Chapter Text
“I think we should have a feast,” Sansa announces.
Jon lifts his head up, startled. Arya doesn’t look too surprised, though she does look up from her spot on the floor, too. Bran looks the least shocked of all, but there’s a small smile on his lips.
“The people are restless and unhappy,” Sansa continues. “They need something to cheer them up. We’re almost six moons post war. We should feast.”
Jon blinks several times. “We can’t afford a feast,” he says finally.
Sansa puts her sewing in her lap. “I’ve been looking over the accounts, and I think if we shift a few things we’ll be able to. The people are unhappy, aren’t they, Arya?”
Arya does look startled this time, especially when Jon turns to look at her.
“Well?” Jon asks when she doesn’t say anything. “Are they?”
Arya shrugs slowly. “I wouldn’t say unhappy,” she says carefully, “but discontent.”
“They’re cold,” Sansa offers, “and hungry. I’ll organize the entire thing.”
Jon, bless him, realizes quickly enough that any argument he gives will inevitably end with him losing and therefore a waste of time, so he nods his consent.
She can see he still has some reservations though, and if they were simply of an administrative or organizational nature he would surely have said them in front of their siblings. As it stands, though, she and Jon have come to a silent agreement to shield Arya and Bran from as much torment as they can; oh, they don’t lie, and anything truly important is shared, but while all the Starks mourn for themselves and what they lost, Jon and Sansa mourn for Arya and Bran, too. Sansa isn’t sure what it is, perhaps just the simple fact that they’re the older siblings, or perhaps it’s because they’ve filled Ned and Catelyn’s roles so absolutely, but whatever the reason, Sansa – and she knows Jon, too – finds herself more than a little protective of her younger siblings.
She would spare them any and all further torment, even if it were just Sansa’s own insecurities.
And clearly, Jon’s objection must come from a place of concern for her, otherwise he would broach it here.
She lets him stew on in for a while longer, but eventually she see’s him start to squirm often enough that she knows he’s getting anxious.
Sansa pretends to yawn, then rolls her shoulders and puts down her sewing.
“It’s getting rather late,” she says, “I think I’ll retire for the evening.”
Jon stands immediately. Sansa has to stop herself from rolling her eyes. “Aye,” he says eagerly, “a good idea.”
Arya looks up from where she’d been petting Ghost. “Alright,” she says suspiciously, narrowing her eyes and looking between the two. Sansa wonders what it is she suspects. Something far more promiscuous in nature than is the truth, probably. Sansa hopes that that thought doesn’t show on her face, though she suspects it does because Arya’s lips turn down in a medium of disgust.
Sansa steadfastly avoids Jon’s eye.
Arya is trying, they all are, but Sansa knows that she herself has acclimatized to her marriage much quicker than anyone else. She hardly objects to Jon’s nature, knowing as she did when they went into it that he would treat her better than any of her previous husbands (not that that’s a high standard), or any potential suitor, really. But, more than that, she thinks she might love him.
Not as she should.
But as a wife loves a husband.
She wouldn’t be entirely opposed to them going to bed together in the nature that Arya suggests.
Because go to bed together they will, as they have been since Jon comforted her nearly five moons ago. Just not in the way that Sansa is slowly recognizing she wants.
Arya stands and takes hold of Bran’s chair. Sansa drops to press a kiss to the crown of Bran and then Arya’s head, and Jon does the same. Arya looks disgruntled but Sansa knows that this domesticity pleases her, as it does Bran, who gives them a small smile, and as it does she and Jon, who can’t help but look after the departing pair fondly.
When the chamber door closes, Jon goes over to bar it, and Sansa takes the opportunity to retire in to the bedchambers before he can open his mouth.
If Jon desires to talk about it, then she knows it must be important to him, but she’s not sure she wants to weather it just yet. She takes a seat at her dressing table, starting to unwind her braids.
Jon comes in only a moment later and starts to tend to the fire, as he does every night. It may not be as bone chilling a cold as it had been during the Long Night, but winter still demands a heavy toll.
Once he’s satisfied, Jon steps away from it to prepare himself for bed. There are two washbasins that have been filled with hot water by Sansa’s handmaiden in the corner of the room, and Jon goes to one to wash his hands and face, sighing with pleasure as he does every night.
