Work Text:
She is a bit shocked by it all when the plane comes in to land, gliding just above the tops of the silver skyscrapers, a modern city protected by ancient walls along the edge of the sea. It is like nothing she’s ever seen, the mix of old and new. The ancient Starry Sept, the epic Hightower, the sparkling new Dragon’s Roost, the last cranes still yet to be moved from the latest addition to the city’s skyline. She’d grown up in Tarth, a tropical backwater compared to this, where the most impressive piece of architecture was the new-ish Terminal 2 at the international airport, built for the ever-increasing influx of students visiting Tarth for a cheap Winter Break escape.
She calls her father as soon as she’s grabbed her bags from the baggage claim, letting him know that she’s made the journey safe and sound. She knows he is trying to keep the relief out of his voice, but she can hear it just the same, and it makes her smile. He had tried (and failed) to keep his worries to himself when she told him she’d been accepted on the prestigious Targaryen Foundation exchange program for the year, but she couldn’t blame him, not after what had happened to her mother, and her sisters, and her brother. Her father would never try to keep her from exploring the world, but she knew he worried immensely for her whenever she ventured beyond Tarth’s shores.
After a stop at the airport information booth (“Take any of the green line buses, they’ll bring you right to campus”), she boards the correct bus but misses her stop, and so she lugs her bags back the way she’d come for five blocks until she (finally) arrives at her dormitory.
“But this is a women’s – sorry, yes, my apologies Miss Tarth, we’ve got you right here: Room 6C,” the campus housing coordinator stutters, and Brienne tries (and fails) to keep herself from rounding her shoulders down, trying to fold into herself, to take up less space. She grabs her keys from the coordinator, mumbles a thank you, and tells herself that the tears pulling at the corners of her eyes are just from the fatigue of her long travel.
On the second day in her new home, she is already sweating a bit by the time she arrives at the exchange students’ orientation, five minutes late and blushing deep red due to the embarrassment. She always tries to arrive ahead of time, so that she can sit down in the back and avoid everyone’s eyes on her, but this time she had written the room location down wrong, and once she’d realized her mistake it was already too late. She opens the door quietly, tries to slip in, but at once all eyes are on her, and the chipper little woman at the head of the room is already calling out a loud, sugary hello.
“You must be Brienne! Welcome, Brienne, we’ve just gotten started. Grab a seat wherever you like.”
It takes all she has to keep her eyes from staying locked firmly on the ground – you didn’t come all this way to fade into the background, she tells herself. She takes the first available seat she can, folding her long legs under the desk and dropping her bag to the floor beside her.
The orientation weirdly ends up feeling like a lot like the first day of high school – Aisley, the international student coordinator, treats them a lot more like children than she thought they would be treated. They go around and introduce themselves, and Brienne learns that most of them are here from King’s Landing, on exchange to Oldtown so that they can take advantage of the winter sun, the beaches, and the infamous Hightower Lane, a stretch of road filled with bars and pubs and as many drunk students as one could possibly imagine. When it comes to her turn, she quickly states her name and where she is from, and that she hopes to catch an Oldtown Keepers’ game while on exchange.
Aisley hands out course manuals, and they are told to take 20 minutes to have a look at the course guide, and then they can all register for their courses together. Brienne grabs hers and heads outside, a bit overwhelmed with all the handholding from the Citadel’s international student coordinator so far.
She’s only made it past the third page of the manual (which, to be fair, she has had nearly memorized since she found out she made it into the exchange program) when a shadow crosses over her page, and she looks up to see the most handsome boy she’s ever laid eyes on.
He has slightly curly blonde hair, tanned skin, and the greenest eyes she’s ever seen, and he’s looking at her like he’s waiting for a response, and she panics when she realizes he’s been speaking to her and she has no idea at all what he’s said.
“Sorry, what did you say?” she asks, her face already flushing with embarrassment.
“Are all people from Tarth a little bit slow, or are you the only one?” he says, but he laughs as he says it, and she isn’t sure if he is making fun of her or just bad at interacting with complete strangers.
“I was asking, are you fan of football? You mentioned the Keepers, and I was wondering if you were a fan of theirs,” he is saying, while brushing a lock of hair out of his eyes.
