The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl

A/N ~ So, I made the happiness drag out for two more chapters. Because I love you. I do. And in answer to all your lovely and persistent asking, I didn't update because it's far too hot in London and hence I've not slept for a week, so I was just watching Mean Girls and sleeping because I cannot handle heat.

Disclaimer ~ I really wrote A Song of Ice and Fire. A crazy bearded fellow just put his name on the cover instead of mine. *falls down* *George is revealed behind my body, holding a frying pan* Silly lying jackanapes.

Coming Up… Jaime is really not a patient guy, and waiting very nearly kills him, Cersei's almost human (again), but not quite (again), and Jaime makes a pity offer. Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!

24. An Early Fallback

When Jaime logged onto his Facebook a few days after the game, he was hit by sudden wave of nostalgia.

He'd spent his first day as a school-free adult asleep in his bedroom, occasionally waking up to eat frosting from a can and to watch Extreme Car Chase Reloaded on TV. It was a great thing, this mature life. He'd planned on spending the next day the same way – it was summer, he had months of being amazing with his friends and doing amazing things. For now, he could veg. He'd planned.

Cersei, apparently, had other ideas. At six in the bloody morning – practically the middle of the night – he'd heard her alarm go off, and then heard her ranting loudly on the phone at some poor sod after another, and then she'd put on some rather annoying music. At half nine, finally geared up for getting out of the bed zone, Jaime stormed into her damn thin-walled room, and started shouting. Cersei just stared at him as if he were really not worth her precious time.

"Jaime, go away, I'm trying to study."

"With this shit blaring?"

"What did you say? This shit is classic!"

"You have five pairs of the best quality headphones in the world, use them."

"It's my house as much as yours, I can do what I like. In fact, it's my house more than yours because I'm older." She finished with a superior look.

"Yeah, by like five seconds."

"Five minutes,"

"Like it matters."

"You know it does."

"Turn it off!"

"Get out of my room!"

This, of course, woke Tyrion up, who found the whole situation very amusing, and hence caused Tywin to trudge, tired and exasperated, up the staircase to see what on earth his children got up to. He wasn't even working today, wasn't even doing anything today and he was still wearing a suit, a fucking expensive suit. Why? What was the point? Jaime did not understand his father in any way, shape, or form. The moment he materialized in Cersei's doorway he glanced from one Lannister twin to the other and folded his newspaper carefully. For a moment Jaime wondered if he was going to get whacked by the latest Casterly Times.

"Jaime, leave you sister be. She's studying."

What? "No, she isn't, she's just playing music to annoy me, she's an evil mastermind, you think what she wants you to think." At that, Jaime heard Tyrion snort. Well, it was true.

"Yes she is," Tywin said firmly, at the same time Cersei stated in precisely the same tone, yes I am. Jaime glanced around her meticulously perfect bedroom and begun to pick up on things. There were, god above, books stacked beside her from where she sat on her bed. And notebooks and the like. He stared at the nearest, a heavy brown volume labelled Corporate Social Responsibility: Globalisation, Regulation and Law. Jaime stared at it as if it were the seventh hell incarnate.

"What in gods' name is that?" He retorted, mildly disturbed.

"It's called studying, Jaime, I don't believe you're familiar with the concept." Tyrion put in helpfully from the hallway. "It's where you look at informative books and papers and videos and so on regarding a certain subject, in order to –"

"Shut up, Tyrion," Cersei snapped, although Jaime wasn't sure why, since the little bastard was helping her cause. Sort of. "Jaime, you were freaking out like a nervous little girl when you played Dragonhome or whatever it was and the Kings Landing scouts were watching, how dare you question me when I actually want to prepare for the essay that could very well get me my scholarship, and, if you leave me alone," She glared, "Will."

Oh. He hadn't even realized his twin sister was focusing on law, let alone pursuing a scholarship into KLC with it. Maybe, maybe she was human after all. (Then again.) (Maybe not.) "Okay, fine." Jaime muttered. "Just a bit of fun." And then he shrugged it off, a little creeped, trailing back into his bedroom.

That was when he opened up Facebook, slumping on his carpet beneath drawn curtains. And choked on the nostalgia. He had five new unread messages. All of which he ignored. The first thing that came up on his feed was Ashara Dayne, with a status update that read, final exam today, wish me luck, after that won't see this place till prom. Love all you Westeros Dragons, thanks for the memories. So emotional rn. And it was followed by a bunch of love heart and crying emoticons. To his disgust, there were several comments from the other cheerleaders, saying pretty much the same thing and exchanging 'internet hugs'. Ugh. Why couldn't girls just be normal people?

