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He’s warming her bed. The news reaches them before Jon does, gossip sent from King’s Landing to a man no longer there to snatch the raven scroll before Maester Wolkan. Sansa refuses to believe it at first, refuses to let anyone else believe it. Jon could feel forced to bend the knee under duress or out of necessity, but he would never bend the knee because he fell. Never. But then she sees them together and she knows. It’s true, the gossip, about Jon and her--that silver-haired woman who strides into Winterfell with her head held high and her hand resting on Jon’s arm--and the pain is sharper than any betrayal Sansa has ever known. She’s known too many, she thinks. That’s why it hurts this much, because each time a piece of her has been chipped away and left her broken and small and all too vulnerable. That’s why the armor of courtesy no longer fits. That’s why she needs to pull the straps so tightly she can scarcely breathe lest it slips right off her frail frame.
By old habit and a will of castle-forged steel, she keeps her composure around others. She performs her duties, shows Daenerys and her retinue to the guest house, exchanges small talk with Tyrion and Varys, greets Missandei and ser Jorah, and keeps an amiable mask on her face throughout the first meeting in Jon’s office. But all the while, anger and hurt boil inside her with such heat that mask evaporates the moment she and Jon are alone.
Hunched over the desk, he’s leaning on his knuckles and rubbing his forehead with his free hand, unaware of her glowering. Unaware of her at all, it seems. For when he finally looks up and finds her waiting for him to acknowledge her, his eyes widen with surprise and she snaps. Words pour out of her, fast and feverish, and the force of it carries her across the room until she’s barking into his face.
“You never listen to me! I told you to be smarter than father. I told you to be smarter than Robb!”
“I did listen,” he says and his words are low and calm, but instead of slaking her fire they only stoke it.
“How could you?” She balls her hands into fists, the leather of her gloves creaking. “How could you give her everything we worked so hard for just because you wanted her? How could you let that thing between your legs make your decisions for you!”
“Would you keep it down!”
“What, are you embarrassed, Jon? Are you afraid everyone will know the real reason why you gave away the North? That you feel in love. That you were randy. Because they already know! Everyone knows! It’s all anyone talks about!”
“Would you please shut up,” he hisses, moving so close the toes of their boots knock together. “Just shut up and listen to me so I don’t have to shout out the truth for all to hear.”
Despite keeping his voice low, he’s panting as if he’s been shouting and she feels her body falling into the same rhythm, the heat of their breaths mingling in the scant space between them. His dark eyes bore into her and it does something to her stomach, makes it swoop and flutter and burn with a new kind of heat, and she drops her own eyes to his lips to get away from the sensation. To wait for the truth to spill from his mouth. But Jon stays silent. Even his breathing is quiet, shallow, moving quickly through softly parted lips--just like her own--and she realizes she’s been staring. That eons have passed where they’ve done nothing but share breaths.
Sansa’s eyes flicker up to his. “What truth?”
Jon swallows.
“What truth, Jon?”
“I did listen. I do listen. I listen to everything you say. And I’ve watched you, but I couldn’t handle her the way you handled Littlefinger. This was the best I could do.”
She searches his eyes for an answer to the question waiting on her tongue, but she needs to hear it. She needs to hear his tone, see his expression as he answers it. “You don’t love her?”
“Love her? I can’t stand her.” Gaze soft, he cups her cheek with a warm, dry hand. “I did what I had to for us. For our home. For our family.”
Jon looks at her with such earnest tenderness it leaves her dizzy. Dizzy enough that her mind quiets and lets her body follow instinct instead of sense and lean in. The tip of his nose is cold when it bumps against hers. His mustache tickles her skin. His bottom lip is warm between her lips, warm and soft and tasting of winter and the mulled wine she had served during the meeting. A delicious tingle fizzes through her body and pools in her belly, sweet and smooth like honey. Pressing closer, she slides her hands up his chest and shifts her mouth to kiss his top lip too and she thinks she might be melting.
But then Jon’s hands closes around her upper arms and he gives a push.
