"Well. You are a self-proclaimed disaster." She would argue the point, but she's got her own opinions on the matter.
It doesn't quite register that he's made his way to her out of concern—she's learning very quickly that Jaime's prone to closeness and touching. But if there's anywhere she isn't ungraceful, it's in water. Now, it eases the strain on her tired body and the warmth seeps pleasantly into her aching muscles.
"Though I think you have always liked making yourself out to be at least a little scandalous," she says before moving around him to retrieve washing paraphernalia.
JAIME LANNISTER
Jaime turns, watching her as she moves through the water. Some part of him is aware that Tarth being an island means she likely has some natural inclination towards the waves that makes her feel at home in the water, but the other part just needs to watch her. To see her with his own two eyes and reassure himself that she’s okay.
“I do enjoy ruffling feathers. Watching all those highborns with their smallclothes lodged up their arses fluttering about in outrage is one of my most treasured hobbies.”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
The statement rings true but it makes her laugh anyway, because he is the very person he wants to annoy. She likes that he plays the part and has been revealing a deeper loathing of it the more time they spend together.
"'Ruffling feathers.' You pluck feathers, Jaime." It sounds nothing at all like an insult, and very much like it's admirable. She could never get away with his behavior, but she relishes it in him. Even when it's turned on her.
Brienne makes a face at the soft sponge and sweet smelling soaps that have been provided before setting to the task of trying to make them actually scrub her skin clean, starting with her arms.
JAIME LANNISTER
Thank Sansa later for the sponges and soaps. She’s trying to help. She doesn’t know that you like to scrub several layers of skin off whenever you bathe.
“What can I say,” Jaime remarks with a toothy smile as he lets himself sink down into the water, lounging back so that he can keep himself afloat on his back with one foot planted on the bottom of the pool. “I am a lion after all.”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
That one actually makes her giggle out loud, because while she normally loves to scoff about all the ridiculous leonine likenesses she cannot argue this one in particular. She scrubs away, distracted from the rosy smell someone assumed a southron girl would appreciate which she actually despises.
When she finishes up her arms and torso and face, she tries to lean against the edge of the pool and work on her legs. It's slow going, though she's determined, and she winds up having to cross them and bend awkwardly to reach her feet.
(Everyone knows that if you don't draw at least a little blood you aren't actually clean.)
"Oh, I know what you are," she replies, a soft smile on her face.
JAIME LANNISTER
He snatches the sponge away from her and reathers it with the floral scented soap once she’s done tending to her feet and legs. It’s held against his chest with the stump of his right arm as he twirls the pointer finger of his left in a circle, waiting for her to turn around. When she does, Jaime scrubs at her shoulders, neck, and back for her.
“Though I might as well be more shadowcat than lion, now. They have taken to calling me that in place of kingslayer, after all.”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
It's ludicrous that she flushes when she realizes what he's doing, and even more ridiculous that she spins around immediately, and just completely baffling that she's blushing all the while.
She twists to try to look at him, though she gives it up just as quickly once he starts washing her and she decides to just let her head hang forward after a deep sigh.
"They're calling you shadowcat?" Her furrowed brow is wasted, confusion twisting her features. "Have you been sneaking about?"
JAIME LANNISTER
He doesn’t need to see her confusion to know it’s written on her face. Jaime chuckles warmly, pressing a kiss to the space between her shoulder blades.
“You gave me the cloak and you can’t fathom why they would call me that?”
It’s not just the cloak. He’s quick witted, agile, lightning fast, and quiet on his feet. Attributes that are feline, but not necessarily leonine like his house.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
"It's just a cloak," she says, forgetting the significance and house-changing aspects of officially cloaking someone. "I didn't want to be wasteful of such a large pelt, once I realized we'd gotten the leader."
That's all. No big deal getting Sansa to fashion it and then attach it to Jaime's own existing one.
JAIME LANNISTER
“You lined it in Lannister red, wench.” Jaime drops the sponge, letting it float away from them so he can wrap his arms around her and draw her back against his chest. “You knew well and good what you were doing. Don’t pretend it was just a pelt.”
A pelt he wore everywhere and cherished as if it were spun of the finest silks and gold.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
She lets herself be moved, relaxed and relieved by Jaime's care and touch. The water's warm and he's warm and all right behind her. The bickering makes it easier for her not to fall into the tension she knows is going to take over once she's well enough to be on her feet again, trying to balance her ties to him, Sansa, the free folk, and now her father.
"I had your own cloak that you carelessly left behind in my chambers improved," she argues, airily. "Protest all you like, but you're proud of where you come from. But you're yourself, too. You can be proud of both. It's not shameful to be a Lannister, and it's not shameful to grow into more."
JAIME LANNISTER
Jaime huffs and presses a kiss to the side of her neck. “I don’t know how you do that,” he says into her skin. “See through all the walls I’ve put up. Stone fortresses for others and hanging, transparent silks for you.”
Not that he minds — most of the time. It’s nice to be seen and understood, even for someone like himself who goes out of his way to present a facade of himself instead of the actual man who lies behind all those masks he wears.
She sees him. He loves that she does.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
"Well, you let me," she says, like it's an obvious thing. She can hardly make sense of most other people, even the ones she loves. Brienne learned a lot up in the wild of the real north, where she had to come to terms with wanting what she cannot have in all new ways.
