Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/3783448.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M, Gen
  Fandom:
      A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire_-_George_R._R._Martin, Game_of_Thrones_(TV)
  Relationship:
      Jaqen_H'ghar/Arya_Stark
  Character:
      Arya_Stark, Jaqen_H'ghar
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Modern_Setting, Alternate_Universe_-_Nazi_Germany,
      Underage_But_Whatever, Alternate_Universe_-_Harry_Potter_Setting, nymeria
      -_Freeform, Braavos
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-04-19 Updated: 2015-11-15 Chapters: 17/? Words: 6363
****** The Arya x Jaqen Drabbles ******
by theelusiveflamingo
Summary
     A compilation of all my Arya/Jaqen work that's either a drabble or
     just for whatever reason doesn't feel like a stand-alone fic.
     (All A/J drabbles that have been posted in Drabbles_of_Ice_and_Fire
     have been removed and re-posted here)
***** Breathplay *****
He has come to trust a lovely girl with his life, and to bring him to that line
on the edges of it and then back again, leaving nothing behind.  He has come to
need—no, crave—the solid weight of her small fingers around his neck, the
weight of the power of what she could do but the knowledge of what she would
never do unless he asked it of her.
The most lovely girl takes him there on the murkiest, coolest Braavosi nights,
and as she wields her power her stare locks into his and the candlelight makes
her light eyes look dark. Her hand tightens around his neck as she moves atop
him, and it’s as though there are many Aryas, one moving up and down, one
looking deep into his eyes, one showing him the Gift and then bringing him
back, showing him the Gift and then bringing him back…
His release comes quickly and lingers long, and on a lovely girl’s face there
is a flicker of a smile.
 
***** Swirls of blood; Modern AU *****
"Harder," she said, reaching around and slapping his soapy ass, and he listened
because he always listened to her when they were naked. His arm tightened
around her waist and his fingers found their way into her mouth and he fucked
her twice as fast then, so fast she felt her toes curl against the narrow edge
of the tub where she'd propped her foot. His breath was loud even with the
water running, and with her eyes flickering open-shut, his red hair in the
drain looked like swirls of blood.
 
 
***** Lessons in Subtlety; Modern AU *****
It’s so late there’s hardly any cars going by on Route 1, so late they’re the
only two customers in the diner. It’s 3:30 AM, and in the dead of night either
nothing happens orSomething Happens, so Arya keeps her eye on the brand-new
motorcycle parked outside. 
It’s hers, her very own, bought with money Arya’s surprised Jaqen has, and it’s
a BMW (though she can’t read the letters without hearing Jaqen
saying Bayerische Motoren Werke like he’s the most pretentious and sexy asshole
who claims to be from Germany but is he, really, in the universe), and she
doesn’t even have her license yet, so she has to keep an eye on it, because how
shitty would it be if her brand-new fancy motorcycle got stolen before she
could even ride it legally?
She sees a figure coming toward her in the reflection of the diner in the
window glass and wonders if it’s Jaqen coming back from his phone call, but no,
it’s just the waitress asking her if she’d like another refill, honey?  Arya
nods and smiles and watches the coffee pour out of the pot and into her empty
cup.  When Jaqen finally brings her home, she’ll be too wired to sleep, but
it’s worth it to be awake and alert for every minute they spend together.
She’s about to reach for the milk when she feels something brush against her
under the table.  She rolls her eyes and kicks her boots out in frustration,
but her heart’s suddenly beating fast and her fingers are clammy and shaky in a
way that has nothing to do with caffeine. 
“How’d you get back without me seeing?  I was watching.”
He rolls her shirt up just a bit and laughs against her stomach.  The feeling
of his breath on her sends jumpy heat pooling right there between her legs. 
She kicks again.
“Stop laughing and teach me.  I want to know!  I’m ready.”
“Hmmm,” he said.  “Hmmm.”
“What does that mean?”  She tries to pour milk into her coffee, but she feels
his slender fingers tug at her waistband and the milk overflows and spills. 
It’s like a stupid metaphor for how this weird guy who carries multiple knives
makes her feel.
