Fic [Game of Thrones AU]: idée fixe, Jaime/Cersei, NC-17
Everyone at the agency thinks he's a fag.
This because he doesn't come snapping around at the newest legs falling out of the latest skirt, because he doesn't pile boast upon boast during the post-work outings (coral upon coral of bawdy ventures, already ossified by the next round of Manhattans).
He just sails in at odd hours with that patent-leather smile, fast track to becoming the agency's youngest creative director in history. He hits his marks, lightly massages the clients, closes the deals, and catches the most lamplight in his hair and teeth during celebratory drinks.
Let the other junior executives seethe. Let Loras and Baelish laugh different kinds of knowingly. There's the short game and the long game, and Jaime Lannister cares fuck-all about either. He could build a castle, fortify an army, with his talent for the quick swallow, the hard sell.
The boys gape at his closed-door sessions with the newest copywriter. "We always assume you're working in there," they say, "because you can't possibly be screwing her."
But Brienne is efficient and measured, even if her ruddy features are more edifice than face and her attire perpetually brown and askew. She's quiet but not scared, a quality he can appreciate. Today, she hands him the draft for Pendleton women's gloves. An illustration of a trim, jaunty brunette on a vespa, the words "Old world, new you" swirling above.
"Brienne," he said. "How often do you wear gloves?"
She twitched her hands on the edge of his desk, without looking down. "Only in church."
"Why?"
"They get in the way."
"So how would one associate this specific brand of ladywear with..."
He used to think her eyes were dull, but they were just direct. "I just wanted a vespa."
With a sigh, he drained his water glass. "What does the word 'tradition' mean to you?" They did this often, him hurling ideas at her head, and her polishing them off and gingerly handing them back.
"Following orders."
He scoffed. "That's just servility. There's a difference, you know. Someone perfected a formula a long time ago, millions of years before you were born."
Brienne shifted and squeaked in her leather chair. "Do you want me to write that down for the campaign, or did you just want to talk?"
Jaime stifled a laugh. Sometimes, he forgets that she hits back, too.
---
Their last year of university, Cersei dropped out to model in Milan.
"It's not like they would have taught me anything useful," she said before she left, valise in gloved hand, hair soldered with bobby pins.
Milan. The summer after graduation (back when Father assumed Jaime would be the heir, before Ty proved just how nimble and damaged he was), he visited her for two months, and they fucked three times a day in that hot little third-floor apartment where everything tasted of dust and coffee: In the morning, lazy suckling to the tepid whir of the bedroom fan, the shrieks of children tattering the streets below. In the afternoon, after or before auditions, peeling black taffeta and white lace garters from her frantic thighs while she moaned right into his ear. In the night, her belt tethering his wrists to the slanted headboard, his gold watch sliding up and down her wrist as she'd jerk him off then straightaway ride him, the brush of her cunt erecting him all over again.
"Let's stay here forever," he might have said at a fountain or maybe down a long alley choked with statues, the sunlight spearing them at angles even through their sunglasses.
"You don't even know the language," she said.
"You can teach me," he said. And one day in a hollowed-out church in Ravenna he led her by the elbow into an alcove and got to his knees.
"Jaime, please," she said, her back against a faded fresco of starry doves and sadfaced saints. He slid his hands down the crinkles of her skirt, wondered how his sister could make even a pink floral dress look savage.
"I wanted to do this first," he said, feeling the damp church floor grit sinking into his trousers. "Before anyone else got the chance to."
She took off her white sunglasses and he said the words and she said nothing at all, just the two of them cradled in the shadows before a crumbling God, the voices of the next tourists already approaching.
A week later, he went back to the States. A month later, she met Robert Baratheon in a bar in Barcelona.
Jaime never asked her what happened to the ring.
----
He was five minutes late for lunch, still puzzling over Pendleton through the downpour, and Cersei had already ordered two martinis, untouched. She slid the extra glass to him, and casually slipped her scarf from her neck to her purse.
"Do I have to go tonight?"
"Of course. It's Robert's birthday," Cersei said. "He'll be offended. And then drunk. And then offended." She was wearing one of the suits Jaime bought for her birthday (always suits, always Italian. Crisp, colorless wool, with buttons that gleam like dagger points).
"Imagine how fat he'll get, now that he's properly in his thirties." They had a window seat on the top floor, and he gazed, briefly, at the open umbrellas, like so many bright mushroom caps, mingling below.
"I took the subway here today." She swished her martini a little, tight, controlled circles that almost lapped over the rim of her glass.
