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Sansa’s hand slides down the window, meeting the door panel and desperately curling around the hard plastic.
They didn’t make it back to Jon’s apartment.
But then, she’d been teasing him all through dinner. Her hand snaking under the white tablecloth and working over where she found him hard for her, while his jaw strained under the effort of keeping it together.
She likes having power over him. She likes that he lets her have it.
She likes what he’s doing at her pulse point too, sucking hard enough that she knows he’ll leave a mark, while she moves her hips, rocking over him. He can’t get any deeper. Her rocking is just a delicious rub that she feels tingling through her body.
She’s obscenely wet. She can hear it. Them. Their bodies slipping together, their staccato breathing, and that low sound he makes in the back of his throat, when she rises up high to slide down slow.
His hand splays against her back, holding her in place, firm, like she might try to weasel away even with a wheel ready to dig into her back and his chest pressed hard against her and everything inside of her winding tighter and tighter.
“That’s my girl,” he says hot against her ear. “Is this what you wanted?”
Forehead collapsed on his shoulder, she nods, made dumb by the good, full feeling of him inside her and the spiraling pressure low in her gut.
His hand slides down over her, fingers digging into her ass, urging along her pace.
“You’re going to come for me.”
And she does. She always does what he asks.
Almost always.
Sometimes they disagree. Sometimes they fight. They fought about how to tell Robb about them. They fought about whether it was safe or smart for her to walk after the sun had gone down to the Blue’s Too, when she wanted a pineapple shake.
Not ugly fights though—not how it was with Joff. Jon would never hit her. Or any girl. He says men don’t do that.
Jon’s a good boyfriend. Sweet and gentle. Supportive. She can trust him. He isn’t good at telling her how he feels necessarily, but she can usually figure it out.
Besides, he likes to make her come, not cry, which she did plenty of with Joff. With Harry too even if all he ever did was get red in the face and yell loud. She only really faked her orgasms with either of them, when their egos required it, which wasn’t often.
There’s no need to fake it tonight, knees straddling him in the driver’s seat and his hand palming her ass under her blue sundress. There’s never a need to fake it, since he’s as intense about getting her legs to shake and her back to bow up and off his bed as he is about everything else, and his sullen pout does wonders between her legs. That was a damn revelation of spiritual proportions, God forgive her.
She bites his shoulder through his shirt, riding out the white wall of pleasure that has her keening, as he thrusts up into her, slow-fast, cursing against her damp hairline.
“You feel so fucking good. You're my girl.”
“Yours,” she agrees, clinging to his shoulders, as his hips snap into her.
“Sweet girl. Baby. I need—”
His fingers lace through her hair, hauling her up for a kiss. Sloppy. Off-center. And that’s what he needed. That's what it takes. He comes with his mouth slack against her smile and his eyes scrunched shut, pulsing inside her.
Jon always wears a condom. No excuses about it not feeling as good. He says that’s just bullshit guys say to get their way and she can’t go getting pregnant.
She’s supposed to make something of herself. She’s the smart one, the pretty one, the first one to go to State and not just the community college in Rolla. For a small-town girl, she’s got a world of potential. Or so they say. And no one would have thought she would be having sex in Jon Snow’s truck in the dark alongside Highway T. But they’ve spent the summer having really good sex all over town and she knows he’s a part of her future, not the drag on it her mama might worry he is.
She came home broken and sad and he patched her up with his quiet devotion. She slipped into being his like sliding into a warm bath.
Jon’s boy scout like commitment to preparedness even when it comes to sex on the side of the road saves them from a mess. It’s a funny thing to find endearing, but she does.
“You’re sweet,” she tells him, curling her fingers around his ears.
“Guys don’t like that,” he says, kissing her on the tip of her nose in direct, affectionate contradiction to his assertion.
With a shrug, she leverages up off him enough so he can peel the condom off and tuck himself away. “Well, guys don’t need to like it.” She squeezes the shoulder she's balanced on. “I’m saying it just for you. You’re sweet,” she insists, as he leans crossways over the console to throw the condom in the Price Chopper grocery bag turned trash bag. “And you like the things I say.”
His head flops against the seat and she leans back into his steering wheel, as his eyes move over her. “I like everything about you.”
She shifts her ass against him, rubbing. She means to tease him, but she feels it too. She’s still sensitive. She has to bite her lip against it.
“Okay?” he asks, half his mouth quirking.
She hums back. “Perfect.”
“You look real pretty tonight.”
Her nose wrinkles. “I’ve got sex hair.”
The beachy waves she put in it with her barrel roller in honor of an actual date night in a real restaurant in Rolla are a tangled mess. So bad that her fingers catch, trying to pull them through. Her lips are probably a blur from kissing too. Disheveled. Not presentable for walking through the kitchen door and running into her daddy.
