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janie_tangerine
“Well, a moment," Jaime replies, checking the map on his phone, trying to balance it properly — fuck his lack of right hand and fuck the fact that he’s skipped on physical therapy, except that who is to blame? Him. Then again the one reason they're doing this is that she said he needed a distraction and he couldn’t disagree.
Also, the concept of being somewhere Cersei couldn’t call physically find him for three weeks at least? Sounded like a fucking dream.
He squints at the phone. “We could go ahead here,” he says, “and be across the Oklahoma border in… one hour. Or,” he squints harder, “there’s… apparently a shortcut that means we’d reach it in twenty minutes.”
She moves behind him, looking at the map on the screen.
“It… sounds strange,” she says, “but it does look like it.” The main road does a long detour passing through a lot of small towns, the shortcut goes straight through the border. “Fine,” she says, "then we can take the shortcut. It’s sundown in three hours, I’d like to be beyond the border by then.”
He agrees — it’s not like Kansas has been bad until now, but Brienne sold him this part of the trip with we’d go to the States and you wouldn’t go to the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum when you’ve been watching those movies since I’ve known you? Come on, don’t lie to me, you know you want it, and — yeah. That was enough to convince him to do the detour, and he really wants to get there already, and the last four hours of driving seemed to stretch forever.
He goes back into the car as she puts the pump away and goes back behind the wheel.
If everything is good, in two hours they’ll be in Oklahoma and they can get something to eat and tomorrow he’s going to see western memorabilia and not think about —
His phone rings just as Brienne turns and takes the detour.
It’s his father.
He doesn’t pick it up, but he knows she can pick the shift in mood, because she doesn't ask what’s wrong and turns the radio up higher — it's nondescript country music, but that’s fine, anything as long as he can avoid taking that call.
And then —
“Ah, fuck,” Brienne says, and his phone rings again.
It's Cersei, and it turns out that the shortcut is not asphalted except they didn’t notice before the car went straight on it, and so now they have to go the whole way but this car was so not made for it, they got a cheap one and it shows considering how much the engine is sputtering, and —
“Yeah, no,” he says, and closes the phone. “Sorry, we can use yours if —”
“Sure,” she says immediately, “it’s all right. It’s not like we can go back.”
Yeah.
Fair enough.
The car sputters for the next hour or so, Brienne trying to bring it to the end of the road without having it die on them, and the more time passes the darker the sky becomes as the sun sets and disappears over the horizon line, and he can only think can’t she just leave me the fuck alone, and by the time they're finally back on the interstate the sun has gone down, a quarter of the gas is gone and his mood isn’t brightened.
His mood is livid, and he’s sure Brienne can feel that because she keeps on not saying anything beyond asking him if she should stop at the first motel, and he nods, not even bothering to speak, but — he fucking can’t.
Then Brienne’s phone rings, and he can see Cersei's number flashing on it, and his mood turns downright black — livid doesn't even beginning to fucking cover it for how much he wants to punch the car’s glass window until it breaks, except he can’t afford to ruin the last hand he has left now, can he?
“The fuck,” he asks, "since when does she have your number?”
“Since never,” she replies. “Block her if you want. We can see into it later, but I can see your mood is foul and neither of us needs it. That’s why we’re here, right?”
Yeah.
Fair fucking point.
He considers it, then takes the call.
“Take a fucking hint,” he says without letting her talk, “I’m done.”
Then he blocks the number and turns off her phone too.
“It’s not like we need that for the next motel, do we?”
“No,” Brienne agrees. “Do you want to talk about it?"
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I mean, do you know what’s the last thing she said to me? That she was sure I was green with envy.”
“What? Because of Rhaegar Targaryen?”
“Sure. I mean, I’d be envious of him because he's so much fucking better than me,” and fuck is he talking to his best friend about the details of how he and his fucking twin sister stopped fucking, well, okay, she knew, and — never mind, just, never fucking mind, “as if, I mean, whatever, she was the one who said I was the only one when she absolutely was putting a move on him after he divorced Elia, and when I — when I got that, because I did, you know what she’d tell me?”
