Archive of Our Own ^beta

“And I speak to you like the chorus to the verse
Chop another line like a coda with a curse
Come on like a freak show takes the stage”

-J-O-N-

Jon woke to pounding in his head and pounding on his door. He groaned as he rolled over in his bed, opening his eyes and squinting at the hard morning light, memories of the night before flooding back to him. As he stretched out and tried to shake the stiffness born from a night full of partying out of his joints, his arm connected to a warm body next to him. He did a double take and saw expanses of naked tan skin and light blonde hair. Right. He did vaguely recall meeting a particularly forward Lyseni socialite yesterday. He remembered that she had an equally beautiful Mereenese friend too. Jon leant over the sleeping Lyseni girl, and sure enough, lying on her other side was another gorgeous and equally naked woman-- this one with brown skin and dark curls. Jon couldn’t help but grin to himself-- it seemed that he’d had a better night than he remembered. Just as he was considering waking one-- or both-- of the girls up for a morning reprise that he would hopefully remember a little better, the pounding on the door resumed.

“Alright, alright, I’m coming” Jon said in an exasperated tone as he dragged himself out of bed-- remembering almost belatedly to drag a pair of boxers on- and ambled down the stairs to his front door, “There’s this thing called a cell phone you know” He remarked snidely to the person on the other side of the door as he yanked it open, before even bothering to check who it was.

His manager Sam stood in front of him, giving him an unimpressed look. “Yes, I know that Jon. Do you? I’ve called you about a hundred times in the last hour. What the fuck were you doing?”

Jon gave his friend a sheepish grin and offered “Sleeping?”

Sam remained unimpressed, rolling his eyes and asking, “Where’s your phone Jon? And whatever fangirl you made this mess with” He gestured to Jon’s living room, which on second glance, was an absolute warzone, with furniture knocked over and clothes strewn everywhere.

“Fangirls. Plural.” Jon couldn’t help how his grin got wider at that statement. It would probably be even wider still if he could remember more of the night though.

Sam sighed. “Find your phone Jon. I’m not the only one that’s been trying to contact you. You have a meeting with the label this morning. Or did you forget? Satin’s been trying to get in touch with you too. And we both know he’s a lot less patient than I am.”

Jon winced at the thought of his publicist and friend, who was clearly blowing up his phone for a reason. He could probably guess what reason. What vague memories he had of last night definitely involved... party favors. Jon always got into unimaginable trouble when he took party favors.

“Satin is gonna murder me,” he groaned.

“The label is going to murder all of us if we’re not there within an hour. Go find your phone. I’ll get rid of your...guests” Sam stated as he put a determined look on his face and marched up the stairs to Jon’s bedroom.

Jon would have paid actual money to hear whatever Sam was going to say to those girls to get them to leave, but as per usual, Sam was right-- he really needed to find his phone.

He decided to start at his coffee table, where his jeans from last night had been thrown. Seemed as good a place as any to start.

After an embarrassingly long search, and destroying his living room even more than it had been before, Jon finally found his phone inside a plant pot.

Just as he triumphantly fished it out, the women from last night traipsed down the stairs-- still naked as the day they were born, but draped in sheets and blankets from Jon’s bed-- and Sam followed behind them, face a shade of red that Jon didn’t think it was possible for a human being to turn.

The Lyseni girl gave Jon an easy smile and walked towards him as her friend located their various items of clothing from the bomb site that used to be Jon’s living room.

“I had fun last night,” She said, trailing a finger down Jon’s chest, “We both did. Maybe we should do this again?”

Jon was about to give her an answer when Sam cleared his throat pointedly from behind him.

“Maybe we shouldn’t doll,” Jon said, with what he hoped was an apologetic expression on his face, “I’m gonna be pretty busy”

The smile dropped from the Lyseni girl’s face. “Busy. Sure. That’s what they all say”.

“Jon is very busy,” Sam defended, “And the car I ordered for you ladies is here now”

Despite his normal sweet countenance, Sam could be firm when he needed to be, which was one of the reasons he made such a good manager.

The Lyseni girl rolled her eyes grabbed her dress from her friend, pulling it over her head as they made their way to the door. But she couldn’t help but looking over her shoulder and dropping one last snide remark before she left.

“We met your brother at a party in Myr last month. He was much better in bed than you are.” With that closing statement, she slammed the door shot behind her.

Jon couldn’t help but chuckle. He knew the dig about his brother was meant to bruise his ego, true or not, but it really didn’t bother him. Years ago it would have, but now he and Egg had settled into a rocky camaraderie. They were as similar as they were different. Why should he care that Aegon banged some random socialites before-- and apparently better-- than he did?

“It’s not funny Jon,” Sam sighed, “Satin’s not going to find it funny either when your friends try to sell a bunch of stories about you to trashy tabloids”

Jon shrugged, “Let them try. They won’t have anything new to say about me. Nobody would care.”

“Some people care.”

Jon raised an eyebrow, “Like who?”

“Well, you have your phone back now. Search your name. In the car though. We’re very late”

¬¬¬¬¬

By the time the car Sam had ordered dropped them off at the recording studios offices, Jon was well and truly caught up with the media shitstorm his night on the town had caused. It seemed that the further the night went on, the less Jon had cared about the hundreds of social climbers with their smartphone cameras pointed directly at him.

Thank the old gods there were no explicit pictures of him doing lines or taking pills, but he was undeniably zonked in every single photo. His hand up the skirt of that Lysene girl in the middle of a public club also wasn’t a good look for either of them. And neither was the photo were Jon was valiantly trying to make out with her and her friend at the same time.

A cursory scan of social media showed him that public opinion was very much not in his favor. Jon was well aware that teenage girls made up a significant portion of his fanbase, and a lot of them did not seem very amused with his ‘gross’ behavior last night. Their conservative parents seemed even less impressed, with one popular social media pundit calling him ‘an embarrassing and sinful display of the corruption of today’s music industry’. Which seemed a little much in Jon’s opinion, but the post had three hundred thousand likes. Shit. Satin really was going to kill him.

His death seemed to be coming even sooner than he thought, because as Jon and Sam walked into the office building, Satin was stood just inside the door, arms crossed and a thunderous expression on his face.

“What the fuck Jon,” he hissed.

“Save me the lecture Satin,” Jon sighed, “I know I fucked up. I should have been more careful about the cameras.”

“More careful? You shouldn’t have been out at all, you dumbass! We’ve been pushing the story that you're putting so much love, care and energy into this new album and you’ve ruined it with one night of dumbassery!” Satin exclaimed, and then added one final “Dumbass!” for good measure.

“Just because I’m working on the album doesn’t mean I can’t have a life too,” Jon defended, “If anything, this is not my fault. Pyp and Grenn were the ones who wanted to have an after party. And then an after the after party.”

Pyp and Grenn were Jon’s labelmates and good friends. They were in a band called The Black Crows with their other friend Edd. Last night had been the album release for the bands second studio album, so of course Jon had to go. Grenn was the one to suggest they have an after party at a private club... and Pyp had been the one to bring the party favors. Edd of course, had gone home straight after the album party, giving them all judgmental looks as he did so.

“I’m their publicist too, remember? Trust me, I’ve already ripped both of them new assholes this morning. They at least picked up their phones. But the public groveling they’re going to have to do to salvage their album release is nothing on the publicity tour you’re going to need for your album. Your public image has been a shitshow lately Jon. You’ve been yo-yo-ing between angry recluse and spoiled party boy and it has not been a good look.”

“Wait, wait, wait. What the fuck are you talking about Satin? My album doesn’t come out for months, how is this going to affect that?” Jon knew that his public reputation hadn’t been the best since the disastrous release of his third album last year. He’d been dealing with some personal issues on top of the fact that while the album had technically been a commercial success, it had been critically panned and Jon viewed it as his biggest professional failure. He’d not handled it well, and he knew that the tabloids had started to turn on him a little. Though admittedly not to the extent that it seemed they had this morning.

“Jon, what the fuck do you think this meeting about? The label is concerned that your recent behavior is going to affect album sales.”

“I thought this meeting was just about mapping out the release!” Jon exclaimed.

Sam sighed and massaged his temples, “Jon I’ve sent you about fifty emails about this. I told you that the label wasn’t happy.”

“I just thought they were being dicks because I insisted on having complete creative control this time.”

“Whatever they were being, they’re going to be worse if we don’t get our asses to the boardroom,” Sam said. “We’re so, so late.”

¬¬¬¬¬

Sam, as usual, was right. They were very late. By the time the three of them walked into the boardroom, the head of artist relations for the label, the head of the label’s publicity team, and a small army of assistants and lawyers were sitting at one side of the long table, unimpressed looks on all of their faces, even the fucking assistants.

“We’re so sorry to keep you all waiting,” Sam stated calmly, “We were a little delayed this morning.”

“I’m sure we can imagine what delayed you,” Alliser Thorne said with a sneer at Jon. Jon forced himself to resist rolling his eyes.

Alliser Thorne was a massive dick. He was the head of artist relations and Jon still had no idea how the fuck he convinced somebody to give him that job. He was so clearly filled with bitterness and jealously that he didn’t even possess an ounce of the talent of the artists he managed, and he gladly took it out on them.

“Well, we’re here now,” Satin said smoothly as he took a seat at the table. Sam and Jon followed suit. “So let’s chat, shall we?”

“Of course, Mr. Flowers,” Melisandre said. Melisandre was the head of public relations for the label, so she worked a lot with Satin on Jon’s label related public activities. She always made Jon feel uneasy but he could never put his finger on why. He was validated by the fact that Satin didn’t like her either.

“As we all know,” Melisandre continued, “Mr. Targaryen’s album is coming out in a few months.” Maybe the fact that she always insisted on using Jon’s legal last name was one of the reasons he didn’t like her. “The label is concerned that if we were to release in this current media climate, the album would be a commercial bomb. The court of public opinion has always been in your favor, and that’s no longer the case.”

“I think ’the court of public opinion’ had less to do with my previous success than the fact that my songs were fucking good,” Jon argued, “And the songs on this album are better than ever.

Thorne snorted. “I’m sure you think that. Luckily, we don’t pay you to think. That’s what we pay our team of media analysts for, and their projections are not in your favor, boy.”

Jon opened his mouth to give a sharp retort to the man who was technically his boss, but lucky Sam stepped in and interrupted before he could.

“Of course we’re aware that Jon’s media presence lately has been hectic. We care about the success of this album as much as you do. Even more so. But this all seems a little bit dramatic. With a few well placed interviews, Jon can easily turn this around in time for the album release. Right Satin?”

Satin gave a slow nod, but Jon could tell he wasn’t quite convinced. He would never undermine their team in front of the label though. He was too loyal for that. But he’d definitely be sure to tell Jon and Sam his real opinion later.

“If you believe that, then you’re incredibly naive,” Melisandre stated, “The label has invested too much in you to let you flop Mr. Targaryen. So we’ve come up with a strategy that we’re confident will help your image.”

“What strategy?” Jon asked suspiciously.

Melisandre smiled. “The oldest trick in publicist play book of course. Fake relationship.”

Jon isn’t sure why he’s surprised by the proposition, but he is. Logically, it makes sense. PR relationships are an open industry secret, and almost everybody uses them to drum up publicity every once in a while. Jon had done so himself. But at the beginning of his career, when he was trying to separate himself from his family name. He’s unsure what benefit it would have now when he’s already at the height of his career and not lacking in attention from any avenue of his life.

Satin seemed to have the same concern as Jon. “I’m not sure I understand the logic behind that,” he stated with a frown. “This is not like the Val situation. Jon has almost too much publicity. A public and open famous relationship would just increase his exposure. Isn’t that the opposite of what we want?”

“Jon has too much bad publicity,” Melisandre explained. “I think it makes more sense to try and counterbalance it with good publicity rather than to try and reduce his exposure.”

“Considering his last name and his.. personality, laying low would hardly be possible,” Thorne added unhelpfully.

“Exactly,” Melisandre continued, “But you’re right. This is not like the Val situation. Which is why we’re not going to play it like that. Val was a fellow artist at a similar point in her career at the time. Their relationship helped because it put eyes on them at a critical point when the public was learning about them as musicians. Jon’s position as a top mainstream artist  is more than solidified now. Which is why we’re not going to use a fellow artist, or anybody at a similar level of fame. We’re going to use a nobody.”

“A nobody?” Jon asked incredulously, “Elitist attitude aside, where are you supposing I find this nobody? Shall I just grab a random woman off the street? Not sure how that will play for my public reputation”

“Don’t be crass Mr. Targaryen. Though I admit my word choice could have been better. She won’t be a nobody, not exactly. It needs to be somebody connected enough to an industry that they would also benefit from the publicity this would drum up, but unknown enough that we can more easily sell it as a sweet and relatable love story to your fanbase.”

“And the power difference of Jon being the more famous one means that we’d be able to control the narrative better,” Satin stated with a pensive look on his face.

“You’re not actually considering this?” Jon asked and Satin simply shrugged.

“In theory, it’s not a bad idea.”

“Where would we find somebody like that though?” Sam asked. Jon couldn’t believe that both of his friends were buying into this bullshit.

“The label has already thought of that don’t worry,” Thorne stated, “We think the ideal candidate will be a model. Not anybody well known or a supermodel, just somebody who does mostly smaller shoots and would jump at the chance to be connected to a Targaryen.”

To a Targaryen. Not even to Jon, but to his last name. Jon couldn’t help the flare of anger in his gut, but in his mind he knew where this was going. Satin and Sam already seemed half convinced and Jon had a feeling that he would end up with little choice in going along with this.

“The agency has somewhat of a relationship with Mockingbird Modelling agency. We’ve used them for some of our videos and parties. We’ve already reached out to their management and PR departments and they’ve sent us a folder of candidates that they think would be suitable. We’ll allow you to pick any girl from this list Jon.”

“How gracious of you,” Jon muttered.

“Do you really think this is the best strategy to improve Jon’s public profile?” Sam asked.

“We think this is the only strategy,” Thorne said, “And frankly we’re not asking you to do it, we’re telling you that you’re going to do it. The label has already dumped too much money in this album to lose out now. They stupidly allowed you to have full creative control, but you don’t have control of this Snow. You will choose one of these girls, and you’ll trot her around for the album release and leading up to the tour. You’ll also stop embarrassing the label by falling out of clubs looking like a drug dealers wet dream and you’ll become a boring domestic lover boy. We're not hearing any arguments on this.”

Jon felt his anger bubbling into rage, but Satin put a hand on his arm as a warning to stop him from exploding.

“Since we don’t seem to have any say in this, what’s the strategy? How is Jon supposed to have met this ‘nobody’ model. If this is going to work, we have to sell the love story.” Satin said.

“Don’t worry Mr. Flowers, I’ve thought of that too,” Melisandre stated. “Jon will hire whichever girl he picks to play the love interest in the music video for the first album single. The single will be coming out soon, a while before the album, so it will give them time to build up the public appearances, get ’caught’ together, give the public little glimpses of the new couple and then we can hard launch at the album release. If you give the media enough crumbs, they’ll write their own love story for you.”

“The music video doesn’t have a love interest,” Jon protested, “That barely makes sense for the song.”

“Make it make sense,” Thorne said, “We’ve let you control everything else, it’s not going to kill you to write a beautiful woman into your video concept.”

“I guess we’re in agreement then,” Sam sighed, “We don’t really have much choice, right?”

“Glad we understand each other,” Melisandre said with a sharp smile. She stood up and pulled a folder out of her briefcase and placed it in front of Jon. “These are the candidates. Choose wisely Mr. Targaryen." And with that, she sauntered out of the room, Thorne and their entourage scurrying closely behind her, although Thorne made sure to throw Jon one more smug look before he left.

“What the fuck guys,” Jon exclaimed as soon as it was only the three of them in the room, “Way to have my fucking back.”

“Jon, you know we were backed into a corner. And it’s really not the worst idea. I didn’t think of any better ideas," Satin stated.

“I still think the entire problem is overblow. My album is going to do fine.”

“You can’t promise that Jon, and you can’t blame the label for wanting more of a guarantee,” Sam said as he pulled the folder towards it an opened it up, “We may as well choose now. The sooner we sort this the better.”

Jon didn’t want to choose at all, but he knew at this point that arguing was futile when Sam and Satin were on the same side. So the three of them methodically went through the folder.

It was a bit disconcerting to be honest. The folder was just full of photos, headshots of the models, and written on the back was their names and their measurements. It was one of the weirdest things Jon had ever done, and it made him feel dirty, like he wanted to crawl out of his skin.

Nothing was really catching his eye. All of the women were beautiful of course, but Jon couldn’t shake the feeling of wrongness, couldn’t connect with any of the blank beautiful faces staring back at him from their photos. Until he looked at her. She was just as beautiful as the other women, nothing should have made her stand out, but Jon couldn’t help be drawn in by her eyes. They were bright and blue and made her look kind. He felt stupid for thinking that, but it was true. She had pale skin and long red hair that actually seemed to be natural and not from a bottle like most of the redheads in the industry. Jon turned the photo over. He didn’t bother to look at her measurements, he frankly didn’t care, but he did want to know her name. Sansa Stark. Even that felt right.

“Her,” he told Sam and Satin. “I choose her.”

¬¬¬¬¬

“I want something else to get me through this
Semi-charmed kinda life, baby, baby”

-Semi Charmed Life, Third Eye Blind

“Baby, look at me
And tell me what you see
You ain't seen the best of me yet
Give me time, I'll make you forget the rest”

-S-A-N-S-A-

Sansa Stark was tired. The lights that they were using for this shoot seemed even more blinding than usual, and she was struggling to keep a stoic expression on her face and not squint.

“Okay, great guys, I think I got it,” the photographer finally said, “Can we just try one more pose? Something doesn’t feel right about the positioning of the back line.”

Sansa resisted the urge to groan. They had been trying to get this specific shot for over an hour. Her feet were killing her in the ridiculous heels that she was wearing, and she was sure that many of her peers felt the same.

There were 36 models total in this shoot, and it was for the centerspread in a small time fashion magazine. But with the way the photographer was acting, you would think it was going to be front page of the biggest fashion magazine in Westeros. As annoying as it was, Sansa could hardly blame him. He was an unknown name, of course he felt he had to fight to make everything perfect. Because what if this was his big break and he messed it up?

Sansa was no stranger to that feeling. Nobody trying to break into the fashion industry was. It was the reason that she had woken up at 3am in the morning to arrive at hair and make-up bright and early, to try and make a good impression on the crew of a shoot where she would be just one face in a crowd of beautiful faces, unlikely to even be noticed by anybody. But she still had to try.

The photographer came forward himself to adjust the positioning of the models in the back line, including Sansa, instead of letting one of the assistants doing it, confirming her theory about how much he cared. It endeared her to him a little, despite the fact that her feet were in so much pain that they had gone numb, and she felt likely to pass out due to her exhaustion if she didn’t get a break soon.

“And... there!” the photographer stated, as he placed the last model in position. “That’s it, you’re all perfect now. Nobody move!” He rushed back to his spot and started snapping pictures.

After several torturous minutes in which Sansa tried not to move a muscle, lest she fall out of perfect position, finally the photographer said, “Okay, I think I got it! We can break for a costume change now!”

One of the women next to Sansa gave an audible sigh of relief as all of the models began to scatter back to their dressing areas. The budget wasn’t high enough to have individual dressing rooms, so all the male models were sharing one and the female models were sharing another.

Sansa made her way back to the dressing area at a relaxed pace. She knew there would be a line to get dressed no matter what. There weren’t enough assistants to help everybody at the same time, and many of the outfits required assistance to get in and out of.

The first outfit they all wore was a daytime look by a selected upcoming designer, and now they would change into a nighttime look by a different designer. Whichever shot was best between the day and night shoots would get the centerspread in the magazine, and the other shoot would go somewhere else in the magazine.

Sansa’s daytime look had luckily not been as involved as some of the ones she saw other models wearing. It was a simple jumpsuit, elevated by it’s decorated shoulder pads and beading down the spine on the back. Sansa was able to quite easily get out of it herself when she finally made her way back to the dressing room. The bigger relief was getting out of the ridiculous heels, although she knew she’d have to put them back on once she was in her second outfit.

Luckily, an assistant became free just as Sansa was ready to start getting into her nighttime look. If they weren’t she wasn’t sure that she would have been able to get into it. At first glance it seemed quite simple- a two piece skirt and top in a beautiful shimmery pink color, but whatever material it was made out of was clearly not made to stretch. Even though the outfit was supposed to be to her exact measurements, by the time the assistant had helped Sansa squeeze into the skirt, she was seriously concerned that she would struggle to breathe if the second shoot took as long as the first. The skirt was high waisted and the top was cropped, and both of them felt like they were squeezing at different points on her ribcage.

But when she looked in the mirror, she almost gasped. The outfit looked even more beautiful on than it had on the rack, with intricate detailing down the center of the skirt and on the long sleeves of the top. Beauty really was pain, and the fashion industry reminded her of that daily. Sansa decided to steel herself and just get it over with. Hopefully now that the photographer knew the type of shot he wanted, the second shoot wouldn’t take as long.

She picked up the ridiculous heels-- she wasn’t putting those back on until she had to-- and made her way over to the refreshment table to get a drink of water and wait for the rest of the models to get ready so they could resume the shoot.

