Author's Notes: Woop, well, I needed a break from the Wheel of Time series since I'm doing two books a week and this is what happened. I love writing from Gendry's POV, so I picked this OTP to write from. Also damn the scene dividers for getting deleted again!
Disclaimer: Bitch please, I own nothing.
Crayons
"I'm going out for a smoke." Gendry doesn't wait for Hot Pie, the nickname of his fellow line cook, to reply before tearing his apron off and slipping out back of the restaurant. It's not like it's lunch or dinner rush or anything, just the middle of the day where business is slow enough to keep them bored with just enough customers to keep them from having any fun. Those are the times that drive Gendry a little bit bonkers, especially with Hot Pie jabbering nonstop about whatever crosses his mind.
It's not much better outside, what with the sun beating down on him, letting him know just how nice it is outside and how shitty it is inside, but it's still cooler with the wind. The kitchen gets so hot during summer that it's no wonder no one in the back of the house suffers from heatstroke. Maybe they build up some sort of tolerance. He could probably live in a desert at this point and think it was spring.
Fishing a nearly empty pack of camel blues out of his pocket, Gendry leans against the wall. The bucket that they all sit on is gone, probably taken by one of their managers that think it'll inspire their staff to not lounge around so much. He doesn't care. Standing on his feet for twelve hours a day has become no problem to him at this point. With a slightly bent cigarette tucked in between his teeth, he flicks the lighter until the cigarette is lit and then inhales lightly, closing his eyes and finally relaxing.
He didn't smoke before working in a restaurant. He's not sure that anyone in a restaurant is a smoker until a few months in, when they realize that the only time they can get a bit of fresh air and take a breather is when they're inhaling nicotine and chemical-lased tobacco. Non-smoking employees are a bit of an oddity, looked on by the smokers as innocent and strange.
They all talk about quitting – Gendry talks about it twice as much as anyone – but no one ever does. Eight hours into being smoke free and they're jonesing again, hands near shaking, lips twitching into uncomfortable grins, eyes looking anywhere but at other people smoking. What a joke.
"Smoking kills, you know," a voice suddenly says to his left.
Gendry startles, the cigarette nearly dropping out of his mouth, but catches it just in time with his fingers. When he looks over, all he sees is a girl. She's short (then again, everyone is short compared to him), hair cut in a boy's cut like she took scissors to it herself out of frustration, but it's her sharp eyes that catch his attention, an eyebrow raised just so, like she's used to people listening to her.
He takes another puff out of it. "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?"
"No, I'm pretty sure it just kills you, stupid." She eyes him carefully, taking in his outfit, and then jerks a figure towards the building he's leaning against. "This place any good?"
"Depends on who's cooking."
"Well, hopefully not you, seeing as how you're outside puffing like a train," she replies, almost primly. It's not prim though – it's anything but that – but it's like she can't seem to help herself. He tries to look at her a little better without actually staring at her. Even though she's wearing just jeans and a t-shirt, he can tell they aren't from any Wal-Mart or anything like that. No, those scruffy clothes are all designer.
Gendry drops the cigarette butt onto the ground and smashes it with his foot. "I'm the best cook we've got." Maybe not exactly the truth, but he's good at what he does. Chef says that he might get promoted soon. The raise would be nice.
"I guess I'll have to see for myself," the girl says. He gives her a lazy grin. She rolls her eyes and then walks around the building.
Shaking his head, Gendry turns around to go back inside and freezes immediately when he goes to open the red door. He blinks a few times, even closes his eyes hard for a few seconds, but when he opens them again, the door is red as can be. He doesn't know how he knows the color is red – deep, vibrant, and violent, with a few white scratches on it – but the back door to the restaurant is red.
It's the first time Gendry has ever seen color before and it's then that he knows that he is utterly and completely fucked.
Fire is red.
He notices it as whenever he flicks his lighter to light up a cigarette. He stops smoking, unable to take the sight of the color in. All he gets are shrugged shoulders from Hot Pie and the other cooks when they ask him if he wants to join them in on a smoke break and he shakes his head. Less work for them, more for him. Whenever fire shoots up over a pan or under a stove, it takes everything in him not to jump at the color. He stops eating apples, can barely stand to deal with the steaks, ribeyes, tenderloins, fish…
Is everything in the world red?
Strange how he finds red clothing in his closet, mixed in with varying greys, blacks, and whites. His favorite cap is apparently red. Baseball uniforms has a lot of red in them. Cars fly by him on the street, shiny red blurs and pinpoints for him to stare at.
