Ch 10: August 2013: Still Into You
"Hey, lemme see your schedule. Do you need the laptop?"
"Nah, Mom printed it before we left yesterday," Ned said. He brushed wavy brown hair out of his face and then pulled his messenger bag up from the hardwood floor. After a few seconds of pushing papers around, he smoothed out the crinkled schedule and handed it across the coffee table to his cousin Val. He didn't notice the slightly disgusted face that she made watching him smooth out the schedule. She was a year younger than he was and even more of a surprise to Jon and Ygritte than Ned was to Robb and Jeyne. "I think she still is under the impression that it's how it was twenty years ago, ya know? Standing in line for hours at the registration building to sign up for classes and using punch cards."
Val rolled her eyes at him. "She knows it's done online now, stupid. Aunt Jeyne's just worried. Believe me, it was even worse with my dad when I started classes earlier than everyone else," she said, then looked down at his schedule. "Ugh, gods, Ned! I can't believe you were able to get into one of Tyrion Lannister's history classes your freshman year. You know how lucky you are? From what I heard last year, there's a waitlist of seniors that aren't able to get into his seminars."
She passed the paper back to Ned, who snatched it out of her hands quickly with a smirk on his face. "Well, I guess I'm just lucky then," he said.
Not a second had passed until they heard the front door open, slam shut, and then another voice joined the conversation. "I heard that luck had nothing to do with it!" A female voice yelled from the other room, one they both quickly recognized as their younger cousin Katie. A second later they heard the front door slam shut and Katie walked into the family room like she owned the place.
She walked over to the reclining chair next to the couch, let her backpack drop to the floor, then climbed up and sat with her legs crossed under her. "I heard," she repeated, louder than she needed to, "that it had nothing to do with luck and everything to do with -"
"Katie!" Sansa called from the doorway. She stood there with Margaery and all their overnight bags. "What have we told you about spreading rumors like that before?"
Katie said a quick apology as Ned and Val rushed over to hug their aunts and say hi to their younger cousin Alen, ten years old now. They both doted on him whenever they saw him, and he was well aware that he'd leave this weekend with a belly full of ice cream and pockets full of candy. They were interrupted by a cell phone alarm.
"Oh, crap," Margaery said. She grabbed her phone out of her back pocket and swiped to stop the alarm. "Medicine time. Sansa, do you mind grabbing my purse out of the car? I think it's behind the driver's seat." Sansa nodded and rushed off to the car.
Margaery had woken up that day, a few hours after Jon had screamed down the hallway for help. It took about two weeks until she was finally cleared to go home. The cause of her blood loss was never fully explained, but subsequent weekly doctor's visits afterwards quickly had her diagnosed with Sheehan's Syndrome - a pretty rare disease, at least nowadays in modern Westeros, caused many times by a large blood loss or low blood pressure during delivery, which ultimately harms the pituitary gland. It wasn't life-threatening, but she would always need to be monitored closely, and had to take a daily cocktail of different steroids and thyroid hormones.
It was annoying to keep track of all the medicine and routine endocrinologist appointments, but there'd been nothing she wouldn't have done to ensure she had years and years of life with Sansa and her children ahead of her, even though Sansa still mispronounced the names of her medicines and worried constantly about it she was getting the right dosages, but she loved how much she'd thrown herself into research about the disease, practically knowing more than Margaery herself, and how she always attended fundraisers and group meetings with her.
XxXxX
"Who'd have thought that after all these years we'd be back at the same place?" Sansa asked. She looked around the kitchen table, where all the "grown-ups" were sitting now.
Soon after Sansa and Margaery had arrived with Katie and Alen, Ned and Val had printed off the lists of books for their classes and walked off towards campus, Val saying she'd show him where everything important was, and Katie tagging along with them, desperate to be included in her older cousins' activities.
"I know," Robb agreed. "Thinking back though, it makes me a little worried to think of what sort of trouble Ned is going to get himself into his first year."
"Can't be any worse than our first year," Jon said. "Remember, you, me, and Theon all in this house? Regular Animal House 'round here until Sansa showed up."
"Yes, I'm sure that's exactly what it was like. I don think you need to worry though," Sansa replied.
Robb shook his head. "You say that now, but just wait three more years until Katie is here."
"I mean it. Especially with Rickon and Shireen living here there'll probably be a lot less monkey business than when it was just us."
"I guess you've got a point," Robb said, nodding in agreement. "I'm surprised just about every day that he's got a real job. Anyone who knew him at thirteen would've thought he'd choose to spend his life living in the forest with a pack of wolves."
Margaery laughed at that. She'd met Rickon early on in her relationship with Sansa and that was pretty much her evaluation of him at that time. "Well, Shireen does a good job at keeping him grounded, and I think his job is quite enough adventure for him."
Everyone at the table murmured in agreement. They'd all been worried when he had decided to go to firefighting school right after high school graduation, but no one could say that they were surprised.
After a bit of silence, Robb pushed his chair back from the table, announcing that he was going to start getting food ready for the grill, and asking for any volunteers. Sansa and Jon said they'd help, while Jeyne wrangled Ygritte into helping unload more of Ned's things from the mini-van. Margaery mentioned she was going to take a quick walk to the coffee spot, since she'd driven the majority of the way from Kings Landing and wanted to stay awake until a decent hour.
