AN: Written for Arya/Aegon Week (Day 2: Expectations)
Because every OTP needs a Roommates AU fic, and I am only too happy to provide you with one.
NAME: Arry Stark
HOBBIES: Football, guitar, dancing, occasionally shooting things with a stun gun
FAVORITE FOOTBALL PLAYER: Arthur Dayne
Aegon read the entire email out loud, smiling as he did so.
"Hmm. Now that's the kind of guy I'd like as a roommate," he said approvingly, because yeah, living in a three-bedroom apartment in King's Landing could get pretty lonely sometimes, hence, the talking out loud part. It was one of the many reasons why he'd decided to get a roommate in the first place.
Roommates were fun. You could bond with them over video games and re-runs of Wildings and Direwolf Cops, and if you happen to pass out drunk on the couch at three in the morning, they certainly wouldn't judge you for it (unlike his grandfather, who had threatened to disown him and burn him at the stake if he so much as tried to besmirch the family name again by puking all over their thousand-year-old, dragon-themed tapestry rugs).
Besides, Aegon thought it would be nice to finally have someone else answer the door and pay the pizza delivery guy for a change. Arry Stark seemed like the kind of guy who liked pizza.
There was a five-foot something, leather-clad wearing brunette standing on his front door. She had a guitar case slung over one shoulder and a black suitcase the size of Westeros on the other hand, and between that and the three other boxes standing next to her, Aegon figured she must be here on behalf of his new roommate. That, or maybe she was his girlfriend, which was just Aegon's luck, really, because she totally looked like his type. Dammit.
"You Aegon Targaryen?"
"Yup."
She extended her hand out to him. "Cool. I'm your new roommate."
Wait, what?
Aegon stared dumbfounded at the girl. "You're Arry Stark?"
"Yeah. My family calls me Arya, but sometimes I go by Arry." She shot him a friendly smile that, under normal circumstances, he would have found charming. (These were not normal circumstances.)
"But I thought… I thought you were a guy! You said you liked football and shooting things and –" Aegon sputtered, the words dying in his throat the minute he realized that he was just about two seconds away from sounding like a chauvinistic pig. His Martell cousins would skin him alive if they ever heard him talking like that.
He couldn't help it though. He was really, really looking forward to having a new male roommate. Fucking hell, he was such an idiot.
"Well, obviously I'm a girl," the stranger who introduced herself as Arya said, sounding amused at the situation. "Is that going to be a problem?"
"Is that going to be a problem? Jesus Christ, are you kidding me?" Aegon looked at her as though she'd just asked him to perform a blood ritual in honor of R'hllor. "No offense, but… aren't you worried about rooming with a guy? I could be, like, a serial killer or a secret perv for all you know."
She shrugged. "I have four brothers back home – well, three, if you don't count Jon who's in the military – so I'm used to living with men." As if the word "military" wasn't enough to send alarm bells ringing in Aegon's head, she added, almost as an afterthought, "I should also probably mention that I have excellent knife-throwing skills and I've been trained to use a gun since I was twelve. Oh, and I once watched a five-minute video on Youtube on how to get rid of dead bodies. I think I can take care of myself."
A distant part of Aegon was aware that it was rude to gape like a fool, but he couldn't help it. This was now quickly escalating to become one of the scariest conversations he'd ever had, and that was saying something, considering who his family members were.
The girl, however, remained blissfully oblivious to all of it. She smiled at him like she didn't just issue an indirect threat to his person and said, "So, are we cool?"
The fact that Aegon didn't reject her outright was a testament to how excellent he was at making bad decisions. He stared at the suitcase and three boxes in front of him, then at Arya's face, and then back at the boxes.
He counted to ten in his head.
"Oh, fuck it. Fine," he finally said with a long-suffering sigh as he opened his apartment door and let her in. "But only 'cause you put down Arthur Dayne as your favorite football player."
"So, how long have you been living here all by yourself?"
Arry-whose-actual-name-was-Arya swung her legs back and forth from her relaxed position atop the kitchen counter and watched him as he cooked breakfast. She cocked her head to the side, like one of those perky cocker spaniels Aegon used to see running around in his backyard back when he was a kid (before his grandfather's condition got so bad he started trying to burn anything that had a heartbeat), and Aegon felt rather than saw her follow the movement of his arms as he flipped pancakes like a pro.
