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When they kiss, it’s a quiet affair.
The simultaneous motions, like mirrored reflections in a pond, they lean in as one.
When they touch it is not cold glass they meet but so much warmth. The hush of their lips pressing together, dried and chapped from the unrelenting cold makes the wet heat inside their mouths all the more tempting.
Jojen raises a hand, thin and shaky to gently hold the side of Bran’s head, unadorned at the moment but he has seen the crown Bran will wear in his dreams and it is glorious, nearly as glorious as the boy who will be king.
“Stop thinking so much,” Bran murmurs against his lips, cheeks flushed like the first time they met when winter was so far away and the Wall even farther. “Did you have another dream again?”
“No,” Jojen lies, his palm circling an ear that would one day listen to all the problems and counsels of the realm. The skin behind Bran’s ear is soft like wax but so much stronger, even in those tiny little bones Jojen can feel so much unrelenting strength and he knows that Bran will be fine, is fine. “Nothing but good things. We will reach the three-eyed crow and you will learn, more than anything I can teach you.”
“You sound like Meera, so optimistic,” Bran makes a face, his own hands reaching up to hold Jojen’s face, so strong, so warm, they felt so warm on his ice-cold cheeks. “I don’t need another Meera, I need you.”
“We will all perish before we get there,” he replies solemnly. Bran smiles widely back, pulling him in until their noses touched, so close, so warm, they share the hot air between the two of them.
“You don’t do lying well either,” Bran speaks softly and Jojen can see the entire kingdom kneeling to the sound of that voice. He wants to listen too, for as long as he lives, Jojen will listen and follow the sound of that voice. “But that’s what I like about you, that’s how I know I can trust you with my life and my heart.”
“As are mine, my prince,” Jojen closes his eyes with a long exhale as a slice of cold wind cuts through their camp, a dragonglass dagger through flesh and bone. “My life, my heart and all of my dreams are yours till death.”
Jojen feels the frown against his own lips, still close, still warm, just as the day they met, “You speak so much of death these days.”
“Death is all around beyond the Wall,” he speaks the truth because he has nothing else left to say. He has told Bran all he has and all he knows and now, he can sleep, if nothing else, a deep sleep with no more dreams. “Don’t fear death but fear the things that bring it.”
“Why are you telling me this, Jojen?” Bran moves away. His hands shake as they hold Jojen until he too opens his eyes and they stare at each other.
Bran remembers when they used to be so green, the colour of wet moss when they first met and winter had seemed so far away. Now, they are glassy, pale like dying grass, smothered beneath a layer of frost. “Tell me, Jojen, what should I be afraid of?”
“You know,” his voice sounds thinner, breathier, like his chest is slowly freezing over until he will no longer be able to take another breath. Bran desperately slides his hands down, just so he could feel for himself that is not happening, just a dream, a false dream. “You know the words. They’re your words, Bran.”
“Winter is coming,” Bran whispers it between them, the words falling into the space between their lips. They freeze in the cold air of the North.
“Winter is death,” Jojen speaks slower, a drawn out winter’s moon. Bran would see it too if he cared to look away from eyes of green turned dead in the middle of the night. “Fear what winter brings, not winter itself. You may be a summer child but winter is your House and you are Brandon Stark, Prince of the North, Lord of Winterfell. Winter is your strength. Do not be afraid of it.”
Bran holds the words in his hands, his palms pressing against ice-cold skin. He falls asleep to the rattling breaths from Jojen’s chest, a cage of ice and steel and decaying bones.
It’s only quiet, much later, when he sleeps. Long and dreamless, it’s silent when he finally sleeps.