Jon kept looking at Sansa and not just because he really liked looking at Sansa, but because he was trying to gauge how she was doing with all he'd confessed. Part of him wondered if he should have waited to tell her how he felt until she was more comfortable with the idea of him as something more. Of them as something more.

The other part of him felt that this was Sansa. Of course he was going to tell her. They were always honest with each other – the Dr. Lannister debacle notwithstanding. Jon just wasn't all that great at subterfuge, and when he realized how he'd truly felt about her, all he'd wanted to do was tell her so they could begin their new relationship together. There may have been some projection going on. For how could he be the only one with all these feelings seeing as how close they were? In his mind her feelings had just needed to be uncovered the same as his had been.

They were not completely on the same page, but Jon knew that eventually they would be. It was them; it was them together. How could they not end up together?

He followed her down the aisle at the grocery store as she chattered on about what they should get and he found he was just amused watching her put more food in the basket than they needed for one picnic.

"Jon?" she said as she pulled out some plastic container in produce. "How do you feel about olives?"

"Black or green?" he asked.

"Black."

"No. But not green either."

She just looked at him as she put the container away as if to say 'I am 100% done with your shit' and he laughed. He wanted to tell her – See? Nothing has changed. We're still us.

"Sansa, I don't know that we need this much food," he told her as they looped over to the next aisle and she began to inspect crackers.

She came over to him and peered inside the basket he had offered to carry. It was getting rather heavy. "Yeah, you're right. We probably don't need all that cheese. I'm just so hungry I think my stomach is eating itself. I might have to gnaw on your arm."

"Did you eat anything at all today?" he asked her.

"Very little. My stomach was mistrustful of what I was putting in my body after all that tequila last night."

Jon reached out and caressed the side of her face. "Do you think it will be okay now?"

She smiled. "Yes." And then she pulled out some cheese and then the bag of grapes.

"No, keep the grapes," Jon said.

"Okay," she said with a smile and hurried off to put the cheese back.

He had plans for those grapes.

xxxxxxxxx

Half an hour later, Sansa and Jon were on the beach on the blanket he kept in his car for occasions such as this. With Sansa, there were plenty of them. They'd sat facing one another, their legs crossed and their knees touching as they ate their dinner of sandwiches, potato chips, and pasta salad. They had bought six pack of water and had downed two in quick succession. Then Jon brought out the grapes and proceeded to feed them to her.

Sansa was sure she was blushing to the roots of her hair. No one had ever fed her grapes before, and no one had ever doted on her quite the way Jon currently was. He wore a soft smile of pure contentment as though he could just do this all day and all night.

It was odd for her in a way to see the dating side of Jon. Here she thought she knew everything there was to know about him, but there was this whole other side that she didn't know, but others before her did.

"Where did you go?" he asked softly, and tugged on her ponytail gently.

She smiled at him and shook her head. "Nowhere. I'm right here."

"Liar," he murmured. "Come closer…"

She scooted closer to him and then leaned over for a kiss. That wasn't enough for Jon. He urged her closer until she was on his lap. When she looked up at Jon under her lashes, he wrapped his arms around her waist and crushed their mouths together. He kissed her with such passion that Sansa felt her core tingle. She shifted against him, wanting to ease that ache, and let him lead. He was teaching her so much already.

When Jon kissed her outside the music department it had been a tentative kiss, as if he was asking 'is this okay?' In the elevator, it had been quick, hard, and full of need. Now there was need as well as hunger.

Also, tongue.

For all that he could be so quiet and subdued, Jon kissed her as though he couldn't get enough and Sansa felt a bit overwhelmed by it. Her kisses with Jaime had always felt rather controlled. Practiced. There was nothing controlled with this kiss. It was unrestrained. Wild.

When Jon broke the kiss, he pressed his forehead to hers. "Sorry," he said gruffly.

"Don't be," she whispered, surprised to find her own voice a little gruff as well. "You're, um, you're a good kisser. Not that I have much to compare your kisses to." Her thoughts were scrambled and she was trying to grasp onto the threads of them.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

She laughed self-deprecatingly. "I'm having a hard time forming a coherent thought right now."

Now he looked smug. Sansa rolled her eyes and he laughed. She shifted on his lap and felt it. He was hard. She looked at him in surprise and he looked back at her a bit sheepishly. "I want you," he said simply.

"When did you know?" she asked. She couldn't look at him while she asked that, feeling rather shy about the whole thing.

"When did I know how I felt about you?" he asked.

She nodded.

He laughed softly. "The day I got punched by Drogo."

She looked at him in surprise. "That was two days ago, Jon."

"That's when I had the realization of how I felt. It was actually something Dr. Lannister said that got me thinking."

"What did he say?"

"After I punched him I said something about how I never liked him and he said, basically, that of course I didn't seeing as how I was in love with you."

Sansa's eyes widened. "He actually said that?"

"Yes. And it gave me pause. I already knew things were changing."

"Oh?"

He swept some hair over her shoulder and kissed the corner of her mouth. "Yes," he murmured. "That day we all went out? I couldn't take my eyes off you." He grinned. "Including your ass."

She laughed and swatted him playfully. "Jon!"

He shrugged. "I wanted so many times to just touch you. A few times I wanted to kiss you. I was jealous of 'Drogo'. I hated the idea of him touching you."

