Chapter Text
Chapter 23: Liquor
Sometimes they were together so often that it felt as though they really were a couple; sometimes weeks and months would go by before they saw each other. But even as alcoholics are drawn to the state liquor store after a stint on the wagon, they always came back to each other.
* * *
Tarth was the kind of island poets wrote about. Its sapphire waters glimmered in the light of the afternoon sun, making the sea look like a star-sprinkled sky, open and beautiful, shrouded in mystery.
Brienne was sitting on top of her motorcycle, much like she had every day that week, staring at the house that had been her home until her teenage years. Though the lands around it were wide and fertile, the house itself looked no different than any other. It had two stories and an attic, and was located on a cliff overlooking the Narrow Sea. If Brienne closed her eyes, she could still recall the days when it was painted in azure, contrasting beautifully with the rose roof tiles. There had been flowers planted all over the front yard, and an orange tree with fruit of incomparable taste.
Upon opening her eyes, reality would hit her like a slap. Since the closure, the place had been entirely abandoned, and without anyone to maintain it, its current state left much to be desired. The paint was chipped, and the wood on the side of the house had mold, unable to withstand the humid, salty air. The roof tiles needed to be changed urgently, all the plants had died, and the fence had fallen apart piece by piece.
Brienne could not begin to imagine how she would have reacted to such a thing were it not for her current financial situation. With what was left of her payment for the Red Wedding investigation, she had more than enough for the necessary repairs, however much it took for her home to look the way it had a decade ago. As for the time she would have to invest, she had put her apartment in the Red Keep district up for rent, and the monthly income was far higher than she had ever earned at Evenstar Security. For the first time in her life, she could take as much time off work as she needed without worrying about the money.
The inside of the house was another matter. There would surely be cobwebs everywhere, dust, fungi, even rats living there. The place might smell like wet wood, it might look like it had come out of a horror movie. But for Brienne to know that, she would have had to walk inside first.
For the past few days her routine had always been the same. She would wake at the inn where she was staying, have some breakfast and climb on her bike, making her way to the estate. Then she would sit on the motorcycle, gazing at the house for hours, unable to come up with the courage to open the door and look inside.
Every time her fingers grasped the doorknob of the main entrance, panic seeped into her veins. It was as though the handle burned her skin, and the memories flooded her brain. Brienne could almost perceive the stink of cigarettes that came off the intruder, hear the sounds of struggle, of violence. The bloodstain that awaited her at the entrance would not leave her mind, that spot where the lifeblood of three different entities had come to co-exist and mark the space—her blood, her attacker’s, her father’s. The hardwood floor must have eagerly absorbed it all, sealing that moment in the history of the house. The stain would be there to greet her, to taunt her.
With a sigh, Brienne realized today would not be the day.
Just as she stood to climb on the motorcycle, she heard the noise of a car pulling up on the road, which was odd. Since she had barely arrived on the island days ago, she was not expecting visitors, and all the people who had known her from childhood were either dead or estranged after the murder.
Brienne thought her eyes might be deceiving her when she spotted the plates of the vehicle. Her breath caught in her throat, and she tried to remind herself how to breathe as the SUV stopped near her and Jaime climbed down. Her grasp on the helmet loosened, and it dropped to the gravel with a choked sound.
He stood there for a time, leaning against the side of the SUV, and they stared at each other without a word for what must have been minutes. Jaime’s eyes were as green as ever, his hair had been trimmed to the same length as when she had met him, and he had shaved his beard. Its absence made him look unfamiliar; she had always thought it so attractive in its scruffiness, but now he looked younger, and it was easier to appreciate the sharp angles of his face. His smile, that self-satisfied grin, the nonchalance in his posture, they all baffled Brienne. Had she not been with him before, had she not touched him, felt him, kissed him to prove that he was real, she would have thought him a vision.
When Jaime finally approached her, Brienne made sure not to make a single move, expectant of his reaction. His hands were casually inside the pockets of his jeans, and he was wearing a white t-shirt, well suited for the weather of the island.
