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Gendry doesn’t think highly enough of himself to believe in the threat on his life. So it’s a good thing he has a manager doing that for him.
When Beric shows him the letters, the first thing Gendry notices isn’t the 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝 in bold letters, but that it’s written in Times New Westerosi. He thinks back to the thriller movies his mom brought him to for his birthday every year at the Flea Bottom cinemaplex and decides magazine cutouts are a classic better left unmessed with. But he can roll with it. What with The Brotherhood in the past year having gone from garage shows in Gin Alley to a sold out tour across the country, nothing in his life goes as Gendry expects anyway.
Like the tiny woman no taller than his mic stand who says she’s here for the bodyguard position.
He can admit he’s kind of into the steel of her stance and the intimidating gray of her eyes, but he’s still trying to convince Beric that the whole idea is overkill. He’s not one to brag, but if physique is a question, one look at Gendry answers it pat. Hey, he hadn’t lost a bar fight yet, right? And he doesn’t mean to offend, but he really doesn’t want to put this Arya person on the line for him.
Though just from how hard she judges everyone in the room, he can tell she can pack a punch. Beric, he gets. People tend to linger on the story in his eyepatch. But Gendry? He walked in, took off his leather jacket, tossed it onto the green room couch, and that was enough to get Arya’s eyebrows playing pinball in his direction.
“We have one of the top agents from Black & White Security in our midst,” Beric explains. The name speaks for itself. Black & White are known for training such hardened guards that people in the industry nicknamed them the House of Smack and Fight. “Her last assignment was detailing for Lady Crane, the Braavway actress. Arya successfully apprehended an attempt on her life.” Beric dips his chin knowingly at her to elaborate, “A knife to the throat, if I recall.”
“Perp was a real bitch, too. Practically barked when I stabbed her.”
Gendry’s mouth hangs ajar despite him being sufficiently shut up.
“A singer,” she scoffs. “You gonna sing when I hit you?”
“Thanks Beric, now I’ve got two threats to deal wi—ow.” He was right. A girl packs.
As Gendry rubs the future bruise on his bicep, he’s not sure what hell he’s in for with this Arya. But as Beric shakes her hand and says “You’re hired,” he thinks it’s a good sign that she chooses to direct her smile at Gendry.
They’re walking back to the tour bus when Arya hammers out the brass tacks that come with following him around all day and night.
Like not being modest when it comes to undressing because she’d seen it all before. (Winter is not Gendry’s favorite time of year, but it’s a welcome culprit for the rose in his cheeks when she says this.) If she sees any illicit activity, any abuse, anything on the hard drug side of the celebrity food pyramid, she’s out. “Celebrity” is rich, but Gendry assures her that the most The Brotherhood gets up to is poor covers of drinking songs. (Two Farts That Bleat as One is the ditty he’s least proud of.)
And as Arya walks beside him, all iron and surefooted, drilling in his safety and wellbeing as priority one, Gendry can’t help but feel a little undeserving of her. He wasn’t used to having a designated person care about him. Having a shadow suddenly made him want to make it worth having the sun out.
“Trust me,” she says. “With the messages you’re getting, you’ll be glad I’ve been assigned to you. When it comes to your kind of profile, you want someone who blends into the background as well as I do.”
“Right,” he scoffs. “Like my eyes wouldn’t go right to you in a crowd.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Before Gendry can blush any deeper, he lets the bus doors accordion open and braces himself.
“Just watch.”
And the effect is immediate as they enter the cabin together.
“Fuck’s sake, mate,” Anguy groans over the deck of cards in his hand. “We said we weren’t doing hotels for this stop.”
“Yeah, majority rules, Gen,” Tom says circling his finger around the table to highlight himself, Anguy, and Lem. “You and your girlfriend can try booking a last minute room the night before the Trouts game, because we’re not doing it.”
“She’s not my girlfriend, Tom. Everybody, this is Arya. She’s my bodyguard.”
The only thing that breaks the stunned silence on the band’s faces is the sound of Arya’s knuckles cracking.
