Chapter Text
When I tell you it was an accident, I know you won’t believe me, but it was.
Sure. Maybe I’ve always kinda had a thing for redheads, and maybe Freud would have a field day with that for reasons you’ll soon understand, but there’s a great big pornographic world out there, filled with plenty of redheads.
Well, Freud would probably have some things to say about the volume of pornographic content in the world, too, but let’s save the moral debates for another time, shall we? Fact is, I’m not a porn addict. Don’t watch the stuff every day. Don’t even masturbate every day, which I’m pretty sure makes me an anomaly at my age, which is twenty-seven. Twenty-seven and single and too fucking busy between my graduate work and fledgling career to have much of a dating life, yet I don’t end each night making my bedsheets look like a tent during an earthquake, and I don’t start each day watching my semen circle the shower drain along with the suds of my body wash.
It's more like every other day, thank you very much.
Now… where was I?
Oh. Right. I was telling you it was an accident. Hand to the bible, that’s the truth.
See, I was cruising AmateursOnly, going down a rabbit hole of recommended videos that stemmed from the results of a totally innocent search (hot redhead masturbating) when my brain stumbled a bit. The way it does when you see something totally ordinary but in a totally weird context and you can’t think of the name of the thing because, apparently, our brains are lazy motherfuckers that look but don’t see, or see only that which they want to see, or expect to see, or are trying to see.
It’s like that. I was debating clicking ‘play’ on a video still that didn’t show the actress’ face, just a backside view of her riding a dildo that’s suction-cupped to the floor, with wavy auburn hair so thick it hides almost her entire back and points to the crevice of her ass like the sign for a rest stop on the interstate.
And there I was, thumb hovering because the video next to it is tempting (a compilation of redhead anal creampies) and eventually lowering down to softly click on the auburn hair because I fucking love that shade. Fuck off, Freud; I’m not out there sniffing random redheads on the L or stealing their underwear from the laundromat. I’m not a rapist, not even a womanizer or philanderer or chauvinist. I’m a nice guy who treats women with respect, and if I happen to like the precise shade of auburn hair that both my stepmom and stepsister have, well… what’s wrong with that?
Wait… I feel like that was misleading. Because you’re probably reading this going [shrug] “Stepsister? You don’t even share any DNA, bro; what’s the problem?”
Well, the problem is that my stepsister also happens to be my cousin. Who I was raised with from age eight up. That’s when my mom passed away and my uncle and his wife took me in, even legally adopted me. But his wife – meaning my aunt-slash-stepmom – never entirely warmed to my presence. In fairness, she had four kids aged two through nine at the time and her husband, who routinely worked 65-hour weeks, dumped another one on her. And maybe if there’d been no other options, she’d have been more receptive, but she knew as well as I did (even by that tender young age) that I could just as easily have gone to live with my dad, if only my dad wasn’t… Well, how shall I put it kindly?
Certifiable.
But, like, smart enough and functioning enough that it’s tempting to just call him ‘eccentric’ or ‘kooky’, but when I began this tale I committed to giving you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, which is that my biological father, if not for inheriting money and servants, would be that homeless dude on the corner holding up a cardboard sign bearing the words ‘Repent. The End is near.’
(Side note, I might have inherited a touch of that madness, because I often see those guys and think ‘shit, what if they’re right? What if, because they’ve given up their material obsessions, they’ve got a direct line to J.C.?’ But this one time I handed such a man a twenty, feeling pretty guilty about wishing I’d broken it at the coffee shop before making a donation to a derelict, and struck up a conversation. It went alright at first, lots of ‘God bless you, brothah, God bless you’ and what-not. Until I asked him what his deal was, how he ended up on the street, and was offered an explanation that involved government-issued antennas implanted in his ear canals and a landlady who was in on it, so, naturally, he’d had to push her down a flight of stairs. And the funny thing is, every conversation with my father is kinda like that. Like, he’s an eloquent dude with an off-the-charts IQ who has a library of something like five thousand books, and he’s read all of them, so it’s really easy to get sucked in by him, and it’s only after you’ve left his house and been around other people for a couple hours that you realize his theories can be very easily debunked and more easily labeled as ‘batshit crazy’.)
So… yah. I was raised by Aunt Catelyn, but never 100% embraced by her. She wasn’t cold, definitely not cruel, I just think she had so much of her heart occupied by her husband and four children that, by the time I moved in with them, she didn’t have much to spare for me.
As for her auburn-haired daughter, Sansa, two years younger than me, I was embraced by her well enough, especially when it was convenient, but otherwise I didn’t fit her definition of ‘pleasant company’.
And to be fair to her, I think she was just annoyed that she got yet another sibling that shared none of her interests. Uncle Ned and Aunt Cat had four kids, and only one of them was likely to be found with a book in their hands. Robb, the eldest, was all varsity football and having lots of bros. Arya, younger than Sansa by two years, was all field hockey and messy-hair-don’t-care. Bran was one of those kids born without much sense of fear or self-preservation, so he was forever giving his parents and older siblings heart attacks by doing things like backflips off the roof into the swimming pool, or skateboarding down the hill on Dodson Street that most people avoid even in a car.
And then there was Sansa, who was all Barbie Dolls and then nail polish and then boys, boys, boys, even when she was too young to know that those boys wanted more than a quick peck from her candy-apple lips. I swear, by the time Sansa was eleven, it felt like Robb and I were her bodyguards, eternally chasing off the twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys that orbited her like moons. (When she was fourteen, the boys were sixteen, and a little harder to scare off with a glare.)
