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from: [email protected]
reply-to: [email protected]
to: [email protected]
date: Mon, Dec 5, 2016 at 9:34 AM
subject: Casterly’s First Annual Secret Santa Holiday Gift Exchange! Participation is mandatory!

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It’s that special time of year again! The holidays are approaching, and we are delighted to announce that this year Casterly Rock Enterprises will participate in a company-wide Secret Santa Gift Exchange!

Before you growl and grinch that this event is absolutely, completely non-negotiable, that it is mandatory in every sense of the word, and that failure to participate will result in disciplinary action up to and including termination, please be aware that we intend to make this utterly worth your while!

For four days only, company matching will apply to more than just your 401k. For every dollar you spend on your Secret Santee, Casterly will return three dollars to you. That’s right: spend five dollars on a gift for someone else and you will walk away with TEN for yourself! Simply expense your gifts with the code SANTA. Please be aware that there is a five dollar minimum and twenty dollar maximum per day, and be sure to include those itemized receipts!

We hope you will enjoy a full week of festivities the week of December 19th – December 23rd. Gift exchanges will take place on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. More details to follow!

The annual Casterly Christmas party will take place after closing on Friday, December 23rd on the fifth floor. Refreshments will be provided. We regret that legal has informed us that we cannot mandate attendance for this event, and hope that if you draw a member of the legal department as your Secret Santee you keep that in mind. On a completely unrelated note, it is still possible to buy coal in Fleabottom.

Let the fun begin! Ho, ho, ho!

P.S. We are looking for volunteers for tree decorating both in the main lobby and on the fifth floor. Please email me if you’re interested!

Sansa Stark
HR Officer
T: (555) 491-4523
F: (555) 491-4524
Casterly Rock Enterprises
3100 King’s Way
King’s Landing, CL 10001-3100

At 9:34 am, Sansa Stark clicked send with a heart full of holiday cheer and goodwill toward men. She was wholly unaware of the furor that would soon arise from her earnest desire that her coworkers share in the same peace and love that welled within her own breast during the Christmas season. If she had known, she might have hesitated.

Or perhaps not. “No pain, no gain,” was one of her mottos.

The email traveled along the Casterly network at the speed of electricity, and an instant later appeared in over two hundred inboxes. In each it nestled, fertile and waiting; a gift ready to be unwrapped.

For ten minutes, all was quiet. Sansa received fifteen read receipts. She wrote twenty-five names from the company roster onto small, white slips of paper.

Then Podrick Payne in the mailroom hit Reply-All. He kindly volunteered to help decorate the Christmas trees, and everyone in the company got to read about it. They also got to read Sharon from Marketing’s offer to pay Sansa one hundred dollars to get out of having to participate in Secret Santa. The first ineffectual request for people to stop using Reply-All hit the chain at 9:58 am.

Within an hour there was a party in every inbox. The memes began to fly just before lunchtime, and two friends from different departments obliviously carried on a spirited chat about Rodrik Harlaw's newest book. The demands for everyone to stop using Reply-All devolved into no-holds-barred, all caps rants.

At a quarter till noon, Sansa sat at her desk, holding a spoonful of yogurt in front of her mouth, entranced by her monitor. She almost always spent lunchtime in her cubicle, but normally she passed the time with a book. The fourth floor was the quietest of them all, for it housed the two most detested departments in the company: HR and IT. No one ever disturbed her quiet lunch.

All in all, the morning had been interesting, if not quite what she had hoped for. She was a little dismayed at the fighting, and disappointed at the bribery attempts, but ten people had offered to help decorate, and she had a new book for her reading list. Some joker from IT had posted Minor Mistake Marvin with burning presents in the microwave—even Sansa had to admit it was funny—but her spirits had been buoyed when a senior engineer from Development had posted Haters Gonna Hate in response.

The sound of a door slamming broke her out of her trance. The cubicles in HR were an awkward height, too low to hide behind but too high to see over properly without stretching her neck, and when she did so she felt a little thrill of alarm.

The Head of IT had just burst out of the stairwell.

Sandor Clegane was the tallest, ugliest man she had ever encountered. Half his face was covered with gruesome burn scars, and in her eight months at Casterly Sansa had heard a dozen different explanations for them. But however hard the rumor mill churned, the truth of the matter remained a mystery. As far as she knew, no one had ever summoned the bravery to ask him outright what had happened. Given his aggressive conversational style and general aura of scathing contempt, she doubted anyone ever would—or that he would answer.

Even now she could see the ever present earbuds firmly jammed into his ears. She suspected that he only wore them to avoid conversation.

He must have taken the morning off, she thought, noting the laptop bag slung across his long body. The implications of this filled her with chagrin; he was walking into work completely unaware of the storm waiting for him.

The floor plan of the HR department was open, and Sansa was able to watch him stride down the hallway toward the IT offices from a considerable distance. When he was gone—the IT department enjoyed the luxury of full floor to ceiling walls—she settled back down in her seat and spooned the forgotten yogurt into her mouth. I hope I didn’t cause him too much trouble.

Five minutes later, her hopes were dashed. Sandor Clegane’s roar of outrage was so loud she fancied the entire building could hear it. Sansa slouched in her chair, grimacing, thankful that walls and distance prevented her from hearing the words he was shouting.

After a minute or two, the diatribe faded away, and an ominous silence descended. Blushing, Sansa looked at her monitor. Her inbox suggested that there were seven new responses in her email chain. She reached for her mouse.

“STARK!”

Sansa started. Quickly, she bent and pulled her book out of her bag. She placed it on her desk and opened it to a random page. Her hands flew to her hair and she fluffed it a bit before smoothing the tan pencil skirt over her thighs.

Then she sat up straight and poked her head over the cubicle wall.

“Here,” she called.

Far across the room, Sandor Clegane’s searching gaze snapped onto her own, and her pulse began to beat a little faster. He’s very angry, she thought, watching him barrel toward her like a bull charging down a red flag.

It didn’t take him long to find his way through the cubicle maze, and in a few short moments he stood in the opening to her workspace, towering over her with fury in his eyes. One of his hands rested on the top of the cubicle divider, the fingers tap-tap-tapping his agitation.

“Stark,” he said, deliberately quiet, and the low volume of his voice was somehow more cutting than any shouting. Sansa sat a little straighter in her chair, and smiled up at him.

“Hi, Sandor. How are you?”

The look he gave her was equal parts disbelief and disgust, but he pounced on the opening anyway.

“I’m sorry to say that I’m not very well.” The technically polite words tumbled out of his mouth with dangerous menace. “To tell you the truth, I’m actually having a—” He paused, narrowed his eyes, and blew air sharply out of his nose. “A beast of a day. And do you know why, Miss Stark?”

Sansa offered him a contrite look. “I’m very sorry, Sandor. I didn’t know this would happen.”

