Chapter:

The Rabble and The King


Warnings/Tags: Sapiosexuality (Sexual attraction to intelligence)


Young Tywin Lannister & Haraella Targaryen


I

Tywin Lannister was every bit the man his father was not. Keen, clever, acute, he was a dagger hiding in a flesh sheath.

Tywin did not laugh, not how Tytos did shrieking over cups of dribbled wine by a whisper from a whore's mouth. He did not smile, cannot stomach too, could only imagine Tytos's smile, the way saliva, tawny coloured from guzzling Arbour Gold, dipped down his lip to lap in the crest of his chin. Tywin did not idly let threats fly by, let men capture him in shackles of iron and ransom him back to son and House, as his father once had.

That is, conceivably, why, when Haraella Targaryen came sailing back home astride a golden dragon the size of which had not been seen since Balerion the dread had roosted in the skies, Tywin did not flock to Kingslanding to pay homage to her, hoping for favour, eager for advance and benefit. Neither did he brace himself in his Keep, waiting to see scales overhead, to feel fire upon his fields.

Tywin Lannister sits, and Tywin Lannister waits, and Tywin Lannister plans.

Within weeks of her arrival, her cousin, Prince Aerys, Tywin's own childhood friend, writes to him.

Aerys is nervous, he did not say so much as showed between the uneven lines of his letter. Perhaps he has rights to be.

Yes, Aerys is Crown Prince. Certainly, he has recently wedded his sister, Rhaella, and she is expecting their first child, a boy if the Mother was feeling kind. Unquestionably, his position was secure, and no child from Duncan and that woods witch Jenny, could usurp his place. And yet…

Yet, she has a dragon, and that changes everything.

Perhaps one day this Haraella would glance to the Throne. Perhaps one day she would see it a comfortable seat, a glimmer to the steal she quite likes. Perhaps one day she may wish to take it.

Who would stop a girl with a dragon between her thighs?

Or so Aerys believes.

Nevertheless, Tywin hears other information streaming back from Kingslanding on raven's wings. Joanna, his own cousin, a lady in waiting to Princess Rhaella, writes to him two days later. She tells tales of a kind girl swift to smile, a girl who spends most of her time down in Fleabottom, dishing out soups and furs to ragged children. A pretty thing, she says, with moonlight for hair and a gentle hand.

Tywin was, admittedly… Intrigued.

If only to know which way the coin would fall, with Aerys or Joanna, with throne-taker or Princess to the paupers.

When King Aegon V writes a moon tide later, inviting the freshly minted Lord Lannister to Kingslanding for celebrations of Haraella's Nameday, Tywin accepts graciously, loads his men and arms, and rides that very night.


II

The revelries were in full sway and would continue to be for ten and seven days, numbered the same seasons Haraella had lived, the bards playing a spirited tune, coy damsels twirling with handsome knights drunk on wine and the summer heat.

Tywin sat in the turn of the Royal Gardens, Cyvasse board before him, a nameless Lord spluttering his fury as he heaved his considerable weight from his cushioned chair before he left in mumbled gripes.

Tywin plucked his goblet free from its home and sipped at cherry wine.

It was almost as sweet as the loss of the Lord, many Lords, he had defeated in the game that morn.

However, insignificant delights aside, this was merely a gambit to pass time, time Tywin still had yet to meet the recently returned Princess.

For a Targaryen, she was proving to be abnormally illusive and frustratingly capricious. When Tywin first arrived at the Dragon's gate with his supplement, she had already flown for the Stormlands, to greet her distant cousins, the Baratheon's, of which it was said she was instantly and unconditionally fond of. She had gone so far as to offer Steffon Baratheon a ride upon her dragons back, arriving home in a fit of giggles, windrushed, and rosy cheeked.

Then she was in Dorne, playing Targaryen delegate to the Martells.

Then she was sweeping over the Neck, off to see the Wall at the far North, a tale that had caught her attention, at which she ended within Winterfell and became jovial cohorts with Brandon Stark.

Then she dashed back to Dorne to sup with Oberyn Martell on his sisters, Elia's, Nameday, rumoured to have been an immediate favourite of hers.

Then, as she arranged to return to Kingslanding, she instead stopped over the Reach, and took her time viewing their gardens and garlands and nibbling on peaches.

Now having a taste for the South and North, peaches and barley ale, she took her time to see the Riverlands, the core of Westeros, to fly over the Tully Rivers and dine with the Fish Lords in their wet halls.

