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Chapter Text

Brienne squints at the digital display on the bus stop sign, palms sweating. Her bus will be here in six minutes, it tells her. For the fifth time, she checks Google Maps just to make sure it’s the right one – the H1 towards Baldoyle. Yes, she is at the right stop. The last time she’d tried this, she’d gone to the wrong side of the road. But this time, she’s done everything right, she’s sure of it.

She exhales, relaxing a little, only to have to jump suddenly to the side to avoid being hit by two young teenage boys careening down the footpath on a scooter. They look over their shoulders to jeer at her as they pass.

Brienne suddenly feels very homesick for Inis Oírr.

She glances back at the bus sign, and frowns. The H1 towards Baldoyle is no longer anywhere to be seen on the sign. Behind her, she hears two elderly ladies tutting.

“Gone again,” one of them says. “Typical.”

“Honest to God, Bríd,” says the other one. “We’ll be waiting twenty minutes now for the next one.”

Brienne stares at the sign, not understanding. It was supposed to be six minutes away. Where could it have gone?

At least she’s not in a rush – she’s only going home from work – but she’s exhausted from her first day and wants nothing more than dinner and bed. She sighs. If she has to wait, she may as well call her father.

She digs her phone out of her pocket, hoping he has signal. It can be very patchy out on the island, but she had never minded that when she lived there.

“Haigh,” she says, when he answers in his customary gruff fashion. The sound of his voice sends another wave of homesickness through her. “Cén chaoi ina bhfuil tú?” How are you?

“Maith go leor,” he says. All right. “Agus tusa? Conas a raibh do chéad lá?” How was your first day?

“Maith go leor,” she echoes. She tells him about her new boss, Catelyn, a kind woman from up north who had recently moved to Dublin after losing her husband. She had hired Brienne to help market her new handmade jewellery business, Abhainn.

It’s Brienne’s first proper job out of college, and secretly she is terrifed of letting Catelyn down. Apart from Catelyn’s daughter Sansa, who helps Catelyn out with social media from time to time, Brienne is the sole person on the marketing team, and she can’t help but feel the pressure.

“Ná cuir an iomarca brú ort féin,” her father tells her, as if he’d read her mind. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. “Béidh tú go hiontach.” You’ll be great.

To her surprise, Brienne feels tears well up in her eyes, and chides herself. She’s just tired and a bit homesick, that’s all. There’s nothing to cry about.

Suddenly, she sees the H1 bus loom around the corner. Miraculously, it has come on time after all. Relieved, she bids her father a hasty goodbye and sticks her hand out to hail it.

She lets the old ladies board first, pulling a crisp tenner out of her purse as she waits. Suddenly, she hears a voice from behind her. A male voice, lazy and amused, with a South Dublin drawl. “They don’t give change, you know.”

Brienne turns, startled, and sees the most handsome man she’s ever seen in her life.

He is older than her, in his early thirties probably, wearing a suit that looks expensive. He has tanned skin, flashing green eyes, and curly hair the colour of beaten gold. His smile is sharp and perfect, revealing a mouthful of gleaming white teeth. He looks like he should be on a beach in Australia, or on the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week, not in Dublin about to get on the H1 to Baldoyle.

“What?” she says stupidly, both flustered that the most handsome man in the world is talking to her and panicked by the information he has just imparted.

The bus driver clears his throat impatiently; it’s her turn to pay. Before she can decide what to do, the most handsome man in the world hands the bus driver a tenner of his own.

“For both of us,” he says, nodding towards Brienne.

The bus door closes behind them, and the bus jolts forward at a speed Brienne had not been prepared for. She catapults backwards, and the handsome man catches her, strong arms wrapping around her. He smells of expensive cologne. She feels a flutter in her belly; she has seldom been this close to a man, and never one this beautiful.

“Wow,” he says, still amused, his voice low in her ear. Even with that accent, it’s an undeniably sexy voice. “You’ve really never been on a Dublin bus before, have you?”

She struggles out of his grip, mortified, and grabs a handrail. He looks her up and down, that cutting smile still on his face, and she is suddenly very aware of the fact that she’s wearing a Penney’s jumper and a shabby green anorak.

Her embarrassment turns to anger. She does not need to be made fun of by some posh, rich South Dubliner who has probably never had to work for anything in his life. She mutters, “Thank you,” shoves her tenner into his hand, and wobbles down the aisle to find a seat, holding on to the handrails as she goes.

To her consternation, the man follows her. “I didn’t mean any offence,” he says lightly, sitting down beside her when she takes a seat. “Where are you from? What was that language I heard you speaking?”

Brienne stares at him in disbelief, forgetting her anger for a moment. “You mean... Irish?”

The man laughs. “You don’t say. I wasn’t very good at it in school. I always thought it was a bit pointless.”

Brienne shakes her head. Handsome though he may be, this man is everything she hates about Dublin personified. “Thank you for paying for me,” she tells him primly, then pointedly takes her headphones out of her bag and puts them on.

The man taps her shoulder. When she turns to glare at him, he hands her back the tenner she’d given him. “It was a gift,” he says, smiling. “I like to help out the culchies wherever I can.”

Hot with rage, Brienne screws the note up into a ball and shoves it back into his hand without a word.

He holds up his hands in mock surrender. “All right, I’m sorry. I’d give you your change, but that’s all the cash I have on me. Can’t fit much coinage in the pockets of this suit.”

Part of her does want to take the tenner back – she’s painfully broke – but it’s a matter of pride. She does not need charity from some insufferable D4 who thinks her first language is pointless. She stares out of the window, ignoring him, and finally he leaves her alone.

At least until they get to his stop, at which point he taps her on the shoulder again. She grudgingly pauses her music, wondering what he could possibly want now.

“My name’s Jaime,” he informs her, as though this is something she needs to know.

“OK,” she says.

He waits, and she realises he’s waiting for her to give him her name. She doesn’t.

He smiles, sharp as a knife. “All right, culchie. Good luck in the big smoke,” he says, and then finally, finally, gets off the bus.

As the bus moves off again, she watches him stride confidently down the street. What an obnoxious, snobby, gorgeous weirdo, she thinks, and can’t tell if she’s relieved or strangely disappointed that she’ll probably never see him again.

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Why don’t you call over to mine after work and we can hang out? :)

Brienne reads Sansa’s Slack message over and over again, feeling a little pathetic for how happy it makes her. As much as she’s starting to enjoy her new job, and has developed a friendly (if somewhat awkward) relationship with her housemates Asha and Margaery, her loneliness has not abated.

But she and Sansa have been getting on well, despite the fact that Sansa only works part-time and usually from home (they had bonded on Slack over a shared love of trashy romance novels), and the thought of them actually being friends instead of just friendly coworkers makes her heart leap.

Then Sansa messages, We could get a spicebag and watch Pride and Prejudice (2005)??, and Brienne’s eyes actually well up a little at how perfect that sounds.

I would love that!, she messages back. Where do you live?

Sansa sends on her Eircode, adding, It’s in Clontarf. You can get the Dart, it’s easy!

The Dart. Brienne’s heart sinks. She has finally mastered the bus and the Luas, but the Dart is the final frontier. What are the chances she humiliates herself in front of Jaime Lannister for a third time?

“Catelyn?” she asks.

Her boss looks over and smiles. “Yes, Brienne?”

Brienne swallows her pride. “How does the Dart work?”

Two hours later, having tapped her newly-acquired Leap Card, Brienne steps onto the platform at Tara Street Dart Station with tentative confidence. “You really can’t go wrong with the Dart,” Catelyn had told her, and Brienne hopes that’s correct.

Her train arrives after five minutes, and she gets on and takes a shabby green seat. Aside from the faint smell of urine, she decides she almost likes it – it’s a much calmer environment than the Luas (which is always packed and claustrophobic), or the bus (where something chaotic always seems to be happening.) Best of all, there’s no sign of Jaime Lannister. She puts her headphones on and relaxes a little, keeping a watchful eye on the stops to make sure she doesn’t miss hers.

Three stops later, there she is. Clontarf Road. She steps off the train, jubilant, and goes to get her Leap Card out of her bag so she can tap off.

Except she doesn’t have her bag.

It’s still on the Dart.

Her stomach does a sickly swoop, and she whirls around just in time to see the train doors closing. She runs over and presses the button to get them to open again, but it’s too late; they don’t. The train moves off, and she’s left on the platform with no bag, no money and no phone, trying very hard not to burst into tears.

She takes a deep breath, resisting the urge to mentally berate herself for failing to take one single journey on public transport without incident, and tries to focus on solving the problem. She looks around to see if there’s anyone on the platform who can help her, but all she sees are a large group of American tourists in matching T-shirts, a bunch of Spanish teenagers from a language school, and a shirtless man holding a half-empty bottle of Smirnoff. None of these seem likely candidates.

She goes inside the station, but there are no staff to be seen. She can’t see any on the opposite platform, either. She takes another deep breath. Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic.

She decides to find the nearest Garda station. As she’s walking out, she digs into her anorak pockets to see if she has anything remotely useful in there, and pulls out something thin and rectangular.

Jaime Lannister’s business card.

She stares at it for a long time. He had said to call her if she needed help. And he had saved her twice already.

But no. He had only given her this as a joke. He hadn’t meant for her to actually call him. That would be ridiculous.

But what other options does she have?

She finds the Garda station – a nice woman points her in the right direction – and explains her situation. The garda, a fatherly man with a Galway accent, is sympathetic, but tells her there’s not much he can do. If someone hands in her bag, it will be at a different station, somewhere further down the Dart line. But he takes her contact details and a description of the bag anyway.

He then asks her where she’s from – “you sound like you’re from the Wesht” – and interrogates her for five minutes until they find someone they know in common (it turns out that his mother-in-law is the sister of Brienne’s former landlady in Galway.)

She is about to ask him for directions to Sansa’s house when she realises that she doesn’t know Sansa’s address. She had only gotten the Eircode, which she doesn’t remember. Her heart sinks.

“Do you want to use the phone?” the garda asks kindly. She suspects he is being extra nice to her out of western solidarity.

Brienne looks down at Jaime’s business card. Apart from her father’s number, which isn’t much use to her right now, it’s the only number she knows. She makes up her mind.

“Please,” she says reluctantly.

Her stomach ties itself into a miserable knot as she waits for him to answer. This has to be the most humiliating thing she has ever done.

“Hello?” he says at last, and her stomach clenches.

“Hi,” she mumbles. “Look, I know this is really weird and we don’t know each other, and I’m really sorry, but it’s Brienne. You know, the girl from the bus. And the Luas.”

“Brienne!” he exclaims, sounding genuinely delighted. That catches her slightly off-guard. She hadn’t even really expected him to remember her.

“Yeah. Look, I’m really sorry, this is so embarrassing, but you said to call if I got in trouble again, and I know you were probably joking, but... I’m kind of in trouble. I lost my bag and my phone on the Dart, and now I’m stranded here, and you’re the only person in Dublin whose number I have, so...”

She’s talking fast, stumbling a little over her words, dangerously close to tears. Jaime cuts her off.

“Where are you?” he asks. It’s not his usual half-mocking voice. It’s an assured, serious kind of voice.

“Em, Clontarf. Clontarf garda station.”

“Well, that’s convenient,” he says brightly. “I’m in Clontarf right now, visiting my little brother. I’ll come and get you.”

She blinks. “Oh. Oh, no. You don’t have to do that. I just, em, I just thought you might be able to give me some advice on what to do, or... I’m sorry, I don’t even know what I thought. I just didn’t have any other number to call.”

“I’ll come and get you,” Jaime repeats, in that same firm voice. “Don’t panic, sweetling. I’ll be there in five minutes.” He hangs up.

Brienne stares at the phone in disbelief.

“Who was that?” the garda asks with interest.

True to his word, Jaime walks in exactly five minutes later. He’s more casually dressed this time, in jeans and a tight jumper, but no less handsome. He smiles at her as he enters, like they know each other very well and it’s completely normal for him to be picking her up from the Garda station like this.

“All right?” he asks her kindly, and she nods, cheeks burning.

“My brother’s parked outside,” he says. “We’ll bring you wherever you need to go. Where are you going, anyway?”

Part of Brienne thinks that it’s probably not very wise to get in a car with two strange men, one of whom she’s met twice on public transport and the other she hasn’t met at all, but she supposes she can trust the Taoiseach’s brothers-in-law. “You really didn’t have to do this,” she mumbles.

“Nonsense.” He grins at her. “I told you, I always help out the culchies when I can.”

She gives him a reluctant smile back. “I’m supposed to be visiting my friend, but I don’t even know her address,” she admits. “I had her Eircode on my phone, but I don’t remember it. Her name is Sansa Stark.”

There is a pause. “Stark,” Jaime says. “Ah.”

“You know the Starks?”

Brienne hears a derisive snort from behind them. It’s the garda, who has been listening intently to their entire conversation. He gives Jaime a look of clear dislike and shakes his head.

“Are you sure you should be going with this man? It doesn’t seem like you know him very well,” he says to Brienne. “We can drive you.”

The thought of arriving at Sansa’s in a garda car makes Brienne want to die. “No, thank you,” she says firmly. “I’ll be fine. Thanks very much for your help.”

Jaime gives the garda a tight smile, then takes Brienne’s elbow and leads her out the door. Just like last time, his touch sends a jolt through her.

