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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"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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