The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl

A/N ~ I acquired fabric pens and am now in possession of a shirt that reads 'Team Jaime + Brienne.' Because you know. That's the sort of thing I think you'd be interested in.

Disclaimer ~ I am not a old, bearded American man. I just think he's pretty cool.

Coming Up… The cast comes off, the nails come out, Lyanna and Rhaegar host couples therapy and inspire epiphanies, again, because come on, Jaime is euphoric for once in his life, and Brienne is really awkward and goddammit Selwyn you're making your daughter uncomfortable. Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!

19.Personal Growth (I Might Like Some Burger With That Cheese)

When Jaime awoke that Tuesday, he was the happiest he had been in a long time.

Finally convinced himself that everything he'd been doing recently was a good thing, finally thrilled to have the prospect of Kings Landing College so near, finally, finally, finally able to have that cast off. Chataya was picking him up at lunch to drive him to the hospital. They'd meet with Qyburn. And finally, he'd be free. Yes, he'd still have to be careful. Careful was hardly his middle name. But he was going to be free.

He was going to come back onto the team fighting. Tooth and nail. He was going to play, he was going to win, and he was going to impress the Kings Landing College representatives so much they'd offer him a place right there and then.

All in the next couple of weeks.

Eh. He could take it. He was going to get his hand back. And be un fucking stoppable.

The world had finally seemed to realize it ought to be easing into summer by now, and Jaime was thankful for the warmth as he walked to the school. The moment he arrived at the gates, a colossal cheer, fronted by Robert Baratheon and Rhaegar T erupted, swelling in the air. "He's going to get his hand back, his hand back, his hand back, Jaime's going to get his hand back and we're all going to win! He's going to get his hand back, his hand back…" and so on. It was hardly the most eloquent or even rhyming, really, but Jaime appreciated all the same, as he was carried through the corridors to homeroom by the chanting crowd of his friends.

Unfortunately, of course, the first lesson he had was science with Mr Tully.

No, no, not unfortunately. He was changing his mindframe. Science was shit and boring and absurdly shit and boring and he had to study with the most irritatingly loserish person there ever was, but still. She was alright. Science could be alright. He'd endure it if it meant credit if it meant Kings Landing. And fortunately or not, Lyanna's seat had been changed. Instead of where she usually sat, toward the front, the crazy moron was instead a seat in front of Eddard and Catelyn, who were beside Jaime and Brienne. Diagonally right there.

Whilst Hoster Tully went on prattling about sedimentary rock flow rates or some nonsense, Jaime was being hit in the head by paper aeroplanes, from Lyanna's direction. He unfolded one and immediately shifted to Brienne wouldn't see. In Lya's untidy scrawl, was written if old Tedious Tully wants real chemistry he should put away the chemicals and study YOU TWO. The next one read ha, I'm great.

He crumpled them up in his fist, although really he was glad of the distraction they provided. He was trying not to acknowledge Brienne Tarth, but it was sort of hard. She was really tall. And right next to him. And she looked the most uncomfortable he had ever seen her. And she always looked uncomfortable. And Jaime himself grew more uncomfortable as the lesson drew on, painfully long second by painfully long second. And it was definitely not just Lyanna's messages.

This creature slouched beside him, posture astonishingly poor, was very much aware that he had kissed her. And he had kissed her. She never explicitly advocated it. But she never tried to stop it. They'd sat there, by that lake, and he had kissed her. And he knew she knew that if Robert hadn't called him that last night by the campfire, he probably would have kissed her again too.

She'd told him about her family problems. What the fuck was that even supposed to mean? (Then again, he'd told her about his.) (He didn't know what the fuck that was even supposed to mean anyway.)

In fact, she had probably told him more than she had told anyone her entire life.

And he her, because quite frankly he joked with people, but he did not talk to them. Not properly. Not about the stuff that mattered. He just couldn't handle that. (You could at the lake with her, the voice taunted, and Jaime bit his tongue aggressively to make it stop.)

