"I hate these things."
"Then why are you here?"
"…"
"Ugh, you're such a girl. Take your dog and go suck face somewhere else."
"Hey!" Sansa pouted, frowning at her sister, then at Sandor for not defending her. He shrugged in response, and resumed staring down at the ominous board between the four of them. They—Sansa, Arya, Sandor and Bran—were in the Stark basement, having met up through a series of coincidences. Sansa was more inclined to call them unfortunate events, if they had led her here…
"It's creepy," she mumbled. "Why do mom and dad even own one of these?"
Arya eyed it intently, not at all with the same distaste or wariness that Sansa did. "Dad's family was always a bit odd. Remember Uncle Benjen? Always enjoyed going on those hikes in the Artic with, like, two other men and no supplies. For spiritual awakening, or something?"
"That," Sansa said primly, "has nothing to do with this dirty old thing." It wasn't really a fair description. Although old, it was most certainly not dirty. In fact, it looked rather clean, not as though someone had wiped it down, but as though someone used it regularly...
"Stop arguing," Bran ordered from his spot on Sansa's left. Sandor had carried him down at his insistence he be included, with that all-knowing look he'd acquired after his fall two and a half years ago. "Mom and dad will be home in ten minutes."
Without a word, Sansa and Arya made eye contact, suddenly cautious and chilled for reasons other than the object they were centered around. Their little brother had a habit of saying things like that—things about the future with such conviction—and it wouldn't be so creepy if not for the fact that they were often, you know, true.
"Fine," Sandor rumbled, looking unimpressed with the whole thing. Sansa fought an affectionate eye roll at his tone. Trust Sandor to be bored with a relic of the dead. "Let's get this over with then. How do you use a—what the fuck do you call this?"
"Language!" Sansa said sharply, and Arya said at the same time, "A Ouija board!"
"Ouija board…" he repeated to himself, ignoring his girlfriend altogether. "Right. And which dead guy do you plan on waking up?"
Arya, pleased with the turn of conversation, took over with such presumptuous authority that Sansa wondered why more didn't think she was like their mother like Sansa did. "We're going to ask our Aunt Lyanna for guidance. It'll be for our cousin, Jon."
"You haven't met him," Sansa interrupted, reaching out to touch Sandor's knee. They were all on bent knees, except for Bran who was more comfortable sprawled out on his belly with his elbows propped to keep him up. "He lives in Finland. His mom—our aunt—died years ago. I don't even remember her."
"Neither does Jon," Arya said with a frown. "I want to know if there's a way we can help him. He never felt accepted in our house."
And it was little wonder why. Catelyn, their mother, had never said so outright, but over the years Sansa had realized exactly how her mother felt regarding having a bastard nephew growing up in the good Christian family she maintained. Or tried to, anyways. Between an oldest son who had gotten his unwed girlfriend pregnant, a daughter who was dating a man eleven years older than her, another daughter who was…well, she was Arya, and a youngest son who liked to break things in his spare time, Catelyn's house was possibly the worst example of togetherness. But Jon had always borne the brunt of her frustrations with what she perceived to be her failures as a mother and wife, and Sansa hadn't realized it until it was too late, and Jon had moved out.
"I want to help Jon, too, Arya," Sansa told her the truth. She did want to help Jon, especially after treating him so poorly for so long. "But…calling on our aunt… That feels wrong, Arya."
"You stupid," Arya declared in her typical fashion. Sandor snorted and received a scathing glare for it from Sansa. "Aunt Lyanna loved Jon. She'll help us."
"It still feels wrong," she mumbled, unable to shake the edgy feeling.
"Help me sit up, then," Bran spoke up from the floor. "I'll need my hands." Sansa and Arya moved him into a comfortable position and folded his legs for him, before resuming their seats.
"Why do you need candles?"
As Sansa squeezed Sandor's hand, Arya answered him. "It sets the mood."
"Of what?" Sandor mumbled unhappily, eyeing the flames with immense displeasure. "Burning?"
