Chapter Text
OCTOBER, 2008
"Despite the pot. . . the potential risk of ad. . . ad--additional. . ."
Snickers from various overly caffeinated teens filled in the gaps in Dany's speech. The sound buzzed in her ear until she struggled to hear her own stuttering voice.
". . . additional oil leakage, the r--risk of--"
"You need to speak up, Daisy," interrupted Mr. Hightower, Harrenhal Preparatory School's speech and debate teacher.
My name isn't Daisy. Dany's temperature rose. Before standing up to deliver the five minute speech assignment she had spent the last week writing, Dany took comfort within her monogrammed sweater, hoping it would protect her from the gaze of her classmates, but now her back and underarms were moist with sweat, making the heavy fabric painfully constricting. She prayed the material was dark enough not to show any wet spots.
"--the risk of--" She cleared her throat and tried to finish in a louder voice, "--destroying the vast marine ecosystem that has ac--acum--acumulated on and around the oil rigs for--"
"Can you stop doing that?" asked a girl in a front row seat, closest to where Dany stood at the classroom podium. The girl's ambivalent eyes looked to Dany's hand where she had been clicking her ballpoint pen in rapid succession.
Dany released the pen from her trembling hands. It clambered onto the sloped podium and rolled onto the floor with another clamber. "Shit," she hissed under her breath, causing more snickers from her classmates. Her face went flush with humiliation as she dropped to her knees to pick up her pen. You can't curse in front of the whole class!
In a tone of upmost dissatisfaction, Mr. Hightower said, "Why don't we move on. You can re-present your speech on Monday, Daisy."
Dany stood, pen clutched in her sweaty palm, a mixture of relief and anger churning up a sickness in her gut.
"Try to be more prepared next time," Mr. Hightower finished, then addressed the rest of the class. "Who wants to go next?"
Dany raised her hand at the podium, but couldn't wait to be called on before urgently asking if she could be excused to the restroom.
Even at that, Dany stuttered, and her fellow classmates chortled.
Mr. Hightower heaved a sigh. "Go ahead."
Dany turned on her heel and rushed out of the classroom without even the mind to take her typed-up speech with her. As she left the room, another hand shot up.
"Can I go to the restroom, too?" asked Jon Snow. "I was waiting for her to finish her speech before asking, and I've really got to go.”
Another sigh heaved, then Mr. Hightower excused Jon as well.
The boy's restroom was down the long corridor and sat just beside the girl's restroom. Standing at the urinal, Jon relieved his bladder of such undo pressure, but before flushing, he heard a peculiar sound echoing from the other side of the wall. It was the sound of retching. His dark brows furrowed with concern. His timid classmate had never struck him as bulimic.
Jon flushed, washed his hands, walked out of the boys bathroom, and without qualm, veered right into the girl's restroom just as Dany vomited a second time into the second-stall toilet.
She hadn't even had time to lock herself in the little cubicle before she had dropped to her knees and puked up half her lunch. She had managed to pull off her sweater and unfasten the top three buttons of her sweaty blouse before the second half of her lunch hurdled up her esophagus. The sound of her heaving into the toilet bowl prevented Dany from hearing Jon enter the restroom, and the stall she was huddled in.
"Are you alright?"
Dany turned suddenly, falling back on her butt and getting awkwardly wedged between the toilet and the cubical wall. She flinched when Jon lurched forward, but then his arm extended down to her, offering his hand to her. Dany trailed her gaze up from his long fingers to his dark eyes, radiating concern for her wellbeing. Her cheeks tinged red. Oh how much more mortifying could this day possibly get?
With no other options, Dany took Jon's hand and allowed him to pull her up to her feet. His hand was warm, but not the way Dany's was, drenched in hot sweat. No, his was warm the way hands were meant to be. Dany had never touched a boy's hand before, unless you count her father, but even so, she hadn't felt her father's hand since she was too young to cross the street without a guide. It suddenly spooked her, and as soon as her saddle shoes were planted flat on the floor, Dany took back her hand and backed away until her shoulders and butt connected with the cubical wall.
When Dany realized she was still looking into Jon's eyes, she quickly averted her gaze. But that was worse, because her attention landed on the bile and half-digested food substances that coated the toilet bowl. As if things couldn't get any worse, Jon followed Dany's grimace.
"Gross," he stated, and Dany died a little bit inside.
Jon extended his leg and hit the flusher with the bottom of his black shoe, sending Dany's sickness spinning down the pipe.
Hands on his hips, Jon looked Dany up and down. "You're kind of a mess, huh?"
Dany stammered a response. "I don't-- I'm not-- I just--"
"Don't worry," Jon interrupted, his expression soft. "So you have a stutter. It's not that big of a deal."
Anger finally won out, curing Dany momentarily of her nerves. "I don't stutter. I just. . . I'm not good at talking in front of people."
