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Chapter Text

“Brienne. You should eat something. Brienne.”

Brienne of Tarth starts from half-sleep, her heart still beating fast. She had been dreaming in confused snatches. Pod disappearing beneath a pile of the dead. Snow falling on Tarth. The Bloody Mummers returned as wights, mouths frozen open in grins, advancing on her and Jaime as Winterfell burns.

And then Jaime – the real one, not the bloodied man in her dreams – calls her back to the world of the waking. He stands in the doorway to the chamber Brienne and Pod have shared since the Battle of Winterfell, when Pod nearly lost his life defending the walls.

“Sleeping there again?” Jaime says.

“I didn’t mean to.” Brienne rises from her chair and stretches her back, which is stiff from sitting. It’s been three days since the battle, two and a half days since the Stark army’s chief healer bound the gaping wound across Pod’s chest, and mere hours since Pod’s fever broke.

“What was the point of dragging a cot in here if you were only going to sleep in that chair?” Jaime says. He makes it sound like a joke, but Brienne hears the worry in his voice. “They already served supper, and I didn’t see you, so…” He edges into the chamber, out of the dim hallway, and she realizes that he’s carrying a basket. “For you.”

Brienne rubs her eyes and peers out the window. The deep darkness of nighttime in the North has already fallen. Here and there are flickering orange lights: the bonfires where the surviving soldiers are feeding the bodies of the dead to the flames. They have been at it for days now, but the mountains of the dead go on and on. “Gods damn it. I only meant to make sure he was all right. I promised Lady Sansa I would-”

“-supervise the soldiers. I know. It’s all right.” He places the basket on the table. “Ser Davos was happy to take your place.”

“Ser Davos is a good man.” Brienne’s stomach rumbles, and she tears a hunk of bread from the two-day-old loaf in the basket. Most of Winterfell’s bakers fell in battle, and they are making do on little. “And so are you.”

Jaime sketches out a mock bow. “Only the finest stale bread and tasteless jerky for you, Ser Brienne.” He twists open a wineskin and fills Brienne’s cup. “Take that and go somewhere else. Clear your head. I’ll watch him for a time.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

He sighs and rubs his cheek. He hasn’t shaved since before the battle, and he is close enough that she can hear the rasp of fingers on stubble. “Then lie in your bed, at least.”

At any other time, she would have fired back a retort. Sleep while you work? Not bloody likely. But Brienne is exhausted. When she hasn’t been sitting in council with Lady Sansa and Jon Snow, she’s been commanding the Stark forces as they assess the damages. When she hasn’t been with the army, she’s been at Pod’s bedside. Sleep has been next to impossible.

“All right,” she says.

Jaime raises an eyebrow. “This may be the first time you haven’t disagreed with something I said.”

“Even you have sensible ideas on occasion.” Brienne shucks off her outer layers, leaving her shift and thick, woolen leggings. No point in modesty. Pod’s eyes are closed, and Jaime – well. “Besides, I hardly have the energy to eat, much less disagree.”

They are silent for a few minutes as Brienne tucks herself into the cot, then reaches for the basket. She eats ravenously and does not care that each bite scatters crumbs on the sheets.

“He looks well,” says Jaime, only he’s looking at her and not Pod. “He’s like to survive.”

“I don’t know what I’d do if he didn’t,” she says, and she means it. Podrick Payne is the closest she has to a living brother.

“And you? Your leg, it’s-”

“Fine,” she says. When the dead had pulled her down, and she thought they were going to bury her until she choked and became one of them, a wight had sunk its teeth into the meat of her calf. Then she had heard Jaime scream with rage. A second later, he was pulling her to her feet and she was screaming too, in pain and fear and shock at being alive after all. “It would have been far worse if you weren’t there.”

He offers her a tired smile. “If you had told me years ago that a bear would be the least dangerous creature I’d pull off you, I’d have laughed in your face.”

Brienne swallows a mouthful of dry bread. “As I recall, you still laughed in my face plenty.”

He grimaces. “That I did. But after the battle-” He stops, and she knows what he’s thinking of. She had saved him, too, when a wight leapt onto his back and knocked him into the wall. She had lifted the dead man off Jaime’s shoulders, dropped it to the ground, and crushed its skull underneath her boot. “I promise, Ser, I will never laugh at you again.”

Brienne chuckles. “Come, now. That’s a promise you’ll break before nightfall tomorrow.”

“But it is an awfully nice idea, isn’t it?” he says in that smooth, low voice he uses when he is joking. She feels a jolt of something she refuses to name. She always does, when he speaks in that tone.

Now that Brienne is no longer hungry, sleep tugs at her eyelids again. “Wake me after an hour. Or if he cries out. Or if his forehead is too warm. Or if his bandage-”

“I will wake you if there is cause,” Jaime says. “It’s all right. Rest.”

She closes her eyes and listens to his movements: footsteps, followed by a thunk, then a crackle. He’s thrown another log on the fire.

The chamber grows warmer. She sleeps.

Brienne wakes past midnight to a hand stroking her hair. “Ser Jaime?” she says, her voice hoarse.

“You were moaning in your sleep.”

