes so diamond hard. But she isn’t. It’s only solemn, determined to be heard. “Congratulations, you marvel. Look at you go.”

Once Rhaenyra is finished arguing and admiring, and she’s left with nothing to be animated about, she looks suddenly less than herself again, tired and wan, shadowy under the eyes. Nothing compared to yesterday, but Alicent still half-expects her to take herself back to bed. She doesn’t. She trails behind Alicent, yawning all the way to the kitchen, then perches at the countertop, chin propped in her hands. Alicent doesn’t need to be told to know that she expects a coffee to be placed in front of her imminently.

“Have you got early plans with Rhaenys?” Alicent asks, dutifully checking the water levels of Rhaenyra’s chrome espresso bar; she’ll get to her own tea afterwards. “When are you hitting? I was going to ask if you wanted to join me.”

“I’m not hitting at all. I’ve been given a day off.”

“Oh? That’s not like Rhaenys.”

Rhaenyra pulls a face as she sips at her steaming coffee. “Yes, well, apparently yesterday I wasn’t like myself.”

Alicent throws Rhaenyra a look, a little irritated by the allusion, in that tone, right after they dragged themselves out of another argument.

Rhaenyra shrugs, wearing a smirk.

Just being annoying, then. Or at least mostly? Alicent finds it difficult to tell, not having been on the wrong end of Rhaenyra’s ability to bear a grudge before. It’s disconcerting. Determined to keep things on the right foot, she doesn’t comment on it. “But you don’t need the day now, right? Since we’ve sorted it all out. I’ve got Aorangi booked for noon if you want to join. Harrold won’t mind.”

Well, he might. But she pays his wages, so.

Rhaenyra shakes her head. “I’m still so tired, I need it, I think. I’ll relax. Do some yoga, my physio, take a nap, etcetera.” She looks wistful for a moment. “Several naps. But I can hold out until you have to go?”

But Alicent has to go too soon.

Drink her tea, shower, change, meet her father and brother for stupid breakfast. And then practice, where there won’t be Rhaenyra, and then lunch on site, where there won’t be Rhaenyra, and then conditioning, where there won’t be Rhaenyra, and then dinner, where there won’t be Rhaenyra. It’s a terrible theme for the day.

It felt like she’d had more of her when they’d been fighting. Rhaenyra at her doorstep, Rhaenyra in her crowd.

Alicent has a dreadful feeling that if she goes away their reconciliation will be undone. Even the unconscious hours of the night seemed to tick back progress, like the unwinding of clockwork. Rhaenyra had met her so defensively this morning. What if that timer rings when they’re separated, before Alicent can shore them up again?

“Well,” Alicent says slowly, as an idea that might be very bad pops into her head. “If you’re not doing anything else, you should at least come to breakfast.”

“Breakfast?”

“With me,” Alicent says, then carries on, watching in real time as Rhaenyra’s inclination wanes, “and Gwayne.” She hesitates. “And my dad.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

“Why?” Rhaenyra pauses, struggling with her words for a moment. “I’m not trying to start anything, I swear.”

“But…”

“But the other day you didn’t want me to know you were seeing him again, even. And now you think it’s a good idea for us all to hang out together?”

“I wasn’t myself either?” Alicent crosses around the counter and loops her arms around Rhaenyra’s waist from the side, propping her chin on her shoulder. “Please?” she asks, blinking up at Rhaenyra.

Rhaenyra glances at Alicent down her nose and then groans. “Stop it. No really, why?” She looks at the floor when Alicent takes too long to answer. “Right, you can’t—”

“I want more time with you.”

Rhaenyra’s lip part prettily, hands drifting absently to the cup set in front of her. “Oh.”

“And because I want to prove I can share things with you, and I will.”

“I meant…” She snorts. “I meant it would be nice to be told things. I didn’t mean I wanted to break bread with your dad.”

“And—” Alicent takes a deep breath. Honesty. “Because I’m a bit scared. About breakfast. Rhaenyra… I—I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing, talking to him again. That’s mostly why I didn’t tell you before, really.”

“Well—”

“Don’t,” she interrupts. “Please. I know your feelings on it, on him, but the thing is, I have to at least try.”

Rhaenyra’s face is strained. Alicent can only imagine the choice words she’s holding back. “You’re scared.”

“Not of him. Not really. Of me, how I get with him.”

“That’s the same.”

“It’s not,” she argues. “Because – Rhaenyra, I’m not stupid. I know my dad isn’t going to change overnight, especially if he doesn’t feel like he needs to. But I can be different. If he pushes at a boundary, I can stand up to him. I did, when I saw him, I told him not to come to my match. But it took so much out of me, and I’m scared I’ll let something go, and it will be this whole…slippery slope.”

“Alicent…”

“And I’m braver when I’m with you. I am. I always have been.”

Rhaenyra will come. Alicent sees it in the resigned slumping of her shoulders. “He’ll pick a fight with me, and I’ll bite.”

Alicent nestles back into Rhaenyra’s side. “Then don’t bite.”

“You have Gwayne,” she points out. “Surely he’s the better buffer.”

“I want you,” Alicent insists. “I want you there with me. Please. Don’t make me go the whole day without seeing you.”

Rhaenyra heaves an enormous sigh. “God,” she says a moment later, eyes widening in apprehensive realisation. “Exactly how mad at me is Gwayne?”

“Fucking – ow, Gwayne!”

“The least of what you deserve.” Rhaenyra rubs at the arm he’d just punched, like a playground game of dead-arm. “Oh, don’t be a baby,” he tells her snootily. “It wasn’t hard, and it’s your left. What do you even use it for? Not that poncy little backhand.”

“The ball toss!” Rhaenyra argues, high-pitched. “Balance, style! Daily activities. Lots of things! I’m ambidextrous.”

Gwayne rolls his eyes, gearing up to get at her further.

“Be nice, Gwayne,” Alicent orders sternly, stepping between them. She slips her hands under Rhaenyra’s, taking over the job of massaging the sore muscle. “I’m over it,” she says. “You need to be too.”

It isn't entirely true, but probably will be one day.

Gwayne and Rhaenyra glower at each other for what feels like ages, until he steps in and elbows Alicent away. Rhaenyra grumbles as he hugs her, tighter and tighter until she returns it. They act more like siblings than Alicent and Gwayne do, sometimes. Part of seeing each other less often, maybe, stuck in those teenaged summers.

“You’re an idiot,” Gwayne chides Rhaenyra. “Honest-to-God, I’ve never been so mad at you.”

“What about when—”

“I promise you, no other time.” He pulls back, attempts to mess up Rhaenyra’s hair – she’s too quick, and ducks him – and then points at Alicent over his shoulder with his thumb. “I mean it, you’re an idiot. But so is she, I suppose. To a lesser degree.”

“What?”

“An idiot.”

Alicent, betrayed: “Gwayne!”

She isn’t given much time to be offended, as her brother pulls her under his arm, and then he’s squeezing them both tight in a vaguely painful three-person hug, with far too many limbs involved. “Let’s not repeat this one, alright? Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee can’t break up the band.”

“Dibs Tweedle Dee.”

“Oh, fuck you,” says Alicent. “No way.”

Gwayne shrugs sagely. “She bagsied.”

And then, from behind them, a clearing of the throat. Alicent and Gwayne scramble to stand straight, in the manner of the Von Trapp children at the sound of the Captain’s whistle.

“Oh! Dad! Good morning.” Off balance, Alicent lurches forward clumsily to kiss his cheek. “I hope the traffic wasn’t bad?”

“No worse than usual. Parking is terrible around here, though.”

“Right, right.” Alicent nods. “Sorry, I should have thought of that.”

Rhaenyra kicks the back of Alicent’s foot. “Hi, Mr Hightower,” she greets. “It’s been a little while.”

Alicent squints in confusion. Rhaenyra has been calling him Otto since they were children, never dissuaded by the fact he had found it unspeakably disrespectful. It’s hard to fathom the formal address being used with any sincerity now, but Rhaenyra is smiling politely enough.

It’s false, of course. Alicent could tell it from a mile off. But it’s the professional one she uses on sponsors and strangers, not the passive-aggressive smirk she’s been directing at the man since hitting her terrible teens.

Rhaenyra’s trying. Blinking rapidly in a bid to clear the stars from her eyes, Alicent ignores the way her stomach swoops. ‘Please avoid overt hostilities with my father’, perhaps shouldn’t be an enormous thing to ask of one’s best friend. But she feels the weight of it anyway.

“Rhaenyra,” Otto said, with a flat civility and a bland smile. “I didn’t know you were joining us.”

She shrugs. “Last minute addition. Sorry to impose.”

“Not at all. I was on Centre for your match, yesterday.”

“Were you?” she says tightly, an edge creeping in. “Not my best.”

“No,” he agrees, leaving it at that.

The bare attempts at courtesy are worse than Alicent remembers. She wonders if inviting Rhaenyra along had been mad. She looks desperately to Gwayne.

“Hiya, Dad,” he says, reaching out. “Good to see you.”

“Son,” Otto greets, taking the hand firmly. “How are things at the ranch?”

Gwayne rolls his eyes good-naturedly, in a way Alicent would never dare or get away with. “The stables are great. Well, you know – always something that needs fixing, but we’re in good shape, lots of students.”

“If you ever need any investment…”

“I know, I know, I’ll call.”

Gesturing to the door, Otto takes charge. “Well,” he says. “Shall we?”

Otto Hightower takes breakfast in much the same way as he does everything else: with brutal efficiency. There’s no faffing about ordering drinks first. He glances only perfunctorily at the menu before asking for a cappuccino (only acceptable in the morning) and the granola. With a competitive, healthy readiness, Rhaenyra opts for an açai bowl. Gwayne doesn’t have to look at the offerings to go for the Full English.

