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Chapter Text

“You’ll only make it worse for yourself if you throw a tantrum.”

“I’m not throwing a tantrum.” says Sansa, petulant. “I’m expressing myself. Something you’ve always encouraged us to do.”

Her mother closes her eyes, very briefly, with a sigh. 

“Do you mind expressing yourself outside of the car, please?”

In the rearview mirror, the sign to the pumpkin patch is rippling in the wind, obnoxiously orange. Her father, Arya, Rickon, and Bran are waiting off to the side, by the entrance.

The faster she gets this over with, the faster she can go home.

The gravel crunches underneath the heels of her boots as she shuts the sliding door to the minivan gently, despite her mood.

She’s never really been one for tantrums.

“Thank you.” Her mother says.

Sansa scowls, arms crossed over her chest sulkily. 

As they walk towards the entrance, her mother slings an arm around her shoulders, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. “You used to like coming here once, you know.” 

Castle Black Farm is really all but a tradition in her household. Growing up, Sansa never objected once. There was always so much to do: treasure hunting, pumpkin picking, hay rides, carnival games. And she always came home full of pie and cider and hot chocolate and candy she’d managed to sneak behind her parent’s back.

A riot of a time. For an elementary schooler. 

“Yeah, when I was eight.” Sansa huffs. “I’m not a kid anymore. Not that your husband has noticed.”

“My husband?” Her mother chokes out a laugh. “Who is also your father? And loves you very much?”

“That’s debatable.” Sansa mutters under her breath.

Her mother heaves a great big sigh, this time kissing her on her head, then her cheek. 

“There’ll be other parties, baby.” She says. 

Right. Other parties. She has a snowball’s chance in hell of Joffrey inviting her to another party ever again, especially if he knew where she’d gone instead. She’s explained this to her mother several times, and is fixing to explain it once more, when her father interrupts her. 

“There you two are.” He has Rickon on his shoulders, who is laughing uncontrollably, holding onto the top of his head with both of his skinny arms, “Are we ready?”

Sansa has to bite her tongue to keep from saying no, while her mother reaches a hand up to tickle Rickon’s side, to which he laughs some more, shrinking away from her. 

“I don’t know.” She says. “Are we ready guys?”

Arya and Bran chorus an impatient “Yes!” while Rickon whoops so loudly, Sansa wants to hide behind the nearest pumpkin and smash her head until it becomes a bloody pulp. 

“Alright, gang.” Her father says.

“Let’s go, gang!” Rickon declares, pointing onward, like the captain of a ship. 

Arya and Bran all but bumrush the ticket booth, and her father and Rickon follow. Her father holds out his hand to her mother, and she takes it, gently swinging it back and forth between them. 

“Come on, you.” She tosses over her shoulder. 

Sansa feels her right eye pulse. 

At that very same moment, she receives a text. Sansa pulls her chiming phone out of her purse and squints at the screen. Jeyne’s name is at the top of her notification center, accompanied with the dancing twin emoji and the arrow heart. Attachment: 1 image.

It’s a picture of Jeyne with her sisters Jayde and Joy, holding matching orange solo cups in their hands, all wearing their most convincing pouts. 

Wish you were here!!!!!

Sansa sends her a litany of emojis that all contain some form of tears before dropping her phone back into her purse, and soldiering forward. 

She really, mistakenly thought that it couldn’t get any worse. 

But there are kids her age everywhere. Most of which she recognizes, thanks to the entire town being the size of a freaking broom closet. Though almost all of them whose faces that she knows of are actually from neighboring schools that she’s run into at football games. So they’re about as familiar with her as she is with them, which is to say—not at all.

She wishes that made her situation better. 

But while waiting outside of the bathroom for Arya, all she can do is blush when a group of older girls comes out whispering and giggling, and her entire body threatens to cave in on itself while waiting in line for the ferris wheel with Bran as some guy in front of her squeezes the back of his girlfriend’s thigh, dangerously close to her butt, and during the treasure hunt, she hears a loud whoop of joy as a group of boys hoists a girl into the air after she wins the ring toss, peppering kisses all over her cheeks.

None of them could give a damn about her, but for some reason, she feels like they’re all watching her. Mocking her.

Because they’re allowed to grow up. They’re being trusted to grow up. Meanwhile, she can’t even get her father to trust her enough to go to one measly party because he still sees her as a little girl. 

That much is evidenced when he gifts her a stuffed animal dressed as a mummy after winning the ring toss. 

“You used to love these things.” He bops her on the nose with the toy. “Remember?”

She does. Just like she remembers packing them in a box and sticking them in an attic so she could make room for her makeup table and her bookshelf. Just like he should have remembered, because he helped her do it. 

“I haven’t played with stuffed animals since I was eight.” Sansa mutters under her breath.

Her father’s face falls, a little, and for a second, she feels bad. 

“Can I have it, Dad?” Rickon asks at his side, blissfully ignorant.

“You can hold it.” Her father says back, ruffling his hair. “Maybe she’ll change her mind.”

Then, her mother comes back with Bran and Arya, and if any of them notice that she’s 10 times more miserable than she was before, they don’t say a word about it. 

Her savior comes in the form of a letterman jacket in black, silver, and white—North Westeros High’s signature colors. And there’s her older brother by the basketball hoop game with his signature grin. 

Her brother. Star running back. Class President. The source of every female teacher’s semi creepy adoration. He didn’t need to go to Joffrey’s party because his place in the hierarchy of things is already solidified. And no one's gonna question him, anyway. He’s missing the party in a cool sorry-I-had-plans way. 

He’s never had to try to be cool. Not that she’d ever tell him that. 

“Mom, can I go with Robb and Jeyne?” Sansa tugs on her elbow.

Her mother is helping Rickon untie the little drawstring bag he dropped all his gems in, which he double knotted for whatever reason made sense in his seven-year old mind. 

“Robb is on a date, honey.” She says, without looking up. “I don’t think he’d appreciate you third wheeling.”

Jeyne Westerling is at his side, clutching a stuffed animal underneath each arm, all while holding her phone up to record him to the best of her ability.

One of the nicer girls that he’s dated. And she’s lasted longer than six months, so they had plenty of time for dates where they could spend quality time together. 

“He said I could come. I texted him.” Sansa lies. “Please?”

Her mother looks up, chewing on her lower lip. Asking to see the text message would mean admitting that her beloved daughter is capable of lying to her, which she almost doesn’t want to admit as much as the fact that Robb is an asshole 40% of the time.

Being the eldest golden children really does have its perks, occasionally. At least where her mother is concerned. 

Her father is at the counter with Arya and Bran, shooting water at toy ghosts, and Sansa can tell that she’s contemplating on deferring to him, and even the slightest chance means that she can kiss getting away from here goodbye. 

“Please, Mama?” She pleads. “Just for a little while?”

Her mother sighs. 

“Just for a little while.” She finally relents. 

“Thank you, thank you.” Sansa jumps up and down, hugging her quickly, before rushing off so she doesn’t change her mind at the last minute. 

“Stay with your brother!” Her mother calls out after her. “And answer the phone when I call!”

“Okay!” Sansa says over her shoulder, a little frantically, because Robb and Jeyne are starting to move away out of her line of sight. 

Luckily, she manages to catch up to them, which is a little hard to do in heeled boots. But they’ve stopped by a concession stand giving out candied apples. Jeyne notices her first, and smiles.

“Hey, Sansa.” She greets.

“Hey, Jeyne.” She says back.

With a stuffed ghost tucked underneath his arm, Robb is fishing his wallet out of the backpocket of his jeans. He raises his eyebrows at her. “What’s up?”

“Mom said I can hang out with you.” She tells him.

Robb barks out a laugh. “No, you cannot. Are you crazy?”

Fortunately, thanks to 15 years of experience, Sansa anticipated this response. She tucks her hands behind her back. “Mom said you have to let me.”

“Oh my god. ” He hisses, because thanks to past experiences, he totally believes her. He starts looking around for the offending parent in question, and almost takes out his phone—

“I don’t mind.” Jeyne says.

Robb pauses.

Not because what she’s said has made him magically change his mind, or anything, but because of the fact he said it in the first place. If he did everything in his power to shoo her away now, it’d only make him look like an asshole in Jeyne’s eyes—who is a fellow annoying little sister herself. 

He appears to be fighting the very basic instinct of telling her to get lost right now, as his hand glances over his phone in his back pocket, mouth tight. 

“Besides, you can’t make both of us go into the corn maze.” Jeyne moves her stuffed prizes to one arm so she can link arms with Sansa. “It’s two to one.”

“And I’m the one with the tickets.” Robb points out. 

“I have tickets too.” Sansa speaks up. 

“We have tickets too. So there.” Jeyne sticks her tongue out at him. “Do you want a candy apple, Sansa?”

“How are you offering her things with my money?” Robb grumbles. 

“I can buy it.” Jeyne says, a threatening hand shadowing the cover of her purse. 

Robb’s eyes narrow at her. “Don’t you dare.”

They’re up next in line, then, and Robb steps forward with his wallet. Jeyne leans into her ear to whisper, “Works every time.” 

They both dissolve into giggles, and manage to pull together some semblance of a straight face when Robb comes back with their apples. He doesn’t buy it for a second.

“Just for that,” he says, “We’re going into the corn maze next.”

They don’t go into the corn maze. 

But they do go on the Haunted House ride, where a vampire’s fake teeth fall into her lap and Jeyne shrieks so loud that Robb can’t stop laughing for the rest of the circuit. And then they go to the petting zoo, so Robb can make it up to Jeyne for laughing at her. Sansa gets her face licked by a baby goat, which tickles, even though its tongue is surprisingly soft. 

Afterwards, they watch some farmers make apple cider and drink it fresh straight from the press. Then, they go into the bouncy pumpkin castle, where Robb isn’t allowed in because he can’t even fit into the doorway, so her and Jeyne jump around for ten minutes, holding hands and trying to do tricks in the air and giggling because they’re failing miserably while all the little kids cheer them on. Robb is grumpy when they leave, stating that they were in there forever, and Jeyne makes it up to him by buying him a slice of harvest pie. Sansa isn’t even annoyed when she starts kissing him all over his face as he eats. But it does remind her of Joffrey, who she has attempted to only think about sparingly. This time, though, she decides not to wallow in self pity. This time,  she actively decides to push the thought of him away. It works for a couple seconds, and for those few seconds, she’s content. 

Of course, that’s when Robb decides to ruin it all. 

“Look!” He points his finger, something their mother would admonish him for if they ever saw him do it. “There’s Jon.”

Sansa’s stomach drops. 

Because he isn’t lying. Even though she literally hopes with everything inside of her that he is as she follows his line of vision, he isn’t. 

He’s exchanging change with a blonde who is trying to accept said change with one hand, the other clutching the bottom of a rowdy three year old, squirming in her arms. She drops two coins, and he scoops them up from her, dropping them back in her hand with a half smile, pushing his hair out of his face. 

“I have to go to the bathroom.” Sansa blurts. Much too quickly and loudly.

Not that Robb hears. Or cares. “He’s just right there,” He says. Right before forging on. 

Sansa has no choice but to follow him.

Jeyne does the same, hand around his inner arm, but Sansa lags behind slightly, withdrawing her phone from her purse. She immediately begins to type a variety of keyboard smashes to Jeyne, along with short, clipped, barely coherent sentences requesting help while simultaneously promising to end her life in the next ten seconds, or however long it takes her to get to the damn table--

Which isn’t long. At all. 

