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For the first time since she could remember, Brienne turned off her alarm clock and went back to sleep. If she simply refused to show up, that wasn’t exactly lying about being sick. She comforted herself with the thought as she drifted back into restless oblivion.
She woke several hours later to the sensation of the bed dipping. She rolled unconsciously down the bare incline, and when she hit a solid form, she blinked awake.
“Sweetheart,” her dad spoke hesitantly, reaching up to brush a matted clump of hair from her forehead, as though he might find a fever. “You can’t skip school.”
She made a sound between a grunt and a groan, turning her head to half-bury her nose in the pillow.
There was a pep rally that afternoon, and everyone on prom court was making speeches. Brienne’s desire to support Margaery and that gentle tugging on her gut whenever she thought of Jaime were quickly overruled by the thought of other candidates and less pleasant wrenches of her stomach.
Her dad tried again, using that too-soothing tone that said he really didn’t know how to handle her. It was the voice she heard when girls laughed at her or adults made unthinking comments. It was his default whenever Ms. Roelle used to tell her to suck it up and stop expecting to grow pretty.
And she heard it with boys. Always with boys.
“Whatever Renly did, I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”
The moisture fled from her eyes, like they wanted to well up and needed to overcompensate.
“That’s the problem,” she mumbled.
He looked confused and concerned, but she didn’t want to talk about it, and she knew he wouldn’t ask. She’d barely told him enough last night for him to piece together it was about Renly.
“You have practice today,” he tried again after a moment. “You haven’t missed practice since you joined the team.”
Brienne couldn’t miss practice. Practice was her haven, her safe zone after the war of each school day.
Loras would be at practice.
“Yeah, I guess,” the words were muffled by her pillow, and she sighed after them, edging an eye out to peek up at her father.
“And you have other responsibilities,” he continued, encouraged. “Private cotillion practice is today.”
Brienne made an uncomfortable noise, disappeared back into her pillow.
Her dad sighed and stroked her hair.
“I know you and Cersei don’t see eye to eye.” He had picked up on that much, at least. “But she’s taking time out of her schedule to help you learn these things.”
Humanitarian of the year, thought Brienne bleakly.
She sank back into her bedding and resolved not to surface.
Her dad added the kicker.
“Please, Brienne. Try for me.”
She made school in time for 4th period. She hated to admit it, even to herself, but she had dragged her feet to avoid seeing Loras in 3rd. She didn’t know what he knew, or what role he’d played in Renly’s game. He and Renly weren’t even a thing until summer break. But talking to Loras meant talking about Renly, and Brienne couldn’t handle that.
Classes after lunch were canceled for the pep rally. Brienne forced her feet toward the football field. When she made it to the bleachers, she hovered beside them instead of climbing the endless metal stairs. She made herself show up, but she wasn’t sure she could make herself stay.
She caught sight of Sansa waiting for her friends and thought about joining her.
Sansa Stark, it turned out, was a pretty decent girl to know. She was sweet, intelligent, and—once Brienne convinced her to give up the makeup thing—pretty good at listening. Whenever Brienne got fed up with talk of which cheerleader was trying to score which prom date, Sansa just rolled her eyes and shut her mouth.
She caught Sansa’s eye completely by accident, and worked up the courage to smile widely at her.
‘Hey’ she mouthed, as a few freshman cheerleaders caught Sansa’s orbit.
Sansa worked up a small, guilty grin, wiggling her fingers at Brienne behind her slim waist.
Brienne’s refused to let the smile slide from her face, but it took some effort. She gripped her book bag tight and anchored herself to a metal support beam.
She stayed for Margaery’s speech. The pretty Tyrell girl was charming, clever, capable, and it showed. She sat back down between Jane and Cersei, flashing Brienne a smile as she settled in. An odd wave of emotions swallowed Brienne, affection and distrust and an image of Margaery’s brother.
She told herself to stop being ridiculous. She and Loras knew each other from hockey before Renly ever made them hang out. And her friendship with Margaery had nothing to do with either guy.
But Brienne was finding it kind of hard to trust anyone right then.
Jaime was coming up, but Cersei was first and so was Renly, and Brienne couldn’t stay.
She pushed her way through the crowd of students socializing on the sidelines, and did homework in the nurse’s office until the final bell rang. She tried not to think about the rest of her evening as she snagged her hockey bag and beat the crowds to the sophomore lot.
Jaime wasn’t at practice. She wondered if he was avoiding her after yesterday.
She made it through drills by gritting her teeth and focusing on the puck. The vice grip in her chest eased as she skated, and she couldn’t help but think about that other part of yesterday, when she and Jaime had danced in their hockey skates like life was some rom com and her name had made the credits.
