Chapter Text
The air is warm, but just cool enough to be comfortable in the shade; it’s another bright summer’s day in King’s Landing and the sun’s rays beat down on those in the streets. Hushed giggles leave yours and the girls mouths as you share secrets of desires and dreams. Your wide smile reaches your eyes as you listen to the girls you have grown close to since you were first handed to Sansa Stark at her arrival in King’s Landing. You’ve all tried your best to ensure that she was as comfortable as can be, sharing knowledge and laughter - Joffrey’s company wasn’t something you’d wish on anyone.
Slowly, the wooden door swung open to reveal the red-haired girl, returning from her walk with the prince, no tears this time which was an improvement. Your heart fluttered at seeing the tall figure, Sandor Clegane, standing behind her. His eyes locked onto yours and you averted your eyes to Sansa’s postion, his steely gaze sending a shiver through your spine. Lyra nudged you playfully, a cheeky smile on her lips, and you felt your cheeks grow warm. Sansa’s eyes squinted suspiciously at you.
“What have you been talking about? You’re all so… giddy,” Sansa questioned as she moved to take her seat.
“Just about all of the handsome knights and men,” Ione confessed, unashamed, with a casual shrug of her shoulders. “Who do you think, Sansa, is the handsomest?” She continued.
Eleni sat up and leant forward, “Yeah, who do you think, Sansa?” She pressed, intrigued.
Shock spread across the girl’s face as her brows furrow, “I am courting with my Prince,” she voices, astounded. You let out a light-hearted chuckle at her words.
“Just because you are promised to another, does not mean that you don’t have eyes,” you say pointedly and watch her face grow red with slight embarrassment.
“Well-,” Sansa bluffers, “who do you think is?” She asks, pushing the question onto you. The room quickly changes as all of the girls roll their eyes and shake their heads before they start to tease you.
“Y/n, has the worst taste in men,” Ione warns.
“Always has,” Lyra chimes in, and you elbow her side from your position next to her.
“It’s not that bad,” you can feel your face becoming increasingly warmer as you try to defend yourself against them. “-He’s not that bad.”
“Not that bad!?” An uproar begins at your statement, and the room is thrown into a small chaos.
“Just tell me who it is,” Sansa pleads as she takes your hands in hers. You mumble his name, the syllables just tumbling past your lips, and it gets lost in the loudness of the room. “Everyone, be quiet!” Sansa rushes out and the room stills, all eyes on you.
“Sandor Clegane.”
“The Hound!? You can’t be serious. He’s- he’s hideous.” Sansa guffaws at your confession, unable to wrap her head around the thought of the Hound being anything but ugly.
“He is tall,” Eleni stated, “and strong.”
“So are the others, and they don’t have that awful scar.”
“He’s a brute.”
You only shrugged your shoulders at their words. “I think he’s handsome; the scar is… unfortunate, of course it is, but he’s not hideous.” The girls stared at you in silence, and you were beginning to feel as if they were coming around.
“You must be out of your mind, Y/n.” Ione speaks out before swiftly moving the subject onto Sansa’s walk.
— — — — —
The Hound sits just opposite Sansa, and he squints into the sun as it gleams off of his silver armour. Sansa can’t help but look, eyes searching his face for as long as she was brave enough to.
“Quit starin’, or you’ll be ugly too,” Sandor warns gruffly, making Sansa jump at the sudden noise. She looks back out into the flowering gardens, but finds that her eyes travel back to his face just a few minutes later. Sandor shifts uncomfortably in his seat, his armour clanking, “What’re you lookin’ at, girl,” he almost barks,“if you want a story you ain’t gettin’ one.”
“Do you think you’re ugly?” Sansa finally speaks, her eyes not looking away this time. She watches as the anger swelled within the Hound’s face.
“What kind of stupid question is that?” He spits out, looking away from her. Not anger. Shame. He shifts more in his seat at the silence that follows.
The sun somehow feels harsher than it did five minutes ago, and all he wanted was for Sansa to hurry up and get bored so that he could go back inside.
