Chapter 8: Gendry

"So, Arya's been spying on you with her binoculars."

Gendry spat out his cereal and began coughing. "What?"

"She birdwatches out her window sometimes, and sometimes spies on you with her binoculars. You might want to consider wearing pants more frequently." Jon was leaning against the sink, eating oatmeal. He looked very much as though he would prefer not to be having this conversation, but that he was morally obligated to.

"Right then," said Gendry. He didn't know what else to say.

He supposed the only thing he could think of that was worse than him perving on Jon's sister was Jon's sister perving right back on him. Because she was young. And not supposed to be interested in the tired, over-worked, underpaid grad student. She was supposed to find some ridiculously idiotic, good looking fellow to have her way with. He groaned internally.

This just got even more complicated.

Why is it that fantasizing always got complicated?

It was raining outside, and the leaves were falling under the rain. Great. That would probably give perving Arya a better view.

Gendry felt distinctly uncomfortable with how much he liked the prospect of that.

He'd never had a girl interested in him before. To be fair, he wasn't sure that Arya was interested in him. She might well just be looking around. But if she was interested…

He'd only ever dated girls that he had asked out before. There'd been Ros in King's Landing, an orange-haired girl who had laughed at all the wrong jokes. She had been his first girlfriend, and she had left him because she said he was too slow in the sense that she had wanted sex—lots of it quickly—and he was determined not to be disrespectful of her the way whoever his father was had been disrespectful of his mother.

When he had explained this to his mother, she had laughed, saying that respectful doesn't mean not fucking a girl when she wants to be fucked, it means not treating her like dirt.

With that knowledge, he had asked out a girl named Victoria, a blonde girl with bright blue eyes from Brightwater Keep. They had had sex—lots of it quickly—and Gendry had fancied himself in love. But things had fallen apart sometime after a year of dating and that was it.

He'd had hook-ups between then and now, when he was convinced to forget that he didn't feel comfortable taking off his clothes in front of people he did not know.

He supposed he could be pleased with it all, to the extent that Arya found him worthy of her perving. But that was coupled with the fact that she was eighteen years old, and he was twenty three. That didn't even fit into the half-your-age-plus-seven bounds. He should not be ok with any perving involved between them, whatsoever.

But the thought of Arya watching him through her binoculars kind of turned him on.

Then he yelped—what if she saw him on the days when he would stretch and let his towel drop. That would mean she would have…seven hells. It just got a lot creepier.

He continued to feel uncomfortable with that as he biked over to Mott's through the rain. When he got to the garage, he shook the wet out of hair, locked his bike to a pipe just inside the door, and settled himself behind a desk because no one was there.

He'd worked in garages since he was too young to be legally employed. His mum had never made much money off of her bar—a small thing in Flea Bottom that often attracted the kind of person who tried to sneak out before paying their tab. Gendry had always been good with his hands, and he enjoyed working on cars, and he found that it paid very well. It's what put him through his undergraduate degree—as much as the financial aid and his mother's savings—and it was what was putting him through graduate school as well. The money he made off TAing was enough to supplement his life needs.

It made him glad that Jon was also working his way through grad school. Daemon and Aurane both had money from home. Jon felt uncomfortable asking for money from his dad, for some reason that Gendry didn't fully understand.

Thinking of Jon made him think of Arya, from whom he had so successfully distracted himself. He groaned.

"Hello, good sir," came a voice. He looked up from his desk. A dwarf was standing in front of him. One eye was green, the other was black, and his hair was a bright blond. His nose looked like it had been broken six or seven times.

Gendry knew who he was at once. How could he not? Especially after his internet research of Joffrey Baratheon.

"Hello, welcome to Mott's. How can I help you?"

"You look lost in thought."

"I am. What can I do for you?"

"Well, something about my car doesn't seem to work. I imagine that my ex-girlfriend did something to it. She's a crazy one."

"What's the nature of the problem?" asked Gendry, standing up. He'd never been more aware how tall he was than when he was standing next to the dwarf.

"It won't turn on. It's here now. I called a tow-truck when it wouldn't turn on this morning."

"Great. I'll take a look."

Tyrion Lannister led him to the car. It was a very nice car. The gearshift had seven gears on it, and Gendry, as so often happened when nicer cars than he could dream of appeared in front of him, wished he could take it for a spin. Instead, he contented himself with grinning and saying, "Nice Harpy."

"Came in straight from Astapor in June. Now it doesn't work. I tell you—what's your name?"

"Gendry Waters."

"Tyrion Lannister. I tell you, Gendry, never date a crazy woman. Never date someone who is going to be unfaithful. Never date someone who is after your money more than your love. Never date someone who is more interested in how she looks than how she feels about you. And never, as my idiotic nephew decided to do, date someone who is too good for you and then abuse them."

Gendry did his best not to let on that he knew that Lannister was referring to Joffrey and Sansa.

"Women. What can we do without them. Many things, I suppose. But never cross them. They don't like that. And are quite vicious in the revenge, I find. No man would ever hurt another man's car. I'm honestly surprised that Shae didn't do worse…" sighed the dwarf.

"Seems to be your battery," commented Gendry, "You could have just jumped it on the road. You didn't need to bring it in."

"Well, I am here now. The little light indicating a dead battery did not turn on."

"Can't really explain that. It should have."

"I assume you can you jump it."

"Shouldn't be a problem."

Gendry jumped the car in five minutes and instructed Lannister to drive it for an hour before turning it off again.

"Excellent. I thank you for your work, Gendry Waters." The dwarf nodded to him through the window and reversed out of the garage.

Gendry watched him go, then felt his phone buzz in his pocket.

Aurane Waters: Will be having a get-together in the house tonight. Should be out of the common spaces by eleven, but if you could be scarce before then it would be much appreciated.

Daemon Sand: So long as underwear does not end up on my doorknob again I will be fine with that.

Jon Snow: Have work starting at 8. Should be fine.

Gendry wondered briefly what he would do while he couldn't go into his house.

He knew what he wanted to do, but also knew that he bloody well shouldn't do it.

He looked at the screen of his phone, wondering if he was as strong as his mother told him he ought to be.

He wasn't.

Gendry Waters: Aurane's kicking us out of the house. Can I eat at your place and do some work?

Arya Stark: I'll be at a fencing tournament in Highgarden. Ask Roslin.

Gendry wished he had the brains to take that as a sign from the seven heavens of the wrongness of this whole thing. But he couldn't.