Brienne shifts, stepping away so that she can turn to face him and cup his face in her hands. Her thumb skates along his beard, scratching gently through the coarse hair. "Walls and fortresses aren't bad. Everyone has them, and you open the doors for some people. And if they make a mess you kick them out on their arse."
JAIME LANNISTER
His cheek twitches in response to the attention she’s paying his face, unaccustomed to having his face touched while donning a beard. Cersei always hated when he had facial hair, she wanted his chiseled features smooth and on display. Once, he thought it was because she liked to look at him. Now, he understands that it was likely because he looked more like her when he wasn’t wearing something so masculine as a beard.
She craved the mirror image, not him.
“I nick myself when I shave with my left hand,” he tells her, diverting the topic away from his closed doors. “And I was far too surly without you here to let the page that sees to my grooming anywhere near me. Might have scared the poor boy off entirely.”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
Her eyes dart between his as she works to follow the change in subject, and she gives his beard a good scritching with both of her hands.
"Here I assumed you came to your senses and wanted the extra warmth." One of her hands runs down along his jaw to curl the patch growing down off of his chin. "Do you like it?"
JAIME LANNISTER
“Do you?”
That’s not what she asked and he knows it, but he honestly doesn’t know whether he likes it or not. Jaime’s self image is a tangled mess and hasn’t bothered with trying to pick it apart with winter having arrived. The warmth is good, though. He does like that. He hadn’t realized how chilly the wind was on his face until his beard got thick enough to stop the brunt of it from stinging his cheeks.
“I don’t look too unkempt? Not too much like a prisoner at the end of your leash?”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
She levels him with a considering look—though not in appraisal of his beard. Only because moments ago he was calling himself an unkempt disaster, and now he seems unsure. Almost insecure, in some strange way.
So instead of answering, Brienne leans in to brush her lips against his before pressing a kiss against them, and then against his cheek. She presses a few more along his jawline, where enough scruff has turned to real beard to be a little softer. She pulls back to look at him again, a soft smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
"It's different. Different isn't bad."
JAIME LANNISTER
He can’t help it. His gaze darts down to steal a glance at his stumped right arm.
“No. No, it really is not.”
Jaime encircles one of her wrists with his left hand, thumb brushing against her pulse point and holding her hand in place against his face. “I missed you.”
BRIENNE OF TARTH
Her cheeks are already rather pink but if she could flush more she would. Brienne's head dips, shyness taking over even though it's Jaime, and she's already standing naked in a hot spring with him.
It's such a simple thing—plenty of people say things like that to each other all the time. But nobody really misses Brienne. They might miss a wayward heir, or a shield and sword, sure. Those she knows what to do with, being an absent servant.
"Me too," she says, and her mouth twists with how awkwardly she's put it. She sways a little, the heat and her still recovering body making her a bit woozy, and she steadies herself against him. One hand on his face, and another against his shoulder. "I think I might need more sleep. In my own bed this time?"
JAIME LANNISTER
“As my lady wishes,” he says, taking hold of her hand and drawing it away from his face so he can press a kiss to the back of it.
He uses that hand to lead her from the water, helping her to dry herself off and then to dress, insisting upon it even if she tries to bat him away. Jaime isn’t doting on her because he believes it required of him; he wants to. He couldn’t do a damned thing to bring her back while she was gone and presumed dead, but he can see to her comfort now that she’s back and safe and alive.
Once dressed himself, he takes her to her room. There’s evidence of him having occupied it in recent weeks, namely in the form of various documents and books piled on her table, the Lannister wax seal resting upon the open pages of one of them, but it’s otherwise much the same.
“Everything’s still here,” he tells her as he shuts (and bolts) the door behind them.
Still here because Jaime wouldn’t let anyone touch any of her things. Not even Podrick.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
She does just that, batting at him and weakly trying to shift out of his grasp. But rather than motivated by irritation, Brienne finds it's the sort of fun she can let herself enjoy. She gets to annoy Jaime without risking either of their egos or feelings. It leaves her warm and pleased once they arrive at her quarters.
The difference is immediate: her room smells like Jaime. More than the things he's left here, there's just a presence she knows well. It feels odd, having a place to come back to and having it exactly the same and yet not. Her brow furrows at his statement before she looks around to see everything in place still.
"But I thought…" she trails off, wondering why they would keep up a room that could go to someone who could use it.
JAIME LANNISTER
“That your things would be combed through and redistributed to those in need of them? That your room would have been given away to someone in need of a bed or repurposed?” He hangs his head in slight shame for his selfishness. “That was the intention, but I wouldn’t allow it. I couldn’t part with your space. Not yet.”
From the way the bedding is rumpled, it’s obvious that Jaime has been sleeping here, too.
BRIENNE OF TARTH
She nods and nods and nods at his assumptions, and her confusion continues at his body language. The idea that he'd—that he had all but commandeered her space in a keep he didn't choose to stay in himself...that he had spoken up for this and not for his own comfort…
"Jaime," she breathes his name, and takes the few steps to close the distance between them. Brienne pulls him into her arms, and just holds him there.
JAIME LANNISTER
Her being taller than him means that Jaime can rest his head upon her shoulder without having to crouch down. Lesser men would likely feel degraded by such a thing, would claim that they were being somehow robbed of their masculinity, but all Jaime feels is comfort. Comfort and the warm reassurance that she’s here. She’s alive.
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27 -- DONE
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