It scares him, though he hates to admit it. Everyone knows that the moment you start seeing color is the moment after you meet your soulmate. People have so many ridiculous stories about it, rehashing them over drinks and at weddings and funerals and all those other moments. His mom never saw color before the cancer took her. She didn't see it when she had a one night stand with his father, said she didn't really care, but there was no one at her funeral to talk about the first time they laid eyes on her and color burst into their life.
So why does he get to see color and what does it have to do with that girl?
It's nearly three months before he sees her again. It's the end of a busy shift and he's dragging his feet, itching for a cigarette even though he hasn't had one in over two months. Gendry is set to get his side work done and get the hell out of there when one of the other cooks nudges him in the side.
"Hey, check out those girls at seventeen," Anguy tells him, a wolfish grin on his face.
Gendry stops the internal sigh before it heaves out of him. All the guys in the kitchen like that, poking their heads out from the rock that is the kitchen so they can ogle at attractive girls like they've never interacted with the female kind before. Still, his eyes slide over to the table in question, and he damn near chokes. There she is again, that girl, hair grown out just a little more so that it's a bob, still a bit uneven. She's laughing at something one of the other girls has said, a raucous laugh not meant for nice places.
"You should go talk to them," Anguy says, "see what they're up to."
This time, Gendry does not stop himself from shooting Anguy a frustrated look. Anguy just laughs. It's always him the guys like to send out to talk to the girls, under the guise of doing table checks, not because he's the best at talking to girls or anything, but because he's so… Well, he's just him. Girls like him. Anguy is generally the one that is able to convince a group of girls to hang out after at a bar across the street, but everyone likes to make jokes about the way Gendry will come storming back into the kitchen, a little more…red in the face.
"I'm not going out there," he mutters, about to storm back into the kitchen, when the girl turns around and they somehow manage to connect eyes. He blinks, noting a bit of surprise in her face, but then she ducks back to talk with her friends. He grumbles under his breath and walks away, wincing at the green lettuce and spinach at the salad station.
Why do restaurants have to be so damn colorful?
A week later, he's sitting in the bar in between Anguy and Hot Pie as Tom serenades the entire place with a ridiculously perfect rendition of The Darkness' "A Thing Called Love" on karaoke night. The bar is dark, which Gendry is eternally grateful for, muting the reds and greens in the signs. The "open" sign glares bright red and loud. A woman sitting near him, eyes him carefully, swirling a straw around her green apple martini, and he ignores her at all cost.
"I'm gonna get another beer," he announces to no one in particular.
"Can you grab me one too?" Hot Pie asks. Freshly turned twenty-one and he's already pretending to like beer. Poor kid will learn soon enough to not fake it anymore.
Gendry's standing at the bar when he feels someone bump into him and he looks down. It's her. Goddamnit. The bartender is still taking his time getting his drink. He stares resolutely at the TV even though it's a basketball game. Of course one team is red and the other is green. The colors strain his eyes.
"Oh, hey, best cook in the Brotherhood." She's grinning at him, a cheeky little shit as ever. "Sorry, didn't mean to bump into you. Not the best in heels." Her grin drops for a second as she cringes and wiggles one of her feet. He looks down, catches a sight of two inch heels, and nods his head. "You just get off work?"
"Yeah, a few of us at the restaurant usually come over here after for a few drinks," Gendry replies, trying to sound as casual as possible. She's got brown hair. It's dark, but he can still tell it's a rich, dark brown. He inclines his head towards Tom. "Plus, they all love karaoke. Tom thinks he's a rock star."
The girl laughs. "Yeah, that's what we're here for. Well, my sister and her friends at least. I'm the driver."
"What? No singing for you?"
"Trust me; you don't want to hear me sing." The way she sighs, it sounds like even she doesn't like to hear herself sing. She taps her fingers on the bar. It's brown too, though the wood isn't nearly as nice as her hair, no matter how many times they look like they've tried to polish it. "You gonna sing?"
Gendry blows a raspberry as he grabs hold of his beer. "There isn't enough alcohol in the world to get me to do karaoke."
The grin on her face is back. "Challenge accepted."
A coke in hand, she's about to return to her friends when Gendry touches her shoulder to stop her. She looks back in surprise and he flushes slightly, his hand dropping to his side awkwardly. "Sorry, I just, ah, I forgot to ask your name. If you're going to try to get me drunk in the name of embarrassing me, I ought to know, right? I, your hapless victim, would be Gendry."
