It takes one day for Arya to regret signing her name on the contract.
She has it all worked out: She'll tell Sansa she's been seeing someone, and Sansa will predictably shriek, and within moments, the whole family will know about it.
She hadn't realized how uncomfortable the whole situation would be after the family knew about her supposed relationship with Gendry. But now, sitting in the dining room with her mother staring angrily at her and Jon glancing between her and the door, like he's expecting Gendry to come in so he can hit him, Arya really thinks she should have thought this through a bit more.
"Since when have you been dating Gendry?" Catelyn asked.
Arya pinches her eyebrows together and opens her mouth, but Jon cuts her off before she even gets a word out.
"Why are you dating Gendry?" he asked her. "He's so much older than you. He's...he's twenty-eight. And you're twenty-three! And he...he's just not right for you. He's too...He's too…" He scrambles for the right words, and Arya jumps in when she has the chance.
"He's too what, Jon? He's too nice to me? He's too financially stable, too steady on his feet, too mature? Too kind to this family? Of all the people I have dated, I would have thought you'd all be relieved that it's Gendry I've chosen now."
It's too much, she realizes a second too late. She's putting it on too thick. Too many compliments, too many praises. So many things she's thought of Gendry for so long, but she's always been too scared to say them out loud, because she was always worried he'd see right through her and realize that she liked him much more than a friend. And now that she had the opportunity, she couldn't stop the words from spilling from her mouth.
Jon, at least, had the good sense to keep his mouth shut after her small speech. Sansa was looking at her curiously, her lips pursed hard. Arya could practically see the wheels turning in her head.
"I don't...understand," she began, the words coming out slowly, as if she was trying them to sound them out for the first time. "We've been trying to get you to find a date for this wedding for so long...why did you suddenly start dating Gendry?"
Arya's brain momentarily went quiet, until she remembered the story she had settled on with Gendry. She took a deep breath to steady herself.
"Well, we've been dating for a month, now—"
"A month—" Jon started.
"Yes, a month," she interrupted, shooting a glare at him. "We've been dating for a month now, but it's been quiet, casual...we didn't want to tell anyone until we were sure how we...felt about each other."
Sansa's eyebrows go up at this, and Arya knows the question before she even opens her mouth. "Oh? And how do you feel about each other?"
Arya closes her eyes briefly, and when she opens them, Catelyn, Sansa, and Jon are all looking at her intently. Waiting for her to answer.
"I like him," she says softly. "I like him a lot, actually." It's no different from the things she's ever revealed to her family about how she feels about any of her boyfriends, but because it's about Gendry, they seem to take it differently this time.
Jon visibly deflates, and he exhales heavily in what Arya assumes is relief. She knows it's because he sees they aren't just messing around with each other.
"Then why did you ask Edric Dayne to go with you to the wedding the other day?" Sansa asks.
"Because we weren't sure if we were going to tell anyone about our relationship until after the wedding. We were too nervous to tell you guys, because we thought you would all put too much pressure on us...which you guys are doing a great job at accomplishing, by the way," she adds on shortly, at which Sansa blushes a little.
"It's just...we agreed that we wouldn't go to the wedding together, and we'd find our own dates if we could. But when neither of us found someone who would be willing to go with us, we kind of took it as a sign that maybe it was...maybe it was time to stop hiding our relationship and be honest about it."
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Jon frown, and Arya makes a mental note to ask him about it later, but now, she has more important things to deal with.
"Well...it's nice to know that you have a date to the wedding," Catelyn says, and Arya rolls her eyes. Her mother really did have a one track mind. "But it's even nicer to hear that you're with someone again. Even if he is a bit...older than you, you are twenty-three now, and able to make your own choices."
Arya holds her breath as she waits for the words she's been counting on all day.
"I'm happy for you, Arya."
Her breath comes out in a rush.
( O O O )
A little while later, Sansa knocks on Arya's door, and comes in to find Arya sitting on her bed reading a book with her headphones in. She pulls the headphones out of her sister's ears, and Arya looks up to see Sansa standing over her. She smiles and sits up, closing the book and setting it on her nightstand, making room for Sansa to sit next to her. She has a feeling she knows why Sansa is hear, away from Catelyn and Jon, and she's been ready for it since she signed her name on the contract.
"So," Sansa starts off, "you and Gendry, huh?"
Arya nods absentmindedly, a smile coming to her lips without even realizing it.
"When did this all happen?" Sansa asked.
"I told you already," Arya replied. "We just decided it was time to stop keeping it a secret from everyone—"
"No, you know what I mean, Arya," Sansa interrupts, looking at her meaningfully.
Arya stills. She does know what she means, but she's not sure if she can answer. Agreeing to pretend to date Gendry was a bad idea, she knew it from the beginning, and she still said yes. She still negotiated terms of what was allowed and what wasn't allowed, and they'd even come up with a story of how they got together. Answering Sansa's question would be no problem.
