Petyr watched the glass rise to her mouth and back down. He let his eyes linger too long on the glossy sheen the spirit had left behind on her lips, waiting for the pink flash of her tongue to dart out and sweep it away. She was good at this, the ruse, the game; it amazed him how quickly she’d taken to giving away her smiles and the ability she possessed in making every person she spoke to feel as though they were the one who interested her the most. Then he thought of her clumsy seduction, and how poor that had been, along with every other encounter thereafter. It was reality she struggled with. Petyr understood that all-too well.
“Three.” So he had been paying attention to her. Quite studiously, at that. “This is number four.” A tilt of his head towards the colorful drink she’d skillfully non-sipped. “Three’s a good number, except you haven’t had any food.” Her prep team had warned her, quite vociferously, that the precise plum-pomegranate shade of her lips would be ruined if she dared partake of food. It would be a tragedy! Did she not see how perfectly the shade offset the highlights of her hair? The faint pink undercurrent of her gown when she turned just so in the light? One member of her team had dramatically claimed she would sooner die than see Sansa’s ruined lips plastered over the pages of tomorrow’s tabloids. Guilt had worked, it seemed. Sansa had eaten nothing. “And I doubt you ate anything at supper, because those harpies never shut up, and judging by your appearance…” Down, his eyes slid, from collarbone to toe, appraising her. Appreciating her. “They spent a long time making you look like this.” It wasn’t so ruthless a barb, if the playful smirk on his face were any indication.
“So maybe hold back, or else you might make some stranger very lucky.” And that’s what they were all hoping for. The drinks, the atmosphere, the music: all of it was carefully manufactured to facilitate a good time for every attending patron. But one patron, and what she did, mattered more than the rest. Every lurking, leering guest at the party hoped to catch Sansa Stark’s interest by the end of the night, so that it was their face that would be headlining the morning’s gossip rags alongside the Victor’s ruined lips. Sansa’s Tawdry Tryst the titles would read, replete with commentary from the next-door neighbor about just how loud the squeals and moans were! It was stories of a similar ilk that Tatty and the prep team had been squawking about all day. That’s how it was done. That’s what the citizens of the Capitol thrived on. Every painful contrivance, anything worth a shock or scandal. The survivors of the Hunger Games provided entertainment fodder for years, even decades, after their victories – something which made them especially valuable commodities to President Snow. Anything that served as a distraction from the real issues – the shortages of food, the flickering lights, the hint of unrest looming just beyond the Capitol’s walls – was a thing that need be protected.
And exploited.
“You’ll be here a while longer yet, and you should probably get some sleep once you leave…but…” Into Baelish’s pocket his hand delved, returning with a small, metallic card. It was thin and speckled with tiny ruby flecks; on the edge a number was engraved. She’d recognize it as a key card to the hotel they were staying in, having been given one earlier by Tatty. Baelish wasn’t staying in an adjoining room, or even on the same floor. Where Sansa had been placed on an upper level in a suite filled to the ceiling with accouterments, gifts, sundries, and luxuries, Baelish had been relegated to what amounted to a peon’s room several floors lower. What begged the question most of all, however, was why Baelish had been given a room at all. Hadn’t he mentioned an apartment at some point in passing? He certainly traveled to the Capitol often enough to warrant having somewhere permanent to stay. Petyr slid the card alongside her drink before abandoning it. “If you feel up to it, you can come by. We can…talk.” There was a quiet air about him, an almost rankling, sly arrogance in the way he said it. The quiet smile playing over his lips did not help, nor did the brush of his fingers at the small of her back, just where the fabric of her gown gave way to skin. It was chilled, that touch, and perhaps all the more electric because of it. Petyr pushed away from the bar, a glass of ice and honey-colored liquid clicking about in his hand as he did.
