Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.
Author's Note: Missing scene for 8x02, placed directly after Jaime's trial.
Pelt of Furs
"At some point, it all becomes blurred. This line between them, this world around them, this war raging through them. At some point, it just whittles down to his chest breathing against hers, his fingers along her skin, her mouth at his ear.
At some point, it just becomes them.
'I would wait for you, Jon, if you asked me to.' And it's the truest thing she's ever known." - Jon and Sansa. What they will never say.
"That was poorly done, Sansa."
She slows her steps to a halt at his admonishment, fingers curling and uncurling at her sides. Stiffly, she turns to face him. He's followed her from the main hall after Jaime's informal trial, caught her in one of the hallways leading to her solar before she could fully escape.
Jon stares at her, his jaw clenched tight, shoulders rigid.
Sansa lifts her chin and winds her hands behind her back, a raised brow her only answer.
Jon huffs his frustration, wiping a hand over his mouth as he stalks toward her, stopping a few steps away. "You can't be counteracting her decisions like that."
Her lips purse minutely, and she cocks her head at him, her cool gaze unbothered. "I heard no formal declaration from her concerning Ser Jaime's stay before I spoke – only elaborately veiled threats. I counteracted nothing."
"Don't play games." He takes a step closer, his voice a hiss. "You knew what you were doing. You deliberately defied her."
Sansa's spine tenses at his fervent condemnation of her, the indignation rising hot and fierce in her chest. "I am still the Lady of Winterfell, and those who seek to reside here are my responsibility. I was doing my duty."
"You were being reckless."
Sansa's nostrils flare, her hands tightening behind her back. She doesn't understand his ferocious defense of her, his unquestioning loyalty. She steps closer, her eyes narrowing. "Let's make something very clear here, Jon. Daenerys doesn't blame Ser Jaime for killing her father, a man who – let's not forget – burnt our grandfather alive and brutally murdered our uncle. She never even knew the man, and surely she's heard the stories of his madness. I can assure you there was no love lost there."
Jon sighs, his shoulders still tight with tension, his stare still hard. "What's your point?"
Sansa can't help the slight sneer that graces her face then, her hands slipping from behind her back. "My point is that she wasn't berating him like that because she felt some sense of familial need for justice. It was because the very act put her in exile, because it forced her from her home, forced her to the other side of an ocean and away from a throne that was 'rightfully' hers. She's angry at Ser Jaime, not because he killed her dear old father, but because she was put at a great disadvantage from the very start because of his act. And while I can empathize with some of that, it still stands that she may as well call it what it is and stop using her father's death as an excuse to pass arbitrary commands."
"'Arbitrary commands'?" Jon asks, his voice rising, the anger flush on his face once more. "You agreed with her at the start, Sansa. You condemned him just as easily."
"Because he is a far more immediate threat to our family."
He flinches minutely at her words, his gaze drifting vaguely past her shoulder, and she takes a moment to wonder at what it is that silences him so. But it's gone a breath later, his eyes flicking back to hers with that familiar irritation.
And seven hells, she wants to shake him, or maybe just bunch her hands in her hair and scream. Something – anything – to make him see.
Because how can he not see?
Sansa stops, blinks, flexes her fingers at her sides.
(Or maybe he does see. Maybe he sees better than any of them but then –)
Sansa licks her lips, eyeing him warily. It's a dangerous game he's playing if she's right. And she wants to be right. Because if she's not, then he gave away their home for nothing more than a tumble in the sheets with the dragon queen. He gave away the North for a pair of pretty violet eyes and a warm hole to stick it in.
Sansa feels sick suddenly.
Not Jon. It couldn't be Jon. And yet, she sees the way Daenerys slips her hand through the crook of his elbow with ease, and how her smile lifts just a touch higher when her eyes land on his, and how she inclines her body to his unconsciously when he speaks.
