Work Text:
Don’t roll your eyes. Do NOT roll your eyes at a senior member of the biology faculty.
“Good question, Dr. Baratheon.”
Brienne hoped her gritted teeth didn’t noticeably distort the words. But honestly what else could she do? It was bad enough that Stannis was one of the few faculty members who still insisted on his title being used instead of his first name like a human person, and the fact that the department was still Not Speaking about That Other Baratheon Lab Thing only made it worse.
And it was a stupid question.
“I’ll be the first to admit that my focus is on basic research of RNA:RNA interactions, so we really aren’t looking toward clinical applications of this work just yet,” she began. Jaime was, because of course he was, but that was a project for him, not for the Stark lab, and certainly not for discussion at the weekly department seminar.
Without thinking she glanced past Stannis’s ever-shinier head in the front row to where Jaime sat in the back corner of the lecture hall, his white-knuckled grip on the outside arm of his seat somehow comforting to Brienne. He wouldn’t get involved-- he’d promised. Even if asking what is the relevance of this work was obviously a dick move, it wasn’t worth starting a department schism over. But she liked knowing he was on her side, both morally and scientifically.
She continued, slowing her words to give her time to think, “I would suggest that understanding the basic behavior and interactions between RNA secondary structures could form the foundation of any number of pharmaceutical technologies. Off the top of my head I think there’s a good chance this work could produce new techniques for studying or treating RNA viruses by altering or disrupting their genomic structure.” Jaime was more interested in anti-cancer therapies but Brienne still had a soft spot for infectious disease research. “In fact--” she knew she was speeding up, and Catelyn would chide her for it, but she had officially warmed up to her topic and felt the telltale bubbling in her chest that came with sudden inspiration, “--I could see it being useful to the labs working on delivery methods for modified RNA vaccines.” She usually distanced herself from pharma, both for personal preference and to avoid conflicts of interest with Jaime, but that was a rather neat idea if she did say so herself.
Clearly Stannis wanted to disagree, but he couldn’t actually refute an answer based on conjecture. His fault for asking for essentially her speculation rather than something he could argue with on the basis of facts. Brienne counted herself lucky he hadn’t come out swinging. The previous year he’d traumatized one of the second-year grad students when the hapless kid mixed up fluorescence and luminescence. Brienne and Theon had set aside their afternoon’s work to rush poor Pod out to the hilltop biker bar and reassure him that literally everyone else in the room enjoyed his talk, that he wasn’t a failure, and that Stannis was just Like That.
Concluding her answer, she took a moment to look out over the audience. Her talk hadn’t exactly drawn a crowd, and the grad students were required to come (though at least half of them were using the time to edit papers, update lab notebooks, or, in a few cases, nap), but the mid-size lecture hall was nearly full, and she could see a number of approving nods scattered throughout the group. She let herself smile. “If there are no other questions--” she paused, just to be sure, “thank you all for your attention.” And with those words the focus of the room instantaneously left her. She nodded to herself as the stampede headed for the back door, pleased at a job well done, and began to pack away her computer. She hoped the starving grad students would leave her at least one department-funded donut.
“Good talk, Tech.” She had just pulled her bag onto the table when Jaime slipped back into the now-empty hall, sidling up beside her to set a glazed old-fashioned on a cheap paper napkin beside her laptop bag.
“Thank you,” she said, blushing at the praise-- and the knowledge that he must have fought the crowd to bring her pastry-- as she wound up the last cord. She was just zipping up the bag when Jaime slid both arms around her waist to press his chest against her back.
“I especially liked the statistical regression you did on the new kinetics data,” he half-growled into her ear.
“Oh yeah?” She felt the corner of her mouth twitch upward. The man was incorrigible in all the best ways.
“I must have you.”
Gods she loved him. It was a long process, getting used to the feeling of being wanted, much less by someone as brilliant, as handsome, or as exasperating as Jaime. His handsiness had taken her some time to acclimate to early in their relationship. No matter how much she enjoyed it-- and she did, rather extremely much-- she still sometimes forgot it wasn’t some sort of bit he was doing as a joke. And now here he was using romance-novel-caliber hyperbole on her, and a nonzero chance he might be serious. Still, she laughed it off with a roll of her eyes. “Don’t be dramatic, nerd.”
