Any chance you would write the followup to the new bed fic?
This probably isn't exactly what you were thinking of, but it gives a bit more context to aspects of the situation that the bed doesn't know about. (Find the bed fic, aka Bangst, here.)
It is strange sharing Jaime's bed, and not just because Brienne has never shared a bed with anyone - apart from the last time she shared a bed with Jaime, but they do not speak of Winterfell.
They do not speak of anything that they should. Not anything personal.
They do speak of many other things, however. There is so very much talking, social and political and strategic, in the days after the attack on King's Landing. It's all very wearing, in a way that even battle is not. Things were simpler when Brienne's main tasks were to ride a horse and, when necessary, wield a sword.
Things were simpler, too, in that long year when she had been a prisoner, her days spent in hard labour, and her nights focused on plans for her escape before falling into an exhausted sleep.
Now her nights are full, too full to allow much room for thoughts of anything before she falls asleep. She just feels, and puts off the decision she needs to make - the answer she needs to give - until the next day. And the next.
Marry me, or don't. Whatever you wish.
It is strange sharing Jaime's bed, when she thought never to see him again, much less… all this. Perhaps the sheer unreality of it is what makes her act as if the coming of each new day is a certainty to squander.
Reality intrudes on the fourth night.
They're getting ready for bed when she properly notices the bed itself for the first time. "Why the grapes?" she asks, nodding at the carved headboard.
Jaime tosses his shirt aside and sits down on the edge of the bed beside her before he answers: "The bed was made for some Redwyne or other, before… Before."
"Yes, but why are you sleeping in it?"
Jaime shrugs. He's not looking at her - but then, he'd need to pause in his undressing and turn to face her to do that. He pulls at the laces of his breeches, and says, "There weren't so many beds left to choose from a year ago, thanks to battle and dragonfire."
Brienne nods slowly. "But that was a year ago, and you're sleeping in it still. I would have thought that lions would be more appropriate for the head of House Lannister - or anything that didn't include the sigil of another house."
"I think you're confusing me with my father." Jaime pulls at the laces again, tangling them together as he tries to free them, and swears under his breath.
"Jaime," Brienne says. "Jaime I-"
"I didn't care," he says in a low voice. "I didn't care then, and I didn't care in all the months that followed. It was just somewhere to lay my head at night. Because I didn't care."
Brienne doesn't ask why. She doesn't need to. She hears the hollow ache of remembered loss in his voice, and recognises it. She'd felt much the same herself, all through that long year when she hadn't cared that only thin sacking separated her from hard cold stone each night. What did it matter when she hadn't known who had lived and who had died - and feared the worst, for Jaime more than anyone.
"And now?" she asks. "How do you feel now?"
"You already know how I feel." He turns to look at her then, looks her straight in the eyes.
Marry me, or don't. Whatever you wish.
It is Brienne's turn to look away. She stares at the headboard. The carved grapes, decorated in red and gold, seem to glisten in the flickering candlelight, like real grapes touched by the dew. She takes a deep breath. "I think we should keep the bed."
"I wasn't intending to get rid of it, grapes or not," Jaime says.
She meets his eyes. "When we wed, I think we should keep the bed. It may have been a Redwyne's once, but it's ours now."
She leans in to kiss him, but he's already there, clutching her to him, mouth hard and desperate against hers, telling her without words just how much he hasn't shown her, hasn't let her see, all through these past few days.
Brienne feels, just as she has for the past few nights, but this time she's not even trying to stop the thoughts that crowd in on top.
They're lying side by side on the bed when at last Jaime opens his mouth to speak again. He reaches up to push her hair back from her face. It’s long enough to tousle now, and in the past few minutes it's had its fair share of tousling.
“So, this is what a wife looks like,” he says.
“I’m not a wife yet,” she reminds him.
“But you will be, and soon,” he says. “My wife.”
It’s a strange thought, for all that for days she’s been carefully not thinking about it so hard that it’s almost all she’s thought about. “Your wife,” she says, trying out the shape of it on her tongue, and then, for good measure, “My husband.” The words taste strange in her mouth, but not unpleasant. Just unlooked for, overturning half a lifetime of expectations. “I never thought to say that. Not since my last betrothal.”
“This is your last betrothal.” He says the words lightly, but the look in his eyes isn't light.
A wittier person than Brienne might protest that she could outlive Jaime, and become betrothed again when he is gone. But she’s just spent a year wondering if she had outlived him, and it’s barely been a week since she set eyes on him again, and saw for herself that he lives indeed. The wound is still too new-healed for jokes, so she just says, “Yes."
They look at each other across the mattress, and somehow it seems to mould itself to the shape of the two of them even more firmly than a moment ago, almost as if it is actively trying to push them closer together. But then, it's no longer Jaime's bed, nor the relic of some departed, nameless Redwyne.
It's theirs, their soon-to-be marriage bed, and lying in it together will always feel the opposite of strange.