It was trying to keep her feelings down that would be the issue. Years of having a crush on her brothers' friend had been hard enough, but she'd thought it was over. Maybe those feelings would never go away — it was rare to forget the feeling of having your first real crush — but she thought she'd stopped having feelings for him when she realized it was never going to happen.
But the thought of holding his hand in public, maybe even kissing him if they both agreed to it beforehand, putting on a show like they were a happy couple...Arya would have to work hard to make sure she didn't fall into her little fantasy world.
Sansa was oblivious to her sister's inner turmoil. "I mean, I know you had a crush on him when you were younger—"
"I did not!" Arya squeaked.
Sansa rolled her eyes. "Please. I saw how you liked him when you were, what? Fourteen? Fifteen? Maybe you still liked him a little when you were sixteen, but I remember thinking how cute it was."
Arya aims a kick at Sansa's ankle, but she just kicked Arya back.
"It was a stupid crush, that's all," she mumbles. "I never thought he felt...that way about me. And he didn't. Not until...you know, recent events."
Sansa's interest visibly piques. "Recent events?" she repeats.
Arya blushes. "You know...my breakup with Edric. Your wedding coming up."
"I thought you said you guys had agreed to go separately?"
"We did. But the excitement of it all, seeing how happy you were with Willas, well...we both got caught up in it all. He kissed me one day, when I was hanging out in his apartment, and then we went to dinner one night, and it just...happened very naturally after that."
"Hmm," Sansa mused quietly. "If I were you, I wouldn't tell Robb or Jon that you guys kissed in his apartment before he even asked you to dinner. In fact, I wouldn't even tell them you kissed in his apartment at all."
Arya snorted. "Please. I'm not telling them that we kissed at all." Because it hasn't happened yet, she reminds herself mournfully.
Sansa laughs with her for a few moments before she stops and sits in silence for a minute. Arya can tell she's waiting to ask a question.
"What is it?"
Sansa hesitates for a second more before pushing the question out. "Well...I never would have thought you two would actually date. It's just weird to think of you two as a couple, but...I don't know. I guess people never thought of Willas and I like that, either, right?"
Arya bites her lip as she thinks about it before she slowly shakes her head. "Um...no," she says firmly after a moment of consideration. "I never thought you two would date. I never even thought of the possibility of you two ever getting together. The thought of you with someone other than Joffrey seemed so...strange to me at the time."
Saying his name in Sansa's presence used to be like throwing a curtain over her. All her light seemed to flicker out in a blink. But now, she only sits up straighter, her chin raising a just a little higher.
"But not because I thought you two were so well-suited for each other that it seemed wrong to think of you with anyone else," Arya continues. "I think we both know that I never liked the idea of you two together. Actually, I think everyone knows that I felt that way. It was more like...like he was keeping you locked up. And I was so used to seeing you trapped that I couldn't even imagine you being free. It was like I didn't even know you were trapped at all because it was like that from the very beginning. I never knew — I never thought...about how bad it could be—"
She has to stop before she either starts crying or yelling.
One look at Sansa tells her she's already crying.
Sansa wraps an arm around Arya's shoulders and leans her head against hers. "It was bad," she admits. After she left Joffrey, Sansa never sugar-coated any of the things that had been done to her. She never covered the final bruises he'd left on her with makeup, she never defended him. She refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing she was still ashamed of the mark he'd left on her, both physically and mentally.
"But," Arya says, her voice still a little shaky, "now, with Willas...you're so different. I can't imagine you with anyone else in such a different way. It's like...I can't imagine you with anyone else because he brings out such a specific kind of happiness in you that I hadn't seen since before Joffrey."
Sansa tries to wipe away her tears, but they keep falling and it takes her a minute to accept that it's a lost cause. She sniffs and laughs once.
"Okay," she says, pushing herself off the bed. "Save it for your speech at my wedding as my maid of honor."
Arya laughs. "Oh, please," she says as Sansa backs out of her room. "There's no way in hell that I'm giving a speech."
( O O O )
"I don't get it, though," Robb says to his tightly clenched fists.
Arya's been spending the past three minutes looking back and forth between Robb's face and his hands, wondering if he's going to pull something if he keeps clenching them so hard. And for the past three minutes, he hasn't looked at her at all.
"What don't you get? I'm dating Gendry. Gendry's dating me. What's so confusing?"
"Because. Because it's Gendry."
"And?"
"Well," Robb says, and Arya knows he's about to go off on a rant, so she quickly readies herself to tune him out once he really gets into it. "It's just that you're so young, and he's so old, and you really shouldn't be dating someone you're so close with. And have you thought of what Mom and Dad are going to say when you tell them? Oh, and don't think Jon is going to be so easy-going about all of this. He's going to threaten to skin Gendry alive if he even touches you in one wrong way, and I'll be right there to back him up."
