![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
janie_tangerine(“Wait,” Jaime tells Brienne the moment she comes back home, cursing the rain and shedding away her raincoat, “where did you say your redhead marine biologist was going to stay?”
She rolls her eyes, hanging the raincoat in the entrance of their apartment trying to make sure it doesn’t drench the ground. “She’s not my anything and I’d have been assholes if my mentor’s daughter needs a ride and I didn’t give it to her now.” Catelyn asked her a favor and of course Brienne was going to drive Sansa to the lighthouse — the fact that she moved in the middle of nowhere to run the local small museum with Jaime so that they could also stay very far from his family doesn’t mean that she still doesn’t talk to her.
“Yeah, whatever, that’s not the problem. The problem is, she’s at the lighthouse?”
“At the guest house,” Brienne shrugs. “Which she rented regularly so she can study whichever baby dolphin strikes her fancy. What’s your point?”
He laughs.
Hard.
“Oh,” he says, “this is going to be amazing.”
“… Jaime, what the hell are you even on to?”
“Please, do you think that it’s not going to be hilarious the moment Sandor Clegane finds out that he’s not all on his own telling people to fuck off whenever they drop by?”
… Oh.
Fair.
It’s not like Brienne’s had that many interactions with the man though with her he was always perfectly nice, though… well, she supposes that he and Jaime are somewhat better friends, if basing being snarky at each other while sharing beers once every two weeks counts as a basis for a friendship, but that’s the most human contact Clegane has with other human beings that’s not kicking them out of his turf.
Still, so what.
“And so what? I mean, now he has a neighbor, he won’t be an arse to her just because. I don’t think so, at least.”
“Never mind,” Jaime shakes his head, “just tell me in a month if I wasn’t right that it was going to be a downright telenovela.”
“You watch too many in the first place,” she smiles, and then she grabs him by the neck and kisses him and shuts him up.
Honestly, it’s not her business what Sansa is up to and she just hopes she has a good time studying her fish for the next six months and if she needs a ride Brienne will be more than glad to give it to her, and that’s it.
Jaime honestly has too much imagination, sometimes.)
—
“And what the fuck are you doing here?”
Sansa, who had just wanted to enjoy her herbal tea as she breathed some fresh air, and doesn’t she love the smell of earth just after it has finished raining, had not expected that interruption.
She turns and looks at the man who just showed up at her right — Brienne did say that there was someone living in the lighthouse making sure that it wasn’t left completely abandoned when it was before he came to stay there, and it was a good thing because he avoided a lot of shipwrecks in the last years.
She hadn’t told Sansa that other than being exceedingly rude he also seemed to have some penchant for staying in the shadows purposefully, since he’s making sure to stand near the wall, which is almost completely covered in darkness.
“I rented the house,” she says, not trying to hide that she’s irritated, “regularly, for the next six months. I have a thesis to write and the fish I have to study only live in this area, so, I’m doing my job, or well, my future job, I hope. Mr…?”
“Clegane,” he snorts, “Sandor Clegane, and no one warned me someone else was going to stay here this bloody long.”
“The secretary said they sent emails to anyone that should have received a notification, so if you haven’t —”
“I don’t have an email,” the guy scoffs.
“How do you live in the modern world?”
“The post exists for one reason, miss…?”
“Sansa,” she sighs, “Sansa Stark. Listen, I gather you appreciate your solitude, so how about I try to not bother you and you try to not bother me and six months from now we never see each other again?”
He half-smiles, moving out of the shadows to head back to the lighthouse, and then she sees him properly — he’s tall, very tall, with long pitch black raven hair over a pair of grey eyes, and he’s certainly built like a brick wall, large shoulders and muscles that show he does a lot of heavy lifting. He would almost look out of some cheap telenovela where he’d play the dark, doomed, tormented love interest, if it wasn’t for the fact that the right half of his face is burned, and badly — it’s a mass of blood-red scar tissue, or so it looks in the moonlight, and one ear got burned off entirely, and whatever happened to him also ruined the edge of his mouth, and she can see a sliver of white bone peeking from his cheek. She gasps, unable to keep it in.
“Well,” he says, “sounds like a plan.”
Then he stalks back to the lighthouse and slams the door as he walks up the stairs.
Well, Sansa thinks, these are going to be some interesting six months, and goes back to drinking her herbal tea. She just hopes they can manage to be civil, but then again he also looks like he doesn’t like to actually talk to people, so.
Well.
Too bad for him, she supposes, and finishes her cup before going back into the little guest house. She has work to do tomorrow, after all.
