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That first and only Thanksgiving weekend dinner at the Starks, back when everyone was still getting used the notion of Father having a secret illegitimate son with one of the other prominent families in town (“In his teens, younger than young Aegon,” the town gossips had said. “Not only that, but Mr. Stark also knew.”) had been organized by their respective mothers.
“Saving face,” Uncle Oberyn had snorted. He’d been right – whatever screaming matches had taken place at the Stark household about it couldn’t have been as bad as what Mother and Father were getting up to at home – but all three families had silently agreed: it’s best for our reputations if we don’t take it out on the children. So here they are at the Starks’ rustic large house to the north of town, all eight kids and five parents given extended introductions and seated around the antique dining table, and Aegon’s picking away at roasted brussels sprouts. They’re good, but really, too much is going on for him to appreciate how they taste.
He wishes he could swap places with Rhaenys. She’s sitting to Father’s right, next to little Arya, the second daughter. They’re chatting about how Arya should meet Uncle Oberyn’s daughters, as if she were a friend who warranted an immediate introduction to their extended family. He supposes she might as well be, now.
Unlike Jon, who’s awkwardly seated near the head of the table, in between Lyanna and Mr. Stark; Aegon’s seated in the middle of the long table. He’s across from Robb, Jon’s oldest cousin-brother-whatever. He figures this was a tactical decision, have the eldest boys on both sides get to know each other, but Robb’s a little preoccupied – on Aegon’s left is Robb’s little sister Sansa, and she’s brought her boyfriend.
“How’s your mother?” Robb grunts, the barest of graces expected from their social set.
“Fine,” says Joffrey Lannister-Baratheon, glaring right back.
Aegon tries to catch his mother’s eye, but she’s in the kitchen talking to Mrs. Stark in ominously hushed tones, and so he says nothing and turns his gaze back to the interaction at hand.
Sansa exhales. “She’s spearheading another fundraiser for Little People of America,” she says, faux-genial in an obvious attempt to smooth things over.
“Is that so,” Robb says, dry.
“You’ll be there, of course,” Joffrey interjects. “God knows more attention is exactly what my uncle needs.” He looks past Sansa, narrowing his eyes at Aegon. “And you, Targaryen.”
Robb finally meets Aegon’s eye, an eyebrow raised as if to say can you believe this crockpot of shit?
That’s when Mrs. Stark calls for Sansa to come help her with the turkey. Joffrey gets up to follow her.
Finally, Robb relaxes. “Sorry about that,” he says, cracking a smile. He and Sansa look a lot like their mother, and nothing like Jon.
“No, I get it.” He doesn’t know the Baratheons, not really – being away from Westeros for boarding school and then college would do that. But – “She’s your sister.” God knows Rhaenys had dated her fair share of shitheads back in the day, and Aegon didn’t have Robb’s advantage of seniority in his anger.
“Yes, but.” Robb looks after them – in the kitchen, Sansa’s laughing. “He’s a family friend. And he makes her happy, I think.”
Sansa, Joffrey, and Mrs. Stark return from the kitchen bearing a delicious-smelling turkey. Father says so, and Sansa beams, bright and girlish. “She did most of the prep, if you can believe it,” Mrs. Stark says proudly.
Aegon takes a bite. It really is good.
Aegon and Jon aren’t close. He and Aunt Dany get on like a house on fire, but Aegon and Rhaenys have been slower to take to him, and Mother has not spoken of him since divorcing Father. So it’s a tall ask, befriending your secret half-brother. Which is why – this must be a big deal.
“I don’t want to babysit your cousin, I’m trying to graduate,” he says. “I don’t even know her. And it’s college; she should be out there having fun, not having some nosy senior peek over her shoulder.”
“I know, I get that.” Except Aegon knows Jon doesn’t because he went to the army instead of college. The video screen futzes, and someone yells a command behind Jon. He grimaces, mouths training drill at the screen.
“Okay, good talk.”
