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Jon is sixteen when Sansa first speaks to him.
He’s known Robb for two years now—not that long, but they’d hit it off from the start so it’s long enough that they act more like brothers than friends. Jon gets along with the rest of the Starks just as well, taking to Robb’s younger siblings as if they were his own. Arya, Bran, and Rickon are easygoing enough to get on with, if a bit intense at times, but Jon knows that he’s not the easiest sort to strike up a bit of camaraderie with, either. As such, there is one Stark with whom Jon hasn’t managed to ingratiate himself, and that’s Sansa.
It’s not particularly surprising or even noteworthy. She’s three years his junior, so they’re both dancing around awkward adolescence but not close enough in age to be of interest to each other. Sansa is quite apart from her own siblings, preferring a brand of fun that has little to do with the others’ more rough-and-tumble style. So there’s no reason for Jon to take her disinterest in—perhaps even disdain for—him too personally.
But he still nearly jumps out of his skin when she addresses him directly:
“You shouldn’t smoke, you know.” Her voice is sudden but smooth, and Jon nearly drops the cigarette he’s just lit. “It’s bad for you.”
It’s a balmy midnight in mid-July, the sky clear and dark and vast above them, tainted by the garish yellow porch light that the Starks never seem to switch off. Jon’s staying over again, but Robb had snuck out quarter of an hour ago to meet his girl. Ned and Catelyn have a loose curfew for their children, but even still Robb likes to sneak off to meet Jeyne most nights; Jon reckons they get off on the risk.
Wired on energy drinks and the video games they’d been playing through the rainy afternoon, Jon doesn’t have it in him to wheedle away the hours on sleep. So he’d popped out for a smoke, figuring it was late enough that he’d be left alone. But the thing about the Starks’ place is that you’re never really left alone, so he probably should have known better.
Sansa is curled up in a wicker chair, book in her lap but eyes trained on him as he coughs out a stream of smoke in surprise. She lifts an eyebrow, then grins a little when Jon splutters out a “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry,” she says, but she doesn’t look it. Even at the tender age of thirteen, Sansa radiates confidence; and even though she’s hardly spoken more than a polite “hello” to him in the past two years, Jon is used to her haughty tone. “But lung cancer’s scarier. That’s how Grandpa Tully died, so Mum would be angry if she caught you smoking on her porch.”
“Er—right.” Without giving it a second thought, Jon stubs the smoldering cig out on the sole of his shoe. He and Robb smoke all the time, but they tend to do so as far from Catelyn Stark’s watchful eye as possible; it’s like an unspoken rule. “Sorry, I—I wasn’t thinking about that.”
Sansa shrugs. “That’s alright, Jon. I just thought you should know.”
They’re quiet; there’s not even a breeze to disturb them, just the chirping of crickets in the field behind the Starks’ house. Jon coughs, breaking the silence without meaning to, but Sansa must think he’s got something to say because she’s looking at him again. As a rule, she’s quieter than her siblings—more demure, composed—but it only takes her eyes on his for Jon to realize that she can be just as intense, just as unnerving. Unyielding. It makes him shift nervously from foot to foot, and he says the first thing that comes to mind.
“What are you doing out here so late?”
“I couldn’t sleep.” Her eyebrow hitches a little higher. “Robb’s room is next to mine, you know. You two leave the volume on the telly way too high.”
An involuntary cringe twitches his face; he feels as though he’s being scolded, and further chastised when he finds himself apologizing again. “I’m sorry, Sansa. Why didn’t you say something?”
She shrugs again. The book shifts in her lap. “It’s no trouble, not really. Not like when Theon stays over and starts scratching on the wall in the middle of the night.”
Guilt washes over him anew. He’s always over when Theon does that, and he never says a word; to be fair, neither does Robb. Still…
Sansa must be some kind of mind-reader because she tells him, “Don’t worry about it. He’s been doing it since I made them let me watch Sleepy Hollow with them. It was so scary, I don’t care what Theon says, but now he thinks it’s funny to tease me. It’s not your fault.”
For a moment, Jon almost says nothing. But then… “He shouldn’t do that,” he mutters. “Theon’s a prick.”
Her smile is wider now. Warmer. “He’s not so bad. But thanks for saying so.”
“Yeah.” Jon clears his throat, coughs again. His hands itch for another cigarette, but that’s sort of how he’d ended up in the middle of this conversation in the first place.
Not that it’s bad, the conversation, it’s just… odd. Because Sansa never talks to him. And all of a sudden they’re alone on the porch in the middle of the night, and he’s got it in his head that he needs to defend her from Theon’s dumbass but harmless pranks. It’s not that he’s nervous, not the way he is around the girls at school, around girls his age, it’s just…
It’s that stare. That unwavering stare, and the way that her eyes shine like luminescent turquoise under that ugly yellow porch light. It tears him apart and he doesn’t know why.
He starts patting down his pockets nervously. He really wants that cigarette, but he sure as hell isn’t gonna light another one up when Sansa’s looking at him like that. So he gives his pockets one last pat, then rubs the back of his neck and says, “Well, erm, guess I should go back in, then. Leave the door unlocked for Robb, would you?” Stupid twat always leaves his keys behind.
“Oh, he’ll be back soon,” Sansa says. She breaks their gaze—thank god—and goes back to her book. “He’s only ever gone until about one.”
Jon pauses on his way to the door. She’s not looking at him anymore, but he still regards her curiously when he asks, “How d’you know that?”
“I always wait up for him,” she explains. She licks her thumb and turns the page, and Jon finds himself wondering if she’s actually read a word. “I’m the lookout, and he brings me a McDonald’s.”
“Oh.” He smiles in spite of himself, because he doesn’t know why he’s smiling at all, or why he’s questioning it. He pulls the door open and, with one foot on the threshold and one without, says, “‘Night, then, Sansa.”
“‘Night, Jon,” she returns, with a smile at her book that’s really meant for him.
Jon doesn’t mean to think about it further; there’s nothing much to think of it at all. But once he’s back in Robb’s room—collapsed on the sofa they’d picked up from a rubbish sale last year, and staring at the ceiling—he sees the flash of his lighter and those big, blue, fucking cut-you-to-your-core eyes, anyway.
