Chapter Text
When Robb signs her up for The Bachelor, she nearly goes into an Arya-level rage blackout.
When she learns why he signed her up for The Bachelor, she actually does. She manages to throw a (poorly aimed) bagel at his head at Sunday breakfast (to Arya and Rickon's delight and her mother's horror) before she realizes what she's doing.
“If you love Jon Snow so much, why don't you apply to go on?” she screeches. She doesn't care that her voice is almost at a decibel only dogs can hear.
“I would, but The Bachelor is real regressive and they definitely don't allow men on and I don't know if Jon Snow even swings that way,” Robb says, hiding behind Jeyne (who gives him a glare and steps out of the way) and he has to add on, “and also I'm dating Jeyne, the love of my life.”
“Jon Snow might swing that way,” Arya says through a mouthful of bagel that Sansa thinks is actually the one she flung at Robb and why is Arya eating off the floor when they have a dozen more perfectly clean, non-floor bagels? “Do you remember those photos of him with that model guy? Satin what's-his-face?”
“None of this is helpful!” Sansa stomps her foot (no one can bring out her angry, petulant inner child quite like her siblings). “I am not going on that stupid show just because some football player Robb has a boner for is the Bachelor.”
“Stupid show?” Now it's Jeyne's turn to be offended, mouth open in a look of betrayal (and yes, fine, she and Jeyne are Bachelor buddies and she goes over Jeyne's apartment every Tuesday and they drink wine and watch the show and they even have a league going with some of their friends and coworkers but this is different).
In the end, it's Arya who convinces her to go on.
Her application had been approved (which is how she found out in the first place that Robb had signed her up) and she gets through the rounds of interviews, the whole time trying to remember Arya's points.
You broke up with Harry six months ago and haven't even tried to date again. It'll be like a vacation, you might get to travel to another country if you make it far enough. You can unwind from social media for a while. You might even be able to promote your Etsy store or something.
There's not a lot of time between the application approval and being whisked to a hotel and kept under lock and key, but there's enough for her to start a Google search on Jon Snow. Sure, she knows who he is, but she doesn't know him know him, you know? She knows he's on the Direwolves and she knows he's one of their star players, considering how much Robb (and everyone else in Winterfell) talks about him like he's some sort of god, here to bring the Direwolves back to their former glory.
But to be completely honest, Sansa has very little interest in football herself, never cared much for a bunch of dudes running around a field trying to kick a ball into a net. And they couldn't even use their hands? Seems dumb to her, their hands are right there.
She gets about thirty seconds into Googling Jon Snow before she starts to feel guilty, because once she's past his basic wiki page and his season stats, she starts to get to some stuff that she feels like she shouldn't be looking at, even if it's technically public knowledge. His season-ending injury, his very public downward spiral and drunken fight in a bar a few months after. His breakup with his ex, some punk singer named Ygritte who looks like she would rather stab you in the throat than talk to you, and Sansa wonders how Jon is going to go from Miss Trash-a-Hotel-Room to the kind of women who end up on The Bachelor.
Women like Sansa.
Oh no, she's one of them now.
She closes the Google tab and tries not to think about Jon Snow at all.
She has watched girl after girl get out of the limos and with each passing one, her anxiety only gets worse. There was a girl dressed like a wolf, a girl in a wedding gown, one that rode a unicycle, and even one that wore his jersey (and only his jersey, and Sansa wonders if they're going to have to black box her. The jersey did not cover much).
And then the producer, who is crouched on the floor of their limo, is shooing her out the door and she swallows against her very dry throat and manages not to stumble on her exit. She smooths her dress out and doesn't know what to do with her hands as she walks up the drive to the mansion, lit with glaring spotlights, and the pavement is wet, did they hose it down? It definitely hadn't been raining earlier. Why is the walk so long? Why are there so many cameras? Why did she agree to do this?
To be completely honest, she's so caught up in not looking like an idiot that she doesn't even noticed the actual reason she's here until she's standing in front of him. She's seen pictures of Jon Snow before, but she thinks they don't quite do him justice (or maybe it's that she's never seen one of him in a tux with his hair pulled back and his beard trimmed so short).
Ok, here's where she says something. She and her producer, Sam, had gone over her introduction line again and again. What was it? Something about being Northern, something about reminding him of home or some nonsense? They practiced this line, she's got it.
