Chapter Text
Arya was 13 when she realised that her friends were crushing hard on one of her brother's friends.
It caught her off guard; she hadn’t given much thought to how attractive Gendry was before. He was just Robb and Jon’s friend who was always at their house. Arya was also a little late to the whole boy thing. Her friends had already had a boyfriend or two by now; Arya got on with boys just fine, but almost all of the ones that she actually knew or liked were her brothers. Even those boys could be proper idiots at times.
When Wylla started gushing about how fit the year 11 Gendry Baratheon was, Arya’s brow furrowed. She conjured up a familiar image of him; broad shouldered, dark haired, blue eyed, square jawed, strong hands. Objectively, she supposed he could be attractive. To some people.
“You’re so lucky he’s at your house all the time,” Wylla sighed, flipping through a gossip magazine as she lay sprawled across Arya’s bed. She twirled a lock of her auburn hair around a finger on her free hand absently. “I wouldn’t know how to act, I’d melt into a puddle whenever he spoke to me.”
Arya shrugged uncomfortably. “He’s just Gendry,” she mumbled, her cheeks warm.
She didn’t like that they were making her rethink him. She was perfectly happy with the image of him in her mind she already has. Surly Gendry, Gendry who liked to wind her up, Gendry who got all muddy with her and her brothers when they played football or rugby, and Gendry whose hands were always rough and stained with oil.
She could easily recall memories of him from over the years. Jon met Gendry in year 3, after he transferred from another primary school in a different city. She never learnt the full story, but it was something to do with Gendry’s mother passing away and his absent father — her own father’s best friend — suddenly stepping into the picture. Arya was only 3 at the time, and so wasn’t able to really recall a time where Gendry wasn’t in her life from the moment he moved here. He was standing there next to her in their photo albums, at Jon’s birthday parties, playing in their backyard, dressed up in stupid costumes on Halloween and running around park playgrounds with them.
That Gendry was familiar to Arya. Gendry the womanizer was not.
“Are you blind?” Alys scoffed at her, piping up from the other side of Arya’s room where she lay on her back scrolling through her phone. “Gendry Baratheon is definitely the hottest guy at school. Except maybe Robb, and Trystane Martell in year 9 is cute .”
“Ew, ew, ew. Stop talking about my brother, please.” Arya groaned, grimacing. Her friends had no filter. They’d shamelessly flirted with Arya’s older brothers before, despite them being 3 and 4 years older than them. Obviously, they hadn’t taken much notice of the girls.
“If I were you, I’d corner Gendry alone and—”
“And what , Wylla?” she rounded on her friend, growing fed up with this whole conversation. “He’s in year 11. He may be bullheaded and stubborn, but he’s not dumb . He’d never go out with a year 8. That’s gross. End of conversation” Arya rolled over and fumed at her bedroom wall.
Wylla kissed her teeth. “Jeez, okay, whatever. Hit a nerve, I see.”
Arya clenched her fists. No . She didn’t care if they went after stupid Gendry or who Gendry was interested in, she just didn’t see the point in this ridiculous conversation.
Coughing, Alys stepped in to interrupt a brewing argument, “did I tell you guys that Stephas Karstark asked me out?”
She tuned out the rest of her friends' gossip, because her mind had become stuck on the idea of Gendry Baratheon as some kind of teenage sex symbol. How many other girls fancied him at school? She wished they’d never said anything.
It played on her mind all day. And all night. She even dreamt about Gendry. Just his face, though. It was as if he was haunting her.
When he came around to her house the next day, Arya found herself reconsidering him whilst he wasn’t looking. Gendry’s hair was much darker than hers or Jon’s, and offset the brightness of his blue eyes. He was throwing a rugby ball about with Robb and Jon in the garden, flexing his biceps and broad, muscled shoulders. He bested both her brothers in size — and probably strength. When he grinned, rolling his head back in laughter, Arya felt a new and confusing fluttering in her stomach. Sansa elbowed her in the side abruptly.
“Why are you staring?”
Arya’s jaw went slack. Her sister suddenly sat beside her at the kitchen table, where she was looking out of the French doors and into the garden in an attempt to follow Arya’s eyeline. She desperately hoped she hadn't gone as flushed as she felt. “I wasn’t staring,” she hissed.
Sansa raised a dubious brow, “you were practically drooling. What’s new with Gendry?”
“ Nothing .” Arya snapped, her cheeks on fire.
Her sister smiled knowingly and Arya began to feel absolutely feral. “You’re an awful liar.”
