The first time he sees her, she is sitting outside the clinic, cursing her empty lighter with torrid rage. He is studying psychology, and it has become instinct to read people. This girl is angry. Fiery and angry.
She turns out to be his 4:35. Her file states he has her for an hour, but they never make it past the 15 minute mark. She is out of there before he can utter more than few words.
He looks over her file and learns this is the same girl that put her half brother in the hospital. He smiles.
An attempt to have his father assign her to another counselor proves pointless and he is forced to make her his permanent 4:35 for the next 23 weeks.
The second time he sees her tops the first. She doesn't talk for nearly the entire hour of her session, save for the last few minutes, which she spends building up into a tirade that gave him a massive headache.
"Did I do something to you?" was the first thing Gendry said to his father as he sat across him in the restaurant table.
Robert had made reservations at Gaucho's a few days ago, and Gendry had to cancel his own plans to show up.
His father was leaning back in the white leather seat, looking over the menu with hungry, half-lidded eyes. "Eh?" his eyes never left the menu.
"I was just wondering if I did something to piss you off?" Gendry's head was throbbing and the smell of food was making him nauseous.
Robert set the menu down. "What the fuck are you on about?" he refilled his glass with bourbon and filled Gendry's to the rim.
"No thanks." Gendry shook his head at the glass.
"Drink, boy. Why do you think you've done something wrong?" he pushed the glass closer to Gendry.
"My 4:35. Arya Stark."
Robert tipped his head back and let out a jolly chortle. "Oh!" he sighed with a smile, rubbing his round belly in an almost sensual way. He is drunk. "I want you to crush her. You have her for 6 months. When those months are over, I want you to hand me her balls in a little sack with a lovely pink ribbon on top."
"Well," Gendry took two large gulps from his drink. "don't be surprised if she hands you mine instead."
Robert's smile faded and his face became stern. "That better be a joke." he finished his bourbon in four gulps and refilled is glass, then moved to try and fill Gendry's.
"Don't." Gendry pushed the bottle neck away. "I'm driving, and I have an exam early in the morning."
"Ah!" Robert hissed and filled Gendry's glass anyway. "I have Clegane. He can drive us both home. And about the girl, get used to patients like her. "
Gendry rolled his eyes. Maybe this was not the best time to bring up the art thing, as he'd planned to do on the drive here.
"You've had enough of those flimsy Ann and Andy cases. Or is it Mickey and Minnie. Whatever the fuck they're called, it's time you move up to uh... well... tougher shit."
Gendry smiled despite himself, and shook his head disapprovingly. "You're drunk." he told Robert.
"Are you boys ready to order?" a young, strawberry-blonde server smiled down at both of them with a cheery expression.
"Fuck yeah I am, sweetheart!" Robert boomed out merrily. The girl giggled dutifully and Robert winked at her.
This was definitely not the moment to bring it up. His father was too drunk and it would just turn into an argument. Gendry downed the rest of his drink and poured himself some more. "Fuck it." he muttered under his breath. "Fuck the exam."
xxx
"Why does K get stuck?"
"What?" Sansa looked up from her homework, confused.
"The letter K. It gets stuck." Arya pressed the typewriter key to show Sansa.
"It always has. Ever since grandfather gave it to me."
"Why don't you get it fixed?"
"I never use it, so there is not point in fixing it. It's just for decoration. Did you need something Arya? I'm doing homework."
Arya pressed the typewriter spacebar idly and shrugged. "Mycah's out of the hospital next week."
Sansa set her pencil down smiled and sympathetically. "That's good. They have not said anything about Joffrey's release date yet."
"Let me know when they do. I want to be there the minute he gets out of the hospital... so I can put him back in there."
"You do that, and they will put you in jail this time." Sansa warned, turning her attention back to her homework.
"If I'm going to jail, might as well kill him then."
"Arya!" Sansa slammed her text book closed and slid off the bed.
"Its only a joke."
"I don't see anyone laughing. Arya, Joffrey is part of my life now, you have to learn to get along with him. For my sake."
"NO I DON'T, Sansa! He is just your stupid boyfriend. You'll dump him as soon as you figure out what a complete dick he is."
"Don't call him that Arya." Sansa crossed her arms over her chest. "He is not just my boyfriend."
Arya sprung off the desk chair and stood before Sansa with suspicious eyes. "What. Are you... talking... about?"
Both girls were barefoot, but Sansa stood nearly a foot taller than Arya. It was Arya's presence which towered over Sansa's in that moment, though.
"Joffrey proposed." Sansa said in a small, shivery voice.
Arya's face twisted with disgust at the thought of Sansa married to that prick. She shook her head in disbelief. "You won't say yes. You're 20 years old, Sansa! He's a piece of crap! You can't marry him! You can't say yes!"
Sansa's gaze fell and Arya let out a bitter laugh. "You... want me to kill him, don't you?"
Sansa rolled her eyes walked back to her bed. She picked up her textbook and flipped it open on a random page. "You won't hurt him."
Arya's eyes narrowed and she felt a wave of heated rage consume her insides. She stomped to the bed, knocked the book from Sansa's hands, grabbed one of the pillows off the bed, and hit Sansa with it over, and over and over again; messing up her neat bun.
"Arya! Arya, stop!" Sansa pleaded, shielding the hits with her arms.
"I hate you, you know that!" Arya threw the pillow over her shoulder and curled her hands into fists. I can beat some sense into her. "About 99.9 percent of the time, I really, really hate you!" she closed her eyes and hissed out a heated sigh, her tight fists loosening at her sides. "But for the rest of that .1 percent . . . I really, really love you."
