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If her, albeit limited, experience had taught Brienne anything, it was that Jaime Lannister was never at a loss for words. And yet, since being invited into her home he hadn't found the energy to pass more than one snarky comment about her outdated decorating skills, the tiny front room he'd immediately made a beeline for or even the stray dog hairs on her knees.
"It'll be about twenty minutes until dinner," she told him as evenly as she could, her head and heart full of things she couldn't admit to herself, never mind say out loud.
This isn't a date. He just wanted to dress nicely because he spends his life in scrubs.
Pausing just outside of the warmth radiating from the front room, Brienne tried to ignore the fluttering in her chest at seeing how content he looked surrounded by Tarth family memories. Since their odd relationship had moved beyond warring neighbours and closer towards friends she'd so wanted Jaime to find a place beyond the hospital where he felt like he belonged, though even in her wildest dreams it wasn't in here, with Nana Alys' Evenfall Hall cross stitch behind him and an overgrown puppy trying to sit on his lap.
Breathe, Brienne. "I hope that's okay."
"I don't mind waiting," he replied buoyantly from where he seemed to be even more artfully sprawled across her sofa than before. He was going to kill her before this meal was done if she wasn't careful.
Gods, I lo...look at him. "You could make yourself useful and set the table, maybe open the wine?"
Jaime smiled, green eyes twinkling despite how easily she recognised the hours of lost sleep deepening the creases around them. "Show me where you want me."
****************
It didn't take long for Jaime to lay out plates and cutlery and glasses and Brienne half expected him to head back into the living room or pull out a chair at the dining table to watch her cook once the chores were done, but he stayed by the stove, burning through conversation topics at a fair rate of knots trying to find some additional way to be helpful.
Her kitchen wasn't quite big enough to accommodate more than one person at a time but, for all the awkward bumping of elbows and brushing of shoulders, having him there, an extra pair of hands to help make sure the gravy was stirred at the same time the sides needed prepping felt nice, like a warm bath at the end of a long day, the childlike joy brought by the first real snowfall of winter and falling in love all wrapped up together.
Not that she was falling over anything but her own tongue, stumbling spectacularly through a story she wasn't quite sure he'd heard before, Jaime having the audacity to undo the top two buttons of his shirt as he nodded and laughed in all the right places.
"Are you sure this thing is working?" he asked, tapping her quietly whirring extractor fan. "It's getting bloody hot in here."
"Is it?" she lied, her sweater already sticking to her like a second skin. "I hadn't noticed."
"You've clearly spent too long in the south, Blue-Brie, if you don't feel anything."
"That must be it." Brienne hid her rapidly burning cheeks behind a wall of steam as she bent down to check the potatoes roasting in the oven. Above her Jaime continued complaining as he chopped carrots and shelled peas, stealing colourful morsels to snack on before they could be cooked despite insisting he didn't really like vegetables. Apart from tomatoes.
"They're a fruit," she informed him with what should have been a gentle smile, though it quickly seemed to radiate through every bone in her body for no reason at all, adding several handfuls of broccoli florets and half a head of cauliflower to the pan even as he mock groaned at the sight. "They have seeds."
Jaime considered that for no more than a second, biting into his lower lip before his grin threatened to become infectious, looking like it had been a long time since he'd had so much fun. "You can't bake them in a pie, sweetheart, therefore vegetable."
"You clearly have never heard of rhubarb then."
Relaxation brought about a casual flirtation she'd never seen from Jaime before, every gesture feeling almost as easy as breathing for a man who'd spent his entire life being seen as nothing less than the most beautiful creature in any room. Though he was far more than that; funny and smart and loyal to those closest to him, she couldn't have cared enough to bring him into her home if he hadn't been more than an arrogantly pretty face.
But Brienne knew from past experience that the promises glittering in his grass green eyes were likely nothing more than a natural state being reawakened after months, maybe years, of loneliness. She couldn't believe that he could return some of the feelings she was doing her damnedest to ignore, the ones that wanted her to swallow her pride and ask Jaime to dinner tomorrow night and the one after that and the one after that as well.
"What?" she snapped before she could stop herself, not knowing if she was worried by the tattoo her heart was now beating out just from the brush of their fingers over the salt shaker or simply irritated by his continued staring. He hadn't been able to stop looking since she'd asked him for his help. "Do I have something on my face?"
"I've just realised I never thanked you properly for doing all of this," Jaime replied, trying to hold her gaze as he licked droplets of gravy off the end of his fork, her stomach tying in knots that had everything to do with the fact she hadn't eaten since breakfast and nothing to do with the rhythmic flickering of his tongue between the prongs.
"There's n-no need. You brought wine, really good wine, that's thanks enough."
"The Lannister way would be to repay in kind but since I never learned to cook I'm not sure you'd be happy with microwaveable mac and cheese. Not after roast potatoes and real gravy." He smiled again, his eyes heading back towards the same melancholy she'd seen in him too many times to count, and Brienne nearly choked swallowing her bite of chicken as she found herself thinking that just spending more time together, no matter what was on their plates, would be absolutely, wonderfully, perfectly, fine with her.
"That wouldn't be-"
"So I think I should take you to a restaurant instead," he said as she blinked through a wave of surprise and he ploughed on. "Maybe next Saturday night if you're not busy?"
"Next S-Saturday?" she stammered, starting to push around the food in front of her if only to give her something to do, rather than study his face for any sign of deeper meaning behind the casual offer. "The kids have an art show in the evening b-but you could come. If you wanted. We could go out afterwards?"
"I do. I mean I would love to."
Her cheeks flushed darker despite everything in her willing them not to. "Or we could go out another day this week. Like tomorrow. I finish early on a Wednesday."
"Rounds start at 5am on Thursdays," he told her, picking up whatever flirtatious thread she'd just carelessly unravelled and ran with it. "You'd have to make sure I was in bed early."
It really was far too hot in her kitchen. "I-I could do that, sure."
Brienne swore she saw Jaime's nostrils flare as he took one quick inhale after another, his darkening green eyes locked onto her blue ones like there wasn't anything else in the world that mattered more.
"Do you want-?"
"Of course, I want," he growled after an extended moment near sparked between them, rising to his feet. "Bloody hell, woman, how can you not see what you do to me? I love you and you just ask if I want-"
"Dessert," she finished weakly, blinking rapidly as he sat back down, looking, if she didn't know him better, almost embarrassed. "You what?"
"You heard me," he huffed petulantly, the jut of his pouting lower lip filling her head with ideas about kissing that she was increasingly desperate to act on.
"I-I don't think I did."
He sighed. "I know there's nothing wrong with your hearing. Do you really just want me to say it again? I love-"
She hadn't been imagining things, then. "I love you, too, Jaime. I didn't know and then I didn't think you would...love. I love you."
"God, that's good," he exhaled audibly as she stuttered to the end of her confession, red faced and wide eyed. "I don't think I could have coped if you'd thrown me out after telling you that." Pushing himself back from the table, he opened his arms in invitation and all she could think was how much she wanted to be wrapped up in them.
"Now come here and let me show you how much I love you."