Work Text:
"We ripped wings
off of butterflies.
Translucent, glittering paper,
and on them we wrote
our tale of bright-eyed greed.
Our fingers
were silky with scales.
They were a good treasure
while they lasted."
- Unknown, "Bright-Eyed Greed"
Theon was tired.
Tired right down to the bone, and cold too, like he’d never be warm again. Steam licked at his face as it rose from the bucket clutched to his chest, but it could not thaw the bit of ice that had encased his spirit. His vision was misty no matter how often he blinked.
With every step he took, the bucket’s contents sloshed. It was difficult to keep his balance; with missing toes, every step was a perilous task. Every now and then, he had to pause and lean against the stone walls to catch his breath while the water settled. The serving girls accompanying him giggled at his frequent rests. They had no trouble with their pails of hot water. They were healthy, with flushed cheeks and arms made strong from labor and regular meals.
The juxtaposition of their strength and his weakness shamed him. With every fluttery giggle, the pit in his stomach gaped like the lips of a jagged wound. What a wretched creature he had become.
Up in the bathing chambers, Ramsay waited. It was nighttime outside the castle; soft orange light from the oil lamps muted everything with warm shadows. Theon was aware of Ramsay’s presence by the window the moment he limped into the room with his bucket of water. He felt the prickle of Ramsay’s colorless eyes on his bent neck. Ramsay had not broken his thoughtful silence since their journey back to Winterfell began, after Moat Cailin — after Theon had — had —
No, he could not think about what he had done at Moat Cailin now. When the memory of the stench of rotting bodies, stripped of their skin and withering in the sun, came to him, he could not help the reflex of bile in his throat. Ramsay would not be pleased if Theon made himself sick in his bath chamber.
That thought, more than anything, helped calm his nerves. Serve and obey, Ramsay had said, and you will be rewarded. Theon just had to be good, that was all Ramsay wanted from him. He could do that. He could do anything if it meant never going under the flaying knife again.
His bucket’s contents brought the water in the tub up to its lip. The tub was a beautiful thing, big and made of polished copper. Distantly, Theon remembered it from his youth. It was the same tub he’d bathed in growing up as a ward of Winterfell. It seemed odd that it had survived the burning when so many things far more precious had not.
Seeing that their task was finished, the serving girls slipped away like minnows. Nobody wanted to be alone in a room with Ramsay Snow.
Bolton! Bolton, Theon immediately chastised himself. He peeked towards the figure leaned up against the wall, half-expecting him to lunge off the wall and grab Theon’s head. The idea that Ramsay might be able to divine his thoughts did not seem so far-fetched.
Nervously, he stepped back from the tub and hunched his shoulders. The empty pail dangled from his curled fingers. Please, dismiss me. Dismiss me back to the kennels.
A moment, then:
“Well? Will you make your lord undress himself?” Ramsay’s voice, soft and calm, ran down Theon’s spine like ice-water.
Immediately, Theon hobbled forward, hardly daring to raise his eyes above Ramsay’s shirt. Ramsay had the laces on his jerkin done up all the way, and they were made of stiff, waxed strips of cowhide to keep the moisture off. Theon picked at them. His mutilated hands looked so spindly and broken as they darted in and out of the laces. Ramsay stood very close; each of his breaths stirred Theon’s fringe. His breath was sweet as clover. Theon remembered that smell from the dark, when he’d hung on the saltire, when he hadn’t known how to obey and be good.
Ramsay had been shockingly handsy then, he recalled. He’d touched Theon often; a bracing hand on his hip to keep him still while the other hand held the flaying knife to a finger; a soft caress on Theon’s throat while Theon wept in the aftermath of a whipping. He didn’t even seem to be aware of his proclivity for the contact, but Theon felt them like red-hot brands, and their skin-memory lingered long after he’d moved away.
Finally, Theon managed to get the laces undone. Ramsay’s jerkin peeled apart, the flaps hanging loose on his shoulders. Ramsay made no move to shrug it off, so after a moment, Theon slid it down his arms. He moved away to hang it carefully on a nearby peg and stepped back into place.