Of course, it wasn't until he accidently clicked on the newest Facebook service, which provided a chance to 'review your year so far' or something like that, that he became one of those girls. (The thing was, it wasn't even this year that he had clicked on.) (It was last year.)

The first pictures that came up were from January, where he was tagged in the Lannisters' new years eve party, in a tuxedo jacket and jeans, pulling a party popper between Tyrion, looking rather less attractive in the same sort of outfit, and Cersei, who was wearing a ridiculously expensive dress constructed, apparently from golden sequins. Lannister parties were always large affairs. Always strictly black tie. He remembered absently what a huge fuss Cersei had kicked up about buying that dress. Some designer brand, worth enough to feed a small third world nation for months. Tywin had ranted over the importance of understanding the worth of money, or something, and then Cersei had slammed doors and made insults she probably thought were clever, and Tywin still did not relent. Cersei could be a brat – damn, Jaime shuddered remembering her as a small child – but Tywin Lannister prided himself on never rewarding insolence. So Cersei had fake-apologized for the first time in her life, and then used her own credit card.

Tywin blew a gasket, but she had the damn dress. (Which she hadn't worn since then and probably never would wear again.) (According to Cersei, things lost their value when worn in public more than once.)

Anyway, the party had been a huge success. Over a hundred people came, all of whom were meant to be family or family friends, but Jaime only knew who about half of them actually were, although most of them invaded his personal space and told him how tall and handsome he was getting, and-or reminisced over his baby days. Fun. The image faded into several meaningless status updates that he could have laughed at the stupidness of Facebook for, and then into the Dragons yearly picture, taken around February time. He was in the middle once more, uniform on, and grinning, framed by Rhaegar, with his silver hair in his customary ponytail, and Brandon, who actually looked alive. Right. He'd just gotten with Catelyn then. They all knew how that turned out.

The year sped by in an inconsequential blur – he laughed at a September post of his that ranted about the stupid school switching him to Tully's science class - , until October came around. Jaime remembered last October. The images that came up were, mostly, of Rhaegar's Halloween party. What worried Jaime was that he didn't remember any of those pictures. They were blurry, some of them, and some of them had the most godawful quality he'd ever seen. Like his memories of that night. There was one of them, still partly sober, cheering on Robert regarding meatball pingpong, another less coherent picture depicting Gerold Hightower and a goat, doused in purple glitter, but only one picture from that night that struck any sort of chord.

It was meant to be of Ellaria Sand, red plastic cup balanced expertly on her head, pulling a stupid face and a double rock-and-roll sign with her hands. But in the background, Jaime caught sight of himself, hand in cast, talking to a rabbit-in-headlights eyed Brienne. Oh. He knew what that was all about, at least. Before his meltdown in Rhaegar's pool. The photo didn't show it, but if it were a wider shot, you'd see Renly B making out with that random dude. He suppressed the twinge of the memory.

When the thing was done with that year, Jaime did not do the same for the current year. Instead, he checked his notifications, a picture he hadn't remembered ever being taken catching his eye. No, he did remember now – it was just after Cersei and her lemmings had left, and Lyanna had insisted. It was a really very shitty selfie; they all barely fitted into it. Half of Catelyn's laughing face, almost entirely obscured by red hair, was cut off, along with half of Ned's, who was sort of crushed against her boobs by necessity. Lyanna's reaching arm blocked the top half of the practically-glued-together Oberyn and Ellaria out, Rhaegar's face was distorted sideways since it was, you know, in Lyanna's lap, and Jaime and Brienne themselves were so smushed into the frame, between Obaria and Rhaeanna that he was virtually on top of her, face leant back so as to get in. (The eight of them, a voice in his mind, reflected, with no regard for his actual sanity or actual thoughts, looked rather like four pairs.) (Like, when you could associate certain peoples' faces that went with other peoples' faces.) (It was like that, times four.) He left a quick comment, something about Westeros High's new dream team.

Jaime was close to quickly shutting his damn netbook and being over with it, but the five unread messages eventually won him over, and sighing, he clicked the message symbol. The profile pictures beside the messages? Five make-up obscured selfies. And he had only to glance at the first one to know that they all ready pretty much identically; 'Hey Jaime, you, me, prom?' 'Wanna go to prom?' 'We should totally meet for prom! You played so well against Dragonstone.' Etcetera, etcetera. All with an exorbitant amount of kisses and smiley faces. Ugh.

Any social situation, Jaime had his pick of the litter. It was all always entirely up to him to choose the hottest girl who threw herself at him – and that was a lot. But these were all complete idiots. There was still time, of course, for a respectable chick to come up. Thank the gods. A beep alerted him that Lya had replied to his comment. Avengers move over.

