the place you call home

by honey_wheeler

Summary:

We are the last two Starks, Jon.

Notes:

Alternate Canon. Spoilers more or less through A Storm of Swords but not compliant with the whole of the book or necessarily any beyond, specifically in regards to the living and the dead (aka: don't freak, this is just what if). Half-sibling incest. I pretty much hold with the theory that Jon isn’t Ned’s son, though, so if that makes you more comfortable with this fic, by all means.

He almost turns back half a hundred times. She will not want him, he thinks. Her bastard brother. But she’s all the family Jon has left and he’s somehow desperate to see her, to reassure himself that Sansa’s really come home to Winterfell after so long. That she’s really still alive.

He’s come alone, no men of the Night's Watch riding with him. Times are peaceful enough that he wanted to make the trip without them. He would have felt wrong returning to the place that was once his home with a guard, with men who had no understanding of how much it meant to him to see Sansa home again, to see a Stark in Winterfell once more.

Jon sits his horse on a hill above the castle, the setting sun at his back as he looks down over the buildings still partly in ruin. The Lannister gold has been put to good use and there are spots of new stone to patch the old, new roofs to cover the holes. It’s just begun to repopulate, only the barest household in residence with Sansa and Tyrion, but there are people here and there, moving about, chickens in the dooryard scratching at the soil. A far sight better than it had been the one time Jon had ridden by before, when it was dead and desolate, a sooty ruin. Jon had never been able to accustom himself to the idea of Sansa married to Tyrion Lannister, but he wonders now if it was a good match. If Tyrion was able to make Sansa happy. He was certainly able to bring her home. Suddenly, Jon is tired of hesitating. Ghost is roaming about the woods, but he’ll find Jon later. Right now Jon’s done waiting. He spurs his horse down the hill, ready to see Winterfell again. Ready to see his sister.

*****

The nerves remain even as he slides down from his horse, a groom taking the reins and a maid informing him that Lady Sansa has been told of his arrival. He’s on the verge of ripping the reins back and turning tail, running away like a craven, when she skids into the courtyard, her cheeks flushed and her hair escaping its confines. The sight of her after so long hits him like a fist. Gods, she’s more beautiful than ever, he thinks. He stiffens, draws his spine up and inhales.

“Lady Lannister,” he says, covering his nerves with formality as he reaches to take her hand, only to stagger backwards when she flings herself into his arms and buries her face against his chest.

“Jon, don’t be stupid,” she cries, and it takes him a moment to understand her words, sobbing as she is. “You’re so stupid.” It’s as if his ribs have shrunk in his chest, as if his skin is too tight for his body. He wraps his arms about her, tight enough to crack her bones, and lets out a shuddering breath.

“Sansa,” he murmurs into her hair, and her crying doubles, hot tears wetting his neck and trickling beneath his jerkin.

“Jon, oh Jon,” she sobs. He holds her until she stops crying, until she stops shaking, until the groom who takes his horse is long gone and her maid has crept away. And then he holds her a little longer.

*****

“You’ve had some adventures in our time apart, little sister,” Jon says, glancing over to where she sits on his bed, watching him unpack.

“Adventures,” she smiles. “That’s a word for it.”

“I know you must have suffered,” he says softly, and the pain on her face at his words is enough to kill a man. Still, she waves the words aside, shakes her head and makes a brave smile.

“I’ve come through on the other side,” she says firmly. Arya had always been the sister Ygritte had reminded him of, but now he thinks there was maybe some of Sansa in her as well. Ygritte’s bravery was loud where Sansa’s is quiet, her tongue was brash where Sansa’s is sweet. But they weren’t so different, not deep down.

“You have,” he tells her, more proud of her than he could say. Her answering smile is shy, still shaded with sadness.

“It’s more than can be said for the rest of our family, dear and departed. We are the last two Starks, Jon.” It takes him a long moment to steady the suddenly painful thump of his pulse at her words. For so long he would have given anything to truly be a Stark, and for Sansa to believe him one. But not at such a cost.

“I worried over you,” he admits, not ready to articulate how much her acceptance means to him, but needing to give her something in return, some small token of emotion.

“And I you,” she says, then laughs at herself a little. “That is, once I’d grown up a bit.” She looks at him and her face turns serious, her eyes pained and remorseful. “Jon, the way I treated you…”

“Don’t think on it,” he tells her, meaning it.

“But I-”

“Sansa, we were different people then. It was a different world.” She bites her lip and nods, but he can tell she’s still letting it eat at her. Impulsively, he leans forward, cuffs his hand behind her neck and presses a kiss to her forehead. She smiles up at him when he pulls away, returning the gesture with the press of her own lips at the inside of his wrist. It sends prickles running up his arm. Strange, he thinks. He can count on both hands the number of times they'd touched each other with affection in the past. Now they've practically outnumbered that in a single day.

“Anyway,” she says, once he’s gone back to his unpacking. “I suppose I needn’t have worried. Lord Commander! Goodness, Jon, Father would have been so proud.”

“I suppose,” he says. Their father. Sadness floods him at the mention. Had Jon known that leaving Winterfell meant saying goodbye forever, would he have done anything differently? Would he have traded places with Sansa for a bit more time with their father, if it meant he had to watch him die? Jon thinks that maybe his goodbye came with fewer regrets.

“He would,” she insists. Then she sighs and smiles all at once, tucking her knees up under her chin, her bare toes peeking out from beneath the hem of her gown. “Oh Jon, look at you. You’re a man grown.”

“And you a woman,” he notes.

“Sometimes I still feel a girl.” He can’t deny she looks it right at this moment, curled upon his bed, her hair loose and gleaming about her shoulders in the firelight. But there’s a new loveliness to her that she never had before, a gravity. As if she inhabits the world more now.

A ruckus outside the door draws their attention, the sound of one of the few serving girls they have shrieking in alarm, following by a scrabbling at the door. Ghost, returned from his rangings and ready to investigate his new accommodations, no doubt. Jon tugs open the door to allow the great white beast in and Sansa gasps in surprise and delight.

“Ghost!” she cries. “Oh Jon, he’s full-grown now too, just look at him.” Immediately she slides off his bed to her knees on the stone floor before the hearth, extending her hand for Ghost to sniff curiously. Jon is about to warn her that Ghost has never been much inclined to friendliness, that he’s more like to be interested in what’s left of the supper Sansa had brought up for Jon, when, to his shock, Ghost flops at her knees, rolling over to expose his belly to her. She wastes no time, pushing her fingers into his rough fur, scratching and petting him, until his tongue is lolling out of his mouth, something close to a lupine grin on his face.

“Well, would you look at that,” Jon says, smiling. Abandoning his unpacking, he sinks to the floor in front of his wolf, the flames in the hearth warm against his shoulder. Ghost doesn’t even spare him a look.

“I haven’t seen a direwolf since before… Well, since before,” Sansa says, wistful and glad. “I’ve missed having them about, you can’t imagine.” Jon has a shadow of an idea. When he and Ghost were separated by the Wall, it had been the most alone he’d ever felt. He can’t imagine losing Ghost entirely. Part of him thinks it strangely symbolic that Sansa’s freedom vanished almost simultaneously with Lady’s death, as if there were some sort of connection between the two. Ghost rolls again, turning to lie on his side, his great head covering her lap. She curls forward to bury her face in his ruff and breathe deeply.

“You could use a bath,” she tells Ghost when she’s raised her head.

“You’re welcome to try,” Jon laughs. “He’ll not submit to such things without a fight.” Ghost seems to be trying his best to make lie of the words, though, as he stretches his head up to look at Sansa adoringly. Jon shakes his head. He’s never seen him act like this. Though he can’t blame him; he almost wishes he could put his own head in Sansa’s lap and have her fuss over him and soothe him as well. Sansa threads her fingers through the soft underfur at Ghost’s shoulder and frowns.

“So many scars,” she says.

“He’s a bit worse for wear,” Jon admits.

“As are you,” Sansa says, transferring her frown and her impossibly gentle regard to him. The touch of her fingertips on the scars around his eye is whisper-light but still he feels it down to his toes.

“As are we all,” he counters, catching hold of her hand and pressing it to his cheek. “Not all scars are visible on the outside.” Her eyes well at that, her face crumpling into a mask of grief and pain. Jon’s heart twists. He wants to touch her, to hold her, to make all of it go away.

“Sansa,” he says, brushing her hair away from her face, desperate to give comfort. “Sweet Sansa.” Shuddering with repressed tears, she sinks against him, laying her head in his lap and giving a great racking sob that has his chest tightening in sympathy. It seems she could cry forever. Helpless, he curls his arms about her, makes wordless soothing noises. How long he holds her, he has no idea. Hours, perhaps. She drops into sleep at some point, her body limp and boneless against his, exhausted from crying. Ghost watches them from the bed, his red eyes reflecting the firelight. Sansa’s hair is a pale shadow of Ghost’s eyes under Jon’s hand as he strokes through the strands, letting them slip through his fingers like the finest of silks and staring into the fire until it’s all he can see.