—
(“He’s such an idiot,” Lannister says rolling his eyes, and Stannis just wishes he wasn’t that theatrical, but it’s not his pub and he can’t tell him to can it. And if Davos finds that amusing… well. It’s Davos’s pub, so he supposes he’ll deal with it.
“Who,” Davos replies, sliding him a pint, “Clegane?”
“Yeah. Two weeks and he’s complaining he has company, as if it wouldn’t be a good thing.”
“I mean,” Davos agrees, “it’d be good for him if he had any, but you know how he is.”
“I am the one person he tolerates, am I not,” Lannister shrugs. “True tragedy, especially since Sansa Stark was absolutely checking him out when I went two days ago.”
“She was what,” Stannis replies in spite of himself. He shouldn’t care. Why did he even ask?
“She came back from whatever it is she does on the shore with her fish and said goodnight before going into the guest house and she was absolutely ogling at his arms while she did.”
“Or maybe she was ogling at you,” Stannis objects.
“Nah. Barely even looked my way, Detective.”
Stannis really wants to know why Lannister has to use his damned job title every time they talk to each other.
“Then what? Do you think they’re going to… what even?”
“I just think it’s an excellent telenovela in the making,” Lannister says, downing the last of his beer, “and I have to go back home now, but let me tell you, the waste of potential.”
Then he pays, stands up and leaves.
Stannis just — wishes he got why people are like that about others’s business.
“He’s just bored,” Davos shrugs, “and I think he actually cares about the guy.”
“Well, short list of the people Lannister gives a fuck about,” Stannis sighs. “Also, telenovela, really?”
“No one can be as boring as us,” Davos snorts, grasping his hand for a moment before moving on to the customer that just came in.
Stannis supposes that finding out you you’re in love with your best friend after a damn bad divorce and after you’ve known each other for twenty years is more boring than whatever lighthouse drama is going on, but if this is how it’s going to go, he just really hopes that the telenovela is quick or he’ll have to listen to Lannister rant about it every time he shows up and while the guy is a lot better than his family looks like, at the end of it, he really isn't looking forward to that prospect.)
—
It’s been a month.
Clegane has barely said hi and good evening when passing her by, and completely ignored her existence whenever Brienne’s boyfriend shows up with beers — the guy has done more to get them to talk than Clegane ever did, and Sansa has been polite in response, but that’s been it.
She also can see that he seems to never go to sleep because even when the lighthouse isn’t operational he has his lights always turned on, and if he does he does when she’s not around to notice, and at this point she basically has given up on a neighborly friendly relationship — there is no hope.
Too bad, a small part of her says, because he certainly has some lovely arms doesn’t he —
Sansa shakes her head as she types the results of today’s work on her computer — she has to send them to her TA at the end of the week, same as she does every month, and she doesn’t want to be late, and she’s not going to think about Sandor Clegane and how much she thinks his arms are lovely and that he has a pretty damn nice ass to look at and at how after one month of seeing him go around the area she knows that at least physically she really… does like him, and considering how badly it ended with Harry a few months ago and how much she had realized that she wasn’t really that much into him and she just accepted to date him because he looked nice and adequately attractive… and then it turned out he was an asshole, well. She has a feeling maybe he wasn’t her type much.
And Sandor Clegane might be.
Just my luck that if he’s my type then I’m most likely not his, she thinks, shaking her head and finishing up the typing.
She closes the computer, then walks outside, figuring she might take a walk along the cliff, and of course there he is, bent in two near the base of the lighthouse, weeding out dead plants or so it seems.
“Good evening,” she says.
He grunts something noncommittal in return.
She sighs.
“You know,” she goes on, “we don’t have to go on like this.”
“Like what?” He replies, and at least that wasn’t a grunt.
“I’m here another five months, what if I just want to have a civil neighborly relationship?”
“I didn’t sign up for neighbors,” he says, “and tomorrow morning I have to get up early. Enjoy the fresh air,” he says, sounding… slightly as if he’s making fun of her, but not in a mean way, at least, and then he goes up the stairs after throwing away the dead leaves in a sack near the entrance, and that’s it for the day.
Well.
That’s the most she got out of him in the last month. She shrugs, sighing to herself, and maybe the next morning she wakes up earlier than usual, and —
Yeah.
Lannister shows up at six in the morning, looking remarkably more serious than usual. Then they drive off, and only come back late at night, and Clegane doesn't even say hi, just slam the door on his way back up again.
She’s not going to ask.
—
(“So, anyone knows how the thing went, or what?” Theon Greyjoy asks, and Stannis, who was definitely looking forward to not discussing what went on yesterday at Gregor Clegane’s trial, figures that there’s no way he can avoid keeping that talk down. Not when everyone knew it was going to happen yesterday, considering why the arse was on trial he figures that the lad has a right to know and he just wishes he had asked at the police station, not at Davos’s.
