Work Text:
-2010-
The last thing she saw clearly was Bella’s wicked grin, as the door slammed with a firm click. Then - nothing at all. Only darkness.
A cough and two awkwardly shuffling feet from - from somewhere behind her, Arya couldn’t really be sure of the exact spot - made her turn carefully.
As usual, the source of the muted noise read her mind.
“Um. It’s -“ Gendry mumbled. “Didn’t expect it to be so dark in here.”
She laughed nervously and attempted to move in the direction of his voice - promptly tripping over nothing and colliding with a rogue hanger.
“Yeah, well.” She blinked in annoyance and rubbed her brow. “No windows.”
Her hands - still grass-stained from practice and raised in front of her, as if she were approaching a tiny animal - finally met the soft wool of the coat she’d been looking for. She took a tentative step to the left and perched herself on the stool in the corner of the closet.
She picked at a loose chip of wood while she tried not to picture their collective siblings, waiting with ears pressed against the door and bated breath.
“So,” he said.
“So,” Arya mocked - her most natural, defensive reaction. “You gonna sit?”
“Where?” he asked, like he asked most things - indignantly. Arya saw him scratch at his jaw, and she rolled her eyes.
“I don’t know, stupid. On the ceiling.”
She didn’t so much as see his glare, as she did feel it burning in the space between them.
“How long do you reckon they’ll make us stay in here?” he asked.
“Got somewhere to be?”
Gendry sighed.
“You’re acting all tough, but I can tell when you’re uncomfortable. Just admit it.”
“It’s not an act,” she huffed - trying her best to match his indignation. It was an unexpected challenge. “I am tough.”
Her words made the air change - she felt it. Somehow, she saw Gendry’s features soften, his (far too broad for seventeen) chest deflate, as he made his way to the floor.
“You know we don’t have to do anything, right?” he asked, like he rarely asked anything - carefully. Delicate, almost. “We can just wait it out. It’s only a dumb game. I should’ve never invited my sisters. They’re nothing but -“
He was rambling. He never rambled. He was uncomfortable, too - the stubborn bastard.
He kept going, trying his bull-headed best to put her at ease, but her mind was too busy reeling to pay attention, and the darkness, it - it did make her uncomfortable. He was right.
But it was also proving to be a tremendous help, if she was really going to bite the bullet here.
So, she bit.
“Have you ever?” she interrupted him.
He was confused. She could tell - could only just make out the silent question in his brow.
“Kissed someone,” she added quickly.
“Have I ever…kissed someone,” he parroted slowly.
Wistful little Arya always thought she and Gendry could do anything in the world together. This conversation was proving her theory to be wildly off-base.
“Forget it,” she murmured.
“Why are you asking? You know I have.”
She didn’t bother suppressing her snort at that - hoping, praying that he couldn’t see through to her instant disappointment.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Like you’re some Maiden’s gift to -“
“Because I went out with Beth? Last year?” he prompted. Half-exasperated, half-amused.
“Oh.”
She had known that, actually. It wasn’t her fault for forgetting, though. It wasn’t as though they…talked about this kind of thing, ever.
Their friendship was skipping last period on Fridays, and skateboarding behind the diner, and drawing on each other’s faces when one of them fell asleep during Doom reruns.
Their friendship was not acknowledging the existence of other perfectly lovely girls that may or may not have had their mouths anywhere near Gendry’s, at any point in recent history.
Their friendship certainly wasn’t discussing how one day - out of seemingly nowhere - Arya woke up wanting to be one of those girls more than she’d wanted anything else in her fourteen years on Earth.
“Arya?”
Shit. He’d asked her a question. And - yes, confirmed. They were still locked in her parents’ coat closet.
“Sorry. What did you say?”
“Have you ever?”
“Oh,” she said - for the second time in what had to have been hours. “I… Yeah. Once. It was… Ned kissed me after homecoming. This year.”
“Ned Dayne?”
Gendry really, really disliked Ned Dayne. Always had. Arya never really understood why. He was nice enough.
“Yes, Ned Dayne.” She shifted to tuck her leg under her where she sat - more of an excuse to move, to shake out her discomfort, than anything. “It wasn’t…that great,” she said, since - evidently - she felt the need to explain. “I haven’t really been in a rush to try again.”
She left the ‘until now’ part out. It was looking more and more like it wasn’t going to get its moment.
