Somewhere In Time

In the spirit of Gendrya Week and other Ship Challenges, I decided to try my hand at 5 days of Thanksgiving-related prompts for our favorite couple.

The prompts can be anything from canon-verse to modern au and are as follows: Football, Feast, Family, Tradition and Grateful.

If anyone wants to try it too, please share! You can never have too many Gendrya fics.

(These will also be posted on A03 under the name: MillysarusRex)

FOOTBALL

(Modern AU)

They’re playing shirts and skins.

It’s a Stark family tradition. Not the skins part—but football. Thanksgiving day is a whole affair. Everyone shows up at the Stark home in the morning for a light breakfast of fruits and various pastries, and play games, until dinner is served. 

They’ve done this every year for as far back as Arya can remember. Catelyn and Ned Stark have an open door policy: Everyone is welcome. So new faces come and go, as she and her siblings get older and friends—or in her brother Robb’s case, girlfriends—are made and lost. Some are constants, like Theon, who is more of an adopted brother than a family friend, or the Reeds—her father’s friend Howland and his children, Meera and Jojen. 

And then there’s Gendry. 

He’s been part of the family for five years now. She can still remember the day Robb and Jon brought him home. It was the Thanksgiving Arya turned eight and he’d been a kid they’d met while playing football in the park. When they learned that he didn’t have plans for the holidays, being in a group home one town over, it was a no-brainer. He’d been taken into the Stark family fold and has been there ever since.

Arya has always liked Gendry. He didn’t complain when she wanted to tag along with whatever plans he and her brothers had and never treated her like a stupid girl, even when Jon, who usually let her be, did. He was from the wrong side of the tracks—or so she’d overheard her mother saying once—and so he never put on airs or pretended to be something he wasn’t, which made him easier to talk to than half the boys at her school. She’d thought of him like a bonus brother.

That is, until now.

She isn’t sure how it happened—or when—but at some point in time, Gendry had grown up, or perhaps it’s Arya who’d grown up enough to notice.

They’re playing football, a Thanksgiving tradition in the Stark family, and as usual, it’s shirts and skins. Gendry is on the skins team, and Arya is trying very hard not to stare.

She’s the same age he was when they’d met—thirteen—and he’s eighteen, practically a grown man, though oddly enough, she doesn’t see her brothers as men, despite the fact that they're of a similar age to Gendry.

Arya is shirts—obviously—while Gendry is skins, which shouldn’t matter except that it suddenly, inexplicably does. He’s bent at the waist, hands on knees which are scraped up from a particularly nasty tackle at the start of the game, and his bright blue eyes are locked onto hers as they wait for Robb to hike the ball.

He’s panting a bit, breaths coming out in small puffs in the chilly November air, and she can nearly make out the goosebumps all over his skin. Even after five years of living in the north, clearly he’s still a southern boy at heart. It almost makes her want to laugh, but she’s far too distracted eying the way his abdominal muscles flex as he shifts his weight from foot to foot.

Despite her best intentions, she must be staring, because Gendry grins at her and waggles his eyebrows. Mortifyingly, Arya feels her face start to warm, and she’s grateful for the cold and the exertion of the game to cover up her sudden bashfulness. She’s never been easily embarrassed or flustered, and she’d certainly never been shy around boys, so why she’s acting like a simpering idiot over Gendry, of all people, is beyond her.

It irritates her and suddenly she’s scowling.

Gendry reads her frustration as an intimidation tactic and snickers. “Nice game face, lady Stark.” 

Arya rolls her eyes, ignoring the flutter of elation that his endearment—which she usually despises—suddenly elicits. She feels like Sansa, which is even more irritating, so she resorts to her usual sass. “Still better than that ugly mug.” 

She wonders if he knows it’s untrue because she’s heard her brothers teasing him over dozens of girls who have liked him over the years and on the deck, Sansa and her friends Margaery and Jayne keep stealing glances at him and giggling behind their hands.

Even Arya can’t help but appreciate the way the dark hair falling over his forehead makes his blue eyes pop or how the scruff he’s growing out makes him look like one of those rugged men on the covers of the books her mother loves.

Gendry laughs good-naturedly at her jab like he usually does, and it’s harder to ignore the little spark of pleasure this time. It’s always been like this between them—easy banter, comfortable teasing—but something about it feels different now, charged in a way she doesn’t quite understand. 

“You’re going down,” she snips, hoping she doesn’t sound nearly as breathless as she feels, but if he notices, he doesn’t comment.

Instead, he says, “Yeah right. I’m bigger than you,” and that makes her actually laugh in earnest.

“I’m faster,” she replies and then the ball snaps, and Arya proves it by catching the ball and rushing toward the goal. She dodges past Theon, cuts left around Jojen, and makes it three yards before someone wraps an arm around her waist and brings her down.

Air wooshes from her lungs as she falls to the ground, but at least her assailant manages to roll them so they take the brunt of the impact. They tumble for a moment, all limbs and cold grass, until she comes to a stop flat on her back with Gendry hovering over her.

And the world suddenly freezes. 

At this proximity, Arya can see flecks of gray in his eyes, can feel the warmth radiating from his skin despite the cold, can count every freckle scattered across his shoulders. It’s like he’s surrounding her: every hot exhale brushing over her face, the scent of sweat and boy filling her lungs in a way that shouldn’t be appealing but somehow is. 

They’ve never been this close—or if they have, Arya just can’t recall, and it has her heart galloping so loudly in her chest that she can only hope he doesn’t hear. A bead of sweat trickles off his forehead, landing on her clavicle, and if he were anyone else—her brothers, Theon, maybe even her father—she would shove them away, griping about how disgusting they were, but she’s frozen in place, her head only filled with Gendry, Gendry, Gendry.

“Told ya I was stronger,” he says, and the corners of his eyes crinkle as he grins. Arya finds herself staring at his mouth wondering what his lips feel like, if they’re soft and warm, or chapped from the cold. She wonders what it would feel like to lean up and brush hers against them. How he might react. 

But then he’s moving to his feet, yanking her up by the elbows and the spell is broken. She becomes painfully aware that the backyard is full of her family and friends. Jon is scolding Gendry about tackling his ‘baby sister,’ while Arya tries to catch her breath, only for it to stutter once more once Gendry shoots a wink at her.

“Arya can handle it,” he parries back before he elbows Arya playfully in the ribs. And—God, if this is what a crush feels like, then she owes her sister a million apologies, because there’s certainly nothing disgusting about it. It’s like every nerve ending in her body has suddenly woken up and decided to pay attention all at once. It’s thrilling and terrifying in equal measure, and Arya doesn’t know what to do with it. This is Gendry. Practically her brother. Her brothers’ best friend. Off-limits in every way that matters.

Out of the corner of her eye, she catches Sansa watching her with a knowing smirk, and Arya quickly looks away, mortified at the thought that her reaction might be that obvious.