“You look uncomfortable,” She heard a voice behind her say. She turned around to see a pretty woman, maybe in her late twenties or early thirties, with dark hair that fell in waves just below her shoulders. She was wearing a simple, pretty cream dress but wasn’t holding a clipboard, phone or random pieces of clothing like many of the assistants running around were. Sansa wasn’t sure who she was or how she got on the set, but she had found the best course of action was to treat everybody that she met on a job with friendly politeness. Word of mouth spread quickly in the fashion industry, and reputation was everything.

“Don’t worry, I’m alright,” Sansa stated with a simple smile, but the dark haired lady just continued speaking, with a curious expression on her face.

“Is the skirt too tight? Or the top?” She had a slight accent but Sansa couldn’t exactly place where it was from, somewhere in Essos for sure, maybe one of the free cities. There were lots of people from all over the world who came to King’s Landing to get into the industry, so hearing a smattering of different accents was commonplace.

“They fit fine, the material is just a little... unforgiving.” Sansa hoped that was is placating enough answer but the dark haired woman just seemed to become more interested in continuing the conversation.

“It is a bit of an odd material. So beautiful though, don’t you think?”

“Oh it’s stunning! It looked pretty on the rack, but when I put it on, it completely transformed. It almost looks unreal.”

The dark haired woman gave a small smile, but then frowned very soon after.

“But it’s not comfortable?”

“Well I didn’t say that,” Sansa rebutted.

“Hmm.” The dark haired woman seemed to decide to take a different approach. “If you could change just one thing about the outfit, what would it be?”

“I don’t know that I’d change anything” Sansa stated hastily. This lady clearly worked for the shoot in some capacity and Sansa didn’t want to get a reputation for disparaging designers.

The woman seemed to sense her apprehension and gave her another warm smile. “It’s okay, I promise. You can be completely honest. I’m not going to tell anybody.”

“Well...” Sansa was probably going to regret this, but she did have a fairly innocent answer, and it seemed that this woman didn’t want to end the conversation without getting something from Sansa. “If I had to change one thing... I think I’d put a slit in the skirt.”

The woman raised an eyebrow. “A slit? Like up the side?”

Sansa shook her head. “No not a side slit, in the middle. There’s already this beautiful embroidery here,” Sansa indicated to the line of embroidery going up the middle of the skirt, “There could have been a slit here, with the embroidery decorating the outline of it. Not a high slit of course, but just enough to draw more attention to the embroidery, with the added benefit of making the skirt easier to walk in without taking away the modesty of it.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that,” The woman said, looking at Sansa with a delighted expression. “That actually makes a lot of sense. I’m going to try that the next time I work with this material.”

Sansa suddenly got a sinking feeling in her chest. “The next time?”

The woman smiled. “Yes. I designed the outfit you’re wearing. Next time I’ll definitely try out the slit though, that’s truly brilliant. I really wasn’t trying to make this look modest though, so it seems like I missed the mark there as well. Maybe I should make the skirt shorter?”

Sansa was too busy panicking to answer her question. “My gods, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to insult your work, it’s perfect the way it is, honestly.”

The woman laughed. “No it’s not, and that’s okay. That’s why I asked. I meant it when I said you have nothing to worry about. I like to hear honest criticisms of my work. I’m Shae, by the way.” She held her hand out for Sansa to shake, and Sansa took it with relief, seeing that Shae really wasn’t mad.

“I’m Sansa Stark.”

“Well you have a good eye Sansa. I come to every shoot that my clothes are going to be featured in-- which is honestly not many, but when it does happen I like to see how my designs work in the wild. It’s well and good seeing something on a mannequin, but how does it walk? how does it look in different lighting? Is it wearable? I always ask the models about the looks to, and most of them give me bullshit answers, even if they don’t know who I am. You’ve given me the first piece of useable advice that I’ve gotten in a while. Do you design clothes too?”

Sansa was flattered by the question, but realistically shouldn’t have been. Many models also wanted to design, and many designers wanted to model. People got into the fashion industry through any door that they could and then tried to get to where they actually wanted to be later. And technically, Sansa did used to make her own clothes, and her interest in that was sort of what had gotten her the opportunity to model in the first place. She didn’t really design or make clothes anymore though. She didn’t have time for it.

So she said, “Not really. I do love fashion and design though, so I try to pay attention to things.”

“Well I appreciate your advice,” Shae said, “And you do make my work look amazing. I’d love to work with again if I could.”

“Really?” Sansa couldn’t believe that she was going to walk away from what should have been a careless reputation affecting blunder with a work opportunity.

“Of course. Obviously I won’t be able to offer anything that a big fashion house would, but I do get some decent opportunities to display my work, mostly in Lorath, where I’m from, and other places around Essos.” She pulled a card out of her bag, “Here’s my card, just contact me whenever you’re free and pass over your agency and booking information. I’ll be in contact if anything comes up that i think you’ll be a good fit for.”

“Thank you so much! I’ll definitely be reaching out.”

Shae gave her another smile. “I’ll be looking forward to working with you.” With that, Shae walked away. Just in time too, as the photographer started to call all the models back to set for the second shoot.

Sansa walked over to the set, not even caring about how her ridiculous shoes were pinching her feet. Things seemed to finally be looking up.

¬¬¬¬¬

The second shoot thankfully didn’t take half as long as the first one did, so Sansa found herself back in the dressing room and changing back into her street clothes in no time. Sometimes models were allowed to take home clothes from shoots, sometimes they even got clothes instead of payment, but for this shoot they had to return all of the clothes, so Sansa carefully placed Shae’s design back into the garment bag it came from and then went over to her designated locker to grab her bag and phone.

She had planned on shooting a message to the number Shae gave her as soon as she got her phone back, but she was distracted by the things that she had missed during the hours that she had been working. There were messages from her family group chat of course, and Arya had sent what seemed to be 50 memes in their private messages, but the thing that caught Sansa’s eye were the multiple missed calls from Petyr.

Petyr Baelish was the owner and C.E.O of Mockingbird Models, and therefore Sansa’s boss. He was also an old friend of her mother’s, so she knew that they had a different dynamic with each other than he had with most of the other models. He didn’t normally call her multiple times in a row unless it was important though. Especially while she was working.

Luckily, he’d sent her a text message too.

Petyr: Come to the office as soon as you’re free. I have something to talk you about.

Unluckily, the message was suitably vague enough that Sansa was still incredibly worried.

The set and the main Mockingbird offices weren’t far away form each other, they were both in downtown King’s Landing, but Sansa still called for a taxi instead of using public transport like she usually would have. Whatever Petyr wanted to talk to her about, she wanted to do it as soon as possible.

When she walked into the office building and made her way up to Petyr’s office on the top floor, she was greeted by the familiar face of Petyr’s personal assistant Ros. Like most of the mockingbird employees, Ros was a former model herself. When the gigs began to dry up, instead of leaving King’s landing and going back home like a lot of unsuccessful models did, she instead decide to make a place for herself as Petyr’s right hand woman.

“Sansa,” Ros said with her typical wry smile. “You don’t have an appointment.”

“I know. But Petyr sent me a message. He said to get here as soon as I could, so here I am.”

“I’ll go and check that with him,” Ros stood up and walked into Petyr’s office, returning less than a minute later. “Mr. Baelish is just finishing up with a meeting. He’ll see you as soon as he’s done Miss Stark. You can go wait over there.” She gestured to a couch in the waiting area where Sansa saw two familiar faces.

“Thanks Ros,” she stated as she made her way to sit with Mya and Myranda, two of her fellow mockingbird models. “So nice to see you guys,” Sansa said as she gave them both a hug in greeting, “What are you both doing here?”

Mya and Myranda were colleagues, but they were also probably the closest thing to friends that Sansa had in King’s Landing. They’d both been at Mockingbird a few years longer than Sansa had, and she’d met them at shoots shortly after she started. They hung out sometimes, going to get cocktails or brunch, but they never really talked too deeply about their lives, they mostly talked about work and work related gossip. But Sansa didn’t mind it that way-- sometimes it was better to keep things light.

“Waiting for our annual torture,” Mya said, scrunching up her face into a grimace.

Myranda snorted. “Annual slaughter, more like. He was absolutely brutal about my audition to booking ratio last year. I can’t imagine he’ll be any nicer this time. He doesn’t care how much harder I have to work as a plus size model, he just cares about results.” Sansa still found it ridiculous that Myranda was what the industry counted as ‘plus size’. She was very curvy for sure, but in most regular stores she would not be somebody who was buying from the plus size section. Unfortunately in the modelling industry, anything bigger than sample size was plus size. It meant that models like Myranda were pigeon holed, and any bigger body sizes just weren’t properly represented at all.

Something that Petyr did that was different from most other agency C.E.O’s, was that he had an annual review meeting with each one of his models at least once a year. Sometimes models were let go from their contracts at review meetings, sometimes he made the decision to try them in a different market, sometimes he just reduced them to tears by criticizing their craft.

Models very rarely left these meetings with a warm fuzzy feeling from what Sansa had heard.

Sansa had been with mockingbird for just over a year now, and had her first annual review a couple of months ago. While it had not been exactly positive, it also hadn’t been as bad as she was expecting from what she’d heard from other models. Sansa had undeniably underperformed Petyr’s expectations in the past year. When he’d brought her to King’s Landing, it had been with excitement and promise that she’d be in for an illustrious modelling career. And the agency had done it’s part, Sansa had managed to get invited to a lot of castings and auditions, but she had just never managed to seal the deal on anything major.

Instead of reaming her for her apparently terrible modelling skills though, Petyr had given her an ‘I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed’ speech, and said that he may have to try a different approach.

Sansa wasn’t sure what other approaches there were. She gave her all in every casting and audition, and the feedback she was given when she wasn’t chosen was never helpful. They rarely said anything negative, just that they felt she wasn’t the right fit for them. It was very discouraging.

“Of course he cares about results,” Mya said, “That’s what goes into his pocket right? Our success is his payday.”

“Well he’s in for a very big payday soon then.” Myranda said, and Mya gave a knowing nod.

“What are you talking about?” Sansa asked curiously.

“Haven’t you heard?” Myranda leant forward to whisper conspiratorially, “Apparently Baelish has signed Loras and Margaery Tyrell to Mockingbird.”

Sansa couldn’t hide the look of surprise on her face. “Really?”

The Tyrell’s were famous reality stars. Their grandmother Olenna had been a famous opera singer back in her day, until she retired to marry a minor agriculture tycoon. After their marriage, his business took off and the Tyrell’s became new age millionaires, inching closer towards a billion every day. A few years ago, Olenna had pitched a reality show about their family life in Highgarden and it had become an overnight success, becoming the most watched reality show in Westeros.

Since then, almost every Tyrell was a household name, but Margaery and Loras were the most famous. As the youngest members of the family, they had been the breakout stars of the show. They were the center of storylines about scandal and romance, and Loras’ coming out story a few years ago had been one of the highest viewed episodes of non scripted programming.

If Petyr had really signed the Tyrell’s then that would be a goldmine for Mockingbird. The Tyrell’s could book gigs without ever even showing up for an audition. Star power still made a huge difference in the fashion industry.

“It’s just a rumor for now,” Mya said, “But if it’s true, you know the rest of us are fucked right? All of the good jobs will go to the Tyrells.” Mya had always been somewhat of an enigma to Sansa. It was never clear why she had made the decision to become a model. She didn’t seem to have the same interest in fashion that Sansa did or attraction to the luxury and glamour of the industry that Myranda did. But she was good at what she did, getting more opportunities to work in runway than Sansa and Myranda combined. Her angular features were appealing to runway in a away that Sansa’s softer features weren’t, which is probably one of the reasons Sansa ended up with mostly editorial work.

“But imagine getting to cozy up to the Tyrell’s at company parties? I bet we could get more opportunities by just being around them,” Myranda sighed.

“I doubt they’d be attending many company parties,” Sansa said, “They probably get invited to parties by movie stairs and hotel heiresses. Why would they want to party with us?”

“Exactly,” Mya agreed, and then changed the topic, seemingly bored of talking about the Tyrells. “What are you doing here anyway Sansa? You already had your review right? You don’t look like you’re dressed for a review either.”

The models always dressed up for their annual reviews, either in fancy business clothes or in high fashion pieces. Petyr was big on putting your best foot forward, and he liked to see his models making an effort. Sansa had spent 3 hours choosing an outfit for her review a few months ago. Mya and Myranda were both suitably dressed up too.

It was in obvious contrast to how Sansa was currently dressed. Unlike for auditions and castings, Sansa always wore comfortable clothing to shoots. She wouldn’t be in her own clothes for long anyway, so she didn’t see the point of wasting any more time in the mornings when she already had to get up so early for most shoots. Today she was wearing leggings and an oversized hoodie that she had stolen from Robb a few years ago. And because she had rushed here straight from the set, she hadn’t had chance to undo her hair and make-up either. She bet that she made an interesting sight in a ratty Wintertown direwolves hoodie, a complicated updo and a full face of make up with a smoky eye.

“Oh umm.. I have a meeting with Pe... Mr. Baelish. I’m not sure what about.” Even though Sansa had suspicions that the meeting couldn’t be about anything good, she didn’t want to say that. It would just make Myranda want to dig deeper for gossip. Sansa always tried to be discreet about the fact that Petyr was technically an old family friend. Getting jobs through connections was common, expected even, in the industry, but something about it still made Sansa feel weird, so she tried not to spread it around.

“He scheduled a last minute meeting with you out of nowhere?” Myranda asked suspiciously.

Sansa was saved by having to answer as Ros interrupted them at the most opportune moment.

“Miss Stark? Mr. Baelish will see you now.”

Sansa stood up quickly, giving Mya and Myranda a little wave as she walked into Petyr’s office, glad that she didn’t have to try and explain something that she didn’t have an answer to.

“Hello sweetling,” Petyr greeted as soon as she shut the door to his office.

“Petyr, hi.” Sansa took the seat across from him. “I got here as soon as I could. Is there... is there something wrong? Did I do something wrong?”

Petyr chuckled and gave one of his signature smirks. “Of course not sweetling. I called you here because I have a wonderful opportunity for you.”

“An opportunity? Like a shoot or a fashion show?”

“No, not exactly. Have you heard of The Wall records?”

The Wall was one of the biggest record labels in King’s Landing, and they had started in the north, so of course Sansa had heard of them, even though the musicians they signed didn’t tend to produce the genres of music she sought out.

“Yes I have. What do they need models for? Some sort of party or video?”

“They don’t need models plural, just one. And you’ve been chosen.”

Sansa was starting to get suspicious. She wasn’t sure what this job was. but it didn’t sound like a typical modelling gig.

“What have I been chosen for?”

“The Wall want to clean up the image of one of their biggest artists. They think having a steady girlfriend will help with that. They didn’t want to use somebody with a big name-- I suspect because they don’t want to distract from him-- so they asked me for some headshots, and he chose yours.”

Sansa tried to process the information she had just been told. This clearly wasn’t a modelling job at all. It sounded like... well it sounded like the oldest profession in the world.

“So you want me to be an escort?” She asked, trying to keep the incredulity out of her voice. She knew she hadn’t been doing amazing at the whole modelling thing, but she couldn’t believe that Petyr thought this was the only path forward for her.

Petyr had the nerve to chuckle again. “Trust me sweetling, this is not escorting. They won’t be paying you for this. Not with money anyway. This is a mutually beneficial arrangement. Just imagine the kind of attention you’ll get on the arm of a famous rockstar! And imagine the job offers you’ll get because of that attention.”

Sansa nodded slowly, finally starting to understand. “So it’s like... I scratch his back and he scratches mine?”

“Exactly. Although of course, you would not be expected to do any literal back scratching... or anything else along those lines. I’m sure he could hire an actual escort for that.”

Sansa’s face flushed red at Petyr’s implication. “Right. So who is this guy anyway?”

Petyr gave another smirk, this one with barely contained glee. “That’s the best part. It’s Jon Snow.”

Sansa knew who Jon snow was, of course she did. He was one of the biggest music stars in Westeros right now. Arya was a big fan of him, she liked that type of music. Sansa knew him more for his fashion connections though.

“Jon Snow as in... actually a Targaryen, Jon snow?”

“Exactly.”

You couldn’t live in King’s Landing and not know about the Targaryen’s unless you lived under a rock. They owned half the city. Targaryen corporation had started out as a commercial real estate company a few generations ago, and they had owned most of the office buildings downtown. And then one clever Targaryen decided that they could make more money if they didn’t just own the buildings, but owned the businesses using them too. So then Targaryen Corp started spreading into every industry they could, either by buying up existing businesses and rebranding or by creating their own businesses. There was Targaryen Manufacturing, Targaryen Pharmaceutical, Targaryen Technologies. The list just went on. They say that every member of the Targaryen family was encouraged to spread out into yet another new industry to make their mark.

About 30 years ago, Rhaegar Targaryen founded Targaryen House, a luxury designer fashion label that had taken the fashion industry by storm. They had risen quickly for a new fashion house, probably in part due to the immense funds available to them, and had quickly become one of the most elite and exclusive high fashion brands. A few years back Rhaegar officially stepped back from the fashion house to fully devote his time to being C.E.O of Targaryen Corp, and handed over the reins of Targaryen House to his little sister Daenerys who now acted as head creative director.

Rhaegar Targaryen was Jon’s father, Daenerys was his aunt. If Sansa was connected to Jon, she would potentially be close to a fashion dynasty that she would previously never even have dreamed of getting near.

“Wow. That’s...wow.”

“It’s like fate,” Petry said, “That he would choose you, just as I was trying to figure out what I could do to help your career. I know you have the potential to be a wonderful model sweetling, and this is going to help everybody else see that too.”

“Can I... can I think about it?”

Petry pulled a face, like he wasn’t sure what Sansa would have to think about, but he smoothed it out to his normal neutral expression almost as soon as it happened.

“Of course you can Sweetling. But don’t think for too long. His publicist wants an answer by tomorrow, or they’ll go looking for someone else.”

Sansa felt overwhelmed. She felt like this opportunity seemed almost too good to be true. She needed sometime to unwrap her feelings about this before she could make a decision.

“I’ll let you know by tomorrow. Promise.”

¬¬¬¬¬

By the time Sansa reached the front door of her apartment building, her mind was racing. Being Jon Snow’s fake girlfriend would undoubtedly bring a lot of opportunities for her, but she had a feeling that it would bring her a lot of trouble too. She’d been online in fandom spaces on social media, she knew what some fangirls could get like, and she doubt that they’d take kindly to a random nobody suddenly showing up with the object of their awe.

Also, Sansa had no idea what being a fake girlfriend even entailed. She barely even knew what being a real girlfriend entailed. She had only ever had one real boyfriend, her high school boyfriend Waymar. And that had been more of a puppy love thing-- holding hands in the hallways, going to prom. They never talked about anything too deep, and looking back on it, they barely knew each other really. They dated for 7 months and then broke up when Waymar graduated.

Since then, Sansa has been on a few dates and had a few hookups, especially since moving to King’s Landing, but none of it has led to anything serious. She was far too focused on her work and on trying to make something of herself. She didn’t have time to date.

“Long day, Sansa?” A familiar voice asked as she walked into the lobby, and she turned to see Olyvar standing by the mailboxes.

Olyvar was another Mockingbird model. Petyr actually owned this building and gave a small discount to his models who lived here. It had made the most sense when Sansa moved to King’s Landing for her to move in her. It was a central location, and the discount made it more affordable then all the other nearby buildings, so she was able to keep up with her bills using what she made from the few shoots she managed to book, and supplementing with her savings when she had a bad month.

Olyvar lived on the floor below Sansa, and they often crossed paths in the lobby.

“Very long day,” she replied with a small smile, “How about you?”

“Nah it’s just been a lazy one for me. Flying out to Dorne tomorrow for a shoot, so I’ve been trying to save my energy.”

“Well I’ll leave you to it,” Sansa said, giving him a little wave as she made her way to the elevator. She didn’t have the mental capacity to carry on a full conversation right now.

Finally, Sansa made it inside her apartment. It was a cozy one bedroom, the living room was only slightly bigger than her childhood bedroom, but Sansa had made it her own. When she’d first moved down, Robb had come with her and had helped her go to furniture stores, thrift stores and yard sales until she’d had a collection of cute and eclectic furniture.

She grabbed her laptop and flopped down on her couch. Searching Jon Snow’s name yielded a wide array of interesting results. There were a lot of recent articles about his partying and bad behavior, which answered the question of why his label wanted to clean him image up. There were also some articles about his relationship with his family, although the authors could never seemed to decide if they thought he loved them or hated them. And of course, there was a lot of fan content-- some of it discourse about his personal life, but most of it genuine love and excitement about his music and his projects.

Sitting on her couch, looking at a picture of Jon Snow, Sansa thought about all the ways that her life would change if she agreed to this. And then she thought about the ways it wouldn’t change if she didn’t-- she thought about going on as she had been, fighting and scraping to make a name for herself.

She put down her laptop and picked up her phone, shooting a simple message to Petyr.

Sansa: I’m in

¬¬¬¬¬

“I got more in me
And you can set it free
I can catch the moon in my hands
Don't you know who I am?
Remember my name”

-Fame, Irene Cara

“Trading in who I've been for shiny celebrity skin
I like to push it and, push it until my luck is over”

-S-A-N-S-A-

Sansa had spent the last three days aggressively researching all the publicly available information about Jon Snow. It was probably a little bit over kill, but she had decided to view this whole fake girlfriend thing as a job-- that’s basically what it was-- and Sansa always liked to make sure that she was prepared for her jobs.

