The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl
A/N ~ Badumdumdumdumdum. Gwen's going to be in Mockingjay and that makes me happier than cake. In other news, does anyone else agree that if George sets back the Winds of Winter release date any further we should storm his home with a vanguard of clansmen? Dothraki? No?
Disclaimer I own neither A Song of Ice and Fire, it's characters, or Facebook, or anything else apart from the story and the words because I'm sad and poor.
Coming Up… Cersei turned Jaime's life into a Gok Wan show, Tyrion finds it hilarious, Jaime realized he can rock the sling look, and for once everyone becomes uncertain and/or reluctant about partying it up like it's Pentos. Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!
1. Hello, I'm Cersei and This Is Snog, Marry, AvoidNearly a month on and he still wasn't allowed to be rid of the godforsaken sling.
Jaime Lannister was, with his useless hand bound and perpetually slung, hardly recovering fast, as that stupid Doctor Qyburn swore he would be. He couldn't even use football as an outlet for all his raging rages; after turning up to practise and dropping the ball every five minutes with his stupid useless left hand, Rhaegar and Selmy both had agreed it best for him to take enough time as he needed for it to heal up. They had all their fancy new subs, after all. Or, that was how Jaime consoled himself outwardly. It was a natural instinct of his not to show weakness – if he'd learnt anything, if as inadvertently and unaware as this from his father, it was to keep a cool surface. (Even if his was polished so much so that those who looked too hard saw themselves instead, where his father was all hard stone.)
At night, however, his real fury crept back up on him.
He couldn't sleep anymore anyway – the damned injuries made it too awkward to toss and turn as he was used to. If he wanted to roll himself over he had to first guide his broken hand into a safe (meaning, uncomfortable) position with the other hand, which was nigh on as inept as the former. But it wasn't just that, and the continual dull ache, and that was the truth of it. He'd stare at his blu-tack-pockmarked ceiling, the sounds of his breathing annoying him to no end, as he contemplated how spectacularly shit his life had become.
Qyburn and the rest failed to specify how long exactly before he'd be rid of his forced wariness – that was hard enough; Jaime freaking Lannister had never been wary before in his life – and be able to cast away the cast, and play again. The football was his thing, had always been his thing. Without it, he wasn't entirely sure what was left. (He was Quarterback Jaime. He was the football, the football made him.) Aside from his ever-blazing resentment for his twin sister and her devious plots, which had turned one of his best friends away from him.
He wasn't used to all these thoughts.
And then there was the pressing matter of Brienne Tarth – because really, it'd all started going so sharply downhill the moment Mr Goddamned Hoster Tully had condemned him to a year of enduring science class with her. Science was in fact tolerable now, because he'd learnt to find humour and parody in every detail of the class. That it was so; that was sort of the problem. Since their little talk (he said little, really, she'd been there hours) in the hospital, he'd been torn between his increasing shame for associating himself with the freakshow, and between the shame at feeling the previous shame. If that made any sense – it hardly did to him.
Because since then, he'd tried so hard to cover his tracks from his guys, that his simple taunting of Brienne (and of Petyr Baelish, Lysa Tully, little Pod Payne and the rest of Westeros High's rejects) had turned so sour that it was far past cruel, by now. He revelled in it by day, taking pleasure in doing the one thing he did so well aside from football, like before the hand, taking pleasure from the raucous laughter of his friends, of causing that and taking pleasure in seeing the idiots flinch, knowing he caused that too. He revelled in it, because it had taken his mind off of his hand (and catapulted him even higher in the school's food chain, if that was possible), and it was, after all funny. No, it was hilarious. Yes, he revelled in it by day. But lying sore and irritated in his bed, eyes boring dully into the roof, listening to the slightly out-of-time muffled clicks of his bedside digital alarm clock with the slower, more rhythmic pulse of the grandfather clock crowning the hallway outside, he loathed it. And he loathed himself gradually more and more for gradually enjoying it more and more.
