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Gendry and Arya have been assigned to go buy drinks, for the Stark family Christmas party. That seems fair enough. If anything, it’s bordering on the side of unfair in their favor, because all they have to do is drive to the store. Sansa has to bake an actual cake for this party, and Rickon is vacuuming the entire house.
Arya picks out four or five bottles of wine, and… that’s all, apparently. She’s already heading for the register. They’ve been in the liquor store for ten minutes. Half of that time was trying to remember which of the white wines was the sweet-tasting one. They couldn’t remember in the end, so they just guessed.
“You’re sure we shouldn’t get anything else?” Gendry asks. There are upwards of twenty people invited to the Starks’ party. Gendry is pretty sure more wine than this was consumed at the Waters family Christmas party last year, and that was mostly just him drinking his uncle Davos under the table.
“Yeah, this seems fine.” Arya says. “Enough for everyone to have one or two cups.”
“Alright.” Seems suspiciously sober to Gendry, but Arya knows her family better than he does.
“Actually… we could get a case of Smirnoff ices. Sansa likes those. The berry-lemon ones?”
Gendry has no idea what a Smirnoff ice is, but if Sansa likes them, he’s willing to bet they have an ABV below 5%.
The Starks are big on Scrabble during their Christmas parties, apparently. Arya warns him of this several days beforehand, as a means of insinuating that Gendry needs to brush up on his Scrabble skills. Gendry tries to make a joke about it to Hot Pie, only to find that the rabbit hole goes deeper than initially understood.
“I know what she’s talking about.” Hot Pie elaborates. “It is weird. They all get super competitive about it. One year they all spent, like, three hours playing Scrabble after dinner.”
“You’ve been to the Starks’ Christmas party?” Gendry asks.
“Once or twice, yeah. Probably wouldn’t go again. Like I said, there was a weird energy about the whole Scrabble thing.”
“Did...were you invited?” Gendry asks.
“Obviously I was invited . I didn’t crash the Starks’ party. They sent me a letter in the mail, and everything.” Hot Pie says. Gendry thinks back. He’s pretty sure he’s known Arya as long as Hot Pie has.
Gendry has never been invited. Come to think of it, he didn’t even get a letter in the mail this year. Arya just told him the date and time.
“You look like you’re really thinking through something right now.” Hot Pie says. “And whatever it is, I think you should go ahead and talk about it with Arya.” Not me , goes unsaid.
“My parents don't like you.” Arya admits, pretty readily. “But that’s just because you’re my boyfriend.”
“We’ve only been dating for three months. Did they like me before that?”
Arya thinks about her answer for way too long. “ When before we started dating, exactly?”
“Was there ever a time when your parents liked me?” Gendry asks. He’s known Arya for, what, eight years, total?
“I...eh....no, probably not.”
“But they don’t have a problem with Hot Pie ?”
“I mean, Hot Pie doesn’t have a motorcycle, or tattoos, and he doesn’t drink, or smoke, or text me in the middle of the night, and he didn’t teach me how to shotgun a beer, or help me hotwire Jon’s truck, or-”
“Sure, got it.” Gendry says. Hot Pie was the one who taught him and Arya how to pirate movies, though. They're currently watching Zodiac , like, super illegally. So he's also a bad influence, in his own way.
“It’s a total catch-22, right? If you were boring enough that my parents liked you, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to date you.”
“Right.”
“Although now that I think about it, I’m not sure they even know about most of that stuff. They might just really hate your motorcycle.”
Gendry will just have to make a great impression at the Christmas party. He can do it. He can be charming and charismatic when he needs to be.
“No you can't.” Hot Pie says, from across the Scrabble board. “You've never been charming or charismatic even once in your entire life.”
Gendry grumbles at him. He looks at the little plastic letter tiles lined up in their groove. If he can't make a good impression with his words or actions, he should at least be able to play a serviceable game of Scrabble. Scrabble is a learned skill. Gendry can read at a high school level. There's nothing to stop him from getting good at Scrabble, over the course of the next three days.
