It's Christmas Eve when Sansa wears the push up bra again.
It isn't something she plans. She'd been careful picking her outfit for a day with the family, more careful than she had been for that night at Margaery's: skinny jeans again, but in place of the tank top she goes with a sleeveless top she found on sale, a red cardigan over it, and a plaid scarf looped around her neck. It's closer to how she used to dress back in the old house, before the crash, before she came to live with Lysa. And it's why when Sansa looks in the mirror she pauses for a long moment until Lysa shouts something from outside her door, then quickly strips off the top and fits the push up bra under it, replaces the scarf with a thin black choker.
She regrets getting rid of the scarf as soon as she steps outside, but she's timed it so she's only left to stand shivering at the foot of Lysa's driveway for a few minutes before Jon's battered Chevy pulls up. He frowns at the chatter of her teeth as she opens the passenger side door and slips inside. "I could've parked." He says.
Sansa shrugs and cups her hands around the warmth gusting from the air vents on the passenger side, relishes the tingle through her fingers. Jon has only a vague idea of the horror that is Lysa, and Sansa's stomach squirms with embarrassment at the thought of him meeting her. She changes the subject with a rosy cheeked grin. "How much did the tires cost you?"
"Too much." Jon shakes his head and shifts gears. "They'll get us there ok though."
Sansa settles deeper into the seat as Jon pulls out of Lysa's neighborhood, nervous energy thrumming through her. It's the first time she's seen Jon since that night weeks ago at Margaery's party, and she is all too aware of the shape of him in the corner of her vision, the easy way he leans forward and flicks on the wipers as droplets begin to spatter the windshield. You're going to embarrass yourself, a part of Sansa hisses, and she glances away out the window and to the grey sky whipping by overhead.
The cold had come on early in the week, a chill creeping in from the east coast, and she hadn't looked forward to riding the train. She tells herself that the feeling that shivered through her when she first saw Jon's text a few days before offering to give her a ride up to her family was relief and refuses to question it more than that, because she wasn't that girl anymore, had sworn she never would be again.
Arya always invites me, he'd texted, but I never feel like it's my place. She says Bran's inviting a couple of his friends though… It's not the first time they've texted. All day after Jon had dropped her off after Margaery's party Sansa had told herself she wasn't going to text him, a ball knotting in her gut each time she glanced at her phone's screen and remembered how she'd embarrassed herself. But the day had worn on, and by ten Sansa couldn't keep her fingers away from her phone any longer. Thank you, she'd tapped out, instantly regretting it as a little green check mark popped into existence beside the words.
It'd felt like hours but was probably about thirty seconds before her phone chirped. Don't mention it, he'd texted back, and Sansa had heaved an internal sigh of relief. That was it. They stumbled into each other, she'd embarrassed herself, and now it was done. He would go back to being a stranger from another life, and she could just be the weird clingy girl he'd had to help that one time. And if the feeling that was welling in her chest was something other than relief then she'd swallow that down like she had so much else. She'd tossed her phone facedown on her pillow and tried to focus on the homework spread over her duvet that needed to be done by morning if she didn't want a B in algebra.
But then her phone chirped, and Sansa's heart leapt into her throat as she flipped it over. Theon won't shut up about the girl he hooked up with, it read. She'd worried at her lip with her teeth, a hundred different replies flitting through her mind as she stared down at the phone screen, then eventually typed: guess we're lucky he didn't come back with her last night. It wasn't funny, wasn't witty, and she'd hated it as soon as she tapped send, but Jon responded a minute later and it was easier after that.
She's texted with guys since Joffrey but this was different, giddy and exciting in a way it wasn't with them. Don't be pathetic, she'd tried to tell herself. Jon would never look at a dumb high schooler like her, and she'd sworn to never be that girl again, the one that threw herself at guys, let them do whatever they wanted to her like she had with Joffrey: but it's hard not to, hard not to look over each new text a few times to make the most of the giddy thump in her stomach before responding. She's never been more acutely grateful that the person she's texting can't see her face, because if Jon could see hers she'd shrivel and die. They'd spent the night going back and forth until Sansa had fallen asleep with the rectangle of her phone screen shining on the pillow next to her.
"You sure you're good to ride the train on the way back tomorrow?" Jon asks, startling Sansa in her seat. "It being Christmas."
Last year a guy who was twice her age had sat next to Sansa the whole ride, close enough for her to smell his rancid breath, eyes sliding over her in a way that made her skin crawl. But Jon doesn't need to know that. "I'll be fine." She pats the overnight bag she'd slung under her seat when she slipped into the car. "I've got earphones."
