Chapter Text
The first time Brienne notices it, she doesn’t think much of it.
The circumstances are nothing new — she’s helping Jaime practice with his left hand, as she’s done since they set off for Winterfell with the Vale army Sansa is bringing with. And it’s going pretty much as usual — she’s holding strength back because otherwise it would be a quick win, he’s holding up just slightly better than yesterday even if he’s nowhere near close to beating her if they did this seriously, she’s not giving him advice vocally because she can see in his face that he’s understanding himself all the things he’s doing wrong.
Actually, they’ve been going at it longer than yesterday, which means that he might call it a day soon enough, but then it happens that while she doesn’t get distracted, he stares down at her hip for a moment, making her believe that he might strike there —
And instead he goes for her leg.
She manages to block that just thanks to an extremely good combination of reflexes, quick thinking and luck, but he did almost get her there.
She’s about to tell him, but a moment later he lets the sword fall down and raises his hands.
“I think you wore me out enough for today, wench,” he says, gasping for breath before he glances down with disgust at his right arm. “But maybe I’ll surprise you, one of these days.”
“Well,” she says, “that was actually a good tactic?”
He was about to bend down and retrieve the sword, but looks at her instead. “Wait, it was?”
“You almost did get me there. I mean, you didn’t, but I didn’t see it coming at all. That was some clever thinking, really.”
For a moment, she’s sure that his cheek flush slightly darker and his eyes widen a bit, and he seems pleased to hear it, but then he shakes his head. “Huh. Guess there’s some hope for me to chastise you yet,” he jokes back, but — he wasn’t feeling it. She’s sure he wasn’t feeling it.
She lets him go back to his tent to wash and goes back to hers — best that no one knows that one of them will slip into the other’s at night, nor what they do inside it. It’s already enough luck that no one has clamored for Jaime’s head yet, she’s not going to risk things for the both of them by making people suspect something that’s… actually true, but that would gain them no sympathies yet.
She remembers the Brotherhood calling her the Kingslayer’s whore.
No, they’d better keep it hidden.
——
Still, the next day, she actually does compliment him whenever he lands blows right during their training — he doesn’t manage to take her by surprise, but he lasts more than he did yesterday, so he is building up strength, which is not bad whatsoever.
The first time she does, he gets distracted enough that she almost disarms him. The other times, though, he doesn’t, but his cheeks do flush ever so slightly when she says it, and she sees the pattern. It’s not just because he’s getting tired.
No, it happens just when she tells him something nice about whatever it is that he’s doing.
Weird, she supposes, but she figures she’ll find out at some point. For now, no use in asking him — he probably wouldn’t answer outright.
——
That said, Brienne figures she’ll keep on doing that. It’s most likely encouragement and she has a feeling he sorely needs that, especially given how he feels about that hand and what she has grasped his sister thought of it, from the bits and pieces of information he fed her about his time in King’s Landing after she left. Sometimes she wonders what she’d do if she came face to face with Cersei Lannister one of these days, and she decides she doesn’t want to know that answer.
So she keeps on complimenting him when there’s reason to, and things don’t really change — he still looks overtly pleased at hearing it, he gets better but still not enough to hold up his own against her if she doesn’t hold back, but it’s obvious that he would if he still had both hands.
One day Brienne will stop asking herself what would have happened if she kept a better eye on him and didn’t let him steal that sword nor fight her. Maybe they wouldn’t have run into the Bloody Mummers and maybe he wouldn’t have lost that hand, but she can’t know, and she can’t know if they still would have gone beyond their prejudices and if they would have come to understand each other the way they do now, but she thinks they might have anyway. It’s not like Jaime didn’t have it in him to be an honorable person, and something tells her that at some point he would have gotten under her skin same as he got under hers. It wouldn’t have changed, she likes to think.
It doesn’t help hating to see how much he hates lacking that hand.
So — she keeps on telling him. If he likes to hear it, it’s only natural that he might, she thinks.