Alicent, for her part, is left panicking, feeling harassed as the waitress taps her pencil on the pad. “The very berry French toast please,” she blurts, after dithering for the precise amount of time it takes her father’s eyebrows to creep up in disapproval. “And the… Ginger Zinger. Thanks.”

If her queasiness doesn’t abate, Rhaenyra will surely be happy to polish off the leftovers, and the smoothie might help settle her stomach.

Gwayne looks mournful as the waitress departs. “In my day, we called it eggy bread.”

“What?”

“‘French toast,’” he clarifies. “When did we get all continental with it?”

“I thought eggy bread was savoury,” remarks Rhaenyra, “and if it’s sweet it’s French toast.”

“Well, we called it all eggy bread at Scouts.”

“It’s American anyway,” Alicent chimes in. “Not French at all.”

“Regardless, I’m having order envy.” Rhaenyra bats her eyelashes, a common cruelty. You’ll let me have a bite, won’t you, Alicent?”

Alicent pats her hand, in full certainty she’ll be sacrificing more than that. “Of course, I will.”

“It was a shame I couldn’t watch you play in person yesterday, Alicent,” Otto cuts in. Apparently he had nothing to add on the subject of eggy bread. “But with the Centre Court debentures, and the business opportunity, it’s not economical—”

“Well, that—”

“Yes?” Otto says tightly, when Rhaenyra cuts herself off.

But she only smiles sweetly. “Never mind.”

Alicent looks anxiously upon her father’s stony face, displeased at being interrupted, suspicious of whatever Rhaenyra hadn’t said. Alicent can guess at it, because it was at the forefront of her own mind – the boldly ignored fact Alicent had told him not to come.

“As I was saying,” he went on. “It’s just a bit tricky to convince business associates into detouring to Number Two Court.” He chuckles and Alicent tenses, prepared to be stung. But it’s not aimed at her. “Of course, we did get a show on Centre, in the morning. Even if not the one we expected. You seem recovered, Rhaenyra.”

“Thanks. I am.”

“Everybody was terribly worried about you. It was all anyone could speak about in the lounge, after.”

“That’s nice,” Rhaenyra says, with very little emotion. “But yes, I’m fine. Just a little wobble. I hope your colleague wasn’t terribly disappointed by the quality of the match.”

“On the contrary,” Otto replies genially. “He was very pleased to have caught a match that made the BBC News. Makes a much better conversation piece. And the men’s match afterwards made up for it, as you’d expect.”

Before she can trap it, Alicent internects. “As you’d expect?”

“Because of the exciting match-up.” Her father’s voice is smooth. “And – the women’s game is a passion of mine, of course, but to a more casual fan…”

“With Rhaenyra on that same court,” she argues hotly, not even sure of where this righteous need to defend the WTA has arrived from. She only watches Rhaenyra and the clips Harrold sends her. “The greatest British talent in decades?”

“Well,” Otto says drily. “I’m not sure he saw the evidence of it.”

“Even not at her best—”

Rhaenyra clears her throat. “No,” she says, pulling her hand free from Alicent’s as their drinks arrive. “It’s alright, Alicent. Not like I don’t watch more of the men’s game myself. And I was incredibly shit. Unlike you. And unlike Otto, I was lucky enough to witness it.”

“From an unusual spot,” Gwayne mutters unhelpfully.

Alicent kicks him under the table. “A mistake,” she excuses. “It would have looked strange to move seats after arriving, is all.”

“It would,” Otto agrees. “God forbid, I thought maybe you girls had fallen out.”

“God forbid.” Gwayne, apparently remembering belatedly he’s not there to stir the pot, but to keep it from bubbling over. “Excellent roast, this coffee. Do you think they sell it to take home?”

“They do. Rhaenyra likes it.”

“Ooh, yes. I have a bag at home, but – would you get one, Alicent? Not to complain, but…”

Gwayne interjects. “Don’t worry, she replaced the stale stuff. Although… this is nicer. Alicent, if I’m to be imposing on your hospitality a little longer—”

“Scrounger,” Alicent scolds her brother, secretly pleased at the implication he’ll be hanging around to see more of her tournament, despite his stables missing him. “Pick whichever roast you like, Rhaenyra, I’ve the cupboard space.”

“Am I not allowed a preference?” grumbles Gwayne.

“I’ll take your thoughts into account,” Rhaenyra tells Gwayne magnanimously. And then, much less so, adds, “If it’s any good.”

“I have a preference for the Peruvian blend here, myself.”

If Alicent could let herself believe it, she’d say her father sounds almost apologetic. Placating.

“And you really did play wonderfully yesterday, Alicent,” he adds, reaching over the table, his hand resting briefly on hers. “I would have liked to have been there.”

“Oh.” She feels herself blushing. “Thank you.”

“A toast,” Gwayne suggests, lifting his mug. “To the second week at Wimbledon, and Alicent’s excellent win.” He smiles toadishly in incomplete forgiveness. “And Rhaenyra’s lacklustre one. I suppose.”

“You prick,” says Rhaenyra, but she takes it on the chin. When her coffee cup clinks against Alicent’s glass, she hooks their feet briefly together under the table. “But…. to Alicent.”

In that moment – with Rhaenyra, Gwayne, her father, all looking at her, all smiling, varyingly effusive with their pride, but all nevertheless visibly so, improbably united by it – Alicent feels such a force of feeling that she lacks the capacity for it. Proud of herself. Wary that it won’t last. Hopeful, for the first time in a long time, that she might be able to have it all.

Or, she corrects herself, her own smile dimming slightly as Rhaenyra’s flicks to the approaching waitress, reaching with greedy hands for her açai bowl, to at least have most of it.

The end of the meal is marked by a brief argument, but only the civil kind, about who should pay. Alicent is an underdog in the fight – her head-to-heads against her father and Rhaenyra are poor, and it’s neck and neck with Gwayne – but comes out of it the dark horse winner.

“I’m serious,” she says, staring up at Rhaenyra. They each hold a corner of her debit card. “Use it.”

“Or what?”

“Or I’d be terribly unhappy.”

“Well, we couldn’t have that.”

Alicent doesn’t let go until the mischief in Rhaenyra’s eyes fades into promise. “Get a couple bags of coffee, if you like. Gwayne goes through it at a rate that’s frightening.”

“Thanks, Daddy Warbucks,” Rhaenyra says drolly. She’s too pleased with herself for the reference to pay any mind to Alicent’s fiery cheeks.

Gwayne trails after Rhaenyra to the counter, where she plainly ignores whatever he’s saying to her. Probably banging on about roasts and grind sizes again. As temporary roommate, Alicent has fallen victim to this recent and boring preoccupation.

It leaves Alicent alone with her father for the first time. He seems equally aware of it.

“This was pleasant,” he says to her after a moment. “But…”

Pavlovian dread strikes Alicent at that word, in his voice. “But?”

“I thought it would be a family affair. That’s all.”

“She is family, Daddy.”

“You know what I mean, Alicent. Not a blood relation or an in-law. She might be like a sister to you—”

Alicent slams the door on that hateful thought. “I asked her to come, because I wanted her here.”

It’s hard to remember she used to cherish the idea of sisterhood, wish it were true, that when she was fourteen she’d gone into Boots and stood in front of the platinum blonde bleach for ages and ages, until an older woman had taken her audaciously by the shoulders, shaken her like a rattle and told her Don’t you dare. It had embarrassed her so much she’d left the shop without the tampons she’d gone in for and avoided that aisle for a long time after.

“I only thought it worth commenting on, that a family gathering, in the pursuit of laying to bed any recent rifts—”

“She’s my family,” Alicent reiterates. Even if it’s more of the chosen kind, brought in. Like a spouse. “And even if she wasn’t” – she takes a deep, bolstering breath – “I don’t think you get to choose how I want to see you, not yet. Where, or who with, or when.”

“Alicent—”

“You disowned me, Daddy,” she whispers in a wounded rush, barely audible over the Norah Jones crooning breezily through the café’s sound system. “If you want me back, Rhaenyra’s part of the deal. Be nice to her or… or…” Alicent feels queasy. She’s never threatened her father before. “Don’t make me choose.”

Otto’s clasps his hands neatly in front of him. “Duly noted,” he says, thin mouthed. No argument. A longer hesitation, his neat beard twitching by the corner of his lips, and then, dumbfoundingly: “My apologies. I didn’t mean to end things on a sour note.”

“We haven’t, yet.” Alicent glances over at Rhaenyra and Gwayne, the barista behind the counter giving them a blatant upsell – perhaps she shouldn’t have handed over her card – and then back at her dad. “When we say goodbye, say sorry for what you said about her match,” she instructs him. It’s a trippy little head rush. “And wish her luck in the next round.”

“I think your dad got bodysnatched while me and Gwayne at the till,” Rhaenyra says to Alicent, when they’re alone outside the coffee shop. Otto had gone for his car, and Gwayne – with less stamina for tennis than the rest of them – had loped off towards the tube, determined to escape the SW postcode for a day. “Did you possibly look away for a second? Witness anything strange?”

“I only told him to be nice to you.”

“Wow. Should have tried that, what – seventeen years ago? Perhaps we’d be tight by now.”

“I don’t think he’d have listened to me before.” Alicent nudges her. “Much like I could never get you to call him Mr Hightower.”

Rhaenyra looked sidelong at her. “Mm, well. Going without you does put into perspective the lengths a person should go to avoid it.” She grins. “I think he hated it though, actually. It’s like I can’t fail to piss him off.”

Alicent snorts despite herself. “No need to sound so happy about it.” But she won’t mind if Rhaenyra keeps looking it – she’s missed that smile, silly and smug, self-satisfied.