Sansa takes the time to carefully brush her hair, something that brings her as much peace as Jon washing his hands brings him.
“Well,” Sansa says, turning to face Jon as she gathers her hair in her hands to rebraid it for sleep, “what’s wrong, then?”
Jon smiles ruefully as he starts to undress. “Am I that predictable?”
Sansa turns from him to give him some privacy. Still, the sound of his undoing laces and buckles fills the room, followed shortly by the noise of clothes dropping and being folded.
“Predictable enough,” she responds vaguely, feeling an all too familiar need warm her bones.
“It’s not that I don’t want a feast,” Jon says slowly, “if the people are bothered, this is a very easy solution.”
“I agree,” Sansa says, tying off the end of her plait.
He stays quiet for a moment, and the noise of clothes rustling once again fills her ears. “I just think it’s a responsibility you don’t need at the moment,” he says finally.
Sansa turns to him to raise a disbelieving brow before she can think better of it. Luckily enough – or unluckily as the case may be – he’s dressed in his sleepwear and slipping under the furs.
“You’d rather we deal with a riot in a moon’s time?” she asks.
He huffs. “You know that’s not what I mean.”
She purses her lips. “Aye, I know.” She sighs. “I think it will be worth the extra effort.”
She stands from her chair. Jon turns away to pick up the book on the bedside and lifts it up above his face. Sansa appreciates the gesture, she still does, even though he does it every night. Secretly, though, she craves his attention.
Sansa changes quickly into her sleepwear, then goes to her own washbasin. The sound of the water prompts Jon to lower his book to a more appropriate eyelevel.
“I will share the work load with you, then,” Jon says.
Sansa can’t but a laugh as she dries her face and hands. Jon’s lips downturn into a displeased frown.
“Apologies, my King,” Sansa says demurely, trying to push the smile from her face but not quite managing it, “I just can hardly picture the greatest swordsman to ever live attempting to coordinate his formalwear to the table clothes.”
Jon’s eyes widen slightly. “That’s something that has to be worried about?”
Sansa laughs in unabashed delight. She so adores this man. “It’s rather important, I’m afraid.”
She sits back at her table and reaches for her jar of hand cream.
Somehow, Jon still manages to look hopeful. “I could be in charge of food, perhaps.”
Sansa smiles as she rubs in the cool cream. “Did you know that the Lady Mormont can’t have goat’s milk or it’s products? She almost died as a child from it.”
“Well, no, but -.”
“And Lord Cerwyn, too, can’t eat nuts. I’ve heard his face swells up so badly he can’t breathe.”
“Okay, Sansa -.”
“And baby Sam is frightfully picky with his food, and he eats it mushed up! I don’t know how he tells the difference, honestly.”
Jon sighs heavily. “You’ve made your point, Sansa, no need to further humiliate me.”
Sansa laughs again, then stands. She pulls back the furs of the bed and settles in. “Don’t worry, Jon, I have it handled.”
He raises a brow and puts his book back on the bedside. “Have?” he asks. “I should have known that you’d already started organizing.”
“What can I say, I’m an organized woman.”
He smiles fondly at her, then turns to blow out his bedside candle. Sansa does the same.
“Organized indeed,” he says softly, then reaches out to her.
She tucks herself into him, one arm resting under her head, the other wrapping around her back.
They don’t do this very often. Enough that she knows the routine, knows exactly how to fit her body against his, but she never initiates and Jon usually saves it for when he’s feeling particularly emotional. Good or bad, it doesn’t matter. Whenever he seeks her, she always goes.
His fingertips trace a slow line up her back. She hides the shudder it induces by pretending to shift around and get more comfortable. Sansa regrets it a moment later though, when his hand stills and doesn’t move again.
She keeps in her sigh, because if she sighs Jon will probably move away completely, so she does what she does best and settles for less than she wants, and tries to get some sleep.
-
This, Jon moans inwardly, staring resolutely into his cup, pointedly ignoring the vision that is his wife, this is why I didn’t want a feast.
Sansa is absolutely glorious in her new dress, laughing in delight and swinging through the dances and partners. His hands clench around his cup with the ache of stopping himself from going straight to her and touching her, fingers gently pressing in to her waist, pulling her hips against his, maybe even in all the commotion he would find an opportunity to discreetly press a kiss to her lips.
