Work Text:
It’s not that Jeyne doesn’t understand why Theon always wears gloves.
It’s only too easy to guess. She knows because she takes care to keep hidden the bite marks still visible on her skin - she’s always careful to wear clothes that will not show them, and at least in her case clothes are enough. It’s been months since they fell from that roof - if someone merely looked at her now, they wouldn’t know.
But they do if they look at him. Of course he would wear the gloves. Of course he wouldn’t let her sew a pair for him that would only have the necessary number of sheaths - he always wears regular ones, regardless of the lonely sheaths without a finger filling them. She never even needed to ask him - she’s pretty positive that her assumptions are right.
Sometimes - no, not just sometimes, most of the times - she wishes he wouldn’t. He has them on even while he sleeps, and she catches him glancing down at his gloved fingers with disgust more than she’d like. She wishes she could tell him that he doesn’t need to, not when it’s just the two of them at least. Sometimes she just wants to tell him that when he held out one of those hands to her before they left she hadn’t even noticed the missing finger and that it really hadn’t mattered in the end - when he held her waist as they jumped, they had just felt like hands, not like maimed ones. But she really can’t put it into speech - in her head it always sounds nice, properly worded, but the one time she actually tried to tell him she stumbled over the first sentence and ended up saying that it was nothing important. She suspects that he didn’t believe her, but he hadn’t pressed the issue.
When it’s been a year, though, Jeyne decides that it’s ridiculous. If anything, he deserves a better effort - she could bet gold that if she told him that saving her was something worth writing songs about he’d say that she has it wrong. As it is… well, he did the bravest thing she’s ever witness anyone doing in her entire life for her and she can’t even find the words to tell him that he shouldn’t be ashamed of showing his hands in front of her? The thing is that she’s also half-sure that even if she told him straight he wouldn’t believe her, and it’s not that she doesn’t understand why he wouldn’t either.
Which is how she decides that if words won’t do, she might as well try with facts. They sleep in the same bed, though that’s all they do in it - not that Jeyne hasn’t ever thought about maybe possibly do more than that, but whenever she tries to picture taking off her clothes she feels like vomiting and she knows that it’s worse for him, so that’s definitely not happening now or soon. Still, she doesn’t think that what she has in mind might be too much. The night she decides that she will do this, she waits for him to fall asleep before taking a deep breath and steering herself. She looks down at Theon, making sure that he’s definitely not anywhere near awake - he looks better now, his short hair almost as dark as it used to be, and while he’s still too thin for her tastes at least he’s doesn’t look malnourished anymore. And his gloved left hand is resting on the pillow. She breathes in again and reaches down slowly with her own hands, grabbing the glove with the tip of her fingers and slowly, carefully taking it off. He doesn’t wake up as she does it. Jeyne throws the glove on the ground and looks down at his hand. His skin is whole now, his nails stark clean, and it’s just three fingers, two sad still red scars in place of the two others, but it’s not as if she hadn’t known.
She reaches down with her own and threads her fingers through his, slow - he doesn’t wake up and he doesn’t reciprocate, obviously, but she had expected that as well. And - gods, it feels good. She likes the way his remaining fingers feel against hers, she remembers when that hand had gripped her waist before they fell, and his skin is rough and warm and there’s nothing about this that feels wrong or repulsing or whatever Theon would assume.
Jeyne can barely wish that he would return the grip before his eyes open suddenly - right. Maybe she shouldn’t have squeezed - he’s a light sleeper, not that she doesn’t understand that either. Then he looks at their clasped hands as if he can’t even believe what he’s seeing.
“What are you doing?” he asks, sounding completely baffled.
“What does it look like?” Jeyne doesn’t try to keep the amusement from her voice, even if she’s more worried than else right now.
“Why would you even do it?”
Right. Exactly what she had thought he’d ask. “Why not?” And fine, maybe that wasn’t what she was aiming for. “I mean - gods, all right, I wanted to.”
“You wanted to.”
“Is that so unfathomable? Yes. I wanted to. In fact, I think I like it.”
“You can’t like it.”
“And what if I do? It’s not - it doesn’t matter, you know. You didn’t need the other two when we jumped, did you?” Her voice goes softer at that, hoping that he gets it - she’s still not sure that she can put it in proper words. “And - I think it would please me very much if you would stop staring at my hand and do… something.”
“It would. And what should I do with it?” He sounds as if he doesn’t know whether he should laugh or cry hysterically.
“You should do… what you want, Theon. Really.” She knows that if she had answered maybe you should just return it he’d have most probably done it, and… it kind of makes her want to vomit, and she’s seen enough to know that it’d be unfair. If he doesn’t want to, he should have a choice about it, even if it’s something as ridiculous as this.
For a moment, nothing happens.
Then he sits up without moving his hand, he takes a deep breath and looks down at their fingers. His hand start shaking and for a moment she’s sure that he’ll say no, but then he turns his hand upwards and clasps her fingers with the ones he has. Jeyne feels ridiculously relieved as the two extra fingers she has - in comparison to him - curl over the empty space where his own are missing.
“You don’t have to wear gloves around me, you know.”
He grips her hand a little tighter as he looks downwards, giving her a small nod before meeting her eyes again. He looks as if he’s about to cry, but he’s smiling and some of his teeth (both his real ones and some silver replacement ones) are showing so it’s probably not the bad kind of crying. “Duly noted,” he croaks, and he doesn’t move his hand away.
So maybe Jeyne makes an habit out of it. After that night, whenever she has the occasion she will just go and grab his hand for a while, either left or right, and he always looks startled at first but he never says no, and he always holds it back, and he might try not to let it show but it’s obvious that he likes it as much as she does.
It doesn’t even surprise her when he asks the question a while later though.
“You really like it?”
“I do.”
He could look more convinced at her answer, but she won’t hold it against him - she knows enough to guess that his first conclusion would be that she’s doing it because she thinks she owes him. That’s really not it, but hopefully he understood by now.
“It’s just - we got away, right? I don’t think we did just to fall into it all over again. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t want to. I’d like to think I’m done with it. And - you really should stop thinking that no one in their right mind could want it with you.”
She can see from the way his eyes go wide that it was exactly the problem. Gods, right now she’s feeling envious of Sansa all over again, but just because the girl she was friends with a life ago would have found the right words for it - Sansa always knew what to say, and with all the songs she remembered she could have come up with something better. But she never was Sansa and she’s not her now either, and how can she convince him that she really means it when she knows all the reasons why he could take it the wrong way? She’s still racking her brain trying to come up with something to say other than that, but then he reaches out with his free left hand, touching her cheek with two familiar fingertips and she isn’t expecting when he presses slightly shaking lips to hers for a handful of seconds before moving away. She feels her lips almost tingling at that, and before he can think of it she reaches up with her right hand and wraps it around his left, too, the way she always does, and maybe that was enough because he’s tentatively smiling again. Her heart is beating faster now, and she’s bursting with the need to say out loud that yes, this was exactly what she wanted and could never ask for, but he precedes her. He looks as nervous as she felt a moment ago.
“Jeyne?”
“Yes?”
“This? I think - I think it rhymes with dove.”
It takes her a moment to get it - that wasn’t what she expected him to say - but then she does and she knows she’s grinning when she lets go of his right hand to touch his face.
“I think it does,” she answers, feeling like she can’t even breathe, and then she kisses him again, her right hand still curled around his left.
End.