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Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
Reek fears the woods. He remembers them as a boy bound for Winterfell, borne through the limitless trees of the Wolfswood – their tall black trunks looming along the road, boughs reaching down as though to pluck him off his horse. At night, without the sound of the sea to drown them out, each small forest noise sent his heart skittering and he mistook his own frightened breathing for the approach of a snowbear or a shadowcat, or one of the other northern monsters he had read about in his mother’s library.
Reek has learned since then that the worst things in the woods have two legs and gray eyes and call you by your name. Still, he takes a strange comfort in watching the sway of Ramsay’s broad back as he shifts in his saddle, and he knows that tonight the worst thing in the woods has its mind set on other prey. (And it’s only for a fleeting second that he compares this feeling to the ease he felt trotting along behind Robb, who – like Ramsay – is not afraid of the woods.)
While the idea of hunting wolves stirs something troublesome in Reek’s addled brain, it’s a welcome change of pace from Ramsay’s usual pursuit. He’s even been allowed to ride instead of hobbling along behind – probably due more to Ramsay’s impatience than any sort of generosity – and if Reek isn’t careful, he might just start feeling like a human being again. Even with the cold front that’s blown a steady snowfall in from the north, it’s a relatively tolerable evening.
Except for Damon. Reek’s mount is tethered to Damon’s, and Damon keeps twisting to look at Reek over his shoulder, and there’s something about that humorless little smile that gives Reek pause.
“Are you frightened, Reek?” he asks as quietly as he can manage. Reek recognizes the excitement in his voice, a sort of flush creeping into Damon’s cheeks as he slows his steed to keep stride with Reek’s nag.
“No,” says Reek, taking a thin satisfaction in saying a word that most often earns him a blow. “Are you?”
Reek doesn’t know where that came from – (or he does if he thinks too hard about it) – but it’s too late to take back – the vapor from the words still hangs white in the air.
“You little whore –” Damon’s hand goes unthinkingly for the whip coiled on his belt.
“Will you two bitches stop your barking?” Ramsay holds up a hand for silence. He’s been tracking this wolf for hours, and the sun is nearing the horizon.
Reek weighs which bodes worse – spending the night in the freezing woods with Damon Dance-for-me, or returning to the Dreadfort with an empty-handed Ramsay Bolton.
“Apologies, milord,” he pipes, leaving Damon to echo weakly:
“Sorry, my lord.”
Continuing on in silence, Reek considers why he’s always detested Damon so especially among all the Bastard’s Boys. He’s not the most creative with his cruelty nor the cleverest with his gibes, but somehow the mere sight of sets what’s left of Reek’s teeth to grinding.
Just then, Damon casts him a sharp look that tells Reek his backtalk will not be forgiven, and Reek sees quite clearly the thing about Damon that makes him so terrible – he’s lovely.
He’d be called handsome if anything inside the Dreadfort were allowed to be more than brutally functional. But now – outside the confines of that awful place, with fresh snow catching on his fine, blond hair – he looks almost like a boy just going for a ride in the twilight.
“Theon, go for a ride in the Godswood with me.”
“It’s freezing out there.”
“So we’ll be alone.”
Reek looks down at his saddle-horn – he shouldn’t think of these things. The odd-numbered fingers clutching the reins remind him who he is now, to whom he belongs. The men-at-arms, the serving girls, the stable boys all remind him – the way they invent any distraction to avert their eyes, the way they speak too loudly so as not to hear his shuffling approach. He remembers the way the kitchen wenches at Winterfell used to look at him – lingering gazes that ended in a blush – and he sees it again when the girls at the Dreadfort bring Damon his second, third, fourth cup of wine. It makes Reek burn inside that the best he can hope for now is to pass unnoticed at his master’s feet beneath the table.
When he looks up again, he realizes that Ramsay’s mount has trotted out of sight, leaving him alone with Damon in a darkening clearing.
*
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
The woods thrill Damon, and have ever since the year that a cat slaughtered three men from the village. It was trapped, eventually, and paraded along the road on a spit, but in the intervening weeks, Damon and the other boys made a sport of who dared to go the furthest from the safety of the fires kept burning at the edge of town.
Alyn was three years older than Damon, with thick black hair and broad shoulders and a sharp smile that caused most of the younger boys to look away. “I found the place where it killed the blacksmith’s boy,” he said one night. “Want to see?”