Jon nodded, digging into his pocket and pulling out a pack of Trident. "Fear of public speaking is the most common phobia in the world. Nothing to be ashamed of." He spoke so casually and so matter-of-fact. He pried a stick of gum from the box, returned the box to his pocket, then unwrapped the foil. Pitching the unwrapped gum between finger and thumb, Jon held it before Dany's mouth and said, "Open."
Dany responded with a bewildered expression.
Jon explained. "You just had your hands all over the rim of a public toilet. My hands are freshly washed. I promise. Now, open up."
Tentatively, Dany parted her lips enough for Jon to slide the stick of gum between them. Dany took the stick between her front teeth, and Jon retracted his hand, his fingertips just barely brushing Dany's chapped lips.
"Better?" Jon asked as Dany began to chew.
"I don't like mint," She answered with a grimace.
Jon chuckled softly. "It's better than puke."
Dany's cheeks blushed. She couldn't help but smile.
Jon Snow had been Dany's next door neighbor since she could remember, and they had been classmates since Dany managed to convince her father to let her go to a real high school three years ago. And yet, this was the first time she had ever spoken to Jon. It was the first time he had ever spoken to her. Maybe it was the echo in the tiled restroom, but Dany found the sound of his voice intoxicating.
When Jon's eyes flitted down to her chest, Dany realized her shirt was parted enough to reveal her small cleavage, glistening with sweat, her skin pink. Suddenly flustered again, Dany quickly buttoned her shirt up to her throat.
"Sorry," Jon mumbled awkwardly.
"Was it really bad?" asked Dany with a frown.
"Your tits?"
"What?" Dany jumped. "No. My speech."
"Oh." He pushed some of his black curls behind his ear. "It was. . . I mean. . . Well. . ."
"Now who's the one with the stutter?" muttered Dany.
Jon chuckled lightly. "It wasn't bad."
"Yes it was," argued Dany miserably.
"I'm sure your speech is amazing. You just looked terrified is all. And I couldn't really hear anything you were saying over the pen clicking."
Dany's throat rumbled a low groan. "I didn't know I was doing that. God. . . everyone was laughing at me."
"Fuck them." A sharp, earnest statement.
“And what about the teacher?”
“Fuck him, too. He's an asshole.”
Dany folded her arms over her chest. “He always calls me Daisy, like I'm some fragile little child.”
Jon looked curious. “You don't like to be called Daisy?”
“No,” she insisted. “It's not my name.”
“It's not?”
Dany blinked heavily for some time before shaking her head. “It's Daenerys. But I really just go by Dany.”
“Shit,” Jon muttered. “That's unfortunate, because you look like a Daisy. Literally.”
Dany's eyes rolled. “That's not what literally means.”
A smile eclipsed Jon's face, flashing white teeth, endearingly crooked. “Your hair is so light it's basically white, and when you're sitting in the sun, your skin sort of glows in faint gold. You look like a daisy. And I don't think it makes you sound fragile. I don't think the little flowers are any weaker than the big flowers. They all need the same things to grow. Sunlight, soil, water. Plus, daisies are pretty.”
Dany's jaw softened, ceasing it's chewing on the ball of gum between her molars. It just occurred to her that they were standing no more than a foot apart, alone between two cubical walls, alone in the whole of the girls' restroom. Her heartbeat thumped a rapid rhythm, a soundtrack to the visual art that was Jon Snow. His clean shaven face, full lips, and lean body made him look boyish, as all seventeen-year-olds still maintained most of their boyishness, but there was always something about Jon that made Dany believe he wasn't like the other boys they went to school with.
Even as Freshmen, Jon seemed to carry himself more maturely than their classmates. He was pals with many of them, but he was never roped into their childish antics. He never participated in their foolishness. He never snickered at Dany when she struggled to communicate under the judgmental gaze of others. This may have been the first time Dany ever spoke to Jon, but still. She felt she knew something personal about him, that he was different. An old soul, perhaps. Or maybe he was just kind. Could hot guys be kind? The notion dizzied Dany. It went against everything she knew of teenagers. The hotter they were, the more viscous, right? But Jon was the hottest guy in all of Harrenhal, in Dany's biased opinion, at least.
When has he seen me in the sunlight? Dany asked herself. She never saw anyone in the sunlight. When Dany moved about campus, it was with her head down, staring at the words in a book, or at the scribblings in her notebook as she did some last minute refreshing before class. Even when she would lift her head, she rarely met anyone's eye. In fact, here in this toilet stall, Dany thought this was the longest she had held the gaze of a classmate in her entire time at Harrenhal.
“You done?” Jon asked, breaking their silence. He lifted his hand up to Dany's chin, palm up.
Dany's face twisted in a strange expression. “You want me to. . ?”
“Oh, did you think I was giving you that piece of gum? No, that was a loan. I need it back now.”
Dany's silver eyebrows shot up to the top of her forehead, but then a comical smirk appeared on Jon's face and she knew it was a joke. She allowed herself a little laugh, willing her cheeks to stay neutral and not give away how utterly charming she found Jon to be.
But Jon's hand remained before her chin. “Go on,” he coaxed.
“Really?”
“Only if you're done with it.”
