Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Roose Bolton had never been one for socializing with colleagues. Necessity might force him to interact with them at the university, but he saw no reason why friendship was required. For fifteen years, he had attended the requisite university functions, but had steadfastly refused invitations to lunches, dinners, nameday, and retirement parties, most of which had mercifully dried up after his first year of employment. He roomed alone at conferences. At no point had he ever displayed photos of his sons or either of his wives in his office. The closest he had ever come to discussing his life with anyone had been on the single occasion when he had contracted a vicious case of the flu that had required him to cancel his lecture.

The students called him “unapproachable” (the less polite ones called him other things on his course evaluations, but as he was possessed of tenure, it was of little consequence). To his face, his kinder colleagues called him “reserved.”

So it was both a surprise and an annoyance, when after his divorce from Bethany, so many people came out of the woodwork attempting to remedy his single status.

Roose couldn’t even fathom how they had found out, but now everywhere he turned the newly-divorced were there with slips of paper containing information on support groups and dating sites.

“Come to dinner on Friday,” more than one person would beg.

“You need to get back on the horse,” others would say.

For months after his divorce, he had been invited to potlucks, backyard barbecues, dinners, lunches, and pool parties with the promise of “I know you’ll hit it off with her.”

His stony-faced refusals only seemed to encourage them more. “You have to put yourself out there,” the woman who drove the mail truck told him unasked.

“There’s a singles group at my Sept,” another person said, helpfully adding that he wouldn’t even need to be a member of the Faith.

And then one day he reluctantly drove Catelyn Stark to a mandatory faculty reception because her car had a flat.

“Ohhhh,” Yohn Royce said in a whisper to him as they settled into their seats. “No wonder you’re not interested in my cousin.”

“You’re perfect for each other,” an associate professor from another department made a point of saying to him.

“We’re not dating. Catelyn needed—”

“—None of my business, of course. You’re absolutely right. I won’t say a word. All the same, I stand by what I just said.” His phone rang. “That’ll be my daughter wanting a ride. Later!”

And that seemed to be that. No one talked about it again. The offers of fixing him up and all the advice dried up almost instantly. All it required of him was occasionally giving Catelyn rides or helping her with the odd household repair. She did the same for him. They had never come out and discussed the matter, but Roose concluded that she had been subject to similar pressures and found the arrangement as satisfactory as he did.

“I tell you,” Asha insisted. “They’re banging.”

From the end of the hall, Renly eyed the backs of the heads of Roose Bolton and Catelyn Stark and then looked at Asha Greyjoy in utter disbelief. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Nope.”

In the ordinary course of events, Renly and Asha would never have socialized, but they were the newest and youngest members of the history department and as such had banded together. “She is of a certain age and her options are more limited,” Renly allowed as they walked down the hallway to meet them, “but I think she could do a lot better than the Leech Lord.”

“Then she’s slumming.” Asha dug in the pocket of her leather jacket for her gloves. “C’mon. Let’s get this farce over with. And later you’re going to have to tell me why everyone calls him that.”

The farce in question was attending one of the new Provost’s “listening talks.” Renly suspected that this was a rather futile event. He was new to academia, but from the bits he’d heard muttered in the halls suggested that the Provost had arrived with an agenda set in granite and this was more or less a sop to the rank and file—to prove that the administration really did want their feedback.

But when he had suggested to an older colleague that he might skip it, the reaction had convinced him this was one of those tiresome activities they were expected to attend.

“Only one on this campus and at the worst possible time,” Asha muttered.

Renly was in total agreement. It was why they were all carpooling to the university’s main campus. Parking there was practically non-existent. “Thanks for doing this,” he said to Roose as they met up with them.

“Don’t be silly,” Catelyn replied. “We were going there anyhow.”

Asha caught Renly’s eye.

It didn’t have to mean anything. Both Catelyn Stark and Roose Bolton had been faculty at Raventree for years.

Renly did wonder how they were going to find a parking spot. His normal practice when going to the main campus was to tack on a good twenty minutes to the travel time.