He wasn't used to showing off his outstanding culinary skills with an audience, but somehow Arya had a way of making him feel at ease. He could tell that she was good with people, even if she herself wasn't aware of it. It made the situation less awkward than it should have been.
"I moved out of my grandparents' place a couple of months ago," Aegon said in response to her earlier question. "And you? Your parents know where you are?"
The smile Arya flashed him a second before she lifted the coffee mug to her lips was bright. "They do. But as far as they're concerned, you're an arts student named Wylla with green hair and a weird taste in 90's indie music."
"Okay." Aegon shrugged, looking unperturbed. "Pancakes?"
"Sure." She snagged a plate from him and proceeded to stab one with her fork. Aegon thought he rather enjoyed the way her eyes widened when she took her first bite.
"Oh my god, these are so good. How can pancakes taste this good? I don't understand." Within seconds, she had demolished the entire thing and lifted her plate up and asked for seconds. That, coupled with the glazed and semi-reverent expression she was currently sporting, was seriously doing wonders to Aegon's ego (not that he needed much trouble in that department).
"I think I love you now," Arya promptly declared in between mouthfuls of fluffy pancakes. "Man, I'm so glad you didn't kick me out yesterday."
At that point, Aegon was beginning to feel glad that he didn't kick her out too.
Living with a new roommate – albeit one who was female – turned out to be just as fun and exciting as Aegon thought it would be. Arya seemed to share his passion for football, video games, and funny Internet memes, a fact that Aegon was sorely thankful for. She paid her half of the bills on time, refrained from bringing strange guests home, and never once tried to get out of their designated house chores. She didn't even bat an eye when Aegon showed her the chore wheel.
She wasn't a neat freak, per se, but she wasn't overly messy either. Aegon liked that about her. (The first time he accidentally found a pair of black undies mixed in with his laundry though, he freaked out so hard and blushed for what seemed like hours. Arya thought it was cute.)
But sometimes Aegon forgot that he was living with a girl. He'd gotten so used to having his own space these last couple of months that sometimes he found it easy to forget the fact that there was another person who shared the same living quarters with him. It made life at their apartment extremely interesting. Or terrifying. It depends on who you're asking.
One time, he accidentally ate Arya's stash of blueberry ice cream and came home to an empty fridge and a note that said LOL we're even now, complete with an evil smiley face next to it.
Approximately five seconds after that, his phone buzzed. Arya had sent him a selfie. She had her mouth halfway open, a piece of chocolate-coated cherry dangling from her fingertips. Aegon's natural response had been to gasp. He'd ordered those cherries straight from Essos, the bitch. Oh, it was on. It was so on.
Thus started what Duck had gleefully dubbed The Chocolate-Coated Cherry War of 2015. It was brutal, it was long, and there had been numerous casualties involved (namely Aegon's pride and dignity and Arya's favorite guitar). He even had the faint scars and the traumatic memories to prove it.
As the war progressed, further acts of aggression drew other parties into the conflict, until finally their neighbors forged a secret alliance made out of blood and tears and a serious No-Noise policy that had them calling the cops at three am on a Sunday.
Thoroughly chastised and feeling just a little bit tired themselves (hey, living in enemy territory twenty-four hours a day and formulating scare tactics in the middle of the night was not easy), Arya and Aegon went home not as enemies, but as comrades and brothers-in-arms. The bonds of war were just too strong to overcome, was all Aegon would say when asked about the matter. It made for a very interesting dinner story, to say the least.
The second time Aegon forgot he had a roommate, it ended in disaster as well.
The whole thing wasn't as dramatic as, say, their epic food war, but in the aftermath, Aegon lost what little remained of his dignity – again – so, yeah, there was that.
Aegon blamed the spider. When it came right down to it, it was the spider's fault. He wanted to sue their landlord, because really, who the fuck manages an apartment that had fucking spiders in it? How completely irresponsible of him and oh, just you wait, Aegon would have justice.