“You look even prettier with sex hair,” he says, copying her attempt to brush it back. His fingers catch too. But it feels good when he does it—the tug on her scalp and his thick fingers teasing through the strands.
She pouts. “Proud of yourself?”
“A little.” His mouth threatens to properly smile. That’s her smile. She’s earned it and other people don’t get it. “You look real pretty when I’m inside you.”
She’s about ready to swat his chest, when a car’s lights whip around the bend, blinding her. She squints against the yellow light—there and then disappearing just as quick in a softer glow of red. It only occurs to her after they're past that a cop wouldn’t be super impressed about their clothing being on, when they’re parked halfway in a ditch and she’s straddling him in a car that probably smells of sex.
It was just some neighbor though—hopefully not some friend of Mama’s who will recognize Jon’s truck. That might be worse than red and blue lights illuminating the dark with the accompanying warning beep of a siren.
Maybe. She knows most the cops in town. One better than the rest. And familiarity isn’t always a plus in situations like these.
“You ever think what Theon would do if he caught us like this?”
Theon Greyjoy, her older brother’s other best friend, went straight to the police academy after high school. He loves how he looks in his uniform and lording that position over people as much as he loves flirting with girls. Which he does a lot. He flirts with Sansa. He even flirts with her mama. He’s good at flirting, but Sansa’s not sure how good he is at being a cop.
“Greyjoy?” He pulls a face. “He wishes. Pervert.”
“We could say we were just talking,” she says, testing the corner of her mouth with her tongue.
He steals a kiss. Right beside her pink tongue. Quick and gone. But his voice is low and makes her adjust her seat on him. “He’d take me in just to get you off me.”
Theon is no great fan of Jon’s, and the feeling is mutual. They’re jealous of each other. Neither of them is content with what they’ve got.
Theon flirted with Sansa on the fourth and Jon came up to sling his arm around her. Said absolutely nothing but looked at Theon like he was planning his funeral. Arya calls it Jon’s serial killer look. He launched himself across a cafeteria table one time in high school, when some idiot called his friend Sam a fat fuck and dumped a full tray in his lap. That’s the first time Sansa saw it.
She liked it. She liked it back in high school, when Jon was sticking up for Sam, but she liked it even more on the fourth. She’s that girl. She likes the idea of being saved, protected, taken care of, which her sister finds pathetic. Yes, Sansa knows she can take care of herself; she’s done it, could do it again. But Jon wanting to do it is good too.
“He’d be fucking thrilled to have your parents be pissed at me.”
His palm chuffs her thigh, pushing her skirt up higher with each unhurried brush of his hand over her, until she feels the air conditioning ghosting over where she's still sensitive. Her underwear is lost somewhere on the floorboards, and the slippery folds of her skirt expose more than they should.
So much for being fully dressed serving as a guard against public indecency charges.
“I don’t want that,” he says, his thumb finding the line between her thigh and torso.
She’s too sensitive to touch, but her body fidgets at the curve of his thumb, rocking closer like it has a mind of its own. It would be too much, but she'd climb on him again, biting her lip against the sharp intensity of too much too soon. Sometimes in her head, when she's not totally opened up for him yet, she pretends it's her first time, that he's her first and none of the rest of it ever happened.
“They’re not mad though,” she tells him softly.
Jon needs assurance. Almost as much as she does and pretends not to. Maybe even more.
It’s not a lie though. There’s nothing they’re pissed about at the moment. But her mama in particular has her eye on Jon, ready to announce that she knew all along that this was a bad idea, and her daddy wouldn’t like to know about something like this either. Everyone has their limits. Roadside sex is probably Ned Stark's, when it comes to his daughters.
Sansa didn’t used to be this kind of girl. But then, the girl she was didn’t end up very happy.
“Still and all.” His thumb circles, the roughened pad trailing pebbles along her skin, making her restlessly shift. “We should talk about what you wanna do.”
His eyes fix on some middle distance likes he’s looking through her.
She touches his cheek. Frowns at how far away he seems suddenly. He could be tired. He worked overnights earlier this week.
“We could watch something.” There’s never anything good on Netflix. It’s more like background noise, while they mess around. “We could go back to your place. My mom won’t start getting antsy for another couple hours.”
Jon’s got to work early tomorrow morning, so they ate like old folks. She doesn’t mind: more time to spend together, she figures. Especially with the fall semester a week away, the amount of time they have is slipping away like sand poured from one of those colored sand art things she made in bible school with the poem tied to the neck: When you saw only one set of footprints... She hasn’t brought it up, but the countdown is already starting to spoil the time they have left together. Like when you can’t enjoy your last day at the lake, because you know you have to pack up the next morning to go home.
His fingers fist and flex against her thigh. He grabs the flimsy edge of her skirt and covers her back up, so nothing shows. “I mean, what do you want to do about going back to school?”
She wraps her arms around her middle. “I’ve been trying not to think about it honestly.”
