That same expectation she felt just then, wallowing in the mire of unvoiced agreements, contracts signed in blood and sheer resolve – it would crush her, eventually. She would languish away under the weight of it, or she would burst free and destroy every last notion of it. Only time would tell. Baelish privately hoped he might be Sansa’s Lysa. What grim poetry, what absurdly perfect happenstance; he’d teach her how to hone that violence she felt and knew not what to do with, then he’d sink into it when it became too much.
Did Sansa believe Petyr to be in distress? Perhaps he was. Perhaps that decorous display of unwashed glasses and rumpled clothing spoke to some sort of hurt inside the man, though he would almost certainly not admit to it, and never to her. More likely, however, was that it spoke simply to a pattern. How well did Sansa know Petyr? Really know him? Every conception of him was formulated on a basis that she was allowed some sort of intimate glimpse into his life, but did she have any solid evidence to substantiate such a hefty claim? Oh…yes. He’d saved her. He’d saved her where he’d saved no one else. Intervening first with her very life, and then whatever notion of her chastity still existed. Something about her drove Petyr to action; such profound intervention from a man who had for many years done little more than idly spectate spoke greater volumes than any warbled declaration of devotion ever could.
The look in his eyes when she rose from the couch in agreement, that spoke volumes too. Petyr’s practiced persona, keenly sculpted, refined smile, immaculate body language – it always left a deadened void to be found in those eyes of green and gray. Now, watching her step towards him, there was something almost predatory. It was so easy, so easy, Sansa did not even make Petyr work for it, and this placed her fundamentally on a level far beneath him, putting her at an inherent disadvantage to each and every of their encounters. Mutual satisfaction had long been an unspoken pact, but to what end? Under whose terms? It was Sansa who flitted time and again to land at his stoop in blatant solicitation; it was Sansa who more often than not initiated any interaction between them, sexual or otherwise; it was Sansa who sought to repair whatever torn ligaments and nerves had been shred and snipped by the Capitol’s greedy wiles.
It was Petyr who looked at her as though she were a lone fawn wandering into the den of a hungry wolf. It was a hungry look, an insidious look, somehow both subtle and unspeakably vulgar at the same time. Her hand, smaller but far from tentative, slipped into his, preparing to guide him, guide him, up the stairs, as though it were suddenly she who stood in control. Petyr found this amusing; a smirk flickered across his mouth. Each time she looked back, drawing him nearer, his eyes were on hers, dark, shadows of drink and sleeplessness lurking at the planes beneath his eyes. There were no indecent looks down her form, no lingering gazes focused on her ass. Petyr was focused only on her. By the time they reached the landing of the second floor, Sansa’s agency paid off. Petyr stood just behind her, beside her, and then, against her. His was a firm lean, pinning her between himself and the wall, one hand still tangled with hers, the other sliding around her waist to pull against the small of her back, joining their abdomens in lurid press.
“It doesn’t take much…” he mocked. Whether he spoke to the relative lightweight status of her drinking, or her willingness to rut with him wasn’t made clear. There was a silvery glint to grinning eyes as they washed over her face, settling on her lips. Petyr’s mouth parted, his head a telling tilt as though he intended to slant his mouth across hers and stake claim. “You feeling it yet?” That was clear: he spoke of the liquor. Was it warming her blood, pooling in her tummy, hazing her mind? Is that what he wanted? With a slight lean he brought himself ever closer, the tip of his nose a drag along her cheek, up and over in an arc, until his mouth was at her ear, until she could feel the wash of his hot breath against its delicate shell. But he didn’t nip at that sensitive bit of flesh, didn’t drag his tongue lewdly along her lobe. The hand entwined with hers freed itself, drifting fingers up her side until they reached the neckline of her plain shirt, coasting along its hem. The touch was so light, utterly unobtrusive, almost gentle in its caress as it teased over the protrusion of her collarbone and stole away into the hollow of her throat, up the esophageal column, and then nestled beneath her chin as he leaned back enough to again look her in the eye. There was still a darkness in his, that marauding design all too clear. Sansa’s eyes were blue. Beautiful, beautiful blue.
