Archive of Our Own

Brienne of Tarth had once maintained a seventeen-chapter RPF about Jaime Lannister on Archive of Our Own.

Not that anyone knew that.

Not that anyone would ever know that.

She would rather physically launch herself into the sea than admit that at sixteen she’d stayed up until three in the morning writing about Jaime Lannister falling in love with a tall warrior-princess librarian with “moonlit eyes and devastating emotional intelligence.”

In her defence, she’d been a deeply lonely teenager.

Also, Jaime Lannister in interviews had been unfairly charming.

He smiled like sunlight. He flirted with absolutely everyone. He once rescued a dog mid-red carpet interview and carried it tucked beneath his arm for the remaining twenty minutes of the segment.

Brienne had watched that clip enough times that YouTube began auto-recommending compilation videos titled JAIME LANNISTER BEING CHAOTIC FOR EIGHT MINUTES STRAIGHT.

She was not proud of any of this.

At thirty-two, Brienne considered herself healed.

Mature.

No longer susceptible to celebrities.

Which was why she nearly died when Jaime Lannister walked into her Saturday reformer Pilates class wearing black compression shorts and a t-shirt stretched across broad shoulders.

Every woman in the studio froze. Someone actually gasped.

Brienne experienced the vivid spiritual sensation of all the blood evacuating her body at once.

Oh my gods.

Oh my gods.

Oh my gods.

He was even hotter in person.

That felt offensive somehow.

He looked less polished than onscreen—sun-gold hair slightly messy, freckles across his nose, expensive sunglasses pushed carelessly atop his head. But the smile was the same.

The exact smile that had once inspired Brienne to write 11,000 words titled The Lion’s Bride.

Which, again, no one would ever know. Absolutely no one.

“First time?” Satin asked brightly.

Jaime smiled. “That obvious?”

“Yes,” Brienne muttered under her breath.

His eyes flicked toward her immediately. Mistake.

Huge mistake.

Because now Jaime Lannister was looking directly at her with warm green eyes and mild curiosity, and Brienne suddenly became acutely aware that she was wearing a fitted blue athletic tank and leggings that showed approximately the entire shape of her body.

No, she refused.

She would not become one of those women who fawned all over attractive celebrities. She had spent years watching interviewers giggle breathlessly at his jokes while Jaime performed effortless charm like breathing.

Brienne did not feed celebrity egos.

Especially not celebrities she’d once secretly written kissing fanfiction about.

She looked away instantly.

Cold. Detached. Aloof.

Perfect.

“All right,” Satin clapped. “Partner work today. Brienne, pair with Jaime.”

God hated her personally.

Jaime approached with an easy smile. Up close he was absurdly handsome. Tall enough that most women probably felt petite beside him.

Brienne still had two inches on him.

Which visibly surprised him. Interesting.

“Hi,” he said.

Brienne adjusted a spring with clinical focus. “Your footbar’s wrong.”

A beat.

Then Jaime laughed softly.

Delighted.

“Well,” he said. “Hello to you too.”

“You’ll hurt your knees.”

“You opened with criticism. That feels promising somehow.”

Brienne refused to smile.

This was war now.

“You should probably stretch first,” she said coolly.

“I do stretch.”

“You strike me as someone who thinks touching his toes counts as flexibility.”

His eyebrows went up.

Across the studio, two women looked moments away from fainting.

Jaime leaned casually against the reformer beside hers. “Do you know who I am?”

Ah.

There it was. The celebrity thing.

Brienne finally looked at him directly with all the cool indifference she could summon despite the fact that twelve years ago she’d once paused The Knight’s Vow every twenty seconds to stare at his forearms.

“Yes,” she said flatly. “You’re in my Pilates class.”

Something shifted in his expression.

Interest.

Real interest.

“Oh,” he murmured. “You’re one of those.”

“One of what?”

“The scary women.”

Brienne shrugged. “You’ll survive.”

God, she hoped she sounded calm.

Inside, however, her internal monologue resembled a Victorian woman dying of fever.

—

Jaime had attended premieres with supermodels. He’d kissed actresses people literally wrote songs about.

None of them had ever looked at him the way the blonde giantess in blue leggings just had. They matched her stunning blue eyes.

Namely: not at all. It was electrifying.

His twin sister had been insufferable about Pilates for months.

“You’ll hate it,” Cersei told him smugly over dinner. “You rely entirely on upper-body strength and confidence.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s mostly true.”

So Jaime enrolled mostly out of spite.

Instead, he walked into Core Collective and immediately encountered the most astonishing woman he’d ever seen in his life.

Six feet tall at least. Powerful shoulders. Long blonde braid. Strong hands adjusting reformer springs with ruthless competence. She looked like she should’ve been painted onto the side of a shield before leading armies into battle.

And gods alive, her body—

Jaime was only human.

The fitted athletic tank was doing things to him psychologically.

But the real problem was that she did not care who he was.

At all.

“You’re thinking too hard,” Brienne said as he climbed awkwardly onto the reformer.

“I’m trying to understand how this machine works.”

“It’s a sliding bed with commitment issues.”

That startled a laugh out of him.

She glanced at him briefly, almost surprised she’d made a joke.

God.

He wanted to hear her laugh properly.

“All right,” Satin called. “Feet in straps.”

Within ten minutes, Jaime realised Pilates was a cult designed by tiny sadists.

Every muscle in his body trembled violently.

Meanwhile Brienne moved beside him with terrifying elegance, long legs extending smoothly as she demonstrated perfect control.

Jaime made the catastrophic mistake of looking at her while she lifted both legs into the air during short spine.

His brain stopped functioning.

Specifically because her tank shifted slightly and—

Oh no.

Absolutely not.

This could not be happening. Not here. Not in compression shorts.

Jaime stared at the ceiling in mounting horror. His body had betrayed him.

Brienne glanced sideways. “Neutral pelvis.”

“My pelvis is no longer neutral.”

“You’re overcompensating with your hip flexors.”

I would love for hip flexors to be the problem right now.

He adjusted carefully.

The reformer carriage slammed loudly backward. A woman across the room snorted.

Brienne looked down automatically—

—and froze.

Others take him.

She saw it.

There was no universe in which she did not see it.

Heat flooded Jaime’s face so quickly he thought he might spontaneously combust.

“I can explain,” he muttered.

To his astonishment, Brienne went bright red too.

Like violently red.

“I wasn’t looking,” she said immediately.

“You absolutely were.”

“I was checking alignment.”

“That’s somehow more humiliating.”

Her mouth twitched. Jaime stared at her in disbelief.

Was she trying not to laugh?

“Maybe take a break,” she whispered.

“I can’t stand up.”

That did it. Brienne made a strangled sound before turning sharply away, shoulders shaking.

She was laughing.

Trying desperately not to but laughing anyway.

And the sound hit Jaime straight in the chest.

Gods.

He was completely finished.

Satin wandered over. “Everything okay here?”

“Yes,” Brienne said immediately. “No,” Jaime said at the same time.

Satin blinked.

Jaime continued staring at the ceiling. “I’m experiencing adversity.”

Brienne actually choked trying not to laugh again.

And Jaime, despite suffering the most humiliating moment of his adult life, thought helplessly:

I’m going to marry this woman.