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Sansa laughed again, sitting cross-legged on the floor and leaning her head against one of the armchairs in the living room. Arya was next to her, laughing so hard she’d managed to curl up into a ball and in front of them Gendry continued his dramatic reading of Taylor Swift’s Blank Space. Every now and then an explosion from the video games Bran and Rickon were playing with their friends would interrupt and she could hear Theon in the kitchen calling for more shots. Her own lemonade was alcohol-free. She’d stopped drinking earlier in the night the more people had poured into the Starks Lakehouse, but she felt a pleasant buzz from the energy around her.
Gendry was almost done, and Arya was leaning against her searching through other songs they could make him do. Sansa strained her head to look around, trying to find Myrcella who would absolutely want to be involved in this when she spotted Jon. Hair pulled back, black jeans and an olive-green henley, he was holding a bottle of water and heading up the stairs and she could have sworn. Would have put money on it. That he’d caught her eye before making his way up.
She watches him disappear into the quiet before giving Arya’s shoulder a playful nudge.
“I’m going to head up,” Sansa says, pulling herself up off the floor and pointedly ignoring the look her little sister sends her way.
“Courage dear heart!” Arya shouts and Gendry pats Sansa on the shoulder as she walks away.
“Make him do London Boy” Sansa yells back and as she heads into the kitchen, she can see Arya grinning while Gendry protests.
The kitchen is empty save for Theon and Tormund who are in a tense argument about gods knows what. Sansa goes about filling a glass with water and by the time she’s done she thinks maybe Tormund might be winning.
She has another look around for Myrycella but she can guess who her best friend might have wandered off with and why Robb is mysteriously absent. Plus, if she found Ella she knows exactly what she’d say to her. “You’re stalling. Just go upstairs I promise he wants to hear what you have to say”.
The thing about it though is Myrcella is her best friend. And wholeheartedly believes there isn’t a thing Sansa has to say to someone that the receiving party wouldn’t desperately want to hear. Which Sansa admits, is exactly the energy she needs right now.
So, she disappears up the stairs too.
By the time she reaches his room, she has lost every inch of her nerve. Sansa stands, for what feels like at least five minutes, but was probably only two, staring at the oak of Jon’s door not so much as raising her hand to knock. She’s fiddling with the chain of her necklace, walking around in a little circle. What’s the worst that could happen? He says he doesn’t want her, for one. He went up there to meet someone else, is another. Sansa stops, shuffles closer to the door and puts her ear against it. She can’t hear anything so option two doesn’t seem likely. Plus, it’s Jon. Hooking up with some girl he barely knows at his best friend’s parents’ house really isn’t his style. She thinks. Knows. She knows.
Moving her head slightly she presses her forehead against the door and sighs. Maybe she should have kept drinking. Liquid courage and all. A moment, that’s all she needs, she’ll go into her bathroom, give herself a little pep talk and then she’ll knock on his goddamn door. He absolutely made eye contact with her.
Her room is only down the hall from his, which, after admitting her feelings for him to herself has been incredibly inconvenient the last two nights. Knowing that he is right there. And the only thing stopping her from doing anything is that she’s just, like, the tiniest bit of a coward. Miniscule. At best.
She opens her door and beelines to the en-suite and leaving the door wide open Sansa switches on the light and turns on the tap. Slowly pulling her hair back in a ponytail when-
"Hi"
She freezes. Sansa can see herself in the reflection. Wide eyes, mouth opened in an oh shape and arms behind her head, hair slipping through her fingertips. And behind her. Sitting on the edge of her bed. Is Jon.
"Sorry I uh..." he lifts his hand to run it through his hair now and she is still standing there like a statue "I didn't know if you saw me when you walked in, and I didn't want to just sit here silently without you knowing"
He’s got this endearing look on his face, a little bit deer caught in the headlights, a little bit of the kind of surety that has her go weak in the knees. She’s not entirely sure how he’s pulling both off. Or why she’s still standing frozen in place. Sansa spins around, her hair falling in waves around her. Gods. She didn’t even get to splash her face with water.
“Hi” her voice is squeakier than the bravado she’d been going for and for some reason she gives him a little wave as she walks toward him.
She doesn’t miss the grin that flashes on his usually solemn face.
“Sorry I was…” she reaches her bed, lets one of her hands fall, and her fingertips dance on the duvet. His eyes haven’t left hers, a charcoal that sees far too much and gives nothing away. Her own eyes flicker away, she’d abandoned her glass of water on the bathroom sink. She wishes she still had it to hold onto.
“I was coming from your room, actually” it wasn’t what Sansa had intended to say. But he’s here, sitting on the edge of her bed. And he’s either looking directly into her eyes or at the way her fingers move nervously on her bedspread.
