Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/ works/625745. Rating: Explicit Archive Warning: Underage Category: F/M Fandom: A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire_-_George_R._R._Martin Relationship: Sansa_Stark/Tyrion_Lannister, Tyrion_Lannister/Sansa_Stark Character: Tyrion_Lannister, Sansa_Stark Additional Tags: Loss_of_Virginity, POV_Female_Character Stats: Published: 2013-01-05 Words: 2607 ****** The first step home ****** by ImhereImQuire Summary Cersei tells Sansa that the best way to return to Winterfell is to get a child on her. She wanted to go home. The north was dying without her, she knew it in her core, and though there was no longer a happy home and hearty welcome for her to return to she was still a Stark. The Starks had long been the heart’s blood of the north, and Winter was coming; she had a duty to make sure that she was at Winterfell when it did, that the roofs were re-thatched and the grains were harvested, the orchard fruits gathered and dried… but what could she do? She was a prisoner by another name, of another name and there was little she could do about it. Or so she thought, until the queen summoned her to her solar. “Well, of course if you truly wanted to go home...No, it’s too awful,” the Queen smiled and gave that oddly high pitched giggle that she always did when she was saying something which wasn’t really at all funny. It was a sound which Sansa had once thought the height of sophistication, but had soon grown to despise. “What’s awful, your grace?” she asked, trying to hide her wariness behind a smile. “The reason that the Imp is dragging his feet over consummation is this: father has made it known that intends to send you both north just as soon as he’s put a lion in your belly.” She took a delicate bite of her tart. “Tyrion has clearly decided that he would rather stay in the capital… but you could change his mind, you know.” Sansa stared at her blankly, waiting for her to continue, and continue Cersei did. “What’s true of most men is doubly true of my brother, little dove,” she smirked. “If you can appeal to that awful little worm in his breeches then he will forget himself for long enough to deflower you… then you can go home. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Sansa almost choked on her honey cake, struggling to find a suitable answer. “If it would benefit the crown…” she trailed off, looking at the older woman cautiously, trying to discern her reaction. “... You will strive to be a wife to your husband in every sense,” the queen prompted. “I will strive to be a wife to my husband in every sense…” she parroted flatly. But she meant it. By the old gods and the new she meant it. Because she had to go home. That night she looked across at her new husband, watching him carefully as he read his book. The queen’s words were echoing in her head. You want to go home, don’t you, little dove… “Would you like to go to bed, my lord?” she blurted out, suddenly. He gazed up from his book. “I’m not tired, but if you are then you should retire, my lady,” he replied, and tired or not he sounded weary. That wasn’t quite the response she had hoped for. No heirs would be made that way. And winter was coming. Winter was always coming. She needed to be bolder, she realised. Braver.  “I meant with me, my lord,” she clarified. “Do you want to go to bed… with me?” His goblet was set very carefully down upon the table at his side, his breath catching in his throat. “I think that you know the answer to that well enough, Sansa,” he said quietly. “But it’s the same answer as it has been every night since our wedding. Why do you care to hear it now, and not then?” he asked, studying her with odd and eerie eyes. “What have I grown, Sansa? A nose, or three feet?” She had imagined it to be easier, that the moment she gave consent he would be upon her, and it was a moment before she could find an answer that might satisfy his pride. “It’s me that’s grown, my lord. I’ve grown fond of you. I thought it might make you happy.” She swallowed thickly. “As a reward for your patience”. His face softened in a way which astonished her, his expression a mixture of hope and awe which made her feel like a goddess. She could crush him then, her nominated keeper, and there was not a thing he could do to prevent it. Now she understood what the queen had meant when she had told her of the weapon that her more intimate charms could be. “I want it,” she said to him then, with all the conviction she could muster. “You are my husband, after all. And I am ready to be a wife”. Tyrion, for his part, could only nod, on his feet before he had registered the movement. “Lead the way when, my lady,” he said, sounding breathless and entirely devoted. She took a deep breath and stood herself, walking to the bedroom without a backward glance.  