Love is a Battlefield (a Game of Thrones fanfic)

The Offer

Sansa

Received 3:45 AM:  It's been three weeks since you took down LiaB and I'm starting to get genuinely concerned that you will never put it back up online for all of us to read.  What on earth could be so horrible in your life that you want to deny us such a wonderful story? Your words are brilliant and I hope you realize that you’re only hurting your fans by denying us the beauty in your words.  You're selfish for doing so, wolfgirl23, I hope you know that..

Received 10:23 AM: Every day I hold out hope that you'll decide to put Love is a Battlefield back up for all the world to see.  The only thing I can think of is that you have a publishing deal in the works.  I wish that you'd confirm that, though, so we know.  I'm sure many of us would buy the book if you simply *told* us that you were planning on doing that.  Basically disappearing from the Internet as a whole for three weeks after your massive over-reaction/flip out is ridiculous.

-

"You know," Margaery says, curling into Sansa's shoulder as Sansa glares through the twilight gloom at her email app on her phone.  She hates this, and she hates that she cannot, in good conscience, turn off the messaging feature on the forums website.  She has friends online, friends that she doesn’t want to lose over this stupid story and the apparent bomb that Sansa had set off in taking it down.  "I don't think I've ever met a more demanding, self-involved group of people in my life." Margaery reaches up, fingers closing around Sansa's phone and pushing it down to rest on Sansa's stomach.  "You don't owe them anything."

"I feel like I owe them more of an explanation than I gave them," Sansa mumbles dejectedly.  She hasn’t had anything more to say though, and the messages go long-unanswered.

This has become a familiar conversation over the past few weeks, as Margaery's presence in Sansa's apartment had become more and more frequent.  Margaery theoretically lives with a bunch of her cousins in a big house in one of King's Landing's oldest neighborhoods, but she’s hardly ever there.  She tells Sansa that she and her cousins are very close, they are impossibly noisy and Sansa suspects that Margaery appreciates the quiet of Sansa's apartment.  Exams are coming up and Margaery's in her fourth year, her thesis is due soon and she's been working on it in every spare moment she can scrape from her busy social and academic calendar. 

Even still, she’s found time to foster this… whatever that exists between them.  Sansa isn’t sure that they’re dating, or even if she wants them to be.  She likes Margaery, she likes kissing her and she loves how easily things come with her.  She’s everything Sansa’s probably ever wanted in a companion.  She understands the need for silence that Sansa feels, but knows when to break it just as easily. 

Theirs is an easy companionship.  They go out with Renly and Loras occasionally; they linger too late in the dark of doorways, kissing in the light of streetlamps.  Loras calls them ‘streetlight people’ for that reason, and Sansa’s so impossibly happy that she’s found someone who’s changed everything about her mundane university experience up to this point.  She wants this to be something.  She desperately wants to, but the conversation always turns, it always flits away before Sansa can find the courage to spit the words out.  She knows Margaery would say yes, it’s the asking that’s proving impossible.

"You could always take your father up on his offer and actually speak to his publisher friend..." Margaery suggests.  "Or ask Professor Lannister, I'm sure he knows people as well, if you don't want to use your father's name to get you a favor."

Sansa rolls her eyes at the mention of her Sexual History of Westeros professor.  "Yes, I'm just going to tell the biggest letch in all of King's Landing that I used his class as a springboard to write a story about two gay guys during the War of Five Kings.” Sighing, Sansa turns to set her phone on her bedside table. She leans over the side of the bed to retrieve her charger cord.  "He'd probably ask for details on the good bits," she adds once she’s upright again.