Another smirk crowded his features, and then he was turning away, walking down the hall and into the bathroom. The sound of the sink turning on and water pouring into the basin echoed out, followed closely by the louder, more prominent belting of the shower stream. When Sansa followed him in, he was already smearing a layer of thick, fresh-smelling foam over his the bits of his face darkened by stubble where he stood above the sink. The shower door was left open.
That seemed intimate, didn’t it? Too intimate? Despite Petyr a hundred times over being privy to Sansa’s prepping process, not once had Sansa ever witness the man in the midst of grooming. Not so much as a buff of the nails or an intentional adjustment of hair. Now he stood poised, razor in hand, bringing the blade carefully down over his face, swiping away unruly hair and cream and flicking it away into the sink, leaving behind a tract of smooth skin. After a few repeated motions of this, Petyr’s eyes finally diverged from the task at hand to accost Sansa in the mirror. The heat of the shower stream was starting to waft out in wispy trails of steam. “Well?” he asked, an expectant lift of one brow. “Go on then.” That he expected her to disrobe and enter the shower first was, perhaps, unfair. It seemed intentional, and any notion of such premeditation would only be confirmed in the creeping twitch of one corner of his mouth, his gaze alight with the sort of gleam that could be found in a cat who delights in first playing with his prey before consuming it. Petyr’s stare was one of wanting; he wanted her to shed her clothing, he wanted her to step into that shower under the scrutiny of his heavy gaze, he wanted her naked and wet and vulnerable.
Sansa knew Petyr as well as he did her — that is to say, not in the slightest. He saw her only in situations of desperation, a protracted state-sanctioned prostitution gracefully designed to prevent any delineation between fantasy and truth. Without the Games her desire failed to exist. It lurked, trapped within a vacuum of Victory, as isolating as it was freeing, shifting quickly from idle distraction to reliable habit. Yes, Petyr saved her. But the creature he pulled from stinking muck by virtue of a lecher's fortune would never again resemble a mother coveted. Her strength came from a different place now. Not the careful teachings handed down across generations, but through suffering, that exquisite intimacy of witnessing in flesh what so many others salivated at from a pixelated distance.
And it was there Sansa knew her stubbled mentor far better than Catelyn Tully ever might have. Did a young Petyr dream of becoming his best self in honor of childhood infatuation? Were his fantasies filled with effulgent white, that supernal glow reserved solely for love pure and true? No such promise lay with the ruby-haired siren dragging him upstairs. Loss and pain joined in her belly, black like tar, like hell, like hate; the Games put them there, provided a promethean spark so they might roil inside her, coating every organ. Alongside her family Sansa almost forgot that poisonous coating, yet like drew to like, and in Baelish's company — in his arms — she found at last some acceptance of its hold.
Did mutual contamination condemn their affair? Or merely assure its longevity?
Desire blinded her to the avaricious gleam in grey-green, the girl focused on guiding Petyr to his room, on the tacit consent that she could stay. Beneath illusory appearances power crackled between them: Sansa's naive faith in where it lay, Baelish's assurances as to the truth. Heat spread along her nape and shoulders, peach-fuzz hairs prickling with a prey's primal awareness. Sansa attributed it to lust, nothing more. At the landing she paused, unsure of which door led to his shower, his bed, but Petyr allowed no time for pause. Pliable, she molded herself between wall and man, sapphiric gaze fringed with slackening copper lashes, lips parted on a breath that threatened to become a pant. Tension shifted to exertion, need for resolution grappling with the delectable pleasure of uncertainty. Wanton. A thousand sponsors would beggar themselves for but a few moments alone with that expression of unmitigated hunger, of utter submission.
Only Petyr was privy to it, still.