To cut the long story short, this was what happened: Arya came home and found a half-naked Aegon (think: bare-chest-and-towel-around-the-hips naked Aegon) chasing a giant spider around the living room with a broom.
The war cry died on Aegon's lips the minute he saw her.
It would've been fine, really – Arya was already used to seeing him in all kinds of weird situations, she probably wouldn't even blink twice if Aegon started running around the room with his hair on fire – if it weren't for the fact that Aegon's towel chose that moment to drop to the floor.
Arya blamed gravity. Aegon blamed his awful luck. (Apparently the gods had a strange sense of humor.)
He would deny it to the death if asked, but he thought he might have cried out a little. Arya, though… Arya got this weird, intense look on her face that Aegon wasn't even sure he wanted to interpret, and she certainly had no problems looking at him. At all of him.
Aegon wanted to shrivel up in a corner and die.
In the end, he just settled for hating spiders for the rest of his life.
It was Taco Thursday and Arya was still not home. Aegon's fingers itched to call her, but he forced himself to drop his phone at the last minute because the last thing he wanted was for Arya to accuse him of acting like Mrs. Stark. He wasn't worried about her, per se. He knew that she was perfectly capable of disarming a man with her bare hands, as she so often liked to remind him whenever they got into a fight over whose turn it was to pick the movie, but then again, she was Arya. She could be lounging in a jail cell somewhere for trying to defend the rights of marginalized women for all he knew. He wouldn't put it past her.
With a resigned sigh, he reached for his phone and sent her a brief text message before he could change his mind. Arya, will u be home for dinner? I made tacos.
He only had to wait less than a minute for her reply.
Sure. But can we skip the tacos? I'd rather have you for dinner instead ;)
Aegon almost choked on his water. He had to thump his chest repeatedly with a first and stare at his phone display three times before he finally managed to convince himself that Arya really did send him that text.
Which begs the question: what the fuck was he supposed to do now? Was he expected to reply with a similar message of his own? A sort of sexting-with-my-roommate-oh-yeah-it's-no-big-deal message? That kind of thing? Did Arya finally cotton on to the fact that she had the power to give him boners every time she opened her mouth? Or that she could give him boners even when she wasn't opening her mouth? Aegon was so close to having a panic attack now it wasn't even funny.
Luckily for him, Arya's next text message cleared things up.
Omg, I'm so sorry! I went to the bathroom and Wylla stole my phone. That wasn't me, ok? Please tell me you believe me.
Aegon didn't know what was worse – the fact that she was sorry or her insistence that she would never say something like that to him. He ignored the odd twinge in his gut and assured her via SMS that yeah, of course he knew they were just messing with him. He even managed to insert a lame joke of his own, one that he knew Arya would appreciate.
It wasn't until later that he started to wonder: exactly what had Arya told her friend about him that made her send him that text message?
The last thing he expected to see when he stepped back into his office was a beaming Arya sitting on his worktable, a box of lemon cupcakes balanced on her lap. To make matters worse, she was wearing a pair of extremely flattering denim shorts in the middle of winter and, what the fuck, that was so not fair. Aegon loved seeing her in those shorts. He was pretty sure he wasn't allowed to pick favorites though, so he wisely kept that comment to himself.
He ignored Aurane Waters' shameless ogling and half-whispered complaints of "Targaryen, you lucky bastard" and slammed the door shut in his face. Then he turned to Arya. "Aren't you supposed to be in class?" he asked her, feeling mildly annoyed and more than a little turned on.
She held out the box of cupcakes to him as a peace offering. "Thought I'd drop by and give you these," she said by way of explanation. The smile she sent him was blinding – too blinding, perhaps – and it made Aegon all the more suspicious.
"Okay, clearly you're here to bribe me," Aegon told her. Bluntness always seemed to work best with Arya, something that he'd learned all too well after living with her for several months. "What do you want?"
Her smile widened just a fraction of an inch before she dropped the act altogether. She winced. "Sansa has a ballet performance later this evening. The whole family's supposed to attend. You know, for moral support."
Aegon raised an eyebrow. "And you need me how?"
"I need a date. Can you be my pretend-date?"
She said it so sweetly and so matter-of-factly, like she already knew he'd say yes a minute before he made the decision himself. Arya knew him too well. Aegon pinched the bridge of his nose and peered at her. "Why do you need a pretend-date to the theater?"
