Archive of Our Own

The thing about drag is that people get into it for a million different reasons, but Jaime’s always confused when it’s not at least a little bit about disappointing one’s father in a very specific, very pointed way. He’s rewatching old seasons of Drag Them, Dayne in preparation for his upcoming All Stars competition, and for the first time he watches the broadcast version of the live season finale that saw Rosé Thorne pull off her own wig and rain rose petals on the stage from beneath it. Jaime was there at the time, and the atmosphere was incredible, everyone jumping from their seats to cheer the move—after more than a handful of seasons, anything new was rare and thrilling. He never went back and watched the broadcast version. But now that he is, he sees the way the cameras zoom in on Mace Tyrell jumping up with a beaming smile, his hands clasped together. He sees Willas Tyrell cheering. Garlan whooping. Margaery is crying. Olenna nodding with approval. The entire family is there to support Loras, and it’s just…wild. That’s all.

It’s not like Jaime spends a lot of time being forlorn that his father won’t ever accept his career. He doesn’t accept Tywin’s career either, so they’re pretty much even. Tywin thinks Jaime is a waste of a son and a shit businessman? Jaime thinks Tywin’s a ghoulish capitalist and a terrible father. Tywin thinks Jaime’s sexuality and lifestyle are something to be ashamed of? Jaime thinks Tywin sucks. There you go. Ties severed.

And Tyrion, well. He’s Tyrion. He’s never not going to be Tyrion. Tyrion likes to think he’s subversive and cool and edgy because he’s friends with a bunch of prostitutes and an actual mercenary, but he’s still one of the most heteronormative people Jaime knows, and he’s wildly uncomfortable with drag and most of Jaime’s chosen circle.

Cersei’s the only one who halfway supports him publicly, and even that is mostly based around the fact that Jaime is one of the most popular contestants to ever be on the show, and was one of the most-requested alums for the show’s first All Stars season. Jaime’s initial choice to adopt Cersei’s name and mannerisms as his drag persona—just Cersei, no last name—was after a particularly brutal fight when they were still in university, but Jaime’s fame has come with a reconciliation with his sister. They won’t ever be as close as they were, but that’s probably for the best. They were pretty fucking codependent.

During his first run on Drag Them, Cersei showed up during the makeover challenge. Jaime hadn’t expected it. The moment he heard that it was a challenge to make over family members, he had been convinced that none of his family would have accepted. That the producers would invite one of his friends, and there could be a Teaching Moment about how sometimes we have to choose our families. But Cersei was there, looking fragile and more nervous than he’d expected to ever see her. They had barely spoken in years. The show provided enough wine that a tearful reconciliation was practically guaranteed, especially since Cersei was extremely aware of the cameras. When they walked the runway as Jaime and Cersei—both of them in drag as each other—they were given glowing reviews, and their embarrassing crying hugfest backstage when Jaime won the challenge is still everywhere on Top 10 Drag Them Moments compilations.

And it’s not like Jaime is lonely. He has friends, both in the drag scene and outside of it. He has plenty of fans. Maybe too many fans, if he’s being honest. The good thing about being a drag performer usually is that you take off your persona and can be relatively incognito with some chunky glasses and some interesting facial hair, like Oberyn Martell, who always brags about never having been recognized out of drag. But Jaime’s thing is making himself into his twin sister, so generally he’s shit out of luck when it comes to being recognized in public.

So it’s not loneliness, but there’s something missing. Something that he would like to have. Someone sitting in the audience and cheering for him the way Loras Tyrell’s family cheered, looking like he hung the moon as he took off that wig and absolutely murdered his competition in the lip sync battle. His father can’t do that for him, and neither can his siblings, and Jaime has never really had a serious relationship. When he was younger, he was convinced that he had to meet The One before he turned thirty, and his sparse, brief, often cringe-worthy dating record has been fairly pathetic, and probably exactly the opposite of what most people expect of him. Cersei’s persona is of a wine-drinking, free-wheeling, self-professed proud slut, and Jaime, meanwhile, once told a Tinder date in all seriousness that he wasn’t really looking for sex until he was sure it was A Commitment.

It’s on his mind a lot during All Stars. It’s on his mind in part because Loras shows up on Day One as a guest judge, a former winner who traipses in, smug and smiling about the crown he won three years ago. Rosé Thorne is an ingenue, a young up-and-coming actress with a vintage aesthetic and a cute, coy, who, me? persona. Loras Tyrell is a bitch.

But he’s a bitch with a family that loves him. A young bitch with a family who loves him. Jaime is rapidly approaching forty, his family is almost all assholes, and his last serious girlfriend dumped him because she was tired of people asking, wait, isn’t he gay?

“Don’t you get tired of this?” he asks Oberyn one day. Oberyn is the only person in this year’s cast older than him, which means he’s Jaime’s best friend, because Jaime can be predictable, even when he’s not Being Cersei. He wants to feel young sometimes, too. Plus, Oberyn is the only other person in Drag Them history who identifies as something other than gay: Oberyn as Pan and in a long-term open relationship with a woman, Jaime as Bi and tentatively demi. Jaime would be lying if he said that he wasn’t Inspired when Oberyn showed up in Season 3 and made immediate waves by talking about his life-partner Ellaria.

“Tired of what?” Oberyn asks incredulously. He’s lounging backstage and sipping at the watered-down drinks that they’re allowed when the cameras aren’t rolling. He’s one of those veterans who likes to loudly complain that “this is so much nicer than it was during my season”, making the others feel like newcomers if they were on it any later than Season 5. Jaime’s season was Season 6, so. He’s basically an infant.

