Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: While this is a post-series marriage of convenience AU, let's just ignore the politics of how they got here, mmkay? I just don't have the motivation to actually plot right now, let's be real, so maybe just... go with it. You all came for the fluff anyway, who are you kidding.

What Grows in Winter

"There are too many years ahead to think of the years before." - Jon and Sansa. Through the years of a harsh winter, they tend their love.

He weds her in winter, as Starks have done for generations. And he is now – he well and truly is – a Stark.

Jon looks at his new bride beneath the fall of steady snow, her cheeks pink from the cold, copper hair curling in the faint light of dusk. Sansa's lips are cold and chapped when he kisses her, a soft press of mouths to seal the bond.

Later that night, after he's removed the cloak he'd only just donned her with, Sansa takes his hands in hers and sets her gaze to his.

"You do not love me, Jon."

He opens his mouth to speak but she hushes him with her fingers at his lips, fine-boned and sure. She offers a comforting smile. "And I do not love you."

He looks to his boots.

"But you are my husband now, and I think there can be something of love between us, if we tend it, build it – if we let it grow."

Jon looks back up to her, face half-hidden in the flickering shadows cast by candlelight. "I would be good to you, Sansa, if you let me."

Her fingers slip from his lips to cup his jaw, her head tilted in fondness. "I believe that. And do you believe I would be good to you?"

"You already are."

She laughs gently, shoulders easing out some of her tension. But then her lip is caught between her teeth, laugh silenced as quickly as it started. She looks to the bed. "Jon, I don't know if I can… if I'm ready to – "

Jon links his arms around her and holds her to his chest. "Then don't. Not tonight."

Sansa nuzzles her cheek against his, sighing into his embrace. "It's going to be a long winter," she whispers warily, fingers curling into his tunic, "And they say in winter, nothing grows."

One of his hands finds its way into her hair.

She is his wife now, and he is her husband, but he has no name for the kind of love between them.

Not yet.

"You miss it, don't you?" Sansa asks him one day, eyeing the way Jon gazes yearnfully at the snow-laden hills past the walls.

Jon glances back to his wife. "What?"

Sansa fits her gloved palms neatly together before her, stopping beside him along the ramparts. "The 'true' North, as Tormund so fondly calls it."

Jon offers a short chuckle, lip quirking with the sound. He doesn't answer her.

Something catches in her chest, her heart stuttering at his pointed silence. "If you wished to return…" she begins, not knowing exactly how to finish.

Jon heaves a steady sigh. "My place is here."

"But if you wished it – "

"My place is here," he repeats, voice firm, eyes finally meeting hers when he grabs for her hand.

Sansa nods, lips pursed tight.

She isn't precisely sure if she believes him or not. But he doesn't look back over the ramparts. He keeps his gaze fixed to hers. He keeps his gloved palm in hers. He keeps his thumb rubbing languidly over her knuckles, until she tugs him inside from the cold and finds that she wouldn't have been able to finish the thought anyway.

"Ow," Jon snaps accusingly, lurching back from the cloth Sansa places to his forehead.

She tuts reprovingly, grabbing him by the shoulder and yanking him back, dabbing the ointment-lined cloth along the scrape at his temple while he sits on the edge of the bed. "Oh stop, you're being worse than Arya."

Hissing at the sting, Jon scowls up at her. "Aye, well, Arya doesn't get absolutely mauled by you, does she?"

Sansa smacks his bruising shoulder, only minutely regretfully when he winces in response. "Then perhaps you shouldn't have challenged her to a spar."

"It's not like I lost, really."

Sansa rolls her eyes, shifting in the space between his legs, leaning to the side to better view his scrape. "It's not like you won, either." It's a playful scoff that leaves her.

Jon frowns, eyes flitting from her face. He reaches a tentative hand to her hip, fingers bunching in the material of her skirt.

Sansa blinks at him, hand stilled at his temple.

