BRIENNE OF TARTH

She beams at him at that, delighted for some reason at a jape she might take umbrage with before. Her shoulders curl and shake with the force of a solid chuckle, but her lips stay pressed together against putting her teeth fully on display.

"Oh, and you think you could pull me along?" The challenge is bright in her tone, and the question too: maybe he very well could. Maybe she doesn't mind pondering the test at all, but she bumps him with her hip for good measure anyway.

JAIME LANNISTER

If that’s not an invitation to sweep her off her feet, he doesn’t know what is. (Whether she realizes it or not.)

A predatory grin is the only warning she gets before Jaime quite literally sweeps her up into his arms and walks the short distance to the bed to drop her unceremoniously on top of it.

“Could I pull you along? I’d say yes.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Instinctively, as if doing so will help him not drop her considerable weight, Brienne clings to Jaime as he lifts her. If she squeaks, nobody but them has to know.

When she flops onto the mattress with an aborted yelp, she freezes before assessing what just happened. It's a lot like when she realized it was his right elbow in her ribs rather than the hilt of his sword—she's equal parts shocked and delighted.

"That doesn't count!" The challenge is a little more serious now, and she sits up to protest it at him, leaning back on her elbows as she goggles up at him.

JAIME LANNISTER

“Oh, I believe it does.”

He jumps up onto the bed with her in a single leap, and indulging in some adrenaline fueled childish whimsy, he begins to jump. Up and down, jostling her her on the bed below. The frame is solid wood that’s likely half as old as this keep, but the metal rest beneath the lumpy mattress is worn and malleable and easily bends to allow bouncing.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She hisses at him at first, for jumping and jostling, and when he continues, it becomes an open-mouthed sound of disbelief, a long exhale of wordless astonishment at his childish behavior. But it's not a demand to stop or get off, as discontent as her scowl makes her look.

Her scowl turns to a wry amusement, turns to her leaping up to grab him and roll him beneath her, pinning both his hand and his stump to the bed on either side of his head.

"Are you quite finished?"

JAIME LANNISTER

She’s got his hands pinned, but not his lower half, allowing him to lift his hips up to press into hers. “Not anywhere near.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Another hiss, but the grimace she shoots down at him is hot and sharp.

"Good." Her hands tighten on his limbs, and she sits her weight fully into him, eyes fluttering closed for a moment. Then her mouth is on his, lips and teeth and tongue.

JAIME LANNISTER

Jaime groans, a low rumble at the back of his throat, the sound muffled by her lips upon his. His right hand flexes, opening and clenching closed a few times, but he makes no attempt to extract his wrists from her grasp.

He's delighted. She could kick him out of her bed right now and he'd still be delighted. Frustrated and in need of a walk through the cold snow, but delighted.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She kisses him until she wants to crawl out of her skin.

The part of her that enjoys the challenge enjoys the knowledge that she's sat atop one of the deadliest men on the continent. One that probably knows she's got three daggers stashed within arms' reach and could break her grasp on him to wield one against her before she realized he was free.

But she sits up, releasing his limbs and frowns at the fact that he's still in his smallclothes, and she in her shift. "And now?"

JAIME LANNISTER

"And now I'm wondering why we felt it prudent to leave anything on."

Instead of seeing to his own smallclothes, he reaches for her shift, tugging on it until the parts of the hem that were trapped between him and her have been freed. He pushes up into a sitting position, dragging the fabric up with both and hand and stump until it's pulled over her head and he can toss it somewhere not the bed.

"Much better."

BRIENNE OF TARTH

As he removes the shift to reveal her body, enough of her confidence falters to make her shoulders hunch before she gives into the instinct to cross her arms over her chest and looks away from him to focus on anything else. She knows he'll likely scold her for still having this ridiculous modesty, but it's something bone-deep.

Being here, in her quarters, brings it to the surface. It's not like the magic of the godswood or the unfamiliarity of his tent, or even the baths when she was fresh off of a fight with her blood still up.

Brienne lets out a heavy breath and forces her eyes back to his, biting off an apology.

JAIME LANNISTER

He doesn’t scold her, doesn’t tell her to put her arms down or try to pry her limbs away from parts of her body that he’s already seen and is intimately familiar with. The instinct to do so is there, but he promised her that he was working on being better about that and is making a genuine effort not to revert to snappish habits.

So he hugs her. Just wraps his arms around her shoulders and hugs her to him, limbs covering her chest and all.

Hugs her and waits.

Gives her the time she needs for however long she needs it.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Surprise exhales suddenly from her mouth, a gasp she uses to get her from abject shame to something less paralyzing. He's warm, and solid, and her breaths cease entirely while her heart thuds in her ears. The brackish mix of heady arousal and panic swirls up against this unfamiliar but bolstering feeling of a different kind of want.

Her arms trapped between them, her too-big body helplessly straddling his, and the feel of his nakedness against her own is too vulnerable. It's also, absurdly, comforting. Brienne tucks her chin over Jaime's shoulder, and though it's awkward and doesn't precisely fit, she stays there for a few quiet moments.

She thinks about the reflecting glass lying face down on her table. And of all the scornful looks she's endured her entire life. She wonders how Jaime endures scorn on his own terms, how he always holds his head high, brave and defiant. Will she always struggle against this?

"Okay," she whispers, more to herself than to him. She nods, chin dipping into his shoulder decisively. "You can look."

Brienne pulls back from him, slow but firm enough to encourage him to loosen his grasp and lets her arms fall away from herself. She's breathing hard and swallowing hard and putting on a brave face, hands curled into fists at her sides as if she's about to fight him rather than let him see her nude for the nth time.

