#ch: steffon baratheon | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

boschlingtumbles · 5 years ago

Text

White Wedding Ch 25

A long time ago, there was a crumbling mansion on a hill. Once all the land around for as far as the eye could see had been a part of the grounds, but it had been sold off bit by bit to fund the family in the mansion’s lavish lifestyle.

Well the grounds were gone. There was nothing left but a mansion that his father couldn’t afford to maintain, so everything was broken and the roof was leaking and when the utilities company shut the heat off because father hadn’t paid the bill, all of the children had to sleep in the same bed to keep from freezing.

It was on one such night that Tywin got up, awoken by Kevan turning in his sleep and elbowing him the gut. He got out of bed and put on his hand me down boots from father, still much too large, and two jackets over his pajamas. He looked back at his siblings, the four of them subconsciously rolling closer together to fill the space in the bed that he’d left.

He jammed his hands in his pockets and walked out, nearly tripping on a wine bottle that his father had left on the stairs. The man himself had passed out in an armchair by a now dead fire, pants around his ankles, and there was a woman, a prostitute likely, going through their family’s china cabinet.

“There’s nothing left,” Tywin said acidly, and she had the grace to look embarrassed.

“He hasn’t paid me, hun, I’m just trying to make rent,” she said and opened the next drawer.

“Next time consider asking for the money up front,” Tywin bit. “Now leave before I call the police.”

He couldn’t call the police of course, not without implicating his father, not without some awful blurb in the Tattler like “Last of the Lannisters” illustrating his family’s fall from grace. And then the world would know how far they had truly fallen. And then would come the social workers, and they would split them up, and Tywin would never let that happen.

The prostitute left all the same, with a sad backward look that verged too close to pity.

Tywin ignored it. Once he was sure she was gone, he locked the door. He threw a blanket over his father and then began climbing the steps to the attic. A falling tree had taken a chunk from the roof and the wall here, and only starlight met him as he opened the door, starlight and blast of icy winter air.

He sat there, looking out over all the places that had once belonged to his house, blowing on his fingers to keep them warm, and as the sun began to rise, he vowed that someday they would belong to his house again. He would rebuild everything, brick by brick, just how it had been.

In that moment, things had seemed... not easy exactly, but clear. He knew what had to be done and he never shirked from his duty.

He had met Steffon Baratheon at King’s Landing Prep. It had been all male then, and they’d had uniforms. Tywin had always been thankful for that fact, didn’t know how he would have concealed his impoverishment otherwise. He had a reputation as being a bit of a swot, all the better to explain why he didn’t fraternize with the others. Not because he was working two part-time jobs, not because he didn’t have the clothes or the car to fit in, but because he spent all his time studying and thought he was better than them. Well, they were half right. He did think he was better than them.

Steffon was his year and failing math. His father had asked if another student would be able to tutor him for some money and the teacher had recommended Tywin. They met in a classroom after school let out.

Steffon was big for their year and had pitch black hair and dark blue eyes, once currently swollen shut from some fight. He had a loud voice and a louder laugh, and next to him Tywin felt pale and skinny and mouselike. Tywin hated him immediately.

“How’s this work?” Steffon had asked, kicking his feet up on a desk and leaning back in his chair. Tywin itched to knock the chair out from under them.

“How this works is that I don’t have the time nor the inclination to spend my afternoons sitting in a classroom with you. I have the key to Mr. Swyft’s office. I’ll get the answer key before our next test and give it to you. I trust you can handle some memorization?”

“No shit,” Steffon raised an eyebrow, looking at him appraisingly.

“Well can you?” Tywin asked testily.

“Yeah. But I want half.”

“Half?”

“Of what you’re making to tutor me,” Steffon smirked. “To keep my mouth shut to my father.”

Tywin ground his teeth. Of course this money had been a windfall, but it didn’t mean he hadn’t earmarked it for new shoes for Genna (all the boys got each other’s hand me downs) and a warmer jacket for himself. But really, what choice did he have?

“Deal,” he said.

“Now c’mon. If you’re not going to teach me maths, let’s go smoke at the quarry.”

Tywin was taken aback. He was not the kind of boy who hid out in the quarry drinking and smoking and fighting and gods knew what else.

“Whassa matter, doesn’t cost anything to have fun,” Steffon rolled his eyes.

“I have money,” Tywin said stiffly.

“Nah, you don’t or you wouldn’t have said yes to begin with. You patch your uniform instead of buying a new one and I saw you cutting coupons out of a newspaper once.”

“If you think you can spread such slander about me, you are mistaken,” Tywin glared.

“If you think I care about you and your problems, you are mistaken,” Steffon yawned. “Now come on. Don’t pretend like you have anywhere better to be.”

So that’s how it happened. On days when Tywin was supposed to be tutoring Steffon, they would drive out to the quarry and Steffon would buy beers and cigarettes off the older kids and they would lie on their backs on the edge of the world and talk. And Steffon would pretend he believed that Tywin was going to pay him back for that six pack someday and Tywin would pretend he believed Steffon had busted his nose playing street hockey and they spun each other tales of how the world would be.

Daydreams for the most part, looking back, that’s all it was. But it was comforting to have someone to confide in who didn’t rely on him for their next meal, someone with whom he could be his age and not some kind of protector-father figure.

“Some day,” Tywin had said lazily, watching the sun set on King’s Landing far below them, “some day I am going to own this town.”

He exhaled a stream of smoke, held the cigarette lazily between two fingers as Steffon did, like he didn’t give a damn whether it fell. Like there were more where that came from.

“This town?! Pfff,” Steffon threw a rock hard and there was a long beat before it splashed far below. He had a fading bruise across his jaw, mottling his skin in the dying light. “I’m going to travel the world. See everything, do everything, leave this shithole in the rear view mirror.”

“You can’t leave, you have to take over Stormsend,” Tywin pointed out drily.

“Fuck that,” Steffon sang and threw another rock.

The year after that, they’d coordinated their schedules to have the same classes. The year after that one, they’d gotten to the cafeteria to see a stranger sitting at THEIR table. He’d been almost girlish looking. Long white hair pulled back into a low ponytail. It was against regulation, Tywin was shocked the teachers hadn’t made him cut it. And then he looked up, directly at them, and his eyes were honest to gods purple.

“That’s Aerys Targaryen,” Tywin had grabbed Steffon’s arm. “They say his entire family is crazy.”

“Yeah?” Steffon eyed him consideringly. Then he’d grinned. “He looks fun.”

The year after that, they’d run the school.

And yeah, it had been Steffon who had elbowed Tywin in the side at a fraternity mixer in college, and nodded at a girl across the room with curling blonde hair and the greenest eyes that Tywin had ever seen in his life.

“She’s cute,” Steffon smirked. “Why don’t you talk to her?”

Steffon who had hunted down Miss Joanna Marbrand’s number when Tywin had been so starstruck that he hadn’t even thought to ask before she left.

Steffon who had been best man at their wedding.

Steffon who had shoved him in the chest so hard that he’d fallen, who’d made no move to help him back up.

“He’s sick, Tywin. Really sick. If you support his re-election campaign, you’re enabling him. He’s going to get worse, not better. He’s a paranoid delusional psycho, and the twisted part is that you’re worse. Because you know exactly what you’re doing.”

And Tywin had seen the people around them staring, could imagine the headlines, the implications for Mayor Aerys Targaryen if it got out, and his mental calculator spit out the only response.

“I take it we shouldn’t expect your vote,” he’d snarked.

And he’d seen the shuttered expression when he’d chosen Aerys over Steffon, knew there wasn’t any coming back from that. All the same, he’d thought some things were sacred. He’d thought Joanna was sacred. Right up until he saw the perfectly tasteful perfectly bland flower arrangement from the Baratheons at her funeral. They weren’t coming.

Sometimes he wondered where things went wrong. Things had started so simple. That night watching the sunrise over the property Tytos Lannister had let slide into ruin. Or that summer evening with Steffon, all of King’s Landing stretches out before him. Or that moment he had knelt on one knee in front of Joanna, and asked her to be his and only his until the end of time.

Was it when he had gone to Aerys’ office to discuss Denys Darklyn’s latest corruption accusations? And Aerys had looked at him oddly and said it was already taken care of. They’d found the body two days later.

Was it when Steffon had demanded he choose between him or Aerys? And Tywin hadn’t come this far, hadn’t worked this hard, to sacrifice his career on the altar of butterflies and friendship.

Was it sitting in the doctor’s office with Joanna, squeezing her left hand in his own as she’d rested her right hand on her swelling bump? If we start treatments now, the doctors say there’s still a chance, he’d tried. And she looked at him, her normally luminous eyes now wild and fierce. I will not hurt this baby, she’d said.

Was it looking at that fucking flower arrangement in the funeral parlor? Jaime’s hand in his left hand and Cersei’s hand in his right, little Tyrion asleep across some chairs. He’d felt like he was drowning, sinking at last under the weight of all these impossible expectations. He’d looked at those polite impersonal flowers and they’d held a truth he’d been trying to suppress since his wife had died. In the whole world, his children had only one person they could turn to. And he was not up to the task.

“Money won’t make you happy Ty!” Genna had screamed at him when he’d missed her wedding to oversee a hostile takeover.

He’d wanted to retort that having it made him a hell of a lot happier than not having it. That who was she to lecture him? Only Kevan had really been old enough to remember the bad times, only Kevan could understand how far they’d come. Kevan who’d been half a world away opening their Essosi branch. And Gerion and Tygett, forget it. They had been babies.

But the irony was in the end perhaps Genna was right. He’d found himself without friends, without family, without his wife. And he could give his children everything, literally everything, but happiness.

The question of whether or not his children were happy had not bothered him initially. There were so many other things—Jaime’s dyslexia, Tyrion’s myriad health problems, Cersei’s bewilderingly violent tantrums—to just endure. And add to that the struggle of waking up each day on his side of the bed, knowing he would never again roll over and see Joanna smiling back at him. Every morning was another bleak foray into a world that no longer interested him. A world where nothing made sense any longer except his business. He retreated into Lannister Corp, admittedly, but it had become the only thing he understood.

The turning point had come one November when two things had happened in short order. The first had been a long time coming. He and Aerys had finally, irreparably fallen out. The second was that Jaime had suffered a horrendous football injury, ending his career and leaving his right hand shattered.

It occurred to Tywin, as he was researching neurosurgeons on his tablet, with a doctor on his cell, a surgeon on his work phone and the Chief of Staff at Crone’s Mercy videoconference in on his desktop, that his children were terrifyingly vulnerable. That he could not simply sever his relationship with Aerys and retreat. That Aerys had to be permanently destroyed, or his family would never be safe.

The ensuing events were well known to the world of course. And in the next six years, Tywin thought it imminently reasonable that he had been primarily concerned with Jaime. The boy had been taken hostage, witnessed horrifying acts of violence and then forced to kill somebody in self-defense.

He’d gotten him the best therapy money could buy, backed off on pushing academics, encouraged him to pursue his relationship and held his tongue as his son went to an average university and made average marks and now barely worked at the company with no clear idea of what he wanted to do in life. And all that could be endured, if only Tywin knew he were happy. That by his continued association with Aerys, he hadn’t damaged his son beyond repair.

So when the tracker that he’d had installed on the car he’d gifted to Cersei for her birthday showed an unscheduled trip to the doctor, he’d barely paid it any mind.

It wasn’t until the doctor called, as he had been paid handsomely to do, and gave Tywin the news.

His only daughter, pregnant.

Embarrassingly, the first emotion he felt was panic. Of his children, he had always felt least at ease with Cersei. A girl needed a mother. But it was more than that. She looked so much like Joanna and was so unlike her... well it had always left Tywin at a loss. Joanna had been warm and empathetic, quick to laugh and quick to forgive. Cersei was prickly and complicated and if given advice had always been prone to run out and do the opposite. Fortunately, Tywin wasn’t in the habit of giving advice. He was in the habit of giving orders.

The burden of being a single parent had been one he had struggled with immensely. Frankly, he did not believe he had acquitted himself particularly well. No daughter of his would ever know that loneliness. Over his dead body. Or, far more likely, Robert Baratheon’s.

Had Tywin believed in karmic justice, he would have found some humor in this situation. A neatly executed irony in the idea that Steffon had managed to have the last laugh. But he did not. There was only the dull aching guilt that he had once more failed to be the father his children had needed, and a stoic determination to minimize damage at all costs.

And now he had been dispatched to pour drinks for Steffon Baratheon in the library. Tywin exhaled a shakier breath than he’d realized, sitting down heavily on the bed. He looked at his and Joanna’s wedding photo, pretended she were here. Telling him he was a self-centered idiot, promising him that their children were stronger and more resilient than he gave them credit for. His frazzled nerves even managed to conjure a thump of approval when he brought up burying the hatchet, and Tywin considered whether it might not be time for him to find his own mental health specialist. Joanna as a ghost was one thing, but a poltergeist might be a step too far.

Snorting at the idea, he managed to sustain himself through the walk back to the library, through pouring out two glasses of scotch. And then the door pushed open and Steffon Baratheon walked in.

