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“You’re telling me you’ve seriously never had your first kiss? Alicent, we’re in college. Even I’ve had my first kiss. Me ,” Rhaenyra scoffs, sitting opposite on her respective bed in the small dorm they share on the Brown campus.
“I really don’t fancy this conversation, going to be honest with you, Rhae,” Alicent groans, scrolling absentmindedly through her laptop and pointedly ignoring the paper she’s supposed to be working on right now.
She isn’t even sure how she and Rhaenyra got on this topic of conversation, but she’s not a fan. Alicent had chosen to go to university in the states of one reason and one reason only: no one would know who the hell she was. No one would know her family’s name, no one would call their fortune blood money and sneer at her in the hallways the way they had all of sixth form. It was meant to be entirely peaceful. Until, of course, the school took it upon her to room her with a fellow international student for a “taste of home.” And of course, that roommate happened to be the one person she was hoping to never see again in her life.
She and Rhaenyra used to be best friends. But then, as with any young female friendship, there was a boy and there was drama, and it was all for naught because Alicent hadn’t even liked him—some year 11 boy she hadn’t even liked, but Rhaenyra had. And him liking Alicent over her had apparently been the betrayal of the century. They were more or less over it now, but they never were quite the same. Now that they’re living together across the ocean from all their old problems, though, they’ve hatched up quite the dynamic. Frenemies is probably how Alicent would describe it best. Most of the time it’s Rhaenyra trying to make up for lost time and Alicent not having it.
It’s not that she doesn’t want Rhaenyra in her life—they were best friends for a reason. They just understood one another in a way no one else had. Which was why it had been so detrimental to lose her. Alicent isn’t sure she trusts herself with Rhaenyra’s friendship again.
“What about Frederick?” Frederick, that had been his name. “No, you must be lying because Frederick told me you two shagged in his car outside the winter festival in year 10.”
Alicent slams her laptop shut, “He told you that?”
“Yeah?” Rhaenyra looks at her as if this was the most obvious thing in the world. “So unless he managed not to kiss you during that whole escapade—”
“Rhae!” Alicent shouts, “We never slept together. Is that—is that why you were so cross with me? You thought I hooked up with him? He lied. He got upset I told him I didn’t like him so he went and told everyone that would listen that I gave it up for him. Oh, my God, I can’t believe we’ve been fighting for four years over something that didn’t even happen.”
Rhaenyra stands up from her own bed and crosses their room, a room that is frankly much too small for how much they charge them to live there, settling down in front of Alicent. “Alicent. Why did you never tell me the truth?”
“No one believed me,” Alicent shrugs, avoiding her friend’s (enemy’s?) gentle gaze. Rhaenyra has always had this way of making her feel seen in a way no one else manages to accomplish. “And you were already so mad, I was worried you would think I was just saving face. It doesn’t matter now, though, does it? It was forever ago, we shouldn’t bother ourselves with it anymore. Secondary school bullshit, right? That was what you said when we first moved in. Water under the bridge.”
“So all this time you were some pariah at our school, but you’ve never even kissed anybody?” Rhaenyra presses on.
“You’re still on this?” she laughs, chuckling through the tears welling in her eyes. It’s stupid to cry over something so long ago, but knowing she lost her best friend over something so idiotic is killing her slowly. “Why does my first kiss matter so much to you anyway? Who was yours?”
“Criston,” Rhaenyra says with a giggle, reaching up and wiping Alicent’s cheek. “Year 11. He was not happy that I didn’t want to go steady with him, though, that’s for sure. Men.”
“Tell me about it,” Alicent scoffs, leaning back against the wall with a sigh. She narrows her eyes at Rhaenyra. “So, are we cool?”
Her friend rolls her eyes and settles next to her against the wall, their shoulders bumping up against one another’s. “We’ve been cool, now it’s just better because I don’t even have anything to forgive you for anymore. If anything I should apologize for being a proper asshole the last few years.”
“Well, if I had slept with him, it would have been quite the betrayal. I get it,” Alicent sighs. “You were trying to protect yourself, it’s all you can do at that age. Besides, it’s not like it matters anyway. It’s not like either of us married Freddy. God, I couldn’t even remember his name until you said it.”
