AN: I swore I wouldn't actually write sibling incest and then 3 AM Edmund decided to be a perv. SMH my freaking head, I swear.
Prompt #27 was "birthday."
Father never held name day celebrations for us. He didn't believe in them; didn't believe, particularly, in showing us any sort of regard unless some censorious motherly sort happened be around to bear witness to his reserve. Occurrences of which I could count upon the fingers of one hand. Lest I be deemed uncharitable, let it be noted that for all his neglect of the pressing and quotidian duties of fatherhood, he beat us similarly rarely-Edgar more often than I, for my brother in his mild and retiring nature, his poet's soul which quaked like leaves of aspen at the meanest injustice and balked at the mere mention of power, bore a cheek ripe for blows. Some wretched, cowardly corner of my soul could not help but be grateful to him for that misguided chivalry, which bade him take upon himself those blows meant for me.
But for all Edgar's weaknesses and failings, it was he to whom Father had bestowed the deeds to the estate on the day he turned five and ten. A richer gift, in my jaded eyes, than any measure or display of love.
The passage of a year and four months marked the day upon which I would ascend to the same age. The jovial sun, too bright and hot upon my face, mocked me with the knowledge that I, unnatural son, would receive nothing of the sort. Nothing at all, most likely. The day would pass as any other. And I would be, if not content, then at least amicably resigned to letting it so pass-if my poor puppet brother had not crept into my bed at the pert crack of dawn. As I used to creep into his when we both were still so young as to believe the nightmares of the other to be a cause for our own concern.
"Edmund," he whispered. His papery voice grated at the edges of my fast-fading dreams. "Edmund, wake up, I have something for you."
I turned my face into the pillow and groaned. Damn him, did he never sleep? "Why?"
"It's your birthday."
"What of it?"
"Why don't you open your eyes and see what?" He was teasing me now, the toad-born twat. Of all days he could have chosen to grow a sodding spine and speak, it had to be this one.
With a suitably put-upon sigh, I wrenched open one eye, rubbing at the grit and glaring at the twitching smile striving to mar Edgar's habitually gloomy face. Unfathomably gloomy. Had I in my bastardy not infinitely more reason to go sullenly about than he?
"Widdershins your way, wean," he giggled.
"What nonsense are you speaking?" I reached over to thump him with a stray pillow. Laughing outright, he leaned out of the way. Bastard. "Get stuffed."
"That's your charge, I've asked the cooks to prepare your favourites today."
"Why?" I muttered again, letting my weary eye fall shut again. My face burned, of a sudden. How I wished I could call it the work of the wretched sun! But, in troth, I had only my foolish heart to blame. The heart that still dared yearn and beat for Edgar, blight on my soul and the only soul living to think me worthy of more than learned ignominy.
"I can't imagine. Surely not because everyone deserves nice things on their birthday of all days." Sarcasm dripped like chill rain from my brother's drawled words. The tone didn't suit him at all; the skeptic's purview was darkling mine, not dawning his.
"And by whose measure am I of all people deserving?" I couldn't resist asking, praying he heard petulance, not desperation, honing my jibe to a knife's edge.
Edgar's meagre weight depressed the mattress; his cold, dry palm came to rest firmly upon my bare shoulder. He who shied from any stray touch, he had never once constrained himself with like regard from reaching out to others. His most banal hypocrisy. Sometimes I hated him for it. Today was not one of those times. "By mine." Something else settled upon the pillow, near enough to tickle my still-beardless cheek. A sheaf of papers, loosely bound. "And see, brother, I've another gift for you."
I didn't want to look. Didn't want to imagine that this gift might be aught of more moment than a moment's jest. But Edgar nudged the papers closer, come on then-what choice did I have? Hesitantly I opened one eye. Then the other. I picked up the papers gingerly, like they were soiled, and perhaps they were, with the dirt and sweat and blood and muddied stream water that comprised the family holdings. For I held in my bastard's hands the very deeds which had been passed into Edgar's a year's lifetime ago, which had set down in ink like heart's blood spilling onto the pages to whom all assets would be bequeathed upon time of death or mortal incapacitation of Edward, fourth Earl of Gloucester. Deeds which had been made out in Edgar's unsullied name, now bore the stain of another. Edgar. Edmund. Sons of Gloucester.
I raised my eyes, our father's oaken eyes, to meet Edgar's. Pale-fogged, like the winter sea. He blinked, once; ran a tongue still white from last week's ague over cracked lips. His hand upon my shoulder twitched. In tandem we breathed in, out. In. Out. Watching. Waiting. Wanting.
With one hand I cast the filthy deeds to the floor, the rasping flutter and thud warped, stretched, sounding through a sea of things unsaid. With the other I scrabbled for the back of my brother's head. Before he could flinch away I twisted my fingers in the elf-locks of his thick curls, stark charcoal against the wan ivory of my skin.
My eyes never left his as I surged upright; my hands never left his shivering body as my vision swirled, dimmed, until I could see only him. Edgar. Wretched, wonderful Edgar. White and black and grey, angel and demon and muddled man, from a thousand retellings removed my storied likeness. As I would touch a saint I took his hand. Bound us together, brothers in deed as much as blood. Bodies writhing together as one: who was the mirror, and who was the man?
And I pressed my lips to his. Hard enough to bruise, to mark him. Stain him, as he had those pages. Those bone-bleached threads of my tapestry of dreams, woven through with ambition and ne'er spotted with the blood of hope. All the while my serpent's tongue whispering I hate you, I hate you, I hate you, my martyr's mind crying love, love, love. That vein of hope, pricked to the quick, singing mine, mine, Edgar's spider fingers on the back of my hand and at the base of my throat tracing the sordid, sacred ours. I pressed my lips to his, and he his lips to mine, and the world dawning dark before us was ours.