So too could only he could boast of knowing how distilled liberation warmed the girl to lewd touch and licentious suggestion. Sansa trusted him; if not with her heart, then at least with her general well-being. His advice to do no more than indulge an illusion of intoxication did not go unheeded; tipsy flirtation, boozy relaxation, and late night effervescence were all well-constructed acts in the Capitol, rather than the very real results of overindulgence. But here? Sansa felt it. Weightlessness in limbs that seemed to move well after she bid them to; a growing fuzz at the edges of already frayed thoughts; warmth indistinguishable from the heat spreading out between her thighs. "Mm-hmm." Theirs was a ballet of nuance. Eyes lidded, then closed, her cheek drifting to brush feather-light against his. Idle fingers toyed with the hem of Baelish's shirt, nails occasionally grazing over sensitive flesh beneath. In darkness Petyr became a force, a sybaritic specter the mere suggestion of whose touch kept her in thrall.
Ah, and what he suggested! When wandering fingers dared caress suprasternal valley a breath at last caught in her slender throat. Imagination wheeled towards entertainments far more sinister than the unscrupulous advantages already taken by man and girl. Behind a trembling curtain of black Sansa awaited tightening fingers, a first planting of flowers marbled blue and purple, that sharp panic when breath would not come, when she would feel, acutely, the cry of every nerve in every limb. But Petyr's grip never tightened, knuckles instead settled at the soft underside of her jaw. A tempest stared back at her, all green banished from those eyes so that only clouds of slate remained, lighting arcing around pupils of blackest ebon.
It would not take a fool to lose themselves in that storm, venturing into its heart never to return.
A moment of faltering balance and she followed him, tentative. Her feet pressed back down the plush fibers not yet restored from where Baelish just trod. Sansa would remember later how no pictures adorned his walls, nor were there tables artfully topped with knick-knacks or mementos. It might as well have been the corridor of a hotel she walked down, though even such temporary lodgings attempted more personality than the seemingly more personal wing of Petyr's home.
At hall's end Sansa ventured through the growing billow of steam, blinking against the damp.
Until now a perfunctory air lingered about their liaisons. For all the sweat and seed that stained them, the lovers seemed to be silencing a base urge rather than satisfying latent desire. They did not even indulge in the simple pleasure of undressing, with eyes and hands raking over naked flesh. A few adjustments to buttons, zippers, and ties sufficed, just enough to free those parts essential to swift climax. No matter how those habits changed in the weeks or months to come, no image of Baelish disrobing would ever rival the nonchalant intimacy of his routine witnessed then. To watch made Sansa feel complicit in some crime whose pettiness was exceeded only by its prurience. Speech stirred her. Ephemeral droplets coasted and drifted through the tiled space, alighting at last on the edges of a trap laid, its edges shimmering, wavering, disappearing again. To escape was to forsake him, rejecting all gravity of her previous pleas. Sansa could only step into it willfully, unshaken.
She waited until razor's rasp ceased, Petyr's eyes shifting from the task of his shaving to the girl who lingered some distance away in the mirror. Staring at him in fogged glass Sansa toyed with the hem of her shirt, much as he had, before drawing it slowly up and over her head. Long ruby hair tumbled down, though it did not quite obscure the lace covering her breasts. A Capitol garment, unmistakably. Pale cream almost as light as her skin dipped low over each swell, the pink curve of her nipples barely visible through the swirling pattern. Still she stared, daring him to look away. Her trousers came next, resigned to the pile atop her cottony blouse, peeled away to reveal matching panties. For several moments Sansa stood there, arms slack at her sides; whether it was for Baelish to appreciate the vision or for her to grow accustomed to his unbroken scrutiny remained unclear.
She shimmied free of her underwear first, still bare between the legs from her stylist's most recent attentions. A snap of elastane and her brassiere vanished. That nude apparition lingered for but a moment reflected beside Petyr before Sansa slipped into a shower's sheltering opacity. Within seconds her skin turned rosy with heat. Absent were the dozens of potions that punctuated her bath, replaced with the simplest, though not the cheapest, soaps. She caressed a blue-green bar, her fingers coming away smelling of him.
From glassy confines a quiet entreaty echoed: "Don't let me distract you."
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