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Sansa stirs at a loud rapping at her bedchamber door. Hair mussed from her mostly sleepless tossing, she sits upright, waiting for a voice to call to her. In the silence, her hands flutter upwards to tidy herself. Her Lord Commander is supposed to be standing guard at her door tonight; he should be turning away anyone so bold as to seek her out at this hour.
Her nakedness heightens her alarm upon the second pounding. She couldn’t sleep until she divested herself of her shift and threw the windows open wide, letting the spring’s cold breeze into the room to vanish overly heated thoughts. Now she feels unarmed by her nudity, as much as by the absence of the dagger she once kept close, a gift from the very man who seems to have abandoned his duty.
The door vibrates again, and she snatches at her carelessly discarded linen shift. Yanking it over her head with trembling hands, she slips from the bed and pads on bare feet to the door.
Fingers wrapped around the key that keeps her unwanted visitor at bay, she pauses, silently assuring herself that naught can be amiss here in her home. Here she is well-guarded and beloved. She’s almost summoned up the courage to see who dares frighten her in such a manner, when a muffled voice calls her name—Sansa—and something else she can’t make out.
She fumbles with the key, until the lock gives and the door swings open with a metal creak. Her Lord Commander leans against the doorframe, a hank of golden hair shot through with silvery strands curtaining one eye.
He smells of sour wine.
She purses her lips. “What is this about?”
“Your Grace,” he drawls.
“You’re drunk.”
“Very,” he agrees with a lopsided grin, charming in spite of his intoxication.
It’s a dangerous smile; one that she’d almost forgotten to be on guard against, until things went too far between them. Then she banished him from all spaces where he was not strictly required, including her chambers. They’d spent too much time together here, when everyone else was abed. Two lonely creatures, playing at cyvasse, badly at times. When the conversation turned to a past they dared not discuss with anyone else in this reshaped world, it was too easy to take comfort in the delicious urgency of his kisses.
“You’re supposed to be on guard, ser. If you can’t perform your duty…”
“Never fear: I can perform. On this side of the door,” he says, shouldering in past her.
She catches his arm to stop him. He gives a lurch, stopping with an exaggerated sway.
“You know you can’t be in here.”
She says it too gently. There’s no hint of the sternness certainty demands. Professed loyalty and the security of home has softened her. This is what comes from leniency. One of the most trusted members of her household has abandoned his duty and flagrantly risks her honor with a drunken display.
“Very well. Tell me to leave.”
He might only mean her chambers. She could send him away were that the import, but she suspects there's more to the request than a dismissal for the evening. If he seeks release from her service, she can’t bear to grant it. Then she would be truly and completely alone.
“Jaime,” she says, fearing she sounds as broken as he did from behind her door.
His weight shifts, teetering drunkenly. She’s carried back two quick steps by the loss of his footing, and her posterior meets the door, shutting it. Only the thump of his golden hand hitting the door, as he catches himself, spares her from the solid crash of his body.
They're separated by little more than a breath for one stunned moment, and then he eases into her, melting against her body.
Oh.
He's shockingly warm in the cool of the room. Even his weight is a pleasure.
She slips her hands around his waist, anchoring him in place. “You can barely stand.”
“Is that what you think?”
It’s what she must pretend if she means to allow herself this momentary indulgence. No one touches the Queen of the North. That was a comfort at first after what she'd suffered. It stopped being so some time ago.
Her thumbs trace arcs against the wool of his tunic, exposed by the splay of his unhooked doublet. He should by all rights be thick about the waist like the other men who count his age, but he has a younger man's trim figure. It is the result of his incessant training. He strains in the yard day after day against something unseen.
Sansa can’t help but care for the broken and weak. Jaime Lannister is not weak precisely, even without his sword hand: he proved himself amply during the long night. But he is so very broken. The cracks are more evident than they’ve been in some time, exposed by these drunken bouts, which have become routine. She hates to see him like this. Intemperance is its own sort of weakness, as Petyr was wont to lecture.