“Stupid stubborn geek,” he said for a greeting. “Has no one ever taught you that when it’s your birthday, you receive presents? You’re not supposed to give them.”
She wondered how he had found out about her birthday a week ago, but it was not a difficult piece of information to obtain. The night Brienne turned twenty-five, she had decided to bring as much freedom to Jaime as she was getting herself by making sure Robert Baratheon received the documents of the Targaryen case. After that, Brienne had turned in the keys of her old apartment, changed her address in all the required institutions, and made her way back to Tarth.
“I’ve come to give you one,” Jaime continued, ignoring her silence. Though Brienne was convinced he could be presumptuous enough to consider himself a gift, he pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to her.
It was a photograph. The sight of it made her stomach twist with sentiment. It had been taken in the godswood back in Winterfell. Under the big, stunning weirwood was Brandon Stark, along with his brother Rickon, who was now in his teenage years. Beside them stood Sansa, lovely and graceful as ever, and in the center, to Brienne’s disbelief, sat Arya Stark. Her eyes shot up towards Jaime’s, as if begging for answers, her heart beating so fast it might leap out of her chest.
“You did it. It just took a while to sink in,” Jaime said with a smile.
Brienne desperately wanted to cry at the news, cry of happiness, of pride, of a sense of accomplishment that as of late seemed to be blooming like a field of flowers during the spring. But she held back her tears, every one of them, and waited for the knot in her throat to soften before speaking. “Did you come just to bring me this?”
He shrugged. “You’re not returning my e-mails, how else was I supposed to make sure you got it?”
Jaime walked back to the SUV, and for a moment Brienne feared that he might climb inside and leave just as suddenly as he had appeared, but all he did was pop the trunk open. She walked towards him with curiosity. There were so many suitcases and boxes in the trunk that Jaime had had to adjust the seat forwards to make room for the baggage. In total silence, he began to unload the trunk one case at a time.
“What . . . what are you doing?” Brienne asked in disbelief.
“What does it look like I’m doing, geek?” Brushing her off, he went on with his task.
Realizing her mouth was open, Brienne closed it and came to stand between Jaime and the trunk, puzzled by his intentions. Has he gone mad? Gently, he grabbed her by the waist and moved her aside, continuing until every piece of luggage was out of the trunk. Then he stretched, looking towards the house. “It’s very quaint,” he remarked in amusement. “It needs a few patch-ups, but nothing a hammer and some nails can’t solve.”
“No,” Brienne said at once, shaking her head. “You must have suffered a blow to the head. You should jump back in the car and go get checked out by a doctor.”
Jaime simply laughed. There was an air of conviction about him that she had seen few times before, when one of his theories was proven unequivocally correct in the investigation. She recognized the expression that appeared on his face whenever a clear answer came to him after spending hours, days, weeks wondering. Searching.
“You see, I realized you’d left this behind . . .” He opened one of the boxes and pulled out the familiar red blanket that she had taken from him during their first days back in Winterfell. “But then I remembered it belongs to me, and I know how very important it is to you . . . So I thought the best way to go about this was a reasonable time share.”
“Time . . . time share?”
He bit his lip through a grin in that way that never failed to raise her temperature. If he was teasing her, she was convinced it would be justified for her to kill him right then, but soon his arms came to be wrapped around her hips, his chest firm against hers, his lips seeking her own for a soft, tentative kiss. The sensation was odd after so many months away for him, like waking from a dream that had felt too real, too close. When Jaime pulled away, she placed her hand at the back of his neck and prompted him to kiss her again, deeper and more familiar now. It was as if a single page of their book had been turned, as if their film had been merely paused all this time. As if life had somehow refused to go on.
When they broke apart, the questions rained in Brienne’s mind in the face of the sudden circumstances. Jaime was so impulsive, so volatile, that all she could wonder was if he had truly thought this through. “What about Millennium? What about your children?”
He snuck his fingers inside her shirt, caressing her waist so softly that it gave her goosebumps. “Freelancers can work anywhere, isn’t that your motto? I’m an editor now, so I can very well do my job from here.” Jaime kissed her damaged cheek, then her chin. “As for my children, Myrcella is going to college this year. She met with me to tell me that she knew I was her father, to ask me not to tell Tommen yet. To give him time.”
