Flashback

Robb slipped into Sansa's bed and curled up around her. "Mom said you weren't feeling well," he murmured.

"What are you doing here?" she croaked. "Don't you have work?"

"I called out."

"Why?"

"To take care of you."

She didn't say anything and he wondered if whatever was bothering her was more than just not feeling well. He'd noticed the night before she'd been quiet and hadn't been herself. She would tell him what was wrong at some point; she usually did. And he knew better than to push. Until that time, he was more than happy to lay here with her and just hold her.

Sometimes he wondered that she thought he expected sex from her all the time. He didn't. Not that he didn't love making love with Sansa, but it wasn't what their relationship was about. Not to him anyway, and he certainly hoped it wasn't about that for her. He doubted it though. He knew Sansa loved him. Out of the two of them, she had realized her feelings later than he did and though she'd had reservations in the beginning, she didn't seem to have wrestled with them as much as he had.

He and Sansa had always been close growing up. He wasn't sure what it was exactly – the fact that they were the two eldest and the rest of their siblings had looked to them for guidance, if it was that he had been her big brother first and it had been instilled in him from the time his parents told him he was going to be a big brother that he had to look out for his sister. He didn't know. He wished he knew why he and Sansa had always felt so separate from the rest of the Stark clan. Why they seemed to have their own language. How they seemed to have an almost telepathic connection at times. He had analyzed it to death, hoping and wishing that if he could explain it then maybe he could just accept it for what it was and not as something more. And maybe he could know what to look for so he could duplicate it with someone else

Someone that was not his sister.

It wasn't as though he hadn't tried. When he first realized he had feelings that were more than brotherly for Sansa – which was about the time he was a junior in high school and she a freshman – he had become something of a man whore. He dated a lot. He slept around. He was desperate to find that girl that would replace Sansa in his affections. To find that girl that he wanted and craved and loved as he did her. It wasn't meant to be.

He'd come home with some other girls perfume on him and feel empty and lost until he could curl up with Sansa on the couch and watch some stupid movie with her. Or go to the park and push her on the swings while she told him all about the gossip in ninth grade…then tenth…and then he learned he wasn't alone in his feelings.

He stopped dating when he started his senior year. He was tired of it. Tired of trying. He loved and wanted his sister and that, it seemed, was that. He couldn't fight it, so he thought he might as well just give himself up to it and maybe it would just ride itself out. He remembered his mother asking him why he didn't go out so much anymore. He had always been popular but now he seemed to rather stay home than go out. He just told her was tired of high school crap.

The first time he and Sansa had kissed things went - depending on how one looked at it –uphill or downhill from there. For Robb, it was uphill. He thought it was the same for Sansa, but sometimes he worried. He doubted. She wasn't as needy as he felt he was sometimes.

He sometimes felt guilty for having been the one to take her virginity. But she had wanted him to be the first and after so long of denying himself what he really wanted, Robb just couldn't do it anymore. She'd been sixteen. He'd been eighteen. It wasn't as if they had sex immediately after discovering they felt the same about each other. They'd spent a lot of time talking about what this meant. About the family. How they had to keep it a secret (obviously). How it would affect their relationships. Sansa couldn't be telling her girlfriends everything anymore, for one.

She wondered why this had happened. He told her how he'd wondered the same thing and didn't have any answers.

Their first touches had been tentative and yet so fucking heady and exhilarating. It was like something out of a movie – they couldn't get enough of each other. He took comfort in the fact that he was the first thing on her mind in the morning and the last thing on her mind at night. Just as it had been for him with her for so long.

He still remembered their first time. The rest of the Starks had gone out to a dinner and movie but Sansa and Robb had begged off. Robb explored her and she explored him. When he was inside her for the first time it had felt like coming home. He knew then that he wouldn't be going away to college right away. He had already begun to plan how they would go away together. He told his parents he wanted to take some time off just to save some money and figure out what he really wanted to do. They told him he'd known what he wanted to do since he was ten. He ignored them.

"Robb," she said, breaking the silence.

"Hmm?"

"Do you ever think about kids? About having a family?"

He stilled. Their mother had said she wasn't feeling well… "Sansa, are you—"

"No. I, well, I took two tests yesterday in the bathroom at Target."

"Why didn't you tell me about this last night?"

"I'm telling you now."

He sighed. "Sansa."

"I'm not pregnant, Robb. Relax."