Steffon still looked youthful (and why wouldn’t he, what does he know about the stresses of a career or raising a family, a bitter though brushing the back of his mind), still looked like the charming flippant friend who’d had all the confidence Tywin lacked, who’d looked down at the city below them and sang ‘fuuuuuck that’.

Steffon was staring back at him, uncertainly. Tywin wondered what he saw, knew he had aged and hardened where time had left Steffon untouched. For the briefest instant, he wondered if Steffon was going to bring up Aerys, was going to point out that he had been right and Tywin had been wrong, and even had it been the opposite, by what right had Tywin cut him put?

But instead, Steffon only smiled, affecting an air of surprise.

“Ty! It’s been too long!”

Tywin stuck out his hand with the glass of scotch.

“Far too long.”

And then Steffon’s smile broadened into the grin be remembered, and he took a long draught from the glass.

“My boy, your girl... who’d have thunk it?”

Tywin shook his head, a smile at the ridiculousness of life.

“To a Lannister-Baratheon dynasty! Long may they reign!” Steffon toasted exuberantly, the scotch sloshing in his glass, and Tywin laughed at his antics. And so, some fifteen years later, they came full circle, two overgrown boys with delusions of grandeur. Only one thing was missing.

“Do you want a cigar?” He asked abruptly. “They’re from Ahvana, I was saving them for a special occasion.”

“Ahvana?! I could always count on you to have the best of everything.”

Tywin opened the humidifier and they strolled out to the balcony to observe the festivities below.

Steffon lit his cigar, and took a few luxuriant puffs.

“Gods it’s good to be us,” he smirked, sitting in a chair and leaning back.

Tywin sat down as well, picking out the people below as the fireworks sporadically illuminated them. There was Tyrion, snickering with Renly Baratheon. There was Jaime, laughing hand in hand with his girlfriend Brienne Tarth. Where was Cersei?

Another cursory inspection revealed Robert was nowhere in sight either.

“Where did our children run off to anyway,” Tywin leaned forward.

Steffon snorted. Tywin glanced over his shoulder.

“Please, you know where they ran off to,” Steffon said drily.

Tywin, realizing what he was implying, reddened.

“Certainly not!”

Did Steffon know Cersei was pregnant? Somehow Tywin doubted it.

“Please, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Steffon stretched. “I could barely keep my hands off Cassana at my engagement party.”

Tywin remembered that engagement party. He remembered Steffon had disappeared for an hour in a cloakroom with a cocktail waitress. Not to be confused with the wedding, when it had been twenty minutes with a florist in a confessional.

There was another round of applause from the people on the lawn, as Cersei and Robert appeared on the staircase under a shower of Golden sparks, arms around each other. Tywin ground his teeth as below them, Robert discretely pulled Cersei’s dress down in the back.

“What did I tell you?” Steffon laughed, taking another puff of his cigar. “He’s the spitting image of me. Never had a thought I didn’t do first. And Cersei is Joanna come again.”

As the fireworks crescendoed, Tywin remembered how Steffon had kept three girlfriends at three different schools from age sixteen to eighteen.

As Tywin clapped his friend on the back, he remembered how Steffon met Cassana at an opera he’d been invited to by another woman.

As Tywin mechanically shook hands with the gradually dispersing guests, he remembered Steffon in college with a different date to every event, Steffon laughing about making the seven sororities, Steffon hanging a sock from their dorm room every night until Tywin had threatened to hide his condoms.

As Tywin dealt with a flustered Tygett, pinching his son Tyrek’s ear with one hand, and carrying a bundle of a woman’s shawl and men’s trousers and what looked like two different cell phones and a ring, he remembered back to that night when he’d met Joanna.

“She’s cute, why don’t you talk to her?” Steffon had whispered.

“—and I told that nanny he has to be WATCHED, how the hells did he get a pair of trousers? How am I even supposed to identify the owner?! ‘Paging the man with no pants’?! Not to mention—“

“I couldn’t, I don’t know her,” Tywin had stammered.

“—the cost of this ring?! Tell me there’s some kind of lost and found that I can just dump these in, it’s too humiliating for words—“

“If you don’t,” Steffon had leaned in, leering. “I will.”

“Darlessa says he’ll grow out of it, that it’s a phase. Some phase, it’s been two years, I keep telling her—“

Tywin swallowed. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Joanna come again. Gods. What had he done?!

0 notes

boschlingtumbles · 5 years ago

Text

White Wedding Ch 24

Cersei was not going to scream. First that... horrid woman had landed her horrid helicopter on the grass, ruining Cersei’s entrance (you only get one shot to make a first impression unless you roofie somebody, and how was she going to drug the entire party?!) and then she had the gall, the unbelievable gall to wear red! Red was the Lannister color! CERSEI WAS WEARING RED!

There would be vengeance. Oh there would be vengeance.

“Cersei, darling!” Cassana Baratheon called, sweeping her into the lightest breeze of an embrace as she air kissed her cheeks. “Don’t you look just like Joanna! A little plumper, but really the spitting image!”

Plumper?! PLUMPER?!

“I love your dress,” Cersei gave her a mega-watt smile. “It’s so refreshing to see women of a certain age embracing today’s fashion.”

Cassana laughed, and hooked her arm into Cersei’s.

“Let’s get a glass of wine my dear. Something better than this dreadful vintage they’re passing around.”

Cersei inwardly seethed. Of course the vintage was rather dreadful, she’d told that tart Tysha Crofter she didn’t want anything younger than her, but STILL!

“Assuming you’re still drinking,” Cassana Baratheon arched an eyebrow and their audience tittered.

“Still drinking,” Cersei assured her, and mentally apologized to the biscuit. “Although in my experience, it’s rather hard to keep up with the Baratheons on that score.”

“Robert does love his vices,” Cassana replied, giving her arm a little squeeze just to be clear which vices she was referring to.

They had gotten to the bar. As Cassana hailed the bartender, Varys hurried over, beads of sweat dotting his bald head.

“Moonboy has backed out,” he hissed in an undertone.

“What?!” Cersei reeled.

“He said his agent got him a gig last minute at the National Theater doing stand up! He’ll be the first stand up comedian in history to perform at the National Theater!”

“Last minute? They book their performers years in advance! And it’s all wrong... they do ballet and musicals and.. what am I missing?!”

“What you’re missing,” Cassana handed Cersei a glass of Merlot. “Is that I’m on the board of the National Theater. Drink up sweetie, you look so pale. I didn’t want to say this in front of everybody, but I’m not sure red is your color. I think you would have been better off in a nice forest green.”

Cersei drained her glass in one go.

“Why I’m rather surprised that Robert can keep up with YOU!” Cassana smiled.

Cersei wiped a droplet of wine from her lip and glared.

How was she supposed to make front page of the tabloids if she didn’t have a blow out fight? She knew all the classier outlets would carry her party anyway, but for the Daily Raven and Yes! she needed some whiff of scandal that the other papers and magazines would be too refined to mention.

First things first. Steffon and Tywin was a disaster in the making. She went to the treehouse, which was always where Robert and Stannis had retreated when they were grubby little boys who couldn’t handle a girl beating them at laser tag. Saying it was unfair that she had swapped out her and Jaime’s guns for pellet guns. Please.

Sure enough there they were, along with Renly (unsurprising) and Melisandre (a bit surprising). Maybe Melisandre hadn’t been lying when she said how much she enjoyed helping with the wedding? That one was hard to read. Probably she was just sad that her relationship with Stannis wasn’t as advanced as Cersei’s with Robert’s. Yes that must be it. She was hoping Stannis would propose soon, and had a touch of wistful envy when surrounded by the majesty of Cersei’s wedding. Cersei benevolently decided to give Stannis a kick in the pants by tossing her bouquet to Melisandre. If nothing else, it would spark a conversation.

That problem dispatched, Cersei hurried back to the lawn. Marillion was supposed to serenade Cersei on the steps, just a teaser of his concert before the fireworks (gods she still needed to do something about that helicopter). She artfully arranged herself next to the flowers, waiting for the spotlights that would train on her and the singer at his piano, composing her features into demure delight.

On cue, the spotlights flickered on. Well, not exactly. One spotlight flickered on.

Cassana Baratheon, dramatically illuminated as she sat at the piano.

There was a ripple of applause through the audience and she smiled.

“As some of you know,” her voice, technologically amplified, echoed mellifluously across the grounds. How the fuck had she gotten mic’ed?! Cersei, alone and abandoned on the steps, clenched her fists.

“As some of you know, I am a classically trained pianist and opera singer. It was actually at my debut as the lead singer in Florian and Jonquil that I met Steffon and he swept me off my feet. The rest, as they say, is history.”

There was again a murmur of appreciation from the assembled guests. Cersei’s expression of demure delight slipped into a scowl. Had she known that? It certainly explained a great deal about Renly. And she supposed that on the few occasions that Robert had broken into drunken karaoke with the car radio, she remembered thinking that he had a remarkably good voice. And now that she was really thinking about it, all of the Baratheons, even Stannis, were quite good dancers. Still, lead singer, big whoop.

“In honor of my son’s engagement and his beautiful bride,” Was that a hint of sarcasm? SHE WASN’T PLUMP! “I’d like to dedicate this song to them.”

Cassana sat down to the piano and began a beautiful haunting melody.

“High in the halls of the kings who are gone...”

Cersei, utterly forgotten, decided to refill her glass of wine. Even if she had no intention of drinking it, it would subtly reinforce the idea that she had been drinking, ergo was not pregnant.

At the bar, she googled Cassana Baratheon. Just a bunch of the usual philanthropy garbage. Breaking ground on an orphanage? Really? So nineteenth century. She tried to remember Cassana’s maiden name. Estermont, wasn’t it?

Cassana Estermont had been the youngest prima donna in Westerosi history. Her debut, in The Wildling, had broken attendance records for the King’s Landing opera house, rave reviews, world tours, the usual nonsense. Cersei ground her teeth and shoved her phone back in her pocket.

Trying to put as much distance between herself and that... witch as possible, Cersei began to push through the crowd. She was only stopped briefly by Brienne (poor dear looking quite out of her element) and then she was alone, staring that thrice-damned helicopter.

“I thought she sounded rather flat, didn’t you?” Renly sniffed, coming to join her.

“We have to make allowances for singers who are past their prime,” Cersei said haughtily. Renly gave an uncharitable snort.

“I’ve handled Tywin. I suspect Robert’s coming over now to tell you dad has been dealt with.”

“Well it’s a start. Meet me back here in half an hour, I’ll corral Tyrion and we’ll discuss the next phase of the plan.”

“All these potential agents, and of course Mother steals the spotlight! LITERALLY! I saw her having the staff move the equipment!”

Renly stomped off, only to be replaced by Petyr, swallowing nervously.

“Should I even ask what happened to Marillion?” Cersei said dully.

“Gig at King’s Landing Observatory.”

“And Cassana Baratheon is on the board?”

“Chairwoman.”

Cersei nodded absently. Robert had finally arrived and wrapped her into a hug from behind. Petyr took the opportunity to run, the little weasel. Naturally Robert had one thing on the brain.

“Relax? RELAX?!” Cersei hissed. “Robert, Petyr just told me that your mother poached Marillion to keep him from upstaging HER at MY party! She’s already cancelled Moonboy, and if we don’t get press today, it’s over! This is our last best chance to get Vogue! And Cassana Baratheon is RUINING EVERYTHING!!!”

She paused for a breath. Robert only gave her a pleasantly puzzled smile which meant he’d heard one word in ten. Cersei sighed and pecked him on the cheek. It was a good thing he was pretty.

Having dispatched him to find a way to move that gods damned chopper, Cersei started to leave only to bump into her brother. The brother not in love with a whore.

She assured Jaime she would take care of THAT problem, as she half dragged him into the house. She had very little time here to give Jaime their mother’s ring, but she also could hardly pass up an opportunity like this one. Of course Jaime had to go and get all maudlin on her. It was just the cut of the ring would really look much nicer on Brienne than it would on Cersei. And Cersei had wanted to design her own ring anyway. And yes she knew in every bone of her body that Joanna Lannister would have ADORED Brienne. She didn’t see why Jaime had to make such a big deal of everything and drag Robert into it.

The moment he left, she hurried back toward the wine cellar, positive that would be where the brother who WAS in love with a whore was lurking. Sure enough, she caught him mooning over a text from that sommelier slut.

“Tyrion, we have to stop father from killing Steffon Baratheon. Can you help?”

The little monster immediately closed his phone and got up to follow her, and Cersei felt a surge of affection for him. A surge of affection that was strongly tied to an all-consuming rage for anyone who might toy with his heart.

“We’re going to meet with Renly and I’ll explain the plain,” she said curtly.

“How’s everything else going?”

“A complete disaster. It’s just too vexing for words! I can’t believe none of the staff here can fly a helicopter! I would have thought that at least Westerling...” Cersei pursed her lips. Westerling had been distraught not to be able to assist, but she really had to put her foot down when he’d proposed dedicating the next two hours to learning how to fly through YouTube videos. Good help was just too hard to find to risk losing the man.

