Summary: He's not unique in feeling this way, but funerals are one of Tyrion's least favorite affairs, unless it's a wake with plenty of booze, which this wasn't. He knew exactly what kind of funeral this would be. It was only out of respect for the Starks that he made the trip out here. Now he's ready to forget.
Chapter Notes: Some Lannister snark for this chapter. Thanks for all the kudos and comments. They're food for the soul.
Chapter Two: Tyrion
His brother tucks away his cell phone, leaning to the side to slide it into the pocket of his expensive wool slacks, as Tyrion motions for the waitress, who is making her way through the black leather chairs in the lobby of the Barrowlands Hotel, where he and Jaime have been drinking since the conclusion of the Stark boy's funeral.
"What can I get for you gentlemen?"
In New York, an upscale hotel like this would have the waitresses dressed in something a little more chic than the ill fitting black polo and khakis this girl's sporting. But this isn't New York. This is almost as far from New York as you can get, which is probably why the Starks, born and raised in this wholesome environment, are such strange, foreignly honest creatures in the city.
"Two more of these, please," Tyrion says, rattling his empty glass of whiskey.
"On the rocks?" the girl inquires, her eyes nervously darting over him, as if she doesn't know where to look.
His being a little person probably makes her uncomfortable. It often makes people afraid to really look at him, as if he might mistake it for gawking. It's almost worse than the stares of ignorant people to have people who don't want to give offense carefully staring above his head somewhere.
It's not his job to put her at ease, but he smiles at her. She's a pretty girl even without the right clothes.
"And a glass of red wine," Jaime adds.
She paws at the black pocketed apron tied around her hips but comes up empty. "Sorry, I thought I had… Do you want me to bring the wine list?"
Jaime runs his hand through his hair, as he considers for a moment. "No, just bring me whatever you have that doesn't taste like shit."
His brother's smile and wink undoes whatever offense he might have otherwise caused—a benefit of having reaped the best of what the Lannister genetics had to offer. Tyrion is often coarse and careless with his words too, but no one is as forgiving about it. At least no one will ever be able to say Tyrion Lannister has traded on his good looks.
She titters, looking flustered by his brother's meaningless attentions. "I'll be right back with those drinks."
Tyrion waggles his finger at his brother. "Careful, Jaime." He stops to tease whatever whiskey might still be left melting amongst the ice onto his tongue. It's a fruitless attempt, which only succeeds in getting ice to bump his lips. "I don't believe these good Midwestern folk use such godless language. I've never heard Ned Stark so much as say damn."
"She didn't seem to mind. Anyway, feel free to tip well to apologize for the manners of this unrepentant heathen," Jaime says, as he leans forward to deposit his empty glass on the low metal coffee table that sits between them. "Regardless, this next drink is the last one."
Tyrion slides his empty glass onto the table to join his brother's. "For you maybe. I intend on getting good and drunk."
He's not unique in feeling this way, but funerals are one of Tyrion's least favorite affairs, unless it's a wake with plenty of booze, which this wasn't. He knew exactly what kind of funeral this would be. It was only out of respect for the Starks that he made the trip out here. Now he's ready to forget.
Although he's only just put it away, Jaime pulls his phone partially out of his pocket again, checking for something. By the line that forms between his brows, he looks as if he's been disappointed.
He clears his throat, his gaze cutting back up at Tyrion. "Yes, the last for me."
"You're abandoning me to drink alone?"
"That I am," Jaime says, as he lets the phone slip back into his pocket.
"Plans?" Tyrion inquires. "In beautiful White Harbor?"
There's little to do here but eat fudge and ice cream or rent a touring bike, as far as Tyrion can tell. It's not exactly a bustling metropolis. Tyrion's not sure what Joffrey and Myrcella are doing to entertain themselves, but this isn't a town with much to offer the young or those who like to think they are young like Jaime.
"God, no."
"Good. Leaves me free pick of the White Harbor ladies. I hate sharing."