"You're my wife now," he says lowly, almost petulantly, if she thinks too long about it. "Shouldn't you be on my side?" He tugs at her dress lightly, like a child craving attention.

Or perhaps just affection.

Sansa smothers her laugh with her lip caught between her teeth, straightening up and dropping the cloth to the table beside the bed.

Jon raises his brows at her when she cups his face in her hands.

She smiles down at him. "You were very valiant, husband."

Jon beams.

Sansa pushes his face away, smirking as she reaches for the cloth once more. "For a play fight."

"For a play fi – "

His yelp of pain when she presses the cloth back to his forehead is far more satisfying than she thinks it should be.

Sansa takes her seat beside Jon at the head table easily now, as though it has always been thus. She raises a cup to Arya across the hall, smiling when her sister reciprocates, settling into the space next to Gendry.

Jon releases a long sigh, tearing at a piece of bread.

Raising a brow his way, Sansa catches his gaze on Arya as well. "She's a woman now, Jon, and she can make her own choices."

"I'm not – " Jon whips his gaze to her, stops, slumps further into his chair. He rubs a hand down his mouth and tries again. "Of course she can."

"But?"

Jon is quiet for a long time, fingers curling around his mug.

She lets him be, takes a sip of wine, settles back along her chair and simply waits.

Jon finds his words eventually. He always does. And she has learned to let him.

"Does he love her?" he asks softly, frowning.

Sansa's fingers thrum along the handle of her goblet. "Not every union is made with love."

It isn't an answer, she knows, not really, but it's a truth – one she recognizes all the more clearly when she catches his look out of the corner of her eye. She sighs once, quiet and yielding, face softening in the candlelight. "But yes, I think he does."

More silence – a not uncomfortable one. And then Jon shifts in his seat, leaning toward her, weight resting over the arm of his chair when he peers at her. "Have I been unloving, wife?"

She cannot help the smile that tugs at her lips. Sansa reaches for his jaw, tutting gently when she brushes the crumbs from his beard with a thumb. "You are…inelegant, husband, but hardly unloving."

He dips his head down when he chuckles, eyes glinting with humor.

Sansa feels the hot puff of his exhaled laugh against her palm just before she retracts her hand.

The warmth blossoms across her skin so quickly – fierce and unexpected – that she has to bunch her fist in her lap beneath the table.

Sansa is silent and stiff all morning long following the last meeting of the lords. It is not the first they've discussed heirs.

But she is just so tired of the conversation. And she finds she's just been too foolish all this time, to ever think being a mother would be anything more than obligatory as Queen in the North. To think it could ever be a choice.

"Do you not want children?"

Sansa looks up from her letter, quill stilled in her grasp. She blinks at Jon, considering. "It was a dream of mine once," she says carefully.

"Is it still?"

Her eyes drift to the shut window. The ink drips from her quill, unattended.

"I think you'd make a great one, actually."

Sansa swings her gaze back to his, brows furrowed in confusion.

Jon clears his throat. "A mother, that is. Not a dream. Or, well – I mean…" He chuckles, shifting in his seat. "I guess you already make a great one of those, too."

Sansa sets her quill down, rises from the table, and strides across the room to Jon in six easy steps. She kisses him, hands cradling his cheeks, tilting his face up to hers.

His hands fit tentatively to her hips from where he's seated.

"Thank you, Jon," she whispers tearfully against his mouth.

She tastes his smile at the corners of his lips.

"Will you help me, Jon?"

Jon looks up at Sansa, catches her gaze reflected in her vanity mirror. She's sitting with her back to him, fingering the end of a long braid.

Jon pushes up from the bed and makes his way over to her.

It's a quiet bloom of affection that branches through his chest when he pulls the first pin free, watching a tress of copper tumble down past her shoulders. And then another. And another. Until her sigh of relief is signal enough. Jon stops, resting a hand along the juncture where shoulder meets neck, her undone hair cascading over his wrist. He slides a hesitant thumb slowly up and down the bare stretch of skin.

