00 - Lies, or maybe Truth - 00

A Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire one-shot

which marks my first venture into a new fandom,

and is therefore predictably long, porny, and gay. Woops?

Shooting an arrow, Theon liked to think, was a lot like coming.

There would be a period of heightened concentration during which every little detail cut to sharp attention. The light would gleam on the arrow's polished shaft - or a pearl of sweat coalescing on flushed skin. Veins would pulse in the target's neck - or throbbing against a lover's. All of this followed by the moment of pressure mounting until muscles coiled, and the body was tightly strung, the heart beat so hard it was like to give, until finally –

Beside him, Robb loosed the arrow. It arced through the air in a soft, purring whoosh, sloped down in a way Theon could not mentally describe as anything other than 'pitiful,' exhilarated in its downward descent, and bore into the target's lower half with a low, thrumming thunk.

Theon felt his trademark grin stretch across his lips. "Not bad."

Robb's eyes dashed over to him, held Theon's for a beat, then fell away again, back to the target.

Wordlessly, Robb nocked another arrow, pulled back the string until the feather was to his ear, creased his eye brows in concentration. Loosed.

Better than the last, this arrow hit a few inches closer to the heart of the target. It might have looked impressive, if Theon's own hadn't been swarmed with arrows not a few feet to the right.

Robb's expression was controlled as always, betraying neither resentment nor jealousy when he said, "I'm not as good as you are at this."

Theon smiled. "Well. It might be that a wolf's paw is not entirely suited for this art of war." He lifted an arrow from his quiver with the ease of a shrug, nocked, marked, loosed and hammered it into the target, where it split apart another arrow already lodged there and knocked aside another. Tension seeped out of him sweet and thrilling, as did the boast. "Mayhaps it is the speed you lack. Or the dexterity."

"Dexterity," Robb repeated, as if tasting the word on his tongue. He paused, then nocked another arrow. "You would have the skill."

A smile played across Theon's face, just wide enough to lift him into the terra incognita that lingered between genuine and genuinely mocking. "Everyone's good for something. In my case, I'm even good at listening to orders in addition to shooting arrows. And fucking." His smile crossed the line. "I'm good at that, too."

"I wouldn't know about that," Robb said, his tone flat and even. "Well, I do know about the arrows. Not the other thing."

There had been a time, not too long ago, when Robb would've pinned him with a glare while the heat pulsed rosy-red beneath his cheeks at any mention of that word or any like it. Now, he had learned to just let it roll off his shoulders, leaving Theon floundering between reluctant admiration and the subtle dismay at having had the edges of one of his favorite japes salted and ground away like the spikes of a sea shell off the coast of his father's castle.

"...Aye, and you're not like to hear more of it." Theon's smile loosened when his mind returned to his earlier talk with Lord Stark. He flipped an arrow from his quiver and drew the bowstring to his ear, his eyes boring into the wide, gaping, lusciously red ring of the target ahead. "Stark honor and all that."

He loosed the arrow and shook his hair out of his face without even bothering to check where the arrow had landed; he'd learned to tell by the sounds they made upon impact long ago.

Robb knew what he was talking about, of course. Dry and witless and far too literal he may be, but his ears worked as well as anyone's, and he had a mind quick to apply itself to where questions of duty were concerned. "My lord father had no choice but to close down the brothel in Winter Town, Theon." Locks of auburn hair tumbled forward to splay across his cheekbones when he inclined his head to study his arrows.

Theon tried to mask his snort by clearing his throat. "Of course not. The fact that five fools so deep in the cups they were like to come out the other side got robbed down to their last coppers is cause for your father to enforce an involuntary act of chastity for everyone."

"Bannermen. They were my lord father's bannermen. Not fools."

"One does not necessarily exclude the other," Theon said, dipping into the pools of mockery before swiftly withdrawing. "Be that as it may, they were victims, whatever else they were." He loosed another arrow. "Would that I could just find the long-fingered wenches, I'd have more interesting targets to practice with."

"It will not kill you to go... without." Robb paused. "Until the matter has been settled. Surely."

An easy grin found its way back to Theon's lips. "No more than a lack of mead, one would think. Yet I'm fairly sure a fair few would contest you on that."

"No one I recall."

Theon sighed. "It's just a matter of preference. You prefer to keep honorable, I don't, that's fine with me. You prefer a sword, I prefer a bow, that's fine as well. Admittedly a lot of that comes back to skill, but -"

Robb turned to him, and his eyes barreled into Theon's. "You will not," he said, "criticize my lord father's decisions in front of me any further."

The words settled in between them, wrapped themselves in the drifting snow, and turned to ice and cold and silence. A few flakes caught in Theon's hair, melted, and ran down along his cheeks like wet fingers. They dangled down his chin and dropped down into the furs of his cloak. Scattered.

Theon tossed back his hair, slipped another arrow from his quiver and flung it at the target, and then another, and another, teeth grit tight, eyes narrowed, his hands reaching and pulling and loosing. Iron wailed against wood, again and again, thuck thuck thuck like drums, until at least, when he reached for his quiver to slip out another arrow, his hand grasped only air. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, lodged his signature smile onto his face, and looked over to the heir of Winterfell.

