Chapter Text
He sleeps so deeply now. She still checks. The fear of waking to find him dead has not left her, and she suspects it never will.
Jon lay as heavy as a log beside her, blissful to her restless fervor. He had always run a bit cooler than her, but death and winter had left him near freezing. It was all she could do to share her body’s own hearth, and yet his chill could not tamper her hungers.
He was too still. It was fear that moved her hand.
The brumal winds dressing the realm had settled deep into his bones since the Wall came down, and every night she’d lose him longer; sometimes his stillness was indistinguishable from the other kind. She pressed her palm flat to his chest, right over the scar he bore for her. His heart moved under her hand, albeit slowly, and her eyes pulled hot and tight. So much the gods had taken from her.
Jon was a king now, and she a proper lady, though not truly so with her odd band and quirks, and he his tribe of Free Folk. The thought lingered at the edge of her mind, and came forth at times like these: listening to his breath in the cool darkness, hand spreading over his sternum with the want in her something live beneath her skin. He carried the North. He carried the war and the cold and the Dragon Queen’s trust. He carried the dead and the lives of tens of thousands more who needed him. More than some girl beneath a dozen names needed him.
But she had him first. She loved him long before, back when she was only Arya Underfoot and he, just a sullen bastard. Could she not take for herself what he had freely promised to her?
Arya palmed down his chest, over the corded muscle of his belly molded from years of sweat and labor. Gently, she moved upright until she was nearly straddling him, her core flush against his thigh. He’d grown so much bigger now. She’d have to spread wide to mount him proper, a stretch she knew well, to his pleasure. The memories flooding into her made her squeeze her legs. Her shift bunched uncomfortably around her waist. She was being so stupid.
She slipped a hand under the threadbare shift, and the cold in him gave way as she moved. That was the thing she’d found and kept finding. She could share her warmth with him, and somewhere beneath the sleep and frost, his blood would move.
His belly moved at a laggard rhythm; Arya felt the slow percussion of his essence beneath. Death had given him back strangely, leeched the warmth from him. But she had enough to give. Steadily, she leaned down to press a kiss to his navel and stayed for a moment to feel the burn from her palm. He had a scar here too, just above where her lips rested, and she leaned up to kiss that too. Jon hardly stirred, so she slipped down, slowly, following the dark trail of hair and musk to the tightness of his groin. A tightness that mirrored the lust low in her gut. She traced her fingers over the veins that led to the cock she knew by touch, right above the hem of his small clothes. The weight and curve of him was as familiar as her own hand. His body knew her, but did he want?
He has not slept proper in a fortnight, she knows. She watched him refuse supper with a frown. She sat with him and his generals, Queen Daenerys and her men, long until the candles had burned to nothing. He is tired. She knows. And now his body has finally surrendered, and she… wants. How desperately, pathetically, selfishly she wants.
She pressed her nose into the dark ravel of curls and breathed in the musk. Gods. He was half-hard even in sleep, and the feel of it made her stupid.
The musk of him filled her nose as she made her way down, and her mouth watered, cunt clenching at nothing. She was rocking her hips against his thigh by the time her lips met the bulge of his cock, separated only by mere fleece. When she left a hard kiss at the swell of it, he twitched against her mouth, and the pulse that answered between her own legs made her breath stutter.
It was not enough to feel the ghost of him. Arya worked down the fleece carefully–she was not eager to break his sleep–and the sight of him erect and flushed, dark at the tip and already beading made her heady want. She wrapped her fingers around the base of him and felt him pulse against her palm. She had done this to him, with just her hands and breath and want. His body had answered without his knowing.
Arya took him in her mouth and whimpered around him. It was too much. The weight of him on her tongue as she suckled him deeper and let up again. She licked a slow stripe up his shaft and had to stop and breathe, pressing her forehead to his hip. The salty taste of him alone made her keen, rolling forward against his leg for the friction she wasn’t going to find.
