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i. the exposition
It’s become a tradition, of sorts, for some thing around their shared flat to break — a wobbly chair, a shower pipe that only spits out freezing cold water — for Robb to offer to buy a replacement, and for Theon and Jon to see eye-to-eye for once and simultaneously say, “No.”
ii. an excerpt of a past conversation
(“Why do you do that?” Robb half-whines, half-grouches when Theon forcibly wrestles the Home Depot catalogue away from him. “Hand it back, I want to take a shower without jumping out of my skin from the cold.”
“You’re from the north,” Theon points out.
“There’s a difference between living in low-but-bearable temperatures and being attacked by freezing cold water at six in the morning—“
“We’re not paying an expensive-as-fuck repairman to do something I can do myself.” Theon smiles that smile full of teeth and promises that he’s up to no good. “Right, Jon?”
Robb looks from his best friend to his half brother, standing in the doorway of the kitchen and watching the exchange. On the list of things Robb expects to happen, Jon giving a small nod and saying, “Yeah, sure, I’ve got faith in him,” is nowhere within the top hundred.
“In the meantime,” Theon says to Robb, smile suddenly turning into something else not-so-innocent, “I could help make that shower a little less cold.”
Robb flushes. “I retract my support,” Jon says, walking out of the room with hands clapped over his ears.
Robb throws the nearest object he can find at a now-laughing Theon — a Sharpie marker as red as his face — and wonders why he hasn’t broken their shower before, if that’s all it takes for Theon and Jon to be civil.)
iii. Tuesday morning
Sometimes, Robb marvels at how smoothly their schedules work. Jon is usually up before six o’clock (“He’s not human,” Theon groans as he rolls over, accidentally elbows Robb in the side, and makes Robb regret sleeping in his bed for a second) and gone for a run by the time Robb wakes up in third place. Theon is typically in the middle of finishing a bowl of cereal when Robb finally stumbles out of his and Jon’s shared room and into their tiny dining room, all sleep-heavy limbs and sluggish g’mornings.
“I found a movie for tonight,” Theon declares as he slides over the box of cereal.
Jon, who has washed up from his run and is eating his own bowl of cereal on the couch, says, “Ugh.”
This is also a tradition: since they figured out that none of them had classes or club meetings scheduled on Tuesday nights, Robb takes the liberty of forcing all three of them to do something together every other Tuesday — a part of his lifelong campaign to get them on better terms, Jon knows. He loves his brother so he goes along with it, and Theon is…emotionally invested in Robb in his own way, so he goes along with it too.
Unfortunately, their Tuesday nights began to consist either of passive-aggressive movie choices filled with sniping commentary or board games that become a little too heated as Jon and Theon do everything in their power to sabotage Robb’s campaign of good intentions. Those nights, Robb often goes to bed looking like a survivor of a grueling battle. In the morning, he’ll throw out whatever board game they had squabbled over, but not before the victor steals a piece to keep as a trophy: Theon has the dice from Yahtzee and a miniature gun from Clue, and Jon has his winning Scrabble letters. (Robb has a miniature orange car from the Game of Life hidden in his bag.)
This Tuesday morning, Robb is too busy looking for a bowl to see the way Theon’s eyes narrow at the sound of Jon’s disapproval, but then Theon says, “Ghost, it is,” and he thumps his head against the cupboards because he knows Theon picked that after finding out that Jon’s seen it seven times already.
To his credit, Jon doesn’t react, keeps right on watching some crime show on the TV. Robb is grateful for the peace as he finally fishes out a bowl and spoon and goes for the Lucky Charms.
Unfortunately, the peace lasts for all of thirty seconds, shattered when Robb’s sleep-weak fingers accidentally drop the open box. There’s a dull thump and the unique sound of Lucky Charms skittering across the floor.
“Bloody fantastic,” Robb grumbles. (It’s just as well, though. He sees that there were no marshmallows left anyway and makes a note to have a talk with Theon about that.)