And then he'd wake up, ridicule and torment the gauche and the lonely, and then he'd fail at sleeping, and wish he'd never done it, and vow never to do it again, and then he'd wake up again, and reprise it all. Again. (On a side note, he'd begun to suspect after all the mental dreams he'd been having, that perhaps his body was just trying to keep his subconscious from taking over the tormenting.)
He tried to convince himself that Brienne didn't care at all what he said, if any of the others did. She certainly appeared that way. But then again, that spiteful little voice in the back of his mind reminded him; that day in the hospital, she'd showed him much more than he'd ever expected from her, and that made him begin to realize that everything he, and perhaps everyone else, assumed about Brienne Tarth was all a big mask.
He'd begun to realize that maybe everything he, and perhaps everyone else, assumed about himself was all a big mask. (Maybe he'd just been wearing it for so long it had melded with his face, so that even he couldn't tell where it ended.)
Either way, weekends came as a relief. He would not have to put up with school – only his siblings. (Quite frankly, he thought himself a martyr for that much, at least.) He woke on Saturday, after one of those nights that doesn't entail remembering any sleep at all, but must have involved sleep, because he woke up from something. Those kinds of night were quite frequent now. The glowing green numbers on his clock declared it 11:56.
Jaime Lannister groaned as he struggled to disentangle himself from rumpled covers with his left hand, and struggled to keep his right hand down when it instinctively wanted to help. He resolved the matter by kicking the covers into a twisted heap on the carpet, and managed to stand, and nudge the light on, though sufficient light filtered through his closed curtains anyway. Jaime decided even the temptation of food was not enough to draw him from his bed to face Cersei and Tyrion and his father so early, leaning over to clumsily grab for his new laptop and, after his left hand nearly dropped it twice, manoeuvre it into his lap as he resettled on the mattress. The laptop was brand-new, Apple. A consolation gift from his father – sort of an I'm-sorry-some-Wall-Academy-oaf-broke-you-so-have-this-shiny-machine-because-I-don't-know-how-to-produce-emotional-sentiment gift. He was eternally glad. He'd been after one of these for months. (There were certain perks to being extraordinarily wealthy.)
He clicked it on, typing in his password and opening Google, tossing his head awkwardly to remove the dishevelled golden hair from his face. The thing was up and running within seconds; he would not have had the patience for any slower gadget. He opened his emails, hoping for something to brighten his spirits, and scrolled down. A few newsletters from his school. Jaime groaned theatrically for the benefit of becoming Jaime Lannister instead of Sleepy Moron, before opening them dutifully. Blah blah blah, nonsense, boring, nonsense. Upcoming match this, new lab equipment that. Something about an extra-credit camping trip along the Trident river. Boring, nonsense, boring. Blah blah blah. Dominos Pizza vouchers. He saved that email, and skipped past the next two school ones. One with attached holiday pictures from Aunt Genna.
And then one that made him stop in his tracks. An email notification from Facebook.
Hi, Jaime
Remember the event Rhaegar's Halloween Party is coming up!
And a few links to his Facebook. Jaime followed them, frowning and groaning. Sure enough, the first thing he saw to pop up on his feed was Ashara Dayne, updating her status – Shopping for Prince T's party tonight! J - With Elia Martell. As he scrolled down his feed, it was mostly dominated by proclamations about the party, and pictures of people's costumes. Well, he said costumes; really it was half-lingerie nonsense and animal ears for the girls (excluding the majority, who'd opted out of costuming), and plastic fangs for the boys (excluding the majority, who'd opted out of costuming.)
Jaime shut the laptop immediately, and harshly. What with everything else going on, he'd completely forgotten about Rhaegar's Halloween party. And gladly! As if he needed the hassle of making himself look just that extra bit godly, and alcohol and crappy greasy party food (although knowing the near-Lannister riches of the Targaryens, the food was probably going to actually be very nice) was hardly going to help improve his current state as a handless insomniac. If he'd ever felt less like celebrating, he didn't remember.
