Chapter Text
Brienne isn’t usually one for religion, but whoever decided the campus café should be 24 hour has to be some kind of deity.
It’s not staffed 24/7, so she doesn’t have to feel bad about whoever’s stuck behind the counter. They shut up the main service desk and lock all the back room at 8, but there’s a self-service machine open and you can stay at the tables all night. When the library’s packed into the early hours of the morning, the coffee shop has quickly become her favoured alternative.
She’s not the only one to think so. In the last few days it’s been busier and busier, and this week the café has full most nights. She doesn’t mind the company so much – maybe it’s the size and oddity of the space, but there’s a certain camaraderie developing in the café. So long as everyone’s quiet and sticks to listening to music through headphones, she’s pretty good at ignoring them.
Today, she buys a double strength espresso before sitting down at her usual corner spot. It’s only 9pm, but she’s found that’s the ideal window between the evening crowd leaving and the all-nighters setting up. This latest essay is really putting up a struggle, but she’s nothing if not tenacious. It’s a whole new kind of frustrating to spend hours working on it and find that it hasn’t improved in the slightest, but she keeps reasoning that it won’t get any better if she doesn’t work on it. And now the deadline has crept up on her and it’s due tomorrow and the only way to not freak out is to spent every remaining minute on it.
The café gradually fills up around her over the next hour. She recognises a few of the regulars now, even if they don’t acknowledge each other. The guy with the brown curly hair is on her course, though he spends more time eyeing up the blond dude on the next table than actually studying. Brienne’s watched them a couple of times, but these late sessions are when she focuses on work best.
She’s just settling into a rhythm when there’s a cough, and she looks up to find somebody hovering in front of her table.
‘Hey,’ the newcomer says. He looks vaguely familiar – might be on her course too, though she doesn’t recall seeing him in lectures. ‘Mind if I sit here?’
He’s got to be kidding.
Yanking an earphone out, she looks up at him. The fact that he’s attractive makes this exponentially worse.
‘It’s my table,’ she says, defensively. It’s not like she hasn’t claimed it. Textbooks, highlighters and various granola bar wrappers are spread over the wooden surface.
The guy smiles, but it seems to take an effort. ‘I know, but everywhere else is full, and this is where the power outlets are.’
A quick glance around the café confirms that every other table is indeed taken. Fuck.
‘Have you tried the library?’ Brienne asks, knowing it to be hopeless even as she says it. The only way anyone would approach her table is if they’ve already exhausted every other possibility.
‘Nowhere with an outlet. Come on, I’ve got an essay due tomorrow.’
‘So do I.’
‘Yeah, but,’ he smiles again, this time self-deprecatingly, ‘I haven’t started it yet. You don’t want to be the reason I fail?’ Seeing he’s failing to sway her, he reconsiders. ‘Look, I’ll buy you a coffee.’
The double espresso will last her a while, but it is possible she’ll be here all night. Brienne looks the guy up and down, sighs, and starts moving her stuff onto the left side of the table.
‘Thanks.’ The guy takes the seat opposite and takes out his own laptop. ‘I’m Jaime.’
‘Brienne,’ she supplies.
At least he doesn’t have tons of stuff. A laptop, some earphones, a phone charger and a packet of spearmint chewing gum make a fairly small pile, especially when compared with her mountain of textbooks. She watches him get settled, then hurriedly returns to her essay.
It’s the last paragraph that’s a problem. It’s a point she desperately needs, but it doesn’t seem to relate much to the previous section of the argument. The essay flows nicely up until then – but if she cuts it, then she’ll be 300 words under the limit with only a few hours to think of something else to say and get it to the appropriate standard.
Across the table, Jaime is humming under his breath and untangling his earphones, while keeping his eyes fixed on his laptop screen. He catches her looking and smiles in a self-confident way that makes her immediately recoil.
‘I hope I’m not distracting you,’ he says.
He’s not flirting. He’s just being a dick.
Brienne plugs her own earphones in and opens Spotify. ‘Stop humming.’
The first hour is the worst. Jaime can’t seem to settle to anything. He’ll be typing frantically one minute and mindlessly scrolling the next – when he’s not taking regular Instagram breaks. Every so often he starts tapping irregular rhythms on the tabletop, but usually stops fairly quickly.
They’re earning quite a few glances from other tables, thanks to his restlessness. Brienne’s wondering if it would be overkill to make a sign that says I DON’T KNOW HIM in order to preserve her café reputation. The last thing she wants is for anyone to assume he’s here by her invitation.
