#amazingmsme

Jaime’s knees seemed to liquefy at her words just as he half-gasped out, “I —what?” 

She reached in again, scribbling deliberately this time at his skin. Jaime sucked in a shivering breath, drawing his stomach in tight. It was useless, but he tried to squirm away from the lingering touch of her fingers. 

“B-Brienne.” Jaime choked out, voice higher than she had ever heard him. “Please.” 

“You know, you’re almost cute enough to have pity on.” She smirked, reaching up to tousle his hair. 

Jaime snorted at that, shaking his head to try to get it out of her way, however useless his attempts may have been. “Get me out of this or I’ll— ohgods stop stahahahop! Nohohoho!” 

“You’re not the one giving the orders..” She teased, running her fingernails up and down his abdomen gently, scribbling them about like the legs of a spider. 

“Ohmygods stop- please! I’ll do anything!” Jaime hissed, shaking with barely-suppressed laughter. 

“Anything?” She asked playfully.

“Anything!” Jaime answered quickly, his eyes wide. “Please!” 

“Oh alright… How about I stop tickling and help you out of here…” Brienne began, “if after I do, you let me see where else you’re ticklish.” 

Jaime’s face grew warm. “What? I- I’m not tick—”

“Really?” She asked sarcastically, prodding her fingers into his side and making him squeak. 

“Okay, okay fine! No traps–and no, no tying my arms up like this godsawful—”

“Careful… that armor belongs to the Starks, it would be wise not to insult it.” 

Jaime closed his mouth, looking down. “Can you… please, get me out of this.” He spoke as calmly as he could, his stomach still dancing with butterflies at the prospect of being tickled any more.

“Why yes, I do believe I can help.” Brienne winked, laughing as she reached up to wriggle Jaime’s arms loose from the heavy armor set. 

Finally, he was freed. His arms came down swiftly to rub out the excess tickles from his sides. “Shit. Remind me never to try something like that again.” 

“Oh I think you’ll remember.” Brienne smirked, starting toward the stairs. “Now then, when we get back upstairs, take off those boots.” 

Jaime blushed, his eyes widening at her comment. But he followed her, faltering only slightly in his step as he honored his word and went to pay his debt.

…

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Any amount of friends is higher than zero, to be fair, but now he had three.

Tonight’s gonna be different, though. Tonight’s the launch of a whole new Ted that people will actually want to be around. Time to shake off the remnants of his past self (Borat impressions included) and be a pleasant person to be around!

So, Ted sat in his car beside the cases of beer that he’d been tasked with bringing, trying to hype himself up like a loser before his first school dance.

“Alright Spankoffski,” He drummed his hands on the steering wheel, “This is your chance to prove to everyone that you’ve really changed. You are going to be nice, and friendly, and a normal, not disgusting or sleazy, human being.”

He pulled into Bill’s driveway, gathering the beers into his arms and pointing at himself in his rear-view mirror, “Do not fuck this up.”

It was already dark out when Ted knocked on the door, doing his best to appear relaxed as he waited.

The door swung open to reveal Bill beaming at him, “Ted! We’ve finally got everyone so now we can actually par-tay! Come on in!”

He’d gone all out as a skeleton with the face paint and everything making Ted feel a little self-conscious about his Mario costume that he’d managed to dig out of his closet at the last minute just because he already had the mustache.

All that melted away when he actually stepped inside to see Charlotte, dressed as Catwoman, look at him and say, “It’s-a-me! Mario!” and Paul, wearing a nametag that said “This is my Halloween costume,” look him over and give him an amused grin.

“Alright everyone, I am here and I’ve brought beer!” Ted hoisted the cases in the air, “Now we can have some real fun!”

And they cheered.

Yeah, this was going to be a good night.

And boy was it.

