Chapter Text
The moment he walked into The Peach, he saw her. Sansa’s text had been drunk. He saw that now. Gendry would never find himself in a place pumping club music and flashing strobe lights all over the place. He blinked hard, but it wasn’t a mirage.
It had been his instinct to be the knight in shining armor, but he could see now that was misplaced. He would always be misplaced. It had been easy to con his way into the club, but now that he was there, he felt more out of place than ever.
He was in his jeans and customary black t-shirt, with his even more out of place friend as his back up. Hot Pie seemed more transfixed by the bar than anything else. He hadn’t caught sight of them. Not like Gendry had.
Sansa’s flaming red hair was easy to spot. But it still wasn’t the first thing he saw. And everything clicked into place.
From that point until forever, Gendry was low. He had been able to fool himself for months, but he understood now. He understood as he watched Arya Stark dance in the middle of the dance floor, completely unrecognizable to anyone but him.
She was wearing black, but he knew it wasn’t from her own closet. Her shirt covered her stomach but was so lacy he could see her black bra. She was wearing a black skirt that shone beneath the lights. He suspected it was Margaery’s.
Up close, Arya’s eyes were coated with black shimmering eyeliner, her short hair waving to just above her shoulders. This wasn’t his best friend. This was Arya Stark, daughter of rich real estate developer Ned Stark.
Gendry’s heart broke. He made a quick turn towards the bar, grabbing Hot Pie’s shirt.
“We’re leaving.”
“What?” Hot Pie asked in dismay. “Why? Do you see the girls that are here?”
His heart gave another wrench.
“Yes, I saw,” Gendry said, having to shout over the mind-numbing dance music.
Gone were the band shirts and dallying with poor boys. And every heated word between them came rushing back.
“About time you got here.”
Gendry turned to see blue eyes piercing his own. He couldn’t remember the last time Sansa Stark had spoken to him. He stared at her dumbly. Her breath smelled like vodka and he couldn’t bear to look over to the dance floor again.
“I don’t see an emergency,” Gendry said darkly.
“You don’t?” Sansa looked genuinely confused. Her eyes flicked behind her shoulder and he couldn’t help but follow the gaze.
He grimaced, tearing his eyes away again. Sansa watched him.
“Looks like one to me.”
If you haven’t noticed,” Gendry said, “she hasn’t exactly been begging for my company lately.”
“Yeah, what's that about?” Sansa asked.
He had no answer for that.
“It doesn’t matter,” Sansa said, losing interest. “I need you to take her home anyway.”
“What?” Gendry asked, floored.
“Margaery knows about this party in Flea Bottom and we’re going.”
Flea Bottom never sounded like a party to Gendry, but what would he know. He only lived there.
“Your sister’s not invited?” he asked.
“I’m not stupid,” Sansa said coldly. “This whole thing was Arya’s idea, you know.”
Gendry tried not to flinch at her name.
“Tonight. The party. Here. Take her home, Gendry,” Sansa said. “Or leave her here. I’m sure you’d be perfectly willing to abandon your underage best friend where plenty of men would be willing to take her home with them.”
Even when drunk, Sansa was smart. He cursed how obvious he was and her attempt at reverse psychology because she was completely right. Of course he couldn’t leave her. No matter what happened.
Sansa turned to the bar to retrieve the drinks she ordered. She paused, feeling Hot Pie’s salivating gaze on her. She gave him a look before returning to Margaery.
Arya was still dancing.
“So what’s happening?” Hot Pie asked. Gendry rubbed his eyes. The lights were starting to give him a migraine.
“Call Lommy and have him give you a ride home,” Gendry said as he dove into the crowd of drunk and sweating stockbrokers.
“What?” he heard Hot Pie call out. “Why? Is that Arya?—“
But Hot Pie’s voice was lost in the crowd as Gendry edged closer and closer to the floor.
She caught him before he caught her. It had always been that way and he knew that would never change. He looked down to see his hands clasped in small black-polished ones.
He looked up to see her familiar stormy eyes. They weren’t so full of anger as they had been for the past week. But they weren’t anything else, either. They were just empty and gazing. She pulled him, backing onto the floor. He couldn’t deny her. He never could.
The bass was pounding even louder there. “What are you doing?” His voice was lost but she seemed to understand.