The morning has kept cool instead of simmering into hazy heat, as had been its unusual tendency of late, bright and fresh. Yesterday evening’s stormclouds had cried themselves to nothing overnight, and the sky is the same pale blue as Rhaenyra’s jumper. It’s a novelty to see her in one not stolen from Alicent. Having been purchased for Rhaenyra, it suits her unbearably well, but Alicent doesn’t like her in it half so much as she does in her own old hoodies. Never mind. Easily rectified once Alicent starts leaving them around again to be snatched, a game starting over.

“Let’s walk back,” Alicent suggests, not ready to stop looking at her. “It’s so beautiful out.”

Rhaenyra glances at her watch. “You have time?”

“Plenty.” Alicent lengthens her step, to make the half-lie truer. If she doesn’t dawdle at home, and the traffic doesn’t thwart her, she’ll make her practice slot just fine. “Can you wait a little longer for a nap?”

Rhaenyra taps her chin in mock thought. “I think a stroll counts as relaxation.”

Alicent feels her face contort apologetically. “Ah, well – it might have to be a bit more of a stomp.”

Rhaenyra apparently considers this a challenge. Her purported exhaustion doesn’t stop her from speeding off so abruptly Alicent has to jog a few steps to catch up. When she does, she takes Rhaenyra’s arm. A moment later, they’re matching stride. Being in physical contact with Rhaenyra, especially hitched together in some way, holding her or hooked to her or in a heap, brings with it a jigsaw sense of satisfaction, a puzzle piece pressed into place. A difficult, solid blue piece, the sky or sea; the picture parsable without it, but not complete.

Alicent squeezes Rhaenyra’s arm tighter, bringing her other hand to it, too, boggled by how close she’d been to losing this. If she’d lost that tennis match. If she hadn’t been brave, or insane, or both, and chased Rhaenyra home, invited herself in.

They would not be walking amiably along, chatting in the sunshine. They would not have just been for breakfast, and Rhaenyra would not have polished off Alicent’s French toast, so there would not be a dusting of icing sugar on Rhaenyra’s chin for her to reach up and brush away. Rhaenyra would not be rolling her eyes at the mothering, or self-consciously rubbing at her own face in search of further, non-existent smudges. She would not be smiling at Alicent like nothing had ever been bad between them, or blaming the chef at the café for being overly free with the sugar shaker. That was not a sprinkle, Alicent, it was a blizzard, which, yes, tasted very good, and I did appreciate, but…

“I love you,” Alicent says.

Rhaenyra gives her a puzzled look, though she certainly heard; Alicent had spoken much more loudly than she’d meant to.

Alicent feels the need to explain herself, although it’s really a case of Occam’s Razor: she said it because she does. “I wasn’t saying it before, when I was being weird, I know, but I do. And I was thinking it then. So. I thought I should say it. That I love you. So you know.”

“You don’t have to—”

“We agreed, no? That we can tell each other things?”

“I mean, alright.” Rhaenyra shakes her head, chin down. “I love you too,” she says lightly.

“Good.” Alicent matches the tone, then clears her throat. It won’t be so long before their paths split, forking away from each other, and she’ll be left with a café-branded tote bag full of coffee, but not the girl. “Could I come over again later? After practice, I mean.”

Rhaenyra hums. “What time will Harrold keep you to? I’ve got some dinner plans.”

“Oh. Who with?”

“Mysaria.”

“I don’t think I’d be home until seven-ish.”

“Ah. Then yeah, I’ll be out.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just to the place she’s renting. She’s leaving London tomorrow, so…”

Alicent doesn’t say, ‘So you’re going over to get one last shag in’, but it’s a close-run thing.

“Rhaenyra, I’m not just saying this because… I mean, this isn’t about… the way I get sometimes.”

“Territorial?”

“Shut up,” she grumbles. “It’s only. We’ve just made up. Don’t you think it would be good—”

“I’m not cancelling on her.”

Alicent digs her nails into Rhaenyra’s arm, wounded by the speed of it. “Didn’t have to give that any thought, did you?”

“She’s already not the happiest with me, given yesterday.”

“So you go to her…” Alicent points out. “When I had to come to you.”

Suddenly there is no arm in hers. Rhaenyra’s hand is on her hip instead, where she’s drawn to a stop. “I did go to you, first. You told me to get lost.”

“But that was before.”

“Well, Mysaria hasn’t given me the fuck off message, she’s just being kind of pissy. And I wasn’t really going to apologise. Though I suppose I could.”

“For showing up at the match?”

Rhaenyra snorts. “No, she invited me.”

“Okay…” Alicent says, holding back at the revelation. She doesn’t think calling Mysaria a conniving cheater will help her cause right now.

“But I didn’t warn her, when she was underestimating you.”

“She did in the match, too,” Alicent agrees, residually puffed up. “She did not see it coming when I turned it around.”

“I mean, nor did I, exactly. I don’t think any of us did,” Rhaenyra says. “But I did always know you have that level in you. Plus. You have always played well when you’re mad at me.”

“Don’t take that as an invitation to piss me off more often,” Alicent says grumpily. Insistently, she tugs at Rhaenyra’s arm, claiming it back, softening the threat. “Fine. Hang out with her. You’ll see if I care.”

“Will I?”

“Literally. Get ready for sad selfies of me watching Love Island all by myself.”

“Fuck.” Rhaenyra frowns. “I’m so behind.”

“So catch up with me, instead.”

“Alicent…”

“I’ll miss you,” she says. Saying what’s on her mind gets easier every time she does it. It’s revelatory. No Looney Tunes sound effects emphasise the fact she’s making a fool of herself, there’s no laugh track mocking her for putting herself out there. “I hate missing you.”

And when Rhaenyra rejects her, it’s not actually the worst thing in the world. In fact, it’s quite nice. There’s arms around her waist and a chin on her shoulder and an apologetic peck to her cheek. “We’ll see each other tomorrow. As much as we can. We can work it out when the schedule comes out, but – whatever happens, sleepover in the evening, yeah?”

Instagram keeps showing Alicent videos of an animal rescue in Australia. In Rhaenyra’s arms she feels like one of their baby kangaroos, diving headfirst into a pillowcase. “Okay,” she says, pacified, any agitation of a different kind than before. “Pinky swear.”

Rhaenyra laughs, and makes the promise; sacred again, now they’d unbroken the first. Their little fingers stay looped until they say goodbye.

Chapter Text

‘Out of sight, out of mind’ has never been an adage Alicent has put much stock in. On the day she met Rhaenyra, it had been proven false.

There was always some hanging about after practice, but it had been more than usual that day: her father wasn’t pleased by how distracted the session had been and so was telling off the coaches; all the girls were huddling excitedly around their new friend, ignoring their parents, the car keys jangling in exasperated hands; and Alicent had sat been sitting on a bench changing her shoes. Lacing, unlacing, lacing them again, adamant she did not long to join the group. But her eyes were on that shiny blonde plait even when the mob disbanded, until it disappeared into a shiny black saloon car – but not without Rhaenyra pausing in front of her bench to say, Bye Alicent, have a good weekend, nice to meet you. She’d made a point of introducing herself earlier, too, with a big bright smile missing a milk tooth.

On Alicent’s own ride home, and after, she’d thought of little but Rhaenyra.

When her father asked what she thought of the new competition, a Targaryen, no less, she’d hedged for a while, before giving her answer.

I think she’s nearly as good as me, Daddy, but not quite, she’d said aloud, because he valued honesty.

She was really nice to me, she didn’t say, because he would have looked at her like she was a stupid little girl for caring about that, so she murmured something about her having good manners instead. Those were always important.

But Alicent had been a stupid little girl. A lonely little girl. And so she had cared. It had stayed with her, all weekend.

Next practice, would Rhaenyra grin gap-toothed at her again, or would she pick up on what all the other girls seemed to naturally know, like there was a scribbled sign stuck to her back: that Alicent was there to play tennis, not make friends.

If there had been, Rhaenyra hadn’t paid it any mind that second session, unless it were to rip it away.

(I love your scrunchie! And wow, your backhand is really nice. I wish we’d been partners for that drill. In a too loud voice, Maia can barely hit one. But we should be a pair next time! Promise me?)

All these years on, Rhaenyra’s hardly left Alicent’s mind since, near or far. It doesn’t help that she’s reminded of her with every swing of her racquet, every stroke of the ball, every shuffle of her feet against the court, hard or clay or grass—

“Alicent, focus please,” Harrold calls over the net.

“I am, I’m focused!”

—so it isn’t really her fault. It’s practically her job to be reminded of Rhaenyra. The work demands it. Although the work – the coach – also demands her full attention. And she should give it. What’s Alicent even worrying for?

Of course Rhaenyra won’t stop wanting to be her friend. They’ve just been through all that, they’re good. Rhaenyra has never given her evidence that says otherwise, Alicent had just gotten a bit ahead of herself the other day, made a rash judgement.

Except that was before Alicent had given Rhaenyra room to doubt at all. Introduced a fragility that wasn’t there before. Alicent sees it in her mind’s eye, the recent, root-heaving growth spurt of bitter-fearful seeds, forcing their way up and out, lifting and cracking foundations that used to be smooth.

“Alicent!” Harrold snaps.

The sharpness is so wrong coming from him that she reinhabits her body at once, bouncing on feet that had just been flat, straightening her sagging arm, ready to receive his feeder ball. “Sorry,” she says. “Sorry, sorry. I’m ready.”

Harrold gives her a sour look, and beckons her to the net. Preemptively shamed, she skulks over, spinning her racquet.

“So where exactly are you?” he asks, his tone simmeringly tight. “Because it’s not in front of me.”

“No, it is. I’m totally present, sorry. I swear, let’s just go again.”

“I came to work today excited, Alicent, because I thought we’d seen a breakthrough yesterday. I thought you’d realised—” He shakes his head.