For her part, Sansa didn’t seem to want a fan club (though she never complained about it, either), she only wanted her fairy tale prince. When she was a freshman in high school that prince was Harry Hardyng, much to my and Robb’s annoyance. Not only was he a senior, but he was even more popular than Robb, what with that movie star smile, those dimples, that blond hair that was always conveniently falling in his eyes.
After Harry left for college, Sansa was heartbroken for a couple months, but she recovered and went on to date someone her own age: Joffrey Baratheon.
Now, how should I sum up Joffrey Baratheon? Well, you know that kid who’s popular in high school not because anyone actually likes him, but because everyone’s afraid of becoming his victim? That’s Joffrey Baratheon. Or at least that’s how he was with his peers. His intimidation tactics didn’t quite work with older kids, so he just pretended they didn’t exist. Yours truly included.
What Sansa ever saw in him beyond looks and family name, I can’t tell you.
But you didn’t come here for that, did you? You’re probably thinking that I’m purposely digressing so that I never have to admit that when I clicked on that video and saw my cousin slash stepsister’s face, I didn’t immediately close the browser and throw my tablet out the window for good measure.
Like I said, at first it just didn’t make sense. Seeing Sansa of all people dressed in lingerie (the sort that’s somehow kinky while still being classy), giving come hither eyes at the camera as she touches herself – tits, waist, thighs, neck, pussy – was as weird as it would be to see a dog smoking a blunt. My brain was doing some extreme gymnastics in trying to rationalize it. Like:
An AI creation that, by pure happenstance, was based on a photo from Sansa’s Instagram.
A deep fake. Of my cousin/sister, Sansa, who cried every time she watched Bambi as a kid and used to pretend to be Ariel from The Little Mermaid every time she went swimming through age thirteen.
Sansa has an identical twin sister she’d been separated from at birth as part of a social experiment on nature versus nurture. Also, Sansa’s twin has daddy issues.
I’m dreaming. Or hallucinating. A totally weird dream or hallucination that has nothing to do with some sordid desire I’ve ignored for years, and everything to do with that shrimp taco I had for lunch today.
But then the Sansa doppelganger started talking. Kneeling on crisp white sheets and staring right at me, she started talking to me. Not the million other guys who might’ve stumbled upon her video, just me.
(And yes, I knew in that moment that a million other guys had thought the same, but that didn’t stop me from feeling certain that it was, without a doubt, me whom she was addressing, in a voice I’d known for most of my life.)
And that’s the thing you need to understand before you pass judgment. It’s never been about seeing her firm tits, her perfect pink nipples or perfect pink cunt, her ass that’ll make a man’s mouth water. It’s always been about something deeper than that.
You see, I’d never really known what to call it, nor even fully realized there was something there needing to be named, but in hindsight, and only after I fell into Sansa’s AmateursOnly page like Alice down the rabbit hole, she’d always had this thing about her.
When Sansa Stark looks at you, you feel seen. Perhaps for the first time in your miserable life. Or perhaps just for the first time that matters.
It’s not like I worship her – far from it. She’s never been the brightest crayon in the box. Smarter than lots of people assume, sure, but not quite as smart as her report cards indicated. She’s never been the wittiest, either. And for as beautiful as she was, she’d rarely been the prettiest girl at the party.
And yet…
She’s just… something. Something to be corrupted and protected in equal measure and in the same moment. That first time, I felt like I might just crawl through the God-damned screen of my tablet and keep crawling until she was on her back and I was hovered above her, doing filthy, dirty, degrading things to her even as I was shielding her from all the other men who wanted to do filthy, dirty, degrading things to her.
When Sansa Stark looks at you, she sees all of you, and you want her to. You welcome her eyes raking over every inch of your skin. Every freckle, every scar. Every part you wish was bigger or smaller. Hairier. Less hairy. More toned or more tan. Everything you love and hate you want her to see, because her gaze is like a blessing.
When Sansa Stark looks at you, she takes something that you’re more than happy to give her.
It’s safe to say I was addicted from the start.
It was like no porn I’d ever seen. In fact, to even call it ‘porn’ is to mock the sacred intimacy that exists between us for those many minutes.
See, it’s not about what she’s doing with those delicate fingers. It’s not about watching a hot chick finger-blast her pussy while moaning and screaming in a way a guy will gladly pretend is genuine. Got it? It is so not about that.
It’s about being the man she’s beckoning to her heavenly bed; seeing through his eyes, hearing through his ears. It’s about approaching like the slowest and deadliest predator, while she lays herself down in the tall grass like the tastiest prey.
It’s about staring into her eyes while she stares into mine while I fuck her, while she tells me how good I feel.
It’s about watching her climax and knowing it’s no act; no exaggeration, even.
It’s about finishing to the sound of her voice – honey sweet and satin smooth – telling me it’s alright, telling me to let go.
And yes, I know that the video I’m watching at any given point in time was probably filmed days or weeks earlier. Yes, I know she’s not talking to me but to a fucking camera. Yes, I know she’s not fucking me but a sex toy, and sometimes another guy’s dick. I’m not stupid, and not delusional. I just want you to know what it feels like, watching my cousin’s videos, because then, maybe, when I tell you what I did, you’ll understand…