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Sansa saw the light turned on through the lower crack of the door and twisted her hands tighter into each other. It had taken her a good amount of pondering until she’d made up her mind to come here, and then almost as long to knock on the door; with the approaching steps, she was nearly ready to bolt in the other direction again.
Margaery opened the door wearing a fluffy white bathrobe, that did little to hide the silken black slip that appeared to be her sleep attire. She ran a hand through her hair that fell -way too perfect for this time in the night- over her shoulders. The pillow crease on her cheek and tired, barely open eyes the only thing that let her not look like a supermodel taking a break during a photoshoot.
Her tone lacked its usual friendliness. “Do you have any idea—”
“I’m sorry,” Sansa cut her off quickly. “I need to borrow your flashlight.”
Margaery looked at her out of tired eyes, her features, initially anything but happy; only slowly a small smile worked itself onto her lips, and she seized her up. “My flashlight.”
Sansa’s fingernails dug into her own skin, and she nodded.
Still looking somewhat amused, Margaery crossed her arms over her chest, which caused the robe to slip off one shoulder.
“And why is it that you need my …flashlight?”
Sansa shook her head before she could get any more wrong ideas. “I need to find that stupid dog.”
Margaery didn’t hide her smile, raised both brows over sceptical eyes. “Are you sure you did not just wake up from a very lifelike dream?”
Sansa huffed, and gestured down on herself, dressed in jeans and her warm down jacket, her ugg boots still lined with snow that slowly melted onto Margaery’s doormat. “Do I look like I just rolled out of bed?”
“No, you look a little insane, though.”
With a roll of her eyes, and not wanting to lose any more time arguing, Sansa bit out a curt. “Do you have a flashlight or not?”
Seizing her up for a moment, Margaery’s resolve softened and twisted around into her apartment. “Come in. I’ll check.”
Sansa followed behind her, at the same time reluctant to step a foot inside and frustrated with the slow pace Margaery moved forward. She stepped from one foot to the other, while Margaery opened the closet in her hallway, pulled out a small ladder and started to go through the upper shelf. She pulled two storage boxes out that she handed off to Sansa, holding on to the third one and then began to rummage through it.
“I’d expect you would have something as essential as a flashlight in a more accessible place,” Sansa said, placing the two boxes down on the floor.
Margaery tilted her head and grinned. “I’d expect someone as anal as you to own something that essential herself.”
It took her a minute or so to retrieve the MagLite and Sansa thanked all the Gods when she tested it, and it turned on. With how long it had taken her to find it, she’d had little hope to actually get one with full batteries.
“Thank you!” Sansa took the held out flashlight, wrapped her hands around it tightly, and held it to her chest. “I promise I will return it tomorrow.“
Margaery stepped down with her eyes narrowed, and she crossed her arms, tugging the edges of her robe together. “What’s going on, Sansa?”
With a sigh, Sansa’s fingers twisted around the base of the torch. “I’m sitting my cousin’s dog this weekend. And… I don’t know, I opened the terrace door for a moment while making dinner… He must have slipped out.”
“And you noticed just now that he was missing. "Margaery smirked teasingly. "I’ll remember that the next time you call me irresponsible for only turning the key in the lock once.”
Sansa’s lips pursed. She wasn’t getting into that -again. Especially not now. “You do that.” She held up the torch and gave her a tight smile. “Again, thanks and … sorry I guess.”
“Wait.” Margaery followed a few steps behind her, until they both stood in the door frame again. “What’s the plan here? You want to just strive into the woods in the middle of the night looking for a dog?”
Hearing it from someone else it did sound slightly mad, but Ygritte would be here in less than six hours, expecting a well-taken-care-of Ghost. Not being able to present her with the animal would not go down well for her. She’d take her chances in the woods.
“I need to find him.”
Margaery looked at her for a moment and then sighed. “Give me a minute.”
Sansa shook her head. “Marg, I don’t have—”
Her neighbour had already spun around and rushed off to her bedroom, leaving Sansa standing there, still anxious, still reluctant to be here but also not finding it within her to just take off. She dapped her fingers nervously against the handle of the flashlight, waiting impatiently through the thirty seconds it took Margaery too come back to the door. She had gotten rid off the robe, was wearing wide black sweats and a grey hoodie instead.
Sansa watched her in perplexing how she slipped bare feet into a pair of fur-lined boots, pulled on her coat and grabbed both beanie and a scarf off the dresser.
