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Snow melting into thin, fast streams along Winterfell’s stone walls. For the first time in years, sun peeking through the clouds, leaving a trail of gentle light over their frost-covered grass. Muddy boots and wet hems turning into linen shirts and rolled-up trousers. Harsh winds making way for birdsong. Birdsong that wakes them up in the morning. The tire swing finally getting some use. Arya picking her first flower ever and giving it to her mother. It remaining on her dresser for the rest of the changing season.
Meltwater knocking at their doors. Or rather, trickling gracefully under the rise of dawn. The only remnant of water they’ve left in town, and it surprisingly doesn’t freeze to spikes.
A smile appearing more often on his father’s face as he watches his children chase each other in the courtyard. The first time he sees sweat bead on the man’s hairline. Lady Stark and her increase of mercy toward him. How the lines on her face go slack, go absent, release him from the torment that is answering to her ache-long borne.
The distant idea that warmth is temporary, always moving, never meant to stay.
Jon prays that the snow never returns.
***
It was all wet-yard celebrating for the first week. Jon had never seen so much booze. The bells rang nonstop just like they did when Sansa was born. At first he avoided the gates because all that was beyond them was a sea of Winterfell people, and he hated crowds. He would lie back straight with both arms and both legs out on his chamber’s floor and feel the hot air creep in and stick to his wintery skin. He would count the ringing, eyes closed, mouth slightly open. His long hair suddenly feeling unbearable against his neck.
Arya came and found him within minutes of his wake.
“Will you teach me how to track now that the snow is melted?”
Jon cranes his head to look at her. She stands energized, ready at the door’s release in a thin dress he had never seen on her before. Her hair is scraggly and falling over her eyes like she ran here. It’s not until she glances behind herself that he sees it’s hanging dearly by a loose piece of thread.
He lets his head hit the floor again and says, “Okay.”
Neither of them bother changing. They kneel in soft, cracking mud, following the half-formed animal prints of Winterfell’s usually intimidating forest, though in the warmth it just feels peaceful. Jon makes note to come back out here, maybe with a book. Arya has a stick wedged in her small hand and scrapes lines through the dirt as he points. Ruining the prints. But he doesn’t care.
The first summer they’d had in years. Their kingdom didn’t get its name from nothing. Bran was the first to notice that the snowflakes had stopped landing on his windowsill each morning, and was the first to insist that the gods had heard their chattering teeth and shivering and decided to cover them in a blanket of their own. He hasn’t shot an arrow since the sun came around. He’s been climbing a lot more because he claims to love the view. Better than the winter ones, he says factually, and leaves it to everyone to figure what that means.
Of course, there were the concerned few. The small number of people who worried that this was the beginning of something never-ending and unsympathetic for Winterfell. “Meltwater distorts tracks. Makes them harder to read.” Jon wished they would shut their gobs and accept a good thing when it happened.
“Can you get them back?” Arya asks.
“The tracks? No, once they’re gone, they’re gone,” Jon replies.
Arya pouts. “Then how will we find the deer?”
“Deer?” Jon cracks a grin. He looks back at the horseshoe indent and then back at Arya. “This look like a deer print to you?”
She doesn’t like being teased and that’s something he learnt about her the day he met her. “No, I know. Those are horses. But when it comes to hunting… how will we find the deer?”
Jon gives her a small sigh. “Don’t you worry about hunting, bug. That’s for the men to take care of,” he tells her. “You’re a Stark and you’ll be fed. By old gods and new, you’ll be fed.”
Arya smiles. “The gods are good,” she says. “They gave us summer. Can call us Summerfell, now.”
“You can,” Jon chuckles. He tugs lightly on her ponytail. “But who would wanna do that? No one was afraid of a little heat. ‘S the cold you gotta look out for.”
She nods. “Winter is coming.”
“That’s right.” Jon nods back.
He prods at the print until it becomes indistinguishable. Wipes the mud on his trousers. Arya copies him and drops her stick, shoving her hands right in without any remorse for her clothing. When he laughs she laughs back, and when he lifts out of his squat and groans with his joints, Arya stays down, swirling in the muck.
The sun shines on her messy hair. He realizes she is actually a light shade of brown, not as dark as he’d originally thought under the winter’s dim ray. He goes cross-eyed trying to look at his own hair—see if it also reigned lighter under the sun. If it did, then he might be considered of closer relation to the Starks. Might be now easily excused of his salient appearance if he could simply say it was the seasons. That it was the snow that separated them.
Arya looks up and smiles at him.
Winter was coming. But they could enjoy the sun for a little while.
***
Lady Stark scolds Arya for the mess when they return. As it turns out, even the heat couldn’t thaw her ice-cold heart. Jon was born in the midst of such weather, has the damn freeze of his name to remind him, but even he can’t resist summer and its way of softening people up. Catelyn Stark, evidently, is not like him. Does not care for the warmth and the things it does.
He doesn’t correct her when she blames him for Arya’s unladylike behavior.
He lingers at the edge of the yard when she is sent to clean up, arms crossed and leaning against a pillar. He finds Sansa seated and hair brushed, sewing. He almost walks over but instead watches her sew in the sun. Glow in the light, pink-cheeked and hopeful for the first time in a long time. Catelyn beside her, gentler with her than Jon has ever seen her be with Arya.
Sansa waves, and he realizes he’s been watching for too long.
Then Robb approaches him. “Day for it, brother,” he says, and claps Jon on the back hard. Jon tries to nonchalantly cover his cough by nodding and grunting as a response. Robb smirks and shakes his head fondly at him because he’s Robb and he knows.
In any case, it’s warm enough to try. They race to the walls and beyond, and end up in an empty field in the prairie. They get their shirts off and ready their fists. Jon plants his feet as best he can, and it feels unfamiliar because the prairie used to be just ice and now it’s so textured and real. Robb seems to adjust just fine.
“Got your wits back on quick then, ey?” Robb teases.
“Never took ‘em off.” Jon retorts, smiling.
Robb steps closer and Jon steps back.
“Could use a trim at the sides. Growin’ a girl’s mane.”
Jon feigns a scoff. “What do you say to Sansa?”
Robb barks out a laugh.
He has always been the light of the Stark family. For as long as Jon can remember. Even through their coldest freezes, their deadliest storms—a civilization centered around the brutality of winter itself—he remained a torch, bright and burning. Jon thought that the sun reflected off his teeth whenever he opened his mouth. Had the seven damn heavens in his smile. Had their family radiating heat that hugged all the townsfolk when they needed it most. Got them through unthinkable chills. He felt overwhelmed by honor, at times, that he got to stand so close to Robb’s side. Others, he felt consummately sweltered.
“I tell her the boys don’t care how many braids she’s got in her ‘air.”
Jon huffs. “Don’t say that, she’ll never style it again.”
“Hey, no. Sansa’s respectable.” Robb frowns. “An’ smart. She knows the game, and she knows to play it well.”
“Right.” Jon ducks his head for a moment. “Right. Sorry.”
He doesn’t get a response, and suddenly there’s a fist colliding with his stomach.
