Chapter Text
Sansa Stark has never been so embarrassed in her whole life.
She’s prided herself on being one of the top students in her class for years now — it’s part of how she convinced her parents to send her away to the prestigious boarding school she attends, King’s Landing Academy, rather than dooming her to Winterfell High with all of her siblings. And she is one of the best, in nearly every subject.
Just not in geography.
Sansa had imagined that the summer after her sophomore year would be filled with glorious trips with her best friend Margaery, snapping pictures of themselves all over Westeros and posting them where the rest of their classmates would see and ooze with jealousy. But thanks to her stupid failing grade in a course that she’d been promised would be easy , there’ll be no sun and fun for Sansa Stark for the next four weeks.
Instead, she’ll be stuck inside of a gloomy classroom inside of Winterfell High after all, taking geography all over again so that her horrifying grade doesn’t end up affecting her chances of getting into a good college.
Students at King’s Landing Academy aren’t supposed to fail classes. They don’t even offer make-ups in the summer, because people so rarely find themselves in Sansa’s situation. She supposes the only perk of having to take the class in Winterfell instead is that none of her usual classmates can see her, and she can pretend to the teens from back home that she’s just here to try and get ahead.
Except Sansa’s plans are thwarted the second she sees the easily-recognizable curls of her brother Robb’s best friend, Jon Snow, slinking into the classroom just before she does.
Sansa pushes her long red locks out from behind her ears, letting them fall forward and cast a partial shadow over her face as she enters the room shortly after Jon. She doesn’t want to be here, she doesn’t want anyone to know she’s here, she doesn’t want to draw any attention to herself.
This isn’t like a normal class, where Sansa can proudly raise her hand and give an answer and shine . This is a subject Sansa is truly atrocious at, and she takes a seat in the back left corner of the room, as far out of the spotlight as she can possibly be.
In the back right corner of the room, Jon seems to have the same idea. He doesn’t even see her; his head is ducked down, staring at his desk, and Sansa immediately pulls her book out of her backpack and buries her head in it.
She may as well start studying now — gods know she’s going to need it.
Obviously, Sansa knew she couldn’t go the whole four weeks without Jon or anyone else recognizing her. She just hadn't expected that she couldn't even go four minutes.
Old Mr. Luwin, the man stuck inside this four-walled, flickering neon-lighted hell with them this summer, calls out all of their names, and Jon’s head snaps in her direction when he hears Sansa Stark .
They don’t talk much, when he comes over to spend time with Robb, and as he stares at her in surprise, it’s the first time that Sansa realizes he has the kind of eyes that feel like they can look straight into your soul.
Right now, her soul is mortified , and at least Jon seems to respect that, because he stares resolutely back at his desk, and he doesn’t make any effort to talk to her throughout their first day of class.
Class ends around mid-day, and Sansa immediately heads home to do the heaps of reading that’s been assigned to her. Today they’d just been given an overview of what the class as a whole would be like: five continents to cover, although one was just a mess of ice. Sansa thinks that might be her favorite continent, since they hardly have to spend any time learning about it — although she still can’t remember whether it’s the cold place with the penguins or with the polar bears, or if it’s both.
Hopefully, she won’t have to know that for her tests.
They’ll do one populated continent a week, and their last week will focus intensively on Westeros. It’s their home, and they should presumably understand its layout, but Sansa would be lying if she said she was feeling anything but dread about that last week. Why does Westeros have nine ‘constituent regions’ but it’s technically only ‘seven kingdoms’? It’s making her head hurt already, and she’s still got another three weeks before it’s even relevant .
It’s dinner time when she finally finishes her work, and Sansa slams her text book closed much harder than is strictly necessary. Her younger sister Arya snickers at her as she does it, muttering about how that’s the closest Sansa’s ever come to getting into a fight.
She huffs in annoyance as she sits down at the dinner table, as far from Arya as she can possibly get.
If Sansa thinks that Arya will be the last she hears about class for the day, though, she’s sorely mistaken. Her mother asks her about it in a kindly voice, as if it’s something fun Sansa’s done rather than a punishment for somehow having no sense of direction. Her father even leans forward, eager to hear about what she’s learned today, and beside her, Bran is positively green with envy.
