A Holiday by Decree
~~ Day 9 ~~
Sansa turned to find him smiling stupidly and holding his coin. "Your eyesight might be going, but remind me never to drop a pin around you," Sansa jested.
Rolling his eyes, Tyrion returned to her side until she found her coin. After plunging to get it, she gently returned it to Tyrion's hand. "So how did you get to be so fast at the-?" she began.
"The front crawl?" Tyrion fidgeted with the coins he held. "As children, Jaime and I often played games as well as having swim-races. Naturally, he almost always beat me, except for when he'd let me win, but there wasn't another boy we played with faster than him at the front crawl. It was the first stroke Jaime taught me."
The memory hung on the air between them, until Sansa asked, "Would you explain to me how it works?"
"Absolutely," he replied with a grin that told her he had managed to get past the melancholy moment.
They talked about how the stroke worked, and Tyrion modeled the form while Sansa tried to copy. He bit his lip after trying unsuccessfully to describe corrections to make to her. "That's close but… Could I possibly please help you… reposition?" he asked haltingly.
Sansa stared for a moment, realizing what Tyrion wanted. Then with a nod, she came down to her knees to let him reach her arms. She swallowed, as Tyrion came near. He looked into her eyes before looking away again to study her position, and she felt glad for when their eyes parted, as she had to brace for the contact.
Even though Arya was Sansa's sister, they had probably not hugged since Arya returned alive from the siege of King's Landing. Indeed, touching was no longer something Sansa did unless as required with her maids and maester, and there was a reason she heard petitioners at a farther distance in the Winterfell Great Hall than was traditionally done...
Definitely, she still had a deep-seated fear of unwanted bodily contact. However, as she was reminded on the day in the library, when she had inadvertently stepped into Tyrion's grasp, she desperately wanted to find out how to overcome this.
She wanted so badly to trust Tyrion; Gods willing, she hoped increasingly a time might come that he would be willing to love her as she had once dreamed long ago that a man might. However, how could she forgive herself, if she reflexively cringed back at a critical moment, turning him off?
One of Tyrion's hands finally came to rest on the wetted fabric of Sansa's shirt sleeve, and blessedly, she stayed steady. His other hand, warm in spite of the water, came to cover the back of her bare wrist.
Sansa silenced her breath, as she glanced to the side to see him gazing at her arm dutifully. He was gentle, as he moved it.
"More like this," he said softly and kindly, unknowingly thrilling her heart.