The cursory search she had done before messaging Petyr to accept the position had barely scratched the surface. There were thousands of articles, videos, and social media posts about Jon Snow. Most of the interest was focused on after he began his music career, but there were also some about his early life too. As a Targaryen, he had essentially been in the spotlight one way or another his entire life.

By this point, Sansa could practically recite the first few lines of Jon Snow’s Wikipedia page.

Jaeherys Jon Targaryen, known professionally as Jon Snow, is a Westerosi musician and songwriter...

She could probably win a pop quiz about Jon Snow.

Where was he born? Dorne.

How old was he? 25-- only 3 years older than Sansa.

What was his mother’s name? Lyanna Snow. Evidently where he’d gotten the stage name from.

There was a surprising dearth of information about Jon’s mother, given the wealth of information about the rest of his life. All that Sansa had been able to ascertain was that Lyanna was an artist of some sort who had crossed paths with Rhaegar Targaryen at some point and then they had an affair. A lot of articles mentioned the huge scandal of Jon’s birth and the subsequent public messy divorce of Rhaegar and his ex wife Elia Martell, but Lyanna was barely a footnote in any of them. She died when Jon was a baby, that much was clear, but beyond that, Sansa couldn’t find any reliable information about Lyanna Snow. Maybe that was for the best though. Some things should be kept personal.

Unfortunately, another aspect of Jon’s life that it was difficult to find reliable information on, was one that was actually quite important to Sansa’s role: his love life. Of course there were tons of articles about his hook ups-- tons of pictures too-- but as far as Sansa could tell, Jon Snow had only ever had two public girlfriends.

His first girlfriend, there was next to no public information about-- all Sansa could figure out was that her name was Ygritte, they’d started dating sometime before he got signed to his record label, and they broke up sometime in between his first album being released and his second.

There were quite a few photos of her though-- paparazzi photos of her with Jon or red carpet photos of them together. She had red hair, a couple of shades darker than Sansa’s , and her style was always effortlessly grunge and cool. Jon always seemed enamored with her in all of their photos together, but he rarely mentioned her in interviews, even when they were together, and brushed off questions he was asked about her to this day.

Jon’s second public girlfriend was the popstar Val. They started dating just before Jon’s second album. They were signed to sister record labels and apparently met at some sort of industry event. There were lots of photographs of them together, and they talked about each other often in interviews too, but nothing that ever seemed to scratch below the surface. They dated for a little less than a year and then had an apparently amicable break up, citing opposite schedules as their reasoning. Jon still often spoke about Val fondly in interviews to this day, and she did the same. There were a subset of Jon’s fans that shipped them together hardcore, thought that Val was Jon’s soulmate, and were convinced that they would get back together one day and live happily ever after.

Since his break up with Val, Jon’s public dating presence had been nothing but hook ups and one night stands, the volume of them increasing substantially after the release of his third album.

Sansa didn’t know what to make of it all. The Jon who dated Ygritte seemed completely different to the Jon who dated Val. And both of those Jon’s seemed to be at odds with the current playboy Jon. She wasn’t sure the best way to approach him if she wanted this fake girlfriend thing to work-- which she did.

Additionally, she wasn’t sure whether or not his connection to Targaryen would actually help Sansa, or have the opposite effect and result in her being blacklisted from any Targaryen House opportunities. While there was tons of information and articles about the Targaryen family and Jon’s role within it, the picture they all painted was incredibly contradictory.

Some articles spoke about Jon’s strained relationship with his father, his distant connection to his sister and his bitter feud with his brother, and then a week later the same publications would post pictures of Jon with his family at some society event and write a gushing article about how close they all are and how important family is to the Targaryen’s.

Jon apparently had a falling out with his aunt a few years ago, but every year for the past few years he had worn her designs and walked with her to represent Targaryen House at the Red Gala, the biggest fashion event of the year. But by that same token, he never went to any other Targaryen House events or to any of their shows at any of the fashion weeks. It was all just odd.

It was never really clear where the supposed feuds stemmed from either, or when Jon’s supposed rift with his family started.

From what Sansa read, Jon grew up in King’s Landing with his father and half siblings. When they got a little older, they were all sent to different boarding schools across the world. The reasoning for this was never explained, but some articles speculated it was another weird Targaryen tradition. Either way, Jon was sent to a boarding school in the North, near Castle Black, while his half sister Rhaenys went to school in Dorne and his half brother Aegon went to school in Essos.

Jon stayed up North for a couple years after graduating from high school, only returning to King’s Landing after he had already signed his recording contract. That was around the time that the feud articles started too, but Sansa couldn’t tell if that was just a result of Jon’s increasing public profile as he became more famous, or if that was actually when the supposed issue with his family started.

It was all so confusing. Sansa didn’t want to stress herself thinking too much about the Targaryen’s as a whole though, she already had enough stress thinking about the Targaryen that she was going to be connected to for at least the next few months. She felt a bit like a stalker, looking up all this information about him, but she knew that she would feel worse if she showed up to their first meeting completely blind.

Petry had informed her that Jon’s publicist Satin had set up a meeting for them at the record label this afternoon. They were planning to hire Sansa for one of Jon’s music videos, and use that as a way to launch their public relationship, so if she was seen at the record label it could be easily explained as her coming to discuss the video. Really, they’d be meeting with lawyers present to sign a contract and NDAs. It was a little daunting.

Sansa checked the time on her phone for the third time that morning. She knew the meeting was still a while away, but she’d been up early to fret and get ready. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was supposed to wear to meet her future fake boyfriend. For some castings, they liked for model’s to show up dressed very plainly, a blank slate for the designer’s vision, while other castings liked for them to dress up and show off their personal style and knowledge about fashion.

But for this? Sansa had no idea. Technically, until they signed the contracts nothing was set in stone. She knew it was silly to worry that Jon would reject her because of how she was dressed, but she couldn’t help it. Should she dress for the job she wanted, as a rockstar’s girlfriend? What did that even entail? Her normal style was very different from either of Jon’s previous girlfriends. What if he chose her out of some misplaced assumption that she would be his type-- she had red hair like Ygritte, and a similar height and body shape to Val-- and then when he saw her and realized that she wasn’t, he changed his mind?

She’d spent half of the morning ransacking her closet for the perfect outfit to wear. She spent more time planning this outfit than she had for her annual review outfit, although you would never be able to tell by looking at it. In the end, Sansa thought the blank slate approach made the most sense, so she had chosen to wear blue jeans and a plain black top, paired with her favorite black ankle boots. She’d add a leather jacket for a little bit of that rockstar aesthetic-- Jon snow seemed to be wearing various leather jackets in 80% of his paparazzi photos-- do a no-makeup make up look and keep her hair down.

Hopefully less would be more in this case, and even if she wasn’t exactly Jon Snow’s type, she wouldn’t be too far in another direction to the point that it was off putting to him.

Sansa’s phone rang, snapping her out of her musing, and she hurried to check the caller ID, thinking that it may have been Petyr calling with some information about the meeting. It was actually her mother.

In all of her worrying and researching for this meeting, Sansa had practically forgotten that today was Sunday, and every Sunday morning she had a phone call with her mother to catch up. It had started as a tradition when Sansa was a kid. She and her siblings were raised in a dual religion household, but all of the rest of them gravitated towards the Old Gods fairly early on. For a while there, Sansa was the only Stark kid who would accompany her mother to the Sept every Sunday, and so they had started a tradition of using the time in the morning before they went to sept to catch up on their weeks.

Eventually, after her father died, Sansa stopped going to Sept. But the morning talk tradition with her mother continued-- they needed it more than ever back then. When she lived in Wintertown, Sansa would still wake up early on Sundays to chat with her mother before Catelyn went to Sept. After moving down to King’s landing, the tradition turned into phone calls. Sansa always looked forward to them.

“Mom!” Sansa said cheerfully as she picked up the phone, “Happy Sunday.”

“Happy Sunday, darling,” Catelyn said. “ How has your week been?”

Sansa wasn’t sure if she could even begin to describe how the last half of her week had been, holed up in her apartment researching a wayward rocker so she could better pretend to date him. Even though she hadn’t signed an NDA yet, she still knew that she wasn’t supposed to reveal to anybody that the relationship was going to be fake, not even to her family. She would have to just focus on the first half of her week instead.

“It’s been alright. I had a shoot earlier in the week, I think it went well. Hopefully the photos will be published in a few weeks.”

“Oh that’s good news. Was it a solo shoot?” Despite Catelyn’s pleasant tone, Sansa knew the intention behind her words. She had been vehemently against Sansa moving to King’s Landing and trying to become a model. She had even gotten into an argument with Petyr about it after finding out he was the one who wanted to sign Sansa. Catelyn didn’t think that modelling was a suitable or stable career, and every time that Sansa mentioned her struggles or failures, she knew that an ‘I told you so’ was on the tip of her mother’s tongue.

“No, it wasn’t. It was a group shoot. But I made a connection with a designer while I was there. She said she might reach out to me with some work.”

“Well I hope it works out. But if it doesn't, you know you’re always welcome to come home. You could go back to school, or you could work with Robb.”

Sansa sighed. Her mother was never subtle about wanting Sansa to return to the North.

“Yes, I know.” She decided to change the subject. “How are Bran and Rickon?”

That seemed to be the correct move as her mother launched into a lengthy story about some prank Rickon had tried to pull at school this week. Sansa knew it wasn’t easy for her mother with all of her children so spread out. Robb still lived in the North but he had moved out of the family home a couple of years ago and into a home of his own with his wife Talisa and son Ned junior, who was 3.

Arya had moved to Braavos last year after graduating high school and joined a dance company called the faceless men who specialized in braavosi water dancing. Sansa and Arya had both done dance when they were growing up, enrolled by their mother. Arya had hated it at first, while Sansa took easily to the traditional forms of dance such as ballet and ballroom. But then they did a lesson on braavosi water dancing, which was based on an old style of sword fighting, and Arya had taken to it like a duck to water. Catelyn had been happy that she had found a passion, but just like Sansa’s modelling, she wasn’t sure that passion translated into a career. Unlike Sansa though, Arya had proved her wrong. The faceless men were the most prestigious water dancing company and performed all over the world. Arya hadn’t achieve full membership yet-- members had to go through months of rigorous training and then audition to ‘become faceless’-- but she was well on her way. She seemed to be enjoying Braavos too.

Sansa of course, moved to King’s Landing just over a year ago, which left only Bran and Rickon at home with Catelyn, and Bran was set to graduate high school this year. He’d told Sansa that he had been tip toeing around his college options with their mother. He wanted to stay in the North, but go far North. He wasn’t sure how she would react.

“Anyway, that’s enough about the boys,” Catelyn said after she concluded a story about Bran trying to convince her to take both him and Rickon to the summer isles as a graduation present. “What else is going on in your life? Have you been anywhere new or exciting? Met anybody interesting?”

Her mother always ended their conversations with thinly veiled enquiries about her love life. If this fake dating thing worked out, then Sansa would finally actually have something to tell her, even if it wasn’t real.

“Nope, I’ve not met anybody new,” Sansa stated simply.

“Oh well, I’m sure you will soon. I have to go now darling, or I’ll be late for Sept. I love you!”

“Love you mom,” Sansa said as she ended the call. She checked the time once again. It was finally almost time to start heading to the meeting.

¬¬¬¬¬

The offices for The Wall record label were sleek and modern. Sansa couldn’t help but feel a little out of place in her casual outfit as she made her way through the hallways with Marwyn, one of the Mockingbird lawyers who Petyr had sent with her to get the legal contracts squared away. Marwyn was wearing a sleek grey suit, which only made Sansa seem more out of place standing next to him. She had a sinking feel she’d made the wrong fashion choice, but it was too late too change things now.

Sansa and Marwyn finally arrived at the room that they had been directed to by the friendly receptionist. Sansa took a deep breath and steeled herself as they walk through the door.

Jon Snow was already sitting at the table waiting for them, three men were sitting with him, probably members of his team.

Sansa first thought when she set her eyes on Jon Snow for the first time was: he’s so pretty. The thought came to her unbidden, and made her blush a little, but she couldn’t help it. The combination of those dark curls and pale grey eyes was lethal.

Jon stood up when Sansa walked in, after receiving an unsubtle elbow in the rib from one of the men sitting beside him.

“Sansa Stark right?” He asked while holding out a hand for Sansa to shake. “I’m Jon Snow.”

“I know...I mean of course... I mean Hi. Nice to meet you Jon” Sansa stumbled over her words like an idiot as she shook his hand, but Jon just gave her a small smile continuing to hold her hand in his, until one of the guys on his team cleared his throat and stood up, interrupting their moment. Jon dropped her hand.

“Hi Sansa, I’m Samwell Tarly, Jon’s manager. Thanks so much for meeting us here, we really appreciate it. This is Satin Jon’s publicist,” he gestured to a man with dark curls that could almost rival Jon’s, “And Davos Jon’s lawyer,” he gestured to an older gentleman who simply gave Sansa a nod in greeting.

“Well, as you know, I’m Sansa Stark. And this is Marwyn Belmore, one of the lawyers from my agency.”

“Now that we’ve gotten all of the introductions out of the way,” Satin said, “Why don’t we get down to business?”

Jon and Sam sat back down in their seats and Sansa and Marwyn followed suit, taking seats across the table from them.

“Before we get into all of the legalese, I thought that we should go over what’s actually expected.” Satin said.

“What’s expected? Aren’t I just expected to pretend to be his girlfriend?”

Satin chuckled. “Sure, but it’s not that simple. This won’t help Jon’s reputation unless we sell it perfectly. The music video thing is a realistic first meeting, but we have to figure out how we’re going to build things from there. We need to construct a love story that the public will not only believe, but also root for.”

Sansa nodded. “Okay, that makes sense. So we need to drop hints right? Before properly announcing the relationship?”

Satin grinned. “Exactly. We need to engineer ’candid’ paparazzi shots, we need to cleverly drop hints via social media and most importantly we need the media to pick up on the hints and spread the story. This only works if they think they’ve figured something out that they weren’t supposed to.” He pulled out a piece of paper from a briefcase. “I’ve drawn up a rough outline of places you can be seen and things you can be caught doing together in the build up to the hard launch of your relationship, which will be Jon’s album release party. Before then, you shouldn’t post any clear photos of each other to your social media pages, but say if we get like Jon’s arm in the back of a photo you post, or a glimpse of your hair in something he posts, then that would be perfect.”

“After the hard launch, you’d be encouraged to post photos of each other to social media. Both alone and together,” Sam added. “And Jon has several obligations-- events, red carpets, award shows-- where you’d have to go as his date. Of course, we will provide a stylist to dress you for these events.”

Sansa felt like she was get a lot of information at once, but so far everything they were saying made sense, and nothing they were saying made her want to run out of the room screaming without signing the contract. In fact, the idea of going to red carpet’s and working with a stylist was actually a little exciting. She couldn’t help but notice than Jon had been quiet through most of the conversation though.

“What do you think?” She asked him, and he looked up at her, seemingly surprised that she was talking to him, even though this meeting was supposed to be about the two of them.

“I think whatever Satin planned probably makes sense,” he said finally. Sansa wasn’t sure what to make of that answer, and she wasn’t sure what Jon snow was thinking of her, but at least he hadn’t outright rejected her. At any point he could have told his manager that he wanted to choose another model.

“Well, if we’re all in agreement, should we move on to the contracts then?” Davos asked, and Marwyn lit up, finally being able to participate in the conversation.

“Yes, I went over the drafts that you sent us. It all seems pretty standard. I just had a question about the NDA. There are some clauses in here that are pretty vague about what Sansa is allowed to talk about pertaining to Jon. Like this one here,” Marwyn pulled out a copy of the NDA and pointed to a section he had highlighted, “This says that Sansa can’t publicly discuss any information she learns tangential to Jon as a consequence of their agreement which may be in any way connected to current affairs. What does that mean?”

Davos smiled, “That’s just a fancy way of saying Sansa can’t sell any Targaryen secrets she may happen upon to the tabloids. Not that we’re expecting her to. I actually didn’t write that part .That’s just standard phrasing every member of the Targaryen family is required to put in their NDAs.”

Marwyn frowned but said, “Well I guess that makes sense. In that case, I don’t have any objections. Sansa?”

Sansa simply nodded. “If you’re happy with it, then I am.” She wasn’t going to pretend to know enough about law to even begin to parse what all of the legalese in the contracts meant, but she knew that Marwyn took his job seriously, so she trusted that he wouldn’t let her sign anything that would screw her over.

“Are we ready to sign then?” Sam asked, purposefully looking at Jon. Jon simply nodded, but he wasn’t look at Sam at all, he was looking at Sansa with a curious expression that made her feel a bit self conscious. Still whatever he was thinking didn’t stop him from picking up a pen and signing both the contract and the NDA. Sansa followed suit, giving Jon a small smile as she did so.

“That settles it then. You’re officially fake boyfriend and girlfriend!” Satin said, clapping his hands together. “Looking forward to working with you Sansa.”

“The music video starts filming in a few days, so that will be your first public sighting together, and officially your first public meeting,” Sam said, “We’ve sent all of the paperwork to book you for the shoot over to Mockingbird Sansa, to make sure we’re doing everything through the proper channels.”

“Thank you,” Sansa said, not sure what else there really was to say. This was a novel situation for her, and Jon Snow was still looking at her with his intense grey eyes.

Finally he said, “I guess I’ll see you in a few days.” And then he stood up and left the room, his team following closely behind him, although Sam did throw her an apologetic look over his shoulder.

Well, she’d done it. She’d had her first meeting with Jon Snow. And she had no idea how she felt about it, or how he felt about her.

¬¬¬¬¬

-J-O-N-

Jon was still pissed at Satin and Sam. But he had also resigned himself to the fact that this fake dating thing was happening, and happening fast. Currently they were sitting in one of the conference rooms at the label, waiting for this girl--Sansa Stark-- and her legal counsel to arrive. Jon’s own counsel, his personal attorney Davos, was already there with them.

"I still think this is bullshit," Jon said. "I don't need a fake girlfriend to make a good album". Despite his resignation, he still wanted them to know that he wasn’t happy about this.

"No, you need a fake girlfriend to sell your good album," Satin countered. "Now shut up and smile, we're about to meet the fake love of your life."

“Well that’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one who has to give up a year of your life.” Satin had gone over his proposed timeline with Jon. He’d have to build up public appearances with Sansa until the release of his album in 3 months when they would announce their relationship. Then they would have multiple public appearances over the next 6 months while Jon prepared for his world tour. They would break up a few months into the tour and cite distance as the reason, they’d both go their separate ways and everybody would be happy. Everybody except Jon of course, who would have wasted a year playing pretend with a stranger.

Although he supposed that by the end, she wouldn’t be a stranger to him. It would be hard to spend that much time with somebody and not get to know them at all. That thought disconcerted him too.

“It’s just a year Jon. And it’s not like it’ll be a constant thing. You’ll be very busy and I’m sure she’ll have her own projects too. You’ll probably only end up seeing her a few times a month for photo ops,” Sam said.

“And I’m sure it won’t kill you to go a few months without sex either,” Satin added.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Jon asked, brows furrowed “What does this have to do with me not having sex?”

Satin rolled his eyes. “Come on Jon, you didn’t honestly think you could carry on having a string of one night stands while doing this, did you? That would defeat the whole purpose. You’re supposed to be cleaning up your image.”

Jon hadn’t even thought of the fact that agreeing to this was basically agreeing to celibacy. Back when he and Val had fake dated, it had been fine because they’d developed a friends with benefits relationship pretty quickly so they had hooked up with each other all the time. They still hooked up sometimes. But Jon couldn’t guarantee that things would be like that with Sansa. He didn’t know anything about her.

“I’m not going an entire year without fucking somebody,” Jon hissed.

“You could probably get away with discrete meet ups in the beginning,” Sam added hastily, “Before the relationship is officially announced. But please no random women. I’m sure you have people you know and can trust.”

Jon didn’t even bother to dignify that with a response. That still meant they expected him to go almost 9 months living like a septon. They had to know that it wasn’t sustainable.

“I think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself Jon,” Davos interjected calmly. “Nobody is expecting you to be a saint, I’m sure we can figure something out. There are probably discrete...services that you could hire.”

Jon had never paid for sex in his life and wasn’t planning to start now. Plus if he was caught hiring an escort, that would also blow up the whole thing. They clearly hadn’t thought this through. Maybe they thought it would end up being another Val situation, but again, none of them knew anything about Sansa Stark. Maybe she was vehemently against casual sex.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” Satin said. “Let’s not think about it now. The model will be here soon with her lawyer. What sort of image would that give if we were arguing when they walked in?”

Satin seemed to have impeccable timing, because right after he said that there was a soft knock on the door and then the most beautiful woman Jon had ever seen walked in the room, followed by a guy in a suit.

Sansa Stark’s headshot did not do her justice. Sure it highlighted her pretty eyes and hair, but it couldn’t capture the way her skin looked so soft, or how endearing her nervous smile was. It also didn’t show off her figure-- Sansa stark was tall and willowy, with enticing long legs that Jon couldn’t help but imagine wrapped around his neck. Jon was supposed to stand next to this woman for a year while also not getting to have any sex at all? He was fucked.

He must have been staring at her quite hard, because Satin elbowed him in the ribs, reminding him of where he was and why he was here. He stood up and put what he hoped was a neutral expression on his face as he offered her a greeting. She stumbled over the words of her introduction, and Jon even found that endearing, which was odd because he normally found that kind of ‘coquette-ish’ or ‘quirky’ persona annoying as fuck in women. But Sansa Stark didn’t seem to be putting on a persona at all.

