BRIENNE OF TARTH

"Yes. I cleaned it off of you for weeks." As he settles in, Brienne stands and lets her arms hang loose at her sides. This reminiscing should dissipate her need. She'd won, out there, and yet somehow she feels like she's lost ground in here.

"I'm not covered in anything anymore."

JAIME LANNISTER

"So I recall," he remarks, sitting down on a ledge as she stands, letting out another delighted sigh as the heat in the water laps at the stiffness in his neck. "More or less, anyway. I got the general gist of you having to wipe my arse, but forgive me if I don't recall every excruciating detail of that point in my life."

Much as his mind is often his own worst enemy, it did him the kindness of blocking out a lot of the torment he endured following the severing of his hand. He remembers Locke's men kicking him in the ribs, remembers falling off his horse and being tied to her, remembers feeling endlessly nauseous and being plagued with vertigo spells. He remembers bits and pieces of the bath they shared at Harrenhal, namely the way she rose angrily out of the water when he spoke ill of Renly — much like she's doing now.

Except this time, he hadn't done anything to warrant her ire. (Or has he?)

"I can see that. That's kind of the point of a bath, to take one when you're not wearing several layers of clothing. Sit down, Brienne. If you're so opposed to being in the same pool as me I'll go find another."

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Speaking of minds and enemies, Brienne's seems to be working against her now, as she takes in Jaime's dismissiveness and matches it against a past she hasn't had to confront in a long time. It's like a swift pitcher of ice water dumped over her head. She's an idiot. A fool. She'd let her blood get up and she'd thought—

"No, that's all right. I've finished with it anyway," she mumbles and hoists herself up out of the bath entirely. The flagstone is warm under her feet, but she quickly wraps a large flannel around herself and hunches into it like she needs the warmth anyway. She fumbles with the latch before it gives way under her hand.

JAIME LANNISTER

Even sopping wet and completely nude, Jaime is fast. The splashing of water is the only warning she gets before Jaime is swiftly crossing the distance between the pool and the door, pushing so it shuts against the weight of his maimed forearm pressing against it.

"Tell me what I did. Clearly I did something, but I'm at a loss as to what misstep I've taken with you this time."

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She startles at his sudden proximity after not recognizing the splash as a sound accompanying his exit of the tub. Her brow pinches with confusion.

"What are you talking about?" Brienne takes a step back, clutching the flannel to herself. She's the one misstepping, not him. Too eager, too deep in her feelings, and all too happy to see something that isn't there. She shakes her head. "You've done nothing, Jaime, I'm only trying to let you bathe in peace."

JAIME LANNISTER

"If I wanted to bathe in peace, I would have chosen one of the empty pools. I wouldn't have passed Edmure Tully and his endless parade of poorly-timed, mundane questions onto an unwitting commander to make sure I got here before you departed. I was hoping to share in your company, but if you would rather not share in mine..."

Jaime takes a step back, releasing his hold on the door.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She scowls again, confused still but also irritated. Pouting, anyone who didn't care much for their life would call it.

"You said you just came here to bathe!"

JAIME LANNISTER

“I can’t bathe and hold a conversation with you at the same time?”

He likes being around you, Brienne. Why is that so hard to accept?

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Because nobody wants to talk to her. They want to fight her, and in Jaime's case fuck her, usually. They want her to teach them how to fight other things. They want her to stand guard or intimidate people. They want to try and use her to prove their superiority.

"I thought you wanted—you telling me you're just bathing is a conversation?" Even when people do talk to her there's a point to get to. This is absolutely foreign to her, excepting one very bad instance wherein the men trying to talk to her did not want to do so just to get to know her.

She'd come into this bathing chamber on a high and now she feels like a miserable fool.

JAIME LANNISTER

Jaime does. How does she not notice how utterly enraptured he is whenever she’s speaking, how Bronn eyes him like he’s lost his godsdamned mind when he fixates on her whenever she speaks up about anything during war council meetings?

“I just said that I can bathe and talk to you at the same time. Come back to the pool, Brienne. Surely your muscles could stand basking in that heat as much as mine, if not more. You gave me quite the wallop today. No— Wallop is putting it mildly. You, my lady, kicked my sorry arse all over that training yard.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Their sparring match seems ages ago. Everything she had felt now melted like a dream she woke from confused and unmoored. And while she doesn't know what to make of this, she doesn't have a good reason for leaving.

She nods weakly and gestures back to the bath. When she moves back to it, she keeps the flannel wrapped around her torso and sits on the edge to dip just her feet in. Brienne would not be letting the hot water influence her back into stupidity again, thank you.

JAIME LANNISTER

Jaime, on the other hand, wades back into the pool’s water and begins doing what he said he was going to do: bathe. He scrubs at his right arm and then as much of his left as he’s able to, which involves trapping the soap between his chin and collarbone and rubbing his left arm over it, then doing the same with the crook of his right elbow so he can wash the left elbow. It’s a fumbling sort of adaptation, but an adaptation all the same. He no longer needs pages to help him bathe. His right arm isn’t useless. He’s not helpless. It might have taken him a while (and getting out of the oppressive environment of the Red Keep where everyone told him he was a cripple and wanted his maimed hand out of sight and not spoken of), but he’s finally figuring it all out.