Okay, he works there and he arrived with a damned witness protection program a couple of years ago, so he supposes he didn’t particularly relish finding him in his office, and still.
He drinks his own pint.
“He got life,” Stannis sighs, “and his brother’s input was… well, let’s say that if the jury needed to be convinced that he shouldn’t be living in society, that convinced them.”
Not that it wasn’t known around here why the one out of those two that’s not a criminal has a burned face, but no one pressed charges back in the day, and maybe if they had the Clegane who just ended up in jail with the key thrown in the trash wouldn’t have ended up there for being involved in a human trafficking gang in London, and wouldn’t have been found guilty of killing five poor girls who never even knew it was coming and of course Theon would be asking since they found ties with the father of the other criminal asshole he ended up here to run away from.
“Good for him,” Theon says, obviously meaning it, “and what about Bolton?”
“He’s incriminated for being behind half of that,” Stannis says, “and no, his son is staying in jail, don’t worry.”
“Well, good,” Theon answers, and hands him a beer he didn’t ask for.
Stannis looks out of the window. It’s about to rain hard, he thinks.
“Think I’m just coming back with you tonight,” he tells Davos later, when he moves closer. “It’s not like I’m on shift and it’s too miserable even for my own bloody standards.”
“Is someone getting soft in his old age?”
“Says the one older than I am,” Stannis scoffs, and Davos laughs and goes back to serving people, and Stannis just hopes that Clegane didn’t take seeing his brother after years too fucking badly.
He might, considering that yesterday he looked on the brink of breaking the witness stand with his own hands, but Stannis doesn’t think he can fault him for that.)
—
So, Sansa hadn’t noticed that the weather had turned this badly in the last twenty minutes, except that she had been too busy noting down that the rocks all over the beach are full of cushion stars which aren't usually found in this area, which was damn interesting and she’d like to know why they’re all over this side of the beach and not the other one, and so when water starts falling over her hair she’s taken completely by surprise — damn, she thinks, looking up at the sky that has darkened so much it feels like it’s way past sunset even if it's still mid-afternoon, I really was too focused, wasn't I, and she immediately grabs back her notes and her bag, this isn't the kind of weather she needs to be out in —
That is, until she hears a roar coming from the sea and she turns just in time to see a wave rise high and crash down on her.
Oh, fuck, she realizes, the tide is rising isn’t it, and it wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t thundering in the distance, and she lets her notes go and tries to swim back, but the weather is getting worse at once and the moment she opens her mouth to breathe she swallows salt and she coughs and tries to move her arms except she can’t and oh damn she can barely move her legs and now the wave is bringing her far from the shore and she’s trying to at least put her head up above water so she doesn’t choke on saltwater except that she can’t seem to, oh fuck please I can’t die here like this she thinks —
And then she feels an arm grab her shoulder and then she’s choking on water again and everything goes dark and —
She opens her eyes and spits water out as someone pushes down on her chest, so hard it hurts —
“Fuck, finally,” a voice above her rasps in relief, and when she stops spitting water she focuses and sees that she’s on shore, near the lighthouse, with Sandor Clegane kneeling above her and moving her hands from her chest where he had been pressing before to —
Oh.
Oh —
She spits more water, trying to sit up, except she feels so damned weak she barely can manage, and she’s slightly surprised when he helps her up, his hands way gentler than she had thought they’d be.
“Did — did you fish me out?” She croaks, wishing her chest didn’t hurt so badly.
“Maybe I did,” he says, “and good for you I was out and I saw it happen. Can you walk?”
She shakes her head. She could try, but she knows she wouldn’t manage.
“No,” she says.
“Well,” he huffs, “I should be up in there, so — ah, bugger it.”
A moment later, he’s picked her up under her knees and shoulders, holding her to his chest like she weighs nothing and she’s — she’s feeling sick and she almost drowned and she’s so weak she can’t even move and even with that, she’s halfway sure she’s going to swoon. Damn, what’s her problem —
“Guess you are coming up, after all,” he says, and heads for the lighthouse’s door.
Sansa lets her head fall against his chest, shivering from the cold and the rain, feeling how warm he is, and decides she’s going to worry about everything else later.
*
Later, she’s sitting on a small sofa in the main room in the lighthouse, wrapped in a blanket and drinking some tea, shivering from the cold still, while he sits in front of whatever machinery makes the lighthouse function and keeps an eye on the outside.