Sam cleared his throat, making Jon realize that his handshake with Sansa had gone on for longer than was socially acceptable so he dropped her hand and allowed the rest of the group to continue their introductions.

He wasn’t sure what he had expected of her, but it wasn’t this. Maybe his mind had just assumed an unflattering personality because he knew that she was an aspiring model--and she had agreed to do this, likely for self promoting purposes-- but as he listened to her speak with Satin and Sam about the plan, she seemed surprisingly normal.

“What do you think?” Suddenly Sansa’s voice cut through his thoughts. Her voice was soft and sweet, and there were hints of a northern accent, but he couldn’t place exactly where in the north it was from. He also had no idea what she was asking his opinion on, because he hadn’t been paying much attention to the conversation.

“I think whatever Satin planned probably makes sense.” That was probably a safe thing to say. Satin usually made sense. She seemed to accept it, and the conversations continued, moving on to the legal side, which Jon completely blanked out. He trusted Davos more than he trusted most people, so he knew he’d be covered legally in any contract that Davos drew up. Anyway, these kinds of contracts were more for security rather than legal enforcement. Although they were technically legally binding, if one party broke the contract, the other would have to take them to court to prove it, and court documents were public record. That would defeat the whole purpose of a secret fake relationship, which was probably why it had never happened in the history of the industry. The contract was basically for decoration and to dangle as a threat in case anything did go wrong. The NDAs would be binding though, and Jon had handed enough of those out in his day that he could probably recite his standard NDA with his eyes closed.

Blanking out the conversation gave him more time to observe Sansa Stark. Although this meeting was supposed to be an introduction for them, he knew that it was really about making sure that she knew the plan, and not really about them getting to know each other. He supposed that would come later. This was the first time in a long time that he actually felt himself being curious about getting to know a woman. He didn’t know how he felt about that.

The legal things were hashed out, and before he knew it, both he and Sansa were signing the contract and the NDA, and the meeting was over. Jon gave a cursory, ‘see you soon’ before making a hasty exit. Sansa Stark made him feel on edge. He supposed he would have to either get over that, or change it somehow. He had a year to figure it out either way.

¬¬¬¬¬

Later that evening, Jon made his way to his father’s house-- or as Egg jokingly called it, Targaryen Manor-- for family dinner. He was not looking forward to it, especially not this month, when he already had so much going on. But he didn’t want to deal with the passive-aggressiveness that he knew that he would get from Rhaegar if he were to skip out on one of his sacred dinners without a solid excuse.

Once a month Rhaegar would invite over Jon and his siblings, as well as his aunt and uncle for a formal dinner. The dinners were ostensibly about catching up and maintaining family unity, but most of the time they just devolved into a shit show.

At last month’s dinner, Daenerys and Viserys had got into a screaming match about something trivial which resulted in Viserys throwing a plate at the wall, while Jon pretended he was somewhere else, Rhaenys actually got up and left, Aegon watched on with undisguised glee and Rhaegar sipped on his glass of Dornish red and pretended that nothing was happening. And that wasn’t even one of their worst dinners.

When he walked into the formal dining room--because of course Rhaegar lived in a mansion with multiple dining rooms-- he saw that Rhaenys and Aegon were already there. Viserys, was thankfully in Essos on a business trip, so he wouldn’t be attending.

“JJ!” Aegon greeted him happily. Aegon was the only person who called Jon ‘JJ’. Basically everyone he knew called him Jon, including Rhaenys, because she knew he preferred it. Rhaegar, Daenerys and Viserys all insisted on calling him Jaeherys, which yes was technically his name, but still grinded his gears. But Aegon had called him JJ since they were kids, and Jon honestly didn’t really mind it. He and Egg had a complicated relationship, but these days it was more positive than negative most of the time.

“Hey Egg. Rhae,” Jon said, nodding in greeting to both his siblings. “Where’s Rhaegar?”

“Father and Aunt Dany are in his office, having some sort of business meeting,” Rhaenys answered with an eyeroll. She had always been the most critical of their father’s inability to separate business and family. While Rhaenys and Jon had never exactly been close, they did always have a camaraderie of sorts concerning their feelings about their father.

“We’re right here,” Rhaegar stated as he walked into the dining room, Daenerys following closely behind him. “I’ll let the staff know we’re ready for dinner to be served.”

One positive about these family dinners-- the food was always amazing. Rhaegar staffed his kitchen with world class chefs, and they always made something creative for them to eat. Tonight was some sort of braised lamb meal. Jon had no idea what was in it, but it was delicious. And stuffing his face also conveniently gave him an excuse to not have to participate in conversation.

“We’re hoping that we can have our grand opening in about 6 weeks,” Aegon stated. He was telling their father about the plans for the nightclub that he had bought a few months ago, against Rhaegar’s advice. Rhaegar was simply listening to his explanations, almost bored expression on his face.

“And then what next? How exactly are you planning on turning this venture into something worthwhile?”

“What’s not worthwhile about a club? It’s worth my while anyway,” Aegon said with a smile, not taking his father’s obvious displeasure too seriously, like usual. “I figured I spent enough time in them, I may as well own one.”

“Owning one club is something anybody could do,” Daenerys said, “How are you going to turn that into a legacy?” Their Aunt Dany was almost as focused on legacy as their father was. Probably because she emulated her entire personality after him.

When they were growing up, Jon had actually been closer to Dany than he had been to either of his siblings. Dany’s mother died in childbirth, just like Jon’s, and her father had died a few months before she was born, so Rhaegar became her legal guardian and raised her alongside his children. Viserys too, but he was a bit older and had always been an asshole, so they never really developed a bond.

Jon and Dany were very close in age, and used to spend a lot of time together, until they started to grow older and it became apparent that Daenerys cared a lot about Rhaegar’s approval, and Jon just did not at all. By the time they were all sent off to separate boarding schools at age 12-- Daenerys to Mereen and Jon to the North. Rhaenys was already in school in Dorne at that point, and Aegon had started boarding school in Volantis the year before--they barely spoke to each other. They only drifted further apart in the following years, and by the time Jon returned to King’s landing when he was 20, he barely recognized the person that Daenerys was.

“I could buy multiple clubs, turn it into a franchise,” Aegon said with a shrug. “Who cares? We all know you’re going to make me take over Targaryen Corp when you retire anyway. Why does it matter what I do before them?”

One thing that Jon didn’t like about the Targaryen’s, they were almost traditional to a fault. And that included the tradition of the firstborn son inheriting everything that mattered, including the C.E.O. position at the corporation. Jon didn’t actually mind too much about that tradition though-- he preferred it, almost. Even though he and Aegon were barely a year apart in age, it meant that most of Rhaegar’s expectations and disappointments fell onto Aegon, not Jon.

Rhaegar placed his fork down and took a sip from his wine glass, giving Aegon a sharp look above the rim. “You know, my father thought that my plan to start a fashion house was ridiculous. He thought it was emasculating and wouldn’t make any money. But now Targaryen House is one of the corporations most valuable holdings. And running that company, building it from the ground up, helped me to cultivate the skills I needed to be C.E.O. I’m not judging you for wanting to own a nightclub Aegon. I’m judging you because you don’t seem to have any ambition for it, except using it as a convenient place to get drunk and cavort with social climbers.”

“I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” Aegon said stubbornly, staring at their father with an unwavering expression.

“We’ve set a date for the wedding!” Rhaenys interjected, clearly wanting to change the subject before it devolved into a bloodbath.

“Oh that’s wonderful,” Daenerys said, “When have you decided on?”

“We’re going to do it next summer, in Dorne. Our wedding planner has rented this wonderful vineyard.”

“Next summer? That’s over a year away. Pretty long time to be engaged,” Rhaegar noted.

Rhaenys gave a stiff smile. “Well, we wanted things to be perfect. We wanted a summer wedding and Edric is shooting a movie this summer, so we knew we wouldn’t be able to squeeze in a wedding. We don’t want to rush things.” Rhaenys’ fiancé, Edric Dayne, was a movie director. He was fairly good at what he did, and was the rumored favorite for winning director of the year at this years Westerosi Entertainment Awards. He was a decent guy too, Jon liked him.

“What time is Edric going to get to set on Wednesday?” Jon asked, figuring that Rhaenys could also use a save from their father’s judgement. Edric had agreed to direct the music video for Jon’s first single form the album, which he was grateful for, because he knew that a music video was well below the man’s paygrade. Jon had also had to make some changes to the concept so that he could include Sansa, and Edric had taken it all in stride, even though Jon hadn’t been able to give him a real explanation for the changes. He said he thought he could still make it fit with his ‘vision’ of the song.

“You know Edric, he’ll be there bright and early, probably before everybody else,” Rhaenys said with a smile, clearly grateful for the change of subject.

“And how is the music going Jaeherys?” Rhaegar asked, “I haven’t seen much mentioned about your music in the media lately. Just your...other exploits.”

Jon gritted his teeth. “That’s because I haven’t released any new music in a year, Rhaegar. Things will change after the single and the next album.”

“Hmm,” Rhaegar said, “We’ll see.”

“Yeah, we will see.” Jon retorted, getting hot under the collar, even though he knew that was exactly what Rhaegar wanted.

“This wine is lovely father,” Aegon interjected loudly, “What’s its vintage?”

“This bottle is over 300 years old. It’s part of the cellar that I got from your mother in the divorce,” Rhaegar said pointedly.

Rhaenys sighed deeply. “Since we clearly cannot choose a civil conversation topic tonight, how about we just don’t talk at all and enjoy our food? That way we have a chance of leaving here tonight without hating each other.”

Daenerys snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous. You really think it’s better for us to sit in silence than have simple conversations about our lives? I wanted to talk about the new line I’m designing for-”

“I second the silence!” Aegon said, and then looked over at Jon. “JJ?”

Jon shrugged. “Silence is good for me.”

Rhaegar sent a withering look to each of his children, before simply shrugging to himself, and taking another sip of his wine.

They spent the rest of the dinner in silence. It was one of the most successful family dinners they had ever had.

¬¬¬¬¬

“When the mirrors and the lights
And the smoke clear I'd never guess
How we ever coulda got here”

-Celebrity Status, Mariana’s Trench

“It's all there, now it's real
Now that you have me, do you want me still?”

-S-A-N-S-A-

By the time the day of the music video rolled around, Sansa was more excited than nervous. It was easier to focus on the exciting thoughts and the positive things that were happening than focus on the few worries that she still had niggling in the back of her mind. She had never been on a music video set before, so that was exciting.

She’d also had other positive things going on in her life, separate from anything Jon related. Yesterday she had received a call from the agency informing her that Shae had booked her for two projects: a photoshoot for her new line, and a runway show in Lys fashion week. It was only one of the smaller shows, but Sansa had never walked for any shows in any fashion week before. It could possibly be a big step forward in her career. And even though she knew that she’d likely be getting a lot of new opportunities soon with the Jon situation, it felt more fulfilling to know that these opportunities she’d earned all on her own.

But she knew that the Jon situation would still be a big deal for her. She knew it would give her a lot more security with the changes that would be happening soon at Mockingbird. Yesterday it had also been all over the media that Petyr had officially signed Margaery and Loras Tyrell to Mockingbird.

Sansa knew that Mya was right, and that their signing would make things harder not easier for other mockingbird models. Petyr was trying to sell it as a win for everybody, he had even organized a huge photo shoot in a couple of days with a bunch of active mockingbird models, and the Tyrell’s of course would be front and center. Although it was supposed to promote unity, Sansa was sure it would just flare up more competition between the old models and the Tyrell’s. Maybe that was Petyr’s plan though; to force his current workers to step up their efforts by threatening them with bigger fish. But hopefully with the publicity that Sansa would get from being Jon Snow’s girlfriend, she would be able to counteract the effects of it all. She had gone over the official timeline that Satin had given her, and knew that she would be connected to Jon’s name for a year. That would give her a year to try and get as many positive opportunities as possible and turn her career around.

The Tyrell’s were a problem for another day though. Right now, she had to focus on the music video she was about to shoot. She’d never been in a music video before, and had no idea what was really expected of her. The label had sent a description of the video concept to the agency when they booked her, but it had been very vague, it seemed like she would basically just be doing a lot of walking around. But the shoot was also supposed to take two days, so she wasn’t really sure what was taking up all that time. As per usual, she had woken up way earlier than she needed to for a job, so she probably had a little bit of time to do some research. Maybe she could look at some of Jon’s old music videos.

Sansa took a cursory look at her phone, just to check that she hadn’t missed anything while it was on do not disturb overnight, and saw that Arya had responded in their group chat early this morning, carrying on a conversation that Robb had started last night. It was 6am in King’s landing, and Sansa knew that it was only an hour later in Braavos-- much earlier than Arya was usually awake. She decided to give her sister a call; it had been a while since the last time they’d had a proper chat, and she still had about an hour before she needed to leave for the music video set.

Arya picked up on the second ring, and said in a grumpy tone, “Who’s on fire?”

Sansa laughed. “No fires here, promise. And don’t act like I’ve woken you up, I saw your messages in the group.”

“Yeah, I did wake up at an insane time today,” Arya sighed. “We have an important performance in the audition process this afternoon, and I couldn’t sleep.”

“I’m sure you’re going to do amazingly. You’re a wonderful dancer Arya.”

“But so is everybody else here. And I want to pass audition in time for the company’s big King’s Landing show, so that I can come see you.” The faceless men had a ceremony at the end of each performance where they would present and induct all the new faceless men who had passed audition to become full company members. On average it took about two years for most people to gain induction, and Arya had only been training with them for a little less than a year, so Sansa wasn’t sure if that would be possible, as the King’s Landing show was in a few months.

Still, she said, “I believe in you. If you want to do it by then, I know you will.”

“I hope so.”

“Did your roommate get up early today too?” The faceless trainees had to stay in dorm style rooms with a randomly assigned roommate, and Arya had been complaining about hers every since they were matched.

“She’s pretending to be asleep, but I know she’s awake.” Arya snorted

“Don’t antagonize her,” Sansa admonished, not being able to help sounding a bit like their mother.

“If me talking to my sister and ass o’clock in the morning bothers her, then she can get up and tell me that to my face, like an adult” Arya retorted and Sansa couldn’t help but giggle. As much as Arya grew and matured as she got older, there would always be a defiant part of her personality that was so distinctly Arya, it was hard to find it anything but endearing.

“What are you doing up anyway?” Arya continued. “Do you have an audition today? or a shoot?”

Sansa had thought about the best way to introduce the ‘Jon Snow Thing’ to Arya. She knew that she couldn’t tell her the full truth, but Arya was both the person that probably knew Sansa best, and a genuine fan of Jon Snow, so it wouldn’t be easy to sell this to her. Sansa knew that selling this whole thing to her family was going to be one of the hardest parts of it, so this conversation with Arya would be her first try at testing the waters. She’d have to tread lightly.

“It’s a shoot of sorts I guess. I’m shooting a music video today. It’s not something I’ve done before, so I can’t decide if I’m more excited or nervous.” So far, that was all true.

“A music video? That’s definitely not your norm. Why did you try out for a music video?”

“It’s not something that I would have thought of, but Petyr thought it would be a good opportunity for me, you know to try something different. What I’ve been doing so far clearly hasn’t been working.”

“Of course he thought that.” Sansa could almost hear Arya rolling her eyes. Arya had never liked Petyr Baelish, and she let her thoughts be known.

“He’s just trying to help me Arya. That’s literally his job.”

“Who’s this music video for anyway? Like, which artist is it?”

Sansa bit her lip. This was when she need to start selling it. “It’s actually somebody who’s music is more your taste than mine. Jon Snow? You were a fan of him right?” Sansa knew that she was, and the high pitched shriek Arya gave just confirmed it. If Arya’s roommate wasn’t really awake before, then she definitely was now.

“Jon Snow?! You get to meet Jon fucking Snow?!”

“Yes, Arya,” Sansa chuckled. “I’m going to meet Jon snow.”

“Well, why didn’t you open with that?! He’s one of my favorite artists. Well, his first two albums were great anyway. Can’t say much good about the last one. I didn’t know he was making new music. Is it better than his last stuff?”

“I haven’t actually heard any of it , you know. I suppose I will today at the music video shoot.”

“Tell me if it’s good! I want all the inside scoop. And get his autograph for me!”

“I’m not going to ask him for an autograph, Arya. He’s basically going to be a colleague, that would be unprofessional and embarrassing!” He was going to be a lot more than a colleague, but Arya didn’t know that yet. In all likelihood, giving the time period that Sansa would be ‘dating’ him, Arya would get to meet Jon herself at some point and ask for an autograph in person.

“Fine, be boring,” Arya grumbled.

“I’ll try and get all the inside scoop about his music though,” Sansa said, even though she didn’t know how possible that would be. Based on their first meeting, she wasn’t sure how much Jon Snow would speak to her at all.

“Thanks Sans!” Arya said, and then Sansa heard movement and a sharp voice in the background of the call and Arya sighed. “Okay, I have to go now, apparently I’m being loud when my roommate is trying to get back to sleep.”

Sansa chuckled, unsurprised, and said, “Have a good day Arya. We’ll speak again soon”

“You’re the one who is going to have a good day, you’re meeting Jon Snow,” Arya retorted, “And we’re definitely going to speak again soon, because I want to know everything about him. Bye Sans!”

“Bye Arya,” Sansa replied before hearing the hang up tone.

Talking with Arya always put Sansa in a good mood. And it was just in time, because she was about to see Jon Snow again.

¬¬¬¬¬

By the time Sansa arrived on the set, it was still fairly early, but there were some people already there and starting to set up. One of the people there was Edric Dayne. He was one of Sansa’s favorite movie directors, his movie Summer in Sunspear made her cry every time she watched it, and she couldn’t believe she was getting the opportunity to work with him. She was sure that she would make a fool of herself in front of him. She had read in the media that he was engaged to Jon’s sister Rhaenys, which was probably why he had even agreed to shoot a music video. She observed from a distance as he gave instructions to the set crew, she didn’t have the confidence to approach him. Luckily, an assistant spotted her fairly quickly and whisked her away to hair and makeup.

The music video was being shot in two parts, and from what Sansa understood after reading the vague concept, today’s shoot was taking place in an ‘underground club’ set. Jon and most of the extra’s would be dressed in all black rave and rock concert clothes, but Sansa’s character was supposed to stand out, so she would be dressed in a white sundress with flowers in her hair. Tomorrow’s shoot would be the opposite, shooting in a field with Jon were light, loose clothing, while Sansa was in an all black sexy rave outfit. The concept barely made sense to her, but she wasn’t going to complain about it. It was Jon and Edric’s vision apparently, and she didn’t know enough about things like this to question it.

Sansa had her own dressing room for the shoot, which was a luxury that she wasn’t particularly used to, and both the hair stylist and make up artist came into her dressing room to style her, rather than her having to go to them. Her hair was done in loose, free waves, with a few braids scattered in between, and white flowers weaved through the braids, and she had a light make up look done.

After hair and make up was done, the costume director came in with a rack of dresses for Sansa to choose form. They were all essentially some variation of a simple white sundress, so it only took them a few minutes to select one that they both liked that also fit Sansa perfectly. She suspected that tomorrow’s look would take a little more time to plan. The costume director also told her that she would be barefoot for this part of the music video, which she hadn’t expected, but she guessed made sense with the vibes of her outfit. She wasn’t looking forward to walking around barefoot on the set, but luckily they provided her with a pair of slides to wear in between shoots.

When Sansa had finished getting ready, she left her dressing room and made her way back out to the set. It was interesting to watch the set up process, as she’d never really seen anything like it before. Shooting something that was moving required drastically different lighting to the still shoots Sansa was used to. It was also fun to watch them dress the set and the stage and really make it look like an underground club, despite the limited space that there was.

“It’s quite cool, isn’t it?” She heard a voice behind her say, and she spun around to see that Jon Snow was standing right next to her. He was already in his costume-- Dark jeans, a ripped open shirt and a leather jacket, so not too different form his usual-- so he must have arrived at some point when she was getting ready. It probably took a lot less time to get ready for him than for her.

“Yeah, it’s really cool.” Sansa hoped that she sounded cool. Or at least not as much of an idiot as she did during their first meeting.

“I always love the atmosphere of a music video shoot,” Jon continued, “There’s nothing quite like it.” It seemed like his strategy for their situation was just acting like everything was completely normal. Maybe this was normal to him. Sansa still felt a little wrong-footed though.

“I’m excited to shoot with you,” She said in what she hoped was a neutral tone, “Not sure if I understand quite exactly what I’m supposed to be doing though.”

Jon chuckled. “Don’t worry, basically all you have to do is walk through a crowd of extras as I follow you. Edric will be sure to direct you if you’re doing anything that doesn’t look how he wants.”

“So what is the song...about?” Sansa hoped that was a safe question, because the music video still didn’t make sense to her.

“You haven’t heard it?” Jon asked, seeming genuinely surprised.

Sansa shook his head. “They couldn’t send it over in the brief they sent the label, I think it would have been a security breach or something. They didn’t want to risk it leaking before you released it.”

“Even still, it doesn’t make sense to have you shoot a video for a song you haven’t even heard yet,” Jon shook his head. “How about you come to my dressing room? I have a version of it saved on my laptop, I can show it to you.”

