Chapter Text
“It has a dress code,” Ellaria had smiled at her over the sangria, thick with the pulp of blood oranges.
Sansa watched, enraptured, lips parted; it was rare to get away from Cersei’s critical eye, the woman who claimed to be more than her manager, nearly her mother. She almost had been, once. The way she had once worshiped Cersei’s talent and beauty, wanted to be like her, she now directed towards the exotic Ellaria, who made all the tabloids with her handsome lover, wore all the right clothes, knew exactly what to say…A moment alone, to drink the woman in, was more edifying than all of the exercises Cersei had her doing, brutal, boring.
“I can dress the part,” Sansa assured. “I don’t care about that. I know how to fit in.”
“Don’t you, little pup?” Ellaria smiled over her tapas, cool and elegant. “I would have said it would scare you off, but maybe not.”
“How do I get in? Please, I have to know.”
Ms. Sand sighed, dabbing her napkin across her mouth so as not to smear her lip gloss. “All you need is an I.D. for the front, but who wants to go there? Nothing but sweating students and drunken fools. No, if you want a real experience, use the side door. No lines, they don’t let people hang around there.”
“The side door?”
“That’s right.” The exotic woman nodded, pulling out a tube of gloss to touch up her wine-red mouth. “Say the Red Viper recommended you. They’ll let you in, we’re excellent customers of theirs.”
Sansa did not know if her pulse was racing with excitement or with fear.
She still didn’t know the next night, when she stood by the side door. Ellaria had been telling the truth, the line for the front entrance nearly wrapped the block. Some hopefuls had been waiting there since the sun had set. Sansa’s heart had hammered in her chest as soon as she approached the door, the burly man that stood as its watch. She did not say hello, because she knew it would give away her nerves and inexperience.
Instead, wordless, she pulled out her driver’s license and lifted her chin in the most imperious way she could manage. “The Red Viper said I should stop by.” The man glanced at her face after scouring the dates on her I.D. card. Did his eyebrow raise? Hard to tell. She ignored the feeling of sweat beading on her brow. “I got the impression he enjoyed himself.”
He had to see right through that. Even so, the man stepped to the side - and opened the door for her. “We always try to serve Mr. Martell and his friends well.” Sansa’s mouth went dry as she stepped across the threshold, ankles feeling wobbly in her strappy heels. “Have a good evening, miss.” The door shut behind her. Sansa jumped and tried to condition her eyes to the dark.
This room was not like the main floor of the club, that much she had been able to assess from photos on the website. Oh no, this was grander by tenfold, couches done in black leather or red velvet, the bar top made of marble. The liquors that lined the mirrored shelf were all top grade, nothing cheap or knockoff on this side of the club. The patrons here were older men and women, tycoons of industry, powerful politicians, media moguls.
And the working girls? Sansa gulped a little. These weren’t run of the mill topless dancers. Each was beautiful enough to grace the cover of a magazine, hair long and perfect, lips plump, breasts full, hips round, waists impossibly tiny. Some wore purple silk corsets with matching garters over black stockings; some were in the outfits of French maids; at least one was done up like a harem girl, but all were beyond the scope of beauty Sansa had ever seen on any catwalk. She pulled down at the short hem of her tiny, black dress and felt instantly out of place.
Her solution was to stride to the bar like she knew what she was doing, where a bald headed man in a buttoned shirt and tie wiped down one corner with a rag. “Good evening, miss.” His manners, at least, were impeccable. “And what can I get for you this evening?”
Sansa laid the credit card out on the marble; Tyrion’s card (”In case you run into an emergency,” he’d said. That man didn’t know what an emergency this was). “Brandy Alexander, please.” It sounded sophisticated, and better yet, sweet. Lemondrops were Sansa’s drink of choice, but that didn’t seem elegant enough for such a place, and she dreaded being caught out as a pretender here as she never did under the Lannister’s watchful eyes.
“Very good, miss,” the barkeep nodded, starting up her tab and slipping the card back toward her over the counter top.
Fingers stopped its slide, and not her own. Masculine, with well kept cuticles and a gold and ruby ring on the right hand. “Don’t tell me we haven’t been checking for I.D.”