“Can you do that while wearing armor? What you did to throw me off you?”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Brienne very carefully does not watch him bathe. She doesn't want to let that part of her cloud her vision again, but she's not sure that she could manage it if she allowed herself to take him in.

Her body is mostly still, schooled into calm passivity on the exterior, though her scowl is firmly on place as she watches her own feet slowly kick in the water.

"I doubt it. Maybe in leathers or chainmail but if you're in either you're already dead by the time close quarters is an option. Maybe plate if you're desperate enough and the circumstances are right. And you don't mind gouging yourself in the process…"

JAIME LANNISTER

“Doesn’t make the move any less impressive. You caught me completely off guard.”

He beams at her for it, but he’s not so sure that she sees him. She appears to be avoiding looking at him altogether, and for a man who lost all sense of propriety and vanity to the trials and tribulations of his trauma, to suddenly wonder if his appearance was one she still wanted to look at is startling, to say the least.

She called him beautiful once. Maybe she had meant the snow.

Jaime rubs the bar of soap against his unruly locks in lieu of having a pair of hands to lather up suds to rub into his locks. He sets it aside when he’s through, scrubbing his fingers through the tangled mess and pulling out a stray twig that managed to bury itself somewhere in there. It’s tossed aside as Jaime sinks into the water and submerges himself entirely, holding his breath as he works the soap out of his locks.

Water is unintentionally flung everywhere when he rises from the pool’s depths.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Her irritation grates enough that she lets out a huff and shrugs.

"Because someone like me shouldn't be able to move like that," she says, a rhetorical question she thinks she already knows the answer to. Except she's strong enough to toss nearly anyone around and she's never relied on only her strength to do so. Brienne knows her body, and she knows how other people see her body.

"That's the point."

JAIME LANNISTER

Jaime swims up to her, fingers curling around one of her ankles. “Did I say that? I said nothing about how you shouldn’t be able to move like that or catch me off guard. I am not so far up my own arse that I think myself undefeatable. You’re a formidable opponent, Brienne, and you continue to surprise me — that’s a good thing.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

The only part of her that was moving freezes at Jaime's touch, ceasing her idle kicking in the water. Her eyes come up to his for a beat and then drift away again. She hadn't meant to insult him.

"But it's the truth. You don't have to be arrogant to make incorrect assumptions."

JAIME LANNISTER

“Oh, for the love of—”

Fed up with this sour mood she’s in, Jaime tugs on her ankle in a bid to drag her into the water with him.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She lets out an undignified squawk as her body jerks into the water despite her scrabbling to keep herself perched on the edge. She doesn't go under, but hops in place, splashing as she regains her balance and looks sourer than before.

Confusion and embarrassment of some kind take her over. Instead of retaliating or shouting at him, Brienne spins in place to turn her back on Jaime and gives in to the instinct to cover up.

JAIME LANNISTER

Retaliation is what Jaime had been hoping for. He envisioned her dunking him back under the water in revenge for pulling her back in, but instead she glowers at him and turns away. Is she really skulking at him? (Rude, skulking is his move.)

“Brienne.”

His palm touches her back, flattening against her spine.

“What’s wrong?”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She's desperately trying to sort her towel out to wrap around herself when he touches her again, which is exactly what she wants and also too much to handle right now. She speaks as she twists away from his hand, still fumbling with her now-drenched flannel like it's a life-line.

"I don't—I'm not—" she fumbles for words the way she's fumbling her hands, juggling thoughts and unable to actually catch any of them. She gestures between them, the sopping towel following back and forth in the water. "I don't know why you'd want to talk to me when it seems all I do is say the wrong thing."

JAIME LANNISTER

“When did I say you were saying the wrong thing? You know me, Brienne. I’m as blunt as a blacksmith’s hammer and I don’t enjoy beating around the bush unless there’s some sort of strategic purpose to it. This isn’t a battlefield this is—” A relationship? “This is us. You and me. If I had a problem with the things you were saying, I would tell you. You’re a bundle of nerves right now and I don’t know why. You say it’s you, but I’m beginning to think it’s actually me.”

What is it about baths and having arguments and heart-to-hearts? They really have to stop doing things this way.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

"You say it's not a battle, and yet until we—unless we're fighting or—together—" fucking, she doesn't say because she feels so exposed and raw and she just cannot.

Her shoulders fall, and though she's finally gotten her towel into a state where she could wrap it around herself Brienne is suddenly too tired to bother. She looks at Jaime, and it feels wrong to want him so much when she's making him upset like this.

JAIME LANNISTER

The problem here is that Jaime has virtually no experience with relationships — romantic or otherwise. Whenever he squabbled with people, it was either family members who would forgive him in time or people he more or less worked with or protected as a member of the Kingsguard who he didn't give a flying fuck about earning forgiveness from. If they hated him for something he did or said, they were free to. Half the population of Westeros, if not more, already loathed him, what was another highborn with their nose turned in the air and away from him going to matter?

And yet, the prospect of her being cross or uncomfortable with him is almost too much to bear.

"We're not fighting or fucking now. We're just— together. Talking. Enjoying one another's presence, something we've done before, Brienne. What makes now so different?"