Jon takes off in the opposite direction from the other kids, back along the house and a gate that opens up into a neighbor's side yard, Sansa stumbling after him. They slip through the dark into a back street and then Sansa loses track of where they are or where they're going, all the streets blending together into a dark maze. A few minutes of the wind whipping her hair and Jon pulls her to stop a next to a darkened park. "This should be good," he says, barely breathing hard. "Who was your ride?"

There's a playground just inside the park, and Sansa slumps to a seat on one of the empty swings, curls her fingers around the frigid and dusty chains. "Margaery. But that was her house."

Jon stuffs his hands in his pockets against the cold. His breath mists the air. "Arya said you're staying with your aunt. What about her?"

"I told her I was spending the night at Margaery's." The cold has peeled away some of the peach schnapps' tingling warmth, and Sansa finds herself missing it desperately. Calling Lysa for a ride isn't an option even in the best of circumstances much less late at night to be picked up from an abandoned park, but she doesn't want to admit that to Jon, doesn't want to do anything to look more pathetic than she already has. I can text one of my friends, she thinks of offering, but that would be a lie. She'd had people she thought were friends in her old life, but they'd all shriveled up and disappeared after she could no longer keep up with their lifestyle, and she knows better than to think the people she goes to school with here are her friends.

She looks up and realizes Jon is watching her in the quiet, careful way he had outside Margaery's house, like she's a bird with a broken wing. Sansa tears her gaze away, a cold knot clenched in her gut. After Joffrey she'd sworn she would never do this again, never let anyone see her like this. "You don't have to take care of me," she blurts. "I can get one of my friends to give me a ride."

"Don't worry about it. Robb would've killed me if-" A muscle twitches in Jon's jaw and he shakes his head. He pulls his phone from his pocket. "It's not a problem. Theon was my ride, I'll get him to come pick us up."

Sansa nods, but a lump's risen to her throat at Robb's name, and it refuses to bob back down as Jon takes the swing next to her, hands thrust into his pockets. Cold minute after cold minute ticks by without Jon's phone chirping until Sansa doesn't think she can stand it any longer. She wraps her arms around herself, shoves her hands into her armpits. "Have you talked to Bran?" She asks without looking at him.

Jon is silent a long moment. "Not for awhile," he finally answers. "I wanted to see him more, you know after, but-" a rustling sound like he's shaking his head. "Catelyn isn't the biggest fan of mine."

Sansa remembers that about the funeral at least: the way Arya had clung to Jon with his sling the whole time and the way her mother had watched him coldly, silently judging, silently asking why he'd been the one to survive. She'd never liked Jon. Maybe that was why Sansa had never liked him either. She'd wanted so desperately to be like her mother when she was young; Catelyn who was effortlessly graceful always. Idly, Sansa wonders when that stopped, when she turned into the girl who goes to parties and gets tipsy on schnapps so she won't feel nauseous when guys grind up against her on the dance floor, who ends up in an abandoned park at midnight with a stranger.

Not a stranger. Jon.

Jon slips his phone out to check it, mutters a particularly imaginative combination of four letter words, and stands up. "My place is about a mile from here," he says, running his fingers through his hair. "We can wait there, if you want. I think Theon found a girl so it may be a bit."

Sansa nods mutely, too cold to do more, and stands. They leave the park behind, streetlights flooding the sidewalk in pools of yellow halogen light. Though not the highest heels she owns, Sansa's feet ache almost immediately.

"Hold up," she tells Jon after a few minutes. She reaches up and grabs his shoulder, and maybe it's the last hurrah of schnapps left in her veins, but she can't help but notice how muscled it is, the way his tendons shift under her fingers as he reaches a hand to steady her. And she can't help but notice the way his eyes slide to her chest as she does and the way the platter of her cleavage jiggles as she balances on one foot and then the other to slip off her heels.

"All good?" Jon asks with a faint smile, eyes flicking guiltily back to her face.

"All good," she agrees with a smile of own, heels dangling from her fingers.

It take maybe another ten minutes of walking to reach Jon's apartment. Jon fumbles with his keys when they reach the stairwell, then pulls open the door and holds it open for her. It's too dark to see anything inside until Jon hit a few switches on the wall and light flickers on to show a small but relatively neat apartment, a third of the space taken up by a kitchenette and island.

Sansa uncrosses her arms and rubs her hands together as Jon moves to the thermostat on the opposite wall. She starts wandering around as he fiddles with it. "Sorry," Jon mutters. A second later a gust of hot air rattles the vent overhead. "It'll heat up soon."