“Aegon,” Jon’s voice comes again, low and pleading. “We’re – we’re worried. That’s all. Sansa, she–” He worries his lip, like he’s debating whether to tell him something. Finally, he does, though Aegon suspects it’s not the entire truth. “Joffrey’s an asshole, that’s what.”
Oh. “What?” The sum of Aegon’s interactions with Joffrey had been the one Thanksgiving dinner and a handful of other society parties, but somehow, the declaration doesn’t surprise him. He thinks of Sansa and her big smile, all of sixteen when they had first met, and finds himself worried despite himself.
Jon runs another hand through his hair. “Yeah. A few times, it sounds like, it had gotten really bad,” he says, awkward. “Fa – Uncle Ned and Mr. Baratheon aren’t talking. And they don’t want it to be big news, but – we’re all worried. We want her to be okay while she’s away.” A pause. “You know I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important to the family.”
The family is a phrase he turns over his head. Starks and their honor. He agrees.
Sansa obediently seeks him out during orientation week at what he suspects is Robb and Jon’s behest, and they go for campus burritos in her sensible little sedan. She was always a pretty girl, but she’s now a little slimmer than he remembers her, the baby fat around her face beginning to give way, features more elegantly accented with subtle makeup. He tells her where the honor roll students go to study and where the cool kids go to party, and she nods with each new piece of advice. All the while he looks her over, trying to find evidence of what Jon had told him, but comes up short. She’s a little less bright in her expressions, maybe. A little more schooled. But that comes with age.
Probably.
“Well, I live in Red Keep Hall,” she tells him. “Thanks, Aegon. I’ll see you around.”
He doesn’t really. Freshmen and seniors exist on separate planes at Crownlands U, and they’re in different departments – him in business, her in political science.
That is, until a rumor makes its way to him, and he finds himself careening across campus to her neat little single dorm room. “Sansa, it’s Aegon! Open up!”
She opens the door and stares at him like he’s grown a second head. He brushes past her to sit at her desk chair and she sighs. “Can I help you?”
Aegon briefly considers beating around the bush and decides against it. “You cannot go out with a fucking professor.”
Her jaw goes slack. “Huh?”
“Look, I know Dr. Tyrell is by all accounts a nice guy, but–you should know better than to–”
Sansa’s cheeks color and she buries her face in her hands. “What did you hear?”
This flusters him. “That you’d been going into Dr. Tyrell’s office after hours, and someone saw the two of you getting coffee.”
Still to her palms, Sansa says, “Marge said it would look good if I did undergraduate research for her brother, so I met with him in his office a couple of times. He does a lot of research on Yi Ti economics.” She drops her hands and meets his gaze head-on, her cheeks still flushed. “And the coffee thing – Marge invited me for brunch at their house, so he dropped me off at my dorm afterwards. That’s it.”
“Oh.” Aegon deflates, a little embarrassed. “I wasn’t going to imply–”
The two of them stare at each other before Sansa, somehow, giggles. “No, it’s okay.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I know – I know my brothers asked you to look out for me. And I appreciate that you checked in.”
He gathers his things and stands, nudging her shoulder on the way out. “You aren’t going to be a student-teacher cautionary tale, right?”
She smiles. “I mean, no offense to Dr. Tyrell, he is smart and nice and really good-looking, and he said my thesis statement was so well-written.”
“I dunno, I think he might actually be the hottest professor on campus,” he jokes. “So if you can avoid being overcome with lust around him, you might be good ‘til you graduate.”
Sansa snorts, then hastily covers her mouth and the ensuing smile. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s not your business,” Sansa retorts, stabbing the waffles on her plate.
Aegon sighs into his coffee, letting the smell of it drown out the other diner customers, the stress of his new PhD program, and Sansa’s glare. “It kind of is, though.”
“Why?” she asks. “You aren’t my brother. And you don’t ever see me complaining about your girlfriends.”
That’s…true, on both counts. His girlfriends don’t usually know what to do with Sansa – family friend felt wrong, my half-brother’s cousin raised too many questions, a girl I know from home felt loaded, and friend felt like it underserved their dynamic. She is his friend, but he perhaps checks in on her more often than most friends do.