That was weird, he thinks, once again not in a bad way, but somehow it feels as though his world has shifted and he wonders if it’s just caffeine overload. In the end, after his overstimulated mind has flitted to and fro and back again for what feels like hours, he decides that it is.
Because, really—he flips his pillow to the cool side and fluffs it with his fist—what else could it be?
ten years later:
The familiar sound of gravel crunching beneath his tires announces Jon’s arrival. The Starks’ road is crowded with cars, most he recognizes as he and Robb have worked out the kinks in quite a few of them over the years. It’s been awhile since Jon has seen the house this crowded—the kids are all away at school or working full-time—but the occasion of Robb’s wedding has called for a long-overdue reunion.
When Jon steps through the front door—he never did learn the art of knocking, nor had it ever been expected of him—the house is as alive and loud as it was when they were all living here.
“Oi!” Arya slides down the banister of the entry staircase, her preferred method of travel between the upper and lower floors. She lands nimbly on her feet and pulls Jon in for a hug. “Look who decided to show up! And at the eleventh hour, no less.”
Jon gives her a squeeze before releasing her. “Hey, I’ve been around.”
“Not in a month, at least,” Arya points out, then continues before Jon can make his case. “I know, I know—your boss was on your arse. But hell’s bells, man, even when you were here it was just a few hours at a time. You’re like the phantom of Winterfell or something, always popping in and out of town without making a fuss.”
“Don’t kick me when I’m down.” Jon ruffles her hair the way he did when they were kids; as far as he’s concerned, even at twenty-one Arya’s as much a kid as ever. “You’ve got me for two weeks, haven’t you?”
“We sure do!” Robb’s voice joins them in the entry. He all but tackles Jon into another hug. “I’m getting married!”
“Yeah you are,” Jon chuckles. Robb’s greeted him in much the same way over the past year, ever since he proposed to Jeyne. He’s as starry-eyed now as he was the night she said yes, and Jon thinks that must be a good omen for them.
Bran rolls into the room, greets Jon, and informs Arya that he can’t possibly corral the entire pack of Stark dogs on his own, so could she please come out and coax Nymeria out of the pond? When Arya asks after their youngest brother, Bran tells her, “Rickon’s only encouraging them. He’s in the pond, too.”
Arya swears, hops on the back of Bran’s wheelchair with a Hi-ho, Silver! and the pair of them head outside to tame their brother and the dogs. Not wanting any part of the mud half a dozen dogs can accumulate, Robb and Jon make their way upstairs to greet the rest of the family.
“Huh, guess Mum and Dad are still out,” Robb says after sticking his nose into the kitchen and study, respectively. He frowns. “They left for breakfast with Jeyne’s parents like… three hours ago? No, that can’t be right—”
“Brunch!” a voice calls from the bathroom halfway down the hall. “They went for brunch, Robb. Brunch means mimosas, and you know how the mothers are with mimosas. They won’t be back ‘til this evening, you can bet me on it.”
“Sansa!” Robb knocks on the frame of the half-shut door, which is open just enough to let the steam from the shower out. “Jon’s here, come out and say hi.”
“Robb—” Sansa sighs into something like an incredulous laugh— “I’m not wearing anything but a towel.”
“Oh, so what? Jon won’t look at you.” Robb slants a look at his friend, as if daring him to do otherwise. “He’s got a girlfriend.”
Honor-bound to his honesty, Jon corrects him. “Er—I don’t.”
Robb halts his incessant knocking and drops his hand, turning to Jon in surprise. “You don’t? This is the first I’m hearing of it. What happened to Ygritte?”
“We broke up.”
“No shit.” Robb rolls his eyes, then shoves Jon by the shoulder. “When?”
“Like…” Jon considers it. It had been awhile; he just hadn’t wanted to talk about it, so he’d kept his mouth shut and no one had asked questions. “Eight months ago.”
“God, Robb—” the bathroom door creaks open all the way— “even I knew that. Check Facebook every once in awhile, why don’t you?”
Jon turns, and his jaw immediately slackens. “Slackens” might actually be too weak a word for it; “unhinges and completely detaches from the rest of his face” might, however, do the trick quite nicely.
Despite his frequent visits to the Stark house, Jon hasn’t seen Sansa since she was eighteen, ‘round about five years ago. She’d gone to university in the south, and her academic and social schedules alike had kept her too busy for regular visits home. With a steady boyfriend and job prospects lined up post-graduation, it seemed as though Sansa’s life would begin and end in the sunshine.
But then, six months ago—and Jon doesn’t know the details—she’d ditched the boyfriend, declined the job offers, and moved home.
Still, her social calendar kept her out of the house, and—as Arya had so astutely pointed out—Jon’s boss was always on his arse, so he hadn’t been around for more than a few odd hours at a time recently. He’d thought of her, of course, but overall Sansa simply hadn’t been on his radar.
And now, here she is, standing in front of him in nothing but a bath towel, leaning against the doorframe with arms and ankles crossed, and looking like the sweetest salvation Jon’s ever known.
Maybe she knows he’s been staring at her legs—she has to know, it’s not like he could hide it, nor could he avoid the miles of bare skin that she’s slathered in shimmering lotion—because she smirks when his eyes somehow manage to meet hers.
“Hi, Jon.”
“Uh—” he clears his throat, pointedly avoiding the daggers Robb’s sure to be staring at him— “hi, Sansa.”
Avoiding Robb’s gaze for too long turns out to be a mistake. There’s nowhere else to look but at a half-naked Sansa, and while Jon could die happy looking his fill of her instead of turning respectfully away to look at her brother, if he’d done so he might have ducked before Robb could smack him upside the head.
As it is, he’s too interested in the curve of her collarbone to notice that Robb’s about to hit him, and then it’s too late to prevent it.
Sansa rolls her eyes but laughs all the same, and Jon knows—inexplicably but surely—that he’s totally fucked.
Jon remembers being nervous the first time Sansa spoke to him. Ten years ago. Back then it hadn’t been about anything more than Jon’s reserved nature. He was sixteen, she was thirteen; it wasn’t about… that. This.
