#tombcest

anon this is just making me think how hot it would have been if canon harrow and gideon called each other sister. like begrudgingly. full of hate. bc harrow's parents forced them to.

28. Sloppy Kisses

Silas Octakiseron doesn’t tolerate other people’s bodily fluids. None of them. But Colum Asht doesn’t count as “other people,” he’s a part of Silas. They are one flesh.

When Silas sits in Colum’s lap at the end of a long day, helping his cavalier recollect and ground himself through physical touch, he tolerates their combined bodily fluids, taking Colum’s spit as his own into his mouth as their lips slide together punctuated by moans and gasps. A hot sensation roils in Silas’s gut as their tongues touch, as Colum’s hands slide underneath his nightclothes to run over his feverish skin.

Silas’s chin is wet as he pulls away for a moment, checking for that telltale haze in Colum’s eyes that means he doesn’t feel all the way back yet. Silas is Colum’s necromancer, he must tend to Colum’s needs even when Colum cannot or will not tell him what they are; that is his burden to bear.

Colum makes a needy noise, soft and deep in his chest. His eyes are still a little hazy, he thinks. Silas can see that their saliva glistens on Colum’s skin as well, and he shivers.

Silas presses himself forward again, pink tongue swiping boldly at the seam of Colum’s lips to request reentry. And why shouldn’t he be bold? Colum is his, and he is Colum’s, and they are both a section of each other as well as themselves.

The sound of it all used to make Silas blush, the first few times he had tried this particular method of ensuring his nephew was in fighting shape by the next day. It isn’t embarrassing anymore, but the sloppy sounds of where their mouths are joined still makes Silas’s body too hot to be entirely blameless. But as long as Silas doesn’t do anything above and beyond what is necessary for the care and maintenance of his cavalier, his soul remains unsullied.

“Colum,” Silas whispers into the space between them, kissing again and feeling a deep thrill in him that borders on shame. The name falls from his lips like a benediction might a few more times between unwavering touches, until Colum’s mouth starts to move a little more vigorously on its own, kissing and licking and swallowing down their shared spit.

24. kiss to distract!

It was morning, and Colum Asht really didn’t want to be awake. His body ached as though he’d been crushed by a compactor, but really it was that his soul had been conspicuously absent for too long the day before. He always felt… addled, and weary, and a hundred other nasty things when Silas used him so thoroughly as he had the day before, like each of his component parts had been separated, put into a box, shaken vigorously, and then put together again by a blindfolded toddler.

But just because Colum felt like shit, that didn’t mean that Silas did.

And Silas Octakiseron was, annoyingly, a morning person. Early morning prayers were his favorite time of day—peaceful and meditative, unless of course you felt like a jigsaw with a dozen missing pieces.

“Brother Asht,” Silas’s voice intoned from somewhere very close to Colum’s cot, probably kneeling beside it, “it is time for morning prayer.”

Colum sighed, disgruntled, and rolled away, toward the foot of Silas’s bed. It made about half a dozen joints creak. “A cavalier is meant to care for her body first, to fulfill her primary purpose to her necromancer,” he quoted scripture from the deepest parts of his mind, the part that didn’t get all mixed up no matter how many times Silas sucked his soul out.

“That doesn’t mean you can neglect your soul,” Silas shot back. A small, smooth hand pressed against the bare skin of Colum’s shoulder, soft but relentless. “Rise, Brother Asht.”

Colum didn’t know what wires had gotten crossed the day before, but there was a terrible idea that sparked in him, and the rest of him was so discombobulated that he couldn’t stop himself in time from acting upon it. He sat halfway up in his cot, his blanket falling to his waist, and he pressed his face forward until his chapped, dry lips met Silas’s.

They were perfect, excessively so, as Colum’s uncle was designed to be in all things.

It really was just a peck, to distract Silas from his line of thought and hopefully to gain Colum a little extra much-needed rest so that he would feel more like a person when he woke up again later. He hardly felt it, though he did feel Silas’s full-bodied gasp.

