Chapter Text
Jaime Lannister has always liked Elia Martell. That’s not very special; everyone likes Elia Martell. Elia Martell is the nicest person on the planet except maybe, Jaime would argue, Brienne Tarth.
It’s possible he’s the only one who would say that. Brienne Tarth’s undeniably nice, but she has her prickly side, mostly born of defensiveness. Elia’s the kind of nice that comes across almost as being fake at first until you’ve spent enough time around her to realize that she’s just like that. It’s this sweet obliviousness. Like she doesn’t seem to pick up on cruelty because it never even occurs to her that people can be cruel. She’s so naïve. Ever since they were in the fourth grade and Jaime intervened to stop Gregor Clegane from picking on her, he’s felt this absurd protectiveness towards her. This compulsion to help someone so perfectly innocent because she never seems able to help herself.
So when he finds Elia crying in the hallway, her forehead pressed against the door of her locker, hours after school let out, his heart feels like it has been physically stomped on.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
She turns and looks at him. She even looks pretty when she’s crying, which he knows is impressive. His twin sister Cersei is one of the prettiest girls in school, but even she looks all blotchy and horrible when she cries. But Elia delicately wipes her eyes and gives a sad little sniffle, and she turns a watery smile in Jaime’s direction that already trembles from the effort. Jaime is aghast. Jaime is furious.
“What did he do?” he asks.
Jaime actually likes Elia's boyfriend, Rhaegar Targaryen. Their fathers have been friends for a long time, apparently. It’s hard to imagine Tywin Lannister actually having friends, and he doesn’t even seem to like Aerys, but their families get together for holidays and stuff. Rhaegar has been a little chilly ever since Jaime punched Aerys in the face for drunkenly making a pass at Jaime’s Aunt Genna at a cookout last year, but for the most part he knows that Rhaegar is a nice guy. But something has always bothered Jaime about the distant way Rhaegar treats Elia.
It isn’t that Jaime wants Elia. No, Elia is beautiful and kind, but Jaime is, at heart, a one-woman kind of guy, and his heart is already spoken for even if the big, stubborn idiot doesn’t realize it. But that’s part of his problem with the Rhaegar situation, because he watches Rhaegar blow Elia off or barely listen to her when she talks, and he gets so irritated. Like, Rhaegar has no idea what it’s like to want someone who doesn’t seem to want you back. He has no idea how badly it hurts to be the person most invested. Rhaegar has a girl who loves him and wants him and isn’t afraid to show it openly, and he treats her like a minor irritation most days.
“I caught him,” Elia whispers. “With Lyanna Stark.”
Jaime can’t help the expression he makes. Lyanna Stark? The freshman Lyanna Stark? Ned Stark’s little sister? What could they possibly have in common? And it isn’t as if Jaime’s one to talk—pining away as he is for a girl who is widely considered the ugliest girl in school, for some reason—but the idea of Rhaegar cheating on sweet, beautiful Elia with plain, serious Lyanna is just incomprehensible.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he asks. Elia laughs. It’s wetter than a normal laugh, and it shakes a bit.
“That’s very flattering, Jaime,” she says. “But I shouldn’t be surprised. I knew something was different about him. I just didn’t think…I thought he was going to break up with me! I didn’t think he would ever do something like this.”
“He’s an idiot,” Jaime says. “Do you need a ride home?”
Elia’s smile is so relieved that it hurts to look at.
“Could you?” she asks. “I tried calling my brothers, but Doran is at work, and Oberyn never has his cell charged.”
“It’s not a problem,” Jaime insists.
He takes them through the drive-thru of a fast food place on his way to the Martell house. They sit in the parking lot for a while afterward, sharing a large thing of fries and talking about Rhaegar. Jaime doesn’t mind, really, because he knows Elia needs someone to talk to and he likes being useful to people, but she gets embarrassed and hangs her head.
“I’m talking about him too much,” she says. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“You haven’t dated anyone since you and Cat broke up.”
Jaime hums his agreement. He and Catelyn Tully dated for nearly two years at the start of high school before they had to acknowledge that they were basically just friends who made out sometimes. So they took make-outs off the table, and Cat moved on to Ned Stark, and they let the friends part stay exactly as it had been. Ned occasionally seems to have some kind of manly, tortured complex about it, but Cat Tully isn’t the sort of person to let her boyfriend dictate the people she has in her life.
“Guess I’m just waiting for the right person to notice me,” Jaime says, letting his laugh turn it into a joke.
“People are always talking about you. About how good-looking you are, and how you’re much nicer than you used to be.” Jaime laughs, which makes Elia laugh too. “There isn’t anyone? Half the girls in the locker room during gym class are scheming about how to snap you up.”
