[Fanfic] Lies, or maybe Truth, pt. 1 [ Game of Thrones, Robb/Theon, M, complete ]
Fandom: Game of Thrones
Title: Lies, or maybe Truth
Pairing: Robb/Theon.
Word Count: ~7,900. Split into two even though I have no clue why because it's less than 10k, but OH WELL. HTML hates me.
Rating: M
Summary: Robb, Theon, and the illusion of intimacy.
Shooting an arrow, Theon liked to think, was a lot like coming.
There would be a period of heightened concentration during which every little detail cut to sharp attention. The light would gleam on the arrow's polished shaft - or a pearl of sweat coalescing on flushed skin. Veins would pulse in the target's neck - or throbbing against a lover's. All of this followed by the moment of pressure mounting until muscles coiled, and the body was tightly strung, the heart beat so hard it was like to give, until finally -
Beside him, Robb loosed the arrow. It arced through the air in a soft, purring whoosh, sloped down in a way Theon could not mentally describe as anything other than 'pitiful,' exhilarated in its downward descent, and bore into the target's lower half with a low, thrummingthunk.
Theon felt his trademark grin stretch across his lips. "Not bad."
Robb's eyes dashed over to him, held Theon's for a beat, then fell away again, back to the target.
Wordlessly, Robb nocked another arrow, pulled back the string until the feather was to his ear, creased his eye brows in concentration. Loosed.
Better than the last, this arrow hit a few inches closer to the heart of the target. It might have looked impressive, if Theon's own hadn't been swarmed with arrows not a few feet to the right.
Robb's expression was controlled as always, betraying neither resentment nor jealousy when he said, "I'm not as good as you are at this."
Theon smiled. "Well. It might be that a wolf's paw is not entirely suited for this art of war." He lifted an arrow from his quiver with the ease of a shrug, nocked, marked, loosed and hammered it into the target, where it split apart another arrow already lodged there and knocked aside another. Tension seeped out of him sweet and thrilling, as did the boast. "Mayhaps it is the speed you lack. Or the dexterity."
"Dexterity," Robb repeated, as if tasting the word on his tongue. He paused, then nocked another arrow. "You would have the skill."
A smile played across Theon's face, just wide enough to lift him into the terra incognita that lingered between genuine and genuinely mocking. "Everyone's good for something. In my case, I'm even good at listening to orders in addition to shooting arrows. And fucking." His smile crossed the line. "I'm good at that, too."
"I wouldn't know about that," Robb said, his tone flat and even. "Well, I do know about the arrows. Not the other thing."
There had been a time, not too long ago, when Robb would've pinned him with a glare while the heat pulsed rosy-red beneath his cheeks at any mention of that word or any like it. Now, he had learned to just let it roll off his shoulders, leaving Theon floundering between reluctant admiration and the subtle dismay at having had the edges of one of his favorite japes salted and ground away like the spikes of a sea shell off the coast of his father's castle.
"...Aye, and you're not like to hear more of it." Theon's smile loosened when his mind returned to his earlier talk with Lord Stark. He flipped an arrow from his quiver and drew the bowstring to his ear, his eyes boring into the wide, gaping, lusciously red ring of the target ahead. "Stark honor and all that."
He loosed the arrow and shook his hair out of his face without even bothering to check where the arrow had landed; he'd learned to tell by the sounds they made upon impact long ago.
Robb knew what he was talking about, of course. Dry and witless and far too literal he may be, but his ears worked as well as anyone's, and he had a mind quick to apply itself to where questions of duty were concerned. "My lord father had no choice but to close down the brothel in Winter Town, Theon." Locks of auburn hair tumbled forward to splay across his cheekbones when he inclined his head to study his arrows.
Theon tried to mask his snort by clearing his throat. "Of course not. The fact that five fools so deep in the cups they were like to come out the other side got robbed down to their last coppers is cause for your father to enforce an involuntary act of chastity for everyone."
"Bannermen. They were my lord father's bannermen. Not fools."
"One does not necessarily exclude the other," Theon said, dipping into the pools of mockery before swiftly withdrawing. "Be that as it may, they were victims, whatever else they were." He loosed another arrow. "Would that I could just find the long-fingered wenches, I'd have more interesting targets to practice with."
"It will not kill you to go... without." Robb paused. "Until the matter has been settled. Surely."
An easy grin found its way back to Theon's lips. "No more than a lack of mead, one would think. Yet I'm fairly sure a fair few would contest you on that."
"No one I recall."
Theon sighed. "It's just a matter of preference. You prefer to keep honorable, I don't, that's fine with me. You prefer a sword, I prefer a bow, that's fine as well. Admittedly a lot of that comes back to skill, but -"
Robb turned to him, and his eyes barreled into Theon's. "You will not," he said, "criticize my lord father's decisions in front of me any further."
