a/n: Thats right, Edgar and Ellen. Purely experimental, and oneshot. So no asking me to make this longer, not that I really believe any of you want me to, because honestly this is kind of pointless.
And if you guys smell sexual tension, then your senses are probably working perfectly. If what is implied bothers you, please do yourself a favor and leave.
All characters belong to Charles Ogden.
No one who knew him would ever in their right mind call him urbane. He was not stylish, he was not suave. Yet as he stood on the roof of the mansion with one arm draped across the sharp metal railings and the other occasionally bringing a long clove cigarette up to his lips, he almost looked rebelliously debonair.
Almost.
He wore his drab striped pajamas the way he always had, but as a teenager they hung strangely on him. His body had always been rather scrawny, but his shoulders filled the top of his one piece clothing awkwardly. How else could one describe him except a young man who still wears striped footy pajamas?
Edgar stared out at the incredible view of Nods Limbs, black eyes narrowed and lips tightly pursed.
He missed being a child. It was a horrible sensation to look at one of his old blue prints and feel that familiar rush of nostalgia for the old days. He longed for pranks, for mischief. To look at his sister's ghostly pale face and the both of them would chuckle insanely at what hoax they were about to execute next.
Ellen was still at school, and she wouldn't be home for a while.
He hated going to school.
The undermined education system was something that he never believed could catch up to him and his superior determination to be a mad scientist; but apparently it could. After a while he got fed up with the teachers, the irrelevant assignments, and the never-ending idiocy of his classmates.
Beakers and chemicals. Lab notes and ballpoint pens. Textbooks and theories.
Edgar's element, correct?
He considered going on simply in the name of science.
But soon, even his precious inventions at home lay in his laboratory chamber collecting dust and becoming homes for various insects. Even the loss of his major interests could not force him out of the daze he had walked into about a year ago. Suddenly, he had no desire to prank, no desire to foil. He would merely wander in and out of various rooms of the mansion while Ellen was at school, smoking and staring out the dirty windows and sometimes breaking out of his trance to scratch Pet underneath one of its hairy tendrils.
Along with the faint clipping of Heimertz's bush keeping, Edgar's ears picked up the loud open and slam of the mansion doors. Ellen had come home. His acute ears could feed him everything from inside the mansion. Ellen putting her large ratty sack of books down, Ellen throwing her wispy shawl onto the floor, Ellen's long chicken legs carrying her up the stairs and up to the roof-
"Brother."
In a flash he crushed the lit end of his clove within two calloused forefingers and threw it over the railings.
"Afternoon, sister."
It seemed to be one of those empty moments that he been growing so accustomed to, where a prank of some kind, no matter how small, should have made it count.
"Yet another dull day of lectures on how to put each grain of icing perfectly on a chocolate cake, I believe?" Edgar said, a tiny smirk making its quick residence on his thin colorless lips.
"And I guess lounging around the mansion for eight hours is better, Edgar?" She said, raising a long thin black eyebrow, situated right above her large coke bottle glasses.
She took a step towards him.
Edgar didn't flinch when she did, but a fleeting twitch rattled through his body. Ellen had that eerie ability to make anyone, even her own brother feel uneasy about being in close proximity with her. She had grown up so much, and was only an inch shorter than him. Her pajamas no longer fit on her loosely, but wrapped tightly around her body and revealed curves, however small and minute they were. She was skinny, more so than he was, except there was no masculinity in her delicate form. Somehow she made up for her small stature with the sharpness of her face.
She took another step. This one was quite large, and she was ten inches away.
"You smell like cigarettes, brother." She said softly.
Edgar looked curiously at her, his eyes darting to the side.
"Allow me to…" She reached down the front of her shirt and pulled out a squirt gun.
"Clean you off!"
And she fired it point blank right into his pale face.
Edgar sputtered, frantically rubbing the water out of his face as his sister chortled hysterically.
"Oh…my…god…that…was…hilarious!" Ellen shrieked between laughs.
Edgar could only stare with his mouth gaping at his sister as she laughed. It was so…hell, it was completely unexpected. The both of them had been walking around like emotionless zombies for so long; to have this sudden burst of emotion and hilarity shocked him. It wasn't long after that he joined his sister in her cackling, water still dripping down his chin and the tips of his jet black hair. They both fell to their knees until their laughter died away, leaving them staring at each other with dazed faded smiles on their faces.
"Ellen…" He said.
"Yeah, Edgar?"
"Be careful with that prank, it's an antique."
"Sure caught your pale ass by surprise though, didn't it?" She taunted.
"Touché, sister."
He wiped the rest of the water off with his sleeve and got up, offering his hand to Ellen and gently hoisting her up.
When they both were standing, he didn't let go.
The two of them looked over Nods Limbs, any traces of their previous antics long gone. The sight of their town seemed to sadden the both of them. It used to be a playground whose dirt would get underneath their fingernails with ease, a place filled with victims who were more than worthy of their practical jokes. They had their mundane material, like bugs in the hair or food to that of a larger scale, such as putting some arsenic particles in Stephanie Knightleigh's lunch and causing her to black out for three days.
"You should come back to school."
"W-what?" Edgar said, bewildered at his sister's abrupt statement.
"I miss you."
"You don't need me, Ellen."
"Of course I don't, Edgar." She said with bite in her voice.
"I don't need you, I want you."
Edgar raised an eyebrow at her, unaware that he was still holding her hand.
"Think about it this way; have you ever imagined what it's like for me to be in public without you?"
