When the concierge called to let Sansa know that Tyrion's driver had arrived, she took a last look in the mirror.
She made sure her cheeks were rosy, and her lips were glossy. She wasn't positive why it felt so important or why she had donned that unnecessary bit of makeup, but yet, it was. She made sur she had her meter in her purse as well as a notebook to document her expedition.
She had called Theon earlier, when Tyrion and she had parted, to ask him to enquire about the status of her next commitment. She had confided that she may want too audition for a movie that would start at the same time, and her brother promised to look into things, see where they were at, and if she were to want o drop out, what it would mean for them.
She was wearing a dress she liked but which was not promotion-worthy. It was a little thing, red as blood which showcased her figure. She loved it but never wore it for actress business as she found it a bit too revealing and comfortable, two words that should be antithetical but really described the garment well.
She had knee high boots on, and a light jacket. She put on her coat and closed the apartment door behind her as she made for the lift. She quickly found the car and was delighted to see that there was no one in sight, no paparazzi to bugger her.
She climbed and the man welcomed her. They made chitchat as he drove her to their destination, and she liked his humor. There was a decent man in Bronn it seemed, when he was not under his boss' scrutiny and thus did not feel like he needed to act like a complete ass.
He took them to the underground parking, and went with her to the lift, telling her Tyrion occupied the penthouse on the very top and that he would badge her in as the elevator required access clearance for people to be able to go to the last floor.
She was not sure what to expect, truth be told, but Bronn used his sesame, and soon after, they were standing in a corridor with only one door. The man gave her a set of keys and told her he would be waiting in the car when she'd be ready to leave. She thanked him, giving him a broad smile, and he seemed almost surprised, as if he was not used to Tyrion's visitor treating him like a human being.
She went in front of the door, the keys firmly in her hand, and wondered for the umpteenth time how things had evolved from a couple of fake dates to coming to his place to pick up a script and planning some redecorating. As she got no answer, as always, she all but gave up on trying to understand, and let herself in.
During the day, the penthouse had to be very luminous, as it had ample windows everywhere, though she could tell they were some sort of tinted glass, to prevent annoying parasites to try and have a look in. There was a table near the entrance and a bowl with various set of keys. She figured she should do as the Romans when in Rome, or as Tyrion when in his house, and thus left the set of keys in the bowl.
It was warm inside but not overly so. She was able to get rid of her coat and hand it in the entrance, before she went on. She felt like she was entering the lion's den, but felt no fear. The living room was lovely, she thought, with a couple of big couches, and a huge tv set. He played videa games she noticed when she spotted the PS handle. She was kind of itching to go see what he had in his gaming library, but she did not want to snoop. She would simply ask him at a later date, she figured. She was not an avid gamer, but back at Winterfell, not to mention when she'd go to Theon's she was known to have good eye-hand coordination and had played several games herself.
The kitchen was open onto the living room, behind a huge bad, with high stools. She noticed there was no special layout. Here and there, she could see on the contrary a few small stepladders here and there. She thought about Tyrion's family, about his tall brother and sister. She wished she could believe they had told him from an early age that his condition was no handicap, since it could be solved with a few stools here and there, but from what she had gathered and researched on Internet, she had the distinct feeling he must have spent his childhood and then teenage years trying to fit in their world, as they probably never did wonder what they could do for him.
She did not know what he thought about that, and also had no idea how to work it into a conversation… Perhaps if they ended up pretending to sort of date for a decade or so, she would come up with a good way to ask him about that she thought, then chastised herself. What they had was temporary, and she should not plan for him to be there, always. There would be a time when this charade would have served its purpose, and he would be able to go back to his womanizing ways. She'd go back to her chosen celibacy, probably missing his companionship.
"That is pitiful, Sansa, get yourself together." She told herself.
The manuscript was waiting for her on the bar and she saw that he had left a note.
