Chapter Text
Sick twisted cherry-red lights line the walls of this club, casting ethereal shadows as Theon snakes his way through the moving masses of people.
He ends up near the bathrooms and makes eyes across the room, scanning for loners, people so out of place they ooze with awkwardness. He’s good at this. Young guys, new guys, they try to slide shy smiles at people who are similarly attractive and comfortable in places like these. It’s not even so much naïveté as it is hope because, well, obviously you want to suck the dick of a guy whose dick actually interests you. Naturally.
Theon’s lucky because he’s not exactly picky. The guy who ends up stumbling over to him is balding and bug-eyed, kinda sorta creepy, looks like he might have been a high school science teacher in a previous life, or maybe a mad scientist in a Saturday morning cartoon.
Yeah, well. Theon pulls him into the bathroom, pretty thing on his knees and says that’ll be fifty dollars. The guy looks hurt but not surprised and, anyway, he fumbles for his wallet in the end and Theon gets him off with his eyes closed and his throat open. He hasn’t had a gag reflex since he was sixteen.
Money in the back of his pocket, Theon wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and heads back out into the club, walking over to the bar when he spots ridiculous black, curly hair.
“Hey,” he says, yells, bouncing a little, nervous. Always nervous when it comes to which side will face up when this coin is flipped.
“Yeah? Oh.” And when Jon looks at him it’s with faraway eyes, cosmic like. A whole other universe in there. Theon breathes easily at that. Last time they saw each other Jon was clean and Theon still has the bruises to prove it. This way, talking like this—he can handle this. It is, in fact, the only way he can handle Jon anymore.
“Are you going to the party?” Theon asks, swiping closer, his hand on Jon’s elbow, fingers instinctively covering the track marks there. Force of habit, the need to protect him.
“Party? Oh the—yeah. Probably. Why do you wanna, like. Go together?”
Theon pretends to think about it, leans back against the bar and licks at his lips. They’re dry, chapped. He’s too tired to care, but he needs this money. And he hates going to these things alone.
“Yeah, I mean. If that’s cool.”
Jon nods, because he hates going alone too.
They walk most of the way. dodging cars and slipping on the rain slicked sidewalks. Theon chatters in a way that he knows is annoying, because he just can’t stop himself. His mouth is always running away from him, pockets full of words he never really meant to say out loud, “You can come back to my place after” and “I haven’t slept for days” and “That color looks good on you.”
“Black?” Jon says, lifting an arm like he’s forgotten about the shirt he’s wearing.
“Yeah, sure.” Theon stops Jon in front of the building they’re eventually going to go in, the party they’ve got to make at least a thousand bucks at, each, if they don’t want to lose a body part. Theon’s already missing two. He brushes the remaining fingers of his left hand through Jon’s hair, separating obvious tangles and then turning his cheek to the side, eyeing the yellowing bruise under his eye. He couldn’t see it in the club light and can only just see it now, outside, streetlights above them.
He doesn’t ask, just lets his hand fall away from Jon’s face.
With these types of things, asking is rarely worth it.
“C’mon,” he says, streetwise but never smart enough to stay away from the things that leave him bruised. It’s part of the reason he and Jon wound up on the same stretch of concrete again after all this time. Their shared propensity to let themselves be torn down by other people.
A hundred thousand miles up in the air, and Theon is just high enough to believe he’ll never have to come down.
He’s on the beach with folded money in his pocket, laid out on the sand, watching the sun rise. He knows, distantly, that he’s had better ideas than spending his early morning hours strung out in public, but he’s also had worse ideas so it all kinda evens out in the end.
Too tired to drag himself down to the waves but, man, he misses the open water. He knows the ocean is right here, not moving for anyone. That’s always been one of his favorite things about the beach, the immovable nature of its existence. But he doesn’t do outside crowds these days, doesn’t do midday light, either.
Five in the morning, sunrise halfway done, beach empty except for the markings left over from yesterday, though. That he can do.
