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janie_tangerine
Knowing that, he should have thought about it twice before agreeing to drag Jaime out for drinks after Tyrion begged him to.
Rewind: apparently Jaime had the worst falling out with his sister, and Bronn does not fucking want to know the details of it because what little he knows is more than enough for your standard guy who absolutely never asked to be involved in Lannister family drama and then ended up smack in the middle of it. According to Tyrion, he’s taking it really badly and he needs to get distracted, but Tyrion himself is currently in France for a month because of work matters and so he should do it.
Bronn, wh0’s sometimes a fucking bloody idiot but had figured he’d get at least good drinks in return, had done his job as a Friend Of The Both Of Them and dragged Jaime out for drinks.
And now he doesn’t know if he should regret it or not, because the moment they were at their third round, this woman walks inside the place and goes to sit on her lonesome on the other side of the counter.
Now, the woman in question is something. Tall, really fucking so, definitely more than Bronn and with an inch or two on Jaime, at least, cheeks covered in freckles, large lips, thrice-broken nose (Bronn can recognize it, thank you very fucking much), large as fuck shoulders — she does have a pair of damn pretty blue eyes, though, from what he noticed when he passed near her as he headed for the bathroom.
He had admittedly thought that while she’s hardly pretty or anything, if he was on his lonesome he might have chatted her up just because.
Except that then he had gone back to his side of the stool where Jaime had been about staring at her, trying to look smooth. Is not exactly working.
“What,” Bronn tells him.
“Nothing,” he immediately replies, downing half of his whiskey.
“Oh, come the fuck on.” Bronn rolls his eyes at him. “You’re not being subtle here.”
“I don’t know what —”
“You’re staring at her like there’s no tomorrow, not that it’s my fucking business.”
He goes red in the face. “Well, it’s not my fault if she has a nice ass, all right?”
Wait, what —
Bronn, who has been known for a lot of crass lines to hit on girls but who has grasped a long time ago that most of them will take you for a complete cunt if you start by telling them that they have a nice ass or tits without even saying hi, rolls his eyes again and glances at the part in question.
Okay. Fine. He can give them Jaime that. She does have nothing to complain in that specific department, but of course she doesn’t — she’s tall, her legs are long, and the jeans she’s wearing show off how they’re all muscle.
Of course she has a nice arse.
Bronn shrugs and takes a sip from his glass. “Well, then don’t be a cunt and tell her.”
“What?”
“I mean, I’d avoid breaching the fucking subject immediately because most people wouldn’t want total strangers to march up to them with that bloody piece of information only, but we’re in a pub, she’s alone, you are — well, not alone but it’s not like we’re here to fuck, so that doesn’t matter, just chat her the fuck up.”
He goes red in the face as he chokes on his drink.
“I don’t think you’ve got the situation clear,” Jaime says.
“How do I not,” Bronn sighs back.
“I’ve never — I mean, there’s only ever been —”
“All right, all right, now first thing, you’re not going to tell me that in public or possibly not ever because the last thing I need to know is what exactly is your issue with your cunt of a sister —”
“Hey —”
“I’ve known her since she was thirteen, don’t tell me I haven’t gained the right to call her what she is.”
“Whatever. So?” It’s probably a good thing he’s not denying it.
“I was saying, whatever is that, if you haven’t hit on people at the ripe age of Almost Thirty then it’s your problem, but it’s never too bloody late to start, so how about you go there and do it?”
“Come on, I don’t — I mean, it’d be creepy —”
“It’d be creepy if she tells you she’s not into you and you keep on pushing, not if you bloody talk to her.”
“Oh, yeah, and what do I do, I sit down next to her and say, hello, you don’t fucking know me from Adam but the moment you walked inside this joint I couldn’t stop staring at you and your backside?”
“That’s exactly what I said you shouldn’t do,” Bronn groans, then pours himself more whiskey. Good thing they bought the bloody bottle. “Maybe like, ask her if she’s alone or her name or try to chat her up before telling her you want to tap her in that one specific place.”
Jaime groans and reaches for the bottle. “Yeah, no. I’m — forget it.”
“For — you know that if she leaves and you never see her again it’s a wasted chance, don’t you?”
“As if,” he says, “it’s probably better for anyone if I don’t. I mean — never mind. Fuck it.”
Then he drinks some more.
Bronn is not liking how the evening is shaping up to be.
— —
An hour later, the situation is the following.
One: Miss Nice Firm Ass has not left the premises. She’s chatted on her phone a bit, she’s at her second cocktail and hasn’t talked to anyone nor tried to chat anyone else up.
Two: Jaime has thought about it for ten seconds before buying some Russian vodka that probably costs half of Bronn’s regular paycheck.
Two and a half: the vodka is good, at least.
Three: the situation has turned so embarrassing he’d laugh, if he wasn’t one of the cunts in the middle of it.
“Jaime,” he hisses, “if I hear another remark about how that arse and those legs and those eyes are the hottest thing you ever saw I’m going to personally kick you in your bloody arse until you crash over her.”
