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When I hear my favourite song, I know that we belong
Sansa is fifteen, and her piano teacher breaks his arm in a car crash and can't teach her anymore. She goes mental, ringing up every teacher within a ten mile radius, insisting that Mum and Dad will let her go as far as Duskendale for lessons when she hates every teacher she finds.
Arya doesn't say much on the matter – she knows she'd be just as bad if Syrio was out of commission and she had to find a new swimming coach – but she does make her own enquiries, and finds a solution in the form of Loras Tyrell's brother.
Loras is the star of the boys; senior team, and kind of a dick, but everyone knows his brother is studying over at KCLU now, and Arya vaguely remembers Edmure saying something about a Tyrell a few years below him making a fortune during school by giving piano lessons. That in mind, she catches Loras wringing out his ridiculous hair (it's longer than hers, never mind the rest of the lads').
“Does your brother still give piano lessons?”
Loras blinks at her – they don't really cross paths, much, so she can't blame him for being surprised that she was speaking to him. Whatever, if she finds Sansa a new piano teacher, Sansa will be in a better mood and maybe won't freak when Arya tells her about the kind-of broken chain on her bike that Arya kind-of can't afford to get fixed.
So Arya asks Loras, Loras says yes, gives her his brother's number, and boom, job done. Sansa has a new piano teacher, and is so thrilled that she doesn't even scream a little bit when Arya tells her about the bike chain.
It probably doesn't hurt that Loras' brother? So good looking.
Even Mum kind of stops and stares a minute – he's tall, taller than Loras, with darker hair than Loras that curls the way Robb wishes his hair did, and he's wearing the cool sort of steel rimmed glasses and a crutch tucked under his left arm.
“Hello,” he says, and he smiles, and Arya just knows that Sansa's going to be swooning about him all the damn time.
Weirdly enough, she doesn't, though. Arya doesn't think she ever remembers Sansa having a friend who she was just... Dumb with, but she's dumb with Willas, in the good way. Arya's dumb with Gendry, and she's dumb with Ned, and with Alla and Beth and Dara, but Sansa's not dumb with anyone except her piano teacher, who is only a few years older than her.
Okay, five. Which is a lot at the moment, but Arya knows Sansa, and Sansa is good at the whole patience thing, so she's pretty sure Sansa's set her sights on Willas and knows it's just a matter of waiting until the age gap is a bit less weird.
Or at least, that's what she thinks until she overhears Willas leaving one night - “Princess,” he's saying (he always calls Sansa “Princess,” which, ew, that's too sweet), “it's been a pleasure, as always.”
And Sansa, instead of blushing like Arya might have expected, laughs and slaps Willas' shoulder, and says “Whatever, Tyrell – go get your girl, yeah? Let me know how things go!”
If she's encouraging him to get with someone else, then they're probably not on course to being together. Okay. Not what Arya had expected.
It's like a bad dream that is too afraid to wake
Sansa is sixteen, and Willas has his arm around her shoulders so she has to walk with him into the kitchen. Ned looks up from his newspaper, clearly puzzled, and Cat wonders why it is that Willas, usually so cheerful, looks like he's going to stab someone.
“Show them your hands, Sansa,” he says, and Sansa does, as reluctant as Ned is confused.
Cat understands why Willas wants to stab soemone when she sees the neat, straight lines of bruises crisscrossing Sansa's fingers.
“Explain,” she says, and without moving from under Willas' arm, Sansa explains. Cat wants to do more than just stab Joffrey Baratheon for what he's done, but she knows that she can't, so she leaves it to Ned to sort out his godson.
Sansa's story comes out in dribs and drabs, long after her piano teacher has gone, and Cat ices her poor, bruised hands and, when it becomes clear that Sansa's in more pain than she's letting on, brings her to A and E. Two fingers are badly sprained, mercifully on her left hand, so they splint those and give her anti-inflammatories for the swelling and huge pink tablets for the pain, and Sansa falls dead asleep almost as soon as they get home.
Ned doesn't get angry often, but he's furious now, Cat can feel it as soon as he slides into bed beside her that night – Robert, apparently, had gone crazy with Joffrey, but Cersei had screamed that her boy wouldn't do anything like that, that Sansa was probably lying, that she'd probably done it to herself.
Willas Tyrell calls Sansa while she's getting ready for school the next morning, calls Sansa Princess just like he always does, and Sansa seems a little steadier for having talked to him. His sister meets her at the school gates, looping her arm through Sansa's and glaring bloody murder at everyone who isn't already backing away from the look on Arya's face.