“I don’t know. All the backstabbing and the shit-talking. It’s so fake. Everywhere else, these girls are the kindest people in the world. Get a TV crew on us, and we’re all a bunch of assholes.”

“Baby, this is All Stars,” Oberyn says, dramatically enough that Jaime knows he has misjudged; there must be a camera somewhere, after all. He thought they were alone. “If you want to go home, just let me know. I’ll help you pack.”

Jaime doesn’t want to go home. Not really. There was a time when he worshipped Arthur Dayne, who was a pioneer in the industry, who made drag more mainstream, who is basically the person people think of when they think of drag. Arthur hasn’t done drag in years, hasn’t gone by Dawny Dayne since he was in his twenties, and he has turned the art of drag into a financial empire. He isn’t the man Jaime worshipped when Jaime was seventeen, but…Jaime understands. He was a bit heartbroken when he showed up to his first season of Drag Them and found that Arthur Dayne’s personality was entirely constructed for the camera. He’s a busy man. He can’t afford to remember everyone’s names, can’t afford to get emotionally connected to the contestants when the majority of them are going to end up being forgotten by the mainstream audience and therefore Unprofitable. Jaime and Arthur are friendly now, because Jaime still makes Arthur a lot of money. And it is what it is, but it’s also been disillusioning on a scale that people like Oberyn Martell—who started out already cynical—doesn’t really seem to get.

Jaime is fine with faking it for the camera. He is. He’s fine when he has to laugh with Arthur when Arthur does his rounds in the workroom, pretending to be more chummy than they are. He’s fine with pretending to give a shit about the petty drama that erupts between the castmates. He keeps reminding himself that he has a fairly popular touring career to go back to after this, a best-selling advice book, and millions of Instagram followers, and…whatever. A real life. Or something close enough to a real life, anyway.

But it’s different, on All Stars. He waited until the second All Stars season to join in, because the first one seemed like it would probably be a bit of a mess (it was) and he wanted to wait a little longer after his first season, give his fanbase a chance to grow. He doesn’t think he could have chosen a better time to hop back in, but it doesn’t have the same glossy feeling of excitement that it did last time. In his first season, he was relatively unknown. A fairly popular local queen with a well-attended weekend slot at a not-terrible venue, but obviously it can’t compare to what he has going for him now. And the problem is that the other girls are all the same. They’re all established now. They’re all popular past contestants. They know what’s expected of them, and sure, it’s going to heighten the production value, and he’s sure the output for the challenges is going to be stunning. But that feeling of gritty, excited hard work is gone. That frightened, almost schoolboy desire to make friends, to make sure that people like him, that’s gone too. His major goal is just…not tainting his legacy. That’s it. He doesn’t even care if he wins. He didn’t win his first season, and that was more of a boon to him than anything else, because he lost to someone who wasn’t favored by the audience, which means years later people are still having him sign Cersei was robbed! shirts at cons. Everyone knows that the crown isn’t the important part. It’s the fan interest and the fan dollars that will keep a queen relevant for years afterward. So Jaime is just…nice. He’s nice. He’s calm. He’s polite. He mentors some of the younger kids—Jon is a bit scattered and a bit nervous, and he latches onto Jaime’s kindness in a way that’s probably going to play great for the audience—and he stays mostly out of the drama. Whether in drag or out of it, Jaime has perfected the art of looking Woundedly Innocent, because he knows how well it plays on camera, with his green eyes huge and hurt and uncomprehending.

It’s easy. That’s the problem. He wins three of the first five challenges. He’s coasting. He’s unremarkable. Uninteresting. He can see it happening. Can imagine the editors’ eyes glossing over as they decide to cut another too-cute conversation where he shows Jon how to hem a skirt. Oberyn got in a shouting match in episode two with Renly Baratheon, and they have continued to try and sabotage each other at every turn. By the time episode five rolls around, they have to face off in a lip sync that ends without an elimination—a shocker that has them hugging desperately in the middle of the runway, and it’s going to be fantastic fucking TV. In episode five, Jaime told Satin he looked cute in pink, and Cersei placed first by constructing a gorgeous emerald gown out of curtains. How groundbreaking.

The makeover challenge is actually the one that Jaime has been dreading the most. It’s been kind of a wildcard in past seasons. Even though it seemed like it was going to be awkward in Jaime’s season when he didn’t think they’d be able to scrounge up a family member for him, the whole thing ended up making for heartwarming television, with all of the family members talking about how much they loved and supported their children. Arthur Dayne has made it kind of his mission to make families come together, and so the conversational portion of that episode was handled with uncommon sensitivity.

And then, the next season, they had the queens makeover straight men, at least three of whom were openly homophobic, and one of whom threw an actual tantrum over the possibility of tucking. It was easy to see where the producers thought that they’d be able to make heartwarming television out of literal homophobes—who doesn’t like to see the moment when a bigoted fool realizes that We’re All Just People, Aren’t We? (Jaime doesn’t like to see it, for one, because he’d rather not watch the bigots at all, but that’s him)—but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a stupid fucking idea. Every other year has been the same: sometimes heartwarming, sometimes a huge swing and an epic miss.

For All Stars, Jaime’s assuming it’ll be on one end of the spectrum or the other. Oberyn thinks they’re going to invite mothers, which would spell another awkward moment for Jaime. Satin is convinced it’s going to be exes, which might be equally as disastrous. Jaime’s just hoping he doesn’t have to explain contouring to a fucking biker or whatever.