It seemed, then, that Kingslanding was the sole place Haraella Targaryen was not.

Until she was.


III

The Cyvasse board was set anew, ivory and jade pieces arranged in pretty little battle lines.

The chair opposite Tywin Lannister squeaked as it was drawn back. By the time his gaze flittered from the crowds about him to the seat, to gander at the Lord foolish enough to match him, the person had taken their liberties and had already sat.

It was no Lord at all, Tywin saw.

She was not beautiful as the other women around her were. There was no demure rehearsal to her appearance. Her hair was not oiled and painstakingly curled and cast, no rouge or blush or silk in sight, no paper painted fan to coyly conceal half her face, or perfume to beckon a man closer for a breath. Nothing alike which Tywin Lannister was used to noticing from the fairer sex.

There was nothing soft or subtle about this woman.

She had scars, Tywin saw, one right above her arched pale brow, the same shape and shadow as a lightning bolt. And that was it, Tywin distractedly thought.

That was her.

Lithe and swift, sharp.

So sharp the mere sight of her cut somewhere deep below, somewhere only those ungodly green eyes could reach and wretch and screw into knots, a face fitting on the frescos of the Maiden chiselled to something intense and fatal, of ruin in relish, crowned in braids so silver and light they were almost white.

A startling contrast to the plain black leathers she was donning.

And she was toying with the jade King on the Cyvasse board.

"I can't say I've ever played this game before, although by layout it appears similar to chess. How about a match then, while I learn?"


IV

She smiled and it was dimpled, and even this, something that would naturally soften another's face only sharpened her own. As if those dimples were splendour spiked pits a man could fall in and never be able to climb out of again.

She lowered the King back onto the board, and gently pushed out an Elephant, stealing a square closer.

Tywin coughed into a closed fist, briefly glaring at his half empty goblet, for what must be wine induced vertigo, mentally vowing not to touch another cup that night, as he bowed a head in greeting before moving one of his own Elephants.

"Then I shall endeavour to go easy, my Lady. You must be Haraella Targaryen?"

Her eye flashed up from the checkered board, crashed against his own across the way, eyebrow cocking, smile severe and sudden, something dangerous in the green.

"Just Harry will do. And easy you say, Lord Lannister? No… Now that is foolish, and I had heard such great things about you."

She had heard of him, then?

From whom?

Joanna would have been kind in her summation of him… And, perhaps, the only one to be so.

Aerys, possibly, if not under one of his spells of suspicion, could be fair in his judgement.

King Aegon V liked Tywin well enough but knew to keep his cards close to his chest.

Preoccupied by his thoughts, Tywin only observed one of his Spearmen dropping when the piece clinked against his square.

He blinked down at the fallen piece.

Blinked again.

A jade Elephant now in its place.

Deft fingers sweeping the fallen ivory away, to the side, lost.

She had… She had taken his piece in two moves.

The first he had lost all morn.

How had she done that?

"Perhaps I have misjudged your skill."

She laughed like the song of swords clashing mid-swing.

"I dare say you have."


V

They play, and Tywin lost more pieces but took some of Haraella's own in the checkered dance they were swaying to. It was equally matched for a long time, a piece for a piece, a square earned for a square lost, and she was quick and keen in finding the rules she could bend to her own means.

Just like he did.

"Tell me, Lady Harry, are you the Dragon or the King?"

He stole her Light Horse, and in return she took his Trebuchet.

"Neither, I would say. I think I fancy myself as the Rabble. Queen of the ruckus, one might say. Especially my cousin, Aerys. He wrote to you, didn't he?"

They both lose their Catapults three moves apart.

"So you know why I am here, then?"

Tywin thought he had her King on the run but saw too late the ploy to take his Crossbowman too many squares out to save.

"Thrones are exceedingly uncomfortable seats, Lord Lannister, particularly ones made out of bloody swords. Tedious too, I believe, with all the parchment they come with day in day out. I can't fly if I am stuck in a chair from sunrise to sunset. Aerys has nothing to worry over. You can tell him that."

Ivory and jade Dragon edge around each other, daring the other to move first.

Perhaps Aerys did have nothing to worry over.

Perhaps… Perhaps Tywin had everything to worry over.

"Or perchance he has everything to fret over. Perhaps it might not be you who takes the seat for themselves but others. You have been here for such a short amount of time, and yet you have many friends. The Tyrells, the Martells, the Starks, to name but a few. Quite the backing, for a Queen of the ruckus."