Theon makes a sympathetic noise but doesn’t actually move to help him.
So Robb puts aside his bowl for now and starts rooting around under the sink for the broom and dustpan. He finds the former easily enough, but after five minutes of searching he still hasn’t found its counterpart.
“Who last used the dustpan?” he asks, now considerably more awake, albeit confused.
Jon finally comes over with his finished bowl. “Greyjoy used it to kill a spider and you got so upset that you wanted to throw it out afterwards,” he supplies.
“Right,” Robb says, because that did happen.
“I have nothing to say in defense of myself,” Theon says gravely, “except that that thing was about to attack my fish, and I did what I had to.” He’s referring to the catfish that lives in a bowl on their coffee table, the one that Theon keeps forgetting to name even though they’ve had it for months.
“Do you need help with that?” Jon has the decency to ask as he puts his bowl in the sink.
Robb shakes his head and moves towards their stash of reusable grocery bags. “I’ve got it, thanks. I’ll buy a new dustpan tomorrow.” He shoots Jon a grateful smile though, and he’s not sure if it’s the smile or the mention of a new dustpan that suddenly has Theon standing up with a loud, “Nah, don’t worry about it, I’ve got it.”
Jon washes his bowl while Robb and Theon bicker over the broom. Robb wins and sweeps up the cereal into a neat pile, and he holds out the plastic bag for Theon to hold in place while he pushes the Lucky Charms inside. Instead, Theon grabs an empty pizza box from the night before and holds out a hand expectantly.
“What?” Robb asks, puzzled.
Theon sighs and grabs the broom, then begins scooping the Lucky Charms into the pizza box. When Robb realizes what he’s doing, he’s torn between feeling exasperated and awed at the ingenuity. “I’m still getting a new dustpan,” he says stubbornly.
Theon’s eyes are dancing. “After we watch Swayze.”
iv. Tuesday night
Two notable things happen.
One, Theon sidles up to Robb on the couch closer than usual—nothing out of the ordinary there. Jon has walked in on them tangled worse before. It’s during the pottery scene that he hears Robb give a choked noise that borders a laugh and gasp, and he looks over and sees what appears to be Theon recreating the onscreen actors’ position, except his fingers are crooked purposely into Robb’s sides where he knows he’s ticklish.
Two, the ensuing kerfuffle results in spilled popcorn and soda. Theon triumphantly brings over the broom and the same pizza box, and Robb scoots over and leans his head resignedly on Jon’s arm as Theon uses the box as a makeshift dustpan again.
Jon pats his brother’s curls as a sign of comfort.
“We can deal with that in the morning,” Robb says forlornly, looking at the ruined sofa seat.
Theon, whose thoughts look like they’re already racing a thousand miles a minute, says, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
v. the origins story
Surprisingly, it was Jon and Theon who originally lived together. Jon was fresh off of freshman status and thus no longer required to live in the residence hall that was on the other side of his classes. Theon, after some minor encouragement from Robb and his personal discovery that Jon could cook great omelettes, brought up the idea of renting a flat together. In terms of distance and money, it was a promising deal.
Two days after they moved in together and the semester started, Theon stumbled into Robb’s dorm, a little tipsy and raving about how he and Jon were going to murder each other and Robb better stop him before he made the first move. In the morning, Robb woke up to Theon snoring quietly into his neck, his roommate fleeing with a red face and apologizing for interrupting them, and a text from Jon asking him to move in, please.
Two days later, Robb moved in. Theon no longer spent ten minutes in the morning inspecting the omelettes with suspicion.
vi. the aftermath
“What,” Robb says, almost dropping his economics textbook when he walks into their flat the next morning, “in seven hells is this.”
He’s an optimist at heart, so he tries to look at this positively.
On the bright side, the ruined cushion is gone.
On the not-so-bright side, so is approximately a third of the couch’s seat, and in the gaping hole someone has, literally, jammed one of their dining chairs.