Now, though… There are still three years between them, but now, in their twenties, that seems like a whole lot of nothing. Now she’s his age.
Theoretically, that’s a good thing. Because now he can look at her and talk to her and maybe even think about her a little bit—not that he does but, well… he does—and it’s normal. Natural, even. Because Sansa is gorgeous and clever and available and she knows how he takes his coffee, and as it turns out Jon is just that easy.
Not to mention obvious, apparently.
“Are you finished?” Rickon wants to know one morning, after Sansa’s slid Jon’s mug across the breakfast bar with the sort of smile Jon could imagine waking up to every day.
“Finished what?” Jon asks, only half-listening as he watches Sansa flip pancakes. She burns a couple on purpose and gives them to the dogs, and even that makes his heart feel a little giddy. (Giddy? Jesus, he’s really in this, isn’t he?)
“Undressing my sister with your eyes.”
Jon nearly spits out his coffee. He casts a nervous glance Sansa’s way, but it’s far too loud in the kitchen for her to have heard. Even so, he elbows Rickon in the ribs and says, “Oi, twerp, keep it down, would you?”
“Why?” Rickon tears a bagel in half with his teeth. “If she hears, you’ll have to do something about it. You’ll put the rest of us out of our misery, too.”
“What misery?”
“The misery that accompanies the unwilling spectators to your mutual pining,” Bran supplies upon his approach. He swipes the other half of Rickon’s bagel and slathers it in marmalade. “Six days and the two of you are in so deep that even Dad’s noticed. He was laughing about it with Mum the other day. She doesn’t think it’s particularly funny,” he adds with a meaningful look at Jon. “She reckons you’re not actually going to do anything about it, so keep that in mind.”
Jon squirms in his seat. He can’t have been that obvious, could he? Ned Stark never notices anything, so unless Jon’s tongue has been lolling out while he’s staring at Sansa, then there’s no way that Ned—
Oh, shit. Jon has to swallow his groan, because he knows damn well that he’s been panting after Sansa since he got a good look at her in that towel. Ned’s definitely noticed. Which means literally everyone else knows, too.
But it’s not just the towel thing; Jon doesn’t have a one-track mind, no matter how often he follows the sway of Sansa’s hips as she works whatever room she’s walked into. It’s just… It’s easy with Sansa. Easy to look at her, to talk to her, even to argue with her over the best way to fry bacon in the eternal debate of fatty versus crispy.
(Sansa had eventually conceded—after smacking Jon in the face with a piece of his preferred crispy—that his way made for a better weapon, at least. That had been enough of a victory for Jon, who grinned and snatched the bacon from her hand with his teeth. His tongue had tasted her fingertips and he hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since.)
He likes her confidence. He likes her laugh. He likes the way she’ll look him dead in the eye and then turn away because she can’t help a chuckle or a blush. He likes how this feels, like even though they weren’t doing this thing—whatever it is, it’s still A Thing, Jon’s sure of it—the whole time they’ve known each other, now it seems like they were meant to end up this way all along.
Jon has never been one to believe in fate or destiny or the “powers that be.” But now, with Sansa, he’s been thrown completely off-kilter, and he can’t figure out how to describe this thing he’s feeling otherwise. All he knows is that when he looks at Sansa, it just clicks; he thinks, Yeah, that’s her. There it is. And that’s all he needs.
Bran clears his throat pointedly, jarring Jon from his daydreams. The two youngest Starks are watching him with expectant eyes, but like hell is Jon about to spill his guts to these smug little shits—especially not when Sansa’s right there across the kitchen and his palms are all sweaty.
“Well… ?” Bran prompts.
Jon hasn’t got anything to say to that, so he takes a hasty pull of coffee, and that tells Bran and Rickon everything they need to know—which, incidentally, isn’t anything they hadn’t already expected.
“Oh my god,” Rickon snorts. “You love her.”
“I—” But Jon’s always been a shit liar. His gaze is steady on the back of Sansa’s sleep-mussed topknot when he mutters into his cup, “Shut up.”
The brothers exchange grins.
“Mmmhmmm,” Bran hums in that singularly know-it-all way of his. He takes a self-satisfied bite of his bagel. “That’s what I thought.”
The wedding is a handful of days away when the frenzy really begins to show.
Ned’s lost the Stark family heirloom cufflinks. Catelyn’s sister Lysa is making a fuss over the “lacking” hotel accommodations. A glitch in the seating chart has the Martells and Tyrells sharing a table, Robert Baratheon next to his ex-wife, and the Tarlys seated with company that Randyll will no doubt deem “unsightly” at best. Robb wants to wear trainers, claiming that it’s his day, damn it, and he doesn’t want to suffer through pinched toes all night. Arya’s lost weight thanks to her strict gymnastics training, so now her dress—ordered four months prior—no longer fits properly. And to top it off, the centerpieces aren’t finished.
Caught in the throes of competing Stark temper tantrums, Jon is regretting his decision to return to Winterfell to help with last-minute preparations. In fact, he’s beginning to regret ever speaking to Robb in the first place, but he’s got over a decade of friendship under his belt so it’s too late to back out now.
And really, it’s hard to stew in all his second-guessing when Sansa is there to put everyone back in their place.
She finds the wolf’s head cufflinks wrapped up with Catelyn’s good china. She sweet-talks her aunt into submission, then calls the hotel and bribes the co-managers—her good friends Mya and Myranda—into handling Lysa’s near-impossible demands. Social butterfly that she is, Sansa is able to rewrite the seating chart in one night based on her knowledge of various inter-family feuds. She orchestrates a compromise between Robb and their mother, so Robb can wear his trainers so long as they’re solid black and not the Heelys he’d been considering. She’s taking Arya’s dress in herself, and has assured a stressed Jeyne that she can take care of the centerpieces in a pinch, too.
So, three nights before the wedding, Jon stumbles downstairs for a glass of water to find Sansa still awake at two A.M.
She’s sitting cross-legged on the family room floor, surrounded by paper flowers, lanterns, deep blue vases, and multicolored pebbles. House Hunters is on, and Sansa is alternating between crafting and popping handfuls of almonds into her mouth as she mumbles over the wannabe homeowners’ ludicrous aspirations.
