#dorkssss

"Just ask him out!" her best friend shouted, as she took a crowbar to the siding on her house, prying up the nails. Missandei was used to most of her antics, but she knew this was going too far. She watched, amazed, slightly terrified, and in awe, muttering, "You have gone mental Daenerys."

Maybe she had gone mental, but she was also put off by how attractive the handyman was. He was incredibly sweet. A little goofy; he apologized one day when he showed up in thick black glasses, saying he'd forgotten to put his contacts in before he left the house. She had wondered why someone would apologize for that, but she soon learned that Jon Snow, Handyman Extraordinaire, apologized for quite a few things that were in no way his fault or under his control.

Like when he couldn't get a part in time to fix her hot water tank, because it was a weekend and the store was closed. "No problem, guess I'll see you Monday," she had simply said with a smile and a cheerful glee, because she knew they were closed on the weekend and he'd have to come back Monday.

Or when she had purposefully yanked out some sort of fuse in her car so it wouldn't start and he had apologized that it had gone missing. "Not your fault at all!" Because it's totally my fault and then she'd pretended to find the fuse on the ground. "Will this fix it?"

He frowned at the tiny piece of place and wire. "Um, aye, that's so weird..."

Today she was going to claim there was something wrong with her siding and it needed to be replaced. She dropped the crowbar, wiping sweat off her forehead, and placed her hands on her hips, glancing at Missandei, who was shaking her head side-to-side. "What?"

"Just bloody ask him out! I'll do it for you. You're destroying your house just to get him to come over." She smirked. "He has to know what you're doing. He's just taking your money and knowing you're using him which is wrong, or he's really bloody stupid and that's not great either."

"You haven't met him yet."

"What guy could be so attractive and cute and sweet and all that for you to resort to this!?" Missandei waved her hands at the splintered wood at her feet. She sighed, closing her eyes. "Dany, love, you are my best friend but..."

"Good morning!"

Dany threw the crowbar into the bushes, spinning on her heels and beaming at the man who had poked his head around the open fence to her back garden. She waved. "Hello Jon! Good morning to you!" She rounded on Missandei, who stared at him and smirked knowingly. "You're a little early."

He turned pink, coming around the corner holding onto his toolbox. "Aye, sorry about that, I thought I might get you a coffee..." he trailed off and politely smiled at Missandei. "Oh I am sorry, I would have gotten another....here, you can have mine if you want."

To her best friend's stunned silence, he removed one of the two takeout coffee cups from the tray in his other hand and passed it to her. Missandei swallowed hard, clearing her throat. "Thank you, that's...so nice of you."

He smiled again in his shy, half-smile way that Dany absolutely bloody adored, and turned his face to her. "You called last night and said that your bathroom pipes were leaking again? I don't know what is going on, I mean..." He scratched his hair, brow furrowing, and gazed up at the old-as-shit house she had purchased with intent to completely renovate. "I swear I just fixed those..."

"Oh you did, I'm sure this place is cursed."

"By a Valyrian dragon," Missandei mumbled under her breath.

Dany stepped on her foot and crossed her arms, grinning. "And would you look at this? This siding is rotten, I think we'll need to replace it."

"Um, yes of course." He knelt and picked up some of the wood, shaking his head. "You must have an angry ghost Dany, this looks like someone took a crowbar to it." He was immediately concerned, jumping to his feet. "You should file a police report, someone could be vandalizing your property!"

Missandei sipped her free coffee and mumbled again, not so quietly, "Hmm, someone with silver hair I think."

"What?" Jon asked.

"Ignore her, she's mad." She forced another smile. "It's fine. I...thank you Jon, perhaps look at those pipes first and then we can look at the siding."

"I have wood," he blurted out.

Missandei choked. Dany flushed bright red. "Oh?"

"Hmm, in the truck. Be right back." He turned on his heel and walked away. Dany elbowed her best friend, who stared now at his retreating back.

"Oh my."

"It's beautiful. I just like to look at it."

Missandei patted her arm. "Daenerys you are my best friend, but if you don't ask him out by the end of the day, I'm going to tell him everything you've been doing and only because I'm scared you might set your house on fire just to watch him come running in with the fire hose."

Dany hummed. The idea was appealing, but arson was certainly not an option.

Yet.

