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Brienne wasn’t entirely sure how she’d ended up underneath Jaime on the plush red couch in his family’s entertainment room. There had been teasing, and talking, and trailing Jaime home under the promise of video games. But the consoles lay forgotten on the floor, and the flatscreen had been flashing a game over message for far longer than it had lit up their furious melee.
They were fighting a new kind of battle: a battle of wills, of hands, of fears and desires and mouths. Jaime was toeing a line, and Brienne nudged tentatively back, and somehow it seemed they had melded, meeting newness and nerves as one.
Her edges sizzled; her muscles jolted freely; her whole body ached and stretched, cocooned in the stifling air between the pillows and Jaime’s increasingly familiar form. She wasn’t sure exactly who would emerge into the glaring light of the LCD, but it was no girl Brienne had ever known. It was a girl who had been kissed, caressed, with no laughing peers in sight.
Jaime eased the insistent rhythm of his mouth, trailed the perfectly functional fingers of his broken arm from her inner elbow to her wrist, then leapt the distance to grasp her hip. The supple press of his hand was a strange contrast to the unyielding roughness of his cast, but not an unpleasant one.
His mouth retreated, hovered, a thrill of promise instead of pressure. His hands stole away again, bored or inquisitive, while he breathed heavy against Brienne’s lips, pausing their skirmish for her to recover scattered wits and weapons. Her senses were on overload, churning above and below and within each cell of her skin, and she couldn’t seem to shake the heady film that had seeped into the crevices of her brain and taken root.
The blonde ground her teeth, forcing tension up her jaw, climbing like ivy to her crumbling foundation. The press of bone felt uncomfortable, not implacable; out of place amidst the hazy edges of her world. The tattered air in her throat beat furiously against the wall of her teeth, desperate to dance free; she let it escape in a hot burst under Jaime’s left ear that coaxed a heavy sigh of his own.
“Should have known you’d get stubborn about this, too.”
Brienne forced her thoughts open with her eyes. Her stark brows dug white ditches in her color-worn face.
“What?”
The unfathomable weight of him above her made focusing difficult, but the embers in Jaime’s eyes brought clarity to hers. Her body captured the slow burn, reflected it back to him a million times over. She smothered the inferno, refusing to let him see how entirely he’d frazzled her.
Jaime pushed up from her, all languid grace and tousled sunlight. His body penned her in, elbow and cast and thigh, and her breath caught, trapped in the sticky conversation between his body and hers.
“Match; master; raise the stakes. Leave no challenge unmet,” he grinned as if she knew what he was talking about. His mouth smudged red and gold, hopelessly distracting; an Impressionist painting she couldn’t resolve, but could happily whittle away hours studying.
He might have been joking about her furious attempts to keep afloat under the deluge of his everything. But he might just as easily have been admitting that he’d kissed her all those minutes and blushes and lifetimes ago because her Bitterbridge avatar had gotten a Morningstar.
“Never mind.”
She frowned, opened her mouth to argue.
“Just keep being you,” Jaime murmured, each syllable bringing his mouth a millimeter closer to hers.
He kissed her again, slow and soothing. The kind of kiss she imagined people reserved for Sunday mornings, lounging on sun-dusted bedclothes while the world held its breath.
She was inexplicably grateful for Sansa’s choice of shirts. The freckles that had felt exposed this afternoon were now a roadmap for Jaime’s curiosity; her bare shoulders enjoyed the contrast between the briskly regulated house and the muggy creases in Jaime’s hands. The stinging jolts of fear borne by his fingertips were wearing off, fading away, replaced by something indefinable and all encompassing.
Brienne reveled in his touch, flexing her shoulders, inching her long legs up alongside him, testing him and her and this frightful, breathtaking novelty. She felt peace and disquiet lace fingers in the sinew of her muscles, sharing space like that old church icon of lion and lamb.
His hipbones tickled her jeans, and her breathing turned shallow against Jaime’s mouth. He pulled back; pressed hastily forward when her lungs collapsed with an audible hitch. Her thighs were on either side of his and she squeezed, trapping his hips between her.
Jaime groaned into her mouth, and her muscles went slack. She’d have bit her lip to temper her misgivings, but Jaime was already doing that, pressing teeth and tongue against the plump skin of her mouth. It made her go hot all over, made her muscles clench through no power of her own, and then Jaime’s face was burrowed in the hair at her neck and Brienne was expelling short little bursts of apprehension into the air above his shoulder.
Jaime lifted his hips, fighting the strength of her knees, until she felt cool, cautionary atmosphere shiver between them.
“Watch it,” he growled into the staleness where parched hair met sweaty flesh. His mouth buried so tightly against her skin that its thrumming motion seemed her own.