There is a sleek black Mercedes waiting outside. Jaime opens the back door for Brienne, and after a moment’s hesitation, she gets in. The driver, a little person with white-blond hair and mismatched eyes, turns to smile at her, and she gives him a sheepish smile back.

“This is my brother, Tyrion,” Jaime says, getting into the passenger seat. “Tyrion, this is Brienne O’Tarth. She’s looking for Sansa Stark’s house.”

Tyrion cackles as he pulls the car out. “You don’t say.”

“Do you know where it is?” Brienne asks.

“As it happens, Sansa and I live across the road from each other,” Tyrion says. “Very awkward.”

Brienne breathes a sigh of relief. “Oh, that’s amazing. What do you mean, it’s awkward?”

The brothers share a look.

“I’m afraid I have a bit of an ugly history with the Starks,” Jaime says. For the first time since Brienne has known him, he sounds uncomfortable. “I’m sure they’ll tell you all about it.”

“Oh,” Brienne says, confused. She is surprised that he would even know the Starks – they are a northern family, new to Dublin, and Jaime doesn’t seem like he leaves the city much. She wonders just how bad their history could be.

“How do you know Sansa?” Tyrion asks her.

“We work together. At her mam’s company, Abhainn.”

“Ah,” says Jaime. “So Catelyn Stark is your boss?”

“Yes.”

Tyrion laughs again. Jaime doesn’t.

“You might not want to tell her that you know me,” Jaime says. “Just in the interests of, eh, keeping your job. Not that she’d fire you for that, I’m sure Cat’s a fair employer, but you never know.”

Brienne shakes her head. “What happened between you and the Starks?”

“It’s a very long story.” Brienne sees Jaime’s humourless smile in the rearview mirror. “Like I said, I’m sure they’ll tell you all about it. Suffice to say I’m not their favourite person in the world.”

Brienne’s heart sinks a little. “Is there a good reason for that?”

There is a moment’s pause. “Yes,” Jaime says.

“You could Google it,” Tyrion says helpfully. “If you really want to know.”

Jaime glares at his brother. “Don’t Google it,” he says, his green eyes meeting Brienne’s in the rearview mirror. “Please.”

Tyrion pulls in and stops in front of a small but nice-looking apartment building. “Here we are.”

Brienne opens the door, pushing all thoughts of Jaime’s bad history with the Starks out of her head. Whatever might have happened between them, he had gone out of his way to help her and she was grateful. “Thank you both so much. And I’m really sorry, again.” She hesitates, looking at Jaime. “I’m not stupid, by the way. Even though I’m sure it seems like I am. I’m just... still adjusting, that’s all.”

“If it helps,” says Tyrion, “Jaime used to pretend he was a horse and eat grass until he was ten years old. I’m not convinced he doesn’t still do it from time to time.”

Jaime shakes his head. “I really don’t see how that was relevant.”

“It wasn’t, I just wanted to bring it up.”

Brienne can’t help laughing.

“There’s no need to be sorry, and I know you’re not stupid,” Jaime says, smiling at her. “You just have a culchie naiveté about you that’s quite endearing.”

She rolls her eyes.

“Hold on a second.” Jaime starts rummaging in his wallet. He pulls out two fifty-euro notes and hands them to Brienne. “To get you home.”

“Oh, no,” Brienne says, flustered. “I can’t accept—I don’t need—that’s too much—”

“You’ll have to cancel your cards,” he points out. “It’s just in case of emergency. Which you seem to be prone to.” He puts the notes in Brienne’s hand and folds her fingers around them. “Besides, I owe you ten anyway.” He winks.

“I’ll pay you back,” Brienne insists, cheeks reddening. “Do you have Revolut? I have your number, I can Revolut you—”

Jaime laughs. “Keep it, sweetling.” The way he says sweetling does something funny to her insides. “And I’ll call all the Garda stations on the Dart line about your bag. I’ll ring Irish Rail, too. I have a feeling we’ll get it back.”

“Oh, that’s OK,” Brienne says, embarrassed. “I’m sure Sansa will let me use her phone to call them.”

“Ah, but Jaime and I have friends in high places,” Tyrion says, grinning.

Brienne gets out of the car. “Thanks a million, both of ye,” she says awkwardly before she closes the door. “I really appreciate the help.”

“Don’t mention it,” Jaime says. The smile he gives her—a little softer than his usual one—makes that funny feeling intensify. He really is astonishingly beautiful. “Stay safe out there, culchie. And let me know if you get your bag back.”

“It was lovely to meet you, Brienne.” Tyrion starts the car again. “Now hurry in there before Sansa sees us.”

“Bye,” she says hastily, closing the car door behind her, and they immediately speed away.

Chapter Text

After an evening of calling every Garda station on the Dart line, as well as Irish Rail (with Pride and Prejudice on in the background), Brienne finally gets a call back on Sansa’s phone from Killester garda station. Her bag has been handed in. Her whole body sags with relief.

“Someone else rang us on your behalf, too,” the garda says. He sounds oddly formal. “Will you please let Mr. Lannister know?”

So Jaime really had called all the garda stations for her. Brienne is baffled by his kindness. “I will,” she says. “Thank you so, so much. I’ll collect it this evening.”

She hangs up and beams at Sansa, who has been listening intently as she munches her spicebag. “It was handed in to Killester garda station.”

Sansa claps her hands. “Oh my God, amazing!” she says in her musical Derry accent. “And all your stuff was still in it?”

“My phone and my wallet, yeah.” Brienne shakes her head. “I still don’t know how I could have been so stupid. I think I was just so focused on getting off at the right stop that I forgot about it.”

Sansa smiles. “Don’t worry about it, we’ve all been there. It takes some getting used to.” She lowers her voice. “Don’t tell anyone this, but my first week in Dublin, I thought you had to put your hand out to get the Luas to stop for you. I must have looked like such an idiot.”

Brienne laughs. “That makes me feel a bit better.”

“By the way,” Sansa says, “did I hear that garda say Lannister?”

Brienne hesitates. She doesn’t like the idea of lying to Sansa, but Jaime had implied that she might lose her job if Catelyn knew she had associated with him. As unlikely as that sounds, she doesn’t want to risk it.

“Oh, no,” she says. “He said, eh, Bannister. Some guy called Mr. Bannister handed my bag in.”

Sansa visibly relaxes. “Oh, good. I didn’t know how they could have been involved, but that name is never good news.”

Brienne isn’t sure how much she should probe, but she’s desperate to know. After the kindness Jaime has shown her, she finds it hard to believe he could have done something really terrible to the Starks. “I heard...” she ventures. “I heard your family has a bad history with the Lannisters?”

Sansa’s face darkens. “Aye. Jaime in particular.”

“What happened?” Brienne asks nervously.

“He hit my little brother with his car.”

“Oh, my God.” Brienne’s mouth goes dry. So that’s why he got his licence taken away. “Was your brother OK?”

“It could have been a lot worse, I suppose. But he broke his leg in three places and he hasn’t been able to play hurling since. It was his favourite thing in the world.” Sansa shakes her head. “He was only ten. Did you not see him on the Late Late Toy Show last Christmas? He talked about it there. They surprised him with the Derry hurling team.”

“I didn’t see it,” Brienne admits. “There was a really bad storm on the island that night and all the power went out. Your poor brother.”

Sansa smiles. “Oh, Bran was happy enough to be on telly. And the whole team signed his jersey. But yeah, we’ve had bad blood with the Lannisters ever since. Mam was going to take Jaime to court, but he paid us off with a ton of money – I assume so that the whole thing wouldn’t reflect badly on Cersei and Robert. But really, he deserved jail time. He was speeding in a residential area. Cersei was in the car too. They were late for some stupid gala or something.” She stabs a piece of chicken with her fork. “Scumbags.”

“That’s awful,” Brienne says quietly.

“There’s even more to it. My dad, he actually used to be best friends with Robert Baratheon, before he became Taoiseach.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. They went to college together. My dad really wanted a united Ireland, and Robert did too, at the time. He promised Dad he’d advocate for it when he got into politics. But when he married Cersei Lannister, his priorities all changed. Tywin Lannister was in his ear the whole time, and suddenly all he cared about was big corporations and giving tax breaks to millionaires.” Sansa shakes her head in disgust. “If your rent is too high, by the way, you can blame Tywin for that. His horrible company bought up half the buildings in Dublin and turned them into expensive hotels. He’s basically the reason we have a housing crisis, and of course Robert is doing nothing to stop it.”

Brienne thinks of Jaime’s business card, the gold lettering. Lannister Properties. He’s part of the problem as well. Her heart sinks.

On the TV, Darcy is confessing his love to Elizabeth. You have bewitched me, body and soul, and I love.... I love... I love you.

Sansa sighs happily, the Lannisters forgotten. “God, I love this movie.”

Brienne forces a smile and agrees, but for once, she can’t quite concentrate on it.

Brienne collects her bag from Killester garda station on the way home. She’d gotten lucky for a change—Killester is where she lives, so she’d have been going there anyway. She uses the money Jaime gave her to pay for her Dart ticket, trying not to think about what she’s just learned about him.

On the bus into work the next day, she decides to text him. After all, he had helped her, and he had asked her to tell him if she got her bag back. It’s only polite to let him know.

Hi, it’s Brienne. I got my bag back, someone handed it in to the guards in Killester. Thanks again for your help :)

He replies almost immediately. Delighted to hear it, sweetling.

Sweetling again. She feels that same curl of pleasure in her stomach that she had the other day, then quickly feels guilty. Not only has this man hurt Sansa’s little brother, but he is actively contributing to the housing crisis. He and his beautiful golden family are the reason she can barely afford groceries.

She decides not to text him again.

A few moments later, however, he sends her another message: If you’re ever in trouble again, call me. I mean it. I know you don’t know many people in Dublin. I can be your emergency contact.

She can’t help the way her heartbeat speeds up a little, but she stays firm. Thinking about her worryingly low bank balance, drained from the last rent payment for her tiny room in her crappy houseshare, gives her strength. She doesn’t respond.

An hour later, when she’s in the office, her phone buzzes again. It’s Jaime. You asked Sansa about me, didn’t you?

Her stomach twists.

Seemingly taking her silence as confirmation, he texts again: Well, it’s a pity, but I don’t blame you. It was nice getting to know you, culchie. I would have liked to get to know you better.

Brienne puts her phone face down on the desk and tries to concentrate on work, but she can’t deny the disappointment she feels. She chides herself. Jaime might be beautiful, and he might have done her a favour, but that doesn’t change the fact that he is making obscene amounts of money out of making things worse for people like her. He’s essentially a landlord of the worst kind. A mega-landlord.

A mega-landlord who hit a child with his car while speeding in a residential area.

No amount of Dart fares or phone calls to Garda stations could change that.

That evening, she decides to Google him. The fact that he had asked her not to makes her feel a bit bad, but also makes her want to do it more.

It is immediately clear that Jaime is a lot more famous than she had realised. Clearly, she’s been out of the loop all those years on the island. There are thousands of results.

The first headline, to her dismay, reads: Is Jaime Lannister the Most Hated Man in Ireland?

The second one reads: Taoiseachslayer Jaime Lannister Embroiled in Scandal Yet Again.

Brienne frowns. Taoiseachslayer?

She clicks it.

Jaime Lannister, once a suspect in the high-profile murder case of former Taoiseach Aerys Targaryen, has been accused of seriously injuring ten-year-old Bran Stark through reckless driving. The former Leinster Rugby player, who was forced to retire from the sport after the Aerys Targaryen scandal, was identified on the Late Late Toy Show last night by Stark himself as the person who hit Stark with his car, breaking his leg in three places. Though Lannister settled outside of court with the Stark family, meaning he never faced criminal charges, Bran Stark claimed last night on live national television that Lannister was driving at 60 km/h in a 30 km/h zone. Stark was an aspiring hurler, playing for his local under-12 team, but has been told by doctors that he may never hurl again due to his injury. Lannister and his family’s property development firm, Lannister Properties, have received major public backlash after Bran Stark’s claims, with many Toy Show watchers taking to Twitter to demand that Lannister face jail time.

Brienne stares at the screen, disbelieving. When the hell was Jaime suspected of killing a Taoiseach?

The words ‘high-profile murder case’ link to another article, which she clicks. This is an old one from 2004, three years after she was born. No wonder she doesn’t remember.

Jaime Lannister No Longer a Suspect in Aerys Targaryen Murder, is the headline.

The article reads: 17-year-old Jaime Lannister, rising rugby star and son of Lannister Properties tycoon Tywin Lannister, has been dropped as a suspect from the Aerys Targaryen murder case. The former Taoiseach was found dead of asphyxiation in his home two weeks ago after a party that Lannister attended, along with his father Tywin and sister Cersei. The death was ruled as suspicious by Gardaí, who took Lannister in for questioning as he was the last person to be seen with the deceased. Friends and family of Aerys Targaryen have also stated that Tywin Lannister was once a close friend of the deceased, but that they were known to have had a disagreement shortly before the party. The Gardaí announced yesterday that Lannister is no longer a suspect, and that they will not be questioning any other members of the Lannister family.

Heart pounding, Brienne scrolls down to read the comments. All of them are more or less the same.

