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Jon’s not even three steps out of the repair shop before he spears his fingers through his hair and tips his head back, puffing out a cloud of mist in the cold, mountain air.
“We should have flown,” he mumbles as he fumbles around his pockets for his cell phone, probably to call Robb with an update.
It’s as close to criticism as Jon will dare give her, because this – driving home together on an epic two and a half day road trip from Los Angeles to Minnesota for Christmas break – was entirely Sansa’s idea. It had seemed like a good idea back in November, when she first hatched the idea when she stopped by Jon’s Pasadena apartment to drop off some of her mom’s stuffing after Thanksgiving. And even though Jon tried to convince her that twenty-eight hours in a car wasn’t all it seemed to be, he’d finally been swayed by the argument that she wouldn’t have the chance to see the country like this any other way.
And it’s not that she didn’t want to do a long-haul road trip. Seeing the country sounds great, but seeing it with Jon – alone in a car, where they can carry on hours of conversation, or just take in the silence together – is something out of a dream.
It’s not that she didn’t know it before, that she’d started nursing a tendre for Jon Snow shortly after he drove her home from that party. By the time Jon stopped by the weekend before midterm with a bag of Chinese takeout and a stack of grading, even though it was very likely at Robb’s request, Sansa knew she was a goner. But for all the flirty body language, hair-flipping and long hours doing her homework over at his apartment, she’s sure that Jon is oblivious about her otherwise painfully evident crush.
“I’m not sure this road trip idea of yours is going to work,” Margaery had warned her before she left, leaning against the door frame while Sansa sifted through heaps of her clothes, searching for her cold weather clothes among the sundresses and shorts. “If he’s just, you know, being a proxy brother type.”
Sansa had dismissed the idea out of hand then, but she’s forced to reflect that Margaery has always been sensible and pragmatic, and Sansa the romantic, dreamy type. But Sansa isn’t going to lie down and let this all be ruined by Jon’s busted, old sedan. As long as there’s a chance she can salvage her idyllic road trip before any hope of time alone with Jon is dashed by the hustle of being home again, she’s not giving up on it.
When Jon retreats deeper into the parking lot, this thumb tapping rapidly on the screen of his phone, Sansa shuffles after him, jamming her hands into the pocket of her hoodie. “How long is it going to take them to fix it up?”
He looks up at her and her heart sinks when his steel eyes flicker across her face. Not anytime soon, she can guess.
“Um,” says Sansa. “Do you mind calling Robb and letting him know?”
Something twitches on Jon’s face, like half a smile. “Only if you tell your mom. I’m not sure when we’ll get you home, and I’d hate to be the one to break that news to her.”
“We’ll get there,” she says firmly and leaves him where he is, his fingers fumbling in his pocket for his lighter. He won’t smoke around her, he’s even trying to quit, but Sansa knows he’s struggling not to walk to the corner store and buy a pack to deal with the unexpected hitch in their plans.
By the time the mechanic drops them off at the hotel room she’s booked for them in town, Sansa’s called her mom, found a rental car to pick up in the morning, and scoped out the cute diner next door on Yelp. She’s already congratulating herself for an adroit recovery when she manages to make Jon laugh with a story from her sorority formal while the clerk steals awkward glances at them while rapping at her keyboard.
“You’re in 312,” she says, pushing a pair of key cards across the desk at them. “There’s a bus coming through later tonight, so. You know.”
Sansa’s smile fades a little. She doesn’t know, but the knowing look the clerk gives them, sweeping from Sansa’s toes to her messy bun and then flickering over toward Jon gives her plenty of ideas about what the clerk seems to expect they’re doing. If Jon notices, though, he doesn’t let on as he sweeps up the keys and heads for the elevator with Sansa’s suitcase in one hand and his duffel bag in the other.
She doesn’t say anything on the way up, fumbling awkwardly with her phone in one hand. It’s really nice of Jon to take her suitcase for her, but Sansa wishes she’d grabbed it first, if only so she’d have something to do with her hands while they trek down the hall toward their room.
