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She meets him the night the girl he loves gets engaged to someone else.
Daenerys doesn’t know he loves the girl, not at first. She only knows he looks sad and lonely and that whatever’s troubling him, surely she can make it better. She’s never met a problem she couldn’t solve simply by being who she is.
But Jon Snow… Well, he’s different, she can tell right away. He’s not charmed by her, he doesn’t seem to want her at all. He grunts in response to everything she says, and feigns a cough to shake her hand from his arm when she tries to flirt.
He’s different, and in all honesty Daenerys doesn’t think she likes it very much. But she’s never walked away rejected before and she doesn’t plan on starting now.
Jon proceeds to get drunk, and one of his mates is muttering to him all night. Whatever the other man’s saying, Jon clearly doesn’t want to hear it.
“Piss off, Theon,” he says, more than once, and then orders another drink. His eyes are damp and tinged with red.
He doesn’t like her. Daenerys can tell that much, but she ends up getting what she wants, anyway. She always does.
~
JON: I’m happy for you, Sansa. You’ll make a gorgeous bride. I hope Harry knows how lucky he is or else he doesn’t deserve you.
SANSA: Thank you, Jon. That’s so sweet of you to say, though you know how Harry is…
JON: Still jealous of me, eh?
SANSA: I’m sorry. I’ve told him a thousand times that you don’t feel that way about me.
JON: And what’s ‘that way,’ exactly?
SANSA: You know… whatever way you feel about Daenerys.
JON: typing…
JON: How do you know about that?
SANSA: Theon told me. Why didn’t you?
JON: There’s nothing to tell. It’s not a serious thing, Sansa.
SANSA: Why not?
JON: typing…
JON: typing…
SANSA: Jon?
JON: I dunno.
Because it’s just not.
~
It’s been nearly three months before he’ll introduce her to his friends.
“You go out with them all the time,” Daenerys pouts as he prepares to do just that yet again, after she’s gone to all this trouble to surprise him. “Why can’t it just be us tonight?”
She’d shown up at his place after he’s had a shite day, which she knows because he’d finally texted her back at three to say Been a shite day and that was it. So she’d brought a bottle of wine and worn her best lingerie under a pretty dress in the hopes that he’d touch her at some point tonight.
It’s been ages since he’d touched her.
Daenerys would like to blame it on the fact that he’d been on a weeks-long trip to Dorne for work. But he hadn’t been too keen on touching her before that, either. She thinks perhaps he’s shy or maybe even inexperienced. She wouldn’t mind helping him to change that, but she’ll give him time to get used to her if that’s what he needs. Most of the men she dates aren’t quite used to a woman like her. She understands how intimidating she can be; she just has a confidence about her that can emasculate her partner, she’s found, but they grow accustomed to it soon enough.
“I haven’t seen them since before Dorne,” Jon tells her now. He sounds exasperated — no, just tired, she decides.
He’d left her standing in the doorway, and returned to the couch to pull on his boots as he gives her more of the same excuse: “I told you, it’s been a rough day. I just want to go out for a drink with my mates.”
“You’ve barely seen me since before Dorne, too,” Daenerys points out.
“You met me at the airport,” Jon grumbles. That had been a surprise, too. She’s beginning to think that Jon Snow’s not one to enjoy surprises.
“Well I can compromise, if that’s what you want. I’ll come along tonight.”
His jaw twitches, but he doesn’t argue, and really that’s all Daenerys wants from him.
~
SANSA: Will we see you at Hobb’s tonight?
JON: Wouldn’t miss it.
~
The Starks are nice enough people. Well, Daenerys has only met one of them so far — Robb, the eldest, who’s polite even if he comes off a bit confused as to what she’s doing there. He keeps casting looks at Jon, who appears to ignore whatever they mean.
Or perhaps he doesn’t notice. Jon’s been looking ‘round the pub since they walked in, even after he’d found Robb and Theon at a table against the wall.
“Where’s” — Jon pauses a moment, clears his throat — “um, Arya?”
Robb narrows his eyes. “Picking up Sansa.”
Sansa? Daenerys doesn’t think she’s heard the name before.
“Oh.” Jon taps his fingers against his beer bottle. “No Harry tonight, then?”