Oh, she was done with it the moment it touched her tongue. Dany despised the taste of mint, and this particular genre of mint seemed especially strong. But to spit it out into his hand? That was something fathers did with their small children. Jon was not her father, and Dany most certainly was no small child. And yet, when Dany's eyes flitted from Jon's palm to Jon's face, studying how calm, and how accepting he seemed. . . He's never laughed at me. Dany told herself, Not once.
Carefully, Dany tilted her head down and let the little wad of gum slip past her lips and fall into the center of Jon's palm. When she looked back up, Jon's expression had shifted, but just slightly. He wore a twinge of surprise now, like he hadn't been sure Dany would actually do it. Had she made a mistake in trusting him? Had it been a prank? Would he laugh now?
He didn't. He smiled softly instead and retracted his hand. He turned and left the stall, disposing of the gum in the waste can. He didn't wash his hands, rather just swiped his palm across his black slacks a couple of times. “That wasn't so weird, was it?” Jon asked, letting a little chuckle slip out this time, but it was the type of chuckle that soothed rather than threatened. Dany chuckled with him.
Jon returned to the stall and scooped up Dany's sweater from where she had flung it off of her and left it in a heap on the grimy floor. “You can't wear this,” Jon said. “These floors are disgusting.”
Pinching the fabric of her blouse and pulling it an inch from her belly, Dany morosely said, “I have to. I've got sweat stains on my shirt.”
“Here.” Jon draped Dany's sweater over the top of the cubical wall long enough to peel off his own burgundy monogrammed cardigan. Jon held it out for Dany in such a way that said he wanted to help her put it on.
Chewing on her bottom lip to keep from squealing with joy, Dany turned around. Back to him now, she allowed herself to blush madly and grin ear to ear as Jon helped her into his cardigan one arm at a time. He straightened the shoulder seams and smoothed his palms down her back to settle the fabric. Dany's toes curled within the tight confines of her saddle shoes.
When she turned back to face Jon, he stepped up close to Dany. The air left her lungs, but she could still smell his aftershave. What seventeen year old wore aftershave? It wasn't so uncommon among prep school boys, but Dany would not consider any explanation that did not conclude with Jon being special.
She felt his hands on her wrist. They fiddled with the sleeves that dangled past her fingertips, rolling them up until they settled appropriately where her wrist met her hand. He then repeated the process with the other sleeve. When that was done, Jon fastened the buttons at the front of the cardigan, beginning with the very bottom.
Dany swallowed hard as she felt his knuckles brush her skirt, shifting the fabric enough to tickle her crotch. With Jon's eyes focused on the buttons, Dany found it easy to stare at his mouth. Plump lips, slightly pink. If she lifted to her toes and leaned in just a few inches, she could capture those lips with hers. But, he would never dream of kissing her after seeing what all came up her throat just minutes ago. Why did she have to order the cheeseburger at lunch?
But maybe he didn't care. He had held her chewed up gum in the palm of his hand and smiled about it. Why could he not kiss her after she'd vomited as well? Just her lips. Just one gentle kiss to her lips, and Dany would never have to kiss another person for the rest of her life.
Kiss him, Dany urged herself as Jon's fingers buttoned the final button, knuckles grazing her breasts ever so gently.
She did not kiss him. No, Dany could never make the first move. Dany doubted she could even make the second move. Someone could make a move on her and she wouldn't even be able to move along with their move.
Jon turned away from her, and she released a self-deprecated sigh. He grabbed Dany's sweater and slung it over his shoulder. “How about I give this back to you tonight?” he asked.
“Tonight?” the disappointment left her face, replaced with confusion.
“Yeah, unless you have plans or something already.”
Dany's eyes went wide. Plans? Or something? Was Jon trying to make plans with Dany? This could not be happening. Their first interaction was of him watching her hurl into a public toilet. What part of that scenario made Jon want to make plans with Dany?
“Well--” Dany cleared her throat “--my parents are going to a dinner party tonight. They said I could go if I wanted to. . .”
“Do you want to?” The bemused smirk on Jon's lips gave away his thoughts on dinner parties.
“No.”
“Cool. So, do you want me to come over?”
“To my house?”
His smile widened. “Yeah. I mean, I'd invite you over to my house, but I share a bedroom, so we wouldn't have much privacy.”
“Privacy?” Dany's thighs trembled. New sweat percolated up her spine.
“We don't need privacy, though, if you don't want it.”
Before her mind could talk her out of what her body yearned for, Dany quickly said, “Privacy is good.” More demurely, she added, “I guess you could come over for a bit if you want.”
“Okay, cool.” He looked satisfied. “When should I come over?”
“Well, my parents are leaving at six.”
“Sweet.”
The restroom door swung open and another senior came sauntering in. Tyene Sand. She crossed her arms and looked over Jon with displeasure. “Ya know this is the ladies' room, right?”
“Then why are you here?” Jon shot back.