“You wouldn’t,” Jaime protests, his cheeks flushed. He’s definitely way beyond tipsy. If Bronn was anywhere near responsible, he should drag him home already.
Too bad that Bronn never asked for that job and he wants to finish the vodka, at least, and maybe he was kind of hoping that Jaime would see reason and talk to the damned woman, especially since it would only be good for him.
If only he would do that.
“Christ,” Bronn groans, “you know that if I walked up to her and you did, your pretty face would have more chances of getting a yes than mine?”
“Yeah, and then if she gets a grasp of the personality behind it —”
“Are you fucking saying that is the problem?”
“‘Course I am,” Jaime laughs, but it’s not reaching his eyes or anything of the kind. “I’m really not a good prospect right now. Or at any point.”
“Is that you talking or your sister?” Bronn is sure he sounds entirely done with this bullshit, but there’s a limit to everything. “Because as much as you can be a cunt at times, there’s nothing wrong with your shining personality, unless we take into account that you seem to think it’s the same as hers, which has been fucking creepy since I’ve known you, but whatever.”
“Wait, I seem to think?”
“That’s what you say, but like, you behave the opposite way she does and sure as fuck you don’t go around traumatizing your brother for life to the point that when we met he thought I was a damned adjusted person.”
“Why, aren’t you?”
“Fuck you both,” Bronn groans as he downs more of that vodka. “I am compared to you, I guess. But never mind that, there’s nothing wrong with you. Just talk to her, won’t you?”
Jaime looks down into his half-empty glass. “You know you are the only person I’m not related to I actually talk to regularly, don’t you?”
“Yes, and that is why you should talk to other people.”
Jaime says nothing.
Then he drinks more vodka.
Fucking hell.
— —
Half an hour later, Jaime is at the point where he really should quit drinks before he starts talking too much, the bottle has a quarter left, Miss Nice Firm Ass is at her third cocktail without showing any signs of being drunk, he’s heard odes about how hot she unconventionally is enough that he could recite at least some of them, and he’s this close to standing up, playing the wingman, go to her side of the counter and tell her that his cunt of a friend is hopelessly into her and could she please come by and talk to him for a moment, but then he shakes his head, figuring it would be a cosmically bad idea.
He’s trying to find a way to make sure this entire situation doesn’t go pear-shaped when the door opens and some guy in his forties walks in. Bronn immediately decides that he looks like a creep in the worst way if anything because of how he glances at the waitress when he comes in. He goes in the middle of the counter along with a couple friends, orders some gin and obviously blocks their line of sight for Miss Firm Nice Ass.
Jaime doesn’t look too pleased at that. Bronn just shakes his head and tries to keep an eye on the situation, since it doesn’t look too pleasant. He gathers that the guy has to be named Locke or so his friends say, and he definitely isn’t the kind of person who doesn’t talk about the waitress in a fairly crass way.
Not long later, the waitress does come to the counter to take her orders —
And a moment later, the guy does palm her ass.
Hard enough that she almost drops the tray.
“Hands off,” she tells him, but her voice dies down at the way the asshole stares at her.
Bronn glances beyond the counter. Of course the bartender just went to the kitchen.
“Hey,” the guy leers, “a pretty little thing like you should appreciate a man being into her.”
Shit, the girl’s barely eighteen from the way she looks, and she’s obviously about to freak out —
“And how about you keep your hands down?”
Wait —
Oh. That was Miss Firm Nice Ass, Bronn realizes. She stands up, turning to glare at the guy and moving next to the waitress, motioning for her to just leave. Shit, she’s tall.
“And who are you, her knight in shining — oh, fuck me, you’re not a man?”
Jaime about chokes on his vodka. “How do you look at her and not notice,” he slurs.
Fucking hell.
“No,” Miss Firm Nice Ass says, not sounding at all amused. “But I could probably kick your arses in ten seconds, so how about you go back to your drinks and avoid harassing people?”
“As if,” Locke quips back, and Bronn can feel that this is going to end up in a fight, he can — “You’re just jealous that no one would grab yours, given how fucking ugly you are.”
For a split second, Bronn can see that she looks like she just took a hit in the solar plexus.
Except that then her eyes turn hard again and she opens her mouth —
“Speak for your bloody self,” Jaime shouts, and oh, shit, of course now he’s drunk enough that he completely lost his brain to mouth filter.
Locke turns to look at them. What a score.
“Because you would think that is attractive? Are you fucking blind?”
Jaime drops on his feet from the stool he was sitting on. Now he looks pissed off. Bronn looks at her and — now she looks just completely out of her depth.
“No,” Jaime proclaims, managing to sound not completely drunk for some kind of miracle, “I’m very much not blind, and if your taste sucks so much that you don’t notice the greatest ass that ever graced this country right in front of you then I’m very sorry for you, but you’re also just a plain fucking arsehole, so how about you leave and stop harassing women who aren’t obviously into you? Not that I don’t get them. If I was a woman I wouldn’t look at you twice.”
