Work Text:
…
Jeyne Poole knows that she’s not someone another would ever call necessarily smart. After all, people who are generally smart don’t graduate from high school, go to Essos to “find themselves”, work one meaningless job after another – barely squeaking out anything resembling a living wage in the meantime and getting nowhere close to finding anything out about herself – and then go and get pregnant from a guy they barely know; and certainly, one they never see ever again once they tell the guy they’re pregnant.
Honestly, coming home to Winterfell with her daughter is one of the smartest things Jeyne has done in recent memory. Running into Sansa Stark and Jon Snow in the market just a few days later was pure luck and Jon offering her a waitressing job at his bar was almost too good to be true.
She makes minimum wage at the bar, but the tips – on particular nights when the bar is packed – are fantastic and Jeyne is finally able to start saving money for her daughter and herself. Living with her parents for the moment helps with expenses but working at Castle Black Bar might help her towards her goal of having the money to rent a small flat in town somewhere.
Jeyne should have known better than to make plans though. Once an idiot, always an idiot. And agreeing to go on a date with a bartender at the bar where they both work – six dates, but who’s counting – only for him to pull away and stop talking to her, well, that’s just about as stupid as a person can be.
Jeyne puts her coat and purse away into her locker in the back office/break room and takes a deep breath. She turns around and looks to Jon, sitting at his desk, typing on some spreadsheet he has open on his computer screen and she knows she shouldn’t do this when he’s working, but there really is no other time. The bar still has a few minutes before officially open for the night and Daario and Tormund are out there, getting the place ready before customers start arriving.
She comes to stand in front of Jon, on the other side of the desk, and she takes another deep breath.
“Jon?” She says his name hesitantly.
Jon turns his head from the screen immediately to look at her. There is a small smile on his face, but as he looks at her, it fades. “Is everything alright? Is it Meg?” He asks.
The month before, her daughter, Meg, had come down with the chicken pox and Jeyne hadn’t been able to come in for her shifts for three days. She had apologized so much for having to call off, Jon threatened to fire her if she apologized again. And that’s another thing that she can call herself stupid over. Jon Snow is an amazing boss and there’s no way she’ll ever find someone as kind and understanding as he is.
“Um, I just wanted to let you know that I need to give you my two weeks’ notice.”
Jon doesn’t say anything for a moment. He sits there and looks at her and she can’t even begin to read his expression. Jon Snow is actually very good at keeping his face blank if that’s how he wants it to be.
Still, without saying a word, Jon gets up from his chair, walks around his desk and closes the office door. Jeyne turns so she can face him.
“Did Daario do something?” He asks.
She and Daario actually hadn’t announced that they were going on dates together, but she has learned something – quite quickly – since coming to work at Castle Black Bar.
They’re like a family and there are no secrets no matter how hard one of them might try to keep one.
Jeyne is already shaking her head before she answers. “No.”
And that’s the truth, isn’t it? Six separate times going out with one another and she had then asked if he would like to meet her daughter. He had come up with some fumbling excuse as to why he couldn’t and after he dropped her off at home, he hadn’t even kissed her goodnight like he had done the previous four dates (he hadn’t kissed her on their first). And he’s been acting like she’s quite possibly gone invisible ever since.
So, no. Daario hadn’t done anything and that’s the truth and the point and the problem all wrapped in one.
“Then why are you quitting?”
“I just…” Jeyne honestly hadn’t been expecting to have to defend herself. If an employee wants to quit working for them, shouldn’t the boss just let them go? “It’s been so great working here and you’ve been great, too, Jon, but… I don’t want to tell my daughter that I’m a waitress in a bar,” she blurts out the first thing that pops into her mind. She then grasps tightly onto it. “That’s all. I… people hear bar waitress and they get certain connotations in their minds. I just think it will be better for me and Meg if I get a different job in a restaurant or café or someplace like that.”
It’s all a lie, of course, but Jeyne’s already dug the hole and she’s not going to climb out of it.
Jon is just looking at her and his face is blank again and she’s wondering if he’s actually believing any of this.
He still doesn’t say anything as he turns to open the office door again and Jeyne has no idea if he accepts her notice or not, but she also doesn’t want to ask about it. So, without saying anything else either, Jeyne leaves the office and goes to get her apron from behind the bar. Daario is there, but Jeyne makes sure she doesn’t even look at him since he has made it so clear to her that he doesn’t want her to.