No, he wouldn't fret about this – he was Jaime freaking Lannister, and if he didn't want to do something, he was most certainly not going to do it.
He'd leave the partying (rather, glaring at Lyanna Stark) to Cersei. (He assumed Tyrion wouldn't go – despite his relentless dedication to very underage drinking, Rhaegar Targaryen's famed house parties were hardly his little brother's haunt.) He resolved to stay in abed all day, and not get dressed, and not sort out his hair or anything.
Jaime, rubbing the lingering sleepiness from his eyes, and meandered out into the hallway, closing his door behind him. Before venturing into the land of downstairs, he went to the bathroom to splash his face with cold water, cupped from the faucet, just to wake himself up more. It worked, and he was blinking the chilly water from his eyes, drying it from the ends of his bed-tangled golden hair.
He entered the spacious kitchen to the acrid stench of burnt bacon and winced, going instead to the fridge, rummaging around and salvaging a half of yesterdays egg sandwich. It took him a while to realize that the god-awful stink was eminating from where Cersei was standing at the cooker, brandishing a grease-gleaming spatula. She was staring at him with ice in her jade glare, lips pressed so tightly together they near disappeared.
"I feel like I've done something else to offend you, by that look, but I don't know what. Care to enlighten me?" Jaime turned like a guilty man, seating himself languidly at the polished kitchen table (The Lannister kids ignored the dining room when possible.) and peeling and picking away yesterday's tinfoil, crumpling it into a ball and crushing the half sandwich into his mouth in one. Cersei took that moment to conveniently explode.
"Something to offend me! Seven bloody hells, Jaime, I have been slaving away making breakfast all morning. Dad's out, Chataya's on holiday leave, and I decided I'd play the good child and cook something nice and you come down here and blatantly ignore my efforts, stuffing your pathetic face with –"
Jaime chewed and swallowed, with some exertion, throwing the tinfoil ball up with his left hand and promptly dropping it, cursing. He hadn't even been aware that Chataya (the latest in a long, long line of cooks and cleaners) had been granted holiday leave."I'm blatantly ignoring your efforts because your efforts smell as appetizing as pig shit."
A laugh behind them heralded Tyrion's entrance, already up and dressed and clean, tossing an apple from hand to hand as was his odd breakfast custom, and Cersei gave a sharp deathly glare to both her brothers that would send anyone else withering and crumpling. As much as she tolerated Jaime, she despised Tyrion, who merely smiled shrewdly at her as he drew up a chair. "Hello, dear siblings. Cersei, take no notice, Jaime, don't be cruel – that's an insult to the pigs and you know it."
Jaime grinned and nodded acceptingly. Cersei threw her spatula so furiously at the youngest Lannister's head that Jaime thought it like to take it clean off if Tyrion hadn't ducked so swiftly. Tyrion was adept at ducking things by now, particularly metal objects sailing toward his face, Jaime had begun to notice. After living with Cersei all your life, that was a trait one developed. Cersei was prone to throwing things at her irritators faces – whatever she was holding, most likely. Jaime had learnt it far wiser to insult his twin when she held a balled sock pair, or a toothbrush, than a cooking implement or knife. And her hairbrushes were surprisingly hard. (Although with the sheer amount of hours Cersei dedicated to her precious hair, Jaime would not have expected anything less.)
After Cersei swallowed down her swill of a breakfast out of sheer stubborn rage, Jaime rose and declared himself for his bed again. He'd go play some Fifa – if he couldn't actually play football in the real world, at least he still could in the magical land of pixels. Maybe watch a movie. Attempt to sleep. Eat. He'd begun to quite treasure his upcoming day of procrastination. (He wasn't going to mention the homework.)
And at that, Cersei, who'd been mid-dialling one of her stupid friends to chatter about nonsense for seventy two hours, set down her phone quite harshly on the kitchen side and stared at him. "You're what?"