The girl’s eyes go so wide it would almost be comical. Bronn also leaves his own stool because he can feel that this is going sour in a moment.
“Well, given your tastes I can imagine that,” Locke says, and —
Bronn does try to stop it.
He really does.
Except that before he can reign Jaime back and he can deal with this himself, the first punch has flown.
Amazing.
— —
Fifteen minutes later, Locke and his friends have been thrown out by the very-pissed-off bartender, Bronn is more or less unscathed, Jaime is nursing the black eye to end all black eyes, the waitress looks mortified, three tables are broken and Miss Firm Nice Ass, who had actually punched everyone in the face except Jaime before sending them all to the management therefore confirming that she could kick everyone’s ass in the bar, is keeping an ice pack over Jaime’s face, looking fairly worried.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the ER?” She asks for the fifth time. “That really looks bad.”
“Nah,” he slurs, “I'm fine. Got through worse.”
If he’s thinking of that one time Tyrion called him because Cersei was apparently throwing plates his way, he’s going to — he doesn’t even know what the fuck he’s going to do, but fuck if everyone he knows named Lannister didn’t need therapy fucking yesterday.
She doesn’t look too reassured at that.
“Also, I could be doing a lot worse right now — ah, fuck,” Jaime blurts, realizing too late what he just said. “Uh, sorry about that. I’m just —”
“Uhm,” she interrupts him, “just — I mean, did you imply that —”
She’s blushing.
Jaime is blushing.
Bronn is fucking done.
“He,” he interrupts her, “has been quite bloody literally pining after your very firm, round, muscled ass since the moment you walked inside this bar and hasn’t tried to talk to you because he thought it’d be creepy or whatever the hell was going through his head, and I’ve been trying to convince him to do it for two hours and then he decided that getting punched in the fucking face for you was an entirely better idea, and I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t want to go to the ER because he can just stare at you instead, so if you’re bloody amenable to give his arse a chance, I can assure you he’s nowhere near as bad as he thinks he is. Cheers,” he finishes, and finishes his drink.
The girl looks back down at Jaime, her cheeks even redder. “Did he just say you are —”
“Listen,” Jaime slurs, “I wish I was as sober as this situation required, but yes, I think you’re hot, I would rather stare up at you than at some random ER doctor and your ass is fucking magnificent. There, I said it.”
For a moment, she looks completely flabbergasted, but then she laughs and —
Her hand moves to his wrist?
“Listen,” she says, “guys don’t usually look at me twice or hit on me or anything of the kind. Sure as hell they don’t get punched in the face to make the point that I am hot or whatever. I’m — I mean, given the situation… it’s not creepy or anything. Actually — it’s nice? That you’d like my ass.” She’s still half-smiling and admittedly it does light up her eyes, and as Jaime looks up at her he looks completely smitten.
What.
The.
Fuck.
He opens his mouth, closes it, and okay, fine, Bronn isn’t going to be satisfied until this entire situation is solved the way it should be and if Jaime can’t just bloody tell her, he is going to. He has started it, might as well finish it.
“Well,” Bronn says, “if that means you’d be willing to let him tap it whenever you see bloody fit, just tell him and put him out of his misery. You’re welcome.”
She laughs again as Jaime sends him a glare, but given that he has just one eye to do it, that comes out remarkably pitiful.
“Shit,” Jaime says, “I’m sorry about him, I guess I really pushed it —”
“It’s all right,” she replies, her hand still holding that ice pack up to his face. “I’d be the same. I mean, I’d probably need the wingman to hit on nice guys who usually don’t even look at me twice.”
“Wait, what —”
“I’m saying,” she goes on, “that if you’re amenable to maybe a few dates before I let you tap that, I’d be more than all right with it.”
Jaime blinks once, twice, and then grins at her in a way that Bronn has never seen him smile at anyone. Maybe Tyrion. But without that subtext.
“I’m fucking more than amenable,” he says, and then the idiot realizes that maybe, maybe, he should have fucking introduced himself. “Oh, by the way, I’m Jaime. Sorry, I didn’t even —”
“That’s all right,” she smiles, and good thing she is amused here. “I’m Brienne. And you really need to stop apologizing, I think.”
“Fine,” he says, “but then I guess you’ll be amenable to help me out with that ice for a bit?”
“I could be persuaded.”
Okay, now they’re flirting. Good. Bronn decides that he can be one hundred per cent satisfied with the outcome of the evening, and if she volunteers to bring Jaime home herself he absolutely is going to let her have the honor. Now he’ll finish his excellent alcohol, text Tyrion to inform him of this entire mess and be glad that the pub was near his house and he doesn’t have to drive or anything, because now that would be a bad idea.
That said, after those two hook up for good, he is going to gloat about it as long as he lives, because Jaime absolutely deserves it for the ridiculousness he put him through, and if at the same time he’s really glad it actually worked out… no one said the two things couldn’t coexist now, could they?
End.