A couple hours later, Ted found himself squished between Paul and Charlotte and halfway through their second corny as hell horror movie. Jump scares didn’t affect Paul because of course they didn’t but Charlotte screamed every time, often hiding her face in either Ted or Bill’s chest when something she deemed scary happened.

It was really nice and, honestly, Ted and Charlotte had come to more of a mutual understanding that they worked well as friends, and Ted was astounded at how relaxed the atmosphere was. They were just a group of friends, drinking beer and eating candy while watching shitty Halloween movies.

Ted almost felt like he could be himself.

Almost.

The movie they were currently watching had a…well endowed female character, lets say. Normally, Ted would be cracking jokes left and right, and it seemed as though everyone expected him to by the way they shot him looks every time she was on the screen.

But he didn’t say anything, and nobody commented on it.

Until she fell into the water wearing a white tank top. Because of course she did.

“Damn! Talk about a—” The words were already halfway out of Ted’s mouth before he cut himself off, self-preservation instincts kicking in just a few seconds too late to save him from the looks he was inevitably going to get.

Except the looks he got weren’t the usual exasperation or disgust. They were more along the lines of…concerned?

Before Ted could shake off that thought, Bill leaned forward and said, “No! You’ve been too quiet all night, Ted and I know you want to say something, so have at it.”

Fucking what?

“Uh, no. I’m good, actually.” Was this a trap? This had to be some sort of trap, right?

Charlotte jostled him a little bit, “Seriously?! How about, like, I’d drink from those jugs any day!”

The impression pulled a snort from Bill who added, “Yeah! Or what about something along the lines of ‘I bet I could make her scream!’”

Okay. Those were pretty good. But this was new Ted, and new Ted didn’t make or laugh at jokes like that when desperately trying to get people to like him.

He managed to keep a relatively straight face as he said, “Sorry folks, I got nothing.”

With his gaze locked back on the screen, Ted missed the confused and slightly worried looks his friends were shooting at each other. He also missed the look of resigned determination that crept onto Paul’s face.

“Not even a ‘My wife!’ Ted?”

Hearing those words come out of Paul’s mouth felt like some sort of auditory hallucination. Ted would put real money on Paul never having seen Borat in his life, so his impersonation was more along the lines of an impersonation of Ted’s impersonation, which was funny as fuck.

Ted snorted out half of a laugh before getting himself back under control and attempting to mimic the unimpressed eyebrow raise Paul always gives him when he made jokes like that.

“Damn,” Bill whistled lowly, “I can’t believe that didn’t work. Are you feeling alright, Ted?”

Ted just scoffed, rolling his shoulders, “Yeah man! Just introducing you guys to the new and improved Ted 2.0! No more inappropriate jokes that everybody hates!”

He thought that that would settle it well enough, that everyone would breathe a sigh of relief and move on.

Except out of the corner of his eye, Ted could see Paul wince and he could hear Charlotte’s sad little, “Oh, Ted.”

Also, it was hard to miss the way Bill stood up and walked directly in front of him to stare him in the eyes with an odd look on his face.

“Ted, you know that we don’t hate your jokes, right?”

Oh shit. Everyone was looking at him, and it felt like things were getting serious, so Ted defaulted to his tried and true defense mechanism: Being a sarcastic asshole.

He pasted a sardonic grin on his face, “Oh come on, Billy. I may be an asshole but I’m not fucking stupid. I know how to take a hint or twenty.”

Bill’s expression shuttered before shifting into something harder.

You’ve really done it now, Spankoffski. No matter what you say it’s always the wrong fucking thing.

When Bill opened his mouth, Ted braced himself for a dressing down before getting kicked out to spend Halloween alone like he should have been doing all along.

“Ted’s being a bit of a grouch, huh guys? Why don’t we find something that’ll tickle his funny bone and crack a smile.”

And the way Bill said that combined with the looks he gave Paul and Charlotte suddenly made Ted very nervous for an entirely different reason.

