Chapter Text
28th October 2011
Fresh from a comfortable win in Brussels, Andy Murray had plenty to smile about as he soaked up the autumn sun courtside with his mother after another assured afternoon on court. But while the Scottish star secured a straight-sets victory, one of many this year, the top spot still remains frustratingly out of reach. Jaime Lannister continues to reign supreme — both Britain’s golden boy and the world number one for the seventh year running.
Equally ruthless on grass, clay and hard court, Lannister has turned consistency into spectacle, sweeping all four Grand Slams this year in an unrivalled season. He’s been at the top of his game for nearly a decade now, fighting off existing heavyweights and rising talent every year, and he’s not showing any sign of slowing down.
Jaime
Naturally, Cersei had rented out London’s most expensive hotel for her birthday party this year, complete with waiters who were not merely pretending to be French and a wine list so exorbitant that it would make even the wealthier guests’ eyes water. Cersei had been planning it for months. She always did. Every detail had been selected with military precision: the candles, the string quartet, the shade of the roses, the exact red of the table linens. By tomorrow half the women in her social circle would be picking over the event like crows, trying to imitate it.
Officially, of course, it was their birthday party. They had been born only minutes apart.
In practice, Jaime was content to let her pretend otherwise.
It wasn’t like he lacked attention himself. He’d won all four Grand Slams this year, one after the other, not to anyone’s surprise, and he closed his eyes as the waiting cameras on the pavement almost blinded him. For half a second he wondered who had tipped the press off to his exact arrival time before dismissing the question. Obviously Cersei had. Or the planner had, at her instruction. There was no better birthday present to herself than appearing in a glossy spread about tennis star Jaime Lannister’s weekend, gilded by association, her beauty immortalised for posterity.
He was already late, but she’d sulk for a month if he denied her this, and so he paused to allow the photographers a few easy shots.
Tyrion was waiting for him inside and he wasted no time in drawing him aside.
“I was beginning to think you’d abandoned me to this hell,” he chuckled.
Jaime raised an eyebrow. “Hell?” he queried, wrapping an arm around his shoulder by way of greeting. “It’s a birthday party.”
“It is a hostage situation with canapés,” Tyrion corrected. He lifted his empty glass in accusation. “And at these prices, even I can’t afford to get properly drunk.” He patted his hip. “You should have warned me and I’d have brought a flask.”
Jaime gave a smile. As Cersei would put it, the expensive drinks would separate the wheat from the chaff. Those unfortunate individuals not wealthy enough to drink until their heart’s content would stand out like a sore thumb. Just as she planned it. She never liked her parties to be too appealing to the average Joe.
Tyrion, however, was his brother and so Jaime reached into his pocket for his wallet. “Go wild,” he said dryly.
Tyrion pulled out a wad of notes without even feigning reluctance. “I thought you paid for all this?”
“I did.”
“Then next year perhaps you could spring for an open bar.”
“My involvement,” Jaime said, “extends to settling the invoices sent my way. The finer details are entrusted to more capable hands.”
Tyrion snorted. “If you say so.” He looked Jaime up and down. “No date tonight?”
Jaime wrinkled his nose. “Not tonight.”
Tyrion’s smile curled. “Wise. We know how our sister hates competition.”
“That she does…” Jaime agreed with a small laugh. It was true enough. He rarely kept a woman around for too long. The women whom he rubbed shoulders with on the ATP tour were always the same — beautiful, of course, but invariably vacuous — and he usually grew bored pretty soon. On the rare occasion one of them lingered for more than a fortnight, Cersei always made her thoughts known. She'd never accept anything but the very best for her favourite brother.
She made her grand entrance then, descending down the central staircase slowly, quite aware that every eye in the room had followed her, and Jaime felt a familiar surge of satisfaction at the sight. She was his mirror made finer: poised where he was merely graceful, regal where he was merely composed. Her scarlet dress skimmed the stairs behind her like spilled wine and her gold hair fell over one bare shoulder in a heavy, shining wave.
Only one man in the room seemed untouched by her beauty.
Robert Baratheon was at the far end of the room, half turned away, trying with laughable subtlety to flirt with one of the waitresses.
Jaime’s mouth hardened.
How Robert could stand there, thickening at the waist and sweating through an expensive suit, and ignore a wife who looked like that was beyond him. It was offensive, really and Jaime considered crossing the room and telling him exactly that, before deciding that the man wasn’t even worth his while.