Except when she opens her mouth, nothing comes out, and she realizes in horror that her mind is absolutely blank. She is so aware of the cameras, the lights, this stranger she's standing in front of, the millions of people who will be watching this and judging her and laughing at what an idiot she is and-
“Hey,” his voice breaks her out of her thoughts. It's low and calm and he reaches out and grabs her shaking hands. “Breathe.”
She nods, and lets out the breath she had been holding. He takes an exaggerated deep breath and she mirrors him, and they do it a few more times until her head has cleared a bit and her hands are no longer threatening to vibrate off her body.
“Hi,” she says, and tries to smile. She hates the way her voice wavers.
“Hi,” he says back, the corner of his mouth tilting up, and he's still holding her hands and she thinks she should pull them away, but she honestly doesn't mind.
“I'm nervous,” she breathes, like that isn't the most obvious thing on the planet.
“Yeah,” he huffs out a small laugh. “Me too.”
She has to remind herself that he's a famous football player and the Bachelor and that he's probably not nervous at all and just trying to make her feel better, but he sounds so sincere.
His thumbs are rubbing the back of her hands and she doesn't think he even realizes he's doing it and neither of them are saying anything and she knows she should be saying her line, but for the life of her she can't remember it and so instead they're both just standing here in silence holding hands.
Then there's some producer gesturing wildly from behind one of the cameras, and she realizes at the same time Jon does that this has gone on too long, and so she says, “guess I should go in?”
“Seems to be the popular thing to do,” he nods, and she lets out what has to be the most embarrassing giggle she's ever produced. Why is she like this?
He finally lets go of her hands and she nods and steps back, and she's a few steps away when he calls out, “hey,” and she turns and he says, “remember to breathe.”
Breathe. She can do that.
It isn't until she's inside and sitting on one of the uncomfortable couches with a glass of champagne in her hand that she realizes she never even told him her name.
So not only did she make an absolute fool out of herself, but he also has no idea what her name is, and now she's definitely going to be one of those girls who gets sent home night one
It doesn't matter, she tries to tell herself, and she wonders why she feels so awful. Who cares if she gets sent home night one? Maybe they'll barely even show her and she can get out of this with little to no notice from the general population. And then she can go home and tell Robb and Arya well, I gave it a shot, didn't I? and she can go back to living her life and she never has to think about Jon Snow or his earnest grey eyes or his pretty mouth or his steady hands or his deep voice ever again.
She's going home tonight and she's totally fine with it.
Totally.
As far as she can tell, she was out of the limos almost dead center of the thirty women in the room. Right in the middle, didn't even tell him her name, completely forgot how to speak. Great.
You don't care, she tells herself, except there's a small piece of her that does. Not necessarily for the Bachelor himself, but just for the sheer fact that going home night one is embarrassing. But that would be just like her, right? Pretty, but completely forgettable. Boring. (Gods, why are you so uptight? Harry's voice sounds in her head.)
Back in Winterfell, in high school, she'd been the most popular girl in her class, voted best smile, prom queen. But here, she realizes she is nothing compared to these women. There's a brunette next to her with soft curls and a quirk to her lips that makes her look like she has a secret that you desperately want to know. And there's the blonde in the corner who might be the most beautiful woman Sansa has ever seen in her life, it's actually unreal. The woman talking to her is just as beautiful, with big dark eyes and a rope of thick black hair hanging in a braid down her back and curves for days. Another blonde, shorter, with eyes that look almost purple in the light, is ethereally pretty.
And even the ones that aren't punch-you-in-the-face gorgeous seem intelligent and outgoing and just... better. There's really nothing like looking around a room full of women and realizing you're the least interesting of the bunch to really knock your self esteem down a few rungs (not that Harry hadn't done that already, but it turns out she still had a bit further to fall).
The girl sitting on the other side of her is a slip of a thing and Sansa learns her name is Gilly. She's pretty and seems a bit shy, but she's easy to talk to. Within minutes, Sansa learns that Gilly has a son back home and she can tell Gilly is anxious about that – about leaving her son and what it will look like to the rest of the world. Sansa's glad she sat next to Gilly, because she suddenly realizes that maybe she isn't the only one here with doubts and insecurities.