Did the clerk think they were an item? Sansa wonders as Jon pushes the door open in front of her and fumbles for the light. She steps around him, but her heart flips in her chest when the small room comes into focus, then it bottoms out somewhere in the sub-basement of the building.
There’s only one bed.
It’s piled high with fluffy pillows and made up with fresh, starched sheets, and it fills most of the tiny room with two narrow paths and a nightstand on either side. There’s a small desk with a chair that doesn’t look comfortable in the corner, a small dresser with a television, and almost nothing else.
“I guess this is it,” says Jon, setting her suitcase next to the dresser, sounding so casual that Sansa could almost believe that he hasn’t noticed the bed. She starts to gesture faintly to it as Jon’s duffel drops to the floor next to her suitcase and he rubs his hands over his arms and smiles thinly at her.
“Let’s get dinner.”
For all of Jon’s casual attitude about what is surely on his mind, too, dinner is a quiet affair across the street. Sansa spends most of it nervously checking her phone, hovering her thumb over three drafts of a text to Margaery before locking the screen and pushing it away.
“We can ask for a cot when we get back,” Jon suggests when they split the bill, but he can’t quite bring himself to look Sansa in the eye. “Or I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“It’s a king,” Sansa says airily, as if the bed problem hasn’t consumed her for the last hour. As if it isn’t some kind of silly romance novel trope, the sort of thing that never really happens in the real world. She pushes her hair back and shrugs her hands up into the sleeves of her sweatshirt, closing them into little balls around the warm fabric while waiting for the crosswalk light to change. “You’ll be so far away on your side of the bed that I won’t even know that you’re even there.”
That seems to settle it, but it doesn’t keep Jon from lingering in the shower for an extra fifteen minutes, and then takes up watch in the desk chair, tapping away at his computer with an excuse about grades being posted and a flood of questions from his undergrads. Sansa pretends not to notice that he pushes his glasses up every time he steals a look in her direction and she’s swiping through Pinterest and waiting to fall asleep. She also pretends not to be helplessly charmed by how polite he’s trying to be. If it were any of her exes, they’d be taking full advantage of their situation for all kinds of inappropriate things.
Inappropriate things that don’t seem that inappropriate now that it’s Jon she’s with, and now that Sansa would actually like to do any of it.
After nearly an hour of scanning sorority crafts, Sansa sits up and flips her braid over her shoulder. Jon’s eyes are drifting closed with Facebook open on his laptop, an unread message flashing red in the corner.
“Jon.” Sansa clears her throat, “Just come to bed. We’ve still got a day and a half of driving to get home, and we need all the rest we can get.”
Jon doesn’t argue with that. She didn’t think he would, either, but he seems hesitant to climb stiffly out of the chair and peel back the covers on the other side of the bed. It’s so much bigger than her twin-size bed back at school that they could go the entire night without coming close to touching each other. Jon is, after all, four and a half feet away from Sansa. She almost laughs at the absurdity of this, pulls up her blankets and stares at the wall.
Minutes tick away on the red LED display of the alarm clock on Sansa’s side. Outside, she hears a car pass on the street, then nothing for a long time after. Jon’s breath is still ragged and unsteady, so she knows he hasn’t fallen asleep either, even though he’s not moving around, not even to find a better sleeping position.
“You can get comfortable,” she says finally, after a long time, feeling like she’s the only one who’s trying to make this work. It’s near midnight, according to the little alarm clock, and neither of them are any closer to actually falling asleep. “I mean. If you’re worried that someone’s going to get the wrong idea, I won’t tell Robb.”
“I’m already not telling Robb about Margaery’s party earlier this semester,” Jon reminds her, but there’s a muffled laugh somewhere in his voice that makes her feel like he doesn’t really mind when he adds, “And there’s – Well, how many secrets am I supposed to keep from my best friend about his baby sister?”
Her face flushes hot, remembering the night of the party. She remembers being sure he’d tell Robb, how she’d dreaded the inevitable lecture from her brother that had never come. She’d told herself it might still come, or maybe Robb was willing to let her grow up on her own. She hadn’t known that Jon had kept it to himself.