*****

Summer is a sweet shock after the years of winter, the sun on their shoulders warm and bright even in the still-cool air as they walk through the gardens and woods. They spend every second together, talking, remembering, laughing. Jon could almost forget he’d ever been cold. He could almost forget he’d ever been lonely.

“You must tell me everything of the North,” Sansa says as they walk along a green path, early flowers barely beginning to bloom on either side. Her arm is looped through his, his own arm hugged to her side as they walk, as if they’d never been apart, never been anything other than this close. It’s a fresh surprise to him each time, her open affection, the ease of her company. He hadn’t known how very much he missed her. He tells her of beyond the Wall, of mammoths and giants, Others and wights, wildlings and battle. There could be no better audience. She gasps appreciatively, hugs his arm even closer when he tells her of battles and being wounded.

“Old Nan had the right of it,” she muses thoughtfully. “All her stories that we thought were just fancies.”

“Ygritte told me-” Jon starts and then stops short, unsure how to explain Ygritte to her.

“Ygritte?” Sansa asks curiously, moving to stand in front of him, her eyes questioning.

“A wildling. She... I traveled with her for some time.” He wants to look away but Sansa’s gaze is so arresting, he finds he can’t.

“She was important to you.” It’s not a question, but he answers it anyway.

“Yes.” Then he hesitates, grapples with all he wants to say and all he knows he shouldn’t. “Sansa, she… I loved her. Laid with her. I broke my vows with her. Gods, Sansa, you must think me-"

"I think," she says, her hand on his cheek staying his words, "that life is far too brutal to turn happiness away when it finds you." He turns his face, kisses the palm she holds to his cheek, her soft skin smelling of flowers and green, growing things. Her acceptance is more than he deserves and everything he needs all at once.

"And you, the most tender-hearted of my sisters? Has happiness ever found you?" Her smile becomes soft, melancholy.

"There are many things in life besides happiness,” she says, and it’s the saddest thing he’s ever heard.

*****

“You’ve done well for yourself, Snow,” Tyrion says, pouring Jon a glass of wine as they sit at the long table in the hall, waiting on Sansa for supper. “Seems the desolation of the Wall suited you after all.” Jon raises his glass in acknowledgement and they both drink, though Tyrion continues to drink long after Jon has set his glass down, draining his own cup and pouring another.

“Is she who you remember?” Tyrion asks. Jon considers the question carefully before he answers.

“Yes and no.”

“She’s been through much,” Tyrion says. “My sister was not a careful steward.” The smile on his face is grotesque, twisting his scars into something more approximating a grimace.

“Sansa would not speak of it when I asked,” Jon ventures, both needing to know what she’d endured and desperately not wanting to learn.

“Wouldn’t she?” Tyrion asks, staring into his glass as he swirls it, the wine winking red in the dim light. “No, I suppose not. Joffrey was a beastly boy and only grew more so as he aged. You know he killed your father before her, after she begged for his life.” He transfers his unsettling gaze to Jon’s face then and Jon nods. “He made her look at his head as well, stuck on its spike. The other harm was done at his command, not by his hand, but it was no less brutal.”

“He hurt her,” Jon says, fists clenched so tightly that his fingernails bite into the skin of his palms.

“Yes,” Tyrion answers, with the tone of someone who’s long adjusted to a brutality that’s new and painfully fresh to another. “Or his knights did. The result didn’t much differ. I did my best to protect her, but I’m only one man.” Tyrion takes a deep draught of his glass before adding, “and a sad half a man, at that.”

Tyrion’s been through much himself, Jon knows, his scarred and misshapen face a testament to the fact. He seems harder than Jon remembers, though, more broken. Tyrion’s been nothing but kind to Sansa that Jon’s seen, and Sansa seems to harbor some small fondness for him, certainly an awareness of what he’s protected her from, but there’s still a distance between them, a polite formality. Jon thinks Sansa’s sweet, guileless heart would be a poor match for this…this bitter man Tyrion has become. It weighs on him, makes wine turn to iron on his tongue until he pushes his glass away.

They both hear Sansa’s footsteps at the door and rise at the same time, turning to face her across the long hall. She’s wearing a simple gown, one that compliments her beauty. Jon loses his breath at her, still sylph-like and youthful but a woman now, grown and lovely.

“She doesn’t usually change for dinner,” Tyrion notes idly, in a voice meant only for Jon’s ears. “Must be for your benefit.” The idea hits Jon in the gut and he swallows hard, cursing himself for his weakness. Cursing himself twice over when she takes his hand in hers, her smile all sweet innocence, and his body tightens at her touch. She’s a woman married, and his sister. He reminds himself of what she’s endured, of all that she’s suffered without turning in on herself, without curdling like milk left in the sun. He vows he’ll protect her, that he’ll never let anyone hurt her again. Even if it’s himself he’s protecting her from.

*****

“Oh Jon, look!” she cries, hurrying ahead of him on the path, her hair a beacon in the morning light. It’s barely a path, really; the wildness around it is slowly consuming it, leaving it little more than a ribbon through the green. “There are still winter oranges.”

It’s late for winter oranges, pickers and the warming weather leaving few in storehouses and fewer in the trees. This one tree is still resisting the call of summer, though, its branches valiantly holding a few of the tart-sweet oranges that seem to grow only near Winterfell. Jon hasn’t had one in years. From the delighted look on her face, neither has Sansa.

“Let’s gather some,” she says, already reaching to pull the nearest from its branch. She holds it to her nose, breathes deeply. “They smell perfect,” she decides. Soon her arms are full. She looks around, searching for some way to hold them so she can gather more, so Jon grasps the hem of his tunic, holds it before him like an apron. She smiles gratefully and gently looses her armful of oranges into his care before turning back to the tree to pick another. Deftly, her busy fingers peel it and break it into sections. She pops one into her mouth and makes an appreciative sound that sends a flutter running through Jon’s belly, a fire prickling in his veins.

“Even better than I remembered,” she says, another two sections dispatched with equal appreciation. Jon is distinctly aware, watching her, that he’s holding a tunic full of oranges, leaving himself half-uncovered, that his breeches are far too likely to betray any unwilling interest, that she’s his sister for Gods’ sakes. It doesn’t help when she turns to him, eyes snapping, and offers a segment of fruit in her fingertips.

Gingerly, he takes it with his teeth. It’s overripe, the sweetness decadent on his tongue, overlaid with the barest bit of tartness – exactly how they all used to like them best. It reminds him of being a boy. Of a home that’s no longer his. Smiling, she offers him another piece, only to pull it away when his mouth would have closed over it, so his teeth clack on empty air. There’s nothing of the woman about her now; the giggle that escapes her is all girl, pure Sansa, and he laughs big and bright, a sudden stab of joy burying itself between his ribs.

“So you want to play,” he mock-growls, and then he lunges for her hand, relishing her delighted shriek when his lips close over the orange and her fingers both, his tongue tasting the salt of her skin under the sweet.

Her eyes grow wide, all play forgotten. She stares at his lips while he chews the fruit, though his mouth has gone dry at the awareness on her face, at the way she rubs her fingertips together as if remembering the feel of him. Heat unfurls low in his belly, sending lazy tendrils up into his chest to quicken his pulse and trouble his breathing.

Wordlessly, hand trembling, she holds the last piece out to him, an offering as tempting as he’s ever had. He slides his lips over her fingers once more, tasting salt and sweet again, too seduced by her sweetness to care at how wrong this is. The sound that escapes her is somewhere between a whimper and a moan, a needy, involuntary sound. The oranges fall around his feet, forgotten, as he drops his hem to catch her wrist, holding her as he licks every bit of juice from her fingers, lips and tongue moving over her skin long after it’s gone.

A crack has him dropping her wrist, both of them springing apart. It’s nothing more than wind through the trees stirring the branches, but the damage is still done – he knows he should consider it more a rescue but somehow he can’t – and they both stoop hastily to collect the fallen oranges.

She repairs immediately to her apartments when they return, leaving Jon to bring the oranges to the kitchen. At a loss, he finds himself wandering the castle alone, unsure what to do in the hours without her company before dinner. It’s the first time he’s been truly apart from her since he arrived, aside from sleeping and attending to necessities. He’s half-sure he’s ruined everything, that their fragile, budding relationship has been broken beyond repair by his actions. The thought fills his veins with ice, the loss too enormous to contemplate. Such thoughts are a poor sort of company, now that he’s gotten used to hers.

*****

If Tyrion notices the strain between them over dinner, he’s too polite to mention it. The easy manner they’d fallen into so quickly is gone now, replaced by careful courtesy and awkward pauses. Each time she glances up at him only to dart her eyes away, Jon’s heart sinks another notch. It’s the longest meal he’s endured in quite some time.

After they’ve all excused themselves, he moves slowly from the hall, even more unsure of what to do with his afternoon than he’d been with his morning. She’s waiting outside the door, though, and catches him by the elbow before he even takes two steps. His pulse can’t help but speed at the touch, even as his mind worries over what she might say.

“Walk with me, Jon?”