Jon staggers back, goes ‘oof’ and straightens himself back up. Robb has an amused look on his face. He winks at him.
Jon sighs. “Asshole,” he mutters beneath his breath, and lunges forward for his own hit.
Robb dodges it near flawlessly and lands another jab to his side. Jon groans louder that time and whips around hastily. Then he laughs, free, because Robb is in thin linen pants and shirtless and sparring with him under the blistering sun.
Robb falters—only slightly. “Somethin’ funny?”
Jon keeps laughing to himself. “Only your face.”
They start circling.
“Ya tell Arya she can’t be a knight again?” Robb says, then clocks the confused expression from Jon. “Passed her on the stairs. Ghastly scowl on her.
“Oh.” Jon blinks. “No. Your mum, she—”
Jon pauses, careful. Don’t blame Lady Catelyn, he reminds himself. She is Father’s, as are Robb and Arya.
Robb raises his eyebrow. “She…?”
“Ah, just—Arya and I went down to the woods to search for some animal tracks. She’s been wantin’ me to teach her since she learnt what hunting was. Wanted me to teach her to track.”
“Oh, alright,” Robb says, nonplus. “Take it Mother didn’t approve of her muddying her new dress?”
“That dress was new?”
Robb swings. He misses.
“Yes, it was new.” He chuckles. “Took Mother near a month to finish.”
“Gods, I…” Jon lets his stance drop. His arms hang by his sides. “I didn’t know. I wouldn’t’ve said yes if I had known that—”
A hand on his shoulder. Robb chases his falling gaze. “Hey. Don’t go beatin’ yourself up about it. Just a dress, and it can be cleaned. I’m sure Mother’s giving her a stern one as we speak, on her hands and knees, scrubbing that dastardly thing.”
A smile creeps onto Jon’s face as he takes in Robb’s easiness about it. He nods curtly and pries his eyes away in slight embarrassment. Robb claps him hard again—only once—then backs away into position.
Jon does the same.
Robb opens his mouth again and the sun comes blaring, blinding Jon innocently in front of him. Line of fire. “Pay her no mind,” he says. And when Jon makes no sign of comprehension, he specifies. “Mother. Pay her no mind. She is who she is and you are who you are. There are just some things blood cannot tie together.”
As if he doesn’t know that. He knows that. Spent his entire life trying to please her grace, and it still hasn’t paid off, in any form or regard. Jon chooses to delightfully ignore his words and punch his jawline.
Robb receives it indubitably, gasping sharp and dropping his arms to cradle his face.
Jon’s heart drops, already rushing to his side. “Robb, I’m—”
“It’s alright,” Robb whispers to the grass. He rubs gently at his jaw, slowly rises to full posture after he deems it mostly uninjured. “It’s okay. You were aiming for my chest, weren’t you?”
Jon swallows. “Yes. Yes, I—”
“Then it’s okay. It’s alright.” He opens his mouth wide, very wide, then closes it—then repeats that motion a few more times in front of Jon seemingly just to measure his mistake in pain.
Guilt farms in Jon’s chest. He wonders when it’ll be ready for harvest, and how he should present it to Robb when the time comes.
Robb looks over the field and then back at Jon. He smiles weakly and bends down to pick up their shirts. He holds Jon’s out for him to grab. Jon follows his gaze and finds Ned at the top of the hill. Fuck. He groans, squeezing his eyes shut, head hung back and facing the sky.
“Don’t,” Robb tells him. Jon opens and looks at him. Takes his shirt and wrestles the humidity to get back into it. “You are my brother, Jon. My blood. I only said that there were some things, not all.”
Jon nods like it makes sense, trying to bury the curl of joy he gets from hearing it, even if he finds it hard to digest. He nods and Robb nods back.
Robb puts on his own shirt and asks, “Ready for perdition?”
He rolls his eyes. “Tell me what you really think.”
***
Ned doesn’t punish him as he’d expected.
“There was a summer,” he starts, staring daggers into the innocent vase on Jon’s bedside. Held a single flower—from Arya. After she’d picked her first for her mother, she’d picked her second for Jon. “When Winterfell forgot itself.”
Jon knows how this goes, all the low recollections of years unbeknownst to him and far too precedent for his understanding. He lets Ned do his staring, and his pausing, and shuffles closer instead of sitting rigid beside him.
He shifts his hands that are folded in his lap. His eyes fixed on his father’s profile. He had learned very early on that silence, more often than not, was a subtle invitation to the truth. These days he tried never to let the opportunity pass.
“The days were long—so long that men stopped counting them. We left the gates open at night; the guards drank more than they watched,” Ned explains. He glances at Jon and then goes back to the vase. “Children ran the walls ‘til their feet bled. And we thought winter had grown tired of us.”
Jon’s usually happy to wait however long it takes someone to finish talking. He was taught once to prompt in a person’s break of speech, to egg them on so as to reassure active interest in the conversation. But Jon is a respectful boy and a patient boy. So he waits. Besides, he was only taught that once, so it’s easy to forget.
He is quick on the uptake and that will make him a skilled fighter, Father says. “Did it?” he finally prompts—eggs.
Ned’s mouth curves. A bitter smile. “Winter never tires, son. It only waits.”
Jon never knows what to expect with these stories he tells. It could be a war, it could be a battle, it could be a petty argument he had with his sister or Uncle Benjen. It could be a thousand men charging at him at warp speed. It could be the time he gave Lyanna a dutch oven.
“One night, a storm came down from the North, faster than any raven, and flooded the whole lower yard,” he continues. “Froze two men at their posts because they’d unbuckled their cloaks to cool off. Buried ‘em in summer soil, we did.”
“What did you do?”
“I closed the damn gates, is what I did.” Ned’s voice rises. “Sent the children inside. Posted double watches. Remembered that comfort is a poor teacher, and that Winterfell stands because it prepares.”
“Eddard.” Catelyn’s voice cuts through the air.
Both Jon and Ned turn around on Jon’s bed and it creaks. Catelyn in the doorway with a tight expression. Composed. Polished stone.
She steps forward. “He is not one of your men.”
“He learns.”
“He will learn what is proper,” she says, then curls her mouth up and manages a reluctant, “Jon.”
Jon doesn’t like how his name sounds in Lady Stark’s mouth and he never has. In any case he stands up and bows his head, biting back a disappointed sigh when he hears Ned stand up and approach her at the door. Leaving, then. Goodnight, then.
He watches their shoes as they exchange whispers. Ned lands a hand on the same shoulder Robb had and says, “Easy on your brother, yeah?”
***
As warm rain hits stone the meltwater returns, faster now. Jon hesitates to join in on the running they do around Septa Mordane but eventually succumbs when Arya sticks her tongue out at him and Robb copies.
His boots are slippery on the residual sheet of ice still liquifying and a tired smile makes it onto his face every time he slips. Every time Bran or Arya or Theon slips. Septa Mordane goes about her tasks as she would any other cold winter’s day, but she swats them by the backs of their heads and scoffs unbelievingly when they get too close and almost catch her on her heels.
