With this, I feel like I should warn the readers about something, but I don't know exactly about what. Sandor in general?
As always, I have to thank TopShelfCrazy for time and effort invested into beta reading this :-)) Alyssa's Tears would be nowhere without your help.
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"There is nothing wrong with my belly, but I give a rat's arse for you and your brother. I have a brother too." Sandor Clegane to Arya Stark, ASOIAF
Sixteen
Sansa gave him her immaculate hands and claimed she loved him.
Him, the killer, the loser, the victim; the burned boy and the crippled man.
She was in his armoured arms now; soft and young in a pretty dark blue gown. Sandor wished she wore yellow.
He wanted even more to undress; to feel her warmth with more than just hands. At least the silvery, light-grey vambraces of the buggering Winged Knight left his palms and fingers free of cold steel. They were better suited for this new reality than the soot black ones with sharp, cutting gloves he used to wear for years in King's Landing.
Sansa's breath did not hitch, her body did not tense, her pulse of a little bird never fluttered. She was not afraid of him, nor was she repulsed. She was not obliged to be there, nor to love him; not by him, nor by any of his or her masters. She was at ease with him, terribly so, more so with every new moment that he held her. Her smile broadened on the ladylike perfection of her features.
For my face.
For me.
It was more than he ever hoped for.
And yet not enough to quench and calm down the raging madness of his love for her, unrequited until so very recently. Besides, his admiring her smile would not help solve Sansa's predicament of a political prisoner who risked being escorted to the block by Gregor.
Sandor's heart parted ways with his angry, seething head. His blood-pumping muscle felt unusually big and plump, not tiny and lost in his ample chest, but large as the rest of him; thudding madly in response to the tenderness of Sansa's surrender. He felt uncommonly young from it.
He almost felt strong again.
Weak, I am weak, he immediately cursed himself in his mind.
His head of a gnat churned with insults directed at his pitiable failure. He hated himself now, more than he had ever hated Gregor. Sansa had no use for a craven.
Whether she loved him or not.
He carried Sansa to her bed, the one she did not sleep in yet. He could not bring himself to take her to his bed, their bed from the night before. He feared what he might do in his altered state if he let himself remember fully how incredible it felt to have her. He did not want to chase her off by unmeasured demands.
Instead, he allowed himself to believe that Sansa loved him with his whole heart, knowing he should not. She must be acting as she did when she lied that she still loved Joffrey. This could not be true.
Could it?
He didn't know what would anger him more. To know he had lost again while having her love or to reaffirm beyond any doubt that his life still had only one purpose; the only one it had ever had before.
To kill Gregor.
And he failed in that too.
He wasted another opportunity to legitimately face his brother and kill him in approved combat, or possible self-defence. In that setting, no one could sanction Sandor. No one could condemn him to death, nor to take the black, as a payment for an act of justice.
"I am going," he announced firmly to Sansa, laying her down with care, taking his shaky, hairy paws back to himself.
He needed wine. He did not drink himself to death when he fell in a tilt like an incapable arse. He came to her as the dog he was, with his tail between his legs. But she could not tell him she loved him and expect him to drool over her when he was rabid over his own miserable failures. Couldn't she understand that? What did she think he'd do? Write a song for her? Sing one?
"But you will be back?" Sansa demanded in that tremulous voice that had haunted his old memories of her; the girl who was beaten and needed help that never came as he stood by and watched. Her smile melted like summer snow in the frozen nowhere land she came from. She spoke like on those nights, years ago, when she encountered him in the Red Keep. Then, all she wanted was for him to leave her alone. Now and then she sounded on the verge of crying. He was certain that only the marble-like flawlessness of her lady's composure prevented her from dissolving in tears.
He had scared her again by simple, honest words, by declaring what he had to do. He did not even mean to shock her. To know this made him even angrier. He yearned to be awful, more terrible than she would ever expect. And why not? She thought that of him. She told him so more than once.