She gapes at him for a moment, and then pulls herself together enough to respond. “Uh, yeah, yeah I’m a pretty big fan. They aren’t my favourite team, but they are a close second, and I’ve never been to a game in person before.”
He grins at her, and her heart gives a little leap, and she is groaning internally at herself, at her weakness for a pretty (the prettiest?) face, especially given the state of her own. He sits down beside her, his class manual in his hands as well.
“We should go to a game sometime – I’m a massive WFL fan, though I prefer the Lions over the Keepers.”
She scoffs at his mention of the Lions, and then realizes immediately what she’s done. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, it’s just… the Lions?” she says somewhat plaintively, and he laughs at that, a bright peal of laughter that makes her smile despite her embarrassment.
“No, no you’re right,” he says, still chuckling. “They haven’t had a winning record in three seasons, they keep trading their best players away, and their franchise quarterback doesn’t look like he could run a franchise McTarly’s, let alone a football team. I get it.” He turns to her, offers his hand. “I’m Jaime, by the way.”
“Br-Brienne,” she stammers out, shaking his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, even if you are a Lions fan…”
He laughs again, and Brienne can’t help herself, can’t stop the crush that is already somehow beyond her control. “Now, have you picked all your classes yet?" he asks, gesturing to the course manual. "Because a lot of these look dull as fuck, and I would love to have someone else to complain to during them…”
They end up deciding on three of the same classes for the first semester – History of the Seven Kingdoms, Medieval Warfare, and, surprisingly, Politics of the Major Houses,for some reason, though neither of them are politics majors.
Jaime introduces Brienne to a few of the other exchange students from King's Landing – Margaery Tyrell, Sansa Stark, Theon Greyjoy – and lets her know that some of them have already planned a little ‘get-together’ tomorrow night in Theon’s room.
Brienne shows up for the party dressed up in her best jeans and shirt, and tries not to feel the little pangs of jealousy that come every time Jaime’s phone buzzes with a new text, every time he smiles as he types out a reply.
Later in the evening Margaery sits down beside her, raises an eyebrow as she catches Brienne staring just a bit too long at Jaime on the other side of the room. “Handsome, isn’t he?” the other girl says a bit too slyly, taking in Brienne’s blush as she averts her eyes.
“I… I mean, yes, he’s- handsome,” Brienne replies, stumbling over her words.
“I think he has a girlfriend back home,” Margaery tells her, not unkindly. Her eyes are soft, trying to cushion the blow.
Despite it, Brienne still feels her heart sink. Silly little crush, she tells herself. “Of course he does,” she sighs, and she downs the rest of her drink in one go.
Jaime and Brienne become fast friends. He is cocky, and sarcastic, and just a bit full of himself, but he is quick to laughter and always keen for a lively debate about the merits (and pitfalls) of a run-heavy offense. They watch WFL games on Sundays in her room – she somehow ended up with a double room all to herself, and she isn’t arguing with that outcome – and sit together at lectures, laughing quietly to themselves frequently at the back of the room.
Her crush doesn’t dissipate – if anything, it only gains in strength – but she can’t help herself from wanting to be friends with him, no matter how much it hurts. She wonders what others think when they see them out together, one golden and beautiful, the other tall and broad and grotesque. She tries not to think about it, and sometimes when Jaime smiles at her, she succeeds.
They get really, really drunk one evening at a party put on by Theon and his field hockey friends, and as they stumble home together Jaime stops dead in his tracks, grabs her by the forearms, and tells her something she never, ever expected to hear.
“I’m sleeping with my cousin, back in King’s Landing” he whispers, unsteady on his feet as they stand outside the canteen, shuttered for the night, a strangely amusing backdrop for so serious a revelation. “I – I don’t know why I am telling you this now, but I – I trust you, and I need you to know.”
She gapes at him for a long moment in shock that is amplified by the amount of tequila swirling through her veins, but when she finally gets enough of her inebriated wits about her, she simply nods and tells him: “I won’t tell a soul.”
He stumbles forward and embraces her, and she can’t stop her poor, hopeless heart from skipping a beat while in his arms.
They don’t really talk about it again, but he becomes more open now around her, answering the phone in front of her on the odd occasion that Cersei calls. She learns in bits and pieces that his cousin is the same age as him, that she is studying economics at the University of King’s Landing, and that if their parents found out they were sleeping together they would likely both be written out of the family trust funds.