Tywin diverts course, saw the trap for what it was, stealing her last Spearman with his Dragon.

Haraella hesitated, fingers drumming on the edge of the board.

"You don't see yourself as part of the board at all do you, Lord Lannister? Not as King or Dragon or Spearman or Catapult. No, that is too easy, too simple. You see yourself as the player behind the checkers. The man with the pieces. The man with the plan. Shame."

Her Elephant follows and-

Knocks over his last piece.

Only his King alive, on the run, besieged.

"Sometimes, Lord Lannister, even the smallest of pieces, even the Elephants, can rebel. When that happens, no King or player behind the board is safe. Keep your Elephants happy, and the rest falls into place. You should tell Aerys that too."

Game over.

Lost.

Tywin Lannister had lost.

The first, and only, game of Cyvasse he had ever failed.

To a girl three seasons his junior.

She smiled at him again, reached over, took his ivory King in her grasp, she eyed it, running thumb over carven face.

"I think I'll keep this piece. It reminds me of you. Just as frowny."

She slides the thing into her breast pocket, stood from her chair and-

Winked.

"Maybe next time you will give me an actual fight, yes? Good evening, Lord Lannister."

And then she was gone, walking away, fading into the crowds.

Tywin stared down at his missing King, his ruined board, his lost game.

Joanna found him moments later, coming from the small clapping crowd he and Lady Haraella had gathered without notice, slipping soft hands upon his shoulders and squeezing.

"What a good game! Half the court has been entranced. Come, let us fill our goblets and toast a match well played."

Idly, Tywin reached up and patted the hand by his neck.

"You go. I shall follow shortly."

Joanna nods, Joanna goes, and Tywin stayed seated for much longer.

It would do no good to shame himself twice that very day by standing with breeches inappropriately tight for all the court to see.


VI

It is nothing less than warfare, their games. They play in the Throne room, they play in the Gardens, they play at Privy Council meetings Lord Lannister and Lady Haraella have recently been invited to join by the King, much to Aerys's vexation.

They talk taxes between axing Dragons.

They discuss Heir disputes over toppled ivory.

They debate the merits of Braavosi loans over discarded chunks of jade.

"We send the treaty not in pardon of those calling themselves the Band of Nine, but for the men under them. Once they know they will not incur exile or worse, execution, they will flee, leaving their leaders stranded and easier to pick off."

Tywin was down to six pieces, Haraella nine.

"Or we only succeed in allowing them to flee and restrengthen in the Free cities. It is not a viable plan. We strike hard, we strike fast, and we strike now. If you cut a man off at the knees, he cannot stand again."

She struck over his Catapult.

Five to nine.

"But if a man sees another man cut down, he begins to wonder when it will be him or his kin next. He begins to talk to other men, other men who have seen just the same, and then you don't have just one man thinking his life is on the line, you have twenty, a hundred, a thousand, and then a full-blown rebellion."

Her Heavy Horse fell with a thunk.

Five to eight.

"Perhaps you have a people who know what rebelling costs, and are not willing to pay the price."

Her Dragon dances backwards across the checkered board.

"Maybe. Or maybe you create nothing but tyranny."

A swift succession ensued, and down Tywin's pieces fall, one by one by one.

Aerys spoke up from the long table.

"Must you two always play that stupid game while we're trying to work?"

Neither looks up from the board.

"Be quiet, Aerys."

He huffed at the double voiced tone.

Tywin loses at the next move.

Haraella laughed, took his King again, pocketed the piece.

She must be getting quite the collection now.

"A pardon it is then."

Tywin capitulates.

And of course it goes to plan.

The mob diffuses, the Band of Nine are left without arms, and the Targaryen forces snuffed the rebellion before anyone lifted a sword.

No blood shed.

Not a single drop.

By the Father, Tywin had never been harder in all his life.


VII

Marriage proposals come flooding into the Red Keep on the back of Raven wings, as stories of Haraella had come to Tywin at Casterly Rock. Lord Frey offers Haraella her pick of his small male litter. Lord Tully hands up a nephew. The Greyjoy's send a ship named in her honour with the promise of a brother to their heir, a Euron Greyjoy. They come far and wide, small and grand, many and most.

Duncan, her father, says simply it is her choice, as it had once been his to choose her mother.

And so Haraella gets her share of letters and spoils, all in hopes of her hand, all in hopes of her golden dragon.

And then, one day, over a crackling fire, she jokes.

"I shall marry any who can beat me in a game of Cyvasse."