A smirk rose on Tyene's face, and she flicked her fingers against the side of Jon's head before disappearing into a stall. Jon chuckled at the action. He was friends with everyone, Dany reminded herself. Jon may have been special to her, but Dany wasn't special to him. Jon probably went to the houses of every other person at Harrenhal on Friday nights. He probably hung out at Tyene's house, and at the houses of other girls, too. Dany couldn't imagine any girl turning Jon away.
Dany was suddenly acutely aware of how hollow her belly was.
“We should get back to class,” Jon said. “I'll go ahead, and you wait a minute, so we don't arrive back at the same time.”
Dany watched Jon leave, frowning sorrowfully. But as she washed her hands at a pedestal sink, Dany looked at her reflection in the mirror, seeing her petite body wrapped up loosely in Jon's thick cardigan. She was special. Jon would not have given his sweater out to just anyone, would he? Jon would not have willingly touched the chewed up gum of any girl, would he? Jon would not have taken the time to situate the garments of any other girl so that they fit just right, would he?
* * * * *
As soon as Dany got home from school, she ran up to her bedroom, logged onto her Windows XP desktop computer and pulled up Skype. Within minutes, Dany was virtually face to face with her best, and only, friend, Missandei. Ever since they met at Engineering Camp five summers ago, they had kept in touch, and when Dany was old enough to have her own computer, they chatted everyday.
“You are never going to guess what happened today,” Dany exclaimed in a rush through her nervous excitement.
“You puked during your speech?”
Dany's face fell into a sharp glare. “I'll have you know, I did not puke until I was safely in the restroom after my speech.”
Missandei's image shifted rapidly in the square box on Dany's monitor as her friend moved about on her bed to find a comfortable position. “Then I'm proud of you, D! It went well, then?”
“No,” Dany groaned. “It went horribly. But that isn't what I wanted to tell you. I have incredible news.”
“Spill it.”
Dany relayed every single detail to Missandei beginning with her speech and ending with her washing her hands at the pedestal sink. No small detail was left unspoken. She described exactly how Jon smiled whenever he did, and exactly how Jon smelled. She described exactly how Jon's fingers touched the fabric of her clothes, and exactly how close he had been standing to her. She mimicked every word or phrase Jon spoke to her while they were in the restroom and described the precise manner in which he spoke them.
At the end, Missandei only had one question. “Wait, you spit in his hand?”
Dany's nose scrunched. “Maybe I didn't describe it right.”
“No, it's hot.”
“Really?”
Missandei quirked a small smirk. “Yeah. I mean, your saliva was touching his skin. That's hot.”
Dany's cheeks turned red and her belly fluttered. “Do you think this means he likes me?”
“Well, he's definitely into you, or else he wouldn't have invited himself over to your house.” Missandei grew nervous. “What are you going to do?”
“I don't know. What should I do?”
“I don't know. I've never done anything.”
“I've never done anything either,” Dany mumbled anxiously. “Do you think he wants to do things?”
“He's a Senior, right?”
Dany nodded.
“Oh, he definitely wants to do something then. Seniors are always doing things. And Juniors actually. Even Sophomores. Basically, everyone except me is doing things. And now you're going to do things.”
Things. Dany's eyes bulged and her fingers jittered against her knees. Did she want to do things with Jon? She wanted to kiss him, that much was perfectly clear. Kissing was a thing, right? Tongue kissing. . . Yes, Dany very much wanted that as well. To taste another person's tongue with her own was deeply erotic to Dany.
Hand holding. That could also be a thing, right? Dany loved the feel of Jon's fingers on her skin. She wanted to feel his fingers lace with her own and squeeze tight. What if Jon held her hand while he tongue kissed her? Dany felt dizzy all of a sudden.
“You need to wear something really cute!” Missandei said.
For the next two hours, Dany displayed every single item of clothing she owned in front of her webcam, and Missandei gave her judgment of each one until they finally settled on an outfit good enough for a hang out session with one of the most popular guys at Harrenhal.
Dany hung up the Skype call so that she could shower and “get pretty,” as Missandei would say.
By the time Dany's parents were heading out the door to make their dinner plans, Dany was out of the bathroom, having showered, shaved, and blown out her hair. She'd spent way too much time with the razor. Having grown paranoid about her pubic hair, she started hacking it all off. Who would guess such a small area would take so much time to smooth out? Now, Dany was scrambling to get dressed in the precise outfit Missandei helped her pick out.
First, a short black circle skirt her mom had bought her, but that Dany had not once worn. She rolled it once at her hips so that the skirt fell at mid-thigh. "You've got to show off your legs so he'll want to touch them," Missandei had advised.
Touch her legs? Dany shivered at the thought. Goosebumps covered her now hairless body. Missandei had also told Dany to wear sexy underwear, but Dany did not own any sexy underwear. That wouldn't matter would it? Jon didn't want to have actual sex, did he?
"Do you want to have sex?" Missandei had asked Dany before signing off.
