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Yara leads the fleet southwards, while Theon stumbles around the boat with his damaged fingers and shuddering limbs and tries to remember what all the ropes do. His armour props him up – a man inside a Greyjoy shell – and he works constantly, desperate for the few nights where he’s allowed a deep and dreamless sleep instead of the ever-haunting nightmares.
He dreads sleep. Some nights it’s just echoes – ghosts and guilt. Other nights it’s the pain, slicing through his skin and making him wake in a thrashing screeching mess. But on the worst nights of all he dreams of the times Ramsay treated him gently. He dreams of warm baths, a soft sponge, a light touch and a gentle voice. He dreams of the nights Ramsay was soft and tender. When he wakes those mornings he can’t stop shaking and crying, rubbing his hands raw on the wet ropes as he works till he’s passing out because he can’t bear to sleep again.
The men look at him sideways, and don’t really talk to him. They know what he is. But they don’t say anything. When they call him, they call him Theon. At first Yara tries to intervene, tries to insist on Lord Greyjoy, but Theon tells her to stop and the men don’t listen anyway. They’re happy for Yara to lead them, but she leads only while they support her, there is no legality or precedent for what she is doing. She can’t force them into anything, only persuade them, and they will not be persuaded to call Theon a Lord.
Theon doesn’t mind. He likes hearing his name.
They sail south and the weather warms. The seas fill with new fish, the air breaths with new winds and the southern currents carry them swiftly around to Dorne, where they get off to load supplies. Theon isn’t needed to haul boxes, and the men tell him bluntly that he’s still not strong enough to be much use. He doesn’t want to get in the way so he heads through the harbour, enjoying the sights and smells and sunshine.
He’s had a few good days of decent sleep and hard work, he’s feeling more like Theon, and he sees a brothel.
Theon went into brothels. Theon would’ve jumped at the chance. He looks at it nervously and licks his lips. Maybe he could go into this one, remind himself who he is. He hasn’t even thought of a naked girl for a long, long while. He briefly tries to imagine one, Roz maybe, the beautiful redhead from so, so long ago. She went to King’s Landing and his mouth manages a small twitching smile. By now she probably owns her own brothel. Maybe one day he can go to King’s Landing and see her again. Will she remember him?
The smile slides away. Even if she does, she won’t want him now. No woman will want him now.
Gritting his teeth he steps into the brothel.
Inside the women are smooth and curved and mostly naked. He sees a flash of Myranda and Violet in the naked bodies and gives a sob, staggering through to a chair in a corner and collapsing into it shaking. He closes his eyes, takes a few breaths and forces himself to look at them. He doesn’t feel aroused. He’s never felt less aroused. A girl approaches with a sultry smile and he feels the twist of the knife between his legs, a cramp in his stomach, his face twists in pain and she backs away, confused.
For a few moments everything is horrible. He doesn’t really register anything that’s going on. His head is dizzy, his stomach hurts; he sees Sansa’s pale skin, Myranda’s hands on his chest, Tansy’s naked terrified body. He closes his eyes, it helps with his eyes closed because the place smells about as unlike the Dreadfort as possible. The smell is cloves and spices, wine and heat. Theon whispers his name between his lips and lets the sound catch against the pound of his heart in his ears.
“Theon, is it?”
Theon’s eyes snap open and he stares in slight confusion at the young man who has slid down to sit next to him. Lysian, with dark smooth skin, impossibly white teeth, and friendly dark eyes. He holds up a goblet and Theon stares at it incomprehensively.
“Wine, Theon?”
“Y-yes…” And once again this man smells and looks and sounds so utterly unlike the Dreadfort, where everything is pale and cold and harsh. Theon feels himself calming a little, and takes the wine with trembling hands, “I-I’m sorry, do you own … I-I didn’t mean to – to insult the g-girls, I just …”
“I understand.” The man clinks his own goblet against Theon’s and then takes a sip. “No. I don’t own this place, wish I did!”
Theon manages a strange bark of a laugh. He’s pretty sure he is failing in every way to seem like a normal functioning person, but this beautiful man doesn’t seem to mind. “I – I just…“ but he can’t think of a reason to explain why he decided to come into a brothel and then panic at it like a skinny lost freak. Freak. Rhymes with Reek.