“Thank you,” she croaks, taking a look around the place. She had noticed that the lighthouse had some two floors, and one must have had his bedroom and a bathroom, while the top floor has a kitchen on the opposite side, a living room-like space with the table in the middle and his work space, of course. There is no television, but he does have a small CD player that has to be some kind of nineties relic on a smaller table near his chair with a small pile of records on the side. There are a few western paperbacks thrown around the place, and it looks… nice, if not lived in.
“Pay more attention next time,” he says, but he sounds more tired than angry. “And I think you’re running a fever.”
Sansa, who feels like throwing up and like the blanket on her won’t keep her any warmer, doesn’t need to measure it to know he’s right.
“Suppose I can’t ask you to sleep on the sofa?” She croaks again, hating how low her voice sounds.
“Be my guest,” he shrugs. “Just don’t touch anything here and I guess you should tell me if you want any clothes from the guest house.”
She doesn’t even think about it twice before telling him where she keeps her pajamas — she doubts he’s going to steal her computer and she has nothing else valuable and he saved her life, she’s not even considering that she might be making a mistake. He says he’ll get them for her and to not touch anything while he’s gone.
She goes to sleep instead and when she wakes up a while later, finding a stack of pjs near her and a note written in an almost illegible hand saying that there’s a bathroom five stairs down at her left if she wants to use it, she can’t help smiling to herself.
Just a tiny bit.
—
(“No,” Brienne tells Catelyn Stark on the phone, “she’s fine. The guy living in the lighthouse got her out of the water and she ran a fever for a bit but now she’s fine. What? Oh, sure. There is a hotel in town, if they want to — sure. Sure, sure. I can go get them at the station.”
“What’s up now?” Jaime asks. “Is Sansa Stark getting visits?”
“Her brothers,” Brienne says, “they want to check on her after finding out what happened. They’ll be here tomorrow. Why?”
Jaime can’t hold back the grin. “Oh, this is going to get good,” he says, “and I’m offering you a pint for it.”
“But why would you offer me —”
“Nonsense,” he says, “this absolutely deserve celebration for the telenovela about to unfold in front of us.”
Then he grabs her arm and he drags her out of the house.
Oh, she has no idea, and he kind of loves how she can be oblivious to this, but.
But honestly, the next few weeks are going to be hilarious.)
—
“You’re good at this,” Sansa says after eating some of the fish and chips he cooked that he just put in front of her for dinner, because of course she hasn’t gone back to the guest house and she has barely eaten before today, she was feeling too sick, and now that she doesn’t have a fever anymore she’s famished, and he said he might as well cook for her, too, and —
And it’s the damn best fish and chips she’s ever had in her entire life, and she tells him that a moment later.
He —
He shakes his head, grumbling something, but she’s sure that he’s flushing, on the not-ruined side of his face, just a tiny bit.
“It’s average,” he shrugs, “and I had to learn.”
“Please,” she says, “I really never had such good fish and chips, ever. My mom would kill to know how you made those chips so crunchy.”
“You’re serious,” he half-glares at her, and then he looks back at his plate.
“Of course I am,” she says, and then takes another bite. Damn, it’s really good. She takes a second helping, even if she hasn’t even finished the first, but she’s famished, and he seems to be preening a little bit as she sees him doing it. “And well,” she goes on as she does, “you definitely learned well. Fuck, this is just so delicious.”
“Thanks,” he blurts, not quite looking at her, and for such a large man he’s looking remarkably… not imposing right now, and fuck but Sansa really, really wants to put a move on him, but —
But she thinks she needs to bide her time.
“I should be thanking you,” she smiles. “I’m not dead just because of you now, am I?”
“Please,” he says, “I don’t leave to die young girls who go around chirping all over the shore like fucking little birds who should know a bit better, though.”
“Oh,” she grins, “I should have, but still… thank you. Really.”
“Don’t mention it.”
He goes back to his food after, and Sansa —
Sansa really, really likes him, damn it, and —
And.
They broke the ice, didn’t they? And he’s not that terrible, once you scratch the surface.
She smiles to herself as she wolfs down more cod.
She has five months left here.
She’s going to make the damn most of them and to see if she can get him out his shell, at least enough to — to tell him.
Yeah.
Yeah, she likes this plan.
And she will put it into motion. She does have months in front of her, after all, and she can’t spend all of them catching starfish now, can she?
Oh, no. She thinks there’s something else, or better, someone else she’d like to catch, and she’ll try, but for now — for now she thinks she’ll be happy to just drop by, because honestly, he obviously needs more than one friend, and he’s interesting, and she likes him, and he’s not even that rude, all things considered.
Decision taken, she goes back to her meal, glancing at the ships passing by from outside the windows of the lighthouse, wondering if he likes it because it feels this peaceful.
She will ask him, she decides. She will ask him a lot of things. And in six months, well, she hopes he will answer all of them.
End.