"I don't know," Dany had replied, but the truth was, she desperately wanted to. She would surreptitiously skim romance novels between that stacks at the public library and skip to the juicy parts, imagining she were the woman being ravaged by a large, dominant man who oozed masculinity. She would read stories online late into the night on weekends, online message boards of young adults discussing their sexual experiences. They were never very detailed, or even overtly erotic, but Dany still managed to masturbate to them.
And she had spent an hour shaving her vagina for crying out loud. People didn't do that sort of stuff unless they wanted to have sex, right?
After the skirt, Dany put on a tight blouse that fastened together with little silver clasps down the front, leaving a thin sliver of flesh visible from her chest down to the hem of her skirt. Missandei said to wear it without a bra, but Dany was too self conscious for that, and bras made her breasts a nice evenly round shape.
Dany looked in the mirror and immediately felt ill. She did look sexy, but it was all off. Like she was trying too hard. She needed to be casual. She needed Jon to think she was cool. Right now, Dany just looked like a slutty Disney channel star.
The doorbell rang, chiming throughout the large two-story home. Dany gasped, and in a feverish rush she ripped off her outfit and replaced it with cotton shorts and a gray t-shirt. She did not realize the shirt had "West Coast Mathletes" written across the chest until she was running down the stairs.
And of course, the first thing that left Jon's mouth when he saw her was, "Mathletes." A statement accompanied by a comical expression.
Dany's cheeks went flush.
"I brought your sweater," Jon said, handing it to her. "I washed it for you."
She took the clean fabric in her hands and stood in the doorway awkwardly. Maybe that was it. Maybe he only wanted to drop off the sweater.
But then Jon asked, "You gonna invite me in?"
They went up to Dany's room. She was glad she had changed now, seeing that Jon was in jeans and a white t-shirt. Casual. That was all this was.
Dany hastily took Jon's cardigan from a hook beside her bedroom door and handed it to him. "I didn't wash it. I'm sorry."
"It's all good." He swung the sweater over one shoulder as he did with Dany's sweater earlier than day. He then moved to take in the environment.
It was difficult watching Jon tour her bedroom like this was a modern art museum. Dany had not been in the bedrooms of other teenagers, unless you would count seeing Missandei's bedroom through a Skype window, so she did not know how hers stacked up against the norm.
The room was large. Almost twice the size of Jon's room next door, and he shared it with his half-brother. The walls were painted a pastel pink, and the drapes were white lace with crystal beads hanging on strings across the fabric. They were shut, since it was nighttime. The floors were cherrywood, covered partly by a shag area rug. She had a canopy bed and a full-size mattress covered in ivory sheets and a pink quilt with a few furry throw pillows. On her desk was a computer, a couple of framed photographs, and a few novels with library stickers on the spines. Jon picked one up. “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Love Stories--”
“Shit,” Dany hissed, reaching for the book, but Jon stepped back, finishing the title with a big grin.
“--Stories of First Dates, Soul Mates, and Everlasting Love.”
Ah yes. . . the blasted Chicken Soup for the Soul books. Dany was still too nervous to check out the romance books. She was thankful for that in the moment, though. God knows if she would ever recover had Jon found real erotic fiction just lying on her desk beside her homework. Still, her face was red as a tomato.
“Very cute,” Jon said with a little chuckle before putting the book back down.
Very cute? What did that mean? Very cute like a five year old in a Princess costume is very cute? Or very cute like a young kissable woman is very cute? Somehow, Dany felt Jon meant the former.
“Thanks for letting me come over, by the way,” Jon said, moving on to look at Dany's framed photographs. “I know we don't really talk at all, but--”
“I don't really talk to anyone.”
“Yeah,” he chuckled again. Why was everything so funny? “I know that. This is your friend?” Jon showed Dany the photo of her and Missandei from when Missandei spent a week with Dany over the Summer, just a couple months ago. They had gone to a water park. Even at fifteen, Missandei was tall and her figure was nicely proportioned in a bright two-piece bathing suit. Dany, though. . . puberty did little to stretch out her height, and the blue one-piece she wore in that picture only made her look shorter. Why hadn't she combed her room for embarrassing artifacts?
“That's Missandei. She doesn't live here, though.”
“She's pretty,” Jon said casually, placing the photograph down.
In that moment, Dany despised Missandei, but the resentment left her almost as soon as it entered. It was a fact, after all. Missandei was very pretty. That didn't necessarily mean that Jon was into her, did it?
“So, what do you want to do?” Jon asked. He draped his cardigan over the back of Dany's swivel desk chair and sat down, swiveling so he faced the bed, knees parted in the way all men seemed to sit.
Dany perched herself on the edge of her bed, keeping her own knees firmly pressed together. “I don't know. What do you want to do?”
Jon's eyes moved around the room once more. There was no clutter in the entire space. Nothing left haphazardly on the floor. No clothes tossed in a pile on chairs. No dresser drawers left ajar. No smudges on the walls or even dust on the bookshelves. “Do you have any games?” he asked.
“Games?” Dany hadn't been expecting that. “I don't really play any games.”
“Board games?”