And it’s…okay. Actually, it’s not the worst: female athletes. Women celebrated for their form, for their strength. They all walk in wearing tank tops and sports bras and workout gear, and Jaime and Oberyn exchange glances from across the room, both of them raising their eyebrows, because they have very similar tastes, at least when it comes to women.

Arthur quickly introduces the concept: the winner of the episode’s mini-challenge—Renly—will assign the female athletes to the contestants. The contestants will then design two looks each for both themselves and their athletes. The theme is superheroes and damsels in distress, with the female athletes playing the part of superheroes. The contestants and their athletes are expected to come up with a rich backstory, a dance routine, and dialogue for an incredibly campy trailer that they will then shoot. There will also be a more traditional runway portion that will focus on the “secret identities” of the superheroes, which Arthur emphasizes should be about glamor and sex appeal, because it wouldn’t be a makeover challenge without taking a chance to make some hamfisted Comment about Gender Expression, or whatever. No one ever said Drag Them was subtle social commentary.

To do all of it, they have, like, two days.

It’s a classic Drag Them setup, and Jaime is too much of a professional to be completely overwhelmed, but he knows already that it’s going to be a mess. Jon looks like he’s ready to quit—he’s threatened to walk away three times already (Arthur read him three episodes in a row for his uneven hemlines until Jaime stepped in and showed him how to use the sewing machine). Renly looks smug, eyeing up the women in front of him like he’s trying to figure out how best to fuck with Oberyn. Oberyn looks gleeful, probably at least in part to fuck with Renly, but also probably at least a little because he just likes women, likes designing for women, is easily the most charming one on the cast, and is almost guaranteed to end up winning this challenge. Satin is looking at the women with vague despair and is half-hiding behind Jon, like he thinks Renly will forget about him if he can’t see him. The women stand opposite them, facing off, regarding the men in front of them with blank expressions. Jaime just hopes he doesn’t get stuck with an asshole.

Renly matches Satin, first, with a beautiful, fierce blonde woman who introduces herself as Val, a long jumper and runner with toned legs and a sharp smile. Jon gets Ygritte, an archer and rock-climber. Jaime is assigned Asha, a distance-running, axe-throwing, yacht-sailing virtuoso, apparently. Oberyn is assigned a terrifying, quiet woman named Meris, who apparently teaches hand-to-hand combat to mercenary companies. And for himself, Renly chooses the tallest woman, who introduces herself as Brienne the Beast, to the polite laughter of everyone. She’s a wrestler.

They’re given two hours to come up with superhero concepts for their athletes. Jaime’s set up near the back of the room, which gives he and Asha a good line of sight to all of the others. Asha is giddy, clearly a fan of the show, and relishes in the opportunity to get a backstage look at how it all works. Jaime is glad to indulge her with a few gossipy tidbits, because she doesn’t seem like an asshole, and because she tells him that he should have won his season, which is usually the way straight to his heart, much as he wishes he wasn’t such a predictable shithead.

Satin and Val seem to be getting along fairly well, with Val coaxing shy smiles and occasional comments out of Satin. Jon keeps sending glances over at them, checking in on Satin, which is very cute, even though Jaime has yet to figure out if they’re angling for a showmance or if they actually like each other. Jon and Ygritte are barely speaking, but they seem to be completely in sync in ideas, trading a paper back and forth as they scribble drawings down. Meris is stone-faced while Oberyn is at his charming best, ignoring the fact that his partner seems like she wants to step on him in the least sexy way possible. And Brienne is…red. Very red. Renly is laughing about something, probably coming up with some horrifyingly crude outfit concept, because his whole brand is sex for shock value.

Asha and Jaime come up with something pretty quickly: a lumberjack-based superhero whose damsel is some kind of tree spirit. It may not be the most exciting thing, but Asha likes it, and that’s the main point, for Jaime: making these women feel strong and sexy and powerful and cool in a way that makes them comfortable to be themselves. Of course, there’ll be a fair amount of objectification, because this is Drag Them, and their audience is made up of a healthy amount of people who are interested in women, but Asha seems comfortable with it as long as she’s treated respectfully, and Jaime plans to do that.

At the end of their two hours, Arthur reenters the room, which is…a little unusual. They usually send in a producer to dismiss everyone unless there are further big announcements.

And big announcements in the work room are never good.

Jaime feels dread pooling in the pit of his stomach. He’s familiar enough with the formula by now, and they’re in the top five, which means he should have expected some kind of twist. There’s nothing Arthur/the producers like more than throwing in an eleventh hour wrench to make things more difficult. A whole other outfit concept? A different skit? A reversal so that the queens are the superheroes and the athletes the damsels?

“Oh no,” Arthur says, when the queens have all made their guesses. “It’s much worse than that.”

And it kind of is: partner swaps.

“Whatever concept your partner’s previous queen came up with, that’s the concept you have to use,” Arthur says, with the kind of forced gleeful energy that has made this show so bizarrely popular for the past decade. The queens all groan theatrically, some of them more sincerely than others. Asha pouts in Jaime’s direction, and Jaime rests his forehead on the desk and sighs heavily as Arthur begins drawing names from an extremely large, glittery, campy hat.

The swaps are made efficiently, though drawn out for maximum drama. Satin ends up with Asha, which will probably work well. Satin will pull off the whole tree spirit thing better than Jaime would have, anyway. Jon ends up with Val, who coos over his puppy-dog eyes and ruffles his hair. Oberyn and Ygritte size each other up on the other side of the room. Renly pales as he stares up at Meris. And Brienne is still red as she moves over to sit with Jaime, Renly’s notes and design sketches clutched to her chest.

Arthur gives them another two hours to plan before the day is over, and then the cameramen whirl around the room, barking orders, trying to catch all the conversations at once.