Hello Sansa. I hope you had a nice trip over. This is the infamous script. I wrote down a few things in the margin, I hope it won't be a bother when you read it. Otherwise, the bedroom you want to see is the one on the left in the next corridor. If you're angry, do help yourself to whatever you want. Mi case es su casa. I tried googling it to see how it would be said in Gaelic but decided against writing it down as I'm sure it would not have been accurate. Tara, or Cheers, as you Brits say!
She smiled to herself as she grabbed the script. She could hardly wait to read it, already liking the way it looked, used but not abused, as if it had been read time and time again. Later on she would blame her curiosity for the fact that she sent right when using the next corridor.
"Wow, that is not the guest bedroom slash office," she whispered, as she entered.
It obviously was Tyrion's very own bedroom, and she was intruding terribly. However, she could not help herself, and walked in the room, taking in the scent, which was unmistakenly Tyrion's. It was huge, with several cupboards, more than she had at her place, making her slightly jealous. When she saw that he also had a laundry room, she could not help but picture how she would redecorate it and had a dressing room there, to free some space in the main bedroom, or simply to make more room for clothes. She knew it was obviously not needed, but if he ever got in a relationship and shared his place with someone, that person would need some cupboard space too, and having a dressing room would be a fine compromise. Perhaps she would suggest it to him when they'd see each other again, after apologizing profusely for the fact that she had entered his den.
She walked in the room, trailing her hand on the high-quality furniture. There was another TV there, but there was also a massive bookcase, and for some reason, it did not shock her at all. She remembered when he had tried implying she was a Darcy girl and she had countered about being more of a Rochester adept. The man knew his classics. He also had a very eclectic collection, on several subject, fiction and non-fiction, and she found herself caressing the back of a couple of books she wanted to read but had not found the time to buy.
Then, there was the bed. It was King size, of course, but it did not look like it was eating the whole room's space as those often did if placed in quarters which did not have the good dimensions to hold them. She barely remembered letting of the script and setting it on the bed as she grabbed his pillow, bringing it to her nose.
"What am I doing?" She asked herself, her face still half-buried in the furniture.
It smelled good. She could not pinpoint exactly what she liked about it, but she remembered being with Ramsay and how she hated the smell of his bedding.
"Better not go there…"
Still holding the pillow, she found herself walking to the adjoining bathroom, and she liked the huge bathtub.
She went back in the room, ready to leave it and stop intruding when a thought crossed her mind.
How did Tyrion like his mattress? Soft, hard, in between? Sure, the guest room was not meant for him, but there would be no point in buying furniture he would hate just for the sake of making the room pretty, right?
Carefully, almost religiously, she sat on the bed and smiled.
Firm. That was what the mattress was. It was better for your back even if the first few nights sometimes felt a bit painful. She looked and could not help but notice only one side looked slept in. Sure, the other one was tugged upon, as if someone had hogged the covers, but he was keeping that part of their deal, and was not having tarts in his bed.
Why did she care?
"Enquiring minds need to know," she whispered, as if trying to provide herself a reason for what she was about to do.
She put the pillow back in its place and lied down.
This was a great bed. She put her hands on her stomach, making sure her feet were off the bed, and thought it was lovely. From the corner of her eye, she saw the script she had come to pick up and grabbed it.
The best way to avoid temptation was to give in to it, Oscar Wilde would say, and who was she to doubt a literary genius? She bit her lower lips as she felt like she was pushing her luck and started reading just the first page. And then the second one.
She would have been completely unable to say at which point she had removed her boots, but before she knew it, she was deep into the manuscript. The writing was excellent, totally pulled you in, but what she adored was what Tyrion had warned her about. He had annotated the script with thoughts about how to play certain things, invented background for his characters and others, in order to get a precise idea of how he really pictured it. She understood most of his notes, except for one "Like Shae", which came back every time his character was interacting with a chick who was desperate to get into his bed and he pushed her away, or his character did anyway.