“Did you hear he got signed for fifty million dragons last season?” the brunette next to her is gushing to a girl on the loveseat opposite them. “And he's fit.”
“I heard he lost his sponsorships because of the injury,” another girl leans in and whispers. “That's why he's doing this.”
“I thought it was damage control because of that fight,” someone else offers.
“I heard it was to make his ex jealous.”
Sansa tries to tune them out and instead turns back to Gilly.
“Your producer is Sam, right?” she asks and Gilly nods. “Me too.”
“He's nice, isn't he?” Gilly sighs. “I'm so glad I have him and not Loras or Mel. They're terrifying.”
They've been sitting around chatting aimlessly for what feels like hours when the host, Renly, finally breezes in with a charming smile. Behind him, Jon Snow enters and if she didn't know any better, she would say he looks like he's walking to the gallows. But that's insane, right? Star footballer, Bachelor, gets to have thirty women's undivided attention? He must be loving this.
Right?
“Sansa, you haven't talked to him yet,” Sam whispers, having pulled her aside. “You need to get out there.”
Out there.
What Sam actually means is go interrupt his conversation with whatever girl he's currently talking to. Shove yourself into the middle of their chat and make him talk to you instead.
“What's the point, I'm going home anyway,” she mutters back and takes another sip of her champagne even though it's a terrible idea. She's had two overfilled glasses now and no food for hours and she knows that's the whole point and yet she's falling into their trap anyway. She's already going home tonight, what she really doesn't need is to be that girl. The girl who gets drunk and makes a fool out of herself. Sansa knows she's a lightweight to begin with and the champagne is already making her head dizzy. She can see Sam eyeing the glass like he wants to take it from her, but he doesn't (likely because he's not allowed to, if the way the head producer, Cersei, has been gleefully ordering the crew to refill drinks is any indication).
“That's not true!” Sam argues. “He was really into you! Stared at you the whole way as you went inside! He even told Renly he didn't get your name and he sounded really disappointed.”
He's supposed to say that, she knows. She overheard Loras telling some other girl the same kind of thing – he was clearly interested, he thinks you're the hottest one here. She needs to remind herself that the producers are not here to be their friends, they're here to make good TV. She's watched the show enough to know that only a few girls get a good edit, the rest are fodder for drama clips and GIFs on Twitter. From the few interactions she has had with Cersei Lannister, she has no faith the woman cares if any of them look good.
Speaking of, the woman is talking to the head cameraman and whispering when her eye catches Sansa and she smirks, and for a moment Sansa feels heat rush to her face. It feels like Cersei knows every thought in her head, every single insecurity, knows she's too afraid to go talk to Jon Snow, too afraid to get in front of the cameras for real.
“Fuck it,” Sansa says, then downs the last of her champagne, shoves the empty glass into Sam's hand, and marches out of the mansion and into the backyard. Jon isn't near the pool, and so she weaves her way through the gardens until she sees a gazebo set up with twinkling lights – she knows that gazebo, had watched Bachelor Daario have his first kiss with his eventual winner (and later, ex-fiance) in that gazebo.
She steels herself, head feeling just a tad bit fuzzy, enough so that the twinkling fairy lights have turned soft and slightly out of focus and she can ignore the cameraman who has been following her and the others with their focus on the couple inside the gazebo.
“Hi,” she manages to say in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear and she's proud of herself when it doesn't shake (she almost eats it, though, heel sinking ever so slightly into the soft grass, her balance already compromised by two glasses of champagne on an empty stomach, but she manages to stay upright).
“Hi,” Jon immediately angles his body away from the other girl (which one is it? She can't tell, one of the blondes, she's honestly trying not to look at her) and towards Sansa and this gives her the courage to step forward.
“Can I steal you for a minute?” she asks and she almost laughs at getting to use the most cliché line. She said it for Jeyne, wants her to be able to check off a box on their Bachelor bingo cards. Maybe she'll be able to squeeze in I'm not here to make friends, too, before she's kicked off.
She needs to calm down, the alcohol and adrenaline have made her delirious, she's about to start giggling on camera with Jon fucking Snow and the entire world watching.
“You don't mind, do you?” Jon asks the woman next to him, but he's already standing up and moving out of the gazebo.