Flustered, surprised, he can only nod. It’s a short enough walk to the gardens, which is where she seems to be steering him, but it doesn’t feel short with her hand burning his elbow where she’s tucked it, with the side of her breast pressing into his arm. Ghost appears as they move outside and falls into step beside Sansa, butting up against her hip until she drops a hand to rest on his neck as they walk.

“Traitor,” Jon manages, though his voice sounds nervous to his own ears. “Meets you and it’s as if I no longer exist.”

“He’s merely doing me a kindness,” Sansa smiles. “He knows how lonely I’ve been. Without Lady. He knows I have need of his companionship.” Jon has the strangest feeling, an instinct that it isn’t Ghost she speaks of but him. Hope wars with worry, until his head buzzes with it.

“Will you be staying with us long?” she asks when they’ve walked into the gardens, away from the castle and everyone in it, leaving the two of them practically alone in the entire world for the moment. The question makes his heart drop completely, the spark of hope snuffed out to nothing. She drops her hand from his elbow and flexes it the way he stretches his burned hand when it’s sore.

“I’ve a moon’s turn before I must head back to the Wall,” he says heavily. It’s an effort to make his mouth form the words; it feels stiff and unwilling. “There are other houses to visit, as many as I have time for.” He’s waiting for her to bid him leave immediately, to take the out he’s unhappily giving her, when, to his surprise, she crouches suddenly and buries her face in Ghost’s coat.

“I suppose Ghost will be happier back at the Wall,” she says, her voice thick and quavering. “He must miss the snow and the adventure and his own home. He can’t stay with me, I know. Of course he can’t, no matter how I’ll miss him. I’m only one girl who needs him, not the whole of the North.” This time Jon knows for a certainty it isn’t Ghost she speaks of and his heart cracks and shatters like ice under fire.

“Sansa, I’ll miss you as well,” he almost whispers. “Desperately.”

With a speed that stuns him, she stands and near throws herself into the arms he already has open to receive her, even though he’d never consciously willed them to raise. Her cries tear at him, destroy him, and he tightens his arms surely to the point of pain, but she makes no protest. He says her name over and over, kisses her hair, her temple, her ear. Then she turns her face to his and suddenly he’s kissing her lips. Something makes a neat flip in his chest and he knows he’s lost.

It takes him far longer than it should to come to his senses and pull away. To his intense surprise, she clings to him, follows when he would have withdrawn, refusing to relinquish his kiss. Again he succumbs, allowing himself her sweetness for too long before gripping her shoulders and gently holding her away.

“Sansa,” he says, and his voice sounds so foreign, so raw and desperate. “Sansa, we can’t. We mustn’t.” Tears make trails down her cheeks as she looks at him, somehow beautiful even in her sadness.

“I’ve been wed to a stranger for near to six years, and I’m as much a maid as I was at ten-and-three,” she says. “And gladly so until now. Until you. Jon, I want to be kissed by someone who loves me, just once. Soon you’ll away and I’ll be alone again and I could not bear your leaving without your touch to remember. Please.”

“Sansa, Sansa,” he groans, pulling her close, her head tucked under his chin. He feels her tears collect at his collar. They wear away at the threads of his control even more, wrenching something within him painfully loose.

“Please, Jon,” she cries, and he knows he couldn’t deny her. Knows he won’t.

“Not here,” he tells her. “Not now. I’ll come for you tonight.” He knows he shouldn’t, that it’s wrong. He also knows that it doesn’t matter how wrong it is. He could never refuse her anything, not even this. Not when he’s as desperate for her touch as she is for his. She pulls back to look at him, her smile watery. She nods and he kisses her once more, softly, sweetly, breaking it off long before he could ever be sated. “Now go back to the castle. Take Ghost. I’ll come for you tonight.”

Quickly, she disappears, as if afraid he might change his mind. Ruefully, he laughs, no one to hear it but the trees. More sense in her worrying that the sky might fall. He knows it’s far more like to happen.

*****

It’s long past dark when he comes for her. All through supper she’d watched him with darkened eyes, just as silent and strained as at dinner but for an entirely different reason. He’d barely been able to eat a bite, his food left on his plate untouched as he imagined holding her, kissing her, a ribbon of images unspooling in his head and making him glad of the heavy oak tabletop.

Her door opens mere moments after his soft knock. He imagines her waiting only steps away, waiting for him. The thought does nothing to cool the hot rush of his blood. She’s holding a blanket in her hands, even though the night is surprisingly warm, and her hands twist the heavy fabric nervously.

“I thought, she says. “I thought we might need it for… Because…” Her voice dries up and she blushes fiercely, dropping her head to stare at the blanket she’s wringing as if she means to rip it in two. How she manages to touch his emotions even as she inflames his senses, Jon doesn’t know. He catches one hand to stop her wringing and tugs gently.

“Come.”

The godswood is dark and quiet, no one to witness them picking their way through the trees with Ghost a pale blur alongside them, as ethereal as his namesake. Any tree would do, Jon knows, but he looks for the perfect place, just the right tree to sit beneath with her. He wants this to be perfect. When he finally chooses one, he takes the blanket from her and spreads if across the ground, then sits with his back against the trunk of the tree and pulls her into his lap.

All his thoughts of how he’d begin, how he would touch her and coax her and ease her along – they all dissolve when she turns her face up to his, offering her lips with more sweet trust than any man could ever deserve. Groaning, he takes her offering, forgetting his plans, forgetting everything but the taste and the feel of her, there in his lap with her hand curled loosely over his heart.

They kiss for ages, maybe forever, until the taste of her is as familiar as wine and water, until he knows the feel of her lips and mouth and tongue as well as he does his own. Until the sky is black and pierced by stars and they’re the only two people in the entire world. It isn’t until she wriggles on his lap, the sweet weight of her a torment against his already painfully hard flesh, that he breaks away and sucks in a great gasp of air like he’s drowning.

“Sansa,” he says, his voice sounding hoarse and unused. “Sansa, my sweet girl, you’ll unman me.”

“Good,” she says firmly, but then her features flicker in doubt. “I don’t know what that means, but good. Does it mean something good?” He laughs, kisses the worry from her brow.

“It means we should get back,” he says, wanting nothing of the sort, wanting only to stay here with her forever. She nods, subdued, as if she shares his lack of desire to be anywhere but here. They push to their feet and collect themselves, brushing leaves from clothes and hair, Jon surreptitiously adjusting himself through his breeches when she turns away to pull the blanket from the ground.

“Jon,” she says when she’s straightened, the blanket draped over her arm. “You’ll stay, won’t you? The moon won’t turn for weeks yet.”

“Sansa…”

“Stay with me, Jon. Please. For as long as you can.” He tips her chin up with his knuckle and looks into her eyes.

“For as long as I can,” he agrees, and she smiles at him, her face so soft and open it’s a wonder he doesn’t fall into her entirely. Then again, maybe he already has.

He twines his hand with hers as they walk back to the keep, their fingers laced together tightly. He’d taken her hand on their way to the godswood, only hours before, but this feels different, infinitely more intimate. He squeezes her palm and she returns the pressure of his hand, holding on to him tightly. At her door, she turns to him once more, the sweet offer of her lips achingly familiar already. He kisses her, gently, pulling away even as she clings to him. If they don’t stop now, he knows they won’t stop at kissing and touching this time.

“Tomorrow?” she asks.

“Tomorrow.” The brilliant smile she gives him is enough to make him forget anything else. It might just be enough to make him forget himself, forget his duty and his vows and everything he is. If she asked him to, he might.

*****

Morning dawns far too soon. Jon’s eyes feel full of sand, his lips bruised and chapped. It seems he’d only just closed his eyes. The night before floods back to him, instantly, every touch, every taste, every sound. He glances down at his already unruly body and groans. Years ago, the boy he was would have tried to not think of her as he circled his fingers around himself, slid them over flesh so sensitive he could practically jump out of his skin. The man he is doesn’t even try. It’s her touch he imagines, her soft whispers and sweet moans that echo in his ears with the sound of his own labored breathing. It doesn’t take long. He’s still shaking from it when there’s a knock on the door, the sound of her voice in the hall going straight to his gut.

“Jon?” she calls softly. “Jon, are you awake?” Flushed, he throws back the covers, his cheeks burning even more hotly at the mess on the sheet. The boyish part of him that’s still left is sure she’ll know, that she’ll be able to somehow hear what he’d been thinking and doing not a moment past. Another part of him hopes she can.

“A moment,” he calls, hastily rinsing his hand and pulling on the closest breeches he has at hand, thinking that he should probably put on a tunic but not wanting to give her a chance to change her mind and leave. He rips the soiled sheet from his bed before twitching the coverlet back into place, wads the linen into a ball and kicks it into a corner on his way towards the door. Then a chilling thought occurs to him, that, unlike him, she spent the night feeling guilty and ashamed. That she’s here to voice her regrets, tell him it must never happen again. He stops dead in the middle of the floor, so immobilized that she calls out again, obviously wondering where he is.

“Jon? Please let me in.” His feet feel leaden. He moves the rest of the way to the door, breathing deeply through his nose as he unbolts the latch and opens it. Whatever she says, he’ll live with it, he vows.