"There will be Freys there. And my mother." Arya suppressed a shudder."Think of this as a rescue operation."
"And you couldn't have asked anyone else to do this?"
Arya shrugged. "You were the first person I thought of."
Hearing those words gave Aegon a certain smug sense of satisfaction.
He sighed, even though he knew he wasn't fooling Arya in the slightest, and grudgingly replied, "Oh, alright. You're lucky I like ballet."
Arya jumped off the table and ran towards him. "I knew I could count on you! Thanks, Egg." She kissed him on the cheek and hugged him once for good measure.
Aegon tentatively hugged her back and tried not to think about the delicious warmth of her body and the way the curve of her waist seemed to fit just right pressed against the palm of his hands. Nope, not going there. Those were traitorous thoughts, and one of these days they would get him killed.
A distant part of himself wondered if it wasn't already too late for that though.
The following day, Aegon barged into her room without so much as knocking. He looked as though someone had just threatened to gut his favorite pet with a butcher knife. Well, technically, he didn't own a pet. But it was the thought that counted.
"I just got a very disturbing phone call from a guy named Jon. Should I be worried?"
Arya's lips twisted into a smile. If the look on his face wasn't so damn amusing, perhaps she would have found it within herself to apologize for her family's completely unnecessary but oddly sweet gestures of overprotectiveness. She had a sneaking suspicion that it was Sansa who told Jon about Aegon, but it hardly seemed worth the effort to call her sister in the middle of rehearsal just so she could give her a piece of her mind. Perhaps she even needed to thank her. The way Aegon was panicking right now seemed downright charming.
"Don't worry. Jon is harmless," Arya reassured him. "It's my brother Rickon you have to worry about. If he ever calls you, do not, under any circumstances, leave the apartment for at least 72 hours. Just a fair warning."
Aegon's skin blanched. He buried his face in his hands and walked away, muttering something about "scary shovel talks" and "proper health insurance."
Wednesday evening, he found her sprawled out on the couch, furiously gnawing on the end of her pencil. Her hair was a mess, as was the living room area, which was littered with everything from empty cups of coffee to sticky notes taped to thick textbooks. Judging by the heavy bags under her eyes and the imprint of a pillow tassel on her cheek, it also appeared as though she hadn't slept since last winter.
Aegon frowned. He hadn't seen her this frazzled since that time Mrs. Stark had tried to set her up with a Frey last Valentine's Day, during which Arya had seriously contemplated jumping off the balcony just to get away from the dreaded date.
"You okay?" he inquired as he shoved aside some of her books to make room for himself on the couch.
Arya sighed and allowed her head to drop back against Aegon's shoulder. She looked like she needed an entire week's worth of painkillers and alcohol. Or a vacation. She could probably use a vacation. Aegon made a mental note to ask Rhaenys for plane tickets the next time she called and pestered him at work. She'd been nagging him to visit her at Dragonstone for ages now; it was about time he took her up on it.
"Remind me again why I'm studying dead languages when I could just as easily be playing football for a living?"
"Uh, because those Mormont girls keep trying to make you bat for the other team?"
Arya laughed, the sharp curve of her mouth a heavy imprint on Aegon's shoulder. "I love my teammates to bits, but I – yeah – half of the time Lyanna and Jory are so convinced that me dating a guy would be a complete disaster –"
"You dated that Gendry dude for three weeks, though," Aegon helpfully pointed out. "Three whole weeks. Do you know how proud I am for you for sticking it out for that long?"
"Oh, shut up." Arya rolled her eyes good-naturedly and whacked him on the head with the end of her pencil. "If Gendry hadn't left to join the police academy in the Riverlands, I probably would have moved out and lived with him in some artsy, hole-in-the-wall apartment in Flea Bottom. And then where would you be? You can't even remember to feed the fish without me reminding you of it every day –"
"Wait, we have fish?"
Arya looked at him exasperatedly as though he'd just proven a point. "Honestly," she grumbled. "How on earth have you managed to live without me for so long?"
"Says the person who can't survive a week without my cooking."