The news spreads like wildfire.

The challenged is risen to by many flushed, hungry men.

No one wins. They last five moves at most.

Tywin Lannister, however, in their latest match in the Privy council, makes it to forty-three before she decimates his players, wipes the board clean of him, steals yet another King and winks.

"Maybe next time?"

She said, and surely there was more behind that keen and clever smile, more behind those uncomplicated words, more behind their games.

"Next time."

He declares.


VIII

He paid the Kingsguard handsomely, Tywin Lannister, if nothing else, has coin to spare three lifetimes. The man in turn vows to keep his tongue still, to keep the corridor barren, to keep Tywin's path from his chambers in the South tower to the highest rooms in the Holdfast as clear as possible.

He knocks upon her door when the moon was fast and high in the starlit sky.

She answered it, in nothing but a pale shift, raucous hair tussled from slumber, swells and arches temptingly eclipsed by thin thread.

Tywin swallowed around the heat-heavy rising in the quarry of his gut.

It was the first time he had seen her in anything vaguely resembling a dress and not the shapeless dark leathers she preferred. The first time he had seen that silver-snow hair free from tight braids pinned back in functionality. The first time he had seen those sharp sloping cheeks flushed by furs and fireside, eyes lidded with sleep.

She was not beautiful.

Never anything so mundane.

She was resplendent.

"Lord Lannister, is everything alright? Has something-"

He holds the checkered board up between the small space separating them.

"A game, if you will?"

She stared at it for a breath, a beat, a pound, and then… Then she smiled that smile, that wild thing of keen teeth and verdant lip, opened the thick oaken door wider, and beckoned him inside.


IX

She had the Kings set in a stripe across her mantle, an ivory comet of victories, flames below popping and hissing softly.

They sit at the side table beside the fire, fifty moves in, seven to seven, she in her shift, he in breeches and red tunic.

She reaches for the Rabble as he reaches for the King.

Fingers brush in the night.

That was all it took.

A spur that burns like any fire blazes.

Irrevocably without regret.

Tywin dropped his piece, shoved the board to the side, down the table, snatches at the hand that skimmed, always just out of reach, a King's move away, the hand that started this inferno.

Her move.

She stretches further still, and yet does not steal his King, not this time, in its place stealing the collar of his tunic, wringing spry fingers in gold thread, and drags.

Their mouths meet as their Dragons did, dancing, slanted across a checker square, pressing and urgent. His lips shift, warmth and heat on the tip of his tongue, heady like wine, and surely she could feel the corners rolling, stretching.

A smile.

"Haraella."

He sighed between her tongue and teeth, voice frayed, touches out, snatches an arm around a waist, and heaves her over the table, through the night, right into his lap.

She lands with thighs on either side of his own.

And who would stop a girl with a lion between her legs?

This too becomes battle.

She tears into his doublet, into his tunic, until the thread fastening switches strain and break, scattering gilt buttons on cobblestone floors. Her fingers on his flesh are hot enough to brand, and are wonderfully, terribly gentle.

Four to Five.

Tywin sequentially draws at her shift, binds the slender cloth between his knuckles and tugs until the strings in the back snap and unravel. The cloth flutters to the floor, slips from their hips, tattered.

She's pale in his lap, like milk and moonlight and seafoam, and bare as the day she was born.

Four to Four.

They collide once more, a writhing thing of teeth and tender touches. His hands are hard, the only way Tywin knew how to be, calloused too, leaving bruises on thighs and rib-cage, thumbprints of himself hewn in purples and blues, and she bits her sense into his shoulder, hard enough to draw blood, to leave a mark, to give a claim.

His neck lolls back as a tongue laps around the score, and he groans to the black ceiling, hips jutting forward and up.

He's met with heat.

Blinding, scorching, wet heat.

His hands find purchase under crooked knee and with a slide, she was on the table, bare backed, spread before him like a feast. He tumbled between the bruise-blotted thighs, clasped, bent and sloping.

There's the heat, that wonderful heat, hot and wet and wanting.

His chin fits home in the recess of her collarbone, as if it was meant to be there, mouth sucking delicate skin red-raw, nipping and snatching as she locked ankles at his back, arched and rolled and-

He blows a laugh against the pale column of her throat, a little breathless, half chuckle part hopeless moan.

"That's cheating."

He sounds broken.

Perhaps he is.

Broken in the best possible way, and she pushes and pulls again, and he spies her cheeks, flushed brilliantly, eyes soaked with craving, clever fingers coiling into his golden locks.

