Chapter nine: Jon

"I'm sorry."

She combed the hair from her cheek. Her dress still burned like fire, and his rage was melting away. Perhaps she was right.

"No. I'm sorry."

The tires ground against the road, and that 'Let Her Go' song was on the radio- probably for the hundredth time that week. He continued on his trek, neither of them talking, both of them feeling bad for turning on each other.

"You hungry?"

"Yeah…" She whispered, pulling sequins off the hem of her dress, littering the floor boards with it.

"What are you hungry for?"

"Pancakes."

"Okay."

5:11 AM

The truck entered the empty town, and was immediately drawn to a diner. It was thirty minutes to opening, so Jon left the truck running and slid out into the parking lot for a cigarette. Dany said nothing, pulling her hair back with a rubber band she found in the center compartment, not even making eye contact when he reached past her for the silver foiled box.

Just as he sat the filter between his lips, his phone rang. He lifted it to his ear, answering before lighting his vice.

"Hello?"

"Jon? It's Cat- where in the world are you?!" Her voice sound more intensely angry then upset. No doubt Theon and Robb had showed up drunk as she was enjoying her ritualistic cup of coffee.

"I'm at the diner off the boulevard, why, what's wrong?"

"You didn't go running this morning. So I assumed you didn't hear your alarm- know what I found?"

"…three empty beds?" His voice went up, as did his shoulders, preparing for the earful he was going to get.

"Three. Empty. Beds. One missing work truck. Two drunk boys. Do the Math." Cat sighed loudly into the phone, and Jon flicked the ashes into the road; counting the broken stripes of the parking SLOTS was better than receiving a lecture. "Jon, you have class in 2 hours, and your father has work in 2 1/2, he needs that truck. When you get back we're going to have a strong discussion."

"Okay," he grumbled, flicking the butt into the road and smothering it beneath his foot, " love-you-bye."

"Bye." The phone went quiet, and he shoved it into his back pocket returning to the truck. Dany was leaning out the WINDOW with a smile playing on her lips.

"What?" He asked flatly.

"Was that your mom?" He pushed her head back into the truck, pulling out the door and hopping back in. He immediately took to rolling up the window, and warmed his hands in front of the heater.

"No. Step-mom."

"I bet she's pretty huh? I bet she gives warm bear hugs and smells like clean linens," Dany whispered to herself, leaning back into the seat and adjusting herself in the rear-view mirror. She pulled out her lipstick and began reapplying it, probably to give her something to do, because they were about to eat, and any other reason didn't make sense.

"I wouldn't know." He admitted, rubbing his nose and staring at the diner's windows. She turned to face him, and it seemed like she was a completely new person, no inkling was left of the girl he had argued with an hour ago. " 's wrong with you? Why are you so happy?"

"I just really like pancakes," she lied, leaning her shoulder on his. He could tell she was thinking about mothers, just from her smile. But that smile dissolved as she looked at the tips of her curled hair. "I never knew my mom. Just that I looked like her… and her hair was silver."

"Me either," Jon whispered to her, staring at the window's again, absent-mindedly rubbing a strand of her hair in his fingertips. It was soft, and she didn't seem to care. "Guess it's a good thing you dyed it."

Her eyebrow arched and she looked at his profile, "I guess now I'm my own person, huh?"

"Yeah," he half-heartedly agreed. The Army was his hair dye, and both of them were idiots expressing themselves, despite any consequences. They were Adults now, they will no longer be what people expected them to be; they would no longer live as their mothers. They were more similar then he knew.

"I like it better brown anyways, you look hot."

"I didn't dye it to please you, male." She scoffed playfully, using his gender as if it were an insult. "Besides, I wanted it blonde."

"Blondes are so overrated," he grunted, pulling the seatbelt from beneath him. Another scoff ensued.

"Oh yeah- how many blondes has Mr. Big-Shot-Stark had?" Dany challenged, and Jon said nothing, but laughed loudly, and she prodded him in the gut. "That's what I fucking thought!"

"Yeah, but I've had way more girls than you had boys," he returned the poke, right in the exposed part of her soft belly.

"I bet you've had none!" She returned, sneering at him while crossing her arms.

"And you less."

She gave his arm a squeeze as if he were just another one of her girl-friends. "You're actually not wrong."

"Are you- no way!" He laughed in disbelief, "you're a virgin, but you went to the club to fuck someone? Do you even know how sex works?"

"How is it conversations always end up with sex? Are humans really that obsessed with it?"

"Answering a question with a question? Are you hiding something?"

"Did you just answer my question with a question? Are you?" Dany smiled her bright teeth at him; she was too nice to be lead astray, Jon saw it as his duty to set her right.

