Work Text:
“It’s open,” Sansa calls when she hears a knock against her bedroom door, but she doesn’t shift her focus from the brief spread open across her desk. As the door swings open and Mya enters her peripheral vision, though, she looks up. The smile that comes to her lips is both involuntary and possibly a little too fond. “Hey.”
“Hey.” With a half-smile Mya leans against the doorframe, crossing her arms. She’s wearing a black robe and either little or nothing else; both of Sansa’s roommates were rather casual about near-nudity in a way Sansa herself was not. She’s seen Mya in almost every state of undress in the past year, but her eyes are still drawn to Mya’s long, strong legs, exposed by the short hem of the robe. As quickly as she looks, though, she looks away—because although Sansa had not been smart enough to avoid falling for her straight roommate, she did know how to keep that attraction under wraps.
If Mya noticed, there’s no hint of it in her face. “Got a minute? Or… a half-hour, maybe?”
Truthfully, Sansa does not—Friday might be an evening of rest for the average human, but 1L Sansa Stark has four case outlines and a legal writing assignment to get through this weekend. She sets down her pencil. “For you? Of course. What did you have in mind?”
A half-hour is too short for a movie, which is usually what Mya used to lure Sansa away from her desk when she noticed the stress of law school beginning to get to her. Whatever Mya wanted her for tonight was bound to be a departure from the norm.
Mya rubs the back of her neck. “You know how you have this insatiable urge to put me in a dress?”
“I wouldn’t call it insatiable,” Sansa demurs, but she ruins the effect by smiling. What had begun as a tactless comment of Sansa’s early in their acquaintance about how nice Mya would look if she ever bothered to dress up had become, over the past year, a way for Mya to lightly tease her, and Sansa didn’t mind it at all. The joke is especially welcome today—Mya has been quieter than usual for the past few weeks, for reasons Sansa has not been able to uncover.
She’s encouraged by the way Mya grins back. “Well, anyway… I have a date. Come help me pick out something to wear?”
Sansa blinks as what feels like her last remaining brain cell—it had been a long week—processes this information. To the best of Sansa’s knowledge, Mya hasn’t been on a single date since her ex-fiancé announced he was calling off their wedding by eloping to the Summer Isles with someone else. “Really?” she asks, and immediately wants to rewind time half a second and slap a hand over her mouth.
But Mya misinterprets her question, anyway: “Sure,” she says, with a wry smile. “Come make me pretty, Stark.” She pushes off the doorframe and walks away, not bothering to see if Sansa is following her.
Because of course Sansa is following her.
*
Sansa remembers being surprised by Mya’s room the first time she had been invited inside: she’d been expecting something messy, for reasons she could not later articulate, but instead it had been sparse and tidy. Mya didn’t have a lot of possessions, but the things she did own were well-cared for; over time, Sansa had learned she was much the same with her friends. That fact made Sansa’s inclusion into the circle of ‘people with whom Mya enjoyed spending time’ a precious thing, and something she refused to jeopardize by ever letting on that she wanted to make Mya come about a thousand times and possibly also adopt several children with her.
Mya’s room is not neat now.
“Wow,” Sansa says, stepping carefully between some discarded clothes on the floor as she moves further into the room. Half of Mya’s wardrobe must be scattered around the room—thrown over the neatly-made bed, hangers hooked through the pull-hardware on her chest of drawers.
“I know,” Mya says, crossing her arms again, and there’s so much frustration in her voice that Sansa’s sort of taken aback. Mya doesn’t get worked up like this, never. She’s such a steady presence, a perfect foil to Randa’s calculated irreverence and Sansa’s own worry-prone nature.
But right now she’s flustered, and the kind of help she needs is something Sansa can provide. “Where is he taking you?” She starts sorting through the clothes strewn across the bed, separating them into piles according to potential dress code classification.
“Dinner,” Mya says. After a beat, she adds, “Fancy.”
“Fancy dinner,” Sansa echoes, pushing aside an entire unsuitable pile. A thought strikes her. “Do you actually own a dress?”