He carefully lays out the letters to spell ZEST , with some pride at using his Z tile.
“Ooh.” Hot Pie says.
The door swings open and closed as Arya lets herself in, begins making herself at home in Gendry’s kitchen.
“Does she have a key?” Hot Pie asks, looking up from his letters to watch Arya rummage around in the fridge.
“Yeah.” Arya says. “Gendry, you still have yogurt?”
“Top shelf, behind the eggs.” Gendry says.
“ I don't have a key.” Hot Pie says.
“You're not dating me.” Gendry reminds him.
“I had the key before we started dating.” Arya says. She peels the lid off of her yogurt and digs through the dish drain for a clean spoon. This is true. There had been something sort of weirdly compelling about knowing Arya was carrying around the key to his apartment, even before they'd officially been together. That to some degree, she'd seen his space as something like home.
Anyways, Gendry isn't sure he wants his apartment to feel like home to Hot Pie.
“Why do you even want a key?” Gendry asks.
“It's a matter of principle.”
“I don't want you randomly letting yourself in if I'm walking around naked.”
“No way are you ever wearing less than three layers of clothing in here, it's like forty degrees.” Hot Pie says. He has a point there. Building management hasn't fixed the heating yet. But they will eventually, and then the apartment is back to being a pantsless utopia.
“Are you guys playing Scrabble?” Arya asks, coming to the table to inspect the board. She stands behind Gendry, rests her chin on the top of his head to look over the tiles.
“I just put down ZEST .” Gendry says.
“You haven't drawn any new letters yet, have you?”
“No.”
“You could've done ZEALOT ...there, see?” Arya leans her weight on the back of his chair. “You would've gotten the double word bonus, then, too…”
“No redos.” Says Hot Pie, who is absolutely not getting a key.
Theon gets a mailed invitation to the Stark Family Christmas Party each year. Theon . What could Gendry have possibly done to get himself on the shit list that Theon hasn't done more often, worse, and with more nefarious motives?
Theon thinks the whole situation is hilarious. He's in the Starks’ kitchen, making eggnog like he lives there.
“My parents pretty much raised Theon,” Arya explains, “so they feel like the way he turned out is their fault.”
“Ouch.” Says Theon, grinning.
Gendry watches Theon crack several raw eggs directly into a crock pot. He's never made eggnog from scratch, or at all, but that doesn't seem exactly correct.
“So, Robb and Jeyne. They’re done by now, right?” Theon asks.
“They're engaged.” Arya says.
“ Fuck , what?” Another egg gets cracked into the crock pot. Theon drops the shell in, too. He fishes out half of it.
“They've been engaged since September.”
“Nobody tells me anything. What about Sansa and Harry?”
“Still together.”
“God, that guy is the worst.” Theon turns to look at Gendry. “Harry sucks so hard , and even he gets a written invite.” Theon punctuates the statement by uncapping a jug of milk. He pours it into the eggnog like he's pouring gasoline into a truck. “He's really good at Scrabble, though. So I guess he's got that going for him.”
“Maybe you can bring that girl you were talking to online.” Arya says.
Theon considers. “What girl...oh, no, she was actually my sister catfishing me. It's cool, I'll just come by myself and hit on your mom.”
“We would all prefer if you did not do that.” Arya tells him.
Theon puts his hands out like he's going to say something placating. “Don't worry, I'll get really drunk first.”
“We only bought five bottles of wine.” Gendry warns him. And we all have to share .
Theon looks at the crockpot. He looks back at Gendry. He inclines his head towards the crockpot and raises his eyebrows at Gendry.
“I'll make due somehow.” Theon says.
There is more riding on this Christmas party than Gendry ever could have imagined. He has to make such a good impression at this party that the Starks forgive him for every stupid thing he and Arya have ever done together. The more he thinks about it, the longer the list of stupid things gets. Arya dragged him into so much dumbass stuff when she was in high school. And the Starks probably think that was all his fault.