“Twenty-seven tickets!” he barked, dropping the pretense at calm. “My fool team flapping about the office like drunken butterflies, doing nothing!”

He jabbed a long finger toward her. “Your mess! And you’re going to fix it.”

“Of course,” she said quickly. “I’ll do anything—”

Sandor stepped forward, and suddenly the cubicle felt tiny and crowded. Sansa sucked in a breath as he bent over her, but he only reached for her mouse and keyboard.

He clicked the button to compose a new email, immediately tabbed into the subject line, and wrote ‘How to unsubscribe from email threads.’ Another tab put him in the body, and he began typing with a rapidity and force that threatened to rattle her keyboard to pieces.

Sansa kept her eyes on the words appearing on her screen, but he was invading her personal space in a way that was very distracting. The drawstring of his hoodie brushed back and forth over her bare forearm, and his small movements allowed his clean, masculine scent to wash over her. She breathed him in, enjoying the moment, and didn’t bother to read what he had written until he finished and stepped back.

“Okay,” he said, all his anger wiped away by a teaching moment. “When you need to send an email to the entire company, just send it to yourself and BCC the ‘all’ group. This way they can’t Reply-All.”

Sansa obediently typed her own email address into the ‘to’ field, and ‘[email protected]’ into the ‘BCC’ field.

“That’s it,” he said. “Send it.”

She couldn’t help herself; she clicked into the body of the email, keyed “Ho, ho, ho!” on a new line at the end, then sent it.

When she looked up at him with an unrepentant smile, he shook his head at her. “You’re a menace, Stark,” he said absently, pulling his chiming phone out of his pocket. As he turned away, his gaze dropped for a bare instant to her collarbone, peeking out of her white blouse. If she hadn’t been watching him so closely, she would never have seen it.

“Thank you!” she called to his retreating back, but he didn’t respond.

Sansa leaned back in her chair. Well, that was a… start. She swiveled back and forth, thinking. I’m definitely on his radar today, that’s something. Sure, it’s because I completely pissed him off, but you can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs.

And the truth was that Sansa had a great interest in making that particular omelette.

In her mind, she replayed the appraising glance he had given her a few moments before. She thought it was very likely he hadn’t even been aware that he'd done it, but it was the first smidgen of personal interest he had ever shown in her, and she intended to seize the encouragement and run with it.

Sansa Stark considered herself a goal-oriented, driven person, and wasn’t afraid to put in the work to get what she wanted. A Secret Santa Gift Exchange was a project she might have shouldered in any case, for the pure enjoyment of spreading holiday cheer, but she couldn’t deny that this year certain additional perks were in play. The ability to choose her own Secret Santee, for example.

She twined a length of auburn hair around her index finger. He doesn’t know it, yet, but he’s about to have the best Christmas of his life.

Chapter Text

Sandor Clegane could take or leave Christmas. His childhood memories of the holiday ranged from poor to horrific, but he was smart enough to place the blame on his brother Gregor rather than the holiday itself, and never participated in any of the histrionic, vocal lambasting of Christmas in which other outcasts often indulged themselves.

For an avowed atheist in a sea of believers—a large number of whom he suspected to be atheists hiding behind pious words, based on the marked difference between their actions and their stated beliefs—Christmas was just a quiet, paid day off. It was a day to hit the gym, take Stranger to the park, and watch football.

Once his initial annoyance over the email chain faded, he found he didn’t mind the Secret Santa gift exchange, not really. It was hard to object to free money, and he’d determined at once that the whole thing could be dealt with quickly and painlessly by the purchase of four twenty-dollar gift cards.

If he’d believed in the gods, he might have thought they were enacting some righteous revenge on him for his general impiety. But he didn’t believe, so when he drew Todd Parker as his Secret Santee, his only recourse was to curse his bad luck.

Todd was one of the IT department’s very own; he worked for Sandor on the tech support side of operations. Cheerful and polite, but not particularly talented, he was strictly first-tier support material: password resets, power cycles, and not much more. He was tan and smooth-skinned, handsome in a bland sort of way, and obsessed with golf. He had lasted two years so far—longer than most in tech support—by dint of being oblivious to Sandor’s biting remarks. To make matters worse, Todd seemed to genuinely like him, and frequently invited him out to hit a few balls.

Sandor loathed him.

So he was as surprised as anyone else might have been when, on an excursion to purchase more tennis balls for his dog, a moment of impulse propelled him into the golf supplies section of the sporting goods store.

The sight of hideous shoes in neat array caused him to immediately regret this decision, but since he had already come this far he continued to look around, feeling awkward and foolishly out of place. The clubs and bags were too expensive, and he didn’t even know where to start with the gloves. Golf attire was a mystery to Sandor; he suspected that the goal was to look as ridiculous as possible, but wasn’t completely sure. Should he simply choose the stupidest looking item he could find? It dawned on him that he was putting entirely too much thought into a gift for someone he didn’t even like, so he grabbed a canister of white balls and showed the golf supply shelves his heels. At the checkout he firmly demanded three twenty-dollar gift cards.

At home he sat on the floor and wrapped the golf balls, fighting with the bright paper he’d bought at the grocery store and cursing his lack of foresight. Cylinders were a bitch to wrap, and it didn’t help that Stranger seemed fascinated by his master’s odd project; several times the black muzzle gently nosed its way into the paper just when Sandor was ready to apply tape. At least he could just tuck the gift cards into cheap little greeting cards.

Monday the 19th was the first day of the gift exchange, and he’d been glad to see that Sansa Stark’s emailed instructions the week before had been properly addressed this time. In his opinion, the girl was a little bird-brained; she couldn’t seem to remember a password to save her life. He’d probably reset it a dozen times for her since the beginning of her employment at Casterly.

Good thing she’s pretty, he thought, climbing the stairs past his usual stop at the fourth floor, gift in hand. Might take to the phrase method. I’ll try her on it next time, see if it sticks.

Sandor emerged on the fifth floor and blinked. Fifth was a ballroom, with huge windows and gleaming hardwood floors. Casterly took its parties seriously—good business included networking—and the charity balls and high society events that happened here were frequent and never ending.

Today the ballroom looked as though someone had dipped it in a vat of liquid Christmas. A huge tree glowed in the corner, and an excess of multi-colored lights were strung from the ceiling, their light reflected in the glossy floors. Around the edges of the room were a dozen folding tables, each with its own, individual Christmas-themed tablecloth. Glittery pinecones and green garlands were artfully strewn between the presents on the tables.

“Oh!” he heard someone chirp. “Hi Sandor! Come to drop off a present?”

Sansa Stark appeared before him as if she had teleported there. Her wide, white smile and glittering eyes told him she was having the time of her life. The Santa hat she wore was another hint.

“Yeah,” he said, wiggling the badly-wrapped canister.