When he had suggested this, Roose arched his eyebrows. “I never have a problem.”

When they arrived at the faculty lot, Renly learned why.

The typical approach was to wait in a somewhat orderly line. As a person emerged from the nearest sidewalk, one rolled down the window and inquired as to the lot where the person was parked. Then one either followed the person or gave the individual a ride to his or her car. It was ungainly, but it did work—unless (and this was Renly’s usual experience) another driver swooped in and took the spot before one could execute the turn.

When this occurred to them, Renly felt a mixture of annoyance and smugness.

Roose remained calm.

“We could try the overflow lot,” Asha suggested.

Renly agreed. “I don’t mind walking.”

He spared them a glance. His normally pleasant expression had turned hard. “No.”

“We’ll be late if—”

But he was out of the car. He did nothing more than stand and lock eyes with the boy who was getting out of his SUV. Or rather, what was probably his parents’ SUV, Renly thought. The bumper sticker “My child is an honor student at Baelor the Blessed Academy” suggested it did not belong to him.

Catelyn wasn’t paying any attention, but was instead sorting through her capacious handbag.

Renly watched as the student’s defiance melted away.

“Sorry, my bad. I didn’t see you.”

Roose said nothing, but waited until the boy got back into the SUV and then after the SUV lumbered away, he backed the car in. “There,” he told them almost cheerfully.

“I’ll have to try that next time,” Asha muttered.

When they arrived at their destination, it was clear that whatever else they were, Catelyn and Roose were clearly old hands at this. They surveyed the room even as they exchanged greetings with colleagues.

“Five rows from the back on the left-side side,” Roose murmured.

Renly noted Roose’s suggestion had been solely directed to Catelyn.

“The back row is free,” Asha said. She waved to a group of four chairs on the right still as yet unclaimed.

Catelyn smiled kindly. “We won’t be able to see that far away and on that side. If we take those seats there, we’ll have a better vantage point and we’ll be able to leave discreetly from the end if the Provost goes too long.”

“Yes,” Roose agreed. He exchanged a glance with Catelyn and then moved purposely toward the long thin refreshment table at the back of the room.

Catelyn draped her coat over the four metal folding chairs. “Oh, there’s Ellyn. Excuse me.”

Renly and Asha followed Roose toward the table. He took a plate and carefully selected a few pieces of fruit, a cookie, and a brownie. The last two seemed odd to Renly. The man was a health nut. He hooked his fingers around two bottles of water and then went toward where Catelyn was chatting, who took the plate and one of the waters from him with a quick smile.

“I told you. They’re banging.”

Renly turned toward Asha. “You’re right.”

“Of course you can stop by,” Mum said in a bright, happy voice that was totally at odds with the expression of horror on her face.

Rickon tensed. He knew what was coming.

“Wonderful. See you then.” She hung up the phone, looked around the living room wildly, and then immediately dialed again, taking the receiver with her.

Rickon couldn’t make out all of her words, but a few were all too audible.

“Roose, I need you.”

That meant Dr. Bolton, who Rickon and his siblings were all pretty sure was dating Mum.

Rickon scowled, but there was no point in saying anything. Mainly because he knew that if Mum had not already whipped herself up into a state about the impending visit from company, she was going to very shortly. Without being told to, he turned off the TV and his laptop.

It wouldn’t be enough. Not even Dad had ever been able to reason with Mum when she got this way. Anyhow Dad was gone now and Mum still wasn’t back to normal or she wouldn’t be dating Dr. Bolton.

“Why do people do this?” Mum wondered aloud in a voice of despair. “Less than an hour, they said, and the house is filthy!”

The house was not filthy, Rickon knew. Sure, it was kind of cluttered sometimes, but Mum was always wiping stuff down and she had a lady come in to do the floors twice a month. And she was usually on him to clean up his room. But he did what Dad and later Robb and Sansa and Arya and Bran had always told him to do when Mum got like this: keep your head down and do whatever Mum said. So he did.

“Thank the gods you’re here,” Mum said as she let in Dr. Bolton in through the side door.