"Arya," she says with a laugh, "Arya Stark."
The sky is blue. It's the strangest color in the world. To think that the grass is so green and the sky is blue, the colors contrasting each other so much. Water is blue too, but only sometimes. It's strange, a mixture of colors yet to come. The sun is out, still a bright white, but there is no denying how much color is at the park.
"So when are you going to cook me dinner?" Arya asks, not looking at him. She has her pink tongue sticking out, concentrating on the pond in front of them, as she holds a rock. When she tosses the rock, it skips at least five times before sinking in the clear blue water, its ripples sliding across the sheen.
Gendry picks out a rock. Still gray as ever. "I have cooked you dinner, multiple times in fact."
"Work doesn't count. That's just a menu set up by someone else."
"How about you cook me dinner?"
Arya snorts. "I hope you like everything burnt to a crisp then."
Glancing over at her again, it's hard for him not to stare. Arya is a mixture of colors and non-colors. Technically speaking, as he's come to find, the blacks and whites and grays that he's seen all his life are color – or maybe the absence of color – but they're not all there yet, he doesn't think. Her torn up jeans are dark blue, her tank top slashes of red and varying grays, her hair brown, her shoes near black, her skin a pale off-white. Her eyes are still gray too.
He wonders, not for the first time, what colors she sees when he looks at him, if they're the same, if they're different, or if she sees any at all. She's never said anything about it and neither has he, since their friendship began to slowly develop over the summer. He's afraid to talk about it, afraid it'll fracture whatever this is, and she acts like nothing has changed for her since the moment she told him to quit smoking.
"What about this Friday?" Gendry blurts out. "I'm a double, so I won't be at work too late."
When Arya turns to face him, the smile on her face is almost shy and that stops him for a second. He's never known her to be shy. "Sounds good. Surprise me. You're supposed to be the best cook. I've got high expectations."
Gendry snorts and shakes his head at her. He throws the rock and blinks up at the incredibly bright yellow sun.
The wine is red, staining her already pink lips and bringing a flush to her pale cheeks. He doesn't know how to describe the color of her skin, except for maybe pale peach (he picked the color out of a list online), but it's smooth as he rubs a thumb across her cheek.
"You're too bright, you know," Gendry mumbles. "Ridiculously bright. Why do you have to wear so many colors?"
It's like she reveled in the colors. The moment he started seeing color, he panicked and refrained from wearing anything that showed too much color. No more favorite red baseball hat, adios blue jeans, goodbye green shirt. Why did he own so many purple shirts? How did he manage to buy yellow shoes? And his favorite dress shirt was pink. Until finally he was down to wearing black and white shirts, forcing himself to stick with the darkest pair of jeans he could find, and his black non-slip shoes. At least his kitchen clothes were black and white.
"I didn't realize I was before," Arya replies stubbornly, but her voice is quieter than ever before. "You don't wear enough. It's like you go out of your way to not."
It takes everything in Gendry not to gulp. It's the first time she's ever mentioned seeing color. He'd wondered, thought maybe it was possible for someone to be your soulmate and maybe not the other way around, like some sort of doomed, unrequited love thing, but…
She bites her lip. "I didn't know what to think when I saw you smoking and caught sight of the red tip at the end."
He gives her a surprised look. "That's why you started talking to me?"
"Yeah, that and smoking is bad for you."
"Ah, I think you just like telling people what to do."
Arya glares at him, but it's not angry. "Oh yeah? Then I think you should kiss me."
Gendry laughs, because of course she would do something like that, and kisses her with everything he has. She has to step on her tip toes, her arms thrown around him, but he can feel the grin on her lips as she returns the kiss.
She is the most colorful person in the world. She's got such a red personality, so bold and wild, but she smells green like the forest, all pine cones and earthy brown at the same time. Most of the time, she's as energetic as yellow, rushing around with enough energy to exhaust him, but when she's worn out, she sleeps blue, slumped against him as she fights her way to finish a movie on the couch. She's an array of colors when she's angry and defensive, a complete and utter whirlwind, dashes of red anger and purple sparks and a bunch of other colors he's only beginning to learn.
When he pulls back to breathe, Gendry leans his forehead against her and looks her in the eyes. They're still grey. Somehow, he knows that they will always be grey. Maybe it was the first color he saw actually, when they crossed paths one morning all those months ago. It's a color he has seen all his life, and yet it's like he's seeing that color for the first time.
He doesn't mind the color anymore. He doesn't know what his life was like before Arya, before the color seeped into his life.