"Death," she replied sharply, adding another lit flame to the mix. "Afterlife. The beyond. Now," she rubbed her hands briskly on the front of her pants. "Everyone, place your fingertips on the piece. Like so."
They all did as commanded, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. Bran looked calm as ever, blinking owlishly in the darkened room, while Arya looked nearly giddy with excitement. Sansa was plainly unhappy, while Sandor's gaze kept skittering back to the candles lying about the floor.
"O great spirits, we call upon the lost life of our beloved Aunt Lyanna, beloved sister of our father and mother of our cousin! Is she with us?" Arya's voice was hokey in its bellowing fervor, but her excitement was contagious. Sansa's heart was pounding at dangerous speeds in her chest.
Together, their hands moved the triangular piece to the Y.
(Sansa could've sworn she saw Sandor's arms flex in a way that strongly suggested he was doing the guiding, but Arya's excitement bubbled to the point where even she didn't think it would be funny to ruin in now).
"Aunt Lyanna, your son needs you. Help us help him. Do you know what he needs?"
Their hands had moved back to the center, but after hearing this, they moved back to the Y, seemingly pulled by the unseen forces of the spirits. Sansa glanced suspiciously up at Sandor and away. Yes, she could've sworn she saw him move his hands.
Arya nearly bounced up and down in her seat, but refrained. Likely because she knew it would risk knocking over one of the dozen candles scattered about, and thus risking Sandor's wrath (and Sansa's).
"Will you tell us, Aunt Lyanna?"
There was a long pause, the suddenly….
The four of them began to murmur the letters aloud as they passed each one. T. A. R. G.
"What the f…?" Sandor's query went unheeded.
R. Y. E. N.
"Ttttt…tar…gar…yen?" Bran asked with a frown, sounding out the word. "What's that?"
"Targaryen," Sansa corrected, a chill shooting down her spine. "I've heard of that name. Isn't he a politician in the south?"
"Used to be. He's a dead one now, little bird. And you're thinking of old Mad Aerys," Sandor said with a frown. "Your dad's pal replaced him though. Robert Baratheon. Aerys killed himself after failing at attempted mass murder. He was going to blow up the city—called it the new age for dragons. The man was a kook. Robert sort of pushed him out of hall."
"Ok," Arya said slowly, trying to wrap her head around this newfound information. "But…why would Aunt Lyanna want us to learn about Aerys Targaryen? How's that gonna help Jon?"
"Well, she didn't say Aerys, did she?" Bran pointed out. "She said Targaryen, is all. Maybe she meant someone else in the family."
"The whole family died out some time ago," Sandor said simply. "Last I heard there was just some girl living in Hawaii who wants to take over her dad's old job—Mad Aerys' last kid."
"The poor girl! All alone with that kind of legacy to live with," Sansa exclaimed, but to her surprise, Sandor laughed.
"I'll not feel too sorry for her, girl. The family is as rich as f… I mean, as rich as those Lannisters. Anyone fortunate enough to be in that family would be loaded. It's old money. Family money. She's rolling in it, I'm sure."
"Still…"
"Who gives a shit, Sansa?" Sandor asked, getting up and walking to the wall where the light switch on. As soon as the basement lights came on, he walked about blowing out the candles. "It's just a damn Ouija board."
Before Sana could answer, or before Arya could defend the mysterious communication device with the dead, the sound of a front door opening and closing distracted them all.
"Hide it!" Arya hissed vehemently. "Don't let anyone see it! Especially not mom. Actually, especially not dad, either. Neither of them."
"Wait—I don't even know where it goes!" Sansa's shout was met with an indifferent, put it somewhere! And she left. Sandor carried Bran upstairs and set him wordlessly onto his wheelchair, before stomping back downstairs to his girlfriend.
Sansa grabbed the piece and the Ouija board and went to stuff it back in its box, when Sandor reappeared suddenly.
"Wait," he said quickly, and knelt down at the board opposite Sansa. "Let's just ask one question."
Sansa's brows lifted into her hairline. "You? You want to talk to the dead? Arya's rubbing off on you." Her disapproving tone was ignored, and Sandor coughed in mock-theatrics, a parody of how Arya had acted right before addressing the great spirits.