She doesn’t know what she was expecting, to be honest. If her life up to this point has shown her anything, it’s that it’s certainly not anything resembling a love story.
Daario is a ridiculously handsome man and that had been used to his advantage in the past. She’s heard stories – not explicit ones, but more like passing jokes told by Tormund that let Jeyne draw her own conclusions about the reputation he used to hold – but he’s not like that anymore.
He confided in her during one of their dates that there had been a girl – Beth Cassel, Jeyne had guessed, but hadn’t asked Daario to confirm – and he had been crazy about her but had realized it too late and she already left. Since then, Daario admits that he’s taken a step back from all of the flirting and hooking up. Jeyne’s the first girl he’s really taken out on any dates.
And Jeyne had allowed herself to get caught up in that confession of his and allow herself to think that these dates with Daario could possibly mean something.
That’s why she had asked Daario if he would like to meet her daughter.
She’s never introduced her daughter to a man she’s dated before. She hasn’t wanted to bring men into her life when Jeyne knew they weren’t going to stay there. She’s also not gone out with the same man – since Meg’s birth – six separate times and she had thought, maybe this thing with Daario could lead to being something.
She knows how some guys can be. They see a single mom and think that she’s either loose with constantly open legs or desperate, looking for a father for their child or children.
Jeyne doesn’t know if Daario is either of those types of guys. She can only hope he’s neither and just the idea of going out on another date with her or meeting her daughter is repulsive to him. That’s better, in her opinion, then thinking she’s either a slut or gold-digger.
She’s not going to force or guilt him into meeting Meg. Her daughter is not a burden and she will not have a man in her life who thinks that. She will only introduce a man to Meg who actually wants to meet her.
When the bar begins to pick up throughout the night, Jeyne takes her drink orders to Jon. She doesn’t go to Daario’s end of the bar at all. If Jeyne Poole doesn’t exist to him then Daario Naharis doesn’t exist to her.
…
“Jon,” Sansa mumbles, still more asleep than awake when he turns for what has to be the fiftieth time in less than ten minutes. “Stop it.”
Jon sighs heavily. “Sorry,” he murmurs quietly to her and then leans in, kissing her on the forehead. “I can’t sleep. I’m going to go out into the living room.”
“Mmmm,” Sansa comments, already asleep again, probably thinking this is a dream, and Jon slips from their bed. He pauses to make sure that she’s covered with the blankets again before leaving the bedroom; Ghost – who sleeps on the floor at his side of the bed – gets up and follows after him.
He closes the bedroom door, but not all of the way in case Lady decides she wants to come out, too, and Jon shuffles to the couch, flopping down and kicking his feet up onto the coffee table. He uses the remote to turn on the television and then immediately mutes it so he doesn’t disturb Sansa any more than he already has.
There’s nothing on, of course, at this late hour and he stops on some rerun of some show that got cancelled; the annoying kind with too much fake laugh tracks and no one ever wears the same thing twice and they’re all living in flats they could never afford outside of television.
Ghost hops up onto the couch with him and lays out, putting his head on Jon’s thigh. Jon sinks a bit lower into the cushions and scratches Ghost behind his ear as he watches the show without really watching it.
What is he going to do about Jeyne? She’s a hell of a good waitress and she fits in well with himself, Tormund, Daario and Dickon. That’s important that they all get along. It’s a small bar with a small staff and they work together for hours nearly every night. Getting along is important. And since he doesn’t have Sansa working at the bar anymore, Jeyne had been the next best thing. She’s friendly and capable and should he be pissed at Daario for running her off?
No, Jon knows he has no reason to be pissed at Daario. At least, he doesn’t think he has any reason to be pissed at him. He wasn’t overjoyed when he found out they were going out, but he also thought he didn’t have that much room to complain. Yes, he’s the boss, but he started dating the bar’s waitress, too.
And he has seen the changes in Daario over the past few months. He still smiles and gives winks to the female patrons, but Jon admits that that’s just good for business. Flirty women like a handsome man flirting back with them. But Daario throws out every phone number now that women slip him. After that whole thing with Beth, it’s almost as if he decided to calm himself down a bit in case his real “Beth” comes into his life.