She sighed. "You do know that every time you use the chef card in an argument, I hate you just a little bit more, don't you?"
"Oh, come on," Aegon wheedled. "Stroke my ego a little. I'll make you tuna casserole for lunch tomorrow."
"Deal," Arya instantly replied. "And while you're at it," she waved a newly printed copy of her notes in front of his face, "make yourself useful and help me with my Linguistics class."
Aegon snatched the thing from her hands and hummed under his breath as he quickly surveyed its contents. "High Valyrian?" His lips quirked into an amused smile.
"Quit sounding so smug. I got excellent marks on my last exam, I'll have you know. It's just the adverbs and restrictive clauses that are giving me trouble."
"Sweetheart, I've studied High Valyrian since I was a kid. Give me an hour and I'll have you spouting off Valyrian epithets in your sleep."
They ended up sleeping on the couch later that night. Arya, as it turned out, did not spout Valyrian epithets in her sleep, much to Aegon's disappointment, but her head was a comforting weight against his chest, and soon he fell asleep to the sound of her steady breathing. He can't remember the last time he succumbed to sleep so easily.
When he woke up the next morning, she was still there, her arms wrapped around his waist, fingers fisted against the cotton fabric of his shirt. It was all well and good, until Aegon's blood started rushing to other parts of his anatomy in a way that was just slightly bordering on inappropriate, and he was forced to think of Jon Connington dancing on a firepole so as to avoid possible death by garrote. (Arya was not a morning person, and had been known to punish men for lesser crimes than this. Aegon could only imagine the damage she could inflict on him if he accidentally woke her up with his, uh, problem.)
Aegon held his breath. He could've sworn he felt Arya's eyelids flutter open and her breathing quicken. But then the moment passed, and he felt silly for even entertaining that idea. Like she would willingly snuggle with him on a tiny couch without a gun pointed to her head? Oh, please.
"So, I heard you're practically married now."
"What? That's absurd. Who told you that?"
"Duck," was Rhaenys' quick reply. "You weren't answering my phone calls so I called him instead."
"That ass! I'll kill him myself."
He heard Rhaenys chuckle over the phone. "Please don't. Then I'll have to get a new spy," she said. Aegon couldn't figure out whether she just joking or not. In the end, he decided it would be better not to find out. "Anyway," his sister added cheerfully after a few moments of silence, "tell me about this Arya girl. What's she like?"
"Stubborn. Brave. Kind. Can probably kill me with her pinky finger."
Rhaenys hummed in approval. "That's good. You need someone who won't put up with your shit."
"Look, I don't know what Duck's been telling you, but Arya and I are not together. Not like that. She's just –"
"What, a friend? Friends don't buy friends tampons at the grocery store at ten in the evening and go with them to the theatre to watch ballet."
"How did you – When did you even-?" Aegon sighed. "You know what, I'm not even going to ask you how you learned about that one."
"Best not," Rhaenys chirped. Aegon could practically feel her smile at the other end of the line. "It's no use lying to me, little brother."
"I'm not lying. I'm telling you the truth. There is absolutely nothing going on between me and my roommate."
"Wait, so you're saying she doesn't know that you like her?"
He huffed. "No, but that's completely besides the point –"
"Oh my god." Rhaenys squealed. For someone who professed to love her brother a lot, she sure sounded awfully happy to hear about his misfortune. "Aegon, can I stay at your place for a few days? I want to watch the drama unfold."
"What? No way!" Aegon had never been so thankful in his life that he'd refrained from sending Rhae that email asking her for plane tickets to Dragonstone. He might have just saved himself from an entire month's worth of therapy and unnecessary agony.
"Oh, come on. Please? This is better than reality TV. I haven't seen such good and delicious drama since that whole Dany/Jorah debacle a few months ago. Help a girl out here, Aegon."
"No."
"But what if I –"
"Rhae, I swear to god, if you ask me again one more time, I'm telling Mom and Dad about you and Uncle Viserys."
Rhaenys gasped. "You little snitch," she accused him. "You're no fun at all."