Lady Stark emerges from shaded safety to present them with a tray of freshly squeezed orange juice. Six glasses balanced between her steady hands, one for each of her children—and hell, even Theon gets one—but Jon stands quiet and thirsty and watches them all swallow it down, giddy laughs and breathless thanks as the empty tray is filled with glasses once more.
Jon finds himself on the tire swing—and finds himself there a lot longer than the curfew he knows.
It’s Theon who comes. “Your father sent me to fetch you.” And tests the swing’s reliability by pushing Jon back and forth on it slightly. “Damn ropes are bein’ tested by the gods with all your weight on ‘em.”
He doesn’t think he is that fat. He weighs less than Robb.
Theon just likes to tease.
***
Long evenings, so Jon goes with Bran and climbs to the top of the battlements, and they lie on the hot stone until their backs ache pleasantly, counting clouds and making up stories for all the peculiarly shaped ones. He knows Bran isn’t allowed up this high but the poor boy is being stretched with boredom. Archery was yet to level its difficulty, Arya was too preoccupied with figuring out how to make the perfect mud pie, and Rickon was far too young for him to even consider spending time with. Like the good big brother he was, he sacrificed his slow mornings of lying with the heat in favor of speeding through his daily chores lack of interruption. All so his late afternoons and early evenings were job-free and chock-full of Bran.
But after a while, Jon found he wanted to be alone again.
“Don’t move,” Jon tells Bran. Bran tenses and shoots him a frightened look before Jon smirks and nods to the other side of him. A raven. “You’ll spook him.”
Bran deflates. It pecks at the stone. “You scared me.”
“I could tell.”
“Where’s its letter?”
“Not all ravens are letter-sent,” Jon says. “Sometimes they’re just out and about.”
“Doing what?” Bran asks.
“Flying. Chirping. Feeding their chicks.”
Bran rolls his eyes. “Squawking’s more like it.” He turns to the raven and gives it a snarl. “You’re always waking me up,” he tells it.
It doesn’t seem to care and only hops closer.
“Wait. Stop moving,” Jon tells him again.
Bran doesn’t listen and shuffles closer to Jon’s side, pebbles scuffing his shoes. The edge they’re posted on suddenly gets skinnier. A small but warm breeze slinks past and it moves Bran’s hair along with it.
“Hold your hand out.” Jon nudges Bran. “Let it come to you. Why are you moving away?”
“I don’t wan’ it.”
“Why not?”
“Big eyes,” Bran says defensively.
Jon laughs at the sky. His head hits a particularly sharp pebble beneath him. “Yours are the size of dinner plates, you don’t see me tryin’ to avoid ya.”
Bran cracks a smile. “Shut up.”
“Go on.” An ultimatum of sorts.
Bran sighs, sneaking back over to his original spot and stretching his arm out wide in the bird’s direction. It flinches at first and even makes flapping movements with its wings, but then it calms down and tilts its head at Bran's hand, left and right. And then hobbles even closer, pecking at it.
He giggles. “Tickle.”
“Yeah?” Jon’s amusement is apparent in his voice.
“Yeah. Kind of like the sun.”
It wedges its beak between Bran’s fingers and tries to dig for worms.
“Hm?” Jon hums. He turns his head to look at Bran even though he isn’t looking anyway. “What do you mean ‘the sun’?”
He studies the side of Bran’s head for a moment and the sunlight catches on it the same way it does Arya’s. Not nearly a shade as light as hers, but shining all the same. Jon wonders what his own looks like under the sun. If anyone would tell him. Or even notice.
Bran makes him wait a few more seconds before wiggling his fingertips over the raven’s beak and thus scaring it off into the distance. He turns to Jon and blinks like he’s confused. Like what he’s said makes any sense at all, and Jon’s the weird one.
“The sun. How it tickles. On your skin, yeah? Do you feel it?”
Jon shakes his head.
Bran takes his raven arm and places Jon’s hand in his own. Their bare shoulders touch as he tugs them close together, hip to hip, and mouth parting ever so slightly the way he looks at Jon’s palm.
“Like this. It feels like this.” Bran drags a feather light fingertip from the top of his index finger to the bottom of his wrist. Then he drags from the bottom of his wrist down to the tip of his elbow. He catches Jon’s arm hair on the way. He adds more fingers on the way, dancing delicately along the skin. And it feels just as Bran says it does, simply. Warm and light and from the sun—ticklish. “Like that.”
Bran lets go of his arm and Jon brings it out in front of him to stare. He feels Bran’s touch lingering. His hand renewed. “Like that,” Jon echoes, in agreement.
“Jon.”
“Yeah?”
“Robb is planning on taking the black.”
“What?”
***
In the fading light Arya asks Jon to cut her hair so she can watch it fall like dead grass. She asks Jon if Lady Stark—mother—will be angry with her, and he replies yes without hesitation or doubt.
***
The water in the washbasin is cold. Summer doesn’t change that. He gets the idea when he’s scrubbing dirt from under his fingernails to go for a swim in one of the nearby streams. Arya’s hair stays the same length so she’ll have to tie it up if she doesn’t want it getting washed when they return. But knowing her she’ll probably infuse it with whatever sloshes at the bottom of the river just to give Lady Catelyn a hard time.
He passes Robb in the hall and stops him by a hand on his chest. “Fancy a swim?”
Robb grins madder than the King.
They race, again, over the prairie and just past the trees until they reach the peacefully isolated body of water. Robb laughs manically and pats the tree closest to him when he gets there first. Jon tells him that he let him win, that he could use it after waking up like that this morning. Whatever his vague and illegitimate insult means. Truth is he just wanted to see the sunlight a little closer to his face.
“Sansa’s skipped out to be with Septa Mordane. Again.” Arya huffs as she eventually catches up. “Like embroidery’s going to cool her down.”
Bran appears from behind her. “Bet she’s stitching water droplets as we speak.”
Can you believe that? Cooling down? In Winterfell?
Jon chuckles while he strips, but makes sure to defend his sister’s honor. “Leave her alone. She’s got steadier hands than the both of you.” Considering the comment he’d made the other day.
He’s in first and he acclimatizes quickly. The water is undeniably refreshing but it takes a moment for him to fully relax in its hold. Robb is still off the hill, helping Bran and Arya shuck their shirts off over their arms. He waits a moment as he kicks his legs, and then he doesn’t. The water swallows him whole. Slightly brown and mostly reflecting the sun’s light. The sounds of insects buzzing somehow sound louder underwater than they are overhead. He keeps his eyes screwed shut and his cheeks puffed fat like he’d actually taken a deep gulp of air when he hadn’t. He touches the bottom of the stream with his toes and it’s sloshy, muddy, something Arya would love if her height didn’t condemn her. He feels a fish swim against his leg. Then an arm, pulling him up, and water loud falling from his hair as hands come close to wipe it out of his face.
Jon blinks rapidly at Robb.
“You good?” Robb checks, worry evident. His hands on Jon’s shoulders now. Bran and Arya stand feet in the shallow end only, awaiting the rest of their brother’s instructions. Permission.
Jon nods small, staring. Then Robb doesn’t move so he nods again, saying, “I’m fantastic,” even though it comes out a whisper.
