Chapter Text
“You sure you’ll be all right?” She rolled her eyes, and Jon frowned at her.
“What?” he demanded, his voice tinged with defensive protectiveness.
“You’re being silly is all,” she said, elbowing him in the ribs.
“I’m not being silly, actually. You’re posing naked for—”
“I signed up for it. They’re paying me money. And good money too.” They were. Most ads for student models on the employment website offered ten dragons an hour. This gig offered nearly double that.
Jon looked around. Rosehips offered good coffee and a convenient place to meet between classes near the center of campus, but while it wasn’t exactly full, it wasn’t exactly empty either. Jon kept his voice low as he said, his grey eyes full of earnest entreaty, “And even beyond that, how do you know you’ll feel comfortable? I just don’t want you getting in over your head and then feeling stuck and like you can’t leave.”
Arya smiled at him, doing her best to keep her annoyance out of her face. “Jon?”
“Yes?”
“When you imagine that I’m changing between dances, do you think that I’m going into a closed off space? I’m literally tearing my clothes off and running around backstage completely naked. I don’t mind being naked around people.”
Jon looked mildly uncomfortable, from the way he was biting his lip. She appreciated it, actually—both that he was concerned for her, and that he had the good sense to trust her when she said she’d be fine.
Because she would be fine. If anything she was excited—more excited for this than she was about any of her classes for the semester. She’d grown up looking at paintings and photographs of dancers, the way that they—more than other models, it seemed—were able to really pose, contort, display, hold. The idea that this was something that she would be able to do, that someday, there might be a painting of Arya, holding some sort of pose for an hour, the perfect depiction of artistic athleticism...it made Arya grin. More than that, it made her even more eager to ditch Jon and his nervousness and get to the studio on High Street.
“All right—I’ll see you later,” she said.
“You sure?” Jon asked her one last time.
“Oh, go work on your damn thesis, will you?” she snapped. Then, as an afterthought, she pressed a kiss to Jon’s wild black hair. It was greasy; she didn’t want to think about whether or not he had showered while he was churning out his Master’s thesis.
It was chilly out, and rainy too, and Arya didn’t need the weather as a motivation to move a little faster, but she figured it was as good an excuse as any to get there early. She wanted to get there early. She could pin it on the dancer part of her—you could never be late to a rehearsal, and you should be early to make sure you stretched and warmed up properly if anything—but that would be lying to herself and she knew it. She was excited to be going, to be doing something new after the semester had started off so frustratingly, with everyone asking her how she was, and if she needed anything, their eyes too soft and their voices too gentle to be at all natural.
The artist was waiting for her—or at least, she assumed it was the artist—outside of the studio, sitting in a chair and bent over his phone such that she could only see wiry dark hair as she approached.
“Hi, are you Gendry?” she asked. He looked up, and she had a moment where she realized just how blue his eyes were and she felt her confidence begin to fade. There was something familiar about him—she wasn’t sure what, but it was almost unnerving. Had she seen him somewhere before?
“Yes,” he said. “That’s me. Arya?”
“Yes.” She extended a hand to him.
He stood, tucking his phone into the pocket of his jeans. There were paint splatters on them and when he stood, she felt suddenly very small. Arya carried herself tall—most dancers did. They had good posture because they used every muscle of their body. It had been easy to forget that Mycah was only five foot six. And Jon had always joked that Arya had the personality for ten people and that that made her always seem bigger than she was. Jon would always then rest his elbow on her head as if to prove a point, but it wasn’t quite the point he wanted to prove. There had definitely been a time when he could rest his elbow on her head and make it look like he was leaning on a railing. Now her head came to just under his chin and it really just made him look like a rather lopsided bird.
But Gendry was taller than Jon. And bigger too—in the muscular sense. He had broad shoulders and she could tell just by looking at his arms that he lifted too. He took her hand. His grip was very firm and his hand was huge compared to hers. Then, he reached down and pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and opened the door to the room.
The art studio was larger than she expected. There was more space than backstage at Targ, but that didn’t exactly mean very much. Targ was old and cramped and in sore need of renovation. Here, the studio had some easels, some canvases that were facing the wall, and a wide window that looked out over the river. It was bright, and clean and the space in the middle of the room was completely empty.
“So,” Gendry said, dropping his bag to the floor. “I don’t know how much Professor Mott told you about the project,” he said.
“A little? He said he needed a dancer—that you needed a dancer.”
“Yeah. So it’s for my senior project. I’m trying a project with a series of sketch-paintings.”