The chair next to his scrapes loudly as it’s pulled back from the table. Jon jumps, startled.
Arya scoffs loudly, obviously drunk and delighted from all the dancing.
“You’re a little bitch, you know that?” she says, then leans over to steal his cup of ale. “You’re seriously a sad sight, up here on your fuckin’ lonesome.”
Jon turns to her, eyes wide at her language and impertinence.
“I’m your King, you know,” he says, displeased.
She shrugs. “And a little bitch,” she says, then slams the cup down on the table. Jon takes it back, but she’s emptied it.
“Alright, Arya, I think you’ve had enough.”
“If you’re looking to tell a woman what to do, perhaps you should go to your wife. Maybe just spend some time with her at all.”
Jon reels back from her, indignant at what she’s implying.
“Arya.”
“You’ve not noticed all the Lords looking at her?”
“Of course I’ve noticed,” he snaps, because it’s true. It’s another reason he hadn’t wanted a feast. In the absence of Jon’s affection, of staking a public claim of her – preferably, to the Lords, by way of her stomach rounding with his child, but they would settle, for now, with an appropriate kiss between them, of Sansa dancing almost solely with her husband – they think that Jon is lax enough to either not notice their stares, or maybe even not care.
The smallfolk, who Jon had also worried about, are much more respectful of their Queen, even though she dances amongst them, too.
They’ve not overstepped their boundaries, not in the way Jon has spied several young lords doing this evening. Sansa’s been graceful in sidestepping the lords’ more risqué advances, moving a hand too lowly placed, putting distance between bodies pressed too closely together, but she hasn’t declined a single man a dance, no matter who they are.
“So,” Arya says, propping her legs up on the table. Perhaps Jon should not care for propriety now, when it’s late, and most are so deep in their cups they won’t remember this come morning, but he does. He glares at her until she pulls her boots from the tabletop. “Go and stop them! Declare her as yours, give her some attention!”
Jon looks down from the table and out to the crowd. It’s extremely easy to find Sansa, tall as she is, her hair as bright as it is, the crown perched atop her head as it is.
Jon and Sansa had protested the wearing of crowns tonight profusely, but Davos had strongly recommended it, and even Arya said it might be a good idea to remind everyone exactly who was welcoming them into their home for the night. Davos had capitulated and said that they could take them off during the night, if they pleased, which Jon has long ago done, but Sansa’s still sits as neatly atop her head as it had at the beginning of the night.
She’s spinning from partner to partner, but finally she settles with the young Lord Karstark. The young boy is absolutely besotted with Sansa, even daring to go so far as to place his hands too low on her waist, pulling her too close to him. Sansa laughs, but allows it. Jon, however, can’t help the tiny flower of rage that unfurls. She would dare let him do that? With her husband sitting in the same room? With other Lords looking on, taking his lead?
“She’s getting attention enough,” he says bitterly, going to take another drink before remembering that Arya finished it.
Arya takes an immediate affront to that. She narrows her eyes at him, then bites out, “Not from anyone that matters.”
She grabs the crown that’s sitting on the table in front of him as she stands. Arya shoves it into his chest and he scrambles to catch it.
“She’s your Queen,” Arya hisses, “show her some respect.”
Arya disappears in to the crowd, leaving Jon at the table, alone, with just his crown for company, and Sansa laughing with the people.
-
When Sansa has finally had enough of the festivities, later than most but not as late as some, Jon still sits at the high table. He’s surly, and brooding, but the one time she’d convinced him to dance with her he’d put enough of a smile on his face that she’d been content.
He’d retreated from the floor soon enough, a melancholy smile on his face, and it makes Sansa wonder what he’s thinking. The smile is tragic enough that she has to wonder again if it’s his Targaryen Queen his thoughts linger with. He’d assured Sansa, before and after they got married, that he harboured no feelings for the dead Queen, never had, but sometimes such longing, such sorrow, fills his eyes when he looks at her that she can think nothing other than that he must desperately wish she were someone else.
Jon had taken her arm in his and smiled at her gently, and then led her through the halls of Winterfell and to their rooms. She’d chatted to him the entire time, and he’d gazed at her fondly, only encouraging her, but now they’re in the bedchambers and Jon has slipped into bed first, like always, and she thinks she might be about to do something drastic.
“Are you alright, Sansa?” Jon asks from his spot on the bed. She’s paused after washing her hands and face. “Did you have too much to drink?”