The words settled in between them, wrapped themselves in the drifting snow, and turned to ice and cold and silence. A few flakes caught in Theon's hair, melted, and ran down along his cheeks like wet fingers. They dangled down his chin and dropped down into the furs of his cloak. Scattered.
Theon tossed back his hair, slipped another arrow from his quiver and flung it at the target, and then another, and another, teeth grit tight, eyes narrowed, his hands reaching and pulling and loosing. Iron wailed against wood, again and again, thuck thuck thuck like drums, until at least, when he reached for his quiver to slip out another arrow, his hand grasped only air. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, lodged his signature smile onto his face, and looked over to the heir of Winterfell.
The Stark boy stood there calm and still, sheathed in shimmering snow and cast against the jaundiced glow of the torches lining the doors to the towers. A frown had etched itself across his features, drawn together his eyebrows, and forced his eyes into a small squint.
Blue, Theon thought absently. His eyes are very blue.
As were Theon's own. Though his own, he liked to think, were blue like the tossed-up waters in the iron bay. The Stark boys were not like Theon's and they weren't like Lord Stark's, either, who had eyes like frosty fog and icy sheens and all things winter and North, no.
His were neither sea nor frost but the sunlit blue of the rivers in his mother's home.
And yet. And yet.
Theon felt the fingers of resentment dig into the pit of his stomach. "Forgive me." The words tasted ashen, but he managed to sweeten them with the curl of a skeptical upper lip. "My lord."
Silence reigned. Theon looked at the Stark and the Stark looked at him like two animals testing where the water was wide and the rivers tore. Auburn curls clung to pale skin where the snow had landed, and blue met blue spun across two orbits of waiting.
Until finally: "I'm no lord yet," Robb said. His tone rang neutral now, the consonants softened.
"Just so. Not yet." Theon grinned.
Robb looked at him for a beat, then another. The cloak's fur that framed his face suited him, Theon thought; it made him look regal and well-muscled and even handsome, just like a little lordling should be.
Then Robb broke eye contact and turned back to the target, signaling Theon in not so many words that he considered the conversation flung aside, wrapped in the Stark colors of dispassion and brusqueness, until he decided to pick it up again, in a voice simple and clear, "And you were wrong, by the way. About your preference for archery over swordsmanship being due to skill." Blue met blue. "You would make for a good swordsman if you applied yourself more. No worse than I."
"Kind though you are, you forget that you're years younger than me and yet have always bested me." He laughed through the bitterness. "No match for a young wolf's strength, I fear."
Robb's eyes rested on him. "Is that what you think?"
Theon grew serious. "Well, yes. I came here as a boy of two-and-ten, with you barely past your seventh name day and yet you wielded the sword like the extension of your arm. You and your bastard brother both. Am I wrong?"
"No." Robb seemed to weigh his next words. "I think that you might want to ask yourself if you are no good swordsman because you lack the skill or..." He considered his words. "Because you never really wanted to be, is all."
Robb. Robb.
Robb, Theon had always thought, was just too perfectly positioned within the stream of his destiny. Certainly, at present Eddard Stark functioned as the rock onto which the Stark family leaned and relied, but who doubted that Robb would seamlessly take on those stony robes of responsibility? That sour-faced bastard that always side-eyed Theon might be smarter in some ways, but he'd long since accepted himself as ultimately inferior. The pretty Stark girl loved him as well, and the long-faced one might prefer her bastard brother but seemed loyal enough. The other two, though scarcely more than babes, were set to accept him as their lord father's heir as well. His future had been carefully laid out for him like marks on a high lord's battle map and sweetened with such promises of future songs that Theon was half-convinced that a future so excessively promising would find its natural closure in nothing but tragedy.
Worst of all, Theon himself could not deny that he, too, liked Robb Stark. Sometimes, he just wasn't sure how much. Sometimes, he was sure of so very little.
For example, not even why he sauntered over to Robb, slipped behind him, put a hand on his right arm and the other on his shoulder, and said, "Do you want to be better at archery?"
And when Robb's eyes widened at that, he thought he might know at least one of the reasons why he'd just done that: because little was more thrilling than completely upsetting a Stark's rigid world view. "I... yes. Yes, that's why I'm practicing."
Theon took another step closer. "Then I'll teach you."
Robb's face remained nonplussed. "Ser Rodrik teaches us, as our master-at-arms."
"So he does, but I'm the best archery teacher you're like to find." He bumped his hip against Robb's to straighten his spine and lifted his right elbow. "It wasn't me who taught you wrong posture, was it?"
Robb fit against his chest well enough that Theon found it easy to grasp his bow and yank it into position. "A bow is not a sword, Robb Stark."
"I know that." A hint of petulance crept into his voice. "Ser Rodrik has taught me what to focus on when loosing arrows. I need to lean into a longbow and bend it as I draw -"
"Has he taught you this?" Swiftly, he slipped an arrow from the quiver and drew it back with his hand placed atop Robb's, holding the arrow in position with the string strung tight. The arrow shook and kicked with tension.