"Okay, first." Arya holds up one finger in Robb's face. "I'm twenty-three. I'm an adult. I'm able to make my own choices and decisions. And Gendry's not that much older than me. If I were, say, fourteen, and he were nineteen, I would completely understand. But now? I'm fully capable of deciding who I want to date. Second. Mom is fully supportive, and says she's very happy for me now that I've gotten over my breakup with Edric, and she's even agreed to tell Dad for me so I don't have to sit through this conversation for the third time with him. And third. Jon has already told me all of this, to which I say go ahead. But if you really think I'm willing to get myself into a situation where I don't feel safe or comfortable with the person I'm with, or that I won't be able to get myself out of it, and that I need my big brothers to threaten their best friend for me, then you really don't know me at all and I'm very disappointed in you."
Robb is quiet after that, and he finally looks up at her, releases the tight hold he has on his fists, and opens his mouth once more. But he doesn't say anything else about Gendry, or thinly veiled threats.
"You told Jon before you told me?"
Arya rolls her eyes and leans over the counter to kiss Robb on the cheek.
"I'm leaving. Go tend to your wounded male pride. Tell Jeyne I say hi, and I'll see her at the Tyrells for dinner."
( O O O )
Arya might regret signing the contract, but all in all, it's not as bad as she would have thought it would be. It's a bit awkward at first, but they find their rhythm rather quickly.
Arya tries not to think too hard about how easy it is for them to date.
The day after Arya tells her family that she's dating her best friend, Ned announces that he wants to have Gendry over for dinner that night. Arya is too shocked to do anything but nod and fumble blindly for her phone to text him.
Ned's never asked to invite one of her boyfriends for an actual dinner until at least a month into knowing she was even in a relationship.
Well, Arya thinks, technically we did say it was a month, but still. Ned would rather sit through an entire day of business meetings than sit through an uncomfortable dinner with one of his kids' boyfriend or girlfriend.
It's either a very good sign, or a very bad sign, one that Arya tries not to dwell on for too long, or too hard, and texts Gendry quickly before she loses her nerve.
Arya: My dad wants you to come over for dinner tonight. Don't wear sweats. And don't wear white.
Gendry: Okay. No sweats is obvious but why no white clothes?
Arya: Because you eat like an animal, and I'd rather you didn't wear something where a potential stain would be obvious.
Gendry: Always thinking ten steps ahead. You do make a wonderful girlfriend.
She also tries not to think of that final text for too long.
She fails miserably.
( O O O )
Despite her warnings and attempts to guilt Robb and Jon into not threatening Gendry, they do it anyway.
In retrospect, she probably shouldn't have told Robb 'go ahead'. She doubts he heard anything past those two glorious words.
They reemerge from Jon's room and come back downstairs with Gendry trailing behind them, shooting daggers at Arya. She tries to make herself invisible by disappearing into the pantry and spends five minutes looking for the salad dressing.
When they sit down next to each other at the table, he leans close to her so he can hiss in her ear, "You didn't have to tell them that you gave them free reign to skin me alive, you know."
Arya laughs and tries to cover the sound with her hand.
Jon, sitting directly across from Arya, glares fiercely at Gendry. As if it was a crime to make his girlfriend laugh.
"I didn't say they had free reign," she whispers back as she piles salad onto her plate and passes the bowl to Gendry. "I said they could go ahead and threaten you. In my defense, I didn't think they would actually do it."
Gendry scoffs, and it looks like he's about to say something else, but then everyone else sits down around them, and Arya kicks him in the leg to get him to stop talking. In response, he kicks her back, and she quickly jabs him in the side with her elbow.
He grunts uncomfortably and Arya smiles pleasantly as Sansa hands everyone wine glasses. She's keeping an eye on them, Arya notices, but she pretends not to.
Once everyone is seated at the table, Arya glances at them all and patiently waits for someone to speak, but no one does.
Everyone is looking at each other with something like panic in their eyes.
Everyone except for Gendry, who has resigned himself to keeping his head down, staring fixedly at his plateful of salad.
Okay, so maybe this would be a bit more uncomfortable than Arya had predicted. She would have thought that Gendry's presence in their lives before they announced their relationship would make all of this go smoothly, but they're only two minutes of dinner and no one's said a word. Not that Robb needs to say anything to convey to Gendry that he's just waiting to make good on his threat.
There's a moment when Bran clears his throat, and everyone somehow turns to look at him completely in sync, but apparently, he wasn't planning on saying anything.
He gets a panicked look on his face. "Oh, I was just, um...clearing my throat. Bit of lettuce got stuck…" He trails off.
Arya sighs.
Sansa hears the sound and catches Arya's pleading eyes, so she also clears her throat and sits up straighter in her chair. "Jon, have you and Ygritte decided on whose apartment you'll be moving into after you get married?" she asked.
Jon had been too busy copying Robb's glare to hear Sansa's question. "Hm?" he asked.
Sansa rolls her eyes. "Were you too busy trying to burn a hole into Gendry's forehead?" she asked. "I said, have you and Ygritte decided on which apartment you'll move in to? After your wedding?"
Jon frowns for a moment as if he had forgotten he was engaged himself and nodded. "Yeah, we, um...actually, we decided to give up our leases as soon as they end, and move somewhere a little bigger."
Ned coughs once and fixes Jon with a stern look. "Bigger?" he repeats. "You're not saying Ygritte's pregnant, are you?"