Arya bit her lip and reached up to brush the wayward hair out of her face. Gods, she was really… Her cheeks were flushed, and the room’s hearth had little to do with the sweat clinging to her skin. Her breath seemed to fog. She worked down the foreskin to expose the roseate head and swiped her thumb over the slit to catch the drip. Arousal pooled low in her gut, her mouth watering. She would have her fill tonight. She pumped him into fullness, but her free hand slipped down between her own thighs almost without her realizing–she was so hot, eager for just a little something–
She pulled her hand back. Not yet. Not until–
She leaned down again, breath ghosting him. She flicked her tongue at him to taste, but Jon lurched. Fuck. Arya froze, breath caught in her throat. Jon’s brow furrowed, he shifted slightly, and the jolt of his thigh under her made her gasp. Her hand flew to her mouth, pressing closed. If he saw her now… at eye level with his cock! Her heart raced. Jon was no stranger to pleasure from her touch, but to start when he was sleeping!
A breath, then two. He was still twitching in her hand. Arya’s eyes stuck to his face. When she had counted half a hundred breaths, and he stayed unmoving, Arya allowed herself to let down the tension in her spine. She was being too eager. Slowly, she would go. She had learned slow with Jon, the reward in taking time.
Her free hand pressed flat to his belly and felt the slight hitch in his breathing–still asleep–his body knowing. His hips shifted, the barest roll upward, yet Arya squeezed her legs.
Careful now, she took him in again. Arya hollowed her cheeks and sucked him down inch by inch, letting the thick vein tickle the edge of her throat. She breathed gently through her nose the way she learned; his smell surrounded her completely, and Arya shut her eyes in bliss.
Time to time, his hips would stutter, feeding into the warm heat of her mouth. Arya welcomed him gladly, sucking down until the taste of him coated her tongue. She swallowed around him once, and drool escaped the corners of her lips and dampened the inside of his thighs. She pulled off with a soft pop and mouthed down his length, then back up, blowing a puff of air on the twitching slit, and took him deep again.
Every inch of her was strung tight, pins dancing on her flesh as she worked him. Her jaw ached, and her eyes were wet as she mouthed all over him and sucked him to slickness. Slick with her, and twitching steadily, he was fully hard now. The hand she braced on his stomach felt his breath coming faster, and she was so wet herself she was sticky between the thighs.
The strap of her night shift had slipped down to the elbow, and the drag of her nipple against the rougher fabrics of his small made her dizzy. She pressed her thighs together against the pulse that had started to throb.
When the dripping had budded to drooling, she finally pulled off him, breathless. Her lips were darkened from her movements, and her chin was coated in a sheen of spit and juices. Her jaw ached in a way she did not quite mind, and her cunt was aching so much that simply shifting made her keen.
She wouldn’t wait anymore, but she needed to prepare herself. That was always what he was adamant about. Gingerly, she eased up to lean back on her arse, still balanced over his thigh. Her smalls were soaked; under the dim light, they’d be near translucent. Arya chewed her lip, holding her breath as she pulled them off. The cool air on her mound made her hiss, a rush of pleasure sparking up her. She didn’t even need to spit, truly, but she wet her fingers anyway. Arya spread her legs over him, one hand braced on the paillase, the trailing down betwixt her thighs.
The first touch was, was a startle. She drew a sharp breath, quivering as she teased the swollen bud. Arya dragged her fingers through the slickness. How wet she was, she would have to be quick lest she bring herself to the edge before even having him. She worked two fingers into herself slowly, more to ease the ache than anything else. Her cunt drowned them easily, and Arya let her head drop backward, scissoring herself open. She couldn’t stop clenching. Her thumb grazed her bud, and her hips jerked on instinct. Rocking, slowly, she arched into her hand. Her walls pulled her in, and her hand to the wrist was damp with it. It was good, but it was better when he did it. His fingers were thicker, and he could always reach deeper in a way she never could. It could be even better than his cock when he did it right. And long, when he was mean and liked to tease her. When he would whisper in her ear, wet and soft, and she would rub all over his whole hand. Arya curled her fingers and flinched, the knob of her knuckles stretched her wider. She added a third finger. Hell, she was so soon with it, dripping, dripping…
She pulled her fingers free before she got carried away, before he got dry.