The part he had told her about had seduced her before she had read about it, but now that she had the material in her hands, it felt even more interesting. The story was that of a brooding writer, who had been keeping fans waiting for the release of the next installment in his saga, and the writer hired her character, a woman fresh from uni who wanted to make it in the edition world. She thought she was supposed to help him organize his worktable but discovered pretty soon that she would be his ghost writer as he seemed to have lost his edge. The woman then tried to involve the writer in what was becoming their work, for he was supposed to read everything she came up with, but she had trouble getting through to him.
It went perfectly with the main intrigue of the plot, which had the writer dealing with his demons, the ghost of his past and those he had created for himself by letting people put him on a pedestal and suddenly having vertigo and feeling like a fraud, like the few first successes were a fluke. It all came down to how his father used to treat him and degrade him any chance he got.
She was so caught up in the script, she never heard the front door open.
"Well, well, well," Someone said from the entry of the room. "Behold my eyes!"
She almost jumped in the air and said:
"I'm so sorry!" as she sat down.
Tyrion laughed and gestured for her to get herself out of this tizzy.
"Just what every man hopes to find when he gets home, a beautiful woman in his bed…"
"I really am sorry… I did not mean to intrude, but I made the mistake of taking a peak at the script and…"
"Sansa, stop apologizing, it's okay," he said, coming to sit next to her on the bed. "Though I must tell you something. You apparently don't know where is right and where is left…" He whispered as if revealing the key elements to a secret plan.
She felt most of the tension leave her body and mocked taking his pillow to beat him with it.
"This," she said instead, holding the script, "it is amazing. I'm halfway done, but Tyrion, my Lord, can you speak to the director to see if he would let me audition for the part of Ismelda?"
"I knew you would like it!" He exclaimed.
She fell back on the bed with her hand on her face and said, looking him in the eyes.
"It is positively mind-blowing. There is not a single word that is there that should not be. Everything is so thought through… There so much to unpack, I know I have yet to read it a thousand more time to see all the layers. This is amazing! I do not want to sound bitter, but God, I wished I had been asked to audition, it would have been an honor. It is so good!"
"I should have known you would be a bed hogger," he joked. "But for all your hogging, you are absolutely right. When Varys gave it to me, I think I told him to call Tony to have my trial audition even though I was only a quarter in. When something is great, you just know it, don't you? And you have to jump on it."
She sat back, and realized her hair was a complete mess. She tried to hide it, but nodded along, as she completely agreed with his analysis.
"Do you want something to eat?" He asked. "I'm famished. I need to become a diva, food in the interview rooms was disgusting…"
"I'm so sorry for being so rude, how was your evening?"
"Do you want food?" He asked again. She declined, and he went on "It was okay. You know how these things are. You need to be seen before the movie is made, while it's being made, and when it's done. Since I was doing press interviews, I did not have to care for my image, I only had to be witty, but that was becoming more and more difficult the umpteenth time I was asked a question."
"I know your frustration. They're only doing their job, but sometimes you do think that when they prepared their questions, they must have realized that this item or this one would be something everyone and their cousins would ask…."
'To be fair, I'd rather have a repetitive evening like this one and not one where everybody is trying to uncover my darkest deepest secret."
"That is your white male privilege talking, I'm afraid," she told him. " When you're an actress, every question is coated in layers you never think about. Like if you say 'the sky is blue', there will be a section in the interview where the journalist ponders if you're being optimistic of if you're knocked up and it's the pregnancy hormones talking, or something along those lines."
"I have to say, I have yet to meet one journalist who asked me for my due date."
She laughed as they both got up.
"Are you sure about the food?" He asked again.
"Yes, thank you so much, but Tormund came around earlier with some Scottish dishes. That man will make one woman very happy one day, or he'll be miserable ending up with some woman who does not eat because she's watching her figure. He likes you, by the way," she added.
"Good thing for him I don't watch my calories then…"
She laughed again, and she could see the spark in his eyes as he used his wits with her.