“Wonderful! Who’s it for?”

“Todd Parker.”

“Well, let’s see.” The girl looked at the tables. “We’ve kind of alphabetized them, so… that one!” She turned away and made a beeline to one of the tables. Sandor followed.

“You know,” she said, glancing at the gift in his hand, “I think that could use a little something more. Maybe a bow?”

“Didn’t have any,” he said.

“Not to worry,” she said cheerfully. “I’ve plenty.” The next instant, the girl dropped to her hands and knees, ducked her head under the tablecloth, and began to rummage underneath the table.

“Now where are they?” he heard her mutter. Sandor could only see the back half of her due to the fall of the tablecloth, and couldn’t help but notice how round and pert her backside was in that tight skirt.

Don’t ogle, he told himself, but then she began to wiggle in her search, and the thought was forgotten. The skirt began to ride up, and he saw that her thighs were lovely and smooth. She must be a runner, with hamstrings like that. He cursed himself for a dirty old man—the girl couldn’t have seen her twenty-second nameday — but still he couldn’t bring himself to look away.

After what felt like a century, Stark emerged from beneath the table. “Got it!” she exclaimed, waving a large red bow triumphantly.

He handed over the canister wordlessly, and she slapped the bow on the top with satisfaction.

“There, that’s better. You said Todd Parker?”

Sandor nodded, and watched as she carefully wrote the name on a white tag and stuck it next to the bow.

“All done, then,” she said cheerfully, and Sandor immediately turned to leave.

“Wait!” she called after him. “Don’t you want your present? It’s already here.”

It had completely slipped his mind that someone would have brought something for him, perhaps not surprising since gifts did not feature heavily in Sandor’s life.

“Right,” he said, following her to a table closer to the tree.

“There, that’s you,” Stark said after examining the new table for a few moments. She pointed to a package in the middle of the table.

It was about a foot long, and several inches wide. The wrapping was simple—plain brown packing paper—but sparkly red stretchy string was wound artfully around it, and the whole thing was topped with a shiny red bow.

When he picked it up, it was heavier than he thought it would be. He nodded at Stark, his mind already on the day’s work, and left.

When he arrived at his office, Sandor tossed the package on his desk and forgot about until later that morning. Three new hires were joining the Sales department after the first of the year, and he wanted to get a head start on their laptops. The reimaging process was slow, and dealing with his inbox didn’t take a very large bite out of the wait time.

In a moment of sheer boredom, the present caught his attention. He pulled off the stretchy string and the bow, and when he ripped through the paper he stared down at his gift, frowning.

It was a giant Snickers bar. Taped to it was a little note: You’re not you when you’re hungry.

The meaning was not lost on Sandor. The note implied that he was an asshole, and the one pound candy bar insinuated that it would take a lot of Snickers to fix the problem. Or perhaps it was just a dig at his size.

Either way, his Secret Santa was a dick.

How ridiculous would I look eating that thing?

Sandor sat in his chair, frowning down at the candy, and Todd Parker chose that moment to burst into his office.

Per company policy, Sandor was required to tell new employees that his door was always open to them. He complied with this policy by very clearly stating that his door was open, while slowly and pointedly shutting it. Todd, of course, hadn’t caught the nuance.

“I got balls!” he shouted, waving the canister of white golf balls above his head.

“Congratulations,” Sandor grunted.

“I love balls!”

“I’m sure you do, Todd.”

The younger man’s eyes settled on the wrapping paper on Sandor’s desk. “What did you get?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but approached the desk at once with a wide smile.

“Wow, look at that Snickers! That’s awesome!”

“You want it?” Sandor said at once, hoping to get rid of him.

“Heck yes I do!” Todd snatched the candy bar up, then paused. “But… don’t you want it? It’s your gift.”

“Won’t eat it.”

One rip and the candy bar was open. Todd took a huge bite out of the bar, and screwed his face up in bliss. “It’th tho good,” he mumbled through his mouthful of chocolate, caramel, nougat and peanuts.

“I’m glad you like it,” Sandor said.

Todd took another bite. His mouth must have been completely full, for his cheeks bulged like a chipmunk’s. “Ohhhhh,” he moaned. “Mmm… good…”

When Todd showed signs of taking another bite, Sandor felt it was time to intervene. He didn’t really feel like watching his employee chew up a full pound of Snickers right there in his office. “All right, kid. Time to get back to work.”

Todd nodded. “Merry Chrithtmath.” He smiled, showed Sandor a disgusting brown mouthful, and wandered out of the office with his balls tucked under his arm.

Only three more days of this, he thought. The golf balls had clearly been a mistake, and he sincerely hoped that his employee’s reaction to the gift cards would be more subdued.

Sandor tossed the wrapping paper, string, and bow into his trash can, and turned his attention back to the laptops.

Chapter Text

For Sansa, it began with a single phone call in June. At that time she was fresh out of grad school and settling in fast to her new position at Casterly Rock Enterprises.

Company policy required that passwords expire monthly, and Sansa had obediently changed it right on schedule. She was not in the habit of forgetting passwords, so when the new one didn’t work the next day she assumed that she’d made the same typo twice. It was annoying but no real problem; one call to tech support would net her a password reset and then she could get on with her day.

The deep, growling voice of the technician had taken her by surprise. Obviously bored, he talked her through the process briskly, in the manner of a man speaking by rote. Sansa, however, had been anything but bored; the rich voice shivered into her ear through the telephone and ricocheted from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes.

The call was over far too quickly for her liking, and she hung up the phone, wondering what a man with a voice like that would look like. The internal corporate website was no help; most employees had pictures next to their names in the directory, but Sandor Clegane did not.

Her curiosity remained unsatisfied for another month, when her computer began to behave oddly. She dutifully called tech support, and the man with the rasping voice once again answered the phone.

“What’s it doing?” he demanded, when she told him her computer seemed to be broken.

“It just kind of… turns off.”

“How often?”

“Three times this morning, so far.”

“Right,” he said, and Sansa heard a click. She looked at the handset in surprise, but it seemed he really had hung up on her.

“Okay, then...” she muttered. Had it been an accident? Should she call again, or was he coming to fix it? She decided to give it half an hour and visit IT in person if help didn’t come; she really couldn’t do any work without a functioning computer.

Long before then, she heard her name spoken nearby. The timbre of the voice confirmed it was Sandor, and she guessed he was asking one of her coworkers where her cubicle was located.

Sansa sat tall in her chair and looked over the divider. Her first impression of Sandor Clegane was that he was one of the tallest men she had ever seen. The IT department must have had a more relaxed dress code than the other departments, for he was wearing dark blue jeans and a gray hoodie over his white button-down shirt. Sansa took in the broad shoulders and muscular frame, and decided that he had to be pushing three hundred pounds.

