The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl
A/N ~ Braime makes me happy. Can you tell? Once more, don't reprimand me if I make any abnormal mistakes in the ways of American high schools; I'm English and all of this is taken from what I've learnt from the extensive watching of terrible clique-y television programmes. And again, the coming up stuff is hinting at subplots much later on. The primary focus is Braime. And I do have one spoiler… Things will come to a head at prom. Because stereotypes.
Note: Character ages from ASOIAF mean nada to me. I know Tyrion is so much younger than the twins, I know Brynden is old and I know Cat's older too. I know. I know I've aged up Brienne. I know, I've just decided to conveniently ignore facts for the purposes of your entertainment.
Coming Up... Cersei's subpar attempts to attract Rhaegar T, son of the principal and boyfriend of Lya Stark may or may not end in war, Teen Tyrion really is quite the wisecrack and Eddard Stark, may or may not have a crush on Cat Tully – making the situation with Brandon and Littlefinger into the world's first… love …square? Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!
2. How Not To Deal With Your Man-Eating Sister
Slamming the door behind him, Jaime Lannister trudged into his house, enveloped in a cloud of perpetual annoyance. Shouting something about being home to Tyrion, his little brother (in more ways than one) who was (pretending to be) sick the first freaking day of school, he zeroed in immediately on the sweeping majesty of the fridge. Glorious invention. Just as Jaime was downing some semi-skimmed milk from the carton, leaning against the open fridge door, Tyrion came waddling into sight, a wry half-smirk curling at his lip. Smug bastard. Perhaps it was his unspoken shame of Tyrion's dwarfism that kept Tywin Lannister from forcing his youngest child into school on days he didn't want to go, because, Jaime thought, neither he nor Cersei would ever be allowed to stay home with the excuse of a slight headache. Reverse favouritism.
"How was school, big brother?" Tyrion asked without caring, hopping up to sit on the kitchen table. "Throw me an apple."
"Terrible." Jaime replied, snorting, wiping the milk residue from his face with his sleeve, before taking off his hoodie and throwing it rather aggressively behind him. Tyrion glanced back at the crimson cloth, splayed across the floor, almost like a bloodstain or a dead body. Jaime glared into the well-stocked fridge, reaching for an apple at hurling it over his shoulder at his brother.
"Must have been. You nearly killed a coat. And a me, for that matter. What happened, if I dare ask?"
"I have to work with Brienne Tarth in science all year." He stated plainly, rummaging around in the fridge. Somehow hearing it put so simply, out loud, in his own voice made the matter even worse. What also didn't help was how Tyrion burst out into uncontrollable laughter, pointing a finger and leaning back in hysterics as he tore off parts of apple. "Thanks." Jaime muttered bitterly, settling on pulling a slab of cheese, regarding it and then stuffing it in his mouth.
"Oh, Jaime, oh, dear stupid Jaime," Tyrion grinned in that irritating little-brother way, hopping down from the scrubbed table and swaggering over to him, tossing the half-eaten apple from hand to hand, before clapping Jaime sympathetically on the shoulder. (Or as near to the shoulder as he could reach. That was the sentiment, anyway.) "How will she ever survive?"
"Shuaot uop!" Jaime grunted through a mouthful of cheese, swallowing and kicking at him, with a sigh. It was hardly a life-threatening situation, he'd decided after much (much, much) mental debate with himself on the walk home – barely even popularity-threatening, particularly if he managed to uphold his couldn't-care-less demeanour in science, which wasn't going to be hard, considering his general thoughts on the subject. No, so long as he pointedly complained of it loudly and regularly, every day, it'd be fine, in the long run of things. But a year was a long time. An hour of science a day, practically, was a long time. And what had Tarth said earlier? About extra studying, and her grade's influence on his grade…? The smallest part of his brain said to him that he really aught to have been listening. The more prominent argued that was absurd. He merely had to endure the lessons and the looks. That was all. "Laugh all you wand, little man, but it's horrible. I have to spend time with her."
"Oh, yes, Jaime, such trials and tribulations. I'm sure you'll manage. It's her I'm worried for, choking on your excessive Lynx cloud every day, poor thing."
"Not funny, Tyrion. I know I'm kicking up a storm about this but I'm the Dragons' quarterback! She's… I don't know, she probably does something aside from being a moping social reject and –"
"Who does?"
Jaime spun on his heels, still holding the cheese, and rolled his eyes, exasperated, slumping into yet another sigh, as his twin sister came gliding through the door, wreathed in her everlasting air of perfume and hormonal-girl evilness. She somehow thought it a supposed twin-right to nose around every aspect of his life. And just as he was opening his mouth for some kind of snarky retort, Tyrion had tossed his apple in the air, taken a bite and wandered back over. It was hardly a secret that his siblings despised one another more than life itself.
"Jaime has to do some kind of science project with Brienne Tarth and he's turned into an awful drama queen about it."