Not that he has any intention of indulging with Shae back in the city, but there was a time not so long ago that he would have done his best to find someone, anyone to sleep with him tonight, so he wouldn't have to be alone. His best was often not good enough, however. Tyrion has spent a good amount of time alone.
"Do you have extensive experience in sharing a woman with another man?" Jaime asks with one raised brow.
No, but his brother does. Oh how his brother knows what it is like to share a woman.
"You know, there's a better kind of threesome," his brother says with a grin.
"As if you'd know."
His brother's furtive arrangement with Cersei and her oblivious husband, Robert, is much less adventurous than all that. Jaime might be the good looking Lannister brother, but his sexual experience is rather limited. Tyrion guesses that happens when you meet the woman you're going to love for the rest of your life when you're fourteen.
"You're welcome to whatever trouble you can cook up, little brother. I've got work I've got to get to back in the room."
Tyrion knows that's a bald faced lie, but he lets it go with a crook of his brow and a snort.
Out of the two of them, Jaime is the one with the executive office with a view and Tyrion is the one with the brains for books at Lannister Mercantile, toiling away without thanks in a hallway where he won't much get in the way. Nevertheless, Jaime is the face of the company, the eldest son, Tywin Lannister's pride and hope for the future.
"You know, I feel terribly sorry for the Starks. I can only imagine how they feel." As if their future has been suddenly cut short.
Jaime brushes the leg of his pants, removing some invisible lint. "No you can't. You've drunk too much and are feigning empathy. It's in bad taste."
Tyrion frowns. "It's not entirely feigned. I might not understand entirely what Ned and Cat are going through, I might not be a parent, but I'm also not completely heartless. This isn't something from which they'll recover with any rapidity, I'd imagine."
Tyrion isn't a father, but he knows what it is like to be the second son and to see what genuine parental approval looks like from the outside. Ned Stark probably felt as strongly about Robb as his father does about Jaime. Losing their firstborn is not only the death of a child, but the death of whatever hopes they had for his future life; it's the sort of blow which even the stoic Starks will find difficult to weather with grace.
"No, probably not. The Starks are good people," Jaime says, although there is an emptiness to his voice that betrays his lack of real interest in the Stark family's troubles.
"This is what happens when we send children off to war, I'm afraid. A terrible waste."
Jaime shakes his head. "It's a little bit of an overstatement to call Robb Stark a child. Cersei and I had been married four years by the time we were his age."
"And so mature and adept at it that you were quite nearly divorced." It was only their father's fat wallet that allowed Jaime to play house with his bride. There was very little actual adult behavior taking place in Jaime and Cersei's apartment, besides the tedium of keeping babies alive.
Jaime shrugs. "I've only really been good at two things." One was baseball. Jaime was extremely promising, a successful pitcher in high school with scouts showing marked interest in number 18's talents, but an injury late in his senior year put an end to any dreams of his playing ball—unfortunate, but for the best, in their father's opinion, since he always wanted Jaime to succeed him at Lannister Mercantile. Tyrion knows better than to ask what the other thing Jaime excells at is: brothers don't need to share everything. "Being a responsible husband isn't one of them."
"I suppose my point is you wouldn't want Joff to sign up with the Corps, would you? Another year and he'd be the same age as Robb and could be shot down over Afghanistan or Iran or Pakistan or wherever it is the government decides we need to send troops next."
"Joff would never sign up."
The thought makes Tyrion smile. "No. Do something selfless for his country? I'd bet my inheritance against it."
His nephew is a brat. Worse than a brat. His behavior at the funeral was appalling. Cersei begged him to share his sympathies with the Starks, the parents of his pretty girlfriend, who he'd bizarrely ignored. She even offered him a bribe if he would just say something. Tyrion ended Cersei's pointless wheedling by snatching Joffrey's iPhone from his hand and stomping on it, cracking the screen.
There. Now you have no excuse not to open your mouth, go over there, and say something that doesn't make me want to smack you for once.
