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i.
They wed in King’s Landing, where no Lannister knows him for who he is - they are gone from the city before Joffrey can call her back, and Sansa rides all the way to Highgarden on a horse the same colour as her mother’s hair.
She speaks very little to her husband. He is kind, and gentle in nature, but he does not have his siblings’ gregariousness, or his father’s tendency to chatter, or even any evidence of his grandmother’s sharp, biting, wit.
She wonders if he is like his mother, who she saw so little in King’s Landing, and hopes that that was the case. Otherwise, it must be that he does not like her.
ii.
At Highgarden, though, he is different.
At Highgarden, her husband becomes Willas, and Willas is a man she likes.
He is clever, which is to be expected. He reads constantly, always with a book at the dining table, a sheaf of reports while they sit surrounded by his friends and cousins in the evening, letters from all over the Reach and beyond while he takes petitions.
He is not arrogant with it, though - he encourages Sansa to read books, allkinds of books, histories and records and books of maps, of all things. Treatises by learned men and sometimes women, detailing the far-off cities of Essos, or the swan ships of the Summer Islanders.
Her favourites are the books of stories - there were books of stories at Winterfell, of course, but none such as these, none with beautifully illuminated panels along the edge of each page, none with delicate, richly coloured illustrations at the beginning of each chapter. These she devours as readily as her husband does his histories, and these are the books which appear on her nightstand every week or fortnight, new ones with new tales from all over.
Perhaps, she thinks, he does not dislike her so much as she once feared.
iii.
“I know well how difficult it is to lose a friend such as yours,” he tells her quietly, loping along on his crutches as easily as though there are not half a dozen hounds scampering about their feet. “I lost such a friend when I was about your age, my lady, and miss him still.”
Sansa does not dare to wonder aloud if he has any idea of the bond she shared with Lady, of the way her dreams were too often about wolves and not often enough about women’s things.
“Harrier is my finest bitch,” he tells her, his voice still quiet, still careful. “She is recently delivered of a litter of fine pups, sired by my best dog.”
Willas’ best dog might be the strong, powerful hound that leads Highgarden’s hunting pack, but it might just as easily be the slobbery old mongrel that follows at his heels, lovesick and loved. Willas calls the old dog Mutt, with a depth of affection Sansa has otherwise only glimpsed.
“Take your pick of them, Sansa,” he urges her, with a rare, warm smile flashing his white, white teeth against the dark of his beard. “Replacement is impossible, but comfort is a luxury we can well afford.”
iv.
Comfort is something she thought long lost to her. It is so sweet to find it here.
She names her new pup Jonquil, and makes her a collar of green-and-gold satin ribbons, and brings her along when she and Willas walk in the gardens during the slow, cool sunsets that herald the coming winter.
“I will have a winter cloak made for you,” he tells her on one such evening, letting go of a crutch to tuck her hair under her hood. “In your colours, if you would like, or mine, or something else altogether.”
The offer of Stark white warms her more even than the heather-grey cloak of heavy, waxed wool that arrives in her chambers a week later, tied with a ribbon and a pink-blushing golden rose.
v.
Willas bedded her just the once, in a richly dressed bed in King’s Landing, in a chamber lit gold against the red walls, under the shadow of the Lannister lion.
He has not so much as kissed her since, save for the press of his warm, whiskered mouth to her hand when he takes his leave of her, and hardly even touches her - his crutches mean that she cannot take his arm when they walk together, and the presence of others in their fine, shared solar in the evenings makes her too shy to join him on the thickly padded couch he favours.
That is what makes it so surprising when, after the feast to welcome his lady mother and the Queen of Thorns home to Highgarden, after he has supped more from his cup of Arbor gold than usually he would, he releases one of his crutches and slides his hand into her loose-curled hair and tugs her mouth up to his, kissing her for such a long time that when he breaks away, she thinks that perhaps she has forgotten how to breathe.
“Goodnight, sweet lady,” he murmurs, his breath warm and his moustache ticklish against her lips. “Pleasant dreams.”
vi.
It takes her a week or more to find the courage to ask him about that kiss, the taste of which lingers still on the tip of her tongue.
His chamber is across the little hallway off their solar from her own, his door altered to make it so that he can manoeuvre without letting go of his crutches. Otherwise, it is the twin of her own, and perhaps that is part of what makes it so daunting.
She has never been in his bedchamber before.
She does not know if she ought to knock, or if it is acceptable for her to simply walk in - the once or twice he has come into her chamber, he has knocked, but he is always hesitant before he intrudes on her in any way, she has noticed.
Save for when he kissed her. Which means she must ask him just what possessed him that night. Was it solely the wine? Was it a desire to be close to her? Or was it simply desire, such as she knew men to sate with whores-
“Oh,” she sighs, barely more than a whisper, and she is suddenly glad that she chose to do this at night, when the castle is sleeping. Oh.
He has a window the match of hers, looking out over the tiny little handkerchief of a garden that otherwise borders only the library and a cloistered walkway on two sides. It is private, theirs, and Willas is sitting on the deep window ledge in just his breeches.
His left hand, with its long fingers and its heavy golden signet ring, is inside his breeches. She can see it moving, see the way his wrist shifts, like the half-light of the moon spilling in across his bare shoulders.
She’s never noticed just how broad his shoulders are, and how warm the colour of his freckles is against his skin. She’s never noticed the lean stretch of muscle in his arms, or the line of his throat, exposed now that he has his head thrown back and his soft mouth just a little open.
His breath is coming in little hitches and moans, and the heat that sometimes flares low in her belly when he smiles at her in that particular way over a book or a cup of wine or even over someone’s shoulder blooms now, hot and almost hungry, and she has her hand on the cool rosewood panel, prepared to push the door open enough to let herself in, when he moans out a single word:
“Sansa.”
This time, it is she who kisses him, startling him into an odd little noise, but then his hands are sliding over her back and drawing her in close, and the heat in her belly flares until it is almost more than she can stand.
“Please,” she manages, her lips feeling tender, “please, Willas,” and he nods, and that changes everything.