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Brienne was disappointed in him. That wasn't anything new, in general, although usually he could guess how he had disappointed her in particular, and this time he had no idea; he had hoped to come through tonight without feeling the force of it. After all, the name day party was something kind Jaime was doing for her, small and casual, at his own apartment. He had thought she would enjoy herself, and she wouldn't need to clean before or after. And he had tried to leave her alone after the Starks got there and attached themselves to her. She got uncomfortable when he stuck to her side at things like this and called it hovering. Fine, so he was keeping his distance, but there she was staring at him thoughtfully from across the room, her eyes concerned but her mouth angry, which meant he had let her down somehow.
If she wanted to come and speak to him, she would. Jaime did his best to ignore her, trying to appear more and more engaged in his conversation with Margaery Tyrell's brother, who was as irritating as always but off again with Renly and feeling handsy. Brienne liked it when he played nice with the Tyrells, or said she did, but her frown only deepened when Loras's hand brushed his knee. All right, maybe it was a little much. Jaime extricated himself and went for a glass of wine, his first of the evening.
The other Tyrell was at the bottle already, of course. "You want the red?" Margaery asked, already holding the bottle out to pour for him. "It's a very good vintage, I noticed."
Briefly, he wondered if she thought he couldn't pour on his own, with his injured hand, but Brienne would remind him it was a kind gesture regardless. He chose a glass and held it out; Margaery poured him a generous measure.
"I've noticed you enjoy a good wine," he said. She smiled sweetly back. Probably thirty percent of the people on the guest list were functioning alcoholics. Did Brienne collect fuck-ups for friends on purpose, Jaime wondered, or did fuck-ups just gravitate toward her the way flies always wanted to lay their eggs on something soft and warm?
Anyway, it was lucky for Jaime. He directed a small smile toward his glass.
"I'm glad you came tonight, thank you," he added for Margaery, because she seemed to be waiting around for something.
"No, thank you, Brienne's never let us do anything for her name day before," Margaery said. "Lucky she's got you around to wear her down now, I suppose."
"Do you think she liked it?" Jaime asked, because he hadn't seen Brienne since she'd been glaring at him, and because even if Margaery hated saying what she meant, she loved Brienne.
"Yes, sweetheart," Margaery said pityingly—how grating—but redeemed herself by saying: "She was happier than I've seen her in a long time when I talked to her earlier. Not that I've been able to get much time with her, with all the other suitors."
She meant the wolfpack and Podrick, who were probably still clustered around Brienne in the other room. Brienne had been worried no one would come. Stupid woman.
"And clearly you've spared no expense," Margaery added, raising her eyebrows at him. She topped off her glass one more time before wandering off to flop down on his couch with an arm around her brother, who pulled her in close and brushed a kiss against the top of her head.
Jaime only watched them for a moment before turning away. He hadn’t been extravagant, and Margaery knew it, even though she was drunk and thought she was clever. The wine was the only thing he'd spent any real money on for the party. There was also the fountain pen he'd had engraved for Brienne as a name day gift, which was very nice and had cost him a little money, but he had almost decided not to give that to her. The expense might put her off, and the party would probably be all she was expecting. At least he would have the pen in his back pocket, if she really was angry with him and needed bribing or distracting. Brienne was difficult to distract and impossible to bribe, but he was still an optimist.
She was angry with him, or something. She couldn't hide it when everyone else had filtered out—he had gotten a grudging nod from Arya Stark, a true smile from Sansa, a handshake, of all things, from Podrick Payne, and a light, lingering slap on the back from Loras—although she kept saying earnestly what a good time she had had. One of the benefits of the short guest list was that there wasn't much to clean up, but she insisted on staying to help, and unfortunately she was faster than he was.
"What is it," he snapped at her at last. "Do I have something on my face?"
"What?" Brienne looked at him blankly. "No, I don't—see anything.” She pulled back to consider him. “There's the stubble, but I thought you’d been doing that on purpose."
"I am doing that on purpose," Jaime said, feeling injured. "What I mean is, why have you been scowling at me all night?"
There went her blush, which had already been in effect because of the wine, kicking into a higher gear. "I don't scowl at you," she said, sounding confused.
"What, never? That's an awful defense to choose," Jaime said, amused. "Aren't you supposed to be some kind of lawyer? Of course you scowl at me, you do it all the time, and you glare and you roll your eyes and you look at me like I've done something terrible to disappoint you, and you were doing all of that tonight, when you were supposed to be only happy and grateful to me."
"I am grateful," she said, "and I—I'm sure I didn't roll my eyes." Now she had reached the part where she avoided looking at him all together. "I suppose I was thinking..." She trailed off, staring into her almost-empty trash bag. It was really like pulling teeth with the woman.
"Just tell me," he said. He guessed he had said something offensive to one of her friends, thinking it was funny, and they had snitched back to her. Probably Podrick, he was too easy to target. Usually Brienne thought it was funny that Jaime still called him your intern after all this time, but maybe she had decided he was too sensitive to be subjected to that kind of teasing any longer. Or Arya was still bitter that he'd said he didn’t want those fucking wolf-dogs in his home. Or the Stark mother had—
"I wondered if you were leading him on a bit," she said to the trash bag.