Dany shook her head. She had no one to play board games with. When she was a kid, she sometimes got her parents to play Life with her, Spongebob Edition, but that game was long sold off on eBay along with any other memory of a time when Dany did anything with her parents.
“Card games?”
EBay. Dany shook her head.
“Video games?”
“I play Tetris sometimes on my computer. Or solitaire.”
The corners of Jon's mouth quirked up comically, no doubt intrigued by Dany's lack of childhood staples.
“I'm sorry,” Dany quickly said. “I'm not very interesting. I mainly just read and study and talk to my friend online.”
“Do you listen to music?” he asked.
Dany's face brightened. “I do.” She showed Jon her CD collection, actually thinking it was something special for a short while until Jon chuckled again. His fingers peeled out a case from the stack on her shelf and turned it around so Dany could see.
Ashley Simpson. Dany's face flushed red. “That's from when I was younger,” she insisted.
“What about this?” Jon asked, peeling out N*Sync. The “No Strings Attached” album.
“That was from when I was ten.”
He peeled out another album. Aaron Carter.
“Please stop,” Dany insisted, taking all the CDs from Jon's hands and putting them back. She suddenly hated having him in her room. They should have stayed in the living room. It wasn't like her parents were home anyway. No one was home. No one was ever home.
“Wait, this one is good.” Jon plucked out another CD and examined it.
“Really?”
It was The Offspring. The “Smash” album. It wasn't technically Dany's. She had stolen it from her father's collection because she liked it, and he never listened to it anyway.
“Yeah. I like this.” Jon went to Dany's nightstand and popped the disk into her Sony stereo. He hit the skip button to track 4: “Gotta Get Away.”
Dany's heart raced along with the hammering of the drums and the rapid crash of symbols. Jon turned from the stereo to face Dany. Like deja vu, they stood a mere foot apart, Dany's back pressed against the wall.
“I like your room,” Jon said.
“You do?”
“Yeah. It must be nice to have so much space to yourself.”
Was her room large? She supposed it was. The whole house was large. It had two master suites and this was one of them. Jon told her that he shared a room, and that his house was full of people all the time. “There's eight of us total. Three of them teenagers, so you can imagine. . . And my step-mom is always on my case. Always. She still checks my backpack every day when I get back from school. It's fucking ridiculous.”
Dany didn't have any frame of reference for that last piece of information. She had been home-schooled until high school, and her parents never saw cause to check her home-school packets before they mailed them in. Dany was a good student. She usually finished them early. If ever she did have a question, she figured it out herself. “You're smarter than your mother,” Dany's mom used to say. It made Dany mad, because even at a young age she knew her mother was lying. How could a child be smarter than a mom?
“Maybe it's because she cares about you,” Dany said.
“She wants to control me,” Jon glumly retorted. “If she cared about me, she would leave me alone.”
Dany sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. Her palms were sweating again. She swiped them against her shorts in a futile effort to dry them. “All my parents do is leave me alone,” she said.
Jon looked down, watching Dany's left palm rub against her hip. He lifted his own hand to hers, stilling it. He smoothed his thumb down the back of her littlest finger. Dany gulped, her finger reflexively lifting toward his touch.
“Are you alone a lot?” asked Jon quietly.
Dany watched his lips move and the flutter of his black eyelashes with each blink as he stared down at their hands. His fingers followed the slopes over her palm, feeling the sheen of moisture.
“Yes,” Dany whispered breathlessly.
“You could come over whenever you want, you know.”
“Really?”
Jon massaged gentle circles into the back of her hand with his thumb. “Yeah. I mean, we'll never be alone, though.”
“That sounds nice.”
“Yeah?” His gaze lifted to meet hers, a small smirk playing on his lips. “You don't want to be alone with me?”
Toes digging into her shag rug, Dany felt a familiar sensation between her legs. Her thighs were moist with sweat and, higher up, she was moist with something else. She curled her fingers around Jon's holding onto them tightly.
“I do,” she breathed, the words barely audible, but Jon was so close he would surely hear each one. “But, I. . .”
Jon stepped closer until Dany could feel his belt buckle graze her t-shirt. “But what?”
“I don't know.”
“You know know?” His mouth was so close to her, she could smell the sweetness on his breath, like citrus gum. Not mint. Dany wanted to follow the scent, to crawl into his mouth and fall asleep on the bed of his tongue.
“I've never. . .” she began, head in a euphoric flurry. Jon's other hand connected with her free one and slowly slid their palms together until he was intertwining his fingers with hers.
“You've never been alone with anyone before?”
Her head shook slowly. “Not with a guy.”
Just when she thought Jon would finally close the gap between them and press their mouths together, he took a step back. Dany frowned, but Jon never let go of her hands, holding them in the space between them now.
“Are you a virgin?” he asked.
Unable to gauge whether or not her answer truly mattered, Dany decided to be truthful. She nodded a yes. “Are you?” What a silly question. Of course he wasn't. He was Jon Snow. Even Tyene Sand thought he was cool, and Tyene Sand didn't think anyone was cool.
But then he said, “Yeah. I mean, I've done some things, but I haven't gone all the way yet.”