She’s ignored this failing, pretended to take no note of disappearing flagons and unexcused absences, though nothing happens in Winterfell without her knowing it. To notice his lapses in duty would require chastising him, perhaps even require removing him from his position in favor of one of her less impulsive guards. And yet, she feels an unwieldy fondness for him that makes it increasingly hard to do what she ought.
No, something rather more than fondness. Fondness does not keep a woman up at night, consumed by thoughts of a man's heavy stare at table.
It does no good to remind herself that Jaime's house was an enemy of House Stark; she forgave him that long before she made him her Lord Commander. She longed for the death of those dearest to him once, and he was guilty as they were by virtue of sharing their blood. Still she forgave. She forgave him a great deal, when he fought for her family and her home. Even more when he chose to stay, after so many left with the Dragon Queen for the South. They survived the long winter together, and now, like entangled tree roots, she’s not certain they can be undone without sacrificing the whole.
His head falls forward until it rests beside hers, held up only by the solidity of the door. His breath on her exposed neck is as warm as the smooth stretch of skin she can feel through the weave of his tunic.
“Sansa,” he says in the same plaintive tone as she heard through the door, hinging on something unspeakable.
She takes a deep breath, mustering a practicality of purpose that must be her armor.
“Can you make it to the chair?” she asks, slipping under his shoulder, so that she might aid in the attempt.
“Do you mean to carry me?”
“If I must,” she lies breezily.
He might as well sober up here, where she can look after him. It would do no good to break his neck stumbling down a darkened stairwell. And if she draws some pleasure in care of him, what real harm is done?
He gives in to her maneuvering enough that she manages to guide him to the chair closest to the open window. A good bracing Northern air will surely help, she reasons, as she fetches the half filled pitcher by her bedside.
Even with her back turned to him, she can feel his gaze, watching her lift and pour with an intensity that runs contrary to his state of intoxication. It’s that stare she's all too familiar with lately, the one she can feel on her body as surely as a touch.
All her life she’s wanted to be loved. Not just desired, but loved. Her heart hammers away in her chest at the prospect of giving in to that stare. It makes her legs twist in the bedclothes, thinking about what it might be like to have him touch her again like he did that night, when he looked at her like she was the only thing worth having in this world.
Cup in hand, she pivots on her heel. He’s slumped, elbows draped over each arm of the chair and one long leg extended out before him. He’s distressingly handsome in the beam of moonlight that illuminates his profile, kingly even in his rumpled state. What would have the world been like if the Kingslayer had seized the throne for himself, having killed the mad one?
No doubt he would have taken his sister to bride. Who would have stood to stop him? Her lord father, no doubt.
“What’s that?” he asks with a nod towards the pewter cup she holds before her.
“Mint tea.”
He scowls. “Save yourself the trouble, unless my breath so offends you.”
“You do stink of wine, but no, this settles the stomach and you’ve obviously drunk a great deal.”
He tilts his head, his eyes raking over her unapologetically. Aware once more of her nakedness beneath the shift, which barely covers her knees, she feels suddenly recklessly exposed. Jaime is not that kind of man, but he is still a man.
Setting the goblet down, she squares her shoulders and juts her chin, but there is nothing she can do about her rising color. It betrays her, the fast thrum of her heart flooding her face and chest with a forest berry dark flush.
“Your Grace provides her wretches with such excellent vintages that it could not be helped.”
“If you think coming to me in this state is becoming, you’re mistaken.”
He ignores her censure with another lazy smile. “Do you mean to fix me? Patch me up? With your teas and your handsome new liveries embroidered by your own hand and a special place reserved for me at table?” He taps his lips with his index finger. “A most esteemed spot enough seats away that we can’t possibly speak.”
“You’re beyond repair, I think,” Sansa sniffs, summoning her most imperious iciness.
He stands on the feet she swore only minutes ago required her assistance. Appearing much too capable, he ambles towards her. Too close, and closer yet, when he stops before her and reaches out to clasp the hemmed edge of her loose sleeve, where it stops at her wrist.