Then he turned to face her. For a moment she froze—his scars turned an ordinary face into a mask that could easily frighten small children—but Sansa had been born into a very distinguished family, and her manners were impeccable.

She looked him right in the eyes and smiled.

“Hi, I’m Sansa Stark,” she said, once he arrived at her cubicle. “You must be Sandor Clegane.”

He grunted, and held the computer tower he was carrying out to her. She took it, and then his hand was on the armrest of the chair; he pushed her away from her desk without so much as a word, took his phone out of his pocket, and set it on her desk.

Sansa watched him get on the floor with interest; his head was near her current tower, and his position was so reminiscent of a man on his back underneath a car that she wouldn’t have found it odd if he held out a hand and asked for a wrench.

As it happened, the hand did emerge, but he simply pressed the power button on the front of the tower and listened.

“Fan’s out,” he said with a faint note of satisfaction. The finger shut the computer off again, and soon he was disconnecting all the wires leading into the tower.

Sansa watched as he worked; when he had to reach far behind the desk his shirt rode up, and she caught a glimpse of muscular torso covered with coarse dark hair. When he twisted, a Snickers bar fell out of his hoodie pocket onto the thin carpet.

She heard a chime, and saw his phone light up. Sandor ignored it, and once the call had gone to voicemail she was unable to resist peeking at his wallpaper photo. A large black dog looked sweetly up at the camera, with a red frisbee in its mouth.

In no time at all he was ready for the new tower, and since he seemed to be paying her no attention whatsoever she ogled him with absolutely no shame. The face isn’t great, she had to admit, but that body is. When she caught a whiff of aftershave she pressed her thighs together. With that beard, it must be his neck.

By the time he finished swapping out the towers, Sansa was head over heels in lust. As a junior HR officer, she knew the policy on interoffice dating quite well: acceptable as long as the parties did not work in the same department, and neither was subordinate to the other. The Head of IT was fair game.

The only trouble was that she didn’t know how to get his attention. She tried recrossing her legs while he was on the floor, but he didn’t even look her way.

When he finally climbed out from underneath her desk she looked up at him through her eyelashes. “Thank you so much,” she said in as throaty a voice as she could manage.

Sandor grunted, snatched his phone from her desk and the candy bar from the floor, and took the original tower out of her hands. Then he was gone, without a goodbye or a backward glance.

He barely said two words to me, she thought, turning her new computer on. I’m not sure he even looked at me.

Sansa wasn’t one to be discouraged easily, however. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” was one of her mottos.

Thus began her campaign to conquer Sandor Clegane. Twice she had finagled her way into being the HR representative in IT interviews. She asked the general questions, and Sandor barked the technical ones with such force that several applicants withdrew themselves from consideration immediately afterward. Both times Sansa dressed with more than usual care, and fussed over her hair and makeup, but she could have worn sweatpants for all Sandor seemed to notice.

After six months she had hardly made any progress. Sansa was fairly sure he knew her name, and the second time they conducted an interview together he actually made eye contact when they discussed the applicant.

But that was all, and to her shame she had taken to calling once a fortnight or so for an unneeded password reset. She knew it was pitiful, but all the same she was deeply disappointed each time her call went through to one of the other technicians.

By early November, she was almost ready to simply march into his office and ask him out for a drink, but an overheard conversation in the cafeteria about last year’s awful Secret Santa turnout struck her like a bolt of lightning. The plan sprang fully formed into her brain. All she needed was permission, and she was fairly sure she had what it took to get it.

So when the next charity ball occurred, Sansa dug into her trust fund money and bought a plate. She wore a low-cut red dress with slits on each side nearly up to her hips, and watched videos on the internet to learn how to create the smokiest of smoky eyes.

At the bar, she found the man she was looking for. Many rumors flew about Casterly’s CEO, Tyrion Lannister, but two of them were nearly established fact: Tyrion’s two greatest loves were alcohol and women.

Sansa flirted shamelessly with him. She showed him her dimpled smile and made sure to bend slightly forward to display her décolletage. She had been told many times—particularly when walking by construction sites—that it was excellent. She sat on the stool next to his and let the front panel of her dress fall between her bare thighs.

They spent a pleasant ten minutes conversing, and to her delight he was clever, intelligent, and behaved like a gentleman. She was genuinely laughing at his joke about a honeycomb and a jackass in a brothel when he gave her a sardonic look.

“All right, Miss Stark,” he said. “While I enjoy your company, I’m not a fool. Clearly you’re after something, and I doubt it’s me. So let’s cut to the chase.”

Sansa took a sip of her champagne and fixed him with a beady eye.

“I want a Secret Santa gift exchange. A mandatory Secret Santa gift exchange.”

Tyrion’s eyebrows rose. “Do my ears deceive me? Do you work for me?”

“HR.”

“A Stark. Working for me. In HR, no less.” He took a deep swallow of his wine, looking slightly alarmed. “Thank the gods I didn’t sexually harass you. I haven’t, have I?”

Sansa smiled at him. “I’m fairly sure I was the one doing the harassing.”

“So,” he mused. “You spent thousands of dollars on a plate of food, just to try and get permission for a Secret Santa exchange.”

“Yes. A mandatory one.”

“You fascinate me. Go on.”

Sansa ran her fingers through her hair. “I was thinking we could match their gifts, so that when they bought something they got a reward, too. That way people wouldn’t be angry.”

“You know we have some Braavosi working for us, who worship at the House of Black and White. They only believe in giving one specific gift.”

“Religious exemption,” Sansa countered at once.

“It would have to be vetted by legal. And some people will still be angry no matter what,” Tyrion said. But there was a glint in his eye, and Sansa thought she knew why.

“All the more reason,” she said, smiling wickedly.

When she heard him laugh, she knew she had won.

By Tuesday the 20th of December, Sansa’s nerves were starting to fray. She had stayed up far too late the night before, baking. She didn’t know what kinds of sweets Sandor liked, apart from Snickers, so she’d decided to make several different treats and package up the best-looking ones for his present.

She ended up with six perfect devil’s food cupcakes, topped with mock whipped cream frosting which she colored red, half a dozen puffy sugar cookies dipped in a green glaze and coated with sprinkles, and eight rum balls.

Feeling daring, she tucked a note inside the baker’s box that read ‘sweet things for a sweet thing’ and wrapped the whole thing up with packing paper. It was simple, but she felt the shiny, stretchy string she wound around it made it look classy.

But when morning arrived she felt drained instead of excited. Her spirits were low, and she didn’t even feel up to picking up her gift from the fifth floor until after lunch. When she did, she immediately knew it was the same unkind gift she had received the day before. She struggled writing a report all afternoon, and by the end of the day all she wanted to do was go home, get into bed, and throw the covers over her head.

