#thisisamadhouse

She was finally asleep. It was the only reason he did it. But he kept thinking about it afterward, and he felt the same embarrassment he would have felt if she had been awake for it. He relived it, remembered it. The unthinking way he used his left hand, still shaking, to brush her sweat-lank hair away from her face. The way he bent and kissed her on the forehead. The feel of his lips against her skin. It had been newly scrubbed clean, but still he thought he could taste the blood that had been there before. He couldn’t understand the impulse. Why he had done it.

She betrayed him. Nearly led him to his death. Immediately tried to fall on her own sword for him, because of course it was the life of the boy that she was willing to bargain with Jaime’s for, and of course even feverish and sick and half-dead she thought she could fight her way out. Jaime would have probably been the same, at her age, though he’d have been a bit more clever about it. Wouldn’t have ended up half so full of holes.

He had still been angry when they escaped from the remains of Stoneheart’s followers. The boy and that hedge knight had both been concerned for Brienne in a way that Jaime couldn’t be. Not until Brienne had fallen from her horse. He’d gone away inside himself for most of the ride before that, and so he hadn’t noticed her swaying, losing her grip on herself. Not until she’d fallen.

She was a big woman, Brienne. Broader and taller than him both, and she made a fearful sight, flopping from her saddle so gracelessly, hitting the ground with such a thud. It shook him awake, and he had not been able to retreat within himself since. A woman who looked like a statue should not be able to fall like that. But that was stupid. Of course she could.

Then it had all been panic, and guilt, and cold fury. Jaime was at his best when he was feeling things. He knew that. Unable to escape inside himself, he’d been all efficiency, so that even Hunt followed his lead without question.

The Elder Brother tried to set Jaime up in a separate house, going on at length about things like purity and honor and innocence, and it made Jaime sick. She’s not an innocent, he wanted to say. She does not have honor. She betrayed me. She struck her former lady’s head from her neck. Are you so concerned with her purity now? What does it matter, when her soul will rot like mine in time? What good is her maidenhead? It has not protected her. I have been a stain on her already.

He didn’t say those things, though there was an angry part of him that wanted to. This beast raising its head within him and trying to make him speak. When he did tell the Elder Brother to go fuck himself, it was as kindly as he’d ever said anything. He did not curse or rage. He did not pull out his sword and threaten the man.

Lady Brienne is my charge, and I will not be parted from her, he had said simply, and the Elder Brother had nodded, and that had been that.

He’d been given a bedroll to lay out on the floor. Some of the brothers brought food with their medicine and bandages, and Jaime had helped them quietly. Podrick had wept so furiously over Brienne’s insensible mumblings that Jaime had eventually forced him outside to bother Hunt. Brienne did not wake. The brothers managed to rouse her enough to feed her some broth and fruit, but still she was not fully there, and she did not fully see them. When she finally fell into a more peaceful sleep, the brothers took their leave, and then it was just him. Just Jaime. Left to watch.

The wound on her cheek still festered. It had been cleaned and tended to by the Elder Brother, but still the smell of those old bandages and that old flesh lingered, and Jaime felt unmoored, standing by Brienne’s side. It made him think of another recent vigil. The smell of it. Tommen’s watering eyes and Cersei’s ire. It made him think of that dream he’d had. The one where his mother had cried. Jaime had never been very good at ordering his feelings, but there was a connection there that made his insides squirm.

That was when he sat on the edge of her bed, and leant down, and kissed her on the forehead. And after, he lay in the bedroll on the floor and hated himself for it. For all of it.

He remembered Brienne as he first met her. Strong, resolute. Hating him and everything he stood for. He remembered her as she was when she rode into his camp and asked him to follow her. Shrunken. Wretched. He sent her out into the world to rescue Sansa Stark. For his honor. He could still taste the blood on his lips from the skin of her forehead. Have I ever cared for anything without destroying it?

I’m married, shereminds him.

He stopped thinking of Jack Raydor as Sharon’s husband longbefore she slipped that ring off her finger, and that was easily ten years ago.

What they do now, in the privacy of his house or her condo,it sure as hell isn’t an affair. It’s not some tawdry secret sex, though shereminds him every time that it’s a secret. It’s not just a hurried fuck in ahalf-bath, squeezed in between finger sandwiches and champagne toasts at one ofthe many political fundraisers she’s dragged him to over the last two years.

What they’re doing is more real. Isn’t it?

It’s the reason he called her when he got his ass handed tohim after one of his AA meetings. It’s the reason that he’s a dick to her whenshe invades their murder room, but defends him when the rest of his team getssalty about her presence.

“Why are you such adick when you have to share investigations with me? You of all people shouldknow I’m just doing my job.”

“Yeah, and you of allpeople should know that nobody likes an IA investigation.” He lifted his headoff her stomach, kissing slowly down her belly until he came to rest at thejunction of her thighs. “Nobody likes a bossy woman sticking her nose in whereit doesn’t belong.”