“You think I’m exaggerating? Let me try that again.” He pulled her closer and she couldn’t deny the physical evidence before-- or rather behind-- her. “As I was saying, I must have you.”
“Seriously?” She had meant to sound jokingly long-suffering, but instead only barely managed to keep the surprised hope out of her voice. An effect that was entirely ruined when the words “for me?” slipped out.
His low chuckle made the skin on her neck prickle. “Yes, genius. For you. Now,” he began, resting his chin on her shoulder, and she was grateful she was wearing a button-down and not one of her usual tank tops as she might not have survived skin contact, “how about we find an unoccupied room and you can tell me more about your thermodynamic model?”
“At work?” she squeaked as one hand found its way past her waistband and under the tail of her shirt, grazing the skin there maddeningly.
“It’s a break. A fun break to have fun. You like fun. Besides, you deserve a break after facing down Stannis and his time-wasting questions.”
The fingers drew circles against her skin and Brienne bade a fond farewell to her restraint. She glanced at the timer clipped to her pocket to see how much longer the electrophoresis gel she’d loaded before her talk would be running. “Okay, I have half an hour--”
“I can work with that.”
“--and nothing below the belt. We’re at a prestigious institute of higher learning. And I don’t want to get carried away and lose my morning’s work when my gel runs over.” His ardor might be for real, but Brienne knew she could count on him to respect her work ethic when it mattered.
He affected a pout. “If we must.”
As a reward for both of them using their words, she spun suddenly in his arms and had a brief moment to register the pleased surprise that flashed across his face before she was kissing him. If he had expected her to need more convincing, well, that’s an expectation she was happy to subvert. She wound her arms around his neck as he tilted his head for better access, but when he began to urge her onto the computer desk she pulled back. A bit of tongue wouldn’t hurt anyone, but if he was serious about anything else--
“And also not right here.”
“You drive a hard bargain, Tech, but I accept.” Before she could wonder if his easy acquiescence was a bad sign Brienne found herself being tugged by the hand out of the lecture hall, across the courtyard, into Pycelle Hall, and up the nearest flight of stairs.
“Why the second floor?” she asked as they reached the landing, pushing away a stray thought that two steps above her Jaime’s ass was eminently gropable.
“It’s mostly structural biology and genetics labs. They don’t have enough grant money to afford breaks. Everyone here will be too busy with their computers or nematodes to be peeking into spare rooms.” That was actually a fairly clever assessment, and an impressively astute one given that Brienne had thought his brain too otherwise-occupied for strategy. She reconsidered her quick dismissal of her earlier ass-groping hypothesis. It would surprise him, and she rather liked getting to see him thrown off his groove.
As suspected, the halls of the second floor were dead as tombs. Jaime stopped to pull Brienne closer, getting an early start on the kissing as he pushed backwards through the nearest door.
And immediately shuffled them both back out. “As hot as you are,” he mumbled against her lips, “a four-degree coldroom isn’t going to work for this.”
What a terrible line. Brienne laughed and disengaged from the kiss long enough to tug his hand toward the next door down. It was dark as they slipped in, and Jaime pulled the door shut as she groped for a light switch.
Brienne was halfway out the door before Jaime registered the room’s contents: racks and racks of glass tubes and jars stopped with cotton plugs, full of-- “Voyeuristic fruit flies,” she cursed.
And so the search continued.
The conference room had a very public window in the door.
The microscopy room was occupied, requiring her to make a red-faced exit mumbling something about “wrong room.”
And the full-body astronaut suits required for BSL3 would be rather antithetical to their needs.
Jaime gave her a pleading look as they passed the men’s restroom but Brienne wouldn’t be moved.
“This is ridiculous,” she groaned, slumping against the wall of the corridor and resisting the urge to bang her head on the wall in frustration. “Let’s just go back to your office.”
“I have never been in that office for ten minutes at a time without someone knocking on the door to remind me about a late grant application or ask me to explain my sister’s business decisions,” he reminded her. “And you blush whenever Pia sees you leaving my office, even when we’ve been nothing but professional.”
Brienne groaned. “Could this experience maybe be teaching us a lesson about the advisability of making out in a lab building?”