Once more, Sansa had no idea if she was elated or terrified. For a moment, she did not look up into the man’s face, only stared at his chest, at the dark grey silk vest that covered up her view of his emerald green tie - the mockingbird tie tack in silver that held it all together. She swallowed slightly. “I’m twenty one, Mr. Baelish.” Sansa raised her head and looked her accuser in the eye. The darkness of the lounge brought out the grey in his eyes, but his mouth twitched toward a smile beneath his trim mustache. “You know that.”
Sansa moved to take the card back, her own fingers just a few millimeters removed from the man’s, the two still looking at one another - and after a moment, Littlefinger released the plastic and Sansa had to work to keep from giving a sigh of relief. “So you are.” The smile he gave her barely existed, a smirk across his lips, one that tugged his small triangle of a beard. “Difficult to tell with that youthful face of yours.”
Another man sat next to her at the bar on Sansa’s right, and even though her back was to him as she faced Littlefinger, he felt compelled to strike up conversation. “Hey there, pretty thing.” That smile was a grin, a leer, one that threatened to swallow her whole. Sansa cast an uncomfortable glance over her shoulder, bending in on herself defensively. “I haven’t seen you around here before. First timer?”
“She’s my guest.” He had used that voice; that hard, sharp, Littlefinger voice that brooked no argument Sansa had only rarely heard before, as he usually played the jovial, smiling dilettante.
The man looking her over scowled. “I thought you didn’t mix business with pleasure, Littlefinger?”
The man’s hand wrapped around her bare, upper left arm, and Sansa was unsure if she was grateful or resentful. “I do when they’re this pretty. Have another drink, my treat.”
This mollified the stranger, but not Sansa, as Petyr was pulling her out of the chair. The bartender reappeared with her cocktail glass, fresh nutmeg ground at the top and already hitting her senses. “Your drink, miss.”
“Dump that,” Petyr instructed, and the bartender didn’t even blink, turning away to do precisely as he was told.
“Hey!”
“I don’t want to hear someone’s mixing my good brandy like a schoolgirl mixes vodka and Red Bull.” He was pulling her away from the bar, off the floor to the curtained hallway where door after door waited to be opened; some already had “occupied” signs turned on them, and Sansa could just pick up on the noises beyond. “Someone’s got to teach you how to drink, and those wino Lannisters certainly aren’t going to do it.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“My office.”
“Oh no.” Sansa was in flight mode; she couldn’t escape him, his grip was deceptively strong, but she wasn’t going to let him call home to Cersei like the principal calling a mother on a naughty student. They were passing another door, this one with the sign turned to “available.” Sansa took a chance: she dove for it, the momentum dragging her captor right along with her. Before Petyr could say word one, she’d flipped the sign and shut the door.
This was, possibly, a mistake. This room was even darker than the bar floor, colored bulbs tilting the low light a deep magenta. It washed over the man, made his hair glow, made his eyes straight silver. She wondered, absently, what she looked like as well. The room’s dominating feature was the chaise, double-wide for two bodies to sit side-by-side, though a buffet also stood against one of the walls. MP3 player, a pitcher of water and crystal glasses…condoms, lubricant…Sansa knew where she was. She didn’t flinch.
Petyr looked her over, sighed. “You could have at least gone for the room with the mirrored ceiling.”
Sansa’s lip twitched up, half a sneer. “Sounds like a bitch to clean.”
“Well, don’t you have a saucy mouth. Do you know what this place is?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t hesitate, which seemed to surprise him slightly. He paused, considering her, before turning to pour himself a glass of water. “It’s a sex club, Sansa.”
It made her color slightly to hear him say it. She hoped the light washed that out of her cheeks. “I-I know.”
“Which means the gentleman at the bar assumed you were there to be, shall we say, wooed.” Her blush deepened. Somehow, that had escaped her thought process. “Is that why you came here? Because, frankly, I’ll be disappointed.” She shook her head. “Why, then?”
Sansa opened her mouth to tell him - but decided against it. She couldn’t trust Petyr Baelish, she knew that, she couldn’t trust anyone. And if that felt lonely, if at times it made her do reckless things like…this, well, she was a tough Stark daughter. She could handle it. “It’s too complicated to explain.”