“Hey,” Jon greets from the doorway, his voice gruff from sleep. “How’s it going?”
“Stellar.” Sansa toasts him with a Red Bull—one of three, as far as he can see. “I lose ten years of my life with every can I drink, so with any luck I’ll drop dead before the wedding and I can finally get some rest.”
Jon grins, forgets about his water, and joins Sansa on the floor. He tilts his head at the centerpiece fixings. “How many have you got left to do?”
“Forty. I know,” Sansa adds when Jon grimaces, “but Jeyne was popping antacids like candy. I had to step in.”
“Where’s everyone else?”
“Mum’s arthritis was acting up around the twenty mark, and Arya was sure to burst a blood vessel so Gendry took her out for Chinese about an hour ago.” Sansa cracks another almond between her teeth. “And not to be all gendernormative, but Dad and the boys really are useless at this stuff so…”
She breaks off on a sigh. “Margaery and Loras said they’d help when they get in, but that’s not ‘til the night before and I don’t want to leave it that late in case another disaster sees fit to strike.”
Without thinking on it too much, Jon places a hand on her knee—her bare knee, since as far as he can tell she’s wearing an oversized jumper and nothing else (underwear, probably, but Jon’s trying not to think about that). Her skin is warm and soft under his; touching her was probably a mistake, but Jon can’t bring himself to include it on his list of regrets.
Sansa turns to meet his eye, and he could swear her gaze flickers down to his mouth. Just for a moment, but he doesn’t need more than that. He just needs to know that maybe she’s been thinking about him the way he is her.
“Want some help?” he asks, more to break the suddenly heavy silence than to actually offer his assistance. Not that he wouldn’t be willing, but he’s not any better with crafts than the Stark men. Sansa would probably have to scrap any of his attempts and redo them herself, a fact she very well knows.
“I can manage.” She smiles. Her hand touches the back of his, thumb sweeping his knuckles once before she pulls away. “But you could keep me company if you’re not too tired.”
“Not too tired,” Jon assures her. His eyes are on her lips now as she pops another almond between them; he swallows, hard. “Is that all you’ve had to eat? Almonds and Red Bull?”
“Breakfast of champions.”
He shakes his head, chuckling. “I’ll tell you what, I’ll keep you company if you let me take you for a real breakfast when you’ve finished with the centerpieces.”
Sansa informs him that, despite what he seems to think, she’s really getting the best of both worlds out of the deal. Jon doesn’t have the chops to tell her that’s precisely what he was thinking on his end, but fuck if he’s not thrilled to hear that she shares the sentiment.
It’s less than three hours spent in mostly companionable silence—save a few scathing comments and laughs over House Hunters—when Sansa finishes off the last of the centerpieces. She tells a surprised but impressed Jon that she’s good with her hands, and leaves him to mull that over while she runs to her room for shoes and a pair of leggings. Jon is rather sure he’ll be thinking about that for the rest of his sorry life, and wonders wistfully and fleetingly whether he might ever find out firsthand.
Down, boy.
If Jon’s as shit at composing himself as he thinks he is, Sansa thankfully doesn’t seem to notice. It’s just about five in the morning when they take the short walk downtown to Hot Pie’s. The sky outside is dusky and shot with gold as the sun peeks up beyond the horizon, and the early morning breakfast crowd is sparse.
Jon is glad of it, but doesn’t say so to Sansa, or else he’d be in danger of saying more—of saying too much, like how happy is to spend some time alone with her, at which point he might as well propose and make Robb’s wedding a double for the hell of it.
Alright, so maybe he’s underestimating his own ability to chill. But just in case, he drinks his coffee and otherwise keeps his mouth shut.
“So,” Sansa says through a helping of eggs, decorum forgotten due to hunger, a lack of sleep, and familiarity with her present company, “I know it’s not manly to discuss your feelings, so you probably haven’t spoken to Robb or anyone about it, but… I really was sorry to hear about you and Ygritte.”
“Oh.” Jon’s gut twists. It’s not that he’s sorry for the split—not anymore, anyway, he knows it was for the best—but this wasn’t exactly what he had in mind when he took Sansa out. This is what he gets for winging it; go figure. “Yeah, well… It was a long time ago. Sort of. Feels like a lifetime, at least.”
“Yeah.” Sansa fiddles with her fork, and piles eggs onto her toast before she takes another bite. This time, when she speaks, she’s not quite looking at him. “I, um, sorry if that was too forward. I just—I know how it can be, talking to my family about your love life. The Starks mean well, we always do, but we can be a bit—”
“Involved?” Jon supplies kindly when Sansa falters. He grins when she meets his eye again. “I don’t mind, Sansa. You know I—I love your family, even if the lot of you can be—”
“Intrusive?” Sansa finishes for him this time, and Jon laughs. She nicks his coffee and takes a long draw of it. “Well, I just wanted you to know that you’ve got someone to talk to, if you wanted. Someone who won’t groan and grumble the whole time, anyway. Or someone who won’t give you wise but very strange advice, which has become Bran’s M.O. from puberty on.”
Jon laughs again; it’s short and quiet and a little reserved on the whole, the way it always is. He’s never been one for loud and loose and boisterous, and Sansa knows that. She even appears to like it, he thinks, taking in her relaxed shoulders and the half-smile that tweaks one corner of her mouth. Sansa is so often proper and well-mannered, all composure and straight posture, that it makes Jon feel warm, to see her let her guard down with him. It makes him hope—for what, exactly, he doesn’t know, but…
For us, maybe.
When Sansa slides his coffee mug back across the table, Jon stops her hand by taking it in his own. His fingers curl around hers and squeeze, and her eyes flick from their joined hands to his face; she swallows another mouthful of her eggs-and-toast and a pink tinge blooms across her cheeks.
“What about you?” he asks gently, because he doesn’t know the particulars but he knows that something must have happened to bring her back to Winterfell six months ago. “What happened with Joffrey?”
“Oh, god… um…” Sansa licks her lips nervously, then bites down on the bottom one as if the action might stop her from spilling her secrets. “It’s—that’s complicated, Jon. Let’s just say that for all the bad that can be said of his grandfather, it’s thanks to Tywin that I won’t have to see Joffrey at the wedding. Robb doesn’t really want any of them there, but… Well. You know how it is.”
