Chapter Text
Brienne
“I’ve told him no, I’ve reported him to HR, I’m at my wits end with him and I don’t know what to do.’
“Want me to kill him?” Brienne offered, handing Sansa the rest of the cardboard pizza box. Tonight was My Nanny’s Twin but frankly, it wasn’t living up to the hype. The dialogue was stiff, the twists pedestrian, and the over-acting was hardly “over” at all.
In truth, Brienne’s attention had been far elsewhere for most of the evening, even while Sansa bemoaned the latest “tokens of affection” sent to her by Petyr Baelish.
This undue interest in Jaime, in Mr Lannister, continue to fester. It had metastasized into a full blown- something. He had always been magnetic, Brienne’s eyes were hardly the only pair that followed his progress across the floor. Especially in the evenings, when he rolled his sleeves up his forearms and stretched the wide muscles of his shoulders, reclining in his chair like a languid cat.
Jaime had always been beautiful, but where that knowledge had once been tempered with her hatred of his arrogance, his petulance, his petty cruelties, Brienne’s grip on those facts, on her good sense, was loosened. Handsome and hateful was fine, but if he was now her friend?
In truth, it was getting worse. Brienne started, in the office, when Jaime approached her unexpectedly, found herself manufacturing excuses to stop by his office and chat. It wasn’t just the voyeuristic glee of those sculpted features; she longed for how he made her feel in those moments, devoting his full attention, as if she, too, were beautiful.
Every day the lump settled deeper in her stomach, that one day somehow he’d learn how she felt about him, and that illusion would shatter. Jaime would be revolted, rightly so, and she would lose him. As a boss, as a friend. It would be a professional nightmare as much as a personal one, and Brienne couldn’t withstand it.
Sansa continued on, circling around the same well trod path.
“Honestly Brienne, you have no idea what it’s like, these men who just never leave me alone. It’s like one look and they decide I’ve got to be their wife, whether I want to or not.”
Brienne hummed, ignoring the unintended sting.
She settled back into Sansa’s stylish (read, deeply uncomfortable) sofa and resolved to get her shit in order.
The next morning she made an early start into the office. Sansa disapproved of her working on Sundays, and Brienne excused herself, pleading that they were in the final weeks of the deal, “crunch time and all that.” It was true, but it wasn’t everything. As child, Brienne had loathed summer holidays, and as a grown woman she dreaded weekends. The loneliness that stretched out before her, punctuated only by the occasional illumination of Sansa’s company.
Work was a distraction. It moored her.
By habit, her feet routed her by Jaime’s office on her way into the bullpen. She hadn’t expected to find him there, hunched over his laptop, hair unkept. Jaime was unshaven, a two-day stubble peppering his jawline, his hair (usually immobile under industrial quantities of gel) unkept.
Anyone else would have looked ghastly. On Jaime it was merely rakish.
He looked up and met her eyes, and waved at her to enter.
‘You’re here early? And on a Sunday?”
“Yes well someone has been churning out work for me to review at an unbelievable pace,” his eyes twinkled.
Brienne shuffled her feet. It sounded like a compliment, and she was unsure how to deflect.
“Although you’re right I am here very early,” Jaime reclined back in his chair, extending his arms above his head in a stretch. A devious part of Brienne willed his shirt to slip up, granting her a glimpse of his amber skin.
“Particularly as I didn’t get any sleep last night… if you catch my meaning,” he leered.
Brienne gave an exaggerated roll of her eyes.
“You’re disgusting.”
“You love it.”
“Just waiting for the right moment to report you to HR.”
“I’d be more inclined to believe you if you weren’t smiling right now.”
A shadow cast across Jaime’s face, and heavy set lines flickered around his mouth. “I’ve been thinking, Brienne.”
Her stomach churned.
“About Hunt and Vargo and the lot of them. I don’t like how they treat you. Say the word and I’ll have them fired.”
Her jaw slackened. “Can you even do that?”
“I’ve never tried. Still, you’d be surprised what invoking Tywin Lannister’s name can do.”
Again he was staring at her with a horrible, earnest, intensity as she fought to avert her gaze. Jaime Lannister, a good man, offering to do a good thing.
“Don’t. I know it’s coming from the right place but I can fight my own battles. I don’t need you to do it for me.”
“Just because you don’t need something, doesn’t mean you don’t deserve it.”
Brienne stared resolutely at the pattern in the carpet. The softness in Jaime’s voice was devastating. Looking at him would have been lethal.
“Anyway,” Jaime slapped his thighs and took to his feet. “Coffee first. Then we can deal with this mountain of fucking paperwork.”
Brienne nodded, hurrying for the safety of the kitchen.