Cersei had reached them then and Jaime kissed her cheek when she turned to embrace him. He’d kissed her on the mouth once, midway through a game of doctors and nurses back when they’d been children, only for their mother to see and separate them for the next year and a half. She’d nipped that in the bud, but she’d not succeeded in driving much of a wedge between them.
That was for the best. Even nowadays, as a grown woman, she needed him.
Robert had been promising once. Handsome, broad-shouldered, loud in the way some men mistake for charm. But his luck had gone from bad to worse. His parents had died young, leaving him a very wealthy young man, but he’d squandered most of that inheritance within six months, gambling it away on parties and drink. Five years into their marriage, he’d filed for bankruptcy — a humiliation that Tywin Lannister had never actually let happen, of course — and those debts had been quietly paid off to avoid social disgrace. Even their father’s money ran thin nowadays, though he’d never admit it, and so it was Jaime who paid for the things Cersei needed — the holidays and the clothes and the jewellery.
It was the jewellery that she loved most of all and this year’s birthday present was testimony to that. Jaime had left its price tag attached on purpose, its eight figures handwritten by one of the world’s most exclusive jewellers. Even for him, it had been extortionate, enough to wipe out the entire year’s tournament winnings. But there would be more where that came from next year.
She eyed the box hungrily when Jaime presented it to her, and he laughed as she turned so that he could fasten the necklace around her neck. She didn’t thank him — it wasn’t in her nature to do so — but Jaime didn’t need her gratitude. Gratitude implied surprise, and Cersei had always regarded his devotion as no more than her due.
Still, when she moved away to display it to her guests, her head held high to show off the diamonds blazing against her skin, Jaime felt rewarded enough.
He was watching her with private satisfaction when someone tapped him on the shoulder, and he raised his eyebrow to see that it was Robert’s kid brother.
He’d grown up to be annoyingly handsome and perhaps that was why Cersei hated him so much. He reminded her too much of what Robert had once been, before the weight had piled on and she’d been reduced to being the trophy wife of a fat man whose company she couldn’t stand.
The woman at his side, however, had nothing of Cersei about her.
She was blond, yes, but that was where the resemblance ended. She was tall, so tall that she towered over even her Baratheon escort, and she was built rather like a double-decker bus. The red dress that she’d donned for the occasion didn’t help with that illusion either.
“This is Brienne,” Renly said. “I figured I should introduce you guys. She plays tennis for our university.”
Jaime had to laugh. For some people, that would be an achievement. But he was a Grand Slam champion. It was like introducing Gordon Ramsay to the guy who manned the fryer at McDonald’s.
“Right,” he said, feigning minimal interest. “Congratulations.”
Renly rolled his eyes. “She’s actually good.”
Jaime snorted. Coming from Renly, that meant little. Robert, of course, had tried to get him involved in rugby but he’d had limited success there, and the closest his baby brother got nowadays to anything sporty was the changing rooms.
Amusingly though, the girl on his arm had turned pink at his flattery. A faint blush was spreading across her cheeks and down her neck. She was clearly delighted by his praise and Jaime had to stifle a laugh. Much to his sister’s distaste, Renly Baratheon was gayer than Christmas morning and he wondered whether the girl even realised that she was barking up the wrong tree. Or perhaps she did realise and thought she stood a chance simply because of her manly stature.
“It’s an honour to meet you,” she finally said. “I saw you play this year. My father managed to get Wimbledon tickets for my birthday.”
Jaime rested one elbow against the bar. “Which match?”
“It was the quarter-final,” she said. “Against Mayer.”
Jaime pushed a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. “And what did you think?”
The girl was silent for a moment and Jaime prepared to stifle a yawn. Usually when people brought up Wimbledon they followed it with something useless about the strawberries, Centre Court, or whether they'd put the roof up or down. They remembered the ceremony of it more than the tennis.
“You could tell you’d never played him before,” she said.
Jaime motioned for her to continue. “How so?”
“You changed your serve after the first set.”
That was observant and Jaime raised an eyebrow. “Did I?”
“You did,” she said, seemingly more certain now that she had begun. “You were serving wide to his backhand at the beginning, but after the first set you started going through the body instead.”
Like all top level sport, tennis required a hundred tiny decisions a minute, as you reacted to your opponent and the court conditions. Most tactical changes, however, went over the head of the general public and Jaime had to admit that he was grudgingly impressed.
