The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl

A/N ~ I'm particularly pleased with this chapter after the Cersei-annoyance-centred last chapter. Primarily because this one was so fun to write, and stuff happens. Funny stuff, fighting stuff, and, more importantly OTP STUFF. It's finally here! The long-awaited party chapter!

Disclaimer ~ I own neither A Song of Ice and Fire, the characters, or any of the food/drink brands mentioned in this chapter, or the music either. If I did The Winds of Winter would entail Jaime and Brienne getting the flip over themselves and realizing they're madly in love, and riding around butchering the Bloody Mummers. And also Daenerys would get a move on and Sansa would kill Baelish and be Queen in the North, and Cersei would finally have all her mental issues contribute to a breakdown involving her killing herself spectacularly and dramatically with a touch of redemption. And Jon would be there somehow. I've waffled, haven't I?

Coming Up… Jaime gets well and truly drunk, Lyanna makes ridicule of Cersei's latest mental plot, Robert can't stay out of a fight, pentagons are not resolved in the slightest, there are breakups and food fights and a house is trashed, Rhaegar tries to calm everyone down and fails, and Jaime finds unexpected salvation and unexpected thoughts with an unexpected guest. Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!

Warning: This chapter was indeed originally called Rhaegar's Disaster Party. Not to give anything away but it truly is a disastrous (and drunk) evening.

9.Your Eyes Are Astonishing (Not That I Was Looking)

He knew it was going to be a truly spectacular house party when he walked in to the truly enormous living room to find the end filled with a drinks-and-food table so crowded that said drinks and food spilled out over the pushed-aside coffee table, kitchen, and shelves.

All around, as Jaime Lannister cradled his sling carelessly, and pushed through the shockingly copious crowd, he was clapped on the shoulder and cheered and greeted, and a can of beer was shoved into his hand. The house was lit with the same paper lanterns that decorated the exterior grounds, only a lot more of them, their strings tangled and clustered absolutely everywhere. Their rainbow of a palette gave the light they cast soft coloured hues, myriads of spots of sapphire and pink and emerald and purple, autumnal orange and lemon yellow. The thumping dance music thundering through the sprawling, packed downstairs clashed violently with the raucous laughter and classic rock drifting from up the modernly curling staircase.

He wove his way through the pressing torrent of dancing kids, moving as one tide, around into the vast, gleaming kitchen, similarly lit. Despite the added crowds, Jaime knew his way around Rhaegar's house well, having met there for match after-parties and before-match pep talks, and such many a time. The kitchen sides and the island in the middle of the glinting tiles both were crammed with red plastic cups and bottles and paper plates and plastic cutlery, packets of food, some tipped out and overflowing from big plastic bowls. Rhaegar was taking no chances with his father's actual silverware, Jaime noted – smart. He assumed wherever Aerys was, he'd taken Rhaegar's baby brother – Viserys? – there too. A screaming toddler was hardly going to add to the atmosphere.

In the kitchen, Jaime set down his unopened beer and opted instead for filling a cup with Pepsi Max; even he didn't lack respect enough to start drinking so early on in the night. And as he did so, Melara Hetherspoon materialized beside him, clearly drunk, dissolving into random fits of giggles in the patchy vivid lights, touching his hair and prodding him in a most irritating manner. He managed to disentangle himself from her long enough to flee upstairs and into one of the guest rooms, dark and lightless, cup held clumsily in his inept left hand, where Victarion Greyjoy told him the coats were being dumped. He gladly rid himself of his new brown leather jacket, tossing it atop the murky pile on the guest bed. It took him a while to manage it without causing himself searing agony from his wounded hand, but thankfully there was nobody there to see him but the couple making out passionately on the other bed, and they weren't paying any attention to him, that was for sure.

As he stalked back out into the first-floor landing, after his idiot limb sloshed Pepsi across the carpet, his attention was snagged by a chanting in a nearby room, the chanting almost in time with Living on a Prayer, playing loudly from inside. The foil-pumpkin laden door was so wide open so as to allow him sight of what was going on inside – a ring of kids were bouncing and cheering and laughing and drinking around a ping-pong table, where Robert Baratheon and one of the Kettleblack brothers (after going to school with them for years Jaime still struggled to tell them apart) were rapidly bringing down their paddles. It took Jaime a second glance to realize the ball they were whacking back and forth was indeed a meatball. He laughed to himself, shaking his head at his mental friends, and joining the throng, humming along to the song. He was quickly swallowed up into the crowd, hearing a dozen or so people shout his name and drunken greetings, but the thumping attention was primarily fixed on the pair in the middle. Ro-bert, Ro-bert, Ro-bert!

