Work Text:
He wakes up on her couch, sometime after 7, hungover and alone.
The first few moments of consciousness are mere snapshots, experienced through dull senses: grey morning light; a steaming mug of tea; an acrylic blanket; the muted smell of old perfume. He’d love to burrow through the cheap foam of her sofa and hibernate all day, but he’s sure she’s awake and knows he’s here, so now he has to wake up, too. Tyrion plucks the afghan from where its twisted around his legs, and draws it over his shoulders, shuffling into a seated position. The apartment is cold – freezing, really. She never puts the heat on and he never got used to weather. When he tries the tea, which was perched so precariously on a stack of crumbling paperbacks, he feels a bittersweet pang: she’s remembered how he takes it. Almost. It could use some whiskey.
Looking around, curious now that his thirst is slaked and the pounding in his skull has lessened, he notices that the living room is much the same as he recalls. The walls are pristine white, but flaking paint, the carpet an institutional green that brings to mind a bank, or public school. She loves the apartment for its lead-lined windows with the stained glass panels, and the high ceilings covered in decorative moulding; he hates the four flights of stairs and the neighbourhood.
He gets to his feet, determined to get the awkward, stilted, quite possibly apology-heavy conversation out of the way so he crawl back to his hotel room, where only the cleaning staff will judge him. Cautiously, cradling his head with one hand and the mug of tea with the other, Tyrion walks towards the kitchen, following a corridor lined with portraits. There’s one of her father, and he pauses to examine the stern face of Eddard Stark. He looks no better, painted now in careful brushstrokes, than he did when he was alive, and Tyrion bites his tongue to stop himself from arguing with a dead man.
Sansa Stark is indeed in the kitchen, and that’s where he finds her, leaning against the marble counter, reading the newspaper. She doesn’t look up when he enters, so at first he just sees a bare sketch of her. It’s almost as if she’s eighteen again, all coltish and achingly vulnerable in appearance. Then she stirs, and his vision clears, and it is undeniably a woman of twenty-six in front of him. Her eyes, still dark, still as blue as the ocean by Casterly Rock, are ringed with faint lines of strain. The set of the mouth is harder, less forgiving. She’s wearing a dress he’s never seen before, a simple thing in dove grey wool that she’s paired with the ugliest, thickest black socks imaginable, all covered in lint. Is she comfortable enough not to wear shoes around me? Tyrion wonders, holding back a laugh at the sight of her footwear.Ridiculous! Endearing, but ridiculous.
There’s more changes, there must be, but the most pressing to his mind is the fact she seems taller. He chalks it up to a straighter spine, less slumped shoulders. It makes him nervous and pleased in equal measure.
Sansa flips down her newspaper. ‘You’re up.’
‘I am,’ he agrees, and places the mug of the kitchen table. It’s half-obscured with magazines, and books, and an abandoned knitting project. ‘Please, I hope you can forgive me for coming over unannounced. It was terribly rude of me.’
‘It was terribly you of you,’ Sansa replies, her voice sweet, burying the sharpness of the words in honey. It’s perfect. She twists her lips wryly, and moves towards the table.
Closer, he can see that her hair is auburn again, not brown, and he’s glad; when she walks through a shaft of light it reveals the fiery highlights hidden in the dark strands. It reminds him of breakfast on the deck, salt spray and orange juice, all surrounded by golden, Californian sun.
Sansa waves her hand in a short gesture and draws his attention to the fact she’s laid out two bowls of porridge, as well as toast, and fruit, and jam and spreads. She’s always struggled to tone down her nurturing side and it reveals itself in the neat angles of the cutlery, and the crisp fold of the napkin.
‘Will you have breakfast?’ She asks. He nods and takes a seat. Tyrion scrapes butter across his toast and takes a tentative bite, more afraid of heartburn than whatever she might say. ‘I’m surprised you still had your key.’
Why? I wasn’t the one who left, he wants to say, I was just the one who trapped you. ‘I’m surprised it still worked.’
Sansa dabs at her mouth with a napkin. ‘You’re my husband. It would be impolite to change the locks.’
Her logic is flawless and absurd; he loves it. This is his Sansa, with her careful words, the tempered pitch, a subtle curve of eyebrow. Somehow the changes in her person don’t seem so terrifying now.