Not that much conversation is happening in Jaime’s corner of the room. Brienne hasn’t even looked at him yet. She’s staring down at the table, and she looks vaguely…stung. Like she’s going to cry.

“Look,” Jaime says. “Renly’s a bitch.”

He knows a camera caught that. He knows it will probably get back to Renly somehow. The producers have been itching to cause a fight between them, because they know Jaime and Renly kind of hate each other behind the scenes, but they’re both generally too smart to get pulled into Drag Them drama, so they’ve been tolerating each other for the cameras and then just delivering bitchy little barbs to their own contentment in the vans back to the hotel at the end of the day.

But Brienne looks upset, and Jaime doesn’t want her to be. This should be a good experience for everyone, not just for the contestants who happen to get paired with nice people like him and Satin and Jon and…well, okay. Everyone but Renly.

“He was…kind,” Brienne says, but she looks at Jaime finally, almost guiltily, her bottom lip worrying between her teeth.

“Let me guess,” he jokes, leaning forward a bit, teasing her. “You’re a fan.”

She blushes more deeply, and he laughs, but it’s a kind laugh, and he can tell that she knows it from the way she smiles a little wider.

“He’s funny,” she says. But it’s hesitant now, and Jaime knows exactly what she’s thinking.

“He is,” Jaime agrees. “But it’s not fun to be on the other end of it when you didn’t sign up for it. Renly never knows when to turn off. He’s never not in drag.”

“Mm,” Brienne answers, looking a little lost. Still a little shell-shocked. Jaime sighs and reaches out his hand.

“All right, come on. Let’s see the damage. What did he come up with?”

Brienne lays the pages on his outstretched fingers. He looks down at the design, and obviously the first thing he sees is the giant pink cock sticking out of the front of Brienne’s costume. There are wings on her back. Oh. Pegasus. Well. It’s not not funny, he doesn’t think, but it certainly doesn’t cut a very dignified figure.

“Huh,” he says.

“I,” she starts. “I thought…maybe he’d find a way to make it funny.”

“Giant pink cock is exactly Renly’s type of humor,” Jaime sighs. He puts the notebook down on the table and stares across the room at Renly, who isn’t even trying to make conversation with Meris, but is staring down at the page in disbelief. Oberyn keeps shooting him satisfied little glances from across the room. Jaime has a feeling at least someone knew about the swap ahead of time. “All right. So what did you ask for from him? It obviously wasn’t this.”

“He asked if I ever wanted to be a superhero, and I said no. I said I wanted to be a knight.”

“What on earth does this have to do with knighthood?”

“He said that was boring,” Brienne says helplessly, and Jaime sighs. Of course Renly probably had the idea planned ahead of time, and he wouldn’t let Brienne the Beast get in the way of whatever grand joke idea he had come up with.

“What was he going to be, then?”

“I didn’t really understand. It was something to do with a peach? The sketch is in there somewhere.”

Brienne is looking more and more helpless, more and more overwhelmed. Jaime feels sorry for her. He can feel the cameraman just over his shoulder, coming in closer, encroaching. Ready to capture the first few tears that are no-doubt going to fall when Brienne loses control of herself. She’s a staggering woman. Taller than him, and he’s several inches above six feet himself. She has hunched herself into the chair beside him like it can hide her from the cameras, hide her from view. Jaime shifts his seat slightly so that he can cut off the camera’s line of sight, bracing his hand on his elbow and tilting his head just right so that they’ll have to line up a shot.

“Brienne,” he says gently. “Talk to me. What’s the objection? Is it too crude? Is it because Renly’s trying to make you into gif and then the furries will never leave you alone?”

She laughs a little at that, and she looks down at the table, like she thinks her next words are going to be stupid. He doesn’t think they will be, but he doesn’t know how to make her more comfortable. He knows how difficult it can be to say things when you know it’s going to end up on TV. He knows how it can feel impossible, like everything you say is going to be taken the wrong way. And this hasn’t exactly been a good first experience for her so far. He can see why she would be reluctant.

“I don’t want to be a joke,” she says finally. Quietly. He knows the mics are going to pick up on it anyway, but Brienne is looking at him so earnestly that he doesn’t care. He doesn’t even think about it.

“Brienne,” he says gently, reaching into her lap and covering her folded hands with one of his. He sighs, and he looks back down at the drawing on the table. “I think you came to the wrong show if you wanted to be anything other than a joke.” She nods miserably. “I mean, we’re going to have to shoot a skit.”

“I know.”

“And a…a performance.”

“I know.”

“It’s not going to be dignified whatever costume you’re in. They’re notoriously terrible.”

She’s looking at him with her brows furrowed, like she doesn’t understand why he’s bothering to tell her this. She nods.

“I know,” she admits. “I. It may have been a mistake. I was just…I wanted the chance to…to meet him.”

Jaime sighs, and shakes his head mournfully.

“There’s your problem,” he says. “Bad taste.”

She laughs at that, a little. Blushes.

“I just,” she says. “I never…I had never watched before. His was my first season. A friend was watching it, and some of the things he said…”

Jaime remembers well. Renly got a lot of attention for his Season 9 appearance, and the fact that he discussed never feeling like he was in the right skin, never feeling at home with himself until he discovered drag and discovered the power in shaping himself into the person he wanted to be. They were pretty words. Jaime liked them, himself. And then he met Renly and he realized that everything Renly said was calculated, considered. Pre-written.