“Oh,” she replied softly, glad that his daughter had reached out at last.
In a playful tone, he continued, “Do you know what else we talked about?”
Brienne shook her head.
“You.” He extended the blanket over the trunk of the SUV. The space was very ample from the way the seat was positioned. Jaime grabbed her by the waist and led her inside, little by little, until they were lying down and he was firmly settled on top of her. “You see, she likes you. I wonder why that is. She was also under the impression that you’re my girlfriend. Isn’t that crazy?” Brienne blushed and averted her gaze. Jaime planted kisses all along her neck, sliding down the sleeve of her shirt and brushing his thumb against the scar on her shoulder. “When she found out we were not together anymore, she got pretty angry. People keep telling me this thing about not letting go . . .”
Brienne brushed her fingers against his torso, feeling the smooth skin underneath his shirt. Before she knew it, she was taking it off, if only to look at him, at all of him. Jaime returned the gesture, and when she lay back with her chest exposed, she felt the soft blanket on her back. He grasped one of her breasts, touching it in the way he knew she loved, and took the opposite nipple between his lips. She arched into him, bewildered by how right his body felt pressed against hers.
“I agree now,” Jaime said, looking straight into her eyes, all traces of his amusement gone. “I should have fought for you, even if I had to fight against you. I should have brought you back, screaming and kicking, back with me, where you belong.”
Her chest tightened at the words, recalling the feeling of despair that had possessed her when she had gotten on her bike and turned her back on Jaime, turned her back on Winterfell; recalling how the road was blurred by her tears, how many times she considered turning back, arriving at the house and admitting it was a mistake. Remembering how slowly the months in King’s Landing had passed, how colorless and unremarkable they had seemed. I do belong with you, she realized, putting a name to the connection that drew them together like magnets. I belong to you, and I seem to have no choice in the matter.
Brienne kissed him, softly at first, until her tongue took a life of its own, exploring him, tasting him. Her breath was heavy when they parted. “What makes you think I would have let you?”
“Oh, I have my ways of weakening you . . .” He nibbled on her earlobe, making a shiver race down her spine. Then his hand came to rest against her shoulder blade. His eyes went to the part of her tattoo that was visible, and he smirked. “To look at this, everyone would think you a prey, a deer in the woods, but you’re fiercer than the whole lot of them.” His face neared hers until their lips almost touched. “You ought to get a lion instead.”
She shifted underneath him, her pulse speeding up from the mere tone of his voice, from the sensation of his mouth hungrily meeting hers. Brienne could also play games—there would have been no way for her to spend endless nights in the sheets with Jaime Lannister without learning a trick or two. “Are you jealous?” She pushed her hips up towards his, feeling his length grow harder at the gesture.
Jaime sighed loudly and moved his hands down until they reached her pants. He unbuttoned them and pulled them down, throwing them aside carelessly. “You’re mine. Why shouldn’t the world know?”
“You’d mark me like cattle?”
“I’ve been much deeper than your skin, I reckon,” he whispered into her ear.
It was all too much for Brienne. Jaime’s presence here, in her home island, the suddenness of his appearance, the delight he took in smashing her defenses were turning her skin to fire. Control slipped between her fingers like water flowing down a stream. She finished undressing him, stirred by the sight of his cock, hard and throbbing for release when she placed her fingers around it. Jaime sighed and adjusted his position to rub his palm between her legs through her underwear.
As soon as he felt the dampness, he smirked, pulling down the garment unhurriedly. “You can’t wait, can you?”
Her only response was a kiss, deep and nearly obscene in its daring, as waves of warmth traveled through her core, aching for his touch, for any part of him.
“I must be very good-looking, geek,” Jaime told her with a laugh, scraping his teeth along her jawline. “You didn’t even want to see me, and now you’re dying to have me inside you.”
She rolled them over violently, coming to straddle him and intertwining their fingers as she held his arms over his head. “My name,” she hissed in a tone that was nothing short of homicidal, “is Brienne.”