“Sans-” is as far as he gets into greeting her before her lips are on his. Automatically, he kisses her back, pulling her up into his arms and shutting the door with a well-aimed kick.

“Jon, oh Jon,” she’s saying, her lips on his mouth, his chin, his eyes, his cheeks. “It’s been only hours since you left me but it was too long.” He would tell her the same, but finds he can’t form any words, his chest too full. So he kisses her, and kisses her again, walking them towards the bed until it hits the back of his legs and they fall onto it, her body colliding with his so sweetly that he almost can’t bear it. Their weight sends feathers puffing out of the coverlet, floating through the air, and she giggles, watching the white bits fall around them like snow.

“It’s winter again,” she smiles, brushing a feather from his cheek.

“No,” he says, returning her smile, loving the light that’s rekindled in her eyes. “This couldn’t be anything but summer.” They just smile at each other, for long moments, like two besotted idiots. He raises a hand to her hair, rubs the silk of it between thumb and forefinger. “Kissed by fire,” he muses. Sansa’s fire may not glow as brightly as Ygritte’s but it burns still.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing.” And then he’s kissing her like he’ll die if he doesn’t. The way he’s feeling, he just might.

“Sansa,” he groans, when his hand flexes on her backside and she gasps into his mouth, her body restless and alive on his. “We have to stop. We’re expected at breakfast.” She ignores him, moving even more restlessly against him and nipping his lower lip with her teeth and “Sansa, Gods, Sansa.”

“You say my name so much,” she breathes, smiling and laving the skin she just bit with her tongue, making him go not a little crazy with her sudden boldness.

“I must sound like Hodor,” he laughs. “I’m sorry, I’ll try not to.” She pulls her face away and gives him the most stricken look.

“No,” she says, her eyes welling. “Oh no, Jon, don’t stop. Don’t you see?” Helplessly, Jon shakes his head, slides a soothing hand down her back, along the curve of her spine. “I spent so long with Littlefinger, hiding who I was, everyone calling me Alayne. Alayne, Alayne, always Alayne. It was like forgetting myself after so much time. Hearing you call me Sansa… Oh Jon, you can’t know how much that means to me.”

“Sansa,” he says, anguished.

“Promise me you’ll never stop,” she says, and it’s such an easy promise to make, so little to ask.

“Never,” he agrees. “I’ll never stop.” Quickly, he wraps her up in his arms, rolls her over on the bed until she’s beneath him, laughing through her tears and breathless. “Sansa,” he says, and kisses her cheekbone. “Sansa,” his lips on her chin, “Sansa,” on the crescent of her eyelid, the barest hint of salt clinging to his lips. “Sansa,” he says again, and then his mouth is on hers and there’s no more talk, not for hours, long after the time for breakfast has come and gone.

*****

She could kiss for hours and never tire of it, Jon’s learned. The second they’re alone, she comes to him, insinuates herself into his arms and turns her face up to be kissed, utterly unabashed about asking for what she wants from him. Her trust is so sweetly given, so unshakeable. He knows what it means that she allows herself such honesty with him, such vulnerability.

It’s unlike everything he experienced with Ygritte. Ygritte, who knew what she wanted and was interested in little preamble. With Ygritte, kissing was a means to an end, a momentary pause along a road leading somewhere else. Not something to be indulged in, to be drawn out until she’s quivering and weak as a day-old kitten, the way Sansa seems to want. He thinks they’ve probably kissed beneath every tree in the godswood by now, some of them twice, hours spent tasting each other with no thought to anything else, nothing existing outside their tiny world, only Ghost nearby to give them alert at any approach.

The bark of their current tree is rough against his back, a sharp contrast to her, soft and sweet on his lap. They’ve been kissing so long that Jon’s jaw aches, his tongue is sore from reaching. The idea of stopping is unthinkable, though, no ache worse than what he feels when she’s not in his arms. Except maybe the ache in his groin when she shifts her hips against him and presses her breasts to his chest.

“Gods, Sansa,” he manages, holding her hips still with both hands.

“Don’t stop,” she breathes, her lips seeking his as she squirms against his hands and makes his torment better and worse all at once. He catches her chin in his hand to hold her still. A careful thumb run over her bottom lip tells him it’s as raw and swollen as he expected.

“Sweetling, we cannot do this forever.”

“We can,” she insists, eyes dark and unfocused, body straining towards his, and he makes a choked sound, tempted almost beyond his control.

“Your skin is like to crack, love.” He brushes her lip again, knowing that even she’ll have to admit she flinches in discomfort at the touch on her now-dry skin. Carefully, he takes up the wineskin next to him, lets the liquid slide over her lips. Her tongue darts out to catch a drop and he’s gone entirely again, faster than he thought possible, his tongue smoothing over hers and chasing the taste of the wine into her mouth even as she giggles and presses closer.

“I thought you said we couldn’t do this forever,” she reminds him between kisses.

“I lied,” he says, swallowing up whatever else she’d say with his mouth.

*****

They grow bolder. Now she steals to his chamber in the night, slipping inside and stepping against him, sliding her lips over his face and shoulders, over muscle and bone and skin, seemingly wanting to touch and taste every uncovered inch of him. She wears her nightclothes still, but they’re flimsy enough barrier to seem like none at all and the feel of her against his bare chest is a sweet torment, one he’s glad to suffer through.

He’s lying over her in his bed, his hands a loose cage about her face, her chin tilting back to reach his mouth leaving the lovely column of her throat bare to him, when she first wraps her legs about his hips, settling him square into the saddle of her hips. The cry torn from her throat is wordless, inchoate. Her head tilts back farther into the mattress and he sets his mouth to her neck to moan against her, wanting to suck a dark bloom on to her skin but knowing he shouldn’t.

“Jon,” she cries, moving her head restlessly. “Jon, please.” Slowly, deliberately, he rocks his hips against her, feeling like he could be undone just in the sound of her choked cry, the whimpers that vibrate in her throat under his lips. Again he moves his hips, and again, until her fingers clutch in his hair to the point of pain, desperate and unraveled.

“I can’t,” she pants. “Jon, please.” He wants so badly to make this good for her. No matter what he’s lacked in life, he’s known tenderness, and he wants that and more for Sansa. Resolving his mind, he kisses his way down her body, using his tongue against her breasts through the fabric of her nightshift and making her restlessness only increase. When he reaches the thin smallclothes she wears beneath her shift, he pauses, fingers curled in the fabric.

“Sansa, do you trust me?” he asks her, looking up at her, her face flushed and impossibly lovely.

“Of course,” she answers immediately, whole-heartedly, and he shudders, the words lodging somewhere deep inside him. He turns his head, kisses the silky white skin on the inside of her thigh, then opens his mouth over her through her smallclothes. Her hands shoot up automatically to grip his hair, her thighs instinctively closing and trapping him there, so close and not near close enough, the smell of her making him dizzy.

“J-Jon, you mustn’t, that’s…” her voice trails off, and she looks at him uncertainly, nerves and curiosity battling in her eyes. “Do,” she starts falteringly, her fingertips making what he thinks are unconscious circles on his scalp. “Do men like that? Do you like that?”

“Very much,” he assures her, his voice rough with desire, with his effort to control his need for her sake. She nibbles at her lower lip and this time her question is almost a whisper.

“Do ladies like that?” He can’t help but smile, even as need wracks his body.

“I don’t know about ladies. But some women do.”

“What,” she starts, and then pauses, licks her lower lip as if it’s suddenly gone dry. “What does it feel like?” Her shy question is like a fist clenching in his gut, his whole body settling into a dull throb of sweet pain.

“Let me show you, Sansa,” he says, his voice so husky he barely recognizes it. Her eyes grow dark at his tone, at his words, and her hands change in his hair, clinging to him now, her thighs relaxing and letting him sink closer to where he wants to be. He watches her, waiting – he’ll wait as long as needs be – and the primal triumph that shoots through him at her nod is overwhelming.

He opens his mouth over her once more through her smallclothes, sucking gently through the cloth before easing them down and tasting her with no barrier at all. Her whimpers and soft cries are the sweetest music he’s ever heard. He licks and sucks at her, using everything he learned from Ygritte to bring her pleasure. Her body writhes beneath his mouth, bucks and trembles, and he’s unable to stop his grin of sheer satisfaction as she cries out and stiffens against him, smiling even as he drinks of her, the response of her body to him more than he’d ever thought to want.

She’s still jerking, pleasure tremoring through her even yet, when she tugs at him, her hands gripping in his hair and pulling. For a brief, terrible moment, he thinks she’s ashamed, that she’ll push him away and turn from him in disgust, but that moment is shattered into oblivion when she pulls him up her body and lifts her mouth to his, kissing him deeply even with her taste still on his tongue. It makes him feel far too much, more than he thought one person was capable of feeling. He pours everything he can’t say into his answering kiss, everything that no words exist to describe.

His kisses ease as her trembling lessens, growing shorter, sweeter, more innocent, until he rolls aside and pulls her to curl against him, his lips pressed to her temple. She twines one hand up across her chest to tangle with his fingers over her shoulder, her other hand low enough on his stomach to keep a steady thrum of tension fluttering in his abdomen. He thinks she’s fallen asleep when she speaks, the sound of her voice hushed in the quiet.