Two tiny little cannonballs of water beside them and Bran and Arya surface from the water with matching beaming smiles, already starting to tackle each other back under again. Robb’s laughter is a remote melody in his ears, lulling him. Jon takes his own batch of notes and commits it to memory before dipping below the surface for a second time.
This time, he doesn’t close his eyes. Robb goes with him and keeps his open, too. His movements are slowed and wistful in the water but he points to his mouth, then the sky, then shakes his head. Jon understands instantly. Let’s see who can stay under the longest. And he’s game.
In the end it’s Jon—just as he’d expected it to be. Robb’s usually the one to suggest the games but has no particular interest in partaking in them. The orchestrator of fun, he is. Not so much the player. It was most likely that he got bored of watching Jon’s pliant face down there, or the particles of fish excrement got in his eye. Either one or either way, Jon didn’t mind.
He finally saw his hair spread out in a stupefying, unanticipatedly soft way. He saw the light slinking over each lock, strand. Tracing. And it was blacker than the feathers of any raven.
***
“Should we promise each other things?”
The sun feels heavenly on Jon’s closed eyelids, but he opens them up to look at Robb on his left. Both of them sat legs out arms holding them up. Winterfell’s entrance stationary in the aether in front. A field of flourishing, green grass before them.
“Like what?” Jon asks.
“Like… I don’t know. Big things. Important things. What are things a brother promises?”
Jon thinks for a moment. Thinks about the way Robb doesn’t meet his eyes as he speaks. “They promise not to make a move on your lady?”
Robb snorts, though it sounds empty and unamused. “No, dumbass. Real promises. Promises you can’t break, not ever.”
“I would’ve thought that would be one.”
“Jon, I’m being serious.”
“That’s what’s scaring me. Should I be keeping my girls on a tight leash ‘round you?”
“Okay. There.” Robb finally looks at him. “That’s one. Do you promise to tell me if you were to ever get a girlfriend?”
Jon’s tongue catches itself on the edge of his teeth, his teasing smile slowly slipping off his face. “You—Of course,” he says.
“Do you promise to treat her as well as you would your own mother?”
Jon’s eyebrows furrow as he tries to ignore the blatant irony in that. “That has nothing to do with you?”
Robb shrugs. “Can’t have an asshole for a brother. You get it.”
“Okay, I promise,” Jon accepts. “What’s gotten into you?”
Robb turns away, shaking his head. Jon can see from the corner of his eye his fingers curling into the ground and ripping up the precious new grass they’ve got sprouting for them. Jon almost wants to yank his hand up, say, stop it! you’re ruining our new grass! because one of the only good things that had come out of summer was that everything had color now and everything felt magical to him, and he didn’t want Robb to take that away. Didn’t want his sadness to infect it. Ruin it. Instead he lets his chest constrict, and forces himself to look away.
“Just—” Robb pauses, then goes again. “Do you think we’ll still hang out when we’re married and have kids and stuff?”
Like most things with Robb, Jon doesn’t give himself the chance to really think. He just agrees, in tenfold, whatever it is that Robb’s saying. This is like most things. “I mean, yeah. Sure. Why wouldn’t we?” There’s a clear answer he’s looking for here.
“I don’t know,” he sighs. “I just think about it sometimes. Mother and Father, and Sansa and Arya, and Bran. Rickon.” He laughs to himself. “Fuck—even Theon I think about.”
Jon exhales through his nose, Robb’s stern shoulders hunched over. He brings his knees up to his chest close enough for him to wrap his arms around and hold them there by his wrist.
“And you,” Robb says. Still doesn’t meet his eye. “You, the most. I think about you the most.”
Jon feels a lump in his throat. “Me?” he croaks out.
“Yeah. You.” Robb doesn’t sound happy about it. “Taking up all the space in my head. It’s just—you don’t have a mother, and you’re not the heir to anything. I just—I worry about ya. I don’t know why I do, but I do. I worry about you, Jonny.”
He takes a second to look at the sky. The clouds falling further below dusk and the sun beginning to set.
“Just, like—where are ya gonna be in five years time? A—A blacksmith? A mason? No, you’re—you’re destined for more than that. You’re worth more than that. But you don’t—I can’t—”
Jon swallows the lump down as quickly as possible because he wants to respond as quick as possible. “You don’t have to worry about me,” he reassures. Robb doesn’t give the sign that he’s heard him. So he repeats, “You don’t. I’m gonna be fine. Wherever I end up, I’m gonna be—I’ll figure it out, I’ll find my way.”
He lays a hand over top Robb’s, gently pulls his grip out of the innocent roots and intertwines his own fingers as replacement. Robb can ruin them, instead.
“I always do, don’t I? Robb.” Jon squeezes. “Hey.”
Robb finally looks over, eyes glassy.
Jon forces a smile at him. “Hey,” he greets ever so softly. “You know me better than anyone else in Winterfell. In the world. You know I’m telling the truth when I say I’m going to be okay. Okay?”
Robb nods just to appease Jon. But Jon holds on longer than willingly comfortable, so then Robb gets the message nods strong for himself. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Jon lets go of his hand. It doesn’t return to the ground. Score. “Do you promise to always be my best friend?”
“I’m your best friend?” Robb blinks, and a stray tear rolls down his cheek.
“Who else is there for me to have as my best friend? Maester Luwin? Theon?”
They both laugh.
Jon gives him one soft pat on the back. “Yeah, you’re my best friend, man. Sorta comes with the package of being my brother.”
“So am I only half your best friend then?”
“Oh, shove off—” Jon pushes him with his shoulder.
Robb puts his hands up in surrender. “Alright—stop! How about… do you promise not to let me make dumb decisions?”
Robb is planning on taking the black. “How dumb are we talking?”
“Hah… dumb,” Robb chuckles nervously.
Jon’s stomach churns, but he hides it well. “Well, I can’t fix stupid, but I can try to fix what stupid does.”
Robb smiles at him.
“All I ask.”
***
It’s silly and intimate and warm and Jon tries not to let himself enjoy it, but the way her fingers are scraping ever so slightly across the sides of his neck and tugging just the right amount of hair fails to remind him to hold himself upright, breathe manually. He dips back, forward, sideways. Sansa hauls him back into position each time.
He shouldn’t have agreed to let her do this. He has chores waiting for him. A hearty lecture from Lady Stark waiting for him. There wasn’t enough time, was never enough time, for the trials and tribulations of Sansa Stark. A minute with her was an hour somewhere else. How time flew. Her long red hair.
He’s watched her braid other girls’ hair before—even Arya’s, at times—but nothing really compares to being in the chair.
“Have you ever thought about chopping it?” Sansa asks him while she starts on the third braid.
Takes a moment for Jon to register her speaking to him. “Uh, no. No, why?”
“Very long,” she says observationally. “Too long, I would think. Men don’t usually like their hair to be of braiding length. And now that the weather’s all… Very long.”
Jon bites his lip.
“Of course—Mother says you are still just a boy, so maybe it is a different attitude.”
“Do you—” He hesitates. “The Dothraki have long hair.”
“And do you know why that is?”
