BRIENNE OF TARTH

She's delighted by it, by the obvious care that's gone into Jaime learning to adjust his form. She hadn't known what to expect from him but it's clear that he has put in the work just the way everyone else who wasn't built with the innate talent of swordplay had to. While she can't see all those times he trained with his people where he did get stuck in his head, right now she feels him slipping into that place which sparring is meant to take you. His form is guiding him and he's not freezing.

Loudly, she grunts as they come together again, heart pounding in her chest loud enough to deafen her. Her eyes rake over him, and she sees all the things you aren't supposed to do in a sparring match, all of the good illegal moves you don't execute because you're still training your instincts.

She aims for one, stepping too far into his space to slide a foot between his and hook one of his legs out from under him. She turns with it, darting back out of his space again to see how he reacts, ignoring the upset noises from the crowd and the way Addam explains to Rosa that the sparring ring is not meant for such dirty tactics.

JAIME LANNISTER

The air rushes out of him with a sharp oof that sounds somewhere from deep within his chest, and Jaime’s left staring up at the clouds until he’s able to get air back into his lungs. He’s going to feel that later, but the rush of adrenaline that’s flooded his veins keeps him from registering the bruise blossoming on his elbow where it collided with a stone protruding from the gravel and how stiff his neck is probably going to be later.

He’s not old. Jaime’s barely sitting within the cusp of his thirty-fifth year (he missed his own nameday, apparently), but his body has been through hell. Stress, trauma, illness, and starvation have taken their toll on him and he’s only back to being physically fit because he worked at it, but it took a considerable amount of time for him to get back to where he’d been before Robb captured him. It’s also done a number on his hair, causing grey strands to peek out a full decade before his father had started to show signs of greying, and there are stress line at his eyes that weren’t there before.

He isn’t old, but he is going to feel old later and he’s going to hate it. So much.

But right now, he merely laughs aloud at Addam’s statement and shakes his head so his unruly twists of hair fill with dust and sand. “Perhaps for a tournament, but this is war, not a competition for titles and favors and gold. The dead aren’t going to play fair. Sometimes, dirty tactics are needed and that was a good, opportunistic use of one.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

When it comes to martial pursuits, even Brienne is old. A body can only take so much and after what the realm has been through in just the last decade let alone the two prior it's a wonder any of them are able to stand up straight at all.

Jaime's laugh is a salve for her earlier frustrated state, and his words make her puff out a laugh in return. Her eyebrows lift at his little lecture, and she can't hide her amusement of it. Only Jaime would show off as if it were a tournament and then speak about fighting creatures he's never seen before. He's so presumptive, and she's all the more fond of him for it. She laughs too, just a puff of a thing, before giving in to the urge to taunt him a little.

"Playing dead is for opossums and wights. Come, Jaime. The music's still playing."

JAIME LANNISTER

“Not lions? How unfortunate.”

Still in showoff mode, Jaime jumps to his feet — quite literally. It’s a feline-esque move if there ever was one, and he manages to do it with just the one hand and still gripping the pommel of his blade.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

He's showing off, and Brienne is regaining her breath by just standing there like a rock and trying both not to grin at him nor roll her eyes at him.

Once he's up she doesn't give him a moment to breathe, nor think. The thing is, Brienne is fast as well as economical. She doesn't usually need to use it because most men tire themselves out trying to batter her into submission before they realize she's stronger than they ever could be. But she chases him around the space now, happy to rain blow after blow upon him, as if daring him to keep up his show.

JAIME LANNISTER

Showing off for her and not the small crowd they’ve amassed. Not even for his cousin. In his mind, it’s a win/win situation for him where Rosa’s concerned: either she’ll get to see the golden relative that’s become her guardian beat a formidable opponent or she’ll get to bear witness to a woman emerging triumphant against a man. He is good with either result and isn’t doing Brienne the disservice of letting her win for his cousin’s sake. He’s certain she’d be furious with him if he even attempted to let her win.

He meets her swings blow for blow, happy to let her push him around on his feet as he moves in a very sloppy circle about the training space. Jaime is patient and calm and he waits until he has to twist to parry, his back to her, and does what Addam has been trying to get him to do for months: use his right arm.

Chambering the elbow he rams her with it, hard, and right in the ribs.

A dirty move for a dirty move.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

It's a solid hit, one which makes her curse and grunt with the pain. Not only did she not expect it, but she and Sandor had given each other a right solid beating the day before. She gives in to the heat of the anger, baring her teeth at him as her footwork somehow blessedly keeps her aright.

She steps into him instead of away as the fight shifts obviously into something else, something that begs fists instead of blades and her legs tangle into his again to bring him down. Except she knows he'll be on the lookout for such a move, so she goes down with him, even as she processes what just happened.

It wasn't his sword. It was his arm—his right elbow jammed expertly into her side. Her bared teeth turn into a delighted snarl, one side of her mouth curling up into a dangerous grin as the sparring match devolves into a brawl.

JAIME LANNISTER

Down he goes once more, but she took him out by his legs, and more importantly, has gone down with him, preventing him from using those muscular, long legs of his to launch himself back up to his feet. He’s pinned beneath her, his sword having slipped from his fingers to clatter off to the side, out of her reach.

That’s fine. She fights dirty, he can fight dirty, too. Jaime manages to get the upperhand enough to reverse their positions, pinning her to the dirt in an unintended mimicry of the way he’d pinned her to the bed nights before. “Yield.”

