Chapter Text
Sansa had nearly broken two years on her “road to spinsterhood” streak when she finds herself shanghaied into a blind date. She hadn’t been looking to break it, but as far as Lysa Arryn is concerned, her eldest niece isn’t to be trusted with her own love life. Which isn’t necessarily untrue, but Sansa could have lived quite happily without ever having that pointed out to her.
But she, bless her heart, takes the comment with good humor, if only to get her aunt off her back. No such luck—Sansa’s assurance that she appreciates the gesture isn’t enough to deter Lysa’s agenda as she’d hoped. Usually, Lysa only wants to hear that she’s right and then she moves on; however, this time she insists on testing the results.
“I’m really not interested,” Sansa says so many times that they might as well carve it on her tombstone, the phrase has become such an integral part of her.
In fact, Sansa is quite interested… It’s just that someone else had caught her attention long before Harry Hardyng’s name had found its way into the running. And like hell is Sansa going to tell anyone about the way her heart sighs whenever a certain curly-haired dreamboat comes through the Starks’ front door.
So no matter how many times she says “Thanks, but…,” Lysa is not to be dissuaded, and Sansa is much too polite to tell her aunt to shove it up her arse because there is no way that Sansa’s going anywhere with some bloke she has to Facebook stalk for an honest first impression.
Things only get worse when Margaery—Sansa’s unapologetically sexual and tenacious best friend—finds out that Sansa might finally get laid after her two-year dry spell. She suggests a shopping spree as a sort of preemptive celebration, which Sansa disagrees with on principle, but all the same she isn’t going to say no to a jaunt in the mall.
“Ooh, who do the abs belong to?” Margaery asks when she meets Sansa at the food court. She’s already peeking over Sansa’s shoulder while the latter swipes her thumb through the Facebook app on her phone.
“Ugh, it’s that guy my aunt’s trying to set me up with.” Sansa scrolls past more photos of a half-clad blonde with a dimpled chin and trouble written all over him. Seriously? “Harry Hardyng.”
Margaery hums her approval when another picture of his abs shows up. “How many ‘hard-on’ jokes d’you think his mates make about that name?”
Sansa snorts. “Dunno, but it does look like he sees a lot of action. Every picture that isn’t putting his strangely oiled body on display, he’s got his paws all over a different girl. Several different girls. I think Lysa’s trying to set me up with a gigolo.”
“In that case, I hope she’s footing the bill, at least.”
“Oh, well.” Sansa sighs and drops her phone into her bag. “Mum wants me to play nice, so I’m going Friday, as planned. Anyway, Arya reckons if it goes badly enough I can spin it into a good column for the website. So let’s just say I’m doing this for my career, otherwise I don’t think I could stomach it.”
Margaery arches one perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Well, well. When did my Disney princess best girl become such a cynic?”
“I’m not a cynic. I’ve just given up on men.”
“Oh, well, not a cynic at all, then,” Margaery chuckles as she leads the way through the thin crowd of shoppers. “I’ll be honest—”
“That’s so unlike you,” Sansa deadpans.
“Whore,” Margaery counters, then continues her original point. “As excited as I am that Mr. Perpetual Hard-on—if all those other girls are any indication—might drop your panties like they so obviously need to be dropped, why go out with him if you don’t want to? Clever, beautiful you, it’s not like you don’t have your pick of men. Just go out with someone else.”
“I told you,” Sansa says as they ignore the persistent kiosk salespeople, “my mother practically begged me to just get it over with. I mean, she didn’t beg, obviously, but she did whatever the equivalent of begging is to a woman as dignified as Mum is. Anyway, point is, Lysa’s probably been driving her mad about this. The least I can do is suffer through one bad date.”
“You don’t know it’s going to be bad,” Margaery points out, but Sansa shakes her head.
“In one of the few pictures of Harry Hardyng fully clothed, his shirt said ‘Certified Stud,’” she reveals. “And quite frankly he doesn’t seem like the ironic type, so…”
Margaery wrinkles her nose. “Oh, god, he’s a tool.”
