So I just had to write something after that new episode…which was well worth the wait! Inspired by 8x01 so there are spoilers for that-mostly cute romantic Jonerys stuff!
The dragons seem content to roam for food farther north, away from the hustle and bustle in Winterfell, and Dany is so happy to see them eating normally again that she doesn’t mind waiting a while before they fly back. The death of Viserion has been hard on all of them-she still sees Rhaegal hang back a little bit when he flies, as if he’s still trying to leave a space for his brother. Drogon has been more protective of him than normal, too-he never leaves the other dragon, even for a moment. His long midnight flights are over; his brother takes priority. Dany feels, in a way, that he’s finally grown up. She only wishes the circumstances for it hadn’t been so dire.
The little clearing is beautiful and remote, the air so clear and clean it hurts to breathe. The only sounds are the wind through the trees, the plash of water in the not-quite-frozen falls. It’s a spot of life and movement in what is otherwise a world of ice, and it comforts her in a way she can’t quite define. But it’s Jon who notices the cut in the wall that leads down behind the waterfall, a path that winds away into the dark. He scrapes a fallen tree branch along the stone until it catches and then leads the way, keeping a hand on her elbow protectively.
She can’t deny it feels a little wonderful.
The darkness only lasts for a few moments before the passage opens up into a large natural clearing, seemingly carved out of the rock. A hole in the top of the ceiling high above them sends clear afternoon light filtering down. Nearly half of the cave is water, but when Jon touches it tentatively he gives a little sigh of relief-and then, to her shock, he starts stripping off his outer layers of furs. “It’s a hot spring. We have them at Winterfell.”
She tentatively takes off one of her gloves and touches the water carefully-and it’s blissfully warm. It seems like a contradiction, the harsh winter air meeting the warm water-but Jon only takes off his jerkin and slips inside, closing his eyes and letting out a sigh of pure bliss. He opens one eye carefully when he notices she’s not following him in and raises an eyebrow. “Well? Aren’t you coming in?”
She’s desperate to wash off all the dirt from travel but the whole thing still strikes her as…odd. “Won’t it be cold?”
“Only a little. Only at first.” He flicks water at her and she can’t help laughing as it splashes her boots. “What are you waiting for?”
She rolls her eyes and strips, carefully folding her clothes and leaving them within easy reach of the water’s edge. The cold bites at her exposed skin and she slides in fast-only to let out a little gasp when she hits the hot water. It feels like every part of her body simultaneously tenses and then releases, leaving her full of contentment. “It’s lovely. You had these at Winterfell and you weren’t planning on telling me?”
“Of course I was planning on telling you-there just hasn’t been time.” She senses the weight that comes down on their shoulders when they mention Winterfell and how horribly everything is going. There hasn’t been time for anything, much less soft and romantic moments like these. She’s hardly even had time to kiss him-although she’s sure doing that would drive away whatever Northern lords they still have following them.
As he kisses her now, she realizes how much she’s missed it.
“I’ve missed you,” she whispers, letting her fingers run over his scars and watching the path the water droplets make as they trace down his skin and the flat plane of his stomach.
He laughs a little bit. “I’ve been beside you all this time.”
“Still. We’ve always been busy negotiating-debating, more like. Pretending that we don’t love each other, that we’ve never slept together.” She wonders how quickly Sansa Stark would kick her out of Winterfell, dragons be damned, if she knew just how many times they slept together on the boat ride north.
Even now she’s still hesitant to bring it up because she doesn’t know what it all means. She doesn’t know what they can be, whether this can change anything or if it just makes things more complicated. Love is a dangerous game.
More and more now she’s beginning to think she didn’t sleep with him just because he was handsome and they were both lonely and they would be able to go their separate ways when the wars were over. Perhaps there’s something more to it-an emotion she can’t name, even to herself. He’s staring at her now with those deep, soulful eyes she can lose herself in, and she keeps talking even though she’s not where her next words will land. “If things were different…would we still be keeping things a secret?”
“No,” he whispers, and his quick and assured answer makes her heart leap a little. “If things were different, we’d kiss like this for the entire world to see.” He comes to her now, cups her face in his hand, and kisses her like she’s giving him something vital-food to a starving man, a crown for a king. “Perhaps…one day…” It’s clear he’s just as frightened as she is about this.
“When you’re in Winterfell and I’m in King’s Landing and we only see each other every ten years? Maybe longer?” She can’t help the way her voice wavers because it hurts even to imagine that. He’ll be married to a woman from a good Northern family, with a brood of children that have his hair and eyes, that will gaze at her just as resentfully as his sister does. And she’ll have…well, she doesn’t know what she’ll have. Not any children, certainly.
“Don’t say that,” he whispers, and she doesn’t know exactly what he’s objecting to.
“There’s not a future for us,” she whispers, even as tears prick at her eyes, because it’s true, it has to be, and someone should say it even though it hurts.
His arms come to envelop her, holding her so close she can feel the beat of his heart. Between the heat of him and the heat of the hot springs she feels warmer than she has in days. “Dany-”
“I love you,” she whispers, each word tearing at her heart. “And that frightens me.”
He’s so quiet that for a moment she starts to feel nervous-maybe she’s badly misjudged things, maybe he doesn’t feel the same way. Then he says “I love you too,” in a voice that melts her bones, reduces her to cinders even though she thought she could never burn.
He will be her undoing, this man. She knows it.
They kiss and kiss for so long that their skin is wrinkled by the time they finally get out and change quickly, wincing whenever they’re too exposed to the cold. The dragons give her a strange look when they finally leave the cave behind, as if to tell her that she doesn’t fool them because her hair’s disheveled. She feels like she’s glowing from happiness.
He kisses her one last time before they mount their separate dragons. “Don’t fly too far ahead.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Suddenly she doesn’t want to leave the cave behind-they could stay here and never come back, letting the dragons catch their food (they look properly fed for the first time in days and she’s certain they enjoyed themselves) and leave the rest of the world to sort itself out how it will. All they need is each other.
But that’s not who they are, and they know it.
So instead they fly back and she watches him struggle to control Rhaegal, who’s always had a mind of his own, and laughs so hard her stomach hurts. And when she lands she extends a hand to help him climb off but they are so wonderfully cordial to each other that not even the most careful observer could believe what they’ve just done. But she knows, deep in her heart, and she carries that truth around with her wherever she goes.
Jon Snow loves her. And she loves him. And it changes everything and nothing, because maybe they don’t have a future but they do have a present.
And she will do everything in her power to make it last.
More of my Jonerys fics here