“Just accept that you’re going to have to ask Steffon to repark his vehicle. Maybe you can make an announcement. ‘Will the owner of the corporate helicopter obnoxiously parked on the lawn please move their vehicle?’” Tyrion snickered, mismatched green eyes lighting up in good humor.

“Everything’s a joke with you!” Cersei scolded. Didn’t he understand this was life and death? Vogue hung in the balance! “Look, can I at least borrow your phone?”

“Fine, here,” Tyrion handed it to her. It was a simple matter to open his thread with Tysha, give her strict instructions for a naked rendez-vous, then delete the brief convo and hand the phone back to Tyrion with him none the wiser.

When they emerged back on the lawn, she immediately saw that the helicopter had been moved, thank the gods. Occasionally Robert did surprise her. She gave Tyrion his marching orders, Renly his marching orders, Robert some marching orders for good measure. And then Westerling rang the bells for dinner.

She eyed the crowd moving toward the courtyard broodingly. Everybody seemed to be having a grand time. But Vogue didn’t cover weddings because people were happy and their guests had a grand time. She needed an edge. What was her edge?

Cersei noted with some horror that the Tyrells were moving to the table directly next to their own. She had specifically put Olenna Tyrell as far as humanly possible from their entire family. Brienne had even double checked! And Ned was going toward the Tully family table... she had promised Robert he and Cat would sit with the Starks! What was this... this... chaos?!

“I moved a few of the placecards around a bit, I hope you don’t mind,” Cassana Baratheon placed her hand on Cersei’s shoulder. “I know how... irrationally territorial some people can get about these things...”

Cersei eyed the hand on her person and contemplated what it would look like taxidermied and hung over her mantelpiece.

“Of course I don’t mind,” she smiled sweetly. “In fact,” she plucked the hand off her shoulder, and held it in both of her own. “I had something very important I wanted to ask you.”

Cassana looked nonplussed, but the crowd she’d gathered around her as witnesses to ask whether Cersei would be a territorial bitch about the placecards hadn’t gone anywhere.

“Anything darling. We’re family now,” she said and touched her hair to make sure it fell just right for the camera snap.

“I was wondering,” Cersei bit her lip. “Oh I couldn’t. It’s too much to ask.”

Cassana and her high society minions all looked intrigued.

“Would you... would you consider coming out of retirement to sing at my wedding?”

Cassana hesitated for a second, suspicion clouding her features. Cersei could almost see the gears turning behind her tastefully Botoxed and dermabrased mask of a face. The lure of more attention, all eyes on her, the chance to play the gracious mother of the groom, the accolades...

“I would be delighted,” Cassana squeezed her hands. And Cersei was willing to bet those were the first sincere words to pass her lips all night.

“Oh Cersei, where is your engagement ring?” Cassana suddenly asked. Cersei blinked at her bare finger.

“Don’t tell me there’s trouble in paradise already!” Cassana tittered.

“Of course not,” Cersei said smoothly. “Just a sizing issue.”

“It’s so hard for women with fat fingers, nothing fits,” Cassana patted her.

Cersei would have been infuriated if she weren’t busy wondering when in the seven hells she was going to be able to look for her ring on top of dealing with Tysha and meeting with Varys. It must have slipped off in the grass somewhere. Somebody would find it, surely? She would get Westerling on the job first thing tomorrow otherwise. He would be out there with a fine-toothed comb if necessary.

She sat down at the head table still reeling over the latest wrinkle.

Her father and her numerous aunts and uncles and cousins were all present, as was Tyrion. Jaime and Brienne were conspicuously absent.

“Poor girl has probably given him the heave-ho after his disgraceful performance tonight,” Aunt Genna stabbed her filet viciously. “I would castrate any man that did that to me,” she continued, this directed at poor scrawny Uncle Emmon who fairly shivered in his seat.

“Quite right dear,” he said immediately. Cersei was rather fond of her Aunt Genna.

“Where is Tyrek?” Uncle Tygett frowned and looked around. Tyrion sputtered and choked on his wine. Cersei scanned the cousins indifferently. Was that pimply one not Tyrek?

“I’m rather impressed that we’re halfway through his daughter’s engagement party and old Tywin hasn’t smiled once,” Olenna Tyrell’s light laugh floated over from the next table. Her father’s eyes narrowed, and Cersei kicked Tyrion. Best to move up the timetable.

“Father,” Tyrion began hesitantly. Tywin was still glaring at Olenna Tyrell. “Tywin!”

That got his attention.

“Steffon Baratheon was hoping to have a drink with you in the library between courses,” Tyrion said brightly. “I told him you’d meet him there.”

“Really Tyrion, I wish you’d consult me before volunteering my time,” Tywin said, nostrils flaring. “I am the host of this event, I can’t just disappear.”

“Don’t worry father, I have it under control,” Cersei patted his hand. He withdrew the hand and fixed her with a glare as well.

“Well off you go,” she said.

There was a lengthy cold stare.

“I will return shortly,” Tywin addressed the table. Amidst the hubbub of typical family feuding, Cersei and Tyrion were probably the only ones who heard him.

Cersei looked over to Renly and gave him a meaningful nod. Then she politely excused herself to take a quick look through the grass for her engagement ring.

There was the merest whisper of a rustle and Varys materialized.

“You texted?” He said smoothly.

“I want you to leak to the appropriate publications that world renowned opera singer Cassana Estermont is coming out of retirement to give a private performance at my wedding,” Cersei instructed curtly, continuing to walk with head bent, scrutinizing the grass. “And tell Petyr to have his camera ready. She’s put Ned at Hoster’s table and he’ll have a front row seat to the show.”

“Of course,” Varys nodded and faded back into the shadows.

Cersei noticed a significant chunk of the trellises had collapsed on the East Wing, and a small army of staff were working to clear the debris. That would be coming out of the Garth Greenhands invoice, she noted to herself. She checked the time. The ring would have to wait.

Exactly three minutes after she had instructed Tysha to meet Tyrion in the cellar, she strolled by and scooped up the girl’s clothing. Including a lacy red thong that had been left hanging on the door handle. Skank.

She shoved her loot into some old chest nobody would ever think to look in and flagged a waiter to initiate the hunt. Then she made it back outside to see Ned Stark landing a tremendous right hook into Hoster Tully’s snarling face, punctuated by a camera burst. Nobody but Lysa noticed Petyr politely excusing himself to touch up the images before he sent them to the Daily Raven.

She allocated Petyr twenty minutes to edit, the Daily Raven thirty minutes to process and post, the world another ten to take the story and run with it.

She sat back down at her table, which had gone rather quiet.

“I heard Stannis Baratheon say that his company is going to beat projected earnings for the third quarter in row,” Cersei mentioned off-handedly to Tyrion.

“Emmon, call our broker,” Genna said.

“Where the hell is my phone,” Gerion patted his pockets.

“I keep telling Tywin we need to expand into shipping,” Kevan announced to the table.

“Mining has been good enough for our family for seven generations!” Tygett pointed at him with his fork, spattering Kevan’s wife Dorna with salad dressing.

“I’d thank you to watch your tone with me!”

“This is silk!” Dorna wailed.

“Blended silk at best,” Darlessa, Tygett’s wife sniffed.

Willem and Martyn seized the chaos to attempt second helpings of dessert, but promptly got into an argument over who could claim the largest eclair.

Cersei sat back and smiled as the volume in the courtyard returned to a dim roar.

Exactly one hour and five minutes after Petyr snapped his photo and thirty four minutes after the Times touted Cassana Estermont’s return, Cersei’s phone buzzed.

Dear Miss Lannister,

We have moved some features in our August edition and are wondering if you would still be interested in a collaboration with Vogue...

Cersei stopped reading and excused herself. Ned had run into the mansion, which meant Robert was doubtlessly somewhere nearby. It was a moment’s work to find him. And as she raked her hands through his shaggy black hair, felt her dress slipping like water off her shoulders, saw the way his stormy blue eyes ignited with a molten heat that she would never not love, Cersei reflected that nothing put her in the mood like winning.

0 notes

boschlingtumbles · 5 years ago

Text

White Wedding Ch 18-21

Stannis (Been Away For So Long 1 of x)

Somewhere between catching the immediately recognizable stag’s head logo on the helicopter and the moment when his parents stepped down onto the great lawn of Casterly Rock, Stannis felt his stomach flip.

His gaze automatically slid to Robert, who was looking back at him from next to Tywin Lannister in mute anguish. His gaze slid to Renly, who was clutching a glass of wine in a trembling hand next to Brienne Tarth. Shit. They were in so much trouble.

Stannis immediately squelched the thought. He was an adult for the seven’s sake. This wasn’t like they’d gotten kicked out of mass. They’d only had a party. With their father’s sworn nemesis. That had spiraled into the social event of the year. And kind of maybe slightly “forgot” to invite their parents. Oh fuck it. This was so much worse.

Stannis jerked his head toward the orchard abutting the north wing. Robert and Renly both nodded.

As Stannis stiffly excused himself from a conversation with Axel Florent, he reflected that in some ways, it was a mercy that the party was being held at Casterly Rock. If there was one location that the Baratheon boys knew almost as well as their own home, it was this one.

He and Robert had been abandoned to “play” with Jaime and Cersei Lannister more times than he could recall as a child. (Jaime and Cersei had always hated them. Any playing that they did, and Stannis didn’t remember much, had been alone together.) Renly had experienced much the same enforced social activity with Tyrion. And what the Baratheon boys knew that their parents certainly did not, was the secret tree house in the pine grove at the edge of the orchard.

He reached it first, was pleased to see the old knitted rope still swinging much as he remembered it. Taking a quick look around to make sure nobody would catch him climbing a rope ladder in a tux, he hoisted himself hand over hand up onto the platform.

It wasn’t maybe five minutes later that he saw Renly running through the trees, wine glass still in hand. The rope twitched, and seconds later his younger brother’s head appeared, trapping the still half full glass between chin and shoulder.

“You couldn’t have put that down?” Stannis pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Tyrion said he picked out the wines himself! It would have been rude!” Renly protested, cradling the glass to his chest. Then, remembering the greater issue at hand, he lifted his dark blue eyes up to Stannis’ own.

“How did they find out?! I was checking the mail every morning just like you said!! I got the stupid box, I RSVP’ed no, I hid it in my cuff links collection box, and I know it’s still there, I saw it yesterday when I was trying to decide whether I should use the gold or silver antlers,” Renly wailed.

“Renly, shhhh! This is a secret meeting!” Stannis tried to hush him. Not that he wasn’t also panicked. He’d checked their calendar this morning! They were supposed to be on a cruise in the fjords of Lorath!

“They’re gonna kill us!!” Renly banged his head against the floorboards, making even more noise if possible.

“Look shut up, it wasn’t you okay?! I am reasonably certain that it was Jaime Lannister. Somehow.”

Stannis flashed back on their conversation and ground his teeth. How could he have been so careless?!

He and Robert and Renly had decided, in a rare moment of unanimity, that it would be for the best if their parents did not come to the evening’s festivities. Renly already hated that Robert was the only child their parents paid even a cursory amount of attention to. A party where he was actually the center of attention?! Renly probably would have preferred to go to a football game rather than endure such an evening with their parents. Stannis, personally, just knew that they would somehow find a way to blame him for Robert getting Cersei pregnant. Which she wasn’t. But still. Somehow this would be his fault because he was the responsible one and why hadn’t he been looking out for his brother. As for Robert...

It was possible that he didn’t want to completely ruin the party by introducing Steffon and Tywin into an enclosed area.

For much of their childhood, their father had been good friends with Tywin Lannister, and the mayor at the time, Aerys Targaryen. Stannis wasn’t sure what had happened exactly—certainly the fact that the mayor was a psychopath didn’t help—but their friendship had been hanging on by a thread when Joanna Lannister died.

His parents hadn’t gone to the funeral. As far as he could remember, that had been the (Stannis winced) final nail in the coffin.

Tywin Lannister and Steffon Baratheon hadn’t spoken since.

Okay, think this through. Think, think, think. What had Jaime said? Probably just, oh did the invite get lost in the mail. So worst case, the three of them were on the hook for not telling their parents about the party. Which they had quite reasonably not mentioned because they hadn’t seen their parents in months. So this wasn’t their fault. Stannis let out a slow breath. This was going to be okay.

Robert’s head popped through the hole, followed by the rest of him, pulling the rope up after.

“This is going to be a disaster!!” Robert groaned. He snagged Renly’s glass of wine and drained it, eliciting a howl of rage from Renly.

“Robert, Renly, shut up, this is a secret meeting!” Stannis hissed at them.

“Look, as near as I can figure, it’s unfortunate that dad and Tywin will be in the same place. But none of this is our fault... As far as they’re aware,” Stannis added guiltily. “We invited them to the party. They just haven’t been home. It’s not our fault that they don’t care about your wedding enough to come back.”

“Ummm about that,” Robert scratched his head.