Sansa purses her lips and takes a seat at her dress table, unscrewing the lid of her hand cream.
“No, I’m fine,” she finally says, when she’s sure she’s not going to blurt out her true thoughts.
Because, truthfully, he’d looked extremely handsome tonight. Their matching colours may not have mattered to him, but to her, it marked him as hers. But as much as she loved his clothes on him, the sound of them coming off as he readied for bed has made her hot with desire.
She’s not sure how she’s going to get in bed beside him.
Jon doesn’t reply to her, but she hears him shift around in the bed. She does what she can to put it off, but if she doesn’t join him soon he’ll know for certain that something’s different, and she can’t have him asking questions.
Eventually, suppressing a sigh, she joins him in the bed.
Jon’s eyes are closed, but he’s facing her, and quietly he rumbles, “Did you have a nice night?”
She smiles widely, even though he can’t see it.
“Jon,” she says earnestly, “I had the most beautiful night.”
He smiles, too, then reaches his hand out to her, leaving it to lie between them. She takes it easily.
She so ardently loves him.
“That makes me so happy to hear, Sansa.”
With no need to worry about being caught, she lets herself look over his face.
The deep scar over his eye is so faded, now, compared to how it was when she first saw him at Castle Black, though it’s still clearly defined.
Her eye’s lower to his chest. The memory of the scar on his chest is burned into her forevermore, as unique as it had been, but the glimpse of his muscled chest is what her thoughts most often linger with.
His cheeks are starting to fill in again, though with how little food he’d eaten while he was at war she’s not surprised it hasn’t taken too long. They’re flushed, from a combination of ale and the heat from the fire. His hair isn’t pulled back like it is normally; instead his curls are falling freely over his head.
Sansa lets her eyes fall down to his lips. She doesn’t usually let her gaze linger on them, but his eyes are closed. She’ll let herself, just this once. His lips are pink and plush and beautiful, and not for the first time she wonders what they’d feel like against hers. She’s never experienced a kind kiss, let alone the type of kiss she hears whispered about by other ladies and servant girls; the mind-blowing, life-changing, toe-curling kind.
Jon would be a gentle kisser, Sansa thinks. He would kiss her softly, though he would guide her, maybe he would hold her hand. When the time comes that he must take his rights so they can produce an heir, perhaps she’ll even be lucky enough that he might take his time to try and make her comfortable, or maybe even just give her a moment to get herself slick.
She groans slightly and lets go of his hand, suddenly heavy in hers, and turns onto her back.
“What’s wrong?” Jon asks, worry clearly lining his voice.
Sansa huffs. “Nothing,” she replies, but she sounds frustrated, even to her own ears.
Jon stays quiet a moment, then says, “Is this about tonight? Because I didn’t join you dancing?”
Sansa almost laughs. No, it most certainly isn’t. Truthfully, she doesn’t know if she could have handled him dancing with her more than he had, especially with how much wine she’s had. He’s been kind to her, he’s danced with her, he’s looked at her with desire in his eyes even if the desire is not for her, then he’d shed his unbelievably handsome clothes to get into her bed and then he’d held her hand and she wants.
She wants him, so, so badly.
They’ll have to lay together eventually, they all know, but Sansa wants him to take her now and she wants him to be compelled by something other than duty.
She doesn’t reply, just turns on her other side so her back is facing Jon, and she wonders if Jon detects as much petulance in the silence as she does.
Jon’s hand lightly touches her back.
Her breath hitches in a gasp that fills the room.
His hand pulls back.
“No, no,” she whispers, before she knows what she’s saying. “Touch me again.”
Well. Something drastic indeed.
There’s several moments where he does nothing, and Sansa can’t bear to face the shame of her demand.
But then his hand curves over her waist, sure and true, and her own hand whips down to his to draw it further around her.
“Sansa,” he says lowly, warningly, “don’t do this if you don’t want to.”
His voice makes her drunker than all the wine she’s ever had.
“I do,” she breathes, “I do, I want it so badly, Jon.”
Her voices sounds whiny to her own ears, but Jon must find something desirable in it because his breath intakes sharply and then he’s pressed entirely against her back.
His nose nudges against the back of her head, his breath hot and panting against her neck.