“Can you get me a list?” Jaime jokes. But Elia isn’t deterred. Just steady, unwavering, waiting. She just spent almost an hour talking about Rhaegar and how hurt she is. Baring emotional wounds in a way Jaime doesn’t think he would ever have the strength to do. He can at least give her a glimpse at his own heart in return. “There is someone. She’s in the half that isn’t squealing about me in gym locker rooms, though.”
“Do I get to know her name?”
“Not a chance,” Jaime says. “You’d do something absurdly nice like trying to matchmake us, and I’m still in the stage where I’d like to just…quietly freak out about her. I’m not ready to have my friends pull sneaky shit to get us together.”
Elia laughs at him and steals one of his fries, a sly expression coming over her face.
“Not a bad accusation, Jaime Lannister. I love to meddle. At least tell me a little bit.”
Jaime considers, trying to think of a way to describe her without giving it away immediately. It’s a lot harder than he expected.
“She’s…nice,” he says, lamely. Elia groans. “What? She is!”
“That’s not a description! That’s boring! If you really like this girl, you should be able to do better than that.”
“She has the prettiest eyes of anyone I’ve ever seen,” Jaime blurts.
Elia takes another fry. She chews it slowly, still smirking at him.
“So you like Brienne Tarth,” she says finally. Jaime sputters.
“What? How did you…?”
“She has very pretty eyes. And she picked you up and carried you off the field last year when you broke your wrist. I’d have a crush on her if I was you.”
“You saw that?” Jaime asks.
“I was at the game,” Elia confirms. Jaime doesn’t remember seeing her there, but then again, most of his memory of the time he broke his wrist is consumed either by the pain or by Brienne.
They’d been friendly ever since she was granted permission to join the boy’s soccer team, but he supposes he still saw her the same way everyone else did: big, ugly, boring. She has a low voice and speaks slowly, like she’s considering every word. People aren’t as outright mean to her as they used to be when she moved to Kings Landing in middle school, but they generally still aren’t kind. She’s friends with Cat and Ned, which means that Jaime wouldn’t ever be cruel to her even if he wanted to, but being on the same team meant he wouldn’t be mean anyhow; if there’s one thing Jaime believes in, it’s loyalty. He was kind to her. He stood up for her if the other kids were acting cruel. It was nothing groundbreaking. It was barely even friendship. It certainly wasn’t anything more.
Except then one of the kids on the other team—Hoat, that fucking prick—slid into the back of Jaime’s legs to knock him down, and then he stood up before Jaime got to his feet and stomped directly on Jaime’s wrist, grinding in his heel for good measure. Not that anyone had been able to prove it, since the refs weren’t watching beyond the illegal slide tackle, but Hoat’s eyes had been locked directly on Jaime’s, and Jaime knew it had been on purpose.
So did Brienne.
She appeared out of the horde of players on both sides who were shouting and shoving each other. Coach Selmy was waving his arms around and trying to calm everyone. Arthur Dayne was trying his absolute hardest to maintain control as team captain. Howland Reed was trying to fight past him to get at the ref. But Brienne marched straight up to Hoat, and she stared at him.
That was all she did. Stare. Her lip twitched a little, like she was barely holding back a snarl. She looked at him, her big blue eyes flickering contemptuously over every part of him as if to declare him weak and empty and not very good at soccer. She had a full few inches on him. He couldn’t help but quail slightly under her scrutiny, and Jaime saw Brienne sneer in response.
Then she turned her back, and her sneer turned to concern, and she bent down next to where Jaime was still lying on the ground, clutching his wrist.
“Put your arm over my shoulders,” she said gently. “Let’s get you off the field.”
Her voice had been so calm and steady and warm, and Jaime had clung to her like a man starved as his wrist ground together and hurt. Brienne lifted him to his feet and basically dragged him to the sidelines.
He was taken to the hospital after that, but the game continued. Arthur braved the Lannister home the next day to fill Jaime in on the rest. He said the game had been ready to explode until the final whistle was finally blown, and even then tensions had remained high. Not like Jaime required his team to go all Warriors on the other side, but he was floating just slightly on painkillers, and it made him feel something to hear that they were angry on his behalf.
When he said something to that effect, Arthur laughed, and he said, I haven’t even told you the best part, and then he told Jaime that Brienne Tarth spent the rest of the match ruthlessly stopping every single attack that Hoat tried to make, even if she had to leave her position to do it. When he lost his cool and yelled at her, she straight-up head-butted him.
That was the exact moment Jaime fell in love with her, and she wasn’t even in the room with him.
“If you were at the game, you saw her head-butt Hoat, right?” he asks.
“I did! It was amazing.”