Ned246: GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY

barristan92: So obvious that daddy Tywin paid the Gardaí off. Couldn’t have the rich rugby star going to jail

bobbyb: well, aerys WAS a terrible taoiseach. someone had to do it amirite! ;P

l1ttlefingr: Hmm, so the Gardaí dropped him as a suspect, but why, when all the evidence points to him? Very strange that they wouldn’t reveal that information. Power is a trick, a shadow on the wall.

masterofwhispers: a little birdie told me it was him...

idrinkandiknowthings: he's innocent :(

thelightofsouthdublin: the NEEEEEEEEECK of some of these comments!!!! none of you know what you're talking about!!! >:(

viserys7: he defo did it!!!!!! handsome tho

villagewoman29: well, it would be half a shame for a man that pretty to go to jail for life

Fingers trembling, Brienne types in another Google search: who killed Aerys Targaryen? The first result that pops up informs her that nobody was ever charged with the murder.

She closes the tab, exhaling; she’s read enough. So now Jaime is a former murder suspect, along with everything else. All the more reason to never associate with him again.

He was dropped as a suspect, though, says a hopeful little voice in her head. He was never accused.

That doesn’t matter, though, she knows. From reading the comments, along with everything else she’s heard about him, it’s clear that the Lannisters are a very powerful and very shady family. It doesn’t seem unlikely that Tywin could have bribed—or even threatened—the Gardaí.

She reaches into her tote bag for Jaime’s business card, stares at it for a moment, then crumples it up and throws it into the bin.

She will have nothing more to do with Jaime Lannister.

Chapter Text

“Oh my God, we’ve been nominated for an award!”

Brienne and Sansa look up immediately to see Catelyn staring at her laptop in disbelief. With a gasp of delight, Sansa jumps up from her seat beside Brienne and rushes to look over her mother’s shoulder.

“Best New Business at the Irish Women in Business Awards! Oh, Mam, that’s amazing!”

“Someone must have submitted us for consideration,” Catelyn says, looking dazed but happy. She tilts her head up to look at her daughter, her long auburn hair falling down her back. “Was it you?”

Sansa shakes her head, and they both look over at Brienne, who smiles sheepishly. “I didn’t want to say anything in case we didn’t get nominated,” she admits. “But I thought it would be a good way to get our name out there.”

Catelyn beams. “Oh, Brienne, you’re a genius! Thank you!”

Brienne blushes. She never knows how to react to compliments.

“Oh, I’m so excited,” says Sansa, clapping her hands. “Will we all get to go?”

Catelyn looks at the email again, and her smile drops. “Oh. Oh, no.”

“What is it?” asks Sansa worriedly.

“It’s the day of Bran’s surgery.”

Brienne’s heart plummets. She hadn’t known the date of the award ceremony when she had made the submission, but she knows Bran has been on a waiting list for this knee surgery for almost a year.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, feeling terrible. “If I’d known...”

“Nonsense, Brienne, it’s not your fault,” Catelyn says, all business again. She smiles. “And this is still a great thing for us, whether I can make the ceremony or not. If we win, someone else can just accept the award for me.”

Brienne looks at Sansa, thinking her the obvious choice. But Sansa is biting her lip as she peers at the email. “I can’t go, either,” she says ruefully. “That’s the weekend I’m going to Kerry with Jeyne. She’s been having a tough time recently, I don’t want to bail on her.”

Sansa and Catelyn both look at Brienne, and she goes cold.

“Oh, no,” she blurts. “No. I couldn’t possibly... there are much better... what about Robb? Or Arya?” She has met all of Catelyn’s children by now; they call in to the office regularly.

“They don’t work for Abhainn. We need someone who knows the business.” Catelyn spreads her hands as if it’s obvious. “Who better than our head of marketing?”

Brienne hates when Catelyn calls her the head of marketing. Apart from Sansa, who isn’t even an official employee, Brienne is the entire marketing department.

“You wouldn’t have to make a whole speech,” Catelyn says cajolingly. “Just a couple of lines saying how grateful and honoured I am, and how sorry I am that I couldn’t be there. And that’s if we win. Who are we up against? Probably Vogue Williams’ new fake tan brand that everyone’s raving about. We probably don’t even stand a chance.”

Brienne isn’t convinced. Abhainn is doing so well that Catelyn can barely keep up with all the orders flooding in. Last week there’d been a glowing article about them in the Irish Times, and then one of Ireland’s biggest influencers had made a TikTok showing off the necklace Brienne had sent her, resulting in a slew of new customers.

“It’ll be fun, Brienne,” Sansa says brightly. “You’ll get to meet some celebrities!”

Catelyn nods. “And you won’t be by yourself. It says we’ll have a table for six, so Pia can go, and Gendry, and he’ll probably bring Arya. And you, of course, Pod,” she adds, smiling over at Pod the intern. “That leaves an extra space if you want to bring a plus-one, Brienne.”

Brienne can’t think of a single person she’d want to bring as a plus-one. “That’s OK,” she says dully.

Catelyn leans forward, looking concerned. “Brienne, I wouldn’t ask you to do this if I didn’t think you could. You’re more than capable. You’ll be great, I promise.”

Brienne forces a smile. “Thanks, Catelyn. I won’t let you down.”

A month later, she’s walking into the award ceremony in a rented blue gown, feeling more out of place than she ever has in her life.

There’s an actual red carpet for people to pose for photos. Brienne’s first instinct is to run right past it, but she knows that the most important thing for Abhainn is to get as much publicity as possible, so she stands with her coworkers and forces a smile, hoping she doesn’t look as miserable as she feels. Her dress is flattering, and Margaery had done a great job on her hair and makeup, but she knows she doesn’t look good. Nothing could make her look good.

Inside, they find their table and sit down. Everyone else is in high spirits – Gendry, Arya, Pia, and Pia’s boyfriend Peck, who had come along to fill the extra chair. Only Pod seems to share her nerves, but at least he doesn’t have to potentially get up on stage in front of everyone.

The ceremony begins, and the MC, Taena Merryweather, begins going through the categories. Most Innovative Business, Best Marketing Campaign, Most Eco-Friendly Business. With each award, the knot in Brienne’s stomach twists tighter and tighter. Her hands are starting to shake, and she grips her glass tighter so people won’t notice.

As the winner of Most Eco-Friendly Business gives her speech, Brienne glances around the room in an attempt to distract herself from her nerves. As Sansa had said, there are some famous faces present – influencers, celebrity businesswomen, reporters, politicians.

And then she spots a face that makes her feel like she’s punched in the stomach.

Red Ronnet Connington.

She flinches so violently she knocks her glass over. Champagne soaks into the pristine white tablecloth, and everybody jumps.

“Are you OK, Brienne?” Arya asks. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Before she can reply, Taena Merryweather reclaims the mic. “Our next award,” she announces brightly, “is Best New Business!”

Fuck.

Everyone at Brienne’s table sits up straight, the spilled champagne forgotten. Brienne takes deep breaths as Taena reads out the nominees.

“And the winner is...”

The pause seems to go on forever. Then--

“Abhainn!” Taena cries.

The room erupts with applause. Brienne’s teammates jump to their feet, whooping, but Brienne feels paralysed. How can I go up there, in front of all those people? How can I go up there in front of him?

“Go on, Brienne!” Arya shouts encouragingly, pushing her in the direction of the stage. Somehow, she manages to put one foot in front of the other. Her entire body is shaking now. The heels she is so unused to wearing, low as they are, make her even more unsteady.

She makes it onto the stage. Taena gives her a wide, fake smile and a hug, then presents her with the award and the mic.

Petrified, Brienne stares out into the audience. There are so many people, all of them looking at her. Some of them are smiling. Are they laughing at her? Then she sees Red Ronnet again, an incredulous grin on his face.

He is most definitely laughing at her.

Do it for Catelyn, she reminds herself, raising the mic to her lips. She opens her mouth, but no words come out. Her mind is blank. She had been rehearsing this the whole way up in the car, but now she can’t even remember what she is supposed to say.

Taena is waiting. The silence is growing awkward. Finally, Brienne finds her tongue.

She stammers her way through the few lines she had rehearsed, her voice wavering. Whether she says them correctly or not, she doesn’t know. Her hand is trembling so much she almost drops the mic. She knows she should smile, but she can’t quite make her face do it.

When she’s done, she shoves the mic back into Taena’s hand and practically runs off the stage.

The applause is scattered, and starts a little later than it should. Above it, Brienne is certain she can hear Red Ronnet laughing.

“Are you OK?” Arya asks, again, as soon as Brienne gets back to the table. Everyone is looking at her with concern.

Unable to speak, she just nods in response.

As Taena reads out the next category, Brienne decides she can’t stay in the room a second longer. She mutters something about needing air and hurries out the door, feeling stares on her back.

She stumbles down the stairs to the blessedly quiet hotel lobby and collapses into an armchair, wanting to cry. She has embarrassed the company; she has let Catelyn down. Instead of talking about what a great new business Abhainn is, everyone will just be talking about her and how she could barely get through her three-line speech.

“All right there, Beauty?”

Her head shoots up at the sound of the voice, dread curdling in her stomach.

Red Ronnet Connington is standing in front of her, grinning, two of his stupid friends behind him. Just like that day at the cinema when she was thirteen years old, on her first date that she had quickly realised was not a date at all.

She had been new to the school, new to the mainland, new to boys. She had just started first year, and she was getting the ferry to the mainland every day. The school felt huge, the other students intimidating, and she had yet to make any friends. When Red Ronnet, who was two years older and a county minor, had asked her to go to the cinema with him, she’d been ecstatic.

Brienne the Beauty, he’d said when he’d shown up with his laughing friends in tow. I can’t believe you actually came. I can’t believe you thought this was a real date.

You should have known I’d never go near you, you ugly pig.

She had cried the whole way home on the ferry, the mascara she’d applied for the first time running down her face.

Now, Ronnet is shaking his head, grinning. He’s slurring his words, and she can smell alcohol on his breath.

“Long time, no see, Brienne. You haven’t changed a bit. That was a great speech.”

Behind him, his friends are chortling. She can tell that they’re drunk, too.

Words are wind, she tells herself. Just ignore them.

“I—I—I’m accepting this award on b-b-behalf of, of, of, Catelyn S-Stark...” Ronnet’s voice is exaggeratedly high-pitched and wobbly. He holds out an imaginary award in a violently shaking hand. “Sh-sh-she’s so sorry she c-couldn’t, em, b-b-be here tonight...”

His friends laugh raucously. Ronnet laughs too. “You might want to work on the aul’ public speaking, Beauty,” he says, before turning around and walking directly into Jaime Lannister’s fist.

It happens so fast Brienne barely registers it. All of a sudden Ronnet on the floor, clutching his bloody mouth, and Jaime is standing over him, shaking out his hand.

One of Ronnet’s friends lunges at Jaime, but the other (more sober) one yanks him back. “That’s the Taoiseachslayer, you gobshite,” he hisses, sounding panicked.

A flustered receptionist hurries over to them. “Gentlemen, I’m going to have to ask you all to leave.”

“No problem,” Jaime says calmly. He looks at Brienne. “Do you need a lift home?”

Five minutes later, after sending a hurried text to Arya, Brienne is in the back of a taxi with Jaime Lannister.

Part of her is very concerned that she has made a terrible mistake, but another, larger part can’t bear the thought of walking back into that conference room. The award ceremony is almost over anyway, and she’s done her part, albeit badly. Surely no one could blame her for leaving now.

That doesn’t make her feel any less awful.

“Don’t worry, culchie,” Jaime says lightly as she tries very hard not to cry. “If you’ve never been in a taxi before, I’ll explain to you how it works.”

She smiles in spite of herself, then remembers that he might be a murderer. The murderer of a Taoiseach, no less. She closes her eyes. When had her life become so complicated?

“What were you doing at the Irish Women in Business Awards, anyway?” she asks, because it’s easier than asking him if he’s a murderer.

“My aunt Genna is the CFO of Lannister Properties. She was up for an award. And I’m all about supporting Irish women in business.”

“Congratulations to her,” Brienne says flatly.

“She didn’t win. But thanks anyway.”

Her phone buzzes. It’s Asha, her housemate. Hey Bri, I hope you don’t mind but I’m having a few people over tonight (40-50.) Might be a bit noisy. Sorry!

Brienne groans, tipping her head back against the seat. The last thing she wants is to go home to one of Asha’s wild parties.

“What’s wrong?” Jaime asks.

“My housemate’s having a party,” Brienne says, wondering if forty to fifty people will even fit in their tiny house. “I won’t be getting any sleep tonight.”

“Why don’t you join them? Could be fun.”

“I’m not really in a party mood right now. Or ever, to be honest. But especially not now.”

“You don’t seem like the type,” Jaime agrees. “Well, stay at mine, then.”

Brienne blinks. “What?”

He smirks. “Don’t worry, I’m not implying anything. I have a spare room. Several, actually.”

The offer is tempting, though she knows she shouldn’t even consider it. He’s a suspected Taoiseach murderer, and he’d hit a small child with his car, and his family caused the housing crisis. And her boss hates him and would probably fire her if she found out.

But he had also just punched Red Ronnet Connington in the face in her defence. Nobody has ever done anything like that for her. And for some reason, that seems more important than all the rest of it just now.

“Why did you hit Red Ronnet?” she asks.

Jaime looks away. “I don’t know,” he says lightly. “I had a dream about you last night. Maybe that was why.”

“What kind of dream?” she asks warily.