"Leading him on?" He frowned at her and then said, "Podrick?"
"What?" That got her to look at him. "Podrick? No. What—Loras."
"Loras Tyrell," he said. It was not what he had been expecting.
"You were all over him," she said in a rush. "And Margaery said he's very sensitive just now, he and Renly broke things off again—" She didn't even stumble on the name—"And he was flirting with you, and you were making him think—I don’t know. You weren’t discouraging it, anyway.”
“Loras would flirt with a shadow if he thought it had a cock, you know that,” Jaime said, somewhat at a loss as to why she was white-knighting for the man. But Brienne white-knighted for everyone. He thought of what she might have seen between him and Loras. A hand on a leg, a little whispering? Nothing very scandalous. “He didn’t mean anything by it, and you know I don’t really like him, anyway.” Jaime could stand talking to the man for longer than he used to, but Loras was still an asshole, not that he would say as much to Brienne.
“How can that not bother you?” Brienne said, incredulous. “What would you do if he, I don’t know, propositioned you?”
“Fuck him or turn him down, I suppose, but I don’t think he’d be too put out either way,” Jaime said, and she said, “What?” Her eyes were wide.
“People have casual sex,” he said. “Sometimes even with people they don’t like. We’re not all—” He stopped. He couldn’t think of a kind ending to the sentence, so he left it.
“Oh,” she said quietly. “I didn’t know.” She was still looking at him, and he rubbed the stubble, self-conscious. It was growing in grayer and grayer, and he had thought it looked good, but it could only accentuate his age. Surely now that she was thirty-one, she would start finding gray hairs; it was bound to happen soon.
“About you and men,” she said, and Jaime realized for the first time what conversation they were having.
“Yes, me and men,” he said. “Me and women, too,” he added, to be sure she knew it wasn’t only Cersei.
Actually, the trouble was that in a certain way, it was only Cersei, still. However he had been trying to make it sound to Brienne a moment earlier, Jaime was not going out and fucking strangers every night, but he had done a little; he had tried. He knew what it was like to be with the other half of yourself, to feel perfect and complete for as long as you were inside them. He had had that, he had given it up, and he had done enough experimenting now to figure out that he wouldn’t ever get it with anyone else. So really it didn’t make a difference, man or woman; either way he would enjoy it well enough and either way it wouldn’t be as good as what he really wanted.
He thought about saying something politically correct about how he also liked people who were neither men nor women—Brienne would like that—but then maybe she would think he wanted Arya, the only person he knew who identified as non-binary. Horrifying thought.
“I apologize,” Brienne said stiffly. “I was being unfair, then. Obviously you can—flirt with whoever you want.”
“I appreciate that, Brienne, truly,” Jaime said, trying to make fun of the formal way she said I apologize. She got it, which pleased him, and she shoved at him where he was sitting cross-legged on the ground. He had given up on doing anything, and slid complacently down to lay on his back on the beautiful hardwood floor of his kitchen. She kept sitting next to him, not saying anything, but he could feel the strange little glances she kept throwing his way. He had really surprised her, then.
“Do you?” he said, curious.
“Do I?”
He wished she would lay next to him so he could see her face. Conversations went much faster when he could just look at her and guess what she was thinking. “You and women,” he said.
“Oh,” she said.
“I know you and men,” he said. “But do you…?”
Funny that it had never occurred to him to wonder about this before. She had mentioned that she had been called a lesbian at school, but she had been so hung up on Renly when he met her; Jaime had never considered that she might actually lean that way. He had lumped in the homophobic abuse she had suffered with the vitriol she got whenever someone took her for a trans woman in a public bathroom: painful, but misdirected.
But maybe not. Brienne and women. Brienne could be sweet with a woman, he thought. It would be nice for her to have someone to open doors for. Of course Jaime let her open doors for him sometimes, but not all men would be as secure.
“I don’t like women,” she said at last, although she had taken too long to say it, it couldn’t be a hundred percent.
“But tell me really,” he said, propping himself up on his left elbow to raise an eyebrow at her. “Come on, I told you.” Maybe he could be her catty gay friend now, even if he was only half. The gods knew she could use one that wasn’t a complete douchebag. She was blushing again and she mumbled something that was almost intelligible.
“Margaery?” he repeated. “Not you and women, but you and Margaery.”
“Only once, and it was kissing, don’t be disgusting.” There was the scowl. Never far away.
“I’m not being disgusting,” Jaime said, but that was a lie, he had already failed at being a gay best friend, he was being disgusting, thinking about it. He wasn’t the biggest fan of Margaery Tyrell, but he had eyes, it wasn’t an unappealing picture. “Did you like it?” he asked helplessly.
“It was all right, I suppose,” Brienne said, sounding disinterested. “We did it for a while, to see. So many people asked me if I liked girls, it did make me wonder…”
“Very scientific, I’m sure,” Jaime said. Brienne was much bigger than Margaery but she would have been shy about it. Maybe Margaery had climbed into Brienne’s lap. If Brienne had been wearing the blue top she wore tonight it would have been easy for Margaery to… “This was in college?” He knew they had been roommates.