“Seven hells. I bet it was. When Arthur told me about it, I think I left my body for a second. Like it sounded so cool I just short-circuited. I don’t think anyone’s ever stood up for me before.”
Not Cersei. Not Tyrion. Not even Aunt Genna, who only gently chided her brother whenever his expectations for Jaime got too noticeably crushing. There were little moments of familial loyalty, sure. But that kind of visceral, physical defense was not something he ever thought he would get from anyone, and he is still, a year later, a bit shaken by it. He’s used to being the one who protects others. He never really thought about what it would feel like to have someone protect him.
“She seems very nice,” Elia teases. “A bit quiet. She’s not who I imagined you falling for.”
“Me neither, I guess,” Jaime admits. There’s a lot more he could say, but he doesn’t want to say it. Things about how Cat’s the only other person he’s ever really been interested in, and how until that moment on the soccer field he wasn’t even interested in Brienne. Except now she’s the only person he wants. He doesn’t even understand it. “But she’s it.”
“She’s taller than you. Is that what it is? Do you like that?”
“I’m not answering that.”
“I’m not trying to tease you, you know. I think it’s sweet. And Cat will be happy to know you’ve moved on.”
“Don’t you dare tell Cat. Brienne is her best friend!”
“I know!” Elia says. She’s smirking again, but Jaime trusts her. She takes a long, thoughtful sip of her soda and finally says, “I won’t tell her, but you should. She might have advice.”
“I don’t need advice. I just need to be left in peace,” Jaime argues, dramatically, and Elia covers her mouth to laugh.
“Thank you for being so kind to me, Jaime,” she says finally, and Jaime’s heart just hurts, and he can’t figure out anything to say, so he nods.
For most of the next few days, he doesn’t realize what’s happening. He used to be much more involved in all that social politics stuff at school, back before he and Cersei drifted a bit when Jaime joined soccer and Cersei went to volleyball. They still spend most of their afternoons and evenings together watching TV when Cersei isn’t out with her friends, but Cersei’s always gravitated towards the center of social circles, and Jaime found that he generally liked being outside of them. When Jaime was constantly in her orbit, he just sort of absorbed things from Cersei and her friends and the people who always seemed to be around for some reason (like Varys or Petyr Baelish, both of whom seemed to be competing for who could get Cersei the best gossip possible). Jaime likes the way things are now. Addam Marbrand is still one of his most loyal friends, and there are Cat and Brienne and his little brother Tyrion. He doesn’t need much as Cersei does to be content, which is the way it’s always been.
But if he was still tapped into Cersei’s network, he would have realized a lot sooner that for some reason the student body has decided to take Rhaegar's side.
Not that there are really sides to the whole thing, because Elia doesn’t make a fuss about it and goes about her life while Rhaegar and Lyanna do that thing that the most confusing couples do where they walk side-by-side while kissing, like other people aren’t trying to walk down the same narrow hallway. It’s already kind of freaking Jaime out because Lyanna’s a freshman and Rhaegar’s a senior who got held back once so he’s like nineteen, but the weirdest thing is that no one seems to care.
“They make such a cute couple,” someone says as they walk by Jaime and Cersei at Cersei’s locker.
“Ugh, I know,” their friend says. “He’s so much happier than he used to be.”
“I just don’t get it,” Jaime says once the two gossips are gone. He looks at the couple in question, making their usual show of things down the hall. Rhaegar trying to look all sophisticated and cool as he leans against a locker beside a giggling Lyanna. “He cheated on Elia Martell. Everyone likes Elia! Elia’s never done anything wrong in her life! And they’re acting like this is just fine.”
“Rhaegar’s friends are better at controlling the rumor mill than hers are,” Cersei says, glancing at Rhaegar as she reorganizes her books in her locker, passing the ones she needs for her next class to Jaime. Cersei used to have a crush on Rhaegar—a fact which Jaime and Tyrion have both since teased her for relentlessly—but then he bought an acoustic guitar and started growing his hair out, and Cersei’s irritation overrode her want. “Someone started telling people that Rhaegar dumped her because she wouldn’t put out. And then someone else started a rumor that she was a total slut and that’s why he dumped her. Men are so fucking simple. And don’t get me started on the girls who think either rumor justifies it. They’re all so easily manipulated.”
“He didn’t dump her at all. He cheated on her. Technically, she dumped him for being a cheating scumbag.”
“If only you got there before his PR team.”
“By which you mean Jon Connington.”
“Someone should tell him it’s pathetic. He and Petyr Baelish should start a hopeless losers pining club.” She sends a sly little look in Jaime’s direction, which he answers with a sharp glare. “Or you could start it with them.”