“No,” Brienne says quietly, driving a bit faster, her eyes darting upon the road, “no, you never told me. That it wasn’t true?”
“That I was being paranoid. Paranoid. When I just got the vibes, and thing is, I thought she was right, because why would she be lying to me, we were the same person or so she said, I wouldn’t like to her so why would she lie to me, and so I accepted it, said sure, it has to be that, and then turns out that she actually had been fucking the two of us by the time she ended it, so — yeah. Paranoia. My fucking ass. Shit, you never asked to hear any of that.”
“I asked,” she says, “and I’ve known you long enough, Lannister. I suspected half of it anyway. And I’m definitely going to change my number,” she says, and — yeah.
Well.
She hadn’t known most of that until now. And he — he’s only shared a half-truth for now, because of course all of that happened, but she doesn’t know when it started, he never told her that, she doesn’t know that lately he’s been feeling sick just at the thought of how long he let Cersei just do whatever the fuck she wanted with him and with them, she doesn’t know what happened on their twenty-third birthday and he only ever told her half of it, when it came to how he lost the fucking hand.
Good thing she had been out of the country.
Good thing she had.
And she had come back at once, didn’t she, the moment she heard the news, and Cersei never even came to see him but now she can’t stop calling —
“There’s one three miles from here,” Brienne says, quietly.
There’s a sign — it reads that there’s a Gloria’s Inn indeed that far.
It’s late.
He’s tired.
He really wants to throw up.
“Stop there, Sapphire” he sighs. “I think we both need to sleep.”
“All right,” she says, and presses down on the accelerator.
He stares at her hands around the wheel, and doesn’t tell her even more of that half truth he’s not sharing, as in, that he wishes those hands were touching him instead.
— —
I’m a fucking coward, she thinks, and doesn’t say, and she really should get an award for how she has managed, until this point, to not faint every time he uses that nickname for her — it started as a joke when they met in uni and then it stuck, and now, well. It almost sounds like something you’d call your girlfriend like, and she should so not go there, she shouldn’t —
She shakes her head and bites down on her lower lip.
Jaime is staring straight out of the car’s window, his left hand gripping his jacket tight, his lips pressed in a thin line, and he looks really — really tired and angry and sad, and of course it only took a call from his sister to do that, and Brienne —
Tarth, you’re a bloody coward. You’ve been in love with him for years, he’s — he’s not with her anymore now, you could just say it and if there’s a chance in hell he could want you back you might be better for him than she was, not that it would take much but you still fucking could, except that no, you’re just keeping your mouth shut and saying half-truths because of course you suspected all of that but you suspect more and you’ve had feelings for him for years and you only realized — you don’t even remember when at this point, and you should tell him, you should, you should —
She stops in front of the motel.
“Well,” she says, “isn’t this an American stereotype.”
Jaime snorts at that, unbuckling his seatbelt. “I see I did rub off on you, a bit. But yeah. Christ, what’s that? Some house filled with ghosts? I’m sure there has to be at least one around. It looks like it’ll fall on itself tomorrow.”
It -- it does. It’s old, and it's all wooden, and not in a quaint, fancy way. It’s wooden and old in the this was built in the thirties and no one did maintenance on it way, and it does look like there have to be at least five resident ghosts, and the LED sign outside with the name of the inn and — what looks like an iguana next to it just looks… eerie. And out of place. And tacky.
Still.
“Do you want to drive to the next one?” She asks.
“Fuck no,” he says, "I'll risk the ghost. Can’t be worse than my sister, anyway.”
She drives ahead and parks the car in the small lot surrounding the property, then gets out of the car and opens the trunk — she gets both their duffel bags, throws Jaime his own knowing that he would hate it if she offered to bring it, and walks inside the place.