"No," Jon insists, his face going bright red. "No, she's not pregnant, at all, trust me. We use protection, I swear—"
Robb disguises his laugh as a coughing fit, and Jon turns to him accusingly.
"Do you need a cough drop?" he asks sarcastically.
Robb grins at him. "Think I'm good."
It was laughable, Arya thinks, that Jon, a man closer to thirty than twenty-five, was still scared by his father's Dad Voice that he clammed up like a teenager and stammered out his words like a seventeen-year-old boy caught with his hand up his girlfriend's blouse.
That one little slip was like a dam breaking: All of a sudden, conversation flowed easily, and thankfully, the attention was shifted to Jon instead of Arya and Gendry.
"So, tell us about this apartment," Catelyn ordered as she began serving pieces of cut up chicken on everyone's plate next to their salad.
"Well, we haven't found one yet," Jon admitted. "We've been looking, but we haven't found a place both of us agree on."
"If you're waiting to find a place you both agree on," Gendry says, "you'll be stuck in separate apartments for the first five years of your marriage."
It startles a laugh out of Jon, and Arya sits a little straighter in her chair as she catches on to the sound. She hopes his joke was enough to make everyone forget the real purpose of this dinner: To feel out the newfound relationship.
Luckily, if anyone else remembers, they don't bring attention to it. Eventually, wine is poured for everyone except for Rickon, and the feeling of familiarity only gets stronger when he makes a show of trying to guilt Catelyn into pouring him a little.
Someone always gives in and pours Rickon a little wine from their own glass, and Arya is thinking if she should nudge Gendry to pour him a little from his own glass, to get Rickon to warm up to him a little, but she doesn't think it'll go over well with her parents if they see someone outside of the family giving their underage son alcohol.
So to get Rickon a little bit more on her side, just in case it helps him like Gendry a bit more, she pours him some, a little extra than she normally would, and refills her glass.
Rickon winks at her, and Arya finds that she can suddenly breathe a little easier.
Maybe it wouldn't be so hard after all.
( O O O )
The dress won't close, and Arya wishes that she had an actual boyfriend so that she wouldn't feel self-conscious about asking him for help when it came to zipping a dress closed.
They really need to make something to help people close zippers easily when they're alone.
It's a dress she bought specifically for the dinner at the Tyrell house. Arya had tried to beg off going, but Catelyn and Sansa had both held firm. Both families in their entirety were going to be there, and that included Arya. The dress, though, wasn't half bad. It was a deep red skater dress, with a strappy geometric design on the back. It had a lower neckline and a shorter skirt than she was used to, but it was probably one of the most flattering dresses Arya had. When she'd bought it, Sansa said it was the just the right mix of casual and semi-formal, perfect for this dinner.
She was just about to call out for her mother or Sansa to come to help her when there was a knock on her door. Arya let go of the zipper and opened her door just a crack to see who it was. Sansa stood outside the door, already dressed and ready to go. "I'm changing," Arya said as a greeting. "Can you help me with my zipper?"
Sansa stepped into the room, dressed in a rose-colored lace halter romper and black suede over the knee boots, a leather jacket folded neatly over her arm. Her red spilled over her shoulders in long waves, and Arya was struck by how much she looked like Catelyn in the old pictures she'd seen of their mother.
"You look really pretty, Sansa," Arya said as she turned around to let Sansa zip up the back of her dress.
Sansa moved Arya's over one shoulder and quickly zipped it up. "Thanks. You look nice, too. It's a shame Margaery won't get to fawn over that dress."
Arya turned back around to face her sister in confusion. "What are you talking about?" she asked wearily.
Sansa looked too pleased with herself.
"I texted Gendry—"
"Sansa—"
"And he said, without any suggestions from myself, by the way, that he was going to be taking you out for dinner tonight. So, even though I was so terribly sad that you wouldn't be joining us for dinner tonight, I decided to put my dear baby sister's lucky date ahead of yet another dinner with my future in-laws and let you go."
Arya folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. "You said this was his suggestion?"
"...Yes."
She held out her hand. "Let me see your phone."
"...No."
"Sansa!"
"What did you want me to do, Arya?" Sansa asked. She walked into Arya's closet, digging through piles of boots and sneakers to find the pair of shoes she was looking for. "You said you haven't been on a proper date yet, aside from that one dinner you had. You deserve a real date, and I know you aren't very excited about going to the Tyrells tonight. Am I right or wrong?"
Arya hesitated before answering. No, she didn't want to go tonight. Not because she had anything against Willas or his family — she liked them all, actually, very much — it was just that all of the get-togethers and formal dinners were getting repetitive to her at this point.
But at the same time…
Saying that Sansa was right was at the bottom of her bucket list.
She stayed stubbornly silent until Sansa let out a noise of triumph and emerged from the depths of Arya's tragically disorganized and messy closet with a pair of black stilettos in her hand, her two fingers hooked through the straps as they dangled from her hand. "See? You want to go on a date with your boyfriend, or else you would have undressed by now." Sansa pushed the heels into Arya's hand. "Here. Wear these. I don't know why you've never worn them before."