Rickon muttered “Freak” under his breath. He was pretty sure Dr. Bolton had heard, although the guy looked more amused than anything else. Mum definitely did because she whipped her head around. “Stop it, Rickon.”

“What?” Rickon said, adopting an expression of innocence.

“We’ll talk about it later.”

Rickon was counting on her forgetting all about this. His chances were good. Mum was almost at the point where she would start throwing things out with wholesale abandon.

She turned to Dr. Bolton. “Food. They’ll want nibbles. Gods, what do I have to serve them?”

Dr. Bolton seemed unfazed. He merely waited.

“Vegetables! Would you cut some?”

“Of course.”

She thrust a bottle of all-purpose cleaner and a roll of paper towels at Rickon. “Wipe everything down in the guest bath and put some clean towels—nice ones in there—and then get your backpack out of the living room.”

When Rickon came back, Dr. Bolton had retrieved a bunch of carrots and celery and radishes and stuff from the fridge and was chopping them up with the competence of a very calm, very expert sous chef. “How long do we have?”

Mum piled stacks of magazines and journals into the cupboard that held the pots and pans. “Fifteen minutes, I think. Rickon, I told you to take your backpack to your room.”

Rickon was in the act of doing this, when Mum raced in and placed Dr. Bolton’s satchel by the sofa.

“How come he gets to have his stuff in the living room and I have to move mine?” Rickon demanded as he followed Mum back into the kitchen.

“Do it again.”

“What?”

Mum didn’t look up as she shoved a pair of running shoes into the same cupboard. “I said ‘wipe down everything,’ not ‘squirt some cleaner on the vanity and give it a half-hearted pass with a single paper towel.’ ” Again she ran back into the living room.

It was uncanny sometimes how Mum seemed to know all and see all.

Dr. Bolton had found a platter and was placing carrot sticks on it.

Mum called from the living room. “Rickon!”

“I find it is best not to argue in situations like this,” Dr. Bolton commented in a mild voice. He rummaged in the refrigerator and found a half-used container of hummus.

“What would you know about it?”

“My ex-wife used to get like this on the rare occasion we had unexpected guests.” He examined the expiration date on the container lid. “Especially when her sister was the unexpected guest, so it’s not altogether surprising that your mother should be reacting to the arrival of hers.”

Rickon froze. “Aunt Lysa?”

“I believe so, yes.”

“Rickon Elmo Stark. MOVE. NOW.”

He sighed and obeyed.

With thirty seconds to spare, the three of them had the place in what Mum considered acceptable condition. The weird thing though was that even as Mum went to the door, she stopped to move Dr. Bolton’s satchel to an even more visible position before switching on a smile to greet her company.

Domeric squeezed her hand in what was meant to be a comforting gesture. All Cerenna Lannister felt was ill. They hadn’t been in his mother’s living room for more than five minutes and the entire morning had complete disaster scrawled all over it in indelible marker.

Not that Domeric understood just why she was so nervous. And even after she explained how Uncle Tywin had taken a paternal role in her life after her father had died and was very particular, Dom didn’t quite get it. They loved each other. What did it matter what her uncle thought?

But then you really had to experience Tywin Lannister live and in person to get him.

In theory, Uncle Tywin might (and that was a very big might) have been all right with her marrying Domeric Bolton. But there were strikes against him. For one he came from comparatively modest circumstances. For another his career prospects as a musician were not that encouraging—at least from Uncle Tywin’s perspective. But then once you added in Dom’s family and it was like they brought their own nails and hammers to seal the coffin.

Cerenna had met them individually (all but the half-brother who was serving the life sentence with no hope of parole—by some miracle, Uncle Tywin hadn’t found out about Ramsay yet, and Cerenna certainly wasn’t going to enlighten him). Domeric had been enthusiastic about his family. He loved his parents and he adored his aunt.

Domeric’s mother was a cold, silent woman, but she was positively the image of warmth and loquacity compared with his father.

It was clear they cared for Domeric.

It was equally clear they were baffled that they cared.