“Renly had a good first season,” he says. “Because Renly knows exactly how to speak to his experience in a way that makes other people relate and understand.” That’s maybe the kindest thing he’s ever said about Renly. It leaves a bad taste in his mouth. It’s going to be even worse in a few months when they watch this episode and Renly won’t shut up about it. “But.” He taps the page in front of him pointedly. “He sometimes gets so wrapped up in his own experience that he forgets to look outside it. Renly has never been you. He’s never been me. He’s never been Arthur Dayne. Renly is Renly, and he’s very...well. He’s Renly about it. He didn’t realize you were uncomfortable.” And he wouldn’t have cared if he did. “He doesn’t think of this as your challenge as much as his. He wants the crown.”

“It is a competition,” Brienne puts in quietly. Like she understands.

“Yes, but it’s about more than winning,” Jaime replies.

It’s odd, because it’s been years since he’s actually believed that. Oh, sure, it’s about winning. The crown isn’t necessarily his idea of winning, but he knows it’s technically true. And when Jaime says winning, what he really means are the fans on offer. The exposure. The people who will buy his merch and buy tickets to meet him at cons and who will fly across the continent to see him perform on his tour. That’s winning. That’s the grand prize at the end of this drag boot camp.

But in his first season…He can remember, now, in a clear way that he hasn’t remembered for a long time. Entering the work room and looking around, eyes wide and glazed over. The last time he re-watched his entrance into the work room to meet the other girls, he’d been struck by several things: first, how young he looked. Second, how naïve. How easily bowled over by the cheap set decorations and the glaring, hot-pink design of everything. He was so excited to be there. So excited to compete, and meet new people.

He’s more cynical than he was. He thought he was too cynical to really enjoy this All Stars run, or to find any remaining passion within himself for the kind of commercialized drag that it produces. He hasn’t been thinking about the competition as anything but another stepping stone. Another way to get fans, to continue to hustle and stay active and stay successful. He has made for exceptionally boring television, and he knows it, but at least he has not faltered, or fallen, or made a fool of himself. His fans will love him more for it. The various media outlets that follow Drag Them breathlessly might ding him for his lack of drama, but they’ll also proclaim him one of the most professional and gracious competitors the show has ever seen, and it will get him fans. It’s soulless. He has become soulless. He knew this, he thinks, but he has not dwelled on it the way he is dwelling on it now. He needed to see it through Brienne’s eyes, he thinks. The hopes she had when she came here, wanting to meet Renly. The way those hopes have begun to crumble.

He takes the sketches and concept designs into his hands. He crumples them. He drops them into the trash. Brienne is staring at him. Frowning.

“Tell me about knights, Brienne,” he says, pulling over his notebook, taking out his pencil, and preparing to draw.

It’s not until later, back in his hotel room, that he worries. He wouldn’t let Brienne mention it. Stopped her every time she tried to ask. They used the rest of their hours together coming up with a concept that Brienne wanted. Every time she stopped, hesitated, wondered if it was too much, Jaime shook his head.

“It’s for you,” he told her. “This day, this experience, it’s for you.”

Later, alone, he thinks he should regret it. He’ll be disqualified from winning the challenge, obviously. He knew that when he threw Renly’s notes in the bin. It doesn’t matter how well Jaime pulls off the design elements of the challenge—and he is planning to absolutely crush it. The judges will hem and haw and praise his design work. They might even praise his choice to abandon the challenge for the sake of his athlete’s comfort. But they will disqualify him, because it wouldn’t be fair to award him the win if he doesn’t play by the rules.

It’s not the judges he’s worried about, anyway. It’s the fans. He knows it’s a shallow thing to worry about, but they have been on his mind ever since he decided to come back to All Stars. Even just coming back was a risk. A beloved contestant returning, to be seen in new light. During the first All Stars season, several veterans who were beloved by the fans returned and were lambasted as entitled, dismissive, judgmental. Jaime tries to stay away from Twitter and Reddit and sites where the show is discussed as a kind of worshipful staple of pop culture, but he couldn’t help but bump into it a few times during the All Stars 1 season. I liked Rhaegar so much better before he came back. What a dick. Or what happened to Purple Lightning? She was so awesome in Season 1. Resurrecting her was a mistake. She’s just a washed up, entitled hag now.

Those people, those anonymous faces, those Drag Them fans and local queens who can’t wait to tear a person off their pedestal, what will they say about him throwing the challenge? Jaime can see them branding him a martyr. Disdaining his choice and calling him ungrateful for not taking every opportunity to win the hundred thousand dollar grand prize. He can see them saying that he was too focused on the fans. Too focused on his appearance and not enough on the race for the crown. They are looking for any reason to unseat him. Popularity does that. He’s well aware of it. The slightest mistakes. The slightest reasons to dismiss him and declare him past his prime. They are seized upon and torn apart and gleefully waved in everyone’s faces.

Yes, he’ll be disqualified from the challenge. Will it make them respect him more? Or will he be damning himself to the same kind of legacy as Beric? As Rhaegar?

It doesn’t matter, in the end. That’s what he decides: it doesn’t matter. He’s set on his course. He wants Brienne to enjoy herself. He doesn’t want her to feel disillusioned with this show, with this cast, even with Arthur Dayne. It meant so much to Jaime once, and he can tell that it means something to Brienne. A lot of girls, even a lot of straight girls, find something in Drag Them that Jaime can’t really comprehend. He’s heard enough tearful stories from teenagers who found themselves in the insecurities and the in-fighting and in the beautiful transformations and the triumphant victories that the show has offered over its years on television. Hollow as he finds it now, it means something to people. Brienne isn’t a teenager, but she nonetheless looks around with that same heavy gaze with which he remembers taking everything in when he was here the first time, and he doesn’t want to take it away from her. He doesn’t want it to be taken away from her.

