Work Text:
Secret Agent Girl
xXx
The first time he sees her she’s walking with intent through the lobby of the Storm’s End branch of Interpol. He’s waiting for the elevator and has just happened to turn to look around as she approaches, cell phone to her ear and looking none to happy with her conversation. Its early, earlier than most agents coming in for the day shift would be there, and it’s just the two of them as they board the elevator.
“I understand that mum, but there’s nothing I can do about it.” she says. Standing next to him she barely reaches the middle of his chest, she can’t be more than five foot one and compared to his six foot three frame she’s tiny. She’s dressed in a black suit, standard agent ware and her hair is just below her shoulders. She’s quite pretty if he’s honest, but that’s not really something he should be noticing of a coworker.
She sighs. “You don’t argue with Theon about his job.” she continues. “It is the same thing, MI5 is just as dangerous as Interpol, if not more.” she pauses, listening and then; “I can’t help where they send me, mum.” pause. “No I can’t. They needed me here, so I came here.” she waits again. “Planes are a thing you know. Trains as well.” she sighs.
Gendry doesn’t hear the rest of the conversation, the elevator doors opening on his floor. He doesn’t think much of the woman for the rest of the day, but the next morning she’s already waiting at the elevator, sans cellphone.
“You’re new here, aren’t you?” he asks, drawing her attention as the elevator doors open. She turns to look up at him as they step on and smiles.
“Yes, I just transferred in from the Braavos branch.” she holds out her hand to him. “Arya Stark.”
“Gendry Waters.” he replies shaking her hand.
“You were on the elevator yesterday morning too, right?” she asks. He nods. “Got off on… Forensics? Sorry, I’m still learning the building.”
“Yes, yes I did.” he tells her, just as the elevator opens on said floor. They chuckle at the irony. “It was nice meeting you, I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
“Same.” she smiles at him as the doors slide closed.
And he did see her again, nearly every morning waiting for the elevator. They talk and laugh and those are the moments that make the early morning just a little bit more bearable. Then one day she’s on the forensics floor, her boss at her side as they make their way toward his desk in the electronics lab.
“Agent Waters.” the director greets him.
“Director Tarth.” he replies. “Agent Stark, what can I do for you?” he asks.
Brienne looks pleased. “Oh good, you already know each other. We received a box of hard drives from a crime scene in Dorne. They need to be analyzed by both a technical analyst and a profiler. Do you have any open cases at the moment?”
“One, but I just started it running this morning and it’s going to need a few days to go on it’s own.” Gendry explains.
“Excellent, then I need you both to make this your top priority. This case is time sensitive, as Agent Stark has been made aware. She’ll brief you as you go.” Brienne explains. “I’ll leave you to it. If you find anything or need anything let me know immediately.”
They both agree as she walks away and Arya turns to him, coming around his desk and setting an evidence box in an empty space. She hands him a form to sign and after he does, he takes the box, opening it and inspecting the contents.
“Damn.” he says, pulling out a massive external hard drive. “This is heavy duty tech. What’s this from?”
“A warehouse in Dorne. It was raided two nights ago. They found large crates of weapons and ammunition as well as three dozen young women.” Arya explains, leaning against the edge of his desk. Gendry grimaces. “My thoughts exactly. Agents down there are trying to prove it belongs to Gregor Cleagane. They’ve been trying to nail him on various things for years, but he’s got most people so scared of him, they wouldn’t dream of turning on him.”
“Cleagane? I know that name?”
“His brother Sandor teaches at the academy, used to run the Veil field office.” she explains as he plugs the biggest hard drive into his computer. A mess of code lines scroll by as he starts it up, and he gets to work on decrypting what he can. Arya pulls up a seat beside him and watches, but he tunes out the world as he works. Within the hour he’s cracked the first layer of encryption and discovered several embedded files.
“Can I assume if it’s just the first layer, the information probably won’t be that sensitive?” Arya asks.