Mya gives her a strange look. “Of course I do.” Fifteen seconds later she returns from her closet with four dresses on hangers. The one at the front of the group is a beautiful deep blue that will bring out Mya’s eyes, and certainly dress-code-appropriate; Sansa doesn’t have to look at the rest to know this is the one.
Wordlessly she takes the hangers from Mya, drops the other three dresses on the bed, and hands her back the blue dress. Obediently, Mya disappears back into the closet.
“Will I do?” she asks, when she emerges a moment later, looking so gorgeous Sansa’s heart skips a beat. It doesn’t strike her as the kind of dress Mya would purchase for herself, though: the one-shoulder style is beautiful, showcasing her tattoos and toned shoulders, but it’s also far more low-cut than anything Sansa’s ever seen her in, and the figure-hugging skirt would be a perfectly normal length on a shorter person, but on someone Mya’s height it’s almost scandalously short.
“He’ll love it,” Sansa promises, instead of saying something like I love it or Cancel and stay here. It’s absurd to be jealous of Mya’s date, considering there’s no way Mya would ever even consider her in a romantic light, but Sansa can’t help the way she feels.
Mya studies herself in the mirror on the back of the closet door, frowning a bit. She doesn’t seem very comfortable with what she’s seeing, and it’s on the tip of Sansa’s tongue to suggest she try on the more conservative wrap dress lying across the bed when Mya says, “Randa will be glad I’m finally wearing this, I guess. Can you help me do my makeup?”
She seems firmly decided to power through whatever negative feelings she has about the dress, so Sansa just says, “I can do that.”
They sit side-by-side on the bed with Mya’s meager collection of makeup, bodies angled toward each other. As Sansa unwraps the cellophane from an unopened eyeshadow palette, she does not fail to notice the way Mya fidgets with the dress, pulling it further down her leg, fingers curling in a fist around the hem.
And then, as Sansa begins to brush powder across Mya’s closed eyelid, she sees Mya tug up the bodice. Sansa sighs. “You hate it.”
“No,” Mya protests, and Sansa bops her on the nose with the brush, leaving a dusting of silvery-grey eyeshadow.
“Stop moving, and stop lying. You hate it.” As Sansa goes back to applying Mya’s makeup she carefully adds, “I know I don’t have to tell you this, but you don’t have to wear anything you don’t want to.”
“I’m allowed to want to be pretty sometimes,” is Mya’s stubborn answer. She rubs at her nose, and when the eyeshadow there is gone, Sansa grasps Mya’s chin in her fingers and turns her face to get at her other eye. She wants to tell Mya that she’s pretty every day, no matter what she’s wearing, but it feels too close to showing her hand. The line between friendly compliment and unwelcome come-on is disconcertingly difficult to locate, some days. Better to err on the side of caution.
When Sansa says nothing, Mya continues, in a quieter voice, “I... she’s so beautiful, Sansa. I don’t want to feel like an idiot standing next to her.”
She. Sansa barely hears any of the words that come after that one. She presses her lips together and aggressively refocuses on finishing Mya’s eye makeup without smudging anything. Her ears are ringing. “Look up,” she says, because she can’t say anything else.
Mya makes eye contact for a long moment, instead; after perhaps a half-second too long Sansa realizes Mya is trying to figure out how Sansa feels about this revelation. So she calls up her most gracious smile, determined not to let Mya believe, even for a second, that she has a problem with this. (It would be the strangest kind of hypocrisy, considering Sansa’s own sexual orientation, but she knows from personal experience that coming out is a messy, endless process, and logic doesn’t always take center stage.) “Look up,” she repeats, more gently, and when Mya does Sansa continues, “Where did you meet her?”
“Work,” Mya says, as Sansa brushes mascara over her lower lashes.
That turns Sansa’s smile into a real one. “If she liked you harnessed up and covered in chalk, she’ll like you in anything.” When she finishes with the mascara, she re-caps it and grabs Mya’s two tubes of barely-used lipstick, holding them up. Mya’s searching eyes are on her again. “Which is your favorite?”
Mya shrugs. “You pick.”