Jaime constructs her outfit. He sews his own. Brienne watches him with big, blue eyes, always on him. She helps him when he asks for it. They help Jon with his outfit, too, when Jon is at a loss when it comes to structuring Val’s Barbarian Princess look. They chat about Brienne’s job, about her life. Maybe it won’t make it to the episode. Maybe it’s too boring for television. They probably won’t garner as much interest as Satin and Asha talking about how cute Jon looks out of drag, or Renly and Meris going head-to-head over how much skin Meris is willing to display. But it’s…nice. Jaime is enjoying himself. Brienne is enjoying herself, too.

At the end of a very long day, Jaime is pretty sure that he and Brienne are set for the next morning’s runway. They part ways at the workroom, but then Oberyn directs the driver—a man he has been sleeping with, and therefore a man willing to bend the rules for him—to a restaurant across town that his family owns, and reveals that the athletes have been shuttled there as well. It’s probably not, strictly speaking, allowed, but there are a lot of rules on the Drag Them set, and almost none of them are followed by the contestants anyway.

Jaime sees the way Brienne’s expression lights up when he enters. She makes a space for him at the table, allowing him to squeeze between she and Asha. She is bright, and warm, and happy, and she reveals that she has been telling the other girls about Jaime’s designs for her, and Jaime feels just…filled with warmth. I did this. I made her happy. My choices made her happy. It will be worth it, he decides. Whatever happens when this episode airs. Whatever happens to his fanbase, or the way he is written about. His legacy. It has been empty inside him for a while now, being custodian to his own legacy. Tending to it carefully, making sure that he never has any reason for his fans to turn against him. Watching as his friends were taken down or made obsolete by careless mistakes. He has never wanted to be one of them, and yet here he is, making a choice that could either endear him to the fanbase forever or turn him into a joke. They will see him as someone martyring himself for the sake of appearance. Not as someone who genuinely cares about Brienne’s happiness and wants her to enjoy her time on this show that she appears to love so much. Well, Jaime doesn’t care. Let them say what they will say. He knows why he’s doing what he’s doing.

Afterward, they all head back to the hotel together, and Jaime ends up walking Brienne to her room, because it seems like the polite thing to do, and because he wants to talk to her alone. She invites him in, and she pours him a drink, and they talk. It’s nice to talk to her without the cameras rolling. She asks him how he got into drag, and he tells her about his father and his brother and his sister, and the way that the answer to that question must necessarily be wrapped up in them, even though it wasn’t one thing or one moment that made him decide to leave his position in his father’s company and start performing. He asks Brienne about wrestling, and she describes it to him. She started out in a more underground ring, performing stunts for rowdy crowds, and she worked her way up until she was working for the most popular female wrestling network in Westeros. Jaime promises to check her out. She tells him that she’ll go to his shows whenever she can. He believes her.

He’s a couple of drinks in, and he makes a joke about wanting to wrestle Brienne. Like his mouth can’t help itself. He feels like an idiot. She looks at him like she doesn’t understand.

“I would beat you,” she warns, and he laughs aloud at that. She frowns.

“Of course you would,” he says quickly. “I’m strong. But I don’t know anything about wrestling, and I think you’re stronger, anyway. I’m just saying, I’d like to put it to the test.”

Of course, then he’s thinking about that stupid fucking giant pink cock that Renly drew on the front of Brienne’s costume, and he’s thinking of, fucking, whatever. Brienne pinning him down with those strong thighs, kissing him on his throat, her lips moving across his skin. He shouldn’t think about this. He’s thinking about his hips searching upward, canting towards her, and he’s thinking about her shoving them down with one hand, strong and steady, keeping him in place. Drawing it out. Wearing that stupid fucking cock and fucking him with it.

Fuck Renly. Fuck Renly. Except don’t fuck Renly. Nobody should fuck Renly ever again. He should not fuck or be fucked. That should be his punishment for making this happen. Brienne’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and it’s not fair, the way her muscles curve and the way he can see her abs when it rides up, and the way that her legs are firm and thick. She could hold him down and fuck him, and he wants her to. Fucking Renly. Fuck off. Jaime has never wanted anyone to fuck him so badly in his life. What is wrong with him?

“I should go,” he manages to say, and Brienne nods, guileless and bewildered, and he’s just the worst, and so he leaves, and he goes back to his own room, and he hates Renly fervently for the rest of the night.

In the morning, he is not hungover so much as wrung out. Emotionally hungover, maybe. Brienne acts completely normal in the work room, which means, at least, that she didn’t notice how wrecked he was when he left. She’s pleased to see him. She hugs him when she sees him. Renly should die.

When it’s time for Brienne’s final fitting, Jaime is nervous. She looks like some kind of warrior goddess, he thinks, but the skirt does slit up a bit high, and maybe she thinks the chest plate is too much. He wanted to show off her legs, because it’s Drag Them and because he knows the judges will harp about him making her sexless if he doesn’t show off a little skin—again, not the place for nuanced gender commentary—but he can put together a pair of leggings pretty quick to go under the skirt and the laced-up sandals if she hates it. But she’s staring at herself in the mirror, turning first one way and then the other, and he can see a glimmer of wetness in her eyes, and he knows that he nailed it.

She turns back from the mirror and hugs him, and he hugs her back, and for a long time they stand there, pressed together, and he knows that the cameras are catching every moment of this. He doesn’t care. He kisses her on the cheek when he pulls away, and her cheeks are pink afterward. Not red with mortification like they had been with Renly, but pink and pleased.