His chin lifts and falls.
“You wanna drive me?” she asks, closing one eye as she tilts her head like she’s getting ready to beg real pretty and sweet.
She doesn’t need to.
His fingers set to moving again, tracing the lowered hem of her skirt. “I can do that, yeah.”
The back-and-forth brushing of his calloused fingertips and his low voice makes her heart hiccup. She smiles back at him.
He is sweet. He’s reliable. Shows up, doesn’t ever cancel on her. It doesn’t have to be something he wants to do for him to pitch in. His mama raised him right.
She was going to have to beg Bran to help. The boys share the old family car. She goes without. At college, she doesn’t need one. It would be a waste, when she can walk to her classes. Makes it hard to get her stuff there and back though. Even if it’s just a junky Goodwill microwave, her guitar, and a couple pink and white camp duffle bags of clothing and hair stuff. Arya says she has way too much hair stuff.
“You helped move me in to my dorm freshman year too.”
Him and Robb. It was Robb’s old car then, not Bran and Rickon’s, and only a little less beat up. They took her out for a burger before they left. She felt special sitting at a table with boys just old enough to order beers instead of a shake. No one knew it was her brother and his friend. She was the mysterious freshman with older friends. Jon’s attention felt different that day. Even the sway of her ponytail against her partially bare back felt good with Jon’s legs stretched out underneath the booth, bumping hers when she crossed and uncrossed her legs, and he stared over his beer at her through those dark lashes of his.
Jon didn’t complain like Robb did about the fact that she overpacked, thinking she’d join a sorority and need dresses and heels and have a perfectly put together dorm room to complete the picture. But they were all so fake, the sorority sisters. Dues are expensive too. It wasn’t like she thought it’d be.
She’d been popular at home. At school, she sticks out in the wrong ways, and no one was impressed with her good girl act—loves Jesus, saving it for marriage, never touched a drink bull shit. She dropped it, tried on a new persona, thinking it would make her happy, and then it didn’t.
“You were wearing those tiny track shorts.” His brows lift, mouth totally flat like he isn’t picturing her in them right now. “The blue ones.”
“It was like 98 out, and you weren’t supposed to be looking.”
Robb would have kicked him out of the car if he knew. Made him hitch a ride back home.
His mouth twitches. “I don't think you minded.”
“You're terrible.” She pokes him in the abdomen. There’s no give. He’s flat and firm and has a trail of hair there that she likes. There’s a lot to like about Jon. She just didn’t know that back then, sipping on that shake. She just knew she liked how he smelled like soap, when he leaned in for a quick one-armed hug goodbye. “But, you know, we could have put that little extra-long twin of mine to good use if you’d done more than look.”
He laughs tonelessly. “You sure? You were awfully innocent at eighteen.”
She walks her fingers towards the copper button on his jeans. “But I wouldn’t have been when you were done with me.”
His stomach contracts under her touch, as his head tips to watch her. “If I think too hard on that, I’ll need therapy.”
She stuffs her fingers underneath his waistband, gives it a jerk to watch him flinch. His eyes are so dark.
“Don’t beat yourself up.” Her thumb swirls around the button. “We can recreate it. Do it right.”
“That’ll make it pretty hard to leave you.”
“Good,” she says with a roll of her hips. He probably doesn’t have another condom on him, but it wouldn’t be a terrible thing for him to have to drive back to his place ready to go again. A little anticipation never hurt. “I don’t want you waltzing out of Springfield too easy.”
“No chance.”
“You can be a little miserable about it,” she suggests and then immediately regrets her teasing, when he follows up with, “I don’t want you being unhappy because of me.”
She’s ready to tell him she didn’t mean that. She doesn’t really want him to be miserable. She just wants to be missed. She wants to know he’s looking forward to seeing her again, not thinking about his new-found freedom with his girlfriend a hundred miles away.
She’s ready to pet him and assure him and pepper his stony face with kisses, when his hand closes on her hip, stilling her. “We should put things on pause. With us. While you're there.”
Her lips part.
It takes her a second to connect with what he’s saying. She’s not getting anything from him otherwise that would help her understand. He’s all closed off. Face blank and eyes dull. But it finally sinks in. Sickeningly.
A pause.
Her stomach swoops. She’s going to be sick—Di Trapani’s pasta all over his lap.
She forces his hand from her hip with a downward thrust. “Jesus, Jon, you were literally just inside of me.”
She needs a handhold for balance to get off of him, but she’d rather die than grip his shoulders. She flails instead, her dignity circling the drain, as she tries to get one knee up and push off the door to get over the console. At least he doesn’t move to stop her. Or help.
She growls. Infuriated humiliation flooding her body. “Fuck me one last time, I guess.”
He holds his hands up in front of himself like he’s warding off an attack just before she flops over into the passenger seat. She kicks out her foot, thumping the dash in frustration. She swears she could tear apart the whole interior with her bare hands for all the world as feral as Arya or Rickon in this moment.
