The first time you saw Sandor Clegane, he looked like something the sea should have swallowed years ago.

Rain hammered the shoreline hard enough to sting skin. The sky hung black and swollen with storm clouds while waves crashed against the rocks below your little cottage. Wind screamed through the reeds, carrying the scent of salt, wet earth, and blood.

Always blood.

You’d been gathering driftwood when you spotted him half-collapsed near the tide line.

A giant of a man.

Burned face slick with rainwater. Clothes soaked through. One hand pressed hard against his side while seawater foamed around his boots. Even wounded, he looked dangerous in the way storms look dangerous—too large, too rough, too capable of destruction.

Most sensible people would’ve fled.

Instead you walked closer holding your lantern high.

His head lifted immediately at the sound of your steps. Animal-fast despite exhaustion. His good eye narrowed beneath dripping hair.

“Fuck off,” he rasped.

The sea hissed around the shore behind him.

You remember tilting your head slightly, studying him the way you might study some wounded creature dragged ashore after a gale.

“You’re bleeding on my beach,” you told him calmly.

He blinked.

Not because of the words.

Because you weren’t afraid.

Even now, years later, Sandor still remembers that part most clearly. Not your strange moonlit skin or the way your dark hair whipped around you like black water.

Just the absence of fear.

You crouched beside him despite the blood soaking through his gloves.

“You’ll die if you stay out here.”

“Maybe I want to.”

“Mm.” You adjusted the lantern. “Still bleeding on my beach.”

Something that might’ve been a laugh escaped him then. Bitter and exhausted and rough enough to scrape skin.

You helped him stand eventually, one massive arm slung heavily over your shoulders as you guided him toward the cottage overlooking the sea. He tried not to lean too hard on you.

Tried and failed.

Inside, the cottage smelled of herbs, salt, beeswax, and fresh bread. Firelight glowed gold against stone walls lined with drying plants and bundles of lavender. Strange little charms made from shells and bone hung near the windows, clinking softly whenever wind rattled the glass.

Sandor noticed everything automatically.

Knife on the table. Mortar and pestle. Drying fish. A gray sealskin cloak hanging near the hearth.

And you.

Moving quietly through the room as if you belonged more to the tide outside than the cottage itself.

“Sit,” you told him.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re bleeding on my chair now too.”

Another rough almost-laugh.

That was the beginning.

Years later, summer sunlight floods that same cottage warm and golden.

The world smells entirely different now.

Milk. Honey cakes cooling on linen. Fresh laundry drying in the breeze drifting through open windows.

The twins have turned the house into chaos.

Maren sits in the middle of the floor in only a little linen shift, furiously slapping wet fabric in a laundry basket while shrieking at her own accomplishment. Gilly lies beside her chewing thoughtfully on the corner of a drying cloth, solemn as a philosopher.

Outside, cicadas buzz loud in the heat. Bees drift lazily through the herb garden near the open doorway. Beyond the reeds, the river glitters silver-blue beneath the afternoon sun.

You kneel beside a wash basin near the window, wringing water from one of Sandor’s shirts.

Your hair sticks damply to the back of your neck.

Summer always makes it worse.

The itch.

At first it’s subtle.

Just a crawling sensation beneath your skin.

Like invisible fingers tracing slowly along your arms. A strange tightness low in your ribs. The air inside the cottage suddenly feels too dry, too still, too heavy to breathe properly.

You pause mid-fold.

Sandor notices instantly from where he’s splitting kindling outside the door.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

A lie.

You try continuing with the laundry, but the sensation worsens rapidly. Your skin prickles hot and uncomfortable. The back of your neck burns.