"Listen; don't go to a club to have your first romp - save that for someone special, it's not comfortable for you girls to just go willy-nilly. Didn't anyone ever teach you that?" Oh God, he was starting to sound like Cat when she had the talk with Sansa, and Sansa should count herself lucky to have had Cat to teach her. Otherwise she'd be as clueless as this idiot.

The girl didn't appear to be listening, posing in the mirror with one of his cigarettes between her full pink lips. Jon lunged forward and smacked it onto the floorboards, clipping her nose in the process. "Don't let me ever catching you smoking- I mean it."

"Ow- wha- you smoke them all the time you hypocrite!"

"No, not all the time. Only when my folks aren't around." He pointed his finger into her cheek, starting to sound as tired as he was, warning her in a sleepy-husky voice. "You're too pretty to be smoking. You're too smart to be smoking. Don't let me catch you."

And even though they never noticed, the open sign had been flipped, and business men were filing in. She grabbed his hand from her face, and mocked him, as if he were a puppy. "Coffee? Do you want coffee Jon?"

He simply nodded. Yeah, he did want hot coffee. And bacon. And waffles. "Yeah, come on, let's eat and go. We both have class in an hour."

She grimaced, sliding out the driver's side door after him, pulling on her shoes with extreme difficulty. "I don't think I'm going to go."

"You should. Makes you smart."

"Wow. That was the worst sentence you've constructed so far, you need English 101 more than I do!" She bit her lip, and coyly pushed hair from her cheeks as if she were a cheerleader and he was the football star- they could only ever dream. "Are you going to go?"

"No."

"Then let's not. Let's eat and chat like normal friends-Oh my god." She gaped at their reflections. Both were dirty and appeared as if they were doing a walk of shame. "I look like a hot-mess. It literally looks like we went to that party and fucked people in the dirt."

Jon moved uncomfortably, because he literally had gone to that party and fucked someone in the dirt. "Yeah, we do look rode hard and put away wet, huh? Why are your legs so freaking dirty?"

"Why are yours?"No answer. "I also look like a transient hooker." Still no response. "Wow, you could have denied it."

"What? What do you want from me? A jacket?"

"Please?" She shuffled behind him as he unlocked the truck, and he lifted the seats, digging underneath. "Anything to cover my shame."

"Uh- how desperate are you?"

"Pretty desperate." She answered, rubbing her arms. "Why? What are my options?"

"All that's in here is my work shirt. It's covered in gross-ness and has a big ugly wolf face on it." Jon retrieved it from beneath the work tools, grimacing at the large words that read 'Stark Ranch'.

"You work? What do you do?"

"I just help my dad out is all."

"What does he do?" Her brow lifted again.

"Works on our Ranch and does handi-work for other Ranches."

"Oh."

She took it and slid it on without questioning; it was large on her, ending at her knees. Dany then proceeded to shimmy her dress down until it was around her ankles.

"What are you doing?" Jon looked around the growing parking lot, "keep your clothes on."

"It's scratchy and annoying." She threw it on top of the toolbox. Jon shut the truck door, and immediately ran after her to pull her shirt down in the back after a majority of the parking lot saw her panties. She clearly was at that level of sleep deprivation where it was okay to walk into a diner in just a dirty long sleeve, heels, and a rubber band ponytail. And Jon smiled.

5:58 AM

"How many?" The woman asked with a smile, and neither answered verbally, just lifting up two fingers. She grabbed their menus and ushered them further in, the booths littered with drunken partiers and stern coffee-drinking businessmen.

Jon couldn't even remember ordering, his eyes were so heavy- if it weren't for the cup of coffee, he would have passed out; he laid his head on the sticky table and watched. Dany generously drenched her pancakes, lifting her bacon off the plate and towards his mouth. He didn't complain, taking it as he stared at nothing.

"Daenerys?" A male voice asked, both turning towards it. She tensed up, clenching her fork tightly.

"Um, hello Mr. Jorah… good morning!"

"Is this your boyfriend?" He sounded a little distressed, motioning to the collapsed mess that once was Jon.

"No, this is my friend, Jon."

"Oh! You're Ned Stark's bastard." Now it was Jon who was tense, lifting his head to get a good view of the man. He was older looking, donned a suit and clutched a mug in his fingers. The boy glanced at Dany, who gripped the table with uneasiness.

"I've got to go," rushed out Jorah, leaning down to kiss a shaking Dany near the mouth, "you look beautiful, as always- tell your brother I said hi!"

And he was gone. Jon watched the door for some time. That man knew him, but he had no recollection of him. From the corner of his eye she scrubbed her mouth furiously, diving back into her breakfast with watery eyes.

"You okay?"

"Yes."