Sansa tries very hard not to look at the woman, but she can't help it and her eyes flick over to the blonde and if looks could kill, Sansa is very sure she'd burst into flames just from that glare alone. Then her line of sight is blocked as Jon comes to stand in front of her and she really must be drunk because he is way prettier than she remembers (though, to be fair, she had been so nervous before, it's possible she didn't even register him, really).
Behind the cameras, a tall woman with blonde hair cropped short gestures at them silently and points off to the side and Jon says, “um, let's head over here,” and they leave the gazebo and the angry blonde behind.
(It's alright, she tells herself. She's going home tonight anyway, it's not like she'll have to deal with her new arch-nemesis for longer than a few more hours, right?)
“Hi,” she says again after they've settled themselves onto a bench conveniently surrounded by rose bushes.
“Hi,” he grins and she almost snorts out a laugh but manages to keep it in check.
“How's your night?” she asks, trying to remember her etiquette. It's not like she's never been tipsy at a fancy party and had to hide it from her parents before, but this is different, with the cameras and the ring lights and all the people staring at them.
“Fine,” his voice sounds confused for a moment, and he studies her face carefully and she wonders if she has something on it (can't be food, she thinks, she hasn't eaten anything). “You don't seem as nervous anymore.” He says it cautiously, and she's not quite sure why he's being weird (is he being weird? She doesn't actually know him at all).
“Oh, I've had a few glasses of champagne,” she says before she realizes it's a terrible thing to admit. Not just to the Bachelor, but also on camera. “I'm a bit of a lightweight.” Shut up, her brain screams, but her mouth is not listening. “It really helps with ignoring them.” At this, she waves her hands at the cameras and operators and lights and producers around them.
“I see.” Jon doesn't seem to be paying attention to... well everything going on around them, he seems strictly focused on her and it's unnerving.
“Is it legal for them not to feed us?” she babbles. “I mean, I guess there's a table with fruit and veggies, but that really doesn't help, does it? I would kill for any sort of carb right now.” There's a detached part of her brain that is screaming. She's going to be the drunk carb girl now. That's going to be her thing.
“Like what?” Jon's voice interrupts her panic, and she looks away from the producers and back at him. She must be drunk because there is no way he's actually smiling right now. She's hallucinating that.
“Waffles,” she decides on a whim, “with ice cream.”
“Ice cream?” he grimaces, and she gasps in horror.
“You've never had it?”
“Who puts waffles and ice cream together?” His grimace is still firmly in place as she shakes her head at him.
“Geniuses. I can't believe you've never had it! This is a tragedy.”
He laughs, a short burst of a thing, but oh his smile is beautiful and it takes her breath away. And then his smile fades and he's just staring at her with such intensity and... did he really just look at her lips? That cannot have happened.
“I still don't know your name,” he says, voice suddenly much deeper than it had been before and gods it does something to her.
“Sansa,” she breathes out in a pathetic rush of air. The alcohol and his intense stare are turning her into a puddle, she's going to melt right here on this bench.
“Sansa,” he repeats and yup, there she goes; she's drunk and a complete goner for Jon fucking Snow.
Robb is gonna be so jealous.
Speaking of Robb... “You should tell girls their name is pretty,” she blurts out, remembering the advice she had given Robb back in middle school when he'd wanted to ask out Dacey Mormont.
“That right?” Jon grins at her and she nods sagely. “Well, Sansa, you have a very pretty name.”
“What a charmer, you are,” she gasps like the words are a surprise to her and Seven save her, is she flirting? She is, she's actually flirting (or trying to). With the Bachelor.
And suddenly she's dragged back into reality and the cameras and lights and people are back (somehow, she had forgotten them all, too caught up in Jon Snow's calm voice and his stupid pretty face). She feels herself tense up. Jon must notice, because suddenly he's got her hand in his and he gives it a squeeze.
“Where in the North are you from?” he asks, his voice a tad sharper than it had been, less flirty and more I'm trying to distract you from the fact that at least five people and three cameras are watching us.
“Winterfell,” she says (like a normal person), and then (like an idiot), “go Direwolves!”
“Ah,” he nods and sits back a bit. “You're a fan?”
