Work Text:
Brienne Tarth was not having a good day. She was behind in her Weekly Accounts Balancing Reports. Not that any other department did weekly reports. Marketing did theirs monthly and the Executive Administration did theirs quarterly. And even then, the ExecAd balancing reports inserted a four and sometimes five digit reconciliation figure just to get their reports to balance. Brienne, the youngest Director of Project Operations in LannisCorp history, knew she would never be able to do that. It was unconscionable.
On top of not being as up to date as she wanted regarding the accounts, today was the monthly VPOD meeting. And while she was one of the four Directors, the Vice President of Operations was Jaime Lannister, and Jaime Lannister was the most annoying, and annoyingly gorgeous, human on the face of the planet. While the rumors flew that the Vice President of Research and Strategy, Tyrion Lannister, was the reason the ExecAd ABRs required such an outlandish reconciliation figure, she’d experienced first hand the luxury of Jaime Lannister’s office.
Jaime routinely called her in to discuss what should have been management level issues, rather than director level, but Brienne wasn’t going to send her managers into that lion’s den. She’d been a director for eleven months now and over time, her meetings with Lannister had just gotten worse while his office had become more and more of a disaster. It was so unlike her own meticulously organized and tidied space.
Jaime seemed to be in the midst of some redecorating crisis. The red bound volumes of the Citadel on Business Practices had been replaced with blue leather bound volumes of the exact same works. While Lannisters were known for marking up documents in their signature blood red ink, Jaime had begun using varying shades of blue ink, claiming he was looking for the perfect shade. The amount of ink the man ran through, doodling huge blocks of blue on his notepads! She’d once seen him fill an entire sheet of his expensive, creamy, white letterhead with blue doodles.
It wasn’t only his office that hinted he might be in the midst of some breakdown. Just two nights ago, when he’d called her in for one of their late night operations review sessions, within forty-five minutes of listening to her outline the schedule of staff insertion into the project holes, his hair was a tousled mess and he was sweating so much that he’d had to remove his bright blue tie and unbutton the collar of his light blue shirt. He was in such a state that his usually impeccable manners had failed him and he hadn’t stood to walk her to the door when it was time to leave.
Not that Brienne minded looking at his mussed golden hair and seeing the soft throb of the pulse in his exposed neck. Necks weren’t supposed to be sexy, but somehow Jaime’s was. At one point, she’d been so distracted looking at the hollow of his throat that she’d sucked the cap off of her ink pen, almost choking until Jaime had come around her and attempted the Hizdahr Maneuver. Not that she’d needed it. But having Jaime’s warm chest pressed against her back… well, it had distracted her so much she’d completely forgotten her WABRs and she’d worked so late she hadn’t gotten a workout in but four times this week, instead of her usual six.
Now, of course, getting into the office, the elevators were down. Staff on the first three floors were taking the stairs, but Brienne worked on Fifteen and she didn’t want to be late for the VPOD meeting. Not because it was a meeting with Jaime Lannister. Of course not, but because well...because. Just because, that’s why. She just did not like being late.
There was nothing for it. Brienne slipped off her sensible heels and jammed them into her messenger bag, slipped into her trainers and headed for the stairs. Fourteen flights wasn’t anything compared to her normal workout, but she wasn’t wearing the proper gear. By the time she hit the fifth flight, there was no one left on the stairs. She could feel her heart rate increasing and decided to take the stairs two at a time. By the tenth flight, she could feel the workout endorphins flowing and, well, her legs were long enough, she could do three steps at once. She heard something that sounded like a rip, but the echo in the stairwell was terrible. She flew up the last four flights, knowing she would make the VPOD meeting not just on time, but 11 minutes early!
Brienne stopped into the ladies room on Fifteen to change back into her work shoes, run her fingers through her hair and pat her brow. She hadn’t worked up a full sweat, and she wasn’t completely blotchy. She didn’t look terrible, and on a smaller, prettier woman, it might look like she had rosy cheeks and a glow.
Now fully composed, Brienne opened the door to the conference room to find...only Jaime Lannister and his cousin, the Director of Ecological and Ergonomic Resources, Cleos. He looked up at her with wide, nervous eyes, but Cleos looked at everyone with wide, nervous eyes.
Brienne smiled vaguely in his direction as she made for her assigned seat, to the right of Jaime.
