When Jaime asked Brienne to sleep in his bed in Traitor's Walk, Brienne knew that she would lose any argument she might make to do otherwise. She and Jaime had been sleeping apart ever since Jaime had been taken prisoner just south of Queenscrown. He had been under guard on the long road to King's Landing for his trial and Brienne had barely been allowed to speak with him as they moved ever closer to a probable execution. It had been some of the longest, most difficult weeks of her life.
"Please," Jaime said, giving her the kind of smile that she would never know how to say 'no' to. It was not in her nature to give in too easily, though, and having Jaime beg was a rare treat. His eyes were so dark that the green of them was nearly swallowed by the black, and while he was smiling there was something else in his expression that left any resistance she might have had scattering like dandelion seeds on the breeze.
"I will stay," Brienne told him, and Jaime's relieved smile pierced straight through her, "on one condition," She said.
"A condition?" Jaime asked, his smile still in place, "Name it, Wench."
"I have not thought of one yet," Brienne admitted, trying to quell her own giddiness. Honestly, wasn't she getting too old to be so taken with a simple smile? "Oh, I have it! I get to sleep next to the wall, so that if one of us falls onto the floor it will be you."
"Then we must hold each other tightly so that we both will be safe from harm." Jaime told her in a serious voice, as though they were about to embark on a dangerous adventure.
Brienne blushed a little at the picture he painted. His words seemed almost romantic, but she did not believe that Jaime was a man who believed in romance. She wondered what he might have been like before Cersei had scorned him for being maimed and accused him of being less than a man, and before he had found out that his faithfulness to her had been one-sided and misplaced. Had he given Cersei sweet words and promises he meant to keep?
Brienne feared that their days of holding each other in sleep as they went to push back the Others could be at an end with the inclusion of Cersei in their party. It was known and accepted among their fighting companions that the Kingslayer and Brienne of Tarth never slept apart, but would Jaime want them to keep separate beds when Cersei traveled with them to avoid her animosity and scorn? Brienne felt less fear now that Jaime was still in love with Cersei, but the possibility that he could be tempted back between her slender thighs made Brienne feel faint with anguish.
As Brienne prepared for bed she mused that there was something a little different about Jaime lately, especially tonight. He had deliberately pulled her against him twice, and he had held her hand like she imagined a young suitor might have done, had she not been so unpleasing to men from a young age. It still hurt deeply to recall her first betrothal to Red Ronnet Connington, how he had looked upon her with repugnance at their first meeting when she was twelve, on the cusp of womanhood and already as tall as a man. He had looked at her and cruelly rejected her with a rose. Gods, how she still hated roses. She had realized then that she was not a woman meant for a man to love. Ronnet had been loathsome himself, and she had been relieved not to have to marry him, but the scars he left had never really faded, even after she had been able to thoroughly trounce him in a melee she had fought in at King Renly's camp at Bitterbridge.
No sense dwelling on slights from her past, she thought. The hopeful, naïve, fanciful girl she had been had disappeared before summer had turned to autumn, and the barrenness of winter suited her. Tonight she would sleep next to Jaime, who respected and cared for her, and she intended to enjoy every heartbeat of it.
They set about the usual business of getting ready for sleep. Both removed their belts and boots, and Brienne lent Jaime a hand with taking his tunic off. Brienne had seen countless men without shirts on from the time she had joined Renly's host. Men encamped with other men had very little modesty, and the whores who seemed to attach themselves to any large camp of men had little more. Yet for all the flesh she had seen over the years the sight of Jaime with his chest bare always made her catch her breath in wonder. He may have seemed half a god at Harrenhal, but she had long since felt that no god could compare to him. Let the Warrior be jealous and the Father be proud; her Jaime, with a lion's russet hair on a chest scored with the pale scars of battles past and the angry red slashes of wounds barely healed, was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.
Brienne sat down on the hard bed while Jaime busied himself hanging his belt and hers, and leaning her sword Oathkeeper against the wall near the small table. She liked to watch him when he thought himself unobserved; his quiet strength, the movement of muscles under his skin, the way his hair fell forward over his brow. She was no less a woman just because she was undesirable and scarred and ugly; she had desires and dreams like any other. What she had with Jaime was more than she could have ever hoped. Jaime was not hers the way he had been Cersei's, but it was enough.