Well, she thinks, now I get the name, because the moment she gets inside the lobby, the first thing she sees next to the counter is a pretty big cage with a bright green iguana inside it, and she’ll bet money that —
“Yes,” a gruff male voice says, “that’s Gloria. Anything to comment?”
Brienne shakes her head, looking at the old man who just showed up from the back room — definitely the same one in the picture hung on the wall, except that he was younger in that one, and he was wearing a military uniform. She’s pretty sure it had to be Vietnam, given his age and the uniform itself, and looking at it better —
“No, General…?” She asks, and at that he half-whistles, raising an eyebrow.
“How did you guess?”
“I know my military,” she says as Jaime walks into the lobby.
“She’s a historian,” Jaime smirks as he joins her, “she doesn’t just know her military.”
“Mormont,” the old man says, “Jeor Mormont. And I imagine that you two want a room?”
“Possibly one with a nice bed,” Brienne replies. “I just drove through that shortcut that was supposed to bring us to the border and it wasn’t a good idea. My back is killing me.”
She doesn’t even want to know how Jaime’s is faring considering that he is the one who’s just out of a weeks-long hospital stay.
“Well,” Mormont says, “it’s not like I don’t have vacancies.” He takes a quick look at them, then at the iguana, then back at them. “What’s your budget?”
Well, Brienne thinks, at least they’re not projecting rich and clueless tourists.
“We’re not on a budget,” Jaime says. “And my back really hurts.”
“Well then,” the man says, “I can give you the honeymoon suite for a hundred for the both of you.”
It’s probably robbery, Brienne thinks, but then again they aren’t on a fucking budget, so.
“We’re taking it,” Jaime says, and slides the man a hundred.
“A pleasure doing business with you,” the man says, and asks them for their IDs after pocketing the money. They hand them over, he takes a couple of pictures, declares them good to go and hands them a key reading 19, with… an iguana on the keyring. Well, this man really likes his lizards, Brienne decides, but it’s quite cute, at the end of it, so who is she to judge?
She takes it.
“Go upstairs,” he says, “it’s immediately to your left. If you need new sheets or an extra blanket it’s in the wardrobe. If you need anything else I’m in the office. And if you want breakfast tomorrow morning you can have it for an extra ten each.”
“Deal,” Jaime says, slipping him a fifty, “and actually, you can keep the rest if you pay me a favor.”
“Such as?”
“If anyone calls here and tells you that they want to call me, you say they got the wrong place. Clear?”
“As rain,” he says, “enjoy your stay.”
Brienne is halfway through the stairs when she realizes that he didn’t object to the fact that he gave them the honeymoon suite.
Oh.
She shakes her head.
It means nothing. He most likely just wants the comfortable bed, and it means nothing.
She reaches the top of the stairs and opens door number nineteen, switching on the light to the side.
“Fucking hell,” Jaime says, walking inside, “this really is top notch southern gothic.”
“We’re in the Midwest,” Brienne replies inconsequentially, noticing that he’s not wrong — the entire room’s wooden panels are carved with flowers and leaves but again, they’re old and ruined, and there’s a large king sized bed with a white canopy in the middle with what seems like at least fifteen pillows in between both sides and dark red covers, the chandelier has actually fake candles on it and she’s sure the light is dim on purpose, there’s another old wooden desk in the corner and — she can see any character in a Faulkner novel sleeping in a similar room, honestly, but still.
“Then it’s top notch Midwest gothic,” Jaime shrugs, “and as long as the bed is comfortable, I don’t give a fuck.” He puts the bag on the ground, shrugs off his jacket and and sits on the bed. “Well, it is comfortable,” he proclaims. “You should try it.”
Brienne does the same, and — yes, at least that was true. It’s very soft. And nice. She thinks she can work with it.
