Author's Notes: So I honestly thought that I'd posted the other two chapters of this, only to realize that I hadn't. Yeah, I felt like a big dumb idiot for that. This is a three-parter. There will be one more chapter after this. Woo?

Disclaimer: Not mine. Not even the AU idea.

all good things comes to those who wait
part ii

Being best friends with your soulmate before your soulmate knew that she was your soulmate had to be the most frustrating thing on the planet.

It wasn't that he couldn't just rush up to her and kiss her on the lips or that he had to deal with her talking about Ned fucking Dayne (not that he was jealous or that she even liked the other boy, but really now, did they have to sit so close to one another and share secrets and–) or that he couldn't tell her about her words tattooed on his ribcage when his words hadn't yet been placed on her. It wasn't that he was so close to her and she would get so close to him that he could smell the smoke from a bonfire she'd been to before coming over to his place or how he always felt so embarrassed when around her and her rich friends. It wasn't that she didn't know.

The most frustrating part was that Gendry couldn't just allow himself to fall in love with Arya Stark, not yet at least.

"You can't tell her," Mya had insisted multiple times over the phone. "It could – I don't know – ruin something. I'm not really an expert on these things."

No one was an expert on these things. And even if there were experts on this sort of thing, Gendry didn't want to talk to them. He could hit up that late night hotline where the supposed brilliant psychic Melisandre gave all her helpful (though mostly very disturbing) future predictions about the tattoos pressed onto their skins, but he wasn't that desperate. (Or was he? No, no, he had to set that phone down right now.)

Just less than a year, Gendry told himself as he pulled up to the school in his car. A year felt like a fucking lifetime when he spent nearly every day with the girl that was supposed to love him one day and not just call him a stupid head whenever he was being a stubborn idiot.

He put the car in park and turned it off, not wanting to waste gas. Rubbing his face against his hands, he asked himself for the hundredth time why he was here or how he'd allowed her to con him into picking her up from school every Friday when she had a chauffeur. She had been so insistent though upon first finding out that he was finally getting a car. He hated coming to this place. He didn't fit in. One semester was worth more than his car, his apartment, and everything in it put together.

A sudden smack on the hood of his car startled Gendry out of his thoughts. "Oh, look, there's your loser boyfriend, Arya!" Standing in the front of his car was a blonde-haired boy, some prick named Joffrey, also known as Arya's sister's boyfriend. Gendry was half in mind to turn his car on and hit the kid real quick, but then thought about the lawsuit and jail time and forever being in debt.

"Shut up, you asshat," Arya's familiar voice snapped. She was hurrying towards the car, her backpack slung over her shoulders. Running while wearing a skirt wasn't the most lady-like thing, but just because she'd been forced into a dress code did not mean that Arya adhered to everything else expected of her. She grabbed the handle and opened the door. "And he's not my boyfriend."

Gendry looked out his window and squinted into the sun. Those words didn't sting any less after being said for the thousandth time.

"Yeah, he was probably so broke that he was skipped over for a tattoo and never got one," Joffrey said, a sneer on his face. Before Arya could respond (as Gendry never responded to Joffrey out of fear that saying one word to the boy would land his ass in jail), Sansa appeared and grabbed hold of her boyfriend's arm, pulling him away.

After glowering in their direction for a moment and still very much silent, Gendry turned his car back on and then pulled away from the prep school. They usually went to the baseball field after this. At first, she'd liked watching him play, but after a while, he'd been able to convince the guys to let her join. It wasn't like they were the major leagues or anything after all. Arya turned on the radio and leaned back in her seat, kicking her shoes off and putting her feet on the dashboard. When he glanced over at her, he saw that she had her face tilted into the sunlight, sunglasses shielding her eyes, her dark brown hair flowing messily into her face and falling out of its ponytail, and she was waving her hand in the air outside of the window like it was riding waves.

Gods she was beautiful, even if he knew that she never felt like it.

"Let's go to the river," Arya suddenly said, right when he was about to make the turn to the fields.

Gendry gave her a peculiar look, but shrugged his shoulders and headed in that direction. He liked the river and knew a good spot where they could go. It was covered in cattails and had a lot of frogs, but was also covered in shade by some trees that were growing in the water. Not a lot of people went there, which was exactly the reason why he liked it so much. Being in a shop full of guys all day, even if he was able to focus on just the cars once in a while, and then being around so many people when he was off work exhausted him after a while. Arya wasn't the quietest of people, but she had her contemplative moments that still caught him off guard.

It wasn't until they got to the river that Gendry realized he hadn't said a single word since he'd gotten off work and gone to pick her up from school. "Um, we're here." She nodded her head and hopped out of the car before he'd even turned it off. He followed her slowly. By the time he reached the bank, she was already on the ground taking her socks off. "Sorry I didn't bring a picnic or anything. Wasn't exactly planning on going here."