Jaime turned from arranging their boots in the corner and saw her watching him. His eyes caught hers and held them, and the yearning went through her like Valeryian steel, swift and layered and true. She dropped her gaze and was glad she was sitting down. She might have had to admit to a wobble if she had tried to stand right then. It was enough, she told herself again. It had to be.
She deliberately broke the spell by getting back to more prosaic concerns, "If I should need to get up in the night to pee, where will I find the privy closet?"
"There isn't one," Jaime said, I've just been pissing out the tall windows in the hall."
Brienne narrowed her eyes at him. Was he kidding her? No, he seemed very serious, though not overly concerned. "Maybe I was too quick to agree to this," she told him, "though I suppose it is a good thing I've had no wine."
A lopsided smile was starting to steal over Jaime's face as he watched her struggle with her womanly dilemma. In camp she would have merely found a private place away from the eyes of the encampment to use as a privy, though often Jaime insisted on going with her so that he could stand guard for her at a distance. But in a castle, particularly in the prison tower of one, finding a private spot for a pee was not going to be possible.
"You are too easy to fool," said Jaime, "there is a privy closet five doors down. It is the smaller red door. You will need to stoop to enter, I imagine."
"I should be accustomed to the many things I must stoop to for you." Brienne said in an annoyed voice.
"You should be glad you ended up with me rather than my younger brother then, if you do not care for stooping."
Brienne grinned at that, conjuring a ridiculous image of she and Tyrion hand in hand. She really did owe the little scamp for his dirty trick of scaring them with the prospect of Cersei at dinner. He would be going to the north with them as a commander, so there would be plenty of opportunity to take revenge.
"Okay, shove over, Wench. I am sleepy and plan to snore loud enough to wake the dragons."
Brienne lay down on the bed facing the wall, trying to make as much room for Jaime to squeeze in next to her as she could. She took a few steadying breaths and thought to herself how completely ridiculous it was to be feeling nervous tonight; this would just be one of hundreds of nights cuddled up with Jaime. Surely to him the only novelty in this was that they had never slept in a jail cell together before.
Jaime sat on the bed behind her, then lay down and snugged himself up close to her, his right arm draped over her waist. He shifted around trying to get his left arm in the most comfortable position for her to rest her head on.
"Wench, could you pull the covers up some?" he said into her neck. Brienne reached her right hand out, patting along herself and Jaime and the bed until she located the thin blanket's edge. She pulled it up and tried to tuck it all around them without getting out of position. "Would you care for the pillow?" Jaime offered.
"No, I'm certain your arm is more comfortable."
"Hm. Okay," he said, his voice muffled against her. She shifted her hips some to get a little more comfortable. She heard Jaime's little intake of breath and then the familiar feel of his hard cock pressed against her bottom. "Sorry," Jaime said, sounding not sorry at all, "I'll turn over."
"Don't worry about it," Brienne said quietly, "if we turn over then I have to rest my head on the thistle pillow. Stay where you are." Jaime made a sleepy sound and snuggled closer to her, tightening his right arm over her waist. Her right arm went over his forearm and she curled her fingers over his stump and hugged it to her. There was nothing new to this position, though feeling Jaime's hard cock pressed against her was something she was more accustomed to waking up to; this rarely happened when they were drifting into an exhausted sleep after battling wights and ice spiders in the night.
"It really is your fault though," Jaime murmured sleepily, "I swear you move your hips like that on purpose sometimes."
Brienne lay awake thinking for a long while after Jaime's arousal had subsided and his breathing had deepened into the familiar rhythms of sleep. She didn't recall him ever laying the blame (or credit? she mused) for his arousal on her before. When they had first begun sleeping together it had been awkward and embarrassing to them both when Jaime woke up with his cock stiff against her. He would mumble something about men not being able to prevent such things happening in the morning, and he would either leave their furs quickly and set about getting ready for the day, or, if he thought she was still asleep, turn over quickly and move a little away from her. Eventually it became something they would joke about just like anything else in their friendship. She would complain that his snoring had kept her up and that now something hard was poking into her back, and had he forgotten to hang his sword up before they went to bed? He would look a little chagrinned and imply he had no control over when his cock woke up. Then they would both turn over so that their positions were switched and go back to sleep. Many times she woke before Jaime and she would not mention his state at all; it was not as though she minded. And like she had done tonight, sometimes she would shift her hips around a little, brush up against him in ways she had learned brought a reaction; whether this was to torment him or herself she was never sure.