“Oh.” Dany was feeling too many things at once. Nervous, excited, afraid, elated, really fucking horny. She wasn't sure she wanted to have sex, but she needed something. She'd been wrong. Hand holding wasn't enough. Not by a long shot. “With Tyene Sand?”
He choked a little laugh of surprise. “No. Not Tyene. I dated this girl for a few months last year, but we broke things off right before she graduated. It wasn't very serious.”
Graduated. . . he had dated a Senior when he was only a Junior. Just when Dany thought Jon couldn't get any cooler. . . Dany wanted to ask who the girl was, but realized she didn't know the names of anyone from last year's graduating class. So instead, she admitted, “I've never done anything.”
“Do you want to do something?”
She gulped, eyes staring once again at his mouth. “I don't know.”
“We could do something else. I could watch you play tetris.”
“What, um. . .” she squeezed his hands, “what sort of things did you do with her. . . the girl you dated?”
“Do you want me to tell you, or do you want me to show you?”
Her lips parted, eyes flitting up to Jon's eyes, so deep and dark, like a pool of water in the dead of night. “I don't know.” Dany cursed the words that came out of her mouth. I don't know? She did know. She knew with every nerve in her body which she preferred.
Jon took a step forward, whispering deep, “I want to show you. Is that okay?”
Say yes! Shit. . . she couldn't. She had gulped down all the moisture in her mouth, and her throat was paralyzed. But she needed it so badly. Craved it. Craved him. Dany mustered up all of her courage and finally replied with a nod of her head.
The song on the stereo had switched but Dany couldn't hear any music. All she heard was her own heartbeat thumping erratically in her chest, and the sound of Jon's fingers gliding against her skin as he raised a hand to her cheek. His thumb grazed her jaw, his finger tips dipping into her silvery hair. He stepped ever closer to her, closing the gap between them entirely until Dany felt the soles of his shoes against the sides of her feet, felt his hips against her pelvis, felt his chest gently compress her breasts, and felt his lips press against hers.
She was flying, head spinning. Her first kiss, and it was with Jon Snow of all people. Dany had always assumed her first kiss would be after high school. College people were always kissing each other. She would go to a party – if she even got invited to a party – and get tipsy enough to forget her nerves long enough to make out with a complete stranger. She would most likely hate it, but at least she would have finally kissed someone, and then maybe she could kiss someone while sober and have it be half-way decent, and with someone she actually liked.
But this. . . This kiss was incredible, and the only thing inebriating Dany's senses was the euphoria of the moment. Jon's lips were soft and careful, lingering against hers for a few moments before pulling away a millimeter only to apply the same amount of pressure once more. Dany thought she could finally die happy, but then his lips parted slightly, and suddenly his tongue was tasting the seem of her own lips. Open up! she yelled at herself until her mind listened. She opened her mouth and Jon's tongue dipped inside, petting her own tongue with the tip.
A moan escaped Dany's throat involuntarily. When his tongue retracted, her own poked out to regain contact. That simple action ignited something in Jon. He pressed their lips together again, jaw dropped, and he devoured her. His hands released Dany's and moved to the small of her back, pressing her firm against him.
Dany whimpered in his mouth, feeling his crotch swell against her abdomen. She rose to her toes, feeling the rigid organ dig into her own crotch. A low groan rumbled through Jon's throat.
After another minute, Jon suddenly turned them around. He did not part from Dany's kiss until he walked her backward and sat her down on the edge of her bed. He stepped back then, chest rising and falling heavily with each breath. There was a sheen of saliva across his lips – Dany's saliva. He looked incredible. Dany wasn't sure what Jon was doing to her, but she wanted to be devoured by him, to have all of him against all of her, smothering her, consuming her, owning her.
Her hands gripped her quilt, suddenly realizing that if she were to part her thighs, Jon would most likely see how aroused she was.
“Do you still want me to show you?” Jon asked, voice deep and hot with desire.
“Yes.” Her loins rejoiced. Finally! She spoke!
“Take off your shirt.”
Dany swallowed, trembling fingers moving to the hem of her Mathletes tee. She suddenly couldn't remember which bra she put on and prayed it was something cute as she revealed her torso to Jon's gaze. A lavender t-shirt bra. Not exactly sexy, but the way Jon wet his bottom lip with the tip of his tongue gave Dany a boost of self-confidence. She dropped her t-shirt beside her on the bed, sucking in her already small stomach and straightening her back to try and appear taller.
“The bra now.”
After a few moments hesitation, Dany reached behind her back and unhooked the clasp. The cups went limp around her breasts. Chewing nervously on her bottom lip, Dany slid the straps from her shoulders slowly until the bra was in her lap. She scooted it to the floor before her nerves took over and she crossed her arms over her chest bashfully.
Jon stepped forward, taking gentle hold of her wrists and moving her arms away. “Let me see,” he said.