"Oh great spirits, tell us how to spend our night together this Friday, for Sansa's date ideas are goddamn expensive, and my pockets are bone-fucking-dry!" Sandor pressed his fingers to the wooden piece, even as Sansa shouted in indignation, giggling despite herself.
"Hey! They are not expensive!" She pouted a bit. "Besides, I always offer to go Dutch."
"Shh, I'm getting something." And Sandor slowly, deliberately moved the piece. Sansa stood over him, watching, waiting, oddly on edge despite the fact she was certain he was steering the letters himself.
F…
U…
C…
"Sandor!" she shouted, stomping her foot. With a well-aimed shove, she sent her boyfriend toppling over, who was chuckling with deep, perverse laughter.
"We can't disobey," he pointed out mildly. "The Ouija board gave us our orders."
"You—you!" She scrambled for words, for something to express her anger. Here she was thinking he was going to be romantic…
"Aye, me. And you." Sandor reached out a hand and grabbed her wrist, tugged until she fell into his lap. "Friday night. All night."
She sighed, shook her head in mock-dismay. "You're incorrigible. And wicked. And…and…"
"And you're stuck with me," he declared briskly, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "Rotten luck for you."
"I just don't understand." He eyed her hands critically, one braced alongside the pumpkin's orange body while the other dug for the wet, mushy goop mixed with the seeds. "You don't like dirt. Or gardening. Or anything remotely disgusting. But this?" He gestured to her position in disbelief, "this is ok?"
Sansa shrugged. "It's soothing. Isn't it?"
Sandor frowned down at his own pumpkin, whose insides were in the process of being gorged out as well. "Yeah, sure. I just never thought I'd see you elbow-deep in pumpkin guts, is all, little bird."
Sansa grinned at him wordlessly, and resumed her careful scooping. He'd been ordered sternly to keep all the seeds, and throw the goop into a garbage bag Sansa had propped open next to her dining room table. The house was blissfully quiet—her brothers had moved out, and the little hellion she called her sister had taken their younger brothers shopping for costumes. Her parents were at work, and Sansa and Sandor had the house to themselves.
He hadn't planned on spending the afternoon carving pumpkins with her, but when Sansa had held one up with both arms wrapped around its wide girth, and stared up at him with wide, pleading eyes, he'd caved like a house of fucking cards.
"What are you going to carve in yours?" asked Sansa, scraping the inside walls now, nearly ready to start outlining the childish Jack-o-lantern face she'd found online.
Sandor shrugged. "Haven't given it much thought, really."
"Oh. Well you could always do one like mine! We could match!" Her cheery answer made him grin a bit despite himself. Chirp, chirp, chirp, goes the little bird.
"I don't think so," he murmured, eyeballing the goofy smile she planned on copying onto her pumpkin. It was the kind you would find in stores, with the missing teeth and the triangular eyes. Sansa was, if nothing else, strictly traditional.
"You could do…a cat. Or a witch. There's loads of pictures online, if you wanna print one off."
"Might as well," he rumbled, and wiped his hands before grabbing her laptop. With a black sharpie, Sansa began to draw the face on with a look of intense concentration, her tongue poking out slightly between the ruby red lips.
Focus, he scolded himself, and resumed scrolling down the webpage of pumpkin faces. Some of them were absurdly difficult, and Sandor didn't want to be at it all day. If he timed it right, he could do the damn face to Sansa's satisfaction, then spend an hour or so making out on her couch before leaving for work.
At last he found himself a suitable design, complete with a pattern to trace onto the pumpkin, and he printed it off while Sansa got out the knives. He made a face at one of them in her small, slim hands.
"Be careful," he ordered gruffly, watching her in his peripheral as she manipulated the weapon to do as she pleased. Sansa rolled her eyes at his concern, but her method was quite safe. She didn't put her fingers near the blade, nor did she push or pull at it exuberantly. Each move was executed with obvious deliberation and no energy wasted.
"What did you decide?"
"It's a surprise," he snapped, and she laughed loudly. The little bird always loved her damn surprises….