“Realised what?” she asks squirmingly, when his silent disappointment stretches out.

“That you can do this!” Another shake of his head. “What I saw in you yesterday, I thought that you’d found your fire. But then today you look like you don’t even care that you’re through to the round of sixteen—”

“I do!”

“Or that you think it’s enough—”

“Well—”

“Well, nothing, Alicent. It isn’t.”

“It’s my best result here ever,” she points out. “It’s not nothing.”

“And it’ll stay your best ever, ever, if you don’t show some bloody ambition!” Alicent blinks at the vim in Harrold’s voice; it doesn’t rise above speaking volume, but she leans back as though he’d shouted. “I coach champions, Alicent.”

“Then why’d you sign on with me?” she jokes weakly.

His lip curls in disgust. “Don’t be”—pathetic, she hears, but it’s not what he says—“so dismissive of yourself. It’s a bad look on you.”

“I haven’t won anything in years, it’s a good question.”

“Then why are we here? Maybe you should retire. Do you want me to go to the tournament officials and let them know you won’t be playing tomorrow? You’ll give Brecht a walkover, because there’s no point in you playing for a title you don’t deserve, for whatever reason it is you think you’re not capable. Because you’re washed up and over the hill at twenty-six, some drivel like that.”

Hot all over, her eyes prickle. “You’re being unfair.”

“I’m being a coach.”

“You’re being mean,” she accuses. “Like my… but you’re meant to be—nice,” she says, wincing as she does, how bloody puerile. “You’re meant to…to…”

Support me.

But she doesn’t finish the sentence. She shuts her eyes for a moment until her hackles sink back down.

“No…” she says. “No, sorry. I’m sorry.”

Alicent has become accustomed to the velvet glove Harrold handles her with. Palm on her shoulder, he’s never squeezed it too tight for comfort before. But even now, the hand is only meant to encourage – it doesn’t conceal an iron fist, it’s not a weapon to beat her with.

I stopped fooling myself that you would trouble the majors a long time ago, Alicent, her father had once railed at her after a bad loss. But I thought you might have a couple of 250s left in you, God help me.

The cold creeping feeling at the back of her neck retreats. Alicent briefly grips Harrold’s forearm, resting on the net.

“Alicent?” he asks probingly.

“Head in the game, I promise. Let’s go again.”

Harrold shakes his head, stepping back. “Nope.”

“No?”

“Let’s take a water break. Two minutes, and if you want, you can tell me what’s on your mind.” He raises his eyebrows meaningfully, but the steely thread has thankfully dropped from his voice. Alicent, not expecting the concession, wonders if he isn’t just nosy. “But then you leave it behind, and I want you on that court looking like you did in the second set yesterday.”

“So, Rhaenyra and I made up last night…”

Before her water bottle is even fully uncapped, Alicent’s preoccupations are leaping out of her. She grudgingly concedes that Harrold probably isn’t only an implacable gossip hound; that she does need the respite of a listening ear, that he could tell.

“Just like that? And is that not what you wanted?”

Alicent dislikes his tone. “Yes, just like that.” Even though things are perhaps not entirely one hundred percent smooth, and they haven’t discussed everything they need to, and Rhaenyra might redevelop the urge to smash her face in at any given moment—

“Don’t forget to drink, Alicent. Two minutes.”

She takes a hasty sip. “We did make up. But I don’t know, I’m just worried.”

“That you’ll fall out again?”

“She isn’t practicing today. I don’t like it.”

Harrold pulls a face behind his beard. “I don’t know that would be my strategy, if I were her coach, and she’d just played a match like that—”

“Well, the thing is, her head was all over the place because of me.”

“Don’t sound too pleased about it, Alicent.”

“No, I’m not. I’m not, really! Because she wasn’t sleeping while we were arguing. At all, I don’t think. Stop looking at me like that. And so she’s resting today, and not practicing, but she obviously should be practicing, because this is her first tough match really, her first seeded opponent, and Gorgieva’s in really good form, and”—Alicent takes a hurried glug of water and a quick breath— “it’s not like she’ll get another let-off, if she plays badly. Not like Daniels gave her. I mean, what business did Daniels have being in the third round anyway? But what if Rhaenyra loses tomorrow, because she didn’t practice, so she isn’t prepared? And she thinks it’s all my fault, so she unforgives me again, and—”

Harrold looks at his watch, then stands up. “Then you deal with it after Wimbledon,” he says brusquely. “Alright, time’s up, back to it.”

Alicent gapes after him as he gestures for her to catch up.

“You’ll need to be returning great against Brecht or her serve will bulldoze you, I want to give some time to that—”

“What, no advice?”

“Yes, you’ll need to be returning great against Brecht or her serve will bulldoze you, do try and listen—”

“I mean, about—”

“I said time’s up, Alicent. You can stress yourself out later.”

“That’s—”

“Later.” He squints at her against the sun. “Where are we, Alicent?”

“Wimbledon.”

“And when?”

“The second week,” she says. “Round of sixteen.”

“Your first second week at Wimbledon,” Harrold repeats, with such gravity her spine straightens without her meaning it to. “Let’s focus on business.”

Alicent is exhausted when she gets home, but less stressed, because in the end she hadn’t had time to be. Not only had there been practice and the gym and tactics with Harrold, but it seemed like every news outlet in the world had wanted to speak with her. The social media people from the LTA, the WTA, wherever else, all trying to grab her for little video segments.

What’s her favourite pre-match meal? Does she have any weird superstitions on court? If she could take the forehand, backhand, serve, movement of any player from history, who would it be? Is she more excited for Barbie or Oppenheimer? Who’s her best friend on tour?

Rhaenyra Targaryen, she’d gotten to say, confidently, puffed up like a pigeon. It always feels like bragging, but today it had been laced with relief, too.

Thank God they hadn’t asked a day or two earlier. What would she have done? Burst into tears? Been made to mumble out a miserable ‘Criston Cole’? Not a position she’ll be in again, if she has her say in it.

Idly, Alicent considers the shape of her evening. Pesto chicken pasta for dinner, which is easy to decide given her simple repertoire is nearly as narrow as Rhaenyra’s. She could watch Love Island as threatened, but it doesn’t hold all that much appeal alone, so had mostly been a bluff. Her favourite parts of watching are Rhaenyra chatting incessantly over the inanity of it, saying equally inane things, for the most part, that Alicent finds nonetheless much more worthwhile, and getting to stroke the silky head in her lap.

Saving Love Island to watch with you, she texts Rhaenyra. You’re welcome xx

Rhaenyra texts her back for a bit. She calls her an angel for waiting, teases when Alicent sends a picture of her dinner, which she’d guessed at the moment Alicent claimed to be cooking, then sends her a photo of her own meal. Having been perfectly pleased with her own plate, Rhaenyra’s is offensively appetising in comparison, given it comes with the information Mysaria had cooked it herself: well-plated steak and grilled vegetables, the vibrant green of chimichurri.

(Are you sure she’s not poisoning you for revenge, Alicent asks. Yes, Rhaenyra replies, I’m sure.)

Then the read notification stops popping up, so Alicent puts her phone down, lest she torture herself with the why of it. Gwayne picked a fine night to go out on the town with ‘his boys’. Right when she could use a brotherly distraction. In the end she settles on reading for a bit, and an early night – she’ll go over her the clips Harrold had sent over right before bed, and let his soporific narration wind her down.

Dutifully, once she’s ready for bed, Alicent does her homework. Cross-legged to start, she jots down notes that she’ll keep in her racquet bag but probably won’t look at. Recognising it as a futile exercise, and increasingly embraced by her pillows, it isn’t long before Alicent puts the pad away entirely. Then she just listens. Letting the rhythm of Harrold’s thoughtful commentary relax her, she sinks lower and lower into the sheets.

Lotte Brecht is a great player, consistent above anything else. She’d been solidly top-twenty until she managed to transform her serve into a real weapon a few years ago, when she became a fixture in the top-ten instead. The fact she’s the German number one earns something like affection from Alicent. Surely a source of irritation for Mysaria. Maybe part of her motivation to switch federation?

Aware that she can ill-afford this fondness for her opponent, she goes to the WTA website and glares resentfully at the graphic of their head-to-head, weighted 4-1 in Brecht’s favour.

All of those matches had come before the German’s level up, too, she dwells, glumly. But no – she can’t think like that, can only let it motivate her. Alicent’s been playing the tennis of her life: she’s got good reflexes, a strong return game, and a 2-4 would look much less unflattering.

Stats are only stats, Harrold keeps telling her. They’re always changing. And he’ll be so cross if she writes herself off.

Sense of purpose renewed, she picks up her notebook again. Even if she doesn’t bring them out during play, lodging the ideas in her head can only be a good thing. She finds herself underlining words that come up again and again: anticipate, absorb, attack.

When her laptop’s away, and her lights are turned off, she murmurs them into the dark, a mantra. What to remember, if she wants to win. She wants to win.

“So how come you changed your mind?” Alicent asks very nonchalantly, having been rudely awakened by a home intruder. Although maybe it doesn’t count as that if the trespasser has her own key.

“I wanted to see you,” Rhaenyra says plainly, sliding into the bed, wearing borrowed pyjamas. She puts her head on the pillow. “And this, to spend the night. Shall we turn out the light?”

“Why did you want to see me?” Alicent fishes, no longer sleepy at all, freshly giddy with Rhaenyra’s arrival. “And you won’t be seeing me if it’s dark.”

“‘See’, metaphorical. To be with you.”

“You could have been with me all night…”

Rhaenyra groans. “Don’t start.”

“I’m just saying.”

“I’m here now. And your lamp is blinding me.”

Alicent flicks off her perfectly well-shaded lamp and lies down. Rhaenyra can’t see her pout, so Alicent pinches the back of her hand to make sure she receives it in translation. “Here now, but planning to go straight to sleep.”