"You may need them sooner than that." Jon frowns at the old radio set in the dashboard and leans forward to fiddle with it. Sansa bats his hand away, tries to ignore the tingle through her fingers as they bump his. Don't be pathetic. "You can stay the night, you know," she tells him, voice carefully careless as she takes over. "I'll talk to my mom about it."
Jon gives her a sidelong look. "Your mom hates me. Really, it's ok. I know Christmas morning is a thing. I'll drive back tonight, and I already picked up an extra shift at work for tomorrow."
Sansa bites her lip as she manages to tease out a trickle of pop music from the worn dial of the radio. Christmas morning is a thing. It had been in the Stark household ever since Sansa was old enough to totter down the stairs as a child. Once she was older she'd always taken special pride in getting up before her siblings and helping her mother heat up steaming mugs of hot chocolate as Robb and Arya and eventually Bran and Rickon came yawning down the stairs. Her father had always been last, and his face would wrinkle in a smile when he saw her. He'd draw her into a one armed hug and kiss the crown of her head as he took his mug. Thanks, sweetheart, he'd say in his warm, gravelly voice. You're already all grown up, aren't you?
And even though that girl is long gone, for a moment Sansa can again smell hot chocolate, feel the rough warmth of her father's arm drawing her snug, and it's like a knife is carving white-hot through her chest, splitting her breastbone in two, and she can't shrink from it, can't run, can't-
"What about your mom?" Sansa blurts, voice tight in a way she prays Jon won't notice. "Won't you miss her if you're working?"
"I talked her into going skiing with some girlfriends of hers." Jon shrugs. "I want her to have something of her own. She gave up a lot raising me."
"It was just the two of you, right?"
"Yeah." A smile tugs at Jon's lips. "We used to get that we were brother and sister all the time. It used to irritate me so much, though I can't remember why now."
There's something steady and warm in Jon's voice, and Sansa latches onto it as she leans back in her seat. "Maybe you wanted them to know. Didn't want to plaster over what happened with your dad."
Jon tilts his head to the side and gives her a strange look. "When did you get so wise?"
A pang swells in Sansa's chest fat as a red balloon ready to pop. She hadn't been horrible to Jon as a child: that would've taken acknowledging his existence in the first place, and the most she'd ever done was feel embarrassed about the weird kid Robb brought with him everywhere. It makes her want to shrivel how shallow she'd been, how self involved, how little she'd known just how hard life could truly be. Would it really have cost her so much to be friendly to Jon? To smile at him now and then without turning up her nose?
They talk for the rest of the drive, an easy back and forth with the radio crackling out pop tunes in the background. Sometimes Sansa dials the sound up when it's a song she likes (to which Jon will dutifully groan in protest), but for the most part it's just him and her and the murmur of rain and tires outside. It's nice, nicer than Sansa wants to admit, the longest she's talked to anyone in months and leaves her strangely warm and prickly at once, like a cat with its fur ruffled.
It's drizzling as Jon pulls into the driveway of her mother's house. It's smaller than the old house, with a tall oak in the front and an unevenly trimmed lawn. "Arya's handiwork," Jon says pointing it out, "she's constantly whining about it."
They've both barely stepped out of the car before the front door of the house flies open and a dark haired blur is streaking down the steps and launching itself at Jon. Jon laughs and rocks back as Arya throws her arms around him. He steadies himself and wraps her tiny frame in a tight hug. "Careful or you're going to crack my ribs."
"You're such a butthead." The fierceness of Arya's voice is muffled by her face pressed into Jon's chest, and she pulls away with a bashful grin and punches his shoulder. "You never come."
Jon grins back and something childish twinges in Sansa's chest at the expression, the fond way he's looking down at Arya like he'd die for her on a pin drop. They've always been like this. You just always thought you were better than them. Sansa reaches back into the car and slings her bag over one shoulder. "Mom inside?"
"Hey Sansa," Arya says without looking at her, still grinning up at Jon. "Yeah, she's doing cooking stuff."
Sansa purses her lips, but tries to ignore the prick of irritation. She closes the car and starts up the path to the front door, Jon and Arya falling in behind her, Arya already beginning to chatter about her soccer team.
Sansa mounts the steps and pushes open the door, and suddenly it's like there's a knife lodged in her chest again. It shouldn't hurt, but it does, a sudden and violent ache. This isn't the old house, isn't her home, the one where her father would smile and hug her hello, where Robb would call her little sister: but that only makes it worse, like this is some version of the world where neither of ever existed to begin with.
From around the corner Bran wheels into view, tall and lanky in his chair. "Hey, Sansa. How was the ride?"