"Thanks, Tyrion," Jaime muttered, shoving him out of the way and pushing past Cersei to the porch, delving in his hastily-deposited backpack for his iPhone, and declaring his departure to his bedroom. Not, he thought, that anyone in this damned family had any sort of respect for privacy, and-or personal space. Just as he was tearing up the stairs, he heard Tyrion's amused shout of, speaking for the rejects, I don't think she's too pleased about working with little big-head rich- boy hotshot, either. Ugh.
Making his way into his continually untidy room, Jaime Lannister kicked off his trailing-laced Chucks and threw himself onto his double bed, a nest of stewing duvet and pillows, unmade from the morning, snatching for the remote to his flatscreen and flipping it on, discarding it for his Xbox control and his Call of Duty headset. Maybe things were going to look up for him; he could play some, with the guys, eat (a lot), and he was pretty sure (pre-timetable consultance) that he had no science lesson tomorrow. It wasn't like Brienne Tarth was his solitary reasoning for loathing the class; Hoster Tully taught with mundane unenthusiasm, and he was hardly… academic, in the first place.
When he and Cersei were younger, and his mother was alive, and Tyrion was barely a whisper on the wind, refraining from sending his golden twins to the horrors of pre school, their father, Tywin Lannister, had insisted on teaching them rudimentary alphabetical understanding, and the basic ability to count to fifty. Cersei could do so with basic skill and little interest after a while, but Jaime simply could not understand it. Letters and numbers were just weird shapes, they had no meaning to the boy. Not like sports did, anyhow. The child was always out in the extensive acres of garden, tripping over soccer balls and charging around, declaring himself an international baseball player, with perpetually scuffed knees and grass-stained hands, with mud in his blonde curls. The little Jaime just did not understand why he needed to know how to read and how to count, when he was going to play all the big-boy sports for a living. But his father had sat him down at the kitchen table every day, with paper and pen until he could read, and count, and write. Just not as well as some people.
Surprisingly little had changed, from then to now, with his sixteenth birthday fast approaching. He got by with schoolwork, pestering intelligent losers to do his work, and living happy in the assumption that a football scholarship was what would get him through college.
As the afternoon subsided into evening, Jaime Lannister was feeling considerably better; he'd found a half-eaten packet of crisps in his wardrobe and they weren't half bad, he'd kicked ass on Call of Duty, and, he thought, scrolling through his Facebook feed whilst the alluring scent of spaghetti wafted up from downstairs through the crack under his door, the pictures of the new subs that Brandon Stark had posted looked promising. Jaime stretched out languidly against his pillows, scrolling and scrolling on the Apple netbook balanced across the knees of his jeans – designer and yet tearing; a prime example of how little he appreciated his family's extensive wealth – and then he noticed something on his feed that he really did not understand.
Robert Baratheon is in a relationship with Cersei Lannister.
What?
He leaned forward, squinting a the screen, brushing back his blonde hair, and typed in his sister's name, clicking on her page. And yes, next to the 'friends' button, quite clearly – In a relationship. Frowning, eyes narrowed in confusion, Jaime leaned across the bed for his phone, resting dormant beneath his off-kilter lamp, and, for some reason, instead of actually getting up off of the bed and going and talking to Cersei, in her room next to his, swiped the number to call his teammate. He picked up. Before Robbie Baratheon even had time to get out a lazy 'hey', Jaime was onto him, pure perplexed bewilderment. "Since when are you dating my sister?"
Silence. Some kind of crumpling. "Oh, what, sorry, I was eating a Mars Bar. Since she asked me out for Friday night over a text chat a hour or whatever ago." Chewing sounds. "Why?"
"No reason, um, I just saw it on Facebook. That was quick for a relationship declaration – you've barely spoken to each other. It's already a relationship and you've not even gone out? That's stupid."
He could just imagine Robert shrugging with that rowdy laugh of his over the other end of the line. "So? I know her, she knows me, we've spoken quite a bit, and she's pretty hot."
"Dude, no. That's my sister."
"No to me dating her or no to me calling her hot?"
"No to you calling her hot, Seven Hells, can we change the subject, please. Anyway, I thought you liked that Lyanna Stark?"
"Yeah, well, apparently she's settled on the prince. Bloody prince. Got to go. Bye." And the line clicked dead. Great. His sister and one of his best friends. Wonderful. Although, he thought, if he knew Cersei at all, she had some exterior motives for so suddenly making arrangements with a guy she'd never before shown any interest whatsoever in. He felt for Robert, truly he did - Jaime himself had never had a relationship (or a crush, for that matter) that lasted longer than a mento, but Robert had it bad for the younger sister of his best friend, Ned. (Rob's best friend, that was. Somehow Jaime could not stand Eddard Stark, and vice versa.) He pitied him – Lyanna was stubbornly decided on Rhaegar Targaryen, son of the Principal Aerys T, and hence nicknamed 'the prince'. In a friendly way of course – Rhaegar was extremely attractive and extremely talented; co-captain of the guys Westeros Dragons, even if rumour whispered he was more committed to his band.
