Chapter 5
Gendry was beginning to think the weekend had been a dream.
Or at least, his head was still spinning so fast from Saturday that he wasn't sure what was real anymore.
He spent Monday in a constant state of recollection, flashbacks forcing their way into his consciousness. He was called out more than once for glazing over in class, but he couldn't help it. There was no calculus scrawled on a blackboard in front of him, there was only rows of silk and cashmere and luxury he could never afford. In English class, Cathy wasn't declaring her soul for Heathcliff, but berating him for not trying on a floral-patterned waistcoat. Gendry was so zoned out by the time fourth period came that he couldn't hear the bell ring over the voice in his head, asking if he was allergic to good taste or just had a mild intolerance.
He was so caught up in this fantasy world of memory that he almost walked straight passed them on his way to lunch.
He had stopped at his locker to drop his books off, and he was still only half in the real world. The corridor was almost empty so he thought there was nobody around to see him smiling to himself, but he took a quick glance around to make sure, just in case.
They were standing half hidden in a doorway on the opposite side of the hall. There was a slamming noise and for a second Gendry thought that it was aimed at him. When he came to his senses a second later, he tried to turn back to his locker, to not get involved with something that wasn't his business. But something in him must have known – sensed, foreseen, feared – and made him stop and watch.
She looked angry, but he looked worse. He was whispering quickly and she didn't speak. His hand was wrapped around her wrist, a little too tightly, Gendry noticed, and something twisted inside him. Anger, defiance, mistrust. All the same feelings he got when one of his mom's boyfriends got rough with her.
It couldn't have been a nice conversation, whatever they were talking about. A minute later Joffrey stalked away and Sansa's eyes were red.
"Hey, are you okay?"
Gendry had no idea why he asked. Up until the noises came out of his mouth he had been doing a perfectly good job of pretending that he had nothing to do with them. But perhaps he was just pretending to himself that he wasn't waiting for the little shit to leave. Regardless of the convoluted plan the Starks had brought to him, nobody should be spoken to like that, not by someone who was supposed to love them.
Sansa's eyes were wild for a second as she looked for the source of the voice. The shock on her pale face when her gaze locked with Gendry's scared him. She blinked and then seemed to shake herself. She pulled her bag onto her shoulder and flicked her hair over the other one, rolling her eyes.
"I'm fine. He's just being dramatic." She scoffed, and it was almost believable.
"Looked pretty intense," he closed his locker now, stepping forward towards her, crossing the divide of an empty hallway, "Did he hurt you?" he nodded to her wrist. She had tucked it against her stomach, cradled it almost.
She moved it quickly, out of sight down by her side. She tried to laugh but it sounded a little too hysterical to be genuine. "That skinny boy? He couldn't hurt a fly." She smirked.
Gendry nodded, not believing a word of it. Joffrey wasn't the biggest of guys but that didn't mean he was gentle.
"You heading to lunch?" she asked, nodding over his shoulder to the stairs. They led down to the cafeteria where there were witnesses and people who probably knew how to look after Sansa better than Gendry - people who he could inform of the scene and ask for advice - but he suddenly felt no desire to go to them. You can't help someone who won't recognise the problem, after all.
"The library. I have a paper I need to look over."
Sansa nodded, and Gendry tried not to read too much into the way her lips twisted down, lines spread across her forehead.
"I'll see you around, yeah?" she asked, taking him by surprise. There was an intensity in the question that he couldn't quite place, a sub-meaning that set his teeth on edge.
He nodded, "Of course. See you around, Sansa."
She shot him a quick smile – watery and utterly miserable - before disappearing and he thanked the gods he hadn't eaten yet. He was suddenly feeling very unwell.
-*-.
"I think I'm going to be sick."
"Oh, come on," Jon rolled his eyes as he pulled his bag over his shoulder, clambering out of the Chinese torture trap that is high-school chair-desks, "it wasn't that bad." He sighed as they left the classroom - five minutes late to lunch. Mr. Stone did not believe in letting up for anything as trivial as basic human needs.
"You didn't see it, man, you were too busy blushing at Ygritte to pay any proper attention. And if you had been, you'd have seen it. It was the size of a watermelon. A big watermelon. The sort that fancy internet people turn into kegs for their strange ice-tea at Garden Parties. Bigger than a human head, surely."
Jon ignored the Ygritte comment. They had shared a look at one point, sure, but it wasn't like they were snuggling at the back together. They had suffered through their teacher's love of human anatomy right alongside Sam.
"I don't think so. It was a video on child-birth, after all."
"Yeah, but it was more like melon-birth, the size of that thing. Eugh." Sam shuddered, and shook his head. Jon grinned, trying not to laugh at his friend too obviously.
"Nerves of Steel, you've got there, Gamgee."