“Right now…A girl should proceed as normal.”
“What does that mean?  Normal?  Are you serious?”
“A girl wants to learn things.  Tonight a man will help her practice subtlety. 
If a girl would like.”  She can feel him smiling.  Literally.
His tongue works over her slowly, way too slowly.  She rips open a sugar
packet.  His tongue dips inside her and her toes are already curling in her
boots.
She grabs a clump of his hair, imagining how the red and white look tangled in
her hand.  She loves how this looks, but she doesn’t dare peek now.
He tugs her elbow and closes his lips around her clit, and she lets go of his
hair and grabs her coffee cup because the slow way he sucks at her drives her
fucking crazy.
“Subtlety, or a man will stop.”
“You’re evil,” she breathes, and opens her legs just a little wider under the
table.
 
***** Celebrity/Fan AU *****
She doesn’t know why he has to pose as the new bassist for a folk-metal band
and she doesn’t know why this assignment has to be so long.  Someday
she’ll make him tell her, once she figures out the best way to do that, anyway.
But it could be worse, she thinks every time she comes back to Aunt Lyanna’s at
6 AM with her ears ringing and her heart beating happy-slow and fast at once.
 Folk metal, well, all those songs about direwolf ghosts and the Night’s King
and ancient Boltons flaying men during a year of winter nights are more Jon and
Sam’s thing than hers, but at least Jaqen’s not posing as some whiny douche
with an acoustic guitar and a lot of stupid feelings.  She’s happy to get into
the clubs where they play for free without the bouncer even checking her ID,
and it feels good to stand there as the crowds of bearded men surge past her
and around her, something stronger than her steel-toed boots anchoring her to
her spot.
One time the crowd surges and she’s up in a sea of strong hands being carried
towards the front, and it’s the wild-haired bassist who reaches her first,
grasping her by the wrists as she slings her legs onto the stage.  His sparkly
blue bass thumps in between them as he kisses her on her sweaty cheek.  Some
people near the front hoot and the lead guitarist goes into his third solo but
Arya can still hear the bassist, (her bassist, she doesn’t want to admit
thinking) mumbling “Lovely girl” against her ear.
Arryk the bass tech winks at her from the wings, and she pulls away from the
bass and the bassist and walks off the stage.  She doesn’t give two shits about
being classy, but she still likes how Arryk always manages to get her backstage
before the show ends, quiet as a shadow.
"I remembered to get regular M&Ms for you this time, not peanut," he’s saying,
"and let me tell you, I fucking heard about it all night from the guys, they’re
like, ‘I can’t perform without my peanut M&Ms,’ and I’m just like—"
"Well, you could’ve gotten both,” Arya says, hardly listening as Arryk rambles,
because she’s thinking, she’s thinking about how even when Jaqen has fried-
looking long black hair and Thenn tattoos spiraling up his face and ears gauged
a little too much to look good, he looks at her the same way, he touches her
the same way.  She’s realizing, every time she looks down and sees a black head
between her legs instead of a red-and-white one, every time it’s thin lips
breathing against her ear and deep brown eyes that stare into hers and then
flickeropenclosed openclosed as she rides him so hard in these clubs’ nasty
back rooms that she hurts the next day, well, it’s not that weird-haired,
pretty-lipped, blue-eyed face she has these feelings for, it’s Jaqen, just
Jaqen, whoever the hell he is.
***** für das Leben bezahlen; Nazi Germany AU *****
She was to be no one of note to him, just another young girl in Berlin going
about her business despite the war, but she’s become someone to him, and she
can’t be.
She hates the sight of their uniforms on the street because of how they make
her feel; it’s what he wears when he comes to her, and what he leaves pooled on
the floor of her flat when he takes her in his arms and carries her to bed and
calls her Little Wolf while he kisses her to moaning with his full, smirking
lips.
She’d thought he’d smell like death, her Oberschütze H’ghar, but he just smells
like soap and the starch of his uniform, he smells as pure as the consonants of
his native tongue suddenly sound as he pleads bitte, bitte while her nails dig
into his shoulders and she rides him until they both feel like everyone and
like no one at once.