“Okay, let’s go.”
“You want to help me look?”
Margaery shot her a look while she wrapped the scarf around her neck and pushed her out the door frame. “No. I don't want to help you. I don't want to be the last person to have seen you before they find your body in the woods.”
She was worried about her?
“You really don’t have to—”
“I am awake, and I’m dressed,” Margaery declared and threw Sansa a short, determined look over her shoulder as she locked her door behind them. “I’m coming.”
Sansa stared behind her as she walked in resolute steps down the hallway to the front door, with the doorknob in hand she turned around to her, looking expectantly.
“If there isn’t a dog to find, now would be a good time to tell me,” Margaery said through a small smile.
Quickly Sansa shook her head and followed after her. “No,” she kept her voice quiet as well, not wanting to alert any of their other neighbours. “I mean, there is, and I do need to find him.”
Margaery took her in for the length of a heartbeat. “Shame,” she quipped with a wink.
Outside, the icy air around them robbed Margaery of any further witty remarks, and Sansa of any more pondering. Margaery pulled her mittens on as they made their way through the driveway lined with trees, and rubbed them together.
“Where should we start? "she asked, taking a look around.
She’d gone around the building three times already. Sansa shone the cone of light towards the thick tense line of trees that marked the border of the Wolfs Wood. "Let’s go that way. ”
They started to trudge in the direction Sansa had indicated, the snow growing higher around their feet with every step. Angling the torch back and forth, they walked next to each other in silence for a while. With the lights of their building disappearing, Sansa started to forget about her reluctance of being alone with Margaery and was only glad not to be alone out here. She’d know the Wolfs Wood ever since she was a little girl, but that didn’t mean they were not intimidating in the middle of the night.
“So, what are we looking for here?” Margaery asked, pulling her scarf up over her chin.
“A white wolfhound.”
Margaery had gone ahead into this with an unreasonable amount of motivation; now it melted away in rapid speed. She stopped and automatically Sansa halted as well.
She smiled that sugary sweet smile, that was never meant sweet. “Wait, come again. You want to look for a white dog in a metre of snow?”
“Yes, well I didn’t force you to come out here,” Sansa returned with a frown, her tone more defensive than needed. She knew this was searching for a needle in a haystack.
“No,” Margaery shot back, continuing her path forward, deeper into the wood. “But you failed to mention that this would be like trying to find Waldo in candy cane forest. You didn’t need a torch, you needed a miracle. Or at least floodlights.”
Sansa caught up with her in only a couple of large steps. “None of those in that junk room you call a closet?”
“I have a system. ”
“Uh-huh. I lost plenty of things you borrowed to that system. Including my favourite Tupper bowl."
"First of all, rethink your life choices if you have a favourite Tupper container. Second of all, for the trillionth time – I put the bowl on your doormat.”
“So you said.”
“And I never borrowed it. You forced that chicken soup on me.”
“You know I had miscalculated the recipe.” This time Sansa stopped, directed the torchlight in Margaery’s face. “And I didn’t hear you complain at the time. Or a thank you.”
Her trademark smirk appeared, and Sansa knew that she’d given her the perfect set-up. Damn subconscious.
“I recall thanking you plenty, darling.”
Sansa huffed and shone the light back on their non-existent trail. “Let’s just focus on finding Ghost, okay?”
The expected witty remark never came from Margaery; they trotted along next to each other in silence for a while.
“A white dog named Ghost lost in snow,” she muttered then. “Gods, and here people said I’d be bored up North.”
They went ahead for another while, skimming through trees and bushes, calling out for the dog, to the point where Sansa felt like an insane person if she called “Ghost!” in the middle of the night in the Wolfs Wood one more time; or at least tempting faith. Something that wasn’t lost on Margaery either.
“This feels like calling Bloody Mary in front of a mirror,” she commented, her voice sounding shaky. “Only this bloody dog is refusing to appear."
Sansa threw her a side glance. Margaery had almost completely disappeared in her warm clothing, both hands deep in her pockets, her scarf pulled up to her nose, and her beanie down to her eyebrows, and still she was shaking like a leaf.
"Are you cold?”
“I’ve lost sensation in at least five toes."
"Maybe you should go back,” Sansa suggested, even if being alone out here was the last thing she wanted.
“You’re not going back, are you?"