“That would be the smart thing to do, but that doesn’t mean these people are smart.” Gendry explains, opening up the first file. “Financial statements?” he says confused. They look at one more closely and Arya replies;
“The warehouse was listed as a distribution center.” she explained. “These are the documents they filed with the government to show they are what they said they were.”
The rest of the files are much the same and Gendry goes to work on the second layer as Arya fetches them lunch. They work through lunch at his desk and he manages to get through three more layers of encryption by mid afternoon. It’s here that things start to get interesting.
“These are just random pictures of landmarks around the world.” Gendry says, as Arya sits forward suddenly very interested.
“Check the file sizes.” she tells him and he does.
“These are way too big for simple images.” he tells her.
Arya nods. “I’ve seen this before. Sex traffickers will hide images of their victims in the pixels of other images, usually ones that are a message in and of themselves and then post them on dark web sites. The interested party downloads the image and then uses a program to uncover the image underneath.” she explains.
“Yes, I’m familiar with the technique, I just didn’t know it was used like this.” he tells her.
They spent the rest of the day decrypting the pictures and Arya was able to match up every face to the faces of the girls from the warehouse. Everything they found was sent off to Dorne and the next morning, they were sent more harddrives and documents to go over. They spent the rest of the week working on the case. It was by far the most difficult week Gendry had had in his five years at Interpol. In most of his work he remain detached, but he’d never dealt with human trafficking before and it wasn’t long until he was praying for an end to this case.
They caught their big break that Friday, sending off what they’d found to Dorne and hearing back within a few hours that a man hunt was underway for Gregor.
“So what next?” Gendry asks as they pack up their work.
“Well, there’s a potential serial killer moving across Westeros. I need to look into the cases and see if they have any links in common, and unfortunately, there will always be more human trafficking rings to break up.” Arya explains.
“How do you do this every day?” he asks. “I spend all my time behind a computer and yes I see what’s happening out there, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it like this.”
Arya pauses in what she’s doing and looks up at him. “The trick is to remember that you can’t save everyone, no matter how many hours you put in, no matter how much of your life you devote to this work, you won’t always be able to save everyone.” she explains. “Keep your friends, your family close, they’ll be the anchor you need to stay sane.”
“What about you? You just moved here. Who do you have?”
She shrugs. “Don’t know yet. I’m sure I’ll find my people and in the meantime, my mother loves when I call her to complain about work, it gives her a false sense of hope that I’ll move back home.”
“What are you doing tonight?” he asks.
“After a week like this. A glass of northern wine and my Netflix queue. Why?”
Gendry turns to his desk and grabs a post it note, scribbling something on it as he says; “A friend of mine owns a pub downtown. Great food, great atmosphere. I meet my friends there as much as I can. We’re all supposed to meet tonight. You should join us.” he hands her the post it note, an address written on it.
Arya reads it, then looks up at him. “That… sounds nice, yeah. I’ll be there.”
“Great.”
And she is there. He shouldn’t be nervous about it but he is. His friends all seem to notice, if the teasing looks are anything to go by, but he can tune them out as she takes a seat across from him at the tables they’ve all slid together. She smiles and greets his friends who fall over themselves to introduce themselves to her. He’ll admit, there was a part of him that was nervous for her to meet them, they can be a bit much, but she takes it in stride, giving back as much as she takes.
They end up staying until last call and as they all pile out of the pub, Arya bids him farewell and tells him she’ll see him around work on Monday. His friends proceed to take the piss out of him all the way back to his flat where they intend to crash for the night.
The next few months seem to fly by. He goes to work, he dedicates some of his free time to a few new side projects and he meets with his mates at the pub. On more than a few occasions Arya joins them, eventually becoming a regular, fitting well into their little rag tag group. It’s nice actually. Gendry isn’t very good at making friends, being an introvert and all. The friends he has now made themselves his friends, but Arya is different. He invited her in and a part of him thinks that’s kind of a big deal for him.
They work together more. Apparently their success with the case against Gregor Cleagane has encouraged several of the higher ups to insist on their help on other cases. So they see each other in more than just passing throughout the day more often than not.