“‘Wasn’t that great,’ how?”
Arya exhaled.
“Awful breath. And a bit, um.” She looked up. “Overeager. With his tongue.”
Her head fell level again when she heard him hum in reply, and there the air went again - changing between them. Not in a way she recognized, this time.
“Why are you asking?” he repeated.
Well. If he had to ask that, there obviously wasn’t a point to any of this, was there? There was no way to know for sure, but she suspected her cheeks were an unparalleled shade of red.
Someone - probably fucking Rickon, who should’ve been in bed an hour ago - wolf-whistled outside the door, in a gross misinterpretation of their near-silence.
“Just curious.”
“Nah, that’s not it.” He scooted toward her from his spot on the floor - stopped when he was close enough to grab her dangling foot. He tugged it once, playfully. “You wanna kiss me.”
Gods, she was lucky it was dark. Hadn’t he just made a fuss about wondering how long they’d be trapped there? Told her that they didn’t have to do anything?
Like, yes, she absolutely did, but did he have to be so smug about it?
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice trembling slightly, along with her resolve. “Maybe.”
He predictably said nothing - like he hadn’t expected her to admit it, or like he was thinking it over, or like he’d…passed out with his eyes open. Whatever the reason, it was far from reassuring.
“Everyone my age has already had a good kiss,” she continued - to fill the silence. “And I’m getting tired of hearing about it, honestly, so I just was gonna see if you would.” And in case it really wasn’t apparent: “Be my good kiss,” she clarified.
She had butterflies in her stomach from all of the vulnerability, and it was utterly unclear to her how people said these sorts of things in broad daylight.
In any event, Gendry was rising onto his knees - probably moving to stand and walk swiftly away from her - and the butterflies morphed into a stomach-churning regret.
Until he wasn’t moving to stand at all, but was instead kneeling before her at eye-level. Until the warmth from his palms swirled across her lower thighs. Until he was actually - finally - close enough to read, and -
“Oh,” she whispered. Big night for ‘oh,’ apparently.
He leaned toward her so slightly that she might have missed it, if not for how intensely she was dialed into his every move. They had never been this close on purpose before. Someone outside the closet was yelling at them to ‘get a bloody move on,’ but her best friend’s breath was caressing the lower half of her face, so forgive her for needing to take every single remaining second to figure out what the fuck was going on.
Gendry’s eyes were closing, and Arya realized - right then - just how wholly unprepared she was to kiss him. She hadn’t actually thought this far. Was he bluffing? Maybe she was meant to slap him away. They’d played chicken once when they were eleven and fourteen, and she’d wound up pushing him in the pool.
That was firmly before she’d noticed how pretty his eyes were, though.
The butterflies were going positively insane now, and the idiot still hadn’t even spoken, which was how she knew he was serious when he fully did it.
He kissed her.
Where Ned’s clammy hands had gripped her waist a bit too tightly, Gendry’s were solid and assured - one still on her leg, the other cupping her cheek. Where Ned’s lips had been frantic and unpracticed, Gendry’s were surprisingly soft. Her eyes fluttered closed, as she did her best to melt into it, into him, because it would be over soon, and it was all so sweet, and slow, and -
Good. It was so, so good.
The tips of her feet had hooked around the backs of Gendry’s thighs at some point, and the gentle movement of his thumb across her cheekbone weirdly made her want to cry. Almost. Instead, she brought a limp hand from her side to the nape of his neck - burying her fingers in his hair.
Something she’d been aching to do for ages.
Gendry’s tongue had just tentatively traced the seam of her mouth, when a choir of pubescent voices screamed at the door about their time being up.
Only a dumb game, she thought.
It took everything Arya had to withhold the whine that threatened to escape her, when he let her go and rested his forehead against hers. His breath - shaky, which was actually a bit comforting - landed against her still-wet lips, and yes. She would definitely be needing more time to process all of this.
“How was that?” he asked.
A lot more time.
-2020-
“Meera, darling,” Poe slurred around a massive gulp of wine, “you can’t keep picking truth every single time.”
“You lot are so full of shit!” Meera laughed. “If I pick dare, you’re just gonna make me flash my tits.”
“Will not,” Theon chimed in from where he was sprawled across - slumped over, really - the arm of the sofa.
“Will, too.”
“Go on. I’ll prove it,” Pod challenged.