She could do this, she told herself. If she didn’t have to look at him, she could do this. But she was afraid, she realised, as she got to the bedchamber. She was afraid. “Sansa?” She looked down and there he was, concern writ clear upon his face. She had been given to believe that men in the grips of lust were godless and without pity, but he looked at her as though afraid she might break, aware that this was some pretense, and willing, she could see, to put it aside rather than press his advantage. He seemed in that moment.... a truer knight than any she had seen in the south. “I don’t have any family left, my lord,” she whispered, unable to disguise her own vulnerability and still convince him this was her choice. “I need this.” “A child?” he asked, sounding stunned. “And a home.”  “I cannot..” “Can’t you?” she asked, wondering if there was something which made him incapable. His lusts were a thing of legend after all, but she had never have heard of any bastards. He shook his head, dismissing her question with a sigh. “I’m capable.” “Then please?” she asked. He screwed his eyes shut, and when he opened them again he looked resigned, the way that she had felt on their wedding night. “Alright.” He said softly, putting his hands upon the mattress behind him and drawing himself up onto the bed, before patting the space beside him. “This isn’t how you envisaged your first bedding, I suppose?” he asked, trying to start some conversation between them, some small scrap of intimacy before they slid between the sheets. She sat gracefully, her hands clasped in her lap as her septa had taught her. “No, my lord,” she confessed. “Tell me how you imagined it.” His voice was gentle, and more than a little sad. “I… don’t know, in truth. I never really thought about what it would be like, my lord” “Tyrion. If we’re to do this then you should at least feel at liberty to call me by my name.” “Tyrion” she said. The name felt strange to her. The silence stretched, the tension heavy in the air until at last her husband could stand it no more. “Have you ever been kissed before?” he asked. “Once,” she said, her jaw tightening as she thought back to Joffrey. At the time it had been golden, but now the memory made her flesh crawl and next to that even the imp did not seem quite so bad. He seemed to realise his misstep and sought to change the subject, but there was only really one way that he could think to. “Lie back then, and close your eyes. I mean to make it twice.” She obliged, closing her eyes as she rest her head upon the pillow; awaiting the kiss with something which was not too far distant from dread. When her lips puckered in a childish gesture of acceptance Tyrion smiled wanly. She’s beautiful, he thought to himself with the same mixture of lust and self- loathing that he’d felt for her every night since their marriage. And she did want this, if not the reason which he had wished. It would be in her best interest and it would not make him any more of a monster. She felt the mattress bow beside her and she held her breath, but all that came was a greater blackness behind her lids. He had put the lamp out, she realised, hesitantly opening her eyes to the darkness. It was a small mercy, but one she appreciated. In the dark she need not guard her expression so carefully, and he… might be the knight of flowers, she thought to herself, recalling the words from their wedding night. She was still musing upon that when something brushed her cheek, soft as butterfly wings, and she could not decide whether it were his lips or his fingers, but it was gentle as it followed the line of her jaw. The only sound was that of their breaths, both ragged in their nervousness and so loud that it seemed to her that it filled the room. Another touch came, beneath her chin, and then there came a pressure upon her shoulder as he bent across her, and another press upon her lips, delicate and unhurried, and then another, upon the corner of her mouth. “Sansa?” he breathed, close by her ear, and she swallowed before answering. “Yes?” she whispered. “If you say the word I will retreat.” “Yes, my-“ she caught herself. “Tyrion.” That said his kisses continued against her ear and they remained surprisingly sweet, his breath hot and ticklish in a way which she hadn’t expected to like, though it was naught compared to the barest brush of his fingers across her cloth covered breast, light enough that she was forced to wonder if she imagined it. That brought a gasp from her and despite herself she wanted him to do it again just to be sure that it had happened... mostly to be sure that it had happened. It was not... unpleasant. Nothing came but a darted stripe of his tongue, delivered at joint of neck and shoulder to make her shiver and caused her to tilt her head, exposing her throat further. In the