He licked into her,slowly at first, and then with more heat. “You’re driving us all crazy.”

She moaned, thenhummed, and finally screamed as his tongue brought her to release.

“Crazy,” he murmured ashe found her mouth again. God, he’d never get enough of the taste of her on hislips as he kissed her. “We’d like you so much more if you’d just stay away.”

“And it so easy, LieutenantFlynn, to stay away, hmm?”

It wasn’t hard to stay away from him; she’d proven that overand over again since the first time they’d slept together. Even when he’d beenthe one in the hospital, her visit had been brief, and she’d left him to goinvestigate what he later found out was a case about him.

No, what was hard was staying away from her.

And now she’s in the hospital, and he can’t go see herwithout his entire team figuring out that his feelings toward their FID liaisonin the Tyrell Baylor case are possibly less than antagonistic and more thanplatonic.

“Agents Flynn and Tao, please visit the lab and gentlyremind them that we need our results immediately.”

“Yes, Chief, “ they echo.

“GENTLY,” she yells after them. Fuck the chief, he’ll gettheir result. He’ll get them immediately, and he’ll send them along with Tao.

USC Medical Center is just a short drive up the street fromthe county forensics lab.

***

It’s not a police matter, what landed her in the hospital.An overeager agent’s assistant rear-ended her on the 101. She should have beenat Cedars, or at Kaiser because it was closer to her condo, but she wound up atUSC Med because even LAPD insurance has its limits.

Whiplash, a broken nose from the airbag, and strongpossibility of a concussion. I shouldhave been there, he thinks, when he sees her lying in the hospital bed.

“I should have been there,” he says, out loud this time,when she realizes that she’s not alone in the room.

“You should have been…where, exactly? Grocery shopping withme, instead of investigating the death of a rapper?”

Fuck the rapper. “Yeah,”he says, hoping that the smile he gives her is convincing.

“Liar.” She puts on a good show for him, smiling back even thoughhe knows for a fact that it hurts like hell to smile with a broken nose.

“You’re gonna be okay,” he says, because he’s an idiot and hedoesn’t know anything more soothing to say. He has other things he’d like totell her, but she doesn’t want to hear them, so he says what he thinks shewants to hear. Sitting on her bed, squeezing her hand, he hopes she knows whathe wants to say.

“I’m going to be fine,” she reassures him in those clipped NewEngland tones of hers. Nobody would ever know that they grew up less than ahundred miles apart. “And you need to get back to work.”

Like hell. He’s just about to argue when Tao ducks his headin the room. He gives a stilted wave to the captain, then gestures with thefolder to Andy.

“Interesting findings,” Tao whispers. “Might need somefollow-up. Maybe I should go back to the Murder Room and you should stay hereto lean on any questions we might have for the lab?”

Andy flips through the folder, seeing both the lab resultsand any questions Mike might have, along with their answers. Written in detail,medical terms spelled out phonetically, just in case someone might call forclarification. “Looks like a lot of questions.”

“Might take all day,” Mike agrees, then nods at the woman inthe bed. “Captain.”

“Lieutenant.”

Mike disappears, and Andy doesn’t say anything for a moment.He doesn’t want her to know that he’s rattled by the sight of her in a hospitalbed. She wouldn’t like that – it would be breaking the rules of their affair, thathe might care too much about her. That he might want to find the punk that rear-endedher and beat the shit out of him. That he might very well open himself up to aninvestigation of excessive force, because Sharon Raydor is hurt, and she’s in ahospital bed, and fuck the rules, he’ll take the suspension if it means that hecan get rid of the pit in his stomach at seeing her so pale in a hospital bed.

He doesn’t want to upset her, but Andy Flynn was never verygood at rules. But she is, and he’s not good at making her happy – not yet –but he’s better than he used to be. So he’ll stay here with her and hope that’senough. “Seems I have some time to kill,” he says. He pulls a chair up to her bedsideand takes her hand.

“Seems you do,” she agrees. She curls her fingers into his,then tugs him closer, and closer still, until he’s settled on the bed next toher, her head resting on his chest.

“We should thank him,” he murmurs. At this point, knowingthat she’s hurt, but not seriously, he’ll thank anyone who cares to listen.

He’s never heard her make a noise like that, a snort that isdefinitely not in keeping with the very carefully cultured image of SharonRaydor. “Mike Tao owes me,” she says, and he’ll never admit it, but he fallsjust a little more in love with how satisfied she sounds. “Thank him if youwant to, but he won’t say a word.”

Of course he won’t say a word. Mike Tao might be the mostboring person Andy’s ever met, but he’s also the most loyal. Mike would neverbetray his teammate in Major Crimes as a matter of conscience, but he’d alsonever betray Sharon Raydor as a matter of personal integrity.

Thank God Provenza wasn’t sent to the lab with him.

“So,” he says, “you gonna get out of here tonight?”

She sighs, and he catalogues that with all the other breathynoises that she makes. He loves them all. “The doctor says I have to havesupervision for the next 48 hours.”