BRIENNE OF TARTH

"Aren't we?" It feels a lot like fighting, anyway. It's definitely not fucking, and she's clearly not good at the talking if she's making him feel like he's a problem. "I'm not good at this. If you wanted a lady who could converse, there are plenty out there to choose from who will gladly fuck you and that you can teach to fight."

But she can't be taught to be beautiful or conversational. She'd heard all the japes from Bronn and she knows that she's still called a whore in most circles. Brienne isn't stupid enough to think that her little faction of free folk friends are anything but an oasis for her to cling to.

"I thought you followed me here to—because of…" she gestures between them the same way he did but for a very different reason. It should be laughable, the ex-Maid of Tarth being more comfortable with Jaime following her into this bath just for sex and balking at the idea that they might just spend some time together. But mostly it's just sad.

JAIME LANNISTER

“...you think I came here to fuck you? Whatever heat was in my blood cooled the moment Edmure Tully started asking me about blacksmiths and weapons forging. I came in here to bathe and to be near you.”

Clearly, that was a mistake.

Jaime sighs and moves away from her then, sitting back on one of the ledges to reach for the soap again and start scrubbing at a long, bruising leg he brings up into view.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Sullenly, Brienne sits on the steps of the bath and crosses her arms. If he doesn't want her to leave and doesn't want to fuck her and doesn't like how she answers his questions she figures she will simply sit like a stone and perhaps that will please him.

JAIME LANNISTER

“You’re not my mistress or my whore.”

He looks up at her as he holds one leg up, out of the water, balanced on top of the other. There’s a gnarly scar there from where the tip of a blade caught him during the skirmish with the Kingswood Brotherhood that earned him his knighthood when he was just fourteen years old. It was the first real blemish on his then perfect skin and he cherishes the mark in spite of how jagged and glossy it looks in comparison to the rest of his golden-hued skin.

“You’re someone I cherish and care for deeply. Someone who I enjoy being around. If that’s not something you’re comfortable with, come out and say it, and I will cease following in your wake and withhold my affections in front of others’ eyes.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

"I'm not comfortable with it," she says, meaning to be angry and thinking she only sounds desperate. She doesn't inspire affection in others and for a thousand horrible reasons she's only comfortable with it behind closed doors, where it isn't a show for anyone else.

"How could I be? Me? How could I possibly—" Look at me, she wants to say. Look at me and then look at you. How are you so comfortable with it?

JAIME LANNISTER

"Then I'll stop!"

He snaps at her from across the bath, dropping the soap into the water and swearing under his breath, taking in a gulp of air and sinking below the waterline to fumble for the bar at his feet. Resurfacing, he places it on the ledge and rubs at his eyes to banish the sting of having opened them in the water.

"I don't know how to make you see what I see in you, how to make you believe that my affections for you are genuine. That caring for you as deeply as I do is about far more than just your ability to make me see stars when you're fucking me." The maimed arm comes up this time, the stump smoothing uselessly over his head, barely pushing back the damp locks that are falling into his face. Instinct doesn't remember there's not a hand there, and at the moment, neither does Jaime. "I don't have any experience to fall back on here and the examples that were set for me at the Red Keep... The worst part is I can't even throw proper stones at those who entertained carnal relations outside their marriage bed, given my bedding of my sister while she was married to Robert. I was the whore in that equation. I know what it's like to be the secret, to be the shame... If my people's misunderstanding of our relationship and the labeling they've placed upon it has made you this unsettled and caused you the shame I never wanted you to feel, I will do everything in my power to right their perceptions."

BRIENNE OF TARTH

His outburst at first deepens her scowl, but as he rambles on it softens too. She's upset because of so many things, but that nervous energy he'd clocked earlier had only silenced while they were sparring, drowned out by the rush of being near him and seeing how he's improved after all of the difficulties he's been through.

It's so hard for her to speak. He takes everything she says the wrong way, assumes she's implying her words are his. She feels muzzled at every turn: she can't speak for the free folk, her advice to Sansa is nearly never what the Starks want to hear anymore, and now she's tangled up in Lannister business because of her shameful desires (and her father, who will judge her harshly for those shameful desires).

"Don't," comes quietly out of her, as most of her strength is in the way her hands are grasping each other, white-knuckled with the force of her grip. It's pathetic, probably, that she keeps trying to adjust her expectations to fit whatever it is that will give her more time with Jaime. "I'm not ashamed. I'm trying. And you don't seem to be happy with my efforts. You suggested we fuck in the stables, and you marked me in your tent at Riverrun, and you come in here and I was—I wanted—it feels as if you want me to hate you. But I don't, I'm—I love—I have loved you for a long time. And I don't think I know how to do it up close."

JAIME LANNISTER

Maybe he does. Maybe there's some subconscious piece of himself that desires her hatred, because he's still warped enough to believe that the only thing he's truly deserving of for all that he's done (and didn't do) is scorn. For all that he prattles on about not knowing how to make her understand what she sees in him, perhaps he doesn't understand what she sees in him, either. He is a tarnished man, damaged inside and out. A man who doesn't really know how to be a man, who indulged in taboo practices by way of buying into lies his sister spun and the ones he told himself. He's contributed to the deterioration of the Seven Kingdoms in the worst of ways and he is trying to do better, to be better, but sometimes he feels like all he'll be is an honorless Kingslayer, stuck on the other side of an impenetrable stone wall he's not allowed to touch the other side of.

