Author's notes:
Thanks as always for the reviews.
This chapter features shirtless!Sandor, enjoy! :)
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Chapter 7
They had ridden into King's Landing about two hours before dawn.
He had commanded two of his men to bring Sellmer, who was miraculously still breathing, to a maester and had woken a couple of stable boys to see to the horses. He'd left his sword and armour at the stable.
If he got lucky, someone would find and clean it before he came back in the morning, although his gear was the last thing on his mind when he carefully tiptoed through the floors of the holdfast, trying to reach her room.
It was way past their usual time and he didn't mean to stay long or in fact at all, but he wanted her to know he was still in one piece. And regardless of the exhaustion that hung like lead in every part of his body, he couldn't imagine finding sleep before he had seen her.
As expected, she was asleep when he snuck into her room, but the small candle on her bedside table was still emitting a very soft light, bathing her face in warm colours.
He moved to touch her but shrank back when he saw the blood-smeared, grimy hand he had meant to put on her face; a face that looked like a child's when she slept.
Her eyes flew open at that moment and before he could gather his wits, before he could start to wonder what kind of welcome he would have after the way he'd left her, she had her arms around him and clung to him so fiercely, she knocked the wind out of him.
"You are back," she whispered, her embrace tightening even more.
Which, unfortunately, aggravated some of the bruises the swords of the deserters had left and he winced.
She pulled back with a start and stared at him, her expression rapidly turning from relieved to horrified.
"Oh Gods what happened to you?," she asked, gesturing in the general direction of his upper body. "All that blood…"
He looked down at himself and noticed that his undertunic was blood-soaked at both his arms and shoulders. Only now it occurred to him that he probably shouldn't have come to her first thing. She might have accepted him for what he was, but that didn't mean she would appreciate him showing up with the blood from his latest victims still all but dripping off his hands.
"Not mine… I think," he said.
She motioned for him to get up and walk and he surmised she was throwing him out, when she steered him in the direction of the table and quite unceremoniously shoved him into a chair.
"Here sit down," she said, fiddling with something or other in some dark corner of her room. "I'll take care of you. You must be…"
"Exhausted," he supplied helpfully.
"No, I meant…"
"Death tired?"
She materialized in front of him and fixed him with a cold, blue glare.
"Hungry," she said.
While hunger was truly at the bottom of the list of his various complaints, he lacked the energy to protest and meekly accepted the slice of cheese and piece of bread she put into his hand. He grew slightly alarmed however, when she started fiddling with the drawstrings of his shirt and made to remove it.
As tempted as he would be any other day, right now, he would probably fall asleep on top of her. He reached for her hand to stop her from doing what she was about to.
"Sansa."
"I have to get this bloody shirt off of you," she said, deftly freeing her hand from his. "I have to see if you are wounded and you have to be cleaned up before you can go off to rest."
He heaved an inward sigh of relief and closed his eyes, for now content to let her fuss over him. Nobody else usually did.
She moved the candle over to the table, carefully taking stock of his limbs and skin and finally declared him mostly unharmed.
"I can see only some bruising," she said, matter-of-factly. "And I guess you'll feel rather sore in the morning."
He already felt rather sore right now and wasn't about to contemplate how it would feel in the morning. In his experience, pain had to be dealt with one step at the time. He thought of himself as something of an expert on this.
He heard the sloshing of water being poured into a bowl, Sansa probably using the jug of water put there for her morning ablutions. He wondered distractedly what her maids would say if they found the water bloody, but then again, maybe for a woman that wasn't all that unusual.
She carefully washed his face and then went on to his neck, shoulders and arms. Then she scrubbed his fingers and even cleaned his nails, while he was slowly drifting off to sleep.
He vaguely sensed her standing in front of him, probably admiring her handiwork, when she interrupted his tranquillity.
"You are magnificent," she whispered.
His eyes slowly opened to find her gazing at his arms and chest with undisguised appreciation. Not just appreciation, he noticed when she came closer to put a tentative hand on his upper arm for a light caress.
"So strong," she breathed softly and it could be his overtired mind but he was pretty sure there was a spark of something else; of want and lust.
Sansa Stark, lusting after him. Who would've thought? If only he wasn't so fucking tired, he surely would've found a way to make use of that.