“I just want to make sure that you’re dating Tyrion for the right reasons,” he says, trying his best to remain patient. “I know Joffrey was a right shit.”
Sansa huffs. “That was a long time ago. And Tyrion hates his family. And Joffrey.”
“Three years, Sansa. It’s not that long. And he’s– well, he’s not exactly in your age range, is he?”
She scowls. “I’m not a kid.”
You’re nineteen, Aegon wants to say. I was a kid when I was nineteen. But he knows he would have hated hearing that at nineteen, and so doesn’t say it. He takes another sip of his coffee instead. “My apologies, princess, I won’t presume,” he replies sarcastically.
She arches an auburn eyebrow, unimpressed. “Did Jon ask you to talk to me about it?”
“No,” he says, and it’s the truth. Their friendship had been a learned thing – Jon had asked it of them, and Aegon had figured that if he gets along with her, maybe he can get along with Jon. But he likes Sansa, not just as a girl forced into his circle because of his father’s indiscretion, and, well. If they’d gossiped about Sansa and Dr. Tyrell last year over encounters so innocuous, the circle would certainly gossip about this now: Mr. Stark’s lovely college sophomore of a daughter dating her ex-boyfriend’s uncle.
“Okay,” she says, looking a bit more comforted. “Thanks for checking in, I guess.” She tucks a strand of long, red hair behind her ear and takes a moody sip of her juice. “It made Dad really mad,” she admits.
“Is it worth dating him even if it makes Mr. Stark mad?” God knows Westeros could do with a lot less of their parents being mad about relationships.
“I think so,” Sansa replies. “I know he’s not what anyone had in mind for me. And I’ll still have to see Joffrey. But he’s intelligent, and witty, and I really like how he sees the world. Right?”
He taps his fork against his plate a few times. “I’ll be honest with you, I think Tyrion is an infuriating, smug bastard,” Aegon tells her. “Jon and Dany have a higher opinion of him than me, but I’m probably siding with your dad on this one.”
“Because he made fun of you at that chess competition?” Sansa’s upset attitude is gone, and her voice is now teasing.
“Not just.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “I mean, Sansa, I think you could do better. I’m not telling you to, I’m just saying.”
Her smile widens. “What if I told you it was a secret plot to get back at Joffrey?”
He shrugs exaggeratedly. “I think that could only end in disaster, but what do I know? Like you said, it’s not my business.”
She nudges his leg with her foot under the table, still smiling. “Good, you’re learning.”
Sansa invites him to her graduation. He tries to beg off – all the Starks will certainly be there, and he’s not fully confident Mrs. Stark won’t try something when she sees him – but she promptly invites him to the lunch afterwards. It won’t just be you, she says. Marge will be there!
And then another text: You don’t have to!! But it would mean a lot if you came 😊
So he picks up a fancy leather journal – pastel blue in the shade she likes – slips it in a recycled gift bag and heads to the upscale restaurant where Mr. and Mrs. Stark have booked out a small private room. Margaery is the one who opens the door, and she smiles when she sees him. “Oh, good. You can sit at the interloper end of the table with Gendry and me.” Another once-over. “Your hair is blue.”
He peeks behind Margaery at the large table, filled with Stark family members and family friends. Gendry does nod at him from the tail end. “It can feel like that,” he says.
Jon and Sansa have gotten up to meet him. Her grin is big. “You came! And you didn’t have to get me a present.”
He pulls her into a brief, perfunctory hug, and hands her the gift bag. “I was in the area,” he jokes. “Congratulations, Sansa.” To his brother: “Hi, Jon.”
Jon cracks a smile. “Hi, Egg. You heard the news?”
From beside him, Margaery laughs. “Just show him, San.”
Sansa flushes again before raising her hand. The diamond on it glints in the light. “You missed the proposal,” she says shyly, gesturing to where Robb and Harry are laughing uproariously about something.
“Congratulations,” he exclaims.