“I was lost on the Aran Islands, and you came and showed me the way.”

Brienne sighs. “Can you just say one thing that’s not a joke?”

He smiles. “That wasn’t a joke, culchie. That was a real dream I had. But if you want a more serious answer, I did it for the same reason I helped you on the bus, and the Luas, and in Clontarf. I did it because I like you.”

There is silence for a moment as she tries to decide whether or not she should believe him. It makes a weird kind of sense, she supposes – why else would he do all that? If it was all a big joke, there had been no one there to point and laugh. But--

“What’s there to like?” she hears herself say, and is embarrassed when tears well up in her eyes.

She closes her eyes so he won’t see, but it’s too late. He reaches over, wordless, and wipes away the tears on her cheeks with his thumb. His hand is warm, his touch surprisingly gentle. Her heart starts to beat faster as she breathes in the scent of his cologne.

“That’s a very silly question,” he says quietly.

“Is it? Every time you see me, I’m embarrassing myself.”

“You moved from a remote island to the big city all by yourself. You’re straight out of college, you don’t know anyone here, but you’re determined to make a life for yourself. And just an hour ago you were up on stage at one of the biggest award ceremonies in the country. That’s impressive, culchie.”

She shakes her head. “I made a fool out of myself on that stage.”

“No, you didn’t. You seemed a tiny bit nervous, that was all, but who cares? You were perfectly fine. I promise.” Jaime pauses. “You know, I’ve never had to do anything like what you’ve done. Everything I have was handed to me.” His mouth twitches. “And I still managed to fuck up my life.”

This is her chance to ask. She takes a breath, and looks at him.

“I Googled you,” she says. “I’m sorry.”

He gives her another humourless half-smile. “And? What’s the verdict?”

“I don’t know,” she says simply. “I wanted to hear your side.”

He blinks. “Well, there’s a new one. No one’s ever asked me for my side before.”

She waits, but he glances meaningfully at the taxi driver.

“OK,” she says, after a moment. “I suppose you’ll have to tell me at your place, then.”

He smiles.

Chapter Text

Jaime’s house is located on a leafy street in Ballsbridge. Sandwiched between stately red-brick houses, it stands out, and not in a good way. It is comprised of three oddly-shaped blocks stacked on top of each other, jutting out at strange angles. The windows are huge, making the facade more glass than brick. It’s clearly the pinnacle of modern design, but Brienne can’t help finding it ugly. She wonders if Dermot Bannon designed it.

Inside, everything is clean and sleek and minimalist. The colour scheme is white and grey, with only a few bland pieces of abstract art to decorate the walls. It’s so impersonal it feels like a show home. Brienne sits down awkwardly on the edge of the grey couch, wondering if she was insane to come here. Her feet are throbbing in her heels, but she doesn’t feel comfortable enough to take them off.

“Did you decorate this yourself?” she asks. It doesn’t really seem like his style, but she supposes she doesn’t know what his style is.

“Nah. Dad bought it for me, furnished and decorated.”

Of course.

“You don’t want to put your own stamp on it?”

Jaime shrugged. “I’m not much of a decorator. I do like the white, but the grey’s a bit boring. And I’m definitely going to sell those ugly paintings.” He goes to a bar cart in the corner of the room. “Whiskey?”

Brienne isn’t much of a drinker, and especially not of whiskey; but after the night she’s had, she feels like she could use one. “Please.”

As she takes the glass from him, she thinks, If there’s a true crime documentary about me, they’ll say I did everything wrong. Then she feels guilty. Jaime has done nothing but help her, and despite herself, she trusts him.

Jaime takes off his jacket and tie and throws them over the back of a chair, then opens the first few buttons on his shirt. She finds herself staring at his tanned throat, the hollow between his collarbones, and feels her cheeks warm. She looks away.

He sits down on the other end of the couch and takes a sip of whiskey. She does the same, wincing as it burns her throat.

Jaime smiles. “That’s good whiskey. Thirty years old.”

“I’m sure it is,” she mutters, trying not to cough.

“So,” he says, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “Which story do you want first? Aerys, or Bran?”

Her heart starts to beat faster. She feels a little stupid suddenly, sitting on his couch and demanding explanations from him about things that don’t concern her, but she can’t continue to know him if she doesn’t have answers.

And she wants to know him.

“Up to you,” she says.

“Well, Bran’s the easier one, I suppose.” He sighs heavily. “My sister and I are very close, you know. Or at least, we used to be. We haven’t been getting on so well lately. But there was a time when I would have done anything for her. I was driving her to this charity gala where she had to give a speech, and we were late and she was stressed, and she was shouting at me to drive faster and faster. And obviously I shouldn’t have, because we were in a thirty zone, but I did. I’m not blaming her. I was the one driving. And the Stark boy...” Jaime runs a hand through his hair. It had been combed back off his face, but now it falls forward into his eyes. “He just appeared out of nowhere, with his hurl in his hand. He was visiting his cousins and they were playing in the road, I found out later.” He shakes his head. “I just didn’t have time to stop.”

There is a haunted look on his face. Brienne doesn’t know what to say. Sansa had made it sound as if Jaime didn’t particularly care about what he’d done to Bran, but it’s clear it weighs on him.

“I could have killed him,” Jaime continues. “I think about that every day. They wanted to take me to court, and I would have gone, but Dad got involved. He offered them a crazy amount of money to settle outside of court. Couldn’t have the Lannister name dragged through the mud again.” His lip curls. “Or the Baratheon name.”

He takes another sip of whiskey, staring off into the distance. Brienne is silent.

“Well?” Jaime says dryly, after a few moments. “Any thoughts?”

Brienne chews her lip. “It sounds like the guilt is punishment enough,” she says at last.

Jaime’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Not according to the Starks. I think they’d only be happy if I lost a leg, too. Or a hand. Something like that.”

“You can’t blame them,” she says quietly. “Ned had just died. They were already suffering.”

“Oh, I don’t.” He pauses. “Could have done without the whole Toy Show thing, though.”

Brienne can’t help but agree with that. She had since watched the clip on Youtube. How did you break your leg, Bran? the Toy Show host had asked when the boy hobbled out on crutches. Jaime Lannister hit me with his car, Bran had replied immediately, to a gasp from the audience. When Bran had tearfully explained that he might never hurl again, followed by his emotional introduction to the Derry hurling team, Brienne could almost hear the entire population of Ireland sharpening their pitchforks.

“How do you even go out in public after that?” she asks.

“I did have to lie low for a bit.” Jaime shrugs. “I still get spat at sometimes, but it’s not as bad any more. People have short memories.”

Another silence. She gets the sense that he is waiting for her to judge him somehow, to declare him innocent or guilty, and it makes her uncomfortable.

“You made a mistake,” she says at last. “A bad one, but still. You don’t deserve to be crucified for it forever.”

He exhales, as though he’s been waiting to hear that. “You think so?”

“Yeah.”

The corner of his mouth quirks up. “Maybe you could mention that in passing to your boss.”

She gives him a hesitant smile, but she’s nervous for what’s coming next. Jaime must be thinking along the same lines, because his face darkens.

“So. Aerys. I’ll warn you... this one is worse.”

Her heart sinks.

Jaime opens his mouth, then closes it again. For a moment, he looks puzzled. “You know,” he says, half-laughing, “I don’t think I’ve ever actually told his story before.”

“Really?” Surely that can’t be true. “Not even to the Gardaí?”

He looks her in the eye. “No.”

She feels a cold sense of foreboding. Suddenly, she’s not so sure if she wants to hear this after all.

Jaime gets up to pour them both more whiskey, and she wonders if she should just leave. But she stays rooted to her spot on the couch, silently holding out her glass for him to refill. She’s already feeling the effects of the first one, warm and a little dizzy, so she resolves to drink this one more slowly.

“You’re probably too young to remember when Aerys was Taoiseach,” Jaime says, and she nods. “Towards the end of his last term, he was losing his mind. Not that he was ever particularly stable to begin with. He was always a paranoid, power-hungry, cruel man. So of course, he and my dad were best friends.”

The casual slight against his father takes her by surprise.

“My dad’s not a politician,” Jaime continues, “but I think Aerys always admired what a successful businessman he was – and resented him for it at the same time. So he was constantly asking my dad for advice. But when it became clearer and clearer that Aerys wasn’t fit to be Taoiseach any more, and his own party was going behind his back to talk about ousting him, Dad had to be honest with him. He told Aerys to step down of his own accord, before he was forced to, and Aerys didn’t like that at all. They had a huge row over it. But then a few days later, he invited all of us – except Tyrion, he was too young to go -- to a party at his house. That seemed odd, but it would have looked bad if we didn’t go, so we went.”

Jaime stares at the bottom of his whiskey glass, swirling the amber liquid around. “The house was full of Aerys’ favourite arse-lickers. He asked my dad to go to his study for a private talk, and I just got a bad feeling, so I followed them and listened outside the door. Aerys was ranting and raving about how my dad was trying to sabotage him, how Dad was jealous of his power, stuff like that. And then I heard my dad say put that down. He almost sounded scared, and I’d never in my life heard my dad sound scared.”

Brienne holds her breath.

Jaime looks at her. “What would you have done, Brienne? I went in, and there was a fire blazing in the hearth, and Aerys was brandishing a piece of turf from the basket beside it. At first, I didn’t get it. Why would my dad be afraid of a piece of turf? And then Aerys started shouting about how he was going to burn down the house with everyone in it.”

Jaime takes a long drink of whiskey. Brienne doesn’t make a sound.

“He had his back to me. He hadn’t heard me come in. I didn’t even think about it. I just grabbed him by the throat. I don’t know if I even meant to kill him. I just wanted him unconscious, but when he did die...” Jaime looks at Brienne, those green eyes searing into hers. “I didn’t regret it.”

Silence.

Jaime smiles. “Do you think I’m a monster now? Maybe you do. But you don’t know what that man was like. He’d been making our lives miserable ever since he became Taoiseach. Constantly trying to interfere with things so that Dad would never look better than him. Say Dad wanted planning permission to build somewhere, he’d pull some strings and make sure Dad didn’t get it. And then there was the Cersei and Rhaegar thing.”

Brienne has seen photos of Aerys’ son Rhaegar, who had left the country after his father’s death. He was very beautiful, with long silvery hair and violet eyes. She hadn’t known he was ever involved with Cersei.

“They were engaged,” Jaime says flatly. “For all of a day. They’d been together for a while, and she was madly in love with him, but Aerys always hated it. He didn’t want us becoming part of his illustrious family; he thought we were beneath him. So when he found out that Rhaegar had proposed, he flipped. He told Rhaegar to break off the engagement or he’d disown him. And Rhaegar did. Cersei never got over it. Now she’s married to that clown, Robert.” Jaime makes a face. “Oh, yeah. And any time Dad did anything that displeased Aerys, he’d threaten to have us all killed. I don’t know how serious those threats were, considering he was the Taoiseach and not a Mafia don, but he was the most powerful man in the country. We didn’t want to take any chances.”

Brienne finds her voice. “What did you tell the Gardaí?” she asks quietly. “Why did they drop you as a suspect?”

Jaime shrugs. “Dad told me to deny everything, and that he’d take care of the rest. I don’t know what he did, exactly. Paid them off, probably.”

“Why didn’t you tell them about Aerys threatening to burn the house down? You could have claimed self-defence.”

“And would they have believed me? The only witnesses were me and Dad. There was no proof.”

Brienne falls silent again, trying to process this information. Jaime leans back on the couch, affecting nonchalance, but he’s watching her closely.

Finally, Brienne says, “Why are you telling me all this? I could walk out of here and go straight to the Guards.”

He shrugs again. “Honestly? I have no idea. I suppose I just wanted you to know.”

“That you killed someone?”

He meets her gaze again, eyes burning into hers, and she has to fight the urge to look away or blush. “That I did it for a good reason. That I did it to save my family.”

She is silent.

Jaime laughs a ragged half-laugh, his expression turning almost desperate for a moment. “Nothing to say? Come on, Brienne, give me something. Anything.”

“It’s not up to me to judge you, Jaime.”

“I’m not asking you to judge me. I’m just asking if you still want to know me.”

She looks at him, the most hated man in Ireland, sitting on the couch with his empty whiskey glass in his hand. His habitual smirk is gone, and his expression is raw, vulnerable. His face looks like an open wound. His eyes are searching her face, hungry for something. For her acceptance, she realises. Her understanding. He looks younger than his thirty-something years, and she feels as though she’s looking at the boy he was when he killed Aerys, no more than seventeen.

As she looks at him, she feels something shift inside her. There’s no going back now, she realises. He has hit Red Ronnet for her, and she has sat on his couch and heard his confession. Even if she wanted to turn her back on him now, to leave his house and have nothing more to do with him, she can’t.

And she doesn’t want to.

“Yes,” she says quietly. “I still want to know you.”

Jaime lets out another ragged laugh, but this time it sounds relieved. He slumps back on the couch, rubbing a hand across his forehead.

His relief makes no sense to her. Why does he care so much if she wants to know him or not? Why does he care so much about what she thinks? None of it makes sense.

Maybe that’s why she does what she does next. Or maybe it’s how vulnerable he seems in that moment, or the weird intimacy of sitting beside him on his couch in his dark and silent house, or the enticing smell of his cologne. Or the whiskey.

It's probably the whiskey.

