Margaery is tipsy. She's swaying on the rain-slick pavement, the street lamps and the little bulbs tucked inside the hotel's landscape architectural stag casting a lurid yellow glow on her jade one-piece pantsuit. Sansa is worrying her lip as she approaches Margaery. It's eleven at night, and most of the guests have already left. She won't be surprised if Margaery declined driving off with the Tyrells.
Margaery notices her and smiles, bright and loose and red-cheeked. It makes Sansa's belly dip. Sansa brings her arms around herself and stands beside Margaery.
"What are you doing out late?" Margaery asks.
"I should be asking you that."
Margaery tips her head back and squints at the sky. There are no stars tonight. "I'm riding the high of not giving a fuck." Then lets out her full throated laugh that Sansa can't help but smile. "God that felt so good."
Sansa thinks back to earlier in the evening, to the hushed gold and cream of the hotel's ballroom full of the embassy's people and their families. Of the massive birthday cake for Joffrey's twenty-first and his father the consul general personally bringing a tray of strawberries for champagne for each table. Of the consul general's younger brother Renly nervously clearing his throat and announcing a surprise marriage proposal for Margaery. Of Margaery shooting a glance at her own younger brother Loras and letting out a disbelieving laugh before she stood up, grabbed the half-full bottle of champagne, and rejected Renly. Sansa remembers sitting frozen between Bran and Arya on the other side of the ballroom, and wanting to throw up due to sheer nerves.
Margaery suspected something like that will happen and fretted about it even though she tried to hide it from Sansa. Three weeks went by with Margaery shredding lettuce and cutting up tomatoes and assembling salads with frightening attention to detail. Sansa and their other housemates from uni were obliged to finish the admittedly delicious salads. Dany swore her lifespan lengthened to another ten years. Missandei announced that she had never felt so wholesome in her life before. Sansa had second helpings each time and then locked herself in her room to polish off half the box of lemon cakes.
Sansa fumbles for her purse now, disentangling it and her arms from her blue shawl, and fishes the lemon sweets she got from the lounge. She pokes Margaery on the shoulder and hands her one.
"This is good," Margaery says around the sweet. She crumples the wrapper in her fist and shivers. "It's so bloody cold here."
"Because why are you doing this riding high at night?" Sansa rolls her eyes and offers her shawl to Margaery. "And at this time of the year."
Margaery gives Sansa and the shawl a quizzical look before hesitantly bundling herself into it. She sways closer to Sansa and Sansa catches a whiff of Margaery's favourite perfume, the one with oyster pearls and pink orchids.
"Won't you be cold?"
"I've spent most of my life in cold places," Sansa says. "This is summer to me."
"All right, you're winning at life right now."
Her family is moving to another country in two weeks after five years here, during Sansa's third year in uni, but she's managed to settle early in a student house three streets away from her campus. She isn't behind on her essays and she has stayed immune to colds and coughs so far, possibly due to her excessive intake of Vitamin C by way of lemons. Margaery is here, who is a cool Masters student and a mentor and friend. She thinks.
Sansa tries to not put much thought on the Margaery bullet in her list and decides she might be winning, after all.
Taxis drive past them and Sansa casts wistful glances at the rain-splattered glow of their lights. She wants to go home but she feels like Margaery needs to walk off the champagne and the events of the evening. She's proven right when Margaery reaches for her hand and they start ambling down the pavement.
They never held hands before.
They linked arms as they made a quick shop for milk and biscuits before.
Margaery held herself up on her hands as she blew smoke into Sansa's mouth before, when Sansa's teeth hurt after her final orthodontic adjustment last year, to see if weed would numb her.
Sansa's fingers knotted into Margaery's fall of hair before, because she really liked Margaery and she let Margaery put four fingers in her and fuck her so hard that she had a mild panic when she's still sore a week later. Sansa held on to Margaery's thighs before, when after the fucking Margaery rode Sansa's face and then Sansa gasped out that she needs Margaery again. Margaery's hand gripped Sansa's nape before, mouthing away the tears on Sansa's face as she edged Sansa for almost an hour. In hindsight, the equally furious second round might have been why Sansa had to blunder through in the uni Health Services clinic last month and blush as the doctor eyed the bruises on her thighs.
Sansa thinks that if hands could blush hers would be the colour of her hair right now. She carefully exhales. "Is your Nan okay with what you did?"
"She'll be okay with it by tomorrow. She might be quite disappointed."
Sansa gives her hand a reassuring squeeze. "They must've thought it was worth a shot. You know. Baratheon hotel holdings and everything."
"Please." Margaery brushes aside a lock of wind-blown hair. "I followed them all around the world all my life. Fucked up my body clock for them. There is absolutely no mutually beneficial thing between me and my family in that arrangement. I live for me now."
"I can imagine you this time next year," Sansa says, even as she feels terrible about it. "Fancy diploma and off wandering to fancy places."
"It's one of the ghastly habits I got from my family," Margaery agrees. "Got anything from yours?"
Sansa can't really see herself voluntarily turning her life into half a holiday again. As soon as she graduates and finds a job she's settling in one city, get the odd jetlag phobia out of her system, and grow her own lemons. So she just says, "I've got the love for a good cuddle from them. I'm not sure about ghastly things. Maybe being stubborn?"
"I love you being stubborn," Margaery says, sounding tremendously sincere. "Especially with your righteous face on. Remember when you called Joffrey a, and I quote, vommed up oatmeal for the entire pub to hear?"
"Oh my god. That was ages back!"
"You got his wanker self off Ross and then dumped him. A sociology professor was present." Margaery is laughing again. "It was amazing, really."
"Oh my god."
Margaery tugs them to a stop. She squeezes their Sansa's hand as she says, "That remains inspirational. How did you think I got the tits to do it?"
Sansa feels the rising urge to throw up again, but it's not a morose throwing up. That may be why all she can come up with is a nonsensical, "What?"
"Calculated, proper socialite Margaery," Margaery says, grimacing before she shrugs and looks up at Sansa with her eyes gleaming, "causing a scene. What I'm saying is you're iconic."
Sansa swallows and wishes she could look away. "Yeah. Yeah, I kinda am." She nods, just as nonsensically. "So would you remember my iconic self when you go around the world?"
She knows that's all she could expect. Sansa has learned that nothing is permanent except for her goal to stay in one city, because everyone else packs up and searches and searches for something or else put somewhere else. And even this kind of thing, relationships, nothing is permanent with their age. She's dreamed of romance with forever afters and she's also dumped Joffrey. Sansa doesn't know what comes next. She never does. She feels like she's got her valise packed up again and she's standing on the airport's lounge, with its air of impermanence. At this point it's enough that she can call someone else a home for a bit, just as she's found home in countless cities all her life. Margaery may be that home, at this point.
"How can I forget an iconic personage?" Margaery says. She's beaming, and Sansa's charmed by her lopsided lips. "I'll send you flowers from every place."
"That would be nice," Sansa says. "I love your taste in flowers."
Margaery plucks half the shawl off her and blankets Sansa's other arm and their joined hands with it.
"I told you I'm not cold."
"Your hand has goosebumps. I can feel your goosebumps."
Sansa giggles. "You're ridiculous."
"You're ridiculous, and I love it." Margaery noses Sansa's shoulder. "Let's go home?"
There are still no stars out, with the thunderstorm leaving the sky a hazy inky black. But the lamps are glowing wetly, the tree branches are swaying with fresh crispness only the aftermath of a rain can bring, and there are plenty of taxis passing by to take them home.
Sansa turns her head and says into Margaery's temple, "Yeah. Let's go."