Work Text:
The winter is harsh and bitter and drags on and on. It’s the worst, the wise women say, the worst to ever hit them since the Age of Heroes, mayhaps. The sickness comes with hatred and kills Princess Sansa’s son all the way in Casterly Rock; Arya tells him when she gets the letter and her eyes are red from holding back tears of grieve. He remembers little Jaime, only two, with golden hair and blue eyes and a shy smile, and he pounds at the steel to forget he once held the babe high over his head and twirled him around under Lord Lannister’s eyes much to the child’s delight.
Princess Myrcella Martell comes second and he cries for the not-sister he might’ve had, had things turned out different. Arya brings him soup and onions and a small, dry lemoncake she baked herself that’s too toasted on the left and is a bit raw on the inside, but he eats it all the same because she kind of smiles like a maiden and her cheeks are painted pink with a fresh blush. He tells himself it’s from the wind, ‘cause it’s easier that way.
He falls victim of the fevers too and it claws at his chest with watery sounds. He hears voices over him, voices that sing to him the old songs his mum would sing while tucking him to bed or while trying to comb his hair before rushing to the ale house or welcoming a man in her bed. They’re old, unfinished songs she had learnt at her mother’s knees, and he remembers her singing them to him over and over again, until he’d sing them while braiding her hair or while holding her hand when she was much too sick to open her eyes. His mum’s been dead for a long time, he knows, he’s no fool, and hearing her again only means one thing.
He feels small hands grabbing at his shoulders and the bite of frozen water when someone tries to clean him up a bit with a piece of old cloth. He thinks perhaps the kitchen maid with the yellow hair and the grey dresses is trying to keep him alive and he wishes she wouldn’t, ‘cause there’s much need of her in the castle, where people huddle close together and try to keep warm at night. Arya used to sleep with her sister, he remembers her telling him, but now she must sleep with her two maids, he thinks.
It’s not so bad, the numbness, but he wakes up at last to a strange bed and someone’s hand over his own. Arya’s by his side in a purple dress and bundled up in furs and he smiles at the thought of having thought her the maid with the yellow curls.
His head hurts and his throat is sore and every limb in his body feels heavy and warm, but he’s alive, which is something, and the Maester says the worst is over. Arya smiles at him and tries to nurse him back to health as best she can. She even sits by his side, with the fire blazing hot, and works on her stitches, doing needlework, sewing shirts and cloaks and coats to dress the children of the castle and the nearby village. He’s weak, too weak to sit or eat anything but watered down broth, but Arya cradles his head and feeds him small spoonfuls of potato and onion soup.
Arya comes to him on the eve of a full moon with tears in her lashes and trembling hands and sobs on his shirt while he strokes her hair.
“She lost the babe,” she croaks, “Meera lost the babe.”
The King’s heir was dead in the Queen’s belly and she birthed a stillborn that had choked on the mother’s cord, she tells him, and it’s the third child the Queen has lost. He remembers them, the one who didn’t quicken in her womb and the one who died a fortnight after coming to the world. It seems that winter takes everything that they hold dear and the next one could very well be Arya. It could have been him, had he not been built like a bull, Arya cries.
They could very well die on the morrow, he knows, no matter that the Others are slain and the wars have ended. They could die on their beds with frozen fingers and blue feet. Arya must be thinking the same because her fingers tighten on his shirt and she leans forward, her head only inches from his. Her eyes are the sharpest grey he’s ever seen, a pool of steel, the blade of her sword and the horns of his helmet. She’s unlike Princess Sansa, who’s all soft curves and pretty smiles, and she’s unlike the Queen in the North, who is more a spirit than anything. No, Arya is a true Princess of the North in her own right, with the sweet wilderness of a snowfall, cold and pretty and familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.
He lets his hands travel to her waist of their own accord and the furs that cover him fall to his lap. The forge is hot and dark and the smell of ashes and sweat lingers everywhere. He’s missed it, all this time he’s been at the castle, sick with fever, and now that he’s back he relishes in the small tasks he must do everyday: fix horseshoes, make tools, chains…
Arya rests her hands on both sides of his face and her thumbs caress his cheekbones. Her lips graze his, softly and much too quick for him to enjoy, as if she’s not sure of what she’s supposed to do, and he smiles to himself at the way he can feel her heart beating against his own chest and how her skin smells faintly of neroli and wool. He presses his lips to hers, lets her feel his skin against hers, lets her get used to it, to the burning inside her belly, to the crackles of the air on her arms, to the quiver of her legs and the pounding of blood on her wrists and on her ears. She’s fast at adapting, though, and as patient as a hungry cub, and she tugs at his hair, asking for more.