Rolling her eyes, Arya took them out of her hand. Sansa was right; the tag was still attached to one of the straps. She ripped it off and stepped into the shoes, zipping up the back of it.
Sansa stepped back to look at Arya and cocked her head to the side. "Do you want me to do something with your hair for you?" she asked. "I know I'm going to meet Willas a little earlier than everyone else to help his grandmother set up for dinner, but I can do a braid if you want."
The kindness of Sansa's offer hit her much harder than Arya would have expected, and she only managed to nod her head before heading to the chair in front of her dresser to watch what Sansa did with her.
Her phone buzzed from next to her, and she quickly read the text from Gendry.
Gendry: Have you heard yet? We're going on a date. I'll pick you up in 20 minutes.
Arya: What happened to no public dates? That's rule number 6 asshole.
Gendry: Do you know how hard it is to say no to your sister when she starts bringing up reasons and explanations? I was half expecting her to send me a power point presentation. Seriously, why didn't she become a lawyer?
Arya snorted, and Sansa tugged gently on a piece of hair she was working on. "Stop flirting with your boyfriend and tell me if this is good so far," she ordered
Arya looked up into the mirror as requested. Sansa had braided a piece of hair over the top of her head like a headband and pushed the rest of her hair over her shoulder. She smiled gratefully at Sansa. "It's lovely. Thank you."
"Thank you. I'm here all week," Sansa said, already sliding her arms into her jacket. "Okay," she said, straightening the lapels and standing in front of Arya. "Willas should be here in a few minutes to pick me up. How do I look?"
Arya stood up as well and looked at her from head to toe. She really did look beautiful. "You look amazing. Aren't you going to be cold, though?"
"Nope. Willas's car has the best heater, trust me." She kissed her cheek and opened Arya's door. "I'll see you later tonight."
A few minutes later, she heard a car horn outside her window and rushed over to see Willas pull up to the front of the house. Sansa came running out, somehow perfectly keeping her balance in her heeled boots, and dashed into the car. Through the glass, she saw her lean in and kiss Willas quickly before they drove off.
Arya stands by her window for a few more seconds, leaning her head to the side as she wonders what it would be like to be that...open with someone. To rush into the warm comfort of their car, kiss them hello, and not even have to worry about it. Even when she was Edric, Arya used to feel nervous when she would kiss him. It was like...like when you were sitting in a classroom that was dead silent, and you had to throw out a piece of garbage. You were doing something completely normal, but it felt like you couldn't choose a worse time to do it. That's what kissing Edric had been like. She felt out of place when she did it as if she was disturbing the peace, even if they were hidden in the shelter of his car.
She wonders what it would be like to kiss Gendry. He would probably be a good kisser, Arya thinks. She's overheard enough stories from his college years that she knows he was...popular with girls. And she couldn't blame them, really. Years of working in a mechanic's shop had given him plenty of muscle, and his handsome face and blue eyes only helped him when it came to picking up girls. With all his experience, Arya suspects he'd be a fantastic kisser.
She hopes the opportunity arises for her to find out for herself.
Her phone starts buzzing again, back at her dressing table, and Arya rushes over to it. Gendry's name starts flashing on the screen, and she quickly picks up the call. "Hello?" she says into the speaker, trying not to sound like she was just thinking about kissing him.
"Hey," Gendry says. He's whispering like he's trying not to be heard. "I'm down the block from your house...Should I come up, or should you come down here and we'll just drive off?"
Arya looks out her window, and she sees the barest hint of Gendry's car. It's white, and it's a pretty old model, but it gets him from one place to another, and he says that's all he needs. Like he always said, why should he spend thousands of dollars on a brand new car with all the newest add-ons when he could get a cheap car and fix it up himself?
"We shouldn't even be having this conversation," Arya says angrily. "You're already breaking one of our rules. No public dates," she reminds him again.
"I know, I know. I'm sorry," he apologizes. "But what was I supposed to do? Sansa texted me, and then when I tried to dodge her, she called me. I tried to ignore it, but she kept on calling, and I couldn't just ignore her."
"Gendry…"
"You act like I haven't thought this through all the way." He tsks her in mock disappointment, and she practically hears him shaking his head at her slowly. "As if I don't have the Chinese delivery place holding our order already so we can pick it up on our way back to my place."
Arya grins; he really does know her so well, it's almost scary. "Impressive," she says.
"I can hear you smiling like an idiot through the phone," he says. "You can do better than that."
Arya snorts. "I'll come downstairs and meet you in your car. But you have to pull up to the house and honk. Or else it'll look too planned. You have to make it look like I didn't know when exactly you'd be here."
"No problem," he says. "Oh, by the way, before I forget. I don't want to blindside you when you get into the car, but how's your breath?"
Arya stops with her hand on her doorknob. "Fine. Why?"
"Because I'm going to kiss you when you get into the car. Thought you should know. Is that okay?"
