Gendry

"Well fancy seeing you here."

Gendry's eyes sprang open, wrenching him from sleep and he jumped, a jerking jump that resulted in him thwacking his head against the wall it was leaning against. For a moment he was confused, and his entire body ached. Why was he on the floor in the middle of a hallway? And then he remembered. Arya.

Well... She'd been crying, hadn't she? And he heard her sobbing her Dad's name in her sleep... But then, instead of knocking like a normal person... And she had said she was all right... But he couldn't just leave her, could he? What kind of person left a crying sick girl all alone? He had thought, just in case she started crying again, he should wait outside. She must have been telling the truth when she said she was fine, because he apparently had fallen asleep, sprawled outside her room in the middle of the hallway.

Margaery raised an eyebrow, expecting an answer. Gendry looked up at her from his position on the floor and suddenly felt extremely stupid. 'I'll sound like an idiot,' he decided instantly.

"I erm... I was..." He said, rubbing the back of his head, which did hurt more than it probably should, as he tried to rapidly come up with something that sounded remotely sane. "I... Err..."

"Were you spying on her?" Margaery asked, narrowing her eyes.

"NO!" Gendry shouted, maybe too loudly. "No I was... Checking to make sure... There were no vampires..."

That excuse, he decided, was stupider than the truth. But at the same time... Well he didn't want to tell Margaery that Arya had been crying. It seemed to him something that was private, and he knew she wouldn't want him to run around and have people feel sorry for her or think she was weak.

"Riiiiggght," Margaery said, looking thoroughly unconvinced. "Because we don't have protective charms on the house or anything, so no unwanted guests could even step on the grounds."

"Err..." Gendry could feel his face turning bright red.

"Don't worry about it," Margaery said, waving her hand at him. "You're worried about her, I get it."

"You do?" Gendry sighed with relief. "Oh okay great."

He tried, with limited success, to get to his feet, his bones popping in the process. He was definitely going to be sore. Heck, he already was. Margaery laughed.

"Next time you should just bring your mattress with you," she said with a giggle as Gendry tried to straighten his back and failed.

"Yeah I feel like I've taken a pounding," he said, cracking his neck. "Oww."

At that moment Arya's door wrenched open with a bang and Gendry and Margaery both jumped. As they did, the tray balanced on Margaery's hands tilted dangerously, and Gendry dove to catch it just in the nick of time.

"Whoa!" Margaery cried as he helped her steady it. "Thank you! Look at him, saving the day. He's such a gentleman."

Arya raised a very incredulous eyebrow, and for some reason she looked vastly irritated, her eyes darting from Gendry to Margaery and then narrowing. Gendry felt himself blush again. Maybe she had heard about him sleeping outside her room and worrying about her. She was probably cursing him in her head right now. He shuffled uncomfortably.

"Isn't he?" Margaery was saying blithely.

"Not exactly," Arya said in a very deadpan voice. "I don't know if you can call a guy who shot someone with an arrow a 'gentleman.'"

Gendry blinked, surprised. She really was very unamused, wasn't she? Hadn't they just been joking about the whole thing the night before? She had seemed perfectly fine then, well, despite the tears on her face, but she certainly hadn't been this hostile. She was glaring at him. What was that all about?

"I don't know," Margaery said, "last night he-"

"Margaery's brought you breakfast!" Gendry said hurriedly, cutting across her. The last thing he wanted was more of Arya's irritation. "And I've got to go shower."

He looked back Arya with a half smile, which was instantly wiped off his face when he saw the searing and incredibly frightening glare that she was giving him. What was her problem? Whatever it was, he had a feeling he should run. So he did, bowing out gracefully before making a beeline for his room.

Maybe it was the whole naked thing, he thought as he pulled his shirt over his head and started to run the shower water. Maybe she was really embarrassed. She had blushed pretty brilliantly that night, buried under her blankets. 'Maybe she thinks I'm making fun of her?' He wondered as he pushed off his pajama pants and boxers, stepping into the shower. Or maybe she had taken his embarrassed reaction badly. Girls did that, he knew. Maybe she thought that he had found her ugly.

He could have hit himself. He didn't want to assume... But he was probably the first boy to have seen her naked, which must have been traumatic enough, but given the circumstances... How could he have been so stupid? Especially now, in such a sensitive situation. He should have said something nice, something reassuring, but all he could do was stare at the ceiling and try very, very hard not to think about her naked.

As he washed his hair, he sighed. He really, from the depths of his heart, did not want to have this conversation with her. He wasn't very good at emotional things, and that night in her room had been the very perfect example of how incapable he was at handling emotional situations. Their relationship was awkward enough besides. How could he try to talk about her naked when they hadn't even gotten past the whole arrow thing?

He turned off the water and got out, drying himself, and then, towel looped around his waist, he padded to his dresser drawer. There hadn't been time to pack, so he had to use Willas, Loras and Margaery's brothers clothing. He had been too broad chested for both Willas and Loras's clothes, but Garlan, who lived down south, was still a bit bigger than he was, so Gendry had to loop his belts tight to keep them from sliding from his waist.