“Yes,” replied Damon without thinking. None of the bodies had been recovered, and in his mind’s-eye he saw a cave littered with the bones of the blacksmith’s boy, and the shepherd, and the crazy old man who had often wandered into the woods at night.
Only Damon was brave enough to follow Alyn into the forest. The breeze carried a biting cold, and it had gathered the snow into high drifts against the boulders and tree-trunks – deep enough in places to make walking slow and laborious. As the two boys rounded a bend, the glow of the village torchlights vanished, leaving them with only the moonlight to show their way. The drifts grew deeper and the woods grew denser, and Damon began to regret his decision.
“Are you sure you know where you’re going?” he asked, but when he turned around, Alyn was gone.
Damon stood there, dumbfounded and suddenly aware that he couldn’t feel his toes. Alyn had been following in his tracks, so it was impossible to know when he’d turned back – how long Damon had been marching on alone into the forest. Again, he imagined a cat’s lair filled with the bones of young men. Had they known, before it happened? Somewhere to his right, he heard a branch snap. Damon held the air in his lungs, listening, but the woods resumed their silence, and when he began to breathe again it seemed so loud, too fast. It would hear him, he thought. It had heard him already.
He hesitated before turning back, lifting his foot to place it in the last track he’d made, but no sooner have he taken a step when again he heard the sound of something moving through the brush, much nearer this time. His heart began to pound furiously, and something within him urged Damon to run. He threw his arms out to keep his balance, lungs burning from the cold as he fought against the knee-deep snow. In trying to look over his shoulder, he missed his tracks, left leg sinking all the way to the hip and he found himself unable to take another step. His feet felt like blocks of wood, and his head was reeling – he had not imagined dying this way. He twisted to face his pursuer – too late; the force of the impact toppled him into the snow. The air went out of his lungs and his eyes squeezed closed.
“I knew you’d run.”
Alyn grinned, his warm weight pressing Damon down and down into the snow.
---
Like most everyone in the Dreadfort, Damon had noticed the prince’s handsome face. He also noticed the way Lord Ramsay always sneered the word “prince,” leaving Damon confused about whether the Ironborn was one or not.
In either case, there’s little that Ramsay hates more than highborn boys, and this one had been particularly defiant. Damon remembers the first time his lord called him down to the dungeons to unleash the sting of his whip on the prince’s back, and he remembers the marks that Ramsay had already begun to leave there – long, red tracks down the firm muscles of the boy’s shoulders. Damon drew back his arm and then sent the whip sailing forward with an awful grace, and he can still recall going half-hard at the way the boy cried out. He did not stop until the prince’s back was all but skinned; Ramsay laid a knowing hand on his arm and said, “Enough, Damon. Well done.”
By now, hardly a trace remains of the prince’s former beauty. What’s left of his teeth are rotten, and his hide is more scars than skin. His straight, black hair turned white some time ago, and now he slouches and slinks and whines like a beat dog. And yet for every piece of him that Ramsay has taken – every tooth and toe, the very luster from his eyes – he seems to love the creature all the more. It’s no secret what other sorts of things Lord Ramsay enjoys doing to the former Prince of Winterfell.
And now, here he is – Ramsay’s pet – mouthing off to Damon like he isn’t a pathetic, repulsive cur.
“Are you frightened now, Reek?” Damon asks, pulling up the slack on the tether, bringing their horses close enough that he can grab Reek by the ratty old furs he’s wearing.
“He won’t like you touching me,” Reek says, and though his voice trembles, there’s a certain matter-of-factness about it that irks Damon even further.
“He also won’t like you talking back to me.” Damon feels his cheeks going red. “Lord Ramsay deserves a pet that knows its place.”
Reek levels a stare at him. “And do you intend to show me my place?”
Damon gapes at him. Reek’s expression is oddly unreadable – fixed, though his gaze flits from Damon’s mouth to the surrounding woods and back again. The words are a dare, but Damon can’t decipher exactly what reaction Reek hopes to provoke.
Before he can consider any further, he’s grabbed Reek by the hair and flung him into the gathering snow. Reek lets out a yelp, scrambles to escape from beneath the hooves of Damon’s horse and ends up sprawled with his back against a downed log at the edge of this small clearing. Damon dismounts, too disgruntled to bother securing the horses, and as he strides towards Reek, he can see the panic creeping into those crazy blue eyes, sees the rapid rise and fall of Reek’s chest, mutilated fingers pawing at the ground. But Reek stays where he is and makes no attempt to call out.