Arya didn't even bother looking back at him. "I'm not really in the picnic mood anyways. We can go get a bite after."

Gendry cocked his head slightly. "After what?"

"After we go for a swim."

For a second, Gendry thought he might've forgotten how to breathe. Go for a swim. It seemed simple and innocent enough. And he'd definitely gone for a swim in the river before, especially in this part, but not with Arya. As far as he was concerned, all parts of his clothing stayed firmly on when he was around her, and he made sure it was the same for her. One time before a game she'd started changing in his car while he was driving and he'd nearly wrecked when he'd accidentally caught a glimpse of her bra. That argument had been awkward. He was only two years older than her, but she was still only seventeen. The shit that could've landed him in…

(Arya Stark landed him in a lot of shit, if truth be told. Sometimes, tattoo or not, soulmate or not, Gendry wondered why he'd become best friends with her in the first place.)

That was when it hit him – what she was doing. She wasn't just taking off her socks. She was stripping down to just her undergarments.

"Arya!" Gendry awkwardly looked away once she tossed her button up shirt to the side, revealing a white camisole that did not hide the green bra underneath. Who taught her how to color-coordinate anyways? "You can't just… We're still in public and it's in the middle of the day."

"No one comes down here," Arya replied stubborn, hooking her thumb into her skirt. "It's just us."

Gendry pressed his face into his hands for the second time that day. "Exactly. It's just us. I'm nineteen. You're not…"

"If it makes you feel any better," Arya told him, "the legal age of consent in this state is seventeen." He looked at her just for a second so that he could shoot her a humiliated glare. "But we're just going swimming. It's not like we're sneaking off to have sex in the bushes." When he refused to look at her or say anything, arms folded across his chest in defiance, she changed her tactics. "C'mon, Gendry, please. It's super hot and sunny outside; and I had such a bad day. Joffrey was being a shit all day and I messed up a super important test and I just…I need to relax."

Why? Why did he allow her to do this to him time and time again? How could he be so stubborn and bull-headed with everyone else, but the moment it came to Arya, he bent to her will like it was nothing.

Sighing, Gendry looked back at her in defeat. "Okay, fine."

"Great!" Arya smiled brilliantly. "Now get out of those pants."

Being best friends – being just friends – with the girl he was supposed to fall in love with was the actual worst.

It was even worse after she slipped her skirt down her legs. He caught a glimpse of her pale skin and determinedly did not look at her underwear before she jumped into the water. After standing there for a while, Gendry slowly began to unbuckle his pants, telling himself the thousands of reasons why this was a terrible idea. When he was just down to his boxers and undershirt, he froze. He couldn't take off his shirt. She would see the tattoo and then she would know and things would get super weird between them. She might not talk to him for months or years or ever again. He had to keep his shirt on, no matter what.

The moment he stepped into the water and Arya caught sight of him still wearing his shirt, she frowned. "You're not self conscious or something, are you?"

"What?" Gendry looked down at his shirt and connected the dots. "No, I'm not. I'm fine."

"Because you shouldn't be," Arya said, splashing around in the water. "I've seen you changing in the dugouts and you're in shape."

Gendry couldn't help himself. He actually blushed. "You know, spying on people when they're changing is kind of creepy."

"And the way girls throw themselves at you sometimes…" Arya rolled her eyes in disgust.

"They do not…" Gendry shook his head. "That's beside the point. I just…I don't want to get sunburned."

Arya snorted. "In the shade?"

"I sunburn real easily," Gendry insisted.

She shrugged her shoulders and started to float on her back in the water. Again, he had to look away. He didn't know why she was so careless or why she was so comfortable around him even. She was just in her undergarments and he was a guy and she trusted him to not do anything. He didn't know how to feel about that. On one hand he was glad that she felt so comfortable and trusting of him, but on the other, it made him feel like she wasn't attracted to him in the slightest and would only ever think of him as a friend. Could some people only have platonic soulmates?

For a while, nothing was said. Gendry was okay with that. She was in one of her contemplative moods, something he'd learned how to handle after nearly a year of knowing her. Arya was loud and rowdy and very aggressive in everything she did, positive or negative, but she had her quiet moments. Apparently she liked being around only him when she felt like this because he never felt the need to fill the silence with pointless small talk.

And then she spoke up. "Do you have a soulmate tattoo?"

If the water could swallow him up and he could hide in the mud, that would've been brilliant. He honestly didn't know what to say, so he sank further into the water and turned away, trying to pretend that he hadn't heard her. She wasn't looking at him, still floating on her back and staring up at the sky, so she could've been talking to that bird up in the tree. Maybe if he just ignored the question a little longer…

"I know you heard me," she added. She switched positions so that she was bobbing upright in the water and looking at him curiously. "You said it yourself. You're nineteen. So that means you'd have the tattoo, you know, unless…"

Gendry glanced away from her. "No, I mean – yeah, I have one."