He's been reading the scrabble dictionary app in his spare time. He ironed his collared shirt. He even got a haircut. The haircut backfired since he wasn't super clear with the barber about what he wanted, and ended up with a sort of severe institutional-looking buzz.
The party starts at 5:30. He's going to pick Arya up at 5:45, and they're going to get there at exactly 6:00. He borrows Uncle Davos’s car, so they won't roll in on the much-hated motorcycle. Uncle Davos drives a 2005 Toyota Corolla. It's gray. It is decidedly not a sexy vehicle. But that's okay. Tonight isn't about being sexy, it's about making a good impression.
Gendry arrives at Arya’s apartment at 5:40. She's just finishing getting ready, and apparently for her, tonight is about being sexy. She looks great. Not in a ‘ that’s a lot of cleavage for a family party’ way, but in a ‘ we’re going back to my place after the family party, right? ’ way. Her dress has some sort of leafy pattern on it. Like a nice oak tree.
“You look great.” He says.
“Thanks.” Arya says, holding out the skirt hem. “It's got pockets.”
Gendry checks the time, which he's been doing compulsively all afternoon. 5:41.
“You don't look half-bad yourself,” She continues. “And, you know, we're running ahead of schedule…”
As much as it physically pains Gendry to take a rain check on what Arya is insinuating, that is a risk he cannot take right now. If they arrive at this party and Gendry has, like, a lipstick smear on his face or sex hair or some shit like that, his one chance at rebuilding bridges will be burned before it even begins.
He doesn't think Arya wears lipstick, so that, specifically, probably isn't a worry. And with the haircut, sex hair isn’t likely either. But there'd be something .
Arya keeps trying to roll down the windows of the Corolla and blast the radio. She can do one or the other, Gendry keeps saying, but they can't arrive at the Stark family home with the hard rock station pumping out of the car’s open windows. The Starks might think he's corrupting Arya with rock and roll, or giving her hearing damage, or some other no fun allowed concern.
Why does Arya even want the windows open? It's December.
“Your uncle’s car smells weird.” She says.
She's right, actually. Davos likes to make his own soup, and Gendry has the growing suspicion that at some point in time a container of that soup was spilled in the backseat.
But beggars can't be choosers, and sometimes the road to respectability comes with a distinct oniony smell.
They arrive, and Sansa greets them both at the door with a big hug. That seems out of character for Sansa. Usually she's not super touchy. Well, she's sometimes touchy , but by the ‘quick to take offense’ definition (thanks, Scrabble dictionary app!), and not in the ‘hugging everyone’ sense.
She offers them both cups of eggnog. Gendry says no thanks, he's not drinking tonight, he drove here. It's a good responsible cover for the truth, which is that he absolutely cannot drink tonight because he cannot do anything to weaken his competitive Scrabble edge, or to compromise his chances of impressing the Starks.
Also, he saw Theon’s eggnog-making process, and it looked terrible.
“The eggnog doesn't have alcohol in it.” Arya says, ladling herself a scoop from the crockpot. She takes a gulp of it and recoils slightly. “Nevermind, yes it does. Not a lot though, I don't think.”
She holds her mug out to Gendry as an offer. He takes a sip and coughs at the unmistakable flavor combination of hard liquor and simple syrup. To be sure, there's also vanilla and eggnog spices and a taste he's suspicious might be raw egg. But this eggnog definitely started with the base recipe of one part vodka to one part sugar water.
He passes the mug back to Arya and watches as she takes another drink with an entirely straight face. “ Not a lot ? Compared to what, rubbing alcohol?”
They have the much-dreaded face-to-face conversation with Mr. and Mrs.Stark. Arya doesn't appear to be dreading the conversation too much because she's blasted on 100-proof eggnog. For the last half-drink, she's found everything hilarious.