‘Just so.’ Taking a drink of tea, he finds it lukewarm and over-steeped – she kept the teabag in just as he likes, but he left it too long. ‘I suppose I ought to tell you how I came to be on your couch.’
Sansa inclines her head. ‘I’ve an idea. We’ve not been separated that long, Tyrion.’
His name sends surprising sparks down his spine; he’s not heard it from her lips in years. ‘Long enough, perhaps, to forget your husband is a drunken fool.’ There’s humour there, but it is bitter. Tyrion spoons up some porridge and hopes she can be courteous and ignore it.
She sighs softly, but says nothing. Sansa eats daintily, small bites and delicate sips. Her eyes linger on the crossword in the paper, and there are black smudges on her fingertips from where she’s turned the page. It’s hard to reconcile the habits he remembers – her restraint, the coolness, the distance – with the slight shabbinessof Sansa Stark in her own flat, with her embarrassing socks and loosely braided hair.
‘I was in town for a conference,’ Tyrion says suddenly, and she looks up from 22-across (“Impetuous person, 7 letters”). ‘The university asked me to give a lecture on the Chinese economy. As you no doubt remember, I’ve never said no to an open bar.’
‘Any bar,’ she corrects. Tyrion suspects there’s a challenge there - if he can be bothered to find it.
He’s too hungover to debate her, especially not when she’s right, so instead he flashes a toothy smile (the one his father paid thousands for a decade ago) and nods. ‘Anyway, I make for a morose drunk, and last night was one such occasion. I found myself wandering down streets I thought I’d forgotten. 3AM caught me completely lost and at your door.’
It’s not much of an explanation, but Tyrion doesn’t want to reveal the deep well of loneliness he usually keeps hidden, especially not over breakfast.
Sansa looks at him for a few moments, then shrugs. ‘It doesn’t matter, in the end. We’re married.’ She says it as if it means something – he has no idea what that might be.
‘Our marriage consists of press releases and separate addresses.’
‘And vows.’ Sansa insists, an edge of – what was that? Irony? - creeping into her voice.
‘Were there vows? I believe I was too drunk to tell.’
She makes a sound, a not-quite tsk that lets him know she’s annoyed by the comment. He can’t meet her eyes, not when he knows they’re full of Stark earnestness and Catholic guilt. Of course she’d focus on the words they said, not on the fact they’d both been coerced into the match: he through an overbearing father who paid his wage and withheld affection; her through financial ruin, largely orchestrated by his own family’s ruthless business tactics. Instead, he runs a hand over his face, noticing for the first time that he’s lost the contact that makes his eyes match. It probably fell out somewhere between his sixth glass of champagne and the third gin and tonic.
He could, if he dared, reach out to her now. He could take her hand and apologise in truth, tell her one of the many speeches he’s constructed in his mind as he lies, sleepless, in the quiet of night. She might respond, might smile properly and thank him for his words and concern and say that it wasn’t all a mistake. Tyrion shifts the crusts of his toast on his plate and knows he won’t. He doesn’t do it because she doesn’t want him to; there is an unspoken agreement between them, stretched taut and unyielding, that means she will adhere to her vows – however ridiculous, however coaxed from her unwillingly – provided he asks nothing of her. She is beautiful and lovely and not his at all.
Tyrion chokes down the rest of his breakfast and drinks his cold tea. ‘Thank you,’ he tells her, far too earnestly to go unnoticed. Sansa glances at him sharply, but says nothing, just nods slightly, acknowledging the words. She stands up and starts clearing away the plates, moving them to the sink to wash after he’s gone. She’s finished, he realises, and now she needs me to get out so she can go back to pretending I don’t exist.
Out loud, he says: ‘I’ve got to get back to the hotel before they lock me out.’
‘Right.’ Her arms are crossed over her chest. ‘Your briefcase is by the door.’
He gives her a wry smile and pushes his luck to lean up and kiss her cheek. She doesn’t flinch, doesn’t object, and he is grateful that there is only confusion on her face when he withdraws rather than harsh rejection. Tyrion leaves, picking up his possessions on the way out. This was always going to be a bad idea, he decides, and the wind blows against his back, cold and bitter and in agreement.