“It… looks cool underwater?”
Sansa laughs. He feels the braid in her hold grow loose. “The Dothraki hate the water!”
“Okay, well.” Jon chuckles, too. “Do you think I should cut it?”
She hums behind him. Whenever things get too quiet, he picks at his knees. It’s a mostly mild degree since they’re almost always in pants, but nowadays he’s shorts. He’s shorts or he’s rolled up. Knees bare every day, so it gives him some new real estate to work with.
Between the dirt under his nails and the weak scabs on his skin, Ned tells him not to pick at his knees. Could get infected, or irritated, or just plain hurt. But Jon finds that that’s the point. What distracts him from the silence.
“They have long hair because they only cut it when they lose in battle,” Sansa explains suddenly. “So we can infer that they’ve never lost in battle, yes? But you, Jon—you’ve never even held a sword.”
“I so have.”
“Oh, Father’s that he asked you to return to his chamber? The one you dropped on your foot?”
“I—”
“Robb and Theon had to carry you the rest of the way? That one? No, I don’t think you should cut it.” She grazes her fingers over his cheek, over his chin, past his jugular. He pauses at her change of pace. “It’s nice on you. It is you. I like to see your face but this is okay too.”
His heart swells. Feels joy like a bright yellow bubble popping in his face. “‘Kay,” he mumbles, suddenly very flusterd. “Like your hair as well.”
“Thank you, Jon.”
When she finishes he bids her goodbye and tends to his chores, four braids in hair that take his cheekbones and jawline and put them on display. A frame. He earns a few glances and a couple double takes but the day feels lighter on his shoulders. Later, when Sansa is braiding another little girl’s hair, he watches from afar the strands catching the light, and wonders if warmth is something you can miss even while standing in it.
***
Drip, drip, drip. More meltwater, somewhere, outside. Another night with open windows, and that consistent noise that keeps Jon awake with his thoughts until the crack of dawn.
The edges of his chamber’s windows are no longer soothingly scorching. When he puts his palms on it and presses down, he recognizes that familiar prick of coldness surge through, and he yanks backwards, holding his hands close to his chest, almost afraid.
The next few nights, he does it again and again. And each time it gets colder, and colder. He lies awake thinking about how everything else in his room is hot and bothersome and muggy and sticky, but how the edges of his chamber’s windows are starting to cool mysteriously—and how he’s powerless to stop it.
He doesn’t tell anyone about it, and he stops touching the windowsill.
Instead, he memorizes the birds and the air and the warm wind. The feeling of not needing a cloak or even boots out past the gate. The stream. The fact that there are small bugs that live between the long threads of grass and thistle; they crawl into his ears when he’s lying atop their home. The way meltwater comes faster and faster, proof that this won’t last. He notices it more than anyone. Like he’s the only one to notice it. Driving him crazy.
He doesn’t want to be the one to bring it up, because then he’ll be the one who breaks the cozy summer blanket. The one who pulls them out of whatever blissfully sultry daydream they’re all sharing. He’ll off-handedly mention that the frost is slowly returning to his bedroom windows, and they’ll say, Jon’s done it again! Jon’s ruined summer! Jon’s brought misfortune down upon our kingdom—Snow wants snow!
He’ll be the first to freeze. And the first to know that warmth doesn’t erase the cold—it just makes you notice it later.
***
Jon knows where to stand.
The doors of the Great Hall stay open all summer, to breathe, to let the banners stir with the breeze, wide to let some of the heat seep out and to carry the smell of grass and sun-warmed stone away. Light pools across the floor in long, lazy shapes; he’s learned which floorboards creak and which stairs catch the cold first. Behind Robb is the safest, where he’s not overly visible but still present, enough to put his breathing at ease. Being behind Robb is like being behind a giant shield.
Ned listens from the high seat with his voice calm and his questions thoughtfully measured. They’re off to the side in the shadows where the sun cannot get them through the windows. Hands behind their backs. Just like his role as eldest brother, Robb takes training for future Lord of Winterfell extremely seriously. Ned was generous enough to allow them into the room while he placated petitioners, so he vowed not to make a fool of himself in their court. However, that objective proves increasingly difficult when in the vicinity of one’s younger brother.
A man approaches to complain about Winterfell’s designated milking cow knocking over every fence he builds. He introduces himself as Seamus Trenfaunt. He brings his mallet to demonstrate how worn out it’s becoming, putting up so many planks of wood. Jon shakes his head and whispers, “That bloody cow has more land than we do.”
“Don’t,” Robb warns.
“What?”
“You know what.”
“I’ve put up seven fences!” Seamus emphasizes. “Seven!”
Jon winces, leaning in closer to whisper to Robb. “Seven fences? Fuck—one for each hell, d’ya think?”
“Jon.”
“She’s ambitious, I’ll give her that.”
“I will have you removed.” Robb looks at him.
Jon smirks. “Re–moo–ved?” He wiggles his eyebrows.
Then another petitioner, another man. He’s on the old side, balding around the rim of the head. He has a mole just above his top lip, and Jon recognizes him.
“Oh, I know this guy. He’s always losing his shoes in the river,” Jon says. He glances down at the man’s feet and is surprised to see that they are covered, wholly and efficiently. A perfectly fine looking pair of shoes. “He’s a saint but he’s bloody stupid. A stupid saint, if you will.”
Robb’s mouth twitches. “So, what? He’s come to negotiate stronger footwear?” he scoffs mutely. “Watch him blame the river.”
Jon hums. “Bold. Rivers don’t argue back.”
The man gets on one knee before Ned. “My Lord. All I ask—some fencing, maybe? A border? Just on the outskirts of the river! Just so I don’t keep bloody losin’ my bloody—”
“My gods, you were right.”
“—shoes. Erm—Perhaps his Seamus would be so kind as to situate them for me?”
“The cow guy? With the broken mallet?” Robb mutters to Jon. “Rubbing it in much?”
“These people are relentless. And stupid. How does Dad do it?”
“Please don’t make it sound so impossible. I’m only a few years away.”
Jon gives him a look. “Dude? Dad isn’t spontaneously combusting the second your sixteenth nameday comes around.”
“I’m sure you’ll find it within yourself to keep a reasonable distance from the river, lad,” Ned says. “Not much a fence can do if your problem isn’t falling in headfirst.”
Ned steals a glance off to the side, shoots them a smirk. Jon sees Robb bite his lip to stifle his laughter. Their father’s playful nature. Jon wonders if Robb will be the same. As a Lord and as a father. Wonders what him ruling would look like. His kids. Their personalities, their appearances. Robb’s future wife. The future Lady of Winterfell. Jon shudders. All too much to think about.
Next is a mother and her two boys who won’t stop fighting, who Jon thinks he’s heard of, too. Some complaints hiding around the corners. People whisper louder than they think. And being a bastard means being invisible—so he gets all the gossip. Jon’s not sure what the mother wants Ned to do, though. Parent your kids, lady, then maybe they’ll listen. Not the Lord’s job to indict some fear into ‘em.