“There’s no way your mom is letting you supervise all these kids.” Robb calls out. 

Sansa had resolved to look at her phone and absolutely nowhere else until she heard the sound of his voice. 

Kind of warbled from the sucker in his mouth, which is an objectively distracting red thanks to the flavoring. Too dark to be strawberry. Cherry, probably. The stick is a slash of white poking out of his mouth. He’s trying not to grin while also managing to keep the candy in. An impressive feat. 

“I’m great with kids.” Jon says. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

It’s hard to tell whether he’s being wry, or he’s trying to assuage the worries of the few parents whose eyes had widened slightly at Robb’s words. From the way they both shove at each other jokingly upon being in near proximity, Sansa thinks it might be both. 

“You are pretty busy.” Jeyne says. 

This time, he does grin, to the best of his ability. “It’s my charming personality.”

Robb snickers and Jeyne smiles that smile that people do often when they haven’t been around Jon and Robb for long enough and have no idea what’s going on. But seven months is long enough for her to know to not take it personally. 

“Oh, it’s so tiny!” She cries, picking up one of the pumpkins on display. It’s orange and plump, and fits perfectly in her cupped palms. 

“It’s only one dollar.”  Jon says. It’s not the most convincing sales pitch.

“She.” Jeyne beams, cradling her pumpkin in one palm so she can open up her purse. “Her name is Francine.”

“Don’t you dare.” Robb warns, before she’s even got her wallet out.

An argument ensues, mainly because Jeyne is insisting that the pumpkin is for her mother and that she should buy it, which makes Robb even more adamant on the fact that he should buy it, because her mother doesn’t like him, which leads Jeyne to repeatedly insist that isn’t true. 

Sansa turns around, trying to avoid what is starting to sound like an uncomfortable conversation. She pretends to check her phone for good measure, though her lockscreen is empty. Not even a weather warning. She unlocks it and pretends to type something, nonetheless. Out of politeness, of course.

Not sheer awkwardness.

“Hi, Jon.”

There’s a brief, nonsensical, embarrassing moment after she registers that he’s speaking to her when she contemplates pretending not to hear him. Thankfully, the rational part of her brain wins out.

She slips her phone into her purse, smoothing out the front of her sweater for no reason in particular. “Hi, Jon.”

“That wasn’t so hard, now was it?” He takes the sucker out of his mouth, and it perches between his thumb and forefinger like a cigarette—which she secretly suspects he smokes. He shakes his head. “Kids and their phones, these days.”

Sansa is rolling her eyes before she can stop herself. “Spare me, Dad.” 

His mouth is half quirked, a glimmer of a smile threatening to peek through—something that always happens every time he sees even a hint of insolence from her. It amuses him.

“I only wish I could be as cool as your Dad.” He says.

Cool. Her dad is a 40 something year old banker who works in a stuffy office and spends his weekend in the garage working on old cars. His idea of a good time is the outdoors. He’s the definition of not cool . 

Jon is—well, it’d probably just be easier to say what he isn’t. 

He isn’t a jock—he’d made it an entire season before he dropped out of the soccer team sophomore year simply because he didn’t like being told what to do by people who weren’t better than him. He isn’t popular, exactly—but there is a certain status that comes with being in such close proximity with Robb that he never really bothers to take advantage of. And he isn’t really concerned with what other people think, either, though sometimes she has a suspicion that he’s only pretending not to care, even if it is a lot more trouble than it’s worth. 

That’s what Jon Snow is. Trouble. 

“You’re already too cool for me.” She says. “You don’t need any help.”

For me. Like he was personally made for her in a factory, or something she found defective that wasn’t quite to her liking. Like she thought of him as belonging to her. 

Why can she never say the right thing around him?

Jon opens his mouth, as if to speak, but she cuts him off before she can begin, very swiftly, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

And she walks—not runs —away from the table very quickly.

She doesn’t have a crush on Jon Snow.

It’s something so ridiculous, so far removed from her realm of reality, that just thinking about it makes her laugh.

He’s known her since she was born. They took baths together. He’s avenged her on behalf of her stolen halloween candy. They’ve worn matching Christmas pajamas. He calls her father his uncle. A crush isn’t what’s going on here.

But he does make her indescribably, unaccountably nervous. 

She has no idea when it started. It’s all foggy and not something she really likes to think about. Somewhere between middle school and elementary school— literally, he was in middle school and she was still in elementary. Sometime after he picked up that stupid guitar. Definitely around the time he got his ears pierced, she knows that for certain, because she could hardly look him in the eye for weeks after that, and that was plenty of time for something to fester—

Not a crush, though.

She’s not standing behind a portable restroom, texting Jeyne Poole again, because she has a crush on Jon Snow. Unless hell has frozen over. Or pigs have started flying. 

Jeyne isn’t even answering, anyway. Of course, she’s at a party, but they never take so long to answer each other. Sansa checks instagram, hoping to see some sign of her.

She doesn’t even get a chance to check her story before she sees Theon Greyjoy’s post at the very top of her feed. She doesn’t even think anything of it until she sees his hand resting on a single brown leg, and a familiar pair of shoes.

Her shoes.

Sansa lets out a groan so loud when she looks up people are staring at her. She sends both Jayde and Joy a text letting them know the school whore currently has their little sister in his clutches, despite everyone’s many warnings about him. 

If there’s one thing Jeyne is gonna do, it’s whatever the hell she wants. 

She forces her phone back into her purse. Her irritation with Jeyne’s stubborness is enough to make her forget about her own embarrassment, so she makes her way back over to Jon’s booth, where Robb and Jeyne Westerling have clearly made up, because they’re wrapped up in each other’s embrace, face to face. Jon is counting the money in the cashbox, clearly trying his best to ignore them. 

She almost feels bad for leaving him alone. 

“There you are.” Jeyne says to her, cheeks pink. 

“We were just gonna take all these to the car.” Robb puts in, barely allowing her to finish. 

These being the stuffed animals he’d won for Jeyne. A witch, a ghost, a black cat plush, and a green alien—a whopping running total of four. This entire time, they’d been carrying them around. 

Before Sansa can give any assent, Robb says, “You stay here.”

It takes her a moment to realize what he’s saying exactly.

“What?” She nearly squawks. “But—”

“You can have the rest of my pie.” Jeyne breaks in. “You practically devoured yours.”

Her face burns, and she swears she feels Jon’s eyes on her. “No I didn’t.”

“You can stay here and finish it.” Robb goes on, like she hadn’t even spoken. “We’ll be gone for five minutes max. Besides—it’s dark out, and we parked pretty far. It’s too dangerous for you.”

“Then why are you taking her?” Sansa accuses. 

She has a pretty good idea of why , on the account of the fact that she wasn’t born yesterday and Jeyne’s cheeks are about as pink as her scarf and Robb isn’t even bothering to hide the way his hands are trying to sneak up underneath her jacket. 

“Well—” Jeyne stammers. 

“She’s cold. She’s getting her jacket from the car.” Robb says, then upon realizing his hands are brushing her jacket, adds, “A warmer one.”

Her entire body jerks away from him then as a giggle erupts from her, and Robb pulls her close to him, arm around her waist, trying his best to keep a straight face.

“And we parked in the mud.” Jeyne says. “So much mud! It rained earlier and—I know how much you love those shoes—”

“Five minutes.” Robb cuts her off. “Promise. You don’t mind?”

Sansa almost says that yes, she does mind, but then she realizes that he’s talking to Jon. He looks at her, then away, lifting a single shoulder into a shrug. 

“We’ll be alright.” He says.

No, they most certainly will not. 

“I don’t need a babysitter.” Sansa blurts, voice embarrassingly high, at the same time Robb declares, “Great!”

“Be back soon!” Jeyne chirps, but Robb is already tugging her away until they’re all but jogging away. 

Sansa stands there for a moment, bewildered.

“They just ditched me.” She says to herself, in complete and utter disbelief.

“They’ll be back when they’re done.” 

Jon is sitting now, sucker gone. His mouth is still red, and his hair is still ridiculously curly and he is still wearing that thin silver hoop in his left ear that her mother had ranted about for hours to her father after she first saw him with it when him and Robb were in eighth grade, scandalized , and he still does that thing with his hands, where he goes to crack his knuckles but doesn’t follow through. He does that a lot when she’s around.

There’s a chair next to him, on the other side of the table. He bumps it with an elbow pointedly.

Sansa hesitates. 

“I’m not gonna bite you.”  He says.

Her cheeks warm up.

She rounds the table, not too fast and most certainly not too slow. 

“Maybe I’ll bite you.” She counters.

It’s not the most clever of comebacks, and frankly makes her feel even more embarrassed, but it’s something. Better than nothing. Or so she tries to convince herself, as she sits down.

He snorts at that. “You used to, actually. Regularly.”

Sansa scowls. “Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Did not. ” She insists stubbornly, horrifiedly.

“Did too.” He repeats, grinning. “Mom used to call you sweet tooth.”

Jon tweaks at her chin, and Sansa bats his hand away.

She has a more clearer memory of that time in her life than she would like to admit, the nickname stirring something in her brain. She scowls again. 

“That would imply that you were sweet. Which you weren’t. Ever. ”

“I must have been. You couldn’t get enough of me.” 

Her heart skips a beat, while the rest of her manages to not crawl underneath the table and never come out, settling for a halfhearted eye roll.

Silence lapses, momentarily. 

“You wanna paint a pumpkin?”

Sansa narrows her eyes. “I’m not a kid.”

“No.” Jon says slowly, brows raised. “But you do like to paint.”

She blushes. Again.

She kinda hates that he’s right.

There’s a smooth, plump pumpkin not too far from her. A bit bigger than the ones the kids are going for and worlds smaller than the ones the adults were lugging away in wagons. It’s a big enough canvas but still small enough to  carry comfortably with both hands. She pulls it over towards her. 

“Don’t worry about it.” He says, when she starts to open her purse. “Free of charge.”

Sansa frowns. “I have money.” 

“My mom would kill me if I took your money.” He shakes his head, but he’s not really meeting her eyes. “Really. What kind of paint do you want?”

She chooses white, red, and black. He squirts her paint on a paper plate. The brushes are thin and spindly, not quite what she’s used to. But just putting her brush in the paint for a couple seconds makes her feel better. There’s a moment where she’s just dragging her brush across the plate, and though she’s not doing anything significant, it calms her. Soothes her. 

They’re quiet for awhile. She’s painting, and he’s watching her paint. Or her face. Or something like that. She knows it she looks up, she’ll start acting weird all over again, and she likes this feeling of normalcy. 

Sansa clears her throat. “Where are your parents?”

In her peripheral vision, she watches Jon turn away, leaning back against his chair. He snorts. “Probably making out in the cornfield like a couple of teenagers.”

Sansa can’t help but laugh. 

Jon’s parents are just as disgustingly in love as her own, only they’re a little better at not forcing it down everyone else’s throats. She supposes there are worse things that she could be complaining about, but she knows in her heart it isn’t really a complaint at all. She loves the way her parents love. Howland and Lyanna, too. 

“Saw yours maybe 10 minutes ago.” He says. “Bran came to get Jojen.”

Jojen is to Bran as Jon is to Robb. She isn’t really surprised. “Where’s Meera?”

Jon rolls his eyes. “By the goats, mooning over Stone.”

When they stopped by the petting zoo earlier, Sansa didn’t see Meera, but she didn’t see Mya Stone either. She decides to keep this information to herself, because more than anyone, she knows how big brothers can be. 