“Sketch paintings,” she repeated and she saw a glimmer of realization that she had no idea what he was talking about.
“Basically, I want each painting in the series to be a dancer in a different pose, in a different style. Some of them will be quick, and I can do a lot of the legwork on my own once I get your form. Others, I might need you for a while. But in essence—they’re short spurts of art. Each painting should be completed in one sitting, give or take.”
“Got it,” she said. “So when do I take off my clothes?”
Gendry stopped short, his eyes widening as though he hadn’t expected her to ask that question quite that cheerily.
“Well...whenever you like, really. I was going to bring up the subject more politely, but...”
Arya shrugged, pleased with herself. He had blushed, she noticed.
“Yeah, I’d like the paintings to all be nudes. So some will be more…” he blushed again.
“Graphic?”
Gendry blinked and shook his head slightly, as if he were a dog trying to shake away a fly that was buzzing in his ears. Arya suppressed a grin. Mycah had once berated her for ignoring other people’s boundaries. Just because she had very few didn’t mean that she could just go and assume the same of everyone else.
“If you like. It wouldn’t be the word I’d used. I mean...it’s...it’s not like I’m painting porn or anything,” he said the last bit very quickly, and his blush became even more pronounced. Gosh, if Jon were in the room, she’d probably be cackling because the pair of them were so determined to suck the fun out of all this.
“It’s fine,” she said instead. “I know.”
“Cool,” Gendry said, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. “So...yeah. If you could…”
She grinned, removed her jacket and tugged her t-shirt over her head.
*
“Was he hot?” Shireen asked, not looking up from her computer screen. They were sitting in the common room of their double, and she had the unkempt look of someone who was in the depths of computer science homework, her face haggard, her blue eyes dull behind her glasses, her hair swept up out of her face so that her scars were a little more visible than usual. Shireen tended to wear her hair down, so that it fell like a curtain obscuring the mottled skin of her cheek.
“Yeah, I think so,” Arya said grumpily. Posing, as it turned out was far more boring than she would have expected. Not that she had anticipated moving—oh no. It was just that Gendry was sullen when he was painting her. He didn’t say a word, or want her to talk either, because if she talked, she moved, and he didn’t want her to move. So she’d gotten very familiar with the bend in the river outside of his studio, and had even grown fond of the ducks that she’d seen swimming in it.
“He any good?”
“I don’t know. He wouldn’t let me see the finished painting.”
“Guess not,” Shireen teased.
“Or maybe he was just disappointed with my face,” Arya said. Shireen reached over and shoved her.
“Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“You know exactly what.”
“Yeah yeah,” Arya sighed. She knew Shireen understood. “Remind me to stretch better next time. I’m so fucking stiff.”
“Stretch better next time,” Shireen said unhelpfully, frowning at her screen. “Balls,” she sighed and slammed shut the laptop, taking off her glasses and pressing the heels of her palms into her eye sockets.
“What’s up?” Arya asked.
Shireen inhaled deeply then muttered, “I just caught a really dumb mistake and now I have to go back and fix it and try and debug and fuck everything. Why am I majoring in computer science?”
“Because you like to show you’re smarter than me?” suggested Arya.
“I don’t need to show that. I just am. There’s proof and everything.” She removed her face from her hands and blinked twice. “Ugh, I’m so mad at myself.”
“Ahh well,” said Arya, flopping over on the couch. “What can you do?”
“Not be so dumb next time,” Shireen muttered. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said. But she didn’t move. She just sat there, her eyes unfocused, staring at her closed laptop.
“Do you need help?” Arya asked after a moment.
“No,” Shireen said. “I—yes. Help me up. My brain is too fried to do anything.”
“And what were you saying about me being dumber than you?”
“It takes more to fry my brain than you could even conceive of, Arya Stark,” Shireen teased, accepting Arya’s hand and letting herself be pulled to her feet. “You’re lucky you’re so good at dancing. Otherwise you’d be fucked. Or worse, a literature major.”
“You like reading,” Arya pointed out lamely. She didn’t like insults to the literature major. Jon was a literature major, and her mother had been one too. “Or is all that just some clever ruse. You’re taking a dang literature class right now.” Shireen glared at her, still leaning heavily on Arya’s arm.
“Yes,” Shireen whined, “but it’s Middle Common, Arya. Do you have any idea what it’s like reading The Song of Florian and his faire Jonquille with an appendix by Archmaester Willas in the original Middle Common? Pure and unadulterated pain. That’s what it’s like.” Shireen plucked her towel off the back of the door to her bedroom.