Each time she hears him speak, she lets the sound swirl and sink into her mind;
the authenticity of her German is growing, her reports back to the Service more
fruitful.
But there are times when he cradles her in his arms and strokes the shell of
her ear after she’s come and come and come again and he whispers about how he
sometimes feels only death can pay for life, and she wishes she doesn’t have to
listen, and hates herself for never wanting to stop.
***** Happy Birthday; Modern AU *****
Chapter Summary
     ;)
     for Vana
It's exactly midnight when her text sound goes off and there's a video message
waiting for her. He isn't even in her time zone tonight, but that's how A Man
is. He's always in the right place at the right time. As soon as she's hitting
play she's pausing it again, tucking her phone into her pocket and ducking into
the bathroom. She sinks to the floor with her back against the locked door and
stares at the phone screen. A Man's nicely-fitting black pants are undone and
his stupid perfect arm muscles are flexing hard like he’s been at it for a
while. She bites her lip and he bites his own, smirking. She’s going to punch
him in his stupid face when she sees him next. Since when does A Man send
videos from his phone, anyway? And why isn’t she there with him? Her heart
beats faster as A Man’s back arches and his eyes close for a moment. “Happy
birthday, lovely girl,” he whispers as he comes, and then the screen goes
black. Damn him. She plays it again.
 
 
***** Mafia AU *****
Chapter Summary
     Man, I wrote this WAY back in the day--December 2013--for an inbox 3-
     sentence-fic prompt.
"A man hears them saying inside that a girl cannot do the job," Jaqen says in
their usual spot back behind the Fiorentino’s dumpsters, smelling gross like
the restaurant’s kitchen and its grease and sauce and Sterno even though his
shift’s been over for a few hours.
"Fuck them," Arya says, grinding the heel of her Docs into the lit cigarette
she’s tossed onto the ground as she does, "I can do the job, better n’ faster
than those fat fucks can, too."
"A man agrees," Jaqen murmurs, slipping a Glock into her palm.
***** Flashcards; University Universe *****
Suddenly her life’s full of surprises, and it’s good, because that’s what Arya
likes—surprises, challenges, things to think about, things to do.  
It turns out that grad student Jaqen H’ghar—her grad student Jaqen H’ghar, she
thinks sometimes with a stupid smile teasing the corners of her mouth—is fluent
in Braavosi (as well as Lorathi, the Common Tongue and High Valyrian, and his
Pentoshi’s not half bad, either.)  And Arya’s taking Braavosi 110 this
semester, and it’s hard.  So she asks him down to her room to help her with her
flash cards.  Once, twice.  Then she realizes she doesn’t need an excuse to ask
him over.  He’ll come anyway.  He wants to see her.
"A girl does not need these," he says on his fifth visit, pointing at her stack
of 200 flashcards.
"Seriously?  Even with them I got a C on the first test.  I never get Cs.”
 Arya flings one of her big blue pillows at him.  ”Either help me with my
Braavosi or get off my bed.”
Jaqen grabs her stuffed wolf, named Nymeria after her real dog back at home.
 He looks weirdly natural sitting cross-legged on her bed like they’re about to
tell secrets at a sleepover or something.  ”A man holds Nymeria hostage until a
girl listens.”
"You’re such a little shit," she says to him, but the grin on her face makes it
more than clear that she doesn’t mean it.
"A man is many things," he says, grinning back.  "But a man is serious.  These
cards distract a girl from hearing and thinking.  A girl
must hear and think Braavosi, to hear how the sounds relate.  A girl must hear
Braavos in her Braavosi.”
"I mean, that sounds like more fun than flashcards," Arya says.  "But how do I
do that?"
"A man reads from a girl’s study guide."  Their fingers brush on purpose as she
hands it to him, and then his blue eyes meet hers, and Arya feels warm.  "A
girl watches a man’s lips closely, and then tries to make the sounds he does.
 Then a girl learns."
He draws his knees to his chest, his long toes wiggling on her blanket, and
Arya snorts.  ”That sounds less like teaching and more like hitting on me.”