“Like you weren’t already tucked up, sleeping? I woke you up. I’m minimising my crimes.”

“Maximise them,” Alicent dares. “I missed you this evening.”

Rhaenyra’s smile is loud: “I missed you too.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“Good.”

“G—”

An amused huff finds Alicent in the dark, shutting her up, because she grins knowing she made Rhaenyra laugh. If only she’d been able to see the accompanying flare of Rhaenyra’s nostrils, and the way her lips always twist crookedly up.

“Goodnight, Alicent.”

“You know, you literally took the day off to nap. Surely you can stay up for a bit.”

“To catch up. No good if I just get behind again. And I was later at Mysaria’s than I thought I would be. Can you close your eyes please, I can feel them.”

“I can barely even see you. Are yours shut?”

“Yes.”

“Liar.”

The sound of a blown raspberry, then Rhaenyra rolls over, dragging the sheets with her. Alicent tugs them back, trying to incite some mild wrestling; it’s unlike Rhaenyra not to take the bait, but she lets them go.

Alicent stares at the back of Rhaenyra’s head, eyes adjusting to discern its shape. After a while, she tests the silence, restless. There’s a morbid curiosity growing in her like an itch. “Rhaenyra…”

There’s no reply. But she’s not asleep yet, or Alicent would be able to tell, from the rise and fall of her shoulders.

“So how come you were at Mysaria’s later than you thought? Did you two…”

If nothing else, it gets Rhaenyra’s attention; she grunts in muffled exasperation. “I’ve told you, it’s not like that.”

“Anymore…”

“Yep.”

“If it were, you could tell me. I’m not—”

Rhaenyra interrupts her, giggling. “Yes, Alicent, I know.”

“Don’t laugh.”

“But you’re so funny,” Rhaenyra protests, copying the cadence.

She flops onto her back, then her other side, so they’re face-to-face, limbs jumbling up, so close. Alicent has to go cross-eyed to look at her. Her eyes have adjusted enough now to make out her features, fuzzy like static.

There’s a hesitation, then Rhaenyra kisses Alicent on the end of her nose. Just like she’s always done, a frequent feature of their nights together. It’s a return to normality, sublime and unbearable. Then she settles back into the pillow.

“Now, shush, will you?” she murmurs, closing her eyes.

But Alicent isn’t tired. She’s not sure what she is, Rhaenyra’s arrival had taken her so off-guard. All melted, the tip of her nose burning where Rhaenyra’s lips touched it. And she’s wondering things she shouldn’t. Imagining. Failing to imagine.

“Rhaenyra,” Alicent whispers, knowing she really shouldn’t, no less able to stop herself. “What’s it like?”

One eye creeps reluctantly open. “What’s what like?”

“Being with…” Never mind, she urges herself to say. Fruitlessly. “You know. A woman?”

Alicent can’t even roll over like she wants to, to bury her shamed regretful face in the pillow. She’s pinned, had asked the question with their legs tangled, Rhaenyra’s arm slung over her hip. Like an idiot. A masochist.

At least one part of her brain is still sharp enough to come up with an excuse for the question, bubbling urgently out of her, clinging to levity. “I mean… as we well know, I’m not homophobic—”

“—yes, as we well know—”

“—but… it’s not homophobic to say it’s kind of a big deal, right? And we’ve not spoken about it at all. Like. No debrief. And you don’t have to, but I know you felt like you couldn’t tell me about it, before…”

Rhaenyra hums. It buzzes through Alicent, top to toe. “You know, it’s funny…” she says slowly. I always expected it would be a big deal, if I ever did anything about it. The fancying women thing. But it wasn’t really, not how I thought it’d be.”

Alicent releases her breath, filled with a nebulous disappointment. “So it was just… the same as with guys?”

“Oh, no,” says Rhaenyra. She props herself up on her elbow. What little light is in the dark room finds her teeth as her lips part, glinting. “I didn’t say that. It’s different.”

“Um.” Alicent clears her throat, desperately casual. “How’d you mean…? In what way?”

“Just. It is sort of, you know, similar beats. But… I guess, it’s kind of like different surfaces. Hm. Yeah, so – if all the sex I’ve had with men is hardcourt—”

Alicent isn’t sure she wants further elaboration. “Jesus, Rhaenyra.”

“But that’s still, like, a lot of variety. Cincinnati versus Indian Wells versus Doha. They all play differently, you know, like, even Ashe compared to Armstrong. Roof on or off. The mood on the day. And like, the basics of the game are whatever, the same, but you adjust to the conditions—”

“Yes,” interrupts Alicent drily. “I do play tennis.”

“But you don’t really fuck,” Rhaenyra says matter-of-factly. “I’m just setting up the analogy. So! Men are hardcourt, right. But women – or, well, Mysaria. I suppose I’ve not got much breadth of study here. But we’ll say women, since that’s what you asked me. Women…women are clay.”

Annoyingly, Alicent thinks she understands Rhaenyra’s nonsense. She exhales slowly, considering the implications. “You love clay,” she says, more accusatory than she means to be, unsure why it comes out like that at all.

“Mm,” Rhaenyra says. “You don’t.”

“I could,” Alicent argues. In theory, it should suit her well. “I just – it never seems to go very well for me.”

“But the sex,” Rhaenyra says, dreamy in a way that peturbs Alicent. “Do you get what I mean?”

“Slower and requires a different strategy?”

Rhaenyra huffs, face so close that Alicent feels the rush of air, cooler than her face. “That’s a very unromantic way of putting it.”

“It’s your analogy. And er, it’s not like I don’t see the virtues of skill and stamina. In the bedroom.”

“Well, I think clay is a romantic surface. That’s why they like it on the continent.” Rhaenyra sighs, shimmying into the sheets. “I mean. I can describe it more if you like. But I didn’t think you really liked talking about sex.”

Alicent despairs of herself, wondering how many escape routes she could ignore, in chase of a lick of voyeuristic thrill. Tucked up in bed with Rhaenyra, sex on their lips, inches apart, there’s a parallel sort of intimacy she can’t bring herself to pull away from.

“It’s not that,” she says hesitatingly, “I just… don’t think I have much to say about it. But you could. If you liked.”

“What sort of thing?”

“I don’t know, we’re having a sleepover, sleepover stuff. Like, um… how did it even happen with Mysaria? What was it like? That sort of thing. How did you feel after?”

“Worn out,” Rhaenyra quips, and a cartoon piano falls on Alicent’s head. Cacophanous, discordant.

She pictures Rhaenyra, sweaty, panting, flopping down onto the court. The painted white of the baseline becomes a pillow, the surface the sheets, the smile another kind of triumph. The heaving of her chest. Alicent feels the throb of her own pulse everywhere.

“But I thought I told you, it was some sponsor’s thing in Madrid. And we just hit it off. Obviously, she’s open about liking women.” Rhaenyra shrugs into the pillow, her eyes darting away. “It was sort of for fun, when I started flirting – the event was so boring. But, um, it was hot, when she did back, and her hotel was so far, and the place we rented was really close.”

“Practical,” says Alicent, more snidely than she has an excuse for. The bitterness is for herself, really. Would it have been so convenient if she’d done better in that tournament, stayed in Spain for longer, if Rhaenyra hadn’t had an empty flat to bring Mysaria back to?

“You know me,” Rhaenyra says, breezily. “A famous pragmatist.”

“Claims that have never before been made.”

Rhaenyra’s laugh is only a syllable. She’s quiet for a beat after and Alicent fails to catch her gaze in the dark, restless and fluttering. Its dragonfly refusal to settle is only discernible the shift of faint faint light, scattered, darting. Alicent doesn’t know if she imagines it, the shape of Rhaenyra’s tongue, peeking out to wet her lips.

“We weren’t drinking at the event, obviously… middle of the tournament. But we had one when we got back, we shared one. I’d been given that bottle of whiskey, do you remember? So we were sitting next to each other on the balcony, passing this glass back and forth, and then… she took the last sip, and she put the glass down, and she kissed me.”

It’s easy to imagine.

Alicent can picture the label on the bottle, and the view from the balcony. She knows exactly how Rhaenyra would have looked in the light from the city and the sconces, in any of the dresses and jumpsuits that had been hanging in the wardrobe when she left.

They’ve shared a million drinks. The same glass, the same straw, the same spout. Unlike Mysaria, she nearly always lets Rhaenyra have the last little bit. Perhaps that’s her problem. Mysaria had just taken it. Alicent should have kissed her clumsily when they were ten, the first time Rhaenyra asked for a sip of her water.

In Rhaenyra’s retelling, she Mysaria have moved inside, and Mysaria has softer hands than any man Rhaenyra had ever been with, and they’re softer on Rhaenyra’s body, and her body under Rhaenyra’s hands is softer too.

Rhaenyra hedges. “But that might be. You know, because of the men I’ve been with. It always seems to be athletes. I mean, Mysaria is so toned too, obviously – her arms! But the curves.” Her laugh is the kind usually accompanied by the bashful biting of her cheek. “I don’t think I’ve ever touched another woman’s boobs.”

Not true. She’s touched Alicent’s.

Rhaenyra’s voice sounds thin. “Not like – deliberately. I mean.”

Alicent voice is even thinner; she had not meant to say that out loud. But she’d been remembering. And not any of the incidental times they’d woken up with hands in funny places, or been play wrestling, or helping each other into outfits, or whatever. “There was a party, once. Years ago? We were playing truth or dare, and you got dared…”

It had been before Rhaenyra won the Australian Open for the first time. The memory had come back to haunt her, after, once she understood why her heart had raced like that, bright red and breathless in what she’d written off at the time as embarrassment.

“I’d… forgotten about that.” Alicent hears Rhaenyra swallow. “This was, um, a bit different.”