The superhero skit is, well. It’s a skit. The dialogue is terrible and clunky, and anything subtler than a slapstick routine is judged “not funny” until finally they exaggerate to the point of humiliation. Jaime was worried about how Brienne would feel, because the whole thing is a joke, but she seems to get into it. Giddy and amused, and Jaime is relieved and giddy in turn. The director of the skit, one of the judges, Varys, sighs over them and tells them they’re hopeless, but Jaime doesn’t care. He’s having fun. He’s having so much fun that it stands out in sharp relief with the way the rest of his All Stars run has gone. He feels like he has woken up again. Brienne did that. He wants her to know.

He waits to tell her until the runway, hours later. Their looks for the runway are fairly simple, with Jaime using the same cultural inspirations as in Brienne’s knight look, but showing off Brienne’s shoulders and neck this time instead of her legs. The gown is long and sweeping, and he puts Brienne in heels that make her tower over everyone else. She walks in them with the kind of expert grace that took Jaime years to master, and he’s so proud of her. He hugs her backstage again, and she is shaking and nervous and glittery and excited, and he is so happy for her, too.

When the runways are all done, the contestants are called back out in front of the judges. They all love Asha and Satin’s Lumberjack Fantasy look. Hate the look that Renly made for Meris: some kind of giant snake costume that started falling apart halfway through the skit, leaving their trailer disjointed and even worse than the others. Oberyn and Ygritte win handily with a look that’s inspired by ice and fire. Then it’s Jaime and Brienne on one side of the stage and Jon and Val on the other, waiting to see which of the contestants will be lip synching against Renly. Brienne keeps stealing little glances at Jaime, like she’s worried. She made an indignant sound when they didn’t win. He appreciates her loyalty, but he knew this was coming, and he meets Arthur’s eye proudly. Arthur is looking back at him, considering. Jaime knows how it’s going to play out, but he also knows that he has put Arthur in a difficult position. Jaime threw out the rules to make his contestant comfortable. Arthur will like that, and it makes them all look good. Plus, Jaime’s looks were some of the best. It may not have beaten Oberyn, but it was top two for sure.

Jon is, as expected, dragged for sloppy construction but praised for his wolfy look and Val’s sexy barbarian princess outfit. He is Safe. Brienne is gaping now. Arthur turns to Jaime and puts on his best Disappointed Dad expression.

“Cersei,” he says. He sighs. “The rules were clear. You were to use the notes and sketches provided to you by your partner’s previous queen in order to construct your partner’s outfit. You constructed a beautiful costume, and your story was compelling. But I’m sorry, my dear. For not following the rules of the challenge, you are in the bottom two.”

“But,” Brienne says.

“It’s okay,” Jaime tells her quietly.

“No, it isn’t,” Brienne replies. Her voice is firm, and steady, and nobody is more surprised than Jaime that she steps forward willingly into the spotlight, her lower lip trembling with a kind of righteous fury that makes her look more like a superhero than she did in her costume. “I was uncomfortable with the outfit that was designed for me, and Cersei knew that. She designed the look that I wanted.”

“Cersei knew the consequences of breaking the rules,” Varys puts in. He smiles warmly in Jaime’s direction. “But she’s a good person, and she broke them anyway. It’s out of my hands, but I want you to know that I think you did a very good thing. Nobody had more chemistry with their partner. Nobody took their partner’s happiness into consideration more than you. It’s just…really well done, Cersei.”

“Thank you,” Jaime says, annoyed with himself for being at all touched by that.

“And just…beautiful construction,” says the other judge, Quaithe, a designer of some note whose comments are famously only about the fashion. “You did an excellent job with the outfit. The dialogue was terrible.”

Jaime laughs at that, and he nods.

“Thank you,” he says again. Brienne is still looking at him in disbelief, but he smiles at her and reaches out his hand. She takes it, and he squeezes their hands together. “I knew what I was doing,” he says.

“Then why risk everything?” Arthur asks, in a perfectly composed tone that tells Jaime everything he needs to know. Arthur has planned for this moment. Arthur knew that this was coming from the moment someone told him that Jaime threw out Renly’s notes. Maybe he, or the producers, even understood exactly what kind of revelation Jaime was reaching when he threw himself into making sure that Brienne’s experience would be a good one. It’s hard to say. For once, Jaime doesn’t mind playing right into their hands.

“Because she deserves it,” he says, turning to face the judges. He knows what he will look like. He knows this is his chance to make sure that he doesn’t come off so much like a martyr that people will hate him for it. But it isn’t about that. It’s just true. “She came to my table, and she was uncomfortable and upset, and I wanted to help her. That was all it was at first. But the more I got to know her, the more I started to recognize parts of myself in her. Her wrestling persona is Brienne the Beast, because she knows what the world will say about her, and she has taken that power away from them. I admire that. I recognize it. I started doing drag because I was tired of wearing it all inside, where no one could see it. I was tired of hiding away and being afraid of what people would say if they knew what I wanted. And when I came here, the first time, Arthur. You changed my life.” He says it earnestly, honestly, without cynicism or reservation. He will hate himself for it later. He will be embarrassed. It doesn’t matter now. “I looked up to you for years, and you gave me this space to be myself, and I will always be grateful to you. And when I saw that Brienne was looking around the work room with the same expression I used to have on my face…I had to make sure that this experience was exactly what she needed in the same way you made my experience exactly what I needed. So I threw out the sketches. I would do it again. If I go home tonight, fine. It was worth it to see the smile on her face when she looked in the mirror today.”