She forces her dress down. She knows she flashed him—fucking misplaced underwear. She growls again, higher, close to a scream with her hands balled up.
He’s silent. Not explaining, not wheedling. He levels everything with a few cool words and then stares blankly at her like she’s already gone.
She breathes through her nose. Once, twice, sharp and angry. “I thought we were—”
She thought they were really good. She thought this was it; he was her person. But she can’t make herself say it now.
Stupid.
Her chest is so tight. She sucks in a breath that sounds like a sob, and she hates the sound of her vulnerability as much as she hates him watching her. Tears sting the corners of her eyes and she presses the heels of her hands into her eyes. It won’t stop them, but at least he doesn’t get to see them shimmering there.
She was excited to go to a nicer restaurant. Jeyne had her thinking maybe—
He touches her arm and she throws him off with a jerk. “Take me home.”
“Sans—”
“Now,” she barks, still hiding behind her hands.
She doesn’t need to drop them to know he’s doing as he’s told. The engine starts. The wheels catch in the gravel that lines the road. The truck bumps up over the edge of the asphalt. She doesn’t see any of it, but she doesn’t need to.
She presses harder. Stars pop behind her lids.
She’d like to scream. Fill the cab of the truck with her pain.
Stupid.
“You’ve got two years of school left. It’s a long time,” he says so quiet she has to hold her breath to hear him over the car.
She drops her hands, knits them primly like she’s in church. Pretty dress, pretty manners, not the kind of girl who would ride Jon Snow in his truck. She doesn't have to let him see her go to pieces. She can pull it all together.
Or she could if this wasn't such a punch in the gut. It didn’t occur to her that he wouldn’t want to stick it out with her. With another guy, she’d have already thought of ways to keep his interest, she would have worried and plotted and spun webs, but she assumed this was forever. She didn’t need games. They don’t do that. Going back to school sucked because she wouldn’t see him every day, but it wasn’t going to be the end. Jon would do more than drive a hundred miles for her: he’d do anything.
“Too long. Too far. Too much to ask really, all that wear and tear on this goddamn truck making the hour and half drive.”
The trip’s more like an hour forty-five, but Jon drives too fast anyway.
Usually. They’re crawling along now. If Theon pulled up behind them, he’d think Jon was drunk.
With his hands splayed on the steering wheel, he glares out at the road like it did something to him.
She loves those hands, those wrists, those forearms exposed where he’s got his sleeves rolled up. She loves those hands on her and in her, pumping.
Fuck him.
He doesn't make any sense. She thought she finally understood Jon, but he's making no damn sense at all.
Her lip starts to tremble, but she bites it, stretching it taut so it can’t flutter. Harder and she thinks she might draw blood.
She’s not going to bargain and beg. This was too good to cheapen it.
Or maybe it wasn’t what she thought at all. His last girlfriend wasn’t even a real girlfriend. She was someone he could fuck, when he got off his shift, and she didn't want anything more than that. Maybe that’s the way he prefers it. Maybe Sansa wanted too much.
“You’ll want to do the whole college thing. Not some watered-down version of it.”
“What do you know about college?” she bites back.
It’s mean, and she knows it. She wants to strike out. Wants to draw blood. His. Hers. It doesn’t matter whose.
His hand beats a tattoo against the wheel. He exhales. “Nothing. But you shouldn’t have to spend Saturday nights texting me or whatever.”
Her knees bounce, balls of her feet pressing into the floorboards. Her chest rises and falls too fast. Mad is one thing, but panic is setting up shop in her heart. Arya would stay good and mad.
Do not beg.
“You could come down on the weekends.” She winces at her lack of self-control. The words are hardly out and she’s ready to pile more on, weaving plans he might agree to, plans maybe she should have been ready with weeks ago, something to keep him interested. She pinches the tender skin between her thumb and forefinger, cutting herself off. “Or would that be too embarrassing?”
Driving one-handed, he scratches at his eyebrow. “I work Saturdays.”
She’s been dreading going back to school, and not just because the distance is made more complicated by his lack of a five day a week nine to five job. There's also the fact that spring semester was a mess and she’ll have to face all those people again, who know about Harry and Petyr and everything.
“Well, I guess we’re done then,” she says, looking out her window to watch fields go by, indistinct in the dark.
She makes him disappear from her peripheral vision, twisting far enough in the passenger seat, until it’s just the sound of his hand drumming against the wheel again and his heavy breathing.
They pass the Mormont place. Then the Karstarks.
Jon dated Alys for like five minutes. Then she dated Robb for ten more.
Margaery says the guys in Newburg act like there aren’t enough girls to go around. They all keep dating the same dozen or so. The pretty ones with good hair, who do more than kiss. Could be Jon just ran out of girls, which is how he stumbled into sleeping with her, his best friend’s little sister.