Loras tried to catch her after practice, but she ducked into the locker room and pretended not to see him. Arya muttered something disparaging about high schoolers, but she played lookout without argument. By the time Brienne pulled around the parking circle at the Lannisters’, she was nervous enough to have willfully forgotten guys who may or may not have spent half the year lying to her.
The house she approached was like nothing in the real world. She’d been to Renly’s, to Sansa’s, even to the Tyrells’ once. They were all variations on her own house, larger and cleaner, but not fundamentally different.
She would barely be exaggerating if she called Jaime’s house a castle. It was three stories high with Corinthian columns out front, and when she rang the doorbell, a woman in a housekeeper’s uniform let her in.
Cersei had scheduled cotillion practice to coincide with the end of hockey. The other two girls were on the uncomfortable end of Cersei’s stare when the maid showed Brienne into the formal living room.
“Punctuality is the mark of a politeness,” Cersei began pointedly, once Brienne had squeezed herself between her comrades on the love seat opposite the blonde.
The girl on her left was not quite pretty and not quite plain, but a thousand times more attractive than Brienne herself. She might have passed unnoticed except for her flaming hair, brighter than any of the Starks’.
The other girl had crooked teeth and braces, but her mousy brown hair fell prettily around her shoulders, and her face was nice enough.
Brienne tried to remember either of their names, and couldn’t.
“Thank you, Cersei,” a voice broke in.
Brienne straightened as Joanna Lannister swept into the room, all strong, handsome jaw line and neatly pressed suit.
“Damn,” muttered the redhead beside Brienne, looking Cersei’s stepmom up and down. Brienne couldn’t tell whether or not she meant it as a compliment.
“Mom,” Cersei said tightly, forcing a smile. “I thought you had a meeting.”
“They can make do without me,” Joanna dismissed. “I’ve left them enough instruction to fill a book. You,” she raised an eyebrow, and Cersei jerked her skirt down her legs, “cannot.”
“We’re rehashing conversational skills,” Cersei said primly, looking at the girls on the couch instead of her stepmom.
“Dancing, too,” piped up the brash redhead on Brienne’s left. “You said I had two left feet.” She nodded at Brienne, smirked, “You said she had three.”
Joanna Lannister settled gracefully into an armchair, creating a triangle with Cersei and the debs on the couch. Without a hint of effort, she commanded the focus of the room.
When she spoke, her voice mixed easy charm and a thread of unyielding strength.
“While my stepdaughter possesses the,” Mrs. Lannister paused, smiled faintly, “determination to teach you ladies, she lacks a certain patience. And cases like yours,” she added, catching the brown haired girl’s coy glance at her stepdaughter, “require an accomplished teacher.”
Brienne bit her lip, tried to scrub the dried sweat from between her fingers.
“My boys are out, we have a safe space,” Mrs. Lannister said, like that would make them suck less. “Cersei may stay if she wishes.”
She did not wish, Brienne could see. But she also couldn’t stand to leave. She scooted her chair nearer to her stepmom and crossed her arms tightly over her chest. Her expression was stuck somewhere between a sulk and a glower.
It didn’t stay that way long. Her eyes sparkled maliciously as Joanna rapid fired small talk at them, and Brienne fumbled talking about even the weather. The only conversation she didn’t botch was the one about her extra curriculars, and despite the spark of interest in Joanna Lannister’s clear green eyes, the other girls looked bored to tears while Brienne mumbled on about hockey.
“Learn to gauge your audience,” Mrs. Lannister instructed when Brienne stuttered to a stop. “Not everyone shares your interests.”
She quickly learned how true that was.
Whereas Brienne was an athlete, Ygritte was an adventurer. Her name reminded Brienne of a Viking warrior woman, and her demeanor did nothing to belie the comparison. Her lack of expertise wasn’t in talking so much as figuring out when not to talk, and what not to talk about.
When Cersei told Brienne, “It’s a wonder Jaime finds it in him to ignore your inanity,” Ygritte told her, plain as day, “You know nothing.”
Brienne didn’t know if her face or Cersei’s were more shocked at the redhead taking up for her, but Mrs. Lannister watched Brienne from the corner of her eye as she chided Ygritte for the rude comment.
The other deb, Jill, was a country girl at heart, and she didn’t want to learn any different. She spent the evening willfully silent, and muttered, “I don’t like to talk fancy,” when pressed.
By the time they moved on to dancing, Brienne felt tired all over.
“We’ll pantomime our partners,” Joanna told them, standing and raising her arms to air as though her husband were there to dance with her. “Cersei’s arrangements have fallen through.”
Cersei’s jaw was so tense it looked like it might crack. Brienne wondered what the girl had planned, and was suddenly, overwhelmingly grateful that her stepmom had stepped in.
“Begin,” instructed the statuesque blonde.