“I don’t know how I could ever thank you, Jon,” she says, sounding near to tears, but he can tell by the steady beat of her pulse, the boneless drape of her body that her tears aren’t sad or pained. “You’ve given me so much.”

“You’ve given me more in return, Sansa,” he says. She angles her head up to look at him, disbelief plain on her face.

“That can’t be true.” He smiles at her, traces a fingertip down the tidy line of her nose. How could he explain to her how he’d thought this was gone to him, the way it was he before he found Ygritte, only this time worse with the knowledge of all he was missing. How life as Lord Commander has meant cordoning off bits of himself, turning himself into someone measured and sure. How with her he can be vulnerable and impulsive, how he can bury himself in her sweet arms and forget, if only for a moment. How she’s made him whole again just as much as he’s tried to do for her.

“You said you trusted me,” is all he can say. Her brows knit in gentle confusion and he wants to soothe the spot between them with his tongue, to wash away every speck of uncertainty she’s ever felt.

“I do.”

“Then trust that you’ve given me more than I’ve ever dreamed I could want. And smile for me, sweet Sansa.” Though he knows she still has doubts, her smile for him is instant, beautiful. A smile to last him a lifetime.

*****

Sliding away from her sleep-warmed body in his bed is something akin to torture. She’d grasped at him, clinging in her sleep as he moved away, and he’d wanted nothing more than to let her pull him back to her. But sated though she may be, his body is humming with energy, still hard enough to cause him pain, and he knows he’ll not be able to lie with her tonight and do nothing more than hold her without some help.

He’s already downed his first glass of wine before he realizes he’s not alone in the hall, Tyrion’s low laugh practically startling Jon out of his skin.

“Lord Commander,” Tyrion says from his chair by the fire. “Join me for another glass. And bring that skin, mine is almost empty.” Cautiously, holding the fur he’d wrapped about his shoulders closed in front of him, Jon brings his glass and the wineskin and sits in the chair next to Tyrion, intensely aware that he sits beside the man he’s been cuckolding in a manner of sorts. Jon should feel guilty, he knows he should. But he can’t.

“Your being here has done wonders for Sansa,” Tyrion says after they’ve drunk in silence for several long moments. “She’s thawing just like the winter.”

“She’s done no less for me,” Jon says, his tongue loosened by too much wine on an empty stomach, his emotions a roiling boil of water in a kettle that no lid could contain. “It feels like we’re making up for years in days.”

“Indeed. I’ve barely seen either of you since your arrival.”

“Does,” Jon starts, and then falters, unsure of what he wants to say. “Have you no resentment of the time she spends with me?”

“She’s your sister,” Tyrion points out.

“And your wife,” Jon returns.

“My wolf wife,” Tyrion muses, contemplating the cup in his hand. “We may have come to understand each other somewhat, Lord Snow, but I’ll not pretend that there’s been anything approximating love between us. I cannot blame her, I’ve allowed my soul to become as stunted and twisted as my form. She’s a gentle lady, and sweet, even after everything. Far too sweet for the likes of me. I suppose it’s my hope that you can give her what I cannot.”

“What is that, Lord Tyrion?”

Tyrion shrugs. When his eyes meet Jon’s, they seem to look straight into his soul, as if Tyrion can see everything and is surprised by nothing. “Happiness,” he says simply. Words crowd in Jon’s throat, clog up his lungs. He feels that if he says anything, he’ll say everything, so he stands, downs the last of wine and turns to leave. But Tyrion’s words tug at him, and Jon stops in the door, hesitating.

“She’s grateful of you,” he says, needing some way to acknowledge the words Tyrion’s left unspoken. Tyrion is only a silhouette, an outline against the fire.

“I know,” Tyrion answers.

“I woke and you were gone,” Sansa says sleepily when he slides back in beside her, gathering him to her with greedy limbs like he’d been gone half a year rather than half an hour.

“I’m sorry, love,” he murmurs, fitting her close, burying his nose in her hair and breathing deep. “I’ll not leave you again, I promise.” She makes a happy sound at his words, but they give him less comfort, knowing as he does that it’s a promise he’ll soon enough have to break. The thought of returning to the Wall, to a life without her… Jon’s arms tighten involuntarily and she stirs, turning her face up to be kissed, offering him her comfort. The gesture only pains him all the more, but he pushes that away, drives everything but the feel of her nearness out of his mind. There’ll be time enough to miss her once he’s gone.

*****

She’s an easy drunk. A glass and a half and she’s giggling, tilting askew where she sits on the bed feeding Ghost tidbits of the supper she’d ordered brought to her solar but not bothered to eat.

“No reason for us to eat in the hall with Tyrion gone for the night,” she’d said. “Might as well be comfortable here.” She took her own words to heart, curling her legs beneath her on the mattress as she picked through her food, taking up no more than bits of bread and meat, half of which she offered to Jon, humming with satisfaction when his lips closed over her fingers to take them. His own head was dizzy with the wine as well, with her nearness. With the memory of her crying out beneath his mouth the night before.

Now she beckons to him in his chair by the fire where he’s watching her, crooking a finger in his direction. “Jon,” she says, trilling his name like it’s birdsong. “More wine please.” Smiling, he pushes himself to his feet, holding the wineskin towards her. She reaches for it, but then gets distracted, her hand hovering in the air as she looks up at him, her brow knitted.

“Have I ever sung for you?” she asks.

“When we were children,” he reminds her. “You sang all the time.”

“No,” she says with a shake of her head, like he’s being impossibly silly. “Have I ever sung for you, just for you.”

“No.”

“I should. If you’d like me to.”

“Very much.”

“Then I shall. But when I haven’t had wine. Give me some more, Jon.” She doesn’t reach out her hand this time but leans forward, mouth open. Grinning, he holds the skin over her mouth, wine dripping across his hand and up his sleeve when he flips it back upright. He transfers the wineskin to his other hand, meaning to wipe the dripping wine off on his breeches, but she catches his wrist and forestalls the motion. Every part of his body freezes as she chases the wine across his skin with her tongue, pulling each finger into the wetness of her mouth and dragging her lips from base to knuckle to fingertip. He thinks even his blood has stopped moving as her tongue traces over his wrist, her hands pushing his sleeve up so she can lap at the wine that’s dripped to his elbow.

“We’re wearing so many clothes,” she remarks conversationally, her fingertips toying with the cuff she’d pushed up, nails scraping lightly over the direly sensitive skin at the crook of his elbow.

“Is that a problem?” he asks, holding as still as possible. He has a half-formed thought that he could scare her away, stop the sweep of her fingers on his skin and whatever else she plans to follow it with.

“It is,” she says. “I would see you.”

“You’re seeing me,” he points out, lips quirking at her, his tone light to cover his struggle for control.

“I would see all of you.” Her words hit him like a physical force and he has to close his eyes for a moment, his body swaying and his breath sounding out harsh and ragged in the stillness.

“As my lady wishes.” She shivers, watches him with eyes gone black as he undresses in the firelight.

“Jon,” she breathes, and he thinks he can see the beat of her pulse at her throat, a flutter of wings just beneath the skin. Silently, his body thrumming, he watches her rise from her bed, eyes never leaving his as she steps in front of the hearth. “It won’t do for me to be overdressed, will it?” she whispers, her fingers going to the laces of her gown and Jon swallows hard, his cock twitching so violently that she must notice. But she just smiles, fingers busy at work and soon her gown puddles at her feet. Her shift glows transparent in the firelight, each shallow curve and plane of her body outlined through the material until it follows her gown to the floor, leaving her hair in disarray when she pulls it over her head. Only her smallclothes remain, and she tugs at the drawstring, slowly, letting them slip down her legs to leave her bare and glorious before him.

“You’re beautiful,” he says, barely managing to find his voice at all. Shyness and pink-cheeked pleasure overtake the boldness on her face.

“Not half as much as you,” she says, and he laughs.

“Sansa, such terrible lies are not fit for such sweet lips.”

“No lies,” she insists, moving to stand before him, the heat of her touching him like a living thing. “It’s the only true thing I know, Jon. My beautiful Lord Snow.” He has to close his eyes again.

“Stop. Please, Sansa, I can bear no more.”

“You’re trembling,” she says. “Are you afraid?”

Yes, he wants to say. Of you, of what you make me feel, how much you make me want. Of how you turn my weakness for you on its head until it seems only strength. Concern shadows her face at his hesitation.

“Jon, why do you shake?”

“I long to touch you,” he says, and her smile returns, like sun breaking through the clouds.

“Then touch me.” Her husky invitation stirs his blood almost as much as it moves him. He raises one unsteady hand, drifts it over cheek and neck to lie on her chest. “Touch me, Jon,” she whispers, and he knows he could no more refuse her than he could snatch the stars from the sky.

She gasps when his palm slides over her breast, her nipple dragging against the scarred flesh. She’s too perfect by half for the touch of such flawed skin, but she catches his hand when he would pull it away, pressing it fully against herself. Her breast is small, fitted perfectly to his hand, the wild tattoo of her heartbeat fluttering against his palm.