Low music thumped through the speakers in Arya’s living room, and she glanced over at Gendry. They shared expectant eye contact - already prepared for what was about to happen.
“Fine.” Meera seemed prepared, too - for what it was worth. “Dare.”
Only the word ‘flash’ had left Pod’s mouth before he was assaulted with a throw pillow.
“Okay, okay,” he surrendered through cackles. “Lady Stark. Your turn.”
Arya furrowed her brow.
“The fact that my sister isn’t here doesn’t give you permission to call me Lady Stark.”
“Truth or dare, pipsqueak,” Theon declared - inciting a noise of interest from Alys, as she returned from the kitchen.
Arya considered her options for a moment. She looked to Gendry for assistance, but promptly remembered his disdain for games when she clocked the scowl on his face.
“Dare,” she said.
Gendry mumbled something about needing to use the loo. He always seemed to make himself scarce when it was her turn, she dimly noticed.
Arya glanced back at Pod, and his eyes were sparkling in a way that she did not appreciate.
“I dare you,” he started - pausing for dramatic effect, “to kiss Gendry.”
She snorted.
“That’s it?” She downed the rest of her wine and set aside the glass. “I’ve kissed Gendry before.”
She had, after all - technically. It had been a full decade, but it certainly had happened.
Had they ever kissed again? No. Had they ever spoken about it? Once - or maybe twice. The timing had just never been right for them, she supposed. Uni, and work travel, and whole entire other relationships always loomed overhead, and honestly - that was perfectly fine with Arya.
The kiss had served its sole purpose, anyhow. She’d been able to check something off her fourteen-year-old bucket list, Gendry had done her a solid, and the whole thing had given her a great barometer for future experiences.
(More than great. Incredible, really. But that was neither here nor there - he hadn’t felt the same, so they hadn’t done it again. Plain and simple.)
“I remember that,” Theon said into the couch cushion.
“And I missed it? When was this?” Pod asked - with an interest that Arya was hoping would fade soon, since Gendry was already returning to the circle.
“It was, like, ages ago,” she said, trying her best to deflect. She didn’t mean to catch Gendry’s eye, but she did anyway, when she added: “In a coat closet. On a dare.”
His face blanched with recognition, at the same time that Pod’s positively lit up with glee.
“Delicious,” Alys said into her next sip. “I think you just sealed your own fate, Stark.”
“Oh, no, we can just-” Arya protested quickly, at the same time that Gendry sat up in a mild panic.
But it was too late.
“Up you get,” she heard Pod command Gendry, as Meera unceremoniously hoisted her up by the underarm, onto her feet.
She barely had a chance to register what was happening, before she was being whisked down the hall toward her bedroom. A feat of pure drunken strength evidently enabled the boys to pull Gendry from his seat. His heavy footsteps and loud protests - that they’d spilled his fucking wine, that he was not doing this - were not far behind her.
With a swift smack to her backside, Arya was shoved through her bedroom door - spinning around just in time to catch Gendry by the wrist, as he fell in after her. He shrugged her off like she’d burnt him - turning instantly back around to shout his objection.
She unconsciously clenched the fist of the hand he’d rejected - willing herself not to take it personally.
The familiar click of the door - followed by the rather unnecessary sound of something being jammed up against the knob - made the dissent die on his lips. His shoulders sagged, and he raised his forearm to lean against the wall.
(She wasn’t taking it personally. She wasn’t.)
“Déjà vu, or what?” Arya asked, around what she hoped was a nonchalant-sounding laugh.
Gendry cleared his throat and slid his fist down in defeat.
“I fucking hate this game,” he said.
Arya swallowed nervously. Seemed like she’d have to be the one to take the reins this time.
“Well,” she started, “nothing we haven’t done before, I guess.”
“Yeah.” He finally looked at her then. “Except I’m pretty sure that time was just an elaborate excuse for my sister to snog your sister.”
“And look at them now,” she tried, offering a slight smile.
He did not reciprocate. He opened his mouth - seemingly preparing a response - but promptly closed it again. The irritation remained, blazing in his eyes.
“So,” she tried again, stretching the word across the space between them. “I guess we should just…”
Gendry blinked - like he’d already, somehow, forgotten why they were there.
“Just what?”
“Um.” Arya chewed on her lip and bit a bullet she hadn’t touched in a decade. “Kiss?”