Whatever the reason, she leans forward and kisses him.

As soon as their lips touch, she realises the absurdity of what she’s doing, and she pulls back immediately, heart pounding. Jaime is staring at her, wide-eyed.

“I’m sorry,” she blurts. “I don’t know what... it was the whiskey. I should go.”

But before she can move, Jaime puts a hand on her cheek, draws her face back to his and kisses her again.

Her kiss had been tentative, chaste, barely a kiss at all. Jaime’s kiss is nothing like that. He kisses her with the desperation of someone drowning. Brienne is not an experienced kisser, but she finds herself kissing him back with the same hunger, opening her mouth for his tongue, tangling her hand in his hair just like he’s doing to her. He presses her down on the couch and she melts into him and the world disappears until there is nothing but him and her and this kiss that she never wants to end.

Jaime’s lips move down her neck, sucking hard at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, making her gasp. Her dress is lower-cut than anything she would usually wear, and he presses open-mouthed kisses along her collarbone before moving down to the small swell of her exposed cleavage. He pauses there for a moment, just looking, then glances up at her with the wickedest smile she’s ever seen.

“I meant to tell you,” he says, his voice low and rich and impossibly sexy, D4 accent and all. “I love this dress on you. Really brings out your eyes.”

He’s not looking at her eyes, though. He’s looking at her breasts, and that combined with the compliment and the fact that his hand is sliding up her leg makes her so flustered that she hears herself blurt out, “I’m wearing a push-up bra.”

Jaime looks up at her again with a mixture of amusement and surprise, and she wants to die. Then he says, “And it’s doing a great job, but do you mind if I take it off?” and her embarrassment is forgotten.

The short flutter sleeves of her dress have already slipped off both shoulders, and Jaime eases the neckline of her dress down further until her strapless bra is exposed. He mouths at her small breasts above the bra, and the feel of his stubble grazing her skin makes her sigh. She fists her hands tighter in his hair, gasping again when he licks the valley between her breasts. She hitches her leg up against him, the slit in her dress freeing it from the fabric, and he runs his hand along it from her thigh to her knee, pressing her tighter to him. She can feel him, hard against her. Heat pools in her lower belly; she wants to wrap her legs around him, wants to feel him where she needs him the most. In the back of her mind, she can hardly believe how bold she's being. It's as if her body been possessed by someone else, some other girl far more confident than she is.

After a moment, he pulls back to look at her, and she lets out a tiny moan at the loss of his lips on her skin. He looks just as flushed and wrecked as she must, his golden hair tousled by her hands. Some of her pink lipstick, expertly applied by Margaery, is smeared at the corner of his mouth.

“Sweetling,” he says breathlessly, “I promise this wasn’t my intention when I brought you here.”

She half-laughs. “It wasn’t my intention either.”

“Are you sure you want this?”

She hesitates. “Yes, but I should probably tell you...” Her cheeks heat, and suddenly she is shy and uncertain again. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

He pauses, absorbing this. "Fuck, you're not too young for me, are you? How old are you?"

"I'm twenty-two," she says defensively, and he looks relieved.

“And you really want your first time to be with the most hated man in Ireland?” he asks, in a softer voice.

She bites her lip. “Yes. That is, if you want me.”

“If I want you?” His voice is incredulous. He presses into her so she can feel how hard he is, and she gasps. “I’ve wanted you since the moment I saw you, sweetling. But if you want me to stop, tell me, and I will.”

“Don’t stop,” she says, and leans up to kiss him again.

Chapter Text

Brienne wakes to bright sunlight streaming through Jaime’s giant Dermot Bannon windows, and is immediately filled with panic.

She turns over very slowly. Jaime is fast asleep beside her, looking far more beautiful than anyone should at this hour of the morning. The sun has turned his tousled hair to beaten gold, and the bedsheets are pooled at his waist, exposing tanned skin and chiselled muscles. She has never seen a body so perfect in real life. He looks like a Greek god.

A Greek god who, for some reason, had decided last night that he wanted her.

Brienne’s mouth is dry, her head pounding. She’d had too much whiskey last night, and evidently so had Jaime. That was the only possible explanation for why he had slept with her.

Maybe if she leaves now, he’ll forget it had ever happened.

She tries to slip out of the bed without making a sound, but she only has one foot on the floor when she hears him say huskily, “Where’re you going, culchie?”

Her stomach swoops. Reluctantly, she turns back around to face him, and sees to her surprise that he’s smiling.

“I assume you were going to make coffee,” he says, in a tone that implies he knows perfectly well where she was going. “Don’t worry, I’ll do it. I have a Sage Oracle Touch. I doubt you have them on the Aran Islands.”

She rolls her eyes, some of her nerves fading. “We do, actually,” she retorts. “My dad has one.”

“Really?”

“No. I don’t know what that is.”

He laughs.

“Come here,” he says, pulling her back into the bed. He gives her a long, languorous, delicious kiss, and for a moment all of her fears are forgotten. He breaks away and smiles at her, and she gives him a small, shy smile back.

“Are you all right?” he asks, sobering a little. “Last night... do you feel OK about it?”

She nods. “Do you?”

“Of course I do.” He brushes a stray strand of hair out of her eyes. “I just want you to know that I don’t do this very often. Bring younger women back to my apartment, I mean. In fact I never do it. And I wouldn’t have done it last night if it didn’t mean something to me.”

Brienne’s heart starts to beat faster, but she forces herself to think rationally. This man is from a completely different world than she is, and he’s so far out of her league it’s ludicrous. If this had happened in one of the cheesy romance novels she secretly loves, she would have thought it was too unbelievable. She takes a breath and sits up, holding the sheets to her chest.

“Jaime,” she says quietly. “You don’t have to spare my feelings just because last night was my first time. It’s OK. I don’t expect anything from you.”

Jaime frowns. “Spare your feelings? What are you talking about?”

“You know what I mean. We were both drunk last night. Neither of us planned on... this happening. If you’d rather forget about it...”

Jaime leans away from her, his expression turning cold. “You think I’m lying?”

“I think you’re trying to be kind to me. But you don’t have to.”

Jaime laughs, and it’s a dark sound. “People call me many things, but kind has never been one of them. I wouldn’t lie to spare your feelings, Brienne. If I didn’t want you, I never would have slept with you in the first place. But if you’d rather forget this ever happened...”

“No,” she says quickly. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Jaime studies her face for a moment, and his expression softens. “Good. Neither would I. Do you believe me?”

As impossible as it seems, she can’t help it; she does. She gives him a tiny nod, and he smiles.

This time, she kisses him first, soft and timid. He kisses her back just as gently, cupping her face in his hand as if she’s something precious. Then he lowers her back down onto the bed, pulling the sheets away from her, and she melts into him again.

When they finally go down to make the coffee, it’s almost noon. Wearing one of Jaime’s T-shirts, Brienne tries to listen as he explains how to use the coffee machine, which looks like something that belongs on a spaceship. But it’s a long and complicated process, and she keeps getting distracted by his face, and his lips, and his bare chest. She ends up cutting him off mid-sentence to kiss him, which leads to him lifting her onto the end of the marble kitchen island.

“What are you doing?” she asks breathlessly.

“Something I think you’ll like. Lie back, sweetling.”

“Here?” she asks, feeling a thrill of excitement as he eases her knickers down her legs.

“Yes, here.” It’s not a very comfortable place to lie, and her head just about misses the sink, but she has a feeling he’d be able to get her to lie down anywhere if he said it in that voice and called her sweetling. “Now put those lovely long legs of yours over my shoulders, just like that. Good girl.”

Sweetling was one thing; good girl is something else entirely. He plants an open-mouthed kiss on her inner thigh, making her shiver, and then his mouth is on her and she is lost.

They forget about the coffee again.

By the time they finally manage to make and drink the coffee, it’s one o’clock, and Brienne resigns herself to the fact that she should probably leave. When she voices this to Jaime, he says, “Why? Do you have plans?”

“Well, no, but...”

“But what? Let’s go for lunch.”

“You mean... go out?”

Jaime laughs. “As good of a time as I’m having here with you, I don’t have any food in the fridge, so yes, I’m afraid we may have to leave the house.”

Brienne is silent, thinking of Catelyn. Dublin is a small city, and Jaime has a famous face. All it would take would be for the wrong person to see them together, and her boss could find out everything.

“You don’t want to be seen with me,” Jaime says abruptly.

Tentatively, Brienne takes his hands; she is not used to touching someone casually like this. “It’s not that. I’m worried about Catelyn, that’s all. She’s been really good to me, Jaime. I don’t want her to feel like I’ve betrayed her. And...”

“You don’t want to lose your job,” Jaime says in a softer voice. “I understand.”

“I’ll find a way to explain to her,” Brienne says, even as she’s thinking, How the hell am I going to do that? She pauses. “If there’s something to explain.”

Jaime raises an eyebrow. “I thought we addressed this.”

She looks down at the tiled floor. “I know, but we still barely know each other. I don’t expect you to make any kind of commitment to me just yet.”

“I know enough. But if you’d rather take things slow until you’re ready to talk to Cat, I understand.”

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

“So no lunch, then?”

“Well... we could always order in,” she says, blushing, and he grins.

While they’re waiting for their food to arrive, she finally checks her phone. It had been dead when she woke up, but Jaime had let her use his charger.

She has three messages. The first is from Catelyn, which makes her stomach twist. Arya tells me you did a great job at the awards ceremony yesterday. Thanks so much, I really appreciate it. You’re a star :)

The second is from Arya. Hey you left v suddenly last night, hope you’re ok. Tbh you had the right idea, we’re all violently hungover x

This is accompanied by a selfie of Arya, with tousled hair and smudged eye-makeup from the night before, holding up her mother’s award and doing a peace sign. Gendry is in the background with his head in his hands.

The third message is from Margaery. Hey, how did the ceremony go? Did you stay with Arya after? You were lucky you missed Asha’s party, the house is a wreck.

Brienne responds to Catelyn first; her message is from two hours ago. No problem at all, I just hope I didn’t embarrass you. How did Bran’s surgery go? The reminder that Catelyn had been at the hospital with her son while Brienne was losing her virginity to her worst enemy makes her wince.

She looks over at Jaime, happily munching on his €7.80 chicken fillet roll (they’d ended up getting a Centra delivery, which Brienne would have felt inordinately shameful about if Jaime hadn’t paid for it), and wonders how much Catelyn would despise her if she knew where she was right now. She feels like a fraud.

She tells Margaery that she had indeed stayed with Arya, and tells Arya that she’d gone home early because she felt sick. Each message brings a fresh pang of guilt. Brienne does not like lying.

Jaime sees her frowning at her phone and puts his chicken fillet roll down. “You OK?”

She nods. “Just replying to Catelyn.”

Now it’s his turn to frown. “Brienne, I really don’t want to put your job in jeopardy. Maybe this is a mistake.”

She chews her lip, getting the sinking feeling that he’s right. However slowly she and Jaime might take things, she will still be deceiving Catelyn. She doesn’t want to lose her job, or risk her friendship with Sansa and Arya, or throw the kindness Catelyn has shown her back in her face.

It’s typical that fate would give her a beautiful man who actually wants her, who had made her feel special for the first time in her life, only to snatch him away again the very next day.

“I said last night that I wanted to know you,” she says quietly. “And I meant it.”

“I want to know you too. But not at the expense of your career.” There is a crease between Jaime’s brows. “This is a great thing you’re building for yourself, Brienne. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I ruined it for you.”

She says nothing.

“I don’t want to ruin your relationship with the Starks, either. You’re friends with Sansa, aren’t you?”

“She’s my only friend in Dublin,” Brienne admits. “So far.”

“Well, maybe I could be your friend, too. Cat wouldn’t fire you over a friendship, would she?”

She looks at him. “You want to be friends? Just friends?”

“It’s up to you, sweetling,” Jaime says gently. “I’ll take whatever you offer me. I just don’t want to get you in trouble, that’s all.”

Part of Brienne wants to throw caution to the wind and tell him she doesn’t care, that she wants to be with him, that she’ll find a new job if Catelyn fires her. But that’s stupid, she knows. Stupid and reckless and selfish. Catelyn took a chance on her when she was fresh out of college with no experience, pays her more generously than most small businesses would, and had trusted her to represent the business at one of the biggest events in the country. Plus, Brienne likes her job at Abhainn. The work is interesting, and she gets along well with the rest of the team, especially Sansa. To throw all of that away for a man she barely knows would be idiotic.

Even if that man is Jaime.

“OK,” she says heavily. “Friends.”

“For now,” Jaime says, winking. “Once you’ve made yourself indispensable at Abhainn, if you haven’t already, then you can do what you like.”

She manages a smile.

“I better go,” she says reluctantly. “Can I borrow this T-shirt to wear home? And maybe a pair of shorts or tracksuit bottoms if you have any that would fit me? I don’t really want to do the walk of shame in that gown. It was a rental.”

“Oh, I’ll get you a taxi, don’t worry. But you don’t have to go just yet.”

“I don’t?” she asks warily.

He flashes her another wicked grin. “The way I see it, we can’t start being friends today. We’ve already had sex twice this morning, so today is a write-off. We’ll start tomorrow.”

Her heart starts to beat faster, the promise in his smile making heat curl in her lower belly. “So...”

“So, until tomorrow morning, you’re all mine. How does that sound?”