They spend more and more time together as the weeks, and then months, go by. She wants to pretend that she doesn’t know what this is, but she knows: she is his surrogate Cersei, an inoffensive and non-tempting stand-in while he is separated from his cousin back home.
And for her? For her, she gets to pretend; when they are out for dinner together on a Monday night, laughing as they buy the cheapest wine on the menu and get drunk amongst the local families and retired people, she gets to pretend that she is someone’s girlfriend, that she is his girlfriend, and even though it is pathetic and sad, she can’t give it up.
Some days, though… some days she wonders if it’s not just a hopeless crush all in her head.
There is the time at the corner pub where a former Citadel student, visiting Oldtown for Alumni Week, buys them both a drink and tells them they make a cute couple.
“Oh, we aren’t-“ starts Brienne, but then Jaime is cutting her off, putting his arms around her shoulders, and grinning at the man.
“Thank you so much,” he says to their benefactor, winking at her and clinking his glass against hers in a cheers.
There is another time, where it is long past midnight and they are eating chicken wings in a late night greasy spoon, and in the middle of wrapping her lips around the next wing of delicious, greasy, hangover-cure-worthy meat, Jaime groans and closes his eyes.
“Brienne – can you eat that a little less… intensely, please?” he asks, and she is so embarrassed, thinking that she must look like a total idiot, but when she dares to look up to meet his eyes there is something else there other than disgust, something dark and heated that takes her breath away.
There is the day where Sansa invites Margaery and Brienne out to a local farmer’s market for the entirety of a Saturday, and Jaime seems to be so bored without her that he won’t stop texting her updates about his progress in his latest video game obsession, interspersed with casual (not-so-casual) requests for updates on their time of arrival home. When they do finally get back to campus, Jaime is already at her door, the newest Marvel film in one hand, a bowl of popcorn in the other.
“Did you miss me?” she says with a chuckle as she unlocks the door.
“I really did,” he tells her soberly, and then he’s bounding into the room, making himself at home on her bed.
For Winter Break, Jaime heads back to Casterly Rock to visit his father and brother, and Margaery invites Sansa and Brienne back to Highgarden, a short train ride away. Brienne is loath to spend the holidays without her father, but he insists he is fine and stumbles through a somewhat sheepish admission that his new girlfriend has invited him over to her home for the holidays anyway.
Her mouth drops at the size of Margaery’s family estate, even though she already knew that Margaery’s (and Jaime’s, and Sansa’s) family was very wealthy. They spend the break swimming in the massive pool on the grounds (with Brienne gently being coaxed by the girls into a lovely one-piece that Margaery gifts to her), sunning themselves, playing table tennis with Margaery’s little brother Willas, and generally laughing themselves to tears every night.
She has never felt so happy – between Sansa and Margaery’s friendship and being… best friends (?) with Jaime, this year of exchange has been the happiest of her life.
She wonders, as she waits for Jaime to arrive from the airport, if things will be the same now that he has been home, seen his real friends, had time with his family. She wonders if he might not need her as much anymore.
But his wide smile as he arrives at her door, calling “Tarth!”, makes her throw that doubt away.
“You promised,” she reminds him as they get off the bus.
He grumbles, kicking at a rock on the pavement. “I can’t believe I lost the bet.”
“But you did,” she tells him, grinning.
“I mean, who the fuck goes for it on fourth and ten instead of taking the field goal? They were already winning!”
“I told you, the Keepers always go for it if they can, they are really good at it and, let’s be honest, their kicker is only good from about 30 yards out.”
He turns and glares at her. “I can’t believe you won.”
She smiles at him. “I did win, and you have to hold up your end of the bet.”
They buy cheap beer at the corner store on their way back (“I need it to make it through this bet in one piece”, he tells her solemnly), and even though Jaime starts grumbling again as she presses play on The Princess Bride, by the end of it he is leaning forward towards the screen, completely enthralled.
The rest of the winter semester passes in a blur of studies, parties, and most of all, Jaime. There are more things that make her doubt that her crush is all in her head: nights where touches her at a party more times than she can count (as if he’s making sure she’s still there), days at the gym where his eyes linger on her body just a second too long (although, the voice of doubt in her head says maybe he is always so shocked to see how unfeminine her body is), and mornings where, when they meet for breakfast, he smiles so brightly at her that her breath catches in her throat.