Brienne dropped her legs entirely, digging deep down the over-fluffed cushions, hoping the fabric would swallow her whole. Her head drove backwards into the couch, and the air cleared of several kinds of heat.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” he rolled his eyes at her, halfhearted, his breathing ragged. “Be careful.”
His eyes flickered down and away, and Brienne understood then. Her heart tripped over her thoughts, and her whole body tensed, and her head fell to the side, staring into the nearly invisible texture of the sofa.
They lay silent, stagnant, recovering from the debilitating vestiges of fear and lust, swirling around those parts of the body that hoarded each sin. The world cooled and resolved and returned to almost normal, all but the warm pressure of Jaime’s calves between hers, his forearms cradling her shoulders.
“I – “ her voice cracked, breath rebounding off the cushion and slapping her hot face, “– I didn’t mean to . . .”
“Make me horny?” he laughed, a shuddering rumble tinged with genuine amusement. “That’s kind of what this does.”
What did you think? she asked herself, feeling stupid, That kissing was all cotton candy clouds and chaste lips?
She hadn’t, really. She hadn’t thought about it much at all.
“Sorry,” she said again.
Jaime relaxed, and she flinched for no good reason as his body eased against her. It was the same as it had always been, firm and lean and decidedly flat.
“I should go home,” she said, melting back into the cushions as Jaime’s heat simmered above her.
“Or not,” he countered, the vibrations ghosting along her neck as his nose nudged the wide underside of her jaw.
“But – “ she objected, losing her words when Jaime’s lips scraped along the wide expanse of her throat.
She almost grabbed at him when he pulled himself up and off her, sitting back on his socks between her ankles.
“How about round two?”
She might have imagined the throb of his Adam’s apple as he tilted his head toward the console.
“You know I would have won if you hadn’t cheated and kissed me.”
Brienne hauled herself up, and her knees drew into sharp Vs around him.
“You kissed me,” she protested hotly, glowering into the wordless amusement sweeping across his eyes and mouth and cheekbones.
Jaime shrugged as if to say, ‘that’s neither here nor there.’
On instinct, the broad hockey player lunged, not quite sure what her fisting hands would do to him when they got within striking range. His shoulders rebounded off the forgiving arm of the couch, and then he was sliding down under her belligerent kiss, and her frown was blending into his smile, and Brienne wasn’t sure who had won that round.
She captured his face, jaw firm between her palms. He could surely feel the rush under her wrists, but she refused to let the torrent overpower her. This kiss was hers. She overcame her erratic nerves with a fixed pressure that fought her inexperience as determinedly as it pushed against Jaime’s mouth. She kept her lips closed, steady, unwilling to chance moving them against his.
His hands captured her hips, curving so subtly from her waist that his hold was tenuous at best. He made it a vice grip, and Brienne drove deeper into him, combating her lack of subtlety and skill with willpower alone. She felt him, then, firming and rising, pressing inexorably against her.
Her face flamed, and the rest of her body, too, and her panic flared to push her up and off him. But Jaime pressed unceremoniously into the cushions, burying his hips deep, and Brienne felt guilty for her impulse. She fumbled to her knees, not touching him, until the grimace left his face and his eyes flickered to meet hers.
She took a deep, unsteady breath, and met the question in his eyes. Leaned down, past the tightness in her chest, and made herself kiss him.
“Sorry,” he muttered against her mouth.
The press of her lips was slow, short, and she lingered above him between each brush of fevered skin.
“S’okay,” Brienne didn’t know what else to say.
The hardness of him brushed her thigh, not quite under control, and Jaime jerked sideways. Even as her shaking hands flattened on his chest, holding the distance between them, Brienne’s hips drifted after him, jolting down and back with the electric shock of a yearning she couldn’t fathom.
She yanked herself up, hovering on knees and palms, letting gravity tug her into the embrace of the cushion at her hip. Her heart was cantering the length of her body, rearing heavy hoof beats in her head, galloping circles in her abdomen, doing who knew what on it’s path between her hipbones. She wanted a hockey stick, a tackle dummy, helmet, pads, and guards, anything so she could beat back the feral sensation coursing through her.
Jaime shoved up with elbows and shoulders, chasing her, kissing her. Her toes curled into the cushions, and Brienne sunk down beside him, caught in the crease between the couch and his body. Her knees unfurled, pushing the pads of her feet down the slow length of fabric until they caught the edge of a cushion and sank beneath it.