Sansa's trembling suddenly, her skin strangely tight, her lungs clamping down on the air in her chest. She can't stop imagining his calloused hands on Daenerys' thighs, his face buried in her treacherous white hair, his body pressed to her unburnt skin. A hand slinks up to her throat unconsciously, fingers digging into her collar.
Jon eyes the motion, moving to step closer, but Sansa holds a hand in the air, stopping him. "Don't," she whispers, almost seethes, swallowing tightly.
Jon's shoulders slump slightly, his brow furrowing. "Sansa."
She keeps her gaze cool and unblinking, her hand sliding from her collar back to her side, her palm in the air slowly lowering. She raises a brow in question.
"Why did you change your mind?" he asks cautiously.
Sansa considers him a moment, the dark features, the strong shoulders, the way he gives her his undivided attention, breath stalled in his throat – waiting, but she doesn't know what for.
Sansa sighs, bringing her hands before her, glancing down the stone walls to a glimpse of early morning light breaking in through a far, small window. "I've come to trust those in my service – in our service." She hopes the inclusion reminds him just how much a king he still is to her – even when he drapes the arm of the dragon queen like some precious ornament (maybe especially so then). She licks her lips and brings her gaze back to his. "Brienne has always been truthful and forthright. She's always acted in my interest. I wasn't lying when I said I trusted her with my life. And that means I trust her with my home, with Winterfell." She takes a slow breath, hands folding over themselves before her. "I am not so narrow-minded as to turn away a possible ally when those I trust advise me as such." It's a pointed dig, she knows, but she can't help it. It falls from her tongue too easily, and maybe this will always be the way between them. Quick anger. Quick defiance.
Quick surrender.
The image of his lips, parted and wet, ghosting across her ribs, overtakes her. An image she keeps tucked in the shadow of her mind, lingering behind her closed lids when she drifts her hand down beneath the cover of her furs at night, his name caught behind her clenched teeth when she presses her face to her pillow and pants her silent release.
The only kind of surrender she has ever considered.
Shame fills her at the thought and she takes a step back, widening the distance between them.
Jon eyes her with a hard gaze, a veil of hurt glancing over his features and then it's gone, replaced by the familiar discontent she has grown to loathe as easily as she has their new queen.
"You said he attacked… Father." He stumbles over the words. An oddity in the face of his apparent anger.
"Yes."
"And yet you accept him? At the word of Brienne?"
"As you seem to have accepted him. 'Every man we can get', remember?"
Jon stays silent, eyes shifting between hers, his body still taut like a drawn bowstring. "There were a dozen other ways you could have voiced your opinion, without drawing her ire."
"My 'opinion', is it?" she asks scathingly, taking that step back toward him unconsciously. "Is that what the Lady of Winterfell's word has fallen to? Simply an 'opinion'?"
"Sansa – "
"Oh spare me your platitudes, Jon, please," she spits.
Jon takes a single swift inhale, closing the distance between them easily, his jaw working over his clenched teeth as he variably shakes before her.
Her mouth goes dry instantly at his sudden proximity, her body a tight, stiff line as she keeps his dark gaze – unwavering.
"You are dangerously close to treason here, Sansa, don't you fucking see?"
Her chest heaves, her hands clenching into fists at her sides. "All I see is a traitor king and his tyrant queen. So please, tell me what I should be considering here, if not treason?"
"A 'traitor king'?" he scoffs, his features screwing up in fury. "You don't even – you have no fucking clue, Sansa, no fucking clue what I've – what I've needed to – " He stops, licks his lips, tries to reign in his labored breaths, turning and stalking away from her, stopping in the middle of the hall, ripe with unspoken ire.
"Then prove to me otherwise," she challenges, tentatively walking toward him.
Jon looks over his shoulder at her, his brows angled sharply down, his grey gaze darker than she's ever seen. He heaves a long, tight breath, seeming to consider his words before he lets them taste air. "You have to be careful, Sansa. Far more careful than you are now."