He gives it to her, of course; he moves his lips against her own, he bites at her lower lip, licks the upper one, suckles on her tongue, runs his teeth over it, his tongue on the roof of her mouth. She makes all these little noises that have him hard in an instant and she’s wanton and wild, rubbing herself on his lap even if she doesn’t realise she’s doing it. He’s not about to stop her, not when her thighs clench around him where she’s straddling him and her bum presses tight against his legs when she comes. There’s a silent scream on her throat that he swallows and then their resolve snaps —everything that’s been holding them back (their duty, their honour, everything, from her being a princess and him being a bastard blacksmith to the fact he knew she’d be someone else’s soon enough) ceases to exist. There’s nothing, nothing, that can keep them from giving in.
She’s ready for him —she says so with bright eyes and such abandon in her voice that his fingers tremble when he uncoils her hair from her braid. She’s pale and thin under him and her flesh rises in goosebumps everywhere his breath hits her.
He lets his fingertips travel from her neck and over her breasts to her belly and then to the curls that cover the craddle of her thighs. Under there she’s pink and wet and warms and he prods carefully with just one finger, caressing the slit of her opening, parting the curled lips folded over her pearl. She gasps and her breath comes short out of her lungs, mixed with little mewls and high-pitched moans that tickle her throat. He’s throbbing inside his breeches, red and angry for her, but Arya is beautiful spread underneath him and he wants to keep her like that for a bit longer, memorise her before he tastes her. She feels sticky on his fingers and later on his tongue, sweet and salty as it sticks to the roof of his mouth and under his tongue. It’s hard to swallow, but he does all the same, and then he suckles on her lips and the little button at her apex like a babe at his mother’s breast. She clenches around his tongue, rides the pleasure away with the ondulating movement of her hips and he has to pin her down with his arms to keep her from falling off his small cot.
She’s flushed pink from her cheeks to her breasts, pretty and still high from all the pleasure. He strokes himself over his clothes to the sight of her legs spread open and her juices falling down the juncture of her thighs to his bed. She’s a princess of Winterfell being soiled by a bastard in a forge too dirty for her fair skin and all the while the night and winter surround them in a protective cocoon that they’ll have to leave in the morning; it’s the stuff of the songs he’s heard, Tom would sing it before pretty ladies to get them to warm his bed, except Gendry’s no bard and no true knight, even if he’s always Ser Gendry to everyone, even the King, and Arya is no regular princess, either.
But it’s more than enough, for she is his, somehow, even when his dirty fingers leave marks of black soot on her thighs when he goes to take her maidenhead, even when he licks at her throat to make her moan and howl like a wolf, even when he presses against her with every part of his body to feel her tremble against him when she peaks. She is his, like he’s always been hers.
He wakes up to find her still beside him, with her eyes wide open and her mouth trailing a path of warm, open-mouthed kisses down his neck.
“The sun came up a little earlier today,” she murmurs, “and a white raven came from the Citadel this morning. I saw it through the window.”
He doesn’t know what that means and it’s difficult to think because she’s naked underneath the furs and pressed against him in such a way that his cock rests between her thighs, making him blush as he hardens. She smiles against his skin and pushes him so she can straddle his groin.
“M’lady.”
He’s sure she’ll hit him, but she smirks in this wicked way she has that’s always made him want to take her over the Hall’s dais in front of everyone and he gulps down his own smirk. She takes his cock in her hand and his hands fly impulsively to her hips as she strokes him a few times and sinks down on him. She stays there, still as a statue, with a knowing look in her eyes ‘cause she knows what she can do to him, as he trembles underneath her and fights to regain some measure of control.
“Winter will be fading soon and Sansa wants us to go to Casterly Rock to visit her. She’s with child again.”
“Us?” he manages to ask.
“Their blacksmith is old and it wouldn’t be for another five months. Sansa likes you well enough and she says our chambers would overlook the sea. I’d bear you bastard boys named Eddard and Robert and little girls named Cat and Rose and you’d make swords for Sansa’s sons and I’d teach them how to use them properly. Bran wouldn’t say anything ‘cause he knows things, he sees them, and it would be just me and you and Nymeria in the forge and sometimes Sansa and Tyrion could come too with their babes.”
He smiles and says, “M’lady,” and Arya bites her lower lip before calling him stupid and moves just so to make him gasp. He’ll take revenge on her, he will, bring her to the edge and deny her her sweet release. But not now, he’s too far gone, now, and he must abandon himself to the pleasure before he goes insane with this desire.