Chapter Text
Jon looked at Arya with the start of a sentence on his lips. As he saw her, leaning against the doorframe and draped only in her blanket, Arya saw that sentence melt away. His gaze took the long route to her eyes. Even by the low reddish glow of his candle, Arya could tell that his face was reddening.
His eyes finally met Arya’s, and she watched in amusement as they strained to stay there.
“I’ve disturbed you again,” he said.
Arya couldn’t help but laugh. “I think you’re the only one who’s been disturbed here.”
Whether on account of the beer, the hour or the fact that it was Jon, Arya felt no particular shame at her nakedness. Mostly covered as she was by the blanket, Jon was seeing little enough to be shocked by. She started to adjust the cloth better cover her chest, but, deciding against it, let if fall.
“I can’t speak for the customs of your clan,” Jon said, “But in the South, most people would be shocked to see a lady as uncovered as you are.”
Arya titled her head. She almost frowned at the dizziness it brought, but kept it hidden.
“But not you?” she said.
Jon paused noticeably before his answer. “Not as much as others might be,” he said.
“Why is that?”
“I supposed, I’ve lived among the free folk,” Jon shrugged. “I know there are other peoples, and other ways than my own.”
“Truer than you know,” Arya agreed. Indeed, in the ever-varied docks of Braavos, Arya had seen people of more ways and customs than she could remember. She was no longer easily shocked. She ran her eyes over Jon’s expression. “You came back to say something,” she said.
It was not a question. Jon nodded.
“I did,” he said. “But I don’t know what.”
Arya shrugged. “What comes to mind?”
Jon looked at her then, truly looked at her. His dark eyes looked into her, and Arya looked into them. She saw the candle’s flame reflected there, like a pinprick of light amongst the blackness. The intensity of his gaze set that flame inside of her, but also frightened her. She felt almost sure that he’d looked through the face he knew as Elrine, and see the Arya underneath.
“Your eyes,” he said, at last.
“What about them?”
“I shouldn’t have come back.” He shook his head.
“What about them?” Arya pressed.
“They are… beautiful. And dark.”
“Like your own,” Arya answered.
Arya read his face again, but saw no discovery there. Instead, it was solemn, almost sombre under the shadows of the flame. She saw a far-away sadness, and a trace of shame.
“You’re looking at me, but you’re seeing somebody else,” Arya said.
“I am,” Jon said. His voice was low and raw.
“The same person that you saw before?” Arya asked. “The one you loved a great deal?”
“The very same,” gasped Jon.
Feeling the fear and the fire both rising in her, Arya stepped forward with a power that felt more than just her own.
“I can only say,” she said, approaching until her toes almost touched his, “is that I envy that person very much.”
Then, placing her hand against his cheek, Arya kissed him. With her height, and him still in his boots, she had to strain up to reach him. Their lips touched, and she felt the hotness of his breath as he exhaled his surprise. Then, she pulled herself back.
Though they were both very still, that short instant of a touch echoed through Arya like thunder. Her legs quaked in its aftermath, shaking with fear and excitement. She said nothing, for if she did, she feared that her voice would shake too.
Above her, Jon seemed frozen by her touch. He looked down at her, his face still and unreadable. Arya awaited his reaction with a held breath, and prayers to a dozen gods she didn’t worship.
Jon blinked and looked at her as if he had never seen her before. Arya held his gaze. Then, before she knew it, he stepped forward into her and returned the kiss in force. His lips felt like a lifetime of buried desire, and his breath was as hot as dragon fire. Arya’s hands gripped his sides, and Jon’s fingers closed around the bare skin of her waist. They moved together, crashing into the cold stone of the wall, which registered like ice up Arya’s back. Jon’s candle fell to the floor and died in an instant.
Arya broke for half-mouthed gasp of air before returning to Jon’s mouth. Her fingers dug deeper into the fabric of his clothes. She pulled at him, wanting to drag him closer into her, wanting to have him all. All of a sudden, however, she felt him full back.
“Wait, wait,” she heard him say.
Arya didn’t much want to wait. She followed him backwards, closing her mouth around something in the vicinity of his own – some part of his jaw, it felt like. She heard him – felt him – chuckle, before pushed her back by her shoulders.
“Wait, Elrine. The candle,” he whispered.
“Fuck the candle.”
“Not unless we want another fire,” he said.
Arya parted from him reluctantly. She saw vague suggestions of movement in the dark as Jon stooped for the fallen light, which she could only see by the dull red glow of its wick. She heard him blow gently on the ember, hoping to rekindle it, and curse as he succeeded only in killing it.
“Shit,” he said. “I’ll need luck finding my way back in this darkness.”
“Fuck going back,” Arya said. “Stay here.”
She hadn’t planned on saying it. It just came out. Panic flared in her chest, but Jon immediately disarmed it with a laugh.
“Best not,” he said. He paused for a long while, while Arya felt disappointment rush in to ruin the mood. “I’ll give the servants a terrible fright if they find me missing from my bed in the morn.”
She heard him clear his throat, and the sounds of shuffling feet. “I think the beer has gotten the better of our senses tonight. I shouldn’t have done this. Best to sleep it off, I think.”
Arya might have answered that Jon seemed had drank less than she, and seemed to have suffered the less for it, but kept that to herself. This close, all she wanted was to grab him by the neck and drag him into her room. But if she had learned anything from the training, it was that often the only good route was patience.
“One last kiss,” she said, letting some of the disappointment into her voice. “To end the night.”
There was a thinking breath from Jon. “If you wish,” he said. And then, “Gladly.”
She felt the floorboards shift as Jon stepped forward.
“Wait,” she said. “Wait. Just a moment.”
Arya suddenly found herself possessed by the thrill of danger. Hooking her fingers beneath the seams of her Elrine mask, she slipped off of her face. Wrapping it in her blanket, which she also removed, she threw back into her room. She stood before Jon now in the pitch darkness, naked and unmasked as Arya Stark.
“Give me your hand,” she said. Her legs were shaking again, from cold and giddy nerves. Without a word, Jon obeyed.
Arya wrapped her fingers around Jon’s wrist, and gently guided his hand. His fingers were rougher, more calloused now than when last she felt them. Still, they were warmer than the candle’s flame, and when she touched them to her face, they were as gentle ever.
Arya took her hand away from his wrist, and let out a shaky breath. Wordlessly, delicately, Jon’s fingertips traced along her skin – her real skin, Arya’s skin, his sister’s skin. They brushed along her cheek to the edge of her jaw, and followed the bone to the tip of her chin. They slipped down onto the soft skin of her neck, and Arya swallowed as Jon ran his thumb along the length of her collarbone.
With the silent solemnity of a worshipper, Jon’s hand explored down over her breastbone, and onto her breasts. He brushed his thumb over her nipple, and Arya shivered. It was a sensation she had no experience of, and nothing to compare it to.
No longer able to restrain herself, Arya latched her own hands around the back of Jon’s neck. She pulled his mouth back to hers, and their lips met again. Arya let her tongue explore into his mouth and felt the answer of his own, felt the bitter remnants of his beer and the sharp edge of his front teeth. It felt simple, strange, and entirely natural. Her mind went blank as all the world shrank down to this sensation in the dark, divorced entirely from sound or vision, time or place.
When they at last pulled away, Arya was certain that her heart must echo through the whole body of Winterfell. Jon Snow’s fingertips still held on her skin. There was a final silence, in which all she could hear was his breathing.
At last, Jon Snow spoke.
“Goodnight,” he said, with a voice out of the darkness.
His hand came away from her skin, and sooner after his footprints faded down the hallway. For the second time that day, Arya was left alone in the shadows.