She also notices that whenever she does compliment him, he always has a somehow witty retort… that doesn’t have half of the usual snark in it.
She should look into it. Maybe she’ll ask after they take Winterfell back and they don’t have pressing concerns like making sure no one in the army defects, not getting found out and brought Lady Catelyn’s daughter back home.
She decides it’s the best course of action.
——
Or at least, that is the plan until they’re one week from the castle, waiting for Pod to come back from scouting for news (he went ahead with a few others), and she’s breaking her fast with Jaime when they both hear what a couple of soldiers from the Vale army who are eating near them tell each other.
“I’d just like to know how the lady is so sure that the Kingslayer isn’t at his sister’s beck and call,” the first mutters.
“Aye,” the other agrees, “I really would like to know that, too. I mean, should we really buy he’s turned his cloak along with her?” He shakes his head. “This smells fucking fishy.”
“What can we do,” the other shrugs, and goes back to his food.
Brienne looks up at Jaime and sees that his face just went three shades paler than it was before and he’s suddenly looking at his food with extreme distaste.
“Jaime,” she whispers, “let them talk. They don’t know anything.”
He looks at her, sighing as he forcefully swallows his food. “They don’t,” he agrees, “but it’s not like this entire fucking army doesn’t agree.” He shakes his head, then goes back to his food.
She doesn’t push it, but for the rest of the day his eyes are less bright than usual and she’s reminded of how he looked on the way to Harrenhal in a way she doesn’t like at all, and when they spar again, it’s obvious his heart isn’t in it.
——
That evening, since it’s also Clegane’s turn to guard Sansa’s tent (he joined them when they passed by the Quite Isle on the way to the Vale and he never left — she wishes she had realized he was the gravedigger back then) and so she doesn’t have to be there, she sneaks into Jaime’s after everyone is asleep or at least everyone around the area of the camp they sleep in is.
She’s not surprised to find out that he’s not asleep already and doesn’t look too happy with his current condition. He’s staring at nothing, shaking his head.
“Do you want to talk about… whatever it is?” She asks, lying down next to his bedroll — he’s not even opened it.
He shrugs. “It’s nothing, wench.”
It doesn’t sound like that at all.
“I daresay it’s something, given how you’re taking it.”
He turns on his back, opening the bedroll and getting inside it, not quite looking at her. “I don’t even know how to put it anyway, but I guess that I’m just tired of people whispering behind my back.”
It is the truth, she feels, but not all of it. Still — she knows he loathed it when people whispered behind his back calling him kingslayer, didn’t he, but this time it wasn’t about that. It was about —
“Is it because they said you’re doing Cersei’s bidding?”
He closes his eyes. “I’m not surprised they think that. I did that for years now, haven’t I?”
He sounds bitter. Like he’s not denying it and like he hates that he actually might have done that. Brienne doesn’t want to ask him, and did she leave you any other choice. So she doesn’t.
“But you’re not doing that now, are you?” She asks, moving closer, putting a hand on his hip. He turns his face towards her, finally.
“Of course not,” he retorts, “and for that matter I didn’t even want to do her bidding in the Riverlands, but I had no choice. It’s just — the more I think about it, the more I’m sure that was what she always thought of me.”
He doesn’t open his eyes as he says it, but he does curl closer towards her. She puts her arm around his waist, tightening her grip.
“I mean,” he clarifies a moment later, “I have a feeling she never thought I wouldn’t do whatever she wanted regardless of what I wanted. And — I know that. I don’t need them to remind me.”
“You know that it’s not true, don’t you?”
He still doesn’t look at her, but at least he’s talking.
“Has it ever mattered?”
She’s not sure if it’s only about his sister now — it probably isn’t — but she doesn’t prod. He is talking, after all, she doesn’t want to corner him into saying more than he meant to discuss.
“It should,” she finally answers. “And it matters to me, for what it’s worth.”
“It’s worth more than you think,” he says, his voice going lower.
He doesn’t go on, so she figures it’s a done conversation. Except —
“How long can you stay?” He asks, and at that Brienne realizes something isn’t quite right — he never asks, and she’s always sneaked out of his tent before sunrise, he knows that.