Distantly, he wishes for Ramsay’s return. If his Lordship arrived now, he would only see Damon standing in a clearing. It might seem – he might say – that Reek had tried to flee, and Ramsay would even thank Damon, perhaps be pleased enough to sit beside him at their next meal and leave his wretched creature in the dungeons where he belongs.
But there is a part of Damon that wants something else entirely. The cool air clashes pleasantly against the heat of his blood as strides towards Reek, pausing only for a second when Reek solemnly warns, “He might kill you.”
“Aye,” says Damon, pulling off his gloves to unfasten his belt. “He might.”
He kicks Reek’s legs apart, then drops to his haunches between them, grabs Reek by the throat and gives a firm squeeze. Reek brings his hands up to wring at Damon’s arm and kicks at his shins, but it’s half-hearted somehow. Damon knows this because he’s seen what Reek looks like when he’s really resisting. The first time Ramsay removed his restraints, the prince had actually blackened his Lordship’s eye. Damon was hopeful that Ramsay would kill him right then and there.
It churns Damon’s blood that Reek isn’t trying to fight him off. He tightens his grip and leans in to ghost his lips over Reek’s cheek and whisper, “Or maybe I’ll tell him that you forced me.” He hears Reek choke on what might be a scoff, but continues, pressing down again on Reek’s windpipe: “I’ll tell him you begged for it, so hard that I couldn’t – that I just couldn’t stop myself.” He smiles when he feels Reek’s fingers, trying now in earnest to pry his hand away. “He knows what an incurable whore you are.”
“Please–” Reek rasps. Damon lets his grip tighten once more before he releases it, and Reek’s head falls forward, coughing and wheezing. His mutilated hands worry at his neck, shaking, and Damon grins to see the pain and bewilderment in Reek’s watering eyes.
“You used to be so pretty,” Damon teases, grazing his teeth over Reek’s throat before sinking them just behind his ear. Reek hisses, clutches at Damon’s arms but doesn’t try to push them away. Damon’s hands tear at the clasp of Reek’s furs, then move their way down to his breeches. “What does he say to you before he fucks you?”
Reek’s eyes are closed, brows pinched together as he bites his lip. “He tells me I’m disgusting – says I make him want to retch.”
Damon can imagine how Ramsay smiles when he says the words, icy eyes glinting with anticipation. He knows how frightful Ramsay’s eyes can be, but he’s never had to bear their force the way Reek does. It dawns on him that Reek experiences every aspect of Ramsay with an intensity that the rest of them can only dream of.
Damon manages to free himself from his own laces, and the cold air does nothing to diminish how achingly hard he is. Reek is looking at him with that inscrutable expression again, shifting slightly as he watches Damon give a few firm strokes on his cock.
A gust of wind picks up, rattles through the bare branches of the trees, and somewhere up the valley a wolf howls. Reek’s eyes scan the clearing, and Damon realizes that Reek is frightened, but not of him.
“Look at me, pet.” He crooks a finger beneath Reek’s quivering chin, passes his thumb over those cracked lips until Reek’s eyes meet his again.
“I’m not your pet.”
“Does he kiss you?” Damon asks, not waiting for an answer before pressing his mouth to Reek’s. Reek does not reciprocate, but parts his lips, and Damon gasps as he cuts his tongue on one of the jagged edges within.
“Not usually.”
Damon guides Reek’s hand to his prick, though the touch is cold and incomplete. He tugs on Reek’s britches, and Reek lifts his hips just so – compliant but never enthusiastic – and Damon lets a small wave of shame wash over him as he reflects on the fact that – although he suspects Reek is probably enjoying the attention – he is the one who wants this enough to completely abandon his duty to his lord.
He refuses to be impressed by the size of Reek’s cock, though he cannot help but glance at it as he slides his hand up the inside of Reek’s thigh and asks, “How does he take you?”
Reek’s eyes flare suddenly, as he reaches for Damon, pulls himself up by the hair on the back of Damon’s neck to whisper in his ear, “He likes me on my hands and knees, like a bitch.” Damon shudders and tries to pull away, but Reek clings to him, breath hot against his cheek and goes on, “He’s strong – he just moves me how he wants me. Sometimes he holds me down – by the wrists, by the throat. His hands are so rough.”
Reek has clearly guessed the game, and Damon can hardly bear to look into those mad eyes; he grunts as he hooks an arm around Reek’s side, flips him onto his stomach and tugs his breeches down as far as they’ll go while Reek struggles to lift his face out of the dirt. Damon bites his lip as he slides his prick along the cleft of Reek’s ass, and he’s about to pose another question when Reek says, “He makes me ask for it.”
