Chapter 18: Gendry

It was mid-afternoon when his phone buzzed.

"I'm outside, if you still want to talk." Arya sounded more tentative than she had ever sounded before. Gendry looked out his window from his desk, where he had been trying as hard as he could to lose himself in work. In an effort to find something to distract him from the awful night—Sansa's terrified eyes, Arya's disappearance—he had turned to researching his master's thesis. It was frightfully dull, but it had successfully distracted him until the phone had rung.

He saw Arya standing outside in the backyard. She was looking up at him.

"Come on up, then."

She was in his room in thirty seconds. Gendry couldn't help but notice the strange feeling in the corner of his brain—the one that was elated that she was in his bedroom. He did his best to squish it though.

"My parents are here. They're at the hospital with Sansa. They wanted to thank you for finding her and bringing her in, and would love to take you out to dinner, once they've settled into their hotel."

"I'd be happy to have dinner with your parents." He tried to keep his voice as neutral as possible and he watched as her thumbs darted across the surface of her phone, undoubtedly sending his reply on to the parents Stark.

"Do you want to sit down?" he asked after she had sent the text. Even as he gestured towards his bed, she slid down his closed door and settled herself on the floor. "Coffee?" he offered, pointing to the coffee maker.

"Yes please."

He turned on the machine, then settled himself back in his desk chair and looked at her.

She was fiddling with the zipper of her fleece.

"What the fuck happened to you last night?" asked Gendry.

Arya flinched. He supposed he could have phrased that a little better.

"I was at a friend's house, very drunk, with my phone on silent."

"Would you have picked up even if it hadn't been?"

She looked up.

"Probably not."

Gendry nodded.

Then, Arya exploded. "Look, I've never done this before, ok? I don't know what in seven hells I'm doing, and it freaks me out."

Gendry looked at the indignation on her face and couldn't help but laugh.

"It isn't funny!"

"No, you're right. It's not." He got up and poured her coffee then brought her the mug. "You're really something, though."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well, you're the one who's been spying on me for most of the semester and you're trying to get by saying you don't know what you are doing. I mean, that's clearly true. It's just," he ran his fingers through his hair, stalling while he collected his thoughts, "All right, let's try it this way. Why did you spy on me?"

"Have you seen yourself shirtless?"

Gendry laughed.

"All right, but you would watch me when I wasn't shirtless. There wasn't that as an attraction then."

Arya's attention returned to her zipper. "I dunno. Habit?"

Gendry raised his eyebrows.

"All right, I was curious, ok? I wanted to see what you were doing."

"Why?"

"Why not?"

"That's not an answer."

"What do you want me to say?"

Gendry sighed. He knew damn well what he wanted her to say. That she loved him. Well, he knew that was unrealistic. He'd settle for like. "How about the truth?"

"The truth?" Arya looked annoyed. "I've been telling you the truth, stupid."

"Then a little more detail?"

"Detail?" Arya looked very annoyed. "Do you hate me for spying on you?"

"No." Gendry was surprised. "I could never hate you."

"Ok then. Here's the truth. I went to a friend's house last night to get blitzed because I didn't know how to handle the fact that I like you, and I've never liked anyone the way I like you."

Gendry had never realized just how bright her grey eyes were.

"Why would that freak you out?"

Arya looked at her shoelaces, and Gendry could see a shade of dejection there, a flash of frustration. She looked back up at him.

"Wouldn't it freak you out? Liking someone more than you've ever liked anyone, and then being afraid that they would hate you because you have been spying on them?"

Gendry considered. "Yeah, I suppose. If it's any consolation, I thought it was funny that you were spying on me."

"Thanks." Arya's voice was dryer than the Dornish Desert.

"Also, I enjoyed the attention from you," he mumbled. He had not intended to mumble. But somehow it had happened.

Arya's head jerked up. She looked at him, her brow furrowing.

"Why?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

"No."

"I like you too, Arya. I feel like I'm perving on my roommate's little sister, and sometimes I think you'd probably like someone more like Ned Dayne more than me, but I like you."

Arya cocked her head. "Why Ned Dayne?"

"He's nice enough. And you both fence. And he's…" Gendry didn't want to bring up Ned's looks.

Arya snorted though. "He's too blonde. And besides I'd probably kill him if he tried dating me. Which he did. And then he stopped, probably because he sensed that I would kill him."

Gendry tried to keep his face from revealing just how pleased that made him. But he felt some of the muscles in his lips twitch and knew that that was one he'd lost.

"Are you saying you wouldn't kill me?" he asked at last.

"I think you'd have different reasons for dating me." Her eyes clouded for a moment. Then she shook her head ever so slightly and the clouds were gone. "But I still don't understand why you'd want to."

"Because you're funny, smart, pretty—" Arya snorted. "You are. Don't even try and say you aren't."

"And you're stupid. Sansa's the pretty one."

"And yet I think you're prettier. And for some reason, I like it when you call me stupid."

She looked at him and he couldn't quite read her expression. At last, she said, "To summarize. You liked that I spied on you and I enjoyed spying on you."

"Yes."

"This because we like each other?"

"Yes."

"Now what do we do?"

Gendry rolled his eyes. "We have two options, I think. One is to continue as is, creepily stalking one another until our paths diverge. The other is to, you know, date."

Arya's eyebrows shot up.

Gendry didn't say anything. It was her move.

"You don't want to date me. I'm a mess," sighed Arya.

"Everyone's a mess."

"No, but I really am. I—I don't know how to be open to people. At least, that's what Sansa tells me, and it upset me to hear it, so I assume it's true."

"Well, then I'll ask you questions until you get better about it."

"I don't think that's how that works, stupid."

"How would you know, have you ever tried?"

She closed her eyes, and he could see the debate raging in her mind written all over her face.

He would have loved to have heard it. He wondered what Arya was like when she argued with herself. It had to be truly hilarious.

She opened her eyes, and there was something happy in her tired face. "This has been a surprisingly good day, given everything that happened last night."

"Oh?"

"Yes. Sansa knows she needs therapy and she and I have the kind of sisterly moment that our parents had been praying we would have since the day I was born. I got to see my mum and dad for the first time in months and, apart from the fact that I was hungover, they were very glad to see me too. And then there's you." She smiled at him, and for the first time, she there was a freedom to her smile, a raw joy that made his breath catch in his throat and his heart tighten.

Before he was aware of moving, he was on the ground next to her, kneeling in front of her, slowly moving his face towards her.

Her lips met his with a tentative gusto, her hands slithered around his neck, and she pulled herself up to a kneel so that she as closer to being on level with him.

And, for the first time in several months, Gendry couldn't make himself feel bad about perving on Arya Stark.