“Do you long to kiss me as well?” she asks and he’s taking her invitation before she finishes the words, swallowing them with his lips and licking inside her mouth. Without permission, his other hand slides over the dip and swell of her waist and closes on her backside, fingers sinking into the soft yield of her. “Jon,” she gasps into his mouth, stretching on tiptoe to get closer to his kiss. Then she’s sliding his hand from her breast, down the sweep of her belly to the apex of her thighs and he’s the one gasping, drunk on her boldness, on the heat of her around his fingers as he moves them inside her.

He becomes dimly aware that he’s chanting her name, saying it over and over against her lips as she clings to him. She’s slick on his fingers and he can’t go another second without tasting her, so he drops to his knees, steadying her hips with his hands as he replaces fingers with tongue. Now she’s chanting his name, hands roaming over his shoulders and back, fisting in his hair. When he feels her knees buckle, he guides her to the bed and she sits heavily, all grace gone in the face of need. He shoulders her thighs apart, tastes her again. Gods, she’s even sweeter than he remembered, something he didn’t think possible. Unable to resist any longer, he drops one hand to circle his cock, matching the rhythm of her hips under his mouth.

It’s not long before she’s curling in on herself, shaking with her release and triggering his own, messy and hot. “Up,” she says before she’s even stopped shaking. “I want you up here with me.” He hastily cleans himself with his discarded shirt and crawls into her arms.

Maybe they sleep some. He isn’t sure. He just knows of the weight of her against him, her sweet breath on his neck, soothing despite the need he couldn’t quite dissolve still tight in his belly. He’s not sure how long they’ve lain together when she stirs, taking up his hand and tracing a questing fingertip over his scarred palm.

“How did this happen?”

“Fire,” he tells her. She cranes her head back on his shoulder to study his face, like she knows he isn’t telling her the full story. Then she lifts his hand to her mouth, her lips warm on the ridged, damaged skin.

“And these?” she asks, touching the scars around his eye. He smiles, turning his face further into her touch.

“Eagle.” He closes his eyes as the marks are given the same treatment, one by one, her breath stirring his eyelashes.

“And this?” Thumb drifting over his collarbone.

“Sword.”

She wets her lower lip with her tongue and he feels it on his skin, drying into a patch of coolness when she pulls away. Then she moves lower, over ribs and stomach, cataloguing every scar, every mark life has left on his body, soothing each one with her kiss. He’s intensely aware of how close she is to his cock, how she can probably feel it against her body as it stirs to life, but she seems either not to notice or not to mind. He swallows his disappointment at how she studiously ignores him hard against her, telling himself that he’s just glad she’s not frightened or disgusted, reminding himself of her innocence. There are other rewards, he knows, particularly in the spill of her hair over his hips and thighs when she shifts focus to his legs, softer than a sigh on the skin she’s so carefully ignoring still. Every movement she makes sends the strands sliding over him, teasing him. He fists his hands into the coverlet to stop himself reaching for her, unwilling to interrupt her exploration.

“And this?” she asks, palm covering the arrow wound in his thigh, pressing into his flesh where it still dips as if carved out, even after so long.

“Arrow,” he says, steadying his breath. “From Ygritte.” That she didn’t expect and her eyebrows climb towards her hairline in surprise.

“She shot you with an arrow?” Sansa asks, disbelieving. Jon nods, watching her with half-lidded eyes. “Did you deserve it?”

His mouth tugs into a smile. “Maybe.”

Sansa traces her fingers over the scar, her touch a fire under his skin. “Where is she now?” she asks quietly, like she’s afraid of the answer.

“Gone,” he tells her. “Long gone.” She dips her chin, the sadness in her eyes real, sadness for a woman she never knew. His heart gives a lurch, one that only worsens when she lowers her head, exploring the scar first with her lips, then with her tongue, and Jon inhales deeply, clenches his fists all the more tightly. He’s barely regained his control when she shifts her head and he feels the careful, curious touch of her tongue on his cock. All breath leaves his lungs in a gust, his body arching up off the bed into her touch before he can stop himself, before he can catch her and hold her away.

“Is this not pleasing to you?” she asks, her lips pink and shiny-wet, and he thinks his body might turn into a knot from wanting her.

“F-far,” he chokes. “Far too pleasing.” Smiling, she lowers her mouth again but he holds her away still, barely able to overrule his instinctive desire to let her taste him, to let her do anything she wants, Gods, anything at all. “Sansa, I’m afraid you’ll mislike it.”

“Did you mislike it when you did this to me?”

“No,” he says immediately.

“Was the taste of me unpleasant?” she presses.

“You tasted sweeter to me than sun-warmed honey, you must know that. I could taste nothing else all my days and be sated.” Her eyes lose focus for a moment, and she shivers visibly.

“Then why would you not allow me such liberties with you?”

“It’s not the same.”

“Have you tried it?” she asks, brow arched.

Despite himself, he smiles. “No.”

“Then you’re in no position to judge such a matter, are you?” He shudders, the knowing smile on her face undoing him, picking him apart at the seams, stitch by stitch. “I wish to please you.” He looks at her, at the face grown so dear to him.

“You always please me.” She rewards his words with an exasperated roll of her eyes and he laughs, soft and low, amazed he’s even capable of it in his current condition. “You do,” he insists, knowing that he should tease her or affect hurt at her impatience, or for Gods’ sake encourage her, but he’s unable to give her anything but complete honesty.

“I wish to please you the way you’ve pleased me.” His breath snags in his lungs at the thought, at the fire in her eyes.

“Sansa, you don’t have to,” he says quietly, desperately – desperate for her to stop, desperate for the touch of her tongue, he doesn’t know anymore.

“I want to,” she assures him, her voice husky and raw, washed silk, and he almost loses himself right then and there. Surrendering, he slides his hands from her shoulders to her hair, caresses her sweet face and nods, almost imperceptibly. She sees, though, and smiles that smile, lowering her face to the joint of thigh and stomach, the ticklish drag of her nose from groin to hip followed by the wet, curious glide of her tongue. When she finds his cock again, he squeezes his eyes shut, the darkness behind his eyelids exploded into stars.

Her sounds of delight and discovery alone would be enough to destroy him, but combined with her sweet touch… How he holds still to allow her exploration, he doesn’t know. It can’t be said she doesn’t fumble, her mouth innocent and inexpert. She gags when she tries to take him in fully, coughing and pulling back in clear dismay. He laces one hand with hers, cups her cheek reassuringly in his other, her name on his lips as it is so often. After a deep breath she tries again, taking him into her mouth more shallowly this time, her tongue somehow finding just the spot to make his eyes cross and his breath explode from him on a grunt. Peeking up at him, she repeats the motion, humming with satisfaction when he bucks up against her.

He doesn’t last long. Were she any more accomplished, he’d last even less. Knowing he’s on the brink, he catches her under her arms, pulls her up his body. The disappointed sound she makes is what finishes him and he spills hotly against her belly, her body sliding slick against him and inflaming him further even as he worries at disgusting her. He wants to cover himself with a sheet, to clean both of them up, but his muscles can do nothing but twitch and tremble.

“Gods, Sansa, I’m sorry.”

“For what?” she asks against his neck, the flat of her tongue covering his pulse.

“For…” He waves a boneless arm at where her stomach is pressed to his, where he’s made a mess of her. “I didn’t mean to…I tried to stop. I’m sorry.” She raises her head and fixes him with soft eyes, eyes he could drown in.

“I’m not,” she tells him. “I love the feel of you, always.”

“Sansa.”

“I’m not,” she repeats. “Now kiss me, and properly.” Helplessly, he obeys. She could bid him swim to Braavos, tame a dragon, bring the bloody Wall down with his bare hands – he’d obey. There’s no room left in him for anything else. When she falls into sleep, he gathers her atop him carefully, pulling every part of her body over his, the idea of a single bit of her touching anything but him unthinkable.

*****

“Why will you not lay with me?”

He exhales abruptly, his insides shifting alarmingly at her question. He shouldn’t be surprised by it, given how they’ve spent the last few days, barely more than a breath apart at any time, doing little more than touching and tasting and exploring one another. But he hadn’t allowed himself to believe she’d want such a thing. An idea like that was too tempting by half, too powerful. Too destructive to entertain in the face of even the slightest doubt. Even now, lying as he is in the cradle of her hips, only layers of clothing between them, he won’t let himself think of it. Well. Not much.

“Am I not pleasing enough to you?” she asks when he remains silent, hurt creeping into her eyes, only a hint but more than enough to make him want to run himself through with his own sword at being its cause.

“No woman will ever be lovelier to my eyes,” he tells her, half a hundred times more seriously than he’s ever said any words before. “You must know that.”

“Then why? Jon, I want to be with you. Fully. I want to know all of you. Why do you shy away from me, why must you hold me at a distance?”

The distress in her voice tears at him. He buries his face in the valley of her breasts for a moment needing to fortify himself before looking at her again. “I can’t control myself with you,” he says.

“I don’t want you to.”