Gnawing at her lip, Arya glanced back at the boys outside. Gendry now had Robb in a headlock, with Jon wrapping his arms around Gendry’s waist and trying to tear them apart. They were all laughing, falling about and play-fighting with each other as they usually did. When Arya was younger, she’d have joined in. Now, she was second guessing every interaction with Gendry, and she hated it.
“Do you think Gendry’s fit?” Arya asked suddenly, trying to maintain an even and disinterested tone, but refusing to meet Sansa’s eyes.
Sansa smiled, “do you think he is?”
“No.” she snapped, a little too quickly, and with a rehearsed ease. “Alys and Wylla said he was, is all.”
“Right,” Sansa nodded, still smiling. It was impossible to hide anything from her sister. Sansa was too perceptive, too smart and too much of a ‘people person’ to not pick up on the subtle tells and feelings of others. She’d make a fortune as a psychic.
“He’s not my type,” her sister continued, “but a lot of the girls in my year fancy him.”
They lapsed into silence after that and Sansa eventually rose to make herself some tea. Robb had Gendry on the ground now, wrestling in the grass. She was halfway to being able to comfortably admit that Gendry was objectively attractive, when he decided to pull his shirt off over his head. His toned abdomen was tanned from working outside at the garage over summer, skin glowing in the warm evening sun. Arya stood up with such a sudden force that she knocked over the chair she’d been sitting on. Sansa snorted before hurriedly turning away from Arya so she couldn’t see her laughing.
“Shut up,” Arya hissed, and she stormed promptly out of the kitchen.
—
Gendry frowned from where he sat in the Stark kitchen. He was looking at Arya, except it wasn’t the Arya he was familiar with. She was wearing a damn dress. The two things didn’t compute in his mind; Arya and dress . Does not compute. Error. System failure. He was beginning to think that he’d stepped into some alternate universe and that Sansa would come downstairs any minute wearing a boiler suit or slacks.
“What are you wearing?” he said with a bit more incredulity than intended, making him feel a little mean. He wasn’t trying to be mean. It looked nice. She looked nice. It was just a shock.
Of course, Arya flushed angrily at his tone, her face reddening and her brows knitting tightly together. Gendry tried not to be amused by that. She was making that scrunched up, seething face she often made when she was angry. Controlling her emotions was not one of Arya’s strong suits.
“I don’t need you to make snide comments,” she snapped, self consciously tugging down the hem of her dress.
“I- no,” he stammered. He didn’t actually want to upset her or make her feel bad about it, and now he was worried he had. “I was just shocked, honest. Don’t think I’ve seen you in a dress since Bran’s Christening.”
If Robb would hurry up and finish pissing, that would be great. He didn’t want to dig himself into a deeper hole. The way Arya was glaring at him now was enough to set him on edge. She might have been small, but he knew better than to underestimate her.
At just 15, the little black dress Arya wore clung to her curves in a way it never would’ve a few years ago. Puberty is a fascinating thing. Where Sansa’s build was willowy and slender, Arya was shorter and fuller, her muscles toned and defined. He noticed suddenly that she was even wearing makeup. Her hair was characteristically untamed though, which was probably the only thing about her appearance that had any semblance to the Arya he knew growing up.
Gendry couldn’t help but feel incredibly pervy at noticing all of this. It was just hard not to. He was at the Stark’s just a week ago and hadn’t noticed any of this about Arya then. How the hell could things have changed so much since? He was unsure of what to say to this girl he hardly recognised. It was easier when he was able to tease her and banter with her when she looked like she’d just fallen out of a tree, all messy hair and overly large t-shirts. Gendry could pretend they were both still little kids.
When Robb returned, he stopped dead in his tracks at the sight of his little sister. Gendry was admittedly a little relieved that Arya’s appearance had shocked her brother too, meaning he wasn’t a proper weirdo for noticing a sudden change.
“Where the hell are you going?” Robb demanded. His jaw had practically detached itself from his face.
“I have a date,” Arya shrugged Robb off dismissively, typing something into her phone and not paying her brother much care.
Robb stared at her in disbelief, looking between Arya and Gendry as if to say to him have you seen this shit?
“With who? Have mum and dad approved this? Where are you going? What time will you be back? Is someone going with you?”
Arya grabbed her bag and swung it over her shoulder. The whole scene had become quite hilarious, really. Rebellious, teenage Arya vs suddenly very parental Robb.
“Frankly, it’s none of your business.” She carried herself with a confidence that was fascinating to watch, despite the fact that he’d noticed that she actually moved quite uncomfortably in that dress.
“I damn well think it is!” Robb shouted after her, chasing Arya down the hallway. Gendry heard the door slam shut and Robb scoffed disdainfully, offended and shocked at this new version of his sister. He was ever the protective older brother.