“Brienne,” he hummed into her ear. He placed his cock at her entrance, and she lowered herself onto him. “Brienne,” Jaime whispered again, rolling his tongue in that infuriating way, as she began riding him, long and slow.
Only then was the world set right again; it was when their bodies were joined together like this, when her body made way so he would fit inside her, that she felt truly at home. I’ve been a fool, she realized, dread and elation merging in her veins, pumped in a fury throughout her body. Brienne kissed him and he thrust up, shoving himself inside her, every kiss a mere beginning to the process of recovering the wasted time.
They had been too long apart; it had been so many months without sharing a single touch that their rhythm was desperate, eager. She rested her hands against his chest, dug her nails into his skin as she leaned back slightly and shifted the angle, feeling Jaime brush against the spot that made her lose all sense of control. Panting, she gazed at his face, at the sweat traveling down his temple towards his neck. His pupils dilated when she reached behind her and gripped him the way he’d taught her, gentle but firm. Jaime grasped her hips tighter, so tightly they might leave a bruise, and with a groan, he swelled and spilled himself inside. She made sure to tense her walls around him at the right time almost subconsciously; they had learned so much from each other that it was all unspoken, instinctive.
Brienne lifted her hips to let him out, feeling his seed spill out of her, and came to lie beside him. Jaime turned and nuzzled his head in her neck, holding her by the waist. “Sorry,” he said with a grin. “Too long.”
Yes. She brushed his soft hair with her fingers. Too long to get here, too long apart. It was a journey of timing, of being in the right place at the right time. Much like their investigation, things only fell into place when certain pieces fitted together, when bits of each of them were stripped, transformed.
With a smile, Brienne closed her eyes, and fell into a light sleep beside him.
* * *
By the time Jaime woke, Brienne was still in a slumber, her breaths slow and relaxed. He ran his fingertip over her lips, staring at every freckle on her face, at her milky skin sprawled on top of the crimson blanket. In all his days, he would have never thought to experience such a sense of protection and submission at the same time. Cersei had been too proud to ever truly give herself to him, whereas Brienne had handed every bit of herself to him without question.
She might have run, might have taken every opportunity to cower back into the shadow, but through the abyss of silence that had engulfed them, he had heard her swallowed screams. I see you, she had said by taking down the video websites; I’m here for you, she’d confirmed by exposing Meryn Trant. I know your worth, she’d declared at last with every minute of the declarations on the TV screen, with every word of the announcement of Aerys Targaryen’s arrest. The rest she gave in her kisses, in her embraces. The rest Jaime did not need to hear.
So many things could have worried him when coming to Tarth. Brienne was much younger than him; she still had an essential innocence that had been taken from Jaime while he was still a child. To look at them, anyone would have thought them so different, but the truth was that since the very beginning, she had stood up for him, for the Kingslayer. Then, against all odds, this unusual and brilliant creature had fiercely protected him through the worst of his ordeals, had rescued his name from being dragged through the mud.
Curiously enough, Jaime would have never thought himself capable of leaving everything behind for anyone but Cersei, but here he was, bringing every piece of his belongings to the Sapphire Isle. Jaime had never set foot on the island before, but he could not deny the beauty of the sight when he had stepped off the ferry. As he waited for his SUV to be unloaded, he had stood on the port, gazing towards the radiant blue waters. The salty smell in the air had brought him straight back to his childhood, to the same air that populated Casterly Rock, so different to the foul one in King’s Landing. Perhaps it was not such an absurd thought that Tarth would now become his home.
“Have you lost your mind?” Tyrion had exclaimed as soon as Jaime had broken the news of his departure. “You mean to tell me that you’re going sell your apartment, grab all your crap and move to an island in the middle of fucking nowhere?”
“It’s not in the middle of fucking nowhere,” Jaime had assured his brother. “It’s just a short flight away from King’s Landing. You’re welcome to visit anytime.”
Tyrion had laughed at that. “It’s remarkable that you have no idea if this girl is even going to take pity on your poor soul, but you’re already inviting me over.”