He’s trying to remember the last thing he said to Jon, when they were counting bills in the apartment building lobby, sweat drenched bodies and t-shirts not pulled down all the way. Something about how it was a good night, real good night, while Jon nodded and said I think I’m just gonna go home, I think I gotta sleep it all off.
He’s trying to remember the exact way Jon said that, the way his eyes looked, when he’s hit full force by someone yelling and the pounce of something fluffy and made of boundless energy on his side.
It’s a dog, big and slobbery, the kind Theon has never liked. Covered in grey fur and with a lolling tongue that it uses to lick a stripe up Theon’s cheek, tail wagging high in the air.
“Shit—fuck—Grey! I’m so sorry, he’s a good dog, I swear!”
Theon’s rolling on his side, dazed and shaken, ready to be biting, nasty mean, when he looks up and it all dissipates.
Dark, dark red hair, big brown eyes, smooth skin and a genuinely worried look on his face. Theon suddenly remembers why leaving home was worth it. He did it for boys like these and the sounds they make when he’s got them pinned up against a wall, fuck. Theon breathes in, deep and sharp, as the boy pulls his dog away.
“I really am so sorry,” the boy says, starting to sound frantic, like he’s scared Theon’s gonna stand up and punch him, push him down in the sand and break some bones. And Theon might have if this boy was someone else, but, well.
He gets on his knees, brushing his shirt off. The sky looks exceptionally beautiful this morning, purple like the bruises under his eyes. And he remembers what courage used to feel like for a moment, can’t believe he was ever able to forget.
“It’s no problem,” he says, “as long as you take me on a date.”
Robb—his name is Robb, like he’s a prince or a knight, like a character in a fairy tale—thinks Theon is hilarious.
He ties Grey Wind (Theon guesses weird names run in the family) to a bike rack outside of a diner on the pier that’s just opening up. The two of them are the only ones inside aside from an exhausted but pleasant waitress and the kitchen staff.
Robb orders without looking at the menu and Theon picks the biggest breakfast plate they offer because he hasn’t eaten a full meal since he doesn’t know when, and he’s never mastered the art of modesty, of saying oh no I really shouldn’t.
He grins at Robb when the waitress walks away and Robb flushes, cherry frosting for his red velvet cake-colored hair.
“You come here a lot?” Theon asks, picking at the sugar packs at their table, flinging a few across the way.
Robb grins like he likes that. “Sure, yeah, mostly during the summer but sometimes in the morning before school, too.”
Theon hums. In the morning before school. A college kid would say class, he figures, probably. He doesn’t hang out with many college kids, but still. He’s thinking, looking across the way as Robb starts stacking sugar packets in a miniature Tower of Piza type situation, this boy is not legal. This boy is no good for you, or, more like, you’re no good for this boy.
“What about you?” Robb asks. “You went to Mason? Or are you not from around here.”
“Dropped out,” Theon says, vaguely. It’s not a lie, even though there’s no way the high school he went to is the same one Robb is talking about. “Left home.”
“Really? Wow.” Robb has the tone of voice of someone who’s never done what they’re not supposed to. In awe of rash actions borne out of a mix of necessity and stupidity. Like he’s imagining Theon leaving home to do great things, to become some great person.
Theon shifts in the booth and feels the money in his pocket shift with him. It’s a ridiculous amount of money to be carrying around. He’s still going to make sure Robb pays for his food.
The waitress brings over their food, french toast with syrup and sausage for Robb and scrambled eggs, hash browns, toast, and sausage for Theon. It smells so good Theon could almost cry. He consists mostly on a diet of frozen food and things he can scrounge off of other people. He tends to spend his money on speed before fruits and vegetables.
He gets a cup of soda at his own request, Robb watching him as he sucks half the thing down in what must be record time.
“Thirsty?” he asks.
“You bet,” Theon replies, already through a mouthful of hash browns that he drenched in ketchup. He remembers his older brothers telling him how nasty that was, how gross. He still loves the taste. “Anyway—you wanna go see a movie or something?”
“Wuh—um. That’s kinda, I don’t know…sudden?” Robb is watching him with wide eyes, pushing half of his french toast around his plate.