If he’s asking there must be a reason, and then she realizes — wasn’t he always in the position of having to sneak out of his sister’s chambers before anyone could find out who he was sharing a bed with?
Until now, they’ve said nothing to avoid people talking and questioning their alliances, but… honestly, what does she care? And mostly, does she care more about the fact that he obviously wants her to stay the full night and won’t ask, or about people talking?
She shrugs, figuring he’s going to feel it given how close they are right now. “I’m staying,” she says.
At that, he does finally move back and open his eyes. “Wait, you mean —”
“Yes,” she says. “Honestly, the lady knows that we’re together and she knows about her brother and her mother, she forgave you and she never objected, did she? I don’t care to hide it any more than you do.”
“You know that you will miss how the Brotherhood called you, don’t you?”
She probably shouldn’t have found it amusing, but — even with everything that went down then, she kind of does. And the fact that he’s here joking about it instead of being horribly disappointed in her for having lied to him is just proof that he’s an entirely better person than he thinks he is. She’d have only deserved scorn from him, after bringing him into that trap, after all.
“Honestly?” She shrugs. “If people want to think I’m your whore then it just means they don’t know that you’d never treat anyone as such, and it’s their loss. I handled a lot worse than that.”
The way he looks at her, one would think she had just given him ten years’ worth of nameday presents he missed — she kicks off her shoes and joins him under the bedroll, her arms going around his waist as he curls up against her at once.
He closes his eyes again, his head going to the crook of her neck.
She moves a hand to the back of his head, her fingers running gently through his hair (it’s longer now, not as it was in Riverrun before he shaved it off but more than it was when she found him in his camp in the Riverlands). She doesn’t miss that he leans into it at once.
Nothing she could say seems appropriate, and so she closes her eyes, too. They’ll deal with the fallout in the morning.
——
In the morning, she wakes up when the sun has been up for a short while, she can see it from outside the tent, but there’s no way people wouldn’t notice if she left the tent now. So she does nothing and waits for Jaime to wake up, which happens not long later.
For a moment he seems disoriented, then he blinks and obviously realizes she hasn’t left.
She’s not going to tell him that she doesn’t think anyone has ever looked at her with such plain joy in her entire life. She leans down and kisses him instead, and she knows they can’t linger, but —
Gods, she hopes they get to Winterfell soon so she can talk to him about this entire matter and they’ll have a proper bed and everything.
She really hopes they do.
——
Thankfully, people don’t have time to talk behind their backs about anything, not when that same morning Pod comes back with the rest of the people he went ahead with, informing them that Stannis Baratheon and Jon Snow are about to try and take the castle but that their army might not have the numbers.
Sansa looks like she might cry in joy when she hears her brother is alive, and she about does when Pod tells her that he spoke to a friend of hers she long believed dead who’s in Stannis’s camp — at this point, it’s obvious that they’re joining them.
Good. It means they’ll have more chances to win, won’t they? And if it means she will have to bury her hatchet with Stannis, well, it doesn’t hurt so much anymore that she can’t put aside her feelings for the realm’s well-being.
Still, she does hear a few, have you heard that he’s fighting for Lady Sansa just after overthrowing the last of her family for his bloody sister, and do you think he won’t turn his cloak?
She doesn’t do anything about it, but she hates hearing it, and she hates imagining how much Jaime might have hated it himself for more than ten years.
Well, they’ll see he’s not going to turn his cloak or anything of the kind very, very soon.
——
Jaime doesn’t turn his cloak, of course he doesn’t.
They also stick close together during the battle and she shuts him up when he tells her not to waste time covering his back, not that he keeps on saying that when he realizes that if she covers his right side and they make people underestimate them because they assume he can’t fight… well, they actually do take them by surprise and they’re fairly efficient because they fought each other so much they’re in sync by now, and by the time it’s done and over and the castle is stormed, they have a damn high kill count and he comes out of the battle with only a scratch on his left leg that she can take care of without needing a maester, while she’s not even wounded.
