#jaime lannister: professional failson

[dame-lazarus]

Work in Progress Wednesday

(Part 1)

I’m trying this thing where I write my multi-chapter fics in full before posting to wean myself off instant writing gratification. However, I still need those serotonin hits, so—

Brienne couldn’t take it anymore. She ripped out her earbuds and pushed away from her corner of the table under the window of their glass-walled office suite. It felt positively cavernous when there weren’t five people crammed in there. She wrenched open the glass door and stepped into the hallway, its lights dimmed for the post-midnight crowd. And there, sprawled out on the floor, she found the source of the noise.

Jaime Lannister, Westerlands Games’ Director of Operations, sat up against the wall a little ways down. In one hand, he held a ping pong paddle. In the other: a tiny white ball that he was lobbing against the wall that separated the floor-to-ceiling glass door of a snacks subscription startup’s office suite from theirs. Plink. Plink.

“Could you please stop doing that?” she asked him. He froze his hand mid-toss and turned to look at her. Stare confusedly at her, more specifically. “The sound is driving me nuts.”

“Why are you still working at 3am?” he asked back. The nerve of him. Jaime was technically their sixth employee, but this was the most they’d spoken or even been in each other’s presence since her interview. Even then he’d asked no questions and just stared at her, nodding his head.

“Some of us care about the 2.0 launch,” she retorted. The late hour had made her speak more sharply than she intended, but there was no denying that she had said exactly what she felt. He may have had a fancy title, but Brienne was fairly certain he did no work at all. If the CEO was anyone other than his brother, he’d have been fired long ago.