But she stayed late anyway, until everyone else on the floor had gone home. Just a hint, she told herself. A single crumb, or a crumpled cupcake liner. Anything to let me know he liked them, then today will have been worth it.

Even though the entire floor was empty, she still crept to the IT offices as quietly as a mouse. His office was the last on the right, and she opened the door feeling like an intruder.

Sandor Clegane reigned over a spacious corner office with an impressive view. The desk was huge and glossy, more of a workbench than an office desk. It looked like an ideal place to work on several computers at once.

It was perfectly clean.

Sansa walked around it, and put her hands on the back of the large chair. She was tempted to sit, but her inner voice told her that it would be wrong; invasive.

Glancing down, she saw the trash can next to his computer tower, and her breath caught.

The baker’s box was in the trash, unwrapped.

At once she knelt and opened it. Sansa stared down at six smashed cupcakes, six smudged cookies, and eight flattened rum balls.

Chapter Text

Running a successful IT department took both technical skill and a certain willingness to play dirty with upper management; both were qualities that Sandor had in spades. His experience working for other companies had shown him that when things were going smoothly, management was tempted to settle their sights on IT as convenient way to increase the bottom line. They inevitably pushed to reduce or outsource staff, and were reluctant to invest in new equipment or pay competitive wages. If they got their way, things always descended into chaos, no matter how fiercely he warned them, and in the end the catastrophic tech failures caused by their neglect always cost the company far more than if they had just listened to him in the first place.

Casterly was different than most other companies, though, in that its CEO seemed to understand the value of a strong internal tech team. Still, Sandor took no chances; he always demanded triple what he thought he would need for his budget, and allowed himself to be reluctantly talked down to reasonable levels.

He fought hard so that the people under him earned fair wages, particularly for several software engineers who were truly talented—he didn’t want them poached. Even Todd was paid well; despite Sandor’s personal antipathy toward him, he recognized that a good attitude and reliability helped morale around the office. In return for having their backs, Sandor demanded a lot of his team, and he got it.

But nobody could work at full steam every moment of every day, and even Sandor felt a certain end of the year lassitude. Next year’s budget was set, and there was no real reason to start any of the new projects, not with so many people taking PTO between Christmas and New Year’s. He’d gathered everyone that morning for a quick huddle, and let them know he wouldn’t be expecting much of them for the next few days. The normal flood of tickets had faded to a mere trickle, and he knew that elsewhere in the company others were kicking up their heels and taking it easy as well.

Sandor had Git and an editor open, meaning to tinker with a pet program of his, but he hadn’t written a single line of code or really even looked at his screen.

Instead, he toyed with today’s bizarre gift from his Secret Santa. Four little red boots with white fur cuffs had been nestled in the standard brown-wrapped box with a note that said, ‘warm feet, warm heart.’ He had no idea what they were for. They looked like they might fit a little kid, but why would anyone give him boots for a child? He didn’t have one toddler, let alone two. Sandor twirled one of the boots around on his finger, feeling as though he was missing something obvious. Considering how faintly sinister the two previous notes were, he was sure it was some kind of joke at his expense.

Sweet things for a sweet thing, he thought. Right.

The cupcakes and cookies had looked just fine, but the notes from his Secret Santa had been strange and not exactly friendly; he’d been far too suspicious to actually eat them. His childhood had taught him that it was best to be cautious when offered food by the untrustworthy; when Gregor said “Eat shit!” he’d often meant it literally. Sandor liked spicy food but had no interest in a capsaicin laced cookie or a cupcake spiked with laxatives. It had briefly occurred to him to try them out on Todd, but that would have been his brother’s play. Sandor knew how the world saw him, but even so he was no Gregor. Besides, he’d accidentally dropped the box descending the stairs to the fourth floor.

His phone rang, and he put down the little boot.

“IT department, Sandor Clegane.”

A small voice said, “This is Sansa Stark. I’m… having a problem with my computer.”

“Did you put in a ticket?”

“I can’t,” she said. Her voice was so faint he could hardly hear her.

“What’s it doing?”

“Nothing. It’s on, but…”

“But what?”

“I can’t,” she said, suddenly louder. “Can you please come help me?” Her voice hitched on the last word, and he realized she was close to tears. Before he could respond, the line went dead.

Sandor frowned. Nothing he was doing was very important, but he wasn’t enthusiastic about tearful encounters. He wasn’t good at faking concern over some problem he didn’t actually care about, and his instinct was to make himself scarce, not walk into the storm.

Still, computer problems were clearly within his realm of responsibility. He sighed, and stood up.

Sansa Stark's coppery hair was nowhere to be seen when he scanned the HR department, but Sandor knew the way. When he arrived at her cubicle, he found her seated with her hands in her lap, a little way from her desk. Her eyes were downcast, and her hair was a bright curtain shielding him from her sight.

Sandor waited, but she just sat there quietly, looking down at her hands, and he realized that she hadn’t heard him approach. He cleared his throat, and she looked up at him. Her face was pale and solemn, and it struck him that she must have worn a smile every single time he had encountered her, because he found the sight of her without one very odd.

“So, what seems to be the problem?”

“I went out to lunch,” she said. “I must have forgotten to lock my computer, because when I came back it was like this.” She glanced at her monitor, then looked back down at her hands.

Sandor moved closer so he could see. When he realized what was wrong he wanted to laugh, but something in her sad, still face stopped him. Someone had flipped her display so that everything on her screen appeared upside down.

“I see.” It seemed a harmless enough prank, but when he glanced at her he saw that tears were welling in her eyes. “Easy enough to fix. I’ll show you.” To his own surprise, he made an effort to sound kind.

He leaned over her to reach her keyboard and noticed, not for the first time, that Stark didn’t shy away from him as others did when he got near. “All you have to do is hit Ctrl-Alt-↑,” he said, and did so.

From this vantage point he could see a small golden box on the far side of her monitor. Stark had shoved it almost all the way to the back of her desk. Nestled inside some rather pretty gold tissue paper were several chunks of dull black rock.

Not rock. Coal. There was an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach and it took him a few moments to realize it was pity.

It turned out that they had something in common after all: a not very nice Secret Santa. He understood why someone might might be peeved about the mandatory status of this year’s Secret Santa exchange, but Stark seemed to be a very kind, gentle person, and he couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to hurt her.

“Have you been getting that this whole time?”

“Every day,” she said, her voice low and dull. “But it doesn’t matter.”

Sandor felt a spark of anger. “Someone’s trying to hurt you, and it doesn’t matter?”

“Really, there’s no need to—it’s all right,” she said, and suddenly the smile was back, though it was tremulous. “Did you know that you can polish coal? It can be quite pretty, actually. I might get one of those tumblers and make a little rock garden for my apartment.”

Sandor stared at her.

“All right,” he said, still unconvinced. “But if this goes any further let me know.”