Jaime says nothing to come to his son's defense; he said nothing at the cemetery either, but then, Jaime has always been disinterested at best, neglectful at worst, when it comes to his children. Perhaps if he'd taken some interest, his son wouldn't be so disgustingly spoiled. It's a miracle Myrcella has turned out as well as she has or that little Tommen appears to be so naturely good natured.
Instead of speaking up on Joff's behalf, Jaime drums his fingers on his knee. Tyrion suspects the restless motion is not just a sign of boredom or disinterest: Jaime is anxious about something.
"You want to check your phone again?" Tyrion asks.
Jaime's answer is a redirection. "They were proud enough of their son and that Snow kid six months ago, when they could trot them out in their uniforms for the voters."
Yes, Robb's not the only fallen soldier. The entire Stark family looked pale and sleep deprived with trembling lips and dark circles under their eyes, but Jon Snow looked particularly miserable. He'd signed up, probably thinking he'd come home a hero after defending the weak and spreading democracy or whatever corn fed logic they raised these boys on, but it is no well kept secret that Jon Snow was discharged after the rest of his squad was blown up. To look at the boy, you could see that it wears on him. He didn't come home in a bag or missing a limb, but he came home broken all the same. The death of his brother will do him no favors in recovering his wits.
What a terrible sort of irony that all the family expectations will now be piled on Jon's shoulders, when he is least able to rise to them. Hopefully he won't be required to participate in the fall election.
"There's no way Ned will lose his bid for reelection now," Tyrion observes. "Good news for Robert. Good news for Cersei."
The Baratheons have considerable interest in the success of Ned's political career, since Baratheon Industries sells to the U.S. government the very weapons that potentially killed Robb Stark. Robert depends on that friendship.
"Who would vote against the honorable Senator?" Jaime agrees.
"Although, to be fair, Ned Stark would trade an election victory for his son. He's probably seriously rethinking having sent his boy off to war. An honorable death doesn't make the death any less painful."
"There's no such thing as an honorable death. They're all equally pointless. But no one forced Robb Stark to enlist," Jaime corrects him, his knee beginning to bounce with mounting impatience. "Not even his flag lapel pin wearing father."
"No, no one forced him, but there were expectations. The Starks always serve their country. I hardly think he imagined any other path would be acceptable."
No one expects much of Tyrion, being the family disappointment from the moment he came squalling into this world, an arrival that cost his beautiful mother—known only to him in photographs—her life, but he's still trying to impress them all. Hopeless, really. His lot is probably no different from Jon Snow's, son of no one.
"There are always expectations," Jaime agrees. "Mine have me landed me counting beans for the rest of my life."
Jaime doesn't work hard, but he didn't work at all until Cersei left him. Apparently, joining the family business seemed like the right move for his brother to make after she walked out. The idea of Cersei finding solace with a man more successful than him must have lit a fire underneath him. Not a fire that burned particularly brightly—what he wanted was to be a baseball player and nothing else but Cersei and that dream much mattered—but he'd made some effort at amounting to something.
"Aw, come on. It's not as bad as all that."
His intention is to remind his brother that Jaime has the world at his fingertips. He already has everything and he could have any woman he wants too, just some of the perks of the job, his handsome face, and their shared last name, but he doesn't manage to utter a word of it. He's distracted by the sight of Cersei emerging from behind the hotel elevator's silver sliding doors.
She's changed out of her conservative funeral attire and into a white pencil skirt, mile high nude stilettos, and a loosely knit sweater that he can make out her bra through. Her hair is perfectly glossy, not a hair out of place, and she moves with an assurance in her superiority that Tyrion envies.
Jaime's head turns without Tyrion having to announce Cersei's appearance. It's like there's an invisible cord between his brother and Cersei, drawing him along in her wake. Jaime just can't escape her. It's been that way since they were all teenagers and Jaime spent too much time fucking Cersei and not enough time studying. Not that his brother would ever want to escape her grasp. Tyrion might be the only one in the family that would rather never see her exquisite face again. Even his father seems to admire her steely determination to get her way.