“What’s your plan? Go back to fucking Val? Casually? All friendly like?”
“Don’t hold that over my head.” He doesn’t raise his voice. But he’s angry. There’s an edge she feels like a warning. “That was before us.”
Val is so pretty, full hips and tits like the girls on IG filtered into oblivion. She's blond and confident, ready for anything. Jon’s type. Sansa knew all along what type of girl he went after and she still let herself get carried away in a fantasy that he would end up with her. Forever.
“Well, it’s convenient, right? When I’m too far away.”
She thinks of Val’s tan legs wrapped around Jon’s slim hips and his hand tugging on her silky hair and another wave of nausea hits her.
“I am not going to fuck another girl,” he says, over emphasizing each word. “Val included.”
“Why not? It’s only been three months, right? It’s not a big a deal to you, I get it.”
“It’s a really big fucking deal to me.”
His voice scrapes along her spine, deep and full of shredding restraint. He shouldn’t be the one about to lose his temper, but then, nothing about this makes sense. It’s like she’s floating, watching a scene play out below her, where the actor she’s been cast opposite is saying lines from two different play. One’s a tragedy. The other a darker threaded romance.
If he would just be cruel, she would know what to say. She's a decent little actress. But this seesawing back and forth makes her weak. It makes her plead, throwing off her flippant coolness for something thin and pitiful.
“Robb and Jeyne are halfway across the world from each other. They’re making it work.”
It doesn’t get any worse than bringing up her brother, his friend, and setting Robb up on some kind of pedestal. It’s about as lame as if she threatened him with how Robb will respond to this little breakup, forcing him to choose between losing his friend and gaining his freedom from her.
Besides, they both know Robb and Jeyne aren’t perfect; she doesn't even like his dog. It’s an embarrassing and flawed argument.
It also doesn’t work.
“That’s different.”
He says it with total certainty. No hesitation.
Robb and Jeyne are married—that’s the difference. Robb asked, she said yes, and they got married quick before he was sent overseas.
Mama didn’t get the wedding she wanted—it was a courthouse thing and backyard BBQ with a pony keg—but Jeyne got Robb.
Now with Robb in Afghanistan, they all live together. Jeyne sleeps in the basement, right down the stairs, ready to encourage Sansa’s fantasy with her own girlish notions about romance. Gentle hearted Jeyne can afford to have them. Jeyne’s lucky: she didn’t have to go through a Joff or a Harry to get to Robb. She’s not all messed up. She still has dumb ideas about good guys and true love.
Right now, Sansa hates her a little bit for it, because Jeyne got Sansa’s hopes up, and now, she feels stupid about how off the mark they were. Worse, she feels raw, cut open and exposed to the air.
“You take me out to a real dinner. In Rolla. I get all dressed up for it and do my hair. All for you to break up with me. You could have just texted. That would have been nicer.”
He tries to say something but she whips back around in the seat, arms crossed defensively, daring him with wide eyes to deny what an asshole move this is. “Jeyne was absolutely convinced you were going to ask me to marry you tonight.”
“Are you kidding?”
The horror, the complete shock on his face, as they swerve to the right, the car following the swivel of his head, poisons the dream a little more.
He course-corrects with a curse.
She didn’t think she was still enamored with Disney fairytales. But she cast him in the part of her prince. The kind that also needs a little saving.
He must see something, something she’d love to hide from him but bleeds through. He has to have seen it, because he’s got one hand on the wheel and the other reaching across, in spite of her repeatedly throwing him off, and this time he gets his hand around the back of her neck. His fingers are taut. Taut but not pushing.
Just like when she goes down on him and he calls her all those sweet dirty things.
She huffs.
She could toss her head and be rid of him. She could grab for the door handle too. They’re going so damn slow that she’d probably only get scratched up some by the asphalt if she jumped.
But she doesn’t. She’s like a stray dog caught in a trap. Weak and needy the way she never intended to let herself be again, ready to accept the gentling hand and a scrap.
“I didn’t mean it like that.” His brows furrow and his nostrils thin. “Is that what you want? Me to propose?”
Yes.
Yes, it’s what she wanted even though she told Jeyne she was crazy. Even though she’s been trying not to think about it, while she ground her hand over him at the restaurant.
She knew a girl once that got engaged in St. Louis. In the Arch. That always sounded so fancy.
“Sans, baby.”
“Pull over,” she says, sounding like he’s the idiot, not her.
“Which is it? Take you home or pull over?”
“Whatever I want it to be. You’re going to crash. Pull over.”
He grunts, hand sliding down to her bare shoulder, as he depresses the brake and steers them to the right. They roll to a stop, and he throws the truck into park, as she replaces the strap of her dress that he knocked off.
He scrubs his face and then kills the engine. He stares forward, looking scary.
He's making not one lick of sense, acting all hacked off after he's the one who wants to end this.