Except this time he doesn’t have her tangled up in a blanket, unable to retaliate. Which just makes everything all the more thrilling.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She doesn't have time to marvel, but nothing could wipe that sharp grin from her face even as they tangle and she winds up on the flat of her back with Jaime looking dirty and glorious atop her. She actually considers it for a moment, just to see the triumph light his face up.

But her blood is on fire the way it burns through her before a storm would roll over Tarth and douse it in unrelenting rain amid the earthshaking thunder and blinding lightning streaking across the sky.

"No," she growls at him and twists her body in a way she doesn't often get to when she's laden with layers of padding and plate. The flexibility of her hips leverages her long legs as she seems to curl in on herself around Jaime before breaking his grasp on her and practically tossing him rolling through the dirt.

She's up and scrambling gracelessly after him, a bone dagger suddenly in her hand and at his throat when she straddles and presses her weight into him, breathless and panting.

"You yield."

JAIME LANNISTER

—if Jaime wasn’t plagued by a raging boner before, he certainly is now. Having her perched atop him like that, bearing down on his hips, while pressing a dagger to his throat certainly isn’t helping matters.

He holds her gaze, green on blue, for a moment as he weighs his options, and finally, with a sneer, relents.

“I yield.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

It seems like they stare at each other for eternity or no time at all. She can see him moving through his options, and she tunes back into her body to pick up anything he might telegraph, but she only feels—oh.

It's another moment before she registers his yield. She pushes past the heat that's curled into her gut without her realizing it. Brienne pushes up off of Jaime and sheathes the dagger in a fluid movement before extending her hand to help him up. Her face has fallen back into a scowl, but she's still looking at him like she might stalk him back to the opposite corner of the yard.

"Good match." Her voice comes out husky and even she can't attribute it to the fight. Normally, once it's ended, she feels clearer. But the burning remains, and she doesn't think even a Tarth storm could douse it.

JAIME LANNISTER

He needs a moment, puffing out a breath that’s in part from exertion and half sheer frustration of an entirely different kind. Taking her hand, he lets her help him to his feet, stepping back to turn in a semicircle away from their crowd of onlookers under the guise of brushing some of the sand and twigs off himself.

Addam shoos them off, asking young Podrick, who came out to see what the commotion was all about, to see the Lady Rosamund back into the castle.

Bronn at least as the decency to wait until most of the crowd has dispersed to lean in and tell Jaime, “Careful. You’re going to poke someone’s eye out with that.”

Jaime swings at him, but Bronn ducks out of range, howling with laughter.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Brienne can't take her eyes off of him. Age gave him experience, his maiming gave him creativity, and—and his people seem to have given him back something she didn't know was missing. Her heart is full to bursting for it.

She doesn't belong among them, so Brienne picks up her tourney sword and replaces it on her way into the keep. But she doesn't follow the halls to her quarters, unwilling to pester a few maids just so she can bathe in peace. She descends into and beyond the undercroft where the Starks molded the hot springs into rows of baths. Brienne undresses swiftly leaving her things piled neatly outside the door to the one she chooses before stepping in and sinking into the heat with a relieved sigh.

She's both at peace and restless at once, replaying their match again and again in her head until her cheeks feel hot and her skin too tight. Then she scrubs said skin harder than it deserves, pretending it's what she needs.

JAIME LANNISTER

Brienne departs and Jaime waves off his men — his friends? — and follows in her wake. He gets waylaid along the way by Edmure Tully and his shit timing, wanting to know about the metalsmiths in the Lannister encampment and how the progress they’ve made on forging additional weaponry, but it doesn’t take him long to find her once he’s able to make his escape and redirect Lord Edmure to one of his commanders.

He knocks, if only because he doesn’t want her to attack him — or maybe he would be absolutely fine with that, but he would be cross with whomever overhead the commotion from this corridor and came to swiftly investigate. (Better to rile her up with the door firmly closed behind them.) And while he does knock, he doesn’t wait for her to answer, opening the door, stepping in, and shutting it behind him.

“It’s just me,” he says to whatever reaction or response she has for someone intruding on her bath.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Instinctively, though she recognizes Jaime's voice cutting off her protestations, she hisses back at him, scowling as she covers her chest. "What in the seven hells are you doing?"

JAIME LANNISTER

“Am I not allowed to bathe?”

Suddenly it’s Harrenhal all over again, with there being numerous warm baths Jaime could have picked from and he chose to join her in her already occupied one instead. He’s without shame as he begins to strip in front of her, kicking off his boots tugging his tunic up over his head because unlacing the thing takes too much damn effort.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Brienne watches him, openly letting her eyes follow every place he reveals skin. She eases back against the stone edge of the tub as the heat in her veins she was trying to scrub away reignites almost immediately.

"You aren't here to bathe." Her arms stay wrapped around her chest.

JAIME LANNISTER

“Have you seen me lately?”

Jaime turns to face her, holding his arms out to showcase his bare torso and what’s visible of his pelvis from where his half-unlaced trousers hang low on his hips. He’s covered in dirt and grime from their skirmish, small cuts and welts that will eventually bruise dotting his form here and there.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She bites her lip as he turns, and if she should question the pang of possession that thrums through her when she sees the result of their bout mapped over his skin, well, that'll have to wait for later.

"You've chosen poorly. I've already soiled this tub."

JAIME LANNISTER

“I spent the better part of a year living in my own shit.” The look on his face says remember, you were there. “You think I care about getting into soiled bath water? Not like you’re covered in anything I’m not.”

Down go his pants and smallclothes, piling at his feet as he steps out of them and moves around to the edge of the pool with the slanted rocky steps that serve as the entrance. He descends them slowly, sighing pleasurably as he sinks into the water’s warmth.”