The Kind of Affair to Make You Dance About
Disclaimer: Yup, GRRM's still gonna be pissed, but I'm saying it, this is his.
A/N: This is a sequel to my fic Belief, so I'd recommend reading that first. Thanks go out to the invaluable friends who encouraged this and gave it a once-over before posting.
Two days after her twentieth nameday, Sansa was as a much a virgin as she had been on her twelfth. Her husband often hugged and held her, had caressed and kissed her a hundred times - a number of those kisses had even been on the lips, although most he rained on her forehead, or one of her cheeks, or on her hand as a courtesy - but Tyrion had not mentioned bedding her since that first horrible night of their marriage.
Oh, the two shared a bed, that much was true. Her husband lay next to her while he slept - when he slept. She knew his snores and his starts, the way he twitched when he dreamed unpleasant dreams, which was not as often as it once had been. (Sansa sometimes wondered, when she opened her eyes in the near-dark to find Tyrion awake and reading beside her, if he ever witnessed her in the throes of her own nightmares, if he recognized how rarely they seemed to plague her of late.) In truth, she knew her husband's body naked almost as well as she knew it clothed. He slept in the nude, and Sansa had been quite adamant that he not change such habits when he took her into his bed.
But once the candles were blown out and he had undressed - Tyrion still refused to undress under the harsh, flickering light of the candles, reluctant to call attention to the worst of his perceived deformities - he did not touch her. His wife. On the other side of the bed, he may have been on the other side of the Wall for the way he curled in on himself, a respectable distance always between them, like two children playing at marriage.
Sansa had, for her part, said nothing of it, as if it was common for man and wife to never have lain together nearly eight years after their joining. At first she had been thankful, and later, when she had stopped half-fearing that her dwarf husband might lay a hand on her, silently asking for something she should have been able to give, she had grown content, complacent. It had been easy to forget that Tyrion's manhood could be used for anything other than relieving himself. (Sansa had to smirk at the thought. Would Tyrion have been proud that she had managed to make a joke about a man's cock without blushing, or would he have been horrified that she thought it so ill-used that it had lost its purpose? As little as he used the thing, Tyrion still referred to it often. More often than was proper in Sansa's opinion, but that was her husband, and some things would never change.)
This stirring in her belly was something entirely new.
Tyrion was brushing out her hair when it made itself known. When Sansa was small, only a girl at Winterfell, her mother had done this for her nightly, even though Septa Mordane had been more than capable. The Lady Catelyn would sit behind her on the bed, Sansa remembered, and brush her hair until it shown like the sun in autumn, cooing secrets of her own girlhood in Sansa's ear and remarking upon the many things the two of them shared, starting always with the color of their hair. It had been Sansa's favorite part of the day - better even than needlework.
But she was a woman grown now, so when Sansa had come upon a tangle in the back of her hair that she had no hope of reaching, she had risen to go in search of a maid who might help her. Instead she had found her lord husband looking at her fondly from the doorway of their solar. "Sansa," he said simply, and gave a little mock bow. Surprised, she wondered how long he had been there, watching her struggle to reach her longest locks, more than halfway down her back now. He has probably been here watching and snickering the whole time, Sansa decided, the brat. Just like Arya.
"My lord husband," Sansa returned (she sometimes called him that only because she could), turning the corners of her mouth downward in a little pout, "I do hope you haven't been laughing at me. It is unbecoming for a man to find mirth in his lady's misfortunes."
Tyrion laughed well and truly now. "If a tangle in your hair can be counted among your misfortunes, Sansa, then you must have thusfar lived a very fortunate life indeed." Sansa did not for a moment doubt that he knew he knew his words were untrue even as he said them. Then he was looking at her searchingly, intensity alight in his eyes, but she did not flinch. Tyrion must have been satisfied; the look was gone as quickly as it had come.