Jon nods, because he does know. It’s all rubbing elbows and blood ties and rich people politics. That’s why the botched seating chart had such propensity for disaster, and now Jon guesses that’s why the details of Sansa’s breakup with Joffrey Baratheon were so hush-hush.
His grip tightens on her hand—not hard enough to hurt, just firm enough that she knows he won’t let go if she doesn’t want him to. It’s a delicate situation, but Jon likes to think he can handle it. It’s Sansa, after all, and he’s prepared—willing and able—for anything.
“You’ve got someone to talk to, too,” he tells her, voice low and gaze perhaps too intense, but something has shifted and now he’ll never be able to look at her again without searing through to her soul. “If you wanted.”
Sansa doesn’t say “thank you” in so many words. She simply doesn't let go of his hand, and interlaces their fingers on the walk home. By then, the sun is shining low in the sky, and Jon feels warm when he pulls her in a little closer.
Their hips bump; Sansa bites back a grin, and Jon directs his own at their feet.
“Well… well… well…”
Jon’s eyes blink open to a mass of red hair and, over it, a grinning Arya, who’s leaning in the doorway of Sansa’s bedroom and eating a bag of off-brand crisps. She shoves a fistful into her mouth and crunches loudly.
“Shut it, would you?” Jon croaks sleepily. Sansa nuzzles into his neck and his arm tightens around her waist.
Arya, sharp-eyed as ever, catches the flex of Jon’s fingers on her sister’s lower back. She smacks her lips and says “Well… well… well…” again.
“What?” Jon all but growls, annoyed at being woken up and perhaps a tad uncomfortable now that he’s conscious enough to register his body’s response to having Sansa pressed up against his chest.
“You’re shacking up with my sister, that’s what.”
“Jesus, Arya…” Jon yawns. “Neither of us slept all night. She was finishing the centerpieces, and I—unlike some people—stayed up with her. Robb’s got Jeyne over for a little afternoon delight because he’s a fucking twat, even though I’m bunking with his inconsiderate arse. Sansa didn’t want me to nap on the couch.”
“Oh, because our couches are so uncomfortable,” Arya drawls. “That’s real suede, you fucking barbarian.”
“Because the damn dogs would be all over me if I tried to sleep in the sitting room,” Jon counters.
Arya snorts out a laugh; she’s enjoying this far too much, with her smug smirk and her god damn crisps. “Christ, you’re cranky for someone who’s got a hot babe all over him.”
“I’m cranky for someone who’s got a hot babe all over him while her sister pisses me off.”
Arya’s laugh is louder this time, as wild and raucous as the girl herself. Sansa stirs at the sound but doesn’t wake, just cuddles closer and exhales a warm, contented breath against Jon’s neck. It makes him shiver, and really wish that Arya would shut the door behind her already. Jon flips her off for good measure.
Never one to miss a hint, but always up to the task of taking the mickey out of her friends and family, Arya sighs dreamily, dramatically, and sweeps away down the hall, singing at the top of her lungs as she goes:
“So this is love, mmm hmmm hmm hmmm! So this is what makes life diviiiiiine! I’m all aglow, mmm hmmm hmm hmmm! And now I know—”
At the other end of the corridor, Rickon’s voice couples with hers:
“And now I know! The keeeeeey to all heaven is miiiiine!”
Sansa stirs again, mumbling incoherently as Bran joins the utterly out-of-tune ruckus in the hallway:
“My heart has wings, mmm hmmm hmm hmmm! And I can fly! I’ll touch ev-e-ry star IN THE SKY—”
“God,” Sansa mutters, eyes still closed, “remind me to hide the mics before they open the bar on Saturday, would you? Otherwise we’ll be listening to that, only amplified and well-soused.”
“Hmmph,” Jon grunts into her hair, then presses a kiss to it because he’s only half-awake and not thinking. His hand sweeps slowly up her spine, then back down again to tuck her more fully into his embrace. “Your family’s a bunch of little goblins.”
Sansa giggles. Her fingers dance up his chest to idly stroke his beard. “You said you loved my family?”
“I misspoke. Tremendously,” Jon adds just as Arya, Bran, and Rickon are bellowing another chorus of “So This Is Love.”
For the space of a moment, there is nothing but the Starks’ tuneless shouts and Sansa’s fingertips on his jawline. Jon is searching her face, and her eyes open—slowly, still bloodshot from exhaustion, but she smiles at him like this is the way she wakes up every day and she never tires of it.
“Are you ever so tired that you feel drunk?” Sansa asks at length.
Jon’s brow crinkles in part confusion, part amusement. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”
“So let’s say that’s how I feel now,” she soldiers on, voice rough with tiredness. Jon wonders if this is what she’d sound like if he kissed her senseless for hours on end; he wonders more if he’ll ever pluck up the courage to find out.
Sansa glances up to catch his eye, and Jon thinks he might stop breathing.
“Jon, I—”
But she doesn’t get a chance to finish before Arya kicks the door open and lets the dogs in. In a flurry of fluff and joyous barks, Jon and Sansa are accosted by six overgrown, overstimulated huskies, and Arya’s pronouncement that no one flips her off in her own home and gets away with it.
If time travel were possible, Jon would use the opportunity to go back about five minutes just to kick his own arse.
The night before the wedding, Jon has forgiven Robb for exiling him from the room while Jeyne was over (“The proper term is sexile,” Rickon said), and the two of them are drinking on the Starks’ front porch.
“I can’t believe you’re getting married. Well, yeah, I can,” Jon amends when he takes a second to think about it. “Ten years, mate. Most guys would’ve cut and run, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, well…” There’s a dopey smile on Robb’s face when he shrugs one shoulder and takes a swig of his beer. “When you know, you know, right? What’d I do if I cut and run?”
“I dunno. Experience other… ugh,” Jon snorts into his bottle and gives up the charade. He never could pull off the careless vibe; he knows himself well enough to admit that he's a sappy romantic at heart. “Whatever the fuck Theon said the other day.”