Ready for it now, she reached down to stroke the gathered wetness over him instead, and rose up, knees flanking his hips.
Arya gripped the thickness of him as she leaned over. He should enter her easily. Dots of pre beaded at his slit, and she smeared it down with her thumb, coating him in it, mixing it with the slick of her own mouth and the mess of her cunt. If that failed, the cooling wetness between her thighs would see her through. And if not, well, she could handle a bit of pain. She was soaked, her cunt had been dripping since she first slipped her hand beneath his smallclothes. The emptiness was almost punishing. She had not had him in too long, and her cunt pulsed around nothing, trying to remember the shape of him.
He was big enough that each time he carried a bit of pain if he was not careful. At their first, he almost refused her entirely–too afraid of splitting her apart, hands shaking as he held her hips, Arya, gods, wait–and she had pulled him into her anyway. She had hurt, of course, but she had never been given much to patience.
She notched him as her entrance and felt the broad head of him stretch her even still. She shook above him, rocking the head against her quim. She’d never felt so whorish as when he had her open and taut, waiting for him.
At times, she had liked to think of herself as the solemn statues of her father’s forebears–as glacial and haunting as the sculpture made in the likeness of her aunt. No fear or failing could penetrate her then, and no matter how the world crumbled around her, she would stand as tall and true as the trees that guarded the spirit of the North.
A child’s fancy. A feat she lost the moment she slipped into Nymeria’s furs, a skill she’d been helpless to retain when she took her final step outside that temple of death so long ago. When she had left the warm and foggy salt-bitten shores for the frigid wasteland that she once called home. She could never hollow herself into the vessel they had hoped she might be, and Jon had had a way of filling the cracks she had made. She resented it sometimes–the way the girl in her clawed back through every careful layer and left her with this desperate, shameful wanting. She resented it now, thighs trembling atop him.
No One does not need. No One does not take from sleeping kings because she cannot bear the thought of the night without him.
But that was what she was inside, the wolf in her that could not yield even when forced a thousand leagues apart. This may not have been the girl she’s always been, but it was the woman she was becoming. So Arya let herself take and sank down.
Gods.
The first press of him made her thighs shake, and she made a noise deep in her throat. The tears threatened her, which was humiliating and so purely her. She went slowly, giving herself time to open around him. The stretch was sharp and sweet, and she bit her cheek at the feel of it. When she finally settled flush against him, the first wave nearly gagged her; she had to drop her forehead to his chest and just endure the first ripple. Her cunt clenched around him greedily, trying to swallow him deeper, though there was nowhere deeper to go.
His chest rose and fell with little difference save for the slight hitch and stutter. But Arya whined, thighs trembling with the effort of holding still, the stretch still too much. He was in her. He was in her, and he was warm, so warm. Warmer here than anywhere–his hands and chest and frost-bitten skin–like she had found the ebbing fires in him and taken them for herself. She couldn’t think past it, the blaze in her core. So full of him at last, and she wanted to weep.
His heartbeat moved under her cheek. Slow and steady. Still asleep–by the gods will, she supposed. Arya pressed a kiss to his sternum and began to move.
She had forgotten. She had always forgot, in the time between, how much it settled her. The hollow wanting replaced by this, by him, by the unbearable fullness of it. Her body wanted to cease working, to only embrace the corporeal and feeling between her thighs.
The drag of him against her velvet walls, gods. She’d be damned and take her suffering in stride, so long as she could remain with the memory of this. She moved small at first, a roll of her hips to test, relearn the angle of him. She kept her palms flat to his chest for balance, fingers spread over the old scars she knew by heart and taste. The rhythm she built was unhurried; she had nowhere to be. She had the whole night and his sleeping warmth beneath her, and she was taking her time with this, and the quiet stillness of the outside world having no need for either of them yet.