“What? Why?”

“So I can make their life a living hell. I can do that, you know—I work in IT.”

Her smile widened and began to look genuine, and without meaning to he found himself smiling back.

Thursday, December 22nd

Sandor had absolutely no intention of going to Friday’s Christmas party; socializing with one’s colleagues ranked right up there with sleep deprivation and hot pokers on the scale of torture techniques, in his opinion. The Secret Santas were supposed to reveal themselves to their Secret Santees at the party, and he suspected that Todd Parker’s reaction to the news would be unbearable. It might even include attempted hugs, since Todd, much like Sansa Stark, seemed to be totally unafraid of him.

However, he was itching to know who his Secret Santa was. Last night he had been watching television with a glass of scotch in his hand and his dog curled up against his leg, when the obvious solution finally occurred to him.

“I’m going to catch that Santa in the act,” he told Stranger, who responded by looking up at his master with soulful brown eyes.

On Thursday morning, Sandor found himself hiding behind the Christmas tree in the fifth floor ballroom, waiting for someone to walk to his table with a present wrapped in brown paper. He alternated between feeling grim anticipation and feeling ridiculous, but decided it was worth a little loss in dignity to have a chance at giving his misbehaving Santa a proper dressing down.

The click of high heels on the hardwood floor alerted him to a woman’s presence. He peered through the lit branches, and was not surprised to see Sansa Stark. This was her project, after all, and he figured she wanted to make sure everything was in tip-top shape.

What did surprise him was the burden she carried; a flat, wide package wrapped in plain brown packing paper. The ubiquitous red stretchy string marked off each corner, and today’s bow was particularly ribbony.

“Mother have mercy,” he said, stunned. Normally he would have used much fouler language, but even in his shock he knew better than to swear in the presence of an HR officer. I tried to comfort her, he thought, and suddenly he was furious.

“Who’s there?” she said.

Sandor emerged from behind the tree and intercepted Stark in front of his table. He loomed over her and scowled down at her surprised face.

“You’re my Secret Santa?” he demanded.

“Well, yes. You weren’t supposed to find out until tomorrow, though.” She tried that pretty white smile on him, but Sandor was having none.

“You little hypocrite,” he snarled, and the smile fled from her face as though he had slapped it off her. “You were oh-so-sad about that coal. Let me tell you something: if you’re going to dish it out you’d best learn to take it, girl.”

“What? I don’t—”

“That Snickers. ‘You’re an asshole, Sandor, an enormous asshole. It’s going to take more than one to fix that, so here’s the biggest one I could find.’”

“That’s not—”

“And that ‘sweet thing’ nonsense. Nobody thinks I’m sweet, Stark. Because I’m. Not. Sweet.” He scowled down at her reddening face. “I wasn’t stupid enough to eat whatever you spiked them with, by the way.”

“Sandor, I—”

“And that last one. You’re going to have to explain that one to me, because I don’t have any kids, Stark, and frankly I didn’t understand. When you’re insulting people it’s possible to go too subtle, you know. Or maybe you’re just plain crazy and—”

“ENOUGH!” Stark shouted. She slammed the package onto the table, and then her hands were on her hips. She tossed her hair. When she glared up at him, he saw that the color was high in her cheeks; she looked prettier than ever, and Sandor hated her for it.

“I got you that Snickers because I saw you had one once and I thought you liked them.”

“It was a pound of Snickers—”

“It was slice and share, you weren’t meant to eat it all at once, even if you didn’t share it. That note was supposed to be funny, I didn’t realize you were so ready to think people hated you.” Sandor opened his mouth, but she pointed her finger at him and said very quickly, “You be quiet, it’s my turn to talk.”

Sandor closed his mouth. A terrible feeling was stealing over him, like he had made an awful, unforgivable mistake.

“I spent hours baking those treats; I don’t know what you like so I thought I’d try you on a few different things. And don’t tell me you aren’t sweet,” she said. Tears were in her eyes again; he watched them spill down her cheeks and felt ill.

“Because you are sweet, I always thought so. And you proved it when you were so nice to me yesterday.”

Stark covered her mouth with her hand for a moment, then scrubbed briskly at her eyes. “All I wanted was for you to have a nice Christmas. I’m sorry you didn’t like any of it. But I’m not sorry I tried.”

She turned away from him and began to walk away. Then she paused and said over her shoulder, “The boots are for your dog. For when it’s cold outside.”

The turmoil inside him was so great that all he could do was watch her until she was gone.

“Fuck,” he said. He turned, leaned both his hands on the table, and bowed his head. He closed his eyes. “Fuck.”

When he opened his eyes, Sansa’s last present to him was right between his hands on the table. Whatever it is, I don’t deserve it. But he slipped the string off each corner anyway, and gently separated the tape from the paper.

Inside the box was a lovely black and autumn-yellow striped scarf. It felt very soft, and he discovered it was extra long when he lifted it from its tissue paper bed. On each end of the scarf were three black hounds, and underneath the scarf itself were buttery smooth leather gloves in the same colors. The gloves’ hounds would dance on the backs of his hands when he wore them.

At the very bottom of the box was a card.

Dear Sandor,

I hope you don’t mind that I took the liberty of looking up your ancestral House’s heraldry. I also hope that you enjoyed the rest of this week’s gifts. It’s very difficult to shop for someone you don’t know very well, but I like to think I did my best!

You’re going to the staff party on Friday, right? I very much look forward to wishing you a Merry Christmas in person.

Here I will be bold—courageous even!—and tell you that I have admired you for quite some time in a more than strictly professional way. If we happen to find ourselves under the mistletoe during the evening, you should know that it would make my Christmas very merry indeed.

Affectionately yours,

Your Secret Santa

Sandor had to read the note twice before the implications of her neatly written words sank in. Very quickly after they did, he understood that he was the biggest idiot in Westeros. That kind, beautiful woman wanted me. And I fucked it all up.  You big dumb bastard,  he told himself.

He slid his fingers along a warm length of yellow and black scarf, and wondered if it was still possible to save Sansa Stark’s Christmas.

Chapter Text

It was fortunate that Sandor had put in for a half day on Friday weeks in advance, for company policy dictated that unscheduled PTO just before or after a holiday would result in the loss of holiday pay. He would have forfeited the extra money without a second thought, but he decided to try being an optimist for one day—his natural cynicism had not exactly been paying dividends lately—and took the happy accident as a sign that matters might not be irreparably fucked. His original plan had simply been to enjoy a long weekend, but the disaster in the ballroom Thursday morning changed everything. Suddenly he had a clusterfuck to untangle, and a looming deadline of 5:00 pm Friday.

Sandor knew perfectly well that he owed Sansa Stark an apology, and that if he showed up in her cubicle and told her he was sorry, she would readily forgive him. But his behavior had been so reprehensible that she deserved more than just words. Words were wind.