“Did you see that?” he came to sit opposite Gendry at the kitchen table, shaking his head in awe, “when the fuck did she grow up?”
Gendry noded and offered his friend a noncommittal shrug. “I have no idea.”
—
She slipped up eventually. Arya had always been one to wear her heart on her sleeve, purposefully or not. It was a curse.
The dress Sansa helped her choose for the party was a lot tighter than Arya remembered it being in the shop, and she squirmed about in the mirror trying to get comfortable. She didn’t hate dresses anymore, but she didn't feel entirely confident in them. The way Sansa wore a dress was not the same way Arya did.
Every summer, usually in July, her parents organised a party to celebrate the end of the school year and the start of the summer holidays. The kids were allowed to invite friends and Ned and Cat invited family, and it turned into a huge affair that was practically compulsory to attend. Not that anyone would have wanted to miss it, anyway.
Now she was 16, Arya could get away with having a drink here and there, as long as she wasn’t spotted by the same person twice. She’d gotten good at sneaking drinks ever since her and Jon would try to do so when they were kids, but now Jon was free to legally drink beer with the adults and Arya could hardly ask her more straight-laced, younger brother Bran to sneak around with her instead. Rickon was only a baby.
She was so good at it now anyway, that by 5PM the sky was beginning to spin. Everything tilted on its axis, and everything was funny. The sun was still shining, the garden smelled like BBQ, and the party was nowhere near ending. All of her parents' friends and coworkers were out chatting on the patio. The younger kids were running around their garden wildly, and the older ones were mingling with the adults. Arya wished she was 12 years old again rather than 16, as she’d found herself stuck in an awkward situation where she was in-between. She was too old to climb trees and play hide and seek with Rickon and Tommen, but too young to join in a conversation with Robb and Theon. Not that she wanted to entertain Theon Greyjoy’s dirty jokes and jibes. They were gross.
A lot of her energy was also being focused on determinedly not thinking about Gendry Baratheon, who had turned up in a shirt that was unbuttoned in an unfairly sexy way and with slight stubble on his jaw. It wasn’t fair . He always managed to look handsome, no matter how scruffy he was. She’d come a long way from seeing Gendry as just another boy in the years since she was 13, and Gendry was certainly not a boy anymore.
Anyway, it didn’t matter. It shouldn’t have mattered. She had a boyfriend.
She was glad Mycah wasn’t there, though. The butterflies in her stomach at the sight of Gendry overpowered anything she’d ever felt for Mycah. But Gendry was out of reach; off limits . Mycah was quite sweet and not put off by Arya’s outspoken nature unlike other stupid boys, she was just working on moving past the fact that his kisses were a little too sloppy and his hands wandered a little too far. He was a friend from school, but school was over for the summer now. When September came around, she was moving elsewhere to go to sixth form college and she doubted she’d stay in touch with Mycah. She just hadn’t found the right time to break it off yet.
Whilst Ned and Catelyn were distracted, Arya mixed herself a gin and tonic that was way more gin than tonic and swiftly chugged it down. By 8PM, she was walking around the party completely barefoot and with a flower crown made by one of the little kids in her hair.
“C’mon, Arya, tell us again!” cackled Jon’s boss, Tormund, a hulky man with fiery red hair. He had a large hand clasped over Jon’s shoulders and was shaking him as he bellowed a laugh from deep within his belly. Jon’s face was a mixture of distress and drunken elation.
Arya doubled over, laughing at her own story before she could even get the words out. The small crowd around her were laughing too, and it felt so good to be involved. She loved socialising, and sometimes she worried that her confident facade made her come across as too intimidating. Just because she wouldn’t take shit from anyone, it didn’t mean she couldn’t take a joke.
“I— I—“ Arya hiccuped and felt a little bit of bile rise up her throat. She grabbed the shoulder of the closest person next to her and gagged. How quickly alcohol can turn you from the life of the party into a vomiting mess, she mulled. She glared at the empty glass in her hand. Traitor.
“Woah, slow down there,” a strong arm wrapped tightly around her waist to steady her, but Arya’s head just continued to spin at the recognition of exactly whose voice it was. He was holding her upright and keeping her legs from collapsing underneath her. She hiccupped again. “I think you need some water.”
She tried to wriggle out of Gendry’s arms, but he had a firm grip on her. Instead, he steered her away from the crowd and through the glass doors into the house, regardless of her defiant squirming. The kitchen was lit by the under-cupboard lights and a couple of candles on the dining table. Gendry slid the french doors closed and drowned out the sound of everyone outside.
“I’m fine!” she complained, just as vomit threatened to rise up her throat again. She slumped against the counter. But she didn't want the party to end, things were just getting fun.