Aegon rarely brought people home into his apartment. The last time he'd tried doing that, the night had ended with him and Arya handcuffed to the radiator, courtesy of his meddlesome cousins. He'd had to suffer through an entire week of Elia and Tyene alternately teasing him and sending him damning photos in his inbox, and that was before Uncle Obi got wind of what happened. Aegon shuddered. It was not an experience that he'd care to repeat again.
But tonight was the final match of the season, and he'd be damned if he didn't watch it with a friend over a bottle or two of beer. He would have asked Arya, but she was busy with a film project and wouldn't be available to provide snarky background comment until after eleven in the evening. Thus, he thought it would be a brilliant idea to bring Gerry along with him. He would've asked Duck too, but truthfully, he was still a little mad at him that he'd told Rhaenys about his love affair with Arya (or lack thereof). So Gerry would have to do. He was Quentyn's best friend, rarely kept in contact with the Sand Snakes, and most importantly, he was rooting for the same team as Aegon. As far as football-watching buddies went, Gerry was a safe choice.
What he wasn't counting on, however, was the sight of Arya walking around the apartment in nothing but an oversized shirt that he was pretty sure belonged to him, her hair damp from the shower. She blinked at him when she saw he had brought a friend home.
"Hey," she greeted them.
"Hey," Aegon echoed back, trying hard not to blush too hard at the thought of Arya wearing his shirt. There was something strangely intimate about it, and judging by the sly glances Gerry kept sending his way, he wasn't the only one who thought so.
Aegon licked his lips, a nervous habit he'd been trying to get rid of since he was a kid. "I thought you wouldn't be home until later," was all he could bring himself to say at the moment.
"I wanted to go home early so I could watch the game with you. I know how much you hate watching football matches alone. But clearly you already have company." She shot Gerry a friendly smile. "Shall I leave you two alone then?"
"No," Aegon exclaimed perhaps a little too quickly. "No. Stay."
"Okay." Arya shrugged, the motion exposing the bare curve of her shoulder and the smooth planes of her skin, making Aegon swallow hard. Oh shit. This was going to be a long night.
Arya stuck her head out the doorframe and yelled, "Egg, have you seen my clothes?"
"Nope. Sorry," Aegon shouted back.
He heard the distinctive sounds of drawers slamming shut and Arya's muttered curses. A minute later, she emerged from the laundry room wearing another one of Aegon's shirts. This was the third time this week that this had happened, and though she liked how comfortable Aegon's clothes were on her small frame, this was starting to become a little ridiculous.
"You know, I could've sworn I did my laundry yesterday," she complained as she swept past Aegon on her way to the kitchen, bringing with her the scent of clean laundry and raspberry shampoo. "Why do my clothes keep on disappearing?"
Aegon hid a smile behind her back and said in a carefully neutral tone, "Maybe the washing machine ate them."
"Hi. You've reached Arya and Aegon's apartment. We can't take any of your calls right now, but if you leave a message after the – HOLY CRAP, is that a dog? What the hell is a stray dog doing in our apartment? Oh my god, it looks like it wants to eat me. Why does it look like – oh, fuck, it's coming closer! Why is it coming closer? (panicked sounds) Arya, do something! (more panicked sounds) Get it off me! Arya Stark, I swear to god, if I die of rabies –"
The line went dead.
A beep. And then Rhaenys' cheerful voice saying, "Aww, you guys are so cute! Aegon, if you don't send me a wedding invitation by the end of the year, I will personally fly back to King's Landing and kill you myself. Happy birthday, baby brother!"
Before, Aegon hadn't been fully convinced that his life was just one huge terrible sitcom waiting to happen. But tonight was about to change that. He'd laugh if the situation weren't so goddamn mortifying.
I love you.
Funny how those three simple words could threaten to send Aegon's world toppling off its axis. He felt dizzy and disoriented all of a sudden, and his legs felt like Jell-O. Trust a girl like Arya to drunkenly confess her undying love for him via SMS. And all that in perfect Braavosi too.