He nodded to the chair from which Sansa had just risen. "Will my laughter sting less if I help to remedy this misfortune that has befallen you?" he asked, taking the brush from her hand. "It has been a long time since I last brushed a lady's hair." Sansa knew there was only one other whose hair he might have brushed and silently appreciated that he might speak of her, if only in the vaguest sense. "But I suspect I am just the right height for the job."
So Sansa sat.
His fingers were blunt but gentle as they moved through her hair, stopping here and there to work out knots even Sansa herself had not found. Last week, Sansa's handmaidens had pulled her hair into an updo of elaborate braids, and Sansa had worn them for days, finally letting her hair down only this evening. Now it was a mess, and her scalp ached from the way the braids had pulled, although she had not noticed the pain while she had worn the style.
Nothing had ever felt half so good as this, Sansa decided as Tyrion's fingers began a slow massage of the back of her head, and completely by accident, she let out a little groan of appreciation. Tyrion's fingers stopped moving for a moment, and embarrassed, Sansa covered her mouth and giggled, feeling both a little girl and more of a woman than she had ever been. "Forgive me, that was so unladylike!" she gushed, even as she knew Tyrion could scarcely care less for how ladylike she was. She said these things now mostly because she was used to saying them, and it was easier not to try hold them back when they came so readily to her tongue. "But it feels so good. How is it you've never shared this particular talent with me before?"
"There is nothing to forgive, sweeting," Tyrion said, his voice warm with an affection he had never put into words, but that Sansa recognized all the same. She could feel his presence behind her, even when his hands left her hair; he was not unlike a small fire, her husband, with the way the warmth from his body seeped into hers now, and Sansa shivered despite feeling warm. "And as I've already said, I've not had many occasions to brush a lady's hair. How was I to know I'd be any good?" Tyrion chuckled. "I wager you'd be singing a different tune if I'd accidentally ripped out all your hair and left you bald."
And then his fingers were brushing along her neckline. It was an innocent movement, she knew, meant only to sweep her hair over her shoulder so he could continue brushing it, but the touch shot a line of fire up her spine. If it was ever true that northernwomen are made of ice, then I should be melting, Sansa thought somewhat hysterically, and she couldn't have said how it happened, but suddenly her hand was covering Tyrion's smaller one, holding it there, pressed to her neck, a firebrand against her skin. She did not care that it was his hand held against her neck; to Sansa, it was as if she was marking him as hers - though she thought she might gladly be his as well.
Met with an undeniable urge to look her husband in the face, Sansa twisted in her seat so that she might read him. Was her touch burning him as his was her? Had it always? (Yes, a voice inside her whispered, but it if had, he had never let on.) Whatever the answer, on his face Sansa saw only confusion. Tyrion's palm was growing sweaty against her neck; it was then she knew she had him. He was nervous. Perhaps even afraid, his fingers fidgeting against her own.
He did want her, then, she recognized, but he was afraid to take her - to even really touch her. Never would unless she asked. Somehow that made Sansa want him all the more. That she had to want him in order for Tyrion to allow himself to want her; it was intoxicating. Sansa had only ever made one choice in her life, really, and that was to remain wed to her lord husband of Casterly Rock; it was only fitting that this would be her second.
She was not touching his face, but her eyes would not allow Tyrion to look away as surely as if her hands had anchored him there. Sansa wet her lips; she was not made for such advances, and her tongue felt clumsy in her mouth as it tried to find words. "Tyrion," she said his name slowly, tasting it, forcing herself to feel the similarity to his father's, thanking the Seven this was a different man. "I want you to..."
What did she want? Sansa was familiar enough with what went on in the bedroom - she may have been a maid, but she was not a child - but knowing it and saying it aloud were very different things. It all sounded so vulgar. She couldn't say it, was not even sure that that was what she ached for. But she was sure that she wanted Tyrion's hands on her; that was not so unfamiliar. She wanted to share in his warmth. Sansa brought her other hand up, cupped his cheek. "I want you to share your bed with me, not just in name, but in truth."