“Yeah, you really seem it,” he drawled sarcastically, his mouth close to her ear. Her skin goosebumped at the proximity and she was too drunk to try to pretend like she wasn’t at all affected by him.
“I am.” Arya grumbled. She twisted in his grip and felt it loosen, but before she could slide away from him he pinned her against the kitchen counter with his arms on either side of her.
She felt like she’d been here before, and she grimaced as she remembered where. Her goddamn dreams . Guilt filled her as she couldn’t help but recall them, but the alcohol somehow made it easier for her to picture when Dream Gendry had had her up against this very counter, hands roaming the curve of her hips, palming her arse, exploring the length of her thighs. His breath had been heavy against her neck, and her head had rolled back as she—
“Arya?”
Her eyes trained back on him. The real Gendry. Her vision was a little blurry and the kitchen was dark, but it was definitely the real one. She could tell because he was fully clothed.
“You’ve gone red, are you feeling hot?” he pressed the back of his hand against her forehead and she unconsciously leaned into his touch. Is she feeling hot? Boy, if only he knew. “Woah, steady!”
Arya’s knees buckled. His hands were there to catch her.
With one hand firm on her hip, he grabbed an empty glass from an overhead cabinet and reached over to the sink to fill it. Arya was detached from her body — she couldn’t help but laugh. The noise that came out of her mouth sounded manic, and she couldn’t decide if she was incredibly happy or incredibly sad. When Gendry’s attention returned to her, full glass of water in hand, he generously held it up against her lips. His eyes pleaded with her to drink. She stared at him, not sure what exactly she was refusing to back down from now, and eventually took a small but defiant gulp.. Something on his face shifted under her confrontational intensity, and it just made her want to glare at him more.
“Enough,” she mumbled finally, pushing the glass away. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. His body still had her boxed in, her legs between his, but his hands weren’t on her anymore. He wasn’t even physically touching her, just watching her with concerned eyes.
There was a frown written across his face. Why was everyone always mad at her? She wished she were as perfect as Sansa or Bran, or at least her parents were as proud of her as they were of Robb. She was the runt of the litter. Even Jon, who she only shared half of her DNA with — that’s how science works, right? — made her parents prouder than she did. These were her bitter, drunken thoughts, but she thought them nonetheless. She’d heard people say that drunk words are sober thoughts. If that was true, maybe she wasn’t a nice person after all. She really hoped that wasn’t true.
“You never get this hammered, Arya. Is something wrong?” Gendry’s eyes scrutinised her with concern.
“No,” she slurred.
“Liar,” he said flatly.
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth at their familiar back and forth tug of war. Arya bit down on her lower lip to smother a smile that was threatening to choke her. If he weren’t so attractive, and didn’t give a shit about her, maybe this wouldn’t have been so hard.
She couldn’t imagine a world where kissing him did either of them any good, but that was what she did anyway.
He didn’t kiss back. Like, at all.
Arya felt him immediately tense up, his hand flying out to grab her forearms. She’d pushed up on her tiptoes to reach him, chest flush against his, and he smelt like bonfire smoke and cardamom. It was somewhere between a lifetime and only a few seconds before he pushed her to an arms length away from him and just stared at her, his lips red from the force of her kiss.
Neither of them said anything. Arya’s body was on fire. What had she done? She could now add impulse control to the list of skills she didn’t have.
Gendry’s face softened suddenly, his features crumbling as his head shook and his forehead creased. “Arya...”
It was a rejection. Obviously. She was 16 and he was nearly 20 and she’d had too much gin. Her brazen, alcohol induced confidence had not worked in her favour. She’d made a mess of herself. She was 13 again, young and foolish.
“Whatever.” she choked out, elbowing him out of her way with all the force she could muster. He faltered from the shock of her blow just enough that she could worm herself away from him. She stumbled towards the hallway, towards the staircase she’d surely struggle to climb in her drunken state, just so she could crawl under her covers and forget Gendry Baratheon existed.
“ Stop , Arya!” he pleaded, coming after her.
Arya hung off the fourth step, clutching the bannister just to give him one last look. She was sick and embarrassed but he was still so infuriatingly hot. Stop caring about me, idiot , she thought bitterly. Make not liking you easier.
“Arya, it’s just—”
She didn’t let him speak. She couldn’t stand to hear what he had to say. “No, fuck you.”
She wasn’t even sure why she said that, but the power of the words clearly had some effect on him. It wasn’t even like it was his fault; it was definitely her own, but she was too drunk and too humiliated to care. No one had seen and they could both try to forget it, but she had ruined their friendship irreparably, she feared.
Weeks passed before she saw him at the Stark residence again.