---

It was the end of the day; she'd tried her damndest to get him to ask her out. Missandei had left, becaus she claimed she couldn't watch it any longer, proclaiming them both "stupid idiots" and Dany had to agree. She was a stupid idiot, trying to get him to look at her as something other than the crazy lady in the haunted house. She'd worn her bikini top while gardening, she'd broken her siding, and stuffed leaves in her gutters.

And Jon Snow still didn't bloody get it.

Maybe he was stupid, she thought, and watched him bent over some exposed pipes in the hallway leading to the master bedroom. A himbo or something. Except she knew he wasn't, because she'd seen that he had a stack of books in his truck to return to the library, one of which happened to be her brother's boring ass tome on Targaryen History, and he'd eagerly chatted with her about it.

"So why are you a contractor?" she asked. She kept referring to him as a handyman, but reminded herself he was more than that. He ran his own business and lumber yard up in Winterfell. "Do you just like fixing things?"

He shrugged, reaching his arm down into the pipes. "I do like fixing things, but when I got out of the military, nothing really appealed to me. Didn't want a boss again and I like building things. Working on my own terms."

"I like that too." It was why she moved up North, a freelance journalist, and needing a safe quiet space to recharge and focus between assignments. She got up and cleared her throat. "I'll be downstairs if you need me." She was halfway down the stairs when she heard a strange sound. It was a yowl.

It sounded like Drogon, she thought, turning towards the wall. "Drogon?" she called.

He meowed again, pitiful. She moved closer towards the wall and knocked. Her voice trembled, calling once more. "Drogon?"

A light scratching and more yowling.

She screamed, realizing with horror that Drogon was inside the bloody wall. "DROGON!" She banged on the wall, running up the stairs, crying out. "Jon! Drogon's in the wall!"

"What?"

"I think he must have crawled in when we were talking and not looking, oh my gods, Drogon!"

Jon frowned at her, still not moving. He narrowed his eyes. "Drogon's in the wall, huh?"

"I think so."

He cocked his head and got to his feet, sighing hard. "Dany, I...I think I know what's going on and..." He turned bright pink. "I really have to confess something..." He shifted on his feet and blurted out, really fast, his Northern burr thick. "I...I know that not everything here is breaking and...and I'm fixing it and stuff, but...well...the store was open and I didn't get hte part because I wanted to come see you and...and I may not have cleaned the gutters all the way so I could come back and...oh gods, I haven't charged you at all because I'm just...I like you!"

Her eyes widened, too terrified for her cat to process what he'd just admitted to her. "But...I...I'm sorry, but he's really in the wall! Listen!"

They both were quiet and after a second, heard the pathetic howling of a trapped cat.

Jon moaned, mortified, shoving his face into his palms. "Oh my gods! I'm so sorry! I thought...oh fuck, forget what I said!"

"No I can't forget it because I like you too!" They could have this conversation after they saved her damn cat.

It took awhile, of her trying to coax the damn cat out from the opening in the floor, to Jon carefully searching and finding a space in the wall to knock through with a sledgehammer so he wouldn't hit Drogon or anything unsafe. Bits of drywall and debris scattered, "You better watch yourself," she warned him, when Drogon began to hiss and pant, terrified as they drew closer to him. "He might attack!"

"He's just scared, he'll be alright."

A couple hours later, her entire hallway and stairwell covered in broken bits of drywall, plaster, wood, and insulation, her very dirty and ashy cat enveloped in a blanket in her arms, Dany finally looked up at JOn. He hadn't said a word to her about his confession of not really fixing anything because he liked her and wanted ot keep seeing her.

She ducked her head, whispering, "I know it was wrong of me too, to keep breaking things...I just really liked you too."

"I'm not good with women," he admitted.

"Clearly, I was walking around in my bikini and you didnt say a word."

"I was trying to be professional!"

She giggled. Drogon whined in her arms. She scowled. "Hey! You didn't think I was serious that my cat got stuck in the wall!"

"I thought it was another thing like when you called me to say that your pipes were clogged at ten at night." He arched his brows. "Come on Dany."

"Alright, that was a ruse...but he really did get stuck!" She let go of Drogon, who raced into her bedroom to hide under the bed and lick his wounds-- more like his pride at having to be rescued by humans of all things. She looked up at Jon, sitting on the step just above her and grinned. "Can we agree to just...kind of start over?"

he nodded and licked his lips; she shivered. "Start over at dinner tonight?"

"Yes, dinner is perfect."

"And I'll be the first thing in the morning to start working on..." he gazed around at the chaos surrounding them, sighing. "This."

"Sounds good."