I call Thor, Jaime replied absently, glancing back over at the messages. He should probably wait.

Black Widow. Lyanna responded. Catelyn soon became involved in a depthy converse about Marvel with Lya, wondering who Ned would be, superhero wise. Poor Brandon. He supposed that Oberyn would made a rather awesome Iron Man. But then again, he remedied, entangled in the contagious and fucking stupid nostalgia of Facebook, he was meant to be Super Jock.

But should he respond to the girls? They'd have seen, of course, that he'd read the messages. Why did he care? He'd wait, see if anyone better put herself foreward, and if not, then hey, one of them would do. Or would they rather not, if they thought he was ignoring them now? Girls were stupid, vastly irritating, confusingly complex creatures. And just imagine that. Jaime fucking Lannister, attending his high school prom minus a date. (He'd put it out nobody there was good enough for him, naturally.) (But still.) (It wouldn't look good.)

It wouldn't hurt to have a fallback, he supposed. He'd never have to use them anyway. And before his mouth and mind caught up to his hand, he was dialling a number on the phone he didn't recall picking up. She answered on the fourth ring, sounding half confused, half exasperated, half intrigued. (Wait.) (That wasn't right.) (Thirds.) (Thirds.) "Hello?"

"Sup." He steadied himself. What he fuck was he doing? Well. He could hardly back out now. (Technically he could.) (But he wasn't admitting that to himself at any rate.) "Say, do you have a date to the prom yet?"

"Why are you asking?" She parried cautiously, guarded, wavering. He'd never have to go through with anything. Other, better girls than the ones on Facebook would show themselves. He'd have a wide selection to choose from.

"Just making conversation. The point of which is flow, my socially impaired friend. Watch as I demonstrate. Some girls on Facebook just asked if I wanted to go with them, and I decided to hold out for better ones."

"Do you have any idea how offensive that sounds?"

Jaime considered. "A bit. But flow, woman, flow. I then realized that these girls may or may not be offended by my keeping them hanging, as you seem to be offended by practically nothing." He swiftly spoke over her words of protest. "I'm calling, in short, to offer you a deal."

"That sounds shifty."

"Brienne Tarth - shut up. If, by some absurd chance, I find myself offending and dateless the night of the prom, what say we go together, as friends? An early fallback, if you will. Like those friends who agree to get married if neither are by forty." He thought that sounded like an alright comparison, although he had stolen it from an episode of Friends.

"Jaime…" She sounded hesitant. "Hyle's already asked me."

What? What? What? And she insisted he just liked her as a pity friend. Balls. Shit. Shitballs. Brienne Tarth was annoying, boring, ugly, insufferable, stupid and generally confusing, but to be honest, even she, he'd thought, had more self respect than to agree to a date with Hyle Cunt, rather than go to the prom dignified and alone, or just not go at all because frankly it was hardly her cup of tea anyway. But apparently not. "Oh, alright, well that's great. Great for you and for Hyle Hunt and –"

"I said no, Jaime." Brienne told him, the words coming in on one breath. "I said no."

"Oh, really?" Jaime grinned. (Because he could still read people to point perfection.) (Not because of anything else.) (At all.)

"Yeah." An awkward pause ensued. "He's a… Don't worry about it. I said no."

"Alright. You still going to go, though?" He prompted.

"I don't know. I'm – no. No, I'm not, it's not my idea of fun."

"But if I end up all humiliated and lonely, you'll help out your good pal Jaime, won't you?" He forced his voice into the self-assured confidence of Jaime fucking Lannister, because often, he'd found, it helped him get his way if he acted as though he already had.

He heard a sigh and a shifting down the line. She'd better not decline. That would be a whole fucking new low. Turned down by Brienne Tarth. Oh well. It's not like anyone would ever find out he asked her to be his fallback prom date anyway, ever. "Fine, Jaime. But it's not because I have any respect for you at all, it's because it's the right thing to do." She grew quieter as she realized what she was saying, mumbling some jibe about damsels in distress.

Jaime laughed out loud. "Right, good lady knight Brienne - an early fallback it is."

At least he had a safety net. (Not that he'd ever need it.)

A/N ~ Guys, I cannot overstate how sorry I am. Sorry sorry sorry sorry. For not updating sooner, and then for only posting this teeny little filler chapter that actually plays a key role in the less fluffy following chapters and, of course, the ultimately fluffy ending. Sorry sorry sorry. Life got in the way a bit; and then my ancient elderly laptop had a little spaz. Oops. Gaaah.