The Stark boy stood there calm and still, sheathed in shimmering snow and cast against the jaundiced glow of the torches lining the doors to the towers. A frown had etched itself across his features, drawn together his eyebrows, and forced his eyes into a small squint.

Blue, Theon thought absently. His eyes are very blue.

As were Theon's own. Though his own, he liked to think, were blue like the tossed-up waters in the iron bay. The Stark boys were not like Theon's and they weren't like Lord Stark's, either, who had eyes like frosty fog and icy sheens and all things winter and North, no.

His were neither sea nor frost but the sunlit blue of the rivers in his mother's home.

And yet. And yet.

Theon felt the fingers of resentment dig into the pit of his stomach. "Forgive me." The words tasted ashen, but he managed to sweeten them with the curl of a skeptical upper lip. "My lord."

Silence reigned. Theon looked at the Stark and the Stark looked at him like two animals testing where the water was wide and the rivers tore. Auburn curls clung to pale skin where the snow had landed, and blue met blue spun across two orbits of waiting.

Until finally: "I'm no lord yet," Robb said. His tone rang neutral now, the consonants softened.

"Just so. Not yet." Theon grinned.

Robb looked at him for a beat, then another. The cloak's fur that framed his face suited him, Theon thought; it made him look regal and well-muscled and even handsome, just like a little lordling should be.

Then Robb broke eye contact and turned back to the target, signaling Theon in not so many words that he considered the conversation flung aside, wrapped in the Stark colors of dispassion and brusqueness, until he decided to pick it up again, in a voice simple and clear, "And you were wrong, by the way. About your preference for archery over swordsmanship being due to skill." Blue met blue. "You would make for a good swordsman if you applied yourself more. No worse than I."

"Kind though you are, you forget that you're years younger than me and yet have always bested me." He laughed through the bitterness. "No match for a young wolf's strength, I fear."

Robb's eyes rested on him. "Is that what you think?"

Theon grew serious. "Well, yes. I came here as a boy of two-and-ten, with you barely past your seventh name day and yet you wielded the sword like the extension of your arm. You and your bastard brother both. Am I wrong?"

"No." Robb seemed to weigh his next words. "I think that you might want to ask yourself if you are no good swordsman because you lack the skill or..." He considered his words. "Because you never really wanted to be, is all."

Robb. Robb.

Robb, Theon had always thought, was just too perfectly positioned within the stream of his destiny. Certainly, at present Eddard Stark functioned as the rock onto which the Stark family leaned and relied, but who doubted that Robb would seamlessly take on those stony robes of responsibility? That sour-faced bastard that always side-eyed Theon might be smarter in some ways, but he'd long since accepted himself as ultimately inferior. The pretty Stark girl loved him as well, and the long-faced one might prefer her bastard brother but seemed loyal enough. The other two, though scarcely more than babes, were set to accept him as their lord father's heir as well. His future had been carefully laid out for him like marks on a high lord's battle map and sweetened with such promises of future songs that Theon was half-convinced that a future so excessively promising would find its natural closure in nothing but tragedy.

Worst of all, Theon himself could not deny that he, too, liked Robb Stark. Sometimes, he just wasn't sure how much. Sometimes, he was sure of so very little.

For example, not even why he sauntered over to Robb, slipped behind him, put a hand on his right arm and the other on his shoulder, and said, "Do you want to be better at archery?"

And when Robb's eyes widened at that, he thought he might know at least one of the reasons why he'd just done that: because little was more thrilling than completely upsetting a Stark's rigid world view. "I... yes. Yes, that's why I'm practicing."

Theon took another step closer. "Then I'll teach you."

Robb's face remained nonplussed. "Ser Rodrik teaches us, as our master-at-arms."

"So he does, but I'm the best archery teacher you're like to find." He bumped his hip against Robb's to straighten his spine and lifted his right elbow. "It wasn't me who taught you wrong posture, was it?"

Robb fit against his chest well enough that Theon found it easy to grasp his bow and yank it into position. "A bow is not a sword, Robb Stark."

"I know that." A hint of petulance crept into his voice. "Ser Rodrik has taught me what to focus on when loosing arrows. I need to lean into a longbow and bend it as I draw -"

"Has he taught you this?" Swiftly, he slipped an arrow from the quiver and drew it back with his hand placed atop Robb's, holding the arrow in position with the string strung tight. The arrow shook and kicked with tension.

"Can you feel it?" Theon only had to lower his head a little to position it right next to the Robb's pink ear. "Can you feel the tension? Hold it. Bear it." A smirk pulled up the corners of his lips. "Feel it mount inside you. Feel it reach toward the top -" Mock-casually, he added, "Does it remind you of anything?"

It hadn't, not yet, Theon could tell by the half-annoyed, half-quizzical look he earned.

Theon rolled his eyes. "You're not feeling it, then." He let go off Robb's hand, and, catching him off-guard, the arrow merely flopped and then nosedived into the cold, hard, snow-covered ground. "Another," Theon judged. "This time you nock it."