"I will go in the bedroom to make the measurements, while you eat, if it's alright with you."
"Sure. And if you see anything that needs to be replaced, just add it to the list."
"I have one awkward question for you…"
"My favorite kind, shoot," he said as he started moving around in his kitchen, grabbing what he would need.
"In your bedroom, I noticed the stools and the ladder-ish devices to navigate your cupboards. Will you be needing some too for the guest bedroom?"
"I guess so. I mean, we never know, I may need to reach something I'm not tall enough for."
She nodded.
"I call it the anti mirror effect," he said.
"I'm sorry?"
"When I was a kid, growing up, I had to deal with getting things, and that was that. When I moved in my first apartment, it was tailored for 'small people', he said using quotes. "I hated it. I'd much rather climb on a ladder to grab a t-shirt than have my friends feel like their entering a smurf house when they visit. When everything is your size, it acts like a mirror. You may stop noticing it I guess, but everything is reminding all the time of that thing that makes you different. I want none of that here.
"As long as it is your choice and not something forced upon you, it makes sense to me."
He nodded, and she went for the guest bedroom. It was much more Spartan than his own. She took some measurements, saw that a king size bed would fit too, if used with assorted furniture, and that she could probably make the office part of the bedroom still an office, by rearranging the layup. She wrote it all down in her notebook and went back to the main living space.
Tyrion was on the phone and she heard him say her name. She did not ask, though she made a small gesture to let him know she was there. She left and went back to the bathroom to freshen up. One look at her watch let her know it was close to 2AM.
When she came out, the actor was hanging up and said:
"If that's good for you, Tony will meet you tomorrow at 11AM for a reading."
She wanted to jump up and down but went for the next best thing, kissing his cheek while saying:
"Thank you so much!"
"Damn, I need to be nice more often," he joked, looking on the verge of blushing. "Varys was right, you're a very dangerous woman, or a very good one."
"Who says I can't be both?" She asked.
"Good point, as always my Lady. I will be attending the second part of your audition, because Tony wants to see how we work in front of a camera, given the importance of the relationship between Ismelda and Richard for his growth."
"I'm game if you are," she replied.
"You know I'm game."
"I was leaving you an open door to say you wanted to distance yourself in case I was not a good fit."
"You're a great fit, Tony will see that."
"I found your annotations extremely interesting… May I ask though, what does "like Shae" means?"
He sighed and she regretted her curiosity.
"Shae is a former lover. She is a model from Europe, nice I guess. We had a relationship except it was a 'with benefit' thing without the word 'friends' before. I stopped seeing her what feels like a million years ago, but when I was reading the script, well this felt like an appropriate note."
"Thank you for explaining. If you don't mind, I will go now, and try to get some beauty sleep."
"Nonsense, you're beautiful already. Plain old sleep will be enough," he said, and she squinted her eyes before saying;
"Careful my Lord, one might think you speak in earnest and are being very flirty."
"One could think that, couldn't they, hum?" He said and he was not denying anything nor apologizing.
"Do you mind if I keep the manuscript? I would like to finish reading it before tomorrow…"
"Sure, go ahead. I'm quite certain that you'll have your very own by the end of the day."
She said nothing, not wanting to jinx herself, but praying he was right.
"I guess I'll see you tomorrow then?"
"You know you will. I'll be a dick and you'll be the woman who attempt to be my salvation. Wait, that does seem fitting already, doesn't it?"
She smiled, before going to the door, gesturing for him to have his dinner.
She opened the door, and thought about it twice before turning, and saying:
"Thank you, no matter what happens."
"When you get the part, let's make it an argument for you to le me braid your hair," he said, and she laughed again, before saying her goodbyes.
Later on, when Tyrion got ready for bed, he could not help but notice the new smell on his sheets. Plus, there was a smudge of what must have been glossy lipstick on his pillow. He slept like a bear entering hibernation.
Please R&R!