Except somehow, hers weren’t. They’d been echoing in his head since Thursday morning. I have admired you for quite some time. You were so nice to me. And underneath it all, the word mistletoe, a promise and a wish, both unfulfilled.

So he avoided her the rest of Thursday, and on Friday morning. It wasn’t difficult; their paths never crossed accidentally, and he was careful not to even look toward her workspace on his way to and from his office.

After work on Friday he went forth to do battle at the local shopping mall. The crowds were sizeable, and as he weaved his way through clusters of people carrying bags and holding hands, he felt for the first time that he was part of something larger than himself. No one held his hand, and he was aware that the something larger he was part of was merely a throng of last minute shoppers, but even so, there was a slight sense of belonging. He wondered if he was feeling a hint of Christmas spirit, and if so, how much more strongly and joyfully Sansa Stark must have felt it, to have been willing to put so much work into a gift exchange.

While trying to make plans to fix his big screwup, he’d quickly discovered that Sansa had been correct when she said it was difficult to shop for a person one didn’t know well. Flowers or chocolates were the obvious options, but he quickly discarded that idea. It felt too easy, too trite; for all he knew she could be allergic to chocolate, or would break out in hives near flowers. What she would like, he understood implicitly, was effort. So he dug down deep and tried to remember everything he could about her. At first he could only remember the pretty blue eyes that never flinched away from his face, her gorgeous auburn hair, and the curve of her waist as it flared into her hips, but after a while an idea came to him, and he felt some of the anxiety drain out of him.

The clerk asked if he would like any of his purchases gift-wrapped, but he declined. Some instinct told him she would like it better if he did the wrapping himself. So he did, and once again Stranger helped. Sandor wasn’t much better at wrapping flat, rectangular objects than he was at wrapping cylinders, but this time he’d bought ribbon, and in the end he was almost impressed by how nice it all looked.

At 4:45pm, he placed the gifts into his empty laptop bag and wound his new scarf around his neck. Normally his commute to work was a mere fifteen minutes, but it had begun to snow heavily while he was inside, and he didn’t walk into the fifth floor ballroom until a quarter after five.

By then the party was in full swing. A live band played covers of Christmas songs in one corner, and the tables that had once supported gifts were now groaning under the weight of all kinds of food and drink. The room was full of people; some danced in the middle of the floor and others gathered in groups near the tables. A photographer was taking pictures of people kissing under a huge bouquet of mistletoe.

Sandor didn’t see Sansa at first glance, and decided to make a lap of the room. He peered into every face, just in case she had her hair covered, but there was no hint of her until he heard a male voice say her name.

“...that Stark bitch good,” the voice laughed. At once Sandor’s head swiveled, searching for the speaker.

“Yeah, but how much did it cost you to trade for her?” one of his friends asked.

“Three hundred,” shrugged a blond, handsome young man. He was tall, though Sandor had half a foot and over a hundred pounds on him. “That’s nothing. Totally worth it—she didn’t even come to her own party, did she?”

“I thought you liked her. Didn’t you take her out once?”

“Yeah, but it was a waste of time. Should’ve known a northerner would be frigid.”

Sandor took a half-step in his direction, hands balled into fists. The blond was Joffrey Baratheon, the CEO’s nephew and living argument against nepotism. All Sandor saw was red, and he would have beat the little shithead into a pulp if someone hadn’t stopped him.

“Boss!” he heard a voice cry joyfully. A hand gripped his shoulder. Sandor turned, ready to rain down fury on whoever had dared to touch him. “I love your Santa hat,” Todd Parker said. “It looks really good on you!”

“Hey,” he said, and when he looked down into the beaming face, his rage was snuffed out all at once, like a candle. “Thanks,” he added, grateful more for the fact that Todd had just saved him from being fired and possibly arrested than for the compliment.

“Did you find your Secret Santa?”

“Uh, yeah. Earlier. You?”

“No, not yet. I hope they say hello, though. Their presents were so nice! The balls were great and I used the gift cards to buy a new bag. It’s orange!”

“That is nice,” agreed Sandor. He glanced over his shoulder, and an evil thought came to him. He would take care of Joffrey Baratheon later, in his own way. But for now…

“As it happens, I actually know who your Secret Santa is, Todd.”

“You do!?”

“Yes. But the thing is, he’s really shy.”

“Oh, that’s so sweet. Won’t you please tell me? I really want to thank him.”

“I don’t know,” Sandor said doubtfully. “I think he wanted it to stay a secret.”

“But boss, it’s Christmas.”

For the first time ever, Sandor Clegane smiled at Todd Parker. “Well, all right. He’ll probably deny it, but I know he’ll really be thrilled. You see that guy over there? His name’s Joffrey…”

Secure in the knowledge that Todd was completely impervious to having his feelings hurt, Sandor unleashed his employee on Joffrey Baratheon with zero guilt. He didn’t even stay to watch the carnage; he was on a Christmas mission, and the clock was ticking.

I’m done, thought Sansa Stark. I’m stick-a-fork-in-me done. The ballroom looked fantastic; the band and the photographer had arrived on time, and the caterers were already hard at work. Nothing else needed her attention, so at a quarter before five she handed the reins over to Podrick Payne and fled, pleading illness.

It wasn’t really a lie, either. Her sadness was nearly physical in its intensity; she had so looked forward to this week, and it had turned out to be an almost complete disaster. The only silver linings were that quite a few people had told her they had really enjoyed the Secret Santa exchange, and that she knew nearly the whole company was about to be treated to one heck of a party.

Sansa tried to focus on those two facts as she drove home, but she couldn’t stop thinking about the coal, which hurt her, or the blowup with Sandor, which hurt her and also made her angry and sad. Why is he like that? He’s so suspicious. Someone must have hurt him, for him to act act this way. It must be a very lonely life, pushing everyone away and trusting no one.

It looked like he wanted it to stay that way, for he hadn’t sought her out after their fight. She’d hoped for an apology, but was old enough to know that those were rarely forthcoming in adult life. Sansa wished she had taken the last present with her when she’d marched away from him, for at least then he’d still be ignorant of her feelings for him. Clearly he didn’t return the sentiment, and she wasn’t sure how to deal with the sting of rejection. It had never happened to her before.

I just need some me time, she thought, parking her car in the lot outside her apartment building. A nice, hot bath. I’ll curl up in the window seat with some hot cocoa and watch the snow fall.

It really was beautiful snow, too. Sansa turned her face up to it as she walked up the steps to her apartment. The flakes were her favorite kind—fat and thick—and floated lazily toward the ground.

By the time her bath cooled and her fingers were pruney and weird looking, it was dark outside and Sansa felt more like herself. After wrapping herself in a blue bathrobe she impulsively picked up the garland she had planned to wear to the party. She threw it over her head, and the red bells in it jingled gently all the way to the kitchen.

