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She’s wearing kohl on her eyes. There’s just the barest smudge of it along her eyelashes but it’s there, Gendry is sure of it. He’d had to look three times, but he’s sure. The fourth time, he thinks maybe she’s rouged her cheeks a bit, and the fifth time, he notices her lips look redder than usual, and then he doesn’t notice anything else at all, because all he can think is that her lips are the color of a Dornish apple and he’d very much like to bite them.
“Why are you staring at me?” Arya asks, giving him a cross look that confuses him. Why did she do up her face like a court lady if she wasn’t interested in anyone looking at it? Then he thinks maybe she just didn’t intend for him to look at it, that maybe she wears the kohl and stain for someone else. That bloody fucking Edric Dayne, maybe, whom Gendry has really kind of come to hate. It makes him irritable and he snaps at her just as crossly.
“Why did you tart yourself up like a lady at court if you didn’t want to be looked at?” he grumbles.
His answer takes her aback, he can tell. She swipes a hand over one eye and examines her fingers. “I’d forgotten,” she says. “It wasn’t that I wanted to be looked at. Only…” she hesitates, gropes for words. Gendry’s rarely seen her so uncertain and it makes him pause, has him setting down the blade he’s sharpening, the whetstone striking the table with an overly loud sound. He twists to face her on the bench.
“Only?” he prompts.
“It’s nice to feel like a girl sometimes,” she says, her words accompanied by a blush almost as furious as her glare. It’s a glare he’s seen often, though this seems less directed at him and more indiscriminate. A glare for the whole world. Why wearing eye make-up should make her so angry is a mystery to him, but then the times she isn’t a mystery to him are by far the lesser to the times she is.
“Don’t you always feel like a girl?” he asks. That’s a mystery to him too. Gendry’s never felt like anything other than a boy. Well, a man now, he supposes, though he’d always thought that being a man would feel different than being a boy had felt. As far as he can tell, it’s just a matter of what others think they see.
“No,” Arya says, wrinkling her nose. “And normally I don’t want to feel like a girl, because they have to be all mannered and proper and boring, but sometimes. Well, sometimes I do? I don’t know. Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything!” he protests. “Besides, you always feel like a girl to me.” She raises her eyebrows at that, and Gendry realizes how the words sounded. He flushes, half wanting the ground to open up and swallow him. “I mean…you know what I mean.”
“Mmm,” she hums noncommittally, a smirk on her lips. Then her face changes, she looks uncertain again. “You don’t think girls are stupid?”
“No,” he says, surprised. “I think girls are pretty great. Don’t you? You’re a girl. You’re pretty great.” He shrugs his shoulders. It follows clear enough to him. She stares at him, though, flummoxed, her mouth working like she’s a fish hauled on to land and left to gasp.
“I should get back to…to working on…I should get back,” she says finally, awkwardly standing and gesturing vaguely in the air with both hands. Gendry sighs. Definitely a mystery.
“All right,” he says. He picks up the whetstone again, reaches for another dagger to hone, but then he’s shocked to his toes by her small hand under his chin. She tilts his face up, gives him an appraising look, lets her eyes drop to his mouth for a moment long enough that it makes his heart stutter and resume at a quicker pace. This is one of those times where he thinks he should feel a man, but he feels only a boy. Her lips are soft and dry on his when she leans forward to brush them together, her breath warm and sweet. Gendry is so stunned that he can’t move, can only lift his face into hers and kiss her back. It’s only when she pulls away and turns in a flurry, bolting through the door, that he wishes he’d remembered to bite that lower lip, the one as red as an apple. Maybe he’ll have another chance, though, maybe he’ll have a chance to kiss her again, to slide his tongue in her mouth and see if she tastes of apples too. The idea is heady and all too potent.
It’s a quarter of an hour before his hands feel steady enough to even pick up a blade.