"And then you found out who 'Drogo' actually was…"

"Yeah, that didn't help. That night after I punched Dr. Lannister Sam made a comment about how I felt the need to go to Dr. Lannister's house and punch him. He thought that was telling of my feelings for you." He kissed her neck. "And when I thought about our relationship, how much a part of me you were…how I felt you down in my very bones…well, it all clicked into place. So, my realization came two days ago, but I think I've had those feelings for a long time. You became essential to me, Sansa. We fit so well together that I feel like there is no me without you."

She nodded. "Yes, I feel the same way. There is no me without you."

"I can't tell you how happy I am to hear you say that," he said and then kissed her. He trailed kisses along her jaw and then down her neck where he sucked softly. Sansa tilted her head to the side to give him better asked and she shivered in his arms.

"You like that?" he murmured against her skin.

"Yes," she breathed.

He trailed kisses further down to her collar bone and over to the other side. Sansa tilted her head to the other side and her arms tightened around him when he sucked on her neck there. His arms were like bands around her and Sansa squirmed in his lap.

"God, you're driving me crazy," Jon rasped against her neck. He moaned. "Sweetheart, stop squirming. A man can only take so much."

Sansa forced her hips to still. "Sorry, I just got caught up in the moment."

"Don't apologize for that," he said and brought his face up to hers. He then lowered her down onto the blanket on her back and he lay half on her and half on his side. Sansa tunneled her fingers through his hair and then brought his face down to hers for another kiss. His lips took the same path as before and Sansa finds her hips moving again, seeking…more.

This wasn't like with Jaime, whom she had never been able to really relax with. This was different from anything she'd ever known, and in some ways it makes sense that it was with Jon and in other ways it surprised her that it was with him. There wasn't a sense of wrongness, just the sense that this was different. But all of this, with him, was different.

His kisses grew more heated. Passionate. She could practically feel him vibrating with hunger and need and she felt her body respond in kind.

And then he abruptly stopped and rolled away onto his back. Sansa looked over him, she was breathing as hard as he was. Her gaze ran down his form…yep, he was still hard. She wanted to roll into his side and put her arm around him, but she wasn't sure if she should, or could.

"What can I do?" she asked.

He turned his head and looked at her. "What?"

"You look…distressed. What can I do?"

"I'm not distressed, Sansa," he said with a little laugh. "I'm turned on. I was ready to pop off in my jeans just from kissing you."

Fuck it. She rolled onto her side and slid over to him. He immediately moved his arm under her head so she could press herself against his side. She put her hand over his heart.

"Can you feel it racing?" he asked.

She smiled. "Mine is too."

He held her against his side and for a while neither of them spoke. It was the comfortable ease they had with each other that if they wanted to be quiet together, they did so without one of them feeling the need to fill up the space with mindless chatter.

"Shall we go back?" Jon asked after a long while, his hand on hers over his heart.

"I suppose," she said with a sigh.

They packed up the food and folded up the blanket and headed back to campus, Jon's hand in hers over the consul in his car. Sansa is amazed by how he can't seem to get enough of touching her. She didn't mind though; she liked touching Jon, too.

"I'll see you tomorrow?" Jon asked in front of her dorm. He held her hands in his at their sides and they were standing so close Sansa could feel his body heat.

"Of course," she said and tipped her head up for a kiss.

He looked like he wanted to say something more. Like maybe 'I love you'? But he didn't. Sansa wondered if he didn't because he didn't want to frighten her away. Part of her wasn't convinced that he did – but only because it was all still so new and she still hadn't wrapped her mind around it. But part of her wanted to hear it because it felt as though he mended part of her when he said it.

She watched him head back to his dorm with a smile on her face. Her gaze dropped to his ass. That perfect ass was hers now. Sansa smiled dreamily and headed up to her room. Margaery was out. Sansa grabbed her laptop and plopped on her bed with it on her lap.

She opened her email and her smile dropped.

Jaime had replied. In the midst of everything with Jon, she'd forgotten she'd even written him in the first place.

To: Songstress1211

From: TheKnight

Re:Re: Hello

Sansa,

How do you do it, darling? How do you manage to cut me without saying a word? You are absolutely right that my life is not how I imagined it would be, but I suppose that's because my choices in life have been terrible. I am selfish and self-serving. I've been told I have a problem…I think they may be right.

I can tell you that I definitely meant it when I said you were talented, Sansa. You are. Despite what I am as a man, I do think I was a pretty good professor. I knew talent when I saw it, and you have it in spades, my dear. I know you made it in the show, and I didn't even have to do anything to get on there. That was all you.

I hope you will consider declaring a major to music now. If you do decide to, please let me know so that I can at least take comfort in the fact that I did something right by you. Plus, I'd like to be able to tell you what classes to take and who to avoid.

Yours,

Jaime

Sansa stared at the "Yours" bit, thinking how odd it was for him to used that as his closer. She hit the reply on her email and stared at it, wondering if this was a good idea to email him back. But then, what harm was there in finding out from him what classes she should take and which professors to avoid?

It wasn't a big deal; this was research.

And so she began her response, asking what his advice was per her curriculum and then she started to type: What is going to happen to you now? But then thought – no. That opened it up for him to respond to that. She deleted it.

But then she put it back.