#i was intending to tell someone downstairs like a landlord or door man i guess? i dont know.

[avpdgirlfriend]

why did i have a dream that i was being stalked and harassed that was genuinely so stressful

[geekprincess26]

The Snow: Chapter 9

The chime of Jon’s doorbell interrupted Sansa in the middle of typing her e-mail to the legal consultant whose information she had requested from Pod Payne.  As Sansa had predicted, Pod had replied to her inquiry within hours of her having sent it.  Now she found herself seated in front of the island in Jon’s kitchen formulating her missive to Jeyne Westerling, a Leeds barrister whose first name Sansa had decided not to hold against her.  

Sansa sighed and flipped the top of her laptop downward.  Jon, as far as she knew, was still in the shower, and at some point he would have to know she had contacted Jeyne anyway, and almost certainly, but now was not the time, and Sansa could not take the chance, however slight, that he would meander into the kitchen and catch sight of her e-mail by mistake.  Even the minute or two it would take for Sansa to sign for the new phone she had finally ordered during Jon’s illness – and she could think of nobody who would be ringing the doorbell at the moment other than the delivery person – was too long a time to risk.

But when Sansa opened the door, from which Jon’s landlord had had the snow cleared some time after the previous evening, she saw two men there, not one, and neither of them was carrying a package.  Instead, the younger of the two was wielding a large and expensive-looking camera, and the elder, a stout, friendly-looking fellow with thick-rimmed spectacles and curly, whitening gray hair, a clipboard and pen.

“Hello,” began the older man.  Sansa did not let him get any further.  She took a step forward onto the doormat at the top of the expansive stone staircase and shut the door halfway behind her.  Each of the men took a corresponding step backward.  Sansa, accustomed to having the paparazzi dealt with by her security detail, felt her heart begin to race and her palms to sweat; but, if the flat complex had security personnel, they were nowhere in sight, so she lifted her chin and did her best to summon the Princess Stephana-worthy glare with which she had dispatched the children who had laughed at Jon during their first audition together all those years ago.

“This is private property,” Sansa informed the men, lowering her voice by half an octave to disguise her nerves.  One could not go too soft on the paparazzi, and after all, she was not an actress for nothing.  “If you’d be so kind as to leave now, I should appreciate it.”  She raised her chin by another fraction of an inch and shot them a tight-lipped smile.

“Oh, no – ” began the older man affably, but Sansa cut him off.

“Seeing the roads are this clean,” she said, nodding toward the sidewalk leading to the brick stairs at the front of the flat, “I’m sure the police will have no trouble getting here quickly, and – ”

“Ma’am,” the older man tried again, still quite affably.  Sansa pulled her stiffening right leg forward and planted it half a step in front of her left.  Both men backpedaled once again.

“ – they still don’t mind arresting people who trespass on others’ property, from what I’ve been told,” Sansa continued, a bit more loudly.  The older man shook his head.

“You see, I’m – ” he began again.  He was still smiling, and Sansa flushed with annoyance.

“So if you don’t mind leaving, I’m sure I don’t mind not calling both them and building security on you both!”  Her voice came out a bit sharper and much louder than she had intended.  Her left leg shook as it swung another step forward, and Sansa was relieved to see that both men backed up once again in response.  One could never be too careful with the paparazzi, however, so she forced her right leg to stand nearly even with the left, but far enough back of it to keep her stiffness-impaired balance.

“And if you really don’t mind,” she continued, once again a bit more loudly than she had intended, “you can see to it your employer understands that anyone else who get sent out here without any right to be one this property whatsoever – ” she raised her voice deliberately this time on the last word because the older man looked very much about to speak again – “will have both police and security called on them, and your employer hearing from m – J – the owner’s attorney as well!”

Both men’s eyes widened, but their gazes had shifted to the doorway behind her.  At first Sansa refused to turn around, thinking they might be trying to get her to do so in order to distract her.

Then she heard an amused chuckle behind her and the sound of Jon’s voice.