“And why did I do that?” he asked lazily.
“I assumed because he was returning your serve better than you expected?” she said. She clasped her hands behind her back, which did very unflattering things to her already stocky figure. “It was clever. His return sat shorter after that.”
She was far from wrong and Jaime felt a small smile tug at his mouth. He almost told her so and yet when he raised his head to meet her eyes, he was startled to see quite how blue they were and he lost his train of thought. All of Robert’s brothers had blue eyes and yet hers made Renly’s look like muddy pools.
“How often do you play?” he asked instead.
“A few times a week,” she said. “I’m on the women’s team.”
There was a moment of silence then and Jaime wondered whether they were all thinking the same thing — that she hardly looked like she belonged on a women’s team. She towered above almost every man here and she would have made even Venus and Serena look petite.
Renly nudged her then and she cleared her throat awkwardly. “One of the women on the team writes for the university newspaper,” she said tentatively. “Do you think you’d ever be available for an interview?”
Jaime almost laughed. All tennis players worth their salt did outreach of some kind. He could imagine how Cersei would cry with laughter though if he deigned to give an interview to a university paper run by students.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “But my schedule is pretty packed.”
Her face fell.
Perhaps Jaime took pity on her. “But you never know. Perhaps something will open up.” Idly, he passed her his phone and watched as she typed her number in with large but surprisingly nimble fingers. “If it does, maybe I'll come watch you play.”
Brienne
It was an hour later when her phone buzzed and Brienne struggled with the clasp of her bag as she pried it open. She’d borrowed a dainty beaded one from the girl who had the room next to her and whilst it had seemed pretty at the time, she wondered now if anyone had ever looked more ridiculous. This sort of bag did not suit her; it was for graceful girls with delicate features and an elegant bone structure. Not great hulking ones.
The text was a short one.
Jaime.
It had no more purpose than to allow the proper exchanging of their numbers. But she saved the contact with trembling fingers anyway. It was a rarity indeed that a boy gave her his number, and the fact that this was for strictly professional purposes did not completely eliminate the thrill of joy that ran down her spine.
Renly, standing next to her still, grinned. “God,” he said. “He must have liked you.”
“As if,” she mumbled. She felt suddenly self-conscious, more so even than usual, and she tugged the hem of her dress down awkwardly. This wasn’t borrowed. She’d forced herself to go out and buy something new when Renly had casually asked her if she fancied going to a family party with him. It had been expensive, and Brienne had let the girl in the shop lie to her about it showing off her long legs, only to realise after she’d walked out with it in its paper bag that she was probably paid on commission.
“Let’s get a drink,” Brienne said, seeking to change the subject.
She needn’t have bothered. Renly was absorbed already in his phone. Unlike her, he had no shortage of admirers. They’d only been at uni a few weeks and he already seemed to know every single person on campus. It was not even the end of the month yet, but he’d already run out of texts. Brienne, on the other hand, had 500 texts a month and she didn’t think she’d ever even got halfway through her allowance, not even with texting her elderly father every day.
Brienne left Renly to his phone and walked over to the bar anyway. One glance at the drinks menu, however, told her everything she needed to know.
“I’ll have a tap water,” she said eventually to the bartender after deciding that it was not sensible to spend what was left of her student loan this month to sip a cocktail which cost more than her weekly shop.
He turned his nose up at her. “I’ll get to you after the paying customers.”
Brienne smiled politely and it was only a minute or so before Renly joined her.
“Eesh,” he said, looking at the drinks menu too. “You’d think my sister-in-law was deliberately gatekeeping us plebs with prices like these.”
Brienne nodded glumly. Everything about this party screamed that, to be honest. She and Renly had walked from the station, but everyone else had seemed to be using the valet parking, a quiet procession of polished cars gliding up the drive while uniformed attendants whisked keys away. There were fresh flowers on every surface — not cheerful bunches, but pale, sculptural arrangements that looked like they belonged in a film — all golden orchids and red roses with no scent she could detect. Even the candles looked deliberate, lined up in identical glass holders as though someone had measured the distance between them.
Renly dug in his pockets and pulled out a few coins, before evidently deeming them useless. “Two tap waters,” he said brightly to the bartender.
He got served straight away, of course. The few women on her sports science course would no doubt have had something to say about misogyny. As feminist as she wanted to be, however, Brienne didn’t think it was that. It was because she wasn’t good-looking. A pretty face went a long way, and those same people who looked straight through her lit up whenever Renly approached, their manners miraculously restored.
