A/N: This was more of an exercise this week than anything else, but it is what came out of my stressed-out mind and must duly go here.
Disclaimer: Not mine, babeh.
First Sight, Last Touch
Geoffrey was the only one who had never looked at her.
When she was born, as she had been told since that auspicious day, the king had broken French social custom by waiting through hours of labor so that he might be the first to glimpse his heir. Needless to say his pale blue eyes crinkled in disgust at sight of her cleft.
When her brother one day told her to take off her gown, and she did so fearing what might happen if she refused, and she was inevitably caught not by the nurse but by mother, she was told, "God is watching you, Alais." She law awake often at night with no bedclothes or nightdress to cover her because it did not matter, anyway; her body was ever shameful.
Henry liked her habit of sleeping naked, and he had been the first to discover her this way when she came to England. Eleanor had long ago convinced herself that Richard had been the first one to use the girl for his kingly pleasures, so Alais kept to herself the true story; of how she had been awake when the king entered the guest chamber and hungrily perused her body for a long time before making a decision to act. Henry was more of a thinker than Eleanor would ever realize.
Geoffrey, of every man and woman she could remember, had never once laid eyes on her as anything more than another creature sharing God's breath, and she didn't know why, but she wanted him to see her.
The truth was that it had never crossed Geoffrey's mind. He supposed it would be normal to desire that which his two surviving brothers spent their every waking moment tryin to wrest from the other.
He had a fantasy of going up to one or the other and placing both his hands on their shoulders and pressing with whatever might he could stir up, and telling them so close that his breath went up their nose, "None have ever worn the weight of the crown that you will wear." Not even their erstwhile father. "How like you even this?"
Eleanor always said his logic was twisted and no logic at all. She said it had made him corrupted from the inside out, and that was why no woman would lie with him. Geoffrey wanted nothing g to do with the crown, which defied any logic he had ever known, and never once had interest in lying with a woman. He had no interest in lying with a man, for that matter, though he had seen it happen often enough. Henry the great rutting monarch of England had taken shepherds and eunuchs, bards and monks among his greater assortment of female conquests, numbering more than Eleanor and Rosamund and the wretched Alais.
Alais was only a power move against Richard, anyway, Geoffrey was sure. She was not entirely beautiful, and Henry had never been one to lay with prisoners.
What was he, then, if he received pittance to call his own even over John?
Sometimes he feared he had never been the great strategist he once thought himself to be.
He had once watched Richard lay with Sir William for hours on a hot July afternoon and found he had absolutely no reaction to it. In some ways, he, the strategist, feared to explore.
Why does no one ever mention Alais and think of Geoffrey?
She followed him to his room that night, knowing he was aware of the rustle of her slipper against the dusty floor.
She waited, then, outside his cell-like chamber, waited for the single candle to go out. It was an hour, maybe two, later, when she was reawakened to herself.
"Come in, no. I want to see you."
He sat, still dressed, on a stool next to his bed.
"Praying to Our Lord, Geoffrey?"
He smiled, but held up a hand so that she stopped next to the foot of his bed. He looked her over a moment, then, "Please, do what you were going to do."
Alais began to finger the lacings on her gown, slowly and methodically disrobing as she had done for years, since Henry had forbidden her a lady's maid.
When she was finished, he only looked at her a moment before his smile tightened into the smirk that had underlain it all along. "You won't do at all, and you know it. You've been had too many times."
"Your brother. My brother. Your father. One of my escorts to this God-forsaken corner of England. And two men that, I think, work for you. A woman is never ignorant of these things."
His expression was faltering, and of all things she knew she could not bore him. If that happened, she was through.
"But you, Geoffrey, have not been had enough. A woman knows that, too." She reached up at last and began to undo the braiding at the back of her head. She let one, two, three, four green ribbons fall to her feet. "You're married, I know as well. You and I both know how much that means you need to what it's like, Geoffrey, once and for all. Through me, you can keep your whiteness from her."
When he stood, it was slow, and when he ran a hand down her side, it was once.
"Now you have my curiosity at your beck and call, Alais. I do believe those are your thoughts. Now bend over."
Rain fell quietly as Alaid and Geoffrey came together. It had yet to snow for the Christmas season, and now this: it had pattered on the window ledge and the smell lay over the two of them in the chamber. Alais was naked, and it made her skin soft and full under his hands. Geoffrey still wore his doublet, and he was conscious all the while as it seeped into every worn fiber in his garments. The mix was a heady green smell that put Alais in mind of some half-fey Arthurian story.
The duration of the even meant nothing in the end—neither wanted to remain in this damp uncanny place and neither wanted to return to all that they had been. Geoffrey wondered, in the final movements, what was the purpose of it al, for this certainly made no sense. Alais was as she always was, responding and grateful, delicate and worthwhile, accommodating.
When they finished, Geoffrey drew back away from her, and Alais went to get her clothing. Everything went on as it had done before.
But when she turned around, Geoffrey was as white as the fleur-de-lys.
"Ithink I'll kill myself," he said, though his voice sounded the same as it always did.
"Then I will, too," she responded, looking him in the eye. "Some would say I must do, anyway."
As she moved to go past him, she reached out and brushed at his arm. He reached out and grabbed her arm. He gripped her wrist tightly, reached over and put his hand over hers, playing with each finger. "Maybe I will take this tricky little thumb with me to my grave."
"You won't," she said forcefully, struggling to free herself.
"How could you do this, Alais? How could you do this to me? Have I ever been anything but kindly oblivious to you?"
"You said it yourself, Geoffrey! I've been with your father and your brother. Now you have been with them, too. We are all tied together now. Welcome back into the family."