Sam frowned at the nickname, but didn't say anything. He had been the one to introduce Jon to Lord of the Rings after all, and Samwise Gamgee was a hero among Men and Hobbits. Sam tried to think of it as a comment on his resilience rather than his appetite, but didn't want to ask.
"I understand it's good to know how these things happen, but I don't understand why we have to see it. That's all I'm saying." He said conclusively when they reached their lockers.
They had been on the same wall of lockers since freshman year. There had been a wobbly moment in Junior year when their Home Room tutor had tried to give Jon a locker on the first floor, but some quick thinking and a hasty conversation with a giggling Tyrell later, and Jon was a football jersey down but a locker up on the third floor right beside Sam.
"Sure," Jon nodded, no longer really listening. He had just spotted Gendry at the end of the corridor, head low, brow furrowed. Jon hadn't had a chance to talk to him after Saturday and so only had Robb's assurances that Gendry had enjoyed himself to go on. He didn't find that all too settling, if he was honest – Robb hadn't spoken to Gendry either. He was just going on instinct, and he wasn't exactly a master of the art of human subtlety.
Sam was talking about English homework now, but Jon wasn't listening.
"Sam, I've just gotta-" he said quickly, nodding down the corridor. Sam nodded and Jon dashing down the hall. He had left his locker hanging open, but figured Sam wouldn't take advantage too badly.
"Hey! Gendry!"
He turned slowly, blinking as though in a daze. It took a second, but he nodded and stopped.
"Hey,"
"Hey, how are you?"
He blinked again, but after a beat replied, "Fine. You?"
"Good."
They both shifted uncomfortably, Jon shoving his hands deep into his pockets, Gendry fiddling with the zip on his hoodie, neither one sure how to move on from their stunted conversation.
Gendry was waiting for something, Jon thought, but he couldn't quite get his mouth around the words he needed to say.
"Was - Saturday – how was it? For you I mean."
To his credit, Gendry took the stuttering in his stride, and nodded thoughtfully.
"Yeah, it wasn't too bad. Anything for free food, right?" he joked but it didn't reach his eyes and his heart clearly wasn't in it.
"Right," Jon nodded along with him. He didn't know Gendry that well. They played football together, and he sometimes showed his face at the after-parties, but otherwise they hadn't spent a lot of time together. Now he was wondering if that was a mistake.
"Look, I just wanted to say again, thanks for doing this. You have no reason to get caught up in our family drama, but you're doing it anyway. It just- it means a lot."
"No, it's okay. I'll do whatever you need." There was an intensity behind the words that made Jon pause. It couldn't just be for Sansa's sake that Gendry was suddenly so committed to the cause, could it? For some random girl? Gendry must have understood some of what was going on in Jon's head because when he spoke again it was something close to an explanation.
"I saw Sansa with Joffrey just now. They looked like they were arguing. She said she was fine when I spoke to her after, but I see what you mean about him asserting his influence. She shouldn't be with someone like him."
Jon didn't know how to react, so he just nodded.
"And here I thought you maybe just had a crush on my sister." He joked.
Gendry smiled, but again, it didn't quite reach his eyes and Jon could tell he didn't actually find it very funny.
"Because you'd have to defend her honour if I did?" he asked, and it was too heavy a question not to take him seriously, given the circumstances.
"Well, look where we are now. Family's all we've got, isn't it? You've got to at least try to look after it."
"That's true."
And maybe it was because they were both outsiders to the Stark siblings, or because he was willing to go to the mattresses for a girl he hardly knew, but Jon decided he needed to look after Gendry as well. At least while he was vying for a position in the family.
"Look, I was thinking that we need to iron some details. Do you have any plans for the weekend?
Gendry narrowed his eyes. He'd heard that one before.
"Why?"
"I'll text you."
-*-.
"Why is your phone so shit?"
The room had been empty a few seconds ago, he was sure of it. Robb was shuffling about in the kitchen and Jon had gone upstairs for notepaper, so Gendry, in the habit of a generation, had pulled his phone out and started scrolling.
He looked up at her, blinking in surprise, but otherwise quite proud of his lack of reaction,
"Er – hi. Nice to see you too."
She threw herself down on the sofa next to him, sinking so deeply into it he worried for a second that it would swallow her whole.
"Hi there, how's the family, hope you're well, nice weather we're having, why is your phone so shit?" She didn't stop for breath or even to meet his eye before reaching over and plucking it out of his hands. "It doesn't even have a front camera." She was wearing sweats and her hair was scraped back in a bun but somehow she still looked ready for business.
"I don't need a front camera." Great reply, Gendry. Really stellar conversation skills there.
She looked at him – finally – with a knowing expression, although what she was supposed to know Gendry was sure, "Everyone needs a front camera."
He frowned. He didn't like having things because everyone had them, "What would I use it for?"
"I dunno," she shrugged and spun his phone back to him, "Dick-pics?"