“See,” she says as she puts Oathkeeper away, “you’re nowhere near useless with that, as much as you like to say.”
“Sure I’m not,” he japes, “it was just to annoy you.”
Brienne, who knows it wasn’t, rolls her eyes and takes it in stride. “Of course it was. Well, there’s room for improvement, but I think next time we spar you might last a lot more.”
She’s sure he did flush at that. Just a bit. But he did.
She’s about to tell him that she should see to his wound, but instead a guard shows up and says that they’re needed with Lady Sansa. Jaime says that he’ll live if he waits some, and so they head for the castle.
He looks in a good mood, though — his eyes are bright and it’s obvious he enjoyed that fight for what it was worth, and he looks maybe a bit more confident since, after all, he has had ample proof that he can fight with his left, if he needs to. And if he needs her to cover his back, well, they’re extremely efficient together, aren’t they?
That is, until they pass in front of some Baratheon soldiers who obviously recognize the both of them.
“Didn’t know that the Kingslayer was a turncloak,” one whispers.
“And what in the Seven Hells he’s doing with her? Wait, does that sword have a Lannister handle?”
“Fuck me, it has. You think they’re both at Cersei’s bidding?”
“Dunno, but if they are King Stannis will figure them out,” the second retorts, and Brienne only takes a deep breath and ignores them.
Jaime, though — his mouth is tightened in a thin line, his eyes are back to that dull green shade she’s started to hate, and his good mood has vanished completely.
“You know it’s not true,” she whispers as they go through the yard.
“If only everyone else did,” he replies. They don’t have time to linger on that, but Brienne decides that she’s going to talk about it, too, the moment they’re free.
——
Thankfully, both Stannis Baratheon and Snow are entirely more reasonable than their men or Sansa’s, for that matter. They do have to answer a lot of questions, of course, but by the end of the meeting they’re both satisfied with the state of their alliances and Jaime has been assured his head will be safe as long as he cooperates — he answers that it’s exactly what he’s here for, isn’t he, and by the time they’re done darkness has fallen and dinner is ready in the main hall. Snow says he’ll come after he does a double-check on the prisoners, Stannis says he’ll go along with him and everyone else heads downstairs.
Brienne purposefully chooses a table at the far side of the room for the both of them — the least attention drawn, the better.
It doesn’t save them from unwanted stares — a few of Stannis’s men are nearby and stare at them all of the time, and she knows they’re talking, but thankfully neither of them can hear.
She can see that Jaime’s mood is not back to good, but he eats his dinner, at least, and only talks to make dubious jokes about their current situation, but it’s better than nothing. She makes quick work of her stew, figuring that the sooner they’re done here the sooner they can have that talk and she can take care of his wound —
When a man that Brienne thinks has to be Lord Manderly’s cousin approaches the table, glaring down at Jaime and entirely ignoring her.
“Lord Marlon,” Jaime says after they stared at each other for a bit too long, “can I do anything for you or do you find the sight of me eating particularly interesting?”
“Not particularly,” the man says, “but I’ll be brief. As I suppose Baratheon has told you, no one in this room wanted the Boltons in the North, nor your breed, and we were all too happy to ally with him. But, my brother hasn’t lost a son and almost lost his life in order to take revenge for the Red Wedding that your family orchestrated just to worry all over again that you’re here on your sister’s orders.”
Brienne has to give credit to Jaime for how he doesn’t let any distaste show on his face. She does notice that his right wrist jerks upwards just slightly, though.
