December 31, 2015

Mark was nice enough. Sansa wondered if her mother's meddling, by setting up this blind date, might actually end up being helpful. For once.

The only tarnish on the evening, which Sansa considered minor in this day and age of tech-obsession, was that he seemed unable to stop using his phone. Throughout dinner, Mark's gaze kept flicking between her and the phone, which he kept canted at just the precise angle that she couldn't see what he was doing.

Everything was proceeding nicely until the food arrived and cutting his steak proved more challenging than Mark could accomplish one-handed. He tucked the phone between his chin and shoulder, trying to slice his beef and maintain their conversation while doing so, and looking kind of ridiculous, Sansa had to admit. He tried to pull off a jaunty shrug, and that's when his phone fell.

Onto his steak, screen up.

Revealing that, rather than having a messaging app open, or even Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, he'd been watching porn.

Really filthy porn, if her eyes weren't deceiving her and that really was a shoulder-length black rubber fisting glove being enthusiastically utilized for its intended purpose.

He correctly read the expression on Sansa's face and motioned for the waiter as he attempted to clean jus off his phone with his less-than-absorbent polyester napkin.

"Can we get our meals wrapped to go?" he asked wistfully.

The waiter, sensing tension, nodded briskly. He snatched up their plates and trotted off to turn their lovely dinners into doggy bags.

"I'll… just go wait in the lobby," Sansa told him, and stood.

"Good idea—" Mark began, rising, but she interrupted.

"You wait here." There was no room for disagreement in her tone.

"Um. Yes. Okay," he mumbled, and sat back down while she strode from the main dining room. Her last glance of him revealed he was once more staring avidly down at his phone, not appearing too chagrined at this turn of events since he still had plenty of porn to watch.

Sansa tapped one expensively-shod toe on the foyer's shiny marble floor and stared out the glass door. The rain-slick street reflected the red-and-green Christmas lights that should— if the gods were merciful— be taken down soon. Tonight was New Year's Eve, and she felt six weeks of relentless holiday cheer was plenty. She was ready for it to be over so she could settle into her late-winter funk that usually consisted of her daydreaming about summer and wasting too much time shopping for 'the perfect bikini', which she would never end up wearing because she ended up being too busy to get to the beach.

She sighed. Her mother deemed Sansa, at the age of twenty-six, officially old enough to 'think seriously' about getting married and starting a family. Sansa's own ambivalence toward those things took a clear back seat, in terms of Catelyn's priorities. Desperate reminders that various others of her children had already provided her with several grandchildren, and two more were on the way, were disregarded as irrelevant.

Catelyn had decided that if Sansa was going to shirk her duty to snag a man and start popping out babies, it was up to her determined mama to make it happen.

Thus, Mark. He was a client of Catelyn's headhunter firm, and everything she could hope for in a son-in-law: okay-looking, reasonably polite, not too stupid. He had a college degree and a decent résumé, which was to Catelyn an indicator of employability and thus financial security, the two most important traits for a son-in-law to have.

In a weak moment after breakfast on Christmas morning, while watching the grandkids opening their gifts and shrieking in joy, and feeling a pang of Fear of Missing Out, Sansa had agreed to let her mother fix her up on a blind date, the results of which were being handed over to her at that very moment by the waiter who'd duly boxed up her untouched supper.

He turned, the other doggy bag in his hand, with clear intent to bring it to Mark, but Sansa's temper snapped— just a little, just as much as it ever did, which wasn't very much at all— and she snatched it from his hand before darting out to the waterlogged sidewalk and down the street, intent on hailing a cab home and then dining lavishly, all by herself. The little flame of satisfaction for sticking Mark with the bill and depriving him of his meal kept her warm most of the way home, but by the time she let herself into her apartment building, it had faded and left behind a chilly lump of resignation in her stomach, which curdled her appetite entirely.

She was lonely.

It didn't seem as if it were possible. She seemed, at first glance, to have a good life: she was kept busy with her job as a fashion journalist, and both her family and two roommates tended more toward rowdy than calm, so there was always something to do, and someone to do it with. Her life was a whirlwind of print deadlines, drinks after work and mini-breaks to the seashore or skiing. On paper— or on Instagram, same thing these days— she seemed to have the perfect cosmopolitan existence.

Wherefore, then, her longing for quiet nights in, with someone to share a home-cooked meal, then cuddle as they watched TV?

Sansa heaved a sigh and stepped off the elevator just as the heavy metal door to the stairs leading to the roof slammed shut with a clang! Then the apartment door across the hallway from Sansa's opened, and a large redheaded man stepped out, brandishing an umbrella like a sword.

"Sandor, you dumb fuck, you forgot—" His shrewd green gaze perceived that the sole occupant of the hallway was Sansa and he cut off abruptly. "Oh, hey, Sansa."

"Hi, Tormund," she replied, her voice warm, and smiled. She concluded that his roommate, one Sandor Clegane, he of the monumental build and savage facial scarring, had been the one to take the roof stairs. She knew he liked stargazing from up there, and though tonight was overcast due to the freezing-cold rain, their dingy apartment building's lone claim to fame was a clear and unobstructed view of the Flatiron Building, from which descended the lit-up ball signifying the transition into the new year.

"He's going to freeze his ass off up there," Tormund stated with grim satisfaction. "He only just got home from a date. Why couldn't he wait another twenty minutes and watch it on the TV?" He shook his head, puzzled. "He's a glutton for punishment."

