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She was lingering in that gorgeous place where no alarm clock is admitted, a twilight zone where dreams dance and spin with reality.
And Brienne's reality was sweet.
Contented, she grunted in sleep, her mind registering the sound made by the toilet flush and the shushed trailing of Mr Prostate's handmade Italian slippers on their bedroom's parquet floor. How he was vain - he had always been, and she loved it. She loved anything about him, even his being totally and irremediably fucked up about all was sensed and simple, and regretted that menopause made her lose her temper quite often, of late.
As Jaime climbed again into their bed stealing room from Ned, the stray gray cat that had adopted them, Brienne nested against her husband, claiming a place for her cheek on his shoulders, in silent apology for the tantrum she'd given him after dinner. “I heard a noise and went checking, wench.” Feeling his arms closing around her to pull her even closer was a delight. “Did I wake you up?”
“Nay. Ned woke me,” she lied, and, ignoring the innocent cat that had started meowing for breakfast, closed her eyes again.
It was as if just married. Her and him, and the comfy warmth given by the crimson duvet - if it weren't for the cat tugging at her side and her damn neck. She felt its muscles stiff but resisted. Brienne Tarth Lannister wasn't an easy-yielding woman, and cervical pain was nothing compared to what she had been through when just a teen. She was about to drift off, when Jaime moved, lightly, almost imperceptibly.
She suppressed a sigh. “Pins?”
“And needles,” Jaime admitted, reluctantly, after a while.
Resigned, Brienne lifted her head from his shoulder and rolled again on her side of the bed. The sheet had grown cold, there. “Sorry, wench. I can hardly feel my right hand, right now,” her husband murmured, stretching his arm under the duvet and making the cat jump off it. She stretched, too, to warm herself, since her old bones always craved for warmth, summer or winter having become quite the same to her and she treasured her fleece pajamas in any season, finding it hard to recall when they had stopped sleeping naked. But she recalled far too well what they used to do, naked, in the bed, and flushed, unseen, in the pleasantly dark room.
Jaime was still fighting against the numbness, shaking his fingers too vigorously, anyway. “Don't fret. Be kinder with yourself,” she warned him, and the silver-haired scum shook them even harder. How the hell did he manage to convince her to wed a fucking Lannister?
“Stop frowning, wench. And it was you asking me out the first time, by the way.”
Her frown deepened. “How do you... Oh, damn it, Jaime, that wasn't a date.”
He set his green eyes on her, melodramatically dropping his hand on the duvet. “I'd prefer not being reminded of the time the mother of my children considered me a scum.”
“I still consider you a scum, ol' man.”
“Indeed.” He pretended to be vexed. Then he smiled, a flash of white in the dawn light, shyly sneaking through the tiny roller shutter's holes. “I'm not old.”
She smiled him back, and reached out for his leg, with one of her calloused feet. “I am. And since I'm younger than you, you're decrepit, like it or not.”
Jaime snorted, his beautiful lines deepening. Then his eyes glinted, ruefully. “Wanna see how old I feel, wench?”
She was tempted. “Tomorrow. Today my neck and back ache more than usual.”
Brienne could sense his disappointment, and his relief, in the grumpy but soft way he curled on one side to look at her in the eye. “You should listen to the doctor and get some cortisone, for a while. For a brief while. Seriously, my lady. I know Tarths enjoy a bit of avoidable suffering from time to time, but don't be too stubborn about it. Please.”
For stupid it was, she couldn't say no when he called her my lady. When he purred the word please like that. “I'll think about it.”
He laughed, lion-like. Majestically. Beautifully. And won her.
Then he rolled away. “My back, too, ache today.” He stared at the ceiling, as a kid stares at the clouds in spring. “When did we get that old, Brienne?”
“Mmmh,” she mumbled, and, slowly, braced on one elbow to lean on Jaime, and get a taste of the amazement his last words had been frosted with. She lingered in the kiss. It felt good, like precious Modica chocolate. “Someday in between the day I beat you and the day our kid's kid went to college, I presume.”
He scoffed, but she could tell he was grinning wildly, even in the scarce light. “You never beat me. Tie and draw, it was.”
“If you say so,” she said and shrugged, as she got seated on the bed, hurrying to grasp the peignoir in soft pink-dotted minky cloth their eldest had gifted her for last name day, which was a good shield against the evil drafts. “Well. No way I can sleep more. Coffee?”
He groaned a yes. She stood, with the due calm, because at a certain age feet and legs go itchy and don't talk to each other, and Ned came to brush and push on her shins, his red tail tall and bold, all slights forgotten.
“Brienne,” a muffled voice called her. “You know what?” She stopped looking for the old blue slipper that diabolical cat had brought who knew where in his night hunt. “I love you. I do. So very much.”
She couldn't help but giggle like the first time Jaime had got her drunk with champagne and finally found the missing slipper. “I do, too.” As she walked towards the door, she passed her fingers on the coverlet, and as she came to the shapeless hill made by Jaime's feet, she squeezed one of them. “But you're not getting sugar in your coffee, nonetheless. Sugar isn't suitable, at our age,” Brienne concluded, sending him a kiss from the threshold to kill on the spot any of his proverbial rants, and left for the kitchen, soft, soundlessly, with Ned rushing at her side on his velvety paws, for the young students living downstairs had just finished an exam session and it would be a crime to wake them up so early in the morning.