“Why,” he says, “and I haven’t sworn your former liege lady a vow that I’d never raise arms again against her family — which I technically didn’t in the Riverlands, but never mind it —, sent the lady here on a quest to find her daughter and bring her to safety, joined her in that quest therefore gaining a bounty on my head same as my brother, and believe me, Cersei is entirely serious about this kind of thing, came up here and helped Lady Sansa put that army together in the Vale going against my own family’s interests just for you and whoever else to assume I’m lying. Also, I would like to inform you that I do my own fucking killing myself if I need to, and while my father was planning the Red Wedding, the lady was accompanying me in an enchanting trip through the Riverlands, a trip during which some bandits cut off my right hand and helped me fight the subsequent infection by giving me horse piss to drink, so you can rest assured that I had nothing to do with the Red Wedding. Nor my brother, who actually killed the one person you should blame for it other than Lord Frey, so maybe you should give him the benefit of the doubt if he ever comes back from wherever he’s hiding from Cersei. Are you satisfied with my answer or do I need to inform you that the lady here would never accompany herself with anyone absolutely dishonorable?”
Lord Marlon has the grace to not push it, but he merely scoffs and takes a step back. “Well, we’re going to keep an eye on you.”
“I hadn’t expected anything less,” Jaime grins back. “You Northerners must really have a thing for judging people you never met, don’t you?”
“Don’t push your luck, Lannister,” Lord Marlon snaps, and then he goes back to his place.
Jaime lets out a long, defeated breath, then forces himself to shovel more food inside his mouth.
“They’ll see it,” Brienne whispers after she’s sure no one is trying to eavesdrop.
“What?”
“That you’re way better than they think you are.”
“Well, at least one of us has undying faith in it,” he sighs, but he just sounds like he’s done discussing this for now.
Fine. There’s time later.
——
Brienne is pleased to see that the room they’re assigned is a good size, with the fireplace close to the bed and enough space for a small desk. It’s also one bed only, but — well. People did know, including Lady Sansa.
She wishes they could bathe, but it’s out of the question today — hopefully tomorrow. Jaime throws a pack with what few belongings he put together in the Vale in the corner and she helps him out of his armor after getting rid of hers. She finds water and a few rags in the corner, so she tells him to take his breeches off.
“Oh, I see you’re eager to —”
“I need to see to your wound,” she says, “and then maybe I’ll lose mine.”
He laughs and says that she’s welcome to — he pushes his breeches down on the ground as she sits on the bed and dabs the cloth inside the pitcher. She cleans the blood away, and it looks better than it had seemed — that cut bled but it’s shallow and doesn’t need stitches, so she merely uses a clean rag to bandage it. She does her work in silence even if she kind of wanted to start talking, but she doesn’t know how to approach the subject. Still — she has to, one way or the other. She breathes in, putting pitcher and rag away.
“Jaime, I — you know that those people have no idea, don’t you?”
“Depends of what,” he says, his tone going dark in a way she doesn’t necessarily like. “It’s not as if I haven’t given them plenty of reasons to think what they think. And it’s not like I haven’t done exactly what they say I’m doing right now for years. I just wish I had given enough of a shit to realize that it wasn’t what I really wanted.”
“I don’t think blaming you for not giving a shit after they spent years assuming the worst of you for Aerys would be entirely fair.”
“Maybe, but I lied in the damned bed I made for myself. And for that matter I thought for years that I was the same person as my fucking sister, stands to reason they would assume the same.”
“Except that you’re not,” Brienne says at once, moving slightly closer. “They’ll get it, with time. And if they don’t, well, the people who should know better do.”
“At least one of us is optimistic about that.”
“Jaime, I didn’t get to this point by caring about what anyone else thinks, or if I did, I’d have never left Tarth.”
He grins at that, some of that light from before coming back to his eyes, and she can’t still believe that she of all people can make it happen. “I know,” he says. “And I wish I didn’t care in the same way you do. Except that I didn’t in all the worst ways.”
“Fine, but you don’t have to feel worse because of that,” she tries to tell him. “And you’ve been caring for a long time, regardless. I think I’d know.”
“You might,” he admits, “and maybe my brother would have, if I also hadn’t helped ruin his damned life, but what do I even know. As far as dumb decisions go when it comes to our almighty House, I might win that damned prize.”
He says that in such a self-deprecating tone that Brienne almost recoils at hearing it. Then she realizes what he actually said.