His brother stands like a gentleman or a good approximation of one, as Cersei slips past them and takes the empty chair between the two brothers. Jaime might be the friendliest ex-husband a woman could want, but Tyrion is just a former in-law. So he chooses to stretch one arm over the low back of the chair, refusing to acknowledge her unwanted presence.
"I hate this place," she says under her breath. "Did you order me a glass of wine?"
Jaime's distraction, his obsessive checking of his phone has been all about his bitch of an ex-wife. Of course it was her, ruining things. That's been the case for years.
"Yeah, it's coming," Jaime assures her.
"Not fast enough," she sighs, lounging back into her chair until she's one long line from the tip of her rounded toed shoe to the top of her head.
"You didn't have to come, sis."
Cersei turns her green eyes on him, her blonde lashes dyed black fluttering in faux outrage. "Don't call me that. I'm not your sister."
Maybe that was the worst part of being married to Jaime: having him as a brother. "No? I was under the impression that your relations with my brother weren't severed."
She narrows her eyes at him. "You know they are."
"For how long?" Tyrion asks with a burst of laughter that he gives full breath to. Waving his hand to shake off her scowl, he begs in false contrition, "No, forgive me. I'm only joking and a bad joke at that."
Cersei pushes her blonde hair back away from her smooth forehead with the back of her fingers and sniffs dismissively, "No need to explain. I'm well acquainted with your inappropriate behavior."
"Yes, well, I only meant that there's no reason to make yourself miserable by making the trip out here to God's country. I'm sure the Starks could have done without you. We could have all done without you."
Maybe not Jaime, but he's only watching the two of them trade barbs with a smirk on his face. Presumably he's not bothered enough by his brother's antics to defend Cersei, any more than he was pressed to say something in defense of Joff a few moments ago. Of course, Cersei can actually defend herself. Tyrion knows that a bully like Joffrey folds under the attack of a worthy opponent. His nephew is a coward. Cersei has her faults, but cowardice is not one of them.
"Robert wanted me here."
Unlikely. The only person who might dislike Cersei more than he does is probably her unfaithful husband.
"My mistake. And how is your dear husband? We didn't get a chance to chat. Will he be joining us for a cocktail?"
"He's asleep," she says, curling her fingers in to examine her manicure, and Tyrion can't help but notice how Jaime's eyes rake over his ex-wife at her words.
This must be their agreed upon signal: Robert is asleep. If this is her little coded message for him, Tyrion knows what will be coming soon.
Tyrion shifts in his chair, moving closer to Cersei. "Worn out from the grief?"
Cersei crosses one long, lean, tanned leg over the other. "Or he's already indulged in more than one cocktail. Like you, Tyrion."
"I'm just exceptionally dedicated to the craft of imbibing, but it only stands to reason that Robert had a drink or two. The young man was named after him after all. I'm sure he took a keen interest in Robb Stark."
He didn't. Tyrion's not sure what kind of man Robert once was to earn Ned's friendship, but he's not that man anymore. Now he's more interested in women and wine and spending his money than he is in anything else.
Jaime opens his mouth as if he is finally about to add something to their petty, little disagreement that has been dragging on in some form or another for years, but Cersei clears her throat and nods towards the waitress, who approaches again with their three drinks perched atop a bar tray, putting an end to whatever light Jaime intended to shine on Robert's impressive depth of feeling.
"There you go: two whiskeys and a red wine," the waitress says, setting the drinks down one at a time. "What room should I put this on? Or would you like to pay with a credit card?"
"Room 132," Tyrion instructs, as the woman bends at the hip to collect their empty glass. "My treat."
"How generous," Cersei flatly says, as her slender fingers wrap around the bowl of the glass.
"I might be short, but I have deep pockets."