“I’m a simple girl, Gen. All I want in life is to catch this serial killer and Hibachi Noodles. Maybe to get laid regularly, but I’ll settle for the first two.”
“Well,” Gendry replies, amused. “There’s nothing I can do about the third one, but I think I’ve got the other two handled.” he leans a little closer to his computer. Arya slides her feet off the edge of his chair and sits up, trying to peek over his shoulder. “My program is finished running. Let’s see if it managed to clean up the CCTV footage.”
“I’ll never understand how the second most monitored city in Westeros could have such shitty CCTV cameras.”
“Budget cuts. I give em a year before they start laying off monitors.” Gendry explains. “Got it!” as he spoke the cleaned up image of a man walking out of an alley in downtown Storms End appears on screen. The image is clear enough for an identification and he can practically feel Arya vibrating with excitement.
“Yes! We got the son of bitch. Gen, your a god damned magician.”
He feels the heat rise on his face as he prints a screen cap of their suspect, turning as Arya gets up to take it off the printer. She looks it over, before turning to the door. “I need to get this to Brienne, first pints on me Friday.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Stark.” he calls after her, earning a few curious stares from his colleagues in the adjoining offices. He clears his throat and turns back to his work. He spends the rest of the day trying to drown himself in work.
When it’s time to knock off he finds himself going up instead of down, stepping out of the elevator on the field agent’s floor. It’s pretty much empty with the exception of a few agents and a janitor. It takes him a minute to find what he’s looking for, he doesn’t come up here often and when he does it’s not usually to find Arya. Her office is along the far back wall, a window overlooking Stormbreaker Bay a few blocks over. It’s beautiful and he’s a little jealous. His office doesn’t have any windows being in the middle of the floor, but it is bigger, so he at least has that.
Arya seems to sense his presence, looking up from her work and smiling when he realizes it’s him. “Hey, shouldn’t you be heading home?”
“I’m heading out now. I was just seeing if you were still interested in the rest of that list of yours.”
She looks confused for a moment, the slightest tinge of red across her cheeks. For a moment he too is confused until he finally realizes what he said. “The food part, not the… you know.”
She smiles, looking away. “Yeah, sure, that sounds great.” she looks like she’s trying not to laugh at him as she stands from her desk, tidying up the surface. “Just give me a second to clean up.”
He nods, turning to step out, but as he moves his attention is drawn to a neon orange post it note tacked to the cork board on the wall by the door. His quick scroll spelling out the address of Hot Pie’s Pub. She’s been to Hot Pie’s several times over the last year, and he can’t imagine she still needs it to find the place, especially when it’s easily googled.
He doesn’t get the chance to think more on it, because she’s suddenly there, ready to go. The evening is spent around good food and even better conversation. He’s fairly certain he hasn’t said this much in one sitting in his entire life.
They’ve spent a considerable amount of time together outside of work, enough so that their coworkers have started asking questions, but through all of that it’s been platonic. She’s a friend, one that means a little more than she should simply for the fact that she came into his life by his choice and not by circumstance. He didn’t have to invite her to join him that Friday night, he could have left her to her wine and Netflix, but he didn’t. He asked and she said yes and it was the first time in Gendry’s life where he felt like maybe he wasn’t so hard to get to know after all. Maybe it was just everyone else unwilling to put in the time or effort. And she did put in the effort. As soon as she realized he didn’t mind, she started asking questions, questions about his family and his friends, his hobbies, his schooling. And strangely enough, he found himself asking her the same.
Gendry told her about his mother who’d passed when he was eighteen and his father whom he’d met in college, though he stuck to vague details as much as possible, having never known him as anything other than the abusive sperm donor that helped create him. He told her about all of his half siblings, (because apparently his father got around when he was drunk) and she in turn told him about her own. She told him all about her big family, her three brothers and her sister, her adopted brother Theon who came to live with them after his father lost custody of him and her favorite cousin, son of her favorite aunt.