More likely that he was tired of hearing Tormund and his girlfriend, Sansa's roommate Brienne, billing and cooing like a particularly sick-making pair of mated swans. Sansa had a limited tolerance for it herself. If Brienne was with Tormund, and their third roommate Margaery was at some hellaciously noisy New Year's party with her boyfriend, Bronn, that meant Sansa would be all by herself when 2016 turned into 2017, and suddenly that seemed unbearably awful.

"Give me the umbrella," she told Tormund. "I'll take it up to Sandor. I don't mind."

She didn't know Sandor very well— they were far closer to being acquaintances brought together by mutual friends, than friends themselves—but what the hell, she figured. Better than sighing over her extravagant meal all by herself.

Tormund didn't have to be convinced to hand over the umbrella; he had a six-foot-three Valkyrie to return to. He thanked her swiftly and disappeared back into his apartment.

Sansa juggled the umbrella, her purse, and the two doggy bags while she fumbled with the key to her apartment. Once inside, she set it all down and went to her bedroom, exchanging her strappy heels and form-fitting minidress for yoga pants, a sweatshirt, and thick socks under Uggs. She stuck her keys in her bra, snatched up some blankets from the sofa, snagged forks and knives from the drawer, and made her heavily-laden way to the roof.

Tormund made fun of Sandor's propensity for spending time on the roof, but Sansa knew something Tormund did not: that there was still an old dovecote up there, with an overhang to protect its former occupants from the elements, and it was a snug and waterproof little place for when you just wanted to chill by yourself in peace and quiet. She had told Sandor about it, sensing in him a kindred introverted spirit who needed a goodly amount of quiet time away from his boisterous ginger roommate.

Sansa tried to be as quiet as possible, wanting to sneak up on him, but Sandor apparently possessed the ears of a bat, because when she sprang at him from around the corner of the dovecote, he just quirked an unimpressed eyebrow at her from where he was sitting on a blanket of his own. It was cold up here, but dry and kind of cozy.

"Between your stomping on the gravel roof, and the way those paper bags are rustling, you might as well have had a brass band announce you," he drawled.

Sansa pouted, creating a fluffy nest of blankets for herself before plopping down at his side and unwrapping the food.

"No steak for you, then," she replied serenely, and cut herself a big bite of beef. It was still warm, and dripping juices, and out of the corner of her eye she could see his formidable nose twitching at the smell of it.

"You're a cruel woman," he rumbled at her, and leaned back on his hands with a scowl.

"And don't you forget it," she agreed. "That'll teach you to be rude to me."

He snorted a laugh. "And what if I just took the steak from you?"

"Then you'd better start sleeping light, because I will get back at you when you least expect it," was her prompt reply. He only snorted again, indicating what he thought of her threat of retaliation. "But since you're such a huge baby…"

She handed him the other doggy bag and he eagerly set to demolishing it.

They ate in silence for a while, listening to the trickle and patter of rain outside their shelter and the dim sounds of cheering and shouting from the crowds, one block over, waiting for the ball to drop. From where they sat, they had a perfect view of where the lit-up ball swayed on its pole, awaiting only the command before descending in welcome to another year.

Sansa finished her meal and snuggled back into her second blanket, casting a critical eye over her companion. He was wearing jeans, as ever, but his shirt was slightly less disreputable than what he usually wore, and his hair looked as if he'd tidied it with an actual comb instead of just his fingers. He'd been on a date. But if he were home already, it clearly had gone as well as her own had.

"So what went wrong?" she asked, therefore.

He slanted her a look without turning his head. She knew it disconcerted him when she could discern things without being told. It always seemed to surprise him that she could be pretty and have a brain in her head.

Sandor grimaced. "Thought I recognized her when I picked her up. Halfway through dinner, I remembered where I'd seen her." He paused for effect. "Spit-roasted between two dudes on PornHub."

"Oh, no!" Sansa burst out giggling, ignoring the evil glare he shot her way. "I think tonight's date theme was 'porn' all-around." She told him about her own evening, and shot him an evil glare of her own when he began to laugh that deep belly-laugh of his.

"It'll be okay," she said when they'd both settled down. "The next dates will be great. Right? Right." She held out a fist for him to bump in solidarity. He looked at her oddly, then very carefully touched his own ham-sized fist to her comparatively tiny one.

"Right," he agreed, but his tone clearly said he was humoring her.

The cheering from the street grew louder, and the glowing ball began its ponderous descent.

"Here we go!" Sansa couldn't disguise the excitement tinging her voice, despondent though she was feeling that night, and Sandor quirked her one of his half-smiles to hear it. With ten seconds to go, she began chanting along with the countdown, poking his shoulder until he, with great reluctance, joined her for the last five.

"Happy new year!" she shrieked at him, laughing when he winced at her piercing volume, and planted a noisy smooch on his breaded cheek. "This year will be it, Sandor, I feel it! We'll have wonderful dates and maybe find The One for each of us."

Sandor rolled his eyes at her and heaved himself to his feet, beginning to fold up his blanket. "Yeah, I believe you completely," he said, not sounding convinced at all, and plucked the umbrella off the ground.

Sansa stood up, too, gathering up the styrofoam boxes their meals had been in, and her blankets, and waddled after him toward the stairs.

"I'm sure my next blind date will go better than this one." she told him.

He grunted. "I do not share your faith about that. At least not for any dates of mine."

"Ooh, when you have another one, text me when it's over, tell me how it went?"

They had paused in the hallway between their apartments. He grunted again.

"You just want to laugh at my shitty luck."

"I'm giving you the opportunity to laugh at my shitty luck, if it ends up the next guy is a turd like Pornhub Guy was," Sansa countered.

The prospect of her also having a lousy date cheered him, and he quirked a tiny half-smile at her.

"Fine," he said, and disappeared into his apartment.