“No shit,” Lem practically drools out. “If that’s what they come in, I should get me one, too.”
His bag lands on the mattress of his bunk with a thud before Gendry swings a swift one across the back of Lem’s head. “Keep talking like that, I’ll make sure you need one.”
When he turns to apologize to Arya for his eggheaded bandmates, she’s already assessing the windows and exits of the place. So he goes to his bed to grab his extra blanket for her bunk. It’s not the swankiest digs in here (he’s heard big names like Oath & The Crypt Keeper travel with a hot tub in theirs), and there have been delays in repairs, like to the microwave and shower that Beric swears they’ll get around to eventually. But he still wants Arya to be comfortable. And though he was sad to see Harwin stay behind at their last stop in Harrenhal to take care of some family business, he’s grateful the spare bunk can now go to her. Otherwise he’d just give up his to sleep in the passenger seat up front or something.
“Sorry about the guys,” Gendry says, rubbing the back of his neck where it’s still a little sore from head banging. “I hope I can make it up to you with your first night in a shoebox.”
“Don’t worry, I’ve endured worse. On both counts.” Arya eyes the blanket in his hands. “That for me?”
“Yeah, it’s been freezing this week. And don’t be fooled just because we have the heat on, that’s been going in and out lately.”
“You Southerners are just useless this time of year, aren’t you?” she chuckles, plopping the blanket back onto Gendry’s bed. “There’s barely a breeze outside. I could walk around naked if I needed to.”
“Don’t let me stop you then,” he says with his hands up.
Then something catches her attention and Arya’s looking for something in the narrow aisle of the bus, almost circling around Gendry’s body in a way that reminds him of a dog.
“How do I turn that shit off?” Arya swats at the strand of hair blowing the wrong way across her face and Gendry realizes she’s talking about one of the vents high up on the wall that’s aimed at her spot.
Gendry takes a step over, points a finger, and easily touches the vent just above his head. He bites his tongue trying not to laugh when Arya gets on her toes, jumps, and fails at the same thing. “Now what did you say about Southerners?”
She huffs, “That you’re all assholes and we should’ve ceded last election after all.”
“Here.” And in one motion, Gendry picks her up by the waist so Arya can flick the vent tab in her desired direction. She’s light, but firm around her abdomen where he grips her.
“Thanks,” she says when she lands, her eyes looking Gendry up and down. “Asshole.”
In just a couple of hours, Gendry went from being pretty convinced he’d be beat up by the end of the week to being pretty grateful about the new addition to their travel crew. And though he hates admitting when he’s wrong, he might have to revise his opinion on how easy it can be to get along with someone new after all. Might.
Once they finish brushing their teeth—which they had to do together, and to which he definitely heard someone whistle at them for—it was time to hit the hay. They had a big show in High Heart tomorrow and Gendry heard the crowds there were some of the best.
Right before Arya climbs into her ludicrous one-blanket dwelling, she takes something off of the wall of her bunk. “This yours?” It’s a brown horse magnet, a trinket from one of the stops where they actually had time to explore the city.
“Harwin must’ve left that,” Gendry says as he takes it for safekeeping. “Each of us have our own sigil in the band and it kind of extended to the roadies. Mine’s a bull, Anguy’s is an arrow, Harwin a steed, that sort of thing.”
“Right. Like a poor man’s Lys Zeppelin.”
“Hey, I take that as a compliment. Robert Flowers is the only Robert I wanna take after anyway.” Truthfully, the tour mattered more to Gendry than he let on. He knew the band would get here someday, but he also knows it would’ve taken longer had the headlines of his newfound royal parentage not blown up their album sales. Talk about having shadows.
“You know you’re part of The Brotherhood now, too. What with you acting like my second manager and all. We should pick you something.”
“Already got one.” Arya’s eyes don’t leave his as the waist of her pajama bottoms dip to reveal a howling wolf inked into her hip.
“Right,” he swallows, and a drink of water suddenly sounds like a gourmet meal. “Suits you.”