"You're becoming just like Tyrion." He jests, of course -- she just observes the lower set with a sort of clinical defiance, not in the way their younger brother immerses himself.
"I stood across from a poor family. You could see it in their faces. Not their whole faces, even, just the curve of their chins. Like they were slapped flat at birth." A waiter apparated at Cersei's elbow with a water carafe. She dismissed him, then continued. "A mother, a boy, maybe 13, and a little girl. The mother said something, then the boy talked back, and suddenly they were screaming up and down the train."
Jaime smirked into his drink, trying to imagine his sister's swift, terrible reaction if his niece or nephew pulled that stunt. "You do hate a scene."
"The mother sounded so young, like a teenager. And the little girl started wailing, 'Shut the hell UP,' the irony evidently being lost." Cersei tapped the stem of her glass with her forefinger. The baroque olive-black dining room suddenly seemed airier, lighter, even though Jaime logically knew the place was stuffed with the same mass of professional climbers and idlers sprinkling laughter and anecdotes all over the silverware. Cersei had fought so hard to stay in Manhattan.
"What happened then?"
"The girl started to cry. And it was such an ugly sound, Jaime. Wark-wark-waugh, so much phlegm, like a duck gurgling sewer water. I never knew that they cry differently, you know. The poor ones."
"Cersei Lannister, champion of the undertrod. You're a regular Jane Goodall." He raised his glass (half-empty) and clinked it against hers (empty). "And the point of this deft raconteuring was..."
His sister lifted her napkin to her lips, dabbed at the corners of her mouth. Looked side to side, then leaned over the table to whisper in his ear:
"I want us to have a child."
Then she slowly pulled back and sat down, and by the time Jaime could see straight again she was folding her hands on the white tablecloth, like it was a business deal, but her cheeks her jaw her throat were all clenched pale, against the sharpness of her black wool suit.
"Say it again," he growled, quiet, trapping her feet between his under the table. Cersei flushed, but didn't move her eyes from his.
"I want us to have a child."
And there were so many things folded into that, I'm sorry and this is the best I can give you and -- softest of all -- do you want this? Please want this., so many things that he couldn't tell which ached first, his chest or his groin.
So as the rain splattered on the glass and the clatter rose all around the dining room, Jaime knotted his hand in Cersei's, and said yes for both of them, the Yes she should have said in Ravenna, nine years and everything ago.
Someone perfected a formula a long time ago, millions of years before you were born.
This because he doesn't come snapping around at the newest legs falling out of the latest skirt, because he doesn't pile boast upon boast during the post-work outings (coral upon coral of bawdy ventures, already ossified by the next round of Manhattans).
He just sails in at odd hours with that patent-leather smile, fast track to becoming the agency's youngest creative director in history. He hits his marks, lightly massages the clients, closes the deals, and catches the most lamplight in his hair and teeth during celebratory drinks.
Let the other junior executives seethe. Let Loras and Baelish laugh different kinds of knowingly. There's the short game and the long game, and Jaime Lannister cares fuck-all about either. He could build a castle, fortify an army, with his talent for the quick swallow, the hard sell.
The boys gape at his closed-door sessions with the newest copywriter. "We always assume you're working in there," they say, "because you can't possibly be screwing her."
But Brienne is efficient and measured, even if her ruddy features are more edifice than face and her attire perpetually brown and askew. She's quiet but not scared, a quality he can appreciate. Today, she hands him the draft for Pendleton women's gloves. An illustration of a trim, jaunty brunette on a vespa, the words "Old world, new you" swirling above.
"Brienne," he said. "How often do you wear gloves?"
She twitched her hands on the edge of his desk, without looking down. "Only in church."
"Why?"
"They get in the way."
"So how would one associate this specific brand of ladywear with..."
He used to think her eyes were dull, but they were just direct. "I just wanted a vespa."
With a sigh, he drained his water glass. "What does the word 'tradition' mean to you?" They did this often, him hurling ideas at her head, and her polishing them off and gingerly handing them back.
"Following orders."
He scoffed. "That's just servility. There's a difference, you know. Someone perfected a formula a long time ago, millions of years before you were born."
Brienne shifted and squeaked in her leather chair. "Do you want me to write that down for the campaign, or did you just want to talk?"
Jaime stifled a laugh. Sometimes, he forgets that she hits back, too.
---
Their last year of university, Cersei dropped out to model in Milan.
"It's not like they would have taught me anything useful," she said before she left, valise in gloved hand, hair soldered with bobby pins.