“And you!” she says. “Aren’t you finishing soon?”
He groans. “Sansa, if you’re ever going to get an advanced degree, you’ll learn never to ask that question.”
She beams at him, flush with happiness, and gives him a hug before gesturing that he sit down. She and Margaery reclaim their seats next to Harry, who squeezes Sansa’s shoulder before downing another drink.
Aegon glances at Jon, who huffs. “Sansa's not had good luck with boyfriends,” Jon comments, apropos of nothing. “And they’ve only been together a year.”
“Oh, I guess,” Aegon hums, like he hasn’t noticed. He considers saying something like at least he’s not a Lannister, but he figures that might make Jon’s attitude even fouler. They’re on better terms now that Jon is officially a decorated veteran and their father’s retired away to Dragonstone, but their relationship is still not something he wants to test. “But I suppose you and Robb have already given the shovel talk,” he says instead.
Jon ignores this. “He’s their cousin’s cousin or something,” he continues. “Related to Catelyn’s sister’s in-laws somehow. Not close enough that the Tullys would throw a fit about it, but maybe close enough that there’s enough at stake if he fucks up.”
Aegon watches Harry whisper something in Sansa’s ear that makes her blush. “You don’t think she could fuck it up?”
“No,” Jon says gravely. “I really don’t.”
Aegon thinks of this conversation three months later when the school outlets blaze the headline everywhere: Ex-QB Harry Hardyng dead in car crash.
He texts immediately: Sansa, I heard the news. I’m so sorry.
She doesn’t reply until later that evening. Thank you, Egg. I appreciate it.
Aegon and Daenerys are the only ones who attend the wedding – Rhaenys doing Doctors Without Borders in Essos, Father ill, Mother not touching anything Lyanna will be prominent at with ten-foot pole, Viserys still finding the whole affair a joke.
“It’s their loss,” Daenerys says when she tells him why Viserys begged off, an excuse so weak Aegon forgot it as soon as she said it. “I’m sure it’ll be a lovely wedding. And I have seen the Stark liquor cabinet.”
“You would know,” Aegon says, keeping his eyes on the road.
She nudges him. “Both my weddings were fabulous, and you know it.”
“The husbands less so.”
She scoffs. “One day, Egg, you will understand the travails of being a husband, and I will be there, serene in my guidance–”
He turns up the radio to that awful Lyseni radio station he knows she hates. It makes her laugh, which in turn makes him smile. His aunt is lovely, and if she still wants one, she deserves a nice spouse after all she’s been through. Much like –
Speak of the devil. Sansa’s waiting for them outside the Stark home. “You are both late,” she says at the car window as soon as Aegon puts it into park.
Daenerys rolls her eyes, but she gives the younger girl a hug when she steps out. “Only by six minutes, Sansa. It will be fine, I promise.”
Sansa frowns for a moment before her impeccable manners take over. She’d told Aegon months ago that she’d volunteered to plan the wedding. Robb wouldn’t let me plan his and Gendry is never proposing, she’d complained, but he wonders if the other, more obvious reason isn’t why. But their conversations of late have been about tie colors and food allergies and are you sure Rhaenys isn’t coming? and what time they should arrive, never mind that Aegon and Dany have already flunked the last one. Aegon brought a backup tie to make it up to her.
“Sorry,” he says placatingly. “Got held up at the florist’s.”
She grins. “Oh, now you’re speaking my language. You got it?”
Aegon reaches into the backseat to take out the box. Winter roses, a Stark family favorite, interspersed with jasmine, Ygritte’s favorite. “It’s beautiful.”
Sansa squeals when she sees it. “It is.” She takes it from him and looks up at him, excited. “She’ll love it.”
Aegon and Dany are ushered into the large house – Daenerys into the garden with the rest of the guests, Aegon into the kitchen with the rest of the groomsmen. Sansa squeezes Robb’s hand – “You got it from here, right?” – before disappearing into the guest bedroom where the bride and bridesmaids are.