Despite himself, the image stays on the back of his lids that night, the swaying of the bus lulling him to sleep as they make their way to the next show.
There must be something in the water in High Heart because when they take the stage at The Peach that night, the crowd sets off a tidal wave of energy. It takes all the electricity in his bones not to crowd surf as they rip into their anti-war anthem, Gimme Shelter. Even as Gendry watches thousands of devil’s horns go up as he sings mad bull lost your way, he still heeds Arya’s silvery voice in his head telling him that it’s for the best.
Aptly enough, a metallic ox skull bobs above the crowd and Gendry realizes by the frantic jumping of the brunette holding it that it’s meant for him. He still feels bad from announcing earlier in their set that he of the four wouldn’t hang back after the show to meet fans and sign merch, so in the high of the performance, walking into the Peach pit to bring up one single person on stage seemed like a good way to make up for it.
The acoustic segment is a great time for everybody anyway. The guys get a good five minute breather and Gendry plays whatever he wants. He’d feel silly wearing the skull so he sets it on an amp as the woman takes the stool next to his. For some reason he feels inspired tonight and his fingers start strumming one of his personal favorites growing up, a cover of Bob Manderly’s Could You Be Loved.
During the applause, he only means to half hug her, but she goes in for a kiss on the cheek that he reluctantly obliges, given the entire public view of it all.
The rest of the show leaves him sweaty and racing with adrenaline. After the encore, the house lights go up behind them and it feels like nothing could knock him out of the euphoria when a pair of tiny fists shove him against the wall backstage.
“What the hell was that?” The bite in Arya’s voice reminds him less of an authority figure and more of an ex—someone who’s been betrayed.
“What? You said I couldn’t go into the crowd, so I just brought a bit of it to me.”
“You broke protocol.” Lean arms cross over the chest of her black muscle shirt to make the point. “And it was stupid. If you were my mark, I could’ve taken you right then and there”—a Freydian slip if anyone had ever heard one—“Down. Taken you down.”
“In front of the whole house? I’m not a bloody politician. No one’s trying to assassinate me.”
Something in the slight droop of her mouth reminds him of a spat Tom had in the lobby of one of their hotel stays recently. His eyes narrow just a slight.
“You think I’m trying to sleep with her?”
“Gods, do you need a sound check for your brain? And like it’s anything to me. You can ring all the bells you want, see if I care.”
“Fine, then maybe I will.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
If looks could decapitate, Arya’s shows no mercy in this moment. Gendry blinks first.
“Isn’t this the part where one of us is supposed to storm off?”
“I would. But I don’t break fucking protocol.”
They walk back in silence, a stalemate pair, half uncertain what they’re angry about and half sure the other’s wrong about it.
Once they’re back on the bus, it’s just the low hum of the heat and a chin nod from the driver to greet them and Gendry thinks he might as well resign to the static of the night and hope bedtime clears the air.
Arya’s trailing behind him when he lets go of the thing. Having not received many in his life, Gendry’s usually careful handling gifts, but with the thick of anger clouding his head, instinct makes him toss the horned skull straight onto his bunk.
It combusts on impact. The top bunk, frame and all, the upper shelves and their storage containers, all collapse into the ensuing flames. Immediately, Gendry twists his body to cover Arya’s, but she uses his momentum to forcefully rotate him behind her. Through the ringing in his ear, Gendry can hear Arya shouting something at the driver. Her reflexes must be quicker than light because he doesn’t even notice when amidst the chaos she’d gotten the extinguisher in her hands.
The smell of smoke and chemicals coats his nostrils and after a moment the intact walls of the vehicle peek through the cloud of fumes. When it gets in his eye, the only thing that stings more is when Arya finally turns to acknowledge him with a cold glare.
From there it’s one no shit moment after the other.
When they finally exit the vehicle, the driver has already unloaded most of the luggage from the outer compartment. By the time he realizes it’s thanks to Arya, she’s already on the phone making a second call.
Help arrives in minutes. Thanks to Arya.