She swirls the wine, as if it is a vintage worth savoring, which Tyrion doubts it is, despite Jaime's instructions to pick something palatable. They don't know their wine here. Last night they were offered something called cherry wine.
"True, you do. It's your finest quality. Speaking of which, where is dear Shae?"
"She's at home." In the new apartment in Brooklyn—she doesn't like the location—he's paying for. He had offered to fly her out with him, make a weekend out of it, but she showed no enthusiasm for the plan and he didn't press.
"She's an attractive woman. I should warn her that your father doesn't particularly favor you. She might have the wrong idea about what she stands to inherit, should you ever propose."
"No plans to ask her or anyone else to marry me at present. I'm a dedicated bachelor. But go ahead, Cersei. You can try to scare her away."
"It would only be a friendly warning."
"It would be a waste of your time. Not all women sleep their way to the top."
"Oooh," she coos into her glass, her glossy red lips parting just enough to take a sip. "He's trying to hurt me, Jaime," she says with a roll of her eyes. "You'll excuse me if I don't care what you think about me, when the only thing you've ever accomplished is being born into the right family."
"You're right. I've never done anything of merit."
He taps his stubby nose with his finger, watching as Cersei nearly finishes her wine in one tight looking swallow. He's touched a nerve. "You know I kid because I love. You're one of the family, Cersei."
Forever a part of the family, Tyrion fears, and not just because she's the mother of Jaime's three children—two if you were brave enough to questionCersei on it, but little towheaded Tommen's as much Jaime's kid as Joff and Myrcella are.
"You'll have to excuse me. I have to head back up to the room. Work calls," Jaime says to Cersei, and there it is, the thing Tyrion has been waiting for: the choreographed disappearance act. "Play nice," he warns, knocking back half of his new glass of whiskey with a grimace.
"Really?" Tyrion sighs. They're really going to let this play out before him as if he is totally unaware? Do they truly think he's that stupid?
"Really." Jaime stands and sticks his hands in his pockets, rocking slightly back on his heels. "But you two should have another drink for me in my absence, since I'm going to be chained to my laptop."
That better not be a euphemism.
Tyrion shakes his head, as he watches Jaime stride towards the elevator. He squints at Cersei. "How long are you going to sit here pretending before you join him?"
She swallows the remainder of her wine and turns a frozen smile his way. "We can sit together like friends. Can't we?"
"'Friends' is a little optimistic, don't you think?"
Her fingers trace the edge of her skirt, as she wets her lips, staring back at him unblinkingly. "Perhaps, but I do think we should all work together to make sure our businesses succeed. Don't you? Work together as family? I'm sure it's what your father would want."
Her questions worry him, and he doesn't like that she's invoked his father. It worries him enough that he has to take a slug of his drink before responding, "I'd do anything for my family. If that means getting along with you, Cersei, of course I will."
"Good. I'm glad to hear that."
I'm not, he thinks, inwardly squirming. There's nothing about this leading conversation that puts him at ease.
"I wouldn't want to have you get in the way of your brother's success. Of the family's success."
Jaime's success. Right.
She doesn't say it, but he knows what Cersei's primary concern is these days and it's not Jaime. They might still fuck, but she gave up on him a long time ago, otherwise she would have never left him, her ticket to a life she never thought would be hers. Now everything is for Joff. Like the mother lioness she is, she focuses almost exclusively on what kind of legacy her son will inherit, scraping for it, so that he doesn't have to lift a finger.
That's the rub of it. Whatever Tyrion does for Lannister Mercantile, Joffrey Lannister will stand to reap the benefits, and the last thing he wants to do is help that unthankful little snit get anywhere in life. No, the last thing he wants is to one day find himself under his thumb, working for the monster, but ensuring that won't be the case is trickier than smashing a cell phone.
Notes: If you're following Sansa (username makepinklemonade), you might have noticed that Margaery (ahighgardenrose) has turned up too. For those who might be curious, Jaime's POV is up next. *waggles brows*