Robb chuckles. “Honestly, I get where Theon’s coming from, but at the same time I don’t get it at all. Maybe if I’d never met Jeyne, but… I dunno. She’s Jeyne, right? I love her. I wanna experience everything with her, I don’t want experiences besides her. You know?”
“Yeah.” Jon thinks of the way that Sansa smiles, like she means it, and takes a hasty pull of his beer. It doesn’t do anything for the mad thumping of his heart, but his nerves settle, at least a little. Then he remembers the way she’d said Jon, I— before they’d been interrupted the other day, and his nerves are shot to hell all over again. “I think I might.”
Silence settles, but not for long; crickets chirp an everlasting melody, and the quiet never lasts when you keep the Starks for company.
“I’m sorry I didn’t know about Ygritte,” Robb says. His smile turns rueful then. “Probably should’ve guessed, shouldn’t’ve? Once you stopped bringing her ‘round, stopped talking about her…”
Jon shakes his head to dismiss his friend’s apology. “I should’ve told you.”
“Nah. I get it. I’d hole up for awhile if me and Jeyne split, too.” Another shrug, and then Robb’s hitting him with that signature Stark once-over, the kind that skins you alive and leaves your heart bare to the world. “Were you in love with her?”
“I was,” Jon admits. There’s no harm in it, and he doesn’t regret it; but it is what it is, and now it’s over. And all things considered, that’s the way it should be. “It wasn’t like I thought it’d be, but I loved her. But shit happens, right? You move on. I’ve got a life ahead of me, don’t I? Can’t spend it thinking I should’ve stayed with her when that’s not what either of us wanted. We could have lasted, I know that. We could’ve made it. But…”
He trails off. It’s not that he’s at a loss for words, but the heartache that followed Ygritte had long passed, and Jon has no need to dwell on it further. He hasn’t, not for a long while; now, his heart is his own, and someone else’s, if she’ll have him.
It’s not about who you’ve been with. It’s about who you end up with.
“Ah, right.” Robb chuckles. He polishes off his drink and pops the tab on a new one. “But. I’m not fucking with you, by the way. But’s always getting in the way. Sometimes that’s a good thing. I mean, look at Sansa.”
Jon stiffens in his seat. Does Robb know? Oh, fuck. If Ned knows, of course Robb does, too. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck—
But Robb doesn’t grill him or threaten him or ask after his intentions. No, he only speaks honestly, if a bit drunkenly, and by the end of it Jon thinks he might have his blessing.
“She could’ve stayed with Joffrey, the fucker,” Robb continues like he’s not giving his best mate a slight panic attack in anticipation of his speech, “but in the end she loved herself more than that. It would’ve meant giving up what she wanted and what she’s got now. She would’ve been comfortable but never happy. And that’s the best case scenario, mind.”
Jon’s fingers clench, then unclench just as quickly. There’s nothing he can do about Joffrey Baratheon, and what’s more is that Sansa wouldn’t want him to. It’s over; time to move past it.
So rather than brood over Sansa’s past, Jon tilts his head in Robb’s direction and jokes, “Since when are you this insightful about your sister’s love life? Or anything, actually?”
“Fuck you,” Robb chortles. “I’m just telling you what she’s told me.”
“And why’re you doing that?”
Robb heaves a weary sigh. He looks at Jon as if to say Do you think I’m stupid? but he says something entirely apart from that, and yet not terribly far off the mark:
“Because I’m not fucking blind and Sansa’s not a but, Jon. She’s it, okay? If she’s what you want, then she’s it. And you need to know that, otherwise I’ll tell Arya to kick your arse.”
Jon takes a swig of his beer, but he can’t hide the way the corners of his eyes crinkle with his smile. Because she’s it, isn’t she? he thinks, and knows that, yeah, she really is.
He won’t tell Robb, though. Not yet. Not until he tells Sansa first.
Instead, he cracks another joke when he asks, “Not gonna kick my arse yourself, then, are you?”
“Gotta be fresh for my wedding, Snow,” Robb reminds him. He stretches his legs and sighs again, not weary at all this time, but obviously pleased with himself. “Besides, Arya’ll take you out better than I could, especially when it comes to Sansa. I’d be doing you too much of a favor if I kicked your arse myself.”
Well, Jon can’t argue with that. He taps his bottle against Robb’s, and the pair of them exchange grins.
“Cheers, mate.”
The wedding goes off without a hitch, as is only natural under the eye of Catelyn and Sansa alike. Jon’s not sure he’s seen anyone as high-strung as the pair of them over the past few weeks, always ready with Plans A, B, C, all the way through Z, just in case, and even that hadn't been enough to avoid any and all obstacles. Sansa’s centerpiece all-nighter had been evidence enough of that.
But now the ceremony’s done and the reception’s in full swing, and he’s just caught the Stark women at the bar doing shots with the Tyrells and Renly Baratheon. There’s an absolute mountain of tiny, sticky glasses between them, so it’s hard to tell who’s done what, but Sansa’s flushed face and stream of giggles tells Jon that she’s had her fair share. He can’t quite speak for the rest of the group, because his eyes are all for her and that’s about all he knows.
Incontestable as this fact is, it nevertheless has Jon’s nerves all tied up in knots. He’d been confident last night when he’d spoken with Robb, and that confidence hadn’t wavered so much as it simply scared the ever-living shit out of him.
The lights in the reception hall are low to create that romantic, atmospheric glow, and the vast room is cool in the dim light, but Jon’s sweating in his suit and pounding whiskey like it’s water and he’s suffering dehydration.
Sansa shoots him a smile—that knee-weakening, rip-your-heart-out smile—from the other end of the bar and Jon thinks he’s just gonna up and fucking die, and honestly maybe that would be for the best.
Because he’s an idiot with no clue as to what he’s doing, and maybe he’d give Sansa the world but oh dear mother of god, how the fuck is he supposed to do that?
He didn’t think this through. He’d just gone ahead and fallen in love with her without a care in the world, and now he’s sure to ruin it with his sheer ineptitude.
“What’s up your arse?” Arya demands about two hours into the reception. She slides into the seat next to Jon, who’s been drumming his fingers against the tabletop for ten minutes. “Nobody should be as pitiful as you look when there’s an open bar in your direct eyeline.”