As it was, he closed his eyes again and let her look, not quite knowing what she found so interesting about his hide that was littered with a number of ugly scars from badly healed wounds and covered with wiry black hair. He knew he was more powerfully built than most men and some women seemed to find that attractive, but he also knew that Sansa especially had been way more interested in slender, smooth-skinned, willowy boys like the Tyrell whelp, or … well, Joffrey fucking Baratheon.
Her hand moved upwards on his arm but then she suddenly drew it away as if having been burned.
"Right," she said as if admonishing herself. "You're tired, have to get you cleaned up."
'Someone seemed to have come to her senses', he thought dejectedly.
There was some more fiddling going on behind him.
"Just lean back a bit more and I wash your hair, then you can go get some rest."
He did as being told, enjoying the feeling of clean water being gently poured over his head, of soap being applied and of her fingertips carefully massaging his scalp. He felt himself slip even more into a dazed state of almost sleep.
Much too soon to his liking, her fingers and the heavenly magic they were weaving were gone and the clinking of bottles could be heard behind him.
"If you put something on me that will make me smell like a flower garden," he warned sleepily, "I swear I'll make you regret it."
She heaved a dramatic sigh.
"I was afraid you'd say that," she said. "Even though just yesterday a friend of Ser Loras gifted me with this marvel here."
A tiny flask was pressed into his hand and he dutifully sniffed it and then quickly held it away from him in disgust.
"Ewww, this is awful," he complained, "it smells like a whorehouse full of flowers and not in a good way. I hope you do not consider wearing this."
She laughed quietly. "No, I do not," she admitted. "Although it seems a shame to have such a costly gift going to waste."
A spark of an insane idea flickered in his brain.
"Let me hold on to it for a while, maybe I can come up with something," he said.
She rinsed his hair once more, then got some cloth to towel it dry.
When she was done, she gently pried the half eaten piece of bread out of his hand and leaned in closely to put her hands on his shoulders and a very sweet, very light kiss on his lips.
"I'd love to keep you here for a while longer," she breathed onto his mouth, their lips still almost touching. "To admire your body at length."
He chuckled, his eyes still closed. He dreaded opening them to find, as he was certain to, that this was a dream.
"Alas, you are tired and dawn is close, so I am afraid I have to send you away."
He pried his eyes open at this reminder of reality, only to find her exactly where she had been in his dream, about half an inch from his face.
His heart gave a painful start and lodged itself in his throat, robbing him of speech.
Instead he pushed himself up and gathered his bloodied clothes to put them back on.
"You're not meaning to wear those again?" Sansa asked, aghast.
"I cannot run through the keep half-naked," he grumbled.
"I just cleaned you up, you'll get dirty again," she said and then turned on her heel to go rummaging around in some chest. He was mildly entertained at the thought that she would give him one of her dresses to wear.
"Here," she said when she came back. "It's your old Kingsguard cloak. I washed and mended it and I want it back."
She was using this special tone of voice that told him she wasn't in the mood to argue.
"It's mine," he said, not being able to resist teasing her.
"You gave it to me, it's mine now. And I am not joking, I want it back."
He gave her a cloak, he mused, his drowsy state of mind making his thoughts flow mellifluously through his head, seemingly unhindered by reality and reason. A cloak and later a kiss and somewhere along the line a promise of protection, too.
And unbelievable as it was, she had given him her kindness and she took care of him and returned his kisses.
Wasn't theirs a perfect union?
Like in a dream, he took the cloak from her and let the heavy, white fabric flow free, until it limply hung in his hand. Then he threw it around her shoulders, grabbed it with his other hand and drew her towards him until only an inch of air separated them.
"With this kiss I pledge my love," he whispered, "and take you for my lady and wife."
Sansa's eyes widened at his words and when he leaned in to kiss her, she stopped him with both her hands on his chest.
'Please,' he thought. 'Please just let me dream a while longer.'
"With this kiss," she said in her no-nonsense tone, "I pledge my love and take you for my lord and husband."
They kissed with closed lips and then he took the cloak from her with the solemn promise to bring it back.
He stumbled back to his little room barely staying on his feet, feeling for all the world as if he was rip-roaringly drunk and about to fall face-first down the next set of stairs.
Good luck to anyone trying to wake him for the next several centuries.
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