As a little girl, Sansa adored playing pretend. Robb and Bran would oftentimes oblige with their participation, taking on the part of soldier or king or muttation in a drama that always managed to revolve around a certain flame-haired heroine. She recalled such fantasy easily, slipping into the skin of a young woman with no siblings, no obligations, no nightmares that came creeping in out of the inky dark. Creating a blank canvas onto which any number of desires might be projected required great effort, however, endurance already flagging in this, her first true test. During the tour every moment had been planned and scripted, great swaths of time spent traveling in the relative privacy of a train; public appearances served as mere punctuation, rather than the endless statement Seven’s team now sought to make. Beneath her mask of jubilation lay a girl exhausted and beyond her depth, seeking out those few points of familiarity still within reach.
Sansa looked on her drink with vague suspicion, as though it had conspired with the previous three to intoxicate her. “You don’t miss a thing, do you?” But admiration threaded through murmured inquiry. Clearly he had kept a close eye on his Victor, a surveillance as reassuring as it was puzzling. Baelish guessed correctly about her lack of sustenance as well, a deprivation driven home by half-muttered comments about alterations and physicians, no doubt the sort largely bypassed during her recuperation period after emerging from the Arena. Instead she made do with the tempting smell of stews and roasts, fresh fruit topped with a dozen different sugary creams, piping hot rolls, braised vegetables in shades of orange and green and yellow, surrounded by sweating goblets of rainbow liquids. When she first reached for a plate one of them had the audacity to swat her away. Sansa knew better than to try again. Did she look any slimmer? Had her lips endured the minuscule sips that had become a nervous tic as she circulated? Not once since arriving had she seen a mirror, the expressions of others her only reflection. Baelish’s veered more deliberate than any that came before, stoking heat along the back of her neck, fanning it out along her ribs. “I’m to be their masterpiece,” she confided with a roll of eyes, the wisp of a smile dimpling both cheeks.
It deepened with his advice. For the first time Sansa felt as though they had reached some sort of equilibrium, neither pushing back at the other, a tenuous alliance formed in the space between them. His offered introductions made the girl believe any tryst lay beyond the realm of possibility; so, when a silvery card slid from his pocket across the bar, she could not help her brief astonishment. A blink and it cleared away to careful neutrality; if Petyr watched closely enough to count her drinks, then many other eyes must be taking careful note, seeking any scandal, any weakness, any possibility for more. Without looking she set her fizzy drink atop it, hand curled around the base to almost fully obscure it from view. “I’ll…be certain to remember…” A tremor raced down knobbed spine, belly swooping at the realization that Petyr had managed to reverse her proposition entirely, transforming him into the hunter. Free hand drifted after the man in departure, quickly recalled into a softly curled fist beneath her chin. With neither purse nor pockets she spent the remainder of her evening clutching the key under that same drink, barely touched and discarded at the last possible moment when she at last took her leave some time after midnight.
Sansa rode alone, the driver given no suspiciously new address, her escort and team remaining behind despite the girl’s declaration of exhaustion. Lacquered nails traced card’s edges, a fingerpad ran back and forth over the sequence of numbers telling her precisely where Baelish could be found. The nervousness felt when she first knocked on his door in the Victor’s Village returned ten-fold, for though the players remained the same, everything about them had changed drastically. Would it be a citizen of the Capitol who greeted her, or Seven’s apathetic mentor? Would it make a difference? Could he still make her feel better? The car stopped. Sansa tucked the key into her coat, a voluminous creation of grey and black fur, ludicrously warm for an impending summer. The door opened, a gloved hand extended to ease her onto the sidewalk. When she slipped into a gilded lift it was the button for Petyr’s floor her hand found and his door she soon stood before. A discrete beep and click affirmed the key’s success, Sansa opening the door just enough to slip inside. Like Tatty she greeted him with a kiss to one cheek; unlike their befeathered escort, however, painted lips lingered just at the corner of his, palm brushing down along his ribs, catching at his hip. Pulling back at last, Sansa made to divest herself of cumbersome fur, angled away from him as she spoke. “I hope I haven’t come too late. I worried you might feel too tired to— to talk.” No more than a minute in his company and already her blush had returned, a pink flush entirely unrelated to drink or coat.