“Precisely.” Sansa nods curtly, as though the unfortunate graphic tee settles the matter.
Which, she thinks, it really does. Had they been much younger, it would have been a forgivable offense, but at twenty-four Sansa is already exhausted by her male counterparts’ considerable lack of maturity. She has approximately zero desire to spend her time convincing whoever she’s dating that he needs to dress like a grown-up—or, in Harry Hardyng’s case, dress at all. He may be cut like a Greek god, but something tells Sansa that wouldn’t be a viable argument against her father’s almost guaranteed disapproval. More importantly, there’s no viable argument that could sway Sansa’s current position of “Thank you, but absolutely not.”
But it’s only one date, Sansa reminds herself. Just one night. If she can’t handle just one night, then she’s just as soft as everyone thinks she is. And that simply wouldn’t do.
So she straightens her spine and quickens her step to keep up with Margaery, who is surprisingly quick-footed for someone so small. It’s because she’s always on a mission, she’d told Sansa several times before, although Sansa isn’t quite sure what the mission is today. The thought has her narrowing her eyes in suspicion.
“Margaery… What exactly is the purpose of this shopping trip?”
“You need new lingerie,” Margaery explains flippantly, without breaking stride.
To her credit, Sansa’s steps don’t falter, either, even if she’s at a loss for words. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Underwear, San,” Margaery reiterates. “Panties. Bustiers. Whatever. It’s been two years since anyone besides me has seen you in your delicates, and I’m easy. I would happily bang you after seeing you walk about in a myriad of neutral tones that do absolutely nothing for your skin tone. Not to mention, none of it’s doing any favors for your tits and arse, either. But again, I’m easy. Men are easy, too, come to think of it, but really, Sansa, you should treat yourself to a little lace and satin every now and then, don’t you think?”
“For the love of—” Sansa presses her palm to her forehead in a vain attempt to stave off the stress headache. “Have you rehearsed that speech, or did you just have some sort of emotional breakdown?”
Margaery waves a dismissive hand. “A little of this, a little of that. Honestly it’s always surprised me how frankly lazy you are when it comes to your lingerie. You like pretty things—really, you’re rather shallow, which is why we hit it off in the first place, by the way, but that is neither here nor there,” she continues before Sansa can open her mouth to protest. “My point is that you’re going on a date, and despite your best efforts it might actually go well, so for the love of god, I will get you into a push-up bra if it’s the last thing I do. A nice pastel, I think, but I’m flexible.”
Sansa’s head spins in efforts to keep up with her friend’s train of thought. “Again, that was quite an earful. You should run for parliament.”
“Ha!” Margaery chortles as she leads Sansa into the atmospherically lit lingerie shop. “Please. As if the government could keep up with me.”
“I can barely keep up with you,” Sansa admits, but readily follows Margaery’s beeline to a rack she must have scoped out on a previous visit.
Margaery clicks her tongue as she shifts hangers from one side to the other. “The important thing is that you take my advice without fuss or question. Remember, dear, not only am I older and wiser, but a good deal sluttier, and real wisdom comes from a well-maintained G-spot.”
“So have you received your Nobel prize and just forgot to tell me, or…?”
“Cheeky.” Margaery smirks and starts tossing bras into Sansa’s unprepared but deft hands. “Go try those on while I pick out your panties. Size seven, preferably crotchless.”
“What’s the point?” Sansa wants to know, although she actually doesn’t.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Margaery confesses, completely nonplussed. “Something lacy, then. Now go get a dressing room, mama’s got work to do.”
Not willing to get in the way of Margaery on a panty prowl, Sansa does as she’s told. She’s not particularly keen on dressing up for this date, but Margaery is right when she says Sansa should treat herself every now and then. Besides, one can never have too much underwear.