Arya opens her mouth and tries to speak, but then she closes her mouth. She nods but then she remembers that he can't see her. "No, yeah, that's fine. As long as your breath doesn't stink."
Gendry laughs. "Please. I just ate fish soup." She's about to say something nasty when he hangs up on her, and Arya groans in frustration. She looks down at her outfit, too formal to sit in his apartment and eat Chinese food, but her family thinks she'll be going out on a date.
Arya sighs in resignation and quickly grabs her bag, digging through it until she finds a small container of breath mints.
Better safe than sorry.
Catelyn is waiting by the bottom of the stairs when Arya rushes down after hearing Gendry honk the horn. "I heard about your date. You look lovely, Arya."
Arya smiles at her, pretending to be rushed as she looks for her jacket. "Thanks. Sansa did my hair for me. Do I look okay?"
The nervous look on her face isn't all just for show.
"I think you need a longer dress," Rickon remarks from the kitchen island, and Arya shoots him a dirty look as she puts her jacket on, pulling her hair out from beneath it and throwing it over her shoulder.
"I'll see you later tonight, Mom," Arya says, kissing her cheek before heading to the door. She calls out a final goodbye to her dad, who yells from his bedroom to have fun and not be home so late. But before she can start a fight, Catelyn waves her out the door with a knowing look and mouths I'll handle it.
Arya slides into the car, rubbing her hands together against the cold air outside. Without greeting Gendry first, she turns the heat towards her and puts her hands up.
"Are they looking?" Arya asks without looking at him. The light is still on in the car from opening the door, and Arya doesn't know how long it'll stay on so they can see from the house.
Gendry leans forward to make it seem like he's saying something to Arya as he tries to get a look at the house.
"Yep."
Arya nods once and rubs her hands together one last time before leaning back in her seat and turning to Gendry. "Good."
He moves towards her and his lips on hers before she can even process how quick it all happens. One of his hands move to her hair to move a few pieces away from her face, and it stays there to cradle the side of her face, his thumb resting right on her jaw.
They keep their lips stubbornly closed, but it's surprisingly gentle. Arya hesitantly kisses back for a few seconds before Gendry eventually breaks away from her and buckles his seatbelt to start the car.
How long was it? How much did they see? The light in the car is still on, and only shuts when they both have their seatbelts on, so if Catelyn and Rickon were watching from the window, the chances of them having seen everything were pretty high.
They're quiet in the car for the first few minutes of the drive before Arya can't help but break the silence. "You didn't eat fish."
It's the first thing that comes to her mind, and she regrets it the second it leaves her mouth. You didn't eat fish? What a stupid thing to say. She internally swears at herself for saying it, but Gendry doesn't seem to mind. Since she got into his car, he's been as smooth as ever. She wonders if this is how he acts whenever he's on a date with a girl he actually likes.
Nope. Not a good road to travel down at all.
"Obviously," Gendry answers. "I popped in, like, seven breath mints right before you got into the car. I wasn't going to have our first kiss taste like fish."
Arya thinks about his last sentence for the rest of the ride to the Chinese restaurant. Their first kiss.
Meaning more to come.
( O O O )
"It's just a question," Gendry insisted through a mouthful of sesame chicken. "Come on, answer. If you had to choose between going to this wedding or going to back to your middle school years, what would you choose?"
Arya only stares at him as she continues shoveling forkfuls of rice and chicken into her mouth, not breaking eye contact until he finally sighs.
"Fine, fine. Don't answer. I know you'd rather go back to your middle school years, though."
"Oh, come on, Gendry, that's not true," she says sarcastically. "If I decided to go back to my middle school years, then we wouldn't be dating right now."
Her casual jokes about their pretend relationship shocks a laugh out of him, and he shakes his head at her. "Well, I'm certainly enjoying our date right now. So I wouldn't want you to go back to your middle school years, either."
Arya grinned happily. "It is a pretty awesome date, isn't it?"
They've been sitting at his counter for the past half hour, eating their way piles of Chinese food. The second they'd entered his apartment, Gendry had thrown her a pair of his sweats and a t-shirt, and she'd gladly accepted them. She'd do anything to get out of these heels, and though Arya loved her dress, she didn't want to spend the whole night wearing it. Gendry really did decide to spoil her tonight.
"Thanks for saving me from going to this dinner tonight," she says suddenly.
Gendry shrugs off her gratitude like it was nothing and takes an egg roll out of one of the containers. "Don't thank me. Thank Sansa. She's clearly on our side."
"Yeah, it was pretty nice of her to get me out of going to the Tyrells for dinner tonight." She checked the time on her phone. They should all be sitting down to dinner in twenty minutes or so. "I think she just wants to make sure this goes right."
It makes Arya feel guilty for a second, knowing how Sansa likes to get involved with all of her relationships and make sure everything is going right. It's only going to make it worse when they decide to break up.
"Why were you so against going there tonight anyway?" Gendry asks as he cuts an egg roll in half and hands one of the halves to her.
"It's not that I was against going tonight. I'm just bored of all of this wedding stuff already."
"You'd think it would get easier now that the wedding is so close."