She opens her eyes. The fire has burned low, but her cot is warm: Jaime has tucked in one of the hot bricks that the Northmen use at the feet of their beds. “I told you to wake me after an hour,” she says.

“So you did,” he says. He’s still running his fingers through her hair. She can’t look at him for fear he will stop. “But you clearly need the rest, and besides, I find myself unable to sleep.”

“Mm,” she says, too drowsy to respond with full sentences.

“Is this all right?” he says. “That is, should I…” The stroking slows.

“No. Please. It’s soothing.” She shifts position so he has better access to her head and neck. Is it wrong, she wonders briefly, to feel such pleasure in the scrape of his nails across her scalp?

“Good,” he says, so softly it’s almost a whisper. “I would not touch you unless you wished it.”

This time, when she sleeps, her dreams are pleasant.

They fall into a routine of walking the hills around Winterfell in the hour before the sun goes down.

The earth to the north of the city has been trampled flat by a thousand dead men’s footfalls. The earth to the east and west is scorched black by dragon fire. Only the south still looks as it was. The broad ribbon of the Kingsroad curls over the crest of the horizon.

“How much longer will you stay in the North?” Brienne asks on that first day.

Jaime snorts. “I can hardly go south. If I fall into Cersei’s hands, she’ll kill me.”

“She wouldn’t.”

“She would.”

“She loves you.”

Jaime stops short, eyes suddenly wild. “I abandoned her.”

Brienne takes him by the shoulders. “You risked your life to come here and warn us of her betrayal. You did something brave-”

“She is with child.”

Brienne’s mouth drops open in shock. “Oh,” she says. She can think of nothing else to say. A battery of emotions is tearing at her heart. She pushes them down, deep within herself.

“You think I’m weak,” Jaime says. “You always try to act the stoic, but I can see everything you’re feeling on your face.” He sets his mouth in a hard line and starts to walk again, fast, away from her.

“Jaime,” she says. “Don’t be cruel.”

He relents immediately. “I’m sorry,” he says.

They walk in silence until the sun is almost gone. In the fading light, Brienne can see the gray in Jaime’s hair and the lines in his forehead. Things he didn’t have when they first met, years ago.

“I lay with her again because it was easy,” he says at last, so softly she strains to hear it. “Haven’t you ever done that?”

Brienne pauses. “No,” she says, “but I can understand why someone would.”

“That’s right. I forgot,” he says, turning to look at her. He is smiling, a rueful, pained smile. “You never do anything because it is easy.”

A week later, a raven arrives for Varys in the morning, as the survivors are breaking their fast. Varys reads the message, winces, and passes it to Jaime, who grows white and leaves the room.

Brienne finds him pacing in his chamber. She doesn’t knock. “What is it?” she says.

Jaime doesn’t look at her. “It turns out,” he says, “that there is no child after all.” His voice is hollow.

She sits in one of the chairs by the fireplace, head in her hands. Jaime’s sadness is so vast that it fills the space between them like a cloud. “How did the news reach Varys?”

“One of his little birds helps with the royal household’s laundry. Cersei’s monthly bleeding never stopped, apparently.” He smiles, but there is no mirth in his eyes. “She wanted to entrap me, I suppose. She did a damn fine job of it.”

“I am so sorry,” she says, quietly.

“I saw two of my children die, you know,” he says. His tone is level, as if discussing the weather. “Myrcella died in my arms. And you know what happened to Joffrey. You were there that day.” His hands clench and unclench. “Joffrey was a sadistic little shit, but he was my son.”

“You told me something once.” Jaime’s quiet grief is making her own throat tight, and she has to clear her throat until she can continue. “You said we can’t choose who we love. It’s all right to love them, your children. Even the one who…” She trails off.

“…didn’t exist,” he says. “I loved that one most of all, and do you want to know why?”

Brienne is silent.

“I hoped,” Jaime says. “I hoped this child meant we could start again. However impossible that seems. That Cersei and I could be good.”

She comes to stand beside him. “I have tried to tell you,” she says. “You are already good.” Then she summons up her courage and embraces him. But he doesn’t pull back, as she’d feared. Instead, he leans into her.

Brienne doesn’t know much about comforting, but it feels right that her arms hold him. It feels right that she rubs circles on his back with her palm. And when he weeps into her shoulder, that, too, feels right.

For the next few days, their walks are mostly silent.

One morning, Arya Stark and the Hound are gone. “They took horses in the night,” says Lady Sansa when Brienne asks. “Gone to King’s Landing.”

“Alone?”

“The less noticeable they are, the easier it will be.” Sansa doesn’t say what ‘it’ is. She doesn’t have to. Sansa has told Brienne of Arya’s list, and there is only one name left.

Later, when she and Jaime are walking, he turns abruptly to her. “The Stark girl intends to kill my sister.”

It is a statement, not a question. She nods.

“Gods,” he says. His mouth moves for a moment, but nothing comes out. Whatever else he has to say is so vast, so painful, that he can hardly articulate it. She has seen this look on his face many times before.

Brienne chooses her next words carefully. “I would not hold against you,” she says, “if you ride south.”