Medics check the three of them and rule no one’s hurt. Thanks to Arya.
SUVs pull up to take them to a hotel where rooms wait for the whole band and crew. Thanks to Arya.
And the wires finally connect. That an attempt on his life is an attempt on Arya’s. That they’re both in danger. Thanks to—
Gendry starts to take the whole situation a lot more seriously. So when they get to the hotel and Arya proposes an idea that’ll make it harder to track him, he forgets how the whole thing looks and follows along.
They fuss with the key card long enough for everyone else’s doors to shut and then they hightail it back to the ground floor where a driver named Yoren awaits.
Gendry tips him extra for the long night they’ve had and the discretion they need.
“Don’t you worry about it,” his voice rasps as he pushes Gendry’s hand back to him. “You know how many rockstars carousel through this here backseat? I don’t need your hush money. The only time I talk to tabloids is to tell them to fuck off.”
“We’re not together,” Arya deadpans. “I’m the muscle.”
“No shit,” he says to the bills in his hand.
There are only two cars parked outside of The Crossroads Inn and the flickering light of the joint washer and vending machine in the lobby is way too skeezy for the front desk to be hassling them like this.
“It’s an Essosi King,” the innkeeper, Sharna, reminds Arya yet again. “Practically stretches wall to wall and you put that guitar o’ his down the middle for buffer, you won’t even notice the fight between you.”
“Would you believe me if I told you that we are not a couple?”
“Not if you told me come morning.”
“I’m his bodyguard.”
“No shit.” Sharna glances from Gendry’s shy expression to Arya’s forthright one, then back at the computer. But she doesn’t click anything. “Well, The Kneeling Man is down the street, but their bread’s stringier than shrimp dung, so you can guard this man’s body from the parking lot, or,” acrylic nails send a single key sliding across the counter, “say something nice about the pillows when you leave us a review on Master of Trips.”
Upstairs, the condition of their bathroom is on par with the venue showers Gendry’s gotten used to on the road. Which is the sole and only reason he insists Arya shower first because with their luck tonight, the hot water will dispense like it’s on loan.
And no, getting to lay eyes on the sight of her emerging from the rose-scented steam, water droplets bringing out the glow of her long face, and wearing one of the inn’s fluffy pink robes like it was both un- and completely meant for her was not on purpose.
But yeah, the cold shower does work out.
By the time he’s donned the plush of the pink terry, he’s greeted by a truly heinous sight. It’s one thing that the yellow tree print of the blankets clash horrendously with the motley carpet, it’s another that Arya’s bubblegum shroud is trying to lay in them.
“No.”
“It’s not really professional for me to share a bed with my client,” Arya answers.
“And it’s not humane for me to let my,” he swallows. “You, sleep on the floor.” His voice winds down at the now curious reaction on her face. She’s kneeling at the “foot” of the bedspot, eyes wider than he’s ever seen from her, and Gendry never cared what anybody thought of him before but he’d saw the mattress in half with a butterknife if it’d buy him a crumb of what Arya’s thinking right now. “Stop what you’re doing, please.” But as soon as he reaches for the blankets, she swats his arms away.
“All right, I get it, you’re quick,” he says as he plants his bottom on the makeshift bed. “But I’m strong, and if you want to sleep here, you’re going to have to move me.”
“You know I could do that, right?”
He blinks. “Shit, really?”
She smirks. He is 6’0, 190lbs.
Sighing, he asks, “How’d you get into this anyway?”
Their knees almost touch when she shifts into a cross-legged sit to match his. The proximity and the way she leans onto her elbows reminds him of sleepovers from the movies. Only different. “My family’s as well off as your bio-dad. They had a plan for me from the womb. I didn’t like it. So I hopped some countries and learned how to suplex people twice my size.”
Arya speaks about herself like she’s got some template of a life story. Gendry can tell there’s more to it, but as he opens his mouth to ask, she speaks first.
“How old were you when you heard Wonderwall and thought ‘gee, I have to cover that on the uke’?”