Normally this was the kind of thing he had fantasized about numerous times in the past, but he didn't even know if she had meant it in that context because a) it was already a well-established fact that Arya loved him (though what kind of love she harbored for him still remained a complete mystery), and b) the way she had strung her words together without thought to proper punctuation and spacing suggested a certain level of inebriety and total loss of control that could only explain her actions all too well. He wanted to believe that Arya had meant those words romantically, that she wasn't just saying them because she loved his cooking or because he agreed to walk her sometimes-scary-but-mostly-cute dog in the mornings when she was too hungover or sleep-deprived to get out of bed, but the masochist part of Aegon kept thinking that the thirteen I love yous he had received thus far was just the result of too much vodka (or whatever the hell those Mormont girls were shoving down his roommate's throat at the moment). Sure, he had been trying to get Arya to see him as more than a friend for months now, but to have this occur in the middle of the night and in questionable terms was too much. The injustice of it made him want to weep.
He thought about calling Arya, but holding a serious conversion with her when she was drunk was useless. He could try calling her friends, but what good would it do? He would only have the added bonus of arming Wylla with the knowledge that he cared a little too much about Arya's generous declarations of love, and that, he decided, would not do.
So on a whim, he called Trystane.
From there, things went from bad to worse.
Arya got the call at four am, right when she was about to knock on Aegon's door to ask him for a bottle of aspirin. She'd stumbled home about two hours ago, clutching her head and moaning about the inevitable hangover she would get once she'd managed to flush all traces of alcohol out of her system, and had since managed to spent the better part of those two hours reacquainting herself with the toilet bowl while simultaneously trying hard to fill in the missing gaps in her memory. Football after-parties tended to do that to her a lot, especially if they occurred on Mormont property.
She glanced at her phone screen and frowned. Why was Duck calling her at this hour? She quickly dialed his number back to find out why.
"You broke my best friend," was the first thing he said to her the minute he picked up the phone. The tone was accusatory in nature and carried the beginnings of panic, and coming from Duck, that was huge.
"What are you talking about?" Arya asked him, sounding baffled.
Duck groaned like it physically pained him to say the words out loud. "In case you weren't aware, you sent Aegon thirteen text messages and left him more than a dozen voice mails telling him that you loved him. To hear him say it, you sounded pretty urgent in your need to let him know."
"I did? Shit." Arya swallowed back the lump in her throat and winced. There were not enough words in Westerosi or Braavosi that could adequately express her emotions right now. She wished she could take a moment to properly panic. "How did he take it?"
"He showed up on my doorstep a few hours ago, looking completely freaked out. He refused to drink a speck of wine even after I insisted, so I offered him weed instead. But that was before I found out that Trystane gave him some kind of synthetic drug, one that I bet isn't even out on the market yet," Duck quickly explained to her. "So now we're both on the rooftop of my apartment, and Aegon is making these weird reptilian noises because he's somehow convinced himself that he's a dragon trapped in human form, and unless you want your roommate to end up in a body bag, you have about five seconds left to get your ass over here and help me before he realizes that dragons can actually jump off buildings."
Arya was out the door before Duck could hang up the phone.
"Oh, thank god."
Duck's relief was palpable when he saw her, and he abandoned his vigil near Aegon's side to take the time to greet her properly. Running a hand through his hair, he muttered, "I was beginning to think I might never see another sunrise again before you got here. If anything at all happened to Aegon, Trystane Martell's fault or not, his father would bury me right next to his grave."
Arya smiled at him, though it came out more as a grimace, and looked past him to see the guy in question. Aegon was lying flat on his back on the cement floor, flapping his arms up and down as though the act of making imaginary snow angels was of the utmost importance to him, and though there was a dopey smile on his face, Arya was mostly just glad that she hadn't arrived in time to see him foaming at the mouth.
"He's still high as a kite, but at least he can recognize us now," Duck pleasantly informed her. "An hour ago he was calling me a thick-skinned peasant, so I'd consider this improvement."
Arya knelt next to Aegon and poked him on the cheek. "Hi, Egg," she said. "If you weren't so ridiculous right now, I'd give you hell for making me run all the way up here in my pajamas."
"Arya?" His voice was faint and slightly hoarse, but his smile widened immediately when he saw her. "Arya, my little wolf princess, you're here!"
Arya shot Duck a horrified glance over her shoulder. She needed to be less sober for this conversation to occur and wished she'd had the foresight to down a bottle of beer right before she left her apartment.
"When you're sober and feeling much better, you and I are going to have a very serious discussion about the consequences of calling me 'princess' in public," she told Aegon with a roll of her eyes.
