The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl

A/N ~ Ah, the fluff. Also, I'll warn you now – if you think the fluff is taking over, well… It lasts for a good few chapters before Classic Jaime returns. Also, it may interest you to keep in mind that pretty much all of this is based on my experience with school camping trips.

Disclaimer ~ My recent plan, involving a pickaxe, hempen rope, three medium lemons and Jeyne Poole has failed. Though I'll not rest until I own A Song of Ice and Fire and can force Jaime and Brienne to get over themselves and realize they're irrevocably in love, for now it remains the property of George the Fabulous And Sadistic.

Coming up… Jaime's interlude away from life simply gets better and better, people relax, and how in the name of the seven are teenagers meant to assemble working rafts by themselves? Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!

14. A Regular Mr Darcy

At breakfast, Jaime found himself gravitating toward Brienne.

(The camping trip must have drained all the good judgement from him, really, because he didn't even realize it.)

The Highgarden Manor cafeteria was a huge, gleaming thing, all polished floors and low panel ceiling and long plastic tables, the enormous, sprawling sort with seats attached. Through silvery double doors the clatter of the kitchens drifted, and pictures and noticeboards tacked across walls displayed random kids and teenagers doing a variety of different activities, and schedules and adverts. Last night had been a mild success, since Petyr Baelish barely spoke to him because he, for once, had nothing to say to him. Hyle Hunt in turn blanked him and glared at him, and then proceeded to snore absurdly loudly. At first Jaime thought a pig had somehow gotten into the tent. But once you got used to the unsettling grunts and the stereotypical crickets, in their odd cacophony, you slept quite well. Naturally Jaime, accustomed to memory foam and king sized thousand tog duvets, had taken a good while to get comfortable, but he had and he'd slept a, for once, dreamless sleep.

When he awoke, he thought it would be late, but it turned out, when he'd wandered back from the toilet block and turned his phone on, that it was barely six am. The onset of sunlight had roused him. The thick dark curtains he had at home blocked out everything. But still, he'd hardly felt so wide awake. He made a pre-breakfast snack of one of the many crisp packets he'd stuffed in the side pockets of his bag, and played Doodle Jump until Mr Satanic Fucking Randyll Tarly came round yelling at everyone to get up. Honestly, he thought he'd come on a school camping trip, not a military encampment. Jaime pitied the poor fools who were woken that way. (Except Hyle Hunt.) (Nobody pitied Hyle Hunt.) (He was a dick, Jaime had decided.)

Either way, they'd all somehow found their way into clothes and stumbled through the dewy grass to the cafeteria-kitchen block. Rhaegar and Lyanna were being quite repulsively romantic, so he steered clear of them – he didn't want to end up like Elia Martell, looking on a futilely attempting to join in. Brandon Stark removed himself so far away from everybody but a girl Jaime was faintly sure was called Barbrey Dustin, and was so silent and sullen he was probably restraining himself from lunging across the table and obliterating Littlefinger. So it was for lack of anywhere else to go really, a feeling quite new to him, that Jaime sat himself down next to Brienne and happily began loading his plate with the assorted breakfast foods that lined the middle of the table. Toast, spread with Marmite. Scrambled egg. Sausage. He filled a plastic cup from a plastic jug of orange juice and offered some to her. She ignored him and went on picking at her muffin.

"What are you doing, Jaime?"

…There it was. Just when he thought they were becoming comfortable.

"I'm having breakfast, what are you doing?" She calls me Jaime now. Brienne looked as though she was going to say something in reply, something Jaime didn't doubt would be long-winded, disjointed and useless bullcrap, and then thought better of it. He was glad. Half the time the only thing that came out of her mouth was bollocks condemning her to public ridicule, but there you go. "We're friends now, aren't we?" She didn't reply. "We're friends, that was officially agreed on. Friends are accommodating to friends. And all my other friends are either too busy with blue-haired footballers or are too busy with not tearing Baelish's intestines out – not that I'm really friends with the Stark."

"We're friends because of science class, we don't…"

"We don't have restrictions, because we're friends, yes? But surely that was what you meant to say?"

"Jaime Lannister, you're a complete and utter arse."

"Brienne Tarth, you're the first person ever to not want to eat breakfast with me."

"I'm entirely sure there are hundreds of people who don't want to have breakfast with you."

"Gods, no. There's maybe a dozen, and you're their queen."

"None of these other people here are having breakfast with you and there's more than a dozen."

"Yeah, but they're all losers."

"Be quiet."

Jaime grinned. Good-naturedly annoy people – check. He was already in high spirits. When breakfast was all cleared away they had a half-hour slot before the first activities of the day, and Jaime filled it with a quick, much-appreciated shower. In his pessimistic horror the previous day, he'd expected there to be but freezing drizzle dripping from the showerhead, but it was actually satisfactorily warm. He returned to the campsite to find gaggles of surly teenagers he didn't recognize amongst the ones he did. He turned to Lyanna Stark, who was rambling on at some tiny loser named Howland Reed. "What's going on?"