“Sansa, I must. Lying with you would be…” A wonder, an ecstasy, the sweetest way to die.

“A mistake?”

“No,” he practically explodes. “Sansa, I…” He falters, words drying up, and she looks at him pleadingly, almost desperately.

“Jon, I want to be with you, in every way. I want to know.”

“Sansa, my sweetest girl. There will be other men.” Even as he says it, he hates the words, hates the man who would lie with her, hates every man in the world who could be with her without fear.

“I want no other man,” she says, vehement. “I want to know with you.”

“And if you ended up with child?”

Her cheeks pink, but she holds his gaze and it pulls at him like something alive. “I wouldn’t mind.” Her soft declaration spears through him, lodging between his ribs like a splinter. He can barely breathe from it.

“Gods, Sansa.”

“Jon-”

“I’ll not get a bastard on you, Sansa,” he says, summoning every bit of steel in his soul to say what he must. “Ask anything of me but that.” Her face falls, she shrinks into herself a bit.

“I…no, of course. I understand.”

“Sansa, sweetling…”

“I understand, Jon, truly I do.” The terrible part is, he knows she does. She coos at him, pulls his head to her breast, and he allows her to comfort him, even though it should be the other way around. But there’s a cold spot lodged in his stomach that her arms can’t quite chase away. For the first time there’s a sadness between them, a wrongness that he can’t allow himself to fix. Ygritte had often said he knew nothing. He’s never felt she had the right of it more than he does now.

*****

She’s gone when he awakens the next day, gone from his bed, from his room, from Winterfell entirely, it seems. No one seems to know where she’s gone, only that she is. The cold spot is still there and it only grows with each hour she’s gone, until he feels half crazed. He’s got himself practically convinced that she’s run from him, never to come back – a truly ridiculous notion since she’s the one who actually lives here – when she finally returns, slipping into his room looking flushed and secretive. His mouth dries up at the sight of her and he can only stare, dumb at her presence when he’d imagined her halfway to Dorne by now.

“I’ve taken care of it,” she tells him, her eyes drinking in his face, as if, Gods, as if she missed him as much as he did her. He reaches for her, her words not entirely registering.

“Taken care of it?” He’s too consumed with kissing her mouth, her neck, the slope of her chest to listen fully.

“Yes,” she murmurs, equally distracted. “I saw a woman in the village. She- oh Jon, again.” He opens his mouth over her shoulder once more, tests her softness with the blunt edge of his teeth.

“A woman in the village, she…” he reminds her, amazed he can remember what she was saying himself.

“Hm? Oh. Tea.”

“She tea?”

“No, she gave me tea. So we can be together. You and I.”

He pulls up short, her words penetrating the haze of his mind. He’s heard of such village women – Theon used to say they should be made holy for their service to mankind. His brain processes what Sansa is saying, that she visited such a woman, that she made to protect herself from pregnancy. That she did it to be with him. “Together?” he murmurs, fisting a hand in the fall of hair down her back. Sansa feels his sudden stillness and looks up at him.

“Yes,” she whispers. “Be with me, Jon.” And just like that, something within him comes undone, some gate opens and he’s lost. Lost and then found again with her.

It’s familiar and new all at once, like a song he thought he knew being sung with different words. They’re both intensely aware of the difference, of the intentions behind their touches. Jon tries to remind himself that she’s an innocent; he tries to go carefully, gently. Slowly. His hands feel clumsy, though, his movements desperate and rough.

She gasps when he enters her, a pinched sound that flays him to the quick. He had thought it would be difficult to hold still, to let her adjust, but somehow his patience is infinite now that he needs it. He waits for her body to relax, for her to move experimentally. Only then does he withdraw and return, knowing her fully, overcome by her sweet trust. There’s scarce room between their bodies for his hand, so tightly does she hold him, but he wants everything for her, even this first time, so he makes room, circles his thumb over her until she’s shivering beneath him, giving little gasps and sighs. When he sees the slide of a tear down her cheek, his insides freeze, heart juddering to a stop.

“Gods, Sansa, have I hurt you? Sansa-”

“You haven’t hurt me” she says. “Don’t stop. Please never stop.” She pulls his face to hers and kisses him, sweetly, entreatingly, until he begins to move inside her again.

“Jon,” she whispers, holding his face between her hands and staring into his eyes. “My own Jon.” He answers her with her name, over and over and over again until she shakes against him and he lets go his reins, allows himself to follow.

His limbs don’t work; his bones have gone to powder under his skin. He must be crushing her. But when he tries to move away, she tightens her arms about him, presses her heels into the backs of his thighs hard enough to bruise.

“I must be heavy,” he protests, but her grip doesn’t loosen.

“You’re perfect,” she says. “Stay.” So he stays.

*****

It’s as if a fire has been lit, smoldering embers bursting into flame. She inhabits his every thought, his every dream. Every moment not spent touching her, kissing her, buried sweetly within her is a moment wasted. A moment sorely regretted. He worries he’ll overwhelm her, or frighten her with the breadth and depth of his need, but she’s just as desperate as he is, just as consumed. He’d thought he’d wanted her before. Now he knows he hadn’t a clue what it meant to want.

She’s insatiably curious, her innate shyness always overcome by her desire to explore. Soon he’s done everything he ever did with Ygritte, and even some things he hadn’t. Things he didn’t even realize were possible. And for all that he’s experienced such things with Ygritte, it still feels new to him, unfamiliar and unknown. As if he’s discovering himself all over again through Sansa.

They’ve snuck into the kitchen, ravenous in the middle of the night. Small wonder, as they’ve missed more meals than not of late, aided by Tyrion’s frequent absences that give them leave to rarely emerge from either of their apartments.

Jon’s carrying her on his back, like she’s a child – “My lady has no shoes,” he’d said when she pulled open her chamber door to head downstairs in search of food, “how could I allow her to hurt her delicate feet?” – Sansa’s arms doubled around his neck so that she holds her own elbows. She’s warm on his back, her laugh is high and sweet in his ear. Even with her extra weight he feels so light he could float down the steps, bump against the rafters and drift up into the sky if not for the roof. Then Sansa’s teeth test the shell of his ear, her clever tongue finds the sensitive spot behind the lobe, and he could fly.

He sets her on the long trestle table in the center of the kitchen, where the cook chops roots and kneads dough. Sansa is wearing nothing but his shirt – “My clothes take far too long to put on, and they don’t smell like you” – leaving him only his breeches. The hem falls past mid-thigh on her, his sleeves dangle beyond her fingertips until she impatiently pushes them up. Her hair is a tangle about her head, her lips well-kissed. She’s lovely enough to stop his breath. He’d thought he might grow accustomed to her, might stop feeling light-headed in her presence with time. He’d been wrong.

They’re taking a chance, being out of their chambers looking like this. Everyone in the household seems to be treating them with deliberate ignorance, carefully taking no notice of the hours Jon and Sansa spend together behind closed doors. Should anyone find them in the kitchen past midnight, however – sharing food, sharing clothes, sharing kisses – that might prove too much to ignore. But Jon can’t find it in him to care, not with her sitting there, bruised and beautiful like ripe fruit, inside his shirt the way she’s gotten inside his skin. Let them see, he thinks recklessly. Let them know.

“I’m hungry,” she tells him conversationally, knees bouncing against his hips as he stands in the vee of her thighs, one bold hand moving over him through the front of his breeches.

“As am I,” he groans, catching those smiling lips, surging into her hand.

She giggles, gasps as he drops his mouth to the column of her throat and applies his teeth. “I meant for food,” she says.

“And not for me?” he asks, affecting a tone of mock dismay. “You wound me, sweet lady.”

“Always for you,” she answers, one finger dipping below the placket of his breeches to tease at the dark hair arrowing down his abdomen, stopping just short of where he wants her. “But of the two, I’ve had you six times today and food not even once.”

“Seven,” he reminds her. “Your bath.”

“My bath,” she agrees, eyes gone cloudy at the memory and this time when he kisses her, she forgets food entirely. He wants nothing more than to take her back to bed, to finish what they’ve started, but he knows they need to eat. He’d sooner be light-headed from her rather than hunger.

The sound of protest she makes when he pulls away is soon enough replaced by a hum of satisfaction when he finds a loaf of bread and breaks it in two, pushing half to her with a crock of preserves he found in the larder. He intends to look for a spoon or knife, but she merely dips two fingers in. When she offers them to him, sticky with fruit, he closes his lips over them, licks them clean the way he did that day in the wood with the winter oranges, a day that somehow seems both forever ago and only yesterday. He finds a crock of early fruit, sliced and peeled and set to steep for summer wine. He feeds pieces to her, one by one, letting her lick his own hand clean before he kisses her, tastes the fermenting juice still on her tongue and teeth. He doesn’t intend to take her there, on the table where their bread is made, where anyone could walk in and catch them, but she opens herself to him, sweetly inviting, legs circled about his hips. She wears no smallclothes beneath his shirt, nothing to keep him from crooking his fingers inside her, circling his thumb, spending himself inside her like he’s coming home.

