A/N: Quick note: Arya is 18, Gendry is 23. Other characters have been aged up accordingly.
I have nine chapters written, and I will publish one a week for the next two months. Your response will determine whether I will actually get off my ass and continue this.
There will be lots of guns and dying and bikes in this. Don't expect anything else. This fic is where I put all my ANGER and my weird fascination with motorcycles.
Part I: Prologue
Chapter 1
The sixth time the wrench slips from his hand, Gendry admits defeat.
He got maybe an hour of sleep last night before his alarm shrilled at six and dragged him into real life. He stumbled through most of the day on auto-pilot, replacing alternators and rigging spark plugs and trying not to face-plant into the engines. It isn't like Mott noticed; the man's good, but he has faith that Gendry doesn't need someone hovering over him like a mother hen. Besides, Gendry at half-capacity is better than most at their best.
He doesn't regret his late night though, not at all. He wasn't out, even though Anguy and co. had invited him, and he's glad he resisted the siren song of beer and under-dressed girls, because he got a call from said friend at two in the morning asking him to get him out of detention. Hacking was infinitely preferable to bailing drunk morons.
He only really started hacking because he was bored. Secondary school was mostly unbearable for him; he wasn't dumb by any means, but his brain would never cooperate long enough for him to drag his grades up. As a consequence, he wasn't allowed onto any sports teams, even though he knew the boxing coach had attempted to dissuade the principal a few times. Without sport as an outlet and without enough money to buy more materials for the metalwork class, he turned to computers; he cut his teeth the school's old PCs, white and blocky, hopping over their firewalls with relative ease and astounding many with his ability to find pictures of boobs. He'd never done anything strictly illegal; in fact, he thought he'd helped a few companies, alerting them to the holes in their defences by smashing through them like a bull. The Bull. Stupid nickname, but he'd dealt with worse
Bastard.
He sighs, and slams the bonnet shut a little more vehemently than is wise. Luckily, Mott isn't around; he's been leaving early recently. Something about his wife. Gendry rubs the sleep out of his eyes and takes a bleary-eyed glance at the clock on the wall. Nine pm. He's been up for fifteen hours straight on an empty tank and his eyes are beginning to feel like sandpaper. He had far too much fun with Casterly Corp last night, grabbing little bits of mostly pointless information that would piss them off big later. The Lannister's company is one of the best to deal with, being both near impenetrable and easily angered. They'll throw more money at the breach, but he'll just break it again and again and again.
He begins to clean up, mind wandering toward his bed, when headlights illuminate the garage. It's late, and the garage is closed, so they're probably in the wrong place. In any case, he ignores them, pushing the car to the back of the garage and wiping the grease off his hands. He's making his way towards the back office to turn off the radio, playing low-volume rock, when the door swings open.
He turns around slowly and surveys the vehicle first, as is his wont; a motorcycle, monstrous, jet-black and dented. There's no brand on it; custom-made, and expensive at that. He turns his eyes right to examine the rider, who is not nearly as threatening as her bike. A slip of a thing, hair trussed back, eyes big in her pale face, and not a day past eighteen. Can she even get up on that beast?
"Are you the mechanic?" There's a musical lilt to her voice, and she drags her vowels. Posh.
"No, the cleaning lady." Her eyes narrow. "Of course I'm the mechanic, but that doesn't matter. We're closed."
"That's not what the sign out front says." Her lips twist, as if she knows she's got him. Shit. He always forgets to flip the dumb sign. She pushes her bike towards him, and he grabs the bars deftly. It's heavy, heavy enough that he's surprised she could drag it along. "Can you fix it?"
He throws her an offended look and hoists it onto the workbench, grabbing a screwdriver to prise the panels off and reveal the engine. He can't help it; he whistles. How much money has gone into this thing? Enough to buy this garage twice over, he reckons. "What the fuck did you do to it?"
"I drove it." She sidles up beside him, grey eyes assessing the damage.
"Were you trying to break the sound barrier?" She snorts, and a grin slides, unbidden, onto his face; maybe this girl isn't quite as icy as she seems.
"Maybe." She pauses, waiting for him to give her an answer; really, he's seen all he needs to, but he's beyond tired and he wants to annoy this kid. Her toe taps impatiently. "Well?" she eventually bursts.
"Yup. It'll be expensive, though." He names the price, and she doesn't even flinch; he didn't expect her to. It isn't just the bike and her accent; her jacket and boots gleam in a way that only real leather does, the cut of her jeans screams designer, and her hair, tied back as it is, has the razor-sharp edges only a professional hairdresser could achieve, unlike Gendry's own hacked off effort. He hasn't been examining her on purpose; it's just something his hyperactive mind does, snagging onto random details and over-analysing them.
She pays him in cash, however, which is strange; in his experience, trust-funders always flash plastic, but this girl hands over the bills with an exacting eye. He doesn't bother counting; she didn't cheat him.
"Be back here in two days..." he trails off, realising she never told him her name. "Sorry."
She looks at him strangely, and he sees a small struggle flare behind her eyes; finally, she sighs and sticks her hand out. "Arya." It's a pretty name, but she snaps the syllables out like a dare.
He takes her hand. "Gendry." He does his best not to crush her hand, but if he did hurt her, she doesn't show it.
"Two days." She retracts her hand, but doesn't step out of his space. Her face has gone from cool courtesy to hot determination, her eyes sharper as they fasten on his.
"Yes, ma'am." She flinches at the title, and he smiles to himself in triumph; no, definitely not as icy. She clear her throat, and stomps out. Abruptly, her steps pause at the door and he glances at her, puzzled, only to see her flip the sign around so that OPEN glares at him in scarlet letters. She gives him a tight-lipped smile, and disappears out the door. A few moments later, he hears the car rumble away.
He rolls his neck, and all the alertness from his conversation with Arya drains away; it takes all he has not to collapse right there. He isn't particularly extroverted; talking tires him, and that girl didn't really talk. She fought. He doesn't know who won that.
He drags the bike into a corner, hand sliding over the cool steel of the fairing. He finishes up, turns off the radio and the lights, and exits, scowling at the sign. He almost flips it around out of spite, but he kinda needs this job.
Even though he almost dozed off on the bus, when he gets home it takes a while for him to conk; every time he shuts his eyes, he gets the strangest feeling that he is being watched, a grey gaze raking up and down his back in cold shivers.
When he finally falls asleep, he dreams of a pack of wolves, howling at a moonless sky.