“Yeah, I don’t really do plans. Now or never.” Theon grins, crunching into his last piece of toast. He’s cleared his entire plate already, down to the bare bones. Kinda regrets it, though, would have liked to have gotten one of those white styrofoam take-home things. This is breakfast, but what about lunch and dinner?
Whatever, he doesn’t have time to think about it. Never really does. Three meals a day is too much for someone like him, anyhow.
Robb pays the bill comfortably, tucking a five dollar bill under the napkin dispenser for a tip. Theon gets the feeling this boy isn’t rich, but well off with respectable parents. The type of family who taught him to be kind to other people, but also the type who wouldn’t take well to their son spending his time with a whore.
He follows Robb out to the sidewalk, where Grey Wind is sitting obediently, soaking in the sun with his tongue half out of his mouth.
“What movies are out right now?” Robb asks as he squats down to untie Grey’s leash.
“Um, probably something about superheroes, I dunno.” It’s been honest to God years since Theon went to the movies on purpose, sober and actually watching what was on the screen. “I’ll see anything.”
With you, with you, with you, he wants to say to this boy he just met. He knows that’s dangerous, bad and stupid A special kind of stupid because what’s he really gonna do with this high school boy in board shorts and a place on the, what’s it called, honor roll?
But Robb just stands up, leash in hand and says, “Well, I like superheroes.”
And Theon, he just grins.
Jon’s sitting on the front steps of his place.
Just barely noon and Theon’s got sweat stains on his shirt and his hair’s a mess. He’s gotta change, his first real date in ever with the prettiest boy he’s ever seen.
But Jon’s sitting there, eyes red rimmed and whole body shaking, so Theon pulls him inside because despite what everyone says he’s not a monster, he’s not heartless.
He doesn’t ask what’s wrong. Instead he puts a hand to Jon’s forehead and feels the heat there. Thousand degrees, hundred thousand, doesn’t matter. Jon is burning up, but keeps saying he’s freezing. It’s the only thing he’s saying as Theon leads him to his bedroom and puts him on the mattress on the floor.
“Shh, babe, shh,” Theon says, before leaving him there to get some water. He’s done this too many times before and he hates himself for being worried that this is going to fuck up his plans.
But it should be okay, shouldn’t be that bad. Jon’s prone to summer sickness, bad at coming down from his highs and they’ve done this before.
Theon wants to say what is it this time but doesn’t, just ends up sitting on the edge of the mattress and helping Jon drink from the glass he filled to the brim.
Probably it was the coke on top of the smack. Theon saw Jon snorting lines at the party before being passed around between the impossibly ugly men there, all of them with black credit cards and red faces. Theon’s always telling Jon not to partake when he doesn’t know where something came from—that coke coulda easily been cut with bath salts for all they know, something nuts like that—but Jon doesn’t listen, never listens. Stubborn until the end, at least where Theon’s concerned.
“Hey,” Jon’s saying, a hand on Theon’s wrist, fingers freezing now even though he’s wrapped up in a blanket. “Hey, man. You’ll stay with me, yeah, please? Yeah?”
Theon pushes the hair on Jon’s forehead back and presses his palm against the skin there. Warm, but not worryingly so now that he’s inside and out of the sun.
“Yeah,” he says, easily, naturally. A kiss pressed to Jon’s too prominent cheekbone. “Of course.”
Jon falls into fitful sleep and Theon knows it’ll last all day, probably over twelve hours. He knows he should stay, keeping pillows at Jon’s back and checking his temperature with the back of his hand. He knows he should.
He locks the door behind him when he leaves.
He meets Robb at the Main Art Theatre, the dingiest, oldest cool kid spot in the city, the only place anywhere nearby that has a ticket booth outside the building, the front window cluttered with ads for missing pets and little league sign ups that ended months ago.
Robb pays without being asked and Theon was right, Batman v Superman is playing in spectacular fashion, the next showing in only five minutes. Theon still manages to strong arm Robb into hitting up the concession stand and they have to run to theater number seven, all the way in the back, a trail of popcorn in their wake.