The last paragraph is still giving her trouble. She’s tweaked the first couple of lines a bit so that they connect to the previous point, but is now stuck in what seems like an extremely clunky middle section.
She reaches for her coffee before remembering there are only cold dregs left. It’s only 11pm, she should pace herself before getting another one now - or by dawn she’ll have blown all her food money for the week.
It’s going to be a long night.
Sometime around 11.30 Jaime actually starts writing, even leaving his phone untouched for more than twenty minutes. Brienne takes this as a good sign and doesn’t say anything for fear of disrupting his concentration.
He can’t be really planning to do the whole essay tonight, can he? If he’s on her course and they share a deadline it stands to reason that they’re working on the same assignment. She’s spent weeks compiling reading and perfecting her outline. Nobody’s going to come up with four thousand brilliant and coherent words overnight.
Still, it’s not her problem. She’s got bigger things to worry about than people who aren’t interested in taking the course seriously, and so long as he behaves himself she doesn’t have any excuse to get rid of him.
Plus, she’s got the impression that getting rid of Jaime could be surprisingly difficult.
‘Shit,’ Jaime says, ‘when did it get this late?’
Brienne glances reflexively at the clock mounted on the café wall. ‘It’s only 1.’
‘How come everyone’s still here?’ He has, at least, the good grace to keep his voice down. ‘I thought most people would have gone to bed by now.’
Another espresso would be excellent right now.
‘This is your first all-nighter, isn’t it?’ Brienne says, saving her Word document and opening Candy Crush on her phone. It’s perfect when she needs to shut her brain off for five minutes.
Jaime shrugs. ‘Yeah. How many have you done?’
‘A few.’ Does he remember that he offered to buy her a coffee? Would it be cheap to bring it up now?
‘Right,’ he says, stretching. His jersey rides up, exposing a strip of stomach. Brienne is definitely not looking. ‘Forgot, I’m in the company of nerds.’
‘Do you want me to kick you off my table?’
‘Can’t do that when I’m about to pay you.’ Good, now he’s remembering. He gets up slowly, feeling in his pocket for his wallet. ‘What d’you want?’
She might as well get something nice. If any of her friends were paying for it she’d pick the cheapest option, but Jaime’s not exactly being considerate.
‘Cappuccino,’ she says. There’s something comforting about having that much needless foam.
He nods and heads over to the machine. She takes the opportunity to stretch a little herself. The table isn’t really meant for someone as tall as she is, but she’s discovered it’s vital to have a proper chair. The raised bench over by the windows is better accommodating to her frame, but sitting on those stools for longer than an hour is guaranteed to make your butt fall asleep.
She looks back at her laptop. She’s sorted that paragraph as best she can, and will just have to come back and check on it tomorrow. For now she’s trying to track down a mention of a case study that wasn’t relevant when she read it but now might be, only she can’t remember where it was. She’s got a vague feeling that it’s somewhere quite niche, but it has to be a journal she’s cited somewhere. It can’t have just disappeared.
‘A cappuccino for your majesty.’ Jaime places it in front of her, putting a latte down on his side.
‘Thanks.’ She warms her hands on the sides of the cup. ‘How’s your essay going?’
‘Not well,’ he admits, sipping his own coffee and running an absent hand through his hair. The gesture nearly makes her laugh, it’s simultaneously so vain and yet so automatic he probably didn’t realise he was doing it. ‘I’ve got an introduction now, though.’
‘Just an introduction?’ She shouldn’t panic about this; he’s not her responsibility.
‘Yeah, but that’s the hardest part,’ he says, as though she has no idea what they’re talking about. ‘They decide on your grade from the intro and then skim everything else.’
Brienne thinks about answering, but there’s no possible version of events where here response is calm. She redirects her attention to the cappuccino – which, if not quite the deliciousness she had hoped for, feels vaguely more indulgent than an espresso would be.
‘It’s fine,’ Jaime continues. ‘I got 87 in the last module so even if I bomb this one my overall term mark will be OK.’
‘87?’ Brienne almost drops the cup. ‘How the hell – ’
‘I don’t write every assignment the night before.’
Any sympathy she’d been feeling disappears immediately. She’d got 76, which seemed like an excellent mark at the time. It’s just insulting that Jaime should have done so well when he clearly isn’t giving a shit now.
‘I should get back to this,’ she says, nodding towards her essay.
‘It has to be fine by now,’ he says. ‘You’ve been working on it hours.’
‘It’s not done,’ she says firmly, bringing the document back up and skimming through it to the last section.
Oh shit, she still needs that citation.