After a few more hits, and a particularly harsh one from Kettleblack that Jaime thought would crush the meatball, said meatball instead sailed toward Robert's face – he opened his mouth and as he caught it between his teeth the cheer that erupted all around him was truly staggering. Whoa, nearly halfway there. "I'm reigning champion, you scar-faced bastard! Who's next? I'll take you!" Robert was clearly remarkably drunk. Ro-bert, Ro-bert, Ro-bert.

"Watch yourself, Baratheon, with all those meatballs – don't want to be getting tubby again, do you? You know you're prone to it," Jaime called and Robert turned to his direction, snatching a red plastic cup spilling something or other and downed its contents in one, laughing raucously. Meryn Trant (Jaime admired his brute force on the pitch, and wondered if his thick skull actually contained anything off the pitch) stepped up, snatching Kettleblack's paddle. Brandon Stark blew sharply over the rim of a bottle to make a loud noise that sounded nothing like a whistle, and threw in a fresh meatball. Jaime grinned and wandered out, muttering – he'd enjoy that particular sport properly when he was drunk enough to understand the non-existent rules.

He stopped to lounge about with Arthur Dayne and Gerold Hightower on the landing a while, discussing this and that, and fended off a quick hug from a very drunken Garlan Tyrell, before running into his sister, leaning smugly against the wall beside one of the many bathrooms, in a transparent crimson wisp. She looked ultimately too pleased with herself for his liking – even by her standards, that glint in her eyes looked dangerous. "Cersei," He was grinning despite himself and his doubts – when in doubt, grin, indeed. It was better to make life a joke than let life make a joke out of you. "Boiled any of Rhaegar's bunnies yet?"

"Whatever makes you think that, Jaime? It's not Rhaegar I so despise." She must have heeded his words at least – her expression suddenly more placid, with only the merest hint of self-satisfied undertones. "You'll see." She finished lightly, with a look that made him feel rapidly unwelcome and rapidly uncomfortable. Whatever she'd done, he was sure he'd know.

Hoping not to be associated with his mad drunken twin, Jaime ventured back downstairs, where a cluster of people sitting on and around a kitchen table were playing some sort of drinking game in the shifting lights. Billows and bursts of strident laughter and screams, and sloshing drowned out the thunderous pulse of electronic music. "Ah, now what's going on at the wasted table?" Jaime asked, seating himself on the edge of the table and delving into a nearby bowl, coming up with a handful of crisps. Laughter.

"Drinking game. You can't –" Ellaria Sand, lying across the table playing with a glazed party ring between her fingers, hiccupped halfway through her explanation, much to the amusement of her just-as-drunk companions. " – Say the words yes or no –" In an eruption of guffawing giggles, her comrades sent up a multitude of bellowing cheers, saying that she'd just said them both and had to drink. Ellaria laughed and grabbed absently at a nearby plastic cup, half crushing it in her grip as she raised it over her mouth to pour in, so that a great deal of its reeking contents sloshed across her shoulder and her face and her friend and the table. Nobody seemed to notice. Jaime decided he'd best leave that lot and return when – if – he got truly smashed.

And then he heard, faintly, a muffled holy shit! from upstairs and knew that whatever Cersei had planned had come to fruition. Feeling sort of responsible, by no fault of his own, Jaime tore up the stairwell, and saw Cersei looking more put out than thrilled – not what he was expecting. Not by a long shot. When Cersei usually wanted to do something, more often than not it happened and happened just as she wanted it to.

Instead, Cersei was fuming, irate, as Lyanna Stark grinned and fell about hooting, swearing with shock and joy. It didn't take Jaime that long to realize what had gone on, purely because Lyanna's once-dark hair was now a dusky, but bright, unquestionable blue. "Oh, motherfuck, I look brilliant, I'm like a winter rose or something! Shit, thank the motherfucking gods for whoever came up with this! Who was it? Who was it? Wow! Dude! Rhaegar, look!"

Cersei, that conniving little nutcase had been tampering with whatever hair products Lya kept at Rhaegar's, doubtless. Nonetheless, being Lyanna, she'd obviously love it. An old quote came to mind that would have helped Cersei pull off something of this scale but actually have her enemy in ruins – know your enemies. His sister quite clearly knew nothing of Lyanna Stark, by this. He sort of wished Tyrion was there –he'd have wet himself.

As word around the rather enormous house spread, guests gathered in their dozens to laugh, puke, and congratulate Lyanna on her bold, flattering new trait. Cersei had vanished. Jaime didn't want to know where to. But while the fuss had gathered around whodunit to Lyanna's hair, what people didn't notice was the shouting and swearing eminating from somewhere across the landing.

In fact, people were so drunk and/or amused, absorbed, to notice this that it wasn't until Brandon Stark and Petyr Baelish came crashing through a door, screaming that they did.