"You missed Tetchy Tarly's rally speech in favour of your beauty time. Enough to make anyone suicidal. We're joining with two other schools 'cause there's about two of us. Then we're splitting into groups – group one doing this while the others do that and that and whatever so the stuffs aren't overcrowded." Then she turned back to Howland, blue waves of hair falling in her face.

Jaime trudged through the substantially larger throng, revelling in the much-familiarized stares and smiles and girly giggles from the new additions. Hardly any of them were hot. (Properly hot anyway.) (Like, Melisandre Asshai hot.) (Jaime loathed Melisandre Asshai.) (But she was really hot.) (How she ended up with a grim-faced non-person like Stannis Baratheon he'd never know.) (Or Ashara Dayne hot.) (Again, he wasn't interested.) (But she had purple eyes.) (How was that not slightly cool?) (Hell, even Catelyn Tully.) (She was pretty hot.) (And Lyanna Stark.) (Dacey Mormont.) (Even Elia was alright looking.) (Just as long as it wasn't his sister.)

(Even though he was pretty indifferent to most of them, Westeros High had turned out some quite impressive girls.) (He didn't feel a need to get a leg over any of them) (But it was always nice to have good scenery.) (Thank you Westeros High.)

(But then, there was also Brienne.) (God knows what happened there.)

He somehow managed to find Rhaegar, through following Lya and Howland. He was talking with Brandon about football, and Brandon was no doubt debating whether or not to kill Baelish there and then. So he hung around Rhaegar and Lya, the latter of whom received about a dozen evil glares from girls realizing she was with Prince T.

Tarly and several others, assumed teachers from the other schools, were conferring clipboards and by the time the day had darkened and started to very gradually spit tiny specks of rain, managed to rattle off lists. He'd be in the second group, with Podrick Payne and Brienne, and a smattering of others from Westeros High who he barely knew. Mostly it was kids from the other schools. Still, at least he had one sort-of scientifically official 'friend'.

He stood around for a while whilst the staff conferred. Leonette Fossoway took one of the other groups for rock climbing, and their new guide, a red-faced pimply idiot didn't seem to bother introducing himself. Instead, he told them, they'd be going around to the lake for raft-building. And then taking out their built rafts on said lake. Jaime was quite obviously going to drown.

By the time they'd all trooped round to the vast expanse of silvery-murky water, it had started spitting and a few of the girls had hoods up. The weather didn't put off Mr Pimple. Littered around a hard dirt shore were reels of rope, enormous logs, and large, dinted blue barrels. How they were ever going to make rafts out of these was beyond him. Let alone rafts they were expected to make float. "Right, into groups of two to four, and get going. You can go off so long as you don't go too far, to work. If you need any help with design or knots, just give me a call. Try and make them as simple and efficient as possible – you'll be racing these around the lake. You'll have an hour to make them, and an hour to race, including shower time afterward; I can promise you at least a few of you will be in the drink by the end of this!"

Jaime instinctively hovered around Brienne who had instinctively magnetized to little Podrick Payne. "Room for a stunningly attractive third?" Jaime enquired hopefully. Brienne muttered something about don't flatter yourself, you're a bastard but it was in a nice way, he supposed. And Podrick just nodded awkwardly. Around, the others were diverging into groups and dragging wood and rope off to various different corners of the bank, field, and shallows of the clusters of trees framing the water.

"Right, Brienne, grab some of those log type things, I'll get the barrels, Podrick, try not to fall into the lake. And get rope."

"Nobody's crowned you yet, Jaime." Brienne told him, in all seriousness. "Help me with the heavy stuff. Podrick… Get rope." Jaime burst out laughing, and Pod even gave a tentative smile before scurrying off to grab a reel of rope. Brienne frowned as they made their way over to the pile of smoothed logs. He used to think scowls suited her better than smiles, but he wasn't quite so sure now. (If the big ugly bitch would just relent and laugh then he could decide.) (But whatever.) (He was cool.)

"Right." Brienne knelt down by the pile. "How many do we need? Four? I'll take two one at a time, you do the same. Get the barrels last."

Jaime leant to drag one off and dropped it immediately. Brienne glanced up, expressionless. "I'm an almost-cripple, you have to help me."

"Jaime - "

"Don't make me beg. Just come on, Brienne, help me with my wood."

He watched a familiar splotchy redness crawl up her thick neck. "Jaime."

Jaime grinned. "I need help with my wood, Brienne. I need you to help me with my wood."

He burst out laughing a few seconds before she did. It was like confirmation. That this was all jest, and genuine. A couple of actual friends having an actual mess around. Well, fuck me. Jaime Lannister friends with Brienne motherfucking Tarth. Gods. Eh. There was nobody cool around to see it. Brienne eventually relented, trying not to smile, hefting the other end of the thing and dragging it over to their little workspace together. "That's what I'm talking about, thank you, thank you for treating the wood right."

"Do you have to make everything awkward, Lannister?" She was still restraining whatever meagre joviality she had.

"Of course I do," Jaime replied. "It's my special talent, so long as absurd hotness doesn't constitute a special talent. Like if I was a super hero."

"What, making things awkward? No. You'd be Arrogance Man." She dropped her end and turned back over to heft another over her shoulder and drag it across, dumping it with ease. She was stronger than he'd thought. "Captain Idiot. Full of Himself Boy. Super Jock."