For a moment Tyrion did not seem to have heard her, but then he regained himself, flinching back as if he had been struck. Sansa moved with him, her hand still trapping his against the back of her neck - she had won this struggle, although Sansa suspected her husband could have put up more of a fight had he been so inclined. Was he angry? She didn't know, as they breathed together in the silence of their shared quarters. "Sansa," he said, turning his face away from her so that it was half obscured in dancing candelight. Her fingers trailed lightly along the cheek closest her - there was stubble there, and the scar, that terrible wreck of his nose, all a comfort to her in their familiarity - but she could not see his eyes, expressive as they always were in their two-toned way.
"You don't know what you are asking for. I - you have seen me, Sansa. If you are lonely - if it's company you seek -" he swallowed thickly, forcing out words that obviously would have rather stuck in his throat, "I can arrange for that. The gods know I could hardly fault anyone else for taking measures to relieve themselves of their loneliness when I once could have single-handedly kept the entire whoring population of King's Landing afloat." Tyrion flexed the fingers of his free hand, and Sansa recognized jealousy, frustration, although he otherwise showed no signs of either.
"I have killed, Sansa," he said then, and whether he might have been grinning or grimacing, Sansa could not tell. The lighting was poor, and the two expressions were, on Tyrion, not always far off from one another. "There was a woman, your handmaiden, back in King's Landing." He stumbled, did not finish the story, though Sansa thought she knew where it was going. "I - I am not a good man. I am not - what you deserve."
He was babbling now. "I could hurt you, Sansa. You don't know how badly. You don't know the lives I've destroyed - those men on the Blackwater, burned to death, their families without even their blackened remains. I did that. And Tysha, gods be good, Tysha. I should have known, even then I should have known what might my father might do. I might have stopped it, you know, might have shot a crossbow through his belly right then, the moment he put his hands on my wife." He spat the last word with a venom she had rarely heard from him, and his laugh was tinged with hysteria. "But he's dead now, isn't he? How could I forget? I shot my own father. In his own quarters with his own crossbow. I killed him, right after I killed Shae. Gods." Tyrion disentangled his fingers from Sansa's, not roughly even then, and buried his head in his hands.
Sansa had had a handmaiden named Shae once, when she was a prisoner at King's Landing. Tyrion had never spoken the name to her before tonight, nor had Sansa thought of her after her escape into the night with Ser Dontos, but now she knew her husband had killed the girl. Her handmaiden and his father and more men than that whose names she would never know. In battle and in intrigue and perhaps in other, worse ways. She knew it for a truth, for she had never known Tyrion to lie when it would not benefit him.
She should have run then, should have taken Tyrion's warning to heart, should have at least asked why, why the cheeky, dark-haired girl who had once helped her dress, but there was a Stark stubbornness in Sansa (the same one that got Father killed, she thought, and Robb, and maybe she would be next) that left her feeling rooted to the chair. The war had forced them all to do things they regretted; not even Sansa had been spared. And despite what her husband had said, she could not believe he would hurt her. Not him, whose fingers had felt like hot stones against her aching scalp not five minutes before. Who had been the only one to save her from Joffrey's cruelty when she had been surrounded by a hall full of knights sworn to protect her.
"Shhh," Sansa soothed, "shhhh," touching the crown of his head lightly, the way her mother had when, as a child, Sansa had been too distraught to speak. When her husband looked up at her, his mismatched eyes clear, Sansa could not find it in her to doubt herself. "I am a woman of twenty years," she said, looping her arms about his neck, "and I know what I want."
Something inside her that Sansa did not recognize took over then, and she covered Tyrion's mouth with her own. She could feel where the chunk of his lip had been shaved off during the battle with Stannis' fleet, and he tasted as if he had been drinking, but despite all his protestations, his mouth responded eagerly enough, opening for her kiss. "Do you think I am still the girl you wed at King's Landing?" she whispered against his lips, kneading her fingers into his shoulders, tight with tension.
