Chapter Text
Her phone rings as she steps in the taxi.
She gives the driver the address and a small smile before accepting the call.
“Where the fuck are you, Sansa?”
She’s late. She really hates being late.
“Almost there”, she lies.
On the other line, Arya sighs.
“Work?”
“Petyr wanted me to go through some paperwork. With him. Alone”
“Mh. I’ll save you a glass of champagne”
“Make it two”
A beat passes, then: “Jeyne says she isn’t that pretty”
“Jeyne is a liar. I have access to the internet, you know?”
She can almost see her sister shrugging, “I have met her”.
“And?”
“She’s blonde”.
Sansa laughs at that, “what’s wrong with being blonde?”
“He has never liked blondes”
Sansa closes her eyes at that.
She remembers a day at their house. Sansa must’ve been sixteen, the boys twenty one. She had overheard Robb joking with Jon and Theon, “Jon, I knew you had a thing for redheads!” and for a few days her stupid crush on her brother’s best friend had come back in full force, hopeful that they might be talking about her.
She also remembers how one week later Ygritte, Jon’s new redhead girlfriend, had been invited to their house to spend the day with the guys.
“He clearly likes this one”, she tries to be nonchalant about it.
The driver stops fifteen minutes later at the beautiful villa, the garden is lit by fairy lights and there are benches under big beautiful trees. She spots some couples already sneaking away for some privacy.
“I’m here. See you inside”, she ends the call and tips the driver before stepping out.
The place is gorgeous and she feels underdressed in her office attire. She would’ve wasted too much time going home to change and she does look good in her white button down and form fitting black skirt but she longs for the beautiful baby blue slip dress she had planned on wearing tonight.
She fixes her lipstick, looking at her reflection on the window of a parked car and steps inside.
It’s gonna be a long night.
The chatter is loud and it worsens her already forming headache.
She looks around, hoping she might find her family in the sea of suited up business people, beautiful rich socialites and scary lawyers.
As she passes the entrance, a group of older men gawks at her and she swallows the urge to flip them off. It would do her no good to actively draw attention to herself.
She may be curious and petty and relatively angry but she’s trying to go through the night without incidents, possibly observing from afar without actually having to interact with the bride and groom to be.
Following the music, she finally manages to find the dance floor and - most importantly - the bar. She sits on one of the stools, trying to find her phone in the small clutch she has with her but before she can text Arya, she feels someone kissing her cheek. Jeyne’s flowery scent engulfs her as they hug and Sansa relaxes a bit in her arms.
Her sister-in-law pulls back from their embrace to look at her face, concern clear in her eyes, “mh, how are you?”.
Sansa shrugs. She wishes she could say that she’s fine, that it’s ok that her childhood crush is getting married in a few weeks to a stunning and successful lawyer, that she’s totally over that summer six years ago but it would be a lie and if there’s something Sansa hates more than being late, it’s lying to her family.
Jeyne seems to understand because she clicks her tongue and waves her arm to someone, inviting them closer. Sansa cranes her neck to see who she’s gesturing at and she sees her sister and Gendry walking towards them.
Arya shoves a glass of champagne in her hand as greeting and she downs it in one go. Gendry chuckles at that and puts an arm around her shoulders.
“Planning on getting drunk, my lady?”
“Wasted”, she agrees.
“She really has nothing on you, Sans”
“It’s 2020, we don’t put women against each other”
“She’s a criminal defense attorney that works for guilty rich people, she deserves it”, Arya chimes in.
That does bother her.
The Jon they all know wouldn’t just throw his morals to the wind for a pretty face and yet, here they all are, celebrating the engagement of a loving couple.
Gendry squeezes her shoulder in a comforting gesture and Sansa finds herself grateful that, along with Jeyne and Arya, he also knows the full extent of what happened between her and Jon. She hadn’t shared it willingly, it had been more of a drunken accident but the tall man standing next to her had turned out to be a really good listener and a loyal friend.
“Robb?”, she asks and Jeyne grimaces - pointing at the other side of the room.
There stands her brother, laughing wildly as something another man is saying. She doesn’t recognize him instantly, his hair is longer, he has a beard now and the suit he is wearing looks expensive but as he joins in on the laugh her heart lurches.
Jon Snow looks happy, older, handsome. Oh, so handsome.
She curses the day she decided to accept the invitation and she begs the bartender for another drink, something strong.
She’s swirling the straw in her glass when she hears Jeyne mutter a oh no .
She lifts her eyes just to see that Robb is making his way towards them, followed closely by Theon and, to her dismay, Jon himself.
