Work Text:
“Darling, I’m home!” Jaime can feel his mouth twitching into the semblance of a smile at his own words. He had started it as a silly cliché when they had first started dating, and she had always rolled her eyes at him for it (fondly of course, or so she claimed). It took him nearly a year to realise that he had started to say it unironically and he had even started making an effort to stop the words from falling from his lips the second he crossed the threshold to their home. Or at least he had until he had come home one day to her standing cross-armed in front of the door, demanding the reason why he had stopped with his ridiculous announcement, all with an adorable pout on her lips.
Needless to say, he has never stopped saying it since.
He frowns slightly at the silence he is met with, which although an occasional affair is steadfastly not the norm. In fact, the norm has become more so of a habit in recent months as she has been working more and more from the comfort of their home. Something about her caseload having grown lighter lately, although Jaime had had trouble believing this. She was hardly what could be called not sought-after, in terms of her work, being one of Stark Enterprises’ top acquisitions barristers. Again, a smile tugged on his lips, as they were wont to do whenever Jaime thought of his wife. In fact, it was difficult not to. It always had been.
“Sansa?” He called out, expecting the familiar voice to echo throughout the home that they had made their own nearly two years ago, calling him to her. However, again there was nothing but silence. Bemused, and admittedly growing all the more worried with each passing second, Jaime can admit that he climbed the stairs no less than two steps at a time then. At the landing he is met with the open door into their bedroom and briefly takes note of the suitcase laying open on the bed, clothes in an unusual disarray scattered around (he can describe his wife with more words than he suspects appropriate, however, messy has hardly ever been one of them), but the sight of her, eyes closed and chest rising in even breaths while sitting in her office pulls him to a stop. They have been married for years now, and together for even longer, and yet the view of his wife so unashamedly her does nothing less to him this day than it did the first time he saw her. Her computer is open in front of her and her gorgeous locks are doing a sublime job in hiding the keyboard from view, the only thing left unobstructed is one side of her face. Carefully he walks up to her and the same onslaught of memories that he gets whenever he enters into a room in this house comes. It’s them bickering over whose office it was going to be (it became abundantly clear early on that she was winning that particular discussion), it’s him coming home after work to the sight of her in overalls on a ladder, cheeks smeared in yellow paint, a few weeks after they moved in, a smile so bright he was sure it could eclipse the sun playing on her lips as she proudly displayed the newly-painted walls. It was her, in the end, who had ‘claimed the room’ or so she had told him. This room was his wife’s haven, a detail he thought so obvious to anyone taking the time to notice, and in the end, one he had taken no issue relinquishing to her, and only her. He vividly recalls telling her as much and the distinct smell of paint when she had leaned in to kiss him.
He will admit, he is not entirely surprised that she has fallen asleep at her desk. Ever since her father had stepped down more and more from the family business after his second health scare a few months prior, it had been left to Sansa and her brother to efficiently run the company. It was odd, that she had spent more time at home than ever before and yet, she had never worked quite this much. It is a quality he has long since admired about her – her never relenting spirit.
“Darling.” He whispers, hoping to not startle her too much. Just like he would never describe his wife as messy, neither has she ever been much of a morning person. He had relented to using the adjective in the way she preferred in the early days of their relationship when she had calmly and sensibly (the latter he thought to be debatable) that it was not only confined to not enjoying waking up in the morning. Instead, it was a universal aversion to being awoken at all. These days, Jaime suspects he would have fought her harder on it, but the picture of her in bed, red tresses bundled up and the imprint of her sweater imbedded on her cheek had made all the will of fighting her on it leave his body years earlier.
She is easy to read after five years together and with a husband who is, “properly obsessed with her” (or so she says), that the small cue of her waking up is as familiar to him as her smile. It is the distinctive, admittedly adorable, way her nose scrunches up and her lip quirks up in the semblance of what he likes to think is a smile. Despite treating waking up with more contempt than anyone else that Jaime has ever met, it is also so very like her to treat even things such as that with all the happiness in the world. Another thing which his wife had cunningly used to enchant him into marriage – how her happiness positively pours out of her very being at all times.
And so that is how he knows that, despite the fact that she will hate him for approximately four seconds after he pulls her out of her sleep, he will be on the receiving end of her every ounce of happiness for all the seconds that come after. She is right, he thinks, that he is more than a little enamoured with her. How could he not be, he wonders, as the contempt passes and like every other day, he is hit with the startling realisation to how much this woman loves him the moment her eyes meet his. Jaime knew that being undeserving of every other thing in his life would never be able to even cause him an ounce of pain, as long as he knew that he had made himself deserving of this one particular part. His wife.
“I am not a-“ Her voice is thick with sleep and Jaime has to stop himself from grinning like a fool.
“Morning person, I know.” He glances down at the watch on his wrist. “But it is also seven o’clock in the evening.” He teases.