Jon had watched Daario and Jeyne over the past few weeks. They had kept things professional while working, but the smiles they would exchange with one another throughout the night had been all too familiar to Jon.
He and Sansa used to exchange the exact kind of smiles when they had worked together.
Something must have obviously happened between them if Jeyne now wants to quit and leave the bar.
He’s going to have to get an advertisement together to put in the paper. He doesn’t think it will be too hard to find another waitress; the bar seems to be popular among the college and post-grad crowds. But still, he needs to be able to find someone that fits in with the bar family – because as cheesy as it sounds, that’s exactly what Castle Black Bar is for him and the other guys who work there.
He hears the creak of a floorboard and he turns his head, a moment later Sansa coming out of their bedroom.
“You’re thinking too loudly,” Sansa whines sleepily and Jon can’t help, but smile.
She shuffles to him and cuddles down into his side, mindful of Ghost on his other side, and she draws her knees up to her chest with a yawn and Jon puts his arm around her shoulders.
“Will you tell me?” She asks quietly after a moment.
Jon doesn’t hesitate to. “Jeyne gave me her two-weeks’ notice tonight.”
That seems to get Sansa awake, she lifting her head to look to his face, her eyes alert now. “What? Did Daario do something?”
“How terrible of friends are we of Daario that that’s the first question we both ask?” Jon wonders out loud.
“Did she say why she’s quitting?” Sansa asks.
“Something about how she doesn’t want Meg to be embarrassed that her mom is a bar waitress or something like that. She obviously made it up on the spot,” Jon says. “I don’t think she was expecting me to ask why she would want to quit.”
Sansa is quiet for a passing beat, obviously thinking that through and Jon’s fingers begin playing with the ends of her hair. She has grown it out longer over the past couple of months and earlier tonight, she took a shower before bed so it has dried naturally in messy waves. This is Jon’s favorite way for Sansa’s hair to be.
He can’t resist from leaning in and closing his eyes as his nose smells the scent of her shampoo. She smells like coconuts as she always does – both from her shampoo and her body wash. Their bathroom always has the faintest aroma of it hanging in the air and it’s on their bedsheets, too. It’s not overpowering or dizzying. It’s just enough for it to waft into Jon’s nose so gently, he sometimes wonders if he’s actually smelling it or if his mind is just triggering a memory.
“Are you going to talk to Daario?” Sansa asks.
“I don’t know,” Jon says, his lips brushing along her temple. “I don’t know if I should stick my nose in it.”
“It’s not sticking your nose in it if it’s involving your business, Jon,” Sansa points out to him. “Do you want to lose Jeyne as the waitress?”
“Jeyne’s the second-best waitress Castle Black Bar has ever had,” is his response.
Sansa rolls her eyes at that, but she’s smiling and it makes Jon smile, too. She lifts a hand to his cheek and their lips meet in a soft kiss.
“You should go back to bed,” Jon tells her.
He’s not surprised when Sansa shakes her head.
“If you’re up, I’m up,” Sansa says and then nestles in close to him, wrapping an arm around his middle, and Jon’s arm squeezes around her shoulder and his lips rest to her forehead for a moment.
It’s like Sansa’s philosophy on her favorite movie, The Princess Bride, and as a result, it’s her philosophy on their entire relationship as well.
He tumbles, she tumbles.
They’re a team and Sansa loves to remind him of that; as if it’s something Jon could ever actually forget.
And in a couple more weeks, when he’s done finalizing all of his plans, he’ll ask her if she wants to make their team an official one.
…
When Sansa had bought the building next to Castle Black Bar for her dress shop – Winterfell Designs – she had also purchased the flat above. After about two months of contractors working, Jon and Sansa’s flat is now spread out above their two businesses – the other flat now allowing them to expand their kitchen from one into the other, two more bedrooms, another bathroom and a room that serves as a dining room. Jon and Sansa both silently think to themselves that if they ever have children someday, it’s a good-sized flat for a family.
“Jon!” Sansa calls out as she stands in front of the refrigerator, holding the door open. “Did you remember to get apple juice?”
“It’s in the door!” Jon calls back.
Sansa locates the jug a moment later and when she does, she smiles and closes the refrigerator door again. She then heads from the kitchen, down the hall that connects the two flats into their flat now and into the dining room. Jon is standing at the table, having just finished setting it, and is now counting places, making sure that he has put out enough.