Arya gives him an incredulous look. "Are you kidding me? Have you met my sister? She's getting more nervous by the second! I'm pretty sure two-thirds of her is still convinced our two families hate each other so she's trying to plan every kind of get together she can to make sure nothing blows up at the wedding."
"But you guys have never hated each other."
"I know! It's ridiculous."
"Well...you can't really blame her, I guess. I mean, I'm sure that when you get married, you'll also go a bit crazy making sure everything is perfect, right?"
Arya laughs. "When I get married? More like if I get married. Who's going to want to deal with my mess of a family? Or my mess of a...well, me?"
It's a joke she makes all the time, poking fun at the fact that none of her relationships last, that she's only had four real boyfriends and casual flings in between, and usually Gendry is the first to laugh.
Except for tonight. Because there's some kind of intense look on his face, his eyebrows drawn together and his mouth turned down in a strong frown. He's looking down at his plate of food, something like concentration and disappointment mingling together in his expression. "You shouldn't say things like that," he tells her eventually.
"Say things like what?" Arya asks. It's like she never even noticed the silence. And really, she hadn't. It's such a commonplace comment for her to make that she barely even registers when she says stuff like that anymore.
"About not getting married, or anything like that. Actually, no, forget not getting married. Just...you shouldn't say stuff like that. About how now one would want to deal with you. I can't imagine someone who wouldn't want to not deal with you."
Arya's hand clenches tightly around her fork, her hand freeing as she hears his words. "Well," she says, shrugging it off and not looking up, "you shouldn't say things you don't mean."
"Who says I don't mean it?" His voice takes a turn for the defensive, and Arya immediately bristles. It's like her instincts ready themselves for a fight even when it's just Gendry. It's just Gendry, she repeats to herself.
"Well, for starters, you." She points a finger at him. "If you actually meant it, then you wouldn't have suggested we do...this in the first place." She waves her hand between their two bodies, indicating their relationship. "It's fine, I'm not mad or anything. I'm not even sure if I want to get married myself. Maybe that's just not the path I'm supposed to take or whatever. Maybe having a steady relationship isn't what I want."
"Arya, you're only twenty-three. You can't possibly say that now when there's still so much life left."
"But it's what I want at this point of my life," she says. "Maybe you're right, and in five years I'll be in a committed relationship with some big investment banker or something, but right now, I'm content."
That wasn't entirely true. She was frustrated, mostly. She was angry that Gendry had arranged this, insisted they make rules and boundaries and different ways to assure they were both comfortable, and then told her she couldn't give up hope that someone would actually want to be with her, crazy family and prickly personality and all.
Gendry stayed quiet for a few minutes after her speech. The only sounds in the kitchen were the sounds of their plastic forks scraping against the bottom of cardboard containers.
"I'm sorry," he said finally.
"For what?"
"For making you think that the only reason I thought of this was because I didn't think you could get a date. Obviously, you're capable of getting dates and boyfriends and...stuff like that."
"Stuff like that?" Arya repeated, a hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
"Don't be an asshole," he mumbled.
"You started it," she drawled, hopping off her bar stool and heading to the fridge.
"Well, I'm trying to finish it. You could accept my apology like a regular person," he teased.
"Don't worry," she said as she pulled a bottle of coke from the fridge. "I accept your apology. It was the most heartfelt, sweetest apology I've ever heard—"
Gendry yanks the bottle out of her hands, and she shrieks in indignation. "Hey!" Arya tries to reach it but he has it held over her head. "Now who's being an asshole?"
"Look at how nice I was to you, and now how you're repaying my kindness and remorse with sarcasm and snark." He shook his head slowly in disappointment and tutted at her.
Arya stopped her jumping and crossed her arms over her chest, giving him her best glare. "If you think I won't climb over you to get my drink," she told him, and delighted in the way his eyebrows shot up in surprise, "you're sorely mistaken."
He tried to laugh it off, but they were too close to each other to pretend to be casual. He slowly lowered the bottle to her, but she didn't take it. It stayed between them, clutched tightly in his hand, while they continued staring each other down.
And then the moment was broken when Gendry's phone buzzed from the counter.
Arya jumped back and grabbed the bottle from his hands, reaching for a cup and pouring herself some soda. "You should check who that is."
But Gendry had already seen the text, and he let out a shout.
"Who is it?"
"It's your brother!"
Arya froze. "Robb?"
He shook his head.
"Jon?"
Gendry nodded and passed his phone over so she could read the texts.
Jon: sorry to interrupt your date with my sister but I'm heading to your apartment to pick up my tie that you borrowed last week
Jon: Ygritte insisted I dress up nice for this Tyrell dinner
Jon: I usually wouldn't use your spare key but I figure you owe me since you're dating my sister and all
Arya immediately jumped off her stool and threw Gendry's phone back to him. "Give him an excuse. Whatever you can think of."
"An excuse? Like what? What could I tell him that would actually make him turn his car around and go back? You know Jon, he won't just leave. Especially if he thinks I'm not here."