And then.
Then there is the night of the SuperCup.
None of their other friends really care for football – Theon hates it, Sansa usually only joins them at the bar if there is a drinks special on during the game, and Margaery only ever comes if Jaime’s chemistry lab partner Addam Marbrand comes to join. Jaime and Brienne stake out a spot in the local campus sports bar, snagging a couple of seats in the back corner, and they cheer (much to Brienne’s chagrin) the Lions to their first SuperCup victory in fifteen years. Jaime, exuberant from the win, buys them round after round of beer, and when they stumble home to Brienne’s dorm, Jaime collapses onto her bed beside her, and she is too tired to say anything otherwise.
She awakes, in the middle of the night, to his arm around her waist, his breath hot against her neck.
“Jaime?” she asks, but when he shifts his arm slightly, a moan escapes her lips at the contact, and the arm around her waist tightens.
Time stops – and then –
His mouth is on her neck, and she can’t help herself, she moans again, the feeling of his body pressed against hers too much for her to resist. Before she knows it she is turning to face him, his face only a shadow in the dark, and she is pressing her lips to his, or he is pressing his lips to hers, but either way she is pushing against him, her hands on his body, his hands on hers. He is lifting her shirt, sliding his hands on her skin, and when she gasps in pleasure he is murmuring against her lips: “Brienne, Brienne…”
Her brain can’t keep up with her body – before she can think she is running her hands along his arms, along his chest, slipping her hands under his clothes to touch every inch of him that she can get, while his arms wrap around her and pull her tight against him. His mouth is one one breast, the other in his right hand, and as his left hand drifts down to slide until the waistline of her jeans, she sighs his name and he murmurs something unintelligible into her skin.
But then –
He is pulling away, his hands leaving her skin, and she can feel his eyes on her in the dark. “Brienne – I’m sorry, but I-I can’t-” and he is leaving the bed, leaving her room, and by the time her brain catches up, the tears are already sliding down her cheeks.
He comes to her room first thing in the morning, running his hand through his hair nervously as he asks to come in.
He sits down at the edge of her bed, and she has to will the memories of the night before away (his hands on her, his lips on hers, him whispering her name in the dark). “I want – I want to apologize, Brienne, I feel like I took advantage of you and I…” he closes his eyes, grimaces. “I never wanted to hurt you.”
“I know,” she says softly, and she surprises herself by reaching out for his hand. “You didn’t hurt me, Jaime.”
He looks up at her, squeezes her hand tight between his own. “You’re my best friend, you know that?”
A part of her rejoices at hearing it out loud, and yet, a louder part, traitorous, says that that is not and will never be enough. She silences it, pushing it down and down and down far below.
“And you’re mine, Jaime,” meaning it despite it all.
He smiles at her then, really smiles, and brings in her in for a hug that she never wants to end.
Things go back to normal between them (at least for him) for the last couple remaining weeks of the semester, and she tries to make herself forget that she knows how it feels to have his mouth on her breasts. She gets better and better at it- she can eventually stop herself from staring at his lips too long and hold herself back from remembering the way his fingers felt on her skin.
He goes home first, six hours before she does, and they make promises to Raven call each other over the summer. She goes with him to the airport, way too early for her own flight, but it’s worth it to wave goodbye in person.
Safe flight x, he texts her just before he boards, and as she spends the hours waiting for her own flight, she wonders if he will simply forget about her when he is back in Cersei’s arms.
Her father is ecstatic to see her, hugging her so tightly that her feet leave the ground, and that evening back in Evenfall he introduces her to his new girlfriend, Maera. Maera is lovely and kind but Brienne finds it hard to muster any sort of enthusiasm at all, so as soon as she can she is feigning fatigue from the long journey and retreating to her childhood bedroom.
She plugs her laptop in, turns it on, and is surprised to see several missed messages from Jaime when she logs on to Raven.
How was the journey home?
Are you watching the draft?
Hope you aren’t too bored without me… x
She smiles despite herself, and starts her response.