Mouth set into a tight line, Robb pulled back the string until the feathers nearly tickled his ear and Theon could see his arm shake in restraint. Before Robb could loose it, Theon put a hand on his shoulder.

"Now, you will not loose it until I tell you to." He leaned in. "Draw it back a little further... and a little more, and a little more. More. You need to stop when you can feel it. Too far and you'll tear the string, too little and it won't come rushing at your enemies with the force of twenty punches like you want it to. It is what you want. The point... are you ticklish?"

Robb had squirmed away from Theon's mouth (which, he noticed just now, had gotten close to his neck), and shot him a withering look as a reply. "No."

Theon laughed, low and guttural and entirely amused. "Well, excellent then." With a smirk, he leaned in even closer, until his lips were a hair's breadth away from the pasty white skin of Robb's neck. He allowed his eyes to linger for a second, to trace the lines of where his shoulders let to his neck and up to where his auburn curls brushed against a bobbing Adam's apple. "Feel it," he ordered, his voice dropping. "Feel how it mounts. That tension, that delicious tension. Don't think with your head, think with your body. Your instincts. They tell you what they need. They know." And lower still his tone fell, barreling past the levels of suggestive and deep into the pits of sultry. "Ache for release, little Robb. Ache for it -"

A shudder sluiced through Robb's body. Theon could feel it, starting low at the small of his back and slitting upwards, seizing his shoulders, tensing his neck, making his Adam's apple throb.

And then, Robb loosed the arrow.

It blurred in the air, a mere whisper of iron and wood and feather, then drilled into the target with enough force to nearly make it topple, and Theon thought, yes, yes, he's got it now, he has, before he even had time to consider why exactly this was cause for celebration, and Robb's body slackened against his in time with the release of a long, drawn-out sigh.

"...See?" Theon chuckled, and watched a curl of Robb's hair flutter in his breath. "You've figured it out, haven't you?"

The blush beneath Robb's cheeks pulsed with all the evidence Theon would ever need.

"So you have," Theon said, amused. "Well, I shouldn't be surprised. In siring all his whelps, Lord Stark has admirably proven that you northmen do know what goes where -"

The glare that Robb threw at would have burned, if it hadn't been ruined by the fact that a tint of blood red stood high on his cheeks. "Quiet, Theon."

He laughed. Loud and fully, puffing gusts of breath.

Irritated, Robb took another step toward him. "Quit it." Too used to being obeyed within his own household, he proved himself suitably unskilled at managing derision. "I said -"

"I apologize." Another chuckle, but he reined it in when he caught Robb's look. "I meant no slight – well, not this time, anyway -" Another glare. "No, in all seriousness – it's just." Theon smirked, and said, more gently, "You've never, have you?"

Robb's nose twitched. "You've just... seen me shoot that arrow."

"And you've just realised that this isn't what I meant," Theon said, amused. I like him. I do, gods be good. "Don't insult me by pretending you don't know."

The snow continued to fall, the cold kept creeping up on them, and a Stark kept his stone-edge silence.

"It's not any of my concern, in truth," Theon allowed with an easy smile and a shrug of his shoulders. "I'm pretty sure none of you have, not even Jon. All the tales of their lot being lusty and devious notwithstanding."

Robb severed the eye contact then, and poised himself back into archery position. "If you already knew, why ask?"

Because your reactions are half the fun of it. "Call me a dare-devil, but I try not to make assumptions. Not too many, that is."

Robb fell silent at that. Shrugging another arrow from his quiver, he nocked and loosed it in fast succession, foregoing the wait and the ache and the release, the sweet and sinful point of no return. Robb's mouth thinned into a tight line of dismay when he missed.

"…. I can't get married yet. It's not useful or desirable until such time as my house decides that it is. Even if that may not yet make me a man grown in your eyes or anyone else's."

Theon laughed, not unkindly. "You don't have to marry whores, Robb. Take it from me: I'd be married half a hundred times over."

Avoiding Theon's eyes, Robb gazed straight ahead, shoulder square, spine straight, mouth perfectly poised. "I'm not interested."

"Why? Because they taste of cold hard coin and not sweet and salty love?"

Robb shifted his weight, and finally raised his eyes to meet Theon's. "Are you mocking my convictions?" Lacking real accusation, his voice came instead tinted with a dash of curiosity. "Is it really that important?"

"No, and aye," Theon said, and realised that he was speaking the truth. "Maybe."

"I've been taught that it is improper to lie with a woman you have not yet married," he said with all the grandeur of Stark conviction. He grew distant for a second, then caught himself. "I have responsibility to live up to expectations, so wait, I shall. A woman's virtue is to be cherished."

Coming from any Stark other than Robb, it would have annoyed Theon. From Robb, it seemed like part of a game. "Only a woman's virtue by the word of the old gods, you say? So my own has been preserved. I shall rest easy at night."

For a moment, Theon fully expected to be met with another glare of indignation or perhaps a sneer of annoyance.

Instead, Robb cracked one of his rare smiles.

Robb's smiles, ah.