“My under-layers,” Ramsay dictated, speaking with a sort of languid pleasure that always boded ill for Theon.
Sniffling, he grasped the hem of Ramsay’s shirt and lifted. Ramsay raised his arms agreeably enough, and soon Theon had the warm woolen undershirt off and hanging on the peg as well, leaving Ramsay bare-chested.
“The britches, too, Reek,” Ramsay said, smiling.
Theon hesitated, but only for a moment, quailing under that unblinking gaze. With a few small grunts, he folded himself to the floor to reach Ramsay’s belt. Leather slithered on hide as Theon worked it free. He gripped Ramsay’s trousers by the waistline so that he would not have to touch his skin, then pulled them down. Then it was just Ramsay’s smallclothes that remained. Without being instructed, Theon tugged them down as well, and then Ramsay was naked before him.
Theon had never seen Ramsay naked before. He’d been bare-chested when confronting Theon’s sister in the kennels, of course, but at least then he’d had trousers on. Theon stared fixedly at the ground. He was very aware of the proximity of his head to Ramsay’s groin.
“Very good,” Ramsay said, and stepped over to the bath. His bare feet rasped quietly on the flagstones. Theon didn’t dare move until he heard the sounds of water splashing in the tub. “A good servant never makes his lord undress himself.”
Theon nodded his head. It was safer not to speak, to merely nod or shake his head. Less for Ramsay to find fault with. Words were difficult these days; oftentimes, they got lost and jumbled up during the journey from Theon’s battered brain to his lips.
“Bring the rags,” Ramsay instructed.
Theon shuffled over to the shelf where a bundle of clean rags and a new cake of soap waited, then brought them to the tub. He dunked the rags in the water and squeezed them so they would soak. The memory of Ramsay bathing him in this very room rose up inside him like the steam from the water. Ramsay had been so kind, so gentle when he ran the rags over Reek’s filthy skin. The memory of that perfect jewel of kindness made Theon’s knees weak, so he crouched by the tub instead. There was no stool by the tub for him to sit on. The stonework hurt his knees.
Ramsay let out a big sigh and leaned back in the tub. Theon flinched at the sudden movement, expecting a strike, or for Ramsay to grab the back of his head, but all was calm. He cracked his eyes open. Ramsay’s face was totally relaxed, his eyes closed as though in sleep.
“I’m tired from our journey,” he said. “And I fear I smell half as terribly as you once did.” One eye slitted open, observing him, then closed once more. “Get me clean again, Reek.”
Theon worked to moisten his cracked lips. “Yes, milord,” he croaked.
Never had he been invited to touch Ramsay before. He had the oddest sense as though the world had moved two steps out of rhythm when he wasn’t looking.
Obediently, he began to run the cloth over the safest span of exposed skin: Ramsay’s forearm. His strokes were not nearly so smooth as Ramsay’s had been; his hands had been left with a terrible tremor after Ramsay finished with them. Aside from the small sounds of the water dripping from the cloth and their breaths, the room was quiet.
Theon washed Ramsay’s arm for a long time, dreading moving on, but eventually, Ramsay twitched his limb below the surface and raised the other, so Theon brought the cloth to that one too. He was very thorough, working it through each space between Ramsay’s relaxed fingers, though he was too terrified to look at them for very long. These fingers had brought him so much agony and torment that it seemed odd to feel them pliant in his shaking grasp.
After another few minutes, Ramsay lowered that arm beneath the water as well. Theon hovered for a moment, biting his lip, then tentatively laid the sodden cloth on Ramsay’s chest. Ramsay did not move, so Theon added some of the soap and began to rub, back and forth. He could not have missed the way Ramsay’s nipples tightened up into stiff peaks under the repetitive strokes of the cloth.
“That’s good, Reek,” Ramsay said. His voice had gone a shade deeper. Theon recognized the effects of lust and very carefully did not think any further about it, or the strong heartbeat he could feel under his fingertips.