He snorts. “Wouldn’t you? I’d be deserting. Again.”

“Love is also an oath,” she says, and she means it, though it almost burns her mouth to say it. “An oath you would be remiss not to keep.”

“I don’t love Cersei,” he snarls. “I owe that woman nothing now.”

Confusion blooms in her, and hope, and pain, too, to see him wrestle with himself like this. “Come,” she says, and sits on the lip of a ravine that runs along the forest path. Above them, the dead leaves that have clung to the oak trees whisper in the wind.

He sits next to her. “Would you really be so cavalier if I left?”

“I already told you, I would understand-”

He looks at her, something wild in his eyes. “Is that all you would feel? Understanding?”

Brienne is silent. This is how they have always been: silent. They look at each other and do not speak, hoping the other understands. They let their swords say what their mouths cannot. And now he is asking –

“You’re asking if I would miss you?” she says.

“Yes! You, Ser Brienne of Tarth, would you feel my absence?”

“Of course I would.” Now her voice is as heated as his.

Jaime holds her gaze for a long moment, his dark green eyes probing her blue ones. “So that is the way of it after all,” he says.

“Yes,” Brienne says, not daring to look away. Her heart is pounding in her chest. She thinks about his fingers in her hair. “That is the way of it.” She shifts, moving a fraction closer to him. “And you?”

He snorts. “If I left, I would think of you while saddling my horse. I would think of you with every passing mile. At night I would make camp, and I would lie on the ground, and I would imagine you there with me. Does that answer your question?” She gapes at him. “I don’t mean any of lustfully,” he adds. He leans closer, then, and enunciates each of his next words. “Though let me be clear. I do, sometimes, think of you with lust.”

Brienne’s eyes go wide, and she looks away. “Nobody thinks of me with lust,” she says, automatically.

He snorts. “On the contrary. I have been tortured by it.”

She stands and whirls to face him in one fluid motion. Now she towers over him. “If you dare make this sort of joke at my expense, I will-” She stops. What would she do?

“I am not joking.” He stands, too, and then he takes her hand with his. She gasps at the unexpected sensation of his skin on hers.  He steps closer, and closer, until his face is inches from hers. Brienne closes her eyes, her breath shallow in her throat. How can she tell him that she knows next to nothing of what people do when they lay with each other, which must be what he expects –

Then she feels his forehead against hers. She opens her eyes again. He has to stand on his toes to reach her like this, she notes, and she has to stop herself from giggling like a child.

“Do you want me?” Jaime says. His mouth is close enough that she could take it, if she wanted.

“Yes,” she whispers, before she can stop herself. “But I’ve never been with a – I don’t know how to-”

“I don’t care.” He is staring at her lips, she realizes, and she swallows. “My whole life I have only ever touched one person. I am almost as green as you.”

She tries to respond but cannot. The smell of him – soap and sweat and metal – is making her dizzy.

He kisses her on the cheek and steps back. “Take a day to consider it,” he says. “If you would rather remain – what we are now, I understand.”

Brienne nods, slowly. What are they now? “Yes,” she says. “Let me think on it.”

That night, Brienne can hardly sleep. She has a chamber to herself now that Pod is well again, and she paces in front of the fire until well past midnight.

To think that someone looks at her with desire. To think that she looks at him with desire. And there is no question, she realizes, that what she feels for Jaime is desire. The sensation thrums just beneath her skin. It has a pulse and a mind of its own. It is a living thing.

Brienne is not a complete innocent. Around the time she got her first blood, there was a girl. Nell, the daughter of the cook at Evenfall and one of her playmates growing up. She doesn’t remember who started it, Nell or her, but there were kisses stolen in the shadows of the stable, and sometimes caresses, too.

Then Septa Roelle found them, and Nell was sent to live with her cousins. That was when Septa Roelle’s warnings started to come thick and fast. A woman’s body is for childbearing, not earthly pleasures. A woman’s body is like a delicate flower, best left untouched. A woman’s body should be bound up in silks and velvets like a gift, which is given to her husband and no one else. Brienne was not sorry to hear, years later, that Septa Roelle had died of the measles.

For the past fifteen years, Brienne has used her body to strike, to defend, to endure. It has been hard work. She struggles to remember the feeling of Nell’s hands on her and the memory escapes her, like a gasp of smoke in the wind.

Then she thinks of Jaime and the desire returns. If she doesn’t know how to please him, or herself – well, what of it? There have been countless nights when she has conjured up his face in her mind and felt heat course through her. That must count for something.

Brienne pulls off her shift and kneels before the hearth. Her fingers reach between her legs, and she finds that she is slick with want. She stares into the fire and strokes herself until she feels shivers of pleasure wrack her body. This is right, she thinks, as she moans into the hand she presses to her mouth. This is good.

The next afternoon, Brienne watches Jaime and Pod spar. It’s the first time Pod is back on his feet after the battle, and he is favoring his right side. That wight’s claws cut clean through the meat on his shoulder, the healer had told her. Truth told, milady, he may never move the same way.

She had been so worried over her squire that she hadn’t corrected the man for calling her ‘milady.’