“At least it was worth the price,” she says, and flips him off when he scowls at her for actually wearing pjs at night — he can sleep as naked-with-just-underwear as he likes, but there is no way she is doing that, and so what if she’s wearing a nice sky-blue pair that he got her for her birthday years ago? He looks pleased enough even if it’s obvious he thinks that it’s the kind of clothing only his aunt would wear
(and he still got them for her, though)
so she’ll just scowl back at him, go brush her teeth and get in bed — she’s too tired to grab a bite and they had enough fried chicken at lunch that she doesn’t feel like eating, and he confirms that, so — well. Time for the midwest gothic bed, she thinks, and slides under the covers.
Jaime goes to brush his teeth just after her.
She tries to not stare at his ass or at his chest or his legs — fuck, he’s going to sleep almost naked with her in the same bed, how is she going to even handle this —
Never mind. She can do it.
She can.
She waits for him to come back and slide into the bed after he turns off the light.
He does, and then he sighs, and —
“Well, Sapphire,” he says, “goodnight to you.”
“… Why to me?” She asks. “Aren’t you sleeping, too?”
“Yeah,” he shrugs, “I haven’t slept a wink last night, and I’ve been sleeping like shit since this whole crap with Cersei went down, so. Think it’s another insomniac night for me.”
“… Wait, since the whole thing with Cersei went down? It’s been months!”
He shrugs. “I know.”
“Didn’t — have you tried going to a doctor’s…?” It’s not like he can’t afford a good specialist, Brienne thinks —
“Yeah, and explain him why exactly I have insomnia these days? Sorry but I’d really rather not. If you’re about to ask shouldn’t you try a good therapist, let’s just say that the moment I find the right one I might, but you know. I have to.”
Fair enough, Brienne reasons, he certainly wouldn’t want to unload that kind of baggage to anyone he didn’t feel was… the right kind of specialist.
Still.
“Do — I mean, do you want to talk about it?” She asks softly, again. “Maybe it’d help. But just if you want.”
He says nothing, for a long moment, staring straight ahead in the darkness of the room — she doesn’t know what he’s seeing, and on one side she doesn’t dare ask further, on the other… on the other she still wants to do anything she can to make it better, even if it’s just listening to him rant.
“I’m angry,” he finally says. “I mean, I’m… also a lot of other things, but… it’s just, I’m angry about how it ended, I’m angry that I let her decide things for me half of my life, and I’m angry she had the fucking last word.”
“About — about the entire thing? Or… something specific?”
He shrugs. “Everything. I never had a word in the entire matter, not how it began, not how it ended not anything that happened in between. In retrospective.” He shakes his head, pushing his back against the cushions and looking like he wants to drown in them.
Brienne traitorously thinks, wish I could push you against them, and tries to not stare at how that golden hair of his is spreading all over the pillows.
“And she — she’s still trying to push and I’m just angry that she doesn’t even want to respect that I would rather not talk to her at all, and —” He moves his right wrist under the covers, as if he doesn’t want her to even see the shadow of it, which… it kind of makes her feel sad because it’s not like she’s ever had a problem looking at it, but still. She waits, he obviously hasn’t finished speaking, and —
“You thought I was fucked up when we met, didn’t you.”
“I —”
“Please, you can tell me the truth.”
“I thought you had issues. I never —”
“Well, I had issues also because there was — the worst time. Was before we turned twenty-five. Let’s just say that she dragged me into working for the family company with her, we were in PR, and — it wasn’t — let’s just say it was easier to find cocaine than water around the company offices.” He shakes his head. “I didn’t even like that, I didn’t care for it, I wanted to fence, not to do any of that, and — well. You ever spent your birthday in the ER?”
“No,” she says. “And whatever happened, I’m not judging you for that.”
“You haven’t heard it.”
“You said cocaine was around and it was your birthday, I suppose the party went badly?”
He shrugs. “She had this friend who had a crush on me, she invited her, I… tried to ignore her but she kept on basically throwing the stuff at her. She — she got too much. She was about to overdose, they had to pump adrenaline into her like in that damned movie.”
“What, Pulp Fiction?”