She smells like spice, and soot, and summer breeze.

She tastes even better.

Like molten gold.

"Haven't you heard? All's fair in love and war."

He fumbles with his breeches, with laces too intricate for his suddenly ungainly hands, sets the starkest edge of teeth to her dusky nipple, and then his cock was free from leather and twine, and sinking into the scorching wet heat.

She glows in the moonlight, in the fire light, amber glistens in sweat. Tywin traces the glow with his tongue, chases it with his lips, sipping at divinity.

There's a pop midway in, an abrupt give that allows him in bottom deep, a trail of blood and a grimace.

Tywin blinks, but his shock is short lived.

Haraella isn't the type of woman to let a little blood and pain get in the way of her delight. She rolls those hips again, and Tywin is lost.

He had been since that first match.

She's tight, almost excruciatingly so, and he can feel the flutters and trembles of her flesh, thinks he can feel the beat of her heart from her belly as surely as she can feel his own hammering against her breasts.

They dance, he thrusts, and she dips, and she rolls and he plunges, and it is war, merciless, they grapple and struggle, chew and clutch and claw angry red lines down leg and back, until it's all frantic, all gasping, panting need.

His eyes are open, dampened to a black blown green, his own cheeks flushed and hair clinging damp to his temples, and he looks to her, looks at the breathless mouth and blistered skin, to eyes that see the same as he.

He thinks of children with his hair, her eyes, as keen as a daggers edge.

He thinks of a little girl with her smile, but his glower.

He thinks of a boy with her dimples and his curl.

He sounds like a wounded animal as she darts up and swipes tongue at his bobbing Adam's apple.

She croons as his hands slip from palming breast down the slope of a toned stomach, to the dip of her legs, thumbing circles at a secret place.

She tried to seize his wrist, perhaps rattled by the unexpected tightening of her muscles. Tywin circled faster.

"Like that… Just like that… Let go."

She curves in his arms, like a bowstring pulled too far, and his arm glide around her waist, yanks her closer, so close he is sure there will forever be an impression of his shape upon her, an impression of her on him, and he kisses her as she falls apart, grasps her tight as he follows, hips stuttering sharp thrusts, spilling hot heat from one to the other, and all he sees is white, all he smells is fire, all he tastes is gold.

When he comes to, he's collapsed upon her, tangled limbs akimbo across a table, cheek pillowed against quaking breast, damp and wet and messy and smiling.

He looks to the left, sees what he couldn't before.

He grins wider.

Reaching a trembling hand out into the night, he picks up his Rabble piece and knocks over her King.

"I win."

She laughs in the moonlight, and Tywin joins her there too.


X

Haraella was breaking fast with her family in the solar when the man came into the room, kneeling politely.

"I come with a betrothal offering."

Haraella huffed around a bite of her peach, waving him off.

"Please, no Merlin damned bowing. And throw it out with the rest."

The man stood, shuffling in his boots, refusing to meet her eye.

"I was sworn to ensure you at least looked upon it."

She sighed, dropped her peach on a silver platter, and held out her hand.

No letter came forth.

No book of poetry or flowers or oaths of knightly devotion.

The man took a lone step closer and dropped a piece of ivory in her hand.

She held it up in the morning light, stared deep at the frowning face of a Cyvasse King in the middle of a Rabble.

Custom made; it must have been.

Two pieces as one.

Aerys scoffed.

"A scrap of ivory. How unfortunate. Surely they could have done better. Perhaps some ointment? You look as if you went to bed in a bramble bush last night, Haraella. It isn't becoming."

Haraella, however, grinned and fisted the piece, tucking it safe into the breast pocket of her doublet, where, later, it would join its brethren on her mantle place. Leaning back, she plucked up her peach and took a ravenous bite, regarding the man at her side.

"Tell Lord Tywin Lannister I accept his betrothal offer."

The man nodded, bowed again, and left.

Aerys choked on his wine.


A.N: So, there's been a little change in broadcasting tonight. I know I said the next piece would be a continuation of Maegor, but I got a little distracted with this. I hope you all liked it! I saw art of a younger Tywin with Tytos by Magali Villeneuve in The World of Ice & Fire (It's really good and I advise you to look it up to see what I had in my head during this chapter) and just really couldn't help myself lol.

Please be kind on this one, as this is only my third attempt at smut overall, and first in so much detail.

Don't forget, Prompts are welcome!

Until next time, stay beautiful! ~AlwaysEatTheRude21