Chapter Text
It’s cold out, late January cold, with old snow piled around the curb and grey skies. That’s what makes her glance toward the man at the covered bus stop, as she’s hurrying out the hospital’s sliding doors and buttoning up her red wool coat. She feels sorry for anyone waiting for a bus in this weather, but this guy especially. He could really do with a coat. He’s not even wearing a sweatshirt. He sits in the breath-fogging cold with his elbows propped on his knees and his head hanging down, shaggy dark hair obscuring his face, in nothing but a t-shirt and jeans.
It was probably an emergency. There are plenty of those at Winterfell Long Night Medical. Ones that pull you out of bed at 2 AM or catch you as you’re getting out of the shower before you’re heading to work. You don’t always have time to grab coats and hats when you’re rushing, and now he’s stuck waiting for a bus dressed like it’s sixty out.
She’s staring, empathizing really, as she pauses to dig for her gloves in her purse. Because she’s been there, she’s been the person scrambling to get to the hospital with no warning. She learned of her brother’s death in her pajamas and walked the halls of this place in them with her face swollen from crying. The only thing that would bring her here is her work bestie’s new baby. She even sutured herself with Super Glue to avoid coming in for stitches after a kitchen incident where she should have been paying more attention to her knife than the YouTube video tutorial on her phone.
He catches her staring. His gaze lifts and fixes on her. It’s her red hair, it always pulls people’s attention, which is precisely why she dyed it dark when being perceived felt like too much. And she’s ready to give him an apologetically flat smile for staring when she recognizes him and realizes in the same heartbeat that he’s wearing a hospital band.
Jon was her brother’s best friend, which is how she knows him well enough to suspect he might taciturnly refuse her offer of a ride. He might choose to sit here and freeze, waiting for his bus, instead of accepting help and voluntarily getting in a car with her. He’s been like that with her in the past when they were younger.
But he doesn’t. He surprises her. And she drives him to his mom’s house. Not visiting, she establishes, though his answers are mostly monosyllabic. He’s staying for now.
“I’m glad I ran into you,” she says, pointedly not looking at the band on his wrist, as he rubs his hands over the legs of his jeans. “We’ll have to get coffee or something. Catch up.”
He really looks back at her then at the light before his mom’s street. Sansa’s never been inside Jon’s house but Robb spent the night hundreds of times and she knows the way by heart. Their mother was always shuttling Robb and Jon around from practices to school and everywhere in between, helping Ms. Snow out since she worked full time.
His street looks the same, as her blinker cancels out, ceasing its rhythmic chant; he looks different. Longer. Still lean but his t-shirt stretches across his chest beneath her car’s seatbelt and she doesn’t think he’s skipping leg day from the way his jeans fit. The most jarring change is the beard he’s sporting, which he wouldn’t have been able to fully grow the last time she saw him. When she pictures him, he’s clean-shaven, eighteen. But it’s been a decade since the funeral.
Arya didn’t mention he’d come back. They’re in touch in a real way, texting, Sansa assumes since she can’t imagine him chatting on a phone and Jon doesn’t do social media. Maybe he doesn’t have time for it, while getting his doctorate. Sansa hears that can be a real nightmare.
“Did you finish up then? Do PhDs graduate in December?”
His answer, “I’m ABD,” doesn’t mean anything to her, but she flashes him a smile from the driver’s side as they pull into his mom’s short driveway.
It’s cracked and sunken, one concrete pad at a noticeable angle from the next.
His throat rolls above the white of his crewneck. “And in the middle of a mental health crisis. They don’t want you to say nervous breakdown anymore.”
She shifts into park. Her hands rest in her lap, dropping from the still-cold steering wheel. Her nose burns.
She had one of those—a mental health crisis. A while ago. It doesn’t feel fair to date her problems from her brother’s death like he is somehow to blame, but she made a series of bad choices from that point on. It’s chapter one in her little saga.
His hand covers the hospital band, twisting it around his wrist. The rub of his palm against his arm is noisy in the suddenly silent car.
“They probably set you up with a therapist, right? Or group? I did group for a while,” she says, craning to grab her purse from the backseat where she tossed it. She keeps everything in there. She knows she’s got a little pad of paper somewhere at the bottom from her last stay at a Mariott with Mya. She nicked it on the last morning along with the pen. It was a good ballpoint that felt really nice as she jotted down addresses for dinner recommended by the flirty gentleman at the front desk with the very white teeth. “Group’s good too, but I have a therapist you might like. Let me give you her number. Can’t hurt.”
He lost his phone. It was one of the first things he said when they were shut in the car together and she made the decision to mute the radio, leaving nothing to do but talk on the eight-minute drive to his mom’s house.
“I think you’d love her,” she adds, using the middle console as an impromptu writing surface. “She’s really great if you don’t mind a woman therapist.”
He’s not watching her as she carefully writes a second number right underneath Brienne’s office number. He stares resolutely out the windshield as she adds a parathesis—(coffee).
Maybe he won’t call either of them. He was always quiet. Or at least with her.
…
Mya’s on maternity leave, but she has perfected one-handed texting while breastfeeding and she says she’s going crazy from loneliness, so Sansa doesn’t feel as guilty about bothering her when she’s bonding with the baby.
Interrupt me, please interrupt me.
“Would you go for coffee on Valentine’s Day? Or is that weird?”
“A date? First date? You haven’t said a word! Spill!”
Sansa’s finger hovers for a moment, and she’s annoyed with her hesitation. It’s a weird day to offer to meet up, but he called it “Thursday” not “Valentine’s Day.”
“No. Definitely not a date,” she replies, mistyping definitely twice.