“How?”
Reek finally manages to brace himself against the log and his body quakes from the strain. “‘Tell me how badly you want this.’”
“And what does he like to hear?”
Again, a wolf calls up the valley and another wolf answers, and Reek goes taut, listening and shivering.
“What does he like to hear?” Damon repeats, grabbing a fistful of Reek’s greasy hair and giving a hard pull.
“‘P-please – take me.’”
Damon moans as he pushes inside, and he closes his eyes as Reek continues. “He loves to hear you whine and beg and moan. You call him ‘milord.’ He calls you ‘slut’ and ‘whore’ and ‘cunt.’”
“Don’t stop.”
“It hurts. You can’t breathe at first – it feels like he’s crushing you. And if it stops hurting, he’ll find other ways – he’ll choke you, or pull your hair, or twist your arm behind your back. Sometimes he’ll bite you hard enough to make you bleed. He likes when you bleed. He tells you how good you taste.”
Damon reaches around to Reek’s prick, gratified to find it hard and already dripping, though he’s beginning to realize it’s not for him. He belatedly reminds himself that he shouldn’t – that he doesn’t – care. He grabs a hold of Reek’s nasty old tunic, pushes it up over his back to run his fingers along the scars there. Some of them are his – most of them are Ramsay’s, and it’s easy to tell the difference – there’s a certain, obvious level of attention in those marks left by Ramsay’s knife.
Reek makes a wonderful sound – a sort of choked whimpering that drives Damon wilder than he’d like to admit. He can feel the tension building in his thighs, his heart pounding in his ears as he strokes Reek’s cock in time with his own thrusts, leans forward to feel all those perfect scars against his chest and asks breathlessly, “Does he make you come?”
Reek moans, opens his mouth to reply when the sound of a branch breaking somewhere just beyond the clearing makes him freeze, one of his ruined hands shooting back to still Damon’s arm. “Stop,” he whispers, so quiet that Damon can pretend he hasn’t heard it. Then louder, “Stop! Did you hear that?”
“It’s just the woods,” huffs Damon. “It’s nothing.”
*
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods comfort Ramsay. In the confines of his family's holdfast, Ramsay feels like a wrong thing – too big, too strong among his father’s fine effects. But in the woods he has always felt right – here, it’s only natural that he should take what he wants, as he wants it. Roose has urged him to be more discrete, and Ramsay thinks to himself that perhaps if the old man had heeded his own advice, he might not need to worry so much about how his Ramsay chooses to spend his time.
As a boy, he often wandered into the forest, occupying himself with the many brooks and caves and boulders, and sometimes slinging rocks at the squirrels and rabbits and birds misfortunate enough to cross his path. He still remembers, sometimes, the first time one of those rocks found its mark, and left a rabbit gasping its final, agonal breaths at his feet. He watched it for some time, until he was certain it was dead, then took it home to his mother, who was uncharacteristically proud of him that evening.
After a while, it was not enough to watch things die. Ramsay learned to build traps that allowed him to play with the animals a bit before snapping their necks or bashing them against the tree trunks. He began skinning them, cutting off pieces, and while it was happening, Ramsay felt strange – intoxicated – his whole body somehow lighter as the ache of a day’s work at the mill and the sting of a bastard name lifted from him.
He took his time in choosing a boy. He watched the other lads from the village and the nearby farms, looking for the one who seemed right. He can’t recall the boy’s name now, or the precise lie that he told to persuade him into the woods – no doubt some curious or wonderful sight was promised - but he remembers how the boy screamed when Ramsay wrestled him to the grass and ground out one of those pretty green eyes with the tip of his thumb.
“Tell anyone and I’ll kill you,” he’d said, knees straddling the boy’s ribcage as he writhed. “Say it. Say you won’t tell.”
There have been countless others since then – and to each the trees have borne silent witness. The forest belongs to him now – in name as well as blood – and though he will humor his father’s insistence that he temper his sport for the time being, he is painfully bored by the prospect.
The only pleasure he’s found in this evening’s venture was the stricken look on Reek’s face when he informed the creature that he’d be tethered to Damon for the duration of the hunt. But now the two of them seem to have become lost, and Ramsay sighs before turning Blood about and heading back towards the clearing where he last saw them. He can hardly blame Reek – always so slow and confused – but the thought of Damon stirs his ire. Damon ought to know how to keep up.