She’d been smaller back then - quicker, nimbler - so she’d dodged it with ease. This time, it pierced every layer of her flushed skin.
“No.”
Her face was on fire. The embarrassment, the raw vulnerability - that part was familiar. She remembered it all too well.
The pain was an unwelcome addition, though.
Arya fiddled with the hem of her shirt.
“No?”
“Yeah, it’s not -“ Gendry huffed and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t think it would be good.”
She knew she’d done a shit job at keeping her face from falling when she saw his eyes widen.
“A good idea,” he corrected through slightly gritted teeth.
Maybe she could understand that perspective, actually. She had been drinking. But it hadn’t been that much, and it wasn’t exactly like she was running for the hills here, so -
“I’m not that drunk,” she offered. “You wouldn’t be taking advantage, if that’s what you’re -“
“It’s not.”
She jumped slightly at his tone. Sharp - like the bullet she’d bitten. “Oh. Then why wouldn’t it be -“
She jumped again, and so did he, at the sound of a firm slap against the door.
“How’s it hangin’, lovebirds?” came Pod’s voice from the other side of the wall. “Need more time?”
“Shut up!” Arya found herself shouting. She did need more time - not for that, though.
She took a careful step toward Gendry, who seemed to be attempting to melt into the wall.
“Why wouldn’t it be a good idea?” she tried again, feeling emboldened by…something. The wide-open hole in her chest, maybe.
Until one more pace forward made Gendry step to the side and brush right past her, effectively maintaining their distance, and you know what? Sue her.
She was taking it personally.
“Right,” she said to the empty space in front of her. “It’s me, then.”
The control in his exhale made her turn again to face him, and he almost looked more disgusted with himself than he apparently was with her, and when had he ever walked on eggshells like this before? Gendry crushed eggshells - shattered delicate things into millions of pieces.
He stood still and considered her.
“No, it’s not -“ he started. “Arya, I’m… You’re… This is -“
He never was one for an explanation longer than a few short sentences, but really - if it wasn’t her, then what was it? If it wasn’t her, why did she feel like one of his shattered, delicate things?
Gods, wine made her melodramatic.
“Look, just -“ It was her turn to release an exasperated breath. “Just kiss me,” she managed. “So they’ll let us the hell out of here.”
It was like he was trying to stare directly into the sun, the way he looked at her - his eyes never landing on one spot for too long. And wine made her melodramatic, but it also made her warm, and maybe she was the fucking sun, because she suddenly felt far too scorching for such a small space.
She had no business wondering if his lips had somehow become softer over time.
Unbidden, the memory of a roughened thumb tracing her cheekbone flashed through her mind, as Gendry’s gaze before her dialed up in intensity. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think that his inexplicable resolve was cracking, but there was no way - no way he was looking back on that faraway night with the same sudden longing.
She’d danced around it, back then. Given him a coy ‘maybe,’ and watched the ball bounce over to his court. But she was older now. Confident, and composed, and sure - of a lot of things, but of one main thing, in that moment.
He was wrong. This was an excellent idea. And the flickering in his stare made her fairly certain that, deep down, he would agree.
“Gendry,” she said. “Kiss me.”
He made a decision to which she was not privy - a feeling she wasn’t quite used to. She could only tell he’d made up his mind about something, when he breathed in slow, flared his nostrils, regarded her with a brand-new depth, as he took three steps toward her.
One, two, three, and he was there. Close enough for her to see the tear in his collar and the storm in his eyes. Close enough for her to feel his next slow breath ghost across her face.
“I didn’t… Um. I didn’t mean to suggest that. Before,” he said. “That it wouldn’t be…good.”
She reached out a hand on impulse - laid her palm flat against his chest.
“Hey, no, I know that. It’s fine.”
He reached for her right back, gently closing a hand around the small of her waist, and no - she was definitely not imagining the erratic tempo of his heartbeat.
“I only meant that this is…” He trailed off - perhaps not meaning to make her shudder at the subtle slip of his fingertip under her shirt, but being altogether successful anyway. “You deserve more than this,” he said, eyes roving around the room.
Years’ worth of contempt for people claiming to know what she deserved went soaring out the window. Suddenly, she couldn’t think of anything she’d rather discuss.
“And what exactly do I deserve, Gendry?” she asked, and she couldn’t believe how close. Whether her hypothesis was proven right - that the softness of his lips had, in fact, stood the test of time - or not, they were well on their way to proving one thing or another.