"Can you feel it?" Theon only had to lower his head a little to position it right next to the Robb's pink ear. "Can you feel the tension? Hold it. Bear it." A smirk pulled up the corners of his lips. "Feel it mount inside you. Feel it reach toward the top -" Mock-casually, he added, "Does it remind you of anything?"
It hadn't, not yet, Theon could tell by the half-annoyed, half-quizzical look he earned.
Theon rolled his eyes. "You're not feeling it, then." He let go off Robb's hand, and, catching him off-guard, the arrow merely flopped and then nosedived into the cold, hard, snow-covered ground. "Another," Theon judged. "This time you nock it."
Mouth set into a tight line, Robb pulled back the string until the feathers nearly tickled his ear and Theon could see his arm shake in restraint. Before Robb could loose it, Theon put a hand on his shoulder.
"Now, you will not loose it until I tell you to." He leaned in. "Draw it back a little further... and a little more, and a little more. More. You need to stop when you can feel it. Too far and you'll tear the string, too little and it won't come rushing at your enemies with the force of twenty punches like you want it to. It is what you want. The point... are you ticklish?"
Robb had squirmed away from Theon's mouth (which, he noticed just now, had gotten close to his neck), and shot him a withering look as a reply. "No."
Theon laughed, low and guttural and entirely amused. "Well, excellent then." With a smirk, he leaned in even closer, until his lips were a hair's breadth away from the pasty white skin of Robb's neck. He allowed his eyes to linger for a second, to trace the lines of where his shoulders let to his neck and up to where his auburn curls brushed against a bobbing Adam's apple. "Feel it," he ordered, his voice dropping. "Feel how it mounts. That tension, that delicious tension. Don't think with your head, think with your body. Your instincts. They tell you what they need. They know." And lower still his tone fell, barreling past the levels of suggestive and deep into the pits of sultry. "Ache for release, little Robb.Ache for it -"
A shudder sluiced through Robb's body. Theon could feel it, starting low at the small of his back and slitting upwards, seizing his shoulders, tensing his neck, making his Adam's apple throb.
And then, Robb loosed the arrow.
It blurred in the air, a mere whisper of iron and wood and feather, then drilled into the target with enough force to nearly make it topple, and Theon thought, yes, yes, he's got it now, he has, before he even had time to consider why exactly this was cause for celebration, and Robb's body slackened against his in time with the release of a long, drawn-out sigh.
"...See?" Theon chuckled, and watched a curl of Robb's hair flutter in his breath. "You've figured it out, haven't you?"
The blush beneath Robb's cheeks pulsed with all the evidence Theon would ever need.
"So you have," Theon said, amused. "Well, I shouldn't be surprised. In siring all his whelps, Lord Stark has admirably proven that you northmendo know what goes where -"
The glare that Robb threw at would have burned, if it hadn't been ruined by the fact that a tint of blood red stood high on his cheeks. "Quiet, Theon."
He laughed. Loud and fully, puffing gusts of breath.
Irritated, Robb took another step toward him. "Quit it." Too used to being obeyed within his own household, he proved himself suitably unskilled at managing derision. "I said -"
"I apologize." Another chuckle, but he reined it in when he caught Robb's look. "I meant no slight - well, not this time, anyway -" Another glare. "No, in all seriousness - it's just." Theon smirked, and said, more gently, "You've never, have you?"
Robb's nose twitched. "You've just... seen me shoot that arrow."
"And you've just realised that this isn't what I meant," Theon said, amused. I like him. I do, gods be good. "Don't insult me by pretending you don't know."
The snow continued to fall, the cold kept creeping up on them, and a Stark kept his stone-edge silence.
"It's not any of my concern, in truth," Theon allowed with an easy smile and a shrug of his shoulders. "I'm pretty sure none of you have, not even Jon. All the tales of their lot being lusty and devious notwithstanding."
Robb severed the eye contact then, and poised himself back into archery position. "If you already knew, why ask?"
Because your reactions are half the fun of it. "Call me a dare-devil, but I try not to make assumptions. Not too many, that is."
Robb fell silent at that. Shrugging another arrow from his quiver, he nocked and loosed it in fast succession, foregoing the wait and the ache and the release, the sweet and sinful point of no return. Robb's mouth thinned into a tight line of dismay when he missed.
"…. I can't get married yet. It's not useful or desirable until such time as my house decides that it is. Even if that may not yet make me a man grown in your eyes or anyone else's."
Theon laughed, not unkindly. "You don't have to marry whores, Robb. Take it from me: I'd be married half a hundred times over."
Avoiding Theon's eyes, Robb gazed straight ahead, shoulder square, spine straight, mouth perfectly poised. "I'm not interested."