“Nope,” Robb says as Theon snorts. “Don’t reckon we’ll be seeing much of Harry soon enough. My sister’s fiancé,” he adds, for Daenerys’ benefit. “He’s a right prick. We all think so. You should hear Jon talk about him.”
“I haven’t.” Daenerys turns to the man in question with a raised brow. “You’ve never mentioned him.” Or Sansa. The latter interests her more.
Jon shrugs. “Not much to mention.”
Robb’s still looking at him in that peculiar way, but otherwise that, apparently, is the end of it.
Until the Stark girls walk in.
Arya is small and dark, with a pixie cut and big grey eyes that regard Daenerys with only a modicum of curiosity. She doesn’t ask to be introduced or make any effort to do so herself, instead declaring they all need a round of shots, and she heads off to the bar to procure them.
And then there’s Sansa. She’s a tall, willowy creature with waves of auburn hair and a pretty smile, even if it doesn’t quite reach her tired eyes. Still, she offers that smile to them all, along with a hug for her brother and an exchange of smacking kisses on cheeks with Theon.
Jon stands up when she comes ‘round, so quickly he nearly trips out of his stool.
“It’s good to see you,” he says as he envelops the girl in a tight embrace.
“You, too.” Sansa hugs him back, just as tight.
Daenerys takes an uncomfortable sip of her drink. He’d hugged Arya, too, and ruffled her hair with the air of an affectionate big brother. Daenerys tells herself that this is more of the same.
It’s another lingering moment — one that no one else questions, but leaves her wondering all the same — before they break apart.
“Hello,” Sansa says, with a smile just for Daenerys this time. “It’s nice to meet you. Dany, right?”
She offers her hand, adorned with a diamond — three carats, surely, which is enough for Daenerys to accept the other woman’s greeting, and almost enough to quash her annoyance that Jon hadn’t addressed her by her proper name. She hates when people call her Dany; it’s childish.
Jon watches their handshake, a slight frown on his face when the diamond catches the light of the dim hanging lamp above their table.
“So, no Harry tonight?” he repeats the question he’d asked Robb hardly fifteen minutes earlier.
“Ah — no.” Sansa twists the ring around her finger, almost as though she’d like to take it off. “You know, I should see how Arya’s doing with those shots. She’s probably just flirting with the bartender again — it’s Gendry tonight, she told me half a dozen times — but then, she might have taken all the shots herself. And I could really use a drink.”
“I’ll go with you.” Jon takes her by the elbow to lead her through the thin crowd of patrons. “We shouldn’t’ve let Arya go off on her own, last time we did that she wound up dancing on the bar to Kool & the Gang.” That makes Sansa laugh.“I’ll spot your drink to make up for it.”
He smiles at her, so softly it could break Daenerys’ heart. And it just might, too, she thinks when the pair of them walk away, and he doesn’t look back.
But she tells herself that’s only the liquor talking.
~
JON: You holding up okay?
SANSA: Other than the hangover headache, I think I’ll live. I’m so sorry for unloading all of that stuff about Harry on you last night.
JON: Hey, it’s alright. I know how you get after too much rum. Arya’s not the only one who can dance to ‘Get Down On It’ with the best of them, after all.
SANSA: Har har har.
JON: You know I’m happy to listen to you whenever you need, right?
SANSA: And drive my drunk arse home when Arya leaves with the bartender?
JON: More than happy to do that.
SANSA: I feel bad for drunkenly singing so many terrible pop songs at you on the way.
JON: Consider that your fee. I had a good time with you, Sansa. I always do. You even make me like all those terrible pop songs.
SANSA: typing…
SANSA: I feel bad for taking you away from Daenerys like that, too.
JON: Don’t.
SANSA: Is something wrong between you two?
JON: I just don’t know how to talk to her. I don’t really want to talk to her. I know that makes me a complete arse. I just never meant for it to get this far, you know?
SANSA: Yeah. Yeah, I do.
JON: Are you alright?
SANSA: typing…
SANSA: Let’s just say I don’t know how to talk to Harry, either.
JON: I meant what I said last night. He doesn’t deserve you.
SANSA: You’ve told me that a lot.
JON: And I’ve meant it every time.