“I hardly ever spill my drink anymore. You can trust your gowns will not suffer by my proximity.” His thumb and middle finger rub over the fabric, as thoughtfully as a seamstress. “Or is it yourself you don’t trust?”
She means to say something indignant, to rebuke him sharply enough that he’s shamed into letting loose, but her breath catches and all she can do is thickly swallow down her panic.
She doesn’t trust herself. Not in this one thing: this girlish wish has always been her weakness.
“I know what would fix me,” he says, lowering his voice to the level of a confidence. “Might fix you too.”
“Enough,” she says, trying to pull back her caught sleeve.
His brows knit at her desperate little motion, and after a pause, he lets go of her, but only to slip his hand up her arm, dragging the shift with it. Their feet tangle together, as he steps in closer still, and her skin pebbles with the stroke of his calloused fingers over her forearm.
He smells of wine, but also like sweat, like leather, like a man. This is how it happened before. Confusion and wine heated veins made her lose her head, tipped it back, inviting the press of his lips, as his arms held her up, allowing her the vulnerability her position denies her.
“Tell me to leave,” he repeats. It might as well be a taunt.
She slides her hands into his hair, feigning as though she means to draw him down for another ill-advised kiss. It’s silky like she’s imagined it would be. She gives it a sharp tug.
It’s meant to be a punishment, a warning, a cure to his audacity. But his eyes crinkle with something like delight.
“Go to sleep, ser.”
“Take me to your bed,” he says, head canted at an awkward, forced angle. “You can wear me out and then I’ll sleep.”
She yanks again—harder—and he gasps on a half laugh.
She isn’t strong enough, but he’d let her snap his neck; indeed, he’d almost certainly be grateful for it, her broken Lord Commander.
“You forget yourself, ser. There are whores and serving girls for that type of comfort.”
“No interest. Your cunt is what I want.”
Even as queen, she could offer him that much. She could offer any man as much, who could be counted on to be properly discrete. He’s certainly kept secrets greater than a dalliance between a Northern queen and her Lord Commander.
But to her great misfortune, she wants more.
Still desperate to prove his honor by staying true to his vows, he is bound to her. Filled with guilt over his self-made tragedy, he’s a shell of a man, practically hobbled. She used that to her advantage. Without anyone else to turn to or any place left to go, she made herself essential to him, wormed her way in with cool determination. Jaime Lannister is a man who cannot stand by himself, sober or not. Not truly, when he hardly knows who he is without someone else to define himself against. She made herself that person in the absence of his twin. In the absence of dear Brienne of Tarth too, who went South to serve the new king faithfully.
Sansa’s goal in making herself essential to Jaime's life purpose altered as her own needs changed. Make a friend of him, when she had none. Destroy him to placate her thirst for revenge. Demonstrate the vastness of her sway by twisting him away from his true North. Any and all of those motives have been paramount at one time or another.
“That makes your position pitiable, ser, but no less impossible, I’m afraid.”
She schools herself not to look over at the bed, not to imagine sitting atop his thighs with his hands on her breasts. His words are vile and should inspire nothing but revulsion in her.
Indeed, they should hate each other, and yet, here they are.
He leans in, the evening shadow of his beard scraping her cheek, as he whispers against the shell of her ear, “You’re as bloody miserable as I am, Sansa.”
“I am content.”
Perhaps it’s the way she can’t help but look at his mouth, when he pulls back to asses her, that spoils it. Perhaps it’s her eyes drifting shut, as his hand presses into the small of her back and arches her into his muscled chest. Or perhaps she was never as good a liar as she likes to imagine. But he laughs at her dishonest claim and she feels the rumble of it deep in her belly, when he whispers back, “Liar.”
She trapped him. She trapped herself as well.
This is why she’s kept him out. Locked the door and refused to meet his eye, when the lute player came from the South, bleating ribald songs of flame haired maids the musician thought would play to her vanity. All it accomplished were unwanted reveries she ought not to have indulged about her Lord Commander.
“Tell me to leave or let me fuck you.”
Loneliness can make a fool of anyone.
She’ll never be satisfied with what he offers. Not when he has so little left to give, and yet, she unravels anyway like a needy little girl.