"Why? Because they taste of cold hard coin and not sweet and salty love?"
Robb shifted his weight, and finally raised his eyes to meet Theon's. "Are you mocking my convictions?" Lacking real accusation, his voice came instead tinted with a dash of curiosity. "Is it really that important?"
"No, and aye," Theon said, and realised that he was speaking the truth. "Maybe."
"I've been taught that it is improper to lie with a woman you have not yet married," he said with all the grandeur of Stark conviction. He grew distant for a second, then caught himself. "I have responsibility to live up to expectations, so wait, I shall. A woman's virtue is to be cherished."
Coming from any Stark other than Robb, it would have annoyed Theon. From Robb, it seemed like part of a game. "Only a woman's virtue by the word of the old gods, you say? So my own has been preserved. I shall rest easy at night."
For a moment, Theon fully expected to be met with another glare of indignation or perhaps a sneer of annoyance.
Instead, Robb cracked one of his rare smiles.
Robb's smiles, ah.
They were never like the firecracker grins of his own. They were not the sour little half-grimaces Jon would give him, and they weren't the poised and perfectly-studied little squints of Lady Catelyn's, either; they were something else: small and whimsical and as honest as they were subdued. No one but Theon noticed Robb for his smiles, he was sure. No one but him.
The private moment stretched and cloaked around them. Robb looked at Theon and Theon looked at Robb, eyes fused together, environment blocked and scattered, the burn of the snow soothed. Titles and names and history finally, finally forgotten.
He found himself smiling back, taking a step toward him, and saying, "Mayhaps you and I should," before he could even think if through, before he had even fully formulated what he'd meant to say in his head, but once he'd said it, his skin cooled in doubt.
Robb didn't comprehend. Eyes fixed on Theon's, he asked, "Should what?"
It was too late. Much too late. He could probably backpedal now, laugh it off, come up with something unrelated, or even just drop it, but he'd been seized by the idea, the one idea that had waltzed into his head unannounced and hammered images into every corner of his head like a series of well-timed arrows, and they were -
Too compelling. Too perfect.
He walked over to Robb. The snow popped beneath his feet. His breath shimmered in the air and mingled with Robb's when he had gotten close enough. Smiled. "You and me. Perhaps we should do it with each other."
Somewhere behind them, a crow cawed. The wind picked up, bit into Theon's skin, and slid beneath his cloaks.
Robb just stared as incomprehension scattered to surprise which rapidly bowed out to embarrassment seasoned with anger. "Do not jape, Theon."
Theon took a step closer. "I wasn't." Another step, until his nose picked up on Robb's scent again. "Why shouldn't we? I'm not a woman. I don't have any virtue left you can still rob me of." Part of it must have been his bout of abstinence, but most of what aroused him right now was the idea in itself, so deliciously wrong and wrongly delicious. "I've shared pleasure with men before. Not often, mind, they're not my preference. But just because a man prefers cakes does not mean he will turn down bread -"
"Why would you compare this to food?"
"Because both are urges that must be met, one way or the other." He leaned in, until Robb's eyes dominated his vision; large and wide and framed by thick dark lashes. "You know it. I know you do. You've touched yourself. You've been touching yourself for years, haven't you? I could do it for you, that's all."
Color shot into Robb's face. Visibly fumbling for words, he eventually settled on a pressed, "Here?"
The grin on Theon's face grew. I have him now, I know it. I have him. "So you do want to."
Robb frowned. "I didn't say that."
"Not in so many words, no."
Robb looked on the brink of annoyance. "May I remind you that putting words into other people's mouths doesn't make them so?"
"Aye, but tell me: would you ask for the price of a hen if you weren't the least bit interested in buying it?"
Robb looked almost offended. "But you're not a hen."
Coloring aside, Robb was a Stark after all. Too bloody literal. Here they were, one propositioning the other for casual sex, the other artfully putting any doubts about the Starks' lack of wits to rest, and having a conversation about the politics of buying livestock.
Theon rolled his eyes, and took a final step forward, placing a casual hand on the front of Robb's breeches. "I think I've heard enough about hens."
Robb's spine stiffened, jaw tightly locked, frown etched into his features.
Rubbing his palm against the bulge, he felt Robb's cock give a satisfying little kick upon being touched. Theon ducked his head to ghost his lips along that cut, stubbled jaw line. "Don't you want me to touch you, Robb?" Slowly, so very slowly, he pulled on the laces. Slipped a finger up below Robb's clothing until the fine hair on his belly tickled his fingers. Let it wanter down, down. "Do you want me to touch your cock?" Theon's voice grew rugged with his own mounting excitement. "Do you want me to make you come?"
His hand reached lower, brushed against curls of hair. He went lower and lower, and his head started to spin, and then he felt it, hot and half-hard against his hand and Theon tore his face from Robb's jaw to look him in the eye.
