JAIME LANNISTER

“Was it ever really just fucking between us, Brienne?”

He isn’t going to assume that it was the same way for her, and he wouldn’t hold it against her if it weren’t, but for him, it wasn’t just about fucking. It was about who he was fucking and that she wanted him. Wanting him because he was Jaime with all his faults and flaws, not a head of state, a wealthy man, or even a beautiful man.

Nothing between them has ever been just one thing.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She opens her mouth, but only a sigh comes out. There's only so much she could let herself accept, and sometimes that meant, for her, that it had to be all right that he had simply felt the familiarity of their bond again.

"Not for me," she admits quietly. But him, she probably still isn't quite sure. "But it wasn't out loud."

JAIME LANNISTER

“Sweetling.”

Jaime cups her face in his palm, smoothing his thumb over the apple of her cheek.

“Look at me. It was never just fucking for me, either.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She breathes through it, this thing she never let herself examine too closely, and it's all she can do to look him in the eyes. Her own prickle with the threat of tears, all that emotion she tries to hold at bay ready to force itself out of her if she keeps it up.

"You were in distress," she says, still weakly unsure about Riverrun. "And then I was, and I couldn't—I felt so ashamed. I've never felt the rush, like men talk about, after a fight."

And then he had only meant to be near her, and she couldn't make sense of how she'd felt. Raw, exposed, and wanton. Everything she was taught not to be, as a lady.

JAIME LANNISTER

“Dismissed from the Kingsguard, sent away from King’s Landing, labeled a useless cripple with no further worth... I was, but you were a great comfort to me at a point in my life where I truly felt like I had nothing left,” he says of Riverrun.

The Kingsguard had been the entirety of his existence. He didn’t — and in many ways, still doesn’t — know how to be anything but a sentinel. To be set aside and so easily replaced after he’d given eighteen years of his life to the vows he’d taken far more seriously than anyone ever gave him credit for was a crushing blow.

And then she showed up, and she was like a beacon of light and a balm on a festering, open wound. She helped him see reason and purpose again. Pointed him in a direction worth following, whether she realized it or not.

As for their fight—

Jaime smiles at her, pushing a lock of unruly white-blonde hair behind her ear. “That happens sometimes, especially when you’re up against a worthwhile opponent. It’s normal, to feel your blood rush and have it boiling hot in your veins. Had you needed release from it, I would have provided you with it. There’s no need to feel shame, especially not with me.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

"A comfort," she repeats, hanging onto that word, because it's better than what she'd always thought: an escape. "You didn't seem to be in a state to...know what, precisely, you were doing."

And that was why she hadn't even entertained the idea that he'd been toying with her. It was a lot for Brienne, who also didn't want to hide away from his affection, to accept that at least in the moment Jaime was being genuine. To refuse to be ashamed that it was him, even if he had come to his senses later.

"Not me," she shakes her head, still uncertain. A wry chuckle puffs out of her, just the one. "I've never felt it. It seemed...unseemly."

JAIME LANNISTER

One day, he’ll tell her that he’s thought himself the maiden many times and that she’s been his knight in shining armor, here to rescue him and remind him of himself. To snap him out of his bullshit and shake him back into the reality he’s too good at avoiding. When she’s around, Jaime doesn’t feel like he needs to go away inside.

“You were into it — more than that, you were already into me, which made the fight different than if you had been sparring with, say, Ser Addam. I felt it, too, I just had the misfortune of running into Lord Edmure. That man is a walking mood killer.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

That makes sense to her, and she visibly relaxes, mollified by the idea that dancing with him specifically had been the reason she was so wound up. It even makes her smile that small thing it seems only he pulls out of her.

It turns into a laugh she fails to smother. Edmure is terrible, but she feels bad for laughing, even though she doesn't lift a finger to defend him. "I just assumed your reaction was like any other man's."

JAIME LANNISTER

Jaime shrugs one shoulder, leaning closer and whispering to her as if sharing some sort of conspiratorial information that wasn’t meant to be spoken of.

“I’ll let you in on a secret. Men get hard at the most inopportune times. We can’t help it, whether it be first thing in the morning as we rise for the day or when we’re sitting on a horse in the middle of a long trek to the next camping location. It happens, but unfortunately some men are vile enough to believe they have to take care of it by carnal means whenever they find themselves standing at attention.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She looks skeptical at first, scowling though he's too close to see it. But she trusts Jaime with her life, and she's trying to trust him with her heart. She wants to believe that he wouldn't toy with her if he meant harm in doing so.

She lets out another huff of a laugh, aborted by her shifting disbelief. "That sounds miserable."

JAIME LANNISTER

“It very well can be! Do you know what it’s like to have a raging hard on while you’re wearing armor? Or tight breeches? It’s more painful than anything else.”

The mere thought of said discomfort makes him shift on the bed next to her.

“The worst, though, is trying to piss while you’re hard. It goes everywhere. You get it on yourself and the floor... No one ever talks about it, but it’s a fact of male life.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

"Jaime!" Her inner proper lady takes over, though she's laughing with delight through being so scandalized. It's safe for her to react so baldly, safe in front of Jaime who might tease her more or who will remind her of the things she did for him when he couldn't do them for himself. But her hands flap at him, patter at his chest as if she means to shoo him out of the room entirely.