It’s gentle--a nudge, really--and yet so painful she can’t help but stumble back while struggling to disperse the delirious fog filling her mind so she can understand what just happened. What she just did. His rejection of her depravity. His chest his heaving with breaths and she keeps her eyes on the silver shine of his gorget as it moves, because if she has to meet his gaze the shame might end her. Her lips burn, her cheeks burn, but that warm honeyed feeling in her stomach as been replaced with a lump of ice. He says her name, she thinks, but the blood rushing in her ears muffles all sound and she's glad for it. He'll be understanding, she knows, and it only makes it worse.
“Don’t,” she whispers, but she can’t bring herself to lift her gaze and find him aghast at the horrible thing she did. “Please don’t.”
Then she bolts.
She vaguely remembers passing servants and guards and a lord or two, giving them hellos and a pleasantries as she kept walking. But she doesn’t fully return to herself until she’s hidden away in the broken tower, the only place in all of Winterfell where no one would look for her. Her breathing is so loud, so forceful, it could knock down her ribs, knock down the broken walls and leave her bared. Her hands shake like reeds in the wind and she paces back and forth and back and forth to get rid of the discomfort brimming in her body while the memory of the biggest mistake of her life whirls before her mind’s eye over and over until she sags down on the floor from sheer exhaustion.
The pale sky peers through the gaps in the ceiling. Crow nests line the beams. She watches them take off or settle in, and they watch her as she pulls her knees to her chest and rests her head against the cold wall and does her best to think about nothing.
Her body feels numb by the time the door creaks, and she turns her dull gaze to see who enters.
Gilly's brown eyes are wide and worried, her cheeks flushed as if she's been running. “Oh, there you are! I've looked all over. What happened?” She closes the door carefully behind her. “Was it her? Was she awful? Was she mean to you?”
“I kissed Jon,” Sansa hears herself say. Gilly blinks but says nothing while Sansa’s lips keep blurting out the horrible truth. “I kissed my brother. I kissed him and he pushed me away.”
On the last word, her voice breaks and her face crumbles and her vision blurs with tears--and then Gilly’s is right there, pulling her into a warm embrace that smells strangely of autumn, all earthy and woodsy. Rocking back and forth, Gilly murmurs soothing noises and strokes Sansa’s hair while Sansa sobs into her friend’s shoulder and wets the fabric of the dress she sewed for Gilly a week after she and her Sams arrived.
“I don’t know why I did it,” Sansa murmurs. “I was so angry and then… I must be losing my mind.”
“You’re in love with him, that’s all.”
Sansa looks up at her with alarm. “Why would you say such a thing!”
“There was a boy in a village close to our keep. A kind boy.” Gilly fishes a cloth from her pocket and dabs away Sansa’s tears. “Sometimes when me and my sisters went out to hunt rabbits, once we were far away enough that Craster couldn’t see us, the boy found us. One of my sisters liked him. After a while, we let her sneak off with him while we hunted and when she returned, we made her tell us everything. And she shone. She shone when she talked about that boy. He had red hair, just like you, and then time passed and when she had a little girl, she had red hair too and we knew. Craster didn’t, but we knew.”
Gilly folds the cloth and tucks it back into her pocket. “You shine when you talk about Jon.”
Somehow, Sansa makes it through the day even though she can think of little else but her stupid mistake and the truth in Gilly’s story. If she shines when she talks about Jon, then Gilly can’t be the only person who knows. If she shines when she talks about Jon, does she shine when she talks to him? When she looks at him? When she’s near him?
She keeps her eyes to herself and her feelings in check and once she can finally retire, she collapses in bed, dress, cloak, shoes, and all. Her eyes drift shut, her breathing slows, someone knocks on the door. She ignores it.
Another knock. “Sansa,” Bran calls. “Open the door.”
She drags herself out of bed and complies, cautiously, only pushing the door open a smidge to ensure he’s alone. He’s not, but it’s only Sam standing behind him with his hands on the bar running along the back of Bran’s chair and Sam doesn't look as if he knows about what happened at all.
“We’re having a family meeting in my room,” Bran says. “Come.”
“You can have it without me. I’m tired and need to sleep.”
“Either you come with me or I’ll have everyone come to your room.” He meets her glare with a mask of indifference. “It’s that important.”
Jon is there. She sees his boots by the hearth, doesn’t let her eyes travel farther up than his thighs, and positions herself by the window, as far away from him as possible. She’s not looked him in the eye once since losing her mind and it’s for the best. Instead she looks at Arya and Bran and Sam and the dark sky outside Bran’s window.