“No,” she snorts, before she realizes how insulting that must sound. “I mean,” she tries to backtrack, “obviously I'm all go Direwolves because it's the home team, duh, but I don't watch it on my own, you know? My dad and my siblings are more into it...” She's rambling, terribly, and she manages to cut herself off before she does something stupid like admit that her older brother is a drooling fanboy or that Arya had (somewhat) jokingly asked her to get Jon's autograph before she got booted from the show. And she's definitely not going to tell him about Theon joking that she should poke holes in the condoms if she got to fantasy suites, because getting knocked up by a football star meant she would be, in his words, set for life. (She remembers whacking him in the face with a couch pillow and storming out of the room after that. She'd had her phone in her hand, ready to call production and tell them she couldn't do it, when Arya had found her and convinced her not to back out.)
She is saved from embarrassing herself further when some girl shows up and asks to steal Jon and Sansa doesn't even wait for his answer, she gets up with a mumbled goodbye and walks as quickly as she can away from that disaster (not too quickly, though. She has made a fool of herself enough tonight and the last thing she needs is to trip and fall into the pool or something).
Back in the living room of the mansion, she's standing off to the side and staring at the rose resting on a tray on the table in the center of the room. So is every other girl, so at least she's not alone in that.
The first impression rose.
Well, she's certain she's made an impression, it just wasn't a good one.
She freaked out, got drunk, talked about waffles, insulted his job, and then ran away from him. A truly stellar performance.
All around her, girls are talking about their own conversations with him, and she wants to sink into the floor or learn how to time travel and never come here at all.
“We talked about how many kids we want.”
“I told him all about my animal rescue.”
“We both love rock climbing.”
“I wore this apple lip gloss because he said in an interview in GQ a few years ago that he liked apple pie...”
“Do you think she started to stalk him before or after she found out he was going to be the Bachelor?” a voice murmurs from right next to her, low and thick with amusement. Sansa turns to find the brunette with the secretive smile there.
“Definitely before,” she whispers back, which makes the girl laugh.
“Margaery,” she says, holding out a hand.
“Sansa.”
“So who do you think gets the rose?” Margaery asks her, raising her champagne glass to her lips elegantly. Out of the corner of her eye, Sansa can see a cameraman hovering, and she holds back her initial reply of definitely not me.
“I'm not sure,” she hedges. “All the girls here seem so amazing, it must be hard for him to choose.”
She's proud of that answer, mostly because she knows they'll never air it.
“It can't be Falyse,” Margaery says and nods at the apple lip gloss girl (the one who had only worn his jersey for the limo exit. She's now covered in a robe, Sansa assumes because they didn't want to have to black box her for the entire night). “Way too desperate. Did you hear she memorized all of his stats going back to high school? I overheard her talking to him and she was clearly just reciting stuff she memorized about football.”
Sansa's about to defend the girl, because maybe she's just nervous, maybe she needed to memorize talking points, but when she looks at Falyse again, she's got a compact out and is applying a thick layer of what must be her apple lip gloss while simultaneously eyeing the first impression rose, and Sansa sort of loses all of her arguments.
“Might be Dany,” Margaery drops her voice even lower. “Asha said they kissed.”
“Already?” Sansa can't help the surprise in her voice, though she's not sure why. She's been watching this show for literal years, there's always at least one kiss on the first night, especially with the Bachelors.
Her head is reeling. Not only is she tipsy, not only has she made a fool out of herself, but now Margaery is throwing out names and information left and right and she can't keep up. She'd only learned a few girls' names but Margaery seems to know everyone.
“I'm surprised you didn't know,” Margaery hums, “since you interrupted them and all. She was pissed.”
“Oh,” Sansa breathes, her eyes scanning the room and finding the blonde woman with the elaborately braided hair. “Well, they weren't kissing when I got there!”
Sure enough, the blonde, Dany, catches her eye and gives her a glare and Sansa wishes she had accepted that third glass of champagne some intern had tried to hand her.
“Asha's a sports writer, so maybe they could bond about that,” Margaery continues. “But I honestly don't see it. Maybe Arianne? She's a model, but like a real one, not an Instagram one.”
On and on Margaery goes, spouting out names that Sansa has no face reference for, and all she can do is stand there and nod like she knows what's going on. And then suddenly Jon has walked into the room and immediately every girl stops talking and some of them greet him and Falyse leans forward and winks at him.
