Sansa was growing inpatient. That morning, they'd sent out riders from the village in every direction, all carrying the same message.
The Lady of Winterfell requests the honor of your presence at the Fall Creek Inn to discuss your movement across her lands.
She was supposed to stay inside the inn until Sandor and the Brotherhood arrived, but she found that she couldn't sit still. She'd only have to look at the floor where she had lain with Tormund hours before to lose any semblance of composure. For the first time in her life, she understood why the men around her released their pent up emotions inside the sparring ring. So, she did the only logical thing she could think of. She went to Tormund and begged him to fight her.
At first, she'd been afraid that he wouldn't be able to train her anymore, after what had transpired the night before. That he'd shy away from hitting her. From hurting her.
She needn't have worried.
"Get your head out of your ass, girl," he hollered from above her, after he'd knocked her to the ground for the third consecutive time. The sky was a pale grey, like the underside of a wolf's belly, and his red hair was a flame against it. He stretched his hand out to her and pulled her roughly to her feet. "How are you supposed to defend yourself lying on your back?"
Sansa brushed the snow off her tunic, wincing at the soreness in her shoulder. The last fall had been hard. They were working on hand-to-hand combat, and Sansa had learned almost immediately that she was outmatched in all aspects against Tormund. Strength, dexterity, speed. All of them fell in the wildling's favor.
"I can't help that I'm a woman," she told him, the words coming out far more self-pitying than she'd intended. Her braid had come loose, and she took a moment to untangle the strands, brushing her fingers roughly through them. Tormund watched her at first with irritation, but it quickly melted away and was replaced with barely restrained longing. He loved the feel of her hair against his skin, the way it feel around them like a curtain, concealing them from the outside world, whenever she leaned in to kiss him.
He glanced around the clearing, confirming their privacy before stepping closer to her.
"Stop playing with your hair, girl," he told her, though his eyes said something else entirely.
"Why?" she asked, looking at him from under her dark lashes, all wide eyed innocence while she weaved her hair into another thick plait.
Tormund pulled out a knife from his boot then, the same knife Sansa had held in her hands and grazed across his skin. She shivered involuntarily.
"I should cut it off," he said, pointing to her long auburn braid. There was a smile playing on his lips and his eyes were twinkling mischievously.
"You wouldn't."
"I would," he said, stalking closer as Sansa took a hasty step back. "No opponent is going to give you time to fix your hair, girl. It would be a favor really, since it's so distracting to you."
He was kidding, wasn't he?
She thought so, but still he came closer and the knife in his hands didn't waver.
"Tormund, this isn't funny." She retreated two more steps and her back collided with the unyielding trunk of a tree.
Tormund sank down into a crouch, like a stalking animal. "Who said it was supposed to be funny?"
Her heart was pounding a ragged tempo in her chest. "Tormund, you're scaring me."
"Good." And then, he lunged for her.
She spun away from the tree, narrowly missing being taken in his outstretched arms. She wasn't sure if he still held the knife, but she didn't dare look back to check. She ran. Faster than she'd ever run before, weaving among the trees, barreling through the snow drifts. She could hear him behind her at first as he pursued her. She heard his great booming laugh and his shouts of what he was going to with all her lovely hair after he'd cut it off. But soon, that fell away to be replaced only by the sounds of her own jagged breathing.
She hid behind the trunk of a giant oak tree, the branches above barren and snow laden, while she caught her breath. The bird song of the forest was the first sound to reach her ears, once her breathing had slowed back to normal, and the occasional creak and groan of straining branches in the wind.
But there were no sounds of Tormund.
Slowly, cautiously, she peeked around the trunk of the tree, careful to stay as close to its bark as possible.
Nothing moved in the icy forest before her eyes. She was alone.
It wasn't possible.
She had never managed to outmaneuver him before.
And yet.
Her heart swelled with the accomplishment. She was never going to let him forget this. How an unarmed girl had managed to escape the great wildling warrior Tormund Giantsbane. She almost clapped her hands together with glee, so happy was she in that moment.
And then, she felt the soft bite of steel resting against the exposed flesh of her neck, and a voice in her ear whispered with barely restrained mirth, "Dead."
Surprisingly gentle hands seized her shoulders and spun her around, and she had a moment to look at Tormund's laughing eyes before she found herself crushed against him, his mouth hungry on hers.
He must have dropped the knife in the snow at their feet, because he used one hand to tangle in the hair at the nape of her neck and the other to press her roughly up against the tree trunk. He moulded the hard edges of his body around the soft curves of hers, and tugged down the tunic on her shoulders, taking his time to suck on the delicate skin at the base of her throat.
She leaned her head back and moaned, wrapping her leg around him and drawing him closer into her.
It was dangerous, what they were doing. Foolish and fearless and incomparably reckless.
And neither of them could stop.
"Sansa," Tormund managed as she slid her hands under the heavy layer of furs he wore and to the bare skin underneath.