~
When they’d first met, Daenerys hadn’t wanted to like Sansa. But she’d set aside her misgivings because of that unmissable rock on the other girl’s ring finger. So what if Jon had a little lingering childhood crush? That’s all it was. Daenerys would help him forget all about it, all about her, and then she’d have a diamond on her own finger before anyone could doubt the commitment between them.
Easy.
But then, one day, Sansa Stark hasn’t got a diamond ring anymore.
Arya pops by his flat when Daenerys happened to do the same an hour before. Jon had begged off with work that needed done, and left Daenerys in his lounge while he holed up in his home office. She thought they could grab dinner when he was done, but then Arya bursts loudly into the room with no preamble, shouting for him to get your stupid arse out here! and Jon comes down the hall to ask what the fuck her problem is.
“Don’t talk to me like that, you broody bastard,” Arya snaps right back at him. “I texted you a dozen times. Turn off your read receipts if you don’t want me bursting unceremoniously into your apartment.”
Is that normal for Jon? Daenerys wonders. To avoid strings of messages like that? He never seems to have time for hers, but the way Arya’s glowering at him makes her think this isn’t an ordinary occurrence.
Jon glances at her before beckoning Arya to follow him into the kitchen. “Excuse us a moment, Dany. Family emergency.”
“Can I help?” she wants to know, though all she really wants to know is what’s going on.
“Afraid not,” Arya tosses coolly over her shoulder, and then the kitchen door snaps shut behind them.
Well, that won’t do. Daenerys slips from the couch and tiptoes to the door, and presses her ear against it to listen.
The scrape of chairs. The creak of the cabinet. Running water. The click of the stove and, soon enough, the kettle whistles and tea is poured.
There is a gentle thu-ud of mugs being set down, and then Arya speaks.
“You’re a fucking moron.”
“I know.” Jon’s voice is tired, pained. He sighs, and it sounds like it hurts. “What was I supposed to do? She was engaged, and I —”
“Well she’s not anymore. I told you that first thing. So imagine my surprise when I come over to find you’re still here, instead of at Sansa’s where you should’ve gone straightaway.”
Daenerys frowns. Why would Jon —
“And not only that,” Arya continues before he can speak, before Daenerys can finish her thought, “but your bloody girlfriend’s here, too. You’ve got a right to date whoever you want, Jon, but this is so unbelievably stupid. This isn’t what you want. And it’s not fair to anyone.”
“I don’t — I wouldn’t call her my girlfriend,” Jon protests moodily.
Her heart lurches, but she forces it to settle. They don’t need labels. She’d wanted him and she got him, and that’s all that matters.
“That doesn’t make any of this any better.”
Jon sighs again. “I know.”
Daenerys doesn’t want to listen anymore. She shouldn’t have to question a relationship that’s hers, not Sansa Stark’s — none of this belongs to her, this other girl who gets all of Jon’s gentle smiles and the softness in his eyes. She can have that if she wants it, Daenerys thinks, because she and Jon have something deeper than that.
She understands him, and she can understand why he might be confused now. Sansa’s like family to him, and she’d just had her heart broken, no doubt. It’s a tumultuous time. He needs to sort through his feelings, needs to let go of those vestiges of his adolescent hopes that one day Sansa would be more to him than just his best friend’s sister. It’s time for him to have a real connection with someone, not just this thing he’s made up inside of his head.
That’s what we have, Daenerys thinks. Something real. Sansa Stark will only ever be a fantasy, and it’s high time he moves past it.
It’s what Daenerys wants, and it’s for the best.
~
SANSA: Arya just called. I’m so sorry, Jon, she shouldn’t have barged in on you on my behalf. It’s just, well, you know how she gets when someone makes me cry, and Harry wasn’t exactly nice about it when he packed up his things and left.
JON: Do you know where he’s staying now? Because I’ll go kick his arse right now. I mean it.
SANSA: I don’t. But thanks for the sentiment.
JON: Well, don’t be sorry for Arya. I should be the one apologizing. I should’ve come over when she texted me the first time. I just didn’t know…
JON: typing…
JON: I don’t know what to do here, Sansa.
SANSA: What do you want to do?
JON: I don’t ever want to be the guy that makes you cry. I know that.
But I think I already have, if Arya’s got it right.
SANSA: It’s not your fault. I should have realized so much sooner.
JON: Realized what? Arya said, but I
I need to hear it from you.