“Yes,” Alicent agrees hastily. “Yeah, obviously. You know me, though. Pedantic.”

“Your only flaw.”

Alicent giggles, grateful for the release of tension. She flops her hand, waving it off. “I know you don’t believe that.”

“So true. If you weren’t a pedant, you wouldn’t be you. Ergo it can’t be a flaw at all.”

“Ergo,” Alicent scoffs. “Flatterer.” Then, less giddily, “God, I bet Mysaria heard all sorts.”

“I think if I have something nice to say, I should say it.” Rhaenyra’s face retreats a few centimetres. “Do you really want more details?”

“No,” says Alicent, at last sensibly. “Um, I think I’m okay.” Except less sensibly – always one to pick a scab until it bleeds – Alicent hears herself rattling on. “I mean, I guess, as—you know, someone who has only been with men. I suppose I’m curious. Intellectually speaking.”

Rhaenyra blinks cattishly at her. Her lips part, but Alicent can’t stop herself from babbling, the slippery slope more slippery than she’d bargained for.

“About what you do. Really. Like, I know about the stuff that’s foreplay with guys, too, obviously, and I know there’s things like”—Alicent doesn’t mean for her voice to slip into a whisper, but it does—“scissoring.” She clears her throat. “And toys. But I don’t know what’s real, and what’s… you know. Just porn stuff.”

“Alicent Hightower,” Rhaenyra says after a moment, in a solemn voice that can’t mean anything good. “Are you telling me you watch lesbian porn?”

“No!” The denial squeaks out, aghast. “No, I would never.”

“Wow, never. That’s quite close-minded.”

“Rhaenyra,” Alicent whines. “You know I don’t watch any.”

Rhaenyra sounds breathless. “Hands and mouths, that first time.”

“Nooo. Forget I asked anything.”

“No, no, I’m sorry for embarrassing you. Let me tell you about strap-ons.”

Alicent at last flails her limbs free, all so she can lie face down in the pillow. It’s not all that much darker, but there’s the added bonus of suffocation risk. “Oh God.”

Cruel comfort, Rhaenyra slides a hand soothingly over her back. Or Alicent presumes that’s the intention. In reality, it’s like a roaming sun, burning her up, melting wax at her shoulder blades, punishing her for asking one too many questions. She’d thought she’d been doing relatively well at keeping her composure, but Rhaenyra had cracked it clean open, and not even the way Alicent expected it would happen. Teased, and not just – too horny, or jealous, or miserable.

“Sorry, babe,” Rhaenyra’s saying. “I’ll stop.”

It’s always been difficult to work her way out of a fluster. And now she’s got the idea of – of that – in her head, and competing visions of its use. Probably she should demand an absolute embargo on the information she’s tempted to seek. Whatever the answer is will spell ruin for her, her mind and body that have so inconveniently woken up.

She needs some water. “Can you put a light on?” she croaks.

Rhaenyra does, and Alicent sits up. She guzzles from the bottle she keeps on the nightstand until her face stops feeling like a swarm of bees have had at it, Rhaenyra eyeing her cautiously all the while. Eventually, she puts the bottle down. In a bid to release some of the fuzzy feeling clouding her head, fizzing through her body, she takes to flexing her fingers in her lap, tilting her head against the headboard.

“Sorry,” Rhaenyra repeats. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

“Yes, you did,” Alicent accuses.

But the truth is she liked it. She had liked that teasing voice, how it dipped sultry in its faux-scandal, how her embarrassment could never really find a real foothold, made frictionless in the face of Rhaenyra’s delight, the shame smoothed out of her. The queasy excitement of toeing the line. Talking about sex with Rhaenyra is the closest she’s ever been to it.

“Okay, a bit.” Rhaenyra pulls a face as she concedes. “But only in fun.”

“It sort of was,” says Alicent. “I just – I get embarrassed. Like when you used to make me do the quizzes in your mum’s Cosmo.”

Rhaenyra is too nostalgic for a 26-year old; she shouldn’t have a special smile for reminiscing. And yet. “Are you good-girl hot or bad-girl hot?”

Alicent had been good-girl hot, insofar as the design of the quiz could extrapolate results to a tweenager. “Hm. And you were too TMI, all the time.”

Rhaenyra smiles, sidelong. “And tonight, maybe. But I did take—what, a decade?—off, in fairness. In terms of sex, anyway.”

“Funny that, right? How it got less fun to talk about once we started actually having it.” She stills her hands as Rhaenyra gave her a thoughtful look. “What?”

“I don’t know that’s true. I did really want to talk to you about it, when I lost it with Ben.”

Ben, Alicent thinks disdainfully, a decade on.

“You were, I don’t know. A bit judgy. More religious then, I suppose. So I reined it in, and it… became habit I guess.”

The strap of Rhaenyra’s top slides down her shoulder as she exhales. Reflexively, Alicent reaches out to push it back up. It’s a mistake, giving herself the luxury of Rhaenyra’s skin under her stuttering fingertips, but she can’t regret it. Not when it’s so lovely, and warm, and Rhaenyra’s lips twitch gratefully upwards.

“Thanks,” she says. “Not—I mean, not for that. For asking.”

Nonplussed, Alicent tucks her hand back to her side, hides it under the covers so she doesn’t stare jealously at it, those lucky digits. She slinks down after them, settling back into the pillow. “Hm?”

Rhaenyra follows suit, lying down as well. Alicent watches her catch air bulbously in her cheeks and blow it out again. It skims warmly against her ear. Rhaenyra turns her face into the pillow, enough that its case blocks her breath, and denies Alicent another chance to feel it.

“Maybe it was a bigger deal than I thought.” Her voice is muffled by her shy, squashed cheek. “Not the sex, even, but this. I mean—it was really… To talk about it. And have you, I don’t know. Still look at me the same. It’s….”

“Rhaenyra,” Alicent murmurs jaggedly.

She wonders what Rhaenyra means by it. How does she look at her? She tries to shutter her gaze, so often avoids drinking her in as she’d like to, in case she gets caught. But as she closes her eyes now, she can see Rhaenyra’s face more clearly than she had when they were open, and Rhaenyra’s features had been unfairly obscured by the fraying lamplight, so she must have failed the mission somewhere.

(The swimming vision of her nose, sweet slope it once was, its proud regality now, the crooked contour of its bridge. Cupid’s bow. Sharp almond eyes, colour indescribable, though when Alicent first tipped into mooning, she used to try, looking for it in the sky, in flowers, in gemstones, fancying herself a poet. But they’re too liquid and shifting, reactive to the light, in flux, elusive. Prideful chin, carved jaw, vaulted cheekbones under soft pink skin.)

“Sorry.” Rhaenyra knocks their knees together, and Alicent opens her eyes again. Even in the dim light, she can see the mist in Rhaenyra’s. “Didn’t mean to get sappy. But I was—I’ve been really scared. For a long time. Before I’d ever done anything at all. It might be why I never did.”

Forced through such a tangle of other sentiments, the unsaid and the unsayable, Alicent isn’t even sure her words will even squeeze themselves out. But they do, hoarsely. “One day you’ll know how…” She swallows, her throat too dry. “Just how ridiculous that is.”

“I said sorry,” Rhaenyra pouts defensively, not seeing the reassurance for what it is.

Once Wimbledon is over, Alicent will spell it out for her. But for now, a new tact. “You could confess murder to me and I wouldn’t look at you differently, Rhaenyra.”

Rhaenyra snorts. “You’d turn me in.”

Troublesomely, Alicent isn’t sure she would. “Maybe, but I’d visit you in prison. And still look at you like I—love you. You’re my best friend, no matter what. You can talk to me about anything.”

Rhaenyra shifts, propping her chin on her arm. “Even sex?”

“I’m not—I’m not a seventeen year old prude anymore Rhaenyra.”

It comes out sore. But you don’t fuck.

A peevish voice in the back of her head: And whose fault is that?

Not a fair thought, Alicent knows. It’s not really Rhaenyra’s fault that she magnetises every iron filing of Alicent’s desire, binds it as tight, targeted as a bullet. But it’s difficult to be fair when her body is so alive, brimming with want, and being falsely accused of sexlessness.

Does she just have no sensuality about her? Is that it? Is there some fundamental flaw in her chemistry that emits zero sexual aura, and that’s why Rhaenyra doesn’t want her, though she could want her – because Alicent doesn’t mean to be vain, but she knows she isn’t hideous. She’s got a pretty face, and she’s in really good shape.

It’s not fair. Rhaenyra wields her racquet erotically. How naturally it comes to her, her embodied physicality, the passion that lives on the surface of her skin. Alicent doesn’t know how to find that in herself.

It’s embarrassing to want to be objectified, but Alicent sort of does. As long as that object isn’t a barbie doll, smooth between the legs.

“What’s funny?” Rhaenyra murmurs.

“Maybe I’m a twenty-seven year old prude,” Alicent tells her, remembering how recently she’d buried her face in a pillow.

“You’re twenty-six, stop aging us—”

“And maybe I don’t have – a lot of sex. But I’m not asexual. And I can talk about sex, because I’m an adult, who’s had it, and – and who wants it, and no longer attends Sunday School. Alright?”

“Alright,” Rhaenyra accedes quietly. “Why don’t you, then?”

“Why don’t I what?”

“Have more sex,” she clarifies.

“Because—I’ve had a lot going on.” Alicent swallows bravely, knowing her own face isn’t spared the illumination of the lamp light, though if she’s lucky, it might be yellow enough to spare the display of certain red. “And you said it yourself. We don’t talk about sex, really, ever. There’s been times you don’t know about.”

Not many, but some. Her infrequent, secret spate of one night stands after her break up with Criston, double, triple, quadruple checking the conclusions she’d drawn about her sexuality. But those had petered off around the time of Rhaenyra’s shoulder injury.