Her hand has gone to his chin and turned it so that he’s looking at her in the eyes before she’s even thought about it.
“Are you seriously telling me,” she says, “that you’re saying that because you joined the Kingsguard when you were too young and your sister pretty much half-convinced you to, at least, because you killed Aerys and didn’t say why when everyone thought ill of you after you spent two years watching people burn and worse, because you lied to your brother when your damned father pretty much forced you into it?”
“Well, I don’t think they qualify as smart decisions, my lady.”
“They probably don’t, but so your sister has no responsibility in how you ended up taking them when, excuse me, from what you’ve told me the only conclusion I can muster is that she’s treated you like a bloody commodity for the entirety of your lives? Your fellow Kingsguard don’t hold any responsibility for having let things go that far when you were the youngest of them and arrived last or for leaving just you in a castle under siege? And your father has no responsibility in lying to your brother when it was his idea? You know, if you aren’t to blame for the Red Wedding because he schemed it, the reverse is at least somewhat valid. And I haven’t seen you try to make up for all of that and for actual wrongdoings no one else was responsible for just to hear you chalk it up as winning a prize for dumb decisions.”
His left hand wraps around her wrist, his cold fingers grasping at her dirty skin. “I have a feeling you might be a tad not objective, but —”
“Jaime, I imagine you remember what we both thought of each other when we met. If anything, I’m absolutely objective. I wouldn’t change my mind about someone who was truly dishonorable, never mind that — gods, can’t you see it?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” he says, and now he sounds utterly serious, and Brienne wants to personally meet anyone who made sure he wouldn’t see it just to make them taste her steel. But she can’t do that now, can he?
“Well, I see that regardless of how much just about everyone in your life failed you, you still saved an entire city and asked nothing in return — not even recognition, for that matter. I see that regardless of how much your sister might have been power-hungry or self-centered or cruel, you never were, and the fact that you hate that you hurt your brother instead of asking for his head on a spike would say it all. I see that you could find it in yourself to save my — my honor at a cost when you could barely even stand up and you jumped in between myself and that damned bear without a hand or a weapon, and when your sister wanted you to give her Lady Sansa’s head and your brother’s, you gave me a Valyrian steel sword and sent me out to find her instead of doing her bidding. And never mind everything else, because there’s more, you also found it in yourself to forgive me because I risked bringing you to your death even if I already knew I would have tried to avoid it and I lied to you to get you to come with me, and honestly, if that doesn’t say a lot about how much better than you think you are and the rest of Westeros thinks you are, well, then it’s a damned pity.” She takes a breath, feeling like she’s just vomited an incoherent mass of words at him, but she never was good at talking, was she?
She doesn’t expect him to grasp tighter at her wrist.
“Gods, if it wasn’t a fucking dumb question I’d ask you how can you really mean it, but it was obvious that you did. And it’s not that you don’t make sense, but it’s not like I’ve heard that speech that many times.”
The last sentence was barely audible, but at that Brienne thinks she might have understood what she was wondering a few weeks ago. Or better, she had thought she’d ask him if she was seeing things thinking that his attitude changed when she complimented him somehow, but hasn’t he just told her that he’s not adjusted to hear that?
Maybe she doesn’t need to ask him when he most likely wouldn’t want to answer.
Maybe —
“Then maybe it’s time someone tells you that you might have done bad things but you’re still the best person I know.”
She might have said more, but then he makes a pained, needy noise in the back of his throat that she can’t quite pinpoint but she certainly never heard it coming from him, and then his mouth is on hers, kissing her like it’s the last thing he might do, and she kisses back at once, realizing that this is the first time time they can do it on an actual bed without anyone possibly interrupting them and of course they’re both filthy and covered in dried sweat. Well, she supposes they’ll just stop here for the night as they lie down on the bed without breaking contact, but when they do for air, he looks down at her, his left hand brushing along the laces of her shirt.
Then it moves downwards and unlaces her breeches without hesitation.
