Chapter Text
“Pinky promise? You’re not that old—you know what it means!”
It means you can never break it.
Jeyne slips from the door, shame dragging down her shoulder blades. Her feet follow a carpet distressed from a decade of bedroom-to-bathroom treks, eardrums grappling at the delicate threads of her best friend’s conversation. Nothing makes sense anymore, Jeyne thinks—why can’t they just go back to when they were single-digit-aged girls, sweet and sunburnt, boys more fun contained behind the glass of celebrity crushes and elementary gossip.
Jeyne starfishes on her bed, reaches for her phone:
Hurry up, popcorn’s cold
Sansa texts back: coming!!!
Five, ten, fifteen minutes pass—and Jeyne’s picking at her cuticles and carouseling through every social. Uploaded an hour ago, their twin posts: she and Sansa, pajama-bodied, fresh-faced, pints of ice-cream in hand, spoons and tongues out. Sansa’s post dazzles with two hundred eight likes, seventy-one comments; Jeyne’s: thirty and four, one from Ramsay, emoji stand-in smirking—gross, she should block him. Taps on the tag, fleeing to Sansa:
Two hundred twelve likes. King’s Landing High dotes on her, as though Jeyne weren’t in the picture too, as though it weren’t her idea, her fairy lights in the background, her phone memorializing their sleepover movie-night—
Even Sansa’s caption stuns, in its effortlessness:
love this life <3 sweet 16!
Senior boys flock to the comments, wishing her a happy nameday with a side of hit them back up sometime, don’t be a stranger. Sansa could have any of them—Harry Hardyng, star quarterback and heir to a family fortune; Joffrey Baratheon, class-president and son of the mayor—any of them—
Sansa skips into her bedroom, blushing and breathless. “Sorry! Sandor just wanted to say happy nameday.”
Jeyne scoots over, as she snuggles beneath a shared blanket, the one they crocheted together in the sherbet days of eleven.
A thirty-two year old man wanted to say happy nameday for an hour and what was the pinky promise about?
Jeyne just says Aw, that’s so cute and passes her the popcorn, plays the movie.
Chapter 2
Notes:
lol
Chapter Text
He found them in the fanfare of the fall carnival, their faces sticky with cream eyeshadow and glitter gel, tummies aching from a dinner of strawberry floats and cotton candy.
It went like this:
Sansa puffing and pouting over a game of milk-bottle knockdown, the stubborn remaining two versus the final ball, and Jeyne needing to get back home, like now, Sansa, Dad said to have the car back by nine.
Just one more try, I’m so close.
It’s Sansa’s plea that peels him from the shadows: dusty utility jacket bounding a giant body that stinks of beer, face half-hidden behind a cloak of black hair until the whip of the wind reveals it as hideous.
“No crew hands,” says the snaggle-toothed carnie working the booth. The scarred stalker only has to feint a swing of his fist to send him reeling into the corner.
Sansa has yet to make eye-contact with him. It’s his boots she considers, mud-caked and steel-toed. He steals the ball from the tender cradle of her fingers and hurls it from a thing that is solid into one as transparent as an earthbound ghost. The shelf with its two bottles knocks loose with a resounding thud.
“Winner!” cries the carnie.
Sansa’s gratitude gushes out in spurts of seven blessings and thank yous and you didn’t have tos. The man grunts to the wall of prizes wired to a gate. Sansa bounces on tiptoe, and points to a jumbo teddy bear. Her wristband is shaking.
He snatches the teddy by the throat then relinquishes it.
“What will you do with it?” the man asks in a voice that belongs to a thing from hell.
Sansa tilts her head, eyes graduating from boots to bust. “Um…put it on my bed?”
His smile is the lingering dread of a nightmare. Jeyne cups her elbow. “Sansa…”
“And do what with it on your bed?”
Sansa hugs the bear, close. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Let’s go,” Jeyne begs.
And they go.