"Do you… want to sit over here by me?" That always seemed to make his sisters feel better. But she shook her head; eating her food but not actually tasting it. "Is that guy a pervert?"

She shrugged, putting her lips on the rim of her orange juice. For some reason, he felt angry- because he had tasted those lips only hours ago, and some pervert was stealing kisses. He was like a dog that marked a tree. It wasn't his tree to mark, but since he had, he felt possessive.

"So an abusive brother and a pervert. That's pretty fucked up, Dany." Her eyes met his, she was expressionless.

"A motherless bastard. That's fucked up too."

"Yeah, we're the world's biggest outcasts…" he sipped his coffee, and was quietly offended by the truth. She sat her fork down with a clank, rubbing her eyes with force.

"Woah," he grabbed her wrist with an eerie calmness, "don't."

"It's three perverts, a dead mother, a looney father, and an abusive brother." She yelped at him.

He motioned to the seat beside him, and she was hesitant. "I'm not going to try anything- we're friends now, remember?"

She slid out of the booth and ran to him, wringing his shirt in her fists and crying into it.

She reminded him of Arya, so small, fierce but always broken.

He whispered into her hair, rubbing her back as he had Sansa's the day prior. "You can't let this break you down. You need to fight it."

"Are you supposed to be my cigarette smoking guardian angel, Jon Snow?" She whimpered at last as a joke, cradled beneath his arm with her lip in her teeth.

"What… why did you call me Snow?"

She was quiet, staring towards the window, and he waved away an approaching waitress. "…I'm sorry. It just sort of came out... sounds right, though. Sounds like the name of a hero from a leather bound story book, doesn't it?"

Snow was cold, and harsh, and destroyed everything in its path- always disappearing with the sun. He was snow. Jon Snow. He laughed at it.

"Come on, let's go." He sat down a 20 dollar bill, pushing them out into the aisle.

They were forced to pump gas into the truck, but Dany didn't complain. Returning to the truck with a Red Bull to share, smiling brighter than ever. They drove the truck in front of her duplex, and her brother could be seen from smoking in the lanai with a large man.

"Do you want me to walk you up?"

"No, that'll make things worse…" And she leaned forward, pecking his cheek. He could smell her body-wash and see the sparkles in her make-up. "Bye. I'll be seeing you?"

She smiled, but he could tell she was afraid. He knew it wasn't a good idea. He knew he brother would be merciless. And when he shouldn't have cared, he did. He truly did.

"You sure?"

She opened the door and nodded, waving to him as she slid out. Jon watched her for a long time, only opting to leave when she was safe inside, but the men flooded in behind her, and his stomach was turning.

6:32 AM

"Jon! Where have you been? You're brothers and sisters just left-"

"I know, I saw them." He shut the door and marched past Cat, hobbling up the steps in a drunken stupor.

"Go get dressed-"

"No." He returned from the porch. "I've signed up for the Army. You don't have to deal with me anymore."

"Jon-?" She turned to her approaching husband, who was exiting the door with a mug in tow, and looked to him for a reaction. He reached out and gave Jon a hearty hug, and an even heartier laugh.

"Well done Jon, you'll be the pride of the Starks." He snatched the keys from his boy with playfulness, and Jon felt happier than he had in a very long time. This was what he had waited 19 years for- nothing could upset him.

"Jon." Ned called from the truck, sounding sterner than before, "come 'ere."

And the boy complied, returning to the vehicle that he was far too familiar with. Ned stared him in the face, and a smile grew on his face, "Next time you steal your old man's truck, take this stuff out."

From the depths he retrieved a tiny red dress, and found a lipstick covered cigarette even further in. "Eh smoker huh? Wearing this? She must have been irresistible."

"She was nice girl," Jon returned, eyeing his cigarette. Cat just gasped at the sight of the items, she was a terribly old fashioned woman.

"Oh Jon, tell me you didn't get her pregnant."

"What? No- Cat, we didn't do anything."

"Your knees are dirty and your fly is down, boy." Laughed Ned who nudged Cat and received a bashful smile.

That would be Ygritte, Jon was tempted to say, pulling up his zipper while praying no one else was fortunate to see.

"Make sure you give the young lady her dress back, and don't get shot by her father." Ned demanded, climbing behind the wheel with an audible grunt, "I just buried Lady, don't need to bury my future soldier either."

"I'm too young for grandchildren, so glove it." Cat said, prodding him with a smile on her lips as Ned backed away.

"Ugh! God, don't say that."

"Glove it," She repeated it this time to mess with him, poking his abdomen. "No glove, no love. Now get upstairs and shower, I can smell the hormones."

And he did, running through the quiet house, feeling a little better today. He was so glad he went to that party.