Sansa glanced out to the small beam of light. She was starting to get tempted. The area was too big, and Ghost too white, making this entirely useless. She was not as sensitive to the temperature as Margaery, but she’d be lying if she said it didn’t start to get to her as well.
Only, again, the thought of what Ygritte would do to her should she not present her tomorrow with the dog that she and Jon loved like other people loved their children, let Sansa shake her head.
If she didn’t find him, dying of hypothermia in the woods was the better option.
"I can’t.”
“Then I’m staying,” Margaery stated with a shrug and hooked her arms into Sansa’s. “You will just have to keep me warm.”
She really should have seen that one coming, Sansa thought, distracted a great deal by the way Margaery cuddled up to her.
“How badly trained is this dog anyway, "Margaery sighed. "I mean to just bolt out the door into the woods in the middle of the night.”
Sansa felt slightly offended by the comment even if it wasn’t hers to defend. She’d cursed a lot already about Ghost and that he didn’t take commands from anyone but Jon or Ygritte. “He is well trained. They live in the far North, he’s used to just jump around all over the place.”
“Good idea of your cousin then to restrain him to a small apartment all weekend.”
She couldn’t argue with that. The poor dog had paced around her living room all day yesterday, and that after she’d already taken him on two long walks.
“Sansa?"
She didn’t know what to brace herself for when Margaery came to a halt, forcing her to stop along as well in their steady trotting forward.
Her body tensed at the way Margaery’s eyes seemed fastened on something in the distance and she clung to her. With her hand gripping the around the flashlight tightly, Sansa followed her eyes and found the reason for it.
In a distance of about ten metres, fifteen at most, a wild boar was sniffing through the brush.
Adrenaline flushed through her body, and for a moment, she stopped breathing. Wild boars were common in the Wolfs Wood. She knew that. But she’d never encountered one before. She had seen injuries caused by an attack though.
Margaery’s hands that circled tightly around her upper arm, forced Sansa into more rational thoughts.
She had grown up with this, during field days in school they’d lectured them again and again about wildlife and how to react to all kind of animal sightings. All that knowledge came back frustratingly slowly to her now, but it did come back.
Wild boars. Usually not prone to attack unprovoked but also fiercely unpredictable.
She took a shallow breath and scanned what she could see in the narrow ray of light. It looked like the animal was on its own, no piglets in sight.
Feeling a little reassured by that she took a first slow and cautious step backwards. And another; forcing a reluctant Margaery along with her as she did. She held the torch as still as possible, painfully attentive not to provoke the animal with the light, but also keeping it in sight.
It took them a small eternity to make the small distance of a couple of metres, luckily without the boar not giving them any attention. For the first time tonight, she was glad not to see any sign of Ghost. An unpredictable wolfhound was the last thing this situation needed.
When the boar was almost out of sight, only visible at the very end of the light scope, Sansa released a long breath of relief when it moved on its own in the other direction.
Margaery’s grip was still iron on her arm, but her head fell forward onto her shoulder, and she breathed in relief too.
Sansa kept her look into the distance to make sure the animal didn’t return and only stopped when she saw no sign of it for a good minute.
Gently pulling her hold off, Sansa turned to Margaery, and with a gloved hand on her cheek tilted her head up to get a proper look at her.
"Are you okay?”
Margaery nodded, but her appearance did not reinforce it. She looked almost as white as the snow surrounding them, in the dim light, her eyes still wide.
Sansa took hold of her hand, giving it a comforting squeeze. “Come on, let’s go back."
Margaery didn’t move yet, maybe couldn’t move yet. "What about Ghost?”
Sansa sighed and gave her a gentle tug to come along. “Are you saying you want to keep looking?”
That silenced any further protests and she let herself be pulled along towards where they had come from.
They were lucky that it had not been snowing, finding their own footprints in the otherwise untouched snow made the way back a great deal easier.
“I did not know we had wild boars out here.” Their apartment building and the lights of the city outskirts were already in sight when Margaery had found her speech again, sounded almost like herself again. “I sleep with an open window in the summer.”
“I told you before, you might want to rethink that,” Sansa gave back.
“You said you didn’t deem it safe because we are on the ground floor,” Margaery argued. “You did not mention that there are wild animals so close by.”
“What did you think would be in those woods? Only rabbits hopping around and a couple butterflies in the summer?”
“You are the native Northerner,” Margaery insisted. “I expect you to warn me about things like that.”
“I told you to close your window!” Sansa huffed exasperated.
“You failed to elaborate the why.”