“There—your holiness rubbed off on me. My soul will be fine. Now, let me sleep,” Colum huffed before dropping back to the bed like a sack of a hundred potatoes.

17. First Kiss

The first time Silas Octakiseron sinned knowing his transgression ahead of time… was terrifying. It was worse than the time that Colum had taken him on a trip to the top of the belltower in the Octavian, when Silas had passed out because of how far his stomach seemed to drop looking down, and down, and down from the fenced-in area. It felt as if one single misstep might have caused him to plummet so far that he would disintegrate to dust upon hitting the ground, skipping the need to be buried in the catacombs entirely.

When they rose from their evening prayers, from huddled together and linked hand to hand to standing and the same, Silas refused to let go. He’d explode if he did.

He tugged on Colum’s hands to keep the big, weathered man in place, and he stood on his toes to press his lips clumsily and chastely to his cavalier’s. It was the first kiss he’d ever given or received with this sort of intent. It was a statement bigger than its outer facade, Silas declaring that in this one aspect of himself, he would accept and indeed welcome imperfection.

He would welcome Colum, no matter if it was a subversion of their vow. Their vow was large enough to hold more now, now that Silas was older than when it had been made.

Silas landed back on the rest of his feet lightly, his expectant gaze never leaving Colum’s face for a moment. Colum was remarkably still, like an unusual statue in their austere set of rooms, and the tips of his ears flushed darker, along with one particular patch on Colum’s left cheek.

“You’re a bit too old to say goodnight like that, aren’t you?”

Before Colum had even finished his weak protest, Silas felt like he’d been thrown outside of the city without proper protective gear on. His heart cracked in his chest the same way it had when Colum had told him what meat was made from at the age of six, but worse.

Colum still thought of Silas as a child. Silas thought of Colum as… more than he should. More than he’d been taught to.

But, in Silas there was also a deep-set ember in his belly, of the angry variety. His thin cheeks puffed a little as he let go of Colum’s hands finally, embarrassment and shame coating the heartbreak and bruised ego.

“I’m not a child, Brother Asht,” he insisted, scowling and feeling very adult about it. He shot one last glare at Colum before stalking back to their bedroom to finish preparing for bed. “I’d appreciate if you didn’t insinuate that I was.”

It seemed he still had a lot of work to do before his offer to commit this single sin would even be considered.

Elsewhere…

Colum Asht was shock-still in the middle of their small prayer room that jutted off to the side of the Master Templar’s bedroom. His hands still felt warm where Silas had held them as they’d joined each other in prayer, and then where Silas had held him to—

How old was Silas again? Was he fifteen, sixteen, or seventeen? He could have even been older or younger. It was sometimes difficult for Colum to remember small details like the passing of years since some years ago when they’d taken their vows. In any case, Silas seemed just as small and delicate, the perfect picture of a pale Eighth House necromancer, as he always had been since he had been a child.

There was no possibility in Colum’s mind that Silas had kissed him with any intent other than familial comfort and intimacy in mind. Silas was the Master Templar, and Colum couldn’t remember a single time when Silas hadn’t done his utmost to ensure that he didn’t even come in the general vicinity of a sin.

Finally, Colum shook himself out of it. Of course, Silas wasn’t a child anymore, and as such wouldn’t appreciate Colum stepping out of line by pointing out his young age. He probably hadn’t meant anything by that kiss, owing to his general state of innocence, and so any meaning that Colum would impose himself upon the action would, in a sense, be Colum’s own depraved mind. That must have been the case.

14. Accidental kiss

“Brother Asht, will you take a look at this sheaf of flimsy? I may need to rest, but I believe the ink’s warped from heat. We may need to have this volume recopied.”

Silas sat hunched over the desk in his study, a fluorescent lamp shining down on his desk in a spotlight so bright that it nearly rivaled the artificial brightness that served as their substitute for Dominicus’s daylight. The knobs of his spine were visible through the thin tunic he wore for his evening study, though that was not what Silas had called Colum to comment on, so Colum trundled over to peer over Silas’s shoulder.