They were never like the firecracker grins of his own. They were not the sour little half-grimaces Jon would give him, and they weren't the poised and perfectly-studied little squints of Lady Catelyn's, either; they were something else: small and whimsical and as honest as they were subdued. No one but Theon noticed Robb for his smiles, he was sure. No one but him.

The private moment stretched and cloaked around them. Robb looked at Theon and Theon looked at Robb, eyes fused together, environment blocked and scattered, the burn of the snow soothed. Titles and names and history finally, finally forgotten.

He found himself smiling back, taking a step toward him, and saying, "Mayhaps you and I should," before he could even think if through, before he had even fully formulated what he'd meant to say in his head, but once he'd said it, his skin cooled in doubt.

Robb didn't comprehend. Eyes fixed on Theon's, he asked, "Should what?"

It was too late. Much too late. He could probably backpedal now, laugh it off, come up with something unrelated, or even just drop it, but he'd been seized by the idea, the one idea that had waltzed into his head unannounced and hammered images into every corner of his head like a series of well-timed arrows, and they were –

Too compelling. Too perfect.

He walked over to Robb. The snow popped beneath his feet. His breath shimmered in the air and mingled with Robb's when he had gotten close enough. Smiled. "You and me. Perhaps we should do it with each other."

Somewhere behind them, a crow cawed. The wind picked up, bit into Theon's skin, and slid beneath his cloaks.

Robb just stared as incomprehension scattered to surprise which rapidly bowed out to embarrassment seasoned with anger. "Do not jape, Theon."

Theon took a step closer. "I wasn't." Another step, until his nose picked up on Robb's scent again. "Why shouldn't we? I'm not a woman. I don't have any virtue left you can still rob me of." Part of it must have been his bout of abstinence, but most of what aroused him right now was the idea in itself, so deliciously wrong and wrongly delicious. "I've shared pleasure with men before. Not often, mind, they're not my preference. But just because a man prefers cakes does not mean he will turn down bread -"

"Why would you compare this to food?"

"Because both are urges that must be met, one way or the other." He leaned in, until Robb's eyes dominated his vision; large and wide and framed by thick dark lashes. "You know it. I know you do. You've touched yourself. You've been touching yourself for years, haven't you? I could do it for you, that's all."

Color shot into Robb's face. Visibly fumbling for words, he eventually settled on a pressed, "Here?"

The grin on Theon's face grew. I have him now, I know it. I have him. "So you do want to."

Robb frowned. "I didn't say that."

"Not in so many words, no."

Robb looked on the brink of annoyance. "May I remind you that putting words into other people's mouths doesn't make them so?"

"Aye, but tell me: would you ask for the price of a hen if you weren't the least bit interested in buying it?"

Robb looked almost offended. "But you're not a hen."

Coloring aside, Robb was a Stark after all. Too bloody literal. Here they were, one propositioning the other for casual sex, the other artfully putting any doubts about the Starks' lack of wits to rest, and having a conversation about the politics of buying livestock.

Theon rolled his eyes, and took a final step forward, placing a casual hand on the front of Robb's breeches. "I think I've heard enough about hens."

Robb's spine stiffened, jaw tightly locked, frown etched into his features.

Rubbing his palm against the bulge, he felt Robb's cock give a satisfying little kick upon being touched. Theon ducked his head to ghost his lips along that cut, stubbled jaw line. "Don't you want me to touch you, Robb?" Slowly, so very slowly, he pulled on the laces. Slipped a finger up below Robb's clothing until the fine hair on his belly tickled his fingers. Let it wanter down, down. "Do you want me to touch your cock?" Theon's voice grew rugged with his own mounting excitement. "Do you want me to make you come?"

His hand reached lower, brushed against curls of hair. He went lower and lower, and his head started to spin, and then he felt it, hot and half-hard against his hand and Theon tore his face from Robb's jaw to look him in the eye.

"Do you, Robb Stark?"

Robb's hand shot down to Theon's. Grasped him by the wrist. Yanked it out of his breeches, and tossed it to back down Theon's side.

"No," Robb said. Simply. With finality.

Those blue eyes looked at Theon cold and hard while the heat rushed and the blood drained and still his breath came in short gusts that billowed out in front of him in hazy blazes.

Shame burned down his spine. All other emotions gathered in his guts where they tangled and shook until he felt like retching.

"…As you will. Then we shan't." He straightened his back, and forced a casual smirk. "It makes no difference to me either way."

Robb looked slighted. It made Theon feel slightly vindicated.

Theon had expected Robb to do a number of things. What he ended up doing was lacing his breeches back up, adjusting his cloak, clearing his throat, and breezing past him with an unceremonious yet decidedly no-nonsense, "Follow me."

I have no choice, Theon knew, and so he lowered his head, bit his lip, and fell into step.

Warmth greeted them as soon as they stepped inside. Servants drifted past, greeted them with bows or curtsies. Robb nodded at each but said not a word, instead cloaking himself in silence as he went down stairs, bristled through heavy-set wooden doors, waltzed across the granite of the entrance hall, and marched deeper into the bowls of the castle while Theon retreated into his own head and gradually filtered out all external input to return to a place of mulish avoidance.