Sansa let go off the hand she had held tightly and groaned quietly.
She was infuriating when she wanted to be. The woman had a doctorate. You shouldn’t have to explain to someone with a doctorate why leaving it was not a good idea to leave the window open in a secluded area. In fact, she was one hundred percent sure she was only arguing with her here to get a rise out of her, as per usual. Next time she’d just leave her to fend off the boar herself.
“You know for someone who clung to me like a baby monkey just now you sure as hell–"
"Sansa?”
“What?” Sansa did not have it in her to look at her.
“Is that Ghost?"
Sansa looked up into the direction of their apartment building, where Margaery pointed and came to a cold stop; the contrast of the white bundle right by the front door was not to miss, or to mistake as snow.
That bloody dog.
Margaery stepped in her way, looking up at her with drawn up eyebrows and a small playful smile. "You did check the closer area of the–”
“Of course I checked around the house,” Sansa interrupted harshly.
Ears perked up at her raised voice, and a moment later Ghost was scurrying towards them, like he’d been waiting for them to come back all night.
With a shake of her head, Sansa scratched his head when he rubbed against her leg.
“You trouble maker,” she cooed at him, her anger from a second ago vaporising into thin air as soon as he acted all like a cuddly little puppy. She was fairly certain that he didn’t plan to take off anywhere again any time soon, but still slipped her fingers beneath his collar, while Margaery opened up the front door for them. Only when it was closed behind them she released him and watched amused how he started sniffing around Margaery, who seemed perplexed at the large animal so close to her.
“He’s perfectly tame,” Sansa assured with a small smile, still reaching for his collar and pulling him back towards her. She led him to her apartment’s door and took a second to fish her keys out of her pocket and open the door, once she did, all needed was a gentle nudge to send him trotting inside.
Knowing him safely back inside she felt a great deal of the strain, that she’d carried through the night, fall off of her. And it left just enough room in her mind to bring her focus on what had been an issue for the last two months.
She turned around and found Margaery standing behind her still, her beanie and her gloves pulled off; hair slightly tousled, but otherwise looking once again way too good for the time in the night and a good hour of stomping through the snow.
And she smiled, that damn smile that always got to Sansa, despite her best efforts; never failed to make her weak in the knees. Weak in general.
“Thank you for your help tonight, "Sansa managed to force out awkwardly.
With a particular sway to her hips, Margaery took a step closer. "I ought to thank you. It was an exciting night.”
“You looked more terrified than excited,” she smiled tightly.
“Lots of adrenaline either way.” She took another step closer, then leaned against the wall, turning her head towards Sansa lazily. “Not every night you have a near-death experience.”
“You saw a boar, that’s not a near-death experience,” Sansa pointed out dryly, regaining some confidence now that Margaery had stopped moving closer.
Margaery didn’t leave her out of her sight for even a moment, looked thoughtful. “I always found it strange,” she started in a low voice. “Excitement, fear… lust. Our body reacts always the same, and yet it feels so different. And it always leaves you so… keyed up, afterwards.”
Sansa held her gaze, hoped that her scarf concealed the way the muscles of her neck moved as she swallowed.
"So,“ eyebrows quirked with the word. A single syllable that only Margaery Tyrell could let sound as suggestive as that. "While we’re already awake…”
“No."
”…Can I come in?“
It took every ounce of willpower Sansa possessed to shake her head. "No,” she repeated. “We agreed—"
"You insisted,” Margaery corrected.
“–that we work better as friends.”
“So you said.” A small sense of regret flashed over Margaery’s face, but still, her smirk returned. “And then you made me cum twice after you said it.”
Sansa shook her head and closed her eyes for a second, trying to push the images that Margaery tried to evoke away. “Marg, don’t.”
Margaery smirked wider. “I’m not doing anything. I’m not even touching you.” Her look grew challenging. “You know what you have to do. Tell me to go, and I will.”
Sansa stared her down, her hands fisted at her sides. She couldn’t give in again. She already was one of the many conquests, the chain of girls she’d seen Margaery walk in and out of her apartment through the last year. She’d end up hurt if she—
“Go to my own bed,” Margaery’s voice was husky. “And touch myself thinking about you.”
Sansa’s felt her knees go weak with wanting.
With a low growl, Sansa reached out, pulled Margaery flush against herself and clashed their lips together.
Damn her.
It was a game she never won; she never stood a chance in.