“Leaving you stuck with pumpkin duty?”

“It’s not so bad.”

She thinks he might be looking at her, but she’s too afraid of looking up from her pumpkin to check. Her stupid heart stammers all the same. 

“You didn’t wanna go to the party?” Sansa blurts, anxious to fill the rapidly approaching silence even before it arrives.

This time, she does look up, but only because Jon is taking so long to answer. It turns out he’s performing the world’s longest eye roll. 

“I wasn’t invited.”

“Oh.” She says, voice small.

It was no secret that Jon and Joffrey didn’t like each other, although it wasn’t as overstated as his rivalry with Robb. Of course he wouldn’t be at his stupid party. She mentally kicks herself for even asking. 

 “Were you?”

She looks up. “What?”

“The party.” He stares at her.  “You knew about it. Were you invited?”

For some reason, she doesn’t want to answer that question. 

“You knew about the party too.” She says evasively.

“I’m a senior.” He points out.

Sansa bristles. “Just because I’m not a senior doesn’t mean I’m blind, deaf and dumb. I didn’t know it was some huge secret.”

She turns back to her pumpkin again, focusing all of her energy on the white streaks of paint she’s making with the glide of her brush.

“I guess that’s a yes, then.” Jon says flatly.

Sansa scowls at him, though she directs it at her pumpkin, even though it did nothing to merit such a reaction. 

“Not that it’s any of your business,” She says stiffly,  “But yes.”

He doesn’t say anything to that and she thinks— hopes— the conversation is over.

It isn’t.

“He’s an asshole.”

Sansa grips her brush. 

“And he looks like a girl.” adds Jon.

“He’s prettier than any of the girls you’ve dated, that’s for sure.” She mutters under her breath.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

More silence.

“It sounded like you said something.” He says.

Sansa sniffs. “That sounds like your problem.”

“It sounds like you’re lying.”

“Well you sound annoying.”

Jon scoffs.

She nearly jumps when she feels his fingers close in threateningly on her right side, nearly splattering paint on her sweater. 

“This is cashmere!” She yelps, squirming away, all too late. “Jon, stop—”

But giggles are starting to bubble up her throat, as much as she tries to clench her jaw down against them. She tries to fold in half, both to drop the paintbrush safely in the grass and shield her stomach from the ruthlessness of his tickling fingers. She only succeeds in the former. 

“Not until you tell me what you said.” He demands, chin digging into her shoulder. 

“People are staring.” She gasps between breaths.

“Because you’re annoying.” 

“ I’m annoying—”

Before she can deliver her scathing reply, his tickling is renewed with a ferocity that causes a shrieking laugh to peel from her throat.

A sharp whistle cuts through the air, stilling both of their movements.

“Yoohoo!”

Just twenty feet or so, Lyanna and Howland Reed are coming into view. Their faces are pink with cold and they’re swinging their hands back and forth. Lyanna is using her other hand to wave at them. 

Jon’s hands are leaving her before she can even think about elbowing him in the stomach. Still suspicious, Sansa wraps an arm around herself before she allows herself to wave back. 

“Hey lady!” Lyanna greets her when she’s less than a stride away. Sansa rises to meet her. 

“Hey, Aunt Lyanna.” She hugs her, then Howland, who squeezes her tight like he always has, trying to make her laugh. And she does. 

“We didn’t mean to interrupt.” Lyanna says, voice almost coy. She looks down at her, then Jon.

“Mom.” He says, voice flat and unimpressed. But she thinks she sees a flush crawl up his neck. 

Lyanna just laughs. 

Sansa has no idea what’s going on.

“He was torturing me.” She says. “You saved my life.”

“You poor thing.” Lyanna teases. 

“Cruel our boy is.” Howland agrees, to which Jon scoffs: “hey.” But he doesn’t reply. He rounds the table instead, stopping right where she was sitting.

 “Working on another masterpiece for us?”

He’s looking at her pumpkin. That reminds Sansa to pick up the brush she dropped onto the grass. She places it back on the paper plate. 

“It’s supposed to be a weirwood tree.” She dusts her hands off on the back of her jeans. 

“I think it’s beautiful.” Lyanna says.

Sansa blushes. “You can’t even tell what it is yet.”

“Everything you make is beautiful.” Howland waves her off. “We wanted to ask you for help with the displays but it completely slipped our minds.”

“We made do, though.” Lyanna wraps an arm around his waist, leaning into him.

The display pumpkins are cute. There’s one that looks like a donut, and another that looks like a witch, with a green face to match. And there’s just one that looks like a regular jack o’ lantern. 

“I like them.” Sansa says truthfully.

Lyanna laughs a little. “That’s very sweet of you.” 

“It seems like she’s running this counter more than you.” Howland says to Jon, right before ruffling his hair. 

“Both of us put together are doing more than you two.” Jon grumbles, batting his hand away, smoothing his hair back in place.

 “You’re right.” says Lyanna, with a dramatic sigh.

That causes Jon to look at both of them with suspicion, “I am?”

“Go on.” Lyanna makes a shooing motion. “You two stretch your legs. Find something fun to do. We’ll take it from here.” 

You two.

Jon doesn’t waste any time. He all but springs from his chair, rounding the table, kissing his Mom’s cheek on the way.

Sansa just sort of stands there.

“If you see your sister, tell her to come here.” Howland says. 

“That too.” Lyanna adds.

“Fine.” Though Jon is already walking backwards. He jerks his chin up. At her. “Are you coming?”

With him?  

Sansa opens her mouth, but nothing comes out. 

“Go on.” Lyanna repeats, hands on her shoulders. “You look too cute to hide behind a counter all night. We’ve got this.”

But does she? 

Sansa doesn’t allow herself to think about it. She just keeps walking towards Jon. 

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Lyanna calls after them, after they begin walking. 

“Or would do.” Howland adds. 

“That too!” Lyanna agrees. “There’s a very small gray area between the two. That’s where you need to operate.”

“What do you wanna do first?” Jon asks. 

They just got out of the ticket line and Sansa is holding 18 more tickets in her hand than she had five minutes ago, even though she told him she already had some. 

“You choose.” She shrugs, trying to seem casual. But her heart is threatening to pound a hole through her chest and her face is too warm to not be pink at the very least. 

She kind of wants to die. 

Jon grins, and his lips are still red and her stomach is lurching and spasming—

“You don’t want me to choose.”

“Why not?” Sansa croaks. 

He merely tips his chin in her direction, behind her. 

Just behind a couple decorative stacks of hay is the corn maze, massive, sprawling, and foreboding. The perimeter is fenced in by wire—the only entrance being manned by a scarecrow with a walkie talkie in his overalls, taking tickets. 

“The maze,” And embarrassingly enough, her voice is a touch weak in her own ears. 

“Told you you wouldn’t want me to choose.” He says. 

And that irritates her, along with his overall arrogance and his stupidly soft hair, and red mouth. 

“I’m not scared.” Sansa lifts her chin, crossing her arms over her chest.

He actually barks out a laugh. “You’re scared of everything.”

“I am not.” She snaps. 

Jon cocks his head to the side. 

“When you were six, we watched the Nightmare before Christmas and you had to get in my sleeping bag because you were too scared to sleep in your bed alone.”

“Watching Santa get kidnapped by the boogie man would traumatize any six year old.” She declares, indignant. “Thanks for that.”

“You threw up at Robb’s birthday party at Chuck E Cheese when Chucky tried to hold you.”

“I’d had too much pizza. That’s literally not even fair.”

She doesn’t even understand how it’s possible for him to be smiling even wider . “Didn’t you pee yourself on the tower of terror?”

“You weren’t even there!” Sansa cries. “How would you know?”

He laughs, long and hard, and he’s really never been more unbearable to him than he is in this second. 

“Are we going, or not?” She demands, simultaneously haughty and shrill. “Or are you too scared?”

“Scared?” He coughs out another laugh.

Sansa marches toward the maze, determined, and a little shaky in her stomach. 

“Don’t worry.” She says. “I won’t tell anyone if you start crying.”

She hears him chuckle, low and irrevocably delighted. She wishes she had elbowed him in the stomach earlier, 

“Same goes for you.” He catches up to her, bumping their arms together, “You can even hold my hand if you get scared.”

“You know, you can just ask me to hold my hand.” She says coolly. “You don’t need to make up an excuse.”

He laughs, almost hysterically this time. 

Sansa prays to every god there is that he pees himself in this damn maze. 

Inside of the maze, the evening sky is a dusky purple and the moon isn’t full, so there isn’t as much light as there could be. The shadows of their bodies stretch long and wide. The slightest wind makes the corn stalks rustle.  

It’s freaking creepy.

People are admitted inside in groups of six. They only just barely make the cut off. Sansa is glad for it, because it means they are behind everyone else. Which means hopefully, they’ll get the worst of the jumpscares. The two boys in her group, college aged, who she thinks might be dating, seem anxious for it. Two girls Arya’s age cling to each other, and Sansa yearningly thinks of Jeyne. Jeyne would never put her in this position. They’d eat pie and follow cute boys around. 

But Jeyne isn’t here. And all she has is with her is her brother’s best friend who she doesn’t have a crush on. 

“This is like that one movie.” Sansa’s arms are wrapped around herself. “The Stephen King one. With the cornfields and the clowns.”

“Those are two different movies.” says Jon.

For the first time since they entered the maze, she looks at him. “What?”

“The one with the cornfields is the Children of the Corn.” His breath is a visible puff of steam. “The one with the clowns is IT. But it’s just one clown.”

Sansa scowls.

“I forgot I was talking to the horror connoisseur.”

“I feel like that’s something everyone knows, actually.”

She rolls her eyes. “Guess I’m not like everyone, then.”

“No.” He turns to look at her, and something about the way he does it makes her stomach flip. “You’re not.”

Out of absolutely nowhere, smack between their little group, a scarecrow jumps out.

Everyone screams.

Except Jon, of course. Sansa knows this because she ends up right in his arms, clutching the front of his jacket, and not one shout leaves his throat. There’s a slight flinch, but it’s quickly forgotten because his shoulders start to shake, and it isn’t from fear.

“You totally saw that coming.” Sansa accuses, once her heart has slowed down, and shoves him. 

“No, I didn’t.” He says midlaugh, hands on her wrists. “You’re just scared enough for the both of us.”

Sansa is torn between hitting him, and running out the maze, but now that she has something to hold onto, she sure as hell isn’t letting go, so she wraps both of her arms around his right one instead, clinging to him like a monkey.

Mercifully, Jon doesn’t say anything at all. About that, at least.

“I take it this means you’re not going to the haunted house.” He still sounds faintly amused, but at the very least, he isn’t laughing. 

Sansa groans at the reminder. “Coach signed us up to help, actually.”

Thanks to Allyria, the cheer team would be helping the theater department man the haunted house for whatever reason. Well, she knows it’s to raise funds for their program, but still. 

“What are you doing? Decorating?” Jon asks. 

“I drew a short stick, so no.” She says sourly, “You’re looking at dead cheerleader number four.”

He laughs at that, but this time it doesn’t annoy her. It’s low, sending a shiver undulating down her spine. “Hot.”

Sansa forces herself to roll her eyes. “You would think so.”

“Last time I checked, cheerleaders are more Joffrey’s type.”

Joffrey. His name is like a splash of cold water. She’d gone nearly 20 minutes without thinking about him. Even when she was with Robb and Jeyne, her mind flitted to him occasionally. Still.