Jon and Ygritte had insisted on a small wedding, none of Mr. Stark's extensive business contacts or the high-society ladies Mrs. Stark hangs out with, but it’s still quite a large gathering. It makes Aegon a little wistful, that the Starks can call all these people family somehow.
Finally, Robb takes them to the garden, where Jon looks like he’s about to keel over. Aegon gives his brother a hug before taking his place in the procession next to Arya.
The wedding, of course, goes off without a hitch. Samwell chokes up on the rites, Ygritte looks beautiful and tries very hard not to cry, and Jon misses his cue twice – but in the end, it happens, and Aegon gets a new sister-in-law.
At the reception, still in the garden but now lit with twinkly lights, he finds his friend and draws her into a dance. “It’s a very nice wedding, Sansa. And you look good,” he adds, because he didn’t get a chance to tell her earlier. “Congratulations.”
“Oh, it shouldn’t be me you’re congratulating,” she says graciously, her high cheekbones coloring. “Go tell the groom. You should have seen him earlier today; Robb had to drag him out of his bed.”
“Couldn’t tell by looking at him,” Aegon says, looking over his shoulder to where Jon’s now being led around the garden in a dance by his firecracker of a new wife, looking like the happiest man in the world.
“Ygritte’s really good for him,” Sansa adds. “He needed the kind of girl who could pull the stick out of his ass.”
That makes him snort. “I’ll tell him you said that.”
She rolls her eyes. “I already told him that,” she says, bratty in the way only younger sisters are. That she could still treat Jon as her brother, the way Aegon has learned to do, is almost heartwarming.
“Well,” he says. “I meant to congratulate the wedding planner.”
She looks a little wistful at that. “Well, some of it was already in place, you see. Not…reserved or anything, but…you know, Jon and Ygritte said we trust you, Sansa, and I already had a Pinterest board.”
The implication saddens him. He remembers how she'd lit up at seeing the bouquet, wonders if she'd imagined herself carrying it down the aisle. “You didn’t have to use it.”
“No, it’s fine, really,” she says. “I was…a different person then. So it felt like saying goodbye to that time of my life. I want different things now.”
He twirls her, and her hand makes it back to his, warm and secure.
“What, you don’t want another cute boy?” he teases.
“Why? Know any cute boys?” she asks slyly.
“Eh. As a former cute boy myself, I think they’re kind of overrated.”
“Really?” Sansa says. “I think you’re perfectly rated.”
He tries not to overthink the compliment. “Why, thank you, m’lady.”
Another twirl. “No, but really,” Sansa continues. “I used to want a lot of…really romantic things, you know? Now I think I just want to wait for the right guy.”
“The right guy.”
“The right guy,” she repeats, before quieting. “Egg, we’ve known each other a long time, haven’t we?”
He thinks about Sansa, all of sixteen, at that Thanksgiving table, and sees her now, twenty-five and in full bloom. The song ends. Sansa’s eyes are very, very blue, and her hands are very, very warm when Aegon lets go of them. Finally, she gives him a peck on the cheek, and he gets a whiff of the rose scent on her, dusky and sweet.
Arya and Gendry come over to them. Arya grabs Sansa to do a dance with the girls and bids Gendry to keep Aegon company. But throughout their ensuing conversation, Aegon keeps catching Sansa’s eye, and she keeps smiling at him like they have a secret.
Finally, Aegon goes to tap the groom on the shoulder. “Jon,” he says. “I have something to ask you, and I’m going to need you not to kill me.”
At their wedding, Daenerys tells everyone what she had told Aegon the day Jon got married. Beside him, a vision in silver and white, Sansa claps delightedly. “She actually told you you’d get married the day we agreed to date. Is that true?”
Aegon sighs. “Sadly, yes.” He clinks his glass against hers. “I hope I won’t actually need her advice, though.”
“Oh, well,” she says, taking a sip of the wine and giving him a peck on the lips. “You’re being a pretty good first husband so far.”
“Am I being a pretty good last husband, too?”
His wife blushes beautifully. “I think so.”