“Hello, Leigh,” it said, and Sansa pivoted as quickly as she could to see a grinning Jon standing on the doorstep, clad in his boots and nothing else save for a towel wrapped around his waist.  Sansa, feeling very much as though a pack of red dye had exploded across her face, stood stock still for a moment as Jon raked a hand through his damp curls.  She had more than half a mind to reprimand him for stomping outside half-naked while still recovering from a fever; but she had already spent enough time shouting at Jon, and in any case the rest of her mind was too busy realizing just how much more lush and beautiful his curls, not to mention his body, had gotten over the past three years.  At any other time, that thought would have annoyed Sansa, who had after all spent two days undressing and redressing Jon without so much as a blush after her initial discomfiture.  However, the discovery that Jon apparently knew the two men she had just spent the last few minutes treating like paparazzi relegated it to oblivion.

Partly because she knew she would have to do it at some point and partly to avoid having to stare at Jon any further, Sansa slowly turned back toward the two strangers.  The elder one had the good grace to look past her, and the younger followed his lead after a few awkward seconds.

“Jon.”  The older man’s affable smile widened into a grin, and he held out his hand to shake Jon’s.

“Leigh.”  Jon nodded as he returned the gesture, then glanced over at Sansa, who finally realized her mouth was opened and hastened to shut it.  “Sansa, this is Leigh Harris, the PM here onsite – property manager, not Prime Minister,” he added, “although if you ask him, he’s both.”

The other man’s grin mirrored Jon’s.  Sansa wished the brick on which she stood were a magic brick, just like the ones in first movie she and Jon had acted in together as teenagers, which would flip around when someone stood on it for long enough and immediately transport the person to another world in another dimension.  But the bricks on Jon’s doorstep were entirely ordinary, and Sansa swallowed a grimace in favor of a very sheepish smile as she force herself to look directly into the property manager’s twinkling green eyes.

“I am so sorry, Mr. Harris,” she said, but the man waved away her apology.  

“Not to worry,” he replied genially.  Far from being offended at her rudeness, he looked as though his grin would splinter into laughter at any moment.  Sansa guessed that if she were to glimpse her reflection in the lens of the other man’s camera, her eyes would stare back at her out of a face roughly the color of a black cherry.  Jon, who actually could see her, must have thought the same, for he stepped forward to stand next to Sansa.

“Sansa Stark,” he introduced her to Mr. Harris, who shook her hand at once.  He did not look starstruck in the least, however, and Sansa felt the blush begin to recede from her face.  After a moment, he gestured to the younger man, who still looked a bit nonplussed at the entire exchange.  “Jon, Ms. Stark – ”

Sansa shook her head.  “Oh, no; Sansa, please.”

Mr. Harris nodded amiably.  “This is Neal Brown of Casterly Rock Insurers.  He’s here to take photographs to document the property for insurance purposes in light of the blizzard.  Outside photos only, of course.”  He inclined his head slightly toward Sansa, whose eyes had widened.  “If now does not suit you, I can arrange a time that will.”

Sansa risked a sidelong glance at Jon, who did not seem at all perturbed.  “Right, Leigh,” he said.  “If you don’t mind giving me a few minutes, I can get whatever you need.”

Mr. Harris nodded, and Jon headed back inside.  Sansa stayed rooted to the spot.

“I am so sorry again, Mr. Harris – Mr. Brown – ” she began, but the younger man shook his head and muttered, “Don’t mention it,” while the older man merely waved away the apology and said, “I’ve been called worse in my day, Ms. Stark.”

“Still, I – I – ”  But both men were already waving off her next apology, and at last Sansa, feeling that her face would turn blue next, thanked them for their understanding and returned to the flat.  Jon was donning his coat as she did so.

“Oh!  The door,” she exclaimed, remembering.  When Jon merely stared at her, she added, “The downstairs door, where the snowdrift was – here, I can show them, if you like.”

Jon nodded, although why his eyes crinkled with amusement at the idea Sansa could not tell.  

“Good idea,” was all he said, however, and a few minutes later, he and Sansa both headed downstairs to meet with Mr. Harris and Mr. Brown.  As soon as Sansa had shown the door in question to the two men, she hastened back indoors, slumped on Jon’s living room couch, and buried her still beet-red face in her hands.  She raised it only when she heard Jon’s footsteps entering the room.

