JAIME LANNISTER

“Leaving or pushing me away?”

Even as he asks this, he lifts up to balance precariously on the one knee while using the foot that was previously planted on the ground to toe off his boot. Shifting to the other knee, he does the same, then leans down to press a warm, lingering kiss to her neck.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

"Leaving," she grumbles, and huffs up at him. "And talking without some ulterior intent."

She's an upstanding lady who hadn't intended to pressure Jaime into feeling like he must stay here with her. "If that amounts to pushing you away…"

She is prepared to sulk about it.

JAIME LANNISTER

"Love and affection is not ulterior intent, Brienne."

Jaime nips at her neck this time, lifting his head up enough to peer down at her. He's forced to release the wrist he's had a hold of so that he can cup her cheek in his palm.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Her reply to the nip is another grumble, though it's far from displeased. She sighs, trying to find a way to explain to him that she only knows a certain kind of love, and that of course affection comes with a price.

"I believe you mean that," she starts, all earnesty plain in her worried brow still. "And I would like to believe it too."

But her birth and her experiences simply make it easier to speak of children and alliances than of spending a comfortable night with the man she loves.

"Affection cannot be easy for me. It simply cannot."

JAIME LANNISTER

“I’m not asking for it to be,” he says gently, careful to not assume or accuse as he mistakenly gave the impression of doing the earlier in the day (and perhaps did, he can be a very domineering person at times, even when his intentions are good ones, he’s aware of this) when he aimed to share the bath with her.

Jaime smooths his hand over her face, fingers tracing the outline of her jaw and sweeping up to tangle in the hair at the side of her head.

“All I’m asking is for you to trust me and to try and keep in mind that my affections for you are genuine and come from a place saturated with the love I feel for you.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Her hand comes up to his, softly circling his wrist and letting her thumb trace over where she can feel his pulse warm beneath his skin. She thinks she's trying, but she thinks it's going to take a lot of small steps for her to make any headway at all. One forward, a few back. Gaining ground away from her shadows only to falter back into them again.

She nods.

"If you will do the same. Remember that I'm not you and you aren't her. You aren't the cause of my shame, not ever. I have stood up for you in the past, and I'm not ashamed to stand by you now. The shame is mine, please believe me. Maybe I'll be able to speak of it, maybe someday—after. Ask me after."

After they survive. If they do.

JAIME LANNISTER

It doesn’t take much for him to lean in and press a soft, tender kiss to her lips.

“After,” he agrees, adding asking her for her hand about the shame she carries to his growing list of things to inquire about after. “I can do after.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She kisses him back with a hum, and squeezes his wrist before releasing him. There's a lot she could tell him but that she doesn't want to burden him with. He already hears about the horrors beyond the wall; spiders, and Walkers, and wights (oh my). She backs Jon up when he warns them all that there may come a day they have to kill the corpse of someone they love.

Brienne leans up to kiss him again, sweet things she presses to the corner of his mouth, and his cheek, and the tip of his nose.

"My bed's not as big as yours," she teases him, because that monstrous contraption in his pavilion is as Lannister as ever and she does quite enjoy sleeping in it. "But I think we'll both fit. If you'd still like to."

JAIME LANNISTER

“Your bed could be a hole in the ground full of straw and pebbles and I would still crawl in it with you and sleep soundly because you’re there with me.”

That and he would straight up be fine sleeping on the ground with little issue. Perhaps the cold would bother him, but the other conditions are fine. He’s slept in worse places in much worse health. Straw and pebbles would be a luxury compared to his own shit.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

"Mhm. Tell that to your forty-three pillows." She grins up at him and gently presses him back so she can sit up and get her own boots sorted.

She knows though, if pressed, she wouldn't be able to deny that she gets better sleep on the nights she can feel his warmth pressed against her. When she can feel Jaime breathing next to her, real and alive and close.

Her chin jerks toward a large chest Lady Sansa had insisted she take, since Brienne refused any of the more substantial quarters and insisted that those be saved for people who would care about such things. It was hardly a sacrifice, and if it kept Edmure Tully from whining, it was worth it.

"You can drape your things over the trunk there."

JAIME LANNISTER

“There are only fourteen pillows.” Fourteen pillows is still one too many pillows for one person, even one pampered person, Jaime.

He lifts off her, sliding to his feet instead of his arse this time. Slowly, he removes the items of clothing he’s got on. From the simply-laced tunic whose ties come undone with a simple tug to the breeches he’s got on over his small clothes. There are a few bruises that have begun to blossom across his torso from their fight, yellow-purple splotches against his golden, yet somehow still pale skin.

Jaime lays them all over the chest, setting his boots next to it and grabbing the newly dubbed Just Hand from where it’s leaning against the foot of her bed to lean back against the chest instead. The cloak he wrapped the blade in is draped on top of his clothes, but doesn’t conceal them, his boots, or the sword that is obviously not Brienne’s from anyone who happens to make the mistake of barging in here.

He isn’t ashamed. Let someone find him in her bed.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She rises after him with a chuckle to bend and remove her boots before she stands to place them just where they belong by the door.

"Of course there are," she muses happily. Brienne had already been down to few layers, and she removes them down to her shift in no time. They too go into a particular place, easy enough for the maid who Brienne assumes Sansa assigned to her without her knowing to pluck up for cleaning when she comes to fetch their dishes.

She moves to a small table to pluck a bone-tooth comb to run through her hair quickly and methodically. Beside it is a mirror lying face down, and when she hits a few snags Brienne simply pushes through them, unused to having hair long enough to tangle at all.

"Fourteen pillows and the wool of about four-thousand sheep to fill the mattress."

