Title: It's a Battle Ground
Fandom: Game of Thrones/ASOIAF
Characters/Pairing: Brienne/Jaime
Rating: M
Word Count: ~1.420
Spoilers ASoS
Summary: written for the asoiafkinkmeme prompt "The Maid of Tarth and the Kingslayer are in a relationship. But she is always so rough in bed and in sparring. Why? Because he's beautiful. Because the whispers of "Her? With him?" never stop and Brienne cannot rid of herself of that last bit of resentment."
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Bitterness does more harm on the vessel in which it is stored, than the vessel on which it is poured... ~ Unknown
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There are few things (nothing that readily comes to mind) that can boast Brienne's command like the clash of one steel edge against another. But, even here it seems, the whispers and the barely concealed snickers seem to find their way, seep through the gaps in the yard's fences like fetid air forcing its way into her lungs.
Brienne the Beauty and the Kingslayer, they call them. A jape of the most sordid variety it would seem from the gasps and giggles and the (far too frequent for her liking) barks of cruel laughter.
Least the Kingslayer's a looker, can't say the same for that beast of a woman...
Aye, and that cheek ain' helpin' her any neither...
"If I didn't know any better, I'd think you actually meant to kill me today," Jaime observes lightly, bent forward slightly in what she takes to be exhaustion (strange that she does not feel the same).
"Good gods wench," he shakes his head, raises both hands (the good and the golden) in surrender while his sword drops onto the dirt beneath his feet.
"Perhaps you should seek a partner better suited to your capabilities then, ser," she raises her chin at that, but even as the words leave her lips she regrets the bite of cruelty in them, the desire to hurt that startles and shames and satisfies her all at once.
Least the Kingslayer's a looker...
She makes no amends.
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The nights are no different, as vicious a battle between them as the ones that take place in broad daylight--at least on Brienne's end.
"You really do mean to kill me," Jaime laughs--always laughs--as she roughly shoves him onto the feather ticking of the bed. She gives him little time to recover before she's pulling on the strings of his dark breeches.
"If I meant to kill you, you'd be long dead, ser."
There's a certain truth to it, she's sure, but even single handed (and particularly in light of all their hours in the training yard), they both know that Jaime could still hold his own among the best of them--perhaps not as deftly as he once could, but Brienne needs only to ghost the tips of her fingers over the deeply puckered flesh of her cheek to know that very few (if any) people are as they once were.
But then he's still smirking up at her, mocking her with the turn of his lips and the glint in his eyes the way he always does, and it's almost enough to give her pause (though not quite enough, she knows him too well now).
Brienne the Beauty and the Kingslayer...
She wants to slap the smugness off his face, wants to strike him hard enough to draw blood for dragging her into this foolishness, this twisted farce of a fair knight and his fair lady (who shouldn't tower at his height, shouldn't hold her own and more against him, shouldn't be any less beautiful than he is).
Instead she tugs on the laces at the front of his breeches again, bends forward for a hard kiss, her teeth clashing against his in a way that's near painful for her (and for him too, she hopes). His beard bristles against his skin, not quite as poorly groomed as it had been during his captivity, but far less so than she's certain he's ever been accustomed to keeping it.
Pretty man...
She swats his hand away when he moves to mimic her and tug at the laces of her own breeches. The move leaves him entirely unruffled as he leans back, rests his weight on his elbows, and watches her get on with the process of disrobing them both.
Suddenly, she feels silly, as out of sorts as she always does when all eyes are trained on her without the security of her helm, the security of her strength and skill, to stand between them. It is frivolous of her to keep Jaime from touching her when he's already done it more times than either of them can count. It is most unkind of her to punish Jaime for the crimes of others--the likes of which she's been subject to for as far back as she can remember, long before his emergence.
There's little she can do to remedy her foolishness though when she already seems to have set some unspoken rule between them--when Jaime watches her expectantly.
Get on with it, wench, she can so easily hear him goad (though his lips do not move).
And so she does, wastes no time in taking the length of him in hand once she frees him and stoking until he groans, until his eyes no longer watch her.
It's strange, this power she holds over him, the kind that manifests itself with a brush of her fingers and a flick of her wrist. It could be so simple, if she'd let it.
She moves her hand more quickly when he lets out a long groan, only to stop short long before he's at the peak of his pleasure in favor of unlacing herself.
"Seven hells--" he nearly growls (the sound of him shooting a jolt of pleasure to the pit of her belly), but he makes no move to bring her back.
It still surprises her, how obedient he can be, and she wonders--vaguely, despite herself--about the one who came before her and just how she managed to tame him so (she does not linger on the name, the relation).
She has less a mind to wonder with when she straddles him and feels the hard length of him at her center, feels the heat pooling at the pit of her belly in a way that she's certain will never be familiar enough.
He lets her set the pace (just as he always does), though the nails of his good hand dig into the skin of her hip. urging her on in a way he has never been wont to with words.
When he presses his thumb against her right over the place where they're joined, rubbing slow circles into the spot that leaves her at the brink of madness, she nearly screams. There is a part of her mind that knows--even in the midst of the muddle--that he would laugh at the near shrillness of her cries were he in any condition to, were he not groaning beneath her, just as lost to all manner of dignity as she is.
She slumps beside him when it's over, sated and boneless. There is no sound aside from their ragged breathing for an interval of time she would be hard put to estimate (a moment or two or half a hundred...).
"You're quite through then?" He muses beside her, voice still slightly hoarse.
"Your meaning escapes me, ser," she respond with as sharp a clip to her tone as she could muster in her present condition (lying bare beside him with his seed drying on the inside of her thighs).
He laughs at her words (just as she knew he would, just as he always does), but there's a gentleness to his touch after--his fingers more than a little deliberate as they glide across the bare skin of her hip.
"Been knocking men like me down your entire life, was it?" He inquires, brow raised and voice teasing, but it unnerves her just how well he hit the mark.
Indeed she has been (and he knows it all too well, despite whatever initial skepticism he may have had), but she learned far earlier than she would have liked that physical blows are but one fleeting means of causing pain.
Just as well, she'd learned far later than she would have liked that physicality (if Jaime's fingers making their way to the cleft between her legs are any indication) can bring with it just as much pleasure--as welcome and necessary to her now as it is fleeting.
And so she does not push him away as he moves to brace himself atop her, doesn't turn her face as he tilts his head and studies her with eyes she can't quite read.
The feel of him growing hard again, the knowledge that she put him in that state, almost drowns out the words (if only for a short while).
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