“Yeah. I went to the ER, of course. She didn’t even bother. And I still didn’t have the guts to leave her after that. The friend didn’t die, at least, but… well. I think she’s still trying to pull herself together and it’s been years. Good thing my father paid her a good settlement.” She can’t see him roll his eyes, but she can feel it in the way he’s talking. “And I didn’t — that wasn’t enough. I had to fucking lose the hand and see that you showed up at the hospital the moment you could and she didn’t at any point to make me realized how much exactly she didn’t give a fuck.” He stops, and then she feels him move, inching closer to the middle of the bed. “It’s been — however long it’s been. And I think she ruined me.”
“Come on,” Brienne says, “you aren’t ruined —”
“Please,” he says, “I — sometimes I don’t even know if I know what even being in love means. With Cersei it was just — an obsession, I think, on both our sides, and it was fucking bad, and it feels like a fucking hurricane sweeping you off your feet except that not in the good way, and there’s that and a perpetual adrenaline hit except when she’s not there or when things are bad, which was… most of the time really, and that’s just — any therapist, even a bad one, would just say it’s a fucking mess. But I can’t seem to separate that shit in my head, so.” She feels him shrug as she moves closer, too. “Think that I’m really done for, in that sense.”
No, Brienne thinks, no, that’s not —
“I’m sure you’re not,” she replies, moving closer so they can actually look at each other in the face.
“Yeah, please,” he says, “who’d ever even want to deal with this mess even?”
“You’re talking to the person whose experience with romance are either nonexistent or a disaster,” she says. “I — I don’t know how to describe the difference, I guess,” she whispers, “I don’t know if I’ve ever felt it like that, but there are ways and ways to love and you never did it wrongly, as far as I’ve seen. Don’t — don’t speak about yourself like your love life is… dying of the light or something.”
“What’s it now, the it’s too early to actually sleep so we’re going to speak in metaphors hour?”
“Fuck off,” Brienne half-laughs, “and maybe it’s a shitty metaphor, but — so what? If — if loving people is like the sun being up in the sky then I don’t think it’s setting yet. Fuck, it really was a bad metaphor, wasn’t it?”
He says nothing for a moment, and fuck but she wishes she could tell him, well guess what I’ve been in love with you for I don’t even know how long at this point, imagine that, fucking imagine that, I wish I could tell you I wish I could —
“You know,” he says, “you always say you’re saying the wrong thing, but you actually never do. That — that was nice, you know. Thanks. Not — not many other people would — take care to tell me anything like that.”
“Too bad for them,” she says, moving closer, daring to, and now he’s warm next to her, just — just close enough to touch —
“Hey,” she says, finding the courage to ask at least that, “you — you said you haven’t slept since the accident?”
From what she knows, it was because he was driving and he was drunk and his father bribed the police to drop any charge also because he didn’t hurt anyone, merely crashed the car.
“No,” he says, “not much. Not really. Why?”
She clears her throat, wetting her lips.
She remembers that he asked her more than once why she never sang out loud even if she tends to hum a lot, and she had confessed that she used to do it loudly in kindergarten and then she never could bring herself to since people made fun of her for that, and he said he wouldn’t have minded, they were both drunk when they had those conversations, all those times, but —
She always felt too self-conscious to actually do that, even if he’s been her closest friend for years at this point, but —
But.
— —
“You know,” she says, “I, uh. When my mother died.”
She doesn’t say anything for a while, and Jaime doesn’t press, not knowing where she’s aiming at —
“I couldn’t sleep. Not really. My father would — sing to me. Always the same song. And stay with me until I fell asleep. If — if you’d like that.”
Jaime goes still.
He doesn’t think anyone’s sang to him like that since his mother died, and he only barely remembers it, not really, and no one’s touched him for real except for her and Tyrion since the hand, and not — well. A hug or a few pats on the back at most. And —
“Seriously?”