How could she have just forgotten about him like that?

“Not ones that are zombies.” She says, voice light. 

Jon doesn’t even snort. 

“He really invited you to his party?”

This again. Sansa scowls. “I didn’t think that would be so hard to believe.”

“It’s not.” He retorts. “The fact that you said yes is.”

She starts to pull away from him, making to wrap her arms around herself again, but he stops her. He takes her hand. Interlaces their fingers.

She wonders if he can feel her heart through her hand. 

“Wasn’t your last girlfriend an environmentalist that like, refused to shower?” She blurts. 

Jon narrows his eyes at her. “She showered.”

“Not what I heard, but I digress.”

He scowls, but doesn’t let go of her hand. This emboldens her. She wraps her other one around his inner arm.

“It sounds like you were keeping an awful amount of tabs on my relationship.” He retorts instead. 

Sansa feels her entire body flush, root to tip, and it’s her who drops his hand. Again. 

“You wish.” She sneers. 

Just as she marches forward, away from him, a werewolf decides to make an appearance with a blood curdling roar that is way too convincing for her liking, and sends her right back into Jon’s arms, screaming.

“There are children, here!” She hisses into his neck, body trembling like a leaf. Her throat is raw. “God.”

“That’ll teach you.” His mouth is against his ear, and she is all too aware of the fact that he’s trying to suppress his laughter. But he’s also rubbing circles into her back. “You big baby.” 

Sansa resolves not to let go of him again. 

After a little while, when her heart returns to normal again and her chest is finished loosening, she starts to register their closeness. His arm around her shoulder. Her arm around his waist. He smells like laundry detergent and that aftershave that he’s been using for about two years now that she sometimes shamefully sniffs whenever she’s at Walgreens, and she can see the glint of his hoop earring in the dark. That’s how close they are. She likes it.

And suddenly, she’s feeling bolder.

“Why’d you guys break up, anyway?” Sansa asks. “You and Yvette?”

“Ygritte.” Jon corrects. 

“Yvonne.” She replies, dismissive.

He sighs at that, exasperated, but she can tell from the way she looks over to find his mouth tugging upward in the dark that he really isn’t so tired of her after all.

“We were just really different. That’s all.”

Sansa had never met the girl, but she had seen her around, which was annoying, because for some reason, every time she did, she’d taken to comparing them. She had the better boobs, but Ygritte had the better butt. Sansa didn’t have any tattoos, but Ygritte had three. Her teeth were straighter, but it was Ygritte’s smile that made Jon smile. 

But not anymore.

“She was, like, 24.” Sansa says, downright chirpy. “It’s not like she could go to dances with you without looking like a sex offender—

“She was 19. And it’s not like I go to dances, anyway.”

“Of course not. That would require you to actually socialize outside of the same circle of four people.“

Sansa can practically hear his eyes roll, but he still doesn’t let go of her. And that makes her more smug than it should.

“So you’re going?” He asks. “To homecoming?”

Her heart skips a beat.

Because for a moment, she stupidly thinks, what if he asks me? Which is ridiculous. He doesn’t go to dances, and even if he did, why would he wanna go with her? Why would she want to go with him? 

“Everyone’s going.” Sansa clears her throat. “Except you.”

But Jon ignores that. “You’re going with him?”

She can feel her heartbeat in her throat. 

“If he asks me.” She says finally. 

She’d been fantasizing about going to homecoming with Joffrey since the first football game. She doesn’t tell him that. She doesn’t even know why she answered his previous question.

She doesn’t know why everything inside of her wanted to tell him no. 

Sansa bites her lip. 

“You don’t think I should?”

For a moment, Jon doesn’t answer.

“I think any guy would be lucky to go with you.” He meets her eyes finally. “And there’s not enough luck in the world that would make him deserve you.”

Her tongue is suddenly incredibly heavy, as her heart drops into her stomach. 

She’s so dazed, she doesn’t even register the clown jumping out of the brush and screaming bloody murder. 

But Jon does. He actually shouts, jumping, arm tight around her, before he slaps a hand to his chest. “Jesus Christ.”

Sansa busts out laughing.

“My fucking chest hurts.” Jon says, gasping for breath, pointing towards himself.

Tears are gathering in her eyes, and she wipes them away between giggles. “God. That was totally worth it.” 

Jon’s eyes are still wide. “This is funny to you?” 

She can’t even answer him because she’s laughing so hard, clutching her stomach. 

She stands virtually no chance when he moves for her. 

One minute, she’s bent in half, trying to find her breath between giggles, and the next, she’s in the air and literally over his shoulder, shrieking in surprise. 

They’re about halfway through the maze, and he rushes through the last half while carrying her. Way too fast to be the victim of anymore jumpscares. Until they’re at the end of the maze, on the other side of the patch, where a lady in cat ears with whiskers drawn onto them is looking at them bemusedly. 

“God, you’re heavy.” Jon says when he finally sets her back down onto the ground, he’s wheezing for breath. 

The world is spinning slightly, and Sansa is still giggling uncontrollably, which makes it a little worse. She has to lean into him to find her balance. 

His hair is falling into his eyes, and he’s grinning and his mouth is still red and he still smells good and his hands are on his hips to steady her. Or maybe they aren’t. 

She has never been so achingly aware of the fact that she’s never been kissed. 

Jon pushes his hair back, and looks away. His cheeks are a little flushed, but that could very well be the wind. 

“I’m starving.” Then he flicks her chin gently. “Let’s eat.”

Jon eats. A lot. 

They share a funnel cake topped with pumpkin ice cream before she gives up, and he demolishes the rest—putting a way a little less than a full pound of fried dough away in his stomach at the very least. Sansa is full just watching him, but she manages to make room when they happen upon the pumpkin spice cotton candy, which Jon doesn’t allow her to pay for. 

“Are you sure this doesn’t scare you?” He shakes it in front of her face, pocketing his wallet. The bag has Jack Skellington on it. “I don’t need you crawling into my bed tonight with your cold little feet.”

“My feet aren’t cold.” Sansa protests, taking the cotton candy from him. She steers clear of the mention of them in bed together. 

But they talk about other things. School, and classes. Everything that Howland is growing on the farm, not just the pumpkins. Movies they want to see. Music they’ve been getting around to listening to. College—Sansa isn’t anywhere near close to having to apply, but for Jon, it’s right around the corner. 

She listens to him talk about all the places he’s going to apply to—New York, California, Michigan, Washington—and her chest hurts, thinking about him so far away. But he’s so animated talking about them, so genuinely excited, it’s easy to push the feeling to the back of her mind. 

“Are you applying to any music schools?” 

Jon scoffs at that, “No.”

Sansa frowns at that. “Why not?” 

He shakes his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “It’s not a serious thing. The music. At least it isn’t for me.”

“It could be.” She counters.

Jon laughs, but it’s mirthless. “My mom would have a heart attack.”

Sansa knows why. Jon’s dad, his real dad, was a musician. He knocked Lyanna up and didn’t look back. She never dwelled on it, never spoke of it—why would she? She met the love of her life not soon after. But Sansa didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count how many times she’d called musicians “unsturdy types.” 

“She wants you to be happy.” She whispers. “I think it’s worth a shot.”

Jon doesn’t say anything, so Sansa grabs his hand. 

“I think you could be great.”

He looks down. 

“Not that you’re not already great.” She stammers, and  moves to drop his hand. “but. You know. You could be greater. The best. Or one of them, anyway—”

Jon stops her from pulling away. 

Like he did in the maze, his fingers intertwine with hers.

Once again, Sansa feels that ache. 

“I’ll think about it.” He says at last.

He doesn’t let go of her hand, and she’s glad for it. She’s afraid she’ll float away. 

They’re walking by a booth containing some sort of dart game with a bunch of orange and black balloons. Over the booth hangs a string of spooky themed teddy bears, like the one her father had offered her earlier. Thinking of the way she treated him earlier, Sansa feels guilty. 

“Do you want one?”

Sansa looks over to find Jon looking at her. She feels herself blushing again. “No. I’m fine.” 

Jon shrugs. 

But then he goes up to the lady manning the booth, and gives her a five dollar bill.

“I said no.” She says, a little louder. 

“Maybe I want one.” Jon tosses over his shoulder. 

Sansa shakes her head. She doesn’t know why she has to try so hard not to smile. 

In the end, it takes him seven dollars total to pop the black balloon. He chooses a pink bear dressed in a fluffy witch costume. Right before he hands it to her, he pulls it back. 

“It’s still mine.” He says. “I’m only letting you borrow it.”

She takes the bear, but only so she can hide her smile behind its big fluffy head. 

In her back pocket, her phone buzzes. There are two texts from Robb, asking where the hell she is, and to find him before their mom kills him, and then there’s a text from her mom, requesting that she tell her brother to answer the phone, and that it’s time to go. 

“Your mom?” Jon asks. 

“Yeah.” She has to straighten her back, so her shoulders don’t droop. “I have to go back.”

He nods. 

Then he tugs her hand. “Let’s take a shortcut this time.”

They take the hayride back to the other side of the pumpkin patch. As always, it’s extremely unpleasant. Straw pokes at her through her jeans, making her itch, and the ride as a whole is extremely rickety, sending her bones into a jangle. But Jon has his arm locked over her lap to keep her from sliding into their fellow passages, and she decides that the ride isn’t so terrible. 

“Are you coming to the game, at least?” Sansa asks. “The homecoming one, I mean?”

They’re getting off the wagon, and his hands are on her hips, helping her down, and she doesn’t want this night to end. So she’s prolonging it as much as possible. 

“My mom will, probably.” He says. “You know she likes to cheer you and Robb on.”

She did. She would bring signs for both of them. One cheering Robb on and another proclaiming that she was only there for the cheerleaders. She loved it when Lyanna came, but that wasn’t what she asked. 

“But what about you?” She presses. 

Half of Jon’s mouth tugs up into a half smile. “Are any zombie cheerleaders gonna be there?”

“Just the regular ones.” She says, nervous all of the sudden. 

“Maybe I’ll still stop by.” He says. 

She’s still in his arms. 

She doesn’t move away.

No, she moves closer. Just a little. Barely enough to be noticed, but still enough to be something. She braces her hands against his forearms. Like she’s bracing herself for him. 

Jon leans closer.

Too close to be interpreted as anything else. When his gaze drops to her mouth, she knows she isn’t imagining it. Even if he does look away fast, right before he meets her eyes again. 

“You’re not going to the dance with him.” He tells her. 

“I’m not?” She asks, breathless. 

“No.” His nose brushes hers lightly, sending a shiver zipping down her spine, before he moves away just a centimeter. “You’re not.”

His mouth is hovering over hers. She tips her head further back. 

Jon turns away, the ghost of a smile curving his mouth. Her lips are now against her cheek. 

Sansa scowls. 

“Is this a negotiation?” She says, irritable. “I don’t wanna kiss you that bad.”

“How bad, then?” He asks. 

She turns away from him, mid scowl, right before he turns her face right back to him, mouth just brushing hers—

“Ew.”

Then, he stops.

Just a couple feet away from them are Bran and Jojen, holding twin cones of cotton candy, watching them with identical expressions of perturbed interest.

Sansa blurts, “Creep much?” at the same time Jon says, “Jojen.”

“You guys were about to kiss.” Jojen says, quite matter of fact. 

Bran turns to him, nose scrunched. “They were totally gonna kiss.”

“What are you even doing here?” She demands. “You guys are supposed to be with Mom and Dad.”