Sansa is on her third try-on—a pretty but tricky front-clasp—when the curtain of her room rustles, announcing Margaery’s triumphant return.
“Panties achieved,” she chirps from the other side of the thick blush cloth. “Twelve new pairs, and I’ve already bought them so you can’t argue.”
“Of course you did,” Sansa mutters, more irritated with this particular bra than she is with her friend. “You really didn’t have to do that, I’m perfectly capable of paying for my own underwear.”
“Yes, but it wouldn’t have been so easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy for me to convince you to spend your money on what I’ve got you,” Margaery explains as if it’s the most pragmatic thing in the world. “Besides, I have more money than you since I don’t insist on making it as a starving artist, or whatever it is that you do.”
Having successfully clasped the bra and now finding it stuck, Sansa merely grunts in response. It really is a pretty thing, she must admit—pale blue with a black lace overlay, and it’s doing fantastic things for her cleavage—but that doesn’t mean she wants to struggle in and out of it for every wear.
“This is so much trouble to go through for a guy I don’t care about.”
The shrug is evident in Margaery’s voice when she replies, “So save it for a guy you do care about.”
“I haven’t got any of those,” Sansa reminds her.
“Oh, no? Not even a certain brother’s pouty-lipped best mate?”
Sansa rolls her eyes. Of course. She huffs at her reflection, giving up the fight against the front-clasper for a moment, because of course Margaery would bring up Jon at a time like this, and Sansa can’t think straight when he’s on her mind.
Margaery knows better than anyone that Sansa has been cradling Jon Snow like a dirty little secret for the better part of her young life, and she never passes up an opportunity to broach the subject. To Margaery’s mind, there is simply no better man for Sansa than Jon: He’s kind to everyone and gentle with her. He makes her laugh and never does so himself at her expense. He seems to know just what she needs right before she needs it, and what’s more is that he gives it to her, whatever it is. And—as Margaery had astutely observed and Sansa privately agreed—he’s got the best arse this side of England.
Badda bing, badda boom. Really, it seems like a no-brainer that Sansa should go for it. But despite all the things that would make Jon her Mr. Right, there’s too much that could go wrong. There’s too much at stake. Good heart and great arse aside, he’s also the family friend who’s just as much a fixture at the Starks’ as any of their own. He’s the best friend of her older brother, and as such he could only ever see her as a sister, Sansa’s sure of it.
Ever since she had recognized the stirrings of a crush some seven-odd years ago, Sansa had done everything in her power to squash it. Because a man like Jon Snow is dangerous; a man like Jon Snow could make her fall in love. And the whole point of the “road to spinsterhood” streak had been to keep Sansa clear of such a thing, as her previous experiences have advised her to do. It just doesn’t seem worth it.
Even if Jon didn’t break her heart—he would never, of course he wouldn’t, but… Well, Sansa can’t contest that. The problem is, he’d have to accept her heart first. She’d be lying if she said she’d turn him down for a date, but it’s not like she can ask him because he might not have any such reservations. He’d let her down gently and then she could never show her face around her family again. She could probably never see them again at all; she’d probably have to move, and Sansa would prefer not to as she quite likes her flat.
She shakes her head to clear it, to bring herself back to the present. She’s standing in a dressing room, stuck in a bra, and her best friend is egging her on from the other side of the closed curtain.
“Me and Jon.” Sansa snorts through the lump in her throat. “You always say that. There’s nothing going on between me and Jon.”
“Yeah, but you both want there to be a little some-something,” Margaery says, completely unfazed, as per ush. “He looks at you up and down like you’re a Tootsie Roll Pop he wants to lick until he gets to your center.”
Sansa’s heart flutters about in a way that cannot be medically advisable, but she’s determined to hide it. “Oh, for fu—shut up, Margaery, he doesn’t.”
“Fine,” her friend says all too airily, “why don’t we ask him which bra you should buy, and then maybe you’ll see what I’m talking about when I say he wants to fuck you five hundred thousand ways to the next life?”