Gendry felt himself going red. He thought he had gotten used to Arya's brash questions, but here she was making him squirm again.
"Do you even use the front camera for dick-pics? Surely there were better angles with the - "
He forced himself to meet her eye, hoping it would cut his ramblings short.
"I – er – I mean -"
He tried to stammer something out, although wasn't sure that was completely wise. If the conversation had started with dick pics, who knew where it would end? He blinked at her, not sure what she wanted from him. The look on her face told him dying of embarrassment was exactly right.
"Arya! What are you doing home?"
Robb was stood in the doorway scowling, but somehow he didn't look angry. In the time that Gendry had spent with the Starks he had come to learn that Robb scowling was normal and was more like your average person's confused expression. Perhaps it was an eldest sibling thing but it seemed to Gendry that Robb never liked to admit he didn't know something. On the football field he was all confidence and even in the middle of a department store he had known how to find his firm ground. Gendry had no such skill. He was mostly just hoping the sofa would swallow him whole, or at the very least that Robb hadn't heard his baby sister talking about dick-pics.
Robb moved further into the room and shoved Arya's feet off the coffee table. The tray he set down was overloaded with snacks. Gendry couldn't help glancing at Arya again - he knew what she got like with a little sugar – but she wasn't looking. She was tapping away furiously on her phone, frowning and looking remarkably like her brother.
"That's a lot of food." The awkward silence was getting to him. He wasn't sure that he filled it particularly well, but it was better than hearing the echo of 'dick pics' that was running around his head.
"We're going to be here for a while." Robb's face was solemn as he settled in the armchair nearest the television, "We have a lot to sort out."
"Right. The plan." Gendry nodded once. He wondered, if he stared long enough, would he soak up some of Robb's stout confidence? Maybe if he was more severe in his actions, more decisive or maybe just less self-aware.
"Indeed." Robb nodded sagely before reaching for a doughnut off the overloaded tray and taking a massive bite out of it. He settled back in his chair completely oblivious to the jelly glooping its way down the front of his shirt.
Arya cast a quick look of disdain at him before going back to her tapping. She must have been writing a novel on that thing because her fingers hadn't been still since she sat down.
Gendry tapped his fingers against his leg. He couldn't pull his phone out for fear of being less important than Ms. Stark, and he couldn't reach for something off the diabetes-tray lest he look less stylish than Robb covered in sugar. He focused on the cushion on his lap. It was a nice blue colour. His mom would like it. She would love this whole place.
The clock on the mantelpiece ticked. Gendry was doing his best to be subtle and not stare, but really, who had a mantelpiece? Who had a fireplace for that matter? The whole house was ridiculous, and – like every Stark he had met so far – made to intimidate him.
It was three torturous minutes before Jon stomped back down the stairs.
"Found my notebook," he said unnecessarily, waving a black book before settling on the sofa on the other side of Arya.
Robb breathed in deeply, and puffed out his chest. He looked very self-important,
"Shall we begin then?"
Gendry nodded quickly, happy just to be doing something. If Robb had suggested climbing up the chimney to see if there were birds nesting there he would have said yes – anything to break the silence.
Robb cleared his throat, "Right-oh. In that case, this meeting is begun, Arya put your phone down."
Arya snorted, "This meeting of minds you mean? Oh joy."
"You can leave if you want." Jon was smirking, but Arya didn't look up from her phone to see the joke in his eyes. She simply scoffed before replying,
"And leave you three to sort this out? Fat chance. I'd come back and you would have decided to steal Sansa's diary or force Gendry to learn how to ballroom dance."
Robb opened his mouth to speak, a light appearing behind his eyes,
"No!" Arya finally looked away from her phone to glare at her brother.
Jon laughed, "Sorry Gendry, looks like you'll have to put your dancing shoes back in the closet."
"Maybe not." Robb smiled, glancing quickly at Gendry before raising an eyebrow at his cousin. After a brief moment Jon nodded.
"Good idea. Arya could you-"
"On it." Arya dipped her head back down and her fingers started tapping again.
Gendry tried to ignore the fluttering of panic in his stomach.
"What's going on?" he asked. He didn't really want to know, but from the look of concentration on Arya's face he knew that there was no escape.
Nobody answered his question, instead Robb asked, "You don't have any plans after the game on Friday do you?"
Gendry shook his head nervously, "No, nothing at the moment."
"Great, so you can come to the party."
"What party?"
Thank you so much for reading and for all your reviews. They are so kind and make it worth writing. I love love love hearing what you think of the story, and all the different theories.
I'm trying to have the next chapter ready before uploading the last one, so that's why it's taken so long to upload this one – chapter 6 was a bit of a thorny one with new perspectives and all. You'll see. Anyway, for now, I hope you enjoyed this, and I would LOVE to hear what you thought. Nice, nasty, neither, bring the comments. I'm ready and waiting.