She takes another daring step. She could touch him if she wished, stretch her arm out and graze the fur of his cloak – the cloak she sewed for him those many moons ago in the midst of her floundering, fledging affection for a brother she hadn't thought to need quite so desperately as she does now.
(And not so nearly like a 'brother', as she should.)
She presses her tongue to the roof of her mouth, leveling him with a steady stare. "I've afforded her no less than the proper decorum required."
"Aye, and no more either." He throws her a withering look, turning fully to her.
"And what more should I give? What more can she demand when she already has my home and my people and my brother – my brother – and I… I…" She takes another step, and without warning, they're back to breathing each other's air, and she doesn't understand how they've managed to get to this point again, to this closeness, to this hesitant pulse of space between them – more than an exhale but less than a step – this tangle of air that seems to pull at their lungs, tugging, dragging – mauling them with its intensity – until they're steeped in each other's scent and their skin is singing beneath the madness and every possible way she could touch him is right there in her grasp and –
"But I'm not your brother."
The chasm has never been so wide.
Jon's eyes widen at his unconscious release, mouth opening, and then closing, his gaze drifting down to the floor a moment.
Sansa tastes bile at the back of her tongue. She nods, breathing deeply, trying to stem the wetness dotting the corners of her eyes. "You're right."
Jon's head snaps up at her words.
"You're right, I'm sorry." She shakes her head, rubs at her temples, tries to steady her breathing. "You're right."
Jon's eyes are searching hers, his breath stilled in his chest, something desperate and hopeful seeming to hang at the tip of his tongue.
"My half-brother," she corrects, and she watches as he closes in on himself instantly, his face a shuddered mask of war-worn exhaustion once again, the ire leaving him so suddenly it's like a visible exhale of his body.
Her brows furrow, confused. Why is this still between them? Hadn't she named him a Stark when she spoke to him atop the ramparts of their newly reclaimed home? Hadn't she told him, again and again, that he was pack, he was theirs – Bran's and Arya's and… and hers.
(Maybe especially hers, but she won't allow herself to think it outside the secure blanket of night, where she can stretch her arm out across the empty space of her large bed and pretend.)
"Sansa," and the way he says it has her raising her hackles once more.
She doesn't want another warning. She doesn't want another reprimand. She can't take this burning chastisement any longer without wanting to grab him by the face and… and – shut him up in any way she can (even in ways she should regret but wouldn't.)
"Don't." If the word were tangible, it would be ice.
Jon heaves a single, weary breath.
It makes her bolder, makes her desperate. "When did she start to matter more?" She should be mortified at her choice of words, but she can't find it in herself to care. Not now. Not when he's right there in front of her – right there in front of her – and he looks like the Jon she used to know and yet, nothing like him at all, and she can smell him this close, gods, she can smell him (like soaked wood and harpseed oil) and somehow, there is still a dragon queen between them.
Somehow, Daenerys has wedged herself seamlessly and adamantly between them, and Sansa is left to stare at him from across the chasm, wondering at the distance, mourning his absence, even when he's back where he belongs, back at Winterfell, back home.
Even when he's staring back at her just the same.
The look flickers from his face before she can properly register it, but it wouldn't have mattered.
(Never outside the secure blanket of night.)
"She doesn't," he says lowly, like a secret, like he's afraid to bring it to air.
Sansa licks her lips but doesn't say anything in response, too terrified to shatter this moment, too terrified he'll take it back.
Jon closes his eyes and sighs, rubbing a hand down his face, and he is instantly older – unexplainably brittle. "She's our queen," he says, as though it is reason enough. "And I have already bent the knee." His eyes hit the floor and she should revel in it. She should, but –
Her shoulders go rigid once more, a lance of resentment arcing up her spine in fine trembles. "Before or after you fell into bed with her?" She likes to think she keeps the sense of betrayal from her voice but it's there all the same, rattling through her words like a Northern wind, breaking her down from the stem.
