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Petyr is unperturbed. Where once he would've scraped and bowed, he now merely returns a gaze that is civil but not servile. He owes this man nothing now. This is Petyr's domain.
"I want you to create the trousseau for my fiancée. A full wedding collection to eclipse all collections."
"How many pieces?”
"Thirty."
Petyr raises an eyebrow.
"When is the wedding?"
"Eight weeks." Tywin frowns. "Can you do it."
It's worded as a command, not a request. But Tywin is asking because Tywin knows that the right of refusal stays with Petyr.
"It's impossible," Petyr smirks. "I'll do it.”
It is an impossible ask. Each exquisite couture garment requires at least 800 production hours. An entire collection of 50 designs for the spring shows typically takes eight months to carefully handstitch together.
Monsieur Petyr has eight weeks to produce 30.
Couture clients are royalty, or celebrity, or both. One seldom makes money out of the endeavour, but couture clients are necessary evils. Investments in prestige-building. They sap resources from the Shows, but they are breathing billboards and create desirability.
Petyr Baelish has already taken the world by storm. But Tywin is the King's hand. His bride will be celebrated.
The House of Baelish was invited to the syndicale of haute couture, as determined by the Chambre de Commerce et d'industrie in The Reach. Its eponymous founder, Petyr Baelish, remains as its Creative Director.
Littlefinger. Valītsos hen daoriot — Boy From Nowhere. He is still an outlier, with his halting French and middling High Valyrian. But he's the darling of Highgarden and Dorne, of runways the empire over.
He's heard rumours of the fiancée, of Sansa. It's a grotesque match — a man old enough to be her grandfather. He hears she is beautiful. But then he's surrounded by works of art.
Thirty pieces. Two jackets, two pairs of pants, three shirts. Seven dresses because she loves dresses, Tywin said. Three skirts, three blouses. Two pairs of shoes. Two hats. Four evening gowns.
Lingérie — a babydoll and a déshabillé.
The wedding gown, including a lace-up corset, garter, pantyhose. All made-to-order, lovingly handstitched, each unique. Masterpieces evoking breathless desire. The wedding gown alone would take a thousand hours.
The collection costs a cool 92 Gold Dragons — or what 30 of his artisans make in a year.
Petyr rounds it up to an even 95 Dragons. Because Tywin Lannister is a prick.
"She shall come to me," Petyr had insisted to his première. Ellaria Martell had been surprised.
"Are you planning to take her mold? It makes sense," she'd mused, "since there are so many pieces."
"No mold. I just want her to come to me for the measuring."
Sansa Stark is early. She is dressed simply — ballet flats, a large shirt over long, expensive leggings. She unbuttons her top to reveal a bodysuit underneath.
There are 150 measurements for 150 nuances. Petyr watches Ellaria work, his eyes missing nothing. The symmetry of her face, her fleshy derrière. Sansa is perfection.
He takes over suddenly. Ellaria steps away, her eyes unreadable but respectful. He announces each measurement in a low, silky voice, sometimes adding instruction as Ellaria records.
Now Sansa watches him, as he wraps the tape around her wrist and takes her pulse. His touch is soft and cool on her skin, and his fingers skim the back of her neck when he measures her collar. It is a fleeting touch, but she shivers nevertheless. He stares at her over her shoulder, through the mirror.
When he finishes, he tells Ellaria they'll take a life-size mold of Sansa after all.
Unlike his compatriots, Petyr trusts the talent of his staff. Instead of sketching hundreds of concepts himself, he creates mood boards and thick creative dossiers for each artisan. Everyone sketches their own ideas, thus creating a pool of 200 concepts for each item of clothing.
Incredibly, Petyr is the only couturier to do this in all the Seven Kingdoms. Varys and House Tyrell are too proud and traditional. Foolish.
He needs to find the inspiration for his dossiers. He permits himself to dream about Sansa day and night and day again. It's hopeless. He calls her up, arranges a meeting.