“Oh, God, what your property manager must think – I am so sorry – ” she began, but was cut off by the sound of Jon’s chuckling as he sank into the chair nearest the couch.  Her mouth shut abruptly, but Jon’s chuckles only expanded into a full belly laugh the like of which he had rarely produced even during their marriage, except for when she’d tickled his feet.  Sansa could not begrudge him that, not when his cheeks were pink with amusement rather than red with fever and his eyes sparkling with laughter rather than delirium, but she still threw both of her hands into the air and groaned.

“I called him and the adjustor paparazzi – I threatened to call the police on them, and your attorneys – oh, they must think I’m some sort of delusional freak, and what they must think since I landed on your doorstep – and the manager’s used to you being all calm and gentlemanly with him – ”

The word gentlemanly sent Jon into another burst of laughter.  Sansa narrowed her eyes at him, but the expression had no force.  

“It’s just – the expression on his face,” Jon gasped when he finally caught his breath.  “He probably just thought it such an irony, is all – he’s called more police on the paparazzi here than anyone.  Don’t worry; he won’t take offense to it,” he added with a wave of his hand.  “He doesn’t offend easily, and this isn’t exactly the strangest situation he’s ever had to deal with.  He’ll probably just think it funny that you were trying to defend my honor the whole time.”  

His eyes twinkled with dry humor as he said the last bit, and he could not restrain another chuckle.  Despite her reddened face, Sansa, to her shock, heard one of her own escape, and then another.  After all, she must have sounded so ridiculous screaming about calling the police and attorneys on the man whose job it was to call them to protect Jon in the first place.  The longer she thought about it, the more ridiculous it sounded, and soon she was laughing as hard as Jon, and Jon laughing was a sight she had not seen since even longer ago than she had last witnessed him smiling.  She had forgotten how many years dropped off his face when he laughed, how flushed and smoothed his cheeks got, how the left corner of his mouth quirked upward farther than the right and almost dimpled his cheek as it did so.  She had also forgotten that his laughter was infectious as it was rare, that the room always brightened around her when she saw him that happy, that every time she felt like kissing his head or rubbing his shoulder, or –

But she could not do that now, and Sansa’s laughter trailed off at the thought.  Jon, fortunately, did not seem to notice.

“Well, I’m sure I’ll be one of his livelier pub stories with the boys for the month, at any rate,” remarked Sansa drily once they had both stopped laughing altogether.  Jon shook his head.  Sansa had also forgotten how quickly his expression could switch from mirthful to sober.

“No, you won’t,” he assured her.  “Leigh’s seen a lot livelier than this, and anyway, he knows how to keep things quiet better than anyone I’ve ever met – except maybe for Sam.”

Sansa tilted her head in acknowledgement.  “Well, Sam is Sam,” she said, and Jon nodded.  Both of them knew that the closest Sam had come to betraying either of their confidences, even after Sansa had left Jon, was when he had mentioned having seen Sansa at the park in Leeds near the end of the divorce process, and Sansa suspected even that reference had been more than half accidental on Sam’s part.

“How is he doing?” she asked, unwilling to let her mind wander down that particular rabbit hole again for the moment.

“Really good,” replied Jon, sprawling back into his chair.  “He and Gilly are having their first child together next year.”  

Sansa leaned forward slightly.  “Gilly Craster?  The nurse he met in the emergency room – what, four years ago now?”

Jon grinned.  “That’s Gilly.  They got married about two years ago.  Sammy’s in primary school now.”  He shook his head, as if not quite able to believe the mathematics that told him a child who had been two years old when his mother had first met Sam had now attained the age of six years.  Sansa smiled.

“Maybe this one won’t have quite as much energy as Sammy,” she remarked.  She had been even more surprised than Jon when placid, introverted Sam Tarly, who had always been more at home around books than even well-behaved adults, had first met the boy even Jon had described as a little hellion and taken every one of his tantrums in stride.  

“Or maybe he’ll have more,” said Jon drily, but he could not say it without smiling, and soon both of them were chuckling again.

Jon’s stomach growled so loudly then that Sansa could hear it, and she immediately got up and offered to make coffee and grab whatever Jon might want from the refrigerator or pantry.  He, however, insisted on following her lead, and soon Sansa was cutting up apples and Jon scrambling a pan of eggs.