Her cheeks warm. “That sounds... good,” she manages.

His grin widens. “Doesn’t it?”

Chapter Text

For the second time in a row, Brienne wakes up in Jaime’s bed. This time, his remote-controlled blackout blinds are down, so the room is still dark, but the sound of birds chirping outside tells her it’s morning.

Her head is on his chest, his arm around her. She breathes in the scent of his skin, trying to commit it all to memory. Spending another night with him had been a mistake. Now it will be even harder to leave.

She slips out of his embrace, and he makes a disgruntled noise and opens his eyes.

“Where you going?” he asks, voice thick with sleep.

She gives him a rueful smile. “It’s morning. We’re just friends now, remember?”

Jaime groans, stretching his arms out above his head. “Don’t go yet. What time is it?”

She glances at the sleek white alarm clock beside his bed. “Ten past eight.”

“It’s Sunday. Nobody gets up before ten on a Sunday.” He pulls her back into his arms and she lands on top of him in a heap, laughing despite herself. She tries to get away but he wraps his arms tight around her and rolls them over so that she’s underneath him, then pins her arms to her sides, grinning. He leans down to kiss her and she lets him, thinking, One more kiss won’t hurt.

But then his lips move to her neck, her collarbone, his stubble scratching deliciously against her skin, and she has to push him away. “Jaime, we can’t,” she says reluctantly. “You said yesterday was a write-off because we had sex that morning, so if we do it again this morning...”

Jaime shrugs. “Then today will be a write-off as well. Too bad. Well, tomorrow is a new day.”

“Jaime...”

“You know, it doesn’t really make sense to start on a Sunday, anyway. Sunday is the end of the week.” He looks down at her, caressing the side of her face with his fingertips, moving down to her neck, her shoulder, making her shiver. “We should start on a Monday. New week, fresh start.”

“And on Monday, we’ll come up with a new excuse.” Reluctantly, she pushes his hand away. “We have to stop.”

He sighs, and leans away. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

She dresses with her back to him, pulling on her underwear. She’s reaching for the T-shirt she’d been wearing yesterday when he tosses her a clean one, white this time. “Thanks,” she says, slightly embarrassed that it’s now been two days and she’s still wearing his clothes.

She hears him rummaging through his wardrobe, and then he hands her a pair of rugby shorts. They’re bright blue, with the Leinster Rugby logo in white at the bottom. “See if those fit you.”

She hesitates for a moment, and he laughs. “Not a rugby fan?”

“My dad says it’s a coloniser sport. There was only GAA on the island. I played Gaelic football and camogie.”

“I always wanted to try GAA. You’ll have to teach me how to play.”

Brienne frowns at him. “You’ve never played Gaelic football? Or hurling? Ever?”

“Wasn’t really a thing in my school.”

Brienne shakes her head. “You’re like an alien,” she says, and he laughs.

She puts the rugby shorts on. They fit. She feels a bit embarrassed about fitting into his shorts, but he looks her over appreciatively, as if he likes the way they look on her. “I scored a good few tries for Leinster in those shorts,” he tells her, somewhat wistfully. “You’d better look after them. They’re a piece of sporting history.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’ll give them back, don’t worry.”

He smiles. “Keep them, culchie. They look good on you.”

She blushes.

Jaime offers to pay for a taxi for her, but that seems like a pointless extravagance, so she insists on getting the Dart. It’s only a short walk to the nearest station, and it’s a beautiful day. Then he tries to top up her Leap card for her, but she refuses that too.

“You’re my friend,” she reminds him. “Not my sugar daddy.”

“I could be your platonic sugar daddy.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“I want to take care of you,” Jaime says, and something about his low voice and the heat in his gaze when he says it makes her blush. God, she wants him to take care of her too, in every way possible, but she can’t say that. “Friends take care of each other, don’t they?”

“Well, I don’t have the means to take care of you, and I want this to be an equal friendship.”

“You can take care of me in other ways,” Jaime says. When she narrows her eyes at him, he gives her an innocent look. “What? I meant like bringing me soup when I’m sick, or something.”

She shakes her head. She imagines Catelyn would be unhappy enough if she knew about this friendship; she would be unhappier still if she knew Brienne was also taking Jaime’s money, even if it’s just a few euro on her Leap card. “You can bring me soup, too. But no spending money on me.”

Jaime looks disappointed, but he nods. “You’re very principled, culchie. I respect that.”

“Thank you.”

She’s about to leave when she realises that her only shoes are her heels from the award ceremony, and Jaime has to loan her a pair of runners, too. “I’m so sorry,” she says as she tries them on, half-hoping they’ll be too big, but of course they’re not. If anything, they’re probably half a size too small.

Jaime laughs, seemingly unfazed by the fact that his shoes fit her. “Don’t be sorry. I’m the one who brought you here and then essentially held you captive for two days.”

“I could have left at any time.” She gestures to his T-shirt, his shorts, his shoes. “I’ll return all this.”

“Don’t bother. I have plenty of clothes.” He winks at her. “And I like seeing you in them.”

She blushes.

She bundles her dress and heels from the award ceremony into the shopping bag he’d given her, then goes to the door. She hovers there for a moment, wondering whether to hug him goodbye or not. Friends can hug, surely, but maybe physical contact of any kind is a bad idea.

Jaime makes the decision for her, pulling her into his arms. He squeezes her tight, and she breathes him in, savouring his warmth and his smell and the feel of his arms around her. She rests her head on his shoulder, and he rubs her back. There is a sense of finality to this hug, as if they’re saying goodbye forever.

“Thanks for this weekend, culchie,” Jaime murmurs into her hair. “It meant more to me than you know.”

“Me too. I’m sorry it had to end.”

He draws back and smiles, hands still holding her arms. “Well, maybe we’ll get a miracle. And if not, I’m glad we can still be friends.”

She forces a smile, too, but she feels suddenly very sad. “Yeah.”

Lost in thoughts of Jaime, Brienne gets on the Dart and takes a seat without looking at the person sitting opposite her. Then the person says, “Brienne?”

Brienne glances up, startled, to see a smiling Sansa.

“Oh my God,” Brienne says, putting a hand to her heart. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t even see you.”

Sansa laughs. “You’re grand, I could tell you were distracted. Everything OK?”

Brienne forces a smile. “Yeah, of course. Fine. Just in my own world. Where are you going?”

Sansa yawns. “Home. Jeyne drove us up from Kerry this morning, so I’m on my way home from her place in Booterstown. What about you? What brings you to the southside?”

“I was just visiting a friend.” Not technically a lie, but she doesn’t feel great saying it. “You must have been up at the crack of dawn.”

Sansa yawns again. “Yeah, I’m wrecked. How did the award ceremony go? Arya said you did great.”

“Well, I got through it, anyway.”

Sansa shakes her head. “She said you were being way too hard on yourself. I’m sure you were fine. Mam is over the moon that we won.”

“How’s Bran?” Catelyn had replied to Brienne’s text the day before to say that the surgery had gone well and that Bran would be able to leave the hospital in a couple of days.

“He’s grand. Bored in hospital, but grand. He’s not in pain or anything, so that’s good.” Sansa’s eyes flick downwards, and a tiny crease appears between her brows. “Are those Leinster Rugby shorts?”

Brienne reddens, cursing Jaime for giving her probably the only pair of shorts he owns that could be traced back to him. “Oh, yeah,” she says sheepishly.

Sansa waits, clearly expecting an explanation, but Brienne neither wants to lie or tell her the truth, so she changes the subject. “Did ye have a good time in Kerry?”

“It was lovely. Very relaxing. We got massages, facials, the whole lot.” Sansa’s eyes are still on the shorts, her nose wrinkled in faint distaste. When she catches Brienne’s eye, she gives an embarrassed laugh. “Sorry. I’m so petty. It’s just, Jaime Lannister used to play for Leinster Rugby, so I have a wee bias against them. You know yourself.”

Brienne’s stomach swoops.

“It’s stupid, though, because he hasn’t played for them in years,” Sansa continues. “Do you support them? I would’ve thought you’d support Connacht, no?”

“Actually, I don’t follow rugby at all. I just borrowed them from someone.” Again, not technically a lie, but not exactly the truth either. Before Sansa can ask more questions, Brienne changes the subject. “It’s a gorgeous day, isn’t it? Are you up to anything nice later?”

Finally dragging her eyes away from the shorts, Sansa starts to talk about her plans to visit Bran in hospital and do a grocery shop and clean her flat. Brienne nods along, her mind back on Jaime, and a new weight settling on her chest. This is going to be even harder than she’d thought it would.

That night, she’s about to drift off to sleep when her phone buzzes. Her stomach flips when she sees Jaime’s name on the screen.

He has sent her a screenshot from the Duolingo app. A warmth fills her chest. He is learning Irish.

He sends her another text. Conas atá tú, a chara?

She smiles. Surely you didn’t need Duolingo to learn “conas atá tú”? she writes back.

Her phone buzzes again. Well, no. I’m not quite that bad. Just wanted to start a conversation.

She smiles at the screen, snuggling into her pillow. What did you learn, then?

Tá úll ar an mbórd.

She laughs.

She is about to reply when another text comes in, this time from Sansa. She has sent a photo. Brienne opens it, and her heart stops.

It’s a paparazzi photo of Jaime. Brienne doesn’t know when it was taken, but he looks a little younger in it, his hair slightly shorter. He’s walking out of a SuperValu, shopping bag in hand, and he’s wearing the same T-shirt he’d given Brienne this morning.

Brienne’s heart is pounding. She zooms in on the T-shirt to make sure the small black logo on the chest is the same, and it is. Maison Martin Margiela. She hadn’t even noticed it when she’d put the T-shirt on. A quick Google search tells her that it would have cost Jaime €479.

“You couldn’t have given me one from Dunnes?” she says aloud.

Sansa sends her another text. Brienne opens it, hand trembling. It’s just four words.

Can you explain this?

Chapter Text

“I really hope you’re about to tell me that this was all just some mad coincidence,” Sansa says.

It’s eight o’clock in the morning and they’re sitting in the coffee shop beside their office, both of them tense and awkward. Brienne’s stomach is in knots, and the extra shot of espresso in her coffee isn’t helping, but she’d barely slept the night before and she needs caffeine for this conversation.

“It wasn’t,” Brienne says miserably. “I’m sorry.”

There’s a long pause.

“So you’re actually sleeping with Jaime Lannister?”

“No,” Brienne says quickly. “Not any more. We’re just friends.”

“But you were.”

“It just happened once. Well, a few times.” Brienne can feel her face reddening, and she curses herself. “Over the course of... the weekend. But it was just the one weekend.”

Sansa empties two sachets of sugar into her coffee. “Right,” she says flatly.

Brienne sighs. “Sansa, I’m so sorry. I should have told you. I know how this looks.”

Sansa nods. “Not great, Brienne, to be honest. I thought we were friends.”

To her dismay, Brienne feels a lump start to rise in her throat. She does her best to swallow it down. “We are.”

Sansa looks at her, and the hurt is plain in her eyes. “Then why would you sleep with that man after everything I’ve told you about him?”

“What he did to Bran was awful. There’s no justification for it, and he knows that. But it was an accident, and he feels a lot of remorse for it, Sansa. I know that doesn’t make it OK, but I swear, he’s not the monster you think he is.”

Sansa raises an eyebrow. “And you learned this after one weekend?”

Brienne hesitates. “Well... no. Not exactly.”

“You knew him before that?” Sansa asks, frowning.

Brienne takes a breath, and the whole story comes spilling out of her. Their first meeting on the bus. Him saving her from the ticket inspector on the Luas. Him picking her up from the Garda station in Clontarf. How she’d resolved to stop talking to him after Sansa told her about Bran. The award ceremony, and how nervous she’d been. Jaime punching Red Ronnet.

Sansa leans forward a little at that, looking intrigued despite herself. “He punched that guy for you?”

Brienne nods.

Then she tells Sansa about the taxi, about going to his house. She tells her what Jaime had said about Bran, but leaves out the Aerys part; that doesn’t seem like her story to tell. The whiskey, waking up in his bed, how she’d planned to tell Catelyn but then had realised it just wasn’t going to work. How they’d agreed to just be friends.

When she’s finished, her words seem to hang in the air between them. Sansa is silent, a small crease between her brows. Brienne holds her breath.

Finally, Sansa looks at her, and her eyes are softer now. “Brienne,” she says quietly, “are you in love with him?”

Brienne opens her mouth to say no, of course not, she barely knows him, that’s ridiculous. But for some reason, nothing comes out.

“Ah,” says Sansa.

“It was only one weekend,” Brienne says miserably, face burning. She feels agonizingly vulnerable, as if Sansa has peeled her skin off and is now examining the mess underneath. “It’s never going to happen again. We agreed.”

Sansa rests her chin in her hands, looking much more sympathetic now. “But you want it to.”

Lying seems useless at this point. “Yes. But I also want to still be friends with you, and I want your mother to not hate me, and I want to still work at Abhainn.”

“Do you trust him?”

Brienne surprises herself with the quickness of her own response. “Yes.”

Sansa takes a sip of her coffee, her expression thoughtful. “Well... maybe we can work something out.”

This is the last thing Brienne had expected. “What?”