Now Pod is facing off against Jaime in the clearing outside Winterfell’s walls, wooden sword in hand. Pod’s face betrays the pain of forcing his still-healing shoulder to move, and so Jaime is gentle and encouraging. “Shift your weight so you’re not favoring your right side. That’s it.” Thwack. “Careful. With the state you’re in, no need to hit so hard.”

“Yes, Ser,” says Pod, teeth gritted, and they go around each other in circles. Brienne nods approvingly. Her want for Jaime mixes with tenderness.

When Pod tires, Brienne sends him inside. “That was excellent,” she tells him, and he gives her one of his radiant smiles as he tromps back to the halls of the keep.

Brienne and Jaime regard each other for a moment. “Take his place?” says Jaime at last.

“All right,” she says. She tries to sound diffident, but her heart is leaping.

Before the army of the dead arrived, they practiced together every day. If they had not known each other’s strengths and foibles before, they do now, just as well as they know their own. She parries every one of his blows, and he feints around every one of her strikes.

He is magnificent when he fights. She thinks back to the time the Bloody Mummers had them, after they’d cut off Jaime’s hand and he’d grown still with grief. You were lucky it was only your hand, she’d said.

I am that hand, he’d bitten back.

He was wrong, Brienne is pleased to note. He fights almost as well now with a golden hand instead of a flesh one.

“Are you distracted, Ser?” Jaime asks.

“No.” She surges forward and nearly knocks him across the chest.

He dances back, dodging. “Not at all? You’ve given no thought to what we discussed yesterday?” He is trying not to smile.

“Oh, I have.” This time she goes for his knees. Too slow. Another miss.

“And the conclusion you have reached is…” He is breathing hard, but not hard enough to keep him from speaking.

Brienne hesitates, unsure of what to say, and that is when he strikes. His wooden blade whistles through the air, and though she blocks the first few blows – one, two, three – the last makes her lose her balance. She goes down hard on one knee.

Jaime kneels in front of her and, slowly, brings the sword to her throat. “Do you yield, Ser?” he says. His voice is a whisper.

Her pulse quickens. “Hardly,” she says, and she places her hand on the flat of his sword. Lowers it. Then kisses him.

The intensity of it shocks her. He gasps into her mouth, drops his sword, and grabs her face with both hands, golden and flesh alike. Her lower lip is between his, and he bites, gently, but enough for a fire to light inside her. She does the same and he gasps again. Then his tongue is in her mouth, and hers is rising to meet it, and her arms find their way to his waist, and she wonders what she ever worried about –

“This is all right?” Jaime says, panting. “This is what you want?”

“Yes,” she says, and she means it. “Do that again.”

Instead of kissing her, he slides his cheek against hers until she can feel his breath against her ear. He takes the lobe between his teeth and bites, the same as with her lip. This time, she is the one who gasps. “Do you yield now, Ser?” he asks again.

She starts to smile. So this is the kind of game he wishes to play. “No,” she says, and shoves him backwards. His eyes fly open as he hits the ground, but he has hooked his feet around her ankles and she comes down with him. Then they are not fighting so much as they are wrestling, and each place where they touch is like a small flame against her skin.

He rolls on top of her and wedges his knee between her legs, then draws it upward, to the place she touched last night. Brienne tenses in sudden pleasure. They stare at each other, and she sees the longing plain in his open mouth as he shifts his leg between hers, studying her face to see how she responds.

“Do you like this?” he rasps.

“Yes,” she breathes. He leans down and places his lips at the base of her neck, then sucks at the skin there. The length of his body covers hers, and she pushes her hips against him, desperate for as much as he will give her.

“What about now?” he says, drawing out the words. “Do you admit defeat?”

Her mind clears at the challenge, and she snorts in his face. “Of course not.” Brienne hooks her legs around his waist and rolls until she is sitting astride him. She places one hand on his chest and one at his throat to keep him from pulling the same move. He bucks against her, and it brings him pleasure too, she can tell.

She brings her face close to his. “Yield,” she says.

“Do what you will.” His breath is coming in short, shallow bursts.

Then it comes back to her, what they are doing and where. Brienne glances around the clearing. They are lucky: there is no one. She looks back at Jaime, but some of the heat is gone.

“Too much?” he says softly.

“I just – I…”

He sits up to run his knuckles over her cheek. “We can continue this inside, you know. On a bed.”

Her eyes widen. “That already?”

Jaime chuckles. “No. It doesn’t have to be that already. We can sit and talk, if you want. Or do…” He wets his lips with his tongue. “Whatever you like.”

She narrows her eyes. What is there to discuss? From what she understands, when people lie together, there is little discussion about it. “Talk about what?”

“How you want me to touch you.”

“Oh.” Brienne thinks of the night before and blushes. He grins back. “And…will you say how you want me to touch you?”

“Of course.” He kisses her, and this time they are gentler. Their teeth knock against each other a few times, and Brienne winces, but Jaime just laughs into her open mouth.

“Come to my chamber tonight,” she says. It’s a sentence she had fantasized saying before. Had feared saying before. Now she is not afraid.

Jaime nods, slowly. “I swear it. On the bruise you have on your neck now, I swear it.”