Her fingers soothe over where she delivered the hurt, tipping his mouth to meet her own. After moons of denying him, she gives in, and this is the moment he chooses to resist. The tendons in his neck stand out with the force of avoiding her kiss. Contrary, impossible man.
She huffs in frustration, and as if in answer, he reaches up to edge her mouth open with his thumb.
“Tell me of this husband, who will give the North heirs but hold no real sway here. Hmm?” His breath disturbs the soft hairs at her temple, making her nostrils flare. Her teeth close on his thumb: she should bite it straight off. “Perchance you’ll summon up a bear to do the job like the Mormont ladies always maintained.” Smudging her lower lip with his thumb, he noses her cheek. “Or a wolf? Lure your exiled bastard brother back from the Wall?”
She tosses her head free. “Don’t.”
“Please, so superior: you’ve considered it. Your mind never ceases spinning webs.” His hand cups her cheek with tenderness that feels so much like affection that her chest constricts. “Just like my damn brother. You were a better match than it seemed at the time, I suppose.” He grimaces. “Forget I said that. I already hate this imaginary husband of yours. I'd have to kill an actual rival.”
She would do anything to shut him up. Shut him up and quiet her mind as well.
She raises her brows. “All this talking. I gather you’re not fit to perform after all?”
He is. She’s more than aware of it, as he hefts her up. Flush against him, the solid length of him feels good, reassuring even. That he wants her is a great relief. The moonlight provides ample light to highlight the differences between herself and the women that came before her, but it hasn’t dampened his arousal.
Her legs go around his waist and the metal of his false hand presses into the round flesh of her backside. Arms scrambling to grip his neck, she rocks into him, brazen in a way she’s never been before, either because of lack of desire or due to practiced restraint. His mouth finds hers with a hungry seal of his lips, and she sags against him, letting herself be born back to the bed.
Maybe he’s right and this will fix them both. Maybe this will be enough.
He strides without falter the handful of steps to her draped bed, and then the room tilts and he’s above her, his mass against her hips a promise of something she hardly knows.
Sex has never been anything but horrifying, but the way her body responds to the path of his mouth along her breast and his hand following the curve of her thigh and hip promises this will be different. She’s all tingling flesh and racing heart and questing fingers.
He will be different if she can only free him of his doublet and tunic and breeches. Braced atop the bedclothes, he needs her assistance. However, she proves hardly more proficient in their removal than her drunken, one-handed would be lover. She has no practice undressing a man and her jittery desire does nothing to assuage her inexperience. She works with shaking hands, as he nips her neck and pulls at her pulse with the hot latch of his mouth. But it’s worth her awkward efforts to feel his flesh contract under her touch, as she strips him as bare as his nameday.
Though she's disrobed him, he leaves her in her shift, making no move to draw it over her head. It’s flimsy, but she’s thankful for the shield to her tattered modesty. Not a substantial shield, for it bunches up about her waist and the neck of it hangs off one shoulder, when he brushes where she’s slick with a bob of his cock. The jolt of sensation forces a sharp inhale from her, and his eyes, which had been fixed somewhere south of her breasts, dart to hers. His pupils are wide, the green of them mere slivers, but for all his wanting, he’s frozen in place by her reaction.
She runs her palm down his chest and over the flat of his abdomen, holding his gaze. He might have more experience than her, but how different his experience has been; they might as well both be novices in need of assurance.
“Slow, please,” she says with a gentle kiss, off center from his mouth.
Resting his brow against hers, he grins. “I’m satisfied to discover you never forget your courtesies.”
“Enough of your mouth, ser.”
He takes himself in hand. “Shame. My mouth is quite capable, you’d find.”
She shushes him, while drawing one leg up along the firm stretch of his thigh.
As much as she’s lost sleep from wanting this, she has considerable reservations. Jaime blunders, taking unnecessary risks and rushing ahead, when it suits him to pursue something. He might never be the man she needs in bed if she's being honest with herself. She hates to think what his lovemaking has been like in the past.