Sandor's took longer than Sansa's had, and she had nearly finished cleaning by the time he was done. His carving was punctuated with low curses and exclamations whenever his knife slipped or turned at an angle he hadn't meant it to do, but he smothered his anger down long enough to work through the pattern and have a presentable a-fucking-mazing pumpkin to show his girlfriend.
"Here," he grunted, and Sansa came running to his shoulder with a squeal of excitement.
"OOH, I love it!" Her gushing continued for a solid ten minutes, oohing and aahing appropriately at the unmistakable carving of a wolf baying to the crescent moon, until he finally got tired of it and hefted her over his shoulder, unwashed hands and all.
"Eugh!" she shouted, slung over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Reaching back she smacked his arms, his hands wrapped tight around her bum and thighs. "Your hands are sticky!"
"Aye, that's what happens when you shove them in pumpkin guts all day."
He dropped her on the couch in the next room without a word, and climbed atop of her. At once, Sansa lost all complaints, eagerly reaching out for him, spreading her legs wide enough for him to settle between. Why did I wear jeans? Sandor lamented, unable to rut against her due to the stiffness of the fabric between them. Each time he tried in the past (and he'd tried many times) it resulted in extreme discomfort in a matter of seconds.
Kissing Sansa was all well and good, until his hands touched her bare skin. Tucking her chin into herself, she reared back, horrified and squeamish. "EWW, Sandor, you really need to wash your hands!" Half-laughing, half-whining, she shoved at him until he got off her, muttering to himself all the while. Luckily the bathroom was just down the hall, and when he returned, the little bird had fetched their pumpkins from the kitchen table and placed them side by side on the floor of the living room. Hers with the childish smile and his with the crudely carved wolf's head.
"We make a good team," declared Sansa unexpectedly, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of the sofa. Sandor raised a brow at her, wondering how on earth she thought those were at all matching. But in the end he couldn't bring himself to shit on her pride, and dropped back onto the couch behind her.
"Yeah, we do. Now come over here, little bird, and let me see you howl."
He picks them up in his flatbed, a beat-up hand-me-down from his father, and peels out of the parking lot with his truck crammed with Starks and full to excess.
The sun is slowly sinking in the sky, a hazy blend of blue, purple and pink, with fiery streaks of gold and red on the horizon. But it's early yet, almost half an hour earlier than he expected to get them, and the lot is full of parents' cars with kids playing on the field, finishing halftime and ready to declare the winning team of the day.
"So," Sandor says, turning to his girlfriend of three years with a brow quirked at her. Her hellish sister and her downright wild brother sit in the back, on seats that are hardly seats at all. "What happened?"
"What happened?" Sansa echoes flatly, a sour pinch to her face like she just sucked on a raw lemon. "What happened? I'll tell you what happened. My sister is a fucking idiot."
"Piss off!"
"You are too, Arya!"
The cacophony of Arya and Rickon's shouts hurt his ears, already sore after a long shift at the factory, with clanging and rattling machines, angry foremen and honking trucks. All he really gets from it is the fact that Sansa's been pushed to the point of cursing, and that's a rarity by far. His interest piques, as if it wasn't before, when she texted him asking for an early pick-up.
Sandor whistles lowly. "Wow. What did you do this time, kid?"
He says it to piss her off. Arya likes to insist she's an adult—I know how to adult, you dumbfuck—but there's too much childlike humor to her for him to think of her as eighteen, rather than as the four year old she acts like.
"Well!" says Sansa, in her most unimpressed tone. He knows that tone well. He's been on the receiving end a few times. (More than a few.) "Arya has decided that she's tired of the word pussy being used as a slanderous word."
And then Arya interrupts in her social-justice-rant-voice, also a voice he knows well. "It's commonly synonymous to a vagina, which is often thought of as solely pertaining to a woman's body, and then it's used as a derogatory word. You know, to replace wimp or coward or just plain stupid. It's misogynistic, is what it is."
"Yes, ok." Sansa waves a hand at her impatiently to silence her, though she nods along throughout her social-justice-rant herself. "Ok, so Arya decided that she doesn't want the word pussy to be used as a bad thing anymore. So you know what she's doing?"