“Tarth,” Jaime acknowledged her, looking her up and down, his eyes lingering on her knees before asking, “stairs?”
“Yes,” Brienne answered, swearing to herself that she would not look down at her knees. She wasn’t wearing stockings today. She never wore tights as they were always too short, but she knew she’d properly shaved her legs this morning and she didn’t have any new bruises or scrapes on her knees. Lannister was again staring at the hem of her skirt as she set up her laptop and notepad. Maybe her slip was showing. No, she wasn’t even wearing a slip today.
She heard a mumble from her right and registered Cleos, the Director of Ecological and Ergonomic Resources, eying her warily. She’d forgotten he was there.
“We had to take the freight elevator,” Cleos was saying.
Brienne had no idea how to respond to that. She scrambled for a meaningless phrase. “Oh, erm, was it that hard?”
She heard Jaime make a distressed noise. She turned to find him running one finger between the collar of his shirt and his neck. His shirts were usually perfectly fitted. In fact, she’d noticed how his shirts would cling to his chest and when he turned or twisted, she could definitely see the outline of one of his pectoral muscles. Not that she was looking. But perhaps he’d been overdoing it with Isometric Cervical Side Bending. Sure, those exercises helped strengthen the neck, but might have caused a thickening.
“Not really,” a voice beside her said. “But it is a tall building.”
Brienne turned her eyes towards the Director of Ecological and Ergonomic Resources, who then scooted his chair away from her. When had Cleos arrived? Oh, the freight elevator, right. She settled herself in the chair, noticing that her skirt wasn’t nearly as tight as it had been last week. Maybe those parallel tucks Jaime had caught her doing in her office last week were working to elongate, and perhaps thin down, her thick thigh muscles.
“Well, it’s nice that you were able to get up,” she responded to Cleos, who skittishly rolled his chair back and away from her.
Brienne crossed her legs, settling in to work on her WABRs before any of the other directors arrived. Jaime made a strangled sound beside her. He was definitely looking at her knees. Maybe she did have a scratch or bruise. She moved her chair closer to the table, wiggled her bottom to the back of the chair and leaned forward, causing her to arch her back awkwardly, effectively hiding the offending knees.
She peaked over at Jaime who was now loosening his tie and unbuttoning his collar. He might even be sweating. Brienne actually thought it was cooler in the conference room than normal. She could even feel goose pimples rising on her thighs. It was likely because she’d warmed up with her trek up the stairs without a proper cool down.
Beside her Jaime had torn a strip off one of his sheets of paper. What was he thinking, destroying his presentation? He wrapped the strip around one of his gold Lannister pens, then began sliding it up and down. He moistened his lower lip and then looked at her tilting his head down first so that he was looking up at her from under his lashes. Damn the man, did he know how that set off his green eyes?
“WABRs?” he asked.
Brienne nodded, “Just a few more slots to fill in. I think my sheets need changed. Fitting these numbers in the columns is a tight squeeze.”
Jaime made a whimpering sound.
“Are we allowed to make formatting changes to company documents?” someone asked.
Brienne spoke to Jaime, “I prefer to have the perfect width for information insertion. Would you mind if I refreshed these sheets?”
Jaime’s hand gripped his pen. “I think your information should be inserted in a way that’s most comfortable for you, and I don’t want you to suffer with dirty sheets,” he answered, blinding her with one of his sexiest smiles.
“That didn’t answer my question,” someone asked. Brienne pulled herself away from staring at Jaime to notice Cleos, the Director of Ecological and Ergonomic Resources, cowering on her right.
She was just about to respond when she heard the ping of the elevator. The doors opened and LannisCorp employees spilled out onto the floor.
It was only polite to stand as the other Directors arrived for the VPOD meeting, but Jaime remained in his seat. Perhaps he was unwell again. He really looked like he might be having a heart attack. As Brienne stood up and leaned across the table to shake Addam Marbrand’s hand, she heard a slight ripping noise and felt a breeze across her bare thigh.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jaime place his forehead gently against the conference room table, and heard him start mumbling, “Mother of the fucking seven crone’s tits.”
Brienne looked down at her skirt, noticing that the sensible low slit had ripped all the way to her hip, exposing the bright red lace panties she’d worn to work that day.
And suddenly, her day seemed much, much worse.