“My condolences,” said Arya, wholly unsympathetically. “But you are the one who took the damn class. You could be taking Fire, Sex, and Blood with me.”
Shireen rolled her eyes in an exaggerated way that Arya thought might be a little overkill. “There is no way on this earth you could convince me to read incesty Targaryen love poetry, even if they paid for most of this school.”
“But ye, sweetest star, do make me throb / that even if my roots did—” Arya began reciting, but Shireen elbowed Arya furiously as she crossed the common room, heading towards the door.
“I got enough of that shit in high school, thank you,” said Shireen.
“Did Dev recite it at you ‘neath yon window?” Arya asked.
“Fuck off.”
“I bet he wrote you love poetry.” Arya felt a manic grin spread across her face. “I bet it was metered.”
“Speaking of Dev,” said Shireen loudly, her hand on the handle of the door out into the hallway. “Can you be out of here Friday? I might want to fuck him on the couch when he gets in.”
Arya let out a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose I will just have to pester Jon to entertain me or something. Don’t get fluids on it, though.” She pulled a face, sticking out her tongue and scrunching her eyes. Shireen stuck her tongue out at her and yanked the door open, disappearing into the hallway. Arya watched the door swing shut behind her. As much as she loved Jon, she wished that Mycah…but no, she couldn’t. Thinking about that, wishing for that was silly, and unproductive, and unhelpful, and all those other “un-” words Dr. H’ghar told her to avoid. All the same, it was difficult not to wish when she was feeling so suddenly aware of how empty the room was.
*
When the semester had begun, Arya had, over the protests of her mother, who worried she was over-exerting herself after a semester off, signed up for two dance classes. For the most part, they met on separate days, but on Wednesdays, they were scheduled back to back. And these two classes could not be more different from one another.
There were only four of them in Jaime Lannister’s class, and in each lesson, they watched videos of Arthur Dayne’s rehearsal techniques, then set about learning them themselves, falling into the most traditional form of classical ballet that Arya had ever studied.
When she’d been in high school, Syrio had told her that, if she wanted to, she’d make one of the finest ballerinas of her age. She had the size for it, and the skill, and the drive, and the raw talent that people always seemed to emphasize when discussing whether or not someone could or would become a professional dancer. Lannister had told her that if she worked hard enough, she might be half as good as Arthur Dayne when he was drunk and spotting his choreography.
The good thing about Lannister’s class was that Mycah didn’t drip out of every piece of music. She couldn’t hear him in recordings of the Sunspear Symphony Orchestra playing The Duet of Nymeria and Mors. When she took Marq’s hand—lightly, daintily, arching her wrist—she didn’t for a moment think it was Mycah. Mycah was jazz, Mycah was soul, Mycah was earthy. Mycah was not polished and smooth the way that ballet was. And Mycah hadn’t wanted to be.
Mycah had always said that ballet was for old people and for children, and that if you were in your twenties and loved ballet, you probably didn’t know anything about dance. Arya didn’t think that was true, and Mycah had rolled his eyes at her when she’d told him that. “You don’t need to dance the way everyone else dances to be beautiful, Arya,” he had said, so seriously, a pair of lines marking the skin between his eyebrows as he frowned at her. And when she’d tried to say that that wasn’t why she didn’t agree, and he was being stupid, he’d just shaken his head and reached out and rubbed his thumb on her neck and smiled and her words had caught in her chest because when he looked at her that way, the world stood still and she could forget all the names that Jeyne Poole had given her growing up to make fun of her long face.
Signing up for Jaime Lannister’s class was an obvious choice for any dance major who wanted to get the ballet requirement out of the way. But it was in no small part because of Mycah that she had taken Sandor Clegane’s class to begin with, even though her parents, her therapist, and even her common sense told her it was a bad idea. And at least twice a class, she wondered explicitly what in the seven hells had made her do it.
“Are you fucking drunk? Is that supposed to be a relevé?”
“I—” but Lommy was blushing furiously and without another word, Clegane raised himself onto the tips of his toes so that he towered over Lommy, glowering with such ferocity that Lommy cringed.
“Arch your feet,” he commanded, dropping himself back to the ground so lightly that he seemed to be floating. He raised his eyebrow at Lommy, who tried again, and didn’t make a comment. Instead, he turned away, muttering to himself about idiots.
Arya bit back a growl.
“Fucker,” muttered Hot Pie
“Shut up,” roared Clegane. “I am starting the music up again.” And true enough, he did.