“So much,” he said, almost reflexively, bending his neck slightly to move impossibly closer. “And I don’t… You’re you, and I… I mean, can I please just -“
Arya was vaguely aware that she was already nodding, and she sort of wished she were sitting like the last time, because there was no way her knees weren’t -
“Oy!” Pod barked from the crack below the door. “Hickey, or no dice!”
It sounded like Alys and Meera - bless them, but fuck everyone, generally - were trying to drag him back down the hall, but it mattered none. Gendry froze beneath her palm - his callous resolve returning in spades, as he pulled away from her. Like she’d been on fire after all.
“Fuck. No,” he bit out, shaking his head. “I’m not doing this.”
“Gendry,” she started, ashamed at the slight desperation in her tone, “forget about him. They’re just -“
“Arya,” he interrupted. He looked at her - just looked at her - for one more steady beat, before he stormed toward the door. “Joke’s over, assholes,” he yelled, banging his fist on the wooden panel. “Open the door.”
“Sorry, Waters!” came Pod’s intoxicated laugh. “I need to hear lips smacking!”
“Just ignore him,” Arya said, resigned to the fact that this was not happening. Back squarely in best friend mode. “Just sit. We can wait it out. We don’t have to do -“
“Open the fucking door, Pod!”
His bellow - one she often forgot he was capable of - had clearly stunned the people outside the room, just as much as it had the one inside. Chair legs faintly scraped across the floor, and the door soundlessly swung open on its hinges.
Gendry wasted no time striding away, past their shell-shocked cohort of friends. If Arya hadn’t been too busy figuring out how best to kill all of them for putting her through this, she might have stopped to admire the way his back muscles rippled through his thin t-shirt.
She avoided any and all eye contact, rushing down the hall to find Gendry furiously lacing up his shoes. He appeared rather out of breath for such a quick walk.
“I’m gonna go,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “I can’t… Yeah.” He tied one final knot, and stood, and towered over absolutely everything in the room. His chest rose and fell sharply, and he cleared his throat. “I’ll see you.”
He left his words and his rage and her speechless form behind without a second glance, and Arya could distinctly remember the last time she’d prayed for invisibility.
She was fourteen - in denial, and unworthy, and unwanted.
She laughed. It was all she could think to do, while inside she screamed at her friends to stop looking at her like someone had kicked Nymeria.
It didn’t feel right coming out of her mouth, though, and she spun on her heel to retrieve more wine from the fridge. Tense shuffling replaced the raucous laughter from just ten minutes - had it only been ten minutes? - before.
She heard dainty, socked feet enter the kitchen behind her.
“Hey,” Meera said. She reached around to remove the bottle from Arya’s hands, placed her hands on either shoulder. “That was really, really shitty of us. I’m sorry.”
Arya smiled softly. “Definitely went better the first time. Should’ve just let it be, I guess.”
“Well,” Meera offered with a toothy grin, “one more glass of wine, and let’s say you and I give it a shot, hm?”
Arya laughed again - truer this time.
“In your dreams.”
It made no difference whether she had one drink or one too many drinks. After nights spent anywhere near alcohol, Arya always woke up long before she should.
She cursed the same bumpy spot on her bedroom ceiling that she always did, and tapped blindly at the screen of her phone on the nightstand. 4:03. And not the fun, ‘almost the end of the workday’ kind.
She let her barely-there hangover carry her to the bathroom in search of some aspirin, then promptly to the kitchen for some coffee. She knew better than to try going back to sleep - she’d only wake up an hour later, both grumpier and hungrier than she already was.
Best to just quit while she was ahead.
She was glad to have ultimately sent everyone home, she mused while the pot brewed. They had all kindly offered to stay on her couch, to keep her company - everyone but Theon, actually, who had seemed pretty oblivious to any of the night’s events. But Arya knew herself, and she knew she needed her morning.
Just her and the sun - who were decidedly not the same entity after all, considering how cold she’d felt from the moment Gendry had walked away, mere hours before.
Burrowed under a blanket, coffee in hand, she flipped on the news and stared emptily at the screen. Someone had died - some politician her father had always hated. The anchors were paying their respects and speaking - with very little authority - about the fragility of life, and Arya’s coffee was boiling as it slid down her throat.