“Robb? Is that you?” he hears Jon call. He’s still too stupefied to answer. Jon emerges from the bathroom a few minutes later, stops, sees what he’s looking at, and sighs. “I came home and it was like that, so I thought you did it.”
Jon left for class first this morning, then Robb an hour later, and the couch had been normal up til then. That meant…
“So Theon said no to buying a new cushion too?” Jon asks, sounding far too unconcerned.
“Theon said nothing at all,” Robb says sweetly. A moment later, he adds, blunt, “I’m going to kill him.”
Jon gives him a funny look, and Robb thinks he hears him mutter, “No you won’t,” under his breath as he wanders away.
“This was a nice couch,” Robb says to the catfish.
After a solid half hour of attempting to pull out the chair and finding that it was lodged pretty well in there, Robb gives up, sends Theon an angry, ten-second rant on Snapchat, and hunkers down on the opposite, normal end of the couch with his paper to write.
vii. downtime
Theon flicks another wadded ball of paper off his desk and watches with vague disinterest as it lands on the back of Loras Tyrell’s head. Up front, his professor’s droning on about physics, and Theon knows he should probably be paying attention, but his notebook is filled with sketches of broken sofas and dining chairs, all with dimensions mapped out. He’s certain that if they find a way to fill in the remaining gaps in the sofa, it would look—
A small buzz of his phone catches his attention. Thoughts of physics fly entirely out of his mind when he sees that it’s a Snapchat notification from Robb.
His phone is silenced, so when he clicks the little purple square, Robb’s face pops up, in the middle of forming angry-looking words. Theon is instantly endeared, not only because he can’t hear the actual rant, but because Robb looks, well, adorable when he’s angry. When the video finishes, a picture of their Frankenstein couch pops up, with a crudely drawn angry face in the corner.
Theon takes a picture of the back of Loras’s head, which now houses a total of four little paper balls. How many do u think I can fit, he sends off to Robb.
He doesn’t get a reply, but Snapchat informs him that Robb has at least opened the message.
Theon grins, satisfied, and puts his phone away.
viii. conversations that took place in the dark
At approximately eleven o’clock, Jon wakes up from a poorly planned, two-hour nap and stumbles from his and Robb’s room completely disoriented. He’s about to turn on the lights in the hallway when he realizes he hears hushed voices — and it’s not so much as the voices that strike him as weird, but that they’re whispers.
He peers around the corner and sees two heads behind the sofa, their outlines lit up by the TV. He recognizes them to be Robb and Theon—who else? There’s some show playing, but the volume has been lowered to a point where Jon can hear their conversation more than the show itself.
“—don’t understand why you won’t just let me get this stuff.” That’s Robb, sounding grouchy but not overly upset.
“But we’ve never tried the broke-college-student lifestyle before,” Theon points out. This is when Jon realizes he has an arm slung around Robb’s shoulders, which isn’t groundbreaking, but they’re so close.
“Would even college students go that far,” Jon sees both of them turn their heads to the left, so he assumes Robb is pointing out the chair still lodged in the sofa, “to salvage a sofa?”
“You like this sofa. I didn’t want to just throw it away. Also, I think you’re underestimating college students here, Robb.”
“Theon.”
“…Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like that.” Then Theon looks like he’s going for Robb’s throat and Jon almost grabs his hockey stick, but Theon’s hands land gently enough on both sides of Robb’s face and shakes his head back and forth.
Robb makes a noise that sounds close to a “bleh” and shakes his head free.
“Fine,” Theon is saying. “You win. Get a new couch, but run it by me or Snow first or so help me—“
Jon is mildly touched that Theon thinks to include him.
“Theon, if you got to pick out that ridiculous squid-patterned shower curtain, I think it’s only fair that—“
“We are not getting a couch printed with dogs.”
“They’re wolves, first of all, and secondly—“
“It doesn’t matter if they’re dogs or wolves, it’ll look ugly!”
“Shh. You’re going to wake Jon.”