After that, he did not need any further prompting. When Ramsay leaned forward, Theon washed his hair, and then the back of his neck, and then over the broad expanse of his shoulder blades and lower. Ramsay’s skin was perfect and unbroken like fresh fallen snow. He had very few scars. Nausea rose inside Reek’s stomach as he stared at that expanse of clean, intact skin. Obviously, Ramsay had never been whipped. Nobody had ever brought the knife to him until he wept, until he sobbed and agreed to call himself by a different name, until he’d hollowed out his own soul to satisfy the crushing demands of another’s whim.
When Theon had washed all that he could reach above the water, he sat back on his heels, cringing.
Ramsay indolently lifted one of his bare legs and propped his heel on the other end of the tub so that it jutted above the water like the peak of a glacier. No words were necessary. Theon started with his foot, rubbing away the sweat and dirt that Ramsay had accumulated walking around in his heavy boots. His leg was fleshy, muscular and well-fed. In comparison, Theon was waifish thin. All his musculature had melted away in the darkness of the Dreadfort’s dungeons. Ramsay’s skin was warm and pink from the water, but none of that warmth seemed to touch Theon.
He re-wetted the cloth and followed the path left by beads of water as they trickled down until he’d reached Ramsay’s upper thigh. As he was lifting the rags to start the stroke again, Ramsay caught his thin wrist in a vice-like grip.
“I told you, ‘get me clean,’” Ramsay said, enunciating with care as though Theon was slow. “That means, all of me.” Meaningfully, he flicked his eyes to his groin, obscured as it was beneath a thin layer of oily bubbles.
Reek’s lip trembled. Far away, Theon screamed in denial. Reek wanted to cry too, but there was nothing he could do. Please him. Just make him happy, and he’ll let you sleep with the dogs on a bed of fresh straw. He swallowed and submerged the cloth, down under the soapy water until his fist bumped into the bobbing shape of Ramsay’s half-erect cock.
“Ah,” Ramsay said, settling into the water and easing his legs further apart. Timid as a lamb, Reek wrapped the washcloth around Ramsay’s blooming arousal and said nothing. “That’s it.” When he smiled, exposing his little fang teeth, Reek had to look away. “I'm sure you remember how it's done?”
Since his throat had closed up, he nodded instead. He couldn’t meet Ramsay’s self-satisfied gaze, nor could he bear to look at where his arm plunged beneath the water, the small ripples he made with every uncertain motion. There was nowhere safe to look. Around Ramsay, there never was. He could be punished for meeting Ramsay’s eyes like an equal. He could be kicked or backhanded for not looking at Ramsay’s face when receiving instructions. The fading bruises on his temple attested to Ramsay’s mercurial moods.
But Reek had had enough of the knife and the whip. Starvation and flaying had made him shy, eager to please. Meek, Reek rhymes with meek. I know my name. It was difficult to please a man when you had so few fingers, but Reek was determined not to be punished for lack of trying. When he rubbed the underside of Ramsay’s cockhead through the cloth, where the glans met the shaft, Ramsay gave a small gasp. His lips were pink and wet. Water rippled as he pushed his hips up into Reek’s careful grip.
It is not so bad, Reek thought to himself. I only have to touch him with my hand. He is being still, and not screaming or beating me like before. He is being kind. The thought prompted a surge of gratitude. Ramsay had been kind, even on the way back from Moat Cailin. He’d swaggered around the tents with unusual cheer, joking and carousing with smug glee. Every night when they’d stopped to make camp, Ramsay fed him scraps from his own plate personally, and Reek was even given a spare horse blanket to sleep under. Maybe that kindness would continue once he was properly Ramsay’s dog.
Ramsay was now fully erect, a warm rod in Reek’s mangled hand.
“Take off your rags,” Ramsay ordered. “You’re filthy again — we might as well take advantage of the bath while it’s drawn.”