After a few seconds the pulse of rage had passed and Arya opened her eyes to find Sansa sitting limpy on the bed; had her bottom lip worried against her teeth to stiffled a small whimper. Her face was framed with red tendrils of loose hair, and her blue eyes glazed with unshed tears. Arya didn't know if it was the pillow beating, or what she was saying that had triggered Sansa's tears.
"I love you a lot. Stupid! I don't want to see you with a guy like Joffrey. That .1 percent of love, it is strong enough that I take jail, over seeing you with that asshole. Any day."
Sansa sniffed and wiped at the few tears that had finally rolled out of her eyes. "You don't mean that." she whispered softly.
Arya chuckled weakly. She suddenly felt deflated. Drained.
It had been a long day. Between her visit with lighter guy, and her visit with Mycah, and now this, she was just about ready to collapse into a sleeping coma.
"What? That I love you?" she laughed again with a small smile. "Oh I meant it. Though it's probably more like .000001 percent."
"You won't hurt Joffrey."
Arya rolled her eyes and made to leave. She turned at the door to get a last look at the mess she'd left her sister in. "No. I won't hurt him. Because I don't think you will marry him."
xxx
"Look I think we got off on the wrong foot last week. Why don't we start-"
"Oh, shut up!" Arya walked around him and slumped down onto one of the sofas in lighter guy's large office. She rummaged though her messenger bag and pulled out her lighter and a cigarette.
"You'll set off the sprinklers!" Gendry snatched the cigarette from her hand. "Listen!" he yelled suddendly. "If I have to tolerate your bitchy ass for 22 more weeks, we have to come up with an arrangement!" Arya's mouth fell open with a surprised smile, and he regretted his tone almost instantly. "I'm sorry." he uttered out quickly. "That was uncalled for."
"You know, there's a few Doctors in this clinic that can help you with those anger issues. Might want to make an appointment."
Gendry shook his head. "I'm sorry. I had a difficult week."Gendry circled his desk and pulled the top drawer open. His bottle of pills rolled out.
"Oh really? What happened?"
He shook his head again and slammed the drawer close. "Just, crap. It... it doesn't really-"
"I was... that was sarcasm, you idiot. I really don't care about your week."
Gendry's head snapped to Arya. "You're just... a little bowl of sunshine, aren't you?" he grabbed a plastic bag off his desk and flung it at her so it landed on her lap. "I got you something."
"What is it?"
"Look, you made it very clear last week that you don't want to talk and open up, and I can't force you to. You don't want to hear me talk. But when your 6 months are up, and you go back into that courtroom, they will be expecting results. They will be looking at my notes to see if you've made some sort of progress or not. Now, I could just say, fuck it, let them give her 6 more months. But I risk being the fucker who is stuck with you during those 6 months. So let's try and work together. I want you out of here as much as you."
Arya opened the bag and pulled out a colouring book and a box of crayons.
"This has helped a few of my other patients." Gendry crossed his hands over his chest.
Arya glared up at him with dark eyes. "Do I look five to you?"
Gendry chuckled humourlessly. "You act like you're five. But you look somewhere around twelve. Look, If you don't like..." he turned his head to one side, trying to figure out whose picture was on the cover of the book. It was some doe-eyed baby elephant he'd never seen before. "Whoever the hell that is..." he gestured to the book.
"It's Dumbo." Arya snapped at him. "Did you not have a childhood?"
"If you don't like Dumbo," Gendry ignored her question, "I can get you another book. But you have to work on it. Every week, and it stays here. You do this, and maybe I'll discard my notes for the first two days. Maybe. Colour outside the lines, and I might have to start making shit up about you."
"Dumbo's fine." she met his eyes with her fierce grey ones. "I don't have to talk?" she asked warily.
"No talking." he agreed.
"Not even from you?"
"No."
The girl considered the book for a long moment before she finally nodded. "It's a deal then."
"Shake on it." Gendry held his hand out for her. She shook her head.
"I'm a germaphobe." she forced a smile.
"Sure you are." Gendry pulled his hand back.
Arya flipped on her belly in the sofa and kicked her sneakers off as she opened the crayon box to inspect the colours. She had bright green and yellow striped socks. Gendry smiled.
"Are you just going to just stand there... and stare are me? What are you going to do for an hour while I pretend I'm five." she asked as she flipped through the pages of the book.
"Do you really care?" he crossed to his desk and sunk into his chair. " or is that more sarcasm?"
Arya let out an unguarded snort and rolled her eyes. There's the girl I met out in the garden, Gendry though as he pulled her file open.
"Purposely belligerent." he wrote in his messy handwriting. "With possible mild to severe ODD."
He pulled his drawer open once more and the pills rolled forward. He plucked them out and filled a glass with water from the jug that sat on a table behind his desk. He made sure Arya was not looking, and he popped a pill inside his mouth and washed it down with water.
xxx
AN
I'm back! After a very long hiatus. A lot of crap happened, but I won't bore you with it.
Someone asked about the age between the characters.
Arya is 17. Gendry is 27.
I am keeping the actor's age difference to help readers picture them a little better, and because Gendry is suppose to be an intern doctor at the clinic.
Why not make Arya older?
Because I think Arya is a smart person. She is angry, but an older Arya beating up Joffrey is a bit immature. Arya is too smart for that. In an modern AU though, i think teen Arya would beat the crap out of Joffrey.
So yes. Ten year difference.
So happy readers are reacting positively to a human Nymeria.
Please review! I want to read your thoughts.
FIC UPDATEs!
"The Bull" update is next. Then "that Stark girl"
Unless you follow me on my new tumblr, there was for you to know that I still meant to finish the stories, and I'm sorry.
Which, by the way, if any of you are tumblr followers I have a new tumblr now, so I'll leave the link to that in my profile.
thanks for reading!