“I, uh—” Now, Jon taps his fingers against his fifth near-empty glass. At least, he thinks it’s his fifth, but he hadn’t started counting to begin with. He huffs out a breath that’s almost a laugh, but it lacks the necessary humor, because this is less funny and more entirely pathetic. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“Being a miserable shit, is what you’re doing.”
Jon doesn’t think he’ll ever know why, but this is what makes him break.
Maybe it’s because Arya’s right, and not-so-deep-down he knows he’s got some nerve being a miserable shit when he’s found The One and he might actually have a shot with her—hell, he thinks of the way she held his hand, and he knows he has a shot with her—but he’s too busy freaking the fuck out for no reason to do anything about it.
“I’m in love with her,” Jon blurts.
He didn’t mean to; he hadn’t wanted anyone to know until he had the chance to tell Sansa. That’s why he hadn’t said anything to Robb the night before. But does it really matter? he wonders. They all know, anyway; it had just been a matter of what he was going to do about it.
Last night, that had seemed so simple—he was going to tell her, and that would be that because she was it. But now he’s feeling hot and suffocated and he’s said it out loud and oh, god—
“Shit. Shit, Arya, fuck, I’m in love with her.” Jon pushes a hand through his hair and turns his terrified eyes on her. “It’s been two weeks, how can I be in love with her already? What the hell’s the matter with me?”
Arya, however, is wholly unperturbed. In fact, she seems almost bored with Jon’s panicked declaration, as though she hadn’t expected anything else and would have been disappointed if “anything else” had been what he offered.
“What, you don’t think you could fall in love in two weeks? Fuck off, Jon.” Arya rolls her eyes at what she perceives to be his overdramatized reaction to the situation. “D’you know how many people I hate immediately upon meeting them?”
“It’s not the same thing,” Jon insists. “I mean, you’re not gonna spend your life with people you hate, are you?”
“Tell that to the Lannisters,” Arya scoffs with a pointed look across the room, where Cersei is judging everyone else over her umpteenth glass of wine. “Look, idiot—”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t pretend that you don’t want a shot with her, okay? Or like you think she wouldn’t give you one, just because you’re too scared shitless to try,” Arya bites out, hitting the nail on the head as she so often does. “All anybody ever does is play games with Sansa. Even the best of them have fucked her about. Don’t do that, I’m tired of that, and so’s she. She wants something real, and she’s this close to thinking that nothing is.
“Do you get that?” Arya presses, and Jon’s never felt smaller. “Do you know how hard that is for her? She never asks for anything and all she does is get shit on in return. Being romantic isn’t a fucking crime, but she’s been treated like it is. So prove her wrong and go fucking romance her, why don’t you?”
Arya is no stranger to temperamental outbursts, and she’s been dying to open these particular floodgates for too long to stop before she’s finished, not even for Jon’s sake.
The pair are more likely to joke, to engage in their easy, familial camaraderie, but there are lines that Arya has to draw—and her sister’s heart is the biggest line of all. She knows that, and she knows that Jon does, too.
Still, he’s momentarily shocked into silence. Having said her piece, she’s already pushed away from the table to let Jon stew in her angry wisdom. He almost watches her go before he can say anything else, but he snaps out of his stupor before Arya can stalk out of earshot.
“What should I do?” he calls after her, not bothering to mask the sorry desperation that hangs over the question.
“What do you think? Ask her to dance, arsehole!” Arya shouts over the music and gayety that threaten to swallow her words. And then she’s gone, disappeared into the crowd on her way back to the bar, and Jon is left to fend for himself.
Love, he thinks, a bit drunkenly, and drains the dregs of his whiskey, is a motherfucking battlefield.
Jon finds her on the veranda.
The sky is inky indigo, and the pavement is bathed in the soft golden light of the paper lanterns strung around the small courtyard. The trees are deep emerald and cast long shadows that dance in the breeze—which, incidentally, is hampering Sansa’s ability to light her cigarette.
The flame catches in one triumphant burst of orange, and she takes a short draw before Jon approaches.
“You shouldn’t smoke, you know.” He swipes the cig from her lips and sticks it between his own. It tastes like ash and cherry ChapStick. “It’s bad for you.”
She wrinkles her nose in a failed attempt to hide her smile. “Shouldn’t you stub it out, then?”
“I can smoke.” Jon gestures with the cigarette, as if that proves his point (it doesn't). “I’m an adult.”
“Oh, and what am I?” Sansa scoffs. “I’m not thirteen anymore.”
“No,” Jon agrees. His eyes follow the lines of her body beneath that sleek silk dress, and he takes a deep drag of nicotine. “You’re definitely not.”
“Stop that.”
His gaze flicks back up to hers. “What?”
“Checking me out.” She makes to snatch the smoldering cigarette from his fingertips, but he switches it to his free hand and catches her wrist.
“Sorry.” He takes another drag through his grin. He’s got her so close now that he can smell the kick of cherry on her lips. “You look beautiful. You want me to tell you that instead of checking you out?”
Her mouth presses in a thin line, but it does little to hide her answering smile. “I want you to stub out the ciggy.”
“Alright.” Without further ado, Jon drops it to the ground and crushes it under his heel. He releases her wrist, too, and shoves his hands in his trouser pockets. “I was always quitting the stuff for you, wasn’t I?”
“Well someone had to talk sense into you, didn’t they?” Sansa challenges, lifting an eyebrow.
Jon tilts his head in acquiescence. “Guess so. So how come I’m the one talking sense to you this time?”
Sansa opens her mouth to retort, then seems to think better of it. She presses her lips together again and gives him that look—the same one Robb gave him as they drank their way through a cooler last night, that Do you think I’m stupid? look that Jon’s beginning to think also begs the question, How daft are you, exactly, Jon Snow?
He’d prefer not to answer that, privately or otherwise. But he responds to Sansa’s hitched brow with a questioning look of his own, because perhaps he’d like to hear what she thinks, even if it is to his detriment.
To his surprise—the Starks are nothing if not stubborn, after all, and Sansa is no exception (indeed, she may be the worst of the lot in this regard)—she sighs in a defeated sort of way and says, “I’m stressed.”