“Why not?” She asks, and presses closer to him, and then she has an arm around him, tentatively, and when he moves so that his head is pressed against her shoulder, and fuck she has large ones but he thinks he likes how it feels, with Cersei he always was the one holding her but now feeling Brienne’s arms carefully closing around his waist is making him feel good in ways he can’t remember ever feeling, and —
“That’s all right,” he says, “I mean, it — feels nice. You should sleep, really, I —”
She clears her throat. He’s sure she’s blushing like mad, he can feel that her skin is burning up —
“You are my sunshine, my only sunshine —”
“Seriously, Brienne?”
“You make me happy when skies are gray —”
“That was what your father thought was appropriate lullaby material? It’s fucking sad —”
“You’ll never know dear, how much I love you —”
“You can be a right idiot when you want to, you know —”
“Please don’t take my sunshine away,” she keeps on going, and she’s half-laughing but she’s not stopping and her hand is in his hair and wait oh now that is nice, and then — he should tell her to stop, she proved her point, but —
The other night dear, as I lay sleeping, I dreamt I held you in my arms, when I awoke dear, I was mistaken, so I hung my head and I cried, she goes on, and oh but she does have a lovely voice, he thinks, too bad others told her different, and she — fuck, she sounds like she’s actually meaning it, and maybe he’ll think about it in the morning as he closes his eyes, but —
You are my sunshine —
You make me happy —
How much I love you —
Don’t take my sunshine away —
He can barely hear her now, and fucking hell she feels warm and her touch is so gentle gentler than Cersei’s isn’t it and maybe this shit had some merit, and maybe he should ask her if he’s an idiot if he thinks she might mean it, but it’s the first time he’s feels like he’ll actually sleep since he crashed that car and maybe tomorrow he’ll tell her that he was that drunk because he refused to wait for her on the side for the umpteenth time, not after she told him that if he was so green with envy then it’s not like they had to break it off as long as he didn’t get ideas, and —
Maybe he will.
He closes his eyes. She’s still carding her fingers through his hair.
He’ll tell her tomorrow, he decides, and maybe he dreams of full soft lips kissing his forehead or maybe it really happened, but right now it doesn’t matter.
He grasps her hips with his left arm, and he finally sleeps.
— —
She lets her voice drift away as he starts breathing regularly against her shoulder.
Maybe her father really had abysmal choices — though admittedly he never sang her the actual stanzas, just the refrains.
Still… it felt right.
You’ll never know, dear.
How true, until now.
I think tomorrow you will, she says, and then holds him tighter and closes her eyes.
It feels like a free fall in a way nothing else has ever felt, but —
But she wants to take the leap.
She goes to sleep.
Tomorrow.
Epilogue
“I love you,” she tells him the day after, when they’re both awake and the sun is filtering through the window.
“Wait,” he says, opening his eyes, staring at her, mouth parted, “you — you do what? As a friend? I knew that, Sapph —”
“No,” she shakes her head, “I love you, I have for years, I feel like I just jumped into a fucking abyss and if you don’t feel the same then it’s all right, it doesn’t have to be weird, but I can’t not tell you anymore and I hadn't thought I’d do it in the middle of midwestern gothic, but —”
He stares at her, and then his mouth is on hers, and wait what fuck is he kissing her —
She kisses him back, hand going to the back of his head, feeling that soft golden hair under her fingertips as he pulls her down on top of him and he’s moaning into it and his left is grasping her hip so tight it hurts and she barely even cares, not when —
Not when —
“Fuck,” he says, “you — I hadn’t known, I thought — really?”
“Maybe,” she says, “your love life — my — our love lives don’t have to be a sunset. Fuck, I need coffee,” she laughs, and he laughs back and kisses her as he glances out of the window — it’s sunrise now, not sunset, and then he looks back at her —
“Well,” he says, "maybe that metaphor had some merit. Think we should stay in the midwestern gothic honeymoon suite for another couple of days before we head off for the cowboy museum and work on that?”
“I think,” she smiles back, “that we have a deal, Lannister.”
“Then, Sapphire, I think you should be kissing me again already.”
She smiles, and she does, and —
That free fall, she decides, was absolutely fucking worth taking.
End.