“Y/n doesn’t.” Sansa confesses quietly, casually. He turns to her then, an unreadable expression on his reddened face. “A maid of mine,” she expands, but he only huffs at her before turning away again.
He finds, as his gaze gets lost into the flowering bushes, that he’s curious. Curious of the girl that doesn’t find him unbearable to look at, and then his mind flits to you, the girl who he catches looking at him when the door opens wide enough. He’s never spared you a second though, just thinking you were yet another person that thought of him as hideous, or pitied him. He didn’t need pity. No matter what form it came in.
As he stares off into the distance, he can’t help but hope that the girl Sansa is talking about is the one that his eyes seem to land on every time the door to that room swings open.
— — — — —
You feel Sansa come up to you as you fold the freshly dried linen. It’s another cloudless day, and they seem to only be getting warmer as summer rolls by.
“How are you this morning, Sansa? Did you sleep well?” You ask as you turn to her with a light smile, smoothing the corner of your fold before you place it onto the growing pile.
“I slept better than the last night, thank you,” she smiles back, though her eyebrows pinch together at the action.
You abandon your folding as you turn to her fully, “You can ask anything of me, Sansa, you know this,” you remind her and you watch as she lets in a deep breath - you almost frown, Joffrey has made her apprehensive.
“Walk with me through the gardens? I think we could both do with some fresh air.” You nod your head and follow closely behind her.
She takes your arm as soon as you step out the door, and the air feels instantly cooler in the stone corridor. The two of you walk in time, no slight jostle, just smooth, fluid motion, and she asks about you; of your home, of how you grew up. You don’t see many others as you walk, one or two here and there. Just as you make the turning onto the long corridor that enters the gardens, a massive figure blocks your path.
“Where’re you goin’?” Sandor questions, his voice gruff as he blocks your path. His downward gaze is held by Sansa as she replies.
“To the gardens, there’s no need to follow- I have company,” she points out and squeezes your arm.
The Hound spares you a glance.
However, his eyes leave just as quickly as they came, and you find yourself wishing that he’d look for a little longer. That his eyes would linger. He turns, his sword clanking against his side, opening the path to the gardens and Sansa takes it; walking past him without another word.
The Hound wordlessly follows.
You feel Sansa’s stride falter before spinning around to face him, her disappointment evident. But still, she keeps her voice indifferent, “And where are you going?”
“With you,” his tone is obvious in an almost comical way. It brings a smile to your lips and you quickly hide it. Sandor can still see, from the corner of his eye, your tight smile as you look at the ground. At first, his blood is quick to simmer - accustomed to being the object of laughter - but the smile on your face is different. His dead-panned face nearly falls as he realises that you find him amusing. You’re not laughing at him, you’re laughing because of him. Sansa’s voice pulls his focus from you.
“Well, don’t walk too close then,” she replies, knowing that he couldn’t be deterred.
And so he follows, two strides behind the pair of you, through the corridor and out into the open gardens. You walk for nearly an hour, the conversation flowing from topic to topic and you listen wholeheartedly as Sansa confesses that she misses her family much more than she realised, that she’s not confident that she’ll see them again. It breaks your heart to hear those words spill from her lips and you softly squeeze her arm, providing what little comfort you can.
Then, appearing from the entrance, you spot Joffrey scanning the gardens and Ser Meryn Trant marching on beside him. A sense of dread overcomes you and you nudge Sansa and jerk your head in their direction, she follows your gaze and instantly you can feel her skin become hot. The chance of them not spotting her is slim with Sandor acting as a giant, armour-cladded beacon.
Your mouth feels dry as Joffrey walks up with a smile striking enough to fool even the Gods, and when he offers an arm to Sansa she carefully, almost apprehensively, unwraps hers from yours before taking his. You’re pushed back when Ser Meryn Trant squeezes in front of you, creating distance between you and the young pair. You find yourself next to Sandor, his towering frame much more impressive now that you’re walking side by side. But it’s silent, eerily so, as if you’re all waiting for danger to reveal itself in a well-lit room.