His aunt was more socialized than either of his parents, but she was very prickly and beyond acerbic, with a propensity to oversharing the strangest things (Cerenna really could have gone the rest of her life without hearing what the blood from Barbrey Ryswell Dustin’s hymen had looked like on her first boyfriend’s dick).

Add in Uncle Tywin, who was probably this close to physically dragging her back to the Westerlands and away from these déclassé northern icebergs and her musician fiancé, and it promised to be a doomed-laden morning.

They sat there: Uncle Tywin, Domeric, his mother, his aunt, and Cerenna, no one speaking. All of them waiting for Dom’s father with his serial killer eyes to arrive. She glanced at the carriage clock on the mantel. From the way Uncle Tywin’s eyes were glinting, Cerenna thought she had perhaps fifteen minutes left before he threatened to cut her off from the Lannister money and the Lannister family if she didn’t leave with him and there.

And then, with the arrival of Dom’s father and the father’s girlfriend, it all changed.

“I do hope you can forgive me,” Catelyn Stark said after introductions were made. “It’s my fault we’re late. One of my sons decided this morning would be a fine time to tell me about a project that’s due tomorrow. You know how it is—well, no, you don’t. From everything Roose has told me about Domeric, he never put you through anything like that.” She turned to Domeric. “I’m so pleased to finally meet you.”

“How many kids do you have, Dr. Stark?” Cerenna asked.

“Call me Catelyn. Five. Rickon, he’s my youngest, he still lives with me.” She accepted tea, told Dom’s mother she had a lovely home, and proceeded to ask Cerenna and Domeric questions about themselves.

Admittedly, Dom’s mother and aunt were shooting incredulous looks at each other, and Uncle Tywin was still uncharmed, but it was so blessedly . . . normal. And even when it turned out that Uncle Tywin had known and disliked Catelyn Stark’s late husband and somehow that Dom’s aunt had history with her, everyone was acting less like waxwork dummies and more like actual human beings.

“. . . such a lovely couple,” Catelyn Stark was saying. “Roose and I looked at your photos on Facebook.”

Domeric blinked. “My dad? Dad? Since when do you know how to use Facebook?”

“I don’t. Catelyn helped me out.”

“Roose isn’t much for social media,” Catelyn said apologetically.

“I can see how it has business applications,” Domeric’s father conceded, “But it is foolish to share personal information in such a public forum.”

This turned out to be really good opinion for him to express, because Uncle Tywin felt exactly the same way and unbent long enough to gruffly congratulate Dom’s father on his good sense. Then somehow it was revealed that both men hunted and they started having a lengthy if tersely worded conversation about guns, and discovered they had the same opinion about something called the Remington Sendero SF II. From there slowly, inch by painful inch, they seemed to reach an silent understanding that maybe she and Domeric together might not be the worst thing to ever happen.

Meanwhile at the other end of the room, the other two women, taciturn northerners though they were, were grilling Catelyn Stark in a manner which Cerenna was intimately familiar with. They were perfectly polite, but all while Uncle Tywin and Roose Bolton were monosyllabically establishing that Domeric needed to have a more stable day job and a sound investment portfolio with which to support Cerenna, Dom’s mother and aunt were digging into the specifics of Catelyn’s relationship with Roose Bolton.

Catelyn Stark was more than equal to the interrogation, holding her own, while thrusting her own conversational daggers. Cerenna had no idea who “Brandon” was, but he seemed to be a sore point between Barbrey and Catelyn. Bethany was much more focused on what exactly Catelyn was doing with her former husband and just when it had started.

Cerenna thought the most pertinent question was “why,” but all she really cared about was that by the end of brunch, the way was clear for her to be with Domeric.

“See, I told you it would be all right,” Domeric said after it was all over. He looked back at the driveway where his father was opening the car door for Catelyn Stark. “Mother thinks Dad’s having some kind of mid-life crisis.”

Cerenna thought it was unlikely that Roose Bolton had ever been in crisis about anything. “I liked her.”

“She’s a bit . . . odd, don’t you think?”