She pulled at his hands slowly to the beat and soon they were dancing like all the other couples on the floor. They weren’t grinding and thrusting violently at each other, but they were close, breathing on each other.
Her nails dug into his shirtfront. She wasn’t angry at him. He was sure of that. But she pulled and tugged at him aggressively. He finally recognized the look in her eyes. It was a look he hadn’t wanted to admit he had seen in himself.
She wasn’t letting go. Her arms wound around his neck. There was no space between them. She began to move and he wished that she would stop. He was starting to sweat and the friction between them was too much. His blood was starting to surge and he knew that she knew exactly what she was doing.
He hated her.
He grabbed her bare forearms, pulling her even closer to him, growling in her ear. “We’re leaving.”
Her smirk was cruel.
But he could hear what she said.
“Whatever you say.”
Her voice was cold, but she let him grab her hand and pull her small body through the crowd. She slid through easily but Gendry’s blood boiled at the looks she was getting from every red-blooded male in the place.
He couldn’t be concerned about where Hot Pie was or if he had gotten a ride home. He knew Arya and he knew this night was about to turn real messy real quick.
When they finally reached his car, Arya stopped short. She had always liked his restored Camaro before, but it had never seemed so intimate until this moment.
“Are you my designated driver now?” she asked mockingly.
“I don’t know,” Gendry shot back furiously. “Are you drunk?”
She didn’t say anything to that. He knew that she wasn’t. She never liked the taste. But his fury towards her was building so much he couldn’t say that driving was a good idea at that moment. She measured him glare for glare and he flung the door to the driver’s side open.
“Get in.”
A few moments passed, but finally Arya opened the door and slid in. They drove in heated silence for a few miles. Gradually the houses became more decent as they drove closer to her part of town. The distance between them was laughable to him when he thought about the literal distance between their districts.
The distance had always been there. They had just been too stubborn to see it.
“I’m sorry,” he finally said.
“You’re apologizing?” Arya asked in disbelief. It made him cold.
“I shouldn’t have been the one to pick you up,” Gendry said. “Sansa shouldn’t have abandoned you.”
Her silence told him how disappointed she was.
“It’s always like that,” Arya finally answered. “I don’t expect any more from her.”
“What were you doing?” Gendry couldn’t help but burst out. He cast a sideways glance at her. “And how you’re dressed—“
“I don’t recall you being my father,” Arya said coldly.
“You’re right,” Gendry said. “Sorry, m’lady. I had no right to speak to you in that matter.”
“Are you kidding.”
He was right. It was about to get messy.
You have no right to be sarcastic with me right now,” Arya said. “After everything that you did—“
“Everything that I did?” Gendry asked. It was all coming undone. “There was two of us there, Arya. What makes you think this is all my fault?”
She was finally looking at him. Really looking at him with all the passion that he saw in the club. He tore his eyes away from hers and focused on the road.
“This wouldn’t have happened,” Arya said. “This wouldn’t have happened if…”
He knew what she was saying.
“This wouldn’t have happened if what, Arya?” Gendry asked quietly. He felt her intake of breath at the use of her name. Both knew what neither of them had ever said or were ever willing to say.
Gendry slowed as he came to a stoplight. She hadn’t spoken for very long. Gendry looked over at her, sure that she would have sunk down into the seat and staring angrily away as she always did. Always stubborn like him.
But she always did this too. She always surprised him. It happened in an instant and he couldn’t stop her.
He wasn’t sure if he even wanted to.
Arya straddled him swiftly, kissing him furiously. Gendry was frozen in his seat, aware of the cars behind him, but mostly aware of Arya Stark in his lap. Her hand curled around his throat as her tongue thrust against his.
For a moment, he kissed her back. But she had pulled away, only staring at him. He heard a distinct car horn and she eased herself off of him, sitting back in her seat and buckling her belt.
Gendry accelerated quickly, his heart beating against his chest as his car jumped forward. He was sure he had missed the turn to her house. He just kept driving and felt her eyes looking at him questioningly. It could have gone that way. He could have just driven her back to her house and this could have all been forgotten, like it never happened.
That wasn't what he did.
His tires squealed as he pulled off to the side of the road and wrenched off his seatbelt, turning to look at her. What he wanted more than anything was what he couldn’t have. He knew that. But he just kept on staring at her.