And not ruining my entire life.

Because Jon’s hands aren’t on her hips anymore and he isn’t standing nearly as close to her as he once was and she wants nothing more than to take Bran and shake him.

“It’s a good thing we aren’t.” Bran retorts. You clearly can’t be trusted alone.”

Jon coughs out something that suspiciously sounds like a laugh, and before Sansa can beg him to shut up, she’s interrupted. 

“Boys!”

It’s her mother, walking slightly ahead of her father, who is rubbing the top of Arya’s head with his knuckles while she shouts her dissent, laughing. 

“We’ve told you about running ahead.” She scolds.

“Look who we found.” Bran says, with a sly, meaningful look over his shoulder. Jojen snickers. 

Sansa has to do everything to keep herself from lunging at the both of them. 

“I was just about to call you again.” Her mother rests her hands on her hips. “You’re supposed to be with your brother.” 

She nearly tells her that she would be if he hadn’t ditched her, when Jon breaks in, ever the loyal best friend. 

“That’s my fault, actually.” He answers. “I wanted to go into the maze, and Jeyne didn’t so Robb stayed behind with her. Sansa went with me because she didn’t want me to go alone. We decided to get something to eat afterward, and lost track of time.”

“That was very thoughtful of you.” Her father tells her. 

“I was in good hands.” Jon jokes. 

Bran and Jojen start snickering.

Her mother’s eyes narrow in suspicion. 

Sansa doesn’t know what she wants more: to kill the boys or herself. 

But Jon pays them no mind, ever so calm, cool and collected. “You guys headed out?”

“Just about.” Her father says, nudging her mother. “What the boss says goes.”

“We have an early day tomorrow.” She gives him a significant look. “That was the agreement.”

They’re visiting her grandfather out in Riverrun tomorrow, meaning they’d have to get up at the crack of dawn just to get home at a reasonable hour. And her parents are nothing if not reasonable. 

“Well, I’ll take this one off your hands.” Jon says. “Come on, Jo.”

Jojen does go, but not before hugging Bran. Both boys say their goodbyes before starting off back towards the pumpkin booth. Jon rustles up Jojen’s hair, and Jojen wraps an arm around his waist, like a bear hug. 

Neither of them look back. 

But curiously, on her way back to the car, Sansa still feels like she’s holding her breath and waiting for something. She lingers behind the rest of her family, fearing it shows on her face. 

Bran is just ahead of her, whispering over his shoulder, “Sansa and Jon sitting in a tree…K-I-S-S-I-“

This time, Sansa does lunge for him, but he quickly scurries out of the way, cackling, leaving her to briefly contemplate breaking her neck in order to catch him.

Robb meets them in the parking lot. He drove Jeyne here himself, but he’s still obligated to check in—though him not answering the phone doesn’t help matters. The only reason he doesn’t get chewed out is because Jeyne is there, and she has to get home before curfew. 

“Nice going dipshit.” He whispers furiously. “You almost got me in trouble.”

Sansa looks at him, incredulous. “You’re the one who abandoned me.”

“Don’t worry,” says Bran innocently. “She was in good hands.”

She’s able to snatch him up by the earlobe, before he squirms away, out of her grasp and the threat of any real damage. 

Sansa sits in the third row of seats in the minivan, so she isn’t sandwiched between a window, and Rickon’s drooling. She drops her purse to the floor, but she doesn’t let go of her bear. 

Her bear. 

It takes her nearly the entire ride home to summon up the courage to pick up her phone and type out a message, and when she does, she retypes it nearly a dozen times. 

To: Jon

I still have ur bear btw

Immediately, she closes her phone. Puts it on do not disturb. 

“I thought you were too old for stuffed animals.” Her father says. 

They’re in the driveway, and all of her siblings have fallen asleep but her. Bran and Arya are trudging up the walkway, rubbing sleep from their eyes, while her mother is fumbling to unlock the door in the dark. Rickon snores on the slope of her father’s shoulder. 

Sansa tucks her bear closer to her. “Do you still have my mummy?”

Her father’s face softens. 

He retrieves her mummified teddy bear from the truck to hand it to her, but not before kissing her on the top of her head. She wraps her arm around his waist. 

“Dad?” She asks. 

“Hm?” His arm is heavy and comforting on her shoulders. 

“I had fun tonight.” She tells him. “You were right.”

“I knew you would.” He answers, squeezing her shoulder. “See? There’s no rush in growing up.”

Maybe there isn’t.

As Sansa gets ready for bed, in her same old pajamas and her same old room with her same old ballerina table lamp, she thinks about everything that has transpired in such little time. She thinks about eating sticky candy apples and laughing until her stomach hurt in the haunted house. She thinks about holding baby goats and dancing around the bouncy house with Jeyne. Most of all, she thinks of Jon and his red mouth, still walking around with her first kiss. 

She thinks about how for the first time in a long time, she wasn’t wishing she was older. 

Right as she turns off her light and prepares to plug her phone in, she dares to check her messages. It’s a concentrated effort to keep breathing.

Jon - 8:49 pm

u can keep it but u owe me one

I’ll have to figure something out 

Sansa closes her phone again. 

But under the covers, knees tucked into herself, her mind dances with all of the possible ways he could come to collect. She hides her face into her pillow, and once again, she thinks of him still walking around with her first kiss.

He could keep it as long as he wanted. She knows in her heart that it’ll be worth waiting for. 

She reaches over to her nightstand for her phone, and types out her reply. 

no rush. take ur time

Chapter Text

Jon takes his cap off to sweep his hair off his forehead before pulling it right back on, pushing open the door to the dusty old chevy. 

It’s a clunker; takes three whole swift kicks for the passenger door to stick shut. He makes his way to the front door, pizza in hand. Seconds after he rings the doorbell, his phone buzzes in his pocket.

Jon nearly drops the pizza trying to reach for it so fast. 

That’s when the door decides to open.

Alys Karstark greets him with one of her signature sly smiles, leaning up against the door frame. “Hi, Jon.”

“Hey, Alys.” He thinks he might be grimacing more than he is smiling. “Pepperoni and cheese?”

“That’s me.” She replies. She leans back into the house, slightly. “Tor, I need your wallet!”

Jon unzips the bag holding both boxes, tucks the bag underneath his arm, and waits. 

Alys catches a wallet tossed to her from inside. “How much was it?”

“32.96.” 

She starts to count the money. “What time are you off?”

“You’re my last delivery, actually.”

“Oh. Sweet.” Alys hands him $40. “So you still have time to get ready.”

This time, when he grimaces, it’s intentional.

Jon begins to rummage through his change bag. “I’m not going.”

“Really?” Alys frowns. “But it’s our last homecoming.”

“Yeah.” He says, like that matters to him. Then he adds, “I’m beat, to be honest.”

“The trials and tribulations of a working man.” She shakes her head teasingly. 

When Jon starts to count out her change, she waves him off. “You can keep it for a tip.”

“Oh.” He’s a little surprised. He drops the money back into his bag, listless. “Thanks.” 

Alys holds the pizza against her hip, mouth curved up. “If you really wanna thank me, you can come by my afterparty tonight, at least.” 

He’d be lying if he said he didn’t think about it. 

But he does, for a couple seconds. Because she looks so pretty. Her dark hair falls down her shoulders in bouncy, soft waves, and her nails glitter against the black of the receipt book when he hands it to her for her to sign, sharp and bedazzled with jewels. Her eyelids are bronze. Even in a tracksuit, she looks great. 

She’s nice. She doesn’t care what other people think. She doesn’t care about what’s cool. She doesn’t say yes when stupid assholes like Joffrey ask her to the dance with roses and a fucking posterboard—

She doesn’t wear a short little cheer skirt. 

She doesn’t have red hair. 

She probably doesn’t cry at literally almost every single Disney movie, even the happy ones. 

And she definitely isn’t his best friend’s little sister. 

Jon’s phone burns a hole in his pocket. 

“Maybe.” He says, finally. She looks too pretty to be disappointed. 

“I’ll take what I can get from you.” Alys grins. “Bye, Jon.”

She says it so suggestively, in a sing song voice, Jon can’t help but shake his head, huffing out a quiet laugh. Even as his face starts to warm. He makes his way back to his car.

“Later.” He says, over his shoulder. “You too, girls.”

Her friends, presumably the entire basketball team, who’d been hiding out of sight behind the door, all dissolve into giggles. 

“Bye, Jon!” They all call. 

He gets back in his stupid car. Though he wants to look at his phone, he doesn’t want to linger outside Alys’ house and give her and her friends the wrong idea. A block away, he pulls over. Takes it out.

It’s just his mom, asking him to pick Meera up from the nail salon.

He sighs. 

Jon opens up another text thread a couple messages down. 

His last conversation with her was from the 14th. The day after the pumpkin patch. She was at her grandfather’s house. It’d taken hours for him to sum up the courage to send the first text. Then she’d answered, and they’d talked all day. 

The last message she sent was a picture of her with the bear he got her from the day before, pressed up against her cheek. She was saying goodnight. He’d saved it to his camera roll. Told her goodnight too.

Then nothing. Because he decided to go fuck everything up because of how much he didn’t wanna fuck everything up. 

Jon’s thumb hovers over the text box. 

Then he locks his phone, and throws it into the passenger side. He starts the car. 

After work, he’s idling outside of Chataya’s, back in his truck, when Meera slides in. 

“Hey, pizza boy.” She greets.

Jon grunts. He backs out of the parking space he’d been temporarily taking up. “Don’t slam my door so hard.” 

Meera doesn’t respond to that. She just sticks out her freshly manicured hands, grinning.  “What do you think?”

Her nails are green and glittery, but her own. Not long and sharp like Alys’s. He doesn’t really see a difference besides the color. 

“You couldn’t have done that at home?”

She dims slightly. “It’s gel. It’ll last longer.”

“Why does it need to last long? You only need it for one night.” 

Meera rolls her eyes. “You’re extra pissy today. Again.”

Jon would have ignored her if she didn’t sound so snide. It isn’t like Meera to be snide.

“I just got off work, I’m ready to go home, and Mom wanted me to drive 15 minutes out of my way to come get you for something you could have gotten done at home.” He says defensively. “So excuse me if I’m a little pissy.”

“You’ve had an attitude all week.” She retorts. “Ever since Joffrey asked Sansa to homecoming.”

Jon nearly hits the brakes in the middle of the road.

“Shut up.” He snaps, abrupt. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. 

“Don’t tell me to shut up.” Meera snaps back. “I’m right. You know I am. And if you just told her you had a crush on her in the first place—”

“You don’t even know what you’re talking about.” He says again, way too fucking loudly. 

“It’s not like he’s going with her anymore, so I don’t even know why you’re still whining.” Meera continues, like he hadn’t denied everything she just said. “Just put on a suit, go to her house, and ask her. Like you should have done in the first place.”

Jon’s mouth opens and it shuts and before he can think of something to say—most likely along the lines of shut the fuck up and you’ve lost your mind—she puts in her airpods, and starts blasting Billie Eilish.

So Jon just sits there, staring at the road, fingers clenched.

Fucking seething.

It’s not a crush. 

He doesn’t know the exact definition of the word but Jon is pretty sure that crushes don’t linger. They don’t fester to the point where they’re downright cancerous, and they don’t have the potential to ruin everything—

Jesus.

Is that why they call it a crush?