“Okay, okay, it’s fine, it’s over, we’re done talking about this,” Rhaenyra laughs, rubbing their shoulders together. Alicent’s skin is alight where Rhaenyra touches her. Every time she looks at Alicent like that, she’s unfortunately reminded why she was so eager to always shove Rhaenyra away in the first place. It’s hard when your friend gets pissed at you over a boy, when all you want to do is kiss your friend. An old crush left unsettled has unfortunately become quite the problem for nineteen-year-old Alicent who has been stuck in a very small room with said old crush.
“Great, can you let me work on my paper now?” Alicent asks, knowing damn well she was not working on her paper in the slightest. She just can’t handle the way Rhaenyra’s lingering gaze is causing a flush of heat in her chest and neck that the other girl will surely call out if she notices.
“Nope, I’m hung up on this kiss thing.” Rhaenyra is going to drive her insane.
“Drop it, I swear.”
“No, you’re seriously telling me no one even tried?”
“People tried, I didn’t let them.”
This answer does not satisfy Rhaenyra. “Well, why not?”
“They were boys, Rhaenyra,” Alicent admits with a casual laugh as if she did not just speak her deepest most intimate secret into existence in front of the one person who forced her to realize it. Studying Rhaenrya’s expression, she chuckles softly, “They were boys. And I never wanted to kiss boys, Rhae.”
Rhaenyra has fallen silent and Alicent tugs her bottom lip between her teeth as she waits for one of them to break the tense silence. She can’t help but feel like she’s fucked everything up—a feeling she has never been unfamiliar with. She wishes they had never stumbled onto this topic of conversation but of course, Rhaenyra had to bring up rom-coms because she’s taking a stupid film class for her art credit and she’s always talking Alicent’s ear off about what movies they have to watch and Alicent never understood the love for film, but God, she could listen to Rhaenyra talk about it for hours. But then Rhaenyra had to bring up kissing and ask Alicent what her most romantic, swoon-worthy kiss had been and her answer had been a big fat nothing.
And now they are here. Side by side with a secret out in the air. Alicent wonders if Rhaenyra can read her mind—they’ve always had a silly way of knowing what the other was thinking, something that had marveled everyone around them since childhood. Sometimes she thought someone had split their minds at birth and swapped the halves with one another, that there was an invisible string always tying them together. She thought their connection had been severed years ago, but Rhaenyra could never leave her, not really. Nor could Alicent ever leave Rhaenyra.
“So, girls then?” Rhaenyra finally asks, voice deep and curious as her eyes rake over Alicent. “Not a single girl ever thought to try?”
Alicent bites her lip, shaking her head. “No, no they didn’t. I think if a girl tried to kiss me in secondary school, I would have ran away.”
Rhaenyra hums thoughtfully, “Understandable. What about now?”
“Now as in this age or now as in right now?” Alicent feels the need to clarify, all too aware of how close she and Rhaenyra are sitting next to each other. Any close and she may begin to break out into a sweat. “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“I can see the gears in your brain turning and I don’t like it,” Alicent huffs, scooting to the side in a vain attempt to create space between the two of them. Rhaenyra doesn’t chase her, they just sit there with that gap between them. “Don’t make a joke out of this, Rhae, please. I haven’t—I haven’t told anyone.”
This seems to interest her, eyebrows raising. “Anyone?”
“Anyone,” Alicent affirms, bringing her knees up close to her chest. She balances her chin on her knees and stares at Rhaenyra judgmentally. “So, please don’t joke. It’s not an easy thing.”
“Tell me about it,” Rhaenyra muses, teeth gnawing on the nail of her thumb as she avoids Alicent’s eyes. “You didn’t answer my question, by the way. What would you do if a girl would try to kiss you right now?”
Alicent gives her a pointed look, unimpressed, “Are you planning on trying to kiss me right now, Rhaenyra? Really?”