Sansa nods absentmindedly, only half listening, still taking in the small space. Outside of the kitchenette there's a vaguely second hand couch, a nicked and dented coffee table, a flatscreen on the far wall, and Theon's Iron Island band posters plastered across the walls. It's a guy's setup: clean enough to invite girls over to, but no real thought in any of the details. But that wasn't fair: was her room at Lysa's really any different? Even after a year it still feels empty and strange, not truly hers. Her room is back in the old house, lying on her stomach scribbling in her diary on her bed or standing on the tips of his toes in front of her mirror to do her makeup before school.

"I know it's not a lot," Jon rubs the back of his neck as he watches her wander around the room, "but it's close to Castle Black. Saves me having to drive a lot."

"I'm not judging." Sansa forces a laugh. "My Berkeley plan died about the same time as my college fund dried up."

Jon is silent as she finishes wandering around the room. "What happened with that?" He asks as she circles back to where she started. "I heard some of it from Arya, but you know how she is with... details."

Sansa bites her lip. She glances at the door beside where Jon leans against the wall, because if she looks at him something in her will crack and break and, though she doesn't know why, of everyone in the world in this moment she doesn't want Jon to see that. "Is that your room?"

He nods silently, and she crosses the room, pushes the door open and slips inside still without looking at him. The space inside is maybe a quarter the size of the pink and pastel blue one she'd had back in Winterfell, his bed taking up a majority of the floor. There's a half open closet next to it, and on the wall are thumbtacked a few of the weird drawings Arya instagrams sometimes.

Something about them makes Sansa tired and her chest ache, and she folds her legs under her and sinks to the floor at the foot of Jon's bed, cool wood knuckling into her back. Jon goes to flip the light on, then pauses. Out of the side of her eye she sees him let his arm drop, and he moves to the foot of the bed. She feels more than sees him slide down to the carpet beside her, legs drawn up to fit in the narrow space between bed and wall.

"Give me your hand," she says, still not looking at him. He hesitates, then offers it, and Sansa draws it to her lap. It's warm and solid, calluses rasping lightly against the tips of her fingers as she ghosts them over his palm. "What did Arya tell you?"

"That your dad had been floating money for his business partner. Baratheon, I think."

"Robert Baratheon." She traces the half circle running from his wrist to above his thumb. It's easier than looking up. "After the crash…"

And sitting with his shoulder touching hers and his hand in her lap, Sansa tells him. Tells him how when her mother had needed the money back Robert hadn't had it, how after the feds shut him down it meant they were never getting any of it back, how it had taken selling the house and cashing in her father's life insurance and every cent they had invested just to cover the clients Robert cheated, how even that had barely been enough to keep them from being sued.

And once she's started Sansa finds she can't stop: she tells him about how even though he'd survived the crash Bran's medical bills had drained their savings dry, how her mother had gone back to work only to find she didn't make enough to cover them, how Arya had almost been expelled from school for getting in fights, how every friend Sansa thought she'd had disappeared like smoke once she couldn't keep up with their clothes and shoes and purses, how she'd stayed for so long with Joffrey before breaking up because she didn't know who she was without him, how she'd had to move in with Lysa just so she could have a shot at the Vale High transfer scholarship and a decent college.

Jon listens through it all without speaking, a solid presence beside her, hand callused and warm. When the words have finally run dry he touches her knee. "I'm sorry," he says, voice soft and hoarse. "I didn't know. I should've been there. But after the crash, with your mom and Bran- I didn't feel like it was my place-"

"I know. It's ok." Sansa gives him a smile; sad and small, but it's the last she has. "You were there for Arya. I don't think she could have gotten through it without you."

"Yeah, but..." Jon's jaw works silently. "Someone should have been there for you."

"I managed." Sansa looks back down at his palm. It is isn't fair for her to do it, not when they were never close, not when he's just being kind (and Jon has always been kind, even if she never bothered to notice), but Sansa pulls his arm over her shoulders and shifts so she fits in the crook of his side. "I always manage."

"Sansa…" He starts, and Sansa thinks his voice may be the saddest thing she's ever heard. She shakes her head into his shoulder before he can say more. She's snug and safe, snug and safe for the first time in a long time and she doesn't want to give that up for something that is dead and gone. They aren't friends, she knows that, she does, but-

"Jon," she says softly, "can we just sit for a little?"

Jon is still a long moment, then nods into her hair and pulls her closer.

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