“Wait,” she says, “we’re — I mean, maybe we should clean up —”
“Wench, is that your only objection?” He asks, the corner of his mouth quirking upwards. “Because if that is the problem, I think we’ve been in worse conditions and I can’t care less.”
“Of course I have no other objections,” she says, and then he grins and moves a hand on her waist — she arches up so he can move down both her breeches and smallclothes, and she helps him with the other side, and then she only has her shirt on before Jaime kneels, leans forward and puts his mouth on her and — gods, it’s definitely an improvement from doing it in the woods or in a military camp on a bedroll, and he’s running his tongue over her cunt slowly before pushing forward, sucking softly on it, and she doesn’t even try to stay silent, it doesn’t really matter now, not when she had never thought bedding someone might feel good rather than bothersome at best and painful at worst, and that anyone would take time for that with her anyway —
And then she thinks, but what if I actually told him?
She had figured he’d know already, and she doesn’t know how to say it without sounding ridiculous, but that most likely won’t matter same as nothing else she was worried about when it came to this has mattered until now, and she can actually say it if it makes him happy, regardless of how embarrassed it might make her feel.
He licks her cunt again, and again, and Brienne moves her hands down, grasping at his hair but without pulling, no need to make it painful.
She tries to speak, and then he sucks down on her clit again.
“Jaime, I — oh,” she interrupts herself, then tries for it again, “this — this feels so good, I’m —”
For a moment he stops, but then he starts again.
Faster.
And as ridiculous as that sounded — that’s not the point now, is it?
“You don’t even know,” she says, “or maybe — you do, but — I thought for years no one would even think about wanting me like this,” she goes on, feeling mighty thankful that she’s not looking at him or this would be way harder to say. She thinks he did grasp that concept, but she’s never told him so brutally. “And — oh, oh, you’re so good at this, gods —”
And at that she has to stop because she’s pretty sure he might have just made that noise in the back of his throat again except that it’s muffled now for obvious reasons, and then his mouth is back on her cunt, his tongue licking her off over and over again with a renewed fervor, and she can feel that she’s not going to last long before peaking, and she should probably warn him but the moment she pulls a bit at his hair he doesn’t try to move away, and at that point she’s beyond doing anything but moan his name over and over again as she spends against his mouth, and her stomach clenches on itself in the good way when she realizes he’s trying to catch her wetness with his tongue, and the moment she lets out a relieved breath and unclenches the hold her legs had around his shoulders, she expects him to move away and probably ask her what she was thinking. Gods, her thighs must be half-covered in fluids, and given that she already was covered in dried sweat it should smell pretty bad, but —
Instead, he doesn’t move for a long, long moment, and then his tongue slowly, slowly proceeds to lick her clean dutifully, starting from the thighs until he reaches the warm flesh of her cunt, still wet, and she doesn’t even know what in the seven hells she’s thinking when she reaches down and starts carding her fingers through his hair, but she hears him moan the moment she does it, and so she keeps on doing it even if she has no idea of what exactly she’s trying to accomplish here. She does it until he’s finished, or so it seems, but then he just — stays on his knees, his head falling against her inner thigh. She can’t see his face still, not from here, but he leans into it when she runs her fingers at the back of his head, his hand reaching out and curling around her ankle.
Seven hells.
All right. All right, she obviously somehow guessed something he wanted because he certainly doesn’t seem displeased, but this also isn’t exactly how he usually is after they lie together, and she should actually pay him back the same favor because she’s not exactly going to leave him wanting after what he just did.
“Jaime?” She asks, her fingers still going through his hair. “Do you need —”
He shakes his head, then presses up closer against her leg.
All right, this is… not the usual. She straightens her back, then curls back down, her other hand going at the back of his head, not forcing him to look at her.
“What — what do you need then?”
He shrugs, not moving.
Considering that he usually never loses a chance to talk in any occasion, including sharing a bed with her, this entire situation is just weird, but —
Well. She obviously was right when she figured he would like being complimented while bedding her. But she figured it out when he said no one ever did that in the first place. And what has he been sour about this entire time?