Today would be another day of research, he knew. It had been dull so far. Gendry wasn't one for studying, but maybe now that they had their new plan, things would get more interesting. They hadn't talked much about the whole thing, but Gendry knew that the Tyrell's grandmother would be coming some time that day, and from what he had gathered, they would be taking the planning orders strictly from her.

After he had wriggled into a gray t-shirt, Gendry went downstairs to snag some breakfast. Hot Pie was already down there, reading some book very intensely and stuffing his face with frosted flakes. When Gendry passed him, he barely looked up.

"How to increase the size of your... Nice," Gendry said sarcastically, reading over Hot Pie's shoulder.

"Hey man," Hot Pie said as he chewed, "when God places something like this in my hands, who am I-Who am I, to throw it away? Hmmm? No, my friend. As it says in the bible, 'what god giveths, so shalt thou take.'"

"Err, I'm pretty sure that was never in the bible," Gendry said, taking some toast and sitting down. "Just because you added some 'ths' in there and threw in a 'thou' doesn't necessarily make it biblical."

"You don't know, okay?" Hot Pie said, frosted flakes dribbling from his mouth. "You know what? You're probably just jealous because I found it first."

"Oh trust me," Gendry said, taking a bite of toast, "I've got nothing to hide."

"Lovely."

Gendry choked on his toast as Arya walked into the dinning room, a look of disgust on her face. He felt his own turn to flames as he coughed, cringing in embarrassment.

"Oh really? Have you measured or something?" Hot Pie asked, chomping on his cereal.

"HOT PIE!" Gendry hissed, choking on his toast again.

"What?" Hot Pie asked. Gendry threw his arms up in the air as if to say, 'hello?' Hot Pie's eyes flicked to Arya, and they widened in realization.

"Oh," he said as she stood in the doorway. He swallowed hard. "Err... Good morning?"

She scowled and stomped off towards to where the library was, where Renly, Loras and everyone else probably was. Gendry watched her go, cursing silently in his head. He was going to kill Hot Pie.

"Is a side effect of being a werewolf acting like you have your period 24/7?" Hot Pie said, looking after her.

"You're disgusting," Gendry informed him. "I'm glad you ate that two month old guacamole."

Toast abandoned, he got to his feet and took a sip of water before sending Hot Pie another annoyed look before turning to go after Arya.

"You're just jealous of the prowess I'll have as a lover!" Hot Pie shouted after him. "Mr. I-have-nothing-to-hide! That's what they all say!"

Gendry sighed. Today was clearly not his day, and Hot Pie, as per usual, was not really helping. 'He better start making cookies or something soon,' Gendry thought to himself, 'or I might have to kill him.'

He walked down the stairs and to the library, greeting Renly, who sat in a chair, pointedly on the opposite side of the library from Loras, who kept giving him furtive looks over the book he was reading. Gendry scanned the library, caught Margaery's eye, and, before he could even ask, she pointed upward, to the second story.

Gendry quickly climbed up the spiral staircase and looked around, spying Arya who was sitting off in a nook, a book titled How to Kill Vampires propped between her legs. Taking a deep breath, and rehearsing what he wanted to say, Gendry strode towards her.

"What do you want?" She snapped, not looking up from her book. Gendry opened and closed his mouth like a fish. What was he supposed to say again? Oh right, something about the whole naked thing. Something nice.

"I don't think you're ugly," he blurted out.

Arya paused, raised her head from her book and then looked at him.

"You're an idiot," she said to him with an eyeroll, and then she turned back to her book.

'That's it,' Gendry thought, 'I give up. I'm one hundred percent done.'

He was about to tell her that, but there was a commotion down below, and he rushed to the balcony to see what was going on, Arya joining him a second later.

"Grandma's here!" Margaery squealed with delight, and she raced out of the library.

"That's early," Willas said, checking his watch and then following after her. "But she's nothing if not punctual."

Gendry and Arya quickly descended the stairs and followed everyone out of the library and through the house to the front door, the door bell shrieking continuously. Margaery quickly opened it.

"Why didn't you answer the door sooner? Has someone died?" An elderly woman asked with a look of searing disapproval. She was elegantly dressed in a pearl colored blazer and pencil skirt with pearls looped around her neck. "I've been standing here for ages. I thought I might die on this doorstep."

"Grandma!" Margaery said happily. "It's so good to see you, come in! I'm so glad you came!"

"Of course I came," the woman said, walking inside. "Killing vampires? It's as if you all finally read my Christmas list."

"It's good to see you, Grandma," Renly said amiably, grinning at her.

"That's Olenna Redwyne to you," she said sharply. "Don't think just because you used to practically live here that you get to call me that. And Loras told me all about what you did."

"That was ten years ago," Renly said weakly while Loras looked extremely smug.

"Well are we going to stand here all day and chat?" Olenna wanted to know. "There's a horde of vampires that have crossed the line. I say we get down to business and kill them."

Now that it's october I feel like this story is even more appropriate