Jon darts back around the corner before they can finish turning around and spot him. He’s never felt weird about overhearing one of their conversations before, but this one seems…fond, private, a thing solely for Theon and Robb’s ears.
“I can think of worse things for him to overhear,” Theon says, and Jon can hear the smirk in his voice, that little shit.
Jon expects Robb to say something nicer than that or stay quiet and turn red in the face. Instead, he hears his brother say, not too seriously but not not seriously either, “Well, you’d have to buy me dinner first?”
Jon retreats into his room and grimly hopes that if anything happens, they’ll take it to Theon’s room.
ix. the rising action
“Let’s go to the park, get a pavilion, and barbecue or something,” Theon moans, sprawled on the new maroon couch with an arm drawn dramatically over his eyes. “I need sun.”
“Don’t you have other friends,” Jon says without looking up from his notebook.
“Said the pot to the kettle,” Theon snipes back without hesitation.
Robb puts down the novel he had been reading half-heartedly and glances between them. Jon is rubbing his eyes behind his reading glasses, looking equally as depleted as he feels. Theon looks half-dead, limp like that.
“As long as you don’t terrorize anyone into giving us their pavilion,” Robb says, and it must be the right decision because even Jon looks up with a relieved sigh. Without another word, he turns and starts searching through the drawers for familiar materials — a lighter fluid, matches, barbecue sticks. They still have a pack of hotdogs and some burger patties, although he thinks they’re out of buns—
“We don’t have barbecue sticks anymore,” Jon says, sliding onto one of the stools at the counter, glasses hanging on the front of his shirt.
“Why?” Robb asks, baffled by the shortage of things they’ve had recently.
“We ruined them all trying to roast marshmallows at that Targaryen party, remember?”
Ah. Robb curses silently, making a note to buy those metal sticks instead of the disposable wooden ones and not offer to share them at parties.
“Next time, don’t share them at parties,” Theon says loudly from the couch.
“It’s fine.” Robb shakes his head. “I’ll,” he begins, then drops his voice so only Jon can hear, “grab some from the store on our way.” His eyes flit warily to the back of the couch, where Theon has at least moved to check something on his phone.
He thinks he’s been successful until they’re about to leave, and Theon says, “Hey, how many gardening supplies do we own?”
Robb pauses by the door to give him a weird look, and Theon explains by showing him a photo on his phone.
“No,” Robb says firmly, and he applauds himself for being resilient the whole drive to the park.
x. the climax
“I can’t believe we’re playing Monopoly,” Robb laments as he watches Jon carefully relocate the catfish by the TV set, then begin to lay out the game on their little coffee table. “I just steamed the carpet, and now you two are going to spill blood all over it—“
“What? Me and Snow? No way.” Theon grins, arms crossed loosely over his chest, and he nudges Jon’s thigh with a foot. “These bonding sessions, which neither of us agreed to, would never led to bloodshed.”
Robb rubs his face and can’t argue, because so far it actually hasn’t, and it’s all he can do to pray and hope it stays that way after tonight. The doorbell rings and interrupts his fit of despair, and he walks over to the door with a pout on his face. Theon’s eyes light up and he exclaims, “More dustpans!” to which Robb groans in response, and Jon rolls his eyes because Theon’s never helped him carry the pizza delivery before, but he’ll drop everything to help Robb.
Jon finishes tucking all of the Monopoly pieces into a straight line — he knows his brother would waste at least fifteen minutes fretting and organizing them if he doesn’t — as Robb and Theon pay for the pizza. Or, Robb pays, accompanied by a firm, “Stuff it, Greyjoy.” It’s followed by a pause and then Robb going, “Shut up!” and Jon decides he doesn’t want to know what Theon whispered this time.
He scoots over to make room for the food on the floor, but then Robb opens the box and the pizza is unsliced.
Theon reaches over anyway as if he’s just going to rip his slice off, but Robb swats his hand away, stands up, and heads to the kitchen.
“Here we go,” Theon says, instinctively following.
Jon also decides they can find out for themselves that they don’t have a pizza slicer.