“How is that project of yours and Sam’s going, anyway?” she asked after several silent minutes.  Jon looked puzzled.

“You know,” she continued, “the one where you and Pyp Knight were outfitting that one machine with extra hookups to feed into the machine that read Sam’s production software, and you kept on rearranging the cables on it.”

Jon’s brow retained its furrows for a few moments before he spoke.  “Oh, you mean the Nightwatch interface?”

Sansa nodded.  “Yes!  That’s the one.”

Jon shook his head.  “We haven’t worked on it for a while,” he replied.  “Not since I moved here, anyway.”

He turned back to the stove to give the eggs another scrambling, and Sansa regarded his back for a few moments.  The machine had been Jon’s pet project for years, ever since he had convinced Sam, a professor of sound engineering at the University of York, to help him with it.  The two had spent countless hours in the basement of Jon and Sansa’s London residence both before and during the marriage – so many hours, in fact, that Sansa had teased Jon a few times about whether the machine was his real wife.  Almost every time, his eyes would turn dark, and he would growl something about showing her who his wife really was and then spend the next hour or two keeping his promise in very satisfying ways.  The memory made Sansa flush so red that she thanked her lucky stars Jon’s back was turned.  She sobered quickly enough, however, when she recalled that it was her fault the memories were just those, and not ongoing occurrences.  A lump began to fill her throat, but she swallowed it.

“Oh,” she finally said, managing to brighten her voice a little.  “Any other joint ventures you’re working on with Sam, then?”

Jon shook his head.  “One or two, but nothing big.  Sam’s been pretty busy lately.”

Sansa’s lips turned up when she remembered the times she’d watched Sam play never-ending games of Tag with Sammy in the park and wrangling him into the car seat afterwards.  “If Sammy’s anything like I remember him,” she replied, “I can see why.”

Jon smiled wryly.  “Oh, he is,” he assured her, and Sansa’s smile widened.

“Perhaps he’ll calm down if you and Sam teach him how to play a guitar,” she said, and Jon raised an eyebrow.

Jon chuckled again.  “I don’t think we could get him to stand still long enough,” he replied.  “Gilly says she’ll have to attach strings to him one of these days to keep track of him.”

“Attach strings.  Clever.”  Sansa grinned.  No wonder Sam had fallen in love; Gilly clearly appreciated guitar humor.

Jon tilted his head.  “Exactly.”

Sansa pulled two mugs out of the cupboard above Jon’s coffeemaker.  “Did she ever ask Sam why a crowd cheers at an American baseball match when the groundskeepers bring out home plate?” she asked.  When she looked back around at Jon, he was staring at her quizzically.  She smiled again.  “It’s because the base has – ”

“ – Turned up,” they finished in unison.  One corner of Jon’s mouth twitched as he switched off the stove burner.  He turned up one hand in a gesture of mock surrender and reached for the salt shaker with the other.

“I know you wouldn’t string me along about it,” he said, and Sansa laughed; it was an old joke of theirs to try and beat each other to that line after cracking particularly bad puns.  Jon, however, said nothing else until Sansa had poured the coffee and arranged the cut fruit onto the plates of eggs he had produced.

“Any writing, then?” he asked, so quietly that Sansa, who had expected him to head off to either the table or another room in silence, barely registered the question at first.

“I mean – ” Jon gestured as best he could with the hand holding his plate, “for you.  Lately.”

“Oh.  No, not really,” she answered after several moments.  “Just an occasional poem or two – or what tries to be a poem, anyway.”  She shrugged.  “And a couple of sketches.  Nothing worth a lot of polishing up, anyway.”  And just as well, she added to herself.  Jon had been one of the few people she had trusted not to make fun of her for admitting that she often busied herself between takes or wound down at night by scribbling down irreverent limericks or scenes from parody sketches, all lampooning the more ridiculous parts of life in the Middle Ages, onto the notepad she always carried with her.  He had been one of the even lower number of people she had trusted to listen without laughing when she had read some of the least awful of her works aloud; he had even encouraged her to do it, as well as to try publishing them anonymously as she had sometimes offhandedly mentioned doing.  On occasion, the urge would still strike her, and she would stay up ridiculously late writing a bit of blather about Shakespeare’s love-hate relationship with Lady Anne, his temperamental computer.  The impulses had struck her far less often since the divorce, though; Sansa had taken on as many film projects as she could possibly handle since the day she had left Ygritte North’s trailer in her rearview mirror, and long hours on one set after another facilitated very little creativity.  