Then Bran shares the news, and she doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry. What cruel jape is this? To realize she loves someone she can’t have only to learn that she can after all--if only he’d loved her back. All in one day. But Jon doesn’t love her back, Jon doesn’t want her, and the tears win. Tears she can’t let anyone see.
When Arya assures Jon that this changes nothing, that he’s still their brother, that he’ll always be loved, Sansa murmurs out her assent and some excuse she forgets the minute she leaves the room to take solace in the broken tower again where no one but the crows can see her crying.
She doesn’t return to her chambers until well after midnight, and when she sleeps she dreams about the whole world mocking her for her twisted desires. Everyone except Cersei, who folds her into a motherly embrace and calls her daughter.
When Sansa wakes, she's damp with sweat.
Sansa never looks at him anymore, not really. If she has to, she keeps her eyes so closed off and lacking in warmth it feels as if he’s back at the Wall, staring at its impenetrable cold. She doesn’t talk to him, unless her silence would raise eyebrows and questions. She avoids any situation where she could be left alone with him. And the few times he comes knocking on her door, she ignores him once she learns that it’s him waiting outside. It doesn’t take him long to realize that Gilly helps her, that they’ve created secret signs to signal to one another where he is so Sansa can avoid him.
It doesn’t take him long to realize the only way he can talk to her in private would be to either break into her chambers and wait for her, or barge inside when she’s already there. And he can’t violate her trust that way.
But he can’t let this go on either. People are noticing. They’re noticing how he pleads at her with his eyes whenever she ignores him, how he follows her with his gaze whenever she moves, how his voice trembles whenever he must address her directly. They’re noticing her frostiness whenever he’s near. Because he bent the knee, because he fucked Daenerys, because Sansa should’ve been named queen that day when people called him king, they all speculate. But no one guesses the whole truth.
Gilly refuses to help him and he wonders how much she knows. He wonders whether Sansa has told Gilly how she feels. Did she mean it? When she kissed him. Or was he the one who kissed her? Days have passed and the memory of the kiss has blurred in his mind, has faded from his lips and it’s leaving him wanting, needing, craving. He dreams about her at night, thinks about her during the days. She’s always on the forefront of his mind--it sings Sansa Sansa Sansa--and it’s only a matter of time before he blurts out something stupid in front of others. It’s only a matter of time before Daenerys realizes he’s avoiding her bed because he wants to be in Sansa’s, not because he wants to focus on the war and avoid giving the lords an excuse to abandon the cause (although that’s true too).
Then the war comes, sooner than anyone expected. He’s just revealed to the world who he is, with his family standing by his side--even Sansa--when the horn they've placed at the gate sounds thrice for the Others and drowns out the shocked gasps of the crowd. They scramble to their posts and for one day, Jon thinks of nothing but fighting. The dragons fall, their mother too, and finally the Night King shatters and all his soldiers with him. Part of Jon expects something to change between him and Sansa, then, but tending to the injured, repairing the castle, and planning for what to do with Cersei eat up their time. Besides a murmured, “I’m glad you’re unharmed,” when he returned from the battle, Sansa still won’t look at him or talk to him. It’s even worse now, he thinks, when everyone knows the truth about who he is and they actually could be together if they wanted it. But perhaps she doesn’t want it.
He's almost sure he was the one who kissed her. He cupped her cheek and did what he's longed to do for far too long. It would explain why she hates him.
It’s Arya who comes through, finally. “She’s sneaking off to the broken tower when she wants to be alone. I don’t know why she’s so angry with you, but whatever you did, say you’re sorry cos I’m sick of this." She makes a shooing motion at him. "Go!”
Jon stares at her all through breakfast. They’re always seated together with her on his left, like husband and wife; Sansa’s not found a way around that.
Sometimes she wonders what type of expression she’d find on his face if she were to turn her head. A wounded look, she imagines. Even her forcing a kiss on him after what he went through on Dragonstone wouldn’t stop him from loving his sister. Cousin. Sister. Sister. He’s too good and she can’t stand it. The moment she can slip away, she flees to the broken tower to collect herself.
