Nothing about his chosen room suggested greater comfort, sturdier shelter from the storm which crashed about them in raging imitation of a Grecian god-king’s ancient ire. Its fury had so enveloped their tiny house that only the basement, perhaps, offered any excess of safety; only Petyr distinguished one sleeping arrangement from the other, a warm body whose smell and feel and sight she found woefully absent from a child’s abandoned bed. Though Sansa took care not to touch him, aware of her encroachment yet loath to retreat, distance came solely from an abundance of caution. Had she not kissed his cheek? Run fingers through the soft cushion of his freshly combed hair? Baelish might have said the decaying, bloated bovine corpses awash in fiery dusk resembled most closely the depths of hell, yet it seemed instead their little hamlet best embodied that maddening limbo of purgatory. Neither wholly good nor wholly evil, not entirely safe nor in immediate danger, the pair wavered between a forced intimacy of circumstance and their tentative steps towards something more voluntary.
Set adrift, more uncertain than ever, Sansa found solace in the warm cocoon of her companion’s bed.
Where before the electric protestation of clouds heavy with long-collected poison had seeped into her dreams, created visions and summoned monsters, curled up in a downy shelter such noise was reduced to a faint roar. Distant, not a threat. In sleep her rigid posture relaxed; though Sansa remained on what she had autonomously deemed her side, the tight coil of arms and legs unwound until she dozed in serpentine imitation of first and last initial. Sometime in the night awareness dawned of a heavier covering — his arm. Too young before calamity took hold, the girl had never shared her bed for anything beyond chaste necessity; all she knew of men and their appetites came from that great collective consciousness of books and films and magazines, the garish whispers which hovered scandalously over a gaggle of friends all bundled into sleeping bags upon the den floor. When hips canted backwards and shoulders angled forward, her legs stretched further to better fit along the wedge of his knees, Sansa moved under the dictate of needs not weakened by dormancy, an instinct towards companionship, nothing more.
Yet Sansa never fell into an abyss of true, rejuvenating sleep. Instead she lingered in that grey realm which served as boundary between waking and rest, where one might view the serenity of a room enveloped in plummy night through the fantastical lens of their subconscious. She could not see Petyr, nor could she revel in more than a whisper of the masculine tang imparted by his shampooed suds. Behind her the man exerted none of her own winsome pull. Sansa relied only on the solid warmth of his chest against her spine, the humid breath which filtered through a mane left long in pursuit of normalcy…or affectionate memory. Thus the Baelish who emerged from imagination, spun together out of remembrance and fog-laden visions, resembled him so much as any dream-actor successfully reconstructed their counterpart of flesh and blood. He was gentle. He was kind. Murmured words of encouragement or praise substituted for his ragged inhalations, just as the erratic grip of questing fingers became the smooth glide of a palm.
In such a daze her body moved with his, more hesitant, never stealing from Baelish the imperative of unsated lust. Had the man not moaned out his approbation perhaps the pair would have awoken at dawn, entangled by mutual pursuit with sweat-dappled brows. Yet through the thrumming violence of the storm his voice did move, coaxing Sansa from her reverie; awake, his cock felt heavier, thicker, hotter, his hand a broad spread over most of her belly. It took her some moments to realize that, despite such discrepancies, they still lay together in a somewhat scandalous embrace, Petyr’s exclamation failing to awaken him as well. Sansa stiffened. Was this some trick? Had she invited this, whether by climbing into his bed or, in some dream-like state, pressing herself upon him? How responsible was she? A familiar terror bloomed, that what he once meant to sell in Bolton’s hut the man now sought in fair recompense. Yet as pulse and breathing steadied, the disorientation of first consciousness ebbing, Sansa could recognize how his touch did not stray, how his hips never deviated from their steady, gentle circling.
Petyr slept.
Fearful of embarrassing him, admitting to knowledge he would rather not impart, Sansa held her tongue. Rousing Baelish might bring his actions to an end — or only cause him to continue on in wakefulness as well. She preferred to think of them as an accident, a small price compared to the comfort and shelter of a shared bed. Never mind that she had reciprocated…fantasized…desired… In time he stilled, enough for her to re-enter a kind of half-slumber easily disturbed by any change in storm or man.
It began with his settling. Though hips slowed and hands relaxed, Sansa still bore the full press of her companion as he lingered on the edge of waking. The girl composed herself into an imitation of sleep: limp limbs, a curled form, slow breathing that came with a self-conscious regularity. Undoubtedly Petyr would see straight through her ruse: a man who had survived so long would not allow himself to be fooled by so juvenile a deception. Yet it provided him with an excuse, a choice — slip quietly away with no mention of his behavior, or else awaken her to pursue whatever had driven him to such intimate dreams. When he rose she feigned a small shift, face turning into the pillows so that Baelish would not see the subtle changes across her face. Anticipation. Confusion. Disappointment.
After allowing him a few minutes of privacy — there was no doubt as to where he’d gone in the small home — Sansa also left their bed. Waiting until he emerged from the bathroom she stepped forward, too quickly to hear any rebuff, arms wrapped around his middle in a firm embrace. Her crown tucked neatly beneath Baelish’s chin, enough so that they fitted together nearly so well as they had in the night. Words failing her Sansa could think of no other way in which to say that she had chosen not to feel frightened or insulted, that she still desired whatever fledgling intimacy had been built even before his hand crept beneath her shirt. God, but he smelled good…To stay and memorize just how they came together tempted her, greatly, yet Sansa forced herself to back away. With another press of lips to his cheek a murmured Good morning drifted between them as feet padded back down the hall to her original room, door shutting with a muted click.