Before long, her eyelids got heavy again, and she was reminded of why she hardly ever drank her coffee warm. Too placating, like its own wool blanket, especially on mornings like this. It would have been easy to surrender and sleep the rest of the day away, but the dull pounding in her head wouldn’t allow it.
It felt like a fist banging on a wooden door.
She tore herself from the couch, padded leisurely toward the kitchen, already daydreaming about the perfect ratio of ice to coffee, hoping the chill would be the shock that her system needed, when -
Bang, bang, bang.
Had it really been the pounding in her head, or had someone been knocking this entire time? At… 4:57 in the morning?
Arya abandoned her task and walked back through the soft beams of light beginning to trickle onto her floor from outside. She muted the television on her way, wrapped an arm instinctively around her middle, and cracked open her front door.
He looked beat. Like he could have told her he’d stood right there, in that exact spot, all night long after he left, and she would have wholeheartedly believed him.
“Hey,” she said - the question obvious in her still-raspy voice. She realized only then that she hadn’t spoken a word since waking.
“Hey,” Gendry said on an exhale.
They blinked at each other.
“Do I have to ask you what you’re doing here so early, or are you gonna tell me?” Arya asked.
He looked at her like he did sometimes - like he was scared to break her, like she was something other than what she really was.
She wasn’t sure she could handle another one of those conversations.
“You’re always up early,” he said. “After you drink.”
And that tore it, honestly. The sun was still hiding, and he had his too-large hands shoved into his too-small pockets, like he was making some sort of humble gesture, showing up here unannounced.
Since he’d clearly given this very little thought, she blurted out the first thought that came to her.
“You’re so annoying.” She purposely avoided his piercing stare. “You can’t just…” She turned her head to the side, shook it in disbelief. “You’re dangerous, do you know that? Knowing everything about me, walking around like that -“
He stepped over the threshold. “Like what?”
“- reducing me to this -“
The door clicked shut. “No, stop, you look -“
“- and what the fuck was that even about last night, Gendry?” Her volume was rising, and her voice was shaking. “You humiliated me.”
“Is anyone here?” he had the audacity to ask.
“No, stupid.” She regarded him briefly, which was a mistake, to say the least. Turned out iced coffee wasn’t the shock her system needed, after all. “If there were anyone here, I wouldn’t be -“
He stepped toward her, and somehow, she’d missed him toeing off his shoes. Had he even come in shoes?
“I never finished my question.”
He walked closer, walked her farther into the room, until she collided with the back of her armchair. She’d been fully intent on leaving him out here, maybe guiding him through an awkward apology before announcing that she was off to bed and he could queue up a documentary if he wanted to stick around, but she had no choice now. Nowhere to go.
“What question,” she mumbled - something warm and liquid beginning to coil deep in her stomach.
The last thing she saw was the crisp white of Gendry’s shirt, before she had to give up - had to close her eyes - because he was so much. She felt him lean in and deliberately nuzzle the hair above her temple, and she still had so much she wanted to say, but whatever his question was - the answer was already formed in her mind.
“Can I please…please,” he emphasized, “show you? What you deserve?”
She was nodding again, through the whole question, while the rest happened in three distinct moments. One hand spread above her pelvis, climbing up the short length of her. Another shifting her hair behind one shoulder, unveiling her bare neck.
And soft lips - a proven hypothesis - descending onto hers.
It stayed soft for approximately six seconds - like her chapped lips had been the shock he’d needed. It would have seemed outrageous to Arya, to assume that he’d been wondering about them with any kind of interest, if not for the urgency with which he started to kiss her.
And, oh, was he kissing her.
She could barely keep up with the heaviness of his tongue or the crush of his body, but it was exactly how she’d imagined it. Exactly how she’d craved it, subconsciously, for so long. Her mind raced to catch up with the rest of her, and before she knew it, she was giving it right back to him. Clutching at his chest and bringing him lower, and lower, and lower.
Thank the gods for something to hold onto, because she was back where she was the night before - waiting for her knees to give out at any moment.
“Gendry,” she gasped when they parted next.
But thank the gods for his hands, too, as one found the edge of her shirt and lifted it up, and up - his palm practically spanning her entire torso.
His thumb brushing the underside of her exposed breast, before descending again.
His mouth tearing from hers to lick a stripe up to her pulse, swirl into the dip in her throat, lave there until she moaned more obscenely than she had any right to moan at such a tender hour of the morning.