Jaime had shrugged as he picked the last of his belongings from his office at the Millennium building. “I’ll stay there either way.”
“You are insistent, I’ll give you that,” Tyrion had said with a sigh, loosening the tie of the suit he had worn to his latest meeting with the investors. “Well, I’m sure I can’t change your mind.”
Their goodbye had been brief; they did their best to avoid an emotional scene. Jaime would miss his brother, but it was true that the flight was short enough for him to visit the city often. Some of the most important meetings would require Jaime’s presence, and he would also regularly visit Tommen, even if he still had to pretend to be his uncle. To know that he would get to be with Brienne again made all of it worth it.
Jaime woke her with a kiss, slipping his fingers in her short hair. Her dazing blue eyes opened slowly, studying him as though she had believed their previous encounter to be a dream. “Break time is over,” he told her cheekily, brushing one of her nipples and watching it harden in response. “I believe I have a debt to pay.”
“You do?” Brienne asked in a raspy voice, and cleared her throat. “What is this debt?”
He rolled her onto her back, and moved beside her, propping his head on his hand. With his free hand, he traced circles on the hair between her legs, close to the spot between her folds, though not quite touching it. “Oh, if you don’t know, then maybe we could just let it go.”
Brienne bit her lip, resting her arms over her stomach. “Well . . . maybe if I think hard enough, I could remember.”
The sight of her plump lips was already making his cock rise. He leaned forward and engulfed her in a kiss, deep and long, while he grasped the back of her thigh and spread her legs apart. “Or maybe you already have a handle on this,” Jaime said against her mouth. “Maybe, since you’ve been away from me so long, you don’t need me to get you there . . .” Instead of touching her, he took her right hand and slipped it down, placing it between her legs. “Maybe this is what you did while you were away from me, wishing for my cock,” he whispered into Brienne’s ear, running his tongue down her earlobe while taking her own fingers and slipping them inside her slowly.
A flush spread from her cheeks all the way down to her neck. He made her slide her fingers in and out, while his own thumb swept over her swollen nub. Brienne arched her back with each thrust, with every touch of him on the bundle of nerves, and her eyes remained only half-open, pupils swallowing her blue seas almost entirely. Watching her that way made him ache with an urge to have her wrapped around him, but he couldn’t stop looking at the way her chest rose speedily, at the drops of sweat that traveled down her breasts like dew on a fresh spring dawn.
“Did you mumble my name while you did it?” Jaime asked her, rubbing his hips against her thigh to feel the slightest relief. “I want to hear you,” he continued, nipping at her collarbone.
“Yes,” she murmured, her voice coming through a haze of delight, “Jaime . . .”
Brienne’s fingers dug deeper inside her, and the sound of her wetness with every plunge made his cock twitch, begging for release. Then she fully opened her eyes, and a surge of lust washed over her face. She bit his lower lip and pulled, dragging him into a deep kiss that left him breathless. “Jaime, Jaime, Jaime . . .” she groaned in a low tone with a wicked smile, and he understood that she was playing with him, teasing him.
He couldn’t take it anymore. He pulled her fingers out of her and spread her legs apart as widely as he could. When he entered her, he felt as though he might come right then and had to clench his teeth to resist. He could barely move inside her without feeling like she was going to force his peak out of him.
Brienne didn’t fail to notice. “Jaime?” she purred at him. He tried to think very hard of something to distract him from the way she tensed around his length, every bit of it intentional. When she spoke again, her voice was low and tentative, her words carefully considered. “Am I too wet for you?” He thought he might be dreaming, to hear this from her. Though she had been this daring more than once in Winterfell, it was usually after having a little too much wine. When he looked into her eyes, he saw that she was blushing more than usual, and she was biting her lower lip lightly. Are you drunk on me, my geek? There was hardly anything he enjoyed more than stripping her bare like this, watching her set aside her modesty just for him. Her lips rested against his ear. “Am I too . . . tight?” She clenched again, hard, doing a damn fine job of getting back at him for every time he had been the one to torment her in bed.
Their time apart had done something to her, made her bolder, fearless. It wasn’t strange, he supposed, that after all of their time fucking late into the night at Winterfell, some of her shyness would break apart to make way for her desire.