The whiplash he’d gotten from the sudden change in the direction of the night meant that Ted hadn’t braced himself by the time Charlotte was enthusiastically agreeing and slipping her nails into his overalls to spider them over his stomach.

Ted immediately folded over with a panicked wheeze, “Wait! Char dohon’t! Shit Paul nohohohohoho!”

Paul, Mr. I’m-allergic-to-fun-and-laughter, decided to throw everytging Ted thought that he knew about him to the wind and immediately go for the fucking kill by digging his fingers into Ted’s ribs.

“NO! Nononononono wahahahait!” He started curling up into a ball and apparently Bill was not having that. He managed to grab onto both of Ted’s wrists and pull them away from his torso, leaving him defenseless to Paul and Charlotte’s attacks.

Of course, Charlotte immediately took advantage of this and wormed a hand in under his arm, giggling delightedly at the shriek it elicited.

“Char! I cahahahahan’t!” Bill tugged out his arms a little further, chuckling at him, “Bihihihihihill why?!”

“I told you that you were being a grouch! And I felt like it was the only way to get you to listen to what I’m about to say, starting with you are our friend and we genuinely appreciate that you try to make us laugh.”

Oh. Oh shit.

Apparently his struggling became a bit more pronounced at that because Ted could just barely hear a pointed “See?” over his laughter.

“Yeah, Ted!” Charlotte piped in, reaching down to scribble over his knees in a way that had him giggling like a fucking kid, “We like your company! We definitely appreciate that you’re putting effort into being less of an asshole but we don’t want you to completely change your personality!”

This was too much. Ted was going to die and his tombstone was going to say Cause of Death: His friends were nice to him and he didn’t know how to handle it.

Of course, that’s exactly when Paul decided to flutter a few fingers against his neck and, “Oh my God was that a snort?!”

Okay. Now he was going to die.

“Fuhuhuhuhuck off Pahahahaul!” And he took that to heart, moving right back to his ribs because he’s an evil monster, “Shitshitshit not thehehehere yohohou dick!”

Paul just talked right over him, “Just accept that we actually like you and your stupid jokes and that you don’t have to completely change yourself into someone you think we’ll like better, because we won’t.”

And Ted really didn’t want to, mostly because he’s not sure how much he believes it, but he also couldn’t take much more of this.

Alright. Fuck it.

“OKAY! Okahahahay you guys lihihike me!”

“And?” Charlotte prompted.

“Ahahand my—HEY! Andmystupidjokes!”

“Annnnnddddd?” Bill swung his arms around, making Ted sway in place.

Shit what was the last one?!

Oh right, “And I dohohon’t have to chahahange myself into sohohomeone I think yohohou’ll like better!”

“Because?” Oh Ted was so going to kill Paul for this when he was free.

“Behehehecause you WON’T! Now let me gohohoho you dihihicks!”

The tickling stopped, and Ted sagged into the couch. Paul wrapped an arm tentatively around his shoulder and he practically melted into the affection, stupid grin still plastered on his face.

Bill came back—when had he left?—and shoved a glass of water into Ted’s hands which he almost immediately downed in between heaving pants.

Charlotte moved in a little closer and started running a hand through Ted’s rumpled hair to smooth it back out and Ted almost passed out there and then.

“You guys suck.” It was unconvincing, the smile and petulant tone saw to that. It’s alright though because Ted didn’t really mean it anyway.

Bill started rewinding the movie to catch up on what they’d missed as he asked, “You doing alright over there? We didn’t kill you or anything?”

Ted just gave him a vague thumbs up which seemed to be enough for him.

“You know that we mean it, right? You’re our friend, Ted.” Paul’s quiet voice had the warmth creeping back into Ted’s face as he grumbled.

“Yeah, yeah. Fucking whatever you saps. Can we watch the movie now?”

But his grin grew a little wider, and if the next time that woman showed up on screen Ted had called out, “She could hallow my ween!” to the mock-dismayed groans of his friends?