Milan. The summer after graduation (back when Father assumed Jaime would be the heir, before Ty proved just how nimble and damaged he was), he visited her for two months, and they fucked three times a day in that hot little third-floor apartment where everything tasted of dust and coffee: In the morning, lazy suckling to the tepid whir of the bedroom fan, the shrieks of children tattering the streets below. In the afternoon, after or before auditions, peeling black taffeta and white lace garters from her frantic thighs while she moaned right into his ear. In the night, her belt tethering his wrists to the slanted headboard, his gold watch sliding up and down her wrist as she'd jerk him off then straightaway ride him, the brush of her cunt erecting him all over again.
"Let's stay here forever," he might have said at a fountain or maybe down a long alley choked with statues, the sunlight spearing them at angles even through their sunglasses.
"You don't even know the language," she said.
"You can teach me," he said. And one day in a hollowed-out church in Ravenna he led her by the elbow into an alcove and got to his knees.
"Jaime, please," she said, her back against a faded fresco of starry doves and sadfaced saints. He slid his hands down the crinkles of her skirt, wondered how his sister could make even a pink floral dress look savage.
"I wanted to do this first," he said, feeling the damp church floor grit sinking into his trousers. "Before anyone else got the chance to."
She took off her white sunglasses and he said the words and she said nothing at all, just the two of them cradled in the shadows before a crumbling God, the voices of the next tourists already approaching.
A week later, he went back to the States. A month later, she met Robert Baratheon in a bar in Barcelona.
Jaime never asked her what happened to the ring.
----
He was five minutes late for lunch, still puzzling over Pendleton through the downpour, and Cersei had already ordered two martinis, untouched. She slid the extra glass to him, and casually slipped her scarf from her neck to her purse.
"Do I have to go tonight?"
"Of course. It's Robert's birthday," Cersei said. "He'll be offended. And then drunk. And then offended." She was wearing one of the suits Jaime bought for her birthday (always suits, always Italian. Crisp, colorless wool, with buttons that gleam like dagger points).
"Imagine how fat he'll get, now that he's properly in his thirties." They had a window seat on the top floor, and he gazed, briefly, at the open umbrellas, like so many bright mushroom caps, mingling below.
"I took the subway here today." She swished her martini a little, tight, controlled circles that almost lapped over the rim of her glass.
"You're becoming just like Tyrion." He jests, of course -- she just observes the lower set with a sort of clinical defiance, not in the way their younger brother immerses himself.
"I stood across from a poor family. You could see it in their faces. Not their whole faces, even, just the curve of their chins. Like they were slapped flat at birth." A waiter apparated at Cersei's elbow with a water carafe. She dismissed him, then continued. "A mother, a boy, maybe 13, and a little girl. The mother said something, then the boy talked back, and suddenly they were screaming up and down the train."
Jaime smirked into his drink, trying to imagine his sister's swift, terrible reaction if his niece or nephew pulled that stunt. "You do hate a scene."
"The mother sounded so young, like a teenager. And the little girl started wailing, 'Shut the hell UP,' the irony evidently being lost." Cersei tapped the stem of her glass with her forefinger. The baroque olive-black dining room suddenly seemed airier, lighter, even though Jaime logically knew the place was stuffed with the same mass of professional climbers and idlers sprinkling laughter and anecdotes all over the silverware. Cersei had fought so hard to stay in Manhattan.
"What happened then?"
"The girl started to cry. And it was such an ugly sound, Jaime. Wark-wark-waugh, so much phlegm, like a duck gurgling sewer water. I never knew that they cry differently, you know. The poor ones."
"Cersei Lannister, champion of the undertrod. You're a regular Jane Goodall." He raised his glass (half-empty) and clinked it against hers (empty). "And the point of this deft raconteuring was..."
His sister lifted her napkin to her lips, dabbed at the corners of her mouth. Looked side to side, then leaned over the table to whisper in his ear:
"I want us to have a child."
Then she slowly pulled back and sat down, and by the time Jaime could see straight again she was folding her hands on the white tablecloth, like it was a business deal, but her cheeks her jaw her throat were all clenched pale, against the sharpness of her black wool suit.
"Say it again," he growled, quiet, trapping her feet between his under the table. Cersei flushed, but didn't move her eyes from his.
"I want us to have a child."
And there were so many things folded into that, I'm sorry and this is the best I can give you and -- softest of all -- do you want this? Please want this., so many things that he couldn't tell which ached first, his chest or his groin.
So as the rain splattered on the glass and the clatter rose all around the dining room, Jaime knotted his hand in Cersei's, and said yes for both of them, the Yes she should have said in Ravenna, nine years and everything ago.
Someone perfected a formula a long time ago, millions of years before you were born.