But Sansa had not been on a project for nearly a week now, by far the longest such lapse since the divorce, and with Jon in front of her, it took all the effort she could muster to keep her mind from wandering further into daydreams about cuddling with Jon in front of the wood stove in their London home on a rainy day, daydreams in which she read him one or another of her works aloud as he drew his finger in lazy patterns along her back, then began placing open-mouthed kisses along her neck and gently tugging her shirt over her head while she gladly divested him of his own, and –

“How about you?  Any new guitars, or speakers, or – or machines you like to work with now?” she heard herself ask.  Jon turned where he stood, halfway between the kitchen island and the entrance to the living room.  Jon’s brow furrowed, but he answered her anyway.

“Just the AT-LP120,” he replied.  Sansa raised an eyebrow.  Four years of living with Jon had taught her many of the acronyms and slang terms to the world of electric guitars and sound machines, but this was one she had not heard.

“Electronic record player,” Jon offered when he saw her confusion.  “Works like the older kind, but they connect to computers and tablets and that sort of thing – anything you store sound files on.  You can hook them up to a lot of the same things I connect my guitars to, but I’ve been working on a dual hookup between mine and the iMac and the newer Waldorf, and – ”  He stopped and shrugged.  “That sort of thing,” he finished, as if expecting Sansa to be crying with boredom already.

Sansa, however, only leaned back against the island and took a sip of coffee.  “You mean newer than the one you liked hooking to your Gibson?” she asked.  Jon looked mildly impressed.

“Right,” he said, nodding.  “It can connect to a larger variety of machines, so I sold the other.”

Sansa smiled.  “You sold Craig?” she replied.  Jon had a habit of naming each new sound machine he purchased.  Every new machine had a name beginning with the letter next in the alphabet to the first letter of the name of his most recently purchased machine.  He had already gotten through the alphabet a couple of times.

“So who’s the new one?” asked Sansa.  Jon’s cheeks flushed a little.

“Nymeria,” he said.  Sansa raised an eyebrow at him, and he continued hastily.  “After my cousin Arya’s dog.  She got her two years ago.  Arya says she makes up her own mind about who to like.”  He shrugged.  “She decided to like me for some reason.  She’s a terror if she doesn’t like you, though.”

Rather like her owner, Sansa thought as she recalled the fierce glare of Arya Winter, the petite firecracker with two brown braids and eyes as big as saucers who had been a flower girl at her and Jon’s wedding.  One of the guests’ children had taken it upon himself to bully Benjen, Robb’s older son, and Arya had leaped to his defense and bloodied both the offender’s nose and her own dress in the process.  Sansa grinned at the memory.

“So how are she and Nymeria doing?” she asked.

“Which one?” Jon answered, and Sansa replied, “Both, I suppose,” around a mouthful of scrambled eggs.

“Sorry,” she said once she had finished swallowing the contents of her mouth.  “I didn’t want them to get cold.”

Jon merely shrugged and took a bite of his own eggs, then set his plate down on the kitchen table.  It stayed there for the next twenty minutes as their conversation lulled and turned; he talked about his young cousin’s latest adventures and the records he planned to buy and play on Hannibal, his new record player, and she about Robb’s children and her forays into glass-blowing classes taught at a studio just a quarter-mile away from her flat in Leeds.  They were safe enough subjects, Sansa decided, but she paused whenever Jon furrowed a brow, determined not to vex him by talking too much or referencing anything that might dredge up the fights of the past several days.

“Oh, bloody hell!” Sansa exclaimed suddenly, snapping her fingers over her empty plate.  “I’m sorry, Jon, I forgot – I need to get the mattress out of your room, and everything else – and make the bed for you – ”

Jon waved away her apology at once.  “I can take care of all that,” he said.  Sansa shook her head.