Pick which lipstick will best suit Mya, for the benefit of her date. Sure. Sansa sort of wants to scream, but instead she studies the two shades and opens the dusty pink that will accentuate the reddish tones beneath Mya’s skin. Sansa had been raised to be gracious and composed at all times, to force her own anxieties and insecurities deep down in the name of ladylike comportment. She knows how to do it now. As she applies the lipstick in short, precise strokes, she says, “You need to pick a different outfit,” and then takes advantage of Mya’s inability to argue back to continue, “because no matter how good you look—and you do—if you’re not comfortable wearing it, she’ll pick up on that. Trust me. If I were your date, I’d hate knowing you were only dressed like this to please me.”
She gets up to fetch a tissue from Mya’s dresser, and when she returns Mya is still studying her. Sansa sincerely hopes Mya cannot read minds, as she appears to be trying to do. “Blot,” she instructs, and Mya takes the tissue from her.
“If I don’t wear this, what will I?”
One of the other dresses is the first option that springs to mind, but her second thought is something much better. “Do you still have those tailored shorts with the paper-bag waist?” When Mya just raises an eyebrow, Sansa clarifies, “The black ones Randa bought you for your name day.”
“Oh,” Mya says with a smile. “Is that what they’re called? I like them. They make it look like I have a waist.”
“Good, go find them,” Sansa says. “I’ll be right back.” She slips out of the room and down the hall to her own closet, where she pulls out a sleeveless silk button-down that’s nearly the same color as the dress. Mya’s already changed out of the dress and into the shorts when Sansa returns, and once she’s tucked in the shirt (as per Sansa’s instruction), Sansa surveys her work.
“There,” she says, because Mya looks great. Comfortable, put-together, like a more polished version of her everyday self. “Fancy enough for any place she wants to take you, and if she’s got any taste at all, she won’t be able to take her eyes off you. What do you think?”
Mya’s staring in the mirror, fingering the collar of the shirt thoughtfully. “Good,” she decides.
Sansa lifts her chin, squaring her shoulders back. “Good. I should get back to work.” She summons every ounce of her composure to add, “Have a nice time.”
Mya’s voice stops her when she’s almost out the door. “Sansa.”
She stops and turns back.
“Thanks,” Mya says, looking like she’s wrestling with saying more. But though Sansa pauses to let her finish her thought, it soon becomes apparent nothing else is forthcoming.
“Anytime,” she says, and almost completely means it.
*
A few hours later, Sansa is sort-of watching a movie she’s seen a half-dozen times when the front door opens. From her position lying on the couch in the living room, she can’t see the door, so she tugs her blanket up to her shoulders again and braces herself for Mya and possibly also Mya’s date.
Instead she hears Randa’s surprised voice. “What are you doing out here, you slacker?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Sansa calls back; Randa’s rarely home before midnight, especially on the weekends.
“Office Guy tonight,” Randa says, coming into the living room from the foyer. “He was in the mood for some weird shit, and he’s the best guilt-tipper. I decided I had earned the rest of the night off.”
Sansa knows this is likely the extent of what Randa will tell her—she loves to hint, but doesn’t go into details about her clients unless someone asks—but she blushes all the same.
“You didn’t answer my question, Sansa.”
“Couldn’t focus,” Sansa says lightly, as if it doesn’t matter at all. “Decided I would be no good tomorrow if I didn’t take a break tonight.” It’s not exactly a lie, but it feels like one. She hasn’t been recuperating, just lying on the couch and thinking of all the things she’s neglecting. But when she’d been trying to focus on her schoolwork, all she could do was wonder how Mya’s date was going. She was going to be miserable and unproductive no matter what; at least this way she’s doing it in a horizontal position.
“By which you mean, Mya dragged you away from your desk kicking and screaming,” Randa says in a knowing tone as she sits on the opposite end of the couch, wiggling to squeeze in around Sansa’s feet. “Where is she, bathroom?”
Sansa scowls as she tugs the blanket Randa had disturbed back up. “On a date, actually,” she says (in what she hopes is a breezy and offhand tone).