He examined her, Mr. Baelish did, with those eyes of washed out silver from the sideboard, the water glass held in his lithe fingers. “Hmm,” was his first, delayed response, before he started toward the door again. “Well, I will get you home.”
“No, please!” It was Sansa’s turn to grab onto him, both hands wrapping around his right wrist, the one that didn’t hold the water glass. It stopped him mere feet from the door and he turned his head back to her. “Please, don’t call Cersei!”
“Does she know you’re here?”
Sansa shook her head again. “Margaery agreed to say I was spending the night with her.”
“Really - this is a level of schoolgirl idiocy I expect from Myrcella, not from you. I thought Margaery had better sense than that.”
“Her grandmother always covers for her, and Cersei wouldn’t argue with her.”
Petyr freed himself from her grip, his long, elegant fingers reaching out to hold her by the chin. “Your mother would have a fit if she knew you were here.”
Sansa didn’t pull away, but her blue eyes flashed hot in the darkness. “Do you think I came here to make my mother proud of me?” Petyr said nothing. “I’m not as dumb as all that, I know what this is. Do you know what it’s like, living with that woman?” He took it here that she meant Cersei, and not Catelyn. “If I eat with her, she tells me I’m getting too plump; if I yawn, she tells me I am looking washed out; if I am not perfect every second of every day, she lets me know - she always lets me know. I am never good enough for them, for her, for Joffrey. I’m stupid and naive and the dirt beneath their feet. I can’t leave, I can’t go home - what else am I to do? What would you do? Because I have to do something.”
Petyr stared at her a long while. This close, Sansa could see the green in his eyes again, and she stiffened and shivered slightly as he raised his palm to run his thumb across her cheekbone. “The difficulty of signing contracts with managers, hm?” He sighed, and his breath touched her lips; it was pleasantly minty, as if he’d just brushed his teeth, and Sansa’s eyes half-closed for just a moment. “Ned never should have let you do it.”
“It was my fault…” Sansa whispered. She couldn’t blame her father for this. “I said it was what I wanted, I thought it was what I wanted. And it’s too tight of a contract to get out of, it’s like I sold my soul to the devil.”
“Yes, she gets that from her father…” After a moment, Petyr released her, back straightening. “Hm. So, this is your moment of youthful rebellion, is it? They all think Sansa Stark is such a little lady, and you were going to prove them wrong?”
Her head bent forward even as his raised. “Something like that…”
There was a silence again, but then his hand traveled from her face down to the smooth column of her throat. “I suppose we should just be glad this was all you did; not covering up your perfect skin with a tattoo, or shaving your head…”
His thumb was positioned at her trachea, but Sansa did not want to seem nervous. She managed a very weak smile. “That might not be so bad. I could give it to children with cancer.”
Petyr snorted. “If you’re giving your hair to anyone, give it to me.”
This seemed a rather morbid thought to Sansa; what would he do with her hair? His fingers skirted the ends of it even now, it might be her chance. She leaned forward on the tips of her toes. “You’re not going to tell Cersei, are you, Petyr?” His eyes snapped back to her face, hard and grey once more. She bit her lower lip and moved closer, their mouths almost sharing breath. “Please?”
His hand moved from her throat to her shoulder and pressed her back down again. Sansa had miscalculated. “What sort of idiot do you take me for?”
She gaped slightly. “No, I-”
“Do you think I’m bought off with kisses? Even if they are yours, sweetling?”
The girl huffed, lips pursed. “That wasn’t what I was trying to do.”
“Don’t toy with me.”
Her hands wrapped around his shoulders, desperate to hold the man still and get him to shut up and listen for a second. “I’m not good enough to be a tease, okay?”
It worked for a moment, he judged her with those cold, near-lifeless eyes of his, eyes like a shark. A shiver ran down the girl’s spine, but it wasn’t entirely fearful. “Yes, you are.” Her brow furrowed. “Most girls are - you especially.” He stepped forward, toward her and away from the door. It forced Sansa to step back, toward the chaise. “You might just not know it yet.”