Sansa shoves herself over to face the back of Jon’s t-shirt, a faded old hockey practice t-shirt she thinks Robb owned, too. “You didn’t tell Robb about that night?”
Jon is quiet for a minute, but he rolls onto his back and stares blindly up at the ceiling rather than at her. “I don’t tell Robb a lot of things, Sansa.”
She can’t stop herself. “Things like what?” asks Sansa, biting at the corner of her lip and staring at him intently. Things like Margaery’s party, or things like hanging out with Sansa almost every weekend for the last three months?
“Well, things that aren’t his to worry about, for starters,” he says a little too quickly. “You’re an adult now, and you’re my – Well, you don’t need me going to tell your brother when you fuck up occasionally.”
That keeps her quietly worrying at her lip for a minute until she blinks through the darkness and sees the deep furrow in Jon’s forehead. Sansa pulls the sheet up to her neck and feels it pull under Jon’s weight. He’ll share the bed, but he won’t go so far as to sleep under the covers with her.
“I thought – I mean, when Robb gave me your number. When you let me come do homework at your place, or came to check on me during midterm.” Her fingers pull at the sheets a little more, trying to remember if Jon had ever said that Robb had asked him to do this kind of stuff with her. “I thought that you were doing it because Robb asked.”
He sucks in a sharp breath before he asks, “Can we talk about this in the car tomorrow?” But when he pushes his hair back and keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the ceiling, it’s like seeing him for the first time again. It’s like she hasn’t been seeing him at all these past few months. Maybe longer than that.
Oh, Sansa realizes, and pulls the sheet higher over her mouth. The idea that Jon has been silently pining for her seems too absurd to be allowed. And yet…
“Yeah,” she hears herself say lightly, but it sounds so far away and muddled that she might as well be under water. “You’re right. Let’s get some sleep.”
But she can’t sleep, even after she rolls back to her side and Jon mirrors her movement on the other side of the bed. She traces the pattern of the wallpaper with her eyes, her heart ramming painfully near her throat. When she finally does fall asleep, she has intense dreams that cycle between the absurd and the obscene, and she wakes up after every one of them feeling too warm and embarrassed. At the other side of the bed is Jon. And Sansa can’t even say that he’s sleeping peacefully, although he doesn’t appear to be awake every few minutes just to make sure she hasn’t actually stripped off her pajamas in bed.
When morning finally comes, she wakes up before Jon and watches him from under the cover with her brows knit together curiously. It isn't like she can just come out and tell him about her crush, or whatever it is. Not now, at least, but he all but told her the feeling was reciprocated and there’s still a long way home to Minnesota. And three weeks at home with him.
So instead, she creeps out of bed and showers, standing with the spray as hot as it can go for a long time before she dares to come out fully dressed for the day. Jon is already awake and dressed, and he turns from shoving his laptop into his bag when she steps out in a cloud of steam.
“We can pick up the rental after breakfast,” she says brightly, fussing with the hem of her sweatshirt. By the light of day, all the things that made her anxious through the night seem so silly. Even the idea that Jon might be half in love with her seems absurd now that she’s looking at him. “We’ll still make really good time.”
“Oh.” Jon looks surprised and, Sansa thinks, a little flushed. But then he fastens his bag and nods solemnly. “Sansa, about what I said last night–”
“Don’t even worry about it,” Sansa interrupts quickly, because she can’t stand to hear him say it out loud, that it wasn’t anything. That it’s better for them to just continue as they are. She won’t be able to make it through the rest of the trip if he says it now. “Let’s get breakfast.”
Jon nods weakly and starts for the door, but he stops next to her, in the narrow hallway of their hotel room. It’s immediately apparent to Sansa that he’s nervous, because his fingers are barely quaking when he reaches out to straighten the collar of her shirt and smooth her hair over it.
Carefully, slowly, Jon smiles crookedly at her so there can’t be any misunderstanding what he means. “I just wanted to say that I’m really glad you asked me to go on this roadtrip with you.”
And like that, he takes her suitcase and heads for the door, leaving Sansa in the hall with her heart bursting in her her chest.