This was just another thing that was habit with them, though sometimes Jaime would still steal out of their furs and, slinging on his sword belt, go patrol the perimeters of their camp and talk to the horses. She did not know what they discussed, but she let that remain between him and Sean and Ser Fluffy Tail.
Jaime had been without a lover for a very long time. At one time Cersei had been the only lover he had ever had; that might have changed between the time Cersei had cast him aside and when Brienne had come to him, desperate and wounded at Pennytree. It was not hard to suppose that he would have wanted to prove to himself that he was still whole and would survive all that had befallen him in such a short time. Brienne knew that Jaime was not a man made for celibacy, that even when his Kingsguard vows had demanded it he had broken them to be with Cersei. He was a passionate man in nearly every regard; the life in him drew others to serve and respect him, one-handed or no. He would not be happy with chastity forever.
Brienne was not so innocent and inexperienced that she did not know about men and their cocks. In every fighting unit she had belonged to the men seemed to talk of little else amongst themselves, obsessively discussing cocks: the relative size, hardness, shape and eventually where they wanted to stick theirs. Come to think of it they had very similar conversations about women's breasts, which also usually culminated in them discussing where they wanted to stick their…Brienne shuddered briefly, thinking of some of the less desirable men in camp, and decided to think about something else. She supposed It was a sign of the men's acceptance of her that they seldom tried to tame this talk in her presence. Of course if Ser Jaime was with her the talk immediately became more general and respectful; she wondered about this because Jaime was in no way offended by ribald japes or talk, though she had never heard him talk that way around her.
Brienne reflected that Camp life could be very raw compared to castle life. More than once in camp she had happened upon some man or another relieving himself into his hand or a soldier and a whore having a fuck when privacy was hard to be found. Brienne accepted these things as part of the life around her, the life she had chosen as a knight, even though her girlhood dreams of knighthood sometimes bore little resemblance to the reality.
Eventually she drifted off to sleep too, and despite the uncovered window and the inadequate blanket she felt warmed through and content with Jaime, her Jaime, she sometimes called him to herself, breathing into her hair, his heartbeat strong and reassuring against her back, his soft snores lulling her to sleep.
She awoke to a dull thump and sat up with a start, looking around for Oathkeeper. A string of curses came from the floor and Brienne could not even begin to stifle her giggles as Jaime's tousled hair and then then his sleepy eyes appeared along the edge of the bed. When he managed to pick himself off the floor and sit on the bed his disgruntled expression made her laugh so hard that a little snort escaped her mouth and suddenly she could hardly breathe as she lay back on the bed with tears in the corners of her eyes, her belly shaking with mirth.
"Wench…" he warned, trying hard to look dignified and affronted even though the corners of his mouth were twitching as he tried to suppress a smile. Brienne held her stomach, gasping. "That's it, Wench. Off the bed with you!" Jaime announced and pinned her to the bed, trying to wrap his arms around hers so that he could wrestle her off. Even with only one hand he was still able to get a good grip on her and though she fought like a lioness he rolled her until they both fell off the bed with a whump, Brienne with what breath she had left knocked out of her and Jamie straddling her stomach, holding her shoulders down with his forearms.
They were nearly nose to nose as they grinned at each other, and Brienne had a fleeting fantasy that Jaime would kiss her right then, so naturally she started to twist and try to buck him off of her and they both ended up lying on their backs on the hard stone floor trying to catch their breath, looking up at the stone ceiling. One of them would start to snigger again and set the other one off until they both subsided for a span of minutes.
"Oh, Wench," Jaime said happily, reaching his hand out to lay it briefly over hers, "If I don't get off this floor right now my back will ache for a week."
"We have slept on worse," Brienne reminded him.
"But on furs, and it did not involve falling on the floor."
"I recall one of us falling on the floor drunk at least once." Brienne said.
"You did, didn't you?"
"I was not talking about me." Brienne said, "you were so out of it that I nearly had to carry you."
"Which time was that?" Jaime asked, turning his head to look at her.
"All of them." Brienne said with a smile, and Jaime took her hand and helped her back onto the bed.
"Next time we sleep in your room." Jaime said, and Brienne could only agree.