Sansa's shoulders stiffen beneath the touch.

Jon pauses.

When she lifts her gaze to the mirror, he's already watching her, already waiting.

And here's the truth of it:

That faint graze of his thumb along her skin lasts like an echo. He feels it even now – just beneath his touch. Her breath, her warmth, her pulse – rippling past his fingertips. He doesn't know how to stem the tide.

He never could.

Jon swallows tightly, eyes never leaving hers through the mirror. He chances another swipe of his thumb. "Is this alright?"

Sansa nods mutely.

He leans lower, mouth hovering over the space where his hand rests. Sansa's breath hitches. His hand slides away, his lips replacing his touch, eyes fluttering shut.

The tension leaves her shoulders, a subtle spasm lighting her skin, her fingers curling along her lap.

"And is this alright?" His breath is a wet puff of air along her neck.

Again, she nods, but his eyes are still shut, and he cannot see her keenly anxious expression.

So in answer, her hand finds its way into his hair, and then she's turning in her seat, and then she's kissing him.

The echo lingers, dancing off the corners of his mind, drowning him with its unexpected fervency.

Sansa is asleep along the settee in her solar when Jon finds her. There's a scroll unraveling from her hand down to the floor, her cloak slipping from her form and pooling over the stone. He rights it immediately, smoothing the fur over her shoulders.

Sansa groans in her sleep, fingers clutching at the scroll, scrunching the parchment in her grip.

"Lady," she mumbles, a yearning sort of keen lighting her sleep-touched voice. She nuzzles against the armrest, seeking warmth.

Jon pulls back slowly after replacing her cloak. He watches her for a moment, and then he leaves.

When she wakes, Sansa recognizes the warm tuft of fur her face is somehow buried in. Ghost rumbles beside her, discomfited but unmoving. Sansa opens her eyes to white, her arm linked around his neck as he lounges against the settee.

He smells like Jon, in a strange, somewhat sharp fashion – like oak and musk and soiled snow, a rich sort of tang not entirely unpleasant. Like a grounding winter. Like the scent of the godswood at the hour of dusk.

Sansa closes her eyes and holds Ghost close, laughing at his responding snort.

"We don't have to, if you don't want to."

Sansa's hands still at the edges of his tunic. She glances back up to him, something passing over her face he can't quite identify.

He's watching her with dark eyes, mouth a firm line, his throat flexing as he swallows tightly.

Sansa presses into him, catching the way his breath hitches and his lips part on a ragged exhale. She smiles secretly to herself. She continues with his tunic, pulling it up and over his head, letting it fall from her trembling fingers.

"Sansa." It's more a rumble in his chest than any breath of air that leaves him, his hands already moving for her arms, holding her to him.

"Do you want it?" she asks him, splaying a hand over his bare chest, her other snaking into his hair.

His eyes flutter closed, his chest heaving. The unconscious groan that leaves him at the flex of her fingers in his hair staggers him slightly, his hands gripping her arms even tighter. "Aye, Sansa. Gods, but I do," he whispers in the space between their lips.

She slides her hand up his chest, anchoring it at the nape of his neck.

He releases a sound that's not quite relief, not quite pain, his head falling forward to brace against hers.

"But if you – "

"Jon."

He blinks his eyes open, stares heatedly at her.

"If you ask me what I want, I'm going to say you," she tells him firmly, thumbs brushing over his cheeks. "I'm always going to say you."

Jon stares at her with unyielding tenderness, his mouth opening, but no words find air.

Sansa steps back, her hands slipping from him, and he almost yanks her back, almost drags her to him with a fierceness that scares him, before he notices her hands undoing the laces of her shift.

It falls to the floor and stays there until morning.

The echo is back.

'Her' it says. Over and over.

Her, her, her.

If she asks him what he wants, he's always going to say her.