"Do you, Robb Stark?"
( continued here)
Title: Lies, or maybe Truth
Pairing: Robb/Theon.
Word Count: ~7,900. Split into two even though I have no clue why because it's less than 10k, but OH WELL. HTML hates me.
Rating: M
Summary: Robb, Theon, and the illusion of intimacy.
Shooting an arrow, Theon liked to think, was a lot like coming.
There would be a period of heightened concentration during which every little detail cut to sharp attention. The light would gleam on the arrow's polished shaft - or a pearl of sweat coalescing on flushed skin. Veins would pulse in the target's neck - or throbbing against a lover's. All of this followed by the moment of pressure mounting until muscles coiled, and the body was tightly strung, the heart beat so hard it was like to give, until finally -
Beside him, Robb loosed the arrow. It arced through the air in a soft, purring whoosh, sloped down in a way Theon could not mentally describe as anything other than 'pitiful,' exhilarated in its downward descent, and bore into the target's lower half with a low, thrummingthunk.
Theon felt his trademark grin stretch across his lips. "Not bad."
Robb's eyes dashed over to him, held Theon's for a beat, then fell away again, back to the target.
Wordlessly, Robb nocked another arrow, pulled back the string until the feather was to his ear, creased his eye brows in concentration. Loosed.
Better than the last, this arrow hit a few inches closer to the heart of the target. It might have looked impressive, if Theon's own hadn't been swarmed with arrows not a few feet to the right.
Robb's expression was controlled as always, betraying neither resentment nor jealousy when he said, "I'm not as good as you are at this."
Theon smiled. "Well. It might be that a wolf's paw is not entirely suited for this art of war." He lifted an arrow from his quiver with the ease of a shrug, nocked, marked, loosed and hammered it into the target, where it split apart another arrow already lodged there and knocked aside another. Tension seeped out of him sweet and thrilling, as did the boast. "Mayhaps it is the speed you lack. Or the dexterity."
"Dexterity," Robb repeated, as if tasting the word on his tongue. He paused, then nocked another arrow. "You would have the skill."
A smile played across Theon's face, just wide enough to lift him into the terra incognita that lingered between genuine and genuinely mocking. "Everyone's good for something. In my case, I'm even good at listening to orders in addition to shooting arrows. And fucking." His smile crossed the line. "I'm good at that, too."
"I wouldn't know about that," Robb said, his tone flat and even. "Well, I do know about the arrows. Not the other thing."
There had been a time, not too long ago, when Robb would've pinned him with a glare while the heat pulsed rosy-red beneath his cheeks at any mention of that word or any like it. Now, he had learned to just let it roll off his shoulders, leaving Theon floundering between reluctant admiration and the subtle dismay at having had the edges of one of his favorite japes salted and ground away like the spikes of a sea shell off the coast of his father's castle.
"...Aye, and you're not like to hear more of it." Theon's smile loosened when his mind returned to his earlier talk with Lord Stark. He flipped an arrow from his quiver and drew the bowstring to his ear, his eyes boring into the wide, gaping, lusciously red ring of the target ahead. "Stark honor and all that."
He loosed the arrow and shook his hair out of his face without even bothering to check where the arrow had landed; he'd learned to tell by the sounds they made upon impact long ago.
Robb knew what he was talking about, of course. Dry and witless and far too literal he may be, but his ears worked as well as anyone's, and he had a mind quick to apply itself to where questions of duty were concerned. "My lord father had no choice but to close down the brothel in Winter Town, Theon." Locks of auburn hair tumbled forward to splay across his cheekbones when he inclined his head to study his arrows.
Theon tried to mask his snort by clearing his throat. "Of course not. The fact that five fools so deep in the cups they were like to come out the other side got robbed down to their last coppers is cause for your father to enforce an involuntary act of chastity for everyone."
"Bannermen. They were my lord father's bannermen. Not fools."
"One does not necessarily exclude the other," Theon said, dipping into the pools of mockery before swiftly withdrawing. "Be that as it may, they were victims, whatever else they were." He loosed another arrow. "Would that I could just find the long-fingered wenches, I'd have more interesting targets to practice with."
"It will not kill you to go... without." Robb paused. "Until the matter has been settled. Surely."
An easy grin found its way back to Theon's lips. "No more than a lack of mead, one would think. Yet I'm fairly sure a fair few would contest you on that."
"No one I recall."
Theon sighed. "It's just a matter of preference. You prefer to keep honorable, I don't, that's fine with me. You prefer a sword, I prefer a bow, that's fine as well. Admittedly a lot of that comes back to skill, but -"
Robb turned to him, and his eyes barreled into Theon's. "You will not," he said, "criticize my lord father's decisions in front of me any further."