A dark hand closes over his leg and gives a squeeze and Theon feels a bit more grounded. “Did you come from the ships?” The man asks.
This is something he can at least talk about. “Yes. From Pyke. In the North.”
“I have never been.”
“You – um – I don’t think you’d like it. It’s not like here.”
“Do you like Dorne?”
So far Theon has spent less than an hour here. “Yes. Very much.”
Two of the girls start dancing together and Theon watches them, eyes widening as they start to strip each other. Myranda and Violet again and he feels the wine churn in his stomach, giving a tiny whimper and averting his eyes.
The man gives a teasing grin and tugs at his hand, “I can see that doesn’t interest you. Come on.”
Theon is so grateful to him as he’s led away up a small flight of stairs and into a private room. He can breathe a bit easier here. The room is light and airy, a large open window with a fluttering silk curtain and opulent hangings on the walls. There’s a bed in the centre and Theon collapses onto it, taking a shaking gulp of wine. “I – I just. They’re very, very beautiful, but I can’t…”
“There’s nothing to apologise for.” The man sits next to him and gives him another dazzling smile. His hand squeezes Theon’s leg again but it’s soft and gentle and Theon doesn’t mind that at all. He suddenly realises why he likes the man’s smile: it’s been longer than he can remember since he last saw anyone smile.
What Ramsay did was not smiling. Not when it meant pain.
The hand strokes at his leg as Theon takes another nervous gulp of wine. He can’t think of anything to say but it doesn’t feel awkward in the silence. Not until the hand slides right up his leg and touches the broken nub of scar tissue between.
Theon shrieks and drops the goblet. The wine spills out over the white sheets, a damp blotting red stain as Theon pushes himself away so violently he lands in a heap on the floor. He stares back into eyes that look as scared as his, the strange man scuttles in the other direction and for a moment they stare at each other until Theon finally gasps out “W-why are you trying to hurt me?”
“I’m not, please, I wouldn’t…”
“You wanted to hurt me!” This isn’t a man, it’s a boy, younger than him, maybe the same age Robb Stark would still be, and he looks so scared and so surprised, and Theon is useless and weak.
Weak. But he’s Theon.
A bit of sanity returns and with it comes the crushing and obvious realisation that he is not being abducted and assaulted, he’s in a brothel with what he’s belatedly realising is a male whore. Theon stares at him, inwardly refusing to apologise, and then reaches down and tugs his shirt off.
The young man’s eyes widen as the constellations of scars on Theon’s chest are revealed, but he doesn’t say anything.
“I’ve been hurt.” Theon says, and his voice isn’t shaking. “What you want to do. It’ll hurt. I’m sorry. But I don’t want to do it.”
He can’t blame the boy for the uncertain confusion in his eyes, but that soon clears. He offers a hand to help Theon up and Theon lets himself be pulled back onto the bed. The young man tugs his own shirt off and while he doesn’t bare anything like the ravages Theon has there’s an ugly mess of marks along his right hip. A knife. Theon can tell and he swallows down bile.
“Some men want to hurt.” A hand wraps around his and presses Theon’s palm into the damage. “But I would not hurt you.”
Theon opens his fingers, touching skin. “I – I loved him.” He says, closing his eyes to say it. Because it’s true, and he wishes it wasn’t, but there’s nothing he can do to make it not true. Reek loved Ramsay, with everything he had and everything he was, because to not love Ramsay was the most dangerous and painful thing of all.
“I loved him too.” The man murmurs back, and Theon knows he’s talking about whoever wielded the knife against his hip. His fingers slide over the dark skin and he finds he can do it without panic, without worry. There’s a small gnawing somewhere in his brain that Ramsay will find out and hurt them both, but it’s only a tiny nudge, enough for him to ignore.
“I’ll pay you.” He blurts out, and then winces at how crass it sounds but the man just laughs. How long as it been since Theon Greyjoy heard a laugh? His hands continue to explore, the scars, the chest, and when answering hands run over the chequered map of his own skin, it calms him rather than panicking him.
They don’t kiss. They don’t ever take their trousers off. But Theon Greyjoy spends the night with his head on the chest of a beautiful Lysian whore and dreams of dark spiced wine, and wide open windows.