"What's she doing?" Sandor asks, though it didn't look like she needed any prompting to plow on.
"She's trying to use it as a compliment! She's going around calling every great thing she sees pussy!" And though he should've probably thought it through before doing it, Sandor throws his head back and laughs long and hard, parked at a stop sign with no one behind him. He can all but feel the smugness radiating off the raven-haired vixen in the backseat.
"It's not funny!" Sansa says, but she's smiling against her will, and Arya vaguely looks like the cat that swallowed the canary. Rickon, on the other hand, is fuming.
"Do you care at all that you got us kicked out of the game?" he shouts, turning on the younger of his sisters, fire in his blue eyes. Sandor glances at them in the backseat in his mirror. "We were winning!"
"There wasn't much time left," Sansa says with a gently reassuring tone, leaning over her seat to look behind her at Rickon's scowling face, arms folded sulkily over his chest. He's tall and gangly, twelve years old and moody enough to prove it. "I'm sure your team did well enough." But that's little consolation to a boy who wants to be number one to his teammates, and Sandor's sympathetic to the kid's plight.
Not enough to stop snorting over Arya's newest harebrained idea.
"So, what, some parent heard you say pussy about some cool shit?" he asks between laughter. Sansa's massaging her temples, sagged into the front seat with exhaustion.
"No," Sansa says with despair. "No, if only." She turns and looks out the window, as though reminiscing on a far-off day, when a Terrible Event occurred, terrible enough to warrant its own title, and it only makes him laugh harder.
"No," she repeats forlornly. "Arya wanted to cheer Rickon's teammates on."
"Oh. Oh." Sandor actually turns in his seat to see her face, both eyebrows up in disbelief. "Arya, you didn't…?"
"She did!" Rickon yells. "The goalie blocked the ball, and she did it! She shouted, 'Way to go, ya pussy!' She called him a pussy!"
"It was a Lannister who tried to score! I was telling the goalie he did a great job!"
"It was because the other player was a Lannister that we had to leave," says Sansa more solemnly this time. "His mother thought Arya was calling their kid a pussy, instead of complimenting the goalie."
"I tried to explain it," Arya whines. "No one would listen!"
"They listened." Sansa rolls her eyes. "They just didn't believe you."
"Yeah, because who the fuck calls a kid a pussy in front a huge crowd?" Sandor asks, and pulls into the Stark driveway, relieved to be at their place. Ned and Cat are out for the evening, and he's dying to crash on Sansa's bed and just—for the first time in a long time—sleep.
"And your logic doesn't make sense," Sansa points out patiently. Rickon doesn't listen to anyone anymore, just leaps out and runs for the front door. Sansa and Arya trail him, Sandor even slower than that. "Calling people a dick is seen as bad, too. Maybe we just shouldn't call people by their sexual organs, period."
"Whatever, you just don't understand me." And Arya stomps off to her room, phone in hand and ready to text her best friend, Gendry.
Sandor and Sansa stare at each other a moment as they stand in the front hall, and he wonders if she can see the tiredness in his eyes, the fatigue in his bones. She must, because she smiles gently, touches him under his eyes, and murmurs, "Why don't we go have a nap before dinner?"
Sandor sighs, relieved beyond all measure, and although all he can think to himself is I love you, somehow his mouth is awake enough to be a smartass and say, "Thanks, you pussy." And he ducks when she swings at him.
Sandor would mind his girlfriend's job less if she didn't have to close all the time.
It was only two weeks into September, and already the part-time gig she had working for the costume store in the city was a downright nightmare—and not in the cool, blood and gore way he liked. No, this was the super-shitty, positively terrifying can't-let-you-walk-alone-at-night scary, the sort of scary that haunted his dreams.
He had tried—seven hells, he had tried—to talk her out of it. It was school time, it was far from her place, the management gave her literally the worst hours imaginable. None of it worked. Sansa had come up with an answer to every gods-damned thing he said. I need the money for school. I can go there after class. You can come pick me up so I don't have to bus home alone.
