/Song: Sometime Around Midnight by The Airborne Toxic Event: watch?v=m53cWa-CdUg
I recommend you to listen to the song while you read it. It's one of my favourite songs, it's so beautiful and heartbreaking/
/Fanfic dedicated to my friend Blanca, for letting me ship this fucked up ship and cheering me on/
And so it started again. Another Friday, another night getting drunk. It must have been sometime around midnight, and there I was one more time, getting wasted to run away from my own mind.
I have to admit, I thought college life would be better. It was a promised paradise- a brand new place to start, be someone else without everyone knowing you as 'Tywin Lannister's son'. A place where Cersei and I would have more freedom to sneak around and be together, So much for that.
"Dude James, you won't believe it," said a drunk Ty behind me.
"I've told you a thousand times, it's Jaime, not James," I said, not caring much for anything he was going to say to me. Most likely someone had broken a drinking record or started a fight. All the better for them.
"Never mind that. There's a girl here, I just saw her, hotter than a volcano-"
"What does that mean, hotter than a volcano? You seriously need to work on your comparisons." I wasn't drunk enough yet to deal with him. "And I'm not having you set me up with a random chick you just spotted."
"That's not why I came. The girl, she could be your clone. She looks exactly like you," he said. Some seconds passed before the words registered in my brain. I froze.
"What do you mean exactly like me?"
"You know man, it was scary," he slurred.
"Damn it, tell me how she looked," I said. I could feel myself about to blow up.
"I already told you, same as you, smoking hot. Long hair. I'd bang her-" He shut up, most likely out of fear because of the death-glare I was giving him.
So it was her. I definitely was Cersei here No one else would look that much like me. I was screwed, and not in a way I liked.
I had to leave. Right now. Before I did something I would regret. But at the same time, another part of me, the one that like torturing itself and making me suffer, wanted me to stay. It had been so long since I had last seen her. I needed to. I knew it would break me, and that any effort I had made during the past months putting up walls around my dark feelings to keep them from overflowing and drowning me would be for nothing, but in that moment, I couldn't find it in myself to care for it. I needed Cersei. A peek at her, at least.
My internal debate was over when she sat at the bar, just at a spot where I could see her perfectly. She hadn't done it on purpose, she hadn't even seen me. Now that she was here, I couldn't leave.
Flashbacks of what had happened just before we came to college filled my mind. It still hurt so damn much.
I had been so happy, so foolishly happy to think that once we were so far away from home we would be able to love each other with more freedom, that the dream I'd always had of what we would become would turn true. I knew we couldn't openly be together, everyone would know we were twins, but at least we didn't have family and acquaintances breathing down our necks.
Apparently, for Cersei things didn't work that way. I want to start a brand new page, she'd said, I need to be by myself for some time. We have always been together, I don't know how to be an individual person, I need to learn to be by myself. All excuses. The truth had come later, and it had hurt worse. I am scared of what we have. It is wrong, it must be. Why would it be forbidden otherwise?
I had tried to convince her that those were stupid thoughts, that they were obviously not her thoughts, someone else had planted them in her mind. All in vain. She avoided me, and eventually I had started avoiding her back. Unrequited love. I'd heard of it. Never thought I'd experience it.
With a sinking feeling in my stomach, I realised that Cersei wasn't alone. There was a guy with her, a big tough guy I had seen around campus. Robert, was his name. He was trying to get all over her, while she was obviously uncomfortable. Well., maybe not obviously, but I could see it. In the way her fingers were tensed. The way she kept biting her lip. Not seductively, like any other person would think, but taken aback. Only I saw this.
I knew I was staring, but I couldn't stop. The band was playing a melancholic song about a lost love, which I found ironic. I hadn't lost her. She had run away from me, from her feelings for me. Was she really scared? She was never scared of anything. Could it be she was scared of love?
She saw me then. She lifted her pretty head, and her eyes found mine. She had probably felt my stare, or my presence. A connection like ours made itself present in those ways. We had been together since before birth after all, the bonds that are formed that way are unbreakable, no matter what lies she told herself.
Cersei went on talking to Robert. She pretended she didn't notice me, but I knew she had seen me. There was a difference in her attitude. She tried to appear happier, laughing and moving her long hair around with her hand, flirting. He was encouraged by this, and talked and touched her even more. Dick. I saw her smiling, but it was strained, forced. She held up her glass to block my view, though it did nothing much.
It was funny. To the outside world, Cersei would seem a beautiful, happy girl enjoying herself. I saw so much more. I could easily tell when she lied with her face, her expression and her movements, as she so often did.
I thought I was the type to dance stupidly when drunk, I thought. Turns out I'm a sad drunk. I had had enough. I turned to my side to avoid seeing her, and went on drinking. If she wanted to stay here, she was welcome, but I wasn't going to buy into her little play to make me believe she had forgotten me. I knew her. I knew how she felt.
I felt her looking at me now. I didn't see her, but I felt her gaze piercing a hole through my head. She could stare if she wanted. I was tempted to act like her- hide my heartbreak, pretend like I was happy and had got over it- but I couldn't. I wouldn't. I didn't want her to pity me, but I wanted her to know just how I was.
I saw her walk towards me. Gods no, a part of me thought, while at the same time another part yelled Gods yes. She was wearing a white dress that made her look like an angel sent from heaven. She wasn't an angel, I knew that much. But she was so beautiful. Was it vanity to be struck by Cersei's beauty, if she looked just like me? What a stupid question to think of while I was panicking inside.
