Chapter Text
Sansa decides to swear off boys indefinitely.
She hates to call herself boy crazy, but she just might be. Hells, though it was fake, she decided to get a husband at seven years old. It might have been cute then, but she doubts it stayed that way when she didn't grow out of it.
All the talk with mom, the insistent warnings about boys and sex and her safety, it all makes sense now after Joffrey. She’s been so obsessed with the idea of true love for as long as she remembers, has wanted to live out a great romance like in her favorite books and movies, that maybe she's been too hyper-focused on it to the point of ignoring common sense.
After what nearly happened at the Sentinels party, she considers that maybe she needs to take a step back and reconsider what's actually important to her. Like her family, her friends, and graduating from high school with good grades.
It’s not a bad decision. The less time she spends thinking about boys, the more time she has to be at home or hang out with her friends. She has unfortunately neglected her relationships outside of Joffrey over the past year and resolves to fix it.
She discovers that it's a lot of fun not having to worry about trying to get some dumb boy to like her, wondering whether she's saying or doing the right things. With her friends, she can just be herself and not wonder whether she's pretty enough or interesting enough. or whatever other crazy thoughts she's had while trying to get Joff to date her.
The rest of the school year flies by after that and the season turns to summer with her barely noticing it.
***
Her parents decide that the family will go on a week-long camping trip in the Wolfswood. It's to mark the last time all Stark kids will live together at home. At the end of the summer, Robb will start attending university in Riverrun. In another two years, it will be Sansa's turn, then Arya’s, then Bran's, then Rickon's.
Mom's been really emotional about it; she keeps staring at Robb all teary-eyed as if he's going to war instead of the very same university where she and Dad met.
It's only Rickon who ever gets her to stop. “Mom, you better still be this emotional by the time I leave for college or I'll be really offended,” he would joke, and Mom would laugh.
Dad is the one to suggest the camping trip so that they can enjoy some quality time as a family. Jon is, of course, invited, and he shows up at the house with his brand new - well, new to all of them - truck. He bought it secondhand, a graduation gift for himself.
Sansa is relieved to see him bring a car because now she can ride with him to the camping grounds. Bran and Rickon are riding with their parents, so the alternative would’ve been riding with Robb and Marg in her brother’s car. She loves those two, but they can be nauseating to be around in an enclosed space, regardless of whether they’re being obnoxiously in love or arguing like the worst enemies.
It turns out she’s not alone in that opinion because Arya curses as soon as Sansa climbs into Jon’s passenger seat. “That’s my seat,” she protests, already red-faced with anger as she glares at Sansa. “I called dibs!”
“No, you didn’t,” Sansa scoffs because she wouldn’t have slid into the shotgun if she had.
“Yes, I did! I told Jon I have dibs on the shotgun seat when he bought the car.”
“That doesn't count. You can’t just reserve a seat for life,” Sansa scowls.
“Yes it does and yes I can.”
Sansa rolls her eyes. “Well, I'm his wife, so I get this seat by default.”
“Show me your marriage certificate or get your delusional ass off my seat.”
Jon, who has been seated at a driver's seat, chuckles softly. “The two of you haven't changed a bit.” Then, leaning over her to see Arya from her window, he says, “Arya, just get in. It’ll be a long drive anyway and you’ll have more space in the back. And if you still want to, you can ride shotgun on the way home.”
Sansa does her best not to give her sister a smug smile. The last thing she wants is to make this drive unbearable with Arya whining the whole time; she’d rather deal with Robb and Margaery than have her little sister screaming into her ear for the next two hours..
“Actually, now that you mentioned the space at the back…” Sansa trails off, pretending to open the door as if she changed her mind.
“Nope. No way. Dibs,” Arya climbs onto the back seat quickly, diving onto the long seat and letting out a satisfied sound. “Look at all this leg room.”
Jon stifles a smile, shaking his head lightly as he turns on his ignition.
The thing is, Sansa doesn’t usually fight for Jon’s attention like this. But he’s leaving for university, too, and she knows all her siblings will hound his attention during this trip. This car ride might be all she gets with him and she wants to ask him all about college and what his plans are, and so she does.
She already knows that he’s heading to UWall for a mechanical engineering degree and that he got a partial scholarship from the Night's Watch Aerospace Agency. Robb had bragged about it as if it were him who got the scholarship and not his best friend.
Throughout the drive, Jon tells her about how he found out about the NWAA scholarship program and the process of applying for it. It apparently comes with the promise of employment at the agency right after graduation.
He sounds so thrilled about it that she can't help but keep smiling as he talks. She can almost imagine him in university, then working at NWAA, leading space missions to discover more about what lies beyond. It fits him so well, this future he’s building for himself. His mom would be so proud.
“Uh, sorry,” he says when he eventually realizes he’s been talking too long, Arya snoring softly at the back.
“No, keep going,” Sansa encourages with a smile. She reaches for his arm and squeezes it lightly. “It sounds so exciting, Jon. I’m so proud of you.”
“Thanks,” he says, head ducking quickly to hide his smile.
***
Sansa’s not one to complain when it comes to her parents’ ideas, but she really doesn’t know why it had to be camping. They could’ve rented out a lodge somewhere nice and warm, the gods know Wolfswood is crawling with resorts. Instead, they’re out in the cold wilderness in several layers of clothes, sleeping in tents -
A tent that Sansa doesn't even know how to set up. She sighs.
She can’t ask her mom since she’s busy setting up their kitchen area, their dad is helping the boys set up theirs, Robb is making a show of putting up Marg’s tent when they all secretly know she’ll barely use it anyway, and Arya’s determinedly working on hers alone.