"What do you think? You are still empty-headed, are you not?" he barked at her. "I've never been good at staying away from you, have I?" He paused, feeling empty after his outburst. "It matters not," he added wryly. "I am going. I have to. I just had to see you first."
"What do you mean by all that?" she asked, becoming angry with him in return, red like the flames that threatened to eat him alive.
Why did she always had to ask questions? Unpleasant ones... Why did he, indeed, let anyone call him a dog? For all his love of dogs, no one called Sandor that for the love of him. Everyone spoke of him with contempt and thought nothing of it, thought nothing of him, but only Sansa dared ask why he allowed it…
Because it did not matter what they called him.
Nothing mattered.
Except killing Gregor.
Until a stupid noble girl told him he rode gallantly in a bloody tourney and he felt so insulted by her innocence that he opened his big, drunk mouth and told her everything, what he never told anyone, since he told Father who would not listen.
His bedding caught fire, Father had said.
The maester sneered at him and Gregor smirked contentedly.
Right…
Sansa, on the contrary, had reached for his massive shoulder and condemned Gregor for not being a true knight, buying Sandor's soul with her judgement and her touch. After that, the dog would be on her side forever, loyal and fierce, without any promise of love or favours in return.
But now… now… Where did he stand?
Where did she?
His mouth opened again in response to her latest query. Why did he have to see her tonight before getting drunk?
"In the past, if I didn't see you often enough in court, or if they beat you, or if I thought of you more than I would have wanted, or more than a man should think about a young girI, I needed to drown in wine, like Joffrey threatened to do with that fool, Ser Dontos. Except that I choked willingly and still drank more," he confessed, completely sober and yet more inebriated than he had ever been, torn by warring sensations; his anger over his losses, his love for Sansa, his hatred for Gregor and the newly discovered useless greatness of his heart. "If I could at least see you, I did better in keeping myself in check. So that I could see you again and again. There were times when I hated myself for wanting you and times when I did not care-"
"If I had known-" Sansa interrupted.
Sandor did not want to hear the rest. "What would you do? Kiss me? Being eleven and knowing shit about men? What good would that do?"
"I might have trusted you more," Sansa finished her thought meekly. Her smile did not return.
Trusted me? Back then? Are you mad?
She was his once. Do you regret it?
He sat on the edge of her bed, mute and brooding, losing all his courage. If I ever had it, he scorned himself bitterly.
"Kiss me now," he said very quietly after a while, almost ashamed of asking.
She did, crawling wordlessly back into his arms, pressing her thinned, closed lips to his, never opening her mouth, hanging there with him, staying in place... He thought he felt her tears on his good cheek and instinctively closed his eyes, to not see them.
He did not deepen the kiss, but cupped her chin with his paws, compulsively stroking the smooth underside of it with his thumbs, not too harsh, but not too gentle either. Her skin was so fine and her bones so fragile. He could snap her neck in two if he was a different man. He felt her trembling slightly when their chaste kiss was done and she wriggled out of his arms, remaining seated next to him. There was an inch of space between them, which could very well be an abyss, a thousand feet deep. They were apart now, he was certain of it.
Sandor wondered how his inspection of Sansa's chin and throat felt for her and if her latest tremor was fear or a shiver of pleasure. Cowardly, he shied from asking, fearing the honest answer she might give him.
"You said you were going," Sansa pronounced with that extreme calm and cold composure she could call to herself at will in dire need, hiding her true feelings from him. "Go."
He obeyed remorselessly, stumbling out of her chambers that no longer felt like his, if they ever had been. He barely remembered to pick up the helm he had left on the floor and cover his face again. He did not understand. How could she kiss him at one moment and send him away on another? Did he truly say he was going? Did he explain why? Did he even know why? He could not remember clearly his own intentions after the defeat… Was she favouring his wishes? Or sending him away? He wanted to return to her immediately, but did not, trying to recall why he had to go in the first place. Why would he ever want to leave Sansa after she kissed him?