SANSA: typing…
SANSA: Jon, I can’t be that person who breaks up a relationship. I’d be no better than Harry, or any of those girls he was with that might’ve known about me. You’re with someone now. The things I realized… I realized them too late.
JON: You didn’t. I swear, it never would’ve been too late.
Sansa, when Harry proposed to you, I made the mistake of thinking it was too late for us. And it wasn’t, it didn’t have to be. I realized how much I wanted you ages ago and I should have told you.
Please, let me tell you now.
SANSA: I don’t want to be a bad person.
JON: You’re not. Sweetheart, I promise you you’re not. This whole thing has just been so utterly fucked up. Let me fix it.
SANSA: How can we fix this?
JON: Can I come over? I can’t say everything I want like this.
I just need to see you.
SANSA: typing…
SANSA: I need to see you, too.
JON: Love, I’ll be there in ten.
~
Jon leaves his phone to charge on an end table when he takes a conference call in his home office.
We need to talk, he’d told Daenerys when he’d texted for her to come by. He’d told her five o’clock, but she’d shown up at two because she couldn’t take the waiting.
She hasn’t seen him in a week, not since the day Arya had shown up and, afterwards, Daenerys had decided to give Jon the time he needed to consider where their relationship was headed. He hasn’t had many serious relationships, this is all new for him, and they can take it slow.
That’s what she tells herself, though her friend Missandei had voiced her own concerns.
“Aren’t you worried he’s spending the week with that other girl?”
“Of course not. When has anyone chosen someone else over me? She’s not a threat, she’s practically his sister.”
“But what about —”
“It was just an old crush. Maybe not even that. They grew up together, so she was just a girl who happened to be around a lot. It was completely superficial. He has me now.”
And now, he’s ready for what that means. He’s ready to commit to her completely. No more long hours at the office, no more nights out without her, no more unanswered texts or missed calls… She’ll be his top priority, as it should be. How else is she meant to feel secure, if he’s not willing to put her first? He needs to make her feel important, above all else.
She paces leisurely around his lounge, stopping every so often to study the framed photos scattered about. They’re all of the Starks, and there’s more than one of just him and Sansa, or Sansa on her own. Daenerys has a curious itch in her hands whenever she sees one of those, as if she’d like to smash them on the floor.
Jon’s phone dings! as she considers this. She glances down at it to find yet another picture of Sansa, smiling up at her. Daenerys recognizes the jumper she’s wearing in the snapshot, too: handknit and oversized, grey, and one that’s hanging on the hook by Jon’s door.
Daenerys picks up the phone and unlocks it. She’d seen Jon type in the passcode a time or two. It had been simple enough to remember, and then it had been burned permanently into her mind’s eye when she’d taken a casual look at Sansa’s Facebook and saw her birthdate.
SANSA: I know. <3
Right back at you. x
Confused, Daenerys scrolls up to Jon’s previous message, sent some five-odd minutes after he’d texted her We need to talk that afternoon.
JON: I know you’re working anyway, but I still hate keeping you waiting.
It’s going to be better after this. So much better.
I love you.
His office door creaks open halfway down the hall and the sound of his footsteps follows, but she doesn’t bother dropping his phone and acting like she hadn’t seen.
She should have seen months ago.
Jon’s brow furrows when he recognizes his phone in her hand. “Are you reading my messages?”
“Are you fucking someone else?” she bites out with as much vitriol as she can muster, as much vitriol as she feels, but Jon doesn’t wince as she’d hoped. He doesn’t flinch or explain or apologize or take it all back.
He just… stands there. And that, somehow, makes it worse.
“How long has this being going on?” she demands. But the answer is right there in her grasp, so instead of waiting on him she says, “Well I can find out for myself, I suppose,” and scrolls up through the conversation.
Dozens of texts, all answered, days and weeks and months of correspondence, and Daenerys had been none the wiser. And why should she have been, really? This has never happened to her before; she’d never so much as entertained the idea that it could.
“I can’t believe you’d do this to me!” Daenerys fumes. She tosses his phone on the couch, not wanting to see another word of Jon calling another woman love, sweetheart, gorgeous… “And with her, as if she has something I don’t! Other than an ex-fiancé, of course —”
“Don’t talk about her,” Jon as good as snarls. She doesn’t like that, doesn’t like the way he bristles and asserts himself, as if she’s the one in the wrong. “You can be angry with me all you like, but it’s not Sansa’s fault. She never would’ve said a word to me if I didn’t start all this in the first place.”