Cersei stayed well clear, and it didn’t take long to figure out that she was the smart one. Ygritte, Brienne, and Jill spent half a waltz knocking into Mrs. Lannister and each other, and when Jaime’s mom announced they would take it in turns, Brienne was smarting from an elbow to the ribs.
This was so much easier with Jaime, Brienne couldn’t stop the thought, or the spots of pink inching past her collar as she remembered how warm he was against the icy air.
“Brienne,” Joanna called.
Brienne looked up, trying to pretend she hadn’t just been daydreaming about the woman’s son.
“It will be easier when you have room to move.”
Joanna Lannister indicated the space between the table and the armchairs, and Brienne shuffled to her feet. The cotillion coach pressed a button on a complicated remote control, and music flooded the room.
Yesterday, Brienne had actually thought she’d gotten this dancing thing down. That was not the case, as the Lannisters’ ornately carved furniture quickly learned.
“Watch your freakish feet!” Cersei snapped from the corner, when Brienne stumbled into a heavy, mahogany table leg and nearly tripped over Cersei’s, too. “This isn’t a hoedown.”
“She wouldn’t live through no hoedown,” Jill muttered, picking at the fringe of her denim skirt.
“Sorry,” Brienne muttered, studying her feet. They seemed overlarge and uncooperative without her skates to glide on. “Sorry,” she repeated to Cersei’s knees.
“Someone move the coffee table,” Joanna ordered, and Ygritte was quick to oblige.
“That’s an antique!” Cersei snapped at her when she started dragging it towards the sofa.
Ygritte scrunched her nose and dropped the corner.
“You drag it, then.”
Cersei made to argue, and Joanna stepped in, so Brienne moved the table herself while Jill tried to disappear into the cushions.
“One more time, Brienne,” Mrs. Lannister urged, sounding almost harried.
Brienne sighed and tried one more time, this time hurting no one but herself. Ygritte went next: she stomped more than Brienne, if less clumsily. Jill danced well enough, but her steps were small and meek, and anytime she raised her eyes to an invisible partner her feet stopped moving. She kept glancing at the stereo, scrunching her nose at the classical concerto and grumbling, “It ain’t right.”
Thirty minutes later the girls were lined up on the couch again, facing down the two most poised blondes in West Eros. One face showed clear exasperation, the other amused distain.
Brienne imagined this was what detention felt like.
“I think,” Joanna mused deliberately, “that each of you girls would benefit from a partner.”
Brienne’s heart kicked into motion; its rhythm matched her feet, heavy and clumsy.
Please not Kyle, she thought desperately, too cowardly to check how gleeful Cersei’s face had become. Had she managed to get their partners here after all? Not Kyle, she prayed.
And not Renly.
She wouldn’t put it past Cersei.
“Jaime,” Joanna barely raised her voice, but Brienne felt her heart catch as Jaime slunk into the room. He was dressed for the gym: sneakers, taped knees, red and gray Under Armor. His sports bag was slung over one shoulder, but he seemed in no rush.
Brienne became deliberately absorbed with an ink stain on the thigh of her jeans. She didn’t want to see whether Jaime would try and catch her eye.
“Dad’ll flip if I miss my trainer,” Jaime said, before his mom so much as requested a moment. Clearly, he’d been listening from the hall.
“Your father has no business dictating how I run my cotillion practices,” Joanna replied.
Brienne didn’t miss the warning look she sent towards her stepdaughter. She wondered what it meant, and why it made Cersei grind her teeth.
Jaime gave his mom a pointed look.
“I’ll notify the trainer.”
Her tone brooked no argument, and Jaime offered none. He slid his bag onto the floor, kicked it to a corner of the room and smiled coolly at his mom’s remedial cotillion class.
Brienne took a deep breath, looked up, and met his eye.
His smile softened. Brienne didn’t know what to do with that.
“Brienne.”
The girl started when Mrs. Lannister called her name. She shifted her focus, trying not to look guilty.
“Mrs. Lannister?”
There was archness in the woman’s expression, and Brienne wondered if this were the first time she’d called her name.
“You’ll begin.”
“Worst first,” Ygritte quipped as Brienne forced herself to stand. The redhead’s eyes twinkled at her, making a game of their shared suffering.
“None of us is more worst than the others,” Jill mumbled, crossing her arms in what might have been support, or might have been offense.
“Said no one who’s met you,” Jaime teased lowly, slipping his cast around Brienne’s waist and tugging her close.
She was glad for that. Grimacing at Jaime let her ignore the weight of his cast on her hipbone, the warm spots of his fingertips on the small of her back. She could feel his bare skin as she moved her fingers to his shoulder. Their bodies didn’t form a cage, as she’d been taught, but rested with a hair’s breadth between them.