But he looks serious, and Arya almost feels bad for him.  He can’t help that
he’s weird.  She doesn’t think she’s ever met anyone from Lorath, and she
wonders if there’s some kind of cultural difference going on, or if he’s just…
"A girl will try.  A girl must trust that a man knows what he is doing.  A man
wants to help a lovely girl."
Lovely.  Arya never thought she’d want to be called lovely, but maybe…maybe it
was all about who said it, and how.
"Okay, fine," Arya says, and she scoots up to him until their foreheads are
nearly touching.  It’ll be hard to watch his lips without remembering what it
was like to kiss him the first time, in his room, and the second time and the
third time and the—
He begins,and Arya’s pretty sure she’s going to like studying this way.
***** Weakness *****
A girl is too clever and quick to be caught.  A girl wears the faces of many as
well as she wears her own fine bones and grey eyes; she will not be so foolish
as to give herself away.  Yet as a girl glides through the alleys with a man in
her cloak of darkness, a girl walks two steps ahead of him so a man may see how
her excited fingers play with the knife in her hands.  How a girl plays with
it—her fingers dancing across the hilt, her fist holding it tight as her
fingers worship.
A man (for the Lorathi humility of which a girl is fond has come to suit the
way a man feels in the service of He of Many Faces) does not need to accompany
a girl tonight, and it is rare that two Faceless Men would go together to do
what must be done.  Yet sometimes, a man is weak. To watch a girl do what she
does is his weakness.
The man is known for relieving himself in a nearby alley after he drinks
himself dull-witted at his favorite inn, and it is there that a girl and a man
find him, and it is there that a girl does her work.  She performs the task
nimbly, the way she has done almost everything a man has seen since he met a
girl on the Kingsroad long ago.  A girl has grown since then, but she is still
the same.
As a girl pulls her blade from the man’s flesh and he drops to his knees with a
grunt, so too does a man, though he does it in prayer.  How easy it is to
imagine his girl, one day, giving him the gift in this way.  A man would let
her.
“What are you doing?” a girl whispers, though she steps on his toes with her
boots as she does.  “You know we can’t just stay here.”
Sometimes, a man is weak, and to watch a girl do what she does is his weakness,
and so a man takes a girl’s cheeks in his hands and brings his lips to hers.
“You couldn’t wait til we were back?” a girl sighs against a man’s mouth, but a
girl’s heart, beating as fast as his, betrays her words.
***** Photo Texts; Modern AU *****
Chapter Summary
     set in Egg Baby universe.
A girl goes out to parties, sometimes, and at these parties she drinks, because
that is what people her age do when they cannot legally purchase alcohol.  A
man does not judge her.  A man could not and would not.  She is strong, but
small-framed, and liquor runs through her fast, and had a man grown up here,
where laws are strict and penalties high, he would probably do the same as
her.  But a man grew up in another time, in another place, and he faintly
remembers sitting on the steps of the temple with the older acolytes at
daybreak, drinking beer after beer and watching the sun rise.  A man had been
even younger then than a girl is now.
When a girl is out at her parties sometimes she will send things to a man. 
Pictures.  A girl sends pictures to a man.  And even though a girl’s phone is
expensive and a man uses a series of burners, all clamshell in shape, her
pictures come through well enough on a man’s tiny screen to distract him far
more than he’s ever let anything distract him before.
Tonight a man stands at his sink with the water running scalding hot, washing
his job off his new pair of gloves, when the new phone beeps, and a man
thinks.  A man knows a girl is at a friend’s house tonight.  A man lets his
willpower shatter.  A man turns off the water and dries his hands on his pants
and reaches for the phone.
A man has seen other girls’ photos, in the past.  What a man likes about the
photos of his lovely girl is that she does not try.  A girl does not need to
pretend for a man, to show off for a man.  Everything a girl is is enough.  A
girl is bare-chested in the photo, her hair hanging over her shoulders, half-
smiling at a man.  A man needs to sit down.  A man feels blood rushing away
from the parts of him that help him stand.