“About… ?” Jon tilts his head again, this time towards the open French doors, beyond which the party is in full swing and likely will be ‘til sunrise. “The wedding’s over. You haven’t got any cufflinks to track down or crazy aunts to placate.”
“Or centerpieces to make.”
“Or centerpieces to make,” Jon echoes, and meets her wry grin with a soft one in return. “So what is it, then? Remember you can talk to me.”
Sansa’s chewing on her thumbnail, and looking at him from beneath her lashes as if she’s afraid to meet his eye straight-on. There’s something equal parts nervous, hopeful, and earnest in the expression all at once. It does something funny to his heart, but then…
Well, two weeks in and Jon’s just going to have to accept the fact that Sansa’s always doing something funny to his heart.
He feels stupid, he really does—like a prize idiot, for falling so hard and so fast, blind and reckless, but how can he help it now? It’s done. He’s mad about her, and if he’s honest with himself he wouldn’t change a second of it. Because what could he gain from missing out on her?
Arya was right—he was playing scared, and he can’t let that ruin something before he even gives himself a chance to try.
“Jon, I—” Sansa begins, just the way she had the other day in her bedroom, when she’d been wrapped up in his arms and Jon can’t remember the last time he’d felt home so acutely.
Once more, she doesn’t say whatever’s on the tip of her tongue. It’s just as well, though, because Arya isn’t about to barge in and the dogs are safely tucked away in the house.
Tonight, it’s only Jon and Sansa and paper lanterns on the veranda, the low lights from inside spilling onto the pavement to sparkle like so many yellow diamonds, and the music is filtering out to tease the midsummer night’s breeze.
Francis and the Lights. “May I Have This Dance.” Damn, Jon thinks, casting a glance to the painted heavens above, you wanna make it any more obvious?
But it’s not as though Jon Snow is the king of subtlety himself, so he can’t rightfully blame the universe for being so obvious about what he’s meant to do next.
Arya’s parting words ring in his head: What do you think?
He scuffs his shoes against the shimmering concrete, and pulls his hands from his pockets. He uses one to rub sheepishly at the back of his neck, and offers the other to Sansa.
“Do you—um—” Jon clears his throat— “d’you wanna dance?”
This time, Sansa doesn’t try to mask her smile. She positively beams, and slips her hand into Jon’s proffered one. Not wanting to miss a single beat of the song, Jon pulls her in with their fingers tangled and an arm around her waist. She smells faintly of cigarette smoke and the sharp tang of tequila, and his head is swimming with her.
Jon’s cheek is pressed to her temple as they move off-beat to the music. His lips catch on the loose strands of her hair when he begins to murmur the lyrics into her ear, his voice low and a little rough and echoing into her skin:
May I have this dance? To make it up to you Can I say something crazy? I love you… Give me both your hands, to make it up to you, let me spin and excite you…
Jon’s not any better at carrying a tune than the three youngest Starks had been the other day (or ever), but all the same he can feel Sansa smile against the crook of his neck.
“Are you tired or drunk?” she laughs, a little shakily, into the whisper that rattles him right down to his bones.
His hand rubs circles into the small of her back, and her fingers curl into his hair.
“Both,” Jon confesses, but that’s not the half of it, and she knows it as well as he does. “Plus, I, uh—”
“Hmm?”
He traces the tip of his nose along her cheekbone, his eyes on hers as their breath turns harsher, laden with nervous anticipation. Jon’s hand moves, trailing slowly from her back to cradle the side of her neck; his thumb maps the delicate line of her jaw, and he tells her—because what else is there for it?:
“I’m in love with you.”
It’s Sansa who takes the final plunge, who leans in to close the half-step of space between them, and takes his mouth with the steady assurance of someone who is loved, and the thrill of someone who loves right back.
Their intertwined hands cling as their lips do: wholly, firmly, pulling the other in until their bodies are flush and their lips parted. There are two sharp inhalations between them, and a needy whine escapes Jon just as Sansa’s breathy moan touches his mouth.
He tastes tequila and salt on her tongue, and she tastes whiskey and lemon on his. His free hand is twisted in her loosened hair, and hers has drifted to the once-crisp collar of his shirt.
Jon pulls her so close that she treads on his toes and scuffs his shoes. But his heart’s gone mad with her; his shoes are far and away the last thing on his mind.
When Sansa tells him that she loves him, too, he kisses her harder, senseless, breathless, and leaves himself spinning.
Honestly, fuck the shoes.
“I knew it,” Robb mutters into his seventh glass of champagne. “Knew. It.”
“We all knew it,” Arya reminds him. She rolls her eyes, shakes her head, and turns away from the scene on the veranda to signal for another drink. “That’s why we all talked them into it, isn’t it? Because we knew it and they didn’t.”
“I think Jon knew,” Bran remarks thoughtfully. “Before Sansa did, anyway.”
Arya snorts. “Had a funny way of showing it, didn’t he?”
“Ha! Speak for yourself,” Rickon pipes up. “If you got up at a decent hour ever, you would’ve seen Jon making sex eyes at Sansa over breakfast every morning.”
“Breakfast is an unnatural meal for an ungodly hour,” Arya comments smoothly. “And even if it wasn’t, I’m sure Jon making sex eyes at Sansa would put me off my appetite. I’m thrilled they’ve worked it out, but I’m not interested in being privy to any of my siblings’ carnal inclinations, least of all when I’m trying to eat.”
“You’re all ruining my wedding,” Robb gripes, good-naturedly for the most part. “Let’s give them ten more minutes, shall we? Then we’re dragging their besotted arses back inside for shots and the Macarena, so help me god.”
“And so god help us all,” Arya quips as her brothers shout Heeeeeey, MACARENA! with more enthusiasm than she deems necessary.
But then, who is she to ruin their fun? Arya considers, and joins their conga line on the way to the DJ.
She spares one last look over her shoulder, and just manages to catch Jon and Sansa’s silhouettes through the open French doors. Fuckin’ saps, she thinks fondly, and hopes they enjoy their allotted ten minutes alone before the Starks kill the vibe, as they’re so wont to do.
So this is love, mmm hmm hmmm hmmm…
Because, really, Arya thinks, humming all the way across the dance floor with her family, what else could it be?