How can you want a loser?
Wine.
Please.
Red and sour.
He could still feel his bad leg hurting, see himself falling to old Yohn Royce in the bloody tourney.
The Gates of the Moon were dark and gloomy, ringing with the deep roar of Gregor's mad laughter, in celebration of his certain victory. Sandor followed the annoying noise, striving to remember what he had to do before Sansa shattered his world by confessing her love, raising the stakes in the gamble his life had always represented to an unprecedented height. He would build his existence back from scratch. He had done it before. He could do it again.
He could not afford another failure. Or...
It would be better if he killed Sansa before Gregor had a chance to approach her.
Around the corner, Sandor was passing through an open gallery in the upper floor of the castle when Gregor's man, Qyburn, called him from the yard below. "A brave knight like you would do well to ask for the honour of joining the Kingsguard," he proposed.
Sandor almost retorted he was no ser and remembered the ruse of posing as the Winged Knight just on time to shut up. "Bugger the Kingsguard," he snarled. "Their helms are not winged," he added stupidly, struck by a belated realisation that the noble hero of the Vale should watch his tongue.
To Sandor's surprise, Gregor laughed heartily at his words, as if they were between friends, and tried to pull his own white helm off.
Qyburn prevented him. "No, Ser Robert," he admonished Gregor as a loving father. "Brave knights remain helmed. Liked the Winged Knight up there. Look. He is a well-behaved ser."
Sandor chuckled stupidly at the treatment he was awarded instead of becoming enraged.
He could not believe his ears. Perhaps they were both burned without his knowledge and he did not hear well.
Outside the presence of the high lords, Qyburn instructed Gregor as if Sandor's brother was a baby boy of three years at most. Their Father did not dare do so since Sandor's accident. How did this Qyburn win an upper hand against Gregor and still have all his body parts intact?
On a whim, Sandor pulled his winged helm off, showing his face, exposing his scars to the merciless judgment of the moonlight, his brother and his pet.
Gregor omitted mocking Sandor as could be expected. He just lifted his arms to his helm again, wanting to mirror Sandor's gesture of revealing himself.
Qyburn only had eyes for Gregor now. "Don't do that, Ser Robert," he commanded Gregor sternly, preventing Sandor's brother from even opening his visor. He grasped Gregor's arms and took them off his oxen, armoured head as a kennelmaster might pull a dog by the collar in order to force the untamed hound to obey.
Faced with being utterly ignored, Sandor had to remind himself of his new reputation after Blackwater. No one feared him anymore. I am a craven who has lost the belly for fighting. That is what they all think now. I should cut their throats open.
But with what steel?
Sandor was armoured, but unarmed. His splintered lance had remained on the tourney grounds and he had not had time to look for a sword because he stayed with Sansa as long as the circumstances allowed, unable and unwilling to leave her side.
His anger flared, simmered, died.
He chuckled mirthlessly at his own misery. Someone had to laugh since Gregor did not even honour Sandor with his usual despising smirk. The Hound re-covered his ugly mug, just on time, before Nestor Royce entered the courtyard of his castle.
The castle was on edge, awake with a thousand voices. Cersei's men and the men of the Vale must have been at the feast together. Sandor wondered if anyone slept that night. Killing could start at any moment.
Waiting for Nestor to speak his purpose, the Hound daydreamed of writing a poem on Gregor's broad, naked back with sharp steel, and dedicating it to Sansa. She would hate it, wouldn't she?
Never hold back, never hide.
Take your anger out on me.
He wondered if Sansa was still waiting for him in her chambers after their awkward parting or if she was wandering the halls on her own as she used to, searching for some young and handsome saviour to whisk her away. The Gates of the Moon were not King's Landing, the walls were weaker and the castle was overcrowded with petty sers. The task of snatching her was not impossible.