She looks at Gendry with panic in her eyes but it’s too late to do anything more than accept her fate.
Robb beams at his wife, giving her a quick peck on the lips.
Sansa is doing her best to make herself disappear. She has successfully avoided Jon for six years - first by going to King’s Landing, then The Vale. Even when she had come back in Winterfell and she had learned that Jon was also working close by in the northern branch of his father’s law firm, she had managed to stay away from him.
Now, they are in front of each other and he is looking at her, mouth opening and closing.
“Jon”, she nods.
“Sansa”, he whispers her name for the first time in six years and she feels like crying. She does her best to look unaffected and as the others start a conversation, she gazes at the other guests, desperately hoping to see someone she knows in the crowd.
Her eyes land on a man standing by himself, he has a beer in his hand and he’s already looking in her direction. He’s beautiful, she can see it even from a distance and he looks vaguely familiar. He tips the bottle towards her and smirks and she smiles as well, repeating the gesture with her own glass.
She watches as the man laughs to himself and steps out of the glass door, on the balcony. It’s only when she hears Jon saying his fiancée’s name that she makes up her mind.
She finishes her drink quickly and hops down from the stool, swaying a bit on her heels when the buzz suddenly hits her.
Jon is watching her, almost steps forward to help her balance but she doesn’t let him.
His eyes are sad, he looks like he might say something but it’s too late, she can’t do this right now, ever.
As Jon’s gaze follows her, she follows the man instead.
The night is chilly, she shivers a little as she steps outside.
The balcony is big, she sees a couple on her right passionately making out. The girls both look beautiful in their sparkly dresses and expensive jewelry.
She looks the other way but not before one of them catches her eye and winks, making her blush.
Gods, has it been long since she last had sex. Her vibrator is starting to give up on her and the only advances she’s getting as of lately are from her creepy boss that is old enough to be her father.
She sighs, looking for her mystery man. She might do something reckless tonight.
She finds him sitting on a bench, looking up at the stars, half hidden by a big plant.
“Mind if I sit here?”, she asks, charming smile on her face.
He gestures at the spot next to him and grins, sipping at his bottle of beer.
He’s even more handsome up close, she muses. Older than her, probably in his thirties, a structured jaw and high cheekbones, his eyes look almost violet in the light of the small lantern above them, his blonde hair is long - almost chin length - and it suits him.
“You are staring”
“Mh. Am I?”
He chuckles, her attention is drawn to his lips and that pout almost reminds her of Jon. She hates that it does.
“Does that bother you?”
“Would it bother you if I stared back?”
Her laugh is flirty, she dares putting a hand on his forearm.
“Not at all”
He looks at her then, up and down and once again. He gazes at the slit of her skirt, at her chest, at her smile. She feels herself blush as he hums appreciatively.
“Yeah?”, she murmurs.
They are close to each other, their noses almost touching.
He doesn’t answer, just lightly traces his finger from her knee up the exposed skin of her leg and she whimpers, closing the distance.
In the back of her mind she is aware that she’s making out with a man she doesn’t even know the name of like a horny teenager but as soon as the kiss deepens and his hands tangle in her hair - she can’t bring herself to care.
She’s tipsy enough to boldly straddle his thigh and desperate enough to subtly start grinding on him.
He stays silent, just puts his hands on her waist and helps her move against him, his lips finding her neck. His hand trails down between them, finding the slit in her skirt and teasing her through her panties.
She tries to lose herself to the sensation, the tingling feeling that precedes what she’s chasing after. She wants to be someone else for the night, wants to come, wants to forget.
She’s almost there when the stranger stops abruptly and she almost whines at the loss of contact. He shushes her gently and that’s when she hears the voices coming in their direction. It sounds like a couple arguing and Sansa groans under her breath, letting her head fall in the crook of his neck. He chuckles and holds her closer while they wait for the pair to get back to the party.
The girl is doing most of the talking - she sounds angry and she finishes whatever she was saying with a “you agreed to this! Stop acting like an asshole!”.
It’s when the man starts talking that both Sansa and Mystery Man freeze. Jon’s voice is deep and relatively calm, his northern accent ever present.
“My father agreed to this”, he says, “I will act accordingly”
“You can at least stop scowling at our guests”
That seems to make Jon mad because his voice is firmer when he corrects her, “I wasn’t scowling at our guests. I was trying to figure out why the fuck you invited that criminal to our engagement party”
Val sighs, “Melisandre was found innocent”
“Only because you represented her in court”
“That’s my fucking job!”