He was a good choreographer. Arya wasn’t an idiot, but every word out of his mouth reminded her that she should have avoided this class at all costs and yet here she was—dancing with fifteen other students to music that her mother would have frowned at thirty years ago.
Harder still, Arya didn’t know what she couldn’t bear more: that she was taking the class, or that she liked it.
*
She arrived at Gendry’s studio on Thursday afternoon and dropped her bag in a corner.
“So? How did it turn out?” she asked.
He shrugged. “Fine.”
“Just ‘fine’?” Arya tried to keep the disappointment out of her voice.
“Yeah. It was good,” Gendry said. “A different pose today,” he said and Arya took the hint. Maybe he just didn’t like talking about his own art, she thought as she tugged off her t-shirt and shimmied out of her leggings and underpants. Usually she didn’t like talking about her own dance. She could rattle on for hours about Nymeria Martell, or the choreography of Shiera Bloodraven but she didn’t ever try and boast about her own work. It was fine. She’d see it all eventually.
Gendry settled her into a relevé, her back to him with her hands clasping the opposite elbows behind her back.
“Are you always so quiet when you paint?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he replied.
“Doesn’t it ever get boring?”
“Do you get bored dancing?” he shot back at her.
“No. But I’m moving. I’m doing stuff.”
“Yes. And so am I.” His voice was dry and Arya smirked at her own reflection in the window. She hoped no one across the river had binoculars, or she would be giving them quite the show.
“You don’t care that I’m not shaved, right?” she asked him. “Around my crotch.”
She heard him sputter and she grinned again.
“No,” he managed. “Why would I care? It’s your body.”
“Yeah, but if you wanted to paint a shaved girl, you know?” She saw him shrug in the window.
“It’s fine,” he said. “You’re fine with however you want to groom.”
Her grin spread even wider. “I can see your blush in the window. You’re redder than the University crests.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not every day I get a girl talking about whether or not I want her to shave her private parts while I paint her ass,” he replied dryly.
“Well, actually, depending on scheduling...” she teased.
“Shut up, I need to focus.”
“On my ass?”
“Yes. On your ass.”
*
She dreamed of Mycah that night.
She dreamed he was laughing, calling her names and dancing around her and she was laughing, calling him names and chasing him. He tore away from her, his body twisting as he leaped across a stage, spotlight following him as he spun, his shadow moving like a demon—black against the white of the light. How beautiful he was, his brown eyes lit up so that they looked gold in the light, like honey, but full of movement.
“Come,” he called. “Come catch me!” And she ran faster, running after him, reaching for his hand, out stretched. “Come on, slow poke,” he chided. “Don’t you want to dance?”
“Stay put, will you?” she called out to him. But even as she did the light was going out, the spotlight was fading and she could only see his barest outline. “Mycah!”
“I’m here!” he called. He wasn’t moving—that much she could see, and she ran, leaping into his outstretched arms and he lifted her high in the air. And then, he dropped her down, catching her so she was at his waist, her face right against his in the dark, and she wanted to see him—see the gold brown of his eyes, but she couldn’t. And he threw her in the air again, and she let out a whoop of glee because she was going so high—higher than she should. She could see the lights suspended from bars overhead—dark but she saw them anyway.
“Mycah, do you see?” she pointed to them.
“I see!” she heard his voice. It was from so far away.
“Look at me, I can almost reach!”
“You’re so beautiful, Arya!”
“You’re just saying that,” she said, looking down to roll her eyes at him and—
The spotlight had turned back on and he lay on the ground in the center of it, his neck twisted around too far and blood dribbling out of his nose and mouth and Arya screamed and screamed and fell.
She woke with a start, feeling cold sweat on her skin and smelling the faded scent of her shampoo on her pillow. It was Sansa’s old shampoo—she’d taken it from home because she didn’t know what kind of shampoo to buy because all of her shampoo smelled like Mycah and there was nothing worse in the whole world than smelling like Mycah.
And suddenly, she was crying, great big horrible gulping sobs that rose out of her stomach, out of her throat. She didn’t have tears on her face—she’d cried enough tears for him already, and she was so good at pushing it down, but it was back, now, it hurt her again, and it hurt worse than anything she’d ever felt, so she sobbed, breathing shallow gasping breaths and crying into her pillow that smelled like Sansa and not her and not Mycah, because the walls were thin and Shireen would hear and stop believing her when she said she was fine because she couldn’t not tell them she was fine—not when she’d started out fine, even if now she wasn’t.