She doesn’t mean defiantly, thank you. She’s just let her nails grow out too long.
“But there’s a guy?” Mya asks and Sansa can almost hear the eagerness from behind the phone in the quick second bubble that appears. “It’s a guy.”
“It’s a guy.”
She’d say friend, but Jon’s never been her friend. They’re less than that and more too. He’s not exactly family, but that’s closer to being an accurate description somehow. Interconnected. Since forever.
“Have you met up before?” Mya asks in quick succession to a third picture of the baby since lunch.
She’s wearing a onesie with a crescent moon and footies and Mya’s combed her dark hair to the side in a cute part. Sansa taps back with a heart. Mya’s baby has very pinchable cheeks. Sansa would spend all day taking pictures of her and changing her out of one outfit and into another if given the chance.
“First time,” she types and then feels like that’s sort of a lie. She erases it with the “x” arrow because they’ve been together in a million different spaces over the years. “Reconnected a couple of weeks ago.”
“omg an ex.”
Mya knows something of her questionable dating history, and she has a colorful saying about going back for seconds. Something about food poisoning.
“Not an ex. Friend,” Sansa clarifies, which is definitely a lie.
Jon would say it was a lie too. She wasn’t always the nicest.
“Don’t do it,” her bestie advises with a crossed arms emoji for emphasis. “Vibes are off. Only a psychotic would choose V-day.”
…
He was in a psychiatric ward, but he’s not crazy. Sansa doesn’t think Jon knows he asked her for coffee on Valentine’s Day. She fully believes it’s just a Thursday to him because guys are less invested in Hallmark’s holiday and she knows what it’s like to be freshly sprung from a facility and still untethered from reality. You’re more focused on getting through a day than properly keeping track of the relentless march of time.
But she’s a different story. Sansa is single but invested. To a degree. She picked out a blouse three weeks ago. She likes to dress in theme; it would have made her an excellent elementary school teacher. The blouse is pink and gauzy. It’s so thin she has to wear a nude bra underneath, and the only thing that saves it from being this side of scandalous are the little red velvet hearts dotting it and a ruffled neck that ties in a bow. It’s too sweet to be sexy, and she doesn’t intend on giving up on something that perfect just because her coffee date doesn’t know he’s asked her for coffee on the most commercially romantic day of the year.
Honestly, Mother’s Day is a better barometer. Sansa always notices the dads who really show up for their wives on Mother’s Day. That’s romantic.
And this isn’t a date. It’s coffee. With a friend. Friend. Friend?
And if she wears the very obviously Valentine’s Day-inspired blouse, he’ll realize his mistake right away and not later when he can spiral into anxiety over what message he might have unintentionally sent with his poorly chosen date.
A date on the calendar, not a date, date, she thinks, as she thanks the man holding the door for her as she ducks inside the burnt bean-smelling place Jon picked out. Assertive enough to pick a date, pick a time, pick a location—he’s doing way better than she was a couple weeks out. Regardless of the Valentine’s Day snafu.
She’s four minutes late. Carefully timed. While she’s usually prompt, overly so, she didn’t want to be the first to arrive and she didn’t want to be rudely tardy either. Four minutes felt right.
She scans the room looking left and right. He’s standing at the counter, grabbing two coffees. He’s traded in the t-shirt for a button down and despite the chill in the air, his sleeves are rolled up.
She got his text ten minutes ago—"Beat you here. What’s your order?”—meaning he was early, and she’d tapped out her response at the stoplight. “Vanilla latte thx.”
He turns and she smiles, hurrying toward him. They meet halfway. She hugs him. One of those half-hearted, one-armed hugs she doesn’t usually like because it makes her feel like any hug between a man and a woman is sexually charged unless you’re guarded against it, which is icky. But he’s got his hands full of hot coffee, so there’s no way around it.
She’s shrugging out of her coat and reaching for the latte she’s thanked him for twice as he pulls out her chair like a gentleman when she feels his attention on the blouse and then on the little folded tent on the table advertising a Valentine’s special—cream puffs with red and pink sprinkles for $5.99 on Valentine’s only with your purchase of a tall drink. The lady two tables away has taken advantage of the order: coffee, cream puff, and laptop all arranged in clear view of Jon’s tight-jawed panic.
He scrubs his mouth and slides into the chair opposite her. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“It’s okay. You didn’t know,” she says as if she’s entirely certain of that. “And I don’t have a boyfriend who is going to give you a hard time over your failure to look at the calendar.”
He spins his coffee with the spread of his thumb and middle finger. It makes the tendons in the back of his hand stand out. He’s traded his hospital band for a fitness watch. He’s got nice hands. Nice wrists.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’m glad you texted.”
His mouth pulls flat. “I’m not beating the crazy rap, I guess.”
“If they don’t like the term nervous breakdown, I’m guessing they wouldn’t approve of you calling yourself crazy,” she says, tipping the coffee he treated her to until it knocks his.
His name is scrawled in black marker on both their cups—John—misspelled.
He thanks her for the recommendation, for sharing Brienne’s number. She really is the best, and Sansa never feels embarrassed or ashamed about telling her about the terrible choices she’s made when she presents a picture of having it all together to the outside world. She listens and nods and is invested in Sansa’s feelings. It’s the best kind of release.
…
“I slept with someone.”
It’s a doorknob confession. There’s only a minute left in the session. Not enough time to delve into it, but enough to drop this little bomb. It gives Sansa a bit of a rush.
“Recently?” her therapist asks in that neutral tone she’s come to expect from her.
Brienne knows she hasn’t been dating. She’s been off the apps.
“This past weekend.”
“Okay.” Brienne nods. “How are you feeling about that?”
“Pretty amazing actually.”