She touches her neck where he kissed her. “You aren’t serious.”

“Would I lie to a knight of the Seven Kingdoms? Don’t answer that. It’s rhetorical.” He shifts the collar of her tunic so it covers the spot. “There.”

They stand and brush the dirt off their knees. Though the Northern wind bites at them on the way back, she can’t help but feel warm.

Chapter Text

There is only one reason why Jaime has never felt awkward around women: he has never cared about any of them, save one. Now that’s no longer true, he realizes as he makes his way to the Winterfell library. He cares very much about Brienne.

Cersei never questioned his devotion to her. She took it as a given. It isn’t the same with Brienne, who has seen the worst parts of him, the weakest and most cowardly parts. It is a miracle, he reflects, that she still respects him after all that. He winces, thinking about the shameful, barbed words he said to her face when they first met.

So he will bring something to her chamber tonight, as a token to reaffirm that the man she has invited into her bed is not the same as the man who called her a beast years ago.

Tyrion is hunched over a faded manuscript, reading by the weak light of sundown. He looks up as Jaime approaches and raises an eyebrow. “I thought it was a wonder when we defeated the army of the dead, but the true wonder is you setting foot in the library.

”What are you reading?” Jaime says, ignoring his brother’s joke. Tyrion is right, anyway. He never has been much for books.

“A description of military tactics by one of Queen Daenerys’ ancestors. Winterfell has one of the only copies. It describes how to use dragons efficiently in battle.”

“Learning anything useful?”

“Yes,” says Tyrion, his voice grim. “I’ve learned just how many of the smallfolk have roasted to death in the past just because the fancy people with dragons and crowns can’t get along.” He lays a bookmark on the page and slams the volume shut. “What did you want to talk about?”

Jaime feigns an offended expression. “Bold of you to assume I’m here for you. Truly, I was here to read-” he runs his fingers over the dusty spines of the books closest to him, then chooses one at random – “the Wolf Queen Erenzia.”

Tyrion cracks a smile, which lifts Jaime’s heart. Once, Tyrion smiled constantly, but that was a long time ago. When he smiles now, it is a rare thing, and precious. “Erenzia Stark! A fierce warrior indeed. I didn’t take you for a history buff.”

“Well.” Jaime runs his thumb over the first page of the manuscript, which is illuminated by a snarling pack of wolves in the margins. “Near-death at the hands of the already-dead changes you.”

“Has it changed the way you think about another fierce warrior woman?”

Jaime shakes his head and puts the book back. “Am I so easy to read?”

“Like a child’s primer on the alphabet.” Tyrion indicates the chair next to him. “Come on. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

Jaime settles into the seat beside his brother, whose eyes are bright with curiosity. “I need to ask you for a favor.”

“Please don’t say you want me to act as envoy for your love letters. Love letters are so very gauche.”

“Gods, no. You know I’m not a poet. Actually, it’s-” He pauses, not sure how to continue.

“Jaime. Are you blushing?”

He forges on. “You once mentioned an – oil. It came from Braavos, I believe. And it makes…things…easier. I mean, more slippery. If they’re not slippery enough.”

Tyrion bursts out laughing. “You want to know if I have any lovers’ oil?”

Jaime studies the cracks in the wooden table. “I suppose I do.”

Tyrion’s laughter slows, then peters out into a few final chuckles. “So you’re really going to lie with someone who isn’t our sister.” Jaime tenses up, and Tyrion holds up his hands in apology. “Sorry. Just stating facts. I don’t often think, you know, about how much more experience I have in that arena compared with my famously dashing brother.”

“And I never thought I’d be jealous of all your fucking. But here we are.”

Tyrion waggles his fingers. “You may have the famed jawline, but I have the famed touch.”

Jaime rolls his eyes.

“What? It’s true.” Tyrion sighs. “Or it was. I don’t find myself wanting that kind of romp much, these days.”

“Which is probably good for you.” Jaime leans forward. “Look. I’ve, er. Never thought of using any sort of oil before. But Brienne, she’s never…”

Tyrion nods. “It’s a good idea, then. You don’t want it to feel like you’re tearing her open.” He grins at Jaime. “And you’re in luck, too. It’s been some time since I used it, but I do have a pot of the stuff in my things. Made of the lightest, most delicate Braavosi olives, or so they say. You’re welcome to it.”

“Thank you,” says Jaime, and he means it.

“You prevented my execution once. This is the least I can do to repay you.” Tyrion pauses. “And may I say? I have been hoping for years now that – in regards to Ser Brienne – you would let your good side win out.”

Jaime exhales slowly. “My good side is underdeveloped. Which is why I’ve always told myself that she deserves better.”

Tyrion spears him with a fierce glare. “One, your good side is much stronger than you think it is. Two, to hell with this idea of what she deserves! Ser Brienne is a knight, or did you forget? She can make decisions for herself, and she wants you, you idiot.”

Jaime feels himself grinning like a boy. “She did tell me to come to her chamber tonight.”

“Which you will do – don’t talk yourself out of it – but don’t forget to pick up the oils from my chamber first.”

“I won’t.” Jaime places his left hand on Tyrion’s shoulder. “Wish me luck.”