“I know what your mom thinks of me.”
“So?” she demands, not bothering to contradict him.
His arms lock, palms pressing into the steering wheel. “Your mom and dad would think I was trapping you if I proposed while you were still in school. I work shifts, I’m gone weekends and nights. I live in a shitty apartment. That’s not what they want for you. I don’t want to piss them off.”
“I’m glad you’re so worried about them. How thoughtful.”
“How about this?” He grimaces. His knuckles go white, fingers wrapping around the wheel. “I don’t want that for you either.”
She swallows. It’s embarrassingly loud. They’re not far from the creek and it’s just frogs singing and her body insisting on making itself heard, when she wants to melt away, sink right into the floor mats and disappear.
“You don’t have to worry about impressing them,” he says, finally turning to look at her. He nods his head at her. “They love you.”
Jon didn’t have a dad. His father had another family and whether or not Jon’s mom knew it going in—every gossip in town swears she did—she was left in the lurch when she got pregnant. Ned Stark kind of stepped in, when Robb and Jon became friends all the way back in kindergarten at Newburg Elementary. Sansa’s dad means a lot to Jon, and she knows her dad is fond of Jon too. Real fond. Mama is a different story.
But he should care more about his girlfriend than he does her folks.
She thought he loved her. This summer has been so good; they were so good. She’s felt like herself with him, not a fading carbon copy.
He tows her in, bridging the distance over the console until they’re both all twisted up, hunching into each other. She gives him a shove that doesn't unseat him. Another. Then collapses into him.
He smells like Budweiser. She ordered Fizzy Izzy Root Beer like a baby, because she can’t legally drink quite yet. She probably tastes as sweet as she sounds naïve.
His thumb sweeps over her scalp, soothingly. Her body responds, rippling with goosebumps. Her body is a stupid traitor.
“Jeyne said the way you look at me could melt—”
Glaciers. Faster than the climate change Bran swears is real.
He grips her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Jeyne’s not wrong, but I don’t want you feeling like you missed out because of me.” He smudges her lower lip. “I’ve been looking at you for a good while. I’ll be here. I’ll wait.”
Free rein—that’s what he wants to give her. Probably because he believes she’ll bolt anyway given the chance. Because he’s not enough. Or not good enough.
Jon’s got issues too. She knows he wants things: she figured that out quick this May. For all that yes sir, no sir, humble, fading into the background stuff he peddles, there is a deep well of want he would rather no one ever see.
He’s ambitious. It would surprise her mama how ambitious he is. He wants a real house and a yard. He wants a family. He told her once in the flatbed, when they were looking up at the stars that he’d be a good dad, that he wants to be good like hers. He wants a job where he has to wear a suit, not a pair of coveralls, even though that sounds about nothing like him and no one in Rolla hardly even wears a suit except to funerals and weddings.
He wants her. In fact, all those pieces probably fit together with her in the center in a future he wants so bad that he takes extra shifts whenever he can and has been taking classes online, trying to bring it all together. He just keeps it all in close, sheltered from anyone’s critical gaze. Nobody knows about the degree he’s trying to get. Just her. He trusted her with that.
She turns into his hand, kissing his palm.
The band of pain around her heart loosens, but heartache still curls through her veins—for them, for the people that have let them down. Because she doesn’t think Jon really believes he deserves any of those things he wants. He thinks he’s the piece that doesn’t fit.
That’s his deadbeat dad’s fault and the kids at school that called him names, since his last name didn’t match his mom’s.
But he’s wrong that he doesn’t fit. Nothing is right without him. He’s her future.
She just has to show him.
She can press his buttons; she knows how even though she’s never needed to play those kinds of games. She can get him to bend and end this nonsense here and now. The reality of this dumb offer should be plenty off-putting when put into words.
“Missing out on what?” she asks innocently, eyes all wide and seeking his approval. She places another soft kiss to his open hand. “Guys like Harry?”
He pulls back. Makes a face and huffs out hard. “You know I fucking hate him.”
She dances her fingers on his console. “Yep.”
“I don’t want you going back to that jackass.”
She leans into the console, straining across it, until the strap on her dress slips off again. His gaze follows its path.
“You wouldn’t have a say though, would you?”
His jaw works, muscle flexing.
“Would you?”
“No, I wouldn’t have a damn say.”
“So, you’d stay here and play the martyr while I run around?” She pushes at his shoulder. “Why would you think I’d want that? That’s not who I am. I’m yours.”
He grabs her hand, catches it and knits their fingers together. He centers their hands on his chest. His heart is beating hard. He’s stewing. Thinking about her and Harry.
“People say butter wouldn't melt in my mouth, but you got it in your head that I'd fuck other boys.” She leans until her chin rests on his shoulder. She can whisper it she’s so close. “I only want you.”
He turns his head towards her until their noses bump.