“You think I don’t know that?”, he snaps, “go away, Val. Don’t forget who is benefiting the most from this stupid thing”.
Sansa is in shock as she listens to the sound of the bride-to-be’s heels clacking on the marble floor. Before she can find an excuse to leave the balcony and find her friends, two things happen simultaneously: the stranger resumes kissing her on the neck and Jon Snow, the man she’s has always been in love with, walks past the big plant and catches them.
“Sansa?”, he asks.
Then, to her surprise:
“Aegon?”
Oh.
Oh, fuck.
Aegon Targaryen.
Jon’s half-brother.
Jon and Aegon are yelling at each other.
Sansa stands there, not really knowing how the fight started, shivering from the cold, sobering up almost completely.
She shuffles on her heels, trying to warm herself up and that draws the attention of the two men.
Jon gets closer to her, offering her his jacket.
She looks at it for a second too long because he huffs and puts it around her shoulders himself. He hasn’t been this close to her in six years and she’s suddenly overwhelmed, her legs are shaky and she goes up to the railing, gripping it hard.
Jon doesn’t seem to understand he’s the cause of her distress because he says, “she’s drunk, Aegon! What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I’m not drunk”, she interrupts.
Once again, the two brothers turn around to look at her.
Once again, Jon comes closer.
“I’m taking you home”
“You are not my keeper, I’ll ask Arya”
He grips her wrist, firm but gentle, “come with me”, he says.
His eyes are pleading and she can’t say no to him, not six years ago, not now, not ever. She sighs instead, mouths an apology to Aegon and for the second time this night, follows a Targaryen man somewhere private.
They pass the dance floor, the music has gotten calmer, slower, since she left and there is less noise. No one really pays attention to them but she still pulls away from his grasp. He flexes his hand but doesn’t say anything.
Once they get to a more private corridor, he stops. He’s still silent so she takes out her phone just to find outthat her family has ditched the party to go eat pizza somewhere, “too much champagne”, Gendry’s text says.
“Fuck”, she whispers.
Jon makes a curious noise and she looks up at him.
He’s standing in front of her, brow furrowed - she shrugs.
“I think I’ll call a cab”
“I already told you I’m taking you home”
“And I already told you, you are not my keeper!”
“Sansa..”
“Don’t”
“Did you hear us? Me and Val?”, the change of topic startles a little.
She nods.
“What were you doing with Aegon?”
“What do you think, Jon?”
“Would you have…”, he trails off, clenching his jaw.
“Asked him to come back to my place? Fucked him? Maybe. You and your fiancé interrupted”
“We don’t love each other”
“I don’t care”, she lies. Her emotions betray her, a single tear falls and before she can wipe it away, Jon’s hand is there, doing it for her.
“Let me take you home, please”, he whispers.
This time, she accepts.
The car ride is uncomfortable.
She thinks of summer days, of long conversations, of home, of happiness.
She wonders what he’s thinking.
She wonders what Val thinks of her, if she even knows about her at all.
“Why?”, she asks, “why her?”
He stays silent as he pulls up in front of her house, parks, stops the car.
“It’s a long story”
She hums, fights the urge to scoff, laugh, yell.
“But you don’t love her”
“I couldn’t even if I wanted to”
“Why?”, she whispers, feels her heart breaking.
“You know why, Sansa”, he reaches forward and takes her hand, his thumb strokes her palm.
“You don’t get to do this”, she hisses - flinches away from his touch. “Not when you told me you didn’t love me six years ago and then disappeared from my life”
Jon has the audacity to look confused.
“You think I didn’t love you?”
“You rejected me!”, she yells.
“You were eighteen! You were young and Robb’s sister and you were going to college! I loved you but I shouldn’t have!”
“BULLSHIT! Bullshit, cowardly excuses!”
They are both panting, both crying.
She doesn’t know who moves first but the kiss takes her breath away. She tries to get closer to him, grips his curls in her hands and keeps his head in place. It’s possessive and sad, she feels the salt of their tears on her tongue and it makes her push even further. One of his hands is cupping her neck, the other is touching the side of her face and she wants this forever.
She gasps when he moves his lips down, kissing her on the cheek, on her jaw, on her neck. He stops there, licking and biting and kissing and it feels like heaven.
She’s his, his, his, his.
But.
But he isn’t hers.
She pulls away, “you won’t leave her”.
The look in his eyes tells her everything she needs to know so she does what she did six years prior.
She slams the car door and leaves.
On the table, where she puts her clutch, sits an invite for a wedding that will take place in six months.