He lifts his eyes and gives her a smile. “We all set?” He asks her.
“We are,” Sansa smiles brightly in return. “This is a really good idea, Jon,” she then tells him, coming around the table to slip her arms around his waist.
“Don’t know why it took me this long to think of doing something like this,” Jon admits with one arm around her shoulders, the other scratching the back of his head as he looks over the table once more.
“Well, you’re doing it now and that’s what matters,” she replies and then kisses his cheek. They both hear the buzzer from below and Sansa gives him another kiss – this time on his lips. “I’ll get that. You start getting the chicken together,” she says, slipping away from him.
Jon follows Sansa back down the hallway and goes into the kitchen as she goes to their intercom on the wall next to their front door.
“Hello?” She speaks, holding the button down.
“Hi, Sansa,” Jeyne’s voice answers.
“Come on up!” Sansa tells her happily, pressing the button to unlock the door below.
A minute later, Jeyne and Meg have come up the stairs and comes into the flat, Jeyne and Sansa hugging as five-year-old Meg giggles with delight at the instant attention and affection Lady and Ghost both give to her. Jon comes out to greet them as well, Jon and Jeyne giving one another a hug and he then holds out his hand, Meg giggling some more as she slaps it with her own.
“Thank you for coming,” Jon says to Jeyne.
“Thank you for having both of us,” Jeyne says.
“Look, Sansa,” Meg then holds up a small cosmetics bag with unicorns on it. “I’ve brought ribbons!”
“Oh, I was hoping you would,” Sansa beams. “I didn’t want to tell Lady and get her hopes up just in case you forgot,” she then says and knowing she’s being talked about, Lady sits prettily at Sansa’s side. “Let’s get her brush and then you can get started.”
She takes Meg’s hand and Meg happily skips at Sansa’s side as they go into the living room, Lady trotting after them, leaving Jon and Jeyne behind. Jeyne watches her daughter with a smile before looking to Jon.
“Do you need help with anything?” She asks.
“No,” Jon instantly refuses with a shake of his head. “Today, you’re not employees. You’re guests. Now, would you like something to drink?”
Soon, Tormund, Dickon and Daario have all arrived at the flat for the first Castle Black Bar’s Employee Appreciation Cookout. It’s a bit cold out today, but Jon goes out to the grill on the fire escape to cook their chicken breasts and slater the barbecue sauce on them as Sansa is inside, making sure everyone has what they like to drink and the bowl of potato chips on the coffee table doesn’t get too low.
“You could have brought Myrcella,” Jon tells Tormund when he arrives.
“I know, but she thought told me that it’s an employee cookout and you don’t sign her paychecks,” Tormund says and rolls his eyes at the propriety that is his fiancée.
Meg is kneeling on the floor with Lady and she brushes her fur and decorates her collar with an assortment of ribbons. Tormund has joined her on the floor and Meg laughs with absolute delight as he asks Meg if she can comb his beard and have a ribbon for him to wear, too.
“This is a dog brush!” Meg informs him, but her excitement is evident.
“She says that as if Tormund will actually care,” Dickon muses with a smile and Jeyne laughs softly.
Daario is not sitting. He’s standing behind the couch with a bottle of beer he’s not drinking from and watches Jeyne’s daughter as she giggles and brushes Tormund’s beard as gently as she can. He then looks to Jeyne, watching Tormund and her daughter together and she looks so happy from the scene.
Jeyne had showed Daario a picture of Meg over one of their dates and Daario knew that the little girl favored her mom in looks, but now, seeing her in person, Gods. She looks just like Jeyne. Brown hair, brown eyes, a splatter of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Daario wonders if that was part of the reason he had freaked out at the idea of meeting the girl – and calling it a freak out is the only proper term to describe it, Daario is well aware.
Maybe he thought that the girl would look a bit like her dad and Daario didn’t know if he’d be able to handle that; being in a child’s life when it’s so obvious that this child isn’t his. It all goes back to the earliest man, doesn’t it? Basic instincts and how men want to have what is theirs and if Meg looked like her dad, it would be hard for Daario to go against that ancient, basic instinct and come to care for her.