Rhaenyra seems to chew on that. “Right. Makes sense.” Her chin falls off her arm, and she tips onto her back, handsomely silhouetted, a Victorian portrait. “Any recent beaus?”

Apparently, she’s Victorian in vocabulary, too.

Alicent laughs. “Beaus? No. And no suitors, either, or gentleman callers, or—”

“It must be tricky for you.”

“What?”

“Dating,” Rhaenyra asserts with a languid dip of her eyelashes, tilting her head just enough to meet Alicent’s eyes. “When none of those boys are good enough for you.”

Alicent’s breath catches in her chest, sputtering squeakily out. Silly, really, how little it took for Rhaenyra to have her feeling like a steam engine. “Stop it.”

“I’m so serious.” And she looks it. “In a league of your own.”

“That’s why I said no,” Alicent says, giddily, knowing Rhaenyra will approve of her confession, “when Criston asked me out again.”

“Of course he did,” Rhaenyra grumps, even as she twists their hands together again. “Well, you’re especially too good for him.”

Alicent bites the tip of her tongue. “I’m not worried about dating, Rhaenyra.”

“No?”

“No, it’s like you said.”

“Like I said?”

“Not when there’s you, right?” Her mouth is very dry when she reaches out to touch Rhaenyra’s cheek, only lightly, only for a second. But she feels electrically brave, like a spy in a movie, on the high-up ledge of a building, pressed flat against the wall, hiding in plain sight. “Love of my life.”

“Oh,” Rhaenyra says, or sighs – it rushes out in a pleased exhale. “Same page then.”

Even if they’re reading in different languages, Alicent thinks.

But still. She agrees, ultimately: she is too good for all the boys. Not to mention much too gay.

Maybe somewhere down the line she’ll figure out how to want to get her rocks off anywhere else, and she’ll download the apps without freaking out, or stop herself from making polite excuses at the bar, and like Rhaenyra, form a separation of church and state. Or maybe she won’t, but she’ll make do. As long as she has Rhaenyra.

“Big day, tomorrow,” Alicent whispers nervously. “How are you feeling for your match?”

Rhaenyra blinks, shimmies her head, and then laughs. “Oh, yeah. Fine.”

“You’re not nervous? After…?”

“Why should I be?” she asks, like the concept is totally preposterous. But her voice pitches high, and Alicent notices. “Georgieva? Hah. No. She doesn’t know how to return a slice.”

“She won Bad Homburg.”

“Sad Schmomburg.”

“Rhaenyra.”

“I’m joking, you know I like the trophy.”

A sore spot – Rhaenyra had skipped out on a section of British grass season to go to Germany when they released the redesign, a mounted brass elephant and a matching gold pendant, leaving Alicent for a week, in an annoyingly successful quest. At least it meant she only absconded once.

“Rhaenyra!”

“What do you want me to say, Alicent? I’m not worried. I caught up on my sleep, I ate well, I relaxed. I walked, I did yoga, physio felt good, my wrist feels good.”

“You didn’t play any tennis, though.”

“I haven’t forgotten how since yesterday, Alicent. It was one bad match.” She smiles. “And.”

“And?”

“I’ve got you back now, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

“You’re too cocky.” Alicent shakes her head, unimpressed.

“I’m better than her. Look.” Rhaenyra takes Alicent with some difficulty by shoulders, her hands wedging between her body and the mattress. “We’re having that match, this time. You and me, Thursday on Centre Court. It’s happening. I’ll win tomorrow, and you’ll win tomorrow, and afterwards you’ll open a fresh jar of pesto, and we’ll watch Love Island, and then we’ll do it over in the quarters. And we’ll get there. Alright?”

“If you did lose.”

“Well, I won’t.”

“If you do,” Alicent presses on. “We’ll still have that sleepover. Promise.”

“Sure, if you’re willing to put up with me. You know what I’m like, after a slam loss. And for such an early exit…”

“Furthest I’ve ever made it in a slam, I’ll remind you.”

Rhaenyra coughs. “I wouldn’t want to be with anyone else, after, that’s all I’m saying. But I won’t lose.”

“But if you did,” Alicent insists again.

A thread of irritation makes itself apparent between Rhaenyra’s brows, in her tone. “What is your problem? Did you place a bet against me or something?”

Alicent sucks in her cheeks, and in a small voice, says, “I just want to know that—that you won’t blame me.”

“You’re mad,” Rhaenyra goggles at her. “For what?”

“The whole—brouhaha!”

Rhaenyra starts to giggle.

“Stop it,” Alicent says crossly.

“Brouhaha,” Rhaenyra savours. “That’s how we should always allude to the fight, I think, from now on. In hushed voices. The Great Brouhaha. Well, no, it wasn’t great. The Bad Brouhaha. The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Brouhaha.”

“Rhaenyra, I’m serious. Be serious.” But Alicent is giggling too, now. “You promise you won’t hate me?”

“Never ever ever ever.” Her eyes slide over Alicent’s shoulder and then widen. Alicent twists round to see the blinking time on the clock. “As long as you quit keeping me up, my God, Alicent. I said bedtime ages ago.”

“See,” Alicent points out. “You love to blame things on me. You’ve been talking as much as I have.”

“You’re too irresistible a conversation partner. I rely on you to be the sensible one.”

Alicent feels far from it. She wants to keep Rhaenyra up whispering sweet things at her all night. “You shouldn’t,” she says softly, as Rhaenyra leans over to turn off her light. “But alright, whatever you want. Bedtime.” Blinking into the dark, she strains her eyes until they adjust, revealing the shape of her. “How did you want to sleep? Should I roll over, or—”

There’s a hesitation from Rhaenyra that Alicent feels rather than hears or sees. “I thought—I thought last night was nice.” Alicent is about to agree, Me too, great plan, hooray, when Rhaenyra tangles their legs together like they had been when they first started chatting, arm back over Alicent’s waist. This time, though, she shuffles closer still. Her forehead comes to rest on Alicent’s sternum. “But so’s this. Comfy for you?”

Measuring her breathing, so her heart doesn’t gallop into Rhaenyra’s nose, Alicent nods. Her chin shuffles against Rhaenyra’s. “Yes. Yeah.”

“Goodnight, Alicent.” Already she sounds drowsy.

It never fails to amaze her how well Rhaenyra has trained her body into falling asleep, even if she can’t always keep it down. It’ll be up to Alicent not to wriggle about too much. She’s up for the challenge – there’s nothing in her much inclined to move at the moment.

“Move!” comes a yelled instruction from her opponent’s box.

Well, ‘beweg dich’, technically – but Alicent did do well in German at GCSE, even if languages aren’t really her forte, and—

Actually, it’s really not the time for her to be reflecting on her school days. The order makes sense though, since exploiting Brecht’s side-to-side movement is how she’s gotten herself up 0-30 in what could not be a more crucial return game. Down a break late in the third set – which is just the same as a first or second set, she’s telling herself fiercely, and not something uniquely cursed – it’s now or never. If Brecht holds serve, she wins. The match is over.

But if Alicent can win two points out of the next four? She’s right back in it.

Bouncing the ball ritually, Brecht prepares for her serve. The crowd is politely quiet, until it isn’t, and a distinctive pop echoes through the No. 1 court, quickly followed by a ripple of laughter. Despite herself, Alicent smiles too, watching one of the ball kids scramble to grab the cork that’s fallen to the grass.

Another thing to check off her Wimbledon bingo card: a midgame champagne disruption.

“Please wait for the changeover to open bottles,” the umpire says drily. “Quiet for service.”

Alicent stays on her toes as Brecht hits her serve. Forced to jump backwards, she pulls her racquet up to protect herself as the ball flies directly at her body. The awkward angle makes the lucky return unpredictable, so Brecht has to scramble for it at full reach, sending it short, and too high. Easy enough then, with all her recent practice stepping in, for Alicent to come in from the baseline and put it away, a drive volley into the open ad court.

“Love-forty,” the umpire declares.

Three break points. Three chances to get the set back on level footing.

To her dismay, Alicent loses each in quick succession – she’s helpless against an ace and a serve plus one, Brecht perfect on both. The third point is Alicent’s own mistake. A shitty lob sets up an easy overhead, smashed past her from the midcourt.

Stifled by the switch in momentum, the crowds quieten with each lost chance. A few valiant loyalists try to keep the energy up, shouting her name, and there’s an answering echo of half-hearted whoops from the faithless. It’s clear, however, that nobody thinks much of Alicent’s prospects anymore.

Once Alicent might have thought ‘fair enough’, and given up with them. Not now. She’s achieved so much already in this tournament, bucked expectations thrice over. So it’s not over, whatever the crowd thinks. No matter how painful it is to have those chances slip away.

Alicent needs two points in a row, and she’s achieved better than that already this game. It’s doable.

She goes to the box at the back of the court, swears a few times into her towel and then, gritting her teeth, drops back to receive. And she gets lucky, maybe, because Brecht’s first serve soars long, as it had in the first two points, which Brecht had lost. Alicent watches the tension appear in her opponent’s shoulders as she rhythmically bounces the ball under her palm, certain she’s dwelling on just that.

It might be why Brecht goes for broke on her second serve, which comes through more like another first serve, really. Risky, the gamble pays off: Alicent makes the return, but barely, nowhere near strong enough to assert herself as an equal force in the rally, let alone a superior one. She’s well behind the baseline, her old haunt, and again and again, the ball comes at her forehand. Far from her favourite mode of play – especially against an opponent with a lot more explosiveness than she’s capable on that wing.

All Alicent can do is her best, so she does, using her limited ability to dictate where she’ll put the ball back to try to force Brecht between the corners, thinking if nothing else, it’ll tire her out for the next point. But her own forehand is unsurprisingly the first to slip. The ball flies wide.