He told her about his days in college playing Rugby, his size perfect to play prop, and she told him about her fencing and gymnastics and snowboarding and martial arts and pretty much everything you would expect from a Northern girl who loved to be outdoors.
It was amazing and from that evening forward, things seemed to change. They were more personable toward each other, skirting the line of what was considered professional, so much so that his friends began to question why he hadn’t made a move on her yet. The truth was… well there were a lot of reasons and only a few of them were valid.
Before he knows it the holidays are upon them and he’s sipping eggnog at the division Christmas Party, watching the director and her hockey star husband talk with Arya across the room. It was quite a treat to find out how much of a hockey fan she was. His friends had declared that she was perfect and if he didn’t snatch her up while he could they would start fighting over her.
He had brushed that off of course. She was his coworker and while relationships between agents wasn’t against the rules, it wasn’t always the best idea. Besides, Agent Stark was a bright vivacious and personable woman and he had been equated on multiple occasions to a grumpy IT gremlin by his sisters, his friends, hell even his subordinates. There’s no way in any of the seven hells that she would want anything to do with him. His personal life consisted of drinks every other Friday with his mates, her personal life consisted of parties and clubs and weekends of wild fun with Missandei and the other girls she’d been introduced to. He would only bore her.
Still, it was a nice thought. To think about her that way, at least. She was kind and funny and passionate about her work and there were days when they worked together, he thinks he could just lean over and kiss her. Close the distance between them and have his wicked way with her on his desk. Or hers. He’d had that fantasy a time or two.
“Listen, mate.” Podrick Payne breaks through his thoughts the following Friday night. It’s New Years Eve and the whole group is crowded into Hot Pie’s. Arya’s come home from her parents early, mostly because of work, but she also may have confided in him that her mother’s nagging was getting a bit suffocating and if she had to hear anymore about one of the three siblings who were engaged anymore she was going to tear her own hair out. At the moment, Arya was bent over the pool table, beating Grey at yet another round. “If you’re not going to make a move, you gotta stop mooning over her.”
Gendry looks away to face him. “I’m not mooning over her. It’s just a crush, it’ll pass.”
“Not likely. A girl like Arya isn’t the kind of girl you just stop having a crush on. You may move on, but it’ll always be lingering there in the back of your mind.”
Gendry looks unimpressed. “Thank you Pods, that’s so helpful, you have no idea.” he looks back to the pool table, ignoring Podrick’s amused huff.
Grey makes a comment as Arya straightens from her shot and she laughs, lightly punching him on the shoulder. Missandei looks amused as she watches them, shaking her head when Grey finally walks over to her. Arya relinquishes her pool cue to one of the others and makes her way over to him at their table, sliding into the seat beside him.
“Evening gents, how’s it going over here?” she grabs the pitcher of beer and refills her mug.
“Well, Gendry was just lamenting his lack of girlfriend to kiss at midnight.” Podrick said, just as Gendry went for a drink. He coughed and sputtered into it, beer dribbling down his chin as Podrick laughed. It was only as he turned to correct him that he noticed Arya didn’t look quite as amused. She was smiling a bit, and there was a little chuckle, but she didn’t seem to find it all that funny.
“I’m sure you’ll have no trouble finding someone.” she tells him, taking a very long pull from her beer. Podrick shoots Gendry a look while she’s distracted and Gendry has to fight back the little bubble of hope that swells in his chest.
“What about you Arya? Got anyone your fixing to kiss when the fireworks go off?”
Arya laughs. “If I did, I’d be having much different conversations with my mother.”
Gendry laughs at that. He’s heard enough about Catelyn Stark from her youngest daughter to know how desperate the woman is to marry off her children and become a grandmother. It wouldn’t surprise him at all if she’d thought about arranged marriages when they were growing up.
“Well there you go. Problem solved.” Podrick tells them, looking proud of himself. “You both need someone to kiss, you can kiss each other.” and before either of them can shake off the shock fast enough to respond he’s up and out of his seat, dashing off across the pub where a few of their friends have congregated.