"Good." Sansa leans down and hugs him, tries to push down the clawing ache threatening to drag her down. She tries to think of something to add, but it's been such a long time since they spoke that she doesn't know what to say. "Mom says you're inviting friends this year?"
"Yeah, Meera and Jojen." Bran gives Jon a pleading look as he steps though the door. "Can you talk Arya and Rickon into not teasing Meera too much that she's the first girl I've invited over?"
Jon grins and shakes his head. "I would if I could, but I've been a guest enough times to know teasing is a Stark family tradition."
"Jon!" Shrieks a new voice, and Rickon slams into Jon's legs. Jon laughs and musses Rickon's hair as he falls back onto the couch. A smile plays at Sansa's lips as she drops her bag behind the table. She should be jealous she supposes, but it's a relief in a way not to be the center of attention like she was last year. It had been a long pair of days filled with awkward silences with her mother and passive aggressive spats with Arya. Sansa crosses to the door where Catelyn has emerged from the kitchen, a thin layer of flour dusting the same auburn hair Sansa had before she dyed it.
"Hey sweetheart," her mother says absentmindedly. Her lips thin as she catches sight of Jon wrestling with Rickon, a line forming between her brows, and Sansa can feel something bitter already beginning to well under her mother's tongue. She'd never liked Jon: not when Robb first brought him tagging along one day, not when he'd hang out after school, not after the crash. "Arya said you've already started on dinner," Sansa breaks in before whatever's on her mother's tongue can find words.
Catelyn glances towards her and frowns faintly as her eyes tick over her clothes. The bra isn't as ridiculous under her current top as it had been under the tank top at Margaery's party, but Sansa still stares at her mother, silently daring her to comment on it. Catelyn's lips purse as if she's going to say something, but seems to think better of it at the last second. "You don't need a minute to settle in?"
Sansa shakes her head and slips past her into the kitchen, away from where Arya has piled on top of Jon and Rickon. "What are you working on?"
She doesn't see Jon for the next hour as she works beside her mother slicing pecans and mashing potatoes for dinner. As a child Sansa had loved nothing more than working with her mother, but that was before, and this is now: twice she asks about Sansa's hair, and twice Sansa has to shrug as though she can't remember why she dyed it. She tells her about school, about the teachers of hers she can remember the names of, about her progress on the Vale High transfer scholarship, but the list of safe topics is a little shorter each time they see each other and after only an hour silence has begun to seep into the hollows of their conversation.
They put the chicken in to roast, and as her mother changes clothes Sansa pours herself a cup of cider and sits on the couch with her legs folded under her. The drizzle from earlier has turned into a full blown storm, rain beating the roof like a drum. It gives the house a cozy feel like the kind she'd loved growing up, rainy afternoons that were a chance to curl up with a book warm and safe against the gale outside.
She's sipping the cider and checking her phone when Jon emerges from Arya's room and flops onto the couch opposite her. "What?" He asks after a minute as she watches him with a faint quirk of her lips over the rim of her glass. Sansa shrugs, the shoulder of her cardigan slipping down as she does. "You look different."
"You too." Jon's eyes fall to the bare curve of her shoulder. His eyes flick up to her face guiltily. "You look… happier."
Sansa slips the cardigan back up and gives him a shy, defiant smile. "What's not to be happy about?"
The corner of Jon's own lips quirk in answer, and Sansa wonders why she never noticed when she was young just how handsome he is. He's not what she wanted when she was growing up: not some pretty boy with dreamy hair like Joffrey, but now that she's older she finds it impossible not to notice the scruff shadowing his jaw, the broadness of his shoulders, the faint pearl line of a scar above his eye from the crash she hadn't noticed at Margaery's. It's not breathtaking like in bad romance novels, but Sansa's chest is tight and she can't but be utterly and helplessly aware of how little space there really is between them, how easy it would be just to lean forward despite how she swore after Joffrey she'd never be that girl again, the girl that let a guy do whatever he wanted with her, the girl that-
"Why are you two sitting together?" Arya breaks in loudly. At some point she's come into the room and is now standing in front of the couch looking back and forth between the two of them with a frown. "Why are you two talking?"
"Hush," Sansa snaps glancing away from Jon, instantly irritated in the way that only Arya can make her. Don't be pathetic. "We can talk. We're adults."
"No you're not. Jon is an adult. You're still in high school."
Sansa flushes. The cider left in her cup nearly sloshes over as she sets it down too fast and stands abruptly. "I need to check on the chicken," she says, and refuses to meet Jon's questioning look as she leaves the room.