“From me?” he asks, as Sansa guides his hand upwards to her breast. “Do you want it from me?”
Sansa rocks her hips back into his, on instinct, because she’s never done anything like this before but her body burns with the need to move, to be satiated in some way. Jon’s strangled whine, though, makes her stop.
“Sorry,” she gasps, “I’m sorry, I -.”
“No, no,” he rushes out, “I liked it, I like it.”
Sansa pauses, then quietly, before she can lose her nerve, she asks the question she left unanswered from him. “From me?”
She hears him groan again, and then feels the press of a light kiss against the back of her neck.
“Aye, sweet Sansa, from you. No one else. There will never be anybody else.”
This time, she believes him.
“And you?” he asks again. “Do you desire another man, or am I enough?”
“You are not just more than enough, Jon, you are the only man I desire, have ever desired. Will ever desire.”
His hand clasps her jaw and tilts her head upwards so that he capture her lips in a searing kiss. Their first kiss since their wedding. While he’s gentle, like she had pictured, he is so much more; there is an urgency, a need, a fierce passion that somehow only makes her grow hotter still.
His hand leaves her jaw to travel down her body and rest on her thigh.
Jon pulls his mouth from hers. Sansa chases it, completely wrecked. She feels him smile against her cheek, his nose bumping against her temple.
“Tell me if you want to stop,” Jon murmurs, “if you get uncomfortable, if you just want to slow down. Tell me, okay?”
“Okay.”
His grip tightens on her thigh, and he moves his mouth down to her neck.
“You – you’re the same,” Sansa stutters, because Jon may say he desires her but perhaps he will look upon her face and remember that they grew up as siblings and want to stop, “if you want to stop. We can.”
“Trust me,” he murmurs, hiking her skirts up to her waist, “I won’t want to.”
His hand dips immediately beneath her small clothes to find her cunt. His fingers brush against her nub, and immediately her hand flies down to grasp his wrist.
“Sorry, too fast,” he mutters.
“No, no,” she gasps, her face flushing, her grip tightening around his wrist. “It’s just – a lot, but good. Keep going.”
He does as bid, hesitantly at first, but her hips buck back involuntarily against his hard cock and he let’s out a hissed breath. It doesn’t take much more encouragement than that for him to dip his fingers a little further down.
He groans, murmuring, “So wet, is this all for me?” then slides a finger inside her.
Her nails dig into the skin of his forearm, she gasps, set alight. Her other hand closes around the edge of the bed. Jon pulls his hand from her and she keens with disappointment, but all he does is spread her legs by lifting one up and resting it back and atop his, and then he has two fingers inside her and she burns, she aches, there’s so much tension in her that has nowhere to go except –
Jon presses himself against the line of her back as she peaks, his open mouth against the back of her neck.
Jon stops his ministrations as she come from down from her high, kissing her neck as she does.
“You’re alright?” he asks as her pants slow down.
“That was – very good,” she manages to get out.
He chuckles against her throat, then presses a kiss there before moving his hand from her thigh and sucking his wet fingers into his mouth.
Sansa’s eyes widen and she turns over to face him, watching.
“That’s very craven,” she tells him, breathless.
He raises a brow. “Is it?” he asks, his lips twitching. “Do you want a taste?”
Sansa licks her lips, her gaze dipping to his fingers. He holds his hand out, and hesitantly she grips his wrist and brings his fingers to her mouth. She takes the tip of his middle finger in her mouth. It tastes . . . odd, least of all because she knows where it came from. It doesn’t particularly make her feel more need, but the sight of Jon’s mouth thinning and his eyes going dark with undeniable desire does, so she takes his whole finger into her mouth.
“Fuck,” he whimpers, and someone how that single dirty word fills her with a deep gratification.
He pulls his hand from her grip and hastily starts to undo his breeches. “Can I – can we -,” he stumbles desperately.
Sansa smiles. “Yes, I’d like that.” And it’s true. As satisfied as she had been by just Jon’s touch, more so than even from her own fingers, and as glorious as peaking under his ministrations had been, she wants more.
She wants to look up at him as he thrusts inside her, she wants to gasp his name and have him gasp hers, she wants him to spill inside her so that perhaps she might quicken with his child and show to everyone once and for all that she is his and he is hers.
Jon pushes his breeches off then rolls onto his back.