Gendry has the growing suspicion, as he tries to think of a good anecdote with no illegal activity or obscenity, that the Stark parents have also been partaking in the potent eggnog. Mrs.Stark’s eyes have gone really big, and she's swaying back and forth slightly, nodding slowly at everything he says. Mr.Stark hasn't entered the physical instability realm of inebriation, but he keeps clapping Gendry on the back, and the shoulder, and the arm, and when they passed each other in the hallway by the kitchen earlier he reached up to tussle Gendry’s hair. Gendry has the feeling Mr.Stark wouldn't do that if he was totally sober.
No good clean anecdotes come to mind, so he settles on a really boring clean anecdote. Mrs.Stark nods along with it, and Mr.Stark claps him on the shoulder periodically. Arya gives up any pretense of listening to the story and plays with the pockets on her dress.
Sansa interrupts their repartee (thanks again, Scrabble app!) when she waltzes into the foyer in tears. There is a noticeably empty eggnog mug in her hand.
“Theon says that I should break up with Harry.” She tells Mrs.Stark, in a sentence periodically interrupted by hiccups. She is immediately wrapped up in a hug that does as much to comfort Sansa as it does to anchor Mrs.Stark.
Mrs.Stark pats Sansa’s hair. “You should break up with Harry, hon.”
Mr.Stark leans in towards Arya and Gendry to share a conspiratorial look. “I don't care for that Harry Hardyng.” He admits to them, very seriously.
Dinner isn't ready yet, so everyone just continues to get eggnog-blitzed, seemingly unaware of how quickly events are devolving into chaos. Gendry has his eyes peeled for literally any other designated driver to commiserate with.
“Do they have plans on how to get home?” Gendry asks Arya, watching Robb and Jeyne collapse into each other in drunken laughter on the low-backed foyer couch.
“They're staying over.” Arya assures him, slightly over-enunciating all of her syllables. “Everyone is staying over but us.”
Gendry would've probably counted that as an affront, a few hours ago. At this point, he'll be happy enough to get out of here before the night is over. Someone is going to end up puking into the garbage disposal and Gendry would just as soon not be here for that.
Mrs.Stark, laughably, decides they're sober enough for Scrabble, in an attempt to cheer up Sansa. Gendry's pride will do better in the long run if he admits to himself now that this is the biggest win he's ever going to have at Scrabble.
Gendry has the letters to play ZOO . It's not even as good as ZEST , but all the Starks Ooh over how clever of a play it is.
Arya compulsively cheats at Scrabble when she's drunk. The slowed reaction times make it a lot easier to catch her switching letters out of the bag.
“I guess I’ll play OATS , off of ZOO .” She announces. None of those are even high value letters. The cheating must not be going too well.
Mr.Stark leans over the corner of the coffee table to confide something in Gendry. Gendry can only imagine what nugget of wisdom is about to be dispensed his way.
“Son, you should know…Arya...” Mr.Stark starts. He does the same alcohol-induced syllable overemphasis as Arya. Fun familial trait.
“I know Arya is switching tiles out of the bag.” Gendry guesses.
“That's not...no...when Arya started dating you...I did not...I was not...happy, about you.”
Gendry hopes this statement will continue with a but…
“Your father….” Mr.Stark says, instead, “...one of my closest friends. I thought you...would be like him...and that was concerning, to me. Because I would not have wanted someone like him dating Arya. You look just like him. Just like him.” He really leans into the words.
“Ah.” Says Gendry.
“But you make Arya so happy...and I see now...I was wrong.”
Mr.Stark looks very seriously at Gendry. Gendry is going to save this moment, edit it slightly in his memory so Mr.Stark isn't utterly hosed, then relive it later to bask in the compliment.
Arya has finished rooting around in the letter bag. “Hey, I can spell JAZZ ! Lucky, how I just happened to draw two Z’s this round!”
“Lucky.” Gendry agrees. Mr.Stark claps him on the shoulder.