Reek felt a bolt of terror so strong it made his heartbeat stumble. No, not my clothes, please. Please. Was this a test? Ramsay liked him dirty, and Reek had just been bathed only two fortnights ago. He’d barely begun to smell again.
“Milord,” he whispered through broken teeth. “I… I am not deserving of baths, milord.” He clutched the patched and frayed knee of his pants with his other hand, his throat thick with fear. Please. Don’t take my clothes. He did not want Ramsay to see him naked.
Ramsay rolled his head along the lip of the tub until he faced his servant. “What was that?” he asked, so softly.
Reek blinked away tears. Be grateful, he told himself. It’s a bath. Enjoy the luxury. Nevermind that the luxury was not freely given. Ramsay’s gifts always had a cruel element to them. He stopped his ministrations long enough to remove his clothes. They lay in a sad heap in a puddle where one of the maids had spilled water. Exposed to the air and Ramsay’s lidded gaze, Reek’s naked skin felt awfully vulnerable. He wanted more than anything to at least yank his trousers back on. But Ramsay enjoyed seeing his handiwork. If he could find a way to make his servant walk around Winterfell naked without prompting intervention from his father, Reek suspected he would command it.
Ramsay patted the side of the tub and shifted back a bit to make room. “Are you still shy, after everything we’ve done together? In you go.”
Teeth chattering, Reek climbed in the tub. His movements were slow and ungainly and he almost lost his balance as he swung one leg over the tub’s side. Ramsay steadied him with a hand on his hip. The ropy scar he’d left there with a paring knife tingled. Reek shuddered.
The water was warm, but Reek was afraid to sit. There was no room. Where was he supposed to sit?
Oh, he realized. This is the game.
He was proved right when Ramsay pulled him down, giving him no choice but to fold himself into Ramsay’s lap with his back against Ramsay’s soapy chest. Every dead and living nerve screamed at the proximity, but he could not stop it from happening. He could not stop anything from happening to him. Obey, just obey, and it will go quickly. Ramsay’s cock was a hot brand against his lower back.
“Ah,” Ramsay sighed. His voice whispered right into Reek’s ear. Reek cowered. “This is pleasant, isn’t it?”
Reek’s lips were shaking so badly he could hardly speak. “Milord,” he managed, but that was it. Things were starting to feel distant like a thin sheet had been drawn over his eyes. For a confused moment, he believed he was in the stables again with Ramsay holding him face-down in the dirty straw. The leers and boorish calls of Ramsay’s Boys rang in his ears.
“You have made me a very happy man,” Ramsay murmured into his ear. He performed a slow roll of his hips that pressed his hardness against Reek’s scarred lower back. Reek blinked, swallowed. Pushed his ragged nails into his palms until he could be certain of where and when he was. I made him happy, a part of him whispered, the part that had cried like a child when Ramsay dropped the horse blanket over his head. He’s happy with me. Relief made him go limp.
“I only ever want to please you,” Reek said through his tears. “Please, it — it’s all I want.” That seemed like the right answer.
Ramsay groaned and rolled his hips again. “I’m going to put a collar on you,” he said raggedly. “Old Ben is making it right now. I picked out a bright red leather, so everyone will see it and know you’re my dog.”
“Thank you milord,” Reek said. “I want to be your dog. I’ll behave, I promise.” Dogs were given meat and water and clean straw to sleep on. For that, Reek would happily bark and go to all fours if Ramsay asked it of him.
Ramsay plunged both of his hands under the water. Reek gasped when he felt Ramsay grip his buttocks and pull them apart. Reek, rhymes with squeak . Ramsay’s next thrust dragged over his hole. Reek could not breathe for the perverted shame of it, but he held himself still for Ramsay’s thrusts. At least the water is better than nothing. It hurts so badly when he does not prepare me.
It would hurt no matter what, he knew. Ramsay did not know how to experience pleasure if there was not a dose of pain somewhere in it. But Reek was still surprised when Ramsay coated two of his fingers in the cake of soap and brought them to Reek’s hole. Unexpectedly slippery, they plunged in easy up to Ramsay’s first knuckle.