“Why can’t I take a summer class? Sansa, can I do your homework?” he asks, and Arya snorts as Rickon calls Bran a nerd under his breath. He’s serious, though; since his accident, Bran’s been confined to less active hobbies, and he’s spent a lot of time reading and learning about anything and everything, really. At least a class would be a way for him to do that with other people around; Sansa would trade places with him in a heartbeat if she could. She’d pass him her homework, too, if it weren’t mostly reading; tomorrow morning, bright and early, she’ll have a pop quiz to make sure she actually read what she was assigned, and she knows that her little brother wouldn’t exactly do her a whole lot of good then .
It seems that none of the other Starks will just shut up and let her forget that her summer plans are in shambles; even Robb, who she can usually depend on, is whining.
“Jon said he’s in your class, too; I can’t believe you’re going to be seeing more of my best mate this summer than I am,” her older brother pouts, and Sansa takes a small bit of satisfaction in the fact that at least Robb’s holiday isn’t going to plan either.
Being one friend down in all his plans isn’t the same as actually being trapped in a geography class for four weeks, but at least it’s something.
It’s day two of twenty that Sansa has to spend in this classroom, and she’s right back in the same corner from yesterday, hiding from the classmates she has no interest in bonding with. She’s usually much more sociable than this, but she’s not here to socialize. She’s here to learn about the world — again — and to pass this class so she can put geography behind her. Friends will only be a distraction, one that might land her with another F when all is said and done.
Class starts, and for the first hour or so Sansa stares between Mr. Luwin, the words he’s scribbling on the board, and her own notes, doing her best to keep up. It starts to drag, though — if she thought geography was miserable when it was less than an hour of her day, it’s just short of torture when it’s hours on end of it. The board starts to look a little blurry, and all Mr. Luwin’s words start to sound the same, and finally, Sansa breaks her concentration to glance around the classroom, giving herself a moment to clear her mind and hoping she doesn’t miss anything terribly important.
Her eyes drift over the cracking wallpaper, and the initials carved into the corners of desks, the backs of the heads of the students sitting in front of her, and then finally they land on Jon. He’s staring straight ahead at Mr. Luwin, his forehead creased in concentration, only his eyes giving away just how lost he is already.
Gods, this is going to be a long summer for the both of them.
Sansa can tell when her siblings at home wake up — after they've luxuriously slept in, of course — because around 10 a.m., her phone starts buzzing against her ankle, vibrating so many times that she has to reach down and pull it out of her backpack. In the span of minutes, she’s gotten about six texts from Robb, begging her to send pictures of Jon because he’s already going through withdrawals, and Sansa has to resist the urge to roll her eyes.
She keeps her phone in her lap so that the buzzing noises aren’t quite so loud , and as soon as they have their morning break, her resolve to keep to herself crumbles and she saunters over to Jon.
“Your best friend,” she announces, sliding her phone onto his desk so he can see the notifications from Robb still lit up on her screen, “Is ridiculous.”
“Don’t you mean your brother?” Jon challenges, arching an eyebrow at Sansa before letting his eyes glide over the messages. They don’t talk directly to each other like this very often — rare moments here and there where they bump into each other at the Stark refrigerator grabbing snacks or passing hellos on the hallway, really. Arya’s much more likely to spend time with Robb and his friends than Sansa is, so she kind of didn’t know what to expect but somehow Jon teasing her back hadn’t crossed her mind.
“Nope, I refuse to claim him when he’s being this needy,” Sansa informs him, taking her phone back and pulling up the camera. Maybe Robb will shut up and stop interrupting her focus if she actually does what he asks and sends a picture, and she tilts the camera towards Jon, trying to catch him by surprise.
Jon sees what she’s doing, though, and throws an arm up to cover his face just in time. Sansa snaps the pic anyway, and Jon asks, “You’re not actually sending that, are you?” right as Sansa indeed hits send.
“Oops?” she says, not sounding very sorry about it at all. “You’re very photogenic,” she says sarcastically, showing him a picture that’s all forearm and a mop of curls, no distinguishable facial features anywhere to be seen.
“Aye, Robb certainly seems to think so,” Jon replies dryly, as her brother’s angry emojis pop up on the screen. NOT GOOD ENOUGH, SANSA! It’s just the first of many messages in all caps, and Sansa sighs heavily.
“I’m going to have to turn my phone off at this rate,” Sansa informs him, a dramatic edge to her tone. “Margaery’s going to think I’ve fallen off the planet when I’m supposed to be studying it, and all because you couldn’t just give Robb what he wants.” Not that she would be texting Margaery back during class anyway — Sansa can’t afford to be docked points for not paying attention, but she keeps up the act anyway because Jon’s slightly guilty facial expression is more entertaining than anything else that’s happened the past two days.