XxXxX
Sansa was startled when she heard the door to her old bedroom creak open. She hadn't closed it when she'd come up here after helping Robb with some dinner prep, but she remembered that many of the doors in this old house had a habit of closing on their own. She bent over to look back through the window, and saw Margaery standing in the doorway, cup of coffee in her left hand.
"I have been looking all over for you. I should've known you were up here."
"You really should've," Sansa teased. "You can come in you know. I won't get in trouble for having a girl in my room."
Margaery crossed the bedroom, pushed the window frame up a tad higher, and climbed through onto the roof, letting out a loud groan when she sat down on the shingles next to Sansa.
"It's not quite as easy as it was twenty years ago, is it?"
Margaery laughed. "You're damn right it's not. Shit, Sans, has it really been twenty years?"
"Almost on the nose. Gods, I remember sitting up here, thinking all about how life was going to be different from then on..."
"And then?"
"And then I saw you," she paused, leaning down to quickly kiss Margaery's cheek. She saw the confused look she was giving her. "What, you don't remember? It was hot as the seven hells in this room, so I climbed out the window and sat right here, drinking a coffee from that place I worked at before the newspaper, just taking in the scenery. Then, all of a sudden, I looked over into the co-op backyard and there you were." Sansa looked toward the co-op backyard and pointed at the garden that was still there.
"I don't know how you've forgotten, I remember it like it was yesterday. You'd come out of the garden, carrying a basket of flowers and wearing a printed floral dress to match. You even waved at me, then took off your ridiculously large sunhat," she continued, reaching to grab Margaery's hair and gather it around one shoulder. "You had this wavy long hair that bounced around your shoulders and I very distinctly remember thinking that you were the most gorgeous creature I'd ever seen."
"Well, I remember the look on your face when you came to our welcome week party and encountered Renly and Loras at the door."
"Don't make me remember that! It was so embarrassing."
"You handled it wonderfully, dear," Margaery replied. "Especially when you realized Renly was a Baratheon."
"The best Baratheon," Sansa mumbled, and then saw the look on her wife's face . "What? Mags, it's true. Him and Gendry... okay, Myrcella is fine. And I guess Loras is now technically a Baratheon..."
"I'm not arguing... you wanna know what else I remember?" Margaery asked. She moved her coffee cup to the other side of her, then took Sansa's hand and laced their fingers together.
"Hmm?
"That party, sitting out on the porch swing with you and hearing you describe Winterfell to me. I think that was when I realized you had me. It really took all of my willpower not to kiss you senseless then."
"Just think about how lucky you are that now that you don't have to use that willpower anymore and can kiss me whenever you want."
"Like now?" Margaery asked, her eyebrow quirking up in reply. Sansa ran her hand up Margaery's arm and shoulders, cupped her face and nodded, bringing her closer until she could feel her breath on her face, then quickly darted her eyes up to Margaery's eyes, then her lips, before -
"Ugh, gross, Aunt Sansa!" They both whipped their heads forward and down, and saw Ned, Katie, and Val looking up at them from the backyard.
"Yea, mom, get a room," Katie added, obviously amused with herself.
"Shut up, Katie!" Ned yelled, playfully covering Katie's mouth with his hand. "That's my window they're sitting next to!" Val stood on the side, unable to control her laughter.
"You better all be quiet or else no one is gonna get any hamburgers!" Robb yelled from the back deck. They couldn't see him from the roof but they could smell the burgers that were hopefully close to being done. The group of kids, all grown up and some almost there, run towards the deck.
"Come on, Sans," Margaery began, "Let's go. If we sit here any longer we're gonna have that black shit from the shingles all over our pants." She grabbed her coffee and climbed back through the open window into the bedroom. Sansa climbed through the window and Margaery immediately pulled her towards her, set the now empty coffee cup down on the desk, and let both her hands go around Sansa's waist.
"You know... they can't see us now..."
"Mags," she said in a mocking stern voice, "We can't do that here."
"Never stopped us before."
"Point taken. But this was my room before. Now, it's Ned's, and he's already worried about us defiling it. You don't want him coming up here to check and bursting in on us, do you?
"Fine, but I'm getting a rain check," Margaery replied, winking at her. She moved her hands from Sansa's waist and took her hand instead, leading her towards the stairs. "Just be glad that after twenty years I'm still into you."
"Oh, Mags, I know damned well you're still into me."
Margaery looked over just in time to see Sansa with a shit-eating grin on her face, wagging her eyebrows the way Theon used to when he made some equally as pervy joke. She got zero reaction from Margaery.
"Oh, come on. That was funny! You know, Theon would've high-fived me for that one."
Margaery just rolled her eyes and continued downstairs. "Let's go get dinner, love," she paused, "And maybe later I can show you just how much I'm still into you."
Sansa laughed, turning around to shut the door on her old bedroom, and followed her wife downstairs to her family, children, and best friends.
This chapter's song is Paramore, Still into You.
In other news... it's done! I'm so amazed at all the positive feedback I've received from this story. I hope everyone is glad with the route I took :) And check out some of my other stories, if you're so inclined. There's some more Sansa/Mags in there.
-Jessica