They eat some chicken and vegetables. Harry and Theon get in a fistfight in the front lawn. Robb throws up in a potted plant. Mrs.Stark sees the living room clock strikes midnight, and kisses Mr.Stark so aggressively that everyone watching can tell she's using tongue. It's only 9:20. The clock must be broken. At least she's getting good practice for New Year’s.
Gendry and Arya say their goodbyes and make their way through the kitchen towards the door. Sansa is fishing a bag of frozen corn out of the freezer. It's unclear whether the frozen corn is intended as a remedy for Theon’s black eye or Harry’s hopefully-not-broken nose. Or if corn is just Sansa’s drunk food of choice.
The crock pot is still on the counter. It's entirely empty.
They drive back to Gendry’s apartment in the Corolla. The windows are rolled down and the music is blasted as soon as they're out of the Starks’ cul de sac. Arya sings along with some power ballad, whipping her head around with almost concussive force.
At the apartment, the dress with pockets is traded out for a t-shirt and sweatpants. Arya has at least one or two pairs of her own sweatpants here somewhere, but she opts for Gendry’s because, completely wasted, she thinks it's super funny to hike the waistband up to her armpits. It's a stylish look, to be sure.
“Do you want to keep watching Zodiac ?” Gendry asks her. He sits down on the couch, and she flings herself backwards over the armrest to snuggle into position. Dragging this craigslist couch up five flights of stairs was so worth it for the late-night cuddling in front of the TV. That's sappy of him to admit, but he would drag a couch up any number of stairs, with or without help from Hot Pie, if it would lead to Arya curled up against his side like this.
“I don't wanna see people get murdered right now.” Arya mumbles, directly into his ribcage. “Put on something fun.”
Gendry scrolls through their pirating website of choice. He's not trying to be the guy from every instance of Netflix and Chill ever, but The Office is fun, right?
“Do you think that went well?” He asks.
Arya nods, equal parts woozy and sleepy. “I think it went so well. My parents like you now! And I feel great. Is the The Office ? Are you trying to Netflix and Chill me?”
“I would never.” Gendry says. They tried to have tired drunk sex, once, and Arya fell asleep on top of him. It's because I'm so comfortable with you , she'd said. Okay. But they're not repeating that right now. Arya can fall asleep on top of him without a halfhearted attempt at foreplay first.
“And you were amazing at Scrabble.” Arya says. “You're getting invited to New Year’s for sure.”
Arya and Gendry sit at the kitchen table, waking up. Arya seems no worse for wear because Gendry, the best boyfriend in the world, made sure she drank a few glasses of water before they went to bed. She woke him up twice during the night, getting up to pee, but she doesn't look hungover, so it must have worked.
Hot Pie is here too. They had agreed to hang out on Sunday morning back when they thought the Stark party was going to be less reminiscent of a fraternity blowout. He brought doughnuts, though, which is nice. Maybe Gendry should get him a key.
Arya bites into a doughnut. It's one of those fancy ones that won't get soggy if you keep it in the fridge for a few days. Not that these doughnuts are lasting long enough to get refrigerated. Arya’s already on her second. “These are great, Hot Pie. I'm so hungover.”
Huh , Gendry thinks. Well, he tried.
“The party got a lot crazier than usual.” Arya says. “I think someone spiked the eggnog.”
Gendry looks at her. “I know for a fact that someone spiked the eggnog, because that stuff was about fifty percent hard liquor, and we both saw Theon pour in an additional half-handle after the fistfight.”
“The fistfight!” Hot Pie echoes, with jealousy. They've given him a summary of the party that wasn't exactly play-by-play, but hit the big moments.
“But the important thing is that you made a good impression. I mean, if anything, my family needs to redeem themselves to you .”
Gendry isn't sure exactly what to expect from the Starks’ New Years Eve party. But he knows he'll be there, because he's been invited, both by Arya and by official written invitation.