JAIME LANNISTER

"Yes, yes, yes, I'm a spoiled Lannister brat. Well aware of that, thank you."

Jaime comes up behind her, and if she'll let him, he'll pluck the comb from her fingers and see to detangling her hair for her.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

The surprise of it startles her out of protesting. Her mind being on their conversation helps, as she rolls her eyes and smiles at him.

"I enjoyed the spoils of Lannister gold just as well. It's good to be grateful, is all." When she's finished speaking is when she realizes what he's doing. "I can sit. When Pod would—well, if it helps. I could sit down."

JAIME LANNISTER

Were they still at odds with one another, Jaime would quip at her about enjoying the spoils of Lannister gold no longer, given that her armor remains on that wooden dummy and Oathkeeper sits above the hearth. He doesn’t say anything of the sort, because although he doesn’t fully understand why she neglects to carry the Valyrian steel, he respects her decision not to.

“Podrick comes up to my shoulder, barely.” He works the comb through, gently, using the careful press of his maimed wrist to hold her locks in place as he pulls the comb through the tangles. “Unlike him, I’m tall enough.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Her immediate response is a shy smile as she fights dipping her chin the way she would if they were outside this room. It feels nice for him to be doing this at all, let alone assuring her he's perfectly comfortable as is. And so there's a quiet little fight inside her. To worry about small gestures of kindness.

She's so tired of that fight.

"I wasn't implying you're not," she bickers back.

JAIME LANNISTER

Jaime pushes her hair aside so that he can press a kiss to the back of her neck.

“I know you weren’t. I just enjoy being difficult. You must know this about me by now. I’m a pest. Quite good at it, too.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She laughs, low and quiet. He is a pest. She is rather annoyed with him. And yet she wouldn't have it any other way.

"I know plenty about you," she agrees easily enough. She knows he's being gentle enough that she hasn't felt a single hair on her head pull. She knows he loves to push her buttons. But she also knows he's been wearing a mask almost constantly for a year straight.

"I know you like to imply that I'm putting words in your mouth of late. So I hope you know I'm not one of your lords looking to slip you up. I'm no good with words that way still, and the free folk only made me worse."

JAIME LANNISTER

A year straight and then some, if one counts years sixteen through thirty-four. Jaime is a one man masquerade, an endless parade of masks. Joel Schumacher could make a bad adaptation of his life and cast Gerard Butler to inaccurately play him.

“I’m trying,” he says after a moment, a small voice that he has to fight himself to let out. “I’m trying to do better. To not assume. To not be so damned paranoid all the time.”

Finished brushing the tangles out, Jaime reaches around her to set the comb down and takes advantage of the rare opportunity to run his fingers through her hair without them catching. “I used to know how to braid, but I’m afraid I don’t know any one-handed plaits.”

Did he learn how to braid while pretending to be Cersei? Absolutely.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She lets out a soft puff of a laugh, self-deprecating as usual.

"That's all right. I couldn't do it with two hands." Brienne hums and leans back into him, very into the feeling of having hair to be played with, let alone the person doing it being Jaime. It's comforting in a way that bumps up against her heart a little closer than she's used to, the way Jaime tends to whenever he's near her.

She thinks that between them maybe they might make up almost a whole person. She could remind him she's not double-talking and he can comb her hair as if it's something worth doing gently.

"I'm afraid too," she adds. She has to work to trust him sometimes. Remind herself that Jaime isn't like other men, other people. He's never lied to her.

JAIME LANNISTER

“I could teach you,” he offers, winding his maimed arm around her middle. “Talk you through it. See if I make as good of a braiding instructor as I do commanding soldiers on a battlefield.”

They make up an almost functioning person at the very least. A person who at least has some idea of what whole is supposed to look like, even if they aren’t quite there themselves.

He almost denies being afraid, that old instinct to protect himself from looking weak rearing its ugly head... But this is Brienne, and she has seen him at his absolute worst. Several shades of terrible and awful and downright pathetic. He doesn’t have to be strong for her. Doesn’t have to pretend he isn’t afraid for her.

Jaime’s hand falls from her hair to join his other limb, hugging her tighter to himself.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She wonders if the hitch before accepting affection will ever go away, that short beat of unfamiliarity and worry she feels before remembering herself (and Jaime). So it takes a moment, but her hands cover where he's wrapped around her, and press him into her belly.

And she wants to protest. There's no teacher that could fix her sloppy hands. It wasn't until she started martial pursuits that her hands ever felt anything resembling competent let alone graceful. She wants to say that, to tell him how she's better at hurting people with them than making lovely things.

But the way he just sounded, telling her he was trying...if he's willing to try, how can she not?

"It might take years. Are you a patient commander?"

JAIME LANNISTER

“Have you seen the snot-nosed Westerlanders I have to deal with? My patience knows no bounds. Were anyone else their Lord Paramount, they would have them all shipped back off to their castles and keeps.”

Chuckling warmly against her shoulder, he presses a kiss to the curve of it, not bothering to push the fabric aside to get to her skin.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Unconsciously, she leans into the kiss, compelled to return it even if all she gets is a face full of wavy golden locks that tickle her nose. In fact, she finds herself pressing her nose against those curling tendrils unconsciously too, seeking out more touch before she can think to worry about being allowed to ask after it.

"That's easy enough talk," she murmurs into his hair, "since you can't exactly ship me anywhere I don't wish to go."

JAIME LANNISTER

“Don’t know about that,” he says teasingly, turning his head to rest his cheek on her shoulder and peer at her with those catlike green eyes of his. “I did my time in chains at the end of your rope, being hauled in every which way direction you pleased. Perhaps it’s time you took a turn at being at the end of mine.”