Jaime moved with her, meeting her slow softness with his own. He kissed her with a reverence that made her ache and doubt, and it was no one’s fault but Brienne’s when she let him pull her back on top of him. His fingers reached up to tangle her knotted hair, his thumb moving an unconscious, feather-light rhythm along her nape. His cast rested so easily on the small of her back that she thought it must be made for the shallow crevice that dipped into existence as she arched up to meet him.
“Losing it on prom night. How cliché.”
The words were a douse of cold water, and Brienne surfaced spluttering.
The look on Cersei’s face was no less scathing than her tone. It cut deeper with the easy swell of her hip, cocked scornfully at the pair tangled in the couch and each other.
Brienne felt their carefully cultivated evening come crashing down around her, little rushes of sweetness tumbling off the couch to dribble onto the floor.
“Tell her how you like it when a girl flips you.”
Cersei’s gaze flickered past Brienne, scanning Jaime’s body under his teammate’s. She couldn’t have feigned the heat that flared in her emerald eyes. It ate through Jaime’s clothes and consumed the girl tethered above him.
Brienne was suddenly rocketed to that last night of her freshman season, when she’d walked into the locker room and her high at making first string had come crashing down, tangling with forgotten shirts on the dirty linoleum. Jaime hadn’t seen her, but Cersei had drummed frantic fists into the hard planes of his back, and when he’d met Brienne’s frightened stare, she’d seen all his liquid green fire scatter and go up in smoke.
Her breath snarled in the glistening silk that flowed like blood around Cersei’s ankles, and Brienne’s resolve cracked and broke under those wickedly sharp heels.
The jock’s muscles jumped, frantic to pull her up and out the door, but Jaime had anticipated her. His left hand was gone from her hair, twining in the shirt above her belly. More effectual was his cast binding her waist, half-healed strength in every rigid wrap of plaster. She couldn’t pull away without hurting his arm.
But she didn’t have to look at them. She tucked her chin left against his shoulder, eyes hard on the crimson cushion. Her breath lurched away, slick and too-fast, slipping further from her grasp each time she tried to stifle it.
Cersei laughed, but it wasn’t gleeful at all.
“Has my brother won the bet? You’re a year late, idiot, but I could still give you your prize,” her voice dripped with derision and promise, a deep-set bitterness she tried to mask.
The words whipped and scratched, lobbing debris at Brienne’s back. She’d thought these storm-winds long-since behind her, only to realize again and again that she’d stumbled into the eye of the hurricane instead of away from it.
“If that’s your definition of prize, I’d rather stick with the game.”
Brienne felt his muscles tighten around her, belying the easy comeback. She could feel the green ice of Cersei’s eyes, too; they were chipping divots into her shoulder blades.
“She likes games. Ask anyone. Renly. Kyle. Ron.”
Each name punched heavy, landing on the edge of hipbone and shoulder blade and ribcage, lodging and ripping away bits of her self-confidence. She watched them fleck off, sinking into the bloody cushions of the Lannister’s entertainment room.
“Vile Kyle and Red Ron.”
Brienne could practically feel Jaime’s hard smile; it slashed fluidly through the roar in her ears.
“Don’t think they’re talking much these days.”
“They might find it favorable to start again.”
The words seemed a petty, grasping smack, but Jaime’s left hand snaked from beneath her, and for all that she was wider than him, his body curled instinctively around her frame. His teeth ground in Brienne’s ear.
“Getting desperate, are you?” he snapped.
The sharpness pulled Brienne’s head up and around. She couldn’t quite grasp the promises in Cersei’s eyes, but that green gaze clashed with Jaime’s, and to him they spoke clearer than words. His shoulders clenched, as if he were suppressing the urge to roll Brienne beneath him.
Brienne braced herself and met Ceresi’s eyes, and the pretty girl’s gaze faltered and flared.
“I’m not the one being crushed by Kyle’s sloppy seconds.”
The words tripped from an angry throat, and the blow weakened to a sting high on Brienne’s cheek. She blinked and winced and it was gone, spinning after Cersei’s urge to fight. The cheerleader turned on her glittering gold heels, stalking towards the stairs as if they had given her personal offense and she intended to beat them into submission. Her hair glinted in the diluted light of the chandelier, and Brienne realized with a start that there was no sparkle of silver woven through the gold.
Jaime noticed just as she did.
“Where’s your crown?” he called after his stepsister, taunting.
Cersei twisted, dress writhing like a living creature, spitting and clawing the air. Her emerald eyes were huge and wretched.
“On Margaery fucking Tyrell’s fugly brunette head,” she spat. Her dress leapt at the banister as she stormed up the stairs, and the viciousness with which she ripped it free was terrifying.
The crash of her bedroom door echoed through hallways and stairways, slamming a wall between Cersei’s dying threats and Brienne’s staunch defenses. The air snapped back to reality and her muscles collapsed like jelly, overworked and aching, unsure how to behave against the sudden lack of tautness.