And that was that, the ever-so-cautious Littlefinger and his steely resolve snapped; his mouth slashed down across her own. It wasn’t a rough kiss, as far as kisses went, but it was hungry, full of anger and frustration and need - on both sides. Her teeth grazed his lower lip and she soothed the mark with her tongue, so that his own joined her in a push and pull of damp muscle. His long fingers tangled in her hair, and her own hands met at the base of his skull, nails a delicious drag across his scalp. He moaned into her mouth and pulled his hands to her hips to yank her closer to him, his knee pushing between the bare skin of her thighs. Sansa gasped as he settled her against his leg, un-protesting as he dragged her up and down, the friction and the heat from him sending blood rushing through her system.
Petyr watched her open-mouthed reaction with hazy, lust-glazed green eyes, felt the girl’s fingers flexing at his neck in sudden need that he was driving. “You don’t want me, Sansa Stark.” His voice was husky against her swollen lips, her blue eyes dull and half-closed with want. “You just want to rebel.” At the moment, she wasn’t sure that that was true; it was true Petyr was no tall, broad-shouldered, muscled man like she’d always fantasized over before - but after being surrounded by such self-absorbed monsters for all her time with the Lannisters, Sansa had lost a lot of the taste for the things she had enjoyed before. Or was that merely growing up? She didn’t know. What she did know was that take away Petyr from this situation, replace his hot, firm leg with someone else’s, and she would have felt like curling in on herself and pulled away, would have felt cheap and uninterested. It was the experienced way his lithe fingers pulled her hips back and forth against him, rubbing that one perfect spot at her pelvis against the bone of his hip, so that her breath left her and her toes curled, that was making her flushed and achy now. If she hadn’t found him attractive before, God was he attractive now, like this. Strange how that could change with demonstration.
She leaned forward to catch his mouth again, to prove him wrong, and he met her in the gesture, tongue a soft, firm swipe against her mouth. “But we’re all pretenders in here.” He spoke again and she strained to catch every tone of voice. “I suppose I don’t mind the game for a little while…”
“Petyr-!” She was going to be leaving damp marks on his trousers at this rate. He took the hint, turned and pulled her down onto the chaise with him. Sansa’s fingers hurried with the buttons of his vest, his shirt, the zipper of his pants. “You talk too much, you know,” she panted, her hand sliding beneath his waistline to feel him thick and hot beneath the clothes, reveling in the way he stiffened and hissed at the touch; not so stoic as he put on. “Are you feeling sorry for yourself, is that it?” Her fingers flexed along his length and she felt him twitch and grow all the more turgid.
His breathing was heavy beneath her, an eyebrow still raised. “Who talks too much?”
She leaned forward so their lips brushed, but did nothing else, her thumb swiping over his head so that he shuddered and bucked against her; it was a deliciously powerful feeling, a sensation that surged through her and brought a grin to her red lips. “You don’t think I notice the way you look at me? You don’t know what I’d say, maybe yes, maybe no. You never ask, so you can’t really know. And I’m here, aren’t I? So do more than look.” In response, his fingers found the hem of her dress, pulled it up over her thighs and hips so that her entire lower half was exposed to him. His breathing grew heavier. “You’re a powerful man - make me want you.”
Petyr’s fingers were quick to yank away her underwear, pulling them halfway down her thigh before she was able to wiggle and help free herself of them. The air was cold between her legs, but she was too flushed and hot to notice it. The pads of his fingers teased over her in a slight dance and Sansa whimpered, biting her lip, needing so much more. This was madness, but it was the most natural madness in the world, the kind of thing humanity had been built upon for thousands and thousands of years.
The man fumbled for the sideboard, dragging one silver-wrapped prophylactic off the shelf. Sansa shivered at the crinkling sound, making quick work of his tie so that she could run her tongue over the sharpness of his clavicle. A scar began there, she could see it working its way down through the greying dusting of hair the dotted his chest, and, perversely, she liked the look of it - liked that they were both fucked up and scarred. She should have done this sooner. They were a good match for one another.