“Oh no,” Renly breathed.

“Robert. Did you not tell our parents about the wedding?” Stannis growled.

“Okay in my defense, it seemed like everybody already knew! It’s been in the papers every day!”

“The papers here in Westeros! Where our parents never are unless they have a very good reason!”

“And it’s not like they give a fuck about us! Why would they even care!”

“Have you met our mother?! Why would she care that she didn’t get to be at the social event of the season where she got to be the proud mother of the groom?! Her precious star quarterback?!” Stannis snapped.

“I’m so screwed. Mom and Dad are going to kill me. And then Tywin Lannister is going to kill me. And then...”

“ROBERT!” A very familiar voice shouted up from the base of the tree. “LET THE ROPE DOWN NOW!”

“Cersei is going to kill me,” Robert rolled onto his back.

“ROBERT!!!” Cersei shrieked. Seriously, did nobody understand the concept of a secret meeting?!

“NO GIRLS ALLOWED!” Renly shrieked back.

Apparently not.

With a sigh, Stannis tossed the rope down.

Cersei clambered up surprisingly quickly for someone wearing a partially sheer red and gold dress that had Stannis averting his eyes immediately.

“Is that a Joy Hill?” Renly forgot his previously combative demeanor immediately. “I thought she’d only done the one capsule collection?”

“Cersei, I’m so sorry, I had no idea they’d be here, we thought, I mean I thought they WOULDN’T be here, we...”

“The three of you sabotaged the invite list so they wouldn’t come. I noticed the RSVP was in Renly’s handwriting. It was smart,” Cersei shrugged. “They must have seen a mention in the foreign press. What you have to deal with now is father.”

Robert blinked, taken aback by her calm demeanor. Honestly, Stannis was rather surprised as well. Apparently her ire was being channeled at a different target. May the gods have mercy on their soul.

“Um can’t you handle him?” Robert began tentatively.

“I will be dealing with... other matters,” Cersei’s nostrils flared white. “I need you to handle this.

Please. Just get your father and my father to play nice for one evening. Can you do that?”

Since when had anyone gotten Tywin Lannister to do anything?

“Yeah I can do that,” Robert gulped. Stannis mentally facepalmed.

“What are we doing?” Melisandre’s head suddenly poked into the treehouse.

“How did you find us?” Stannis asked surprised, as he helped her in.

“I saw you head in this direction and then after that I followed the ungodly screaming,” Melisandre said drily.

Stannis shot a glare at his brothers and Cersei.

“I’m glad you’re here Melisandre,” Cersei said calmly, ignoring him entirely. “I must say it shows great initiative on your part as a bridesmaid.”

Melisandre’s eye twitched.

“These three can catch you up. I’ll expect it handled promptly. If you manage things according to my expectations, I’ll see what I can do about tossing you the bouquet at my weddding. Brienne will understand.”

“You’re too kind,” Melisandre glared.

“I like to reward success,” Cersei said serenely, and then shimmied down the rope ladder as easily as if it were a slide.

“So why don’t you catch me up?” Melisandre asked sardonically.

“Basically we need to keep Tywin Lannister and my father from killing each other. Bonus points if we can get them to smile for a camera,” Renly said.

“Hey, are you guys smoking weed up here without me?” Thoros stuck his head in.

Stannis pressed his fingers to his temples. Did nobody understand the concept of a secret meeting?!

“I wish! Do you have any?” Robert asked with a loud laugh. Stannis gritted his teeth.

“I was hoping you did! That fucking chopper nearly landed on me!” Thoros said back, just as loudly.

“You were fine,” Melisandre interjected.

“Was not!”

“Were too!”

“Maybe Oberyn has some? Should I text him?” Robert raised his voice over their bickering.

“Ooooooh,” Renly clapped his hands.

“SHUT UP!” Stannis howled.

There was a sullen silence in the tree house.

For five seconds.

“Stannis, can you be a little quieter?” Melisandre said reprovingly.

“It’s a secret meeting,” Renly shushed him.

“Really? Because I heard you guys like across the orchard,” Thoros said interestedly.

“Where’s Beric?” Robert suddenly noticed his friend was uncharacteristically solo.

“Hiding from one Jeyne Westerling. She’s eight and precocious. Beric is terrified,” Thoros snickered.

Stannis stared at them all as the volume slowly crept back to its prior deafening level.

“Yes Thoros, it is a secret meeting,” he cut through the conversation. “We need to get our father to make up with Tywin Lannister, and it’s all Jaime Lannister’s fault!”

“You can’t know that,” Melisandre rolled her eyes.

“You heard him on the phone!” Stannis spluttered.

“The engagement party has been all over the news! For all we know, they saw that fucking Storms Ending commercial!”

“I like that commercial,” Thoros put in.

“Eh. I don’t see what all the fuss is about,” Renly shrugged. “All the girls at Prep are gaga over it though.”

“All I’m saying is that Jaime said he had a fail-safe plan and that I would be collateral damage,” Stannis tried to return them to the matter at hand.

“Oh,” Thoros suddenly looked away from glaring at Renly. “Huh. Did you say fail-safe?”

“That was the phrase he used,” Melisandre nodded.

“Right. Um Stannis is probably right,” Thoros looked sheepish.

“Did you know about this?!” Melisandre growled.

“Not exactly...” Thoros scrunched his face.

“What did he say exactly?!” Melisandre bit out.

“That he needed a fail-safe plan to stick it to Stannis?” Thoros made it sound like a question, as he edged away from his younger sister.

“And you never brought it up because...”

“Well it’s not like I knew the specifics! Ned was saying something about Hoster Tully ruining his marriage and childhood best friends and then Jaime ran out.”

“See it kind of seems like you knew the specifics,” Melisandre said very quietly. Thoros shivered.

“I’m on Robert’s side!!!” He protested.

“I know you are buddy,” Robert patted his top knot.

“Okay, three issues. Robert, you need to get to our parents and apologize for not telling them you were GETTING MARRIED,” Stannis said sternly. “Then we need to talk to dad about smoothing things over with Tywin, and I literally have no ideas on that front. Finally, we need to take care of Jaime. I will handle that,” Stannis said firmly. Oh he would handle it.

“Can you also come with me when I apologize to Mom and Dad?” Robert looked uncomfortable.

“Don’t you dare try to blame this on me!” Stannis narrowed his eyes.

“I won’t! I swear I won’t!”

“Okay fine. Renly, you and Melisandre are in charge of implementing whatever plan we come up with to reconcile our dad with Tywin.”

“I can help,” Thoros offered.

“Renly, you and Melisandre are in charge of implementing whatever plan we come up with to reconcile our dad with Tywin,” Stannis repeated stoically. “Now does anyone have any ideas they would like to submit to the floor?”

“What if he apologized?” Melisandre said hesitantly. “Would that be enough?”

“He won’t apologize, he thinks he basically could have stopped the whole Aerys Targaryen thing ten years ago if Tywin had bothered to listen to him. Instead Tywin and Aerys cut him out,” Robert explained.

“Well Tywin won’t apologize, he thinks dad is a superficial dick who was fine rubbing elbows with him at parties but couldn’t bother to show up for Joanna Lannister’s funeral!” Renly protested.

“I don’t know...” Stannis mumbled, trying to recall a conversation he’d had with Jaime once. “Jaime said Tywin felt like he’d backed the wrong horse, that he was... I don’t know, not sad, but regretted how things had turned out. I’m not saying he’d apologize, but if he thought dad was willing to put it behind him, he might put it behind him too?”

“So nobody apologizes, they just pretend it never happened?” Melisandre said sarcastically. “Wow that’s healthy.”

“Nope that’s definitely how it has to be,” Robert nodded assent.

“So we get them into a room, and if Steffon thinks Tywin feels bad and Tywin thinks Steffon feels bad, they’ll just sort of bury the hatchet?” Melisandre said dubiously.

“Robert and I can bring it up with dad. Who wants to handle Tywin?” Stannis said, aware that this plan was thin. But with the disconcerting regularity with which his really well thought out plans backfired, was there even any point in trying?

“Ooooh me!” Renly waved his hand.

Stannis looked at Melisandre.

“Meeeee!” Renly moved so he was now in front of Melisandre.

“Fine. Do I even want to know?” Stannis asked dully.

“Well I saw this romcom the other night and...”

“Actually I really don’t. Come on Robert,” Stannis sighed heavily.

They naturally found their parents swarmed by admirers and well-wishers and assorted hangers-on.

“Excuse me,” Stannis said politely to a star struck Whent. No response.

“Excuse me?” He tried a little louder. Nothing.

“Coming through!” Robert shouldered the Whent aside, grabbing Stannis by the arm as he went. Stannis gritted his teeth as he was half dragged the remaining ten yards, Robert sending trays of canapés, drinks and the occasional socialite flying.

“Mom! Dad!” Robert announced when they finally got there. “You made it!”

Steffon Baratheon looked like an older version of Robert. The resemblance was truly striking. Cassana Baratheon also had black hair, in long curls that had been swept up into an elegant chiffon. Teardrop pearls swung from her ears as she laughed at a joke Melessa Tarly had made, her striking scarlet dress (it reminded Stannis of a more conservative version of Cersei’s) catching the light. A photographer snapped a candid.

“Robert!!!” Cassana cooed. “My baby boy’s all grown up!”

There was a collective ‘awwww’ from the crowd, and Robert gave a sheepish smile for the audience as she pinched his cheeks.

“We need a family photo!!” Steffon boomed. “You with the camera! The Baratheons!”

They put their arms around Robert.

“Do you want me in this or...” Stannis began drily. The camera clicked. Evidently not.

“I’m so glad Jaime got a hold of you,” Robert said to their parents, drawing them away from the crowd. “We were so worried when the invitation we sent to Lorath got returned undelivered!”

What. Stannis shot a look at Robert who looked innocently back.

“So worried,” he said flatly.

Their mother lifted an eyebrow.

“The invitation was lost in the mail?”

“Of course! You don’t think something like this could happen in my life and I wouldn’t tell you guys?!” Robert said sweetly. “Maybe Renly messed up the address somehow?”

And there it was. Stannis rolled his eyes.

“Really darling, I can’t see how this even happened,” Cassana smoothed Robert’s hair as if he were a child. “Cersei Lannister? You know we haven’t really socialized with the Lannisters since Joanna’s passing.”

“Robert has dated Cersei since high school, Mom,” Stannis pointed out, perhaps a tad snidely. “She was his prom queen, remember?”

From the expression of bemusement on their mother’s face, it was clear that she did not.

“Of course, now it’s coming back,” she laughed for the benefit of any third parties in earshot. “Little Cersei. She always did follow you everywhere. And you were always sweet on her. Remember when you made her that valentine?”

Stannis and Robert exchanged a look. Cersei and Robert had always despised each other until... well until they didn’t. The aforementioned valentine had been for Lyanna Stark.

“That’s right Mum,” Robert said easily. “She loved it.”

It shouldn’t have mattered. It clearly didn’t to Robert. All the same, Stannis felt the old unasked for hurt welling up. What was wrong with these people?! Why didn’t their kids matter to them?! Were the three of them so fucking uninteresting?! Maybe Robert and Renly were shitheads, maybe he was awkward and over serious, but come hell or high water he would bet his life that any of them would be better parents than Steffon and Cassana.

That was the sad part. The bar was so fucking low. Literally all they had to do was be there for their children.

Stannis blinked, a simmering resentment abruptly dissipating.

It didn’t matter. That Cersei might be lying about the pregnancy. It couldn’t matter. If there were any chance that she was telling the truth, no matter how remote, he wanted Robert to be there every step of the way. This kid deserved a father. Robert might pass along a whole host of other psychological issues, but absenteeism was one scar that was stopping at this generation.

He turned to look at his brother, now talking earnestly to their father about how much it would mean to him if he’d let bygones be bygones with Tywin. Just let the past stay in the past.

Stannis would do his best.

He gave Robert a tired smile and Robert gave a goofy grin back, mock toasting him with a glass of champagne he’d conjured from somewhere.

Gods he was going to be a disaster of a father. But he would be a father.

Stannis turned his attention from the past and the future to the matter at present.

Jaime fucking Lannister.

Brienne (Been Away For So Long 2 of x)

Brienne was not having a panic attack. Everything was COMPLETELY under control. She just wasn’t entirely sure she could breath.

She sat down on a marble bench festooned with lilies, and checked the laminated to-do list that Cersei had presented her with upon her arrival that morning.

She had let in the sound system people, made sure they were paid, supervised the installation. She had spent two hours placing name cards on the tables throughout the great courtyard according to Cersei’s ever changing master list she kept on a shared spreadsheet. Then Brienne had rechecked the spreadsheet, and of course Cersei had made several changes, primarily to the Tyrells.

Cersei had picked out her dress, a gauzy peach shift with one shoulder that felt a little bit like she was running around with only a personal cloud to conceal her modesty. She had hoped to find Jaime for a little reassurance—(she heard that in his voice and blushed—just reassurance!!)—but he was inexplicably nowhere to be seen.