So much that, when Robb stopped, Theon nearly walked into his back. Stopping just inches from him, he blinked and let his gaze wander.

Granite floors. Flames popping in the brazier. Bookshelves hugging the walls.

Robb's bed chamber.

He wanted to ask what this was about. He wanted to smirk and make an easy joke that would lighten the atmosphere. He wanted to put up his barriers and defenses and go back to where he belonged.

He got to do none of those things, because he was grabbed him by the shoulder, twirled around, and pushed forward, forward, forward, until Robb had his wrists pinned against the wall, his body trapped between a hot body and cool stone, and Theon hopelessly, shamelessly, needlessly aroused.

Theon stared, completely taken aback.

The look on Robb's face roused the first wave of vertigo in Theon's ears.

"If we're going to do this," Robb said, voice grave, "we're doing it on my terms."

Theon's brain spun and spun while trying to come up with a suitable reply – any reply, a well-placed jape, a little dig, a cynical remark – but all thoughts froze in mid-dance when Robb's face snapped forward and mashed their lips together.

Breath caught at the back of Theon's throat. Heat shot into both into his face and down to his crotch. Thoughts tore free from their frozen lock long enough to scream and wail a mantra of, "he's kissing you, he's kissing you, he's -"

And then they, too, ground to a halt again and all wits left him in their entirety when Theon tilted up his head, grabbed Robb by the back of his neck, and yanked him into a thing too harsh and domineering to be a kiss. Heaving his weight forward when he ground open Robb's jaw, and subjected him to the dictatorship of his tongue.

Not for very long. Robb groaned, deep and low, and slammed Theon back against the wall for his trouble, yanking away control over this thing that was not a kiss and using his superior body weight to keep Theon in place while he shoved his tongue into Theon's mouth this time, large and wet and entirely without compromise.

Theon moaned. His body shuddered, his cock hardened, and his hips slid forward, grinding against Robb's heat, desperate for sweet, sweet friction. He heard someone's groan melt into moans and then slosh into something close to whimpers; it might have been him, but it didn't sound anything like him. None of this was like him.

Robb forced open his mouth and pushed his tongue inside as far as it could go. (Not like him at all. Much too...) Robb's tongue rubbed against his, strokes inexperienced and a little too wet, but so full of enthusiasm and aggression that it made Theon's body sing. (Much too...

...submissive).

This tought would have angered him, if he had been able to muster up the mental resources to care.

"Robb." Air flooded his lungs when Robb let go off his lips to trail presses of his lips along Robb's jaw, neck, ear. "Robb. Robb, Robb, Robb," he said, like a mantra or a prayer or a curse.

Robb shivered against him and tore at his clothes, discarded Theon's cloak and buttoned down his doublet, and Theon lifted his arms where appropriate to help in the process until the air roused goose bumps on the skin of his exposed upper body.

As soon as Robb had finished his task, Theon tried a small jape, feeling dizzy by now. "Your future wife won't have any complaints."

Robb leaned in and claimed Theon's mouth again, bidding him to be quiet.

But Theon wasn't quiet, not nearly. Robb's stubble scratched against his face, his tongue dominated his mouth, flooded Theon's mouth with his taste (not sweet like some of these whores, no: earthier, spicier). Large, calloused hands ran across his chest and down to his waist and lower – and still Theon didn't stay quiet. He moaned. And then he laughed.

Unsurprisingly, Robb's broke apart to shoot him a quizzical look. "What's funny?"

Theon had no idea, not really. Except maybe for: "You do it like it's a battle." He laughed. "Remember what I said?" He reached down to press his palm against Robb's breeches again. "Think with your body. Think with this."

He earned a rugged moan for his efforts that went straight to Theon's cock. He held on to the opportunity for dominance and rounded on Robb, grin on his face.

Savagely, he tore open the laces on Robb's breeches and pushed down his hand to wrap it around Robb's cock. He rolled his fingers over the head before giving the shaft a sharp tug, and thought, A little thicker than mine, hmm.

Robb's torso slumped forward. "Oh, gods."

"Battlefields is where you'll need those. Bed chambers are no places for gods. Not the new ones and not the old."

It happened fast, so very fast that Theon's senses blurred and only cut into sharp awareness when he was well on his back, atop a bed, with Robb hovering above him.

Theon's hand still wrapped around Robb's cock, he gave it another tug, and then another, easily setting on the short, hard pumps he himself preferred when he tended to his needs by hand, and looked at Robb.

Robb's face looked nothing as much as someone who didn't quite know what he wanted, only that he wanted, and Theon didn't know why that was so exciting, only that it was.

"Your body betrays you," Theon said, willing a bastardized version of his trademark smirk onto his lips. "It's telling you, 'this is new, this is good, what did I wait so long for?' Look at your cock, Robb, look at it, all hard and red and slippery at the tip." He gave it a tight squeeze. "Your body says, 'I want release, I want to come, I want, I want, I want -''"

Near-violently, Robb tore away Theon's hand from his cock, face darkening. "Turn around."