“I love you. You hear me, Jon?”
Jon never says it. She said it first back in July after she’d felt it for weeks, and he folded her into his chest and held so tight. Like she was a life preserver. It was okay, his not saying it back. He wanted to say it and she knew he did all the same. He says other things instead. Sweet things. Painfully good things. But never I love you.
Sansa has said it too much and to people who didn’t deserve it. Maybe he’s never said it to anyone. Maybe he thinks he’s safer that way.
His mom probably loved his worthless dad, and he walked right out. Not even to look back at his boy. His dad knew all about Jon, and there’s so much to be proud of there, but he never even bothered with a birthday card or a check. And he's got plenty of cash from what people say.
Jon has one picture of his dad, looking handsome but decidedly 80s in preppy country club clothing and white blond hair that looked straight out of some movie. Jon showed it to her, smoothing out a crease down the middle with a slide of his thumb.
Do me a favor and never accept a drink from this guy. It’s my dad.
Jon doesn’t look anything like his dad. He didn’t leave his mark on his son that way, but abandoning him did.
She draws her nose along his. “I’m not going to disappear. You’re stuck with me. Whether I'm at school or here. So, just go ahead and say it back to me.”
He wets his lips, and she’s ready for him to kiss her instead. Show her how he feels—and he’s really good at that, pours everything into it, so she knows—but he goes one further. He does what she asks.
“I love you.”
Her breath leaves her in a chest collapsing rush. Her heart skips against her ribs. Her lips curl. From misery to joy. Just like that. Just as sharp but much sweeter.
“You’re going to have to say that more,” she says, cupping his cheek. “I like that a lot.”
Hand anchored at the base of her head, his lips meet hers with bruising pressure. She breathes out fast against his mouth.
I love you.
Relief flooding her body, she curls towards him. She grips his shirt, feeling his soft mouth and firm weight and the puff of his breath on her face in a heady rush. Press and linger, press and linger, harder with the tension of his fingers spanning her skull. Her fingers twist in the cotton of his shirt. It’s a desperate, tender assault, totally forgetful of where they are. This is what she usually is gifted with, the knowledge that she's his everything without his having to put it into words.
He pulls back, chest heaving. His eyes search hers. “Kiss me,” he says, even though that’s exactly what they were doing. His other hand moves to cup the side of her neck. His thumb follows the curve of her throat, dragging until her chin is tipped up. His nose nudges hers. “Open for me.”
And she does.
She always does what he asks.
Except when he has idiot ideas about being apart, about not being what she needs.
He tastes good. Good enough that she hums into the rhythm of the caress of his tongue.
His hand slides down her back, over the thin rayon of her dress, to where she’s wrenched halfway off the seat, awkwardly hiked up. He grabs her ass hard. With her dress ridden up, he gets half a handful of bare cheek. It’s close to where she’d like him to touch her. She hums again, tugging on his shirt like she might twist until he’s there, as his tongue sweeps against hers. The spank he delivers sends a jolt through her, below. She gasps. Squirms again.
But he doesn’t relent, doesn’t give her what she wants—two blunt fingers sliding between her legs, into her, so she can press herself against his wrist. Maybe he hasn’t entirely forgotten where they are: three more long rural driveways and they’d be at her uncle’s place. Aunt Lysa would pitch a fit if she drove past them, coming home from Wednesday night quilting. Saw her perfect niece arched up against Jon Snow.
His nose nudges hers once more. “I love you,” he says, even lower, even more ragged if it’s possible.
The car seat spring creaks as she shifts and he holds fast to her, pushing her hip into the console. “Come on Sundays. Tell your mama you found a Baptist church in Rolla that keeps you there all day praising Jesus. Tell her anything. Just come see me. Promise me.”
His throat rolls. “Promise.”
“This breakup and makeup stuff—”
He tries to shut her down, to say that wasn’t what he was doing, but she puts a finger over his full mouth, stopping him. “You telling me I can sleep around—don’t ever do that again.”
He nips at the tip of her finger, teeth lightly scraping until her finger pulls free. He swats her again and she shuts her eyes against the radiating sting.
“For the record— Hey, look at me,” he says, waiting until she does, “I don’t want Harry even looking at you.”
“Okay. I won’t let him near me, won’t ever let him touch me again if you ask me not to,” she says, as his hand settles in the small of her back and his finger teases at the rise of her ass. “Ask me nice.”
“Fine,” he says, dipping his head so his mouth is against her ear. “Don’t let him touch you.”
His breath is hot. Dark places inside of herself curl.
“Why’s that?”
Her breath hitches as his finger dips. “You’re mine.”
“Good. Take me home. Your place,” she clarifies, aware that they’ve started and stopped too many times already, but she wants to be alone with him, wants to be in his bed and have his arms around her.
He kisses her forehead, but doesn’t let go of her shoulders, when she tries to sit back in some semblance of road safety before he starts the car up again. “You’ll tell me if you’re unhappy.”
