And they say, everything it happens for a reason
She woke with the dawn. The fire was cold but the bed felt scorched with their combined heat beneath the furs. She had rolled onto her side in the night, and he was no longer touching her, but she knew that he was there behind her, just out of reach.
His left arm was extended across the bed, his hand resting just behind her head, his fingers tempted to entwine themselves in the golden filaments of her hair. He'd woken from a fitful dream in the dark a quarter of an hour prior, reaching for her, opening his eyes when he realized she had rolled away from him. Rather than pull her to him, he remained as he was now, stretched out toward her with hesitation, breathing her in.
He'd dreamt of her. And he'd dreamt of Cersei. The latter seemed to beckon to him from across Westeros with her wine-stained mouth and poisonous words, but he turned from her at the scent of steel and soap mixed with honeyed herbs permeating the space, and all he had to do was look into Brienne's bright blue steadfast eyes and know he was home, that he was no longer Cersei's creature. When he woke, that feeling of comfort was rapidly replaced with anguish.
He fretted over her as he stroked her hair on the pillow. Even with her assurances, he worried that she might wake and feel ashamed. That she felt pressured by him, by Tyrion and the wine, that she'd reproach him for following her to her room for losing himself inside her. Or that she'd renew her self-loathing for vouching for his honor and then letting him despoil her, rejecting him in the daylight. She deserved better than his compromised honor and his ruined body, but he could not stand the thought of her loving someone else. He watched her shiver beneath the furs as she shifted her legs in sleep, and he wondered what she must be dreaming of, wondered if she was running from him in her mind.
You can be flawed enough but perfect for a person
She felt his hand stirring her hair absently as if he didn't know she was awake. With a pang she recognized how badly she wanted him to touch her again, and she shivered at the thought. She stretched her legs out and closed her eyes again, picturing his body against hers, and she decided she had to be close to him again.
Without warning, she rolled over with her eyes still closed, as if tossing in her sleep. Jaime didn't have a chance to shift out of the way, and before he knew what was happening, Brienne was nose to nose with him, her face nuzzling his palm in feigned sleep as her long powerful left leg hooked around his right, anchoring him.
He sucked in a sharp breath as one hand came up to fondle his beard while the other drowsily stroked his belly, hints of a contented smile slowly spreading across her face as she imagined falling asleep here and being happy to the end of her days.
Still fearful of her waking regret, Jaime traced her outline lightly with his wrist – from her scars to the curve of her shoulder, down her rib cage and the dip in her waist, and back up the rise of her hip to rest at the joint of her hip and pelvis where, if he still had that hand, he might have pressed his thumb as he sank into her. She leaned into the pressure with a moan that woke an ache deep inside him, encouraging him to drop the scarred wrist lower to the juncture of her thighs.
Her eyes snapped open with a gasp and found him watching her, staring anxiously.
He swallowed hard. What if she retreated from him now? What if she forcibly removed him from her bed and that was the last time he would ever feel her callused hands gripping his arms? What would he do if she told him it was all a mistake and she sent him far away? Worse, how would he go on if she regretted him and spent the rest of his days pining after her while she let Tormund Giantsbane burrow into her furs? I bet my honor on yours, she'd said to him. What good was his honor if he had hurt her? He dropped his arm to the bed in shame.
Someone who will be there for you when you start to fall apart,
But she'd held him between her legs now. She'd tasted the salt of his skin. She'd felt his want surround her, fill her, and become her own. She wasn't going to let him pull away from her now. With newfound audacity, she tightened her leg's grip on his and dragged her hand up his chest to meet the other, cupping his chin with both hands, her brows knitting together. "What is it?" He looked away without response, and she dropped her hands to his chest, hurt and confused. "Jaime?"
He finally met her eyes again as the dawn began to light the shadows of the room. "Have I…have I dishonored you?"
"What? No!" She nearly laughed as brought her forehead to his, her nose angling against his as she took in the smell of him – sweat, worn leather, the honey and herbs that salved their wounds, and something else, familiar and musky that she suspected with a rush might be hers.
"I should not have made you drink all that wine."
"You didn't," she said incredulously. "And I did not do anything that I did not wish to do." She hooked his leg again with meaning, "That I haven't wished to do. You are mine, Jaime Lannister. You will not get rid of me that easily."
"I can go to the maester for you...make up some excuse for needing the herbs or tea, anything you require. I should have been more careful."
"I can go myself."
"And risk your reputation?" He shook his head.