But he heeds her appeal, finding his length inside her with aching care. The moment spins out endlessly. It is just their ragged breathing and his cock and her digits rigid against his neck, holding his face to hers. His jawline is tense with the force of his restraint—yes, he wants something other than this tortuous retreat and advance. Until she rocks her hips up into his in invitation and they both exhale.
If it’s an invasion, it’s a longed for one. The slow thrust of his cock is a welcome interruption of her solitude. It feeds her desire for more. Of this, of them. Together. She could become accustomed to this feeling.
Whatever crisis of self-assurance he may have suffered, there is no evidence of it in the easy rhythm of his hips and his mouth at her exposed breast, lathing her nipple. She attempts to slip her hand between them, to do something for him in return, though she isn’t quite sure what he might like. Her efforts lead nowhere, for he grasps her wrist and holding it fast, stretches her arm above their heads. It’s a vulnerable position, one that could conceivably give her alarm, but she trusts him.
His having control amplifies her feeling of giving, of being open, of the fullness of having him inside her. She is his, and the sensation of being possessed completely resonates with an urge she's forced down in favor of complete independence.
It feels like enough, when he takes her thigh in his hand and changes the angle where they meet. He watches himself move inside of her, and a needy sound claws at her throat. It’s like her whole being bottoms out, forcing her eyes back into her head and tipping her chin up. The wet sound of them moving together and the earthy smell of him this close might have embarrassed her, when she was younger. Not anymore.
She’s more than herself, she’s pure building desire.
“Gods,” she pants against his neck. “Don’t stop,” she begs, fingers digging into the taut muscles of his shoulder.
She knows he won’t. This is what he wants, what she wants. Don’t leave, she almost chokes out, though she knows he can’t. She’s seen to that.
He’ll stay. But as what?
She can’t make him love her. No one can do that. Not even witches, who stare into flames to spy visions.
Her stomach swoops hard with excruciating doubt.
Behind the tight squeeze of her eyes, she realizes he’s stopped. Has he also closed his eyes? So that he might pretend the woman beneath him is flaxen haired?
She abhors her own cowardice and this cloying need, so she forces her eyes open.
Frowning, he grips her chin. “Don’t disappear while I’m inside you.” His mouth twitches. “It does very little for one’s confidence.”
He won’t ask outright whether she’s all right, but she reads people well enough not to need forthrightness. Stilled save for the heave of his chest, he fears he’s hurt her or caused an echo of a past hurt to resonate.
That would be easier to overcome, but she can’t blame him for what troubles her.
Her body doesn’t suffer from the same conflict. Her body still throbs. Can men feel such a thing?
She spans his cheeks with her hands, as she tests her lips with her tongue. They’ll be pink from his beard in the morning. Everywhere he kisses her she’ll be rosy.
“How talented is your mouth, ser?”
Despite their respective house sigils, his smile is wolfish, when he crawls down her body. She has only to regret the loss of him for an instant, when his mouth obscenely finds her and she winds her fingers in his hair for the second time tonight. This is more than just unlike what she suffered through before: this is a revelation. The deliberate drag of his tongue up and over her has her heels pressing into the mattress tick, seeking purchase. The filthy things he murmurs wetly against her thigh makes her want to push up against him, rub shamelessly, and come apart completely. It’s shameful how much she likes the rasp of his beard where she’s most sensitive. With an urgent roll of her hips, he must sense her desperation, and he adds two long fingers to his efforts, moving them inside of her in languorous, crooked thrusts.
Her septa taught them that the stars moved overhead like a wheel in ceaseless motion. It was too vast to comprehend, the heavens above with stars as tiny as a pinprick, turning for all time. That is what this feels like. With her fists in his hair and her pulse thundering in her ears, she’s going to come forever against his mouth. She jerks hard, and his hand anchors her against the arch of her back, while she repeats nonsense with his tongue barely working over her.
It becomes too much for her overly sensitive center, and her hands flatten against his head, pushing. His hands slide down her bare thighs. The night air ghosts over her, and he watches her in the dark, as she draws big, sucking breaths.