“No, last year,” Brienne said absently.
Jaime felt strange. He lay back down and looked at the ceiling. “But you like it better with men.” She had said she didn’t like women.
“Yes,” Brienne said. “Well, I don’t really know.”
“Oh,” Jaime said. “What?”
“Because I haven’t kissed men,” she said. “Not like that.” He could never guess what would embarrass her. She had been bright red before, but she was perfectly matter-of-fact as she said this thing which seemed, to him, so unbearably sad. Of course he couldn’t allow her to see that he felt sorry for her.
“Like that,” Jaime repeated. He kept repeating things. “Because you know Margaery?”
“Because it lasted more than a couple of seconds.” He heard her sigh. “I know you’re feeling sorry for me right now. I don’t need that. It’s fine.”
Jaime sat up. She did look fine. Even the flush of the wine was gone from her cheeks, although she must still be a little drunk since she had talked about doing that with Margaery. But not very drunk.
“Of course you are,” he said. “I know what you need. Come here.”
She obeyed automatically, scooting closer to where he was holding out his hand, before she realized what he meant to do and blanched, pulling backwards. “No!”
“Yes,” he said coaxingly. “Come here, Brienne. Just longer than a couple of seconds, and you’ll know. I’m a better friend than Margaery, aren’t I?”
“You—” she said. She looked angry, but she always looked angry at him, and her mouth was parted; he was sure he knew what that meant. “That has nothing to do with it!”
“You don’t want to?” he said. He registered a second after he said it that it was a cruel thing to say, because he could tell she did want to. That was why he had said it.
The truth was that he had not thought about it before, even once, Brienne like that. The world was full of men and women who weren’t Cersei and he had never noticed that Brienne was one of them. Now he felt, very suddenly, that he was going to die if she didn’t let him. He reached out and touched her hair. It was almost white from the summer sun. If there was a gray hair, it might go unnoticed for a long time.
“You’re drunk,” she said. He moved his finger to the top of her ear. She shivered.
“I am not,” he said softly. “One glass of wine. Hours ago.”
“Loras Tyrell is probably still awake,” she said. But she was leaning towards him. “If you want to kiss someone, you should text him.”
“Loras Tyrell is an asshole,” Jaime said. Anyway, she still hadn’t pushed him away, so he put his hand under her chin and leaned in to brush his mouth against hers. She was frozen and seemed likely to stay that way for a while, so he did what he could to make it a real kiss without behaving like he meant to stage an invasion of her mouth. He didn’t try to make it urgent; they obviously weren’t going to fuck. Really, there was very little pressure.
It occurred to him right away that he must have been having bad sex the past few years, because it had all seemed so lackluster in comparison to what he had with Cersei, but this had his blood warm and vibrating in the old way—not exactly how it had been before, but how could it be—and it was just a little kissing. He put his left hand back in Brienne’s hair and tried pulling her lower lip into his mouth to see if she liked it. That got her to come alive. Now she understood that they were only fighting, so she tried fighting back, doing what he’d done. She had always been quick. This is nice, he thought, this is just right. Maybe I’m drunk after all.
After only a couple of minutes she pulled back, sliding his fingers out of her hair, and breathed an audible sigh. She didn’t seem unhappy, but he understood that it was over.
“Are you a lesbian, then?” he asked. He wanted her to say out loud how good it had been, although he knew she wouldn’t. Certainly he couldn’t be the one to say it. He wondered if he was smiling.
She blinked and said, “Is that what we were figuring out?”
“That, and if I am a better friend than Margaery,” Jaime said. She was red, red, red.
“There are some things,” Brienne said, and didn’t finish her sentence. She shook her head. “Thank you for the party. I had a nice time.”
“Any time,” Jaime said, for the look she gave him as they stood, suspicious and hopeful. He took the final unopened wine bottle from the table and presented it to her. “Happy name day, Brienne.”
“Yes,” she said vaguely, taking it. They stood together at the door for a minute.
“Football tomorrow,” he said. “You’ll come over and watch?”
It was clear she had forgotten, but she always came Saturdays, and she said, “Of course. Bronn will be here?”
“I think so,” Jaime said. Bronn might be too sick to come, if Jaime asked him nicely.
“Right, then,” she said, with a businesslike nod. “I’ll see you.” She went out and he watched her down the stairs, because he thought she wouldn’t be able to resist looking back, but maybe she felt his eyes on her. All he saw was her wide blue back and her pale hair in the moonlight.
When she was gone, Jaime went to his room and pulled out the fountain pen he had bought her. It was such a stupid thing to get for a friend you had never thought about kissing. The engraving said From Jaime at the end. Why had he thought he wanted her to hold that in her hand?
Such an idiot, Jaime, you really deserve her, he thought, and hoped it was true. He put the pen in its box and shoved it at the back of his desk drawer. Maybe one day he would be able to give it to her, even knowing what it meant.