Cat doesn't hear the details, but apparently Joffrey ends up with a broken nose to go with the expulsion Ned wrangled for him, and Robb and Lyanna's Jon seem genuinely surprised by the news.
Willas Tyrell, however, when she questions him while Sansa's in the loo during her next lesson, sheepishly admits that he might have mentioned to his youngest brother that Joffrey Baratheon was a bully, and Cat can't help but wonder if there's something behind the young man's calling Sansa Princess.
She stops wondering when she hears him offering to take Sansa out for dinner – with himself and his girlfriend, and some of their friends. Sansa declines, tells him that he has to thank Rhaenys for him, and she carries his music bag out to his little car for him, leaning up to kiss his cheek in thanks before waving him off.
Cat doesn't think that there is something there, but she can see how there could be.
Even when you're here with me, I know that you're somewhere else
Sansa is seventeen, and Margaery has her come over during Christmas holidays.
Marg's missed Sansa while she's been away – she's a sweet girl, a nice counterpoint to the girls Marg's made friends with at college, and quieter than her friends from school or the cousins. Sometimes it's nice to just be quiet, and it's easy to be quiet with Sansa.
Which is why Marg's not a little miffed when she arrives home from the shop, where she was getting icing sugar because she likes baking with Sansa, mostly because Sansa does all the work and she can just lick the bowl, to find that Sansa has not only beaten her there, but also already sequestered herself away in the music room with Willas.
Margaery loves her oldest brother to bits – they got really close when he was laid up after his accident – but honestly, she wants to smack him just now. He gets to see Sansa for an hour every week, but Marg hasn't seen her since August, and it's just not fair!
“My friend,” she tells him, dragging Sansa away from the piano by the hand. “Get your own.”
So she spends a lovely afternoon with Sansa, catching up on all the gossip and eating about four biscuits worth of gingerbread dough. It's not until Sansa's icing the biscuits that it occurs to Marg that maybe she interrupted something other than an impromptu singsong earlier.
“Hey,” she says, swiping the bowl with the red icing and dipping in her finger. “Are you and Willas...?”
Sansa bursts out laughing, leaning back against the island with her eyes closed.
“Oh my God, Marg,” she giggles. “Me and Willas? Even if I was interested, Rhaenys would kill me!”
“Are you interested?”
“Didn't you hear me when I said Quentyn asked me out last month? Marg, Willas and I are just friends. Seriously. Nothing more.”
Marg watches them together whenever Sansa's over for the rest of the holidays, and if she's being honest, they don't seem like just friends , not with how cuddly they are, or how Sansa's always fixing his hair and clothes, and he's always got a hand hovering over the small of her back when there's a crowd about (admittedly unless Rhaenys is there, in which case Rhae is tucked under his arm and they're clearly sickeningly in love).
And Sansa is going out with Quentyn Martell, and they're also vomitously cute.
So maybe they are just friends, those weird friends who are all up in each other's personal space and, probably, personal lives.
Incapable of making alright decisions, and having bad ideas
Sansa is eighteen, and her phone rings at four in the morning.
It's Arianne, who knows it's weird to be calling her little brother's ex at ass o'clock, but she's maybe a little off her face and she needs to know.
“Are you in love with Rhaenys' boyfriend?”
Sansa sounds sleepy, but Arianne needs to know. Sansa and Quent are still ridiculously chummy, playing tennis together most weekends, and while Quent has never said as much, Arianne is at least two thirds sure that he and Sansa agreed to break up because they were both mad for someone else. Quent has since moved on with Gwyneth (and maybe Cletus? Arianne's not sure what the situation is there), but Sansa...
“What are you talking about, Ari? Are you drunk?”
“No, Sansa, no,” Arianna insists, because technically, she's not. Daemon got hold of something, she's not sure what, but she likes the buzz, “I'm not drunk, and I'm right. You're in love with Rhae's Willas, aren't you?”
Rhae isn't Arianne's favourite cousin – that's Tyene, no question – but she's still family, and no matter how much Arianne might like Sansa, which she does, if Sansa's after Rhae's boyfriend, Arianne will fuck her up. Rhae and Willas've been together for years now, and Arianne likes seeing Rhae, who's too serious for her own good, she likes seeing her happy. Arianne's reasonably sure that Willas Tyrell makes her happy.