A girl likes when a man writes back, and a man does sometimes, when he is
able.  Another, a man writes to his lovely girl tonight, and waits.  A man
undoes his belt, but does nothing more.  A man enjoys the agony.  A man enjoys
the patience.
A girl sends another, of her with her pants off and her blue underwear showing,
and a man shifts in his seat.  He catches himself biting his lip.  Another, he
says, wondering what a girl will do.
A girl’s face pops up on a man’s phone, grinning, holding up her slender middle
finger.
And a man grins back, though a girl cannot see, and then a man is throwing down
his phone and fumbling with his pants in a way that is at odds with his years
of capability and training.  A man’s self-control is impeccable.  A man
can…fuck all night, to phrase it in the vulgar way, if he desires.  But once a
man snaps, he snaps, and he is lost.
A man is fierce with himself; he barely has time to grab a napkin so he doesn’t
dirty one of his few clean shirts before one of a man’s boots is propped up on
the table, one of a man’s hands is wrapped around the painful throb of his
cock, and the other is knotted in a man’s own hair pulling so hard his lips
tremble, the way a girl does to a man, the way a man likes it best.
A man is lost and it feels over in seconds like a man is very young again.  A
man is hard and the callouses of his hand feel good enough.  A man’s mind is
full of a lovely girl—of her photos, yes, but part of his job is to instantly
call to mind the most minute details of everything, and so there a girl is in
his thoughts.  The ways a girl smells, the different tones of her voice, the
ways a girl moves and the way she had looked when she held one of a man’s
knives for the first time, how a man had felt a certain sadness but he had
also understood.  The way her hair looks spread across his pillows, the way she
steals his blanket and thrashes against him as he holds her through her strange
dreams.
His lovely girl is there with a man as a man tugs at his hair, his toes curling
in his boots, and releases with an exhale that sounds almost vocalized, almost
like the sound of an A.
Afterwards a man is still lost, so lost that he sends his lovely girl another
message.  A girl might not read it until the morning, but still a man types it
out quickly and sends before he loses his nerve.  It is a very intimate
message, the most intimate a man can think of, written in the most intimate way
a man knows.  It begins with the letter I.
***** Funfetti; Modern AU *****
The House of Black and White is not a place for celebration, in the traditional
sense of the word.  You can go there to venerate and accept Death and the gods,
which of course, can be thought of as a celebration, but as far as parties go,
well…they don’t happen much in those shadowy, whispery halls.
Which is why a man is nervous as he checks the sweet-smelling treats baking in
the oven.  The whole thing has confused a man.  A man can switch faces the way
other men might change from wet socks to dry, and a man can kill another man
and make it look like a natural death, but when it comes to this thing called
baking?  A man is lost, beyond lost, and he thanks the gods yet again that Jon
agreed to help him out.  Begrudgingly, of course, for Jon does not quite trust
a man yet, and a man cannot blame him.  If a man knew what it was like to have
a sibling, or any sort of family, a man might feel the same.
But all a man knows are his brothers in the Faceless Men, and a girl, a man
knows a lovely girl, and so a man eagerly went to the store to get the
ingredients for these Funfetti cupcakes Jon had suggested, and a man
respectfully used Arya’s spare key to open the door to her apartment (a man has
many ways of picking locks and less obtrusive ways of entering a locked room,
yes, but a man would never do that to his lovely girl), and a man began to
grease pans and crack eggs and open tricky plastic bags of colorful mix with
the knife tucked into his boot.
The hour is late, and the kitchen is messier than a man’s job as a Faceless Man
has been in quite some time.  The timer beeps.  The cake is done.  A man’s hair
is sticking sweatily to his face.  A man has fine white flour all over his
black pants and black shirt.  A man still has to frost the cake.  A girl will
be home soon from fencing, or is tonight kickboxing?  A man normally knows
where his lovely girl is, but tonight this cake has made him lose his mind.
A man frantically slathers frosting on the cake.  He pushes his hair back from
his forehead over and over.  A man has frosting in his hair, now, and a key is
clicking into the lock and a door is opening.  A man scrambles for a knife, a
plate.