Aegon's response was to blink at her. Then, out of the blue, he blurted out, "You told me you loved me."
Arya groaned. Of course that would be the part that Aegon, even in his highly junked out state, would fixate on.
She could hear the silent question behind his statement though. "Do you love me?" he seemed to be asking her.
She could easily tell him no. Or she could say yes – of course she loved him, stupid idiot – but only as friends. Or she could take the easy way out and just chalk it up to the alcohol. Haha, my bad. Let's go back to being emotionally stunted individuals and ignore the simmering sexual tension in the air every day for the rest of our lives.
Any one of those options sounded good to her – it certainly would save her the need to expose herself to potential heartbreak and whatever baggage came from loving Aegon in a capacity far greater than that she had initially been prepared to give as a friend –but the way he was looking at her now made it hard for her to lie to him. It wasn't every day that she saw such a raw and vulnerable expression on Aegon's face.
She sighed. "Tell you what," she said. "If you still remember this conversation tomorrow, I'll do more than tell you that I love you. Maybe I'll even give you a kiss or two."
"So…" Rhaenys drawled first thing tomorrow morning. "Did you finally get that kiss Arya promised you?"
Aegon groaned at the sudden onslaught of light and wished that he could drown out the sound of his sister's voice chattering in his ear. It was too early for this.
"Can't you at least pretend that you weren't gossiping about my affairs with Duck like a pair of bored grandmothers at the farmer's market?" he complained, his voice muffled by the pillow.
"Oh, c'mon. You know your romantic life is my only source of entertainment," Rhaenys insisted. "Out with the truth, Egg."
Arya, who had been watching the entire exchange silently up until now, saw the look on his face and held out her hand. Aegon sighed, dropped the phone on her open palm, and tried to ignore the way the white sheets failed to cover the soft swell of her breasts and the tiny smattering of freckles on her back.
"Hello, Rhaenys. This is Arya," she said pleasantly over the phone. "It's a pleasure to finally get the chance to talk to you…"
Aegon dropped his head back on Arya's shoulder and smiled, content to listen to her fill the room with idle chatter (he thought she was doing a rather remarkable job of deflecting Rhaenys' intrusive questions in a way that wasn't guaranteed to get her labeled as a bitch), and by the time she launched into a excruciatingly detailed version of the exact manner by which she found herself naked on top of the kitchen counter, with Aegon's head busy between her thighs, Rhaenys had already hung up the phone.
"You're amazing, you know that?" he told her happily, kissing her lightly on the mouth as soon as he heard Rhaenys' indignant shriek of "That was too much information, Arya", followed by the sound of her slamming the receiver shut.
"I know." Arya hummed under her breath and maneuvered them so that she was lying on top of him, her hair forming a curtain around her face. "And you're an idiot, for never saying anything about how you felt until now. You kept insisting that I was such a good friend to you. How was I supposed to know that you wanted to be more than that?"
Aegon closed his eyes and let out a short laugh. "Yeah, I'm an idiot," he agreed. To be quite truthful though, he would have agreed to almost anything at that point, so long as Arya kept rolling her hips like that and doing that thing she did with her mouth. It was seriously driving him crazy.
"But you're my idiot," Arya told him, and the way she said it, coupled with the possessive way she bit his neck, was almost enough to make him see stars. He tightened his grip on her waist and reminded himself to breathe.
"Yeah, but you're the girl who has to put up with my idiotic ways."
Arya sighed into his mouth. "Aegon," she growled. "Stop talking."
Aegon's eyes widened. Ohhh. Okay. He could do that.
They spent the remainder of the morning not talking, until Duck showed up on their front door bearing pizza and a cake that said "Congratulations on the smooching", complete with threats of bodily harm should the pair of them continue to act like lovestruck school kids in his presence, during which Aegon had pointed out that he was welcome to leave and report back to Rhaenys anytime. "Some spy of my sister's you are," he had said.
It was an eventful day, to say the least.
AN: Writing this had been a huge stress-reliever for me. I hope you enjoyed the craziness! :)
Oh, and before you even ask, nope, sorry, there will be no sequels. Lol.