dark she need not contain herself, she thought, as she lifted her hair and drew it behind her head. He dragged his teeth down her throat but did not make to bite, though her breath halted in anticipation of it, awaiting a moment of savagery that never came. What came instead were four sweeping lines across her breast, and there was no way she could mistake it for imagination. This is the imp, she thought to herself. His hands were not long and sleek and elegant, he was no knight… nor shining prince, she thought to herself. But knights had beaten her, princes had stripped her of her dignity and her innocence, and he was tender and would take her home. When his fingers sought the hem of her nightgown she arched her hips, then, when he brought it only as high as her stomach she stripped it off herself, hoping that this will be hint enough. It felt good enough through the linen that she wondered how it would feel upon her bare skin, though it is not his hand which returns to her, but his mouth, as he bent over her, knees against her side. “Oh!” was her single exclamation as his teeth worried the nub against his lips, and her attempts to imagine some new prince were disrupted, for she couldn't focus on any man, real or imagined, when her body was so fixated on the sensation being wrought from it. She felt instead of thought. She experienced instead of imagined. He did this because she wanted him to, she thought to herself, as his hand slid up her thigh, and she does not deny it its path, her feet separating from one another. Because she has asked. That takes much of the nervousness away, as she recalled how she had felt in the solar, seeing him fall helplessly beneath her spell, how devoted he had appeared. She has the power here, she told herself, and that made it easier to open her legs. When he touched her there her breath catches. She had expected something more invasive, less dignified, but his hand only grazed the russet curls upon her mound, and it made her hiss as though burnt though she felt no pain. “Sansa…” he sounded as though he would die or kill at her command, and in that moment his loyalty seemed certain. When they married her to him they had thought to make her his, but she knew in that instant that instead they had made him hers instead. When I am queen, I will make them love me, she thought to herself as she spread her legs further in invitation and while she was shocked to find his mouth moving between them it was nothing compared to the shock she had after, when his tongue arched and darted, and he had made her cry out in the darkness. He brought her to shuddering with a skill which should not have surprised her, and she tensed and tensed, and tensed until she thought she might snap, only to go suddenly, abruptly limp with another cry which all but pierced her own ears. “We’re meant to be making heirs,” she reminded him, when she her chest rose and fell less rapidly. Her words were scolding but her tone was not, breathy and giggly and scandalised; perhaps even, if a man had hope enough to hear it, a little fond. He pulled himself up her body, his hands placed either side of her ribs, and she gasped as she felt him hard against her. “If I asked you to stop-“ she wanted to hear it while she had it in her to believe it. “I would.” the words were breathed heavily, given without hesitation. “Then I will not ask,” she said, shocked at the certainty in her own words. His mouth is at a height with her breasts, and his teeth are teasing but not cruel, causing her to squirm in a way which rubbed him against the folds of her sex and then it was he who moaned. “Deep breath now, my lady,” he whispered, as his hand moved between them, and his length is angled upward. She followed his counsel, and drew one, but it isn’t until she released it again that he pushed inside her, and though it hurt her a little she has hurt before, and it is less than she had expected, considering the talk of blood and pricks and terms that sounds as though there taken from the battlefield and not the bedroom. This was in her power, this was hers, and she owned it completely, placing a hand upon one narrow but not fragile shoulder as she gritted her teeth. There is a tear in her eye, but only one, and he is quick to distract her with his mouth once more, until she is able to relax, head thrown back in the pillows as he filled her over and over, making her gasp and, at one point, unexpectedly squeal. She could not have said how long it went on for… longer than she expected, though less than she would have liked, for it seemed a shame that her pleasure barely outlasted her pain, but she has been told that this is the way of it, the first time, and so she did not resent him. No, she did not resent him for it at all. Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed their work!