They meet in a café halfway between his ateliers and Tywin's holiday penthouse. Petyr has a uniform, Sansa realises. An almost clerical doublet, dark and smart, over a crisp white shirt. She wonders if he tailors his own suits. His Van Dyke beard is immaculate. His eyes are piercing and see too much.
He asks his questions, big and small. He wants to know everything. Her childhood. Her family. Her music. Her loves. Her hates.
He draws her on the pad he brings everywhere. It starts as a sketch but by the end of her coffee, he captures her likeness perfectly.
"Why are you marrying Tywin Lannister?" The question comes from nowhere. "Did you feel you had a choice?" The question is outrageous, but Petyr is still nothing but charm and politeness.
Sansa freezes anyway. "Nothing like that," she snaps. "Don't ask such questions, please."
They stand up. He's nothing like Tywin, towering over her always. Petyr is level with her as he levels with her. When he brushes her fringe across and tells her to wear it to the side, her heart pounds in her ears. She blushes a shade that, when he finds it, will go into the dossier.
He prepares the dossiers, gives them to all staff, and unleashes their talent. Go. In a week, he receives 200 looks a piece — including his. They paper the walls, the myriad shades of her fiery hair and blue eyes dotting the room in watercolour. The pencilled likeness of her everywhere.
All he does is worship those walls now. All he does is obsess about her body — what will please it, what will flatter it.
The more he stares, the emptier he feels. Petyr is frustration personified. In order to pin the look down, he has to pin down the girl.
Sansa returns for measurements because Petyr is fastidious. Her clothes are skintight like a dancer's, and his trousers hide his thoughts. When he picks up the tape, her heart races and her skin burns.
He gives her a personal tour and she meets his 60 petit mains — the little hands. They've been sewing couture since their teens. She meets his two premières. Ros Chechet manages the flou where confectionary dresses come alive. Ellaria is premier d'atelier haute couture tailleur, overseer of the meticulous suiting and fitted pieces.
Sansa enters his office. A wall of tiny Sansas stare back.
She is mesmerised by a sketch when she feels his breath on her ear.
"Do you like that?" he asks. "Do you like any of them?"
"I like them all."
"But which do you love. Which can you not bear to part with. Do you know?"
She smiles shyly. "I'm not good at choosing. I do not have the eye."
"Trust yourself," he reassures her. His hand slides down her arm and her nipples harden inside her bralette. "Which pulls you in, like gravity?"
She points to five sketches immediately. He's pleased to find that three of them are his.
Out of 200 sketches, Monsieur Petyr chooses three or four. From there, he is in real agony. Each design is edited down, pulled apart in concept and built afresh again.
The sketches are chosen and sent immediately to the ateliers. Each look finds its humble beginnings from muslin and toile. The seamstresses are given a special treat this time, their squeals audible even two floors up: they each get to choose which baby to love and birth. The premières hire 60 more petit mains, as if it were Show time.
Long after The Reach falls asleep, Petyr's ateliers stay awake.
When Sansa enters the studio today, Tywin follows closely behind.
Just as well they're not fitting the wedding gown yet. It is still a good 700 hours away.
Ellaria and Ros lead the session. Parts of each clothing are fitted, measured, and measured again. They discuss the fall of the fabric, the exact shade of colour. Sansa is told to walk and still. She is born for this.
Petyr stares impassively at the scene before him. When Tywin holds and squeezes her hand, stepping her down the fitting platform, Petyr learns that the old lion truly loves his young lamb.
Tywin leaves early, leaving his Sansa behind. She waits until the studio empties, until Monsieur comes to her from the corner of his room.
"You want to know why I'm marrying him," she states without preamble, looking out his window at her fiancé entering his limo. "Yes, we've slept together. He is very good. Surprisingly gentle. Experienced."
She turns to Petyr, her blue eyes penetrating like glass shards.
"He is not my first choice. But he's the smart bet to make. Tywin is powerful. He will protect and honour me. And I care for him."
"You have tamed the lion. Brava.”