She closes the door behind her and leans against its singed wood, eyes closed. Days have passed since the battle and more still since that awful thing. She must learn how to put it behind her, move on, and treat Jon like her brother again. Whenever they’re in the same room, the oddest tension floats out into open space and affects everyone present. They mind their tongues, fall into uncomfortable silences, and move about the room as if it were made of glass. She must move past this, for their sake. For Jon’s sake. He deserves better than her awful treatment of him when she is the one at fault.
“Sansa.”
Her eyes fly open. Vines spill from the beams and dip into the shadows that cloak Jon. He steps into the sunlight slanting through the glassless window, his unbound hair gleaming. Their eyes meet for the first time in days and panic strikes through her chest like a lance. For half a heartbeat she’s frozen stiff, but then that panic surges through her body and tells her to run run run.
She’s fumbling behind her for the door-handle when Jon rushes closer. “Sansa, don’t go.”
Shame has seized her tongue; she only shakes her head and turns to leave, but Jon springs forward. He’s still keeping enough distance that she could easily slip away if she wanted it, but the desperate, earnest tenderness in his eyes arrests her. She’s entranced by it and last time that happened she lost her mind and she averts her eyes before she loses it again.
“You won’t even look at me.”
“I can’t,” she whispers.
“We can’t go on like this. We have to talk.”
“I don’t know what to say.” Tears sting her eyes, humiliation has set her cheeks aflame, and she hides her face in her cool hands. “I’m so sorry, Jon. I don’t know what got into me. I regret it. So much.”
Jon's clothes rustle as he shifts his weight. “So you didn’t mean it?”
Sansa’s hands slip and she looks at him through her fingers. “What?”
“The…” He takes a step closer. “Why did you do it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know why I did it. Can we please not talk about it? I’m so ashamed.”
“You have nothing to be ashamed about.”
“I kissed you!” She sucks in a sharp breath and looks around as if the walls have grown ears, then continues in a lower voice, “Can we please pretend it never happened? Please. I won’t do it again. I promise.”
Jon inches closer, his dark eyes glinting in the pale winter light. They caress her face, those eyes, take in her every feature, her parted lips, her tear-filled eyes. Then he pulls off his glove and she holds her breath and stands completely still as he strokes the tips of his fingers along her jawline before cupping her cheek.
“I don’t want to forget,” he murmurs, his breath hot and sweet against her lips. “I want you to remind me.”
Slowly, he brushes his nose against hers and then he waits, his lips so so close and inviting. Heart racing in her chest, Sansa angles her head and gives his mouth the lightest press of her lips. A part of her waits for him to be appalled again, to push her away, but Jon kisses her back, softly, tenderly. Gentle kisses following the line of her bottom lip, then caressing her top lip before he wraps his arm around the small of her back and pulls her flush to him and deepens the kiss. This time she does melt, turns into honey in his arms, his strength the only thing still keeping her upright. With a soft moan, she links her arms around his neck and lets him teach her how to kiss with eager lips and tongue. The locks of his hair are silky against her hands, and she twines them around her fingers again and again, rakes her nails along his scalp, and feels him shiver under her touch. And still she waits for something to change, for him to realize that this isn’t what he wants, that this isn’t right, but he just keeps kissing her and kissing her until she’s the one who pulls away.
“Jon.” She evades his lips when they chase hers. “You pushed me away.”
“Aye, I did,” he says, leaning his forehead against hers. “Not because I didn’t want you. I did. And I do. But because we couldn’t.”
“But now we can?”
“Now we can. If you want?”
“Want what? To kiss you?”
“To kiss me." He nuzzles her cheek and whispers into her ear, “To marry me. To give me sons and daughters. To love me.”
“Are you asking?”
“Aye,” he says, and she hears the smile in his voice, “I’m asking.”
She whispers her yes and he hums his happiness against her lips when she allows him to capture them in another kiss.
He’s warming her bed. Every night he sneaks down the hallway, past Arya’s room and Brienne’s, and slinks into Sansa's chamber. Every morning he kisses her soundly and slinks back to his own room long before her handmaidens knock on her door to dress her for another day.
No one knows their little secret, but she thinks it’s only a question of time before the gossip winds its way through the castle and they can confirm their betrothal, because when she and Jon are together they talk and smile and laugh. When she and Jon are together they shine.