The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl

A/N ~ This chapter, I think you'll all be relieved to know, continues immediately onward from the last one. I am a cruel human being. I know. No need to remind me. Y'all love me really. If there's time in the library, of course, this chapter shall have been uploaded perhaps an hour after the last one because I want to put up everything I've got atm. If so, count yourselves lucky. If not, I'm sorry but sorry doesn't really help.

Disclaimer ~ George, are you going around telling people I don't own a Song of Ice and Fire again? Because you're right, I don't.

Coming Up… Jaime's life falls apart. Find out in The Adventures of Super Jock and Awkward Girl!

26.Boys Are Stupid; Girls are Stupid; Popularity is Stupid

Jaime turned, making a conscious effort to close his fucking mouth so he didn't look like such a fucking goldfish, well aware that the eyes of half the fucking year were on him, only really caring about the eyes of one girl. "I…" He swallowed the sound of whatever he next word was going to be. What was he doing? He didn't love Brienne Tarth, of course he didn't. But he didn't feel nothing either. Not by a long shot. And he knew, damn it, he knew – whatever look he was struggling to wipe off of his face was blaring that loud and clear to everybody.

He looked to her in a silent appeal for help, help of some kind, something she could, shock registering so clearly on her face, wide blue eyes wounded by… something. She gave the tiniest shake of her head. "I have to… I – I," Brienne's mouth made the shapes of the stuttering words though they did not come, and she gave up, and turned her head and ran down the corridor, out of the school for good. Just a minute ago they were exchanging stupid faces, a day ago stupid words.

"Guys, you don't believe that, do you? She was pissed, she'd say anything. I don't love Brienne Tarth. I don't even like Brienne Tarth. In any way. How could I? Why would I? I don't –" His weak, faltering false false fucking smile was interrupted by Lyanna Stark, of all people, last he'd ever expected to come foreward. But she did, shoving quietly through the crowd. And the worst thing about it was that registering so broadly across her features was not anger, or shock or resentment but disappointment.

Right. Right! Because when Cersei had ruined his life because he had been such a selfish ignorant prick and ruined hers, the Stark bitch had probably wanted him to say yes, yes, to say he didn't give a damn and run to Brienne and for them to have some amazing kiss, and the whole crowd would have cheered, but no. No. If she thought that for even a minute, she was the stupidest person alive – that wasn't how it worked! Brienne, for a start, would not have kissed him back, he was sure. The crowd, he knew, would not have cheered but stared in awkward horror. Because this was not some shit comic book, and it might have sounded stupid because it was, but this was the fucked up world of high school, this was the stuff that mattered. Right.

"You know what, Jaime?" Lyanna told him, grey eyes hard. "You are a dick. And not because, even, of what you did to your sister, that was an accident, I get that. But because of that, just then. Because you're lying to everyone, you're lying to yourself. I thought you were changing, I thought you were actually becoming a respectable human being. But that's just one side, isn't it? Tell me, Jaime, which side was the happier side? Just pick a personality so we can all go back to hating you or living in scared awe of you. You are still a dick. And you're a coward, because you're too fucking scared of your own thoughts. So you know what, Jaime?" She shook her head. "Grow a pair." Lya spat, finished. She paused, sighed and glared at him, and then grabbed the sleeve of Rhaegar's jacket and yanked him, all disappointment too, down the hallway after her. "Come on, Rhaegar. We're leaving."

Before he let himself be pulled away from her, Rhaegar shot one last, long, disappointment rife in his mournful eyes, and he shook his head, like Lyanna, like Brienne, like every condescending adult he'd ever met, fuck. "I can't believe you, man," It was quiet, but it hit as hard as anyone else's.

Slowly, as the students who were never close to him, sluggishly disbanded and drifted to the school exits, whispering and muttering, he tried to go after some of his supposed friends, supposed teammates. (Well.) (Not anymore.) (Westeros High was over, except for prom, which he'd not be going to now.) (No more teammates.) But by that point, he had a scrap enough of dignity left so as not to even attempt to protest, or dissuade them from what they already thought of him.