Jaime considered. "I'm fine with all of those. Anything with my face attached has a certain ring to it. What'd you be? Boring Woman? Awkward Girl?"

She gave him a withering look. "Be quiet and get some barrels, cripple."

Within the hour, they'd manage to lash the logs together with some success. Podrick only tied his fingers together twice, which everyone agreed was quite an achievement for him, considering. They'd tied the battered plastic barrels to the underside of their would-be raft, as hopeful floatation devices. Several other groups of kids had copied that idea, something which made Jaime feel absurdly proud. Really, he'd just sat around whining about his hand and happily teasing the other two, but still. He'd always been the guy kicking other people into giving him answers, or copying off of them, not the other way around. All these new experiences. He was beginning to hardly know himself.

It was then that they were asked to line up along the shore of the lake. The scanty shower of spitting rain had long since ceased. In fact, it was quite sunny behind a scattering of clouds. On the count of three they'd all be asked to push out and race around the lake once. (Jaime was still quite unsure of the awfully murky, dark-green depths.) (But as if he'd admit that to himself.) (Let alone anyone else.)

When the whistle blew, Jaime, on the bank of hard-packed mud, pushed them out with all his one-handed strength, and attempted to vault himself on. He slipped. (He was blaming that big Wall Academy oaf who crushed his hand so long ago, in all fairness.) Brienne and Podrick lunged, grabbing on. Podrick, unfortunately, tried to grab at Jaime's wounded hand. Bursts of searing agony. He yelped, and Pod leg go.

But on the bright side, Jaime wasn't the only one in the rather disgusting waters. Several feeble girls' attempts at raft-building had failed immediately. Jaime sputtered in the water, trying to keep his hair above the surface, for a few moments, before Brienne, a spectacular shade of scarlet at everyone's staring, managed to lug him up onto their successfully (if a little shakily) afloat 'raft'.

He grinned. "Well. I think that went very well, don't you?"

"Shut up and pole." Brienne slammed a rowing pole into his hand. (Singular.)

"Do you know," Jaime turned to Pod. "I think she's starting to like me."

Their raft being one of the most successful, the three of them began to paddle furiously. If Jaime was going to become a total boy-scout camping-is-such-fun sadsack dickhead, then fucking hell, he was going to do it right. Somewhere between all the shouting and screaming as people fell in, the three of them, by some miracle, began to pull ahead. A quartet of kids from Qarth College only remained ahead of them.

All this time off of football, Jaime Lannister had almost forgotten how competitive he was.

Until he became suddenly entangled in a pole-paddle-whatever-the-fuck-it-was battle with one of the Qarth kids'. It was a simple mistake, on his part, for once in his life. All he'd done was overstretch an inch too far. And the bastard on the other raft started to beat back.

So, whilst Brienne attempted to steer and Pod attempted not to fall in the water holding them up, Jaime knelt on the soaked, wobbling wood and mercilessly began to batter Qarth's paddle, grunting and roaring and laughing as he pressed his obvious, natural upper hand. (Even if he was using his unnatural, useless hand. When one of the guy's friends used his pole to batter their raft, attempting to capsize them, Jaime gave a hoot. He tore off his hoodie, tossing it aside, where it landed on Podrick. Oh well. "Shit just got real, you scholarship-programme dicks."

Jaime hit at their raft, and the wood between him and the water began to jerk furiously. Oh. They were coming closer and closer to the dirt bank again, they were going to beat these sorry motherfuckers, they were, they were. The shore sped toward them, as flecks of freezing water spattered his face. Yeah! Even in something this utterly sucky and useless, Jaime freaking Lannister would always win. He was Jaime Lannister.

Then the raft tipped over, and all he could see was shifting weeds. And he broke the surface of the lake and realized he'd been underwater, blinking rapidly. (This was probably no good for his hand, but who gave a toss.) He was so close to the shore as well. Brienne and Podrick were there, looking too amused for his liking, and too dry for his liking, too. More a little damp than anything else, damn them. Ditto the Qarth bastard squadron.

Jaime swam foreward, spitting a little, before his feet could sit easy on the muddy floor of the lake, and he could roll his shoulders back and comfort his aggrieved, broken hand enough to confirm it would survive, and stride, quite contently annoyed-amused, grinning despite himself, golden curls dripping, clothes freezing and clinging. He tossed his head to shake free most of the drips. (Jaime knew he was one of the rare, blessed specimen who would look more like a model doing so than a golden retriever.) (At least, he hoped.) (No, fuck it, he was hot.)

Several of the (equally soaking) girls from other schools on the shore seemed to be enjoying the view. He tried to revel in it as he always had. He heard someone mutter something about Pride and Prejudice and nearly snorted. He grinned at Brienne, unwittingly – equally as unwittingly thinking it was sort of a breath of fresh air to have a girl not scream over him.

"Are you alright?" Podrick asked, when he greeted them. Jaime ran his hand through his curls, sniffing.

"Grand." He paused, and glanced at Brienne. "Oh, yes. I'm a regular Mr Darcy."