Brienne is gazing at him openly now, her eyes wet and gleaming. Arthur takes off his glasses and pretends to wipe at some nonexistent moisture. A few times a season, at least, he has to look emotionally affected. That’s how the game goes. Jaime doesn’t care. They can play whatever game they want.

He is still in the bottom two. He still has to lip sync.

He destroys Renly.

Renly is sent home, and Brienne wraps Jaime up in a giant hug when he sees her again backstage. It wouldn’t have mattered if Jaime was the one sent packing instead. But it feels good to win. It feels good to make this choice. It just…it all feels good.

They meet up again at the hotel that night. Brienne is going home in the morning. Jaime pretends like he’s not going to miss her.

“You’re going to win this season,” she tells him when they’re seated at the hotel bar. He grins a little and stirs his drink.

“Maybe,” he demurs. He thinks it’s probably true, but sometimes Arthur likes to throw curveballs, and the Cersei was Robbed! movement was so popular for a while. They were selling merch on the official website. It might be due for a revival.

“You will. You have to.” Brienne is sure, and Jaime just grins at her, a little softly.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says.

“Of course it matters.”

“Not to me. The crown…it’s not about the crown. Gods, I’m tired of the crown. As far as I’m concerned, this was the finale. I’ve never…you helped me care about this again, you know. Not that I stopped caring about it, but…I guess I forgot. Drag was…it was passion for me, once. Over the years, I guess it’s become a job. But these past few days. I don’t know. You’ve changed something. Thank you.”

She seems confused by the earnest praise, but she grins happily. He slides over his phone, the screen unlocked. She doesn’t even need him to say. She enters her number, grinning wryly. He wonders if she thinks he’ll actually text, or if she thinks he’s just being polite. He’ll show her. He can’t wait to show her how annoying he can be.

“Asha,” she starts, then stops, then takes a sip of her drink, thinking carefully before she speaks. “Asha has seen every episode,” she says, finally. “And we were talking, earlier. And she said…something. I never watched your season. I didn’t know.”

Jaime arches an eyebrow.

“Oh?” he asks, prompting her to continue.

“She said you’re bi.”

It’s spoken bluntly, and Brienne is looking at him, and Jaime’s grin cannot be contained. There are no misunderstandings. There is not a single moment when Jaime fears that she’s going to say something like, I was only this comfortable with you because I thought you were gay! or whatever. There’s just this choked quality to her words that he understands, because it’s exactly how he felt when he got wrapped up in thinking about that stupid fucking costume last night.

“I’m bi,” he says. “I’m so bi. I’m the most bi person who has ever existed. And yes, I want to kiss you. And yes, I want to fuck you, and gods yes, I want you to fuck me. Does that answer your questions?”

“It does,” Brienne admits seriously. Then she laughs, a loud, barking sound, and she covers her mouth, and she shakes her head. “I thought she was messing with me. I didn’t think you’d just…”

“Blurt all my fantasies unprompted? It’s been kind of a big day for me. I’m very impulsive. You’ll learn that about me. I think that’s a warning.”

“I don’t need a warning,” Brienne says, and she leans in, and she kisses him.

“I need a warning,” Jaime says, when he pulls back. “Look at you. That was so smooth. You can’t just be like this. Strong and perfect and kissing me like that. It’s unbelievable. Were you created in a lab? It doesn’t matter. Kiss me again.”

She does, still laughing against his lips, and he is laughing too.

It is months before the live finale. All Stars didn’t do a live finale last time. Jaime suspects that they did a live finale this time just because of this: he and Arthur seated on uncomfortably high stools in the middle of the stage, lights beating down on Jaime, in full drag, dressed in a beautiful blue gown that he and Brienne spent ages constructing. It has already been mentioned by Arthur, that the entire thing is handmade, to a chorus of oos from the audience.

“So,” Arthur says. The episodes have all aired. Everyone has seen them. Jaime has endured several weeks of people freaking out about the makeover episode on Twitter. Cersei was robbed! trended again. It’s been nice. He’s feeling uncommonly patient with Arthur’s fake-coy bullshit because of it. “Is there anyone special in the audience for you tonight?”

Jaime knows that he won’t beat Oberyn naming two boyfriends and Ellaria as his special someones. He doesn’t want to beat it.

“There is someone special,” he says. He looks out at the audience. The lights are so bright that he almost can’t see her, but she is so tall, and he can make out the shock of short blonde hair rising above the rest of the audience. He smiles. “My girlfriend,” he says. “Brienne.”

There are gasps. Cheers. Shock. Jon and Satin clinched the showmance, and they’ve been riding that high for months, and Jaime could not be more grateful, because he and Brienne have managed to fly under the radar the entire time. He wanted to make sure that this was what she wanted. He wanted to make sure that this was right. Every day since they first kissed has proven to him that she’s the one for him. She’s the person he wants to spend every day with. He loves her. She loves him too.

Brienne stands up, and the lights find her. More cheering. More naked disbelief. People love a romance, especially one as surprising as this.

Arthur asks her some questions about how it happened. Brienne answers very steadily, smiling all the while, talking what it meant to her, that Jaime chose to be kind even when it put the competition at risk. Jaime can barely hear the conversation through the buzzing in his ears, and in his blood. I’m happy. I’m happy. It’s not like it’s a new sensation. But it’s a new element of it. He’s never been happy quite like this before, and he doesn’t know what to do about it. Sometimes it feels too good to be true, like it’s all going to be taken away. This isn’t one of those times.  

When Jaime is declared the winner, and Arthur puts the crown on his head, Jaime looks out at the audience, and there she is, cheering for him. His family.