The girl’s fingers trembled as she helped smooth the latex down the length of him, her forehead pressed against his temple. Was she really doing this? Fucking a man she hardly knew in a sex club? Honestly, it seemed like the best, most fulfilling idea she’d had in quite some time. Petyr waited as he positioned her hips above him, eyes catching hers, a silent question of permission. Sansa nodded, teeth still pulling at her lip as he lowered her oh. So. Slowly down onto him.
His breath left him in a low moan as Sansa’s fingers clutched the loose material of his shirt. He was thicker than she’d been expecting, a stretching pull that ached, but so sweetly…He let her adjust around him for a moment, his fingers flexing at her hip, tight enough to leave bruises in the shape of his hands. She wanted to be able to remember this when it was done and she was back to being the ridiculed plaything of a bunch of over-inflated cats. She wanted to remember defying the workings of the universe to protest that she was free and alive in this one moment. She hadn’t come to the club seeking this, at least, she didn’t think she had. But maybe that was why she had asked about his establishment, rather than any other cheap bar in the city. Perhaps, somewhere in the depths of her, she had known this was what she needed?
Petyr began to help her move now, a subtle rocking of the hips. Sansa’s breathy gasps went higher in pitch, leaving her in needy moans she had not expected. The rocking pressed the length of him against a spongy spot within her, made Sansa give small, mewling cries that her partner seemed to revel in, eyes half closed, breathing heavy. They picked up both the pace and the elegance of the motions, the girl steadying herself against his shoulders, knees aching on either side of his legs. Back and up, forward and down she moved, eyes closing each time she slid along his shaft. Her fingers flexed, nails digging into his skin, and her head fell forward to muffle her voice at his throat, teeth grazing his flesh in desperation.
Petyr knew, he understood. His hips rose to meet her own as she slid down, nose buried at her temple, sweat gathering at the nape of his neck. Everything was becoming heightened; the mixing scents of their congress, their sweat, his cologne and her perfume. Sansa didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as she did, the musky scents, the obscene smack and squelch of damp skin on skin, and yet, oh, it was so naturally beautiful.
He was growing bolder, too, voice low and rough. “Good girl…” The praise made Sansa’s arms tighten around his shoulders, a small cry and a desperate pleasure. She was a sensitive girl, one who had always naturally striven to please, which made Cersei’s disdain for her all the more painful - and Petyr could heal it as no one else could in that moment, his tongue lapping at her throat, his voice approving. “Such a good girl…”
“Y-yes, Petyr-!”
“Do you want to come for me, little girl, is that it?”
God, this was dirtier than she’d anticipated, she wasn’t used to talking during sex. But she liked it, liked hearing him speak as she bit her lip and ground her hips harder against him. “Y-yes, please…”
“You can, if you want to…” The permission of it made her desire that much more aching and intense, so that she cried out when his thumb found where they joined together and rubbed in a hard, firm circle. Sansa could feel the heat and pressure building, the mindlessness of orgasm that was both terrifying and tempting. “Go on, Sansa. Let go - for me.”
For him, she could, as she could not for herself; her head tilted back as she lost all sense of reality in a small, crying moment of heat and spasms. Her body shook, her legs especially, exhausted and trembling for the effort. Petyr held her tight against him as her muscles clenched and released, his mouth pressed against the point of her pulse as he met his own end. Sansa collapsed around him, a mess that draped across his body and had no desire to move. And he did not move her, except to pull out and dispose of the evidence of their crime, the well-used prophylactic. Even so, he resettled her on his lap, draping his suit jacket over her naked arms as she pillowed her head on his shoulder, taking in the scent of his skin at the throat.
Sansa’s voice was a tired whisper, her mind humming with over-stimulation. “Don’t tell, please…I want to have a secret…”
His fingers flexed over her spine, breathing and heart rate slowing. “Our secret.”
She pressed her lips against the hollow of his throat. “Yeah…”
“That can be alright.”
Sleepily, she wrapped her arms around his neck and closed her tired, blue eyes.
She still didn’t seem to understand that crowds made him nervous.
“I’ve got an in at that Mockingbird club on Landing,” Ygritte said, her voice all excitement. “It’s costume night, you can come straight off duty in your uniform.”
“Are you crazy?” Yes, she was. “If a CO saw me, I’d be boiled alive.”