She didn’t close her eyes though. Because if she closed her eyes, she would see him lying in the spotlight, blood coming out of his face in that moment of dull shock before the audience had realized what had happened.
*
Arya forced herself to look in the cheap plastic mirror on the back of her bedroom door. She looked small and pale and her face was long and her hair was lank and there wasn’t enough makeup in the world to make her horsey face round and soft like Sansa’s.
She took a deep breath, feeling how it shuddered in her lungs, and closed her eyes, determined that when she opened them again, she would see herself the way that Mycah had.
*
“You look a mess,” Jon said when he opened the door for her the next evening. She was wearing one of his old black hoodies because no one looked too closely at your face if you wore a black hoodie and today wasn’t a day for display. She was glad that she hadn’t signed up for classes on Fridays, and that Gendry hadn’t tried to schedule her that day. She was in no mood for anyone—anyone but Jon, of course.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she sighed, pushing her way past him into his house.
“That much I can see,” he said. “Are you sure you’re up for going out tonight?” he asked.
If I don’t I may cry, she wanted to say, but she didn’t. Instead she looked at his liquor cabinet and asked, “Have you not got rum? I’m in a rum mood.”
“I’m out. Grenn finished it last night. Sorry. We have a new rye you may like.”
“Nah. I don’t want rye. I want rum.”
“Do you want to go out to the liquor store with me, Arya?” Jon asked, sounding as though he were babysitting a petulantly alcoholic seven-year-old.
“Yes,” she said, and turned around and they left his apartment together.
It was a brisk day—not quite as cold as it had been for the past few weeks, and Arya wondered if maybe spring was on its way at last. Not, of course, that she was cold. She was never cold south of the Neck. But she wondered if she’d like to see flowers. She wondered if she could see flowers without thinking of Mycah and crying some more.
“What’s up?” Jon asked.
“I had a Mycah dream,” she admitted.
Jon threw his arm around her shoulder and she hugged into his side, feeling his solid warmth, letting it steady her. “This is your first one in a while, isn’t it?” asked Jon.
“Yes, it was,” she said.
It was one of the things she loved so much about Jon. For all that everyone always asked her how she was, asking if there was anything they could do to help, Jon asked the functional questions. He asked her things that let her focus on more than her misery, and didn’t let her twist and turn away from the subject at hand. She couldn’t get away with anything when she brought it up to Jon. And, when she couldn’t put words to it, Jon just got it and hugged her, even if he knew she wasn’t all right and that was all she wanted right now. Well, that and rum.
She liked rum. Not in the alcoholic sense. Arya had never actually been one to enjoy drinking too too much, but rum made her think of the tropics, and the tropics didn’t remind her of Mycah and his warm brown eyes, so rum it would be. And in all likelihood, she would end up drunk and asleep on Jon’s couch within two hours. Or they’d go out to a local bar and hear Grenn’s band play.
She slid Jon a ten as contribution to the handle he bought and within thirty minutes, she’d had enough to be sitting on his floor, staring at his coffee table and wondering loudly if she was too tired to sleep, or not tired enough to sleep.
“You could try and see what happens,” Jon suggested unhelpfully.
“No,” she said, hearing that her words were already beginning to slur, “that’s the easy way.”
Jon rolled his eyes.
“So, how about we go and hear Grenn’s set. And either it’ll put you to sleep, or it’ll wake you up and you can have a night out and not think about the fact that your roommate is definitely having sex in your bed right now.”
“She is not,” said Arya, a little more loudly than she had intended. “She’s having sex on the couch. Or in the shower. She doesn’t have sex in my bed. At least I don’t think she does. She said she didn’t. She’d better not. Stop laughing at me, you nitwit.”
Jon was not even bothering to hide his chuckle, his mouth wide in a grin and the skin around his grey eyes crinkling. “So then,” he said, “What’s the verdict?”
“Band,” she said. “Help me up.”
He did, muttering about how lazy she was. He even got her hoodie for her, though he insisted on taking her wallet in case she did something foolish with it, and they made their way down to Renly’s Ghost.
It was one of those bars made of old dark wood, where people had carved secret—and not so secret—messages onto the tables and chairs. Not that the proprietor cared. The proprietor gave not two shits, actually, and so sometimes his clientele also put out their cigarettes on the table. Arya liked Renly’s Ghost though. It was on the seedy side of nice, but it had good people there, and interesting music, and they made good stiff drinks, which was all she wanted at the moment.
Except Jon had her wallet.
Clever bastard. He probably wouldn’t give it back to her either.