The words settled in between them, wrapped themselves in the drifting snow, and turned to ice and cold and silence. A few flakes caught in Theon's hair, melted, and ran down along his cheeks like wet fingers. They dangled down his chin and dropped down into the furs of his cloak. Scattered.
Theon tossed back his hair, slipped another arrow from his quiver and flung it at the target, and then another, and another, teeth grit tight, eyes narrowed, his hands reaching and pulling and loosing. Iron wailed against wood, again and again, thuck thuck thuck like drums, until at least, when he reached for his quiver to slip out another arrow, his hand grasped only air. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, lodged his signature smile onto his face, and looked over to the heir of Winterfell.
The Stark boy stood there calm and still, sheathed in shimmering snow and cast against the jaundiced glow of the torches lining the doors to the towers. A frown had etched itself across his features, drawn together his eyebrows, and forced his eyes into a small squint.
Blue, Theon thought absently. His eyes are very blue.
As were Theon's own. Though his own, he liked to think, were blue like the tossed-up waters in the iron bay. The Stark boys were not like Theon's and they weren't like Lord Stark's, either, who had eyes like frosty fog and icy sheens and all things winter and North, no.
His were neither sea nor frost but the sunlit blue of the rivers in his mother's home.
And yet. And yet.
Theon felt the fingers of resentment dig into the pit of his stomach. "Forgive me." The words tasted ashen, but he managed to sweeten them with the curl of a skeptical upper lip. "My lord."
Silence reigned. Theon looked at the Stark and the Stark looked at him like two animals testing where the water was wide and the rivers tore. Auburn curls clung to pale skin where the snow had landed, and blue met blue spun across two orbits of waiting.
Until finally: "I'm no lord yet," Robb said. His tone rang neutral now, the consonants softened.
"Just so. Not yet." Theon grinned.
Robb looked at him for a beat, then another. The cloak's fur that framed his face suited him, Theon thought; it made him look regal and well-muscled and even handsome, just like a little lordling should be.
Then Robb broke eye contact and turned back to the target, signaling Theon in not so many words that he considered the conversation flung aside, wrapped in the Stark colors of dispassion and brusqueness, until he decided to pick it up again, in a voice simple and clear, "And you were wrong, by the way. About your preference for archery over swordsmanship being due to skill." Blue met blue. "You would make for a good swordsman if you applied yourself more. No worse than I."
"Kind though you are, you forget that you're years younger than me and yet have always bested me." He laughed through the bitterness. "No match for a young wolf's strength, I fear."
Robb's eyes rested on him. "Is that what you think?"
Theon grew serious. "Well, yes. I came here as a boy of two-and-ten, with you barely past your seventh name day and yet you wielded the sword like the extension of your arm. You and your bastard brother both. Am I wrong?"
"No." Robb seemed to weigh his next words. "I think that you might want to ask yourself if you are no good swordsman because you lack the skill or..." He considered his words. "Because you never really wanted to be, is all."
Robb. Robb.
Robb, Theon had always thought, was just too perfectly positioned within the stream of his destiny. Certainly, at present Eddard Stark functioned as the rock onto which the Stark family leaned and relied, but who doubted that Robb would seamlessly take on those stony robes of responsibility? That sour-faced bastard that always side-eyed Theon might be smarter in some ways, but he'd long since accepted himself as ultimately inferior. The pretty Stark girl loved him as well, and the long-faced one might prefer her bastard brother but seemed loyal enough. The other two, though scarcely more than babes, were set to accept him as their lord father's heir as well. His future had been carefully laid out for him like marks on a high lord's battle map and sweetened with such promises of future songs that Theon was half-convinced that a future so excessively promising would find its natural closure in nothing but tragedy.
Worst of all, Theon himself could not deny that he, too, liked Robb Stark. Sometimes, he just wasn't sure how much. Sometimes, he was sure of so very little.
For example, not even why he sauntered over to Robb, slipped behind him, put a hand on his right arm and the other on his shoulder, and said, "Do you want to be better at archery?"
And when Robb's eyes widened at that, he thought he might know at least one of the reasons why he'd just done that: because little was more thrilling than completely upsetting a Stark's rigid world view. "I... yes. Yes, that's why I'm practicing."
Theon took another step closer. "Then I'll teach you."
Robb's face remained nonplussed. "Ser Rodrik teaches us, as our master-at-arms."
"So he does, but I'm the best archery teacher you're like to find." He bumped his hip against Robb's to straighten his spine and lifted his right elbow. "It wasn't me who taught you wrong posture, was it?"
Robb fit against his chest well enough that Theon found it easy to grasp his bow and yank it into position. "A bow is not a sword, Robb Stark."
"I know that." A hint of petulance crept into his voice. "Ser Rodrik has taught me what to focus on when loosing arrows. I need to lean into a longbow and bend it as I draw -"
"Has he taught you this?" Swiftly, he slipped an arrow from the quiver and drew it back with his hand placed atop Robb's, holding the arrow in position with the string strung tight. The arrow shook and kicked with tension.