"I'm going to my bedroom, it is my bedroom. But I'm getting the feeling there's something less fun for me to do down here…?"
"Oh no no." Cersei interjected, frowning, stepping hastily towards him. "You've got to get ready for Rhaegar's party."
"No I don't; you see, I'm not going. And even if I was, it's –" His eyes flickered momentarily to the gilt clock hanging above the gleaming kitchen window. "Twenty to one, and the party doesn't start until half nine." To his absolute horror, his twin sister stared at him as if he'd just kicked an injured puppy. Or maybe proved her point. It was hard to tell with Cersei, queen of the injured-puppy-kickers.
"But what do you mean you're not going?"
"I mean I'm not going to be there. Are you going to explain why this is a problem for you or…?" Cersei stared at him, flinty eyes almost tinged with a hint of panic. It gave Jaime the unsettling notion that he was to be a piece in one of her absurd plans.
"Because! Because you have to be there. Come on, I'll help you sort out what you're going to wear…" And then she had his wrist snatched up in her manicured talons, his bad hand's wrist, mind, which utterly killed, and was dragging him, wincing, out into the hallway. Yes, Jaime decided, definitely one of her plots. She'd not care half so much if it was anything else. He snatched his hand away from his twin with some pain, swearing it out as much, and yet accompanying her up the stairs anyway, mostly out of curiosity. When she went determinedly to pull open his bedroom door, he started, and the sighed, following her in. Just her being in his bedroom was a violation of her own treasured house rules. He felt uneasy at another person being in there – like he had something to hide, even though he didn't. (Everything he had to hide was trapped in his own head anyway.) Even so, the moment Cersei stepped into his darkened room, she recoiled, wrinkling her pretty little nose and glaring at him with lingering revulsion. "Jaime, this nest stinks to the seven hells, clean it up."
"You don't command me, Cers. Relax. And explain to me what in the name of the seven is going on."
She sniffed haughtily, before perching precariously on the end of his bed, as if touching anything would contaminate her. (Cersei lived her whole life out like that, really; living and judging things as if she were a superior being and anything less than her godly standards would dirty her.) "Well. I had thought to include you in a wonderful scheme that ends with you in a relationship that profits everyone –"
Jaime liked the sound of that not at all. "Cersei, please, for everything else you do, never presume to make me a part of your idiotic conspiring." He paused, considering. "Who's the girl?"
Cersei stiffened. (Well. Stiffened more so. He'd not thought that possible.) "Lyanna Stark."
And then it all made such clear sense to him. She was still at her mental fantasies of tearing Lya-and-Rhaegar apart and stealing the pieces all to herself. As if. "No. Absolutely not, Cersei."
"Why not?" She demanded. "She's hardly the most attractive thing, but I've heard that for some abstract reason a lot of you boy types find her… more than adequate. And she plays football like you do – or did when you were of any use to the team – and she –"
It was the or did when you were of any use to the team that really set him off. "Enough. I'm not going to try to get off with Lyanna fucking Stark, least of all at a function I'm not going to, so you can badger poor Rhaegar into something he quite clearly wants no part of. You know, it might be something of a slap in the face to hear, but somebody ought to let you know – not everybody on this planet's attracted to you, particularly not Rhaegar Targaryen!" He sighed. Lyanna Stark was pretty gorgeous, but she was rather like a stupidly annoying little sister to him. He'd never even considered her in that way. And plus, he actually did have vestiges of respect for Rhaegar himself. And for himself!
"Fine. But you have to go."
"Why?"
"Because I say so!"
"And that of course makes it final and undeniable." Jaime muttered. He'd meant it sarcastically but Cersei looked at him as if he'd proven a point, bloody mental witch.
"Maybe you should go, big brother." A familiar voice put in from the doorway. Jaime turned to find the last of his privacy invaded and smashed to pieces by Tyrion, leaning against the glossy doorframe and eating a chicken leg. "Blow away the cobwebs. You could meet somebody there. It really can't be good for Mr Golden Quarterback's reputation for his dwarf kid brother to have a girlfriend before him."