Especially if the Hound was not at her door.
Some songs spoke of the inconstancy of women.
How long will you think you love me? For an hour, for a day? Have you stopped already?
"Our champion," Nestor bowed obsequiously to Gregor. "Well met. I… We… The tourney master is with fever. The maester says he ate something unsound. I wished to inform you in person. The jousts will restart tomorrow after midday's meal, not in the morning as plan-"
Gregor roared savagely. Rabid like the brother Sandor knew, he flung Qyburn to the side, shaking him off like vermin to get him out of the way. Then he seized Nestor's ugly doublet and began choking the lord rapidly.
Sandor stood by and observed Gregor's doing with a small amount of amusement. And why not? Nestor had Sansa locked in a dungeon. The welts of the chains still marred her perfect wrists and Sandor's innards twisted at the thought of it; another failure on the long list he was guilty of.
The lesser Royce drooled. He would have begged for help if he could still speak.
Against his will, Sandor saw himself jumping into the courtyard over the low balustrade of the upper gallery he had been standing on until then. He landed on his bad leg, hurting like seven hells. Ignoring the pain, he dragged his leg forward and pulled Gregor back by his armoured, white shoulders, inexorably moved to do so by sturdy, entrenched, unforgettable hatred.
"Leave his lordship," he demanded, becoming uncertain why he did not let Gregor have his way. Nestor's messy death might be the public, evil deed that could be used against him, as Sansa suggested before the tourney. Maybe some of Cersei's men would change sides, those with more sense than air in their toad-like heads.
Gregor turned on Sandor, strong like an ox. His hands found Sandor's broad neck. But the Hound had thrashed against his brother's stone grip even when he was six and helpless, with his face shoved in coals. He did not give in to Gregor back then. He would not do it now. Never, ever. He'd rather die than follow Gregor's will in anything.
The Stranger had his own will.
The two brothers wrestled, fully armoured. None had advantage. None carried a sword. Why are you unarmed, brother? Were you with a woman like I was or did your kennelmaster forbid you to carry weapons? Sandor struggled against Gregor and found profound joy in the effort. He listened to Gregor's heavy breathing, or maybe it was his own, and fought for the ultimate pleasure of killing his brother, unless the lesser one of losing himself to death found him first.
Gregor should never be underestimated.
And Sandor sometimes imagined it might feel good to die, but he would never give Gregor willingly that satisfaction.
The Stranger was the deathbringer.
Sandor shoved his brother off in a fierce, unmeasured push and prepared to launch himself on Gregor from a distance he thus created, hoping he might be able to smash his brother's head against the castle wall if he was fast enough.
Isn't that more or less how Gregor killed the Dornish prince?
He did not want to be like Gregor, but he could not stop now that he was so close to-
"Ser Robert," the boy's voice peeped on the margin of Sandor's blood-thirsting consciousness, uninvited and inopportune. "I wondered if you would read to me, the Lord of the Vale. A learned treatise about the history of Kingsguard."
"Ser Robert is of humble origin," Qyburn put in, regaining his scarce wits after his passionate collision with the frozen mud of the castle yard. "He had never learned his letters. Maybe the Winged Knight would oblige."
The false Winged Knight was at loss of what to do. Nestor had already scampered off. The fight was gone from Gregor after he was called Ser Robert. The fake, giant member of the Kingsguard stood as meekly as Sansa sometimes spoke, looking to Qyburn for directions. This was not the brother Sandor knew. What did they do to you? Cut your head off and send it to Dorne?
With great displeasure and a heavy heart, Sandor decided to get the boy away. His raspy voice might not make him an ideal wet nurse for reading, but it was nonetheless preferable that Sandor accompanied Robin Arryn. Just in case Gregor was ordered to kill him as a side business, so that the Lannisters could give the Arryn lands to one of their many blond cousins.
Why did killing Gregor always had to wait?
Because there are no gods and no heavens and no hells.