“Fuck off, I was 12. And I can play you a hell of a lot better than that now.” As he gets up to retrieve his guitar, Gendry doesn’t even have to look to know that she’s rolling her eyes when she answers.
“Oh, really? You know I’ve seen your shows now. The whole love song serenade schtick isn’t going to work on me,” she says as she accepts the hand that leads her to sit on the foot of the real bed beside him, the schtick clearly working on her.
“Who said this was a love song?”
When it comes to writing, privacy is the cover Gendry needs to warm any truth into his words. But if lyrics were an exercise of his mind, music was of his heart. Which might explain why Gendry actually starts to like the melody he improvises for Arya, even though the words are elsewhere at the moment…
This featherbed is ten feet wide,
And there you will lay down,
I really wish you would abide,
My face shant wear this frown—
“Shant?”
“Shut up, or I’ll switch to Wonderwall.”
For you shall be my sword and shield,
And I’ll be your moat and castle,
I’ll always keep you warm and safe,
Take the bed, it’s not a hassle—
After all they’d been through tonight, her laughter feels like a prize in the dim, even if the prize is calling him “stupid” a bunch. Head shaking with mirth, she takes the instrument from his lap and leans it against the wall. Gendry stands up after her (the bed is lava), feeling like he won. But as he takes in the calm glow of her face, he sees he doesn’t stand a chance.
“You have a great voice,” she says. “And people are lucky to hear it.” Her hands palm the front of his chest and Gendry can’t decide if it’s better for his heart to beat as fast as it is or to stop altogether. “But I still won’t change my mind.”
Arya shoves him onto the mattress—she thinks she’s so slick—only Gendry catches her by the wrist to drag her down with him.
They’re all limbs and petty conviction, each trying to pin the other to the mattress as if that’d bind them to taking the bed. Arya sits on top of him, trying to hold Gendry down by his biceps even as he goes to tickle her under the arm. Eventually he clasps both his hands with hers and flips her beneath him. Under the mass of him, Gendry thinks he has her. But as he hovers over Arya, all he sees is a flash of brown tendrils as she headbutts him into submission.
Gendry falls to the side of her. Somehow Arya’s hands fly to his forehead before his own. Her thumb presses into the spot above his brow and he could swear that it’s the softest touch he’d ever felt in his life.
As Arya holds onto his head and needlessly apologizes, her face is a picture of worry beyond the required between them.
“I’m all right,” he says cupping the hand on his cheek. “Long as you’re here, I’m safe, right?”
After a breath, she answers, “Long as you’re safe, I’m all right.”
Her kiss is the softest of her touches, soft and rare as anything that might come from a shell. Gendry has always been drawn to toughness, and he thought that Arya was much the same. But as they undress and leave lingering kisses up and down each other’s bodies, he realizes that he likes soft too, and that he wants to be just as so for her, with her.
In the morning, he wakes to see that they’ve rolled to the very far edge of the bed, Gendry with his backside facing the ground and Arya tucked comfortably facing his chest. His left arm is nearly numb beneath her sleeping face, but she looks so peaceful that he just kisses the crown of her head. Staring at the vast, empty bed space beyond her, he smiles, recalling how they made use of it all the night before.
In his predicament cuddle, he tries to twist his arm behind his body to grab the clock off the side table. If he could just turn off Arya’s too early o’clock alarm, she could sleep in a little more. They had plenty of time before the replacement bus would arrive to get them to their next stop anyway. And if they didn’t, maybe having Tom replace him on lead wouldn’t be so bad if it meant more time with Arya.
It’s when he clicks the off switch that she stirs awake.
“Hey, you,” he sighs.
“Hey,” she smiles as she pushes the messy hairs around his eyes. “You look like you had a rough night.”
“I didn’t know rough was an option,” he says leaning down to kiss and bite her lip.
When she opens her eyes again, Arya jerks her head up, dismayed at where they are on the bed. “Gendry, what the hell?” she exclaims, immediately scooting towards the center to give him more room.
“What are you doing? Come back here.” Gendry lazily chases her back into his arms.