“Okay, okay,” Jon relents, attempting to smile for a picture after all. He looks like he’s grimacing more than anything, though, and Sansa doesn’t think this picture’ll make her brother any happier than the last. Robb’s probably going to keep pestering her no matter what she does, Sansa realizes, so she gets an idea — if her brother’s going to be obnoxious, she may as well win . She decides to turn the camera onto selfie mode and crouch beside Jon instead.
“What are you doing?” he asks her, as Sansa stretches a long, pale arm out to hold the camera towards both of them.
“Looking miserable with you,” she tells him, and Jon actually chuckles at that. A real chuckle, like the kind that’s usually reserved for Robb and maybe Arya, and the fact that she’s gotten Robb’s broody friend to look happy, even for a fleeting moment, feels like another small victory. Sansa clicks at just the right moment, catching both of them smiling, and sends it to Robb.
Go away, he’s mine now , she sends, with a kiss-blowing emoji for her brother, and her message elicits another small laugh from Jon. “Oh, he’s going to hate that,” Jon tells her, and she nods her head in agreement as Mr. Luwin comes back in and tells them they’ve got just a couple more minutes of break.
Jon and Sansa use that time to move her things over to the left corner desk beside his — so she can update him on any more messages she gets from Robb, of course.
And maybe, because if they’re going to suffer through the next four weeks of class, they may as well suffer together.
The third day of class passes in the same boring drone as the first two, although at least now when Sansa’s confused by something, she can turn to Jon and feel better about her fate, seeing an equally puzzled look reflected back in his eyes. They’re supposed to have a test on this on Friday, but neither one of them can seem to even remember what’s on their own continent, much less identify places in Essos, Sothoryos, or… whatever that other one is called, the one that’s only really recently been explored out west.
There’s no getting out of this, but at least they’re making the best of it together.
On the fourth day, they start passing notes. At first, it’s just Sansa telling Jon to stop tapping his pen so loudly , because everyone’s going to start staring at them if they keep it up, and then it’s Jon asking her if he thinks Mr. Luwin will notice if he eats his snack during class — Sansa tells him it’s probably quieter than his growling stomach, and to just go for it. Here and there, it’s a question about something their teacher has just said that one or the other of them missed, but by day’s end, it’s devolved into nonsense.
At least I can remember the name of the Basilisk Isles because of Harry Potter , Sansa writes smugly when she sees Jon struggling to fill in the region on his practice map.
You’re only making it more confusing, the Summer Islands look more snaky, I’m going to label them wrong , Jon writes back, and Sansa can see the frown on his face as he erases something on his map and replaces it with something else.
They do not! You need to get your eyes checked , Sansa scribbles.
My eyes work fine! Jon objects, staring pointedly at her to make his point.
Okay, prove it! What do you see when you look at me? Sansa writes, expecting him to write back something like a girl who’s terrible at geography or Robb’s little sister . They’ve fallen into an easy banter since Tuesday, one she’d never imagined having with him, but she likes it — the playful teasing reminds her of Robb, and makes the hours locked up in this room pass quicker.
He doesn’t always remind her of Robb, though.. Because Robb would never miss a chance to make fun of her, and he definitely wouldn’t make her heart skip a beat by writing back, A girl kissed by fire .
Okay, I guess your eyes work after all , Sansa concedes, and she quickly writes something that changes the subject — not back to geography, of course, but to something that doesn’t make her wonder if Jon’s trying to compliment her or if he thinks implying that his best friend’s little sister is gorgeous is just a normal, everyday thing to say.
They pass the rest of the class like this, and if Mr. Luwin notices, he doesn’t say anything. Even with a test tomorrow, Sansa’s in a considerably better mood when she leaves class that day. She’d been embarrassed that Jon was there to see how bad she is at geography when the class had started, but now she’s got a backpack full of notes that prove she’s grateful for his presence.
Sansa pulls open her map again when she gets home, realizing that she’s going to have to study twice as hard to get a good grade now that she’s ended up goofing off with Jon for half of the day.
Somehow, though, she doesn’t mind.
Friday’s class is blessedly short. They do a quick review session, and then they’re given their Sothoryos test, and once they’re done, they’re permitted to leave.
Sansa agonizes over hers, the shapes of each region of Sothoryos swimming together, and she can’t call back the clear picture in her head of what goes where. She feels confident in the Basilisk Isles, though, but getting one part of her map right is hardly enough to pass.