Jaime Lannister? Panicking? He would've laughed if someone had told him that, but here he was.
"Hey," she said when she was close enough for him to hear her. She maintained her distance anyway.
"Hello," I said. I wanted to say so much more. I didn't know what to say at all. She smiled, but it was faint.
"Long time, no see," she said, tucking her hair behind her ear. She touched her hair a lot when she was nervous.
"I know." Oh, I knew.
"How are you?" she asked. Awkward silence hung between us. Did I lie, and said I was fine? I clearly wasn't, getting drunk by myself on a Friday night. Did I tell the truth, and beg her to reconsider? She took two steps closer to me. The smell of her perfume hit me. The same she always wore. I wouldn't be able to describe it. It smelled dark. It smelled like Cersei. It brought all the memories rushing back, and I could see it all. I could see us embraced, with no clothes between us and just loving each other, away from the world, like we had been so many times.
It was like a blow to the stomach. I had avoided those memories for such a long time. Now they all came rushing, like feral waves to my mind. My breath caught. I could feel myself slightly shaking,
"Cers," I said.
"Please don't- don't call me that." She dropped her act. She closed her eyes and turned her body away from me.
"Cers, this isn't right. You know this isn't right. These three months have been the most miserable time of my life. I wouldn't tell you, because I know that my suffering makes you suffer too, but the thing is that I know you're miserable too. And the fact that I could fix that- and you could fix me, it won't let me sleep, it's killing me. I'm slowly going crazy."
"Please, don't do this," she begged. Now I had started, I couldn't stop.
"I know you said all those things about us being wrong, about how fucked up this whole thing was, but I also know that that is not what you think. You know that us is the right thing, because how could something that feels so natural, so perfect be wrong? We were made for each other. We could never be happy with anyone else. And I know you don't want to hear this, Cers, but you are making me die a slow, agonizing death," I could feel tear stinging my eyes, and I willed them back. Until now I had been able to refrain from drunk-texting or calling her, but everything I had wanted to tell her had come out now.
"Jaime, I'm trying to… I'm honestly not… Fuck you, Jaime." She instantly regretted the choice of words. "I'm trying to do this, and you acting like this only makes it harder. And you won't stop dreaming about us, and I can't do this this way. I-" Tears were starting to spill down her cheeks now. Cersei almost never cried. It broke my heart even more.
"What do you mean I keep dreaming about you?" Cers and I had always shared dreams. Not every night, only some of them. A twin thing, I guess. And it was true, I had been dreaming a lot about her. In some dreams we were just lying on the glass in the garden at Casterly, our mansion, in others we were making love, in some she and I were kids again and we ran around and played together.
"You keep having those dreams about us, and I get them too and I wish you would stop," she said.
"How do you know those aren't your dreams? Because you regret this just as much as I do. Even if they were mine, I wouldn't be able to stop them. Do you think I don't suffer when I wake up and realise you aren't mine anymore?"
She seemed rather taken aback by this. Using the heel of her hand, she wiped off her tears. She took two deep breaths and attempted a smile. It was such a weak one. I wanted to kiss those lips and make her truly smile. Shut up, you idiot, I told myself.
"It's great seeing you," she said, pretending that I hadn't said all I had and that we had only had a civil conversation. Like normal siblings. "I'm going to go back with Robert. I hope you-" She stopped, not knowing what to say. She took my hand in hers. "Please, try to be happy Jaime," she whispered. She kissed my cheek lightly.
"How can I?" I whispered back. My voice broke in the middle, and I saw her swallow hard.
She didn't answer. She just walked away from me.
I couldn't find words for the pain I felt inside even if I wanted to. I felt hopeless and done with and on top of that there was way too much alcohol in my system and everything seemed hazy. I wanted to break something. I wanted to run to her. I wanted to do so many things that I couldn't fucking do and it was making me so mad so mad so mad I was going to explode and take anyone who was close down with me. Cersei and I belonged together and I didn't want to live in a universe in which we didn't.
I don't know for how long I stayed like that, paralyzed. I had my hand on my cheek where she had kissed me and my eyes fixed on the floor. I looked up to realise that Cersei was leaving. Robert went out first. She looked right at me, making sure I saw her, and then bolted after him. I couldn't control my feelings anymore. I could feel my blood boiling in my veins, my stomach tight.
Some guy I knew I knew but that right now I couldn't remember appeared behind me. "Wow, man, has something happened? What is it? You look like you've seen a ghost or something."
"Or something," I said, brushing him away. I stood up.
I couldn't let her go like this.
Not again.
I ran, pushing through the bodies with my elbows and hands. I stood outside, under the streetlights. Everyone was looking at me- my looks must have been crazy in the least, although probably something closer to 'psycho'- but I didn't notice them, I didn't care. I was too drunk for that. She was closing the door of the car. She hadn't yet.
"CERS," I yelled. Her head turned sharply, and she saw me. I could appreciate the sadness in her eyes even this far away.
"Cers please! Please! Please…" My volume decreased, until it was only a whisper and I didn't know what I was begging her for anymore. I just had to see her, once more, I had to see her, I needed to.
I knew she would break me in two. But I needed her. Even if she wrecked me.
She closed the door of the car and it drove away.
I fell to my knees on the pavement.