She loved the play of his muscles under her fingers. The fire of his skin against hers. She ground her hips against his and heard his answering groan of pleasure and smiled.
Tormund pulled back from her then, to look in her eyes. His own were wild.
He ran a hand gently down her face, cupping her chin and tilting her face up to meet his.
"Gods, you're beautiful," he said. He tugged her braid lightly in his fist. "Especially this. It's a shame to have to cut it all off." The teasing light had returned to his eyes.
Sansa pushed against his chest. It was like pushing against a wall of stone.
"You think you're so funny, Tormund Giantsbane." She tried to hide her smile, but she couldn't.
He pretended that she hadn't spoken.
"There is a tribe north of the Wall," he mused, "Who cuts off their enemies' ears and wears them in little pouches around their necks." He leaned over and teased her ear with his teeth, eliciting an involuntary shiver from her.
"I need my ears," Sansa replied gravely.
"Aye, I thought so too," Tormund agreed, just as grave. Again he tugged on her braid, this time pulling the ribbon from its end and running his hand up through the strands. "But this hair, you don't need it, do you?"
"You wouldn't think me very pretty without it," Sansa warned him.
Tormund removed his hand from her chin and ran his fingers lightly along the bones of her face, first tracing her high cheekbones, then her delicate nose, the pale skin of her eyelids, and finally, her soft, full lips.
"That isn't true, Sansa," Tormund replied, expression intense. "Even without all of your pretty hair, you'd still be the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen."
She leaned up on her toes then, and claimed his lips with her own.
Her eyes were closed and his hands were everywhere and she could smell him and taste him and feel him against her. And then she heard it. The crack of a branch behind them, someone's guttural curse, and her eyes opened, and she had just enough time to scream "no" before the bark overhead exploded with the force of a sword swinging against it.
Tormund recovered so fast that even pressed against him as she was, she was startled.
One moment he was clutching her against him and the next she was pushed to the ground behind him, and he was holding his sword raised before him and his feet were squared in a fighting stance, and he was protecting her with the shield of his body.
"Sansa, run!" he told her, and she'd never heard fear naked in his voice like that before. Fear for her.
She got to her feet quickly, her heart pounding like a bird straining against the cage of her ribs and looked past Tormund's hulking form.
And there, squaring off against the man she had been kissing only moments before, was the Hound, nearly every inch of his seven foot frame trembling with rage and regret and something else too.
"Has he hurt you?" His eyes were fixed on her face as though Tormund did not even exist.
"No, Sandor, he hasn't hurt me."
Some of the rage went out of him, then, though he did not drop his sword an hairsbreadth.
"Do you want me to kill him?"
Tormund cursed under his breath but Sansa only shook her head.
"No, Sandor."
The Hound frowned and sheathed his sword, his eyes leaving her face for a moment to consider Tormund.
"Fucking wildlings," he finally said. "Put your sword away already, if she wanted you dead, you'd be dead. Luckily for you, the little bird must like you."
Tormund tore his eyes away from the Hound long enough to catch a glimpse of Sansa's expression. Something in Sandor's nickname for her stirred emotions in her chest that she had thought long dead.
"This is the Hound?" Tormund asked her, though he already knew the answer.
She nodded.
Squaring her shoulders and stepping between them, Sansa drew on her years of etiquette training when she announced with perfect clarity, "Tormund Giantsbane meet Sandor Clegane, my only true friend left in this world."
Tormund watched the Hound all the long journey through the woods back to the inn.
He did not miss the long lingering glances he cast on Sansa's face, nor the way his body gravitated towards hers, as though she were a sinking ship pulling him down with her.
Tormund knew exactly what this stranger was thinking, because he'd felt it himself.
He was wondering exactly what Sansa would feel like pressed against him. He was wondering what she'd taste like. What sounds she'd make when he was inside her. They were involuntary thoughts, Tormund knew. And he'd almost forgive him for them. It was impossible to look into Sansa's clear green eyes and not feel the lull of her beauty. To stand next to her and feel her warmth. To smell the perfume of her hair and not wonder what she'd look like with her hair splayed out on your pillow. Impossible. He'd seen many men look at her in that way and it hadn't bothered him before. Well, not overly much.
But this, this was different.
There was a shy way she had of looking at him too. A way that she held her body that made it all too obvious that she was as conscious of him beside her as he was of her.
And the fucker was huge too. Enormous. Jon had told him of course, told him that the Hound was more animal than man. And Tormund had lived among Thenns. He'd seen giants. A man should have been nothing to him. Even a large man. But for the first time in a long time, Tormund wasn't sure he could beat his opponent with steel or fists or even a fucking arrow straight to the chest. And that was unsettling.
Sansa looked back at Tormund then and smiled, and the happiness on her face was almost too much for him to bear.
So he kept his mouth shut, and his eyes open, and his hand on the hilt of his sword, and he followed the Hound's hulking form and Sansa's delicate one back to the inn.
Author's Note: The Hound! Finally! Would love to know what you guys think. Let me know with a review. :)