Her eyes flash dangerously. "You judge me."
"You judge yourself."
"You don't understand how vulnerable I am. Every vulture, poised to feed off me. I am valuable but friendless and have no family left."
"So am I, sweetling."
She startles, but only her fingers give her away. She pulls herself together and leans in.
"What about you, Monsieur. Lusting after another man's prize."
"You are nobody's prize." His eyes narrow. "Don't cheapen yourself."
"Why do you care?" Her breath is sweet, warm. Petyr swallows and doesn't reply.
Sansa's lips are a hair's breadth from his when Ros enters the room.
She swings by House Baelish sometimes. They climb to the roof from his private office and share a smoke.
"You may not have any children. Don't you care?"
"He's not a man you say no to, Petyr."
Sansa takes his cigarette from his lips, wraps her own around the filter and sucks, her cheeks hollowing. He inhales sharply.
"Don't live your ambition through another man's life, sweetling. Make your own way."
"Easier for some than others." But she looks uneasy now.
"Have you always doubted that greatness lives inside you?"
Sansa has heard enough. "You sound like a fucking fortune cookie.”
He tells her about his life sometimes. — not the bits that ever make the magazines. He loathes being interviewed. It's not false modesty, just impatience. He observes. He is not the observed.
Petyr Baelish really did come from nothing, whereas she had started with fortune and family. The more she sees the man, the more she's put to shame. She was right — it's easier for some than others. She had it easier than he ever did.
The more she knows, the more he becomes.
On impulse, she kisses his cheek before stubbing out her cigarette and returning downstairs. He blushes.
Sansa's collection is about Enchantment: delicate tulle skirts, intricate bodices, ornate floral detail. A fitting theme for a bewitching beauty.
One silvery-grey dress is painstakingly assembled with spools of lace pinched into little bunches and hand-sewn onto eight panels, each taking 48 hours to complete. A petit main handstitches the finest pure gold thread on chiffon, her needlework so intricate as to resemble real leaves. Elsewhere, 20 seamstresses feverishly embroider sequins, rhinestones and beads onto gossamer. Thousands of tiny feathers meticulously arranged in rainbows are glued on a gown by hand.
Airy confections. Ethereal artworks. The zenith of sartorial endeavour.
For the wedding gown, Petyr eschewed the sleek and modern, opting instead for old-world romance. The full-skirted gown in white silk organza is an evocation of pointillism, as a thousand tiny bits of chiffon are hand-embroidered into the delicate fabric. Lily-of-the-valley sprigs adorn the bodice, and the entire effect invokes the timeless Queen of Faeries coming to claim her woodland throne.
Almost 40 feet of organza and tulle now comprise The Gown to Eclipse All Gowns. The entire endeavour is projected to take a thousand hours — or 41 days to complete, out of 56.
It's to be Petyr's greatest masterpiece.
Unsurprisingly, the staff start to crack.
“It will take too long, what you want.” And they try not to groan, especially when he changes his mind. A new detail, a new stitch. Unpicking a previously grand idea that now feels gauche.
"We'll not be able to make it," his usually optimistic premières warn, eyes glinting.
“Do it. Hire 60 more petit mains if you have to.”
For Petyr is a man obsessed now. He is married to couture... but Sansa is his mistress. She haunts his daydreams and torments his nights. His perfectionism is fuelled, ironically, by his heartbreak.
On Day 53, both ateliers wait with bated breath as the most senior of their rank slowly carry their precious babies to the third floor.
They huddle downstairs, each petit main still clad in their white lab coats, their own clothing underneath surprisingly quotidian. After almost eight weeks of creating 95 Dragons' worth of sartorial history, this is the kairotic moment.
Petyr's studio settles into a kind of hush as each piece is solemnly carried in. The tulle, the organza rustle softly like leaves in a breeze.
Monsieur Petyr surveys Sansa's collection. All collectively sigh when he whispers, "C'est magnifique.”
The doors are open for Sansa, but the building is filled with shadows. The ateliers are quiet. But the light in Petyr's studio is a beacon for her.