The moment he knew everything had completely, irreversibly changed:

The first home football game of the season. On the concrete steps of the stadium. He didn’t wanna be there, and he didn’t wanna be fighting with Ygritte, and he didn’t want his mother to know he’d been fighting with Ygritte because then she’d say I told you so. Yet, all three had managed to happen. He was so miserable right before he saw her. 

Then he did. 

With her twiggy little legs in that stupid, short skirt that he’d made a mission to avoid looking at since the first day of school, and her sparkly silver bow, and her hair curled down her back, half up and half down, and her ridiculously red lipstick, and her laugh. That laugh that reminds him of windchimes, because of the time when he was nine and Catelyn took them all to Weirwood Park and they went inside the windchime museum and when they tinkled she laughed, and they almost sounded exactly the same. 

And then she was looking at him. 

He didn’t know how it happened, because one second, he was telling himself that he needed to look away, and the next second he wasn’t. And she wasn’t either. 

She was smiling. Beaming. Glowing and pink cheeked. He knew all of her smiles, and this one was no exception. It was the extra slice of lemon cake kind. The blowing out the birthday candles kind. The christmas morning kind. That was how she was looking at him.

He wasn’t a dessert, or a candle, or a present under the tree. He was just Jon.

And for a scary moment, he wished he was more, just so she would keep looking at him like that. And he could keep looking at her.

She waved at him.

His heart was pounding in his chest so hard that it ached.

He waved back.

In his room, Jon stares at the blinking blue cursor in him and Sansa’s last text thread.

He doesn’t know what to say.

There’s nothing to say. He’d made sure of that the moment he saw her for the very first time after the pumpkin patch. When he was coming down the hallway and she was shutting her locker. When he saw her before she saw him. And when she did see him, she gave him the same exact look she had given him at the football game—like he was somebody to her. Everything. And more than he’d been before, he was scared out of his mind of the inevitability of the day coming when she’d realize that he wasn’t anything at all. When he’d become nobody to her.

So he’d looked away. Walked away.

And now everything is his fault.

If he hadn’t walked away, if he’d gone up to her and just kissed her—like he’d been thinking of doing even before she walked up to his booth at the pumpkin patch, maybe even before that stupid football game if he’s really being honest with himself—then she wouldn’t have gone to the dance with Joffrey, because if she really wanted to go so bad, he would have taken her. Maybe it would have been just as bad because he always feels like he doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing when it comes to her, but he would have gotten her flowers and he would have taken those stupid photobooth pictures and he definitely wouldn’t have ditched her for the fucking cheer captain from HHS—

He would have tried, is the point. 

He should have tried. 

Jon closes his phone, and tucks it underneath his pillow so he doesn’t have to look at it. He picks up his guitar instead. 

He finds himself almost strumming that same tune, the one he knows belongs to her now. He didn’t know it when it came to him last month, but he’d known it ever since he got home from the pumpkin patch, bearless with a lip gloss smudge on his cheek he couldn’t bring himself to wipe away.

He stops, just holding his guitar instead, chest tight. 

A soft knuckled knock sounds on his door. 

Jon sets his guitar to the side, clearing his throat. “Come in.” 

It’s his mother, which briefly surprises him. She never knocks. She shuts the door behind her, and leans against it, hands folded behind her back. 

All she has to do is stare at him for shame to start burning in his throat. 

“I’ll apologize to Meera later.” He says quietly, not quite meeting her eyes. 

“Good.” Jon feels her sit down beside him. “You really hurt her feelings.”

She doesn’t say it like she’s scolding him, and that makes him feel even worse. He still doesn’t look at her. 

“I know.” He answers. 

His mom doesn’t say anything to that. 

They sit there in silence, which isn’t out of the norm for them. Though his mother is a talker, the moment he was old enough, she accepted that he was never going to be. But that didn’t stop her from trying. From dragging out bits about his day from him. From tickling his stomach while raining his face with kisses. 

But he isn’t seven anymore. He’s gotten better at not talking. And she’s gotten better at allowing it. 

He knows that now isn’t one of those instances when she sighs, long and hard. “Are you really not gonna ask Sansa to the dance?”

Not her too.

His entire body nearly recoils at the sound of her name. “Mom.”

“I know, it’s none of my business.” She cuts him off. “I know, I don’t know what I’m talking about. All that. Blah, blah, blah.”

Then she hesitates. 

He feels her hand on the back of his head, fingers carding through his hair, just like she used to when he was little. He finds her looking at him, face gentle.

“But I know you’ve been miserable.” She says. “And that is my business.”

His throat constricts.

Jon tucks his thumb in his palm, and squeezes his fist tight. 

“I..” I like her. The words are lodged deep inside of him, chafing notches into his throat. They don’t feel true.

They don’t feel like enough.

“I messed up.”  He says finally. Because that is true. Because he was scared that he wouldn’t be enough.

The look she gives him is enough to make him wish he never said anything at all. She looks so disappointed. So hurt. 

“Why?” She asks. 

He feels himself shrug without his own permission. 

“I was…” His teeth gnaw on the inside of his cheek. He swallows. “I was scared. That it would change everything.”

His mother’s hand drops from his head to the back of his neck as he feels her inhale, then exhale. Almost tentatively. 

“You don’t think things changed a long time ago?”

Jon doesn’t really understand.

He can’t really allow himself to understand. 

But then he thinks of that night of the football game, the way his heart had pounded in his chest at the sound of her laugh. The way it had done the same exact thing that summer, when Robb was in the passenger seat of his car and she was in the back, the strap of her tank top falling off of her freckled shoulder as she leaned against the console, to connect her phone to the aux cord. And the way it had done it every single time she walked past Robb’s bedroom for the last fucking year--

But he thinks about before that, too,

He thinks about blanket forts in the Stark living room, and he thinks about a chubby hand holding his to make sure he didn’t run ahead like Robb did, and he thinks about her head on his shoulder during long car rides and he thinks about how every single year in elementary school, ever since third grade, he hadn’t gone without a candy gram once. With three words. Eight letters. None of which she could write herself, but she signed it herself. With her name and a heart. 

Jon thinks he might start hyperventilating. 

“I already messed everything up.” He chokes out, palms clammy, throat still tight. Eyes threatening to burn.

“Then fix it.” His mother insists. She says it like it’s the most simple thing in the world. 

His heart is racing and when he speaks, he sounds as if he’s out of breath. Like he can’t catch it. “What if she doesn’t let me?”

This doesn’t deter her one bit. She stares at him, fingers curling in his hair. Voice soft.  “What if she does?”

What if she does?

Then what?

Jon finds it hard to think about. He’s always found it hard to hope. 

“You’ll never know if you don’t try.” says his mother. 

Try.

That’s what he should have done in the first place. Try. That’s what he was wishing he’d done just a couple minutes ago. And now, here’s his chance. Again. 

He knows in his bones that he can’t mess this one up too. 

“I don’t even have anything to wear.” He says, voice a little offkey, just a little shaky. 

When he meets his mother’s eyes again, he finds that she’s smiling.

“Never say never.” She chirps, right before springing upright. “It’s a good thing you and your father are about the same size.”

They aren’t.

The same size, that is. Not really. His father isn’t as broad in the shoulders. Though they’re the same height, everything he shrugs on stretches a little too tight on his back and wrists. They get all the way to the back of the closet before they find something that fits him better—the navy blue suit that his father wore on the day he married his mother at the courthouse. Thankfully, it belonged to his father, who was a lot closer to Jon’s build.

“There.” After a shower, a quick shave that definitely qualified as tempting fate, and several viewings of a youtube tutorial, his mother adjusts his tie on his neck. 

It’s bespoke patterned—one of his father’s less embarrassing choices. It was still blue, but it was better than nothing. Besides, Sansa likes blue. Maybe this will help him.

He needs all the help he can get at the moment. 

Self consciously, Jon smooths down his tie. It doesn’t feel like him. None of this does. He feels like a kid, playing dress up. 

“I don’t even know what I’m gonna say.” He blurts. 

His mother smooths down his collar, before meeting his eyes. She looks as if she’s trying not to smile, but the curve of her mouth is softened.

“An apology is pretty standard,” She says, not unkindly. “Then the truth.”

She grabs his hands, and squeezes them tight. 

“Just tell her the truth.”

The truth. He knows what that is, now. It’s like a loose wiggling tooth in his mouth, still holding on by a hinge. Almost out but not quite. 

He just needs to spit it out. 

“I sent you the address to the flower place Catelyn showed me. It has the corsage that’ll match her dress exactly.”

Jon hadn’t wanted Catelyn to know originally, but his mother pointed out there was no way he was taking Sansa anywhere without her parents knowing. And she doesn’t know. Not really. As far as she knows, he’s doing it as a favor, because his mother asked him to. And if Sansa does end up telling him to fuck off, it’s better that way. Things won’t be as awkward.

“The corsage needs to be that shade of pink, but the flowers—”

“Blue.” He interjects.

His mother falters.

“Winter roses.” He elaborates, swallowing. “She likes blue.”

This time, she doesn’t hide her smile.

“Get going.” His mother flaps her hand. “Before your brother and father come back and see you like this. Then you’ll never leave.”

They’d never let him live it down. 

“Bye.” Jon kisses her on the cheek. “Thank you. I love you.” 

Her eyes are glassy, and she’s so obviously trying not to hide it, but she still manages to huff out an exasperatedly fond sigh. “You better.”

He hugs her, tightly, before she pushes him off and rushes him out the door. In the car, his keys slip in his hands. His fingers are starting to feel clammy. He wipes them on his pants. 

He tells himself this is what trying feels like.

He tries not think about how much it fucking sucks. 

Jon has always been more than a little scared of Catelyn Stark. 

That doesn’t just magically go away when he knocks on the Stark’s door an hour and a half later. 

She answers. 

Punctually. Gracefully, like she does just about everything else. From smoothing batman bandaids on skinned knees to running bake sales. He’s wearing a suit and she’s wearing jeans, yet somehow, Jon feels underdressed in comparison. The way she looks at him doesn’t help matters. Shrewdly. Up and down, then up again.

He stands there, waiting. 

Then she shrugs. “Why not?”

Before he can even ponder what that means, she’s beckoning him in with excited hands and a hushed voice. “Come in, come in!”

He does, just barely.

He’s been in this house a thousand times, but for some reason, he can’t quite bring himself to leave the foyer. Like he’s frozen in place. He holds onto the flowers for dear life. 

“Thank you for doing this. Really.” She shuts the door behind him. “Oh, those are beautiful.” She praises, eyes on the flowers. But just as she reaches for them, she pulls back. “Oh, but you should keep them. She should see you with them first. Did you get the corsage?”

Wordless, Jon clumsily tugs the plastic container from underneath his arm to show it to her, cradling the roses in his arm all the while. 

“It matches better than I thought I would.” She clasps her hands together, “It’s a good thing she still got her nails done. I had to convince her without telling her you were coming, of course. Or she wouldn’t have gotten them done. You know how she can be.”

Prideful? Occasionally stubborn as all hell? Yeah, he does. The reminder only makes him even more nervous, because the possibility she might turn him away is more real now than ever. 

“You just have to work your magic.” Catelyn prattles on, and reaches forward to straighten his tie. “You can be charming when you want to be.”

Jon’s heart is slamming in his chest so hard, he can feel it in his throat. “I can?”

“It needs work, admittedly. But we’re a bit pressed for time.” She says briskly. Then she straightens his collar, “You look very handsome. I appreciate that you shaved. We’ll have to do something about the earring for the pictures, of course—”

“Mom!”