It took approximately a tenth of a second before everyone was yelling fight, fight, fight, in unison.

"You slimy foul twice-damned bastard, I swear, Littlefuckingfinger, I'm going to –" Brandon gave an almighty roar and his fist crashed into the smaller boy's face full on. Jaime heard a sickeningly pleasing crunch and blood spurted from Baelish's nose. Jaime hadn't even know Pathetic Petyr was here. Petyr spat blood and smiled smugly.

"You're going to what?"

Brandon hollered something extremely crude and rather unintelligible and hit him again, lunging and scratching, a cannonball of cold Stark fury. Petyr started fighting back but barely – Brandon was clearly the master here. "If you ever tell anyone anything like that again, you're going to wish you'd never been born!"

The two brawling boys fought like that, tooth and nail, bruising and bleeding and blackening all down the stairs, into the living room, closely pursued by the beaming, chanting crowd that drowned out the struggling trance music, and it must have been a good ten minutes of that, swearing and screaming and kicking, before Catelyn Tully flew into the room looking flustered, eyes flashing. "Stop this nonsense right now! Stop it, you stupid bastards, stop it, by the gods!" And she threw herself into the middle of them, as Ned Stark magically materialized and clung to his big brothers' arm, talking quietly with him and pulling him just so slightly back. A loud groan of disappointment went up from the crowd.

Petyr, cowering on the carpet with a split lip, bloody nose that Jaime, from experience, judged to be wonderfully broken, and both eyes looking as though they'd be panda-esque in a few days; Catelyn breathing heavily between them, red hair floating astray, eyes cold and hard, hand out; Brandon with his goody-goody little brother on his arm, spitting blood, black hair limp with sweat, and swearing, under his breath.

Jaime had never enjoyed a party so much.

Though jaunty music still beat on and on, there seemed to be an eerie stillness to the room. Jaime was about to make some kind of inappropriate joke to smash the sudden cover of ice, before Cat spoke just as he opened his mouth. "I'd rather not do this in front of everybody. If you'd all please mind your own business and clear the hell off I think Brandon and Petyr and I have some things to discuss!"

Nobody moved. Cat gave a half-furious, half-pleading look. Nobody moved.

(Even though Jaime was pretty sure that look would obliterate most people.)

"Alright, fuck off, everybody! Go back to your knitting!" Lyanna yelled from the back of the room.

A collective murmur went up as clusters of kids broke off from the throng and drifted into the kitchen, where the talking, screaming, laughing and dancing (and drinking, copious drinking) seemed to be resuming almost immediately. Jaime had never quite been so glad as he was then, that he'd not missed the party. (He'd never liked his twin so much.) (She'd made him do it, really.)

Jaime followed them reluctantly, regrouping with Arthur Dayne as they speculated and marvelled over just how much Robert Baratheon really could eat. A few of them set up a miniature game of flipping a gumball into a cup (more often than not filled with some sort of alcohol or soft drink, or both) with a cracker from the end of the table. After, maybe, forty five minutes or so, Ned Stark appeared in the kitchen, and was immediately near bowled over by crowds clustering around him, eager for dirt on the fight. Jaime still had enough self respect so as not to go grovelling to that self-righteous moron for gossip, instead hanging back with Arthur and Robbie and Elia, and, later, Rhaegar and Gerold. Word around the party was that Petyr had been going about telling everyone who would listen that he'd slept with Catelyn. Brandon found out – and the rest was common knowledge. Cat herself had taken off immediately after she'd apparently put Baelish and Brandon in their places; an example Littlefinger soon followed, stalking out like a bloodied cat with its tail between its legs.

Jaime pitied Tully. It must be so hard, after all, to have only two (possibly three) people desperately in love with you. He was used to the entire student body.

Once the unspokenly shocked aftermath of the Brandon-Cat-Petyr fight had faded, everyone seemed to agree on getting completely and utterly piss-drunk. So when the next group of party-goers trilled the doorbell, Jaime actually felt the smallest pin of pity prick at him.

Renly arrived in all his style, looking handsome and fashionable and extremely drunk, throwing apart his arms widely and embracing Rhaegar when he came to the door, cheering. A cheer went up at his arrival, too – say what you would about him, the boy had enough charm and charisma to have friends in every corner. (He was no Jaime, of course, Jaime thought sourly – but then, who was?) With him was a curly-haired and girl-pretty freshman named Loras, (Garlan and Willas' little brother or something), a whole gaggle of others, and, trailing dejectedly behind them – Jaime's never-ending doom.