Only this mess we call life.
"Isn't my cousin Sansa the prettiest maid of all?" Lord Arryn asked off hand when they were alone.
Not a maid anymore, Sandor thought spontaneously, longing to have Sansa again. His blood being up did not help. On the contrary.
"I can't wait to become older and taller," Robin continued to paint his bright future in pompous words. "I feel of late that she might prefer me to cousin Harry when I come of age."
Right. In your dreams, boy.
And what will you do if she says yes to the boy, dog?
She will be married one day and not to you.
"Tell the servants to bring us some wine," Sandor asked of the little lord, once they were in his chambers, and began reading the learned scroll, picking by chance the part about some unhappy white-cloaked lover of a Targaryen queen or princess who was put to gruesome death when the affair was typically discovered.
Serves him right.
There were no secrets at court.
Except that there was one involving Sandor when he wore the bloody white cloak of the Kingsguard.
About him and Sansa talking to each other at night, taking no advantage of each other. She never tried to win his loyalty to run away. And he never touched her as a man would a woman he wanted badly, not even in his most violent and cruel outburst against her person, after the battle.
It was possible that not even Varys or Littlefinger knew about the two unlikely companions.
The wine had been served in the meantime, but Sandor only noticed the flagon when he finished reading and remembering.
"I should not drink," Robin concluded after the story, grinning stupidly. "The maester says it is bad for my health."
"I say it's your health, not his," Sandor treated the boy as another man, not caring. "Drink all you like." He was not the boy's father to look after him properly.
The boy obeyed the dog's advice.
The wine was good. Red, dry, not fruity. It was not as strong as Dornish sour but it would do. After two cups, the boy hiccuped merrily. Sandor drank the rest directly from the flagon and missed the oblivion wine gave him. He was not drunk enough. Sansa remained in his head, the wonder of her body, the beauty of her words, the marvel of her kiss, the promise of her love.
Do you love me still?
He was too craven to crawl to her and ask her to repeat her confession.
Why not? She wanted to hear his, many times over.
"More wine," he demanded and read about valiant Prince Aemon the Dragonknight and his chaste sister, Naerys, who may have been his lady love for all her piousness.
Why is every story I stumble upon tonight about bloody love?
Two more flagons followed the first one. When they emptied them, Robin in little cups, and Sandor in great gulps, the haze in the Hound's head was almost as foggy as it should be, but not as thick that he would forget himself, forget everything. His losses were not completely numbed. And neither was the persistent largeness of his heart and its deranged beating.
"Bronze Yohn had another raven. They fly like mad this winter. His men will be here by tomorrow evening so the tourney should end as late as possible," the boy conveyed important information between hiccups and stared at Sandor with an unspoken, yet steel-hard demand in his brown, childish eyes.
Sandor realised this was why the little lord came after the Hound all alone, in the middle of the night, and he had been right to do so. If Bronze Yohn came with the same proposal, Sandor would probably beat him to death. The fist fight with Gregor showed that his bad leg would not be a hindrance to do so on foot, when he could not be unhorsed.
"You and Royce want me to wrestle my brother tomorrow before supper, rather than tonight," the Hound retorted. "You could have said so immediately. I would have said yes to you. I owe you." Without Sweetrobin's help, Sansa might still be in the dungeon, or Sandor might have to kill twenty men to get to her and risk being wounded or worse. "And we all seem to share the same noble goal of wanting to rid the world of Ser Robert Strong."
Why do the highborns never speak plainly?
Because their peers might kill them if they do. The Hound answered his own query.
"Challenge him," Robin said dreamily. "To a combat. One knight can challenge another in the name of justice and honour. You don't need a place in a tourney for that."
"In the name of justice," Sandor laughed darkly. "There is no such thing."
"Maybe," Robin conceded, more drunk than a leech. "But I like to believe that there is and that it stands as high as honour."