And this, this was why this entire thing was complete bullshit. It was just awkward. What was he meant to say? Was he meant to say anything at all? Dear crone, was this what it was like to be other people? How did they bear it?

He drummed his biro on the desktop, just to have something to focus on, to seem engrossed in. (God forbid that thing was actually the class he was in.)

The moment the bell shrieked to life, Jaime had grabbed his stuff and was out of the classroom before anyone else. After a quick check of his timetable he found he had a free period, and decided to spend it as far away from Brienne Tarth as humanly possible. He wanted to keep his good spirits up after all, and was fairly certain that science class was a minor setback in an otherwise sparkling day. So it was really just his shitty luck when Lyanna-and-Rhaegar found him trying to sleep on the bleachers by the football field, all stupid and happy with their hands in each others pockets.

"Hey Jaime." Rhaegar greeted placidly, with a nod. "Great day, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Jaime acknowledged, rolling up into a sitting position and glancing from fixed smile to fixed smile. He glared at the Stark girl. "What did she tell you? Because it isn't true."

"Hey hey hey!" Lyanna yelled, and then lowered her voice when Mr Frey, wandering by, gave her a sharp glare. "All I did was say to him last night, hey, don't you reckon Jaime Lannister and Brienne Tarth have this mental chemistry and should make out or something and he said yeah so we are here to get the actual truth from you."

"Last night, how often do you two see each other?" Jaime frowned, slightly concerned and disgusted by his friends' sappy happiness.

"Every day if possible. If not we talk on the phone for a couple of hours." Rhaegar shrugged. "Anyway, that is not how it happened. Lyanna just made a passing remark about the two of you, and I sort of understand what she means. Meaning no offence. I know nothing's going on with you, I mean – you're you and she's her and though that makes no difference to me, I know some of the teammates, like you are less easily swayed to the likes of people a step or two down from them on the social ring."

What?

"Look, I get the feeling you want to do a nice thing but I didn't understand a word you just said."

"Ugh, shh Rhaegar, he's a blonde –" Lyanna put in. Jaime wasn't sure whether he ought to be offended or not.

"So am I." Targaryen protested.

"No, your hair's more silver. Doesn't count. No – shut up. Anyway, Jaime, Lannister, I know you're all for popular-loser segregation and all but I am getting the feeling that something shitty went down between you and Brienne and your science grades are suffering for it." Lyanna finished, looking absurdly pleased with herself.

"Since when do you care about my science grades?"

"I don't. I'm not going to try and force you together, it's clear you're worlds apart. But I do have to care about Brienne since she's one of the best players on my team and if she fails Tully's class then she'll have to do overtime to catch up and hence miss practise. I cannot loose her from my team. I don't really know why you hate each other even more than footballers and lit rejects usually hate each other, but I know I heard you being kind of a dick to her that day we left Highgarden and I am playing mother and forcing you to go apologise to her. For the sake of my team. The teeeeaaaam." Lyanna concluded ominously.

Jaime just stared at her.

"Go on, chop chop, motherfucker, off you go." Lyanna prompted, hopping up on the bleacher beside him. He didn't move. "Go, now, or Rhaegar and I will start making out and you'll be so uncomfortable you have to leave." Pause. "I'm not kidding. Rhaegar, make out with me."

Jaime sighed and pushed himself to his feet, Lyanna laughed and threw a hand in the air in triumph – too triumphantly. She toppled over backwards and fell off the bleacher. With a yelp of I'm alight, grand, meant to do that, go back to your knitting dickheads, Jaime knew he didn't have to worry.

Then, as he found himself roaming the sun-bathed school, Jaime's thoughts turned to what he was actually doing. He wasn't going to seek out Brienne and apologise for – for what? What had he actually done wrong, ever? It wasn't like he'd dumped her, they were never fucking together, ever and never fucking would be! Or was it just that he'd kissed her and then not really mentioned it afterward? Was that classed as a bad thing to do? Oh, why were there so many rules?