His laughter shreds the space behind them. She and Sansa round a neoned balloon stand, fingers laced and sweaty, wincing at the squeal of latex being manipulated, nimble hands knotting into existence a faceless dog.
They tear through the dirt-packed lot, shadows convexing and concaving at their sides. Loose gravel invades the insoles of their flats. “Seven heavens,” Jeyne gasps, and she wonders how long it’s been since her last breath. “That guy was a total creep!”
“So scary,” Sansa stammers into the fuzz of the bear’s neck. Says it a second time, with the slow release of fascination. “So scary…”
Chapter Text
Libraries harvest secrets:
In stories stiffened by time on the shelves, in the sacrifice of too-long-held whispers. It’s where Sansa confesses that the man from the shadows found her on socials—every one of them. Flared her profile with likes, his own a zero-follower void save for a meme he shared four years ago of a dog lying in apathy behind a caption stylized in murder face font: I exist without my consent.
The library harvests secrets: it’s where Jeyne asks, That’s not weird to you?Â
Sansa shrugs, peeling a novel from the reserved shelf. I kind of get it, she says.
A week shivers past and the nature of Sansa’s books have changed: covers shifting from poppy letters and vibrant hues to muted shades of gray; wholesome tales of romance mutating into the tragic geometries of ambiguous endings and star-crossed lovers. Tonight, Sansa’s perfecting her honors lit thesis on the Valyrian tragedy of a thirteen-year-old little queen on the eve of her wedding, pierced in the heart by her sworn shield, the very man who had vowed to protect her since she was just a babe swaddled in the cradle.
You don’t get it, Jeyne. It was selfless, really—he loved her.
Libraries harvest secrets, and Jeyne’s pushing back her cuticles with her teeth, worrying over her chemistry homework—stoichiometric calculations, who even gets that? Eraser shavings pile like ash on the table.
I don’t get it.
“Like when I think about it, what he did was really sweet.” It takes Jeyne some frenzied seconds to realize who she’s speaking of, where she’s wandered off to. Sansa’s zipping up her backpack, homework finished, smiling to herself, a job well done. “I think I like him.”
Jeyne frowns over all those rotten ratios.
I don’t get it.
Chapter Text
They’re shivering in sheer tights and crushed velvet, staring at a squirrel flattened in the middle of the street. Sansa says she wishes they could bury it.
Jeyne can’t commiserate, can’t let go of the weight of their recklessness. “What if our dads find out?”
“Be quiet, Jeyne.”
It’s the shimmery start of the weekend, and they’ve prettied up for two hours for the cheer captain’s exclusive Friendsgiving. Sansa was invited, of course—the only sophomore in the noon blaze of the courtyard at lunch. Bring someone if you’d like, Margaery Tyrell said with lips glossed petal-pink, her eyes barely passing over Jeyne’s star-struck face.
Their curfew’s nine, but Jeyne’s dad is working third shift, meaning they can sneak out together, and then Sansa can sleepover—has to—because it’s the only way they’ll be able to go, like Daddy will never let me stay out so late.
We really shouldn’t, Jeyne started in, sickened by conscience, but the look Sansa gave her was all Please, don’t ruin this.
Because it’s not about pleasing the upperclassmen and Jeyne knows this. It’s why it came as no surprise when she told her that Sandor Clegane would give them a ride so Jeyne wouldn't have to. It’s called being courteous, Jeyne, the boys at school don’t know how to be that.
He paints their every conversation: every stroke of mundane tattle taken over by his invisible hand. Sansa’s thoughts go back to him, always, like every part of her has been re-engineered to live for nothing else. Earlier today, in fourth period, Sansa got caught texting him, mewing so many I’m sorrys when Mr. Luwin confiscated her phone, shaking his head. “No more texting Boyfriend during class,” he scolded, even though Sansa’s graceful tears won, like they always do, and he returned her phone, consoling in hushed tones, you’ve always been such a good girl, I know you won’t do it again.