"Can you feel it?" Theon only had to lower his head a little to position it right next to the Robb's pink ear. "Can you feel the tension? Hold it. Bear it." A smirk pulled up the corners of his lips. "Feel it mount inside you. Feel it reach toward the top -" Mock-casually, he added, "Does it remind you of anything?"
It hadn't, not yet, Theon could tell by the half-annoyed, half-quizzical look he earned.
Theon rolled his eyes. "You're not feeling it, then." He let go off Robb's hand, and, catching him off-guard, the arrow merely flopped and then nosedived into the cold, hard, snow-covered ground. "Another," Theon judged. "This time you nock it."
Mouth set into a tight line, Robb pulled back the string until the feathers nearly tickled his ear and Theon could see his arm shake in restraint. Before Robb could loose it, Theon put a hand on his shoulder.
"Now, you will not loose it until I tell you to." He leaned in. "Draw it back a little further... and a little more, and a little more. More. You need to stop when you can feel it. Too far and you'll tear the string, too little and it won't come rushing at your enemies with the force of twenty punches like you want it to. It is what you want. The point... are you ticklish?"
Robb had squirmed away from Theon's mouth (which, he noticed just now, had gotten close to his neck), and shot him a withering look as a reply. "No."
Theon laughed, low and guttural and entirely amused. "Well, excellent then." With a smirk, he leaned in even closer, until his lips were a hair's breadth away from the pasty white skin of Robb's neck. He allowed his eyes to linger for a second, to trace the lines of where his shoulders let to his neck and up to where his auburn curls brushed against a bobbing Adam's apple. "Feel it," he ordered, his voice dropping. "Feel how it mounts. That tension, that delicious tension. Don't think with your head, think with your body. Your instincts. They tell you what they need. They know." And lower still his tone fell, barreling past the levels of suggestive and deep into the pits of sultry. "Ache for release, little Robb.Ache for it -"
A shudder sluiced through Robb's body. Theon could feel it, starting low at the small of his back and slitting upwards, seizing his shoulders, tensing his neck, making his Adam's apple throb.
And then, Robb loosed the arrow.
It blurred in the air, a mere whisper of iron and wood and feather, then drilled into the target with enough force to nearly make it topple, and Theon thought, yes, yes, he's got it now, he has, before he even had time to consider why exactly this was cause for celebration, and Robb's body slackened against his in time with the release of a long, drawn-out sigh.
"...See?" Theon chuckled, and watched a curl of Robb's hair flutter in his breath. "You've figured it out, haven't you?"
The blush beneath Robb's cheeks pulsed with all the evidence Theon would ever need.
"So you have," Theon said, amused. "Well, I shouldn't be surprised. In siring all his whelps, Lord Stark has admirably proven that you northmendo know what goes where -"
The glare that Robb threw at would have burned, if it hadn't been ruined by the fact that a tint of blood red stood high on his cheeks. "Quiet, Theon."
He laughed. Loud and fully, puffing gusts of breath.
Irritated, Robb took another step toward him. "Quit it." Too used to being obeyed within his own household, he proved himself suitably unskilled at managing derision. "I said -"
"I apologize." Another chuckle, but he reined it in when he caught Robb's look. "I meant no slight - well, not this time, anyway -" Another glare. "No, in all seriousness - it's just." Theon smirked, and said, more gently, "You've never, have you?"
Robb's nose twitched. "You've just... seen me shoot that arrow."
"And you've just realised that this isn't what I meant," Theon said, amused. I like him. I do, gods be good. "Don't insult me by pretending you don't know."
The snow continued to fall, the cold kept creeping up on them, and a Stark kept his stone-edge silence.
"It's not any of my concern, in truth," Theon allowed with an easy smile and a shrug of his shoulders. "I'm pretty sure none of you have, not even Jon. All the tales of their lot being lusty and devious notwithstanding."
Robb severed the eye contact then, and poised himself back into archery position. "If you already knew, why ask?"
Because your reactions are half the fun of it. "Call me a dare-devil, but I try not to make assumptions. Not too many, that is."
Robb fell silent at that. Shrugging another arrow from his quiver, he nocked and loosed it in fast succession, foregoing the wait and the ache and the release, the sweet and sinful point of no return. Robb's mouth thinned into a tight line of dismay when he missed.
"…. I can't get married yet. It's not useful or desirable until such time as my house decides that it is. Even if that may not yet make me a man grown in your eyes or anyone else's."
Theon laughed, not unkindly. "You don't have to marry whores, Robb. Take it from me: I'd be married half a hundred times over."
Avoiding Theon's eyes, Robb gazed straight ahead, shoulder square, spine straight, mouth perfectly poised. "I'm not interested."
"Why? Because they taste of cold hard coin and not sweet and salty love?"