“Oh, that’s right. The girl from the climbing gym. Valla? Dal? Something like that, right?”
“Didn’t ask,” Sansa mumbles; she knows she ought to have, but she hadn’t wanted to know the woman’s name. Before, Mya’s inability to return Sansa’s feelings was impersonal, just a matter of incompatible sexualities, but now… it was no longer a case of Mya not being interested in women. It was a case of Mya not being interested in Sansa, which hurt a lot more.
“Didn’t you?” Sansa can feel Randa’s shrewd eyes on her. “Well, I did. But you know my memory—only good for the salacious bits. Mya said she came in with a group of friends for a lesson and every sentence out of her mouth was flirtatious.”
Sansa does not want to hear this. “That’s nice,” she says, not taking her eyes off the television. She’s trying to project boredom into her voice so Randa will move on to some other topic of conversation, but it doesn’t work: Randa just continues,
“Did you happen to see what she was wearing? I tried to lend her a dress that unzips all the way down the front, but she just called me a pervert. Can you believe that?”
“Yes,” Sansa mutters. Randa pays no mind. Sansa can never quite decide if Randa knows, but the fact that Randa has never come out and asked is telling in itself.
“Of course, I never really expected her to take me up on it—I was just hoping if she hated that dress she might finally break down and wear the revenge sex dress I bought her after Mychel. It’s the perfect shade of blue and it makes her ass look incredible.”
Definitely the dress Mya almost wore. Sansa’s going to regret asking, but… “ ‘Revenge sex dress’?”
Randa winks. “You know, ‘The best revenge is revenge sex’? Please tell me she wore it, that Valhalla girl would probably buy me thank-you flowers.”
“Sorry,” Sansa says, before describing the outfit they’d settled on. All the while, though, she’s second-guessing why she had Mya change—had she, deep down, not wanted Mya to go anywhere looking that good? Was she really that selfish? But… no. Mya had looked just as good in what she left the house in, and infinitely more herself.
Randa nudges Sansa’s foot. When Sansa glances over, Randa’s watching her with a strange look on her face, brow furrowed. “That’s your shirt, not hers. Did you… did you help her get ready?”
Sansa does not want to know what Randa’s finding with that searching look, so she shrugs and returns her eyes (if not her attention) to the screen. “Mm-hmm. She asked me to. And her makeup, too.”
“And now you’re out here, what? Waiting to see how it went?” Gone from Randa’s voice is all pretense of teasing: she’s probing. She wants answers. Sansa does not intend to give them to her.
“I’m watching a movie,” Sansa says. “Self-care Sa… Friday.”
“Tell me something.” Randa waits until Sansa looks over at her, and then nods toward the screen. “They don’t end up together, do they?”
On the television, the main characters are exchanging desperate goodbyes in a train station. On the couch, Randa is looking at her in a way that makes Sansa want to squirm beneath the blanket and hide. Returning her eyes the screen, Sansa shakes her head.
Randa sighs, getting up from the couch. Not unkindly, she says, “Go to bed, Sansa. If she even comes home tonight… she probably won’t be alone.”
The unspoken Don’t put yourself through that lingers in the room long after Sansa hears the shower turn on. Sansa half-watches the movie until she heard the shower turn off again twenty minutes later, and drags herself up off the couch to begin her nighttime routine.
It’s barely nine.
*
Sansa’s just leaving the bathroom, flipping the lightswitch behind her, when she hears the front door open again. Like a coward, she takes a step backward, so that she’s hidden from view of the door; if it’s about to open to admit Mya and her date, Sansa wants at least a few seconds to collect herself.
The house is dark and quiet, though, and instead of the giggling whispers of two people too wrapped up in each other to remember to be quiet, Sansa only hears the clatter of Mya’s keys in the bowl she keeps on the foyer table.
And then: a quiet exhale and a soft, “Fuck.”
It doesn’t exclude Mya having brought her date back, but it does make it seem more unlikely. And she can’t get to her bedroom without passing through the living room, so Sansa decides to take her chance.
