I did it, I did a porn chapter in a thunderstorm – many years later though when they're married and living in Winterfell.

24.

Spring brings with it all the sweetness and promise of summer – and storms. He finds her on the battlements where the lightning split the sky. She has her face turned into the rain, arms outstretched as though she is conducting the thunder. Or she is flying through it. He remembers that.

So much has happened since then, but in the storm, up high with the smell of rain and stone and the cindery scent of thunder he remembers as though it was yesterday.

He had gone up the tower to feel the thunder; to bask in the storm, and yes, to be alone. That part at least was ruined when she appeared. He supposed he should have alerted her to his presence straight away – like she told him he should have done – but for some reason he had heard her foot on the stair – and yes, the largest part of him had known that it was her – and he had backed away into a shadow as though she frightened him. He had felt like such an idiot – he still felt like an idiot about it in retrospect – but she had frightened him. There was an urge to be himself around her – and a version of himself he thought had died – and a tendency to start telling her all the things he told no-one, a symptom of the sickness it often felt that she was causing him.

He understands it now; he knows that he had loved her, but he supposed that even if he had been able to go back and let himself know that it would not have made him feel better, not the person that he was back then. The Hound. The Hound had always been a bit of a lie; she had told him since that in truth he was always Sandor in her head, told him how the thought of his name made her blush to herself even as the child she had been then.

She is no child now and, more than that, now she is – he did not like to say his, though he knows she would not have objected, and it was a good thing to know.

She does not jump when he appears behind her now. She does not even seem surprised; she always seems to know when he is on his way to her. She turns to him and her smile is wild and wide and there is lightning crackling in her eyes and before he even really has time to be in awe of her she stands up on tiptoe and kisses him.

Not like she had kissed him before; he remembered that sweet little kiss and tortured himself for weeks and more with wondering what it meant. Indeed he was not sure he had ever lost the feel of her lips against his face. This is not like that; this is the kiss he had dreamed about later, full of all the wildness in her eyes, the passion in her being. She kisses him now like a wolf, where before she had kissed like a bird. She is warm and drenched, slippery and cold too with rain on her skin and her hands are pulling him to her, clasping at his shirt and winding in his hair and he wants her almost more than he can bear and she wants it that way and he knows that, too.

He had wanted her back then as well, though it shamed him to admit it. Even after he had told her and she had nodded and told him, realising that it was true for the first time only as she told him, that she had wanted him as well, young though she had been and unsure exactly what it was that she was wanting. But the uncertainty has long fled her now and only the wanting remains and her hand is on his cock in perfect certainty; her little fingers working his laces with a skill that he wonders at, never sure, every time she does this, where she had picked it up. In truth she is not sure herself.

He is rock hard beneath her hands, it is impossible not to be, and she presses herself back against the wall so that he can hold her to it and push into her with no further ado. She is impatient and needy, eyes alternately wide and closed as her head rolls and leans and nuzzles at his shoulder and he kisses her wet hair as he thrusts into her, ramming her into the wall like she wants, like he wants. It had not even been his intention in coming to find her in the storm, but he was more than ready and she whimpers as though she has been waiting a lifetime.

She is so overpowering to all his senses it is almost hard to breathe; he can hear the cries that she does not try to keep down hurling out against the sounds of rain and storm, hear the ragged little breaths in between that undo him almost as much if not more. He can feel every curve of her beneath the thin shift she had clearly put on just to get soaked in. She is soaked in every possible way and her body shakes and shudders to each rumble of the thunder. She is nothing like he had ever imagined her, and he must have imagined her about a thousand times at least – but the reality of her is a wonderful world away from what even his strangest dreams would allow.

Towards the end she tenses, quietening all of her ecstasy down into a fierce whispering yesyesyeyeyyes – her fingernails dig into his shoulder and she comes shrieking into a silvery crash of lightning. The sky dances with her and the violence and delight of it surprises him into coming with her, voiceless with pleasure when she has stolen all the sound.

Seconds later, with the storm receding, she smiles at him with sleepy eyes, so innocent and sweet it is hard to put all the sides of her together into one coherent picture that works. But she is all that she is, whether he can fully believe it or not.

-x-

The next morning at breakfast sees Arya positively egging the children on as they moan about the storm and the rain. It had just been starting to get nice, the sun was coming out, it was spring for fuck's sake, what was the weather up to. Arya is the loudest complainer of course and Sandor is just on the verge of shouting at her under the guise of educating her in how weather works, when Sansa very quietly smiles and says –

"Oh I don't know, I quite like the storms."

And she turns to him ever so slightly and smiles and it is all that it takes for him to choke on his breakfast as the glint in her eye kills him all over again.

_x_

I've realised since starting these ficlets that I 100% don't ship these two as having any kind of sex until after she's grown up and he's got his head sorted out – and even then I find them so sweet that writing it now makes me blush a little! I hope this chapter didn't suffer too much on this account! :-)