Tyrion said he’d chatted with him earlier, Ned had run into him at the bar, Oberyn wondered why she was looking for Jaime when he, Oberyn, was right here and had he mentioned that dress was just exquisite....

Not feeling at all reassured, Brienne had hastily retreated back inside to retrieve a shawl from her suitcase in Jaime’s room and maybe yes, see if he was also hiding out in there.

He was not. She cloaked herself in the shawl feeling unaccountably forlorn. There was just so much to do and none of the guests paid any attention to her except to stare. The only exceptions were Jaime’s Aunt Genna who kept casting furtive looks at her like someone had let in a very large mouse and his Uncle Tygett who had mistaken her for somebody’s nanny and put a completely silent seven year old named Tyrek’s sticky hand into her own.

“He’s gluten-free, sugar-free and completely vegan. Try to keep it organic, and for the gods’ sakes keep your eyes on him, he’s like a magpie,” Jaime’s uncle said sternly. Brienne looked at the small blond child holding her hand. She wasn’t entirely clear what that was supposed to mean.

After towing Tyrek around for thirty minutes looking for an actual nanny (or bird keeper), she’d finally managed to hand him off to Tyrion and was thoroughly sick of the Ty- prefix in general.

She went outside and as she often did when she was feeling overwhelmed, looked for a nice quiet place to be alone.

The marble bench had seemed a nice quiet spot, surrounded by flowers and away from the high contact sport of society mingling. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, let the faint fragrance of the lilies calm her and savored the sensation of being finally, blessedly, alone.

“Hi Brienne!”

She opened her eyes to find Renly Baratheon standing arms akimbo inches away.

Or not.

As always, he had made the dress code his own, an elegantly dapper midnight blue tux bringing out his striking blue eyes. She wasn’t sure he would ever be quite as tall or as broad-shouldered as Robert, but he had an aristocratic fineness to his features that his brothers lacked. Next to him, she felt even more ungainly than she did normally.

“What is that?!” Renly wrinkled his nose.

“Oh just something Cersei made me wear,” Brienne mumbled.

“Ugh no, that dress is a modern homage to vintage Lysene gowns from the 1920s, it’s lovely. What is that!” Renly whisked her shawl away, pinching it between his fingers like he had seized a dead rat.

“I felt like people were staring at me,” Brienne flushed.

“Of course they were, there’s a massive photo of you swimming in the Tarbeck exhibition at the Tayte,” Renly said blithely. He tossed her shawl over one shoulder, it somehow seeming jauntily cavalier on him, and extended his arm. “Take a spin with me? We have so much to catch up on since I’ve been at drama camp! Did I tell you that an agent gave me his card?!”

Brienne smiled helplessly at Renly’s imperturbable chivalry. She had known him since he was in kindergarten and he had always known what to say to cheer her up. Even now at fourteen, an age where she remembered most boys being awful pack animals, Renly was still stubbornly one of a kind.

Renly was chatting animatedly about how this could be the break into the film industry that he’d been waiting for and did his parents even care?! No! His mother had brushed him off to talk to her friends the Tullys, and you know if Robert had said something might be his big break, she would have at least put down her wine and heard him out.

“Your parents are here?” Brienne frowned. She’d gotten the vague impression that they wouldn’t be, but of course that was ridiculous. They would never miss an important life event like this.

“You missed the grand entrance?” Renly rolled his eyes.

“I may have been escorting a jam smeared child through the bowels of this house,” Brienne offered.

“Well it was by helicopter,” Renly rolled his eyes. “That’s mostly what we need to discuss. Remember that scene in How to Lose a Guy in a Fortnight?”

“What scene?” Brienne asked. Before she had left for college, she and Renly had had a long standing romcom movie night.

“Where the guy finds out the girl likes him because he overhears a conversation that their friends are having? And then their friends separately lure them to that balcony and he’s actually nice to her and she realizes she actually is in love with them and then they kiss and then they only find out later that she’d never told their friends anything like that?”

“Of course,” Brienne laughed. “It’s a cinematic masterpiece.”

“Right, we’re doing that,” Renly said, wheeling her through the crowd.

“With your parents? Are they having a tiff?”

“What? No! With dad and Tywin!”

“You want your dad to kiss Tywin on a balcony?” Brienne wasn’t sure she was fully following.

“NO! EW! Tywin is mine!”

Brienne accepted and even cherished many of Renly’s eccentricities, but his crush on Tywin was really really not one of them. Literally everybody except Melisandre found it deeply unsettling.

“He’s not gay,” she said in her most severe and disapproving tone.

“Neither is my dad. I want Tywin to overhear that father feels terribly about how they don’t talk anymore. Then we lure them to a place my dad would actually go, like a bar, slash a place Tywin would actually go, like a library, so just spitballing here, the bar cart in the library, and then they make up.”

“Oh. Okay,” Brienne said tentatively. Although speaking of Tywin... “Have you seen Jaime?”

“Is he not around?” Renly asked lightly. But there was something in his polished surprise that rang slightly off.

“Where... is... Jaime?” Brienne stopped their walk about, squeezing his arm.

“I haven’t the foggiest,” Renly gave her a sunny smile that was at least devoid of artifice. “Oh look, it’s Olenna Tyrell! Hi Olenna!!”

“Why Renly, you charming young man. Look at you, stealing the prettiest girl here for yourself,” Olenna Tyrell, an elegant woman with light brown hair streaking gray rather gracefully, arched an eyebrow at Renly.

Brienne blushed. She was sure that Olenna meant it (painful interactions with her former college advisor had taught her that the erstwhile CEO of the Tyrell Agricultural Conglomerate did not believe in mincing words), but she couldn’t quite trust those kinds of comments.

Jaime would say that was nonsense. He’d remind her of that gods damned photo now hanging in a museum for strangers to gawp at. She looked around once more for him to no avail.

“I do hope your grades this year were not any indication of future efforts,” Olenna was telling Renly sternly. “I know you Baratheons must have a brain cell or two in there somewhere, Stannis was evidence enough of that. And Robert always had his football. You can’t possibly make me sell a theater program though...”

“Oh look,” Renly deliberately changed the subject, his light tenor carrying across the crowd. “Is that Tywin Lannister? He’s looking rather fit isn’t he?”

From Tywin’s flinch, Renly’s remark had certainly carried far enough. Brienne was sure he’d move further from them (Tywin being firmly in the camp of those unnerved by Renly’s fascination with him) but then Olenna gave a rich chuckle.

“If my son weren’t here right now... Mace does so hate to be embarrassed by me.”

Tywin had surprisingly paused, although it may have been due to his being waylaid by Brandon Stark.

“I keep telling him, Mace it’s nothing that a diet and a lie about a thyroid issue won’t fix,” Olenna flapped a hand. “Anyway, the last thing he needs is a reminder that his mother is a living breathing woman who likes to flirt with handsome widowers.”

Tywin and Brandon were still talking, Tywin having ushered Brandon a step or two closer to avoid a passing waiter.

“It’s too bad that there’s so many people around, I know my father had been looking for a chance to talk to him in private,” Renly sighed.

“Oh?” Olenna raised an eyebrow.

“I thought they didn’t speak to each other,” Brienne chipped in dutifully.

“They don’t. And it’s really eating him up, especially now that Robert and Cersei are engaged. He just wants to put the whole thing behind him, and he’s not sure how,” Renly said earnestly, sounding both saddened and wistful.

Brienne didn’t care what Olenna thought, Renly would make a wonderful actor some day.

“Stuff and nonsense. They’re men, what’s to say. They’ll have a glass of scotch and hem and haw and the whole thing will be over with,” Olenna sniffed.

“It’s not quite that simple,” Renly shook his head as if they were discussing matters of state. “Father didn’t come to Joanna Lannister’s funeral. At the time, he felt like his presence would have been an extra burden with his and Tywin’s falling out, but I don’t think Tywin has ever forgotten it. And it’s made father shy of reaching out.”

“This is why women should rule the world,” Olenna gave Brienne a conspiratorial look. “Anyone who had ever met Joanna Lannister should know that she didn’t give two lambs’ farts about this kind of petty nonsense. She knew the Baratheons loved her, and the rest is in the details,” Olenna flapped a hand. “I can’t imagine Tywin would keep a grudge over something so silly.”

Brienne discreetly glanced over her shoulder, but the subject in question had disappeared.

“I do hope so,” Renly didn’t even look surprised at how ably Olenna played along. “And may I just say,” he gave her a cheekily flirtatious grin. “How very much I like you, Olenna.”

“Please, call me Mrs. Tyrell,” Olenna’s smile was razor sharp but her laugh genuine. “If only I had another son for you.”

“As if I’d survive being related to her,” Renly whispered smirking to Brienne as he dragged her away.

“I think that went quite well all things considered,” he continued.

“How do you even know? I don’t think he heard anything after you shouted about how hot he is,” Brienne said doubtfully.

Renly smiled smugly but made no response.

“Oh is that Cersei?” Brienne caught a glimpse of red and gold. “Can I have my shawl back? I need to see if she knows where Jaime is.”

“Absolutely not,” Renly cast her a stern look. “It ruins the outfit. We’ll put it down over here on the bench you were hiding on. Just don’t forget it later.

“Fine,” Brienne huffed, mentally resolving to retrieve it as soon as Renly’s back was turned.

She caught up with Cersei, who was clutching a glass, not of her now standard sparkling cider, but of red wine.

“Have you seen Jaime?”

She asked hopefully.

“Did you know that Moon Boy isn’t showing?” Cersei swung on her.

“I didn’t know Moon Boy was showing,” Brienne said cautiously, sensing that perhaps was not the best time to be approaching Cersei.

“And Marillion!” Cersei hissed. “This is a disaster!”

Brienne looked around the party, probably the nicest party she had ever been to. Everybody seemed to be having a grand time.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Brienne asked uncertainly.

“You’ve done quite enough,” Cersei said. “But there is one more thing I must ask you.”

“Okay?” Brienne said hesitantly.

“You don’t mind if I toss my bouquet to Melisandre do you?” Cersei said.

“Oh,” Brienne blinked. It hadn’t occurred to her really that Cersei would toss the bouquet at all.

“Just a little thank you for her help,” Cersei patted her on the shoulder.

Melisandre’s help? Melisandre had no time for Cersei and less time for weddings.

“Now excuse me, I have a party to save,” Cersei said, handing her glass of wine to Brienne.

Brienne blinked at it.

Had she done something wrong? Was Cersei disappointed in her? Should she have known about Marillion and Moon Boy?

She never even said whether she’d seen Jaime.

Brienne looked at the quite full glass. With a resigned sigh, she took a gulp.

Actually, the wine was quite good she thought. Especially since she hadn’t eaten a proper meal in days. She ambled through the crowd, and had another longer sip, idly backtracking toward the bench she’d first run into Renly at. It was gone. Her shawl was gone. As she blinked, owlishly bewildered, she heard a familiar voice from around the corner and instinctively shrunk back.

“It’s just too awful for words! That Jaime would embarrass us like this!” Jaime’s Aunt Genna was saying loudly to one of her brothers. Gerion? Brienne bit her lip. Were they talking about her? She retreated toward the bar.

“May I have another one of these?” Brienne pushed the glass at a bartender, a little surprised to find it empty so soon. Still, that was good stuff.

“Brienne?” A soft voice asked. Brienne turned. Catelyn Tully—Catelyn Stark, Brienne corrected herself, was sitting there with her own glass.

“Catelyn!” Brienne beamed, partly happy to see her for the first time in at least a year, partly just relieved to find a friendly face.

They hugged, then laughed, then hugged again.

“You look so tan! How was your vacation?” Brienne asked shyly. Ned had spoken of her often while he was at Cersei’s.

Catelyn gave her a look, and took a long defiant gulp of her wine. Brienne let slip a rueful chuckle and took a sip of her own.

“That bad?”

“C’mon let’s find somewhere private,” Catelyn grabbed her arm.

They chose what Brienne had always privately thought of as the reading room—a small second floor nook with plushy armchairs that looked down on the much larger library below.

Catelyn flopped into one, her normally braided auburn hair swinging loose and defiant.

“I think I need to murder my father. Do you think Beric would represent me pro bono?” She said drily.

Brienne smothered another smile. It was nice to feel that she wasn’t the only one in hopelessly over her head.

“I think he still has another year of law school to go,” she tried to play along.

“Nonsense, it’ll be easy. I already have my defense. It’s not guilty by reason of temporary insanity by reason of family vacation,” Catelyn waved her wine glass. Then she looked at it, as if noticing it for the first time.

“I shouldn’t even be drinking! I’m still breast-feeding. Here you take it, you’re empty.”

Brienne looked down at her own glass. So she was. Wow this was great stuff. She’d have to compliment Tyrion later.

“We hadn’t even left for the Summer Islands when my father started in on Ned. How we were living in a shoe box and what kind of life was that for a baby, and nothing had happened that couldn’t be undone, that he had all sorts of eligible sons of friends that wouldn’t mind taking on a divorcee with a young son. Taking me on! Like I was some sort of charity project!”