Why he felt so guilty around Brienne Tarth was no mystery, even to him anymore – he'd spoken to her, once, in that hospital, for a considerable period of time, with respect and dignity and she'd actually laughed, sort of, once – something nobody had ever thought Brienne Tarth would ever do, least of all him. But was he really to blame? He'd been drugged for crying out loud! Drugged! He really shouldn't feel bad about going back to his normal response to the towheaded plank. He'd never been anything else to her but that one, drugged time. And maybe he had gotten worse since. But what had really changed? What had he, really, to feel guilty about?

Whatever it was, it stopped him for making the cursory – Someone obviously doesn't need a costume. Somebody else would overdo that for him, doubtless.

Instead, he decided to wash away his troubles.

In Rhaegar Targaryen's beer supply.

"Drink, drink, drink, drink!"

The dappled, colourful lighting seemed to swirl and shift, contorting and dancing in time with the rhythm of the music, and Jaime found comfort in the taste of good beer as it slopped down his throat. As he drained yet another cup, a cheer went up and Jaime crushed the red plastic between his fingers. Vestiges of beer drops speckled his arm. They were sticky. He made to brush them away. He didn't feel drunk at all, not enough, not yet. But he was pretty sure he looked it.

"One more, one more and you beat Rob B, Jaime!" Arthur cheered, and then spluttered with laughter. At a questioning look, Arthur explained, still sputtering, "Rob B, Jaime! It rhymes. I'm a poet, wow."

Jaime snorted and swiped clumsily at the final cup, red plastic gleaming in the lighting. The cheering of the guys echoed the thumping of the music. And the trumpets, they go. He downed it in one, wiping his mouth on his wrist and holding up the cup in triumph. "It appears I am the champion, naturally." Jaime wasn't a lightweight.

"Screw that!" Robert hollered, and then belched quite loudly. For a moment it appeared as if he was going to be sick – Ashara actually scooted smartly out of the way – and then he grabbed at a sausage roll with a inept grasp, and stuffed the whole thing in his mouth, chewed, paused, swallowed. "To the seventh hell with all of you golden-haired shits, make way for the new record holder!" Elia Martell leaned over the table lightly and handed him a cup. Robert drank deeply, splashing a considerable amount on his shirt, and tossing the cup into the air. Davos Seaworth caught it and kicked it away, to much cheering.

"Charming, as always, Robert," Jaime smirked and decided to slip away for a breather. He found that a few well-timed interludes aided drinking competitions. Unlike Robert, who preferred to holler until he was scarlet, and make no breaks in his steady, messy downing. Now there was a weathered alcoholic in the making, if Jaime had ever seen one.

Gerold Hightower then caused a slight distraction by throwing up violently all over Rhaegar's tiled floor.

Jaime slunk through the crowded doorway. Giggling screams and thumping drifted enticingly down from the first-floor landing, where several lip-locked couples leaned against the wall. And, carefully arranging his dead hand, he would have passed right on by, if his quick gaze had not snagged on one such pair – the male of which was both very familiar and very short. Jaime grinned and tossed his eyes exasperatedly as he tore up the staircase, using the twining , ornate banister to steady himself. "Tyrion! You never told me you got here!"

His little brother, clothes littered with peanut shells, withdrew from a sort-of pretty girl who was short, but not short enough, and hence sitting cross-legged, and he grinned, turning around and waddling over to him with his hands thrown open. "I was going to, but something else caught my attention first," The girl, who'd crawled back over and was giggling drunkenly as she chewed on a peanut, tugging at Tyrion's arm, murmured something unintelligible in his brother's ear and succeeded in pulling him back down on the floor beside her. Tyrion laughed and ate the peanut she was attempting to feed him. How old was he, anyway, now? Fourteen? Fifteen?

Well. He was a Lannister, alright.

"Brother, I want you to meet my dear, dear acquaintance Tysha." Tyrion declared with a hiccup and a giggle, and a languid flick of a nutshell. "Tysha, this is my charming and moronic big brother Jaime. Do say hello, but I am the brains, and I am the superior in the cups," He all but whispered the last phrase, snatching a cup of something and downing it in one. Tysha laughed. Jaime didn't recognize her – he suspected she sparingly attended the Sea Bottom Institute, nicknamed Flea Bottom. Most of the redneck kids from the other side of town skived there. "And I think that I am an extremely wonderful creature, don't you think, everyone? I am the king of everything, and Tysha and I were going to climb another floor and find the source of the enthrallingly pillow-fight-esque noises, before we got so distracted, care to join us, Jai –"

Halfway through saying his name, Jaime's little brother collapsed sideways on the carpet laughing, and Tysha grinned and attempted to drag him into the nearest room, peanut bag discarded, contents spilling out across the landing. Jaime rolled his eyes. And Tyrion was supposed to be the academic one.