They didn’t stay late. Even Renly, usually a social butterfly, did not seem to fit in with his sister-in-law’s crowd. For Brienne, it was like seeing a duck out of water. He’d had no interest in conversing with his brothers beyond a forced exchange of pleasantries, and he’d kept sneaking his phone out to look at the time.
He seemed as pleased to be out of there as she was and he turned to her as soon as they were safely on the train, hands shoved into his suit pockets as if he were mourning the absence of his university hoodie. Brienne didn’t blame him there one bit. The uncomfortable dress was riding up again, baring her pale, chunky thighs for all the fellow passengers to gawk at, and she was keen to get home so that she could wipe the silly make-up off her face and change into pyjamas.
“Thanks for coming with me,” he said, rolling a cigarette rather inelegantly on his lap despite the bumpy train underneath them. “I have to go every year and I hate it.”
“Thank you for asking me.” Despite the evening being rather miserable, it wasn’t a lie. Brienne didn’t think she’d ever been asked out to anything before.
Renly smiled at her then, warm and effortless, and she felt herself go a little weak at the knees. She knew he was gay. He’d told her himself a week ago, out of pity presumably, and yet her heart hadn't caught up yet.
“You’re welcome,” he said. “I’m just sorry it was so awful.”
Brienne felt herself flushing pink. That wasn’t a lie either. It had been rather awful. Renly’s brother had chortled something terrible when he’d clapped eyes on his brother’s date, and his wife — the birthday girl — had insinuated that she was a man who was into cross-dressing, pointing her in the direction of the gents when she’d asked where the bathrooms were.
“Thank you for introducing me to Jaime Lannister,” she said. “You did say that he’d be there.”
Renly made a face. “I wouldn’t get too excited,” he laughed. “He’s a real arse.”
“You don’t understand. He might be the best player who ever lived.”
“Sure, sure. Still an arse.”
Brienne didn’t doubt it. A man like Jaime Lannister had no reason not to be arrogant. He was half a god on a tennis court, more or less unrivalled nowadays, and anyone who called themselves a fan of the sport couldn’t fail to recognise his talent. It was evident in every tiny movement, from the way he gripped his racket to the almost inscrutable change in posture before a point.
“Let me show you,” she said, pulling up YouTube to find a clip from a recent match. “Look at the spin he gets on his serve.”
Renly watched over her shoulder. “He’s hot,” he granted after a few seconds or so. “I’ll give you that.”
Brienne felt her stomach turn somersaults. It hadn’t escaped her notice either. She would never admit it out loud though. First she’d been ridiculous enough to have a crush on Renly. Admitting a crush on the world’s number one tennis player would be a bridge too far.
“Do you think he’ll actually make time to come to watch me play?” she asked.
Renly shrugged. “Probably not.” He ran a hand through his hair. “But he did give you the time of day and that’s a rarity.”
Brienne pulled the hem of the dress down for the hundredth time that evening as she tried to get comfortable on the itchy train seat. “Do you know him well?”
Renly had finished rolling his cigarette and he slid it into his pocket for later, unwilling to smoke on the train despite the fact they were the only passengers in this carriage. “Well enough, I guess. I lived with his sister half the time and they’re pretty close.”
Brienne cocked her head. Renly spoke very little about his home life. They’d met a few months ago, on day one of university, simply because they’d been allocated rooms in halls that were next door. Unlike everyone else, his parents hadn’t dropped him off and she wondered whether it was because they weren’t around anymore.
“To be fair to him,” Renly said, “he mostly just ignored me. His sister, on the other hand? She’s a real piece of work. I get it, her twin brother is famous, but she acts like it makes her Victoria Beckham, instead of, you know, whoever David Beckham’s sister is.”
Brienne’s forehead furrowed. “Does David Beckham even have a sister?”
Renly looked triumphant. “Exactly,” he said. “It’s a shit claim to fame.”
Brienne duly took out her phone. She still had plenty of data left and she opened up Google to look it up. “Apparently he’s got two sisters.”
“See,” Renly agreed. “So why does she think everyone should worship the ground she walks on just because her brother hits a few balls over a net?” He leant back against the train window. “And it’s only bloody tennis. Who even follows it?”
Brienne didn’t bother arguing with him. Unbidden, her fingers had gone to her list of contacts and she felt another shiver go up her spine as she saw the number saved there.