He straightens defensively when one of the boys pokes his tongue out at him. His mother thwaps him on the head, and he pouts, crossing his arms. A sulker. He and his brother get into it not long after, and their mother’s desperate words of virtue are drowned out by their spits of vice. The boys start off by prodding at each other, then pinching, then nudging. It quickly escalates to shoving, then hitting, then tackling. Woman has a iron grip on both of them but it doesn’t stop them from writhing in her grasp. It looks like she’s apart of the fight herself.
Robb leans in. Nudges his elbow. “Remind you of someone?”
“We weren’t that feral,” Jon refutes. “We at least had the decency to take it off the streets.”
“What, you want them to fight at home? Think she’ll let that fly?”
“Oh, yeah, she’s in total control.”
Robb snorts.
“Robb!” Ned suddenly says—startles the both of them. He peers down from his seat and gives them a simple smile. Amused. But not for the reasons Jon might think. “What would you propose?”
He knows where this is going. “Oh no.” He winces in Robb’s direction.
Seems Robb knows, too. His face goes from blissfully ignorant to completely devoid of color, pale as a ghost. Could hear the clicks in his neck, how slow it cranes. He meets Ned’s eyes with a silent plea for mercy, and Ned does not oblige it.
Robb casts his look of worry over to Jon—but what’s Jon going to do? Bastard of the court—what could he possibly do? He furrows his eyebrows and widens his eyes a little in order to relay the message. I CANNOT HELP YOU. And hope Robb understands just as well as he did him under the water that time.
Robb turns back to Ned. “I…” He pretends to think for a suitable answer. Jon knows he’s pretending because he’s doing that wiggly thing with his eyebrows that he always does when he’s trying to come off as thoughtful or buy time. Lord Wiggles, Jon used to call him as a kid. And in this arena, he was trying for both. “I would… hear her fully.”
Ned prompts him with the gentle jut of his chin. “And then?”
“…I’d decide.”
Ned’s not very good at hiding his entertained smirk. Jon can’t help but smile into his neck with his head bowed down. Even the other guards in the room snicker into their helmets, share looks with one another. After this, teasing Robb was going to be gold.
Ned lets the silence stretch before blinking. He says mildly, “Perhaps listening is only the beginning, ‘ey?”
“Yes, Father.”
Message received.
Robb turns back, and Jon has to lift his head to grin right in his face, even though he’s not looking at him straight on.
It takes a lot in time to restrain himself. In the end, he only gets out a smart, “Nice,” before Robb glares through his peripherals,
***
“Lord Stark. Decider of cows.”
“Shut up.”
“You’d hear her fully… and then decide?”
“You try being put on the spot like that!”
“Hells, I could think of a hundred other responses better than that!” Jon laughs, but then clocks the sourness radiating off him. He sobers. “But, y’know, I could also think of a hundred worse, so.”
Robb shakes his head. “What could possibly be worse than hear her fully and then decide?”
“It wasn’t as bad as you think. Direct and straight to the point. Reliable. No room for misinterpretation.”
Robb groans. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you completely dodge my cry for help, by the way,” he says once it catches up to him.
“Well, what you doin’ askin’ the bastard for help?”
Ned closes the doors of the Great Hall and approaches them after barring it. They wait for him against the wall kicking at the pebbles on the ground. Jon prepares himself for the punishment, or the lecture, or another fucking story. But all Ned says is, “Next time, try not to rule the North through sideline commentary, please.”
To which Robb sighs, gratefully and in relief. “So I didn’t disgrace the kingdom?” Put too much pressure on yourself.
“Not today.”
“High praise,” Jon murmurs.
***
Arya says, “Promise this won’t be the last summer?” to Jon on the first cool morning.
Complaints all around. The gates closed. People back in their cloaks and long bottom halves. Jon winces when she asks that but he promises anyway. “I promise.”
Catelyn approaches the two. She gives Arya a soft pat on the head, then levels her gaze at Jon. Still not cold enough to be completely rugged up so she’s in one of her thin gowns that she’s been in for the past couple of months. Jon eyes the way she rolls up her sleeves and angles her body slightly in front of Arya’s, kind of like she means to shield her. A tinge of shame, though he doesn’t know why. He’s nothing to be ashamed of, Robb keeps telling him.
Then Catelyn speaks. “Jon.” She’s already looking at him when he looks up to meet her eyes. “Will you fetch the children? I’ve got something I need to speak to them all about.”
Arya mindlessly wriggles out of her mother’s tightening grasp and moves closer to Jon. She fidgets with her shoelace and leans on him for support while she undoes the knot. Jon doesn’t budge. Fetch the children? You mean my siblings?
He thinks he glares at her a little because her eyes widen, then shrink back to size. He stands, which sends Arya toppling into the now empty spot beside her. Catelyn only just catches her. Jon strides off with a scowl.
He finds Rickon first, playing in a pile of his own tipped bowl of food. He quickly wipes the muck off his shirt and slings him over into a piggyback. Next, Sansa, who comments on the barely there braid still surviving at the back of his head with a fond giggle. She seems to notice his gloom and follows in silence. Peels Rickon from off of his shoulders when she sees him wince and groan under his writhing weight.
Then Bran. Who, surprisingly, isn’t climbing some tower somewhere. They find him minding his poor old business with Maester Luwin, sigils of the seven kingdoms. He seems grateful to be dragged away from his studies. And then—hell—he passes Theon with his clan of Starks and drags him along, too. It wouldn’t surprise him if Lady Catelyn would do it just to rub in his face.
Robb’s by her and Arya’s side when they all return, listening intently to something Catelyn’s whispering in his ear. When Catelyn spots Jon, she pulls back, reserved, and nods at him.
“So… what did Mum want to talk about?”
The gates open suddenly with horses whining and guards exclaiming. The bells ring once, twice. A small group of hunters are returning with a week’s worth of food.
A small eruption of cheer from everybody, Lady Catelyn included. The gates remain open for the remaining few hunters to shuffle in with the carriage. Guards leave their post to help unload. No one mans the entrance.
Jon has an idea.
“Run.” He turns to them. They blink at him confusedly, and then he repeats, “Let’s run. Let’s go.”
“What?” Sansa spits.
“The gates are open, we can leave.” He nods. “Let’s leave. Go for a swim or something. I don’t know. Let’s just go.”
“What? What’s the matter with you?” Theon steps forward. “Does Lady Stark have something to report to us or not?”
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s just do it.” He surprises Theon by grabbing his hand. “Follow my lead.”
Excitedly, Rickon sticks himself to Jon’s other hand. Sansa looks around hastily, back at Jon with an unsure expression. He smiles at her like a little kid, and it’s enough. She picks up the front of her dress and prepares herself.
Theon tries to escape his hold. “What, no—no—stop, Jon! What in the seven hells are you doing?”
“What? It’s not a crime to leave the walls.”
“But the weather’s getting cold again! We won’t be allowed!”
Jon scoffs, dragging. “Oh, come on, it’s not that cold.”
A clear path straight through the courtyard. Gods, his luck. When he looks behind him Sansa and Bran are holding onto each other, like they’re about to enter battle. He laughs and looks forward again. Then he runs.