He turned to venture back down the staircase and rejoin the drinking haze, purely for the amusement of watching a rare species such as the Robert Baratheon roaring drunk. Jaime was restrapping the Velcro on his slung forearm and focusing on that as he paced himself carefully on the winding steps, so it was really no wonder he almost walked right into Brienne Tarth.

But it was even less of a wonder when considered that, at a step back and a second puzzled glance, Brienne herself was doing nothing but lurking on the lower stair, sprawling hand hovering on the carved banister, motionless and frowning. At first blush her expression would've given away nothing, and yet her lips seemed almost aggressively pressed together, so much so they all but disappeared, and her enormous azure eyes seemed to be cracking flint. Before Jaime made some offensive comment, he involuntarily followed her fixated blue gaze to Renly, on the landing, passionately making out with the youngest Tyrell boy.

Ah.

He glanced back and forth from the frozen Brienne to the frantic couple atop Rhaegar's landing. Someone somewhere was attempting, and failing, to beat box, and the sounds clashed violently with the shifting soft lights and the persistently thumping music. Jaime motioned to skirt around his lab partner. "Are you going to block the stairway all evening or get a closer look?"

Brienne seemed startled for a fifteenth of a second, before taking a deliberate and yet stumbling step back and fixing him with a harsh glare. She was staring at him with more revulsion and resentment than she ever had before, which was quite shocking, considering. And all he'd done was ask an innocent question. Bloody fucking mental bitch. "Oh, come now. You can't mean to tell me you didn't know?" He smiled and then loathed himself for it.

"Shut up, Lannister." Though her tone was careful and measured, he easily picked up on the tremble of fury beneath.

"Really? Mr It's A Brooch, Not A Pin? You honestly thought pretty-boy Baratheon was straight? Or maybe you just thought you could change his sexuality? You're man enough, granted, more so than the little flower boy whose company he's so –"

"Shut up."

This time, he could tell that the ice topping her tone was thinner, near to cracking, and the boiling rage beneath, threatening to topple it. It was quite enjoyable. Or maybe that was just the booze. Either way. Fun fun fun.

"I just find it hard to believe that you could possibly –"

"Of course you'd find it hard to believe." Tarth was talking through her teeth and Jaime knew it. "You're nothing but a mindless future-washout with no regard for anyone but yourself, and I'm willing to bet you've never kept to anything in your life. Now, if you don't mind –" She moved to push past him up the stairs. Instinct made him shove his arm out to stop her. She avoided his gaze, suddenly blotching a spectacular red. Her clumping freckles stood out stark against it.

Ouch.

There were a thousand things he immediately thought to reply with.

I'm a Lannister, Tarth, Lannisters won't ever be washouts. We're too rich, you see. A concept probably unfamiliar to you, I'm sure.

Ooh, touchy. So the plank does have nerves to be hit on.

You're taking out your frustrations on the wrong mindless future washout, it's him that you ought to be berating for absolutely nothing.

Come on, Tarth, reverse the roles. Loras possesses pretty looks and a cock. You – well, you don't have either, do you?

Instead Jaime grabbed a thick arm with his retarded left hand and spun her away, leading her fuming down the last few stairs. She protested and he thought she might've called him a word he never expected her to even know, until he swung her her arm back to her, resenting that it worked better than his did, and glaring half-heartedly at her, tossing his head for the sole purpose of removing a straying golden curl from his face.

"What, Lannister?" Tarth demanded sullenly. Sullen, and yet she still casts glances back toward the landing of Renloras. For the first time ever those pretty eyes are giving her away, stupid bitch. Jaime considered. Half of his mind knew very clearly what he wanted to do, and intended to do so, and yet the other half was protesting that that was A; stupid, and B; stupid.

He sighed and relented to himself. "Fine. Come on." Reluctantly, Jaime yanked on her big arm again, nails digging and stalked through the throbbing throngs. She seemed to be following him, at least. And yet he was still entirely unsure of what the fuck he was doing. To himself, of course. Judging from the hospital experience, the aftermath of any civilized contact with Brienne Tarth was both torturous, full of regret and annoyance.

But he was absolutely fucking hammered, and that was as much to blame as the drugs were the last time.

And so Jaime led her through strings of chanting, dancing, drinking and generally mental laughing drunk kids through to the back door of Rhaegar's house, where Robert had once ran straight into the glass and passed out, where he'd spent so many days so many summers with so many people. It was weird that he wasn't with the same people now. The flawless panes had too been strung with Halloween décor. Jaime didn't give them a second glance as he shouldered the door open and greeted the brisk night air of the Targaryen's acre garden.

Tarth however, was not so easy.