The theater itself is almost empty, a mid-afternoon showing of a movie that’s been out for almost a month. Theon couldn’t care less. They catch the tail end of previews for movies coming out in fall, enough for them to agree some action thing with explosions looks like shit.
To Theon’s amazement he actually has fun without climbing bodily on top of Robb and pressing his lips to the boy’s throat.
Instead they jostle for control of the bucket of popcorn and grin at each other in the darkness. It’s like they’ve been friends for years and part of Theon aches for that. He can imagine it easily. He always wanted a best friend, all he has to do is slot Robb into his dreams of a nameless, faceless boy who he’d spend all his time with. It would’ve been easier, he thinks, to put up with everything else if there was a wickedly kind boy at his elbow, keeping him in line with a smile.
Theon keeps their shoulders pressed together as much as they can, reveling in the feel of it like seeing a storm off in the distance. Summer evenings with grey skies, lightning on the other side of town. Theon would sit and watch, waiting for the rain to come to him, anticipation in the pit of his stomach. He feels that now, Robb slumping against him, laughing at nothing in particular, face lit up by the screen in front of them.
All Theon can think is why didn’t he meet this boy sooner, where has he been all his life.
The credits roll and the two of them stay in the theater after everyone has left, watching the names go past, talking about nothing and Theon ends up saying, desperate for this to never end, “We have to do this again, right?”
“Of course, dude, yeah!” Robb says and Theon’s heart soars at the excitement in his voice. He sounds like he means it, like Theon is a person he wants to spend more than a day with. “Lemme give you my number.”
He ends up writing it on the back of Theon’s hand like a teenage girl might, using a pen they borrow from an employee back in the theater lobby.
It takes everything in Theon not to kiss Robb right there, not to push him against a wall when they get outside. He knows where that kinda thing will lead, the two paths they could end up going down, and he doesn’t have the time or ability to handle either right now.
“Don’t leave me hanging, man,” Robb says to him and Theon smiles as he backs away, waves, turns and disappears around the side of a building.
Theon cradles his hand to his chest and thinks, God, he’d sooner die.
Jon is still out cold when he stops back at his apartment to grab the money he stashed in the freezer. He finds Jon’s still in the pocket of his jeans and takes the cut he owes from it. Jon might be angry when he wakes up, but he’ll thank Theon in the end. He always does.
Before he leaves, Theon carefully copies Robb’s number down on the inside flap of a Chinese place’s menu, to the side of the list of family meals. He puts a star next to it and tucks the menu back into the drawer it came from, equal parts excited and sick to his stomach about the secret he’s now keeping.
He changes for the second time that day, putting on a tank top and splashing water on his face in the bathroom and leaves Jon without saying goodbye.
It’s a long walk to the club, but Theon isn’t about to start taking cabs now. He has a certain addiction to the dread that soaks into him with every step he takes on nights like these. Chancing runs through green lights, he doesn’t wait for anybody. It’s not so much recklessness as it is a complete lack of care. Sprawled out on concrete, bleeding from his head, a lot of things would be easier if he were gone.
But, as usual, no one hits him to the ground. He makes it just fine, bouncing in through the side door of the club and heading up the stairs once inside.
Ramsay’s sitting by himself and when he smiles at Theon, Theon feels ghosting pains in his left hand, causing him to curl the fingers left there inwards.
He falls into the seat next to Ramsay, leans back and lifts himself off the chair, pulling both his and Jon’s earnings out of his back pocket. He counts out two thousand dollars and passes it across the table. Ramsay accepts the bills with a nod.
“Where is he?”
“Home. Unconscious. He got pretty fucked up at the party last night.”
“So he’s not working tonight?” Ramsay looks like coiled, ready-to-strike murder in the low lighting as he tucks Theon’s money into the pocket of his suit jacket. He’s always too well dressed for places like these, can’t stop from showing off all the things he’s earned, no matter what the means.
“Well, no. Even if he wasn’t dead to the world I don’t think—I don’t think he’d exactly be…that appealing, right now.”
“I don’t know, there are a lot of people who like their boys strung out.”