The awkward silence he leaves behind him is palpable. They both seem to be fascinated by the beer in their glasses and Gendry lets his mind wander in an attempt to calm himself before he makes a fool of himself. There is quite literally nothing Gendry would love more than to be her New Year’s kiss, however, he highly doubts that’ll happen. And he’s right, they don’t kiss at midnight, but there’s nothing awkward between them either which he counts as a win.
As they stand side by side cheering along with the crowd, a thoroughly sloshed Grey totters over with Missendei practically holding him up, and plants a wet sloppy kiss on Gendry that has both Missandei and Arya rolling with laughter.
“Happy New Year’s Mate!” Grey yells over the sounds of the crowd and the music. Gendry laughs.
“Happy New Year’s you happy bastard!” he calls back.
The new year starts off fairly well, the cases still roll in, but on nearly all of them Arya is there to work it with him. Large portions of his day are spent with her. It’s nice having a friend at work that helps cut the tension when things get a little too intense.
A lot of people, his friends, his siblings, like to accuse him of being oblivious, but he didn't get where he was by actually being oblivious, so he doesn’t miss the changes in their interactions. He can almost equate it to someone whose hoping for more. He may be projecting, but he feels like maybe they’re more in tune than he thought.
Brienne seems to think so too, or he assumes she does when a pair of coveted tickets to her husband’s final playoff game appears on his desk after lunch one day. Arya’s been talking about her plans to watch the game since they made it into the finals and he knows she’ll be more than happy to change her plans. And she is, judging by the wide grin that splits her face.
The day comes, she looks cute in her jersey and jeans and he’s vibrating in excitement as well. They laugh and joke all the way to the stadium and nearly lose their voices screaming for their team. They drink a bit, but not too much and eat far too much popcorn and too many hot dogs.
For a little under a year there’s been a tension between them. A blatant sexual tension that finally comes to a head when the jumbo-tron flashes the kiss cam logo and lands squarely on them. They both try to laugh it off but a quick look at the other and it’s suddenly a sure thing. There’s a spark between them, an electricity he’s never felt before and he loves it, he loves every minute of it. When they pull away she’s smiling like she’s so happy to be here with him. It’s by far one of the best days he’s ever had.
Until it becomes the worst.
Gendry’s father, Robert Bartheon has been trying to make amends with his children since his divorce. His children from his marriage don’t want anything to do with him, and he claims the experience of losing them has taught him a valuable lesson. None of his bastards, as they call themselves, are convinced. At first they gave him the benefit of the doubt, he was learning to be a better person, but as time went on it became obvious he wasn’t trying all that hard. He called when it was convenient, which usually meant it was inconvenient to them, and he was under the impression that the only way to win them over was to buy their affection. For example, he offered to pay for Gendry and Mya’s tuition. They both declined, Gendry was on a full scholarship and Mya just didn’t want anything to do with him. He tried to push his money off on the mothers of his younger children as well, and they chose to accept, simply because they knew he had more than enough to spare.
Gendry was of the mind that the least amount of time spent with Robert the better. So, their interactions were relegated to lunch once a month and only if neither of them cancelled. The day of the Hockey game he was supposed to meet Robert for lunch, but Gendry, for the first time, cancelled on him and apparently, he hadn’t appreciated it.
As Gendry and Arya walk hand in hand toward his flat an unwelcome sight comes into view as they turn the corner. He feels Arya tense beside him and he looks down to find her glaring at the man whose not paying attention to them as they approach.
“What is Robert Baratheon doing on this side of town?” she practically growls and Gendry stops short, pulling her into an out cove where he can’t see them.
“How do you know Robert Baratheon?” he asks.
“He grew up with my father, they were the best of friends until he found out what he did to my aunt.” she explains.
Gendry hesitates. “He hurt her too?” he asks.
“Too?”
He sighs, looking away. “I am one of nine unfortunate souls unlucky enough to be forced to call Robert father.”