"No," Tyrion said, "no," and there was hunger in his voice, something Sansa had only ever heard the barest hint of before. She shuddered against him while his hands fluttered around her, not daring to settle in any one place. It frustrated Sansa - how could he not know how she ached for his touch? - and endeared him to her at the same time, so much so that she finally caught his palm between her own and threaded their fingers together, laying their joined hands over her thudding heart, scant irrelevant inches from her breast.
Staring at their hands, Tyrion let out a shaky breath, almost a laugh. "No, that girl was but a shadow; my family had stripped all the life from her." He was right; Sansa had been afraid then, not only of him, but of everything. How exhausting it had been, to live in such fear; she could not have wanted anyone. "But you are now a woman - and my wife," he said finally. " I trust you. More's the pity if that means trusting myself."
Her eyes drawn to what she knew to be an erection straining against Tyrion's linen breeches, Sansa found it difficult to believe he thought it such a pity. It was the first time a man's arousal had ever been so evident to her, and to think that she had inspired that - she had known she could, of course - but...
Sansa's stomach did a strange little flip. It was not unpleasant, and she smiled into Tyrion's kiss. "It does," she said decidedly, pulling away and nodding sharply.
That must have settled the matter, as Tyrion kissed her in earnest then, the hand over her heart moving down to rest firmly on her breast and the other nesting in her hair, freshly brushed and already getting mussed again. With Tyrion's teeth scraping gently against her bottom lip and something between a purr and a growl in her ear - perhaps it was from the bedroom that the Lannisters took their sigil - she found she didn't mind. Sansa had once found it terrifying to think of men desiring her in this way, to look into their their eyes and imagine the things they wanted to do to her, but this was... different. Knowing what she did to Tyrion, knowing that, for her, he would restrain himself, left her undone in a way she had not always thought possible.
Mine, the voice inside her whispered, as she walked him backward toward the bed.
It was an awkward thing when her husband walked backward; truth be told, it was an awkward thing to watch him walk at all. More than once he stumbled, his blunt fingers fisted in the fabric of Sansa's shift, and she had to steady him, but even that contact served to further her desire. This was her husband, with his twisted legs and his clumsy movements, and she would have not have done away with even a bit of it, for then he would not have been Tyrion - her Tyrion - the man she had chosen.
The bed was built for a man twice his height, and Tyrion had to turn to scramble up on it like a child. Once he sat atop it, Sansa folded her legs beneath her and faced him. Then, in one swift movement, before the seeds of self-consciousness had time to plant themselves, she drew her shift up and over her head and, for the first time, sat in front of her husband entirely exposed. The air in the room immediately chilled her bare skin despite the fire burning cheerily away in the brazier, and goosepimples rose on her arms. Sansa fought the urge to cross her arms over her chest and rub out the chill; she would not cover herself tonight.
Then Tyrion's hands were on Sansa's arms for her, as if he had known her discomfort before she had even had a chance to voice it, rubbing vigorously up and down until the gooseflesh had gone, and her skin was smooth again. "The girl I married would never have been so bold," he told her, appreciation in his voice. "Nor so cold; she might even have been ice herself." He lowered his voice, whispered conspiratorially, "Do not tell her, but I think I prefer this woman." As her husband leaned down and mouthed just below her collarbone, Sansa thought she did too.
She stopped him anyway, her hands going to the hem of his tunic, asking permission. As predicted, Tyrion froze, then reached for the candle nearest their bedside. He meant to blow it out, she knew, as if the cloak of darkness could shield Sansa from what he really was. As if she wanted to be shielded. She fixed her eyes on him, so that he might recognize the truth. "I would like to look upon your body." Sansa's voice was level as she said the words.
Again there was confusion on Tyrion's features. "You know, Sansa," he sighed, somehow managing to sound put-upon even while in bed with his beautiful and naked wife, "I am half-tempted to take back what I said about trusting your judgement. There is nothing anyone could wish to see under here; trust me, I am faced with it every morning when I dress."