“You’re not twelve hours off a bloody horrid fever,” she countered.  “You shouldn’t be lifting things all over the place.”  Not waiting for an answer, she turned to set her dishes next to the sink.  But her right leg cramped as she pivoted on it, and she doubled over to clutch the counter.  Had it not been for her leg, she would have laughed at the irony.

“You OK?” she heard Jon asking, and managed to nod in response.

“I just need some Aleve is all,” she answered.  “Give it a few minutes to kick in and I’ll be able to move everything back where it belongs.”

Jon looked skeptical.  “You could twist something and just not feel the pain that way,” he argued.  Sansa turned gingerly to face him and sighed.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, a bit more sharply than she had intended.  “I’m the one who made that mess and inconvenienced you; it’s only fair I clean it up.”

“You made that mess saving my ass,” retorted Jon.  “We’re even.  I can handle an air mattress and a laptop.”

“Oh, God, you’re worse than Robb,” Sansa moaned.  Jon drew back as though she had just told him that her laptop was made of blueberries.

“If you’d rather have bugs in your pudding every day for a week than have help carrying your things, you can,” he said drily.  Sansa merely stared at him for several moments until she remembered one particularly rainy week on the outdoor set of their first film together, a week during which the crew had planned to shoot two or three expansive outdoor scenes.  Instead, Jon, Sansa, and Robin and Lyanna, who had played the two youngest members of their sibling group, had been relegated to yet another week in the studios, and Robin had gotten cranky and spent the week pulling any number of pranks on his castmates.  She could not quite refrain from cracking a smile.

“Oh, God, no.  I said Robb, not Robin,” she clarified.  “I’m not sure anybody’s worse than Robin Arryn, at least not that week.”

Jon scratched the back of his head, and Sansa caught the corner of his mouth twitching.  “Probably not,” he agreed, and Sansa thought he would have broken into another laugh had the doorbell not rung and made them both jump a little.  This time it was package carrier bearing Sansa’s long-awaited phone, and all thoughts of Robin Arryn and his pranks were driven from her mind at once.

Jon headed back to the kitchen to get more coffee. Sansa ducked into his bathroom to take the Aleve pills she needed; she did not trust her bad leg on the stairway just yet. Back in his room, she settled herself onto the armchair that had been her home for the past two days. She tried to activate her phone while waiting for the Aleve to kick in, but she had never been particularly adept at such tasks, and Jon appeared at the doorway, empty coffee mug in hand, to find her cursing as she input her password into the carrier’s website after her second failed activation attempt.

“Here,” he said and held out his hand. Sansa jerked upward, startled, and Jon took half a step back. “Sorry.”

Sansa shook her head. “No, I should be sorry,” she said. “I'm still in your room – I had thought to have this done by now.” She gestured at the computer screen and sighed.Jon extended his hand a bit farther.  “Here,” he said.  “Who’s your carrier?”

Three minutes later, Sansa’s phone was up and running, and she was mumbling her embarrassment-riddled thanks to Jon.  He only waved them off.

“It’s fine,” he said.  Another silence ensued until Sansa stood and bent to turn the switch on the air mattress.  Luckily, the Aleve had kicked in and she felt no pain in her leg, although she could feel its muscles contracting with more force than usual.

While the mattress deflated, Sansa collected as many of the items she had brought in from her room two nights previously as she could.  Jon, however, insisted on dealing with the bulky blankets, and Sansa did not press the issue.  

“Just – oh, shit!” she exclaimed, nearly dropping her phone.  “I forgot – your bedsheets are still in the dryer, and that means all of your jeans have been sitting in the washing machine; I’ll grab them as soon as I’m done with these.”

“Jeans?”  Jon looked confused, and Sansa hastily explained about her use of his clothing the previous night.

“Oh.”  Jon shrugged.  “I’ll get them, Sansa.  Don’t worry about it.”

Sansa opened her mouth, but then thought better of it.  “All right,” she said, “but let me know if you need any help.”

That earned her a brief nod, and she turned to head out of the bedroom.  Her elbow caught the corner of one of Jon’s shelves as she did so, which very nearly knocked off a small box perched at the top.