“I will not. You don’t need it.” But Tyrion places his hand atop Jaime’s, and squeezes, and winks.

Chapter Text

Several hours after supper, when the hall has cleared out and the soldiers are playing cards in Winterfell’s cellars, Jaime hesitates before Brienne’s door. Tyrion’s gift is in the pocket of his cloak. Under his cloak, he wears only a workman’s shirt and a pair of the fleece-lined trousers popular in the North. He feels strange wearing no armor. Naked, almost.

As he raises his hand to knock, the door creaks open. Beyond it is a sliver of Brienne’s face: the ridge of her nose, the arch of the brow, one brilliant blue eye.

“I heard your footsteps,” she says. She opens the door wider and regards him. “You’re nervous.”

“As a matter of fact,” he says, “I am. May I…?”

She nods. As he steps inside, she reaches for his arm and brushes her hand lightly along his sleeve. He can’t help himself, then. Even that touch is enough to drive him mad. Jaime kisses her, gently at first and then with enough force to back her into the wall. He takes her lower lip into his mouth and tastes her, and her fingers dig into his hips. Then he steps back. “I don’t think I greeted you properly. Good evening, Ser.”

Brienne grins. “Quite the improper greeting, I’d say.” She gestures towards the hearth, where a blazing fire crackles – she always has liked her chambers hot – and a thick rug covers the flagstones. Next to the rug are two glasses and a bottle. “Shall we sit?”

“You’ve prepared for this.”

“I thought it might make things easier if we…loosened up, a bit,” she says. She kneels and uncorks the bottle, and as she pours, the thick, heady scent of mead fills the room. Jaime’s relief is almost palpable. He had been afraid it was red wine, which was Cersei’s drink. Rich and bitter, like her.

“A good idea. But we shouldn’t have too much.” He shrugs off his cloak and boots, sits next to her, and takes a glass in his left hand. “I want you to be able to tell me what you’re thinking. And I want to remember this, later. Cheers?”

“To being alive after all this mess.” She touches her cup to his. The mead burns his throat, but it is a sweet burn, the same way that fantasizing about what Brienne’s capable body can do outside of battle is a sweet burn.

Brienne sets her cup down. “So,” she says. She looks at him with a mixture of anxiety and longing, and it makes him want to take her in his arms.

“Come here,” he says. He pats the space between his legs. “Be with me.” She gives him a quizzical glance. “You’ll see.” She edges forward and relaxes into his lap so that her head is resting against his chest. Her long, long legs, bare under her tunic, stretch towards the fire. His fingers find her hair, just as they had the night he watched over Pod. When she sighs against him, he feels her lungs expand and then contract.

“This is nice,” she whispers.

“I know.”

They sit there for several minutes, reveling in the closeness. Brienne’s fingers massage at his calves, and he draws his thumb along her collarbone, feeling the fine ridges of muscle that connect it to her chest. Then he slides his hand underneath her tunic and slowly traces the curve of her small, pert breasts. She shifts, dragging her fingertips along the inside of his leg. Even through his trousers, it feels torturously good.

“Wait. We should set a rule before we go any farther,” he says.

“People set rules before they…? Like in a tourney?” She rests her head against his shoulder. “Gods, I really am ignorant.”

“No, no, they don’t, normally. But it could be useful for us, given our…circumstances. Besides, there’s only one rule. I propose that you tell me if you enjoy what I’m doing. Or if you don’t. And I will tell you the same.” He thumbs one of her nipples, and it hardens at his touch. “Do you like this?”

“Yes,” she says, breathing hard. “More of that.”

He does the same to her other nipple, squeezing a bit this time. The sharp intake of her breath makes him grow hard. “Do you ever touch yourself this way?” he murmurs in her ear.

“No, not usually. This is” – he bites at her ear, and she whimpers – “new.”

“Then how do you pleasure yourself, when you’re alone?”

“Jaime.”

“No one else is listening. Besides, everyone does it.” He kisses a line down her neck. “It’s all right, to talk about what pleases you.”

Brienne is silent for a moment. Then something in her changes. He can almost feel her gathering her resolve. “I sat in front of the fire last night, the same way we are now,” she whispers. She takes his hand with her own and moves it down her belly, between her thighs. “And I thought of you, and I touched myself – here.”

He ghosts his fingers over her, touching her through her tunic. “Like this?”

“Yes,” she says, sagging against him. “Like that.”

Jaime reaches for the hem of her tunic and slides it up, baring first her thighs and then the tangle of blonde hair between them. He rubs his thumb over her clit, and she moans. The sound alone threatens to undo him.

“Keep going,” she says, and so he strokes her until she is shivering. Then he draws his fingers down, over her entrance. When he pushes one inside of her, she jerks back against him.

“Not good?” he says, alarmed.

“No, I mean, I just didn’t expect-” She pushes herself against his fingers. “Don’t you dare stop.”

Jaime chuckles. “As you command,” he says, and bites down on her neck as he enters her again. “Does this please you, Ser?”

“Yes,” she sighs, and spreads her thighs wide.

He inserts another finger. “And this?”

“Gods, yes.”