Robb shifted his weight, and finally raised his eyes to meet Theon's. "Are you mocking my convictions?" Lacking real accusation, his voice came instead tinted with a dash of curiosity. "Is it really that important?"
"No, and aye," Theon said, and realised that he was speaking the truth. "Maybe."
"I've been taught that it is improper to lie with a woman you have not yet married," he said with all the grandeur of Stark conviction. He grew distant for a second, then caught himself. "I have responsibility to live up to expectations, so wait, I shall. A woman's virtue is to be cherished."
Coming from any Stark other than Robb, it would have annoyed Theon. From Robb, it seemed like part of a game. "Only a woman's virtue by the word of the old gods, you say? So my own has been preserved. I shall rest easy at night."
For a moment, Theon fully expected to be met with another glare of indignation or perhaps a sneer of annoyance.
Instead, Robb cracked one of his rare smiles.
Robb's smiles, ah.
They were never like the firecracker grins of his own. They were not the sour little half-grimaces Jon would give him, and they weren't the poised and perfectly-studied little squints of Lady Catelyn's, either; they were something else: small and whimsical and as honest as they were subdued. No one but Theon noticed Robb for his smiles, he was sure. No one but him.
The private moment stretched and cloaked around them. Robb looked at Theon and Theon looked at Robb, eyes fused together, environment blocked and scattered, the burn of the snow soothed. Titles and names and history finally, finally forgotten.
He found himself smiling back, taking a step toward him, and saying, "Mayhaps you and I should," before he could even think if through, before he had even fully formulated what he'd meant to say in his head, but once he'd said it, his skin cooled in doubt.
Robb didn't comprehend. Eyes fixed on Theon's, he asked, "Should what?"
It was too late. Much too late. He could probably backpedal now, laugh it off, come up with something unrelated, or even just drop it, but he'd been seized by the idea, the one idea that had waltzed into his head unannounced and hammered images into every corner of his head like a series of well-timed arrows, and they were -
Too compelling. Too perfect.
He walked over to Robb. The snow popped beneath his feet. His breath shimmered in the air and mingled with Robb's when he had gotten close enough. Smiled. "You and me. Perhaps we should do it with each other."
Somewhere behind them, a crow cawed. The wind picked up, bit into Theon's skin, and slid beneath his cloaks.
Robb just stared as incomprehension scattered to surprise which rapidly bowed out to embarrassment seasoned with anger. "Do not jape, Theon."
Theon took a step closer. "I wasn't." Another step, until his nose picked up on Robb's scent again. "Why shouldn't we? I'm not a woman. I don't have any virtue left you can still rob me of." Part of it must have been his bout of abstinence, but most of what aroused him right now was the idea in itself, so deliciously wrong and wrongly delicious. "I've shared pleasure with men before. Not often, mind, they're not my preference. But just because a man prefers cakes does not mean he will turn down bread -"
"Why would you compare this to food?"
"Because both are urges that must be met, one way or the other." He leaned in, until Robb's eyes dominated his vision; large and wide and framed by thick dark lashes. "You know it. I know you do. You've touched yourself. You've been touching yourself for years, haven't you? I could do it for you, that's all."
Color shot into Robb's face. Visibly fumbling for words, he eventually settled on a pressed, "Here?"
The grin on Theon's face grew. I have him now, I know it. I have him. "So you do want to."
Robb frowned. "I didn't say that."
"Not in so many words, no."
Robb looked on the brink of annoyance. "May I remind you that putting words into other people's mouths doesn't make them so?"
"Aye, but tell me: would you ask for the price of a hen if you weren't the least bit interested in buying it?"
Robb looked almost offended. "But you're not a hen."
Coloring aside, Robb was a Stark after all. Too bloody literal. Here they were, one propositioning the other for casual sex, the other artfully putting any doubts about the Starks' lack of wits to rest, and having a conversation about the politics of buying livestock.
Theon rolled his eyes, and took a final step forward, placing a casual hand on the front of Robb's breeches. "I think I've heard enough about hens."
Robb's spine stiffened, jaw tightly locked, frown etched into his features.
Rubbing his palm against the bulge, he felt Robb's cock give a satisfying little kick upon being touched. Theon ducked his head to ghost his lips along that cut, stubbled jaw line. "Don't you want me to touch you, Robb?" Slowly, so very slowly, he pulled on the laces. Slipped a finger up below Robb's clothing until the fine hair on his belly tickled his fingers. Let it wanter down, down. "Do you want me to touch your cock?" Theon's voice grew rugged with his own mounting excitement. "Do you want me to make you come?"
His hand reached lower, brushed against curls of hair. He went lower and lower, and his head started to spin, and then he felt it, hot and half-hard against his hand and Theon tore his face from Robb's jaw to look him in the eye.
"Do you, Robb Stark?"
( continued here)