Christmas Eve is tomorrow, she thought, filling a saucepan with water. I’ll get to Skype Jon and Arya and Bran. For the first time since the accident, she was tempted to go home to Winterfell. It’s been years. Maybe I’ll fly up and surprise them. It would be expensive, but money meant little to her.

The water was nearly boiling and Sansa was standing by to add the milk when her buzzer rang. Sighing, Sansa turned off the burner and padded to the intercom.

“Who is it?”

“Someone who owes you an apology.” The deep, rasping voice was unmistakable.

He’s here.

Dazed, she watched her finger drift toward the intercom. She buzzed him in, and stood in front of the door, waiting. Her heart pounded in her chest.

I can’t believe he’s here.

Even though she knew it was coming, she still jumped when he knocked. She closed her eyes, willing herself to calm down, then blinked a few times and opened the door.

Sandor Clegane looked even larger than he did at work, perhaps because the ceiling was lower here. The first thing she noticed was that he was wearing a Santa hat. The second was the scarf she had made, knotted around his neck. The third was the black dog sitting by his side, clad in little red and white boots. The silky tail swept back and forth along the hallway floor as he looked up at her, panting gently.

“How do you know where I live?” she asked, feeling utterly wrong-footed.

“You sent me a thank you card when your fan went out. It had your return address on it.”

“Oh,” she said. She leaned against the doorjamb, feeling weak. “You kept that?”

“No. I threw it away.” He paused. “But since you’d already given it to me, I didn’t think it would be unethical to look you up.”

Sansa looked at him for a long moment, and he looked back. Neither smiled.

They spoke at the same time.

“I wanted to tell you—”

“Do you want to—”

“—how sorry I am—”

“—come in?”

“Yes,” he said, and Sansa stepped back and welcomed man and dog into her home.

“What’s his name?” she asked, bending to run her fingers through the soft fur of the dog’s ears.

“Stranger.”

“You’re a good boy, Stranger.” He licked her hand. “And you look very smart in those boots.”

Sansa straightened, realizing she was nearly naked, and for the first time felt an unwillingness to look Sandor in the eye. “If you’ll give me a moment,” she said, and fled to her bedroom when he nodded. 

She threw on a tank top and some red pajama bottoms with Christmas trees on them. Then she put the bathrobe back on. Feeling a lot more secure, she emerged from her bedroom to find Sandor and Stranger exactly where she left them.

For the first time since Sandor had entered her apartment, Sansa felt capable of putting on her smile. “Would you like some hot cocoa?”

“Sure,” he said.

Both he and Stranger followed her into the kitchen. Sansa added some more water to the pan and turned the burner back on.

“So,” she said. “You were saying something about an apology?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I want you to know how sorry I am for yelling at you. You didn’t deserve that. I felt terrible when I realized how wrong I was.”

Sansa kept her eyes on the pot of water.

“And… those were really great gifts. I didn’t understand, because I’m an idiot who doesn’t trust anyone.”

She waited, sure he had more to say.

“And I brought you some presents. For Christmas. I hope you like them.”

“Presents?” she said, finally looking up at him.

Then he was unclasping his laptop bag, and pulling out three wrapped gifts. He held them out to her and she took them and set them on the kitchen table.

“Should I wait? Or do you want me to open them now?”

“Now is good,” he said.

He’d gotten her three books: the new Rodrik Harlaw, and two others she’d never heard of.

“I know you like to read,” he said from behind her, sounding uncertain. “I got you my two favorites, and that new one, just in case.”

Sansa stood there, holding the hardcover book with its sharp, pointy new corners. They won’t remain that way for long, she knew. Something was bubbling up inside her, and it felt a little like hope. But still, she wasn’t sure. And she had to be sure.

“Is there anything else you want to say to me?” she asked.

Behind her, she heard him take a step toward her. And then another, until she knew that he was right behind her. He didn’t touch her, but she could feel his body heat. She breathed in his scent with every inhale.

“You’re the kindest, most thoughtful, most beautiful woman I’ve ever met.” Sansa felt his breath stir her hair. “It’s killing me that I hurt you. Please say you forgive me.”

“I forgive you,” she said. Please touch me, she thought.

He did; she felt his hand cup her elbow, and pull gently. She turned to face him, as he wanted, and looked up at him.

“I didn’t bring any mistletoe,” Sandor said, and the low rumble of his voice made her shiver.

“That’s all right,” she said, and put her hands on his chest.

When he kissed her, all her uncertainties and regrets fled. The taste of his mouth chased away the memories of the unkind words that same mouth had said to her, and when his hands slid up into her hair she even forgot about the coal. In his kiss, she forgot everything.

It wasn’t until she was on her back on the kitchen table that she returned to herself. Her legs were wrapped around his waist and her hands had somehow slid underneath his shirt. Sandor was kissing her neck, and one of his huge hands was splayed on her ribcage, achingly close to her breast.

“Wait,” she panted, as he dragged her earlobe gently through his teeth. “Wait.”

At once he released her, and backed away. Sansa followed him up until she was sitting on the table.

“I want…” she said, looking up at him. The look in his eyes was so heated that she bit her lip.

“What do you want?” he said, and the growl in his voice very nearly made her reach for him again.

“I want to date you,” she said. “I can’t… I need to know you—we need to know each other better, first.”

“I’ll do anything for you,” he said at once, with perfect and honest sincerity. “But you’ll have to tell me how. I’ve never dated anyone before.”

“You’ve never…?” She felt her eyebrows go up.

“I’ve never dated anyone before,” he said gently, and this time she understood his meaning.

“Okay,” she said. “Well, maybe we should start with watching a movie? I rented a few.”

“All right,” he said agreeably, though when she slid down off the table he kissed her again. She smiled and broke away, and in the living room he lifted her hair gently and kissed the back of her neck while she tried to pick a DVD. In the end, Sansa had no idea which movie she had put into the player.

But on the couch he behaved himself, though he did pull her into his lap immediately. The movie turned out to be It’s a Wonderful Life, and Sansa leaned her head against his chest, letting her fingers play with the dark hair on his forearm.

There was a pleasant ache between her thighs, and she wondered if she’d ever found anyone as physically attractive as Sandor Clegane. She snuggled closer to him, enjoying the feeling of his thumb stroking her collarbone absently as he watched the movie.

“Good things come to those who wait,” was one of her mottos. Sansa firmly reminded herself of that fact, then tilted her head and touched her lips to the clean-shaven underside of his jaw. I can’t remember why I thought that motto was any good, really, she thought, and when Sandor’s reaction was to wrestle her underneath him and kiss her into submission, she decided to toss that one altogether.

Sansa had a feeling that she and Sandor were going to have a wonderful Christmas, and a very, very happy New Year.