“Well, originally I was going to ask if you wanted to just so you could get your first kiss out of the way,” Rhaenyra shrugs, “But now that I know that you’re actually into girls, I’m a little more intrigued.”
Part of her isn’t sure she’s actually hearing this right now. Surely, Rhaenyra essentially asking to kiss her is just some complex wet dream she’s going to wake up from in a moment because no, Rhaenyra does not like girls. She is the most boy crazy, power hungry person Alicent has ever met. Never would she lay down her arms for someone like Alicent, not in a long time.
“Stop overthinking,” Rhaenyra scoots over to close the gap between them, their sides pressed up against one another once more. “It doesn’t have to be anything if you don’t want to. Might be nice to have your first kiss be a friend, yeah?”
“Are we even friends, Rhae?”
“We’re better than we used to be,” Rhaenyra shrugs. Well, at least they’re on the same page. She thinks. She’s incredibly unsure where they stand at this moment because Rhaenyra is biting her lip and looking like she’s one ‘yes’ away from leaning in and Alicent still isn’t sure she’s awake. Surely this is all some horrible joke meant to punish Alicent for being honest about her feelings for once. “You don’t have to, just thought I was offering.”
“Oh, my God, Rhaenyra, you drive me insane,” Alicent seethes, although there’s no bite behind it. She relaxes her form a bit, shifting so she has one leg still bent and the other stretched over the bed. These beds are certainly too small for two people to be on them, but all this means is that they’re stuck to one another as long as Rhaenyra is determined to crowd her space.
“Don’t tell me you’ve never thought about it,” Rhaenyra laughs, backing up and shifting so she’s against the sorry excuse for a footboard the school provides for their beds. She stretches her legs out so her socked foot is poking Alicent’s thigh. “I know I have.”
“Of course, I’ve thought about it,” Alicent scoffs, revealing her second secret for the day—admittedly worse than the first. “I thought about it constantly actually, for about the last four or five years, and I probably thought about it without even realizing it before we even knew what all that stuff is because I have always been disastrously attached to you and you know this. So please do not play with me, Rhaenyra, because if you sit here and kiss me it will not mean the same to you as it does to me.”
Rhaenyra’s expression softens to something that looks just enough like pity to piss her off. She doesn’t need Rhaenyra’s pity, that may be worse than letting the feelings rot inside of her the way she has the last few years. It was never supposed to be anything. Just a dull roar within Alicent’s aching heart until she found someone else to distract her.
“What makes you think it wouldn’t mean the same for me?” Rhaenyra asks, running a hand through her white-blonde hair that’s still half-wet from her shower earlier.
“I don’t know, Rhaenyra.” She caves in on herself, slumping against the wall as she stretches her legs out, the two of them forming a perfect tee on the bed. “Can we just drop this, please? This conversation has been frankly mortifying for me and I would love for it to be over.”
She seems to contemplate this for a moment, before shaking her head. “No, I don’t want it to be over, Alicent. This is the furthest we’ve gotten with this stupid conversation in years because we’ve been dancing around it forever. I want to kiss you—not because I want to steal your first or teach you how or whatever, I just want to kiss you. Is that okay?”
Of course, it’s okay. It’s more than okay. Alicent spent her entire years in secondary school wandering the halls and pining after her best friend who hated her guts—the same best friend that has now openly admitted to wanting to kiss her. Alicent is more or less short-circuiting. Knowing her, she would still find some way to fuck this up. She could suck at kissing. Rhaenyra could hate it. They could ruin everything again. That is the last thing Alicent wants because they’re finally at a point where they’re kind of sort of maybe friends again and she can’t stand having Rhaenyra against her again. This is a recipe for disaster.
But at the same time, Alicent wants her so badly.
So, for probably the first time in her life, Alicent gives into her desires. She looks up softly at Rhaenyra, waiting expectantly for her to say anything, and says, “Yes. Yes, it’s okay.”
“Brilliant, come here,” Rhaenyra reaches out and grabs Alicent’s wrist, spreading her legs where she sits on the bed so Alicent can slot between them, the two of them giggling as they try and fit together on this twin bed.