So hyperbolic, Sansa thinks, but smiles in spite of herself. “What are you going to do, call him?”
“No, I’ll just shout for him, he’s right over—”
“WHAT?” Sansa whips the curtain aside, just far enough that she can poke her head out. Sure enough, there’s Jon Snow at the other end of the shop, twiddling his fingers nervously against his pockets while his friend Sam chats up a pretty salesgirl.
Oh god oh god oh god oh god oh god ohgodohgodohgod—
Sansa tries not to notice how good he looks, but fuck off, he’s wearing his specs today and no one’s ever made wire frames look so good.
“What is he doing here?”
“Playing wingman?” Margaery suggests. “I heard through the grapevine that Sam and that salesgirl—Gilly, who’s very nice, by the by, she helped me pick out your new underoos, but anyway… She and Sam have a bit of a thing going on. Jon’s probably tagging along for moral support. You could use some of that, couldn’t you? Of course you could,” she continues before Sansa can untangle her own thoughts, and suddenly Margaery’s cupping her hands around her mouth and shouting across the shop, “OI! SNOW!”
“Margaery—!”
But it’s too late. Jon is already looking their way. His face reddens when he catches Sansa’s eye, but otherwise he looks relieved to have an excuse to leave Sam and Gilly to their flirtation.
“Listen,” he says when he’s walked within earshot of the girls, “I know this looks weird, me being here, but it’s only because Sam thinks he needs a wingman, even though he clearly doesn’t.”
He inclines his head in the direction of Sam and Gilly, neither of whom seem to have noticed his departure, as if that explains everything. And indeed it does.
“Margaery said much of the same,” Sansa assures him before closing the curtain once more. She’s not sure—really, it’s probably just her rattled mentality talking here—but she swears Jon had been looking at her precisely as Margaery had described. Or maybe he’s just a regular straight dude whose gaze automatically fixates on the nakedest thing in the room, but… Well, that’s not quite Jon, is it?
Sansa starts to fiddle with the stuck clasp again, just to give herself something else to concentrate on other than the adorably disheveled love-of-her-life standing outside her dressing room.
“Margaery, this thing is stuck,” she finally says, because there’s no way she’s getting out of this bra on her own. “So unless you want to help me, not only am I walking out of here in this, I’ll have to be buried in it as well.”
“Well, that won’t do,” Margaery tuts outside. “If you can’t take it off, lord knows Harry won’t be able to do it, either.”
“Harry?” Jon echoes, his voice oddly strangled. “Who’s Harry?”
“Sansa’s date this weekend,” Margaery tells him, feigning shock that he didn’t already know. “Haven’t you heard? Auntie Lysa is positively hell-bent on ensuring the well-being of Sansa’s poor, neglected clitoris—”
“Oh my god.” Sansa sticks her head out from behind the curtain again, trying furiously to avoid Jon (who, by her few chance glances, looks like a kicked puppy, but she refuses to read into it). “Margaery. Shut up.”
Margaery does little else but offer her friend that trademark Tyrell smirk. Sansa ducks back inside before she can begin to over-analyze Jon’s expression again, but naturally Margaery is having none of it.
“I’ve got my eye on a camisole set waaaaaaay at the other end of the shop, where I and seemingly every other shopper seems to have congregated thanks to the outrageous sale signs over there,” Margaery says in tones of the fakest of apologies, “so I must take off before all the goodies have been spoken for. But I’m sure Jon could help you, darling—couldn’t you, Jon?”
“I—um—well—I suppose—” he stutters, but that’s good enough for Margaery.
“Wonderful. Do us a favor, love, tell us what you think of this bra Sansa’s got on, and then you can help her out of it.”
“Margaery,” Sansa begins warningly and, she knows, to no avail, “if you open that curtain I swear I’ll strangle you with it—”
But, as is the custom when Margaery has her mind set without letting Sansa in on the juicy details, Sansa is too late to catch up. The curtain whirls open and shut again in the blink of an eye, and the only difference is that now a befuddled Jon Snow is standing toe-to-toe with her in the dressing room.