Wait, was he actually here, considering doing what Lyanna bloody Stark told him to do?

Anyway, he couldn't talk to Brienne Tarth now even if he remotely wanted to, because she had a class and he did not. And as he dozed happily through his next few classes, they too were peacefully devoid of the idiot. And then came the blissful bell heralding lunch. He jogged past the secretary's office as he left, signing his name out of the school and putting all thoughts of Lyanna and Rhaegar and their cheesy advice column from his mind. He was going to get his hand back.

Chataya was waiting in the car, and Jaime wound the windows down, nodding to the music on the ten-minute drive to the Oldtown hospital. Shockingly, schedules were on time and he only had to longue around in waiting rooms for maybe ten, fifteen minutes, ridiculing magazines and making young nurses in scrubs blush, before the man at the desk rose and called, "Jaime Lannister?"

And he stood up, sauntering after the guy and into Qyburn's office.

The doctor was seated behind his desk, shuffling through some papers and he glanced up and offered Jaime a seat. He took it, barely containing his grin.

"Right, how's it feeling, the hand?"

"Oh, it's never been so thrilled as when some idiot bodybuilder crushed it during a football match." Jaime paused, staring at the guy. You try a little humour. "It's good."

"What constitutes good?"

"It aches still, but not badly. And it itches like hell."

"Good, good. Right…" Qyburn urged his swivel chair over to Jaime and inspected the grubby cast. Jaime felt himself gear up for ecstasy as the doctor carefully began to remove his hands' horrible, foul prison, and then change the elastic sort of bandage thing that he had wrapped around his wrist and palm and knuckles beneath the cast. Then Qyburn sat back, expectantly.

Had Jaime been younger (or Robert) (or Lyanna) he would have yelped with joy. Slowly, tentatively he flexed his hand for the first time in months. It felt better than anything ever had. Each of his fingers stretched out, savouring the ache of the motion. Better than anything ever had.

"How does it feel, does it hurt at all?"

"No," Jaime grinned.

"Good. Keep the bands on at all times, except for to change them of course, I'll give you a few more. They'll help. Don't start using it too fast, though, or it could ruin everything. You're a footballer, aren't you, Jaime?"

"The best."

"I would suggest no football for a few weeks still. You could try, so long as you favour your left hand and go extremely careful. If you feel any sort of stabbing pain, or sharp pain, phone your GP immediately, he'll sort it out. I can give you a balm for the itching, here, I'll give you a prescription, pharmacy's on the second floor - but it is a good thing, it means it's healing. In a few months you'll be good as new."

Jaime grinned, accepting the prescription with his left hand out of clumsily enforced habit and nodding. "Right. And Doctor – Qyburn, thank you." Jaime didn't often give thanks, so although they were alone in his office, he sort of felt like he had to leave immediately. He left still flexing the stale muscles of his hand over and over. Over and over. It was the most beautiful thing.

The queue for the pharmacy counter was so astonishingly large that had Jaime not just had his hand released after so long of not being able to use it, he would have gone on a rampage. Instead he just sat there, marvelling at the way his fingers worked, stretching and bending and warming up, stiff muscles becoming looser. Eventually, when one nurse intern who introduced herself as Pia asked him for a coffee, he went down to the first floor Starbucks and relented. Not because she herself was anything special – in fact she was quite irritating and he kept thinking of other people – but because he wanted to hold a cup, a stirrer, a packet of sweetener.

Then he went back up to the pharmacy where the queue had died down, and he collected his balm, called Chataya and was in the car, amazed at the feel of a car door handle in his palm. He just wanted to pick everything up, however childish it seemed.