“Woo!” He shouts into the dissolving summer air. Hopes the heat of his voice is enough to revive it. Rickon cheers below him, as does Bran behind him, even if it’s tiny spurts of fits and confused giggles. He hears Sansa squeal, but it’s not one of her frightened ones.
“Jon! For fuck’s sake—” No choice for Theon but to keep up.
Townsfolk murmur and point. Then Catelyn gasps, and it has to be pure magic with how he hears it from all the way across the yard. Puts a smile on his face. Can only imagine the look on hers. He thinks to quickly glance back but he kind of doesn’t want to. He just wants to go, to run. Nothing for the world behind him. Nothing for the people.
They barely make it past the horses and carriage, bumping into everything around them, knock out a few apples and slip on them, some dead squirrel. A guard. But they keep running, they do. And they end up reaching the same stream that he, Robb and Bran and Arya went to. He knows Bran recognizes it because his eyes light up and he lets go of Sansa. Sansa, who is slowly down increasingly and panting like a damn bellow. Always been such a dramatic girl.
“Holy shit!” Bran exclaims, bracing himself on a tree.
“Brandon!” Sansa scolds.
Jon lets go of Theon—finally. But he picks up Rickon and swings him around just to see him laugh one of his loud laughs. Theon watches incredulously, head shaking in disapproval. “You’re mad.”
Bran’s already halfway in the water, stripping what’s left of his frame. Rickon quick to follow him. Jon turns to Theon and smiles and he feels like Robb with some fucking shooting star in there or something. Feels huge and promising.
“Oh, yes.” Jon creeps closer to Theon like he is a predator and Theon is his prey. He wiggles his fingers at him teasingly and slinks his own shirt over his head. Theon backs up like the good prey he is—makes this all the more fun when Jon’s finally close enough to get his hands on him. “And you’re about to get dunked.”
Theon’s eyes widen. “No—”
“Oh, yes, yes,” Jon nods. He wraps his arms around Theon’s middle and revels in the way he struggles against him. “Yes, Theon. You’re getin’ dunked. Right now.”
He tackles him into the water, and after a bit more struggling, Theon’s hair does the soft flowing thing too. He catches a glimpse of Bran underwater and he’s smiling, laughing, maybe. Something with bubbles coming from his nose. Bran swims over to Theon and joins in. Jon surfaces.
Sansa’s watching the stream worriedly. “Is this safe?”
Jon softens. “You don’t have to get in if you don’t want to,” he says.
Sansa bites her lip as the boys splash about behind him. He doesn’t take his eyes off her, trying to remain as placid as possible. A moment passes, and she’s undressing. He faces away, and he’s beaming, to no one but himself.
Winter can wait.
(Please, winter. Can you wait?)
***
Dad finds them. He doesn’t look particularly displeased, but he does give Jon a stern shake of his head. Not happy. Jon half-expected for Robb and Arya to be with him too. But apparently not.
Furious is nowhere near suitable for the look on Lady Stark’s face. She ushers her dripping kids to her side and swats them all in front of everyone—points her finger accusingly at Theon’s face. But worse of all—and not too unfamiliarly—she uses her body to put division between his siblings and him. Dad doesn’t say or do anything to defend him, because he never does. And Jon made his peace with that a long, long time ago—but it’s times like these where the most microscopic inch of him gleams and buzzes, and wishes for that type of parental loyalty. The most he’s ever gotten has been from Robb alone.
That night, the fight is worse. Jon hears his name through the thick stone walls.
***
Robb is only months older in age, but he’s always been taller and he’s always been bigger and he’s always just been painstakingly more intimidating.
“Couldn’t ha’ told me?”
“In case you didn’t notice, it was kind of a ‘spur-of-the-moment’ sorta thing.”
“Was there any reason you went against Mother’s direct orders? Or were you just feeling a tad bit pent-up?”
“Screw you, Robb.”
“She said you were gearing up for something naughty.” Robb laments like he’s been tricked.
Jon rolls his eyes. “She’s always saying that.”
“Looks like she was right in the end,” he sneers. “By the way, if you had told me, I wouldn’t have said no. I would’ve said be careful. Which is not the same thing.”
“My gods. I didn’t plan it!”
“She thought you were trying to kidnap them.”
Jon scoffs. “Kidnap Theon? In what world.”
“This isn’t really a joking matter,” Robb tells him.
“Do you see me laughing?” Jon asks.
“You’re making—remarks. You’re being bratty.”
“Oh, sorry. I’m sorry, My Lord. Why don’t you choose which one of my straight faces you like best, and I’ll—”
“Seven hells, Jon.”
Jon leans back against his bed frame and tries his best to hide the small smirk. He watches, admittedly nervously, as Robb paces from one end of the room to the other. Robb doesn’t normally get upset with him, and whenever he does, Jon hates it. Always tries to resolve things within the day because he hates fighting with Robb. Always wants things to be good between them. Kind of feels like the only thing he’s got sometimes.
“She’s furious—”
“Hadn’t noticed. On account of my full name, and all.”
“She bloody asked me why I hadn’t tried to stop you!”
Jon barks out a laugh on accident. When Robb gives him a wide-eyed glare, he covers his mouth. “You weren’t there,” he mumbles through it.
“I know!”
“This wasn’t your fault.”
“I know!”
The room falls silent. Robb runs his hands through his hair. The frost on Jon’s windows has been growing, expanding, spreading by the day. He prays Robb doesn’t notice.
“Look, I’m sorry, alright? I didn’t know going for a swim was illegal all of the sudden.”
Robb groans. “It’s not. You—Why can’t you just stop provoking her?”
Jon splutters, sitting up again. “Sorry—provoking her? What happened to pay her no mind?”
“Do both!”
“Oh, okay. And what happens when she finally grows tired of lookin’ at my stupid face and just throws me out altogether? Turns you against me?”
“That won’t happen! Don’t be ridiculous!”
“What if it does?”
“Then we’ll argue like idiots until we figure something out!” Robb leans in close, shouting. Jon jerks back, his brows pinching inwards. Robb’s shoulders hiked up without him realizing, but then he does realize and he slugs them back down, taking a moderate step back. Unspoken apology. “Something that doesn’t involve… slandering your name. I don’t know.”
Well, that’s comforting to hear. I don’t know. Jon exhales low and looks down at his feet. It’s a slippery slope with Robb and his mum. How it would be with any half-sibling and their other parent. Jon never knows where he stands. Where Robb wants him to stand. Too close to Robb and he’s copping it from Catelyn. But too close to Catelyn means clinging to her every move, basically a servant—which just isn’t right for anyone. Especially Jon—because then he’s copping it from Robb for being a suck-up. There’s supposed to be that sweet spot right in the middle. Where he belongs. And, shit, he really can’t win, can he?
“It’s fine,” Jon says. He takes a large gulp just to get some more air. “I am sorry. It’s fine. Look, I’ll—I’ll apologize to her first thing, alright? Make it all right. Ya don’t gotta worry.”
Robb sighs. He takes a seat next to Jon. “She wants you kept close for a while.”
Jon blinks. “Well, that’s new.”
“She thinks you’re a bad influence.”
