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They scrambled over the rocks, Arya leading the way. The stone was slippery from the river’s spray, which misted over them too, a sweet relief from the beating sun. Springtime came to Dorne quickly, compared to the other realms, and it was already unthinkably warm. She was beginning to develop freckles, after months of constant burning.
“Where are we going?” Ned asked, nearly catching her ‘round the waist.
She slipped out of his grasp like an eel, like water. “You don’t know?”
She grinned and held out her hand as they mounted a boulder, and he took it without protest. Even though this was his home, he didn’t know it as well as she knew Winterfell and its surrounding lands, or even as well as she knew the lands around Starfall now. He’d been gone for a long time, longer even than her, and he was beset by his lordly duties constantly, to Arya’s frustration. Half the time when they were together she was the one showing him the interesting places she’d found.
He didn’t let go of her hand even when it was no longer necessary, but his grip was light. She supposed she didn’t mind.
“There are caves further down.” She pointed down the cliff face with her free hand. She’d found them the day before, while he was tending to a conflict between two of the lower houses. “Did you know?”
He squinted, shading his eyes with one hand against the glare of the sun on the water and stone. “Of course I knew.”
“Liar.” Arya cuffed him on the arm and took off running, jumping from stone to stone. She didn’t have to look back to know that there was a slightly pained expression on his face, or that he was following her, albeit more sedately. But he did not yell after her or tell her to stop. He never did. Her face broke into a grin he couldn't see.
It would take him a few minutes to find her. He wasn’t nimble like her, though he had his own kind of gracefulness, she admitted to herself when she saw him in Starfall’s training yard. She darted into the warren of little caves in the rock face.
“Arya?” she heard echoing off the walls. He was probably sticking his head in each cave as he passed.
“I’m in here!”
His steps became more sure until he rounded the corner, and then stuttered to a stop. “Arya?” he said, his half-breathless voice cracking.
She’d piled all her clothes onto the highest patch of dry rock she could find, and she stood naked before him. The setting sun was behind him, turning his hair into a shower of golden sparks and casting his face in shadow.
“Gods, Arya. You look…”
She shifted, setting her hands on her hips and rubbing one set of toes against the instep of her other foot.
“Indecent? Immodest? Unladylike?”
“Beautiful.”
He was always saying stupid things like that. Arya swallowed.
“Maybe those other things too. But in a nice way,” he added, and that was more like it. She grinned and bobbed on her toes.
“If it’s so nice, why are you all the way over there?”
He stepped closer and his features resolved into something less fuzzy. He was smiling, she could tell. In the dark his eyes looked more purple than blue, and behind him the mouth of the Torrentine rushed and roared.
“Is this why you brought me out here?”
“Does that bother you?” She chewed her lip. “I’m not a maid, you know.”
“That doesn't matter to me.” But he seemed remarkably flustered for a hero of the realm, and he kept his gaze above her shoulders. Well, for the most part.
“Are you a maid, then?” she teased, and oh, the look on his face. Seven hells, he was.
“I don’t think men can be maids,” he said, a little mulishly, and she grinned.
“Don't worry--that doesn't matter to me,” she echoed with a smirk and, placing her hands on his shoulders, pushed her lips up to his. His arms went around her to steady her. He was a very nice kisser, she had to admit, the press of his mouth firm but not intrusive, and with a playful tongue.
“Saving yourself for your lady wife, were you?” she murmured into his neck when she detached herself long enough to sink her teeth lightly into his earlobe.
His breathing was unsteady, to her great satisfaction. “There were more important things going on these last few years,” he said dryly. “War and winter and whatnot. Perhaps you noticed?”
Arya loosened the laces of his jerkin and slipped her hands underneath. The muscles there jerked under her touch. He was still wearing all his clothes, the idiot. “Yes, but now it’s spring.”
He sighed, but it wasn’t an annoyed sigh, not an Arya shut up sigh or an Arya in the name of the Seven I swear sigh or an Arya you’re just too much sigh. It was a good sound, a wanting sound. A yes Arya sound.
It was a slightly uncomfortable affair, him lying on the rocks with and her with stone under her knees, but they managed all right. Better than all right. He kissed her during and ran his hands all over her and he didn't mind being shown what to do, and the way he whispered her name when she took him into her turned her insides to water.
After, he laid his head on her belly and she traced patterns on his bare back. She fidgeted, restless, and part of her wanted to get up, keep moving, but the bigger part, the sillier, softer part, didn't want to dislodge his stupid head. The ends of his hair were damp and very fine between her fingers.
“Now that you’ve dishonored me, you’ll have to marry me, you know,” he said. “Otherwise I’ll be ruined.”
It was hard to tell sometimes when he was serious and when he was joking. “Is that so?”
“That’s what my septon taught me,” he said gravely, but she could feel his grin against her skin and relaxed, chuckling.
“I don’t think you’ll have any trouble finding a suitable match, Lord Dayne.” Her tone was deliberately light.
“I thought I might already have one.”
“A match?” For a moment her heart stopped. Then he poked her in the side. Oh.
She snorted. “Don't be stupid.”
“Is it so stupid?”
“Course it is. You’re the Lord of Starfall. You’ll marry a proper lady”--someone like Sansa, she thought but didn’t say, though the image of her sister by his side made her ache something miserable--“who will give you lots of golden-haired babes and sew favors for you with her ladies and she’ll look lovely and not sunburned all the time and it’ll be very boring and stupid.”
“I don't think I like that idea,” he said thoughtfully. “And if I’m the Lord of Starfall, I ought to be able to do whatever I like.”
Arya glared at the back of his head. “That’s exactly why you can't do whatever you like. A lord serves his people, not his own wants.”
“See? No one else would ever tell me such a thing. It's why I need you.”
She sighed. He could be as stubborn as stone, and he fixed his mind on the strangest ideas sometimes.
“I heard that,” he added mildly.
“See? You’d never survive being married to me. I’d be doing that all the time.” She kicked his shin for emphasis.
“I’d be happy to hear it every day for the rest of my life, if it meant a dream realized.”
“Your dreams are strange ones.” Arya fidgeted. The sun was setting; it was almost time to return to reality. The afternoon had only been a brief respite from his duties.
He turned to kiss her ribs where they jutted out. “Here, I’ll tell you a few more. There’s one with a lady who's always peeling red skin off her nose because she forgets to cover up when she goes out. She doesn't care much for knighthood and thinks water dancing is a far superior form of fighting. And another--in this one the lady and her lord rule side by side, him with his courtesies and fine words and diplomacy, and her with her brash voice and love for the smallfolk, and she has their hearts too, breeches and all.” His voice grew soft. “And sometimes there’s a little girl with brown hair and blue eyes, who loves to go riding and whose mother teaches her how to hold her sword correctly.”
The words plucked like unseen fingers at something vulnerable and soft inside her, something buried too deep to name. She yanked gently on his hair to dispel these feelings.
“You’ve thought a great deal about these silly dreams,” she said when she could find her voice.
His exhale ghosted across her belly, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. “It’s all I think about, when I’m not with you.”
“You fool,” she whispered, and she wasn't sure which of them she was speaking to.
“As long as you’ll let me be your fool,” he said, sounding absurdly content with the notion.
“Yes,” she said. “You’re mine.” And I'm yours.