#hawkecest

When Carver slips into Wysteria's bed late at night, she's expecting it. Their father is gone on a trip with Bethany, leaving Carver and Wysteria alone at the house with their mother. Wysteria wishes she didn't know why her father took Bethany and no one else, but she does. Of course she does.

Carver is sixteen years old and he kisses like he's desperate for it, like he needs Wysteria's lips to survive. He breathes her in, muttering soft reassurances against the freckled flesh of her neck even as he sucks and bites hard enough to hurt. She'll have to wear high collars for the next little while.

At a particularly sharp bite, Wysteria lets out a gasp. Carver shushes her softly.

"Shh. You don't want anyone to find out, do you?" Carver murmurs and she knows what he means. Their mother is asleep in the other room and too much noise could wake her, leading to the discovery of two of her children in such a compromising position.

Wysteria shakes her head and bites her lip, imagining the scandalized look on their mother's face if she caught them like this. She'd cry and scream and demand to know how this all began, but Wysteria wouldn't be able to answer. All she knows is that she'd do anything for her little brother.

Twilight bloomed slowly in the Mire, not so much a sunset as a dull waning of light and clarity. Shadows spread and rose, like a blanket billowing over a freshly-made bed. The drums still kept time. The Dimseers opened their mouths when attendants pressed sopping-wet cloths to their cracked lips, and they let the precious droplets drip onto their tongues and slip down their throats, but they gave no other sign that they were conscious. Their rheumy eyes stared straight through all things, and their calloused hands kept time.

The tribe gathered, shuffling, moaning. Elijah carried his father to the pyre, tall and defiant. Elder Rurig came forward with his torch. The fire caught the ring of gold around Elijah’s pupils, and Rurig gazed into those blazing eyes for a long moment before grunting, as if satisfied.

Elijah laid Malcolm, Hawk, in his bed of drywood and brush, and Rurig set it ablaze.

The drums picked up, just a little. Leandra burst from the tent with a cry, her arms outstretched as she ran stumbling for the pyre. Elijah clenched his fists and dug his heels to prevent himself from intercepting her, from carrying her away from the fire. This was how it must be. As she fell to her knees, the flames licked her hair, her face, and she turned her face up to them, sobbing.

The tribe sang, shedding the weight they’d carried all afternoon, throwing it off their shoulders as their lungs filled with air and their hearts filled with song. They sang the dirge fervently, beating their chests in time with the drums, rocking, swaying. Elijah stood stock still until Bethany and Carver flanked him, and pulled the song out of him with their hands.

The fire rose higher and higher, filling the marsh with the smoke and the scent, masking Malcolm’s burning body in its white-hot heart. Leandra wailed, and the Hawk-children sang, and the tribe moaned, a primal call and response that demanded even the participation of the wild. Marsh wolves lent their eerie howls, and even the toads sounded mournful.

Suddenly, Leandra stopped, and gasped, and stared rapturously at the swirling smoke rising from the center of the pyre. “Mal,” she whispered hoarsely, her hands fluttering up as if to catch him. Elijah, his arms around his siblings, watched the smoke briefly form the shape of wings.

The marsh seemed ominously quiet after the Dimseers ceased, dropping quietly into unconsciousness as the ritual wound down. They would awaken ravenously hungry and thirsty, and would be plied with thick cuts of blackened meat and salted duck eggs and sharp, nose-opening cheeses. The whole tribe would eat well, replenishing their bodies and spirits after the catharsis of the ritual, and rejoicing in the goodness of being alive.

Tonight, Bethany tended sweetly to their mother, and Carver to Elijah. He had barely wept all week, but now he could not stop, his big body quaking with the effort, and Carver held him, rocked him, poured magic into him in cooling waves, as Eli was feverishly hot. A torch had been passed to him in his father’s death, and he did not want it -- tonight, he did not want it. In time, the torch would fit into his hand and heart as naturally as if it had always been there. Tonight, it simply burned him, softened him, melted him into putty in Carver’s hands.