People thinking that he doesn’t have enough of a personality to not do his sister’s bidding or worse, him assuming he didn’t?
Seven hells, maybe…
She clears her throat. “Fine, but the ground can’t be so comfortable. I think I’d prefer lying down. Can you come on the bed?”
She moves back, lying back down on the mattress, and of course she has to stop touching him while she does.
He makes a halfway displeased sound, but then he concedes that she’s right (even if he’s kind of slurring, isn’t he?) and he climbs back up on the bed, still not quite looking at her in the eyes before he puts a hand around her waist and his head hits the pillow next to her. Now that she can take a good look at him, she understands why he said he didn’t need any help with not being left wanting — his breeches are damp in the front, and tomorrow they will definitely need a bath. Good thing there are hot springs below the castle, she thinks.
That said, she moves her hands back where they were — one at his back, the other combing through his hair, and the way he breathes in relief as she does makes it obvious that he did want that.
Gods. All right. She can handle this, she thinks.
She also has a feeling he’s not going to want to talk about anything right now, so she settles on moving the two of them under the covers as best as she can and going to sleep, the rest can wait for morning.
Still, when she presses her lips against his forehead before closing her eyes, she can feel his left hand tightening its hold on her waist.
Yes, they definitely have to discuss it in the morning.
——
She wakes up before he does just at sundown, and he usually is up before she is — last night in the camp wasn’t the norm. He also hasn’t moved all that much during the night and that is also unusual, since when they were traveling to the Vale he used to sleep terribly and even after they started sharing a roll it didn’t get entirely better.
They also are both absolutely filthy and she’s going to drag him down to the pools as soon as he’s up because there’s no way they can show up in the main hall smelling like they do, but she can’t really regret how that happened.
He groans, moving towards the empty spot she vacated the moment she leaves the bed to use the chamber pot, and by the time she’s put it away he’s looking up at her, obviously barely awake, but the green of his eyes seems way brighter than yesterday.
“Good morning,” she says, putting her breeches back on. They’re cold from having been on the ground the entire night, but she’ll be rid of them soon enough.
“Good morning to me indeed,” he retorts, back to the usual lightheartedness in his voice, even if he sounds… somehow better? She clears her throat.
“Well, before we go in the pools and wash, because we really need to do that, would you mind answering a few questions?”
He rolls his eyes. “I can imagine about what, but then again you might want to ask.” He stands up, looking in distaste at his clothes. “Yes, fine, we need to wash. Good thing I did have one change.”
“Good to know that,” she says, putting on her boots without bothering to lace them. “And — it doesn’t have to be a huge deal, you know. Just, what happened yesterday?”
He scoffs. “That’s a question I would really like to have an answer for,” he says.
“Wait, you don’t?”
He shakes his head. “Never happened before,” he says, a tinge of bitterness to his tone. “I mean, it’s not like — oh, hells, I’ve only ever been with her and let me tell you, the two of you couldn’t be more different when it comes to fucking, for that matter.”
“I hope the odds are in my favor,” she tries to joke as he pulls on his own breeches. She doesn’t think it came out too great, but he does laugh at that.
“Believe me, you already won this one war as far as I’m concerned. I don’t know, you started talking and something just changed, but — in the good way. Fuck, I didn’t even need to touch myself, I think it says all.”
“I got that far,” she says, joining him at the door after grabbing her only other change of clothes from her pack — hopefully they can put a few more together in the next days. “But — after. I mean, there was nothing wrong with it, but I’ve never really seen you like that and — I wasn’t too sure of what I should have done.”
He stares at her, biting down on his lip. “Wench, I’m way less sure than you are, but I can tell you that if it happens again I wouldn’t say no and you should do exactly what you did yesterday.”
With that, he opens the door and gets out of the room — she follows him, thinking back on what he just told her.
Well, she supposes she does know what to say, the next time they lay together, and then she’ll see what happens. After all, if that is what he wants, it’s hardly something she can’t give him now, can she?