Although that actually did strike a nerve, Jaime groaned and rolled his eyes theatrically, sighing and throwing his hands up. "Why is everybody in my room? Get out of my room!"
"I'm not in your room. Look. And I was just beginning to think we were even better good friends than before." Tyrion countered. Cersei said nothing but continued to glare dully at each of her brothers. "Go to the party, Jaime. You wouldn't want to miss seeing Cersei shamed by the Prince now, would you?"
That did seem inviting. And the chance to maybe enjoy himself as he hadn't truly, deeply, since his injury at the match against the Wall Academy Crows. Maybe he could try and mend things with Robert B. (And he was sort of fuming about the Tyrion-girlfriend thing. But he was hardly going to talk about that.) "I'm not promising anything." Jaime promised, leaving to go to the bathroom. As he shut the bathroom door he yelled out, one last time; And get out of my room!
Within seconds he heard a sharp banging on the bathroom door, and Cersei was shouting at him through the wood. "You need to shave, Jaime, you look like Robert Baratheon and it looks stupid!"
"Shut up, Cersei!"
He heard Tyrion chuckle, and was still glaring and muttering to himself as he did indeed fish out his razor from the bathroom cabinet. Once he'd shaved, he decided to occupy himself with a shower, and, to his disgust, the moment he exited the bathroom, hair dripping across the plush carpet, wrapped in a towel with his rumpled pyjama bottoms and t-shirt thrown over his shoulder, Cersei pounced on him.
"Right, I've picked out some things for you to try on –"
"For Seven's sake, Cersei!" Jaime yelled, exhausted, elbowing her out of the way as he sought refuge in his room, untouched but for the clothing laid across his bed, and slammed the door in his sisters face. Loudly. He'd all but given up on keeping people out of his bedroom. Bedrooms, he reflected, should be a private sanctuary for one person and one person alone's touching. He ignored the clothes on his bed, opting for jeans and a crimson hoodie instead, which he dressed himself in quite awkwardly (he'd not yet fully mastered dressing himself with a sling-bound dominant hand), reluctantly pulling open the curtains and kicking away the football and socks that littered his floor. He piled his duvet beside his wardrobe and stared at the clothes his twin had laid out for him. Stupid stuff with designer tags – more noticeable designer tags; no matter how much he didn't notice, most clothes owned by a Lannister were burdened with designer tags – that had been bought by his father or whichever housekeeper they'd had then, and that he'd never worn or had any intention of wearing. They'd have to have been buried very deep in his wardrobe. Cersei had had to have dug very deep in his wardrobe. "Cersei, stay out of my stuff, for the last fucking time!"
"I'm trying to do a nice thing, Jaime, you moron!"
"Yeah, well –" Jaime started as he opened his door, shaking out his wet hair with his left hand, and then winced and swore as he was blinded by the vivid flash on Cersei's camera phone. "What in gods name are you doing, Cersei?!"
She smiled smugly, turning away and tapping rapidly on the screen. "I'm just doing a little test on Facebook. Check yourself if you want to, like you keep saying, privacy is so important in the teenage life."
Cursing his sister for a lunatic bitch, he opened up Facebook on his laptop and found himself tagged in a rather unflattering – not that, of course, Jaime freaking Lannister could look anything shy of glorious in a picture – shot of himself grimacing in the glaring flash, sodden golden hair pooling water on the shoulders of his wrinkled zip-up hoodie. Cersei's caption was one simple word – Before. But, being Cersei, she'd commented on her own picture moments later. Thoughts? To be compared to the after shot once I'm done with him. He slammed the laptop shut, not for the first time that day. And sought Cersei, fuming, not for the first time that day.
She was sitting innocently on her bed, rubbing cotton wool vigorously over her now-half scarlet lacquered nails. "Cersei Lannister, why in the seven stinking hells have you just posted that?"