Sansa wasn’t sure if the ‘come to my dressing room’ thing was supposed to be some sort of pick up line, but Jon seemed genuinely interested in sharing his music. And by the looks of the set, they wouldn’t be ready to start filming for a while anyway, so she didn’t see the major harm in it.

“That would be lovely, thanks Jon,” She said with a smile. Jon gave a small smile in return then nodded his head in the direction of his dressing room and indicated for her to follow him as he walked there.

Jon’s dressing room was slightly bigger than Sansa’s, but not to the degree that she would expect given their difference in stardom. The major difference was that there was more seating area in Jon’s dressing room-- a couch and a coffee table-- whereas Sansa just had an armchair. He gestured for her to take a seat on the couch while he pulled out his laptop and then came to sit down next to her.

“This is not the fully polished version of the song, there’s still some editing needed, but it’s basically done,” Jon explained as he pulled a file up. “They’ll be playing a version of it during the shoot for me to lip-sync to, but Edric and the crew will be talking over that to give directions, so you won’t really be able to listen properly.”

He played the song without any further introduction, and Sansa focused on just listening as best as she could. Jon’s indie rock style was not Sansa’s first choice of music, but she couldn’t deny that he had a wonderful voice. It was somehow both smooth and raspy, crooning when he needed too and straining when he needed too. It was a powerful voice, and she felt herself getting a little warm, sitting next to the man who this beautiful voice came from.

The song was called The Watchers, and the lyrics were both deep and catchy, weaving a tale of an outsider who spent his whole life watching people only to learn that those same people had been watching him. It was an undeniably great song.

“So what did you think?” Jon asked when the song finished.

“It was... wow. It was so good.”

“Honestly?”

“Honestly,” Sansa confirmed with a nod. “This isn’t my usual kind of music, but this song just blows me away.”

Jon gave her a sly smile. “You’re not in to rock music? So what I’m hearing is you didn’t have a poster of me on your wall as a teen? Shame, I thought you were a fan.” He joked.

Sansa laughed. “Believe it or not, I did have a poster of you on my wall. But it wasn’t mine. I shared a room with my little sister Arya until I left home. Her side of the wall was full of musician and band posters, and you’re one of her favorite artists.” Arya would probably kill her if she found out that Sansa had told Jon Snow she had a poster of him instead of asking for his autograph, but the words just seemed to be flowing out of her. Jon was surprisingly easy to talk to.

“All I’m hearing is that my poster was on the opposite wall from you, and you went to bed staring at me every night,” Jon teased.

Sansa couldn’t help but be startingly aware of how close they were sitting to each other. Jon’s grey eyes were even more pretty from this close up, and he had lashes so long that Sansa was actually a bit jealous of them. She felt her thoughts getting into a dangerous territory-- this was supposed to be both fake and a job-- so she decided to change the tone of the conversation to something less teasing and flirty.

“I guess I did. Anyway,” Sansa tried to pivot in a way that she hoped sounded natural, but knew probably didn’t, “Now that I’ve heard the song, can you explain the video concept to me a bit more?”

“Sure,” Jon nodded, “So the original concept is that I’m walking through the crowd trying to get to the stage and see the performer, and at the end I realize that I am the performer on the stage. But we changed it a bit when we added the love interest. Now it’s that I’m following you through the crowd because I’m intrigued by the fact that you seem so out of place, and eventually you lead me to the stage to see that I’m the performer. And the shoot tomorrow if basically the reverse. I’m running through a field, and you’re pursuing me. Those images will be interspersed with the club scenes, which will be the main bulk of the music video. Just for an added interesting layer,” Jon explained.

“That makes a lot more sense than the brief I was given.”

“I hope it does,” Jon laughed. “It made sense it my head, but it could be absolute shit to everybody else.”

“I don’t think anybody is going to think that it’s shit,” Sansa said sincerely, placing one of her hand’s over Jon’s without even really thinking about it. Jon stared at her, his eyes flicking between hers and her lips, and for a moment, Sansa thought he was going to do something, and then the door to his dressing room opened.

“There you are Jon,” Edric Dayne said, as he walked into the room. Sansa immediately removed her hand from Jon’s. “We’re just about ready to start shooting.”

“Brilliant,” Jon said standing up, and Sansa followed suit. Edric finally seemed to notice her and gave her a friendly smile.

“Hi, you must be Sansa Stark, our model for today. I’m Edric Dayne.” He offered her his hand to shake, and Sansa took it, biting her lip to stop herself from blurting out how big a fan she was and making a fool of herself.

“I’m really excited to work with you,” She said after they had finished shaking hands. Edric simply gave her a friendly smile. He also didn’t question why she was in Jon’s dressing room, which she was grateful for.

“Let’s get this show on the road then,” Jon said, clapping his hands together.

¬¬¬¬¬

Shooting a music video was a very interesting experience. It was quite fun actually, with all the lights and music, and the extras roaming around. It helped that for about half of the shoot, all Sansa had to do was watch Jon while he performed his onstage part. It was enrapturing watching Jon on stage, he seemed so natural moving around with the guitar and engaging with the crowd, even though he was lip-syncing. He seemed like he was having a lot of fun up there too, and that made him even more electrifying.

The parts that Sansa got to shoot were surprisingly fun too. She didn’t think it would be fun to push through a crowd of extras while a camera man walked backwards in front of her, but it was. Everybody was so friendly, and Edric would often stop to give helpful advice about angles and facial expressions that she would have never even thought about.

Finally, they got to shooting the part of the video where Jon caught up to Sansa. Edric was very specific about how he wanted it all to play out. He started from shooting Sansa from behind as Jon followed her through the crowd, and then Jon reached a hand out and gently grabbed her arm turning her around to face him. At this point they were supposed to stare at each other, and ‘get lost in each others eyes’ according to Edric. It was easier than Sansa would ever admit to get lost in Jon’s eyes.

“Perfect guys,” Edric called out to them, temporarily breaking the spell that their prolonged eye contact seemed to have caused, and Sansa looked away from Jon and at their director instead. “I want to try something different that I think will make a really cool shot. Jon can you put one hand on Sansa's shoulder and the other in her hair?”

Jon did want Edric asked after giving Sansa a questioning look to make sure it was alright that he touched, which she nodded too.

“Perfect,” Edric said, ”Now Sansa lean your head up towards him, and then press your foreheads together. Don’t close your eyes. I want it to look like you guys are about to kiss.”

Jon and Sansa did what they were told, and Sansa hoped that her face wasn’t as red as it felt, or at least if it was then the make up disguised it. At this angle and this position, it was impossible to do anything but stare in Jon’s eyes and down at his lips, and he was definitely returning the favor to her. She could almost feel a physical spark of electricity passing between them.

“Got it!” Edric exclaimed, and the moment between them was broken once again. “Now Sansa pull away from him and start leading him towards the stage.”

Sansa did what she was told, happy to put a bit of space between her and Jon. She had to stop getting into this weird headspace. This shoot was two different levels of fake for Jon. She had to keep reminding herself of that fact. Whatever it was that there seemed to be between her and Jon wasn’t real, no matter how much it felt like it was.

¬¬¬¬¬

In the end, the video took half the day to shoot, which in hindsight seemed crazy for a 3 minute video, especially taking into account that they’d only shot half the footage today, but it didn’t feel long at all while they were shooting. Sansa was actually a little disappointed when the shoot drew to a close; it had been a fun day.

Jon seemed to share the same sentiment as her, and came up to her with an easy smile after Edric had thanked them all for their day of hard work.

“That went a lot smoother than it usually does,” Jon said, “It was fun.”

Sansa blushed. “I don’t think I can take credit for that. Edric was on top of everything the whole shoot.”

Jon shrugged, “Sure, but I didn’t spend half the shoot looking at Edric. Working with you definitely made time fly, in a good way.”

“Well, that’s good. Because I think we’ll be working with each other a lot,” Sansa hoped that was vague enough to refer to their arrangement in a way that people around them wouldn’t catch on. Jon didn’t seem to have any problem with it, because he just smiled at her again.

“I hope we do,” He said, before giving her a wave goodbye and making his way back to his dressing room, with Sansa staring after him

Sansa needed to get a grip. Jon Snow was just a man, he should not be having this effect on her.

Sansa made her way back to her own dressing room. Before getting changed back into her street clothes, she decided to take a selfie to post to Instagram. Satin had said they shouldn’t post any official pictures together until the ‘hard launch’ but he encouraged posting pictures that hinted they were in the same place. Like puzzle pieces for the fans and media to put together. Sansa suspected that Jon posting would have a lot more impact than her, considering she only had about 4000 followers and he had over 20 million, but she was still going to post anyway. She wanted to show Jon’s team that she was taking this job seriously. Because it was a job, even if she had to keep reminding herself of that.

She took a photo in the dressing room, showing off her hair and make up and posted it with the caption ‘started shooting a really cool project today’. She hoped that would be a good post without giving too much information about Jon’s music video. She wanted to post hints but also didn’t want to spoil anything for Jon or his fans.

After she posted the picture, she undid her hair and washed off the make up and then changed back into her street clothes. She waved to the some of the crew as she left the set and made her way to the train station to get home. Sansa spent the whole train ride listening to an audiobook, so wasn’t paying attention to much else that was happening on her phone.

However, once she got back to her apartment and was cozying up her couch, she opened up her phone, and then almost dropped it in shock. She had an insane amount of notifications, so much so that she felt her phone was about to crash, so she turned notifications off.

Opening Instagram, she found the source of the notifications. Her following count had more than doubled in the last hour, and the photo she had posted from set already had thousands of likes. At first, Sansa was a little confused. She wasn’t sure how people found her page so quickly, she hadn’t been publicly linked to Jon in any way yet. But as she scrolled through some of the notifications, she finally figured out what had happened.

TheRealJonSnow has followed you.

He had liked her selfie too. And as soon as he’d done so, the floodgates of his fans had opened and some of them had apparently started following her. Sansa knew that being Jon’s Snow’s girlfriend would change her life, but if this was a taste of what was to come, then she was in for more than just a change, she was in for an apocalypse.

¬¬¬¬¬

-J-O-N-

Sansa Stark was not what Jon had expected. He wasn’t sure exactly what he had expected, but it wasn’t that she would be so easy to talk to. He’d actually had a great time shooting the first half of the music video with her, and was really looking forward to day two.

He could probably do without the insane amount of sexual tension between them, but there wasn’t much that he could really do about that. Well... there was one thing. But he wasn’t sure how to approach it, or if she would even be receptive despite the tension. This felt very different than it had with Val. That had been light and easy.

“How was day one?” Sam asked. Jon was in a three-way video call with him and Satin, both to discuss the music video and their media strategy.

“Great, Sansa is a natural,” He replied, in what he hoped was a light tone. But as always, Satin was way too perceptive for his own good.

“A natural at what?” he asked with a raised eyebrow, and Jon just smirked.

“Modelling. Girlfriend-ing. Take your pick, she’s natural. I like her. Isn’t that what you guys wanted?”

“Of course we want you to get along with her, you’re going to have to be with her for a year,” Sam said.

“Exactly,” Satin interjected. “You’re going to have to be with her for a whole year. So please don’t fuck things up in the first week.”

“Who said I’m going to fuck anything up?” Jon asked in an offended tone, and Satin just gave him an unimpressed look. “I can be an asshole sometimes, but I’m not a huge asshole.” Jon retorted. “I’m not going to do anything to make her uncomfortable.”

“We know you won’t Jon,” Sam reassured, “We’ve just got to keep in mind that this is different from the Val situation in more ways than one. That was a mutually agreed upon idea, while this is something the label essentially pushed on you. We can’t afford to make the label unhappy.”

Jon wanted to grumble, but he knew that Sam was right. “Fine, I won’t do anything stupid.” He sighed.

“I don’t believe you, but I think you genuinely believe that, which is all I can really ask for,” Satin said. “Now let’s stop talking about Jon controlling his dick, and start talking about strategy. I saw that you liked that photo that Sansa posted Jon, that was great.”

Jon shrugged. “Yeah, it made sense to follow her now that we’ve officially started working together. And I know there are a dedicated subset of my fans that track every picture I like, so I knew that it would be picked up on.”

“You needed to keep sprinkling in things like that over the next few months. Now, I’m thinking that because tomorrow’s shoot is outside, we can tip off a couple of trusted paparazzi to the location, so that we can start getting the first candid pictures of the two of you together. For the beginning of the ‘relationship’, all the shots of the two of you together should either be paparazzi pics or fan pics. At least until the hard launch.”

“Okay, that makes sense.” Jon said. He hated the paparazzi, but he knew that sometimes they were a necessary evil in the industry.

“Just make sure to not be too over the top tomorrow,” Sam warned. “This is the first time people will ever see you guys together, so we want it to seem flirty but still with enough plausible deniability that we can no comment any questions of a relationship.”

“Guys, I got this. I’ve done this before, remember?”

“You have, but Sansa hasn’t. You need to keep that in mind Jon. She seems like a great girl, and great for this job, but she is not used to this world the way you are. She may need help,” Satin pointed out.

“Don’t worry,” Jon said. “I’ll take good care of her.”

¬¬¬¬¬

Jon arrived for day two of shooting in good spirits. He was excited to shoot the music video-- he was always excited to shoot videos-- but he had to admit that a part of him was excited to see Sansa again too.

Day two was being shot in a field, so it was slightly different vibes than the first day. Jon generally preferred indoor shoots, but sometimes you just couldn’t beat the aesthetics of the outdoors.

It didn’t talking long for Jon to get into hair and costume-- some tan pants and a white button up shirt with all but one button undone-- and when he was done, he couldn’t help but leave his dressing room trailer and wander around the set, hoping to catch a glimpse of Sansa.

He didn’t have to look long before he found her standing outside of her trailer. He almost stopped dead in her tracks when he saw her costume for the shoot. She was wearing a short black dress paired with thigh high boots with laces up the front that accentuated her long legs. Her hair was straightened and she had on smoky looking make up. He had to admit that this kind of style did something for him. For some reason, it was almost doubly enticing on Sansa-- maybe because it was something that seemed out her norm, so it only made her stand out more. Either way, Jon was considering sending a thank you note to the costume director.

“You look great,” he told her as he approached her, and she gave him a grateful smile.

“Thanks. I feel a bit ridiculous honestly. Especially with everybody else dressed so casually.”

“You stand out, but that’s the point,” Jon said, “Besides, casual is overrated.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sansa said with a smile.

Before Jon could say anything else to her, Edric called them all to set to start shooting. The day 2 shoot was a lot simpler, because there weren’t as many extras as there were yesterday, It was basically just shots of Jon and Sansa walking through a field, but Edric still had specific ways that he wanted them to walk, and specific poses that he wanted them to do.

Eventually, they stopped for a short break, and Jon found himself making his way back to stand by Sansa.

“How are you finding it?” He asked. He had noticed that she hadn’t been smiling as much between shots today as she had been yesterday, and he hoped that nothing was wrong.

“Honestly, I’m finding it a little tricky today. I know that sounds stupid, because it’s basically just walking, but it’s really hard not to sink into the grass with these heels on. I’m worried that I’m going to ruin every shot,” she admitted worriedly.

Jon frowned. “Well then you should change your shoes.”

“it can’t be that simple. We’ve already shot a lot, I don’t want to make the day longer for everybody by ruining continuity.”

“Fuck continuity. If you’re not comfortable Sansa, then we need to change that.” Before Sansa could say anything else, Jon called the costume director over and explained the problem. She was extremely apologetic to Sansa and brought her a part of combat boots with a flat platform instead of a heal to wear instead.

“What about continuity?” Sansa asked, although Jon could see the relief on her face.

“Don’t worry, I’ll just let Edric know that the other shoes weren’t working for you.” The costume director said, and then she walked over to Edric to do just that.

Sansa shot Jon a grateful smile, “ Thank you so much, this already feels so much better.”

“It’s honestly nothing. If you ever feel uncomfortable about anything Sansa, please let me know and I’ll do my best to sort it.” Jon said, absentmindedly placing a hand on her shoulder.

They probably stood there staring at each other for a few seconds before Jon noticed a distant flash coming from behind Sansa. Right. Satin had said that he was going to call paparazzi. Jon almost forgot. He should probably do something to get a good shot for them.

“Don’t turn around, but there are paparazzi behind you,” Jon mumbled under his breath to Sansa. “Don’t freak out, Satin called them.”

“Oh,” Sansa said, clearly surprised by their presence. “What are we supposed to do?”

“Just follow my lead,” Jon said, and then he raised the hand that was on her shoulder to her hair, making sure to maintain eye contact with her the whole time, so that he could check that she wasn’t uncomfortable. She seemed to be the opposite of uncomfortable, staring into his eyes in a way that was really doing something to him that was not suitable for the middle of the day on an open set. He stroked his hand through her hair and removed a flower from it-- it was one of the flowers from the field in the shoot, it must have flown in there during shooting, which was just amazing luck or a sign or something, because what the fuck-- and offered the flower to Sansa.

She took the flower with a smile, and then broke eye contact with him, turning to the side slightly to smell the flower. Jon took the opportunity to take another surreptitious look at the paparazzi. He was sure that they got a great shot from that.

“Okay, back to set!” Edric called, breaking Jon and Sansa’s moment once again.

¬¬¬¬¬

Just like Jon predicted, Edric had no problem with Sansa swapping shoes. He had them reshoot a few scenes, but said for others where her legs weren’t shown they didn’t have to reshoot. As they neared the end of the shoot, Edric decided he wanted to recreate the forehead scene from yesterday, but this time have Sansa be the one to grab Jon’s arm, turn him around and put a hand in his hair before they pressed foreheads together.

The scene felt just as intimate and electric as it had done when they had shot it yesterday. Maybe a little more so. Jon was starting to feel a little crazy about the way he felt when he was close to Sansa. He knew that he would explode if he didn’t do something about it soon. He couldn’t go on like this for a year.

Finally, Edric got all the shots that he needed, and called a wrap. Jon made sure to thank all of the crew as he made his way off set to his dressing trailer. Jon got dressed back into his normal clothes pretty quickly, and then made the split second decision to make his way to Sansa’s trailer.

He knocked on the door of the trailer, and after only a few seconds, he heard her say, “Come in!@

When he entered the trailer, Sansa was also back in her street clothes, sitting in front of the dressing table mirror and finishing wiping her make up off.

“Jon,” She said in a surprised tone, “What are you doing here?”

“I just wanted to thank you,” Jon said. “You’ve been great these past two days.”

Sansa blushed and said. “I barely did anything. Just walked around and did what Edric told me.”

“You’d be surprised how many people aren’t good at that,” Jon retorted. “Honestly, you made this easy.”

“Well, good. I found it easy to work with you too. I hope that means we’re in for an easy year,” she said with a soft smile.

“I think we’re in for a great year,” Jon replied, keeping eye contact with her. He could almost see a flash in her eyes, of something. He didn’t know exactly what emotion it was, but he knew that it meant the chemistry he was feeling wasn’t one sided. Sansa could feel it too. “I’m really looking forward to it.”

“I am too,” Sansa replied, voice low.

Jon stared at her for a few more seconds before breaking eye contact. “I’ll leave you to finish what you were doing. I’ll see you soon Sansa.” He said, before turning around and leaving her trailer, internally asking himself what the fuck he was doing, even though he knew the answer. He was doing something stupid.

¬¬¬¬¬

Hours later, when Jon was lying on his bed, he still couldn’t shake off the urge to do something monumentally idiotic. He couldn’t stop thinking about Sansa, and he couldn’t focus on his album and his work if he was thinking about Sansa. It made logical sense for him to rectify this problem. At least that’s what he told himself as he made the decision to text Sam. He knew that Sansa’s contact information was on the agency paperwork they had sent over, but Sam had the copies of it, not Jon.

Jon Snow: Can I have Sansa’s address?

Sam Tarly: Why?

Sam Tarly: Are you going to do something stupid Jon?

Jon Snow: I just need her address

Sam Tarly: I know I’m going to regret this, but little Sam has colic and I don’t have the energy to argue with you right now

Sam Tarly: *attachment sent*

Jon Snow: Thanks Sam, love ya bud.

Sam Tarly: Don’t fuck up too badly or Satin will kill us both.

Once he had Sansa’s address, it was fairly easy to type it into the GPS in his car and allow it to direct him to downtown King’s landing. Sansa lived in a tall building in downtown that was fairly easy for Jon to get into. He got a couple of looks from some residents in the lobby, but it only took a smile and pleading word for the receptionist to give him access to the elevator that would lead to Sansa’s floor. He’d have to keep note of the fact that this place had shit security-- either that would have to change when their relationship became public, or Sansa may have to move somewhere else. He didn’t want her somewhere that she wasn’t safe.

On the way up to Sansa’s apartment, Jon almost talked himself out of doing this multiple times. He knew he was being crazy, but he also felt that he had to pursue this or he would go crazy. Finally, he found himself outside of Sansa’s apartment door, and he gave a tentative knock.

Sansa opened the door, and Jon could tell by the look on her face that she was even more surprised to see him here than she had been at the trailer.

“Jon?”

“Hi,” he said with a smile. “Can I come in?”

¬¬¬¬¬

“Distance, inches in between us
I want you to give in, I want you to give in, oh
Weakness, tension in between us
I just wanna give in
And I don't care if I'm forgiven”

-Shameless, Camilla Cabello

“You cast a spell on me, spell on me
You hit me like the sky fell on me, fell on me
And I decided you look well on me, well on me
So let's go somewhere no one else can see, you and me”

-S-A-N-S-A-

To say that Sansa was shocked to see Jon Snow at her door was an understatement. After coming back from the set and taking a shower, she had changed into ratty old sweatpants and a tank top. Not normally how she would dress in front of company, especially when that company was a world famous superstar.