“And why did you?” She deserves to know that much, doesn’t she? He owes her. “Why would you go behind my back with someone else at all? I’m your girlfriend —”
“You’re not!” Jon cuts in hotly, like he can’t bear to hear himself paired with her like that. “You’re not, you just decided that’s what this was because it was what you wanted, nevermind what I wanted.”
“You wanted someone else!”
“Aye, I did.” He nods once, with a sense of finality she couldn’t overturn no matter how loudly she screamed. “I do. I still do and I won’t ever stop. I want her — Sansa. It’s always been her. You were just… you were there. I made a mistake and I let it go on too long because I didn’t know how to take it back.”
For once, Daenerys is at a loss for what to say. She doesn’t think he’s ever spoken to her this much. But in all those words, she has yet to hear even a piece of what she wants.
“Aren’t you sorry for it?” He should be. He should be on bended knee, begging forgiveness for treating her so carelessly when he was supposed to be making her the most important thing in his world. “Any of it, even just a little?”
Jon looks at her like he’s never been sorry for a damn thing in his life.
“I never meant to hurt anyone,” he says at last, and shakes his head, “but I can’t hurt her more. I can’t spare your feelings.”
And he can’t be bothered to be sorry for that much, even, so it would seem.
“I think you thought this was more than it was,” Jon continues as she waits for him to say something better. “I tried to — well, it doesn’t matter. I should have told you sooner, so there was no confusion or, or room for interpretation.
“I should have done a lot of things sooner,” he adds, more quietly, and in such a way that Daenerys knows those particular things have nothing to do with her.
She’d been wrong. So dreadfully wrong. Indignation and embarrassment bubble hot and deep in her gut. From the beginning, she’d known Jon Snow was different, and she’d been right about that much, that night at the pub when his eyes were bloodshot from unshed tears and too much drink over another girl: He didn’t want her, and he never would.
She’d thought she could change that. She was more than enough to change that. And that’s where, this time, she’d gone wrong. Because he still doesn’t want her, and now he can have that other girl he’d tried so hard not to cry over.
Sansa. It’s always been her.
And, for a moment, Daenerys wonders what that must be like.
But the moment passes, because she doesn’t know, she can’t imagine, and Jon Snow’s not going to be the one to change that for her. He never even tried, never poured his heart out to her, for her, because he’d already given it to someone else.
Sansa.
No, Daenerys doesn’t wish to be her; she only wonders — again, however fleetingly — what it would be like to have what she does.
~
SANSA: How did it go?
JON: About as well as you’d expect. It got a little teen drama before it tapered off and I thought she’d just storm out, but she got a second wind and really went after me. Broke a couple of my coasters, too.
SANSA: Really? I didn’t expect things to get destructive.
JON: Neither did I. She got me with one of the coasters, too, I’ll have a nice marble-patterned black eye when I take you to dinner tonight.
SANSA: Jon! That’s violent enough to call for a domestic disturbance, at least. Did you dial the police?
JON: She left when I threatened to.
SANSA: I’m so sorry.
JON: You really need to learn to stop apologizing to me, love. You seldom need to.
SANSA: I can’t help it. This has all been such a terrible, rotten, no-good, very bad ordeal.
JON: Don’t I know it.
But it’ll get better, just as I told you. It’s you and me now, right?
SANSA: Right.
But can’t I still feel awful?
JON: I’d, uh, prefer it if you didn’t.
SANSA: Tell me we didn’t do anything wrong.
JON: I don’t think it’s as simple as that. We did our best, or tried to. But I can’t pretend that it’s even a little bit wrong to want you, no matter how messy things got.
SANSA: I can’t pretend that, either. So let’s not.
JON: There’s my girl.
SANSA: Am I, now? :)
JON: You are.
Finally, and for as long as you want to be.
SANSA: That’s a very, very, impossibly long time, then.
JON: I’m counting on it.
~
But it’s not long at all before Sansa Stark has another diamond ring on her finger — and this time, it’s Jon Snow who puts it there.
And this time around, the girl he loves, loves him back.