The pleasure built in slow waves. She rocked into it, chasing each crest with a tilt of her hips, her breath going ragged despite herself. Below her, Jon’s breathing had changed, mirroring hers. Quicker now, less even. Their bodies edged closer. Something in her drummed at an angle when hit, and Arya shuddered and moved faster. Her nipples pebbled through her shift, and Arya cupped the breast exposed to the air. Sweat glistened on her bare thighs and arms, and the mixed flush and chill made her shiver. Brown strands stuck to her nape.
Jon, her lips moved. Jon, Jon, Jon.
She pressed her lips to his throat, his jaw, the corner of his sleeping mouth. She felt the low sound that moved through his chest before it reached his lips. He was getting closer, throbbing in her. She was, too. She pinched her nipple with a low moan, wet with the creamy mess from her cunt. Faster, she rocked down now, grinding reverse. She could feel him pressing against that ball of pleasure in her. Her eyes feel shut in the heat of it. If she canted her hips just right—
She had barely found her pace when his hands suddenly found her thighs. Arya halted, mouth caught in a scream as she fell forward to steady herself on him. Then she went rigid. Her palms pressed flat, and she watched his heat with her heart slamming in the pit of her throat. His grip was loose still, reflexive, fingers curled around the outside of her thighs without purpose. It seared. Arya huffed out the tiniest breath. A curl danced. Then his brow creased, and his lashes fluttered.
No. No, no—
Jon’s mouth twitched, his head lolled. Waking, he was. The slow, difficult surfacing of a man dragged from deep water. Arya’s eyes burned. She didn’t know when that had started again, sometime in the rocking, but it was unbearable to have him like this, only like this, stolen in the dark while the world outside sharpened its cold teeth. The wet gathered at her lashes, and she blinked it back furiously.
She would not be found like this. Weeping and wanting atop him like some—
Jon was staring at her.
The silence stretched. Arya did not move–how could she?–impaled on him, shift bunched at rucked at her waist, nipple still peaked and damp from her own hand, eyes glassy. She watched him take in the full measure of it; where she was, what she had done, was still doing. Her hips hadn’t ceased their small dance, rolling, spurred by the danger, maybe. The pleasure was still bubbling, and Arya could almost hate herself for it.
She waited for it, the anger, the shock, or something crueler. Her hair was a curtain around them.
“Arya.”
Her name in his mouth, rough with sleep, breathing harsh. His thumb pressed into the jut of her hip, and he held her still. Her hips stuttered to a stop, embarrassed that she’d still been moving.
“I’m sorry—” she started, the urge to appease spilling out of her. Her voice came out wrong, barely a whisper, but all cracked at the edges and weedy. That was when his eyes dropped to her cheeks, studied her face properly, and saw the shine of it. Something moved in him.
“Come here,”
Before she could answer or ask, his hands moved, from her thighs to her hips, and he turned them. The world tilted. Her back met the paillasse, and the breath kicked out of her in a rush, and Jon was above her then, still seated deep in her core. The new angle drove a sob out of her throat before she could stop it.
“You were going to finish without me,” he said against her temple, almost in wondering. “You should’ve asked.”
Arya’s head spun. The gentleness of his voice worsened it somehow; it made her want to squirm away. “You needed sleep,” she managed.
“Mm.” The sound wasn’t truly agreeing. His hand slid up from her hip to her jaw, canting her face up to him. “How long?”
She didn’t speak. His thumb pressed her chin. “Did you think I would refuse you?”
She couldn’t answer that either. The truth of it was too humiliating, that the wanting of it in secret had been a part of it, that she’d needed to take rather than be given. The tilt of his head suggested he already knew.
“Arya, how long have you been on me?”
Her face burned worse than any wound she’d weathered, and that was his answer. He made a low sound, between a sigh and a laugh, and pulled back until just the head of him remained. Arya whined at the loss of it, legs rushed up to trap him. Foolish. The quirk of his lip told her so.
“Say it properly.”
“Jon—“
“Say it.”
Her jaw tightened. She would get him one day, when she was not so… this. “Please.”