He finishes the set up and tucks the box under the table. He pours himself a cup of soda and drinks while waiting, but then minutes pass, a little too many required to cut a pizza, and Jon pushes himself onto his knees and tries to see what’s happening over the back of the couch.
His brother and his brother’s best friend are kissing, is what’s happening.
He quickly sinks back to the floor, but not before he hears Robb say, affectionately, “You’re still an idiot.”
Not-so-mysteriously, Theon plays nicely at Monopoly that night. Jon suspects he throws the game because he’s too busy trying to hold Robb’s hand secretly under the table and failing — at the secretly part, at least.
It’s weird but also maybe not surprising. In the morning, the Monopoly game survives, and Jon adds the little metal dog to his trophy collection.
xi. conversations that took place in the metaphorical dark
“We don’t have a pizza slicer,” Theon says before Robb can begin searching.
“Remind me to buy one,” Robb says absently, reaching for the knife instead.
“Wait.”
Suddenly Theon’s hand is on his wrist, a warm and surprisingly gentle grip. Robb looks at him, meaning to ask what he wants, but then their eyes meet and it’s this little oh moment that Robb swears he’d only seen happen in movies before.
Then Theon is pulling away with a wicked grin. “I’ve prepared a better alternative.” He lets go of Robb’s wrist, pulls open one of the drawers with practiced eased, and takes out…a ruler, with an circular aluminum lid taped to one end.
Robb feels a hard-to-describe feeling bloom in his chest, and maybe it’s that fluttery warmth that absolutely overrides his Good Sense and allows him to say, “You’re an idiot,” then grab Theon by the front of his shirt and kiss him.
Before the panic can even begin to settle in, he feels Theon’s hand steady him by the hip and Theon’s soft lips kiss back.
Oh, goes Robb’s mind again.
Theon pulls away first, the grin dampened into something softer, fonder, looking at him no differently than he ever has before, and.
“You’re still an idiot,” Robb mutters, but it’s all filler for when he leans forward and kisses Theon again.
xii. Wednesday afternoon
Jon realizes in the middle of his classical literature class that, amidst his rush to finish his homework, he accidentally read that class’s reading in advance. He looks around in discreet contemplation, seeing everyone else absorbed as the professor struggles to project excerpts of the reading onto the board.
He really tries to pay attention, but after ten minutes, they’re still recapping the text, and he’s bored.
Slowly, carefully, he takes out his phone.
When no higher power breaches the clouds to smite him, he deems it safe enough to look through his notifications. At the top is a Snapchat notification alerting him of four new updated stories.
Making sure his volume is off, he clicks lazily through Arya and Sam’s stories before automatically landing on Theon’s. He straightens up slightly in interest — Theon rarely adds anything to his story, to the point where Jon has doubted that he even uses the app anymore, but then he sees the slightly blurry picture of Robb’s back, and it makes slightly more sense.
BBQ, take two, reads the caption below. Jon has a few seconds to look at the picture and recognize their surroundings as a park. It looks like they’re alone, and for a moment he wishes he wasn’t stuck inside when the weather apparently looks gorgeous.
Hello lunch, says the next picture of a pack of hotdogs. Jon snorts; he didn’t peg Theon to be a take-pictures-of-your-food type, but then again, he didn’t peg Theon to look so besotted whenever he stares at Robb either.
The third picture looks like it’s been taken from behind Theon’s car. Jon recognizes the open trunk. Robb is barely distinguishable in the pavilion in the distance, though Theon has helpfully circled it in red and captioned, this time he brought proper BBQ sticks…
…but i have the ultimate stick, finishes the next picture, and Jon doesn’t quite understand why Theon has a rake in his car, or why he’s taking a picture of it.
He finds out in the next part, which is a video of Theon’s arm extending the rake, a hotdog speared on each tooth, towards Robb, who is tending to the flame. Jon doesn’t need the sound to hear Robb’s exclamation of surprise, then horror as Theon waves the rake full of hotdogs at him. The video cuts off as Robb opens his mouth.