Turning away from the scene – of Meg’s happy laughter as she braids a ribbon through Tormund’s beard and how good Tormund is with her and Jeyne and Dickon smiling and laughing – Daario takes a sip from his beer and goes down the hallway to find the window Jon has gone through to the fire escape. He doesn’t ask if he can come out, too. He just does and Jon makes room for him.
They stand quietly for a moment, both looking over the chicken breasts as Jon brushes them with their final coating of barbecue sauce and Daario leans back against the metal railing behind him.
“I don’t know what to do,” Daario confesses.
He’s felt lost for the past few weeks – of not talking to Jeyne, of Jon informing them that Jeyne would be moving on from Castle Black Bar for another job, of hating himself like he hasn’t hated himself since Beth.
“You could apologize,” Jon says, closing the lid of the grill. “That’s usually always a good place to start.”
“And if she doesn’t listen?”
For as many women he has been with, Daario still finds himself completely clueless when it comes a woman he very much and genuinely likes. First Beth, now Jeyne. And even though Tormund is getting married, Daario can’t imagine going to him for relationship advice. Jon and Sansa have the most solid relationship of any of his friends and those two aren’t even engaged and they already act like an old married couple.
“Apologize until she does,” Jon answers and he makes it sound all so damn simple.
But… maybe it is. Maybe it can be that damn simple.
“You could also try talking with Meg, too,” Jon further suggests. “For being five, she’s pretty funny.”
“I don’t know how to talk to kids,” Daario says around the top of his beer bottle, holding it to his chest, his head bowed.
“They’re just little people, Daario,” Jon says, smiling a little. “Main word, people. Talk to her like one.”
Jon collects the chicken on the platter Sansa has given him and he carries it back inside with Daario following behind, closing the window behind them.
Daario’s not sure if Sansa does it on purpose, but when she shows everyone where to sit, he finds himself sitting next to Meg and Jeyne is sitting across from them.
“Meg,” Jeyne smiles and holds up her napkin before putting it into her lap.
Meg nods and does the same with her own, placing it down in her lap, and with her doing it, Daario feels the need to do it with his own napkin. When he does, Meg gives him a toothy grin and Daario finds himself giving herself a small smile in return.
Besides the barbecue chicken, there is red cabbage slaw, potato salad with bacon, baked beans and corn bread. Jon and Sansa have gone above and beyond and everyone makes sure to tell them.
“You guys deserve it,” Jon smiles at them all from his chair at the head of the table. He hadn’t wanted to sit there, but Sansa’s seating chart had said otherwise. “I’m serious. There would be no Castle Black Bar without any of you,” he says, making sure his eyes land on Jeyne at that. She moves her eyes away to look at Meg instead and Jon looks to the others. “I don’t know what I’d do without any of you. As lame as this might sound, I consider Castle Black Bar as a family and it doesn’t work if there’s not all of us.”
“Here, here!” Tormund booms and holds out his beer bottle and everyone cheers, hitting their bottles with everyone else’s.
“Daario,” Jeyne says and Daario’s head flies up at the sound of her saying his name. It’s been weeks since she’s last directed him; of course, the same thing could be said for Daario speaking to her.
She’s holding the bowl of slaw for him to take and Daario reaches out to take it. He then glances to Meg before back to Jeyne. Jeyne actually gives a small smile then and shakes her head.
“I don’t think she’ll like it,” Jeyne answers his silent question and Daario nods, scooping some onto his plate.
“I wanna try some, mama!” Meg frowns at her mom from across the table with a great pout.
“No, Meg,” Jeyne shakes her head. “I don’t want you wasting Sansa’s food.”
“I can get her a tiny plate if she’d like to try some,” Sansa instantly offers.
“Here,” Daario cuts in. He passes the bowl of slaw to Sansa, who is sitting next to him, and then pushes his plate next to Meg’s. He picks up her fork and hands it to her. “Get to it,” he says with a smile.
Meg bursts into a smile and she sits up in her chair, everyone watching as she takes some slaw from Daario’s plate and guide the fork to her mouth. And everyone laughs at the look of pure disgust as it screws up her face, she sticking her tongue out as soon as she forces herself to swallow.
Daario laughs, too, and still smiling, he looks across the table to Jeyne as she smiles at her daughter. But then, as if feeling his eyes on her, Jeyne looks to him. Daario expects her smile to disappear instantly and though it does get smaller a bit, it doesn’t leave her face and that just has him keep on smiling.