They’re alone, he realizes, and spurs his horse to a canter. He wishes the thought didn’t make him uneasy. Damon is one of his best men, and Damon knows that while Reek may be the nastiest thing in the North, he belongs to Ramsay, and nothing may be done with him without Ramsay’s permission. Still, Ramsay can’t shake a growing suspicion that Damon has betrayed him. He’s seen the way Damon looks at Reek sometimes – almost covetously, if he had to put a word on it – and Ramsay wants to think that Reek is too broken to return the gaze.
But Theon Greyjoy was a whore. And Damon is undeniably handsome.
Ramsay is already whipping Blood to an all-out run when Reek begins screaming. It’s a familiar sound, but Ramsay feels dizzy with panic at not knowing its cause. The sky is dark now – the moon beginning to gleam, but Ramsay dares not stop to light a torch. He pays no mind to the branches slapping at his face. The screaming grows louder, more desperate, and Ramsay suddenly finds that he does not care anymore – about hunting wolves, about pleasing his father, about what Damon is or isn’t doing – he only cares that he finds his pet, holds his pet close again.
As he approaches the clearing, he hears the familiar sound of animal teeth rending apart human flesh – but he hasn’t brought his Girls out on this hunt. His horse twitches, and he sees no sign of Damon’s mount or Reek’s nag. Ramsay squints at the scene, made mostly of shifting shadows, lithe and predatory. He can hear their snarls, the snapping of their jaws, and he can see pieces here and there – a leg with the boot still on, an arm. It’s cold enough now that the mess of it steams in the air.
“Reek?” he calls, and half a dozen pairs of ice-blue eyes turn towards him, watching though they don’t stop their feeding.
“Milord.” It’s a shaken rasp, coming from the opposite side of the clearing, and there in the dim moonlight, Ramsay can see a familiar silhouette. Ramsay swallows as the eyes turn towards the source of that cracking voice, and he nudges Blood a few steps forward.
“Come to me, pet,” he says evenly, and truthfully he cannot recall a time when his heart beat so ferociously as when he watches Reek venture slowly towards him across that little clearing. The wolves snarl, and he watches as one of them circles around behind Reek and begins to follow him at a slight distance. Ramsay thinks of his bow and the quiver of arrows at his back, but he hardly dares to breathe, let alone move. He can feel the muscles in his horse’s flanks tense, and Blood paws at the ground, threatening to bolt at any second.
Ramsay dismounts, and as his boots thud heavily against the frozen earth, the animals seem to move closer, their growls mounting into a single, frightening din, and by the time Reek reaches him they are nearly encircled.
“He made me,” Reek says in a whisper. “He made me.”
“Hush,” Ramsay replies. “Not now.” He bends to lift Reek by the waist, bringing him up until he’s able to get his foot in the stirrup and then grab onto the saddle-horn and pull himself up.
The wolves observe, some with their heads tilted to one side. Ramsay quickly pulls himself up onto Blood’s back, arms reaching around Reek’s thin frame to take the reins once more and guide his horse quickly from the clearing. Before they’ve even turned away, he sees the wolves converge again on Damon’s carcass, hears the sound of bones tearing from their sockets, and he holds Reek close.
They move out of earshot, and Ramsay releases a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. A cluster of crows fly overhead towards the melee. It’s only after a couple of miles that Ramsay ceases to look over his shoulder ever few seconds.
“I’m sorry, milord,” says Reek in the tiniest of voices. He lets his head drop back against Ramsay’s shoulder, and Ramsay notices that Reek has lost his furs. He pulls his own cloak around them, and taking it in his fingers, Reek pulls it even tighter. “They must’ve heard my screams. It’s my fault.”
“He’s lucky the wolves got him,” says Ramsay darkly. “I’d not have ripped his throat out first.”
He presses his thick hand to Reek’s chest and feels the heartbeat there – feeble and frantic like a bird in a cage.
“Were you frightened?”
“Yes, milord. Very.”
“You know that I would never let you die?”
“Yes, milord.”
*
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
He had smirked when Robb laid out the blanket in a clearing beside a stream. “Am I to be your lady, Lord Stark?”
He hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but that was in the summer, and when the call of the wolves startled him awake and he reached for his sword with a gasp, he felt Robb – warm, strong arms pulling him closer, soft lips pressed a kiss just behind his ear and whispered, “They won’t bother you while I’m around.”