Theon dropped his grin. "You can't mean -"

"You told me to think with this." Robb's cock ground against his hips.

To Theon, it felt sharp as a knife. "And it's telling you that its most latent desire is to bugger me in the arse?! I'm not a wench– "

Momentarily insecure, Robb soon found his footing. "And I am?" He ground again, as if for emphasis. "I thought you said you had no..." He trailed off to moan at the friction, then fumbled back for his voice to finish with, "... no virtue to speak of?"

Is this a game, I wonder? Because if it is, I'm losing, fast and hard. Though those are kind of unfortunate words at the moment. "I – "

I have never, Theon could not say.

Í'm scared, Theon could not say. Nor could he follow this with, But I kind of want to.

"I don't think you're man enough," is what he could and did say, infusing the words with just enough challenge and stubbornness to make Robb's nostrils flare, and the next thing he knew, Robb was tearing at his breeches and pulling them down to free his cock. Theon's embarrassingly hard cock, with the tip glossy in the fiery cast of the brazier popping beyond.

Robb gave it an unceremonious tug.

"Ah." Robb's movements were sloppy and inexperienced, but they felt better than anything had in recent memory. "Gods, Robb – "

"No religion in the bed chambers. It's not a battle," Robb reminded him, in the voice closest he ever got to sounding cheeky.

Theon wanted to kiss him, kiss him and not wrestle with their mouths, really kiss him now.

He didn't. Mostly because Robb got there first.

Tongues slid and fingers ran through hair, padded along jaws and necks and shoulders, and then somewhere along this sensory journey, Theon's brain proved too addled to take in many impressions but these: red lips bruised by kisses, half-hooded blue eyes, moans and gasps and skin sliding on skin, and then –

"Turn around," Robb ordered again, and this time, Theon did.

What would my father think of me, was the first thing that came to his mind when he settled on his stomach, naked from head to toe. Sudden, irrational panic pricked his spine, lingered at the base of it, then shot up again to tumble out of his mouth in a mad rush of, "You won't tell anyone. You can't."

Robb said, voice serious and humble, "I would never, Theon. As well you should know."

The worst aspect of this was that, in the rare moments when he was honest with himself, Theon really sort of did.

Robb gave him a weighty look. "I would never, because. Well." He hesitated. You're …."

Not this, Theon thought. Not this type of talk. Not yet. "I know what I am." He bowed his spine and threw a look over his shoulder. "I'm more concerned about whether you know what you're doing."

That put the discussion and Theon's temporary bout of some sort of male version of last-minute maidenly panic to rest, only to discover that Robb really sort of – well, didn't know.

After explaining to Robb that he couldn't just shove it in there without preamble – Theon might not ever have gone this far with another man, but he knew this much, at least – they each scrambled for something to ease the endeavor. Halfway through that, Theon ended up laughing at the sheer absurdity of their current situation: the both of them, one naked and the other barely keeping his modesty with a droopy doublet, rifling through a bed chamber looking for something so Robb could more easily bugger Theon in the arse. Some things in life just had to be appreciated for their inherent comedic value.

At long last, Theon presented Robb with a jar of scented oil he had swiped from under the bed.

Oddly and oddly endearingly, Robb blushed at that. "Present from Daemon Sand, when he visited a few years ago. I had forgotten – "

Theon cared much less about its origin story than the fact that it was there, so he just judged it with a, "That'll do," and kissed Robb some more until they were both hard and breathless again. Drunk on arousal by now, he didn't hesitate when he plopped down onto his stomach, didn't let shame get in the way when he dripped some oil onto his hand, and allowed him not to think of those eyes watching when he reached behind himself and eased a finger inside. And another.

It wouldn't block out Robb's erratic breathing, though. When Theon threw a look over his shoulder, he saw him propped up on his knees, the purple head of his cock appearing and disappearing from view with the strokes of his hand, face flushed so hard that the rosy tint extended down to his neck and what was visible of his chest.

Theon stumbled through a haze. "There." He slipped out his fingers. "You can figure out the rest, I trust."

After much fumbling and groping and hissing, Robb proved that he could, indeed.

Only, it wasn't at all like Theon had hoped. His muscles tightened in knobs of pure, unadulterated, intimately invasive agony. He hissed as if the breath had been punched out of him. He involuntarily squeezed and relaxed and squeezed again around him. Hot and unyielding, it pushed into Theon's body, a tiny bit at a time and then another, and another in what felt nothing so much as being ripped into – and yet Theon didn't want him to stop, not really (Why?), and when Robb dug his fingers into Theon's hips and asked, "Are you all right?" in a shaky voice that betrayed real concern, Theon endured.

Bravely. Theon looked over his shoulder to catch a whisper of heated blue eyes. Putting on his best re-enactment of his own infamous smirk, he said, "A maiden no more. It suits you well."

It really did: Robb looked good like this, dim light tracing fire in his auburn hair, eyes cast in shadows, and the blue of his eyes reduced to a fevered ring around the blown pupil, mouth opened in the lushest little 'oh,' he just – he just looked so –

Theon's and Theon's alone, in this moment only.