…
A couple of hours later, after cups of coffee and a slice – or two – of the Sansa’s lemon cake, they begin heading out – hugging Sansa and shaking Jon’s hand, thanking them both for an amazing time. Meg is asleep and Jeyne holds her in her arms, needing both because the girl has almost gotten too big for someone with a smaller stature like Jeyne to hold her.
Daario is the last to leave and he watches her struggling with her purse and he keeps glancing to her as he says goodnight to Sansa and Jon, both of them giving him a pointed look.
Such an old married couple, Daario thinks to himself as he leaves their flat and the door closes behind him.
Jeyne is standing on the landing, having not gone down the stairs yet, situating herself some more.
No more thinking, he vows silently to himself. That’s what got him in this mess. Too much thinking and overthinking and all of his thoughts have proven to be wrong. He’s scared, yes. Scared at the idea of having something serious with this woman and scared at the idea of this woman’s daughter actually liking him and both wanting him around. But what has being scared and being stupid ever gotten him?
He had thought too much with Beth; had allowed his fear of having a relationship with her to manifest itself until he was doing anything to make sure that he never had anything resembling a relationship with her. And that had only had him succeed in losing her for good and realizing just how completely wrong he had been.
He doesn’t want to make the same mistake this time. Losing Beth had changed him, for sure, but at the idea of losing Jeyne – if he hasn’t lost her already – Daario thinks that that will actually permanently damage him.
“Jeyne,” Daario says her name then and he doesn’t even realize it – thinking he’s still just thinking it – but then she turns to look at him, which is surprising. They had smiled at one another across the table, but he would think that she would be back to ignoring him as he has been ignoring her now that the dinner is over. “I can take her,” he then offers.
Jeyne’s about to refuse. He can tell. But then, she glances down the stairs before back to him.
“Thank you,” she says softly, so not to wake Meg, and Daario lifts the girl from her arms into his, easily holding her with just one of his arms. Meg’s sleep remains undisturbed as her head finds a resting place on Daario’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” Daario says, staring into Jeyne’s face as he says the words.
Jeyne stills and looks up into his face and Daario doesn’t say anything or move; letting Jeyne look and (hopefully), she sees that he’s completely sincere in his apology; apologizing for so many things.
“And if you’d think you would still want me to, I would love to get to know Meg a bit more,” Daario continues, feeling something he rarely feels. There’s a knot clenching in his stomach and he’s nervous.
Jeyne takes another moment to not say anything and just keep looking at him.
Then, slowly, she nods her head. “We’re actually going to the park tomorrow morning. She’s in youth soccer and she has a game. If you’d think you would like to watch a bunch of screaming five-year-olds running around for an hour, you could meet us.”
Daario smiles a little at that and nods his head. “Just give me the time and place and I’ll be there.”
Jeyne looks at him for another moment and he knows she’s still trying to make up her mind as to whether she can believe his words or not. She looks to Meg, sleeping in his arm, her head on his shoulder, and she then looks to him again.
“Alright,” she agrees in a quiet voice and when Daario gives her a small smile, Jeyne gives a small smile, too.
…
The others had offered to help them clean up, but Jon and Sansa had swiftly refused. They clear the dining room table and as Jon packs the leftover food away into plastic Tupperware containers, Sansa loads the dishwasher, humming a song to herself. Both dogs are understandably tuckered out from the company, Lady passed out on the couch and Ghost stretched out beneath the coffee table. They have turned off most of the lights except for a few lamps on the tables and it gives their whole flat a warm glow that makes Jon smile. He loves his and Sansa’s home and it was nice, hosting a dinner for his bar staff in their home, but he likes this even more – just them and their dogs in their home.
“Hey,” Jon says, looking to Sansa.
She lifts her head and gives him a smile. “Hey yourself.”
“I’m going to take you out next Monday night,” Jon says and his lips feel dry. He darts his tongue out to lick them.
The bar is closed on Monday and it’s the best time for him to do this. It’s time to do this. He can’t wait a couple more weeks.
He sees the way Sansa’s eyes light up at that and she can’t keep her smile from growing wider. She knows. And the fact that she knows makes Jon smile, too.
“Next Monday sounds perfect,” Sansa sighs happily and Jon leans over the open dishwasher and with a hand slipping to the back of her neck, he gently pulls her in for a kiss.
…