Her kiss, the way she licked into Margaery’s mouth eagerly, had enough force to -almost- drown out Margery’s soft, triumphant chuckle. She put every ounce of frustration she felt with herself, along with every bit of longing into it.
Only breaking the kiss when they both needed to come up for air, Sansa pushed the door open with her hip and pulled Margaery inside, bringing her against the wall right next to the door with enough force to knock the air out of her momentarily.
Sansa was not gentle with her, she never was, knew that Margaery did not want her to. Her teeth dug into her lower lip when she brought their lips back together, and her hands dove into the soft waves of her hair, pulling at its root, something that never failed to spurn Margaery on. Her back arched off the wall and into Sansa’s, her fingers digging into Sansa’s hips sharply.
They ridded themselves of their scarves and jackets without breaking their kisses off for more than a couple of seconds, and Margaery used every single one of them to let her lips wander; dragged them over Sansa’s cheeks, to the pulse point just below her ear.
“I missed you, darling” she husked right into her ear when Sansa pushed the jacket off her shoulders.
Sansa silenced her pressing their lips back together, her tongue dipping into her mouth. She didn’t need to hear how much she’d missed her and longed for her. It had been the exact same for her. Two days since her last relapse, and it had been too fucking long.
She gave up thinking about it, trying to fight it. Her hands went beneath Margaery’s hoodie, crushing her breasts through the thin cool silk in contrast to hot skin. Margaery pushed up against her through their never-ending chain of kisses, moaned against her lips when she pinched at hardened nipples.
Perhaps Sansa did never stand a chance at resisting her, but it was a fare constellation that Margaery didn’t either. It was a major turn-on just how quickly she turned putty under her hands; went from strong and wilful force of nature, the perfect seductress, to an incoherent hot mess.
The way Margaery curved into her, up against her, was addictive to Sansa; a power trip. This gorgeous woman who could have any man or woman she wanted, wanted her. Came back for more to her, time after time. It was in those moments that Sansa almost believed it; believed that she could be enough for Margaery.
“Please… touch me.” The words were jumbled, muffled against Sansa’s lips and but she still heard the pleading in her tone, the growing impatience, the hitch of her breath when Sansa scratched her nails along the top of her breast.
With how shameless Margaery had pushed her into this -given her the image of touching herself thinking of her, breathing her name, something that would be burned into Sansa’s mind for all eternity- she would have deserved to wait. To be teased and kept on the edge until she’d beg for release. Very much so. But it had been three long days since she’d felt her come undone beneath her touch, an eternity.
Sansa slowed her kisses when her hand dipped beneath the waistband of Margaery’s sweats, groaning when she found a lack of underwear, her fingers skimming along silky wet folds. Margaery jerked when the tips of her fingers ghosted over her swollen clit, one of her hands capturing Sansa’s wrist, urging her hand firmly against herself, making sure she didn’t move away.
Later, Sansa promised herself, she would make sure Margaery paid for all that impatience; but for now, she very much shared it.
She placed two fingertips directly on her clit and drew circles so tight and so fast her arm started to ache after only a couple of seconds. Margaery’s both hands were wrapped around her lower arm, nails were digging into her skin, and her head fell back against the wall. Her whole body seemed strung to the breaking point, her breathing grew more laboured and shallow the closer she got; in building pleasure, her hips pushed harder against Sansa’s fingers.
When Sansa felt the fluttering of her muscles against her drenched fingertips, she drew away at last from kissing her and instead watched with a small smile the breath-taking sight of her coming undone moaning Sansa’s name.
With the first flare of passion behind them, the first grasp of longing out of her system, Sansa stood there, and continued to just watch Margaery as she slowly returned from her high. Only when heavy eyes fluttered open, Sansa retracted the hand from between her legs and wiped remaining wetness against the fabric of her hoodie.
Margaery smiled, her eyes still darkened; one hand coming up, to brush over Sansa’s cheek. “I knew you wouldn’t send me to bed without a proper thank you.”
With a smile, Sansa captured her face and placed a gentle kiss against her lips, her thumbs drawing patterns at the sensitive spot behind her ear. Then she leaned her forehead against Margaery’s, looking into her eyes.
The moment was perfect, everything they both had missed, yearned for… and was ever so abruptly interrupted when Ghost brushed along both their legs, causing them both to jump.
Margaery chuckled throatily and reached out to pat the dog’s head. “I think someone has earned a treat tonight."