He tried.
And tried.
All the while staring into his sister's bespectacled eyes with thoughtful regret.
Wherever he was, she was there, and wherever she was, he was there. At least...that's how it used to be. They were twins, not held together by their uncanny similarities but by the bond that they had unwittingly strengthened through the years. All of a sudden he felt guilty for leaving her to interact with the wide open world, the world that could be so cruel to nonconforming people like them.
"Well I don't know, Ellen. Why don't you come and stay home with me?" He said, trying hard to cancel out his guilt.
"Because whatever's out there makes me stronger. Whatever's out there makes us stronger. What are you gaining by staying cooped up the mansion?"
She let go of his hand and clenched it by her side.
"Nothing, that's what." She said.
"So you think I'm weak Ellen? Is that it?"
Ellen blinked.
"You think I'm weak because I'm tired of dealing with people who only look at me like a freak and that I'll never amount to anything? Because I'm different and I hate being sugary sweet? I can't stand that, Ellen. It makes me sick, and I know it makes you sick too."
He sighed in frustration and looked away from her, instead peering out at their town once more.
"Its just bullshit."
Reaching into his pocket he pulled out his pack of cigs and a lighter, suddenly not caring that his sister hated that he smoked. Edgar plucked out another clove, put it between his lips, and lit it.
"I mean, you're actually saying it's good to interact with people like Stephanie fucking Knightleigh?" Edgar said, exhaling a cloud of smoke into the chilly afternoon air.
Ellen said nothing. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her staring at the cigarette with barely hid contempt.
"And I always thought you secretly had a crush on that purple clad slut."
A comment like that a few years ago would've sent the pale teen on the road to a shouting match with her. Now, he merely snorted and puffed on his cigarette, giving her a jokingly withering side glance.
"Don't sound so jealous, sister. You know you're the only woman in my life."
They both smirked, but he knew they would both ponder what he had just said.
Ellen really was the only woman in his life. They did nearly everything together, and when they weren't together, even he had to admit it was like he was missing an arm or a leg. It was secretly the reason why he never felt like doing anything to exercise his freedom that he had since he didn't go to school anymore.
Without Ellen…it just wasn't worth it. Nothing was.
He still wondered why she still went to school. For if she felt the same way he did when they were apart, which was incomplete, he didn't understand why she couldn't just stay home with him. They were both at genius level; they had no use for the mediocre quality of education that their pathetic saccharine town offered. Everyone despised them; their tanned skin tipped with rosy cheeks and their bright blue eyes, looking other worldly in their harshly induced perfection. And they called the twins aliens. Edgar could admit it; he and his sister were fairly strange. They kept rooms for certain things, like one for broken bottles and another for vials filled with poison. They had no problem lifting up a pothole and climbing into the dank filth that was the sewer.
But he loved the way they were. He adored how strange and outlandish they grew up to be. And he thought he loved how they treated them differently because of how they were.
Maybe she liked it.
Maybe she liked studying those who she was different from, those who were different from her.
But he missed her. God how he missed her. If she was here with him, it would be like old times, where they could be bizarre as they wanted.
Edgar chanced a glance at her, and decided not to look away this time. It was like looking through a mirror, but the glasses and her obscure femininity set it apart from him. Same pale skin, untidy obsidian hair that was now down to her waist, and small dark eyes that sparkled like a true deviant whenever mischief was managed.
She must've felt uncomfortable under his gaze, because she fidgeted and finally blurted out:
"So are you coming back to school or what?"
He rolled his eyes, uncertainty written all over them.
But eventually, he gave a lopsided smile.
"Yes."
In a flash her arms flew around his neck and she was hugging him tighter than she ever had. Eyes wide with disbelief and his arms still by his side, he quietly stuttered.
"W-what're you doing, Ellen?"
They've hugged before. They had, however fleeting and detached it had been. But now they were so close and taut that he could feel her heart thumping quietly against her chest. Her thick strands of hair tickling his nose. Her sharp hipbone jutting against his.
"Would you just fucking hug me back, brother?"
There was a tremble in her voice.
Had she missed him that much?
His arms wrapped around her waist, apprehensiveness evident in his touch. He knew she could smell the tobacco on his clothes, yet another reason to feel self conscious about her being so near. One of his hands left her waist and settled itself on the top of her frizzy head, holding it close to his shoulder. As much time as they spent together, it was still rather cumbersome for them to hold each other like that.
Finally she loosened, but not before giving the softest, tiniest kiss on the side of his pallid clammy cheek.
"Sister…" Edgar said, hating the way his voice sounded so breathless.
"I'm going inside to do my homework." She said suddenly, redundantly trying to straiten her forever wrinkled pajamas, and pushing her large round glasses back to the upper bridge of her nose.
Ellen began to retreat, turning to him again before she went down to the top floor.
"And no sleeping in tomorrow, remember?" She said, shutting the trap door.
His knuckles ghosted over the previous caress of his sisters lips on his cheek, and he couldn't help but feel a strange unwanted pang of insecurity that partially subsided the more he stood there up on the roof. Edgar finally decided to retire; the sun was setting, and he had enough of looking over his syrupy town of Nods Limbs. Edgar was less than enthusiastic about going back to school tomorrow, but after that lecture his sister had given him, he figured that as long as he was with her it wouldn't be all that bad.
Plus his brilliant mind had already been concocting some amazing pranks that would curl the toes of all those prim and proper bastards who were in his class.
And hopefully, Ellen would be by his side laughing like a madwoman as always.