Title: Let Me Be No Nearer
Rating: M
Summary: Sansa still likes to dream sometimes, and so does Jaime. Future-fic.
When they first began this, when she first pulled him atop the furs of her bed and twined her legs around him, all but begging him to stay, she had her largest looking glass positioned on the nearest wall. She liked it there- perverse though it was (and she knew it was), she liked to watch their reflections twisting and writhing together, all red and white and gold and perfect, as beautiful as the erotic etchings from Old Valyria that she'd found in Petyr's apartments at the Vale, the depictions of gods and goddesses and heroes, lush women and virile men bathed in an ecstatic glow.
She was careful, surreptitious- she'd straddle him, roll her hips the way he liked, wait for him to close his eyes, and then she'd turn her head and look in the mirror. Beautiful, beautiful- and it pleased her, that after all of the ugliness, the death and blood and agony and gore, she could still recognize and appreciate beauty.
He finally caught her, of course. She expected him to tease her for her wantonness- but she found herself surprised by the depth of his distaste.
(But when she really thinks about it, it does not surprise her at all. She knows how little he cares for mirrors.)
He never asks her to move the looking glass, but even when she stops staring at their reflections (she reminds herself again and again, don't look don't look), it is all he can focus on, and the hardening of his jaw, the narrowing of his eyes, the eventual dwindling of his erection all pull at her, weigh on her until she requests that the glass be moved to another chamber.
She feels embarrassed, deeply ashamed of her vanity, and she even tries to explain herself, stumbling over her phrasing and flushing warm and red until she fears she may suffer from heat stroke.
(He just smiles and kisses her forehead and tells her that he understands, that she is very, very young.)
Perhaps he is trying to teach her something, when he flips her onto the mattress and leans over her back, drawing his tongue over the thick pink ridges that mar the white skin. He finds each cut, each scar, each bruise, and she chokes back a sob for each gentle brush of his lips.
A handless arm, strangely smooth, grazes the side of her neck, stroking the bits of mousy-brown still staining the auburn of her hair. She turns her head and presses a forceful, almost indignant kiss to the space where his hand once was- I know that we're not perfect, I know that we're not gods and heroes, I just like to imagine sometimes...
Her body twists beneath him until they lie stomach to stomach, chest to chest, face to face. She stares hard into his eyes, past the green irises and into the blackness of the dilated pupils. And the reflection she sees there- a lion apart from the pride, a wolf torn from the pack, a disgraced knight and a former fugitive, a one-time bastard and the father of three bastards by his own sister, a man of seven-and-thirty lying naked with a girl of seventeen, a pair just biding time as "honored guests" at the Dragon Queen's court while she decides what to do with them...
He rarely allows her to wallow in fantasy for long- he's abrupt and candid and bracingly direct, and she welcomes it, knows that she needs it. He leans down and kisses her hard, taking care to rub the roughness of his gold-and-silver beard into her chin and cheeks. And it isn't because she's younger and he's older and he has to rid her of her foolish whims- she knows him better than that. When he digs his fingers into her thighs, when he sucks at her neck with enough force to leave marks, when he thrusts into her too deep and too fast, she can hear him echoing her thoughts, just as sure as if he'd spoken aloud- this is here and now and you and me and we must move forward lest we slide back.
For he dreams as she does, and his are far more damning. She pretends to ignore the name he sometimes whispers in her ear, never acknowledges the tiny flash of disappointment in his eyes when he wakes in the morning and finds her in his arms. She knows what he sees when he catches a glimpse of his own face in her looking glass, and she knows how the reminder of his ideal, his beautiful, his perfect aches in his bones.
And so she cants her hips into his, beginning the familiar call and response- "Jaime," "Sansa"- back and forth in an erratic rhythm, quieter and quicker and closer until they pant the names into each other's mouths and she feels the warmth of his release.
They come together in pieces, and they lie in pieces afterward. But there is a strange solace in proximity, and as Sansa gathers Jaime to her and sweeps his shards into a pile with her own, she wonders whether it is really so terrible to be broken.