She snorted and again tugged on his tunic; Sansa would not be drawn into his self-pity tonight. "It cannot be any worse than your face," she said, with a smile to soften her words, "and I look upon that every day. You tell me you trust me - then trust me in this. I will not laugh, and if I do, then I will..." Sansa paused,chewing her lip, swollen from Tyrion's kisses. What could she say that would convince him, that would make this moment like any other between them? "Then I will read your copy of the Lives of Four Kings from cover to cover. I swear it." She smiled triumphantly.
For a moment, Tyrion looked dumbfounded - Sansa took that time to marvel at her ability to render him speechless - and then he chuckled to himself. "You know me too well, Sansa. My weaknesses for beautiful young women and dusty old books, you've exploited them both this evening." But exploitation worked - Sansa had learned that much from Petyr Baelish before she killed him - and this time, Tyrion allowed her to pull his tunic over his head without complaint.
It was not a handsome body, but Sansa had known that already. His limbs were too short for his torso, and his head looked even odder sitting atop it all; still, none of that stopped Sansa from going to work on the strings of his breeches. Her fingers were so deft from years of needlework that they knew what they were doing without any help from Sansa, and she instead focused her attention on Tyrion's body - she did not even have to force herself not to look away - willing him to understand that she could look at it and not find it wanting.
Only a beat passed before Sansa could feel him relax, and she knew she had him. "Thank you, Sansa," he said, and it was so simple and so beautiful she thought she might cry, but instead she leant down and pressed a kiss to the spot where his shoulder joined his neck. When he shuddered at that, her lips found the wreck of his nose, caressing lightly where there had once been cartilage and bone. Now there was left only a hole in his face, but as with her nightmares, it did not trouble her as it once had.
And then finally, she pressed her lips against where his manhood was straining to free itself from his undone breeches, because that was a part of Tyrion too. He may not have been handsome - perhaps he was right and he was not even a particularly good man - but he was sometimes sweet and always funny, and most importantly, he was hers.
And she wanted him.
At the feel of Tyrion's fingers on her chin, Sansa raised her head so they were again at eye level. He was drinking her in openly now, she could tell, allowing himself to appreciate the curves that had come to her with womanhood. Again he growled in the back of his throat, equal parts gentle and fierce, but all lion - albeit a little one - and the pinched feeling in her belly unfurled into something more, something urgent. "Tyrion," she said, plaintive, and he finally, finally, took that as his permission. His hands were on her, seemingly everywhere at once, following the soft lines of her curves with no thought to where they might lead, cupping her small breasts, running through her hair. Sansa might have told him to slow down, take his time, that they had the rest of their lives to explore each other this way - and they did - but Sansa knew enough of life to make no assumptions about how long it would allow them. She would take what she could from the moments she was given.
When Tyrion nestled his head in the crook of her shoulder, resuming the movement of his lips on her collarbone, it felt like he was telling her a story only she could hear.
She had heard much and more about bedding, but Sansa had never heard about any of this - what came after the bride was carried upstairs and before the actual joining. Her whole body was flushed, Tyrion's heat hers as well now, and when his fingers traveled down there, she realized they were good for more than just brushing hair.
A little over two months later Sansa placed her husband's hand on her belly. It was flat still, but would swell soon enough with the new life growing within her. With their fingers threaded together, she could feel Tyrion's pulse begin to race, and she held on tighter, anchoring him there.
There were many things Sansa could have said, pretty words about how this child would be hers, would be theirs, dwarf or no, about how little she cared for whether it was born with its mother's features or its father's, but she knew it was not for her treatment of the child that Tyrion worried. Sweet assurances and promises she could not keep would do no good here, and Tyrion had never been one to need things spelled out for him, so for a long time, Sansa was still.
In the end she settled for a simple truth, the only one she could offer. "The maester says it is a boy."
Tyrion looked terrified, but her mother had once told her all new fathers did.
End.