Dany felt her nipples harden in the air-conditioned room, but her skin felt like it was on fire. Dany watched Jon's dark eyes as they watched Dany's breasts. No matter how many time Dany had seen her own body in the bathroom mirror, she still found herself wondering what Jon could possibly be seeing. He looked so studious, like he was mesmerized by her. Dany had never considered her breasts to be mesmerizing, but the way Jon stared at them was. Her lips parted. Her thighs dug together. Her toes curled into the rug.
When Jon released one of her wrists, Dany thought to re-cover her chest, but she didn't. She kept her arm out, and was so proud of herself for doing so. The reward for her courage was immediate. As soon as Jon's fingertips met with the swell of her breast, Dany gasped softly. When his hand covered it completely, Dany exhaled a small moan. Every single touch, Dany felt in another place as well – another place she longed to feel Jon's fingers explore. When his thumb brushed her hardened nipple. . .
The clamber of Dany's bedroom door swinging open turned her moan into a squeal of shock.
“Daenerys, have you seen my check book?” sounded her father's boisterous tenor as he walked straight into the room, dressed in a tailored suit and designer tie. But as soon as the question left his mouth, he stopped dead in his tracks, eyes beholding the sight of his only daughter half naked with the neighbor boy.
Dany's spine seized with shock, and she scrambled to pull her t-shirt against herself, concealing her nudity from her father's vision.
“It was in the sitting room, just as I told you it was!” came the voice of Dany's mother as she barged into the room right after her husband, a black leather check book in her hand. But, in similar fashion to Dany's father, Dany's mother halted abruptly, expression twisting with shock and dismay.
Dany sputtered out a few syllables, willing her brain to come up with an explanation that might account for the goings on that didn't have anything to do with the fact that she had nearly climaxed just from having her nipple touched. But nothing came to mind.
After a moment that felt like a lifetime, Aerys looked at Jon and gave a curt, “Get out.”
Before Dany could blink, Jon was hurrying past her parents and out of her bedroom. Suddenly, the sound of The Offspring was making her feel like throwing up. Dany stood and shut the stereo off. A moment later, she heard the front door slam shut, signaling Jon's official departure. She turned slowly, legs shaking with fear. She looked from her father to her mother, then back to her father. And then, they both turned and left as well.
No words spoken. No punishments doled out. No remarks made about how ashamed they were of their good daughter who wasn't supposed to have any thoughts in her head except school, chores, and making herself as inconspicuous as possible.
The front door slammed a second time, and once again, Dany was left completely alone.
* * * * *
Dany spent the rest of that evening sobbing into her pillow. She had never been punished more severely than a ten minute time out when she was a toddler. She had never done anything wrong in her life, never defied her parents, and never gave them any cause to distrust her. Dany was certain that once her parents arrived back home from their dinner party, they would come back into her room and tell her what a disappointment she was, and that they would take her computer away from her, maybe her stereo too.
But when Aerys and Rhaella came back that night just before midnight, they never went up to Dany's room. In fact, they did not so much as breathe one word to their daughter all of Saturday either. Dany had always felt invisible in her home, but never had her parents so blatantly pretended like she did not exist. Dany began to wish for an argument, for a grounding, for her computer to be confiscated. Anything that would prove to Dany that they actually gave a shit about her and what she had done.
It also dawned on her throughout the weekend that Jon wasn't trying to reach out to her. Sure, she didn't have a cell phone, and Jon did not know the landline number or her Skype username, but he did live just next door. If he really truly wanted to see her, he could have found a way.
It wasn't until after Dany's Sunday morning shower that her parents came to discuss matters with her. She walked into her bedroom in a robe, towel drying her long silver hair to find Rhaella and one of the maids packing her things into suitcases.
“What's going on?” Dany asked.
Aerys was in the corner, typing into his blackberry. He looked up at the sound of Dany's voice and casually answered. “I'm driving you up to Maidenpool today.”
“Maidenpool?” Dany asked. She recognized the name. It was another preparatory school, even more prestigious than Harrenhal. But. . .
“Maidenpool is four hours away,” Dany meekly protested.
“They have boarding facilities there. It wasn't cheap, but I've already secured you a placement.”
“But I don't want to move away.” Dany looked to Rhaella. “Mom?”
Rhaella shoved Dany's saddle shoes into a trunk and said, “Maidenpool is a much more prestigious school than Harrenhal. I sent an email to Harvard admissions to inform them of your transfer. I think this will improve your chances of getting in. You should be excited.”
But Dany was not excited. Not at all.
“And,” Aerys added, “it's an all girls school, so you won't face any more distractions.”
Dany's eyes misted and her bottom lip quivered. “Your sending me away because of what happened?” No, she wanted to scream. No, just take my computer away. Ground me from ever stepping foot outside the house except for school, but don't send me away!
But there was no point. It was all arranged. Dany would leave in a matter of hours and by sundown she would be at Maidenpool, tucked away in a little dormitory three-hundred miles away from her family, and from Jon. But none of them gave a shit about her anyway.
“Can I bring my computer?” Dany asked with an aching heart, hopeful that at the very least, she could still have Missandei.