Eventually, they settle as best they can and all of a sudden, Rhaenyra is right there and Alicent’s heart is racing and she can’t help but think she has never wanted to kiss someone this badly in her entire life. She may still be dreaming, she’s unsure.
“You sure about this?” Alicent breathes out, needing some confirmation that she’s not insane—that this is real, this is happening. Rhaenyra has a hand on her waist; the only thing keeping her grounded.
Rhaenyra’s smile is comforting, the way it always has been. “I’m sure. You?”
Alicent bites her lip and nods. With that, Rhaenyra brushes a lock of dark hair out of her face and leans forward. Alicent lets her eyes close and leans forward to meet Rhaenyra in the middle and then it’s happening. Rhaenyra is gentle when she kisses Alicent, tentative with her touch although it does not lack passion. Her heart thrums in her chest as she pushes into Rhaenyra, heart begging to devour her as long as this may last. She feels grounded in reality when Rhaenyra’s tongue brushes against her bottom lip and she opens up with a gasp, letting the kiss deepen. She’s not a hundred-percent sure what she’s doing, but Rhaenyra has always been a good leader with everything they do and this should be no different.
Her hands come up to hold Rhaenyra’s face, one hand reaching back to tangle her fingers in those white-blonde locks she knows so well. She can feel Rhaenyra smile into the kiss and it feels familiar; like home. She can’t believe she and Rhaenyra spent years fighting when they could have been doing this the whole time—fools, the both of them. But at least now they can make up for lost time.
They break apart for a breath before Alicent finds herself chasing Rhaenyra’s lips, grabbing them in a passionate and fulfilling kiss, the fronts of their chests pressed against one another as they both yearn to be closer to each other, closer than is probably possible. She doesn’t think she’ll ever get enough of this. Alicent had never known kissing could feel like this.
Rhaenyra pulls away from her, a strong hand still on her waist and one holding her face. She’s smiling softly. “There, now you’ve had your first kiss. Thoughts?”
“You’re an idiot, shut up so I can kiss you again,” Alicent laughs, feeling completely lost within herself.
Rhaenyra complies and lets Alicent find her lips once more, softer this time although the desperation still eeks through—an urge to fulfill another time when Alicent has a bit more of a grasp on this sort of thing. The two of them can’t get enough of each other—years of frustration and angst and yearning bleeding through every aching brush of their lips. It’s everything all at once and yet somehow still not enough.
When they do finally pull away, Alicent drops her face into her hands. “Oh, this is so embarrassing.”
“Why?” Rhaenyra laughs. “We’re best friends, Al, nothing you do is embarrassing.”
“Are we?” Alicent lifts up her head to ask, cheeks probably bright red. “I don’t think best friends kiss each other like that. Or have embarrassing years-long crushes on each other.”
Rhaenyra just shrugs, “Well, we’ve always been a little unconventional. But, I would hope you want to be a bit more than my friend if you’re going to kiss me like that.”
“I’ve never—” Alicent starts to explain, even though Rhaenyra already knows. “I haven’t dated anyone. I couldn’t even admit to myself that I liked girls until this year, I’m a proper mess, Rhaenyra.”
“So?” Rhaenyra asks, holding her softly by the waist, hard enough to stabilize her but not enough that she couldn’t pull away if she wanted to (which she doesn’t, she could stay in Rhaenyra’s arms forever). “We’re in this together, we always have been. Just a new adventure, yeah?”
Alicent’s heart and chest flush with warmth, smiling softly. She thinks she finally understands what people mean when they say they have butterflies in their stomach, because this fluttery feeling could be described no other way. “Yeah, yeah, we’re in this together. And I want to be. In this, that is. With you.”
“Good,” Rhaenyra smiles, pressing a kiss to her forehead that makes her heart stutter and stumble over itself. “Because I want to be in this with you, too. More than anything.”
“More than anything?” Alicent teases lightheartedly, letting her fingers run absent-mindedly through Rhaenyra’s hair. “Never pegged you for a romantic, Rhae.”
“You bring out the worst in me.”
Alicent hums, kissing her again. “That I do.”