She turns to Jon beside her, who has already started setting up his tent. All it takes is a pout from her for him to abandon his progress and help with hers. He even tries to teach her while he does it, and she smiles and nods along at all the right parts as her mind wanders.
“Sansa,” he sighs when he realizes she’s not listening, “It’s useful knowledge to have. You never know when you’ll need it.”
“Jon,” she sighs right back, “What makes you think I’m ever going camping again without being forced into it by my family?”
He shakes his head defeatedly before instructing her to hold the other end of the tent so he can put in the stick things.
As predicted, once they’ve set up their campgrounds, her wild siblings and Jon set off to find something more entertaining to do. Bran is the only one to stay behind, popping open a book as he sits on one of the loungers. Dad is already setting up to barbecue their lunch, and Mom is working on the rest. Sansa and Marg volunteer and help her, and that's basically how the rest of the week goes.
**********
Sansa stares at her pre-calc homework with disgust, already dreading the hours she’ll spend working on it only to end up getting them wrong somehow. She swears she listened in class, watched Luwin’s snail speed as he explained the process of solving it, but she just doesn’t get it.
Math’s never been her strongest subject; honestly, it’s her worst. The equations never make sense, and she knows she's doing something wrong when it does make sense. It's always frustrated her, especially because it's the one subject she's always at risk of failing.
This assignment is not that bad, she tries to convince herself as she looks up the math question online. Surely someone on the internet has solved the exact problem before.
There is a solved example on one of the math sites she finds, but the explanation is so jumbled that it barely makes sense. She sighs, reading it again and again, trying to follow the process, but she doesn’t get any closer to understanding it.
It could be worse, she reminds herself. She could be Jon up in UWall with his never-ending math subjects. She shivers at the thought. She’ll never understand why he’d willingly subject himself to that, even with the promise of a dream job. Having to do math for the rest of her life sounds like a nightmare.
At the thought of him, she pulls out her phone and takes a picture of her notebook to send to him, along with a sad emoji. He used to help her with her math homework all the time back when he still lived in Winterfell, sitting next to her at the kitchen downstairs and patiently explaining each item no matter how frustrated she got.
It’s ten minutes before he’s calling her, and she grins. It’s too easy.
She accepts his call and his face loads on her phone within a few seconds. She smiles at his rosy cheeks and pink nose, and the way he’s squinting at his phone, only for her to frown when she realizes -
“Are you outside?” she asks incredulously, noticing his surroundings,
He grins, then, as if trying to sound sober, he slowly says, “I'm at a bar with a few classmates. I just stepped out for a bit.”
To call her, he means.
“Jon, are you crazy?” He’s way up north, where it’s infinitely colder than Winterfell, and it’s winter. “Go back inside, you’ll catch your death out there.”
“It's fine,” he laughs, and she thinks he might be a lot more drunk than he seems. “I just wanted to explain the equation to you and you won’t hear me inside. It's really easy, so this will be quick, I promise.”
He doesn't give her time to object before he’s rattling on about math. He tells her to pull up a paper, and she turns her camera to her desk so he can see what she’s doing.
It does end up being easy, or at least the way Jon explained it made it seem that way. Why can't Luwin explain it the way he did? People would probably be a lot less intimidated with math if their teacher didn’t drone on like he did in class.
Jon stays on the call for long enough to watch her solve the first two items on her homework. Once he’s satisfied that she understands it, he says goodbye before dropping the call.
**********
Larence Hornwood asks her out at the start of senior year and she says yes, mostly due to a lack of reasons to say no. Larence is nice; they've been classmates since elementary. He's polite, soft-spoken, and unassuming - he probably won't end up being an ass like Joffrey was.
Only, she feels less than nothing whenever he kisses her. It's not bad, his kisses, just… meaningless. Sansa keeps dating him in the hopes that maybe her feelings will grow with time.
***
It doesn't, which is unfortunate because Larence is everything she should want in a guy. He’s sweet, a gentleman, and yet…
“I just don’t feel any attraction,” she admits in frustration. “And maybe it's just because I have a lot on my plate, with graduation coming and all, but sometimes I forget we’re even together. I feel so guilty because I know he likes me and I can’t reciprocate.”
It’s a month out from prom and Margaery was just helping Sansa pick out which dress she should get for the event. She’d taken pictures of the dresses she liked best when she and Mom did the rounds earlier, and Marg had helped her narrow it down to two.
Margaery hums over video call. “I don't know what to tell you, babygirl. It's either you like him or you don't. And by the sounds of it, you don't like him. Not more than a friend, anyway.”
“I know,” she admits quietly, “I just don't understand why I don't. There's nothing wrong with him, so why don't I feel anything?”
“He's just not the guy for you and that's fine. You're only eighteen, babe. You have plenty of time to meet someone who will make you feel more. You don’t have to stay with him just because he’s nice.”
“But what if in another month I feel different, what if I wait just a little and then I’ll love him then?”
“San, I don't think it's supposed to be this confusing. I mean, obviously you're not going to be in love with the person right away, but there's going to be that feeling… it's hard to explain, and maybe it'll be different for you… but if it's the right person, you'll just know.”
“Easy for you to say,” Sansa sighs, “You found your person at fourteen. All you had to do was bat your eyes and my idiot brother fell to his knees.”
Margaery lets out a melodic laugh. “True,” she agrees, “Maybe that even disqualifies me to give advice. All I really know is, whoever it is you end up with will be the luckiest man on earth, because you will love him so fiercely he won’t have any choice but to be the perfect man for you. So just… be patient. You’ll find him.”