The thing about Cersei is that she spends so much time threatening people and being horrible to people and generally making other people fear for their lives that she forgets to tone it down when she’s with people she actually likes. But Jaime knows she'd keep his secret to the actual, literal grave. Possibly it’s because she’s embarrassed to know her brother has no interest in anyone but Brienne Tarth. But also it’s because he’s her twin, and because the Lannister siblings are good at backing each other up, even if they’re also occasionally a little too good at tearing each other down.
“Can’t you do something about it?” he asks. Cersei smiles a little, plainly pleased to have her expertise acknowledged.
“I could. But you know Elia. She wouldn’t like any schemes for revenge that I might come up with.”
And, well. That’s true. Jaime sighs and looks back over at Rhaegar, grimacing. He hates being in the middle of these things. Honor tells him that Elia needs some kind of justice, but Cersei’s right. Elia wouldn’t thank him. She’d rather if everyone moved on and she was allowed to fade into the background.
“I just wish there was something I could do,” he says.
“I know exactly what you can do to help,” Cersei replies.
Well, it’s not a direct reply. It’s hours later, during lunch, and Cersei’s got Elia’s arm tucked through hers so it only kind of looks like she’s dragging the Martell girl over. Elia looks flushed and horrified and maybe humiliated, and she’s already shaking her head.
“It’s not a good idea,” she says.
“It’s a wonderful idea,” Cersei replies patiently. She nudges Elia to sit down in the seat across from Jaime, and then she slides into the seat beside her. She leans her elbows on the table, looking like some kind of terrifying crime boss. “The two of you will date.”
“What,” Jaime says flatly, looking at Elia. She’s already shaking her head again. He’s never seen her look so embarrassed.
“Our dear Elia needs to date someone with an appropriate level of social capital.”
“Social capital? Seven hells, Cersei…”
“She needs to date someone that people like more than they like Rhaegar, because otherwise those nasty rumors are going to continue to follow her. You, my dear brother, are a complete mystery to the student body, which means that you have made people want you. You’re the best possible person for her to date. Elia doesn’t want to actually date anyone. She wants to be left alone. And you don’t want to date her. You want to protect her. Think of it as being like her bodyguard. You just have to hold hands sometimes. Press a few kisses to her cheek. Let me spread the story. It will make the rumors go away, and we can control the narrative. Right now, Jon Connington has made it seem as though Elia is both bitter and grieving, and moving on with Jaime Lannister of all people will be wonderful for her image. Elia agrees with me.”
“Hypothetically,” Elia squeaks, covering her face. “I didn’t think she’d actually insist that we do it! I just told her it would be a good idea hypothetically!”
“And I know that you think it’s not weird that you haven’t dated anyone in two years, but you’re my brother, Jaime. You really should at least be seen with someone. If you won’t make a move on you-know-who, then you can at least put in a good showing with Elia. Maybe it will even make her jealous.”
Jaime, who really is the absolute worst at keeping things cool when he has feelings for people, can’t help but cut his eyes in the direction of the table where Brienne sits beside Cat, rolling her eyes at something Ned is saying while Howland Reed laughs loudly. Sometimes he just has to look at her and see if she still makes his stomach swoop with want.
And. Yep. She does.
“She won’t be jealous,” he says.
“Of course she will be,” Elia says. Cersei grins a little, apparently glad that yet another person knows about his Brienne Problem.
“She’ll be beside herself,” she says. “And you’ll finally understand that the shy, ugly girl is never going to make the first move, but that doesn’t mean she isn’t in love with you.” To Elia, she says, “maybe you can talk some sense into him. But not for a month.”
“A month?” Elia asks.
“At least. I’d advise you keep this going until the end of the school year, but I have a feeling one of you is going to crack before then. By the time we graduate, no one’s going to care half as much about any of this as they do right now, and you’ll be back in Dorne for university while Jaime follows his heart and their soccer scholarship to the Stormlands to stare in her general direction for another four years. This is about protecting yourself now.”
Jaime looks at Elia, and he sees the way she has her fists clenched in her lap. She’s not just embarrassed, and she’s not just sad. She’s terrified. And he knows that it’s not just because of this. He’s heard the things that people have been saying about her. The rumors that make her out to be a frigid prude or an insatiable nympho. The rumors that say she smashed in Rhaegar’s car window with a tire iron and the other ones that say she poked holes in his condoms to try and trap him. All these stories that paint her as some “crazy Dornish girl” stereotype because everyone’s willing to believe the worst of her and the best of Rhaegar just because she’s too nice to fight the kind of rumors that Jon Connington is willing to start on his best friend’s behalf.
“I’d be willing to do it if you are,” he says. Elia’s eyes dart to his immediately, and she looks so confused and hopeful and grateful.
“Really?” she asks.
“Yeah,” he says, determination mounting. “Let’s do it.”