“You’re every thought I have,” he mumbled into her skin, all but kneading her, and she thought he could mold her any which way, and she’d do nothing but stand there and take it. “And… Fuck, you’re so soft.”
Arya shivered at the heat of his breath, smelling faintly of the coffee that she was sure he’d mainlined on his walk over. That was the extent of the things she was sure about, though, as he let her go for a millisecond to angle her back, more firmly against the chair.
Every nerve ending under her skin sang the same note at once.
“So soft,” he said again, almost in awe, as his fingertips skimmed the waistline of her panties, and would you look at her - she’d found another thing to be thankful for. Chest heaving in front of him, not wearing pants under her oversized sleep shirt. She’d have to start a gratitude journal.
“Do I…” she started, her voice just above a whisper. “Do I deserve to have these taken off?”
Because, apparently, she said those kinds of things now.
Gendry smiled into her neck and barely held back a moan of similar indecency. He answered in a way that was simultaneously precedented and unprecedented. Without words - a given, of course - but with his thumbs hooked around the elastic, pulling the garment down to pool at her ankles.
There was no roadmap out of these woods they were in, but she was a wolf - she’d do just fine.
“You,” he grunted. “You have no idea how…long I…” He punctuated the word with a slow swipe, parting her folds, and this - this was not sex. Sex was clumsy and weird and taking forever for anything good to build.
Sex was not already being soaked, feeling on the brink of something fatal, beginning to flutter around nothing - from one single finger.
“Me, too,” she managed. “I never thought - ah - never thought you’d…”
Gendry kissed the insecurity right out of her, like he couldn’t stand to hear her harp on her lack of value. He opened his mouth against hers at the same time two fingers slid inside her with no resistance, and she’d never need coffee again, as long as she had this memory.
Just as dawn was breaking, she was twenty-four - still in denial that this could possibly be happening, but worthy. And undoubtedly wanted.
Slowly forgetting her own name, too, if she was honest.
His fingers slipped back out, and he shifted forward suddenly to wedge a knee between her legs, until her lower half was almost entirely resting on his thigh. The friction made her vision blur.
“Will you…” he started, rocking his leg against her, eyes trained on the spot she was making on his grey sweatpants. His palms ran up her torso - leaving a cold trail of her in their wake - to play with her nipples. “Will you let me make you come like this? Just…just like this?” He flicked at her, until he was rolling two hardened beads between his fingers. “So I can see?”
“Gendry,” she said - half-crazed, but needing to say something. Anything at all. Anything to ground her, as he pushed his leg higher and faster, pulled at her so frantically that she nearly screamed.
Anything to save her from the embarrassment of being right there.
“Beautiful,” he urged. “You’re so beautiful.”
And with that, gods help her, she was flying - straight out of her body, into the sun that was just beginning to rise. It really wasn’t natural, the blinding intensity of it all. She clutched at his arm, as she rode it out, plummeting deeper over the edge at the thought that this - this was just from his muscled leg. Just from the sheer presence of him, looming above her, before she’d even seen all of him.
When all she’d felt was his cock jutting against her inner thigh, through worn cotton.
He was still thrumming at her chest when she opened her eyes, still drinking her in. The glisten in his stare told her she couldn’t possibly look as unkempt as she felt.
“You deserve to do that every day,” he told her.
Through the haze of the aftermath, Arya smiled - breathless.
“With you?” she asked, and she could see the moment is control eroded entirely - an unconscious tilt of his hips, a flutter of his eyelids.
“If you’ll let me.”
It was hardly conscious, the way she slid off of him - her legs reduced to jelly, making her grab onto his shirt again to keep steady.
Before she could talk herself out of it, she reached down to cup him through his pants.
“I’m not the only one entitled to good things, you know.”
Nothing about his tone - pleading, strained, a little bit raw - did anything to help her focus.
“I don’t…” he muttered, pressing forward into her hand. “I don’t have anything. With me. I don’t…do this. I don’t like doing this.”
She blinked in confusion, slipped her hand under the elastic, wrapped her fingers around him, and the heaviness - she raised her eyebrow.
“You seem to… Um. You seem to be enjoying it so far.”
“No. I mean, fuck… yes,” he managed, now thrusting purposely into her grip. A breathing contradiction. The scarlet on his cheekbones matched the wine stains she’d scrubbed off her teeth the night before. “I’ve just never… I’ve done this, but it’s never been… It’s never felt like this.”