"You're definitely not staying the night, now!" Piss all over her chambers? She thinks not, ser.

JAIME LANNISTER

Her flapping her hands at him just gives him the opportunity to grab hold of her arms (left hand wrapping around her wrist, right elbow hooking around her own) and tug her to him to roll her over so that now she’s laying back, flat on her bed with him hovering over her. He keeps himself up with a knees planted on either side of her, though he’s so close to the edge of the bed that he may very well end up slipping off it and onto his ass.

“The lady doth protest!”

She is so endlessly highborn at times and Seven help him, he loves it.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She had meant to make him go, a silly thought that she now sees was probably one of the most futile things she's ever let run through her head. Brienne wants a good night's rest, and she wanted to prove to Jaime that she would try to be better about simply enjoying each other's company, and yet she let him maneuver her as he likes.

And she laughs when her head bounces against the bed, and puts up exactly no fight about her position.

"The lady keeps a tidy room."

JAIME LANNISTER

Let the record show that if she had asked him to leave and let her rest, he would have. He would have kissed her on her brow and told her to come find him before she departed so he could kiss her before she got on her horse, but he would have left.

One day she’s going to realize that he is putty in her hands and it will be the end of him.

“You say that like I’m going to start pissing everywhere like some sort of territorial dog. I’m a lion, not a hound.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

"Shadowcats piss on everything!" She counters, because she already tried to make up lion behaviors to zero avail, and they're the next biggest cat she knows of. Her eyebrows raise as she tries to hold back her grin.

"And, apparently, so do men, which you are."

JAIME LANNISTER

“Not all the time! Seven, you’re going to make me regret enlightening you on the woes of male anatomy, wench.”

He sits back on his haunches to peer down at her smugly and say something witty and clever, but forgets about how close to the edge he was perched and down he goes. Jaime slides right on off the bed, landing on the floor with a dull thud.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

"I regret your attempts at enlighten—oh!" She's up in a flash, but not quite fast enough to rescue Jaime's rump from the flagstone. No amount of rushes piled in here would have made that thump any better.

Her face peers over the edge of the bed, eyebrows pinched up with worry. "Are you all right?"

JAIME LANNISTER

The air rushed out of his lungs so swiftly it takes him a moment to reorient himself and realize that he’s on the ground instead of perched above her on the bed. He fell off. He can stay upright on a spooked horse during a storm, but can’t remain seated on the edge of a bed. It makes him laugh as he lays back, throwing his maimed arm over his eyes as he finds amusement in his own spectacular folly.

“Fine, fine. Just another bruise or two to add to my growing collection.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Once she sees that he is in fact all right, Brienne covers her mouth as she starts laughing at him. None of his japes or cutting remarks, none of the faces he's made in response to someone's audacity, nothing has ever made her laugh like this. It's ugly, and tries her damnedest to cover her mouth to hide her teeth, and it leaves her unable to get up and help him like she really does actually intend to do.

JAIME LANNISTER

He surges up through the ache in his rump at the sight of her chortling away delightedly, having never seen her laugh in such a carefree manner. On his knees at the edge of the bed, Jaime tips his head up at her.

“Next time I need to lighten the mood, I’ll just fall off another piece of furniture.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She can't speak, but Brienne shakes her head vigorously, nose wrinkled all the way up while her hand stays pressed to her face. His face as he went down keeps playing over and over in her head, and her eyes are wet from the strain.

She doesn't realize it, but she's just been so stressed for so long she's just due for a slightly-feral amount of amusement at something so simple as Jaime Lannister falling off of her bed.

JAIME LANNISTER

He stands then, taking hold of her wrists to peel her hands away from her face so he can see how flushed her cheeks are with color in her amusement. He presses a kiss to her forehead, “I like it when you laugh. You should do so more often.”

Pot calling the kettle black, Jaime Lannister.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

He finds it easy enough to maneuver her how he likes, as Brienne puts up no real fight over it. But her shyness takes over, making it difficult to keep her eyes on his for very long. They dart away from him to look at her lap, or at the table at the end of the bed, before coming back up to his and away again. To make up for the inability to cover her mouth, Brienne bites her lip instead.

She shrugs. When people have been laughing at you since you were old enough to say things to make them laugh, you become careful about when you laugh too. "I don't have much cause for it, usually."

It's rarely a safe reaction for someone like her to have.

JAIME LANNISTER

“Never be afraid or reluctant to laugh in my presence, especially when you are laughing at my expense. I’m quite absurd, in case you haven’t noticed. That’s something to find amusement in, if nothing else.”

Jaime pushes her back, pinning the wrist he still has a hold of beside her head. One knee is planted on the bed between her legs with one boot still resting on the floor.

“Do you still want me to go?”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She draws breath to argue with him, to protest her reasons for laughing at him because it is a tender subject for her (and probably for him too, she thinks).

But again she's pliant under his hands, lying back slowly while she thinks through her options, and through the things they've talked about. Her free hand comes up to graze her knuckles lightly against his cheek. The truth is that she's accustomed to being alone.

"No," she answers, the guilt of it tinting her tone. "I thought it would be easier."

A part of her would wake up beside him in the early morning and not want to go.