He could've sworn her eyes lit up in that moment and she wore a strange look on her face. He couldn't tell what that look meant at all because he didn't know if it was good or bad. She swam closer towards him and he backed up a little, making her stop cold.

"Can I see it?"

"No. It's…it's in a weird spot."

"It's somewhere on your torso, isn't it," Arya deadpanned. "That's why you wouldn't take your shirt off."

Gendry wasn't sure what he was supposed to say to her. He couldn't let her see the words because then she would know and he had no idea what the ramifications of her knowing would be. Maybe it would be nothing; maybe it would be everything. (Maybe he should have called that damn Melisandre soulmate tattoo hotline.) What he did know was that he didn't want things to change between them. He didn't want her to feel weird.

Most importantly, he didn't want her to think that he was just friends with her because he knew that she was his soulmate. Yeah, on one hand, he had sought her out and befriended her because he wanted to get to know who the hell his soulmate was, but on the other hand, he genuinely valued her friendship and enjoyed being around her, no matter how much she drove him crazy sometimes. Gendry knew for a fact that he did love Arya, not necessarily in a romantic way either, not yet. She was stubborn and difficult as hell, but she was also loyal to a fault and incredibly compassionate and clever.

"C'mon, just let me see it," Arya insisted. "Sansa wouldn't let me see hers either. She said its special, only meant for the eyes of the person that says the words, or whatever."

Even if that logic were true, that wouldn't have applied for him. Damn.

"Well, she's right," Gendry told her, "and it's, uh, it's embarrassing and kind of weird."

Arya furrowed her brows. "You can tell me anything though. We're best friends." All the while, she got closer to him. He was so busy looking nervous and uncomfortable that he didn't even notice. "You don't have to be so weird around me."

"Yeah, well–"

Gendry didn't get the chance to finish. Arya pounced on him at the last minute, knocking him off his feet. He went flailing backwards and was dunked under the water, Arya on top of him. For a moment, both of them struggled in the water, but he had the clear advantage. Out of the water, he was able to carry Arya around like she was nothing; with the water helping him, he was easily able to defend himself from her trying to jerk his shirt off.

Pushing himself out of the water, he held onto Arya tightly. "What the hell?" he sputtered out. "Are you trying to drown me?"

"I just want to see!" Arya said, sounding like she was pouting and throwing a tantrum. He shook the water out of his eyes and looked at her. She looked kind of sad. He was holding onto her wrists, making sure that she couldn't grab at him again, and she had herself pressed up flush against him, panting and out of breath from being under water for so long while fighting with him.

I should kiss her.

Gendry blinked a few times. She was right there, right in front of him. Her hair was plastered on top of her head, water dripping everywhere, and her chest was rising and falling in the water with every deep breath that she took. He already had a hold of her and she was so close. He could feel where her skin was touching his and despite being in the cool water it made him burn up. All he had to do was lean down and press his lips against hers. That was it.

What the hell are you thinking? Arya Stark does not want you trying to kiss her.

He let go of her and she pulled herself away from him, glowering and rubbing her wrists. "Sorry if I hurt you," he muttered, glancing back down. "It's just… I don't know how I feel about it, you know? Maybe it doesn't make any sense, but… My mom didn't have a tattoo. She tried to make it sound like it wasn't a big deal, especially because she'd had me before she was eighteen, before she knew that she didn't have a soulmate, but I feel…I feel guilty about having one sometimes. Why do I get a soulmate when she didn't? What was wrong with my mom? Was it because she was going to die before she had the chance to meet her soulmate or did she just not have one?"

When he looked up at her, Arya wore a soft look on her face, one that he'd never seen her wear before. Arya was anything but soft. She didn't do gentle very often. So this look on her right now startled him. Sighing, she reached out and placed a hand on his arm. "I guess I was being kind of insensitive." She smiled at him encouragingly. "Listen; you're my best friend, Gendry – I trust you with pretty much anything – but if you're not ready to tell me or show me the tattoo, then that's fine. It is kind of a big deal. I guess – I don't know – I guess I'm kind of scared that I won't have one."

"You'll have one," Gendry said immediately, maybe too quickly, but he didn't care.

"How can you be so sure?" Arya sounded so scared, more scared than he'd ever heard her sound before. It made him want to pull her back into his arms and hold her close to him, hug her until she never felt or sounded or looked scared again.

"I just know." Gendry scratched the back of his head. "You're gonna have a tattoo. Someone's gonna have your words tattooed on them. And you're gonna fall in love."

Gendry wasn't right all the time and he certainly didn't know a lot when it came to this stuff, but he knew for sure that Arya was going to wake up and find a soulmate tattoo on her body on her eighteenth birthday, just as he knew that she would be loved. (He knew because he already loved her and he knew in his heart that he was going to fall in love with her the second that he could.)