The question sat on Jeyne’s tongue for the remainder of geography like a spike.
“You saved him as Boyfriend?” Jeyne asked at the long-awaited bell.
Sansa swept her hair over her shoulder, like obviously. “He says I was sent by the Seven to destroy him.” Sansa stuck out her hand, her nail polish sparkling sunset-yellow. “But you can’t tell anyone—pinky promise.”
Jeyne’s frowning at her pinky finger when his truck prowls around the corner.
Sansa climbs in first, their bones snug in a passenger seat of leather that is weight-wounded or otherwise slashed by a blade, nostrils sucking in the scent of stale smoke. The seatbelt stretches across their bodies, chafing against Jeyne’s throat. Sandor Clegane mutters some harsh consonants that probably deserve penance, the hand not on the steering wheel claiming Sansa’s thigh.
Pretty girls, he says, and Jeyne hates that her cheeks burn, hates that some insane part of her thinks, Wow, I get it, before her skin crawls with unseen spiders.
Sansa pulls down the visor, flips open the mirror, grooming hair that doesn’t need to be groomed, every strand, lying perfect. The light’s burnt out but in the dimness, they find each other’s silent reflections. Jeyne notices too late that she over-plucked an eyebrow, the follicle a bead, bleeding. She thinks of the gore-smeared street, the two-dimensional squirrel.
“We should have buried it,” Jeyne whispers.
They pull up outside the Tyrell mansion, lantern-lit gardens flanking a cobbled walkway. Jeyne throws open the door before the truck comes to a full stop, hops out with only the tender beginning of a thank you.
Sansa’s right behind her, until the bear paw of his hand captures her wrist.
“No boys, little bird.”
The sound Sansa makes isn’t a laugh but it isn’t a cry either, and it’s worse than if she had screamed bloody murder. She lingers in the truck like this is too terrible to stop, like she loves this and can’t stop.
Jeyne turns away on a sprained ankle and thinks she hears the wet withdrawal of a kiss.
Chapter Text
It began deep in the pigtail season of summer.
They were ten, still hometowned in Winterfell, plucking flowers from her mother’s garden bed. He rode in on a horse, truly: the son of Mr. Stark’s friend who introduced himself as Waymar Royce. He was eighteen and country handsome—so old, she and Sansa had giggled into the bounty of their daisies, but Jeyne saw it even then, the twinkle in her eyes when Sansa greeted him, the spaghetti strap of her dress slipping down the slope of her sun-freckled shoulder. Jeyne saw it even then, unable to decipher it until now: an enchantment equally wild but without the gauze of innocence, as Waymar delivered the trite compliment that’s never been a compliment.
She’ll be a heartbreaker, Ned.
It looks different on her at sixteen. It looks like purplish bruises on her neck, beauty-blending foundation between lunch and sixth period. It looks like chronically losing herself in text messages that Jeyne has never read, and blushing. It looks like Sansa biting her lip in an eyelet lace bra and snapping a selfie in the locker room, as they’re changing for gym, the seven-pointed star of her necklace tucked between her cleavage.
It sounds like: It’s not like we’re doing it, Jeyne, I just like to make him happy.
It sounds worse, a week later: a bestie sleepover to celebrate the end of the semester, Sansa’s guaranteed A-honor roll, and Jeyne’s C in chemistry, like thank the gods, she’ll take it. It sounds like, seeping into the blackness of the early morning, a buzz coming from Sansa’s earbuds.
Jeyne rubs the sleep from her eyes and asks, “What are you watching?”
Sansa tilts away her phone. “Something Sandor sent me.”
Jeyne doesn’t peek, doesn’t ask anything else, because it sounds like what she imagines must have been playing behind Waymar’s eyes and what now plagues Sandor Clegane, all that slapping and moaning.
Chapter Text
Harry Hardyng asks her to the winter formal with a flair of vintage charm: muscling a boombox blaring her favorite song amid a flurry of artificial snow, the sum of their initials spelled out in rose petals.