Then he noticed the time, and realized everyone would be walking back from school, shouted out and thrust his unbound hand out of the window at everyone he passed. Arthur Dayne, Gerold Hightower and Lyanna Stark all released spectacular cheer and woops, jumping up and down manically on the sun-baked pavement as he passed.

As Chataya wound the car down the smaller streets, the students dwindled until one particular one, solitary and slumped and towering, snagged Jaime's eye before he could call out that his hand worked, and he made a shit decision. "Chataya, stop the car, I can walk from here."

"What, why?" She shrugged, confused.

"I left something behind." He rolled his eyes at his own stupidity and clicked the door open, stepping out into the sunlight. "I'll be back for food." Then he shut it again and watched Chataya drive out of sight, out of mind before jogging up the vivid street to catch up to the figure.

He did, then glanced up the street to catch his bearings, remembering her house from that morning they'd talked on their way to school. "Brienne, I didn't think I'd see you again so soon. How's – things?"

She stared reproachfully at him, wide cerulean eyes torn. "What are you doing here, Jaime?"

"Don't answer a question with a question, it's terribly rude. Didn't anyone ever teach you that? Oh, look, I did it. Well. Some of us get away with being terribly rude." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "Only the astonishingly gorgeous ones. Sorry."

"Jaime, I thought I made myself clear, you can't seem to decide who you are, and I don't want anything to do with you, you're done, the temporary friendship's over…" She trailed off.

"Well, what if I told you that I have decided who I am, I'm Jaime the quarterback who just got the other quarter of his hand back, yeah!" He waggled his fingers in her face. "Look, we don't have to like each other, because quite honestly that seems like an impossible task for us both, but we can call a truce. I need to sort myself out for college. You need to get keep your grades up or else Lyanna Stark will skin us both, so I say we put down our arms. No friendship, but no hate. Deal?"

Brienne swallowed, unsure, and then a door opened and a voice called out to them. "Brienne, I thought I heard your voice! Didn't you have football practise tonight?"

"No, dad. I… I'll come in now." Brienne glanced to the doorway where what is assumedly her father is smiling. The house was alright, Jaime noted – it was no Lannister home, but certainly wasn't anywhere near Tysha-standard. Particularly for a man who's a single, widower father. He didn't add voice to that thought. He did however sense a way to provoke his science partner into a(nother) temporary truce. He smiled broadly, waving fixed waves to Brienne's father.

"Hello, Mr. Tarth!" He nodded pleasantly. Brienne stared at him as if he'd lost his mind. Perhaps he had.

"Please, call me Selwyn." Selwyn smiled politely and gave Brienne a look Jaime knew all too well. It was the look approving mothers gave their adolescent daughters when they passed him. He nearly laughed out loud. "Brienne, who's this?"

Brienne had become suddenly deeply enthralled with something the pavement had to contribute. "Jaime." She mumbled, thick neck flushed bright scarlet.

"What was that?"

"I'm Jaime Lannister, I'm on the school football team with your daughter." He declared agreeably, mustering all the manners he could as he strode a few steps up the Tarths' front garden and leaned forth to shake Selwyn Tarth's hand. "And we're also science partners."

Brienne had managed to awkwardly come over to join them, scuffing her grubby trainer along the speckled pavement that sliced through the long strip of just an inch grown-out grass that served as their front garden. "He's just Jaime, he's going to go now I think…"

"Oh, nonsense, any friend of Brienne's is welcome to stay. You can have dinner if you're hungry enough, Jaime, is it? I made lasagne." He lowered his voice in what he imagined to be a subtle way. "I'm always telling her she should bring friends home more often." Jaime thought this wasn't the time to point out that Brienne had exactly two friends and one of them fell into ponds a lot.

"No, Dad, really, Jaime can't stay…" Brienne shot Jaime a look that screamed pleading.

Jaime smiled smugly. "No, don't worry. I can make some time."

A/N ~ Jaime, you're a bastard but we love you. Last one for today guys, I need to keep you hanging c;