“You could’ve told me I was about to shove you off of this thing.”
“And wake you? Don’t worry about it,” he says, running his hand along the dip of her back. “Besides, the last time you shoved me ended up great. I don’t have anything against the floor.”
The sound she lets out is half a scoff and half a chuckle. Arya walks her index and middle finger down Gendry’s chest. “So, rough, and the floor," she says in that low voice of hers. "I’ll keep a list.”
“And I’ll check it twice.”
Though he insists that it wouldn’t kill her if someone else made her a coffee for once, Gendry has to practically wrestle Arya again to get her to stay put. They’ve stayed in bed well past continental breakfast hours and if the magic of coffee won’t get them going before checkout, they’re as good as establishing residency at the Crossroads.
Having already checked rough and floor off their list this morning, Gendry has a decent idea of Arya’s movements. So when he grips both of her wrists in one hand above her head, he knows that if he’s been able to, then it’s only because she let him.
“I promise if you just stay still, Arya, I’ll let you win again.”
“Let me?”
“Yes,” he punctuates with a kiss on her neck. “Let me,” and another on her jaw, taking in the scent of flowers and sweat on her skin. He mimes a kiss just a hair’s touch from her mouth before he pulls away, “And I’ll let you.”
Though she’s indignant about it, the sight of her wrapped in the gaudy, yellow inn sheets, with her hair dried in waves over her clavicle as she pouts, all makes it worth getting out of bed.
And even though the Crossroads is the most snug of their stays, something about it makes Gendry feel the most at home he’s been since embarking on this nomadic existence with The Brotherhood. Like waking up to the light from a gray overcast instead of the dark rear cabin of the bus. Or mutually checking their phones in a comfortable silence. Or the motion of pouring instant coffee into two cups.
“You look lovely, you know that?” Gendry blows some of the steam off Arya’s cup before handing it to her.
“You’re just saying that because I can make you late if I drop this sheet.”
“You can make me do a lot more than that.”
She playfully nudges him with her foot as she takes a sip. “I wish I could. But we’ve got to get a move on. Yoren’s messaged me saying he’s out front.”
“Yeah, Beric’s been wondering where we've been at too.”
“You didn’t tell him where we are, right?”
“No,” Gendry replies. “Just that we’d be back soon.”
Arya looks at him a little uneasily. He knows neither of them came to this inn with the initial intention of sleeping together. He knows they came here to keep him safe. But he doesn’t regret anything either. How could he? Still, their situation is a little precarious (𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝, the letter said). If the look on Arya’s face is because she wants to keep this a secret, he can swallow that.
He puts a hand on her knee. “I’m not breaking protocol,” he says. “I promise.”
“Okay,” she nods. And her smile is small, but it’s the way her eyes linger on his that makes it the kind of smile that says I trust you.
When they exit the inn, Yoren’s parked along the curb towards the underpass of the freeway even though there’s plenty of space in the front lot of the inn.
They’re laughing about how Arya had to put her four coppers in the lobby’s washing machine slot in order for her candy bar to come out of the vending machine end. It seems like odd happenings are the theme of the day.
As they approach the sedan, Arya suddenly drops her chocolate, pushes her forearm against Gendry’s chest, and orders, “Get behind me.”
And the next thing he knows, everything goes dark and tight around his throat. Gendry can feel the rough spun itching of burlap on his face. On instinct, he elbows the mass behind him, but hits air. In the struggle to get the sack off his head, Gendry loses his balance and hits the pavement. Meanwhile, a deep, guttural fuck rings out and he opens his eyes to see that Arya’s brought the guy to his knees, both arms twisted behind his back, his head tilted up in pain against Arya’s knife to reveal a horse head tattoo peeking out of his turtleneck.
“I was wondering when you’d show up,” she snarls against him.
“Harwin?” Gendry gasps in disbelief.
“It was for a good cause, Gen,” Harwin rasps, some of his spit sprinkling the blade of the knife. “No deed higher than for the Lord of Light.”
“You’re behind this?”