Reek gnawed on his fist. Maybe I am just ruined, he thought, delirious. Maybe I’ll never tighten up again. A memory from early in his captivity flashed before him: Ramsay holding his thighs apart and watching with fascination as his release dripped out of Reek’s stretched hole. He’d been unable to close up properly after Ramsay’s violent assault and Ramsay had mocked him viciously for it. The memory was so humiliating Reek bit his skin until it went away with all the other bad ones.
Ramsay worked him with patient, short jabs of his fingers that focused on the rim of Reek’s hole rather than the depth. It still hurt, but not as much as it could have. Ramsay was being gentle. It made Reek quiver with emotion. He ached for Ramsay’s gentleness. Somehow knowing Ramsay wasn’t actually angry at him when he hurt Reek made the pain easier to bear.
“That’s it,” Ramsay breathed. “Look at you, riding my fingers as well as any whore. Should I leave you a copper coin after?” Another circle of his fingers. “Maybe I’ll stuff it here. Could you hobble around all day with it inside you?”
Reek did not know what to say to that. He didn’t want Ramsay to put anything at all inside him, but he knew better than to plead. Instead, he dug his teeth into his fist until the pain in his jaw made it impossible to think. Half the time when Ramsay spoke like this, he didn’t expect an answer anyway.
“I’ll try,” he finally dislodged his teeth to sob shakily. He would. If Ramsay commanded it of him, he would.
Ramsay groaned as if he’d said something erotic. He brought his left hand up and splayed it over Reek’s narrow chest. Two of his thick fingers captured Reek’s left nipple and tugged. Reek spasmed.
“I left this one on purpose,” Ramsay breathed as he licked the shell of Reek’s ear. “You’re so sensitive here. Do you like it when I touch your pretty tit?”
‘Pretty’ was the last word anyone would have used to describe Reek’s chest. His right nipple had been flayed from him and any muscle he’d once had was gone, not to mention the crisscross of scars. Ramsay pinched again, tugged, released. Then he rubbed the pad of his thumb over the blushing peak. Reek’s mouth gaped a bit. Warmth bloomed in his chest and face. It’s only because he took my cock, he told himself. It makes me sensitive elsewhere and he knows it. But knowing it couldn’t stop the small exhalation he released when Ramsay’s wet finger circled his nipple again. Ramsay leaned his chin on Reek’s shoulder to watch the blood flow to the area. Under the water, he added another finger in Reek’s hole.
Just please him, Reek remembered. He consciously edged his thighs apart and felt Ramsay’s smile against his neck.
Reek wandered in his head while Ramsay entertained himself. What did his body and its sensations matter to him? It was merely a sack of flesh, that was all, and it existed solely for Ramsay’s pleasure. He drifted, lulled into a strange trance by the tugs on his nipple and the rhythm of Ramsay’s fingers in his hole.
At last, Ramsay removed his fingers and shifted lower in the tub. The water made Reek’s laughable weight even easier to heft. He had the odd feeling of weighing no more than a stalk of wheat as Ramsay moved him higher in his lap. Then he felt what was unmistakably the shape of Ramsay’s cock. Reek gripped the sides of the tub. His stretched hole couldn’t help spasming fearfully in response.
“You’re sucking me in,” Ramsay rasped. “Filthy whore. You want this.”
Reek shook as he stared straight ahead, eyes fixated on a spot in the wall where stone had crumbled away. I do, he thought sternly to himself. I must. He likes when I beg him for it. He’ll be kind after.
Though creative in his cruelty, Ramsay was occasionally predictable in his pursuit of it. “Beg me for it,” he murmured with his lips pressed against Reek’s ear.
“Please, milord.”
“Please, what? Use your words, Reek.”
Reek exhaled hard. “P-please fuck me,” he said, miserable. “Please, milord, put your cock inside me.”