In the darkness Carver sat in Elijah’s lap, wrapping his legs and arms around him, resting his head on Eli’s shoulder. His hands moved in big, slow circles, soothing, and Eli’s hands gripped him, fiercely. When Carver kissed his cheek, Eli turned his face into it hungrily, into Carver’s rare and beautiful sweetness, the uncommon gentleness with which Carver handled him. Open-mouthed, Carver accepted his pain, swallowed it, and it streamed out of him in his own silent tears.

They mourned Malcolm, but they also mourned the change in them that Malcolm’s absence brought. They mourned their youth, and they feared their future. And they loved each other, so much it hurt, so much that this dread knowledge that they could lose any of each other at any time made them hungry for each other’s embrace, for the security and familiarity of each other’s touch. Elijah and Carver wrapped themselves around each other in greedy, youthful, defiant love, and did not let go of each other, even when, hot and spent, they fell into exhausted sleep.

He hated how weak he was, he hated that he had started crying in the first place. But it was even worse that Garrett had found him like that, crying into his sleeves and wiping his snot into them as he pretended to watch that stupid romance movie on TV. Maybe he could have fooled most people, tried to tell them that he was secretly a sap who always cried over movies, but not Garrett.

Garrett knew he cried differently when it was really about the movie. So instead of making some jab at him for being such a sap, he frowned and sat down next to him.

„Please tell me what‘s going on.“ No jokes, no teasing, no trying to make light of things. As if he knew that something was going on.

„It‘s nothing“ Carver sniffled, even though he knew he wouldn‘t get through with that even as he said it.

„Nothing doesn‘t look like this, brother“ Garrett told him and picked up the blanket from the couch to wrap it around Carver‘s shoulders.

„Mother had Peaches over when I was at hers for tea… and she‘s trying to tell me how nice she‘d be. Tells me how she wishes for me to find someone all the time. That she‘d even be happy if I‘d find a nice man, that she doesn‘t want to judge...“ He heard Garrett sigh next to him, and he knew that Garrett knew just as well as him where this was going.

„I can‘t tell her, Garrett. I can‘t tell her that I already found someone. That I know who the fucking love of my life is and it‘s my own bloody brother!“

He hadn‘t realised that he‘d started crying even harder until Garrett‘s strong arms wrapped around him to hold him tight. Those strong arms he loved so much…

„You truly must be upset to call me the love of your life to my face“ he heard a raspy voice from above his head, and it told him that Garrett wasn‘t quite unaffected either.

„It‘s true though. You know I‘m a closeted romantic anyway“ he grumbled through his sniffles and earned himself a pat on the head.

„That you are. And no, you can‘t tell her, but that doesn‘t mean that you can‘t be happy… we‘ll never be able to tell anyone, but we can still have a good life together, Carver. It‘ll just be… harder.“

Carver sighed and pressed even sloer to his brother. „Yeah, harder and nastier and everyone will keep asking why we still live together and don‘t have partners and if we break up we‘ll still be brothers and it‘ll all go to shit.“

„Yes it will. Yes it will. But that doesn‘t matter to me, because in return for those troubles I get you, my very own closeted sap of a brother with the sweetest ass in all of Thedas.“

Carver grumbled and attempted to swat Garrett away, but his wrist was easily caught in his big brother‘s hand. He looked up and stared straight into those eyes that were so similar to his own and yet so different.

„Your own closeted romantic, as if you‘re not secretly the most romantic of them all“ he retorted and gave a little huff. „It was you who took us on that couple boat cruise with candle light dinner last year for our anniversary, remember?“

„Yes, I remember“ Garrett murmured, and got a faraway look in his eyes for a few moments.

„You were so handsome that day with that flowercrown in your hair...“ He still had a picture of that night as his phone background, Carver knew. He always pretended it was to annoy Carver, but Carver knew better.