“Happy nameday,” he says breathlessly to a girl, holding out a very lumpy piece
of cake.  “A man tried his best.”
“How’d you know I like Fun–I shouldn’t even ask,” a girl says, and she takes
the cake in her hand and takes a bite, not bothering to use a fork.  “Not bad,”
she says with her mouth full.  “It’s better than the rest of your cooking.”
A man rolls his eyes at a girl.
“You have frosting in your hair.”
“A girl has frosting on her face,” a man says, and he leans forward to help a
girl clean it off.
 
***** Kiss in the Rain *****
They dare not do this inside, not in their cells in the temple, not in one of
the many shadowy crevices or twisted staircases.  Whenever one of them feels
daring, the other feels they ought not risk it.
Instead, they slip on their cloaks and leave in the early grey light of dawn.
They leave separately, yet Arya feels she can still sense Jaqen’s presence in
the hallway.  Maybe there’s an echo of his heartbeat in the cold stone walls.
 You’re being stupid.  Stop being stupid!
But it’s hard not to be stupid when the morning is rainy and damp, yet again,
and the dampness is almost more bone-piercing than the cold winds that blew
down from the Wall when she was that little girl, far away, long ago. It’s hard
not to be stupid when she shivers, just for a moment, and long arms wrap tight
around her.
“Don’t shiver, lovely girl,” says the silky voice in her ear.  And then they’re
off, trying to splash through the puddles as quietly as they can.  Sometimes
they make it far away from the House of Black and White, but some mornings are
hungrier than others, and Arya can feel that in Jaqen this morning.  He is
tense, his breathing already labored, and at one moment when he turns and she
does not, he collides with her and she feels how hard his cock is against her
side.  That’s the easiest way to tell.
They tuck into an alley just a block away from where they came from.  Jaqen
presses her against the wall.  The dampness will seep into her cloak and leave
her cold, but it does not matter.  He is breathing heavily now, kissing up the
insides of her thighs and undoing her breeches.  They pause, hearing footsteps
outside the alley, but they’re the uneven footsteps of a drunk, and so Jaqen
stands, his breeches already unlaced and his cock jutting out between them.  He
runs his hand across her waist, grazing the hilt of the knife she wears there.
 Then he scoops her up, wrapping her legs around him, and thrusts into her.
He moans, a sound Arya almost never hears because he’s so quiet, but today he
moans as he slides into her easily, then out, in and out, in and out and in and
out and in and out and–Her head is lolling to the side, her eyes already
flickering shut.  She’d hate how he makes her lose all her awareness, but with
him, it feels right.
“Lovely girl,” he pants.  “A lovely girl should pull her hood back.”
She does, the rain splashing down on her sweaty cheeks, and he stills his hips
and comes in for a kiss.  His cock twitches inside of her.  She slips her
tongue into his mouth and tastes spices on his.
 
***** Five Sentence Fic *****
Chapter Summary
     based on the inbox prompt "Arya was going to kill him. Kill him, but
     kiss him first."
And it would be all right.  A man would die seeing the grey light of Braavos in
a girl’s pale eyes.
But this is when a man awakes, as he does every night, with dawn’s first light
lifting the black of the night sky and a familiar ache in his dream-hardened
cock.
A man reaches down to relieve himself of his need before a girl rises, but as
always, his motions stir his alert girl from her sleep.
“Did I try to kill you again?” she mumbles, her hand reaching down to move with
his.
 
***** Ten One-Sentence Prompts *****
1. (angst) He has changed his face, but walking away with his boots squelching
in the mud of the Riverlands, he realizes with every step away from her that
that something in his chest continues to ache.
2. (AU) He’s a seventh-year with a strange fire in his icy eyes and she’s only
a first-year, but when he tells her he can show her all around Knockturn Alley
and keep her safewhile they do it, she doesn’t waste a moment hesitating.
3. (crack) “Pfft, you could have just told me,” Arya said, pointing at the
small stack of dusty, yellowing, gay leather porn magazines with long German
words written across the cover as she continued, “it’s not like I’d judge you
for this, it looks hot.”