“Come on now. It’s a straight shot down 44, Jon,” she says, smoothing out where she wrinkled his shirt. “Not Afghanistan. And I like texting.”
“I don’t know what half those emoji things you send me mean,” he says, letting go of her.
“It’s an art,” she says, finally settling back and reaching up for the seatbelt. “Anyway, we’d be okay if it was Afghanistan. You and me, we’re better than Robb and Jeyne.”
The seatbelt snaps into place as the engine comes back to life. But Jon’s still staring at her, not the road, giving her a look.
“Don’t be like that, Sans.”
He knows what she means.
They all kind of suspect Jeyne told Robb she was pregnant. No one flat out says it. But they're all thinking it. Maybe Jeyne even thought she was and there wasn’t any deception at work. Jeyne’s sweet and doesn’t seem manipulative. Either way, that’s probably how she got her proposal.
“Sometimes I’m mean, Jon. You should be aware of that.”
“I am aware,” he says, pressing the heel of his hand down over himself. She grins, looking out over the hood of the truck. She’s not the only one that wants to go home. “It’s okay. I like that saucy mouth of yours fine. But he’s my buddy and that’s his wife,” he says, grabbing the gearshift. “So, let's not go making comparisons.”
“Brother trumps friend.”
And she’s glad they’re them and not Robb and Jeyne, because it’s stupid, but Jon would give her up too if that’s what was right. He just doesn’t need to.
He throws the truck into drive and twists the A/C dial, cranking it higher. “Well, I give you permission to feel a little triumphant.”
“Oh, do you?” she coos. “That’s rich, you giving me permission to feel something, when I’m still mad at you.”
Only a little. Only sad he ever thought to feel a certain kind of way about himself or them.
The truck bumps up back onto the pavement.
“About one thing,” he says, lifting a finger, as they rock side to side. “I’m not going to propose at Di Trapani’s or in my truck here or whatever you and Jeyne thought was coming tonight. You can forget that.”
That does not make her feel triumphant. She scrunches her nose. “What are you going on about?”
“When I ask you, it won’t be like that. At some restaurant with unlimited salad bowl and breadsticks.”
Oh.
Robb proposed at Matt’s Steakhouse, where they ply a crowd more accustomed to Olive Garden than actual nice restaurants with salad and breadsticks.
Jon can be catty too.
Doesn’t matter. What has her biting her lower lip is the realization that Jon knows how he’d like to propose. To her. He’s thought about it even if he never intended on proposing tonight.
“What then? Some big production?” she asks, cheating a sideways glance at him. His cheeks are pink in the glow from the dashboard. “That’s not like you.”
“No. Not like that. That’s not you either.”
Most people would think that was the kind of thing Sansa Stark wanted. Cheerleader, lead soloist in the church choir, always seeking the spotlight, she'd want a big to do.
“Okay, what is?”
“It isn’t hiding rings in desserts or spelling something out in roses at Buehler Park.”
Really catty.
Marg got the roses in the park. It wasn’t Buehler though. Buehler would have been nicer. Renly chose Schuman Park by the restored steam engine the little kids all like. The roses were expensive and Marg pretended to love it, but everything about their relationship is pretend. Sansa hadn’t quite worked that out, but Jon told her some stuff and now it all makes sense.
“Jon.”
“Which—” he shakes his finger in her direction, “which is why I’m not going to make an enemy out of your parents. You finish school—”
She groans, interrupting, and he shoots her a look, rolling his eyes. “Or close to finishing, and then I’ll ask their permission first.”
“That’s awfully old-fashioned of you.”
He reaches over to rest his hand on her leg, fingers curving around the soft inner part of her thigh. “You wouldn’t be happy if they weren’t happy for us.”
He’s not wrong.
He gets her. That would surprise her mama too. It would surprise a lot of people.
“And then what would you do?” she presses.
“And the rest is not currently up for discussion.” He gives her two pats she feels places other than her thigh.
She smiles to herself. “You’re going to leave me in suspense.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’re a tease, but you don’t have to be in suspense about my answer.”
That earns her a good solid squeeze.
She's going to reach for the radio, but he catches her wrist and looks quick over at her, eyes all full of softness that scoops her out. “I upset you. I'm sorry. I didn't want that.”
“You sure did upset me,” she sing-songs. “And I've been telling people you were smart.”
His thumb rubs over her pulse.
He'll make it up to her. He's got ways. Tonight if he knows what's good for him.
“I’m sorry I’m shit at this, something real like this. I don't know what I'm doing sometimes.”
“You’re already good enough. Better than good,” she says, as he pulls in her hand and kisses her knuckles and the truck slows too much for her purposes. She nods at the road. “I just need you to drive a whole helluva lot faster.”
There's her smile. The one she's earned. That no one else gets.