She slips into the room with an easy grace he'd missed. She had returned to King's Landing without warning. When she looks at him now, she knows he's lost weight. But he's still gorgeous. Her heart still throbs.
Slowly, he slips his hand into hers as if it'd always belonged there. He guides her over to the standing mannequins — all 17 of them. When she reaches her wedding gown, her breath hitches.
"Would you like to try?" he asks, and she turns sharply to face him.
"Can I?"
"It is yours, sweetling."
He takes in her loveliness. Tonight, she wears a dress that matches her eyes. It comes off in one easy movement and is soon forgotten. Her skin pebbles in the night air. She'd come prepared with a strapless bra and matching silk panties.
Petyr holds up the corset with the 36 handstitched baleen boning. He eases it over her outstretched arms and when it settles underneath her breasts, he starts to pull the stays tight.
Her gasps are airy. Erotic.
Petyr feels a tear touch his eye when he stands back to behold his faery queen. The wedding gown is sublime. It is perfection. The woman he loves is lovelier still.
The look on Sansa's face is one of sheer terror.
He asks again what it is that she truly wants.
"To be married. To the Hand of the King. To be his faithful wife until his death."
"Your lips, sweetling. They say something, but your eyes plead something else entirely."
He moves slowly towards her and she doesn't move away. Sansa's eyes widen even as she wets her lips.
"If we do this..." Her voice is barely a whisper. "There is no going back. Tywin will seek to break your neck before he breaks mine, even though he loves me. No riches or influence will hold him back. He will not be cuckolded."
The prospect should douse his ardour. But the fact that she acknowledges a 'we'... Petyr's intractable cock hardens to the point of pain.
"You will lose your ateliers. Your craft. Your livelihood."
"You will be saved from a marriage that should've never been brokered."
"And what do you hope for? A future together?"
Petyr blinks. "Yes."
"You're ridiculous!" But before he can reply, her lips are on his. He opens his mouth and her sweet tongue greets him.
Everything catches fire like dry lint.
Her kiss is wet and fierce, and her moans turn him to jelly. She is scrabbling at his cashmere jumper, and he pulls her straps down. He cannot find her gods-damn zipper. But her hand reaches for his zip and when she frees his cock, his hand slips into her neckline before yanking it down brutally.
There is that terrible, heart-stopping sound of fabric ripping. The lilies-of-the-valley will have suffered. Petyr snarls.
She snarls back. His jumper, his shirt is stripped off him and his pants are halfway down. For two people so tuned to finesse and class, this collision is raw, clumsy, highly irregular...
And fucking hot.
His hands bunch the fuck-tonne of tulle and organza and the homage to pointillism. She's still wearing her corset and he needs to feel her skin. More tearing as he claws through the extravagance. Something finally gives, and the gown is shucked and summarily discarded. Petyr yanks at the ribbons of her corset as she wraps her fingers around his length and starts pumping.
Perhaps it was the weeks of wanting without having. Perhaps their bodies are two halves of a whole. But even though Petyr has barely touched her sex, Sansa is close to peaking.
The clips holding up her new handknitted Yi Tish silk pantyhose are now yanked away roughly. There's a cursory attempt from Petyr at foreplay when he brushes against her nub through her panties, causing her to jump and then complain in a sob, "Rip the damn thing off!"
No time. He pulls aside the small triangle over her sex and slowly sinks the rigid length of him into her molten core.
They hiss together, and then he settles in and starts rocking. Groaning. She grabs his ass, nails sharp, digging in. She thrusts up as she pushes him in as far as he'll go, her breath hard in his ear.
"Mine..." he hears his own rasp. "Mine... mine!"
"Yes," she grits her teeth. "Yours."
When he comes, he makes the most incredible sound, almost like pain. She cries.
The wedding gown of a thousand hours and 14 Gold Dragons lies on his studio floor in tatters.
In one blinding moment, Petyr Baelish lost everything and in so doing, found everything else.