Arya drops his hand as though she’s been burned and he feels the animosity in the action like he’s never felt anything before in his life.
“You’re his son?” she asks and there’s a pain laced in her voice, like he’s betrayed her.
“Unfortunately.” he insists, peeking out of the out cove to see Robert climb back into his car and drive off, apparently tired of waiting. “He’s gone.” he tells her, stepping out into the open. She follows and when he looks down at her he can see she’s lost in thought.
“I think I should go.” she finally says.
“Oh… okay.” it’s lame but it’s really all he can think to say and before anything else can come out she’s gone, disappearing around the corner. He doesn’t hear from her for the rest of the weekend, nor does he see her on Monday morning. She doesn’t stop by to ask him if he wants to go to lunch and the rest of the week follows suit. She doesn’t show up for drinks on Friday night and when his friends ask he tells them to drop it a little more forcefully than necessary. He leaves not long after that.
Gendry knows it’s ridiculous to be so upset about this, it’s not his fault his father is an asshole. He didn’t ask to be Robert Baratheon’s bastard, but the distinct loss of Arya in his day to day life has made him bitter. He figures the stand off will end in one of two ways. She’ll be forced to work with him and they both explode in anger, she at him for being something he has no control over and he for her nearly irrational anger at the fact. Or, she’ll avoid him for as long as possible and before either of them realize it, they’re just work acquaintances.
He’s glad to find it’s neither.
The following Friday she appears in his doorway at lunch.
“Hey.” she calls out softly, drawing his attention. Her appearance is a surprise to say the least.
“Hey.” he replies, nearly breathless.
“Do you want to grab lunch with me?” she asks hesitantly, like she’s expecting him to refuse her. He’s not sure he’s capable of that.
“Sure, just give me a minute to set this up.”
She nods and steps out and within a few minutes he’s finished, grabbing his coat and following her out of the building. He thinks it’s a good sign that she’s chosen Hot Pie’s for lunch. The establishment owned by his childhood friend, it’s basically his terf and in coming here, she’s symbolically conceding the high ground, or maybe he’s just thinking too much.
They find a booth in the back of the pub, ordering quickly and before they know it they’re alone. “I owe you an apology.” she finally says.
“What for?”
“For how I reacted to… well…”
“Finding out who my father is?”
She nods. “Yes, I… I don’t really know what I was thinking but I was definitely blaming you for something that wasn’t your fault and the more I thought about it… well, the more I realized I was overreacting.”
“Not necessarily.” he concedes. She looks like she’s going to argue but he stops her. “My mother, she never told me about my father, I got the impression he wasn’t someone I would want in my life. She didn’t have to tell me what he did to her, I saw the scars myself, the way she didn’t trust anyone to get close to us and the physical scars too. So, if he did even a fraction of what he did to my mother to your aunt, I completely understand why you were so upset.”
“But you didn’t do that, he did, and it’s not right for me to aim my anger at you.” she tells him. “I know you well enough to know you aren’t him. I see the way you cut yourself off when we’re all out drinking and how protective you get over all the girls in the group when the guys get into fights. You aren’t him. You couldn’t stoop that low if you tried.”
He huffed a laugh. “I appreciate the confidence in me.” she shrugs like it’s no big deal. But it is a big deal. No one has ever said something like this to him. Not even his siblings who all agree of the nine of them Gendry looks the most like Robert. People in his father’s inner circle like to remind him how much he reminds them of his father, but it’s not the compliment they all seem to think it is. Or maybe they don’t mean it to be. Either way, he’s ready for it to be done. He ready for the people who know his father to stop looking at him like he’s a mirror image, ready to devolve into drunken, abusive behavior right alongside him.
After lunch as they make their way back to the office she asks him if he wants to see a movie. The one they’ve both been excited to see came out the weekend before and she’d been a little upset that they couldn’t go last week. He agrees and then they go their separate ways back to their respective offices.
The following Friday, when they turn up at Hot Pie’s for drinks, the group collectively decides not to comment on their clasped hands.