Jaime was halfway out across the sprawling weedless expanse of patio before he realized Brienne was hanging back suspiciously, eyeing him coldly. He sighed, exasperated. Mental. "Well come on."

"How do I know this isn't some sort of joke?"

"Believe me, Tarth, if it was, you'd know."

She didn't move.

"Fine then. Stay there."

The next time he set off, Jaime didn't look behind him.

The Targaryens' were almost as rich as the Lannisters. Their patio, Jaime had always noted with wonder, had been arranged in the shape of a three-headed dragon, their lawn meticulously groomed, bushes shaped and trimmed. Though the thumping music still drifted from the hulking house, he could hear the intricate cogs of the world turning more smoothly here, the cricket's with their lullaby and the wind, whispering words of wisdom across sneering trees.

The air was shockingly still for October, but a few rogue breezes toying with his hair and the hem of his plaid shirt, though the reek of the oncoming cold was rife in his nostrils. (Cold had it's own smell, no matter what they said.) Dew winked on the grass, as slender blades reached to cling to his boots. He could see clearly; the moon was not yet full, but not far off. Not far off enough so as to still brighten the world.

It took a while to reach the rash of apple trees that cast the illusion of ending Rhaegar's garden. Tarth, behind him, as he knew she would be, seemed to be missing the point, when he stopped abruptly in before the woody thatch. She stared at him, eyes accusatory. "You've brought me to trees for a reason, or –"

"Oh, shut up, woman." Jaime muttered. "Really. I'm sure you and the rest of the idiots drinking their parents' trust away are under the impression everything Rhaegar ends here. Well. As I'm sure you're well aware, as the star of Rhaegar's precious football team, I've spent many a pre-game, post-game celebration here."

"I don't care for your reminiscing, Lannister –"

"I know you don't, you don't really care for much, do you? Do you have any hobbies aside from being a –" He was going off-track again. "I'm not here to reminisce, Tarth. I'm here to show you something. Go on in through the trees." Brienne opened her mouth. "No, it's not trespassing, it's still Targaryen land, that's for sure." Motionless, Jaime nodded in the direction of the trees. "Go on. Go."

She regarded him with reserved coolness. "How do I know you're not going to –"

Jaime made a big show of over exasperation. "Have a little faith, woman."

"I just have the sense to have little faith in the famous Jaime Lannister."

"What's that got to do with – oh, shut up and walk. I'll be right on through. I can swear on my place on the team that there's no public humiliation involved here."

"Yes, and we all know your oaths are solid gold –"

"Walk."

Brienne Tarth shot him a withering look and trudged on through the tree trunks. After a glance to make certain she was headed in the right direction, and a quick mutter of keeping straight, Jaime jogged over to the far fence, towering, splintering, and fumbled around until he found the switch, flipping it securely and adjusting it, as he'd watched Rhaegar do so many times.

And then he ran back through the trees. Even here, the music somehow found its way past the ringing in his ears. He walked to take his place beside the towheaded idiot herself. "So. What do you think?"

"I think if this is meant to –"

"It's not meant to mean anything, woman, so shut up and take it in."

It wasn't until after the words had fled him that he realized she might've been to say do, not mean. The Targaryen pool before them, with the lights adjusted just how the Prince had showed Jaime last summer, was a wonder to behold, thinly luminant waters lit from within in the scantily cloud-clad moonlight the tiles aglow in sable and russet, the tiles shaped like a dragon – was a sight to behold. The Targaryen family had a bit of a thing with dragons. It was quite unnerving.

"Okay. Now if you don't mind, Lannister, I think I'm going to get my coat and go, because –"

He pushed her in without thinking. The pool was deep and she broke the still skin with an almighty splash that drowned even the music from the house so far behind them. She came up spluttering and bright red, and looking quite murderous. And for a split second he thought he ought to feel bad. Before, of course, he kicked off his Timberland boots and hastily discarding his hoodie, and his shirt and socks.

And then he threw himself, all impulse, jeans and t-shirt and all, into Rhaegar Targaryen's pool with disregard for himself, and Rhaegar, and the glowering Brienne Tarth, who had managed to rid herself of her rather enormous shoes and was depositing them over the edge, on the grass. She was about to haul herself out when Jaime sent a tidal wave of chlorine stinking water sloshing over her. Tarth glared and splashed violently back. He wasn't quite sure why.

It took quite a while of rather aggressive splashing before Jaime began to sort of think Tarth might actually be enjoying herself, in a weird sort of way.

"So, Brienne, what's your deal?"

"What?" She still looked at him with a cold reproachfulness that he knew meant she didn't trust him in the slightest, and the way she sunk down in the glowing water too. (Perhaps if the roles were reversed, he wouldn't trust him either.) Jaime rolled his eyes. The same jerky rubbish seemed to spurt from her mouth every time he wasted effort trying to engage her in conversation.