Sansa gives her a small smile. “Look, I don’t really know Jaime Lannister. I know I hate his father, and his father’s company, and I hate what he did to Bran. But I know you’re a good person, and I hope you’re a good judge of character. If you say there’s another side to him, then I’m going to choose to believe you.” She pauses. “Also, you know I love a good love story.”

“But... what about your mam?”

“I’ll work on Mam. Leave it with me.”

Brienne blinks, hardly daring to believe this. “Sansa, you don’t have to do this for me.”

Sansa smiles again. “Look, you’re my friend, and this is like something out of a romcom, and as much as I dislike the guy, I can’t deny that he’s incredibly hot. If you really want this, I’m not going to stand in the way.” Her eyes turn stern again. “However, he is still on thin ice, so if he hurts you or my family in any way—however miniscule—I have the right to revoke my approval.”

“Of course,” Brienne says, heart soaring. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Sansa shrugs. “What are friends for?”

In the office, Brienne texts Jaime, her stomach flipping with anticipation. Can I come over tonight?

He responds almost immediately. Of course. Any particular reason?

She bites her lip to keep from smiling at her phone like an idiot. I’ll tell you when I get there.

Everything OK?

Everything’s good, she responds, and means it.

After work she goes home to quickly pack a bag – she doesn’t want to presume too much, but if she does end up staying over, she won’t be left unprepared again. She also showers, brushes her teeth, applies some scented body lotion, and puts on her nicest underwear beneath a suitably casual outfit before hurrying out the door and onto the Dart.

Knocking on his door half an hour later, she feels oddly nervous, like she hasn’t already spent a whole weekend with him. When he opens the door, looking tired but unfairly beautiful in a white T-shirt and sweatpants, the butterflies only intensify.

“Hi,” she says shyly.

His expression softens into a smile as he takes her in. “Hi, sweetling. To what do I owe the pleasure?” His eyes drift to her backpack, and he raises an eyebrow.

She blushes. “I talked to Sansa,” she says, stepping into the house.

He leads her into the sitting room. “Oh?”

“Well, I kind of had to. She found us out. You couldn’t have given me a T-shirt that cost less than four hundred euro?”

Jaime frowns as he flops onto the couch, patting the space next to him for her to sit down. “She figured it out from the T-shirt?”

“You were papped in it before.” Brienne kicks her shoes off and curls her legs under her, resisting the almost overwhelming urge to shuffle up a few inches until they’re touching.

“Damn, she’s good.” Jaime’s brow creases. “So what happened? Is she angry? God, you didn’t get fired, did you?”

“Em, no. Actually, she was a lot more understanding than I expected. She said that she won’t stand in the way, and she’s going to try and handle things with Catelyn.”

A smile dawns on Jaime’s face. “You mean... we can keep seeing each other?”

She can’t help but smile back. “Yeah. I mean, we’ll probably have to be discreet until Sansa breaks the news, but yeah.”

He grins. “Then what are you doing all the way over there? Come here.”

Laughing, she crosses the scant distance between them until she’s straddling his lap, and wraps her arms around his neck. He kisses her, and she kisses him back eagerly, tangling her fingers in his hair, her shyness forgotten. He slips a hand under the back of her loose T-shirt to caress her bare skin and she moans into the kiss, pressing herself closer to him, as close as she can get. She can feel him hardening underneath her and she rocks shamelessly against him. God, it feels good to be with him again. She feels as though they’ve been apart for months, and almost laughs when she realises it’s only been a day.

Jaime’s mouth moves to her neck. “Fuck,” he breathes between kisses. “You know, I’ve thought of nothing but this since you left here yesterday morning. It’s been driving me mad.”

“God, same.”

He pulls her T-shirt over her head and tosses it away, then unhooks her bra and pulls it off. She gasps as he presses his face to her breasts, trailing hot kisses from one to the other and back again.

“Lie down,” he tells her then and she obeys immediately, a thrill going through her at the command. She has learned that she likes it when Jaime tells her what to do.

He’s kissing his way down her body when her phone starts to buzz on the arm of the couch. Someone is calling her.

“Don’t you dare answer that,” Jaime says against her stomach, and she happily obeys that order, too. They’ll call back if it’s important, she thinks vaguely as she tangles her hands in his hair again.

“Pizza or spicebag?” Jaime asks, an hour later.

They’re in his bed now, naked and sated, half-dozing in each other’s arms. Brienne smiles, nestling her cheek against his chest. “You didn’t cook for me?” she asks teasingly.

“I’m sorry, sweetling. I didn’t want to poison you.”

“That’s OK.” Brienne’s stomach growls, and she realises for the first time that she actually is quite hungry. “Maybe pizza.”

Jaime runs his hand lazily through her hair. “Whatever my sugar baby wants.”

She laughs. “I am not your sugar baby.”

“You’re my sugar baby now whether you like it or not. I’m going to take care of you and make sure you want for nothing. In fact, give me your Leap card.”

She laughs again. “No.”

Her Leap card is in her phone case, and her phone is on his bedside table. He spots it and makes a grab for it, but she gets it first. He tries to wrestle it away from her, but she holds on tight, giggling, curling into a protective ball with her back to him.

Jaime gives up and wraps himself around her, occupying himself with kissing her shoulder instead. She sighs and relaxes as he nuzzles at the juncture of her neck and shoulder, sucking a mark there. Then his hand slips around her waist and between her legs, and she gasps. He strokes her slowly, murmuring sweet words in her ear, and the phone slips from her hands, forgotten.

When she returns to her body a few moments later, Jaime is topping up her Leap card on his own phone.

“That,” she says weakly, “was a dirty tactic.”

He hands the Leap card back to her, smirking, and she checks the app to see how much money he put on it. “A hundred euro?” she exclaims.

“If you’re going to be getting the Dart to my house on a regular basis, which I hope you are, the least I can do is fund it.”

She puts the Leap card back into her phone case and curls against him again, and he wraps an arm around her. “Well, I suppose I can’t argue with that. Thank you.”

“You’re very, very welcome, sweetling.” He brushes his lips against her hair. “By the way, you have two missed calls from Sansa.”

“Two?” Brienne sits up, alarmed. She hadn’t even heard the second call. “Something must be wrong.”

She takes her phone and calls Sansa back. She answers on the second ring.

“Hey,” Sansa says. “Are you with Jaime?”

Brienne glances at him, naked and sweaty beside her, and blushes. “Yes. Is everything OK?”

“I thought as much. Listen, Brienne, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to stop seeing him.”

Brienne and Jaime look at each other. “What?” Brienne says, dismayed.

“The rent for our office just went up by ten per cent, which is more than we can afford,” Sansa says grimly. “And Mam just found out that the company that owns our building is owned by Lannister Properties. She’s raging.”

“Oh, God,” Brienne says numbly.

Jaime scrubs a hand through his hair and over his face. “I didn’t know about this,” he tells Brienne quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

“Can you do anything?” she asks him.

“I’ll certainly try.”

“Jaime’s going to try and do something,” Brienne tells Sansa. As she says it, she can hear how weak it sounds.

“OK,” Sansa says, but she doesn’t sound convinced. “But Brienne, I’m sorry, if Mam finds out that you’re seeing him after this, she’ll flip her lid. I won’t say anything to her, but if I were you, I’d stay away.”

Jaime sighs.

“OK,” Brienne says quietly. “See you tomorrow.”

“Bye,” Sansa says, and hangs up.

The ensuing silence feels very loud. Jaime and Brienne look at each other.

“My fucking family,” Jaime says at last. “Or, more accurately, my fucking father. He did this on purpose. He must have.”

“On purpose?” Brienne’s heart sinks.

“It feels targeted.”

“Then you probably won’t be able to do anything about it.”

“Like I said, I’ll try. I’ll get Tyrion to help. He’s the smart one.” Jaime sighs again. “I’m so sorry, Brienne.”

“It’s not your fault.” Brienne climbs mechanically out of the bed and starts to dress. “I should go.”

“You won’t stay for the pizza?”

“I don’t think I should. I’m sorry, Jaime.” She finishes dressing and gives him a brief, chaste kiss, then picks up her untouched overnight bag. She’s about to leave when a question occurs to her. She turns in the doorway.

“Why do you still work for Lannister Properties?”

Jaime stares at her from the bed. “What?” he asks, as if the question makes no sense.

“Well, you don’t seem to get along with your dad, or agree with the things he does. So why do you still work for the company?”

Jaime shrugs. “If I had my way, I’d still be playing rugby, but the whole Taoiseachslayer thing put an end to that. Now I’m the most hated man in Ireland, remember? I’m not likely to get a job anywhere else.”

“You could go abroad. Somewhere no one knows you. Or just stay here and do whatever you want. Start your own company. I don’t know. You have enough money to keep you going, surely.”

“You don’t understand,” Jaime says flatly.

She feels a spike of anger. “Don’t understand what? Business? What it’s like to be rich?”

“What it’s like to be Tywin Lannister’s son. I’m supposed to be his heir. And you just saw what happens when you displease him.”

Brienne shakes her head. “How exactly did Catelyn displease him? She’s just a grieving widow trying to build a business. This will ruin her, and she’s done nothing to deserve it.”

“You don’t have to tell me that. I’m not my father, Brienne.”

“Then get away from him. I know you’re not like him, I know you’re a good person, but as long as you work for Lannister Properties, all this is on your hands, too. Do you know how much my rent costs, Jaime? I pay eight hundred a month for a room that’s probably the size of your wardrobe, with black mould on the ceiling. It might not be owned by Lannister Properties, but they still caused this situation. You can spend as much money on me as you want, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m living paycheque to paycheque because of your family.”

Jaime is silent.

She turns and leaves.

Chapter Text

For the next few days, work is grim. A sombre atmosphere hangs around the office as Catelyn tries frantically to find a more affordable building, to no avail. WeWorks aren’t an option, because they need space to store and pack the orders, and every other office building Catelyn finds is even more expensive than the one they already have.

Finally, Catelyn gathers the entire staff—including Gendry, who is usually based in Catelyn’s studio (her garden shed) making the jewellery—and announces that the business is going to have to leave Dublin.

“Leave Dublin?” Pia asks, aghast. “And go where?”

“Donegal.”

There is a collective, incredulous chorus of “Donegal?”

Catelyn sighs. “Well, naturally my first instinct would be to go home to Derry, but technically that’s in a different country which would make things very complicated, so we have to stay this side of the border. Donegal is the next best thing, and rent is cheaper there than in most parts of the country.”

“But Mam, that’s so far away,” Sansa protests.

Catelyn smiles sadly. “Naturally, I don’t expect any of you to relocate. Those of you in marketing will be able to work remotely. Gendry...”

Gendry gives her one of his rare smiles. “It’s all right, Mrs. Stark. As long as I can convince Arya to come with me, I don’t mind moving north.”

“She will,” says Sansa. “She never shuts up about how much she misses the north.”

“Oh, God, are you sure?” Catelyn asks Gendry, relief washing over her face. “I’ll absolutely contribute to your rent until you get settled.”

“No need for that,” Gendry says cheerfully. “It’ll be an awful lot cheaper than what I’m paying up here.”

Pia clears her throat. “Catelyn, you know I love working here and you’ve been a great boss, but... good luck and God bless.”

The tension breaks a little, and everybody laughs, even Catelyn. “I’m so sorry, Pia. I’ll compensate you.”

Pia gives her a hug. “I’m really sorry this happened to you.”

Catelyn closes her eyes, and for a moment she looks much older than her years. “Me too.”

“So, remote work,” Sansa says dolefully to Brienne on their lunch break, in the café down the street. “What do you think of that?”

Brienne doesn’t relish the thought of spending all her time in her miserable, damp house from now on, but she knows she’s lucky to still have her job. “Well, I’ll save money on bus fares. And we won’t have to get up so early in the morning.”

“True.” Sansa sighs. “I’ll miss you, though. I’ll miss Mam. I can’t believe she’s moving all the way back up north. The whole point of her moving down here with Bran and Rickon was so we could all be together, since Robb and Arya and I are in Dublin too.” Her eyes start to glisten, and she looks away abruptly. “She’ll be so lonely up there.”

“Oh, Sansa.” Brienne slides her hand awkwardly across the table to take Sansa’s. “I’m sorry.”

Sansa sniffs a few times, blinks hard, then forces a smile. “Have you heard anything from Jaime?” she asks hopefully.

The mention of his name makes Brienne’s chest hurt; she hasn’t told Sansa about the argument they’d had. She shakes her head.

Jaime hasn’t contacted her at all since that night, and it’s been a week now. She wonders if she’d been too harsh on him, but she’d needed to say it. He clearly hadn’t taken it well, but she supposes that was to be expected.

She’d known from the start that she and Jaime were from different worlds. Different planets. Sometimes, when they were together, she’d been able to forget that, but the truth was that it was never going to work. Expecting Jaime to leave his family, his father’s company, and his cosy life of privilege behind in exchange for some lofty ideal and a girl he’d spent two nights with had been asking far too much.

She almost can’t blame him. Wealth and status and Lannister Properties is all he’s ever known. He doesn’t know how to work, and the thought of living without that ever-present safety net must be terrifying to him.

They were never going to last. She supposes it’s a good thing they’d ended sooner rather than later; the longer it had gone on, the worse it would have hurt.

And right now, it hurts more than enough.

The following Friday, they’re starting to pack up the office when there’s a knock at the door. Catelyn goes to answer it, and the ice in her voice when she speaks makes everyone look around.

“What are you doing here?”