She huffs out a breath, a tendril of red blows away from her face, and she glares at him (well, she tries to). “We are not having that discussion again.” With an all-too familiar pout on her lips which feels criminal to the extent that the action should be considered an offence, she succeeds in nothing else but captivating him. She lifts herself up from her desk and looks at him and four seconds must have past because she is smiling at him, so softly that it is indescribably her. “Hi.”
Nearly three years of marriage and nothing feels as good, will ever feel as good, as Sansa smiling at him. Her voice is as soft as her smile, as familiar to him as anything else and it is a soothing balm to every worry in existence. Jaime bends down and places a kiss on her forehead, savouring the sacredness of this moment as her eyes briefly shuts closed, a relieved breath so like his own leaving her. He murmurs a ‘hello’ to her then and the smile is on her face again.
“How was work?” In the space of this – of their home, of them – Jaime will be the first one to admit that he would rather discuss anything other than him spending the day listening to the verbal fights between his brother and father, occasionally his sister if she felt the topic arguable enough.
He sighed, “Tiring.” It had never been a part of his plan really to become involved with the Lannister business, deciding early on that his interest laid elsewhere, yet little else other than Jaime’s involvement had been a part of his father’s plans. It was public knowledge, after all, how difficult it could be to refuse Tywin Lannister anything.
Sansa smiles in understanding, knowing instinctively what he is referring to without him having to utter a single word. “I take it that Tyrion is moving up on the scoreboard then?” Her and only her could make him laugh about the matter. The ‘scoreboard’ was one of the early developments in their relationship, the result of a well-known and now habitually mentioned family dinner where Jaime had introduced her to his family for the first time. It had become evident within minutes that while Jaime preferred to avoid conflicts when he could, his family was born from a different stock altogether. And so, the ‘scoreboard’ came to be and he and Sansa had spent the entirety of the night keeping score as to who won the most arguments as the evening progressed. It was one tradition, a shared joke, that belonged to only the two of them. Theirs.
“Actually, Cersei seems to be the one closing in on Dad now.” His wife laughs, and it is difficult to focus on much else other than that sound.
“Well, she is better at arguing than them.” She rises from her chair, closing her laptop as she does so. Instinctively, he pulls her close by her waist and breathes her in. Lemon and mint, a scent so inherently his wife hits him, and it feels like home more than any building ever could.
“That is high endorsement from one who does it for a living.”
She smirks, “I am sure that Cersei could steal my profession away from me at any moment.” He doubts it but says nothing. “It is because she loves me more than any of you that refrains her from doing so, I think.” Jaime smiles and plants a kiss on her lips just as he recalls the state of their bedroom. His lips quickly leave hers, so much so that he doesn’t notice that she was the one that pulled away first.
“Are you leaving?” It is a question that falls with an easiness from his lips that he expects its reply to be in kind. It isn’t.
Her eyes, which had been an enigma to him when they had first met, and which he has now grown used to seeing every shade of emotion pass them through. Happiness, often. Sadness, occasionally. Panic, however, is one he is less used to. And yet, it is that very feeling he sees then and he cannot think of any reason as to why.
“What do you mean?” Her voice is strained and so unlike her that the worry he felt when he first came home and was met with silence seems preferable to the one coursing through his body now.
He nods in the direction of their bedroom. Yet another room filled with memories, one more precious than the other. “I saw the suitcase. Going back to Winterfell?” While that particular practice of hers had greatly reduced in occurrence the last few months, it had not long before that been standard practice that Sansa left every few weeks to sort out issues with the company that needed to be dealt with on site, or whenever Robb felt the burden of seemingly running it alone become too great. Since they had chosen to live in the Westerlands after they had first gotten married (on the insistence of his father, at times borderline threatening words of the man), a trip North usually left Jaime missing her for at least a few days. “I was just surprised, I thought everything was going well after…” The mention of her father’s two heart attacks is left hanging in the air. Finally, he settles for, “all that happened.”
Relief so palatable that he thinks for a moment that it has been breathed into actual existence is bouncing of his wife in waves. “Are you alright?” He has to ask.
Her blue eyes meet his and that soft smile of hers is back and this time he is the one that is relieved. “Yes, sorry. It’s just Robb.” She re-arranges the already neat looking papers on the desk. “He is struggling a bit and with Benjen leaving for Castle Black for a time, he asked me to come up for a while.” Jaime briefly recalls a discussion a few weeks previously where Sansa had told him that her uncle was going further North to one the Starks’ main offices to oversee some of the mining. It is therefore not surprising that Robb would need the extra assurance from her.
“How long is a while?” She is not meeting his eye, and the pit of despair in his stomach grows. Gods know that he had spent what felt like a lifetime before he met Sansa, and yet he can confidently say that his life only ever felt like it had started the second that he did. Spending any amount of time away from each other has always been difficult, for the both of them.
