Chapter 29: Sansa
May
There were three things that Sansa liked about Ned Dayne. (Well, more than that, but three things that made her feel particularly warm and fuzzy.)
The first was a silly one—he had a tendency for over-dramatic chivalry. She blamed Dornish passion; he blamed her. At first, she had thought that it would get old when he would insist upon opening doors with a bow and flourish for her, or pulling out seats for her, or threatening to impale people with his sword for her. But it never did.
Sometimes, she would laugh and shoo him away because dammit she was a modern woman and could sit herself down without help, thank you very much. At others, she would let him take care of her because he wanted to so badly.
The second was one that warmed her, one that made hear heart race. He was always touching her.
Not that way—though she was sure he would do that happily too. Indeed, the fact that he did not touch her that way made her feel, if anything even more cherished. That she was to be respected.
No, it was the little touches. Him taking her hand when they were walking, or slipping his arm over her shoulder when they were curled up on his bed, watching episodes of Lannisport Watchdogs on his computer, supporting the small of her back when she was climbing up the stairs in front of him.
Maybe he would tuck flyaway strands of her hair (growing past her shoulders, at last) behind her ears. She liked it best when he did that, because she would stand on tiptoes to kiss him.
She liked standing on tip-toes to kiss him. She liked that he would pretend for a moment that it was just a peck, something dutiful in gratitude for a kindness, but then his hands would settle on her hips and hers would rise to his (well muscled) chest and the kiss would deepen.
The third was a serious one.
Whenever he thought she wasn't looking—whenever she was absorbed in her research, or on the phone with mum or Jeyne, or cooking herself dinner before Ballroom—he watched her.
It was not the kind of watching that Joffrey had done. Not the careless glances, or the predatory glares that she had once loved but which had eventually made her skin crawl. No. It was a deep kind of watching, the kind that seemed to aim not at the skin but at the soul, and which left Sansa feeling positively stripped bare before him.
But it was not the same kind of being stripped bare as had happened in the park, not the kind that made her want to curl up into a ball and hide away from the intensity of what was happening to her.
At first it scared her almost as much as that kind. At first, she had felt a stiffening in her back, a quieting of her mind and a clammy cool on the surface of her throat. She had been standing in the kitchen, her hair tied as best she could into a Lyseni braid, and she had suddenly felt as though the room were icy cold, even though she was standing over a pot of boiling water.
When she looked at him, she knew her face was blank, she could see it reflected in his eyes.
They were very large, his eyes, blue in some light, purple in others. Dark, no matter which color you chose, especially in his tanned face with his bright blond hair. Brighter hair than Joff's, but darker skin and darker eyes. Eyes that didn't stare at her with hunger and disdain, but rather with calm and contemplation.
She had spent such a long time hoping to avoid being contemplated.
She wasn't a broken little girl who needed to be analyzed. She just wanted to be taken at face value.
And for the most part he did, except when he thought she wasn't looking.
And for that, she loved him.
"You know, clouds are weird."
And then he had to go and say silly things like that.
They were lying on the quad on a Sunday afternoon, blatantly ignoring the final paper they ought to be writing for Environmental History. One of his hands was sitting on top of hers, and the tip of his thumb was twitching over her skin.
"Oh? How so."
"They're fluffy, but they're made of water."
"You're a right genius, you are," she giggled.
"Just some things you think about."
"No. Just some things you think about." She pinched him. He yelped.
"What was that for?"
"Fluffy, but made of water?" and she was laughing.
He made her laugh. Maybe she should add that to the list. She'd never been good at laughter. At fake laughter, yes. The shrill giggles that one expects from one's friends when talking about penises, for examples. But the kind of laughter that you couldn't control? She'd been bad at that most of her life.
She had always thought that it was because she didn't find things funny.
But really, it was because she hadn't met Ned.
When she finished laughing, she stared up at the clouds in the sky. They were perfectly white and fluffy and looked like cotton candy lumps sitting on blue porcelain.
"Now that you mention it…" she began.
"See? I told you! Fuckin' weird."
"Well, I don't know about fucking weird, but I'll give you pretty damn weird. Compromise?"
"You got it."
She turned her face towards him and beamed. She liked that she could beam again. It had happened for the first time a few weeks before when she had been talking to him. She had known it was back because he had stopped in the middle of the word, blinked three times and then tried to remember what he had been saying with a dazed look on his face.
She hadn't beamed in so long, not really. She'd pretended to beam, but she knew it wasn't the same because she couldn't stop men in their tracks the way she had been able to before Joffrey. She had told herself it didn't matter, and that it was not very nice of her to want to beam a man speechless. In truth, though, she had missed it tremendously. And she beamed for Ned.
He was watching her again, a tinge of humor to the contemplative purple. (Purple today. When the sky was this blue, they had to be purple.) He was used to her beams now (or at least, able to maintain a stream of thought through them). They always brought a quiet smile to his face—the one that made her melt a little bit inside. (She imagined that was what she thought must happen to him when she beamed.)
Now was no different. They smiled at each other, utterly blissful. Then, she leaned over and kissed him, smiling into his mouth.
It was a short kiss. It was hard to kiss when you were not quite lying down on the grass, and you were lying at a funny angle to the person you were kissing. But his tongue teasing her lips sent shivers down to the very tips of her toes.
When she pulled away she shifted slightly curling up against him.
His arm slipped over her shoulders, and they looked up at the endless blue sky and the (weird) clouds.