Sansa blesses him with a yes from the balcony of her window, and the proposal goes viral.
“He’s letting you?” Jeyne asks over the phone. She has watched the video a hundred consecutive times, loop after loop; has it memorized, almost believing once again in the fluff of fairy tales.
Sansa knows who she means by he, and sighs into the receiver. “It’s not like I could’ve said no…what would Daddy think?”
It’s madness, how Jeyne’s almost on his side—like you can’t do this, seriously. What will he do? He said no boys.
Jeyne even says it.
“Seven heavens, it’s not like I’m going to kiss him, Jeyne!”
She feels similarly, a peer-pressured twin, when Ramsay asks her to the dance the following day, more like tells her, as she’s stuffing her backpack into her locker: day one of the second semester and already stressed. Jeyne’s feeling so unwell in the head she just says, sure, yeah, sounds fun.
Ramsay texts her later that night and says, Ever notice your name rhymes with chain?
It rhymes with insane.
The evening of the winter formal, he’s obnoxious with the doorbell. Jeyne rips open the door, and he reads this as eagerness, his wormy lips curling into a revolting smirk. “And here I thought I was the worst.”
Jeyne rolls her eyes, wishes her dad wasn’t at work. Ramsay attaches the corsage to her wrist like a shackle. When she pins the boutonniere to his suit, he dares her to poke him. It’s red and her dress is purple and Ramsay knew it was purple—since when has he ever listened?
They pack themselves into his car. It was his older brother’s, the one who died a few years ago, and reeks of BO, like he has yet to learn what laundry detergent is. Theon Greyjoy’s in the backseat, with no date in sight. Jeyne doesn’t understand their friendship but she doesn’t understand her and Sansa’s either, doesn’t understand anything.
Sansa arrives to the dance in the pale carriage of a limousine, holding hands with Harry. They’re beautiful, in blue. Jeyne watches their every step, and grows lightheaded, holding her breath.
It’s like this all night. Like she’s on edge, teetering blindly on a cliff. Doesn’t dance with Ramsay, comes up with an excuse instead to go to the bathroom twice in the sick span of fifteen minutes. The second time she chooses a stall that’s been vandalized with permanent ink. It reads: guys fucking suck :(
Jeyne thinks: Thank the gods, somebody gets it!
Ramsay and Theon are picking at the PTA provided snacks, ladling juice that’s probably been spiked. Harry Hardyng approaches her, and she thinks she’s died and gone to heaven.
“Hey,” he says, doesn’t bother to say her name, and it dawns on her that he doesn’t even know it. “Have you seen Sansa?”
Have I seen Sansa?
Jeyne three-sixties herself dizzy, leaves Ramsay to binge his way through the refreshments.
The campus sinks beneath an overcast that reminds her of a portrait in the sept illustrating a harbinger of the apocalypse. Something about the way she’s feeling takes her to the dumpsters behind the cafeteria.
Sansa’s corsage is crushed on the pavement. A bitter breeze steals the petals of a winter rose far away. Her gown glitters against the brick—it’s rucked up to her waist.
Sandor Clegane’s hand is inside.
“You want that, don’t you, little bird? Want to come on my fingers?”
Sansa’s whining, her boobs spilling over the sweetheart neckline of her dress. Jeyne watches them.
“Yes, I want that.”
“Want my cock?”
“Yes, I want that.”
“Want my baby?”
“Yes, yes, I want that.”
Jeyne breaks a heel, scrambling to the gymnasium. It clicks like a warhorse on the hardwood floor.
“You’re bleeding,” Ramsay says, almost happily, and she is, the nail-bed of her thumb weeping blood. “Want to get out of here?”
No, no, I don’t want to go anywhere with you, you fucking suck. But all she can manifest are Sansa’s words, the ghost of a maiden carried over the dark wind.
Yes, I want that.