“Good enough?” he asks, sufficiently smugly that she smiles, as he climbs back over her.
Men are such children.
Bracketed by his bent arms, he presses into her stomach, still hard. Perhaps his performance was as gratifying to him as it was to her.
“Yes,” she says, wrapping her hand around the base of him, “it will do.”
“I live to serve,” he barely manages to bite out, as she guides him back.
Yes, maybe it was as satisfying for him, for the speed with which he loses his composure fills her with an unexpected feminine pride. His hips snap and his thrusts begin to falter, losing their rhythm and she encourages him, greeting him with an encouraging arch. She’s done this, she’s made him like this, and right now he’s entirely hers. Indeed, as his hand clamps hard over her hip with a curse, she feels her belly begin to tighten again in answer. He’s so pleasantly thick and looks at her with such arousing absorption that when his pelvis meets her own, she feels it all the way down to her toes.
If only there was time for that ember to do more than catch.
She hooks her leg behind him, holding him in place as he comes with his eyes screwed shut and his hair sticking to his forehead. It’s a buzzing, glowing warmth that floods her veins, as he buries his face in the pillow beside her and she skims her fingers over the bumps in his spine to where he is narrowest.
He swallows hard and turns to kiss her lazily—nose nudging hers and teeth nipping at her swollen bottom lip.
Gods, she loves him, and she’s too content in this moment to even question it. Or what they’ve done.
Time for that later, she thinks in a far-off way, as he flops onto his back and she curls into his side. His arm looping around her and drawing her in helps silence the doubts that otherwise would creep in.
She wrinkles her nose, however, at the rather unpleasant aftermath of their coupling. Her thighs are suddenly sticky with it.
He must have been watching her, for he pushes the sweaty hair off his brow with the back of his hand before reaching blindly for something to assist her. “Apologies,” he says, hitting upon his shift.
She almost refuses it before balling it up with a frown.
“It seems I have finally offended you tonight.”
She can feel her cheeks heating again. Bodies can be so mortifying. “Look away,” she directs.
He complies with great dramatic sigh, pushing up in the bed and reaching for the cup she poured but never delivered. He swallows loudly with his back to her, drowning the contents.
“Still drunk, ser?”
He tasted of wine, but it wasn't distasteful. Nothing was.
He twists back to her, bending one leg to recline against the carved headboard. “A little. Enough to use some poor judgment.”
“You?” she asks, adjusting the hem of her shift to make herself decent. “Never.”
“Would it have been better if I had…” he pauses to brush her belly with the curve of his index and middle fingers, the same ones that hit a spot inside her until her legs shook with pleasure.
“I don’t know.”
She’d imagined it both ways. She’d imagined how she would ask the maester for moon tea the next day or even how she might not ask for it at all. Sometimes the fantasy was heightened by the possibility of a babe and sometimes that was too terrible to contemplate. But she never determined upon the right course of action.
“I will if you want me to,” he says, taking the shift back and tossing it over the side of the bed. “If you swear not to snatch me bald next I come to your bed.”
She rolls her eyes. “My apologies.”
Even if he relies on japes to cover his own discomfiture, she didn’t miss the import of his words: next time. She mustn’t have been a total disappointment then. It was enough for him. Now she only has to see whether this arrangement will be enough for her.
“No, don’t apologize. I like when you’re a proper shewolf.”
She grasps his bicep, fingering where the muscles meet in a ridge. “Well, regardless, I quite like your golden hair, so I’ll spare it if I can.”
“Do you?” he says, pulling her back down into the circle of his arms.
“Yes.”
He could pay her a compliment. Tell her he admires her too. That she is beautiful. It wouldn’t be a confession of love, but she’d welcome it all the same. She's not terribly vain, but she is needy for some gesture that speaks of more.
“Shall I go?” he asks, stroking her unbound hair. “Before some well-meaning maidservant discovers your Lord Commander has abandoned his frosty post in the corridor for friendlier climes?”
“No.” She tucks her face into his chest, as his hand combs through her hair, snagging on tangles with each pass. “Not yet.”