Yeah fucking right, he'd wanted to say. Find your own damn lackey, he wanted to snap. But her wide blue eyes stared up at him with trust and devotion, and in the end he was hers, wasn't he?
So now he was left waiting in the car while she closed up shop for the fourth night this week. And Halloween was six weeks away. Seven hells!
The night was cool enough to keep him waiting in the car, the sole vehicle in the parking lot. Sandor drummed out a tuneless beat on his steering wheel and resisted the urge to turn the engine on and drive off. He looked down at the clock on his dash. 9:17. She was supposed to be done at nine, but Sansa wasn't known to slack on anything. If she felt the job wasn't done right, hell and high water couldn't drag her away from it until it was.
When another five minutes passed, Sandor, tired from working himself and irritable and hungry, swung open the car door, stepped out, and slammed it shut. He stomped the path from there to the front doors, and cupped the glass around his eyes, trying to peek in. It was a larger location, and there should have been two employees to close up, but alas, the fuckers were stingy.
From his stance, Sandor could see the sales racks lining the front of the store, could see the kid's section tactfully situated at the front left side of the store so the parents didn't have to drag them through the more scandalous sections of costumes, or the scary ones. It only took a couple seconds of knocking before a timid redheaded woman poked her head out around the back racks, skeptical and ready to bolt at a moment's notice—when she saw who was knocking.
Sandor watched her laugh to herself, relieved, and practically skip towards him. Her fingers worked the lock and pulled the door open enough to allow him entry, and shut and locked it again behind him.
"Hey." Sansa stretched onto her tiptoes to kiss his good cheek. "You could've texted me. I would've let you in."
Sandor shrugged. "Didn't know you'd be so late…"
"I know," Sansa blushed a bit, sheepishly. "I'll make it up to you. It's just that Amy and Dylan were supposed to take care of the new display posters, and there were a ton of costumes to return to the racks—it's like people have never tried on a costume before."
"I haven't," Sandor pointed out factually.
"No, you're a chicken." Teasingly this time, his girlfriend leaned in, grazed his lips with hers, and pulled away quick enough to give him whiplash. Not quick enough to keep his cock from twitching, mind.
Sandor scoffed, trying to recover from his surprise. Sansa had already turned to walk back to finishing her job, but he called after her half-heartedly, "If I'm a chicken, you're a damn cocktease."
"Like I ca-a-are!" she sang sweetly back to him.
Unable to hold it in, Sandor snorted, grunted and resumed his scoping of his little bird's store. Banners for the season were everywhere—literally everywhere—and sales signs were equally popular. BUY ONE GET ONE HALF OFF. BUY ONE GET ONE FREE. TWENTY PERCENT OFF LOWEST TICKET PRICE.
Sandor meandered through the aisles as Sansa flicked the lights on, illuminating the store so he could see all the hokey, funny and skimpy costumes for adults. He walked past the theatrical quality section and made for the ladies' costumes, the ones he enjoyed imagining on Sansa.
There was a long slew of pirates and barmaids, and then fairies and princesses. Superheroes made into racy women's outfits, movie characters, vampires and witches… Sandor eyed the racecar driver onesie with interest, and without thinking tugged it off the shelf.
She'll make it up to me, he thought with a smirk. The outfit zipped up the back, and looked like it would fit like a glove on the little bird's body. It didn't show off much in the line of skin, but it would show every curve she had—and Sandor had enough of an imagination to envision her soft silky skin under her costume without the extreme suggestion. This…this would be far more enticing than any of the other's would be.
"Hey, I'm done."
Sandor spun around to see Sansa striding towards him, her purse under her arm. She had her jacket on and her hair pulled free from its ponytail, falling about her shoulders in a way that made him lose his breath.
"Hey. Put this on." Sandor held up the costume and waved it in the air a bit, emphatically, desperately. With a scoff, she just looked at it.
"That's hardly a way to talk to your loving girlfriend."
He didn't bat an eye. "Please."