JAIME LANNISTER

You can look, as if he hasn’t seen her nude before. As if the image of her furious, naked form rising out of the water in Harrenhal’s baths wasn’t emblazoned into his memory in spite of how feverish he’d been at the time. As if he wasn’t already intimately familiar with her body in various ways, as if he hadn’t already paid the breasts she was hiding from his view with attention from his mouth several times before.

But look he does. Slowly, carefully, taking in the scarred, bruised, muscled sight of the woman who kicked his ass in the training yard. Who dragged him kicking and screaming across the Riverlands. Who protected him when anyone else would have left him to rot away and spiral into feverish madness before death claimed him.

He loves her. Jaime used to think it was a joke, the notion that one’s looks wouldn’t matter if you loved someone enough. It seemed even more unrealistic when Cersei began to shy away from him following his maiming and recoiled at the mere sight of his right arm when it was uncovered, never letting him touch her with it. Now, however, he believes it to be true. It was true for him all along, he was just too blinded by the taboo devotion and affection he felt for his twin to see it.

And even when he did see it, he didn’t notice it, for loving her in spite of her ugliness and all her unconventionalities came as naturally to him as breathing.

“I love you,” he says when he brings his gaze up to meet hers. “All of you.”

BRIENNE OF TARTH

When he speaks, she can't help but look a little surprised, wide eyes searching his for a moment before her mouth curves slightly into a hesitant smile.

Trusting Jaime comes too easily to her. It's the sort of instinct that she can fall back on, but that she can trip over if her thoughts run too far ahead of her.

But she never does him the disservice of wondering about Cersei. Not when it comes to beauty or worth, or why—well, why he might be able to want Brienne when he'd had one of the most beautiful women in the realm most of his life. That was an easy answer, one that required only a dash of understanding Jaime and a more substantial helping of cognitive dissonance on Brienne's part.

She can think herself monstrous, and she can also understand that Jaime is not lying to or tricking her. She can believe him when he tells her he loves her and still be uncomfortable with it, when her past creeps up to try and scare her into pushing him away. She can wonder if he could love that part of her, too.

"You don't know all of me," she argues, good-naturedly enough that her smile remains and there's a cheeky glint to her eye. Still, it's obvious that his words have settled into her, warming her from inside out and setting a furious flush to her cheeks.

JAIME LANNISTER

“Perhaps not,” he admits, trailing his fingers from her shoulder, down to her elbow and back up again. “But I would like to, if you would permit me to.”

The good and the bad alike. The things that colored her perceptions and helped to shape her into the woman she’s become. He wants to know about her childhood on Tarth, how she came to be in Renly’s service, about her travels with Podrick after he sent her away from King’s Landing in search of Sansa.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

Brienne can't help the way her teasing turns to wry skepticism, because she can't imagine anyone caring enough to ask her about the parts of her she hides away beneath armor and scowling. But even that melts away quickly, leaving only wide-eyed surprise.

"Whatever you'd like to know," she agrees. It feels terrifying to say, even to him.

JAIME LANNISTER

“I offer you the same,” he says, fingers trailing all the way down her arm this time to take her hand in his and bring it up to place over his heart. “Whatever you wish to know, I will tell you. If not now, then — after. When this is all over, ask me anything you want.”

As important as he was coming to understand honest conversation and understanding was in a real, healthy relationship, some conversations could wait. They didn’t have the luxury of being able to talk and talk and talk without a mind for their duties or the times that were upon them.

Winter was here.

There might not be an after.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

She nods, eager and hesitant in one again at the way they have started socking away little pieces of their lives for after. It's easy to do, and she could very well simply lie because it's impossibly distant and incredibly unlikely. But she's never held her ideals apart from herself. Brienne has made a reputation of keeping to her word, and this is no different.

Her flush deepens as she feels a naivete she hasn't in years at how delighted the prospect of an idealized future is making her in this moment. It's overwhelming, and not enough at the same time. Her thumb skates over his warm skin, and she leans forward to press a ridiculously chaste kiss to his cheek.

JAIME LANNISTER

The softness of her quick kiss is absurd given their present state, with her fully nude and perched in his lap and him with nothing more than the flimsy fabric of his smallclothes separating their skin. It shouldn’t be the thing that makes his heartbeat quicken beneath her palm, but he does just that, lashes fluttering shut as she presses her lips to his cheek.

(He’s the maiden again. He’s okay with it.)

Jaime returns the sweet favor, leaning forward to press a kiss to one of her cheeks, then the other. He kisses her chin and the tip of her nose, too, for good measure.

BRIENNE OF TARTH

He's not even to her chin before Brienne breaks into an uncharacteristically wide smile. It's girlish and shy and bright because of her inability to hold it in. She's in the lap of a man who keeps showering her with affection for the sake of it. Not only has he not rejected her but today he's coaxed so much out of her through a mix of scorn and gentle support.

She knew she shouldn't have let him stay. How is she supposed to leave him in the morning now? Now that he's been here in her quarters, filling up space and making her warm? It's rude, and she's so grateful for the fact that she'd give him anything he asked for right now.

She wrinkles her nose at the quick peck and leans forward to capture his mouth with hers in a slow, lingering kiss. For a woman who has been denying herself so many things over the years, it's hard not to seek more from him now that she can.

JAIME LANNISTER

If it’s more she wants, then more she shall have. Whatever it is — kisses or otherwise, he will do everything in his power to give it to her. Perhaps she doesn’t want to be spoiled, but Jaime wants to spoil her. He wants to shower her with affection and anything else she so desires. He wants her to feel loved, desired, and treasured.

Jaime leans back, slowly sliding downward on his right forearm until his back has hit the mattress again, coaxing her down with him.