Their eyes met, and Robb's hips slowed. "... You're hurt."

He was, but no matter now. "I'm also a... Greyjoy – hah." He half-moaned, half-hissed while soldiering through the pain. "We... may get fucked. But when we do, we deserve the decency of getting fucked properly."

Then Robb's finally reached the point where he couldn't go in any deeper, and Theon kept very still. His muscles kept tightening and clenching around Robb as if trying to push him out; every little movement of Robb's sent flames of pain racing up his spine to bury in his brain and explode in bursts of sun-bright agony. Theon did his best not to cry out, but some mewls still passed, and he tried and tried not to shudder, but some tremors still made his muscles coil.

And Robb pulled out.

Irrationally, anger roused. "What are you doing?" Theon growled; in his world view, he had agreed to subject himself to the humiliation of being buggered by another man, so he was very well going to, and he was not going to be discarded mid-fuck like a whore you'd just found out was cavernous as a godswood. "I – hey – "

Robb grabbed him by the hips, spun him around, tossed him onto his back on the bed, raised one of Theon's legs to rest on his shoulder, and thrust back into him, all so fast that Theon had little chance to even get a single moment's reverie before Robb's cock was back in there again, and oh. Oh.

Oh.

"... Better?" Robb's breath breezed along the beads of sweat pearling on Theon's forehead. Blue eyes probed. Probed as if he could take apart Theon bit by bit, to study him, to learn, to see, to understand how things worked and where they had gone wrong so he could put him back together right.

Theon's body twitched helplessly. This, this new angle, he hadn't known it would feel like this, he had never, never, not ever, and it still hurt, it did, but something else mingled with that searing pain now, different and kind of, kind of, kind of good, and next thing he knew he was sort of rocking into Robb and had his legs spread like a cheap whore, and taking it like one, too.

If he had been any more coherent, he might have thought about how the position made him a little looser and therefore granted easier passage. Mayhaps even a darker, oft-silenced part of himself would've slipped through the pleasure long enough to whisper treacherous tales of blue eyes and smiles and Robb's face and Robb, just Robb.

But he wasn't coherent and so he thought of none of these things, only watched the way Robb moved, felt the way Robb moved, became the way Robb moved: faster now, better now, thrusts still over-eager and sloppy (and painful, here and there), but –

His eyes caught on Robb's lips, and he grabbed him by the back of his neck to yank him down to tangle their lips together in a kiss.

Or something that was not so much a kiss as it was this: clicks of teeth and desperate, uncoordinated smears of saliva and the thick heat of tongues, and then Theon had one plump upper lip caught between his teeth and Theon bit with no reason of cause but that he could and that he was drunk on sex and this and him.

"Ow." Robb broke the kiss with a wet smack, somehow managing this without interrupting the rhythm of his hips. "What did you do that for?"

"I don't know." Theon laughed, only to groan when Robb seemed to fuck him harder as if in retaliation. Theon tried to speak. "I... hnn … don't know. Nothing. Everything." He laughed, loud and abrasive and past the point of bloody caring, because he was on his back getting fucked by Robb Stark and this was in equal parts the most absurdly hilarious and thrillingly forbidden thing he'd ever heard, and he decided he could probably love it just for that.

Robb's lips quirked into a small smile before he propped himself up on his palms, took hold of Theon's waist to pull him closer and up, and continued his rhythm. "Is this... good?"

Even if it weren't, Theon decided, he probably wouldn't say so.

"Show-off," Theon said mock-annoyed. "You know very... hah. Very well." Every thrust dulled the pain a little more, until finally, by the hundredth or however many there had been by now, it had simmered down to a vague sense of discomfort nearly lost in the stream of pleasure. "Hnng."

A twitch, that was all Robb's smile was before it slid back into his face.

Mesmerizing, that face, Theon thought. So nakedly grateful and honestly yearning. Surprise flitted across Robb's features when he discovered how something new felt, as he learned what he liked, what it was like to share pleasure, to share intimacy or simply to fuck a tight hole.

It was then that Theon noticed the signs of Robb losing control and edging closer to his climax: his groans morphed into shameless moans, his grip on Theon's waist tightened until his nails bit into the flesh, and his thrusts grew hard and rough and desperate, not so much thrusting as pounding, in, in, in, in.

In, in, in, and Theon bounced with him, all rational thought forgotten, and they may have been at it for a moment or a fortnight, but then Robb was saying:

"I – soon. I am. Soon." His eyes shone down wide and questioning. "I – where?"

"In-inside," Theon said, and he would worry about why this turned him on later. "Do it –"

Everything narrowed down to the eye of the pulse. Robb fucked him with a few more thrusts, his hips snapping forward as though locked in the motion, harder, harder, harder, sloppier, more desperate, and still harder –

And then Theon felt it: a shudder, a pulse, a splash of wet somewhere deep inside him, all this just moments before Robb collapsed against him with a long drawn-out moan.

Robb's heart thudded hard; Theon felt the beats even through the clothes Robb still wore. Hot breath sped along Theon's sweat-slicked neck where it scuttled down his spine and made him shudder.