But Sansa had already turned on her heel and flounced off, hair trailing alluringly behind her. "Well, fair's fair!" she shouted back to him, diving in between the aisles of men's costumes. Sandor followed her slowly, a dark frown overtaking his features. He waited in the end of the aisle, arms folded over his chest in blatant displeasure.
"What are you doing, little bird?"
Sansa stood in front of the buccaneers section and stared hard at a few of them, tapping her chin thoughtfully with a finger. She laughed to herself a few times and shook her head, muttering under her breath, before she skipped ahead a few sections and snuck a hand through the racks, pulling a costume in a large size.
"I've never seen this on anyone. Please? I'm dying, and you're the best model for it." Sansa pushed it at him until he had no choice but to miserably unfold his arms and accept it gracelessly, scowling fiercely.
"You're kidding."
"No, please?" Sansa practically danced on her toes in front of him, giddy. "I'll go put this on right away!" And she skipped over to the change rooms and disappeared.
Sandor had half a mind to just strip his clothes in the middle of the store and change into them then and there. Actually he had half a mind not to put it on at all. Costumes had never been his thing, and the act of holding one hadn't awakened any desires to try it out. He'd always hated Halloween with a vengeance, ever since he was horribly disfigured and given the scariest mask a kid could ever buy. Any tricking or treating he did prior to that was long since forgotten.
But he'd sort of agreed to it, and Sansa seemed to be holding up her end of the bargain. Besides, he knew damn well that the cameras overhead would capture all angles of his bare rear, and he wasn't particularly fond of the idea. It would likely get Sansa in trouble at any rate.
Sandor got into the changing room next to hers and, grumbling all the while, shed his shirt and pants and ripped open the plastic bag fastened with a snap button and tape. There were several pieces to the outfit, and it took some time before he managed to sort out which went where, and in what order. During that time, Sansa donned her suit and left the room, walking away and then back to him quickly.
"These too!" She tossed a pair of cheap, grey, faux-fur boots over the door, making him groan. They were the right size, but it was really more effort, and it just made the outfit simultaneously hokier and more complete at the same time.
"Are you ready?" asked Sansa, her smile nearly audible. "Come out! I wanna see!"
And Sandor, being a good dog, obeyed.
And then he saw her, standing there. And for a moment, he forgot that he was wearing the ridiculous getup.
Sansa was wearing the outfit he had picked out, and oh god, it lived up to his every waking fantasy of her. Tight pleather, nearly plastered to her skin, in a one-shoulder, thigh-high dress styled after a racecar driver, with the matching helmet dangling under her arm as though she had just walked off the tracks. Knee-high boots finished the ensemble, and added a good couple inches to her height to boot.
His mouth went dry.
"You…you look…" Fuckable. Enticing. Ravishing. Delicious. "You…oh fuck…"
She giggled, and surveyed him in turn. "Mmm… You're not so bad yourself, mister." And he trusted her, because she was Sansa and she wouldn't tease him like that. Wouldn't call him something she didn't mean.
"I feel like a moron," he complained, but Sansa just ran her hands over his broad shoulders, feeling the fake fur pelt covering them with admiration. There was nothing in her gaze that indicated disappointment or idiocy.
In fact, her eyes went a touch darker, her smile fractionally wider. "You look…hmm… Strong. Brave. Heroic."
"Strong?" he laughed, not unkindly. "Brave and courageous? I'm not sure I've ever heard of a Viking referred to as heroic."
"Well, you are," and her smile went soft again, soft and sweet like Sansa. "My heroic Viking warrior."
Her hands entwined in his, and he felt lost in her for a moment. "Yeah," he murmured distractedly, eyeing the skintight costume she wore with fascination and desire. "Take that off."
She blinked, startled. "Wha…? Sandor, we can't—here, I mean?"
He gently guided her to the change room door. "No. Take it off and change. We're taking that home."
"Yours too!" she said quickly, turning on him before he closed her door. "Fair's fair!"
He faltered only a second, thought about how absurd he felt in the corny Viking getup. "Fair's fair," he agreed finally, and got ready to buy their outfits and head to his place, where they would surely just put them back on again (and maybe take them off together).