The next one looks like Theon is running while filming it. Jon catches a glimpse of the rake and realizes, unimpressed, that Theon is chasing his brother with the hotdog rake. LOVE ME, ROBB, is the caption in bold white letters at the bottom.
Jon puts his phone aside. The most exasperating thing of it all is that, more than likely, Robb does.
xiii. the falling action
“I fixed the shower,” Theon announces brightly one morning. It’s a rare instance that they wake at relatively the same times, and it means that Jon has to pour his cereal while witnessing his grumpy brother walk in and be kissed on the cheek by his flatmate.
“The shower’s been fixed,” Jon says, then frowns when marshmallow-less Lucky Charms tumble into his bowl.
“It broke in a different way,” Theon says. “Then I fixed it a different way.”
Robb has his forehead pressed wearily against Theon’s shoulder. He says, “I’m sure you did.”
When Jon comes back from getting the mail, they’re watching Godzilla—or, Theon is watching Godzilla, while Robb is contently burrowed against him, back asleep. “I’m gonna shower,” he says off-handedly, and Theon makes a vague noise of acknowledgement.
He walks into the bathroom and sees their ridiculous squid shower curtain held in place by multiple clothes hangers. The nearby trashcan is full of the old shower rings, most of them broken.
Jon opens the curtain, then shrugs when it seems to work just fine. He takes his shower and decides to leave it for Robb to discover.
xiv. wherein reasons are given
“So you’re just never going to tell me why you never let me buy that new dustpan?” Robb says over takeout. “Or…the shower curtains?”
“He was trying to save money to take you out for dinner,” Jon snaps, because honestly, enough is enough.
Theon shoots him a nasty look, as if one of his deepest secrets was just betrayed, and knowing Theon, it probably is like that. May the world never know that Theon Greyjoy, tipsy and loose-tongued, once confided to Jon that he wanted to save up money to take Robb Stark out to a “proper dining place with candles and violins and shit, you know what I mean, Snow?”
“Theon?” Robb says, all quiet with wonderment, and Jon looks at his hands and wonders if he can cover his eyes with those skinny chopsticks. “Really?”
Theon huffs. “The first time with the dustpan, yeah,” he says. “The rest of the times, it was just to see your reaction.” This is the first time Jon has seen him remotely close to blushing.
Robb positively beams. “Theon, that’s— sweet, but you should have just told me, wouldn’t that have been easier—? Or we could have eaten dinner here. I’m sure we have candles laying around, and Jon took a year of violin lessons once.”
“No,” Jon says.
“It’s nothing, forget it,” Theon grumbles, but it must be all for appearance, because not a minute later, Jon feels one of their foot accidentally hit his leg and realizes they’re playing some sort of footsie under the table.
xv. a post-credits scene
“Theon,” Robb begins tiredly, looking up at the clock hanging above the TV, “when did the clock break, and why did you think that was a good idea?” Jon is out tonight, so there’s no one to defend Theon now.
“While you were at class,” Theon murmurs, far too busy kissing the back of Robb’s neck to defend himself any more heatedly. “I didn’t want you rushing off to the store to buy a new one before our date, so I improvised.”
The clock in question has had a sizable chunk cracked off, the numbers three to five missing. Theon’s idea had been apparently to tape a piece of paper over the crack and fill in the missing numbers himself with red Sharpie. The clock itself is still functional, its second hand ticking away happily towards seven o’clock.
“Hey,” Theon says suddenly, finding Robb’s hand and squeezing it to get his attention. “Wanna know what time it is?”
When Robb turns, Theon’s grinning lazily. “What?”
“Time for you to stop worrying about the clock and go on a date with me,” Theon finishes shamelessly.
Robb rolls his eyes and laughs and says, “That’s not even a proper punchline,” but when Theon kisses his cheek and begins tugging him towards their improvised, candlelit dining table, Robb gladly joins him.