#focus on the fucking road you are vulnerable and squishy

[elialys]

nothing quite like driving through town and seeing people on bikes, ON THEIR PHONE with airpods in, with no helmet on of course, to realize phones truly has made us fucking stupid

[lainelannister]

That time when Laine wrote a ASOIAF/The Handmaid’s Tale crossover fic...

...yeah, that’s right. I binged-watched the first part of Season 3 of “The Handmaid’s Tale”...and then I wrote a weird-ass one-shot with Sansa as a Handmaid, Jaime as her Commander, and Cersei as his wife. 

I...don’t have any excuses for whatever this is.

The mattress is too soft.

It’s funny, the foolish and meaningless thoughts that traipse through our minds in times of stress and peril. And yet, Sansa (Ofjaime- the very thought of her new moniker makes her twist her lips and wrinkle her nose, just as she used to when she bent to scoop up a particularly rank pile of Lady’s droppings during their daily walks) takes some sort of perverse comfort from this silent critique. They have plenty of money...I’m sure a Tempurpedic mattress wouldn’t be out of reach...maybe even one of those memory-foam hybrids…

But there’s nothing for her to do now but lie still and allow her body to sink deeper and deeper into this miserable, squishy, pillow-top nightmare. Her head and shoulders rest on Mrs. Lannister’s lap, and she’s surprised to catch a whiff of fragrance- women in Gilead aren’t supposed to wear perfumes, not even Commanders’ wives. And yet, there it is, clinging to Cersei Lannister’s pristine teal dress: lemons, rosewater, something else, something herbaceous and alluring...bergamot, maybe? Sansa tries to rack her brain for the answer, recalling the months she spent working at that artisanal candle shop in downtown Portland during high school…

It’s warm in the Commander’s bedroom, so she’s relieved to feel a sudden breath of fresh air gusting in from the picture window beside the bed (relieved, but also suddenly vulnerable...the breeze ripples the hem of her skirt where it hikes up her calves, and she’s reminded once again that she isn’t wearing underwear).

After opening the window, Commander Lannister pivots toward the bed, his gaze settling somewhere in the vicinity of the two women resting there. He isn’t looking at her, not really, so Sansa takes the opportunity to study his face. A flood of shame crashes upon her as she remembers her initial response to her assignment. She’d seen young Handmaid after young Handmaid parceled off to elderly Commanders with loose jowls and rotund bellies straining the buttons of their dress shirts...but although Commander Lannister is easily old enough to be her father, he’s still lean and well-muscled and handsome, with thick golden hair and electric green eyes…

...the glorious hair and eyes that he somehow shares with his wife. They’re uncannily similar, Commander and Mrs. Lannister, as though carved by the same craftsman from the same flawless slab of marble. A sudden and absurd memory rushes into her headspace- Mya, Myranda, and herself in Myranda’s dad’s old station wagon, driving through the back roads of Eyrie, Maine, having a lively conversation about “dopplebangers”.

“It’s a thing! You know, when you only have sex with people who look like you,” Myranda had insisted. But then, Mya offered a counterpoint:

“No, they don’t have to look like you...but if you’re a dopplebanger, then you only fuck people who look like each other. It’s just having a type...a really, really specific type.”

The girls then retreated to their iPhones, seeking out a resolution on Urban Dictionary, then dropping the subject entirely when a group text about Jeyne Poole’s hookup with Theon Greyjoy took immediate precedence.

The weight of wistfulness settles in Sansa’s stomach, and she indulges herself in a moment of useless contemplation, wondering where Myranda and Mya are now. Myranda’s family had influence before the world turned on end, and Sansa thinks she heard somewhere that at least one of Randa’s brothers became a Commander...Randa’s probably someone’s wife. If she were a Handmaid, I’d know it by now.

As for Mya...Sansa recalls her spirited friend’s defiant attitude, her absolute rejection of authority, even in the days before the rise of Gilead. Maybe a Jezebel...maybe even a prisoner in the Colonies...

She suddenly and desperately wants to cry...but tears during the ceremony are expressly forbidden, and she’d rather not receive a lashing from the Aunts, not when the last one left those ugly raised scars all over her back.