Not that he had expected this.
Jaime couldn’t stop himself anymore; his head was spinning. He pushed his way deep inside her and took her as roughly and fast as his hips allowed him. The moans that came out of her lips and the way she writhed beneath him were enough for him to know that the roughness of it was causing her pleasure instead of pain. He was grateful. He wasn’t sure he could have slowed down.
This time, Brienne reached her climax first, and he was more than glad for it. He didn’t even pause to let her ride through her orgasm, just continued, relishing the sensation of her contracting around his cock in ecstasy. She groaned in protest, as though asking him to give her respite, but he would not. She felt too right around him while she came, and her expression of utter surrender was too much for him. He thrust again and again, every second coming closer, his ears filled with the sound of their skins meeting and her gasps. Brienne bit his shoulder with a loud moan, finishing again, and this time she brought Jaime with her. He came inside her with a growl, his fingers digging into the skin of her thigh. Her pulse against his lips was maddening; her heart was racing, much like his own. Their sweat mingled together on their skin, abundant as though they had just ran a marathon. Jaime managed to roll off her and rest his back against the floor of the SUV while both of them caught their breaths.
He definitely liked Tarth.
Panting heavily, Brienne turned to look at him, every inch of her face and chest flushed. They were distracted by the sound of a group of seagulls cawing loudly in the sky above them, which made Brienne jump to a sitting position, reaching around him for her underwear and her pants. “Jaime,” she said with urgency, throwing on her clothes. “We have to get out of this car.”
He chuckled, putting on his t-shirt as she flung it in his face. “Are you afraid we’ll stay here forever, fucking until we die of starvation?”
Brienne climbed out of the trunk, looking for her shoes. “Anyone could have seen us out here,” she mumbled in embarrassment, sitting at the back of the car to tie them.
Once Jaime was dressed, he sat behind her, encircling her waist with his arms and resting his face on her shoulder. She smiled faintly against his cheek. “Are you gonna get shy with me now, after that?”
All of a sudden, her playfulness was gone, and he realized she was staring at the suitcases on the ground, and then towards the house in turn. It had seemed odd to Jaime that she had been sitting outside when he arrived, unmoving, but sensing the change in her mood, he immediately realized something was wrong. He knew it was not about him moving in with her. They had already lived together before, and she had been more than welcoming so far. “What is it?” he asked.
“I’m just . . . I’m not living here right now. We have to move the luggage to the inn where I’m staying,” she explained.
Then it hit Jaime that, despite being here for the past week, all Brienne could do was stare at the house from a distance. It was no wonder. The last time she had been inside, she had watched her father die, had almost been killed herself, and to top it all off she’d had to kill a man. After that, her life had been under the control of someone else, her home had been taken from her and Brienne had been on her own. It was no easy feat for her to walk back in.
Jaime exited the car and pulled her to her feet without a word. As he led her back towards the house, a hesitant expression appeared on her features, but she followed him nonetheless. When they were in front of the entrance, he stopped to give her time. “I’m here. You don’t have to do it alone.”
She looked at him with nervous eyes, then back towards the doorknob. “I . . . What if it’s still there?” Brienne asked softly. “The bloodstain?”
Jaime smiled. “Remember how we had our own bloodstain back in Winterfell? We’ll clean it up. Hells, we’ll tear half the house down and rebuild it, if it’s what you want.”
If she could not fight this battle, he would fight it for her. Brienne had done no less for him, for his life and for his honor, bringing down Aerys Targaryen and restoring his name as a journalist. She had been fearless and persistent, had stood up for him, believed in him. He would not be intimidated by her ghosts, not after she had vanquished his.
Brienne took a deep breath and placed her hand on the doorknob, turning it slowly with a creak.
They had been together through life and death, swam across the past and the present, brought hope to a place that held only held bleakness for a decade. Against all expectation, they had walked a path of risk and come out the other side, weary but proud. Jaime was not afraid of what they would find inside.
Everyone had secrets, and he was more than eager to discover all of hers.