"Get us more wine will you?" Sandor requested. What else was there to do when faced with such candid stupidity? What did the boy think, that his precious house words would save his skin from the likes of Gregor?
This time, the third time, the boy obliged without hesitation and the servants showed even less of it. None of the two maesters came looking for Robin.
It occurred to Sandor that maybe the Royces conspired to kill their little sick lord with this unknown sort of tasty Vale sour they grew and bottled over here. It would be a most natural and lordly death.
Sandor emptied the last two flagons himself, not letting the boy take another sip. Between healthy pulls of blessed blood-red liquid, he read to Sweetrobin about the Kingmaker, the Kingsguard whose actions had a bearing in the history of Westeros, turning it into a bloody war, the Dance of the Dragons.
When he reached the end, the Hound grinned stupidly over the empty flagons and a thickly-written scroll, finally reaching the state of oblivion he had sought.
Thankfully, the last tale he picked for reading was not about love.
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The hour was very late and the castle silent when Sandor was on his way, returning to Sansa, drunk as a dog. In the complete absence of sobriety and composure, neither his losses nor his winnings counted. His life felt inconsequential. Men fell from horses all the time and it did not matter. He did not break a neck when he hit the dirt. Why was he ever upset about the tilt that went wrong or an old injury? Who cared about those? He halted on the gallery and searched the yard for Gregor and Qyburn. Just as he hoped, they were no longer there.
The Hound had been looking for a place to vomit in peace and he had just found it; over the stone balustrade. He would not be the only one who adorned the castle with the contents of his stomach after the feast. The equally pissed stable boys would curse their masters and muck their mess from the yard together with their own. He felt pleasantly lighter when he was done. He had no idea where to find hot water to wash properly so he wiped his face with light, watery snow that had kept falling during the night and stuck to the sculpted pillars of the parapet.
Then, presentable as he could be, he shed his armour piece by piece, scattering it mindlessly over the corridor leading to Sansa's chambers, until there was no metal and boiled leather left on his body; only soft, sweaty tunic and breeches. Her room was moonlit when he opened the door and entered, quiet as a tomb.
The Stranger approached in silence.
He could not hear Sansa and he did not want to disturb her rest.
Privy. Where is it?
He was fortunate to find it before he opted for pissing through the window and letting the winter chill cool down the pleasing warmth of the room. The coals were dying on the hearth, blinking like eyes of some wild animal.
Sansa slept fully dressed, without a blanket. She donned a brown dress, similar to the one she had when he had found her on the mountain, only more simple, made for a servant and not for a noble bastard. Yet her gown was impeccably clean, like no servant's garment would ever be. In place of a pillow, there was a neatly ordered bundle for travelling, stuck under her perfectly combed head. The pack looked village-like or rather, as though Sansa made it like she imagined a peasant woman doing it.
In the songs, great ladies visited noble peasants and their families, men that never stank nor wanted to rob them or rape them. On such occasions, the ladies dressed humbly and delicately, not wishing to offend the poor. Sandor was fairly certain that Sansa Stark knew all the songs in existence and that she never stank in her life. He… he caught himself wishing that she never learned what the real peasants could be like and remained exactly as she was, convinced that there was goodness in the world.
"What is the meaning of this?" he whispered, realising his breath smelled like horseshit dipped in the sour wine from the Vale as soon as he opened his mouth. He should have eaten some of that snow from the parapet. He remained standing two steps away from her bed.
Sansa's eyes snapped open. Her forehead frowned. Even her little nose wrinkled at the ugly sight of him.
"I was going as well," she said. "I nearly left."
"Why didn't you?"
"I was afraid," Sansa confessed. "Where would I go? I fretted over my future until I fell asleep."
"What was your reason for going?" he inquired timidly, slurring on words, embarrassed with his inability to form them correctly.
"I was angry and sad," she replied honestly. "Your unkindness had scathed me before. But never as much nor as deeply as today. It felt like my heart was bleeding."