Arya pressed her finger slowly to the trigger of her seatbelt. It slid away. She inched closer to him. His instinct to run, but his blood urged him different. The one thing he had been thinking of for so long he couldn’t remember not thinking of it.
But he couldn’t ask. He couldn’t wonder what was happening because it had already happened. The two of them had been a train wreck from the beginning. Arya loved a good train wreck.
Arya grabbed the front of his shirt, and pulled him into her waiting mouth. And finally he reciprocated. Her tongue was like fire against his and he balled her hair up in his fist.
When she moaned, he knew he had gone too far. And there was no going back now. He broke away breathless. Her hand found its way to his chest again and she shoved him. He took her hint and crawled into the back seat. She slithered into the back with him, kissing him hotly again. He gripped the back of her head and she shoved him on his back.
She crawled over him, her legs framing his hips. Before he knew what he was doing, he gripped hers, anchoring her to him. She pulled him up to meet her lips, her hips rolling against his. He groaned deeply into her mouth and she bit his lower lip savagely.
Her fingers dug into his belt.
“Arya,” he said haltingly, his fingers curling around hers.
“Do you want this?” she asked. “Or don’t you?”
“I…” She knew. He didn’t have to say but she was making him. She had known all along. “I’ve wanted this for a long time.”
“I know,” she said before capturing his lips again. He closed his eyes, surrendering his shirt as she pulled it over his head. Her nails scraped against his torso and he shuddered.
His hands eased up her back and she stilled, her eyes telling him to go on with it. His fingers found the zipper at the back of her shirt and eased it down before she tore it off.
It was the first time he had seen her so exposed, her skin milky and luminescent in just the light of the moon. His hand slid up her stomach and she went to work on his pants.
Her skirt was tight and constricting but it wasn’t before long that the both of them had no more layers to strip away.
She pulled down his pants. He almost felt the objection on his tongue but she silenced him with her own. And as much as his mind thought this was a bad idea, his body did not and she could see the evidence of that with her own eyes.
Her hand trailed down his stomach and he gasped.
He knew the way she was feeling. He knew that this was just another moment, another rising action in her life. He was just her entertainment for the night. She would be stupid not to know he would do anything for her and she was the one that always called him that. But for the first time, her eyes were soft, he and he was taken by surprise.
“I wanted this too.”
It was something he never thought she would say.
“Even though love doesn’t last.”
That was the last thing she said before they were joined and he shuddered again, his hands on her hips as she moved above him. She braced her hands against his chest. But once, she leaned down and kissed him, gripping his face as he trembled.
And not for the first time, he found her beautiful. No one else might have thought so, but there could never been anything as savagely wild and beautiful as she was, moving fluidly and brutally, her hand braced against his car window.
He hoped the mark from the condensation never faded.
When she finally collapsed against him, he was glad she didn’t move. She laid against his chest, their breathing in time with each other, mixed in each other’s sweat. For the once and only time, she would smell like him.
It was only a few blissful minutes before she peeled herself away from him. He knew that. It could only ever be that. She was Arya and he was Gendry and that was the way things were.
They drove in silence the rest of the way. He pulled into her drive and up to the big expansive mansion. He put the car and park and took in her visage.
She was dark, make-up smeared, hair in disarray, and once again, he reveled in how beautiful she was. He knew it would be a long time again before he saw her. She called him stupid but she was always the stubborn one. He would stare at her until she disappeared into her large house and closed the door behind her.
But she stayed seated for a few more minutes. He would have liked to think that she stayed for the same reasons that he did. She didn’t want to leave him like would never be able to leave her, even when she pushed him away. But he knew that was naïve. He couldn’t be that way anymore. Not when she had clearly made the decision that he knew she would always have to make in the end.
She was better than him and she didn’t have room in her life for him any longer. Especially after everything that had happened.
Arya exhaled and her fierce mask for the night had melted away.
She had tasted like chocolate and not a trace of alcohol.
She put her hand to the door handle and pulled it. She was half way out when she turned to him.
“If it wasn’t for the both of us, Jon would still be here.”
Arya got out of the car and closed the car door quietly behind her. He watched until she crepr back into her dark house and put his car back into gear, backing out of the driveway as he had done so many times before and driving away into the night.
All or nothing, it’s written in blood