“Whoa!”  Sansa turned just in time to see Jon, arms suddenly free of the blankets, lunging forward to catch the box.  It stopped short of falling, but Jon hastily pushed it as far back on the shelf as it would go.  Sansa stepped backward, but not in time to keep his momentum from pushing her against the wall.  She let out a startled “oof!” and clung to her arms’ contents, which after all included the laptop, for dear life.

“Sorry.”  Jon carefully steadied the box, then turned to Sansa.  “It’s just – ”  Satisfied that she was unhurt, he turned back to the shelf and picked up the box.  Sansa stepped backward to allow him to pass back into the room and disappear into his walk-in closet.  He emerged empty-handed.

“It’s just – ”  Jon gestured back toward the closet.  “It’s where I put the pieces of my gram’s vase.”

“Oh.”  Sansa stared down at the floor for a moment.  Then her head snapped back upwards.  “Wait – ”

She bit her lip to hold back the rest of the words that had jumped into her mouth, but she could tell by the way Jon raised his eyebrows that she had piqued his curiosity.  She took a deep breath and willed her thoughts into line.

“I – and – you don’t have to,” she said slowly, “but I we had a guest teacher at one of my glassblowing classes.  Her name’s Alys Karstark, and she’s based out of Leeds.  Our teacher says she’s one of the best glass artisans in the world, and she’s one of the top experts in antique glass.  She’s done work for a couple of Quentin Martell’s projects, so I could get in touch with her if you want and ask her to look at it to see if she could fix it.  Even if she couldn’t, she might know somebody who could.”

Jon’s eyes narrowed as she spoke, but she could not quite read the expression they finally assumed, so she shifted her eyes to the closet door next to him.  Oh, no, you don’t.  You look him in the face.

She forced her gaze back to Jon, who stood motionless for a few minutes.  Sansa, unsure whether he would take offense and either start shouting or wave her out of the room in disgust, or tell her he would prefer not to discuss the matter further, or perhaps say nothing at all, leaned back carefully against the wall.  That proved enough movement to made Jon blink and give his head a barely discernible shake.

“So you want to take it back with you?” he finally asked.  “To Leeds?  And you’d give it to her there?”

That startled Sansa, who had not even considered the idea that he would simply hand over the vase right there.  It took her a few moments to generate a reply.

“If you like,” she finally said.  In any other situation she would have chastised herself for sounding like a little girl begging her mother to let her play with a favorite toy for just a few minutes longer, but this was hardly the time. “Depending on her schedule, I might not be able to get it to her right away; I know she travels to give lectures sometimes.  But I can contact her as soon as I get back home, or even sooner.”  She shifted her weight back off the wall and made to set her computer on Jon’s bed.  “I can find her website now and have a look at her speaking schedule if you want, so you can get a better idea.  Or I can send you her contact information if you’d rather be the only one handling the vase.”  She gestured toward the closet door.

“You don’t have to look everything up right this second,” said Jon.  “But if you can get the information before you go….”  He scratched the back of his head.  “I’m glad you thought of it, though.”

Sansa shook her head.  “It’s only the least I could do,” she replied.  “It was my fault, after all.”

Jon mirrored her gesture.  “It’s already done with,” he said.  His voice lowered almost to a whisper when he added, “I appreciate it.”

He could not keep the relief out of his voice when he said it, but for a moment Sansa caught a flash of the not quite definable look she had seen earlier that morning, when he had caught her as she had stumbled while pulling herself out of bed.  She only nodded and retrieved her laptop, however, and he bent to pick the blankets up off the bedroom floor.  Sansa turned and headed out into the hallway, and he followed her.

“Don’t trip over those,” she called over her shoulder as they began to ascend the stairway.  

She could practically hear him rolling his eyes.  “Not unless you pull a Robin and wire-trip me,” he replied, and Sansa could not help but giggle at the memory of Robin Arryn’s favorite on-set trick.

“Except for the time Lyanna found the wire and paid him out for it, remember?” she said, and they spent the next quarter of an hour intermittently recalling various of some of their very first co-stars’ most memorable escapades.  By the time everything had been carried up the stairs to Sansa’s room, Jon had almost begun chuckling again.