When you find yourself stopping, and Ser Meryn Trant open up a door to an unknown building, your heart begins to race.
“Hound, stay outside,” You hear Joffrey order sharply, before your eyes find Sansa’s as she’s being guided in with him, and with wide eyes she’s silently pleading you to wait for her. You nod your head, but the doors shut sharply behind the knight, and silence falls once again.
Sandor had already found his position when you leant back on a suitable wall. It’s closer to him than one would choose to stand next to a stranger and you can feel his eyes on the back of your head as you look down at your feet. You look everywhere but in his direction, but after what feels like ten minutes his gaze has remained on you. And the longer he stares, the more self conscious you get.
Sandor finds that he doesn’t care if he’s staring. He’s bored of looking out, he’s done it over a hundred times before, and he’s pretty sure he could draw his view from any standing point in the whole of King’s Landing.You’re not bad to look at anyway, he finds himself thinking, much more interesting than those flowers and plants. Besides, you wouldn’t do anything about it; he’s the Hound after all.
And then, surprisingly, your eyes meet his, eyebrows curved to show concern and confusion. He finds that he quite enjoys the site. Usually, this is when he’d turn away, but he unconsciously made the decision to hold your gaze instead.
“Are you alright?” You question, your voice calm but he can hear the concerned twinge. It surprises him more, that he wasn’t met with venomous words or an angry gesture.
“What’s your name, girl?” He asks instead of answering.
“Y/n.”
When the last syllable passes your lips, Sandor only holds your gaze for just a second longer before turning his head with a grunt and looking out into the distance. It’s the most you’ve interacted, the first time you’ve spoken, and you almost feel giddy that he asked you for your name. You don’t look away from him, but he doesn’t look back at you, and after a while you turn your head to look back out into the courtyard.
Y/n, Y/n, Y/n; Sandor slowly repeats your name over and over in his head. You’re Y/n, Sansa must have made it up or heard wrong. Or perhaps there’s something wrong with you, a lady like you shouldn’t be affiliated with a man like him, shouldn’t think of, or see, him in that way.
A light breeze moves beautifully through the flowers and you welcome it happily as it cools the surface of your skin. You can hear Sandor shuffling beside you, the heavy armour most likely acting as a greenhouse. You pull out the waterskin from under your apron and take a small sip, the liquid warm but hydrating, before extending it to Sandor beside you. He turns to you at the motion and you jostle your hand, you can see the cogs turning behind his eyes before he finally takes it from you. Sandor only takes half a mouthful before pushing it back to you.
“You can have the rest, you look hot under all that armour,” you encourage and when he doesn’t move you place a flat palm on his wrapped one around the skin and push lightly. And with a nod of your head, he drinks half the remaining water.
“Thanks,” he mumbles when he passes it back.
You’re sweet, too sweet, you definitely shouldn’t be thinking of him in any way.
Hours pass and Sansa is yet to return, and though your worry grows so does your tiredness. You can feel your eyes begin to close and become heavy.
Sandor watches you closely from the corner of his eye, your head leaning against the wall with your eyes closed and every time it lolls to the side your eyes spring back open before the cycle continues. The words ‘stupid girl’ threatens to roll off his tongue, but he can’t help the fact that it’s warming his heart just that little bit. So, after the eighth time, after your eyes flutter closed, he extends his arm and the weight of your head softly falls against it. He doesn’t feel you move again; success.
So he waits like that, standing with his arm out at an awkward angle, long enough for the sun to finish setting. The doors open with a loud crack and you jolt awake, his arm quickly finds his side, he can see you looking at him trying to piece together the puzzle. However, your motive soon turns to Sansa as you rush over to her cowered form. As you guide the young girl back to her room, disappearing into the darkness, he sees you take a final glance at him from over your shoulder. He remains in place until Joffrey waves him off, and you are long gone. Probably already in bed and sleeping.
— — — — —
It’s a week later when you see him next; from behind the open door. Back to the usual routine. Only this time, your eyes meet his with a small smile, and you could swear you could see the corner of his lips curve ever so slightly in response.