Even in the bright light, Colum had to squint and lean in significantly to see whatever problem Silas currently pondered. His young uncle had a penchant for finding the smallest flaws in things, and condemning them based on the tiniest of blemishes. It was both a blessing, to have a necromancer with such finely tuned senses, and a curse.

Colum leaned even closer, laying his arm on the desk next to where Silas was, their faces hovering beside each other’s. His much older eyes squinted as he tried to quickly examine the flimsy, but he could find no flaw in it. There was just scripture, and sermon, entwined together in a remarkably mundane union for a text created by the Eighth.

“I don’t see what you see, Brother Silas,” Colum murmured, chest rumbling with his speech. The bulk of his chest was pressed awkwardly against both Silas’s ribs and the back of the wooden chair, so Silas must have felt it as well as heard it. “Show me where the flaw is?”

Colum turned, both to see Silas’s expression and to hear him better. The problem was, Silas turned to look at him at the same time he turned to look at Silas.

“Are you entirely blind? It’s clearly—”

They kissed each other as their heads turned—or, more accurately, their lips bumped together, slightly misaligned but still having notable points of contact. Silas’s lips were very soft, which was something Colum had suspected in his weakest moments but never confirmed before now. The last few words of whatever Silas had been saying were caught on Colum’s mouth, half formed and unintelligible, and without even thinking of it Colum’s eyes slid closed.

He missed the way his uncle, who in recent years had grown cold and sharp like ice, distant and faintly luminous like most of the moons which spun around their planet, melted and flushed a red that rivaled a tomato.

It lasted perhaps a total of a second and a half, both of them stunned into freezing, and then Silas squeaked as he hadn’t in years and threw himself to the other side of his chair, nearly tipping the entire thing over in his haste to get away.

Colum grabbed one of the spokes on the back of the chair to stabilize it, and when his eyes opened again, his uncle’s face was drained of all color again, making even his pale silvery hair appear vivid in contrast. His eyes were a dark shock in their sockets, pupils round and large. He took a few shivering, shallow breaths.

“I’m sorry,” Colum said, getting ahead of any impending storm. He was horribly tempted to brush a strand of Silas’s hair behind his ear—his sudden motion had knocked his headband askew, as well. “I came too close.”

He did not mention that they had both been too close. He also did not mention that he didn’t feel the weight of guilt that he probably should—all he felt was a faint strand of confusion, and something tender in him that was so rarely indulged that Colum had thought it died out years ago.

“Don’t—just don’t speak of it again, Brother Asht. Leave me now—your eyes are not as trained as mine, and are of no use at the moment.” Two breaths later, and as Colum stood again, Silas hunched back over the sheaf of flimsy even more, his back bowing like a deceased shrimp’s. His next words were so quiet that Colum wasn’t entirely sure he hadn’t hallucinated them. “I don’t need to forgive you.”

The tone was… soft and placid, free of anger. How strange. That sounded less like a refusal to grant mercy and grace, and more like an assertion that forgiveness was unnecessary, which was… surely something. Colum hesitated near the door of Silas’s study.

“I’ll draw your bath in half an hour,” he said. “And set your nightclothes on the counter.”

He got a noncommittal hum in return, and Silas fingered the particular sheet of flimsy he was holding. Silas likely wished he could tear it, so that its worth would be soundly rebutted. Colum knew he did that at times, with kitchen knives and his own ink—he destroyed things that he thought imperfect, even if no one else could see it. Only the most flawless could remain in close proximity to the young Master Templar.

39. last kiss before dying (warning: angst be here!)

Their last kiss is a terse, awkward affair. Silas summons Colum to his bedside the morning of, takes his rough chin between his fingers, and deposits a perfunctory kiss on the edge of Colum’s mouth, nearly on his jaw. He retreats.

Silas doesn’t ask if Colum has forgiven him. Colum doesn’t ask if Silas has forgiven him. They don’t talk about the important things (including this, the ways they break taboo beside Silas’s necromancy), instead holding them inside until they burst. In time, they could get better about it.