"I know," he said, understanding, grinning madly. It was the best truth he could have heard that day.
"Do you?" she stared up towards him, searching his face for some answer she required. Yet her scrutiny felt as if she stared him down from the position of power.
"Oh yes," he reassured her. "Because it pained me when you continuously averted your eyes from me on the kingsroad. It never bothered me when anyone else did it. But it hurt like seven hells when it was you. And later, when you wanted to thank me for saving you, not meaning the courtesies you bestowed on me. It cut me every time. When I was… when I was… after I fell in love with you."
It served nothing to beat around the bush. He could just as well tell her.
There was no greater misery than to be treated with indifference and kind coldness by the noble girl who had unwittingly stolen his heart.
"I never meant to give insult and you had all intention to be hateful," she rebelled, angry, angry, angry…
He liked it better than her porcelain sadness.
"You are right about that, but your special attention towards my person did not hurt any less for that subtle distinction," Sandor muttered. "Robin wants to marry you," he added, spying on her jealously for reaction.
"I don't," Sansa objected. "I don't want to marry."
"No?" he wondered.
"No," she confirmed sadly.
Not even this… this dragon prince Varys is offering?
Not even me?
Why not me?
If you love me...
Is that not the reason for the ladies to marry in your songs?
"Kiss me," he demanded. "Do it differently. Do it rudely. Pass me your anger in a kiss."
He had never voiced his desires in detail to a woman. He only made them plain by other means.
"Why?" she asked, puzzled. "Isn't that… unpleasant and awful for both of us, besides being terribly unladylike?"
"Go ahead," he encouraged her. "You know you want to. You know I can take it. Do your best."
Sansa hesitated.
"For the love that is between us," he dared claim, challenging her to deny her wonderfully simple confession from before. She used the same words as he did on the mountain… saying she had loved him for years… He did not know if she did it on purpose or by chance.
In his drunkenness, he realised that he had unjustly expected a more exuberant statement of love from Sansa once it came, if it ever came his way, something convoluted and worthy of a great lady like herself. Something like her poem. Yet he knew painfully well that every morsel of touch and devotion he had gotten from Sansa for real was so much better than anything he imagined in his solitude.
He knelt before her bed and did not quite expect her to take him on his challenge, but she did.
Sansa captured the top of his head firmly with her hands and changed their position a few times until she had a good grip on him. Then she pulled his eyebrows apart with her thumbs and studied his eyes and lips intently, like a little bird of prey. The skin on his forehead stretched, tensed and... hurt...
Sandor waited, with rising anticipation of how she would proceed.
Satisfied with something only she saw in Sandor, Sansa assaulted his lips, capturing first the upper and than the lower one tightly and harshly between her own, adding her teeth in the end so that he could feel their sharpness. Her tongue followed suit, plunging very deep into his maw, almost to the point of discomfort, exploring him without consideration if he had any room to breathe. She ended her angry kiss by biting the burned corner of his mouth suddenly and roughly, as if she wanted to bite the scars off his face. He felt the sting of her sharp little teeth through the ruined skin, which was normally impossible. He didn't have much feeling left over there so she must have gone deep.
"More," he pleaded, painfully hard from the onslaught he asked for and from the first sketchy contact with the moisture and warmth of her mouth, announcing the wetness there must be between her legs for him, despite all her anger.
And blood, he reminded himself. Moonblood. His head swam from drink and disappointment. His swelling lessened a bit from the realisation of the inconvenience, but his joy from being with Sansa remained untouched.
Soon, he thought, he hoped.
Her second kiss was far less angry, but equally deep and… demanding? He dared return it, ready to withdraw if he was wrong, and heard her sigh gently when they met halfway. She did not sound in pain so he took it as an encouragement to continue. They consumed each other shamelessly, as hard as they could without drawing blood.
"This is it," he whispered, immensely pleased. "More."
