Since you're gone my empty arms have nothing left to hold

Title: these tornadoes are for you [AO3]
Pairing: Jaime/Brienne
Rating: light NC17
Word count:
Spoilers: heavy for AFFC. Could easily be set after the Jaime chapter in ADWD but it's optional, it wasn't written with ADWD in mind.
Warnings: er, sword-fighting?
Disclaimer: GRRM owns them and I only wish it'd go like this. Title from Richard Siken. (I'm not worthy.)
Summary: “Wench, I recall you fighting a lot better last time.”
A/N: written for lenina20 during the latest five acts round; the prompt was fight turning into a heated situation. More or less.

Brienne isn’t fighting for real.

It takes Jaime two minutes to realize that; the only other option is that his skill with his left hand is now matching what he once had with his right, and he knows that it most definitely isn’t the case.

For some reason it makes him see red.

To think that for once he perfectly understood the problem.

If it had been for him, he’d have just let her kill him and be done with it, but he challenged her to a proper bout so that he could at least save her stupid honor (and really, he was the one sending her on that quest, he doesn’t blame her if she had to swear to kill him in order not to die), and she doesn’t even try?

“Wench, I recall you fighting a lot better last time.”

Her sword meets his, and she could have easily disarmed him, but instead keeps on staying on the defensive.

“You had two hands last time,” she shouts, and when she attacks next, it’s so easy to block that he almost throws away the sword here and now.

“I don’t need you to match your skills to mine,” he shouts back, trying to get her to at least fight instead of just taking his blows and blocking them. “I don’t even blame you – just fight like you can and let’s be done with this.”

“That’s how much you value your life?” she replies, still blocking his blows but making no motion to attack. They’ve been moving across the clearing they started fighting in, and it’s ridiculous that she’s been the one going backwards.

He knows that she’s stronger than this.

“If I have to die, then I’d like it to be fighting against a worthy opponent,” he replies, trying to keep his tone as harsh as possible. Maybe that will make her angry.

But she only stares at him as their swords clash and they find themselves stuck, Brienne’s back against a tree and his sword pressing against hers. She could disarm him in a second, if she wanted, but she isn’t doing it. She’s just there, looking at him with those damned blue eyes of hers, and her breathing is so deep and irregular that for a second he feels completely confused. She shouldn’t be tired. This has been a joke until now, and he can’t just match this Brienne with the one who would have been a worthy match to him when he still had his right hand, chains or no chains.

And then he sees that fire in her eyes for one second, and his sword isn’t in his hands anymore.

He knew. It took her one second to do it. And when he finds himself with Valyrian steel mere inches from his heart… well, maybe he doesn’t deserve it for Aerys, but he deserves it for enough different reasons. If it has to be someone, he doesn’t mind that it has to be her.

“Come on, you won. Just finish it,” he says, looking up at her because he won’t die with his eyes closed, but what he sees isn’t what he had been expecting.

She’s crying.

“What –”

“Do you really think that I could do it?” she asks, her voice thin, barely audible, and then the sword falls to the ground.

Her hands are shaking as she buries her face in them, hiding the bright, red scar on her cheek, and for a second he feels completely out of place. But… hells, he has never seen Brienne cry once, not even when they were prisoners together; the sight is making his stomach clench. He isn’t really thinking straight when he covers her right hand with the one he has left. Brienne doesn’t offer any resistance, uncovering her face. Her eyes are bloodshot and the absolute misery in her stare doesn’t make her any favors (not that the scar on her cheek and the rope burn on her neck do, as well).

“I wouldn’t resent you,” Jaime says, but it was obviously wrong, from the way her eyes narrow. Then she shakes her head, takes a breath, moves forward and kisses him.

It’s barely even a kiss – just lips against lips, she doesn’t even try to turn it into something more, but it’s enough to make him freeze on the spot.

So that was why, he thinks as she starts to move away, her eyes closed, every line in her face screaming that she’s expecting him to refuse it.

But she doesn’t know that since that first time he dreamed of her, it happened other times. She also doesn’t know that there’s a reason why she knows things about him that not even his sister did, does or ever will know.

He pushes her up against the tree and kisses her again. For real.

Brienne’s lips part for his tongue as soon as she understands what he means to do, and her entire frame shakes against his as she reaches up and buries her hands in his hair. They’re rough, bigger than he’s used to, but it isn’t a bad feeling. And the way she’s kissing back, eager and fast and as if there’s nothing else that she wants is making him feel hot all over, the same way that first swordfight had made him feel burning, back when his right hand wasn’t missing. He wraps his arm around her waist, hating his fake hand because he can’t cup her hip properly, and when she moans into the kiss they’re sharing he pushes her back against the tree. Brienne doesn’t push him away – on the contrary, she draws him closer.

When they part, her cheeks are flushed and tear tracks are still visible, but her eyes are wide and she looks a lot less miserable.

“Jaime?” Her voice is almost hopeful, and the way she says his name – as if he’s the best thing that ever happened to her – goes straight to places he had thought were dead a long time ago.

“I mean it,” he says, because he might not be entirely sure of how to name whatever he feels for her, but he wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t been sure.

When she kisses him again, it’s still tentative, but completely different from before – for one, it’s a real kiss. It takes him more than he’d have thought to undo the laces of her breeches after she moves away to get rid of her mail, but she lets him, baring her neck to him as he kisses her pulse point before moving up to her jaw. He wishes he had two hands so that he could cup one of her breasts, too – he thinks that they’d fit in his palm – but he’ll have to do with what he has. He motions for her to lie down on the ground and he moves so that he’s half on top of her; by now, he doesn’t even care if someone sees them.

Brienne arches into his touch when one of his fingers slips inside her, and gods, she is wet, and he has to restrain himself from getting rid of his own breeches and go the whole way. At least she deserves a bed, and this isn’t about him. Her expression goes from overwhelmed to hungry in a matter of seconds, and when her hips thrust up in his direction and she clenches around his fingers, he can’t help thinking that no one would think her ugly right now. Not with her kiss swollen lips half parted, hair that might not look flattering but that is so very soft, with her cheeks so pink and her half-opened eyes almost all pupil. He leans down to kiss her when he feels her relaxing, her heart a fast and regular beat; when she opens her eyes fully, Jaime is half-sure that he’s returning her small smile. He isn’t even sure of his own reactions.

“You haven’t…” she starts, glancing at his crotch.

“I can wait,” he replies, even if his body is telling him otherwise. “Well, I guess that at this point we should find a way to get you out of that mess.”

She looks down at her half-opened shirt and lowered breeches, but he reaches out with his good hand and cups her chin, forcing her to look at him. “You did what you had to. Stop feeling guilty. I told you that too many oaths will clash, and I shouldn’t have sent you alone. But please, swear to me that if we ever spar again, you won’t make it easier for me. Unless it means that it always ends like this.”

“It seems fair,” she agrees as she rearranges her shirt and reaches for her discarded mail. She puts it back on and retrieves her sword. Jaime should really find his, but instead he fixes his own clothes and moves on her side.

“I was serious. You owe me a fair fight,” he says, and when she smiles in spite of himself he can’t help thinking that it’s a good look on her.

“Fine,” she answers. “What about now? We can discuss plans later.” There’s a glint in her eyes that Jaime thinks that he likes.

When blades kiss again, a short while later, he feels his blood singing in ways it hadn’t since the first time their swords clashed.

End.