“I want another drink,” she said, kicking Jon under the table in the middle of Grenn’s song. He ignored her, eyes on Grenn at the piano as if the words Grenn had written were the words of the gods or something.
“Sam,” she whined, trying him instead, but Sam just shot her a sympathetic smile before he returned his gaze to the piano.
She scooted down the bench, deciding the least she could do was try her luck with the bartender.
“Where are you going?” Jon asked her. She didn’t reply. See how he liked being ignored for a change. She stumbled lightly down the row of tables until she reached the end of the bar and found herself face to face with Gendry.
“Fuck, what are you doing here?” she demanded. He blinked at her. It was like seeing a teacher in the grocery store, seeing the guy who painted you naked behind the bar.
“I…work here?” He was looking at her like he was sizing up just how drunk she was, and she knew if she didn’t convince him fast, she would be all out of luck.
“Hey man, can I get a pint?” someone asked. “Red Rain.” The man slid a five across the bar, Gendry took it and pulled up a glass from beneath the bar and sticking it under the tap, letting it fill with amber beer. He handed the glass to the patron and turned back to Arya.
“What do you want?”
“My brother took my wallet. But now I want a rum and cola. On his tab, if you don’t mind!”
“I can’t just give you booze on his tab,” Gendry said mulishly. “Not unless he’s ok with it.”
“Well, he’s listening to Grenn and didn’t say that I could, but it was implied. He also owes me at least three drinks, so I think it’s only fair.”
“How many have you already had?” Gendry asked, cocking his head and crossing his arms over his chest. He had very nice arms. And a very nice chest. She’d noticed that before, and she was noticing it again, because they were right in front of her face. He was very tall, wasn’t he? She liked that he was tall. Taller than her by a lot. Mycah had been taller than her too, but not quite so much taller. And fuck, she wasn’t drunk enough if she was still thinking about Mycah.
“I don’t see how that’s relevant,” she responded, trying to look prim the way that Sansa did when Sansa was getting everyone to listen to her. It must not have worked because Gendry laughed.
“Well, you’re a small person and I don’t like getting my friends drunk,” he said gently.
“Are we friends?” she asked, meaning to tease, but it came out a little harsher than that and Gendry frowned. “I mean sure, you paint me. But you don’t know me very well, do you.”
“I know you some,” Gendry said, looking uneasy.
“Oh yeah? What do you know about me?”
“You dance,” he said lamely.
“That hardly counts. That was in your advertisement on student employment.” That was why she had taken the modeling gig in the first place. It was too good not to take—a female dancer to pose nude all semester making twice the undergraduate minimum wage. Certified through the art department so it was not any more sketchy than it seemed. All she’d had to do was show that she was actually a dancer, which had taken a single video from the internet and she’d been chosen and there she was, posing naked for Gendry twice a week while he painted for his senior thesis.
“You’re stubborn,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “That’s clever inference. I’m here trying to convince you to give me more rum and haven’t been dissuaded by your refusal just yet.”
That made him crack a smile and he leaned forward and said so quietly she almost didn’t hear it above Grenn’s growling vocals, “You aren’t going to convince me unless your brother—”
“Unless her brother what?”
Jon had arrived and thrown his arm over Arya.
“Hello Jon,” she said, standing on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek.
“She’s trying to get a rum and cola off you,” Gendry said.
“Lame face. I was going to tell him that,” Arya sniped at him.
“Of course you were,” said Gendry dryly.
Jon snorted. “Get her a rum. But it’s her last one, ok?”
“Sure thing,” said Gendry, raising a glass from under the bar in a salute to Jon. Arya stuck her tongue out at both of them.
“Why’d you come over if you are going to be no fun?” she demanded, shoving Jon playfully.
“I wanted to make sure the bartender wasn’t pulling any funny business with you,” Jon said.
“Oh Jon,” she sighed dramatically. “This is Gendry. He’s the one I’m posing for. He wouldn’t try any funny business here of all places.”
She smiled at Gendry who was pouring cola into her glass, and adding a slice of lime. He wasn’t looking at her, focused intensely on the mixing in front of him. And when he handed her the drink, she had the distinct impression that his smile was a bit forced.
“Thank you,” she said cheerfully, taking a sip out of the thin red straw. The rum slid down her throat and into her belly, warming her completely.
“Of course,” replied Gendry, before turning to help another customer.
Arya followed Jon back to the table, happily sipping her rum and cola and wondering if she would be able to convince Jon to let her at least have a beer after this.