“Hi. Can I come in?” Jon asked with a smile.

Sansa nodded and moved out of the way to let him into her apartment and lock the door behind him, even though her mind was racing, jumping between hoping she had put away her laundry and wondering what on Earth Jon was doing here.

“I got your address from the agency file, I hope that’s okay,” Jon said.

“Yeah, it’s fine. Of course it’s fine. I just...did you... need something?”

“I just wanted to talk to you.”

“Talk about what?”

“Okay, I’m going to be very forward here, so feel free to tell me to fuck off if it makes you uncomfortable, okay?”

Sansa felt like she knew what Jon was going to say before he had even said it. She knew that she hadn’t imagined the mounting tension in between them today, but she wasn’t sure if he had felt it too. She nodded for him to continue.

“I’ve been going crazy all day thinking about you-- thinking about touching you, about being with you. I know we have a year ahead of us and I just... I don’t know. Do you feel it to--”

Before Jon could finish his sentence, Sansa interrupted him with a kiss. She’s not sure what took hold of her, to act so boldly, but it felt easy to act like that with Jon. It felt right. Jon pulled her closer and deepened the kiss. The kiss was desperate and messy, like they were both trying to devour each other

When they finally pulled away for a breath, Sansa breathed out, “Yes. I feel it too.”

Jon gave her another smile and then leaned in for another kiss. The time for talking was over.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, there was a little voice yelling at Sansa, reminding her of all of the reasons that this was a bad idea, but she was content to ignore that voice for now. She felt too good.

Kissing Jon was like a revelation. He was practiced and skilled at it, and it made Sansa feel like she was melting into him. She knew that her experience level in comparison to his was probably abysmal, but he still made her feel like kissing her was the best thing he had ever done, the best thing that he could ever do.

As they kissed, Jon maneuvered them so that Sansa was leaning against her kitchen counter, and he was leaning into her. She ran her hands through Jon’s curls as they kissed, pulling him even closer to her, as close as she could get him.

Jon moved his hands down from her waist to her butt, using them to cup her cheeks and then get a grip on them so that he could lift Sansa up so that she was sitting on her kitchen counter. At this point, Sansa pulled away for another breath, and used that moment to take another look at Jon. She couldn’t help but giggle when she saw the hungry look in his eyes as he looked right back at her.

“I feel insane,” Jon growled, briefly capturing her lips gently between his teeth before moving to pepper a few kisses down her neck.

“You’re not insane,” Sansa breathed out, “Because I feel it too.”

Jon moved his hands up to Sansa’s waist again, fingers idly playing with the waistband of her sweatpants as her looked at her inquisitively. “Can I?” he asked.

“Yes.” Sansa knew that her answer would be yes to almost anything that Jon wanted to do at this point. As soon as she acquiesced, Jon hooked his fingers inside the waistband of her sweatpants and pulled them down, leaving her sitting on her counter in only panties and a tank top. She should have felt exposed, especially because Jon was still fully dressed, but she felt completely comfortable.

Apart from a few fumbles in high school and then the eventual loss of her virginity with Waymar, Sansa had only had a few hook ups since moving to King’s landing. And she never felt as comfortable with any of them as quickly as she did with Jon.

She pulled him forward into another kiss, all the while, his hands gently caressed her waist, lifted up the material of her tank top to caress her stomach, and traced over the outline of her panties. When they broke from the kiss, Sansa took the opportunity to pull Jon’s t-shirt over his head, making them a bit more even, and giving her the bonus that she could admire the chiseled physique of his chest.

Jon then leant forward and began kissing her neck again, before moving forward downwards and peppering some light kisses on her stomach. Then he moved even lower, fingers ghosting over the waistband of her panties as he did so, and Sansa gasped.

“You don’t have to do that.” She wondered if she had gone as red as she felt. She probably had.

“I want to,” Jon told her, voice low and raspy, which made something in Sansa’s stomach do a backflip. So she watched with dark eyes, enraptured as Jon pulled her panties down and tossed them on the floor. Then he placed both of Sansa’s legs over his shoulders, leaned forward, and gave her folds a long slow lick.

Around this point, Sansa felt herself become incoherent. Jon was skilled and purposeful with his tongue, and every lick made Sansa feel that she was hurtling ever faster towards the edge of a cliff. She wasn’t sure what kinds of sounds were coming out of her mouth at his ministrations, but she knew that they were loud and probably obscene. Not many of Sansa’s hook-ups had wanted to do this, so she had limited experience with it. She wasn’t sure if it was always supposed to feel like this or if Jon was just some sort of genius, but it felt like every cell in her body was on fire. She felt like she was aware of nerve endings that she hadn’t even known had existed before.

She wasn’t sure how long it took of Jon giving her his attentions, before Sansa felt herself go over the edge. She had experienced orgasms before, but none that felt like this. She felt like she finally understand why people used to call it a peak; she felt on top of the world, she felt like multiple waves had come crashing down on her at the same time, like every neurotransmitter in her brain was lighting up at the same time.

“That was...wow,” She panted out when she was finally able to catch her breath, and Jon simply lifted his head and grinned at her.

“It wasn’t so bad from this side either. You taste amazing”

Sansa blushed at his words, not sure what to say in response to that. Luckily she was saved from replying by Jon wrapping his arms around her waist once again, and then scooping her off the counter. Instinctively, Sansa wrapped her legs around Jon’s waist and allowed him to carry her over to her couch, where he gently placed her down before leaning over her and engaging her in yet another kiss.

As they kissed, Sansa trailed her hands down the front of Jon’s chest until they were fiddling with the buttons of his jeans. He seemed to get where she was going as he pulled back briefly to shimmy at of his jeans, pulling a condom out of his back pocket as he did so, and raising an eyebrow inquisitively at her. Sansa was only able to nod in acquiescence, not trusting the words that would come out of her mouth at this moment. Then she pulled her tank top over her head and helped Jon out of his boxers so that they were both naked on the couch. Jon put the condom on expertly and efficiently and then pulled Sansa towards him once again, capturing her lips yet another time. Sansa was so wet that she almost couldn’t breathe. Luckily, Jon didn’t take long to put her out of her misery, as he leaned forward and slid home.

¬¬¬¬¬

A couple of hours later, Sansa and Jon were both laying on the couch naked, sweaty and satisfied. Sansa was laying on top of Jon’s chest and he was absent-mindedly playing with her hair. She couldn’t remember the last time that she had felt this good.

“So we should probably actually talk now, huh?” Jon asked, and Sansa couldn’t help the soft laugh that slipped out at his words.

“Probably a little late for that.”

Jon grinned at her. “Yeah, probably.”

“I don’t regret it, if that’s what you mean though. That was amazing.” And Sansa really didn’t regret it. She thought if she gave in to her thoughts about Jon she would immediately be mad at herself, but all she felt right now was happy.

“Good, I don’t regret it either. I more meant that we should talk about what it means going forward. You know, for the fake dating thing.”

“Okay.”

“Well, I did the whole fake thing before, earlier on in my career. And obviously, either of us being seen with other people would defeat the purpose. So if you’re down for it, I think it would be great if we could continue hooking up, at least until this whole situation is over.”

The revelation that Jon had been in a fake relationship before was a surprise, but in hindsight it probably shouldn’t have been. Sansa assumed that the fake relationship and been the one with Val, and not his first girlfriend. It helped her recontextualize his public behavior during that relationship, and also gave her a better idea of the Jon she could expect in public in their fake relationship.

Behind the scenes was a different story. Jon was basically telling her that he used to hook up with Val when they were fake dating, and now he wanted to develop a similar kind of fuck buddies relationship with her while they were fake dating. Honestly, it made sense. And any rational part of Sansa’s brain that was trying to ring alarm bells or make her think of the posisble pitfalls over this arrangement, was overridden by her hindbrain which was focused on the fact that Jon was offering more mind blowing orgasms.

Sansa already felt that she was getting a pretty good deal out of this situation-- she was practically a nobody, and just by being connected to him she would have access to opportunities that never would have existed to her before. And now she was going to have a steady stream of the best sex of her life on top of that? It felt like a no brainer. Any unintended consequences would be a problem for future Sansa to deal with.

“I like the sound of that,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Sansa leaned forward and kissed Jon again, feeling like she could never get enough of the feeling of kissing him, and then she pulled away and whispered, “Let’s go to my bedroom.”

¬¬¬¬¬

Sansa thought that there would have been some sort of awkward morning after the next day, but it felt surprisingly natural. They both woke up early because Sansa had a shoot for mockingbird and Jon had some errands to run, and they got ready for their day in comfortable quiet. They officially exchanged numbers--Sansa was surprised that they hadn’t before this point-- and then Jon kissed her goodbye at her door before leaving to get on with his day, leaving Sansa to finish getting ready for the shoot.

The shoot today was on the surface for the agency website, but really Sansa knew that it was just a way for Petyr to showcase the Tyrell’s. After her night with Jon, Sansa was feeling relaxed and carefree, so she couldn’t even dedicate much mental energy to worrying about the shoot and thinking about the potential career threat that the Tyrell’s posed.

By the time Sansa was fully ready and had made her way to the elevator, she was running a little later than she usually would have been, but still couldn’t bring herself to really care. She’d still probably get there before most of the models, she just wouldn’t be there before most of the crew.

As the elevator made its way down to the lobby, it stopped on the floor below Sansa’s, and as the door opened, she saw Olyvar waiting there. She greeted the other model with a smile.

“Good morning!” Sansa said cheerfully.

“Morning,” Olyvar replied with a smirk as he got onto the elevator. “Though clearly mine isn’t as good as yours. What has you all smiley?”

“Oh, you know...” Sansa said vaguely. She couldn’t exactly tell him that she’d had the best orgasm of her life last night. And then the second best one shortly afterwards. “Just one of those days I guess.”

“Well this day is probably the right one to have that kind of attitude on. Only the best to meet the Tyrell’s right?”

“I’m actually kind of looking forward to it. I mean, they’re going to be our agency colleagues. Sure they’re so famous it’s almost a joke, but at the end of the day, we’re all going to be doing the same job.”

“That’s a surprisingly good attitude to have,” Olyvar remarked and Sansa just shrugged.

“What do you think about the Tyrell’s coming to Mockingbird?” She asked as the elevator opened up in the lobby and they both got out.

“I’ve not thought much about it to be honest. Except thinking ‘of course Loras Tyrell got signed as a model.’ Even if he wasn’t Loras Tyrell he probably could have gotten signed.”

“He is an attractive man,” Sansa admitted with a small giggle. Something she would never admit though was that she used to have a huge crush on him when she was younger and was initially devastated when he had his coming out storyline on the reality show, Taming the Tyrell’s. Especially now that she was probably about to meet the man himself.

Sansa and Olyvar decided to share a cab to set rather than taking the train, so they made it there in very good time. As she suspected, only a few other models were milling about by the time they arrived, and the Tyrell’s weren’t among them.

Sansa made her way to the women’s dressing room and was happily greeted by Mya and Myranda.

“You guys are here early,” Sansa said after she had greeted both of her friends with hugs.

“Well I’m usually this early,” Mya said, “Myranda was just hoping to catch a glimpse of Margaery before the shoot.”

“I’m kind of regretting it now to be honest,” Myranda admitted. “I mean, she’s probably going to have her own dressing room right? They won’t put her in here with the plebs. So I probably wasted my time and denied myself an extra 20 minutes of sleep that would have been much appreciated.”

Sansa laughed. “Yeah I’d be surprised if Margaery Tyrell didn’t get her own private space.”

“Who knows, maybe soon enough you’ll be joining her on the private dressing room level,” Myranda teased with a smile.

“What are you talking about?” Sansa asked confused.

“You haven’t been on social media yet this morning, huh?” Mya asked.

“You don’t google yourself first thing every morning as a method of manifestation?” Myranda added.

“Uh, no I was in a bit of a hurry. And I never google myself. You google yourself?”

“Every day,” Myranda said sagely, “And maybe you should take a leaf out of my book, because you’re trending girl.”

Sansa pulled out her phone, and opened up social media. And sure enough, her followers had doubled yet again. Doing a quick google search of her name as Myranda advised gave her the answer as to why. The pictures of her and Jon from the music video set yesterday had gone viral. So much had happened in between now and then that Sansa had completely forgotten about the little show that they had put on for the paparazzi.

There were tons of articles, most of them referring to her as ‘Jon Snow’s mystery girl’. Jon’s fanbase seemed to be split in between those who were correctly pointing out that they were just filming something together and that Sansa was probably nobody to Jon, and those that were feeding into the rumors and frenzy. Things were unfolding pretty much as Satin predicted that they would.

“We were just filming a music video,” Sansa explained to Mya and Myranda. She knew that she was supposed to follow Satin’s timeline about the relationship even when talking to friends and family. “Petyr thought it would be a good idea for me to diversify my portfolio, try something different you know?”

“The way that man is looking at you, there’s much more than music on his mind,” Myranda laughed. “But good on you, girl. I’ve been thinking about spreading my wings out a bit myself.”

After that, it was easy to steer the conversation into being about all three of their respective careers. Myranda spoke about a new high fashion designer who was coming out with a plus sized line that she was planning to audition to walk for, and Mya talked about a couple of shoots that she had booked. Sansa told the girls about Shae, and about the work that Sansa had booked with her, happy that she had something positive and work related to add, which wasn’t always the case.

“Excuse me ladies, is this the dressing room?” They heard a melodic voice ask, interrupting their conversation. They turned around to see Margaery Tyrell herself standing in the doorway. “I’ve been looking all up and down the set for it,”

Mya was the first one of them to regain her composure and said, “Well, luckily you’ve found it. Hi, you must be Margaery, I’m Mya. This is Sansa and Myranda” She held out a hand to shake, which Margaery took gratefully, before also shaking hands with both Sansa and Myranda, who was all but staring at her opened mouthed.

“Oh thank goodness, I didn’t want to make a bad impression on my first shoot. It’s nice to meet you ladies,” She leaned towards them conspiratorially and said, “You’ll have to let me in on all the scoop about Mockingbird. There’s always so much catch up to play when you’re the new girl.”

Myranda seemed to finally regain her composure and said, “Well we’re definitely the ladies for the job,” and then she launched into a summary of gossip about their co-workers, ignoring the disapproving look that Mya shot her.

Margaery Tyrell was undeniably beautiful, that much was obvious from seeing her on TV and on the inherent, but she also had a natural sort of magnetism to her. She seemed to take all of Myranda’s gossip in stride, and had a way of engaging in the conversation that seemed to make Myranda want to relay even more information. She was very easy to talk to, and she even drew Sansa in.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what made you decide to try modelling? And why mockingbird?” Sansa asked curiously, once Myranda had told Margaery near everything she knew about the other models and they had moved on to more general small talk.

“Well I’ve always loved fashion but I never really thought that modelling was something I could do,” Margaery started, “But my grandma really encouraged me. And of course I had to drag Loras along to do it with me. And as for Mockingbird... well, we just went where we thought our interests would be best represented.”

Sansa nodded thoughtfully. She felt a little bad about all the thoughts about the Tyrell’s being this huge competition. At the end of the day, they loved fashion just like she did, so why shouldn’t they try and be successful in it?

At this point more models had begun to arrive, and everybody started getting fitted for the shoot. They’d only have one look for the shoot, so hopefully it would be fairly straightforward, but things were always a little hectic when there were so many models. Some girls were getting their hair done while others were getting their make up done and the rest were being zipped up into their couture costumes. All the while there were multiple conversations being carried on across the room. It was a bit of a sensory overload, and Sansa was glad when she was finally done getting into her look-- a simple but chic one shouldered cream dress-- and was able to slip out of the dressing room while the other girls continued getting ready.

Sansa found a chair by the refreshment table and sat down and pulled her phone out. With Jon coming over last night, she’d not really been able to do a social media check after their second day shooting. A quick glance of her Instagram told her that her followers had practically doubled again-- most likely due to the paparazzi photos-- and she was now had over 15000 followers. It was a huge increase in just 2 days. She couldn’t even imagine what her numbers would be like by the end of the year when the contract was over. Social media numbers had a big impact in the modelling industry-- more well known models got more opportunities because brands thought they would bring more eyes to their products. Hopefully this increase would mean that Sansa would get opportunities that never would have been available to her before.

She also saw that there were a few notifications from her family group chat. The Starks had two group chats-- one that included their mother, and then one that was just Sansa and her siblings. That was the one that was currently lighting up, so Sansa opened it up.

Starklings

Robb: Uh... so what’s going on here? *(Picture Attachment)*

Bran: Obviously Sansa is getting her hair done by world famous rockstar Jon Snow

Rickon: Is he doing her hair? I thought he was just taking that flower out of it

Bran: I thought he was putting the flower in

Rickon: Good on you Sans. I hate when there are flowers in my hair. It’s important to find somebody to take them out

Robb: Somebody please give me a serious answer! Arya?

Arya: !!!

Robb: Okay, that was not an answer

Sansa couldn’t help but giggle at her siblings conversation, but at the same time her heart hurt a little. She missed them, and she felt sad that she wasn’t able to share the truth of what was going on with them. With Arya especially. She would freak out if Sansa told her what had happened last night. But she would still just have to go with the fake story for now.

Starklings

Sansa: Put your weapons away Robb, I was just starring in the music video for his new single

Robb: Finally things make sense again

Bran: The outfits are confusing me. What is the song about?

Rickon: Obviously it’s about something something punk rock flowers

Arya: Did you get me my autograph?

Sansa: I did not. Sorry!

Arya: Sansaaaaaaa. You had one job.

Robb: Wasn’t her one job to be in the music video?

Arya: Stop speaking logically

Sansa heard a throat clear behind her and looked up to see Loras Tyrell.

“I see that somebody else had the same idea as me-- to escape from the drama of the dressing room. I can only imagine that the girl’s dressing room was worse than the boys,” Loras said casually, like he wasn’t Sansa’s childhood crush deciding to randomly start a conversation with her.

“The girl’s dressing room wasn’t so bad,” Sansa said, “Just busy”

“With my sister there I’m sure there was a little drama. I’m Loras Tyrell by the way,” He said, as if Sansa didn’t already know who he was. As if everybody in Westeros didn’t know.

“Sansa Stark,” she introduced herself with a smile. Loras was just as charismatic as Margaery was, but he had a much more easygoing vibe. They didn’t get to chat much though, as soon the shoot started in earnest.

Loras and Margaery were front and center of the shoot of course. Everybody knew that it was all about them, even though they were all pretending that it wasn’t. For Margaery, the photographer tried to use her height as an excuse to place her in the front-- at 5"7, Margaery was shorter than most of the other models, and shorter than the average height for models in general. And once Margaery was at the front, of course her brother had to be next to her-- it wouldn’t make sense any of the way, the photographer had said.

Sansa found that she didn’t mind as much as she thought she would. It was still a fun shoot, and The Tyrell’s brought a new and exciting energy. Loras seemed to flirt with everybody and Margaery seemed to make it her mission to make everybody her best friend. Watching them was like watching a masterclass in charm.

For a fashion shoot, it was fairly quick and went fairly seamlessly. Sansa was back in her own clothes and heading out of the studio before she knew it. Margaery and Loras left pretty soon after the shoot in a private car, leaving with much less fanfare than they’d arrived.

Sansa had a feeling that the presence of the Tyrell’s in the periphery of her life at the same time as this thing with Jon was getting off the ground could lead her in a very interesting trajectory. Sansa would just have to make sure that she was able to make it all into a positive and not a negative. As much as she just wanted to get lost in flowery thoughts about Jon after their amazing night together, she had to keep her eye on her goals.

-J-O-N-

Jon was able to leave Sansa’s apartment early in the morning fairly easily without getting caught. He was in a ridiculously good mood too. He felt like every muscle in his body was relaxed. Turning up at Sansa’s had been a risk, but he had definitely reaped the rewards for it. He felt so much better about this year now that he knew he wouldn’t have be celibate during it. The fact that he and Sansa were so sexually compatible was just a bonus.

After Jon got back to his place, he showered and changed before checking his phone. There were no angry messages from Satin so that confirmed his feeling that he hadn’t been caught at Sansa’s by an errant paparazzo. There was a message from Sam though, asking him to come over. Jon had a feeling that Sam knew what he’d wanted when he asked for Sansa’s address, but Sam was generally fairly tolerant of Jon’s bad ideas. Probably a side effect of the fact that Sam had been Jon’s best friend long before he was ever his manager.

Either way, Jon thought it would be good to spend some time with Sam outside of work hours, and he missed Gilly too, so he texted Sam an affirmative and then Made his way over to their place.

Sam and Gilly lived in a modern villa in the suburbs outside of the city. Gilly had been over the moon when they’d bought it, she said it was her a dream to live in a house like this ever since she was a child. Jon was grateful that he’d been able to help them achieve that dream. Sam and Gilly both worked for Jon, Sam as his manager obviously and Gilly as his stylist for events. Gilly had taken a little break for maternity leave the past year or so, but she was gearing up to get back to it after the release of Jon’s new album, when he would have a lot more public events.