The summer passes quickly – she gets a job in the local library as a summer book club coordinator, and Margaery comes over from Highgarden for a week to spend time, ostensibly, in the sun. She chats with Jaime on and off, between his trips to Casterly Rock, his annual sailing trip with his brother, and his internship at his father’s regional office in King Landing. He doesn’t speak to her about Cersei, but she can tell when she is around – hastily rescheduled Raven calls, contrite email apologies, “let me make it up to you” voicemails.
Her last semester of university comes upon her quickly, and before she knows it, they are down to a call once or twice per month. She can’t say she is surprised, and the little voice in her head reminds her, gloating, that she knew what she was for him all along: a stand-in for Cersei, a mere shadow of the real thing.
One night, though, near the end of her final term, the chiming of her Raven account wakes her from her sleep, and she groggily reaches over and grabs the laptop, pulling it down into the bed beside her.
“Jaime…?” she murmurs, wiping the sleep from her eyes.
“Oh gods, I woke you up, shit, I’m sorry Brienne, I just – I needed to hear your voice.”
She blinks, waking up a bit. “You’re drunk… are you okay?”
She can see him run his hand through his hair, and she knows that tell, knows what it means. “Jaime – you can tell me. What’s happened?”
He rubs his hand over his face, presses his hand against the tip of his nose. “Cersei, I- it’s over.”
“Oh,” she breathes, despite herself, and she quickly recovers. “I, uh, I am really sorry to hear that Jaime, I hope you’re okay, I mean, as okay as you can be?” She stumbles over her own words, her emotions a weird mix of relief and worry and, as ugly as it is, excitement.
“Yeah… yeah, I mean I… hey, look, I know it’s short notice, but do you think you might have time for me to visit Tarth sometime? Sometime soon? I know it’s a lot to ask, but I’ll pay for everything, obviously, and, uh, I mean I just… I would like to see you. If you have time,” he finishes, his eyes red-rimmed around the edges meeting hers.
As friends? she wonders (only friends, of course, whispers the voice in her head), but before she has more time to think it through, she is nodding yes, and he is breathing a sigh of relief in a city miles and miles away from her own.
His flight lands early in the morning on a Sunday, and when he steps out of the arrivals gate, her heart leaps into her heart as she waves hello.
He looks better than he did on the Raven call a week ago – his eyes are no longer puffy and red, and a smile comes easily to his lips when he sees her. “Tarth!” he exclaims, and before she knows it he is wrapping his arms around her, holding her closes, and she fights hard not to turn her face close into his neck.
He pulls out of the hug, holds her at an arms’ length away. “It’s really good to see you, Brienne. I missed you,” he tells her, a soft smile on his lips.
She blushes, despite herself. “I missed you too, Jaime.”
She drives them out to her little flat in the city – she’s only had it a few weeks, making the decision to rent it after her father let her know that Maera would be moving in. It’s not like she has anything against Maera, but she feels like an intruder in her own home, like a ghost that won’t quite go away, so she found a little one-room flat near the beach that she can afford on her internship salary when she starts at the end of term.
“So, uh, this is it: kitchen, sitting room, bathroom, bedroom,” she tells him, pointing out each of the small rooms in turn. “I don’t have a sofabed, but I do have an air mattress, so I was thinking that you could take my bed, and I could sleep out here, if that works for you?”
She’s rambling, she knows, but now that Jaime is here, really here, it feels surreal, and she’s not quite sure what to do with herself in this moment.
He turns to her, his green eyes soft and full of… something she can’t quite put her finger on. “Thank you for letting me come,” he starts.
“Oh, of course!” she jumps in, “I mean, what kind of a friend would I be if I wasn’t there for you when… well, when whatever happened between you and Cersei.”
He smiles a bit at that. “About that –“ he says, “I wanted to talk to you about that.”
Her pulse speeds up a bit, unsure if she is ready to hear all about his love life with another person. “You, uh, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, Jaime.”
He laughs then rolling his eyes a bit at her. “I want to tell you. Listen, Brienne,” he starts again, taking her hand, and she nearly jumps at the shock of it. “When I came home from exchange I thought my life would just go back to normal – that things would be the same at home as when I left for Oldtown. But it wasn’t the same there, and it took me a while to figure out that it wasn’t the same without you.”
Brienne feels as if she’s been punched in the chest, all the air leaving her lungs in one sudden rush. “Wh-what?” she stutters, making her way to the sofa to sit down.