He nearly jumps at the sound of her voice, completely dropping the flowers. There are no resulting footsteps, just the lull of silence. 

“Coming!” Catelyn calls out. Then she squeezes his arm. “I’ve been keeping her distracted with movies. I’ll go get her.”

Then, she hurries up the stairs and Jon is left alone in the foyer, holding the flowers and bracing himself against the panic clawing its way up his throat, bracing himself for her.

Once again, he’s frozen.

“Jon? Is that you?”

He clenches his jaw against a wince. 

“Yeah.” He clears his throat, and steps forward. “Hey.”

Just around the corner is the living room, where Ned is sitting, with his ipad in his hand, glasses low on his nose. 

“What are you doing just standing around in there?” He asks. “You can come sit.”

He doesn’t really want to.

His limbs feel wooden and stiff as he makes his way to the loveseat parallel to where Ned is on the sofa, and sits. 

He doesn’t look surprised to see him in the slightest.

“You look pale.” He observes. “You want some water?”

“No.” Jon forces out. “I’m good.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

He knows. 

Jon is 98% sure that Catelyn is still operating under the assumption that he’s doing this as a favor and nothing more, but it takes less than 90 seconds for him to determine that Ned isn’t. He knows exactly why he’s here. 

And how long has he known? The possibility that he might be just as well informed as his mother is, for just as long, is almost too much to bear. 

Ned uncrosses his legs, and folds his glasses up. 

Jon says nothing. Breathing also feels out of the question.

“I didn’t know about this until it was already happening.” Ned says. “That happens a lot when Cat gets an idea in her head.” 

There isn’t any particular inflection to the phrase, but somehow, it still feels accusatory. Jon tries his best not to fidget in his seat.

“But—” He hesitates. “Sansa has been off all week, and this whole Joffrey thing hasn’t helped, so…”

All week. Since that Monday at school. There’s a chance it isn’t because of him, but there’s also too big of a chance that it is. Suddenly, he isn’t nervous anymore. He wants to go upstairs immediately, to her. He wants to beg her forgiveness and promise he’ll never do anything to hurt her ever again.

Ned pauses. As if he’s struggling for words.

“Things like this matter to her.” He says. “So…if…going with you will make her happy, then I’m not gonna stop her. That’s all I want. Is for her to be happy.”

Jon knows the feeling.

He’d felt it the day he watched Joffrey ask her to homecoming, in the middle of the hall, with a posterboard while she was holding a bouquet of red roses. Her cheeks were pink and she was smiling all shyly, and he felt a sharp ache low inside of himself that he knew was longing. Longing to see her smile at him like that one more time. But he knew she never would, so he’d settled for hoping that someone else would make her look like that always. Would make her happy. Even if it was Joffrey. Please, he thought to himself, though he had no idea what he was talking to. Who he was praying to. I’ll do anything. 

He swallows around the lump in his throat. “So do I.”

Something softens in his expression, makes it so it isn’t so pensive. So solemn.

“I know, son.” He answers. 

And even though he’d already been doing so, Jon feels like he’s finally allowed to breathe again. 

Ned clears his throat, leaning forward to set his iPad on the coffee table. “There are rules, of course.”

Jon straightens, echoing him. “Of course.” 

“She has to be home by 10:45, not a second later. No drinking. Definitely no drinking and driving. No drugs. And no afterparties without our permission first.”

“Yeah.” Jon nods over and over again, adjusting so he can wipe his palms down on his pants. “Got it.”

“I’m not finished.” says Ned. 

His throat feels very dry, as he stops nodding. 

Ned stills. He’s leaning forward, slightly, the broadside of his forearm resting on his knee. His expression isn’t so soft anymore. 

And he says, very lowly: “Keep your hands to yourself.”

For a moment, Jon forgets how to speak. 

He’s too busy trying to ignore the tightness of his throat and all the blood rushing to his face. Seconds too late, he’s tripping over his own tongue, which feels curiously heavy in his mouth. “Yes sir.” 

This seems to satisfy Ned appropriately. 

“Glad we got that out of the way.” He picks his glasses and his iPad back up, apparently more relaxed now. He adds, “You’re a good kid. I trust you.”

Jon spends approximately seconds wondering what his distrust could look like before he hears footsteps from upstairs. Two pairs. Furious whispering he can’t quite make it out.

He rises.

She makes her way down the stairs so quietly, he doesn’t even have time to prepare himself. One minute, she’s a whisper of movement around the corner, and the next, she’s in front of him, and once again, he doesn’t feel like he can breathe.

She’s wearing these pigtails that aren’t doing the best job at tying her hair back because there’s a single strand framing her face, and she’s wearing a Carhartt sweatshirt that is so obviously Robb’s because it’s too big for her, the sleeves draped over her fingers and just barely hiding them balling into fists.

But she doesn’t look angry, though. Just wary. Weary. She’s chewing on her lower lip. Staring at him. Guarded. Unsure.

“What are you doing here?” She demands. 

She knows exactly what he’s here for. 

He’s wearing a suit, and he’s carrying flowers , and it’s the night of homecoming. It couldn’t be more obvious what he’s here for. 

She isn’t going to make this easy for him. 

Sansa jolts forward, slightly, and Jon knows it’s Catelyn, chastising her for her tone. But he doesn’t mind it. It’s kinder than what he deserves. Which is absolutely nothing from her.

But he has to try, this time. He has to.

Jon squeezes the bouquet in his hand, as if it’s full of courage and he’s hoping to absorb some. 

“Um—” He clears his throat. “Do you mind if we talk? Outside?”

Sansa inhales, just barely visible.

Jon waits.

He hopes.

She takes him into the backyard—probably because it’s the place Catelyn will have the hardest time trying to eavesdrop on their conversation. There’s a slide Rickon is getting ready to grow out of that she stands next to, arms crossed over her chest. Shoulders hunched. 

She speaks before he can. 

“You don’t have to.” She’s blushing. Rushing through her words and not quite meeting his eyes. “Really. I appreciate the gesture—but I know my mom’s making you do this. Probably your mom too. So—”

“No one’s making me do this.” He interrupts.

Sansa stares at him, expression unreadable. 

“I mean, it was strongly suggested, yeah.” Jon stammers. “But…I also want to.”

She crosses her arms even tighter around herself, though he didn’t know that was possible. She still doesn’t outwardly react. Doesn’t even give him an inch.

“You wanna go to the dance with me?”

She says it like she doesn’t believe him. 

Jon squeezes the flowers in his hand. 

Tell her the truth. 

“I’d go anywhere, as long as it means I’d get to be with you.” He says. “So yeah. I do.”

Something in Sansa’s face ripples, starting from the furrow in her brow, moving downward. Making her arms fall to her side. Making her twist her fingers. 

Her jaw wobbles.

She clenches it. “Why?” Her voice comes out barely higher than a whisper. Then, a little louder. “Why now? This last week—you’ve been really cold to me. Even after—”

She stops. 

Her eyes are glassy, as she inhales sharply. “Why would you do that?”

His chest hurts so badly, and for a moment, he’s speechless with the pain. 

“I was scared.” Jon pushes the words out headfirst.

She’s never looked at him like this. So hurt, so disbelieving. He doesn’t know what’s worse. Her pretending she doesn’t feel anything or not pretending at all. 

“Of me?”

Yes. No. The truth. And even though it feels like the words are a part of him that he’s tearing away from himself, he continues. 

“Of losing you.” He confesses. 

Sansa’s mouth parts slightly.

He says it in its entirety, forcing his voice to be a little bit stronger. “I don’t wanna lose you.”

“Why would you lose me?” She asks.

Because you’ll change your mind. That truth, he refuses to say.

He doesn’t need to. 

Sansa steps forward. 

“I’m not going anywhere.” She whispers. 

In his chest, his heart pounds and pounds. 

“Neither am I.” He says.

Her jaw sets, but somehow, it softens too.

Her eyes drift toward the flowers, and she says, voice slightly tremulous. “Are those for me?”

Jon blurts, without a moment’s hesitation, “All of this is for you.” 

Her breath catches. 

“I don’t even own a suit—this is my dad’s and it’s blue —” He’s rambling now, something he never does but at the moment he can’t seem to stop. “And me and my mom had to watch a tutorial on how to tie a tie a million times and I’ve driven to three different stores to find a corsage to match your dress, because the store I was supposed to go to didn’t have it—”

“I like you.” He cuts himself off. “ Really like you, which is—so annoying, because I can’t even talk right. I’m just trying to say—I’m sorry. For hurting you. And even if you don’t forgive me, I promise I’ll never do it again for the rest of my life—”

“Jon.”

She says his name like she always has, so gently. So sweetly. So much more than he fucking deserves. 

Her eyes are still shining, but she’s also trying not to smile, and it’s that smile, the one he’d recognized at the football game. And in the hallway. And all his life before that, before he even really knew he couldn’t live without it. 

“Are you gonna ask me, or not?” 

His gut, it swoops and it soars. 

“Will you go to homecoming with me?”

And finally, she is smiling. Full out. Toothy. Glowing.

Jon thinks to himself trying may not be all that bad. 

The corsage matches the dress perfectly.

It’s a dusky sort of pink with spindly straps and it’s really, really soft underneath his hands, which are on her waist while Catelyn chirps militant orders from behind an obnoxiously large camera in the backyard and Ned watches from beside her, eyes like a hawk. 

For the first time all night, Jon thinks about Robb. 

He’s going to fucking kill him. 

But as Sansa pins the boutonniere to the lapel of his jacket, the thought is suddenly very far off, tinny as if coming from a radio with a lot of interference. From underneath her lashes, she smiles at him.

Jon all but throws that metaphorical radio across the damn room. Relishes in the crash.

“Robb is gonna kill you,” Bran says from behind his parents, downright fucking gleeful. 

He’s been watching for the last ten minutes. Laughing so hard he was clutching his side at one point. Arya probably would have been beside him if she wasn’t spending the night at Shireen’s house, and Rickon, who is beside him, is too young to really care about the gravity of the situation and doesn’t show much interest in it anyway. 

“Mama, I want my picture next.” He demands, petulant.

Catelyn places a placating hand on the top of his auburn head, before calling out, “Closer to the gazebo, you two!” 

They inch just a little closer. 

“They’re already late, Cat.” Ned reminds her, impatient.

Jon didn’t wanna say anything, but they are. Meera left to go get ready at Wylla’s house as soon as she got home so she’d have time. Robb’s car was already gone when he pulled up. And then Sansa had to get ready. At the least, they’re gonna be an hour late. 

Not that he cares. He’d take pictures all night if that’s what she wanted.

“Nobody is ever on time for these things, anyway.” dismisses Catelyn. Then she gasps, “Oh, honey, do you mind?”

She’s talking to him, tugging at her earlobe expectantly. It takes Jon a second to realize what she’s talking about. He starts for the silver hoop in his ear, when hands cover his, keeping them from going anywhere. 

“Mom, let him keep it.” says Sansa. 

She’s still holding his hands so it takes him a couple seconds to remember how to speak.

“I can—”

She turns in his arms, shifts so that they’re facing each other. Her hands are covering his wrists, and her eyes are soft. The warmest kind of blue.

“I want you to.” 

Jon feels himself blush.

Catelyn looks like she’s about to protest, but Rickon is tugging at her arm once again, sufficiently distracting her.

“Please, mom?” He asks.

“Come on, then,” Sansa waves her hand, half exasperated, half fond. 