“Oh, god,” Jon says in something of a rush, his eyes flicking from Sansa’s to her cleavage and then blinking rapidly as though he’s attempting to pay penance for some lecherous thought. “I’m sorry, San, she just—she pushed me, and she’s quite strong, somehow, I didn’t expect—”
“It’s the Pilates,” Sansa tells him. As much as she hadn’t wanted Margaery to pull this stunt, she’s not half as embarrassed as Jon is. He’s seen her in a swimsuit half a million times, after all, and the bra she’s stuck in now—however scandalous—offers far more coverage than any of her bikinis ever had. “Anyway, I could actually use your help, if you’re up to it.”
“Uh-huh.” His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, and Sansa likes to think it’s his nerves he’s trying to regulate because he’s madly in love with her. Stranger things have happened, haven’t they?
But she’ll probably never know for sure, so she resigns herself to directing Jon’s hands so he doesn’t accidentally feel her up. She’d rather like it if he felt her up, mind, but then again Sansa would also prefer it if he did so consciously rather than as a result of his anxiety.
“See, it’s jammed,” she explains, placing Jon’s fingers on the stuck clasp between her breasts. His fingertips brush her ribcage for the most fleeting of moments and her stomach erupts in butterflies as a result. “I—well, I don’t know what I did, exactly, but I’m keen to call it a manufacturer's error—”
Jon swallows again and his laugh is shaky. “I thought front-closing bras were supposed to be the easy ones?”
“Easy if you want to get at my tits,” Sansa agrees, and if it’s possible Jon’s face flushes even more, “but not so much if the thing’s broken.”
“It’s too bad,” Jon says, apparently without thinking since his fingers slip on the clasp and he stutters all over again. “I mean—that is—it’s just—well. This is a nice color on you. I, uh—I like the lace bit. Don’t tell Robb I said that,” he adds.
Sansa extends a pinky in a gesture of good will. “I’ll take it to my grave.”
“Thanks.” He smiles at her, all warm and genuine, and she’s frankly shocked that her knees don’t buckle entirely at that slight upturn of his very appealing mouth. “So. Um. Harry, is it? Robb mentioned your aunt was butting into your love life, but he was scarce on the details.”
“God.” Sansa huffs impatiently. Fine time to talk about some other bloke, she thinks, while Jon’s hands are on her and she should be making the most of it. But no, she’s too chicken-shit to do so much as flirt, because flirting leads to kissing leads to fucking leads to the inevitable breaking of hearts, and she doesn’t think she could bear it if Jon turned out like all the rest. She knows he wouldn’t, she’d told herself that so many times before, but it’s hard to be reasonable when you’ve been jaded before. “What’s Robb talking to you about my sad love life for, anyway?”
“Dunno.” Something curious flickers across Jon’s face then—jealousy? Sansa’s half-mad heart hopes, but the look is gone as quickly as it had come. His gaze stays locked on the clasp, or perhaps on the swell of her breasts, or maybe it’s both, as he continues to wrestle with the unmovable clasp. “I didn’t know you actually had a date, though. No getting out of it?”
“Not at all.” Sansa doesn’t know why, but she needs Jon to know more than anything else that she doesn’t want this date. She doesn’t want any date. She only wants… something she can’t have. She wants him, isn’t that obvious? But she can’t say that, so maybe it’s not all that obvious to begin with. “It’s just—it’s awkward to say no to your family, isn’t it?”
Jon nods and says, “Although I reckon there are a few things more awkward than that.”
His eyes flick from the bra he’d just unclasped up to hers, and this time Sansa knows she hasn’t mistaken the thrum of his Adam’s apple or the widening of his pupils. Fuck if she knows what it means, only that she can’t dismiss it as nothing, and suddenly her heart’s in her throat again and she’s liable to vomit it up at any moment.