Brienne shook her head sympathetically.

“And then the entire trip, I was practically running into half the male population of Westeros! I think he would have locked me in a closet with some of these creeps if he’d thought that would work!”

Catelyn shuddered.

“So just to get him off my back I went out to dinner a couple times with Jon Arryn. Remember, from Prep? He’s really sweet and he adores Ned, and he felt terrible about the whole thing and was happy to take me out to dinner and just talk about Proust or whatever. Problem solved right? WRONG! Lysa got all pissy at me! She said she’d always had a crush on him in high school—psh, since when?! And she has Petyr, it’s completely absurd! But anyway, how dare I take HER man. So then she insisted on coming everywhere with us, and the worst thing is I think he WAS kind of interested? Like she’s half his age! My baby sister with Mr. Arryn from senior lit!”

Brienne blushed at the thought.

“And now I come home, and everybody thinks Ned and I are having marriage problems thanks to my father! You would believe how many sympathetic should pats I’ve gotten. It’s been a disaster from start to finish. Brienne, take it from me, family is overrated,” Catelyn sighed.

“Jaime’s aunts and uncles keep staring at me,” Brienne confided. “And I heard his Aunt Genna say that he was embarrassing the whole family. And now Cersei doesn’t want to throw her bouquet to me—I didn’t even know she was going to!—and I’m worried I’ve made a mess of things somehow.”

“The Lannisters are uniformly pieces of work. As far as I’m concerned, Jaime’s the only one who is halfway decent, and the jury is still out on him,” Catelyn hugged her. “If they can’t recognize how special you are, they don’t deserve your company.”

“I don’t want to be the reason Jaime drifts from his family,” Brienne protested.

“He might thank you,” Catelyn reiterated stubbornly. “Have you ever noticed that Genna looks like Kevan in a dress?”

Brienne gave an undignified snort of laughter.

“That’s not true!”

“It is true. Now you’ll never be able to unsee it. You’re welcome.” Catelyn gave a mischievous smirk and pushed herself to her feet. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a husband who I suspect needs saving.”

Brienne gave her a drowsy wave and settled deeper into her chair. Honestly, she wasn’t in any rush to go anywhere quickly. The wine had made her feel pleasantly toasty and more than a little sleepy. If she were to just close her eyes...

Brienne woke up with a start, feeling like a not insignificant amount of time had passed. Had she missed dinner? Was everyone furious at her? She was about to bounce to her feet and hurry downstairs when a boisterous and distinctively Robert laugh came from below in the library. She frowned and twisted, peeking over the back of her chair. What was Robert doing squirreled away in a library? He was usually the life of the party.

There was another laugh, and Brienne realized it wasn’t Robert at all. It was Steffon Baratheon, and standing next to him SMILING was Tywin Lannister. Brienne reflected that a smiling Tywin Lannister was just as frightening as a non-smiling Tywin Lannister. Really more so.

They were puffing cigars, and Steffon said something in his Robert-y rumble and Tywin made a sound that could have been a throat clearing or could have been a chuckle.

Brienne fled.

In her her haste to escape the creepy Tywin Lannister look-a-like who did things like SMILE and LAUGH, she nearly flattened someone as she rounded the corner to get to the master staircase.

“Oh I’m—Jaime!” Brienne blurted, her boyfriend’s dark green eyes looking dazedly up at her.

“I always told you that you sweep me off my feet,” he grinned weakly.

She pulled him up, and for a moment they just stood, grinning at each other.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she said, trying not to sound plaintive.

“I’m glad you found me,” he said simply. “C’mon, we’ll miss the fireworks.”

He threaded his hand into her own and she let him pull her down the grand spiral stairs.

All the guests were being ushered onto the Great Lawn and there was a hush of expectancy across the crowd.

“You were right wench, per usual,” Jaime whispered against her ear, his warm breath sending shivers down the bare arch of her neck.

She looked up at him in dismay, squeezing his hand tighter.

“About your family not liking me? I’m sorry, I think they’re getting to Cersei, but I’ll work harder, I can change their minds, I know I can—“

“What?” Jaime kissed her to cut her off. “I am sure they haven’t thought twice about you. That’s not the Lannister way. I was talking about the wedding.”

“The wedding?” Brienne repeated doubtfully. Surely he couldn’t mean what she thought he meant...

“Cersei is completely ridiculously absurdly in love with that moron and I’m an idiot for not seeing it sooner,” Jaime said drily. “I officially give it my blessing.”

Brienne beamed at him. Cersei wasn’t the only ridiculously absurd Lannister here.

“But you’re my idiot,” she kissed him. As his lips melted against hers, a spark illuminated the horizon and then the entire sky exploded into golden light.

“Brienne,” Jaime groaned, breaking the kiss to nibble his way down her neck. “You look gorgeous. This is a delightful dress and I want nothing more than to tear it to pieces.”

She giggled, punch drunk, as he rested his head on her bare shoulder, his fingers teasingly trailing down to her hips.

“Stop, we’re in public.” Another burst, red sparks this time, to punctuate her point.

“Everyone’s looking at the fireworks, wench,” Jaime tightened his hold on her hips and pulled her closer, lifting his head to kiss her again.

“And if it at all affects your decision,” he said drily, when they came up for air. “You wouldn’t BELIEVE what a day I’ve had.”

Jaime (Been Away For So Long 3 of x)

Once Ned had said it, it seemed so stupidly simple. Tywin Lannister was the architect of this monstrosity of a wedding. Tywin Lannister could undo it. It would be as simple as informing Cersei that there was no need to get married and the board seat at Lannister Corp would be waiting for her no matter what she did.

Without the carrot of the board seat and the stick of family banishment, Cersei would throw Robert over before the day was up.

But if the Cersei angle was proving ridiculously hard to exploit and there didn’t appear to be a Robert angle, what was the Tywin angle? What was the thing that would make a man not famous for changing his mind, well, change his mind?

And then good old blissfully unaware Ned Stark saved the day again, prattling about childhood friends. Steffon Baratheon. Tywin and Steffon had been childhood friends. And now they weren’t.

All he needed was to get that foghorn of a man in front of his father and there would be fireworks. The metaphorical kind. Hopefully before the literal fireworks, by which point the engagement party would be over.

He wasn’t exactly sure how this hadn’t come up earlier. Clearly Robert had done something to keep his parents out of the picture. But it was child’s play to get Steffon’s cell number from his father’s secretary.

He tried to conjure up Steffon and Cassana in his mind’s eye. Like most of his father’s friends, they hadn’t really been around after his mother’s death when he was ten. Those interminable play dates had dragged on for a few years after that but Steffon and Cassana had become a once-a-year presence at the holiday party. Cassana a light effervescent laugh, a sparkle of jewelry, a strange pang of homesickness for what it would be like to have a mother. Steffon was just rather hearty and loud. A backslapper like his son.

The phone rang and Jaime focused in.

“Steffon Baratheon,” the voice answered and there was an eery moment when he wondered if Robert had managed to get all calls forwarded to his own phone, so alike were their voices. Then he remembered it was Robert, who barely knew how to answer the phone.

“This is Jaime Lannister,” he said smoothly. There was an uncertain pause. “Tywin’s son?”

“Of course! Sorry the service here in Lorath is just too terrible to be believed! You’d think they would have some kind of civilization up here but you’d be wrong.”

Jaime laughed mechanically along with Steffon’s guffaw.

“I just wanted to make sure you’ll be back in time for the engagement party,” he said sweetly.

“You’re engaged? Congratulations! My goodness, you youngsters grow up so fast! What are you now, twenty?”

“Twenty three,” Jaime said, trying to conceal his smile. Oh Robert, you poor sweet imbecile. Did you really think you’d get away with this? “But it’s not me getting engaged. It’s your son Robert. To my sister. This Saturday. You will come, won’t you?”

The line had gone dead.

What did they say in cyvasse? Oh that’s right. Check mate.

He arrived at the party in a good mood. How to celebrate? Champagne. Lots of champagne.

He strode up to the bar, and was surprised to see the very person to whom he owed this coup de grace, namely one Eddard Stark.

“Stark! How the hells are ya?” He grinned and gestured at the bartender for some champagne.

“My life is over,” Ned said gravely.

A bundle of laughs was Eddard Stark.

“Tell me,” Jaime said magnanimously. He considered that they might even be even for the whole ‘throwing him under the bus during the Aerys fiasco’ thing.

“Catelyn has barely said a word to me since we’ve gotten here! Three different people have come up to me and given me their condolences on our impending divorce! This is all Hoster Tully’s doing, I know it! What am I supposed to do?” Ned looked up plaintively.

“I’ll tell you what to do,” Jaime clasped his shoulder firmly. “Get some liquid courage in you. Then march over to Hoster Tully, accuse him of sabotaging your marriage in front of everybody and tell him what you really think of him.”

“You think that’ll work?” Ned said uncertainly.

“Of course,” Jaime kept a straight face. “Hoster Tully is a bully. The only thing bullies respond to is force. You need to show him that you are a man to be reckoned with, that you won’t back down. And if you make that clear, he’ll crumble like cheese.”

“If you say so,” Ned frowned.

“I do,” Jaime gave him a dazzling smile.

There. NOW they were even.

He reached for the phone that he’d put on the bar when he’d waved to flag the bartender down, but his grasping hand met only the bar top. Odd. He could have sworn it was right there. He’d wanted to text his wench and then gotten distracted by the champagne. He checked his pockets. Not there either. He did have it before didn’t he? Had he left it in the car? Hells, how was he supposed to find Brienne now?

He scanned the huge party slightly despondently looking for a familiar blonde head bobbing above the crowd. No luck.

Jaime resolved to find Tyrion and borrow his phone. Tyrion at least was usually easy to find. Jaime headed for the wine cellar.

Unlike Eddard Stark, Tyrion seemed blissfully out of it. He was lying on his back on the floor, head resting on his laced together hands.

Jaime snorted at him and proceeded to lay down next to him, adopting the same pose.

“Why am I not surprised to find you here? Overwhelmed by the beauty of so much wine in one place?”

“It is beautiful,” Tyrion agreed, his mismatched eyes twinkling. “But I will have you know that I am reflecting on weightier matters.”

“Oh?” Jaime rolled on his side to regard his younger brother.

“As of tonight,” Tyrion began dramatically, “I am a man.”

“You don’t mean...” Jaime’s brow furrowed.

“I had sex. Right about where you’re lying.”

Jaime hastily stood and brushed himself off.

“Congrats! Was it everything you hoped it’d be?” He teased.

“I think I’m in love,” Tyrion said dreamily.

“You’re not in love,” Jaime rolled his eyes.

“I am. Her name is Tysha Crofter, and she’s 21 and she works as the third assistant sommelier at the Crossroads Inn.”

“What are her interests?” Jaime asked wryly.

Tyrion shrugged serenely.

“Sex in wine cellars, presumably. Oh shoot, that reminds me. You haven’t seen Tyrek have you?”

“Which one is Tyrek?” Jaime frowned. “Martyn’s brother?”

“No that’s Willem, Tyrek is Tygett’s youngest. Brienne left him in my charge when I saw Tysha beckoning. So naturally...”

“Naturally you took the child to an adult to be looked after?” Jaime ventured hopefully.

Tyrion shook his head indulgently.

“Naturally I told him we were going to play hide and seek so he better find a really REALLY good hiding spot.”

Jaime opened his mouth and then shut it. Then he replayed that conversation.

“You’ve seen Brienne?”

“Yup,” Tyrion shrugged.

“Which way did she go?”

“Um that way I think. She was running around with a list of instructions from Cersei,” Tyrion shook his head.

“And how is our beloved sister?” Jaime asked, feeling pleased that he was clearly close to catching up with Brienne.

“I don’t know, I haven’t seen her yet. Not like her to not be the center of attention,” Tyrion said.

“Probably wants to make an entrance. For what father’s paying for her dress, she’s going to arrive dripping in peacock feathers and diamonds,” Jaime smiled wryly.

“Well she should get a move on, I don’t want to miss her entrance, but I should really be...”

“Finding Tyrek,” Jaime supplied, right as Tyrion said, “Finding Tysha.

“Jaime,” Tyrion said pleadingly. “I’m in love.”

Jaime ground his teeth.

Instead of calling Brienne and arranging a rendez-vous in some secret hideaway (the old treehouse came to mind), he began methodically working his way through the bowels of Casterly Rock, wondering where he would hide if he were a small snotty child like all his cousins inevitably seemed to be.

It didn’t help that Casterly Rock was full of nooks and crannies and about a billion different wings, each with their own maze of corridors. After an hour of this, Jaime was starting to think he was going mad. He had an eery sensation of being watched, and glared at the hundredth portrait of a Lannister relative he passed, just to make it clear that he was not intimidated by them and their stupid noses.

“Tyrek?” He poked his head up onto the second floor landing of the east wing, where all the bedrooms were. A child of approximately the correct age greeted him, but was both the wrong gender and coloring.