Yeah, Theon wants to say, I know how you like them. But he bites his tongue, looks around.
“Not much of a crowd tonight, anyways, huh?”
“No,” Ramsay replies and he’s got that look in his eyes. “I’m thinking this will be a night just for you and me.”
Theon licks his lips, nods, pushes his shaking hands under his thighs and smiles. Nights like these are why he stopped hoping for pretty boys and movie theater dates, why he stopped looking both ways before he crossed the street, why the sudden flash of light off the steel of a knife can make his throat close up.
Nights like these are the reason he doesn’t sleep.
He gets home at something like daybreak, stumbling into his apartment, scarred and bruised and fucked, crashing down low.
He’s surprised to find someone in his bed, Jon half awake and now it’s his turn to care for Theon.
“Shh,” he says. “Shhhh.”
Always trying to keep the other one quiet, mending scars, Jon holds Theon down to keep him from lashing out and Theon thinks, distantly, thank God I found you a second time.
He doesn’t know Jon’s whole story, only knows the basics, that he was a foster home kid with marks on his arms and anger in his eyes. That second time, he found him in the park after leaving a hotel. He’d seemed dead at first,, but Theon was never one to give up on the still and cold.
Death was one of those things he’d stopped believing in by that point.
And when Jon had proved him right, turned out not to be dearly departed after all, Theon had felt relief and shock all at once, seeing his face, this ghost from his past come back to haunt him.
But Jon was a natural, with pretty hair and a young face and, sure, sometimes Theon felt bad for dragging him down into this shit. Sure, sometimes he apologized when Jon was too gone to hear him, faraway in the way only being strung out could make him. Sure.
But, mostly he’s just glad there was someone to care for him, someone for him to care for.
The amount of times he’s tucked Jon’s hair behind his ears and told him it’ll be okay—the amount of times Jon’s set his broken bones.
It was Jon who opened the door for him when he was a bleeding mess, sobbing and desperate, clutching onto air, the place where his fingers should have been.
“What happened? What happened?” Jon kept shouting, even as he grabbed everything he could, a sheet to rip into strips of cloth and a nearly empty container of rubbing alcohol.
“I asked him to do it,” Theon had sobbed out, because he had and it had been his fault for giving permission. His fingers on ice somewhere, still living things. “I asked him!”
There had been so much blood and Jon had said later that he was sure Theon was going to die. He’d stayed up feverishly for days, changing the dressings on the wound obsessively, scared of something going wrong. He’d had a friend of his, one of the few non-judgemental ones, come over and stitch up the wound when he’d gotten desperate.
Theon remembers, deliriously, hearing a girl ask what the fuck had happened, remembers Jon refusing to answer just please, Ygritte, I don’t know what to do.
These are the important things, the secrets people keep for him. He and Jon are like crushed glass, ground under someone’s heel. Used to be part of something bigger once, both of them, but now they’re both on the ground. Doesn’t matter how much Theon wants to punch that pretty face sometimes, doesn’t matter how Jon rolls his eyes and avoids him when he’s sober.
When they’re down, they go to each other and even if that’s just because there’s no one else, well. That’s still something.
It’s two days later and Theon’s got circles under his eyes like bruises. He takes the Chinese menu with him to a payphone and calls Robb, hey remember me, standing there in evening light like a halo with flies buzzing around his head.
The amazing thing is that Robb does remember him and he rattles off an address, the type of person who’s never had to worry someone’s going to steal everything he owns, probably on account of insurance policies and just generally owning more stuff than one person can carry.
Theon pretends he’s writing it down uh huh and got it. Really he just memorizes the number and street name, the basic direction, and makes it there a few minutes before nine. He was right about Robb’s family, he can tell from the front of the house. It’s a new build colonial with windows all lit up, two cars in the driveway and a bike laying on the grass in a way that says this is a good neighborhood.
Robb said to come around the back and so Theon does, finding himself in a sloping backyard, knocking on the sliding glass door of a walk-out basement that Robb unlocks in a move that’s either fearless or stupid because he doesn’t know Theon at all.