"I mean, why are you here, if you loathe us all as much as you'd have us believe. Renly?"

"Yes. And why not?" Tarth kept her tone defensive. Jaime inwardly congratulated her on her first ever speech of coherent confidence. Sort of. "He's my friend, and he invited me." Jaime knew what that meant – he was the one plus point to a torturous event her father probably forced her into.

He considered and decided against further pressure on the Renly front. Then he lost his footing on the tiles and slipped underwater momentarily, choking on chlorine. That made him laugh, for some abstract reason. Wow, I'm drunk. "Brienne, I'm very drunk right now; if I slip under again, please pull me out. No Lannister has ever drowned in a swimming pool and I don't mean to be the first." She nodded, and he was glad to be in the company of somebody more than completely sober.

As they both took respite in the pause in their watery war, Jaime's drunk mind struggled against reasonable thoughts and leaden musings somehow found their way through reasonless laughter and thunderstorm of clashing feelings. "Why do you hate me so much, anyway?"

"I – I don't hate you!" It was hard to tell in the moonlight, but knowing her, she was probably that ugly, blotchy red she was so prone to turning. Lie. He knew lies, even in his drunken stupor. He knew lies, she was lying, they all always lied, he was surrounded by liars.

"Don't be stupider than nature forced you to be, you hate me and I hate you too. I'm just obligated to know why." He was surrounded by liars. He was a liar. He was such a liar. He was the biggest liar of them all. She was the only one who didn't lie, the only decent person around here, she shouldn't start, she shouldn't be like the rest of them.

"I – "

"Is it because I'm a cruel, self-adoring bastard?" Jaime leapt on to answer his own question. He didn't really think he'd asked to hear her answer; he didn't want to hear her answer. He just wanted to finally try and make some sense of his thoughts. "Because I am. I'm not denying it, and why should I? Why should I? I'm a cruel, self-adoring bastard, but I'm still a good person, better than those arseholes back there. Because everyone's cruel, Brienne, didn't anyone teach you that? We're all bastards trying not to be bastards – but we have to be bastards to hold our own against other bastards. Survival of the fittest, survival of the fittest! I adore myself, it's true, but don't you dare think you have the right to judge me for that. I'm a shitty person because I have to be, all of us have to be, but I do love myself, because if I don't, if we don't, that's when it all falls apart and people can see in. If you looked like me, laughed like me, if you –" Jaime's drunken ramblings were interrupted by a hacking fit of phlegmy coughing. " – you'd love yourself too, when you don't you're admitting the cruelty and that you aren't the fittest, and you, you're open and dead and… By what right can they judge me, by what right?"

He didn't even know what he was talking about.

"If what you're saying is truly what you believe, Lannister, then you're a coward."

"Coward?"

"That you have to be a – bastard, or people will be bastards to you. You're just a scared little boy."

She has steel in her spine, he suddenly knew. Maybe more even than him. Few people dared contradict him to his face. A further, near non-existent few people had the guts to contradict him to his face in a way that insulted him. Though behind my back, I'm sure they speak freely enough. She seemed concerned, suddenly, though still nigh on unreadable. "Lannister?"

"I don't know. I don't know shit since I broke this thing, Brienne, this thing!" He lifted his cast-bound hand with his left hand, sending water sloshing from it, waving it around. "This thing made me Jaime Lannister the Quarterback and now it's dead and useless for god knows how long." He dropped it back into the eerily-lit pool. It splashed, slightly, onto his still-damp face.

"Jaime, you're drunk."

"Yes."

"You've broken your hand, it's hardly advisable to –"

"Oh, shut up, woman! You don't get it, you're too good and godly and good. You're considered vastly uninteresting and nobody wants you around but damn it, Brienne, you're good, you're so good. I don't understand how you do it, you're good, you're a good person, I don't get it, how, why, why?"

Brienne looked rather uncomfortable, put on the spot so suddenly. It took her a while before, staring mutedly down into the shifting waters, hair dripping, she responded quietly. "Jaime, we should get you out of here, you'll drown yourself if you're not careful. Drunken –"

"If you're so good, Brienne, why are you such a fucking fantastic football player? It requires anger and brutality and if you've got so many old-fashioned morals, why do you do it? You must be a remarkably angry person. I would be if I were you, but you're you, and you're good, so you must be okay with being good and nothing else… if you're so good, are you going to not doing anything?"

"Do anything to what? About what?"