His sister glanced up, irritated. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Facebook! Before!"
"Oh, that," She smiled, tossing the damp cotton wool into her wastepaper bin. Stained with nail polish, it looked almost like blood. Cersei rose, infuriatingly pleased with herself. (Then again, when wasn't Cersei infuriatingly pleased with herself?) "If you want the picture taken down, all you have to do is let me sort out the after shot."
"Why are you so desperate to give me a makeover like I'm your little doll?"
"Why are you so desperate not to let me? Do you like having an ugly stump of a baby brother with a girlfriend before you?" She asked softly, grinning.
He glared at her, mouth tight, running through the plusses and minuses of going to the party, and going to the party bedecked in Cersei's creations. He'd no doubt be drawn into her treacherous scheming, he didn't doubt for one second that that was what this was about. His hand wouldn't benefit from any dancing or riotry. But if he got drunk, that'd help dull the pain, and help him sleep. Damn what came afterward. He did want to sort out his friendship with Baratheon again – they didn't even have to be friends, just tolerable, not-awkward teammates again. It'd give him a chance to forget his stupid confused conscience; and maybe actually enjoy himself for once. He closed his eyes, shocked at what he was about to condemn himself to. "Fine. Do your worst."
And that was how, at eight thirty, an hour before he had to be anywhere anyway, Jaime stood before the full-length, perfectly polished gilt mirror in Cersei's bedroom, with his golden hair all combed and teased – he'd protested that he was not in fact a gay man and hence did not need his hair touched at all; Cersei was having none of it and promptly attacked him with hair products; he'd not thought one person could own so many – with his jeans pristine, and his new Timberlands, and Cersei smirking and tugging at his attire with her phone in her hand. His sling was still stubbornly sticking out of his groomed and golden appearance, and yet somehow, if he stood just so, it seemed to work. He'd long since abandoned his I-loathe-this attitude for something more arrogant and Jaime-ish. (He said long since. Really, it was just since he stood in front of the mirror.) There was no point in it; not when you looked like he did. (He wouldn't call himself vain – he could simple acknowledge that he was an abnormally remarkably attractive human being and could even work a sling and cast as if he'd been born with it.)
His twin's flash clicked and clicked again, and she ordered him to turn, and he did, and she released him for the next hour until the party. He had no idea what she herself would be wearing, but could only pray it wasn't something so incredibly revealing that it made his eyes bleed. Tyrion, as he suspected, was refraining from attending – saying that he might make an appearance later, nothing more. Tywin had returned around late-afternoon, resigned to his study. He wouldn't be driving them to Rhaegar's, but he could hire them a cab. Not for the first or last time, Jaime was grateful for his astonishingly rich family.
By the time nine-thirty arrived and Cersei came downstairs thankfully covered in a coat, the cab had been delayed (although Jaime failed to see why it was needed, Rhaegar lived about four streets away.) and Cersei was fussing over this and that and Tyrion was laughing smugly. It took a good half hour, forty-five minutes before it finally arrived.
Jaime just rolled his eyes and sidled into the back seat, the night air pleasantly cool.
When they pulled up at Rhaegar's, the near Lannister-large house was pulsing with muffled music, laughter, and warm golden light spilling out across the luxurious porch. The copious front garden space was bedecked in Halloween decorations strings of paper lanterns and foil bats and dragons strung across windows, and intricately carved pumpkins littered the lawn. Cersei refused to be seen entering the party with her brother, and hence hung back a while, texting some idiot or another. And Jaime found himself on his teammates doorstep. He was glad to for once leave behind all his other hindering thoughts, of guilt and guts and Brienne Tarth, and just be.
Just be.
Jaime closed his eyes, took a breath that steeled himself for what was to come, and followed Rhaegar, greeting him jovially, inside.
A/N ~ I'm giving you a one-word spoiler. Brienne.