The air in the dressing room is thick and thin all at once, and Sansa wants nothing more than to close the seemingly insurmountable space between them once and for all.
But how can she do that? she wonders even as Jon’s gaze searches her face as though she holds some answer he’s been after for all his bloody life. She’s romanticizing things again, she knows—she has to be. Because Jon can’t look at her like she thinks he’s looking at her, because no one has ever looked at Sansa like he does without wanting something in return.
“Good with your hands, aren’t you?” she quips to defuse the tension she’s probably only imagining, anyway. If she’s going to be a nervous wreck, she’s certainly going to take Jon down with her. She grins at his blush, but lets him off the hook a little bit when she holds the bra together with her hands; god knows he’d probably faint if she was actually topless. “Thanks, Jon.”
“Right. You’re welcome.” Jon nods for no reason at all. His hands still hover before her, and his blunt fingernails ghost across her lower abdomen as he pulls them away. “Well, I—sorry, I’m tongue-tied today, aren’t I?”
His grin is lopsided and doesn’t quite reach his eyes when he adds, “It’s just that I—I hope—if you don’t want this date to work out, I hope it doesn’t. But god, I hope he’s nice to you, San. You deserve that, for someone to be nice to you. I don’t know why you haven’t gotten that before.”
“Oh.” Sansa doesn’t quite know what to say to that. She feels right ridiculous, cramped in this tiny space with Jon while she’s half-naked and there’s nothing but a curtain separating them from the rest of the world, and she’s holding her tits together so she doesn’t accidentally flash him even though she sort of wants to, if only she knew he wanted her, too, but she doesn’t know and it’s tearing her up inside and this entire situation has somehow devolved into simultaneously the most heartbreaking and laughable thing she’s ever endured, so how on earth could she come up with anything to say?
You’re nice to me, she should say. She wants to say. But instead she can only stare at him like he’s the world and she’s caught up in his gravitational pull.
“I mean, if it doesn’t go well,” Jon is saying now, likely in efforts to fill the silence she’d left hanging, but there’s a touch of hope in his words, too, “you can always call me. You know that, right?”
It’s Sansa’s turn to swallow. God, she’s still holding her tits, too, isn’t she? She’s not sure if that’s embarrassing or sensual, but either way she’d really like to stop because it’s getting absurd.
“Yeah,” she says, and returns his twitching smile with her own. “Yeah, of course I know that, Jon. You’re always rescuing me.”
“Well…” Jon tilts his head, considering. “Everybody needs a knight in shining armor, right? It’s why I’m always Robb and Theon’s designated driver.”
Sansa laughs, and it drives her crazy that he can make her laugh like this when she feels like such a proper idiot in front of him. She got stuck in a bra, for fuck’s sake, and now he’s making her laugh like there are somehow things more ridiculous in this world than the situation he’d just helped her out of.
It’s this, more than anything, that makes Sansa think just how perfect he is. Not just for her, but perfect in general.
So there it is. After a two-year dry spell, Sansa has found her perfect guy—the one she’d known to be it when she was a teenager but had always been too stubborn to admit to it. And now, god damn it, now he knows she’s going on a date with someone else.
When Jon leaves the dressing room with a goodbye and a promise to text her the Saturday after that blasted date, Sansa runs her hands through her hair in pure frustration. Why couldn’t she just stay on the road to spinsterhood and leave well enough alone? But of course, that had never been an option—not really, not when she’s already mad for that stupidly oblivious bloke who had just left her half-naked in a dressing room.
Who does that? she wants to know, even though she already knows: Jon bloody Snow. That’s who does that.
She is so fucking in love with him, she thinks she might vomit up little chocolate hearts for the rest of her wistfully pining days. But that’s probably anatomically impossible, isn’t it?
Of course it is. Which is why Sansa buys the busted bra instead—all because Jon had said he likes the lace bit.