"This." Jaime's drunkenly clouded mind somehow convinced him to brighten the mood. He dissolved into a sudden fit of hysterical laughter for some reason unfathomable even to himself, that hurt his throat as he lunged forth in the cold chlorine, wildly waving about his decent limb beneath the surface, churning Rhaegar's pool as he send an almighty wave of water surging into his lab partner. She gave a sound halfway between a grunt and a yelp, and immediately splashed him back. With his hand, he stood little chance in this water fight, and she was both bigger and stronger than him, now he was missing out on practise so regularly. Even so. He was Jaime Lannister. Fun was his middle name.

Maybe an hour later, Brienne reasoned that it was October, it was cold(ish) and she was not an advocate of pneumonia. Jaime pretended to sulk, and had to agree, and so he hauled himself, t-shirt and jeans sodden and plastered to his sponge-esque skin, laid himself down in Rhaegar's grass, regardless of insects – they ruled out here, and it was only fair to let them – on his spread shirt, hoodie as a pillow. The stars were bright, stark against a sable sky, and shining.

He wondered. He wondered why in the seven hells did he just throw the big ugly bitch he'd spent the past few months loathing and ignoring and tormenting, into Rhaegar Targaryen's pool, in the middle of October. Though, as he had the painkillers, he would later claim to be horrified by the effects of copious alcohol, maybe it was, just partly, because he felt sorry for her, and because he felt guilty.

(He also wondered what the fuck he'd just been rambling on about to her, at her, but that made his already aching brain hurt.)

It was fine ridiculing people who didn't work in the social structure of Westeros High when he didn't know a thing about them, and never expected to like them any more than they liked him, never to talk with them properly. But Jaime… he knew Tarth. Sort of. He knew that her father didn't think she socialized enough (which he agreed with). He knew she'd once gotten into a fight with someone she was supposed to be set up with, and broke his ribs and her wrist. He knew there was the smallest, smallest, smallest fucking chance that there was a person inside her heavy casing.

(Or maybe he'd just done the pool thing to try and detract from noticing the fact that even in the night's dimness, Brienne Tarth's eyes were still as startlingly, amazingly blue as they were in the brightest sunlight.) (What the fuck?) (He was shaping up to be a right pretentious poetic arsehole.) (No, he was drunk.) (That was all.)

"Lannister?" Brienne tried.

Jaime, my name is Jaime. He wanted her to call him by his name.

"What, woman?"

"I don't mean to be ungrateful – I had fun, but why?"

He paused. A thousand horrible jokes came to mind but he pushed them all away. "I wanted to have a good time and I wasn't, in there. You didn't look like you were having a ball either." What? Was he having a good time in there? He thought he had been, cheering on Petyr and Brandon to tear one another to pieces, laughing with Lyanna and her hair and his mental sister's failed scheme, and his brother and his redneck-parented girlfriend. He'd thought he had been. It was only out here, in the shade of the moon, that he realized maybe he hadn't been.

"I don't – I don't know why I came. Renly asked me in a passing comment if I was going to be there and I felt I had to."

"Don't complain about felt I had to. Not to me." Jaime Lannister leant back on his elbows amid the grass; the pallid luminescence from the reluctant rind of moon stripped everything of it's colour, painting the world a spectrum of silver and shadow, blue shadow. Far, far behind, a pale light pulsed, from the house, as did the music, heavy, thumping electronic music that throbbed faintly, muffled by night-breeze and distance. And he turned to look at her, with the wind toying at her boyish hair, thick arms wrapped around her legs, chin resting on her knee. In this light, she could almost be pretty. In this light, she could almost be anyone. Only the crickets chimed tribute to his thoughts.

And then he heard breathless laughter, and shouting and footsteps thundering, and his blood chilled to ice in his veins, and the ice weighed him down and woke him up.

Woke him up. And he realized what the fuck he'd been doing.

Damn beer. He resolved to become more spectacularly ensnared in the utter ridiculousness that was this party. That ought to help, to blacken away his past hour. I'm turning into a poncy twat whose lying here in the grass with Brienne fucking freakshow Tarth and am acting toward her like I would a normal person, no, more, like someone on the team, like a friend, well fuck. I've gone mad. I'm never drinking alcohol again. Ever.

Aghast at himself and his drunk deeds, Jaime stood up, hand laced with pain, head throbbing, and tore off through the trees, swearing under his breath. He didn't look back at where he'd left her, alone. His hand hurt. He wanted to drink the pain away. The last thing he remembered when he awoke in Rhaegar's third-floor bathtub, covered in glitter and instant jello, at midday the next day, with his skull splitting open, was Robert laughing, and the shout of okay, who put the goat in here?

A/N ~ Jaime you're a bastard in denial and I hope you are punished horribly for leaving her there. Oh wait, I'm the author of this – I can punish you… On a side note, anyone else get the parallels between the bath scene at Harrenhal? Huh? Huh?