Brienne’s heart stops. It’s Jaime.

He’s casually dressed, and holding a briefcase. He gives her a small smile over Catelyn’s shoulder, then says to Catelyn, “I bought this office.”

The room goes silent.

“What?” Catelyn says. She steps back, and Jaime walks in, laying the briefcase down on Catelyn’s desk.

“I bought this office,” Jaime repeats, taking a slim bundle of papers out of the briefcase, “and I want to give it to you.”

She stares at him. “Give it to me? You mean, for free?”

“That’s right. These are the deeds.” He flips to the last page, and taps it at the bottom. “Sign here, and it’s yours.”

“And why in God’s name would you want to do that?” Catelyn asks, her voice trembling.

Jaime straightens, and looks her in the eye. “I want to make things right between us, Cat.” His voice is more serious than Brienne has ever heard it. “As far as that’s possible. I know I can never fix what I did to your son, and I’m sorry. But the least I can do is give your office back to you.”

Catelyn looks down at the papers, her hand hovering above them as if she’s afraid they’ll disappear if she touches them. “And what does your father think of that?” she asks sharply.

Jaime glances at Brienne. “I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care. I don’t work for Tywin Lannister any more. I quit my job today.”

Brienne’s heart soars. Jaime catches her eye and gives her a small smile, just for her, and she returns it.

Catelyn seems taken aback by this. “Oh.”

She looks back down at the deeds and starts to read through them. “I, well... I’ll need a solicitor to check this for me before I sign anything,” she says at last.

“Of course,” Jaime says solemnly.

Catelyn nods hesitantly. “Thank you,” she says, after a moment. The words are stiff and jerky, but her expression is sincere.

Jaime smiles.

The others rush up to Catelyn’s desk to look at the deeds themselves, chattering excitedly. While they’re distracted, Jaime looks at Brienne and jerks his head in the direction of the door, eyebrows raised.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” Brienne murmurs to Sansa. Sansa gives them a nod and a knowing smile before turning back to her mother.

“Wow,” Brienne says to Jaime, once they’re outside. “You really... wow.”

He shrugs. She can hardly bear the way he’s looking at her, so warm and soft and fond, green eyes crinkling at the corners. Sansa was right, she thinks, I do love him. “What can I say, culchie? You inspired me.”

They’re standing in the middle of the crowded footpath, crowds of chattering tourists and Spanish students and teens on scooters swarming around them, but Brienne’s world has shrunk to just the two of them. “You did that because of me? Really?”

“I did it because I want to live a life I can be proud of. But I might never have gotten that push if it wasn’t for you.”

She blushes, not knowing how to respond. “So what are you going to do now?” she asks instead.

He grins. “Well, career-wise, I’m not too sure yet. But in the meantime, I was thinking of doing some travelling.” He steps closer to her, swaying into her space. “Maybe to the Aran Islands.”

Brienne feels as though her heart is about to burst. “I like that idea,” she whispers, smiling.

He leans in, closer still, until their noses are brushing. “I’ll need a tour guide,” he murmurs.

She closes her eyes. Their lips are inches apart now. “I might know someone.”

“Good,” he says, and kisses her.

(If one of the scooter teens shouts “Yup the Taoiseachslayer! Get in!” as he passes them, they don’t hear it.)

Chapter Text

“OK, so you can run with the sliotar,” Bran explains patiently. “But you have to balance it on the hurl the whole time. Or keep bouncing it, like this. That’s called soloing.” He demonstrates.

They’re at the Abhainn Christmas party, hosted by Catelyn in her own house. Standing in the wintery back garden, illuminated by fairy lights and lanterns, Jaime attempts to copy Bran while Brienne hides a smile.

“Not bad,” says Bran, somewhat pityingly. “OK, now strike.”

Jaime bounces the sliotar into the air and gives it a whack, sending it into an impressive arc towards the goal, but Brienne lifts her own hurl and sends the sliotar flying back towards Bran, who catches it in his hand.

“Hey,” Jaime complains. “I’m just trying to learn here, Brienne.”

“Oh, sorry,” says Brienne, exchanging a grin with Bran. “Was that too challenging for you?”

His eyes narrow. “Not at all. Pass it back here, Bran. I have to be a pro by the time I meet Brienne’s dad.”

Brienne laughs.

Sansa emerges from the back door. “Oh my God, it’s freezing out here,” she exclaims, her breath fogging in front of her. “Bri, leave them to it and have some mulled wine.”

Brienne obeys gratefully, dropping her hurl onto the frosty grass and following Sansa back into the house. Catelyn’s house is small but warm and cheery, filled with her family and Abhainn employees. Pod gives her a cheery wave from a corner, where he’s busy petting Arya’s wolfhound, Nymeria. Around the coffee table, Arya, Gendry, Pia and Peck are engaged in a heated game of Thirty Seconds, while some of Catelyn’s newer employees—the company has expanded recently—sit chatting on the couches. Brienne likes them all except for one, a Cavan man named Hyle Hunt who, after seeing how much money she had on her Leap Card, seems to have gotten the mistaken impression that she is rich. Thankfully, after meeting Jaime (who has been calling him Kyle all night, much to his chagrin) he’s backed off. He gives her a sheepish smile and a “Well, Brienne,” as she passes him.

Brienne follows Sansa into the kitchen. “Jaime’s not a bad hurler,” Sansa says as she ladles mulled wine into a glass from a pot on the stove.

Catelyn, stacking a plate with mince pies at the kitchen table, smiles over at them. “No, he’s not,” she agrees.

Brienne smiles too. “He’ll be playing for Dublin in no time. It was really good of you to invite him, Cat. Thank you.”

Catelyn puts a hand on her shoulder. “Of course. He’s your plus-one. I never expected that Bran would have such a great time playing hurling with him, but I’m not complaining.”

Brienne glances out the window to see them still running around. “Bran seems good as new. He’s like a greyhound out there.”

Catelyn smiles. “Not a bother on him. He even got back on his team, thank God.”

“That’s amazing.” Brienne sips her mulled wine. “Just to warn you, though, Jaime said something earlier about teaching him rugby.”

Catelyn’s smile drops. “Tell him if he tries, he’ll be deader than Aerys.”

Brienne laughs. “Will do.”

Catelyn goes into the sitting room with the mince pies, and Sansa leans in towards Brienne. “So, how’s everything going with Jaime? Ooh, you turned your Claddagh ring!” She grabs Brienne’s right hand and admires the silver ring on her fourth finger, turned inward towards her heart. “Things must be getting serious.”

“He turned it for me the same day he bought the office,” Brienne admits, laughing. Her father had given her the Claddagh ring as a Confirmation gift, and she’d worn it every day since, but she’d secretly never thought she would be able to turn it.

Sansa looks at her own Claddagh ring, pointing outwards, and sighs. “I’m so jealous. Are you happy?”

Brienne can’t help the smile that spreads across her face, embarrassing though it is. “Very happy.”

Sansa grins. “You look it. Must be nice to have a sugar daddy.”

Brienne blushes. “He is not my sugar daddy,” she protests, not for the first time. “Though I will say, it’s nice to have a boyfriend with his own apartment. Especially when Asha has her parties.”

“Did he manage to sell the house?”

Brienne sighs. “Actually, no. It was a whole big thing. It turned out that Jaime never really owned the house, because the deeds were still in Tywin’s name, so he just had to kind of give it back to him. I don’t think he cares, though. He seems happier in the apartment, even though it’s small.”

Sansa waggles her eyebrows. “And when will you be moving in? You’re there almost every night anyway.”

Brienne blushes. “Well, that probably depends on how Christmas with my dad goes.”

Sansa winces. “Oh, yeah. Well, keep me posted. When are you leaving?”

“Tomorrow morning.”

Sansa raises her glass. “Good luck.”

“Tá teach álainn agat,” Jaime pronounces carefully.

They’re on the ferry to Irish Oírr, rain pelting the windows. The sea is grey and so choppy that even Brienne feels slightly nauseous, but maybe that’s her nerves. To her surprise, Jaime doesn’t seem affected by either; she takes that as a good sign.

“That’s you have a lovely house,” he adds. “Right?”

“Right,” says Brienne. “But you can’t say that, or he’ll think you’re being condescending.”

Jaime groans. “OK, what about tá iníon álainn agat?”

Brienne blushes. “Well, that’s not exactly true either.”

Jaime bumps her knee with his. “Nonsense. What about tá iníon cineálta, dílis, macánta, agus cróga agat?”

Brienne blushes deeper. “Wow. You’ve really been studying.”

He grins. “I’m enjoying it. You know, I hear you speaking Irish in your sleep sometimes.”

“Do you?” she says, slightly alarmed. “What do I say?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t understand it.” He grins wider. “But my name is in there sometimes. I hope that’s a good thing.”

She rolls her eyes, embarrassed.

“Seriously, though, that’s what made me want to learn. I want to know the language you dream in.”

Brienne makes a mental note to tell Sansa that line; she’d love it. “You just want to know what I’m saying about you.”

“Maybe. But it’s not the whole reason. I want to know every part of you.” Jaime pauses. “Do you get what I mean?”

“I think so,” she says softly, resting her head on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

He takes her hand, resting on the armrest between them, and twines their fingers together. “I want an endearment for you in Irish, too. What’s a good one?”

“Actually,” she admits, feeling her blush return, “I kind of like it when you call me sweetling.”

He smiles. “I had a feeling. All right, sweetling stays. What about culchie?”

“I hate to admit it, but that’s grown on me, too.”

“You know I say it with all the affection in the world.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She rubs circles on his hand with her thumb. “I don’t have a name for you, though.”

“Jaime is fine. But if there’s something very romantic in Irish that you want to call me, I won’t say no.”

“Actually...”

“Oh?”

She blushes. “Well, there’s one that I’ve always liked. I think I remember my parents using it with each other, before my mam died.”

“What is it?”

She takes a breath. She and Jaime have exchanged ‘I love you’s, but this somehow feels even deeper, more intimate. “Mo chuisle.”

“Muh koosh-leh,” Jaime repeats. “What does that mean?”

She hesitates. “It’s a secret.”

“You know I have Google Translate.”

“Don’t ruin it.”

“It’s not an insult, is it?”

“No! I promise it’s very romantic.”

“Are you never going to tell me?”

“I will. But not yet.” Four months feels too soon for him to know; she’ll save it for an anniversary, or some other special occasion. “Mo chuisle.”

Yes, she decides, smiling to herself. That feels right.

“So, how long is your dad going to call me Séimí?”

Brienne laughs. After their initial introduction, which was as gruff and awkward as she’d expected—Jaime giving Selwyn his best Irish, Selwyn looking at him like he was an alien—they’d escaped upstairs to Brienne’s room to unpack.

“That’s your name now,” she tells him, sitting cross-legged on her bed while he empties his suitcase. “Get used to it.”

Jaime gives her a pained look. “My name is Jaime.”

“That’s your coloniser name. Séimí is your true name. Don’t you feel so much more Irish now?”

“It’s an old man name. I feel like an old man.”

She laughs again.

“You’ll survive,” she says. “Mo chuisle.”

Jaime leans down to kiss her, tilting her face up to meet his. “Now, there’s a name I like. Even if you won’t tell me what it means. Anyway, do you think your dad likes me?”

Brienne hesitates. “Well, it’s early days. But you’re doing well so far.”

Jaime gives her a knowing look. “He thinks you should be with a hurler who wears a flat cap and spends all day cutting turf on the bog. Well, I'm not averse to the flat cap, but I do draw the line at cutting turf."

The image of Jaime in a flat cap makes her laugh. “Please don’t get a flat cap. He’ll warm up to you, I promise. Eventually.”

“Is this a bad time to tell you I’m a Protestant?”

She takes a deep breath. “OK, let’s not mention that to him just yet.”

Jaime laughs. “Don’t worry, sweetling, I’m about to win him over.” He smiles triumphantly, unearthing something from beneath a pile of clothes in his suitcase. “Wait ‘til he sees I brought my own hurl.”

Brienne laughs in disbelief. “When did you have time to buy a hurl between last night and this morning?”

“Carroll’s Irish Gifts stays open surprisingly late. Actually, I don’t think they ever close.” Jaime digs a sliotar out of the suitcase and starts bouncing it on the hurl, grinning. “A meteor could strike the place and they’d still be selling leprechaun teatowels.”

Brienne shakes her head. “You bought it in a Carroll’s Irish Gifts? Does it say Kiss me, I’m Irish on it?”

“Not very authentic, I know, but I didn’t have a choice. If your dad asks, it was crafted from the finest ash by Cú Chulainn himself.” Jaime bounces the sliotar again and catches it in his hand, looking pleased with himself. “Anyway, do you think he’s ready for a puck-around? I think Bran taught me well.”

Instead of answering, Brienne grabs the front of his jumper, pulls him down to her level, and kisses him.

“Mmm. What was that for?” he asks, grinning, when they break apart.

“Nothing,” she says quietly. Her cheeks heat; it’s not her first time saying this to him, but she’s still not quite used to it yet. “I just love you.” And then, because everything feels more right and real when she says it in Irish, she adds, “Mo ghrá thú, a chuisle mo chroí.”

He gives her that smile that has had her heart since the moment she’d first seen him at that bus stop, except now there’s nothing sharp about it. “I love you too, culchie. Now let’s go play some hurling with your dad.”