“‘Course she does. That’s not new—”
“Jonny.” Robb’s pinkie finger overlaps his. Jon meets his gaze. “…Next time, alright?”
There won’t be a next time. Winter is coming.
Jon sighs. “Next time. Promise you.”
***
Going to sleep that night is harder than the others. Robb didn’t stay in his chamber and talk him through the night like he often did after Father and Lady Stark argue. Jon kept his door closed instead of cracked open. He wanted to brood in peace. He watched the frost cover more ground from two stories up.
Robb sneaks back in anyway, when the sun finally slips past the hills. He shuts the door behind him methodically and tip-toes over to Jon. Jon wakes when he’s halfway, because he’s one of those light sleepers, and groans lightly when the bed dips.
Jon slugs an arm over his face. “Robb?” he sleepily wonders. His arm is pulled back slightly and his hand settles over his forehead. Close enough to rub his eyes—so he does.
“Sorry,” Robb apologizes, and holds out a small loaf of bread.
Jon perks up at the smell. “Bread,” he hums. He takes it from Robb and immediately takes a corner in his mouth. A muffled, “Thanks.”
Robb appears almost guilty looking at him. Something shameful. Jon stops chewing, scanning his brother up and down. He’s not injured. Not ill. Jon quickly starts chewing again to finish off the piece in his mouth. After he swallows, he keeps the rest of the bread useless in his lap.
“What are you doing up?” Jon asks. For a moment he thinks that Robb might still be mad because Robb often waits till nightfall to let his thoughts fester. It wouldn’t surprise him if he was coming back just to dish him a second lecture.
But Robb only looks away, somewhere out the window. Jon’s chamber is tucked away from all the other Stark children with not a very enticing view. He’s spent years trying to make the midst of tree branches and stone walls feel homey, feel like him, but he hasn’t quite succeeded yet.
He could be noticing the frost, Jon thinks nervously. And he could be right in claiming that there were tears welling up in Robb’s eyes, but he is tired and still pretty sleepy, so he doesn’t claim anything at all.
Robb looks back, smiling. “Do you promise to take care of my family if I ever went away?”
Jon’s taken aback. Mostly by the ‘my’ of that sentence—because what happened to ‘our’? It was always our with Robb. He doesn’t allow himself to dwell on it, because—away?
“What?”
“If I… If I went away. Mother. Would you—” Robb pauses. And then whispers, “Even her? Would you look out for all of them?”
Jon shakes his head first, but then he realizes what that must look like. He uses Robb’s shoulder to hoist himself into a proper sitting position. “Robb, what are you talking about?”
Robb doesn’t answer him. Jon tries to shake him, and he jostles, he does, but doesn’t move past staring right through Jon’s soul.
Robb is planning on taking the black.
“Is this—” Jon stumbling on his words. No better at handling swords than he is his own thoughts. “Is this about…” Fearing that if he says it outright, brutally, it may scare Robb off. He doesn’t know how many people know or if Bran was even supposed to know in the first place. Bran’s not a blabbermouth like that. Only telling the people he trusts. And he’s reliable as hell because he knows how to bite his tongue. But something—something—tells him Robb’s not too sure about it himself. “Bran told me something the other day.”
He takes a deep gulp of air, cringing to himself when he hears it bounce raw off the room’s fairly empty walls. Robb’s eyes flicker down—Jon’s chest—a handful of times, but then he turns to his own lap and stays there, rigid as a stick.
If it was possible to speak without breathing. “Bran told me,” Jon goes carefully, treading metaphorical foot at a time. “Bran told me that you were going to… that you wanted to join the Night’s Watch.”
He hears Robb’s breath hitch in the darkness. Jon sometimes believes that your other senses are elevated when you’re lost to one. See, when he can’t hear, he notices things he’s never noticed before. And when he can’t see, can’t notice, he hears a lot of what he thinks should stay unheard of. It’s the same everywhere else. Food tastes better when he eats in silence, in the dark. His bed feels comfier all alone.
“Is that what you’re talking about?”
Robb doesn’t even nod. But he doesn’t have to. Jon also knows him better than anyone else in Winterfell. He shuffles closer and presses a firm palm to Robb’s chest.
“Don’t,” he tells him. “Do not go there. Not when you don’t have to.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand. So don’t.” Jon curls his fingers in material. “This is perfect, right here. You’ve got family and you’ve got home, and you’ve got a kingdom to run one day. You’ve everything.”
Robb grimaces. “It’s not what—”
“Don’t chuck it away. Not for—Not for that wall. Not for all that ice.” Jon shakes his head. “You… Haven’t you been… This has been the best season of my entire life.”
Jon ducks his head low and catches Robb’s eyes. Robb tries to avoid Jon’s, but that’s exactly what he wants. He follows him ruthlessly until he lifts his head up and has no escape. Jon grabs his chin, holds him stable in his hand.
Jon can’t place the emotion in there, but he thinks if Robb’s smile is the sun, then his eyes are the storm. The rain and the cold and the flood.
“Hasn’t it been for you? Hasn’t this been wonderful? Why would you take the black? What in seven hells made you think that’s where you belong?” Jon questions. “You belong with us. Here in Winterfell. With me.”
Sparring in the field. On the battlements with Bran. In the stream, swimming. In thin linen tunics and barely covering your arse trousers. In the sun. In the sun.
Before he can comprehend, Robb’s darting out and wrapping his arms around Jon’s shoulder, burying his face deep in the crook of his neck, nose pressed against his bare collarbone. Jon hugs him back just as quickly as just as fiercely. Doesn’t move whatsoever. Just lets Robb mold himself to shape and settle in their form.
He feels Robb shake in his arms. His shoulders twitch in tandem with sudden breathless gasps coming from below. Then he feels wet where Robb’s face is in his neck, and Jon closes his eyes and exhales shakily.
I love you.
***
Don’t ask him how he knows—because he just does.
Today is the last day of summer. The last day of magic. Tomorrow there is going to be a storm just like the one Dad spoke of their last summer—or something. There is going to be rain and ice and harsh winds and snow. So much snow, lots and lots of snow. And it’s going to board them in Winterfell with no way out. Dad is going to order the guards to shovel a path so the horses can get out. So they can get out. Catelyn will start making spare winter cloaks for the children, again, just like she does every few months anyway. Bran will go back to studying the kingdoms with Maester Luwin. Sansa and Arya will be back at their sewing. Him, Robb and Theon will be put back in training before the sun even sets. Before the snow even sticks to the ground.
It’s all going to be dull again and the lonely anticipation makes him want to rip his hair out by the roots. The grass is already bending back into itself.
So today they’re running through tall grass and laughing and pretending that they can run through tall grass again at the same time tomorrow. With the kids slagging behind, giggles filling the only now slightly warm air. Sansa practically tripping over her own feet if not her gown, Theon poking at her back because he catches up quickly with his long legs. And Robb, by his side, looking at him like they share the damn sky and everything that falls in it. Like they control the damn clouds. Jon runs to chase the last heat before it sinks into the ground and vanishes for good, and he prays that this time the snow goes easier on them. For his sake.