Arya bit her lip as she thought it over, tapping her nails against the counter impatiently. "Tell him that your apartment is a mess and you don't want him to see it like this."
Gendry sent her a look. "Arya, half of this mess is Jon's mess. Where do you think he goes when he doesn't want Ygritte yelling at him to clean up?"
"Then say he won't even be able to find his tie in the mess!"
Gendry: You really shouldn't come to my apartment is a mess. Probably won't even be able to find it in here.
Gendry: Can't you borrow a tie from Robb
As they wait for his text, Arya begins shoving empty Chinese containers into the trash, and Gendry puts the ones that still have food into one of the cupboards that hold all of his plates. It's only a few seconds later that Jon's response comes through.
Jon: I would but all of Robb's ties suck
Jon: Besides I'm already at your front door
"Oh, hell no," Arya says, flinging the phone at Gendry. "Come on, we have to get to the second bedroom before he gets the spare key and unlocks the door."
She says it a second too late.
Jon turns the lock and opens the door, and is greeted with the sight of Arya holding Gendry's hand, wearing his sweats and his t-shirt, barefoot and trying to pull him in the direction of the bedrooms.
Jon looks between the two of them, and then his eyes find Arya's heels, knocked over from where she'd thrown them into the living room when she'd taken them off. And there, on the couch, was her dress.
Because leave it to Arya to throw it on the couch after changing.
Jon's eyes go back to Gendry, who's gone absolutely red at this point, and he opens his mouth.
"Before you say anything," Arya pipes up, letting go of Gendry's hand as if he had burned her. "You should probably get the whole story first. You see, the restaurant was completely packed, and there was no way we were getting a table tonight, so we decided to just come back here and—"
"Have sex?"
"No," Gendry says. Arya knows he means to sound firm and insistent, but his voice cracks and it only makes him sound even more nervous. She wants to punch him for this, she really does.
Jon's eyes sweep the apartment one more time and raises his eyebrows. "Well, Gendry, your apartment looks pretty damn clean to me. Except, of course, for Arya's dress, and her shoes, which I assumed you took off right before you had sex with my little sister!"
"We weren't having sex!" Arya said loudly, jumping in between the two of them.
Just in case.
"Do you know what would happen if Robb came in and saw you guys like this right now?" Jon asked. It was like he hadn't heard her.
Arya scoffed. "Like what?" she asked. "We're both fully clothed—Look, Gendry is still wearing what he wore when he came to pick me up! And the only reason I'm wearing his clothes is because he was kind enough to lend me something to wear so I wouldn't have to sit in an uncomfortable dress and heels all night."
There's silence then, while Jon tries to ingest the information Arya just gave him. Half of what she's said since Jon walked through the door is a lie, but she doesn't care. All she hopes is that he believes all of it.
"So then...why didn't you just go somewhere else? If the restaurant was packed?"
"Because I wanted our first official date to be special. Not a night where we spend the whole time hopping from one place to another before we finally get a table."
Jon looks between the two of them for a few more seconds before he relaxes, and Arya lets out a breath. But she doesn't move from her position standing between them.
She's not sure she trusts Jon yet.
"Okay." Arya takes a breath. "Okay. So since we're all calmed down now—"
"I still don't believe that you didn't even check at least one more restaurant before you came to the conclusion that 'Hey! Maybe we should just head over to my big, empty apartment where I have no roommates and no reason to put a sock on the door! It's not like there's anyone around to catch me red-handed while I have sex with my girlfriend!'"
Arya closes her eyes.
"Well, this apartment isn't that big, man," Gendry says lightheartedly.
He's such a fucking idiot.
Jon starts to move around Arya, his hand already balling into a fist.
She puts a hand on his chest to stop him. "Okay, no," Arya yells. "Jon, step back. First of all, even if we did have sex, it's none of your business. I'm a grown woman who can choose who she decides to have sex with, and when it happens."
"So you admit you had sex."
"No! I'm saying that we didn't have sex, but even if we did—which, once again, let me reiterate that we did not have sex—it wouldn't be any of your business, and it would be between me, Gendry, and the bed we choose to have sex in."
For once, Gendry was looking at Arya as if she had lost her mind, and not the other way around. Jon didn't seem to be taking her outburst any better. If anything, she'd just signed Gendry's death certificate by saying that even though they didn't have sex, they definitely would be at some point.
They all looked at each other in hesitation, waiting to see who would make the first move.
Finally, Gendry spoke up. His voice was mournful and resigned as he said his next words:
"Would it help if you just punch me now and get it over with?"
( O O O )
"I'm just saying, if you hadn't opened your mouth towards the end, he might have let us off," Arya said as she pressed a cluster of ice cubes closed in a Ziploc bag against Gendry's cheekbone.
He glared at her furiously, but the red mark she was currently icing lessened the ferocity in his gaze. "Just shut up and get more ice."
Author's Note: If you want to see the outfits Arya and Sansa wear, you can check the links on ao3 since ffnet likes to delete the links. Anyway, as always, reviews are greatly appreciated and I hope you guys like the story so far :)