She finds him in the rookery one evening. He's just let a raven to air, his hands still outstretched, eyes trailing the path the bird takes through the snow. He turns at her entrance, faint candlelight smoothing the edges of his silhouette.

She smiles her greeting, making her way to him.

Jon winds a hand around her waist instinctively, and Sansa finds her chest constricting. She takes a steady breath, resting her hand along his shoulder.

He doesn't seem to notice the way such casual intimacy still flusters her.

"Tormund is well?" she asks, choosing to ignore the thrum of something dangerous brewing between her ribs.

Jon chuckles, a dry scoff leaving him. "As well as can be expected with that one."

In the years before, she might have missed the affection lining his voice. In the years before, she might have misinterpreted the soft press of his fingers at the small of her back. In the years before –

Sansa doesn't want to think about the years before.

There has been enough blood between them, enough war in the North. There has been enough time wasted. Enough love squandered.

Sansa reaches up and traces the lines of his forehead in the dim light.

Etched in every fold is a lineage of loyalty, and fierceness, and staunchness so palpable she feels it in her marrow, in her bones, lancing through her with every look he sends her way.

Jon questions her with a low hum and a piqued brow.

"You said once that your place was here. Is that still so?" Her fingers dip down along his cheek, gliding over his jaw, and then his nose, feathering back up along his temple.

"Sansa," he breathes, and she knows. She knows suddenly, but she needs him to say it.

"Is that still so?" Her touch falters to a stop at his lips, her breathing stopping with it.

He peels her hand away and leans in, lips braced just before hers, almost – almost touching – and she thinks she can hear his smile in the dark.

"Would you allow anything else?" he chuckles against her lips.

Sansa pulls back with an indignant scoff, but he catches her wrist easily, tugging her back to him, crashing his lips against hers heatedly, his laugh gone, her scoff silenced.

My place is here, he tells her, with every brush of his lips, with every deep-seated sigh, with every flex of his fingers along her spine.

Always.

There are too many years ahead to think of the years before, Sansa reminds herself.

His hand keeps to the small of her back when he kisses her, open-mouthed and languid.

His hand keeps to her.

Jon watches Sansa from the corner of his eye. Her head's cocked in observation, hands held at her back, taking in the sight of Arya sparring with Brienne. A smile forms along her lips – so small he cannot discern whether it is fondness or pride.

Perhaps there is no difference when it comes to their sister.

Jon nudges the toe of his boot into the snow, alight with sudden doubt. "Do you ever miss being siblings?" He doesn't know what makes him say it.

Doesn't know how to take it back, either.

Sansa turns her gaze to him. She's silent for a moment, lips pursed in thought.

Jon looks around the courtyard to distract himself.

"No, I don't."

He looks back at her, licking his lips nervously. "Why not?"

She turns fully to him, hands slipping from behind her when she offers him a perceptive smile. "Because then I couldn't be your wife." She reaches up and straightens his cloak, brushing the snow from his shoulders. "And I think I would miss that more."

Jon blinks at her, lungs giving out. And then he snakes an arm around her waist and drags her to him, kissing her boldly and unabashedly right there in the open courtyard.

Sansa sighs, staring out over the ramparts. It's a familiar scene – the white arcs of hills, the snow-blurred sky, the long stretch of the North winding far past their walls.

She always knew it would be a long winter. She came prepared for it.

She married her inelegant husband in the height of winter, and she would marry him again, for convenience or not. She would marry him for her.

For Starks have long been unafraid of cold, and Jon and Sansa know how to build their own fires.

Jon announces his presence with the crunch of snow beneath his boots.

Sansa finds that building love is much like building a fire.

"They say in winter, nothing grows," she says in greeting, gaze softening at his.

Jon's chuckle reaches her through the gentle wind, one of his hands winding around hers, the other spreading fondly over her rounded stomach.

Smiling, he tells her, "Some things grow."