farfromthesea | (no subject)

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neil

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He takes Neil fishing.

Theon's not sure at all if Neil will even like it, but it's a good chance to get out in the little boat before the weather really starts getting cold. He's got a couple of crab traps to check anyway.

The cut on his forehead has moved on from scabbing to that first angry pink stage of scarring, and it's a scar that he doesn't mind looking at. Not when he remembers the way Daryl had tended to it, and the easy warmth that here, in this world, Theon's only ever had with the man next to him.

He takes care of getting them set up, even if Neil knows how, just likes to do it, and then they're waiting, the wind low and the ocean lapping gently against the sides of the boat.

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I hadn't spent much time in boats, and I'd fished maybe twice in my whole fucking life. Kansas wasn't exactly known for its lakes, but one summer, one of Mom's boyfriends drove us out to one, and he made a clumsy attempt at teaching me how.

I put in the same effort, lying through my teeth about how much fun it was. He was dumb and hot and had nice hands, and I was ten years old and lonely. For those few hours, I'd actually given a damn about whether or not he liked me.

By the time we made it back home, I'd lost interest, and soon enough, he lost interest in Mom. I couldn't remember his name, now.

"The boat's pretty cool," I admitted, lulled by the gentle rock of the waves.

The smile Theon sends his way has a genuine, pleased bend to it. "Glad you like it," he says. "Wasn't as difficult to get fixed up as I thought it might be."

He'd had help, of course, and he grins down at the water, only barely recomposing himself as he reaches for a beer to offer to Neil. "The ocean's different here," he says. "I mean, it seems less like it'll try to kill you given the chance."

Nudging the beer against Neil's arm, it almost catches him by surprise, the realization of his good mood.

I could practically hear the smile in his voice, and I twisted around to look at him, giving him a grin of my own.

"What the fuck's that smile about?" I asked, rod propped against my knee as I took the beer from him.

"I can smile if I want to," Theon says, knowing this is a losing battle-- and yet, he chooses to drag it out a little bit. "Maybe I'm just happy to he out here with my best friend, on a nice day before it gets too cold."

He cracks his beer open and takes a long pull, knowing his cheeks are slightly pink despite his best efforts.

"Yeah, man, sure. Whatever you say," I snorted, grinning at him behind the mouth of my beer.

"Whatever it is, it's a good look."

Ever since I'd known him, he was always so fucking tense, and I could count on one hand the number of times I'd seen him truly unburdened.

Part of him thinks it ought to remain quiet, perhaps because it might slip through his fingers if he's not careful, like in a story.

He watches Neil, though, Neil who has been with him from his first breath in Darrow, who knows him better than anyone else, and he finds he wants to say it. "I, ah--"

Theon rubs his grin with the back of his hand, and shrugs. "It's not much, perhaps," he hedges, unable to keep from doing it. "I think Daryl and I, we have an understanding, of sorts. I kissed him."

For anyone else, it might not have been much. For Theon, I knew that it was huge, proven by the fact that he could barely fucking talk about it.

"An understanding?" I asked, brow arched. "You kissed him, and what?"

It does take him a while to find all the words, but he knows Neil's going to let him.

So Theon says, after a moment of thought, "I kissed him, and we both, ah, panicked. We've got a lot that's the same, the shit we've been through. It took a minute or two, to explain that I meant it, to--" He's smiling again, smaller. "I'm sure we sound like fuckin' idiots, but even if we didn't kiss again, could still be close. It wasn't a no. It might not sound like much, but it is."

"It sounds like a big fucking deal to me, man."

I didn't know this guy, but I definitely knew Theon, and any step in the right direction— anything that made him smile like that, had to have been big.

"You look happy, man. Either way, that's a good thing."

"Aye, well, you've always had a soft spot for me," Theon says, relieved enough with all of with, with the kiss, with being able to talk to Neil about it, that he's able to slip into the warm teasing. "But-- thank you."

He takes a long pull of beer, and eyes Neil speculatively.

"What about you? How are you and-- things?"

He might be happy, but he's still awkward as fuck.

"I don't know," I admitted, one shoulder drawing up in a shrug. "Kinda weird, I think."

Normally, I was careful talking about this kind of shit with him, but with the mood he was in, it seemed safe enough.

"I've been kind of fucking around with this guy."

Edited 2020-12-12 18:21 (UTC)

Theon keeps one eye on Neil and one eye on the bobbers as they float along.

It might be risky territory, plenty of the time, and he's sure he'll never really work out the tangle of feelings that Neil gives him. But just as much as this careful, fluttering thing with Daryl makes him happy, he wants Neil to be happy. For as long as any person can manage it, anyway.

"That's a good thing, yeah?"

"Yeah, I mean. He's nice? A little older. He's a writer," I said, picking at the label on my beer.

"It's not like, serious or anything."

Chewing restlessly at my bottom lip, I finally admitted, "I, uh. I thought, for a while, that me and Derek might... But it's like the door got shut on it, or I fucking imagined it, or... I don't know. It's weird."

Theon doesn't really try to hide his surprise at the admission. "I know that I haven't ever met him more than during that nasty bit of winter, but I always thought that you weren't-- finished, there." He finds himself genuinely puzzling over it in a way that somehow feels new. They'd clearly had both depth of feeling and that coiled tension, even Theon had seen that. He'd also seen Derek once or twice, and he's not blind, that's-- aye, that's a man, isn't he. And of course, Neil is Neil, who has a light around him even when he pretends it's not there.

"Do I get to meet the writer? And what do you mean, writer? He... writes? All day?"

"Yeah, me too," I admitted, lifting one shoulder in a shrug and ignoring the weight of the admission pressing down on my chest. "Seems like it is, though."

I looked out over the water, eyes burning a little in a way that didn't have shit to do with the ocean breeze. Jesus.

"He's a writer the same way I wanna be," I said, coughing out a laugh. "What the hell do you think I'm going to school for?"

Theon reaches out, scarred hand squeezing Neil's shoulder. He's been there himself, hasn't he? There's not much to say there, unless Neil wants to say more, and he's trying to think of how he should inquire when Neil laughs at him.

His mouth tugs up in a sheepish grin.

"To write... books," Theon says, though he knows there's more to it. "You know I touched maybe three books in my life before I came here. I'm just glad I know how to read." He sighs. "I suppose I didn't connect the two.

"He writes books. Horror novels," I said, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. "I haven't read any. Could be, he's shit, but he sold some movie scripts, so I figure he was kind of a big deal, back in his world."

You could still definitely be shit and still sell movie scripts, but that was too complicated for me to explain.

"Horror's the one with monsters and murders," Theon says, mostly because he's only in the past few months really grasped anything about genres. "I don't know that we had it, but you can bet I wasn't fucking around in places full of books," he adds, with a rueful, somewhat amused smile. But people liked those stories as well as they liked ones about heroics. Stories of battle, and the flowery sort Sansa liked."

He doesn't think she likes them so well anymore.

"Do they make movies around here? We watch them, but where the fuck do they make them?"

"Hell if I know. Half of the shit that's supposedly made here probably just shows the fuck up, like we do."

It was an unsettling thought.

"He's... nice. Nicer than he lets on, I think. Something happened to him. Something major, just before he came here, but he won't talk about it."

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