Thing is, though – the thing is, right, that everyone knows Sansa and Willas have that weird friendship-that-might-be-more thing going on. Everyone knows that you never see them together but they're all over each other, and that they practically have their own language, and that they finish each other's sentences and all kinds of weird, coupley shit.
But they're not a couple, which makes it even weirder.
“Ari, listen to me,” Sansa says, “I need you to hang up, and I'll ring you back and leave this as a voicemail, okay? But I'm not in love with Willas, Ari. He's one of my best friends, and that's all.”
“Suuuuure,” Arianne sighs, rolling her eyes before remembering that Sansa can't see it. “You keep telling yourself that, kiddo.”
“I will, Ari,” Sansa promises her. “Goodnight, Arianne.”
She's gone before Arianne can point out that the lady doth protest too much. Whatever.
I got my mind made up, man, I can't let go
“I think we should break up.”
Willas blinks at Rhaenys over his Shredded Wheat, wondering if it's just the lack of caffeine is his system, giving him aural hallucinations. He can't think of any reason Rhaenys might have just said those words, because, well, they're doing well, aren't they?
“Is this because of what happened last week?”
Last week, Rhae had walked in to find him and Sansa asleep on the couch, and yes, fine, Sansa had been lying on top of him and he'd had his arms around her (and he'd woken up so hard he couldn't do anything but get a cushion into his lap as surreptitiously as possible, but hell, he'd had a beautiful girl lying on top of him, and he is only human), but it was Sansa. Sansa is his friend, his best friend. Rhae had been unhappy about it, though, still is, and he's not sure what he's supposed to do. She wouldn't be annoyed if it were anyone else, but for some reason, she never seems quite as cool about him spending time with Sansa.
“Kind of,” she says, shrugging. “It kind of made things clear, I suppose.”
“What kind of things?”
She sighs, and sits down, and takes his spoon out of his hand.
“Who's your best friend, Willas?”
“Sansa,” he says, without hesitation. Everyone knows that Sansa's his best friend, though, and he doesn't like where this is going. He doesn't like it one bit. “You know that, Rhaenys.”
“She's your best friend,” Rhae says quietly. “You spend more time with her than you do with anyone else, except maybe Garlan. You smile more when she's around. If she's in the room, even if you're not talking to her, you're looking at her. Even when you're with me, Willas, and I don't think you even realise that you're doing it.”
“I don't- ”
“Oh, hon,” she sighs. “You really don't realise it, do you?”
“Rhaenys-”
“If I asked you to choose,” she says. “Her or me. Which would you choose?”
“I can't-”
“I know,” she sighs. “I know you better than anyone except her, Willas – you're in love with her. I think you have been for years, but you've gotten so used to telling yourself that you can't go out with her because she's just a kid that you can work around being mad for her. Well, she's twenty next month. You should ask her out.”
Rhae stands up, picks up the bags he hadn't even noticed – she's got some of her stuff hanging around his flat, and a drawer in his room, but he reckons it'll be empty if he checks – and kisses him on the cheek before putting her key on the table by his breakfast and walking out.
His first instinct is to call Sansa, and he says “ Bollocks,” very quietly before letting his head thump down onto the table, because Rhaenys was right.
You take me over, you're the magic in my veins, this must be love
Sansa is twenty, and Willas tells her he's in love with her.
It's the day after her birthday, and she ended up sleeping on the couch in her and Arya's flat, curled up in his lap. Usually, she'd be the first to tease someone about something like that, but this is Willas, and this is them, and it's not like that.
At least, she hadn't thought it was, but now he's standing in her tiny little kitchen after everyone else has gone home and Arya's gone to the gym and oh, he's beautiful. Why did she never really notice that on a not-objective level before?
“Since when?” she asks, and he shrugs. He's so close their chests are almost touching, and while that's never been a big deal before – they've always been physically close, never mind the rest, perfectly comfortable with physical affection – it is now. All she can think about, in this moment, is kissing him, and is stunned to realise that she's wanted to kiss him for ages.
“Not sure,” he says. “You alright with it, then?”
“Think it might be mutual,” she says, feeling dizzy, and she kisses him.
It's even better than she dreamed, in those dreams she kind of told herself were just because there wasn't anyone else she'd even consider kissing. Yeah, right.
“Was that-”
“Better do it again to be sure-”
“Maybe not in the kitchen-”
“I honestly don't care-”