Mya hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights, but Sansa can make her out anyway, sitting in the center of the couch. Her head is tipped back against the cushion to stare at the ceiling. Sansa could probably slip right past her, but a creaky floorboard betrays her.
And—gods, Sansa hopes she imagined the flinch on Mya’s face as she catches sight of Sansa. She knows she doesn’t imagine Mya’s tired tone. “Hey, Sansa.”
“How was your date?”
Mya lets out a huff of a laugh. “Great,” she says, voice a cross between helpless and overwhelmed. “Really, really great.”
Cautiously, Sansa curls up on one of the empty cushions, body angled toward Mya. “You don’t seem very happy about that.”
“I’m not. She was so nice, and—I just felt like an asshole all night. I don’t…” Mya sighs. “I don’t hate dresses, you know. I don’t wear them often, but I’m not uncomfortable in them. But that was supposed to be my rebound dress, and I didn’t want to wear it on a date.”
It seems like an odd thing to be hung up on, especially since she hadn’t worn it. “Just because Randa calls it that doesn’t mean that’s what you were doing.”
“No,” Mya says. “No, the problem is that’s exactly what was happening, and putting on that dress made me own it. Maybe she wasn’t a rebound, but I was using her, and that’s not me, Sansa. That’s not what I want to go through life doing.”
“So why did you agree to go on a date with her?”
Mya glances at her. “Because I want someone I shouldn’t, and ignoring it hasn’t made it go away. I didn’t know what else to do.”
Sansa wonders how many more emotional blows she will have to withstand this evening. Any more might fell her. “Anyone would be lucky to have you—”
“Don’t give me that—”
“It’s not a line,” Sansa insists, all self-protective pretense dropped for once. “I mean it, Mya.”
Mya snorts. “Would you still be saying that if I said it was you?”
Stunned, Sansa freezes. The room gets very quiet as she desperately attempts to figure out if that was a hypothetical challenge on Mya’s part or a real confession. She’s afraid to hope—
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” The resignation in Mya’s tone tells Sansa all she needs to know; as Mya moves to get up, Sansa’s hand darts out to grab her wrist.
“Why—” Sansa stops, taking a deep breath, trying to marshal her thoughts among the hammering of her heart. “Why shouldn’t you want me?”
“Do you want the list alphabetically, or in order of importance?” Mya asks, but she doesn’t move away from Sansa’s touch. “You’re six years younger than me; I’m not even remotely your type; we’re roommates, for fuck’s sake.” Mya has her free hand fisted in the material of her borrowed shirt, right over her heart. “You were perfectly happy to dress me for a date with someone else.”
It takes a minute for Sansa to find her voice, but when she does, it’s steady. “All of that is wrong. Except for us being roommates.”
“Margaery Tyrell, Sansa.” Mya tugs her arm from Sansa’s grasp. “I have eyes.”
Sansa’s lips part in surprise. “Do you honestly think I’m so shallow?”
“I don’t know,” Mya says, clearly frustrated. “You always talk like you want to change the way I dress, but then tonight you told me to just be myself, and you picked out something I never would have expected you to.”
“I want everyone to look their best, always,” she says, struggling to articulate something she’s left unexamined her whole life. “I know what a difference it can make to feel confident in how you look, and I wanted that for you—but it didn’t take me very long to realize you draw that confidence from other things.”
Mya rubs at her temple. “You have no idea what Ysilla looks like, do you?”
Sansa blinks. “Mychel’s wife?”
“Uh-huh,” Mya says, avoiding her eye. “I know you weren’t around for the end of that, but she was petite and feminine and always wore nice outfits—just, everything his parents wanted me to be, all the stuff he said didn’t matter, but I guess maybe it mattered more than he wanted to say. I don’t wish I was like her, or want him back, but… Sansa, when we met, you were literally dating an underwear model. The least I could do was learn from my mistakes.”
So all the time Sansa thought they had been sharing an inside joke, Mya had been covering her insecurities with humor. More than that, Sansa’s initial faux pas had probably been even worse than she realized, coming as it had on the heels of Mya’s breakup. “The dress thing… I thought it was a joke. All this time, I thought you understood that I like you just the way you are. You don’t look anything like Margaery, but you don’t need to for me to find you attractive. And I really, really do.”