Jaime’s cast dug hard against her back. He wasn’t looking at her, wasn’t looking at anything but the ceiling, boring holes through plaster and pipes and floorboards.
Brienne found her lungs in the harsh air Jaime expelled, felt purpose trickle back to her limbs as he lay unmoving beneath her. She opened her mouth but her throat was dry, tight against everything she couldn’t say, didn’t know how.
Frowning, she chewed her lip. It felt swollen, still warm. She never knew her lip could pulse, but rhythmic, throbbing heartbeats crashed against her formidable teeth, compelling her to speak.
“I should go,” Brienne cleared her throat, shifting up onto unsteady knees between Jaime’s legs. “Congratulate Margaery,” she added lamely, watching her fingers pick a spot on the thigh of her new jeans.
Jaime shifted under her. His hair was mussed, pupils still blown, and he had to fight the hard lines from his mouth.
“You can’t be serious,” he pushed up on his elbows, and he and Brienne were nearly flush again. It felt different than it had, all those endless moments ago. “You’re not actually feeling sorry for her, are you?”
“No.”
Cersei deserved to win prom queen about as much as Victor Hoat deserved a Nobel Peace Prize. There was no question that she’d soured Margaery’s triumph, dragged her hard-won tiara through the mud and left with a cutting remark that would wriggle into her friend’s title and eat bitter holes beneath the surface.
But Brienne knew that stage, the harsh lights, the eyes insinuating and judging and mocking. She pictured the polite stares, vivid in her every failure, that said, “I’m so sorry” and “you deserved it” in the same wide lashes.
She thought of Cersei’s face, bitter and cruel and crushed.
Her teeth rent low furrows into the skin below her mouth.
“Fuck, you’re crazy,” Jaime mumbled.
He shook out his hair and swung his legs around. Brienne untangled hers before he levered her off the couch and flat onto the expansive oriental rug.
She took her time righting herself, unaccountably annoyed that Jaime made no move to untangle his hair or straighten his twisted shirt. Her blouse was askew, the layers of mesh prodded and coaxed apart until they were barely functioning pieces of a whole. Her shoes had kicked off more easily than she was used to. It made finding them difficult; she wasn’t sure just where she had placed them. She searched with her toes, avoiding the sight of anything beyond the freckles on her own sweaty feet.
“Brienne.”
The sound of her name twined a ribbon of heat around her, dread and comfort and a familiar rush of red, pushing past her collar and chin and cheeks to the roots of her stiff, abused hair.
She swallowed hard as her feet swept the unforgiving bristles of the endless rug.
“Brienne,” he repeated, more softly this time. Urging her to glance up, to see the aggravation and understanding and petrifying mess of feelings written across his face.
“Jaime.”
His name was steady on her tongue, steady as her toes as they curled around the back of her shoes to drag them closer. She shoved her feet into the squeaky leather, dug her toes hard into the ends. Her gaze landed on her knees; the spot she’d snagged with her fingernail was beginning to fray. She could see the chaotic jumble of thread beginning to spill from the hole she’d torn.
“Don’t go all standoffish on me.”
The order made her balk, and her eyes leapt to meet his. She pressed her back firmly into the couch, and her mouth mimicked its rigid line.
“Don’t order me around.”
“Fuck,” he muttered, ripping a frustrated hand through messy hair. “You’re picking the wrong stubborn.”
But it was all too much: Cersei and cotillion and the student population of West Eros High; Renly and Jaime and Kyle; kissing her teammate, kissing her friend, kissing the hockey all-star whose prospects were suddenly and hopelessly dashed by one cruel competitor. She wondered if it were too late to go back to middle school.
Jaime drove her home in silence.
“I’ll call you,” he said as she fumbled her keys in the door.
“Don’t,” she whispered. She wondered if he heard the pleading in her tone.
He opened his mouth as if to argue, snapped it closed and glared at her.
Brienne finally made her house key behave, and she twisted the door open and left it that way, an easy escape.
“Thank you,” she gave her words a strength she didn’t feel, looked up and met his flashing green eyes. She tried to pour everything she was thinking into them, a lifetime of feelings that left her adrift. The words clung stubbornly to her lips, refused the canvas of her face. “It was a good date.”
He seemed to struggle with what to say, finally settled on, “A very good date.”
The gauntlet lay unmistakable at her feet. A part of her wanted nothing more than to rise to the challenge.
“Goodnight,” she mumbled, unaccountably breathless, and darted into the house before Jaime could protest, or she could.
It was a long time before Brienne heard his car pull away, but she felt his phantom touch long after he was gone.