“Oh?” he says it like a question, eyebrows raised, a little bit of hope bursting through in the way his fingers move through his hair again. A nervous gesture. One he’s had his whole life. Only she’s just realising he does it a lot around her.
She falters all the same.
“Do you have any idea what Theon and Tormund were going on about in there?”
She matches Jon's laugh as she sits next to him at the edge of the bed. The bottle of water she’d seen him carry up the stairs rolls to her as the bed dips, and she picks it up eager to have any kind of distraction in her hands. It occurs to her, that he came straight here. That he went into the kitchen to grab some water and walked straight up to her door. Exactly what she had planned to do with him. That gives her a little more nerve.
“Cheese” Jon deadpans and Sansa gawks.
“Cheese!?” she repeats a little incredulous.
“Not so much cheese,” he amends “but whether they remembered to put it on the pizza they made. I was only in there a minute, and I was a little distracted…” he trails off, watching as she rearranges herself, no longer sitting awkwardly on the end of her own bed, Sansa now has her feet tucked under her legs and when she reaches for a pillow to get more comfortable Jon finds himself shifting a little closer to her.
“Distracted?” she asks, putting his water to the side and hugging the pillow to her chest.
“Yeah, sorry. Last I heard they were arguing about what toppings they’d put on there in the first place and-”
“Ah!” Sansa laughs, “That’s why Tormund was yelling anchovies in disgust”
“Ugh” Jon crinkles his nose and Sansa’s whole world lights up “God Theon why?”
“He comes from the sea he can’t be held responsible for these things”
“It’s still no excuse”
“Either way those two might end up burning the house down”
“To be fair” Jon leans a little closer and grabs the water bottle, taking a drink before continuing “I don’t actually think the oven was on”
Sansa folds into a fit of giggles and Jon thinks it’s the best thing he’s ever heard.
He leans back, resting on his elbows and he’s got that solemn look back on his face as he watches her “Is that why you were coming up to see me” he asks, and Sansa thinks she must look like a doe caught in some headlights because how does he always cut right through her like this.
“Yes” she lies, and he tilts his head to the side like he knows it.
“Are you going to ask why I’m sitting in here?” he asks, because they’ve been dancing so long and now, he’s finally worked up the nerve he can’t possibly back out now.
They’ve been entwined in each other’s lives since either of them can remember, and as they got older the things that had kept them at a distance when they were young became parts of their lives they could share with each other for hours.
“I was actually going to casually bring it up a few hours into the conversation” she manoeuvres herself to ever so gently kick him and he loses balance falling completely on the bed with an oof “I was going to be really smooth about it I’ll have you know”
“Slow and steady yeah?” he laughs out, grabbing her arm to lay down next to him, feet dangling off the bed, now both looking up her ceiling.
The lanterns Sansa had dutifully ensured Jon, Robb and Theon hung up all around the backyard dapple golden light into Sansa’s room, helping the lamp Jon had flicked on when he came in earlier light up the room. Noises waft up from the party downstairs, someone had turned on an old popular song from when they were in middle school and a swell of approval travelled up the stairs.
Sansa turns her head toward Jon just as he lets out a groan at the memory of the song and puts his arms above his head. Her stomach does a flip.
“See, that” he laughs "I don’t know what to do when you look at me like that"
Sansa’s only half paying attention to what Jon’s saying, too busy looking at the way his dark curls fall in his face when he props himself up a little, how the golden light hits his skin. To busy wondering what’s happening in the grey storm of his eyes, so she doesn’t quite understand what he’s just told her.
"Like what?" she hums it out and he’s so caught up in how the words leave her lips he almost forgets what he’s trying to do here.
So, he drinks her in as openly as she does him, so maybe that’ll help her understand, so maybe they’ll finally be on the same page. Just maybe it’ll make him brave enough to say what he needs to, to close that gap that always hangs between them like mist in the trees.
"Like I’m worth drowning in"
She draws back, only for a moment, but he swears it lasts an eternity. Sansa’s fingers grip the duvet as it dawns on her, what he’s been having trouble putting into words, what he just shone a light on and neither of them can look away now.
Because they always do, don’t they? Every time he catches her gazing at him like this her eyes dart away, distracted by some errant thing. And he does the same, she’ll catch him out and he’ll mumble some excuse to leave the room.
Not right now though, no, now they’re both drowning. And she doesn’t seem to mind. The red of her hair shines a dark copper in this light and his hand moves to slip a strand behind her ear. An excuse to touch her, an excuse to linger. She catches his hand before it falls away and twines her fingers through his. Leaning forward now. Both of them. Just that little bit further.
“Neither do I” she whispers. And her lips are so close to his it wouldn’t take much to be kissing her. To take this leap, to fall together “Should we figure it out together” she asks right before he closes the gap.