Jon's head snaps up again. He sucks a heated breath between his parted lips. "I'm not having this conversation with you right now, Sansa."
"Then when? When she's already burnt half the North to the root? When you ride south with her for a pointless, bloody throne?"
He pulls his shoulders back, his jaw working. "How long are we going to keep repeating the same argument?"
"Until you start telling me the truth."
She says it on a wild hope. She's just as tired of this argument, just as tired of this tearing, rending reminder of the threat he brought into their home, into their lives, into his very bed (and perhaps that last part shouldn't matter so much as it does, but it does anyway, and she's tired of pretending that it doesn't.)
But she calls him out on his lying because she knows – she knows – he isn't telling her everything. And maybe that hurts more than she thought it would.
She knows he spoke to Sam the previous night. She knows because she had seen him exiting the crypts with his fists clenched at his sides, his brows drown low over his dark eyes, his very bearing, his furious, wounded gait, drawing her eyes easily even beneath the dark of night. Sam had stood lingering at the entrance of the crypts hesitantly, and he seemed to be considering whether to follow or not. She had made to leave her place along the ramparts to find Jon when her sweeping gaze caught sight of Bran staring up at her from his position near the gate, not far below her. Just the subtle shake of his head was enough to still her.
And it wasn't simply last night. Ever since Jon's come home there's been an added layer to the tension between them, and she's had a singularly heightened sense of him, nerves at the ends of her fingertips – constantly – as though something lay thrumming beneath her skin, aching for release.
The way he can't seem to hold her gaze for long.
Yes, there is something he isn't telling her. Perhaps more than one 'something'. And she will have it from him.
"Sansa – "
"She burnt the Tarlys, you know." It slips out of her before she can question it, and then she instantly regrets it when she sees the pain etch delicately across his face. But she swallows it back, presses on. "Sam's father and brother. Burned alive with dragon fire. Before their beaten and surrendered men. Because they wouldn't bend the knee."
Jon swallows thickly but doesn't answer her.
"Who else has she threatened to burn?"
Jon jerks his chin slightly, her name at the tip of his tongue, she's sure, that warning look of his, that dark admonishment lighting his brow and she's aflame with the righteousness again.
"Cersei, we know. That's hardly news. Would she extend the same to Ser Jaime? And what about the wildlings? You know they kneel to no one."
He sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Her throat itches with resentment. "Has she threatened her advisors yet? She's been none too pleased with them lately."
"Sansa." A deep rumble in his throat, his hand falling from his eyes as he levels his gaze on hers.
And there it is.
But she can't stop. She never could.
Her eyes flick between his, her chest heaving. He's so close, so unreasonably close (or maybe she is) and somewhere in the back of her mind there's a thrum of danger beating quietly against her skull.
She licks her lips, tastes the sour air between them. Something settles in her gut, heavy and sharp – not unlike terror (though she is loathe to admit it). "And has she threatened to burn me yet?"
Jon's breath catches in his throat, his eyes widening minutely, his lips parting.
And oh, suddenly – the air winded from her – she realizes. "She has," Sansa whispers tentatively, disbelievingly.
"Sansa, no." He's quick to refute her, quick to step that breath's distance closer, his hand reaching to lift her chin when she dips it down toward her chest, her breath coming heavy, but his touch is too hot right now, too jarring, and she steps back, his fingers slipping from her jaw and yes, yes this is better.
Jon swallows tightly, his voice held tight with a string she dares to call desperation. "Sansa, she wouldn't – I wouldn't –" He stops, licks his lips, tries again. "I would never let her."
"You would never let her," she repeats hollowly, gulping down the dread. "But she would otherwise."
Jon blinks at her, silent, mouth a thin line, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides.
"This is who you brought into our home – into our home, Jon." She doesn't understand the wetness dotting the edges of her vision. She should be furious. She should be shaking with the rage. She should be loud and biting and vicious. But she's shaking for an altogether different reason.