Jaime
Jaime winced as his aching hamstrings settled against the smooth wood of the bench. The steam nestled him close, and he shut his eyes.
As a rule he avoided the company gym; too many vascular associates, covered tip to toe in branded athleticwear like F1 drivers advertising sponsors. Not to mention the attention he would attract. All it would take was one eagle eyed junior to put two and two together while he shied from the weights.
This evening in the sauna was, then, a treat. Jaime could hear his heartbeat slowing, feel the blood flow easing through his veins. He might even be getting back some of the years that Stannis’ nutter client had taken off his lifespan. In hindsight, he wished she’d pursued her complaint instead of abandoning it the moment she got push back. No amount of money was worth this.
The temperature dropped, and gooseflesh prickled down Jaime’s arms.
He flexed his fingers and his eyes shot open, preparing to snap at whichever inconsiderate ass was letting all the steam out-
Huh.
Straw hair plastered to her pink forehead, Brienne Tarth stood staring at Jaime like she was Lurch from the goddam Addams Family.
Through the dissipating mist he saw her four white knuckles squeezing the overlap of her towel.
Jaime was not wearing any towel. He was, in fact, naked. He found Brienne’s eyes and followed their path down to the crook in his legs.
Huh.
“Come in, wench,” he croaked. “You’re letting out all the steam.”
For once, Brienne’s eyes did not thunder at the nickname. Wordlessly she slid the glass door shut, before tucking herself onto the bench at the far corner of the sauna.
He should ignore her, but it was far more amusing to prod. Jaime enjoyed getting her colour up, seeing the heat flush to her cheeks when she found her temper. She was far less unattractive with that rose about her cheeks, enough to be almost pleasing.
“Does this mean you’ve finished transcribing my memos?” Jaime recalled the drawling voice memos he had sent to Brienne that afternoon.
She quirked a thin eyebrow.
“I take that as a no. In any event they need to be done by tomorrow morning because-“
“How long are you going to do this?” she cut in, but her voice was smooth rather than sharp.
“Need I remind you? You work for me.”
“I work for the firm. Not you. And that’s not what I meant. How long are you going to keep pulling my pigtails? Aren’t we a bit old for these juvenile games? Or at least you are.”
The Lannisters were gifted speakers. Jaime’s father had built his family, built the firm and the 30 stories it occupied, with nothing more than his voice and a five pound note. Tyrion could talk the devil himself into handing him the keys to hell. Jaime was less persuasive, but he made up for that in his ability to provoke.
And yet, when he reached for a clever retort, it crawled back into his throat and died.
She took to her feet, shifting her pale shoulders, and letting the fabric of her towel slip. Down and down.
Brienne stood before him, naked, the lingering steam curling into the hairs on her mound.
“Or is it because you don’t know any affection that doesn’t hurt? You don’t know any way but to get me to cut you, before you’ll admit what you really want. Because you don’t believe you deserve any kindness. You’re like a dog that’s been hit so many times that when a hand reaches out to feed you, you wince.”
Heat flushed to Jaime’s stomach, and he felt himself stiffen.
The wench smirked.
“Don’t tell me that’s the cock you’ve spent all this time bragging about. Pathetic.”
Jaime’s hand was around his length before he had time to think. Better not to think, really, that would only ruin it.
“Eager thing, aren’t you? How many times have you thought about this? Picturing me naked in your head on those nights you make me stay late in your office?”
“I haven’t,” he protested, settling into a rhythm of long, heavy pulls.
Pearls of sweat were already thick on his skin, and he could see them pooling at the crook of Brienne’s neck. His tongue slipped from his mouth, only for a moment, as he imagined leaning forward to lick the salt from her skin.
“Is that really what you tell yourself?” the same smirk, a wicked narrow to her eyes, but she made no move towards him.
Jaime looked up through the lengths of his lashes, pouting the plump of his mouth, and went for the line that never failed.
“Enough about me. What would you like me to do to you?”
“I want you to tell yourself the truth.”
Jaime’s breath caught and his eyes snapped open to stare at the ceiling. Left, right, he was surrounded by his bedroom walls, his mattress firm beneath him. In his sleep he had thrashed his duvet, exiling it to a puddle at the bottom of the bed.
It was just a fucked up dream, his punishment for coffee after 7pm. And Jaime knew better than those new world woo woo interns who cropped up in the office each summer with their star charts and hemp- dreams didn’t mean shit. Just his subconscious processing the events of the day in random acontextual order.
Which didn’t explain why he’d defended Brienne to Hunt, why he’d practically been flirting with her. Why he’d confessed to her the truth about Aerys that he’d sworn to take to his grave.
It didn’t explain why he was still achingly hard from the memory, of the dream, of her.