“Absolutely not. Who would waste time trying to teach me lessons?” He leaned against the wall beside her and gave her that through-his-lashes look that she had never been able to resist. Well, she’d always been uninterested in resisting it at least. “I’m just building anticipation.”
“At this rate we’re going to be old and white-bearded before we actually manage to find a spot.”
“Yes!” Jaime exclaimed, suddenly pushing away from the wall and holding his hand out to her. Brienne looked at him blankly. “Old and white-bearded!” he repeated, as if that explained his sudden enthusiasm. But before she could vocalize any of the myriad questions she had, he grabbed her hand and nearly dragged her down the hall and around a corner to a small side corridor lined with fancy solid weirwood doors, not slowing his roll until he reached the last door in line.
A white-laquered metal plaque declared it the office of Dr. Barristan Selmy, Professor Emeritus of Biology.
“He’s never here,” Jaime said, apparently by way of explanation. He tapped briefly on the door, and upon getting no response he punched a combination into the five-button lock. “Barristan was our class advisor when I was a first-year grad student,” he explained, pushing the door open and ushering Brienne through. “I told him it was stupid to keep the same combination for literal decades, but I’ve never been so happy to be wrong.”
“And he’s not around?” Brienne asked hopefully.
“He doesn’t even have a lab anymore-- hasn’t been seen on campus in years. Probably enjoying some sort of quasi-retirement in Essos. But nobody has the heart to reallocate his office. Now,” he said, dropping his voice and pulling her toward the leather couch against the back wall, “where were we?”
Before Brienne could either laugh or sigh with relief, his lips were on hers again. It seemed he might have had a point about building anticipation, because even in the first ten seconds it was one of the best kisses they’d had. Through some combination of Jaime pulling and Brienne pushing and both of them falling a bit, she soon found herself stretched out on top of him along the couch, his sneaky fingers pulling her shirt out from her waistband to press into the skin of her back. She managed to get a hand into his hair, the urgency of the kiss leaving her a little breathless.
Soon enough their initial ardor bled out, their frustrations alleviated, and the insistent but less-than-coordinated meeting of tongues calmed to a slow exploratory slide. She adored the experimental way he approached the physical aspects of their relationship-- stimulus and response, visibly delighting in each new bit of data. A little nip at her lower lip drew a gasp from her, and she felt his mouth pull into a satisfied smile
But she was a scientist too, and two could absolutely play at that game. She moved her lips to his jaw, savoring the contented sigh it elicited from him and moving lower to where his pulse beat hard through his carotid artery. “Brienne,” he breathed, his blunt fingernails dragging intriguingly along her sides, “I--”
He was rudely interrupted as a shrill, persistent, and entirely unwelcome beeping filled the room.
“No,” he declared, pulling her back down to him before she could get up and locking his arms around her. But no amount of kissing-- as talented as he was in that regard-- would change the fact that her timer was going off.
“Jaime, I have to get back and deal with my gel,” she protested into his hair.
He groaned petulantly, not letting go. “I wanted to celebrate your brilliant performance at department seminar. You were so good.”
She could not let herself get sidetracked by her unexpectedly positive reaction to that last bit. “At least let me turn off the alarm!”
“No,” he huffed, squeezing his arms tighter around her waist.
She loved him, but he did at times resemble an overgrown toddler. It’s not like she wanted to leave, but duty called. Time for the big guns. “You wouldn’t want to ruin my experiment, would you?”
His arms flopped to his sides in surrender to her superior logic and she extricated herself gracelessly from the couch. He scrubbed his hands across his face to muffle his aggravated growl as she tucked her only-slightly-rumpled shirt back into her jeans. When he met her eyes again, it was with resignation.
Gods help her the man could pull off puppy-dog eyes.
“I’m sorry, but you know how it is. Science can be a cruel mistress.”
He sat up then, adjusting his trousers with a defeated grumble. “Science,” he declared, “can be a godsdamned cockblock.”
“I’ll be done with this experiment by six-- If you want I can meet you at your apartment after that,” she offered, observing as a smile crawled across his face. She could practically see him generating and filing away all sorts of ideas for ways to make use of actual privacy and more-or-less-unlimited time. “You can make it up to me then.”
So he did.