Just to escape the staring – and not the staring he was used to. Instead of, ooh, it's Jaime Lannister, the hot quarterback guy who makes jokes in class and plays so well for the Dragons, they were stares of oh, it's Jaime Lannister, that dick who wrecked his twin sister's college scholarship and's apparently got some retarded thing going with that ugly bitch from Med Lit – he found himself storming into the guys bathrooms, shouldering open the door and letting it slam. Alone at last, he let out a roar of frustration, taking his bag strap in his trembling hands and smashing it against the wall hard enough to vent his shock horror.

What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. Boys were stupid, Jaime thought, whacking the bag against the wall, girls were stupid, slam, popularity was stupid, something cracked inside his bag, Brienne Tarth was stupid.

He collapsed then, on the disgusting toilet floor and sat there, occasionally growling until he was sure everyone else had disbanded. That was when he got up, kicked the wall – which fucking hurt, shit – and then stormed out into the hallway, out into the school parking lot. He located Chataya's car and slammed the door as he slid into the backseat. According to the chauffeur, Cersei was 'spending the night at Taena's'. Well fucking good for her, good for her.

Jaime vowed, when he slammed his bedroom door shut in a blur and punched the pillow with all his might, that he would never leave it again. Fuck being seen in public ever again, fuck college, fuck life. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck life. He fell onto his bed, and squeezed his eyes tight enough shut that it hurt, groaning in frustration, punching pillows, and wanting more than anything just to sleep, forever.

(As if he could.) (As if fate would be so kind.) (But at some point, all of the energy drained from him.) (He lost the will to shout or swear, or hit anything.) (He just lay there wallowing in the misfortunes all caused by his own idiocy.) (He didn't remember falling asleep.) But he did wake up, inevitably, he woke up past midday the following day.

Then he lay on his back and stared at the ceiling and tried not to think. Which inevitably failed. At around two-ish his brother came walking into his room as if he owned the place.

"I don't see why you're feeling so sorry for yourself," Tyrion told him cheerily, taking a seat in Jaime's gaming chair across the room and swivelling it so he was facing his brother.

Jaime didn't bother to sit up. Tyrion didn't bother himself with the common courtesy of knocking, or introducing himself or anything like that, gods forbid. Jaime didn't even bother to move. After his thoughts took him on a detour from conversation, he thought he wasn't going to reply, before he did. "You haven't heard." His own voice surprised him, really – apparently, sleep deprivation made you sound like a suicidal Kermit the Frog.

"Oh, of course I've heard, the whole school and all the rest have heard, even if we weren't there." Tyrion flashed him a smile and to his credit it seemed to be as genuinely fake as it looked.

"Wow," Jaime half-said, half-thought. "Great. Comforting."

"What was that?" His brother smiled and it seemed more true. "Look, I just said, I don't see what you're so stroppy about. You have learnt who your real friends are. You have a great family. An oncoming course at the best university around. And here you are, moping because," Tyrion searched theatrically for an answer. "Because a few jerks whose names you won't remember at awkward run-ins at the shop found out you overslept one morning, and you have human emotions toward an intelligent girl who, despite everything else, has her heart in the right place."

Jaime felt a sound caught between a rock and an angry place tear from his throat and he rolled hard over on his bed, rolled away from Tyrion and away from the truth that Tyrion was throwing at him, like knives. He didn't want to admit that. He couldn't admit that. He couldn't face the fact that in a few years he'd be laughing at how shallow and spoilt he was, that this mattered to him, because when he did that he had to realize – whatever, everything else. And maybe because this wasn't a few years time. This was something he'd blown way out of proportion, that he was going through and struggling with and being torn apart by now. And that made it seem so much worse. And he had a right, a fucking right, to feel shit about was going on right now, right now.

From where he gazed into the wall beside his bed, Jaime heard Tyrion sigh, some shuffling as his brother rearranged himself in the chair. "Look, Jaime, what are you so upset about that you've not even devoured half the fridge in this hour? Is it guilt, over Cersei and her damned notebook?" Word really did travel fast in this damn house. "Because, Jaime," He could almost hear the grin in his brother's voice, working alongside the reassurance. "Cersei'll get into Kings Landing either way. You know that. She'll get the scholarship anyway – recent events drove me to investigation and snooping, and I've found she's actually a damn good… law-person. Or she'll get in because I know our family. Dad is willing to pay. And it's not like that would put him in any financial trouble. Even with both of you. And me, maybe, in a few years."

