Fandom: Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire)

Characters: Jon Snow, Ygritte

Author: m_findlow

Rating: M

Length: 1,693 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 250 - Promise and Challenge 217 - Blanket (Bingo square)

Summary: Hiding what they're doing is easy. Hiding the truth is much harder.


Jon let out a little sigh as the wintery breeze caught in his hair, leaving a dusting of snow in its curls, which melted almost instantly. Even the snow of the north couldn't contend with the burning warmth of his body as he lay their tangled up with Ygritte.

The weight of the fur blankets piled on top of them was heavy but not uncomfortable. Strange to think that they should be lying naked underneath them when it was cold enough that you could die in your sleep even fully clothed. There was something about lying with Ygritte though that made his blood rush around his body at twice its normal speed. Her touches on his skin were like red hot fire, as red as the hair that fell around her face and tickled his chest when she was mounted on top of him. Her lips were so close that he thought if she screamed out in passion, he'd be able to kiss them and drive her scream right down into his lungs, silencing it. She didn't scream though.

Though they were mostly hidden beneath their furs, they were still close enough to the rest of that camp that everyone would be able to hear them. The rest of the camp knew of course that they were lying there in the throes of passion, but they didn't seem to care. If nothing else, Ygritte had their respect, and if she'd chosen Jon then that was good enough for them. Well, most of them anyway. It didn't stop Jon from trying to keep his laboured breathing under control, impossible as it was. The warg had it in for him and would have clawed out more than his eyes with that bird given half a chance.

Ygritte didn't care though. She wanted Jon and she wanted him to give himself to her as hard as he could. She bucked and writhed and groped and kneaded and forced herself onto him until their bodies were so slicked with sweat that he needed to lift their furs to let in some of that bracing air. It was worth it, he thought.

He tried to imagine what it would be like if they were back in that cave, now that he knew what he was doing and all the places he could touch Ygritte that would make her shudder and moan. If they could just have somewhere they could be alone, they could be as loud as they liked, and he wouldn't have to hide them under their blankets. He'd be able to see the way his hands gripped her slim curves, the hardness of her nipples even before he touched them, how her red down met his own darker one when two became one, and the expression on her face when he finally brought her to the edge and then over it. It was just a shame that none of this was going to last much longer. He was probably never going to get that chance.

Ygritte stirred on top of him, her sweaty body still clinging to his. 'This time tomorrow we'll be in the south.'

He couldn't suppress the smile that broke out on his lips. 'The north,' he corrected her.

'Not the real north,' she countered, as if that settled the argument.

No, not the real north, he agreed in his head. The huge expanse of ice towered over them, casting a shadow in its wake, dividing the world in two - her world and his world.

They were so close to the Wall now that he could hear the faint cracking sounds it made as the ice within it shifted, like an old man working the kinks from his weary back. The Wall felt large and indomitable but it was also alive, always moving and shifting, shedding what it didn't want and keeping what it did, growing stronger. It was a sentinel, like the trees from the Godswood he remembered at Winterfell, keeping a watch over all that lay within its reaches.

Tomorrow they'd climb it, defying its very existence, and breach the defence that had kept them safe from Wildlings and White Walkers for a thousand years. It sounded so simple, just to climb over the top, though he knew it was fraught with danger. It could cast them from its sides just as a dog might shake water from its fur. Scaling its great height could offend it in a way that no brutal wind or snowstorm could. To defeat the Wall was to put paid to the idea that it could keep them safe. It had to be stronger than them, steadfast in its duty. There were no guarantees that all of them would make it. He would make it, though, because he had to. Because he had to get warning to Castle Black of what Mance Rayder was planning.

He had no plan himself for how he intended doing that. Perhaps once they were south of the Wall they'd be able to find an abandoned holdfast and make camp. He could sneak away in the night, though he'd have to run the whole way so they couldn't catch up with him. A horse would have been better if he could find one. Or perhaps he and Ygritte could stay hidden away in that same holdfast and make love, leaving the Wildling party to their futile effort of storming Castle Black's front gates. He didn't think she'd agree to that. She hated everyone south of the Wall; they all did.

Having shared their campfires and eaten their food for as long as he had now, he could understand why. They were the abandoned people, those caught on the wrong side of the Wall when it had been built. Those that had suffered generation after generation of nothing but hardship and death. They hated one another as much as anyone else because the land was too barren and too hard for large groups to survive in any one place. Small clans stood a better chance of making it through the bitter winters and lack of food. Mance Rayder had done no small thing in bringing all the clans together and keeping them together. He meant to get all his people south of the Wall before winter came, and if he had to slaughter a thousand Crows to do it, then that's what he'd do.

Why Ygritte had chosen him was still a mystery. She'd have made a fine spearwife for any man, though he couldn't imagine her as the maternal type. She was too much of a warrior to ever give over to children. That he supposed was fortunate, since they'd been lying together for weeks and shown no signs that their union had caused anything to quicken in her womb. Perhaps she did something that prevented it, or perhaps it was more than his vows that ensured he should father no children.

'Ygritte,' Jon began, pondering his question before saying it out loud, 'when Free Folk marry, do they make promises to one another?'

She raised her head to look at him in the glow of firelight, scowling. 'Promises like what?'

'Like...' Truth be told, he hadn't really been to many wedding ceremonies. They seemed formal affairs to identify the bride and an agreement that they should take one another for husband and wife. Cloaks would be exchanged, feasts consumed and then the bedding ceremony. Betrothals were commonplace, particularly among the highborn. Love seemed not to come into it, but perhaps that was the way it was done under the eye of the Old Gods.

He took a breath and tried again to find the words. 'Like... do they promise loyalty or honor? Are there pledges made for protection or devotion?' He couldn't bring himself to ask about promises of love.

Ygritte frowned at him in that way she did when she thought he was speaking a foreign language. Perhaps he was. Wildling customs were indeed some thing he'd had to learn the hard way, and he still wasn't certain he'd perfected any of them. Enough not to get himself killed, but not much more.

'A man steals a woman from another man's clan to make his clan stronger,' Ygritte replied. 'A true spearwife doesn't just let a man take her, of course, but if he can, then they're considered wed. What do promises have to do with anything?'

Jon stopped and thought about this for a moment. 'So... when I captured you... does that make us wed?'

'You weren't Free Folk,' she replied, though she held her lips tight as she said it. She didn't sound entirely convinced that what she'd said was true, and that custom didn't override the fact that he'd been a Night's Watchman at the time. 'Besides, I captured you, remember? I brought you into our clan. To make it stronger.'

'I'm your spearwife?' he teased.

She gave him a shove, much harder than playful, but with Ygritte almost all things were rougher than he expected. She was a fierce as she was beautiful and he found that quality impossibly alluring. 'You'd make a terrible spearwife, Jon Snow.'

'And you'd never let someone put a marriage cloak around you,' he quipped back.

She scrunched up her nose in disdain. 'No one will steal me unless I let them,' Ygritte told him. 'And even then I'll fight like hell.'

He smiled at that, pulling her tighter to him. He didn't doubt she'd fight it. Already it felt like they argued like husband and wife, even if they still made love like lust-filled strangers in a whorehouse. He lay there in silence, letting her stew over those thoughts as they drifted towards sleep. He liked toying with the idea that he'd stolen her, even if she'd stolen him back. He only wondered if he'd fought her hard enough to win her respect.

'There's only one promise I'll make you, Jon Snow,' she muttered against his ear. 'If you turn Crow on us when we make it over the Wall, I'll put so many arrows through you they won't need to build a pyre to burn your body.'