Jon had gotten a bit of pushback form the label when he had first been signed and he insisted on filling his team almost entirely with the friends that he had made up north, but they had eventually backed up. His last name has honestly probably helped a lot in giving him the freedom he had in choosing his team, loathe as he was to admit it. Most new unknown artists wouldn’t have had the choices that he had at the beginning. Most of his choices had worked out for the best, following a few bumps in the road; Jon loved his friends and he loved having them as his team. He also loved that by hiring them he was able to give them opportunities and access to spaces that none of them had before, but that Jon had grown up with and taken for granted.

“Jon,” Gilly greeted him warmly with a hug when she opened the door. She was wearing an apron and was covered in flour. “It’s so nice to see you, it’s been too long.”

“It’s definitely been too long Gil,” Jon said with a smile, “How’s the baby?”

“Come see for yourself,” Gilly said as she gestured Jon inside. Gilly led Jon to the living room where Sam was laying on the floor and their baby, little Sam, was sitting on top of him blowing raspberries into his face. Jon couldn’t help but laugh at the sight.

“Do you need any help, bud? Looks like he’s holding you captive”

“Jon,” Sam exclaimed, picking little Sam up and then standing up to greet his friend properly, “You got here fast.”

Jon shrugged. “Well I had the whole day free, so I figured, why hang about?”

Sam narrowed his eyes suspiciously, seeming as if he was about to say something so Jon redirected his train of thought to his favorite subject.

“Wow look at how big little Sam has gotten!” He exclaimed, “Can I hold him?”

Although Sam’s full name was technically Samwell while little Sam’s was Samwyle, everybody just called him little Sam. He was 6 months old and he was the pride of both Sam and Gilly’s life. Jon was his godfather.

“Of course you can hold him,” Sam said with a smile, handing his son over to Jon. “And yeah he’s shot up like a weed, it really took us by surprise. It probably shouldn’t have given how much he eats though.”

“Hey, don’t shame him he’s a growing boy,” Jon said as he gently bounced his godson in his arms.

Sam laughed, “Hey, I’m not shaming him. It would be a bit hypocritical if I did,” he said with a playful slap of his own belly.

“Well I like that you both have big appetites,” Gilly said, “It just means that I’m going to have test subjects for my cooking experiments for years to come. Speaking of, you’re staying for lunch, right Jon?”

“As if I would say no to your cooking, Gil,” Jon scoffed.

“Great,” Gilly smiled, “I was missing home a bit today so I’ve made a traditional northern stew with roast potatoes. And for dessert I made some brown sugar cooki--” Suddenly Gilly gasped, “The cookies!” and then she rushed into the kitchen.

“So I guess we’re having slightly burned cookies for dessert,” Jon said with a laugh.

“They’ll probably still taste great,” Sam said loyally. He wasn’t wrong though, Gilly was a wonderful cook.

“So how’s Gil feeling about coming back to work soon? The first event I’ll need her for will probably be the album release, but after that there’ll be back to back award shows and nonsense.”

“I know your schedule Jon, I made it remember?” Sam laughed. “And honestly I think she’s a bit relieved to get back to work. She’s loved getting the time with little Sam of course, but I can imagine spending all day with somebody who can’t have a conversation with you gets a bit tiring after a while. Plus it helps that she can do a lot of it from home, and when she can’t be with the baby I can. Because, you know, I made the schedule”

“Well I’m excited to have her back. I hired an outside stylist a few months ago for that event my father made me go to and she wanted to dress me up in something ridiculous.”

“Jon you think anything other than a plain black suit is ridiculous,” Gilly said as she entered the living room again. “I managed to save the cookies.”

“I had full faith that you would babe,” Sam said with a smile.

“I wear things other than black,” Jon interjected.

“After hours of convincing, cajoling and pouting,” Gilly pointed out, “I’ve been meaning to ask you something actually. Now that you’re going to have a fake girlfriend going to these events with you, will I get to style her too? Men’s fashion can get a little boring after a while. It would be fun to be able to style a woman for once.”

“I don’t see why not, I don’t think she already has a stylist, but I can ask her.” Jon said in what he hoped was a neutral tone. He’d been trying to keep the conversation away from the subject of Sansa, and his instincts had been correct, because Sam saw the opportunity and pounced immediately.

“Oh, you’ll ask her?” Sam said, “I didn’t know you had her number. I guess the two of you got pretty close after you went to her house last night?”

“Well...” There was no point of lying, not to Sam, “Close is one way to put it. We definitely got very close in some ways.”

“Jon, you didn’t” Sam groaned.

“You know I did. And you can’t be that surprised, you gave me her address!”

“I guess there was a part of me that still had hope.”

“Didn’t you meet her less than a week ago?” Gilly asked.

“I’ve worked much faster than that before, and you know it. And we’re going to be ‘together’ for a year. You can’t blame me for wanting to make that year more fun for both of us.”

“Oh Jon,” Gilly sighed.

“I don’t know why you guys are making this into such a big deal. It’s just the same as it was with Val, and that worked out great.”

Sam and Gilly exchanged a look, seeming to have a wordless conversation with each other.

Eventually Sam said, “You’re probably right. It’ll probably be fine, and we’re probably over-reacting. We’ve just been a bit worried about you this past year. You’re not in the same place mentally as you were with Val.”

Jon knew that the last year hadn’t been his best for many reasons, but he didn’t think that things had gotten bad enough for his friends to worry about him.

“You can rest assured that I’m mentally fine and this thing with Sansa isn’t going to change that.”

“Alright Jon, we believe you,” Gilly said softly, “Now enough of this talk, the food is getting cold.”

With that, Gilly ushered them into the dining room for their meal. Little Sam was placed in high high chair and got a bottle of milk so that he could enjoy his lunch along with them. The conversation over lunch was much more light hearted and jovially. Jon loved being around Sam and Gilly. Not only were they both genuinely good people, but the love that they had for each other was endearing to watch. Jon knew that he wasn’t destined for a love like Sam and Gilly’s, but he was still able to appreciate that his friends had it.

¬¬¬¬¬

Jon woke up the next morning feeling inspired. He’d spent most of the previous day at Sam and Gilly’s before heading home and having an early night. Maybe the extra hours of sleep had stimulated something in his brain, because he woke up with a tune stuck in his head, and a solution for some lyrics that he had been struggling with.

Although Jon had already written about 30 songs for the new album, he’d only officially selected about 6 for the final album list even though the goal was for it to be a ten song album, with a few bonus tracks for deluxe editions. He had just been indecisive about the last for spots on the album. For some of the songs he had written, there were some lyrics or melodies that just didn’t feel complete to him. And he had a specific vision for the last song on the album and nothing he had written so far fit perfectly.

With the first single coming out soon, Jon only had a few weeks before he had to give the label a final album track listing. And finally today he felt he would be able to make actual progress.

Jon had written all the songs for his first and second album himself, using a few co-writers on the second but still maintaining creative control. For his third album, he’d been going through some personal issues which meant he hadn’t been able to meet the label’s deadlines, and they’d ended up hiring a team of songwriters to finish writing the album. The final product just hadn’t felt like Jon. That was part of the reason he had insisted on regaining full creative control this time. But he knew that his control was still subject to him meeting the label’s deadlines.

Luckily, Jon had a home studio, so he was able to grab his guitar and get right in there and start recording while his creative juices were still flowing.

Jon spent the whole day in his studio, writing, playing, singing and recording. By the end of the day, he had edited 3 songs to match his vision, and written two new ones, one which he felt was perfect for the album closing song. He hadn’t had a writing day as productive as this in years. He actually felt that he had a full album that he could put together now, with some editing and tweaks of course.

He’d need to get in a proper studio with a producer to polish and record the songs properly, but he finally felt confident that he would have created the album he wanted to create by the label’s deadline.

Jon sent a message to a producer he’d worked with for some of the other songs on the able and was able to schedule some studio time in a couple of days.

He felt very proud of himself and accomplished following this, and then unbidden, Sansa came into his mind. It had only been less than two days since he had seen her last, but his good mood also made him feel in the mood for other things.

It was late, but not an indecent hour, so he felt it was alright time to call Sansa. He battled with himself for a few minutes before thinking: fuck it. He called Sansa.

She picked up after the third ring and said in an amused tone, “I was expected a text you know. I didn’t think people still made literal booty calls these days.”

Jon immediately felt that calling her had been the right decision, as the sound of her voice put a smile on his face. “Who said I’m calling for booty?”

“Are you trying to convince me that you were calling to discuss politics or current events? Because I’m not sure how much help I’ll be there.”

Obviously, Jon knew exactly what had been on his mind when he called. But realistically, he knew he probably couldn’t get what he wanted right now. They were still in the part of their fake dating where they couldn’t be caught together in an illicit situation, and he didn’t know if he could risk going to her place again. He’d gotten lucky that he hadn’t gotten caught last time. And she certainly couldn’t come here. There were also some paparazzi camped out near by. He was starting to form a plan of when he could see her again though.

“Actually, I was calling to ask if you wanted to come to the studio with me on Monday. I’m going to be recording a couple songs for the album, and I know you enjoyed listening to that song the other day, so I thought you might like to hear some more. If you’re not busy of course.”

“I’m not busy,” Sansa said. “But would we be allowed to do that? It kind of goes against Satin’s timeline.”

It did technically go against Satin’s timeline, but Jon still thought that they could get away with it as long as they weren’t caught doing anything non platonic. It was a public place in the middle of the day, and it was connecting to work, so if need be they could sell Sansa’s presence as somehow being related to the single. But the studio also had a lot of hidden away nooks and crannies where they could get some alone time. It was the perfect solution.

“Don’t worry about Satin, I’ll run it by him,” Jon said reassuringly.

“Well, in that case, I would love to come.”

“Great! I guess I’ll see you on Monday then.”

“I guess you will. Goodnight Jon.” Sansa said sweetly before hanging up.

Jon got into bed that night feeling pretty satisfied with himself. He felt that everything business related was going in the right direction. The album was coming together, and Sansa seemed like she would fit in to his life easily for the year. Because despite what everybody seemed to think, Jon was aware that his situation with Sansa was completely business. Sam and Gilly had nothing to worry about. Everything was turning out great.

¬¬¬¬¬

“The sun goes down, the stars come out
And all that counts is here and now
My universe will never be the same
I'm glad you came”

-Glad you came, The Wanted

“I'm so into you
I can barely breathe
And all I wanna do
Is to fall in deep”

-J-O-N-

When Jon called Satin and told him that he had invited Sansa to the recording studio, Satin had just given a long suffering sigh and said, “Okay Jon, just don’t get caught doing anything stupid. I’ll be pissed if you fuck up my timeline.” So Jon was pretty sure that Sam had told Satin that Jon had started hooking up with Sansa. He didn’t say anything about it though, which Jon counted as a win.

So on Monday morning, Jon got into his car and drove to Sansa’s apartment to pick her up and take her to the studio. As they became more public, he’d probably have to stop using his own car to go and see her. Way too recognizable.

Sansa was waiting just inside the door of the apartment building when Jon pulled up, and exited the building with a smile when she saw him.

“Morning Jon,” Sansa said as she opened the door and got into the passenger seat.

“Morning,” he replied with a smile. “Looking forward to hearing some music? Feel free to tell me if it’s terrible.”

“I’m sure it’s not going to be terrible,” Sansa said.

“I guess you’ll have to wait and see.” Jon took a moment to take in Sansa’s look before he pulled out of the parking spot and headed towards the studio. She was dressed in a simple casual dress, but it was short enough that Jon couldn’t help but focus on the expanse of her creamy long legs. Fuck, he needed to stop looking at her before this drive became much harder than it needed to be.

“I’m pretty exciting actually. I’ve never been to a recording studio,” Sansa said as Jon began to drive, obviously oblivious to his dirty thoughts.

“It’s not that cool honestly. Just a big room with recording equipment basically.”

“Still, I’m sure it will be interesting. Are you sure your producer is okay with me being there?”

Jon’s producer, Qhorin, had worked with him on multiple albums, and was probably somewhat of a friend to him. But he honestly hadn’t even asked if he could bring Sansa, because he knew that Qhorin wouldn’t care. It was really common for artists to bring people to watch them in the studio, and Qhorin was notorious for his complete focus on the music; he barely noticed who was around.

“It won’t be a problem, trust me,” He told Sansa.

“Strangely enough, I do trust you. That will probably bite in me in the ass later, huh?” Sansa asked playfully.

Jon laughed. “Probably. But not on purpose.” He placed a hand on Sansa’s leg and gave it a reassuring squeeze and she gave him a smile in return.

“I suppose that’s all you can ask for,” Sansa said. And if Jon kept his hand on her leg for the rest of the ride, then that was nobody’s business but theirs.

¬¬¬¬¬

Jon and Sansa arrived at and entered the studio with little fanfare. Jon led her through the building to the studio that Qhorin had rented for them to use. The man himself was already there, setting up the equipment, when they walked in.

“Hey Qhorin,” Jon greeted, “This is my friend Sansa. Is it okay if she sits in on our session?”

Qhorin barely gave Sansa a second glance before nodding in agreement. “Sure man, that’s cool.” Just as Jon suspected he was far to focused on the music to care about anything else. That was one of the reasons Jon loved working with Qhorin, he took his job seriously and he was good at it.

Jon showed Sansa around and explained some of the equipment to her while Qhorin finished setting things up.

“Are you ready to get started?” Qhorin asked when he had finished, and Jon nodded in affirmative. He found a chair for Sansa to sit and watch while he and Qhorin got started.

“I listened to some of the raw files you sent me,” Qhorin said, “It’s already sounding great, but I have some ideas to elevate a few of the songs.”

“I trust your opinion man,” Jon said, “There’s a couple of things I’ve been stuck on too that I want to see if you can work your magic on.”

“I’m always up for a challenge. Let’s get started.”

They spent the next few hours recording and reworking Jon’s songs. Periodically, Jon would check in on Sansa to make sure that she didn’t seem too bored. Surprisingly, she seemed to be having a decent time, often asking Qhorin questions about the technology or asking Jon questions about the lyrics. He was glad that she seemed to slot in easily here. Half of Jon’s life was spent in a studio. It felt good that Sansa could walk into the studio and not feel out of place.

Finally, it was time to record the song that Jon thought was perfect for the closing the album.

“This song is called cold-blooded,” Jon told Sansa. “I really wanted the album to tell a cohesive story, and I feel like the themes of The Watchers come full circle in this song.”

“I can’t wait to hear it,” Sansa said with a smile.

When Jon got into the booth, he closed his eyes and just started singing. This song had felt very natural to him when he was writing it, and it was a rare and wonderful feeling for a song to flow out so easily. Finally he got to the chorus, which was actually the part of the song that he had written first.

Ice in my veins

Fire in my heart

You should have known

Right from the start

I’m cold-blooded

“And...got it.” Qhorin said when Jon had finished recording the song.

“What did you think?” Jon asked as he exited the booth. He didn’t know if he was speaking to Sansa or to Qhorin.

“It was great,” Sansa said earnestly, “It was such a sad song but so beautiful.”

“It was good,” Qhorin said, “But I feel like something is missing. Not in your vocals, they turned out great. But the background music feels a bit empty, especially at the bridge.”

“Do you have any ideas about how we can change it?” Jon asked.

“I have a couple thoughts that we can play around with,” Qhorin said as he stood up, “But I have another artist who booked me for the next two hours so I have to go to his studio for a while. Sorry man, I tried to clear my schedule when you messaged me the other day but this guy was pretty insistent and he did book me first. I’ve booked this studio for a whole day though, so you can just chill here, maybe work on some other stuff, and I’ll be back in a couple hours then we can get back into it.”

“Okay sounds good man,” Jon said with a shrug. Qhorin gave Sansa a little wave and then exited the room.

“So, tell me the truth,” Jon said to Sansa, “What do you really think of all this?”

“I have been telling the truth,” Sansa said with a smile, and gave Jon a playful nudge “This has been a really cool experience, and your songs are great.”

“Yeah? Even thought they’re not pop?” He asked teasingly.

Sansa laughed. “Even though they’re not pop.”

“Well, thanks for coming. It’s always more fun to do this with somebody else here.” Jon always felt that he performed better with an audience. Sam normally came along to record songs with him, but obviously since the baby was born he’d been trying to spend more time at home, so he’d cut down on his managerial duties. Jon did not blame him for that at all, but it was still nice to have Sansa there instead.

Having Sansa there was admittedly nice in a different way than having Sam there.

“It’s been fun for me too,” Sansa said, and Jon couldn’t help but take that opening.

“We can have fun in other ways too,” He said lowly, placing a hand on her leg like he had in the car and caressing it gently.

“Jon,” Sansa admonished, but she was blushing, “We’re in public.”

“We’re in a private studio,” Jon pointed out, “We’ve got at least 2 hours before Qhorin gets back, the door locks from the inside, and there are no cameras in here.”

This studio was famous for their unwavering respect of artists privacy. They claimed it was to respect the creative process, but Jon knew that it was really because there were multiple artists who felt like they couldn’t record anything unless they were high on five different substances. They couldn’t afford to have that caught on camera, so this building only had cameras in the hallways and by exits, absolutely no cameras were allowed in recording studios. It was one of the reasons that Jon wanted to bring Sansa here. Despite liking things a little risky sometimes, Jon wasn’t an exhibitionist.

“You planned this didn’t you?” Sansa asked, but Jon could tell that she was starting to give in by the way she ran her hand through his curls and then moved it down to caress his face.

“Maybe I did,” Jon said with a smile.

“Well we can’t let all your good planning go to waste,” Sansa said and then she leaned forward and kissed him.

Kissing Sansa felt like a shockwave being sent through his body. He wasn’t sure if the first time had just been a fluke, but this confirmed that it wasn’t. It felt just as good ot kiss her now as it did then. A little better actually, because they knew how to read each other’s body language a little bit more now. Jon felt like he would never get enough of kissing Sansa.

When she pulled back from the kiss for air, Jon took the opportunity to slide down to his knees in front of her.

“Jon,” Sansa gasped, “You can’t do that here.”

“Why not?” Jon asked lowly, as he slid her panties down. “Do you really want me to stop?”

“No,” Sansa admitted as she bit her lip.

Jon smiled and then pushed Sansa’s thighs apart, leaned forward and licked. The sound that Sansa made in response was delicious.

Jon would not be lying when he said that eating a woman out was one of his absolute favorite things to do. There was just something so satisfying about knowing that he was causing somebody to experience so much pleasure. It was especially fun to do it to Sansa, she was so responsive and the noises that she made were sinful. Her hands were gripped in his hair and she was whispering his name over and over again like a prayer as he worked, until she finally gasped and came.

Jon grinned as he got up and leaned in for another kiss allowing Sansa to taste herself on him.

“That’s not fair,” Sansa said with a pout after she had caught her breath.

“What’s not fair?” Jon asked.

“You’ve done that to me twice now and I’ve yet to repay the favor.”

Jon laughed. “You don’t need to. I enjoy that just as much as you do.” Not that the thought of Sansa giving him a blowjob wasn’t enticing, and he was already painfully hard, but he knew that if he allowed her to do that he would become absolutely useless after he orgasmed. He still had an album to finish. Being pent up like this actually made him feel more inspired and more creative, like his brain was fighting to keep his mind active and stop the blood from redirecting elsewhere. It seemed that anything he did with Sansa inspired him. “I’ve just gotten an idea for the song that I want to try out.”

“Fine,” Sansa said, “Next time though.”

“I’m definitely not going to say no to that,” Jon grinned. He then showed Sansa a couple of controls so that she could record something for him and then he hopped back into the booth.

By the time Qhorin arrived, it had been over an hour since Sansa and Jon had finished their fun, and they had just been working on music the rest of the time, but Sansa still turned bright red when Qhorin walked back into the room as if they had been caught in the act. Jon couldn’t help but find that endearing.

“Hey Qhorin,” Jon said casually. “I’ve played around with cold blooded a bit, let me know what you think.”

Jon played the updated version of the song, and Qhorin simply listened with a neutral expression on his face.

“It sounds a lot better,” he admitted when Jon had finished playing it. “But something is still missing. I think it should feel a bit eerier. A bit more foreboding you know?”

“I know what you mean, but I don’t know what else we can add.”

“Hmm,” Qhorin said, and then stayed silent for a moment, thinking, before he said, “What if we add some female vocals in the background? Something soft and cooing? To almost make it feel like a creepy lullaby.”

At the same time, Jon and Qhorin turned to look at Sansa, and she turned even redder.

“Me?” She squeaked. “Oh no, I couldn’t do it. I’m not a singer.”

“You wouldn’t really have to sing,” Qhorin explained. “I was thinking more just like humming and vocalizations. It’s just going to be in the background over the bridge.”

“You really just need to be able to catch a tune,” Jon said, “You’ve never done any kind of singing or anything musical?”

“I used to dance,” Sansa said, “If that counts as musical. And I guess I was in the sept choir when I was a kid, but I didn’t like it very much--I wasn’t very good-- and I quit as soon as I was old enough to beg my mom to let me.”

Learning that Sansa used to be a choir girl fit perfectly with her personality. It also confirmed that despite her protestations, she did know enough about music to provide them some vocals, no matter how bad a singer she thought she was.

“I’ll sing the notes and you just have to match them. You basically just have to ‘ooh’ and ‘ahh’ on key,” Jon explained.

“Alright, fine, I’ll do it,” Sansa sighed. “But if I make a fool of myself you can’t use it for the song.”

“Deal.”

And so Sansa got into the booth. Just as Jon thought, she was a quick study and was able to match the notes they needed pretty well. Qhorin also had her hum the melody of the song so that he could overlay it over certain parts like the bridge. In the end, it only took them about 30 minutes before they had gotten everything that they needed.