“That was terrible of us,” she laughs after he’s helped her down, noting with not a small amount of satisfaction that she can scarce stand on her unsteady legs. “We should make sure someone cleans the table. Probably before breakfast.”

He nods, looking at the oaken plank thoughtfully. Then he upends the crock of preserves, drags the jam across the surface. “There,” he says. “Now they’ll have to clean it.” She laughs, bright and real, seizes an egg from the basket on the table and smashes it onto the wood.

“Just to be sure,” she tells him, an impish smile on her face. Now he’s the one laughing, smashing his own egg onto the table next to hers. Then they’re scuffling like children, tossing bits of bread at each other, streaking one another with preserves and licking it off, until they’re more of a mess than the table. Sansa can’t seem to stop laughing as she looks at him. He can’t entirely blame her. There are bits of eggshell in his hair and he can feel a glob of jam making its sticky way down his forehead. She dips her hands into the sack of flour sitting on the table and coats them. Then she turns to him and presses them against the top of his chest, fingers splayed from collarbone to shoulder, leaving white handprints behind on his skin like a brand.

“You’re mine,” she says quietly, suddenly serious. “You belong to me.” The flour leaves streaks on his shirt as she tugs it over her head, drops it to stand bare before him. She takes his hands in hers, dips them into the flour and places them against her upper chest the same way, holding them with her own. His handprints are white on her when he pulls away, contrasting even against her pale skin, fanning up and out towards her shoulders like wings. “And I belong to you,” she whispers.

It’s more than a kiss when he pulls her to him. It’s a declaration, a vow, a plea. It’s sun and stars and Gods and man, the whole of the world in the touch of her lips. His throat is tight with it, his skin prickles as if wildfire runs in his veins. He is undone.

Eggshells crunch under his shoulders when he lies back on the table, pulling her over him, protecting her from the roughness of the wood. He misses her mouth when she sits upright but the straddle of her thighs over him is a more than worthwhile replacement. Shuddering, eyes drifting closed, she sinks down onto him, surrounding him in heat and want and love. The handprints stretching from the tops of her breasts to her shoulders – the white wings – they’re all he sees, smudged and blurred from the press of his own wings, two handprints mingled into one, and he knows there’ll not be a single day he doesn’t want her. Not one single day of the life left to him.

*****

She’s begun to wear her hair in more intricate styles, swept up off her neck into braids and curls. He loves to take it down at night, loosening it into a shining cape about her shoulders before following her down to the bed. Deep in his hidden heart, he thinks it perhaps deliberate on her part, that she knows he loves how no other man sees her thus, that her unbound hair is a gift she gives only to him. He could almost imagine himself her husband – a dangerous thought, as painful as it is beguiling.

Every night he breathes the happiness he can scarce admit to himself into her skin.

*****

Days tick by, endlessly, irrevocably. Jon’s never hated the dawn as he does now, knowing that each one brings them closer to separation. On his last day he wakes up almost angry, full of rage at a world that would do such a thing to him, and worse, to her. He tries not to wake her. Purple smudges lie under her eyes already, they sleep so little. But she stirs against him, moving into his arms and putting her face up to be kissed even before she’s fully awake.

There’s a gravity to everything they do the whole day, a desperation. Each time he thinks they’ve been sated, she’s turning into his arms, he’s reaching for her, need kindled anew. He tries to ignore the painful chanting in the back of his mind, last time, last time, this is the last time. Jon is no stranger to separation. He’s said more goodbyes than he could count. So how is this one goodbye worse than every other combined?

Somehow, despite all his wishing, dark is upon them almost before the day has begun. The windows fade from sky to blue to black, even as he’s lying with her, sliding against her, into her, trying to keep the night at bay. She’s shaking in his arms, trembling like a leaf in a wind.

“Jon, when you’re gone-”

“Don’t think of it, Sansa,” he says, fiercely, desperately. “Think only of this. Here we’re together.”

She kisses him like she could pour herself into him, a spring feeding into a lake until their waters were the same, so that none could ever split them back into separate parts. He’s too rough as he drives into her, a man possessed, with no more control over himself than a green boy. He tries to gentle himself, to slow, but she’s pulling at him, tight around him, not letting go. He never wants her to let him go.

She refuses to sleep. “Not while you’re still here,” she says, so they lie awake into the night, loving one another until their bodies are too sore, their skin and hearts too raw. It’s when she begins to cry, and in earnest, that he lifts her to her feet and tenderly dresses her, drawing her gown over her head.

“Come, Sansa,” he says, and leads her from their bed.

The godswood is as silent and deserted as ever, only the trees to witness them moving together one last time, bodies so close they could be a single person. Tears flow freely down her cheeks as she kisses him, holds him to her with her hands, her lips, her body. He wants to kiss her tears away, to tell her all will be well. That he could never be taken from her. But his tongue remains silent. When she shudders and twists against him, he lays his head on her breast, looses his control and spills within her once more, just once more. The salt of tears is on her skin, and he knows she hasn’t been the only one putting them there.

After, she curls in his lap, a blanket – the same he’d kissed her on that first night – cocooning them in warmth. She’s quiet, her knuckles brushing the inside of his wrist. She seems smaller, somehow, diminished. Knowing he had a part in that makes him wish he could dig his own heart out of his chest with a knife. It would probably hurt less.

“We could run away together,” he says suddenly, his voice too broken by far. “Find a cottage by the sea, someplace with a garden for you.” Her face is tucked into the curve of his neck, but he can tell she smiles by the sound of her breathing, a tiny exhale that somehow sounds different.

“And a wood for Ghost to hunt,” she says.

“We’ll have chickens,” he decides. “And sheep for wool.”

“Am I to spin the wool?”

“No,” he says. “Only to wear it. And to sing and dance and swim in the sea on sunny days. And love me, always love me.”

“Always,” she agrees. She tilts her head up to study him, her smile bittersweet. “And what will you do?”

“I’ll…I’ll train sellswords, or I’ll harvest crops. I’ll dig ditches. Anything. I’ll do anything, Sansa.” His heart is in his voice, he knows. He’s faced the walking dead unarmed, traveled into the unknown, been laid completely bare before her eyes, but he’s never been so naked as he is now. She takes his face in both hands and looks inside him, kisses him like she can’t exist in the world without him by her side.

“If only we could,” she says, and he knows. She would go in a heartbeat. She would follow him to the ends of the world if he led the way, and happily so. And he would take her if only she asked. He’d abandon all, give up everything that means something to him. All duty and obligation, all honor. If she asked him, he would, so she doesn’t ask and he knows he’s done nothing to deserve such selfless love. He knows that no man in existence ever could.

It’s near dawn when she slips into sleep. Taking more care than he ever has with anything, he pushes himself to his feet, balancing her in his arms. Ghost pads alongside as Jon carries her back to the castle, back to his chambers and their bed, to the place where he’s never been happier. To the place that feels like home. Though he supposes that place isn’t his room, or even Winterfell, but Sansa herself.

She settles into him with a sigh, sinking deeper into slumber as she fits herself to him, twines herself about him in a hundred ways. She’ll be cross that he let her sleep, but he can’t find it in him to wake her. So he holds her, the way he did the first night he came home. He strokes her hair and stares into the banked embers of the fire and waits for the dawn.

*****

Day comes too early. He’s loathe to wake her, knowing as he does that they’ll only have to say goodbye. She doesn’t start crying until they’re in the courtyard, his horse saddled and his goodbyes to the household said. If he’d thought she might hold back in the sight of others, he’d been wrong.

“I wish I could climb inside you so that we might never be parted again,” she says, tears thick on her tongue, holding him like she could keep a piece of him with her even when he’s gone. Her words pierce his heart, send heat and love and sorrow rushing through his veins. The last time he left her, it was to go to the Wall. She’d barely even acknowledged him then. It seems a lifetime ago. Maybe it was.

“You’re already the best part I have in me,” he tells her. He presses his lips to hers, not caring who might see, not yet ready to begin the life he’ll have without her kiss, not until he has no choice.

When he turns back to look down on Winterfell from the hilltop, she’s still standing in the courtyard, hair blazing in the light of morning, waving and waving and waving.

*****

He rides night and day, barely pausing to rest, too afraid he’ll turn back to her if he stops for too long, and still there’s a letter from her waiting on his return. Pyp hands it to him – “Said very clearly to give it to you immediately, Lord Snow” – before he’s even released the reins and Jon knows Sansa must have written it the day he’d left. He tucks it into his jerkin and it burns at his breast until he’s alone in his chambers and can read it. It’s short, only a few lines, but just the sight of her curved script brings water to his eyes. He has to blink twice before the words assemble themselves into meaning. “I felt your absence the moment you left Winterfell, maybe even before. Words cannot say how much I miss you, Jon. How I long to look up and see you beside me. But we’ll see each other again. I know we will.”

He folds the letter, creasing the parchment gently, carefully, as if it were precious. As if it were Sansa herself. They will see each other again, that he knows as well. They’ve a lifetime of visits ahead of them. He smiles to himself and tucks the letter into his jerkin, just over his heart. Even hundreds of leagues apart, they’re closer now than they ever were when they were children together at Winterfell. The world is full of surprises.