He follows, sitting close enough to her that their knees touch. “I have loved Cersei since I can remember. Her parents were abroad a lot when we were young, and she stayed at Casterly Rock most of the time. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t in love with her – as a child, as a teenager, as an adult, she’s the only girl, the only woman I’ve ever wanted. Until I met you.”
Brienne shifts, crossing her legs and uncrossing the, unable to feel comfortable in her own skin. “What are you saying, Jaime?”
“When I met you, you were like nothing I’d ever seen. You were tall and broad, quiet and distant, but for some reason all I wanted to do that first day was talk to you. And then I saw – I saw how funny you are, how intelligent, and how pigheaded you can be about things like the utility of jet sweeps. I don’t know when, or how but –” he pauses, taking a deep breath, “I couldn’t take my mind off of you.”
She swallows hard, her palms sweating, not daring to hope or believe what he was saying was true.
“And that night – the night when I reached for you, I just, I panicked, I panicked and I am sorry, Brienne, I am so sorry.”
“It’s alright, Jaime, I told you, I understand-”
He laughs then, a wry laugh to himself, shakes his head a bit side to side. “No, see that’s the thing, Brienne, you don’t understand. I ended things with Cersei because I’m in love with you, Brienne. I've probably been in love with you since that first day in Oldtown.”
She feels like she can't breathe; with effort, she drags a long, shuddering breath into her lungs. "Wh-what?"
He just smiles at her, a bit sadly. "I'm in love with you," he repeats, his eyes never leaving her own.
She stands up abruptly, pulling her hand away from him in her panic to stand - move - anything. She feels unable to process what he's said - he is in love with her?
He is looking up at her, more alarmed and worried now that she has pulled away, and she makes herself sit back down beside him, tries to stop her hands from shaking. "Jaime - you can't... boys like you dont love girls like - like me," she finishes, her hand sweeping over her body, silently showing her lack of curves, her thick thighs, her towering height.
He shakes his head, chuckling softly to himself. "Do you really think I don't know what you look like? Do you think I've spent the last year completely oblivious to your appearance? Of course I know you don't look like other girls - and I love you for that, Brienne." He leans in towards her, his hand coming to rest over her own.
"I love your long legs, and I have spent a long time thinking about what those legs can do," he starts, a grin spreading across his face as she blushes furiously at his words. "I love your arms - the way you do bicep curls makes me need a very cold shower after we work out. And your eyes -" he says, more softly now, reaching his free hand out to touch her cheek. "Your eyes are the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen."
She realizes, suddenly, that she is crying, the tears sliding silently down her cheeks. "Are-are you sure?" she asks, an old but familiar voice whispering at the back of her mind that this is all a trick, an elaborate game played at her expense.
"I've never been more sure of anything in my life," he tells her, and then his lips are pressed against hers, his hands on her face, pulling her to him as if he never wants to let her go.
epilogue (6 weeks later)
"I knew it," says Margaery as soon as she exits the Arrivals door. "I fucking knew it!" she repeats gleefully, pulling her phone out and sending off a quick text. "Sansa owes me a dragon for this one."
Brienne clutches Jaime's hand just a bit tighter, and he squeezes back, reassuring her without a word. "Did you - did you bet on this?"
Margaery is already moving forward to wrap her up in a hug. "I told Sansa it would happen before your internship, and she said it would have during the next Winter Break. I think she fancied some sort of beach declaration of love at like a big resort, but I mean she was half right with Tarth, wasn't she? I mean, don't tell her I admitted that last bit, I want this victory all to be mine!"
Jaime laughs at that, and slips his arm fully around Brienne's waist, kissing her on the cheek as he moves in close. "Everyone had this figured out before us, didn't they?"
Margaery grins at him. "Wouldn't be a good love story if it came easy, right? Now let me grab my bag, and then I need to get to the beach, I gotta get my tan back on track pronto," she tells them, before heading off the the luggage belt to grab the largest suitcase Brienne has ever seen for a single week of holiday.
"We figured it out in the end, though, didn't we?" she tells him, resting her head against his as they wait for Margaery to make her way back to them.
"We did," he replies, smiling up at her.
"I love you, Jaime," she murmurs into his skin, her temple pressed to his.
"I love you too," he replies, and she knows better than anything else she's ever known that this is real and true.