Brienne’s eyes inadvertently caught Cersei’s as Jaime twined his left fingers around hers. Her pulse was doing funny things, and she didn’t know which of the siblings had caused it.
She was pretty sure they didn’t need to be this close.
Jaime’s mom started the music. Brienne pressed her eyes closed, listened for the cue, and stepped square onto Jaime’s feet.
“Damn, Brienne,” he grunted. “Watch where you’re going.”
She heard Cersei snicker, felt the other girls’ eyes, felt herself growing hot.
She screwed her eyes more tightly closed.
“Sorry,” she whispered.
She felt Jaime squeeze her hand, and it was so unexpected that she opened her eyes to stare at him.
“Watch,” he insisted, raising his elbows as though there were a hockey stick between them. He let his arms fall back into position, and Brienne took a deep breath.
Watch, she told herself, blocking Cersei from her brain. Watch, she repeated, feeling the muscles in his shoulders tense beneath her hand. Watch his eyes, she remembered, steeling herself and meeting his gaze.
Her palm was large enough to cover half his shoulder blade. When he moved, her body moved with him.
See? his eyes teased as hers widened in surprise.
She smiled at him, not even caring that it was too wide and all crooked teeth.
She had to be imagining the way his expression changed. His pretty green eyes simmered, like heat rising from summer pavement.
Brienne swallowed hard, and her heart stopped behaving. It thudded out of control against Jaime’s chest, and she didn’t have to see his smirk to know he could feel it.
But against all odds, her feet were doing what they were supposed to.
It was nothing like yesterday, when Brienne felt safe and reasonably in control. Today she was hanging onto Jaime like letting him go would let every frown and snort and incredulous stare from the girls around her come rushing in.
Jaime was flexing his jaw like he had a million things he wanted to say, and had resolved to say none of them.
Brienne couldn’t think of something to say if she’d had a week to come up with it.
When the music stopped, Jaime dropped their hands between them and didn’t let go.
“Well there’s a remarkable improvement,” Joanna commended, looking not at all surprised as Brienne disentangled her fingers from Jaime’s. “Who’s next?”
Jill and Ygritte exchanged glances, both clearly against vacating the couch. Ygritte raised a challenging brow at Jill, while Cersei scoffed from across the room.
“No wonder she’s screwing up at practice,” Cersei said deliberately. “She’s had a thing for Kyle Hunt since Renly went gay on her. Poor thing can’t keep from falling. All. Over him.”
The girls’ silent argument stopped abruptly, and Jaime half-turned to face his stepsister. His cast was still pressed against Brienne’s waist, and she could feel his fingers digging into her skin through the fabric of her t-shirt.
“Cersei,” her stepmom warned levelly, but Cersei stood in a sweeping, regal motion, sauntering forward to face her stepbrother.
“You know he was her first kiss, right?” she smiled sweetly, and Jaime’s arm dropped from Brienne’s waist, twisting the fabric of her shirt as he reclaimed his cast.
“Cersei,” her stepmom warned again, and the steel was clear in her tone.
Cersei turned her head towards Brienne, her body still inclined towards Jaime. Her eyes were alight with intention.
“Do you know,” she murmured, so low that only the three of them could hear, “who his first kiss was?”
And all Brienne could see was Cersei’s hair dangling off the edge of the locker room bench, the rest of her obscured beneath Jaime and his hockey jersey.
“Sorry, mom,” Jaime grunted, grabbing his bag from the corner and swinging the strap over his head. “Dad’ll go ballistic if I miss another session.”
His mother pressed her lips and let him leave.
“I thought she wasn’t good?” Jill chewed her lip and looked at Brienne. She sounded confused.
Cersei barely let Jaime clear the room before she scoffed, “Of course she’s good for Jaime. She’s half in love with him.”
Ygritte snorted at her, and Cersei shot her a hard look.
“She admitted as much.”
Brienne couldn’t deny it, though she wanted to more than she wanted air.
“Kyle,” the cheerleader added, voice dripping with implication, “Will be so jealous.”
Brienne’s stomach rolled, and her skin pricked all over as she thought of Kyle: his lips, and his tongue, and his hand tight on her arm. His stupid camcorder she smashed on the ground.
She felt his fingers invading the skin under her shirt, and she saw Jaime kissing Cersei behind her eyelids, and she felt kind of like she might sick up on the expensive oriental rug.
“Can I go?” she asked faintly, not looking Jaime’s mom in the face.
She saw Mrs. Lannister purse her lips from the corner of her eye, and for a brief, panicked moment, Brienne thought she might say ‘no.’ But then the blonde woman nodded, and Brienne darted into the hall to grab her stuff. Joanna’s eyes followed her as she hefted her hockey bag onto her shoulder, and Brienne clutched it closer, trying not to wonder what that meant.