4. (future fic) When Mercy dreams she dreams of a life not her own, of a
direwolf roaming a burnt and dying wood, of a grey and warm holdfast under grey
and cold skies, and the scent of ginger and cloves everywhere, everywhere, even
in the deepest of dreams.
5. (first time) A man does not know how old a girl is, but why should it
matter?
6. (fluff) The day they switch places, Arya driving the BMW with Jaqen’s strong
arms holding tight around her waist, is the day Arya knows he’ll be in her life
for longer than she’d expected.
7. (humor) The first time she got A Man’s pants down, she couldn’t stop
laughing—“I can’t believe the carpet matches the drapes!”
8. (hurt/comfort) It’s something a man has never had before, a lovely girl who
worries about his wounds and scars even as she strokes them with wonder.
9. (smut) There’s always a point every time they fuck when Jaqen’s eyes flicker
closed and he bites at his lip and he grabs Arya’s hips and pulls him to her
faster, faster—but no matter what, he tangles her in his arms afterwards, and
kisses her lips over and over with reverence.
10. (UST) She watches his lean, scarred body down in the steam of the Russian
and Turkish Baths, watches as he takes the oak leaves and beats himself with
them with his eyes open and focused, each swing of his arm as graceful as the
marks the leaves make on his back.
 
***** Bubbles; Modern AU *****
Chapter Summary
     prompted by crossingwinter: "very specific au prompt: arya and jaqen
     fill the fountains in washington square park with laundry detergent,
     turning them into giant puffballs of foam."
When the M pulls into the Myrtle Avenue station after 25 minutes of waiting,
there’s something blue about the black sky.  Arya points this out to Jaqen, and
he takes her soft-gloved hand in his leather-gloved hand as they walk into the
glaring lights of the empty train car.
“A girl notices much,” he says, giving her hand a squeeze.  "It is as though
she has the eyes of a wolf.“
"I’m gonna wish I never told you about my wolf dreams,” Arya yawns.  She’s too
tired to talk much, and the early morning chill and stillness feels like a drug
in her veins.  She and Jaqen spill into one of the two-person benches at the
end of the car, tucking their bulky backpacks under the seat, and take out her
phone to continue listening to the audiobook of Rilke’s poetry read in the
German original that Jaqen’s put on there.  He gets the headphone in his right
ear, Arya gets hers in her left, and she pushes play and he snuggles against
her.
“Eight stops,” he whispers. “A girl may rest.  A man will watch her.”
Arya yawns again.  ”You mean watch over me?  Or watch me?”
“A man means both.  Always.”
“Creep.”  Arya loves the sound of the German poetry, and her German’s getting
better, but it’s not good enough yet for the rocking of the train and the
clunking of the wheels over the rails to not make it all sound like part of a
strange, guttural lullaby.  Her family would not be happy to know she was
falling asleep on the subway in Bushwick before sunrise, but her family doesn’t
know everything: Bushwick’s not like what they think, and with her and Jaqen
combined, nothing bad can possibly happen to them.
She’s asleep before the next station.
Jaqen nudges her awake just before the train pulls into West 4th, and they
gather their backpacks and walk the few blocks to Washington Square Park
quietly.  The sun’s not out yet, but the sky is getting bluer.  It’s cool, but
not cold, and some birds are singing.
They hop over the fence without checking to see if the gates are unlocked.
 Sometimes, Arya thinks, it’s more fun to hop over fences, and something she
likes about Jaqen is that he agrees.  His long, thin legs are made for it,
anyway.
It’s weird to think that this is what a real, honest killer-for-hire who loves
Rilke and glam rock (which is, in itself, weird to think about) is choosing to
do with his time, with her, but Arya enjoys weird.  She’s not afraid of weird,
and it’s why she’s opening up the first of many boxes of detergent they’d
bought at Family Dollar yesterday and pouring it into the fountain.  She would
have thought they’d turn off the water while the park was closed, but the
fountain is running, and filling with bubbles as she and Jaqen empty out their
boxes.