Maybe it's the way his face falls, his head shaking minutely, his mouth tipping open as though to speak but nothing comes. Maybe it's the way he still wears her cloak, and the way her name on his lips sounds so wholly reverent, and the way she can still smell him, always smell him, as though her lungs were already stained with his presence.
Maybe it's the way she realizes – suddenly and irrevocably – that she's in love with him.
"If Daenerys is what stands between us and the army of the dead, then – " He stops, takes a breath, keeps her gaze. "Then let her."
Sansa blinks at him, her lips pursing together.
"Let her," he says again, this time rougher, this time with his whole chest, the breath raking from him. "The pack survives. And you have always been mine, Sansa."
(She wonders if she is wrong to hear the words in an altogether different way – the way she craves, even when she knows she shouldn't.)
Her mouth parts, and she isn't sure whether it's her own mind playing tricks on her or her own desperate yearning, but she swears his eyes trail to her lips – for only a breath – but it's enough.
It's enough.
"She has never mattered more," he says, eyes fervent on hers. "She never will."
Suddenly, Sansa remembers his laugh when she had choked on his ale that first night at Castle Black. And she remembers the way he had promised to protect her, his face a dark, longing shadow in the tent outside Winterfell. And she remembers the warmth of his lips on her brow and the sigh he had braced against her skin and a million more times that he had told her, in soft, unspoken ways, that she was pack. She was his.
(And is she greedy to want to stay his – only his?)
Jon sighs, rubbing a hand down his face, his tired, pain-etched face, that face she has grown to recognize, in shadow and in light, in her dreams and in her waking moments, in her longing and in her dread. That face that she knows – intimately – without ever having traced its lines. The crinkle at his brow, and the crow's feet at his eyes, and the scar stretching down past his left eye. The dimple in his right cheek when he grins – both wholly and secretly – and the lightest upturn of his lips when he mouths her name – her name – like some dark secret, like some whisper of aching revelation.
(Maybe she isn't the only one who reaches across an empty bed at night.)
It's a dangerous thought, one she won't let fully form, because if she did… if she did –
She finds herself reaching for him before she realizes she has moved.
He catches her wrists before she can brace her palms against his cheeks, before she can thread her fingers through his air. He stands staring at her, and she stares back, and she thinks she may have stopped breathing entirely.
"Sansa."
"And what if I told you, you were mine?" The words stain her lips, her air halting along her tongue before she catches it behind her clenched teeth, swallows it back.
Jon sucks a sharp breath in, blinking at her furiously, his tongue darting out to wet his lips. His hands tighten their grip over her wrists.
But this is not the blanket safety of night, and she would rather have him as a brother than not at all, so she lifts her chin and blinks back the salt-sting at the corners of her eyes. "You're my pack, too, Jon."
And maybe she was wrong, because something splinters across his face at her last words, his brow furrowing, his breath releasing from him in a deep, lulling pull. She can see the clench of his jaw when he tries again for words. "I promised to protect you."
"And you have." She hates how her voice cracks. "Can you not see why I would want to do the same?"
He closes his eyes, chest rising and falling stiffly, and if he hadn't held her wrists in his grasp she'd have tugged him to her by now, buried her nose in the hollow of his throat, wrapped her arms around his wide shoulders, felt him breathe against her.
And then he drops his head to her shoulder, his breath raking from him in one long, uneven exhale, and she can do nothing but stand there against him.
"Sansa, please, I can't – I can't do this with you, not now."
She licks her lips, tries to steady her breath, her eyes fixed to the grey stone wall across from them. "Then when?"
He turns his head just slightly, enough that she can feel the hot puff of air he releases against her throat and she sags against him, unable and unwilling to keep the distance between them.
Jon stiffens, fingers curling around her wrists.
"I'm with you, Jon, I'm with you in this, but you have to –"
His soft chuckle startles her, brings her brows down in a sharp, confused angle, and then she's scoffing, rolling her eyes even as her own chuckle rises in her chest. "Don't give me any of that 'before the word but' nonsense," she teases, and it's a strange fullness that anchors in her heart.