“Dude, are you alright?” Robb asks, head tilted to the side, all genuine.
“Yeah, just uh—pulled an all-nighter last night.” Theon grins.
“Oh…cool!” Robb gestures for him to come inside and Theon can’t help but glance around. Finished basement, drywall and everything, filled with exercise equipment and filing cabinets, pictures on the wall that Theon doesn’t want to look at because that type of stuff will only make his heart ache.
Robb leads him to a room that’s tucked in a corner and that’s a novel idea, a room in a basement that isn’t for laundry. It’s something like a den, with a big television and video games, a comfortable couch and a mini fridge. Jesus, Theon thinks, this is normal to some people.
He turns around and it’s three hours later, him and Robb candy-sweet on Fruit Roll Ups and popcorn, Robb trying to explain the plot of Legend of Zelda to Theon, who was more of a Playstation kid, growing up. He likes the story though, at least when he’s hearing it from Robb’s cherry stained mouth, rambling on with and and and oh yeah.
They’ve been keeping reasonably quiet, Robb explaining that he has four younger siblings, all of them upstairs except for one of the girls who’s at a sleepover, birthday party kinda thing. It’s not that his parents really care he has a friend over—he swears he told them, though Theon gets the feeling that’s part way a lie, that they think one of Robb’s usual regular type friends is over, all football good looks—it’s that if his little brothers know he does then they’ll be down here, too, asking a million questions and getting their sticky little kid hands all over everything.
Robb says this like it’s the worst thing he can imagine, a family interested in what he’s doing, their hands on his things. Theon has a hard time understanding, because his anger (which is a real, solidified thing) has always been borne out of the disinterest of others, the fact that he’s been left alone since he can remember.
But he’s too sugar high to really care right now, smiley and sprawled out on the couch, taking up the whole thing while Robb sits on the floor in front of it, saying, “So, I gotta save the princess.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Theon throws an arm over his eyes and giggles helplessly. “You?”
“What! I’m capable.” Theon moves his arm, peeks at Robb who’s practically pouting. It just makes Theon laugh harder. “Whatever. Shut up. In this game she’s cool, though. She’s, like, a pirate.”
Theon, between lingering, hiccuping laughs, rolls over onto his side. “Well, alright. I like pirates.”
Robb turns to look at him, face confused, like Theon’s the weirdest person he ever met, but he’s okay with it and he’s not sure why. Theon’s breath catches in his throat at that look on the face of this boy he’s known for less than a week and he’s hopeless to resist.
It’s awkward, a sideways kinda kiss, Theon coming in from the wrong angle, missing Robb’s mouth halfway. All he knows is he wants to taste him on his tongue, doesn’t want to leave this tiny, tucked away basement room where it’s only the two of them.
“Ah, Theon, I, I—“ Robb is frozen in place when he pulls away, hands still on the gamepad.
“It’s fine, sorry. I didn’t mean—“
“That was like. It was like. Spiderman.”
“Spiderman?” Theon’s mouth curls into a smile. Jesus. Spiderman. Alright, he can work with this. “C’mere, I’ll show you, I’ll show you.”
“Yeah? I—yeah?” Robb sounds unsure, but he’s still turning around, getting on his knees, eyes on Theon’s mouth like this is a whole different beast. Never seen anything like this before.
Theon leans forward, hand on the nape of Robb’s neck and then sliding up into his hair. “C’mere,” he says again, and then Robb’s mouth is on his, Robb’s lips fitting against his in the most achingly perfect way. Robb’s got one hand on Theon’s chest and as Theon licks against his lips it turns into a fist, clutching the fabric of Theon’s shirt.
Kissing Robb feels like all the things Theon was promised when he was a kid, all the stories about what this was supposed to be like. Bubbling joy in his chest, every good thing that’s ever happened at the back of his mind and none of it compares to Robb grinning against his lips.
He pulls away and is floored by the normalcy of it all. A boy who he likes, a boy who likes him, the two of them fooling around in the boy’s basement, and Theon thinks this is what I’ve been missing all along.
He pulls Robb in again and, this time, doesn’t let him go.