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She can’t sleep.
Brienne has known this for a couple of hours now, but she hadn’t wanted to admit it. She hadn’t wanted to until she’d thrown all she could at the problem. A glass of wine that she downed a bit too quickly, which only made her feel uncomfortably warm and a little bit wired. Thirteen pages of a novel she’s been meaning to read for about three years, of which she’d absorbed about three and a half paragraphs. Seven minutes of something approaching meditation, that culminated in mentally fighting off some embarrassing memory from a decade ago. Then, one hour and fifteen minutes of cycling through about five different social media apps, none of which she even uses very frequently, in hopes that this would tire her out enough that she’d just drift off in the middle of her twentieth cat video.
Okay, so she hadn’t dealt with the problem healthily. But her phone was just there, on the nightstand to the left of her, and to the right of her—
It couldn’t possibly help, could it? Having someone in bed with her? She’d slept alone all her life up until less than two years ago, and it had been so difficult to get used to sharing, at the start. She’d had some less-than-peaceful nights, because someone was in bed with her, and she’s not referring to the times when she was willing to forego rest for certain other activities. But, well, she’s running out of ideas tonight, and she really wants sleep. Damn that cup of black tea that she’d had after dinner. Damn her naïveté for thinking it would be entirely harmless.
Anyway, Jaime really should be coming to bed soon, considering it’s almost two in the morning. She’ll drag him from the study into the bedroom if she has to. Gods, why did she agree to marry him again? Didn’t she tell him she’d only do that if he’d quit his job, which he hasn’t done? Sure, he’d cut back on his hours, mostly, and when he works late, he does so from home now. That isn’t quitting his job, though. Not that she’d really meant to issue the ultimatum in the first place, or to hold him to it. But he’d gone on to insinuate she was doing it to avoid the topic of marriage altogether—yes, she’d remembered what he’d said though she was half asleep at the time, and oh, she envies that sleepy Brienne of four months ago—and she wasn’t really avoiding it, was she? She could commit to Jaime. She’d already been living with him for close to a year by then. They were practically married, except… not practically.
Someone opens the door just as she’s about to get out of bed. They do so slowly and quietly, in a way that wouldn’t have woken her up if she’d actually been asleep. Which she isn’t. She can’t sleep. She can admit that now—admit defeat.
“I’m awake,” she confesses to the figure in the darkness.
“Oh,” he whispers. “Did I—”
“Why are you whispering?”
“I don’t—” Jaime clears his throat. “I don’t know,” he replies, at his regular volume, and she can hear the smile in his voice. “Why are you still up?”
“Tea,” she sighs. “On top of the coffee I had in the afternoon.”
He laughs as he walks towards the bathroom. “You’re such a delicate flower when it comes to caffeine.”
“I’m going to ignore the blatant condescension in that statement. And not everyone has an inhuman level of caffeine tolerance built up from years and years of workaholism.”
He switches on the bathroom light right at that moment, so she can see him wince at her comment. “I promise, it’s going to be the last late night for a while.”
“You always say that.”
Brienne hadn’t meant her response to sound so petulant. But it did, and she can’t take it back now. It’s the lack of sleep, she tells herself. The lack of—of self-control. She doesn’t say things like this. She isn’t affected by things like this, not when she’d been on her own for so long before Jaime came along. And she’s dedicated to her job too, she just—sets better boundaries than Jaime, that’s all.
Jaime stares at her for a long while, then disappears into the bathroom. She hadn’t been able to see the expression on his face, backlit by the bathroom light as he was, so she couldn’t tell if what she’d said had upset him. She pulls the duvet over her head in frustration—at herself for allowing those words to spill out in that tone, at Jaime and his inability to disentangle himself from his family, at the fact that she’d agreed to marry him anyway, at how much she wants to be asleep right now. Especially since if she was asleep, she wouldn’t have said those words at all.
She doesn’t remove the duvet from her head when she feels him climb into bed next to her, or when he pulls his side of the duvet over his head too. Beneath the covers, he presses himself against her side, and tucks his chin over her shoulder. He’s wearing pants tonight, thank the Seven; somehow, she doesn’t feel quite so in the mood to be next to a naked Jaime.
“I wanted you with me.” She hadn’t needed to say it, and it comes out petulant too. “I was about to go look for you when you came in.”
“Sex does make you sleepy.”
“Not—for that.” Alright, maybe she had considered it, but she isn’t going to let him know it. “I just wanted someone to… to witness my suffering.”
“And if I’d fallen asleep before you did?”
“An unforgivable betrayal.”
When he chuckles, she can feel the vibrations of it in her own body. Then, abruptly, stillness.
“I was drafting my letter of resignation,” he says.
There is stillness in her too, now. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I mean—I don’t really have a—a game plan for when, and how, but I thought—since you held up your end of the bargain—”
Brienne wriggles out of his arms, and turns to face him, the duvet falling to their shoulders in the process. “Is that all it is?” she asks tentatively. “Holding up your end of the bargain?”
“No.” He winds his arm around her waist. “That’s not all it is.”
“You know that I want you to do it for you too.”
“I know. I’m doing it for me.” Jaime leans in, and kisses her. “‘Me’ just happens to include ‘us’, these days.”
There was a time when a declaration like that—which had slipped so easily from Jaime’s lips—would have made her squirm away from his embrace. He would have laughed it off in the moment, but she would have realised, later, that she might have hurt him. She wouldn’t have known what to say or do to make it better; wouldn’t have known, perhaps, what ‘better’ entailed. Now, though, she only smiles—or tries to, until it turns into a yawn.
“Am I boring you?” he laughs.
“No,” she says, bringing him in close. “You’re doing exactly what I need you to do.”