“A man wants to play in it,” Jaqen mumbles, and he’s pulling off his jacket and
gloves and shirt and tossing aside and jumping into the foam.
“Watch out!” Arya cries, pulling off her shirt to join him.  She jumps in,
landing on top of Jaqen and knocking him onto his ass.
He sends a rush of soapy cold fountain water splashing toward her.  ”If a girl
intends to get a man soaked, a man must do the same to a girl.”
Arya splashes him back.  There’s a dot of suds on his nose, and his nipples are
as pink and hard as she’s ever seen them.  They look like the scar tissue he’s
got all over his body.  He splashes her again.  
“You can splash me all you want.  I don’t get cold.”
“A man gets cold,” Jaqen says, in a voice so pitiful Arya decides not to ask
why he went into the fountain in the first place.  Instead, she gives him a
hug, melding his slippery, shirtless body with her own.  The red side of his
hair is full of bubbles, and she is sure she looks the same.  They’ll have to
clear out before the sun is all the way up, but for now it’s just her and
Jaqen, rocking back and forth to the sound of the fountain.
 
***** Nymeria; Braavos AU *****
Sometimes when a man comes home to his cold, dark rooms there is a welcome
friend waiting for him.  Her name is Nymeria, and she is sleek but her fur is
soft and her claws are sharp and she pants when he comes in, her eyes gleaming
up at him in the dark. A dog is useful, but a wolf, a wolf feels like
acompanion to a man.  She licks a man’s fingers and stands on her hind legs to
dig her claws into a man’s shoulders.  A man does not notice the sting.  She
licks a man’s face and waits impatiently for him to light a fire in the
fireplace and bring some warmth to the cold room.  Then she tackles a man to
the floor and licks a man’s face raw and climbs upon him.  A wolf’s claws dig
into a man’s thighs.  A wolf’s fur is humid and warm, hotter than the fire.  A
wolf howls.  A man, so accustomed to wonder and horror, to the world and its
ways, shivers every time.
A man drifts into strange, smoky dreams with the wolf by his side.
Hours later a girl returns to his rooms.  It is raining outside; a girl sheds
her wet robes. A man sits, leaning against the wall. A girl sits atop him, her
legs straddling his own.  A girl and a man do not speak.  She slices through a
man’s robes with her knife; pulls the scraps off with her teeth.  A girl is not
hairy like a wolf, but a girl is sharp and sinew, and as she traces the fresh
claw-marks and the old scars, a man takes her small breasts in his calloused
hands and kisses them til her eyes close.  A girl touches him still, breathing
harder and harder as her fingers wander over the raised and stinging marks.  A
man replaces his mouth with his fingers and buries his face in the crook of a
girl’s neck. A man does not smell Braavos.  A man smells forest and fur, stone
and smoke, wind and snow.
***** Polyphony; University Universe *****
Chapter Notes
     Tagged by crossingwinter to write a 5-minute drabble. No editing
     allowed!
They don’t have much in the way of winter traditions in Lorath, Jaqen tells her
one night, as they sit on his bed listening to his strange music and watch snow
swirl in the sky outside their dorm.  It’s always somewhat cold and dreary in
Lorath: their seasons are less rainy and more rainy, less windy and more windy.
 Arya can’t imagine Lorath.  She wishes Jaqen would show her photos, but he
didn’t bring any with him, and the internet doesn’t have many photos of the
place either, which is just weird.
Arya can’t imagine Winterfell without sledding, apple cider, and asking Robb to
teach her how to make the perfect snowball, and she tells Jaqen this.
“A girl hears this music?”  Jaqen says.  “A girl should close her eyes.”
Arya does.  Jaqen’s hand curls around hers.  His fingers are thin but strong,
warm as they always are.
“What does a girl hear?”
In the strange sounds, all those voices joined as one in ways she’s never heard
before, Arya hears wind whistling through the air.  She hears water crashing
against rocks.  She hears cold empty space and a light grey sky.  She hears
winter.  She doesn’t know how this music makes her feel all these things.  She
wonders if Jaqen is…magic, somehow.
It’s a stupid thought, she thinks.  But it stays with her.
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