Mya considers this for what feels like forever. “That’s… yeah, okay,” she says. “I believe that.”
Relief courses through her. This isn’t exactly what Sansa had thought she’d use her legal education for, but if it gets her Mya she’ll sit here all night systematically refuting Mya’s objections. So while Mya’s feeling agreeable, she continues, “Six years is not that big of a deal, either. Not at our ages. And the older we get, the smaller that gap going to seem, so don’t use that as an excuse either.”
Mya half-smiles at that. “Okay,” she concedes.
“And I hated dressing you for your date—if you don’t believe me you can ask Randa. I was wallowing in self-pity when she came home, it was pathetic. And as for the roommates thing—”
Mya’s hand covers her mouth. Their faces are so close that Sansa can really only see her eyes, which are sparkling with amusement. “I get it. You want to fuck me.”
And this is what’s been missing, lately. This buoyancy.
“Obviously,” Sansa says, as Mya takes her hand away. She can feel the blush coming to her cheeks. “But not just that—”
“It wouldn’t be just that,” Mya interrupts. She smiles, shaking her head. “Fuck. I didn’t… I didn’t know, Sansa. And I’ve been looking, lately. Hoping. You never said, you never even hinted—”
She cuts Mya off with a gentle kiss. She doesn’t want to bring the mood down with a discussion of how confusing it can be to navigate female friendships as a sapphic woman; if Mya hasn’t encountered that yet, she soon will. So instead she says, “Is that clear enough for you?”
“Absolutely not,” Mya says, without a second’s hesitation. She leans back into the couch cushions, pulling Sansa onto her lap, and Sansa touches her fingertips to Mya’s cheeks. “You’re going to have to clarify further.”
What begins as sweet kisses escalates so much quicker than Sansa had expected it would; before she knows it Mya has her mouth on Sansa’s neck, her collarbone, the swell of her breast, and she just keeps working her way down while Sansa’s fingers fumble with the buttons on Mya’s shirt. As she slips the first open, though, the living room light flips on.
Sansa moves to scramble off Mya’s lap, but Mya keeps her there with her hands on Sansa’s hips. Randa’s standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, eyebrow raised. “Really, you two. In a shared living space.” Randa’s voice drips amused disapproval. “I had hoped at least you would be more modest than that, Sansa.”
“Thought you were working,” Mya says, completely unperturbed, as a blush creeps up Sansa’s neck and onto her cheeks, because Sansa had known Randa was home. She’d known, and she’d been about to take Mya’s shirt off in the living room anyway.
Randa studies her nails. “Came home early. If you two turn into that couple, I reserve the right to dump cold water on you whenever it gets unbearable.”
Mya catches Sansa’s eye and winks, and it must be the natural high of learning that Mya wants to be 'that couple' with her—without input from her brain, Sansa finds herself saying, “Better go find a bucket, then…”
Randa throws her hands up in mock-annoyance as Mya laughs. “You’ve already corrupted her? Unbelievable. I refuse to be a party to this horny nonsense—good night.”
“Hey, Randa,” Mya calls, as she disappears down the hall. “Scale of one to ten, how much was Sansa moping while I was out tonight?”
“Like a fucking fifteen,” Randa hollers back. “She was so sad she made me sad.”
Mya raises an eyebrow as they hear Randa’s bedroom door shut. “A fifteen,” she echoes, making a 'yikes' face. “That’s pretty embarrassing.”
But it’s hard to be embarrassed about it when Mya’s clearly trying not to smile. “Hush,” Sansa says, attempting to silence her with a kiss, but Mya ducks it at the last minute, bringing her lips to Sansa’s ear instead.
“You know what I’ve been wondering a lot lately?” Mya murmurs.
She’ll play along. “What?”
“How far down this blush goes.” And then her lips are on Sansa’s neck again, more or less picking up where they’d left off. They should move this to one of their bedrooms, Sansa knows, but... later. She’d dressed Mya earlier tonight; it’s long past time to un-dress her.