Delighted, Rickon wastes no time scurrying over, much to his mother’s dismay. As she chides him, Sansa turns around and wraps her arms around his shoulders, pulling him close. 

“Just a couple.” says Sansa, “I don’t mind. Do you?”

Jon realizes she’s talking to him.

She’s so close that she’s practically leaning into his chest and he can smell her perfume, probably one of those kinds that comes in a fancy bottle, and he can count the freckles on her shoulders and he’s suddenly hyper aware of the fact that these are only some out of a multitude of things he gets to do now. All because she gave him another chance.

He wraps his arms around her waist, because he can do that too. 

“No.” He says to her.

She smiles at him.

The camera is flashing when Ned calls out, “Watch your hands.”

The dance is actually kinda sorta everything he expects it to be.

As far as functions that take place in the school gym go—not that he has much to compare it to—it’s decadent. Balloons. Streamers. Multi colored lights. A photobooth with a backdrop. Flower arrangements that match the goddamn table cloth. 

It’s fucking awful. 

Except—it isn’t. Not really. 

Because he’s almost certain there’s lipstick on his cheek from when Sansa kissed him before Jeyne dragged her to the dance floor, and before that, she hadn’t let go of his hand once, not even when Robb nearly blew a fuse at the sight of them together, and at the moment, Joffrey Baratheon is holding court at his table, not even bothering to pretend that he isn’t seething, even with Margaery Tyrell at his side. Their eyes meet once, and Joffrey looks away almost immediately.

Jon is sitting at his own little table, nursing a coke that makes his teeth feel a little chalky, suffering through the pop bullshit blaring through the speakers, holding Sansa’s purse, wondering how pathetic it’d make him if he categorized this as one of the best nights of his life.

Even if Robb is going to kill him before the end of it.

Across from him, he’s slowly coming to after the initial shellshock, which occurred almost an hour earlier. But the more sentient he becomes, the more he drinks—something that is not coke, courtesy of Patrek’s flask—which doesn’t seem to please Jeyne Westerling at all. But she remains at his side, plucking at her corsage. Glum. 

Across from him, Theon Greyjoy sits, also drinking something that isn’t coke, scrolling through his phone. Someone neither him or Robb can stand, but is Jeyne Poole’s date despite this. 

Jon doesn’t even think he’s been to churches this quiet.

But all he has to do is look to the left and see Sansa on the dance floor with Jeyne and Meera—who was exceptionally smug at his arrival—and everything else fades in the background.

He’s never had anything against churches anyway.

Theon’s phone clicks shut. He slips it into his pocket, leaning back into his chair. Exhales obnoxiously.

“So…” He begins. 

“No.” Robb says, at the same exact time Jon says, “Fuck off.” 

“Whatever. Losers.” Theon drawls, before pushing away from the table. “She can’t say I didn’t try.”

Then he walks onto the dancefloor, specifically where Jeyne is, right before he twirls her around, making her head tip back in laughter. Sansa is left with Meera. They’re holding onto each other and trying not to dissolve into giggles. He doesn’t miss the way they both look over at him.

Jon feels himself blush and he scowls automatically before he realizes he isn’t irritated at all. Irritation isn’t the word for the feeling flooding his chest, threatening to fucking waterboard him.

He sips his coke and ignores it. He’s resolved to do so for as long as he can.

“I just—I don’t understand.” Robb sputters out, for like, the millionth time in the last hour, each with renewed outrage. “I mean—what the fuck is this?”

Jeyne rolls her eyes. 

Jon doesn’t. He’ll take this to a punch to the face any day.

“I told you. I asked Sansa to come to homecoming with me. She said yes.”

Robb blinks. 

“Why?”

The question stung a little bit the first time around, but not now. He’s ninety percent sure of his answer, and there’s lipstick on his cheek and the ghost of her hand in his to prove it. 

“Because she likes me. I think.” He answers. “I like her.”

Jon looks over at her again, because he can’t help himself, and the words don’t feel like sandpaper in his mouth anymore. 

Theon’s twirling her around, too, making her giggle. She’s a blur of pink and copper on the dance floor.

“I’m probably gonna kiss her.” He says, more to himself than anyone else.

Robb moans. “I’m gonna vomit.”

“You should ask her to dance.”  Jeyne says, a little waspish. Her arms are crossed over her chest, and she’s glaring holes into the side of Robb’s face. “I bet she’d really like that.”

Jon knows she isn’t talking to him really, but for whatever reason, he finds himself thinking about it. He hates dancing, but he doesn’t think it would be so bad if he got to hold her. 

He knows it wouldn’t.

“Don’t encourage this!” Robb exclaims. “What the hell is your problem?”

Jeyne stands up so fast the entire table shudders from the movement. 

“You are my problem!” She snaps back. 

Then she storms off, out of the gym, in a flurry of turquoise, leaving a bewildered Robb in her wake, who stares after her, brow furrowed and mouth agape. 

“What the fuck is this?” Robb repeats.

Jon doesn’t answer this time, he’s listening to the song playing. It’s rap, and way too fast. He decides to wait for the next one.

Three songs pass. 

The first one is like the last, too fast, and the second one is too annoying, pop synth bullshit, and the third one isn’t bad at all, but Jon spends the entire time trying to figure out how to ask her rather than just getting it over with already—

Then she doesn’t leave him a choice. 

Robb is gone, having chased after Jeyne and Theon is absolutely nowhere to found and Jon is by himself at the table, barely even having time to register that the song playing overhead is a ballad when he notices her making her way towards him. 

She’s lightly flushed from her face to her neck and her lipstick is more red than raspberry thanks to the punch and even though her smile is shy it still hits him like a swift punch through his chest.

“I waited until a slow song to ask you to dance with me.” Sansa informs him.

His stomach bottoms out. “You wanna dance?”

“Yeah.” Her expression dims a little. “Unless you—”

He stands up abruptly. So fast, he almost drops her purse. “I do.”

She smiles at him again.

As embarrassed as he feels, Jon thinks he might be doing something right. 

On the dance floor, she wraps her arms around his neck. He places his hands just above her hips. He’s hyper aware that there are people nearby doing a lot more. He’s also hyper aware of Ned’s rule, echoing in his head. 

But everything else comes secondary to the way her forehead brushes his.

For a moment, he sees everything. Every single eyelash. The delicate slope of her nose. The lights above dappling her cheekbones, nearly succeeding in hiding her blush. Then she looks away, off to the side. Finishes the job for them. 

Her hair tickles his nose.

“I’ve been trying to figure out a way to ask you to dance the last three songs.” He confesses. 

He doesn’t know why.

Not until she looks at him again, brow furrowed, lip slightly poking out. “You don’t like dancing.”

“You do. And I like you.”

That smile.

God, that smile.

Her breath hitches. “Say it again.” 

“I like you.” He says again, barely above a whisper. The words are skin being torn away from every time he says them, leaving him naked and vulnerable.

Her thumb is brushing the side of his neck, and Jon feels like he could melt into nothing.

And just like at the pumpkin patch, her mouth glides over his cheek, just barely touching, as she urges him in his ear, teasing and euphoric—

“One more.”

He kisses her. 

When he moves his mouth to the side to meet hers, she’s already there, waiting. She’s still smiling, and she tastes like fruit punch. Then she isn’t anymore. Her hands spread across the width of his shoulders as her mouth moves against his tentatively. Sweetly. 

Hopefully.  

Jon pulls away, but only because he doesn’t think he would be able to take it if she did first. His entire body feels weightless and jittery. Like it doesn’t belong to him and his head is only attached.

Her lipstick is smudged, and that’s the last thing he sees before her head drops to his shoulder, he feels his heart stop, as her nose brushes his pulse. As her cheek nuzzles into the hollow of his throat. 

“I knew it’d be worth waiting for.” She says, content.

The words aren’t for him, but they’re murmured into his skin. They sear. Burn. Brand. Marking him as hers for everyone to see.

He doesn’t know what they mean. He doesn’t care.

He just kisses her again.

An hour later, in the bed of his truck, with a pizza between them, Sansa is dividing their strips from the photobooth between them. 

“You had fun.” She shakes one of the pictures in his face as proof. “Admit it.”

Jon nudges her. “Only because I was with you.” 

She blushes at that, taking a bite of her pizza. “Even though I left you alone for a little while?”

He shrugs. “I liked watching you.”

Sansa raises her eyebrows in question with a laugh.

“That sounds weird.” He backtracks quickly, as she dissolves into laughter. “What I mean is—I like seeing you smile.”

He doesn’t tell her the smile she’s wearing right now is his favorite. 

“Especially when you have sauce at the corner of your mouth.”

Sansa scowls, reaching forward to shove him, but he grabs her elbows, hauling her forward and causing her shriek with laughter. 

Windchimes, he thinks, lightheaded, as his nose brushes hers.

“I probably taste like pizza.” She says quietly, when their mouths almost touch. 

He doesn’t move away.

“You do know I work at a pizza place?” 

Sansa raises her eyebrows again. “Oh, so you usually buy girls pizza and then kiss them?”

Jon stares at her for a moment, mouth opening and closing.

“That’s not what I said.”

“That’s not not what you said—” She begins, chin raised, though she’s very clearly trying not to smile. 

He cuts her off with a kiss, nearly bowling her over, sending her arms around him as she cackled with laughter.

“You talk too much.” He mumbles.

Sansa hums against his mouth, right before she kisses him back. He knows better than to think she’s agreeing with him.

He kisses her one more time in her driveway, hidden by the cab of his truck, at 10:39 pm. Robb’s car still isn’t here. Jon hasn’t seen it since they ditched him once the dance ended.

Sansa takes full advantage of this. 

They’re on the porch and she’s wearing his jacket, arms wrapped around his neck, when she leans into him, mouth dangerously close.

“We’re right in front of your door.”  He has to bite his lip to keep from smiling.

“Just one more.” She requests.

He leans in. 

The porch light flickers on.

Jon takes a wide step back at the same time Sansa makes a squeaking sound of surprise.

The door doesn’t open, and he knows it isn’t Ned behind it, or else he wouldn’t be standing on the porch anymore. 

“Goodnight.” She dares to kiss him on the cheek, before slipping into the house, which is mysteriously unlocked. She shuts it behind her.

Jon is standing there for a moment before he realizes she still has his jacket, face warm.

The porch light flickers off again.

He knows how to take a hint. He bolts off the porch before Catelyn decides she isn’t feeling very merciful anymore.

His parents and Jojen are all waiting in the family room when he gets home.

“Seriously?” Jon asks.

“You’re not special.” His father is grinning. “We’re waiting for Meera too.”

“But mostly you.” Jojen puts in. “Nice suit.”

Jojen and his father burst out laughing, and Lyanna nudges them both with a single bony elbow. Hard. But she’s grinning, too.

“Did you have a nice time?” She asks casually. 

What she means is tell me everything. 

Which he will. But not right now. And not in front of them. 

“It wasn’t bad.” Jon starts up the stairs. 

His mother hums. “Did Sansa have a nice time?”

He blushes. “She didn’t complain.”

“I bet she didn’t,” Howland snorts. “You have lipstick on your mouth.”

“Goodnight!” Jon calls over his shoulder way too loudly, to drown out the sound of their laughter. His mom’s too.

When he shuts the door to his room behind him, he can’t quite hear them anymore. He tugs his tie loose, unbuttoning his shirt.

His guitar is still leaning against the bed. When Jon picks it up this time, his chest is still heavy, but in a different way. A nice way. 

The song he knows is hers comes a lot easier to him.