Suddenly she’s gone from 0-40 up in the game to facing down a match point.

By now, she should know not to expect censure from Harrold while she’s on the court, but muscle memory has her seeking it anyway. Harrold raises his eyebrows at her, shrugging, looking very unfazed. He won’t tell her what to do, where to stand – on court coaching is allowed now, but he’s too old school to go in for it. It’s up to her to utilise what they’ve practiced, and make good on the trust he has in her. Alicent can almost hear his voice, an irritating primary school teacher cadence: So what will you do now?

Save the match point in the ugliest way possible, is the unglamorous answer.

A few shots into the next rally, her ball hits the net cord, and crawls over the top to dribble onto the other side of the court, unreturnable. On another net, pulled tauter, it would have bounced back towards her. The crowd doesn’t care. Nor does Alicent, particularly, but they get to roar in celebration as she raises a hand in apology. The ‘COME ON!’ vibrating in her lungs has no chance of escape – she’d had tennis etiquette drilled into her since she could pronounce the word – but she turns quickly around, so she can grin at her people. As she does, the cheers get louder.

The energy from the crowd is all for her. It’s sort of amazing – the most behind her they’ve been yet, on the second biggest court at the AELTC.

(Although, actually, she’s starting to be seriously bothered by the fact she hasn’t been scheduled on Centre Court yet. But that’s motivating too, because like fuck is she finishing her best ever Wimbledon run without getting to play on that court, the court.)

She’ll take the boost from the crowd, but she can’t let it distract her. All her attention needs to be on the ball. Brecht is starting her serve preparation again, a neat five bounces before gearing up for the toss.

It rips towards Alicent fast, landing deep in the service box, bouncing towards the tramlines with a nasty kick. A great serve, rising above her ideal hit zone. Though she’d read it well enough to get her racquet on it, from the first motion in the swing, she knows it’s not going to be a good shot. She’s right: it floats high and vulnerable, so she gets back behind the baseline again to cover whatever will come punching back at her.

It’s a walloping forehand.

The power sets the tone of the point. Fighting for her life to stay in it, all Alicent can do is run down balls she has absolutely no business returning, sliding irresponsibly to get her racquet on everything she can. And when finally – fucking finally – there’s a ball she has enough time to do anything but hit it thoughtlessly over the net, she moonballs it, sending it in a spinny arch, deep towards the baseline. It neutralises some of the power Brecht’s been bombarding Alicent with, forcing her to generate pace from nowhere on the loopy forehand.

For all she’s been working on getting more aggressive, Alicent knows her defensive game is still her strong suit. She’s won plenty of games through sheer ability to hang on in points until opponents make a frustrated error. But Brecht hasn’t been making those mistakes today. Against someone lacking Alicent’s athleticism, the game would be over. The match would be over, and probably longer ago.

At this stage, staying on the defence is a bigger risk, Alicent calculates, than taking a chance. Even if she hobbles through this point, she won’t have the legs or the luck to repeat it in the next; she needs to get on the offence.

Easier said than done, but the German’s shot comes back slower this time, at last, and not so deep, thanks to the disruption of pace. It’s a split-second decision to take the ball while it’s practically still on the grass – a half-volley, normally a defensive shot, made aggressive by timing and spin and its trajectory cross court – rushing Brecht into her next shot.

Pulling it off is sort of exhilarating.

In the recent past, she wouldn’t have been brave enough to make the decision to switch from pure endurance play without some blistering instruction from her father. Even then, she wouldn’t have backed herself like that, for that shot, and there’s almost nothing worse you can do than question your decision mid-swing. No way would it have been half as good as what she just did.

The switch in momentum means she gets to hold her ground at the baseline. To wait, and construct her point. Now she’s not scrambling, Brecht’s pace is helpful – she absorbs it, redirects it, sending her opponent on the run instead. It’s a matter of time before she gets the right ball. When she does, she’s ready for it.

Alicent bares her teeth, grunting as loudly as she ever has, and slams a backhand down-the-line. Chalk flies from the grass to prove the perfection of the shot, Brecht no-where-fucking near it, Alicent crows internally. Her opponent is tapping her racquet in slow motion against her foot, graciously avoiding a steep fine for abusing the grass, and mouthing what (from Alicent’s rudimentary German) seems to be a curse word. The noise of the crowd probably spares her a foul language warning.

"Advantage, Hightower," says the chair umpire, as Alicent dries her sweaty palms on a purple towel.

One more point, she tells herself as she prepares to return. Just one.

One, two, three, four, five. Alicent counts the bounces of the ball, stays on her toes. Brecht rotates less in her motion than she has been, and her arm twists more as her racquet comes down on the ball. Taking a chance on the observation, Alicent is moving into the T before Brecht’s service motion ends. She knows, even as she steps into her swing, that she’s done it, that she’s hitting a winner, from her forehand no less. She gets the contact point perfect.

All the pace in that serve, she sends back, adds some of her own. Brecht’s efforts to get to it are admirable but not enough. The ball shanks off the frame of her racquet, into the crowd.

"LET’S GO!"

Alicent jumps, literally, her feet leaving the ground and her fist in the air. It takes longer than gravity should dictate for her to come down again, buoyed. By the applause, the support in her box (Gwayne acting like a hooligan, a broad grin on her coach’s usually placid face), and the fact that she’s clawed her way back into this match.

It’s probably a bit soon to be giving it so much, given she’s only evened the match up, but Alicent can’t bring herself to feel anything less than triumphant.

Carrying the break’s momentum, Alicent holds serve to love. Just like that, she’s up 6-5 with her nose in front for the first time in the entire match. After the gargantuan cliff-edge effort of the last game, it’s almost funny how quickly it goes – like she blinked and missed it.

What she doesn’t miss is the crowing High Valyrian cutting powerfully through the cheering of the crowd.

Grinning already, Alicent looks to the court entrance, where Rhaenyra is just being allowed in on the changeover, her hair still wet from the showers. She must have been peeking in from outside the stands. Her broad smile turns into a mad thing when she sees what Rhaenyra is wearing: one of Alicent’s hoodies again, the ratty, ancient thing from when she left school, with her surname plastered on the back, stolen again without her notice.

Framed by the entrance, Rhaenyra turns around – the absolute peacock – to highlight it, thumbs pointing over her shoulders. The cameras swivel around and the stands erupt, whoops and whistles, and then, with one forceful gesture of Rhaenyra’s thumbs, they’re chanting: Hightower, Hightower, Hightower.

Rhaenyra reaches Alicent’s box just as Alicent reaches her chair, and when their eyes catch, Rhaenyra looks terribly pleased with them both. Alicent tilts her head in question – there’s no point trying to raise her voice over the wall of sound – and Rhaenyra nods: she raises one hand in a peace sign, the other like a girl guide promise. 6-2, 6-3. Light work.

Now you, Rhaenyra mouths, pointing at her, then taps her knuckles to her temple.

Alicent tugs at her shirt with a raised eyebrow and gets a shrug in response, Rhaenyra tucking her hands into the hoodies’ front pocket. She bats her eyelashes in an appeal to be forgiven the theft, sliding into a seat next to Gwayne. There’s really no need – if Alicent wasn’t certain Rhaenyra preferred it stolen, she’d make a formal gift of it.

Tamping down the swell of affection threatening to steal her breath, Alicent grabs an energy gel from her bag and sucks it down, swigging some more of her electrolyte-laden water from its reusable Evian bottle. The changeover ahead of her service game isn’t that long. She can’t actually afford to spend the whole thing playing charades with Rhaenyra.

She has a match to win, by hook or by crook. And if she wins this next game, she’ll save herself a tiebreak.

“Admit I told you so,” Rhaenyra says later that night, her smug head in Alicent’s lap. “Go on, I told you.”

“Getting ahead of yourself,” Alicent warns, too beatific for it to sound at all foreboding.

“I won, you won. Check check. Pesto consumed. Check. Watching Love Island…” She pulls a face, having paid not one iota of attention to it. “I mean it’s on technically, so… check.”

“Hm.”

“And we’re going to win our quarters, so, preemptive check.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Say it, Alicent. Hand on your heart, like this, say, ‘My name is Alicent Hightower, and I’m going to win my quarter-final’.”

“Am I under oath?”

“Yes. Heavy sentence for perjury, so you’ll have to follow through, mind.”

Alicent laughs too loudly, too easily. She’s so happy. She’s so, so happy. “My name is Alicent Hightower, and I’m going to win my quarter-final.”

Rhaenyra reaches up to pat Alicent on the cheek approvingly. She rests her palm there afterward, and curves her thumb over the skin. Alicent’s stomach crawls into her chest, her heart dipping into her belly. It’s not fair, how Rhaenyra looks at her sometimes – that open warmth, blazingly intense, blanket soft.

Two days later, and Alicent knows Rhaenyra’s about to be unbearable: she so loves being proven right.

The quarter-finals come, and Alicent can’t miss. That’s how she feels, retrieving every ball that comes her way, light as air on legs that should be failing her with the way she’s running.

If there’s pressure on her – the hopes of the crowd, the worry she’ll never have a slam run like this again – she doesn’t feel it. Everything’s coming so naturally to her today. Her racquet is an extension of her arm, immaculately precise, always balanced. The first set had passed in a whirlwind, and the second is a rising tide in her favour, up two breaks, the board standing at 5-2.

When she wins the match, Rhaenyra greets her at the edge of her box with a fierce expression, hands falling to Alicent’s shoulders as she stares at her. Her mouth silently shapes the beginning of something a dozen times, before she laughs at her own floundering and gives up. Instead, she hugs her so hard that Alicent is left wondering if her next-round opponent is trying to sabotage her with a rib injury.

The semi-finals. There’ll be no keeping her from Centre Court this time, Alicent thinks, squeezing Rhaenyra back.