He could hear her rolling her eyes over the phone. “If you’re meeting a commanding officer at a sex club, you have way bigger problems, Jon.”
“It’s a sex club?”
“What did you think it was?”
“Not that.”
“Come on.” That pout that was in her voice, he could see the way she’d stick out her lower lip, all to entice him. “The idea of doing it in public makes me hot.” She must have heard his discomfort, for she sighed. “They have private rooms, you know. No one has to be in there with us.”
He acquiesced, the way she must have known he would, but he regretted it now, pressed against all these bodies. And “costume,” was a generous term, most of the people there were in fetish outfits that barely covered their torsos, and often not even that. Ygritte, at least, was having fun, glow sticks in her hand, gyrating to the pounding music, hips locked with his. She had on some kind of ridiculous “Sexy viking wench” outfit, her red hair in braids. His “costume” must have been a hit, for girls kept approaching him, breasts practically popping, batting eyes. Ygritte scared them off with heated glares and choice words the way he’d have expected his viking wench to do, and it was almost as if he was getting into the spirit of the thing; Jon grabbed her by one wild braid as she leaned forward against him, and she grinned wickedly and swatted at him.
Ygritte dragged her crooked teeth over the shell of his ear and the young man shivered. “Are you ready for the real fun to begin, Corporal Snow?” His hand squeezed at her waist in wordless response. “Come on…”
Jon was getting into the spirit of the thing, palms sweating with nerves and excitement. Down a much quieter corridor, door after door presented itself: “occupied,” “occupied,” “available,” “occupied.” Ygritte picked one, seemingly at random, flipped the sign, and yanked him inside. His back was against the door, her mouth on his, and yes, this was beginning to sound like a good idea - when she pulled away, lips giving a dull pop as they disengaged with his own.
The wild girl was grinning at him in the low light. “Okay, ready for the second part of the plan?”
Jon’s mind felt like it was in a haze, he blinked grey eyes at her. “What?”
“The other end of the hall connects to the VIP section.” Ygritte’s eyes were shining - and that could mean nothing good for him.
Jon’s stomach dropped like a stone. “Ygritte…”
“Relax, would you?” She ran her fingers over his torso, fidgeting with the brass buttons of his uniform. “All I want is some of the primo booze they have on thatside of the bar - just to say we did it.”
“If they’re that close together, surely they’d have bouncers to keep the street people out of that side of the club.”
She was scowling at him, that “don’t be such a downer” scowl regularly leveled at him. “You know nothing, Jon Snow. You’re in uniform, tell them you’re about to deploy and wanted to spend a special night with your girlfriend.”
“And what do I say when they ask about that?”
“You are such a pussy, you know that? Grow a pair and go.” Before Jon could formulate another protest, she’d opened the door again and shoved him out - and knowing Ygritte, she wasn’t going to let him come back empty-handed. Dutiful and rather forlorn, Jon dragged himself down the hall, winced at each sharp breath and low moan that escaped through the cracks in the doors. Ugh, someone was asking their partner if they wanted to come, right up to and including calling her “little girl.” It was gross and off-putting, but it mainly served to remind the man of how much sex he wasn’t having.
The bouncer guarding the curtained entrance to the VIP lounge was…intimidating, even for a well-trained soldier. Jon tried to stammer out his excuse (”Yeah, Baghdad, in the morning - and, um, just wanted…house red?”) but the man didn’t even grace him with a response. Stupid, stupid. He worked in a spooge club, no reason for that kind of guy to get on a high horse…
He’d fib. Ygritte wouldn’t know, not if he got something decently expensive - which was a painful thought on a soldier’s pay, but if it made her happy, it would be worth it. Seventy bucks, and that was only for prosseco, but it was cold and it was sparkling, and he’d seen that girl chug grape Smirnoff Ice. She wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.
The problem he had not anticipated, however, was finding the proper dooragain…
Oh fuck. Why hadn’t he looked for a number or something? It was on the right, he was sure - or was that from facing the other direction? So many doors with the occupied sign. Should he call her name? He didn’t dare, though how many Ygrittes could there be in one sex club? He could try to figure out which doordidn’t have noise emanating from it, and indeed, that was the strategy he did try, sweat dripping down the back of his collar. He paused before the first door that didn’t have lewd moans slipping from under the paneling, listening hard - nothing. Probably safe then - he opened the door.