Jaime's shoulders half-shrugged of their own accord. Yeah, he knew all of that. Yeah, he still felt a guilt that was perhaps so crippling because he had never really experienced guilt before. Dirty shame, yeah, in a good way. Amused recollection, yeah, all the time. But guilt, guilt was new to him. (Relatively.) (Hell, he could think of somebody who he really didn't want to be thinking of who guilt tripped him all the time without even knowing it.) (Ever since he was forced to transfer into Tully's damn science class, ever since the new random seating plan, frankly, he'd been in a perpetual state of guilt.) (He just didn't recognize that, since he'd never felt it before.) Or perhaps it was because Cersei was not just family, but his closest family, and from day one he'd been thrust toward the teachings of a man who believed in legacy and family over everything else. His twin. Since Joanna died, since everything; they'd been inseparable since birth – and yes, the teenage years had driven a wedge in their relationship, but he'd just inadvertently assumed that when high school and hormones and hair products had cooled off a bit, they'd go back to being the same. They had to. This whole thing was making him realize that, really.

Yeah, Cersei would go to Kings Landing College regardless. But if it wasn't by scholarship, Jaime knew he'd probably always hold the blame for that. His sister had never been so great with forgiving.

"Or is it because you're actually such a dick and a loser that you're ashamed for liking a girl?" Tyrion's voice was still kind and brotherly, but he'd heard those words in his head a hundred times in a hundred voices. "Because, Jaime, I know that's you but that's childish and horrible. Brienne Tarth –" Jaime felt himself springing up at her name. He knew he probably looked like shit, like a zombie from The Walking Dead, because he felt like it too. Bleary eyes from sleep he was reluctant to brush away, throat dry and crammed with lumpy words he couldn't bring himself to verbalize, in yesterday's hasty, crumpled clothes. Tyrion went on anyway. "I know Brienne Tarth. And I know you. And I think," he smiled half-heartedly. "I think we all know that there was not nothing there, Lyanna Stark's right. But if you keep acting like a high-school dickhead, then that's how people are going to treat you. And you know, yes, a percentage of those you once called your friends are ripping on you behind your back because you're rumoured to have feelings for somebody they don't class as worthy, but the other, bigger percentage is judging you because you're too weak to stand up for yourself. They're wondering what they would do were they in the same situation."

Jaime bit down on his tongue until he gathered the strength to batter away his brothers words. "Is this supposed to be helping?"

He saw Tyrion's misshapen face tense in anger at that, frustration and anger. "No, Jaime, it's supposed to be making you realize how tiny and irrelevant you're problems are! That you are not the only one with problems!" His voice rose as it almost rarely did. "How do you think, I feel? I am sitting here day after day watching you compete with your own over-inflated ego while our father uses every manipulation in his box to try and split apart me and the first girl I've ever felt something for!" Tyrion's lips pressed together and his eyes hardened and he shook his head. Like Rhaegar. "I wouldn't expect you to get it." He finished, articulate. And then he jumped down off Jaime's chair and walked out, closing the door with a suffocated slam as he went.

It left Jaime with an even wider gaping hole of guilt in his chest, another sibling to resent for all the inadvertent wrong he'd done to them. Added to the Brienne pile. His family, his most important. One more, with his lungs filled full of horrible, generic bad, Jaime fell back onto his bed, and squeezed his eyes shut.

But really.

Fuck life.

A/N ~ So y'all can thank me for the depressing and over-done filler whilst you wait for the chapter whose end actually contains some plot relevance.

In other news, I recently hit a hundred reviews. 100 reviews. For the first time ever. Thank you all, for that. It means so much to me because frankly, I never even saw this little story going anywhere. I love you all. It'll be you guys who can judge new fake-fans when I'm a published bestseller.

Plus, lucky you guys, because I'm such a bitch and updating during the summer, you get a double whammy of chapters today. Go ahead. Press next chapter. trust me. You will not be disappointed.