“Would you take your dress off?” Jon asks.
She hadn’t even remembered she was wearing it. She’s unsure she wants to, but her reservation lies with her scars and Jon has seen those. He doesn’t care, he’d said.
Sansa undoes the buttons of her nightdress, but hesitates with her shift. “Do you mind if I keep this on?” she asks, biting her lip, because she wants to please him, but she can’t face everything in one night.
“Of course not,” he reassures, taking her hand to lead her back on to the bed. “Would you like me to keep my shirt on?”
Sansa can’t help the flutter in her chest at the question. He obviously knows exactly the reason she doesn’t want to take her shift off, and doesn’t want to reveal his own scars if Sansa doesn’t want to see them. But she doesn’t mind his scars. They’re a reminder that she could have lost him before she ever got a chance to fall in love with him, and if that doesn’t humble her before the gods and Jon in gratitude then she doesn’t know what will.
“You can take it off if you’d like,” she tells him.
He smiles, then takes it off. She lies beside him, expecting that he might climb atop her now, but he doesn’t. Instead, he takes her hand again and tugs her towards him.
“Come up here,” he says, guiding her so she sits on his hips.
“You can do it like this?” she asks, a smile spreading across her face. Yes, she thinks she’ll like this.
“We can do it however we want,” he says, smiling back at her, pleased with her delight.
Sansa rises onto her knees as Jon takes himself in hand. She sinks down on to him, bracing her hands against his chest, her head falling forward as she moans.
Jon sounds just as wrecked as she does when he groans and grips her hips.
Hands clenched around his shoulders, Sansa moves.
Oh, yes, she really likes this.
In this position, Sansa focuses entirely on her own pleasure. Her eyes closed, all she can think about is the way he feels inside her and how she moves to best take as much bliss as possible.
Jon groans beneath her, hips rocking up occasionally, when he can no longer help himself, fingers digging into the smooth skin of her thighs.
She peaks atop him, his name a sweet sigh on her lips, and he flips them over soon thereafter, taking his pleasure from her like she took from him. He spills inside her, gasping her name into her throat, his lips brushing against her skin.
After, she lays beside him, eyes closed with satiation and exhaustion, Jon’s breath even beside her. She drifts off into sleep, but wakes not long after, the candle beside the bed hardly burnt down any more, the fire still roaring.
She stands from the bed to make water, and when she returns to the room Jon has sat up, bleary eyed, the furs fallen around his waist.
“You okay?” he asks, voice thick with sleep.
“I’m fine,” Sansa replies softly. “Go back to sleep.”
She makes her way over to her washbasin. The water is cold by now, but not chilled. She uses it to wash her hands and face again, then cups some water in her hands to clean her thighs, too. It hadn’t bothered her before, but now she’s aware of the mess she knows she’ll never get to sleep with the evidence of their coupling sticking to her uncomfortably.
Sansa hears the rustle of the furs, and lifts her head to see Jon padding towards her. He’s lean and chiseled and takes no shame in walking towards her completely naked.
Jon picks up the washbasin and kneels before her. “Let me.”
She sets apart her legs, and perhaps it could be sexual, but Jon set’s about cleaning her with such an earnest intensity that it isn’t, not really.
Sansa actually finds it rather romantic.
It’s funny, she thinks, brushing her fingers through his curls. Who would have thought that this would be the type of romance she craves, that she is given. When she was younger, she’d not really grasped what romance truly was.
“I love it when you take care of me.”
Jon looks up at her, sitting back on his heels.
“I can take care of myself,” she clarifies. “And for a long time I thought no one could do it better than I.”
She thinks back to that day, not so long ago, when her trauma and sadness had gotten the best of her, despite her efforts, and nothing she thought could break her from her sorrow. Nothing could break through but Jon, who had let her fall apart in his arms and had then given her the help she needed to put herself back together.
“But you’ve proven to me, again and again, that you want to help.”
“I do,” he replies softly. “Nothing matters to me more than you.”
Sansa kneels down, too, and brushes her fingers against his cheek, then tucks a lock of his hair behind his ear.
“I want us to take care of each forever,” she admits, and saying it aloud is almost more terrifying than if she were to tell him she loves him. “Until the end of our days.”
He leans forward to press a gentle kiss to her lips. His eyes are soft as he looks at her and promises, “Until the end of our days.”