Beside her, Jon scribbles his answers furiously, as if he just wants to dump what’s in his brain and get out of there before he can second guess himself. He finishes much quicker than Sansa, and she wonders if he’ll wait for her to pow-wow about the test, or if she’ll just talk to him again on Monday when they get their grades back.
Sansa spends an extra thirty minutes writing, erasing, and rewriting answers until she finally turns her test in, too, and after a glance down the hallway to make sure it’s empty, she heads home for two mostly geography free days.
Sansa spends most of Saturday with her old friend Jeyne Poole, lounging outside in the sunlight and dreading that Sunday she’ll have to do all her homework for Monday’s class.
This next week is going to be focused on Essos , and she’s already upset about it. They’d covered it first, at King’s Landing Academy, and it was the test on Essos that had been the first F she’d received in her life.
Sansa had thought it was a fluke then, but the bad geography grades had just kept coming.
Jeyne notices her mood and tries to cheer her up, distracting her by asking about her glamorous King’s Landing friends, and if there are any cute boys that Sansa has her eyes on.
For a second, her brain flashes an image of black curly hair and soulful grey eyes, but she blinks once and it’s gone.
Then she’s gushing about Margaery’s brothers and Joffrey Baratheon and even Harry Hardyng — basically any boy she can think of that isn’t Jon Snow.
Sansa wakes early on Sunday morning, but she stays abed, avoiding her geography homework for as long as possible. By the time she finally gets up, eats breakfast, and showers, it’s close to midday, and she can hear the noise of her siblings around the house.
Arya and Rickon seem to be having some sort of Nerf gun fight, Bran’s at the kitchen table, snacking and reading a book, and she hears the sound of Robb and Theon shouting at some videogame inside of his room.
Sansa flops onto her bed, still in her towel, and scrolls through Instagram to put off thinking about stupid Essos and all the things she’s not looking forward to relearning this week. She watches Margaery’s story, a series of pictures from high tea in her garden with her grandmother, and Sansa wishes she were there, visiting with her friend like she’d wanted instead of at home with a stack of reading to do.
She can’t avoid it any longer, though — maybe if she gets through it quickly, she’ll even get a chance to have some fun like her siblings — and she stands up with a dramatic sigh, one she thinks no one can hear but her.
Except as she stands up, she realizes that she’d left her door half-open when she’d meant to close it, and she hears a chuckle from the other side of the door.
“That excited about the reading, huh?” Jon asks as he steps inside tentatively, the smile wiping from his face instantly as he realizes he’s walked in on Sansa in nothing but her towel.
“Sorry, the door was open — " he stammers, jerking his eyes away from her in a motion that looks surprisingly forced. “I’ll just be…” he trails off, hastily disappearing back into the hallway, and Sansa’s cheeks are flushed dark red as the door noisily closes behind him.
Jon still looks mortified when Sansa finds him in the kitchen by himself a few minutes later. She’s fully dressed this time, but he still won’t meet her eyes until she says, “At least it was you and not Theon, he wouldn’t have had the decency to look away.”
Sansa knows that the only thing that binds her brother’s two closest friends together is Robb himself, and that left to their own devices they’d probably be enemies rather than grudging acquaintances. She can understand why, too — Theon’s lovable in his own way, but still a bit of a prick, and he’s certainly not as quietly respectful as Jon is.
Her comment lands the way she hopes it will, and Jon looks up, the ghost of a smile etched into his features.
“Still,” he says sheepishly, “Maybe we should actually properly exchange numbers so that next time I can warn you before I come barging in to complain about classwork.”
“So you can text me from one room over? How very millenial of you,” Sansa giggles, although she’s already taking his phone from him and typing her number into his contacts. They have each other on social media, but they don’t really… talk , unless Robb’s there too. This is a new line of communication they’re opening up here, and she’s kind of excited about it.
"See you on the other side of all that reading," Sansa tells him with a wave, disappearing back into her room as he heads home. Barely half an hour passes before she gets a text from Jon, though, and she smiles at the exploded-brain emojis that pop up on her screen when he asks why the Bay of Dragons has so many different names. The reading suddenly doesn't seem so daunting, knowing that Jon's just a text away, suffering through it the same as she is.
Jon’s always been cute, in his weird, brooding way. He’s always seemed nice enough, too, well-mannered and like he’d be pleasant to talk to. But Starks don’t always share as well as they should, and Robb and Arya have staked their claim in him for so long that she’d never expected to form her own kind of friendship with him.
Maybe Sansa has one thing to thank geography for after all.