Jon goes silent, just breathing against her, his forehead still pressed to her shoulder, his eyes still closed.
Sansa tests his grip, slowly bringing one of her captured hands to brace along his neck, her fingers trembling as they glide tentatively into his curls. He releases a soft hum of contentment she doesn't think he's even aware of.
"I am with you," she repeats, this time surer, this time with steady fingers along the back of his neck and her cheek pressing against his ear when she leans her head against his. "Always."
Jon shudders against her, her wrists still beneath his touch, and when he swipes a rough thumb along the pulse point of her free hand, the slow, tender caress more intimate than any touch she's ever felt before, she sighs against the shell of his ear, his name a breathless exhale.
Something brews in his chest that is not quite sound, not quite vibration, released in a low, throaty hum.
At some point, it all becomes blurred. This line between them, this world around them, this war raging through them. At some point, it just whittles down to his chest breathing against hers, his fingers along her skin, her mouth at his ear.
At some point, it just becomes them.
"I would wait for you, Jon, if you asked me to." And it's the truest thing she's ever known.
Another hot exhale against her throat, his lips just a whisper away from her skin, and she understands, suddenly, without knowing how – she understands. "But you won't, will you?"
You have always been mine.
She can't do heat. Heat is blood and fever and him.
No, give her cold. Give her Stark cold. She will wear the winter like a fresh pelt over her shoulders.
Her hand slips from his hair, his grip a loose clutch at her wrist as she steps back from him.
Jon keeps his head down, even as it slips from her shoulder. He takes a deep breath, pulls his shoulders back, raises his gaze to meet hers.
This is the way between them now. An aching chasm in the space of a breath. The howls beneath their skin silenced and collared. This is what it means to love between Starks, between wolves.
She waits for the night, as she always has.
(A safe blanket to wrap herself in – needful and throbbing and fierce.)
"You said you had faith in me."
"I did." Sansa swallows thickly, eyes never leaving his. "I do," she corrects.
Jon nods, his eyes thoughtful, tender. "I won't test it again. I promise."
Her heart clenches at the words and she can do nothing but stare at him, her mouth parted, her eyes stinging beneath the salt of tears she hasn't even noticed gathering.
"And when this war is done…" He stops, breath halting, words failing him. He looks at the slender wrist still in his grasp, stares at it a moment, and then he brings her hand to his mouth, his lips pressing against the smooth flesh at the inside of her wrist.
Sansa sucks in a breath at the motion.
His mouth lingers there, soft and wet, his thumb grazing up and over her palm as he kisses her skin. And then he pulls back, his lips hovering over her pulse point for a moment, for a blinding, rending moment where she can feel the hot expel of his breath against her trembling skin, and then he's standing straight, releasing her wrists, his hands falling back to his sides as he locks gazes with her.
"When this war is done," he says, and never finishes.
Sansa understands regardless. She nods mutely, her eyes never leaving his.
Because he will not ask her to wait. He cannot ask her to wait.
And even still… even still…
Jon swallows back any other words lingering on his tongue, nodding once, taking a stalling, slow step back, and then he's turning from her, walking back down the hallway where he came.
Sansa stands staring at the space he once occupied, one hand moving to cup the wrist he kissed, her skin still singing beneath his hot touch.
He won't ask her, she knows. He never would.
But she will wait all the same.
She will wear her fresh winter pelt like a true Northerner. And when the sun bleeds through the snow-logged clouds, and the air warms with the coming of Summer, and wolves run free without the threat of dragons in their den, then maybe – maybe –
She may yet call him hers. Pack or not. Pack or more.
For she has long been his.
When Winter has seen its last – she will open to an unending Summer.
Until then, she will wait for warmth.
She will wear her pelt of furs.
She will wait.
She will wait.