Except she makes him feel like he could be better, like he not only has the potential to be, but that it's actually possible. She sees things in him that he thought he lost in the throne room that fateful day eighteen years ago, parts of himself that were waiting in the wings, waiting for him to call them back on stage. She makes him feel wanted and worthy, safe and whole and, by the grace of the Seven, he—

"I love you," he blurts, the water in the pool sloshing about with the force of which he makes his way through it to reach for her on the steps. "So much it feels as if my heart is about to burst free of my chest."

BRIENNE OF TARTH

A soft cry lets loose from her without her realizing it, as she moves to meet him at the edge of the steps, sending great ugly waves slopping up the sides of the stone. If she did feel shame at his side, it was for his sake and the way people looked at them. Her discomfort with what they've started won't go away with this embrace, but she couldn't sit here and lie any longer, no matter how humiliating it might have turned out to be.

But for him to love her too? Almost unfathomable. She can't make all of his words match up with what they've experienced together since she returned to Winterfell, but some of them are undeniable. Hadn't he put her in his bed to rest? Tried to bear some burden of the ordeal of obtaining the tansy? Those were not the actions of someone who didn't care.

She doesn't know what to do with those things. But she knows what to do with Jaime's body. She wraps her arms around him tight, afraid to say something that might upset him again. So she just holds him to her.

JAIME LANNISTER

He holds her close, her frame flush against his own, peppering her cheek and neck with kisses. Jaime rubs his cheek against her shoulder as if he's trying to nuzzle into her to stop himself from bursting with the intensity of the emotions he's filled with now.

Of course he loved her. Sansa called him on it when he spiraled in the wake of Brienne telling everyone the truth about why he killed Aerys, and while he'd been baffled by the assumption at the time, her rejecting him and running off with the Free Folk had only driven home the point. He loved her, he truly did. Had for quite some time, he'd just been able to give his affections for her a proper name, having never felt love this earnest and innocent before. Love was always attached to familial obligation and the taboo that he and Cersei indulged in for far longer than it should have been allowed to go on. That love was bastardized and warped, the pair of them twisting up their bond as twins in a way that made love near unrecognizable to anyone but them.

They'd been wrong. They'd been so wrong.

He'd been wrong.

This is love. This is what love feels like and he doesn't want to let go of that feeling.

Ever.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Now that she's told him, she feels both like she's opened up a can of worms they'll have to deal with and like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. It feels selfish, in a way, but it had also felt like there was no choice. No other way she could stop hurting him. She had been prepared to hurt in his stead, even, for the chance to make him stop offering to leave her alone.

Brienne wishes she was the witty sort of woman who might make a comment to lighten the mood, but if she was at a loss for words before, she's run out completely now. She's still worried and anxious for a million reasons, and she still doesn't know what to do.

"I'm sorry I'm shit at this," she whispers against his hair, where her nose is pressed. She hopes it doesn't incite another angry outburst about how horrible she is to herself. It's just the truth, whether he likes it or not.

JAIME LANNISTER

This time, Jaime refrains from saying any of those things. He doesn't berate her, doesn't ask her why she isn't kinder to herself, doesn't even try to tell her that she's better at it than she thinks she is.

"We're in love, Brienne," is all he says — delighted, and half muffled against her shoulder.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Maybe she is one of those witty types, because after another soft sound from deep in her chest, Brienne sighs against him.

"So we're both shit at it."

JAIME LANNISTER

Jaime lifts his head from her shoulder while remaining as close as possible, nose dragging against her neck and cheek until he's standing on the balls of his feet in the water, forehead pressed to hers. Steadying himself with his maimed arm still wrapped about her middle, his left hand rises out of the water to cup her cheek in his palm. He smooths his thumb over the light dusting of freckles beneath her eye.

"My love," he says, just to say it. To test out how it sounds and feels on his tongue. "My love," he says again, this time punctuating it with a kiss.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Nope, she's the one who's shit at it. Brienne's eyes blink wide as if she's panicking and yet she doesn't move to get away but holds him tighter to herself. Safe to say those are not words she ever imagined anyone speaking to her, let alone someone she thinks of so dearly.

And despite how breathless she feels, she kisses him back eagerly, and doesn't notice that she's crying.

JAIME LANNISTER

She’s crying and Jaime brushes away the tears on the side of her face that his hand is still cradling the backs of his fingers. The kiss breaks for the span of time it take for him to drop back down to his heels and bring both arms up to wrap around her neck as he pulls himself up to her height anew, pressing his lips to hers once more.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Kissing him is so easy and natural, and maybe she shouldn't like the way he practically hangs off of her but it feels good to sweep her hands up his back to press against his shoulderblades in encouragement.

For how wanton she was when she'd stepped into this tub earlier, all thoughts of heat and need have left her as a thread of hope winds around her heart at the touch of his lips. It's not a fix and, in fact, she has likely complicated things even further by blurting out her attempt at coming clean and ceasing whatever hurt they were causing each other once and for all. She is still rife with nerves over her duties and loyalties seemingly colliding. She's no different than she was before she spoke, and she's still at a loss when it comes to pleasing him.

She finds it difficult to stop kissing him back, but Brienne flaps her hands gently at his back to disrupt his attention as she tries to break the kiss and catch her breath.

JAIME LANNISTER

Adept in reading at reading her touches by this point, Jaime draws back from her lips almost instantly. He sinks back down to his heels but keeps his arms about her neck.

"You okay?"