"Jaime, look at me. Look at me." She forced his chin up to meet her eyes, threatening tears. "I do not care what people think of me. And I do not wish to hide - I can't hide any longer. Last night you called my name just as loudly as I called yours." She brushed his lips with her thumbs and she breathed him in, her voice getting huskier as his chest pressed hers. "Do you know what you do to me, Jaime? You make me feel whole. Even before this, before last night. All that time apart, years of telling myself that I did not want you, and yet the moment I would see you, I would feel whole. I would not trade that feeling for anything, and I will not hide it anymore, from myself or you or anyone else. There is no shame in this. We have earned this."
Jaime had spent most of his life hiding. Hiding his relationship with Cersei from their father, and later from everyone in the capital. Hiding the parentage of his children. Hiding his affection for Brienne from his father and Cersei. He'd spent so much time burying his most intimate relationships - including his love for Brienne - that he hadn't the first idea of what it would be like to love anyone - to truly love them - in front of others. The idea thrilled him, made him ache for her, his cock stirring against his leg. "You're not angry," he hesitated.
"Of course not. Why-," she started to pull back, "unless you're..." she froze at the thought that he might be trying to pull away, that he did not want her after this, "unless you think that we shouldn't...are you having regre—"
He barely let the word escape her mouth before he was on her, kissing the word away from her. His hand tangled in her hair and his right arm pulled her waist to him fully, causing her to whimper into his mouth when she felt his hardness pressing against her thigh. She snuck her arms around his shoulder, gripping him to her.
Guiding your direction when you're riding through the dark
He broke the kiss with a cry and buried his face in her neck. "My only regret," he mumbled into her shoulder, "is being a damn fool until this moment. To think that I could have - we could have...why did we fight it for so long?" She kissed his forehead and dropped her hand to his arm, absentmindedly running it up and down, raising the hairs she found there, until she found and clasped the end of his wrist, eliciting a gasp from mouth as his teeth grazed her collarbone. He pulled back to study her. "Does it hurt?"
He shook his head, offering her a wry grin. "It's just an odd sensation. No one touches this arm – it bothers people. So now…when I touch you…" he illustrated by dragging the wrist up the side of her ribs and breast, feeling her sigh deeply as he traced a line to the center of her chest, "it's not the same as having the hand, but heat and cold are more…intense, magnified somehow."
She touched his elbow, holding him there and looking down at his chest.
"Gods, sometimes... sometimes I wish that I had the hand still. Right now, for instance."
"It's like this because of me."
He shook his head. "No, you know better than that. My pride did this. Once they dragged you back from the darkness, once you stopped screaming, "he closed his eyes, shuddering at the memory of Locke's men putting their hands on her, "I should have been content that your torment was at an end, that you were safe – as safe as you could have been given the circumstances. But I thought that I could persuade Locke...I would do it all again. I would do it all again to save you. I would die for you." He stopped as he felt her shudder, and he stroked the back of her neck. "Brienne."
She raised watery eyes to meet his, her fingers circling his elbow.
"He's dead, Brienne. He can't hurt us."
"You can't know that."
"I have it on very good authority. He's gone."
"But—"
She started to argue but he brought the end of his arm up to her lips to silence her, shivering at the sensation of her open mouth against it.
Oh that's you and me
She clutched the arm to her chest as he continued, "And were he alive, he couldn't touch us. When he... you remember, I wanted to die. Left to my own devices, I would have. I'd have drowned myself in the mud or starved myself. But you forced me to live. You made me want to live. Without you, I would be dead many times over."
She studied the scaring from Qyburn's ministrations, his fingers in her hair driving her to distraction. She kissed her way down his arm, pressing the wrist to the scars at her neck with a deep breath. "And I, You."
Oh that's you and me
He drew his wrist up her neck and lifted her chin until he could see the pools of her eyes lit up in the purple dawn, stars shimmering in depthless lakes as she reached her hand down to stroke the skin dangerously close to his cock. "No one can touch us Brienne. You are mine. I swear it," he panted, fisting his hand in her hair and pulling her closer as her tongue ran across her lips, "We're strong together. We will chase the nightmares away, together."
Oh that's you and me
She looked from his eyes to his lips and back again, wrapping her hand around the back of his pulling herself closer, her hips seeking his. He breathed her name and their bodies collided.
That's you and me
A/N: I do not own Game of Throne or these characters; some dialogue may be taken verbatim from HBO's Game of Thrones or George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Lyrics used are directly from "You and Me" by Alecia Moore and Dallas Green (C) 2014