She hears Jon stutter out a greeting before he picks up the rose, and her heart goes out to him because he looks so uncomfortable. The producers clearly placed the rose in the center of the most populated room, where he'll have the most eyes on him when he retrieves it. She watches him nod his head at the group, barely making eye contact with any of them, and then he makes his exit towards the back garden, and nearly every girl in the room groans in disappointment.
“Ok, who's not in this room?” she hears Margaery say, but Sansa doesn't really listen to the rest. She doesn't have the energy to try and figure out who he's going to give it to.
Later, a blonde woman comes in holding the rose (Val, she learns from Margaery) and Sansa can't really be surprised. Val is the woman she'd seen earlier in the night that is possibly the most beautiful person she's ever seen in real life. Of course Jon would pick her.
She really should have taken that third glass of champagne.
Throughout this whole, terrible process, this is the most humiliating part, she thinks. Standing on a riser with twenty nine other girls, waiting for her name to be called. Or, more likely, waiting for her name to not be called.
While they're all waiting around for production, she can feel a lump form in her throat as she imagines it – imagines standing here at the end with the seven other girls that will be cut tonight.
She just needs to hold it together. What she can't do is cry. She thinks back to all the times she and Jeyne had sat on the couch and giggled at the sobbing girls night one (oh please, you barely know the guy!).
But now that she's here, it's more than just the guy. It's everything. It's hours and hours of filming in one night, sitting around in a stiff dress that you had to buy yourself and makeup and hair you had to do yourself, feet aching from being in heels for so long, minimal food and way too much alcohol. It's the lights and the cameras and the crew herding you about like cattle. It's being judged based on one night. It's having that judgment shown to millions of viewers.
She's always been an easy crier, and she can feel the tears welling up already and she digs her freshly manicured nails into her palms to stave them off. She is not going to cry. She is not going to give Cersei the satisfaction.
Jon is brought into the room, but she barely listens as Renly explains the process. She focuses on the sharp pain in her palms and stares straight ahead and tries to breathe even and deep. She can get through this. She keeps her eyes fixed to the wall and tries to think about anything else but being here.
There's a sudden jolt as the girl next to her shoves an elbow into her ribs, and Sansa turns to look at her. The girl's eyes are wide, flicking back and forth between Sansa and the front of the room, and when she turns to see what the girl is looking at, she finds everyone staring at her, including Jon and Renly. In Jon's hand is a rose and...
“Sansa, he called your name,” Gilly hisses from the next riser down and that... that can't be right. There's still a pile of roses on the table, that would mean she's one of the first to be called and that... can't be right?
But her feet move anyway, and girls step out of her way as she makes her way down, and then she's standing in front of Jon and she hears, will you accept this rose, and she almost wants to laugh again.
“Uh, yes,” she fumbles, and he gives her a grin and hands her the rose and then (she's apparently committed to looking like an idiot tonight) she throws her arms around him in a hug. To her immense relief, she hears him let out a surprised laugh and he hugs her back and then Renly is shooing her back into place. She ignores the glares from Dany and Falyse and instead tries to focus on not grinning like a besotted fool for the rest of the ceremony.
In the end, she doesn't know any of the eight girls who end up going home, but she feels bad for them (well, maybe not the unicycle girl or the one she'd overheard defending Roose Bolton's politics).
She's glad Gilly and Margaery get to stay, so far they're the closest she has to friends here, and she's even happier to learn that she and Gilly will be bunking together, along with two others (Missandei and Roslin, she learns).
She nearly groans in relief when she's able to slip out of her heels and unzip the dress (which was too tight to begin with and hadn't become any more comfortable with her alcohol bloating) and she barely manages to take off her makeup before she falls into bed. The sun is rising outside and she honestly cannot believe how long they'd filmed.
Exhaustion weighs on her and all she can think is that she wants to call Arya and tell her everything. Arya would make her feel better, Arya would be able to calm her nerves. Arya would make her laugh. But she can't, no phones, no connection to the outside world. She can't even anxiety scroll through Instagram or Twitter for hours on end to distract herself.
Finally, she gives up and falls asleep, determined that the next time she's on camera, she'll do better.