He thrusts his fingers deeper, into the slick center of her. “And this?”

“Yes, Jaime, please-”

He uses his golden hand to steer her own right hand towards her clit. “Touch yourself.” She does, moaning in earnest. “Are you enjoying this?” he says, and the only response is another strangled cry. He matches her speed as he fucks into her with his fingers.

Brienne is not a quiet woman when she fights, and she is not quiet now, either. But when she begins to shake and near her peak, she clamps her free hand over her mouth. “No,” he says. “Be loud. I want you to be loud.”

She comes with a shout, then. The walls of her cunt shudder around his fingers. He groans too as he looks at her, because he has never seen anything more beautiful than her body, there in the firelight, sheened with sweat and shivering with pleasure. Her tunic is pushed up around her waist, and her long legs are trembling.

“By the Seven,” she whispers, after she’s come down from her high.

“Let’s not bring the Seven into it. I’m rather enjoying being alone with you,” he says, and she swats at his face. He catches her hand and brings it to his mouth, sucking the taste of her off her fingers.

His cock twitches again, and this time Brienne notices. “I thought lovers peaked together,” she says. “That’s how it seems to work, in the books. But you haven’t…”

Jaime can’t help laughing. “You’ve read those kinds of books?”

“A few. What of it?” she says defensively.

“Ser Brienne of Tarth, reader of romances,” he says, and nips at her ear. She kicks his shin. “Ow. There’s nothing wrong with it, I just didn’t peg you as the sort. And yes, sometimes lovers peak together when they’ve been with each other for a long time. But not usually. Besides, I wanted you to peak first.”

“That was kind of you.” She sits up and turns towards him, shrugging her tunic over her head. He gapes at her fully naked body, and her eyes narrow. “What?”

“You are stunning.”

Brienne crosses her arms over her chest. “We both know that isn’t the truth.”

“I mean it. Do you know how much I’ve fantasized about looking at you like this again?” He shakes his head. “The moment you rose out of the baths at Harrenhal and stood above me…I might have been feverish, but I have never forgotten.”

Confusion clouds her eyes. “That was years ago.”

“I know,” he says. “Is it so hard to believe I’ve wanted you since then?”

She stares at him, at a loss for words. Then she kneels in front of him. Her hands make quick work of his shirt, and he sees the same wonder that he feels echoed in her gaze.

“Your hand,” she says.

This is the part he has been dreading. “I can keep it on, if that’s what you want. The stump is unsightly. Cersei always said it looked like a-”

“Shhh,” she whispers, and he feels like a fool for bringing Cersei into it. Brienne reaches for the straps that tether the golden hand to his wrist and begins to unbuckle them.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have mentioned her.”

“No. That wasn’t what I was shushing you over. From now on, I want us to say what we mean to each other, and if you’re thinking about Cersei – well.” She grasps the prosthetic and pulls it off. “What I meant was, I don’t care what you look like under this.” Brienne presses her lips to the skin where his right hand once met his arm, and he sucks in air through his teeth. She pulls back. “Did I hurt you?”

“Not at all,” he says, trying to relax. She really hadn’t hurt him, it was just – “I’m not used to anyone touching me there. It surprised me more than I thought.” He rubs his hand over the scar tissue. “I’m sorry. It’s horrifying to look at.”

He feels the heat of her glare before he sees it. “Jaime Lannister. Do not talk about yourself like that.”

“You really don’t find it horrifying?”

“No.”

“Then you must know how I feel about you. You are magnificent. Strong and capable, as a knight should be.” He smiles, then. “I’ve never slept with a knight before.”

Brienne’s face softens again. “Let’s remedy that,” she says. His pulse quickens as she studies his bare chest, his sides, his hips. Her fingers trace the scars that cover his torso. Then she tugs at the laces of his trousers. She takes a moment to scrutinize what she finds, her mouth pursed. “Ah. So that’s what it looks like when it’s, ah, enlarged.”

He clears his throat. “And? Your thoughts?”

“I have to say, I don’t see what all the fuss is about.” She frowns. “It looks rather like a kind of small eel that fishermen catch off the coasts of Tarth.”

He laughs despite his arousal. “Please, Ser, you are bruising my manhood.”

“I’ve hardly touched it yet,” she says, and her eyes gleam. “I didn’t say I wasn’t interested. Just that it looks strange.” She wraps one hand around his cock and gives it an experimental caress. Jaime’s eyes nearly roll back in his head. “Oh. It’s smoother than I expected.” Her voice lowers. “Is this right?”

“Yes,” he bites out.

Brienne takes his left hand and places it on top of her own. “Show me what you like.”

He moves her fingers up and down with his own, establishing a rhythm. She studies the place where their hands are joined until he says, “Look at me,” and she looks into his eyes. He lets the pleasure wash over him in waves. His mouth falls open, and his eyelids flutter half-closed.

Brienne moves her other hand to the base of his cock. “Yes?” she asks.

“Yes, he breathes, “but – gods. Too much.”

She stops. “Did I actually bruise you?”