He knew she had it in her; to match his passion with her own, especially if provoked. His lips tingled and burned. It was the best succession of kisses they shared so far, the most courageous one for both; deadly and unforgiving as the sets of steps and blows Sandor had learned in his childhood with the aim to kill. Sansa's kiss murdered all other yearnings in his soul. Maybe neither of them was craven and they were both brave.
Unlikely as this sometimes seemed.
Her eyes were huge now, blue and perhaps worried if she did this right and… pleased… Her anger with him seemed exhausted. He… he did not remember ever being angry with anyone. He did not remember Gregor nor that he had any scars. He never thought he could spend so much time just kissing a woman. He never thought a woman would kiss him for longer than a fleeting moment before she would want his cock. He realised that he… somehow he ended up looming over Sansa in her bed, with his weight on his elbows. She was laying on her back and unlike before, she did not seem to notice or mind their position.
"Here, please," she pointed shyly at her rounded breasts. The bodice of the servant's dress was not as firm as the better ones she normally donned so it had moved during their frantic entanglement, revealing her treasures to the dog's hungry gaze.
"Not as harsh as on my lips," she clarified.
"Better not at all," he thought aloud. Nipples were too close to her forbidden sweetness, too dangerous. He felt tempted to lick her moonblood off her and see if she would let him take her. He did no such thing.
"I did as you asked," she complained. "I did my best."
She had him there.
He caressed a nipple with his index finger and lowered his mouth to the other one, licking it, exchanged the position of his mouth and finger, stayed like that, changed a few more times, felt Sansa writhing in place... He lifted his head to see her and cupped her breasts roughly, kneaded them, stared at her face lovingly. He felt her squeezing her legs together, helplessly, tensely, under her skirts. He wondered how this sort of provocation felt for a woman, knowing he had a banner pole in his breeches. He plunged down again and sucked on her breasts as a newborn babe.
Sansa hit him on his shoulders with her fists when she needed him to stop and he conformed himself.
She breathed and breathed and breathed and could not speak.
"We can't stay, can we? I was wrong, wasn't I, when I thought we could?" she asked bravely from below when she gathered herself together, seemingly in peace with her new decision to accept his initial advice about running away from the Vale. "Are we leaving tonight?"
"No," Sandor stated bluntly the truth as he saw it now. He regretted it was always his lot to contrary Sansa's expectations from life and make her see that the peasants were usually poxy and not noble. "You were right and I was wrong. We have no safe place to go to. We are not going anywhere."
Chance was Gregor would find them before they left the Vale. And if he didn't, the mountain clans would be overjoyed to correct his shortcoming, kill Sandor and have their way with Sansa.
Sandor carefully lowered himself on his side, laying behind Sansa. She still made no reaction to show that she either noticed or minded he had been on top. Her hair was entangled. She would not like it that way. So he combed Sansa's hair with his fingers, too dark and not red enough for his liking, and yet so silky, too good for the likes of him. He separated the long waves of her hair; loving it, loving her. He murmured to her ear how he wished to taste her, drink her honey, before having her next time, whenever the moon allowed it, not knowing if she understood all his meaning, not caring if she did or not. Words were wind.
Weren't they?
He heard himself whisper to her how much he loved her, and how he would never, ever leave her; many times so, shushing her to sleep.
He did not even think to wring another confession of love out of her.
Because if he could not only anger her, but also cut her deeply with his hatefulness, then he knew that the incredible must be true.
Sansa loved him...
Or she would give two shits for anything he said or did.
The Stranger slept in peace that night, sounder than the Hound did. The killing would wait for another day.
His mind cleared very slowly. He floated between sleep and waking state, suffering through the familiar pains of the hangover. At some point, he finally remembered what he wanted to do that evening, before Sansa's stunning revelation, besides getting drunk.
With first light, he would find the smith.
xxxx
Next POV is also him. Then we go back to her.
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