“Tell me,” she said, running her thumb lightly over the wet tip of him, solid and warm in her hand. “Tell me that you know. That you deserve to feel like this.”
He finally ripped his hands from her chest to shrug his pants fully down his hips - reaching blindly for her arm, already turned half away from her. Presumably to lead them to her room.
But Arya did what she’d always done best when it came to Gendry - she stood her ground.
“No,” she said, pulling him in the opposite direction, around to the seat of her armchair, and he wasn’t even the one who’d come harder than they ever had before, so it tickled her that he still seemed so spellbound.
“I wanna take you to bed,” he groaned, as he fell onto the cushion with a push of her hand. The speed with which he grabbed at her hips, pulled her down to rub against him, skin on skin - it belied his protests.
She leaned over to nip at the shell of his ear.
“Well, I want you right here.”
For a long moment, he just looked up at her - disoriented, and rumpled, and the picture of early morning. With aching care, he removed a hand from her waist to cup her face, and if nothing else was the same between now and way back then, at least that was.
Déjà vu, she thought.
“Just - shit,” he grunted, seeming only then to notice that her cunt and his dick were thoroughly aligned, that she was already nudging him further, working to take him in. “Just as long as you keep kissing me.”
She wasn’t about to deny him of anything - not then, not ever.
On the umpteenth brush of their lips, he was almost completely nestled inside her, and the sleepy silence in the air was deafening around the sounds of their panting, and the angle - it was all so deep. His cock, and their sighs, and her ruinous love for him.
Arya’s vision started to spot.
“I’m clean, and I’m covered,” she mumbled against him, moving rhythmically now, hands splayed across his (far too broad for twenty-seven) chest. “Will you let me make you come like this?”
“Arya,” he panted. “I’m not gonna -“
“It’s fine.” It was beyond fine. “We’re not on a timer.”
He laughed on her next downstroke, and the wet slide, the friction was just this side of too much. Even in the frenzied mess of their movements, it felt like the best kind of salve to the wound she’d fallen asleep with. The way he needed her, the way he started to meet her halfway, even though she had him pinned down.
The way the filthiest sounds spilled out of him, like wine on the carpet.
Arya felt him start to twitch inside of her - felt her pulse start to spike for the second time.
“Arya, I’m gonna -“ he moaned against her throat. “I need to -“
She nodded - far too close to her own peak to soothe him - and let him guide them both over.
“Do you see now? Why I needed us to be alone?”
They’d made it to bed - eventually - and his tone was softer than Arya had ever heard it. She was boneless, and his hand was brushing her side with no real urgency, and when she looked back on that morning, she wasn’t sure if there was ever a definitive break in her pleasure.
Just constant, rolling waves.
“I’m gonna kill Pod. I really am,” she said drowsily.
“I was thinking of sending him something, actually,” Gendry countered. She breathed out a laugh over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. “What? Who knows how long I would’ve kept staring at you when you weren’t looking?”
“Oh. I noticed,” she said. “I just convinced myself you weren’t actually… You know. Thinking about that.”
She was aiming for casual, but something - some long-forgotten pain in her voice - must have triggered remorse.
“I’m so sorry,” Gendry whispered. “For last night, and for… this. Me. Taking so long.”
She smiled and rolled over to face him - pressed a kiss just above his heart.
“I know.”
The still-chaste caresses of his hands made his next words jolt directly south.
“Can I eat you out?” he asked. Like he was asking if she wanted to stop for ice cream on the way home from the cinema.
“What?” she laughed. “Aren’t you tired?”
“Exhausted.” A kiss to her temple. “Just for, like, twenty seconds?” Another - more lingering. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“You’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately,” she mused, tilting her head back to give him better access to her skin. “Should I be scared?”
The laugh he seared into her skin - devilish.
“Never,” he said. “But you wouldn’t believe the things I’ve thought about.”
“Gendry,” she laughed again - keened, more like - and she wasn’t scared with him, not ever, but this was one dangerous game.
“Please?” A slow line of kisses down the slope of her neck.
“I have a better idea,” she said. She swung a leg over his waist, pushed him flat on his back, and the unbridled shock and wonder and hope in his eyes -
It was hard to say who the real winner was.
“Truth or dare.”