Jaime smiles. “Hardly. I want to be inside you. And I won’t last much longer if you keep touching me like this. Do you still want to-”

“Please.” Her gaze flicks to the bed, piled high with furs. “This part is supposed to happen on a bed, correct?”

“It can happen anywhere, depending on how ambitious you are. But beds are a solid choice.” He gets to his feet, then offers Brienne a hand. The fire highlights the leanness of the muscles moving just beneath her skin as she stands to her full, impressive height. He gets distracted from his task, then, and takes one of her nipples in his mouth. She lets out a startled Oh and clutches at his back.

“Lie back on the bed,” he says. “I’ll be right there.” He shucks off his trousers, then reaches into the pocket of his cloak for the jar of oil. When he turns around, Brienne is lying on the bed, knees spread apart. He marvels again at the sensuousness of her. Anyone who called her Brienne the Beauty in order to mock her should be tarred and feathered, he decides.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“Lovers’ oil.” He removes the lid and dips his fingers in the liquid, which smells of flowers on a faraway sea strand. “It will help lessen the pain when I enter you.”

“If you’re worried that I’ll bleed, don’t. I broke whatever it is that makes women bleed when I was thirteen and out riding.”

He looks at her quizzically. “How do you know?”

She sighs. “Because I told the maester, who told my septa, who inspected me.” Brienne grimaces. “Then she lectured me about purity for days on end. And said I was never to tell anyone I’d torn myself.”

Jaime feels a flash of anger at the thought of such an inspection. Whatever it involved, it couldn’t have been pleasant. “Fuck purity. And fuck your septa.”

“She’s quite dead. Anyway, I’d rather you fuck me.” Brienne takes a finger and draws it up her slit. “Are you sure we’ll need that oil?”

“Better safe than sorry.” He works the oil over her, then in her, and enjoys the sight of her biting her lip. He enjoys it even more when she takes a palmful of oil and slicks it up his length. “You’re sure you want this? With me?”

“Jaime. Please.” She is breathless.

He enters her slowly, an inch at a time. Brienne grimaces at first, and he leans over to kiss her chin. “Loosen up, if you can,” he whispers, and he feels her unclench enough for him to enter her all the way. Her cheeks are flushed red with want and nerves. “That’s it. Are you all right?”

“Yes. Gods. Keep going.”

Jaime wants to be witty, to say I wouldn’t disobey direct orders, Ser, but the sensation of moving inside her is too good. Still, he takes care to be slow and gentle until she rakes her nails down his back and rolls her hips up to meet his. Then he thrusts himself deep into her.

“How does this feel?” he tries to ask. It comes out as more of a growl.

“It feels like I-” She arches her back. “Like I’m-” She wraps her legs around him. “Give me more.”

He tries to reach down and touch her, so her pleasure can equal his, but he can’t balance on his stump and almost pitches over.

“Let me ride you,” she says.

“But it might hurt you.”

Brienne nips him on the shoulder. “I’ll be the judge of that,” she tells him, and rolls them both until she is sitting astride him. Her triumph quickly fades into confusion. “How do I move?”

“Just rock against me.” Jaime reaches up to touch her center, and she shivers.

It takes her a moment to find a rhythm she likes, but soon she is driving herself against him. She moans, louder than before, and he can’t help but add his own cries this time. The sight of her chasing her release on top of him is more than he can bear. “Yes,” he says, “yes,” and she is answering him, “Yes,” and she peaks again while she is riding him. The sounds coming out of her mouth make him come with a gasp.

She collapses on top of him, breathing hard. His hand finds the small of her back, and he rubs slow circles into her sweaty skin. “Was that what you expected?” he says when he can speak again.

Brienne nuzzles into his shoulder. “All I can think about is that we could have been doing this for years.”

“We’ll have to make up for lost time, then.”

“So you want to…keep lying with me?”

He shifts so that they are facing each other on the bed. “Nothing would bring me more happiness, Ser.”

She snorts. “You can dispense with the ‘ser,’ I think.”

“No,” he says. “I like calling you that. You’ve earned the title. Let me use it.”

“If you must,” she says, but she is smiling. “Will you sleep here?”

“Will you let me?”

“Yes, only – I’ve never had someone share my bed all night. Like this, I mean.”

“Neither have I,” Jaime says. “It wasn’t possible, you know. With Cersei.”

Her face freezes. “Of course. I should have realized.”

“Why? You’re not a mind-reader.” He kisses her forehead. “Perhaps I have terrible breath in the morning. Perhaps I snore. You’ll be the first to know for sure.”

Brienne snuggles into him. “Everyone snores, and everyone has terrible breath in the morning.”

“I still look forward to smelling yours.”

“Oh, do stop it,” she huffs, but she draws the furs over them and presses her face into his shoulder.

It doesn’t take long for Brienne to fall asleep. She does snore, but in little whuffling sounds, like a horse. Jaime smiles. It is a privilege to lie next to Ser Brienne of Tarth, Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and learn the sounds she makes in her sleep.

His ghosts press in at the windows, but the bed is warm and Brienne’s skin is soft. That is enough, for now, to keep all his regrets and doubts at bay. You have no power here, he tells the ghosts, and he falls asleep as the fire burns itself to embers in the hearth.