“Hullo Jeyne,” Jaime tried to smile at his family butler’s daughter. “Have you seen my cousin Tyrek? About your height, and though my memory is spotty, I would guess blond hair, green eyes and rather smug looking?”

Jeyne shook her head.

“Well if you do, give me a shout,” Jaime sighed. He was getting rather anxious to get back to the party proper and make sure the Baratheons got ample face time with his father. How much harm could one kid really get up to?

There was a rustling sound from a bedroom in the back.

Gotcha.

Jaime eased into the guest suite and looked around suspiciously. He was in the sitting room, although there was a bedroom attached to that and a bathroom beyond that.

He scanned the three rooms, trying to determine where the sound would have come from. Was that bed skirt just a little crooked? Like maybe somebody had slipped under it?

Jaime started to advance stealthily toward the bed.

“I know what you did,” the all-too-familiar growl came from behind him.

Jaime spun to see Stannis leaning in the doorway. Worse, leaning while holding the guest suite key in one hand.

“Have you been following me?” Jaime asked lightly, edging back toward the sitting room.

“For some time,” Stannis said, deliberately locking and unlocking the door with the key, watching the bolt turn in and out.

“Freaking shadow assassin,” Jaime tried to joke while getting close enough to spring.

“Bringing my parents into this was over the line. But in a way, I’m glad you did,” Stannis glared at him.

“Oh?” Just five steps closer and he could jump for it.

“It’s made me re-evaluate my feelings on the wedding. I’ve come to stop—“

Jaime leaped for the door only to smash into it as Stannis slammed it in his face. He shrugged off the stinging pain and grabbed for the knob—only KA-CHUNK, the lock turned.

“FUCK! STANNIS YOU PRICK!”

Jaime took a few steps back and took another running charge at the door. It shuddered but did not give. He prepared to do it again, only for there to be a horrendous screeching sound from the hall.

“What are you doing?!” Jaime snapped.

“Moving... a... chest,” Stannis huffed, “in front of the door. Now try to knock it down all you want to.”

Jaime repeatedly kicked the door, just to prove that he wasn’t giving up.

“I think some time for reflection might do you good,” Stannis said firmly from the other side.

“You really are the worst ally ever,” Jaime groused.

“Please. I prefer to think of us as neutral at best.”

“ARG!!!” Jaime threw himself against the door again. Not because it would help, just because it made him feel mildly better.

“Goodbye Jaime,” Stannis said and Jaime heard the footsteps receding down the hallway.

He gave the door a last sullen kick. Fuck, he could probably rely on his father and Steffon to be at each other’s throats without his assistance, but how could that miserable stick in the mud Stannis keep him from Brienne’s company all night?!

There was a soft sneeze from under the bed.

“Right,” Jaime rolled his eyes. “Out you go—“ he reached under, grabbed a handful of blond hair and yanked.

“Ow!” Said a fully adult sized human, grabbing at his wrist.

“What the hell!” Jaime yelped and scrambled back.

Beric Dondarrion crawled sheepishly out from under the bed.

“Hi Jaime, I’m sorry to um intrude.”

Jaime ran a hand through his hair, considering just pulling it out entirely.

“What are you doing under the bed of one of our guest rooms?!”

Beric cleared his throat.

“I realize this seems unusual but there was this young girl well... stalking me. It was making me rather uncomfortable, so I decided to lose her.”

Jaime flashed back on Jeyne Westerling, wandering the hallway by herself. He groaned.

“I don’t suppose you have a cell phone?”

Beric shook his head glumly.

“Thoros made me give mine to him before the party, I’ve been having some um let’s call them anxiety issues? He thinks checking social media on my phone all the time is making it worse.”

Come to think of it, Dondarrion did look rather twitchy, even for him.

Jaime sighed. Great. He couldn’t even be alone to sulk in peace. Instead he had earnest goody-two-shoes Beric to be like ‘why would you ever try to deliberately sabotage your sister’s wedding, that’s a horrible thing to do!’ Wimp. Jamie sighed again louder.

“Do you need to talk about something?” Beric asked tentatively.

See?! People just couldn’t let him be.

“Well since you won’t stop badgering me, here’s what’s going on,” Jaime began, before proceeding to fill Beric in on the details.

“Why would you ever try to deliberately sabotage your sister’s wedding, that’s a horrible thing to do!” Beric exclaimed.

Jaime glared.

“First Stannis agrees with me!! Or did agree with me. Traitor. Second, I’m trying to save my sister! How can that be a bad thing?!”

“Have you actually tried to talk to her about this?” Beric asked.

“Yes! I’ve hinted in a thousand different ways that Robert is some kind of genetic experiment that escaped from the monkey lab. She never picks up on it!”

“No, I mean, have you said, ‘Cersei, I’m worried you’re getting married for the wrong reasons’?!”

“What do you know! You’re an only child!” Jaime snapped. Okay, it was settled. He would be damned if he had to spend this entire evening stuck with Beric Dondarrion, the boy on their highschool football team that used to volunteer them to do more laps in practice.

He charged the door again, this time taking a running start.

“Oof!” He grunted as bounced off. Again. And again. And again.

“I wish Thoros were here,” Beric said sadly.

Jaime took a breather from breaking down the door (as he was rather dizzy and his shoulder was starting to hurt), to cast Beric a withering glare.

“As far as I’m aware, Asshai’s only super power is inhuman alcohol tolerance. Would you care to explain how that would be useful?” Jaime scowled. He hoped Beric wasn’t one of those people that was constantly pining after their significant other...

“He can also pick locks,” Beric said bluntly.

“Oh,” Jaime said stymied and collapsed on the floor in defeat. He wondered what Brienne was doing.

“I think you’re being too hard on Robert,” Beric volunteered pensively from where he was now lying on the bed.

“I’m really not,” Jaime gave back, still staring at the ceiling. “Nobody has ever been hard on him in his stupidly charmed life.”

“Maybe he’s grown as a person?”

“Said the guy who just got dragged into a bar brawl with him like a month ago,” Jaime snarked. Grown as a person... maybe in the gut.

Beric didn’t even used to like Robert! This was a post-Thoros development, and Jaime did not approve at all. He wasn’t even sure if, had he actually cared, he would really approve of their relationship. Not Beric being gay, because when he thought about that, it really explained a great deal. But Beric was wound as tightly as they came, and Thoros was the sort to go with the flow even if it was off a waterfall. Kind of like Cersei and... NO! STOP IT!

Jaime jumped to his feet to get his brain off the wedding. Things were fine, he had won, game over, the end.

Beric was eyeing him warily.

“Are you okay?”

“Peachy. You know what they say, whenever the Father closes a door, he...” Jaime trailed off.

“Opens a window?” Beric finished helpfully. Then followed Jaime’s stare. “Oh. Oh dear. I don’t think that’s a good...”

Jaime ran to the window and began struggling to lift it. This guest suite was rarely used (as it would require Tywin Lannister to host guests), and the window gave part of the way, but no more. Jaime looked at the six inches of space dubiously. He stuck his head out the window and looked up. The latticework on this side of the house had been drenched with flowers, and they were preventing the window from going further. If someone could just get out and clear them, someone significantly skinnier than himself, he would be able to climb out and shimmy across to his own room to safety.

Jaime turned back to Beric. Beric swallowed.

“I think if we just wait, someone will eventually find—“

“I think I see Jeyne Westerling! Shall I call for help?” Jaime cut him off. Beric reddened.

“No? Okay, out you go,” Jaime shooed him toward the window.

Beric stuck his head out cautiously. Sure enough, with enough twisting, and some helpful threats from Jaime, he managed to clamber out until he was clinging to the trellises, trembling like a leaf.

“What are you just sitting there for, you need to clear the flowers that are jamming the window shut,” Jaime said impatiently.

“I am scared of heights,” Beric ground out, still shaking.

Jaime blinked. Well that was inconvenient.

“It’s one story Beric, and there’s half a botanical garden of bushes down there. If you fell, you’d be fine,” he said. He was pretty sure he was right. “Now get moving!”

Beric slowly managed to get himself high enough to start pulling away the flowers. Jaime tried to be patient and supportive.

“Before I get old, Dondarrion!”

Finally, the window gave and Jaime shoved it upwards. Freedom! Stay strong Brienne, I’m on my way!

“Woah! Where do you think you’re going?!” Beric yelped. Jaime stared at him.

“To my bedroom, which as discussed, is three windows over?”

Honestly, he thought Dondarrion was supposed to be smart.

“It won’t hold both our weight! You have to let me go first!”

“I can’t let you go first,” Jaime rolled his eyes. “The party will be over at the rate you’re going. Stop worrying, it’ll be fine.”

He swung out one leg, tested his foothold, then swung out the other.

Several times happened simultaneously.

There was a creaking snap as the wood of the trellises gave, and with a groan, the entire structure below them toppled outward like a falling domino.

Jaime let out a thoroughly undignified squawk as he started to fall, grabbing the first thing at hand.

Beric let out an equally undignified eep! as Jaime grabbed him around the waist, feet kicking wildly as they dangled.

There was a pause as they took stock.

“Close call,” Jaime said brightly.

Beric’s pants began to slid downward.

“Oh no,” Beric whimpered.

“Crap,” Jaime sighed, as his grip went from Beric’s waist, to his butt, to his knees. He looked up at Beric staring down at him in mute horror. “Cute briefs? Like the purple lightning bolts.”

Beric moaned.

And then the pants slid over his shoes, and Jaime had a split second to reflect that he wished he’d chosen better final words before he crashed into the shrubs.

There was a second while Jaime assessed the situation.

“Um Jaime?” Beric whisper-called. Like a dozen people wouldn’t have heard the entire flower wall collapsing.

“Present,” Jaime waved a feeble hand. “See, I told you, nothing to worry about.”

He struggled out of the bushes, ripping his own tuxedo a bit in the process. He plucked a twig out of his hair.

“Now were I you,” Jaime squinted up at the still dangling Dondarrion, “I would scamper over to my room before people come and see you in your skivvies. I’ll just fold up your pants and leave them here,” he patted a clear patch of ground.

“Can’t you just bring them up to your room?!” Beric hissed.

“I mean I could,” Jaime scratched his head. “But I really need to find Brienne. Sorry Beric. Maybe next time.”

“What next time?!” Beric shouted, before he remembered he was trying to be quiet.

Jaime gave a mock salute and walked toward the main wing, whistling a jaunty tune.

Sure his ankle hurt a little bit, and there were bits of twigs in his hair, and his outfit had seen better days but Brienne’s gorgeous legs in a fancy dress were worth it. Nothing was going to stop him now.

Jaime (Been Away For So Long 4 of x)

Jaime was looking for Brienne when he turned a corner and saw Cersei standing with her back to him, hands on her hips, glaring at a helicopter with the Stormsend Shipping logo on it. He slowed down, a slight smile twitching across his face. Well, maybe just a brief moment to savor his victory.

“How’re tricks?” He pulled his sister into a one armed hug. He would have kissed the top of her head, but her hair was set into some kind of sparkly bejeweled crown. He settled for hip-checking her.

“I have to move that helicopter,” Cersei squinted at it stoically, barely registering his presence.

“That’s right, I saw the Baratheons came!” Jaime tried to sound innocently amused.

“Hmmm. It’s where I have the surprise fireworks display tonight. But if I tell Steffon Baratheon he has to move his stupid chopper for the fireworks, that... that... WOMAN will find some way to ruin them!”

“I’m sure somebody around here knows how to fly a helicopter,” Jaime said blithely. “Not in Robert’s skill set?”

Cersei made another noncommittal noise, then finally broke her staring contest with the aircraft.

“I have to think it over. But in the meantime, I’m glad I found you. Where have you been?!”

“Oh here and there and locked away,” Jaime flapped a hand airily. Cersei gave him a distinctly unimpressed look.

“Well you’ve done it now. Aunt Genna is furious that you’ve left your date unattended. She says it’s the height of rudeness and your manners reflect poorly on the entire family. She was becoming rather apoplectic on the subject when I left,” Cersei informed him.

“Remind me why you want to name biscuit after that harridan?” Jaime snarked to conceal the stab of guilt he felt. He was coming Brienne! Even if he had to brave a thousand Stannis Baratheons and Beric Dondarrions and yes, Tyrion Lannisters.

Oh right.

“Our brother just lost his virginity in the wine cellar. He says he’s in love,” Jaime told Cersei.

“I’ll take care of it,” Cersei shook her head at the notion. “She’s completely unsuitable for him. She didn’t even know what a white burgundy was. Oh. Speaking of family. I need to give you something. It’s in my bedroom.”

“Right now?” Jaime inched away, toward the crowd milling before him, hoping to spot Brienne and grab her before he was kidnapped.

Cersei put her hand on his arm, and Jaime tried not to wince as her nails bit in.

“Right now,” she said sweetly, and the Lannister twins proceeded back into the house.

“I know the timing‘s not the best,” she said absently as she shut the door to her bedroom. It was the same pastel pink he remembered. Now that he thought about it, he suspected she’d chosen a matching shade for her nursery.