"I just wish you had told me you thought there might even be the possibility."

"So you could what? Hang outside the bathroom and wait with me?"

He clenched his jaw. He hated that this is what they had to do. That they had to hide and sneak and be inventive in how they could spend time together. "Yes," he said curtly.

"The chances were slim. I'm on birth control, you always wear a condom…"

"Those aren't one hundred percent."

"With both methods it's pretty fucking close."

He sighed. "Do you think you should see a doctor?"

"No. I'm not pregnant. Trust me. I just got my period this morning."

That was a relief.

"But it got me thinking," she said.

"Yeah?"

"We can't have kids together, Robb. You know that, right?"

"Yes, I do. That doesn't bother me."

"No, it doesn't now. You're only twenty. But what about one day? Do you think about one day?"

He did. He thought about one day when they were in Europe and away from their family and he could be her boyfriend and she his girlfriend. Maybe they couldn't marry. Maybe they couldn't have kids but they could find a way to be together.

"Do you want kids, Sansa?" he asked.

"Sometimes I think I might. Sometimes I think I don't. I don't know yet. I'm only eighteen."

"We could always adopt."

"Don't men want to like, I don't know, spread their seed all over the place and make a bunch of kids?"

He laughed softly. "You make me sound like a dandelion."

She laughed softly.

"How about we cross the kids bridge when we get to it?"

She sighed.

He poked her lightly. "Talk to me."

"It's just – don't you – don't you wish it was easier? That it would go away?"

That scared him. He held her tighter. "No."

"No? Seriously?"

He sighed this time. "I wish it was easier. I sometimes wish, yes, that it wasn't you, but I can't…I can no more stop it than I can stop the sun from rising tomorrow, Sansa. I don't see the point in wishing away something that just is."

She fell silent again.

He swallowed hard. "Do you want to…do you want to stop?"

She turned in his arms and looked at him. She shook her head. "No. I just wish you weren't my brother."

He pressed a kiss to her forehead. "Amen, sister."

End Flashback

Robb sighed and shrugged off the memory as he stepped into the kitchen where he found Sansa pouring a shot of vodka. He laughed. "What the hell are you doing?"

She looked at him sheepishly. "I'm kind of nervous. So I'm taking a shot to relax my nerves."

He sighed and gestured to her. "Pour me one?"

She smiled. "Sure." As she turned to get him a shot glass he got a gander at what she was wearing. She was wearing flats, leggings, a skirt over the leggings and a top that showed her bare shoulder and a fashion scarf. She wore her hair down and not pulled back. Just the way he liked it.

"You look really nice," he said.

She glanced at him as she poured his shot. "So do you."

He shrugged. He hadn't put too much thought into his attire. He was wearing jeans, a blue button down and a suit jacket. "So, what can I expect from Margaery?" he asked.

"The unexpected. Always."

"Great," he muttered.

"Robb, you did ask her out, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember."

"Then why have you been acting like you don't want to go out with her when you, as we established, asked her out?"

Because I am only going out with her to please our Mother, Sansa. I don't want to go out with Margaery or anyone else at all. "I don't know," he said.

"You're weird. Okay, ready?"

He stood across the island from her and took his shot glass in hand. He smiled. "One, two—"

And then she knocked it back. She promptly hunched over, clutching her middle. "Ack! Oh God, that burns. That fucking burns!"

Robb downed his own shot and winced. It did burn. But he didn't mind it so much. He watched in amusement as she went for the fridge and pulled out one of Arya's cans of Sunkist and opened it. She sipped it quickly and then stuck out her tongue and shivered. "Yuck."

"Why are you nervous anyway?" Robb asked and picked up their shot glasses. He went over to the sink and placed them inside. "You and Jon are friends."

"Yeah, but I've never been on a date with him before. I don't remember dating at all. I don't remember kissing, I don't remember flirting. I don't know if I've…well, anyway. So, um, what are you and Margaery doing?"

It took Rob a minute to switch gears. She didn't know if she was a virgin. As her brother he couldn't tell her that no, she wasn't. He wasn't supposed to comment on it at all. "Uh, we're going to a drive-in. What are you and Jon doing?"

There was a knock on the door then and Sansa jumped. Paled. And then hurried to the door, ran her fingers through her hair, and then opened the door and smiled. "Hi, Jon."

And so Robb got the first look at the guy that was taking his Sansa out.