And so, when she does turn to look at him, it is with a look so full of love that it risks knocking him to the ground. “We’ll see.”
He huffs out a breath, but nothing can stop the smile from spreading on his lips when she leans in and kisses him. They have always been rather good at this part (actually obscenely so), and there is little else that Jaime enjoys as much as kissing her. It is in the way her body melts against his and her fingers treads themselves through his hair and her smile, her goddamn smile, against his lips as they rest against hers that makes him fall in love with her all over again. She pulls away, but leaves her lips hovering just a breath away from his. “I hope your brother knows what he is depraving me of.”
She laughs, “I’d rather he didn’t.”
Jaime pulls her closer yet again, his arms around her waist and feels her rest against his frame. “As long as he gives you back to me.” He can feel her grow stiff in his arms but before he can say anything, she is out of his embrace, already on her way out of the room.
“I need to finish packing.” She seems skittish, he notes, and it is a decidedly uncharacteristic trait of hers. But all thoughts seem to vacate his mind when she throws one last smile his way on her way out of the office.
“I’ll get started on dinner.” He can hear a faint ‘okay’ and he is downstairs again not a minute later, suit jacket off and sleeves rolled up on his arms. When he had first met Sansa, she had declared him a ‘lost cause’ as far as cooking abilities went, although said affectionately of course. Yet, that had not stopped her from trying to teach him everything she knew, which was impossible, but Jaime could now make an edible pasta dish without much fuzz. He smiled faintly, recalling the day that he had after many failed attempts finally succeeded in cooking something halfway to being deemed edible and Sansa had smiled at him as though he had just hung the moon and the stars in the sky.
He can hear the shower start running from upstairs, another quirk of his wife’s that has grown as endearing to him as everything else about her. As much as she isn’t a morning person, Sansa is decidedly in favour of partaking in night showers, which usually leaves her waking up to a drenched pillow and Jaime with a face full of her riot of curls.
Later, the food sits ready at the table and Sansa walks down the stairs dressed in a red sweater with ‘Lannisport University’ spelled out in large yellow letters over it. He assumes that she is wearing shorts underneath it, although it is impossible to tell given the size of sweater. He also assumes that his wife has once again conveniently forgotten the effect that seeing her in his old clothes does to him. When she had started doing it after their first night together, grabbing a shirt of his from the closet and nothing else, Jaime had thought that he had never seen anything as beautiful as Sansa Stark. She had quickly made it a habit, loving how much it seemed to affect him.
Her hair is still wet, the drops leaving a trail after her and it is already turning into the waves he loves. She looks stunning, for lack of better words. “Stare any longer and I’d have to charge you.” That smirk of hers, so damn sexy, is tugging at her lips and stopping himself from kissing her is a feat in and of itself.
“Would marriage be acceptable payment?” He places a brief kiss on her hand and pulls out the chair for her to sit. He can feel her squeeze his hand just before he lets hers go and his heart never fails to stutter at the gesture. He seats himself beside her and commits himself, fully then, to the practice of openly adoring his wife.
A smile this time so soft that it is hardly a smile at all is the only thing he sees when she replies in a near whisper, “You have already done that.” He takes her hand in his again and the relief it brings is not lost on him.
“Damn right I have.” He mutters, the voice laced with the overwhelming emotion he seldom does not feel whenever he thinks about the fact that this woman agreed to marry him.
They say nothing for a while after that. The silence is comfortable and familiar, although Jaime is slightly unused to it coming from his wife. Normally Sansa is the one leading any dinner conversations, usually filled with reports on her family, or his own even, or the attention is often also pulled in the direction of any case she might be working on. Although she had told him that the workload had been light recently, so he isn’t all too surprised. Besides, the silence shared with her is far from troublesome. It always has been.
Instead it is later when he has cleared the table and she has just finished with the dishes, and she turns to him and before Jaime can even identify the look on her face, she is speaking, and he has never missed the silence more in his entire life.
“I want a divorce.”
He does nothing, can do nothing, other than stare at her. At this woman who captured his heart five years previously and has held it in a precious box made of glass ever since, always meticulously careful to never cause as much as a single crack to it. This woman, his Sansa. His wife.
Her words don’t cause a crack in that glass that she has treasured so well ever since he declared all those years ago that he loved her. More than anything, or anyone else. Nothing had ever been as clear to him like loving Sansa was. Had been.
And so, she doesn’t just crack it. With her proclamation, that box previously held in her dainty hands, it falls to the ground and instead, the dam breaks.
“What?” Later, he will recognise the prayer resting on his lips in that moment. Praying for her words to be anything else than what they were. But they aren’t, and they weren’t.
When she finally looks up at him he can tell that the shards surrounding them, abandoned on the floor, are just as real to her as they are to him. Nothing, he thinks, can put them back together. And when her eyes, those oceans of blue that he fell in love with first, meets his, he knows. Neither of them can fix this.
“I want a divorce, Jaime.”