What he did not expect was for her to stand on her bed and start unscrewing the air vent panel.

“I think that’s a little small for you to escape out of,” he joked.

“Oh hush, just hold on a second—“ she reached in and retrieved a fuchsia child’s safe.

“Hey!” Jaime did a double take. “I know that safe! I got it for you when we were seven because you always insisted on being the banker in Monopoly!”

“Yep,” Cersei agreed. She spun the lock to a series of numbers too quickly for Jamie to register and there was a click as it opened. Then she carefully pulled a single hair out of the mechanism and placed it on her pillow.

“I can’t believe you still have that,” Jaime chuckled. It had been her favorite gift that year, more even than the miniature pony or the custom leather handbag from a famous designer.

“I keep my treasures in here,” Cersei patted the safe fondly.

“Your treasures?” Jaime asked.

“You know, like my secret precious things that I don’t want anyone else to ever find,” Cersei said as if that was a normal thing people did.

“Right,” Jaime nodded. Sometimes with Cersei, it was best to play along. “Your treasures.”

“I want you to have this,” Cersei plucked something out of the box and held it out to him.

It was his mother’s ring.

“What?” He said stupidly, staring at the old-fashioned diamond, the well worn band, a piece of jewelry that he’d once memorized every last scratch of. He remembered sitting in the hospital, holding his mother’s hand. Seeing that ring sparkle, like Joanna Lannister had sparkled, even at the end.

“I’m not saying now or anything, gods can you imagine?! At my own engagement party?! I’d have to hire someone and have you killed. But you never come back to Casterly Rock if you can help it and I don’t know when I’ll have another chance to give this to you. So someday. When you’re ready. I think she’d really like her, you know.”

“Who?” Jaime said, still staring at the ring.

“Brienne,” Cersei rolled her eyes as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “I think mother would really like Brienne.”

“Oh,” Jaime swallowed and looked down so she wouldn’t see that his eyes had unexpectedly teared. “I know she would. I mean... thank you.”

He crushed her into a real hug, hair and makeup be damned. His sister, his twin, his best friend. He would do terrible things to make her happy. Not that he would ever say that of course.

“You’re not bad,” he said instead.

“I am perfect,” she scoffed, and then walked over to the mirror to fix her braid.

Jaime used the moment to peek inside the safe.

There was a picture of the two of them on a swing set, grinning with no front teeth. He chuckled, remembering how embarrassed Cersei had been and how he’d knocked his own baby teeth out to cheer her up.

There was a set of earrings his mother had loved, a picture of all of them when Tyrion had just been born. A plastic princess tiara she’d worn every day for a year. A Barbie he didn’t recognize—

“What’s this?” He lifted the Barbie to for her to see.

“Present from Robert. Seventeenth birthday,” she glanced over her shoulder and went back to the mirror.

—a picture of her and Robert wearing goofy fake mustaches at prom. A clipping from the Aerie’s school newspaper, showing them dancing at some sorority social. A letter in Robert’s stupid childish scrawl. A soda can tab.

“How about this?” He lifted the tab.

“Oh,” Cersei plucked it from him and put it back in the safe. “Robert proposed with that. He’s so cheesy sometimes, it’s awful.”

She closed the safe rapidly, and shoved it back into the air vent without looking at him.

Jaime blinked. Fuck.

“Cersei,” he began slowly. “Do you love Robert?”

“Of course,” she said flippantly.

“No, c’mon, I’m being serious. Is he the one?”

She looked at him, and blushed, and looked away again.

“The one? You’re so sentimental Jaime, it’s absurd,” she said, coolly disdainful, although she would still not look at him.

“Seven hells, you do!” Jaime sat down on her bed with a thump. “I thought it was just sex!” Oh gods. This meant Brienne was right.

“Of course it’s just sex!” She protested.

And not just Brienne. It meant Beric was right.

“You LOVE him,” Jaime accused, drawing out the word in a childish sing-song to disguise his dawning horror. Because oh no.

“No stop it, I do not!” She threw a pillow at him.

It meant Stannis was right.

“You want to marry Robert and have billions of great goony Baratheon babies!” Jaime gasped. Awful great lummoxes like Robert. Sullen sour grammarians like Stannis. Melodramatic little crybabies like Renly. It boggled the mind.

“Stop it! You’re being ridiculous!” Cersei stomped her foot. “Father is forcing me to marry him, I don’t have a choice!”

“But if you did have a choice,” Jaime leaned forward, pointing with an accusing finger. “You would choose him.”

“I... I,” Cersei stammered. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

And that was as close to a declaration of love as Cersei Lannister would ever get. To him, anyway.

“Huh,” he sat back.

“He makes me happy,” Cersei said finally, softly.

Jaime swallowed, stood up and hugged her again.

“He is so lucky,” he said firmly. Then he took a deep breath and tried not to gag. “And I’m happy for you.”

There. Done. He really would do terrible things for her.

Then he exited the room, twisting the ring nervously in his pocket. Because it was possible that maybe he wasn’t quite done. It was conceivable, that from a certain angle, he had perhaps made a bit of a mess of things. That in some lights, one might come to the conclusion that he had some serious smoothing over to do.

First he stopped in his father’s study. No Tywin.

Next he stopped in his father’s bedroom. No Tywin.

Third he stopped in the library, and he saw his father pouring a glass of scotch and he almost fell to his knees in relief. He wasn’t too late, they hadn’t had their blow-out fight yet, he could grab his father and say.... say... say something, even if he didn’t know what he would say yet and Jaime took another step into the library and then paused.

Tywin was pouring a second glass of scotch.

Jaime stared as his father gave it to Steffon Baratheon and they clinked glasses.

“To a Baratheon-Lannister dynasty!! Long may they reign!” Steffon toasted boisterously, and Tywin made a sort of exhale noise that could, in a certain light, coming from another person be a laugh... Nope.

Jaime hurried out of the library to compose himself.

Was it really possible that despite his best efforts, there was nothing to fix at all? It was unstoppable this wedding. It steamrolled even forces of nature like Tywin Lannister.

So wow. He was in the clear. He could go back to the party and find Brienne and…

Robert Baratheon slid around the corner, his dress shoes apparently providing less traction than he was used to. He focused in on the library, and saw Tywin Lannister facing his father. Jaime could almost see the gears in his brain turning, slowly, painfully, arriving at the conclusion that he was doomed.

Robert gulped, squared his shoulders, and…

“Whoah,” Jaime grabbed his arm before he could charge into the library and make an ass of himself. Well, more of an ass of himself.

“They are by some miracle getting along,” Jaime informed him. “And if you walk in now, you might see my father smiling, and it has been known to turn weaker spirits to stone.”

Robert blinked at him.

Jaime mentally facepalmed.

“Nobody is in trouble,” he explained slowly, as he might to a child. “Don’t go in or you might ruin it.”

“Why should I listen to you?” Robert raised an eyebrow. “You’ve done nothing but try to sabotage this wedding from the beginning.”

Um okay. Fair.

“Yes. But I was,” Jaime coughed. “Wrong,” he added under his breath.

“I didn’t catch that,” Robert tilted his head.

Jaime scowled, scanning his face suspiciously for signs of the lie. As always, it was innocently blank.

“I have spoken to my sister. I think, for quite unfathomable reasons, she might actually like you. So… you know. I’m done trying to mess things up for you. And for what it’s worth, if we’re going to be family, we’re going to be family. That means something to me.”

A goofy grin broke across Robert’s face. Jaime had one second to regret initiating this conversation before Robert had crushed him into a bear hug.

“I knew you’d come around! This’ll be great! Wait… do you want to come to my stag party? You don’t have to say yes. You know, just think about it. Only it’s going to be amazing. We’re staying at a palace. Ned’s got everything arranged! There’s going to be Dornish wines and Dornish food and Dornish women and…”

Jaime, who was having the breath slowly squeezed out of him, frantically hit Robert on the arm to try and tap out of whatever this strange outburst of happy violence was happening.

“Oh, sorry,” Robert dropped him. Jaime wheezed slightly, feeling his ribs. One twinged angrily. Ouch. Add a bruised rib to his list of injuries for the evening?

“Well?” Robert asked hopefully. What was he talking about? Jaime chanced a nod.

“YES! It’s going to be the…”

Oh no…

“BEST! STAG! EVER!”

Dear gods, what had he done?

“I can’t believe this is all working out. This is great,” Robert beamed. “Who’d have thought Tywin would actually make peace with my dad. I’d have assumed he poisoned the whiskey. Or had like a sniper or a crossbowman up in the balcony waiting to take a shot.”

Jaime had been mostly tuning him out, until that last comment. Ridiculous. Just Robert being his normal comic-book happy self. His father wouldn’t do that.

“Like that total creep he took to break into my apartment in the middle of the night.”

All the same.

“Or maybe he’s rigged the helicopter to explode when they leave? Like an Aerys thing?”

Jaime considered that there was no harm in checking.

“I’ve got to go… do something,” he mumbled.

Robert waved a cheerful goodbye, and Jaime made his escape, hurrying up the stairs because really the more he thought about it the more it seemed like something his father would maybe—

“Oof,” he ran straight into someone and landed hard on his butt. He looked up.

Brienne blinked back down at him, her sky blue eyes round in surprise. She was wearing a slip of a dress in a peachy color that just hinted at nude, and Jaime followed the lines of the dress helplessly downwards toward the miles of legs below. She pulled him up and he resisted the urge to push her against the staircase and kiss her senseless.

“I’ve been looking for you,” she breathed, and dear gods those lips were made to be kissed.

“I’m glad you found me,” he grinned, only thinking of getting her somewhere secluded and dark. “C’mon, we’ll miss the fireworks.”

“And I can’t even do that right,” he finished his tale of woe, as people around them cheered for another crackle of light and shower of sparks. “We walked straight into the thick of things!”

“Maybe this is karma,” Brienne fought a smile.

“Pfff,” Jaime flapped a hand. “Things turned out fine. Stannis clearly built some kind of Tywin Lannister robot and has locked my father in a dungeon somewhere until the wedding is over.”

“Shouldn’t you rescue him then?” Brienne teased, playing along.

“I’d rather rescue you,” Jaime smirked, “from this terrible den of debauchery. Come milady, take my hand.”

“I don’t want to miss the fireworks,” Brienne protested, but followed him all the same, giggling as they stumbled through the darkness, their path only periodically illuminated by the sky above.

“We’ll have a great view of the fireworks, and when they’re over, it’s secluded enough that we can make our own,” Jaime promised, dipping his voice into a growl and pulling her along. Where was it, where was it... here it was.

“Up you go, my love,” he bowed gallantly. Brienne squinted dubiously at the rope ladder, before kicking off her heels and starting up. Of course he had to start up immediately below her, so he could kiss her ankle, her calf, the inside of her knee. He licked a long trail up her thigh, the chiffon of the dress only the gauziest of deterrents to going higher still.

“Jaime!” Brienne moaned, sitting at the top, her eyes fluttered shut.

Jaime took another two steps up, so he could better work her dress off with one hand as the other hand went further still, curling and...

“Please don’t stop on our account,” Thoros Asshai drawled sarcastically from where he was sitting in the corner.

Brienne yelped, drawing her legs away from Jaime and up against her chest. Suddenly bereft, he looked forlornly. Thoros was facing the great lawn, swinging his legs off the side of the platform. Next to him, Melisandre Asshai was lifting her head slightly to accept a joint from Oberyn Martell. All three had briefly paused in what they were doing, and the next crackle of light across their faces revealed they were all staring, ranging from amused to intrigued.

“Seriously, you shouldn’t stop,” Melisandre Asshai’s sly smile was dimly illuminated by the end of the blunt she was holding from where she was lying on the floor. She blew a puff of smoke at them languidly before passing it backward over her head to her brother. Brienne gave a slight cough as the familiar vaguely pungent smell of weed washed over them.

“Unless you’d like some company,” Oberyn Martell purred.

“No, um sorry, we just came for the er… view,” Brienne stammered, her skin flushing beautifully.

“Lannister’s view in particular looked exquisite,” Oberyn flashed her a perfectly white smile, as if he too were enjoying her blush.

Jaime growled and clambered the rest of the way up to position himself between Brienne and certain annoyingly cocky Dornish snakes who would keep their eyes to themselves if they knew what was good for them.

There was a series of explosions across the sky, gold and silver, and Brienne rested her head on his shoulder. Jaime put his arm around her and tried not to sulk.

“This is not how I imagine this evening going,” he whispered to her, even as he swiped the joint from Thoros.

“Karma,” Brienne whispered back, and he blew another puff of smoke into her face as retaliation.

“There’s no such thing as karma,” Jaime retorted haughtily.

“Mmmm, Stannis and I had sex for the first time under fireworks,” Melisandre said, tilting her face back to admire them.

“Gross,” Thoros said.

“Tell me more,” Oberyn twisted to look at her.

“Or don’t,” Thoros offered.

“It was New Year’s Eve,” Melisandre smiled mischievously, ignoring her brother. “On the hood of Jaime’s car.”

“WHAT?!”

0 notes