Painfully aware of his own cock still jutting up hard against Robb's hip, Theon reached down. A tug and then two was all it took before Theon finally, finally, finally stumbled into the bleach-white glare of orgasm himself. He spilled into his hand and onto Robb's hip, and almost as soon as he had, when his breathing had gone back to normal, a deep, bone-crunching tiredness swept up his entire body in a cocoon of sated warmth.

They remained like this for a few moments: Robb on top of him, still breathing heavily, softening and slipping out of him with a wet plop. Robb's release poured out thick and lazy, trickling down onto the bed.

Shooting an arrow was not like coming after all, Theon mused. Surprisingly enough, coming was most like coming.

Since Robb was starting to get heavy, Theon fidgeted. Taking the hint, Robb mumbled, "Sorry," and rolled off of him onto his back next to him where he collected his breaths until they simmered into something calm. When next Theon glanced over at him, he was Robb Stark, heir of Winterfell again all over again, poised and cool and controlled.

Except not. "I liked that." Robb rolled over to look at him, and paused. "Did you?"

".. Friendly advise, Robb: women do not usually appreciate this sort of question." Theon rolled onto his side and locked their eyes. Smirked.

"But you're not one," Robb said.

Theon couldn't argue with that. "... Hmm."

He shifted. So did Robb.

Awkwardly.

This was always the part Theon didn't like as much. The post-sex part. The part where you got up and left – or got up, paid, and then left – while going about your business and pretending like it had meant nothing, like it was just about thrusts and gyrating hips and the sweep of orgasms, and nothing else.

Sex was like wine: a great equalizer, a force that simultaneously allowed everything and stripped it of all meaning. Flushed professions of affections, heated kisses, caresses and private smiles and whispers; all were permissible as it happened and waved off after it had, brushed aside as having been brought on by the passion of wild rubbing bodies. An illusion of intimacy and little more.

Robb had been right and he'd been wrong, though Theon would never admit this to him or anyone else, because this wouldn't be any different. It wouldn't be.

So he put on his defenses in the only way he knew how, and smirked. "So, how does it feel to lose your maidenhead, sweet Roberta?"

Robb looked at him, nonplussed. "That's rich, considering who played the part."

Theon stifled a laugh. "And I played the part because I wanted to, not because I lacked the skill."

Robb frowned.

And that made Theon laugh, rich and throaty, and in that way that was both comfortingly familiar (the laughter of aeons past, when they had been children, and their games had not yet been corrupted, when Theon had still hoped), and then Robb smiled as well, and they might have been young again, for this one moment.

Then Robb said something Theon had never expected: "Then why did you lie?"

The words hung there, suspended in the air, tight like a physical weight.

Why, indeed.

Theon shuffled forward, and put one hand on Robb's shoulder. His lower body burned with pain, his nerves sang with vertigo, and exhaustion dripped through his bones, but none of that mattered now.

"Don't say a word," Theon said. "Let's just stay like this, for a bit."

Robb considered. "How long?"

"I don't know. A while."

Wordlessly, Robb placed a hand on Theon's waist and let it linger there and looked at Theon and Theon looked at Robb, just like he always had. Comfortable silence settled over them, one that didn't need words, only occasional grins and yawns.

And then, just like this, in the warmth of Robb's bed with their eyes locked together and that deep-seated, not entirely unpleasant pain burning low in his lower body, Theon allowed himself to hope again.

Just for now. Just for this little bit.

Where was the harm in lies, after all?

Author's Notes: Uh... hi? :D A few things:

- First of all, thanks a lot for reading. This is my first GoT fic, and also the first time I've written any prose in something like half a year. I used to be a pretty active writer in my old fandoms, but then sort of ended up quitting and doing very un-fannish things before I got swept up again in fannish joy for GoT/ASOIAF a few months ago. At least I'm keeping in my tradition that the first fic for any new fandom I write must be some sort of cheesy gay porn fic of entirely way too epic proportions (or word counts). Some things never change.

- Fun fact: I totally thought my first fic for this fandom would be Renly/Loras because, hello. Canon gay! (which, incidentally, was a big draw for me to take the plunge and watch/read the canon). And then I ended up writing slash for a (somewhat plausible but not even implied) crack ship and I don't even know how in the fuck this has happened, and, and. I regret nothing, though. Oh no.

- Fun fact #2: The inspiration for this fic was crack through and through. Suddenly, while watching Theon nail Ros on TV, I thought, "LOL WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF THE BROTHEL GOT CLOSED DOWN?" and then the whole convo about chicken popped into my head, and I sat down to write. Cackling like a maniac, naturally. Only to find out, a few thousand words in, that it was turning out a lot less cracky than I had thought. I mean, it's still a bit cracky. But, considering my very first draft started with Theon whining to Robb about no more whorish sexytiemz boo-hoo and featured a bunch of mpreg jokes, uh... well...

- I suppose the Theon and Robb here are rather more inspired by show canon than book canon, although I did not set out thinking more of one medium over the other. I guess show!Theon's characterization just crept in with the words.

- Reviews make authors happy in pants. That's no lie! :D