“Not alone though, are you?” Arya demands, shifting the knife against the apple of his throat.
Harwin winces in pain as Arya further twists the arm behind his back. Through gritted teeth, he sputters, “Beric. Beric and I—“
“What?!” Gendry spits.
“Would’ve gotten away with it if it weren’t for this little bitch,” Harwin fumes. “You weren’t supposed to be good. We did the bare least, hiring a single guard to look after you. Just the tiniest one though. Something easy to get out of the way when the time came.”
“Arya, drop the knife.” He’d heard enough.
She does. And Gendry slugs Harwin across the face, knocking him out until the local City Watch get there.
Not that Gendry needed further justification for their night at the Inn, but the detectives end up uncovering footage of Harwin waiting in what would’ve been their original hotel room that night. In the ensuing investigation, evidence turns up that Harwin and Beric were funneling tour profits to the Church of R’hllor from the beginning. And that the kidnapping was part of a larger scheme to ransom Gendry to his estranged father in order to secure even more money for the Church. They made their own bogus death threat letters because they planned on pinning the operation on a stalker, say like, an enthusiastic fangirl.
And it both hurts and infuriates Gendry that someone he trusted could betray him like this, but when Beric too confesses that he purposely hired Arya assuming her stature would be her detriment, and that it wouldn’t have mattered if she also got hurt in the process so long as their Lord got his due, Gendry hopes harder than ever for hell to be real.
If anything, shucking management lights a fire under the collective ass of the band. They take all of the frustration, the stress, the disgust, and piss it all out on stage. They play like they did before they ever got signed in the first place and that’s not even the biggest reason why their show at Acorn Hall is set apart from the rest.
He could say that debuting a new song was supposed to help pivot their latest headlines back to the music. But the end of the danger didn’t bring all the relief that it was supposed to.
Arya was stationed in the pit like she always was, facing the audience from behind the metal barricades, standing in that ready-to-kick-ass-at-a-moment’s-notice stance that he loved so much. It makes him laugh now, the memory of how angry she was the last time he did this. But he’s doing it again anyway.
Her eyeroll dissipates into surprise when he descends into the pit and holds his hand out to her.
You’re so stupid, he can see her mouthing over the raucous cheers of the crowd.
It doesn’t occur to him until he sees Arya’s arms locked together on stage that she doesn’t like the spotlight. Someone who blends into the background.
But all that goes away when he starts to play the song she inspired.
“Anyway, here’s My Featherbed.”
She bites her lip all through the opening chords, but laughs as soon as she hears that the lyrics have been completely changed. Then her face goes soft as snowfall and Gendry hopes she doesn’t mind it that he lied about it at the inn, because this wasn’t going to go any other way. It is a love song. Theirs.
And all the applause he’ll ever need is in the kiss she gives him afterward.
“By the way," he says in her ear. "You’re so fired.”
She flips him off affectionately. “You can’t fire me. I quit.”
The Riverlands leg of the Tour Without Banners ends up being their most successful portion to date. The guys almost believe they can make it the rest of The Neck and North without a band dad, but Gendry knows they just want to delay the unglamorous process. He reminds them how desperately they need someone now, especially with the overwhelming amount of press calls they’re getting from their range of recent incidents.
Thankfully, they make a stop in Oldstones to field some interest for the position.
Lem has the least patience of them all, and like every drummer in history, he channels it by bouncing his leg on the ball of his foot, shaking the whole damn table with him. But Gendry can’t help that he’s taking his time being picky in the vetting process for a new manager. He wants to be smarter this time around, has to be.
So he prays to no god in particular that the last candidate of the day is worth the wait.
And as soon as he hears his accent, he knows that it is.
“Ah, you must be the famous bodyguard,” Davos, with his salt and pepper beard, ever the seasoned gentleman, extends his hand for a shake.
“Girlfriend, actually,” Arya answers.
And as much as it lights his whole life up to hear her say it, Gendry still wants to correct her and tell Arya that she’s still the muscle.
After all, the heart’s the most important one.