Either way, his sister was now dating his fellow Dragon, and Jaime sincerely doubted she wasn't just using him to achieve some means or the other. That was what Cersei – head cheerleader, unfortunately – did with relationships, what she viewed them as. Groaning, Jaime closed his netbook and pushed himself up off of the bed, opening the door regardless of its protestations, and going into Cersei's red and gold bedroom, in which she was sitting on her bed, with some kind of toe-separating apparatus in use, jabbering manically on her phone to some idiot or another.
"Cersei."
No response. She just glanced up at him and then back down at her wet, scarlet toenails, as if his existence meant nothing to her spectacular being.
"Cersei."
Nothing.
"Cersei, you witch."
Jaime lunged for a pillow, crowning the stack piled on the laundry basket by the door, pitching it with all his might at his twin, who gave a shrill shriek, hurled it rather viciously at her overstuffed, rather enormous walk-in wardrobe (which, Jaime noticed, had several new mirrors on it – apparently Cersei adored looking at herself a little bit more every day, a feat Jaime thought impossible.) Cersei muttered something into the phone, locked it and slammed it down on her bedside table.
"Do that again and I swear to the Seven I will strangle you in your sleep." His ever-charming sister hissed, cautiously examining her nails and glaring daggers at him with a deathly green gaze. If looks could kill – well, he'd have been dead in the womb. Apparently he was born holding her foot, and she was born glaring at him. Somehow it seemed plausible enough.
"Always a delight, Cersei. What's this about you going out with Robert Baratheon on Friday?"
"How subtle. You don't have to worry about your little friend – well, maybe I shouldn't say little, he does have a tendency to inflate a little around holidays – he'll get over it. He's merely phase one."
"Phase…?" Jaime struggled to comprehend the paradox that was his sister's mind. He often wondered, of late, whether the extensive collection of hair products she was so protective over, all of which named after some unreadable jungle nonsense or other, seeped through her skull and into her brain, affecting the part that served her better judgement. Namely, not attempting a diabolical self-serving plan every term.
"Well yes, in drawing Rhaegar Targaryen away from the Stark bitch."
She spoke so simply, so platonically about such retarded plans, Jaime noted with a sigh. He had begun to realize that perhaps Robert's heart being broken by his twin was no reason to get involved in her mental cheerleader schemes. "Of course, because that's going to happen."
"I'm prettier than her."
"And that's what matters."
"Get out."
"I thought you'd never ask."
Following an awkward family dinner, during which Tyrion and Cersei were at each others' throats (nothing out of the ordinary) and their father took an extended interest in their lives (completely out of the ordinary) (and terrifying) Jaime retired to his bedroom, playing some more Call of Duty, until the daylight yielded to night and ebbed away, and beyond his drawn blue curtains the stars hid behind the garden trees. When Tywin Lannister came in, poking his head around the door and surveying Jaime jumping around his bed, leaning forth and jerking a controller around, yelling profanities into the headset, he gave him until eleven to stay awake.
So when Jaime Lannister glanced at his bedside digi-clock that read 00:27, he decided it was time to turn the game off, and check his Facebook feed one last time for any updates. And in fact, one caught his eye – from Prince Rhaegar T himself, a status update and an event created, with near everyone added to it.
Rhaegar Targaryen created the event: Halloween party at mine, 21:30-?
I've been meaning to throw a get-together for a while now, and Halloween is the nearest holiday. Dad's away end of this month, and here all of October so… month-early Halloween? Fancy dress optional.
Jaime scrolled down the list of his Facebook friends invited to the party – the Dragons, the cheerleaders, even creeps or losers, like Petyr 'Littlefinger' Baelish and his own brother, Tyrion. In some odd way, he respected Rhaegar for having the courage to be seen fraternizing with those not quite on his ring of popularity – then again, most were not quite his ring of popularity. But Littlefinger Baelish? Huh. He'd have to see if he was free on the settled date. Rhaegar threw legendary parties.
If Robert Baratheon and his sister turned up in some god-awful couples costume he'd kill himself.
Jaime sighed, clicking off his iPad, kicking his netbook under the bed and lying back, staring at the ceiling. Vestiges of blue-tac from back when the ceiling had been stuck speckled with glow-in-the-dark stars and planets returned his gaze. Somehow he couldn't sleep. The first day back at school after the summer holidays was always bound to be more uncomfortable than usual, but somehow this day had surpassed even that. As he drifted to sleep, a distorted soup of imaged taunted his subconscious mind; Coach Selmy, totally pissed off at him for getting a detention and missing practise, hundreds of footballs slamming into him; Robert and Cersei drunk and wearing matching costumes that dripped red as Cersei and Lyanna Stark hit at each other with wooden swords, and Rhaegar T elongating and contorting until he was a dragon, a dragon with silvery scales and purple eyes, and then the eyes were taking over, and they were everything but Jaime in a black and white land, and then they were blue, abnormally, fantastically blue like Brienne Tarth's, and then the blue was the ocean, and he was drowning, drowning, drowning. Struggling to keep afloat whilst Tyrion lounged around on a floating driftwood slab, just big enough for a teenaged dwarf. He woke up just as the azure flow was filling his lungs, slightly concerned about himself.
Then he checked the time. 6:54.
Could a man never get any sleep these days?