Ramsay smirked. “My mutt is so well-mannered.” And, holding Reek’s buttocks apart, he forced his cock past Reek’s slick and loose entrance. Reek did his best to breathe and relax through the strong inward push. He had learned not to clench up in order to avoid tearing that took days to heal and inflamed painfully. Still, it seemed to take an eternity until he felt Ramsay’s balls flush against him. Reek twitched. There, that was the hard part done.
For a moment, Ramsay simply lingered where he was seated deep inside, enjoying Reek’s gripping heat. Then he pulled his hips back and repeated the motion. Reek gasped. Each breath drew in air made humid from the bath. Ramsay’s chest was damp and hot against his back. They both breathed heavily, and the slap of water in the tub seemed like claps of thunder.
Reek squirmed. “I love you.” It burst out of him, dripping with desperate adoration. It was the first time he’d ever said it unbidden. But as much as the admission made him curdle with shame, he could not keep it to himself. It had sprung from the part of him that happily licked Ramsay’s hand to earn scraps at dinner.
Ramsay stilled. “Say it again,” he ordered.
“I love you,” Reek repeated obediently, his voice raw and choked with emotion. I hate you, Theon dared to think. Inside him, Ramsay twitched.
“Again.” He started a series of quick thrusts that skated the head of his cock through the tight ring of Reek’s hole.
“Ah — I love you,” Reek sobbed. “I do, milord, I do, I love you. I’m sorry.”
“You’re an ugly, wretched thing,” Ramsay growled. “Disgusting and smelly. Do you think I could ever love you back? That I ever would?”
Reek trembled, tossed his head fitfully. Reek belongs to Ramsay, and Ramsay belongs to Reek. “No, milord — I don’t know, I don’t know, I’m sorry.” He could not think when Ramsay’s cock was so deep inside him. It felt like it was rearranging his insides. Wouldn’t Ramsay love that? If he could dig out a space inside Reek’s body that fit him perfectly?
“I made you,” Ramsay said. His breaths came fast with excitement. With one hand suspending Reek’s weight in the water, he was able to hammer against him without stopping. “I carved you out of a princeling named Theon, and I made you mine. It’s only fair that you love me.” He moaned. Water slopped out of the bath with each thrust.
Reek sobbed harder at the mention of that bad person. His leg kicked, splashing water out of the tub. Ramsay was speeding up, and occasionally his thrusts glanced over a spot inside that made a strange spark go up Reek’s spine. I truly am a craven whore. If he had been Theon, it would not have been enjoyable, but to a smelly servant named Reek, it was pleasure beyond words.
“Say it again!” Ramsay moaned. He turned and sank his teeth into Reek’s neck like a dog mounting a bitch.
Reek shrieked. Ramsay’s teeth dug into him without mercy. “I love you!” he wept.
Ramsay groaned through his mouthful of flesh. He dropped Reek in the water; one hand flew to the scar between Reek’s legs and the other gripped him by his thin throat to hold him still against his chest. Reek hollered, spasming as Ramsay rubbed harsh, tight circles over the swollen bump left above his sack. Ramsay had shoved his cock as deep in Reek as he could go. His hips trembled, and distantly Reek felt a bloom of warmth inside.
But Ramsay’s fingers didn’t let up their circling, not even when the half-pleasure flickered into over-sensitive pain and Reek couldn’t help squirming in discomfort. Finally, as he cried and shook, there was a sensation like a bucket overflowing — he wondered in terror if he had pissed himself, but the odd half-pleasure drowned him in waves until he relaxed all at once, utterly drained.
Ramsay lifted his fingers from the water. They shone wetly with remnants of Reek’s release. Reek did not resist when Ramsay slid them inside his heaving mouth and told him to suck them clean. He tasted himself, bitter and musky, on his tongue.
“Good boy,” Ramsay told him, oozing smugness as he fellated Reek’s mouth with his fingers. “From now on, you will draw the water for my baths.”
Reek closed his eyes. There was no denying Lord Bolton’s commands.
“Yes, milord.”