“You did amazing,” Jon told Sansa, giving her a hug as she walked out of the booth.

“Thanks,” Sansa said with another blush, “I’m happy I could help.”

“You were a great help,” Qhorin assured her as he finished overlaying the sounds on his computer. “I think we’ve got it. Are you guys ready to hear the final product?”

“Let’s hear it.”

When Qhorin played them the song, it actually exceeded Jon’s expectations. He felt that his vision for the end of his album was finally complete.

“Wow. Thank you so much Qhorin. It’s perfect.”

Qhorin shrugged. “You did most of the hard work. I just put it all together.”

Jon felt that this day had been successful on multiple fronts. He’d gotten to spend some more time with Sansa, and he felt like his album was finally complete.

¬¬¬¬¬

When Jon and Sansa made their way back to the lobby of the building at the end of the day, Jon only had to glance outside to realize that the place was swarming with paparazzi.

“Ah Fuck,” He said, and Sansa took a curious peek outside too, immediately realizing the problem.

“How did they know you were here?”

“They probably didn’t,” Jon explained, “A lot of them camp outside places like this because they know that famous people are coming and going all day.” He really should have thought of that before inviting her here. He can’t believe that he forgot. It was like Sansa made all rational thought leave his brain.

“What are we going to do?” She asked.

“We don’t have much choice. We’re going to have to walk past them to get to the car, even if we exit through the back. There’s probably more of them out back too. Do you have any sunglasses?”

Sansa shook her head. That was something that Jon would have to remind her of for next time. As pretentious as it felt, Jon didn’t go anywhere without sunglasses. Being blinded by camera flashes was not a fun time.

“Okay, you’re just going to have to keep your eyes on the ground. Just keep walking past them, ignore them, no matter what they say, okay?”

“You’re starting to make me nervous,” Sansa said, “Is it really going to be that bad?”

“It’s not going to be good,” Jon admitted, “But I suppose you’ll have to get used to it at some point. This is the downside of being associated with me unfortunately.”

“Okay. Let’s do this then.”

Jon put his sunglasses on and then led them both outside. he was careful to leave a notable distance in between them-- Satin would be pissed if they looked ‘non platonic’ in pap pics this early-- but he still made sure that he was glancing back to make sure that Sansa was keeping up.

The paps were just as brutal as Jon expected. They started crowding them and yelling in their faces as soon as they exited the building. Most of them were just repeatedly asking Jon who Sansa was, if she was his girlfriend, what they were doing in the studio. But some of them were making vile and crude remarks. Jon knew that they did it to try and elicit a reaction, something that they could sell for more money, but he was still angry that Sansa had to hear it.

At one point, Jon looked back and realized that Sansa was getting a little caught up in a scuffle of photographers that were surrounding her, so he reached back and grabbed her hand to pull her forward next to him and out of the scuffle.

He only kept hold of her hand for a few seconds before letting go, but judging by the increase in the volume of the paps screeching he knew he had just given them the pictures that they had been looking for. Fuck. Satin was going to disembowel him.

Finally, they made it to the car, and Jon opened the passenger door for Sansa, making sure that she was safely inside before he went around and entered into the drivers seat. He started the car in record speed, and then they were off. Luckily when he glanced into his rearview mirror he saw that none of the paps were following them. They had no reason to, he had already given them what they wanted.

“That was a little bit terrifying,” Sansa said, with wide eyes. He didn’t envy how she must be feeling. The first experience with paparazzi like that was never pleasant.

“I’m really sorry about that,” Jon sighed, “We probably should have briefed you a bit more about what to expect before you signed up for this.”

“It’s alright, it’s not your fault. Besides, that was an eye opening experience. Now I’ll just be better prepared for next time.”

Jon wished he could bottle Sansa’s optimism and steal some of it for himself.

“Satin isn’t going to be happy,” He said, “But don’t worry, I’ll deal with it.”

“Despite that ending, I really did have an amazing time today,” Sansa said, “Thank you for inviting me.”

“Thank you for coming,” Jon said, “I’ve been trying to finish this album for months.”

“Well then screw the paparazzi! You’ve had a successful day. We can deal with all the rest later.”

Jon couldn’t help but smile. He pushed thought’s of the paparazzi out of his mind. He was going to enjoy the rest of his drive with Sansa.

¬¬¬¬¬

After Jon dropped Sansa back at her apartment building, he went home and the first thing that he did was call Satin.

“What the fuck Jon,” Satin complained, “I said don’t get caught doing anything stupid that would fuck up my timeline.”

“I couldn’t let her get trampled by paps,” Jon pointed out, “That would have looked much worse than me holding her hand.”

Satin sighed. “Fair point. But I’m still pissed.”

“This is fixable right?”

“I can fix anything,” Satin said, “That’s my job. But it’s not ideal. We wanted the beginning of the relationship to be leaked slowly, to really build up the love story; but I can use the fact that it was at the studio. We can spin her presence as being work related”

“She actually recorded some backing vocals for one of the songs,” Jon admitted.

“Perfect! We won’t really even have to lie then. We’re still going to be in denial mode about the relationship, at least for the next month or so. But if we’re going to make that work, you really can’t be seen with her again for a while Jon. This has been too many sightings too close together. We need to spread things out. The first single comes out in a couple of weeks, I think you guys should be seen once a couple days before it comes out, just to bring the gossip back to the forefront in time for us to use the publicity, but until then... I’m putting you on a Sansa ban.”

“A ban?!” Jon asked incredulously.

“Yes, a ban,” Satin insisted. “You cannot see Sansa again until the next outing that I’ll engineer before the single comes out. There’s too high a chance of you guys being seen somehow.”

“Isn’t the whole point of this us being seen? I don’t think it’s that big a deal.”

“And that’s why I’m the publicist not you. It’s 2 weeks Jon. You’re acting like I’m telling you to never see the girl again. You didn’t even want to sign up for this in the first place remember?”

“Fine,” Jon sighed, “I’m on a Sansa ban.” He knew there was no point in arguing with Satin when he had an idea in his mind. And really, Satin was right. Two weeks was nothing.

-S-A-N-S-A-

After their outing to the studio, Jon had called Sansa and told her that Satin said they couldn't see each other for a while. She was disappointed, but not surprised. They had been letting their libidos lead them at it was messing with the laid out timeline.

Luckily, she had other things she could focus on to take her mind off Jon.

The next day, Sansa woke up bright and early to get ready for her shoot with Shae. The shoot was being held in a small photo studio that was a little out of downtown, so Sansa made sure that she set off to catch her train with enough time to get there when she was supposed to.

As usual, she arrived early, but Shae was already there too.

“Sansa,” Shae greeted her with a smile and a hug, “It’s so good to see you again.”

“It’s nice to see you too,” Sansa said. “I’ve been so excited for this shoot. Thank you again for giving me the opportunity.”

“You don’t need to thank me, you earned it,” Shae said, “Now let me show you some of the designs that you’re going to be wearing.”

Shae led Sansa back to the dressing room where there was a rack of beautiful outfits, all of them in pastel pinks purples and blues, and made out of shiny, soft or silky fabrics. All of the outfits were in a similar style to the one that Sansa had worn for the last photo shoot.

“They’re beautiful,” Sansa said, as she felt some of the materials. “What was your inspiration for this line?”

“Not that many people ask me that surprisingly,” Shae said, “And I guess my inspiration was just... hyper femininity. I think there’s an unfortunate trend in the fashion industry where anything deemed too ‘girly’ is simultaneously infantilized. So I wanted to make girly clothing that was sophisticated and sexy too.”

“Wow, I’ve never really thought about that, but you’re right. And I think you’ve done a really good job with these designs too.”

“Thanks,” Shae smiled, “I guess I feel kind of strongly about it because my femininity has always been sort of my armor. The world doesn’t treat little girls in bad situations kindly, but femininity was always something I could cling to, something I could use to get my self out of situations and move my life forward. I grew up in one of the poorest areas of Lorath, and as soon as I turned 18 I got a job dancing in a burlesque club. That’s actually how I got into design. I taught myself how to sew so that I could fix costumes for myself and the other girls and that turned into me being the de facto seamstress, and then that turned into me making my own clothes. Starting out in an environment like that... it definitely gave me a different perspective than a lot of the other designers in the city.”

Sansa found Shae’s story both moving and inspiring, and she told the woman so. She also found it relatable-- Sansa hadn’t grown up rough, she had been very blessed to have the family and upbringing that she did, but she was able to relate to using femininity as armor. That was one of the things that Sansa loved so much about fashion-- it was able to transcend so much and reach different people in different ways. Sansa was really glad that she had met Shae, and that she was getting the opportunity to work with her.

The shoot went really well. Shae had hired a female photographer, something that was unfortunately still a rarity in the industry, and she was really good at making Sansa feel at ease. Sansa modeled 10 outfits in total, each one more beautiful than the last. She was really impressed by Shae’s work. The last outfit Sansa wore was the same one she had worn at the photoshoot where her and Shae had first met, but with the modifications that Sansa had suggested added. It was much easier to move in with the slit, and Shae had also made the skirt a little shorter and the top a little less tight.

When they had finished the shoot and Sansa had changed back into her street clothes, Shae came back over to her.

“You did wonderful. Thank you Sansa.”

“Thank YOU,” Sansa said with a laugh. “Honestly, this has been one of my best modeling experiences so far.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Shae said with a smile. “This won’t get you anywhere near as much as exposure as a bigger designer or one of the fashion houses would, but I’m glad you can still see value in it.”

“Of course I do. I’m honestly really grateful that you hired me.”

“Well you’ve performed above and beyond my expectations. I’m exciting to work with you again for Lys fashion week next month. It will be my first ever fashion week. It’s just a minor stage, probably won’t have much of an audience, and I’ll only have 10 girls walking for me because it’s a short time slot, but I still think I can make an impact.”

“It will be my first fashion week too, so we have that in common. And I definitely believe that you can make an impact Shae. Your work is amazing, and people will see that.”

“Thanks Sansa. There’ll be a fitting and a rehearsal before the final show in Lys, so I guess that I’ll see you then.”

“I’ll be there with bells on,” Sansa smiled. It was days like this that reminded her why she loved her job.

¬¬¬¬¬

When Sansa got home, she pulled her laptop out and did something that she had never done before. She googled her name.

And sure enough, just like she expected, tons of articles about her and Jon with pictures of them outside the studio yesterday came up. The pictures weren’t too damning, in most of them they were just walking beside each other, and the few shots where Jon was holding her hand didn’t look overtly romantic in her opinion.

A quick read through of the articles showed her that Satin had released an official statement saying that Jon and Sansa had been working on something album related. That didn’t stop the fans and the tabloids gossiping though. There were multiple articles with headlines such as ‘Meet Sansa Stark, Jon Snow’s mystery girl’ and ‘Jon Snow’s new model girlfriend works on his album with him’. There were also hundreds of tweets and tik toks form Jon’s fans speculating about the nature of their relationship.

Satin was definitely right that she and Jon had to not be seen together for a while if they didn’t want this thing to get out of hand too soon. Not for the first time, Sansa worried that she had gotten a bit out of her depth with this fake girlfriend thing. It was clear that the paparazzi yesterday had just been a taste of the level of attention she would get by being attached to Jon-- both good and bad attention.

Sansa, decided to brave looking at her phone. Her social media numbers had increased again, but she also now had some messages from people she hadn’t spoken to in years who just wanted ‘to meet up and hang out again’, as well as some random messages from distant family members telling her that they had seen her on the internet.

Her family chat was another story.

The Stark Family

Rickon: Is this another music video? (Picture Attachment)

Bran: Don’t think so. Looks like they’re at a studio of some kind. Are you going to be on his album Sansa?

Rickon: I didn’t know Sansa could sing

Robb: She can’t

Robb: I still have nightmares thinking about her rendition of ‘gentle mother, font of mercy’ when she was 6

Bran: That’s a bit unfair Robb. Most 6 year olds can’t sing

Catelyn: Who is that man with Sansa?

Rickon: Uh oh. Wrong chat

Starklings

Rickon: Sorry Sansa!

Rickon seemed genuinely sorry for his blunder, but it didn’t stop the fact that their mother had found something to latch onto now, and they all knew that she didn’t give up easily.

The Stark Family

Catelyn: What do you mean wrong chat? Who is that man?

Bran: Calm down mom, it’s just a musician Sansa has been working with

Catelyn: I don’t normally hold hands with my work colleagues

Robb: Really? I do

Rickon: You run the family business Robb. Your only colleague right now is your wife

Robb: Whose side are you on?

Catelyn had sent Sansa several personal messages following that, all asking about Jon. Sansa felt terrible, but she also wasn’t sure how to answer her mom’s questions at this point. Maybe she needed to talk to Satin to get an idea of what she was supposed to say to friends and family about this.

She had also noticed that Arya had been suspiciously absent from the group chat. That wasn’t like her. Arya normally had the most to say. Sansa double checked the time to make sure that it was late enough in Braavos that Arya would be finished with practice, and then she called her sister.

Arya picked up on the first ring. “So. Anything you want to tell me?”

“What do you mean?” Sansa hedged.

“Come on Sansa. The boys might be idiots, but I’m not and Mom’s not either. Look at your face in those pictures-- I know what your smitten face looks like.”

“I do not look smitten,” Sansa protested, “If anything I look startled because the camera flashes were so bright and I couldn’t see.”

“Sansa,” Arya said, clearly unimpressed. “Come on. You told me about the music video but you didn’t tell me about this. I know something is going on.”

Sansa always really struggled with lying to Arya. Although they’d not been close when they were young-- they were far to different-- as they grew older they became close confidants. Sansa knew some things about Arya that embarrassed her to think about, and Arya knew similar things about her. She would have to go with another half truth-- she didn’t think she could sell an outright lie.

“Okay, fine. Jon came over after the music video shoot and... we hooked up.”

“I knew it!” Arya shrieked, “What does he smell like?”

“Arya!”

“I’m just joking,” Arya laughed, “Why didn’t you tell me? Did you think I would be jealous? I like Jon snow, but not like THAT. He’s so not my type.”

“I knew you wouldn’t be jealous Arya. I just... I don’t know. Everything is so new. There’s really not even much to tell.”

“I mean clearly there’s something to tell. Jon is known for one night stands. But he hooked up with you and then he invited you to the studio with him. That’s something.”

“I think he just wanted somebody neutral to listen to the songs,” Sansa said. She was not going to admit that he had invited her there so that he could give her an orgasm in peace. “And I did actually end up recording some backing vocals for one of them. I wasn’t singing though, mostly just humming, so Robb’s eardrums will be safe.”

“You’re going to be on a Jon Snow song? Why didn’t you lead with that?! Have you heard the whole new album?”

“I’ve heard a lot of the album,” Sansa admitted. “It’s really good. But I can’t tell you much more than that Arya. You’ll have to wait for the release like everybody else.”

“Where’s the fun in that?” Arya grumbled. “Anyway. Jon Snow. This is your first famous hook up since moving to King’s Landing right?”

“Well I have been more focused on booking modelling jobs than finding famous people to hook up with.” Maybe she should have been doing it the other way around though. This Jon thing was clearly going to have a bigger impact on her career than anything that she had been doing before.

“Well I’m proud of you.”

“You’re proud of me?” Sansa laughed.

“Yeah, you bagged Jon Snow, of course I’m proud,” Arya said, “But be careful Sansa. I love his music, but his reputation leaves a lot to be desired.”

Sansa couldn’t explain to Arya that she wasn’t really in any danger of being hurt by Jon or his reputation because nothing about their relationship was real. Still, it felt good to be able to have said even this much about the Jon situation to somebody. And Sansa trusted Arya more than she trusted anybody, so she knew that she wouldn’t say anything.

“Don’t worry Arya, I’ll be careful.”

“And you don’t worry about mom, okay? I’ll speak with her and try and get her off your back for a while.”

“Really? Thank you Arya,” Sansa said, relieved. She was not looking forward to the inevitable conversation with her mother, and she knew that this was just postponing it, but she felt that she still needed time to get her story straight.

“No need to thank me. I know you’d do the same. I’m going to go now, we have a team bonding dinner,” Sansa could almost hear Arya rolling her eyes. “I really don’t like this sort of forced togetherness but it’s important for me to be a team player if I want to make the next induction.”

“I’ll leave you to it then. Bye Arya.”

“Bye Sans.”

After hanging up with Arya, Sansa decided to look and see who else she had gotten messages from. There were a few from Myranda and Mya in her group chat asking about Jon, which she guiltily ignored for the time being, but the most surprising message was one from Petyr asking him to meet her at his office.

There was no explanation or any other messages, and the time stamp said that the message had been sent less than an hour ago. The last time Petyr had sent her a message like that, he had introduced the fake dating plan to her. She wondered what he wanted to talk to her about this time.

¬¬¬¬¬

When Sansa arrived at the office, things were quieter than they had been before their last meeting. She supposed that Petyr had finished giving out his yearly reviews. It meant that when Sansa arrived, Ros was able to wave her right in.

“Hello sweetling,” Petry greeted as Sansa walked into his office.

“Hi Petyr,” Sansa said taking a set. “I got your message. Is everything alright?”

Petyr folded his hands in front of him. “I feel like I should be the one asking you that.”

Sansa was sure she looked as confused as she felt. “What do you mean?”

“All of this business with Jon Snow, the photos. The two of you definitely look...cozy. I just want to make sure that he’s not pushing you to do something that you don’t feel comfortable with. Something that wasn’t outlined in the agreement.”

Sansa felt her first going red as she realized what Petyr was implying. “Jon’s not pushing me to do anything. And anything between Jon and I is just that-- between the two of us.” Sansa tried to keep her tone firm. Petry was her boss, and so he was within his right to enquire about the business side of the Jon situation. But anything outside of business was none of his.

“I’m just trying to look out for you sweetling. Remember, I’m not just your boss. I’m your friend. Your mother is worried about you too-- she sent me a message.”

“My mother sent you a message?” Sansa asked worryingly.

“Don’t worry, I couldn’t tell her anything. I had to sign the same NDA that you did. I’m just pointing out that people who care about you are worried Sweetling. This Jon Snow thing was supposed to be about propelling your career by using his name and his connections. I want you to be a star, I don’t want you to just end up another one of Jon Snow’s discarded play things.”

“I am focused on my career,” Sansa protested weakly. She was still occupied with the thought of Petyr speaking to her mother. She knew that their relationship had soured once Petry had signed Sansa and she had moved down to King’s landing. She was surprised that Catelyn had reached out to him.

“Really? Because I hear things Sweetling. And one of the things I heard was that Jon Snow spent the night at your place.”

Sansa had a moment of surprise that Petyr could know that, but it was quickly replaced with suspicion. Petyr owned the building. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that he had people who lived there who would give him information about other residents. And any one of those people could have seen Jon coming or going and then told Petyr about it. That was a very Petyr thing to do actually--- Sansa was aware that the man wasn’t above using underhanded methods to get what he wanted.

“Why does it matter? We’re still sticking with the plan. I’m still going to reap the benefits of being attached to Jon Snow, and he’s still going to be able to clean up his image. Why does what else we do matter?”

Petyr got up and walked around his desk, placing a hand on Sansa’s shoulder. “I just want you to be careful Sweetling. Men like Jon Snow in this industry will eat you up and spit you out. I’ve always known that you were special, and I promised that I was going to make you a star. I can’t do that if you sabotage yourself.”

Sansa suspected Petyr thought his tone was comforting, but the words sounded like a threat. She knew the modelling industry was hard, and every action had consequences, but she still felt strongly that she did not want to discuss her sex life with her boss. “I won’t sabotage anything Petyr. I know what I’m doing.”

Either her tone or her facial expression clearly told Petry that the conversation had come to and end and Sansa did not want to discuss this further with him, so he backed off and went back around to the other side of the desk.

“Alright Sansa. I hope you do know what you’re doing. This could change the trajectory of your career forever. It’s up to you what direction that change is in.”

“I know,” Sansa said. And she did. She knew more than anyone what a precarious position her career was in. These next few months were make or break for her. “And I’m working on it. The Jon thing is just one angle. I had a really good shoot with Shae today, and I still have Lys fashion week with her too.”

“That’s all well and good,” Petyr said dismissively, “But Shae is small time compared to what you could achieve. With the right connections and opportunities, by this time next year you’ll be walking on the main stage of multiple fashion weeks. But you have to trust me, and you have to play your part.”

Sansa didn’t know if she had blanket trust for Petyr, but she did trust that he would always do what made him most successful, and currently that was aligned with what would make her successful. So she said, “Don’t worry. I’ll play my part.”

“Good. Then I guess we’re on the same page. I’ll see you soon sweetling.” And with that it was clear that Sansa was dismissed, so she got up and left the office, not giving Petyr a farewell in kind.

Sansa walked out of Petyr’s office feeling defiant. Whatever he had hoped to achieve with this meeting, it had just had the opposite effect. Sansa wasn’t going to be shamed into stopping what she had going on with Jon. It worked for them, and she enjoyed it and she knew that he did too. They were just at the beginning of this journey, they still had so much to gain in their careers. It was going to be a busy year, and if Sansa wanted to have some fun on the side to help get her through it, then she damn well would. Maybe she would be a little more discrete, a little more cautious-- but she wasn’t going to stop.

¬¬¬¬¬

“Got everyone watchin' us
So, baby, let's keep it secret
A little bit scandalous
But, baby, don't let them see it”

-Into you, Ariana Grande