He settled at that, satisfied, as though she were Arya Underfoot and he had finally set her right. He sheathed himself to the hilt in one smooth stroke, and she arched off the bed with a moan.
“Look at me.”
She hadn’t realized she'd turned her face away. She made herself look. His eyes were dark and awake now, fully awake, sleep burned off by whatever he saw in her face.
“Were you crying?”
She bit her lip and shook her head. When she told him no, it was almost true.
He held her gaze and rolled his hips again, and her breath fractured. He wasn’t even being mean with it, she knew. That didn’t make her want to rub off on him any less, make him brutal. She was still suspended in this odd daze, the way her mind always fizzled when he got this way. Wouldn’t he be angry? She was lost. He should be cross.
“Arya.” His voice fell in that knowing, lulling tone, and it made her want to bite him. Curse the tears that puddled at her cheeks, curse Jon for making her leak with them. Making her leak down below, too, with him rubbing slow inside her, making her savor it. “Good?”
“Shut up,” she said, and it came out smaller than she meant it. “Don’t make it–just–”
“I know,” he said. And he did. She always knew he did. And she hated it, the times he chose to do nothing with it, and the times he didn’t. He was always sweet on her, too much so, it seemed to her. If she had had this under those filthy, lonely burrows on the solemn road, she would have never made her way back home.
The snap of his hips jerked her out of her thoughts. He kept her close–one hand at her throat, the other wandering her side in the dark, fondling her hip to groping her breast–and he was unhurried in a way that made her want to scream. She chewed her lip in a doltish pout. He fucked her slow and deep and present in a way that threw her back into her skin, nowhere to hide. She dug her heel into his back anyway, clutched at his neck and pulled him deeper. Their breaths met for a moment, and then he turned to nuzzle into her. Damned him.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured into her hair, which was not something she asked for, or really needed—
She turned her face into his throat and let herself cry.
He worked her through it, through both of it, and she let one hand fall as he drove into her again and again. Fucking her proper, giving it well. Not enough to where she’d be hurting tomorrow, a throb in every step, but still riveting. A hand found her nipple–pinching, rolling, and pulling the nub. She only ground against him harder. He liked to play with her there, and she fancied it too. Could almost finish with it. She’d have no babe with the way he clung.
Her face was still buried in him, away from the hunger in his gaze. The way he would look at her, almost wolfish and mean, was more than she could handle at the moment. All she could do was wet him, the soft skin of his neck, the hard flesh of his cock. Rocking into him as she drooled and sobbed like some scolded child. She had been caught with a throbbing hand just like one, hadn’t she?
Faster, faster, he bucked like a wolf, mounted her the way she liked at the end. Hungry as their Ghost. It was nice this way with him thick inside her, taking all the space she could give, and even more still. Her crest was reaching, and his thrusts were getting erratic. He never let out too far, though. Always shallow and quick like the thrusts he’d first taught her with. He was right on her, the slight stubble of him dragging against her cheek. She snuggled in even as she mewled.
“You’ll always have me,” he said. He pressed his mouth to her temple, the corner of it, her ear. Right into the hole of her ear. “Little sister.”
And then the thrum edging her spine melted into a throb, and then a swell. She moved against him faster, his grunts goading her on. He was near it, too. Gasping, she was, whining…
…and then she was coming, quivering with his name in her mouth, and tears salting her face, with a hand pressed flat to his chest, feeling his heart beat fast and alive, alive, alive. She felt him follow. The pulse of him, spilling deep where he belonged, almost brought her to it again.
At the end of it, she was drowsed. He didn’t move off her, just exhaled long and ragged against her temple as he settled his weight on her.
“You should’ve woken me,” he said finally.
Arya turned to him, looked in his scarred eye, with the rouge tinge at the center, so strange to his dark grey one. “You needed sleep.”
His eyes were soft then, almost a smile. “I needed you more.”
Arya closed her eyes and pressed her lips to his. Outside, winter continued its lament against the keep’s old stones. She said nothing, and neither did he. He was warm now, and it would be enough.