He almost dropped the bottle immediately. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry!”
He should have just shut the door, pretended it hadn’t happened - but the girl on the man’s lap did have red hair, which momentarily confused him. Darker than Ygritte’s, but the room was dark and had weirdly pink light. The red-haired girl in question lifted her head from off her lover’s shoulder - and oh thank Christ, it wasnot his girlfriend.
…But oh Christ, it was definitely not his girlfriend. “Sansa?”
She scrambled to cover herself with a man’s suit jacket. “I didn’t, um-”
The man on whose lap she was draped spoke up, eyes half-lidded and gravelly voice almost a drawl. “What on earth are you supposed to be, some kind of boy scout?”
“What are you doing with my sister?”
The stranger’s hands held her hips possessively, and he wanted to throttle him. “What does it look like?”
“Jon, please, don’t-”
“I thought you only had the one elder brother, Sansa, dear.”
He crossed his arms, despite the bottle making the motion awkward. “I’m Jon Snow.”
The motherfucker (ugh, sisterfucker) barely twitched. “I’m sorry, am I supposed to recognize you?”
Sansa had crawled off his lap, her skirt falling back into place around her knees, still clinging to the jacket. “Jon, stop, please stop. Nobody can know about this - if Cersei hears-”
“If she hears? I’m hearing right now, and I’m going to kill him!”
“I don’t need you to protect me!”
“Are you shitting me? That’s the first thing you need!” The yelling was disturbing other patrons, doors were opening.
Ygritte, however, had found him, grabbed his elbow and yanked. “Are you out of your stupid brain?”
“Let go. Sansa!”
“You’re going to get us kicked out.”
“That is my sister in there.”
“Then she’s a big girl who can make her own choices, you fucking white knight.”
“That’s not - you don’t even-”
But the door he’d opened had already shut, and Ygritte was dragging him plenty far away.
Her shoulders shook with nerves as she pressed a firm hand against the door. Oh God, oh God, how on earth - of all the people in the world- It wasn’t that Sansa was close to Jon, quite the contrary. But the very thought of it…
Petyr’s fingers were suddenly at her shoulders, warm and flexing over the fabric of his jacket. “Not what you were expecting, was it?”
She didn’t turn around. “Jesus, he’s going to think I’m some kind of whore.”
“Let him think what he likes.” He bent so that his lips brushed her throat, and a hiss escaped her mouth. “That’s to your advantage - let people think what they want, and they won’t ever see what you really are.”
Was that a lesson? Sansa didn’t know what to think, except that it was an odd way to take one. Her fingers left the smooth wood of the door, reached back instead to feel the firmness, the reality of the man behind her. “So much for a secret.”
“I doubt your gallant brother travels in Lannister circles; you should be safe. And if not…I’ll take care of it.”
She turned in his arms, looking up at him quizzically. “What does that mean?”
Petyr’s thumb brushed her chin. “It means ‘trust me.’”
“I barely know you.”
“But you knew me well enough to fuck me.” Sansa’s head dipped; Jesus, she did look like some kind of whore…Baelish tilted her head back up again. “I’m not scolding you, Sansa, sweetling. Think about it, and you may find you know me better than you realize.”
Sansa couldn’t help it; she gazed at him with wide, blue eyes because she didn’t know what to think, and that was a kind of magnetic pull in itself she couldn’t just ignore. “What if I wanted to know more?”
His mouth turned down, expression thoughtful rather than scowling. “I think that’s dangerous.”
“Curiosity killed the cat?”
He smirked now. “Something like that.”
Tentatively at first, Sansa’s fingers reached forward, brushing across the bones of his hips, drawing closer. “Well…” Her voice was a dry whisper, throat sore from whimpers and cries. “I’m not actually all that fond of cats.”
There was a heady moment of silence. Sansa counted her breaths. “…Well, what a coincidence.” His fingers held her still, gripping her chin, as he leaned forward to press his mouth to hers. “Neither am I…”