She’s been with the Lannisters for almost three months now, and they’ve undergone a small handful of ceremonies during that time. Handmaids aren’t permitted to discuss their ceremonies with each other- if an Aunt should overhear, the consequences would be dire- but Sansa’s heard enough whispers, gathered enough illicit intel to understand the unusual nature of her own experiences. True, Commanders rarely interact with their Handmaids during the ceremony, beyond the obviously-necessary points of contact-

-but wives don’t typically involve themselves directly, either. The Wife holds the Handmaid’s head and supports her husband’s efforts with prayer...but she doesn’t generally reach out to touch her husband’s face and comb his hair back behind his ears. She doesn’t typically lean over the Handmaid’s prone body to kiss her husband on the mouth and massage his tongue with her own. And she certainly doesn’t usually reach for her husband’s waistband and slide her hand within to stroke him slowly, purposefully, rhythmically.

Commander Lannister takes some time to rise to the occasion- it had been so since their first ceremony, and Sansa accepts it as an unavoidable reality. But as he angles his body over Sansa’s to bring himself closer to his wife, as Mrs. Lannister’s hand speeds its progress and he roughly hisses her name into her perfectly-shaped mouth, Sansa forces herself to focus on the enormous clock affixed to the opposite wall, watching second after second tick away, hoping that they’ll speed this along already-

The tactile contrast of cool fingertips sliding under her bonnet snaps Sansa back to attention. Mrs. Lannister’s elegant, clever digits unfasten the ties to the ridiculous white cap and toss it to the floor before tearing at the hair net underneath. Sansa carefully braids her hair each day and wraps the plaits around her head, securing them with bobby pins- that’s the only way she can fit her voluminous tresses into the confines of the bonnet. But Mrs. Lannister deftly removes the pins and weaves her fingers through Sansa’s thick red hair, sweeping and pulling and separating until loose russet locks fall over Sansa’s neck and shoulders.

“She has beautiful hair,” Mrs. Lannister whispers. And for the first time all evening, Commander Lannister looks at Sansa- actually looks at her.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Beautiful.”

A prickle of discomfort creeps beneath Sansa’s skin, laying claim to her stomach and her chest and her brain and even the space between her legs. She wants to scream herself hoarse, to demand that the Commander and his exquisite, mercurial wife just cut the bullshit, to insist that they get this travesty over with and allow her to go back to her room and soak in her clawfoot tub and pound the flagon of cheap whiskey she’d convinced Guardian Clegane to smuggle in for her a few weeks earlier.

When Commander Lannister finally gets hard enough to penetrate her, she’s overwhelmed by a bizarre wave of relief that nearly distracts her from the cold chill of violation that always accompanies this activity. He’s rearranged them all so that he’s standing at the side of the bed, Sansa’s legs hooked around his hips, putting as little distance as possible between himself and his wife as Mrs. Lannister’s arms lock around his neck, her lips binding to his in an impossible symmetry.

I shouldn’t be here, her inner voice wails- but the stupid obvious nature of that thought only heightens her queasiness. Commander Lannister quickens the pace of his thrusts, and she’s only thinking of expedience when she starts tightening her Kegel muscles-

He comes with a low moan, dropping his hands- both the real one and the prosthetic one- from his wife’s face and tangling them in Sansa’s loose hair. Sansa starts to wince at the pulling sensation, but she forces her face to remain still-

A bright, peculiar flare appears within Mrs. Lannister’s beautiful emerald-colored eyes as she watches the commander draw his fingers through Sansa’s hair. He withdraws from her to tuck himself back into his trousers, and as Sansa pulls herself up to a seated position, Mrs. Lannister places her hands on the younger woman’s shoulders, her jaw rigidly set as she speaks in an oddly-threatening tone: “Blessed be the fruit.”

The tension in the room assails Sansa’s temples, pushing and compressing and contracting with such force that she wonders whether she’ll be able to walk back to her own room without assistance. She avoids Mrs. Lannister’s piercing stare by sliding to the ground and fumbling about for her discarded bonnet; she knows that the Commander’s wife enjoys the sight of their Handmaid sprawled on the floor, subjugated and small, and Sansa lets Cersei have that slippery, sad satisfaction-

Whatever good it does her-

“May the Lord open.”