farfromthesea | (no subject)

Theon wakes up behind an ordinary looking house in East Hallow, a slow and painful grind toward consciousness. For one blissfully ignorant moment, he's just confused.

And then he feels the throb in his head, sticky blood on his face, the sudden rush of knowledge-- not much knowledge, not enough to explain why his wrists and ankles are bound with a loop of thing, too strong plastic. Not enough to explain the fucking chain around his neck, attached to the house like it just belongs there.

He's not gagged, and he can't tell if it's just because they knew, whoever the fuck they are, that he knows better to scream, that he's been taught better.

"See there?" says a voice, and if the tone, the accent are wrong, there's something else that's exact in it. "Knew you were smart enough to keep your mouth shut. You keep your ears open too. You're about to be part of something spectacular."

Theon cranes his head to find the man, and he recognizes the hard blue eyes that had watched him move through the marketplace as it became more and more frenetic. Thank fuck, that color doesn't freeze him anymore. Instead, he's thrashing, writhing, shouting, trying to get free, until the man with the blue eyes is a heavy weight on top of him, sitting on Theon's thighs with a blade to his neck.

"I think you're going to shut the fuck up now," his captor says, and Theon stills, gasping careful breaths as he tries to figure his way out of this.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Daryl followed Theon inside, propping his crossbow up by the door and stripping out of his vest. Stooping to untie his boots, he toed them off just inside, to keep from tracking anything onto the floors he'd spent days sanding and repairing.

"Come on," he said, gesturing for Theon to follow him into the bathroom and flipping on the bulb. "Sit your ass down," he said, flipping the toilet lid closed, a faint smirk on his face.

In the stark florescent of the bulb he'd hung up in this room, he could see the gash on Theon's forehead more clearly. Like head wounds tended to do, it had bled a lot, but it didn't look too deep.

The relief surges up so great at all of it, the way he kicks off his own boots to join Daryl's, the way the cool darkness in the little house wraps around him in an entirely different way that the darkness outside, the surety of Daryl's instructions. Catching sight of the sheer amount of blood on his shirt, he pulls it up and off, just a bit gingerly.

It's so quiet, his windows open just enough that there's the soft, comforting roar of the sea.

He thinks he'll be tired, very soon, but he feels almost serene as he sits down on the toilet lid, tipping his head for Daryl to see properly. Could also be the head wound, though. "Think it needs stitches?" he murmurs, not really wanting to disrupt the strange sense of peace.

In his world, there was a lot of hasty sterilization with alcohol and hoping for the best, but he was able to wash his hands in the sink, to rummage around for the first aid kit stowed in the cabinet. He wet a washcloth with warm water, and standing over Theon, one hand braced on his shoulder, Daryl blotted carefully at the wound.

"Looks shallow enough," he murmured, prodding gingerly at the deepest part, split near his hairline. Theon's eyes were heavy-lidded, but he didn't look worryingly disoriented. "Feeling woozy?" He asked, knocking bits of gravel gently from Theon's hair.

"Just-- relieved, I think," Theon admits, doing what he thinks is an excellent job not overly leaning into the hand on his shoulder. "Maybe a little dizzy." He does manage to keep his eyes open a bit wider, watching Daryl clean a wound that hardly hurts anymore. They'd told him a lot about adrenaline and how other shit like that could make him feel ways, at the hospital, but he'd like to think his threshold for pain is high by now.

Maybe more than a little dizzy, he realizes, as he reaches to steady himself with a hand on Daryl's side.

"I should have said," Theon murmurs, "that this place's holidays get weird."

"Lucky you stayed on the bike," he muttered gruffly, frowning at himself for risking something so dangerous.

Leaning over to rinse out the washcloth, he said, "I figured it out myself. Starting hearing shit, in town. Why the hell'd you think I came? It wasn't for the damn cider."

"I wouldn't have fallen off," Theon answers, "not then. It's because we're safe now. They told me about it, when I was in the hospital." He hadn't really understood it until later, all of it too far removed and out of his experiences.

The corners of his mouth tick up, and his expression unguarded, warm as he watches Daryl.

"You came to help people," he agrees. "I would have--" He doesn't want to say it, not now.

"Came looking for you," Daryl said, frowning. "You and those damn kids."

Maeve, he knew, was all right, but there were others he'd need to check up on. Others he gave a damn about. But he'd gotten Theon on his bike and hauled ass without much of a second thought.

Without meaning to, he thought about Carol. About her arms around him on the bike, the two of them making promises to each other that neither of them could really keep.

Blotting the last of the blood away from Theon's hairline, Daryl left the washcloth in the sink as he fumbled around for a couple of those little butterfly bandages.

Theon lets his hand drop from Daryl's side as he moves, far too distracted by the idea of Daryl going to look for him, among others, making that same connection-- how they'd just left. And he doesn't feel guilty, even if for a moment he wants to, thinks he should. No, all he can think about in that next moment is what it would feel like to kiss Daryl, pull him down and kiss him.

It's such a clear, strong picture that he's not sure what to do with it. Up until now, it had been stupid yearning that stayed much more vague.

"Thank you," he says, his voice slightly hoarse.

"It's nothin'," he muttered gruffly, even though it very clearly was more than nothing.

His hands fiddled with the wrapper on the bandages, worrying at the inside of his cheek with his teeth as he carefully peeled the backing from them and pinched the wound gently closed as he stuck the bandages down.

"This oughta hold," he said, "Long as you don't go picking at 'em."

Edited 2020-11-19 04:53 (UTC)

"It's not nothing to me," says Theon, and when he hears his voice, he thinks it gives too much away, like saying I would have taken you all the way to the Wall, like if you'll have me. "It means something to me."

And that's all he can really make himself say, letting Daryl put the last of the bandages on, letting exhaustion start to slump him over.

"Don't worry," he says softly, smiling. "I've had practice."